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1moremilgram-enjoyer · 7 months

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Play-by-Play Analysis of HARROW

Hello members of the jury! Since I only recently joined the Milgram fandom, I feel it'd be nice to have most of my thoughts on each MV so far in one big analysis for each. I'm starting with HARROW because Kotoko's second trial MV is coming out relatively soon, so I want to get my thoughts about her in order before then!

What? Double? MeMe? What are you talking about?

(Translation: Mikoto's giving me a headache so I've decided to hold off more in-depth analysis until Double actually releases)

Anyways, let's see what our local furry vigilante has for us!

CW Death and murder, child kidnapping and torture, vigilantism, online radicalization, self-loathing and grief, mention of cannibalism, sexual harassment (upskirt shots)

Theoretical Basis

(For anyone not yet familiar with the prisoner's situation)

There's not much debate over what Kotoko's murder is. She killed someone to "protect the weak", so vigilante justice.

[TASK (First Voice Drama)] Kotoko: I did kill someone. This is the one reason why I believe in the power of MILGRAM. But, the murder is only to protect the weak ones being bullied from the extremely evil ones. I became a shield for the weak, the result of becoming a fang for the weak.

The exact nature of her murder is... complicated, but we'll get there in the analysis.

Analysis

Alright, let's see what kind of incredibly subtle symbolism this video has in store for us-!

Or maybe we just get punched in the face by the symbolism! The opening lingers on a shot of Kotoko wearing a blindfold because "justice is blind." You get it? The lyrics in this scene are:

Let’s end this! “HARROW” “HARROW” I can’t forgive the evil hurting the weak It’s unforgivable, I won’t allow it, I sweared

(I'm using the English subtitles transcribed in the wiki btw, though I might change a bit of formatting for funsies)

So basically setting up the main message HARROW wants to communicate; Kotoko wants to protect those she considers weak. She cannot possibly forgive any offense, that she... "sweared." The past tense of 'swear' is 'swore' but alright.

However, it's worth noting that this is a biased showing of the events, as we're seeing them through Kotoko's eyes. She considers her justice as "blind", but I'm not entirely sure that's true. We’ll get to it when we get to it.

‘Harrow’ means to cause distress to (because I’m pretty sure we’re not referencing any farming equipment). In context, I believe it means Kotoko feels distressed by the evil in the world, which will make more sense as we look at other lyrics.

Kotoko is in her investigation room, for lack of a better name, and is pondering her investigation board. Now, if you think I'm insane enough to try to figure out what she's doing in that board... you're right, but I couldn't figure out anything too interesting. She seems to just be narrowing down suspects and figuring out murder routes.

Kotoko is seen wearing a white jacket with red streaks, as well as a black tank top of despair and white shoes. I've explained how I view the symbolism of her clothes in this other post (which you should probably read before this one because I reference it quite a bit), so I'm not gonna go too deeply into it here.

The interesting thing about this scene are all the wolves staring into the camera there. I believe all these wolves represent people online who do similar things to Kotoko and influencing her, which is gonna make slightly more sense as we go further. Note that there are many wolves here, too many to just be her family in my opinion, which is an interpretation I've seen around.

However, it's notable that there is also one other wolf which is seen directly next to Kotoko, not to mention the two wolf pelts (a white one where Kotoko is sitting, a brownish-grayish one next to her). We see the wolf sleeping for a moment, before waking up with a close up of its eye. By the way, in case anyone's concerned, the wolf is not different from the wolves we see in the pack later. It only looks white momentarily because of the lighting, but you can actually see it has the same "white under - gray top" as every other wolf.

I hope it's clear enough.

So why is this wolf important? I believe this is another person, but one who is working alongside Kotoko directly. We unfortunately never really see who they might be, but I do think they exist, and they're not the serial killer with the white hoodie. Again, things in these MVs make more sense the longer you go on.

One interesting thing is that the close-up of the eye looks like a camera lens. Currently, the theory I'm going with is that Kotoko is working alongisde this "wolf", but they don't meet in person often; they mostly speak through video chats. Thus the wolf's eye, the one which can stare at Kotoko, is a camera. I have very little basis for this, mind you, but without Deep Cover, this is the best I can come up with for now.

Finally, the lyrics, which are repeated several times over the course of the MV.

How heavy “HARROW” “HARROW” Is the damage to get in the way of someone’s dream. I’ll gouge you out with my fangs

I think the placement of the word 'harrow' is sort of confusing the lyrics a bit. I think "how heavy is the damage to get in the way of someone's dream" makes one full sentence, so the way I read this is

"It's so horrible (it's harrowing, it distresses me) the damage evil people cause, that gets in the way of people's dreams. I'll destroy the evil, gouge them out like a wolf's fang."

Does that make sense? I hope it does. It's not like the exact meaning is too important; the main thing to take away here is how much Kotoko hates people who get in the way of other people's lives.

Alright watch out this one's important. Kotoko's out on the street, and looks at a sign which speaks of an accident, asking the public to call the police if they have more information. Meanwhile, this lyric plays:

Stained emotions, what is winning or losing Feeding on food so I don’t burn out

The important thing to note here is how unsure Kotoko seems here; she sounds lost. She can't tell what she wants, "what is winning or losing", her emotions are "stained" because she's in despair. For one reason or another, she seems distraught.

The reason for the stained emotions is likely that accident sign we see. It appears repeatedly throughout the MV, as you're going to see. Why it's so important is up in the air, but for now, I'm going with the idea that the person who died in this accident was someone Kotoko knew personally.

Well, "accident." We'll get there.

The moment Kotoko stares at the sign, the lyric "feeding on food so I don't burn out" plays. Presumably, "feeding on food" refers to her vigilantism, the thing she does to feel alive, to keep the flame inside her burning. This isn't the only reason she does the things she does, but it is an important one. Kotoko is sad over this "accident", so she feels she has to do something about it so as to not break down entirely. In fact, it’s very possible it’s after this incident occurred that Kotoko dropped out of university.

(T1) Q7: What did you study at university?

KY: For a while, I studied at the faculty of law. There's something I want to do, so I'm currently taking a break from studies, though.

For the flower symbolism fans, I believe the flowers next to the road sign are white lilies, pink roses, and I think baby's breath (the tiny ones). They are all suitable funeral flowers.

White lilies in particular are apparently pretty popular funeral flowers in Japan, representing purity, elegance, virtue, that kind of thing. Pink roses are also used in funerals, representing love (though explicitly not romantic, I think), appreciation, gratitude, gentleness, etc. Finally, baby’s breath represents purity and innocence, and important to note, are usually used for the funerals of young children.

This is a surprise tool that will help us later-

Another thing to note is the name on Kotoko’s cap and jacket, Jacques Roulet. I’ve talked about it in this post, but if you don’t want to read the full story of Jacques Roulet, it’s about a man who claimed to be a werewolf, killed a child to eat him, and only stopped when two wolves scared him off. I couldn’t come to any definitive conclusions, but I think the best answer here is that Kotoko is one of the wolves who scared off Jacques, who in this case would be the serial killer Kotoko ends up killing. This would entail she had a partner in vigilantism, which is part of what gets me to believe that wolf buddy in the beginning is an actual person.

Finally, a fun fact about that stop sign to our left, that’s actually outdated lol. Stop signs in Japan used to be like that, but apparently from 2017 onwards they now display “stop” in Japanese and English, not just Japanese like in the MV. I doubt this means anything other than ‘the artist who drew this probably grew up with the old stop signs all their life and didn’t think much about it’, but it’s there. Oh, and if you want to really look at the symbolism, Kotoko could be said to be turning away from the stop sign, implying this is her “start.” Get it? Like the opposite of “stop.”

(And listen, I have to draw a line somewhere, I'm not talking about the trash bags and vending machine, etc)

(Girl do you want a chair)

Here we start to see how Kotoko spirals down, and begins to form more and more radical ideas in her search of justice. The articles she's reading are all speaking of different crimes, as these lyrics play.

Becoming light-headed again, it all becomes crazy The normalcy sought for, fading away, everytime death comes The soul moves forward

She's "becoming lightheaded" as she looks at these reports, sickened by the evil in the world. The status quo she's searching for, a world without evil, disappears as horrible people keep killing and hurting.

Yet, "the soul moves forward." Kotoko must find a way to keep going, must find a way to deal with the death and the evil. Both for the sake of "the normalcy sought for", and for the sake of her own feelings. And that is her vigilantism.

Let's go over what exactly she's seeing. I won't post full translations for most of these, you can go to this post by Maristelina which is nothing short of a God-send for that, but I'll give summaries. In order of appearance:

A man and a woman in their twenties stole a bag from another woman and drove off. They were caught on camera, so they were arrested and admitted to the police they sold what they stole to pay for food and drinks. They had a prior record of theft.

(Note: I've seen some theorize this could be Kotoko and someone else, and while it's an interesting possibility, I don't see much evidence for it, and the fact Kotoko is 20 in Milgram makes the timeline a bit wonky imo)

A man in his 30s deceived an 80 year old woman out of 500.000 yen by pretending to be a bank employee. Keep this one in mind.

A 46 year old man took over 200 upskirts photos of high school girls in public transport. One of his work colleagues claimed he'd been saying he was going to pick up his kids, and had no idea what he was actually doing. The man himself claims to have done it to escape the stress from work. Below the article, there are two comments... which Maristelina didn't translate, so I did my best but take the following two translations with a massive grain of salt because my ass does not know Japanese.

何やわんこいつ = What is this guy? 同僚のコメントおかしぃだろwwww = Your colleague's comment is funny hahahaha

Additionally, we later see two anonymous comments which follow the same style as these two, and thus I believe they're talking about this. These ones Maristelina did translate!

Anon on Top: It’s just stress, cut him some slack. Anon on bottom: People like this will just do it again.

(Note: That last one is one of the things which make me believe Kotoko was at least slightly influenced by the comments of other people online)

A man in Tokyo was arrested for stealing luxury bikes by figuring out their combination locks. The police will charge him with theft and other crimes soon.

A group of people have pulled off something called the "It's me" scam over 40 times (FNAF reference?). Basically they call someone, disguising their voice, claiming to be a family member or someone they know and asking for cash for an emergency. The article specifically talks about a 23 year old woman who lost a million yen to this scam.

Point is, there's a lot of crime going on.

Anyways, as the camera pans out, we see a tripod, which can be assumed to have a camera pointed at the investigation board. Since it's not a very good idea to record yourself planning to commit crimes and posting it online anywhere, my best guess for what Kotoko is doing with that is videochatting with someone specific? Maybe? That's why the wolf's eye sort of looks like a camera in the beginning? I'm trying, cut me some slack here. This is very possibly wrong, but I don't know what else to do with this tripod.

If you don't get what's going on here, basically these images flash on screen very quickly, in the order I put them in.

Let's start with the lyrics, which are easy:

I hate all the evils in this world I feel like I’m about to break The surrounding net covered with poison

Kotoko hates evil, she's this close to breaking down, she feels trapped in a net of poison. You get it.

The image flash is important, though. We see the "accident" I said was important before, alongside two things: a TV report I'll call the Street With Bushes Report (SWB report), and an article about white hoodie guy. The SWB report says:

Body Found near the Home of Another Female Victim. Possible Connection to Series of Murders of Girls The body was found near the home of another female victim, and the police are investigating a possible connection to a series of murders of girls committed by the same perpetrator.

And the article:

Shocking revelation: The heinous criminal behind the crime is the privileged son of a high-ranking official! Killed 10 people in just about 2 years. Victims are elementary school students. Hidden by a cover-up.

Presumably the SWB report is of one of this guy's murders. He killed 10 elementary school girls, dumped their bodies near their home, and it was hidden because his father was a high-ranking police officer. I imagine this is probably why Kotoko lost faith in the police and the judicional system as a whole.

However, you'll notice an interesting detail. We maybe actually get to see this victim, somewhat. That person with the white dress laying on their back on a wooden floor. The only other time we see them is at the very end, so I think it's possible they really are related to the SWB report.

But why are we getting so many details about this one murder? It's not connected to the "accident", since the street is different. Well, it's not something I can answer now, but take this idea that there's a second murder which Kotoko isn't necessarilly related to, but one she knows more in-depth than some of the other white hoodie murders.

I put a lot of images here because I gotta properly illustrate this. This scene, where we see a representation of Kotoko's mind, starts with her literally opening her eyes or "waking up", sort of similar to the wolf at the beginning. She's surrounded by wolves, looking around hesitantly. Like I said before, at the beginning of HARROW, Kotoko is still very unsure of herself, but here, surrounded by the wolves, she seems to finally find a purpose. That's why the scene ends with her focusing on the foggy path ahead and starting to run with the pack.

What I believe is happening here is that Kotoko believes she is beginning to understand just how much evil there is in the world, with the guidance of the wolves (again, possibly people online with radical views), and decides to follow them into the foggy path of vigilantism. Essentially, this is a representation of her radicalization. And it's scarily accurate, isn't it? Someone lost and vulnerable, who literally starts by being framed as the wolves' prey, thinks she finds an answer to her 'harrowing' situation. Even the imagery of "waking up" is pretty common for some of these types of communities.

This also vaguely mirrors the scene in Little Red Riding Hood where the titular character first meets the wolf, which presents itself as friendly while getting information of what the girl is doing. This imagery of Little Red Riding Hood will come up again, so.

One note is that the trees are dead, which not only shows how grim Kotoko's views on the world are, but can also see as symbols of death and rebirth. That's going to come into play later, though you could argue Kotoko's already been reborn by becoming radicalized. Additionally, the fog can represent a twisted or limited view on the world, cloudy thoughts, that sort of thing.

The lyrics aren't anything special, since they're the same as in the beginning.

Let’s end this! “HARROW” “HARROW” I can’t forgive the evil hurting the weak It’s unforgivable, I won’t allow it, I sweared How heavy “HARROW” “HARROW” If it damaged someone’s dream to the points of stopping it I’ll gouge you out with my fangs

Well that escalated quickly.

We actually see a lot of articles between when the chorus ends and when the verse begins, but they're mostly the same ones we've already seen (or Maristelina didn't translate them). However, that one I put in the collage is interesting. It talks about how a wanted thief named Mikio Oshii was beaten in the face, stomach and other areas by someone in a hood and using men's sneakers. Oshii was taken to the hospital, but there's no mention to whether or not he died.

And in the next scene, Kotoko scrolls through an article describing Mikio Oshii, which explains he had been the one to steal money from the elderly by pretending to be a bank employee.

Note that this guy has a face, possibly signifying importance. This is because this is the first big act of vigilantism Kotoko performs. Note she uses men's clothing because it throws off the police; the first article actually says the police narrowed down suspects only to men, so it clearly works.

However, Kotoko isn't looking to stop after one. She's still walking forward, the evils always lurking in the background. The lyrics as she beats up Oshii are:

I’ll teach you the pain you caused It’s a tie after saying sorry? What are you hoping for?!

And when she's walking along:

Shall we replace the poor soul, and the miserable delusion “I didn’t mean to offend”, “I won’t do it again” How many wins in a row?

It's evident something's changed in Kotoko. Before, she was asking herself "what is winning or losing?", now she seems to speak with authority on what a "tie" and a "win" are.

And what is a win in her eyes? Well, I believe it's when she "replaces the poor soul and miserable delusion." In other words, when she can get an evildoer to stop their acts of evil by "teaching them the pain they caused." That's why after they say "I won't do it again", Kotoko adds a win; how many in a row? Saying sorry isn't enough, of course, it's not even a tie; she needs to make sure they never engage in evil ever again.

So here's how I read this line:

Let's replace the evil monster with a respectable citizen. Saying sorry isn't enough, we need to teach them the pain they caused so they never do it again. And we hear them promise to stop over and over; how many times have we done this in a row?

Maybe there's other ways to interpret that, but we ball.

(This really makes me wonder what she would consider a "win" in Milgram, though. She doesn't even know what the people she attacks did, how would she know they would stop after getting beat up by her? Unless she straight up aimed to kill, which would stop them, but I believe she was probably going more for an incapacitation thing, otherwise I don't think Mahiru would have survived at all. Whatever, we'll presumably get an explanation in her second VD)

One question that comes up is what are the other "wins in a row"? However, we have genuinely no way to tell, so it's just an unknown for now.

Now, let's ask the big question of the scene. Did Oshii die in the hospital, or did Kotoko intentionally let him live? Well, I believe he survived. One, because there isn't much of a point to specify he was taken to the hospital if he did die. Two, because there is precedent of Kotoko being able to control her strength as to not kill her victim provided medical attention is adminestered (Mahiru), and if she didn't kill him in the moment, she presumably didn't want him dead. Three;

[TASK] (First VD) Kotoko: I did kill someone. [...] what I did is, "facing an urgent and illegal infringement, an action taken out of necessity to protect the rights of myself and others".

Even beyond the wording of someone implying only one victim (and she most likely did kill the guy at the end), Kotoko was not facing an urgent infringement when she found Oshii, since he seems like he was just minding his bussiness when she got there. So it wouldn't be justifiable defense as she claims her murder was. Yes, it's possible she's lying, but I genuinely think there is at least an argument her murder was justifiable defense, as she's usually paired up with Yuno, Fuuta, Mahiru and Kazui (long story), and the most straightforward connection there is "their 'sin' would not be considered murder in a court of law." The other four didn't outright kill a human with their own hands, and Kotoko's would be considered "justifiable defense." Get it?

Undercover prisoner card? What are you talking about? Let me cope and ignore that.

Anyways, for now we can't be sure whether Oshii died or not, but I think he didn't. There's really no way to confirm though.

Finally, the scene ends with Kotoko finding the warehouses we'll see the serial killer take a victim into later. And yes, warehouses, plural. Go back and check; there are two warehouses connected to each other. I believe the warehouse complex might even be referenced in the whiteboards of the investigation room.

I have zero way of checking the Japanese, but none of the other marked locations in her whiteboards match multiple buildings being circled as one complex, which seems to be what these warehouses are.

Why is this important? It probably isn't. But my insanely deranged murder theory sorta requires the possibility there are multiple warehouses connected together in the same complex, so I'm introducing it now so I don't have to convince you of too many things at the same time.

Speaking of not important things, there's a 40 km/h speed limit sign, and a 'no parking' sign. Nothing too wild there, though I guess you could try to read into some kind of symbolism that Kotoko needs to slow down, but she's not gonna stop. That's insane even for my standards, but it's there.

Before we deal with the images, the lyrics are:

Whose fault is it This is getting ridiculous What should the punishment be?

Considering the fact all the images here are connected to the serial killer dude, that's probably referring to him. "Whose fault is it" that he keeps getting away with it. "This is getting ridiculous" because come on, how have the police not caught him yet? "What should the punishment be?" because if the police isn't gonna do anything about it, then she will, and she gets to decide how he'll be punished.

So what are we seeing? Let's ignore the TV report for now, because what is probably the most important article in the MV shows up here; the article with the serial killer that shows up.

“Since he was young, he has been aware of his environment, and his parents are satisfied. His thoughts are unknown,” according to the voices around him. He lives in a tower apartment located in the city. It seems that the suspect’s name (A) was not revealed, and no investigation was conducted based on his bodily fluids. According to sources, there may have been concealment due to his father’s pressure. The victim may have been run over by a car or killed by hand. However, due to the fact that suspect A is his son, there is a lack of consistency in the handling of the case.

Did you spot it?

The victim may have been run over by a car or killed by hand

In case you missed it, the police should be able to easily tell whether someone was ran over by a car, or they were killed by hand. This should not be difficult, though I can't confirm with sources, I'm pretty sure just looking at the injuries should be enough. And yet, they're unsure. But as the article says, there could be some foul play going on, since the guy is the son of an official.

Do you get it? If there's doubt of what happened, that's because the victim wasn't ran over. The police are trying to cover up a murder by claiming it was simply an accident, that way the killer can get away with simply a slap on the wrist. Which is interesting, because we already know this guy killed ten children, why is this murder and cover up so important?

Well, we do know of another "accident", don't we? And if you remember what I said about baby's breath the flower, you'll remember it's possible the victim of said "accident" was a child, which fits the profile of this guy's victims.

Thus, I believe if we're bringing attention to this murder in particular, that's because it's connected to the "accident" Kotoko is so fixated on. I believe the serial killer murdered someone close to Kotoko, and the police covered it up as an accident. And this is what kickstarted Kotoko's path to vigilantism.

This brings up the interesting possibility that Kotoko may have killed him out of a personal grudge, rather than simply to protect someone else. Don't get me wrong, she definitely wanted to protect the weak, that's her thing, but she could have done that without killing him, in theory. She hurt him to protect others; she may have killed him for revenge. At least, that's what I think.

Her justice isn't as blind as she makes it out to be, is it? Unreliable narrators, gotta love 'em-

And speaking of, subconciously twisting a supposedly strict moral system to justify killing someone for personal grudges? That reminds me a lot of another prisoner, but I will not allow Amane Momose to consume this post.

Anyways, that aside, there is actually another murder referenced in this scene. The one referenced in the TV, what I'll call the Highway report (not entirely sure it's a highway actually, but that's what it looks like to me).

New evidence in the case of the abandoned and murdered girl’s body? Report: Police (this afternoon) The same tire marks found at the scene where the victim’s body was discovered were found near the scene of the crime. The perpetrator likely abducted the victim in a car, killed her, and then abandoned her body in the vicinity of her home.

Note that the police are sure this one's a murder, presumably because there's no way to connect the white hoodie guy to it, so there's no need to cover that up. Because of that, and because again the street shown doesn't match either the "accident" street or the SWB report, this is a third murder Kotoko is oddly fixated on. Although we don't see the victim for this one. However, the whiteboard shown here doesn't actually match the whiteboards on Kotoko's room.

It's possible, then, that each of these whiteboards represent a different murder. And once again, we have the theme of three murders Kotoko has more knowledge of than the rest. Presumably, these are the murders Kotoko investigated deeply to figure out where the killer was taking his victims. Keep this idea of 'three important murders' in mind, with what Kotoko knows about them.

>She may have known the victim of the "accident" personally.

>She remembers seeing the victim of the SWB murder, the one with the white dress.

>She doesn't seem to know what the victim of the Highway murder looked like.

Anyways, the scene ends with Kotoko running forward, as we cut to another forest scene.

This one doesn't have much new stuff in terms of imagery, though there's three things worth noting. First, by now Kotoko is firmly running in front of the pack, so she's firmly one of them, unlike in the first chorus, where she was still figuring stuff out. Two, the waning moon is still there. Three, Kotoko's clothes haven't changed despite how much she's changed, which I talked about in the clothes' post and I believe represents how Kotoko doesn't realize how much her views are shifting as she hangs out with the "pack of wolves."

Timelines - 20/6/18 Kotoko: Treat you [Amane] like a child? Hah, you’ve got to be kidding. Back when I was your age, I was already the person I am today.

However, the lyrics are quite interesting.

Want to find “HARROW” “HARROW” I feel like I’m going crazy after straining my nerves The person that can’t be saved, is now understanding the abnormality How heavy “HARROW” “HARROW” If it damaged someone’s dream to the points of stopping it I want gouge you out with my fangs

I've already talked about the second part, but the first one is new. At first it doesn't seem like anything special; we already knew Kotoko was "going crazy after straining her nerves", again becoming sickened by the evil in the world.

But then there's "the person that can't be saved, is now understanding the abnormality." Which seems to mirror the earlier line:

The normalcy sought for, fading away, every time death comes.

As stated before, Kotoko sees a "normal" world as one without evil. But as she saw more and more crime happening around her, she "begun to understand the abnormality", she begun to understand how much evil there was in the world.

But the person who begins to understand the abnormality "can't be saved." Which seems to imply Kotoko considers herself impossible to save. She's far too sickened by the world to feel anything but awful, she feels nothing will ever make her feel good with her life.

Friendly reminder that Anti-Beat, her Trial 1 cover song, is extremely depressing. CW suicidal ideations

[Anti-Beat] Anti Beat I just want to die already, So I can finally be at ease Anti Beat But all I know is pain And there’s nowhere to run Anti Beat

CW over

So yeah, she's extremely sad, and doesn't think anything will make her feel good. That's why she clings so hard to vigilantism; as we'll soon see, it's the only way she's found she can feel good about her life. Yeah, it's sad.

As the bridge plays, we get to see the last few investigative actions Kotoko performs. She shows some dude possibly named "Kaneshiro Ken'otoko" something on her phone, then pays him 10k yen (around $100) for him to... do something. He works for "Shoko Newspaper Corporation" (Shoko is just a woman's name), and is an external director. Well, that's not a real term, but it's probably meant to mean outside director? A member of a company's board of directors who is not an employee or stakeholder in the company. I don't know how important that is, though. Point is, it seems he's pretty high up in a newspaper company, and thus likely has some kind of information Kotoko finds useful. Presumably that's how she found the warehouse complex in the first place.

And then, Kotoko sees the killer take a child with orange overalls into one of the warehouses. I'm going to ask you to pay attention to three things (at this point I'm starting to feel like a Playmaker from Yugioh kinnie). First, the guy has put up a sign to seemingly close down the entire complex, either implying it's completely abandoned or he owns the entire place. This implies he can be relatively confident no one will enter the complex until he's done with his victim. Second, the walls have verticals lines on the walls and vertical bars on the windows. Third, Kotoko is wearing her blue and yellow jacket + cap, and the girl's hands are unbound.

We'll get to why these things are important (to me and no one else) later.

And this is a really weird thing to put here. Although we just saw Kotoko witnessing a crime, we see her slowing down, getting tired and discouraged. It's almost like she's going back to doubting herself, see the lyrics:

Newly born “HARROW” “HARROW” It’s ok to dislike, right? Losing it, losing it. What should I hope for?

She's 'newly born' since she recently underwent some pretty big changes, but she's still distressed. She's doubting whether or not she's allowed to hate evil/the hoodie guy as much as she does, and questions what she even wants to do, what outcome she hopes for.

But the doubt doesn't last long. One of the wolves, possibly the one from the beginning she's particularly close to, smiles at her as this line plays:

Goodnight “HARROW” “HARROW” Laugh and I can get to like myself

Goodnight, because something's about to end, there's a big change looming. She will now "laugh" to "get to like herself." As stated, Kotoko feels deeply dissatisfied with her life, and her vigilantism is the only thing she has which makes her feel good about herself. Kotoko literally laughs after she says that, because her vigilantism is about to reach a climax. She will now kill the man who caused so much suffering, to others, and to her, by killing the victim of the "accident."

So what was up with that hesitation at the beginning? Well, uh. I'll get there in the murder theory. Let's go to the final scene.

Lyrics first since it's the easier part, as most of them are repeated.

Let’s end this! “HARROW” “HARROW” I can’t forgive the evil hurting the weak It’s unforgivable, I won’t allow it, I just can’t let it go How heavy “HARROW” “HARROW” If it damaged someone’s dream to the points of stopping it I want gouge you out with my fangs

The only notable thing is the addition at the very end.

I want to be drowning in the knowledge that I am right

Basically what we've heard before. As Kotoko is very unhappy with herself usually, she finds worth in herself by protecting the weak, which requires "the knowledge she's right" to do the things she does. She wants to feel sure of herself, which as stated is one of the reasons she engages in vigilantism.

As for the visual symbolism, I talked in the clothes post about how Kotoko undergoes a pretty big change here. She's reborn. Remember how the forest scenes always had a waning moon? Well, this one has a full moon, representing the end of a cycle, rebirth. The same sybolism is found by the fact dawn breaks there, again showing rebirth. This also connects to Red Riding Hood symbolism, etc.

This idea of rebirth is even further implied by the fact we see a wolf with her neon pink smile take its place in the investigation room. Kotoko, with the full moon like a werewolf, has become just like the rest of the wolves. She's changed for good.

One other note, you see that one shot where we see the killer's smiling shadow? Doesn't it look like his mouth casts a shadow like a wolf's snout?

If you squint, yeah, I think so. This, and the fact he kills children, is what makes me think he's "Jacques Roulet" getting chased off by the two wolves (Kotoko and wolf buddy) in that metaphor. Not entirely confident I know what the deal with this is, but you know.

Okay so the symbolism is all good, but now we have to get to the really weird part of all of this. Which is, what the fuck is actually happening in her murder? Let's get to the most speculative part of this post, the one which will most likely be outdated by the time Deep Cover releases lol.

(Unhinged) Murder Theory

First Problem: The Time Gap

So it's pretty well known that Kotoko's clothes mysteriously change between when she sees the kidnapping outside, and when she actually goes attack the dude. She sees the kidnapping happen with her blue and yellow jacket, but she kills the dude with her red hoodie. This isn't even the only indication that some time has passed. We can also see the girl's hands are bound and her shoes are off on the floor, so there were at least a few minutes the killer had to do that. Additionally, the lighting slightly changes between Kotoko seeing the event and the murder ending.

Okay the change is actually subtle enough I could believe it just took her a few minutes to finish off the guy, but it is there.

So I believe some time passed. Clearly not much, since the lighting shift isn't too radical, but there's at least a few minutes between when Kotoko sees the kidnapping and when she rushes in.

And I believe we can get a vague idea of what happened, by looking at the scene in between these two things. Which you'll remember, is the scene in the forest where Kotoko slows down and hesitates, before being encouraged by the wolf again. Essentially, after seeing the guy commit a crime right in front of her, Kotoko briefly hesitated, and maybe rushed back to her investigation room or somewhere else. Perhaps she considered just calling the police, perhaps she was paralyzed by the trauma of the "accident", whatever the case, Kotoko couldn't get herself to immediately rush in. However, maybe she called her partner in vigilantism, that wolf she seems particularly close to, and they encouraged her to go in and do her thing.

Is this a good answer? Fuck no, but it's undeniable some time passed, so until we get Deep Cover, this is the best explanation I can come up with as to why that happened. The point is, there's a time gap between the kidnapping and the attack. Keep that in mind.

Second Issue: Different Warehouse

The warehouse Kotoko kills the guy in has bricks which form both vertical and horizontal lines on the walls, and the window has a horizontal and diagonal bars instead of just vertical. It's a different warehouse. Thankfully, though, this is pretty easily solved by what I mentioned before; the killer didn't block off access to just one warehouse, but to the entire complex.

Thus, it's perfectly possible he just took the kid through one warehouse and into another one. This is simply more indication that there really was a time gap between the kidnapping and Kotoko's attack.

However, there's a huge problem. Not only is the girl nowhere to be seen in the last shot, this isn't the room the kid was in. That one's a lot smaller.

Biggest Issue: The Nonsensicality of the Attack

The first thing I want to address; I don't think Kotoko ever worked with this killer. It goes against pretty much her entire character, and as mentioned, I'm pretty sure she has a personal grudge agaisnt him. There is reason to believe otherwise, you can find other posts around talking about it, and you can actually see two hammers on the floor in that scene, which I don't have a great answer for. However, it just doesn't seem like it makes much sense. And yet, there's so many weird things about Kotoko's initial attack in this wooden floor room.

>As mentioned, the room of this scene isn't where the guy actually died.

>The guy is standing on one of the hammers, seemingly not doing anything.

>He doesn't react to Kotoko entering at all beyond simply turning his head a bit, which doesn't seem appropriate even if he was working with her.

>The girl also doesn't react to Kotoko slamming the door open.

>The toolbox appears to be empty, though this isn't too big of an issue.

>Kotoko reaches for him with her right hand, but later we see her grabbing his hoodie with her left hand.

You could argue she turned him around with her right, then grabbed him, but that doesn't make much sense. Why not tackle him to the floor while his back is turned?

Well, to answer what's going on here, I think we need to look at the other scenes where this room appears, and notice they also don't make sense.

How does Kotoko remember these events? As I said, it doesn't make sense for her to have been working with the killer, but that's not all. The last one in particular is extremely impossible. Kotoko is nowhere to be seen in the room (unless she's the girl there, but I don't think so), and there's nowhere she could be where she doesn't cast a shadow or show up on the shot.

Well... I have an answer, but it's sort of insane. Kotoko shouldn't remember these events, so she doesn't.

Unhinged Hypothesis #1: These Scenes Are All Kotoko's Imagination

Alright hear me out. I think Kotoko saw this room at one point, but only when she went to rescue the orange overall girl. The rest of the scenes are her filling in the blanks with what she knows. When she saved the orange overall girl, she saw what the room looked like, the toolbox and weapons the killer was using to torture the girls with, and just imagined the rest.

And why do I say this? Well, apart from the aforementioned nonsensicality of the situation, remember those three murders I mentioned earlier? The ones Kotoko knows the most about?

>She may have known the victim of the "accident" personally. >She remembers seeing the victim of the SWB murder, the one with the white dress. >She doesn't seem to know what the victim of the Highway murder looked like.

Does this ring a bell? Because it matches the scenes of the room with the wooden floor, aside from the occassion with the orange overall girl obviously. We have:

>One shot of the killer attacking a victim out of frame, a victim Kotoko knows exists, but one she can't visualize. This would be the Highway victim, the one Kotoko never saw.

>The girl (because the report specifies it's a woman and it may be connected to the murder of other girls) with the white dress, as stated is likely the victim of the SWB murder. It's possible Kotoko got a glimpse of her corpse being carried away, which is why she only remembers a portion of her body covered by a white dress.

>And finally, the last shot of these we get, book-ending the image flash which starts with an image of the "accident" sign, is of a girl which Kotoko remembers in full. And it's a girl who looks like she could be elementary school age if you look at her at the right angle, so she likely is one of the dead girls. And it's a girl who looks suspiciously similar to Kotoko, perhaps a younger sister, a cousin? This is the victim of the "accident", I believe.

With this, it's possible Kotoko is simply imagining these things based on what she knows after seeing the murder room when she went to rescue the orange overall girl.

Am I confident in this claim? Not really, I'm decently sure it will be deconfrimed in Deep Cover, but for now I'm running with it so I can have something.

But why is this important? Well, apart from explaining how these scenes would be in the MV without having to assume Kotoko worked with the murderer, it also throws into question anything we see in these scenes. If you've been paying attention, you'll have realized Kotoko is not a particularly reliable narrator; see the "justice is blind" thing from the beginning, the non-changing clothes in the mind space, etc. And now, we're wondering if maybe, just maybe, that scene where she enters the wooden floor room and attacks the killer didn't play out how she's presenting it to us.

Unhinged Hypothesis #2: When Kotoko Found the Girl, the Killer Wasn't in the Room

Let me draw your attention to the distorted quote in her Trial 2 Voice Reveal.

"From the beginning I've never asked for your understanding! My actions, one by one, are bringing earth closer to peace. Useless weaklings should just shut up and let me protect them!"

Going by the pattern these things follow, this should be something Kotoko says before her murder. But, who is she saying it to? Looking at the context, it really seems like she's talking to an 'useless weakling' who is pushing against Kotoko's decisions. But, with the information we have so far, the only 'useless weakling' Kotoko could be talking to... is the orange overall girl. None of the other characters shown in HARROW really fit that description.

But how the hell would that happen? By the time Kotoko gets close enough to talk to her, she's suppossedly already attacking the serial killer. And yet, if you hear the quote, she doesn't sound winded or anything during the quote, she doesn't sound like she's fighting the dude. This implies there may have been some time before the murder when Kotoko could talk to the girl, but the killer wasn't there.

So we go back to what we have. The killer has no reason to think anyone will enter the warehouse complex, so he could perfectly leave for a moment to do something. By the time the killer is dead, the girl is nowehere to be seen, it's possible she's been untied and has ran away. And Kotoko's views of the events in the wooden floor room are not to be trusted. She sees herself as saving the girl from an immediate threat of danger, but that may not have been the case.

Heavy Speculation Incoming

My vision here is that Kotoko, after changing and coming back, found the girl in the wooden floor room alongside the toolbox and stuff, and untied her. After getting a bit of an explanation, she hears the murderer will probably come back soon, and decides to wait for him, so she can enact justice. Remember, this is personal; she doesn't just want to save this girl, she wants the guy dead.

Upon hearing this, the girl tries to convince her not to do that. It would be better to call the police and let them deal with it, right? But Kotoko obviously doesn't expect that to work, so she tells her she needs to kill the guy herself. The girl tries to talk her out of it, saying she doesn't understand, and that's where we get the Voice Reveal line. Kotoko never asked for her understanding; her actions are bringing Earth closer to justice, so 'useless weaklings' like the girl should shut up and listen to her.

At this point, you'll notice I'm practically just writing fanfiction. I have very little evidence for most of this, it's more just me trying to come up with some kind of explanation for all the seemingly contradicting evidence we have.

Though there is one more thing Kotoko being in the final warehouse before the killer would... somewhat kinda explain if you squint; the cap on the floor.

Listen. There is, like, no good explanation for why the fuck that's there. People don't just leave caps on the floor, no matter what they're doing. However, ignoring for a moment the why it's on the floor, let's look at the how. If the killer was already in the warehouse when Kotoko went in, there's no real way the cap would end up there. Kotoko has her hood up during the entire attack until the guy's already dead, so it couldn't have fallen off if she was wearing the cap under the hood for some reason. If she came in with it in her hand, for some reason, she would have to drop it before attacking him (see: grabbing him with her left hand then hitting him with her right), but she would drop it before reaching him; the cap wouldn't end up so close to them. Putting it in her pocket would be insane, and also wouldn't exactly explain how it would fall off and land upright either.

Thus, the only way I can think of to explain how it ended up there, is if it was already on the floor, then the killer went to inspect it or something, and that's when Kotoko attacked him. Again, no idea why Kotoko would just leave the cap there, but it's what I think makes the most sense, physically speaking.

Thus, Kotoko was in that warehouse before the killer, or like I'm claiming, the killer went away, Kotoko went in, waited for him, he returned, got distracted by the cap and went to investigate, got attacked by Kotoko.

Closing Argument

+Kotoko sees the man taking the orange overall girl into the warehouse complex, with him having put up a sign to close off the complex to the public.

+For some reason, she becomes discouraged and goes away for a moment, doubting what she should do. She's encouraged by her wolf buddy to go kill the dude, she changes into her murder fit, and goes back just a few minutes later. Meanwhile, the killer takes the girl to a small room in another warehouse connected to the first one, binds her hands and takes her shoes off... for some reason.

+The killer leaves for a moment for God knows what reason, Kotoko comes back and finds the girl, unties her. Thanks to what she sees in that room, she forms a mental image of what the other murders looked like.

+Kotoko decides to wait for the killer to come back, leaving her Jacques Roulet cap on the floor... as bait or something I don't know. The girl tries to convince her not to do that, but Kotoko refuses to listen. Cue T2 Voice Reveal line.

+The killer comes back, sees the cap on the floor, and gets closer to investigate. Since he's distracted, Kotoko takes the chance to run up to him. He turns around right before she reaches him, and before he can react, Kotoko grabs his hoodie with her left hand, and punches him with her right. He falls to the floor, and Kotoko starts beating him to death as the girl runs away. However, since he arrived while the girl was still in the scene, Kotoko can claim it was justifiable defense of either the girl or herself.

... Yeah this is completely fucking insane. This is most likely wrong, so don't be surprised when Deep Cover comes out and deconfirms it. However, I do think some of what I said has a chance of being accurate, so I'm putting it out there so I can pretend to be smart and stuff if it turns out some of this is right.

(Can you believe that's not even the most insane murder theory I've ever done? Like, at least I didn't bring in an accomplice and several pulley systems, or made a wire circuit extending throughout the entirety of a room, both things I've done for another fandom. Yeah, my brainrot runs deep)

Conclusion

Well that last part was a bit of a mess. I hope you can forgive my insanity, and that you still took something out of the rest of the analysis if not the murder theory. I'm really excited to see what Deep Cover has in store for us, Kotoko is a very interesting character. Anyways, if you made it this far, then I think you deserve your own wolf buddy! Though be careful, and don't listen to it when it tells you to kill. Take care!

#milgram #milgram project #milgram theory #kotoko yuzuhira #harrow mv #milgram analysis

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teaandinanity · 7 months

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So I found a meme template for 'About You: Video Games' which I wanted to do except a) we all know I am incapable of Not Talking, b) the boxes were tall and skinny and that is Not Ideal for shoving game titles into because they generally need width to be legible, and c) what the fuck do you MEAN I can ONLY PICK ONE so I'm converting it into text form. Also I'm rearranging the order because all time fave should not be first that's what you wrap up with c'mon.

I am also hoping other people will steal this formatting and tag me so I can go 'ooh that sounds neat!' about other people's games lists.

[cut because this will probably go long]

1. Childhood Game

Cannot pick.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time still holds a soft and nostalgic spot in my heart. Music! Horseback riding! Puzzles! I was terrible at it and did not beat it but I LOVED it.

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, which I also did not beat but which also nonetheless did SOMETHING to my id which persists to this very day, because it is fascinatingly batshit.

The Longest Journey has also left imprints on my id; I think it was the first adventure game I managed to beat, maybe the first game I managed to beat at all.I’d tried some of the King’s Quest games but I kept getting myself stuck in unwinnable situations and/or dying which obviously was not that fun. But TLJ wanted you to see the story; as far as I know, it’s impossible to get yourself into an unwinnable worldstate, so outside the sections where you’re beating your head against a puzzle it’s just wonderful.

2. Best Soundtrack

I already mentioned Ocarina but honestly a lot of the games I grew up with had excellent music, perhaps because the system limitations (midi instruments on a shitty tube television) meant the songs really had to be able to stand on their own. Other stand-outs for me include Legend of Mana and Final Fantasy VI, each of which has more than one song I remembered well enough to hunt down the soundtracks more than a decade after I played them. Also obviously there's things like Bastion now, which has amazing music, and Dragon Age: Inquisition has tracks that (between the music itself and the associations) give me Very Large Feelings.

3. Best Art Style

I have to at least mention Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning here. I still can’t believe a game that is this lovely while playing got such unutterably boring box art. Who did that to you, KoA:R, you deserved so much better. It's got the punchy, amped-up kind of color palette you see in World of Warcraft (which I love; gritty realism and unrelenting brown are boring) but with higher-quality textures and better models than an MMO that needs to be able to run on a potato can handle, and honestly the whole thing is just Nice To Look At.

Also mentioning Legend of Mana again because the art was cute as fuck. A lot of the older pixel stuff had so much charm!

Throwing Winter Voices in, too, because while the game itself is an incomprehensible clusterfuck like 40% of the time, the other 60% it is quite lovely. It remains the only game where the SKILL TREE made me go, 'oh gosh that's so PRETTY.'

4. Relaxing Game

Flow is a good one. Also Stardew Valley. And Spiritfarer. Roots of Pacha.

5. Stressful Game

When I saw this one on the list I was like 'but I hate being stressed' and that is true but also:

Long Live the Queen is HORRIBLY stressful but also kind of neat?

And bits of Scarlet Hollow have stressed me out but I am VERY MUCH having a good time with that. Delightful horror-themed roller coaster of a game; it wants me to be having a good time even when I’m going AAAAAH! and trying to make impossible choices.

6. Tons of Hours Played

Rimworld. We’re not looking at my time played on this.

Also every MMO I have ever played but especially WoW (which I am emotionally invested in still, WHY) and SWtoR (because if you let me decorate a house I will spend SO MANY HOURS decorating a house).

Also Crusader Kings, which is basically a Telenovella Creator if you’re successfully avoiding combat and is therefore delightful - I usually manage at least two generations of absolute nonsense before someone murders me horribly or I lose against the rebellion my aunt has raised because oops there are too many branches of the family tree and some of them are overly successful and have turned into kudzu and are now here to strangle me to death.

Also The Sims, over the course of all of these games the hours played are definitely horrifying. The hours just on 4 are um. Bad.

Baldur’s Gate 3 has over 100 hours already. Oops.

Dragon Age gets this also although that’s also why I haven’t replayed Inquisition; too much of it is spent schlepping across the Hinterlands a g a i n.

7. Favorite Protagonist

For more defined characters: The MC in Gilded Shadows. So relatable. So snarky. Love her.

For less defined, I ADORE the Dark Urge route in BG3 - set enough to feel really connected to the world, but still so much freedom for the player to go nuts. Also the things that are set are UNHINGED, it’s fantastic.

8. Favorite Villain

[nervous villainfucker laughter]

Solas probably counts as an antagonist. Manerkol from The Soulstone War. Sarevok specifically in BG2:ToB when you could Found Family/Power of Friendship him into being less of a dick yes this was partly because I thought he was Very Hot shut up it’s not my fault his VA was Like That.

TBH if I find the villain compelling I probably also want to kiss him it is a recurring problem.

9. Favorite Ending

To The Moon made me cry, but like, in a good way.

The ending of Fire Emblem: Awakening was pretty darn satisfying imo.

I liked Tresspasser very much but I’m still a little irked that DAI was like ‘the real ending is DLC.’

10. Favorite Boss Fight

The final conversation in Trespasser. No, shoosh, it counts and I DESPERATELY want to see more climactic conflicts in games that aren't solved with violence. I loved Planescape: Torment and Fallout: New Vegas for letting me circumvent combat with other skills but Trespasser is the only instance I can think of off the top of my head where you just... Do Not Fight the Final Boss. The POINT is that you don’t fight. I love that.

11. Game You Always Come Back To

I have replayed Choice of Romance SO MANY TIMES and 95% of the time it is with the same MC. Ana is now a comfort character.

7KPP, partly for the fandom, which is full of friends <3

12. Guilty Pleasure

This would require me to feel guilty about my games and I generally don’t? I mean, I have admitted to playing the homophobic horse game to people I work with.

That said the homophobic horse game probably counts because I’m constantly like ‘why are you like this’ about the company as a whole and most of the people who work there and also a significant chunk of the player base.

Maybe World of Warcraft also. ActiBlizz as a company is more than a little bit Yikes.

13. All Time Favorite

I think I’m giving this to RimWorld. The base game was solid and fun and I played a zillion hours. The updates have been good. The dev actually listens to the player base about what’s wanted and then builds it into the game. Modding is allowed and adds some awesome stuff too. The expansions are great and add a ton to the game. It creates very compelling little stories. There are a bunch of youtubers with amazing playthroughs. I found a perfect map seed.

Like, my ALL TIME favorite game is the one in my head, that’s like 30% Breath of the Wild, 30% UnReal World, 20% RimWorld, 20% the homophobic horse game, but unfortunately that does not actually exist. Maybe if I win the lottery.

#babble tea (blacklist this for less chatter)#this has sat in my drafts for Literal Years so I'm posting it now so that it gets out of here #like literally the post next to it is from 2021 #I have added to it over time but also it's a novel now #oops

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delicrieux · 3 years

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☆ﾐ 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚊𝚢 “𝚘𝚑”

PART 10: BIG DICK IS BACK IN TOWN

y/n is back in brooklyn for the holidays. thinking that a stream will make her feel less homesick for cali, she starts working on her famously titled hentai.free.srv. what was supposed to be a relaxing stream turns into a special delivery about two hours in.

─── corpse husband x reader ─── soc. media + written fiction! ─── word count: 2.2k ─── ❥ req: Here's one... You know those apps for delivery like Domino's or whatnot... What if reader is streaming Among Us with Corpse, and reader mentions they're hungry and Corpse offers to order them food, and readers like no no it's fine... Then there's delivery at the door (Corpse ordered beforehand)

author’s note: fucky format is also back in town baby!!! also if you find any mistakes - no u didnt <3 thank u everyone for enjoying this story sm i literally cant believe how feral yall going strawberry cow was a nuclear explosion im still recovering tbh. got an ask a while ago and decided to incorporate it into myso. happy holidays everyone! myso will continue on monday!

ultimate masterlist. ҉ myso masterlist ҉ previous. ҉ next.

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Indeed, being soft on any social media platform was the biggest disgrace and needed to be eliminated post haste. Moreover, it was a slippery slope - once you start flooding your timeline with cute imagery and heart emojis, what will stop you from posting inspirational Facebook quotes? Disgusting. If Rae were here, she would chide you (not you thinking about her as if she’s dead or something). For once in your life, you feel like you deserve it.

Alas, you hope this little chaos you’ve caused is enough to throw everyone off. The stans, especially. You know the hashtags, you’ve seen ARMY scourging for info online with the same fervor and ruthlessness 1 Direction fans hacked airport security cameras just to spy on the boys. If you had any dirty secrets online, they are out to the public now - thankfully, besides the Harry Styles stan account (with edits and all), you have nothing. Though, now that you think about it, exposed nudes would have been better than your Punk!Harry edit receiving almost a million views. God, your life’s a fucking mess.

Your fans aren’t the only ones out for info - you, too, are trying to decipher Rae’s message. Code: Barbecue Sauce. The two of you had come up with it roughly two years ago, around the same time when you promised that if you didn’t find significant others by the time you’re 40, you’ll just marry each other. It was one of the many rules found in your friendship codex. Barbecue Sauce signifies information - an exchange of information. And depending on how it ends or begins (”So I’m sitting there” alludes to Rae, “On my titties” alludes to you), secret data on that person is given away, usually free of charge.

But why? And to whom did Rae give away what? You had pestered her mercilessly and even sent some voice messages where you were crying. You were only crying because of a video of a grandpa smiling you saw on TikTok, but you are a snake, and so you put those tears to good use. If streaming doesn’t work out, you’ll just become an actress. Hollywood would love you. Your PR firm sure as fuck wouldn’t, though.

Rae was having none of it. She said you’ll figure it out eventually. Told you to channel your superior puzzle skills. You were quick to remind her that you can barely count to ten without having an aneurysm. Oddly serious, she admitted that she worries for you sometimes. Why only sometimes?! you demanded. She merely sighed. uttering under her breath something that sounded closely to “Boke.”

You leave her for barely a week and she’s already neck deep in the gay volleyball anime, hoodie and cardboard cutout and everything. Your life is falling apart.

But Brooklyn is nice. It had snowed when you stepped off of the plane. Thousands of snowflakes sprinkling into your hair, dotting your cheeks and nose. You missed this sight back in Cali. You missed your parents, too.

Home cooked meals, old sweaters, your old room and about 40GB worth of old high school pictures on your computer. You went through them all one night. Some were stomach churning, cringe inducing nightmares. You were especially fond of those. Texted some of your friends that were still in Brooklyn, met up, decided to bake. Bad idea, Rae was the resident chef back in Cali. Besides laughing till your stomach hurt, and almost burning down your kitchen, nothing all that significant happened. Somewhere down the line, at about 3 am, half-way through a cheesy rom-com you had the overwhelming urge to text Corpse.

That’s where the problems really started. God, you missed California, missed being in the same timezone with a guy you hadn’t even met yet, how embarrassing is that?! You missed skating around and taking pictures of the beach in the setting sun, sending it to him, silently wishing he was with you to admire the view.

You really want to call him. And to hang out with him. But for some reason, the thought of that springs up immediate anxiety and you shy away from asking. Him sending you cute good morning texts doesn’t help, either. Maybe it’s better he doesn’t know that you’re a blushing, stuttering mess each time you read “baby”.

Late evening. Your stream is already set up, people are slowly trickling in and you greet them with a grin and a soft “Hello! Hi hi!”. You did your best to make your room a perfectly chaotic backdrop - led lights, an embarrassing amount of anime merch and plushies. You always try to balance out your weeb side by dressing hot as fuck for your streams - today’s inspiration just so happens to be egirls. Mostly because you watched one too many egirl make-up tutorials on TikTok, and also because you’ve been listening to Corpse’s song all day.

Yeah, no, who are you kidding, you dressed up this way because you were hoping Corpse was watching your stream. You didn’t forget your cat headphones, either. You know he likes them. You want to make him suffer. Perhaps then, finally, he will ask you out, so you wouldn’t have to.

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“I feel like,” You start when you put away your phone, staring idly at the chat, “I feel like I need a new name for you guys. Calling you guys after two years of streaming is just... weird, no? I also don’t respect men so I don’t want to call you guys. Like, so many creator’s have, like, a name for their fans. Uhm, Cody Ko has the chodesters, Kurtis Conner has, uh, folks? Kurtis Town? Citizens! Markiplier has mommy issues--” You can’t help snorting, “So, I’ve been, like, thinking - I know, shocking! - so I was thinking I’m gonna name you cockroaches. Because you’re grimy little shits impossible to kill. And also then I can use the legendary Minaj meme ROACHES!”

Your stream enthusiastically echoes ROACHES, making the chat swim. Yes, if anyone would enjoy such a name, it would be your audience. You’re as equally proud as you are disturbed.

“Well, anyway.” Leaning back into your chair, you throw your arms out with a bright grin, “Big dick is back in town, baby! If you noticed the backdrops different, it’s cuz I’m in Brooklyn now. Don’t ask me when I will return to Always Sunny, I don’t plan that far ahead.”

While Minecraft boots up, you decide to answer a few questions.

r u dating sykkuno?

You want to smack your head into the keyboard, but as it is, you can’t exactly afford a new one, so you refrain, “No, Sykkuno and I are not dating, we are just good friends. Uhm, I’m not sure how much I’ll have to repeat this, but, we really aren’t, so if the roaches could chill - Oh my God, that sounds so stupid, I love it - uh, yeah, if the roaches could chill that’d be great.”

the roaches lmao sounds like we’re a sports team

“Oh shit, yeah it does, uh-- maybe I can make like, jerseys or something. That’d be cool, I think.”

how disappointed are your parents with the way your life turned out?

“My parents are actually not disappointed at all!” You say with a cute little smile, “Uhm, they’re both really proud, actually. They’re glad I found something I love doing and made a job outta it. Dad finds my Youtube videos endearing. Yes, they watch pretty much all of my videos, unless I explicitly tell them not to. And yeah, with all the fucks and thirsting for anime characters. Uhm, it was very embarrassing at first, but I mean, after a while, shame just...doesn’t exist anymore, I guess? Funny thing about my parents, actually, when they watch my videos-” You eye catches a comment, “Oh! No, they only watch my Youtube videos. They don’t know how to use Twitter, thank God. Uhm, anyway-- when they hear a name they don’t know, like, I dunno, Dabi, or something, they google--” You’re grinning by now, eyes crinkling, giggling softly, “--who that is, and buy me like, merch and stuff. It’s really cute.

can i be adopted by ur parents plz

will you and corpse ever collab?!

You were about to answer, though the man of the hour himself decides to do it for you.

Corpse_Husband: yes.

Okay, not to say your heart skipped a beat, but it totally did. With a pleased smile, you nod, like one of those bobble head toys sold at the dollar store. The motion is oddly reminiscent of Sykkuno’s own nod. Perhaps you had picked it up from him. The chat seems to notice.

pack it up, sykkuno

More questions pile about this mysterious collab you and Corpse are planning. Yeah, you’d like to hear more about it, too, since he single highhandedly decided one was happening right now. Corpse remains silent. Fine, keep your secrets.

“Okay, guys, oh, I mean, roaches, Oh my God--” You’re covering your mouth, giggling, “-calling all roaches, calling all roaches, calm down. Everyone grab a snack and a blanket I’m turning up the music volume so we can all chill. Entering chill zone. Entering chill zone. Roaches, prepare.”

we are prepared

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An hour or so passes and you grow hungry. It shows with the amount of cakes you had baked in your server. Currently, you find yourself throwing eggs at the wall of one of the renovated houses, your face scrunched in concentration and slight frustration. 24 of the 50 eggs have been wasted. “What’s a girl gotta do to get some chicks around here?” you had uttered under your breath, until, finally, a screech - the egg finally spawns a mob. Your mouth falls open, “Aww, look!” You approach it, so small, walking in zigzags beside you, “It’s a baby chicken! Die, bitch.” The baby chicken is no more as you swing your bedazzled (you have mods) diamond sword. You’re cackling by the time the dust settles.

y/n is a child murderer

“Roaches,” You address your fan-base, spurring another fit of laughter - you can’t get over the name, “I think I’m like, forgetting that eating in Minecraft won’t actually make less hungry in real life.”

take a break and go eat queen <3

“Fuck no, we starve and die like men. Now I actually really need another chicken.”

Another twenty minutes trickle by and you’re trying to lure back a panda from the jungle when there’s a knock on your bedroom’s door. Whipping your head to the side, you slide down your headphones. At the same time, your mom pokes her head through the ajar door, “MOM!” You scream, “Get OUT of my room I’m playing Minecraft!” But your yell has no actual bite to it, as you don’t manage to hide your smile. Your mom laughs, doing some sort of sign language and motioning for you to follow her with her head. That or it’s some sort of performative dance.

“I’m live right now,” You tell her, pointing at your screen. She knows this already, though, “do you want to say hi?”

The roaches spam the chat with friendly hellos. You mom, quite impatient now, waves you over.

“Sorry, roaches, mom needs something. Be back in a bit!”

Stopping the stream, you rush out of your seat and pleased she slinks into the hallway. “What’s this about?”

“Your pizza came.”

“My what now?” You echo, confused.

“Domino’s. You ordered pizza?”

“What? No? I was busy with the stream, I never--”

Thankfully, you had managed to grab your phone from your room before you exited. You almost choke on spit once you read the messages.

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

You decide that it’ll be impossible to stream after experiencing what you had just experienced. You tweet out a quick apology to the roaches (God, that fucking name) and say that you had a breakdown but you’re okay. That is as a close to the truth as you managed to muster. It’s a sad sight, chewing and crying; your mom winced when she saw your state - disheveled hair and rundown eyeliner and everything. “D’aww,” She had muttered, caressing the top of your head, “don’t cry my little raccoon.”

If anyone was ever to ask you where did your chaotic nature come from, you’d answer with my mom. To make yourself feel better, you took a selfie - duck face and peace sign and the horrible 2000′s angle. Sent it to Rae.

looking hot, her message read.

thanks, was all you replied with.

You couldn’t just leave things as they were. Once you calmed down, you wanted to text Corpse, but how would you follow up the ungodly caps lock and screeching? Impossible. An idea sprung to mind, one that was brave. Taking the first step.

Instead of sending a text, you sent a voice memo.

“Thank you for the pizza, it was delicious.”

You voice still sounded a bit raspy. His reply was instant. Your heart skipped a beat. He sent a voice memo back.

“Glad you liked it, baby.”

He was going to be the death of you.

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tags (in italics is those i couldn’t tag! make sure all’s ok w your settings!) : @littlebabysandboxburritos - @fairywriter-oracle - @tsukishimawh0re - @ofstarsanddreams - @bbecc-a - @annshit - @leahh19 - @letsloveimagines - @bellomi-clarke - @wineandionysus - @guiltydols - @onephootinfrontoftheother - @liamakorn - @thirstyfangirl - @lilysdaydreams - @pan-ini - @mxqicshxp - @tanchosanke - @yoshinorecommends - @flightsandfantasy - @liljennyx3 - @slashersdream - @unknown-and-invisible - @sinister-sleep - @fivedicksinatrenchcoat - @mercury–moon - @peterparkerspjsuit - @unstableye - @simonsbluee - @shinyshimaagain - @ppopty - @siriuslystupid - @crapimahuman - @ofthedewthesunlight - @mythicalamphitrite - @artsyally - @corpsesimpp - @corpsewhitetee - @corpse-husbandsimp - @hyp-oh-critical - @roses-and-grasses - @rhyrhy462 - @sparklylandflaplawyer - @charbkgo - @airwaveee - @creativedogs - @kaitlyn2907 - @loxbbg - @afuckingunicornn - @fleurmoon - @yeolliedokai - @truly-dionysus - @multi-fandom-central707

more tags are in the comments bcs tumblr only allows me to tag 50 people max 💙

#corpse husband #corpse #corpse husband x reader #corpse x reader #corpse husband imagine #corpse social media au #corpse husband fanfic #social media au #corpse husband x y/n #corpse x y/n #corpse husband fic #reader #xreader #imagine #imagines #myso #make you say oh

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aggravatetheaxe · 3 years

Note

Hi there! I was wondering if I could request an imagine where a victim “escapes” from the slashers and hurts s/o in the process. What would the slashers do during and after? Thank you!!

Hi! I wasn't sure which slashers you wanted for this, so I put my list into a randomizer and went with the first 5!

Walter Sullivan

Thomas Hewitt

Jason Voorhees

Deacon Billings (OC Ghostface)

Erik ("The Phantom")

SLASHERS WHOSE VICTIM HURTS THEIR S/O

cw: mentions of suicide, reader being injured/in mortal peril, mentions of torture and killing etc etc

Walter Sullivan

Oh no. Oh dear.

You are possibly the only good, pure thing in this world or the Otherworld and someone hurt you? Walter is ... not happy, to put it lightly. The only person who should ever hurt you is him, and he won't do that unless it's for your own good.

This only enforces his belief that the world and everyone in it are monstrous. It drives home the truth he's already convinced of - this existence in terrible and torturous and needs to be destroyed if anything holy is ever going to be allowed to blossom again.

Whether The Victim is pre- or post- Walter's suicide, he's already stopping at nothing to go after them. He doesn't view it as personal, he doesn't hold any particular hatred for most (most) of his victims; they're simply links in a chain. But this person, the one who hurt you ... it's personal. They'll die in absolute agony.

If the victim in question is pre-suicide, Walter will bring them down and find somewhere to keep them for later. This will not be a quick death.

While they're bound/gagged or knocked out, he'll check on you. You're special, possibly even the Mother Reborn, and he can't let you die until the time is right. If you're seriously injured, he'll see to it that you're taken to the hospital, and pray to a dead God if he has to that you'll be alright. If you're not seriously injured, he'll do his best to patch you up - he lived on the streets for many years and had to take care of himself, so he knows basic first aid.

Once he's certain you're safe, he will put you somewhere where you won't witness what he's about to do. Even if you want to see it, he'll insist you stay hidden, saying the sinner doesn't deserve to be in your presence. You'll have to really convince him if for some reason you want to watch.

Their torture will depend on what they did to you. If it was just a few scrapes and cuts, he'll let them feel every ounce of pain before they die. If they really hurt you, their torture will be prolonged. In his mind, and according to his religion, death is a sacred sacrament, and this evil being doesn't deserve its release. If they did something to seriously traumatize and/or sully you ... the crime scene he leaves behind is going to be grisly, to put it lightly.

If the victim in question is post-suicide, the results will be similar, but he has absolute control over the Otherworld - and he will utilize that. He will have his creations take care of you and keep you somewhere safe ... they may be terrifying, but they won't hurt you unless he wills it. As for the victim, he can twist them into their worst nightmares over and over again before killing them. He will make them see their wrongdoings and pay for their evil. They will beg for mercy and there will be none.

After it all, he will simply move onto the next one, with you somewhere safe ... until it's time. Until it's time. You are so perfect.

Thomas Hewitt

Dammit. If he'd just been quicker or smarter, he could have caught them before they escaped and hurt you. He immediately blames himself.

There's no time to beat himself up over it, though. He briefly checks to make sure you're not bleeding from anywhere vital and sends you (or locks you up) somewhere safe before going after the victim. You're on your own for first aid for now - unless you're literally dying, he can't let them leave the property.

If you are literally dying, he's staying and doing all he can to help you. But if Hoyt yells, he may have to pawn you off on someone else and hope they do a good job taking care of you. He'll hold your face and give you tender kisses goodbye - whether you want them or not - because this might be the last time he ever sees you.

He chases the victim in a fever, much more erratic than you would expect from him. He's faster, less careful, more inclined to put himself at risk just to get a swing in at them. It's not generally anything personal when he kills someone - it's something he does for the good of his family, and because he was told to. This one he's not interested in saving for meat. They hurt you. You, his special person. He's going to grind them into the mud, and he's not even going to let Hoyt have a go at them.

Sometimes, sometimes, he struggles to see the animals in his victims. But this one ... he doesn't even feel the urge to twist them into an animal. That's a whole human, an evil one, one he wants to kill. It's a different feeling for him.

Once it's all over and everything's calmed down, he's rushing directly to your side. People don't come around all too often, so he's comfortable putting down the chainsaw for now. He neglects any skin projects he planned and lets someone else do the butchering, focusing on taking care of you, especially if you're seriously injured and put up in bed.

If you're not as seriously injured and tell him you're fine, he's still keeping an eye on you ... and making sure you're well-fed. You've been through a lot and it was all his fault. He doesn't want you to be exposed like that again. Next time someone comes around, he'll insist you hide somewhere.

Jason Voorhees

It's a toss up whether or not he'll actually notice you're hurt. Not because he doesn't care or anything, but because Camp Crystal Lake is a lot of ground to cover and there's a low chance he'll be in the same area as you at any given time.

For this imagine, though, let's assume you've found your way to him or he's sensed you're in trouble and has rushed to you.

You were supposed to be safe in the cabin, so he's a little irritated that you wandered out, but that's completely overshadowed when he realizes you're hurt. He stops everything he's doing and clinically and thoroughly pats you down, identifying every solitary injury.

Just like his mother before him, he is a vengeful soul, so he is not letting this go even if you're just scraped or bruised. If you are critically injured, he'll at least get you to the cabin and get a tourniquet on you.

Otherwise, he leaves you behind. Not very mindful, but you should know that he wants you to get back to the cabin or at least stay out of the way. He is no longer thinking of you - he has established his target and knows what he has to do. He's laser focused and decisive as he stalks after them, using anything at his disposal to get to them.

Their death is quick - he doesn't play around - but he has a lingering sense of irony and playfulness. If there's a particularly interesting weapon nearby, he'll take them out with that; or perhaps he'll hurt them in the way they hurt you, just, you know ... more fatal. And a lot gorier.

After that, he'll move onto their friends, until every last one is dead. Once his objective is completed, he is returning to you directly and finishing the job of patching you up.

He can't help but feel a little guilty that you were hurt. You shouldn't have left the cabin, true, but perhaps he should have been watching for you. He should have locked you up. Pamela might say rude things in his head. Then again, she might comfort him. If she doesn't like you, maybe she'll even wish he'd left you to die.

Deacon Billings (OC Ghostface)

Well ... you usually keep him around to scare off other Ghostfaces - something he's very handy at - but you don't usually run into trouble with his victims.

He doesn't really tell you to go anywhere in particular when he's killing. He knows you can take care of yourself. But now he feels stupid for not having a backup plan. Of course some asshole was gonna eventually identify you as his loved one and try to get cute. He should've had something prepared for that.

But, if he's good at anything, it's improvising. He skids into whatever room you're in, drops his weapon, and pulls his mask off right away to check you over. If you're only mildly injured, he's visibly relieved, and tells you to stay put while he deals with whomever hurt you. If you're more seriously injured, he'll grab your phone and shove it in your hand. "Get in the car, get the fuck out of here. Drive to the emergency room if you have to, just leave."

If you're unable to drive, he'll make you call emergency services - or call them for you, if he has to. The game is over, he's done playing; this isn't fun if he's not winning. Everyone in this place is gonna be dead and he'll be long gone by the time the ambulance shows up for you.

The one who hurt you is going to get an extra special surprise. A particularly grisly death, and a bunch of selfies/short videos of Ghostface with the corpse - taken with the victim's own phone, posted to their instagram, tiktok, facebook, sent to any discord groups, and any other social media they have. If he has the time, he'll even make them in meme formats (definitely posting with meme captions, the fucking troll). He'll probably send a copy to you as a "hey, look what I did!"

If there are survivors, especially if that survivor is the one who hurt you, you better believe he is immediately doxxing them. Since he's had a little time to cool down, he might even play the long game, maybe catfishing and blackmailing them. Ruining their pathetic little life even further would be pretty fun. In the end, though, they'll die like all the others.

When all is said and done, he's going to be there for you, helping you recover any way he can. He'd suggest rest (for an amount of time relative to your injury), some movies and candy, maybe some video games. And time spent with your favorite Ghostface, of course, right?

He'll never forget what happened, though. Even though the person is dead, he'll be stewing and pissed off about it for a long, long time. And he won't let something like that happen again, or at least, not without a contingency plan in place.

The hash mark/tally mark he stitches into his costume to symbolize this kill is gonna be twice as long and large as the others, maybe in the place you got hurt as a reminder.

Erik

You already know what's about to happen.

If anyone so much as hurts your feelings they're getting menaced and receiving a strongly worded letter - actually physically harming you? That's suicide.

If he can't immediately kill this person, or if you're seriously injured, his primary objective is helping/comforting you. He has to push down a lot of wrath to do it ... every instinct tells him to immediately dispatch the fiend responsible ... but you are more important to him than anything in this world, even revenge. He will administer any first aid you need and may even drug you with ether to ensure you rest.

Don't think that means your attacker is off the hook, though. As soon as he decides you're well enough, he will put you somewhere safe - lock you away if he has to - and kill them. His preferred method is the Punjab lasso, but if they did something particularly egregious, he'll knock them out and take them to his torture chamber. They have a lesson to learn before they go to Hades.

Another option is, like Deacon, playing the long game ... playing with his food, stalking them, making them live in fear before they die. But he has a lot of wrath in that skinny little body, so it's a toss up as to whether or not he'll actually be able to follow through with that for very long. It depends on his mood, really!

He will keep the killing and torture hidden from you, of course ... unless you express an interest in seeing the vengeance being carried out. He would be worried for you, however, and advise against it. Those sights are not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for someone as beautiful and good as you.

Once all is said and done, it's as if it never happened. As if that person never existed! What a happy thought! Sometimes you even think Erik has completely forgotten the incident ... until he's stalking another victim and he locks you away again, and you remember you are always on his mind. He will never, never let that happen to you again.

#imagines #walter sullivan #walter sullivan x reader #thomas hewitt #thomas hewitt x reader #thomas hewitt x you #jason voorhees #jason voorhees x reader #jason voorhees x you #ghostface #ghostface x reader #ghostface x you #erik the phantom #phantom x reader #slasher imagines #slasher x reader #slasher x you #slasher community

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anxious2dsimp · 3 years

Text

General Dating Headcanons | Sero, Todoroki & Bakugou

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡*✧･ﾟ:˚۰˚☽˚｡･:

Pairings: Sero x Reader, Todoroki x Reader, Bakugou x Reader

Reader: Gender Neutral!

Format: Headcanons

Warnings: Cursing bc Bakugou 🙄 (as if I wasn’t the one who picked him lmao)

Request: :))) hellooooo :D hmmmm may i get general dating headcanons for sero, todoroki, and [insert your favorite character]? 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖 @smexy-goose

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡*✧･ﾟ:˚۰˚☽˚｡･:

Hi again!! Omg yes, I’ll gladly write some hcs for the best bois! I had a hard time picking a fave, but since I have written for Kami and Kiri in the last request I decided to go with blasty boy❤️ (Also, I’m trying a new way to post requests, I hope it works!)

Sero Hanta

I feel like Sero is genuinely so fun to date, just like he said in that one dorm episode, he’s always the wild card.

He’s a goofball, so he adores making you laugh and smile as much as he can. I love him omg😭

Will definitely take advantage of his height (he’s among the taller ones in the class) and give you surprise hugs from behind and rest his head on yours.

He’ll also use his quirk on you for everything from pranks to just randomly pulling you to him to give you a quick peck or a hug :’)

He’s pretty standard with PDA, so he won’t go around making out with you in public but he will do little gestures like those <3

In private I feel like he’s definitely cuddly, he’s just so happy to be with you!

He loves having you over at his room to just chill or be in each other’s presence, even if you’re doing stuff individually.

Speaking of, the bakusquad definitely complains about you having privilege in using the hammock in Hanta’s room.

Denki will whine like; “why does y/n always get to use the hammock? You said it was out of bounds!”

“That’s on pretty privilege, sorry! And you’re just jealous you don’t have a cool s/o like mine,” Sero will say and poke his tongue out from the hammock where you’re swinging togehter :’)

I’m warning you now, if you had a healthy sleep schedule before going out with him, you can kiss it goodbye.

Sero will absolutely be up till like 3 am sending you memes and tiktoks that remind him of you.

And with him blowing up your phone you’ll most likely end up talking into ungodly hours of the night, the *sleep deprivation* only causing funnier conversations.

Those will end up becoming inside jokes that he’ll bring up to make you laugh while the rest of the class is like ???

That also results in some weird ass nicknames sorry not sorry

So he’ll sometimes call you regular stuff like babe and other times... he’ll call you things like “Bert” (FOR NO REASON??) or “Candied Blood Pumping Organ” instead of sweetheart lmao

Overall you two are just THE chaotic couple (and if you’re not generally that way he will bring out that side of you)

Pranking your classmates? Pranking each other? Random ass adventures? Trying weird food together? Dancing in the kitchen at midnight while sharing late night snacks? By going out with him you said yes to all of the above.

From sneaking out of the dorms for late night food runs to occasionally skipping class to go to the arcade or the beach, you usually can’t go a week without doing something fun togehter.

This one time you two were out with the Bakusquad and y’all stopped by a supermarket to get food.

So you had to ask Bakugou to buy you something bc you and Sero had to stay outside and just hand him the money.

He was like “tf?? why? Just buy your shit yourselves!” You had to explain you two were banned from the store because Hanta had accidentally crashed a cart he was driving you around in into a display of cereal boxes.

Ah yes, good times.

Todoroki Shoto

I feel like he’ll definitely need a small push when it comes to relationships bc of his past, but once you’re with him he’ll care deeply about you and will try to make you as happy as you make him :’)

I’m begging you, please give this boy some luv and affection!! For the most part you’d probably initiate PDA because he’s too nervous to do it himself

At the beginning he wouldn’t even be comfy cuddling, solely because he’d be afraid of hurting you somehow :(

But once you’ve reassured him he complies, and from then on out you just have to open your arms and he’ll instantly know it’s *cuddle time*

It’a one of his favorite pastimes bc he just feels so safe and loved <3 he also just loves the feeling of you playing with his hair

Luckily you get to do it year round since you cuddle his hot side in the winter and cold side during the summer

I feel like he’s secretly insecure, so the fact that you trust him and love him for who he is makes him feel like he could melt <3

Because of that you’re the only one he truly opens up to and shows his real feelings to, not to mention the only one who can touch his scar

And though he isn’t great with words, one look at him during one of these personal moments when its just you two, and you can just see it in his eyes.

Especially if you kiss his scar, his eyes might even get teary this sweet boy I 😭

That’s also probably why he shares his precious cold soba with you

Since you’ve been together, Shoto has just been so much happier, so his siblings and mother LOVE you.

They’re constantly inviting you over for dinner when Endevour is working (bc he’s a huge buzzkill to say the least), and his mom adores when you come with Shoto to visit her :)

Todoroki really enjoys seeing you get along with the people he cares the most about...

BUT what he hates is THE EMBARRASING STORIES HIS FAMILY TELLS YOU OMG (you live for them, but I wouldn’t tell him that if I were you)

“Fuyumi remember when Shoto-” “Natsuo, no💙“ your bf will say as he unconsciously squeezes your hand, both of the siblings laughing at Shoto’s glare.

You had to hold in your laughter so hard omg

Though he isn’t that talkative, you guys definitely have that kind of relationship where you two could be silent and still feel completely comfortable (oh I’m so jealous of that but nvm)

He’s definitely observant, so expect the most considerate gifts and the most assertive observations, he’ll always know what you need.

The type of observant that gives you a water bottle before you even notice you’re thristy during training, or switches sides while walking so you loop your arm with his on his warm side when you’re cold.

Also the type to gift you that one thing you really wanted but mentioned once like months ago along with your favorite snacks/drink (you best believe he has them all memorized bc he’s just that attentive)

Over all, just a really soothing relationship were you can be comfortable with each other and feel at home when you’re together.

Bakugou Katsuki

Ok so, I feel like you’d be a competitive couple, turning anything into a competition in an endearingly annoying way.

You’re definitely the type of couple to go to laser tag, an escape room, an arcade, etc, as dates >:) but the competitions don’t end there:

Who can plan the best date? Who can make the other blush first? Who can get the other the better gift? Who’s the better kisser? Who gets the higher score in class? Or wins at sparring?

Especially when it comes to productive stuff like training or academics, although he won’t admit it, he’s just pushing you to be your best because he knows how amazing you are :’)

All the bakusquad knows about your shenanigans and at this point they’ve learnt to stay out of it & go get the Advil just in case bless their souls lmao

I’m sorry but he definitely calls you nicknames that purposely piss you off (with no ill intentions ofc), like “gremlin”, “dumbass” or “booger”

I suggest you also call him stuff like that back, like “angry pom” or “blasty” to get on his nerves >:)

You guys also definitely friendly bicker all the time, knowing that you take it lightly (though strangers won’t, resulting in some hilariously awkward situations)

“You’re such a fucking idiot,” he’ll say rolling his eyes as he messes up your hair.

Just watch his smirk dissapears when you reply, “no, u❤️″ It gets on his nerves, I just know it.

So he’ll chase you around as you call each other random stuff. While the other people at the convenience store are just like 👁👄👁

He never means it tho, keep in mind if you’re dating the self proclaimed future no. 1 hero he thinks highly of you :)

So he’d definitely be protective while simultaneously showing you off <3

Will always greet you with a kiss and keep his hand on your back or waist so ppl know you’re with him

RIP anyone who tries to hurt or flirt with you, I say try bc Bakugou will be exploding them even before they get the chance😅

Denki’s definitely almost gotten his brows blown off his face bc of that lol

Speaking of, the bakusquad still can’t get over the fact that THE lord explosion murder has a soft spot for you,

You mean you take care of his injuries, scold him when he burns himself out, touch his hair, and hug him when his moody... and you DON’T get cussed out and blown up? Shooketh

However they don’t see what happens behind closed doors, & how you’ve helped him with all the trauma he has experienced

You’re the only one who he is vulnerable with, you’ve seen him cry and he tells you about his nightmares and fears

You do the same with him, and you promise each other to get through anything together, which you’ve done so far :’)

Bc of that his parents love you, and his mom’s always going on about how she’s so glad you “stand” his son😂

Why can’t he be real ughhh

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idontblushsrry · 3 years

Note

Uhh may I make a request for Ouran High School Host club? Just a headcanon for how the host would react to meeting someone how is a big time animal lover. (Like they pretty much live there life like the Irwin family)

A/N: I was thinking about how I’d write this and my brain just went ‘they lost their shit at the sight of instant coffee’, so uhh I hope this is to your liking. I tried to get as much animal variety as I could even though I didn’t really touch on marine animals that much)

Warnings: Like 2 swear words (pinky promise), slight drug mention(literally so small you might not even notice it), spoilers (minor) for Tamaki’s mom

Word Count: 1292

General

So this is under the assumption that like the Irwin family, Reader (or their family) has access to a wide variety of animals (from domestic to wild)

All of them respect the passion you have for animals

While they all might have various feelings on animals (see below), they can’t deny that you truly do love animals

Your family’s sanctuary focuses on healing injured animals and rehabilitating them so they can go back into the wild

Of course, your family has many sanctuaries around the world and some focus more on conservation while others focus on research

The one closest to the school focuses mainly on conservation and as such, is massive and functions like a zoo ( in terms of having people come in and see the animals)

Anyways, the host club is very supportive and often helps you with organizing donation events

Oftentimes, your family will collaborate with them and allow them to rent out parts of the conservation center for events

Aside from the conservation center though, your family owns a few ranches and farms (not for commercial profit, although yall have sold a few animals)

The farms and ranches are relatively small scale but they make great venues for the host club and a great place for getaways/vacations

Your main house is where you keep most of your favorite animals

You have an aviary attached to your room (connected through a hallway that connects to your room) as well as a butterfly garden in the backyard

You also have an aquarium tank, 2 dogs, 1 cat, 1 snake, and a hamster that visits on weekends

You had to be stopped at some point

Tamaki

Tamaki loves animals

He was never really around animals growing up because of how sensitive his mom’s immune system is

So when he sees that you’re an animal person, he’s super excited

Like this man is already planning playdates between Antoinette and your pets/animals

You love his enthusiasm, just one small problem

It’s a little too much enthusiasm

Yes the animals are well trained, but how would you react if a 6′0 giant with long arms came barreling towards you screaming showing its teeth?

So yeah, Tamaki tends to set the animals off/ make them nervous

Because of that he’s only allowed around certain animals (ex. certain monkeys, certain birds, etc.)

He’s happy that he’s allowed around some animals but he still pouts every time there’s an animal he can’t be around

Kyoya

This man

Kyoya does not fuck with animals. Like at all

The first time the host club went to your house, you were holding a hamster and Kyoya moved back about 10 feet

When you asked him what was wrong, he just said “Rats are carriers of many of the most deadly diseases”

You told him that you were holding a hamster and that while hamsters were rodents, the worst he’d get sick with would be salmonella

He doesn’t believe you, but yeah sure whatever

For Kyoya it just gets worse after that

The first time he sees you holding a tarantula, he loses his shit

“Look how cute it is Kyoya!”

“Get that vermin away from me!”

I could go on and on about how much Kyoya doesn’t like animals (even domestic ones like cats and dogs)

He hates going to your house, but he often has to go there in order to set up events for the host club, what a nightmare

While he doesn’t care for animals, the business side of his brain can’t help but think of a marketing opportunity

Mori

Is one of two hosts that are going to be chill about it

He doesn’t feel one way or the other about animals and thinks it’s cool that you’re interested in them

Only thing is; if Honey’s afraid of your animals, he will have to ask you to leave he won’t hesitate to step in “harm’s” way

Surprisingly though, that actually makes him the chillest with your animals

Much to your surprise (and Tamaki’s sorrow), the animals love him

He just has this calming vibe that sets the animals at ease

It also helps that he smells nice and is super tall

For most of them it’s like sitting on a giant tree

He’s not really complaining though, it makes his job of protecting Honey that much easier

Honey

Oh boy

He might actually be the worst with animals

It’s not even an issue of being unable to defend against aggressive animals (Honey could probably solo a grizzly bear)

It’s just he has a very strict “cute” animal policy that changes wildly depending on his mood, the temperature, the angle of the wind, the humidity, etc.

He’s very bougie when it comes to what animals he will tolerate and what animals he will refuse to see

The general safe choices are rabbits (especially bunnies), kittens, cows, tits (the bird species), and baby animals of almost every domestic mammal species)

Him and the hamster you see on weekends are best friends

Also, you have had issues with him trying to feed the animals sweets

Explaining to Honey why rabbits can’t have carrot cake was not an easy conversation, nor was it one you thought you’d need to have

Because of how specific he is about what animals he finds cute, you likened him to a crocodile (because of how sensitive they are to temp. changes in egg)

Needless to say...he was not pleased

Hikaru

So him and Kaoru don’t really care for animals but they try to relate to you in somewhat similar but different ways

Hikaru is always trying to get you to do/recreate stunts with the animals

“Hey Y/N, we should-”

“No Hikaru”

“You don’t even know what I was gonna say”

“No you cannot use the dolphins for hoop tricks, no you cannot teach the gorillas how to roll blunts, no you cannot “bribe” the koalas with eucalyptus...”

Yeah he’s a menace

It’s mostly all in good fun though

Hikaru doesn’t really care for animals but he does find it hilarious that the animals like him more than Tamaki

Also, completely random but Hikaru definitely send you those “horse-sized duck vs duck sized horses” memes

Kaoru

Kaoru also tries to use animals on the internet to relate to you, but he’s a lot tamer than Kaoru

Kaoru is kind of like the parent who learns one thing you like and is like “that’s your entire personality right?”

Poor bby is trying his best

Anyways, whereas Hikaru tries to recreate memes, Kaoru sends you them

They range in quality and format; from top text, bottom text to “is this a ____”

At least once a day, Kaoru will send you a meme or picture of an animal with a caption that says ‘this reminded me of u :)’

It’s so endearing that you can’t even be mad about it

Haruhi

Is the only other one who’s kind of cool about the whole thing

She’s really only been around animals in the park or the occasional pet store

Growing up, she didn’t really have the time (or money) to go to the zoo, that and the fact that Ranka doesn’t care at all for animals (she thinks they’re weird and gross)

When Tamaki hears this, he works himself up into a frenzy, torn that his “daughter” has never been to a zoo (even tho he hasn’t either)

But she likes the fact that you’re so passionate about animals

At heart, she’s a scholar, so she loves learning new things she didn’t know before, she could spend all day just listening to you talk about animals

Not to mention the fact that you’re basically giving her a free informational tour every time you see an animal

#ohshc imagines #ohshc x reader #ohshc headcanons #tamaki suoh #kyoya ootori #hikaru hitachiin #kaoru hitachiin #honey senpai #mori senpai #haruhi fujioka

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jockpoetry · 3 years

Note

supernatural sees women as a tool for development and strengthening of narratives/motivation and dean sees his body as a tool. is that anything?

When I saw this ask I really made the 🥴in real life. So, yeah anon, I do think there’s something to this.

Quick Disclaimer before I actually launch into my thoughts™: A lot of my read of Dean stems from my experience as both an oldest daughter and a transman. Being the oldest daughter was an experience I lived for many years, but I am also a man. I wasn’t raised as a man, I wasn’t socialized as a man, and even though once I came out upon reflection my masculinity was obviously there. Like I was a man™ before I knew I was a man. Even when I actively tied my identity to femininity for a long time! A lot of my prideful moments were based around statements like: “I was the only girl who (fill in the blank).”

So I am just putting that out there before I launch into my spiel about Dean/Gender/Tool because they all interlock for me.

I am also going to apologize in advance because I know this has fully gone off the rails and I’m not even done writing it yet. If this is incomprehensible ! Well, happens to the best of us.

First off, most importantly I guess before we discuss womanhood and Dean and the way both are utilized on the show I need to say that I personally don’t subscribe the whole Dean is female coded thing.

It’s a read I can absolutely understand. But for me..he’s not.

He’s a hypermasculine man to the point that when (and because he is written as a punchline, as the stupid™ brother, as the whore™, as the mother/father™, as daddy’s blunt instrument™, etc) Dean deviates from the pre-accepted definition of hypermasculine it’s Wrong.

It’s Instantly Feminine.

I think the internet has made the world very black and white, or blue and pink maybe. This point, I think, colors a lot of these discussions. Dean cooks, he cleans and so therefor he’s female coded. When that really just feeds back into the whole toxic masculinity loop. You can’t be masculine and cook and clean and cry. That’s for feminine people only.

I get the argument! I do, I just think that Dean’s actions are not inherently feminine, it’s just in the vacuum of Female and in the Absence of Traditional Masculinity it makes sense to assign him female coded and move on.

IN FACT the way that Dean is the action hero of the show, the Masculine™ one on the show - but he cries, and he rages, and he cooks (Again and Again) and cleans (Again and Again). The fact he’s macho and confident but he has so little self esteem. Is frankly insane to me. You have this blaze of glory character who is so depressed that they have him kill himself. Twice. In explicitly “I hate myself, I hate hearing all the things I hate about myself, I want to destroy myself” ways.

On just a regular ol’ network show that is just ungodly bad at times. They let their Male Hero cry - all the time (if I linked every example of this the essay would be...longer than it already is, but just take my word for it). Dean tears up and grieves and shows more than just Angry Horny Violent™ (he shows plenty of that, don’t get me wrong) but he’s Emotional (Again and Again and Again). In many different ways!

I mean, beyond even just tearing up, they make their Male Hero™ face sexual violence in pretty, uniquely horrifying - and queer! - ways.

Let’s make it clear, they did a lot of this unintentionally.

Or they do it as a joke.

Off of dean for a moment to say women are plot devices in this show. I could probably count on one hand female characters who have sincere depth to them that have roles outside of progressing plot, filling a filler episode, and who are still alive. Like even characters such as Charlie who are wholly developed, and interesting, are only remembered/mentioned/utilized to progress plots or fill an episode out - and then she dies. For pain™ for plot™ for no other reason than to traumatize a character.

Which let’s also make it clear Dean’s trauma is also only used as a plot device (as is Sam’s but in a different way, and Cas’ trauma is a whole other barrel of fish we’re not gonna dive into right now). Like wholesale full stop they don’t actually care about what happened to him. Unless it’s relevant in an episode.

Oh that boys home he was left at when he was 16 for months? Sure we’ll sprinkle that in in the back half of the series. Oh he was covered in bruises and said it was from a hunt (when it’s clear contextually they were from his father but saying the fantastical but true is easier than saying the uncomfortable but true). As Dean says though the story became the story, he was sixteen. He just went along with what John said.

We only see Dean ever truly rage at John, by the way, when either Dean is dead (when he’s between life and death and he rages at John, right before John “apologizes” for traumatizing him, for putting too much on Dean’s shoulders, and fucking dying) or John is dead (the Djinn episode where Dean is straight™ and John is dead™ and he goes to his grave and just yells and rages like he should have to his father in the real world).

Dean’s trauma from being both tortured and torturer in hell? Yeah, we don’t talk about that after it’s Relevant™. Even though it’s clear - especially in the demon!dean, mark of cain era, all those years later - Alastair still has his hooks inside of Dean. I stopped watching originally after s8 ended. I was fed up with the show, and with this whole renaissance I’ve been doing a rewatch and I’m into season twelve now and it really has never come up again.

Even when he had the mark of cain and he was tasked with questioning and accused of torturing it was “the mark has changed you” and not “you were victim and victimizer in hell for forty years, which is longer than you’ve been alive on earth” (and, was about as long as he wound up living. Which is desperately sad.

Because we talk about Sam’s desire for a “normal” life but, Dean wanted out too. He was tired in the first few seasons of this show, he never had a chance to taste freedom (we don’t count the boys home, because that was a different kind of regimented life, and it was a false freedom) the way that Sam did in Flagstaff with Bones or at Stanford with Jessica. Love for Dean is sacrificing, it’s putting himself/his happiness/his well-being last.

Because Dean only knows love in the context of violence (like all of these fun examples, for starters) is a phrase that I’ve said a lot both in private chats and on here, and I absolutely think it goes to him being a tool (a blunt instrument, a plot device, so both textually and metatextually) instead of a person. Which Cas sees Dean’s shame/guilt and sees that side of Dean because he touched his soul, and saw more than just the Righteous™ man, more than just the tool, he saw A good man, not a machine.

On the other side though you have how “bad guys” view Dean: Desperate, Sloppy, Needy, Dean’s hole (Again), which is again so wildly counterintuitive to the story of a Macho Man Hero™. You’re using vocabulary that is both queering him and feminizing (and I know this a meme format, but sincerely it is done in a derogatory way it is feminizing. It’s breaking him down to bare parts, to a sloppy hole).

My whole rewatch I have been absolutely fascinated by how identity and free will is utilized/conceptualized on this show. Castiel has been my main focus, but Dean and how he is framed by himself and others is...fascinating - and frustrating. The writers inconsistency lends itself not only to this unintentionally queer character, but also one that again is incredibly easily read as a non-traditionally masculine character.

As a feminine character.

This show has so few female characters that of course it had to foist the roles/behaviors/plots that a female character might have onto a male character. Which I think is part of why reading Dean as trans (either transmasc, or transfemme) is so easily done like.

Half of these are shit posts, but you can find trans allegories/textual evidence in this show again, again, again, again, and again. And this is unintentional, they don’t want you to look at Dean and see woman, former future or present. Like a lot of these I’m sure are punchlines for them, because women/queer folk are punchlines to them.

Sometimes the only women in an episode are random witnesses who get two sentences of dialogue, and then the main guest character is a man. Who flirts with Dean, and Dean is receptive to it.

They paint themselves into a corner, there are female Rabbi. So easily could Aaron have been a woman instead of a man, but they made the choice to play up the HaHa Dean & Men card.

Because, again, Dean has filled the slot of Woman™ of Female Lead™ and the flirting would’ve been straight if Dean was a woman. It’s a plot device, they needed to have the guest character be disarming, be cute, make the main character flustered.

It’s just the main character is a man, because they’re allergic to women. But they still need those female plots, tools of femininity, to move their show forward. I mean I am a big subscriber to transmasc Jo (no idea if anyone else is with me on this one, but let me explain). Jo is in love with Dean (concept) not Dean (actuality). Which, we’ve all had our eggs cracked by someone like that. We were in love with them until we realized we just wanted to be them.

He loved her like a little sister, she loved him like a lost idol. He’s a golden calf and she dies for him, because she believed in him, she was the original character dashed at the altar of the Winchesters.

I fully believe if she had lived and if this show had a crumb of actual good writing Jo could have been a deeply compelling transmasc character. But I also think she’s a fascinating inversion of Dean. Dean is a Masculine Character who subverts Toxic Masculinity, Jo is a Tomboy™ she’s not your (if you take it straight, literally and metaphorically) average female love interest. She’s angry, she’s not soft at all, all edges and corners and thorns. She isn’t helpless, she’s stubborn but not in a “you’re going to get punished for this” way. She’s right when she’s stubborn. She’s helpful, she’s a martyr.

I could do a whole other essay just on Jo (and Ellen, and Ash, what a fucking trio!) but needless to say Jo was one of the first...plot device feminine tools sacrificed to this show. She was a regular, she was unique, she was an engaging character, and she still died (to progress the plot? no. for man pain? yeah, for like three episodes maybe, and then it’s forgotten just like the rest of Dean’s trauma, as we mentioned above).

Dean and Women and Love is a very interesting tool used too because. Boy they sure try to make Dean love women and it fails in small ways, and in big, meaningless, failed het domesticity (again) ways. Not to mention whatever Lust (in the form of a woman) having no effect upon him, when they could have used that moment to assert his Masculinity and Heterosexuality. He behaved normally? And...also...whatever the fuck the Adios thing was!

Like they have these opportunities to make him Traditionally (toxically) Masculine, but make the choice to...not? To soften him. Because it’s a tool. He’s their female lead, textually he had to take on the role of mother(/father) to Sam, but...I mean this is a million miles long already. I know, but we absolutely can’t not talk about his Paternal/Maternal behaviors. (Which appear again and again again and again, outside of his relationship with Sam even/especially). He’s the mother hen, sage, safety net, beacon, home to so many side characters they meet.

I mean in many ways Jody is also a Dean comparison. Lost her family. Found a new family. She is non-traditionally feminine, but easily flustered and Silly™ (let’s just drop the entire sex talk over family dinner scene with Alex and the boys and looking to them for help, even though she was already a mother, and she’s a cop, and a hunter and this confident no nonsense individual.... She’s not). We are meant to see her as this hard ass, but she makes extra food for the boys to take back to the bunker. She’s deadly in a fight, but also still easily overwhelmed and put into damsel mode, and she cares so much even in the face of adversity.

It’s also fun to see how Jo | Jody are reflections of Dean at different points of his life. Younger, cocky | Older, settled.

Even when the text tries to tell us that he’s not.

When it reminds us that he’s violent. That he is his father, even if he says that Sam is more like John (which was reflexive, which was angry because of Adam and how Sam was behaving like Dean in that episode, and yes there are parallels to be drawn between Sam and John, the show barely dives into them). Instead we’re told that Dean is John (Again and Again and Again and Again).

So intensely that a fanfictionalized version of the Winchester Gospels makes it an entire fucking musical number.

And yet, despite the texts insistence to make Dean Macho Man Father Reborn™ We get this Dean who is silly (and directly compared/contrasted to the female character in this scene), soft, in heels, nagging, and... Sully (you know Sam’s imaginary friend who has the same Haircut Dean has, who is a softer, shorter, friendlier, campier, version of Dean who was a replacement For Dean until the real one let Sam back in? That? Sully?) it’s hard to take them seriously.

Hell, even when he was A DEMON? What did they do? They had him sing off-key drunken karaoke, they had him doing this ! Like that’s your hero, unhinged, free to be as bad as he could be, and you put him in a cowboy hat in a romance with the king of hell.

The Female Lead, everyone. Who’s biggest betrayal(s) comes at the hands of his love interest (again, a man even though it was an angel who could’ve taken any vessel! who could’ve been recast, who canonically dies admitting his love to Dean - that one), who he tries so hard to be loyal to.

The contradictions of his character are laughable. He is so emotional, but if he is engaged about his emotions? He shuts down, or he’s exasperated about being asked about them. It really is Female Lead/Only Here For The Plot disease, because everything is more important than him. How’s he doing? Doesn’t matter outside of the context of how x character is doing or that y character is dead. Or his emotions only matter if they’re done in penance.

They also really do frame him as Pretty Boy™ in a violent way, or in a derogatory manner. They’ll give us homoerotic shots like this or these and never really acknowledge how these are gay shots. Sorry the gun scene is a a straight up sex scene, the beer sip spilling out over his mouth is oral, the scene where Cas fills up Dean’s glass with whisky is also a sex scene, they do this shit on purpose but accidentally queer it up. If Dean was a woman these scenes wouldn’t even matter. They’d be passing moments, but because he is not just a man but A Man™ they’re insane to see.

Not to mention all of these scenes and all the ones I haven’t linked where Dean dresses up. He performs masculinity, but he performs femininity too. He’s a plot device that is slotted in to whatever role they need. He’s Super Straight Butch Man™ but coaches the lesbian on how to successfully flirt with a man. He’s Action Hero™ who sits through a montage with the same lesbian and yays and nays her outfits, and enjoys himself.

Fuck he loves dressing up, he feels better in these costumes because performing a character is easier than being himself. Because who is Dean? He’s a tool, both textually and metatextually. It is exactly how the women and because of the women on the show that Dean is the way that he is. If there was a more steady female presence Dean would not be half as much of a plot device or half as camp/gay/feminine/non-traditionally masculine/queer coded as he is.

In conclusion....

#dean winchester #supernatural #spn meta #spn #gender #anon #replies #messages #my writing #ANYWAYS PHEW okay anon i don't know if i even fully got to your point but i woke up at like 3:30 to this ask and i've been fixated on it #HOPE THIS IS EVEN JUST a little bit coherent #the way i meant for this to talk so much more about transness and eldest daughter syndrome and just FORGOT #oops #oh well

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steve0discusses · 3 years

Text

Yugioh S5 Ep 20: Yugi’s Senshi Outfit

So I’ve been doing a lot of work, and I haven’t looked at the blog for a hot minute and when I finally checked back in to do these posts I noticed something on my tumblr was just blowing up. I got all excited thinking “oh shoot, Did I draw something right??” and instead, it was a random post I made about the bootspants from season 1. Three years later, resurrected from the grave and covered in...thousands of notes? I don’t understand how this website works.

Anyways, the comments are mostly good, but a little bit wild. A lot of people seem to think I would know what Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is, when I’m an adult who is still watching the first 5 seasons of Yugioh. (I will never have time to watch Jojo,) and then some other people started talking about Actual Card Mechanics that went...completely beyond my comprehension. But then there was one person. One person who said one thing, and brought it all together.

Poots.

The boots that are pants.

Poots.

I can’t believe I looked at all the different combinations, but a Poots never crossed my brain.

It is so perfect, so cathartic, although it took 3 years to get there.

Poots.

Anyways, we’re in S5 and unfortunately not in poots anymore, Yugi is now dressed in a tupperware container from hell and they have wandered into a desert. On cue, Grandpa has an injury, but at least this time it’s not his ass.

You know how there’s artists who do hyper-realistic versions of pokemon monsters with detailed bone structure and muscle anatomy? I dare them to look at this orb and tell me how the hell it has wings. Like go ahead and try and pin a spine down on that thing. I’ll wait.

(read more under the cut)

So Joey decides to sprint down this endless desert with just boundless positivity.

Over the edge of this sand dune is a whole bunch of huts,just random civilization out in the middle of no where.

One girl walks over and it’s a look.

She’s really the only one here who can talk, and she just seems...so incredibly bored to be here. A whole lot of Wednesday Addams energy. She leads them into a hut where an old guy pulls a scroll out of blue fire. As you do.

Again, this arc should have been a video game, because while it’s something to get the player interested if there’s some riddle they have to solve to progress, when you’re watching a TV show, it’s not like I’m the one solving the riddle. The format is honestly one of the downers of this arc, tbh.

It has strong “I played a D+D sesh and made a webcomic out of it vibe” and I know I just called out like half of you, but listen, I will not take it back.

This episode, our gimmick is some asshole is going to be yelling at us from the other end of the map, just shouting in the background for the entirety of the episode like that tangible human skull meme.

Then Wednesday Addams hands over yet another MacGuffin because why not?

Tea can twin it up with Yugi now. Her necklace doesn’t seem haunted, but it’s only a matter of time. (also her necklace looks so freakin terrible, we’ll see it later and I’ll have a lot more to say because wtf it looks like some sort of polly pocket.)

I’m not 100% that the voice that shouts at us from the end of the hall this episode is Mokuba’s voice actress. But I’m 99% positive it is, or Mokuba’s voice is just really that type of vibe.

Stuff happens, and it felt like card duel stuff, so I’m gonna skip over the part where they pulled out their duel monsters one by one, since the fight was pointless anyway because the worms can turn you into stone. So Yugi and Pharaoh decide to have a chat about it because their plan is clearly not working.

This is when Pharaoh has a vivid lucid daydream, which seems like something that would have been more convenient before he ended up turning into stone on the floor of some desert. But, hallucinations never come when they’re convenient on this show. They usually come during card games, tbh.

Imagine with me that you’re dreaming of like...an old ass greek guy who is 99% Alexander the Great. Imagine he tells you to fuse with a sentient paper card that you already carry around in a weird capsule.

Please

For the love of all that is holy

Do not think about what it means to fuse with the Dark Magician.

Dark Magician is...he “exists” but he’s like not even a person. There seem to be whole fleets of dark Magicians, which are all the same guy, just cloned, right? Or maybe they’re a family? Or like...I don’t freakin know. Like they’re all hanging out together in some card dimension so it’d be more like fusing with the guy who dresses like Barney the dinosaur instead of actually Barney. Like he’s more of like a concept than a dude, but apparently you can just introduce him to your...whatever this armor is supposed to be, and Dark Magician turns into a Super Suit.

I want to express my thanks to the Yugioh team for not putting Yami in his underoos. Hell, they didn’t even take off his jacket. I do not know what art directer ok’d this for animation and said “yeah, this won’t kills us if we animate it.” but that is a hell ton of lines and design right there. Yeah they have 3d, and probably had to 3d that staff...but that doesn’t mean you don’t end up drawing it, in the end--you still have to draw over your 3d. You still have to draw literally everything.

Anyway, when we get to the eye of the storm. The secret to getting there was that you have to fly, which again--3/5 of these guys already have a monster that can fly. We can finally tell the voice at the end of the hall to stop yelling because it’s really bothering all the townspeople, and then move on with the quest.

Everyone else was stone during this. So when they un-petrified they kinda looked over at Yugi and were like “how freakin long was I out???”

But youknow, Yugi’s 2 people, so it’s fine. So long as you don’t get down to the third bastard still sitting around in there.

After this, our NPCs vanish, and the show pushes us directly forward. No time for them to piss off a land turtle or set a bunch of wolves on fire. Just get out of the desert and freakin go.

I’m just so bothered by this random ass huge chunky necklace.

It’s like the size of your freakin fist. And it’s just...a pentagon. Congrats Tea, you have a fake ass plastic necklace. I guess it’s so that when we’re far away we can still see it on her chest but like...This show loves huge ass necklaces, and they’re all basic ass shapes. We got a pyramid, the Kaiba’s wear squares, Bakura wears a circle with kind of phallic bits hanging off of it and this is just...it’s literally just a pentagon.

I guess Ishizu wore a wadjet and Duke has an indecipherable clown as his necklace. But man...the Yugioh necklace game is just a lot of shapes.

And so we continue on with this filler arc, which is also a pokemon arc, and even secretly has a Sailor Moon arc just stuffed in there for funsies. This arc is weird.

Also, I brought up the human skull so I legally have to post this.

youtube

Anyway, here’s a link to read these in chrono order, in case you just got here: https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

And I’m off to drink a bin of ice water because it is 5 billion degrees right now in this house.

#ygo #yugioh #yu gi oh #episode recap #photo recap #S5 #Ep 20 #yugi muto #yami #grandpa muto #tea gardner #and her new accessory #tristan taylor #joey wheeler #and that time that Yami fused with dark magician and we all acted like that wasn't extremely weird

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

Text

Conspiracy fantasy

When we talk about conspiratorialism, we tend to focus (naturally) on the content of the conspiracy. Not only are those stories entertainingly outlandish — they’re also the point of contact between conspiracists and the world.

If your mom is shouting about “Hollywood pedos,” it’s natural that you’ll end up discussing the relationship of this belief to observable reality. But while the content of conspiratorial beliefs gets lots of attention, we tend to neglect the significance of those beliefs.

To the extent that we consider why the beliefs exist and proliferate, the discussion rarely gets further than “irrational people have irrational beliefs.” This is a mistake. The stories we tell one another are a kind of Ouija board, with all our fingertips on the planchette.

The messages it spells out don’t describe external reality but they do reveal our internal, unspoken anxieties and aspirations.This is why we should read science fiction: not because it predicts the future, but because it diagnoses the present.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/26/meaningful-zombies/#oracles

Sf is an ever-mutating ecosystem of fears and hopes, and readers apply selective pressure to those organisms, extinguishing the ones that don’t capture the zeitgeist and elevating the ones that do, a co-evolution of our fantasies and our narratives.

http://locusmag.com/Features/2007/07/cory-doctorow-progressive-apocalypse.html

This is why Alternate Reality Games are so central to their players’ lives. They’re a form of narrative co-creation, with the players throwing out theories and the game-masters actually changing the story to incorporate the best of them.

ARGs are an environment where your coolest and most deliciously scary ideas become reality. It’s a powerful way to galvanize collective action.

As anthropologist Biella Coleman writes in Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy, it’s the organizing principal behind Anonymous.

Anon Ops begin life as victory announcement videos. If the vision of success captures enough Anons, they execute the op.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-anonymous-ghost-in-the-machine

In other words, the degree to which a shared fantasy of victory compels its audience predicts whether the audience realizes its fantasy. Long before the alt-right, Anons were memeing ideas into existence (no coincidence, as both were incubated on 4chan).

On the Conspiracy Games and Counter-Games podcast, three left academics — Max Haiven, AT Kingsmith, Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou — analyze “conspiracy fantasies” (as opposed to conspiracies, e.g. the Big Lie behind the Iraq War) for what they reveal about late capitalism’s anxieties.

As leftists, they naturally focus on the relationship between material conditions and people’s behaviors and beliefs. This is an important part of the discourse on conspiratorialism that’s often missing from liberal and right-wing analysis.

Conspiracists aren’t just “irrational” nor are they just “racist.” They may be both of those things, but unless you look at material conditions, then the surges and retreats of conspiracism are mysterious phenomena, strange tides raised by unseen forces.

A decade ago, then-PM David Cameron — the architect of a brutal, authoritarian austerity — dismissed the Hackney Riots as “criminality pure and simple,” and demanded a ban on discussion of the relationship between austerity and unrest.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2011/aug/09/david-cameron-riots-criminality-video

But without that discussion, there’s no explanation. Even if you believe that “criminality” is a thing that is latent within some or all of us, what explains a rise or fall in that criminality? Is it like pollen that alights upon some of us, turning us bad? Or the full moon?

Likewise the “conspiracists are just racists” or “they’re just deranged.” Without looking at the material world, there’s no explanation for why that racism suddenly became more (or less) important to how conspiracists live their lives.

We can’t talk about conspiratorialism without talking about material considerations, and we have to talk about the form and substance of the conspiratorial belief. The ARG-like structure of Qanon is a hugely important part of its popularity:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#adrian-hon

Memeing things into existence in a game-like way is hugely compelling. You can tell when a D&D game is hopping when the players and the DM start co-creating the story, with the DM slyly altering the dungeon and the NPCs to match the players’ super-cool theories.

A recent episode of the CGACG podcast present a mind-blowing analysis of the interplay of the material conditions, mythology and structure of Qanon. It’s a two-part interview with Wu Ming 1:

https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/wuming-one-1?in=reimaginevalue/sets/unmanageablerisks

https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/wuming-one-2?in=reimaginevalue/sets/unmanageablerisks

Wu Ming 1 is part of Bologna’s Wu Ming Collective, the successor to the 1990s Luther Bissett net-art collective. Bissett did many wild, weird things,including publishing “Q,” an internationally bestselling conspiratorial novel in 1999 (!!)

https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/what-is-the-wu-ming-foundation/

The plot of “Q” involves a high-level government official, privy to top-secret info about a state conspiracy. It closely mirrors Qanon beliefs, right down to a call for a Jan 6 uprising (!!!!). The major difference is that “Q” is set during the Protestant Reformation.

In the interview, Wu Ming 1 talks about the proliferation of conspiratorial, ARG-like 4chan hoaxes that predated Qanon, and hypothesizes that the original Q posts were plagiarized from the novel.

The strange experience of seeing a novel turn into a cult prompted Ming 1 to write “La Q di Qomplotto” (“The Q in Qonspiracy”), a book that defines and analyzes “conspiracy fantasies.”

https://edizionialegre.it/product/la-q-di-qomplotto/

Ming 1’s interview digs into this in some depth, including setting out criterial for distinguishing conspiracies from fantasies (for example, a conspiracy doesn’t go on forever, while a fantasy can imagine the Knights Templar running the world for centuries).

I was taken by Ming 1’s discussion of the role that “enchantment” plays in conspiratorialism — the feeling of being in a magical and wondrous (if also anxious and terrible) place. He says this is why “debunkers” fail — they’re like people who spoil a magic trick.

Ming 1 and the hosts talk about replacing the enchantment of conspiratorialism with a counter-enchantment, grounded not in the conspiratorialist’s oversimplification and essentialism, but in the wonder of reality.

Ming 1 analogizes his “counter-enchantment” to the “double-wow” method of Penn and Teller: first they blow you away with a trick, and then they blow you away with the cleverness by which it was accomplished.

He describes how the Luther Bissett collective performed a double-wow during Italy’s Satanic Panic, creating a hoax satanic heavy metal cult and a counter-cult, promulgating stories of their pitched battles, then revealing how they’d faked the whole thing.

The action was taken in solidarity with actual Bolognese heavy metal fans who’d been framed for imaginary Satanic “crimes.” Luther Bissett wanted to demonstrate how a panic could be created from nothing, to reveal the method behind the real hoax with a fake hoax.

The double-wow method reminds me of Richard Dawkins’ manuever in “The Magic of Reality,” his excellent children’s book about the virtues of the scientific world, revealing how the numinous wonder of faith is nothing compared to the wonder of science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_of_Reality

The idea that conspiratorialism is a leading indicator of capitalism’s anxieties is a powerful one, and it ties into other compelling accounts of conspiracy, like Anna Merlan’s REPUBLIC OF LIES, which discusses the importance of trauma to conspiratorial belief.

Like Ming 1, Merlan stresses the kernel of truth underpinning conspiracy fantasies — the real aerospace coverups that make UFO conspiracies plausible, the real pharmaceutical conspiracies to cover up harms from drugs that underpin anti-vax.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

In the podcast, Ming 1 and the hosts stress the importance of identifying and addressing the kernel of truth and the trauma it produces in any counter-conspiratorial work — that is, a successful counter-enchantment must address the material conditions behind the fantasy.

I really like this approach because of its empathy — its attempt to connect with the conditions that produce behaviors and beliefs, not to be confused with sympathy, which might excuse their toxic and hateful nature.

It reminds me a lot of Oh No Ross and Carrie, whose hosts have spent years joining cults and religions and digging into fringe practices and beliefs in an effort to understand them; they laugh a lot, but never AT their subjects.

https://ohnopodcast.com/

But Ming 1 brings something new to this discussion: an analysis of the role that novels have played in conspiracy fantasy formation: not just the plagiarizing of “Q” to make Qanon, but things like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion plagiarizing Dumas.

The interview also brought to mind Edward Snowden’s recent inaugural blog-post, “Conspiracy: Theory and Practice,” which seeks to separate conspiracy practice (e.g. the NSA spying on everyone) from theories (what Ming 1 calls “fantasies”).

https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/conspiracy-pt1

Snowden connects the feeling of powerlessness to the urge to explain the world through conspiracies, relating this to his experience of revealing one of the world’s most far-reaching real conspiracies, and then becoming the subject of innumerable conspiracy fantasies.

Snowden’s perspective is one that has heretofore been missing from conspiracy discourse — the perspective of someone who has been part of a real conspiracy and then the central subject of a constellation of bizarre and widespread conspiratorial beliefs.

These different works, focusing as they do on the character of conspiratorial beliefs, the nature of conspiratorial practice, and material conditions of conspiracists, comprise a richer analysis of our screwed-up discourse than, say, theories about “online radicalization.”

As I wrote in my 2020 book “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism,” the “online radicalization” narrative requires that you accept Big Tech’s unsupported marketing claims about its power to bypass our critical thoughts at face value.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

Claims to be able to control our minds — whether made by Rasputin, Mesmer, pick-up artists, MK-ULTRA or NLP enthusiasts — always turn out to be cons (though sometimes the con artists are also conning themselves).

But there’s a much more plausible, less controversial set of powers that Big Tech possesses. By spying on us all the time, it can help scammers target people who are ready to hear conspiratorial explanations.

By monopolizing our discourse, it allows SEO scammers to create default answers to our questions. By locking us in, it can keep us using a platform even if the discourse there makes us angry and anxious.

And by corrupting our political process, it creates “kernels of truth” for conspiratorial beliefs.

As with Scooby Doo, the monster turns out to be a familiar villain in a fright mask: a monopolist whose abuses and impunity create the anxiety that make conspiracy plausible.

#pluralistic

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tossawary · 3 years

Text

Chapter 24: “Seeing is Believing” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” random favorite lines and commentary. Not a full list or full commentary, but longer commentary than usual to talk about quest construction.

AN: This was... a weird chapter to write. When I started outlining, I had... the conversation with Shen Qingqiu planned... the conversation with Shen Yuan planned... the fact that SQH, SY, LQG, and LFL was the quest party... and the fact that they get the Eye at the end of it. That was everything.

The entire rest of this chapter came together FRIDAY LAST WEEK.

Huan Hua Palace wasn’t going to be there. The Weeper didn’t exist. The Eye or its previous owner wasn’t at all connected to the Garden Master. The Shadow Cave Wolf Spiders didn’t exist. The murder plant didn’t exist. The mysterious monster showing up at the end wasn’t originally planned either.

I mean, I had a lot of pre-existing plot threads to tie in and weave with, but ohhh boy! Picture someone lying facedown on a floor like, “I forgot to plan the contents of the super important quest...”

I was originally going to have the Eye quest a lot simpler, but given the weight “Death of the Author” had when I finally reached this part of the story, that wasn’t really going to do! It had to be bigger than that! It needed oomph! This also felt like a good opportunity to really establish the new SQH-SY dynamic. To explore SY fumbling to find a place in this world without strict character role, especially in relation to settled and well-supported SQH.

“One attempts to remain dignified,” Shen Qingqiu agrees. “As there is little point in kicking and screaming about how such ignobility isn’t fair.”

“Ha! Is there ever?”

“Not in my experience.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely not cute when I do it,” Shang Qinghua jokes.

Shen Qingqiu’s lips actually twitch at that.

Success?!

AN: I wasn’t going into this fic with the intention of writing any Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu almost friendship! But it started developing and it seemed a shame not to explore Shang Qinghua developing a real relationship with Shen Qingqiu (though not a particularly close one) when the man is suppose to be the scum villain (and the readers know that the man might get replaced by Shen Yuan).

I can see myself writing more Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu content in the future. Someone dropped a particularly nice prompt for them in my inbox that I’m looking forward to exploring at some point.

(I mean, not to say that Shang Qinghua has a type, but Shang Qinghua has a type and it’s handsome, deadly, intimidating, frosty men with a villainous character design and trust/abandonment and communication issues. I could make it work.)

“Ah, well, two ‘ideal’ situations come to mind: severing the personal relationship for good… or, ah, talking about how to do better and trying that. You don’t have to forget or even forgive if you don’t want to! But, ah… there’s got to be a difference between totally swallowing your anger and cutting ties forever, right?” Shang Qinghua says awkwardly. “If there’s… ever going to be anything good afterwards…”

Shen Qingqiu stares at him for a sweat-inducing length of time.

“Ah, fuck,” Shang Qinghua thinks.

“Sorry,” he says. “Ahhh, I’m just… thinking about something someone told me… in… in regards to some of my own problems. Never mind! Never mind!”

AN: Luo Jiahui really is out here making Moshang and Qijiu get their fucking act together just by setting a better example.

“Shizun, my apologies for the interruption, but I came to ask Shizun if he would be willing to join our music lesson today? The disciples have missed his playing and are eager to present their improvements.”

“...Very well, unless anyone here would disagree…?” Shen Qingqiu looks directly at the Qian Cao Peak cultivator, as though daring her to object and die.

“It’s an excellent suggestion!” the Qian Cao Peak cultivator says quickly.

The young woman smiles. “And perhaps Shizun could sit in on the calligraphy lesson afterwards? In order to offer his opinion on my progress as a teacher?”

“Fishing for compliments is unbecoming,” Shen Qingqiu says dryly.

“Wait, what?” Shang Qinghua thinks.

AN: So, this has all been happening in the background, but Shen Qingqiu accepted this House of Rejuvenation woman onto his Peak about... 6-ish years ago now? This is kind of meant to parallel Shang Qinghua’s once-secret relationship with Luo Jiahui.

Shang Qinghua was out here trying to be a better person and Shen Qingqiu noticed; now Shen Qingqiu has his own positive (platonic) relationship with a nameless background character who was meant to die for plot reasons. What a thing, huh? If the story was saved because Shang Qinghua started a domino effect of saving random people who went on to change things?

After all, as Shang Qinghua said to the kid, besides Peerless Cucumber’s apparent talent for cultivation, he knows that his fellow transmigrator has three very important skills that will serve him well on An Ding Peak! 1) An encyclopedia knowledge for even seemingly pointless bullshit (which is kind of flattering, honestly). 2) The willingness to fight total strangers over seemingly pointless bullshit. And 3) a sharp enough tongue to win.

Peerless Cucumber didn’t find these points as funny as Shang Qinghua did.

AN: Shen Yuan was always going to end up on An Ding Peak. I thought about sending him to Qing Jing or Qian Cao or Qiong Ding... or any other Peak... but that would take him too far away from Shang Qinghua to really explore their relationship and to move him around conveniently in the story. And SY sticking to An Ding seemed to best illustrate the fact that SY is lost and doesn’t know what to do except cling to SQH.

“It’s not much, sure, but it’s yours,” Shang Qinghua says finally. “You’ll be joining the talisman classes soon, so don’t try anything from a book and then need to request some home repairs.”

Peerless Cucumber nods and puts his stack of manuals down on the table.

“How’s your tutorial mission going?”

“Fine,” the kid says shortly. “Have you found anything for the other one yet?”

“Ah, not yet.”

AN: “Are you winning, son?” meme energy here.

Ah, now Shang Qinghua recognizes his fellow transmigrator’s expression! That’s the same stunned expression one of his Huan Hua not-disciples, Yu Chaonan, made upon meeting the Bai Zhan Peak War God for the first time. Shang Qinghua assumes that Peerless Cucumber was expecting a man who looked more like a musclebound giant and less like a pop idol (if one with amazingly muscular arms), which is a super common and never-not-funny misconception people have about Liu Qingge.

“Brother of one of the most beautiful women in this world, bro,” Shang Qinghua reminds his fellow transmigrator, amused. Aha! Now Peerless Cucumber’s vehement disinterest in the harem stuff is making even more sense than before!

Shang Qinghua’s assumption gets 100% confirmed when it comes time for Peerless Cucumber to fly with Liu Qingge for the next leg of the journey. The other transmigrator is so embarrassed and awkward about it that Shang Qinghua’s super direct brother-in-law asks if the young man is alright.

AN: This was so fun to write. Shang Qinghua really can use the Liu siblings to gauge people’s sexual/romantic orientation.

The map (or rather, the copy Shang Qinghua made of the delicate original map) takes them to a green and grey landscape of leafy trees crawling over a wide network of tall cliffs and deep gorges. Gurgling rivers cut through twisting rock formations. Shang Qinghua can’t see any of these rivers on the map. Or these deathly drop ravines. From the outside, the whole thing looks like a natural maze (holy shit, there could be so many monsters and death-traps in there!), and Shang Qinghua would know those golden robes flying low over the hanging trees anywhere.

“Huan Hua,” Liu Qingge mutters.

“Do you think they’re looking for what we’re looking for?” Luo Fanli asks.

“That’s usually how it goes,” Peerless Cucumber says, before Shang Qinghua can.

AN: I came up with the skeleton idea first. Then I was like... “I should give it three eyes.” And then I was like... “But who IS this dead author? A god? A spirit? What grander implications am I spinning here?”

And THEN I remembered that I had some ambiguous powerful being force the Garden Master into exile due to a flood. This was because, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the immortal man Gilgamesh meets in the abyss is the survivor of a great flood. So I was like, “Reduce! Re-use! Recycle! There’s my skeleton!”

So I wanted to relate the skeleton to water because of the flood angle. Water as a symbol of cleansing/reincarnation is a big thing throughout many cultures. I can’t remember exactly how the crying aspect came up, but I knew there was going to be water in the temple now, so at some point my brain like was, “Bro, this skeleton should totally be crying because mythology vibes.”

So I built the surrounding land off the idea that there was water flowing from or around this temple. At this point, I had decided that Huan Hua Palace should also be looking for this artifact, so I had to come up with a way to hide the temple, yet have a way for SQH’s party to track it down.

The damage to the doors is worse: someone once upon a time collapsed a part of the cliff face around the entrance, essentially leaving only the top fourth of the utterly smashed stone doors visible. It’s a wall now and has been for ages. It looks like it would take days to dig through the rubble. Someone has even super helpfully carved, “These doors will never open again,” just above the wreck.

“Guess we’ll have to go in as intruders rather than guests!” Luo Fanli says.

“What would be welcoming us inside a lost temple exactly?” Shang Qinghua asks vaguely, inwardly cursing the fact that explosive mining techniques will definitely attract the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators’ attention and also probably collapse the whole cliff on them.

“We only have to clear a passage for us, not the whole door,” Peerless Cucumber says optimistically. “Is there a special technique for this kind of thing?”

“Aha, not really.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t we just keep following the water?” Luo Fanli says.

“...How so?” Shang Qinghua asks.

“Some of those waterfalls could be passages inside,” Liu Qingge explains, because he and the little sister-in-law apparently share the same brain. He’s already eyeing the waterfall wearing down the giant statue on the left.

AN: Temples in quests need to have traps and obstacles and monsters! Well, not ALL of the did, but this one did. I based the obstacles they faced as much as I could around the whole “Death of the Author” theme, while using this whole quest to explore Shen Yuan, Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua, Shang Qinghua and Liu Qingge and Luo Fanli, and so on.

The idea here with the door is that the “author” is not going to let them inside the temple to take the interpretation of the narrative (the Eye) for themselves. The story is over (the temple is closed for business)! The author is dead! If they want to get inside, they have to break inside or slip inside as intruders.

This also creates a convenient obstacle to hold up the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators so that our party can be nearly caught later! And shows off Shang Qinghua, Liu Qingge, and Luo Fanli’s twisty lines of thinking.

Luo Fanli is holding the light and Shang Qinghua passes the other transmigrator to her, while accepting Liu Qingge’s hand for help getting out of the water.

“Ahhh, that was fun,” Shang Qinghua mutters.

Then he notices that Liu Qingge has the Cheng Luan sword out and ready. Shang Qinghua looks through the surrounding darkness, but all he can see are columns and water. For a moment, he thinks he sees something, a prowling shadow at the other end of the cavernous room, but he wipes the water out of his eyes and it’s gone.

AN: The water in Shang Qinghua’s eyes briefly lets him see a flash of the invisible monsters who show up later! It helps up the tension.

Another low growl rips through the darkness and Peerless Cucumber shuffles a little closer to Shang Qinghua. Because that sounded really fucking close and yet Shang Qinghua still can’t see the thing that’s making that sound.

He doesn’t see Liu Qingge lunge at him either. He only feels his brother-in-law shove him into Peerless Cucumber, knocking them into the water, out of the way of something that howls when Liu Qingge slashes at it with his sword. Shang Qinghua rolls off Peerless Cucumber and looks up just in time to see dark blood splatter across the watery floor. Liu Qingge pursues the attacker with a second slash, but only seems to meet thin air this time.

“It’s invisible!” Luo Fanli cries. “Fuck!”

“Behind you!” Liu Qingge snaps, and spins to slash at the thin air beside him. Dark droplets of blood hit the water again and something hisses at him.

Luo Fanli whirls and slashes, searching for an opponent.

“They’re reflected in the water!” Liu Qingge yells at her, standing guard over Shang Qinghua as he gets to his feet again. “Listen for their footsteps and vocalizations! Feel the demonic energy and air displacement!”

AN: I got this from a list of Dungeons and Dragons puzzles. The idea is that there’s some puzzle that must be solved, but the truth of the room can only be seen in the reflection of the nearby water (or mirror or whatever).

Which felt fitting for a “Death of the Author” quest! Whatever an author’s intentions, the story is what they actually wrote, so the audience interprets a text without the context of the author’s insight. The truth (of the story) is in the reflection (audience interpretation)! It felt like a fun idea.

It also allows Shen Yuan to actually contribute to the quest via monster lore and bring up his impaired vision problem. And to confront Shen Yuan with the reality of this world. And to show off Luo Fanli’s fighting skills. And to show off LIU QINGGE’S legendary fighting skills, instincts as a warrior who fights many dangerous beasts, and the fact that he’s clever and observant!

Liu Qingge is good at what he does! And this is what he does!

Someone has… angrily… or desperately… carved a lopsided message into the wall.

“‘If I go blind, so does the world,’” Peerless Cucumber reads.

“...That’s probably not good,” Shang Qinghua says.

“Nooo…” Fanli agrees.

The messages continue as they climb, carved into the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Most of it is illegible. Some of it is just nonsense. Some of it looks like the same kind of historical records carved into the broken tablets. Some of it looks like someone attacked the walls after reading what was written there. There are deep gouges in the walls and cracked marks that would match a giant’s hands.

“‘The water cleans the lies,’” Peerless Cucumber reads. “‘I am the only one who can see.’ ‘Lies everywhere, lies everywhere, lies everywhere.’ ‘The water cleans the evil.’ ‘I do not have enough tears.’ ‘Everything is nothing now. Everything in vain.’”

“You really don’t need to read them!” Shang Qinghua tells the kid. “It’s fine. It's totally fine.”

AN: This is mostly here to up the tension, but it’s also here to try and give insight into this being and relate them more to the “Death of the Author” and the “Seeing is Believing” themes.

I also saw the phrase “If I go blind, so does the world” while I was browsing a list of riddles for D&D campaigns and I was like, “THAT’S SICK, I’M USING THAT.” Really brings the “an eye for an eye” and vengeance vibes. (The riddle was longer than that one phrase, but the answer was “the sun”.)

The top of the temple reveals one massive room that looks like someone was alternatively scratching their insanity into the walls and tearing chunks out of the interior design with their bare hands. Overtop of the rubble is that eerie overgrowth. There’s a fine layer of water over the floor. At the center of it all is an incredibly enormous desk, cracked in half, with a robed skeleton sitting behind it, slumped over the top. It’s a little too large to be an ordinary human.

Plus, its skull is a little too long, probably to accommodate the third eye socket in the forehead. There’s something gleaming softly yellow in the third eye socket.

“Is… there water dripping from its eyes?” Luo Fanli whispers.

“It looks like it…” Peerless Cucumber whispers back. “Like it's crying…?”

“Still…? Is it dead or not?”

“Holy shit,” Shang Qinghua thinks, slightly nauseated. “System, bro, the worst bro I’ve ever known, tell me that we have not been swimming in a three-eyed skeleton’s magical undead tears or something this whole time.”

The shitty, no-good System stays unsurprisingly silent.

AN: Okay, so the idea here is that this being was someone who recorded history and shared their knowledge freely. This being had the ability to discern the truth of a person - they were extremely perceptive. (The Weeper is either female or doesn’t have a gender, by the way.)

The Weeper met the Garden Master at some point. The Garden Master was an asshole, a liar, arrogant, etc.. The Weeper and the Garden Master clashed badly, until the Weeper sent the cleansing flood that nearly destroyed the sect and the Garden Master essentially had to flee to a personal abyss.

The Garden Master sent the plant as a final “fuck you” to the Weeper. The plant caused the Weeper to slowly go mad. The smashed tablets and destroyed temple are the Weeper’s work. The Weeper (not in a great state of mind) had the temple closed themselves once they realized they and their work had been corrupted. This was a “you destroy my (embellished) reputation, I destroy yours (and your entire life)” plot by the Garden Master.

The idea behind the tears is the whole “water is cleansing” thing. The Weeper tried to clean away the madness using their magical water-related abilities... and it actually worked for a long time. But eventually the madness began to overpower the effects of the magical water. The Weeper’s tears are from frustration and helplessness at losing control.

The water inside the temple combats the plant’s physical effects. Also stabbing the root killed the plant and essentially broke its mental/spiritual powers.

Unfortunately, to get the fuck out of here, they have to go back through the temple. But hey! That’s still a lot better than an extended hike through an underground, haunted desert in darkness! The battle with the now-dead plant caused its growth to writhe around the temple. The vines need to be hacked through sometimes as they travel down through the rooms of broken shelves and shattered tablets.

“So much history lost…” Peerless Cucumber murmurs.

“He still thinks of himself as a reader - an observer, a visitor, separate from the flow of fate.”

AN: This is... absolutely based on the Heart from the Dishonored franchise. But this sort of item didn’t originate with Dishonored and I need it! It’s a surprise/mystery tool that will help us later!

The Eye isn’t exactly a mind-reading object. I mean, it kind of is, but it works in a very specific way that I’m looking forward to getting into.

From there, their path back out of the natural maze is even more careful and stressful than before, now that the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators are actively looking for them rather than the temple. It’s slow-going and stressful and silent, except for when the Weeper’s Eye presses too close against his chest.

“He is afraid that if he starts screaming, he will never stop,” it tells him, when he’s looking at a pale-faced Peerless Cucumber, as they fly over a particularly deathly-looking drop.

“Oh, me too, bro!” Shang Qinghua thinks. “Seriously! Tell me something I don’t know!”

AN: Having Shang Qinghua be totally unimpressed by an object like this was very funny to me. He’s the author! He’s a transmigrator! He knows these people well! He already has insight into their situations.

Shang Qinghua groans, but supposes that Peerless Cucumber would have at least been disguising Liu Qingge from the back. “You tell them that you were tracking thieves who stole something from Cang Qiong Mountain Sect,” he says quickly. “Rule of embarrassment! Admitting something that makes us look bad to a rival makes it sound true. Don’t tell them what was stolen and act really offended if they try to poke into Cang Qiong business. I’ll come back as soon as I get these two out!”

Liu Qingge nods and launches forward into the fight.

“We’re just leaving him?” Peerless Cucumber says, as they do exactly that.

“I’ll get changed and come back ‘looking for him for urgent sect business’ as soon as I’ve dropped you two off in the last town,” Shang Qinghua says. “I’m really good at acting stressed and confused, and at desperately needing an unstoppable wandering Liu Qingge back at Cang Qiong Mountain Sect immediately. Now let’s go! Let’s go! Mission isn’t over yet!”

AN: Shang Qinghua is, at heart, a liar. I love him.

#tossawary updates #tossawary svsss #pride is not the word #tossawary commentary

67 notes · View notes

adam-memeleri · 3 years

Text

Dial Tone

so i finally finished weh recently and i am ✨not okay✨

BUT i couldn’t stop thinking about this ficlet and i actually really like it, so here’s some angst for this fine day (and some slight alterations to canon but whatever) excuse the poor formatting i don’t really know how to go about it for this type of thing

M Rating (mentions of death and grief, so just to be safe)

Dakota x MC (both unspecified or something idk)

~1.5k words

“Hey. Hi. It’s, um, it’s me.” Her voice rings soft through the phone, hesitant as she sits curled up on her bedroom floor.

“I, uh, I know you’ll never hear this but I’ve just gotta get some things... off my chest, or whatever. Just some things I’ve been wanting to tell you but, you know, can’t.

“I miss you. Like a lot. Which is probably pretty obvious, but still. Like I - I can’t stop thinking about you. You pop up wherever I go, everything just reminds me of you.

“No matter what, I just see everything you’d love or joke about or try to make the best of. Which I could use some of these days.

“And I know you’d probably tell me to move on or keep smiling or whatever, but I miss you. I already said that,” she laughs meekly. “But it’s true. I miss you, and your laugh, and your jokes, and your smile, and the way you’d just make everything feel lighter.

“Now everything’s too heavy. I keep waiting for you to text me, with a meme or a random heart or something, but there’s just... nothing.

“And then I realize you’ll never send me a heart out of nowhere just to remind me you love me again, and it feels like there’s a brick on my chest.

“So that’s why I’m calling,” she sighs heavily, the size of it sinking her shoulders. “I don’t know why, but I kept hoping I’d hear your voice as the line was ringing. You have such a nice voice, did I ever tell you that? I hope so, you deserved to hear it. My favorite part of the day used to be when I’d hear you say hi.” She laughs again, stronger now, “And my least favorite was when you said goodbye.

“I never liked goodbyes, and now they’re even worse. Every goodbye feels so massive now, you know? Like - like what if this is the last goodbye? What if one word is the last I get of someone?

“Sorry, you don’t want to hear about that. What’s something to tell you about?

“Oh, I’m going to school, just like you encouraged. I leave pretty soon, I’ve been putting it off as long as I can. Amy left for her classes already, but she calls me everyday.

“She’s just the best, always there. Even when it’s three in the morning and I need a distraction from...” she clears her throat, “yeah.

“And her and Heather are still together. They’re doing so well, I’m so happy for them. They deserve it, really. But sometimes... sometimes I put my phone on mute when she’s texting me about her and ignore it for the rest of the day. I always feel bad, but it’s just too much.

“Um, I go to the park everyday,” she abruptly switches topics, “and just hang out. Sometimes the dog park, I’ve loved that place since we first met. All the dogs are so cute and fuzzy.

“Mom says it’s good to get out, clear my head. And the flowers are pretty, so I’m not really complaining. I still go to the hospital sometimes, too. Peds is missing you, but the kids are doing well. Hope Springs is helping a lot of people too, sometimes Mrs. Batra invites me to get lunch in the cafeteria.”

Her voice tapers off for a moment. “Something else, something else,” she mumbles beneath her breath.

“Did I ever tell you what I first thought of you? I thought you were kinda annoying,” she giggles brightly, a smile alighting her features. “‘Too insistent,’ I think is what I told Amy.

“You just seemed so sure of yourself, I didn’t understand how anyone could be that confident and not be suspicious. You just knew what you wanted, and it was so obvious you would get it. I - I truly admire that now. I love that about you. To be fair, I love everything about you, but still.

“And then when you asked me to be your girlfriend, I was so surprised. When you asked me out that first time, too. Even when you said you loved me, I just... Dakota Winchester wanted me to be their girlfriend. It seemed impossible. Still does, honestly,” she turns breathless, lost in memories for a minute. “But here we are. Er... here I am.

“Um, Mateo and Lennox are doing well. They’re sweet. They keep trying to help and be there for me, but there’s not much they can do but keep themselves afloat.

“Mateo’s been sending me a random selfie every day to try and make me laugh. Today’s was him running from a store clerk with a broom. He says he’s innocent, but I don’t think I believe him.

“And Lennox... I don’t think she really knows what to do with me. She’s taken us all boxing a few times, but outside of that... She doesn’t talk much, or text unless Mateo invites her to something, but she never really talked much, I suppose.

“She, um, she bought me something. She gave it to me the day after graduation. I made a speech at graduation, actually. About you. Amy cleared it with the principal. I had butterflies the whole time,” she giggles. “If I wasn’t talking about you I probably would have run.

“But it’s a, uh, keychain,” she switches back. “It’s one of those name ones, with - with, uh... Dako-“ her voice breaks before she sucks in a deep breath. “It says Dakota. She said she thought I was lame enough to like it.” There’s a watery laugh, tears now openly streaming down her face.

“I mean, she was right. I -“ her voice cracks again, “I love it. I always carry it now, and take it out when I get stressed, or when I need to remember you.

“My mom keeps telling me I should stop remembering, ‘cause all it does is make me cry, but I’m-“ a choked sob escapes her “-I’m just so afraid of forgetting you. I can’t forget you, ever.

“I probably sound like I mess, but you’re not even listening are you, so what does it matter?” her tone darkens as she swipes beneath her eyes, harshly wiping away the tears.

“You’re not listening now, or ever again, and you’re the only one that would listen if you were here and I know you said that - that - that you are, but how am I supposed to believe that?! It’s been months and nothing’s changed and - and everyone always just stares at me when I say that, like - like-“ she cuts off.

“And - and Mateo -!” She halts, catching her breath before her voice returns, calmer, softer. “And Mateo keeps telling me that you are listening, that you wouldn’t say that unless it was true. That you’ll always be here for me, and... and I haven’t been able to decide if that’s as good as either of you made it sound. If I’m okay with you seeing me like this.

“I just know you’d hate it. You’d hate it so much, because you always hated when I was upset. I know you’d try and make me feel better and you’d have so many jokes, and then you’d put on a horror movie and get ice cream and - and -“ she stops herself for a long while, taking deep breaths to calm down and prevent sobs from fully taking over.

“I haven’t watched a horror movie since,” she finally speaks up again. “Amy invited me to the movies before she left, but I turned her down. Yours was so much better than all of them anyway, and not just ‘cause I was the star. You put so much love into it, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen anything like you, either.

“I wish you got the chance to make so many more movies. They would have been beautiful. Scary, but beautiful.

“Everything you do is beautiful. I miss that. The beauty every day. I miss you. I know I keep saying that but... I don’t know, I can’t stop... thinking about it, all of it.”

The keychain rattles as she pulls it from her pocket, the pad of her thumb tracing over the lettering. “Dakota,” she whispers, reverently. “I looked your name up a while ago. Means ‘friend.’ I couldn’t think of anything more fitting. My Dakota, the friend to everyone.”

She sniffles, the keychain clinking again. “I, um, I should go. Lennox is taking me to meet Mateo at the diner. We get milkshakes every Saturday and I don’t want to be late. I love you. So much. And I miss you so much, too and - and bye. For now, okay? Just for now.”

The phone hangs up, and she prays it can be heard. That they were right, and Dakota really was listening. Prays that the dial tone rings on an open line.

#i put off the last three chapters since it was made public cuz i just adore dakota so much #and holy fuck was it awful #but so pretty at the same time #ughh #playchoices #choices fanfic #with every heartbeat #choices weh #dakota winchester #dakota x mc #tw death #death tw #cw grief #not totally sure what tags to use so lemme know if i missed one #sidenote:#this is the only fic ive written in the notes app of my phone and yknow what it fits the vibe lmao

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frogtanii · 3 years

Note

It’s wind anon. I know I should react to the Kenma part, but I just went through the update, saw Meiko’s portion and I have feelings that I need to get out because I’m so far gone right now—

I swear, I can break down every single text what the flip is this BS. Meiko, dear, do you,,,have a concussion. Are you thinking. What,,, this is like the time you were underdressed at the restaurant and you ended up getting drunk as heck.

Okay, let’s do the breakdown.

Coming in hot, we see Meiko with “tooru!!!!!!” (Yes, I did count the number of exclamation marks) firstly, the usage of his first name after ‘exiled’ where she raged at him and used Oikawa instead... mood swing much because I cannot believe the audacity of this... and really. First name basis. Trying to be close and to get rid of animosity, but not offering up anything like “hey, I’d appreciate talking to you for a sec if you’re free?” Or an apology for blowing up at him because he did indeed have your back, it’s just that you were the one problem. But yes, the exclamation marks too. A bit childish, obvious excitement...mmmm, I’ll move on to the next section.

Oikawa’s “oh. hey meiko” shows that he really ain’t up for this. First is the obvious low energy. I don’t want to go into depth about that but the “oh” shows that he paused. He saw her message. He answered. And he didn’t expect her to talk to him. Especially with that sort of energy. Mixed feelings towards her. And his “hey meiko”. I would say he is one of the more energetic of the House. He probably would’ve done something like “meiko!!! <3” in response before or something like that. He’s a bit flashy in that regard. But no punctuation. Just a downtrodden “hey” in response.

“don’t sound so enthused” she says. I mean, at the very least it seems she understands and can grasp tone from messages? But I am like “it would be more surprising for him to be enthused? I’m in awe of how you were able to become so enthused after you got yourself crushed into pieces by YN...” Besides that, even if Meiko wasn’t physically hurt, a confrontation of this sort would not lead to anyone having a happy mood? Me glancing between Meiko and all the therapists that were mentioned before because I really hope that we can figure something out because she gives off so many different vibes I am like... “what even goes on inside her brain...”

“can you blame me? you yelled at me the last time i talked to you” and this is the truth. He shouldn’t be enthused. You yelled at him, you disregarded his concern and you showed that you didn’t care for him as a person. Even if there was a circumstance where she didn’t yell at Oikawa, he would reach out first and be concerned about her health. Meiko has no grounds to try and blame him for anything right now. Frankly, I don’t think Oikawa should have even bothered answering her because I don’t think he is in the best place emotionally to deal with her.

“im so sorry sweetheart!!!! i didn’t mean it :(” lemme just day, wind anon cannot believe the BS that this message is. First, she says she is sorry. But really? Really. I can’t even look at her. Look, I don’t know what it is but “I’m so sorry.” Has the weakest apology energy. “I’m sorry.” Fine, decent, the classic and simplest. “I’m really sorry.” Also good! Shows regret. “I’m so sorry.” Sounds like you when you just learn that a person’s family member has passed away. There is something about “I’m so sorry” that doesn’t sound sincere to me and it’s infuriating. Next, the “sweetheart” I might’ve gagged a bit internally. Does she,,, talk like that? Normally? Is that a thing? She’s younger than him...and I don’t know but sweetheart sounds so condescending I literally can’t even— and finally, the “I didn’t mean it” yeah, well, you don’t mean anything because everything you say is BS that’s what you mean. Stop excusing your behavior. There is no merit behind it.

“you know i was just beat up and i couldn’t control what i was saying”. Okay, let’s break this down too. First, trying to incur sympathy by the “I was just beat up.” I cannot believe this gal. And the “you know” for a reference to a person’s knowledge of the matter, it lets them be more susceptible to beliefs. But the “I couldn’t control what I was saying” is complete utter hogwash. I mean, Meiko can’t control any bit of her because she is just impulse. But she excused her inability to control herself by saying it was because she was just beat up.

I don’t know what to say for the next portion. Alone, it’s cute, but put into perspective it’s just manipulation and she doesn’t love him. I’ll just move on.

“what do you need that you can’t ask iwa-chan?” Okay, so he didn’t reciprocate with an “I love you too” so that just shows what type of mood and how effective her words were. It also shows that she always messaged Oikawa when she needed something, because he caught on super quick to that. The “Iwa-chan” is interesting though. I wanna know if Oikawa talks to Iwaizumi after this conversation with Meiko because she is clearly going behind his back right now.

“oh well hajime is being very rude rn. he won’t let me leave my room!!!!” Okay, he had best interests at heart and Meiko...I know every single one of your rooms has a bathroom too. They’re bringing you food. They are letting people go into your room. Meiko, you wouldn’t have lasted quarantine if you’re this petulant now. It’s literally going to be like, 3 days max if you work to get an actual solution. I don’t want to break this down, I feel this is self explanatory. She feels entitled still.

“i know, it’s for your own good” he replies, and that is true but I am also of the belief that it is (hopefully) better for the rest of the house to not be in contact with her so I guess that’s that. Anyway, this shows Oikawa placating her, next

Meiko...being...not pretty. “ugh!!! but i wanna go out!!!!!!” Yeah, she would not have been able to be safe throughout the pandemic. Please,,, you’ll have fresh air if you open up a window,,, I know for certain you don’t exercise,,, please Meiko, shut up already you are making yourself look like more of a pile of garbage than you depict yourself as please I cannot handle the idea that the guys fell for this act—

“you have a black eye babe” okay, the black eye is actually Tooru trying to refer to knowledge that she has. As in, she should be trying to rest and get better right now. (Just curious, who treated her? For the injuries? She raged at Iwaizumi and Oikawa so maybe Daichi?) the babe gives off the placating vibe to me, still low energy, not very affectionate, but it’s there so I’m like “hm”.

“so??? omg are you calling me ugly tooru???????” Well...he didn’t call you ugly. But I might? Because you have the ugliest personality of everyone here. But also, shifting blame onto him. Gosh, I give Oikawa some water. He’ll get a migraine from this.

“of course not. i would never”. Low energy, not elaborating, I think he sees that she is trying to manipulate him, or at the very least he isn’t going to play that particular game. But actually, he runs a fashion channel on YouTube. We know Bokuto runs a fitness one and his header message was something along the lines of everyone’s bodies are beautiful, so chances are Oikawa has the same sort of idea for his channel too. He may criticize fashion, but he would never criticize the people wearing it or the people who made it in a mean way. He would be respectful, and he lets people do what they wish because it’s their choice. I mean, there has to be a reason why Meiko’s fashion is how it is—he doesn’t intrude on matters that aren’t his to intrude upon.

Okay, Meiko. I’m gonna stop trying to format the messages exactly how they are, autocorrect is making my time with them a bit too much, but she says she wants him to take her with him. Okay, starting off, you are really under the belief that he will take you on to a trip he has planned when he didn’t invite you in the first place? Pushy... but yes, her petulance again... me flicking water at her, “you got super drunk because you were underdressed at a fancy restaurant and now you have a face that looks like roadkill, how much do you want to embarrass yourself before you get turned into a pariah?”

Oikawa not knowing how she knows that is clear concern. Someone knowing your schedule when it’s none of their business and not public knowledge is major red flag. The “uh” shows that he is clearly taken aback. The ellipses shows that he doesn’t know what to think.

Okay, Meiko—she is actually able to notice something??? Good golly gee, I am baffled by how she did that when everything else she does is on fire. But the consistency probably gave it in. She may have been looking for him at one point, noticed he was out, and saw the pattern then. But actually, wouldn’t she be good at noticing the patterns of the guys so that she always knows which one to go to and use? Thoughts.... but I’m curious about the fact she said the “same group of absolute losers”. I highly doubt they always go and meet up directly in eye view of the house? Chances are they meet up at a bar or something? This potentially could be a thing where Meiko was stalking them? It would be interesting if she saw them while she was out as well—and if yahaba and kyoutani noticed her around before too. Also, her saying “you ain’t slick” like,,, Meiko, have you looked into a mirror. Can you see.

Oikawa defending his friends, we stan. Let’s move on though: “they’re so much younger than you?? and yahaba is def not cute lmao” me, doing like the... monkey meme where they look away because I am just like??? Meiko, you’re younger than Oikawa. I bet Yahaba and Kyoutani are your age. And anyone younger than you is a loser huh? That’s why you look at Bokuto and YN like they are dirt beneath your feet. (And Yes, I do remember that you put Bokuto and YN as the babies of the house, this reoccurrence is very well done). And she went and insulted Yahaba directly like...you’re talking to his friend? What are you doing? Excuse me? I beg your pardon?

And the ellipses strike again— and Oikawa is fishing for information because we have seen him—he listens to logic. And Meiko... her emojis... wind anon be flicking more water at her, she is too much. Also. Kyoutani. She is calling Kyoutani cute. This was the message that made wind anon start this long analysis. Kyoutani, cute? Listen. Kyoutani would take one look at this parasite hanging off his arm with her swollen black eye that was slathered with makeup and her lacking clothing sense, before looking at Oikawa who would be so haggard by then, and then Kyoutani would force her off his arm before grabbing Oikawa and running off with Yahaba following them. There is no way at all Kyoutani would involve himself with Meiko. I refuse to believe he would go for her.

Okay, the two messages after about wingmanning—I don’t want to do a large scale analysis of it. Oikawa really is shown to have good sense for Meiko’s intentions. His intuition is good. And we know that he cares and respects his friends and he focuses on their capabilities. He knows them. Meiko is just...childish in the worst of ways.

“You don’t see the issue with this”. Oikawa really digging in his feet. First, he wished to be in a relationship with Meiko. And here she is, asking for him to wingman to get her together with one of his friends, who may not even like her—and I bet that if it doesn’t go well, she would blame Oikawa for it like really—but I give Oikawa more water for the migraines Meiko induces.

“What?? It’s not like we’re actually together lol”. The laugh out loud at the end really shows how much of a joke she sees this as. She sees him as a joke. And she just crushed all his efforts and actions to try and get into a relationship. And actually...will Meiko ever get into a relationship with another? She has no loyalty. She definitely wouldn’t have ever got into a dedicated relationship with one of the guys. And she would be the type to get upset if they slept around, wouldn’t she? A hypocrite.

“Ugh don’t be like that!!! I’m sure you sleep around too!!” Okay, she is trying to defend herself while also potentially blaming him if he does. It’s just manipulation...I’m gonna move on...

Oikawa’s just done and his “I don’t” holds a lot of emotion. But Meiko’s response back I don’t believe at all. “Oh well that’s your fault, I don’t really give a sh*t if you sleep around hehe!!!” First, blaming him for his choice of only choosing you??? And I highly doubt the second part because she is shown to throw blame and ditch people for negligible reasons—I have no trust towards her words. I do not believe her. I believe she would care. I believe she would blow up at the guy before leaving him.

“Of course you don’t” And there is the utter doneness. He has given up on Meiko in this message. He doesn’t care anymore. He was already not in the mood for her when she first messaged him, he doesn’t want to see her at all anymore. He’s given up.

“So you get it!! Perfect!!!!” Please, wind anon has written so much already, her eyes are sweating everytime she has to look at Meiko being like this hhhhh. “I’ll be ready at like 9pm? Come by my room!! Actually no I’ll come by yours” and her usage of emoji. Get her away from me and everyone in PF. She’s toxic. Send her off with hazardous waste. Also, she deliberately changed from her room to coming by his. She is cutting off him so he has to go with her, he can’t just sneak out and not wait at her room (though she did offer a time so he could just go out now and ditch her presence completely). But it would be amusing if he did something like lock his door, (either after he’d go out or if he wold leave through window) and she would just be there waiting all decked out in her clothes and makeup pounding on his door. He wouldn’t answer and the others would see her out of her room (a misdemeanor). And then she would have to make an excuse. But it would be hard...because Oikawa has text evidence of Meiko going against Iwaizumi to just play like this.

“And if I say no?” Says Oikawa, who is testing the waters—very smart. We approve. “You won’t.” She replies, because she is terrible and we hate her controlling, manipulative, abusive self and we would all fight her. And she ends it off with a “great!! see you then!” Because she has to have her way and the last say.

Okay, wind anon is done

Completely. Utterly done with the analysis and reaction for that. Might not get to Kenma and YN analysis because I went off in this one but just know I appreciate it and I’ll try to get to it—just,,,not today.

I hope Oikawa sends these screenshots to like, Iwaizumi at the very least but it would be even better if he just drops it in a group chat with Daichi and Osamu instead and asks them to keep an eye on her for “her own safety” and ask her to stay in her room. She’s too daring and if she blows up on him after, he will receive more evidence of her being terrible. And of course, he’s smart. He’ll definitely block her number when he doesn’t want to bother with her anymore. Okay, wind anon is ending here. The ask is too long. I think it’s the longest ask I’ve ever sent. I wish you well fr0ggy. I hope your sleep is pleasant and you wake up very rested and refreshed!

WOO LONG POST!!!! i cannot nearly respond to all this!!!! but!!!! i am in Awe??? text by text???? i love this????? ur so amazing i <3 u

#j’s asks #anons babey #℗ poker face #wind anon

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delicrieux · 3 years

Text

—MAKE YOU SAY “OH” EXTRAS: TINDER

extra meaning non-canonical occurrence; can be placed anywhere in the “make you say oh” timeline after couple (cha. 14) and before the final “oh”.

pairing—corpse husband x f!reader warnings—tinder profiles, tw: men, swearing. word count—2.6k. format— written. ─── ❥ req by nonnie: y/n makes a youtube vid/live stream where she's just swiping through her tinder acc and corpse literally blocks her lmao

author’s note—akldsljfs this was such a funny idea i could not not write it lmao

ultimate masterlist. myso masterlist

You have pulled the biggest brain move by setting up both a facecam and a screen recorder on your phone. All is beautifully displayed and visible during the stream. Your fanbase is particularly intrigued on what exactly are you planning on doing today, seeing as your tweet of “strea” had been a bit vague, if not downright ominous. No emojis. No elaboration. You couldn’t even be bothered to finish the word. Truly, a mystery. Everyone tuned in and are currently waiting with bated breath.

A few of your fans must sense upcoming doom because the overall mood in the chat turns from optimistically intrigued to...evil. It’s an entity all on it’s own now, clawing at you through the screen with various renditions of laughter and devil emojis. A few eggplants thrown in there for good measure, accompanied, naturally, by the scandalous water drops. At first the common consensus is that you’re biting the bullet and going through your camera roll on stream. Definitely an idea worth considering, though you frankly don’t know what lies at the start of the 11k photograph journey, and you are afraid to check in public. Could be a harmless meme, could be a salacious pic you had saved of an OF star. It’s really a gamble. Either way, you would definitely get banned. You might still get banned. Why do you insist on doing shit like this?

Because it’s funny. Because you’re kinda stupid. Because it’s just so absolutely laughably easy to do.

A smile quirks your lips, and while it is not explicitly smug, the look in your eyes sure is, “Greetings,” You utter lowly, dimming the lights--the budget for this stream! Ugh, you went all out, “my children.”

mother i crave violence

sensing evil energy rn!!

i do not claim the energy in this video for myself or anyone else watching this 💖💖

^with peace and love shut the fuck up

“I know y’all lowkey hoes-” Upon your words the chat splits into two: one side eagerly agrees (even shares a few OF accounts! How helpful, supporting small businesses!), whilst the other feverishly insists on innocence. You make a face stuck somewhere between offended and bewildered, “Now c'mon now-I know you. I know you all. We’re the same, don’t-what was that?”

You try to scroll back to the comment but it’s loss in the sea of incoming messages, “I swear to God I just saw-”

Corpse_Husband: i love late night streams it’s not like i have anything better to do.

“COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORPSE!!!!”

rip headphone users

i cant feel my face when im with you by the weeknd but instead of face its my fucking ears

yall think full vol on pc is better?my parents woke up 😭😭😭😭

To think he’s spending his last waking moments for today with watching you (he probably still would have anyway, because you do not posses an ounce of shame or self-control and pester him relentlessly)! It makes your heart sing, and suddenly, a traitorous, fun hating idea barges it’s way through the crowd of incoherent buzzing and states: don’t do this. For some reason it also has the voice of Rae. As if that would work in guilt-tripping you- Rae never succeed, and her fictitious rendition in mind won’t fare much better either.

Still, you thought about it. That must count for something. Corpse will understand, won’t he? Why don’t you want to upset it in the first place? Men look so funny when they lose their shit, like hello, don’t you have anything better to do? But the image of Corpse just sitting there, hurt, distraught, leaving you on seen because he’s in his sad boy hours leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

queen rly went from 🥺😊 to 😕 u ok bbgirl?

Corpse_Husband: no pouts cutie

akjdjoeijdfse cUTIE??? deadass boutta r.i.p.

Well that succeeded in eliminating everything from mind, doubts included. If this was an anime, the scenery would shift into something roseate, with flowers and bubbles and sparkles all around you along with a halo or two. Alas, not an anime, rather reality. The led-lights, however, seemingly possessing a will of their own, slowly turn from deep violet to pink. You smile brightly, like the absolute dumbass you are, and you are met with a ray of heart and blushing emojis. You are just so cute, a real cutie! Still in your disguise adorable state, you swipe your finger on your phone screen, the grin never leaving your lips.

There, among the plethora of apps, nestled sits a red square with a white fire plastered on it. The delicate calligraphy on the bottom reads: TINDER.

The mood changes once again- you’re giving the roaches emotional instability by how quickly everything flips over- and the chat spams eggplants vigorously; some, of course, bravely fight against the thirst.

nooooooo i thought y/n is gonna stream in a god honoring way!!!

^pack it up girl defined

“So, Charlie and I-” You note a few awfully curious comments and squint, “-yes, we talk a lot. Charlie is a really good friend of mine. We’re best friends. Brothers. Sisters. Cousins. The whole fucking family tree-no, that sounds weird. Delete. Anyway, Charlie, being the absolute fucker he is, said, hey, you know what would be funny? And I was like, nooo, what would be funny, Charlie? And he says to me, he says, says, making fun of men on Tinder. And if y’all need any more proof that Charlie and I are platonic soulmates, then dunno, my children, my roaches, I dunno-I dunno what more to give you.”

You can’t be bothered reading the comments, there’s too damn many. You also need to save your reading comprehension for the actual bios. It has a time limit, that darn thing.

“Okay, so I made a profile earlier, but I hadn’t swiped on anyone yet-” Despite the fact, Tinder helpfully informs you that already 99+ people have swiped right on you, “So, this is me,” You show the pictures you have of yourself, and damn, not to be a conceited narcissist, but you look really good. Like if you saw yourself on Tinder, you’d super like instantly. “Uhm, so, my bio-my bio says: let’s sauce in the tub together, ya dig? splishy splashy, giggle giggle.”

i cant believe we are witnessing y/n trying to form a coherent sentence live

shes trying give her time

ya dig??? y not capeesh

what scene from the godfather is this lol?

“My anthem, is,” You laugh, covering your lips with your hand, “Corpsie, this is form you-” Proudly, you show that indeed, Corpse’s E-GIRLS ARE RUINING MY FUCKING LIFE is listed as your anthem on Spotify, “Hehe.” Yes, you say that aloud.

Corpse_Husband: you’re killing me Corpse_Husband: thanks baby Corpse_Husband: now delete tinder ❤︎

You ignore his last quip, deciding it’s finally time to get this show on the road, “Right, let’s do this shit. I’m not actually going to swipe on any guys that look, uh, decent? Yuck, can’t believe I just said that, uhm, because I-because I feel like some actually deserve a chance with someone? I don’t wanna get anyone’s hopes up, as I am currently in a long distance relationship with Chrollo. So I’m just gonna swipe on, like, frat boy assholes. Because I don’t care if I hurt their feelings. Quite frankly I don’t think they possess them in the first place.”

The chat voices their agreements. With the ground rules set, you, giddy, click on the first profile.

Does Tinder know what you’re doing, your plan? The FBI agent watching you through your phone must be working overtime, bless his heart. They must, because the the first guy to meet you is named Jason, and there he is, blond hair and blue eyes, holding up a fish the size of his torso. Marginally adequate in looks, pretty good muscles. A solid 7 bordering on 8. He’s the same age as you, 15 miles away, and he studies at some college you don’t care enough to look up. Bio reads:

I like to drive fast. Fishing is my passion, but if you can’t catch me by the ocean, you’ll catch me catching waves, bro! Love a good gym date. You do squats, and I’ll keep a close eye to make sure you’re doing it correctly ;) You probably saw me at a party. Leader of the The Phi Kappa Psi. I’m a Gemini, if that matters lol.

You, of course, read it aloud, dramatically; provide some constructive criticism-he seems nice, but he’s a Gemini, so naturally, you can’t trust him at all! Also, that gym date session leaves little to be desired. With your rant done, you swipe right, and shocker! (not), it’s an instant match.

“Okie, I still wanna swipe of some profiles, so I’ll see what he’ll text later-” For a second you wonder the legalities of this stream, but you’re having too much fun to think of it further, “guys, I won't get sued, right?”

NOW she considers it

well....

if you do, we’ll kickstart your lawyer dw <3

Onto the next profile. Kevin, 25, is seen fixing his car- or, you assume he’s mid-fixing it, you don’t really know why else he’d hold a wrench and be covered in oil. He’s shirtless, and the caveman part of your brain echoes something closely resembling AWOOOGA!, but...but!...blonde hair, blue eyes. You pout again, “I don’t...I don’t really like blond boys, ya know? With the blue eyes and all, it’s just not my thing, uhm, unless it’s like-like...Armin from Attack on Titan. Else I don’t care.”

Onto the bio:

You have to treat a car like you treat a woman: go on long rides, take the lead, but most importantly, keep her oiled up 😜

“What the fuck did I just read?”

The chat is equally confused. You swipe right anyway- another match. Too easy.

The stream continues without incident for a solid thirty minutes- all of your matches, expect a few that genuinely looked like normal dudes that really couldn’t write a decent bio to save their lives, had been blond hair blue eyed gym rats with ranging forms of misogyny. Some opened with asking for nudes out right, some asked about your day first before asking for nudes. You prefer the former. Straight to the point! You admire the gall.

But then, down the forty-five minute mark a profile popped up that made you still by your phone, your smile dying as your eyes bulged. Dear God. Lord in heaven. Who is this demonspiit lookalike and why is he so fucking hot? The neck tats, the skateboard, the clothes- holy shit, you gotta close your mouth before some drool dribbles out.

No bio, just his name, Tyler, and that he’s 23.

“He boutta be 23 in me.” You mutter, swiping right with lightning speed.

WHAT DID SHE SAYYYYY?????????

tyler is y/ns karma for relentlessly mocking that one guy that had a whole ass list on what his “female” partner should be

^he deserved it and also tyler seems like a typical fuckboi y/n grow a braincell

look at mom 🥺 her eyes are sparkling

It wasn’t a match right away. You somehow expected as much, but it still upset you. Simp behavior, pathetic. The stream continued bravely, and when Tyler messaged you a simple “yo” you totally didn’t sequel. You didn’t manage to text him back on stream: texting all those guys that you didn’t really find all that attractive was easy, but this...You’re a sucker for a man who radiates red flag energy. His whole profile is a red flag. He might just be a red flag himself.

What can you do? Suddenly becoming color blind is not easy. Once the stream ends, you unmatch with everyone expect Tyler. He you chat with for a bit, but a sudden craving for different company makes you abandon him, too. You don’t feel too heartbroken for him- you’re certain there’s already too many girls in his dms. You wish them luck.

Happily, you delete Tinder. You go to Twitter, notice you’re trending again- look at you go! Queen shit- and as you compose a thank you tweet, something strange happens. You go to text Corpse, but when you click on his profile you grow cold.

YOU’RE BLOCKED. You can’t follow or see @/Corpse_Husband ‘s Tweets.

...Pardon? You hop onto Instragram and-also blocked. Seriously? And you thought you’re one petty bitch. Corpse is seriously prissy about everything. Damn, if he didn’t like your stream, he could’ve just said so. Didn’t need to, like, block you from his internet existence. So not cool.

You try texting him but no text go through. Well how will you let him know you deleted Tinder just like he asked? You relieve your frustrations by punching your pillow a few times. Later, you apologize to her, you didn’t mean to hurt her, it’s not her, it’s you. Fuck, 5 minutes of exile and you’re already loosing your mind.

“Raeeeeeeeeeeee!” You whine loudly. It’s roughly 2am now, but you don’t care. You’re too heartbroken to care. There’s a thump from her room, but nothing else, “Raeeeeeeeee!!!” You wail, wallowing in self-pity on your bed. You hear a very loud, very annoyed sigh from her room, followed by angry marching. Your door is abruptly thrown open, and in the dim, colorful light you see her scowl.

“What?” She grits.

“Can you please tell Corpse to unblock me from everything?”

“What did you do now?”

“I made fun of men on Tinder.”

She pauses, “...That doesn’t sound so bad.” She surmises, voice laced with suspicion, “What else?”

“...There was one really hot guy that I kinda sorta talked to after--”

“Y/n.”

“-But I totally deleted Tinder and honestly he was pretty boring, so, like, uhm, please?”

She sighs, the servery of which implies she is holding the weight of the world on her shoulders, and instantly you know that you won. She taps away at her phone, “You owe me one.” She states, and before you can reply, she exits your room and slams the door behind her.

Grinning, you text his phone again. The message goes through, oh gosh, you’re so relieved you feel like crying. This has been, officially, the worst five minutes of your life.

You Y DID U BLOCK ME LOSER!!! MAJOR LOSER ALERT!! I DELETED EVERYTHING IT WAS A JOKE r u still mad at me? y u always mad at me i never do anything:(

my husband You’re my baby, how do you think I’ll react when I see you publicly simping for some asshole on Tinder?

Oh no, he used the words, he delivered the killing blow. You’re finished. Your heart can’t take such a workout.

Not that you would ever admit it to him, though!

You hehe ur jellyyyy u always dis jealous hehe?

my husband Not jealous.

Yeah, you might not be the brightest tool in the shed, but even you know that’s a lie. You send him an array of kissy emojis that he doesn’t have the decency to reply to. Then, completely unprompted and dead serious, you send him a simple voice memo, saying: “You really have nothing to worry about, you know? You’re my favorite, Corpsie.”

He responds via text, reiterating that he’s not fucking jealous and that he just doesn’t like when you show such outward interest in anyone but it’s not like he cares or anything. It’s just really, like, weeeeird to see his baby simping for another man like that totally ruins the whole dynamic!!! It was only natural that he should block you on every social media platform, including his personal number (which, like, was completely necessary! Doesn’t matter that his viewers can’t see it, it’s gotta be super believable!), and inform his followers of that, because it’s all a joke, like, for the dynamic, that Youtube grind, you know? Ya dig? No personal feelings were involved at all. He totally wasn’t upset that you found someone else cute, no way!

my husband I’m not jealous. Lol.

You ik u repeated tht like 50 times u trynna convince me or??? lmao

my husband No comment. ...You don’t actually talk to anyone else like we’re talking, right?

You no one else calls me their baby if thts wat ur wondering at least not to my knowledge lol im all urs

my husband That makes me very happy to hear:)

Yeah, it makes you very happy, too.

hope you liked it!! xx

#corpse husband #corpse husband x reader #corpse #corpse x reader #corpse husband x y/n #corpse x y/n #myso #make you say oh #imagine #imagines

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