#this is specifically targeted at a very niche group of people
Note
I swear I feel like every time I hear a terf or baeddal talk about transmen I want to stand on a mountain and shout that women can be misogynists too. It always goes 'transmen dont have privilage' -> 'oh so transmen are IMMUNE FROM MISOGYNY' and sure thats a bad faith argument but I think they really believe women are immune. Internalized misogyny still cuts people the same and terfs have a LOT of it tbh.
genuinely I think all of the actual feminist theory, even the shit that has been fucking baseline since 2012, flies out the window when a lot of people are actually challenged on their regular-ass unexamined transphobia toward trans men, & reflexively choose to defend themselves rather than, like, introspect for one second.
and I dislike calling them all TERFs or Baeddels; the latter especially is the name of a very specific, very small group with a specific ideology (which is only experiencing a fairly niche resurgence right now), and a lot of these folks are just regular people who dig their heels in when faced with the possibility that they might have some non-optimal ideas about trans people. and worse, that they might have made a mistake- especially one that has very likely hurt someone else.
people don't like to think that they have hurt someone. they will try to deny it rather than accept the guilt that comes with acknowledging their mistakes. and when that fact becomes undeniable, a lot of people will choose to believe that the person/people in question deserve it- that they are fundamemtally different and/or worse somehow- in hopes of convincing themselves that they don't need to feel bad for causing harm.
some of these people are probably acting with different, or even just very extreme conclusions of, this same logic. but like. we do need to keep in mind that a lot of it is in the realm of normal human behavior, and that we suffer from the same impulses.
but like, that's why they're so quick to throw all these ideas out as soon as they become inconvenient. it's not a dark master plan, and it's usually not a whole horrible theoretical framework with a cult-like following, either; it's normal guilt avoidance. it's not wanting to examine your biases or have to work on yourself. it's avoiding the possibility that you might be imperfect in one more way. you don't need to fall down the rabbit hole to think that way.
you don't transcend all societal influences the moment you realize you're trans, and you can't transcend them even if you haven't known anything other than life as the target.
but it sure is a lot easier to believe you do. 🤷♂️
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zerobaseone as IB students (headcanons)
some fun headcanons for my fellow students. please take these with a grain of salt, obviously I don't know them personally and these are just meant to be fun :)
word count: 1.1 k (ca 140 for each)
a/n: this is for a very niche target audience but it makes sense in MY head. also I have exams in less than 2 weeks so this is kind of representative of where my mind is at rn.
and PSA if you're also an IB student please don't actually skip TOK <3
jiwoong
what's that?? "he's a 24 year old man, it's been years since he completed high school??" sorry I can't hear you too well I'll just go ahead and write this headcanon anyway <3
he's such a drama kid and he would take it even in IB, so theatre and korean lit would be his HLs
I feel like he would take bio and psych sl purely out of curiosity and then immediately regret it when he realizes how much content there is (but would be really good at psych)
aa sl!!! no particular reason tbh I just think he's kind of smart
doesn't understand tok. like...... at ALL. is saved by the fact that his psychology EE is pretty good because he pretty much flunks tok miserably
CAS defender because "guys it builds character I think it's great that we all do volunteer work :))" bless his heart
hanbin
7 subjects :)
is good at tok probably
genuinely puts SO much time and effort into his cas and regrets it in the end but it looks cool on his resumé
psychology and korean lit HL, probably takes VA too but maybe as sl. he gives such lit vibes I feel like he would totally be a literature kid
chinese ab!!!! and maybe ESS because he can and doesn't like science <3
AI SL just because he's so social science but he gets 6s and 7s because it's too easy for him <3
basically he's all the social science subjects but because they're FUN not because they're easy :)
shares notes and study resources in the class group chat because he's cool like that
zhang hao
science kid
HL math AA, geography, and maybe chem or bio. maybe takes physics SL too.
definitely chinese lang/lit and korean ab (he could definitely do korean B but he can't be bothered)
you won't catch him anywhere without a comically large energy drink
completely numbed on the inside but also puts more effort in than everyone else and gets straight 7's
skips tok though because he can't be asked
does his EE on a very niche obsession of his and it gets a really good grade but he puts way too much effort into it
everyone wants to learn his ways but he doesn't do study groups because he gets too annoyed lmao. WILL tell juniors chatting in the library to stfu
he will complain about anything and everything any chance he gets but also catch him getting that 45 at the end of the day.
taerae
also science kid but a lot less intense
HL bio, chem, music, SL AA, korean lang/lit and japanese ab
he would complain SO MUCH about group 2 btw he's one of those science kids who really doesn't want to do 2 languages lol
really only cares about music to be honest but does the sciencey subjects because he thinks they're cool and gets pretty good grades
the type to do a hyper specific science IA and spend way too much time on it just for shits and giggles because he likes pouring things into beakers and swirling them
unintentionally does the most for his CAS, like "oh a service??? yeah I've been tutoring guitar for like 6 months does that count" and genuinely fails to see how other people struggle with it
also excells at tok, like genuinely writes an amazing philosophical TOK essay and gets full marks
ironically cares so little about IB but somehow does so well because he genuinely likes his subjects (and has an iq of like 150)
matthew
7 subjects :)
wants to do more languages than he's allowed because he's just built like that, he likes flexing his multilingualism
HL english lang/lit, french B, history. SL AA, bio, chem, psych
is annoyingly good at all his subjects like HOW are you doing all that and remembering everything?? secretly kind of a genius
does the mostest for his IAs for absolutely no reason other than he's just interested in his subjects and wants to do fun projects :)
also genuinely likes CAS for the same reason (play sports feed stray cats, what's not to like?)
super ambitious classmate who is somehow the only one still sane and always happy
encourages everyone before tests and exams like "come on guys we can do it!! :)"
ricky
this is more likely than you think like do you know how many rich international kids do IB??? in an alternate reality he's M23
visual art HL <33
probably business management HL too, but I could see him doing psych as well!! I think he'd enjoy the human relationships option
chinese lang/lit and english B because why do a bilingual diploma and struggle when you could just breeze through english B?????
AI and ESS sl because he cba, he just wants to pass fr.
to be honest he only really cares about visual art (does his EE in it and regrets it every day) and his social science a liiittle bit, other than that he's just doing exactly as much as he needs to pass
super chill classmate though like all IB kids need a Ricky in their class to humble our god complexes
gyubin
IB but because he's an exchange student :') like he didn't even know what IB was when he started it
cramming the night before tests because he can't be asked to dedicate his whole life to studying
actually the nicest classmate though
eng b HL and breezes through it
ESS and AI sl together with ricky (they sit in the back of the class and snack together <3)
also like business management/psychology or something equivalent but he's REALLY good at it and gets easy 7's?? like he will be that 1 kid who has that 1 subject that he's an absolute god at
cries every tok lesson but it's alright
favourite part is ironically CAS because he has an excuse to volunteer at dog shelters and play basketball with his friends :)
gunwook
peak IB child I bet he would take this programme for real
4 hls (economics, psychology, korean lang lit, chemistry)
I have no justification for these subjects btw I just spat out 4 that I think he would take. he definitely would do 4 HLs though because that's how he rolls
ALSO takes cas very seriously for absolutely no reason
also takes tok SUPER seriously- he will lead class discussions and get into heated debates about stupid shit like if newspeak would work in real life
AA sl and japanese ab because that's just his vibes
kind of overworked but is always helpful and shares notes with his classmates :)
does his EE in economics and ends up getting way too invested in it and becomes obsessed with economic development policies or something niche like that (nerd but affectionately <3)
very stressed and overworked but he WILL get those grades at the end of the day <33
#boys planet scenarios#boys planet imagines#zb1#zerobaseone#boys planet headcanons#kim jiwoong#sung hanbin#zhang hao#kim taerae#seok matthew#shen ricky#kim gyuvin#park gunwook#this was purely for personal entertainment but I think it's fun so I'm posting it lol
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On BBH calling people « uncultured »
(Here the link to the clip, it's the only one I found)
In summary, during a friendly gathering, BBH called other streamers, including 2 non-Americans whose native language is not English, "uncultured" for not knowing an American expression. And the last person he spoke to before saying that, is someone who rightfully said he didn't know bc it's not his culture.
I saw a lot of people getting angry about it on Twitter X while I usually miraculously escape this kind of drama, and I'm still lucky to have only seen people talking in their corner without (really) directly attacking BBH or worse, harassing him. So obviously, it's Twitter X so it blown out of proportion, but I still wanted to come back to it.
It is important to specify
IT’S A JOKE.
BBH didn't intend to hurt anyone and it's apparently a common joke in the US. Insulting and teasing each other is very common among friends, which is what QSMP streamers are. They were all roasting BBH just before that. The people targeted didn't seem upset (Étoiles loves to be dramatic) and they're adults wjho talk to each other outside of QSMP. If they have a problem with a joke, they discuss it.
And after that BBH tried to find the equivalent in different of the expression. I don't know about Portuguese, but it didn't really work in French. There is no equivalent to "jumping the shark", since it's a reference to a old american serie which then became a (apparently niche) expression. The frence equivalent BBH found was "passer du coq à l'âne" which means abruptly changing the subject, while "jumping the shark" refers to when a series becomes bad/absurd.
The intention is still cool tho.
All this to say that this is not an attack on non-Americans, BBH also "insulted" Tina and Foolish, not just Bagi and Etoiles.
BUT
I understand why people get worked up about it (doesn't mean I tolerate harrassment. BBH doesn't deserve any of that).
First, the lack of reaction from streamers is not necessarily indicative of what they think. When Cellbit joked that Etoiles' team didn't listen to him (suggesting he was a bad leader) in Purgatory, Etoiles just laughed the first time and didn't say anything when Cellbit doubled down. Except that the fact that no one listens to it on day 1 is one of the reasons why the stream was an absolute nightmare to watch, so I don't imagine for Étoiles himself. Even Fit seemed to be dying of frustration even though he wasn't the target of this disrespect. And that’s not to mention that Étoiles was being harassed on social media at the time, and one of those accusations was that he was a bad leader. The joke really made me so uncomfortable.
It's very likely that it was discussed with Cellbit later since no one ever brought it up afterward, but no one said anything about the joke itself on stream.
Also, one thing I thought was stupid about people being personally hurt by Aypierre and Antoine's joke about Mike looking like Hitler was that they were joking about Mike's Minecraft skin. The target was very specific and Antoine had already called Mike a dictator in his face earlier, and Mike didn't have any problem with that (he literally had the political program of a dictator).
Whereas here, BBH calls a group of people "uneducated" because they don't know an expression. Which concerns a lot of people in the chats. Personnally, I've already heard about it but bc my passions gave me the opportunity to know it. And even like that I only see it TWICE in my life, and only one of them explained what it meant.
Unlike Aypierre and Antoine, who spoke in French – which means that only people who know the kind of dark humor that we are so fond of should have understood – BBH said it in a language that everyone understood, since it wasn't an aside but something everyone needed to hear.
These people in the chat are not friends with BBH so being insulted by him is significantly less likely to be taken as a joke. They don't necessarily know that it's a type of American humor and that there is no attack in his words. Being insulted by a friend and a stranger is a completely different experience, especially if you don't know the context behind it.
Because it's also another problem
The context
We have an american telling 2 people who are not american and which native's language is not English that they're uncultured for not knowing an american expression. The US has a bit of history being condescent with other culture for not being the same as them. The cliché that Americans are arrogant, nationalistic and insensitive to other cultures is still present and persistent. And we can't say it's not true, we just have to see the QSMP fandom.
(I know it's not only americans but Baghera's harrassment because she dared to use the word "retard" once, which means late in french, is a good example of people who refuse to aknowledge that non English speakers have a life and culture outside of the English language)
It is therefore not really surprising that the viewers didn't take well the remark.
Especially since this isn't the first time BBH has pissed off someone over something like this. The time he was debating with Forever and he got fed up because he couldn't defend himself properly since it wasn't his language - which let BBH have the upper hand and let him wrongly think he was totally in the right – and decided to speak in Portuguese and let BBH deal with the translator. I remember seeing comments under the clip on Youtube expressing how happy they were that Forever was putting down BBH's cackle by fighting on his turf.
youtube
Even if he is very nice, BBH is a very stubborn person who does not give up and with whom arguing is quite difficult. Whether he likes it or not, want it or not, he takes advantage of the lack of vocabulary and fluency that non-English speakers have when they speak English.
This isn't helped by the fact that BBH seems to be one of the few on the server to put very little effort into learning/speaking other languages. Foolish practices Spanish with Leo, Philza asked Tallulah to speak to him in Spanish (I don't know if he continues), Tina learns French with Etoiles, etc... (ofc I'm not listing the Non English speakers, it's obvious)
BBH has a French child and was adopted by the French as a whole, but I don't remember seeing anything remotely close to him learning/speaking French (apart from the "t'as les cramptés?" but it's on the same level as Aypierre and his "caralho mano") I don't watch Foolish but I know he's progressed enough to be able to translate into Spanish for Leo something BBH said they didn't understand. And I don't forget the gathering of 3 french (Baghera, Aypierre, Étoiles) with Ironmouse and they decided to speak spanish for her.
Apparently, BBH is learning spanish but is too shy/insecure to speak it on stream
And honestly, I have no problem to believe that. But that's also mean that the vast majority of people didn't know that. We're not likely to guess it on our own, and we French know a streamer who had major insecurity problems in the past, and yet who is now trying to speak in public what is probably his fourth language* (meaning that he has not mastered it at all and is currently busy improving himself in another language). So there is very little chance that we will make the connection alone. QSMP is the perfect place to improve and learn another language, if someone want to lean, we'll assume they will do that here.
(*I have no confirmation that Étoiles speaks Arabic but it is extremely likely, hence the "probably")
Like, yes, Etoiles speaks several languages so it's easier to be confident and daring. But that's the thing, isn't it ?
We have a someone who knows one (1) language telling someone who speaks rather fluently at least 2, who has a daily general knowledge show, who often plays general knowledge games, who organizes visits to museums/castles/operas for his streams, that he's "uncultured".
The irony
#Youtube#I'm not forgetting the Aypierre-Etoiles-Roier moment#where they were all speaking their languages and teach each other some words and expressions (while Roier mistreated Pepito)#qsmp#qsmp badboyhalo#qsmp etoiles#fandom discourse#fandom drama#qsmp forever#No I won't say anything about the fact that the non-English speakers that BBH called uncultured are a woman and an Arab#Yes the fandom has a big problem with misogyny and racism#but BBH was not just targeting them
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One of the biggest reasons that I know majority of current transgender ideology is faux-oppression is because of how copy-paste it’s analysis is, which makes its lack of serious academic thought that much more obvious. it’s activists use buzz words from other activist movements like the black liberation movement and feminism (“black trans lives matter”/“cis women can’t identify as transwomen”), co-opt terms from other oppressed groups like the intersex community (AFAB/AMAB), and when it comes to creating their own language, the words are utter nonsense, like “transmisogyny”, which is a nonsense word that pairs two charged words together without considering the internal meaning of either.
what oppression do trans-people face for being transgender? being trafficked (that’s usually black, homosexual people in poorer areas), refusal of hormones or surgery (which are damaging to your body), perception of transness (usually homophobic or misogynistic hatred), being killed (black people again), being the wrong gender (gender is made up you can act and wear whatever you like, and if it is harming you, is it not more helpful to reject gender than redeem it?) And yea, there can be issues of intersection, but what about transness is specifically targeted or resisted on a structural level? The analysis has to keep borrowing from other struggles (being a woman, homo/bisexual gnc person in a patriarchal misogynistic world, being black, the taboo of being intersex) and then labeling those issues as “trans” or “gender” issues. Dysphoria is disorder brought on by existing in a sick social environment, much like dysmorphia and depression can be (because gender isn’t innate). It isn’t about “female” or “male” brains. These are very real issues that women, gnc LGB and intersex people have gone through. Is it a coincidence that these demographics are where dysphoria most thrives? but they’ll never analyze that. gender has to be innate. they won’t analyze how consumeristic trans culture is. they’ll cry about how awful the trans genocide is, but the black trans-identified people dying in brothels won’t push most of them to criticize porn culture or criticize the pro-porn trans icons in their group. interesting.
which is further evident in the huge absence of internal diversity of thought. the rise of micro identities and the way a lot of “queer” activists speak (the endless virtue signaling and verbal diarrhea) shows that this is an “oppression product.” they popularized oppression olympics. having a micro identity is a fad. who is being denied a job for identifying as greysexual? mom and dad I’m so sorry I’m sapiosexual please don’t kick me out.
most prominent trans icons are from the rich white upper class. and also mostly male. they are product influencers, convincing women and children to please buy thing so they can finally be satisfied. isn’t being part of a niche underground “oppressed” group cool? when your oppressed people listen to you, and doesn’t that just feel so good? it’s so white. it’s so capitalist America. it’s so MRA in how it trivializes historic, academic and global human rights movements. like listening to a porn-addicted man ramble on about how feminism is actually just about hating men, and anti-racism is about hating white people.
devoid of any true social analysis, because then we’d actually have to talk about the underlying rot which real activist groups are being killed and censored and disrupted to stop addressing.
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Wow… I always thought you were inclusive to all fans. Guess not.
Spoilers
I tried to be, and I still try to be to MOST fans, but I have limits and I have lines. I know it's probably been obvious, but I've really drawn back from being socially active in the fandom. I take stands, occasionally, but for the most part, I just block and move on. My block list on tiktok is long, because if I don't like content, I block rather than get upset.
I don't really look at my home page, anymore. Going onto AO3 hits me with so many (niche and specific to me) triggers in a day, that my reason for not reading others' works has shifted from, even though I'm working on managing it, my Dyslexia to just being unable to navigate my own triggers. This isn't anyone's fault, it's mine.
If I'm being honest? My mental health is in the dumpster and while this has a wide variety of reasons, if I can protect it in any way I can, I will. And if this includes having to tell a certain group of fans that they're not welcome on my blog? Unfortunately, that's what has to happen.
I'm not a stranger to fandom wars, as stupid as I think they are, I'm not a stranger to the aggression that happens here. And I have, definitely, been on the other side a few times. My first proper introduction to fandom was Supernatural and FNAF. I STILL deal with seeing posts talking about how a ship I didn't ship is superior to one I do ship for no fucking reason. I understand liking a character, and I understand having villain characters that you still like and love, and I can appreciate the "he's my precious pookie bear and does nothing wrong" mindset to a certain extent.
But I think ignoring Makarov's actions, even if he's a fictional character, even if it's just a game, is ignorant, in today's climate. A prime example of why I cannot get behind it is Russian Terminator. I have... so many reasons I can go through why this man is just awful, but my wife is slightly more educated, so I'll let her take the reigns on that one if she wants. However, he sucks. Objectively. But because he's masked and ripped, I see so many edits of him. So many.
I see people call themselves his "simps" and actively ignore and block those who try to point out his horrific actions and opinions and views and values to them. This man is not a fictional character. He's a real person.
I have always been a huge advocate for "live and let live" in fandom spaces. To an extent that even my wife and I get into arguments over it. My only limit seems to be pedophilia, for personal reasons. And I am not telling you to stop writing Makarov. I'm not even telling you not to find him hot. You can giggle and kick your feet when he "activates your praise kink" in the first mission, I don't care I won't stop you.
But I don't want that in my own space. I protect my peace. This ranges from silly things that just bother me (pricegraves) to big things like this. As my wife stated, Graves committed war crimes. Yes. He killed civilians, and that's inexcusable. But, I feel like this is comparing a passion killing, to systematic murder. Graves would have committed those crimes in any country, but the US. France, England, pretty much any country he could have gotten away with it.
Makarov targeted a country of Arabic people, because he knew about the aggression and islamophobia that exists in the west. He knew that if he pulled some strings a little, he could very easily turn a country just looking for peace into a country of terrorists, in the western media's eyes. This is irredeemable in my eyes.
So, no. I try to be inclusive. Pricegraves fans are still welcome to interact with me. They know by now that I won't write it, I don't really entertain it, and to go to my wife. The same for FarahAlex shippers, and really anyone who ships something on my No-Ship list. (Though please get the memo on that second ship, I'm never gonna budge, I'm sorry.)
I'm sorry if you feel alienated, I know it probably sucks. Trust me, I understand. But, unfortunately, I want to protect my peace, and I want my blog to continue to be my own safe space.
Thank you for understanding.
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Guys, I have been looking around for a bit and apparently ElsaGate is on the rise again?
I don't know much about that (since I am not close to anyone in the age group that is in danger) but I know enough to know that it is extremely harmful.
Please look out for children being on the Internet and if worst comes to worst, take whatever they are using to access the Internet away. They may cry and scream because they are children who don't understand what they are seeing, but that is so much better than having them see all of that.
If you have no idea what it is, explanation under the cut.
WARNINGS: grooming, sexual themes, getting liquids injected with needles
If you don't know what ElsaGate is, it's basically characters of shows/games/... that are currently trending with children doing very inappropriate things. I am not "just" talking about doing "that" (the word "just" doesn't feel fitting in such a context but I don't know how to express it otherwise) but things that fall into specific inappropriate niches. VERY dark inappropriate niches. (Example: a cartoon character gets something injected which is portrayed in a sexual way. I have heard, this is hearsay so I can't guarantee, that actual children have been filmed getting injected something which had been uploaded to YouTube in the earlier days of this shit.)
It's theorised that certain people post this to normalise their preferences to children. Like this, they can make a child get used to certain things and, quite literally, groom them into accepting sexual acts towards them. (But why exactly they are posting such stuff is not known. What we do know for certain though, is that those responsible get some sort of thrill showing such stuff to children.)
This stuff is no joke. YouTube kids isn't 100% safe either since those sick individuals target a child-friendly look that might not get recognised as what it really is by the algorithm. If you somehow stumble upon one of those videos report them immediately!
There is most likely way more below the surface and I am just aware of the peak of the iceberg. However, all that really matters is that children need to be kept away from such content. Heck, if we are being honest, this stuff is even too much for most adults.
I am sorry if I might have made some spelling errors and/or weird sentences. My first language isn't English and I am typing this on my phone.
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Be very mindful of people who use unrelenting denialism to dismiss a very real pattern, cultural phenomena, or circumstance which you’re trying to point out to them. The chances are they just literally don’t want to know, because the truth of the matter either makes them feel uncomfortable, contradicts their flawed value system, or both.
The denier usually displays a sequence of behaviour that comes in four stages. When confronted with your observation, say, for example you are highlighting the risk that trans-identified men pose to women when placed in their prisons, they will respond in this order:
1. “Nope. That literally never happens. You’re a conspiracy nut/delusional/*insert buzzword here, most likely transphobia*.”
Then, when you present them with multiple clearcut examples, citing mainstream media sources that they cannot so easily discard they way they would with a smaller, alternative media source:
2. “But my point still stands, that this is uncommon. Why are you so focused in on this tiny thing? Your *insert buzzword here* is showing.”
Then, when the issue bubbles in prominence, leaves the niche corner of the internet from whence it came, and becomes more socially acceptable to publicly assert due to the overwhelming evidence:
3. “Okay but I don’t see why you have such a big issue with this? Why don’t you talk more about *insert totally separate issue here as a means to shift the goalpost*? Because by focusing so much on this specific thing, you’re just inciting hatred/promoting ignorance.”
This stage attempts to toe the line between not explicitly acknowledging the existence of the problem, but also not condoning it (because they quietly know that it does exist – that it is very real), instead choosing to insult the character and motivations of the claimant.
Many deniers will stop there, but the more spiteful and maliciously motivated among them will escalate to:
4. “Yeah well they brought it on themselves anyway. They fucking deserve it.”
I have noticed this across all sides of the political spectrum, both sexes, and all age groups, with so, so many different issues, including, but not limited to:
- TRAs denying TIMs’ abuse of women in women’s prisons, domestic abuse shelters and hospital wards
- TRAs denying how ‘gender identity’ has replaced biological sex in the practice of state institutions across the West (eg on passports)
- TRAs denying how self ID laws will be abused by ‘cis’men who do not sincerely consider themselves trans, but will claim to be to gain access to, and film women and girls in, changing rooms and toilets
- Catholics denying priests’ sexual abuse of children in the Church
- Conservative parents denying religiously influenced child abuse within their communities
- Healthcare practitioners and defenders of differing countries’ healthcare systems denying the prevalence of medical misogyny, the pathologising of women and girls, and the dismissal of their symptoms, which results in delayed diagnoses turning terminal and/or causing death
- The ‘progressive’ British left denying the targeted mass-grooming of working class white girls by Muslim, mostly Pakistani, men
- The ‘progressive’ British left denying that the government are buying out fancy private hotels to put up male illegal migrants in
- The political left across most of the Western world denying the recent demographic changes to its countries, and the cultural changes that come with that
- Men of all political orientations denying that women on porn sets are tricked with dodgy contracts, blackmailed, drugged, gangraped, and sex trafficked, and that this is the footage they see on PornHub and wank off to
- People across the world, of all nationalities, ages, sexes, socioeconomic statuses, and political orientations denying the larger-than-officially-acknowledged likelihood of suffering adverse side effects to the various Covid19 vaccinations, or the coercive policies of governments across the West to maximise the number of people who felt compelled to have it
The point of the diverse range of examples above is not to make a value judgement (you may not consider some of those things as ‘issues’, instead believing that they are good. That is your right), but rather 1. to point out just how bloody common this pattern of behaviour is, especially among those who consider themselves politically progressive, and 2. to potentially aid anyone who reads this in pointing it out in future discussions.
We do not live in a transparent political culture. People employ all sorts of backward mental gymnastics to justify their harmful beliefs, just because they make them feel better, and feel like they are supporting a good cause. That’s really all mainstream left wing progressivism is in the Global North: doing what feels good and makes you look good to your peers (this is why radical feminism is seen by the woke lot as right wing. We don’t operate off of that value system. We don’t do what feels nice in the moment, we want actual fucking results). So we need to be able to reply with: “If you are going to support [x] thing, bloody well be honest about the potential consequences that you have absolutely no problem with taking place.” We need to stop giving these people plausible deniability, and allowing them to fall back on “well I couldn’t have possibly known that [y] bad thing would happen if [x] thing was implemented.” Because yes you did.
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In his continued quest to become either the president of the United States or else a very interesting footnote to someone else’s reelection, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has enlisted a number of celebrities and influencers. On Tuesday, he expanded those ranks, confirming to The New York Times that he is “considering” NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura for his vice presidential pick; Politico reported that he’ has also “approached” Senator Rand Paul, former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
But it was Rodgers and Ventura who drew the most attention from the press, and it’s their roles in the information ecosystem who most signal what Kennedy is doing. Outside of their careers in the NFL and WWE, Rodgers and Ventura are known for, respectively, promoting anti-vaccine views in conversations with sports podcasters and Joe Rogan, and promoting politically contrarian, occasionally conspiratorial views on cable TV and Substack. By publicizing his interest in them, Kennedy is making overtures to a very specific potential voter: the highly online and politically disaffected young man.
Kennedy, an environmental activist turned anti-vaccine superstar, is already running an extremely online campaign; as WIRED noted recently, the candidate is omnipresent on Instagram, podcasts, and Substack and has used influencers as proxies who will deliver his message to his niche bases. Over the past few months, Kennedy has been seen hanging out with snowboarder Travis Rice, naming a young and persistently bleached-blonde TikToker and aspiring musician named Link Lauren as a “senior adviser” on his campaign, and appearing at a Bitcoin conference.
Online is a comfortable environment for Kennedy, a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist who has promoted anti-vaccine views since 2005. Beyond his many and virulent anti-vaccine campaigns, he’s been especially willing to engage in conspiracy theories that are likely to go viral, most notably suggesting that the CIA may have assassinated his uncle, John F. Kennedy, and promoted long-debunked and extremely dangerous junk science about AIDS not being caused by HIV. He has also tried awkwardly to engage with the conspiracy theories about dead pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, on whose private plane he rode at least twice. In December he said that Epstein’s flight logs should be released, and tweeted, “I’m not hiding anything, but they are!”
His efforts to appeal to both a conspiratorial base and a more mainstream voting bloc have been occasionally clumsy, but persistent—and by shoring up his base among young men, who will be increasingly important this election year, he appears to be figuring out how to bridge that gap. One enormous help was, of course, his own appearance on Rogan’s podcast, where the two engaged in three hours of long-winded conspiracy theories about vaccines, 5G technology, and ivermectin, among Kennedy’s other greatest-hits talking points.
Kennedy’s interest in speaking to very online, purportedly “anti-establishment” spaces also means, necessarily, that the people he’s speaking to have a demonstrable overlap with the so-called manosphere, the broad group of bloggers, podcasters, influencers, and grievance-peddlers speaking to young men. Choosing to align himself with figures like Aaron Rodgers—a mainstream football star who has promoted increasingly fringe beliefs, and declared himself to be very brave for doing so—is an excellent way to appeal to the Venn diagram of young men and the conspiracy-curious, says Derek Beres. “It completely makes sense for what he’s doing.”
Beres is an author, speaker, and podcaster who’s one of the cohosts of Conspirituality, which looks at the overlap between New Age and far-right movements. In that role, Beres has observed Kennedy at close range for years and says, “One of the things that I don’t think is talked about enough but is really smart on RFK’s part is he’s been mobilizing fringe communities since he announced his presidential run.”
Neither Rodgers nor Ventura are what you would call politically serious choices; Rodgers has never held elected office, while Ventura hasn’t in 20 years. Neither man speaks to a base that Kennedy hasn’t already hit; in that role, Paul and Gabbard would make more political sense.
Instead, Kennedy is front-loading two men who the young male voter might find in a late-night TikTok or Instagram scroll and who are known for their own fondness for indulging in conspiracy theories and misinformation. Rodgers is best known lately for making misleading claims about being "immunized for Covid,” later revealing that he was taking fake homeopathic “vaccines,” and for appearing to suggest that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel might appear on a list of Jeffrey Epstein’s associates, for which Kimmel instantly threatened to sue him. He has also become a repeat guest on Rogan’s podcast; in his most recent appearance in February, he nodded along as Rogan claimed that Covid was created in a lab. On Wednesday, it was also reported by CNN that he’d shared Sandy Hook conspiracy theories privately, including in 2013, to Pamela Brown, one of the journalists bylined on the story.
For his part, after Ventura was governor, he had a show called Conspiracy Theory on the outlet TruTV. Clips from the show still occasionally go viral, especially ones purporting to show that the pandemic was “planned.” He then had a show on Russian state-backed news outlet RT America, which focused on purported American hypocrisy wherever he could find it. In a slightly awkward fit for Kennedy, Ventura also decried people who refused to wear masks early in the pandemic. (Kennedy spent a lot of time incorrectly but predictably claiming that mask-wearing was useless and in fact harmful.) Now, Ventura has a Substack with his son, where he delivers political commentary and wrestling stories, a move he claims he made after RT America unceremoniously dumped him for decrying the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And most importantly, both Ventura and Rodgers—as outsize and slightly eccentric sports figures—are heroes largely to young men.
Kennedy, Beres says, “is playing culture war politics,” where someone like Aaron Rodgers would make sense; it’s part of his appeal, Beres says, to the mostly male-dominated online body-optimization space. In addition to doing shirtless pushups (in jeans, for some reason), Kennedy has also made numerous appearances with Aubrey Marcus, a fitness influencer and motivational speaker who has been one of his most enthusiastic proxies. The two men are appearing together this weekend at the grandiosely named American Wellness Summit, a Kennedy campaign event just outside Austin, Texas, where the cheapest tickets are a $1,500 campaign donation.
“We’re in a cultural space where you have Donald Trump, who in the past said that exercise depletes your body,” Beres explains. “Then you have a big conversation around Biden’s age, which the right has been pushing and which has been effective in terms of their propaganda. And then you have RFK, who works out at Gold’s Gym and has been spotted there hanging out with Andrew Huberman,” an astonishingly popular neuroscience podcaster. “The optics alone are going to appeal to a young male crowd.”
For his part, Donald Trump has made his own bid for the young male vote’s affections, showing up at Sneaker Con to hawk $400 Trump-branded shoes, signaling his support for Bitcoin, getting (somewhat) into football, and showing up at a UFC match, where he mainly made headlines for appearing to ignore his own grandson. Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, meanwhile, recently got a coveted endorsement from a coalition of 15 Gen Z and millennial voting groups. But as an MSNBC opinion column noted last month, opinion polls seem to show Kennedy with a slim lead among voters 18–34. And as Gallup noted in January, Biden’s favorability ratings among young and non-white adults has fallen since he became president, while Kennedy has “majority-level favorable rating” across all major gender, race, and age groups. Gallup’s Lydia Saad noted that Kennedy could “appeal to that segment of voters who are resistant to Biden but are also not sold on Trump.”
Kennedy has enjoyed, however, some base of support among women for quite some time. The anti-vaccine movement is powered in large part at the grassroots level by mothers who wrongly believe that their choice to vaccinate their children led to them having conditions like autism; women can often be seen crying, cheering, and frankly swooning when Kennedy speaks in front of those audiences. One of his other prominent campaign proxies is an enormously popular celebrity and lifestyle blogger named Jessica Reed Kraus, better known by her online handle Houseinhabit, who is stumping somewhat equally for Kennedy and Trump. (Kraus, too, went viral for involving herself in two high-profile trials, once claiming that Johnny Depp had confided in her during his defamation trial against Amber Heard, as well as“covering” human trafficker and Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trial in a fairly sympathetic way.)
Despite that preexisting base of support, Kennedy has done very little to speak further to women, especially young women. After speaking at a recent libertarian forum, he declined to tell The Washington Post whether he would protect abortion access and said initially that he hadn’t read a controversial Alabama IVF ruling. (He later said he had reviewed it and “wholeheartedly” rejected the ruling.) He has said he would support a 15-week abortion ban and later said he wouldn’t, and he has called abortion “a tragedy.” Amidst all this waffling over a core issue affecting young women, he found time to meet with an anti-child-support advocate who presents it as a “war on men,” which was then released as part of a Blacks for Kennedy promotional video. (In his attempt to court Black voters, Kennedy did speak with a panel of women in Atlanta. Politico reported that the meeting was coordinated by Angela Stanton King, a former Blacks for Trump proxy who was pardoned by the former president in 2020 for a previous felony conviction.)
In a way, Beres says, Kennedy is campaigning more as an influencer than as a politician, displaying his lifestyle and his connections in a way that would also appeal to an isolated, online male crowd looking for models of how—and who—to be: “He nails an image,” Beres says, “that a lot of people don’t understand they need a lot of money and connections to acquire.” In the end, promoting a controversial athlete and an ex-governor turned blogger as vice-presidential picks may not signal a coherent political vision. But it does show an enormous hunger to engage with online spaces where the young and disaffected men gather, and wait to be shown the way.
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He/him lesbian discourse is stupid, and here’s why; bare with me this may be a bit bumpy of a ride but I promise I have a point
CONTENT WARNING: mentions of heavy topics such as bigotry and SA. if you’re not mentally up to it, just scroll. inane discourse is not worth your mental health.
Throughout my time existing in the queer community, I’ve noticed that there is always a group that’s ostracized for being too “different” from the rest of the pack, or are hard for others not in their situation to understand.
The worst part is it doesn’t just happen in the queer community, it seems to happen everywhere, in every space that humans inhabit and form groups in. you may have noticed, for example, that queer people are an outgroup to those who are cis/straight. It’s a line of people, each more niche than the one before them, all saying “You? You can’t be with us. You’re not one of us.” until we get to the end and we’re talking about problems on the fringes of the internet, like this very post.
Don’t get me wrong. There are some people who need to be ostracized to keep the peace as well as maintain safety in a space—Including, but not limited to: Nazis/fascists, racists, homophobes, pedos/zoos, etc. specifically when they are actively causing harm to others (remember rehabilitation though, if someone has grown out of a previous pattern of behavior that aligns with something that caused harm, I don’t think they should be permanently barred from our communities). At the end of the day, there’s always going to be people like this who are hateful, and I believe it’s important to keep in mind that relationships are complicated too. Some people will tolerate certain harmful behaviors because of circumstances like jobs or familial relations, and some would immediately cut them off. I think it’s all down to your preferences. It’s your life, after all.
My issue with this Ostracization comes in when it’s done to those who are not causing harm. I’ll start big picture here. I’m thinking first and foremost of the historical rift between women and men. I’m no expert on ancient bigotries, but if I had to guess I would expect misogyny to be an older one. I can hear it now. “They’re meek and they’re biologically engineered to be weaker than us!” Are they causing any harm? Is there any real reason to treat them worse than men? Next I think of racism, which is inconceivably annoying. “Oh no, their skin is a different color! They have different customs than I do!”boo hoo.
Of course next we can look at queer history. First, straight people push out gays. Because they can’t have biological children? Because they’re threatening masculinity? Whatever. Then, in spite of black trans women like Marsha P. Johnson leading the Stonewall Riots, cis queers ostracize trans people to make themselves more palatable (despite the fact that when given the chance, bigots would be fine with all of us wiped off the face of the earth). And when trans people become a bit more widely known and accepted (relatively so)? Soon, gender-non-conforming trans ppl like non-binary, agender, and genderfluid people are the next target, forming the trans-medicalist debate while trans people in general are still struggling to fight the narrative that they would assault people in the bathrooms of their aligning gender.
So we’ve finally caught up. In many modern queer communities, gnc trans people are accepted as just another part of the alphabet mafia. But there must be another sacrifice. Neopronouns and He/him lesbians. Years of oppression, and we still can’t seem to break the cycle. To those who have issues with people who use these labels, I ask you sincerely. Why?
If you are a lesbian, no one is forcing you to date someone who identifies as a lesbian while also being “male-aligned” in some way. The same way no one is obligating cis people to date trans people just because they’re an ally or whatever. Please consider; are these people you so despise and call lesbiophobic truly doing any harm other than existing? I thought that the trans community was all about breaking gender norms and being your truest self. Is excluding lesbians who are masculine or use he/him not enforcing the whole ��blue= boy” shit all over again? Yes, “he/him” is most often used for men or masculine people, but just like gender roles and gender itself, it’s just a concept we humans made up. With time, everything shifts, changes, and grows.
Let us grow together. Let us feel the magic of queer joy together. Even if you don’t entirely understand it, live and let live.
Realistically I know that gatekeeping and discourse like this will never end, but even if one more person reflects and tries to be more inclusive, more thoughtful, more empathetic, I will be happy. If you got this far ily, take care of yourself and live your best life.
#queer#queer community#he him lesbian#discourse#live and love#there’s so many problems in the world all the time#I just feel like there’s so much more pressing shit to worry about#than the way someone chooses to live their life#can’t we all just get along#anyways#love yourself
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"You are responsible for the effect that any of your jokes have on others. You will be removed from the server if you do not sufficiently acknowledge hurting others with jokes." -Glip, Flora Discord. Insert GIF of 1984 guy talking. I'm not the one that sparked that announcement but I wish they'd just grow tougher skin, because it's not like people are guising things like racism as "jokes" in that server (afaik).
The thin-skin isn't actually thin-skin, it's an abusive control method.
Make no mistake, creating tension that leads to walking on eggshells is an abusive tactic. We are not just talking about a trivial personality trait; this is a targeted behavior aimed at coercive control. The goal here is to have others do what the abuser wants them to do, to be submissive and controlled.
The lack of nuance on who is at fault when person A gets upset at something person B said is also a control method.
If the only basis for punishment is if you upset someone, then that means one can claim that they are upset in order to hurt or harass someone they dislike. There is no way to ever really tell if someone is actually upset, and since the person who is upset is guaranteed to never face any blow back, it means that the floraverse server has a safe mod-approved way to bully other people within the community.
The rule is a weapon to be used to control and instill fear/tension within the community that is framed in a way to give the impression it exists to protect the wellbeing of the community.
Bullies framing themselves as victims is nothing new, it's a tried and true method that works because it encourages onlookers to sympathize with the bully, and encourages the actual victim to become docile and take it. There is a reason predators try to reframe the victim as the abuser when they get called out via DARVO (A method Glip themselves has been shown to love). There is a reason the current mainstream American republican party constantly frames themselves as victims fighting against the tyranny of wokeism.
Context is key, and simply considering it avoids this entire feature flaw in the community.
Recently I upset someone in my server by telling someone else who I know works in my industry that it's a bad idea to use a tool because of our industry specifically. The person I upset uses this tool and does not work in my industry. This tool was a dumbed down program used to do my job that does most of the work for you and is very limited. It is good for people who are not in my industry, but if I put work from it on my resume it would look like I don't know how to do my job, which is why I said it's a bad idea to use for someone in a similar profession.
By Floraverse rules, I would be removed or at least reprimanded for making this comment because it upset someone. Despite the fact my comment was speaking as a matter of fact, was specific to a niche group of people, and explicitly did not apply to the person who was upset.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't hold people accountable for the things they say and the people you upset. You brought up racist dog whistles and that's a good example where the person who said the upsetting thing should be held accountable. Another example is I had to recently ban some users from my server for constantly misspelling a word. Why? Because the users where misspelling the word to explicitly mock and harass another user, and other context clues made that obvious. Such as one of them deadass having "<name of the user they where harassing> haters gc 🫶🏻" as their status message.
Context is key.
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Thank you for your explanation for the skin-color-as-food-description thing! (also I apologize to all olives for assuming them mostly green ;) ) Are there any good resources/tips on writing a diverse cast without falling into the old stereotypes/food-descriptors/more-yikes-words-that-are-yikes? I guess there are probably a lot more pitfalls to this I really want to avoid in the future.
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I accept your groveling, olive besmircher! ;P
There are guides...
As a white American, I have found it useful to at least peruse them to familiarize myself with things I might not have realized are cliches and red flags. And the reason I have found them useful is that I am a white American, the typical target audience of such guides.
Writingwithcolor, on tumblr, is a classic example of guides produced by fandom.
The thing is, a lot of fans who are from outside of a US context find these guides really... err... misguided. They feel they center the experiences of diaspora in a few countries (like the US, UK, and Canada) over the experiences of people in the home country. They feel they're too One Right Way or too obviously aimed at white people. Many people find them too enmeshed in a US-centric POC framework for dividing identities into categories as opposed to how identity would be seen in even Europe or Australia or New Zealand, never mind various parts of Asia or Africa.
So I'm not saying don't read them. Absolutely. If you want a guide, go read all of the many posts on writingwithcolor. Go find other guides.
But you're not going to find a magic bullet that fixes this.
I would personally focus more on not being an asshat in your own context than on pleasing the nitpicking Americans who might find your fanfic and find it problematique for stupid reasons. What ethnic minorities exist where you are? What do they think about writing cliches? And not just the loudest bloggers: what do people you run into in your actual life think? What do writers from your location think?
There's really no substitute for having a varied friend group and talking to them, but life experience and reading widely are helpful too.
There's no substitute for specificity either. Are you writing Sam Wilson or are you writing BTS? Are you writing something completely original? Is it set in the real world or is it fantasy?
If you want to write African Americans or some specific group not near you, go explore the rich history of literature from this group. Maybe for some groups, there isn't much to find, but black people in the US have produced a fuckton of art about their own experiences, and so have many other groups. Go consume it if you're interested.
Recognize that a very specific niche of highly online people who share the same politics isn't going to give you a robust view of an entire group. Sam Wilson is probably considerably more conservative and traditional than a lot of black bloggers in fandom and considerably less concerned with minutia of word choice given that he's a military guy who has made it through a whole career of other military guys. That doesn't mean he agrees with white US conservatives though or even that he's what we might call conservative overall. Ditto Nile Freeman from The Old Guard. Meanwhile, Peter Grant from Rivers of London is likely going to have far more leftist economic views, less of a connection to Christianity, and certainly a far stronger connection to an immigrant experience.
It's more important to learn enough to write something you know isn't offensive drivel than it is to listen to each and every hater you encounter. Those queer teenagers wailing about "the q slur" have equivalents in any demographic. Beware giving too much weight to this sort of person's views.
But that said, I don't think you need to wallow in research until the end of time. It is far more important to try in good faith than to fear getting something wrong.
Someone might yell at you, and that sucks, but if you're more afraid of that than of making boring art about only one kind of character, you're focused on the wrong thing. If you have basic confidence in your own intentions and general knowledge, you can shrug off the most mean-spirited or petty critiques and are better able to listen to the more relevant ones.
If you just want a list of words that are slurs, that's relatively easy. Writing something that sensitively and properly represents any group is harder, even if you're a group member yourself, and a lot of it comes down to writing skill.
There is no magic bullet.
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I must have a social death wish to bring up CRK shipping discourse twice within less than a week but I just need to vent to the void or else I feel like I'm going to spontaneously combust. Like honestly I won’t blame you at all for staying as far away from this as possible I just need to get this out of my system
CRK shipping just…confuses me. More so than other fandoms I've been in, because if it's a fandom then there's going to be shipping and if there's shipping things are going to get weird, but CRK is just, like. A vortex of things that baffle me. I brought up this point a pretty long time ago, but why do so many of CRK's ships, popular or not, are between people who just…don't like each other? At all? Crack ships are one thing, which - again - I can absolutely get behind. Sometimes you just want two people to kiss for shits and giggles and I have zero issue with that - Affocream's a star example for the CRK community. I mean, I ship Black Raisin and Caramel Arrow - two characters who have never had a single canon interaction - just because they're two of my favorites and I think it would be cute and funny if two emos with big-ass ponytails smooched each other.
But why are there people who see two characters who either don't like or outright despise each other and think, in-canon, unironically, that they'd make a good couple? ChiliRye, for example. They're friends for a bit, sure, but under false pretenses, and once those false pretenses are cleared up they go right back to being enemies and there hasn't been any development between the two of them since. RedPastry I have sort of a love-hate relationship with, mainly because I think their dynamic of each being raised under abusive parental figures and being reflections of each other but not realizing it to be super interesting, but they still hate each others' guts and don’t have any development beyond that. I think RedPastry works more as a platonic enemies-to-extremely-begrudging-fondness dynamic more than anything. Hell, until Odyssey, I didn't even like Espresseleine because up until that point Espresso had done nothing but treat Madeleine horribly and make it clear he couldn't stand him, and not even in a tsundere way. Odyssey gave them actual development in their relationship and managed to convince me they wouldn't completely destroy each other's mental health if they ever tried to be a couple. I quite like their dynamic now, but if Odyssey had never released I would've never had that change in opinion. Like, say what you want about PureCacao, especially after PureLily was confirmed as canon, but at least it's made clear the two of them like each other.
And I need to vent about Wildclotted/Clottedchip. Again. The latter more specifically. I do have to admit that me targeting these two rather niche pairings specifically does have to do with my unhealthy Wildchip and Clottcier patriotism, but even before I got invested in both the characters and the pairings shipping Clotted Cream with Wildberry/Crunchy Chip just confused the hell out of me. Wildberry's either neutral to negative towards Clotted Cream throughout the entirety of Odyssey, and Crunchy Chip makes it clear very outwardly that he hates Clotted Cream's guts and threatened him with violence multiple times. Even if you see Wildberry and Crunchy Chip's relationship as strictly platonic, how, by those standards, could you possibly see their interactions with Clotted Cream as romantic? I love the Odyssey quartet with all my heart, but they're not even friends. There's never a point where Wildberry/Crunchy Chip ever made amends with Clotted Cream, or even hint at ever growing a better relationship with him. Wildberry and Crunchy Chip are friends, and Clotted Cream and Financier are friends (at some point…), and Wildberry and Crunchy Chip seem pretty neutral towards Financier, but put all four of them in a room together and there will probably be a lot of screaming and insults. That's why I find them as a group so interesting! Begrudging coworkers! Forced proximity! It's entertaining! It's interesting! It shows sides of each of the characters that you wouldn't see otherwise! In my opinion, eliminating any tension is just watering down the quartet's relationship and making it…boring. And very, very confusing.
Also, Affocara. Need I say anything else. I don't know how it got so popular. I don't know how people saw this man trying to repeatedly sabotage and eventually indirectly end a woman's life and thought 'they'd make a good couple'. I. Just. How.
I get shippers are gonna ship and all. I've been in the fandom scene since I was, unfortunately, barely a preteen and I've seen...things. But the CRK fandom's approach to shipping is just the most baffling I've seen out of any fandom I've been in and I just get more and more confused each day. Honestly, maybe it was a subconscious decision but it could be why I've just latched onto like three or four ships and just ignored the rest of the community. Seriously, I can count the amount of CRK ships I'm invested in on one hand, and I'm just starting to realize why that might be the case. Sure, the practice might be harmless, and obviously all the ships I've criticized can't even come close to how problematic just the inherent concept of proshipping is, but some of them just make me feel icky regardless.
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Ninja Daily: Vapors 76
"If I were a third-rate puppet master, where would I be," Aiko mused, flicking through the personality profile she'd been given as part of her mission materials. Sasuke lifted his head to give her a doleful stare, then drooped again.
The boys were bored senseless by this sort of mental exercise, but she actually found it invigorating.
'They'll just have to cope until they get a chance to smash Mukade's face in.'
Her lips twitched. It probably wasn't fair to relegate them to the mindless muscle of the operation. Not having training in her specific niche of the shinobi arts didn't make either of them stupid, and tracking this way didn't appeal to everyone.
Almost any shinobi worth their salt could follow a trail once they'd been close to their target, through observation of the terrain. But the cold hard logic and mind games of attempting to access the mindset and goals of a stranger was something that didn't appeal to everyone.
Aiko loved it. It was like a puzzle, only she got to stomp in faces when she was inevitably right.
Mukade was a Chuunin from Sunagakure, one known more for his attempts at innovation than his power. He might have done better in another village, one that relied less heavily on very specific, almost ritualistic habits in order to maintain their bare existence. When all attention was turned to survival, it was hard to care about people with big dreams.
'With ambitions like that, he's probably prideful.' Aiko blew out a puff of air, re-examining the attempted reforms he'd tried to push from a low level political position on Suna's council. 'Probably all burnt up on the inside that he never managed to get enough influence to push his agendas, and never had the sheer power to force the issue.'
It was hard to see what of those two varying goals he would pursue, if it weren't for the fact that he appeared to be a total loner. Once ejected from Sunagakure, he had no chance of legitimately gaining power, and lacked the inclination to make friends/allies to help him in his goals without a guaranteed payoff.
He would go in search of physical power, likely in the form of some augmentation or tool that worked well with his areas of expertise. Mukade would have to start all over again from scratch if he intended to gain considerable strength through taijutsu, genjutsu, or ninjutsu.
'He's a puppet master.' Aiko slumped at the thought of dealing with another of those asshats. 'He's going to want to control more puppets. He'll want to get raw materials, more chakra, and refine his control.'
There would be no point in building dozens of new puppets before he had the augmented ability to control them. They would just be luggage. So…
"Yamato, do you know of any items that augment chakra capacity?"
The team captain blinked, scrunching his face contemplatively. "Well, no. Other than a bijuu." He continued over Naruto's muttered, 'A bijuu isn't an item'. "But there a location in the northwest portion of Wind Country famous… Notorious, really," he corrected as an afterthought, "for its position over a subterranean vein of natural chakra."
"Natural chakra?" Naruto perked up, looking interested. "Like what toads use, and you turn to rocks if you do it wrong?"
Yamato gave him a mildly baffled look. "No idea what you're talking about, but yes. Natural chakra. In past years, there used to be a group of women who were capable of interacting with it safely. They used it to power a city on the location, and made it very wealthy." He shrugged. "Supposedly, it was a genetic inheritance, but that could have just been a ploy to keep power in their hands. It seems more likely that the ability was a result of specific training, but it's always possible that they were telling the truth."
"They could have had a familial contract with some sort of sage," Naruto suggested, leaning forwards, blue eyes bright.
The other three exchanged glances.
"We appear to have run into a topic where you're the expert," Sasuke sighed, pushing himself up from his lounging position on one of the froofy chairs in the hotel room. "Translate your jargon."
"Nani?" Naruto cocked his head and blinked uncertainly at his dark-haired teammate.
'Aww, otouto is so stinking cute.'
"I think Sasuke is referring to the term 'sage' in this context, specifically," Yamato clarified with a faintly pleasant expression. "I think I can piece together what a familial contract could be." He waved a hand dismissively. "Something like a summoning contract, but it can't leave the line of the original recipient."
"Yeah, some summoning clans are picky about that," Naruto grumbled in a bitter way that implied there was a story. Then he shook his head and gave the others an impish grin, holding a hand up. "Alright then. A sage is someone who has mastered the usage of natural chakra, a process that involves gathering it and translating it into something that they can use. Natural chakra is technically unlimited as long as there are still living things generating it, like trees and stuff. It normally dissipates and gets reused by the living things in the area if it doesn't get used up by a sage."
"So…" Sasuke mused. "What would happen that would cause an excess of that type of chakra to get trapped underground? And what qualities might it possess?"
"I dunno." Naruto gave a carefree shrug.
Everyone else face-palmed.
"For a moment, you seemed like you really knew what you were talking about," Yamato sighed mournfully into his palm. The muffled quality of his words undermined the mild reproach they carried.
"Wait." At her interruption, Naruto bottled up whatever retort he'd been about to give Yamato (fairly, she might add. That had been rude.). "You said that misusing this natural chakra ends up, like, fossilizing you?" She felt her face turn green at his nod. "Who would be desperate and stupid enough to do such a thing? I mean, I understand why it would be possible for a group to maintain power if they had the ability to safely interact with that chakra. No one would want to overthrow them and try to figure out the problem for themselves unless they had everything they needed from the chakra veins. But barring that guarantee of safety…" She trailed off.
Naruto was the one to offer a suggestion. "A missing nin might be that desperate."
She cringed.
"So we're going to Rouran," Yamato concluded, getting to his feet. Then he made a face and shrugged one shoulder. "In the morning. There's no rush."
Sasuke's eye ticked. Aiko stifled a smile. They'd already spent two nights in this hotel, and he was ready to move on.
'Mukade,' Aiko concluded with stern finality, 'is an irritating little bug of a man.'
They had been just about to give up their ambush in the ruins, when he had finally showed up. At first, they had turned to searching the old city for signs of his presence, thinking that he was hiding or had already left, but there had been no indication at all of humans in the near vicinity in the recent past.
Mitsuo gave an indignant whuff, as if to say "I told you so" to Sasuke, who had questioned his claim that there were no other humans nearby before. The Uchiha didn't dignify him with a response.
"Hush," she whispered, bending down to stroke Mitsuo's head and neck. "You've done well, I never doubted it."
Their prey was picking determinedly through the ruins in a way that implied he knew the layout well, only stopping to check landmarks a few times. That was mildly impressive. The city was large, complex, and disheveled. Fallen buildings seemed to throw his path off, so that probably meant he'd managed to find an old map to study instead of being familiar from past visits.
Sasuke broke off, taking a closer following distance with Yamato and Naruto. Aiko followed behind, curious as to what exactly their prey intended, but cognizant that her role in this mission was largely over.
Yamato must have been thinking something similar. Naruto was practically vibrating with eagerness for a fight, but their captain was restraining him to see what Mukade would do. If he had some enormous advantage or allies hidden around here, they should know before they made a move. It would only be if he made a move for the chakra well underground that they interfered.
She didn't even know how he planned to access that. He wasn't an earth type, nor was he immensely strong like Sasuke who could punch his way down to the ley lines beneath.
The sun was mercilessly glaring into the tops of her mostly bare shoulders, but she bore it patiently. She'd had a choice between long sleeves, pushing up the half-sleeves on this to cover her shoulders, or leaving the garment as it was meant to fit. It was far too warm for long sleeves and a closed neck, and her ANBU tattoo would be exposed if she tugged on the fabric. The top was a soft purple, in concession to the fact that the dark colors she normally favored in mission gear would just absorb the unblocked sun and make the experience even worse.
'I really don't understand how the boys can dress like that in this weather.' Yamato was in the same gear he always was, Naruto in blue standard pants with an orange long-sleeved top, and Sasuke in all black. To add to the pain, they were all physically carrying their gear, despite the fact that Naruto at least could make his own storage seals.
Aiko cringed just thinking about it. Why were they all too proud to admit defeat to the weather and change their clothes?
'Then again, we can't all be brave enough to pair shorts and boots,' she thought sarcastically with a fond grin for Ino, who had scolded her fiercely for the apparent faux-pas. Aiko almost enjoyed vexing her more fashionable friend about things like that, contrary as it was.
Boots were better than those dumbass blue sandals, in any case.
Mukade had led them to a strange open area inside a building that appeared to have been a rock garden at some point.
It wasn't until he crossed to a long, narrow pathway that Aiko got the sense that they had missed some critical information. The large sealing array splayed on the ground was a helpful clue.
Yamato broke out of cover, clearing his throat. "Mukade! We come on order of the Godaime Hokage to return you to Sunagakure for treason. Come quietly, and we will do you no harm."
What.
What.
What.
'That's not what you do when you catch up to a missing ninja,' Aiko felt like crying out. 'You attack from a stealthy position and either immobilize or eliminate them, according to your orders. You don't give them a gentleman-like chance to fight back. We're ninja, not Eagle Scouts.'
Naruto and Sasuke flickered to Yamato's sides, looking dangerous. The older man turned to survey them all, eyes flickering to Aiko's position in a way that indicated he knew she was there despite hiding.
There was no point in hiding, so she stood to get a better view, arms crossed and expression tight. She wasn't getting involved in this fight unless the situation went downhill or Yamato assessed the situation as higher than previously thought.
It really shouldn't be an issue, though. He was just a Chuunin. With her hanging back, he'd probably assume she was the medic, though. Aiko repressed a scowl at the thought. Being support just wasn't her style.
"You fools are too late," Mukade jeered, startling her with his incongruously intimidating voice. He looked a bit like a low budget zombie, with his buggy eyes and protruding ribs, but he sounded like he should narrate car commercials. "I wondered when you would approach me. I even grew nervous that you would have the intelligence to keep me from this place."
'Oh, hell no.'
They'd been wrong about how the chakra was accessed. He didn't have to go down. Aiko's eyes widened, and her hand went to her weapon's pouch before she realized that her teammates were much closer. She should trust them to take care of the situation. Surely they weren't so noble as to let him keep talking.
"But here I am!"
'Come on, come on. Someone, make a move. What are you waiting for?'
"And this power is mine."
"Someone kill him already!" she shouted, patience lost. Naruto jolted at her voice, taking off at a running leap an instant before Sasuke did. As if in slow motion, she saw Mukade take his eyes off them to make a move for the seal. Yamato began moving inwards.
Chakra sparked, and the Hiraishin kunai that she now just recognized holding the array in place was pulled up, even as Mukade let the seal trickle over his skin.
'Not natural. Not natural.'
That was a little like what she had been doing with benign seals borrowed from Naruto. Stealing them. Except… no. He wasn't maintaining it, Mukade was just breaking the seal. It wasn't like her technique at all, except in the appearance of the ink moving onto him giving the deceptive impression that he was stealing the seal for his own means.
Mukade looked up and gave them all one frightening, triumphant grin before he disappeared in an explosion of light that widened to a pillar. Naruto was a foot away from Mukade.
Aiko didn't think. Naruto's seal was singing to her. He needed her.
Her arms went around her brother and she grabbed a fistful of Sasuke's shirt, moving to ping back to the Hiraishin seal on Mitsuo's adorable little doggy vest—and she was caught, jolting in the same swirling visual that had swallowed up their prey whole.
"No!" Yamato shouted, clapping his hands and shooting forward a winding tendril of wood for them to grab onto.
She wanted to shout for him to back up, that she didn't think that he could tug them out, they were already caught and he would just end up taken too.
But she didn't have enough time to say anything, and she might have been selfish enough to still her tongue anyways. Naruto and Sasuke were caught with her. They needed to get out of whatever the hell this was.
"Oh, hell," Yamato muttered to himself in the torturously long moments between seeing three wide-eyed teens sucked into the light that had taken Mukade and being taken in himself. "If the Hokage doesn't kill me for this, Kakashi-senpai will."
He'd just misplaced all three of his charges. There was probably an intelligent, technical phrase that would sum up this tactical situation.
"Fuck."
Yes, that was it.
Mitsuo blinked stupidly at the empty area, his ears flopping as he swiveled to try to survey the situation. His eyes weren't nearly as good at his ears, but he'd never seen anything quite like that before and it didn't seem to have been error on his part. They were all simply gone.
He gave a confused whine and buried his nose in his paws. Not good.
"Where is Yamato?" Aiko muttered, fingers twitching compulsively for a weapon. This was not an optimal solution. She had thought that he would have ended up getting pulled in with them, but he wasn't here. Perhaps she had been mistaken.
'Then again… Mukade definitely went in, and he's nowhere to be seen.' She shuddered. 'If this is what I think it is… the time that we touched the light or vacuum or whatever could be relevant to where we ended up.'
She very determinedly didn't correct her wording, even internally. She didn't want to consider the answer that was begging for her attention.
'Maybe I was wrong, and he didn't get pulled in with us,' she tried to convince herself. It wasn't working well. He was lost somewhere. Or he wasn't and they were the ones who were lost, but they were at least a group. Granted, he was quite capable, but he still shouldn't be alone. If they left and he showed up later, he would panic. Rightly so. But they couldn't sit here and hope that he would show up to take command, either.
'God, this is a massive fuck up. Maybe my fuck up. If I hadn't pushed them to try to rush Mukade, we might have all just watched him disappear from a distance. He'd still be a problem, but he'd be someone else's problem. I have enough problems, between Danzo and having to play diplomat.'
Aiko shook her head sharply. Recriminations and poor attitude would help nothing. They had to move forward.
"Well, this is a change," Sasuke summed up unnecessarily, working to wake Naruto up. He'd seemed to have had a reaction to whatever that portal had been, and have curled up on his side unconscious. The Uchiha jolted him with what looked like a little current of lightning.
Aiko would have cringed in sympathy if she wasn't too busy scanning their new location for threats.
That wasn't quite right, though. The location had changed… but it hadn't changed. They appeared to be in the same place, just a different and less crappy version of it.
Something in her brain whined, high pitched and unhappy and reminiscent of Mitsuo's keening complaints when she did something particularly loud or dangerous during training. If she had to put a description to it, Aiko would have said that there was a sense of something severely disturbed and frightened about it.
That brought to mind another thought: Was Mitsuo okay? Hopefully he was with Yamato. They could take care of each other. It was horrifically tempting to try to summon him anyway, but if they really were where she thought they were, that could go terribly wrong. Perhaps he just wouldn't come and it would be fine when she saw him later. But perhaps he'd be dragged back, or not make it all the way. There was just no way to tell, and inter-dimensional travel wasn't something to fuck around with when you didn't know what was going on. She had to wait and trust her other teammates could take care of themselves while she couldn't get to them, and just concentrate on the ones she was with.
"What… What happened?" Naruto's tone started out groggy, but as he sat up and took a look around, his eyes popped open and his voice became incredulous. "We were- but now we're-"
"That is an excellent question," Sasuke muttered, giving their surroundings a dark look. It appeared innocuous, but she would have preferred the rotten carcass to the shining whole version of this city.
They didn't appear to be making the connection. It was so horrible and so obvious to her that she had a hard time sympathizing with that.
"What," Aiko said flatly, "do you think might happen, when some jackass interferes with a substance known to fuck with the fabric of reality in a specific location by accelerating the passage of time in relation to the person who touched it, and do you perhaps think that having the seal blocking that substance away held in place by a kunai with a seal that works by altering a user's position in space and time could be a bad idea?"
By the end of that diatribe, her tone had wavered on the line between 'hysterical' and 'murderous' a little too much for her companions' comfort.
"Crazy shit could happen?" Naruto meekly posited.
His sister just nodded, working hard to control her breathing. "Crazy shit indeed. I think we can refine our hypothesis with the extra data that those crappy ass ruins are now a crappy ass city around us." Irritably, she gestured at the architecture that she might have appreciated under different circumstances and fisted a hand in her hair, inadvertently pulling out her ponytail.
"Sounds like solid reasoning."
No one seemed to want to follow up on Sasuke's slightly resentful comment. Perhaps they'd been hoping he would tell them they were being stupid and that something else had happened.
"We need to get out of here," Aiko breathed, eyes darting around the area and fingers compulsively reaching for the sole Hiraishin kunai on her leg, as if she could cut her way out of this problem. "We need to go to ground, get information, and reassess the situation."
"I disagree," Sasuke protested. "We're already here."
"Yeah, we need to find this Mukade guy. He was the one who brought us here. We'll stomp him until he agrees to fix this," Naruto added practically. "I don't know what he did, but he probably did."
"No." Aiko barked, giving a stern glare to the two. At the authoritarian tone, both boys jumped. She'd never talked to them like that before. "As the senior operative, I am taking field command, and we are getting the fuck out of here. We can't come into conflict with Mukade again without better information."
'Finding Mukade would be a bad idea. He's already outmaneuvered us once, even if he didn't intend to bring us here with him. We need tactical intelligence. Ours was clearly bad.' She paused. 'Besides, if I see him, I'm going to kill him, in this mood. We can't afford to get drawn into a fight and risk eliminating our one chance to get home.'
Sasuke was the one to look away first, signaling acquiescence. "Fine, then. It's on your head, captain." Naruto's stubbornness would require more persuasion, however. His chin was up and his eyes were narrowed at her in a familiar expression.
"If anyone feels like arguing with me, they will be leaving unconscious over my shoulder. I would prefer not to cart you out like babies, but I will if necessary, as well as file a report for in-field subordination."
Or threats. Threats would work. Even if she would have immense difficulty following through on that one in particular, seeing as how her companions were heavy and she wasn't particularly physically strong.
Back home, she would easily be able to follow through on that threat. That was another thing that made her incredibly nervous. Her carefully built network of planted seals, hidden on shinobi, in important locations in her home country, and even in several towns in Water Country was all useless and absent now.
Aiko fought the urge to hyperventilate. She had thought that she would never be stranded in hostile territory, since she had the ability to instantly carry herself and as many allies as she could grab to one of her seals.
'Stay calm.' Mindlessly, she reached out and pulsed an explosive Hiraishin onto the column she'd woken next to so they could return if necessary, ignoring the questioning expressions when she didn't bother to hide the motion.
She still had one on Naruto and could reach him, but she couldn't risk being separated from Sasuke. Not when they were so far out of friendly territory and she was the only person who could look out for them. Sasuke was just a Chuunin, and Naruto a genin. They were puppies. She had to keep them safe and get them out. If she could find out when they were and reassess the situation, she could come up with a plan to get them into the village and get help.
The plan was optimistic. Maybe even naïve.
'I have no idea when we are,' Aiko argued with herself. 'And no idea when this city was lost. For all I know, we could only be a couple years in the past. Even if we're just toddlers, the Sandaime would recognize us.'
Yeah, and maybe she was going to run into Joan of Arc on the way to Konoha and they'd have girl talk. There was no such luck for her.
"Sasuke, come here."
Her odd tone seemed to unnerve him, but he slunk forward, giving her an uneasy look. "Hai?" Then he jolted, when she reached out to brush her fingers over his left hand and plant a seal there on the back of his palm. "I'm tagging you," she said unnecessarily, beginning to walk. "We can't afford to be separated. Come on, boys."
"Don't you have to ask about a thing like that?" His voice was incredulous. She didn't bother to answer.
It was considered unethical to seal someone without their permission, yes. Aiko did not give a fuck right now.
They made it out of the city without incident and didn't stop running until they had passed two smaller towns. Aiko compulsively tagged the underside of the doorknob to the hotel lobby as she pulled it open and smoothly stepped inside. "One room, please."
The older man behind the counter gave the three of them – three disheveled teenagers—an appalled look as if he thought they were about to fall onto the floor in an orgy if he let them stay there.
A muscle in her jaw ticked, and she snatched a copy of the newspaper off the counter to check the date. "Now, please," she commanded in a tone that brooked no argument. She didn't have time to correct civilian misperceptions about what it meant for a team to room together. There was no room for girlish privacy with people you trusted with your life.
(Unless your prospective roommate was Jiraiya, was the unofficial corollary written into the official academy materials on the subject.)
She tagged the shower faucet when she stepped in just to be thorough, exchanging her outfit for a nearly identical set in light blue once clean. She didn't use nightclothes on missions. Made her too vulnerable.
Three location seals was a pitiful array, but it was the smallest number possible to allow her to triangulate to locations in between, and they were relatively close together, so they actually could be used for that purpose.
Still wasn't optimal.
For that reason, she left a seal on a tree as they continued their mad run to Fire Country the next day. The boys probably thought she was nuts for stopping to feel up a tree, but had the tact not to say anything.
When they reached the town they had stayed in the first night on their mission, she set them up in the same hotel (she already knew the layout and tactical values well) and settled down for a short break. They wouldn't actually be spending the night here, but they needed to rest and recover to a good condition before they ended up in what might well be hostile territory, despite being their hometown.
"So…. What's the plan?" Sasuke started awkwardly, looking down at the counter where he'd parked his bag. Aiko was well-packed for an extended mission since paper weighed nothing, but he and Naruto had both brought the minimum clothing considered necessary by teenage boys.
In other words, they were going to get rather rank soon if they didn't get home.
"We need to get to Konoha and talk to the Hokage," Naruto put out, not sounding certain himself. "That's the only person who has to help us."
Sasuke scoffed darkly. "Yes, if we can convince him that we're telling the truth. They're in a war here. They're bound to be more paranoid than usual, and this story is insane in the first place. We traveled back in time?" He shook his head wordlessly, jaw clenched tight.
"It's unbelievable," Naruto agreed quietly. "But we can tell the Hokage things to make him trust us. We do have a lot of future knowledge."
"If we do that, he won't know if we're telling the truth until he's lived those events, and none of us are history experts anyways," Aiko sighed, crossing her arms under a pillow and resting her left cheek on it. "Besides, we could change the course of history by doing that. Some theories of time travel state that we could undo our own existence and create a paradox. Or worse, we could end up in a future we don't recognize and can't function in. We may have to give vague information, but just hints, and nothing actually important."
The discussion continued in circles, but she drifted off in a short power nap. There was something that had to be done at twilight and darkness, and she needed to be able to focus when she did it.
When she awoke, it was to a feeling of clarity and determination. Sasuke had taken the other bed and Naruto was apparently on watch, playing tic-tac-toe against a clone. When she stood to gather her belongings, Sasuke gave a sleepy grunt and opened those reflective red eyes at her before he blinked and they went back to black.
"Oh, good. You're both awake. I want you two to take turns sharing guard watch until I get back," she commanded curtly, giving a perfunctory examination of her equipment to be sure that it was all in order. Kunai holster, hip pouch, senbon under her short gloves, short sword tightly secured around her back, and a thin blade down the backseam of her left boot… it all looked to be in good order. "Naruto, watch my bag, would you?" It would get in the way of her sword if she needed that in short order. She tossed the item onto the dresser before he even answered. It wasn't even important. It just had a couple notebooks in it, and no sensitive information.
"Wait—what? You're leaving us?"
"Why?" Sasuke asked crisply, sitting up so the sheets pooled around his waist and giving her an appraising look. The effect was lessened by his bedhead.
"My stealth is better than yours," she informed factually, "and my speed. Since we ended up at the beginning of the third shinobi war, the border to Fire Country is going to be very well guarded, and I don't want to risk you two. I will cross the border if I can, plant a seal, and return for you two. It shouldn't take me long. Get some rest until then, both of you. Any concerns?"
They exchanged uncertain looks. "I guess," Naruto breathed, biting his lip with two canines. "I don't like it, but I understand it." Sasuke just shrugged.
Patrol routes on the border absolutely had to have changed in the many years in between when she'd served and now, but the concept should be the same. Aiko crouched down a quarter mile from the border and took the time to put one of the seals that obscured chakra signatures on her left glove. She channeled chakra to enhance her hearing and sense of smell, and traced her way along the border to- "Bingo," she muttered, siphoning an obscene amount of water off the river that crossed at an angle into Fire Country. "It's time to make it rain."
Very seriously, she sank the liquid into the atmosphere and positioned it above the forest. Rain started trickling almost immediately, sinking into the ground and trees to provide her with crude radar. She pushed and powered, stealing more and more raw material, spreading her rain out miles further than she ever had before.
A part of her mind managed to note that her chakra control had improved considerably since the last time she had used this jutsu. But she didn't much care.
'There's the outpost.' Aiko frowned in thought. That building had been destroyed and relocated at some point between the two timelines. Probably in the war to come.
Technically, her textbooks had claimed that the third secret war was going on now, but that was the power of retrospect. Right now, no such thing was acknowledged, though many people would be worried that was where events were heading.
They had no clearance or identification here, so the border patrol would rightly attack first and ask questions once the puppies were smoking corpses. She couldn't afford to take them into that kind of situation.
It took hours to get some sort of map of the layout of border outposts and the ways that the patrol routes traced around them. It was a bit of a gauntlet, but she thought she could trace a path around the hilariously soggy Konoha shinobi on border patrol. The area twenty miles or so into Fire Country would be nearly empty. She only had to get past that short trial.
Aiko let her rain slowly trickle off. It would be idiotic to draw attention to herself by ending it suddenly, or by attempting to keep it up as she ran so that it sputtered when she inevitably got distracted. Impatience killed far worse than curiosity.
Her ability to compose a mental map was exponentially better than it had once been, a fact she was grateful for as she kept track of the time she spent running and the approximate speed of the patrols. She had to alter her route multiple times. At one point, she had to hunker down in a treetop under the chameleon genjutsu to avoid some clever bastards who had changed up what had looked like a predictable patrol pattern.
On an impulsive thought, she tagged the tree trunk she was hidden against. If she got in trouble later, it might be nice not to have to go all the way back to the hotel to start over. It'd be like the worst video game level ever.
Despite her paranoia and worry, there seemed to be little cause for concern. Aiko made her way past the most dangerous area, and then another fifteen miles for good measure. That put her well in the middle of Fire Country. A half-day's running even at the boys' speed would get them to Tanzaku Gai. Just to be safe, she dotted a two mile area with tags, so that if she accidentally appeared in the middle of an escort group or something, she could re-orient and bring her group into Konoha safely anyways.
As much as she didn't like it, leaving them alone outside the village was much more dangerous than sneaking them in. Even if something went wrong, the Hokage refused to hear their case, and put them all in prison, she could break them out and flee for the hills.
It wasn't a pleasant possibility, but it was infinitely less terrifying than finding out that they were in trouble only when one of them thought to spark chakra against their seals.
Then she flicked back to the hotel room.
Naruto blinked guiltily up at her from his position sitting on Sasuke's back. The Uchiha's cheek was squished into the floor, one eye wide and resentful.
"I'm not asking," Aiko informed them matter-of-factly, flopping down onto the spare bed. She curled onto her side and pulled a pillow to her torso. "We have a way in. Who is on watch?"
Aiko determinedly ignored the incredulous glances she got from her companions as she searched around what must seem to be a perfectly ordinary stretch of clearing to them for the entrance to the tunnel Sai had led her through to get out of the village safely. "Mm, here," she grunted with satisfaction, tugging up the hidden trap door and sticking her foot right through the genjutsu of dirt with a slight grimace.
"Ugh!" Naruto exclaimed from somewhere above her.
Aiko tapped back up the ladder just enough to poke her head out, despite how grotesque it would look. "Come on, we need to hurry. This isn't a good place to linger."
"Why is this here?" Sasuke asked quietly as they stalked through the tunnels, giving appraising glances to various off-shoot routes that they weren't taking. "And why do you know about it?"
'Because I'm a member of an illicit organization that works to subvert the Hokage you love so much, and this is one of the ways we get out of the village to perform illegal missions. At least we have the comforting knowledge that Danzo's operations are already alive and well by the presence of this tunnel system under the village to keep us warm at night.'
"That's classified," she replied tonelessly, taking a sharp turn down a path that should lead them closer to the village center. If they came up in a training ground, they could easily blend in with crowds. Three teenagers with Konoha headbands would not seem at all out of place meandering away from that area. "Don't ever come here again, and do not mention the location."
Showing them this tunnel could get her killed, but it wasn't like she had another convenient way in the village.
It would be much harder to get an audience with the Hokage. Sneaking in would make it difficult to get the Sandaime to want to help them. He'd be more likely to start throwing paperweights. But there was no way they could legitimately gain entrance to the tower, as their credentials were certainly not valid at this point in time.
She settled for the unsatisfying but marginally least dangerous option of tucking her puppies away in a training ground ('God, I hope Mitsuo is okay,' she fretted) and going to the Hokage on her own. 'How much trouble could they really get into when I'm only a few minutes away?'
Aiko cringed. She shouldn't jinx it, especially when her two subordinates were so visibly disgruntled about following her orders. At least they were still listening to her, for now. Naruto was used to taking guidance from her, and Sasuke had a better sense of respect for authority than he had before he'd been Tsunade's apprentice. At least, he did when that authority had a good point, she amended. If he thought she was being stupid, he would disobey in a heartbeat.
'Now that I think about it, that's a very risky trait,' she mused, ducking into an office building that she knew from her time in ANBU as someone routinely assigned to protective detail. If nothing had changed… Yes, there was still a door that led to Hokage tower through an underground escape route. It was probably the one that she'd been taken through on the night she'd been born by Uchiha Mikoto.
Aiko stopped dead in her tracks, really realizing for the first time that Sasuke's family was alive now. Would he want to see them? Would… She swallowed, hard. Would Naruto want to see Minato and Kushina?
'No point ruminating on stupid things like that now,' she told herself. Right now there was a mission, unofficial and self-determined as it was. The pathway let out on the second level of the Hokage tower. For a while, she strode the halls as if she belonged there. The secretary downstairs was the major screening device, after all. Theoretically, anyone beyond that point belonged in the tower and had been vetted. The practice was still to assume that there would be intruders, but few people illegally intruding on the center of Konoha's military power would be ballsy enough to smile and nod at passersby. To further the impression that she was harmless, at one point Aiko actually hailed down an office worker to compliment on her dress and had a short conversation. Anyone watching would assume she was in no hurry.
She was and wasn't. Aiko didn't want to leave the boys alone long, but in theory there was no reason to worry about them. They were just in Konoha, and had real headbands. They were also familiar with the layout, which was important when one of the most suspicious tells for spies was that unfamiliarity. If she got the sense that they were in danger, she'd be out of this building before anyone else could blink, and to hell with the consequences and the terrifying thought that she'd have to figure this out on her own.
The only person she crept past was the civilian secretary who took appointments. If she was past that woman, the ANBU in the next room would think she belonged there.
'Now that I think about it, it's positively ill-planned to have her alone. Isn't he worried? Does he trust his security that much?'
Ah. The woman was at least a Chuunin, judging by her chakra core. Not helpless, then.
Pity, that she wasn't very observant. 'To be fair,' Aiko told herself, 'I am using a genjutsu developed by Jiraiya, stealth training straight from ANBU boot camp, and a seal to obscure my chakra signature pilfered directly from the Hokage's office.'
She opened the door with confidence (thanked her stars that the Sandaime was the only person inside. If he'd been in a meeting, her one chance would be lost. She could hardly wait around when she wasn't meant to be there) and stepped inside, giving him a pleasant smile as she closed the door behind her. "Good afternoon, Hokage-sama," Aiko greeted mildly.
The confused crinkle between his eyebrows faded into placid smoothness. "I don't believe I recognize you, my dear," he stated with deceptive kindness. She knew better than to believe it. The man in front of her was made with steel.
One of the few things she had admired about him without reservation was that he knew every single member of his forces by name and face. He knew damn well that he'd never given her a headband. "Oh, that's actually what I want to talk to you about," she said casually, communicating the same thing to him via the handsigns taught only to ANBU.
It wouldn't prove that she wasn't a spy, of course. If anything, he probably thought now that she was a very good spy. But it meant that she had his interest.
"Is that so." Sarutobi Hiruzen leaned back in his chair to appraise her, looking infinitely more dangerous than she ever recalled him being. Then again, this was years before she was even born, if not many.
It was still shocking to see color in his hair. It made him look much more like Asuma… though technically, the resemblance went the other way.
"Are you aware of anything unusual happening in Rouran?" she began casually, hoping to god that the answer was yes. If Mukade had really traveled to the past, he'd either arrived before or would arrive after them. Seeing as he'd gone into the strange disturbance first, she would have to bet that he'd already arrived. He had to have come here in order to do something. Hopefully he was stirring up trouble.
This strategy was a bit of a gamble, but it was better than saying 'I'm from the future'. She'd have to get to that part, but first she should establish some credibility without lying. He'd spot a lie. She was good, but not that good, and he was already suspicious of her.
His eyes narrowed in a way that implied there really was something happening in Rouran. "You are well informed."
"Yes and no," Aiko admitted honestly, pulling up a chair and sitting casually on the other side of his desk. It wasn't a good move to make in front of a random official. It was considered incredibly rude, actually. But Sarutobi had been amused enough by Naruto's antics that she rather thought he harbored a fondness for irreverent mischief makers.
Sure enough, a muscle twitched in the corner of his mouth. He didn't let it become a smile, but she was sure the gambit had paid off.
"I couldn't even being to guess at what odd things are happening in Rouran, but I would be willing to wager that they originate from one man, and that I know who he is." Aiko lazily indicated a height with her left hand, praying this would work. "He's about this tall, bug-eyed, and has brown hair and an incongruously low voice. Puppet user. Ring any bells?"
Hiruzen could have been made from stone. "And what, pray tell, do you think to tell me about the Minister?"
"Minister?" Aiko drew back, actually surprised. "That's what he's going by now? He's actually a missing-nin named Mukade. He has some sort of bloodline ability that lets him absorb seals and then dissolves them. He has an interest in the leylines beneath the city." She paused deliberately. "Forgive the digression, but are you aware of the properties of natural chakra? Specifically that misuse agitates the molecular structure of an individual who interacts with it and rapidly accelerates aging?" She shrugged and honestly amended, "Either that or it forces them through centuries of time in an instant, turning them to a fossil. I'm a little rusty on the theory."
At this point, he actually looks interested. "I haven't heard the phenomenon described with such specificity, to be honest. Are you a sage?"
"No, my brother has been learning from his summons," she answered honestly. "My interest is rather more personal. To the point, it has to do with what happens when an especially potent, aged source of natural chakra comes into contact with an idiot holding a seal that interferes with space-time interaction."
"I couldn't begin to imagine what would happen." The Hokage looked like he was hearing a particularly interesting bit of gossip. She liked him for it. They'd never actually had a remotely intelligent conversation, since he'd thought of her as a child.
"Yes, well, I wouldn't have until it happened either," she confided dryly. Abruptly, she switched tracks. "Sorry about sneaking in here, by the way." He gave a snort, as if to say that she didn't appear to be particularly sorry. "That tunnel between here and the building above T&I looks just the same twenty years from now," she shared with deliberate delicacy and an empathic hand movement.
At that, he froze. It was hard to tell if it was the casual release of information that wasn't even given to most ANBU, or that she'd claimed to be from the future.
"Although the genjutsu seal hiding the ANBU operative in that hidden room there is much, much better in the future. You should have Jiraiya take a look at it," Aiko recommended, enjoying his flustered look. Oh, he probably didn't believe her, but watching him try to figure out how she could have gotten her information was glorious too. "Or we could cut out the middleman and I'll just scribe you a copy, but that would sort of rob the original thinker of their achievement. Not very sporting."
The Hokage swallowed slowly. "I don't suppose you have corroborating information, or any proof? This is a large claim."
Aiko bit her lip thoughtfully. "Well, what would be convincing to you? Would you like to hear about what your students do? See some Konoha unique techniques? Or maybe talk to my team?"
"Team?" he said sharply. "How many shinobi did you ghost into my village, young lady?"
He was probably right to be concerned. Her sneaking into his office instead of turning herself in and asking for an audience had been a veiled threat and show of her abilities. It was infinitely more likely to end in getting a meeting with him than doing the legal thing, but he had to be bristling at the knowledge that she could have done serious damage before anyone knew she was in Konoha. Finding out that she wasn't alone would be an unpleasant surprise.
"It's just me and the two puppies," she confided easily, swinging her legs with faux casualness in an intentionally girly gesture. In all reality, her heart was pounding. "We got separated from our team leader when Mukade sucked up the seal. I didn't like the odds of pulling two silly boys through Hokage tower without getting stopped, so I tucked them away somewhere safe. Would you like me to go get them?"
"I don't think I have the time," the Sandaime muttered, rubbing at a tension headache in a move eerily reminiscent of Tsunade's own crippling migraines. That job must be terrible.
"It won't take long," she assured him. "Just a flash. But if you really insist… would you like to know how long it takes Tsunade-sama to return to the village?" Aiko actually felt a bit cruel at the hope she saw on his face. He was hoping for good news. "Eighteen years from now, and she takes an Uchiha apprentice within a month."
It clearly wasn't what he'd been hoping to hear, but it still put a reluctant smile onto his face. "She does, does she." Hiruzen didn't seem to entirely believe her, but at least he was enjoying the story.
"Mmmhmm," she acknowledged. "Uchiha Fugaku's younger boy, actually."
At that, the Hokage actually laughed. "Come now, that's ludicrous. He would never allow such a thing."
"He's long dead." That brought a bit of solemnity back. Undaunted, Aiko pressed forward. "As luck would have it, that boy is one of my puppies." She gave him a smile without teeth. "Would you like to see them now?"
"You want permission to bring two more possible hostiles into my office," the Sandaime summed up, as if he couldn't quite believe her gall. "And how, exactly, do you propose to get those 'puppies' of yours in past security?"
"Well, like this," Aiko said practically, tapping his desk. "Just a moment please."
'Better to ask forgiveness than permission in this case. I need to shock-and-awe him, keep him off balanced so that he doesn't have time to lose interest, come to his senses, and have me taken to interrogations. If he hasn't had time to process and doesn't have rebuttals and arguments, then he's just listening to me.'
But this was partially because she'd never had a chance to impress the man, and this would probably smack a few years right off his face in surprise.
She grinned at her own theatricality in the instant between when she appeared in the clearing and when she grabbed hold of Naruto, then Sasuke. "Heads up, gentlemen," she commanded briskly, using her toe to dig up a small rock, bounce it up off the top of her foot, and catch it with the hand laced through Naruto's arm. Might need it in a moment.
Naruto actually hit the floor on his knees when they reappeared in the Hokage's office with a groan. "Aiko-chan, that's just mean. Give a guy some warning?"
The Hokage stared, wide-eyed. She wasn't entirely certain if it was at their sudden appearance or Naruto in specific, but he did seem to be staring at the blonde with a pale face.
'He does look unnervingly like Minato, if he'd had baby cheeks.'
"Excuse me," Aiko said sweetly, leaning forward to pluck up her Hiraishin seal and remove it from his desk. His gaze followed it as it dissolved in a way that implied he could sense the energy with enough detail to nearly see it himself. "I don't mean to mark up your furniture, Hokage-sama."
Sasuke just rolled his eyes and stuck his hands in his pockets, giving the room as a whole a dismissive glance.
"I see," Hiruzen said a bit weakly. "That's- that's kind of you, I'm sure."
Naruto blinked, and then scrambled to his feet. Sasuke barely caught the back of his jacket when he moved to fling himself into a hug at the Sandaime. "Idiot, he doesn't know you," Sasuke sighed. "I apologize for his ineptitude, sir. He's never been house-trained."
The blonde stuck his tongue out at Sasuke.
"See what I mean," Aiko half-groaned, rubbing at her head. "Puppies." She ignored the reproachful glares in favor of the grudging amusement on the Sandaime's face. "In any case, Mukade was a failed lower level administrative official from Sunagakure. He never managed to gain any popularity or momentum, and was eventually listed as a missing nin when he ducked an assignment. As a good faith offer, we were part of a team meant to track and return him to Sunagakure. We found him in what had been Rouran."
'Oops, did not intend to say that part.'
He'd caught the slip, though, so she had to admit, "In our timeline, it was destroyed in the third secret war." The Hokage cringed. "In any case, though our travel was unintentional, his was certainly not. That was the basis of my assumption that he had been creating some sort of trouble. He wouldn't have done this without reason."
"Maybe he memorized the winning lotto numbers for the national prize and came back to get rich," Sasuke claimed, straight-faced.
Aiko reached out to cuff his ear. "Bad," she said firmly. "We're being serious now."
'Very good, Sasuke-kun. Reinforce the Tsunade connection and keep him amused. We need him entertained enough to hear us out.'
But she was playing the role of a mildly abrasive professional right now to counterbalance the boys' rather unthreatening demeanors. She had to scold him. He would have to be thanked later.
At that point, the Hokage actually laughed. "Well, that's a fantastic story, and you present some compelling evidence," he allowed. "But come now, you can't actually think I believe you with just that. It could be a trick. I find it infinitely more likely that I should go adjust my security."
"Fair enough," Aiko allowed. "What would convince you that we were trained in Konoha? Rasengan?" She jerked her head at Naruto. "Jiraiya's chameleon genjutsu? One of Tsunade's techniques? The Hiraishin, perhaps?" she added with a hint of sarcasm.
"Is that really what that was," he interrupted, looking fascinated again. "I didn't manage to get a good look at the seal, but I thought I saw a locking mechanism."
"I have several layers of precautions on them," Aiko deflected mildly. Now was not the time to mention the explosives. Leaving one on his desk was bound to stir up bad feelings, even though she'd already picked it up. "Naruto?"
"Er- right." Uncertainly, he crossed his hands into a cross, and formed a single Kage bunshin. "I can't do it with just the one hand," he explained with a little bit of embarrassment as the clone went to work. A few moments later, he held a perfectly swirling technique in his hand. The Hokage bristled, but he let it fade after a moment and cancelled the clone. "You want me to-?"
Aiko shook her head at the quizzical tone. She'd already demonstrated the chameleon genjutsu when sneaking in, and she'd prefer to have everyone underestimate her team as much as possible while still convincing them that they were too formidable to mess with. She needed to be the primary target to deflect any problems. "Sasuke, are you up for a demonstration?"
The boy gave a pointed look around with unmistakable sarcasm. "I don't see a patient to heal or an enemy to throw fifty feet."
She rolled her eyes fondly and extracted the rock she'd scooped up from the training ground out of her pocket, showed it to the Sandaime, and then tucked it into Sasuke's hand. "Crush this for me?" she asked mildly. Sasuke's skill set would be the one that was hardest to imagine being gained through less than legitimate means, seeing as it would require a long period of personal coaching. He had to be able to demonstrate his skills, and they couldn't tear up this office or ask to be allowed to treat his shinobi when they were not trusted.
The Uchiha gave her a resentful look at being asked to perform like a circus animal, but grudgingly made a quick fist and opened his hand to let sand trickle out into a little pile on the carpet.
"Oh, my…" Hiruzen leaned over his desk, giving Sasuke a sharp look. "I am impressed, young man."
'Gotcha. Now I need to push him.'
Aiko coughed lightly into her fist. "Well. What's the verdict, sir? Are you going to help us out, or am I grabbing my puppies and getting out of here?"
It wouldn't do to let him think even for an instant that he had power over them. It could encourage bad decisions.
"Well, when you put it like that…" the older man trailed off. "You sound remarkably like someone I know," he mumbled to himself. "Are you perchance related to the Nara?"
Aiko stared. "No. Not at all, to my knowledge."
"Huh." He gave a shrug. "I'm convinced. Either you're legitimate, I have gone completely senile, or I'm asleep and the sheep are about to come sailing in through that window. Either way, putting you in the company of one of my best teams will assure that you either get the help you need, or killed when you turn on us."
They stared.
"You must have strange dreams," Naruto ventured.
Either fate was unkind, or this was the Hokage's way of testing a hypothesis. It wasn't as if the resemblance between Naruto and the man leading what looked to be a three-man ANBU team was subtle.
She didn't know what to think, to be honest. Aiko had decided that it didn't particularly matter whether Minato was the hero Konoha thought he was, the perfect parent Naruto had dreamed of, or the dead beat dad she couldn't help but project over his image, knowing that he'd chosen to die with his wife when there had been other options. (Not great options admittedly, but a parent had an obligation to do all they could to survive to care for their children, didn't they?) When he was long dead, what was the point in wondering?
Yet here he was, not particularly dead at all. It was tempting to pry. It would be phenomenally stupid and dangerous to actually come out and share her identity, of course. He could have all the suspicions he liked, but as long as they weren't confirmed they were just ephemeral thought and hopefully wouldn't change things.
'I don't know if I'm more frightened by the idea that he'll live up to the ideal and ruin my image of him or that he'll fail and I'll have been right.'
At the casual claim that the three shinobi in front of them were from the future, the three men seemed much more interested in them. Sasuke averted his eyes uncomfortably, but Naruto stared at Minato with open curiosity. He seemed to be drinking his father's face in. Minato's observation was much more subtle, but still present.
Aiko jabbed her brother in the side with a finger and gave him a warning look. He pouted, but stopped the creepy staring.
She listened quietly for most of the debriefing, but had to speak up when Hiruzen delegated authority to Minato. "Hold up a moment," she interrupted, ignoring the scandalized expressions as she interrupted the Hokage. "I cannot agree to allow my team to fall under his jurisdiction. Our extenuating circumstances may necessitate autonomy."
"But, aren't you a little young…" Hiruzen trailed off.
"I've been a Jounin for a year and commanded multiple units," Aiko informed flatly. It was an exaggeration time-wise, but whatever. Saying that she'd been a Jounin for slightly closer to a year than to half a year would be petty and undermine her position. "I think that I can handle commanding the team that I regularly command."
Aburame Shibi cringed a little at the combative interchange. Wuss. He was a Hokage, not a God-King. If Kakashi could sass the infinitely more terrifying Tsunade, she could bring up a cogent point to the Professor.
Besides, she didn't want to be under Minato's command. Aiko didn't trust his judgment. He might be a genius among shinobi, but he appeared to have lost out on common sense.
'Don't put a bijuu in your baby' was hardly a truism, but that was probably because most people wouldn't think about it in the first fucking place. It had been the easiest solution, but Aiko categorically refused to accept that it had been the only solution. She didn't want to be under the command of someone who made the easiest decision out of sentimentality.
"Very well," the Sandaime conceded reluctantly, "though I do not think it will be an issue, I can see why you might fear that your unique situation might lead you to conflicts with orders. I can concede that you have field command of your team, but request that you defer to your senior's judgment when appropriate."
The concession wasn't much of a concession, except as a technicality. She was still expected to behave the same as before.
"Of course," Aiko agreed readily.
It had, however, been enough leniency that she technically was in the clear for in-field insubordination as long as she deemed it appropriate and the Sandaime didn't later refute her. Seeing as that would only be an issue if they failed and were stuck here, she didn't mind disobeying. He was a Hokage, sure, but he wasn't her Hokage.
Her companions probably knew what she was doing. Naruto was ridiculously tricky. Catching him in a verbal agreement was about like grabbing fish with your bare hands in the ocean. Sasuke, on the other hand, was simply very intelligent and would have considered many of the same possibilities that she had.
Aiko pieced through the report as the Hokage soothed a rather nervous Akimichi that even if the three teenagers were lying, they could be dealt with. It was probably a planned warning to let them know that betrayal would be met with lethal force. She could have been bitter, but was actually pleased by the practicality. It was what she would do.
Oddly enough, what had brought Rouran onto Konoha's map was disappearances. Those of children and missing ninja, mainly, though no one cared much about the fate of criminals.
Aiko was half-tempted to ask if they'd asked Danzo, but somehow refrained. First of all, she shouldn't alter the course of history intentionally, even if she rather suspected that it would be self-correcting. Secondly, he was too subtle for this. Danzo would recruit from orphanages, have his operatives start families, or use other means to build his army. Whoever this was varied quite a bit in methodology. Some of the disappearances were street children, some were from orphanages, and others were taken from their parents' houses.
To her, that said that although they were probably all being snatched up for one common purpose, it was through many different agents.
'Possibly the missing nin,' Aiko thought dully. 'I was just thinking the other day that Mukade was an ambitious guy. If that ambition extends to conquer, especially of his hometown, he'll need trained shinobi forces as cannon fodder if nothing else. But he can't train them all himself, and hiring tutors legally would create a hell of a paper trail. He's weak in terms of combat, not an idiot.'
Seeing as how those disappearances had started about six years ago, when the last Queen of Rouran died and her daughter's first advisor had shown up out of nowhere, it fit, and he could be well on his way to a small force. Except that still begged a crucial question…
Who the hell hired that guy? What happened to background checks? Even if it didn't seem suspiciously like the criminal ruling a small kingdom had murdered the competent queen in order to use her child as a figure head, it just didn't make sense to allow that job to go to a newcomer.
'Then again, Roran isn't a shinobi country at all. He could have just killed anyone who protested.'
Aiko suppressed a shiver, ignoring the sudden quizzical looks.
She was surrounded by superhumans on a daily basis. Sometimes it was easy to forget just how monstrous they must seem to ordinary people, and just how much evil one comparatively mundane Chuunin could do if unchecked. That was why they had a moral duty to keep their shinobi in line and check those that fled to become rogue ninja. If the hidden villages trained you to be a killer, they should work to ensure that you didn't snap and harm the ones you were meant to protect with those skills.
It wasn't as if she were particularly altruistic or idealistic. But some things were just wrong. One of those things was being irresponsible with the weapons that you created.
If her hypothesis (and that of the Hokage, by the way) was correct, the real power behind the throne in Rouran was working for some sinister purpose. More importantly for this mission, however, he had begun to impinge upon Fire Country's jurisdiction.
'Probably ran out of orphans in the area.' She winced at how cold the thought was. But it made sense. Mukade must be a greedy man.
But he must also be dangerous. Far more dangerous than she had presumed. His apparent aversion to human contact had either been overstated or he'd wanted power badly enough to work past his distaste for other people.
"It is important that the princess not be harmed," Sarutobi stressed. Aiko rolled her eyes. Surely enough, at the word 'princess,' Naruto had perked right up.
"Because of her power as a figurehead?" she interjected wryly. Then she remembered that most commanders didn't allow you to sass them mid-brief.
He just nodded, however. "In large part, though I do suspect her abilities to interact safely with the leylines may be crucial to your interests."
Aiko stiffened and shut up. Good point. So far, they were working with the admittedly shaky premise that killing the man who had brought them to the past would send them home. She didn't like it much, but hardly had a better answer. She just couldn't shake the lingering theory that killing him might eliminate their only way of finding a path home.
Other than living here, that was. With a war brewing, she didn't like that option much.
"If I may, Hokage-sama, I would like to add one more member to our team." Minato stepped forward and set the folder he'd been cuddling on the desk and respectfully stepped backwards while the old man looked at it. "I know that he is young, but he's very capable."
Bored, Aiko turned back to the first page of her report to examine the depiction of 'Anroukuzan' again. It was unmistakably the same man they had been hunting, but he'd gotten very out of shape for a shinobi.
That meant one of two things. Either he was going to be little threat, or he was exponentially more dangerous than he had been in her present time. If he'd had the slightest fear that he might have to run for his life again, Mukade would have stayed in fighting condition.
As his files had indicated that the flaw that kept him from elite status was his markedly poor stamina and chakra regeneration, the years he had spent with access to a nearly unlimited source were not a good sign. They were probably going to run into a ridiculous amount of puppets. That did seem to be what puppet masters did when they became more dangerous.
Aiko sighed heavily, ignoring the curious look that garnered from Choza Akimichi. How droll. She had little fondness for puppets.
She didn't bother to share her conclusion. The Hokage already suspected that their target was a much larger threat than a rogue Chuunin at this point. He'd already been planning to send an ANBU team to investigate.
And the men in front of her definitely were an ANBU team. She knew the type, though they were a bit informal and relaxed. They probably represented a slightly different training and conditioning philosophy in the force than what she'd experienced, but like recognized like if it was looking for it. She had no idea if they recognized that quality in her. It was their loss if they didn't and no skin off her back.
Of course, speaking about 'recognizing', their last member was waiting at the gate. Apparently, Minato hadn't expected to be turned down in his request to include his apprentice.
"Maa, do we really have to take these guys?" The bratty little shit hooked his thumb irreverently at the three teenagers. "They look weak."
Another time, another day, Sasuke and Naruto would be bristling to pummel the living hell out of anyone who underestimated them like that. Especially an irritating ten year old. Today was not that day.
A strange, stifled laugh escaped Sasuke's lips. "Idiot, are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
"I dunno," Naruto managed in a stilted tone, repressing giggles himself. "Are you seeing a chibi version of Kakashi growling at us?" He knelt to poke at the boy's nose. "You're as pretty as a girl," he crooned mockingly.
Aiko swatted the back of both of their heads, privately amused by Kakashi's vaguely disturbed expression. "Behave." She gave them a stern look. "It would be below your relative maturity to bully him." Unstated but hopefully understood was, 'he's tiny and you could seriously hurt him'. It was true that he wasn't just any Chuunin… but nor were her boys, and this version of Kakashi seemed prone to underestimating others.
"I don't know about that," Sasuke mused thoughtfully. "I think it might actually be just retribution for all the flowerbeds he made us weed."
"And the cats we had to catch," Naruto added mournfully. "And doing grocery shopping for grumpy civilians. And that time he surprised us by having Gai show up to do our training."
Aiko goggled, distracted. "He did that?" she asked, mildly incredulous. "That's just… that's just mean." No one should be surprised by Gai. It was inhumane not to at least have time to steel oneself.
'Hey, wait, I'm letting them distract me.'
That was probably their sinister plot and she couldn't play into it. "It doesn't matter," she tacked on hastily. "be the bigger man, please."
"I take it you already know my apprentice," Minato managed to push out with a straight face.
All three teens looked at him. "You could say that," Naruto sighed, crossing his arms behind his head and looking upwards. "He is a little distinctive."
"No," Sasuke rebutted mockingly. "White hair, bad attitude, and a mask? That could be anybody."
"Oh, shut up," Kakashi snapped, the cheeks that showed above his mask tinged pink. He shoved past them to the front of the group. "Let's go already."
For all his big talk and poor attitude, Kakashi still had the short legs and restraints of a childish body. In the short term, he was faster than either Naruto or Sasuke. Long term, he was forced to slow, staggering slightly as his pride compelled him to keep running. Aiko found herself at the back of the group, mildly concerned that the pace was too much but preferring not to state that out loud.
The trip that her team had made in slightly under 48 hours was going to be a two and a half day journey with this group.
That was perfectly fine. Her team could use the recuperation time after their cross-continent sprint. Their timing had been serendipitous in that Hiruzen had already picked the team to go to Rouran when they had arrived in Konoha. If they'd been a little later, they would have missed them entirely.
(Aiko gave Naruto's back a suspicious glare, wondering if this whole ludicrous episode was his unearthly luck at play.)
They didn't even make it out of Fire Country that night, instead bunking in one of the outposts that Aiko had identified and slipped past on the way in to Konoha that morning. She deliberately didn't look at the guards or the clothesline full of sodden equipment. It would be in poor taste to start laughing.
Minato might have cottoned on to her thoughts, because he maneuvered himself to run beside her when they left in the morning. "So, tell me Aiko-san, how did your team get past all the border patrols?"
'To be fair, it's reasonable to find that as a subject of concern,' Aiko acknowledged. 'If I could do it, perhaps enemies could. The right three-man team is nothing to scoff at behind your lines.'
"I'm just that good," she replied shortly. Fair or not, she didn't want to go into her methodology. It would be pointless. "It's less a problem with the patrols and more a result of the unpredictable factor of my familiarity. I wouldn't worry about it if I were you."
'That outpost is going to be lost within a year or two anyways. Everyone there will probably die.'
Having future knowledge was a bit of a mood-killer.
"Ah, spent plenty of time on border duty?" he prodded. The tone was light and eerily reminiscent of Naruto's, but she knew better. He might not just be making conversation. Honestly, the man probably didn't trust her. She was obviously more removed than her companions. Naruto was an open book, and Sasuke wasn't particularly uncomfortable around their companions. That left her as the largest unknown to assess.
"Not long," Aiko replied honestly.
'I served on Sand's border with your apprentice and teams from Mist in order to fight the forces founded by Orochimaru (who is still loyal to Konoha at this point in time) and later stolen to fight for who I suspect was either your Uchiha student (who you may or may not have met yet) after having been driven mad or a geriatric ancestor wearing his body like a particularly tacky coat.'
"You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you about it," she settled.
"I suppose I shouldn't know too much about the future," Minato agreed easily. "It'd take all the fun out of life to know what's going to happen."
"Unlikely," she replied dourly. "Either time is self-correcting and the circumstances I relate will still occur in different ways, or my presence will change things enough that my information is useless. Either way, fun hardly enters the equation." At the disquieted look he gave her, she blinked. "What?" Aiko asked a little defensively.
He gave a little laugh, ruffling his hair. "Oh, it's nothing. You just sound a little like my student, especially the bit about fun. You don't like to banter much, do you?"
That misinterpretation of her current mood and discomfort around him as representative of her personality actually made her laugh.
"Okay," Minato mumbled uncertainly. "Perhaps not."
Interlude perspective: Aburame Shibi
Choza was in his element. He was an exemplary operative of the ANBU, but his personal preference was for socialization.
Shibi was not like that at all. He was not discomforted by the level of noise and occasionally conflicting personalities, but it made him feel tired. And so while his teammate was beguiling the group of teenagers with embarrassing stories about his genin team while they took a rest break, Shibi took a quiet walk into the forest to refresh himself.
He was not alone.
"Minato-san." He civilly acknowledged. His captain truly was an excellent fit for his summon animal. Minato-san was comfortable wherever he was, dry or wet, alone or with loud fellows. He was also a predator.
Neither Shibi nor his kikai insects were bothered by the man. They were predators as well.
"They're an interesting group," Minato offered with no introduction.
Behind his mask, Shibi blinked slowly. Ah. So this was to be an intellectual exchange. His captain sought his observations to compare with his own collected data. Acceptable. "Yes," he agreed. "Quite disparate."
"Do any of them worry you?" Minato pushed, sounding as if he genuinely was invested in the answer. Perhaps he was worried about one of their companions, or thought that he should be.
"No," he admitted with frank honesty. "Naruto is genuine. I have doubt that chicanery is in his reach. The other boy would concern me more, were it not apparent that he is deferring to the girl's judgment. Sasuke seems a person who would play games of the mind, but such a person is unlikely to allow himself to be subordinated in a trick of his own making."
"And Aiko?" Minato pushed, when it seemed that Shibi was done.
He turned his head to look at the older man, a bit taken aback that he'd pushed. "What of her? She is no cause for concern."
"I don't know that I like the way she looks at Kakashi and I," his captain admitted, pushing a hand through his hair. Shibi pressed his lips together thinly in disapproval. The habit was unbefitting a professional. "It isn't the same look by any means, but I don't like either of them."
"One is explained by the other," Shibi posited. "I do not believe she poses a threat. Her main concern is the preservation of her colleagues. She does seem alert and wary around you, but the expression she directs at your apprentice is disquiet. She knows him in the future, and finds reconciling the child she sees with the man she knows difficult."
Minato shook his head, bewildered. "But everyone's a child at one point. That's hardly surprising," he muttered, half to himself. "Why would she be particularly disturbed to see him as a child?"
And Shibi saw an opportunity for mischief. Certainly, Minato was not the individual who had committed the displeasing act hengeing into his body and made sure he was seen purchasing elicit materials, but taking revenge directly on his old classmate would be too troublesome. If all worked out, Kushina-san would be the one troubled by this. He swallowed the words, 'perhaps he undergoes great personal growth making his present personality difficult to reconcile, or perhaps they are close comrades,' and lowered his voice ever so slightly to give a short reply, laden with meaning. "Why, indeed," Shibi practically purred before turning away, grateful that that mask held the slight hint of amusement that he never could entirely keep off his face. Perhaps Kakashi-chan had stumbled onto a reasonable solution by covering his face, but the mask was simply an intolerable option. There must be a more reasonable compromise option.
'Perhaps a high collar,' he mused to himself, completely forgetting his captain who was standing stock-still behind him until Minato managed to squeak-
"You mean?"
Shibi had quite forgotten what they were talking about. "Most certainly,'" he agreed neutrally.
Minato made a sound rather like a cat being slowly strangled. "But- I thought they were from sixteen to twenty years in the future, using the hypothesis that Naruto is my future child," he pushed out a little frantically. "From her behavior I would assess that Aiko is slightly older than Naruto, perhaps a few years, but that would still make her several years younger than Kashi-kun." Horror stole across his face, but Shibi wasn't paying any attention. "My cute little baby apprentice is going to end up a gigantic pervert," he wailed under his breath, falling to his knees in a melodramatic display Kushina would have pushed him over for. "The curse! Jiraiya's claim that perversion was transmittable from sensei to student—it just skipped a generation!"
Jiraiya had a taste for younger women too. Sure, it was legal for him to carouse with sixteen year olds, but hell if it didn't give Minato the creeps to see his teacher flirt with girls who were younger than Minato himself.
'Jiraiya, that bastard. He's going to be so smug.' Miserably, Minato shuffled his way back to camp, and gave Kashi-kun a probing stare. No. He just couldn't see it. The tufty hair, the up-turned nose, the adorable little pout…
'I should make sure. She could be older than she looks. If she's eighteen, it's ok.'
Subtly, he made his way to Aiko's side, and considered a nonchalant way to open this conversation. "How old are you?" He wasn't very good at nonchalant. Minato was a very intense individual when he was personally invested in something.
"Fifteen," she replied absently, reading through some sort of hand written report and taking comments in a lined notebook.
'That's about as old as I had gauged Naruto. Does that mean he's even younger, or just that she's bossy? I guess I could believe he's fourteen, and judging by what Sasuke said at the gates, they weren't teammates. It could just barely fit that she got assigned to be his captain when he became a Chuunin.'
"Ah," he managed to nod. Then he pinned Kakashi with an unusually stern look, attempting to communicate to the future pervert he'd unknowingly corrupted to wait until his girlfriends were seventeen or eighteen, always. The boy just looked confused.
After the awkward conversation on the first morning while they left the outpost (and his later bizarre decision to ask her a single banal question and then spend all night shooting meaningful glances at an increasingly unnerved Kakashi), Aiko steered clear of her father. He made her very nervous. Most people that made her nervous could either be avoided or fought. Obviously, neither of those was an option.
The second night they camped in the open in Wind Country (apparently, Minato was too cheap for a hotel). It was a bit of a dangerous proposition, seeing as they weren't on particularly friendly terms, but there was little choice.
Of course, the solemn alert that they should have been maintaining was completely thrown out the window when Kakashi managed to provoke Naruto into a spar. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Aiko dropped her head into her hands and groaned. "Naruto, be careful," she warned in an undertone, ignoring Kakashi's superior look. "Don't forget that he's not Kakashi-sensei. He's something like nine or ten years old. No matter how fast and skilled he is, he's very delicate compared to you, and he's not the man he'll be twenty years from now."
Too late she remembered Kakashi's inhuman hearing, but then again, he'd probably already figured out the relationship between the boys and himself from other clues.
She was certain that he'd puzzled it out after Naruto finally beat him in a solely taijutsu match up. The blonde was busy crowing about beating the other boy (never mind that he had about five years on him), and Kakashi came back with the rejoinder that any competence Naruto happened to possess could only be due to an amazing instructor who could cope with his ineptitude.
"He's a charmer," Sasuke muttered under his breath, sitting cross-legged next to her at the fire. Aiko snorted.
"That's exactly how I would describe that exchange, yes." She shook her head. 'Kakashi has a lot of growing up to do. He's hardly even the same person. Honestly, he seems a bit mean-spirited at this point.'
But she'd already known that he had changed considerably between this time and the future, so Aiko wasn't that bothered. It didn't matter. He was a good man, even if he'd been an annoying child. It was still disconcerting to look at the childish version of someone she thought of as masculine and handsome, though. He was a cute kid, but those were two very different impressions.
"Good job boys," Minato praised, amusement flickering in his eyes. "I'm impressed by both of you. How about you come and eat dinner now?" Choza nudged Shibi in some sort of silent joke that she'd missed, probably at Minato's expense.
The nearly worshipful look that Kakashi gave him was neatly mirrored by Naruto's expression. Feeling a bit ill at the poorly hidden adoration, Aiko turned her face away. Naruto was so desperate for parental affection that it was a bit sad. In a strange, contrary way, she was jealous. She was the one who'd raised Naruto. Minato seemed to be a decent man and she'd concede that he probably would have done a good job as a dad, but as things had worked out, he was just their genetic donor. It just seemed so unfair that Naruto would hang on his every word.
"Hey, Minato-san…" Naruto flopped down and scooted closer to the man. Kakashi narrowed his eyes and sat with deliberate dignity… but at about the same distance to Minato.
"Hai, Naruto-kun?"
"Have you ever met a princess before?" Naruto practically exploded, bouncing with repressed energy. "Because I totally have, when I was traveling around with the per- I mean, with my shishou." He wrinkled his nose, as if referring to Jiraiya so respectfully rankled (even if it was being used as an alias of sorts). "She was running away from home with her samurai bodyguard, only he was a she and-"
Aiko tuned out the babble with a distracted smile, enjoying the sound of his voice. Even if he wasn't talking to her, it was nice to hear him go on. She'd heard this story before anyways.
She wasn't as convinced about the 'princess' credentials of his heroine as Naruto himself was, but then again there were technically hundreds of women who could claim that title in the Elemental nations on different criteria. Relation to Daimyo or other major lords, having descended from an old and displaced power that still had a prideful history but no material goods of kingdom attached... some people even counted a Kage's children and spouses as a sort of royalty. It was a matter of perspective, really.
If Naruto wanted to think he'd met a real princess, it was fine by her. He'd always loved those sorts of stories.
'Of course, he's definitely going to want to help this girl,' Aiko sighed. 'Sara, or something.'
Minato's team would be creeping around doing reconnaissance and trying to piece together if Mukade really was attempting to build some sort of personal army (in what had to be the millionth 'take over the world' gambit this year, she thought grouchily). From what she understood, Kakashi was meant to be observing and pitching in if he was needed or the combat was non-threatening enough for Minato to risk him.
Aiko approved. It was a nice, reduced danger way of acclimating him to higher level missions. That was what should happen… 'Not stupid C class missions inexplicably dotted with A class criminals and also a civilian crime lord,' she huffed. The ninja world was an illogical place at times.
"And then the perv- I mean, my shishou, he went down to the docks and I was so glad I could walk on water because we were all fighting in between the boats and man, it was just the best thing ever! I made friends with the pirate leader after that because he wasn't so bad in the end and his favorite color is green and sometimes he says-"
'He is really excited to talk to that man.' She rolled her eyes, slightly exasperated but also guilty that he'd never had a chance to brag about his exploits to a parent. Iruka tried, but he was more of a fond uncle or distant older brother than anything. That scoundrel Jiraiya was the closest thing he had to a parental figure… She liked the man quite a bit, but poor otouto. Aiko unconsciously tugged the end of her ponytail over her shoulder and began playing with it while she listened to the blondes talking, leaving tight little braids dotted through the mess.
If Minato hadn't figured out what was going on, then he wasn't worth half his reputation.
'I need to stop being so possessive and controlling.' She licked her dry lips. 'The boys are putting up with it for now, but eventually they'll lose their temper.'
It was hard to say that she would back up and give them space, and even harder to accomplish when it felt like something awful was going to happen at any point in time and she was the only one she trusted to keep Naruto and Sasuke safe. The other team was all well and good, but when it came down to brass tacks, they would look out for themselves and not the strangers from a theoretical future. She had left Konoha with those two, and she was going to bring them back.
"Are you going to stop scowling at any point in time?"
Aiko jumped a little at the gentle tone and the person who settled near her. For such a big man, Akimichi Choza was a sneaky bastard. She grimaced, internally scolding herself for falling into preconceptions of what extra heft meant for stealth and grace. For a normal person, she would be right. But Akimichi were shinobi stock through and through, big because it aided their jutsu, not because of exceptional appetite or dislike of physical activity.
"My apologies, Akimichi-san."
At that, he frowned. "Don't know why you're apologizing to me. I'm not offended, and I didn't get the impression that you were a cringing toadie." Choza gave a whooshing sigh, cracking his neck. "and when you call me Akimichi-san, I cringe and look around for my mean old aunt who carries a stick for hitting me when I crack my knuckles or breathe too loudly. Choza is fine."
She gave a startled laugh at the thought of the behemoth next to her hiding from some old lady. "I don't know, that seems a bit rude" she teased dryly, examining her nails for dirt.
"Says the woman who hasn't given any of us her last name, forcing us to either allow you to utilize familiarity or be rude," he rejoined good-naturedly. "Are you really so sure it would rupture the course of time to allow me to refer to a lady properly?"
"Pretty sure," Aiko said gravely, nodding seriously.
Close enough. It would probably rock Minato's pointy head off his shoulders, if that counted. He hadn't seemed to make the connection that Aiko and Naruto were related. To be fair, the resemblance was slight, and the differences were further exacerbated by their differing physical tells and attitudes.
"Then I insist you refer to me as 'Choza-san', him as 'Shibi-san', and him as 'the kitchen bandit,'" Choza concluded gallantly.
A few feet away, Minato seemed to choke on air.
"That pretty redhead he's always lurking about has informed me that there's a name change," Choza soldiered on over Aiko's snickers and Sasuke's appalled stare at a national hero and living legend. "Due to the fact that she keeps waking up to find him ass-deep in her dessert cupboard." He grinned and clapped his hands, just as Minato began to sputter something defensive about the bakery near her house. "But who wants to talk about such a boring old man, hmm? How do you like Rouran?"
Omake
'Still not here.'
Sai frowned mildly at her still deserted apartment.
'This makes little sense.' He reluctantly left, and made a thoroughly unsubtle tour of the usual training grounds that Washbo- Aiko and the rest of Team Kakashi frequented. 'Is she avoiding me? Would she really have left the village without informing me?'
Shizune cringed, both at her mentor's cackles and the thoroughly depressing image she was watching on a device inherited from the third Hokage that she had only recently figured out how to work. "It's... it's the saddest thing I've ever seen," Tsunade practically howled, tears streaming down her face while Danzo's pet operative sadly settled down to wait on Aiko's doorstep like an abandoned puppy.
"Tsunade-sama, that's not funny," she scolded disapprovingly, hands on her hips. "Have someone tell the poor boy so he stops lurking."
'Though Aiko really should have remembered to tell one of her friends, so he had a way to find out she was going to be gone,' Shizune thought disapprovingly.
The boy in the crystal ball turned in a small circle and sat on Aiko's doorstep.
A snort escaped without her consent. "I'll take care of it," she managed, trying not to let Tsunade see that she was struggling not to smile. Poor thing.
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I'm one of those people who won't believe Byler is going to be canon until I see it because this isn't my first rodeo and I know that just because it textually, subtextually, and narratively makes the most sense, doesn't mean it's going to happen.
My biggest concern was that even if the Duffers had planned a Byler canon all along, I doubted Netflix would allow their most popular show ever to be queer. And also because the GA loved midleven; they were iconic.
This is what makes it so strange that the Duffers were allowed to ruin them in season 4. And how Midleven is not being marketed AT ALL. If the reason for midleven being endgame is because it would be most profitable for Netflix,... then why aren't they cashing in??
And then I was watching this video essay by Verilybitchie on YT about Queer media which explains how oftentimes new companies (streaming platforms but also in the past just regular up-and-coming cable channels) would target minority groups because they're the ones most looking for new places to get content.
"In the 60s and 70s, when cable channels were first introduced, small new networks like Fox, and the CW, got their early success targeting niche audiences, specifically black audiences. (...) And streaming is following this exact same business strategy. They're churning out huge amounts of diverse content because they're building up a new business and they want to attract invested viewers who don't feel like they're getting enough content elsewhere. That includes people of colour, LGBT people, women, and young girls." - Verilybitchie
For example, one of Netflix' first shows Orange Is The New Black, is diverce as fuck. The main character is bi and in multiple queer relationships, and most side-characters are also queer one way or the other and ethnically and racially diverse. But it also targets women specifically; a huge demographic that isn't being catered to enough. This clearly helped build Netflix' userbase.
But now, with Netflix having become as popular as it is today, they want to target bigger, more lucrative audiences (aka predominantly cishet, white groups), which is why all of their shows are slowly becoming stale and mainstream or get canceled after one season.
But my point is that Stranger Things was given the green light in phase 1 - the phase where they were targeting minorities. This means that there's a higher chance for them to have been greenlit even if - or maybe even especially if - it was queer. And now with the panel saying "they were just amazed Netflix was letting them do this at all", I don't know it's just reminding me of all of this.
It's clear that Netflix is being very hands-off when it comes to ST, trusting them to deliver one way or another. Especially now re-watch value isn't as important in Hollywood anymore; they don't have to please the GA for it to remain popular, the GA will watch it either way until they figure out the queer endgame, and by then they've watched the whole show and ST will no longer be the reason for them to renew their subscription at the end of the month anyway.
If they hope to get a new audience for ST after the show is already over, so they can get a small boost of new subscribers, it would make more sense to once again target the queer audiences who wouldn't otherwise have watched it. Everyone who likes Sci-Fi Fantasy is already subscribed (or watching the show illegally) so they have to give it a new appeal if they want to get new fans; the queer userbase that will watch anything just because it's gay. In my opinion, it's their only way for getting new fans, especially once everyone knows how it ends and the suspense is taken away. And with shows like Sex Education, Young Royals, and Heartstopper doing as well as they're doing, they know there's a huge audience for this.
But more importantly; this brings more credibility to the Duffers having planned Byler all along, and with it being slowburn, and them only getting together in the final season, Netflix would have no reason to not allow the Duffers to continue doing whatever they want.
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Swampcon
As a first-time attendee of conferences like the Swampcon in Rietz, I was fascinated by the distinct economy that surrounded the event's fan culture. At the conference we could clearly see the Otaku’s means of “possesing” the object of their desires by creating their own spinoffs through the many artists and creators present repurposing ideas from popular culture and niche material to produce their own unique narratives. Not only did these artists produce such content, but they were also selling it for wealth. It was also interesting to see how the attendees of the convention were avid consumers of this type of re-created content.
At the vendor booths, I had the chance to speak with one of the sellers who was showcasing his collection of quite well-crafted posters — where both the designs and even the material imprinted were of very high quality — based on popular anime series. I was surprised to learn that he was able to travel around the country selling his designs, and that he and his partner made money through the designing, drawing and selling of such recreations of existing content. It was interesting to see how he was able to make a living from such a niche fandom, and it made me realize that there are a significant number of opportunities to be found in targeting specific communities.
Swampcon was not just limited to anime enthusiasts, though. It also contained Furries, Star Wars fans, and "believers of the dark," among other niche groups. The vendors at the convention were similarly diverse, targeting specific fandoms and subcultures. I noticed markets ranging from goods of the occult to recreated anime. The prevalence of such a wide range of fandoms concentrated in such an environment makes me think if there is a possible link between these different niches. Maybe the specificity of these fandoms and their conceptual difference to “common” society makes them thrive in such small niche-focused events.
Another aspect of Swampcon that caught my attention was the emphasis on identity expression. The convention was a safe space for people to dress up and explore different aspects of their identity with lesser fears of judgment or ridicule. I saw numerous cosplayers, furries, and cross-dressers who didnt seemed too concerned in expressing themselves. These kinds of smaller fandoms seem to be more open minded. Perhaps its due to their differences from the “standard” of society, placing them in a position of being more accepting and welcoming of more uncommon means of identity expression.
To sum it up, attending Swampcon was a really cool experience that exposed me to the unique economy of fan culture. The convention showed me how niche markets can be a source of opportunity for artists and entrepreneurs, and how targeting specific subcultures can be an effective way to build a dedicated following and a consistent source of income. The diversity of identity expression at the convention was particularly striking, not only were there multiple different means of expression — particularly on the way one dressed — but their proportion relative to the number of people that attended the conference was incredibly high compared to my own personal expectation. Overall, I enjoyed my time at Swampcon and look forward to attending similar events in the future.
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Morgan, 16-20!
16. Is your character the athletic type or more of a couch potato? What are some sports/games that they like?
Morgan isn't particularly athletic or particularly a couch potato. He's the type of person who complains when he has to do any excessive physical activity, but he also does his best to walk or bike to commute, take the stairs rather than the elevator, etc. He does his best to get exercise without going out of his way to specifically work out. In terms of sports/games he enjoys, Morgan has a particular fondness for winter sports! He learned how to skate and snowboard as a child, and while he never did anything remotely competitive with either sport, he enjoys them as a hobby when the weather is right! He also follows professional figure skating and snowboarding competitions and has a few favorite athletes he roots for.
17. Does your character have dreams of getting married and/or having children?
Married? Probably. Children? Big Maybe. I haven't thought much about Morgan's future beyond when he's in his early twenties or so, but at that point in his life he's been dating Raphael for a while and is very happy with his current life. He'd like to marry his partner eventually, probably sooner rather than later, but children are just not really on either of their minds at the moment. Both are focusing on their careers and relationship, but it's a possibility they'll likely bring up once they're married. I wouldn't say it's something he's dreamed about prior to getting into a serious relationship, however. Maybe if Emery or (Arceus-forbid) Jay have kids of their own, it'll inspire an interest in Morgan too, but for now he's not really thinking about it too much.
18. What kind of home would they want to live in? Where would they place this abode?
I can see Morgan and Rapha wanting to live somewhere that's both accessible for all the traveling they do for their jobs and is in an active, high-energy place like a big city, but also can be quiet enough for them to enjoy some of that solitude they both crave as well. So, probably, in a quieter neighborhood of somewhere like Hearthome? The type of area where a lot of young professionals like them live, where there's a good social scene but it's not all wild noisy parties. A cozy apartment with their signature eclectic decorating sense with sleek classic styles (Morgan's influence) and extravagant old-fashioned styles (Raphael's influence).
19. Would your character be the kind to get into fights? (physical or verbal) Would they be a good fighter or cave in rather easily?
Morgan generally does not start fights if he can help it. He definitely has gotten into them, especially as he grows older and his more caustic, scathing side emerges, but he usually is somewhat hilariously affronted when him insulting someone leads to a verbal fight. He just was honest it's not his fault they reacted badly. When he was younger though, his anxious and shy personality made him the target of bullying and teasing from some of his peers, though he never fought back then, preferring to keep his head down (despite Emery often trying to pick fights with his bullies, encouraging him to do the same, which he was generally mortified by). With intervention from teachers, as well as being able to find his own little niche in a group of friends, thankfully Morgan's issues with bullies didn't last long.
20. Does your character like animals? What are some of their favorite animals? Would they want pets? What about mythological creatures?
Morgan loves pokémon! His favorites are, of course, his beloved team members, though generally he gets along with all pokémon and tends to claim (half-jokingly) he prefers them to people. In terms of general preference, Morgan has a particular fondness for the more spooky and macabre pokémon, or those misunderstood and shunned by people, finding kinship in them. Growing up, he was always entranced by the icy and deadly beauty of Paul's Froslass, which is why Paul was able to pull some strings with Reggie to give Morgan a female Snorunt to be his starter, so he could raise his own Froslass. During his journey, he also ends up picking up the Odd Keystone and managing to unlock it into Spiritomb, who he doesn't realize is a Cursed Prison Object and just assumes is a rare ghost-type, so to anyone in the know's abject horror, begins sending out Spiritomb for his contest performances, which somehow ends up not ending horribly. Spiritomb enjoys showing off its might and magnificence for the assembled masses. (Also amusingly, in this AU, Spiritomb is a single-instance pokémon akin to legendaries, but due to interdimensional shenanigans, prior to Morgan unsealing his world's Spiritomb, the pokémon was only known as one of Champion Cynthia's team. Her shiny Spiritomb Japhy, of course, being an inheritance from her Hisuian father. Another one appearing in a contest in the hands of a rookie coordinator, of all things, made quite the news!)
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