#[ wow ie i have a lot of feelings already.

[woojirang]

𓆩♡𓆪 Stems of Affection (C.S)

Summary: Wooyoung needs to buy a pretty bouquet to confess to the reader's best friend. With just the right amount of begging, you were now at the flower shop, with the pretty florist boy whipping up a bouquet for you. Pairing: Choi San x Reader Genre: fluff, oneshot WC: 1.05K Playlist A/N: I lowkey wanted to add more to this, but it's like 3AM and I'm kinda lazy. Part of me also feels like it's good to leave the rest of the story open-ended. I might do a part 2 now that I have a pinterest collection for this story though.

Every day after school, you would pass by the local flower shop. You often marveled at the gorgeous display bouquets, which alternated daily. Monday’s floral arrangement showcased white hydrangeas and lilies, Tuesday’s had lilies, lisianthus, and roses, Wednesday’s showcased pink tulips and white and pink peonies, Thursday’s offered peach roses, mini carnations, and lilies, and Friday’s boasted delphiniums, viburnums, hydrangeas, roses, and jasmines. Each day as you passed by, you admired the effort the florist put into the display bouquets, yet you never had an occasion to buy flowers—until today.

“Y/N-ie, please! I’m begging you! I really don’t have time to get her flowers!” Wooyoung pleaded endlessly with clasped hands.

“Well, nobody told you to go and whisper sweet nothings, promising you’d buy her flowers and all that stuff. I have to go home and study for midterms too, you know,” you retorted, rolling your eyes at him.

Wooyoung and your best friend had been talking for about two weeks now, and he needed to make an elaborate confession because he had promised her he would, without planning a single thing. All he ever thinks about is the idea of a relationship with her, if not himself.

“Y/N, you literally pass by a flower shop on your way home. All you have to do is stop by and buy some flowers for me. I don’t care what flowers you get, just make sure they’re pretty, and I’ll pay you back, trust!” he asserted, running his fingers through his hair in exasperation. You sigh before crossing your arms giving him a “Fine.” before he gives you a short celebratory hug because now all he had to worry about was his dance practice after school.

As you headed to the flower shop, your thoughts were swarmed with the subjects you needed to study for your midterms. You already had a lot on your plate, but if buying flowers for your best friend would make her happy, there was no harm in stopping by. You just wished Wooyoung had bought the flowers himself to make it more meaningful.

Today, the shop had many display bouquets—roses, lilies, carnations, forget-me-nots, and hydrangeas in different pastel shades. You couldn’t help but admire the amount of effort that went into arranging the flowers, considering colors, textures, and proportions. As your eyes were drawn to a bouquet with tulips and irises, someone approached you.

“Interested in that bouquet, I see?” he asked, cocking his head and smiling. Startled, you jumped back slightly, placing your hand over your heart.

The boy chuckled, revealing his sweet dimples. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, I just saw you admiring the bouquet,” he apologized.

As you got a good look at him, you noticed his short black hair, an adorable feline smile, and his outfit—a white button-down shirt paired with dark blue jeans.

“You’re all good... the bouquets are really pretty,” you reassured him with a smile. “Thanks, I made them!” he replied, feeling proud of his work and happy that someone appreciated them. “Really?” You mouthed a 'wow' as your eyes widened, and he took note of it. “Were you looking for anything in particular?” he asked, returning to the task at hand. “Right. Flowers. What are some nice confession flowers?” you asked as you fixed the cuffs of your uniform. “Confession flowers… are you planning on confessing to someone?” he teased with a smirk. “Nope, for a lazy friend,” you replied. He mouthed an 'ah~' and nodded in understanding.

“Well… if you want to be basic, a couple of red roses would do but…” he started to trail off, walking into the shop and gesturing for you to follow him inside. You did as he directed. “If I were to confess to someone, I’d want to make sure the bouquet is as gorgeous as the person I’m giving it to. Pink roses represent admiration and gratitude, and I’d want them to know how much I appreciate them and how thankful I am for them being in my life. So, let’s use four pink roses as a centerpiece, yeah?” He gave you a polite smile as he placed the pink roses on the table before looking for other flowers to complete the arrangement.

“I’d also add some lilies because they signify prosperity and ambition, which are important for new beginnings with someone. Add some peonies for good fortune and some greenery… I like baby’s breath because it makes the bouquet look delicate, and some white hydrangea sprigs.” As he put together the bouquet, you noticed how extravagant it looked... and how expensive it was going to end up being.

As he finished wrapping it up with a ribbon, you were amazed at how well his hands worked on the intricate details.

“Would that be all for you today?” he asked, leaning over the register, tilting his head with a smile, showing off his dimple which you started to adore the more you saw it. “Yep, that’ll be all. Thank you for helping me, by the way,” you said, giving him a sweet smile. “How much?” you asked as you pulled out your wallet.

He furrowed his brows at you. “Uhhh… free?” You paused. “What..?” you looked at him dumbfounded as he chuckled. “For you… consider it a gift. In fact, if you really want to pay me back, you could give me… your digits?” he said, rubbing his nape and avoiding eye contact, cringing at his own offer.

You couldn’t help but giggle as you typed your number into his phone. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name, by the way. What was it?” you asked, looking back up at him. Your eyes met for the first time since you’d entered the store, and you noted how his eyes sparkled like sweet champagne as the sun reflected on them just right.

“San, Choi San… and you?” he said, pulling his lips into a smirk.

“Y/N, L/N Y/N,” you answered before returning his phone to him. He handed you the gorgeous bouquet that you suddenly wanted to keep for yourself. Before you walked out of the store, you looked back at him. He gestured at you, mouthing “call me” as his eyes formed into crescents, and you shot him a “will do!” before you left.

Now, you had a pretty florist boy wrapped around your finger. Hooray!

Taglist: @vampzity @sanshairfollicles @rvereri @losrpark @dvrktvnnel @scarfac3 @vrtualsins

[meruz]

sorry if this has been asked before, but i wanted to ask about your lineart! the weight and line economy are just so nice, i get stars in my eyes looking at your lineart and doodles. could i ask what your approach to lineart is and what tips you might offer?

Wow I love these questions - Line is so interesting!!! It's a really big topic so I feel like any tips I give will be just barely scratching the surface. It's like deceptively simple...any given line drawing is essentially taking all the information we glean from seeing something irl ie light, shadow, dimension, texture, perspective, etc and boiling it down to the simplest possible visual information.

I think most commonly my line is informed by light source so like. thicker more continuous lines face away from the light and thinner more broken lines towards. and a lot of my spot blacks r simply cast shadows.

here's a more extreme example

BUT like everything to do with art there's no hard and fast rules. I use blacks when I think it'll be effective or interesting and I leave them out when I don't need em. umm couple things I find myself doing a lot... using spot blacks to make the separation between characters clearer. I like casting shadow in between characters so its easy to separate and read their silhouettes even when they're mashed together.

u can go even further to purposely create a silhouette like

to draw attention to a finger or tongue LOL. There's some comic book artists who are absolute masters at this type of stylization. Alex toth and his spiritual successor Chris samnee come to mind for me right away.

(toth)

(samnee)

I feel like I'm also often using line weight to separate planes receding in space

im naturally a really heavy handed and scribbly drawer(...?) draftsman. and im nearsighted so when i see things i percieve and break it down into big shapes over thin contours. so stuff like spot blacks and shadows came easy to me, the tricky part was making the rest of the lines lighter when they needed to be so the blacks could actually have impact LOLL. a lot of effective visual communication is about balancing contrasts. like I had to really train myself to press less hard on the pen. I think this is actually really evident if u go back in my archive to older sketches LOL

I actually feel like a lot of how I trained my hand to tackle line weights was thru stuff like hand lettering where you rly have to focus on being sensitive to that kind of thing.. contrasting strokes etc.

also exercises like figure drawing will have you flexing those muscles constantly

I'm starting to just regurgitate lessons from freshman year of art school so I'll stop here with the demos but yeah...I hope this was helpful!? I love line!!! I want to get even better at line work so I can feel confident posting work that's only line no color or value... I'll leave you with a bunch of artists who I think have particularly expressive and beautiful linework (not including toth and samnee who I already mentioned and who's work I love so much). You can probably learn much more from them than you can from me...!

Charles dana gibson LOL

Matias bergara

tonci zonjic

naoki urasawa

Daniel warren johnson

shiyoon kim

michel breton

also yoji shinkawa, tomer hanuka, leo romero, I feel like I'm gonna post this and think of so many more. there's so many good artists...!

[olderthannetfic]

Ok, wow, this is NOT the type of ask you seem to get usually, but this appears to be my best option...

I'm seeking out a post that is not particularly fandom-y in nature, but I was reminded of it after reading the earlier anon who was burned out from AI discourse - I totally feel the same way, and there was a really great lengthy textpost I reblogged a few months ago (read: "I read it any time from, like, April 2024 to almost a year ago......sorry") that I cannot find on my blog nor on tumblr in general - either because the post has been completely nuked from the internet OR because I'm just bad at SEO searches and remembering the keywords that were actually IN the post. I'm hoping it's a me issue or, if the post IS nuked, at the very least someone here remembers it and has an internet archive link or screenshot or something????

to get to the point, there was a post that was like (paraphrased, quote marks are not literal quotes):

"When it comes to the anti-AI crowd on tumblr, there's basically two schools of thought: people who completely hate AI and everything about it and are opposed to all forms of AI without even learning what AI really is. These people are stuck in their ways and generally can't be reasoned with.

Then there's a second group who are against AI for pretty good reasons - they really are worried that AI is gonna completely take over and steal artists' livelihoods, those who criticize it for environmental activist reasons, etc. These people generally can be reasoned with as they're truly misinformed, and in fact they would be - or already are - receptive to a less harmful AI."

The post then went on to compare AI to other forms of automation and made some really great parallels; such as bringing up the fact that stores that have both self checkout AND cashiers tend to be the best business models, because people who have their preferences can choose how they want to shop, AND we can utilize automated checkouts without completely getting rid of cashiers, which is obviously good for a lot of reasons.

It also debunked a lot of common fearmonger-y arguments against AI, i.e. explaining what "training AI" really entails, with some general copyright-critical philosophy in general. (I don't know the actual, like, political term, if one even exists, but basically they were talking about flaws with "intellectual property" as a concept - or at least how IP works today and why it works the way it does.)

There was also a really good addition to the OP's thoughts that I liked, with another user talking about: Essentially people who are gonna use AI would likely have done something else sketchy anyway, even if AI as it stands today didn't exist. For example, chatGPT isn't to blame for plagiarism. The people who use chatGPT to do their homework would, in an earlier time, likely go on Chegg / pay someone to write an essay / reuse their old work / etc. Likewise, the people who tell open AI to make artwork for them likely wouldn't make (or try to make) their own artwork anyway, nor would they even commission someone. They talked about how since fandom is so damn divided on the topic of AI, that the artists who DO feel as if their commissions are being taken away from them, or the writers who DO fear AI taking over fanfic.......well, to put it nicely, those people likely wouldn't really be losing many fans in the first place. You didn't lose a commission to AI - that person never would've commissioned you in the first place, and the people that do commission you hate AI as much as you do. You're not losing readers to AI - people who choose AI fics over yours are likely already the impatient type who can't handle waiting more than a week for an update, so they just make AI feed them 10k in one sitting! And the people who DO comment and read on your stuff, also hate AI!

I definitely did not agree with every single point made on the post (ie i dont think the self checkout metaphor was a great direct parallel logistically, but I def picked up what they were trying to put out and overall agreed with the general sentiment), overall it made a lot of really, really, really good points about the AI debate that I'd truly never considered before.

I know I've damn near rewritten the whole post myself now at this point but I also know there's a lot of stuff that I'm missing or that I just can't word and I'd love to know if anyone else has seen this post or has it on their blog in some capacity.

--

[honeylations]

SON JIWOO x FEM!READER

Prompt: You attend a party in celebration of exams ending, only to find your crush being cornered by her ex boyfriend

Warnings/Notes: uni au, drinking, kissing, mentions of cheating, suggestive at the end

———

“Chanelle! Y/n! Welcome to the party-“ Yeji interrupted herself upon seeing your outfit tonight. “Wohohoho look at you Kwon Y/n~ Is this really you?”

You rolled your eyes playfully, unable to hide the proud smile creeping your lips. Yeji was right though, you had decided to go all out with your look, wanting to impress everyone (more like SOMEONE) with your visuals.

“Nerdy architecture student Y/n?! No this is womaniser Y/n!!” Chanelle did jazz hands as if you were her successful experiment. Which is technically true.

Upon finding out your crush was going to be at this party, you cried to Chanelle on the phone about dressing you nicely like a doll. Of course, she was more than happy to help you despite the 3 hours it took of actually finding an outfit in your dull closet.

Chanelle was also right on the ‘nerdy architecture student’ title because every lecture, every brunch, every dinner, you stuck with the same purple Champion hoodie that Yunah got you for your birthday 3 years ago. The colour had faded and some threading came loose but you refused to wear anything else as you quoted: ‘I am attending a 2 hour lecture. Not a fashion show’.

Your friends tried to convince you by using Son Jiwoo, your campus crush, as an excuse to dress better but your buildings are on complete opposite sides of the University so what was the point? It didn’t matter.

Well now it did matter. You had your hair down for once, revealing the outgrown wolf cut that Ruka offered to trim and retouch, and Chanelle organised a simple black long sleeve button up and slacks to help scream ‘lesbian’.

She suggested for you to wear your contacts but you remembered doing that last time while being absolutely wasted and you ended up forgetting to remove them before you passed out in bed. Wasn’t a pleasant morning afterwards, having to deal with sore blood shot eyes for the week.

“You dressed her well, Chanelle. I feel so proud of our Y/n-ie!” Yeji fake cried before letting you fully step into the loud dorm. It was dark but the little neon lights allowed you to see just how many people were here, recognising a few from your classes.

“Jiwoo is in the kitchen if you’re wondering” Funa said in your ear, making you jump.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

The girl laughed and ran her hands from your shoulders down to your arms. “Wow you look great. So pretty but so handsome, rawrrr!”

What you didn’t notice was Jiwoo eyeing you from the kitchen doorway, shooting daggers at Funa who’s hands could not leave your shoulders. Taking a sip from her red cup, she walked back into the kitchen for more liquor.

“Are you drunk? You’re very handsy” You chuckled at Funa.

She gave your shoulders one last squeeze. “You work out so well, I’m jealous. And no, I’m not drunk”

You shrugged at her. “Gotta stay in shape or else the ladies won’t love me”

“Ladies? You mean Jiwoo” She winked. “Get yourself a drink, Y/n. You deserve it after studying so hard”

You nodded and bid her a goodbye before making a beeline to the kitchen that had lights on, being better for you compared to the dark noisy living room. Chanelle was already on her 5th cup, having a good chat with Minju by the drinks table. They both noticed your presence.

“Hey Y/n! I didn’t even recognise you!” Minju beamed, eyeing you from head to toe.

“I’m gonna get that a lot tonight, huh?” You smirked and poured yourself some vodka and sprite.

“Let loose Y/n-ie! Our future architect deserves a reward” Chanelle winked your way, being enough of a reason for you to chug your drink and pouring a second round.

For the next half an hour, the effects of the alcohol got you more extroverted than you usually are, talking with classmates to talking with strangers, most of them being pretty med students that marked you as their eye candy. But they weren’t Jiwoo so you turned down any offers of taking things upstairs.

Being on your god knows how much cup, you were leaning your back against the counter while chatting with Ryujin about your childhood together when Yunjin appears with her hand around Chaewon’s waist.

“Hey there, architect” Yunjin grinned.

“Hey lovebirds, enjoying the party?” You asked with a smiling Ryujin.

“Better question is, how come you’re not making any moves on Jiwoo, huh? You’re dolled up like this and not expecting to get laid?” Chaewon tilted her head at you mockingly.

“I don’t just go up to someone like that, Chae” You laughed.

The three started a whole new conversation when you looked over Yunjin’s shoulder and saw the girl you’ve been thinking of getting cornered by a guy. You sighed and took another big gulp out of your red cup, turning around to pour another. Ryujin slapped your arm

“Slow down there, Kwon. You’re gonna kill yourself”

“What’s the point. Jiwoo’s getting talked to by some dude that could’ve been me” you grumbled, drinking your new pour with ease, going straight for another.

They all looked at where Jiwoo was, Yunjin frowning as she realised the situation. “Uh, doesn’t look like she’s into it actually. She looks uncomfortable”

Throwing your eyes back to your crush, you could see Yunjin was right. Jiwoo had her shoulders up with a disgusted look while the guy was trapping her between the wall and his body.

“Isn’t that Hwan?” (OC character) Chaewon questioned.

“Didn’t they break up two months ago? What could he possibly want?” Ryujin questioned next.

“Look away” You simply huffed and set your empty cup down before walking your way to the two students.

“This is gonna be so good” Yunjin smirked, Chaewon and Ryujin joining in as a small audience.

“I’m back now, baby. It can be us again” Hwan whispered into Jiwoo’s ear, kissing at her ear before he got pushed away by your hand.

“Ever heard of consent?” You hissed.

Jiwoo could finally breathe, holding onto the back of your shirt while she hid.

“And you are?”

You gulped and thought of the first response that came to mind. “Her girlfriend. Is there a problem?”

Jiwoo’s eyes widened, clutching your shirt tighter as her heart rate quickened. Being called her girlfriend was something she dreamt of for way too long.

“Cut the bullshit. She needs a real man and I’m the closest thing to that compared to you” He jabbed a finger at your shoulder.

You took a step closer, killing him with a deathly stare that Jiwoo nor anyone hasn’t seen before, causing an uncomfortable aura around you. “Having a 3 inch dick doesn’t make you a man, Hwan”

His eye twitched before trying to reach around to grab Jiwoo but you aggressively pushed his hand away and grabbed at his polo collar. “Don’t you fucking touch what’s not yours” You growled.

Jiwoo gasped and was quick to grab onto your shoulder, trying not to distract herself from the yummy muscles she was feeling. The touch made you look at her.

“Y/n baby, please don’t. He’s not worth it”

Releasing a heavy sigh, you pushed Hwan away with your eyes piercing angrily into his. You snapped out of it when you felt arms slide up your neck, making you face Jiwoo who held you close. “Please don’t hate me for this” She whispered, not letting you question it the moment her lips pushed into yours.

Instantly closing your eyes, your hands went around her exposed waist while kissing deeply back. You opened your eyes briefly to lock eyes with an embarrassed Hwan as you squeezed Jiwoo’s waist. The man cursed under his breath and left the party.

Jiwoo gently pulled away, fixing your glasses that got wonky from the kiss. Your hands never left each other. “I’m sorry, Y/n”

“Don’t be, please. Just felt the need to save you. Who was he anyways?”

“My ex. He’s insane, don’t worry so much about him” She sighed and ran her hands over your strong shoulders.

“May I ask what happened between you two?”

“Cheated on me, that’s all. I don’t care anyways since I’m here with you. I’ve wanted you for a while now, Y/n” she smiled.

You were about to melt from the blunt confession. “Same here. I didn’t even know you knew my name”

“I’m mutual friends with Chaewon. The moment I saw you, I had to ask her for every detail”

“Stalker much” you joked, letting her head rest against your chest.

She went on her tippy toes to give light kisses under your jaw, marking it with her red lipstick. “You look so fucking good tonight. You don’t understand how crazy you made me, Y/n”

“Oh believe me, I’ve been worse”

She then placed lipstick marks on your cheek to the rest of your face. “Glad you’re out of that same purple hoodie you always wear” She giggled.

You looked at her shocked. “Hey, don’t be mean. I love that hoodie because Yunah gifted it to me!”

“If I buy you a new hoodie can you let that purple one go for once?”

“If it’s from you, I don’t mind anything”

Jiwoo shook her head from your cheesy words.

“Well Miss Son Jiwoo, how about we change this fake girlfriend thing to something real?”

She looked up at you and bit her lower lip. “Hm. If you make me forget everything tonight, I’ll consider it”

You noticed the seductive tone in her voice, easily intertwining your hands and walking towards Yeji’s spare bedroom.

“WOOOH YOU GO Y/N!” Ryujin yelled.

“GET IT BABY!!” Yunjin screamed afterwards.

A/N: Yes finally wrote for mommy Jiwoo :p I can write a smut part if y’all want����

[kedreeva]

#wow now i hate nancy even more like what an overly critical bitch#it's not even bad jfc#wtf was her point other than stomping down on steve and constantly saying how stupid he is#god i hate that cheating bitch who thinks she's so much better and smarter than everyone#stranger things (via @captaincoffeegirl515)

So I get you're mad, but also, this isn't cool. Hating on characters in tags of posts that you didn't make isn't cool. Hating on Nancy isn't cool, either. Fandom isn't and shouldn't be about hate. If fandom is making you angry enough to spew vitriol like this, you may need to step back and take a breather.

If you actually watch the scene this is about, she isn't calling Steve stupid. She doesn't make fun of him, she doesn't even tell him it's bad. He assumes, from her face as she reads, that she thinks it's bad, that she thinks he's bad at writing. Even if he was (which that essay argues he isn't, and I don't think he is), and even if she did (which I don't think she does), she does not say so. In fact she's only encouraging wrt to the paper itself.

Before Nancy even says anything at all, Steve says "It's crap, I know" and Nancy's immediate reaction is to say "No, it's not crap!" Steve then insists "It's not good," and Nancy's response is an affectionate smile and "It's going to be! It just needs some reorganizing." She's not even talking about editing the writing itself or the concepts! She gently asks if she can mark on his paper - respecting that he might not want her to help that directly even after he's clearly asked her to look at it, which is loads better than some commenters I've seen on AO3 these days - and he agrees.

And the thing is? She's being kind about the editing she does do! Literally the first thing she does is tell him she sees the metaphor he's using (acknowledging that she knows he understands metaphor enough to create his own from scratch) and tells him it's a great metaphor. When she does point out something that needs addressing, she doesn't tell him "you did this wrong" she tells him "I don't see how they're connected." Do you know what that is? That's straight up gentle help. That's "you have connected these, I am not saying they are not connected, I am just saying I don't see the connection." I don't do a lot of editing but I've had a lot of editing done at me, and this language is so kind. It does not invalidate the thing the writer is trying to do, it just tells them that if they want to make that point, they have to elaborate to make it clearer to people who aren't inside their head with them. That's a perfectly valid critique and she is giving it to him very softly.

He then explains the point and she turns back to the paper to start rereading when he interrupts to ask if he should start from scratch and she immediately tells him no. She asks about the deadline, he tells her it's tomorrow (for early acceptance, which means Steve is trying to get this in early but also that he's waited until the last second for that), and then he asks if she can come over and help him with it (which a) is him forgetting they already have plans and b) is asking her to give up her plans to do work with him on short notice when he probably had time before this he could have asked. I say this to make it clear that her reaction isn't out of the blue or unjustified).

Nancy, who is still torn up over her best friend being brutally murdered on her watch while she was right there after brushing Barb off, and who still feels horribly guilty about having to lie to Barb's parents about it all, says no, remember they have dinner with Barb's parents that they already bailed on last week- ie, Nancy doesn't want to brush off Barb's parents again when brushing off Barb is what got Barb killed. She even tells Steve "You don't have to go" and suggests he work on the paper instead, giving him an easy out. And he grabs the paper and crumples it and does the thing that raises my hackles saying what's the point and acting like trying won't matter and he may as well give up on it because it wasn't instantly perfect the first time.

The point of contention in this scene is NOT that Nancy is telling him he's stupid, it's NOT that she thinks his paper is crap. The point of contention is that Steve desperately wants life to move forward away from the terrible thing that happened to them, and Nancy cannot walk away from the past that left her so damaged. He wants to focus on a paper to get him into a college (I like to think it's the one she wants to go to, so they can stay together, but that's just a theory), and she wants to go wallow in a sad dinner with the grieving parents of her dead best friend. That is the argument. It has nothing to do with his paper except that the paper is a device to show he's trying to move forward and the dinner is showing that she's stuck in the past.

This also isn't Nancy thinking she's better or smarter than anyone. This is Steve being faced with having to care about schoolwork because for maybe the first time in his life the result of his written work matters to him and he's very easily frustrated by not being immediately successful, and Nancy being so wrecked by the trauma she went through that she's barely keeping her own head above water, such that she cannot help him the way he needs despite wanting to. This isn't anyone treating anyone badly out of malice or being a bad person; this is incompatibility rearing its head and getting ready to bare its teeth. This is their trauma responses butting heads. This is the first whisper of how much they don't and can't fit right now. It is the first sign that they aren't going to stay together.

I don't doubt that they love each other. It's not even a question to me. But despite the idea sold to so many people in story and song, love isn't enough. It can't be the only thing. You can love someone to the moon and back but if you don't fit, you don't fit- and trying to carve yourself into the right shape will do far more harm than good. And that's what we'll see them realize, later, and that's why they split apart. Not malice, not meanness, not even apathy. They care so much in opposite directions that they're liable to tear each other apart trying to stay together, and instead of forcing it to break them the way he did in season 1, Steve will end up letting go this time. And personally, I think that's an awesome display of character growth.

[housewarningparty]

Also: it was lost on me as a teen viewer why Faith goes back at the end of 4x16. I kind of got it but it genuinely hit me in this recent rewatch like

FAITH wants to run, but she knows Buffy wouldn’t and so she has to go back because she’s BUFFY now and Buffy is better than Faith. Buffy is a good person. Buffy would never leave it as someone else’s problem. Faith refuses to run because she’s In Buffy and she refuses to make Buffy as bad & disgusting as her!! I’m blowing myself up!!

She goes into full on panic when Riley is trying to be like actual-intimate, not quickie intimate. And like part of that is ABSOLUTELY her trauma & the fact that people have been “kind” to her so often to take advantage of her. But she’s also freaking out because this guy is trying to take advantage of BUFFY. Faith is used to sleazeballs saying & doing whatever to get to her & she tells herself she’s fine with it. But like having to be on the receiving end of genuine intimacy & kindness (especially from someone she doesn’t know how to say the right thing for, ie telling Joyce she’ll visit & Willow she’ll protect her)?

Like her instinct is already to be nasty and keep people at bay ie Tara, but someone trying to make HER be vulnerable & melting down and then in turn freaking out bc this guy MUST be taking advantage of Buffy?

Bri she loves her so much. Bri I’m crying. Bri she goes to such ridiculous lengths in her Crazy Girl Arc in Sunnydale. on some level it’s because she needs Buffy to hate her as much as she hates herself. But there is no way her LA Sequel moment is not in some way influenced by feeling Buffy’s residual emotions when they swap back & going “oh yeah wow I’m literally so bad, I can’t be fixed I need to die” and then goes of the handle AGAIN and tries the same tactic on Angel who recognizes it immediately.z

I’m rambling but ugh oh my god. I need a minute. I can’t take this. I can’t take Faith doing the absolute most to try and push everyone away & make them hate her even more as herself! And then doing the inverse as Buffy both because Faith doesn’t want to feel alone AND because she doesn’t want to ruin Buffy the way she ruined herself?

Evil. Evil!

Yeah it's definitely really tragic and deeply interesting that faith's view of herself by that point is that she's SO fundamentally Bad that she needs the pretense of being someone else (and BUFFY specifically) to do good.

There's lots of good meta out there about faith's implied sexual trauma and how that intersects with her violation of riley. I think that definitely one of the most fucked up and sad parts of it is how it's literally riley saying he loves buffy that makes faith freak out. "who are you? what do you want with her?" the stutter in faith's voice, the breathlessness. it's sheer terror. and it's horrible. and it ends with faith, in buffy's body, beating her own face bloody, in tears, "you're digusting," she screams at her own face. "you're nothing."

and promptly runs off to LA to try to get herself killed.

god, the whole arc is just brutal and devastating and gorgeous. even faith's ultimate decision to turn herself in and go to prison is rooted in what she imagines buffy would want.

faith's arc of how can i make buffy like me -> how can i make buffy hate me -> how can i make buffy kill me -> how can i make buffy pay for not killing me -> how can she ever forgive me -> how can i help her is SO good. i wish we'd had so much more faith in s7. the parts we get are tantalizing but i could have done with an entire season of weird divorced reconciliation vibes and pining. alas.

[gdrflxboy-gayace]

"boring adult things" I'm excited for in my (queerplatonic) relationship

my recently new relationship has got me thinking that adult life isn't so terrible. someday I get to do these things, yknow?

figure out how to cat-proof our apartment together (both regularly and for christmas decorations, the tree)

decorate our apartment. the living room omg

decide who gets which bedroom and view blahblah

organizing our bathroom, ie shower products + the counter

hugging each other while one does the dishes because "ohmygod thank you I hate doing the dishes" "I love you too"

being who your partner brings to work events (like holiday parties or social events they're supposed to bring a guest with)

setting a budget together, using our strengths and weaknesses financially

grocery shopping

first moving in together after college and having to work out our career paths together

teasing each other over our "silly" food preferences (ex: the consistency of mashed potatoes, which cheese is best, fork or spoon for ___, etc) but strictly sticking to them anyways when the other cooks

picking a standard-ish time we want our dinner to be every night

watching jeopardy together

one of us taking off our jacket and shoes and immediately collapsing onto the couch with the other, taking time to hear about each other's days and feel at home

we don't intend to live in our home state, so navigating that independently while together at the same time

memorizing each other's orders (even more so) and surprising the other with coffee or treats occasionally

making the other's bed (we already sort of do this, also separate beds)

cuddling on the couch, one falls asleep and the other can't move without waking them so they set an alarm 'cause they know the sleepy one has work in the morning

if we do marriage for tax benefits kind of thing, doing taxes together

planning our holiday visits together -- who are we going to see when, buying plane tickets or choosing a route

using our vacation days every now and then to just do something small together

not seeing each other a lot for a few days because of bad work schedules and then choosing to spend time near each other no matter what other things have to get done -- you're cleaning the bathroom? sweet I'll help you, I miss you (the key to this is that the work schedules mean you just have more alone time, not that you don't have *any* time)

sharing calendars n stuff

working out family things together. giving distance when needed but discussing issues like parents aging, sibling emergencies, attending funerals

making sure we've taken new medications we're not used to remembering yet

supporting each other's new habits, like stretching every night or wearing a retainer (*nervous laughter*) or drinking a certain amount of water or eating less red meat

in my case, planning out when I eat nuts because of my partner's tree nut allergies

miserably cleaning out terribly silly things to clean like the oven but Together and with Music so it's tolerable

grabbing the mail for the other person

going to go vote together (have already done this but <3)

taking out the trash together

going to our high school reunion and afterwards we're just like "wow. huh. kay bye losers. shall we go get custard?"

the point is, I can't wait to keep spending the rest of my life with this person

[tumblingxelian]

Wednesday Fanfic Concept - Soulmate Struggles

Summary:

Wednesday has always loathed the idea of a Soulmates. Emotions of warm nostalgia and love forced on her for a stranger by the whims of fate? IF she ever meets the people whose marks match hers she will ensure she doe snot become a slave to passion as her parents did!

Bianca had always feared meeting her Soulmates. Already terrified of the power she had over the minds of others she could think of nothing kinder than to reject them as harshly as possible.

Enid had always longed too meet her soulmates, hoping to find two kindred spirits who could perhaps love her without conditions or demands.

Too bad for the three of them what they got was each other.

Concept:

This is likely one of m most painful ideas, and definitely the one that explores Wednesday's toxic traits the most overtly.

The nature of soulmates in this world is that as you grow and aspects of your personality, temperament ETC settle in you develop a connection with your soulmate/soulmates.

But all this means is that you have some base comparability. It says nothing for beliefs, ideologies and little for life experience.

Despite this, because of the schooling systems and such most people meet their soulmates in their onw age brackets, communities. schools ETC. & from this comes the entirely cultural expectation of romance, despite the fact soulmates are not inherently romantic or platonic, they just are.

As a result, lots of people with soulmates outside their age range or no soulmate tend to experience some stigma or at least judgement.

This also means a lot of soulmate relationships actually end up really unhealthy and or destructive but not enough that its become a talked about problem. But yeah, basically despite the comforting feeling a soulmate provides, any relationship actually requires work.

This story was also inspired by the concept of "This will always be our first" That is to say, a first meeting, a first reaction, a first date and one party intentionally making it worse either out of some mild selfishness that just exploded or even a degree of malice.

The two inspirations I drew from were:

RWBY's volume 9 with main character Ruby Rose, having been driven to a breakdown lashes out at those around her. Including her sister and her girlfriend because their budding relationship and happiness is just agony to see when she's in so much pain. Any other day or time she'd be over the moon for them, but the tragic thing is this will always be the reaction they all remember.

The other was from a Wenclair fic, where despite having been engaged for months, Wednesday did not tell her parents until she & Enid touched down at the airport. Morticia was awkward & Gomez was distraught and ended up fighting Enid who then went to her & Wednesday's room to be depressed because that too will always be her first meeting with Wednesday's parents.

The first being bad is not something that cannot be worked through but it is inherently bittersweet I feel.

Characters:

Enid: Wow I have two soulmates… Maybe they will, I dunno, love me unconditionally? 🙂 Wednesday: Emotions. Complicated. Vulnerability. Awful. Hate them, you did this to me, how dare you. Stay away! Bianca: I don't like affecting anyone's mind by my mere presence, I hate the idea of someone doing it to me even more, I will not be made vulnerable, so stay away!

Bianca & Wednesday: You made me feel emotions against my will. Die. Enid: Wow, both my soulmates are like this… Great… I'm so lucky... :/

Kinbott is actually a better therapist in this cos her soulmate is platonic, IE Cassie from Uriah's heap. SO she is a bit socially isolated herself and more thoughtful. She also has a thing for Principle Weems who was Gomez's soulmate but that didn't pan out.

Chapters:

As noted, this story would definitely be delving into some of Wednesday & to a lesser extent Bianca's more toxic defense mechanism and general attitudes.

Be they born from being indulged by her parents but socially isolated in Wednesday. Or traumatized by her mother and adopting an extremely toxic self image in Bianca.

Enid will be contextualized below:

Chapter 1:

When encountering Enid for the first time, both register they are soulmates. Desperate to avoid her parents cooing, Wednesday is quick to evacuate the situation and Enid surprisingly enables her.

Through the tour, Enid is much more indulgent of Wednesday and generally open even revealing her issues with transforming. She in essence pulls her rib cage open so Wednesday can see her heart.

Wednesday uses this as a chance to stomp on it.

Partially because of her complexes regarding emotions but also because she thinks Enid is just 'that way; because of the Soul Mark and she just wants her gone and so is generally the worst.

Enid puts up with it until the next morning, where she gently confronts Wednesday and Wednesday keeps trying to antagonize her:

"I really wanted you to feel welcome and safe, to make the feeling the mark is meant to give real. & now… That first day and night will always be how we met. (Deep breath) You didn't want I offered, and fair enough, but-"

"Are your ears as broken as your transformation pick it u-"

Enid literally tackles her to the floor, nearly breaks her wrists and snarls against her throat.

"I have spent my entire life pouring love and dedication down a bottomless pit. I will not do it again. You don't want me? Fine! But I am not your servant, not your friend and not your family. Never demand anything of me again you spoiled brat!"

Then she gets up and walks to class like nothing happened.

Wednesday lies on the floor for awhile longer processing:

1: She drastically misread Enid's personality. 2: She just got physically outdone by a peer for the first time ever. 3: Evidently the soul mark did not make Enid a simpering wreck. 4: For the first time in years, Wednesday felt a spike of fear.

Chapter 2:

Displeased by all that, Wednesday wants to get back on the horse so to speak and restore some of her damaged confidence and also figure out how the hell that happened.

Mostly cos it runs contrary to how she thinks soulmates work despite she herself not following the 'rules' of soulmates.

She & Bianca have their encounter and there is not even any speaking. Both register the other as their soulmate and draw swords and it is on sight, because both of them would rather an enemy that let someone in close.

Wednesday still loses so she's still not having a great time. Especially as it turns out Enid is more interested in chatting up a vampire than her or Bianca!

Enid is not outright blanking her, or hating her, but just treating her like any other student she happened to share a room with.

Wednesday would find cloying affection smothering but not unexpected and she would find hatred acceptable.

But it turns out just being kind of dismissed, really gets under her skin. So she storms off, meets Xavier, is generally caustic ETC.

After the Gargoyle incident Enid did show some concern but very generalized, "We're both Outcasts & you are a person who almost died?" and then gets distracted and spends the rest of the night chatting with Thing.

Wednesday's music garners no real reaction from Enid, though we see Bianca having a not emotionally fun time of it in her room because of it.

After that when they go to be, Enid even says, "Night Wednesday." But that's also its, it's so dismissive, it's so... casual.

Wednesday was not built for casualness.

Wednesday was built for soul crushing devotion be it hatred or love!

Chapter 3:

Because of these elements she does not have Enid's help trying to get out of Nevermore. As a result she may actually turn to Bianca because "We both want me gone, help me make it happen." Which may even cut Tyler out for a bit.

Still, the two otherwise remain in their ongoing "We will be eternal enemies/I will ensure you never get close" stalemate. Its not healthy but both deem it acceptable.

Meanwhile Enid begins to fixate on Enid either in her first session or a later one, talks to Kinbott solely cos she wants an outsider perspective on Soul Marks and obsession.

We learn about her ties to Uraih's heap and that soul mark obsession is just down to obsessive people.

IE, Wednesday is obsessing because she's prone to such behavior and because Enid dismantling and then dismissing her is a huge blow to self identity. Wednesday is used to being rejected, or hated, or feared and even adored without resveration from her family.

She is not used to being looked at like a spoiled teen and summarily dismissed as unimportant and it makes her feel like Enid is 'winning' some kind of contest she's not even playing but Bianca is.

Chapter 4:

Wednesday & Larissa do get that hot choc, & Wednesday does fix the machine & Tyler says he owes her. Later, when drinking, Tyler interrupts claiming Thornhill called and could not get through on her mobile.

Its a brief distraction but it lets Wednesday scribble a note demanding his number and she gets in on the receipt and organizes her extraction.

Cue the festival a brief interaction where Enid warns her of Tyler's hate crimes.

Wednesday tries to ply it into being about her rather than Outcast solidarity but is shrugged off as Enid goes off with Yoko, leaving her in a bad mood.

Yes Wednesday is still jealous of Yoko, she cannot escape it XD

Kinbott is there and chatting with Larissa but not enough to distract her.

Then Wednesday blocks two darts flying at her head and one ends up in her hand.

Bianca shouts "Rowan!" Who takes off running and is followed by Wednesday into the forest.

His ambush doesn't work though cos Bianca was after him to and she knows he is a telekinetic. So she manages to knock him out with a drug and steal the book. Bianca likely knows she has it but won't cause a scene around the sheriff.

Gaplin tries to shoot her but is stopped by Weems and Kinbolt makes sure Rowan is alive before practically shouting the man down and then helps carry Rowan back to Nevermore while Weems rounds up all her students.

Wednesday wants Bianca to use her siren song to make him talk which makes her livid and Kinbolt has to intervene a bit and also reveals its not useful for that as the subject just says what the person wants to hear in their own head not their own mind.

After that, Enid arrives.

Turns out Thing fell out of Wednesday's pocket and she was so pissed off she sort of forgot him in the chase.

So, Thing is sulking & Wednesday is initially more interested in trying to get info on Rowan and or proving a point to Enid to acknowledge it so they clamber back over to Enid to sulk and they go off with Yoko to do their nails.

Though not before revealing Rowan was "More like a normie than Kinbolt."

IE, he did not like other outcasts besides his fellow psychics.

Basically a more extreme version of Xavier's distrust and contempt for Bianca and Sirens in general.

Enid: (Puts Thing in her hand) Rowan was always like, 'Oh you may be outcasts (Sneers) But I am the only Outcaaast! (Falls back and it caught by Yoko. They then put an equally dramatic Thing back on her shoulder and leave.)

Wednesday and Bianca are shooed out while Weems and Kinbolt try to get Rowan to talk (Gaplin is being yelled at by the mayor for almost killing a 15 year old)

She & Bianca likely have a tense stand off regarding the book Rowan stole but Bianca needs to keep her secrets and despite being presumably able to Siren Song Wednesday into giving it to her does not. Instead promising to collect it with her scaled hands later, before ominously vanishing through a secret passageway.

Wednesday returns to her dorm room to find it empty.

Her victory over Rowan, briefly a restorative of confidence now tastes like ashes, the book seems useless, Bianca refused to fight and Enid is still vexing her mind.

She shatters the window, as loudly as possible.

Enid comes racing up and Wednesday antagonizes her and Enid's claws and fangs come out and she's barely held back by Yoko and Thing. But more by the arrival of Thornhill making them all have a "Sleep over" with Yoko cos its dangerous to be in a room with so much broken glass.

The three mostly ignore Wednesday and go on about their nails and let Enid vent about the window, but it never ties back to soulmates, or romance, or anything Wednesday wants it too and they eventually go to sleep, with Thing giving her a judgmental vibe lecture while safety out of reach.

Back to square one, incredibly frustrated!

Notes:

As noted, this story is kind of exploring Wednesday at her most intensely bratty, but I think the window would be the farthest it would go so after that there is nowhere to go but up.

Ya know, maybe.

But she & Bianca still have a lot of issues to work through and if either of them ever want anything more than a superficial understanding of Enid she will need to overcome her distrust.

It will likely be revealed in the Rowan bit that Xavier lied to Bianca about not having a soulmate when trying to become her boyfriend. This also comes up in the herbology class when he tries to flirt with Wednesday and fails hard.

Chapter 5:

I think Wednesday may actually, after a point call her mother and kinda low key ask if she's spoiled and or being childish.

"Your father and I wanted you to have every freedom, every opportunity to explore your passions as you pleased. We have always been astounded by you, but... Perhaps in doing so we did not impart to you some key lessons."

"You think I am broken. The-"

"NEVER. A child cannot be wrong or broken or unwanted in anyway. All this is is that your father and I expected your to enter a contest without imparting to you the rules, you are not at fault for anything."

She later asks Wednesday for a favor.

"You are doing very poorly at imposing limits, mother."

She wants Wednesday to tell Weems she and Kinbolt will have a lovely tea together in her office.

Cos of the attack, Wednesday has another appointment with Kingbolt earlier and imparts the message to her instead and claims its the Weathervane to try and see if she can influence visions. She doesn't get to know if she can.

Also Rowan is taken off campus by his father so he lives but Wednesday gets no more answers from him.

Final Notes:

But yeah that's about where I am with it.

But I wanted to explore the idea of soul bonds but with the romantic angle being entirely socially engineered. Pus other aspects for the casts as you may have noticed :3c

Oh, also Bianca is more shocked by Thing than Kinbolt, a hint that she is from a background that isolated her from the Outcast community compared to Enid or Yoko who are just sorta like, "Weird but neat" and "My sire has a haunted samurai mask that constantly yells at us. Thing is way more polite."

[stevie-petey]

hello i wanted to say this earlier when you were talking about the wiritng of duffer brothers and specifically how they will likely be bringing back the love triangle again and i just wanted to add how it feels like a step back for all three of them! i felt like nancy breaking up with steve was important for both of them, for steve to realise that he needs to do some serious introspection and let go of the life that he knows is fake, and for nancy it feels doubly important to not attempt to stick with something just because it was there in the past, and instead allow herself to move on from a stage she feels complete with and move onto what she really wants (johnathan), even if it's unconventional! and then for johnathan it felt like the more classic, someone is choosing me when i am not usually chosen moment. i honestly, truly, wouldn't even be that mad if they break jancy up, just because, y'know they're like 19-20, and it's okay for nancy to decide she wants to explore things outside of hawkins and it's pretty normal for most people, and would strengthen that "moving on" theme they were able to capture in s2, but if she goes back to steve.............hmmmm. feels unfair thematically for steve to go back to a person he dated during a specific period of his life he wants to get away from, feels unsatisfying for nancy wheeler to be delegated to Love Interest TM (as u mentioned) AGAIN, and feels bad for johnathan because omg why??!!?!? would u do that to a character whose already lost a lot of the importance and relevance that he used to have???? remember when he used to be the main character (not to mention they literally cut out his new friend argyle for the hell of it). idk i feel like after s2 they just stopped caring about a lot of these core characters and there are so many moments i could point to and be like hey guys nice regressing you did there.

my apologies, this is getting really wrong, but you mentioned that you like themes and i LOVE your themes it's very cathartic. i am excited for s3 to see character themes continue because i understand ur working with the show itself here but it immediately upset me when they made, like, russian soldiers, the main villain of the season. i felt like we had developed two very good seasons exploring the US's ability to use its citizen's bodies, especially women and girls' bodies, in its war for imperial power, and were doing some good digging at the crux of the cold war, with the upside down and its monsters making up great metaphors for the war crimes and unnatural horrors it's willing to unleash onto people as long as the government and military benefits, with brenner and the scientists and the labs all representing this part of the government. and then we get "russian communists are bad".......right......and i'm sure you believe that....... i understand that they needed like a new villain, but i think it would have been better for them to continue that thematic critique they had established already. like, the base being in the lab is perfect! wow! what an immediate link to capitalism and consumerism in reaganamics and the ways it is designed to hypnotise you to spend your money and feed the economy that thrives on unethical practices and can only exist if it has a population hooked into the addiction of product consumption that in turn provides the economics to increase the empire. DO SOMETHING WITH THAT, GODDAMIT. The mindflayer even mind controls people which fits so well into this theme but they insisted on having the russians be the human villains of the show and it blew it so bad for me :(. i don't know exactly what they should have done, but i think maybe even having a portal open to the upside down because of all the artificial-ness of the mall mixed with the constant ads trying to convince (ie control) people to bye stuff mixing with hawkins freakiness would have been more fulfilling for me. obviously i know you won't be doing anything like that but i'm excited to get some relief through character relationships from this huge problem i have with the duffer brothers.

yeaaaaah u can def tell the show was going a bit haywire once season 3 released BUT the seasons vibes were immaculate u cannot argue with that. however yeah its wack how they brought up some cool villains and powers and then just. dropped it. do we know what happened to all those flayed people ???

as for jonathans character just becoming less and less important as the seasons go on ,,,, i grieve that every day. he deserves so much better in that aspect. and nancy !!! and steve !!!! like the love triangle pisses me OFF !!!!

as for ur russian rant imma be real i followed a bit of it but my brain is so sleepy and im not a history buff but ur SO real and valid for all that. i think the russians were fun but apparently everyone hates them ??? wild. i also have poor media literacy but thats not important rn

[breakfastassociation]

Scooby Doo Mystery Inc, an Introspective.

Daphne - The Spy

She's already been established as being the most physically inclined, a great beauty, and handilly going behind enemy lines (ie getting kidnapped); all traits of a femme fatale. in my canon, daphne really operates as the gang's Body (Wo)Man. In a crime ring she would be The Muscle. I really like the idea that Daphne is classically trained at a young age in all sports; her family may not have be as weslthy as Shaggys but theyve def made some money being world class athletes. This idea also lends itself to the idea that daph was the most well travelled before meeting Mystery Inc, her family always loved to bring her to their competitions, shes been to every Wimbledon cup, etc. While daph is well cultured and great at meeting new people, i do not think she would describe herself as an extrovert altho u cant deny shes warm and welcoming (as much as anyone in the gang is! theyre really a great group of kids). Growing up with a lot of sisters, Daphne is the one most acclimated to team work (maybe they did a lot of team sports growing up?). The reason this doesnt automatically translate to out of this world people skills is because her ability to work with others is strongly rooted in being familiar with her team. She grew up with her sisters and has been friends with Mystery Inc for a long time too; shes built up a repartee with her group and really relies on her understanding of them and their understanding of her to be as efficient as she is. In this way, she and Scooby really hold the group together. Definitely a Actions Speak Louder Than Words type which is why people who dont know her well are so willing to overlook her as a vapid prettygirl; ie when daph spots a clue shes more likely to "wow look at that!" and point rather than "hey velma that glowing orb looks really similar to the one the ghost is always haulin around" Daph and Kim Possible would be truly the unstoppable duo.

disguises, stealth, and sleight of hand ??

polyglot, also designated translator

well connected (but cant network). her sisters got their fingers in all the pies and the Blake Sisters were Daphne's first Mystery Inc :) i do not buy into Daphne having a sister complex #speakingmytruth

very well travelled, met fred on a layover?

literally james bond, ya feel?

tldr; woman of the world, woman of the world, teamplayer

Fred - The Mechanic

Breaking off of the 'Traps Guy' prototype that Mystery Incorporated set up for us; Fred has always been the one at the steering wheel. Everyone loves a Himbo Fred moment but i know hes capable of great specialization just like velma daph shaggy and scoob are. Hes not an air head hes just thinking about a V8 engine vs a Turbo ykno? I do want to lean into the idea that Fred works with his hands and works with contraptions (velma is the gizmo girl tho) and works with CARS and is knowledgeable about them! very, Mona Lisa from My Cousin Vinny/Rosalie from Twilight (ie gets under their car + is hot) but because i want all these kids to be multi faceted, id like to explore the other half of cars which is Travelling. in this day in age, seeing the world is so marketable which is why i can see fred being the one with biggest internet influence. More so than that, fred keeps the team on the move, books accomodations, plans the roadtrips, has the biggest thirst to see the world (maybe thats one of the things that first pulls him and daph together, shes already seen so much of it before they met) Out of the group, i think Fred has the closest relationship with his parents (i think this was shown in some of the tv shows? If not, this is my canon) Fred, despite loving to work with cold hard metal, is maybe the most deeply feeling of Mystery Inc. he really jumps on cases after meeting the people who are most severely impacted by them. This would also explain why hes so inclined to 'himbo moments', he doesnt mind making the less rational choice if it means he can help his fellow man. He and scooby are def the most socially inclined; fred bc he really cares about People (thats why hes a traveller, meeting new people is one of the fun parts!)

automotives, maintains the car (velma helped him set up his sound system) and loves a good car chase

also into planes, trains, and ships but cars are his first love

inventions

explosives

physics, hes a car guy but bikes are fascinating

social media savvy (hes so chipper and always dressed to the 9s courtesy of daph, IG eats him up). Maybe he started the Mystery Inc blog as a way to keep his family updated about what hes doing (the first People he loved was def his family) he gossips about celebrities with velma and daph

loves travelling (in his car) and posts to his gram (see above), his experience with hotels/motels/hostels/etc lets him talk extensively about hospitality with shaggy + scooby

tldr; auto shops, social butterfly, humanitarian

Shaggy - The Doctor

Hear me out!!!! Norville Rogers is known to be: Concerned about his bodily safety and RICH! Tell me which profession that is besides Doctor and ill rework this whole thing. i think this really works for shaggy, hes by no means materialistic but mans has grown up with the silver spoon and can really appreciate luxurious creature comforts like quality bed linens. Like. that plain green t shirt is Hermés dont get it twisted. this also works bc as the groups highroller, we now know how this op is funded (aside from being paid for their detective work:freds blog but like..we really didnt see that often. id like them to be able to do this as a fulltime hobby if they so choose) Aside from this, we know some of Shaggys other great loves are Food and Not Being Physically in Danger. I wouldnt be surprised if one of his parents or older relatives made their money in medicine, allowing shaggy to grow up in that scape. omg id love if this doctor relative was a mentor to shaggy but also a bit of a hypochondriac; maybe shaggys scaredy cat tendencies have roots in his relative's anxieties. I think Shaggys fear comes from a good place, he just wants him and his friends to be healthy happy and whole. In line with medicine, Shaggy is the one who pushes the team to take care of themselves and take much needed time to recuperate from the stress of solving mysteries. As an only child, he can be seen as a foil to Daphne. She has a lot of sisters and did a lot of team sports and became very comfortable working with others. Shaggy was an only child whos only friend was his dog and they prefer to stay in their circles of safety. But both shaggy and daphne have about the same level of social skills lol i think also, bc shaggy grew up without a lot of friends, he is the most conscious of his friendships with the gang. like, he really doesnt take them for granted bc for a long time he did not have any friends at all

selfcare

Mystery Inc's checkbook (when appropriate)

appreciation for the finer things

healthcare

medicine, biology. daphne's go to gym buddy (shaggy really knows kinesiology)

chemistry aka alchemy, imagine the happy medium between Scoobie's love of cuisine and fred's love of ..bombs

tldr; self care KING, truly looks out for *his* people. medic

Velma - The Professor

Velma velma velma. im kind of dropping the ball with her. i want to develop this a lil further bc i think im leaning too hard on the crutch that is Velma Is The Bookworm. Altho i do think Velma is more interested in the Humanities Vs STEM fields, id say her genius reputation is cultivated from how well rounded her knowledge base is. In terms of academics, Velma is the jack of all trades ( opposite to daphne who is JoaT for athletics). Because of this (and because shes great at all things she puts her mind to) shes is also left with the helm of 'resident hacker'. As im typing this, truly the girls of the gang have very broad interests while the boys are very specialized. Anyways, id say the key to Velma is that shes very good at making more from the sum of the parts. She does not shy away from the grunt work of academia, she knows some Important Things will not be intuitive to her but she will run flashcards on them until theyre reflexive bc she knows having that info on hand will be important at some point. Her ability to take the factoids of life and put them together also makes her the teams True detective, not fred. It just makes more sense imo that Velma is the one to push the team to find and close cases. Obviously everyone in Mystery Incorporated has strong convictions on Right and Wrong but i think Velma sees the beauty and satisfaction of solving puzzles.

Edit on 1 mar: may think of switching role of Gizmo from Velma to Daphne since canonically, Daph is always with her cellie. But instead of making her the vapid airhead glued to her phone shes j really into tech (think felicity from Arrow)

Loves trivia

history, talks a lot about international cuisine with daph + scoob

software > hardware, talks gadgets with daph + fred

She and fred share a thirst to see and explore new things

statistician and mathematics aficionado

forensic sciences

law

very up to date with popular culture, from the anthropologic perspective. watches the most reality tv, tv in general, and movies; its interesting, documentaries are informative, and she likes to keep it on as white noise while researching

business, finance, and economics. thats how she knows all the business bad guys on sight (during the reveal), she also handles the group finances with shaggy

tldr; lifelong academic, the most hardworking, curious

Scooby - The Chef

Scooby! The team mascot! Firstly, scoob is Shaggys *best* friend. It makes sense to me that their interests overlap so much. Scooby has always been known to be a big eater (he *is* a great dane...) but my mans is CULTURED. He eats a lot but its never slop. Given Shaggys keen awareness of health and wellness, im not surprised that scooby has combo-ed that influence with his own love of the culinary arts. Shaggy and scooby have definitely known each other the longest; so how ever old the gang were when they met, in my canon Shaggy and Scooby were the first to become friends and it shows. But obviously theyre all friends, and to the group id say scooby is the hearth (not heart) of the operation as any great relationship starts with a plate of good food. Quiet moments of deep inner contemplation will often happen at Scoobys side and scooby, consciously or not, really provides a place for everyone to be themselves in the same way having to dice 5 onions is meditative. We've seen that scooby is a golden hearted goof ball, i think this could be sourced from a highly admirable sense of humility (ironic since hes the only non human of the group?) Great danes are known to be fierce protectors, and even tho (like shaggy) scoob is a scaredy cat, when push comes to shove he is really protective. Thats why hes so cautious! He really doesnt like seeing his friends in risky situations! My hot take is that *Scooby* is the people person/social butterfly of the group! This whole cast is a band of mis fits, having a dog makes Mystery Inc much more approachable to outsiders. Scooby, being a dog, is great at warming hearts to him and loves to be at the center of attention. In regards to mystery solving, hes also invaluable as a clue finder since his senses are so highly developed.

super sniffer, works the most directly with velma on cases

cooking (bonds with shaggy + daphne over but for dif reasons)

people person, gets along real well with daphne's sisters (everyone loves dogs)

very much looks after the gang and motherhens them, hates seeing them walk into danger

zoology (obvious i know)

tldr; iron chef, spokesman of mystery inc

General Notes

Shaggy and Daphne are the two in the gang who are really Of The Body (shaggys understanding of its inner workings, Daphne being the peak form of a human specimen), while Fred and Velma are Of The Mind (Fred who works with calculations inventions etc and Velma who is a lifelong all rounder academic)

Another dichotomy is that Daphne and Fred are the pragmatic pair while Shaggy and Velma are the theoretic pair

But in general i think a lot of the team has a lot of interests that overlap which keeps them tightly bonded

[literaticat]

I notice that many debut authors feel like they don't get any or enough support from publishers as their book launches, feel like that's the reason why their sales aren't an immediate splash, that their book not being an immediate splash means that it won't do well, and that their future opportunities are limited. They've heard the focus on your next book advice, but how do you help clients take a breathe and understand building readership and sales take time?

I guess I try to manage expectations generally. Most debuts DON'T blow up the bestseller list or whatever, for any number of reasons, the main one being NOBODY HAS HEARD OF YOU.

Your publisher could put ads up in the subway or whatever -- but it probably wouldn't be that effective, because nobody knows what your thing is, and nobody cares. Do YOU spend a lot of time looking up info about billboards you see for something you've never heard of before? I'm betting not. That kind of advertisement works when an author or property ALREADY has a following. So you see an ad for a new book by like, A Celebrity, or A Famous Author, and you go "oh wow, Jose Canseco wrote a book? My brother would like that!" -- whereas if you see an ad for something that has no name recognition or "hook" for your brain, it probably just looks like wallpaper to you.

So your publisher actually isn't totally stupid (regardless of how it might seem at times), and they KNOW that for an unknown author, spending big money on an advertising blitz is extremely likely to NOT bear fruit.

The thing most likely to get your book to blow up: Organic publicity surrounding it -- ie, UNPAID buzz that gets it in front of people's eyeballs. The trick here, it can't JUST be book reviews in Kirkus or whatever -- those are nice, but for a book to blow up big time you need MORE than positive reviews. Trade reviews really only reach people who are already enmeshed in the book industry -- to blow up BIG TIME, you have to be able to reach beyond that audience to casual readers, or even people who rarely buy books. Things like you or the subject of your book being part of a news story, or an influencer doing a funny tiktok about your book that goes viral. The problem here is, it's REALLY hard to make this happen "inorganically" or PLAN for it, and usually if a publisher or author TRIES to make this happen, they can't. If a publisher were to try to replicate that viral tiktok moment that worked to blow up a book last month, and did everything JUST the same way, it would likely never go viral.

Being that "going viral overnight" is likely out of both your and the publisher's control, you probably have to build the old fashioned way: Getting people to read your book, and build by word of mouth, and grow an audience in a slow-and-steady fashion so that when your NEXT book comes out, there are already some people waiting for it, and when the NEXT book comes out after that, there are MORE people EXCITEDLY waiting for it, etc etc.

What the publisher is likely going to spend their marketing dollars on is NOT the subway ad or whatever splashy thing like that-- but rather, things that are somewhat more invisible to you -- bringing the book to librarian and bookseller conferences, doing "bigmouth" mailings, trying to talk it up to buyers and tastemakers, etc. Rather than try to reach one reader at a time, they are looking to get your book in front of the eyeballs of folks who place orders for bookstores and bookstore chains and library systems. If THOSE people love the book, then the book will be available in stores and libraries for random consumers to buy and read, which is the best possible first step. :-)

All of that, too, is largely out of YOUR control, though.

Some things IN your control: Patience, grace, kindness to yourself, your publishing team, your readers or potential readers in person and online. Putting yourself out there, being befriending booksellers and librarians and other authors, boosting other people's books online, going to book events, etc -- all this truly can make a difference. People WANT to support people who are nice to and supportive of them -- Diva attitude wears thin fast.

But the biggest thing in your control is to write a great NEXT book! That's why people give that advice -- in a world where little is in your control, at least THAT is. And the best boost for sales of backlist books is a new book coming out.

LOL did that even answer the question? (Sorry, this got long and was in drafts for a bit and then I added MORE instead of subtracting - sigh)

[land-of-holly]

Rings of Power Season 2 Episode 7 Liveblog

I heard we would have less Numenor in this episode. I feel like they're already doing more characterization spots than actual plot advancement, though that may be because I already know where the plot is going so it doesn't FEEL like advancement

Maybe more Arondir tho? Pls?? I miss him

I think we may be doubling down on the implication that the nine's mithril is actually Sauron's own blood. Isn't visual storytelling fun?

The fall of Ost-in-Edhil, as promised

Poor Tyelpe...

Somebody who knows more about metalcraft tell me how he is doing all of this hilariously wrong

Hello Mr. Mouse! He looks very polite, you should let him stay

THAT'S CREEPY PUT HIS REFLECTION BACK THE WAY IT WAS ANNATAR

Tyelpe unfortunately Annatar is going to have to ask for crunch time from you to cover for his own poor scheduling ability

Always love how media siege weaponry use seems to have no other strategy than modern artillery, ie keep hitting until you obliterate the entire fucking thing

Oh now he's "saving" them from their lord's neglect. Asshole.

DISNEY'S MULAN WAS NOT A TACTICAL MANUAL JFC ROCKS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY

That's the kind of thing you accomplish with WELL PLACED DYNAMITE

Arondir! Where did you come from?

(Seriously this show has no respect for time or distance)

I do appreciate every ring having its proper gem.

Warn him, Mr. Mouse!

T_T he's trying to find reality!

Time is money, Narvi! We need to cook dig!

Yayyyyy! Narvi!

Elf? Elf?

ELROND HOW DID YOU GET HERE

Honestly if he's not also here to defy his king I'm starting to wonder why

Nope it's not my audio, the drumbeats are actually not visually in synch with the soundtrack. What the hell, guys?

Elf! Extras! With bows!

Oh no is the mouse in a time loop?

Is Sauron's reach finally exceeding his grasp?

So it's on to strategy number 2, admit that he did it but pretend like it's all fine

"This is hardly a gift" nnnggggggg

We're in trailer territory fam

Lol it's all falling apart

This is absolutely the kind of thing I would expect to see in a good Silvergifting fic, and I mean that as the highest praise. The manipulation! The betrayal!

It's the black goop!

Noooo RIP Tyelpe

Gotta say, roughed up and bleeding looks reeeeally good on Charles Edwards

Come ON Mirdania, I know he comes off a little weird but you don't trust that fucker either!

Unfortunately Tyelpe is a little too harried to remember that blood color is literally THE easiest tell to hide with illusion magic

ANNATAR WHAT THE FUCK

WHAT THE FUCK

WHAT THE FUCK

wow i'm so glad i'm watching this at 7 am

JUSTICE FOR MIRDANIA

It's threats now

Tyelpe please tell me Feanor taught you about decision theory, you CANNOT respond to threats, that just leads to more threats!

Three armies?

ELF EXTRAS

WAR ELROND

Fine, fine, show off the Orc makeup

Ignore her, Elrond, she brought this on herself

Is Adar actually magicing away the sun and making shade just for his children? They do a lot with light in this show but that was a little heavy handed

STOP TALKING ABOUT HIS BEAUTY LEAVE HIM ALONE

Invoking Melian's wisdom is a really low blow. Everything could have gone so much better if anyone ever listened to her.

Elrond knows how to hit back where it hurts! How much do these guys really matter to you, Adar

ELROND IS A MASTER NEGOTIATOR!

Ew. This is some Twilight shit. He goddamn well better have had that ring in his mouth.

Because you always go into a negotiation with confidence, Vorohil!

That helmet needs like a chin strap, but I know those aren't sexy. Letting him have the helmet on at all is a huge ask for most of Hollywood

Durin Jr is a great leader!

Do not make your horse do that wtf

More surprise sinkholes

See??? He can't steal your helmet and show us all your pretty pretty face if you had it strapped on!

Elrond that was kinda cruel, take a deep breath dude

Battle battle fight fight

Now were seeing some tactical macinery use

You are gunning for a patricide my dude

She cannot be caged!

Time for Galadriel to grow an empathy??

I'm still not sure if Galadriel speaks Black Speech. I would assume so, it's useful

Arondir! Where have you been?

So she does know how to motivate people in a positive way

Narvi!!

Unfortunately Middle-earth works on narrativium, not statistics

Someone take away Sauron's literal Christian bible, please

Always focused on the end. Analysts are gonna have a field day with this

Opening up about the torture? I HAVE READ THIS FANFIC I STG.

THAT IS NOT A COMPLAINT

Literally some DARVO shit

THROW IT INTO THE FIRE

unfortunately I think that will not work

they're not even hot

come on Tyelpe you know there's only one way out of this shackle how many times did you see the aftermath lets go LETS GO

dear movie THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

oh no the artillery just has it out for poor tyelpe

I am Appreciating Galadriel declaring Celebrimbor Lord of Eregion

I can accept replacement of escape with the Three by escape with the Nine. They set it up well enough, and the emotional thrust remains

Of course the difference is this plan is doomed

Okay but have these guys accepted that they are dumb as fuck and eminently susceptible to Sauron's manipulation?

Acceptable last words by poor Tyelpe

Rian MVP!

Damrod? Damrod??

You think a few swords can stop this guy?

See? Dumb as fuck, and very manipulable.

And now the torture, I assume

I never know what language these elves are going to be speaking when they open their mouths, it's great

Killing a hill troll is a group effort

War Gil-galad??

Glug is looking more and more treasony

Dwarves? No dwarves?

AEGLOS LETS GO

arondir no

you can't kill him girl your diversity

don't try to out loremaster elrond that's mean

hey that doesn't belong to you

put that back

WOW I didn't think it was possible for a show so overproduced to simply have a bad first season but they are really showing improvement in the second IMO! Can't wait for the finale!

[snarky-art]

Alrighty I’ve finally finished season 5

I hate how obvious it is they’re trying to tone the show down completely to even lower audience demographic. The first 3 seasons were for kids but there was actual peril and darker concepts and stuff that were much more interesting damn you Nickelodeon and your desperate attempt to keep the most squeaky clean image ever not only does it not work it’s costing stories and plot

I REFUSE to believe Stella would be a bad fashion designer with how much she loves fashion (I know it was a joke in s1 too but I still refuse). Plus, avant-garde is a thing and she would serve

That boat that was sent from Andros was def made exclusively for the winx there is NO WAY that style exists anywhere else on that planet for land related peoples with all of its hard lines and industrial style architecture with its limited color palettes

The nautical themed outfits are cute but Bloom’s looks SO overdone to me and Stella,, my sweet babygorl,, wtf did you do to your own fit?? Aisha’s poodle puff braid ftw also

Harmonix was totally useless BUT I still like the flower petal aesthetic vibe (even tho only Flora is a nature floral lady) and some of the color combos. Bloom in pink is still a no tho, which is something I mainly hate because of how obvious it is they started integrating it into her more to make her more marketable for toy lines and shit

Where did the gems that were already on the starfish thing for sirenix come from?

The amount of times the girls all gasp or ooo or ahh and go like “wow!” “so cool!” “amazing!”,, I will kill I feel like I’m watching a 1990s or early 2000s anime dub I hate it I hate it I hate it

Icy would NOT simp like this (shoutout to her leaving Valtor when he got ugly and telling him that’s why she’s leaving him)

The relationship drama was just as stupid and hamfisted as I thought it was from an outside skim of the season based off of secondhand knowledge ie posts and gifs. Also, Krystal did nothing wrong, she’s just autistic and Helia would NOT introduce Flora as anything other than the love of his life.

Timmy and Tecna also have one of the healthiest relationships why tf is everyone trying to give them advice like this they’ve all been dating for YEARS why are all of y’all so insecure like this? The writers really said fuck everyone’s character development even more than they already had

I continue to not give a shit about skoom also this was just exhausting I can’t do it

Also that is NOT Luna and Radius. That “he wouldn’t say that!” meme is ME SOOOO MUCH during this season at so many people but I actually started YELLING about Luna being some sort of soft gorl while Radius is this prideful ignoramus

Sirenix giving Aisha that blonde hair while knowing about the insane white washing to come in the future is something I Think About

The sirenix song does bop also, although I’m so sorry to say I don’t think I’m as big of a fan of it as a lot of people are but maybe that’ll change as I hear it more please forgive me

Also, Musa’s little coffee grinder move during her sirenix transformation? So cute, wish we actually got to see it more than like 2 times. Damn you shortened sirenix transformarion sequence

Im convinced Tecna doesn’t actually know karate, she just thinks it looks cool so she mimics it. Same with Flora and her ballet/lyrical looking poses she does during her sirenix transformation sequence. She doesn’t actually know those styles of dance, she just thinks they looks neat and tries to copy it.

Dark sirenix, you’re slaying thank you for your service

Bloom, you can’t insult Diaspro and remind her you’re a princess in that fucking dress while she’s serving cunt like that

The combat is soooo slow compared to previous seasons I hate it

The rigging throughout this season was a MESS

They should go after the handful of companies that are actually responsible for the majority of pollution and destroy them and their ceos a la Flora season 1 core

Where did they put all of that trash they got out of the ocean? They went to the pacific trash island and cleaned it up. Where did it go? I’m so curious

All of the kings are so STUPID too the whole meetup thing was so dumb like just fucking,, help each other you know it makes more sense

AND PUT SOME MF RESPECT ON THE WINX’S NAMES, ALL OF THEM. They are GUARDIAN FARIES who have saved the magical world HOW MANY TIMES NOW??? Bites the writers bites the writers bites the writers

Their little dance workout outfits? Hatred. I miss the old ones so much. All of these outfits from this season,, it’s so clear cishet people were the main ones designing the clothes I hate it so much it’s not the same kind of tacky and camp that the first 3 seasons had. The only good things I can say about the dance outfits is that Flora’s purple leg warmers were cute, Aisha’s color palette was nice, and Bloom’s was very Bloom core

Icy: you guys are helping me??

Darcy and Stormy: I mean, yeah, we aren’t talking to you rn, but you’re still out sister

Me: OUGH🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭

I forgot Roy existed🥲

Daphne being brought back like this still seems so bleh to me knowing how they don’t really do shit with it and about how it was done only because they retconned all the og stuff from canon and to continue to milk the franchise until it’s teats are dry and chapped BUT I’m glad she does a little spinny at the end of the season with Bloom so at least I got that

that’s all I got for now

Shout out to @charmixpower for suffering through this all with me.

We watched the first half of the series in like 2 or 3 sittings that took place months apart, and then did the last half in one 8 hour sitting

I couldn’t have gotten through it without yelling at each other and making shitty jokes.

The psychic damage you inflicted on me throughout this was awful but I would do it all again in a heartbeat (but not really because good lird this was EXCRUCIATING sorry bestie💕💕💕)

Anyway onto season 6 now I GUESS

[whiskeysmulti]

Anon? Don’t know her.

Let’s see… my favorite detail about some of your portrayals… I’ll try not to repeat myself too much, but I’m sure I inevitably will have to at some point.

-

Ahhhh what haven’t I said about Gokudera before at this point? I think I’ve already stated a number of times the things I like about him, but I’ll reiterate that my favorite detail about him are the things that I don’t often see in other portrayals, particularly the fact that he should be at risk of losing his hearing or at least have an issue with tinnitus if he uses his bombs a lot. Sure sure, it’s just anime/manga but a bit of realism doesn’t hurt anyone (cept for him) and it’s quite interesting to build off of, so it’s fun. So I suppose, my favorite details can be summarized into: what details did Amano not go into much less even touch that you incorporated into him. Like his inability to sleep very well or the fact that he doesn’t really eat that much in general. Lil details like that are always so fascinating for me to see and therefore I love it.

-

Hmmm for Dino, I suppose it’s the fact that you have a pretty good balance between him being silly, him being cool, and having that cocky ass smug attitude which pisses Hibari off sometimes. There is no fear to be seen or awkwardness. Just a guy calmly and expertly manipulating Hibari into listening or preventing him from doing things.

-

Favorite detail about Tsuna is that he makes it so easy for me to hate him. FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES THAT IS A JOKE!!!!! Honestly speaking, Tsuna tends to be pretty careful about the things that he says, and he doesn’t really have a knack for angering people that often. He may have blown up on some people (ie Haru or Lambo) but he always does apologize for it soon after.

The reason I bring this up (and I honestly can’t recall if I’ve mentioned it before) but it’s unrealistic? Homeboy has not had a single friend in how long up until Reborn came into his life? He hasn’t talked to any girls until Kyoko talked to him for like 5 minutes one time and that was enough for Dr.Shamal to pity him enough to treat him??? The fact that he hasn’t fucked up more often with stupid shit he said astounds me, honestly. He’s a young kid and he should be very socially inept and maybe struggle more with how to interact with others. He should be struggling more with actually making friends and maintaining them or what- but it just happened so naturally and smoothly.

I honestly like the fact that he says dumb shit sometimes that pisses Haru off. It just feels more realistic to me and I love that… even if it stresses me out sometimes LOL.

-

Well, there honestly isn’t much canon information on G so really, at this point he’s an OC of your own creation LOLOLOL Any of the primo generation are basically OCs of our own creations at this point. IF YOU WON’T GIVE US INFORMATION, WE’LL HAVE TO MAKE IT UP OURSELVES, YOU COWARD!!!!! (jk I love you Amano~) Though, with the way that I like to think of the Primo vs Decimo generations being like healing from generational trauma kind of vibes, I like the fact that you had it set that G and Daemon were actually quite close up until the betrayal happened. It’s a very nice parallel from how Gokudera just barely trusts anyone, and definitely does not trust Mukuro. Lil parallels like that are just so fun to me and therefore it’s my favorite.

-

For Enma, I could just cheat by saying that my favorite detail is that he’s just a cutie patootie and I LOVE HIM!!!!!! Jokes aside, I actually forgot that he’s quite fond of cats, so your portrayal reminded me of that, so my favorite detail is the fact that you do put some focus on his liking of cats. It is my favorite because ‘oh wow I forgot about that fact. Ohhhhhhhh’. Yes. I’m a weird but simple bean.

Anonymously send me your favorite detail about how I play my character.- no longer accepting!

.Whiskey. Omg Neo thank you so much! The fact that you picked up on those details when I was so afraid some of the headcanons wouldn't work, or that I was stressing something the manga mentioned once and it wasn't that important to the character, or whatever. So hearing this means so much.

As we've discussed before, the way I write, I try to bring the character to life. I don't want to just be one of those strictly canon compliant blogs that feels like they just memorize the character's lines and that's it. I aim to try to make the character feel more realistic which is where a lot of these headcanons come into play or picking up on those details that were only mentioned once and brushed off by Amano (Dera's poor health habits and recklessness being borderline suicidal, Enma being quiet and soft spoken but a gentle animal lover under it all, Tsuna making so many mistakes because this is the first time in his life he's had actual friends and doesn't know what to do without Reborn telling him so he should actually be completely socially inept at this point if it weren't for Nana teaching him basic manners, etc.) I put so much work into those headcanons and questioned myself and almost didn't use some of them because I feared the fandom would come for my ass for being too OOC which I've seen happen to some Headcanon Heavy and Divergent writers I followed before. So I always question myself if what I'm adding fits the character or not. I know a lot of stuff can be written off as "my blog, I'll do what I want" but you've seen the way I write, I'm more "I'll do what I want with this character within reason because I want to keep their personality in character and build from it, not break it down or change it."

So thank you so much, you don't know what it means to me that you caught those details and you actually like them.

[doggirling]

official warrior cats au sir arthur/meadowstar redux... my main problem with his original design was that he didn't look lion-esque enough in my opinion (which is crucial for arthur in starstruck), so i changed up his chest fur a bit to make it much more mane-like! :P

+ realistic fur color alt !!! he is still green in catstruck (we are not aiming for 100% realism here) but i still wanted to make an alt version that'd show what type of normal fur coloring he'd have. i was wracking my brain over what coloring he'd be but my dear oomf rudy gave me a good pointer so he turned out to be a goldish-tan! i like it a lot because it still feels like arthur in a way (being how it matches his golden armor) ^^

other notes below. these are probably just rambly but they're things i didn't write on the actual picture to prevent cluttering. and just to remind or give anybody a heads up, this is a warrior cats au for my kirby story/ocverse. ⬇️

he's a fairly big + broad cat, even if you take away the extra size his thick fur visually adds. he's not as large as some others in this au (ie: dedede, cocoba, mallory, nightmare are all prob the biggest ones), but he's still on the large side of cats.

this was NOT an intentional design aspect i made consciously but thanks to another one of my oomfs attention to detail, i realized i made his tail look a lot like the plume on his helmet!!!

as stated i did not notice i did this the first time i designed him, and i then forgot and literally did not realize i did it AGAIN until that exact same oomf pointed it out like 'wow i love how his tail still looks like his plume 😮'. i have unintentionally made his tail look like his plume twice now without even realizing it.

still not exactly sure what clan he's leader of. i initially considered skyclan but that clan fit floralia so much better, so that got scrapped. i think he's still alive with some of his clanmates, but its a bit of a similar situation as to how shadowclan chased out windclan in the books, just to a VERY extreme and prolonged extent. like how nightmare defeated the gsa/star warriors in krbay, and they went into hiding for a long while before returning to aid in the final battle against him.

he and nightstar are obviously still nemeses/sworn enemies in this au. relations between their respective clans were extremely unfriendly/hostile, which wasn't helped by nightstar's more... vindictive, wrathful, and arrogant tendencies, alongside his dubious schemes. typical hero vs villain stuff.

um. despite all that, i think in catstruck, meadowstar and nightstar are gonna have to. well. break the warrior code a tad bit to have a fleeting secret affair, in order for chavra (ie: mossshade) to exist in this au. i normally wouldn't put arthurnight in here since that's a ship of mine that i only consider actually shippable in certain circumstances/stories, but i really don't think there's any possible way for the whole cloning aspect of chavra's creation to take place in catstruck, even with the fantasy rules already bent quite a bit. so she's just gonna have to get here the 'natural' way. i'll work out what was happening between those two later. but hey at least we're living up to canon warrior cat plot drama.

and before anyone asks, with starstruck story context translated into warrior cats context, nightstar was the one that carried and inevitably gave birth to mossshade. he's already dabbling in literal magic in catstruck, so i guess he might've been able to do some... sex-change stuff...??? IDK

mentored maplethorn (sir percival/falspar) and probably someone else before he became deputy/leader.

ive been sitting here for a fucking hour just writing facts about this guy so im cutting it off here. peace and love but i knew i was yapping

[remyxavierr]

I had my first therapy appointment ever yesterday and it felt so good to say to a medical professional within Canada (though she was also an immigrant) that I feel like Canadian doctors have taken my bipolar I diagnosis and the symptoms I experience from it less seriously because while in the US I didn't hospitalize myself after a suicide attempt while manic nor while I was experiencing hallucinations during psychosis.

I feel like born-Canadians are incredibly ungrateful people, which is obviously very generalizing of a large amount of people, but I don't think I'm wrong. Born-Canadians are so quick to criticize their FREE healthcare because, oh god forbid, they have to wait a little bit. "Americans don't have to wait! Our healthcare could be much better!" Americans would rather DIE than go to the hospital because they cannot afford the debt that will put them in. I moved to Canada when I was 25, and, at that point (aside from seeing a doctor once while 23), I hadn't seen a doctor even semi-regularly EVER. I saw a doctor maybe once or twice when I was 7-9, but that's it. My parents were already in crippling hospital debt from having 3 kids and having an idiot middle child who would put anything down her throat (ie. Bleach, multiple pennies).

The first time I saw a doctor in Canada after becoming a permanent resident, after the appointment while walking out, I had so much anxiety because you didn't have to go to the front desk and pay an exorbitant amount of money for a 10 minute appointment. I felt like I was stealing, like I would have the police called on me. It's a feeling I would experience many more times upon going to the doctor before my body and mind could finally calm down and accept that Canada cared about its citizens and wanted them to get the healthcare they deserved, BECAUSE HEALTHCARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT.

Even to this day, after being in Canada 5.5 years, it still fills me with rage when Canadians ask me "but why would you LEAVE the US?! That's crazy!" It still fills me with rage when I tell Canadians that I like the national healthcare here and they start to shit talk it and bitch and moan about long waits. When I was 18, I got pregnant. It was unplanned. I was inconsolable. I didn't want to be a mother ever, let alone a young mother, but my boyfriend and my own mother were so excited that it made me feel guilty. A little less than 2 months later, I miscarried. You want to know what I was most upset about in that experience? That I was going to lose the free healthcare they give to low-income mothers and the food stamps (called WIC) for low-income mothers that I had enjoyed those last almost 2 months. My family has always been quite poor, and upon moving out and making my own way, I was just as poor. I am still poor, even in Canada, but I don't have to have an unwanted child just to get some fucking healthcare in this country like women have to do in the United States.

Anyway, I love Canada for lots of reasons although it does have its downfalls, like any country does. I am very grateful for the free healthcare, like most immigrants here are, because I can get treatment for a mental illness that wreaked havoc on my life for so long, unchecked, a mental illness that almost took my life. But also for my chronic migraines that I thought would melt my brain, and even for small stuff like: I have this dry cough that has been persisting for 5 months, or my wrist hurts! It's amazing! Wow! Some people have lived their whole lives with this! What is that like?