#there is a tiktok icon obscuring some of it but it doesn’t get in the way much so here you go

[lila-pitts-apologist]

since I’m overdue for a shitpost (and I spent way too much time on this), here are the social medias I think each umbrella would use most:

for luther definitely Pinterest, he’d love a good board organizing (credit to @oklahoma2019 for saying he’d love scrapbooking ). plus, the app is pretty chill and nice compared to other apps (*cough* tiktok), he doesn’t have to worry about drama or hate and he likes how organized it all is. he especially loves pins about astronomy, poetry, and plants, and is very meticulous in how he divides his boards. overall very friendly and aesthetically pleasing 10/10

Diego does not use social media. of course he doesn’t, it’s not cool and he’s not downloading anything, shut up. no matter how much Lila and Klaus try, he refuses and claims he’ll never get anything. but then he does end up making an Instagram account after weeks of peer pressure. but ONLY, he swears, to make Lila happy. until he snoops around the app and before you know it, Diego is an Instagram reels person. he convinces himself that it’s not the same as Tiktok because it’s not, okay, but before you know it he’s sitting in the living room, volume blasting and Lila is getting sick of how many he sends her. (it’s cute though)

this isn’t super creative and a repeat but allison definitely has a huge following on Instagram; besides her fame as an actress, I imagine she’d use her page for good and raise awareness on important topics, especially after her time in the ‘60s. also, hello, no way a fashion icon like her would keep her outfits to herself. she’s a nice mix of aesthetic and aware, and after receiving some light begging she features Klaus in her frequent ootd posts.

do I even have to say this one? Klaus is insanely popular on Tiktok. It starts with shitposts, dance trends, the works, but upon deeper exploration Klaus finds a platform in desperate need of his humor. unsurprisingly, he’s popular for his personality and eccentricity, but after he gains a lot of teen followers he takes the opportunity to posts all the street tips and tricks he’s learned over the years, in a very paternal way. he’s one of those people that openly calls all his followers his destiny’s children, and won’t miss a single stupid trend. he likes to include whatever siblings he can peer pressure into joining him in his videos, usually Allison, maybe Luther, and Lila, which of course are his most viral posts. overall, klaus is klaus.

Five uses Reddit. sorry. he’d definitely refuse any social media at all at first despite his siblings klaus trying to get him to make accounts, but then secretly check things out anyway because he’s nothing if not curious. turns out, being able to rant about whatever niche subjects he wants while also being able to put idiots (who appear in abundance) in their place is right up his alley, who knew. he genuinely will spend hours pouring out the information he’s gathered onto various subs (whether it is to prove his intellectual superiority, or to help others, the world will never know). his favs are, of course, anything math related, but he does indulge himself occasionally with conspiracy subs as well as obscure historical facts only a time traveler would know. he’s got a fuck ton of karma too, but he’ll die before he tells his siblings about his account klaus finds it anyway

this one was hard to pinpoint, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Ben is an absolute menace on Twitter. I see so many people claim he’s all sweet uwu softness and sure, but did you watch almost any of his interactions with Klaus 💀 Ben has that fed up and snarky mind perfect for the hellhole of Twitter discourse. I mean come on, all that time observing Klaus and the world, the man has got a LOT of hot takes. he’s also surprisingly up to date on pop culture, and very witty so he’s managed to grow a nice niche group of mutuals he interacts with. he also dunks on his siblings whenever he can (totally definitely not inspired by Justin and David’s banter)

Viktor. most average not-average guy to exist yet simultaneously unhinged and emotional. you cannot tell me this man does not use tumblr. he is a full on tumblrina, and this goes back to his teen years. like Ben, he’s got a nice amount of long time mutuals but is the type to forget to post for 2 weeks so he’s not very popular. he DOES however have a side blog for his writing he’s had for years, which does decently well and he’s secretly very proud of it. definitely does cringe about what he posted years ago though (dude def had an emo phase)

#tua #the umbrella academy #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #viktor hargreeves #tua shitpost

[bi-avatar]

y’all i found the full lok comic from free comic book day 2021 on tiktok, thanks to @kuviraskeys on there, for anyone who hasn’t read it yet and wants to, I’ll put the pictures under the cut

#there is a tiktok icon obscuring some of it but it doesn’t get in the way much so here you go #maybe most of y’all have already seen this but I hadn’t seen the full comic before this so I’m sharing #I finally figured out the read more function lmao #I have been here for three years #I like the comic it’s quite short but it looks nice #it’s good to see aang and toph #and one panel of katara also already makes me happy #and korrasami! #I really like the art style it looks so nice #I feel like posting this is kinda illegal but I pirate so much and this is a free comic #lok #lok comics #free comic book day 2021 #clearing the air #jade talks about lok #jade talks #avatar

[sunarintoes]

Dear Whoever: [Shirabu Kenjirou]

Synopsis: Where reader was bored during quarantine and decided to send hand written letters to all their friends however Yn forgot one important thing, her best friend Mina no longer lived at her old address which led to Shirabu - a boy at another school, receiving the letter.

WC: 1.7K

TW: none :)

Note: hello! here is the newest and last instalment of the dear whoever series!! I hope you enjoy even though it’s a bit slow

Dear Kiyoko, 

How are you? Quarantine must suck, although you really love your alone time so maybe it's not so bad for you? I'm finding it boring and spent a good day or two on tiktok and kept seeing people write letters and send them to their friends so I thought I'd try it out. It's kind of weird? Anyways… just wanted to ask how you're going and all, if you want we can continue to send letters to each other?

From Yn

Dear Yn, 

I’m sorry my name is actually Kenjirou - not Kiyoko. Unfortunately you must have written in the wrong address, perhaps this friend of yours's last name is Shimizu? Because if so the Shimizu family owned this house prior to my family moving in. you sound like a nice friend, it is very thoughtful of you to write letters to your friends. I'm sure they will be thrilled with the surprise.

Kind regards, Kenjirou. 

Dear Kenjirou,

Haha wow I can't believe I forgot that she moved houses! How silly! Sorry about that! Well, I'm all for making new friends - especially in this boring time, so how about it? Will you be my pen pal? No sweat of course! I don't want to make you uncomfortable considering you are a stranger… but if you write back can you at least tell me some information? Haha that sounds creepy but I would like to know who I’m communicating with at least, I'll do the same (and send a pic of myself).

From, Yn

Dear Yn,

I'm not the most social person but I can agree with you, this lockdown is making me incredibly bored and these letters seem to be the least bit interesting so I will agree to your suggestion. I am a second year student at Shiratorizawa and I play volleyball. If you must know I have light brown hair - same as my eyes, and light skin. To answer your question from your first letter that was technically directed at your friend Shimizu, I am doing alright albeit very, very bored and caught up in studying. How about yourself?

Kind regards, Kenjirou,

Dear Kenjirou,

I am doing good! I enjoy writing back and forth with my friends - it brings me great entertainment and gives me something to look forward to. Online schooling is a pain in the ass. Oh! About me, I am also a second year student from Dateko! What a coincidence because I also play volleyball! Maybe we have crossed paths at a tournament? Do you have a favorite subject at school? Oh also! Like promised here's my instagram: @yn.-. ,,, proof that I am who I am haha. But how about we don’t text on there, we should keep this a sort of tradition and send letters to each other. 

From, Yn

Dear Yn,

Hope you are doing well, it's nice that we are now mutuals on social media and I can confirm that I have seen you before - though it was for a very brief moment at the spring high tournaments. I agree, online school is, quite frankly, draining me mentally. I feel as if there is a larger work load. Personally my favourite subjects are chemistry and biology; I strive to become a doctor in the coming years. I like your idea of communicating through mail, it's not quick or efficient but it is something to look forward to. What position do you play on the volleyball court? 

Kind regards, Kenjirou

Dear Kenjirou,

I am doing well thank you for asking! How about yourself? And yes it's nice to be mutuals, your account has a nice aesthetic to it! I play setter! If my memory serves correct, you do as well? Do you like picnics? I really like them. When this is all over I really really want to hang out with all my friends, do you feel the same?

From Yn

Dear Yn,

Glad to know you’re well and despite being swamped with assessment tasks, I am okay. I also like the presentation of your account, and yes, your memory is correct; I do play setter. I have never gone on a picnic before… perhaps we can go on one after we get out of lock down?

Kind Regards, Kenjirou 

Dear Kenjirou,

Of course I would love to go on a picnic? Where would we go? Do you like reading books? I read a lot of them in my spare time - including short stories online, when we manage to go on a picnic why don't we bring our favourite books and talk about them and read them… if that doesn't sound boring of course!

From Yn

Dear Yn,

I love reading books, if we were to go somewhere I think a nice nature park would sound good; somewhere quiet and away from kids… do you have a favourite colour, or perhaps a favourite food? Only two more weeks of lockdown left, I'm excited to go back to school and play volleyball again.

Kind regards, Kenjirou 

Dear Kenjirou,

A nature park sounds lovely, too bad we can't go anytime soon. Did you hear the news last night? They are keeping us in six more weeks because some people are stupid enough to continue to party… this is so annoying! Not that we can do anything about it - the only thing we can do is stay inside and wait it out. My favourite food is rice!! And my favourite colour is probably red. What about yourself? Oh one more thing… this may sound strange but I love exchanging letters like this - the rest of my friends stopped about two or three weeks ago but you've kept at it and it's made me feel… I don't know, special? Hahahah let's ignore that sorry!

From Yn,

Dear Yn,

I understand what you mean, everytime I receive and read through a letter written by you I feel warm inside. And yes i did see the news and as unfortunate as it is we can't do anything but wait it out. I don't have a favourite colour, it’s never really been on my mind. When you say your favourite food is rice, what do you mean? Just plain rice? 

Kind regards, Kenjirou 

Dear Kenjirou,

I’m glad you feel like that, and yes, when I say my favourite food is rice I mean just a bowl of cooked rice haha. Since we can’t go on a picnic anytime soon, why don't we have a virtual one? We could just set it up in our rooms and facetime each other, how about that? Sending letters to and from each other is something so special but u long to hear your voice.

From, Yn

Dear Yn,

A virtual picnic? That sounds lovely. How about next Friday afternoon? Truthfully I'm excited, I know it won't be with you in person but at least I’ll be a lot closer to you compared to when we write letters.

Kind Regards, Kenjirou

Today is the day you finally speak to Kenjirou face to face, you stand up and look over your room; ‘to think I actually cleaned my room for a boy,’ you sigh. You leave your room to collect the picnic blanket and the food. 

The doorbell rings; ‘delivery!’ With everything in your hands you do your best to open the door, when you look outside you see the postman a good ten metres away and for a second you think its weird before you remember the damned pandemic going on. ‘Afternoon miss, lovely day isn't it? I have a bouquet of flowers addressed to Yn. I've left them just next to your foot. Enjoy your day!’ And with that, he left. 

You raise your eyebrows and look down to your foot and as he said, there is a lovely bouquet of flowers - red chrysanthemums, daisies, pink camellia and primulas. You stare at it for a minute, ‘what an odd combination… it kinda works though…’ you bend down to pick it up and then proceed to waddle through your house with full hands and a slightly obscured vision. 

When you get to your room you set everything up, ‘where do I put these flowers?’ Just as you were about to place them on your desk a small note fell out; ‘dear Yn,’ you read, ‘I’m sorry, I'm not sure what your favorite flowers are but hopefully you like these ones. If we were on a real date I would have given these to you in person. Kind regards, Kenjirou.’ You stare down at the flowers and smile, ‘so that's why they are an odd bunch; he must have searched up flowers with pretty meanings.’

The smile continues to rest on your lips as you sit down, patiently waiting for the clock to strike four before you press the green call icon. To your surprise on exactly four - and not a second later, your phone rings and when you accept it you come face to face with the boy you have been secretly harbouring feelings for. 

‘Afternoon Yn, how have you been today?’ You notice the straight posture he holds along with his deadpan facial expression but despite him looking like he doesn't want to be here, you remind yourself that he called you before you called him - meaning he was just as eager to meet you. 

‘Hey,’ you start off softly, ‘I’ve been excited all day, it's nice to finally hear your voice and see you in person.’

A small smile graces his lips, ‘yeah, same to you.’

The two of you spend the night talking and sharing facts before you settle down to watch a movie together through screen sharing. When the movie ends you look back to him to find him already staring at you. 

You take this time to muster up the courage to confess your feelings, ‘hey Kenjirou, I know we haven't been friends for that long and this is the first time we’ve spoken to each other but I’ve- I guess you could say I really like you and…’

‘Let’s go on a real date when this is all over,’ he finishes for you.

You smile brightly at him, ‘I'd love to!’

Bonus !!

‘On one condition! When we go on an actual date I get to hug you!'

Kenjirou lets his small smile grow slightly larger, ‘that's fine with me.’

Taglist: @ladyrenart​

#haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #dear whoever: a haikyuu series #dear whoever #shirabu x reader #shirabu kenjirou #shirabu fluff #haikyuu fluf

[aion-rsa]

Ready Player Two Review: Ernest Cline’s Soulless Sequel Beats a Dead Horse

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

It doesn’t take long for Ernest Cline’s Ready Player Two to reunite gunter-turned-billionaire Wade Owen Watts with a vintage video game that holds a clue to a virtual scavenger hunt that will forever change the future of the digital, escapist OASIS. But after winning this particular game, Parzival (Wade’s OASIS alter ego) finds that he automatically starts over. Because of an extra life, he is given the option of playing through the game again, even though there are no surprises, simply to rack up extra points and because he can.

Reading Ready Player Two feels a lot like that. Ready Player One, Cline’s 2011 debut novel, delighted readers with its futuristic generation of gunters who had taken on all things 1980s with religious fervor in search of the Easter egg that would bequeath the OASIS, Willy Wonka-style, to one lucky player. The book also made some incisive commentary on retreating into digital worlds instead of trying to fix the climate change-ravaged Earth. But neither of these is reason enough to warrant a sequel, especially one that effectively tries to play through the same plot of a posthumous quest with double the pop culture name-dropping and world-ending stakes.

This time around, Wade is rich beyond his wildest dreams but basically a friendless recluse, and now the OASIS can give you a full-senses experience but can also potentially kill you. Turns out that in addition to winning James Halliday’s fortune, Wade inherited one more thing: the OASIS Neural Interface, or ONI, which allows users to experience every touch, taste, and smell of their digital world. Pop culture aficionado that he is, Wade ponders how easily the ONI could be used for evil—and then decides to release it to his fellow OASIS users anyway, justifying it with the reasoning that he could never withhold wholly immersive escapism from the miserable masses.

Wade relates all this in a bevy of early chapters that jump ahead three years, smoothing out key emotional moments and massive changes to the book’s universe into an unemotional narrative blur—ironic, considering that the whole point of the ONI is that it allows people to feel like never before. I’ve read Wikipedia summaries with more feeling than the beginning of this book. By the time the main plot begins to unfold, readers will feel so distant from Wade that it will be difficult to care when his actions resurrect a ghost in the machine, sending Parzival and the rest of the “High Five”—his strained besties and business partners including Aech, Shoto, and ex-girlfriend Samantha a.k.a. Art3mis—on a muddled fantasy quest with a ticking clock. This time, when you die in the game, you actually die IRL (or, as the kiddos call it in 2048, the Earl—sigh).

Instead of three keys to three gates, it’s Seven Shards to the Siren’s Soul, which gives the book more of a fantasy quest feel than Ready Player One’s video game tournament vibe. Of course, that doesn’t preclude Wade from the aforementioned arcade visit, nor another batch of Halliday-approved ’80s references. The gunters’ single-minded ’80s obsession felt like clever commentary in Ready Player One; in the sequel, it verges on self-parody. It did not seem possible that Cline could find new pop culture trivia to shoehorn into these pages, and yet he does—sometimes a dozen to a single page, if we have the misfortune of encountering a character rattling off lists of movies or songs. The book’s first riddle combines Max Headroom, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Tommy Tutone’s earworm “867-5309/Jenny,” so that should give you an idea of what you’re in for.

To be fair, Cline leans more into mashups this time around, likely following the conventional wisdom that the best way to make two familiar pieces new is to combine them. One notable excursion is the OASIS planet created in the image of John Hughes’ favorite fictional town of Shermer, Illinois. On this medley world, five different Molly Ringwalds all attend the same high school, and obscure knowledge of actors almost cast in iconic roles saves the day. The sequel also utilizes needle drops, with Parzival and his friends’ actions triggering music cues in Shermer as well as on a certain purple-themed musical world. The faithful listing of every song title and/or key lyrics reads a bit ponderous on the page, but no doubt the effect will be more fun in the inevitable Ready Player Two movie.

These interludes also have Parzival getting schooled by Art3mis and Aech for the gaps in his knowledge, for following Halliday’s broad-yet-narrow tastes and inheriting the man’s blind spots for pop culture that might have been more significant for women and people of color. It’s a different kind of self-awareness than existed in Ready Player One, but it feels more performative than anything else because it still comes from the perspective of a white man.

Ready Player One was published in 2011, and our world has changed a lot in the intervening decade, from the rise of social media influencers to gender fluidity (and its vocabulary and presentation) becoming more mainstream. One gets the sense that Cline took these cultural shifts into account when returning to the 2040s, retconning them into his speculative future. The ONI-net, in which OASIS users can experience the lives of celebrities and thrill-seekers through immersive viral clips, brings to mind Instagram and TikTok. Though there are some references to global pandemics, COVID-19 seems not to have made the cut (likely due to Ready Player Two’s publishing schedule). Nonbinary people exist in the OASIS and IRL, and one of the new supporting characters is trans, though the reader mostly experiences this through Wade’s own journey of acknowledging his own sexual confusion. Wade has become more woke, but he mostly proclaims such wokeness instead of actually acting on it.

The Wade of Ready Player One has a clear rags-to-riches story, as his obsession with a bygone decade literally pays off and transforms his life. Ready Player Two’s reverse narrative is not nearly as compelling, and falls into the trap of altering its characters’ circumstances without actually depicting character growth. Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto go through major life changes yet somehow get even less plot development than the first time around. That trans character gets shuffled off to a side quest that will no doubt become its own tie-in novella, when it would have been more affirming for her to be front-and-center—the new Parzival, eager to crack the puzzle. None of these characters are elevated from supporting cast to Wade’s crisis of conscience. Unlike the OASIS, the world of these books remains static and unchanging.

Rather than extend that extra life through another run-through of the same game, Wade wisely lets it expire and takes his win. If only Cline had done the same.

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Ready Player Two is available now from Ballantine Books.

The post Ready Player Two Review: Ernest Cline’s Soulless Sequel Beats a Dead Horse appeared first on Den of Geek.

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