#unless i post some theories/ideas i had for post-finale things

[lookinghalfacorpse]

im a fan of bittersweet and open-ended endings so no s2 is like. almost the best case scenario for me. never underestimate a good ending and those guys KILLED IT with the finale

#would be interested to see how other folks wrap up their character arcs but if that doesnt happen thats ok too #makes sense how we got here #but also im kinda happy abt it #eh whatever thats all ill say about it #unless i post some theories/ideas i had for post-finale things

[project-sekai-facts]

Pre-broadcast station commentary

The next broadcast station will be held on the 27th, featuring Chiruriin, Jiena, Itoken, and Minoringo. The guest during the VOCALOID Music SEKAI segment this time will be Shishi Shishi.

Rotation 4 is nearly done and only has one event left, that being Ena's 4th event! We can definitely expect her event to be announced on stream. Her event will be 2DMV and the rateup at the very least should feature Mizuki. Hopefully pure attribute so Niigo can finally get a pure vsinger 4* card.

That said, there will be one other event too! Since Chiruriin is here, I'm tempted to say it will be for Saki, but Ichika works too I guess if there's any card distribution issues.

For the 3.5 mixed event... well Akito not getting a card at all on concerto seems to pretty much confirm him for the event. This happened to Mizuki back in December. As for the other cards, there's surprisingly few people it could be. The 5 most likely characters are Akito (likely the banner character), Airi, Saki, Honami, and KAITO (mmj or n25). Miku (vbs or mmj) also works if clpl doesn't care about vsinger lim balance. Rui and Nene work too, but it's pretty much confirmed that Tsukasa and Emu are the fes cards, so is clpl cruel enough to put 3 of 4 wxs members on lim rateup 8 days after wxs lim rateup? I think Akito/Airi/Saki is most likely, with mmj kaito as the vsinger card.

And for April lim, I actually have an idea already. April's lim slot has consistently been unit lims. Every year. Here's the thing though: like with 3.5, there's barely any units that actually work. It won't be niigo because of Ena4 being the same month. It can't be MMJ because 3/4 of their members are maxed for lims (and if airi's on 3.5 you can make that 4/4). It's incredibly likely that either Saki or Honami will be lim on 3.5, which puts you with 3/4 being maxed for lims (plus the chances of saki5). WxS in theory works with Nene/Rui/Luka lineup, but you hit a snag with the fact they already have 4/6 vsinger lims.

If April is a limited unit event, it will probably be for VBS. There's some other evidence to back this up too, namely the fact it kinda has to be An/Toya limited if it does happen. Akito 3.5 will max him out for lims, Kohane had valentines recently but long enough that it could justify her getting a lim. However we know already that An and Toya have already gone more than a year without lims, the absolute maximum time to go without a lim (as of posting) is 15 months, 15 months after white day Toya puts him on the wedding banner, and he already has a wedding card. He has to be april limited unless colopale hates him lmao. And obviously, An works for the banner card and also has gone ages without a lim. Luka, Rin or Miku could work as a vsinger card.

This stream will also reveal the songs for the 3.5 anniversary vsinger song campaign, as well as possibly give us a sneak peek of this year's april fools prank.

#mod talks #speculation #sorry this is so long

[lyrakanefanatic]

Thoughts that I wanted to share about the brothers Hawthorne/ the grandest game bc I don’t wanna make a million posts about each one 💀

1: Phone girls dad literally shot himself ON. HER. BIRTHDAY. 😭😭

2: Skye Hawthorne MIGHT be in the grandest game, because when Avery got bombed and Ricky and skye got arrested for it, they found out that it actually wasn’t them which means they prob got out of jail (maybe not Ricky but probably skye) and she might be controlling one of the players

3: WE’LL PROBABLY GET TO SEE A SUNSHINE X GRUMPY TROPE!! (Mathias and Gigi)

4: we’ll see which 7 contestants avery will pick for the game!! (While I was writing that instead of contestants I accidentally put tributes 💀)

5: we might learn more about Toby’s backstory (or just the Hawthorne backstories in general, like Zara’s, nans or Alice’s)

6: speaking of Alice, SOMEHOW THAT OLD GRANDMAS GOING TO BE ALIVE

7: this isn’t really a prediction but more just like a possible hint for the grandest game, but when grayson tells his brothers about the riddle “what begins a bet? Not that”, Jameson says this

He says “what’s the opposite of a handshake?” And I found a picture online that shows multiple different options of what could be the opposite of a handshake

Basically most of the words on there kind of show “misinterpretation” or just different words for some sort of mistake, so would that mean that the “beef” (im just gonna call it that bc I don’t rlly know what went down) between tobias and thomas thomas was maybe accidental?? Or maybe they got into a disagreement that ended in thomas ending his life? All the book really shows is that one paragraph (that I highlighted in green) that talks about what Jameson thought of the riddle, and then Jameson was talking to Avery about the game (probs bc jlb didn’t wanna drop too many hints lmao) And then if you add it in with the “abet” theory ⬇️

It said that one of the opposites of a handshake were “refusal” and “disagreement”, so what if tobias had wanted thomas to aid one of his crimes and thomas refused, and maybe tobias gave him an ultimatum which is why he shot himself?? It’s so confusing bc what would tobias even do that was so horrible that thomas had to shoot himself, I really don’t know. but if anyone has some theory’s on this pls lmk! 🫶

8: holy guacamole 7 was a long one, but anyway i feel like there are definitely more hints on the grandest game in the brothers Hawthorne then there were in the final gambit, even though in (i think tig is the one that clue was from?) the inheritance games “special” edition bc idk what their called it said “hints in the final gambit”. (although one loose end from tig was David Golding, and @riddles-n-games had a good theory about that) But i read the final gambit entirely and didn’t find a single clue other than David, so that’s kinda weird (unless somebody else found something else they found interesting in that book?)

9: Eve might also be behind one of the players, or just trying to get involved with the game so she could get the cash prize or whatever else it is that that psycho needs 🙄

10: we’ll (most likely, bc I’m 99.9% sure that she’ll be in tgg) see what phone girl looks like and see which one of us were right 😜

11: kinda random but i will bet a whole 5 dollars that phone girls name is either gonna be flower related, or just straight up be lily. Or maybe both, but just think of how ironic that would be (there are calla lilys all over the cover of tgg… 🤷‍♀️)

12: LIBBY NASH WEDDING!!! 🤭🤭🤭💗

13: so off topic but WHERE DO GRAYSON AND JAMESON GET THEIR MONEY FROM??? like I’m sure jameson probably gets some cash from his billionaire girlfriend, but what about grayson?? he says in tbh that he’s “buried in work” but what kind of work does he do?? and who does he work for?? 🤨

14: Okay this is gonna be the last one bc i need to shut up, but does anybody have an idea on what some things in the grandest game cover might symbolize? we know about the lilys and the opal rings, but other than that i CANT seem to figure out anything else on there 😭😭

and okay that’s all thank you for coming to my ted talk 🫶😊🙌

#the inheritance games #jameson hawthorne #nash hawthorne #avery kylie grambs #grayson hawthorne #xander hawthorne #the brothers hawthorne #libby grambs #maxine liu #phone girl #the grandest game #jennifer lynn barnes #the final gambit #thomas thomas #calla lily

[adipostsstuff]

We need to talk about the prisoners' memories

We know that none of the prisoners remember being taken to Milgram, so they must have had some memories removed, and it seems it wasn't limited to the kidnapping since Mu in her first voice drama claims that the last thing she remembers is committing her murder. I suspect their memories cut off at the moment they realised they committed murder based on the last scenes in their music videos. This would mean that:

Haruka, Yuno, Mu, Amane and Kotoko would have their memories cut off immediately after their murders since it would be pretty difficult not realise you committed a murder after literally beating someone to death.

For Mahiru and Kazui it would be once they realsie their partners committed suicide and related it back to their own actions.

For Futa it would be when he starts getting posts directed to him how his victim's death and was blamed for it. (Side note: imagine being Futa, getting called out on social media and not knowing when, realising you caused the death of a human being, and then waking up in a prison and being called a murderer with no time to process any of that. No wonder he's so jumpy.)

For Shidou it would be when he gets told his family was diagnosed with brain death and asked to offer up their organs for transplants, realised how hurtful it must have been for others to hear the words said from him, and retroactively consider all of his previous transplants to be murders. (I know this isn't confirmed to be his murder but its the only theory that fits this one and based on other stuff seems the most likely to me.)

This leaves Mikoto, who seems to be the odd one out as unlike the others he had time to clear up his crime scene. It seems like a contradiction to be able to do that without realising he committed a murder. I have a couple of possible explanations for this (but I have to speculate about his crime to do that. ugh).

The first, and what I believe to be most likely, is that he killed someone and immediately started to dissociate. Remember what I said earlier about it being difficult to not realise you committed a murder if you did it directly? There is actually an exception to that rule: if you happen to have a dissociative disorder, which just so happens to be the case with Mikoto. This could be when John was "born" (which checks out with his statements in Neoplasm) and was left with the task of clearing up the scene while Mikoto was unconscious (don't know the proper system terminology for that). If this is the case, then it's unlikely there were more than one victims or at least incidents since it seems a little pedantic for this to happen every time (unless John did kill someone after the first event; have to keep an open mind, especially since I'm not going to bother looking into it much further than this myself).

The other possibility is that it was an alter committing all the murders without Mikoto's knowledge, but since Double I've been less convinced. John is clearly not giving us all the information he knows.

Either way the end is the same. Some time later, Mikoto starts to remember what he did before getting knocked out kinda by John and forgetting again. This realization is what enables him to be sent to Milgram. In fact, if you look at the final scene in MeMe

Yep, that’s the last shot either of them have. Their last memory before entering here. As an aside it's interesting (and also kind of annoying) that the memory wipe is applied to both alters despite only Mikoto being considered the prisoner. They might have just tried to remove all memories after this point regardless of who was fronting. The one time it would have been useful for John to not be considered a prisoner, he is treated as one.

This is entirely conjecture but considering everyone else it would be weird for him to be the only one who doesn't fit. This does give some kind of idea as to how Milgram selects people to be part of the experiment and what memories are wiped, and I don't have a better idea than this one right now so if anything gets contradicted then I'm screwed. I'm fairly confident in this though. Going to make a follow up post to prove more stuff happened between what they last remember and when they were taken here, but I'd like to hear everyone else's thoughts on this.

#milgram #haruka sakurai #yuno kashiki #fuuta kajiyama #muu kusunoki #shidou kirisaki #mahiru shiina #kazui mukuhara #amane momose #mikoto kayano #kotoko yuzuriha #milgram theory

[tmagpposting]

So, about TMAGP Ep 4

Some theories based on this newest episode. Major spoilers under the cut, so please go listen to it first.

I know there have been a lot of popular theories up to this point that Augustus would be Jonah Magnus, and episode 4 puts a lot more evidence out there that would seem to support this idea.

Here's what I thought was relevant to this theory after listening through the episode twice this morning:

Augustus is voiced by an older man who I don't think we've ever heard before, and we've never heard Jonah's actual voice either, since he's using Elias's voice throughout all of TMA as far as I'm aware. He sounded vaguely like Jurgen Leitner to me, although I think this is just on account of the fact that the VAs sound similar and not indicative of them being the same person or being meant to voice the same character (I didn't catch who voiced him in the credits and I couldn't find it online, if you all know please tell me and I'll update this)*

The incident report is a very old document, with a writing style and tone reminiscent of the old statements/letters to Jonah in the early days of the institute. It seems like it'd be right up Jonah's alley.

The episode revolves around a man succumbing to a dark power and eventually dedicating himself to it (the freaky bloodlust violin vs the Eye) and recruiting a younger man, in this case his relative, to serve this violent power (though probably after his death in this case, unlike with Jonah), which has some parallels to Jonah's recruitment of Jon and the rest of the staff in TMA.

We don't know much about the universe of TMAGP yet, but we know there is a Magnus institute that has aldready been linked to Eye-esque characteristics like paranoia, suspicion, (fatal) curiosity, and eyes as of Ep 1. It is possible that Augustus could be a version of Jonah from the TMAGP universe, rather than the same Jonah we dealt with in TMA.

.JMJ error could stand for some combination of Jon, Martin, and Jonah's initials, given that Chester and Norris also have Jon and Martin's voices.

In the TMA finale, Jon, Martin, and Jonah (though I assumed he was dead at that time) were close to where the fears were sucked out of the world and sent somewhere else, and Jon and Martin may also have ended up in the OIAR's computers in some form.

On the other hand, here's some evidence against Jonah being Augustus:

The other Jonah theory I've seen posits that Jonah took over RedCanary's body when they went down to investigate the ruins of the magnus institute, assuming that "canaries should stay above ground" and the gory photo of eyes was meant to represent RedCanary's eyes having been ripped out and presumably replaced with Jonah's. If you interpret things this way, it makes it less likely that Jonah is in the computers, unless you think both TMA Jonah and a hypothetical TMAGP Jonah are both around at the same time, though this theory is also a little shaky itself since it seems to be based on only a couple pieces of evidence so far. I first saw a post about this from @thermodynamic-comedian though that post says she saw other people discussing it, so please lmk if you know any major contributors to this theory and I will add them in here too.**

The fact that, to take over as the Eye's pupil, it was implied that Jon had to actually kill Jonah, and he was seemingly dead as of the TMA finale. Death was usually a very hard line in TMA except for a few avatars of the End and near-deaths where characters lost some of their agency (and/or humanity depending on your interpretation) to become an avatar instead (which Jonah already was), so him being back after seemingly already having been killed off isn't super plausible unless it's revealed that he didn't actually die in the first place.

It seems like there's enough evidence at this point that this theory definitely feels viable, though there is nothing definitive that I'm aware of, and there are some things that point to other explanations.

I personally (this is now entering pure opinion territory, tread lightly) don't love the idea of Augustus being Jonah, because I'd prefer it to be someone or something new to the series or something otherwise more surprising, rather than the same central antagonist as last time. There certainly are ways they could pull this off well, and bringing him back definitely doesn't tarnish the story on its own, especially since he was a pretty great villain with a lot of his character left more or less ambiguous or untouched by TMA, but it still feels a bit like relying on nostalgia for TMA to flesh out TMAGP's plot and conflict, at least to me. However, all the evidence pointing to it being Jonah could be some kind of red herring to specifically mislead past fans of TMA and set up for a later twist, or we could just be running our minds in circles and drawing conclusions that won't turn out to be relevant to TMAGP so early on. Only time will actually tell, and regardless, I'm really eager to see what happens.

* UPDATE: Augustus is voiced by Tim Fearon, thank you to @lokicat5 for finding that out! We haven't heard him before on this podcast, so he could be either Jonah Magnus's original voice, or a new character entirely.

** UPDATE: I found and reblogged what seems to be the original theory that Jonah killed and took over RedCanary, it's by @vertigala and @doomatix, check out their post it's pretty cool.

#tmagp #the magnus protocol #tmagp spoilers #the magnus protocol spoilers #the magnus archives #tma #the magnus archives spoilers #magpod #tma spoilers #tmagp speculation #tmagp theories #tmagp 04

[inkblackorchid]

What the hell happened with Crow: an autopsy (Part 4)

*Deep breath* Okay, everybody. Let's do this one more time.

First off, hello, or welcome back. Let's get the introductions and disclaimers out of the way, shall we?

This is the fourth and final instalment in my very, very long-winded attempt to analyse the character writing of Crow over the course of the entirety of yugioh 5Ds. For everyone who hasn't read the previous parts of the analysis, you can find part one here, part two here, and part three here.

This post, and my analysis as a whole, is neither meant as a Crow hate post, nor as a manifesto to convince people who don't like him that they're wrong. It's as genuine an attempt to simply look at and dissect what the show gives us about him as I can make, though I admit to personal bias because I do like Crow. That said, I'm trying to stay as neutral as possible, because the aim of this entire post tetralogy is to look at the writing decisions made for this character and how they impact him—and how they possibly influenced the audience's perception of him.

My previous three posts all reference this as well, but since I still see these things parroted all across the internet to this day: Please don't read this post under the assumption that any of the 5Ds production rumours are true, especially not the ones surrounding Crow. Because, to make this as short as possible, every popular theory as to why certain characters were mishandled during the later parts of the show fails to line up with the production timeline of said show. Chiefly among those theories, the idea that Crow was meant to be a dark signer and that his popularity correlated to his cards, and the idea that Aki, specifically, had to give up her screentime for him because her VA got pregnant, which both lack any basis in reality, as you can read in the posts I linked. (One final shoutout to @mbg159 here, who compiled these incredibly comprehensive posts and can also be found here on tumblr. Huge thanks.) So if you can do me one favour, please just let the 5Ds rumours die already and read this analysis without the hope of seeing any of them confirmed. I'm so sick of these crackpot theories at this point that I can hardly find the words for it. And while we're on the topic, I also don't want to see this post used as a means to pit Aki and Crow against each other in any way—both have good reasons to be well-liked and both deserve their spot in the narrative, all right? All right.

And now, at last, let's get down to business. The last time I got on a virtual soapbox and yelled about Crow, I covered the entire WRGP, murder-duel-robot induced break included. That means that for this, final stretch, we'll be looking at everything from episode 137 onwards—the Ark Cradle arc. (A side not for dub aficionados here: Episode 136 was the last episode that got an English dub. In other words, everything I talk about here never even made it into the English version. Because 4Kids, I guess.) As we've done before, we'll take a look at what exactly Crow gets up to during the final stretch of the show (and, notably, the epilogue), then see whether any of it needed improving, and if so, how it could have been improved.

You'll find all further yelling below the readmore, and I'll leave you with the other, usual warning here, as well: This will be long. Even if the Ark Cradle arc, relative to the rest of the show, isn't, this post most certainly will be. So get some snacks and perhaps don't start reading this late at night unless you're good at knowing when to stop and reading stuff in bursts. (I'm not.)

As I concluded at the end of my last post, the WRGP ended up being a bit of a mixed bag for Crow. He's there, he duels, but at the same time, despite being positioned as an equal third of a protagonist trio, he's notably less important and arguably also weaker than Yusei and Jack. Moreover, where the plot is concerned, he sure didn't get too much to do—not to speak of the fact that the writers didn't grace him with any meaningful interactions with a certain character who'll become very relevant here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the preamble.

With the end of the Team New World duel, the final arc of the show drops the by this point unexpected arrival of the Ark Cradle right on our heads. So, what does Crow do here, at the start, other than be shocked? Well, not much. A lot of the first episode that introduces the Ark Cradle focusses more on the imminent threat said structure poses to New Domino City, and we flash back to our protagonists mostly to ascertain that things are, in fact, going to shit. Even once that focus on the city evacuating shifts again, the episode concerns itself more with Yusei than with Crow. However, meagre as it is, we do get the first interaction between Crow and Sherry during the Ark Cradle arc in this episode.

(Uh.... at least they're technically talking to each other?)

And frankly... It's not much. Unfortunately, up until the duel where he faces her, the Ark Cradle arc continues a trend regarding interactions between Crow and Sherry that we already saw in the WRGP: They barely get to interact, and even when they do, they never have anything so much as resembling a meaningful conversation, mostly because Sherry basically never addresses Crow directly, nor seems very interested in him, while Crow is usually there only to react to what she's saying, rather than actually talk to her. While digging through my mountain of screenshots, I found that latter part to be especially interesting, because as it turns out, this is a trend not just in Crow's interactions with Sherry, specifically. Many moments that probably contribute to the nefarious "screentime" (I've explained my gripes with this term in part two) some people like to accuse Crow of hogging have him only be part of a scene so he can react to what happens in it, to the point of him sometimes feeling like a stand-in for the audience reaction the writers might be hoping for. The above is a perfect example, because as far as character writing is concerned, Crow's "interaction" with Sherry here is utterly devoid of meaning. He's just there to communicate his disbelief over the ominous prediction that Yusei is guaranteed to die if he goes to the Ark Cradle, which feels like exactly the kind of reaction the writers probably wanted from the audience. After all, it's a bold, shocking statement to make. The protagonist, dying? In a card game anime geared towards twelve year-olds? It's downright preposterous. And Crow seems to agree with that, if his dialogue is anything to go by.

This one and other scenes (mostly the kind that contain plot elements that Crow doesn't actually interact with) got me thinking, though, and after having gone through so much of the show with a fine-tooth comb now, I think I've come to a conclusion, so permit me a tangent here: I believe the choice to let Crow, specifically, be a character who often only reacts to events or interactions after the DS arc, rather than contributing much himself, is deliberate. Don't get me wrong, I don't think he's the only character who is frequently put in this position—Aki, the twins, and even Bruno, especially when they're on the sidelines in the WRGP, also often only seem to be there to react or comment on things, perhaps partially to remind us viewers that they still exist, despite not being in a position where they contribute anything to the plot. With how much the twins and Aki got pushed to the side after the pre-WRGP and the Unicorn duel, respectively, and with how toned-down Bruno's entire character is until the very end, as not to spoil his tragic antagonist status too much, Crow in particular ending up as an often reactive, rather than active character stands out a bit more, though. And I think this has everything to do with his personality, because it contrasts that of Jack and Yusei. Think of it. Sure, Crow is shown several times to be just as cool and competent as the other two, but what he has that the other two crucially lack is the ability to freak out like a normal person. I'm being hyperbolic here, of course, but I do genuinely believe this, because when I think back to the show, Jack and Yusei, due to their character writing, only ever seem to be allowed to lose their cool during pretty specific circumstances, and only in very specific ways. Jack, for example, only ever gets to freak out either when a scene paints him as the butt of the joke (like during his infamous, dramatic outburst over cup ramen), or when the freakout is caused by—and expressed as—righteous (or not so righteous) fury (like when he storms off angrily after catching everyone watching his old duel with Dragan). Meanwhile, Yusei is played so straight that we barely ever see him lose his composure at all, outside of intensely dramatic, high-stakes situations (think his dark signer duels with Kiryu, his confrontation with Roman, his initial failure to accel synchro). Hell, the closest we get to ever seeing him be mildly upset about something like a normal person, as far as I can recall, is when he gets embarrased by Martha calling him out on his perceived crush on Aki. That's it.

Crow, though. Crow's allowed to do something the other two aren't: He's allowed to react to the world around him like your average guy. Jack blows through their household money for expensive coffee. Crow gets upset. Understandable. Crow gets injured right before his big debut in a turbo duelling tournament and is upset to the point of snapping at his friends over it. Understandable. Seeing Yaeger's kid cheering his dad on and knowing that this kid will cry if his dad loses makes Crow relent and throw the match. Understandable. Sherry predicts Yusei's imminent death due to hocus pocus and Crow calls bullshit. Understandable.

Do you see what I'm driving at? With how the show treats the other two Satellite boys, I'd argue none of the moments above would have worked anywhere near as well if the writers had tried to make Jack or Yusei take Crow's place in any of them. Because while Yusei and Jack, I feel, were certainly written to be the coolest characters (at least to the target audience), Crow seems like he was written to be the most relatable. He's the guy who takes on a delivery job when they need money. He's the guy who complains about his cranky landlady. And he's the guy who reacts to insane nonsense happening around him a little more realistically than his defeated-an-ancient-devil-to-absorb-its-power brother, his shouldering-the-guilt-of-a-cataclysmic-event-decades-ago other brother, their mutual previously-violent-psychic-who-was-part-of-a-cult friend, and the one-of-us-can-see-spirits-and-we-share-a-weird-kind-of-magical-bond twins. As such, it doesn't feel too out there to me to claim that in many situations, they made Crow the stand-in for the audience, because he has a less iron composure than Jack and Yusei, is readily available in many scenes by virtue of living with the other two, and happens to be the guy who has the arguably most normal backstory out of the signers. (Save, perhaps, for Rua, but I've already addressed before why the writers barely ever pulled Rua centre stage for anything. And they certainly wouldn't have pulled him centre stage for this, either.)

Now, as far as character writing is concerned, assuming I'm at least halfway correct with my hunch above, I feel that whether or not this decision is good or a shot in the foot on the writers' part depends largely on every audience member's individual perception of Crow after the DS arc. If you liked seeing this scrappy guy introduced during the DS arc, of course you would have been happy to see more of him! Even if he's only present in scenes to comment on what's going on and doesn't actually get to do anything meaningful. If you didn't like Crow that much, though, I can see how him popping up so often only to yap a bit and contribute essentially nothing could have grated on you. And as I said, I think this is where the "screentime" discussion comes in again, because yeah, Crow is very much on screen in all these little-bit-of-nothing scenes. He doesn't get to do much and his character isn't fleshed out or reinforced in any way, but he sure is there. For better or for worse.

And this—this is where I can finally get back to him and Sherry. Because in his interactions specifically with her, it is for worse, due to the fact that all the scenes that contain both of them before the Ark Cradle duel are pretty much exclusively these kinds of little-bit-of-nothing, reactive scenes. Crow doesn't get to interact with Sherry meaningfully, and he never—and I need to empathise this—, not once gets to interact with her one on one, not until the end-of-series duel both of them take part in happens. What makes Crow's lack of meaningful interactions with Sherry even worse is that his later duelling partner against her is Aki, of all people, who by contrast gets to interact with Sherry a whole bunch, most notably during her duel against Yusei. Not only that, but Sherry is also shown to actually be interested in Aki, which cannot be said for Crow. Yet, still in the same episode I was describing above, while the Ark Cradle begins its descent, it's not Aki, but Crow who is entrusted with this card by Mizoguchi/Elsworth:

(I'd like to point out that the dialogue following this moment doesn't make it clear whether Crow even knows what Sherry's connection to this card is. For all we know, this could be the first time Crow sees it, without being aware of any of the context surrounding it.)

You know, the card that's essentially a symbol of Sherry's attachment to her parents and her commitment to revenge. The card that basically her entire character revolves around. For a single piece of cardboard, this thing comes with a lot of narrative baggage attached, yet canon doesn't even take the time to assure us that Crow knows what Z-ONE means, other than it being a memento of Sherry's parents, as Mizoguchi explains. And frankly, this all feels like a rather ham-fisted attempt to get some last-minute setup for the later confrontation between Crow and Sherry in. It's like the writers desperately wanted to feel the emotional moment in the duel later to feel earned; they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. There's only one problem: They didn't even bake the damned thing, the ingredients are just sitting around, untouched, as if staring at them long enough will magically make a cake manifest.

But, well, since I'm already talking about this, I may as well get into the actual meat of the matter, because frankly, it's not like Crow gets much else to do at the start of the arc. Yusei takes off because he at first wants to go to the Ark Cradle alone (like an idiot), leading to the signers coming after him (and telling him he's an idiot). Joining this effort and assuring Yusei that they won't let him die alongside the others is as much as Crow gets to do before the inevitable three-way duel starts.

(That said, while it doesn't accomplish anything, I've always appreciated this little moment while Yusei still tries to pull his stupid kamikaze plan—Crow would know more shortcuts in the BAD area than he does. After all, he lived there for a good while!)

After that, everyone gets up to the Ark Cradle and, as we all know, the signer group is forcibly split up by Z-ONE before deciding to go to a Yusei gear each in order to shut down Ark Cradle's negative Moment. (Top ten sentences that wouldn't make a lick of sense to anyone who isn't up to their neck in 5Ds lore.) And the very first duel on the menu in this final stretch of episodes is also Crow's final duel in the entire show.

(Drumroll please.)

Here's the thing. I love this duel, actually. I get extremely hyped every time I rewatch it. BUT. But. I do not love it so blindly that I couldn't see that it has not one, but several issues. Not only that, but those issues don't just rest on Crow's shoulders, they sadly rest on the shoulders of all three participants in this duel, because frankly? Alongside the four-way Jack/Rua/Ruka/Aporia duel, this duel is one of the Ark Cradle arc's desperate attempts to tie up loose ends. Because as much as I enjoy this arc, that's exactly what it is: A race to the finish line, an attempt to tie as many loose ends as possible up in as little time as the show could get away with. To make clear why I think this, let me just list off all the things this arc resolves or at the very least tries to tie up with a neat bow:

It reintroduces Aki's psychic powers, which we were previously led to believe she'd lost. Notably, we didn't get a reason for why they disappeared and don't get a reason for why they reappear, either. It also turns them into healing powers in an attempt to establish a reason for why she later studies medicine.

It explains what happened to Sherry and what actually drives her revenge. Furthermore, it releases her from her narrative fridge-prison in order to actually let her duel Aki (yes, Aki, specifically), which is a confrontation that was subtextually implied several times previously.

It resolves the question of Bruno's identity by revealing him as an antagonist.

It finally reveals Life Stream Dragon, who was at this point teased over seventy episodes ago.

It also finally rewards Rua, who was teased to possibly become a signer during the DS arc, with an actual signer mark. (As short-lived as it may be.)

It actually explains Iliaster's real plan, which is Z-ONE's hope that the 5Ds gang can actually save the future.

Speaking of which, it actually explains who Z-ONE is and why he's a big deal. (Remember, this guy was first teased a good while ago at this point in time.)

Alongside Sherry, it dusts off several protagonists who didn't get an opportunity to duel on-screen and lets them duel one, final time. (Notably, Aki, Rua, and Ruka, who at this point haven't been seen duelling since the early WRGP or even pre-WRGP.)

You may notice that none of these bullet points contain Crow. They do, however, contain Aki and Sherry, both of whom went into this finale with several unanswered questions as to their characters. Crow, not so much. But let's just put a pin in that for now while we actually jump into the duel.

*Cracks knuckles* Aki & Crow VS Sherry. Here we go at last. Fair warning, the character writing of all three participants of this duel overlaps a fair bit here, so expect to hear a bit of a mishmash about our revenge trio.

So, how does this duel start? Firstly, with Sherry waxing poetic about why she's even opposing Team 5Ds now.

(A dramatic switch of sides that sadly doesn't hold a candle to Bruno turning out to be Antinomy. Which, funnily enough, might be why this duel is front-loaded and Bruno's comes later.)

I won't dig into this too much, but I just want to point out the one thing this moment gives us: It establishes character motivation. Sherry claims she can no longer get revenge and has thus lost her purpose. (The reason why she can no longer get revenge, if you're interested, is because Moment Express, her final lead, vanished in its entirety, as far as canon is concerned.) Thus, she took the bait when Z-ONE offered her a new purpose, and, more importantly, a reward. Now, Aki and Crow at this point in the episode don't get to hear what that reward is, but for our analysis, it's important to keep in mind: Z-ONE promised Sherry he'd alter the timeline so she would get her parents back if she helps him. And I think this is immensely important because this is not only Sherry's goal in the present, I think it's actually the core of her character from the very first moment we meet her. In classic, tragic-avenging-type character fashion, she claims to want revenge when what she's really doing is trying to numb the pain of the awareness that she'll never get her parents back. (Though I'll admit this may also be my generous read of her as a person who likes revenge-obsessed characters.) And then, Z-ONE dangles the actual thing she wanted all along before her. Of course she took the bait.

This brings us to the start of the duel itself. As we know, Sherry employs some tactics that feel quite different from what she previously did in this duel. First and foremost, she messes with the mechanics of the duel itself by using the field spell Ecole de Zone, creating an illusion that confuses Aki and Crow into duelling not her, but each other at first. Sherry, meanwhile, takes a very passive role, clearly intent on letting the two destroy each other while she sporadically activates card effects to accelerate this. What makes all this stand out as even more unusual for her is that she sets this up by lying. At the beginning of the duel, she tells Aki and Crow that there's two of her, and that each duellist will fight one copy of her on a seperate field each, but this is a misdirection to make the two signers duel each other instead of her. And, look. I don't need to tell you this is out of character for Sherry. Canon literally does that for me.

(Case in point.)

It's only after Crow and Aki catch onto the fact that something's wrong and after Aki destroys the field spell that Sherry uses her "real strategy", switching to Soul Binding Gate, which inflicts real damage every time a monster with less attack points than her life points is summoned, in order to whittle away at both other duellists' life points. This is also the point where she reveals to her opponents that she's doing all this to get her parents back. While she does that, we get a bit more back and forth in terms of cardplay, until Aki sets the field up just right so Crow can land a very high-damage hit with Black-Winged Dragon to end the duel. And that is pretty much the gist of it on the duelling side of things.

So what's going on on the narrative side of things, then? Well. Let me front-load something I've noticed on the narrative end: This duel heavily interacts with Crow's and Sherry's characterisation, but barely at all with Aki's. I'll make clear what I mean by that below. For now, let's just get an overview by going through the character moments as they occur in the duel. Why go through all of them? Because most either interact with Crow in some way, or set up a later interaction in the same duel that he's a part of, that's why. I'll get into the nitty-gritty of what this duel did well and what it didn't after that. (Mostly. You may have noticed I like tangents and rambling excessively.)

So.

The first moment belongs to Aki and Crow in equal measure, and happens just as Ecole de Zone is destroyed—which Aki accomplishes by using Crow's monster to synchro summon Black Rose Dragon, as well as prevent that synchro summon from being negated through the same monster's effect, so she can use her dragon's field wipe to get rid of Sherry's field spell. When Sherry is surprised by this, Aki and Crow explain that they memorised each other's cards as part of a strategic effort as a WRGP team.

(Friendship is, in fact, magic.)

Not only does this explanation make perfect sense, it's also an excellent little tidbit to tie Aki and Crow together as a tag-team here, as it strengthens the connection between them. The only gripe I could possibly see with this is that it feels like this didn't necessarily need to be a surprise, end-of-the-show reveal. Frankly, it could have been pretty cool to see this much earlier, to have members of Team 5Ds realise what their teammates were getting up to during the WRGP duels, for example. (Instead of so often having the other signers react just as shocked as the announcer to their teammates' plays—I'm side-eyeing the infamous "a trap from the graveyard"-moment in particular. Like, Aki, sweetie, if you memorised Crow's deck, why are you surprised that he has a trap he can activate from the graveyard? I digress.) Moreover, this could have built anticipation for this particular duel, as viewers would have been excited to see what Aki and Crow would come up with to defeat Sherry as a team. So this moment is not bad, really. Just a bit underutilised, at least to me. (The word "underutilised" might become a trend in this post.)

Every other character-driven moment from here on out is shoved into the second duel episode, 140. Speaking of which, this episode starts with Aki and Crow getting the reveal of why Sherry is helping Z-ONE, where she admits that she joined the bad guys because she wants her parents back. She even goes as far as stating that because Z-ONE showed her the future, she has no hope that it can be saved and thus at least wants her lovely past back so she can have some solace before everything goes to hell for humanity. But we already went over that above.

Next up, albeit this moment should probably be considered more of a running theme than just one self-contained thing, we have Crow's struggle with Soul Binding Gate. Remember, the effect of this field spell causes all players to take damage every time a monster with less ATK than Sherry's LP is summoned. And at this point in the duel, Aki is barely above 1000 life points, so Crow worries about triggering the field spell's effect and hurting her, which leads to him playing suboptimally because he's more concerned about his friend than about winning the duel. Notably, Aki calls him out on this.

(She has a point.)

Outside of providing an internal conflict for Crow to grapple with, this isn't much to write home about. (Side note: I do find it interesting that they introduce the fear of physically hurting someone in a duel specifically in connection to Aki here, though, given that through her psychic powers, she had to grapple with this exact issue many times in the past. I have no idea if this was intentional, though.)

Between this and the next moment, there's a nice bit of interplay between Crow and Aki again, where he activates a card to refill her life points just in time so she doesn't drop to zero through Soul Binding Gate, while Aki uses a defensive trap to protect Crow in return.

(This is just here because it's a money shot to me. The juxtaposition of their faces and their life points, showing that while Aki may have the lowest life points, she still has the coolest head in this duel, and while Sherry technically has the upper hand, she's beginning to falter because she didn't anticipate the other two to work so well together. It's chef's kiss. Mwah.)

What follows after this, is, of course, the Big Moment. Where Sherry tries to convince Crow to forfeit so she can win and have Z-ONE change the past. And this is the one I really need to dig into.

With Sherry's earlier admission that she's on Iliaster's side because she wants her parents back acting as setup, she begins her attempt to sway Crow by telling him that if he had the opportunity to change the past, he would do it, too. And while Crow initially protests, Sherry challenges this, then proceeds to show him what Z-ONE's power could accomplish, and we get a lengthy sequence where Sherry, through weird cyborg-techno-magic-shenanigans that are never explained, takes Aki and Crow to a dreamlike space where Crow sees the orphans he used to take care of being happily reunited with their parents. Sherry also ominously tells him that this is "what he desires deep in his psyche" before promising him that if he surrenders the duel, Z-ONE can give him a world where Zero Reverse never occurred and all the kids can have happy lives with their real families. (I wanted to post most of this sequence in screenshots, but while I have them, I've realised I'm only a few images short of tumblr's limit already, so forgive me because I will need those remaining image spots.) This moment proceeds to introduce some serious doubt on Crow's end. Aki, meanwhile, remains steadfast, telling him not to fall for Sherry's manipulation, which leads to her giving an almost Yusei-style speech. In a moment where Crow wavers, both because he's genuinely considering whether taking Sherry's offer might be the wiser choice, and because he doesn't want to hurt Aki by triggering Sherry's field spell effect, Aki calls out to him and tells him to snap out of it by reminding him of how Yusei reached out to her during their second duel. This speech is a bit, um. Clunky, I feel. (At least if the translation is correct. If it isn't, then that may be the issue.) See, she tells him that Yusei "saved her from the darkness of her psychic powers", that "he wasn't concerned about his own safety and risked his life to persuade her", that, because her psychic powers are now gone, she's "renewed" and that this somehow brought her to the epiphany that as long as she believes in her own potential, she can change the future. This is lifted almost verbatim from the scene, by the way. Leaving aside the fact that half of this feels like a mild to severe misrepresentation of Aki's character arc during the DS arc (don't talk about it, don't talk about it, I need to make this another post of its own, damn it), I, personally, can't exactly follow how she ended up with that final epiphany from the circumstances she listed. But lucky for us, Crow apparently gets what she's driving at, because he quickly echoes her statement and they both conclude that Crow's kids also believe in the future and fight to live, that they're not sad about their lives the way they are right now, even though they don't have parents. Thus, Crow catches himself, echoing Aki's sentiment and telling Sherry that he, too, believes in the future. And through the power of Friendship and Believing in the Future, he manages to use Aki's cards to land the final hit, nicely mirroring how she used his to destroy Ecole de Zone.

...Phew. Okay, look. First off, that above, large section is basically several character beats stacked on top of one another. On Sherry's end, we have the intriguing fact that she's specifically trying to manipulate Crow, not Aki. In fact, she doesn't so much as try to sway Aki, as though she knows it's no use. Then, on Aki's end, we've got her pulling a real Yusei, staying level-headed almost the entire duel and reaching out to make sure Crow stays on track. This moment also ties back to her own conflict with her powers again. (Which, unfortunately, I will talk about, and yes, I'll be chewing drywall the entire time I do it.) Finally, on Crow's end, we've got a nice, proper moment where he doubts himself and, by his own admission, nearly makes a terrible mistake because he wants nothing more than for the kids he used to take care of to have good lives.

Now, before I go over what worked about this moment and what didn't, let me just chew through the rest of the actual duel itself, too, then circle back too highlight some things. In other words, time for me to chew some drywall.

*Sigh*

At the very end of the duel, there are two more character moments that are noteworthy.

First, right before the final hit, we get Sherry desperately defending herself against Aki and Crow's newly strengthened belief that the future can, in fact, still be saved, which she does by (rather heartbreakingly) asking what's so wrong about wanting her parents back, about wanting their love and warmth back. It's at this point that Crow's allowed to get back at Sherry by challenging her beliefs, telling her that people "work hard to live because they only get one chance at life", and that there's no point in trying to go back to do things differently, that the only way to keep going is to believe in the future, regardless of whatever painful and sad events one has had to live through. I'd say this sentiment certainly fits Crow, character-wise, especially given his rough Satellite background. It does partially fall flat because it feels a bit weird for him, specifically, to now be acting like he knows Sherry inside and out, much like she did with him earlier, but again, this is simply a matter of setup and I'll try not to belabour that point again. The horse is already dead, no sense in beating it. It's after this speech and the final attack that Sherry finally realises her error.

Buuut this leads us right into the next character moment. Because as the duel ends, Sould Binding Gate physically falls apart, pelting all three of our duel participants in debris and threatening to crush them under it. While everyone does briefly fall over (and Sherry gets a moment to realise that her father wanted her to live strong, not accept seemingly inevitable doom and die weak), they soon realise they were not, in fact, buried under rubble, though. Because guess what! Black Rose Dragon to the rescue. Black Rose Dragon, who can suddenly physically affect her surroundings again. You know, that thing we were led to believe Aki could no longer make her monsters do because she lost her powers completely out of nowhere. And there's more! Because not only does Black Rose Dragon take care of the debris for the trio, as she disappears, she also heals all three of them, and in response, Crow gets a line that I unfortunately cannot for the life of me discuss without bias because it kills me every time.

(Crow. Crow, please. You're killing me. I beg you.)

This line out of Crow's mouth feels extremely weird to me, and in the process of typing up this post, I've been trying to find the reason why. Here's the conclusion I've come to: Firstly, it feels a bit out of place from him, somehow. A line hypothesising about what psychic powers can or can't do—this is something I would have expected out of Aki's mouth, but not out of Crow's. I believe what makes it feel so out of place, though, isn't necessarily that it seems a bit odd for him, specifically, to theorise about this, but that when I hear it, I don't feel like the character is saying it. Instead, in this moment, moreso than in some others that suffer from the same issue, I hear not Crow, but the writers speaking. I hear them telling me "look, we know we made it seem like Aki's powers are super gone and like they were super, irredeemably bad, and like she and you should be happy that they're gone, but here, see, this is what they're really like. Don't you think we came up with something clever here, to set her becoming a doctor later up nicely? No, this isn't because we needed to backpedal on our decision to make her lose them and be happy about it at the last second, why do you ask?". And yes, I concede this might just be me. (So feel free to disregard this in terms of analysis, I just have some weird kind of vendetta against this line.) But still, even without my personal issues hampering me, this line of dialogue out of Crow's mouth is just plain odd. After all, how would he know what "real" psychic powers are? Since when is he the expert, especially considering we've never so much as seen him comment on Aki's powers before? (And for the record, this line would have seemed just as weird had any other character other than Aki said it imo. It just has that unmistakable "writers trying to justify something at the last second"-tang to me.)

And do not. Do Not get me started on the fact that the writers, despite going to such great pains to paint Aki's psychic powers as an exclusively negative thing especially during the WRGP arc, decide to reintroduce them here, suddenly as a good thing that can also heal people, which directly contradicts every choice they've made when it came to Aki's relationship to her powers ever since the Team Catastrophe duel. While crucially also lacking the one thing this entire duel is practically begging for: Fucking. Setup. But at this point, the handling of Aki's powers, specifically, really needs its own post, so I'll hold off on any further comments here and come back to that another time. I feel like I'm beginning to talk in circles, anyhow. Setup. Setup, setup, setup. This duel wishes it had it, because then the ideas presented here—which, in a vacuum, are compelling—might have worked smoothly.

But, with that. We have finally made it through the duel itself. Sherry, at the very end, gets her change of heart and at last cements herself as a good guy, and that concludes the first duel in the finale, and also both Aki and Crow's last duel in the entire show.

And good lord, was this duel all over the place. Though I think my meandering scene-by-scene breakdown of it showed as much. Now, onto the proper evaluation of what worked and what didn't here. First, let's get the good these two episodes do out of the way, shall we. (Because there is a lot of Bad I need to yell about, unfortunately.)

By virtue of being one of the final duels, this is Aki and Crow's last chance to shine, and shine, they do. Both in the duelling department and in the character department. Aki makes two major plays that upend Sherry's strategy and Crow's perfectly in sync with her, showing that the two truly are teammates, and paying off all the character moments they had specifically in the Team Unicorn to Team Catastrophe section of the WRGP. Their friendship and cooperation is believable and entertaining to watch. Then on the character side, Aki's growth is (somewhat) paid off—where she used to be a character that doubted herself and was afraid of hurting people, she is now the one who can keep a level head and help others fight their self-doubt. Meanwhile, Crow gets to show off his unfailing dedication to community and family again, both by watching out for Aki and by selflessly desiring not for himself to have a better life, but for the kids he used to take care of. And Sherry, who was previously removed from the narrative in such an unsatisfactory way, finally gets to duel again, gets to explain why she actually does what she does, and gets to join the heroes at the end, permanently joining the ranks of the good guys instead of the villains. Happy endings all around.

Ehem. And this is where I'm gonna be less nice about this duel. Because the problem is, due to the specific constellation of characters involved in this duel and how they previously interacted in the show, there's a lot of stuff here that doesn't work nearly as well on a second watch as a first watch would like to make you believe.

First, a broader issue on the card game end of things: The way this duel feels, it's very much more Aki's duel than Crow's, which is also kind of confirmed in the card plays being made. Though it's Crow who's first shown to catch onto the fact that a third party is activating additional card effects out of nowhere, it's Aki who fully solves the mystery, uses Crow's monster to synchro summon Black Rose Dragon, then activates her dragon's effect to get rid of the illusion for good. And while Crow gets to land the final hit, it's Aki's setup and her trap, Synchro Stream, that make it possible for him to win for both of them. And yet. On the dialogue- and character-interaction side of things, this duel is made out to be much more Crow's than Aki's. Because, perhaps surprisingly to some, Aki doesn't waver one bit in this duel. She's got her head in the game the entire time. She's here to do business—that business being defeating Sherry—and by god, does she do it. Moreover, unlike Crow, she has much, much better setup to be duelling Sherry than he does. And this comes right back around to the main thing this duel suffers from, which I've already harped on about: Crow and Sherry, up until this point, have not interacted in a way that would make the connection between them seem in any way significant. Unfortunately for this duel, though, Aki and Sherry have.

From the first episode where we're introduced to Sherry, she's shown to be interested in who Aki is and what she can do. During the duel between her and Yusei, she comments on Aki's powers. Later, when Aki is getting her turbo duelling license, Sherry watches on with interest. At some point while Aki's training, Sherry drops by to speak with her and Yusei again. My point here being, of course, that Aki, unlike Crow, got several scenes where she interacted with Sherry or had Sherry meaningfully take note of her existence before this point. Yet, whatever dynamic the writers may or may not have been aiming for between these two is, at best, underutilised in the final duel, if not completely ignored, at worst. Instead, the writers shift their focus to Crow and try to make us believe that Sherry, a character who has barely acknowledged his existence thus far, would know him well enough to consider him the better target for her attempt at manipulation. (And don't get me started on how the hell Z-ONE's weird robot magic is supposed to expose what Crow "desires deep in his psyche". That is simply a chasm the show expects us to suspend our disbelief over.) And look. The thing is, I don't think the Big Moment where Sherry tries to convince Crow to forfeit is terrible in isolation. Like, they could have made this work, had they given these two setup, had they given us, the audience, reason to believe Crow could be swayed like this (which they, notably, also didn't), and had they given us the impression that Sherry knows Crow well enough to pull something like this. What hurts the scene immensely, however, is that it's preceded by everything before, starting from the WRGP, where there is no setup between these two, no reason to believe Crow could be convinced to forfeit a duel against a major antagonist, and no meaningful interactions to support the belief that Sherry knows who Crow really is at all.

What also stands out to me is that Crow really doesn't feel like the best character to parallel Sherry, here, either. Parallel in the sense that she tries to get to him by expressing a desire she believes they both feel—getting a certain, nicer version of the past they never had back. Because the thing is, Sherry and Crow hardly feel like they have very much in common, and there's certainly no previous hints to make anyone believe they would have this in common. (So for all we know, Sherry could have just been taking a shot in the dark by trying to convince Crow.) You know who could have made for an excellent character to mirror Sherry, though? Yeah. The third person in the room during this scene. Aki.

See, here's the thing about these three as characters, in relation to what this scene tries to accomplish (getting a protagonist to waver by having the antagonist appeal to certain emotional similarities between them): While Crow may perhaps be more relatable to the audience, he isn't all that relatable to Sherry. He comes from dirt poor origins, she from rich ones. He doesn't even remember his parents, she defines herself by the memory of hers. She's a lone wolf, he's incredibly community-focussed. The only parallel you could have drawn between these two, up until this duel, is knowing what it feels like to want revenge. (Sherry with her parents, Crow with his kids back in the DS arc.) But guess what, unfortunately, Aki knows that too, what with her past as the Black Rose Witch and wanting to make people pay for ostracising her. And to make matters worse, she has a lot of other things going for her that parallel Sherry much, much better, too. They both come from well-off families, both have had major, traumatising events in their lives revolve around their parents, both left their initial family structure by way of drastic changes in their life, both are intimately familiar with the desire for vengeance, and, most damningly, Aki knows what it's like to stand on the side of the bad guys—like Sherry is doing in that very scene—because you feel like it's the only place that gives you hope/meaning. Not to speak of the fact that Aki, given her turbulent past with her psychic powers, would probably know exactly what it feels like to want a past you never had back. There would have been so much to work with there, and it makes whatever they were gunning for with Crow look... lacklustre, to put it mildly, by comparison.

The worst part is, I think, that the blame lies neither with the characters nor with the scene concept here. Solely with the execution. Because I truly think they could have made this work. They could have made the entire duel work, big character moments and all. But the keyword is and always has been setup. Setup, which the writers, at least in part, strangely gave to Aki, but not to Crow, which is what hurts particularly his portion of this duel, and, arguably, his character writing in general. Because—and this may be a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but permit me this—while Crow wanting a better future for the kids he used to take care of over a better future for himself feels perfectly on brand, the idea of him forfeiting a duel against a major antagonist, while the threat of the entire city being destroyed is hanging above his head... doesn't. Like, yes, I've talked about the fact that Crow is the only character in 5Ds who ever actually loses duels on purpose. What you may remember, though, is that both occasions we've seen him do this—against Lyndon and Yaeger, respectively—were much lower-stakes duels than this. Not to speak of the fact that it also feels a little odd that Crow, of all people, would buy into the idea that Z-ONE's genuinely powerful enough to just give those kids their parents back, given how liberally he called bullshit on pretty much any and all supernatural mumbo-jumbo claiming that fate is inevitable, or that the gods have this-and-that power, or what have you the entire show. (Also, doesn't he strike you as the guy who'd wonder why Z-ONE's not using his fancy powers for better things, if the extent of them is so great? Or is that just me?) It's a moment of character doubt that tries to sell itself as believable, even though we've never been given any hints that this kind of temptation, specifically, could work on Crow.

Ultimately, Crow & Aki VS Sherry feels like a very hot-and-cold duel. On the cardplay side, the teamwork between Aki and Crow is well done, yet the duel does feel like it skews more towards Aki than towards Crow. Sherry, meanwhile, plays tricky and mean like a proper antagonist, but does so at the expense of sacrificing all her previous tactics and monsters (and, arguably, some of her character, though this is probably on purpose, given her transformation into an antagonist). Then, on the character side, we've got Aki in an interestingly Yusei-ish role, which, while it feels like a good way to show how she's matured and learned, wastes her character dynamic with Sherry. On the other side, Crow and Sherry interact in several personal ways throughout the duel that leave you wondering when exactly these two got to know each other so well, because the show certainly didn't give us a visible progression of their dynamic. The only dynamic that leaves nothing to be desired is that between Aki and Crow (stilted speeches aside), because it excellently showcases their friendship and teamwork. Very weird decisions made in the writing here all around.

We'll get into the nitty-gritty of what changes I would have suggested to improve this duel below, but first: What happens after this duel? Well, two more Yusei gear duels, Aporia briefly standing up to Z-ONE, and then, the final, big clash between Yusei and Z-ONE.

Given that Crow isn't even present for two of these duels and then barely gets more to do than stand on the side and react during the final two, I will dare to skip all that, though. Because really, Crow's occasional comments and the play-by-play he sometimes joins the others in giving when spectating a duel don't exactly contribute anything to his character. They're just there so he gets something to do and doesn't fade into the background entirely when a duel that doesn't involve him is going on. This includes the moment where he, much like the other signers, gets to give Yusei Black-Winged Dragon for the final duel, as well as the later moment when Yusei uses it, chanting in tandem with Crow as BWD arrives. And other than that and the tear-jerking moment when he later reacts to Yusei returning despite all odds, he really doesn't get any noteworthy scenes.

In other words, we are skipping straight to the end. So, where do we find Crow there?

(Oh, y i k e s.)

There's a popular post circulating around this site that goes something like "the worst thing you can do to a character is make them a cop during a timeskip". And, look. I don't think I need to tell anyone that becoming a sector security officer is an extremely jarring character choice for Crow. Crow, of all people! The guy with the face full of markers, who used to be part of a duel gang, who was introduced in the show gleefully stealing from security Robin Hood-style, and who has every reason to despise law enforcement! (Leaving aside the obvious logistical issue that Crow in no country in the world could have completed his police training in the few months between the Ark Cradle debacle and this scene. But given that 5Ds generously brushes realistic concerns like this one aside on multiple occasions, this is, funnily enough, the thing I'm also more willing to overlook here. The character dissonance, however, less so.)

I'll try to be generous and guess that the writers were aiming to convey a message somewhere along the lines of "even someone who's done bad things in the past can become an example for others" or something like it. The problem is just that Crow didn't need any such message because he was already the good guy while he was still actively stealing from security. He was the lovable rogue to a T, damn it! But this, in particular, is a surface scratch hinting at a bigger issue, I think—namely, the issue of the show's complete pivot when it came to the depiction of law enforcement after the DS arc. Because when we think back to that part of 5Ds, good security officers were the exception, rather than the rule. And this is exactly what makes Crow of all characters becoming one even weirder. He would know, would remember how security used to treat him, his kids, his friends, his brothers. And if the idea here was that, well, he's trying to improve sector security by joining it and changing it from the inside, so to speak, then guess what was missing again: Our good, old friend setup. I'm starting to feel like a broken record. So yeah, I don't think a ton of people, whether they like or hate Crow, would disagree that this is a supremely weird position to put his character in.

As we find out through 5Ds' epilogue, however, his sector security job isn't quite what Crow actually wants, though. (And thank god, because that would have been such a bizarre position to leave him in.) Instead, we're shown fairly quickly that several duelling leagues are apparently trying to scout Crow out, and that he's tempted to accept one of the offers and go into pro duelling. This is at first shown in a short scene where something like a league scout follows Crow, then later, when the whole group—sans Jack, at first—is getting together and everyone starts discussing their futures. Aside from complaining a bit about his job and upsetting Aki without meaning to, Crow doesn't get much to do here, either. For what it's worth, at least him feeling tempted to ditch the security job feels more in line with the original Crow we got than with whatever strange twist the writers were going for after this shorter timeskip.

What follows is the very last duel of the show, the long-awaited Yusei VS Jack rematch, of course. And while he doesn't get to participate in this one, Crow, much like Aki and the twins, spectates the duel and ends up having an epiphany about what he wants to do. This epiphany ends up being that he does want to turn to pro duelling, and as a reasoning, canon provides us with this:

(As is known, intense card games are the only way to make children smile.)

Personally, I wouldn't say this is a terrible or out of character reason for Crow to decide to go pro. But there's more to that I'd like to discuss. First, though, let's take a quick look at where we find Crow after the second, bigger timeskip, which is inserted right in the middle of Yusei and Jack's final duel.

(Okay, yeah, I'm a sucker for the bullet earrings.)

The quick scene Crow gets here makes it unmistakably clear that he did go into pro duelling, just like he decided during the duel in the past, and not only that, he went into tag-team duelling and apparently managed to reach world champion status with his teammates. The above scene, however, is the exact same moment he decides to leave said team, so he can instead go solo and (presumably) try to beat Jack.

Now, we can discuss this in a bit more detail. Personally, I'm extremely in two minds about Crow being one of three characters, total, who ends up becoming a pro duellist after canon. Jack seems obvious, especially given the pivot back to his more Fortune Cup-esque persona the writers did around the Red Nova episodes. Rua also makes sense, given that Jack was his idol from the start. Crow, though, feels a little more complicated. The thing is, like so many things surrounding Crow in the Ark Cradle arc, the writers gave us no indication pro duelling is something he's really passionate about before this point. Worse, they didn't even really tell us what reason he saw to participate in the WRGP with his brothers beyond "could be fun". So there isn't really a connection here. The same thing goes for the fact that he specifically talks about teaching his teammates above, which is also something he wasn't associated with all that much previously. Though this one is admittedly less egregious, because at least Crow was seen briefly coaching Aki as she prepared to take his spot during the Unicorn duel. Still, while I wouldn't go as far as saying it's an out of character choice for Crow to go pro, it still feels a little odd that he went down the same route as Jack. Personally speaking, it feels like the writers didn't quite know what to do with him. Because as I said, Jack is obvious and Rua also makes sense, and I'd say the same goes for Yusei. Then there's Ruka, who is treated about as in-depth in the epilogue as she was throughout canon, and Aki, whose "setup" for her timeskip self was done extremely hasty and last-minute, but at least it was there. Between all of them, Crow occupies a weird spot where it doesn't so much feel like he ended up on the wrong trajectory for his life, as it simply feels like there were choices the writers could have made that would have fit him much better. What with his theme of legacy and community, trying to make Pearson's dream of a place where disenfranchised children can learn good life skills a reality would have been a good fit, for example. Especially considering his close ties to the Satellite orphans he used to take care of, which, funnily enough, are reinforced one more time as canon flips back to present day and Crow is seen bidding his kids goodbye.

("Come back"? When, precisely? And what part about "literally saved the world twice" doesn't qualify you as a hero to a bunch of kids ten times over already?)

Considering canon seems hellbent on making sure we know the signers went their separate ways and that they aren't anywhere near each other by the very end of the show, though, my guess is that Crow had to end up doing something like pro duelling, in order to get him out of New Domino City and away from the friend group whose shenanigans we were so accustomed to following by that point. Of course, there's also the argument to be made that Crow staying in NDC and getting a more community-focussed ending would have also been significantly less cool than making him a kickass pro duellist with bullet earrings, which circles back to how the writing interacts with its target audience.

The only thing that follows after this, then, is the big goodbye, and with that, ladies, gentlemen, and other lovely 5ds nerds, we have successfully followed bird boy's path throughout the entire show. And what a ride it was. (I did not think this analysis would end up stretching over a whole four posts.) Time for some closing thoughts before I do my thing and suggest some rewrites that could have made all this feel more coherent one more time.

Crow's character arc, if it can even be called that, feels about as hot and cold as his and Aki's final duel with Sherry over the course of the show. His introduction is fast-paced, he's made to be likable quickly, and his integration into the main protagonist group is as quick as everything else about his narrative. Between the way he shows up out of nowhere, briefly disappears without fanfare, and is then reintroduced with even more importance before slipping into the signer group like he's always been there, it truly feels like his entire inclusion in the narrative was a last-minute decision by the writers to include that one, additional character concept Kazuki Takahashi had originally created after all. If there was one way to describe his whole arc, it would be that it's a rush. At the start, the writers are in a hurry to make him likable, then they're in a hurry to make him a signer, then they're in a hurry to give us a whole backstory for him, then they're in a hurry to give him a believable character dynamic with Aki, and at the end, they're in a hurry to pay off a character dynamic with Sherry they didn't properly set up with him. You may notice that leaves significant gaps, and the lack of balance between those gaps and the rushes surrounding them, I believe, are part of why he's such a polarising character.

Crow is integrated so thoroughly into the signer group at the end of the DS arc that, much like Aki and the twins, he gets stuck in the position of being a character that cannot simply be removed from the narrative for a longer amount of time. And this, I think, ends up biting him in the ass, because in the gaps where the writers don't rush to do something big with him, it often feels like they don't quite know what to do with him at all. So, he instead gets relegated to small side tasks, like inane duels that don't affect the plot, or becomes the person who reacts to unfolding situations in whatever manner wouldn't fit Yusei or Jack. He feels like he's the third portion of the protagonist trifecta only in theory—the status of an equal third player seems to be what the writers had in mind, yet, looking at the show, it feels like an honorary title, at best, because the writing choices made for him don't convey anywhere near the same amount of thought and effort as those of Yusei and Jack. Crow's backstory doesn't intersect significantly with that of his brothers, his dragon is introduced way too late and never given an upgrade, he never gets to clash with Iliaster until the Team New World duel, and throughout the entire WRGP and Ark Cradle arc, there isn't a single duelling victory that's solely his. People who prefer other characters over Crow like to harp on about how much screentime he gets; I argue that this is exactly what showcases how poorly the writers took care of him in many instances. For as much as Crow is plastered onto the screen and given the aesthetics of an equal player in a protagonist trio, his many appearances are as much of a curse as they are a gift, because too many of them aren't spent setting up anything meaningful or developing his character in any way. Speaking of character development: There is none. Crow exits the show pretty much exactly the same as he entered it, brief security stint aside. And, look, this need not necesarily be a bad thing. Static characters exist and they have their place in stories. It's just that in Crow's case, his utter lack of development feels like another damning indicator of the writers' cluelessness when it came to utilising him, given his weird, sort-of-elevated-protagonist. Aki, who is so often weighed against him, gets significantly more development than he does. And though Jack also ends up in almost the same place at the end of the show as he was at the start, at least he had a dip in the middle where his character was somewhat malleable and not set in stone. Crow didn't.

What we end up with, then, is a character whose concept is perfectly fine on paper, but whose execution proceeded to turn him into the one and only favourite for some, and the embodiment of piss poor writing for others. Having now looked at pretty much his entire run in the show with a bloody microscope, I end up somewhere in the middle, myself. He's a good character and much of his writing is confusing at best, utter dogshit at worst. As for what decisions in the writing room led to him turning out like this, I'd still pay good money to know them. For what it's worth, I've tried my very best to make an educated guess as to all of them.

And now, for the final time, allow me to do my very best to suggest how the issues of the Ark Cradle arc could have been addressed in order to make Crow's part in it less messy.

In previous posts, I've split up my rewrite suggestions depending on one circumstance: Whether or not Crow stays a signer. However, this time, I will deliberately forgo this, for one, very simple reason—Crow's status as a signer doesn't matter one bit for the Ark Cradle arc. Regardless of whether he has a mark or not, his duel with Sherry remains unaffected, and so does his later timeskip-self. Thus, pick your favourite, both versions work for the Ark Cradle.

Now. Onto the elephant vengeful Frenchwoman in the room. Let me repeat my favourite word in this post one more time. What the dynamic between Crow and Sherry needed, more than anything else, in order to satisfyingly be paid off during their Ark Cradle duel, was setup. There was so much time Crow spent on screen doing fuck all, and some of that time could have so easily been allocated to him interacting with Sherry in a meaningful manner. (I'm side-eyeing especially his pre-WRGP duels. Those did nothing to add to his character and could have easily been replaced with episodes where he actually gets to talk to Sherry one on one.) And if not that, then the writers could at least have done themselves the favour of letting Aki talk to Crow about Sherry, which would have arguably set up their three-way clash even better. Moreover, show us how the hell these two characters parallel each other and how they differ, damn it! The main issue with the big moment Sherry and Crow had in the duel was that Crow's faltering and his sudden, deep understanding of Sherry came completely out of nowhere. So what if they had shown some of that earlier, then? What if they had shown where the lmits of Crow's resolve lie, what could get him to doubt himself? What if they had drawn the parallel of Sherry and Crow both supposedly being characters that sometimes wistfully think about a past they never had earlier? It would have done so much to make that duel hit exactly the way it was probably meant to. As a bonus, if we had gotten Aki and Crow talking about Sherry, too, the scene of talking Sherry out of helping Z-ONE could have been a team effort, just like their card playing was. Both of them would have reasons to know different aspects of Sherry each, and both could have brought up good arguments. And this is really all this duel woild have needed to be better on the story end, I think: A solid, narrative foundation to make it obvious to us why it has to be these three characters duelling, why it could have only been this setup, why it made the most sense to let these three bounce off each other. Crow only needs that extra step to slot in better with the girls here.

As for the epilogue, I don't think anyone will be surprised to read that I would have never made Crow a cop, not even temporarily. The depiction of law enforcement 5Ds gives us during the DS arc is too damning for that. However, given the way the ending is structured, he does need some sort of occupation that feels like it's not quite the right thing so he can later change his mind about it, of course. Here, though, is where I, purely in service of Crow's character, would suggest a change that probably doesn't work with the ending's final aim of separating the 5Ds gang by hundreds of kilometres each. I would let Crow go into pro duelling first, then let him figure out that's not what he actually wanted. Crow, to me, is a character who is so intrinsically tied to community and family that turning him into a solitary pro duellist—even if he claims to do it to make the kids back home smile—feels off to me. Thus, from a character standpoint, I would let him pivot back to wanting to take care of those kids. Either through what I suggested above, letting him carry on Pearson's dream, or, which also feels fitting to me, by letting him help out Martha again and setting him up as the guy who'll take over when she can no longer run the orphanage. It's not the cool, glamorous end the show gave him, but it's what feels more like the family-focussed guy we first met in the show. It doesn't gel with the idea of permanently separating him from the other signers, though, unfortunately. To do something like that while keeping his community theme, one would probably have to send him away to shack up with Brave or something, to help orphans in other countries. But this, I think, nicely showcases the dissonance between what Crow's character writing would suggest he might do at the end, and what the show demanded he needed to do so he'd no longer be close to the others. Because my focus, as always, is only on character here. And Crow, with his personality and his writing, feels like the character who chafes the most against the idea of striking out solo, abandoning his ties to the community he was so invested in previously. To that extent, the above suggestion is the best I can provide with what we were canonically given. If we wanted to keep the canon ending he gets and actually make it make sense why he suddenly wants to be a lone wolf pro, the only thing I could suggest would be more setup for that. (Ah, there it is again. One final time.) Show Crow having some actual competitive drive, show him enjoying the whole tournament thing more than he thought he would during the WRGP. Just give us something that shows why he would want to go down this path, and why some other things that were previously important to him might not be a priority anymore. It all comes back to setup.

*Deep breath*

So, here we are, then, and this is it. This is all I could make of Crow's character writing in the entire show. To everyone who read this post in its entirety, a heartfelt thank you. To everyone who read the whole series of posts in its entirety, I'm so glad you're as insane about this show as I am, it makes me feel incredibly appreciated. Hope you enjoyed the ride, more meta posts will come eventually, just about different topics. In the meantime, see ya.

#yugioh 5ds #crow hogan #ygo 5ds #5ds #sherry leblanc #yugioh meta #IT IS DONE #HOLY SHIT IT IS DONE #I can't believe I've reached the point of my life where I do gratuitous media analysis for fun #this was such a ride god damn #but I completed it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #I'm sticking a gold star on my forehead as a reward #anyway hope you enjoy this last part #feel free to yell at me (enthusiastically) about it #orchid rambles

[alexiswritingstuff]

(THIS IS A REPOST BECAUSE THE LAST VERSION GOT MESSED UP, SORRY FOR ANY CREATED EXCITEMENT!!)

~

Now, I know I’ve said this for many things, but I genuinely got carried away with this that when I had the idea for the plot... I kinda forgot that the anon had requested something cute with fluff, so... I hope the ending does it justice.

Either way, thank you for sending this in. I hope you like it!

Removal of the Mask.

Pairing: Gustavo Fring x gn! reader.

Other appearances: Mike Ehrmantraut, though only mentioned.

Request: I had an idea for another Gus fic! I just want him to finally break , mask off and just actually let himself show emotion and be upset with the reader comforting him or something? I just need cute and fluffy stuff with him in my life. Poor dude just needs a shoulder to cry on

Content: angst with comfort and fluff.

Warnings: fighting, gunshot, injuries, descriptions of a hospital.

Be aware of spelling errors and mistakes! I do go read through my fics before posting them, but I always managed to miss some!

A/N: I don’t know if it’s just the way I perceive Gustavo, but I genuinely can’t think of him just... crying. You know, like, maybe with tears in his eyes, but the only way I was able to imagine it was like if something close to a major trauma happened. So, I guess that’s what influenced my idea for this.  

Also this fic may be really long, so buckle up, hydrated yourself and grab a snack.

More Gustavo fics.

Taglist-

@sukunamybeloved - @viviennemuerte - @miwagila - @marksassybanana​

The sun was high in the sky. Everything beneath felt the presence, including you as beads of sweat trailed down wherever it could on your body.

You were leant against the side of your car, though not very still in the unbearable heat. “Where the hell is this guy?”

The problem with doing these deals, exchanges, or something along those lines was that they had to be done in unknown places. Areas where there weren’t other people around who could possibly witness something they shouldn’t.

That usually meant abandoned properties, or having to travel miles into the vast desert.

And for this particular meet-up.

It was both.

You sniffed, a rising sense of irritation building as you twisted your wrist to lay eyes on the watch strapped to it. Five minutes late. No one in this business risked being five minutes late, especially if it could end up being more.

No one had been told that it was going to be you instead of Gustavo that they were going to be meeting with today either, so in theory, these people were laying back on him. Making him seem like a fool with the need to wait alone in the desert.

But it was you.

And you were not the slightest bit happy.

Just as your arm lowered, hand angrily smacking back to the car door behind you, there was a revving sound that hummed across the landscape. And upon looking up, your eyes found a moving cloud of dust just over one of the minor hills.

“Ballsy.”

You pushed yourself off of your car, adopting a straightened stance the way a bodyguard would.

Despite wanting to present yourself like Gustavo would- arms tight by the sides, chin raised, head basically unmoving unless needing to provide a form of intimidation- when the car had finally rolled into the lot, your arms were just crossed over your chest.

It may have made you like an angry toddler, but there was nothing more unnerving than the ultimate death stare you shot the driver as he exited the vehicle which had finally stilled.

“You’re not Gustavo.”

That was the first thing he said. 

After turning up late, and looking like he didn’t even bother to dress himself accordingly... That was it? He even had this narrowed gaze when he began to take a few steps in your direction.

“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was the traffic that made you late... Am I right?” You hadn’t moved an inch, just simply watched the man as he ultimately decided to settle on keeping a good distance.

His hands lowered to his hips while his eyes flickered to the horizon, his head mildly nodding as if he couldn’t figure out what to say. But it looked more like he didn’t care.

“Okay,” you began, finally letting your arms fall to your sides, “Let’s not waste anymore time then.”

“Do you have them?”

The mans attention snapped back to you after he rocked on his heels for a moment, his stance unchanging much like his gaze, “It was supposed to be Mr. Fring that I met with.” There was a slight southern drawl to his words, a sound that slowly became vicious the more he spoke, “Where is he?”

Your voice stayed the same despite the irritation that began to take back its place, “I believe we’re old enough to carry out an exchange ourselves, don’t you think?”

There was a good few seconds of strong eye contact. One that closely resembled the kind of stand off you would see in old western movies.

But eventually, his head lowered when you held no reaction to his persistence, even stilled it there when he spat out a glob of spit onto the sandy dirt below.

And then he turned, walking back to the car with a flurry of emotions that visibly affected the way his legs moved.

Your expression was stern as you watched him regardless of the fact that he couldn’t see it, a weird feeling now residing in your chest from the previous actions. I mean, it was like a want. An insistence of Gustavo’s whereabouts.

Gustavo was a businessman. He was the owner of something so large that he couldn’t possibly be everywhere at once, or be the one to do things all the time, so it was more common for other people, like you or Victor, even Mike, to be the ones at exchanges. Especially if the outcome wasn’t something that heavily impacted the business.

Hell, you were just trying to collect new versions of equipment that had been busted from too much usage, this whole interaction had been strange from the get-go.

He had been late, wanted to speak to no one other than Gustavo, despite the fact that the needed task was just handing over the machines, so that you could give him the money in return.

Even with the amount of thoughts that were running through your mind, in the next moment, it seemed that by the time your attention had refocused the realisation of a problem came a bit too late.

The man, who you still didn’t know the name of, had arrived at the side of his car. But instead of moving to the back, where you were assuming was the equipment covered by that tarp, he had stilled at the window of the passenger seat.

You couldn’t exactly pull a machine through a window now could you?

Just as you had retrieved your gun from your belt, and was so close to properly gripping it in your hand, a shot rang through the vast area.

It snagged the weapon, narrowly missing your fingers in the process, and you immediately retracted your hand, watching in mild shock as it fell to the sand below.

Damnit. He’s trained.

Unlike what the rest of your body wanted to do in that moment, your legs sprang into action like your life depended on it. Because it in fact did this time.

You swerved, dodged and weaved as bullets began to pang off of walls and the empty shells of cars that were just left, clouds of dust beginning to gather in the air the further you went.

Situations like this weren’t exactly unusual. Contact with other business went sideways more than anyone would really like to admit, hence the need to carry weapons at all times.

The only difference now was that you were the direct target.

You rounded the corner of the closest part of the abandoned building, heart pounding in your chest, your ears, and chorusing with the bullets that continued to fire despite not even being in view anymore.

Your feet skidded to a stop, your eyes frantically searching through the area for some kind of hiding spot or at least something that would give you time to make a plan.

But just as you made a decision, that would’ve at least lead you to your next option if it went sideways, a shot echoed through the surrounding walls.

A sound uncontrollably escaped your throat. Your body jolted, knees eager to bend as you staggered forwards, a sense of determination bubbling in your system more than it ever had.

However, before you could have even prepared, something collided with the middle of your back with full intent. 

It sent you tumbling forward. Your knees were the first to connect with the ground below until your hands followed, the sand beginning to roast the pads of your fingers.

But of course, due to the combination of your lack of ability to comprehend the situation, and an increasing pain somewhere in your side, you couldn’t keep yourself stabilised for long.

You fell on your stomach, the exhaustion from the heat finally creeping in the last moment that it needed to.

“Listen,” you croaked out after a cough, still trying to pull yourself towards your chosen hiding spot despite the inability to basically move, “You want-- You want Gustavo, right? Why not… You can’t get to him if you kill-- kill me.”

There was no point in bargaining. You knew that. You knew that this was pre-planned, and that it in fact was meant for Gus.

But they could easily settle on the next best thing if the intent was to impact him.

And you were right.

Each of your legs were grasped in either of his hands within the next second, and before you could grab the sand beneath you, even if your fingers would’ve immediately sunk through, he began pulling you towards him.

In the blink of an eye, your body got flipped over, your spine now slamming into the sand. An indescribable pain seared through your side, and despite the urge to arch your back as if it would get you away from the feeling, your eyes went wide. And you swung, arm aimed at the first body part that was close enough.

His gun fell to the side.

There was a yell of annoyance that bellowed from the man above, and when you tried to move a fist decided to meet with your face in a way that had your ears purely ringing.

It was almost like your brain was forgetting basic functions. You could barely remember how to move your eyes, or even breathe, for a terrifying few seconds.

You had previously thrashed in a way that made the man falter, almost losing his balance. It wasn’t until he was trying to push himself to stand that something managed to form in your head.

Your legs trapped his own despite their weakness and while the man battled with a pair of limbs, cursing in ways that you couldn’t imagine, your hand subtly moved to the side, gliding across the surface of the sand.

Until they met with metal.

The vision through your eyes was blurry from the previous attacks and now from the direction off the sun that beamed right on you. But somehow you still managed to find your aim.

The man twisted back round when he heard that familiar click and his eyes widened as much as they physically could, “No--”

The shot echoed more times that you could count, bouncing off of every possible surface, through the building and on the walls like a game of ping pong.

And then something slumped, falling to the side almost in slow motion until it collided with the ground.

You got him.

All at once the adrenaline rush slowed and the pain in your face, with a sort of burning sensation somewhere else in your upper body, intensified so much that you could barely move.

A shaky whine pushed through your lips as you began to pat around your torso, trying to find the large source of pain.

And then you got to your left side.

It seems that he got you first.

“Shit.” you seethed through gritted teeth and lowered your increasingly weak arm back down to let your hand gain access to a pocket. Your fingers dug through the fabric compartment, grabbed at a device before, unsteadily, pulling it out.

There was no way that you would be able to sit up so you did your best to lift the phone in front of your face, but even when it was flipped open, your vision shook with your heaving chest.

It felt like years had passed by the time you had managed to push a certain order of buttons in, and as soon as it began to ring, you let it drop, your arm smacking into the ground next to your side.

Finally, there was an answer.

The phone hadn’t landed that far away from your head, but it was enough so that when a voice crackled through the speaker, you couldn’t hear it over the sound of your heartbeat and the ragged breaths that rasped from your throat.

You coughed, “Hey, Mike. You, uh… You’re not busy, right?” Your voice was strained despite how hard you were trying to play off your injuries, but when you put pressure on the most important wound to limit the blood loss. It was a little hard to maintain.

“It’s not been a very nice tea party.”

~

The surrounding room would’ve been quiet if it wasn’t for the monotonous beeps from machines that sounded more hypnotic as time went on.

The lighting was dull, barely reflecting off of the walls, with no help from the world outside as by now it had apparently grown dark. Though, due to the ache that consumed almost every part of your head, it made you very grateful.

Your gaze was set on the window on the other side of the room, one used so that doctors could see their patients at any given time if they weren’t able to hear them first.

Gustavo had arrived, stood in the brighter hallway and talking to a doctor you were still getting use to interacting with yourself.

The expression on his face was a mixture of the one he held when interacting with the general public and this intensity that would be difficult for other people to notice upon first glance.

But not you.

After almost every sentence spoken by the doctor, the man had sent a glance your way. A look that could almost make you feel exactly how he did, regardless of the fact that it wasn’t fully readable.

And before there was even an attempt to try, you found yourself breaking the eye contact, sinking the back of your head further into your pillow as it seemed that your mind only now was capturing onto the fact that you were indeed awake.

From what you could hear from the muffled conversation going on outside, and what you had been previous told, the bullet had luckily missed major arteries or organs that would’ve cost everything if hit.

But even so, especially now that it had been removed, that didn’t mean it wasn’t still going to hurt like hell.

You had been issued pain medication at a time that couldn’t be remembered off the bat, but it seemed that it hadn’t met the 30 minute mark yet. Meaning that it wasn’t properly in your system.

By the time your eyes focused back through the window, Gustavo had a smile stiffly pressed onto his lips. The two of them were shaking hands, sharing words that you couldn’t quite catch, and then the doctor turned, resuming the work they were previously doing before he had arrived.

In that moment, the emotion held on Gustavo's face had disappeared by the next time your heavy eyelids had allowed themselves to blink. It was almost like he was in a trance for a good second, his eyes unfocused as they stared off down the hallway.

And then he snapped back.

This time when he faced the room, his attention never went to you. He simply opened the door, walked through and then closed it behind himself. A movement that engulfed the surrounding area in a quietness that even the machines couldn’t help.

He stood closer to the back wall than the edge of your bed. His body was still, stance almost like a soldier, as his gaze remained aimed at whatever was in front of him. You really wished you could read minds.

“Have the doctors updated you on your condition?”

Despite the small room, there was a lack of fullness to his voice. Like it was from somewhere in the distance even though he was right there.

“Yeah,” The grogginess from waking up not that long ago was still fresh in your system even with the activeness of your mind, so when you attempted to shuffle yourself to get a better view of Gustavo you had barely even moved. “Though I could’ve make an educated guess anyway.”

His response was a mere hum, still remaining in the same position as before. It was a thing that made your eyebrows twitch, unsure if he had even meant to make that sound in the first place.

“I would’ve had you put in a more private place, but... I was was told there wasn’t enough time.” That was when he moved for the first time since entering the room. His head lowered, eyes now cast down to his shoes like they were the most interesting thing in the room. “I know you don’t like hospitals.”

Your gaze moved upwards as you turned your head towards the ceiling, a huff of air passing through your lips, “Well, I already had the surgery... Just need to be patient now.”

“I wish there were better channels on these TVs though,” you then added, attempting to break the tension surrounding every corner in the room, but when you moved your head again, you found Gustavo starting to walk.

His steps were almost silent despite what his shoes were made of. He moved slow, precise even if his attention wasn’t on the floor anymore.

And soon Gustavo had arrived at the window that looked out onto the world below. You had no idea what floor you were on but it was most likely about halfway as the sound of cars could still be heard, though a bit muffled.

Somehow the more time he spent facing away from you, the more a nervousness began to ignite within your chest.

The way he was acting was something you had only seen when he was disappointed. Upset about how a situation had gone enough so that he needed time to compose himself before speaking.

So, even if most of your body couldn’t be bothered to move, you found a way to fidget.

You stared at the wall on the other side of your bed. A multitude of fresh thoughts and worries swarming your mind in a way that was almost suffocating, until they couldn’t be contained anymore.

You cleared your throat, finally finding your voice despite the utter dread of doing so. “I’m sorry.”

The sound of the heart monitor could literally be heard speeding up as your words fully settled through the air.

“Pardon?”

Your eyes may have still been aimed at the wall, but from the corner, you could see Gustavo twist away from the window. An action that didn’t at all help your nerves.

The next time you took a breath, you had almost gulped, “I realised what had been planned too late.”

“If that had happened anywhere else, I could’ve ruined the business... Lost progress.”

It was only when a new worry, the realisation of another action that had the possibility of many consequences, that you found the ability to actually look at Gustavo, “You got the machines, right?”

His brows were furrowed enough that the skin surrounding them was intensely crinkled, his eyes narrowed in a disbelief that you had never seen him display.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Y/n.” was all he managed for a moment, his voice going back to that lack of fullness that in turn had your eyebrows furrowing. “Did they tell you what happened? Everything?”

“You were injured during a job I set for you.” His eyes were wider now, the once clouded look within them forming into a sense of clarity though the disbelief still remained.

“And I could’ve ruined everything.” The emotions each of you felt were clashing, the brain working in the wonderous ways it always did as you both had very different viewpoints of the situation. The hard part was getting the other to understand why.

“There is a lot more important things than machines, Y/n.” Gustavo pointed out and took a few steps forward so that he was further from the window.

There was a sense of annoyance now travelling through your tired system, the irritation built up over the entire day officially starting to spark, “Which is exactly why I am trying to apologise.”

“For what? Not knowing that you were going be attacked?”

You shook your head, breaking the intense eye contact as your gaze went back to the ceiling.

Arguing was the last thing that you wanted to do right now. You were tired, weak, hungry, and now had an anger that was eager to erupt.

Two people at fault but both only thinking that one is.

After a few moments of being absorbed by those monotonous beeps again, a deep sigh could be heard. Even though you couldn’t see him anymore, it was clear that he had finally allowed his shoulders to lower. Deflate. “You got hurt.”

“Well, I think I know that, Gus.” you blurted out as your mouth seemed to be faster than your brain. Something that you immediately regretted. “Look...” You raised your head again, your hands subconsciously gliding to where your bandages grasped to your skin, “What happened... Happened.”

“It’s over... Okay-- It doesn’t matter anymore.”

It was a sentence meant to ease the situation. Words formed in a eagerness to get this whole thing over and done with, because you were quite frankly over it yourself, wanting nothing more than to fall into an incredibly deep sleep.

But all it did was make the lines of Gustavo’s face more prominent. The look across it formed into an expression that almost mimicked offense. “Doesn’t... Doesn’t matter-- Listen to yourself.”

“Why aren’t you taking this situation more seriously?”

“Well, did you get what you were after?” you questioned, trying to find at least some form of middle ground that you could then use to clear this whole thing up.

Gustavo scoffed, “I can’t believe you.” He turned himself around again, adopting the same stance from before as he stared through the window.

Your eyebrows were furrowed as much as they possibly could at this point, “Why? This isn’t the first time that something like this has happened, Gus-- Hell, it will happen again.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“It can’t.”

“What do you-- What do you mean it can’t, Gustavo?” you huffed out, the sound almost becoming gargled as you began to push yourself to sit up. But you were determined to ignore the pain pulsing in your side. A deep breath shook through your lips when you got upright.

You carefully began to shuffle yourself backwards, trying to lean more comfortably against the bed, and only made an attempt to speak when you had fully decided your positioning, “The more we progress, the more likely stuff like this is going to take place. You of all people should know that--”

“You almost died!”

It felt like time had stopped for a good minute.

The sound had rung longer than the sentence itself, but you couldn’t tell if it was just the way your mind attempted to process it, or if it was really that loud.

Gustavo had faced you once again, only this time there was this active rage that covered almost every visible inch of him in a way that heavily contrasted the usual stoicism.

It was barely seen, but it looked like his shoulders lowered and raised with every breath. Like he was heaving. Heaving with disbelief, anger... and fear?

“You almost... You.” he had attempted to repeat, but there was this lack of control. An inability to get himself together like he always managed to do any other day.

He took in a deep breath, one that shook more than yours had, and practically forced himself to stand straight, “That attack was meant for me.”

“Because I got... interrupted, I wasn’t there... and then you became the target.” He was trying to gather himself. Trying to make himself look how he usually did by straightening his spine, raising his chin and adopting an expression devoid of any emotion.

But despite trying to adjust the mask.

It was starting to crack.

“Gustavo.”

“I should have gone.” His voice was barely above a whisper now.

To the naked eye he was ridged, but there was this shakiness that could be seen the longer your eyes stayed on him, “I should be the one in that bed... not you.”

“You could’ve...”

One half of his nose slightly crinkled after a moment, in turn raising the left side of his top lip, and he visibly swallowed like the words he was going to speak had a horrid taste.

And then you spotted it.

It was difficult to properly see Gustavo’s eyes through the glasses as light sources reflected onto the lenses almost everywhere he looked, and at first you thought it was in fact just some reflected light.

But it would disappear when he blinked.

“Gustavo.” you spoke after a moment, practically forgetting what you sounded like at this point, and it seemed to snap the man out of his thoughts. “Close the blinds.”

At first he just furrowed his eyebrows. His dazed eyes finally moved from where they had zoned in to meet your own with a sudden confusion. And then they followed the finger pointed towards the window for the doctors.

The abrupt change in atmosphere had him just standing there for a moment, but then due to the crowdedness of his mind, it seemed that it just went on autopilot. He walked through the room, same pace and quietness as before, until he arrived at yet another window.

He cleared his throat, picked the left blind cord to take between two of his fingers and then pulled at it, taking one final look at the hallways outside before they were officially closed.

Now, the lighting of the room was increasingly lowered. You still had a slight source from the sky, but time had done what it did best. It barely brought anything to help maintain the light.

But that was the least of your concerns.

The moment those blinds had reached the ledge of the window, Gustavo's hands pressed onto either side of the surface, and he leant his weight into it in a way that seemed to take it off of his shoulders as they visibly slacked.

It was a movement that had you just staring for a good few seconds.

This was not the Gustavo that you knew. This man before you was not in control of his expressions, the way that he spoke, the way he stood. This was not a man who rose above and administered fear into anyone even if that wasn’t his intent.

This was just a man.

Just Gus.

You, very stiffly, began to try and shuffle yourself sideway across the bed. You didn’t care about the pain that pulsed through your torso, or how it felt like your arms were going to either bend or snap. You kept moving, and only stopped when it was clear to do so.

Pins and needles began to spread through your hand as you patted it down in the space you had created, turning your head more in his direction as you expected him to respond.

But he didn’t.

You stifled a sigh, “Come here, Gustavo.”

He needed a proper command. A verbal set of words that allowed him to comply to the urge you placed in his head. So, after trying to swallow the feelings that were appearing once again, he turned around.

Though this time when he fully faced you, instead of pausing like he needed to convince himself to actually walk, he moved the second his eyes lay on you.

His pace was slow like before, each step getting heavier than the previous one.

He understood.

He understood why you had been acting the way you did, wanted nothing more than to change the subject, and now why you had asked him to close the blinds.

It was to stop the outside from seeing in. Not let any other person bear witness to a moment just for the two of you.

Gustavo lowered himself to sit on the bed, his eyes not daring to leave your own in a way that properly allowed you to see behind the lenses of those glasses.

There was a line of water just peaking over the lower lid. His blinks may have subsided most of it, but it would always come back with the same amount. Sometimes even more.

“I shouldn’t have let you do the job alone.” Gustavo insisted, but it had you shake your head within seconds. “Hey,”

You took one of his hands between yours, trying to shift just a tad bit closer to him even if it hurt, “Gustavo, you need to understand that even if there was another person there, the same thing would’ve happened-- Another person would’ve been hurt instead of just me.”

“Someone would still get shot.”

That was when the eye contact had been broken.

He knew you were right. He knew that even if he had found out what had happened sooner, he wouldn’t have gotten there fast enough to do anything about it.

But there was a vast difference between understanding something and accepting it.

The expression on his face was so unusual to see, more so because it genuinely conveyed his feelings. You could see it in his eyes, the way his lips were starting to press together. Utter guilt despite the continuous insistence that it wasn’t his fault.

The action of removing your hands from his had him out of his thoughts again, though it wasn’t until he blinked that he felt where they had gone.

Each of your palms were placed on either side of his face, the centre firm against his set jaw.

The thumbs of your hands resided above the rest of your fingers, lightly gliding across the textured skin of Gustavo’s cheeks in a way that had him instinctively closing his eyes.

The weight of his head in your hold grew and it looked as if the tension in his muscled finally let him relax, even if it was just for a moment. You wanted him to stay like that forever.

“I’m glad you weren’t there, Gustavo.”

And just like that, the sentence had practically undone the moment of peace. But even when he went to lean back, he made sure that it was a distance that would keep your hands on his face.

The edges of his eyebrows were crinkled again, a mixture of concern and confusion purely visible, “How?”

The way he asked had a smile begging to curl at your lips. Though, due to the muscles of your face being too tired at this point and the fact that this definitely wasn’t the time to do so, you ignored it. “If it was you that got attacked instead of me, they wouldn’t have stopped until there was nothing left.”

Your grasp on his face became a tad more firm. Your eyes began to travel, thinking about the fact that you had never seen him so close for this amount of time before. “A shot in the side means nothing to me.”

“Y/n, how can you possibly say that?” The concern spread further than it had done before, now beginning to form into that same disbelief like it had earlier.

You slightly lowered your chin after a minute, making sure that your eyeline was directly connected to his. And then you just shrugged, a wave of emotions flooding your system at a sudden sense of safety that you had yearned to feel all day, “Because,”

“I would rather die, knowing that you were somewhere safe... alive. Than breathe in a world where you aren’t doing the same.”

It felt like it was going to be another one of those moments. The two of you just going to stare into each others eyes, equally lost. No words available that could even scratch the surface of what either of you felt.

Though it seemed that Gustavo’s ability to maintain a calm exterior faltered. He began to crumble.

His his eyebrows pinched together suddenly, his bottom lip slowly pushing upwards until it shook, and then he lowered his head out of your grasp, a wavering breath huffing out of his mouth.

He tried to speak. Tried to express something that ultimately would be left unknown as he just gave up. Understanding that it wouldn’t be able to come out the way that he wanted it to.

So, he just... sort of slumped. His head dipped a little more, his hand reaching up to grab the glasses that were close to falling.

He was overtaken. Emotions active more than he had let it in so long. Gustavo tried to wipe them away, tried to rid his eyes of the water that practically felt like a river pushing to flood.

But the dam had already been broken.

He just sat there, hands now pressed to face in an attempt to block the tears from going anywhere, even if they had already began to trail between his fingers.

You took the glasses that were almost crumpled in his grasp before folding the legs, and then slowly placed them on the bedside table while trying to ignore the pain that pulsed in your side from the stretch.

You subtly gritted your teeth, willing to forget about any feeling that was trying to present itself as you wanted to focus on Gustavo. You needed to.

So, you reached out, waiting for your hand to cup the back of his head before slowly beginning to guide it forward in a way that ultimately made the rest of his body follow.

And soon, he was laid across your chest, careful to avoid your injury.

The side of his head had managed to make his ear press right over where your heart was. Something that seemed to trigger Gustavo the moment he registered both the feeling and the sound.

Because, for the first time since he had entered the room or laid eyes on you through the window that had now been closed. He had actual confirmation that wasn’t just words from a doctor.

You were not some sick hallucination that was playing his mind, or a lie that he was trying to convince himself of in an attempt to avoid a painful truth and make him feel better. No. You were real.

You were alive.

The next breath that Gustavo took was cut quite abruptly like another had just pushed itself out. It was a sound that caught you off guard, one that you didn’t initially know how to respond to as you thought you were just hearing things.

But then it happened again... and then again. A sound that almost made it seem like he had forgotten how to breathe.

And then you heard what it was trying to cover, something else breaking through the harsh huffs of air.

He was crying.

Properly crying.

Gustavo removed one of the hands from his face and reached it under your arm so that he could grab the back of your shoulder, his fingers grasping onto the fabric the moment they made contact.

It had your arms wrapping around his body within seconds, especially when it had begun to rack with almost guttural like sounds.

His head was fully pressed into your chest now, each of his hands holding onto an arm or a shoulder tightly with such desperation as if you were going to disappear if he let go.

So, you didn’t dare move. You just held him there, unable to escape another pain as you had to simply lay in that bed, holding something that was releasing such raw cries.

Gustavo couldn’t even recognise the sounds himself. The way his body responded, the tears falling freely from his eyes, the harshness that the sobs were rushing out of his lungs. It was unfamiliar. A foreign feeling that swirled through everything else.

Truthfully, he could remember the last time he cried in such a way. He could remember when his feelings were shoved out of him regardless of his wants.

But he couldn’t think of any time when he had allowed himself to do it on his own.

Until now.

~~~

The next few days were filled with pretty much the same routine.

Your injuries would get checked, treated again if the doctors saw fit, and you had to do everything in your power to keep yourself entertained as the channels still weren’t giving you much.

And then, when it would get dark, Gustavo appeared.

He would bring this homemade soup almost every night that had your stomach growling before he had even arrived. It was also a decent sized cup, meaning that if you didn’t finish it, the hospital could store it and reheat it for lunch the next day.

Maybe after a while, others would think that having soup for more than a week would get old at some point... But no. In fact there was different ingredients used in every batch. The change could be miniscule but it was still effective.

The rest of the routine got old fast though. The days started merging, and it soon made you become unsure of when the next started or ended, as it seemed like you had forgotten how to sleep at normal times due to your exhausted system.

But then the time finally came.

The discharge from hospital.

Obviously there was still a whole lot of resting, healing and overall taking everything slow coming your way, which was a hundred percent going to prove to be a challenge. However, with the way that Gustavo appeared right by your side, even if it was just a facial expression that proved you were having difficulty, it gave you enough assurance. Comfort.

There was no word to accurately express your feelings the moment the car had pulled to a stop in the driveway. Your driveway.

What you saw out the window wasn’t a picture you had tried to think up multiple times in your head. It was just right in front of you. A house that seemed larger than you had remembered.

It almost startled you when the car door suddenly got pulled open, but after a blink you registered his figure, spotted the hands that were out and ready to aid you.

The process of shimmying your way off of the car seat was a bit of a hassle, however, your legs eventually hung out of the car, feet finally meeting with solid ground once again.

Soon, you had actually arrived inside the house. 

Gustavo was to your right, stood carefully, in a way that would completely cross out any possibility of further injuring the other side of your body, as he guided you through those familiar halls which almost gave you a feeling of nostalgia. Even if it wasn’t that long ago that you walked within them.

A new wave of tiredness hit you after about a step into the living room you had yearned to see. 

Everything looked the same, furniture and even the objects of décor still placed so intricately as if the room hadn’t been lived in or touched.

It smelled the same too.

“Were you cooking this morning?” you questioned, voice a bit more groggy than before, as a sort of smoky scent presented itself to your nostrils. Gustavo hummed, carefully pulling at your shoulder to direct you around the rectangular coffee table.

“You know I can walk by myself, right?” you pointed out, trying to turn your head to get a look at his face but he had moved behind you when the two of you got between the edge of the table and an armchair at the same time.

“Of course.” was all Gustavo said, still holding onto you regardless. And finally, you had reached the couch of your dreams.

Even though you had been laying around all day every day for weeks on end, the relief that filled your system over not having to walk anymore almost had your knees buckling.

“Okay,” Gustavo spoke just above a whisper, lightly turning you so that you faced the TV, “Slowly.”

A deep breath sifted in and out of your lungs. Your grip on his arm tightened and after looking in his eyes for a good few seconds, you began to lower yourself in the speed he insisted on. “There you go.”

“You’re doing just fine.”

Your nose was scrunched, along with your eyes, the further you bent as the movement slightly began to fold more and more of your body. You lost count of how many times you tried to stifle a hiss from the sharp pains that kept coming.

But even when officially sat down on the soft couch, the discomfort unfortunately remained.

You slowly leaned backwards, allowing your injured side to stretch out in a way that was fully comfortable, until your back pressed into the pillows. There was a sigh of relief that huffed out of your mouth all at once and it had the tiniest smile curling at Gustavo’s lips.

“Better?” he questioned and despite your urge to close your eyes, you just looked at him. “Better. Thank you,” you confirmed, reaching out to grab one of his hands.

But before your own could meet his, it had suddenly lowered with the rest of his body. Your eyebrows furrowed as you watched him get onto his knees, even pushing the coffee table away so that he had more space.

And then his hands landed on your shoes, “Oh, Gustavo, you don’t--”

“Relax.”

He lifted one foot at a time, placing the bottom of your shoe on his thigh so that he could properly attack the laces. And soon, both pairs were off of your feet, now held in a singular hand.

“You didn’t have to do that.” Your voice was more hushed this time, timid, as you looked down at the man who now was just looking right back at you. And then he smiled. Such a simple, but full, smile that fit his face perfectly.

Gustavo then pressed his free hand onto the floor, moved himself back a little, and then let out a slight grunt as pushed himself up to his feet.

When he had done so you had thought he was just go, leave to bring the shoes to the area you usually kept them, so you had started to shuffle your self further into the couch.

But the next thing you knew, one of your hands was brough in a gentle grasp. The step that Gustavo had taken was to get closer to the couch, and you.

He sort of hunched forward after a moment, bringing your intertwined hands his way. And then, when it was at a perfect distance, he turned them until the back of your palm faced him.

He brought his lips to your warm skin, the soft but mildly jagged skin pressing down for a good few seconds as the breath through his nostrils slightly tickled you. And then he lifted his head a little.

Gustavo met your eyes with such a wide smile that it had almost bared his teeth.

“I did.”

And after a quick squeeze to your hand, that was that. He let go.

Gustavo adjusted the grip he had on the shoes in his other hand and simply turned, retracing his steps around the coffee table before disappearing into the hallway.

Your hand was still hung in the air. Stuck same position it had been when with Gustavo’s... and then you left it fall to your chest, landing right on top of your heart that was beating so fast that you could immediately feel it.

The smile on your face was one that felt impossibly to get off.

There was a long journey still to go, and a lot of pain to follow, but there was almost no worry when you thought about it. Because, like you had convinced to convince Gustavo of earlier, you made it.

You made it back home.

#gustavo fring x reader #breaking bad x reader #better call saul x reader #gustavo fring #gender neutral reader #gus fring x reader

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Ok so I’ve been thinking about this for much of today and I think I’ve connected some dots about the beers - especially the ones in Bucks fridge!!! 

@mistmarauder​ made this post which along with the comments from @yramesoruniverse​ helped me connect these dots!!

ok so the beers in Eddie fridge are all ‘genuine’ - we’ve seen these beers at play all season.

The beers in Bucks fridge are all different - there are 3 different sorts and they are all arranged in a very specific order.

there is the two brown bottles with the yellow and red labels - hidden behind a box of baking soda (a weird thing to have in that location in the fridge unless it has a purpose), 3 light green bottles lined up neatly and then another brown bottle but with different labelling to the first.

So my current working theory is that the first bottles relates to Connor - that it is a draft beer (hence the brown bottle) and it ties in with the baking soda in front of it. My working theory is that the brown bottles of draft beer relate to men and the green bottles relate to women in Bucks life.

So the baking soda is a reference to Kameron and the fact that she is currently pregnant. I have a lot of thoughts on this as a possible analogy - baking soda is used to make ‘quick’ bread - along side yeast (sometimes instead of) and when used in bread making baking soda means you can put the dough straight into the oven rather than having to wait - because the baking soda causes a chemical reaction that allows this. The reason I think this is all connected to C&K is the fact that Kameron got pregnant quickly via Bucks donation - rather than the more time consuming method that C&K had been doing to get pregnant (before they discovered that Connor was infertile). So the baking soda is a metaphor for Kameron and her pregnancy and the bottles of beer behind it a metaphor for Connor ‘feeling’ pushed to the back, but also the second one possibly being a hint at a possible previous relationship that Buck had with Connor 👀. (Edit; I know that baking soda is used to deodorise fridges - but not in the way its been used here - you need a bigger surface area for it to do that successfully, so a closed up box won’t do the job! plus its not the thing you put right at the front and in front of your beer so you keep having to move it - that placement is deliberate and has nothing to do with deodorising!)

Then there is the 3 green bottles all lined up neatly - they’re all the same, they’re light and might possibly be lager or pale ale and I think they represent Buck 3 ex girlfriends. The metaphor works either way - if they’re pale ales  (think play on words) then they represent those relationships paling in relation to what real love is. If lager then they’re fizzy and nice, but not as satisfying as ‘genuine’ beer. Either way its saying that Bucks 3 previous relationships were lightweight and not the real thing.

Then there is the final bottle - this one is the doozy because I can actually see the label, firstly its a draft beer - different that the others and draft beers are considered ore rounded and fulfilling that lager or pale ales (the UK has a whole organisation dedicated to the promotion of draft or ‘real’ beer and ale - its called CAMRA) . So the suggestion is immediately that this beer is the one that will fulfil Buck the most - its the one thats real. Its also the last beer in the beer collection - all the others came before, but this one is the last!

After the play on words in the yellow card from the coma dream I am very much on the look out for plays on words in the 911verse now!! Back to the beer - its a bottle of draft - the label says ‘Meichtry draft’ - and the ‘h’ looks very b like ans the play on words reads ‘maybe try’ draft - a very loud play on the idea of trying something different - I wonder what that different could possibly be?!

#me adding more insanity to the beer and fridge theories of it all!!!! #sometimes the does just connect!!! #the beer!!!! #911 props and set teams I am sending you gift baskets!! #insanity! #911 on fox #911onfox #buddie

[fayrinferno]

The Complete Escaflowne Pilgrimage

Why am I posting a random train video? Well, you gotta wait for it... Today, Escaflowne is older than its number of episodes for the first time. Happy anniversary! I thought I’d finally post this thing that is so overdue, you wouldn’t believe. Thanks @coverteyes for proofreading once again, I would likely not get this out anytime soon without her help!

Warning: this is very long and image-heavy under the cut. Preview:

As you may know, I lived in Japan for some time a few years back. Obviously, I had a great time. There are so many things to see, to try... even one year didn’t feel like it was enough! Of course, this sentiment is shared by a gorillion of other people, so yeah, tourism in Japan thrives... unless there’s a pandemic going on. (Man, I really had no idea what would happen… I started writing this after I got back from Japan, right before 2020).

In any case, what has been gaining popularity in recent years are the anime tours, covering the spots featured in popular titles. The anime makers often reference real places in their work, one of the reasons I was surprised to see that real Japan looks very much like anime Japan. Add the sense of detail that they possess, and you get a very faithful rendition of the atmosphere you get in existing places, in Japanese cities and countryside, in trains, in schools etc. Of course, die-hard fans easily spot the places, and something as mundane as a random staircase or a zebra crossing becomes a “monument” worth visiting!I am always behind on new anime, and my thing is fantasy and sci-fi rather than slice of life, so I probably passed some of these places unknowingly. Anyway, it’s no secret that I have a soft spot for my fav anime titles from my teenage years, especially Tenkuu no Escaflowne. It takes place mostly in the alternate world of Gaea, but the main heroine, Kanzaki Hitomi, goes to school (lives?) in a town inspired by Kamakura, Japan. Well duh, her school is even named Kamakura Kita. But there are also differences, more on that later.

Since there are only a few existing places from Escaflowne you can easily find, I decided to get all of them. Starting, of course, from Kamakura. The first two visits to the city were not done for that purpose, but I still managed to capture some familiar views. On the third, I planned to catch everything I still missed. 

What really helped me was the map and the comic published in The Vision of Escaflowne Fanbook back in 1997, only about one year after the series aired. The whole book was put together by Escaflowne fans. The map was created by two fans who went on a quest to search for the spots and then drew a small comic about their adventures. Thank you, Yufuko-san and Izumi-san, you helped me a lot there!

So the tour is done by Senoo Yufuko, who introduced herself as “a part time housewife” and Izumi, the “guide” and “Escamakuramaster”. Funny thing is I googled a person called Senoo Yufuko and found out she's a fantasy novelist. What was more interesting was that her website is called Usagiya…as in, usagi, or rabbit. Like the rabbit in the comic about the Kamakura stroll. From her website I opened her twitter, and then I had a revelation with the first look at her twitter profile pic. HOLY ... it was her! This Japanese fantasy novelist, who is the age of my dad, made a fan pilgrimage to Kamakura in 1997, and she is still active! She did this tour with her one year old in a stroller, who would be... the age of the series itself now! This was somehow very heartwarming for me. Anyway, on with the report!

I didn’t bring the Fanbook itself to Japan but fortunately I had it scanned. So I stopped at the nearest conbini (convenience store) and printed out the pages. Armed with those, the camera, the series screencaps saved on my phone, and some rations, I embarked on a third journey to cover everything I missed the first two times. My theory was, if the scenery was supposed to be based on real Kamakura, in the 90s analog age, they had to use photos as references. And if there were photos used for the scenes, they can be taken again from the same spot! So I tried to capture as many as I could.

How to get there (and around)

I mentioned this elsewhere, Kamakura is an old, coastal town south of Tokyo with many sights and popular beaches. To get there, you hop on the Yokosuka line for Zushi in Tokyo–the trip costs only a few hundred yen (or a few bucks)– and before you know it, you’re there.

First thing you will certainly pass if you take a train is the Kamakura Kita or Kamakura North station (named the same as Hitomi’s school). This station is also referenced in one of Escaflowne episodes, more on that later. Anyway, it is worth getting off the train there for other reasons, too, as there are several pretty temples and gardens in the area.

The following train stop is already the main station of Kamakura itself. You may feel surprised at how many tourists circle the station, but then, it is a really popular getaway from Tokyo. I read somewhere that many foreign fans come to Kamakura because of Slam Dunk, a popular basketball manga. Many more come to Kamakura because of Kamakura. I can guarantee that not many come because of Escaflowne, which seems a bit forgotten and obscure by now; I didn’t see any references to it during my stay, when some other, more popular, 90s titles came up from time to time.

So, in this case, I was an exception, but I also quickly fell in love with the town so I cannot say the anime was my only motivation in returning there.

In the town itself, you can move around by the Enoden (literal translation of the full name is Enoshima electric train). This cute, green antique train is an attraction in itself and connects Kamakura and the neighboring city of Fujisawa. If you make more than two Enoden trips, it is already worth getting a Noriorikun, a one day pass, right away at the station. I also got a souvenir of Enoden from one of the gachapon machines.

There are plenty of things to do in Kamakura: there is the Great Buddha, historic temples and shrines (used to be the seat of the shogun and a capital), the famed Enoshima aquarium (featured in the Kuragehime jdrama, for example), beaches popular for surfing, windsurfing etc. But if you are crazy, you may wanna try to find some anime sights instead.

So let’s finally get to it. The photos are mine, taken mostly with a Fujifilm XT-20 camera.  (Please note that I filtered and adjusted the photos as necessary to get the closest possible result.) 

Starting from the first episode….

Hitomi’s and Yukari’s walk home (EP1)

After Yukari catches Hitomi in a compromising situation with Amano-senpai at the infirmary, they walk home side-by-side. Yukari mock-scolds Hitomi about making a move on him behind her back and teases her into buying her desserts. They descend steep stairs, pass several buildings and then walk into the tunnel where Yukari tells Hitomi about Amano’s imminent departure.

The dessert enumeration happens right in front of this cute little building, now housing a hair salon.

They also pass this small church that is right across the street.

You can get to this area by a short walk from the station along Shiyakushodoori (City Hall Street).

As they pass the hair salon first, then the church, they seem to be coming from the other direction, towards the station. After the church and the stairs they get to the tunnel.

I passed two or three tunnels walking this very road, and more can be found around, because the area is quite hilly. I think there are two potential tunnels that could be the one Yukari and Hitomi walk through: Onari tunnel and Shinsasuke tunnel.

Izumi-san thinks this is the tunnel in question, because it had a fence on top and “nameplate” like the one in the anime (the nameplate was changed to just a fenced opening from the production sketch).

Because of the thriving shrubbery, I could not see any fences nor nameplates, but I believe I got the right one. They really tried to replicate this funny tunnel. It’s funny because the opening has a different shape on both sides. The side which Hitomi and Yukari are coming out of is more or less the correct shape though, which is why I think this is the one. It’s in fact the first tunnel you pass on the way from the station.

On the other hand, during another visit, I got a picture of the perfectly round Shinsasuke tunnel further up the road. This one has a phone booth next to it, like the one in the anime (although the booth is on the wrong side). 

What do you think? Which one is closer? I think it may have been the combination of the two.

Here’s another bonus shot of the inside of the first tunnel:

Sasuke Inari Taisha / Sasuke Inari Shrine (EP1)

Escaflowne TV kicks off at Hitomi’s school called Shiritsu Kamakura Kita Koukou, which is imaginary, sorry. But just across the street from this made-up school, there is a familiar thing... a shrine with red torii gates leading uphill in the woods. The shrine where the dragon follows Hitomi and her friends while Van tries to kill it to obtain its minerals.

In reality, the entrance to the shrine is not across some street, but rather, a small street leads to the entrance. It is pretty hidden in a residential area, and the torii gates feel way smaller than they seem from the anime (you can see a pic with a certain person as a comparison in the previous post).

Anyway, this red torii-lined pathway is a feature of many other inari taisha (fox shrines) across Japan. My second visit to the shrine, I heard the fox barking, even (and I rushed away cause I was alone haha)! The most famous fox shrine in Japan is probably the Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, with literally thousands of red torii of all sizes and numerous shrines lining the way up the hill. But you can find a similar-looking pathway randomly in Japan!

What makes this the referenced shrine was the main building which looks similar, but not the same. The steps to the side shrine (where Hitomi and co. escape after the dragon follows them up to the main shrine), also look a lot different.

Shibuya 109 (EP 8)

This is the only Tokyo landmark to appear in the series. Hitomi has a dream/vision of a date with Allen and they go to a game center in a department store called “Shibiya 1G9″, or something. (The reason behind the mangled name is probably trademark use/advertising reasons.)

Ta da.  Allen and Hitomi have lots of fun, until Millerna arrives and snatches him off with her carriage. Then her dream and the building collapses, in a recurring motif of a falling tower.

It took me one visit to Shibuya 109 to see why the creators would choose it. This is heaven for teenage girls, especially. Don’t know about the 90s, but now it houses covering all kinds of scene brands, Korean cosmetics, and ultra kawaii and hip fast food stalls. I saw many teenagers around, just hanging out. It seemed like a place definitely on their map. It may have been remodelled since the series aired, but it seems to still remain a sacred hip place for teens.

Hitomi is not from Tokyo, but I guess she would be allowed to visit with friends over the weekends and such. It’s only a half-hour train ride. The Allen date is also something very Japanese. I lost count how many times I have seen couples hand-in-hand in and around shopping centers, with the girl holding a huge bagged plush toy the boy likely won for her from one of those machines. So of course she would imagine this as an ideal date!

Kamakura Kita Eki / Kamakura North Station (EP 16)

I mentioned this station earlier in this post. Kamakura Kita Eki on the line to Tokyo is shown in episode 16, when Hitomi’s mother invites Yukari and Amano to show them a picture of Hitomi’s grandma and tell them her story.

We are not shown the actual house from a distance, just a bamboo fence and a shot of the patio. I found bamboo fences, but not in the right shape of the street… but this kind of looks similar, if you use your imagination and see a bamboo fence instead (as this probably was many years ago). Really, this is just for effect, you can catch similar scenes anywhere in Japan, and probably even a closer match than this. But the atmosphere of the place was similar, as it seems a more traditional area of the town altogether.

Hitomi’s walk back (EP 24) 

Have you noticed that Hitomi’s walk back home has a few extra scenes in Episode 24? There is one with Yukari on the steps that give an aerial view of the bay for example. I could not see any stairs after passing the hair salon, but the anime makes it feel like they should be in the area, so I explored a bit. Found some stairs, but they seemed to be leading to a private property, so I did not try climbing them. Instead, I turned to the Fanbook again.

Izumi-san and Yufuko-san think the stairs are located in another area, and they lead to the Gokurakuji Pass (apparently, it used to lead to the Gokurakuji temple but does not anymore). It was in an area that I was passing through on my way to Fujisawa in the evening, so guess what, I got off the train and I went to look for them even though it was dark already. What do you think?

You probably can’t see anything. But I think it’s possible a view like you see in the anime would open somewhere further up those steps and that path.

However, there was a closed gate so I could not climb them higher. I don't know if it was permanent or if it was closed because it was so late. But you know what, I take it as a sign to return next time and explore that area. It was the same with Mt. Fuji, we planned a trip but the weather prevented us from seeing the summit. So I still have the dream to climb Mt. Fuji one day!

Instead of the view we got from the stairs in the anime, I present to you another high view of Kamakura, this one from my Hasedera Temple visit. The actual photo I took is in the previous post, I used a sepia filter for this.

The final stop of my day trip was Fujisawa, from where I caught a direct train back to Tokyo. Izumi-san and Yufuko-san said that the area in front of the Fujisawa station looked like the one Hitomi wandered around when she got back from Gaea shortly in ep 24. These scenes are not present in ep 1, so it makes me wonder if she walked around the city that night after her tunnel talk to Yukari in ep 1, too, or if it was induced by the new discoveries about Yukari, Amano, and herself. But she seems to be home around the same time (“Hitomi, bath is ready!”) so could be the first option.

By the way, Hitomi’s house, as seen in the anime, fits the architecture of the area. I saw some similar houses but did not want to take photos of private property.

Back to Fujisawa, here are the stairs that looked a bit familiar, with a box advert in the back. (Unfortunately, there was some construction work going on though.) What do you think?

Streetview actually offers some better shots than I could make at the time (for the purpose of identification at least) and I think it actually confirms that this indeed is the model place when you look at the buildings.

The only other shot from this part was a crosswalk that could be anywhere, so I did not bother with it.

Kamakura Koukou Mae Eki / Kamakura High School Station (EP 26)

On my way to Fujisawa, I also shortly got off at Koukou Mae again (the station from the final scene of the anime, to be handled next) to capture the night Enoden in a similar way as when Hitomi rides it on the way home in episode 24. Mission failed. 

But what I noticed is that the whole station seems to be flipped around for this scene of the anime! I was wondering why Hitomi was riding the Enoden to Fujisawa in the opposite direction than the actual train does, but that explained it. It was all flipped! 

Anyway, back to Koukou Mae Eki. It is allegedly one of the most beautiful stations in Japan and a famous spot for the Slam Dunk fans as well. The Enoden line station itself is rather small, basically just a shelter, which was left unchanged. Also unchanged is the view of Enoshima island from that station, even though you would notice that the proportions are a bit off. 

What is missing are the concrete tetrapods, even though they are nothing special on other stations on the line. Of course, they could have also been moved or removed over the years.

But even Yufuko-san and Izumi-san recommended going to the Koshigoe station to see the tetrapods, so I believe they were not here even in the 90s. I followed their recommendations and saw some behind a structure there. So they combined the view of the island and the tetrapods from the surrounding areas into one.

Also, what needs to be said is that the anime station building is not exactly the same as Koukou Mae Eki. The Fanbook says the design of the station was similar to the next Enoden station on the line called Hase on the photo below. Please compare and contrast.

As we see in ep 26, the back of the station is open, with some empty area behind the Koukou Mae station. This is not the case in the actual place. The back of the station is covered (though this could have been changed more recently to force people through the ticket turnstile) and right behind the station is a slope with a cemetery on it. That was a really strange discovery.

So that’s it, that’s all I managed to find! I had a mind to create a detailed map or something but you know what, if you ever get to Kamakura, probably it’s more fun discovering the stuff yourself. Maybe you can even catch something that I missed? I had more plans there, but with my luck I hurt my foot soon into my last trip. That, of course, slowed me down considerably. Well, see you next time then, Kamakura, and as you see, I have my eyes set on Enoshima already!

P. S. I may make a part 2 to this post, translating the map and the comic from the Fanbook, so keep an eye on that if this is of interest to you or would like to visit yourself!

#escaflowne #tenkuu no escaflowne #天空のエスカフローネ #anime pilgrimage #90s anime #kamakura #japan

[toxicnotebook]

Rating home library ideas from home decorating websites

Okay, here’s the thing: when I was designing a wallpaper for home libraries, I had to look at a lot- and I mean a LOT- of home decorating sites.There were quite a few interesting home libraries, both good and bad. And a few that were downright evil.

I set aside some of the ones I found noteworthy, and now I finally have time to write this post. We’ll start with a classic:

It’s cozy, there’s a comfy patterned chair, it’s using a small space in a smart way, it has a nice lamp and a small succulent. The modern reading nook summed up in one image, and it’s actually achievable for most homes. 7/10

This is, perhaps, a bit too cozy. Leaning a bit on the claustrophobic side if I’m being honest. But it makes good use of a very awkward space, and I do love me some fairy lights.

The top shelf above the window is a bit too high up for easy access though. 6/10

Oh this is just lovely. Does give off a used bookstore vibe, but that’s a plus for me! 8/10

Why does feel more claustrophobic than the one in the skinny ass hallway. It feels like the books are holding their breath to fit in that bookcase. Hate it. Nice color though! 4/10

In contrast, this moderate bookcase feels far larger and airier than it actually is! I do love the decor spots, although I hope the shelves are modular so one could, in theory, add more shelves for more books. Like I just wanna pop another shelf above the glass ball and jam some paperbacks there. But that might be a me problem. 8/10

Girl. This is just mostly air, not airy. Why even bother installing a custom mounted metal shelving unit when you have barely anything to put on it? What an absolute waste of space and money.

Also stacking your books in those small aesthetic piles will make it a bitch to find any specific book, good luck with that. 3/10

Fuck me, the multiple little pile of books on a shelf is a fucking trend. Like WHY would you do this on functional shelves like those? Books piled on a table makes sense. Books placed horizontally on a shelf they are too tall for makes sense. This? This makes no sense. You’re just making it harder to find & take the books off the shelves, AND you’re wasting space. Arrrrrhfhfghgh. 2/10

Ahhhhhh. Much better. Cottagecore girlies, this one’s for you! 9/10

So I live in an area VERY prone to earthquakes, and everything about this image sets off my anxiety. Floating shelves in general are iffy for earthquakes, but the large ones are especially prone to just...falling off the wall when things get moderately shaky.

Add in the large, heavy books on EVERY shelf, the absolute height of the unit, the fact the shelves are polished metal, AND all the books are right on the edge of the shelves....yeah. No thanks. 2/10 don’t wanna be brained by books

WHAT DID I JUST SAY ABOUT EARTHQUAKE SAFETY. The old bookshelf wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t holding up pounds of books with just some bolts embedded in sheet rock and studs! AND GET SOME DIVIDERS. OR BOOKENDS. 1/10

Or something like this, perhaps! Large, roomy, and the spaces are generous enough that it can accommodate taller books. Still don’t like those little piles, but here it’s not as bothersome. This feels like a library that’s well-loved. 9/10 slightly too tall for me though

I hope you don’t have kids or pets, because all your books are coming down when this shelf gets hit with a moderate bump. 3/10 gives waiting room vibes

Good use of an awkward space, a nice chair, and while they did use floating shelves, these ones aren’t overloaded or crazy high on the wall. Wish the top shelf only had paperbacks, though. 5/10

This is just stupid. 2/10 points for whimsy

I’m a short bitch, so I love me an extravagant home library with a built in ladder. The perfect combo of maximum space use and ease of access! 10/10

Unless, of course, the ladder looks like it’s made of balsa wood or is otherwise completely USELESS. 0/10

What a perfect little nook. 10/10

Man, I really wanna love this, but the odd-sized shelf above the built in sofa knock a few points off for me. Maybe if the staging stylist had put in mass market paperbacks instead of regular books it would make more sense. Great view though! 7/10

YES. HELL YES. I love me a staircase library! Perfect combo of class, coziness, and space useage! 11/10

AAAAA THIS ONE IS EVEN BETTER- wait why are the books like that

wait

wait

THIS? THIS IS A FUCKING TREND??? YOU CAN’T STAND ANYTHING BREAKING YOUR PRECIOUS NEUTRAL COLOR SCHEME SO YOU TURN YOUR BOOKS AROUND? DO YOU SIMPLY NOT WANT TO FIND ANY TITLE EVER AGAIN? DO YOUR SENSES COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN AT ANY HINT OF SATURATION? GET A FUCKING E-READER IF YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE IDEA OF BOOK SPINES!

Anyways. -2/10

Ahhh. Much better. Good use of an old phone nook, and you could add those raw wood shelves yourself. And look! You can have a neutral palette AND a home library without making it impossible to find a book! Who would have thought. 9/10

These types of shelves look cool, but are just hard to use in any useful way. Your books are going to be constantly flopping over. 3/10

Oh this is just prime coziness. Can you imagine reading in one of those squishy chairs on a rainy day? I’m starting to relax just from thinking about it. 10/10 someone get me a hot cocoa

I know these types of built-in shelves are popular, but man it would be such a pain in the ass to get any of the books from the top shelves. It just feels like these types of libraries are there for aesthetic purposes, not everyday use. 5/10 they do look cool at least

Well. At least there’s a ladder. 3/10 TOO TALL TOO TALL

This appeals to my Goth sensibilities. 9/10 gimme that chandelier

Those giant words feel like a threat. Is this library about to fight me? 3/10 hate the vibes

This REALLY appeals to my Goth sensibilities. 10/10 RAVENS!!

My opinion on this rests entirely on whether or not there are books behind the painting, because if I had to take down a giant ass portrait every time I wanted to read idk Witches Abroad I would be. Hmm. Cranky! Schrodinger’s books/10

Another excellent use of a weird space, and you could add those shelves yourself! 8/10

This is...extremely off-putting, but I’m not sure why 3/10 kinda getting fire hazard vibes tbh

If I walk into your home and I see this, I immediately know you don’t actually read those books. No book reader is gonna jam their books into a FIREPLACE- hope you closed it up, by the way, otherwise good luck when it rains- in a Tetris-like configuration with no way to see the titles. Every time you try to take a book out you’ll have to shove a bunch of books around and hope they don’t fall out in a giant pile you’ll have to carefully put back in your aesthetic little configuration of nonsense. Home library my ass. Be honest to yourself and call it what it is- an art installation on the cheap. 0/10

Oh I adore this. First off, perfect use of a weird alcove space. Second, the cushy pillows and warm lights just ooze cozy comfort. I can easily see myself flopping over the pillows with a thick book and hot tea. 12/10

Sooo, if I want to take out a book I’ll have to worry about knocking over my entire collection if I go a little too quickly or take out more than one? PASS. 1/10 point for the rainbow I guess

MAN, this just hits my maximalist sensibilities in the right places. The light fixtures, the absolute maximum use of space but still keeping everything within reach, and the bright yellow/deep teal color scheme. There are piles of books on the floor, but since I had my own floor pile during the bookstore days I can’t judge. Absolute perfection. 14/10 maybe put a rail on that stair shaped bookcase, you know someone’s gonna try it

NO

NO

NO

HAVE YOU NO OTHER THOUGHTS IN YOUR BRAIN OTHER THAN YOUR ROMANTIC AESTHETICS? HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF PRACTICALITY? EVERY TIME YOU BATHE, YOUR BOOKS WILL COLLECT MOISTURE AND TRAP IT. THEY WILL NEVER TRULY DRY IN THAT LITTLE ISOLATED CUBBY HOLE OF A TUB. EACH DIP, EACH INDULGENT SOAK WILL NURTURE A BREEDING GROUND FOR SOME OF THE WORST THINGS YOU CAN BREATHE IN. AND WHEN YOU ARE HACKING OUT YOUR SPORE FILLED LUNGS, YOU WILL HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT YOURSELF. Or maybe your designer. In that case, -100/10 FIRE YOUR INTERIOR DESIGNER

Sources:

https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/home-lifestyle/decorating-ideas/g32701104/home-library-ideas/

https://onekindesign.com/2013/08/02/50-jaw-dropping-home-library-design-ideas/

https://www.thespruce.com/home-library-design-ideas-4129190

https://www.mydomaine.com/home-library-ideas-5086793

https://www.homesandgardens.com/interior-design/small-home-library-ideas

https://www.housebeautiful.com/room-decorating/home-library-office/g696/designer-libraries/

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/home-libraries-slideshow

#books #library #home library #libraries #reading #home decor #interior design #long post #I am so not kidding this is a LONG POST

[nullamirrors]

finally an opportunity to write out my side order theories post and stop thinking about writing a side order theories post… here is my side order rambles

main theory: octo expansion was about envy, return of the mammalians was about nostalgia, so side order will be about ambition or something along those lines. it makes sense: you've escaped. you're climbing a tower over and over again trying to reach the top. maybe this is it. maybe after octo you were only ever out of the frying pan and into the fire.

plus, we had a storyline about forgetting the past, then a storyline about rebuilding the past, so it would make sense that this one would be about the future. (is this the future we dreamed of when we stuck in hell?) the trailer shows what might be a factory producing mem cakes - a machine creating memories. now THAT'S an interesting concept. what kind of future do we want to build, and who is selling us our visions of utopia and why? if people can be made to long for a memory they never even had, what might be the extreme outcome of that?

(if it is a simulated world this time, that means anything can happen. I'm not sure they need to up the spectacle again, but they have a track record of succeeding, so… hopefully this gets wacky.)

probably they will not do this since the splatoon series has made a point of only critiquing the status quo indirectly… but if they are committed to completing this story then it should be about the sea creature society having to reckon with their own failings. the fundamental "joke" of the splatoon series is that everything that exists in it only exists because of the extinction of humanity from climate catastrophe, and yet the new dominant lifeforms have built their own hypercapitalist hellscape with presumably no self-awareness of its shortcomings. it's established in mammalians that the new culture is explicitly modelled on human culture, so logically this is what the whole thing has been building to: an environmental crisis that isn't an external threat that can be quashed through violence but something that requires societal change in order to be averted.

of course, they won't do this. (it's good that they don't. it would feel unconvincing from nintendo.) so here is my list of potential villains for side order:

• Marina: this is a popular suggestion given her general absence from the gameplay that's been shown, and while I wouldn't be totally surprised I think it's more likely that marina is kidnapped or something. maybe the spire of order was her project but something went wrong. I'm just not sure what the storyline would be if marina is the villain (unless she is the revolutionary leader from my other idea) also pearl and marina will kiss when they reunite you heard it here first

• A Mark Zuckerberg Type: there's a lot of implication that side order takes place in some sort of virtual world, so it makes sense that this would be splatoon taking on the "metaverse". (were the levels in previous games all meant to be physical spaces?) it's probably most likely that the villain would be a new company and new character, but maybe this will be the director of ancho-v games or something.

• A Revolutionary Group: this would make sense with the idea of the splatoon series always - in its surface text - being about preserving the status quo. I'm not sure how that would connect with the design of the world, though, given that it seems to be very much about ostentatious with an aesthetic that mixes neomodern instagram bland white rigidity with pastelly makeup/fashion styles and old-school gilded art-deco (or is it nouveau) temples of wealth. it basically looks like if a bank was designed for tiktok? that doesn't scream revolutionary to me, but then this could be a case where the skeleton fish things are attacking the tower rather than them being the tower attacking the characters. maybe the bad guys are trying to corrupt the virtual world before the resources required to run it destroys the planet again. maybe they were right all along…

• Acht: well, the skeleton fish do seem like their kind of style. they could easily be a revolutionary as above. I suspect their role will be more limited though - it's not like Harmony is a main character, and even the idols in octo/mammalians have pretty limited story roles in the grand scheme of things. plus, why would they ally with agent 8 while also trying to kill them? for… test data? (well, we don't know the full implications of acht's sanitisation…)

• Commander Tartar He's Back: as great as a villain as Tartar is, I don't think there'd be any value to come from a rematch. just please not a character from the past this time

• A Different AI (ORCA?): would fit with the "metaverse" idea, but like. we already had an AI villain. I guess ORCA is basically the only loose end from mammalians - a lot of focus on a character who essentially has to role in the plot - but I wouldn't be surprised if that's just because they reused so much of octo expansion's structure in mammalians, needed a new character to fill the cq cumber role, and didn't have any greater plans. but there is that ominous gladosy chamber in the main trailer, so..? maybe agent 8 is being tested, in order to simulate their behaviour. maybe agent 8 is the villain - or a virtual clone… (no that will 100% be a boss fight)

• Toni Kensa: this is probably my favourite idea. it's a character who's been around since the first game but afaik has never been visually depicted. there is an interview in the octo expansion artbook that reveals basically nothing? while the white-and-gold aesthetic of the spire of order isn't an exact match for kensa's iconic black-white-red colour scheme, it's still monochrome, and 100% looks like the kind of thing an evil fashion emperor would build. this would also fit with the idea of a threat coming from within the squid society—although kensa could turn out to be a killer whale, which would be visually interesting but a bit annoying to have another mammal villain.

• Agent 4: another loose end, but could just as easily be dealt with in a throwaway line or cutesy reunion. if it is them, hopefully they are not brainwashed and actually have motivations. (kid icarus: uprising 🤝 splatoon 2 octo expansion - ruining an interesting twist with mind control) I don't know what those motivations would be, but they could be involved with any of these other possible groups.

• There Is No Villain: all the bad stuff is just a manifestation of human cephalopod intolerance! I mean maybe, but this is the splatoon series. they like to have you shoot a big thing with paint until it dies. it would be nice to have the conflict be more nuanced (outside of subtext) but I suspect that doesn't really suit the gameplay style of Kill Things

• Craig Cuttlefish: it SHOULD be him. but it won't

like, at the very least I hope it isn't another villain from the past. they just about managed to keep it interesting in return of the mammalians, and I do love that this is basically the only time i can think of where a sci-fi/fantasy story has outright cast humanity as the villain, but it's getting repetitive.

anyway as you can tell I think a lot about splatoon and am very excited for whatever this is going to be although it would be funny if it turns out to be bad

#splatoon #side order #splatoon series analysis

[project-sekai-facts]

HAVE YOU SEEN THE NEW LEAKS im crying and throwing up do you think wxs is going to disband what is happening :((((

I’m writing this the day leaks came out but scheduling it to post the day the preview drops. Sorry about the delay in answering.

(Also I won’t talk about any cards outside Emu’s untrained because they don't drop until tomorrow)

First: the title. Our Happy Ending.

I get why this is starting a panic in the fandom especially since the disbanding thing has been teased for a while and we know endings for every unit have been written in advance,

BUT

Emu’s grandad. We know parts of this event will be flashbacks to Emu’s childhood and times with her grandad. And he’s dead. I think the happy ending refers to his passing. Like I would not be surprised if the flashbacks are to him dying and the promise Emu made with him to smile which is shown in Smile of Dreamer. They did it with Nagi which means it’s on the table.

Second. Rui’s idea.

Rui had never had close friends until WxS came along. As curtain call and events since then indicate, he doesn’t want to leave them. I’ve done a few posts on this before and the truth is that he can’t stay with them forever, all of them want different things, and change is natural. I know Pandemonium just gave him some new friends at school but it would feel a bit... Wrong, I guess if they just suddenly snatched WxS away from him following chapter 8 of that event. Also they’re still in school why would the disband when they’re still together unless the writers pull a scholarship for Tsukasa out their asses but it’s been established that he’s behind other actors his age, so if anyone’s getting a scholarship it’s Sakurako. Rui getting one is pretty much off the table as well since he already turned down the offer from Asahi, so after realising that he wants to stay with wxs for as long as possible I think he'd turn down any other offers.

Third. The summary.

Is WxS disbanding.

No.

As I just said, they’re still in school together so there’s literally no reason to have them split unless one of them is forcibly dragged away. One of them needs to be on the anniversary banner and as I posted a few days ago it’s quite likely that the banner will be for Nene. Also they need a vsinger on the vsinger event they’re not getting written out of the story just yet. And Emu needs another birthday card and a mixed event which won’t be until at least October unless she gets back to back events for some reason. Nene will need a mixed event if she doesn't get the anniversary one. Oh and Rui and Tsukasa need their 4th unit events.

Here’s my personal theory for this event and spoilers for a ten year old anime I’m gonna talk about Love Live again (pretty sure I said this already before but oh well). So towards the end of the second season of that anime, the third years get close to graduating and muse have to decide if they want to continue without the third years or end the group there. They ultimately decide to disband once the third years leave because it wouldn’t be the same without them and then they cry about it and basically I think that’s probably what’s gonna happen. They know they can’t stay together but they’ve got a year left and they’re gonna enjoy it. As I said already I think all this stuff about endings and saying goodbye probably refers to Emu grieving her grandfather.

Also Asahi said he’d be back to offer Rui a job again once he’s done with high school isn’t that confirmation enough that we’ve got three years to go?

Also if it was the final wxs event you’d think they’d. Y’know. Mention it. In advance.

#meikos probably fes if she’s 4* here rip minori. girl i'm sorry they did this to you you didn't deserve to go over a year without a lim #speculation #mod talks #asks

[just-a-normal-regretter]

A cursed theory that I must share.

Odd knows how to throw himeslf off a moving vehicle with minimal injuries.

And that got me thinking.

Why was he sent to Kadic? Why did his parents never question where kiwi is? They had to know about the no dogs thing. (Unless this was adressed between them off screen, in which case why was there no effort to visit and take Kiwi home?)

So a theory for you: Odd was a vigilante of some kind. (Boy had a tail on Lyoko and no balance problems. He clearly is trained in some way. Maybe a magical girl esc situation or something but still. That is not a normal reaction to suddenly having a new limb you can control. Unless it isn't new.)

Or maybe he is trying very hard to keep some powers a secret.

I mean. Aelita had a little elf toy and became an elf on lyoko. Yumi is Japanese and being geisha is a normal, respected job that many aspire to be. Ulrich is a samurai, and by golly aren't Samurai cool people who protect others and work under a lord (bit of a stretch but he's a teenager. With a dad like that I would not be surprised if there was a little escapism involved.) William just got a BFS and really. What teenager would not go wild for a cool sword (seriously the thing reminds me of final fantasy 7).

Then there's Odd. The purple I can get. But the cat never gets an explanation, given the scanner wasn't active while Kiwi was in there. Add in that weird purple no explanation given ever spot in his hair and something doesn't add up. (Yes Aelita's hair is pink but redheads exist so I can see the leap given nobody questions it. People question Odd's hair.)

So really. Something is up with this boy's history. I personally believe superhero of some kind (magical girl esc shenanigans included) or escaped experiment.

What do you think?

Sorry for the late response but anon, you could totally make an AU out of this haha (magical girl-verse or general superhero/escaped experiment tomfoolery). Honestly you could probably spin the magical girl AU quite a bit with Kiwi playing as the Familiar, or even play on the escaped experiment idea and twist it around a bit with series lore

Theory-wise can't be too crazily sold on it. Odd's parents aren't the most observant of their kids (and canon pretty much makes it seem like they're so busy they don't really keep an eye on what goes on in their kids lives) so I imagine what is happening with Kiwi slips under the rug. That and perhaps Odd's sisters don't want to admit they let their little brother sneak off with the family dog, either out of sibling comrodery or they don't want to get in trouble for this as well lol

I've seen some authors like to offer the headcanon that Odd likes to dye his hair (I'm one of those writers haha, Evolution may have been extremely shaky but there are some ideas that can certainly work etc etc Odd having brunet hair is one of them). The kid loves to dress up in flamboyant colors, bright pink, yellow, purple, you get the idea. Part of me likes to think it's to attract attention, he is just one of six kids after all (mind you the only boy and the youngest of the bunch too). I'm sorta headcanon-posting about Odd's parents being emotionally neglectful. I mean it's also kinda out there in the episode. Sure they "care" on the surface level but they don't really offer much structure? They let him loose, offer unconditional love without any set rules. Obviously there's a fine line given the other side of the spectrum is like, say, Ulrich's family (or father in particular) for example. But too much care without guidance can leave kids feeling in the dark and truly not cared for. Especially if they see other kids actually having that healthy relationship/boundaries taught to them (I hope I'm conveying this all right lmao)

Anyhow! Back to this and off the headcanon tangent, I imagine Lyoko grants some knowledge on how to use their abilities. Or at least, kinda like ingrained instincts already despite not having much experience with them just yet. I like to point out how easy it was for Yumi to wield her fans, or for Ulrich to instantly know how to use super sprint in the prequel, even the contested shield of Odd's just showed up out of nowhere there lol. The tail not causing balance issues is probably one of the instinctual things, just like how Odd can go back and forth from cat paws to human hands without batting an eye. This could also just thrive in your theory/AU either way haha

I've heard some suggestions that Kiwi shed some fur in the scanner Odd went in right before he was virtualized for the first time, so maybe that could lend some idea to his form? This one is the weakest out of the bunch though, especially given dog fur really doesn't equal cat. Cats are flexible and agile though (they love to sleep and eat, they're very playful despite not knowing when to hold back at times, I own two cats atm so this is my own observations leaking over haha), Odd fits the bill, and he's an animal lover (or a dog lover, I forget if the show has mentioned if he just doesn't like cats or whatnot it's been a while). I remember bits and pieces of cats having a sixth sense (not really but people like to say they do) so that can line up with Future Flash, Odd's a gamer which is my only decent excuse for laser arrow lmfao Thank you for your ask! Sorry about the bit of delay but it was very fun chatting and thinking about all of this :)

#answered ask moment #anon ask #code lyoko #i'm awkward af but i do love asks so this was wonderful to see #headcanons galore on all ends but at the end of the day #it's fun to speculate and think about all of this #unironically the odd magical girl au would be such comedy i feel #i hope anon gets the courage to write it cause i'd be so down for the shenangians

[mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune]

Buttercup Lifts Couch & Mammon Becomes A Dad...? (2024)

------------------

Credit for Steven Universe Series goes to Rebecca Sugar

Credit for Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss goes to Vivienne "Vivziepop” Medrano

Credit for Invader Zim goes to Jhonen Vasquez

Credit for Undertale & Deltarune goes to Toby Fox

Credit for Transformers goes to Hasbro & TakaraTomy

Credit Transformers Animated Series goes to Sam Register & Matt Youngberg

Credit for The Powerpuff Girls goes to Craig McCracken

Credit for Danny Phantom goes to Butch Hartman

------------

if anyone is wondering, Pink-Pearl is suppose to still look like her original gem humanoid but she is also suppose to be a Moth, and well if Lonely-Pearl was a Moth in her corrupted form, it would make sense that Pearls in a Crossover between Helluva Boss/Hazbin Hotel and Steven Universe, they would be Moths but still look a bit how they originally looked.

I want to call Pink-Pearl by the nickname "Vollie" but it's okay not everyone calls her that, and it would be interesting in a Crossover Fanon Timeline she forms a friendship with Verosika.

and yes I gave that Soundwave a bow on their head, it is suppose to be one of those Sound-Wave copies of the Original Sounwave.

I have had the idea for a while, that Lancer mistakes Mammon as his Dad, just in a different outfit...

I worked on this drawing around January and I'm just now posting it on February...it was not great a few days ago, I know during my trying to write a theory that has to do with Sari that of course has to do with a Crossover with Hazbin Hotel and TFA...

the connection kept going on and off, and yeah I ended up noticing a bit too late that I forgot to put the word "just" and well it is called "Hazformers Theory: What Sari Could Be Doing With Her Autobot Friends MIA" but even when I was trying to write it, the connection kept going off on me, and it was only making me more mad and feeling not so happy...so even when I got lucky and was finally able to post it, but when I wanted to log back on to fix and edit what I notice I forgot to put down on it...and yeah I had finally got around to it today...

but I was having some trouble logging back on, which I think it was because of the connection going off and on me again, and it might of possibly messed up my password, cause when I did try to use it again today......it didn't turn out too well, I still couldn't get on and at some point I had to make a new password just so I could post not only some new fan theories, but also this drawing and that

I seriously wasn't having a good day, I couldn't really get to sleep and well I do feel a little tired right now, it doesn't help that what happen was I guess a bit stressful...

and anyway Peridot is being Feral and is suppose to have Doe Ears and a Tail, like Peridots end up with Deer like appearance.

Alastor ending up adopting her and having her on that very thing that we see her have on her in one of the episodes of Steven Universe, well it can be one of the ways to keep her from running off when she gets all feral...like it only comes off if she calms down and doesn't act all feral.

and even when you make the drawing big, to read what is being said...

here is what Mammon is saying...

"when did I become a Dad…? I don't remember having a kid…unless Stella has been keeping it a secret from me. oh man, do I need to marry Stella?! I'm NOT ready yet!!! I need to call Stella and tell her to pick up our little acciden-…cough I mean Son."

also in this drawing, Buttercup Utonium is 22 years old, so this is the much older future self of Buttercup.

I think I will post one more thing, than I will be heading to bed to get some sleep...I rather post it now than wait until either tomorrow or in a few days...plus if I'm able to, I may talk more about that Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss Theory that has to do with Soul-Partnership Contract...

anyway hope some find it funny that Lancer thinks that Mammon is his Dad, and making Mammon very confused...also I like the Mamtella ship between Mammon and Stella.....their ship name still sounds like a type of food you put on toast, and I don't know if many will end up using that Mamtella ship name or not, so far I'm the first to call those two by that ship name. XD

#do not reblog without permission #crossover fanart #buttercup utonium #zim invader zim #vox hazbin hotel #ember mclain #verosika mayday helluva boss #pink pearl su #soundwave transformers #peridot su #alastor hazbin hotel #lancer deltarune #mammon helluva boss #sans undertale #january 2024 #february 2024

[ashysmultifandomcatdump]

Why Fist Thingy is (or is in cahoots with) Walkie Talkie theory (and also my Actual Thoughts about Walkie Talkie)

here to tell you guys mytheory on why FIST THINGY IS THE SECRET INANIMATE INSANITY INVITATIONAL VILLAIN!!!!!! read it. (contains spoilers for iii17!!!)

(just wanna preface this with the fact this is mostly a joke!!! i thought of this while rewatching the whole show back in october and decided the new episode would be a time to post about it. did it for the funnies and the slightest chance there may be some merit to it)

Ok first item on the agenda this is gonna get wild so strap in tight or else it may blow your seatbelts off: iii has introduced the concept of fist thingy being sentient, doing things a non-sentient object would not do

this is something that the show has NEVER hinted at before, making it seem almost as if they’ve added this in specifically for a reason..an EVIL reason?!?! suspicious!!!

second! we have fist thingy Sending Contestants To Indefinite Island. we know it has to be intentional on fist thingy’s part, since it’s done consistently, HOWEVER. it is completely without mephone’s knowledge—until iii10, he had no idea about indefinite island at all and he did not give fist thingy the direction to send eliminated contestant characters there. which means that someone ELSE has to have done it—whoever is behind walkie talkie .. or fist thingy itself, perhaps ?! mysterious!!!

next up here at spot number three we have the springy connection. now that it has been confirmed that springy and walkie talkie Are Indeed working together, there is something Verrrrrry interesting i was thinking…what sort of object is fist thingy? a boxing glove. now, what do springy’s mitten-covered hands look like when curled into a fist (!!!), and particularly in this image at the end of the ep? THAT’S RIGHT, BOXING GLOVES!!! curious!!!

but ashy! i hear you cry out. this is all so farfetched! what reason would fist thingy have to be walkie talkie in the first place? well imagine this little ones. fist thingy is just like mephone. overly attached to the show. been here since the early days and wants it to go on forever. however it was mostly left behind in s2, save for a few scarce appearances—so it’s desperate for any chances to stay in use in s3 it finally finds a voice through the use of a walkie talkie (don’t. Don’t question how.) and tries to keep it going as much as it can because once it’s over—what use is it going to be anymore? also hey if you wanna add in the “something bad happens to every cohost” thing then fist thingy has a reason to hate the floor specifically—it’s shown frustration over not being able to send him away

or, Alternatively, it’s the other way around. what i mean is fist thingy still isn’t sentient but was hijacked and is being controlled by walkie talkie—still is walkie talkie, but not technically actually walkie talkie or just in cahoots with walkie talkie! either way it has to be one of them, because fist thingy wouldn’t just be sending contestants to indefinite island for no reason BUT YEAH!!! end of my awesome theory unless i remember some other point hope you enjoyed …

honestly it could end up being something Similar to this but with one major detail different. that’s what happened last time when i predicted bot in april 2021 but thought they were meeple made

if you want my Actual Thoughts behind walkie talkie. who it is, i don’t know exactly. but she’s definitely a kinda metaphor or stand-in for like, The Corporation, the way capitalism affects art, you know—the whole ai art metaphor as well as the whole deal with springy

she’s someone who wants to Profit from the show, i think. which is why she’s so desperate to keep it going like mephone is—not that she holds any sentimental value towards it, but because it’s popular, she wants to make it her cash cow and milk it dry and mephone is a person who would let it happen

she Could be from meeple, i suppose, but i don’t really think so? we’ll see. although she doesn’t appear to have any relations with it cobs Did enjoy profiting off of the show without mephone’s knowledge, aside from that though there doesn’t appear to be much reason to see them as the same this is just a Different corporation. a different capitalism, i guess! while cobs would orchestrate fights and such to make the show more exciting and adam begged for bow to stay because viewers liked her, walkie talkie doesn’t seem to really care about entertainment value. she doesn’t care about the art. she prefers quantity over quality and to get that quantity, to get The Money, she has to keep the show running for as long as she can, way past what’s natural. 2 different kinds of corporate meddling

the show has sponsorships. MAYBE THE LIFERING SPONSORS MEANT SOMETHING AFTER ALL!!! springy wants to sell a contestant as a mascot to endlessly profit off of them

etc etc this has gotten very long …im excited to see the finale!!! what is walkie talkie’s DEAL!!

#inanimate insanity #inanimate insanity invitational #ii #iii #theory #ii fist thingy #ii walkie talkie

[derpyfangirl]

Another Pokemon Scarlet/Violet AU thought dump

Inspired by @k-chips and @ameftowriter and I’s discussion on this post,here’s another dive into a Pokemon Scarlet/Violet AU.

To start, I have a theory regarding the professor that’s not present- Turo in Scarlet, Sada in Violet- that was partially inspired by the idea of villain!Clavell.

Now, I might be incorrect as I can’t find any quotes or maybe I imagined it, but I’m pretty sure AISada and AITuro mention that people can’t survive entering the time machine. Thing is, how would they know this unless it happened before?

Also, isn’t it strange that the other professor would just walk out on what can be assumed to be a happy family following Arven’s birth? Yeah, could be nerves, could be cold feet, could be a difference in opinion- but here’s the thing: they had already successfully brought something through the machine. Koraidon/Miraidon are noted as having come through PRIOR to Arven’s birth. So, what gives? If they also wanted to bring Pokemon from the past/future here, why leave when you got the machine finally working? This is where shit gets dark.

Continues under the read more.

My theory is, what if the other professor died testing if people could travel through the machine? Or fell into it?

As per usual, this analysis takes place in the Scarlet timeline, but can apply to Violet as well.

We know that by the time she writes in the journal that she needs more help and that “that man walked out shortly after the boy was born”, Sada is likely so obsessed that the other researchers- Clavell and Jacq included- have left. She could seen her husband dying as ‘walking away’. What if Turo was killed when he walked into the activated machine, getting sucked in and, unable to cope with the idea her dream has killed her beloved spouse and the father of her son, Sada instead chose to believe he walked out on her and Arven.

In regards to the AU discussed in the linked post, Clavell is a skilled manipulator and liar. What I see happening shortly after Arven being born is this:

Sada and Turo, having worked hard on their dream for so long, now have a newborn baby. They agree that work on the machine will need to slow down so they can spend time with their son and raise him together. One night while Sada is still in the hospital following Arven’s birth, Turo is in Area Zero finishing some calibrations on the machine and talking to Clavell, who came to visit and check in on the status of their research. When he’s told that the professors plan to delay their research for a few years, Clavell argues that they can’t, it won’t do, what about their momentum so far?

Turo, not as obsessed with the project as his wife and has noticed their old friend and mentor’s interest in Koraidon and the potential Paradox Pokemon, confronts Clavell, demanding to know why he’s so intent on them essentially pushing their son to the side and focusing solely on their research. Turo realizes that Clavell has been using them and goes to shut it all down, stating once he tells Sada what’s happening she’ll agree with his actions. Clavell won’t let his dream be destroyed when its only just began, and the pair fight.

At one point, the machine is activated and Turo is shoved away from Clavell, and to both their horrors is dragged into it and killed. With the danger to his dreams eliminated, Clavell decides to use this to his advantage and creates a goodbye letter from Turo, stating he’s not ready for all this and that Sada and their son will only hold him back. He tells Sada when he went to see Turo in the lab he found the letter and tricks her into thinking her husband walked out on their family and, in her anger and despair, falls further into her research, not once questioning Clavell until she realizes she too is being used. By this point, Clavell has been actively using Arven as a bargaining chip- the faster she creates paradise, the faster she gets to see him again. Communication between her and Arven have been cut off to prevent Sada from reaching out to her son and telling him what’s happening, so Arven ventures into Area Zero before she’s killed, hoping to find his mom. He and Mabosstiff are attacked by a Roaring Moon, escaping with their lives, but Mabosstiff is still badly injured. Clavell uses this to his advantage.

“Now Sada, Arven has already almost died after being attacked by a Paradox Pokemon because he misses you. It would be a shame if he was “accidentally” injured by another “monster” attack, but this time without Mabosstiff to save him, hmm? We don’t want him to die like Turo did.”

“What do you mean, like Turo did?!”

This is when she finds out the truth- that her husband didn’t abandon her and Arven, he was killed.

The AU continues as described in the original post, but with the added bit that Arven gets some sort of closure that the parent he thought left him and Sada actually loved him very much and wanted to be with them.

Again, thank you to @k-chips and @ameftowriter for inspiring this long ass post lol

#pokemon sv #pokemon scarlet/violet #professor sada #professor turo #clavell #my theory #scarlet/violet spoilers #i think? #scarlet/violet au #evil!clavell AU #apparently when I'm not feeling good i get ideas #its been bouncing around in my head for weeks #again can also apply to Pokemon Violet just swap some stuff