Petition to give Kakeru a god damned hug.

I did not sign up for this

Me, at the first TAZ episode: Ok so this is very silly and these people don’t know, or care, how DND works, but it might be a funny thing to listen to on the train I guess.

Me, 60 binged episodes later, straight up crying: “She thinks of her friends and she prays for sunrise”, that line goes So Hard. You assholes.

Haikyuu 341

Ya know, every now and then I seem to forget how much I friggin love Haikyuu, and then a chapter like the entirety of 341 just draws me back in.
“I’ve seen him staring at a vending machine before” is such a quintessentially amazing line. This chapter is full of good reactions, it has Iron Wall pouts and Kenma being excited.
It’s So Good and I don’t know how Furudate keeps that stuff up.

So the Little Giant finally showed up

Be still, my heart.

BNHA 216

I’m so proud of my boy.

Today in “Horikoshi really likes to draw Todo pretty, doesn’t he”

So about that Open

Hey.
Remember when Kageyama was the King of the Court. The one that felt like his team was never fast enough? The one that kept upping the pace until they couldn’t follow any more?

And remember when Kageyama was all ‘don’t even open your friggin eyes, I’ll steer you’, ‘no you don’t have to think for yourself’. And they fought over letting Hinata have some control?

Cause I do.
And I couldn’t be more proud of him.

Hey, remember when I used to write fanfic?

Originally posted by lummophoenix

So, uh, hi.
It’s been a while. My brain kinda melted over the summer and I’m slowly sweeping it back together, so have a Thing.

Ok, so the Thing is a new chapter of the Shinsou.
Have that. Have a new chapter of Deliverance.

It has a lot of Baku-Kiri fun, and me going overboard with the fluff and the sex scenes. It’s that kind of chapter.

Let’s gush about chapter 194

I mean, your feed is probably already full of this stuff. But:

1. This was such a fan service chapter. It was so good. It’s just so absolutely stuffed with little gems and I feel the distinct need to point them out.

2. Spoilers ahead.

I have a feeling this is like a much needed breather between the heavier chapters. A place for him, in between abuse and like… spy drama, to put all his jokes. I snorted loudly at Iida taking everything too literally.

MY CHILD!
I’m honestly so desperate for any Shinsou content and look! He’s Happy!
My boy is PLEASED!
Bless.

The whole ‘aren’t you cold?’ – ‘Incredibly’ made me laugh out loud.
Also can we talk about these outfits?
Momoi looking practically regal? Mina basically wearing a bomber jacket and some kind of fur infinity scarf?
Ojiro adding MOAR Fluff. I hope its the same colour as the tuft on his tail. Style the hell out of it, Ojiro!

The nonchalance with which Aizawa just straight up chokes students amuses me. It made me think he does it a lot but Kendo seems mildly perturbed.

But then we realize WHY he’s more strict than usual.
And can we talk about how Aizawa is worried that Shinsou will take one look at these classes and go ‘Yeah I’m going back to C thanks’. Because that’s the feeling I’m getting here. These are the hero classes, and our boy is trying out, but Aizawa is utterly convinced that they’ll just look stupid in front of him. He gives the impression of like a teacher telling his kids to behave for like five seconds while a local dignitary visits the class. (He thinks so highly of his pupil I love them so much)

These personalities in a nutshell. New person is announced.
Momo: Curiosity
Bakugou: Instant Murderous Intent
Kaminari: GRL?!!???
Tetsu: Aggressive Cooperation

Also known as: What is it? Can I kill it? Can I fuck it? Can I friend it?

My baby!
Look at that friggin scarf. Aizawa has no right to burn All Might you know they’ve been training together non-stop since the sports tournament.

Why Sousuke deserves everything

Ok, listen.
I need one thing to happen in Dive to the Future, and that is for Sousuke to catch a friggin break.
That is all I need.
Swimming is nice, the cameos are nice, I’m happy to see all my faves back and being adorable but.
BUT.
Give Sousuke his arc. Let him find happiness and a future because so far you (KyoAni) have failed him.

What follows in my TED talk is a full breakdown  of the Free! Timeline (I don’t even know man, it needs out) and why it has just been mean to Sousuke from the start.

Because that timeline goes far. It starts in friggin elementary school where (this is mostly from the ligh novel High Speed) Rin pretty much abandons Sousuke (and Gou, and his mom, – and Kisumi but no one cares about him) to go live with his gran in Iwatobi so he can go to school with Mako and Haru, and to their swim club, because he ‘finally found a guy he wants to swim relays with’.
I have a picture of baby Sousuke’s face when Rin tells him that he found a team he wants to be part of.

‘Bitch, I thought I was your best friend.’ (Sousuke, probably)

So baby Rin bursts onto the scene in Iwatobi Elementary, and drags the other two (and Nagisa) into a relay by talking about teams and the importance of friendship. And Rin being Rin, he makes an impact, upsetting the fragile balance of Mako and Haru’s weirdly codependent relationship for the first time (if you pay attention, he’ll do this a lot).

Things aren’t made any easier by Haru nearly frigging DROWNING in a river in front of Makoto and Rin, triggering an old trauma, where Makoto witnessed the funeral of an entire ship’s worth of fishermen. The whole thing makes Makoto realize that he’s terrified of water, always has been, and the only reason he swims is because he likes hanging out with Haru (Makoto gets messed up pretty badly in the light novel, guys).
Anyway.

• Makoto deals, somehow, because power of friendship.
• Haru learns what it means to have a true rival and gets finds his inner fighting spirit.(he’s honestly quite a passive character and a lot of the series’ runtime deals with him finding motivation)
• Rin gets his relay.

And then he immediately takes off to Australia, leaving nothing behind but a buried trophy and a rock that says ‘for the team’.
I have a picture of people’s reaction when he tells them he’s leaving.

‘Aren’t we friends?’ (literal dialogue in the light novel)

Enter High Speed, Starting Days.

Haru and Makoto go to middle school, where they end up meeting Kisumi, and everyone is sad. They join the school swim club, thereby basically abandoning Nagisa, who is now in Iwatobi SC by his friggin self, and they’re coaxed into swimming a new relay to learn that you can make new friends and team mates.

In this process:

• Kisumi tries to get everyone into the basketball club and fails miserably
• Asahi has to get over his performance anxiety
• Ikuya deals with his issues with his brother Natsuya and decides to break down at least some of the walls isolating his little tsun ass
• Makoto tries to grow an individual personality but is basically told by Haru to cut it out (I’m paraphrasing but that ‘Makoto is Makoto’ thing is a very weird scene, it’s a ‘be yourself and don’t force it’ kinda thing but let Makoto try for frig’s sake)
• Haru has to contend with being Too Popular and learns to, sort of, get over his weird crush on Rin to swim with new peoples and win.
• Everyone gets kindly advice from Nao, and they band together and win (yay!)

It’s about at this point that Sousuke shows up again, with a letter from Rin, written to Haru but sent to Sousuke (because that guy doesn’t already feel like plan B, surely). Rin and Haru sort of both resolve to keep swimming with the ideal image of the other in their mind.

And then in between seasons shit goes down.

• Ikuya and Asahi leave Iwatobi.
• Haru meets Rin randomly when he’s visiting his family, and they have a race. Haru wins.
• This spurs on Rin’s complete breakdown and he stops writing letters to, like, anyone (including Sousuke, because of course).
• Haru and Mako quit the swim club and Makoto takes up basketball (so at least Kisumi get something out of this).
• Iwatobi Swim Club (the one where it all started) just straight up goes bankrupt and shuts down entirely.

We are on Free! Iwatobi Swim Club

and everyone is sad (again, but since this is the first anime season to come out, you know, whatever).

Haru and Makoto are in their second year of high school, Haru lives by himself and the only reason he’s a somewhat functioning human being is because Makoto mothers the heck out of him. He doesn’t even appreciate it.
Nagisa shows up and has conveniently forgotten that he’s one of the first people everyone always abandons. He drags the others to the ruins of Iwatobi SC to dig up their old relay trophy thing before the building is torn down.
Also Rin is back in the country and being an utter drama queen (I love Rin, I do, but boy is theatrical). He shows up at the same written-off swim club and immediately challenges Haru, the both of them abandoning Nagisa and Makoto, because fated rivalry.

Not even kidding about the immediate ditching thing.

Anyway.
Mako, Haru and Nagisa start a new swim club at school and pull Rei into it, and the lot of them relearn the power of friendship.

While they’re doing this:

• Makoto is a self-sacrificing idiot who faces some of his worst fears (the ocean, remember) in order to not be a burden on the team. It’s bad enough that a pre-character development Rin lowkey worries.
• Haru struggles with his talent, in the sense that he feels guilty about Rin’s emotional state, thinking it’s his fault Rin lost his enthusiasm.
• Rin is redeemed because he suddenly realizes he likes these people after all, and winning isn’t everything.
• Rei learns how to friggin swim from scratch, works super hard and then when they make it to nationals as a relay team, he GIVES UP his place to Rin, because Makoto is far from the only self-sacrificial idiot in this series.

The team is rightfully disqualified, but they learned something? They at least resolved some of their issues.
Even Iwatobi SC is reinstated.
Everyone is happy!

Which lasts like a few weeks.

Because in Eternal Summer, Haru and Makoto are now third years and as Rin mentions, should figure out what to do about their future. This leads to a lot of the issues they had at the start of middle school.
Also: Sousuke shows up again. This guy is still desperately trying to get Rin to friggin notice him, senpai, so he joins the guy’s school and swim team despite being injured.
And Sousuke at this point has spent most of his teenage years being vaguely angry/jealous of Haru, and overworking himself to be ‘good enough’ for Rin to see him as a team mate and he! finally! gets! to! be?
Only he RUINS his shoulder in the process because self-care has just gone completely out of the window at this point.

I guess it was worth it if he’s giving that look.

What else happens in Eternal Summer:

• Rei continues to be the sweetheart that this world does not deserve, but gets to swim in a relay with his own friggin team for once. Also Rin teaches him all the other strokes.
• Nagisa briefly runs away from home because the kid has it rougher than people realize, it’s just we were all busy worrying about Haru.
• Makoto finds his calling in being a swim teacher
• Haru doesn’t know what to do with his life, despite being, you know, a swimming prodigy. Everyone and their mother try to talk some sense into him.
• Haru and Makoto try, again, to address their codependent relationship, it doesn’t go well.

Despite the visuals.

But somehow, through an extended intervention, this is all neatly resolved in time for the relay final at nationals.

And what’s nice here is that Mako and Sousuke seem to really mirror each other. They’re both tol self-sacrificing idiots who have some serious jealousy issues about their best friend and his fated rival. Only Makoto actually gets to hang out with his reluctant, badly communicating friend.
Sousuke, despite giving up his own abilities, and despite mentioning some kind of emotional closure, doesn’t really get shit.

And THEN

In Dive to the Future, everyone seems to be mildly grown up. They’re almost all in college (I’m so happy for Nagisa that he found Rei because at least Rei appreciates that ball of sunshine and he’s not alone now).
Makoto has ?given up? swimming?, but now Ikuya is back and dealing with almost the exact same issue he had in middle school (like I realize this is realistic, and people don’t just evolve in a straight line but Ikuya pls).
So he’s probably gonna get the friendship treatment, again.

Honestly, the only one even remotely stable in this entire series is Kisumi and no one seems to like him.

But most importantly:
Sousuke appears to not be in college. He appears to not be taking over his father’s restaurant, which is something that was hinted at in Eternal Summer. He’s just mostly bumming, hanging out at his old high school like a loser and failing (again! still!) to write letters to his best friend (who f*cked off to Australia again).

I mean.
Honey.
Sweetie.
You deserve better than this.
I need you, in this season, to be more tan a simple side character there to hand out plot points.
I need a bunch of people to get together and pull you up. I need you to find that self-confidence and get your shit together because really, it’s been twelve years and everyone else has gotten over it multiple times by now.
I’m begging  you.