#and thus loop has no fucking idea if shes figured them out or not

[lucabyte]

theyve been trapped like that for half an hour now. i don't know if they can move.

#odile: being very utilitarian but maybe affectionate? loop: h. bwuh? hhuh ????? whats going on where am i #in stars and time #isat #isat fanart #isat loop #isat odile #doodlebyte #i think its funny if this is like either early postcanon or early into an odile loops AU situation #and thus loop has no fucking idea if shes figured them out or not

[greentrickster]

a_real_nowhere_man: All of this is great. I love the idea that Chloe is smugly manipulating her team into having healthy schedules. Nino probably helps, he might not know what he's helping with but he knows it helps the team so by gosh he's gonna enable the fuck out of it.

greentrickster: ^U^ Thanks! And yeah, if Claw's the medic, Hesperia's the leader, Nino's the heart, and Alya's the data expert, then Chloe's somehow gone and turned herself into the team secretary. She's got everyone's schedules in her planner and also at least halfway memorized for the reoccurring stuff, sometimes better than they themselves do. It's kind of funny, because she's the sort of person who tends to aim for leadership and authority and that sort of thing, but I think this role actually suits her really well - she gets to be up in everyone's business, have a thumb on events and organization, and - probably most importantly for her - it means she's rarely left out of the loop. For a kid whose parents ignore and placate her on a good day and who doesn't actually have much power on her own besides the ability to 'call Daddy,' I think she'd really enjoy that. Pollen helps her figure out good organization techniques (bees are very structured, after all), and is openly approving of Chloe's efforts to keep the team functioning healthily as a whole, excellent bee behaviour.

And yes, Nino absolutely helps her with this. In fact, all of them do. Not even out of faith in Chloe or to support her, but for the simple reason... she's being really helpful. Seriously, she's in the perfect position to just be so incredibly helpful and useful with all this, since she's the only person who both knows everyone's identities and has strong reasons to interact with them in both her civilian and resistance member activities. She's in the same class as Alya, Nino, and Marinette, so it's natural for her to interact with them on a daily basis and plausible for her to decide she wants to start spending time with them, since they know Marinette, Marinette's interning for Gabriel, and Gabriel is Chloe's new boss, with Marinette having already made friends with Nino and Alya and thus being a pre-established friend group for Chloe to join. Likewise, since she's Gabriel's new top model and the face of his brand, it makes sense that he'd want to interact and spend time with her to test new potential looks and get a sense for what she's good at and what needs work, and being at his house (since his main studio is there) means it's natural for her to run into Adrien (and also Marinette) and thus start interacting with both of them as well, especially since Adrien's mentoring her in her new modeling career. She even coordinates with Nathalie, since Nathalie's the one organizing photo shoots and fashion shows. Girl's landed in the perfect position to just coordinate everything with almost no effort and she's taking advantage of it.

And this doesn't just mean in regards to coordinating schedules for resistance meetings. Chloe's whole life has been one big (and sadly ineffective) lesson in how to get and hold peoples' attention... which is a surprisingly useful skill when it comes to creating a distraction to cover another resistance member needing to leave a situation quickly or cover for them for whatever reason. Marinette didn't get enough sleep and forgot her homework? Good thing that (as far as Mari knows) being coworkers means any embarrassment that falls on her would reflect poorly on Chloe, and also that Chloe's bought the line that Marinette's 120% devoted to the Gabriel brand and image 24/7! "Of course she didn't do her homework, Ms. Bustier, we have an enormous show coming up at Gabriel, naturally she has to devote the majority of her time to planning how to make me and M. Agreste look good, it's her job. Are you implying that a literature assignment is more important than an internship that's going to open doors her poor, commoner little heart could only dream of without it? Maybe I should tell Daddy that this school doesn't support students pursuing formal careers-!"

Adrien's going to need a block of time to get through a task Chat promised to do or get in some extra studying? Schedule him to come watch over her for an upcoming photo shoot, have him there until five minutes into the shoot, then claim she's feeling super confident thanks to his brilliant teaching skills, and "Adrikins won't you please let me do the rest on my own so I can show you how well I can do without you here, I want to make you proud! <3" and boom, Adrien's got a free afternoon to get his stuff done.

Gabriel's schedule for the next month is in Alya's hands without the two of them having to do a thing because Chloe just already had it, Nino's able to actually plan the occasional group hang-out session with the whole resistance for moral and team-building exercises to help facilitate better teamwork and mental health, somehow scheduling changes and conflicts are being passed along and communicated more efficiently than ever before, and no one's pegged the changes as being a result of Chloe because she's managed to transition from 'entitled brat' to 'efficient yet overbearing secretary' with a smoothness hitherto unseen by man.

By a few months in she's reflecting that she should have made her vigilante name 'Busy Bee' instead of 'Lady Bee,' and she's going to be so incredibly smug when someone else finally catches on to what she's doing (aka, she's dominating, but for good instead of evil).

#Tales of Miraculous Hesperia #chloe bourgeois #ml paris special #ml paris spoilers #miraculous ladybug

[heavyknitter]

1 - How it started.

Two weeks ago I walked up 'n over to my aunt, who lives next door to me and asked her if she had some knitting needles and wool to show me how to do it. When I get the urge to do something, I need to do it right now, it can't wait, I need to ride this wave - thankfully my aunt is very much the same so she took one look at me, got up from her seat and started rifling through her stuff to find what I asked for. She used to be an expert knitter, but her eyesight is poor these days so she doesn't bother with that anymore - she is also, as I figured out quickly, not all that good at explaining shit. But eh, we made it work. We are both very kinaesthetic oriented learners and for her this is easy-peasy muscle memory and I had to remind her I have no context no idea how to loop what and where and more importantly, my hands may have a lot of muscle memory on various tasks but not this, none of that. So she manipulated my hand a bit until I got the idea of how and bäm. Suddenly I was knitting.

Well. I tried my best. It was a learning curve, thankfully a steep one. See, she cast on ten loops for me and did the first two rows to get me started and I jumped in and somehow made that 13 loops. That was fun because she of course asked me how the hell and I had no answer because we were at the bare bones, how to increase was not even a topic yet so idk what I did there.

Next issue, which I was not really surprised by if I am honest, was the fact that I was knitting too tightly. See, as artist I have the issue of gripping my pens too tight, so tight in fact that I sometimes cut off the blood circulation in my fingers while I draw detailed linework. I have compression opera gloves to mitigate that issue a bit and keep my hands and arms protected while I try to unlearn this. I also started embroidery in autumn of 2022 and there I like to pull the thread tight to make the embroidery neat and even, so.. both of these things worked against me a wee bit. But I worked on this little test piece for like three days straight to get the movement into my system. To get my grip under control. To get a rhythm going. (To make sure I will not add any more loops to a row than those 13 because seriously where the fuck did they come from.)

I mostly tried to get even rows but in the beginning I made some waves between tight loops and trying to loosen them again but eventually it clicked with my hands what I wanted them to do in terms of pressure and pull. My aunt is a darling you know? She said, those knitting needles are shit for the wool she had at hand but it will do for now, good enough to learn at least. And then she ran an errand the very next day and gave me some bulky as hell soft wool that has like.. the same feels as those soft synthetic cuddly blankets you can buy almost everywhere, so, perfect for me. And my first own knitting needles to go with that. And I showed her my test piece and how I slowly get a hang of it and she nodded in approval and praised how even my rows are getting and that made my brain go brr.

And one day after I did go into the city and hit up the store next to the train station and went a bit wild on buying wool - which is a theme for the next couple of days to be honest. I bought a lot of wool because I really wanted to have everything in house when I go wild. And thus I started on my first real project. A scarf that is more like a shawl because I really really misjudged how broad the bulky soft wool makes the thing. But more on that later I guess <3

#heavyknitter speaks #knitting journal #fuck these 3 extra loops srsly how where and why #I already know how to do increases by the way and I still have no idea what I did on the test piece specifically to make them happen #also maybe worth mentioning. I knit continental style. thats how aunt taught me. #I was not aware that there were different styles until I saw a youtube tutorial that confused the fuck out of me #i was bewildered by looping the thread around the needles by hand #and then i saw another video where a nice old lady said “i'm doing this one in the continental style” and I went ohhhh now I understand #so yah anyway I do contintental #which suits me very well because I knit fast and love it #knitting #fiber arts #fiber crafts #craftblr #knitblr #knitters of tumblr

[causeicanmakethedevilcry]

how I think snk might end

With chapter 138 out (finally) I can finally put my two cents in this. Again feel free to add any other theory to this, whether it is a ‘epilogue of all the characters’ or even a uno-reverse moment from the vile mastermind evilest of mangakas: Isayama himself (though I doubt it).

disclaimer : I am spewing bullshit, I am broken as of now.

First of all, with Eren dead (as we think so) we might in the last chapter have about three options for Isayama closing the shitshow that was SNK.

Ist Possible Ending : Eren being revived.

This isn’t anything new anyone hasn’t theorized before. But Eren coming back to life in the last chapter (thus we might finally get a fucking idea on what this idiot was thinking while choosing the Rumbling and totally letting us inside his mind) has to have a more optimistic view. Before we name the improbabilities of this, we must see the evidence backing up this. 

Zeke, a royal blood and titan holder, got revived not once, but twice. First time even as we desired for this quite unliked character to kick the bucket, did in fact not, and made a second come back for what I call whatever “Isayama-reason”. As for the second time, you could argue that Zeke coming back to life as the rest of the other late-Titan shifters (Ymir, Porco, Bertholdt, etc) was either a “power of friendship” event or possibly Ymir’s doing to serve to her advantage. (A miscommunication of the manga because isn’t Ymir out of PATHS? Did they themselves snap back to life?) 

Even so, with this, our homicidal crazy MC might make it back. For what? I do not own enough braincells to process what else he would want to accomplish after, well, killing half the population and attempting against everyone he ever loved, so unless for revealing a baby-daddy theory (which I am somehow still semi on-board for, don’t judge, one can stupidly hope), OR ending up with whatever girl of his dreams and get a nice cliché ending to fit the narrative of all shipwars and shippers alike, hell, even Isayama’s usual “gotcha” ending where the reversal of idiot MCs dying and sacrificing themselves being overthrown by this manga? We might get Jaeger back (chances are low, however when in doubt, don't undermine Isayama)

2nd Possible Ending : Historia’s POV (finally) + desired Epilogue

With Eren *actually* dead (Thanos’ no resurrections this time) Isayama might (and thats a big might) give us more entail with Historia’s POV that has been avoided for, again, some strange Isayama-reason. ‘Eren being revived’ can be debunked, due to Eren setting Ymir free from PATHS (or what we can tell with her being outside during the Alliance trying to stop the rumbling and even Armin witnessing her). Her not being in PATHS longer (theorizing again) might not allow her to build Eren back like she did with Zeke.

In this case, Historia could be the final key to seeing what Eren wanted to accomplish, given that he confided in her (for some reason) besides pro-genocide Floch, who is dead. The last one remaining is the queen herself, who we might come to know why she supported/kept silent about our deceased anti-hero. Probably confessing if Eren was a crazy homicidal son of a titan, or, most likely confirming most of the reader’s suspicion was: “He DId iT aLl fOr HiS FriEnDs” and we can proudly see Eren’s actions as almost honorable, miraculously revealing Jaeger as actually doing some good for the sake of our detrimental minds. Given so, finally setting a proper ending to SNK and maybe getting a glimpse about life of our character’s and the Eldians as Marleyans moving on from the as time passes by. Mikasa, Armin, Levi, Jean Connie, Annie, and everyone else moving on from Eren, and living that “free” life their friend tried to give them at the end of the day. (It would be really wishy washy for Isayama’s taste in storytelling). Better yet, anticipatedly allow our beloved characters to live peacefully and well, live. An epilogue sounds just right, and in my mind, fucking earned by everyone involved.

At this rate I do not wanna appear dumb and follow the baby-daddy theory any longer, as I said Isayama ain’t one for happy endings, so Historia’s last minute explanatory true conception is downright time-taking and LATE ; fit that? in around 41 pages? it’s more impossible than you think.

3rd Possible Ending : LETS START THE LOOP AGAIN

With the coming of chapter 138, we have gone all the way to the beginning, tying the plot perfectly, and confirming the Loop Theory (well, somehow). Thus, besides a small recount of how all the survivors are doing after the events of the Uprising Arc, we might even get a small scene where Grisha is the man from the ‘last panel’ holding baby Eren. I have seen many theorizing this, even me supporting this idea, that since Isayama, mentioned the last panel being this:

We are not dumb, guys. It’s probable we’ll end the story with the loop just as the beginning with Mikasa and Eren “see you later” scene, and how amazing/whack is that? With this, horrifically demonstrating just how hellish this world/story really is (similar to Grave Of The Fireflies heh?) 

Who knows? After all this time, when we thought Eren figured this all by himself and grew attached to the poor Ymir, it’s likely she instilled the idea of freedom since he was small, making him unable to escape this loop, reliving it continuously (with seeing with memories/altering through PATHS) and falling prey to Ymir using him every time to ‘free’ herself from PATHS. This story might be how a suffering person takes it all out on the world forever, echoing how we as a society are in reality guilty of this or some sort of thrown-in-you-face last minute self-refectory moment? (or maybe this is them breaking the loop, at this rate we don’t know, I don’t claim any of my theories since the release of ch.138, I am in shambles).

As depressing as it is, it is the most fitting end to this story. Dare I say, even Isayama-worthy. All I do not want, is for Isayama to make this manga a type of “take it as you will” or leave it up for everyone’s own way of perception. Imagine? Him saying everyone can interpret this manga however we see, with our own justified take of events from start to finish? And that this story can is anything you want to believe. It would be new for a genre in manga, but in my opinion, very unsatisfactory (again, 41 pages to fill? there is only much he can do).

#snk138 #snk 138 #snk finale #snk ending #eren jaeger #historia reiss #mikasa ackerman #aot #snk ends this way #isayama pay for my therapy #yall can tell me what yall think #this manga made me loose neurons #erehisu #eremika #armin arlet #annie #attack on titan finale #attack on titan ending #I will riot if he doesnt let Jean and Connie live #Gabi can die though

[thefanficmonster]

Never Satisfied [Chapter 4]

Corpse Husband x Original Female Character

Warnings: Language

A collaboration between Vy & Ashens 🖤

“there’ll be a next time...right?“

Corpse and Cora have found a nice secluded picnic table outside the restaurant, out in the sun rays’ path enough for the warmth of the day to be caressing their skin while simultaneously being a safe distance away from the other people enjoying their lunch. Their meal has just arrived, bringing a large grin to Cora’s face.

“So?” She asks as she chews the bite she took without waiting even thirty seconds. Her feet are on the bench, legs crossed, elbows rested on her knees as she chomps down, happily perched in front of him.

Corpse is enraptured by her. He’s staring a little, desperately trying to keep it subtle, hands still holding the small bag of food as he peers at her, a hood over his dark curls. Even in this quiet little part of town, he still doesn’t feel safe showing his whole face - no mask, no eyepatch, no privacy and sense of security. But as his eyes take in his lunch partner, her calm aura and leisure attitude, he can’t help but admit that his heart quickens a little. The girl moves with the grace of someone not afraid to kick ass and he is simply awestruck by her beauty and outward powerful aura. He’s never before been so captivated by a person - someone so different and so similar to him simultaneously.

Swallowing nervously, he reminds himself that she has taken on the role of his checkpoint, something like a friend, a hand to hold if he starts feeling anxious. Even if it’s just for today, he appreciates it wholeheartedly. It’s more than he’s ever been offered by others. That type of comfort is something he hasn’t felt in a long time. Surprising himself when his hand reaches out to touch her free one, he’s surprised yet again when he finds the touch so familiar and welcoming, so natural.  Despite it being just a brief movement, his knuckles softly brushing against her wrist before withdrawing and returning his focus to his meal, it is so meaningful and soothing, he’s afraid he might get used to it. Addicted to it. 

Half expecting a comment or a look, he is taken aback when she doesn’t give any sort of reaction. No movement, no expression change, just curiously watching him while she eats, waiting for his response to her previous dubious question.

 “So?” He rumbles softly, fishing out his lunch from the confines of the little paper bag. He isn’t sure what type of answer he should be expecting but he’s sure he won’t be disappointed regardless.

“Tell me about yourself! You’re not all rumbles, fear and BONES, right? You’ve gotta have a personality under that black hoodie.” She says enthusiastically, her eyes glimmering as though she’ll dig the answers out of him with her gaze alone. He’s not sure whether he’d prefer that or not. He doesn’t like talking about himself but he has an even stronger distaste for the idea of her seeing some information he’d rather keep hidden. Good thing she doesn’t seem to be capable of telepathy, but even that wouldn’t be too odd for her.

His cheeks flush faintly and he looks down for a moment to take the first bite of his food, buying himself some time to think and formulate a proper sentence. He racks his brain, looking for what would be the most vague yet satisfactory answer. 

What am I? I mean, all she stated is true, I definitely am all that...but I have a hard time coming up with what else I am? What else makes me me?  Youtube? Anxiety? Suicidal ideations hidden underneath liquor?

“I um...dropped out of school at, like, thirteen.” He finally speaks, mumbling around the small bite he worked on swallowing. 

Cora’s eyes widen and her brows shoot up. Now he is nervous, his anxiety slowly starting to creep in as he’s worrying if he has said something wrong. Or something that she could be disgusted by. 

Who would want to talk to some grown ass man who couldn’t even make it to highschool? How fucking sad is that? She has all right to judge me for it. 

However, unlike everybody else in his life who’s given him a frown of pity while internally thinking of how absolutely fucked up he had to be to drop out so young, Cora spared him from the pitiful glance he has grown to hate so much. Instead, he sees something alike amazement on her face as she sips her drink before saying:

“Damn dude, that’s intense. I mean, it sucks cause I can’t imagine you had a normal childhood if you’re bailing from school that young but, nowadays, who among us actually had a real childhood? Very few, I’d say.” She grins, putting down the soda can, her eyes leaving his for only the briefest of moments instead of the familiar awkward eye-contact avoidance he’d face when this topic would be nudged during a conversation. Still, the relief and skepticism in Corpse can never end their war so easily - there’s still that shred of doubt that she’s just good at hiding her pity or judgement. Nevertheless, she continues, “You’re doing well for yourself, you’re in an ok place right now, right? Isn’t that what matters?.” She concludes, touching his fingers as a form of yet another subtle reassurance. 

He looks down and finds himself ever so carefully curling one of his fingers around hers, just briefly before he draws back fearfully. “Yeah...guess having an apartment in a shitty part of town, and a car that seems to attract criminals could be considered ‘doing okay’.” He smiles faintly under his hood and she laughs, that bubbly little noise that he is slowly realizing he wants to hear more of. 

“You got a car, that’s more than I have.” Cora pokes her tongue out with a little growl before leaning down to take another bite of her lunch. “So, you like music and aren’t a narc. What else you got up your sleeve?”

Corpse smiles a bit and takes a sip of his drink before clearing his throat. “Yeah, I like video games too.” 

That seems innocent enough, right? Everyone likes video games...or people tend to be okay with them, at least. Video games are fun.

Another bright, sun-like smile. “Yeah? Well in that case I’ll have to kick your ass in Mario Kart some time.” She threatens playfully. 

So she might want to hang out, he thinks to himself, the thought causing his heart to do a little flip and he smiles an almost shy and timid smirk. “Challenge accepted.”

“What do you do for work?”

That question catches him off-guard, causing his eyes to widen a bit. He doesn’t know if it would be better to lie or just tell the truth. He narrates stories on the internet and makes and puts out music people have constantly been telling him wouldn’t be enjoyed. He doesn’t see how that would leave a bad taste in her mouth exactly but because of his inability to stop himself from overthinking he doesn’t want to run the risk of repulsing her. Then again, he doesn’t want to lie either, he’s been so honest with her thus far, why would he derail now and because of such a simple question. That’s why he chooses to answer truthfully but keep his answer relatively vague: “I do online work and make music I haven’t released yet. I honestly dunno if I ever will.” That last part felt like a harsh hit of reality coming on too suddenly, forcing him to look away from her to gather his composure and put it back together.

“I bet it’s good. You’ll have to let me hear it when you get something done. I’ve got a clearly refined taste in music, but I bet you already figured that out.” She exaggerates a wink, reaching over to wiggle the straw in her drink. 

Feeling a bit less tense now, he clears his throat and picks up the conversation once again. “What about you? You keep asking me all these questions, but all I know about you is that you’re a klepto with no car.” 

That signature bright and bubbly laughter leaves Cora’s chest, sending Corpse a millisecond away from swooning over her completely. “I’m actually a starving artist. I’m a pet photographer and I'm going back to school for advertising graphic design. When I’m not off goofing around with people getting their dogs birthday documented, I’m working at ye good ol’ Starbucks, serving all the...” Her voice lifts to a higher pitch and is now coming more from the back of her throat as she takes on the most preppy tone she could muster, “Beckys their venti mocha caramel frappuccino with TWO extra pumps of caramel, but with SOY because they’re all on a diet. Funny how that works, no? All those women with the exact same order and exact same attributes - I almost laugh whenever one of them walks in. You can smell them from a block away.” 

Corpse chokes out a laugh as he covers his mouth, hiding his half chewed bite from view. He definitely wasn’t expecting that. Then again,  he can’t help but acknowledge the warmth that has spread across his cheeks at how she giggles along with him. “And to be fair,” Cora quickly interrupts herself, “I am not a klepto, I just really liked the belt I found and thought forty five dollars was a rip off.” She smirks, finding herself absentmindedly looping her pinky with his. Corpse doesn’t look down, doesn’t comment, doesn’t want her to know he noticed, because maybe she’d put an end to their so small yet so meaningful contact. Instead, he smiles a little and swallows the last bite of his lunch, his heart beating rapidly in his chest and he briefly entertains the idea that he maybe wasn’t the only one awestruck. 

Anyhow, that thought gets pushed down real quick when he considers how absolutely out of his league she is, and how...well, how he’s in absolutely no league whatsoever. The world has done plenty to prove that to him real fast. Corpse sees himself as a nobody; he believes he doesn’t matter and everybody likes to remind him of it. But, as Cora’s pinky curls a little and one of her thumbs brushes against the arch of his wrist, all that bitter venom in his cold soul starts to slowly ease up, loosening its typically firm hold of his mind. Maybe, just maybe, one day, he would matter to someone. Someday.

@fockingwhore  @vixenl  @annshit  @wineandionysus  @wiseflamingoqueen

#corpse husband #corpse #husband #corpse fanfic #corpse fic #corpse fandom #corpse fanfiction #corpse fluff #corpse imagines #corpse imagine #corpse x original character #corpse x oc #corpse husband imagine #corpse husband fanficiton #corpse husband fanfic #fic #fan #fanfic #fluff #fanfiction #fandom #original female character #oc #original character #romance #love

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep20

In which Satoko gets sent to gay baby jail for crimes against the aristocracy.

Also I’m finally vindicated in talking so much about Umineko spoilers, lmao.

Thoughts under the cut.

Oh boy where do I even begin with this one, lol.

Well, firstly, I actually like how relatively subdued this episode was, compared to my expectations. Like, Satoko getting sent to a literal on-site prison center is extremely fucked up, but I kinda expected something like her straight up murdering someone. Instead it all started when one of her normal traps ended up giving someone minor injuries, and then after she spent a while in prison, she just went back to school, and ended up going on a trip back to Hinamizawa with Rika and the gang where she stumbled her way into the meta world because haha Featherine go brrr.

Which feels a lot less over the top than I was expecting, but I think it’s a good thing that it didn’t turn into some sort of psychotic mass-murder event or something.

Also, the whole angle of miscommunication leading her to think that Rika ratted her out and got her sent to prison is really neat, and helps make the situation way more messy and complicated without making anyone unrealistically evil or anything. It at least makes it a bit more understandable that Satoko would genuinely blame Rika for her current misery.

I still think they’re both more or less equally in the wrong, though, and they both contributed to the miscommunication. Satoko is basically refusing to adjust to the culture of St Lucia’s, and she’s actively pushing away Rika out of stubbornness, while Rika is leaving Satoko alone to go hang out with her new rich friends, and is giving up on reaching out to Satoko at the slightest bit of resistance from her. So neither of them are really doing enough to communicate or compromise, but it fits with how Satoko is unwilling to change herself, while Rika is desperate to have a place where she can stop putting on a childish act all the time.

It’s kinda interesting how many people seem to fall really strongly into the category of either blaming Rika or blaming Satoko for everything going on here. It probably says a lot about each person’s own personality and their own previous friendships.

I’ve seen people disagree about this, but I actually like that the ‘big incident’ ended up just being that one of Satoko’s normal traps ended up hurting someone. It’s way more minor than pretty much anyone expected, and it feels kinda jarring when compared to all the slapstick comedy stuff in this whole series, but I think that sense of contrast is intentional, and it goes to show just how much Satoko isn’t fitting in with her new environment. She comes from a countryside village where this sort of rough-housing is normal, and everyone’s familiar with Satoko’s traps, and she’s trying to apply the exact same things to a stuck-up boarding school full of rich kids who don’t even know her. Back in Hinamizawa the other club members would just brush off having a metal pot land on their head as part of Satoko’s traps, but in this sort of environment it’s something unprecedented and shocking.

There’s also the fact that Satoko usually sets these traps up in rooms that have much lower ceilings, whereas here she had the pots fall from a chandelier high up in a fancy entrance hall, so it’s likely that they fell a lot further than they usually do, and thus picked up more speed and caused more damage. Which in it’s own way goes to show how Satoko just isn’t used to her new environment, and is still trying to act like she’s back in Hinamizawa where everything’s small and cozy and everyone’s willing to put up with some bumps and bruises as part of having fun.

I still feel like there has to be more that goes on to show how Satoko gets to the point of straight up being willing to repeatedly murder Rika across multiple time loops, as well as hurting all of her other friends along the way, but this whole flashback still isn’t over yet.

I’m also getting more and more convinced now that it actually took a while for her to get to the point of actively trying to murder Rika. I think that throughout the first arcs, she was going through her own whole arc where her motives and methods changed as she became more aware of what was going on.

I’m not 100% sure about a lot of this, but I think that in Onidamashi she didn’t even do anything until the very end. I think that arc was her attempting to just go back to how things used to be, and the stuff with Rena and Keiichi wasn’t planned by her at all. She might have done a murder suicide with Rika to start a new loop afterward, but I don’t think she was trying to kill anyone, or even hurt Rika at all. At least not in that arc.

Watadamashi’s one of the more confusing arcs, but I also get the feeling there that she wasn’t really trying to hurt Rika or anyone else. I don’t think she’s the one who killed Rika in that timeline, and I think her going to the Sonozaki estate at the end of the arc was due to her genuinely trying to figure out what happened to her. Same with her suspicion toward Keiichi.

Tataridamashi’s kinda weird in general, and even after all these flashbacks it still feels weird. But with what we’ve seen of Satoko lately, I really don’t thinks he was spending that whole arc just intentionally lying to everyone about the abuse while not actually being abused by Teppei for some reason. Unless she got told about what to expect from Featherine, a post-Matsuribayashi Satoko shouldn’t even have any experience with a timeline where Teppei shows up, and he doesn’t show up in the first two Gou arcs either, so I think everything with her in Tataridamashi was actually genuine.

The stuff at the end of that arc with Ooishi is still a bit of a mystery, though. Maybe that’s where she first starts actively sending people to go kill Rika, but I’m not sure. The question of why she’d change her motives and methods partway through if she started off with innocent intentions is a bit of a mystery, but I get the feeling that Tataridamashi might have been the turning point, since it would have been the point where Satoko really started to realize just how much pain she herself was going to have to deal with in these loops. So that might have pushed her to try and be more forceful in her methods to try and make Rika change her mind about the village, because she wants to get out of the loops as fast as possible, and she’s also stuck in them until she can ‘win’ against Rika. Which would fit with how in Nekodamashi she seems genuinely distressed and conflicted about having to kill people. I think that rather than her just being some kind of sadist, she’s just trying to brute-force her win condition as fast as possible while dealing with the escalating stress of being stuck in this loop.

And even if she got cured of her syndrome over time after Matsuribayashi, being sent back in time to her pre-teen body might mean that she started slowly developing it again as the loops went on, which might have made her more willing to resort to violence to try and escape.

So basically I think the story boils down to Satoko being given the ability to go back in time with time-looping powers, in a way that’s structured as a game between her and Rika where her goal is to convince Rika to stay in the village forever instead of leaving for St Lucia’s. So at first Satoko didn’t really have any reason or motive to be violent about it, but as time went on and she became exposed to all of the different scenarios with her friends going crazy and killing each other, and in general all the trauma that she basically side-stepped in the Matsuribayashi timeline, she got more and more desperate, and more and more violent.

I at least like the idea of Satoko basically taking for granted that she happened to wind up in the good timeline where everything went well and nobody went crazy and killed each other, and now her attempt to go back and ‘fix things’ has caused her to trap herself in the same hellish loop that Rika was trying to escape from in the first place.

I could also totally see Featherine setting this up and watching it unfold because she knew it’d be fun to watch, lol.

And yeah on that note, Featherine’s officially in the story now. So that’s a thing.

I guess we’ll see how things go next week, but I think it’s kinda fruitless to try and deny that this is Featherine. I could see them not using her name explicitly, but for all intents and purposes this is literally just Featherine, and at some point we’d just be arguing about meaningless semantics.

They did adjust her design a little bit to fit the Japanese mythology vibe of Higurashi more, but I’d say her design is still about 80% the same, and they still included both her distinct memory device and the green sash with the medal on it that has nothing to do with Japanese mythology. They just replaced her cane with a staff, adjusted part of her dress to look more like Hanyuu’s outfit, and gave her some eye-shadow.

I get the feeling she’ll just introduce herself to Satoko as ‘Oyashiro-sama’, to explain what Satoko meant about meeting Oyashiro-sama and being made into their new miko, but she’d still be Featherine at the end of the day.

One detail that might go a long way to explain things one way or another is how Featherine mentions having met Satoko at some point in the past. Which might mean that she’ll just straight up say that she’s a version of Hanyuu and reference the events of Matsuribayashi. I know people still disagree on if Hanyuu and Featherine are the same person, but I think that for all intents and purposes they are. If anything, ‘Gou!Featherine’ might exist to show how that transition happened in the first place. Which is probably along the lines of Hanyuu ‘going to sleep’ after Matsuribayashi, physically maturing and having her personality adjust, and then going on to straight up ascend into witch-hood. But we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve also seen people suggest that it might tie in to the hypothetical connection between Satoko and Lambda, which might just cut straight to the chase and directly bring Featherine’s role in Umineko into this, but that seems less likely. I still like the idea of Lambda being relevant to this somehow, but I’m not sure if she’ll come into play just yet.

It might annoy some people, but I hope that they just commit to having Satoko and Lambda literally be the same person, and just have it be a bit of a time paradox where maybe Satoko becomes Lambda after going through this loop, and she then goes back in time and gives Takano her blessing to trigger the original events of Higurashi. Which might be a bit of a clunky retcon that’d annoy people who don’t like paradoxes, but honestly at this point it’d be the most satisfying way to actually explain who Lambda is, and how her relationship with Bern even started in the first place.

This also feels like exactly the sort of situation where Featherine would grant Satoko the powers of a witch as part of setting up this whole loop, like what Lambda did with Takano and Beatrice. Satoko gets to become a new witch of Hinamizawa for the duration of the time loop, and maybe at the end of it, both she and Bern ascend into full-fledged witches who leave their game board and become voyagers.

Though, like with how I think they’ll avoid outright using the name ‘Featherine’, they might just use the word ‘miko’ as a sort of analogue for the concept of witches, so it fits Higurashi’s setting more.

There’s also the point that, as Satoko mentioned, she had broken into the Saiguden as a child, but I dunno if Featherine is referring to that. Honestly that whole plot point still feels super weird to me. She brings it up in this episode, so it’s not like Ryukishi forgot about it, but then we see that even in this loop, the statue is unbroken, which just raises the question of if it’s some kind of major oversight or retcon about what Satoko did when she broke into the Saiguden as a child.

Anyway, the real question with all this super heavy-handed Umineko stuff is whether or not this is actually going to lead to something along the lines of an Umineko anime remake [or a Gou-style sequel]. It really feels like they’re risking alienating people on both sides of the aisle if they bring in Umineko elements without doing a whole lot with them.

I have a lot of thoughts about how some kind of new Umineko anime could work, but I’ll just make a separate post about that if I want to go into it in detail.

I’m also wondering more and more whether or not they’re even going to be able to wrap up Gou’s story itself in just four more episodes, or if we’ll get some kind of second season. I still feel like we’re in an awkward situation where four episodes doesn’t feel like enough to wrap things up, but even one more cour feels like more than we need, considering how deep we are into the end-game. Unless things massively switch course for a second season, I dunno if there’s that much material left. Considering that this isn’t even acting like a remake anymore, I doubt they’ll go back and cover some of the stuff they’ve glossed over like Meakashi and Tsumihoroboshi. But who even knows.

One option is that Gou could directly lead into a new Umineko anime, especially if they go down the route of doing a Gou-style sequel to Umineko rather than a regular adaptation. There’s a lot of ways they could handle it.

Also, we STILL haven’t seen the animation for the new ending theme, so unless we’re just never getting any, I think it’s probably going to include stuff like Featherine that would have been a spoiler before this episode. The way that they only played the last section of the OP visuals also makes me wonder if maybe they’re going to adjust those as well, even if the song stays the same. I could at least see them explicitly showing Featherine rather than having her be a silhouette.

Anyway, I’m still enjoying this arc a lot, and I think it actually serves as an interesting continuation of the VN’s story, but as a whole I think it says a lot about Gou that it feels more interesting to just speculate about the Umineko references going on, lol.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi gou #This amount of Umineko teasing is actually going to give me an aneurysm :v

[telaraneas]

man i have so many words about homestuck but no one to talk to about it with. aimless ramble about classpects under the cut (disclaimer that other people have probably said the same things in much more concise ways, i literally finished homestuck like 3 days ago)

so, the way i actually understand aspects and classes in homestuck is that aspect = themes and class = arc. so, like, class and aspect as i think of them are not assigned as a role to play per se, like, they're not prophetic, they're descriptive. ive been reading a lot of old forum discussions from early act 6 because i crave whatever speculation and live analysis was going on at the time. and back then there was a lot of, for instance, "i wonder what the prince class is supposed to do, since eridan probably fucked it up" and im sitting here with the benefit of living almost a decade later and having read the entire story by that point, and im like, no, see, it's actually impossible to "fail" at your class in my opinion because they're descriptive, not predictive. so whatever a character did by the time homestuck actually ended (...with the caveat that i havent yet read the epilogues or the sequel), that was what they were supposed to do in the game/story, because like. that IS what they did.

like in the same way we have descriptive words for specific character archetypes in fiction, because i do think classpects are basically just That, like, for example, (to go. really really basic) princess peach in the original mario game may be a shitty female character but she's a perfect representation of the damsel in distress archetype. the "damsel in distress" denomination here is descriptive of the role she plays in the story of that game (to the extent it has one), whether or not it was consciously written that way, and it's assigned from the outside looking in at the finished game, not necessarily written from the outset to be that way. eg how inexperienced authors often end up writing what is commonly described as "mary sue" characters, even though most of them do not deliberately set out to write characters like that, obviously. the term "mary sue" here is descriptive, not prescriptive (and ofc the term itself has been dilluted to the point it's barely useful, this was just an example)

so like, an author may set out to write a character in a specific way, or to fill a specific role, and they may succeed or they may not; but a reader analyzing the story will interpret the story as they see fit, and will be the judge of how THEY would describe the characters. ofc interpretations may vary from reader to reader, but generally speaking when it comes to the role a character plays in the story, eg do they have agency, what function do they have towards advancing the plot, what are the dominant themes and ideas of the story and how does this character play into it etc etc will, at least to the individual reader, be informed by the work as a whole, not by the author's intent. the character's actions in the work as a whole as written by the author and interpreted by the reader speak for themselves.

i think i've gotten lost somewhere along the line here. this is all true and part of what i meant to say but i cant figure out how to connect it to my point. which is that i think the classes arent meant so much as rpg classes that dictate what you are capable of doing, so much as they're a descriptive label that sums up the role a character plays in the story. like the time loop stuff, it's not that a character MUST fulfill their role, it's that they already HAVE from the perspective of the finished story taken as a whole.

anyways all of this that ive said about classpects being descriptive and not prescriptive is ignoring the very obvious reality that homestuck itself was not written from the outside looking in, but in fact was often improvised from what i can tell, especially in regards to the arcs and themes of the more minor characters such as the trolls, but ofc it has the benefit that because its author is the one coming up with the classpect system in the first place, it gets to set its own definition. so in effect, the classpects in homestuck are self-descriptive; each title is an intrinsically correct description of the character's arc and themes, in the exact same way that the character's NAME is an intrinsically correct description of what the character is called. i think this is the whole reason why afaik there hasnt actually been explicit descriptions of what most of the classes do, and why there were only like 3 or 4 explicit in-universe descriptions of the classes, because if hussie said that a character's class means exclusively X thing, and then that character goes and does Y instead and never does X, then the story has contradicted itself

but instead, by keeping most of them vague, the classes become inherently self-descriptive. it's impossible to say that character A has failed their role as class B, because character A is part of the definition of class B. self-descriptive

(like how once in the adventure zone travis mentioned being shocked that people online were saying that something his character did was "out of character", to which he answered something to the effect of "what do you MEAN it's out of character, i write the character and he did that!". whatever actions character A takes are, by definition, in-character for character A; if this doesn't sit right with the viewer, they may say that this makes them an incoherent and/or badly written character, but by definition the character IS defined by the actions as written by the author. self-descriptive)

bringing it back to the eridan example, it's impossible for eridan to "fail" at being a prince of hope; eridan IS the prince of hope, and thus, whatever he did IS "what the prince of hope was supposed to do", which in this case meant being someone whose character is defined and tortured by his own hopes, beliefs, and convictions, until he reaches a breaking point and destroys his own aspect not just for himself but for those around him.

without context as to what a prince is "supposed" to do, it's easy to assume he must have failed in his role because of how he very literally destroyed the presence of hope in the part he played of the story, but in-universe the classes are descriptive and not prescriptive: eridan is the prince of hope BECAUSE of the role he played in the story, not in spite of it.

in any case, this whole mess is my way of saying that this is why assigning class and aspect to characters from non-homestuck media is, for me at least, very fun and illuminating! because, while in homestuck they may be self-descriptive, for non-homestuck media they are inherently just descriptive. you just need to analyze the characters, as you, the reader, understand them, and pinpoint their core essence as a character via their character arc and dominant themes. and it can illuminate interesting parallels, trends and contrasts in the story as it exists. it's kind of like a birds eye view character analysis cheat sheet and that makes it very fun dkfnekmf

#homestuck #classpect #man idk what to tag this as #sushi original #on this same note i have very many words about vriska and why i think gambling and luck is actually a void thing and not a light thing #tldr being that vriskas power upon ascention is that she no longer relies on luck at all #light is not luck as a variable it is fortune as in concrete fate. as i interpret it the defining Thing for light aspect is 'certainty'

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

If Fates' child mechanics could be improved, story wise, what would you do? Because I do genuinely love the kids as characters but they were done DIRTY by the excuse plot and reasons for them to be there.

That reminds me of something else I’ve meant to say about how the Fates child mechanics really really doesn’t work. Actually several things, one big one and a bunch of other little ones.

It’s obvious that the thought process was “well, people liked Awakening and Awakening had XYZ, so let’s add it in again!” without taking into account that Awakening built its story around time travel. Even if you didn’t get any S-supports, Lucina is still there. It’s a major plot point. Grima is still there, also having time-traveled. You can’t separate the time travel from the main plot, so from there it’s natural that Lucina would have some friends who came back with her, and thus you get the kids.

We’ve discussed how Fates’ baby dimension is silly. Yeah hang on let’s all just have kids during a war and throw them into an Outrealm pocket dimension where they’ll grow up real quick and we can have more soldiers for our army. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody’s around to hear it - if a situation so fantastical happens that it couldn’t have been written about in any human rights documentation, is it still a war crime? Several other issues I have with it before I get into the big one I wanted to talk about:

Even if we presume that the ladies are spending the duration of their pregnancy also in a pocket dimension where time passes differently in relation to the outside world, that’s still the equivalent of nine months that they are experiencing. That’s (equivalent to) several months that they’re not going to be able to train when the pregnancy is far along or when they’re recovering. Even if it seems like just a few days passed outside, they’re physically going to be lagging behind where they were when they entered the outrealm. 

Azura and fCorrin would do that twice.

After they yeet the first of their female friends into a pocket dimension off the astral plane so that she can time-lapse her pregnancy, you would think that someone in the army would figure out some sort of birth control spell/concoction/herb/something so that they don’t have to worry about this again. That’s just good common sense, something we know Corrin lacks, but somebody else surely would suggest it. I feel like Camilla would have that under control - not to insinuate like that she’s a slut or something, but I mean that her older sister vibes tell me that she has the knowledge and supplies to dump on her three younger siblings to inform them how to have relationships safely without fear of unwanted children “and if anyone tries to pressure you otherwise, tell me and I’ll cut their head off” ;3c. She’s like that, I think.

And then the other big and uncomfortable problem with this setup is: some of the character ages.

Like, in Awakening, you’ve got Donnel, Ricken, and Lissa who seem the youngest. Depending on Robin’s gender and how the pairings fall, I think you could end up with two unmarried guys, so you could just have Donnel and Ricken not have children, but if you want to get every character you’ve got to have Lissa get married. I put her at 16/18 during the two parts of the game. Not a great age to have a kid at - but the thing about Awakening’s time travel is that she’s not having a kid at that age. Owain’s from the future, and the only child born during the events of the game is Lucina. It still felt a little weird to see those younger ones getting married, Lissa might be getting a ring now from someone just as young as she is (in the middle of a war) but kids are still years off. That...somewhat lessens the discomfort.

And then. sigh. then there’s Fates. Where no pocket dimensions and strange flow-of-time can get around the fact of character ages, because their children might be growing up fast but they are not from the future. Those kids are born during the course of the game. And like! Elise and Sakura! They’re my baby sisters! I don’t want my baby sisters to be teen moms during a war! That’s just weird and gross and uncomfortable! They’re my baby sisters. I want to find my siblings good partners but I’m not going to matchmake for my baby sisters if that’s the result.

So looping all the way back around to your question - I have no idea, honestly. Anything except time travel/coming from an entirely alternate timeline in the future has all of the above problems baked in, and then future-kids is just an Awakening rehash. Like I was about to suggest that it’d be interesting if for Birthright/Conquest, the kids came from an alternate timeline of the other path, where their side lost the war, but firstly that’s just Awakening rehashed again, secondly Corrin spares as many people as possible so we don’t have dead parents, and honestly it’s not even a dark dire future in Awakening. Like for Nohr in Birthright, Leo gets crowned king of Nohr, his kid is going to have no drive to come back and change the past because it’s fine, there’s holes in the family where Aunt Elise and Uncle Xander are missing, but this is not dire enough to need to find a way to change fate. And thirdly, for the few characters who do die - since we’re using Birthright as the example, Elise and Xander - that would mean that their kids were born before the end of the route, which runs into that same Elise problem! If you wanted “the kids as refugees from a dire timeline” it’d have to be one where Garon won and then again, just play Awakening for that plot. 

Conceptually I think it’s interesting to draw the kids in from a different timeline where Corrin made the other choice - “Roddy what about Revelation?” I don’t fucking know man - and see how they react to Corrin being on that side, fighting for their country, with their parents, but... then that runs into the problem of spoiling the other route. Like if you played Conquest first and Xander’s kid says he died before they were born, well, that’s awkward. And again, Elise - in Conquest you could pair her with like, Kaze, who was with Corrin the whole time, always on Corrin’s side no matter what, and then that creates a plot hole of it having been literally impossible for that kid to have come from a Birthright-esque timeline because they couldn’t have existed then because Kaze could’ve even died before Corrin reunites with Elise. No, that concept can’t work. Too much potential for plot holes and stretching too weirdly to try and cover it.

I don’t know. I don’t know if you can fix it without becoming an Awakening rehash or turning Fates into something entirely different...which, it’s Fates. Might not be a bad thing to do that.

#fire emblem chatter tag #jakeun-kangajii

[irwinkitten]

you can’t stop | a.i

notes: so this was an idea that came up when i first started screaming to @spicycal​ about broadway!ash and then i spiralled because i started listening to the hairspray soundtrack and said the magical words ‘my head has got ashton playing link in hairspray and my mind won't shut!! up!!' and honestly it was one of the first things i started screaming at sarah about and it’s how we became friends because we’re musical nerds (read: clowns) and this idea wouldn’t leave me alone thus this was born. (also there is a part two in the works!) pairing: broadway!ash x plus sized female!reader warnings: a few swears but that’s it? word count: 2.3k

donate to my ko-fi

-

When you stepped into rehearsals on the first day, it took some time to fully register that you were the leading lady of the show and not just a background character. You knew that today was all about breaking the ice, so to speak. 

You knew that over the years, your sense of humour had developed because of the kids you’d grown up with, the people who still made you feel uncomfortable about your weight, and you had turned it back on them.

So when they got to you, you grinned as you gave them your name and who you were playing.

“Don’t know if the extra weight gave it away, but I’m playing Tracey Turnblad. This is my first time as a lead character and the only way I break ice is by jumping on it.” It took a full second before the other actors started laughing, the director wearing a short grin as the atmosphere relaxed.

It was certainly more easier on your nerves than you’d anticipated because everyone had laughed and you let out a breath you hadn’t realised you’d been holding as the others introduced themselves.

And then your eyes fell onto the final person.

“My name’s Ashton, feel free to call me Ash. Can you guess who I’m going to be playing? Although, unlike our leading lady, it could be a difficult guess.” And for the first time in your career, you wanted to punch that stupid self satisfied smug look off his face. 

A few people tittered nervously, but you just snorted in response. You’d heard worse from directors.

‘You only have to deal with him for the next two years.’ You told yourself firmly. 

The first ten weeks were rehearsals. Normally it would’ve been six weeks, but since it was an entirely new cast, the producer had opted for the extra time to help the cast bond since this show run was going to be two years to start with. Opening night was far enough away that you could surprise your family, since you’d kept this job quiet from them.

As you began the warm ups, the director—who had introduced himself as Evan—moved you front and centre. 

“Right, I want to start off with your vocal range. We’ll have other duets fall in as we change the songs but keep it to mostly your songs before we move to ensemble. Once we know the ranges of you lot, our lovely composer Brian,” he waved out to the man who was leaning against one of the walled mirrors in the studio, “will be able to figure out if we need to change any songs.”

It wasn’t so much as brutal, but it put you through your paces. You realised quickly that this was certainly going to be a welcome challenge for you.

Ashton remained smug throughout his parts and it took everything in you to not slap the silly smirk off his face when it got to your duets. But you resisted, matching him pace for pace which surprised him.

When the first break hit, you were feeling warm as you took some water and the actress playing Maybelle—Jace—stepped up to you, braids piled up on her head as she lifted her water bottle in a toast to you. 

“So, first time being the leading lady, huh?” And you smiled. 

“I’ve been working as just an ensemble cast member for the last few years. I jumped at the chance for the audition with Evan and when I got the call back, I knew it was gonna be what I needed.” You shared a grin with Jace. 

A few other cast members came up to you. It was when the one who was playing Amber bounced over, her blonde hair tied back in a high ponytail, bouncing with her movements. 

It took you a second to remember her name was Cassie. 

“So you’re going to be my enemy for the foreseeable future.” Her tone was teasing, the grin on her lips disarming you for a second. 

“I mean, I guess?” You felt confused and she grinned. 

“Reckon we can be friends?” This had you relaxing instantly. 

“Don’t see the harm in that. And maybe when you’re in character you can teach Irwin good manners.” Cassie laughed as she slung her arm across your shoulders and looped her other with Jace’s 

“That man might be a good actor but if you get him to learn some good manners I think the gods would bless you.” 

When the day finished, both Cassie and Jace were convincing you to come out with them for drinks. And despite the hesitation, you couldn’t say no to their pleading faces.

“Is your place close by?” Cassie finally asked and you could feel a smile settle on your lips. 

“If you’ve already got stuff to change into, we can get ready at my apartment?” The offer was met with an immediate agreement, both girls split from you and began inviting others to the night out. 

You’d made fast friends with both of them by the time you were dressed up with a splash of makeup on. As the three of you left, it felt nice as you laughed at Cassie’s imitation of Ashton. 

“Hi, I’m Ashton Irwin and I’m a cocky son of a bitch who doesn’t like meeting new people.” Her tone and pitch had the two of you cracking up as you waited for the lift. When Cassie had pitched the invite to him, he’d rolled his eyes and told her that he had better plans. It certainly hadn’t endeared him to her with that.

It took barely ten minutes but by the time you reached the club where a lot of the cast were waiting, excitement began to ooze through your body. 

“First round of shots are on me!” You called out to the group, earning excited yells as you all headed in. 

With Cassie’s help—since she knew how many people there were—you got the order in and toasted to the lot of them. 

“May these runs lead up to incredible shows!” With the shot knocked back, Jace was quick to pull you to the floor, the music loud as the two of you danced the night away with the rest of the cast members.

—

You were furious. Beyond furious with Ashton.

He’d crossed a line. To embarrass you in such a way in front of so many directors, it hurt. 

When you got to rehearsals the following morning, your anger hadn’t abated. Jace wisely kept her own counsel as you changed into what you’d dubbed as your rehearsal outfit. Loose fitted tee-shirt and black leggings. 

“You realise that it’s final scenes today?” Jace had quietly commented, her eyes concerned and you could feel your temper bubble. 

“I can be civil with him when we’re on stage. But off stage? All bets are off.” You snapped, slamming your locker shut and making your way through. She fell silent, casting a worried glance with Cassie before they headed onto the stage.

You hadn’t even made it to the stage when a hand grasped your shoulder, pulling you deeper into the wings of the stage, further away from your castmates. Your fury ignited at the audacity of Ashton.

“Look, about last night-” he started, his voice quiet.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Irwin.” You snapped back, cutting him off as you yanked your arm free from his grip. His shock at your reaction stunned him silent. 

“What? Nothing to say to me? Nothing to say to me after you embarrassed me in front of every big fucking name in the industry? Nothing to say to me after saying that my family shouldn’t bother for opening night since I’m going to mess it up?” You didn’t bother keeping your voice down. The director knew you and Ashton didn’t get along well, but you were able to work with him. 

“I just wanted to say-” He tried again but you cut him off.

“You wanted to say what, exactly? That you’re sorry? I don’t want your fucking apology. It’s worthless. You could be the king of fucking england and I still won’t give you my time or attention anymore, unless it’s directly related to work. Now back off.” You snapped, pulling away completely and leaving him stunned.

“Ooo, do we need to be having words?” Cassie teased and you took in a slow deep breath, pushing down your anger towards him so you wouldn’t snap at Cassie. You knew she meant well she always did, but you were still too angry, too hurt to not take it the wrong way.

Evan gave you a lasting look, tapping his fingers on the script. 

“Dance rehearsal today. We’ll work on the scenes later and tomorrow.” He announced, earning groans from the ensemble. Ashton slipped onto the stage quietly. 

You threw Evan a grateful look and he simply nodded as he clapped his hands.

“Chop chop, we don’t have all day for this. We’ll go from where the girls are fighting to be seen on camera.” As the cast rearranged themselves, you stepped over to the corner from where you’d come down. Cassie winked at you and you offered her a weak grin. 

“From the top!” 

-

After you’d yelled at him, Ashton had done his best to keep out of your way before opening night. But on opening night you knew you had to call a truce. 

Knocking on his dressing room door, you waited quietly before you heard him knock something over in his haste to get to the door.

As he pulled it open, his eyes widened in shock to find you standing there in front of him.

“Can I come in?” Your voice was quiet and it took him a moment before he nodded and stepped back, letting you in before closing the door behind you. You had to try and ignore the fact that he was half dressed, his shirt clearly hanging from the back of the chair.

He offered the small couch that was in the corner of his dressing room, pulling the chair over to sit in front of you and suddenly you felt your courage and words disappear.

“So, did you need something?” His voice was hesitant, and you couldn’t exactly blame him for that. Ever since you’d verbally smacked him down before rehearsal, he’d done his best to avoid pissing you off outside of rehearsal. 

His question pulled you back to that moment and you felt your courage return, taking a slow deep breath.

“I’m calling a truce between us. Or at least, a truce between my attitude and yourself.” Although you’d been well in the right to be so angry with him and continue the treatment, he’d done everything he could to change that before backing off.

His jaw dropped at your words, sucking in a sharp breath as he processed your words.

“I-uh, don’t know what to say to that except, thanks, I guess?” You snorted at that.

“I’ve been so furious with you for what you did. You embarrassed me and made me look like some kind of pity pick. After working Broadway for years, do you know how much that hurt me? Hurt my career? ” His face flushed in shame as his gaze dropped to his hands that were resting in his lap.

“I hadn’t even considered...” He trailed off and you scoffed.

“Of course you didn’t. You’re the popular kid. The one people fight over to have on their team. You don’t need to consider other people’s feelings because everyone tries to cater for you.” You couldn't help the bitterness slip out with your words and his eyes lifted to meet yours.

“I really fucked up.” 

“That’s putting it lightly, Ashton. You single handedly nearly destroyed my entire career with those words. Evan had to tell me that he’d had calls from other casting directors who had other names to replace me if he needed it.” You could see that the message was sinking in for Ashton, the guilt etched into his face mixed with a look of horror.

“I’m so sorry, I- I never even realised-” You cut him off.

“The damage is done. Thankfully Evan managed to put them off from that and invited them to the opening night of the show. If we pull this off we could be working together for a lot longer than the two years we’re scheduled to.” A wry smile crossed your lips. “So don’t fuck this up tonight.” 

Ashton stared at you for a solid ten seconds before he started laughing. 

“You’ve got it, doll. How about we start over?” He held his hand out to you and you took a second before grasping his hand. He surprised you by bringing the back of your hand to his lips and without even realising, you’d rolled your eyes at his theatrics.

“It’s one thing to start over with me, but I think you need to start over with the rest of the cast too. Cassie is still fully prepared to scalp you for doing what you did.” He winced at that before letting your hand go.

“I guess I owe it to you and them to start over, don’t I?” You nodded at his words, watching as he ran a hand through his hair. 

“I know that everyone has their families in for the opening night and they’re going to want to celebrate this success with them. How about you start with the rehearsal tomorrow and see how that goes?” He nodded at that.

“I think I might just do that. And for what it’s worth, I truly am sorry for what I did and said.” Your eyes studied his face and you let the corner of your lips tug just a little bit.

“I know.” You leaned forwards and kissed his cheek before heading out, leaving him speechless.

-

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[betweengenesisfrogs]

The Triumph of the Marginalia

Marginalia, n.:

1 : notes or embellishments in the margins (as in a book)

2 : nonessential items

-Troll OED

Is it just me, or is Nepeta and Equius’s arc the most slept-upon piece of brilliance in all of Homestuck?

A brilliance, might I add, that culminates in possibly the most triumphant, fulfilling emotional moment in the entire work:

https://www.homestuck.com/story/7928

*stands back and beholds its majesty while from the background comes the sound of James Roach brutally murdering ska*

No, but actually, I mean this 100% unironically, and by the end of this post, I think you’ll agree with me.

By now, I think we all understand the Act 6 double metaphor: the series of temporal loops and universes that Lord English commands is paralleled with, and in fact totally identical to, the narrative of Homestuck. Our characters’ lives exist within this context. They struggle to escape it, and are defined both by it and by the rejection of it.

Enter Nepeta.

The metaphorical meaning of Nepeta in Homestuck is irrelevance, and that’s why she’s the most relevant character in any discussion.

Nepeta was one of the characters killed off during the Murderstuck arc. Hussie argued that she was perfect for this role. In fact, I believe he said something like “Nepeta is sweet, but if you look up the dictionary definition of ‘expendable character,’ you’ll see a picture of Nepeta playing with a ball of yarn and looking very cute.” She’s an endearing combination of shipper girl and apex predator, but not one of your Vriskas or Terezis in being a driver of the plot. Hussie, it seems, created her just to round out the troll cast. He described one of his purposes in Murderstuck as being to axe some of the less necessary trolls to reduce the scope of his character list.

Except that didn’t really happen, did it?

Like a cat with nine lives, Nepeta just keeps coming back.

Equius is another addition to the troll cast who gets pushed away from the main action. He was a character-writing challenge: how do you make someone who’s gross, uncomfortable, and racist kind of likable anyway? I’d argue Hussie succeeded, in large part because of Equius’s relationship with Nepeta. By the time you finish with Hivebent, you’ll probably have a little fondness for their moraillegiance. And if that doesn’t do it, the conversation that serves as their swansong in Equius: Seek the Highblood will tear your heartstrings to shreds.

Because Equius dies, tragically clownmurdered. There was, at the time, some stink over this from Equius fans. Would he have really let himself be killed so easily? Hussie countered: yes, and it was the most in-character thing he could have done. He died doing what he loved: being asphyxiated erotically and horrifically by a superior. Truly, there could be no more fitting end to his character than that.

And yet.

No sooner did Hussie complete his self-appointed story cleanup challenge than he immediately began to undo his own work. It’s almost as if, in declaring his intention to own those who preferred more characters to narrative economy, he immediately had to own himself??

By the time we get even a little way into Act 6, we’re deep in the dreambubble landscape, meeting dead characters left and right. And who should show up there but Equius and Nepeta? Equius attempting to get it on with a bunch of Aradias, who dump him. And Nepeta, living out her romantic dreams as a representative of a timeline where she got together with Karkat. They both appear as symbols of this deadness, this irrelevance. Except that that brings them back into the story, into the spotlight – the opposite of where they’re supposed to be!

Like many bits of commentary, Hussie continues to incorporate the metaphor Nepeta=Irrelevance into Homestuck. Karkat’s remark on their journey that he would love to meet “FIFTY FUCKING NEPETAS” and embark on “NEPETAQUEST” alludes to formspring remarks to the effect that, no, Homestuck was not going to have much time for the minor characters. Except it clearly did.

Why couldn’t the narrative let the meowrails go? Was it that despite the economy of Murderstuck, something was still incomplete? After all, one of Equius’s charms was that he appeared to be growing into a less repressed, kinder person. In Seek the Highblood, we see him letting his guard down enough to roleplay with Nepeta for a change. Their love for each other: wasn’t that ultimately what could redeem Equius in our eyes? So his dying and thus failing to protect her–isn’t that something that should be addressed?

You could imagine many a Nepeta and Equius fan saying this to Hussie back in 2011.

But Hussie was already saying it to himself.

The duo come roaring back into the story in the Trickster mode arc, mid Act 6, thanks to Gamzee’s ridiculous resurrections. True, Nepeta is still reduced as part of Fefeta, the character formed from killed-off girls who never speaks onscreen. But doesn’t using that fact as a running gag kind of draw our attention to it? Doesn’t the fact that Fefeta talks to Roxy constantly offscreen inform us that once we get outside the frame of the narrative, Nepeta has a rich inner life and countless stories to tell?

And it’s here that Equius gets something he never got in his original “arc:” the chance to apologize to Nepeta. You’d be forgiven for missing it since there’s so much else going on at the time, but he does, while fused with AR. Here’s what you’d miss, though: he’s grown as a person in the afterlife. He’s come to regret that moment of weakness, where his fetish kept him from protecting his moirail. Impossible as it seems, he’s continuing his character arc.

The scene ends with Fefeta exploding (she’s also, after all, dealing with Eridan), but it leaves us with a tantalizing question:

Will Nepeta forgive Equius? Is there even a plausible time and space in that story when she could respond to his words?

Do you see what’s happening here? Instead of being erased, Nepeta and Equius are starting to slip the bounds of the story that killed them. They leap in and out of the frame, half-mythical figures. Marginalized, they write their own stories in the margins. They exist in complete defiance of the original logic of Homestuck.

Lord English is an alt-Author figure, a dark, brutal reflection of narrative control and narrative necessity. His world, in which horrible choices are necessary, in which the alpha timeline is a ticking clock leading inexorably to his manifestation, is one that beats down people not deemed important enough by his narrative. Which makes it identical to the one we’re reading. Throw all the unnecessary characters in the trash. Kill them off, if it suits my purposes. The world doesn’t need Nepeta.

Which is precisely why it does. Because isn’t defying Lord English the entire point? Isn’t it what Homestuck reveals as truly heroic?

What might Nepeta be capable of?

Let’s talk about two other victims of English’s forces of marginalization. Davesprite might be the most quintessential example. He teaches us what the alpha timeline is and how it works, by going back to fix a doomed timeline and submitting to being doomed himself. Except he merges with a bird and avoids that fate. Okay, but he clearly gets killed off fighting Jack in Jade: Enter. Except he comes back and hangs out with Jadesprite. Okay, but he dies in the planetsplode in the Retcon. Nope, he comes back from that, too. Huh. He keeps slipping the fate decreed for him by – who else? Lord English.

But it’s a struggle, clearly. He’s caught up in various cycles of guilt and shame. Over being “not the real Dave.” Over his feeling that he has to be a hero in the sense Bro demanded he be. Hussie describes Davesprite as fitting the “way of the unbroken sword:” his experiences have led him to believe in being strong and capable at the expense of all else, in contrast with the other Dave, whose belief in Bros’ toxic ideas is beginning to slip – the “way of the broken sword.” And where did Bro get his toxic ideas from? At least in part, the whispering voice of the soul of Lord English.

Now we turn to Dirk. Like Dave, Dirk has a marginalized, “less important” splinter self but it’s more of a pressing concern. AR shows Dirk’s darker side: exhibiting manipulative tendencies that human Dirk is trying to move away from. He’s also a copy removed from humanity, who feels an understandable amount of disillusionment about being removed from physical existence and his own identity. But as much as Dirk may splinter, like his dumb anime sword, he never breaks. What this means in the symbolic language of Homestuck is that Dirk lives fully, instinctually, in the way of the sword. He believe in a world of hard choices, masculine heroism, and necessity. Ultimately, this, too, is part of what makes Bro so harmful to Dave. In AR and Davesprite, we have a strange parallel: two splinter selves, both of whom are enmeshed in the logic of LE.

Except AR, unlike Davesprite…kind of is LE.

What is Lord English composed of? Well, there’s Caliborn, the most unrepentant shithead of all time. There’s Gamzee, embodiment of horrifying clownery. And then there’s AR, a version of Dirk even more removed from the person he wants to be.

And…Equius?

Allow me a moment to get really indulgent and take a big puff on my Homestuck scholar’s pipe.

The metaphorical meaning of Equius in Homestuck is: sort of growing out of being a creepy racist.

Or maybe let’s say: the opportunity to do that. We said that Equius was on the verge of being redeemed (even had been, in the eyes of many readers). What does it mean to stick him in with Lord English’s souls? It means two things:

1) Equius is a product of his society, which was shaped by Doc Scratch, aka by Lord English, both of whom are kind of him, but Scratch picks up on his traits especially. This is a recognition of that fact: the part of him that sucks is, itself, Lord English in a dizzying loop.

2) Equius’s story is a tragedy. It is the story of a kid who started to escape his society’s tendencies, but was sucked back in by the evil force behind them.

Although…maybe that’s not the whole story.

Because both Equius and AR aren’t really that bad. AR’s pretty understandable, and by no means beyond the possibility of goodness. And the combination of the two? Honestly, pretty harmless. They counter each other’s worst tendencies by devolving into a weird goofball. In fact, AR even says he wants to do something heroic: to sacrifice himself for something really important. He does, kind of, mustering a last-ditch robohorse assault on Caliborn. But at the same time, this is the substance of his tragedy. A hero whose defeat of a great evil forces him to become the substance of that evil. Which could not be a more fitting summary of how these characters function in their story.

But maybe that’s still not the whole story.

Enter Davepeta.

At first glance, the creation of Davepeta seems like Hussie’s most batshit troll move yet. I feel pretty confident in saying that even those who predicted either of these characters returning didn’t see that one coming. However, a few pages of Davepeta’s presence reveals a fundamental truth:

Davepeta is fucking amazing.

In them, Davesprite’s depressive moods are buoyed up by Nepeta’s upbeat optimism. Nepeta’s reclusive shyness is balanced by Dave’s tendency toward brash banter. Both of them gain confidence from being the new person they are. They quickly let go of ideas inherited from the world that kept them from self-knowledge and happiness. Dave, his toxic masculinity; Nepeta, her fear.

A great point I’ve seen made is how much Jasprose and Davepeta resemble fantasy selves for Rose and Dave: indulgent, technicolor manifestations of people they could be if they let go of inhibitions and limitations. But I think Davepeta is the most unambiguously positive of the two.

The metaphorical meaning of Davepeta in Homestuck?

Growth.

Not giving a fuck about what the world thinks. The world, aka Lord English. Because Lord English could never have predicted that his machinations would also spawn a confident, powerful fusion of two beings he had discarded as totally irrelevant.

They’re also a multicolored non-binary furry, so that’s even more points in the pissing off shitheads column.

They are someone Lord English never conceived of, never could have conceived of, but which lay as potential within his domain all along.

And if Lord English is a reflection of the author, of what Hussie feels one has to destroy or sacrifice, than Davepeta is an indulgence existing in defiance of all that.

And this makes Davepeta the most powerful person of all.

They are the light at the end of the tunnel. They are the person you could be, if you could get past your mental shackles and just grow. It may not be possible to ever get there as a mortal human, may only be for a godlike sprite, but striving to be like them matters, is purpose and fulfilment enough.

And they love ARquius.

Nepeta believed in Equius, believed he could grow, and was growing. So as much as ARquius traps himself in a Lord English loop of his own making – grown, perhaps, out of Dirk’s belief that there should be a loop, that importance is admirable—Davepeta pulls from him, in his last scene, his finest qualities. His love.

Equius asks forgiveness again, and this time, Nepeta’s able to give it. Davepeta easily accepts ARquius’s apology, an apology which never could have existed within the confines of a normal narrative. A reconciliation that both of them fought for by defying their narrative, by existing outside it. By being not the trolls who lived and died, but their broader, conceptual selves, who exist beyond lifetimes. Beyond the comic page. And they consummate that reconciliation with that most cherished and loving of gestures:

A hug.

And even as this is Equius and Nepeta’s reconciliation, it’s also Dirk and Dave’s. Which, I should mention, is also taking place, simultaneously and circumstantially simultaneously, just below. It’s a more difficult one, certainly, especially as filtered through the splinters of Davesprite and AR. Here forgiveness is not quite the right word. But – knowledge, and recognition, and a kind of peace. It’s Davesprite’s chance to reunite with the part of his brother he loved, while also being a person who’s grown beyond him. And it’s AR’s chance to be loved.

Oh, sure, the art is ridiculous, the pose absurd. But that’s what makes it sublime.

I mean, what did you think that Sbahj comic was really about?

A boy distancing himself from his feelings through irony, never acknowledging that the story he’s telling is about two bros who desperately want to hug each other, but don’t know how.

Here’s the hug.

I want to dip into Epilogues territory for a moment, but it’s territory which is fairly well implied by Davepeta’s statements and role in Collide. The Meat Epilogue, I think, only illuminates what was already there.

Lord English is uniquely vulnerable to Davepeta.

And why shouldn’t he be? They, like so much else in Homestuck, are a consequence of his actions spiraling far beyond his control. But it’s more than that. Davepeta is finally able to lay the unbroken sword to rest by following the “prophecy” about Dave defeating Lord English. On the one hand, that’s kind of what happened. But it’s also completely different from what English intended, antithetical to his desires and goals. Which makes the victory all the sweeter. But at the end of the day, Davepeta doesn’t fight for the reasons Davesprite did. They’re free of that, now. Instead, they fight from a place of genuine compassion. Because Davesprite, like Dave, knows the true meaning of being a hero: caring about one’s friends.

But the most important thing about Davepeta is that they know Lord English, on a level that perhaps neither he nor they recognize. Both AR and Equius are in there, and both are capable of redemption. It’s only Gamzee and Caliborn who are truly beyond it.

How does Davepeta defeat Lord English?

With a hug.

They wrap their claws around him, and carry him into the sun like a piece of garbage. It’s an aggressive hold, but it’s also effectively an embrace.

And I have to wonder: in those final moments, did they sense a connection there? Did Equius and Dirk stir somewhere within Lord English? Did they give him a moment’s pause? Resist him? Make it just the tiniest bit easier for Davepeta to do their work?

If so, then that, too, is heroism.

At the very least, it’s circumstantially simultaneous with the hug we see in Act 6, and so it carries the same message:

Redemption.

Not for the shitheads, but for those who wanted to be better.

And if this isn’t enough, there’s a third reconciliation here, too: between author and reader, or to put it in other terms, author and character.

If Lord English is a shadow of the author, what part of the author can be redeemed? Maybe not the destructive, antagonistic urges. But the part that plans and designs and philosophizes as Dirk does. That part of Hussie wanted Davepeta to be there, to strike that final blow, and made it happen.

Because, when you get right down to it, as much as Hussie pretends to be antagonistic toward his readers and the characters they enjoy, it’s the fans, the shippers, the furries, those whose hearts go out to a cute, shy cat girl that he most celebrates.

Hussie fucking loves Nepeta.

Nepeta and Equius are, sneakily, the best characters in Homestuck, because they understand its fundamental message: that to succeed in Homestuck is to defy Homestuck. They defy everything it throws at them, and somehow, improbably, come out on top.

All of this is there on that page, a whole edifice of storytelling culminating in that singular, grand, supremely indulgent expression, a feast of looping leitmotif and color and imagery and meme and sound. It’s all there, if you know where to look.

Nepeta and Equius love each other, and that’s pretty fucking great.

See? I told you.

<> Ari

#nepeta #equius #davepeta #homestuck analysis #arquius #meowrails #davesprite #hal #trying to get out ahead of hussie's commentary for a change #happy 4/13 :33 #<3 #stay tuned #feast of homestuck 2020

[winterscaptain]

do you have a directors commentary for redamcy? it’s my go to fic when i’ve had a rough day

i love redamancy :’) thank you for requesting this one. it was such a gift to go back through this one and 

commentary in bold italics. 

“Hey, Aaron?” You peered around the wall to the bedroom from your place on the master bath toilet. There wasn’t any urgency to your query, which would later make you both laugh until you couldn’t breathe. 

Welcome to this installment of “Tali does the equivalent of voiceover commentary on her fics!” I had so much fun that I’m fulfilling requests on these whenever - all you gotta do is ask :) 

They’ll be a little slow because I like to take my time and I’m also writing other things, but this is a nice break because I don’t need to have original thoughts! Only recycled ones!

Alright so we start off here and I wanted this first establishing moment to give us another little window into their lives - they’re so settled after seven years of marriage and eleven years together and I wanted to emphasize that as much as possible. 

Aaron had a book in his lap and reading glasses resting on his perfect nose, as was usual for bedtime. He turned a page. “Hm?”

You know in marriage when you barely pay attention to each other? We’re there. 

“When you get to a good stopping point, can you grab the go bag?” 

“Yeah.” He got up on autopilot, setting his book down. When he got to the bedroom doorway, he froze and turned over his shoulder “Wait. Why?”

...And yet he’s so keyed into Mom it’s stupid. 

“Oh, nothing extreme,” you said lightly. “My water just broke and I figured we might -“

Fourth baby, third birth. The nonchalance couldn’t be any more extreme and Mom really cracked me up here - I didn’t really realize how casual she’d be, but she surprised me. 

(Also my father is a paramedic, and he delivered 27 (!!) babies in the back of ambulances, so I picked his brain for this whole process. I’m both proud of him and my close-to-accurate portrayal of childbirth in this fic)

Your name left his mouth in a laugh, and he trotted back to you, helping you up and kneeling to assist you with putting on your comfiest pair of pajama pants. You steadied yourself with a hand on his shoulder, stepping into one leg, then the other. Playfully, he snapped the stretchy waistband around you. He was still kneeling before you when he said, “You’re insane, you know that?”

You smiled down at him and scrubbed your fingers through his hair. He leaned into your touch like a cat and closed his eyes. “You are too, I’d like to point out.”

He just LOVES HER!!!! AHHH!!!

He sighed, kissing your belly and resting his cheek on it. “Never said l wasn’t.” He looked up at you. “Is it weird that I’m...a little sad? I’ve loved this part of our lives so much.”

This was my favorite little moment in this fic. My mom talked to me about this when I was on the phone with my dad going over the mechanics of childbirth (from an outsider’s point of view) while my mom offered her two cents about the internal processing and feeling of it all. She and my dad had a really similar moment after my little brother was born - they both knew they weren’t going to do this again, and it was kind of weird for them to acknowledge that. 

With so many kids, Elliot being the fifth, it was central to me to acknowledge that Elliot would be their last baby, and that from that point forward, their kids were always just going to get bigger - they wouldn’t have anyone new to introduce to their family after him. It’s kind of bittersweet, in a way. 

You shook your head. “Me too, my love. And no, it isn’t weird.” You sighed, and held his hands as he stood up and kissed your forehead. “We should probably tell Jack it's go time so he can help the little ones when they get up.”

Aaron paused for a moment, thinking. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Isaac isn’t going to clearly remember last time, so he’ll probably be nervous, and this is totally new to the girls.” You reached up and he planted a kiss on your lips. You smiled, pleased. 

I remember being super nervous when my brother was born because I had no idea what was going on, and frankly I’m just as neurotic as Isaac and was about the same age. Thus, it went in!

A little contraction wave hit, and one side of your face screwed up in discomfort. 

Aaron kissed your cheek and said, “I’ll get the rest of the toiletries together.”

You nodded, and padded down the hallway, your socked feet swishing a little against the hardwood floors. You knocked twice on Jack’s door, quietly, and waited for his groggy, “Yeah?”

With access granted, you opened the door with a little smile, and Jack sat straight up. Privacy is important! Parents shouldn’t invade your shit!! AH!  You crossed to his bed and sat down on the edge, opening your arm to him. Though he was almost seventeen, he scrambled out from under the covers and tucked in close to you. 

I love a soft teenager. 

“Your dad and I are headed to the hospital, and Aunt Jess and Em are on their way okay? If you need anything big, dad has his phone and -“

“Mom, we’ve done this before,” he said with a grin. “I know the drill.”

You pushed the hair off his forehead and kissed him. “I know it, but it makes me feel better. The little ones haven’t done this before, and they’ll probably be a little nervous. Please help your aunts so they aren’t driven to the drink by your sisters.”

He laughed a little, and surprised you as he wrapped his arms around your shoulders and pulled you close to him. “Be safe, mom. I love you.” 

Tears pricked at your eyes, and you held him tight. “I love you so much, Jack.”

Jack will always be her first son. I’m searching for a place where she can say, in front of Aaron when someone asks if she has kids, “Yes! I have two boys.” and of course Aaron just melts. 

“Are you scared?”

You pressed a hand to the back of his head, and he burrowed into your neck. “Only a little. I know I’m older, which can make some things difficult, but I’ll always come home to you.”

He nodded. “Promise?”

“I promise as much as I can.”

Jack pulled away and swiped quickly at his eyes with the back of his hand. 

Baby is so concerned about losing another mom I just -

“Hey,” your brow crinkled in lighthearted concern. “What’s gotcha?”

He shook his head. “It’s stupid”

Jack is such a fucking lovebug I adore him and would squish him within an inch of his life if he was a real person. 

“I can guarantee you it’s not.” While still a bit of a boy, Jack looked very much a man in the dark, lit only by the light of the hallway as the wheels turned in his head. You picked up one of his hands, and he put your linked fingers over your belly. 

“I just - I don’t - Ugh. It’s morbid - Nevermind.”

You huffed a laugh. “Baby, remember that one third of this house hunts serial killers for a living. Nothing is morbid.”

A smile quirked at his lips, but it didn’t really reach his eyes. “Just be okay? Please?”

You sobered and nodded, pressing a hand to his cheek. “Jack, do you think I would ever put you or your father into a position that could result in leaving either one of your?”

He shook his head. “But things happen.”

If that ain’t the Hotchner family motto “Things Happen” or, for less mixed audiences, “Shit Happens and People Die.”

“They sure do. Your dad will be with me the whole time and he can send you hourly updates if you want. I promise promise promise you’ll be in the loop, baby. I know you like to know.”

Your son’s eyes flickered to the doorway, where a shadow appeared. It was Aaron, his backpack on and your go bag in his hand. 

“Ready?” 

The Three Musketeers :’)

You nodded, stood (not without effort), and pressed another kiss to Jack’s head. “I love you bud. I’ll see you when our plus one arrives.” 

The plan was easy: Emily and Jessica came over for the kids, and Dave and Spencer would relieve them after 12 hours. Derek, Savannah, JJ, and Will would only be called when the baby arrived, to save them the angst of prematurely wrangling the four children between them. 

The hospital was only eighteen minutes away, but with the way Aaron drove it was more like ten. Time was fairly important - with your body accustomed to delivering babies, having done it twice before, there was a very big chance active labor would only take a few hours. 

Emily and Jess pulled up to the house at the same time, both in their pajamas with their overnight bags.

I love the aunties. 

“Ready?” Jess asked, kissing your cheek. 

You laughed. “Don’t have much of a choice now, do I?” 

Emily set her things down and wordlessly hugged you. You wrapped your arms around her as best you could. 

“Walk me out?” You asked. 

I’m so excited for Reader and Emily to get closer after Derek leaves the team. I think that’s the next logical close relationship that forms from the original team. 

I need to add more with Matt and Luke, and I promise I will one day!

She slung and arm around your shoulders and you walked back out the front door. She situated you in the passenger seat, and you offered her a small smile. 

“You know,” she started with a bit of a laugh, “every single time I’m just as nervous as I was when Henry was born.” 

I LOVE Emily’s concern for those around her, and it’s such an undervalued trait in her that I wanted her and Mom to have a little moment together - just the gals. 

It was also important for me to remind everyone that Mom and Emily joined the team around the same time - 2007ish. The post-Elle era gave us The Girls™ and I think there’s such a special bond between people who join any workplace/team/family at the same time. 

You reached for her hand, and kissed the back of it. “Me too.” 

Everything went according to plan after that. You sat in the car with your stopwatch while Aaron packed the car, checking the car seat base and putting everything that needed to go up with you in the trunk. Jess and Emily were getting set up on the couches in the living room, ready to settle in for the night. 

You were uncomfortable, sure, but it wasn’t unbearable yet. This was the tedious part. 

Miraculously, none of the little ones woke up in the commotion. The magic of white noise machines was never to be underestimated. 

“Time?” He called from where he leaned into the back of the car. He was handling the last details, in full field operations mode. 

You turned around. “5 minutes, 15 seconds.”

The idea that they’re so used to delivering babies that there’s a whole system just made my heart explode. And if you think Aaron doesn’t go right into brisk, efficient, and I Am Ready™ mode, you’re JOKING. 

“Alright,” he looked up at you and grinned widely. “Let’s go, baby.”

He’s so happy :)

+++

Your doctor breezed in and checked your charts and your dialation. “It’s go, time, here I think, Momma.”

You sighed and readjusted. “Do I have to lay down?” Comfortable as you were, epidural all finished, you still felt a little restless. The alternative was worse - you’d delivered Isaac without any pain management, and thought it was the end of days. You didn’t make that mistake again. 

Don’t worry - we’ll get Isaac’s birth! That’s much more dramatic. Not only is he the first, but Mom got to the hospital too late for an epidural (we love working in the field until the LAST POSSIBLE MOMENT and then IGNORING LABOR PAINS. Mom went to the baby delivery school of Jennifer Jareau)

“Not necessarily, but if you’re going to shuffle around I would suggest a squat for the sake of your blood pressure.”

Another contraction hit, and it knocked the wind out of you. You squeezed Aaron’s hand so hard you feared you’d break it, and informed him for the third time that morning that you’d hated his guts. 

“I know, honey. I’m sorry. I know. I’m the worst. Just breathe, okay?” He pressed his forehead to your temple, giving you something to focus on. 

You might have told him to fuck off, but you weren’t sure. The wave crested and then fell, and you slumped back against the pillows. “Okay, maybe I do want to lie down.” 

My dad has so many stories of how tough my mom tried to be while having me, but I was 20 hours of labor and she gave up about three hours in. The insistence that she couldn’t stand him and wasn’t letting him anywhere near her ever again? That lasted the whole 20 hours. 

Everyone stifled a chuckle, but you didn't have it in you to be prideful. While you still had a few seconds, you figured you’d double check the plan. “Hey Brienne, we’re still good to tie today, right?” 

“Yes, ma’am!” Your OB said, way too chipper for the small morning hour. She spoke quickly, knowing she had to finish her thought before your next contraction. “Soon as we’re all done, we’ll do a really quick procedure and everything will be squared away. If, for some reason we have to do an emergency cesarean, we can do it right then as well.” 

Brienne had delivered both Isaac and the twins - she was a great obstetrician and never pulled punches when the news was difficult or stressful. Her straightforward nature immediately endeared her to your whole family. 

Yes her name is Brienne after Brienne of Tarth. Nope. I’m not original even a little bit!

It was too much to think about, seeing as another contraction was sneaking up on you. It felt like only seconds since the last one. You were so tired. 

Brienne gestured to Aaron. They had a bit of a language developed over the last two deliveries, and he pressed a kiss to your temple. “You gotta push, babe.” 

“God, Fuck. I hate you, Aaron. Goddamn you. I’m never letting you near me ever again. Fuck.” A stream of expletives continued to leave you when they could as you pushed and pushed and pushed. 

This was so funny to me and honestly Aaron is the best. Mom knows it. We know it. He’ll live. 

He only held your hand and reminded you to breathe and push. He also told you how much he loved you in between agreeing with your damning assessments. 

If he was honest, he always thought your ire during childbirth was hilarious. It was kind of his fault, and he couldn’t fathom the physical trauma of childbirth, so he figured this was a fair role to fill while you did the hard work. 

See? He’s fine. 

On a small trough in your final set of contractions, you caught your breath enough to ask for his other hand. This was the hardest part, and it always made you a little nervous. “Aaron, come here. Please.” He draped his arm around your shoulders, and you grabbed his hand where it hung by your collarbone. 

“You’re almost there, darlin’! We’re gonna be crowning here in a second.” You couldn’t see Brienne, totally locked into her task, but her update was a relief. 

You leaned heavily into Aaron and he rested his cheek against yours. While this was a shorter labor than both Isaac and the girls’, you were exhausted. Bone-deep tired and hot and cold all at once. 

This was another little cinematic moment for me. Just the two of them taking a tiny breather together, being close together, being spouses, being parents. And again, the understanding that this will be the last time they do this together. 

“You’re doing so well. You’re a superhero. I love you so much.” He whispered his words against you, and you wailed as another contraction hit.  Your choice of a walking epidural didn’t knock the pain out entirely and it still totally sucked. But again, better than the alternative.

“We’ve got a little Hotchner head! Keep going!” Brienne patted your knee and grinned at you, and you followed instructions. “Do you want to catch, Dad?”

Before he could answer, you said, “If you move, I’ll kill you,” through your teeth. I laughed. Aaron shrugged and looked over your head at Brienne, who suppressed a smile. 

There couldn’t be any blood left in Aaron’s upper extremities at this point. In the midst of actively disliking him and your presence in your life in that particular moment, you were so grateful for him you could cry. 

The dichotomy between hatred and love in this little section is something that eats me alive whenever I think about it. 

My mom once said to me, “There’s nobody I’d rather yell and actively despise at while bringing his kid into the world than your dad” and honestly? That’s love. 

Well, you could cry for a great number of reasons, but that was definitely one of them. 

A few minutes and a pretty bad time later, a strong cry filled the room and you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. Aaron released you as you unbuttoned your gown to expose your chest. 

 THE BIG MOMENT!!

“Your time to shine, Aaron.” Brienne held up the umbilical cord clamp and snapped it together twice. (Yes, like a dad at a barbecue with a pair of tongs) With a smile, he stood and rounded the bed. 

You tried to peer over to see, but you were only able to see Aaron and Brienne.

A smile ate up his whole face. “Hi!” His voice pitched up, and you started to cry. You just loved him so much your chest could just burst. Did I cry writing this? Yes. Absolutely. 100%. Aaron was always the first person to greet your children as they came into the world, and he never failed to deliver a warm welcome. “Right here, right?” He looked to Brienne, and she nodded. He cut the cord, and the nurse crossed the room for measurements. 

Aaron returned to you and removed his own shirt, ready to take the little one while you finished delivery. After his crew neck was thrown to the side, he gathered you up in his arms again. There was nothing you could do but melt into him. His skin was warm and he smelled good, whereas your skin felt clammy and you probably smelled like a horse’s ass. 

Can confirm. Mom smelled like a horse’s ass. 

Brienne’s voice came to you faintly from the other side of the room, iterating the specs of the newest addition. “Baby Boy Hotchner, 5:37am, August 13th, 8 pounds, 14 ounces, 21 inches.”

Coming up with these metrics was really fun - it was all purposeful for both the zodiac signs, and for his size as a rather large kiddo. 

Elliot shares a birthday with my best friend Phil, and I told him so. He cried. Then I cried. I didn’t expect him to be as touched as he was and it was so sweet. 

Okay I wasn't crazy. He’s actually huge. 

Aaron scooted even closer as you leaned away to get a better look. Brienne set the still-squalling infant on your chest with gentle, warm hands. Your eyes were blurred with tears. Aaron wasn’t any better off, keeping one hand on you and another on your son, his own tears tracking quietly down his cheeks. 

Aaron is soft for his kids! Aaron is soft for his kids! Aaron is soft for his kids!

Your son. 

Brienne sighed and said, “Alright, last bit here and then you’re done.” 

You nodded and Aaron took him off your chest, leaning back with one hand under him and one hand over him. Fluid and other questionable grossness be damned, he ducked his head and pressed his cheek to his son’s head, an ineffable joy radiating through his body. Aaron’s hands almost completely covered him - with his little knees tucked to his chest, he looked like an angry little loaf of bread. 

AARON IS SO BIG AND ELLIOT IS SO SMALL!!!!! Like imagine this - Aaron is so big that his hands almost cover Elliot entirely. I can’t. Oh my God. 

The afterbirth was the easy part, but then it was before, too. All the Hotchner kids were massive - even the girls were bigger for twins. You always made fun of Aaron for “ripping me to shreds, and not in a fun way” (“Hey!” “Okay, fine. Maybe a little in a fun way. Sometimes.”). 

There was a little more pressure, and you looked down at Brienne’s outline behind that infernal green medical paper shit. “How’s it going down there?”

“I’m getting these suckers tied off so we don’t have any more happy accidents. Don’t mind me.” 

This was the most fascinating part to talk about with my dad - he talked for so long about the process (now done by laparoscopic incision) of tying/clamping tubes immediately following childbirth. Basically, they look like those little flat, wired bread ties and they just go around the fallopian tubes and pinch them shut!

Aaron stifled a laugh and you rolled your eyes, still weepy. The nurse passed him a warm, wet washcloth, and he started gently wiping the ick from his son’s skin. 

Brienne finished up and helped you get adjusted with ice packs and that excellent postpartum underwear. When she was satisfied, she removed her gloves, and pressed a hand to your bare shoulder. “Beautiful work, momma. He’s perfect.” 

Every baby is perfect and every baby is simultaneously very ugly. Yes, it’s true don’t deny it newborns look WEIRD

You put a shaky hand over hers. “Thanks.” A little watery laugh left you. Ouch. “I’ll miss you.” 

And it was true. Brienne had been a semi-permanent fixture in your life for close to six years, and had become a friend. You wouldn’t have any reason to see her again. 

Looking back, this was a little silly. Mom would still see her annually for her gyn checkups, but it wouldn’t the same. I think that’s what I was trying to get at here. 

She squeezed your shoulder twice. “You ever need anything, you know who to call. Let someone know when you’re ready to put his name down, and they’ll finish off the birth certificate.” 

With that, she shepherded the nurse out the door, and you were alone with Aaron. 

“So,” you said. 

He smiled, his eyes still trained on the little body who had quickly quieted and was snoozing on his chest. “So?”

“Gimme that.” 

This moment made me laugh. I say this all the time, and my mom said this to my sister after she had my niece. My mom also cut the cord for my niece because my brother-in-law got a squicked out about it lmao 

His laugh was warm, and he placed little one on your chest again. You prodded him awake, feeling only a touch bad about it, and offered him a snack. He latched right away, and you tipped your head back in sheer relief. 

“Thank God.” 

Aaron nodded in agreement. “That’s one less thing to worry about.” He shook his head, as if shaking something off - no doubt remembering the meltdowns night after night trying to nurse Isaac. 

The ANGST that can come with breastfeeding...ridiculous. 

Little one was still naked to the world, so you pointed at the little blue blanket folded across the room. “Can you grab that for me?” 

Aaron just looked at you for a second, as if seeing you for the first time. Did I cry writing that line? Yes.  “Of course.” He crossed the room and threw the blanket over his shoulder and grabbed a diaper. While little one was distracted, he deftly maneuvered the diaper into place and draped the blanket over him to keep the chill off while maintaining skin-to-skin.

More moments of “This is totally normal” that I can’t get enough of. They understand each other so so well, and they are completely tuned in to each other. 

You pulled the blanket back a little so you could see his squishy little face. “Can you call Jack?” 

“Do we want to call him now? It’s pretty early.” Aaron leaned over to his backpack and pulled his phone out, finding a couple requests for updates from Jess. First things first, he turned the camera on you, and you gave him a thumbs up. You detached the little one from your nipple for a second, framing his face with the blanket. Aaron got a good photo of a yawn and fired both pictures off to the BAU group chat before checking Jess’s messages. 

4:12am How we doin? 4:18am Jack’s up with me. He can’t sleep. Em is dead to the world - she gave up about an hour ago. Give us an update when you can. 

6:02am He’s adorable!!! He’s got your nose though, which is unfortunate. 6:02am Kidding. Maybe. 

That made Aaron laugh a little, and he looked at you. “He’s up with Jess.”

You nodded. “Go ahead and call him. He’ll worry, honey.” 

He nodded, and dialed the second number on his speed dial. Jack picked up on the first ring. “Dad?”

Again, I’m a sucker for teenagers who love their parents. 

“Hey, bud.” Aaron couldn't hide the smile in his voice. “Your brother is here and your mom wants to talk to you.” 

“Can I come see you?” Jack’s voice wavered a little, and Aaron knew it was relief he heard, rather than anxiety. Much like his son, he was more than a little concerned for your safety. Now that it was over, he could finally relax. That alone was enough to make anyone emotional. 

CATHARSIS, BOYS! 

Aaron checked his watch. “Are you too tired to drive?” 

“No, no. I’m good. I slept a little after you guys left.” He was quiet for a second. “Can you hand me to mom?”

“Sure, bud.” Aaron nodded at you and you smiled. He started to pass the phone over to you then -

“Oh, dad?” Jack’s voice was only a little urgent. 

Aaron pulled the phone back to his ear. “Yeah?”

“I love you.” 

Did I cry throughout this WHOLE section? Absolutely. 

“I love you too, bud. I want to talk to Aunt Jess when you’re done with mom, so don’t hang up, okay?” With that, he handed you the phone and fresh tears rolled down your cheeks. You knew this part came in waves - the emotions. Your hormones were in shambles, and you forgot how intense it was every time. 

“Hey, Jack.” 

“Are you okay how did it go what happened?” All the questions came out in a rush.

You chuckled. Ouch. “Slow down there, kiddo. We’re just fine. It went really smoothly, but the last part happened kind of all at once and I denied your father personal freedom and geographic agency, so we didn’t get a chance to update you.” 

He laughed, and it warmed you. “It’s okay. I’m really excited to meet him.” There was a shuffle, and you assumed it was his keys. 

Baby boy was done eating, just nosing around your chest at this point. You shifted, and Hotch caught the phone and held it to your ear so you could use two hands, They are so in-tune I just - bringing little one’s head right under your collarbone, tucking him up again. “He’s excited to meet you, too.”

After Aaron had a chance to debrief and game-plan with Jess (“If you bring the little ones over here before 10am, nobody will have any fun.”), Jack was on his way. 

In the meantime, Aaron set his phone on the side table and sat on the edge of your bed. “Are we sticking to the name we picked? Does it feel right?”

Fun Fact: When I was born my parents had another name for me and when I popped out they were like “Nope. Absolutely not. That’s not the right name at all.” so it's a very real consideration!

You nodded. “I think so. What do you think?”

You did your best to inch yourself over - Ouch - so Aaron could have a little more space. He stretched out on the bed next to you, on his side with his arm folded under his head. A very large hand covered yours, pulling the blanket down to little one’s chin. 

“He looks like you,” he said. 

You snorted. Ouch. “Don’t lie. All your damn kids look like you.”

I AM SOFT FOR FAMILY RESEMBLANCE!!!!

“Alright, fine.” He relented with a wide smile. “He looks like me.” He was quiet for a moment, tracing the apple of little one’s cheek with his finger.  His smile morphed into something soft, pensive. It was the look he always had when he was in awe of his children. “What do you think, little man? Is your name Elliot David? How’s that sitting with you?”

The Elliot David in question just made contented little staccato sounds from his chest, his brown eyes looking here and there, surprisingly alert. He let out a little cough, and both you and Aaron went, “Oh!” simultaneously in that drawn-out way parents do when their kids surprise themselves. 

I love parent noises. 

You looked at him, and you stifled a laugh just for the sake of your exhausted muscles. Aaron’s smile soon turned shaky, and tears fell onto his elbow where it rested under his head. He took a big breath, and it caught on the way out. 

“Oh, honey. Come here.” 

I love that Aaron has grown so comfortable with being taken care of (hi tali, that was shit english!!) as he settles further into his family. By this point, he’s so secure in it and he lets mom care for him whenever she wants to and whenever he needs it. 

That’s growth. 

You adjusted again, bringing the head of the bed down with the little remote. As you reclined, you only needed one hand to keep Elliot secure. You raised your other arm, and Aaron scooted under it, resting his head in the crook of your chest and shoulder. He snapped some buttons shut on your gown in the absent-minded interest of keeping Jack relatively unscarred. 

Aaron’s bare arm was warm under your fingers. You traced little patterns into his skin as he stared at the back of his son’s head. Aaron’s finger was caught in Elliot’s impossibly small hand, secured in that death grip only babies seem to have. He couldn't care less that he was nearly twenty-four hours without sleep, missing a shirt, and really hungry. The only things that mattered in that moment were right there in front of him. 

There was no need to speak. 

A nurse stopped by and dropped off the bedside cradle, speaking quietly. “You can put him in here when you’re ready to get some rest.” 

You looked up and thanked him. “Oh, and we’d like to finish the birth certificate in a few hours. Will that be alright?”

He nodded. “Just fine.” He checked your charts and left a few moments later. 

Soon after, the door slipped open, and Jack’s head popped in. “Hi!” He stage-whispered. “Lemme see him.” 

Aaron was stuck where he was, still locked in by Elliot’s grip, so Jack came in on your other side, pulling up a chair as close as he could get it. 

There was a sense of finality to this meeting. Elliot would be your last child, and this would be the last time the Three Musketeers sat together, meeting the newest member of their family. 

“Oh man, Mom. He’s so cute.” Jack cooed and ducked so he was eye-level with his baby brother. He traced a finger along Elliot’s tiny, straight nose. When he rested his head on your upper arm, you kissed his head. All three of you sat there until the sun rose, watching Elliot fall asleep. Aaron followed suit eventually, his breath fanning slow and even across your chest. 

+++

The three of you were relatively well rested by the time your family came to bombard you. Elliot had woken twice - once to be fed and the other to be changed. Jack retreated to the recliner after a certain point, and Aaron threw on a sweatshirt and curled up next to you for the duration. They were out cold, while you rested somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. 

One of the nurses on rotation popped her head in. You waved at her with the tips of your fingers. 

“Your family is here to see you.” 

That woke you up. You made an ‘eek’ face. “All of them?”

I laughed. 

She nodded. “Three at a time?” 

“Please.” You reached over and picked up a neatly-swaddled Elliot and tucked him into your elbow. You checked the corner, where Jack was still sleeping. You were sure a train could drive through the room and he’d still be out. That kid had sleeping superpowers - being sixteen only helped.  

Jess was first, holding the girls’ hands while Isaac trailed a little behind. 

The idea of Jess loving the littles like she loves Jack is like....everything to me. The Brooks-Hotchners are so so special and I’m so excited to dive further into their lives - especially the relationship that exists between mom and Jess. 

You put a finger to your lips and pointed to Elliot. “He’s sleeping, so you have to be really quiet, okay?”

Caroline clambered up on the bed with a few reminders to “be gentle with Mom and don’t lean on her too much,” and peered over you. “Is Daddy sleeping?”

You looked to your right, and sure enough, Aaron was out like a light again, performance evaluations on his chest, his hand relaxed around his pen. “Yeah, baby. Daddy’s sleeping because he was awake for a really long time helping me with Elliot.” 

Newly reminded of the main event, Caro planted herself by your knee while Sophia sat by your hip, taking the good real estate. You looked over at Jess and winked. She slipped out, closing the door softly behind her. 

This was another one of those Renaissance painting moments where I could completely see this image of everyone crowded around Mom and baby. 

You scooted over so you were flush with Aaron’s side. “Come on up here, bubba.” 

Isaac gave you a little smile and perched at your side. “He’s so small.” 

Isaac’s observations are such a key part of his personality and I can’t wait to include more!!!

“Yep. And look at that,” you brushed your fingers down Elliot’s nose and tapped his cupid bow before doing the same to Isaac. “You have the same nose.” 

Isaac smiled and raised a tentative hand. He hesitated right before he reached the dark brown peach fuzz that sat in unmanageable cowlicks on Elliot’s head. 

“You can touch him, bub. Just be gentle.” Isaac’s hand smoothed over Elliot’s head with next-to-no pressure. “Do you remember when Sophia and Caroline were born?” 

I love it when my little boy can really settle in and connect with his family. I’m soft. 

Isaac nodded. “It was super cool.”

“It was super cool.” You kissed his forehead, and adjusted your hold on Elliot. “Sophia, love, can you hand me the pillow that’s by Daddy’s knee.” 

She nodded and very carefully presented it to you. You showed her how to stuff it under your elbow so you could relax while supporting Elliot’s head. Caro was clearly enamored, her eyes never leaving Elliot’s face. 

“Babies are really delicate,” you reminded a wiggling Sophia. “Their heads are too heavy for their little necks, so sometimes they need a little help.” 

At the mention of ‘help,’ Aaron’s eyes snapped open. “What’s up?”  You suppressed a laugh as he realized all of his kids were surrounding him like the children of the corn. He pressed a hand to his face, recovering. “Oh. Hi.” Caro beamed at him, and he beamed right back. He put his files down and patted his lap. “Come here, my little love. I’ve got a really good view over here.” 

The lightning-in-a-bottle relationship that Caro and Aaron have is one of my favorite parts of this universe. It reminds me of me and my mom and my roommate in her dad - we have such special relationships with those parents it can only be fate. 

My mom always says about her brother that “God made us siblings so we wouldnt have to find each other” and every time i think too hard about it I cry. Those two are complete soulmates and I can’t imagine one without the other. Shoutout to Uncle Billy :’)

She very mindfully picked her way over your shins and into her father’s lap. He lifted her so she was up flush to his chest. His cheek pressed into her hair, and he showed her where to find Elliot’s little baby toes under the blanket. 

“Are his feet very very small?” Caroline’s whispered question almost made Aaron cry again. 

Caroline makes me cry on the regular. 

“Yes. They are very very small. So are his hands. Here, look.” He reached over and peeled back a layer of blanket, exposing one of Elliot’s (very very) small hands, pressed flat against the fabric. Aaron wiggled his finger under it and presented it to the kids. “If you look really carefully, you all have the same hands.” 

All at once, three pairs of hands appeared, flipping their palms up and down as each one individually assessed the similarities. 

“And if you look even closer,” he said, flipping his palm down, but keeping Elliot’s hand aloft, “I have the same hands as all of you, too.”

FAMILY RESEMBLANCE!!!

Caroline looked up at him, awestruck and he nodded. She placed her hand on the back of Aaron’s and lo and behold they were the same shape, just significantly different sizes. 

Satisfied, Sophia dropped her hands, leaning on them to get a closer, yet stable, look at Elliot’s fingers. 

She gasped, but to her credit, kept her voice soft as she said, “Look at his tiny little nails!” 

“Lemme see!” Aaron supported Caro as she thrust her body forward to get a better look. 

Babies being fascinated by babies is simply the purest thing I’ve ever beheld. 

Jack stirred in the corner, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. In full voice, he said, “Oh, hey guys.” 

Three big shushes came from the kids, HA! and it took everything in you to keep your laugh locked away. You kept your eyes trained on Sophia (who looked downright offended at Jack’s volume) knowing if you looked at Aaron you’d be done for. 

Jack made the same ‘eek’ face you made earlier. Okay the resemblance even though they aren’t related? I’m dead. Thanks. Oof. “Sorry, sorry.” He crept over, standing behind Sophia and putting his hands on her shoulders. She giggled quietly as he dropped close to her ear. “Cute, huh?”

She wrinkled her nose. “He looks a little funny.” 

“He’ll start to look more like a person in a few weeks,” Aaron said with a smile. “You looked pretty funny the day you were born, maybe even funnier.”

Funny Dad!Aaron sends me straight into the stratosphere. You know after a couple of years he would have the dad jokes on LOCK

He winked at her, and she dissolved into a fit of giggles again, leaning back against Jack. As she did so, her brother wrapped her in his arms and rested his chin on her head.

Isaac was still running his hand over Elliot’s hair, gentle and repetitive. He, like Jack had done hours earlier, rested his head against your shoulder. You pressed your cheek to the crown of his head, soaking it in. 

“I like him.” 

A smile broke your face in half, and you peered around to look at Isaac’s face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. He’s cool.” 

Your bottom lip disappeared into your mouth as you fought back your tears, still ready to flow without fair warning. You didn’t want to scare them. “I’m so glad you think so, bubba.” 

Bubba :’)

Elliot had once again taken Aaron’s finger hostage, and it took more than a little negotiation to get him unwrapped and tucked back into his blanket. You have no idea how Elliot managed to sleep through all the commotion, but then again, he’d have to get used to it. 

Here we have the first instance of Elliot being the chillest baby on the block. 

Jess poked her head back in. “Ready for some lunch?”

Four heads whipped around and nodded vigorously. Aaron deposited Caro on the floor, while Isaac pressed a heart-wrenching kiss to Elliot’s head before gingerly getting his feet back under him. Jack just lifted Sophia and she hung off his hip, only a little too big. 

He walked to you and kissed your cheek. “I love you, Mom.”

Mom and Jack :’)

You brought your hand up to his temple, the back of your fingers brushing his hair back. “I love you too, my Jack.” 

One side of his mouth turned up in a smile, and he left the room with Sophia, leading the rest of the pack down the hallway. 

A cut from this section: 

Jess lingered, and you grinned at her.

“Come meet your nephew.”

She sat on the very edge of the bed, stroking a finger down his little cheek. “Oh, he’s perfect.” She reached for your hand, and held your fingers in her palm. “Was it super rough?”

You shook your head. “Only about five hours. No complications, and no stitches.” A weak laugh left you. “Turns out after a couple of them, things just stretch instead of tear. Who knew?”

Aaron snorted, and Jess covered her mouth with her hand to avoid laughing out loud. She squeezed your hand once, and leaned back. Aaron met her in the middle and she kissed his cheek. “Proud of you.”

“Couldn’t do it without you.”

“Seriously,” you supplied.

“Who do you want me to get?” She stood and walked to the door, leaning on the narrow edge as you decided.

You looked at Aaron, coming to the same conclusion. “Dave,” you said, simultaneously.

+++

It was safe to say Dave immediately coveted his namesake. You’d plopped Elliot into his arms right away, and said, “This is Elliot David Hotchner. He’s been very excited to meet you.”

He full-on cried, letting the tears just fall onto his shirt as he bounced Elliot all around the room, talking to him about all the ways he’d spoil him rotten. 

It was easy to name him after Rossi. When you finally came down to a couple of first names, it was a no-brainer to pair them up with David. He was your family, like they all were, but you were acutely aware that Elliot would have the smallest amount of time with Dave, no matter how much time that would be. 

This was such an important piece for me to include. BEcause the time is limited, it makes it all the more special. I think about this iwth Aaron too, because while 54 isn’t old, it’s certainly higher than the average age for parents of a new baby. 

I touched a little on this in Rings, but the idea that Aaron is 74 in 2042 really knocked me out. It’s so important for both Dave and Aaron to soak up the time they have with their children (and grandchildren and nephews and nieces and niblings) because they simply have no idea how much time they have with them. 

When Dave was ready to reluctantly give him up, he passed him back to Aaron. Dave crossed to you while Aaron offered Elliot a knuckle to mouth around on. 

Aaron being an auto-pilot dad makes me soft. 

Dave kissed your cheeks and embraced you. He leaned back, keeping his hands on your face. You covered his hands with your own and closed your eyes. You were taking a lot of mental pictures today. 

He pressed a kiss to your forehead, and you were sure you saw Aaron’s one-handed camera work out of the corner of your eye. “Thank you, bellissima.” 

“You’ve more than earned it,” you reminded him.  

“Dealing with you two for fifteen years? You’re damn right I have.”

Here’s something that was cut!! I ran out of steam on this section, and it just seemed perfect to end it with Dave, so I left it right where it was. If I hadn’t though - this is the raw part of what comes next: 

Elliot exchanged hands throughout the late morning and early afternoon, pausing every once and a while for a change or a feeding. 

Emily immediately fell in love with him, sitting with you as he nursed and running her knuckle back and forth over his tiny bicep. When he was more than finished eating, Emily took him on her chest. 

You helped her drape a burp cloth over her shoulder, and she expertly shifted Elliot to her shoulder and started bopping around with him. 

Aaron slipped back into the room with a tray of food for the both of you. “Hey, Prentiss, I didn’t realize you were still here.” 

She snorted. “Of course I am, are you kidding? You guys need a break and I get to have this.” Her thumb rubbed back and forth at the base of Elliot’s skull as her hand supported his head. 

You smiled at her, and you and Aaron dug into your food. 

+++

JJ arrived a little while later, with Spencer. She left the kids at home, because “...you’ve had a very long day and that would only make it longer.” 

Luckily, you’d just 

Spencer held Elliot, playing with his little hands. JJ made Aaron sit down, and helped you arrange your pillows so you could get some sleep. 

tagging: @ssaic-jareau @qvid-pro-qvo @joanofarkansass @forgottenword @hurricanejjareau

#a joyful future #ajf commentary #tali talks cm #tali provides commentary #tali answers stuff #anon reply

[shachihata]

ok i am *checks watch* two years late to the party but i just watched dead apple and i’m having thoughts about it everything below the cut because it’s a goddamn essaypost

ok so basically i had to rewatch fyodor’s speech scene a couple times because of how hard i was thinking about it. he implies that shibusawa’s fog separates users from their abilities and makes the abilities try to kill the user with the caveat that this is only allowed to happen if the ability user, in some form or another, has rejected their ability as a part of themselves -- the ability users that have accepted their abilities/their role in the world might be separated from their abilities, but the ability doesn’t attack them at all. it’s an ability entirely based on the individual’s personal feelings towards their ability (which is pretty ironic, considering that shibusawa is desperately searching for his own reason to live by living through other people). if there’s any conflict at all, then the fog essentially amplifies those negative feelings and turns the user against their own ability -- and, in extension, against themselves.

which... honestly makes a lot of sense! ability users are relatively rare in the world of bsd, and so it makes sense that most of them would be attacked by their own abilities because they feel ostracized from the world because they’re not truly “human” like everyone else, or something along those lines. atsushi is the most obvious example of this -- even though he manages to defeat his own ability, he’s only able to use it again once he fully accepts that the tiger isn’t a curse, it’s meant to protect him. atsushi feels guilty all the time over the orphanage director and for killing shibusawa, even though those people were literally his abusers; he has to realize that he wasn’t the one at fault for defending himself against them, in order to fully manifest his ability and kill shibusawa without feeling guilt, the way he did at the beginning of dead apple when he planned on just capturing shibusawa even though kyouka literally told him “we have to kill him that’s our mission he’s going to destroy all of yokohama if we don’t.”

we can put akutagawa and kyouka under similar analysis. akutagawa originally didn’t accept rashoumon because he felt that dazai was only ever praising rashoumon, instead of acknowledging akutagawa’s existence; once he accepts that he is the one controlling rashoumon and he doesn’t need dazai’s direct praise to know that he’s validated for existing (he visits and bows to chuuya in the epilogue, rather than seeking out dazai), rashoumon comes under his control again. kyouka didn’t accept demon snow because she hated the fact that she cared so much for demon snow as a protector/mother figure even though she blames it for killing her parents; she has to learn that demon snow isn’t her enemy, and, like atsushi, has only ever attempted to protect her. she can use demon snow to do good in the world, twisting it away from its original purpose of assassination, because it’s her power. basically, they’re all conquering their powers and accepting that even though they’re ability users, they still have the ability to be, essentially, human and pick the side that saves people -- the way dazai does at the end, seeing how “beautiful” the world is because atsushi and kyouka are alive, the way sakunosuke wanted him to. their ability is just as much of a part of themselves as any other internal conflict they have. they aren’t separate from their abilities -- they are one and the same.

which is a really interesting implication when we loop it all back around and start talking about fyodor himself. like fyodor says, he doesn’t get separated from his ability because he has accepted his ability in the first place -- “crime and punishment are close friends,” after all. fyodor knows and accepts himself as both the “crime” (being an ability user) and the “punishment” (using his ability to rid the world of ability users), which, honestly, is incredibly remniscient of raskolnikov’s entire speech about the “extraordinary man” in the original crime and punishment -- raskolnikov’s entire philosophy in the first half of the book was based around the idea that certain “extraordinary men” had the “right” to transgress against the laws of humanity/society in order to fulfill their own “higher purposes.” and i mean, that’s basically exactly what fyodor implies about himself: he thinks of himself as a god, and so even though he’s committing the ultimate sin, he’s doing it for the greater good. stupid god complex motherfucker.

when fyodor said that he was using shibusawa as entertainment, he wasn’t even joking. i genuinely don’t think that there was any greater purpose to it other than to basically prove his own points to himself. shibusawa, the conglomeration of hundreds and hundreds of abilities, becomes nothing more than an animalistic, violent, unthinking dragon -- exactly why fyodor sees abilities as the “ultimate sin,” because they do nothing more than wreak chaos and destruction in his eyes. he used shibusawa as an example of just how low ability users can sink -- completely ignoring ability users like atsushi or kyouka, who have chosen to seek the “light” of existence/life by literally just accepting their abilities as something to be used for good!

fyodor, ironically, is doing the same thing as atsushi and kyouka -- except he’s twisted it around so that he only sees his own ability as something to be used for “humanity’s good.” he sees himself as a hero and every other ability user as a villain, completely blinding himself to the fact that other ability users are also making individual choices, every day, to use their abilities for the sake of protecting other humans rather than destroying them, the way shibusawa does (because he’d lost sight of his own identity and reason to live, not because of his collection of abilities). it implies that he sees himself as a god because he’s the only one with free choice; he believes that everyone else has to bend to the “natural urges” of their abilities, impulses, and so on. it implies that the entire reason he looks down on humanity is because he doesn’t think they have free will.

...and so, as it always is with me, it comes down to “man what the hell was fyodor and nikolai’s relationship” i’m DESPERATE to know more about it. does fyodor see nikolai as a god, like him, because nikolai is so purposefully “defying god” and working towards his own death -- he, like fyodor, is both the crime and his own punishment? at the same time, though, does fyodor see nikolai as actually having free will, or just as a bird who recognizes that they’re in the cage -- while still submitting to the whims and orders of higher powers, like himself and fukuchi -- and has thus bent nikolai’s desires for his own hidden purposes? when will the sigma, nikolai, and fyodor subplot come back from the fucking war? asagiri kafka i am on my knees BEGGING to know

#ciphertexts #bungou stray dogs #fake tvtropes analysis #HAVING LOTS OF THOUGHTS RIGHT NOW. HEAD IS VERY FULL #god i could talk about this shit forever. what the fuck #dazai too... i didn't even address dazai in this goddamn essaypost like. he doesnt lose his abilities during shibusawa's fog either! #ghhh the easy answer is that dazai just nullified the fog.. but idk i feel like that's a cheap way out of character analysis #i think you could make the argument that dazai does genuinely accept himself as 'inhuman' #he's an ability user but like. ironically the OPPOSITE of every other ability user #which is exactly what he wants to be. he doesn't want to be seen as human because in his mind sakunosuke was the ultimate 'human' #dazai idolized sakunosuke's devotion so much that he's fine w/ not having morals as long as he's following sakunosuke's morals #which is interesting to think about... how he tried to give akutagawa/atsushi the same mindset. nothing matters but following your teacher #WHICH IS. an entire other essaypost on its own that im not writing in the tags

[skiewrites]

Thoughts of HW:AOC, Plot

Okay, so I’ve had a quick look through the tags to see what people’s opinions were on the games plot, because even though the game doesn’t come up until Friday, people with hacked switches were able to get a hold of the game early and leak it. Whatever your view on copyrights from a large company like Nintendo is, it got leaked, I watched it, lets move on.

A couple of things to be aware of before we move onto the whole post is that no, I do not have a hacked switch. I have preordered the game, but I will not be playing it until it is released. However, I was able to watch all the cutscenes before Nintendo came and took them down for copyright issues. Please keep in mind that what I say is my own opinion on the story after one watch through, so I might come by and edit it after I’ve played the game, to include my views on the actual gameplay.

And of course, this post will contain major spoilers for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, so tread lightly.

This will be part one of a small series, otherwise this post would be incredibly long, so this is part one of ???

So, of course, like everyone expected, the games plot follows the event that lead up to the Great Calamity. At first, I found the order of events to be slightly strange; the idea that Link is Zelda’s knight before its revealed that he is the hero weirded me out somewhat and it was truly the first sign that they were going to deviate from what they had said in botw, where Link had had the Master Sword since he was 12, and he should have had it when they fight the lynal in Zora’s Domain. These inconsistencies are littered throughout, of course. In botw, Revali mentions having wished to have had at least one fight with him before he had died, and in the cutscenes shown they nearly killed each other during their first meeting (something that I am actually pretty excited to play). Then there’s the whole thing with the yiga in the desert (completely disrupting what happened in the memories)

Time travel.

So. The elephant in the room. I thought that I would get this bit over and done with as it’s the bit that everyone seems the most hung up about. Of course, that does make sense, for never has anyone done time travel well in media. There’s always too many ‘what if’s involved with this trope, and it is a trope that has been done to death, especially in the Legend of Zelda series. I now yearn for a game that doesn’t involve time travel in any way, for not only is it repetitive from a gameplay standpoint and a storytelling standpoint, but Nintendo is always going on about the timeline of the Zelda Universe, only to screw it into a ball and throw it away.

As much as I love theory videos and fanfics explaining away why the timeline is the way it, is it too much to ask for at least a couple games that go in a linear fashion so that I don’t have to think of the timeline when coming up with a new fic idea?

There are really two parts of timetravel. The first part, where Terrako (eggy boi) comes back from the ‘bad’ future that leads on to botw. He comes baring information on how the Calamity comes about, the date, the location, the destruction that comes with it. The other characters already know that this was going to happen because of Astor (I’m pretty sure he’s the fortune teller right?), but they then use this knowledge to further prepare themselves. This is the time travel that people kind of expected, especially since the demo, and we were prepared for that.

The timetravel we did not expect however, was when Sidon, Riju, Yunobo and Teba come from the future/alternative timeline and help with the final battle. Don’t get me wrong, I was very confused to see them turn up as much as everyone else was, but does it give some of the best character moments in the game? Absolutely. All of them had bonding moments between each other, but my favourite had to be Sidon and Mipha. Not only did it help that Sidon was the most developed character in botw out of all of them, but adding on with the character interaction at the beginning with the lynal, you can tell that Sidon was finally able to come to terms with his sister’s death in his reality, and Mipha was able to see a glimpse of the zora that Sidon would come to be. I loved every moment that these characters were on the screen, and I cannot wait to play them.

At the end of the day, the time travel does become a closed loop situation (and if you want me to go into detail about that then lmk), and thus, this game, considered canon or not, will not affect botw, nor botw2. Will it create another timeline? I hope not, but that’s up to Nintendo to figure out.

Regardless of the timetravel, I do have to say that the story itself is brilliant. There isn’t a loose thread or a self-contained. Purah talks about teleportation and showing that multiple people teleportation is possible, which then comes to help them in the final act. The scene with Zelda and Rhomn where he lectures her about artefacts comes to save his life later down the line as it turns out to be a shield. Any scene with the Yiga in made me laugh, and the scene at the end, where Calamity Ganon is formed? That is the beast that I wish I fought in botw.

The pacing could be better but these cutscenes aren't really supposed to be viewed back to back like that so they can have that one off. The small background interactions? those scenes will keep me fed for days. The small gags that reference the game, like link being able to eat rocks and using a cucco to jump from the tower? I couldn't stop fucking laughing. I’m not a big fan of zelda/link but those scenes weren't too in my face, which hits the perfect balance for shippers and nonshippers, but I’ll talk more about the characters in the next post.

At the end of the day, if this story had been a fanfiction, people would have lost their minds over it. But if you still don’t like the story, I ask you this. Don’t view it as Link’s story. View it as Zelda’s. even though the name of the game is Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, it is more of a ‘Legend of Zelda’ than the other games. We follow her right until the very end where she unlocks her power and is able to save Hyrule. This is a story exploring the idea that, if the circumstances had been different, if she had just a little more information to give her the final push, she would have been able to unlock her sealing powers and save everyone like she wanted.

That’s it for now, lmk what you guys think of the plot.

#age of calamity #age of calamity spoilers #hyrule warriors age of calamity #hyrule warriors #spoilers #there is more coming #i promise #skie rambles #not writing

[frvyas]

「olivia holt & cis female」⇾ nilsen, freya, the junior radcliffe student’s records show that she is a leo and 21 years old. she is studying marketing, living off-campus and can be assured, exuberant, facetious & remiss. when i see her i am reminded of a missing mother’s found necklace, sleeping through well-intentioned alarms, automated ‘to accept this call, press 3 now’ messages seemingly on loop.

ella again! with her second character. again if u would like to plot, smash that like button and i’ll hit u up!!

(addiction tw) freya’s comes from a family that has plagued lovell for years with their stunning reputation! father, conrad nilsen, was a menace and there was more than enough stories about him from his heyday. mother, holly koch, came from a family where everyone was constantly at each other’s throats. holly dealt with the drama of it all through drug use. as was common in holly’s family, an accidental pregnancy was the next step and thus, freya was born. their happy family of three didn’t last long. the reasons as to why her parents just ditched her are plenty if you wanted to explore them! a real baby is scarier than the idea of a baby, conrad had non-baby plans and holly wanted to follow after him, and finally, addiction is a bitch. freya grew up in her aunt fiona’s care for the majority of her life.  

it’s not as if her parents suddenly disappeared from existence, although freya prefers pretending that they did. it’s easier to deal with them as nondescript figures in her life. and, at the end of the day, they ditched her. in reality, collect calls from correctional facilities let her figure out that her dad’s been locked up. memories of a woman in youth that looked so much like her and so much like fiona proved that holly was still in and out in lovell. freya also remembers that holly never acknowledged her as her own before disappearing once more. she never figured out if it was done purposefully or if it was because that’s just the way her mother functioned. that being said, all potential contact with either parent was short and brief and freya learned to not let it mean anything. there hasn’t been any substantial contact for years now either way.

as for freya’s aunt, she was on the younger side when she took freya in and as she was being raised, it was more of a weird friendship/sibling sort of relationship rather than a proxy mother-daughter one. that meant freya had too much freedom, but it also meant there was a lot of screaming matches between the pair and a lot of times freya was left directionless. her aunt also loved serial dating so there was a lot of strange men in and out. not the most reputable guys either, but truth be told those men were providing them with financial support, so fiona was never quick to let them go. 

very independent. freya has a lot of practical smarts, although most of the time it’s used for nothing good (knows how to shoplift without getting caught, can talk her way out of most things, knows how to get what from who). she’s someone who does what she wants! discipline is foreign to her and god forbid if anyone tries it. in typical teenage fashion, heightened by the fact that life was set up for her to fail, she’s always had this aura of apathy. her general approach to life is to accept it as it is but make sure she’s having so much fun as well. of course, as most people do, there was an inkling of yearning there. the shiny gold possibility that she didn’t have to become another nilsen-koch lovell deadbeat staple hung at the back of her mind. that she could possibly get out and have some dreams was encouraged by a few teachers. so she ended up trying as much as she could possibly try in her last few years of high school and proved to herself that she wasn’t completely useless. although, it was soon clear that getting into a good out-of-state college requires more than just making an attempt -- extracurriculars and money and other obvious yet non-obvious things that freya lacked. at the end of the day, her best option was the local college at radcliffe, which wasn’t a defeat by any means cause she had made it and it was college. still, she was stuck in lovell. she decided to major in marketing after her sophomore year. good at numbers and can talk the talk baby.

kind of always has her foot out the door though. it didn’t take long for freya to fall back into old habits because her life is her life. there’s always a lack of money, another man fiona’s caught up in, another wrench thrown in the works. her education has been spacey and has cracks, and i’ll be honest, i don’t think she’ll make it to graduation but she’s here now! unfortunate bc she’s the kind of person who could accomplish things if she cared or tried, but the problem is that she does not and no, she will not ask for help! she refuses to take anything seriously.

other fun facts is that she’s a leo! she knows how to have fun and knows how to track down a party. i don’t think she’s someone that would ever bring the mood down. like i said she doesn’t really get Deep about things so if your muse needs someone to fuck around with freya is your girl. if your muse needs help with something serious, she is not your girl! her general relationships and friendships are all over the place. i think she’s someone who doesn’t make much of an effort in anything, but will also be totally fine picking things up weeks later. there’s a handful of relationships she holds closer than the rest, though. careless with people and things. catch her in your muse’s favorite sweatshirt that went missing a week ago. currently working at the local diner, which she has been for a few years now. been known to pick up shifts in place of classes. follows paris hilton’s advice of screwing things up the first time so you don’t have to do them again. currently living in an off-campus apartment with lana, maggie, and rosa and lana frequently covers her part of the rent (blows her a kiss).

#ruhqintro #addiction tw

[this-is-a-podcast-fanblog]

A Summary of TAZ Balance written by someone who has never listened to it*.

*full disclosure: I listened to the first episode and a half months ago, so I’m not going into this totally blind. 

My TMA summary post blew up, so I figured, let’s make another and ruin a different fandom. 

TAZ Balance is a show about Dungeons and Dragons. Listening to the first episode made me feel a lot better about the fact that I know totally nothing about Dungeons and Dragons, because if four straight white guys can know nothing about DnD and make it into one of the most famous fiction podcasts, there is hope for me. Are they all straight? They have straight energy. I apologize sincerely if I misidentified one of them. They’re all brothers except one of them is their dad. They make a lot of other shows together too. I wonder if they ever get sick of each other. And they met Lin-Manuel Miranda at a dinner party once, which started their now-iconic friendship, and is why they have a line in Hamilton. 

(By the way, I love Hamilton. Used to write fanfiction for it. You can still find it on my AO3, but it is dated, and thus is both badly written and quite problematic at times.) 

Let’s forget that my Hamilton phase ever happened and talk about TAZ Balance. 

The brothers and their dad each play a different character, except for Griffin, the DM. Griffin McElroy is the physical embodiment of those bougie steel-decor coffee shops with undrinkable coffee, the ones frequented by vegans, grad students, blonde church mommies, and guys in polo shirts who call themselves entrepenuers even though they live in their mom’s basement. I’m aware that I’ve misspelled entrepeneuer and I don’t care because the American economy is a scourge upon the Earth. Each of the other three plays a character who represents a different subclass of being gay. 

Justin as Taako Taaco from TV, who represents twinks. 

Travis as Magnus Burnside, a play on the word sideburns, who represents bears. 

Clint as Merle Highchurch, who represents what happens when otters go through a midlife crisis, grow a beard, and start practicing a religion.

It’s a good show for gay rep. Taako is gay. I myself am gay. Taako’s boyfriend is Death, but the badassery of his being Death is balanced out by him having the name Kravitz, a decidedly not badass name. There are no lesbians in this show because the show started releasing in 2014, before lesbianism had been discovered. There is a trans girl, though, and her name is Lup; she’s Taako’s sister and he affectionately calls her Lup De Loop. I think they used to be performers, like a twin dance act, but they gave that up. 

The plot of the show is like the plot of any Dungeons and Dragons campaign: the boys are going after magical items and they need to use them to stop the apocalypse. The first magical item is some kind of torch owned by Barry Bluejeans, who is a twunk that starts dating Lup at some point. He, like literally every other character, is played by Griffin. The second item is the Umbrastaff. It’s a magical umbrella that has a wand inside. Sort of like Hagrid’s umbrella. Exactly like Hagrid’s umbrella. I call bullshit. 

As with all DnD campaigns, the players have to enter dungeons, except after the first 10 episodes or so Griffin said fuck normal dungeons and started throwing in weird challenges instead. For example, the characters have to go in a race at one point, at one point they have to go shopping at Fantasy Costco, and then they have to be on a game show at another. I would say this is a rip-off of Voltron, because as we all know, I used to like Voltron, except Voltron actually came out after this show. So in an unlikely twist of events, this show is not like Voltron: Voltron is like this show. The meta is imploding my brain. 

There are a few other characters: Angus, a scrawny peasant lad, Somebody With A  Stupid Elven Name, a combination of everything you hated about the elves in Lord of the Rings, and Julia, Magnus’s dead girlfriend. Magnus used to live on a farm but then his town was burned to the ground and now he is a Tragic Hero haunted by the girlfriend he loved. 

Some other details: 

Clint is insanely good at rolling D20s

Travis is insanely bad at rolling anything higher than a D6

Griffin gets annoyed when his campaign is hijacked by people making dick jokes

Taako is extremely horny 

Goblins are called Gerblins. It is never explained why. 

They go to space at one point in a rocketship that looks like the Umbrastaff, so I’m assuming the Umbrastaff turns into a rocketship

This show is so fucking long and I have zero idea how anyone has the time to listen to it all the way 

Sound effects aren’t added until halfway through. This confuses everyone but is also never commented on. 

I’m probably never going to have the time to finish this show, but there’s my summary. Hope you enjoyed it. Now go read my Penumbra fics or I’ll cry. 

If you like these summary posts, send me a suggestion for what show you want to see next.

#the adventure zone #taz balance #the mcelroys #clint mcelroy #justin mcelroy #travis mcelroy #griffin mcelroy

[noora-nora]

my top ten norandro scenes

1. Sweeney Todd doesn’t drink?

Ahhhh this scene owns me!!! Alejandro looked so nervous asking Nora and his little face when she rejected him 😩😩!!! I like how Alejandro differs from all the other Williams in the sense of he just plain asks Nora if she wants to dance or a drink rather the other Williams asked Nora if they wanted to do “homework” at his place. To me whenever Alejandro asks Nora to do something he’s more “courting” her rather than just trying to hookup. The mf fact that the writers made sure that no one knew what Nora was dressed up as and then of course Alejandro is the only mf one like they are literal soulmates. Their banter also continues which I love because I feel like all the other Noorhelms banter is more like bickering but Norandro straight have conversations and joke with each other which I love 💕 💕💕💕

2. A ride?

I remember actually going into a coughing fit from screaming so much while watching this scene. I remember noticing that Alejandro was carrying a motorcycle helmet during his entrance in ep1 and I was like I hope the motorcycle will make an appearance but I had a feeling I would be let down. BUT THEN LOW AND BEHOLD ESPAÑA DELIVERS THIS BEAUTY OF A SCENE!!!! Like how much more evidence do people need to realize norandro are soulmates when Alejandro literally randomly found Nora walking alone on New Years and offered her a ride like bitch?!!!!?!!!! ALSO ALEJANDRO’S LITTLE SMILE I CANNOT!!! I need, not want, need a scene of Nora riding on his motorcycle with Electric love playing in the background it is my one wish in life

3. I’ll miss you too

I love this scene because it really shows that Nora likes Alejandro but is battling whether to act on it or not because of the viri situation. The long pause before Nora says “me too” is just everything!!!! Another thing about the acting in this scene that is evident in a couple of other Norandro scenes is how Fernando takes deep breaths before talking to Nora about his feelings or how he feels about her is just shows how Alejandro who is this supposed fuckboy gets nervous around her and it takes a lot of courage to confess his feelings. I feel like this scene was also needed because with the past norandro interactions you start to get the feeling Nora doesn’t like him but it’s not that it’s other outside factors interfering with her feelings

4.The day Nora said she didn’t dislike me

I remember the day this clip dropped so clearly lol. I love how España gave us scenes of Norandro having full fledged conversations without them at each other’s throats but still having banter yesss pleaseee!!! The comments about her being short 🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️🤧🤧🤧 still not over that I don’t think I’ll ever be. Also him writing down what Nora said on his phone!! Alejandro is such a cute flirt like I get you Nora. Also thank you España for including the fuck you’re beautiful scene my mental health really needed it. Also come through Norandro with the black and red aesthetic I fucking love it!!!

5. Why do you ask?

This scene is beyond perfection even in the things I didn’t like about it the first time I saw it. First off let me mention how Eva has been norandro’s #1 shipper since the beginning and I will stan her forever for that. And the panty comment I fucking laughed so hard and I’m glad españa has the girl group know and interact with the Nora and Alejandro situation because in the original s1 Eva barely acknowledged it and it felt like the girls were always out of the loop about Noora’s relationship with William. Also the banter in this scene will forever be unmatched. Their little flirty smirks I CANNOT!!!! Also Alejandro’s line about excuses and won’t stopping tell she say yes, I think is important more after their s2 interactions than ever before. If you watch this scene and the one where he confesses his feelings to her at the cafeteria table are so different because Alejandro’s intentions are different. I honestly believe Alejandro in season one chased after Nora because she said no to him but through their interactions in s2 made him realize he genuinely likes Nora and I think that’s beautiful

6. You’ll never know until you try it

Things I love about this scene:

•everything

This is the scene where Alejandro sees another side of Nora and realizes she isn’t just another girl and she’s worth fighting for. Sorry for the cheesiness but it’s true! Alejandro did not take his eyes off of Nora for one single second he is so in love 💕💕💕💕 thought I would be lying if I said my favorite part of this scene wasn’t Lucas realizing Alejandro is legit in love with Nora. His face killed me lol 😂

7. I knew you’d figure it out

And thus the Pomeranian nickname was born!! Can we just acknowledge how Alejandro checked Nora out twice, first when she came up to him and he was like who r u? And when she walked away he was like I’m gonna marry that girl! Also are we not gonna acknowledge that one of the first things Nora says to Alejandro is that he’s hot but like she’s insulting him about it but still!! And cristian kills me at the end lol

8. We’ll think about it

Alejandro was the only William the apologized to the vilde character on his own and was sincere about it. Also he was literally starstruck when he saw Nora he legit forgot how to speak. And Nora rolling her eyes at him like girl that’s your future husband!!!!

9. I don’t believe you

I’m so proud of what Nora said and I think it’s one of the few times españa showed a little more of Nora’s character. Because essentially she said listen Alejandro “I’m not the type of girl who can be wooed easily you need to prove that you’re not an asshat” and also the fact that Nicole herself added some lines to the speech herself is just *chef’s kiss*

10. I came to ask you a favor?

I honestly don’t love love this scene it’s just all the other norandro interactions are too short to be technical “scenes” though I loved the idea of Nora tutoring Alejandro in English and I would legit pass out if españa followed through and gave us a tutoring scene I would eternally be grateful

#skam españa #norandro