I was rereading chapter 12 of system rebooting please standby and I found it just a little sweet that spamton was excited to see Kris (even tho it wasn’t them lol). tho he mostly was hoping for Kris to save his hide, I also think he was just happy to see his friend since he’s so lonely at that point

im rlly glad you liked that bit!! :D spamton will always have his more selfish motivations, and i've tried writing him so that if he ever does want/need something from someone else he goes into salesman mode, playing nice and innocent enough to get what he wants. But like they're his friend!! his buddy!! :D!! they're a puppet just like him and they helped to free him even if it was obvious he was up to no good in the first place! someone like that to return to him in his extreme loneliness and confusion would be a godsend, but he doesn't get those often. so whoops it had to be an addison lmao

I'd imagine if kris were to return, he'd be hanging around them and their friends to the point where it got annoying but only because he genuinely cares now and they've given him a new purpose in the world he's forever fated for. Though it would genuinely surprise me if he appeared again in canon (i think he's just gonna get the jevil treatment and be a quiet close-to-nonliving item in your inventory), but in this au hed be harder than hell to get rid of (akin to actual spam) hfjsksksk.

Every Opportunity Pokemon Missed by not having Drew in Destiny Deoxys: A Non-Comprehensive But Still Long-Ass list

Art above- credit to the lovely @salon-maiden-anabel ! So. This is a topic that, if my sister mentions, she knows I will go off about it at the dinner table while my mother stares on confusedly. This is a topic I feel very strongly about, and I decided to put it into words for this post-and I KNOW I'm not the only one with strong feelings about this topic! @raich-raichu I know you showed interest in this topic when I said I'd do it so hope you don't mind if I @ you! THIS GOES FOR EVERYONE: PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE REBLOG WITH YOUR OWN OPINIONS AND/OR ADDITIONS ON THIS. I thrive on hearing everyone's takes and opinions. Images are included which makes it kind of long, each number on my list has a corresponding image below. For funsies. Also, I imagine this happening right before the last grand festival, though I know that’s incorrect. It just gives me more developed characters to work with since advanced and battle frontier Drew are pretty different development wise. This is with late AG Drew.

Some background. Why do I think Drew should be in Destiny Deoxys (which will be referred to as DD for the sake of my carpal tunnel)? What is the connection? Why DD and not, say Temple of the Sea? The key is the location. Drew is canonically from LaRousse City. And DD is the ONLY time we ever get to see it. Connection has been established. So... what would he even do in the movie? I'm glad you asked! Let's get into it. A numbered list of every missed opportunity the writers had by not including him.

1.) Character building through backstory. We know little to nothing about Drew's backstory, and this would have been a really natural way to learn more about it. We could have had a scene where we learn, oh, this is the flower shop his mother worked at and he grew up helping tend to the plants or whatever. This is the garden where he met budew. Just little things here and there would have been fascinating, and this movie's setting was a PERFECT opportunity for it. Plus, here's the vision. We get a semi emotional, nostalgic scene with his favorite place as a child, right? Rare Drew emotional moment, maybe sharing it with May and co.? And then, later in the movie, we see that place destroyed by the conflict in the city and we get an emotional sad moment there!!!! And in the ending credits with the song??? WE SEE HIM AND HIS POKEMON STAYING BEHIND IN THE CITY AND STARTING TO REBUILD IT (after waving at Ash and co. on the train back to mainland Hoenn). Guys, my vision is CLEAR AS DAY. Greenhouse time.

2.) Seeing him interact with other characters. Drew isn't the most extroverted guy out there, and we only ever really see him talk to Ash, May, Solidad, Harley, and Brianna. Also, May is the only consistent one in that list. That's literally five people, for those of you keeping count at home. In DD? A large cast of interesting characters for him to interact with, possibly childhood acquaintances that know him! We have Rebecca, purple hair metagross trainer who likes her computer more than most people. Sid, a human golden retriever. Rafe, who's basically Drew but with brown hair and none of the redeeming qualities. The two twins, whose names are never spoken and are only in the credits as Audrey and Kathryn (one of them also has a masquerain iirc, or at least a Surskit!). And Tory, kid who is scared of pokemon and tbh I wouldn't change Tory's role or screen interactions much. I would, however, say the others have a lot of potential for interactions with Drew. Rafe taunting both Ash and Drew at the same time? Rebecca and Drew getting along well because they're the only two who appreciate silence as a form of hanging out? Audrey and Katherine taking little sibling roles, possibly? Tons of possibilities here.

3.) Shamelessly plugging the contestshipping agenda here, but why else do you all follow me? Anyways, Sid from Destiny Deoxys has a sweet but entirely blatant crush on May (who actually knows and does not give much of a shit, though they get along well anyways). Now, I usually do not like jealousy tropes. I think they're easy to do poorly and for them to come across as posessive, which I am not a fan of. HOWEVER, I am a fan of Drew being all moody and bitchy /affectionate. I can see it going either one of two ways: one, we get asshole Drew back from season one of Advanced, who makes snide remarks at Sid who would likely brush it off as fun banter, further annoying Drew who literally cannot get under Sid's skin due to Sid's overwhelming optimism, or two, we get the Drew that has all of his walls up, hiding behind this cool facade of professionalism and aloofness, sort of emotionally overcompensating for trying to hide how much it irks him. Either way, would have been fun. Could have been used for comedy, too, since May is dumb as shit with the guy who has genuine feelings for her, but clocks the puppy love crush from Sid immediately. Would I have trusted the pokemon company to do this trope well? No, but it could have been funny as hell in the right hands.

4.) On that note, THE PASSPORT PHOTO SCENE. May isn't the most photogenic person in the world. Does he tease her about it? Does he make some offhand remark about how he thinks she looks nice before aloof-ly and deftly moving on from the topic, leaving her with the rare compliment as she tries to figure out if he was serious or not (or was it for her beautifly)? Does he show her how to retake it? DOES SHE GENUINELY SMILE IN THAT RETAKE PHOTO, LOOKING AT HIM BEHIND THE CAMERA ROBOT THING???????ASDFGHJKL so much potential with this already gold scene.

5.) More location-based character building. LaRousse City is home to the (or at least a) Battle Tower, and no mention of contests. This means, likely, that LaRousse is a very battle-enthusiast city. Did this make Drew feel like an outcast as a kid, being interested in something different from his peers? Could have been interesting.

6.) Let Drew have his hero moment. Let's be honest- most of the times that we see him, he's being either a jerk (affectionate), head-over-heels in love, or pathetic (see: Who What When Where Wynaut drowning incident). And in what I would categorize as an adventure anime, he has remarkably... little adventuring, save for a traipse in the woods with On Cloud Arcanine. This can be his moment to actually shine! He's obviously a great battler, though he prefers contest-oriented formats. He beat Ash with a type disadvantage. He's a strong trainer- let him put it to use and try to hold off the Deoxys clones (bonus points if he's holding them off from May, not that she needs him to save her ass).

7.) Forced togetherness with the crew. We know Drew has no issue spending time with May, and he's at the very least quite tolerant of Ash. But... Brock? Max? Fun fact, Brock CANONICALLY does NOT like Drew. At all. Calls him nails on a chalkboard. Makes this face at him (pictured below). Look me in the eyes and tell me you don't want more of that. Tell me to my face that you don't want more of him having to socialize and of Brock being... like this. Shit's hilarious.

Look at him.

I need more of this in my life.

8.) The angst. He has his entire city destroyed, let him have a grieving moment for it. Hell, let him have a moment where May tries to reach out and he has to decide if he's going to let her in or shut her out. Does he snap, like he did in May, We Harley Drew'd Ya? Does he let her in, like The Unbeatable Lightness of Seeing? Do the other LaRoussians reach out to him and let him know, hey, we're in this together? DO THE PLUSLE AND MINUN TRY TO CHEER HIM UP??????

9.) Let him get separated from the group, or let the group get separated from him. Let him have panic, uncertainty, worry for his newfound friends. Humanize him a little bit for casual viewers who know him as 'that asshole with the roses'. You know how Pokemon loves shots of people reaching out to save someone? Give me that. Let him not reach their hand in time as Deoxys clones pull them away or as they get lost in a swarm of security bots. Give me a Drew that thinks he’s failed, that it’s his fault. It isn’t of course, I just like putting him through it. Then… give me a reunion scene. An “oh my god, you’re all safe, I thought I had lost you” scene. Did you guys know we don’t get a single contestshipping hug????? Ever???? No, her keeping him from drowning doesn’t count. I think that’s a crime and I think a “thank god you’re alive” hug, from either end, would be amazing. Ship mode activated. Imagine. May, spotting him from across the city plaza once the dust settles, and sprinting to him, nearly knocking him over with a hug that he hesitantly returns, before realizing he doesn’t want to let go. Alternately, the other way around: he lets his walls down long enough to hug her, to feel safe to break down for a minute in her arms because he was so fucking worried. May, short-circuiting slightly because wait, is this really the same rival that she accidentally threw a frisbee at and hated so long ago? Give me Sid reacting forlornly in the background too fhdhhf. I love Sid, he’ll be ok. (Also: Brock having a moment of “Oh. You’re still alive. Great.” Kidding, mostly.) also… Brock giving Sid a “yeah, I know how it feels” pat on the back???? Just a concept.

10.) More Roselia teasing him. She's the biggest contestshipper out there. I love this little green rose gal. We need more of her being snarky to her trainer. She had so much personality with so few appearances, I love her. GIVE HIS OTHER POKEMON PERSONALITIES TOO!!!! Give them time to shine! My own takes here, but I like to think Absol is over Drew's bullshit 24/7 and is the serious one of the group. Flygon? no thoughts head empty, like most reptiles. Ft. a picture of my own no thoughts head empty reptile, who made friends with a cricket in his cleaning bowl below under Roselia gif. The others, no idea but there's my takes.

I've been inspired to talk about ducknerva again. People have been reblogging my other post about them and now it's got me thinking about them frfr

Uhhh so I'd like to first start off with I am, and you can fight me on this, the #1 Ducknerva fan and I will support them till the day I die :D

Anyways

So Ducknerva is so special, in my opinion, I think that their relationship is so incredibly strong, stronger than people seem to realize. Like they, I think, are up there next to Lup and Barry, and if you know me (which y'all don't know my Balance opinions LMAO) you will know that I fucking LOVE blupjeans. On my main account, I'm planning on doing this whole big post about them but anyway, I think that Ducknerva and Blupjeans are on such a similar level with how strong they are, with the connection that these characters have. They had so much time to fall in love and they did, but the difference with Ducknerva is they didn't fall in love until a lot later, until Duck had experienced so much and Minerva was there to witness. She has been by his side, supporting him, wanting him to be more than he thought he could be, and refusing to give up on him. Sure, some can say she was really pushy with him, and she was, but she had good in her heart with these actions and for the most part only good seemed to come out of it. Of course some of the consequences of this, the bad of Amnesty, you can't avoid. This world isn't perfect and I think Duck and Minerva know that best. They know this better than most. I think Ned and Mama experienced the hate and the worst parts of the world, Ned even being a part of them at some point, but these two witnessed so much, even if they weren't directly apart. With their visions, with the pressure that they were given, and not just Duck but Minerva too, they were given the world to protect, both Earth and Minerva's world, even though it was destroyed, and had to deal with the idea of it ending if it wasn't for their efforts. And they worked together, building one another up and helping each other out to be better than who they were. We know that Duck wasn't all that enthusiastic with this whole chosen one thing, especially not after seeing friends get hurt and risking his life, I'm sure, but even after all this, Minerva stuck by him, kept training him and hyping him up even if they were worlds apart. She didn't leave him for a moment until she was forced to. They make each other stronger, so much stronger than they ever thought they could be, and definitely stronger than Duck thought he could be, and conquered so much. When seeing her for the first time the words 'It's so fucking good to see you,' said by Duck really just shows not only the amount that he confides in her but also just the relief to finally be able to be in her presence. I think before it all, maybe the following months before shit really went down, Duck had this feeling in his chest but never connected it to love when it came to Minerva. He kept it down, to himself, and when she was gone it kinda hurt not to have this pillar of hope and strength that he always had. So when he saw her for the first time, he just melted into the puddle of love, falling for her. They are both incredible warriors and they strengthen one another, and even after all was said and done, they just kept building one another up, kept making each other stronger and stronger, both emotionally and physically. I can imagine even after everything, Minerva made sure to keep Duck in shape. They made each other happy, they were all each other knew for so long. Like I think in some of Duck's darkest places, Minerva was there in her spiritual form to give him some sort of words of encouragement and while Duck really didn't know what to make of all of this, from some sort of ghost that kept following him around all the time, it was still nice to have those words when it seemed no one else would give them to him.

After they moved to the Amazon, and even before, they kept each other happy, active, and moving towards the goals that they had together. Once they did move though, with Juno by their side as well, I think that Duck had a really hard time with that change at first. He missed Aubrey, someone he saw as a sister, and not only that but he missed his actual sister. He missed Mama and he missed Indrid and he missed Barclay, all of them, he missed his hometown and friends. He wanted to do something more, something different, something bigger to impact the world, even more than he had (which is hard after basically saving the world from destruction), but he still had to deal with what I can imagine being some of the hardest struggles for him, and it's changing. But Minerva was right there by his side, keeping him steady, keeping him ready for everything that the world and this new life had to throw at him. Luckily for him, there was always a way to get back to his home, to see his friends again, and in the near future, there would be much easier ways of communication, even in the national quiet zone.

Anyways, they're just such a strong couple. They love each other and they love doing everything together. I can imagine that leaving each other's sides isn't something they do often, but when they are apart, they reunite as if they were apart for much longer. At least this is how Minerva does it. She's always over the top when it comes to seeing Duck after not seeing him for a lil while.

They love and care about each other so much.

hi! read your last ask and you said that you took up creative writing classes so you might have a wider knowledge about this but i was wondering when u mentioned different writing styles (like minimalistic, hightened imagery, linear vilennete and all of that) could you maybe explain the difference and what they really mean and maybe examples in our own levihan nation and writers? this might be asking for too much but i was pretty lost and i'd like to know more about all that. however you are def free to ignore this too!

Did you just ask me to write a comprehensive poetics essay, Anon? (I love writing about writing lmao)

Super long post ahead, and I’ll be citing certain fanfics that I’ve read so far and those that I think somehow exemplifies all the different writing styles I mentioned in the previous post. 

First off, the ones I listed beforehand (minimalistic prose, heightened imagery, poetic language, linear narrative, non-linear vignettes) aren’t the only types of writing styles. There are more if you consider the variations of tone (humor/comedy, sentimental, macabre, noir etc), narration/perspective (first person, second person, third person omniscient/limited), and language (dialogue-heavy or action/scene-driven). And the nice thing is that you can actually use of one or two of them in your work---or all of them, if you’re feeling bold. 

As Hange always loves to do: “Let’s experiment!”

--------

I’ll start with minimalistic prose. It is what it is: short, clear, and concise. Think less is more. You have an economy with words where you disregard most adverbs and focus more on the context to make way for meaning, thus allowing the readers to create their own interpretations of your writing. I think the method here is to write your intended draft first, and then cut the unnecessary words to flesh out the scene even more.

Notice how @stereobone wrote this paragraph of Black Dog (an Eruri fic):

Isabel's voice wakes him, brother, brother, has him sitting upright in bed and grabbing for the knife under his mattress. He braces himself for the attack before he realizes there isn't one. There is nothing in the darkness but him and his heavy, panicked breathing. Levi's heart feels like it's trying to beat its way out of his chest. He drops the knife on the mattress and shuts his eyes and tries not to think about Farlan's bloody resigned face before he was eaten. He tries not to think about how he left them. How it's his fault.

It’s very simplistic in language; the paragraph lets you focus on Levi’s innermost thoughts while he deals with an external action (ie, having nightmares). The author hasn’t unraveled the rest of the plot yet, but you already know where the tension is coming from.

Next is heightened imagery. If you’re familiar with the different figures of speech (metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole, etc), then this is where they all come into play. I think the challenge here is being able to balance it well with the text itself and make sure that the imagery actually clarifies the context of the paragraph instead of convoluting the intended meaning. 

Here’s an excerpt from A Dangerous Game by just_quintessentially_me:

Hanji watched Levi, standing there, head bent and bloodied handkerchief pressed against his arm, and was reminded, irrationally, of a night years ago. When her parents had taken her to the circus. [. . . .] Holding her parent’s hands, she’d gaped, head craned back as she watched the spectacle, a cacophonous mixture of sound and color. At the center of it all, she’d spied a boy. Among the twisting colors and tricks, he alone, was still. [. . . .] The boy was high above, balancing on a platform atop a long pole. In front of him, stretched an audaciously thin rope. Below, no net waited to catch him.

[. . . .]

When Levi looked up, his expression was set - like the boy before the tightrope. And she knew, with sinking certainty, he was going to take the step. Into thin air.

Gray eyes met her gaze and held it.

“Yeah. I’ll go.”

At the door, Kenny smiled.

See how the powerful imagery of the boy on the tightrope was able to fuel the tension in that moment among Levi, Hange, and Kenny? 

I think poetic language is akin to heightened imagery, except that the former is more focused on the actual language. It’s very lyrical, wherein you can actually hear the lulling song of the sentences in a rhythm. One of my favorite works that does this is Deep sea baby by @smallblip. Here she makes use of various setting and scenery to create this entire atmosphere of Levi and Hange’s relationship:

Hanji knows whatever life they've led, this is her favourite.

The one in which her and Levi see the sea for the first time together.

The one in which she’s the Commander, and him, her Captain. And between them, a river of words left unsaid threatening to break the banks.

One day they must cross the ocean, but today they visit the shores again, without the kids this time. And Levi learns why when he watches her peel at her clothes. Her harness comes off first, then her blouse, then everything else, like a little dance for an audience of one. Levi tries not to stare, but he’s already seen her by candlelight in the dead of the night. And yet she never fails to take his breath away.

She makes her way to where the white foams dredge the past up the shores of the present.

"Come on Levi! The water is warm!" she says, and he hears it like a call to come home- where the heavens collide with the sea.

He takes off his clothes and folds them in a neat pile beside Hanji's mess. He swims out to join her.

It’s hauntingly poetic, the way the author is able to connect the metaphor in “a river of words” to the actual body of water right in front of Levi and Hange. Good poetic language is able to tighten up the texts together while keeping the sentence structure flowing with apt figures of speech.

When it comes to narratives, it only comes down to linear or non-linear. See how @lostcauses-noregrets does her opening statement in Trains (also an Eruri fic):

Levi hates trains. To be fair, Levi hates all forms of public transport, but he reserves a particular loathing for trains. They’re dirty, noisy, smelly and worse, filled with people. People who, heaven forbid, might attempt to speak to Levi, engage him in conversation. Levi’s worst nightmare is being stuck on a train with some friendly fuck who wants to pass the time making small talk. Admittedly it’s not a problem he has to deal with too often, his general fuck off demeanour deters all but the most aggressively friendly and hopelessly inebriated. But that doesn’t stop Levi from hating trains.

It’s a short fic and it’s very dependent on the linearity of events happening. But with that banger of a first sentence, the beginning already gives you enough of an idea of Levi’s pet peeve in the story, which in this case, is trains.

Here’s another hot and steamy fic called keep him waiting by keobuns that shows a linear narrative: 

He’s sitting with them in the back of the lab, nursing a cup of tea — it’s still pretty full, and even cold now, for he was far too distracted listening to Hanji talk to properly drink — when he sees it. Hanji’s too preoccupied with overexplaining the same Titan experiment they’ve gone over a hundred times to notice his stare. They just continue on and on and on, gesturing with their hands, pointing with their fingers, flexing their wrists…

Ah. Levi has to bring his teacup to his lips to hide the way his lips tremble. Hanji has incredibly nice hands.

The entire story just revolves around Levi simping for Hange’s hands and how it all goes down from there. But you as a reader are kept wanting more with every paragraph and every sentence that the author constructs (and trust me, it’s not just the sexual tension between Levi and Hange that keeps us going).

Now, as much as I love the straightforwardness of linear prose, non-linear writing brings a different round of ideas onto the table. It can create recollections from flashbacks, heighten the perspective or interior turmoil of a character due to trauma or grief, or even just re-invent what-if scenes that the characters have imagined themselves. 

Gnossiene by @thatalmondgirl​ is one of my all-time favorite Rivetra fics. In this excerpt, you will see how she switches between the past and the present, and how it affects Petra’s POV as a conflicted character:

Contrary to popular belief (fuck Auruo) Petra actually didn’t cry easily.

Alright, she could admit that at some times, she was...emotional. It was far from a weakness, but even she could admit that they sometimes got in the way and walled off all rational thought. Anger, frustration, sadness, hell, even happiness. The only one she could easily compartmentalise away was fear, which probably stemmed from her military career. Even so. It was never easy to separate all the others from her actions, think from a clean slate like the Commander could do, like the captain. [. . . ] Petra groaned, splayed out across her bed. She drew her arm across her eyes, willing the tears to go away. She’d already blown through her tissue box.

“Petra, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Mama sat on the end of her bed, with Petra on the floor between her legs. Even though Petra argued firmly that she was old enough to brush her own hair, Mama had insisted. Unfortunately, Petra wasn’t old enough - and probably never would be - to disagree with her mother.

“I know, Mama.” Petra grumbled.

“I don’t think you do. Else you wouldn’t be crying, would you?”

[. . . .]

“But a man shouldn’t complete you when you complete yourself. Maybe he’s an extension to your house. So you’ll be sad if the extension is compromised or burns down. But you still have the main house. And if it’s strong, the main house can still be standing even after the worst storm.”

Aside from Mama’s crazy metaphors that sometimes didn’t make sense, her message hit home. Even if it hit home years later.

See how it switched in between the before and after? 

An off-shoot of non-linear writing are vignettes (a layering of scenes separated by section breaks) wherein this writing style allows writers to curate scenes in terms of fragments, creating some kind of mosaic for the readers once they finally see the big picture. Nakimochiku’s I’m leaving, are you coming with me? stacks up scenes of interactions between Levi and Hange, enough to depict the kind of relationship that they have as young lovers in a school setting. You can string these fragments together, rearrange them in a different order, but in the end, you will still get the author's clear goal of highlighting how Levi and Hange’s relationship develops over time.

Those are the styles that I mentioned in my previous posts, but as I’ve told you, there’s more to writing than those, so I’ll give a short run-through of other methods in writing. 

Whether it’s dialogue-heavy works such as from my window to yours, or action-driven scenes like Carnivores (a Levi x Reader fic by CaptainDegenerate) that propel the story forward, we as readers should be able to follow through the actual storyline that the authors intend to take us. 

A third-person limited (we listen to Hange’s thoughts in Clockwork by @tundrainafrica) vis-à-vis an all-knowing/omniscient narration (the moon is dark by @sayonarasanity alternates the perspective of Levi and Hange) should be able to make us understand why the author chose this particular kind of point-of-view in order to tell the story. 

And lastly, having a solid and consistent tone throughout the work (the macabre of Even Humanity’s Strongest could make mistakes by Rimeko versus the sweet sentimentality of Flowers for You by @fanmoose12) should be able to set the atmosphere that the authors want us to imbibe as we read through their works. 

So there’s your crash course on writing and reading. Enjoy? :) 

The Circle US Season 3: Alliances Run Deep

Category: Reality TV, Competition

Overall Rating: 5/10

Synopsis:

The Circle is back with new faces (real or otherwise)!! Watch these lovable (debatable) characters compete for $100k by building relationships, forming alliances and taking each other down all while being locked in their apartment. From an MIT techie to a 52 year old southern belle, this group of Circle contestants really know how to bring the heat in competition.

[SPOILERS FROM SEASON 3 AHEAD]

Review:

WOO This is a long one! I needed some time to get my thoughts in order, and as you can tell by my rating, I have very mixed feelings about this season. First impressions are always important, especially in this literal popularity contest. It was really easy to pick out who I liked and disliked from the start, much more so than the previous two seasons. Kai, Ruksana, and Michelle were my top 3 hopefuls from the first batch of players. They are genuine souls who really wanted nothing other than to be themselves in the game. The one player that left the worst impression on me from Day 1 was Nick... I know. People are going to be mad at me for that. Nick is probably the most popular player this season among fans, but I have my reasons.

To start off, he was a computer science major from MIT. Before everyone gets mad at me for pointing that out first, I also graduated college majoring in computer science. My experience with men who are computer science majors is not great. Many I worked with (not all of course) came off as arrogant and look down at people who might not get the concepts as fast as they do. I also was a fan of Shubham who didn't need to hide the fact that he's a tech nerd. There are exceptions to what I experienced, but Nick's introduction fit that description to the T. He does a good job at hiding that level of arrogance in the Circle, but that doesn't make me want to root for him. I also wasn't a fan of his hyper fixation on the girls in the game. First there was Ashley, then Ava, then Isabella, and even when Jacki came in he was thirsting so hard.

I could go on about how I don't like Nick, but that doesn't mean I don't respect his game. He did well to focus on his strong bonds and he definitely deserved to be in the top 5 because of that. He solidified a strong alliance and kept close tabs on strong players he wasn't as close to. That being said, it's the same for my girl Kai. Nick and Kai were two sides of the same coin this season. Both had strong alliances and overall great relationships with the other players. Their overwhelming popularity ended up costing them in the final rankings, as Nick and Kai ranked 5th and 4th respectively.

Before we get into the Top 3, I should probably talk about how the events led up to the dramatic finale. This season really knew how to piss me off by doing Michelle dirty like that. Granted it was Ava and Chanel who chose to be Michelle, but you can't blame them either since it was their only way to stay in the game. Unfortunately, I did find Ava and Chanel kind of annoying, so insult to injury when the real Michelle got blocked. There had been a lot of criticism against Michelle for choosing to go see the fake Michelle, but how would seeing anyone else benefit her? She lost and just wanted answers. The viewers want things to be interesting, but she just wanted to leave knowing who was behind fake Michelle. I know if I was in her position I would want to do the same thing.

Ava and Chanel didn't make it far after Michelle, just as she predicted. Honestly, they weren't all that interesting aside from the whole Michelle situation anyway. It makes sense for them to be the ones out fast. The surprising player to me was Calvin. He didn't give me a good first impression. He gave me a similar vibe as Nick, but the difference between him and Nick is that Calvin wasn't as strategic as Nick. As his relationship with Kai grew, we really see how vulnerable he really let himself be at this point in the game. He took more things to heart than a lot of people in the game, but he stayed loyal to the ones he kept close. Yes he had strategy, but all he really wanted was to make it far with his friends. I was disappointed that he chose Nick for the burner profile but I was more upset that he was gone so soon.

Calvin was the one link between the alliances with Nick and with Kai. With him gone, the divide was clear as day. Nick, Ashley (Matthew), Isabella (Sophia), and Jackson (Rachel) against Kai, Ruksana, Daniel and James. The next blocking would be one that no one is happy with. Jackson/Rachel getting blocked made the most sense to me. Even with James having less time with the other players, Rachel couldn't really solidify her bond with the others, and the most crucial player she needed was Daniel. Ruksana getting blocked also made sense (much to my dismay...). Nick's biggest threat is Kai, but if he got rid of Kai, Ruksana can raise hell in the Circle. His alliance is unified against Ruksana but only because of Kai. If Kai went out this time around, Ashley and Isabella could potentially be swayed towards Ruksana. The double blocking kept the alliances balanced, but introducing Jacki tipped the balances.

Jacki had the biggest disadvantage being the last person in the game. Being new was the only thing keeping her from getting blocked as soon as she moved in. The only real advantage of keeping Jacki strategically is that she is malleable. James was the first one to get a good impression on Jacki, so even if she wasn't exempt, I'm pretty sure James would've saved her. It's easy to criticize James for not fighting for Daniel since the alliances were so clear, but in the end he did have a deeper connection with Ashley/Matthew. Daniel's choice to visit Isabella/Sophia was an interesting choice. If the pattern was gonna be the same I would've assumed he would've went to James and demanded answers, but because of the attention towards Isabella being a catfish, who could blame him for wanting to find out? Their meeting ended up being really wholesome anyway. They were on opposing sides, but in the end it's every player for themselves. He got along with Sophia when they actually met and he chose to give her support (and tea).

After that blocking, Jacki's blocking doesn't seem worth mentioning because it's so obvious with James and Nick as the secret influencers and the fact that she had so little time, so let's talk about the top 5! I was honestly worried about Nick winning the whole thing until everyone gave their thoughts in the final rating. In the end, everyone's ratings were strategic because I was surprised to see Kai and Nick rated the absolute lowest out of the 5. By the final ratings, I was honestly hoping Ashley/Matthew would win. Don't get me wrong! I was still hoping that Kai would win, but the way that everyone was talking......... That win for Kai was gone.

Now the most controversial part of the season: James won. Throughout his time in the Circle, he was the funny one, the one with no filter, and he genuinely left a great first impression on the other players (through to the end). However, him giving up Daniel and Jacki brought him a lot of hate from viewers, and initially I felt the same. Does him winning piss me off? No. It makes sense. I'd like to think this is my Libra moon coming out because I can understand why he made those decisions and why the other players would rate James so high. Literally, Isabella/Sophia is the only one I would imagine rating James low due to the persistent catfish suspicion and the betrayal for Daniel. Kai, Nick, and Ashley/Matthew all had positive experiences with James.

I do give this season a 5 though because it's not as wholesome as Season 1 nor is it as dramatic as Season 2. James winning was a disappointing one to many. He folded to Nick so fast and that angered a lot of viewers. It definitely wasn't what I hoped for considering I was rooting for Kai and Matthew at this point, but at the same time, I was really just hoping that Nick didn't win because of my own bias against him. Because of that, I'm fine with the end result. I wasn't excited about his win like I was about Joey in Season 1 or Deleesa in Season 2. You could feel how much love the other contestants had for the winners for their respective seasons, but with James it felt more obligatory from the others. This may be because he wasn't there in the beginning. Players like Michelle and sisters Ava and Chanel didn't even know him since they were eliminated before he came in. The season may have been too polarizing in the sense that the eliminations became predictable and disappointing. The only really satisfying thing to me was seeing Nick disappointed in the finale. Again, my bias against him is speaking here, but I could not help but laugh my ass off when he saw Sophia.

To sum it all up, it was very easy to pick favorites at the start, but once Calvin left, it gets muddy from there. I still have strong opinions about certain players, but they all played a strategic game. If you say even one person wasn't strategic (with the exception of Michelle) you are lying!!!! The players that made it to the end had very understandable reasons for playing the way that they did, but doing that doesn't make everyone happy. The finale kind of proved that. In no way did I feel as excited for James to win as I did Deleesa or Joey. Honestly, the only person I would be excited for in that top 5 would be Kai. I did however find it sweet that James could finally propose to his girlfriend of 12 years. I'm not mad at how things ended, but it's definitely not my favorite.

Failing | Yoongi Imagine

I was listening to the song "I Wanna Know" by The Hunna and was instantly inspired to write this AU. It's such a bop, I encourage you all to listen!

Preview: You've been feeling neglected, and you're ready to give up. But, Yoongi doesn't give up easily.

Genre: Mafia/gang AU, some angst and fluff

Warnings: Nothing much, mentions of violence/drugs

****

You were fully aware things had not been going well the last 6 months. The gang had lost some valuable hideouts to rivals, a couple members defected, and some profit loss. When things aren't going the way Yoongi wanted them to, everyone around him paid the price. You couldn't remember how many people you've watched him verbally degrade and physically slap around.

You were lucky enough to have the prestigious position of being his girl, so he didn't do anything that drastic to you. It was more like...emotional warfare. He came to bed late, left early, and probably had only spoken two or three sentences to you recently. And they weren't exactly warm and fuzzy.

You didn't require much affection. You knew getting into this lifestyle you weren't going to get a boyfriend who brought you home roses and took you to nice restaurants. Those things didn't matter to you anyway. The only thing that did was him.

It was Friday evening at about 10pm when there was a light knock on your door.

"Come in?" You said hesitantly, confused who would be knocking on the door.

"Hey." Hoseok's voice rang out as he slid the door open.

"Oh, hey." You half smiled; it was really the best you had to give anyone these days.

"I hadn't seen you in a few days, I got nervous." He admitted sheepishly, standing in the door way.

"Yeah, I haven't wanted to be around anyone. Is Yoongi around?" You asked cautiously, though you knew the answer.

"He left around 7pm, saying he had to take care of something. Just took a couple guys and one of the cars." Hoseok shrugged, looking as defeated as you felt. He sighed, sitting on the edge of the bed next to you.

"Don't take it personally. I haven't seen him for more than five minutes in the 6 months." You replied.

"Wow, really?" Hoseok looked shocked. "I always figured you were his weak spot."

"I used to be, but I don't know whats happening. He doesn't speak to me, hell he doesn't even look at me if he sees me around the compound." You spat, clearly feeling the emotions you'd been shoving down rising up.

"You've never called it a compound before." Hoseok pointed out. Fine, technically it was a mansion. But it was the main base for the gang, as well as where you resided with Yoongi.

"I can't call it home. He's what makes it home. And he's not really here." You said. "I can't take it anymore."

If you were a crier you'd probably be crying, but this life had hardened you.

"I think I'm going to leave." You finally said.

"That's crazy, Y/N." Hoseok retorted, practically choking on his saliva.

"Is it? Would he even notice?" You replied, looking at him.

"Of course he would. And how would you even get out with all the guards? And where would you go?" Hoseok looked slightly panicked.

"Pretend you didn't talk to me tonight. You can't be liable for knowing information about me if I'm successful." You stated, standing up. "Just go."

Hoseok stood up with you, and stared at you hard for a few moments. "Don't do this to him."

"He's fine." You crossed your arms tightly.

"We both know he wouldn't be...It's just a phase." He tried to defend his best friend and boss.

"6 months isn't a phase! I was patient. The first few months, I figured he'd snap out of it. But it's been half a year. How much of my life am I supposed to spend being ignored by the man I love?" You asked softly, avoiding Hoseok's gaze.

Without another word, he nodded slightly and left your room. He couldn't bare the idea of saying goodbye and he was hoping you would calm down and change your mind.

You felt a moment of bravery after finally getting your feelings off your chest. You grabbed a bag out of the closet and starting shoving clothes into it. You couldn't think clearly on what you needed. You looked around the room frantically, trying to figure out what to take. Your head was so foggy with sadness and fear that you couldn't collect yourself enough to form a plan.

The door crashing open caused you to jump and drop the bag, spinning to face the bedroom door.

"Y/N." Yoongi said flatly, looking down at the bag.

You swallowed hard and couldn't find words to spit out. What were you going to say? You were caught red handed.

His eyes never left the bag.

"What are you doing?" He asked, low and stern. Still not meeting your eyes.

You started to stutter out an answer but he cut you off.

"You...were going to leave me?" His eyes snapped up to meet yours. He tilted his head to the side, and waited for an answer, no emotions on his face.

"Yes." You answered, regaining your composure. You straightened your shoulders and stared him down confidently. Now wasn't the time to come off weak.

To your surprise, he chuckled lightly. You watched him carefully.

He grabbed the picture frame off the table next to the door and threw it, the sound of the glass shattering made you jump.

"Yoongi..." You warned, trailing off.

"It's been almost three years, and you're going to leave over a rough patch?!" He shouted, and you were sure the whole compound could hear him.

"A rough patch!?" You yelled back, your fiery spirit matching his. "It's been 6 months! How long did you expect me to deal with this shit?"

"Deal with what?! You live comfortably. You don't have to work. You have more money then most people ever see in their life." He explained, exasperated, fists balled up at his sides.

"Well, I don't care about any of those things! All I wanted was you to love me!" You screamed at him.

He span around and punched the wall behind him. You heard a crack, presumably his knuckles, but he didn't falter. He leaned his forehead against the wall and punched it one more time. When he retracted it you could see the blood dripping down his fingers.

"All of this...because you think I don't love you?" He whispered. He turned around and there were tears in his eyes. You had never seen Yoongi cry. You don't think anyone had.

You swallowed all the mean things you had to spit out the moment you saw tears dripping down his cheeks.

"Why do you think I've been so absent? It's because I was failing, Y/N. I was failing you and everyone that relies on me. How could I face you when everything I promised could've been lost? I put my head down and went to work to preserve our future. I'm sorry that that was uncomfortable for you, even though I was the one risking my life day in and day out so some day I would be able to look you in the eye again!" He shouted, stepping towards you, grabbing your face with his hands. "Those were all things out of love for you, whether you're strong enough to acknowledge it or not." He growled, his face inches from yours.

You breathed out, locking eyes with him. "You could've included me! I would've been there for you." You exclaimed, wrapping your hands around his wrists and pulling them off your cheeks.

"I had to do a lot of dangerous things. You think I was going to put you in harms way just so you could feel needed?" He spat. "That's immature thinking. I did what I did to protect you. And if you hate me for that, that's fine. At least I know I kept you safe." He sighed in defeat, his tear stained face making your breath catch in your throat.

Everything about you wanted to be angry and stand your ground...

You opened your mouth to speak, but he beat you to it.

"Do you know what I'd have to do if I ever lost you?" He asked, stepping towards you once more, but keeping his hands to himself.

You hesitated before speaking. "...tell me."

He reached for your hand and took it in both hands.

"I'd have to destroy everything that reminded me of you. I'd burn this place down." He looked up at you, the connection you two had always had making itself known with a gravitational pull you couldn't resist. You took your free hand and grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him to you, crashing your lips together. He immediately responded, grabbing your face and deepening the kiss. Every emotion you felt in the last half of a year poured into the kiss. It was rough, needy, passionate. He pulled away and inhaled.

"Yoongi. You need to either live life with me by your side, or spend the rest of your life wondering where I am. I'm not asking you to drag me into every fight and drug deal. But you made me strong. You toughened me up. So embrace it, and let me be with you." You explained, hoping your words didn't fall on deaf ears.

He stared deeply in your eyes, before exhaling slowly.

"Fine." He agreed stubbornly. "You don't get to leave, then." He huffed, crossing his arms. You giggled, you knew you are the only one who ever saw him with his guard down.

He reached out a hand to you, and you obliged, giving him your hand. As soon as he did, he pulled you towards him and wrapped one arm around your waist, and the other hand resting on the back of your head.

"How did you know I was packing?" You asked into his chest.

"Hoseok is my best friend, not yours." His chest rumbled with a chuckle.

"Damn it."

First of all I'd like to start by saying sorry if my grammar or spelling goes to s*** . It probably means my hands were shaking from all the tears rn . I thought I would ask you this before I forgot .... I'm not the best at asking things but how come we can be so passionate to bands or people we have never met (mostly MFS) can you try to give me a little bit of an explanation please

Hello 😊

Sorry for taking so long to reply. I was on holiday and had been taking a break from Tumblr that whole time. Sorry again.

Hmm …. I would say that us passionately liking people beyond our reach such as celebrities, is all down to science. It’s human psychology.

1. You program your own brain

Don’t quote me on this but I read somewhere that if a person occupies 45% of your mind/time per day, you will develop a tendency to fall in love with that person 😍. Something like that 😁. You’ll need to read proper psychology books to understand this though. So, imagine the effect it has on our brains when we listen to a band everyday and watch their MVs or looking at their photos on a daily basis 🤔.

I don’t have band photos as my phone wallpaper or lock screen BUT I am sure the majority of my readers do. With our phones being the centre of our daily lives nowadays, imagine how many times that you look at those images of those band members every day!

2. Sensory pleasure

Humans are naturally stimulated by what is deemed pleasing by our senses. What we see, hear, touch, taste. With musicians, we get turned on by their music and when they also have the looks that we aesthetically find pleasing, the attraction gets doubled. I won’t underestimate the power of a pretty face or a hot body on our attraction towards a person (*1). Then when these musicians also do or say things we are pleased by, that attraction is magnetized even stronger (*2).

*1. I fell head over heel over Teruki Nishizawa after going to my 1st MFS concert. It wasn’t even my intention to be near him BUT he was 90% of my view from my standing position that night. He was all I thought about 24/7 for the following 2 weeks or maybe a month. Amazing considering he was the MFS member who excited me the least in their 1.0 phase. Also, the fact that he had grown out of his rather annoying childish phase and blossomed into a man now is a big plus point to me 😊.

*2. SWANKY DANK’s Matsuo brothers are good-looking men. That’s an established fact for years but YUICHI Matsuo single-handedly stole my heart away from his brother KOJI simply for being super nice to me the night I went to SWANKY DANK’s show on my birthday in 2016. To these days, YUICHI remains the one I message to the most online and the one I think of first each time the band faces a hurdle in their path 😊.

3. Searching for that kindred spirit

It’s human nature to look for a companion with similar interest or someone who can emphatize with us. With musicians, fans often find that connection in the lyrics they write. For me personally, as I get older, lyrics interest me less and less as I see each person’s life as being unique to that person. Those lyrics are the artist’s own story. Not mine. Nobody else can write my life story. If you have a strong core within you, there would be no need for you to find solace in song lyrics.

4. Not having a fulfilling life of your own

We all have issues in our life and for a lot of us, music and fandoms are our escape. The more we immerse ourselves in the escapism, the more we feel that we can alleviate those issues, albeit temporarily. I see a lot of fans like this online. Behind a fan account, there is the possibility of a depressed person running it.

Some fans let the escapism take over their lives and end up not being able to separate fantasy from reality 😕

i. No, your ships aren’t real no matter how much you want that singer and guitarist to marry each other.

ii. No, combining two band members’ names together in every hashtag, GIF, artwork and multiple fan accounts don’t magically turn the real persons into a couple.

iii. No, you have no reason to be mad when other fans call you out for being “fake” ….. (*insert a rock star name here) … because you really ARE “faking” being someone else with that “roleplayer” account.

Work on your issues first, find your inner happiness and you’ll find that music or any form of art is nothing more than what it is. A piece of art that you appreciate but it’s not your life and death 😊.

Channel that passion towards supporting the artists

By that, I mean buy their music and official releases even little by little. That’s the biggest gift you can give to them and in the long run, yourself when 20 years down the road, you look back at your collection and see it as the treasure from your yesteryears 😉.

What I want to hear more than anything is any and all of your thoughts involving Kushinada? Because I LIVE of them I need all of your ramblings about her and every AU she is currently apart of. You could type out thousands of words and I'd still want more.

since you did write about that hot fenrir X kushinada stuff in your latest fic (which was the most adorable thing btw omg) i figured i might provide a few scenarios for that (a few meaning 1000+ words of cute stuff oops! never mind it’s 2000+ hahaha fuck)

high school au

i know i said it in the dating sim route for fenrir but him giving his leather jacket to kushinada when they go out and it’s cold??? that’s one of my fav tropes omg

also kushinada accidentally comparing fenrir to a loyal dog when talking to aphro and light hel and him overhearing that and being all embarrassed about it bc he can’t deny that he’s literally a dog in human form

he has a very strong sense of smell, always noticing all the flower perfumes that kushinada wears and he always compliments her about how nice she smells even when she’s come back from her garden (he likes the smells of nature hehe)

also he’s very protective of her and gives people the nastiest stares if they say anything remotely negative about her. when kushinada opens up about having an unrequited crush on cu chu and her past with relationship with susano she has to drag away fenrir and get him to promise not to fight those two on sight

also it’s a lil nsfw but i think he’s totally into leaving hickeys around the place so when kushinada shows up at school on a super hot day with a scarf aphro is like “so things must be moving nicely between you and fenrir huh?” and kushinada is just a blushing mess and silently nods

oh, and him just resting his head on kushinada’s when she’s gardening and wrapping his arms around her UwU

so when they start dating i really like the idea of fenrir learning how to grow stuff with kushinada (and him actually having a decent green thumb after learning the basics)

also i couldn’t get the idea out of my idea about fenrir trying to grow kushinada roses/or forget-me-nots/camellias(they all mean love apparently?? that’s cute n sappy hehe) and trying to keep it a secret from her

so while he’s checking some plants during club time, fenrir just snatches a seed packet from her collection and takes her gardening equipment and other materials when he needs them

bc he’s just a beginner he fails pretty badly and goes around asking for help from tyr (as he’s been talking about kushinada w/ tyr who serves as a sorta personal confidant and a father figure who is more stern w/ fenrir than loki). tyr’s all for this as that’s how he wooed ullr over on their first date (and promptly got laid as well) so they both read a few gardening books and search the internet for info…

…unfortunately tyr’s pretty shit w/ gardening as well so they ask chiron for help and, although he’s got the knowledge, it somehow doesn’t work out either…

…so they ask for inari’s help which who suggests that they just hire a professional gardener or just buy some really expensive and rare flowers for her(which they’ll pay for; inari is all for fenrir trying to be romantic and trying to cater to kushinada’s interestseven if it doesn’t turn out)

fenrir eventually decides to come clean and presents her with what he’s got and kushinada kisses him for all his effort UwU. she really appreciates the effort even if she was aware that he was stealing from her the entire time (she’s gotta keep a tight budget with the club, the school only gives her a certain amount of money to run the place and it’s she may be forgetful at times but her equipment disappearing every time fenrir was around was a lil convenient)

also if we’re going full cheese then i want fenrir to confess his love to kushinada all anime-style w/ cherry blossoms and everything :’^)))))) like kushinada would be the first to say that she loves him but it’s really hard for him to say, like he’ll just say “i do too” and avoid saying “i love you”

also just in general they’d probs both like going out to parks, botanical garden or go hiking and have peaceful walks when kushinada points out all the plants while fenrir listens, he likes hearing her ramble on bc it’s cute seeing her so excited about something

so they’re at some botanical garden place and kushinada is really excited and basically dragging fenrir by the arm to point out all the different flower types but all he can think about is how much she’s changed him for the better, how he doesn’t deserve her at all. he’s just smitten with her, with how adorable she is when she’s ranting, even if he’s heard all the information before - he just wants to listen to her beautiful voice. and, wow, she looks so stunning amongst the blooming flowers and he thinks, no, he knows he’s in love with her and how he wants to marry her and that sorta mushy stuff hehe

kushinada snaps him out of his thoughts by asking if she’s boring him with her explanations and then he just blurts out that he loves her and it’s just silence between the two for a moment before kushinada, as the sappy bitch she is, starts crying tears of joy and leaps into his arms :’))))))) (yes i’m the world’s softest bitch, what about it)

mafia au

fenrir stumbles into kushinada’s bakery after a street fight with a rival gang, all bloody and bruised and telling her to not touch him before promptly passing out. kushinada tends to his injuries while he’s out and drags him into her beroom falling asleep beside the bed bc she was so exhausted from work + this incident

fenrir wakes up with a nasty headache, only made worse by him not knowing where he is - he’s still alive, probably due to the beautiful japanese woman uncomfortably lying on the side of the bed with bandages in her hands. he knows he could snap her neck with ease, but something in the back of his mind tells him not to - tyr’s words and actions ring in his ears

also on a side note i’m imagining that fenrir has a rough childhood bc of loki being involved in shady gang operations and that fenrir was preened by him to succeed him but fenrir was betrayed by the norse gang and left to get caught by the cops during a major heist. i imagine that tyr, a cop (duh), went onto the scene and tried to communicate with a scared and furious fenrir. fenrir probably lashed out at him, scarring tyr’s arm (and then it later being infected or something? i’m not here for arm severing lmao) and then breaking down in his arms while tyr comforted him.

fenrir spent some time in prison after that and got out due to tyr lobbying for him and he’s trying to separate himself from his family and old ties to his gang although it obviously catches up with him here :^)

the attack was probably bc in the past fenrir was an asshole and very cocky, brash and abusive to others and he made a lot of enemies bc he thought we was untouchable as one of the norse gang members with really high connections bc of his father

anyways fenrir explores the small apartment before hearing the ring of the bell downstairs (i imagine the bakery to underneath a small apartment like this). he walks to check that out, hiding on the stairs just in case the gang members have found where he ended up

fortunately (or rather, unfortunately) for him it’s not the gang members - it’s inari, wanting to get a pastry and tea from her favourite bakery. when they can’t see kushinada or smell anything being made that’s when they decide to check on her

fenrir makes a mad dash for kushinada’s room, pretending to sleep once again while kushinada is in the shower. she gets out and greets inari, trying to nicely introduce the topic of the strange and ruggedly handsome man resting in her room (it just hit me that this is essentially just that scene from tangled but inari isn’t an evil hag lmao)

inari is really annoyed - they don’t want kushinada to get further involved with any more gang acitivity than she already is and they know about fenrir’s past and what he’s done. they fight for a bit before inari relents, knowing that coddling kushinada and treating her like a defenceless child isn’t going to help her out any.

fenrir is shitting himself - he never expected to get so close to the elusive and destructive inari and it doesn’t help that inari ends the conversation with “if he does anything to hurt you i’ll make sure to put that mangy mutt down and make him regret ever stepping out of prison” before asking kushinada to have a cup of tea with her

after they’re done, kushinada comes up while fenrir pretends to wake up for the first time. she checks on his injuries and she asks about what happened to him but he shuts her down before she has to chance to speak and tries to leave - of course, in his injured state he just makes things worse and falls over. kushinada scolds him for trying to move in this state, and says that even if he won’t co-operate that she’s still going look after him just to prove inari that she can handle looking after herself when dealing with the mafia business.

she leaves for a bit and brings a breakfast tray for him. he wolves it down, reluctantly saying thanks and apologising for his manners - kushinada finds him kinda cute when he’s all blushing and red (although she won’t admit it). she tries to more subtly ask what happened to make him so ravenous but he brushes her off again. fenrir asks for some coffee instead of the tea she’s brought and she makes sure that he uses his manners this time.

she goes down again, leaving fenrir to his own devices. he eventually walks around the apartment for a bit, taking special notice of all the greenery around the place. she pops up behind him while he’s admiring some lillies. he asks how she gets the plants to look so nice - she says that you can gorw anything as long as the conditions are right

then their usual routine sets in - kushinada will get up before him and they’ll eat meals with each other while she runs the bakery downstairs, popping up whenever she has the time to see him.

when he can walk without major discomfort again then kushinada gets him to man the counter and when his arm heals she starts teaching him about how to bake to tend to her plants - he’s not half bad at either activity and when he’s polished his skills enough he makes breakfast for her UwU

of course y’all can imagine as many fluff moments as possible while they fall in love and that cute stuff like

fenrir talking about his tats and what they mean

talking about his past, maybe a lil bit of angst and comfort bc i’m a sucker for emotion support scenes

cute baking moments, fenrir licking the spoon and kushinada getting on his case about that

i’m sure you can think of a few dramatic situations to progress the plot but i’m just here for fluff hehe

or maybe something about fenrir running into some old gang members and them giving him shit about losing his edge and how pathetic he looks manning the bakery - he’s barely keeping himself together but he does for his and kushinada’s relationship together but he snaps when one of the group starts talking about kushinada and threatening to attack her to coax the old fenrir out. it probs gets into a bad back alley sprawl with the gang needing a large ambulance as a result of his anger (i like to imagine that inari was watching around the corner ready to back him up and they’re like “good job kid”)

and maybe fenrir’s family comes to see him?? at the very least i want light hel to work for kushinada at the bakery bc i want Dramatic™ family reunions yo and she’d fit the role p well

Hey!! As much as I'd enjoy the idea I doubt I'm worth that much to you, but I'd love to hear about the characters you've created and if they are based upon anyone you know or knew for the ideals behind them. Hope you get this soon I'm interested in your stories.

Well first of all bless you, and second you are already worth that much to me because you took the time out of your day to send me a message!  Seriously, thank you.  I am a lonely garbage can.  And third, yes, some of my characters are loosely based on people, but most are just based on traits I relate to and/or admire.

I’m going to put the rest of this answer under a read more; if you choose to read it, buckle up, ‘cause there’s a huge fucking wall of text below.

It all started with a homebrew one shot my friend Cait was running in the winter of 2013.  I had never played a tabletop RPG before (I’ll still say tabletop even though she was running it online), but I had always been interested in her worldbuilding and characters; it was a frequent topic of discussion for us.  Plus, I trusted her pretty much explicitly with my sensitivities, so even though I was anxious, I agreed to join up.  The campaign didn't start for a few months after, so I spent plenty of time asking Cait as much as I could (without spoilers) about her world.  After all, I was (and still am) a person who completely overthinks every little detail of something I’m into (yay special interest fixation).

Just some background on the setting; there are two groups of people in this world, magi and non magi.  Magi were heavily persecuted (like at the threat of death) for hundreds of years, but not so openly in present time (although this can depend on region).  The Havens is a city built almost exclusively by mages, for mages.  It was a fortress that provided sanctuary to mages during wars long passed, and in more peaceful times turned into one of the largest universities of the arcane in the Uplands.  There are other countries/continents other than the Uplands, but those have not been planned out at this time (to my knowledge).  Anything else world related I should be able to answer as we go along in the rest of this text (or if you send me another ask; though we’ll see if you want to after this lmao).

Saoirse was a real diamond in the rough for a while.  I knew my babe was in that mess of ideas somewhere, but it took a bit to figure it out.  I decided on a name first (I had been aching to use the name Saoirse), and I drew quite a few pictures of her before I settled on a design, but even that changed over time as I grew accustomed to drawing literally anyone else besides other white people.  I had educated myself and knew what nasty tropes to stay away from and made her a person.  She's a confident, powerful, mentor figure, and her exuberance for life and love of her family has gained the adoration of colleagues and friends alike.  She has her faults; she tends to overextend herself trying to help people or gets caught up in her work; but it all stems from a place of great compassion; she is dedicated to making the world a sweeter place.  To be honest, somewhere along the way Saoirse turned into everything I want and hope to be.  She has a family and friends who she is close to and love her dearly.  She never has to hide her feelings or work to earn their love.  She just has it.  Saoirse is a child of love in its purest form.  And she brightens up my life every day.

Brennya started out as one of Cait's NPCs, but a relationship grew between her and Saoirse after the events of the one shot.  Cait and I aren't always in contact due to life issues and school and work, but she let me keep writing interactions between Brennya and my other characters regardless (thank you).  Also, while it is a side note, have I ever mentioned that Cait’s absolutely brilliant?  She double majored in English and Geology and then got accepted into grad school right after that.  I love her.  So even though I can't (and wouldn't out of respect) claim Brennya is purely my character, I was allowed to continue writing for her.  And the way I write Brennya is honestly pretty personal.  Brennya is closer to the person I am currently... and have been in the past.  Brennya is loved now too, but Brennya was not born into love.  Love was conditional, a commodity contingent on success; personal worth built on actions and achievements, not being.  She grew to be a successful scholar nonetheless, but success rings hollow when you have no one to share it with.  She can be deeply cynical of the intentions of other people and readily manipulative of others (getting what she can from them before they have the chance to do the same to her).  She expects deceit and is truly thrown off guard when confronted with an honest person (like Saoirse).  She wants things like family and connection and truth, but has a hard time believing they exist for a person like her.  So she pretends that she is impervious to those feelings; that wanting those things is trivial in the span of existence; until she can no longer deny it.  When she meets Saoirse, it's not easy at first.  Being truly cherished at no expense of your own is difficult to understand for someone like Brennya (and for someone like me), but it is a truly beautiful thing if you can accept it.  Meeting Saoirse’s family is overwhelming for her at first too; they are an intense bunch; but they accept her almost immediately, simply because she makes their daughter happy.  Brennya acclimates eventually.  

Personally, though I’m still not in a great situation, I have healed from of a lot of bitterness I used to hold.  Seeing them happy inspires me to do better in my own life; realizing that while it may take time, it will ultimately be worth it.  And that someday I will be able to love and trust fully.

Anyways, the rest of them are a little more lighthearted in nature, I swear!!

Aoife is Saoirse’s sister and the middle child of the Keir siblings.  She’s the fun, flamboyant sibling; always jovial, super pretty, and damn good at making others feel welcome.  Aoife sees everybody as a potential friend.  Gods help you if you mistake her good nature for weakness though; she’s a powerful force to be reckoned with.  She’s a vital part of the Bluewater Town Guard, and she loves her work, preferring busy places like the town square or the docks, where her nature as both a protector and people person can flourish.  She also adores the town’s children and always makes time for them.  She lives in a house on the Keir property with her wife Mazneen.

Mazneen is my newest character, so forgive me for not having a lot on her yet (I’m trying to do something new while being culturally sensitive).  I also think it’s important for me as her creator to state explicitly somewhere down the line that she is a trans woman (representation is a high priority for me), but with the really angry and reactionary culture of tumblr these days, it’s really hard to create trans characters without someone getting upset (watch, someone will write a really angry callout for me not ‘performing her gender right’ or something…  well guess what buds, there’s no one right way for a trans woman to be trans!  BEGONE TERF!).  What else I can tell you is that she is outgoing and so incredibly sweet, and loves helping people see the beauty inside themselves like she sees in herself.  Mazneen is also a savvy businesswoman and trader originally from the Havens, and has family, friends, and business contacts there (I just haven’t gotten that far in her writing).  She currently lives and works in Bluewater with Aoife’s mother, Meirna, in her tailoring business (accounting and supply are her specialties).  They mostly make clothing suitable for cold climates like Bluewater, but occasionally produce some finer pieces on commission.  Their regular clothing is really popular amongst the whalers and even gets shipped to other parts of the Uplands.  They’re basically running something like a fantasy L.L. Bean if that makes any lick of sense.

Meirna, who I mentioned earlier, is the Keir siblings’ mother and the wife of Roarke.  She is a woman of great intelligence, tact, and grace; people used to tell her that had she not married a whaler she could have been a favorite of the Havens elite.  But she chooses to completely disregard this, and to this day she is more than happy with her life; she is still in love with her husband Roarke, runs her own well-known business, and has three very successful children.  I also have the inclination to make her deeply spiritual in some way; the Uplands actually has a few religions with a decent pantheon of gods, but I haven’t quite figured out the details of that yet.   Regardless of spirituality (or lack thereof), people look to her for comfort and guidance.

Roarke is the father of the Keir siblings and Meirna’s husband.  He’s a retired whaler but still an active part of Bluewater’s whaling guild.  Being retired certainly doesn’t keep him from being out on the water though; he just fishes for a lot smaller catch these days.  He loves the outdoors and has a fire for life that just can’t be tempered.  But he’s also a MEGA DAD.  Like the best Dad I imagine one could hope for.  He loves his family so much and he’s so proud of his kids and all their achievements.  Intense honestly just isn’t strong enough to describe the way he lives his life.  Roarke is the epitome of ALL THE TIME ALL THE TIME.  Just a huge dude with an absolute heart of gold.  Where else could Aoife have gotten it from?

Arlen is the youngest of the Keir siblings, and takes after his mother more.  His intelligence and patience are unrivaled; and his charismatic and comforting presence gives him the perfect bedside manner as a physician.  He studied at the Havens like Saoirse and Brennya, but with a focus on medicine instead of arcane arts and archaeology (Saoirse and Brennya's concentrations, respectively).  He’s an accomplished healer and has been instrumental in improvements made to Bluewater’s current health awareness and services.  He spends time every year to make trips to Snowshower, the large city northeast of Bluewater, and sets up a free clinic in the impoverished areas of the city.  He eventually ends up in a relationship with Rory after some time (still working on those details).

Rory also started out as an NPC.  He was originally the character that was Saoirse's call to action; a former student in a spot of trouble, and Saoirse just didn't have the heart to turn him down.  Except that the trouble he was in was, in fact, much more trouble than originally stated; a large debt with a notorious Poppyport (a city on the southernmost coast of the Uplands) crime syndicate, Redbloom (also can you guess their specialty lmao).  After the events of the job, Saoirse finds out that she's only thirded his debts.  Turns out he's got some serious impulse control issues and formed a gambling habit that, as you can probably imagine, got way out of hand.  He has an intense need to impress people with flashy displays, always trying to one up himself and others, but quite often these gestures fall flat.  Rory was chasing that dream of being famous and left Bluewater a few years back, only to become known as a fool.  And even though it was free publicity, bad publicity is only just publicity until you owe a crime lord his debts.  So Saoirse takes a risk and flees Poppyport, making her way back to Bluewater with Rory in tow.  Redbloom has no ties to a whaling town like Bluewater, it isn’t profitable enough.  So now he’s stuck in Bluewater for his own safety, and it would have driven him nuts if it weren’t for befriending the Keir family.  He still isn’t a huge fan of life in Bluewater, but his work and friendships keep him well grounded.  He eventually starts dating Arlen sometime into the timeline, but I haven’t written any of that yet; it’s only a series of ideas right now.  I do also want to look into writing a resolution with the whole Redbloom debt, but we’ll see where the story goes.  He’s always been…  A little all over the place.  He was a mandatory character and I really had to think about a way to work him into the story, and even now I’m still not completely satisfied.

I guess my main point is that I’m not nearly finished yet; I’ve only just begun getting bits of my story down, but I’m dedicated to expanding this family and their world and I just really love them all to bits.  And apart from their main story I’ve got some alternate universes I like to work on too, like their Dragon Age AU.  I’ve actually written quite a bit of meta and dialogue, and even drawn some for that one.  I haven’t really shared it with anyone yet though; haven’t figured out a delivery method that feels quite right yet.  I tried starting a blog for it, but it got stuck in the development phase a few months back.  Maybe I’ll try and figure that out soon.  I’ve just got so many ideas!  Anyways sorry for the wall of text and thanks for hanging in here with me with I figure shit out!  If you have any more questions I’d love to answer them! 

Perfume Genius: ‘I thought I'd grow up to be a woman’

The night before our interview, Mike Hadreas, who makes soul-baring, emotionally lurid pop-rock as Perfume Genius, flooded his hotel room.

He’d just arrived in London from Berlin, the last leg of a European press tour in support of his excellent new album No Shape, was in the shower and accidentally left the sink taps running. By 2am, his room was filled with hotel staff armed with towels. It was, he says, the sort of drama that would have troubled him a few years ago. “I thought I’d struggle to sleep afterwards,” he says through a haze of vape musk as we amble towards east London’s Hackney City Farm, “but I managed.”

After two albums – 2010’s Learning and 2012’s Put Your Back N 2 It – of haunted, piano-based horror-ballads detailing sexual abuse, violence and suicide, No Shape follows the broader sonic template mapped out by 2014’s Too Bright, but replaces that album’s anger with something nudging stability. “A lot of the things I’m writing about now are more like questions,” he says. “It’s more dissonant. But I ended up liking that part of it.”

Dressed for a morning at the farm, albeit in a wonderfully Perfume Genius way – green coat, Aran sweater, black boots but with three-inch heels – Hadreas, a youthful 35, is immediately drawn to characters. A lame duck is described as having “a hitch in his get-along”, while the baby goats are likened to something out of Pan’s Labyrinth. Geese, however, are given short shrift. “I don’t fuck with geese,” he states, his accent a strange hybrid of New York drawl (his boyfriend, Alan, is from there) and a southern twang he can’t place (he was born in Seattle and lives in Tacoma, Washington). We settle in the farm’s cafe where he orders a Diet Coke, one of his few remaining vices. “If I drink coffee I have to turn the lights off and lay down,” he laughs. “I can’t handle it.”

I pushed it to a different level than most people did; they would stop and I would continue

When Hadreas was young, he would stage shows for his family, often putting a towel on his head “like long hair” and performing Gloria Estefan songs. “I felt they were truly blessed to witness my performance,” he cackles. Outside of the bosom of his family, however, people weren’t quite so accepting. “I remember that time, around fifth or sixth grade, when everyone started looking at me differently. Even before that, I could tell I was making adults uncomfortable,” he says. “I originally thought I’d grow up to be a woman. I didn’t question that when I was little.” He was bullied at school, with the persistent homophobic name-calling eventually leading to him coming out to his mum, aged 15.

Three years prior, he’d started taking anti-depressants, while most of puberty was spent in and out of hospital with Crohn’s disease. His illness, mixed with the bullying, steadily came to define him. “I would take months off school but I could probably have gone, to be honest,” he says. “Everyone was telling me I was sick, and I felt sick, so it was this weird combination of that being my identity.” A recurring theme in his music – wanting to escape the physical – can be traced back to that time where he felt betrayed both by a body that was ailing, but also giving up too much about him. “Sometimes I’m not into being a human,” he shrugs.

Hadreas quickly turned to music for solace, specifically the holy triumvirate of 90s female angst, AKA Liz Phair, PJ Harvey and Alanis Morissette. Later on, having dropped out of high school, he started to paint, eventually enrolling at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts. He enjoyed the feeling of his work making people uncomfortable, but was often upstaged.

“Someone tried to commit suicide on camera and there was another guy who only painted pictures of his dick,” he laughs. Emboldened by being around other social outcasts, at 21, Hadreas moved to Brooklyn to be with his first proper boyfriend and live the life he’d always dreamed of. “I’d been waiting a long time to be a drug-addict artist,” he states. “Part of me glamourised it for sure, and the reality of it ended up being different, but I thought that’s what you did. I didn’t have a lot of examples for how I felt, or any end game. Most of the books I read were about junkies and hustlers.”

I was thinking of a pop star like Bruce Springsteen, the confidence … when they give people music, everyone’s like: Yes!

In Seattle, he’d “developed a pretty strong relationship with alcohol” and had tried drugs, but things spiralled out of control in New York. “It became a regular thing, and I pushed it to a different level than most people did; they would stop and I would continue.” He talks about lost days spent vacuuming with his drug dealer, “or one time she read me the Twitter terms of service, like the whole 20 pages and I was like: ‘Uh huh, keep going.’” He’s vague on exactly what it was he was using – “Stuff people did socially I did not do socially” – but has previously said it was “everything but heroin”. It peaked during what he calls a “sustained death attempt”.

“The last few times I went out, I was so at the limit that if I kept going I was going to die, and I kept going anyway,” he explains. “I’d wake up and feel like a very different person.” After four years in New York, Hadreas returned to Seattle, checked into rehab, and moved back home with his mum and stepfather, both recovering addicts. “Maybe my mum felt guilty for me having to witness some of her problems, so it allowed her to be more enabling and not confronting,” he says. “I have a hard time talking about all of this because I don’t want to make it seem bigger than it was, or smaller than it was,” he says, his cartoon-huge blue eyes narrowed by a slight frown. “They’re just things that happened; they weren’t good.”

Over time, Hadreas adjusted to his new-found sobriety and he started writing songs. “It’s like I had frozen myself emotionally, and then kept myself in this stasis, so when I stopped [using] all those things came back,” he says. Those early songs, sketched out on piano and sung in a troubled choirboy voice, formed the basis of Learning, his 2010 debut led by Mr Peterson, a hollowed-out ballad about the titular teacher that hints at sexual abuse and ends with suicide. “It’s a story,” Hadreas says, “and a lot of it is true and some of it is imagined, almost like the fantasy of it.”

It was around this time that Hadreas met boyfriend Alan Wyffels, a classically trained musician who also plays in his band. While Put Your Back N 2 It continued to deal with the fallout from his earlier experiences, and Too Bright was about being more outwardly confrontational (the bolshy Queen tackles homophobia head-on), No Shape is more about exploring the weird flux of relative stability. “It’s trying to connect in the moment, rather than thinking of things that have already happened,” he says.

Full of ecstatic punches to the solar plexus, No Shape’s press blurb describes it as “an American rock’n’roll album by big American pop star Perfume Genius”. “I was thinking of a pop star like Bruce Springsteen, about how they write, and the confidence they have that when they give people music, everyone’s like: ‘Yes!’” he explains. “People don’t ask: ‘What’s your relationship with your sister?’ They just say thank you for this music. So I thought: ‘What if I made an album with that sort of energy?’”

As with all of his records, No Shape doesn’t shy away from presenting a variation of the queer experience and the album closes with an ode to Alan. “It’s about how if he truly needed me I would be there, and that wasn’t always true of me,” he says. “There are a lot of songs about youth and young love, especially in relation to gayness; I wanted to make sacred the other side of that.” He’s happy to be presented as an LGBT spokesperson, thinks that culturally things are progressing in terms of awareness and representation, but doesn’t sugar-coat a future under President Trump. “Oh yeah, it’s evil,” he says, a strained smile twisting his lips. “It’s only going to get worse. I have no hope. Zero optimism.”

Later that afternoon, Hadreas is laid across an arcade game in north London bowling alley Rowans. Like a holiday camp pleasure palace, it feels like the perfect place to accentuate the 80s-inspired, retired-Beverly-Hills-mom chic he’s channelling for the photo shoot. “This is more fun than I remember,” he says as we start bowling. After a strong start is followed by some miscues, he reassesses things. “I’m going to approach it in a different way, spiritually,” he declares. Immediately he gets a strike. Then I do. There are high-fives, smiles, celebratory sips of Diet Coke. “Gay magic,” he says.