#[ some of the most outrageous and childish ways ]

[longagoitwastuesday]

ngl it sort of pisses me off the way adults regard Gojo in Jujutsu Kaisen at times. Which could be a very interesting and poignant point in a good way if well written, but as it is it becomes mainly just frustrating and sad in a negative way.

Nanami saying Gojo never cared about anything or anyone other than himself crashes interestingly with Kusakabe saying the whole situation was just all his fault because he refused to kill Itadori. The students are very aware of those aspects of Gojo's personality, but overall they seem to regard him with way more kindness and fondness even when at their rudest, not truly coinciding with either Nanami's or Kusakabe's views.

[hughiecampbelle]

The Boys Preference: Reacting To Crazy Colored Hair

A/N: Not requested (I'm also 98% sure I haven't already written this, but I think I just thought about it so much I convinced myself I did) loosely based off my fun hair dye addiction and the fact that I went back to brown. Rip fun hair for a little while lol 💕

Butcher doesn't quite understand, but he's not against it. He never minds the towels you've ruined or the pillowcases you've stained. That doesn't really bother him. If anything, he finds it a little endearing: you're always leaving remnants of yourself around. He just doesn't get it, though. Becca basically picked out his haircut, and he's had it relatively the sane ever since. It grows out and gets a bit wild, but it's always the same general idea. You're constantly changing the color depending on the season, your mood, what dyes you have available. You're not the most pristine when you're doing it yourself (dye gets everywhere), but he never notices. If you're happy with the outcome, so is he. It's really not a big deal to him, though he does favor blue a bit more than the other colors. You're not sure what it is about that specific color, but he adored it instantly.

Hughie thinks it's great. He's had the same haircut since he was a teenager, and before that, he had an atrocious cut he'd worn since he was a toddler. He doesn't really change his look all that much. If he likes it, he sticks with it. You've never been like that, though, and that's what he appreciates about you. You'll dye your hair late into the night, needing to change the color, unable to stand it any longer. It gets on everything, all over the bathroom, and most of the collars of your shirts (and his when you steal them) are stained, though he doesn't seem to notice. There's always a grand reveal as to what color you chose, and he has a ranking of ones he likes the best, but assures you you rock whatever color or colors you choose. You once did rainbow, and he was stunned silent. He had this goofy smile on his face like he was falling for you all over again. The brighter, the better, at least that's what he's constantly telling you.

Annie adores your hair colors. She definitely favors pink over every other color, but she says it's unfair you can pull off anything. She never dyed her hair any fun colors, but she was able to talk her mom into getting her the chalky spray stuff once for Halloween. She loved it! It was bubblegum pink, and she's been chasing that high ever since. She loves that you're so easily able to express yourself. Annie would be too self-conscious, afraid everyone was looking at her or making fun of her. If people have an issue with what you do with your hair, that's their problem. Annie definitely helps you out when you're updating the color, mostly so the back turns out even. One time, while she was a little tipsy, she used some extra dye and put a streak in her hair. She felt so effortlessly cool, and you loved to see her smile. It washed out eventually, but it was definitely a look she thought about going back to.

M.M. thinks it's a bit childish, but with the work you do, if that's what's going to help you stay sane, then he's all for it. It definitely wasn't ideal when you were in hiding, and the sink you "bathed" in was stained green, along with all the towels. He wasn't mad, not at you, but at the dye. Why was it so damn messy? He knows it makes you an easier target (how could anyone forget the person with bright green hair), but if it brings you even an ounce of happiness, it's fine by him. Everyone's clinging to something, and your thing just happens to be outrageous hair colors. Once in a while, you'll ask him for help, afraid you've missed a spot with bleach or dye. He's gentle when he fixes it, his perfectionist ways coming out. He'll tell you to turn slowly so he can see anywhere else you might have missed. It drives him mad when you ask someone else and they say it's fine when you've clearly missed a whole patch underneath the first layer. He's meticulous and detail oriented, which is why you only ask him when you have no one else. You love Marvin, but the process becomes painstaking. It's really not a huge deal if you missed one or two areas you can't even see.

Frenchie loves it when you change the color. Personally, he loves it when you do red or orange, something fiery and bold. Because he was goth/alternative as a teenager and young adult, Frenchie is basically your co-stylist. He's all about color theory and having the right materials and not leaving the bathroom until it's exactly what you wanted. He couldn't care less about the stained tub or the various hair dye t-shirts you've ruined over the years. The mess doesn't bother him at all. Unlike M.M., Frenchie isn't a perfectionist at all. The way he goes about helping is messy and a little odd, but the colors always come out bright and beautiful. Like Annie, he's given himself streaks and highlights and, once on a dare, dyed his whole head and eyebrows bright orange to match you. Kimiko still brings it up as an atrocious look, but he thought he looked hot. He loves that you're expressing yourself just like he does with his fashion.

Kimiko thinks your hair is so fun, so cool, so chic. She's told you before her favorite was when you went purple. Something about that color brings her so much joy. When you asked her to help you the first time, she was intimidated. She thought she would do something wrong, like mess up the color or fry your hair off. You assure her that if it's a disaster, it's all on you. Since then, she's become your stylist buddy. She realized the dye you use is basically paint, that you have realistic expectations and have learned from past mistakes. Whenever you change or update the color, she's the first to tell you how great it looks! She dreams of dyeing her hair, but she's never been sure about the damage it causes or if it'll look okay. You always offer to give her a small streak she can hide just in case she doesn't like it. So far, she's always thanked you, but she denied the offer, but one day, she's going to work up to it. Baby steps. For now, she can admire your hair, agreeing with Annie it's unfair you can pull off every color effortlessly.

Bonus! Homelander thinks it's weird. Because your supe abilities, your hair changes color depending on the powers you use. The green, the blue, the pink, all of it drives him crazy. He makes sure you know, when you're in his presence, go back to your natural color. When you go to press conferences or interviews with purple or orange hair, he becomes irrationally angry. Not only does he find your powers juvenile, beneath him, the fact that you choose to live with fun colored hair instead of changing it back immediately makes no sense to him. You make sure to avoid conflict, to look as normal as possible when you're together. Everyone else finds it cool, agreeing at you can pull off every color you have, but they all know to keep these thoughts quiet and to themselves. The last time Noir 2.0 said he liked your hair, everyone flinched, anticipating violence. Thankfully, Homelander just kicked him out of the room instead of needing another replacement.

[etheries1015]

Yk throughout Lilia's past thing I wonder why in the old OLD wars people don't use verbal bullying as a weapon- Killing is already included in physical bullying so why not go all out?

Imagine past Lilia with this one friend aka you who fights the annoying humans with money, curses, and (out of pocket) words instead of the traditional going to war way. Verbal bullying can reduce the enemy's morals (probably).

"Instead of worrying about our MoRaLs, why don't you start worrying over YOUR DRIER THAN THE AFTERGLOW SAVANNAH SCALP"

"Our ruler's temper isn't too good, but that kingdom's ruler is bad tempered AND ugly"

"If yall didn't stink so much, maybe the faes wouldn't have found you so easily"

Also

You: You should watch your steps, the floor of this mansion is slippery after all :)

Enemy: Is that a veiled threat?

You: What veil?

People say that the place where faes live are surrounded by thorns, but you have thorns in your mouth ;)

NO BUT THIS IS SO FUNNY. Instead of using your incredibly impressive fighting skills (Lilia has seen firsthand) you first choose the most outrageous and...unique insults and strategies he had ever heard and seen his entire life. Sometimes Lilia can't tell if you are truly affected by the fighting, or if you had gone simply insane and cannot feel complex emotions; numb, to be frank. Upon asking you such questions, In response you shared to your comrades; "Some people cope by sadness and despair, others cope by humor and lightheartedness. I choose the latter- for I would rather live my life smiling at the most ridiculous of things than sit in a puddle of my own tears and trauma."

Thus, you delve deep into the theatrics as a way to distract yourself from the true horror of things.

"Dang, you really went to war looking like THAT? Even I would pity you, and that says a lot!"

"You have the intelligence of a soggy piece of bread! Didn't you hear ANYTHING about subtly?"

"Oh yeah, you're definitely first to die in any scenario. You check all the boxes. I'm surprised you haven't managed to kill yourself by now! Congrats!"

"You're living proof that you do not need to be funny to be considered a clown!"

"damn, human AND ugly? Pick a struggle, to have both is truly a crime!"

I imagine that this MC really enjoys distracting people with long winded prologues or speeches. With fake tears in their eyes, sobbing in front of a wave of humans with their arm up to the sky-

"I would like to thank my mother for this grand opportunity, my pet snake, and my dear beloved and far too soon departed friend Lilia-"

you hear from a distance an annoyed fae yell "I'm not dead!"

you ignore him.

"And to all of you, my grand audience, for granting me this wonderful chance to demonstrate what it truly means to be ignorant."

Confused glances around the humans- before collective screaming as they are all falling into a pit that you lead them to. Lilia catches up to you and stares at the handful of human soldiers who fell into your trap with hands resting on his hip and raised eyebrows, glancing over at you impressed.

"Clever, yet...strangely obtuse. Good distraction, it's almost embarrassing to call you one of our strongest generals with your antics..." He hummed before his face taking a flat and annoyed look as you reveled dramatically in his praises.

"Why can't you be normal."

Reader being incredibly childish yet super clever like Clavis from ikemen prince and the personality of Furina from Genshin impact SDLOIHLJ

[a-very-tired-jew]

"It's not my job to educate you."

How often have you seen this statement?

I've personally lost count, and I'm a scientist that has been active since the anti-GMO, anti-Ag, and anti-Vaxx discourses of the 00s.

I've seen it for years used as a way to completely halt discussions when the speaker is backed into a corner and cannot support their position. I've seen it used as a defense when they try and put forth extremely biased and/or outright incorrect resources and are called out for it. I've seen it used when a person wants to make their opinion and outrageous claims known without defending them whatsoever.

And here's the thing, you're right. It's not your job to educate others.

But you've also entered into a conversation, discussion, or debate where people are backing their opinions with arguments, experiences, and citations. When you use this statement you essentially say you want to enter this conversation with no confrontation to your own personal beliefs, thoughts, and ideals.

That's childish. That's the kid on the playground saying "nuh uh, you didn't get me cause I'm actually on base right now. Yeah, I know it's a stick on the ground, but I said it's base so it's base."

Personally? I hate this statement. In my own circles I've seen it used by the most uneducated ignorant people to justify conspiracies or beliefs that actively harm them and/or others. I've seen my friends with no formal scientific education or experience who fell down the anti-science rabbit hole use it as a way to deflect from their ignorance.

In Leftist spaces I've seen it used to bring discussions to a stop and dismiss another person. "It's not my job to educate you!" while the very same person was just trying to educate the other on the topic being discussed. This is often accompanied with the "Do your own research", which inevitably leads to the person not coming to the same conclusions as the person who uttered the aforementioned phrases. Said person then becomes upset when the other doesn't come to the same conclusions, but again..."it's not my job to educate you (I'm just mad you're not educated in the way I want)".

In a professional setting I have seen it used to justify outright ignorance, conspiracy, and vitriol by people who have no understanding of the subject matter at hand.

People often say they love discussion and debate, but in reality they just like making their opinion known with no opposition.

And this leads me to the point of this wall of text...it's a very culturally goyische thing to do.

The conversations on Cultural Christianity made me think about this and it sort of hit me. We, Jews, are a "contentious" people. We question, argue, and debate to the point where it's a stereotype in media (an accurate one, but a stereotype nonetheless). But what this stereotype leaves out is that discussion and debate is often accompanied by education. We, typically, revel in this type of discourse and love to argue and learn from the argument. Even if none of us come away with a new position.

The joke "2 Jews, 3 opinions" actually highlights how we come to a greater understanding through our "contentiousness". Our discussions are often meant to educate one another and explore trains of thought we didn't previously have. At no point in the Talmud do you ever see someone state "It's not my job to educate you" and only after every avenue of argument has been exhausted do they devolve into sniping at one another about dick size. If you've seen any posts since 10/7 by Jews on here you will often see an active discussion with an attempt to educate if and when people interact.

However, there is the caveat that some people end up sealioning. In these situations it is completely fine to shut down the entire thing as they're simply wanting you to waste your energy until they have a "gotcha" moment. Eventually you will say something that does not necessarily agree with a previous statement and they will pounce on that. In such a situation you just need to leave the conversation entirely. Sealions are bad faith actors and not actually interested in anything outside of their own opinions.

Healthy discussion and debate, which is encouraged in Judaism, does not look like sealioning. It does not look like getting answers you don't like so you keep asking the same thing in a different way until you get what you want. It's like someone arguing with the DM repeatedly to get a spell to do something outside of its defined application and way outside of its possible application even when the DM says no.

Now, you might be saying "but in my non-Jewish household we encourage this kind of thinking!" and that's good. But we are talking about cultural generalities and trends here. If you live in the Midwest or Southern USA you will have encountered a multitude of Culturally Christian people who have their own personal history about how discussion, debate, and education is shut down (sometimes in a violent manner). If you've existed anywhere a hot button topic becomes discussed there is a strong chance you have experienced this statement, either online or in person, and witnessed the complete halt and shift in dialogue it causes. This is by no fault your own or the other persons, but there is a distinct cultural difference in general.

If you're someone who is offended by this, I want you to sincerely ask. Is questioning, discussion, and debate earnestly encouraged in your culture? Is it encouraged towards authority figures? Does it make certain topics taboo? What happens when children question authority figures?

[maxwell-grant]

Any thoughts on AKI in SF6?

I haven't had a chance to play the game yet and I might do a more thorough look into the newcomers after I do sit through World Tour, but yeah I got some AKI thoughts. Holy shit what a design. Top 15-20 in the series, it is one hell of a different thing to watch it animated by the character's personality and moveset and vibe. We expected some FANG-isms, some Juri-isms, but certainly not that. We expected a cold, even generic assassin, not someone who merrily treats the penal code like a list of chores.

It was pretty funny seeing the reaction to her develop from "oh she's FANG's apprentice, okay I guess, not sure anyone was asking for that", to "is she the new Juri, she's got a really similar vibe", to "holy shit Juri's got NOTHING on her". In reaction to her popularity, SF6 had been doing a lot of great character work on Juri that, while making her much more developed and entertaining as a character (cringe failgirl Juri was such a revelation) and dramatically more interesting as a person, also really limits the extent to which she can be a straight-up villain anymore. Much like how FANG was designed to fill the void left by Sagat, AKI here crashed the scene to fill the void left by Juri, and so she gets to be not just completely 100% horrible (where as Juri is like, 70-80% horrible), but also SCARY in a way Juri never could be. She gets so, so much out of not being designed for sex appeal and coolness first and foremost, she's like the D'Vorah to Juri's Mileena.

She's a horrible, predatory character, and much like Marisa, I don't think she would have been allowed at all to exist the way she does had she debuted prior (you just know they would have not given her those sick ass pants or given her a different haircut or a cleavage window or something stupid like that). The development team for V repeteadly stated that there were ideas for a new assassin apprentice character related to Gen thrown around and that some of those made their way into FANG and Seth, and AKI is the end result of that very long refinement process. She's the resident freakshow character in the tradition started by Blanka and Dhalsim, and she's the outrageous over-the-top counterpoint to the more traditional martial arts like Chun-Li or even Jamie (much like Adon, or Necro). She's the understudy of the kung fu assassin villain, and in a way akin to Menat she's the young new apprentice of a prior character who acts as a stand-in for that character on the roster and driven to prove her worth before said character, while also being a modern do-over of said character.

(And for the record I actually like FANG quite a bit, a lot more than most of the other V characters. He played like garbage and his execution was lacking and couldn't make up for a terrible first impression in the fanbase, but the design and character and concept I thought were very solid and I'm glad AKI shows they didn't give up on it but took steps to improve on it, I'm glad to see him again in 6).

She breaks new ground for the series by leaning strongly into a horror wraith vibe no other character had before, and she's the Street Fighter equivalent to characters like Voldo, a horrible contortionist slasher villain who doesn't fight you so much as she just passionately and exquisitely butchers you while getting off on it. Her moves are incredible, superbly characterized, she feels vicious and oppressive to watch but still hits that note on FANG's where the playstyle is meant to be tricky but overspecialized and beatable at close range. And while she's designed to be a much more explicitly serious and deadly-looking character than FANG, they even give her goofy little flourishes like blowing bubbles shaped like FANG (and getting pissed if you pop them), his propensity for bird-like arms flapping, and an uncharacteristically childish victory dance akin to Chun-Li's.

She is as cadaverous as Juri is tempestuous, openly referring to herself as a ghost, and when she isn't losing her shit in contorting fits of laughter over success, she has a remarkably chill, upbeat disposition when spouting horrible things to the protagonist or fake poisoning them for laughs. She has an incredibly distinct personality more so than any especially developed inner life, and that's kinda the point: that she has wholly and completely sublimated herself to her role as FANG's tool, by choice and intent of her own, and that's part of why she's a real deal villain.

She was raised by him, she likes what he likes, she is obsessed with everything he is and has done and will do, hates everyone that isn't him, considers him her master and teacher and father and husband all in one, and her romantic fixation and love for him is meant to be deeply disturbing in every way imaginable (and only not a total dealbreaker for me because FANG in no way reciprocates or encourages it or is able to do so, even AKI understands as much), and that they may eventually have to kill each other doesn't deter her one bit.

Despite those surface similarities, there is quite a lot that sets AKI apart from Juri, chief of those being that Juri was victimized by Shadaloo and in response fashioned herself into an instrument of vengeance and turned monstrous as a result, where as AKI actively chose her life and chose being molded by someone else, running away from home and following FANG every step of the way without any regret. Even FANG himself had little choice in his own life, kidnapped as a child and forced to partake in horrible training under which every day could be his last, raised to value nothing but survival at all costs.

Perhaps this in itself is the strength that FANG saw in AKI, that she gets to choose and does so with far greater intent than even himself. That she's someone who could fully understand the horribleness of the Nguuhao methods and lifestyle and want for that and nothing else, to consciously partake in such grueling torture of mind and body and lovingly decide that she can't get enough of it.

And in itself this pairs interestingly with the very idea of giving FANG a dedicated protege sidekick, a character beat that the series has come back to again and again, and takes on an entirely different tone here. I think a lot of what makes AKI's obsession interesting to me in a way these usually aren't, is not just because it's creepy, but because it's ultimately sad and pathetic, and parallels FANG's own craven worship of Bison. It's such a great dynamic, a miserable cycle perpetuated by miserable people caught on the wrong side of that glorification of self-improvement, inner strength and the great heroes and masters who can pass it onto others that the series uses so frequently, and it makes AKI even greater as a character for it: because now we have a true dark mirror for the driving motivation of many of our characters. We have our fucked-up toxic counterpart to every Sakura, Mika, Menat, and Sean out there.

She sees him as he saw Bison and more, and the fact that she is much more threatening and overtly competent and scary than FANG is offset by the fact that worshipping Bison is a wholly different thing than worshipping, y'know, FANG. We comprehend, on some level, FANG's worship, because M.Bison is supposed to be, at minimum, a cool imposing megavillain we're meant to like on some level, which is certainly not true for FANG. SF6 has been very clear on that, that even though he's been given a much slicker outfit, and is keeping a low profile to plot from behind the scenes, this is still very much FANG, every bit the conniving, petty control freak from before.

AKI is a cool, hypercompetent death machine able to scare the pants off the main villain, and she labors desperately day and night, to the point of crying if she fails, to meet the approval of a ridiculous, pathetic man who, no matter how deceptively cunning or dangerous he may be, is only cool to her. Much of why I think FANG worked and was necessary in the first place was because he was designed around the vacuum left by the Four Kings and to contrast them, as what kind of man would it take to work himself ragged running Bison's schemes and being unfailingly loyal to him and Shadaloo, opposite Vega and Balrog's sporadic barely-there alliances and Sagat's outright betrayal. We needed an anti-Sagat, a proper bastard of a Number 2 to run the show in secret. And AKI adds a lot of poignancy to that in that she is much of what FANG can't be, even as she wants nothing more than to be like him.

It's one thing to have somebody who really looks up to and makes an effort to imitate the cool and impressive and heroic World Warriors, or someone influenced by imposing villains like Balrog or Sagat but ultimately decides to carve their own path. It's another thing entirely for maybe THE most obsessive protege character in the series, someone who actively has no identity outside of servitude to her master, to revolve around FANG, the dastardly bird man, who made his debut in a story by hunting down and melting an innocent woman, and grossly and animastically licking her ashen remains off his fingers. What kind of person would decide that this sickening, vile creep is deserving of worship and following until the ends of the Earth?

(art by @remy2fang)

Well, maybe the same kind of person who would consciously look at the likes of M.Bison in the first place, someone they intuitively understand "will reign death on all living beings", and upends their life on the spot towards becoming that man's eternal servant. Someone who seeks self-fulfillment through no other means than the pursuit of strength and knowledge as tools to subjugate others and appease their master. The darkest corruption of the master-student dynamic that defines so much of the series. You couldn't ask for anything more fitting, for the poison specialists.

[saberlibrary]

Neighbor rivalry ft. Satoru Gojo

Day 03 of 31 Days of Ficmas!

summary — you and your neighbor keep bickering about who has the most beautiful christmas-decorated house in the street.

word count — 1.3k

content — enemies to lovers, fluff, lots of swearing, gojo is a menace and implied to be a tsundere, they’re just silly kids (not literally)

notes — third day! I actually wanted to keep all those fics under 1k words but I got carried away and almost kept writing, I swear it would end up with 3k words and a smut if I wasn’t able to contain myself. I hope you enjoy this one <3

You didn’t want to admit how glamorous Satoru Gojo’s house looked, but it did.

Your obnoxious neighbor had made it his life mission to spend the entire year annoying the shit out of you by bragging how he won the “Best Outdoor Christmas Decorations Award” – which was a friendly competition between neighbors, but ignited a childish rivalry between the two of you.

Whenever you gathered together for parties or barbecues, it would always end in debates about a) how immature he was, and b) how he won. Your endless bickering amused everyone, though.

And it made you even more determined to win this year.

You grimaced at his house, groaning to yourself before focusing on your task: fixing the Christmas lights that were suspended from your roof. It was already hard to keep yourself steady on that ladder, but doing that while thinking about Gojo was on another level of torture.

“You shouldn’t try so hard, it won’t look as good as mine.”

Speaking of the devil…

You didn’t even need to look at him to know he was looking up at you with a big, devilish smile. Gojo was quick to destabilize you and get under your skin whenever you looked into his sky-blue eyes, always sparkling at you – so you didn’t.

“It won’t,” you hummed, disinterested. “It will look better.”

He scoffed, “You should only accept your defeat and move on…”

Your gaze finally found him; wearing baggy sweatpants, a sweater, slippers, and, of course, the smile you predicted.

“Did you really just leave your house to be a pain in my ass, you fucking grinch?” you asked when processed his outfit.

He gasped, pretending to be outraged, “Grinch! Me!? The one who loves Christmas the most!”

Tired of his antics, you sighed, dropping the hammer you were holding onto the box beside the ladder and getting ready to climb down. Maybe throw some punches.

When stepping down, you miscalculated the distance between one step and the other and lost your balance. A scream of pure horror left your lips, pretty sure you’d break a bone when the warmth of two arms caught you in the air.

Before you knew it, Gojo was holding you bridal style, your frightened eyes fluttering open to meet his widened ones, “You scared me for a moment there!”, he breathed out, his body relaxing when he realized danger was no longer present.

Still processing what had just happened, you put your hand on his chest and pushed lightly, a silent request to be put down – which he quickly obliged.

“Fuck, sorry, I’m just— so stressed!”, you grumbled while trying to calm your heartbeat. Everything escalated so quickly and your body couldn’t keep up, “You fucking stress me!”, you spat at last.

Almost falling and having Satoru Gojo, of all people, saving you; it was a sick joke. And you blamed him.

Gojo suddenly went quiet – unusually quiet –, and you could see him biting his lip and looking around awkwardly.

Without saying another word, he grabbed the hammer you had dropped a few moments earlier and simply climbed the ladder, “The fuck are you doing?”

“I’m finishing this for you,” he said so low you could barely hear him.

You watched, in utter disbelief, as Gojo hammered the nails into your roof and placed the Christmas in the places you first intended them to be. You didn’t know, but he did watch you decorating your garden and outdoors and he noticed your patterns, so it wasn’t hard for him to make it the way you wanted.

“You need help with anything else?”, the white-haired man asked casually as he climbed down the ladder, never looking directly at you, his ever so annoying smile gone.

“What is that now, Gojo? Stop acting nice, you don’t have to pretend you care about my decorations or about me,” your words held a hint of bitterness and resentment.

“What?” he finally lifted his eyes to meet yours, confliction hidden behind his irises. “I do care about you.”

You scoff, “Sure, Gojo. Go back to your Award Winner house, will you? I will handle things here,” you stopped to add, “By myself.”

Maybe it was the fright of almost falling or just tiredness of fighting, but you felt like you really couldn’t spend another second with Gojo without losing your mind. He truly got under your skin and you recognized it, he didn’t even do anything, but…

“I’m sorry for stressing you out so much, it was never my intention,” was what he said before leaving you alone.

You gulped, feeling a little guilty for lashing out at him. Your rivalry was never that serious, just something you’d actually laugh about at night before sleep, but recently it became sort of a different experience. Something about that damned man, that infuriating smile and maddening eyes – it made you want to scream at him.

Why, though?

You wish you knew.

You sighed and shook your head, trying to forget everything about him. You proceeded to decorate your outdoors a little more until the sun was setting, then you turned on all the lights and smiled to yourself with the results so far.

Entering your house, you took a hot shower before putting on the comfiest pajamas you found, going to the kitchen, and preparing some hot chocolate when your doorbell rang.

You took your time to take the hot chocolate off the stove and went to answer the door.

As you opened it, you almost regretted all your life choices; you regretted opening the door, you regretted putting on that fucking pajama, you regretted not drying your hair, you even regretted moving to that cursed neighborhood.

Because there stood Satoru Gojo with a big box in his hands and sky-blue puppy eyes.

“Hi,” he smiled without a care in the world, he smiled and didn’t care about your pajamas or wet hair, he smiled and a small part of you was grateful that he did.

It felt wrong when he stopped smiling earlier.

“Hi,” you said back, uncertain of why he was there.

“Your house looks so beautiful tonight,” he started and, if you didn’t know Gojo, you’d say he was blushing. “More beautiful than mine.”

You blinked slowly, blood rushing quickly to your cheeks as your heart beat faster with the compliment and in a second you were blushing as well.

Oh.

“Oh,” you didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? What did he want? “Thank you, Gojo.”

“I brought you the best decorations I could find– some I believe that would suit you,” he continued and you noticed how uneasy he looked.

He practically shoves the box he was holding into your arms, but you accept it without a single complaint, “Thank you, but… why?”

“I like you.”

The declaration hung in the air like a mistletoe above your heads, the tension immediately installed, thoughts of should we kiss? and is this the best moment? filling both of your minds, mixed with the embarrassment of an unexpected circumstance.

“I’ve liked you for a long time and I mess with you because…” he looked away. “I don’t know, I just like to spend hours teasing you and having you teasing me back, but I never meant to actually make you feel any kind of bad–”

“Gojo,” you interrupted him. He was talking too much and that was new information you still didn’t know how to process. The mere thought of Satoru Gojo liking you seemed too surreal to be true. “You don’t need to apologize, just…”

You didn’t know why, but a ghost of a smile started forming on your lips. You could feel it tugging on your face, a warm feeling embracing your heart as you took in the image of your obnoxious neighbor standing at your front door. The way he got under your skin…

“I just prepared some hot chocolate. Do you want to come in?”

Gojo’s eyes lightened up instantly, a sparkle you’ve never seen before shining among his blues. He nodded and took a step to enter your house, which he had never entered before.

He crossed your walls and made himself at home.

[otterskin]

Does you actllty like odin because I thought everyone hated him.

...Why would people hate him? I struggle to understand that, even now. I have my theories, which I've spoken off in other places.

I think, and I don't like to say this, because there are certainly takes that aren't, but in general, that opinion is very juvenile. There's a desire to want to 'defend and protect' people from him, which betrays a lack of understanding of the dynamics in the films, and a tendency to side with children over adults, even grown children, and to see older people as symbolic of institutional power, as well as parental power, over them, and therefore a yoke that needs throwing off. There's a childish 'shut up, DAD!' to the criticism. More seriously, the desire to paint him as abusive reminds me of the problem of people confusing conflict for abuse, something that's a major issue in online spaces and real life. Outrage and extremism are rewarded and sought after, so everything is heightened. In that lens, a father who tried to do right by his children but who was in a unique circumstance because of his desire to challenge the status quo and fated enmity of two warrring peoples, a king who can't put the needs of his children over the suffering of his people and risk to his kingdom, now becomes a monster who delights in playing favourites and abusing them for kicks. It's disheartening.

There's precious little sympathy for characters like him, especially in this genre. Superhero fare is pretty black and white, and even characters like Loki rest pretty firmly in the 'good' side of that. But Odin is that rare character who not only doesn't play by that simple dichotomy, he doesn't get to live in a world so neatly divided. It's part of his isolation from the others. So usually, people see the gray and decide he must not be 'good', and if he's not 'good', he must be 'bad'.

The films have little time to explore him or his motivations or how he chooses to navigate his murky situation, and it's all the worse because he's a secretive person who actively disguises his motivations and goals. He's a minor character in screen time, but looms large over the plot and other characters' motivations, so most of what we see of him is what other people tell us he is. Most of which is, of course, untrue. That's the Odin that lives in their heads, and not the actual man, who is the rare character in the MCU you actually have to watch and pay attention to to understand. In universe, no-one bothers to do that - they are content with the version they've created to hate. So the audience thinks that version is also the real one, because it's easier to understand and categorize.

I love Odin, in mythology, and in the MCU. He's a much kinder person in the MCU for sure! But I'm glad that, even in a fairly straightforward world, they gave Odin no clear answers. He remains contradictory and deeply flawed, a thoroughly miserable person but with something compelling him to try and change the destined end of the world. How could I not love someone like that? How could people who say they like Loki not like a character who is so similar?

I get depressed when I encounter Odin haters. I feel like they've completely misunderstood and missed out on a fundamental part of the story, and I worry that if their sentiments infect the actual MCU, it will besmirch the efforts of those who came before and the humane story I fell in love with. Odin was not intended to be a bad parent or a bad person, and I don't think he is. He is intended to be someone that people IN UNIVERSE see as a full villain or as a full hero, but he is neither. He is a person who was faced with difficult choices, and he chose to do some radical things that many others of his kind would never do. He paved the way for a better future and better choices for others by defying the prejudices and traditions of his people, but because he was a trailblazer, he did not have the benefit of learning from others' examples, like Thor and Loki have because of him.

Comparing him to Thanos or other actually abusive parents is repellant. Never once have I seen anyone who claims to hate him actually engage with the character as depicted, nor how they would cut through the Gordian Knot of compromises the character had to contend with. They handwave away the moral questions as 'actually super easy to solve', which is something I abhor in fiction (it's also why I deeply dislike Spider-Man: NWH, which handwaves away the motivations and tragedies of villains from previous series). No, nothing was easy to solve about the choices presented to Odin, and I think the character had both logical and emotional rationale for his choices. He actually made pretty bold and forward-thinking plans, they just all tend to suffer from his fatal flaw - he thinks about them as logical, but they're really motivated by emotion that he keeps at arm's length, which leads to him showing vulnerability and being punished for it.

This is something that goes by so fast in the films, but I loved it because it is such a fundamentally male experience. Odin is someone being crushed under pretty much every expectation of masculinity, from man to warrior to father to husband to king, and whenever he tries to show regret, fallibility or vulnerability, the other characters find it disturbing and swiftly reject him, forcing him back into the performance and the misery that comes with it.

Odin may ponder what is the correct decision, but does not mistake that for what is the most moral decision. He is someone who is both logical and emotional but who hasn't integrated those two halves of himself together very well.

If you hate the character, I'd be happy to talk about it. It is okay to just not like characters! Including gray ones. But for me, I can really think about Odin, and I like that he can't be easily written up for a bland Fandom page that requires everything be spelled out or it 'doesn't count'. He exists in the between spaces of the story, and it is a very sad and lonely tale.

TL;DR : He's a complicated man in a simple story. In the Squid Game of Sugar Cookie, he got the Umbrella. I am sad that such a fundamental character to the foundation of the THOR franchise's quality and themes is so misunderstood and unappreciated by this fandom. I don't think you can love this franchise and not have some care for Odin.

[true-blue-sonic]

How would you describe Silver's personality now?

I think the biggest change I've been going through over the past year or so is that I've begun seeing Silver as a much more self-reliant and serious character. When I look at my fic New Beginnings, for example, Silver is heavily dependent on Espio and acts quite childish and insecure. And that's an insecurity the games handle much more nuanced than what I wrote, in my opinion. Like, in Japanese in '06 Blaze doesn't call Silver insecure when he's alone; instead she uses a term that describes someone running wild without thinking the consequences through, iirc. To me, that shows Silver as someone perfectly capable of taking initiative and knowing what he wants, as opposed to doubting himself constantly and not knowing that, so to say. And in Belong, my very first fic, he's also quite down and pessimistic about the future being in ruins. Considering the fact Silver's reaction to Blaze sacrificing herself in his place was wiping at his eyes a bit, I think he'd react with much more desire to make things right rather than be upset about things being wrong.

With that changed perspective in mind, I'd say that the main cornerstones of Silver's personality are:

His strong sense of justice (he will move heaven and earth to make a wrong situation right);

Bravery and never giving up even in the most dire of circumstances, endless determination for tasks both small and big. Not immune to moments of self-doubt when the circumstances have become truly dire or his worldview has been shaken entirely, but he easily finds his determination again and keeps going until the bitter end without ever giving up;

A sense of optimism and faith in himself that he can turn even the most impossible situation around;

Perceptive and good at combining little details and things that don't exactly add up to find the truth (most notably in the Rivals games, also a bit in TSR). Doesn't fall for the same trick twice (Eggman Nega in Rivals 2).

Bluntness and rudeness (especially to those he deems against him, but also friends on occasion). Will be short with and rude to people, mock them, disregard them, and shoot down their statements without listening if he thinks they're in his way. Not afraid of telling people to shut up (Rivals 2). Notably, even Sonic noted Silver got on his nerves once and Knuckles explicitly calls Silver rude (Rivals 1).

In a similar vein, haughty about his abilities and strength. Not above trash-talking and sneering at people he deems below him, and one-upping others. It helps that his PK is a terrifying force to be reckoned with (e.g. Meteor Smash in Generations or him stopping a beam from the Eclipse Cannon with his Shield of Light in a Sonic Channel Story, or lifting up tons of weight from a broken stone bridge with his PK for some time in another).

A rather black-and-white worldview which makes him overly honest, because what he's saying is the truth. However, The TruthTM tends to be quite outrageous with him involved, so people don't always believe him. Cue bluntness and rudeness, haha.

And kind! Silver's got a heart of gold underneath his ruder traits. He'll never let anyone suffer if he can help it. He wants to protect the smiles of the people in the future above all and is helpful and sweet towards his friends.

I'd say those are the main ones!

[velmashaircut]

Here is a list of subreddits I don't like because this week is my six year anniversary on reddit. I should say I don't mind the subreddit itself, but I don't like it's members. Also I would like to say I'm not adding subreddits to this list out of spite due to being banned or because I lost an argument to someone on there.

opmfolk: most people on this subreddit dislike the changes made in the manga, which is fine. I agree with a lot of things they say. I dislike the sub because of the awful attitude they have; they act like Murata killed their kids because of the changes to the plot that began to appear in the MA arc. I don't know if ONE is also behind the changes, but if he is, no one on that sub thinks he should be blamed for it.

It's ironic the people on that sub hate the long breaks in between the releases of the manga chapters because it delays the plot, but seldom complain about the lack of updates in the webcomic, how many years has it been since the current webcomic arc began? They say Murata has gotten lazy and checked out of the series, but by their own logic, they should be saying that about ONE (I don't think either of them have).

I think too many of the members of the sub are bias and throw around childish insults, so that's why they're on the list. The concept of the subreddit is fine. I bet a lot of them will change their minds when the chapters they talk about hating get animated.

ao3: I like to start off by saying I read and write fanfiction. I think people on this subreddit are hypocrites, they love to preach 'don't like, don't read' but cannot keep the same energy themselves. Many posts in this sub consist of users screenshotting sections of fanfictions or fanfic blurbs or whatever just to complain about how they hate how it was written or when authors do this particular thing in their writing and so on. Going out of your way to take a screenshot of someone else's work to go complain about it in an echo chamber doesn't sound like 'don't like, don't read' to me. The users would go batshit insane if someone did that to them.

The sub also have a prevalent us vs them mentality, mostly towards tiktok fanfiction readers. They say they're more cliquey and rude, but I don't think the subreddit is any better in that regard, they love to dogpile just as much as tiktok ff readers. The A03 subreddit love to say 'I'm too old for drama!' yet there are always posts about them being caught up in drama in their respective fandoms.

They are also easily offended or seem to assume the worst out of comments. It’s so bad, some users post the comments they want to send to the author so the people of the subreddit can approve if it’s suitable or not, and they are often told to bulk up the praise. And if the writers of the sub themselves do receive a hate comment or a comment that isn’t overly positive, they feel the need to make a post to discuss it too. You can just block and move on if you're that upset. If you're not grovelling, their whole world falls apart. A lot of writers don't want interaction, but endless praise. I feel like many of them forget that readers do not owe them kudos, comments/ save. Writers can choose whether or not they want to publish their works, but readers can also choose whether or not they want to comment or kudos their fanfic.

They also humble brag by asking questions like ‘my fic has been up an hour and has 200 kudos, is that good??’ Like come onnn.

BridgertonNetflix: This applies to the smaller subreddits are created for the main couples. The Para social relationships on these subs are outrageous. So many of these people don't realise acting is a job, the way people reacted to Simon's actor leaving the show was wild, the actor still gets flack for it years later. I don't see what the issue is - his season was over, and he wouldn't have had a prominent enough role in future seasons to stick around. Loads of fans were upset because they blamed him for the lack of Daphne's appearances in S2 and her no show in S3, but you should get more mad at the writers if anything for not being able to write scenes where Daphne makes appearances without Simon, it shouldn't be that hard to do since the Bridgerton's are her family, not his. The hatred towards Simons actor is so unnecessary, and the snarky comments fans make about Anthony's actor being able to still appear despite his various projects are stupid as well. Anthony is head of the family, and the show is about his siblings, its expected that he's in every season. The same does not apply to Simon, it's not hard to understand.

Other weird para social relationships include the protagonists of Queen Charlotte - like stop shipping real people who are in their own relationships together. Beyond disrespectful and the fans made it seem like it was appropriate?

However, what I hate most about this subreddit are the Kate and Kantony stans, which sadly, most people in the subreddit are. You can make a post about how, despite all the excuses the show throws at you, Kanthony were still in the wrong for having an affair under Edwina's nose, or god forbid, point out that Kate is not perfect, and people in the comments will call you racist, sexist, trying to create discourse, having a vendetta against the actress...and multiple posts pop up to defend Kate. I wish I was joking but I've seen this happen multiple times, it happened today actually. A line her stans love to use is 'here we go again' when someone makes a post about disliking Kate, but if someone said that about the endless Kate appreciation posts they would accuse of creating a hate brigade. There's a reason why only so many posts about Kanthony get locked...their fans are crazy.

Any UK subreddits: So xenophobic and racist. This could political UK subreddits or casual ones - all are influenced by politics in some way which is annoying. I dread reading the comments on these subreddits but I still end up doing it. These subreddits usually have articles attached to the posts, but everyone in comments they're dumbass opinions based on the rage bait title instead of reading the articles contents. The jokes are so unfunny too.

Unpopular opinions: I've said this before but they just hate women, so many posts are like 'women are superficial' 'women online are awful' but one post making the same generalisation towards men and suddenly its 'not all men are like this' and ''sexist'.

Most unpopular opinions are not unpopular either, or are just factually incorrect. People use the upvoting system wrong here too, you're meant to upvote unpopular opinions, but basic and tame popular opinions tend to mostly be the most upvoted.

Sixth form and uni subreddits: I find the people on these subs annoying because many of these people worship STEM and look down on humanities subjects. Many people on these subreddits also believe any uni which isn't Oxbridge or a Russel group uni is awful. And I'm saying that as someone who does stem at a Russel group. For the uni subreddit especially, everyday there's a post where someone is upset they failed a year of university or got caught cheating and want a way to get out of trouble, but upon reading the post, you realise its 100% their own fault they failed. Like come on bro. I don't like other uni students at my university so I think I project my hatred and insecurities onto the subreddit.

[whinlatter]

<Art credit: Margaryta Yermolayeva>

Wild card trick or treat: go nuts, friend.

Send an ask with “Trick or treat!” to the writer who reblogged this & you could receive a 3-sentence fic, drabble, headcanon, sneak-peek at a WIP, the last sentence they wrote, a new fic idea, random line from a fic, picture of their notebook, a deleted line they love, an idea for a sequel, something they’re researching, behind-the-scenes info on a published fic, or something else!

an excuse to post hinny deleted scenes??? 👀👀👀

i bit off more than i can chew with this delightful trick or treat challenge but i do have literally mountains of dumb harry/ginny letters that didn't make the cut in beasts so here's some deleted scenes/the two of them doing what they do best (flirting by post, shooting the shit). do i love these lines? not particularly, but i love these two and i couldn't find anywhere for this extremely dumb exchange to go in the fic so sharing it here in honour of halloween will have to do! thank you sm @turanga4!

Gin, 

How’s your week? It’s shit here. Work’s shit, weather’s shit, house is shit. Today I also stood in literal dog shit and I couldn’t even scourgify my shoe because I was in a street full of Muggles so I had to wait until I was in the employee entrance at work to try clean it out. And then when I walked in someone said ‘what’s that smell’, and then someone else started retching and someone else started pointing and going ‘shit is that Harry Potter’. So then I had to try to pretend like it wasn’t me that had shit on my shoe until the room had cleared and I could finally sort it out. And now I’m worried the Prophet is going to run a story about how Harry Potter smells like shit, or start calling me The Boy Who Lived in His Own Filth, or bring those Potter Stinks badges out of retirement and send them into mass production, or something.

Yours (drowning in shit) -

Harry

—

The Boy Who Lived in His Own Filth (catchy),

I’m sorry your week has been so full of shit (literal and figurative). It does seem cosmically cruel that you can save the Wizarding World and still find yourself standing in dog shit. You’d think the universe would give you a pass, or something. Really, no treading in dog shit for the rest of your life seems the least the universe could do for you, given how much trouble you’ve gone to. I’m outraged on your behalf and willing to write to whatever necessary higher power to make this right. 

It’s pretty shit here too. I miss you (yawn, lame, boring). When you inevitably go into hiding from the brutal Prophet expose of your personal hygiene habits you are very welcome to hang out with me up here/hide out in Hagrid’s cabin and help me try to explain to him the proper consistency of custard. 

Yours in shitty solidarity,

Hagrid’s long suffering sous chef

—

Dear Hagrid’s long suffering sous chef/custard de-lumper in chief,

Thanks for the sympathy. I miss you too, a lot (yawn, lame, boring). Ron’s just asked if I’m writing to you ‘again’ like he doesn’t write to Hermione each time there’s a Y in the day. He just asked what we even talk about. So if he asks I told him we’re working on a big list of his flaws and most embarrassing moments to read out at his thirtieth and/or him and Hermione’s wedding, whichever comes first. Now he’s saying we’re ‘very childish’ and keeps trying to get a look at the parchment to check if I was lying or not. Oh wait no now he’s going up to his room to write Hermione about his very busy exciting day spent reading evidence logs and complaining about the canteen’s stingy pie portions. What a lucky girl.

Keep fighting the good custard fight. 

Yours,

Harry

PS. Thanks for the offer but have to say no to hiding out in Hagrid’s hut. Fang’s poos are huge. I can’t risk it. Can I not crash in your dormitory? The steps up to the girls’ rooms don’t still turn into slides, do they? 

—

Outrageous and scandalous attempt to wangle your way into my bed, Potter. Of course the steps still turn into slides. What, you thought because there was a war on and the castle got pounded to smithereens the relics of archaic magical paternalism designed to defend young witches’ virtues would somehow cease to function? How naive. Anyway, I for one am grateful for the slides, if they stop you bringing your stinky shit covered shoes into our dormitory.

Tell Ron I'm writing you absolute filth. Like debauched sexual propositions, truly eye-watering stuff. That said, if you think for a second I’m not going to back my dear brother in his campaign for generous pie portions then you’re out of your mind. Despite the sneering of critics (you), we Weasleys believe in the importance of hearty pie helpings, almost as much as we believe in the importance of perfect custard viscosity.

Yours,

Ginny

PS. You're literally not going to believe this - wrote this letter at Hagrid’s, was heading out and sealing it up to send and I literally stepped in one of Fang's enormous shits. What are the chances???

[naivesilver]

Talking to @strangeacorn always give me angst ideas about the stray puppets sorry 🤭💖

(∩ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)⊃━☆ﾟ

Not for the first time, August thinks he might be starting to understand Jiminy's point of view. 

Since the kids have taken residence in his house, he's come to realize just how frustrating it is to try to reason with a stubborn boy that's as pliable as a brick wall, and that realization always comes with the thought that he should probably get his old conscience a present for all the stuff August put him through. It might be some sort of karmic justice, even - Picco, bless him, couldn't be less obtrusive if he tried, but Mokku is everything August heard himself be called and more, as though the boy was out on a personal vendetta. 

And the worst part is, he has a right to it. All that anger, all that lashing out - it's justified by all the nasty stuff that's happened to him, and there's very little August can do to soothe it, right now. “Kid, I know you're upset, but your brother hasn't done anything to you. You can't get mad at him for that.”

“But it's not fair!” Mokku snaps back at him, furious like a rabid dog. “Why does he get to be whole, and I don't? We're pretty much the same guy! What'd he do better than me?”

He's right. Of course he is. He stands there with that missing arm and those fragile legs, living proof of what he's raging about - August's father thought about replacing the damaged limbs, but apparently they can't, or they'll stop working altogether. It has to do with the magic of the tree the boy was carved from, which is the cruelest irony of all, really. “Nothing. And you didn't do anything wrong, either. You're right, it's unfair, and I am sorry for that- you know if there was a way to change things, I would have already done it.”

The boy all but sneers in contempt. “Yeah, but you can't. You're useless. You're always useless- I can't believe I'm still listening to you.”

He makes to stomp away, anger in every fiber of his wooden body, but his legs betray him just as he's reaching for the door - Mokku stumbles, losing his balance, and almost keels over within seconds, enough that August instinctively reaches to steady him before he collapses. 

He shouldn't have done that. He's registered it as soon as it happens, but by then it's already too late - the boy regains his footing and bats his hand away, seething despite the tears pooling defiantly in his eyes. “Don't touch me! Leave me alone!”

August complies, raising his hands in surrender, but still he watches Mokku hobble away to his room, as close to storming off as he can get with those weak joints, and in the meantime the conversation replays indefinitely in the man's head, and he hates it. He hates that he can't fix this, that he has been cast in this wise adult role while he can't do anything to help the little ones. He hates that he understands Mokku far too well. 

And most of all, he hates that sometimes he can almost hear the boy's voice overlap with his own from his memories, shrill with fear and childish outrage, wondering why no adult would help him out. 

[cdyssey]

Wreck

Summary: When Melissa's nana dies, Barbara is there for her.

CW: Death Discussion; Heavy Grief

AO3 Link

Melissa smooths her to-do list across her kitchen island with trembling fingers. Having been folded and unfolded several times over, marked upon profusely, tossed into her purse, crammed into her back pocket, unceremoniously stuffed into her bra at least twice, and probably stained with some cheap Chardonnay that her kid cousin picked up from Dollar General, the tear-out from a yellow legal pad has certainly seen better days.

But, hey, that’s nothin’ special.

She guesses she looks like a shit piece of paper too, all crinkled and creased, smudged and barely fit for perusal anymore.

Someone load her ass in a garbage truck and cart her off to the dump because she’s a wreck: fucked up, overwhelmed, annihilated, undone.

She doesn’t even feel like a human anymore.

Her nana died just around two days ago now, passing from the world about as peacefully as one could dare to imagine for a woman who’d been sick for the last ten months of her life. It was quiet in the end, as simple and as easy as falling asleep after a long, hard day. And the doctor-on-call promised that the sedative he was giving her would ensure that it was painless, which was a relief perhaps only because everything else leading up to that day had been so goddamn painful: the sickness, the waiting, the wrenching, bone-heavy grief.

(It was entirely possible to grieve someone who was still alive—to look at their utterly wasted body and understand that what was left was just a tangible echo, a breathing ghost.)

Melissa held her bony hand during that last hour and told her that it was okay to go—she’d be fine—and it was the first and only lie she’d ever told that saint of a woman in the entirety of her life.

She didn’t exactly ask forgiveness for doing so either.

She thought that if God knew anything about mercy, He’d understand and grant her this one sin: comforting that comfortless woman.

Nana had been ready to go, of course—sure, yeah, absolutely—she had known that it was her time for far longer than any of her headstrong relatives had been willing to admit. But she was so scared too: scared of leaving all her loved ones without their resilient matriarch, scared of their eventual (and perhaps inevitable) in-fighting, scared of a fractious future that she wouldn’t be around to mend with a homemade ziti dish and warm, jam-filled pie. She made Melissa promise—over and over again, ad infinitum—that she’d keep the Schemmenti clan together long after she was gone.

“Family’s all that we’ve got, Melly,” she once said. In the same way that Joe was the only person to call her Lissa, Nana was the only one to ever know her as Melly. It was a bit childish, maybe, but Melissa didn't mind. She always felt like she was twelve again when she was in her grandmother's presence: gap-toothed, impertinent, a hellion in patched overalls. “You gotta swear to me, on your Papa’s grave, that you’ll always remember that—no matter how balorde some of your aunts and uncles can be.”

“Nana!”She’d belly laughed at the time, bracing her hands on the edge of Nana’s steel-basin sink. They’d been in the kitchen together, as they so often were, peeling russet potatoes for her famous gnocchi recipe. This was at the very beginning of those long ten months when they both thought she just was just having bad arthritis flare-ups, perhaps. Her doctor was supposed to call sometime in the next few days with the results from her most recent labs...

“Those are your kids. You can’t just call ‘em stupid.”

(Even if it was expressly true.)

“Yeah, I can! I pushed them outta me, every one of ‘em eight or nine pounds a pop! Apple doesn’t fall far from the bush is what I say!”

It was the kind of statement that only her grandmother could pull off, something that made her want to snort and cry at the exact same time. She was outrageously funny, that stout, little woman, but she never seemed to think much of herself, especially when it came to education. She had to drop out of high school to work and help her parents raise their endless passel of kids, and then, before she knew it, she was poppin’ out little redheaded Sicilian Catholics of her own—Melissa’s own ma included.

Nana was so proud of her for making it through college and becoming a teacher, telling her as much every opportunity that she got, and constantly bragging about her accomplishments to her canasta group. She’d known how hard it was for Melissa at times.

Reading had always been a little challenging for her.

Taking exams could be a goddamn nightmare.

“Would you quit flippin’ saying that?” Melissa had rebutted, both exasperated and fond all at once, attempting to discipline her smirk into a reproving frown. “You’re not dumb either, Nana. Alright? Capito?"

She was the smartest person Melissa knew, high school diploma or not, for education was far from the same as intelligence in her book. There were plenty of eggheads out there with degrees coming out of their asses who didn't know how to haggle for the best cuts of beef or stay clear of certain Philly streets at night or change a flat with a crying kid on one hip and three more bouncin' around in the car. Before she had ever decided to become an elementary school teacher, those sorts of things were her only measures of how clever a person really was, and her grandmother had been the golden standard of them all—competent in a world that could be so arbitrary, needlessly complicated, and cruel.

At this, her sweet nana suddenly smiled, her dark eyes warmed by the golden light leaning in from the window above the sink. It was a sad smile and a profound one—the kind that little, old ladies always gave in the movies before they up and died, kickstarting the next act. It was accompanied by a slow shake of the head. She had her green rollers in; they shivered in time with the movement.

“Good God, I love you, Melissa,” she had murmured softly, each syllable laden with a certain gravity, as though she already suspected something about her health that Melissa didn’t, as though she had an inkling of what awaited her in the coming days, weeks, and months upon godawful, medicine and machine-filled months. Maybe Melissa should have known then herself—by that rare usage of her Christian name, by the way her stubborn-as-hell grandmother didn’t argue back—that something was horribly wrong.

But she hadn't.

Just ten months and some spare change ago, it was impossible for her to fathom a world where her nana wasn't in it.

She just accepted that love, basked in it, took it for granted even, and now, a little less than a year later, as she pores over a checklist of all the shit she’s gotta do to bury that precious lady—(so much, too flipping much)—she racks her exhausted brain and wonders if she’d said it back that time.

I love you too, Nana. 

Of course, she’s said it about a gazillion times since then. Never left a conversation with the woman without doing so in case it was their last. But all the times she didn’t reciprocate those three words and every other missed or botched opportunity besides tangibly aches her chest, pounds upon it, like fists against an awful drum. Missed calls. Canceled lunch dates. Squandered chances to ask her about her storied life. The endless thank you she didn’t give that woman for practically raising her.

It’s irrational, of course, so goddamn stupid; she loved that woman endlessly and proved it in a thousand different ways.

But even still, what she wouldn’t give for one last tomorrow with her to tell her again and again.

Unbidden, unwanted, totally out-of-line and out-of-the-blue, tears threaten to spill over Melissa’s lashes and onto that yellow paper that’s already been to hell and back. She furiously swipes them away with the heel of her hand, doesn’t have the time to cry.

She’s still gotta call the Social Security Office and get Nana’s checks to stop comin’ through the mail. And after that, she has to take Joe’s suit to the dry cleaner ‘cuz her useless lump of a husband keeps forgetting. And when she gets back home—at who knows what time because she’s really gotta stop at the store and grab a few necessities—she desperately needs to go through Nana’s files again to see if she’s got that damn burial policy in there somewhere. Otherwise, they’re gonna have to pay for the service and the cremation out of pocket, even if she knows a guy who knows a guy who knows the funeral director, who can only get them an okay deal, which is fine.

It'll help, or at the very least, it won't hurt, but the crux of the sordid matter—the bottom line at the end of the shitty day—is that dying is so freakin' expensive.

“Fuck,” she groans, sliding her hand down until she’s palming her mouth. “Shit.”

No one ever talks about how the aftermath of death is just one cold bureaucracy after another: files, papers, tasks, and duties.

It’s unbearable.

Melissa alone has to bear it.

Her ma’s gone. Her remaining aunts and uncles are fragile. Her cousins aren’t any good with this kind of organizational crap. Her own goddamn sister’s been AWOL ever since the diagnosis, and the rest of her younger siblings haven’t done jack squat either.

It’s up to Melissa.

It always is.

That doesn't change just because someone she loved died.

The responsibilities simply take up the same air as the grief.

Just as she’s about to get started, though, reaching for her phone to start looking up numbers, her one saving grace walks in through the arched entranceway of the kitchen. Elegant as ever in a floral print blouse and black slacks, a plastic bag hanging off one arm, her comically huge purse on the other, is none other than—

“Barb,” she croaks, overwhelmed and overcome, weak-kneed with a relief that she just as immediately tries to hide. Vulnerability utterly terrifies her; it is one of the few house guests that she doesn’t know how to capably entertain.

“You don’t… y’know, you don’t have to come every day.”

But her best friend unfailingly has, bringing over various dishes and groceries, helping Melissa keep track of all the shit she needs to do, and oftentimes, just sitting next to her on her plastic-covered couch and holding her hand, palm-to-palm, their ten fingers intertwined. If Melissa has known any modicum of peace in this hellish last week, it’s only because Barbara Howard has deigned to carve out some for her, offering it to her like an alm. 

God bless her—she even showed up before her nana passed away, when family and friends were just congregating in Melissa’s house, filtering in and out of the guest bedroom where Nana’s hospital bed was to say their goodbyes. And when death finally lifted Nana away—arriving as gently as a mother carrying her child to bed—Barbara’s warm arms were the first around Melissa, holding her so tightly, her lone defenses against collapsing into a million goddamn pieces on the floor.

Barbara would never let that happen, though.

She had her.

She would cradle all her shrapnel; she would salvage her from abyssal ruins.

“And you,sweetheart, know better than to think that’ll stop me,” Barbara laughs kindly, setting her purse and plastic bag on the kitchen island. There’s a twinkle in her dark eyes, a lovely playfulness curving her plum-colored lips. “I do as I please.”

“Stubborn fool,” Melissa chuckles hoarsely, a sudden thickness in the column of her throat. She’s always on the verge of crying over nothing nowadays: spilled wine on the counter, a sad headline on the news, smelling something in the kitchen that reminds her of her grandmother, being joked with, having companionship, being loved.

She knows that she’s been caught, too, by the way her friend gingerly skims her fingertips against her forearm.

It’s the lightest touch imaginable.

It nearly shatters her where she stands.

“Yes,” Barbara hums in gentle agreement, “that’s why we get along like two peas in an unshelled pod.”

“Hah,” she tries to smile. Her entire mouth feels like concrete. “Some pod.”

“Extraordinary peas, though, if I do say so myself,” the older woman declares with an air of finality as she starts to busy herself, pulling out a white takeout container and some utensils from the plastic bag. Even before she sees the familiar logo of a happy chef wedged in-between some blocky lettering, Melissa knows the rich, homely smell of fried chicken.

And not just any fried chicken, but—

“Danny's Wok?” Her eyebrows lift at least three inches from their exhausted lids. “Jesus, Barb, that’s all the way across town. You didn’t have to—“

But Barbara cuts her off with a raised hand, a familiar teacher pose. “But I wanted to and so I did. Now park your fine derrière on a stool and tell me what you would like to drink, girlfriend.”

“I’ve got things to do,” she protests weakly, gesturing at the to-do list still laying pathetically on the counter. She doesn't know why she's being so obstinate. Maybe it's just instinct; her immediate reaction to people offering help has always been a deep, gut-felt shame: shame that she can't do something by herself; shame that she's so weak, and someone else is stronger; shame that she isn't enough. (One of her deepest fears is that she's never been enough) Or maybe it's because she just doesn't want to think about the way that Barbara saying she had a nice ass made the contents of her stomach do a loop de loop.

“I can eat later.”

It’s not a sentence she’s said very often in her lifetime, and Barbara peers at her skeptically, damn well knowing this.

“But when’s the last time you did have a bite, Melissa? You look pale.”

“I had a piece of toast this morning,” she grunts uncomfortably, more than aware that it’s not sufficient by either of their standards. That was hours ago. According to the digital clock on her oven, it’s nearly five o’clock now.

But all truth being told, she hasn’t been particularly hungry in a while, not since the hospice worker sat her down a few days before Nana died and said that it’d be soon.Food has lost a lot of its flavor. Nausea is constantly doing laps around her digestive tract. She doesn’t know how to care about eating when this grief is taking up so much real estate in her body and never paying any of the rent.

“Hardly enough,” Barbara scolds predictably, first pushing the styrofoam tray in her direction, now shuffling towards the stainless steel fridge, no nonsense and all productivity. It's how she shows her love. “You need to put something substantial in your stomach, sweetheart. You'll be of no use to your list if you keel over on top of it."

“Okay, Ma,” she huffs, but it doesn’t have any real bite to it because she obediently unlatches the box anyway. She knows that Barbara is right, as she usually—(sometimes annoyingly)—is. 

“Ma is correct,” the older woman hums, undeterred. “Someone needs to be responsible for you.”

It's hard not to feel chastised by such a statement, as though she's being patronized—a little kid in her own damn home; she attempts a weak smile anyway. It wobbles like a tricycle across the chapped line of her mouth.

“‘Cause I’m doing a shit job at it, yeah?”

Of course she is; she's a disaster with good hair.

“Absolutely not,” comes an exceedingly gentle reply, thrown over the other teacher's shoulder, landing as gently as a kiss. “It’s just that you seem to think it’s your God-given duty to be responsible for everyone else in this world except for yourself. Let me—no, wait, I insist upon—doing the same for you, Melissa."

A new lump surfaces to Melissa’s throat as she digests this unadulterated tenderness; it’s unfamiliar to her, even after so many years of receiving it from the angelic woman standing in her kitchen. She doesn’t know what to do with it. She holds it in her like a rain cloud, just waiting for it to pour.

“It’s scary that you have my number like this,” she finally says, and it’s the type of thing that she’s not supposed to mention aloud—she knows. She’s well aware. She’s spent an entire lifetime avoiding emotional honesty like it’s a summons for jury duty. But sometimes—if only sometimes, and usually only when a hell of a lot of booze is involved—she and Barbara can transcend their mutual understanding to never talk about the way they secretly look at each other when they think no one is watching and arrive at the undoctored truth of their shared experiences.

They know each other.

They love each other.

Far more intimately than should be allowed.

Barbara freezes where she stands, shoulders squared, hand gripping one of the fridge handles; she doesn’t turn around, possibly can't.

“Well... that’s what friends are for,” she returns in a stilted voice, picking her way around each individual phoneme like it's a landmine. It’s a warning tone even, begging Melissa not to press, and so Melissa doesn’t, swallowing painfully—just as submissive as a dog and far more devoted.

The sticky moment passes—it always does. Barbara retrieves a half-empty jug of sweet tea from the fridge, and Melissa slowly legs herself onto a stool next to the island. Her feet ache—her head, her chest, her entire goddamn body—but when Barbara joins her a few moments later, having poured them glasses of tea and grabbed napkins and condiments, both of them proceed as though nothing happened at all. Melissa picks at the chicken in an exercise of politeness, tearing off a little piece here or there and trying to chew it in slow, methodical bites.

It tastes like burnt rubber.

She attempts to wash it down with her drink, but the sickly sweetness of the tea just as quickly nauseates her.

Barbara can’t keep up the ruse of not paying attention to this sad ritual for very long.

“I can make you soup,” she offers pleadingly, already halfway off her own stool. "Potato? Broccoli-and-cheese? Vegetable?" Melissa places a hand on her leg to force her to sit down again.

“Nah, you’ve done enough,” she says firmly. “I... just don’t have it in me right now, Barb.”

And without flinching or glancing away, though every nerve in her body itches to bundle her present fragility away from view, she allows the other woman to search her face and confirm this unsavory truth. She bares every line and gaunt shadow; they surely adorn the curvature of her face like bruises.

“You can only do what you can do,” the older woman replies reluctantly, as though it’s the thing she knows she’s supposedto say and not necessarily what she actually believes. Melissa almost smiles at that assessment, smug in her assurance that it's the correct one. Barbara’s never been exceptionally good at hiding her feelings. People think that she is. Hell, even Barbara herself thinks she has others fooled.

But Melissa can see right through her, all those hundreds of things that she doesn’t say, that she entraps behind those tightly pursed lips for fear of being construed as ungodly. She thumbs through the Book of Barbara almost daily—with all the reverence that such a project deserves—and her diligence has rewarded her with all the beautiful fine print.

“Advice you gotta listen to yourself, hon,” she muses fondly, patting Barbara’s leg again before finally withdrawing her hand. “You’ve gone above and beyond for me these past few days. It’s not your fault I’ve got a sick stomach right now.”

“I know,” she admits in that same grudging tone, “but still, I’d do anything to make things better for you, Melissa, to relieve the burden on your shoulders even the tiniest bit.”

She gestures emphatically at the to-do list between them with one of her manicured friends.

“It’s far from fair that you’re in charge of all this when I know for a fact that you have other family members who are perfectly capable of helping to lighten the load. For instance”—she picks the paper up, scanning it briefly—”Joseph’s dry-cleaning! Why in God’s precious name isn’t your husband doing his own dry-cleaning?”

“He’s busy,” Melissa says in a clipped voice, less offended that Barbara is criticizing her husband than she is annoyed that her friend arrived at the same question that she did so easily. “At work. Fightin’ fires.”

Spending his paychecks on booze and scratchers and God only knows what else. Sometimes, he comes home smelling like strange perfume.

The kindergarten teacher emphatically shakes her head. “That doesn’t abscond him of his duty of being a responsible adult in a time of crisis.”

“Yeah, well—” She starts to defend him and then just as abruptly stops, suddenly cornered and violently choked.

Melissa doesn’t know what to fucking say to that, if there's anything to be said at all. If she argues, she’d just be lying to herself, to Barbara, and to almighty God—an unholy trinity of delusion and willing deceit. There’s just no excusing the inexcusable, no dressing it up in rouge and calling it pretty.

She’s alone.

Oh, God—her nana died and left her.

She's got a husband and he sleeps in the same bed as her, but somehow and nevertheless, she’s all alone.

Her eyes begin to water, her breathing quickly turning shallow, as everything inside of her falls apart and implodes.

Barbara quickly places the list down again and exchanges it for a tissue that she plucks from a nearby box, reaching up to wipe the tears away. Her cool palm skims the side of Melissa’s feverish face, and the contact is so tender that it’s almost too painful to bear. Melissa reaches up and curls her fingers around her friend’s wrist like it’s a lifeline, unable to form any words, her throat throttled with vile, her stomach sick with it. And the tears continue to well, no matter how many Barbara capably catches.

She heaves out one ugly sob and then another, covering her mouth with her free hand as though that would help with the inconvenience and the noise.

(She's spent most of her adulthood trying not to be inconvenient to make up for all her loudness and her noise.)

“Oh, Melissa—” Barbara exhales, her own dark eyes filling. She continues to stroke the side of her face, holding her cheek, cradling it, cradling her. “Oh, baby—it’s okay that you’re hurting. It’s okay to feel this pain.”

“I-it’s freakin’ not, though,” she moans, the sound muffled behind her hand, the unspeakable anguish leaking through anyway. Her nails curl into her lower lip. “I… I gotta keep it together, Barb! I can’t just—Jesus—I can’t just fall apart. I don’t, I can’t, fuck, I can’t—”

She can’t breathe. Surely, there’s a vice in her chest, squeezing her ribcage into mere molecules and skeletal dust. Surely, her lungs have burst, her veins, her bleeding heart, one massive supernova of flesh and gory tissue, and this moment's all she’s got left. Minutes. Seconds. Nanoseconds. She’s going to die right here and right now, while Nana is unburied, and her to-do list is still unfinished, and—

“You can, Melissa Schemmenti,” comes an authoritative voice from above, shaking but somehow utterly unshaken, ringing like a decree from the Lord God on High. And then Barbara’s warm arms are around her, filling the encroaching darkness with all the flowers on her shirt: sunflowers, poppies, lillies, and roses. Petals everywhere. A garden of beauty and impossible delight. “You cando this because I’m here, and I’m not going to let you go under. You hear me, sweetheart? That’s my promise to you, my solemn, unbreakable oath.”

It’s the loveliest combination of words Melissa has probably ever been told in her life; she cries all the harder, weeping her horror, half-vomiting it. Her mouth tastes like tea and salt.

“Breathe,”Barbara instructs her, pressing a gentle kiss against the crown of her head. One of her hands finds its way to the hollow of Melissa’s constricted throat; she splays her fingers against it, palm resting on her chest where the divot of her shirt exposes some of her skin. “You have to breathe, Melissa.”

But it's hard.

It's so fucking hard.

Every hitched breath still becomes a sob, and every sob reverberates through her beaten body like a shock wave. But Barbara is patient where she isn't, a sturdy monolith when all of her vertices have become undone. She begins to rub slow, methodical circles into Melissa's sternum, perhaps modeling a rhythm that she can pattern her breathing against. As the seconds limp past, every bit as injured as she is, she learns to inhale on one revolution and exhale on another, doing this until her heart rate begins to slow again, until the tightness in her chest recedes long enough for her to rationally confirm that she’s not, in fact, dying. 

She's living.

(And after someone dies, that's one of the bravest damn things that anyone can ever do.)

Even after her pulse somewhat returns to normal, she and Barbara remain tangled together for what feels like hours, even though it’s surely only a handful of minutes.

Melissa finally lowers her hand from her mouth and twists it somewhere in the paradise of Barbara’s blouse.

Barbara kisses her head again, a little lower this time, near the peak of her red hairline.

Neither of them makes any move to extricate themselves from each other. Melissa doesn’t have the strength, every ligament in her body wrung with incalculable exhaustion. (She’s not exactly sure what Barbara’s excuse is. As secure as she is in her companion's embrace, she currently can't bring herself to care.)

“... I shouldn’t be this weak,” she eventually rasps, and it’s a confession. She’s glad she can’t see her priest’s scandalized face. “I had plenty of time to prepare for this. I’ve known forever she was gonna go.”

“As though that means a hill of beans when you loved her so much,” Barbara murmurs, now running slender fingers through her hair, the motion soothing and rhythmic, reminding Melissa of all the times that Nana had done the same when she was a small child. She briefly closes her eyes, simultaneously endeared by the memories and made sick by them. “You can’t prepare your way through grief. Believe me, girl—I’ve been there, tried that, and it went about as well as can be expected, which is to say not even remotely well at all.”

Melissa chuckles at the convoluted explanation; they both do; they laugh so hard that it almost sounds like they’re crying. She finally pulls back, wanting to look her friend in the eye, but Barbara still grips her by the arms, refusing to let her go.

And they simply drink each other in, mesmerized, tears standing in their eyes, an interwoven statue unto their own: locked limbs, glassy eyes, and a hushed silence that descends upon them like snow.

Maybe they would have stayed like that forever had one of their phones not chimed: her own, laying face-up on the counter. She sees that it's a reminder letting her know that she can take another Prozac in an hour if she needs one. If Barbara sees it—(and with the angle of the phone being the way that it is, she absolutely does)—she's kind; she doesn't say anything; there isn't really anything that needs to be said.

“Shit." She tries to wipe her face on the sleeve of her shirt. It's not a successful endeavor. “I’m a wreck.”

“Maybe so," Barbara agrees, grabbing more tissues for them both. She mops Melissa's face up before delicately attending to her own. "But you won't be forever, you know. it's a transition, not a permanent way of being."

"Doesn't feel that way," she hears herself grouse. It's petulant, a little childish even in her low voice, but it's what she feels; it's her personal nightmare of a lived-in reality.

"I know." The older woman reaches up to thumb away a new tear that has formed at the corner of Melissa's left eye. "But grief rarely ever does."

It's not an especially comforting thought, but Barbara clearly knows her well enough to understand that comforting isn't exactly what she needs right now.

She needs the truth, however ugly it happens to be, however unkind, and the ugly truth is that grief is far from fucking pretty too; it is certainly not kind.

"I love you, Melissa Schemmenti," Barbara adds quietly—in the same hushed cadence that all of their unutterable truths seem to be encased in.

It's dirty, this confession, this boundless and eternal love.

It can't ever be spoken in a normal way and tone.

"You know that, don't you?"

The pad of her thumb is still pressed against Melissa's skin, and there is such little space between them, mere inches and other inconsequential measurements besides; temptation has never been a shorter bridge to indecorously cross and just as deliciously burn. This isn't simply a tender moment between bosom friends, she innately knows, and yet, by the virtue of who they are and their relationships with other people, it can't be anything more than that either, she implicitly understands. She's married. Barbara's married. God is watching. Society is judging. Neither of them will make a move that that they can't just as quickly take back.

"I love ya too, Barb," she replies anyway, leaning very slightly into the intimate touch, as though she could pretend for a moment that they don't have to play that awful game.

Just this one evening.

Just this singular time.

They inevitably will, of course—no doubt about that.

One of them will certainly pull away, and the other will instinctively follow, and together, they will tango themselves out of this senseless mess that they have made; they will offer each other plausible deniability as their highest and most sacred form of love. But for now and until that unwelcome moment, in this fractional sliver of a shared existence and eternity, Melissa dares to rest her tired cheek against Barbara's hand as though she's allowed, and Barbara doesn't flinch like she's been burned.

Silently, they construct a mutual fantasy where they can hold each other without hurting.

Or maybe more accurately still, where they can hurt together and not have been each other's sole and ruinous cause.

"Don't ever leave me," Melissa demands a little unfairly.

It's an unkeepable stipulation.

People leave all the time—by necessity, by choice, by coffin, or in Nana's case, urn.

But nonetheless and all the same—

"Wouldn't dream of it," Barbara promises softly, and Melissa chooses to believe her.

[yooniesim]

So i follow(ed) zhuhaitang and you both and he's been off his rocker for days tbh I'm not sure who's whispered in his ear, talking him into believing attacking your server was a good idea, i'm not on discord. because honestly the corona joke was stupid of you but it doesn't seem to be your original idea just something you mindlessly repeated and everyone on his blog is throwing it way out of proportion. AND i remember your story with the two sims you based off kpop idols and it was... nothing really just kind of childish i guess and maybe a bit weird, BUT all his receipts in general are..... so bland not in a "drama" way but in a "I can't take it that someone is enforcing a personal boundary that doesn't include me in their space" or "i hate it when we are not about me" or literally anything that wouldn't have had either of you stressing your holidays away? You don't need to post this or anything but I'm sorry for both of you having to go through this, espeically him because he seems really freaked that he couldn't actually handle being called out for his? hypocracy i guess

Thanks for this anon! Yes, that joke was stupid as hell, that's what I get for mindlessly parroting a stupid ass meme like a moron lmfao. I should've known it would've been twisted out of context, like everything else I've said. And yeah, I had kpop sims and played em like dolls, and yeah, I still cringe when I think about it- but such is life, right? None of this had to be like this and I honestly wish he had stopped ranting like three days ago when I still felt mildly sorry for the guy. I'm not surprised the 20 year old minor stalker association is blowing it out of proportion bc they have raging hard-ons for anything I do or say... it's a little disturbing but i'm somewhat used to it by now and I honestly don't care. I've had enough time to realize that they're going to say the most outrageous shit about me but like... fortunately, it doesn't matter one bit. Like what do they think, they're gonna call me names and I'm gonna keel over or some shit? Is my presence going to spontaneously explode off the internet? Am I gonna lose a couple followers? Like so what. Like I care about being blocked or unfollowed by anyone anymore. I already have half of simblr blocked or vice versa lol. They bring up the same shit every two months and call me the same things... and a few more if they can manage to out-do their previous vileness... and I just stay just the same as I am and carry on as I like. Just cos they say something about me doesn't make it true. They can say whatever they like at this point. But it was funny bc after I posted about my dad passing away I was like, how much you wanna bet that weird crowd is gonna start poking at me about something stupid again? And it was like god damn clockwork, within a day or two they were starting this silly thing up lmfao.

Anyway, thank you for the empathy nonny. Idk who told him this was a good idea either because it certainly was not. Not at all.

[mylifeinfiction]

Deadpool Killogy by Cullen Bunn

[Note: This Review is for Cullen Bunn's Entire Deadpool Killogy & Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again]

These books were graphic, bloody fun... and very, very little else. Bunn's storyline might be the most Deadpool Deadpool story there is. It's extremely violent, outrageously meta, and chock-full of the Merc with a Mouth's patented a-little-goes-a-long-way brand of cheeky, childish humor.

There's some really fun ideas at play, but none of them ever really go anywhere interesting, and certainly never go anywhere substantial. At best it's a madcap murder-fest. But at worst it's an underwritten excuse to get all of Marvel's biggest names in the same room, then gleefully dismember them. I don't know that I was necessarily expecting something more from these books, but I still wasn't entirely satisfied with what I was given. The first book is a great set-up, and the second teases many interesting multiversal ideas without every really bringing them anywhere. The third—and best—pits Deadpool against Deadpool in a very well drawn, batshit crazy showdown that—again—goes nowhere but at least does so in style. And the final installment, Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again (which is actually more of a standalone, but whatever) was a straight-up waste of time. I really have no idea why it even exists. ::shrugs:: Oh well...

Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe : 5/10 Deadpool Killustrated : 4/10 Deadpool Kills Deadpool : 7/10 Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again : 3/10

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

[ultimateplaylistmaker]

Can you talk about Komaru x Kokichi more?

Their a bit interested and I wanted to know more about their relationship!!!

This is a ship held together with one piece of art and my danganronpa headcanons truly, which I will be glad to share.

First off, Komaru's a jock with a love of fun, while I wouldn't call Kokichi a jock he CERTAINLY has a lot of energy and a love of fun himself. I could EASILY see him coming out of nowhere, slamming a hand on her arm, and yelling TAG and Komaru does not HESITATE to give chase beyond some mild complaining as she runs that she was doing something! Komaru has so much energy and gets SO into things, even in the middle of murder demon hunting city she's getting excited about puzzles and doing fun voices, Kokichi would LOVE that.

Kokichi's a nerd at heart and Komaru's a bit of a nerd as well, Kokichi likes anime, manga, and games, they could absolutely have in depth conversations about some of Kokichi's interests in pop culture that he doesn't normally have people to talk about, they ARE friends on Pokemon Go. Kokichi HAS beaten her in yugioh 20 times in a row. While Komaru is more of a 'girls' manga person then shounen, she's definitely still likely a fan of the more popular series. Komaru is picking up his yugioh references, he is finally vindicated in making them. Like she reads manga about a girl with a bomb inside her, Komaru's into some NICHE stuff.

Komaru is gullible but she's also smart, so while she's definitely falling for a lot of lies at first, she's going to get a lot better at spotting them over time, and may even lie back to him, which he won't mind because komaru is a TERRIBLE liar so it's just kinda funny. If Komaru can become best friends with Toko and Syo, Kokichi isn't going to be as much of a challenge if Komaru decides she wants to hang out with him. Her ability to just take things as they are, means even if Kokichi spouts the most outrageous lies she'll give a fond sigh and be like "that's our Kokichi."

With Komaru's sense of justice, she'd be willing to help Kokichi a lot with minor pranks, she is laughing when shuichi runs headfirst into clear tape like those videos. However her determination and sense of doing what's right means she can also better stand up to Kokichi when he's in the wrong or doing something risky.

As most of his organization, if not all of it besides Kokichi, would be untalented, I have always felt like kokichi would have a secret respect and curiosity not many other talented have for the untalented along with a skepticism towards the authority of the ultimates.

Sure the ultimate artist can make something beautiful, but Kokichi is looking for a sense of soul, a sense of emotion, something that screams "I AM HERE, YOU CANT ERASE ME" things that challenge society, challenge perceptions, and you don't really get that with ultimates due to ultimates being the upper echelon of society that should be challenged. Komaru is so herself, and so driven, she puts soul into everything she does, and I think Kokichi would respect that a bit. I think Kokichi would love to see what she was capable of if he put a can of spraypaint in her hand and pushed her towards a blank wall.

So with both of them being childish at heart energetic people who put passion and soul into everything they do along with being total dorks in secret, I could easily see them getting along. Komaru's down for whatever Kokichi will throw her way as a challenge, and Kokichi's down for seeing what this strange girl who society says should be a nobody is going to do to change that world who tries to stop her. Even if you don't want them romantically, I think they'd become really good friends if given the chance as Komaru helps him put itching powder in everyone's clothes with a few sarcastic comments about Kokichi being a bad influence.

Also I like calling it Komouma instead of oumaru because then it feels like im tricking people into thinking my posts going to be komaeda you FOOLS get TRICKED.

Also heres the playlist

[boytickler35]

Julie and the Phantoms: Bedtime

Ray thinks he handled the reveal of ghosts pretty well, especially considering those ghosts are in a band with his daughter, and have been haunting both the studio and house for several months. But they did also return music to his little girl and whatever their other faults, that wipes it away. Still, becoming the father of three teenage ghost boys is not exactly something he wanted to do at his age even though he and Rose had wanted more children.

He thinks he does it decently, all things considered. The boys don’t need to eat, but do need to sleep. He can see them without them performing, but only inside the house or the studio, which apparently is a new thing after the Orpheum performance, and in general, they are pretty open to parenting. They are strongest after performances, but the longer the band goes between gigs, the harder it becomes for Ray and Carlos to interact physically with the boys.

Julie says she thinks they were pretty lonely in life as far as parents go which might explain why the boys make his job relatively easy. Reggie is bright and cheerful, Luke is loud and brash but his passion is inspiring, and Alex is a calmer force to balance them out. Still, as much as he wants to get to know them, sometimes he feels there’s a barrier, besides the whole, ‘should be his age but died’ thing. Somehow, Ray always feels he’s a spectator, he’s allowed to interact with the trio, but it usually feels superficial. Even Reggie who spends more time with him than the others, Ray finds the boy talks a lot but says very little.

One time when he feels he’s really allowed to see them as they are though, is when they start getting rowdy. It’s like the barriers come down and Ray sees into their inner world. Usually their rough housing starts simple, one annoys the other in some childish way, the other responds childishly, but somehow, it always ends up in a tickle fight and Ray is somewhat surprised by both how ticklish each member of the trio is, and how comfortable they are doing it to each other.

In fact, as time has gone on, he’s beginning to think tickling is the point of roughhousing. It’s subtle, but over a few months of watching them, he’s learned that they have ways of signaling to each other that they want to get into something. It varies slightly from boy to boy and changes depending on the time but it always involves showing ticklish skin. Some of the things he’s noticed are Reggie or Luke putting their feet in someone's face, usually Alex, but sometimes each other. Luke will wear tank tops and lay down hands behind his head and close his eyes and wait for one of them to come. Alex is the least likely to do it but the most dramatic when he does, he’ll make a show of reaching to get something from the top shelf and stand on his toes, stretch his arms all the way up to the thing he’s reaching for, and apparently the other two find it irresistible. It’s amusing to watch these strange habits that form. He wonders if they were created in life, or after death for the boys. Whatever the case, Ray can’t help but feel that the moments are both intensely intimate and outrageously silly and somehow a clearer representation of who they are than most of his interactions with them.

Tonight, Ray is performing his duty as dad and bringing the band back from a performance. It’s almost two in the morning and he’s exhausted but the car ride is thankfully made easy but the boys being rowdy in the back seat while Julie nods off in the front. Their antics, mostly bickering, are enough to keep him up.

Arriving home, he sends Julie up to bed and the boys back to the studio to bed as well. He changes, checks on Julie and is about to head to bed when he spots the light on in the studio. With a groan, he goes over to investigate.

As he enters the studio, he fully expects to find the boys still riding high after the performance, instead he finds the trio all sitting at the foot of the pullout bed they insisted on sharing for sleep. All three are still dressed in their performance outfits, staring listlessly ahead of them. If Ray has ever seen a textbook adrenaline crash, it’s this. He clears his throat and all three shift their gazes up to look at him.

“Changed for bed?” He asks even though they obviously haven’t. He expects it will get them moving, or at least complaining about needing to move because the boys… are kind of babies when they are tired. Sometimes Alex will take over managing the other two but today it seems even the drummer is listless.

“Boys?” He prompts again. This time he does get a reaction, just not the one he was expecting. Reggie raises his arms over his head and it takes a minute for Ray to realize the teen is literally acting like a five year old and asking for help.

“You could use your words.” Ray offers but the glassy look in the trio’s eyes tells him he probably isn’t getting even that. Instead, he crosses over to the bed and fumbles with a few buttons on the red vest before getting it off the bassist. As his hand guides the material off, his hands brush against the teen’s side which gets a sweet giggle from Reggie. The other two look a little surprised, glancing over while an awkward, shy smile breaks out on Reggie’s face as he raises his hands for help with his shirt and under shirt. Ray obliges, this time tickling belly as he undoes the buttons earning more sweet giggles from Reggie and Alex, all the way on the far end, leaning forward to see what’s going on.

It’s a bit odd, to suddenly be pulled into their little game, even if only slightly and by accident but it also feels right, like he’s suddenly trusted with something the boys treat as important. Somehow, Ray isn’t surprised when after getting Reggie’s shirt off, Luke raises his arms. Luke a slight smirk is on his face, characteristic of his ever present cockiness. The dark blue vest is sleeveless and with Luke’s arms raised all the way, Ray doesn’t mind detouring a little as he buries his fingers in the teen’s underarms.

His fingers wiggle around causing the leader of the trio to burst out laughing and Reggie to snicker a little bit as Luke protests, “WaiAHAHitStAHop!”

“Don’t act like this wasn’t what you wanted,” Reggie replies with a laugh.

Ray tickles the teen a little more before moving down to the buttons of the boy’s vest. As he undoes them, he teases the belly underneath causing giggles to bubble out of Luke and the boy to squirm back and forth, but never tries to escape for real.

Buttons undone, Ray finally pulls the vest off the middle teenager and looks at Alex. He watches the gears turn in the drummer’s head for a moment before he lifts arms over his head and Ray moves down the line to undo the couple of buttons he has done and as he goes to help the teenager out of it, he places a few well aimed pokes causing him to squeal and squirm.

Collecting the jackets and shirts, Ray is thankful that ghosts can’t sweat and that all he has to do is make sure the clothes get hung up to avoid wrinkling. For now, he lays them out on the piano and turns back. Somehow he isn’t all that surprised when he finds them sitting in their undershirts making no move to help themselves. The dull looks that greeted him are totally gone. Luke has a slight smirk on his face while Reggie looks shyly optimistic and Alex ever so slightly embarrassed but mostly eager.

“I guess we’re going all the way, huh?” He says knowing the answer.

He gets three eager head nods in response and he crosses back to the bed and says in his best serious dad voice, “But then you promise to go to bed?”

“Totally,” Luke answers for the trio without hesitation but Reggie and Alex nod to back up their leader.

“And you know I’m not going to make this part easy on you?” He checks to be clear. These boys… are like Carlos to him and he would have no issue doing this with Carlos at all, but he wants to make sure they feel the same way. His worries are unfounded though, the trio nods eagerly, Alex biting his lower lip in anticipation and Reggie bouncing up and down causing the bed to creak while Luke draps arms over the other two boys, still smirking and Ray gets the feeling that this is Luke showing off like he would when trying to get one of his bandmates to tickle him.

Starting with Alex this time, he teases the blond’s belly and sides as he works his hands under the hem of the shirt and as he’s lifting it over the drummer’s head, he makes sure to tickle his way up the sides and into the blond’s armpits causing Alex to giggle and squirm. Off to the side, he can see Reggie practically vibrating where he’s sitting and Luke’s moved his arms behind his head. He pulls the undershirt off the rest of the way and passes Alex a T-shirt the drummer had left out for this. Alex slips it over his head.

Luke has a smug look on his face but Ray has plans for him and passes over the guitarist to Reggie who by now is bouncing in anticipation so much that Ray is a little worried for the pull out bed. As soon as he’s standing in front of the bass player, Luke pouts and Reggie’s arms shoot into the air so fast, Ray almost gets punched in the face.

Like with Alex, he works his fingers under the hem of the soft material and works it up inch by inch over the pale skin, causing Reggie to giggle madly as he does so. His knuckles really get into the scrawny upper body and mash against sides and ribs causing Reggie to do a strange hiccup-laugh as air doesn’t move through him properly… if at all? Whatever the case, it’s both cute and weird and suits Reggie wholly.

Ray takes the shirt, which upon inspection without the sweat and grime of a concert is pure white and clean enough to sleep in. All well, it would deprive the boys of part of their game. He passes Reggie a shirt and then turns his attention to Luke. The boy in the middle wears an expression that clearly says he feels jipped, arms folded across his chest and lip set in a pout.

“Impatient?” He teases gently.

Luke is still semi pouting as he replies, “You didn’t need to skip me.”

“Well I am here now if you’re ready.”

He feels a little bad but he thinks what he has planned will make up for it and Luke finally lifts his arms up. Just like the past two times, Ray starts lifting the shirt up and tickles at the belly and sides but unlike with Alex and Reggie, instead of teasing the singer slowly, he is pretty quick about pulling the shirt up, and catching it on the boy’s head leaving Luke hands up, shirtless and with a nod from Ray, tickled on three sides as Alex and Reggie get in on the poking and prodding of their leader.

It’s a good thing Luke is boxed in on all sides except back on the bed because otherwise, he probably would have fallen off. Ray doesn't think he’s seen such a strong reaction from the boy no matter how many times he’s seen him tickled. It’s comical, endearing too, in the way he tries to escape. Ray does have to let up though, and at his signal, the other two do as well and Ray gets the shirt the rest of the way off the teen.

Once Luke pulls a shirt on they look at him expectantly as he stands up and says, “Alright boys, bed time now.”

It’s probably mean to tease them like this but it’s also fun to see the scandalized looks they level at him. He decides to push it a little further and asks, “Was there something else you wanted?”

“We weren’t done yet.” Alex says innocently, as if he isn’t asking something very silly.

“Really? You boys are out of your nice clothes so we look done to me.”

“Not- Ray we’re still- there’s still”

Reggie’s inability to express his feelings in words does tug at his heart strings and he’s ready to give up the little farce when Luke, ever impatient, extends his legs and places his sneakered feet on Ray’s knees.

“Ohh you wanted help with your shoes as well.”

“Ray-” All three boys whine in unison.

“Alright, alright.” He chuckles as he steps back, causing Luke’s feet to fall to the ground. He pulls up a chair because unlike them, he’s starting to get old and needs to sit down. As soon as he does though, he gets three sets of feet vying for space on his lap. When they finally all get settled he starts unlacing the first shoe his hands fall on which ends up being one of Luke’s. The Vans are already loose and Ray could just as easily slide it off but decides to go through the process anyway. Luke squirms in anticipation and when Ray finally pops the shoe off, he finds a pure white ankle sock. Luke wiggles his toes with a smirk and if Ray didn’t already have plans, he’d give the cocky teen exactly what he’s looking for. Instead he works to get off the footwear from the other five feet. Reggie’s boots take him two minutes each which has the bassist snickering and the other two giving their bandmate dirty looks.

Once he’s left with six socked feet, and a lot more space without the footwear in the way, he finds a foot, Alex’s and slides the sock down to his heel. The drummer watches in anticipation, the other two in interest, as Ray stops at the heel and then starts fluttering his fingers across the peachy-pink foot lightly, inching the sock towards the toes while Alex dissolves into laughter and starts shaking his foot back and forth, the sock slides off faster as a result and it doesn’t take too long for Ray to reach the teen’s soles which he tickles to even greater effect, ever inching up further. By the time he reaches the balls of Alex’s feet, the boy is a laughing mess and when he finally reaches the base of the toes, the sock falls off and Alex giggles for a few moment, wiggling his bare toes as Ray moves on to the next foot which happens to one of Reggie’s. He starts exactly the same as he did with Alex.

The bassist bobs eagerly in his seat but within seconds, dissolves into helpless laughter and by the time Ray reaches Reggie’s arches, the boy is leaning fully on Luke as he half begs Ray to stop and half begs him not to stop. The sock falls off just as Ray gets to the balls of his feet.

Then it's on to Luke but guitarist for some reason decides it’s time to tough and struggles to keep his foot still. Ray assumes it’s to try to prolong the tickling for as long as possible after watching Ray tickle the socks right off his bandmates. Still, even as Ray starts scratching at the heel, he knows it’s only a matter of time because try as he might, Luke is squirming slightly and it only gets worse the closer to the arch he gets and like Reggie and Alex, by the time Ray reaches the balls of Luke’s feet, the sock is on the floor with the other two.

The trio obviously expect the same process again, but Ray is feeling indulgent and the boys are at their strongest right now anyway so he might as well take full advantage. Getting each of the remaining socks to their heels, he gathers up all three feet and starts tickling across all of them at once. It clearly surprises the trio and they end up leaning against each other at the foot of the bed laughing their heads off as their feet squirm around in his head lock, pushing against each other to avoid the tickling, and then to get back into it. Luke’s comes off first, partly aided by Alex’s toes getting caught on the dangling fabric and ripping it off and he can hear Luke attempt to vocalize a protest but Ray’s totally unconcerned with it. Alex’s comes off next and then Reggie’s not long after in the ensuing chaos.

He could have stopped then, but he has three captive feet attached to an equally captive audience; at least he thinks. Either they aren’t trying to poof away, or can’t concentrate enough to do so but he’s betting the former over the latter. In any case, he pushes until he glances behind him and finds them looking exhausted despite still laughing. He releases their feet and they collectively flop backwards into an undignified pile on the small bed, legs tangled together and bodies mashed next to each other. Ray grabs the blanket and spreads it out over them. He could do what he used to do with Carlos and use tucking it in as an excuse for some late night tickles, but the trio now looks well and truly exhausted and as much as he’s enjoyed himself, he is as well.

“Good night, boys. Sleep well.”

He pats their heads, earning a content sigh from Reggie, a soft hum from Alex, and something between a snore and a sigh from Luke.

Turning around, he heads towards the door and as he flicks out the light he calls back a mock warning of, “You had better not oversleep tomorrow. Equipment needs post performance checks. If you aren’t up at a reasonable time, I know just the way to fix that.”

He doesn’t need to see to know that the trio is smirking and possibly making plans for how to goad him into joining their game tomorrow. It feels like a step forward in the relationship and one that makes him happier than anything.