#anyway. i just have so an immense love for this arc bc they just got around to appreciating each other in weird ways. though ofc its still

[ruporas]

i killed. i murdered. i'm nothing like these sleepy people here… nevertheless, you can actually be grateful? bastard… i’m saying… thank you. because you spilled blood, you saved all of these people’s lives. i couldn’t have done it without you. (ID in alt)

#vashwood #vash the stampede #nicholas d wolfwood #trigun #trigun maximum #participated in altades' dance collab :3 very grateful for the opportunity and many thanks to them for organizing this! #there was a lot of vw arc choices... but i went for the leonof arc bc it's a dear vw moment to me #i think a lot of the leonof arc further breaks down vash's ideology and for the readers - together with ww- to learn that his ideals aren't #pure naivety and that vash knows he's at an odd standpoint with himself. he's criticized ww for shooting rai-dei just prior when ww had don #so on the behalf of vash but here he thanks him for killing on behalf of his home and its genuine. bc vash's presence - although it's not #his fault - he was the reason leonof and gray had gotten to the ship and killed people there. that's the guilt he has to live with and #despite his anger he'd still resolute not to kill. meanwhile ww just did what he had to - beating down on a seemingly immortal monster but #at the core made up of many lives he had to take and i feel as the fight dragged on - his own mentality waned. committing active carnage #while remembering the orphanage... and bearing that guilt alongside the words vash left with him during rai-dei's death #only for vash to thank him afterwards what he's done and for apologizing for pushing his beliefs on ww when he had no solutions of his own #anyway. i just have so an immense love for this arc bc they just got around to appreciating each other in weird ways. though ofc its still #weird and confusing for ww bc every new info on vash it'll just be strange to him as someone who's human #ruporas art

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

I love jack so so much he's perfect but tbh I do think it would've worked much more with the show if he was a destiel baby instead of lucifer's. and I'm not just saying that as a shipper or whatever I mean narratively it would've been a lot cleaner- and actually, I think it would've been super funny to no-homo them creating a baby together, like, literally all they would have to do is say "oh, when cas rebuilt dean after hell he accidentally left some grace tangled in his soul, and every time he's healed him since then it's been growing stronger until a nephilim was born". like yes the studio is homophibic etc etc but all the jokes they'd make about dean being spiritually pregnant would be very funny for me personally.

but ANYWAY, jack's story gets messy and convoluted and I think this would've been like...a simple fix. them worrying about him going dark side could be because they're worried how demon!dean and lucifer!cas affected him in development, the show LOVES bloodline drama, chuck's wanting abraham and issac 2.0 would've worked better this way, dean's storyline with him would be improved, bc rather than 'oh no I slowly but surely emotionally adopted the antichrist' like I think he would've had an easier time clocking his john-behavoir if it wasn't a question whether he was jack's dad or not. plus last time dean actively raised a kid he went to great lengths to keep the supernatural away from him, so it'd be interesting to see how he handles a kid he CANT possibly hide from this part of his life. it would make more sense why michael wanted jack as a vessel- yes obviously he wanted the nephilim power boost but also having him as part of the winchester bloodline, making him a PERFECT vessel he doesn't have to worry about burning up would add a lot. we could also use this argument for why lucifer is so interested in him if anyone actually liked that plotline in season 14 lmao. we know chuck hated cas and dean's relationship, could you imagine if he checked in and found out they made an unauthorized baby together💀 like that really would've given better context for why he hates jack so much. cas wouldn't need that whole weird brainwashing arc to wanna protect unborn jack, PLUS it could've been an interesting source of angst for him- he feels like he's failed once again, creating an abomination and putting dean in danger, but also still loves jack immensely. it'd be so good! also imagine how fucking stressed out heaven would be to find out a mini castiel is on the way. they wouldn't even wanna exploit that kid for power they'd be preemptively treating the headaches they know they're gonna get lmfao.

also. the casting directors literally put jensen and misha into a face morph app and cast the first actor they could find that matched the results. which would've made more sense if,,,,he was just Theirs. the comedy of dean and cas making a baby before either of them managed to admit their feelings to each other would be more fun then the "dude adopted a kid and pawns him off on his unwilling roommate's all the time and they eventually warm up to the kid" storyline we actually got. we also could've replaced some of the jack-dean angst from the show with "dean wants to connect more with jack but he feels shut out whenever cas is around bc he can't relate to any angel stuff so obviously jack's going to cas for help more!", which I think would be interesting!! how AWFUL dean and cas would feel that jack didn't feel safe enough to be a baby. dad!sam is still in full swing but he cares for jack right off the bat instead of trying to use him for his powers at first. lily sunder talking about how cas killed her kid bc he thought it was a nephilim and dean, who's already fully aware he's (spiritually) knocked up by cas is like 👹 inch resting cas-tee-elle tell me more. mary having a 'my baby has a baby' crisis. cas insisting jack looks nothing like him is a running joke but then at some point he explains its bc jack's 'true form' looks just like dean's soul....

ALSO- in a show where, canonically, the very first act of free will was cas falling in love with dean...the physical manifestation of that defeating chuck and taking his place as god? come ON.

#jack kline #destiel #spn #supernatural #deancas #molly mumbles

[sydneys-adamu]

the bear

the bear episode

the bear episode 2

the bear episode 2 of season 2

the bear episode 2 of season two is so chalk full of important references and motifs and symbolization for sydcarmy’s relationship as well as their individual character arcs from sydney’s conversation with her dad to carmy meeting claire again (and giving her the wrong number) and this wall that’s built up between them this way. LOL u thought that was it no you also have the chef whites conversation, the introduction to the I’m sorry sign and sydney volunteering new information about sheridan to carm AND him attempting to ask about her dad before she cuts him off. it’s funny right that carmy asks about her dad and her dad asks about carmy and neither person gets a clear answer from syd? it seems so deliberate that these two don’t meet this season anyways-

and then this isn’t episode two but shut up you have the tearing down the wall motif and how unsettled sydney is about the fact that carmen does that without her and what “tearing down walls” usually symbolizes is immense bc she wanted to be there ! she wanted to be there with him ! and he did it without her bc he wanted it to be done when she got there ! he thought she would be happy with a finished product instead so he did the ugly process it takes to get there. he wants it to be perfect for her so much so that he leaves her out of a say in that. he thinks she wants things she actually doesn’t. she cares about this restaurant in every way it is, ugly, broken down, health hazard and all.

aaaaand what else does carmen consider a work in progress damn near a lost cause? himself! so does he think that she doesn’t deserve to have to stick around and watch while he figures himself out while he “fixes” himself up? does he not think she can handle it? does he want to be perfect for her even though that’s not what she wants?

but no “this is what you wanted and it’s what I’m giving you” because it’s gone over his head at this point that there’s love in the process. there is an understanding in the process, there is a merging of souls in this process of building a literal restaurant from the ground up. carmen focuses so much on making everything perfect for sydney that he forgets that’s never something she asked for. not perfect just *better*

and under that table, less than an hour before opening he finally fucking understands how to slow time down. if the food’s bad they’ll work on it. if no one comes then no one comes. it’s okay. it’s okay if it’s not perfect because we’re doing this together and that’s what matters. what matters is this moment where I get to tell you I’ll be here for you. where I get to tell you I care about you every way you are, full stop.

#u do not have to read this #I got so off track but I thought of a funny #it’s funny that the episode is named pasta and is also one of the hardest episodes to digest #like pasta ! #these two are the pasta that gives me a stomachache for a whole day #but yknow in a good way #sydney x carmy #carmy x sydney #sydcarmy #the bear

[totaleclipse573]

Putting all of your Eclipses in a room (canon one included) to fight to the death.

No outside help, only them and their powers.

Who’s winning?

I LOVE THIS QUESTION HELP. TAKE A POINTLESSLY LONG ANALYSIS PLEASE

For starters I won't be including Zombot!Eclipse in here bc he could just infect everyone for an easy win💀And I won't be counting the too-new au's for this since they were made only recently (Silver's timeline au and the anti-redemption au. Anti mainly because it only just started being developed and he's already captured inside a gun facility 100% broken mentally bdskjflksd)

So we got :

Canon!Eclipse

Warped!Eclipse (Starline AU, aftermath)

Boom!Eclipse

Ruby!Eclipse (Aftermath)

Oc Universe Eclipse

Clone!Eclipse

HtV!Eclipse (Heroes to Villains)

Timeskip!Eclipse

Hydro, Solar and Bramble (Sonic Prime Au)

(Conclusion : I must be stopped)

HERE GOES

First off, the thing with Warped!Clippy. He............doesn't fight. Sometimes, he'll get this POWERFUL URGE in the back of his mind to kill Shadow, but it never ends up happening. He's just not all that confident! Despite what people tell him...he never was :/ He knows that. He doesn't fight, he runs. So either he's the first to go or this "fight to the DEATH" triggers his Starline implant responses and he goes CRAZY

Solar also hates fighting (not a good trait to have in New Yoke of all places. Good thing he's with the council...and this cyborg duck :D) but he CAN if he has to. He's fair at it, but not the best.

Hydro can fight but he also has the tendency to goof off WAY too much if he gets confident. He might get thrown off in the fight if that happens. He's also not the brightest in terms of intelligence...luckily his skills in hydrokinesis make up for that!

...................If there's water around. Which there probably isn't.

Oc Universe Clip is just Clip but he got a redemption arc and he's SEEN THE HORRORS. So. (Bonus points because he has an extra form, that being his flare form, but he can't use it too well, and it drains his energy immensely. So the chances of actually doing something with it are 50/50)

Canon Eclipse can and will fight everyone in this room and laugh when they're taken down by the superior him (his motivation is that. To prove he is the superior one) We've seen he can FIGHT, so he has a good chance

Timeskip Eclipse is a little more chilled than back in the day, but the gremlin instincts are still there. Plus, he's more experienced with his chaos energy, and has learned to handle his flare form and general powers somewhat better.

Heroes to Villains Eclipse is mostly similar to his canon counterpart, except now he has higher moral standards as a hero. Not to say he doesn't find a good battle fun every now and then... (Starline has had to drag him away from trouble countless times.) He's somewhat inexperienced with his powers, having really no one who is able to understand and teach him, so he tries to teach himself, but he can only do so much of that. Physical combat, though? He's pretty good at that :D

Boom Eclipse would fight to the death for fun. Might not know what's going on for the first few seconds but then someone collapses and he's like OH OKAY. DANG. FIGHT ME FIGHT MEEEEE!! His powers are WILD and he's okay with physical combat, you decide which is more useful

Now the more aggressive clippy's : Ruby and Bramble

Ruby Eclipse in his aftermath has been drained of most of his original personality by the ruby prototype. Even if it's not there anymore, he can't just get that back (not instantly, anyway, and even WHEN he does act more like himself again, it'll never be the same Eclipse.) Battling or fighting is natural, an instinct. He lashes out at times but can be stopped. But if you let him? He CAN and WILL take out everyone in the room, with the FULL INTENTION to do just that. Not because he wants to, really. It's something deep within him he can't just ignore.

Bramble is the shatterverse Eclipse who represents the originals aggression, and parental instincts. He's short tempered and WILL NOT HESITATE TO FIGHT YOU IF HE DEEMS YOU A THREAT. He also has the abilities to control earth, water, fire and air (AVATAR) just so long as his surroundings are fit for his abilities. (Ex. in his own shatterspace, he mains in his earth ability, while in No Place, he mains in water.) Pretty powerful Clippy

But all of this means NOTHING

Because none of them are going to fight the baby. He isn't a threat, he isn't getting involved, he's just watching and giggling in the corner. While the others all fight to the death, bitty Clippy still sits there, unharmed.

So what did we learn from this entire analysis?

Clone!Clippy, ultimately, is the most powerful clippy. Thank you.

#bitty clippy best clippy #sonic the hedgehog #sth #sonic fandom #eclipse the darkling #sonic au #randomness #boom!brothers au #starline au #heroes to villains au #ruby!eclipse au #timeskip au #oc universe au #hydro the sea-darkling #solar the darkling #bramble the darkling #clone!au #this was so fun to write hsbsfskjbk #ask box #thanks for the ask! #i love asks

[gerandor]

Yes yes it's only two episodes so far. Tomorrow we will have another one but any thoughts on Nandor's possible arc this season? The babygirl is finally happy but there is something more there?

Ok so its a well-known fact that nandor's gonna have a jealousy arc this season (or at least that's what the reviews were saying --which were for the first 4 episodes only -- and we got a glimpse of sth in the promo for ep 3.)

And yes!! Nandor seems to be happy so far and he even said 'i'm in a good place' (which kinda echoed what Guillermo had said in s4 when he was talking about freddie? Hmm). And we also got that line from kayvan saying 'Guillermo makes nandor happy -' BUT. He added that but now he's making him sad.

Which made me think of Gail. Remember Nandor's reaction to gail basically cheating on him with that werewolf dude? He looked heartbroken and sad and miserable. During s3 i said sth about how nandor doesn't get jealous in the traditional sense, you know, getting angry, getting possessive and idk, vengeful? probably bc he thinks he deserves to be treated like that. Like, he doesn't deserve to be loved so he just gets immensely sad over it. (I just remembered that the whole gail thing was also Guillermo's jealousy arc, and how his jealousy was more of the traditional sense. Oh boy)

But with Guillermo. Idk if what he feels for Guillermo can be compared to what he felt for gail (as a side note, i read someone say nandor will never be romantic with Guillermo bc the guy doesn't know how. Which is not true?? Remember gail? Hell, even jan? He was also kinda romantic with marwa in the beginning even tho he didn't actually love her. Also Harvey said Nandor's lovely when he's in love which is so true. And how can you think the whole bedtime stories and exchange of gifs and movie watching on rainy nights aren't ramantic? Anyway) so yeah. I think what he feels for Guillermo is way more intense and life-altering than what he felt for any other character we know of. So maybe his jealousy this time will take a new form? But im also betting he's gonna be super sad and heartbroken about it. Even if he tries to hide it under other emotions. Nandor will always think 'i don't think i deserve to be loved.'🥺

#tbh i don't like jealousy trope #like at all #i don't find jealousy cute or romantic i think its a very self-entitled feeling #but anyway i hope whatever happens its gonna be fun #and not just angsty drama #wwdits better leave that to us fanfic writers!!! lol #wwdits #nandor the relentless #what we do in the shadows #wwdits spoilers #wwdits s5 #nandermo #guillermo de la cruz #wwdits asks

[multi-lefaiye]

eden & gale + eden & the knight for the ship names tag game

(also way to flex by actually having good names for your ships LmaO)

FINALLY ANSWERING THIS JFC- i don't have a good reason for taking this long, i just got really mentally ill again. BUT WE'RE HERE NOW!!!

so fun fact, most of those ship names were kinda on the spot LMAO. the only one i was sure of going in was "handsome devils." and maybe "it's a wizard thing." the others were me spitballing about Themes n shit

ANYWAY!! i've talked about eden & gale over here: [link]

but i wanna share a bit of writing with them that i think captures a big theme with these two:

“There’s always another way,” Eden says gravely. “And we’ll find it.” Even amidst the despair spreading sluggishly through his body, the conviction in Eden’s voice makes Gale pause. A small smile spreads across his face as a dastardly spark of hope alights in his chest.

If anyone could find a way to prevent the inevitable, it would be Eden Linnaeus, the stubborn, arrogant tiefling who’d dug his claws deep into Gale and refused to let go. Whatever happens, Gale is sure that Eden won’t let him go quietly, will keep fighting until the end.

For one fleeting moment, Gale almost believes that, maybe, that will be enough.

---

something i've been thinking about a lot with these two is that i want, like... the "love as religious devotion" trope but with a (queer)platonic relationship. eden and gale aren't interested in each other romantically, but they have an immense amount of devotion for each other that borders on worship.

is it unhealthy? perhaps. but it works for them <3

AND FOR EDEN AND THE KNIGHT.... gonna put that under the cut :3c

so eden and the knight, aka my latest doomed yaoi, are two characters who have History that isn't *really* History.

the knight is a creature created from the death of kader al-masri, eden's childhood best friend and first love. and i phrase it like that bc... the knight is not kader, but it has his memories. and as a result, it has his memories of eden.

the knight is infatuated with eden because it doesn't have much of a sense of self, because individuality isn't something it was ever allowed to have. it knows it isn't kader, but it wants to be him, it wants the memories it has to be its own. and that includes eden. the knight very much idolizes him as a representation of the personhood and the individuality that it craves.

AND ON EDEN'S SIDE... he's very conflicted because he knows the knight isn't kader, but it's all he has of him now. made evwn more complicated by the fact that eden *doesn't* remember much of his past. the knight remembers more than he does. so to him, the knight is a representation of the past he's struggling to hold onto, even if he *knows* logicallt that this past is gone forever.

the knight remembers a relationship it was never in and eden has forgotten a relationship that defined much of who he is.

or: TRAGEDY ENJOYERS, COME GET Y'ALL'S JUICE

(i'm imagining that the knight's arc centers a lot around finding its own personhood and moving past its infatuation with eden, defining who it is on its own terms, and eden has to let go and let it do this for both of their sakes.)

#talk to the bunnykitty #bg3 #eden linnaeus #ren!!! #ask game

[shoceted]

have you ever made a ranking for each of the kamen rider seasons you've watched? which one is best for newbies, which one is your secret favourite, which one made you cry etc

i have made a ranking actually! i have a tier list that i very rarely share publicly because there's some spicy takes on there. but here's some thoughts on each season i've completed at this time because you gave me the excuse anon >:]

ryuki: i... really wish i liked ryuki more. i respect it immensely for what it did for the franchise and i think it's got themes, which is more than i can say of some seasons. but for the most part i ahhhhh... didn't love it? it's not my least favorite season i don't think but it isn't one that i'm going to revisit any time soon. i do love ren and shinji though; as a known sucker for a grumpy/sunshine primary/secondary red/blue pair they got me and they got me hard. i definitely am going to write some renshinji someday. and those last two episodes are some good fucking television. but overall ehhhh. i really do wish i liked it more though if only to fit in with everyone else :( (and it's not just the fact that it's heisei phase 1 that's the issue bc i'm loving decade and blade so far! and kiva also is there!). but yeah at this time my favorite ryuki is the one from japanese boy band mazzel stream carnival

double: DUB E X CRIME N THE CITY! i fucking loved w. it's just straight up damn good toku. and it literally took a single episode preview for terui ryu in all his stupid wet cat angstiness to captivate me forever. a single episode preview. like i will always remember finishing the 1st arc, seeing the episode preview for ryu's first episode right after, and being like "fuck" even though i intended to leave off there for the day and watched his first two episodes. DAMN U SECONDARY RIDER SYNDROME. i do think w would be a great place to start getting into rider tbh because it's just so good!!!!!!! i don't even have a lot to say about it but not in a bad way. it's just really really good. watch w. and make it soon. if you have not already. love is strong girls go on

ooo: so one thing you should understand is that i am literally watching ooo right now. like i'm sitting on my couch typing this and also watching episode 19 of kamen rider ooo. i legit watch through the entire second arc all the time. i think it's a very close second or third for my favorite season ever. eiji at the very least is tied for my favorite primary ever and that's saying a lot considering how much i love my other favorite primary ever. (which we'll get into.) ankh is just like me fr and i am going to eat his gender and HINA. BEST GIRL. 10/10. the very first ooo fic i started working on after watching this show (which i might fuck around and try to finish at some point even) is from her pov!!!!!! because i love her. AND DATE AKIRA IS THE MAN EVER (AND THE LEAST REPRESSED SECONDARY CONGRATION YOU DONE IT). the story the comedy the action the epic highs and lows of a hippie and his underwear and of a bird and his ice pops and of a girl and her brother and GAHHHHH. i love this show so so so much. i would absolutely start with ooo if i could go back in time. and i did not secretly cry, i cried a lot. openly. i want to make my boss watch it. i love ooo. i've been trying to design a hawktigergrasshopper shirt for months. i am literally watching kamen rider ooo right now and i will until i go to bed. you count the medals one two and three life goes on anything goes coming up ooo [i start crying]

fourze: my first exposure to kisaragi gentaro was when i watched heisei generations final for the first time, where i promptly freaked the fuck out because holy shit it's fuckin fukushi sota jesus christ jesse eisenberg moment. i actually watched one fourze movie (the winter one, bc i'm a h!p fan and manoeri is there. nadeshiko my beloved) long before i'd seen the series and forgot this. anyway i watched fourze in... like february-march i think? and i ADORED IT. kengo/gentaro is a top tier rider ship and i also have a wip of them that someday i will finish. the kamen rider club is SO GOOD (tomoko and jk are both just like me fr and miu!!! aka tomoyo sepakoi!!!!!!!!!!!! i'm the only person who liked that show!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and meteor's suit is so pretty and fuck man the power of fucking friendship. i cried at fourze too. it took me like two hours to watch the two-parter where gentaro gets his final form. i love this show man. it makes me look up at the moon and think about happy things. my space kids. FOURZE YEAH!

wizard: so unfortunately i have the popular opinion that wizard is really long and poorly paced, especially towards the end. but that's straight up my only criticism of it. like that's it. i put wizard in the "free therapy" tier of my list initially but then moved it to "free therapy but you're a little bit high." haruto is a fucking excellent primary rider who i adore he's so my type i hate it here and like it makes me want to rewatch good morning call bc shiraishi shunya pretty and nitou... is definitely the character ever. to quote my own joke it's like one of the writers watched indiana jones on shrooms and had the idea to create the secondary of all time. (it's been like 10 years since the end of wizard do u think he's figured out that he's into haruto yet.) and RINKO MY GOD and koyomi... koyomi/haruto is proof het rider ships can also dissolve your bones... but most importantly. NARA SHUNPEI. HE IS JUST LIKE ME FR. lowkey highkey kinning him from his very first episode. i love that man. he just wants 2 be useful and you know what me too. but yeah so WAY too long but definitely good idc what anyone says; i ain't gonna hate a show that has the same moral as no pressure by novel core.

gaim: HEY SO DON'T START WITH GAIM. DON'T DO IT. DO NOT START WITH KAMEN RIDER GAIM. I AM SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE. GET LIKE A FEW MORE SEASONS UNDER YOUR BELT AND THEN WATCH GAIM. i am speaking from experience. okay. now i feel like gaim has a negative reputation nowadays. BUT. despite popular belief gaim is not peak sexism in kamen rider (like dude... kiva. what the fuck.) so that is that myth busted; also the ending is so beautiful and tragic but overall good if you dedicate some thought to it! and the characters are fucking wonderful! like in any other show i wouldn't care about zack and he's like in the eternally rotating top 3 gaim characters for me. i fucking adore kamen rider gaim. it's about growing up and it's about fighting against your oppressors and it's about pokemon go and dance crews, what could possibly go wrong. like as much as i hate micchy (which is a lot bc he reminds me of my toxic ex rip <3) i can't deny that he's an incredibly well-written character. kouta is an excellent primary and his journey throughout the series breaks your heart, but isn't that what growing up does? takatora is such a well-executed character that it's fun to watch other people react to how the show makes your opinion on him change. and god, kumon kaito has been giving me brain worms since 2015-2018. crimson lotus of misfortune, tragic banana boy, would-be tyrant, gay ass. no matter what anyone says, he's a great character. bananaorange is one of my favorite rider ships ever; it's either tied for first or a close second depending on the moment. and MAI. mai!!!! ray of light. if she was a tarot card she'd be the star. i love that girl. but DON'T START HERE JUST LIVE MORE

drive: so my plan for this year is all of heisei phase 2 + decade and i watched drive pretty early because i knew i would have complicated feelings on it, because i'm black and i'm never comfortable with positive portrayals of cops in fiction. and i was... kind of right. like there are things i loved about drive (heart. namely. fucking adore heart. had me from the moment he said "that roidmude might have been a monster to you but to me he was my friend." i love love love heart so much. he was my lockscreen for MONTHS this year.). i think that everything after episode 40 or so is great. and i relate to gou as much as i relate to shunpei, except in the opposite direction, so him suffering and breaking down and dying of flowers and stuff is really easy, and also fun. and CHASE. he is the fictional character that i think of when i read the word babygirl. but it's also... like... a show where cops are out to kill an entire species... and that makes me uncomfortable. and i abhor that fucking belt. like spoilers but you see a man getting tortured and you just LEAVE???????? THIS IS YOUR FAULT AND ALSO WHY DO YOU NEVER TELL KIRIKO ANYTHING. AND ALSO, SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN DRIVE. seriously drive would have been p e a k if they weren't cops and kiriko was drive. i also wish heart and shin had more homoerotic tension with each other cause idk i would have liked to see it? anyway. drive. fwiw i think the way it ends is way worse than the way gaim ends, so :) spicy take for the day i suppose. so relationship status it's complicated. also i think shin is boring .

ghost: MY FRIENDS BORN IN THE SAME ERA AS ME WE THINK THEREFORE WE ARE!!!!! I LOVED GHOST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! like seriously if wizard is no pressure ghost is jenga and to complete the trio of novel core therapy songs ooo is thanks all my tears and i'm always a sucker for media where the moral is that life is short and sometimes painful, but it's beautiful, and it's yours, and that's why you should see it through to the end. ghost genuinely makes me want to keep living. I LOVED GHOST. the pacing problems aren't a problem at all if you're not watching week to week i swear. takeruuuuuu my sweet baby my son who i raised myself. also nishime shun is super cute and only like a year older than me,,, i'm fine takeru is such a good boy and if you hate him you will die and go to hell. makoala my boys. they sure are gay aren't they. anyway i'm always a slut for older brothers so i love makoto and if alan was red instead of green i would want to eat his gender. and kanon is so precious but AKARI GOD DAMN IT I LOVE HER SO MUCH. PRETTY SCIENCE LADY IS ALWAYS MY TYPE. but i cannot pursue her because takeru/akari is one of my favorite rider ships ever and fuck you toei they're so fucking married by now. they have to be!!!!!! i refuse to live in a world where they're not! so they're married. thank you. they're also criminally underrated and i think i'm gonna publish my first het rider fic about them because they are so fuckign cute. goodnight. ghost is great. episode 6, my god, one of my favorites in all of rider. AND THE BELT NOISES. COCAINE IN THEM.

ex-aid: so my best friend in the whole world jack (hiiiiiii jack if you read this i love you) had been telling me to watch ex-aid for about two years before i watched it and now i know why: ex-aid has a disease in it and i don't just mean the bugster virus. ex-aid gives you a disease called ex-aid disease where you can't stop thinking about ex-aid. it infects you from the moment you watch it for the first time. symptoms include telling other people to watch ex-aid. watch ex-aid. i listen to excite at least once a day from monday to thursday on my way to work. i have one (1) gashat (tokimeki crisis for my wife who i am married to and is my wife, poppy pipopapo) and it is one of my greatest treasures. i. love. ex-aid. I LOVE EX-AID. kagami fucking hiiro god damn it, i should've known that the scene in sepakoi where kaneda cries would've had a lasting impact on my psyche because wow that boy can cry and be repressed about shit LIKE HIS GIANT CRUSH ON EMU WHICH HE SO HAS, MR. BL ASS SETO TOSHIKI GLOOMY GAY SADBOI. cough. i truly love all the characters though. it's just that kagami hiiro permanently altered my brain chemistry. the adhd lets me write gou and the autism lets me write hiiro. he's like my fucking muse. just god ex-aid is great the belt noises are great the suits are great the villains are great the soundtrack is great my wife is there (poppy) taddle legacy is my favorite final form ever and god it's such a beautiful fucking show. i miss takahashi shit like this because it's genuinely hard to believe geats was written by the same guy. i adore ex-aid. now would i start with ex-aid. no. do i know people who started with ex-aid. yes. but maybe once you've got a little early heisei phase 2 under your belt dive into the god damn gamer doctors. i'm on a mission right now. EX-AID. STREAM PEOPLE GAME

build: so build was my second season of rider, which i watched in late 2020-early 2021... aka when cherry magic was airing. i fucking loved cherry magic and i'll always be grateful for it because lmfttf was a really important fic in my personal fic writing history. but this is not about magic virgins this is about build which... really is another ryuki to me, but it's above ryuki for now because it really is enjoyable and akaso eiji is there and everything, but i don't feel very passionately about it. now when i first watched it i was ~*depressed*~ so that might be part of it, but it didn't have the power to bring me out of that depression that the season i'm going to talk about next does. it just was something i watched and then had watched. be the one's a great song though and the story is really good objectively. i'm also... about to commit sacrilege but it's fine here goes i'm not really into best match as a pairing??????? it doesn't feel as organic as some other rider ships and that sours me on it. while meanwhile you have shit like renshinji where it was 2002 or whatever and that changes my brain chemistry because oh! you genuinely were supposed to read this as friendship! while best match is like. explicitly bait for fujos. like advertised about being about heated drama between men, as opposed to naturally produced heated drama between men. but i did like it and i even have one of the best match rings (with the other with jack). no complaints about the story. but it's not something i'm super into. but they say it's a good place to start for a reason.

revice: so tl;dr at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 i was super depressed for a whole bunch of reasons. and then one summer day i found out that japanese pop singer and member of girl group beyooooonds maeda kokoro's older brother was the guy who was gonna star in the next season of kamen rider. so i decided to give it a shot. i genuinely just decided to give it a shot because of that. and it saved my fucking life. at first it was just that it was miles away from the aforementioned bunch of reasons i was depressed, something to look forward to every week that just didn't have anything to do with it. i'm a sucker for any tokusatsu show that's family-themed, so 8-10 did insane things to my brain chemistry. but really it had me from episode one. because ikki. igarashi fucking ikki my beloved. a fictional character has genuinely never gripped me like this. i literally buy merch of him every time i get paid. he is so special to me because his story was exactly what i needed to hear, and also because he's the prettiest guy on earth, my god. he's so my type that it's like he was created in a lab. i love igarashi ikki so much that actually we're married. like yeah does revice has problems? is the theme song not good? does the behind the scenes stuff & presence of kimura subaru (and again i'm black) make me uncomfortable? YES!!! BUT I ALSO LOVE THIS SHOW! it is a reason that i am alive and typing this right now! kamen rider revice is extremely special to me and my favorite season of rider ever. i don't know what could ever take its place. i love it so much. i collect vistamps of past seasons i've watched (eagle and jackal are next and i already have kamakiri and kong). the music aside from livedevil is fucking wonderful, the spinoffs are wonderful, heated drama between WOMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BETWEEN WOMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! a show that means so much to me and is so close to my heart. i love it so much and it's unmatched and it probably always will be. i'm so glad i watched it. thank you, past me.

#asks #unfortunately i took an edible so this is way too long . rest in pieces

[hellraiseher]

fuck it whatever .. semi-coherent review (with spoilers!) under cut 🎃

objectively i can't say what is Good or Executed Well or Bad about Ends, just that it awakened the id part of my brain and even while consciously thinking 'wow this is a swerve' i still enjoyed it immensely... of course it isn't anywhere near h1978 (and there's no point expecting that any sequel / remake will be a reprisal of the original) and i wouldn't get up off my ass to defend it (apart from That Kitchen scene) but when it comes down to it i love melodrama i love unhealthy obsession / possessive romance i love moody darkwave i love characters who just keep getting Worse i love michael getting undeniably overpowered by laurie ...

the risk of bringing in corey was uhhh i can understand why people hated it but idk!!!! i guess i already knew to expect the film would be clumsy in its 'evil is inside us all' so the disillusionment didn't get to me... and it was from a love story angle and as cliche as it got with 'if i can't have her no one can' i am still a slave to that trope especially when you get to witness corey killing everyone who has wronged allyson / everyone who gets in the way of them being togeddur... my pupils dilated i was there for it 100%

well not 100% bc eventually that lead to laurie but !!!!!

his arc did feel... plausible ... in a batshit suspending all disbelief kind of way.. its major flaw to me was that it has to contradict the simplicity of h1978 SO much and is shoving in your face that 'ok corey is supposed to be michael's ?? motivation proxy/??' which cool!! i will indulge!! but i feel like it's a v convoluted mirror to construct in order to solidify the tether between michael and laurie.. like i feel vindicated but at the same time the source material says it enough...

the unpredicability did work in its favour tho, while i knew what to expect with the ending judging by route previous films in trilogy have taken, i was still caught off guard a lot .. ANYWAY onto most important part

the Kitchen ....

THE KITCHEN !!

i dont know WHY they chose a kitchen (staging purposes??) idk!! BUCKWILD !!!! VISCERAL!!! SHE CRUCIFIED HIM!!! SHE STRADDLED HIM !!! not only that but michael attempting to / inflicting the same wounds she did on him???????????????????????? extreme courting ... THE HAND HOLDING ?? A FLASHBACK SEQUENCE??

A FUCKING FLASHBACK SEQUENCE?????????????????

100% real footage of me:

i didnt care much for the whole town procession.. i would have preferred laurie and allyson burning michael in the garden like a bonfire but the most important thing is she kept the mask :^)

also the part where michael starts shaking after killing the cop like he's at jesus camp had me so creased

#that's all for now i think #Youtube

[sleeptowns]

first love, late spring: the autopsy report

some postmortem thoughts on conceptualizing, writing and editing the first half of my favourite project so far, partly for my own relationship with the "craft" and mostly bc writing this like a blu-ray bonus commentary was immense fun.

・・・・・・

in retrospect, it’s always a bit of a miracle every time i finish a fic.

it might not feel like it for a lot of them, but considering i’m a [spins wheel] kind of person in so many aspects, from writing to travelling to cooking, i sure have a lot of audacity falling headfirst into stories knowing full well that i don’t have a single clue where it will go until it’s all finished. i was very lucky with my 20-50k fics, especially since one of them was a dual narrative/parallel pov situation or whatever yours, mine, ours was. i was probably even luckier with the 70-80k ones, seeing as i was a broke college student in a new city acting like i can do something like a 27-year-old end-of-career actor justice. but to write 113k words’ worth of so many things i’ve never done before, with the same messy method of figuring it out as i go along — i don’t even know how that happened.

as it stands, i have neither a planning doc to look back on and unpack nor even a vague outline that i probably wouldn’t have listened to anyway. and that was all well and fine before; i’ve made peace with not having the kind of mind that knows to conceptualize arcs and secondary plotlines before i even write the thing. i know i work best when i let the characters do the heavy lifting for me as i’m writing: they tell me where something needs to go next, i listen, and if i listen long and hard enough, the one scene i initially wanted to write as a standalone becomes a much longer monster because it felt wrong for it to be anything else. and the kind of story that could not have possibly been anything but what it ended up as? that’s the writing i love best. it works out.

i am, however, trying to be a more mindful writer-person this year, and while there’s very little to be mindful about when the entire process has been seemingly mindless, it doesn’t mean i can’t at least try to look at this complete jigsaw puzzle i’ve ended up with by moving my eyes from one piece to another. will that tell me how i realized that so-and-so piece belonged in this spot? no. but will it inform what to look for in the angles and edges of a lone puzzle piece the next time i try to build a puzzle? i don’t know for sure, but it might, and possibility is a very hefty thing to have when you’re writing.

which, honestly, i’m only saying because i read matthew salesses saying a few months ago that “to become a better writer is to make conscious what may start out as unconscious.” and since it shook the very foundations of my self-pitying “i don’t feel comfortable claiming i’m a proper writer because everything i do is unconscious and i’m just fooling everyone into thinking i know what i’m doing because i know for a fact i do Not” mindset — this is me trying my best to move beyond the parameters of my chaotic writing non-process and reflect on how first love, late spring came to be what it is.

that said, i started this as a genuine attempt at being writerly about flls but then i got very uncomfortable and, looking at the end result now, it’s really more like one of those director’s commentary things that they include in the blu-ray, complete with division into small multiple parts and the writing equivalent of outtakes.

but this was still fun! and probably more valuable than not in the long run! so! here’s to making the unconscious conscious!

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

01 | ROOTS & SEEDLINGS

i’ve had time to think about it, and i blame three things for first love, late spring.

① jay, who had to listen to my sleep deprived self break off in the middle of a spiel about restorative justice so i can wonder out loud what megumi would be like in a polisci class — and who somehow decided 5am was a good time to pitch a fun little joke of a college au where nanami is a philosophy prof and mahito is his unbearable teacher’s assistant

② jjk chapter 132.5, which caught me at a point of almost-breaking in the middle of the shibuya arc and soothed what it can with basketball player yuuji & turtleneck-clad, coffee-drinking, definitely-shops-at-muji megumi.

③ dash & lily, a netflix limited series from which i retained nothing except the song stay by gracie abrams. it played maybe once in the entire show yet haunted me for days after, looping could you hold me without any talking could you hold me without any talking could you hold me without any talking like some spell incantation.

a spell incantation that did its job frightfully well, because by the end of that weekend, i was at a bus stop in -13° furiously typing scraps of a scene into my google keep so it stops rattling around emptily in my brain:

Itadori’s eyes are wide when he opens the door, as if he hadn’t actually believed Megumi would be coming over.

He looks tired. Not in the sleepless way.

He stares blankly at the paper bag that Megumi has tucked under his arm.

He opens his mouth, but Megumi announces, "I have bath bombs."

"What?"

"My sister brings them to my place. I never use them. Here—pick one."

then two other scraps:

"We’ll get in the bath, then sleep. Okay?"

"We? Are you staying the night?"

"When have I ever not stayed the night?"

"Right, you’re the only one who always does." Itadori sounds absentminded. “But I mean—we’re not—tonight—"

"Why does that matter?” says Megumi. "I can take the couch. I’m not leaving you alone like this, Itadori."

That feels too honest, but it’s the right thing to say.

[…]

“Fushiguro?”

Megumi’s half-asleep already, but he shifts, makes sure Itadori slots better against him. Closer, more secure. "What is it?” he says, but it’s mostly a hum under his breath.

“Thank you.”

as with every time this kind of haunting happens, i felt immediately better after having gotten fragments out of my system. but also as with every time i listen to the need to manifest one of these, it finds a new way to follow me around. who are these people? why is yuuji coming over? what happened? why is megumi giving me “i will” by mitski energy here? what is their relationship, if they seem close & comfortable enough for yuuji to come over like this but still with enough hesitation that they can’t possibly be in an established relationship yet?

so then i started thinking about a scene that might come after the bits i wrote, and because i had a stray thought about what yuuji & toji’s dynamic might be like while i was in line at the grocery store, this is what came out:

When Megumi leaves his room, he finds his father sitting at the dining table — with Itadori.

“What,” he says.

“I met your boyfriend at the grocery store.”

“How do you even know what he looks like—“

“Oh, Tsumiki sent me a photo.”

Itadori waves at the collection of half-opened bags on the counter. “We just came here to split the groceries! I would have made too much if I was home anyway, so—”

which just complicated my question of what yuuji & megumi are even supposed to be in this world that my brain keeps trying to feed me. not boyfriends, definitely, but there are feelings and tried-and-tested intimacy there. fake boyfriends? friends with benefits? both?

the final, final straw was — because why not — a video on my fyp. a student living in tokyo was doing a series on their favourite restaurants nearby, and one of them had beautiful footage of a place called ukai toriyama. i looked it up out of curiosity for more, became enamoured with all the photos and videos i found, and thought, wow, this place would be nice for a wedding reception.

and because one plus one plus one plus one plus one equals five, i cracked under the weight of all the little things rattling around in my head, decided to hell with it, and sat down in front of a doc.

1.1k words later, the first scene of first love, late spring was set in stone, and the world it belonged to had me in the tightest chokehold that a story seedling idea has had in years.

only i would argue that this story wouldn’t be what it became without flls!yuuji being who he is, and that had to come a bit later, long after megumi had established what kind of world we were at first. because before yuuji, before haibara, before the scene and chapter that i think would define the structure of flls and what their relationship ultimately became about, i had to first go a few weeks back in time and figure out what megumi’s deal was.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

02 | THE SWEATER AND THE CUP

the thing is, though, i wish i knew why i wrote chapter 2 like i did, but i just really, really don’t. by this point, i hadn’t written anything in two years except news articles & the occasional personal essay, and i’d argue you can see some of the rust peeking in while i try to hash out what on earth is going on in this quarter-realized au. i was lucky that megumi’s perspective felt very natural for introspection, so i had a lot of space for exposition that was, to be honest, more for my purposes than any reader’s. my main objectives were to figure out what would have to happen to lead to the two fragments i had written out, and since i think i like to write based on one detail first, i latched onto how cold my room was at the time and started imagining scenes that feel similarly cold. i typed up a scene in a classroom at the top of an old campus building. that didn’t work after i shuffled through what i remember about the university of tokyo from writing 2 a.m. and realized i can see megumi going there but not yuuji. then i tried a scene at a party, but that wasn’t cold or winter-y enough; it was too much to start on, sensory-wise, and i knew i didn’t want the heat and lights of a party to be part of the ~aesthetic of a christmastime fic.

with that in mind, then, i tried something simpler: a cold apartment, the characters in it just barely starting their morning. and after i latched onto that and followed it a little farther, my head came back to me with a kind of cold that’s not just cold because it’s winter in the story and the floorboards are unheated and the windows are frosted — but cold because the bodily warmth is reserved for the space between night and morning, and this scene must then be a moment beyond that space. with a few more minutes of typing and twirling a pen while i talk to myself, this became: megumi out of bed, standing cold and not fully dressed in the middle of the bedroom; yuuji still cocooned, warm and half-asleep, in the middle of the bed; sunlight streaming in, steady and warm on the sheets, shining fully into the room and onto the bed but not directly on either one of them.

looking back, this is i think the first mention of light in the fic, and probably the precursor for all other mentions i write later on, whether consciously or not. if i am to pull out something deeper out of the intuitive stuff, i’d say that i put the sunlight in to maybe signal to myself that the warmth was there between them, literally and figuratively, but they’re not seeing each other in the light yet. which changes later on, when megumi sees yuuji waiting outside the subway station in the ✨ glow ✨ of the sunset, and again further on, once more a little differently, under the streetlights. but for now, to be completely honest, i also think i just decided to start with a sunlit room because it’s the easiest indication of morning coziness, and therefore the easiest thing to subvert and break.

so. visualizing sunlight in a bedroom means visualizing the rest of the room, and the laziest way to do that is to start from what’s already a given: the sunlight, the blinds, the bed, the wall, and then the floor, none of which has anything interesting about them worth jumping off on for the next paragraph — unless there’s something missing. the thought process went, probably word for word, a little like: “let’s say something’s missing. that would explain why megumi’s standing half-dressed. something of his must be missing, then. why is it missing? maybe he left it in the living room. maybe it’s under the bed. or maybe yuuji has a dog. a cat? what would its name be — oh, wait. sukuna is a thing. i don’t know what to do about sukuna.” as such, cat sukuna was unceremoniously born, and suddenly, not only was megumi’s sweater missing, it was also torn to shreds. because cat sukuna.

now i got megumi out of the bedroom and i needed him to do something, and while there’s intimacy in preparing coffee/tea for himself and yuuji, sure, that won’t really give the scene momentum. but i figured i could reuse the same logic i did with the missing sweater and this time add something that’s there when it shouldn't have been. and having a cup in a literal cupboard isn’t the most creative or shocking thing, i know, but because it had to be shocking to megumi somehow for it to be worth including — it was. it was, because (and i’m still so sorry about using you like this, yuko) it was for someone else, because it was permanence and invitation that wasn’t for him, and what more useful emotional beat is there to end a chapter’s opening scene on except tension over something mundane that wouldn’t be tension over something mundane if only megumi’s thoughts & feelings didn't work a certain way.

and when you’ve got direction like that, the thoughts and feelings themselves can start to find a place in the structure of the story. introspection is my favourite to write because it flows once i’ve justified including it; it’s comfortable and free and nice, and it forms the backbone of characterization while at the same time indulging thoughts i’ve had about canon. i’m guilty about starting nearly all of my pre-flls fics with shameless character-centric introspection, but because this wasn’t the case with flls (and continued to not be, for reasons i’ll get to later), wherein everything i wrote at the start was in medias res, i had to hotwire that justification into existing within the actual scenes instead of leading to them. not having introspection in the beginning, before the actual story begins, means i’m still in the middle of a scene during all of these blocks of introspection, and it had to make space for action somewhere. we had to return to the story somehow.

except, this made me realize soon after, there’s no story yet. there’s no spark that would make the tension from the cup boil over and let the actual story find its foothold.

luckily, though — bless her and whatever photo-taking technique she had that we never even got to see in full swing before she was gone too soon — nanako happened.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

03 | THE GOJO-GETO HOUSEHOLD

before there was a single cemented thing in this universe — minus maybe mahito giving kinda nihilistic advice, but even he had to become a newsletter writer somewhere down the line — there was the ginormous network of people that megumi, at times grudgingly and resignedly, calls family. i knew this was going to be an everyone lives au, because what kind of college au would it be otherwise (and yeah, this at first included yuuji’s grandfather), and i went into it knowing that if nothing else, i wanted to write yuuji interacting with toji + megumi interacting with nanako & mimiko. (because why not. where else would i get the chance to explore those dynamics.) for the first one, i already had a scene fragment; i just had to get there. but for the second, it meant indulging in the concept of stsg raising the girls & the fushiguro siblings together, whether or not they were in a romantic relationship in this universe, and if i wanted to preserve at least a bit of the canon stsg backstory, it meant conceptualizing all the complications that would have led to even the well-established family we see in flls.

this would later turn out for the best, because stsg’s pseudo backstory running quietly under the main story formed the foundation for how i’ll characterize yuuji & megumi and their relationship. not because of the parallels, though there are those, but because even in the idyllic surface of being the product of a family instead of loss, megumi will still carry the burden of the kind of love he didn’t receive. which is not the same thing as not receiving love and care. he got that. he knows he got that. but as i hope i made a point to say in flls, receiving love broadly is not the same as having the kind of love you specifically need. and i don’t think that’s a point i would have been able to make if stsg weren’t there — if gojo wasn’t there to serve as a catalyst for megumi’s first decision to stay stubbornly brave for yuuji in ch 4, and if geto wasn’t there, in ch 6, to gently but firmly tear megumi apart.

but before all that, i just wrote the beginning of flls wanting to see a megumi that grew up with three sisters instead of one. i wanted monthly catch-up dinners at a ridiculously expensive 6LDK house near the university of tokyo, full of ridiculously expensive shit. i wanted the loud, chaotic household that i felt they deserved in this au. i wanted to see remnants of the dynamics they would have had as teenagers, from megumi being the sulking youngest to nanako being domineering and tsumiki being reasonable and mimiko being the healthy middle between them. i wanted a weary but affectionate geto. i wanted gojo that no one really sees as a guardian in this set-up but is somehow the person to benefit the most from having people in this gigantic house that he probably never would have bought thinking it will help raise four kids.

and so i tried writing a scene where all these dynamics collided like two trapeze artists that you think would crash against each other but doesn’t because this is a well-practiced routine and they all know each other very well, not because they were family from the beginning but because they’ve had time to learn to be a family altogether. but again (this is starting to become a running thing in this post, note to self), as with any indulgent choice, i had to justify its existence in the story somehow, to give it a place in the forward momentum of the plot. and so nanako’s social media came into the fray, and more and more people started entering the room as she confronts megumi, and the energy heightens — and at the center of it all is yuuji and a dating misunderstanding, and somehow boom, there we go, we finally have what the cool kids call an inciting incident.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

04 | FAKE DATING, I GUESS

i’m not a fan of billing flls as a fake dating story. like, that has to be a scam, right? they fake-date for about half a chapter at best. i’m genuinely sorry it was so blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, but the fruits of the trope were too central to what the first four chapters became for me to take it out — so there you go. fake dating it was, for like the three days before yuuji caved and confessed his heart out.

but. okay. i’ve had time to think about why i actually kept it and didn’t just find another way to play with what fwb tropes offered, and i think fake dating was only insofar useful to the story in how it didn’t do anything for them. i’m learning recently that there’s merit in that, too. in making a point, that is, out of a point that a trope can’t make for me. or whatever. what i’m trying to say is that — fake dating doesn’t change anything about yuuji & megumi’s dynamic, really. they kiss, they’re friends, they go on not-dates. and a younger me would have restarted and taken fake dating out altogether since it’s not introducing something new, but ultimately, i guess i kept fake dating because it reinforces what yuuji & megumi already are. what they already do. the level of ease and comfort they already have with each other. all these things they haven’t been honest to themselves about quite yet. haven’t been honest about it all meaning more.

and that’s all the use fake dating was, to be honest: bringing them both to a point of necessary realization. megumi alone at first, with asking for all of yuuji, with realizing no, he doesn’t want a fake relationship, and essentially just continuing the emotional beat that the cup started for him and will take us to a point of no return at the end of chapter 4.

but then i reached the end of chapter 2 and found myself wondering about yuuji’s side of things, about what he’s thinking, why he’s saying yes. i never intended for his pov to be in this story, and maybe flls would have been a lot shorter if it wasn’t, but i finished chapter 2 and immediately started writing the bistro breakfast scene in the beginning of chapter 3 and found a yuuji who sees his feelings for megumi with more directness if not clarity, with more understanding for nobara pointing out that he and megumi are pretty much just in a relationship at this point — which, i’d argue, is the first sign of all the contributing factors to how their relationship goes wrong. because of course nobara is right, and her being right means all of this is a convoluted mess, except yuuji is at this point the equivalent of someone getting home tired from work and finding his phone charger knotted and more nest than cable, but he’s so exhausted, and the charger still does its job as long as you plug each end to an outlet and to a phone, so why would you spend energy/emotional capacity you don’t have to untangle something that works tangled?

and that was the turning point for flls, i think. i only wrote a scene on the side to warm up, to feel more comfortable about writing yuuji — but instead i was left with a yuuji who feels so much, who had all these reasons for sleeping around just waiting for me to sink my teeth into, who already has a crush & maybe more on megumi, and man... how do you not give him his own chapter after that?

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

05 | 胸がはち切れそうで

what even was flls before chapter 3 was a thing. i think a lot about what it could have become if this chapter isn’t how it turned out to be, but with the way things ended up, it’s the point where the whole story shifted on its axis and became something i never intended it to be.

i vividly remember taking a break after finishing the first attempt at the bistro breakfast scene and going on youtube; one of the recommendations was the therapy scene from fleabag, which is just one of those pieces of screenwriting that you can’t help but admire for everything it does in so little time. you can’t say the same for the therapy scene in flls, but there remains that the fleabag scene was the foundation for it, and, consequently, for yuuji’s entire arc in flls.

i also think a lot about how my younger self would have written this therapy scene much later in the fic. as a resolution of sorts, a guidance towards a happy ending. the same way i know i would have written something really loving and sappy for geto’s speech at the wedding. as it is, we don’t hear the speech at all, and the therapy scene comes in yuuji’s first chapter. it’s how we’re introduced to him, because the first and only thing we know about him otherwise is that a) he has no family, according to gojo, and b) that, based on what we can gather from the breakfast, his life is a little bit stuffed full and he’s maybe not doing the best.

with yuuji, there was no luxury of the same introspection that megumi has. i’ll deal with it later, in the chapter 5 switch to second person, but right now, yuuji doesn’t so much examine as he does just feel. and instead of the therapy scene becoming a resolution scene, it became exposition instead, with haibara doing the more analytical characterization that megumi at least gave me the space to do from within his head. in yuuji’s case, it had to be teased out, said out loud, a push-and-pull that painted, for me, at least initially, the picture of a boy who’s trying so hard to transcend his childhood and yet is very much a product of it.

but first, i had to decide who would be the therapist in this scenario, and because fleabag already gave me the prompt of having a therapy voucher (i did not google if those actually existed), the question became about who would give yuuji one. and since the first clear answer was nanami, it easily became: who would nanami trust with yuuji the way gojo entrusted him with yuuji in the light novel? who would he have had that conversation with? to whom would he have said “there is a boy whose feelings i want to be careful about, and i know you can do it”? and though there were other contenders before this, the only real answer had been haibara.

the dialogue for this scene came easily, in that i had a point of reference. at the time, i was in twelve-week therapy for something a lot more specific and not at all related to yuuji’s situation, but i found myself paying attention to my therapist’s pattern of guiding our sessions — the kind of questions she asks, when she asks them, how she asks them. the things she says to preface certain thoughts, the clarifications she asks of me.

apply this to how i imagine haibara’s sunniness would have mellowed out if he’d had the chance to become the kind, empathetic adult i like to think he would have been, plus throw in some thoughts about yuuji’s grandfather telling him to die surrounded by people in canon, and i had the bare bones of a conversation. a lot of the prompts there were narratively situational: what happens to a kid who had to watch his only family member left die alone, and be left, as a young teen, to live his life by himself? what coping mechanisms would have had to come out of that, and how do i connect that to the ways we see canon yuuji wrestle with his own thoughts and convictions in canon? and how do i justify the presence of yuuji’s pov in the story now? how does it connect back to megumi’s established arc in the previous chapter? does it?

it did, in the lack that yuuji was a product of, looping back to the loneliness that i realized megumi thinks about at length in chapter 2. i also didn’t want fwb tropes to be there only for the sake of fwb tropes; it wasn’t something i felt comfortable doing, and i was worried about ending up being indulgent when i don’t mean to. so i started thinking about why someone like yuuji, with already so much on his plate, would take the time to spend his nights with so many different people? what is the end goal?

i just wasn’t expecting that goal to be something as simple as being held.

flls came out of that therapy scene a changed story. if we stayed with megumi’s pov, it would have maybe been a lightweight story with, at best, an undercurrent of loneliness at its core — which is all fine, too, but i’ve written loneliness / homesickness / lonesomeness in a handful of different shapes before, and if this had been the case, flls would have been an abandoned wip, never to see the light of day.

but the haibara scene turned flls into something i’ve never tried writing before not only in having dual perspectives on the same relationship, but for that relationship and its dynamic to be the defining core of the story. on a very simplistic sense, we had a boy who keeps his world small and finds order in it that way, and we had another whose order is found in the big-ness he wants to maintain. loneliness is there, sure, but in different ways and only as catalysts to how they love each other — because they do, already, by this point. it’s been love, for a while, and love was itching to be the main focal point of flls. love, love languages, what it means, what it entails, how it can soothe in its smallest form and also harm in its biggest. i didn’t know that yet, in chapter 3, won’t know it until i go back to chapter 1 and realize i hinted at conflict between yuuji and megumi, but i also already knew that i wanted flls to be a relationship > character fic if i was gonna go through with it. and i figured if that meant taking a different angle on the romance than i previously have, then all the better.

the final nail in the coffin was the end of chapter 3, where i was exhausted writing a 20k+ chapter and thinking, “wow, it’s been such a long day, yuuji should have burst with something by now” — and then that became a serious thought, because it just hadn’t made sense, with canon yuuji’s tendency to blurt things out, for him to not react in some way to everything that’s happened that day. things have to come to a boil somehow, and for flls yuuji, that meant a confession.

a messy, unthought-out confession and easily the most fun & visceral of any i’ve ever written. up until flls, confessions were usually for the big, pre-climax moments after an entire story’s worth of romance, and for this reason, i’ve always kind of dreaded writing them. how do i make it fresh when we already know we want these people to be together? how do i make it a novel thing to hear, for the first time, that the person whose pov we didn’t get in the story feels the same way as the third-person narrator? maybe a “twist” moment like in 2 A.M. or the event in lie to make me like you?

but with yuuji in flls, it wasn’t going to be a surprise no matter what. we knew how he felt about megumi, we knew they would be together somehow prior to the wedding, whether on pretend terms or not, and i knew that the only reason this confession was going to be a thing is because yuuji’s had a long day and he’s done, so done, with not saying anything.

so we start small and specific, and we stay small and specific, with yuuji just realizing that love for him is wanting to hold someone and not just wanting to be held, that love is being home for another person instead of someone just being a second home for him on nights where his feels a little empty. in any other situation, the therapy scene would have prevented the pov character from confessing, from pursuing a relationship, but because it’s yuuji, his first instinct is to avoid the loneliness he felt briefly on the subway, when he realized he could just hide his feelings for megumi forever if he really wanted to, and so he blurts it all out. sweet (i hope), genuine and awkward. but also impulsive. rambling. unthinking.

in doing so, yuuji gave me a second inciting incident. one that feels more true to him. it’s equally reactionary as megumi responding to the screenshot situation, but there’s something to be said about how megumi was cornered by so many external elements into the spark that launches his arc in their relationship while yuuji blurts everything out from sheer urgency and exhaustion. which has roots in equally external factors, but the slight difference in their confessions will carry them through to the end — so, i suppose, from here on out in the story, we’ll always return to everything i unknowingly set up in chapter 3: the thoughts yuuji has in the breakfast scene, the truths pulled out of him in the therapy scene, the little things that come into play on the way to and at and after disneyland, and finally, what’s blurted out in the confession and how, why. the things they ask of each other, for each other. the things they want to do for each other.

(and it hurts my heart a little, i admit, to return to this chapter months later and see this same earnestness that will propel their story along, for better or for worse, and know it will have to end before they begin again.)

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

06 | GOING BACK TO CHAPTER ONE

having cemented chapter 1 as a prologue of sorts, i had to go back to add yuuji’s perspective now that he, apparently, was going to have it in this fic. it felt safe to give him a scene with nanami in parallel to megumi’s with toji; it wasn’t my conscious intention to have these scenes end up being reflections of how they handle emotions as a result of what was maybe lacking in their childhoods, and it was just lucky that these two scenes will serve as a decent jumping off point for what i’ll decide to do when writing chapters 5 and 6.

looking back, too, the first scene stuck without a concrete plan because it had the bare parts of a full story: exposition with megumi’s family, a little hint at action with toji asking after yuuji, and, for reasons i can’t remember the root of now, also a show of conflict. i knew i wanted a christmas eve fight, and maybe dash & lily is to blame for that, too, but maybe i was also just itching to write a ~fight because it’s not something i’ve ever done before and i was pretty set on flls being the fic where i just keep throwing in things i haven’t tried with any previous pairings.

i also knew i had to set up nanami & yuuji’s relationship somehow if i was going to justify the therapy voucher in chapter 3, and the scene wrote itself with that in mind. i knew we were going to be somewhere inside since the megumi scene before it was outdoors and i don’t like staying in one place for too long, but everything else was all the tenderness intrinsic to nanami & yuuji’s dynamic rearing its head. that, and a few on-the-nose elements scattered around to set the scene for yuuji’s life — hot chocolate & fresh bread for warmth, yes, but also to show that he’s a regular visitor to nanami’s apartment; snow out the window because it’s Winter™ and we’re feeling a lil’ wistful; the hammer in the head paternal-ness of a guardian figure teaching you how to knot your tie. all things that yuuji didn’t have at a certain point in his life — or, more accurately, all things that yuuji lost and regained only years later. again, in the back of my mind, i was thinking, what does that kind of loss do to someone at that age? for what are we if not a series of responses and reactions to the things that happen to us? and i was thinking, too, that the opposite of love isn’t hate, is it? it must be loss. it must be lack.

i realized halfway that these thoughts echo something i wrote into megumi’s first chapter. and so i packed them away to think about later, letting only some of it bleed into the wistfulness that colors the warmth in yuuji & nanami’s first scene together. when i write chapter 5, i would joke to myself that it’s a “boil until tender” kind of recipe, but in retrospect, yuuji’s entire character is a slow boil. he was strangely mysterious to me, even as i was writing him; we know his trauma, we know his days are busy and overwhelming, but i felt that he could be more reactionary. he needs more momentum. not just for the story, which he accomplished when he confessed, and not just for megumi’s arc, which shows itself in his response to yuuji and yuuji’s problems, but for his own self, too. the haibara scene is only scratching the surface of who and what yuuji is, and the worst of it is still under getting ready to boil and bubble. and not just in the form of a panic attack in chapter 4, but something else. something bigger.

which had me looking back again to life and identity as a series of reactions and how the opposite of love is loss and lack — and that equalled to: isn’t the way we love also, by extension, a reaction? to what, though? to how we were loved? to how we weren’t loved? both. it’s both. and that brought up a lot of questions, all rooted in chapter 1: we see megumi and yuuji around father figures that care for them in their own ways, and one would argue they’re well-adjusted in the face of being loved — but are they? what would they fight about, then? sure, there’s megumi’s jealousy over ozawa but that’s too shallow. too cheap. megumi would never distrust yuuji like that. where would their differences lie, then? their love languages? their contrasting worldviews and life schedules? furthermore, why aren’t they in a relationship yet? why is yuuji only confessing now? neither of them are fumbling teenagers about the intimacy of their relationship, and yuuji was fairly clear in not expecting anything out of megumi. why is that? why is he leaving that space? insecurity? no. too easy an answer.

as it turns out, i didn’t finalize a single answer about any of these. not until chapter 5 and 6. but i knew, after having written yuuji’s perspective into chapter 1 and seeing it side-by-side with megumi’s, that their relationship can’t continue being fake with all the variables we have by the end of chapter 3. not with yuuji’s confession, not with the fight that i’m letting myself keep for no other reason than writing an argument would be thrilling, and not with the tension that won’t be solved just because they start dating. problems don’t end just because a couple is together. if anything, new issues to consider crop up once you put a label on it. it shifts the dynamic that’s there, and that will always come with its growing pains. any evolving relationship comes with growing pains. the matter here is figuring out what those growing pains look like for yuuji & megumi.

so first, i had to throw them into a real relationship.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

07 | DONBURI ON THE TRACKS

chapter 4 is so chaotic under the surface that it haunts me. this doesn’t mean i don’t like it, or that i’ll do it differently. i’d maybe argue that it was a necessary chaos, or at least that it was chaotic because it’s doing a lot in much less space than yuuji’s chapters do. there’s no moving from shibuya to kichijoji to work to disneyland to back home. there’s no takada & nobara to haibara to ozawa. it’s just megumi propelled along a thought process by nobara and into action by toji, from one evening to the day after.

with that, i’d maybe call it a bridging chapter? when i first started flls for real, i gave myself seven chapters to sort of act as guiding parameters — three chapters for them each, on top of the prologue — and opened up a blank doc. there’s no rhyme or reason for that count of seven; i guess i hadn’t expected each chapter to be around 20k words long, and even less that yuuji would be confessing by chapter 3. but it made sense, if there was gonna be a fight. it gave me enough space to bring their relationship through a healthy amount of conflict to get to the meat of the ~themes i wanted to write about, while giving an indulgently happy epilogue at the end.

(okay, clearly, these plans changed, but that was the reasoning at the time 😅)

i had a good chunk of chapter 4 vaguely mapped out somewhere in my head by the time i actually sat down to write it in full, but while i knew this chapter would have the first two scenes i wrote before flls was even flls, i still had to tweak them to fit the aftermath of the unexpected confession. i have a better idea who these characters are this time (not as much as i will yet, i think, because that part will come in chapter 5 and 6 each; we pretty much only have the foundations by this point), but i figured there was no point in keeping the story going if we don’t also get to know the characters even more as the story unfolds. the plot needs momentum, sure, i see that as i write this, but even now, that is only as valuable to me as how much that momentum parallels or, better yet, takes along the characters themselves. there has to be more layers to be peeled back; there has to be more to yuuji and megumi that we’ll only get to see eye-to-eye with in the later chapters.

the way i view it, plot or trope or twist shouldn’t ever be alone in being that. they should only be a thing in service or in response to a character being the way they are. this isn’t always the case, of course — but it’s the way i prefer to write. i’m heavily biased towards character-first writing, is what i’m realizing as i type this, which i honestly don’t see changing any time soon. characterization is a hefty chunk of the fun of writing for me. i love writing because i love my characters. even when they do questionable shit like fail to examine themselves before asking out the fake boyfriend they’ve been seeing for like five months now.

but alright. let’s backtrack. back to plot bowing down to character. the only way i could justify throwing yuuji & megumi into a relationship is if characterization necessitated it, and the only way i could justify keeping those two original scenes in some form is if they serve the plot. so: scenes are worth keeping if they are in service of plot momentum, and plot momentum is only what it is because of character, and character informs what the scenes look like, etc. i’ve always preferred thinking of writing as a circular diagram feeding off each other in turn, not a line graph. it has to be a juggling act, though not a complicated one. there’s a point where it feels right, and i think that’s what i mean about chapter 4 being necessary chaos. it’s the chapter where everything — almost audibly — clicks in place for the momentum of the rest of the story. it’s where everything kind of wisps up towards the top without surfacing quite yet. going off the juggling metaphor, chapter 2 and 3 were one ball each thrown into the mix. chapter 4 is the third ball, is the first time all the balls in the act are at play.

as an aside, i think it feels that way for their dynamic, too. writing their relationship from yuuji’s perspective always felt like a balancing act — because he had so many things going on, yeah, but also because all these precarious elements that shift with the evolution of their relationship are so much more apparent on his side. that isn’t to put the blame on yuuji for what happens in chapter 6. i was very stubborn about making sure yuuji isn’t portrayed as helpless because of all the shit he had going on in this fic. if anything, it’s him taking charge of himself and his understanding of how he’s doing that centres the fic into what it is.

and that was one of the main things i had to ensure this chapter. that his panic attack still feels like him, and not someone desperately in need of megumi’s help. i want him to be full of agency and strength here, something that i also had megumi reinforce in the end of the panic attack scene. it also would have been easy to make this subversion about “it’s okay to ask for help” — because it is, but that would have been too simple for this fic’s purposes. yuuji knows it’s okay to ask for help. he doesn’t always feel like he deserves it, but he knows he has received help from many of his loved ones and is very appreciative of all of it. he just works a little too hard to give it back tenfold. so, here, i wanted to frame megumi as someone that yuuji explicitly knows he shouldn’t ask help from. and, with that, megumi as someone who’s only one name in an entire list of people yuuji can ask.

and i wanted to bookend that with yuuji putting some distance between them after the confession. he doesn’t know why yet (and neither did i at this point, to be honest, haha) but the confession isn’t quite right with its timing. but then he has a rough night, everything feels like it’s piling up, and there’s really one person he wants to see. not to sleep with (and i imagine yuuji’s heart sinks for a bit when megumi offers to take him home, at least until he realizes megumi intends to just look after him and nothing else) but just to see, whatever that would mean. he just wants to be with megumi. he just wants megumi to be there.

and megumi is there, except he’s also battling with the sheer panic of having to be there for a person he cares about so much. i don’t think we acknowledge enough how difficult it is to be there for someone going through a hard time — how lost and helpless that renders even the person helping, and how tripled that might be for someone who sees the world and wants to find order in it like megumi does. and i took the chance to form megumi’s idea of strength and weakness through gojo and his implied backstory with geto, something that megumi might actually romanticize a little without even knowing. you can’t singlehandedly help someone, no matter how much you love them. there’s hubris, in thinking you can. there’s self-destructiveness, in that hubris. megumi is so focused on bravery, on strength, that he leaves yuuji in the bath alone, regulating his breathing for himself. he cooks for yuuji, cares for him in his own way, yet he doesn’t even realize yuuji might want to be in the bath with him. that he doesn’t care about his spilled food anymore. he’s done this before. this time, megumi’s presence is the difference, yet he doesn’t truly get it until they sleep — at which point he holds on tight and only falls into peace then.

that’s another thing i wanted to keep track of, in writing this chapter. that being overwhelmed to the point of cracking is a tried and tested routine for yuuji, that his panic attack wouldn’t be anything dramatic and intense. his breaking point was something so simple and mundane, just that spilled takeout onto the train tracks, but it’s enough to push him over the edge. and i think that captures the feeling of being too full for what life keeps giving, more so than any big trigger. more often, it’s the sudden last straws. a laptop crashing before you can save your work, even though there is such a thing as recovery and backup. biting your tongue in the middle of a sentence and finding yourself tearing up because you’re suddenly so fed up with the world. it’s that over-inflated lump in your throat. the heat behind your eyes that prickles more than it floods. and that’s what i wanted yuuji’s panic attack to look like. something almost resigned, because, again, this isn’t the first time. he knows he’ll get through it. but he’s just so, so tired and wants to be held. held by no one else but megumi.

megumi, who’s still reeling from his conversation with nobara at the top of chapter 4. i maintain that this fic doesn’t have enough nobara (part of it is that i was sure i was gonna be able to write a nobamaki storyline on the side, of which you can see hints peppered throughout), but i’m glad that the scenes of her that are there are very definitive. i always think that nobara is in such a difficult position in any version of itafushi, including their canon selves; she has so much insight to who the boys are in themselves, which you can really see in how she talks and thinks of yuuji and how she deciphers megumi, and while i’m frustrated that i had to relegate her to a Dispenser of Insight and Wisdom role in flls, it also had to be her. it had to be her to squeeze yuuji’s hand at the breakfast bistro. it had to be her, later, to have the pre-wedding talk with megumi. and it had to be her, this time, bumping into megumi at work and forcing him to sit down (literally) and think about how he sees yuuji.

this scene also serves as a breather — as close to one, at least, as flls gives. it’s an interlude, almost. a break right in the middle of the fic. it’s meant to recentre megumi, though that doesn’t really work when the chapter ends with him asking yuuji out.

but — again. scene, plot, character, all intertwined. they have to be in a relationship for plot purposes, but the panic attack scenes ensure that megumi’s characterization is pushed into the only decision that makes sense for him after that. which is, circling back, to ask yuuji to date him. i know a decision has clicked into the right place when it feels final, when it doesn’t feel like i’m forcing anything into being what it is. or, best case scenario, when it feels like the only way this could have gone.

i think the ending to chapter 4 is, unfortunately, the only way it could have gone. it would come back to bite them, hard and painful, but it made sense with their psyches the way they are in that moment. it’s the start of the end, this chapter’s ending, but it’s still a start at that, and i think, when you love someone as much those two did, that matters a hell lot more than anything else.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

08 | LOVE LANGUAGE INTERLUDE

do i like toji in canon? i do. i think he’s a great character in terms of his place in the narrative. do i think he’s redeemable as a father? in complete honesty — i don’t know. my answer changes every day. but i know that while there are plenty of fictional fathers that i strictly, coldly don’t want to entertain the idea of redemption or empathy or understanding for, out of stubborn very personal bias, toji is definitely not one of them. if only when it comes to him, i detest the idea of thinking there are easy answers. this doesn’t mean there is no right or wrong answer, just that whatever the final answer might be, there will be plenty of factors that go into it.

but i was very generous to him in flls. that much is for sure, from the prologue to chapter 4 to everything else that came after. even i was surprised with the nuance he ended up containing, if only insofar as a foil to flls!gojo in megumi’s life. i think he’s a fucked up man in canon, and i think he did and would have made a fucked up father no matter how good the intentions, a fact that i promise i state gently, but i also think that can coexist with him being a fucked up product of his fucked up upbringing. does that excuse or justify or redeem him for anything? no, but and outside of canon and in the indulgence of flls, which semi-started for the indulgent reason that i want to see what an exchange between yuuji & toji would be like, this did give me themes to hone in on in examining love and how we learn to love as we grow up.

because i feel like — there’s been a lot of talk about how understanding your partner(s)’s love languages is key in a relationship. but then, going back to the way we love as a reaction to how we’ve been or haven’t been loved, isn’t your love language — at least for some people — just a reflection of the love you lack(ed)? i don’t know how true this is on a broad sense, of course, but it certainly was for flls yuuji and megumi. and it’s where i was able to justify writing megumi into the family networks that i did. writing about gojo and toji as his parental figures was one of my favourite parts of writing flls, but i’ll get to that in chapter 6.

for now, i was heading into chapter 5 knowing that there was going to be a fight at the end of it. and that if i was going to go into it assuming that love languages are a product of what was lacking in childhood, the focus is going to be on the friction between where yuuji & megumi differ on that front. except these are things we already know, even if subconsciously. their differences are things we know from canon, things we can tell from these first four chapters. so how do i shift this understanding a little bit so it lands a little harsher, digs a little deeper to the point that it’s almost uncomfortable? where it would make sense when they fight at the end of chapter 5?

i knew it was going to take a while to find an answer, so i decided to post the first four chapters in one go for megumi’s birthday and sit on it so i can get to a distance where i’ll (hopefully) be able to reevaluate where i should take the rest of it. i have a soft spot for this fic that i don’t often have for my work, and i was so attached to the world that i didn’t want to stop writing it, but i also knew it remained true that i wrote 49k in around three weeks and just. didn’t look back. so i was anticipating a lot of loose unintended threads that i’d have to tie up in the remaining three chapters, and i didn’t trust myself to see all of them until i’ve had some time away from the story.

the break lasted a month, and it admittedly left me rusty and frustrated. returning to flls to write chapter 5 resulted in 12k words’ worth of deleted scenes — but a necessary 12k, i maintain, because eventually, my divine solution came in a moment of remembering that flls is free playground real estate and i can try even things that a lazier me swore once i wouldn’t try. and to this day, i still think i couldn’t have done that chapter in a way that i would have allowed to be published if i hadn’t thought to throw everything to the wind and try second person. it unclogged whatever needed to be cleaned out of the way — and set me down the path for the second cour of the story.

・・・・・・

note: this is all i've had sitting in my drive since march, but i do cover the latter half + some kind of we in a separate roundup post. 

#fics

[plan-d-to-i]

(google translate again, yeah)

(I forgot to thank you for the last answer, I really didn't know that the drama used the music of my compatriot, it was a pleasant surprise for me)

I don't know if anyone has asked you this before, but do you think JC was good with WWX as a kid?

I mean not just their childhood, but the time of their training in Gusu.

I really love JC, and I understand perfectly well that he is the most dick in character, but I love him precisely during my studies at Gusu, I can not give any arguments that then JC was directly GOOD to WWX, but he is clearly cared a little about him and even ... worried? at least that moment after the punishment where JC helped WWX get to the room...

Yay - I'm so happy to hear about Stravinsky :)

Hahah loving jc as the dick that he is is the way to do it! go for it. :) also, sorry this was so delayed I wanted to reread the Cloud Recesses arc so it would be fresh in my mind before answering.

In terms of jc the Cloud Recesses arc is perhaps the most 'mellow' we see him aside from the Lotus Pod Extra but for me it's still impossible to find him a worthwhile person. I can already see the faults in his character that I know will only get worse as he grows older. Canonically I don't see how he would have any friends studying in the Cloud Recesses if he didn't come as a package deal w Wei Wuxian. I mean I doubt jiang cheng would have any friends without WWX period. In fact jiang cheng doesn't make any friends over the course of 13 years. He's also unable to find a wife bc of his temperament and behavior...

What we can glean about their relationship in the Cloud Recesses arc (and even the Lotus Pod Extra) is that any time WWX gets a kind word or understanding from someone, jiang cheng scoffs at it. Any time someone shits on WWX, jc is there to agree, to relish the idea of WWX being punished, and shit on him some more. He would be an immensely exhausting person to be around. He doesnt believe in WWX's ideas and ingenuity, (as NHS does for example), he doesn't believe WWX is hurt, he always assumes the worst of him, he doesn't believe LWJ might like WWX. The only thing he ever seems to believe is that WWX will dishonor YunmengJiang and that WWX should be punished. So for a kid who supposedly wants his father's approval so badly he instead constantly acts like his mother's mouthpiece/minion. He reprimands WWX like he's trying to become Madam Yu 2.0. I see jc stans all the time being like oh he had to keep WWX in check bc WWX was such a lOOooose canon, for the good of the Clan!! lol listen JFM didn't give a f...about WWX's behavior (in his letter to LQR) why are you so concerned? JFM would have preferred for jc to try & save his peers in the Xuanwu cave or at least to understand why that was the correct course of action rather than for him to just sit in front of the class in the Cloud Recesses and tell WWX off for giving LQR as good as he got, while actually still breaking the rules himself but eschewing punishment.

salt up here, quotes below :

Even when Nie Huaisang picks up on the fact that WWX is being treated unfairly by LQR, jc dismisses it and piles on WWX instead.

Nie Huaisang said, “Old Man Lan really seems like he’s coming down especially harshly on you. Every time he reprimands someone, it’s always you.” Jiang Cheng grunted. “He deserves it. What kind of answer was that? He can get away with saying that sort of nonsense at home, but he had the nerve to say it to Lan Qiren’s face. He was practically asking for the old man to kill him!”

But does WWX get away with ANYTHING in Lotus Pier? When we know he is punished constantly for EVERYTHING? This is jiang cheng fully being his mother's mouth piece. It's not something WWX would get away with, it's something jc knows JFM wouldn't mind. Which is why he's so pissed off. Which begs the question if JFM would not be upset with WWX's behavior why does jc need to criticize him? Again :

A dark expression shadowed Jiang Cheng’s face, and his voice was filled with anger. “Why are you so proud of yourself? What is there to be proud of?! Is being told to get out some amazing accomplishment? You’re making our entire clan lose face!”

and his glee at the idea that WWX will be punished leaves a bad taste in one's mouth considering how WWX was perpetually punished in Lotus Pier by jiang cheng's mother for... existing.

Jiang Cheng smiled grimly. “Now that you’ve thoroughly offended both Lan Wangji and Lan Qiren, you’re basically dead tomorrow. No one’s going to clean up your corpse either.”

and again

Without the old one, only the young one remained. This would be easy to deal with! Wei Wuxian rolled off the bed and laughed while putting on his boots. “Heaven’s charmed clouds are blessing me with shade.” Jiang Cheng was beside him polishing his sword with loving care when he decided to spill cold water over Wei Wuxian’s head. “Just wait until he gets back. You can’t escape punishment.”

Where others like NHS see value in WWX's thoughts

Nie Huaisang thought for a while. “Actually, I thought what you said was very interesting,” he said, not entirely able to hide his envy and yearning.

jc is always dismissive of WWX's ideas. These are inventions that WWX realizes. Demonic cultivation in the first conversation and The Spirit-Attraction Flag and The Compass of Evil in the second:

“Enough,” Jiang Cheng warned. “Whatever nonsense you spout, you better not head down that sort of dark road.”

-

Changing the topic, Wei Wuxian said, “If only there was something like fishing bait that could draw the water ghosts in. Or, something that could point in the direction they’re hiding, like a compass, that sort of thing.”

“Lower your head and watch the water,” Jiang Cheng said. “You’re letting your fantasies run wild again. Concentrate on looking for water ghosts like you’re supposed to.”

“Hey, mounting swords and flying was also only a fantasy once!” Wei Wuxian said.

He's also a hypocrite. Because even though he berates WWX for misbehaving, he himself breaks the rules. He drinks, he even goads WWX into buying liquor, the only difference is that he doesn't get punished for it, and he doesn't feel like coming forward and getting punished for it :

Naturally, Jiang Cheng was too embarrassed to talk about what Wei Wuxian had been up to. After all, all of them had egged him on to go and buy alcohol, and they all deserved to be punished as well. He could only speak vaguely. “It’s nothing. It’s nothing. It’s not that bad! He can walk. Wei Wuxian, why haven’t you gotten off yet?”

It's no wonder WWX is so impressed by LWJ's integrity in spite of his social status, when he's clearly used to the other dynamic :

“Lan Zhan, I really admire you,” Wei Wuxian said sincerely. “After I told you that you had to punish yourself too, you actually did it. You didn’t let yourself off at all. I can’t argue against that.”

A dynamic which is shown repeating in the Lotus Pod Extra where WWX is the only one to get punished for sunbathing, and which repeats here when Wei Wuxian here stops jiang cheng from confronting Zixuan over YanLi's honor (and jc's) and does it himself.

Zixuan :“Why don’t you ask what about her could make me satisfied?” he said in return.

Suddenly, Jiang Cheng rose. Wei Wuxian pushed him away and stepped between them, smiling coldly. “You think you’re very satisfactory? As though you have the right to be so picky!”

Zixuan: “If she’s unhappy, then let her break off the engagement! I certainly don’t cherish your wonderful disciple-sister. If you cherish her so much, why don’t you take it up with your father? Doesn’t he love you more than his own son?”

After hearing the last sentence, Jiang Cheng’s eyes narrowed, and Wei Wuxian was no longer able to contain his own fury. He flew at Jin Zixuan, his fist raised.

WWX takes the punishment alone. Same way he offers to do when he hurts himself falling from a tree because jc threatened him with dogs. meanwhile jc is gleeful to see him being punished.

[Wei Wuxian] was kneeling on the stretch of pebble road to which Lan Qiren had assigned him when Jiang Cheng walked over from afar and mocked him. “You’re kneeling so obediently.”

“It’s not like you don’t know I have to do this all the time.” Wei Wuxian’s voice filled with schadenfreude. “But this Jin Zixuan guy, there’s no way he hasn’t been pampered and spoiled rotten since birth. No one’s ever forced him to kneel, I’m sure of it. If he doesn’t wind up crying for mommy and daddy today, I’m not named Wei.”....

Wei Wuxian "...It’s a good thing you didn’t do anything.”

“I was going to. If you hadn’t pushed me away, the other side of Jin Zixuan’s face would be hideous too.”

“Stop it. His face is uglier for being lopsided."

WWX is happy to have spared jc from getting into trouble but jc makes the whole thing about himself anyway (like everything else ever) and is upset JFM would rush over for WWX - in his mind. Even though JFM clearly had to rush over to meet with Jin Guangshan not to coddle WWX in any way.

"Jiang Fengmian had never rushed to another clan in less than a day because of him. Regardless of whether what happened was big or small, or good or bad." Never

WWX on the other hand tries to be observant of jc's feelings and reassure him & distract him from his moods :

When Wei Wuxian saw Jiang Cheng’s melancholy expression, he thought he was still upset with what Jin Zixuan said. “You should leave. You don’t need to keep me company any longer. If Lan Wangji comes again, he’ll catch you. If you have time, you should find Jin Zixuan and watch his pitiful kneeling.”

Later in the book after nearly dying in the Xuanwu cave WWX leaves his sick bed to run after jc and comfort him after his mother's rant, even though WWX had to listen to his parents (and himself) being slandered by YZY. jc doesn't spare any thoughts for how other people might be feeling or suffering. His entire perception of the world is centered around himself. To him even WWX's greatest fear doesn't generate empathy, only amusement or later on a form of torture.

From that point onward, they made trouble everywhere together, and if they encountered a dog, Jiang Cheng would always chase it away for him, then enjoy a peal of derisive, unbridled laughter at Wei Wuxian’s expense beneath whichever tree the boy had leapt atop.

he grew up on the streets, often having to fight for food with vicious dogs. After several bites and chases, he gradually became extremely scared of all dogs, no matter the size. Jiang Cheng laughed at him because of this quite a lot of times.

This brings me to the last point. jc's resentment of WWX's interest in Lan Zhan, or in a serious friendship outside of him. I see so many ppl say that bc WWX fought he was kicked out of the Cloud Recesses early... but was he?

Jiang Cheng was somewhat taken aback. “Lan Wangji? What was he doing here? He still has the nerve to come see you again?”

“Yeah, I think his bravery is laudable if he still has the nerve to come see me. His uncle probably told him to check on me and see if I was kneeling properly.”

Jiang Cheng’s instincts were sending him ominous signals. “So were you kneeling properly?”

“I was then,” Wei Wuxian replied. “But I waited for him to walk away a bit, then took a tree branch, lowered my head, and dug out a hole in the dirt near me. It’s the pile right by your foot—there are ant tunnels there. It took me so much effort to find them. Anyway, I waited for him to turn back and see my shoulders shaking. He had to have thought I was crying, so he came back and asked. You should have seen his face when he caught sight of the ant tunnels!

“…” Jiang Cheng said, “Why don’t you just get the hell out and go back to Yunmeng? I bet he never wants to see you again.”

Thus, that evening, Wei Wuxian packed up his things, got the hell out, and went back to Yunmeng with Jiang Fengmian.

Repeatedly throught his stay in the Cloud Recesses even while NHS was observing that LWJ's behavior around WWX was strange and unique, jc was telling WWX he is hated and bothersome. When WWX wanted to apologize to LWJ jc is completely dismissive of it :

“He hates me already? I was thinking of apologizing to him,” Wei Wuxian said.

“Oh, so you want to apologize now? It’s too late!” Jiang Cheng said derisively. “He’s exactly like his uncle. He thinks you’ve been wicked ever since you were an embryo, so it’s beneath his dignity to pay you any attention.”

Later on when WWX mentioned wanting to invite LWJ to Lotus Pier jc categorically says no.

“Jiang Cheng had on a stern expression, “Let’s make this clear. I don’t want him to come, anyhow. Don’t invite him.”

BONUS

jc also always doubts WWX. He suspects him immediately of wrongdoings. He doesn't believe that getting hit with the discipline ruler in Cloud Recesses actually hurt him until LXC confirms that WWX might take more than a few days to heal. He doesn't understand WWX is in actual trouble from the Waterborne abyss and assumes he's fooling around luckily Lan Zhan is there to rescue him:

The disciple’s lower body had already been swallowed by the black whirlpool. It spun faster and faster, and he continued to sink deeper and deeper, as though something hidden beneath the water was pulling down on his legs.

Mounted on Sandu, Jiang Cheng had risen calmly until he was about sixty meters above the whirlpool before he looked down. Filled with displeasure at what he saw, he shouted and dove down. “What are you up to now?!”

The suction force inside Lake Biling grew ever stronger. Wei Wuxian’s sword was optimized for agility, and consequently, its strength happened to fall just short, and they were nearly pulled to the surface of the lake. Wei Wuxian steadied himself and held on to Su She with both hands.

“Someone help! If I can’t pull him up soon, I’ll have to let go!” he shouted.

Suddenly, the back of Wei Wuxian’s collar tightened, and his body was lifted into the air. He twisted his neck and saw Lan Wangji holding him up with one hand.

He maintains this same mindset when he tries to whip LWJ and WWX as they're attempting to leave Lotus Pier after the ancestral hall confrontation when WWX passes out.

Is jc evil in the Cloud Recesses ? No. He's just an annoying, basic, disagreeable asshole who doesn't bring anything positive to someone like WWX. People like jc become obsessed with kind, outgoing, generous people, people who don't set boundaries on what they give and what others take in their friendships. Even though they're dependent on them for their social interactions, because who else would socialize with them willingly, they resent them in equal measure, but at the same time they wouldn't be drawn to another selfish, self centered piece of shit person like themselves.

On a personal note, even Cloud Recesses jiang cheng is someone I would exclude from any personal friend group. Friendship with him is adding a minefield of jealousies and snide comments to every interaction. Things that then others will need to compensate around because he won't compromise or empathize w issues outside of his own concerns.

Translation source : x

#This is long af because I wanted to have one post where I included everything #I’ve bitched about jc’s behavior in the cloud recesses for a long time so it was time to put down the quotes #mdzs #Cloud Recesses #Lan Wangji #Wei Wuxian #Nie Huaisang #jiang cheng

[saintobio]

as someone who joked abt y/n just running to toji, or toji endgame! are y'all happy now?/srs bc im kind of not☹️☹️ i thought y/n moving on and being a girlboss with toji was something i'd screaming 'hell yeah!', i just felt so sad in this chapter like😭😭 it's for the best tho but it doesn't mean I can't get sad over what happened to gojo (plus his immense regret)

@shoukuto said

us in the earlier chapters: Y/N X TOJI! IF SHE MARRIED TOJI IN THE FIRST PLACE, SHE WOULD'VE BEEN HAPPIER! IF SHE GETS PREGNANT WITH GOJO'S KID, SHE BETTER PICK THAT CHILD UP AND GO LIVE HER OWN LIFE! GIRLBOSS Y/N, GO WORK WITH TOJI! GO BE INDEPENDENT AND SEPARATE FROM GOJO'S TOXICITY! Y/N SHOULD LEAVE GOJO FOR REAL—

and then you just..... you Gave it to us and we're crying for it 😭 really made us eat our own words. i'm reeling from how conflicted i am because most of the misfortune he got, he set up for himself 😭 (my blood still boils when i reread y/n's first time with him like was he ok) but i feel so sorry for him. their love story is just so sad because it's like the time when they were kids was the only time they could love each other without the other being guilty of some wrongdoing. they just can't seem to meet in the middle. toji's a good guy, and he's already said he'd treat y/n like a queen if she married him (someone check on naoya) so whoever she ends up with, i just want all three parties to be happy. (munchkin is so CUTE) every time i read your writing, i get absolutely blown away by your skill! thank you so much for your hard work on sn!! i hope you enjoy your well deserved break, and i can't wait to see what else you've got in store!

Anonymous said

my yn x toji heart but then my yn x gojo heart are all suffering right now. soooo many theories running through my brain after reading the last chapter. my heart aches for gojo. amnesia? oh boy. i cant help but think that having amnesia would help him though, is that wrong of me?

i hope yn ended up marrying toji, but i also hope she didnt go through with it, and that sn 2 focuses on them getting back together. but again, i dont want toji to get hurt, and i lowkey want gojo to fall in love with someone else as hard as he did for yn. sincerely not is really fucking w my brain lol. soooo many conflicts happening in my heart, idk what i want. look what u did to me saint! haha.

anyways, congrats on finishing sn. it feels like its been so long. this was such a beautiful and painful journey to experience, but i dont regret it at all! congrats saint, we all love u and sincerely not :3

Anonymous said

no bc saint gave us toji fuckers what we wanted in the beginning when we were all like "nOthing hoejo does will ever make us forgive him !!!)!$!" and now post-gojo redemption arc its just its just .. im sorry i ever said i wanted toji endgame 🧎🏻‍♀️🧎🏻‍♀️we should have known better than to doubt gojo x yn soulmates

Anonymous said

Crying and throwing up I’m not ready to read about yn and toji as a couple and I feel so bad bc they’re both so amazing and deserve each other and all the happiness but I can’t stop thinking about Gojo like his life is so miserable my god 😭

honestly all the toji stans in the first few chapters were so passionate abt having toji x yn endgame, but now that it happened, everyone feels bad for gojo and the things he went through <//3

#saintobio.asks #series: sincerely not

[jostenneil]

🔥 batcat

i actually really like them but my entire interpretation of them relies on their foundations in batman: year one and her sister's keeper as opposed to like. every catwoman volume thereafter gjdfklhjlgd. it massively irritates me how mindy newell's re-introduction of her character in 1989 was more or less completely ignored by subsequent selina writers. newell's selina is a woman who's been through a lot of trauma esp at the hands of men (since she's a prostitute), and she dons the costume as a means of reclaiming what predatory men took away from her in terms of agency. the costume is a way for selina to save herself, but it’s also a death wish. she doesn’t want to be coddled, and she doesn’t want to act like she cares about anyone esp when doing so leads to disastrous consequences for those very people whom she cares immensely about ("oh maggie, it's so much easier being dead!"). newell gave a really refreshing take on selina that reflected the more modern feminism of the time and i loved that! her sister’s keeper is probably one of my favorite comics that i’ve ever read

where my irritation with subsequent writers arises is that a lot make selina fantasize about being with or saved by men even tho her sister’s keeper establishes that she’s very guarded with men since so many of them have hurt or taken advantage of her. her tantalizing flirtation is obv the appeal for many people and that was featured in newell’s volume, too! the last issue featured the perfect game of cat and mouse between her and bruce in its final scenes and i loved it. but what i think it sought to illustrate is that selina’s still rly protective of her independence and she doesn’t fantasize about men saving her. if she’s going to put the costume on, she’s going to do things her way and on her own terms. even alan grant’s immediate issues following her sister’s keeper emphasize that. selina’s content to live her own life in peace but when taunted enough about her thievery skills she makes it a point to prove just how much power is in her hands. so to see writers ignore that and even write entire arcs (the long halloween, when in rome) where her end goal is finding refuge in a man (whether that be carmine, bruce, or another lover) has been rly jarring for me ever since i read the newell volume

i think my interpretation of batcat lies along the lines of selina being someone rly loath to trusting or confiding in any men but bruce presenting the one rarity in her life. he’s compassionate, he’s concerned, and he’s privy to how the system takes advantage of her and wants to help selina before she hurts herself even tho she never asked to be helped and is frankly irritated by his attempts in the beginning (tho she plays it off flirtatiously bc that’s part of her power game, to make herself look in control). i also rly love working off of newell’s portrayal of selina as someone who wants to act like she doesn’t care even tho she absolutely does, and bruce reaching out to her on that basis bc he realizes she has more potential for good than she gives herself credit for. i honestly rly hate it when people say they can’t be together bc she steals bc that aspect to her character has been so inconsistent across post crisis comics anyway and again, newell’s volume clearly established that she can and will do good for the people she cares about and she does have a sense of justice, it’s just deeply personal as opposed to bruce’s broader interpretation. that makes for a rly interesting source of tension between them i think and i wish it could be explored more in modern comics bc i think we got very little of it once other writers took over after newell and grant. brubaker kind of went in that direction but he made her immediately willing to be a hero for the people when i think it would take a little more convincing bc again, her sense of justice is deeply personal. she’s not saving every person on the streets but when people mess with those impt to her it’s claws out and she goes on the offense. what ram v’s doing with her now has me rly interest piqued in that sense and i’m excited to see where he goes with her and potentially with her relationship with bruce if he continues to call attention to it in her contemplative moments

#selina kyle #batcat #dc #mine:meta #asks #this is so long i’m sorry i just have a lot of feelings about her sister’s keeper. it’s like my bible

[quartizinedaze]

What’s you favorite part of the Archie sonic comic?

Ok ok you’re giving me an opportunity to talk about it so ………. This answer’s another long one and not hat in time related in the slightest

Bean already knows this but I love the Archie sonic comics. They were all over the place (probably because they ran for 20 yrs) and it’s amazing. I could go on and on about them but I will try and condense my favorite parts to just a list

My favorite absolutely ridiculous (both in and out of context) parts include:

-French fry tails

- anything to do with the echidnas pre-reboot. Like…. They didn’t have to make Dave the Echidna, echidna Astronaut, but they did anyways

-“Sleuth Doggy Dawg” and “Kicks a lot” existing

-this panel

-that one with the ridiculously buff tails (titan tails! I send him in my server every time I remember he exists)

-Sonics fox gf cheating on him with Green Sonic

-the part where like 50 out of the 70 echidna ocs get sent into the void and never came back

-the small panel where the illustrator of an issue drew echidna versions of the rugrats (from rugrats) in the background

-Tails having parents who were stuck in space and once they were brought back they almost immediately organized an uprising against the king and got arrested

-knuckles having a little brother named Kneecaps.

-Zonic the hedgehog. Zonic. The. Hedgehog.

-that one off panel Jojo reference

-The arc where all the humans hate sonic and are like “DOWN WITH THE FURRIES!!!!” This was in an issue that came out in the early 2000s I think

-the “alone on a Friday night? God you’re pathetic” meme originally being a panel full of tree puns

Genuine favorite parts include:

-shard. Any panel with shard. Particularly this one where he was hiding in a pond. He’s the best character no I do not take constructive criticism on this

- bean and bark. Just. Them.

- biased bc shards in it but the Secret Freedom Fighters arc slaps

-Also both arcs with Eclipse (funny little alien)

-Green Sonic getting told off by Sonic’s robot dad

-Bunnie and Antoine getting married <3

-Strewth. Promise.

-Shadow and Hope’s friendship!! Genuinely wholesome

-Honey the Cat

Would I recommend reading these? Maybe? Only if you like sonic and have a high tolerance for bs?

Also if you actually read all the way through these just know I appreciate you immensely thank you

#ask answered #oh bean. you know exactly what can of worms you’re opening #I drew shard again recently and it was great #uh oh this post got long #Archie Sonic #not hat in time related

[prodigious-ladybug]

wishmaker thoughts

in terms of it being a single installment in the larger narrative of miraculous ladybug, i don’t have a lot of thoughts on wishmaker other than ‘haha cool someone knows both of their identities at the same time wonder where this will go’ bc like. i am unable to separate myself from the idea that i absolutely cannot judge something (in this case, season- and series-long arcs) until i see it in its Entirety, in its Proper Complete State (which i know doesn’t exactly mesh with television as a serialised art form but jhdfghj wtvr thats a whole other discussion) so i don’t, and won’t, really have an opinion on luka knowing their identities until i see what the show does with it

on the other hand, in terms of its own merits as an episode (as in, the parts of the episode that are self-contained and are supposed to have their own story arc within the 20min) wishmaker was probably one of the weaker episodes of the show? alec’s akumatisation practically came out of nowhere - the show usually does a pretty good job of setting up the through lines that lead to a character’s akumatisation right from the start of the ep (you know, like with actual foreshadowing and good writing and shit) but wishmaker felt more concerned with the interactions between luka & adrien & marinette than having the villain feel natural within the story. which is all well and good, like this episode is about those three and should be focused on luka’s relationship with adrien & marinette if it wanted to have the proper impact of luka finding out their identities, but it just seemed like the episode couldn’t balance being both a run of the mill, monster of the week episode and an Event episode at the same time (that being said, i doubt this episode would’ve been enough to hold its own across a two parter so i get how the unbalance arose). instead of throwing alec’s characterisation out of whack they couldve used his early screen time to lead up to his akumatisation more naturally - surely something about being a tv presenter and having to be fake all the time for a living and not staying true to what his younger self wanted or SOMETHING would like. be putting him down in the dumps or smth. idk. that’s just off the top of my head surely the writers could come up with something more substantial. and yeah this might take away some attention from the emotional core of luka, adrien & marinette but it’d at least 1. tie in with the theme of the episode and 2. set some precedent for his negative feelings instead of him getting akumatised in like. ten seconds hgfdfghjk

the only other thing that kinda rubbed me the wrong way was how wishmaker’s power seemed especially contrived, even for this show? like i Know half of the akumatised powers are to either get ladybug and chat noir to kiss (contrived for the sake of romance which is. generally fine in a romance show and also approved by my shipper brain) or reveal their identities (which actually ties into the plot and the villain’s motivations and therefore makes it...not really contrived) so wishmaker being used to reveal their identities is fine. but um. the leap hawkmoth made in how his powers would do that is. wild. it’s like:

reveal people’s childhood wishes

???

reveal lb & cn’s identities

profit

and again, i know hawkmoth has given an endless list of powers to people that make you think ‘what the fuck was he hoping to accomplish with that?? what did he THINK would happen?’ and i’m all for hawkmoth having dumb plans, being soundly beaten and then having to figure out smarter ways to beat lb & cn, but i guess my problem here is that in this episode he was actually proven RIGHT. like he had no guarantee that lb & cn wouldn’t have childhood wishes a la dino man and mr banana, but he really put out this fairly weak akuma with the immediate assumption that it would reveal their identities and like?? if viperion wasn’t there he’d have achieved it! (well, idk abt ladybug, he’d at least probably hit chat noir, which is. an interesting au to think about). the link between revealing childhood wishes and revealing lb & cn’s identities seemed like a massive leap in logic to me (more than this show usually makes), and idk if anyone else felt that when watching the episode but like kjhdfghjk hawkmoth buddy can you explain your thinking for just a second like i’ll accept what you’re doing i just need to know why the fuck you’re doing it and how you got there

but other than that! i really really liked this episode and i was hyped up the entire fucking time!! i had to keep pausing it bc i was getting overwhelmed LMAO. i guess one thing i will say so that this doesn’t seem like a wall of negativity (which i swear i didn’t mean for it to be, there were only two (2) things i didn’t like about the episode that i felt weakened it, it just takes me a billion words to get to my point) is that however they handle luka knowing their identities in future episodes, i fucking loved the way they handled it in this episode. for some background, i’ve honestly never cared much either way abt luka, i have zero negative feelings about him, it’s just that he has the unfortunate case of not being a character type i particularly care abt, and the writing hasn’t done anything much to endear him to me. he’s fine, and i certainly like him more than other characters, but i’m pretty much as neutral on him as you could get. UNTIL THIS EPISODE! okay not really, something abt him agreeing to be friends with marinette in crocoduel made me go ‘:) what a nice boy :)’ BUT! THIS EPISODE! i’m proud to announce i’m officially a luka stan. LYING BALD-FACED TO LADYBUG? KING. LYING TO LADYBUG AFTER THE SEASON OPENER OF HIM GETTING AKUMATISED OVER MARINETTE LYING??? i am SO here for internal character conflicts YES! this is what i WANT! set up a character who has a strict line in the sand and put them in a situation where they’re forced to cross it anyway, and see what happens next!!!! i really would not mind a whole character study on luka after this. like....the fucking intrigue.......why did he lie, and how does he feel about it? does he regret it? does he consider it a necessary evil? i’m sure all of this will be answered in like. a single line from him five episodes down the road bc that’s how this show handles shit like this but. those last few minutes were really just straight bangers i’m still not recovered

well this was. longer than i thought it’d be. and again, i liked this episode a lot, idk what compelled me to write all this out. i usually don’t have a lot of formulated thoughts like this after an episode of ml; i think that it was just bc there were a couple things i could actually critique in the ep that it made it easier to pick apart my feelings. but anyways!

TL;DR wishmaker, in its self contained elements, felt a bit weak as an episode bc 1. alec’s akumatisation was mad rushed and 2. the way his powers were used to further the plot felt contrived to me (yes, even for miraculous). but, in the episode’s over-arching elements within the season/show, i immensely enjoyed it, primarily because of the amount of intrigue it set up in 1. luka’s characterisation and 2. the possibilities emerging from luka knowing lb & cn’s identities

#miraculous ladybug #ml spoilers #wishmaker #wishmaker spoilers #i really cannot. say anything concisely #anyways this was fun i'd like to write my thoughts out after more episodes but like i said i generally Don't Have Any #like if an episode is good all my thoughts will be 'wow that was good :)' #ml air more duds so i can ramble on forever challenge

[elkian]

I was gonna do a “missing the point”-style meme but I’m honestly not sure that would even work tho so:

Harry Potter and My Hero Academia/Boku no Hero Academia have similar issues with introducing and then immediately ignoring ENORMOUS issues re: ableism.

I think these two series in specific come to mind bc it’s ableism within a specific empowered community, and in both cases the series are pretty well-known and the community (Wix/Heroes) are immediately identifiable to many audiences.

[WARNING: Discussions of ableism, child harm, and abuse on multiple levels.]

What’s the problem?

SQUIBS.

[This post got stupid huge SO here is a tl,dr for all you lovely people who understandably have no time for this.

TL, DR: Both Harry Potter and Boku No Hero have a bad tendency to implement or imply a level of disability regarding unempowered people in empowered societies. They then continue on to completely disregard important conclusions to these implications, such as how heavily it is implied that these unempowered people (Squibs) are so ‘worthless’ to those societies that their very deaths are merely a byline rather than an actual tragedy.

This is especially troubling in MHA/BNHA when so many other political and worldbuilding considerations HAVE been planned out, and seems to be less-discussed in the fandom as a whole, so that’s a much larger chunk of this post.]

That’s your tl, dr!

Here’s the Harry Potter angle:

HP has a bit that I’ve seen people discussing already: Neville’s magic was discovered when his uncle dropped a literal child a potenial lethal distance. 

Neville activating his power and surviving is celebrated, and then JKR immediately glosses over the glaring issue this has introduced: the heavy implication that a Squib dying from this incident would have not have been mourned or even really commented on.

The few adult Squibs (and isn’t that a whole new slice of wonderful /j) are generally disliked and ridiculed for some reason or other. Now, while obviously there are plenty of places where the Venn diagram of “disabled” and “asshole” intersect irl, when your ONLY presentation of a disabled character or group is, every time, an asshole or a fool or both, boy! That’s bad!

Neville (who is generally presented as magically, physically, and mentally weak and often treated as comic relief) is a bit better via the POV Character constantly having positive interactions with him, but this is still a mess. Yes, Neville canonically is not a Squib, but it’s not subtle that he’s on the cusp OF being a Squib, and that is a key element of ridiculing him in many situations (also the whole trauma thing multiple times, like if I really get into it I could do a whole double-size post of how Neville was done dirty or nearly dirty by JK all the time but this isn’t that post).

This isn’t even the point of this post. Let’s move to MHA/BNHA

Hero Academia has differing but honestly even worse issues. And I’m aware that different countries handle ableism and accessibility in different ways, but if you think too hard about it this is an absolute clusterfuck.

What is the problem now?

Squibs! Or rather, the main character of the series, Midoriya Izuku.

Deku (a nickname meaning “useless”! Imparted after his disability is recognized! hilarity!!) is also born without powers. Even worse in some ways, he is born without powers in a world where the overwhelming majority of the global population has some kind of empowerment. I can’t recall if it’s outright stated or only implied that someone with a functionally useless (and hoo boy, usefullness to society is its own post nope not today i do not have that much energy) Quirk is still more of a person than a Quirkless human.

That sink in? Okay, let’s move on.

In a narratively not-uncommon turn of events, Deku gains power. This is partially a product of, and directly tied to, his own work and determination, as well as his willingness to help even when physically outmatched.

To an American audience (NOT the intended audience though I wouldn’t doubt it if Horikoshi meant to have international appeal more or less from the start), this is a deeply satisfying narrative. Who doesn’t love an underdog story? And we even learn that the strongest hero of all time (til this point, anyways) was ALSO born Quirkless!

However, from here, things take a nosedive.

The key problem is a combination of story progression and overall thought put into worldbuilding. Horikoshi’s efforts may not be the MOST thorough, but he has put a great deal of work and thought into his creation (he at least understands the concept of implications and sometimes plans accordingly, looking at you JKR). However, that tied with story progression and personal repercussions actually works to the detriment of the matter.

Especially given recent turns of events.

 [BIG MEGA SPOILERS FOR FAIRLY RECENT PLOT

 STOP HERE IF YOU’RE NOT CAUGHT UP

 SERIOUSLY]

 What I mean by this is the current state of events re: two particular recent/recent-ish plot arcs.

First, Quirk Removal, and second, Endeavor’s comeuppance.

Quirk Removal/Loss was the start of my realization to what the narrative was doing regarding Izuku’s Quirklessness and the state of being overall.

This arc was a perfect time to bring up Midoriya’s past! A lot of Western works certainly would have done so! And yes, it may be bordering on done-to-death, but many elements of Hero Academia put new twists on common themes and cliches; it wasn’t unreasonable to hope that he might do it again.

Instead, little to NOTHING is discussed during this time! In fact, iirc I’d go so far as to say Midoriya straight-up never considers his past at any point during this arc!? If I’m wrong then it obviously made little impact.

NOW, not every disabled character needs to incorporate their disability and/or skills gleaned from living with it in every narrative. In fact, it would get tedious and questionable if they did (note: this does NOT mean ignoring/forgetting the character is even disabled when convenient. Like, I’d like to think that’s the obvious point of this post but... *gestures at tumblr*). 

But the complete lack of it here feels really weird. Like, almost hollow. I think Midoriya makes some kind of suggestion to Mirio of his former Quirklessness at the end of the arc, but nothing that made any kind of impact.

Let’s move on.

Endeavor.

Now, the problem with Endeavor’s arc is not the arc itself. Or, rather, it’s the fact that Endeavor’s Comeuppance is pretty good.

This is a problem because someone else should be getting this exact same arc, yet the issue is never even RECOGNIZED, let alone addressed.

Endeavor’s abuse of his wife and children, all in the name of creating a Heroic legacy, is publicized and tanks his popularity. The general public is now aware of what he’s done to the people closest to him, which aside from giving him a more correct reputation, means they can’t trust him to protect them if they can’t trust him to protect his own family.

This isn’t the goal of this post and I’m no expert regardless, but up to this point (around chapter 290) this was handled in an interesting way. Endeavor is humanized and often shown interacting with people in a way that, while often domineering, isn’t always aggressive or abusive. He runs a Hero Agency for crying out loud! But abuse in the real world often isn’t constant, nor happening to everyone in contact with the abuser. So this is a surprisingly good lead up to the reveal, where you can understand how most people never realized this was an issue.

But here’s my main point. Let’s examine some traits and actions that come up:

physically abusive to a child (often dangerously so) to the point of permanent trauma and severe scarring in some cases

target of abuse was weaker (physically and/or regarding Quirk power)

often abused victim emotionally/psychologically, bringing this weakness up again and again

own immense power led to rising in the world of Heroics

comrades, fellow Heroes, UA teachers etc. not aware of prior abuse issues

Who does this sound like?

Endeavor, who has a whole fucking arc dedicated to this reveal and repercussions?

Or Bakugou?

Reminder: This isn’t a hate post. This isn’t a character post, or even an abuse post. This is about ableism.

Bakugou exhibits many, many traits and actions that Endeavor was literally just punished for. So why does the treatment of these characters in-universe differ so drastically?

Two primary reasons I can think of, which feed into each other:

1) Bakugou was a child (still technically is a minor, remember! Still a first-year high schooler!) when this started. This doesn’t mean he’s strictly innocent, but it’s an important point, because it leads us to

2) Bakugou Katsuki’s abuse of Midoriya Izuku is socially accepted.

Reminder of the audience’s first encounter with Katsuki. The very first page with him is him and his grade-school posse picking on a kid that Izuku is trying to protect. His posse is showing off their Quirk powers and mocking Izuku’s lack thereof.

Then we flash forward to late-middle school versions of the kids. Bakugou, in front of a fucking teacher and entire class, is verbally, physically, etc. abusive to Izuku. He trashes his stuff, threatens him, tells him to kill himself (which, as Izuku notes later, is a fucking felony in Japan too).

No one stops him.

No one criticizes him.

We don’t even get a shot of like, some more ‘regular’ students being like “man Bakugou’s kinda fucked up but we’re too scared to do anything about it” NO. NO. Everyone more or less either backs Katsuki up or straight up doesn’t care.

Remember that this started when Katsuki and Izuku were four. Remember that Katsuki’s power is absurdly dangerous, ie. LITERAL. GODDAMN. EXPLOSIONS.

Izuku has scars. He probably has hearing loss! He may have gotten at least one concussion which can cause serious neurological issues and open him up to further risk!

He could have died.

And?

NO ONE. DOES. ANYTHING.

THIS is the point of the post. THIS is the value placed on Quirkless people in this society.

And yet. Despite Endeavor’s comeuppance. Despite All Might and Izuku’s blatant ‘value’ to society through Heroics. Despite so many other political implications and quandaries address in the Hero Academia series.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing about this is addressed. The nearly-lethal ableism towards Quirkless people in this society is never ONCE brought up properly once Izuku receives One For All.

There is so much potential here! There is so much worth talking about! And yet we’ve moved into what feels very much like the Final Battle without it being addessed, despite numerous, numerous opportunities for a meaningful conversation about it along the way.

Mirio losing his power! Hell, Mirio’s powers’ drawbacks (and pretty much every Quirk’s drawback! if acknowledged properly!) border on a disability-analogue, and even more when Yuga’s laser comes up, and yet again and again we fail to truly engage with the matter in a meaningful way.

At this point, even if it comes up in the finale, I’m going to be disappointed in this particular aspect of the series due to the complete and total shut-down it’s been given so far.

What the FUCK, Horikoshi?

#elk text #24th #February #2021 #February 24th 2021 #I hope the bold helps with reading #long post warn #elk has thoughts #sorry for the ramble #Ableism #other shit comes up but plz keep in mind that that is the PRIMARY POINT OF THIS #also: #child abuse warn #abuse warn #harry potter spoilers warn #boku no hero spoilers #like REAL BIG spoilers for later Hero Academia stuff! #this is not a character hate post and i will block judiciously #elk has feelings

[kpopper]

(mouse/beyond evil anon here)

omg I didn't realize you'd watch it so quickly!! I'm so glad I was able to rec something you'd enjoy this immensely 🥰🥰

I was not expecting the level of goodness from Mouse and now I'm spoiled for other crime shows!! I actually watched Mouse before Beyond Evil cause Beyond Evil seemed pretty dark (lolllll)

the other crime show I watched recently was Taxi Driver (with Lee Je Hoon). It's really good especially the driving scenes (omg I loved the driving scenes!) but it was a little hard to watch due to the back stories of some of the characters (tw abuse and assault). It's a really good cathartic, revenge, crime show :)

a romantic rec I loved is Run On on Netflix. It's super cute, easy to watch, and with none of the toxicity that other kdrama couples may have and I especially loved the 2nd couple!

I need to watch law school and devil judge ty for the rec!!!

I'll end this super long message with:

jung ba reum and ko moo chi <333 (thanks for reading this holy shit)

(I've also been meaning to watch You Are My Spring on Netflix if you've heard anything about it?)

(again mouse anon here)

omg heyy again

I realized I forgot another rec! I highly rec Flower of Evil if you haven't watched it yet because it's a romantic crime drama, with an emphasis on the romantic aspect. It's about the cutest family, a husband and wife with their adorable daughter but the husband has a secret past o.o anyway it's just super good and I love it sm!!

I hope you find some unicorn lovey dovey shows to watch to get your mind of Mouse <333

flower of evil ANON!!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭 you do have the best taste 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 i watched when it got out and loved it plenty :<

for taxi driver im interested based on your rec <3 but is the tw abuse and assault bc the characters did it? i mean i can. handle these tw if they happen on a show but not if the characters im supposed to simpathyze with are the prepertrators u know? i watched sisyphus and one of the characters beat his wife in the past and there's no redemption arc that will make me like someone like that lmao so if there's just tw in the show its ok but pls tell me if they're done by the main characters otherwise i wont be able to enjoy it </3

i havent watched run on (its on my list) and i dont know anything about you are my spring :( but i'll look into both thank you <3333

#answered #anonymous