#||: I know all this song posting gets annoying on the dash

[auntie-browning]

"♫ Tempus adest grātiae Hoc quod optābāmus, Carmina laetitiae Dēvōtē reddāmus. ♫"

"♫ Gaudēte, gaudēte! Chrīstus est nātus Ex Marīā virgine, gaudēte! ♫"

"♫ Deus homō factus est Nātūrā mirante, Mundus renovātus est Ā Chrīsto regnante. ♫"

"♫ Gaudēte, gaudēte! Chrīstus est nātus Ex Marīā virgine, gaudēte! ♫"

"♫ Ezechiēlis porta Clausa pertrānsītur, Unde lūx est orta Salūs invenītur. ♫"

"♫ Gaudēte, gaudēte! Chrīstus est nātus Ex Marīā virgine, gaudēte! ♫"

"♫ Ergō nostra cōntiō Psallat iam in lūstrō; Benedīcat Dominō: Salūs Regī nostrō. ♫"

[ma1dita]

when the curtains close

a 'partners in crime' installment - luke castellan x dionysus!reader

words: 5.3k

summary: (post-tlt) The one where you lose two people in the Labyrinth that day. All strings are cut. (Pollux, Annabeth, Percy, and Mr. D find out the biggest difference between you and Luke.) (Luke Castellan x fem!Dionysus!reader)

a/n: yeah to me this fic sounds and feels like that tiktok of the girl humming to her microwave. split povs: pollux, annabeth, your depictions of the titular battle of the labyrinth at CHB, some blood/gore, death & grief. the usual. you forced me to by lizzy mcalpine. references to cat on a hot tin roof by tennessee williams if you squint

(posted 5/14/24)

—

The first time Pollux has a panic attack, time seems to stop and the world keeps moving on without him.

He’s reminded of a time when you rambled on about how anxiety takes possession of the senses like a moment frozen in a snapshot meant for you to identify. In the memory, you had your feet kicked up on the dash flipping through a DSM-5 while he and Castor took turns speeding up and down Farm Road (totally normal older sister behavior from you, and when a cop pulled you over, the three of you narrowly escaped a ticket by talking in riddles and godly smoke that smelled like grapes). Pollux still remembers the sound of laughter in the car blending like three different chords to an archaic melody (or squawking crows in the strawberry fields)— the bond between you three laid out before time knew limits and was always meant to be.

It’s still his favorite song. You’re their favorite (and only) sister, they love to joke. These are facts that will never change.

“You two have each other, and well, I’ve got this,” you had said, the Zippo flicking open and closed against your thumb in the blossoming darkness of the car. Pink and purple rays of waning light blanketed the old hatchback as it steadily made its way back towards Half-Blood Hill, comfortable silence shared in the way only siblings can stand to be quiet—when there are no words needed to get a point across. But you’ve always set yourself apart from the pack, not needing anyone like how they need each other.

Not since Luke left, at least. The growing distance between you three since your untimely resignation from camp was proof enough. Pollux’s eyes met Castor’s in the rearview mirror as they both noticed your sad smile. His brother’s voice broke through the silence then, having always been the one blunt enough to say what was on his mind, “You’ve got us too if you let us see you more often.” Your fidgeting stops.

“It’s not you two, it’s just hard to be back here sometimes. I see things for what they used to be instead of how they really are now. Now it’s just… it has to be all business.”

Pollux cracked a smile, “S’what you get for growing up. Soon we’ll just be annoying voices in your head like you are to us.” Shutting your textbook, you turned to look at them from the passenger seat, eyes that match theirs darting between their blond heads, “All of us have to grow up eventually. Except maybe you two— I prefer you in my nightmares like the kids from The Shining. Whenever you get sick of Dad, come see me. Gods know that camp deserves a break from the two of you too.” Your knuckles knocked against both of their heads affectionately as he put the car in park, “My built-in bodyguards, huh? Always looking out for me.”

All words and meaning escape Pollux now as he stands in the greenery of the North Woods with battle gear ill-fitted to his large frame. It’s the first siege he’s ever taken part in, the first time he’s had to use battle strategies outside of Capture the Flag and the first time he’s slashed his way through monsters and demigods with the intent to try and kill or be killed. Sword and Shield could have never prepared any of them for this—as his eyes meet Castor’s and then yours with all of you thinking the same thing, the three of you join the sea of iridescent orange through mind-numbing black moving like a sharp three-pronged sword.

This type of stuff isn’t typical for him, he thinks. He and Castor are used to being comedic relief— being the source of laughs and juice boxes for pesky little campers instead of facing the real world outside the boundaries of the Mist. Perhaps your father babied them to make up for the time he lost with you, but there’s a moment where he wonders how being kept soft will keep him alive in a world as harsh as this one.

Childlike innocence is ripped away from them in the bubble they’ve inhabited until this moment. Home is now a warzone and like lambs set up for slaughter, the twins both turn to look at you as a shuddering gasp leaves your mouth at the carnage in your surroundings, monster blood and fallen friends and enemies at your feet. Breaking away from formation to take a deep breath, he looks at the sky and wonders where your father is, but smoke and soot fill his lungs and he coughs desperately for a breath of fresh air.

Pollux thinks he must have stopped breathing before Castor took his last breath. It wasn’t supposed to be a competition, but sometimes life was just funny like that.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Just like you told him.

Castor was always the more manic one while Pollux knew how to endure. Children of Dionysus are forced to befriend insanity before it makes an enemy out of them—twisting the ugly into what’s real and creating something beautiful out of the deranged. You’ve shown the boys how you detach from emotion by recognizing the details—separating fact and fiction, a methodical process only describable by the blood that runs through your veins. Pollux doesn’t know where to start—everything happens so fast but it plays out in front of him like someone put the pieces together to a stop-motion animation.

He sees Castor’s sword fall to the ground when he gets slashed on the forearm and sees him get clubbed over the head with a metal weapon he’s only seen bad renditions forged for theater practices and hanging on the walls of the armory. Castor falls first to his knees, and then into the dirt with a thud. He never knew there could be that much blood coming out of a person, much less a mirror image of himself. Pollux sees your face come into his line of vision, deep maroon splatters on your face glittering with hints of ichor and then you’re moving because he can’t. The enemy is coming back for him now, and for a moment he wonders if Castor will be mad if he lets him. He sees you turn in an instant, swinging your sword down on the neck of the aggressor, a teenager not much older than he and his brother are—were. It’s funny how his brain immediately makes the switch to past tense, and how he can’t stop thinking about how he’ll now and forever be older than his twin. Pollux then sees you catch the body of the boy you just killed as life seeps out of him slower than it did for Castor.

It doesn’t make him feel any better, though.

His knees hit the ground next to his twin, touching the sludge of dirt soft like quicksand and moist with what he hopes is not blood, but Pollux is not quite sure of what else there is to hope for. His fist is wrapped around Castor’s shirtsleeve, touching faded orange and sweat as he holds on for dear life. Maybe if he tries hard enough his soul will still be intertwined with his. Your hand touches his shoulder, five fingers reaching out to brush the back of his neck and the feeling of your skin helps him refocus a bit, even if you’re saying something he can’t make out. Then the metal of your Zippo lighter feels cool to the touch within his palm and he knows what he needs to do.

The battle isn’t over, but for the three of you, everything stops here. There is no going forward without your brother. You were never meant to be children of war.

Pollux hears the sound of his heartbeat thundering through his ears, blood rushing through his veins and can’t help but notice the silence amid the chaos. There are no words fit for this—and even if there were, Castor and you were always the more talkative ones. He hears the spark of the purple flame between his fingers, blowing the smoke over him and his brother’s body, and their father’s powers blanket them like how you used to tuck them into bed, warm and safe. This is what your family is—unconventional and unending even in different realms of existence. And then Grover’s scream of panic echoes through the air and everyone hears that. Hysteria ensues as monsters and demigods alike run amok, and Pollux realizes he’s stopped shaking.

In his father’s domain, he will always find comfort.

You stand above him now directing campers calmly with a free hand—a brewing storm crackling underneath your skin that he now understands. Hidden by the illusion of smoke, Pollux’s tired bones rest alongside his brother’s dead ones— together as they always were meant to be.

The three of you together, his little family—that is a fact he hoped would never change.

The smell of grapes envelops him as he leans his forehead against your muddy leg… when did the battle end? It almost masks the scent of death that rips through the air as your hand brushes through his sandy hair. Pollux stinks of sweat and you stifle a laugh as you see him smell his armpit. You three were always the same type of fucked up. He doesn’t look down at Castor laid across his lap but knows he would’ve found it funny too. Ignorance of reality even for a moment serves as a comfort. Purple meets purple as he looks up at you with a smile that doesn’t fit his face anymore and he croaks, “Wonder what dad would say about our first battle…”

Glory was never meant to be this bittersweet—it tastes like blood in his mouth until he wipes it away from his cheek and realizes it’s Castor’s. In a way, it’s his too, everything about him and within him is exactly the same down to the star stuff the fates wove them from.

“I’ll be the one to tell him. You take care of Castor,” you answer, as if there’s anything else he would want to do and then he realizes you’re crying— and he’s seeing all of the pieces put together in front of him in this photograph in his mind.

Pollux blinks slowly.

Suddenly the image he has of you is more defined— there is new meaning to the sadness you could never shake off all these years, and he is too young to lose his greatest love, which makes him realize then that so were you.

How long does this have to go on? he wonders, grabbing onto your hand with an eagerness only comparable to the feeling he got when you and Luke whisked him and Castor away from Florida all those years ago. This punishment of living while half of his soul does not—what is he supposed to do next? This was supposed to be the safe place. There is nowhere left to run. His thumb rubs circles into the back of your shaking blood-soaked hand, a secret within the smoke.

Pollux thinks there will always be a part of him frozen in time now, a memory of this day hung up in his mind like a portrait as he holds Castor’s cold hand in his warm one.

—

Annabeth finds you in the middle of the strawberry fields before the sun sets. She knows you won’t be sleeping tonight, not if you can fight it— not when there’s so much to do. You’ve long grown out of your ripped-up and tie-dyed camp shirts, and the one slung on your frame is newly pressed and starchy from the storage room of the Big House, still stiff against your freshly washed skin. When she’s close enough to touch you, you’ve been scrubbed clean of today.

She doesn’t have to be a daughter of Athena to know that you know that she’s there even if you can’t see her, but for once she feels like she has to hide. For once, Annabeth Chase doesn’t know what to say. How can she explain the feeling of guilt that coils around her brain like barbed wire—how can she even begin to apologize for the thing wearing her brother’s skin, knowing that it killed yours? For once, her hubris is crushed by the sinking feeling of humiliation.

“Was your first quest all you thought it would be, Annie?”

As she takes her navy cap off, silver braided strands around her face wave in the wind as a reminder of what Luke put her through. Though as she looks at you now with your berry-stained fingers plucking at stems one by one instead of using your powers, she thinks that your mind is elsewhere—anywhere but here, where everything is a painful reminder of your five years as a camper.

Five years with Luke.

Mourning him isn’t a new feeling for either of you, even though he comes in and out of your lives like a poltergeist you want to bash across the head, just always out of reach. But he’s a constant, even when he’s not here and he’s what binds you two together as you huddle hidden away from the rest of camp.

“He did this for you.”

It’s not a question, more so a fact out of Annie’s mouth when you finally meet her eyes and sigh, “Luke’s always had a way going about things. The most stubborn man to ever live.” You toss another strawberry into the crate at your feet. No one’s working right now, trying to tend to the injured and the dead. Everyone’s doing their best to chase away the nightmares that are bound to come, and she knows you’ll be making rounds with her on the night shift to ease everyone’s anxieties. But there’s a thought so strong it makes her head hurt, bursting at the seams until she can’t stop with her last-ditch effort to fix her found family.

“Maybe if we find him, we can save—”

“He’s been out of time for a while now, Annabeth. We both knew that,” you say, voice firm and unwavering. You’ve never sounded so monotone before, and it hits her as her mouth falls agape, “You’re giving up on him? Why… why would you give up on him?” Anger courses through her veins like fire and she’s mad that she’s at the center of this prophecy, of Hermes’s anger for his doomed son who will love you until the ends of the earth.

And what of her?

What of the hope she has in happy endings, how is it that you’re so damn calm? Annabeth kicks at the crate, strawberries rolling out in different directions and your jaw tightens as you let her be petulant, let her scream and yell until her inner child can catch up with the reality of the world around you.

“How could you?”

Your name echoes as she repeats it, grabbing at your shoulders and she’s as desperate as the truth that shakes her when you cup her face in your hands and wipe her tears.

“You’ve carried the weight of the world Annabeth– you know what it feels like to let it go. It’s time to let him go. There’s nothing I can do or say to fix this.”

Then it hits her that you knew of his fate and yet this was still the outcome. There was nothing else to do but watch him be puppeteered by a Titan and have to fight evil while it wears his face.

“He came to you after he saw me, didn’t he? Why didn’t you tell me? Why don’t you love him anymore?”

Because it wouldn’t have changed a thing, your eyes say. Instead, you grimace as you say, “Wouldn’t that be funny if it were true?” You lean down and pick up the fallen berries, some bruised and covered in dirt, and then you look at her again with teary eyes.

“Some prophecy huh? To lose a love to worse than death. What could we have done besides love him until the end?”

“He’s still in there. I know you know that too. Don’t talk about him like he’s not,” Annabeth insists, and a sad smile settles upon your face. It’s as gentle as the kiss of the breeze on your cheeks.

“I lost a brother today, Annie.”

“Me too.”

—

The funny thing about planning funerals is that with all the fuss it takes to organize one, you still find extra time on your hands. Barely getting any sleep and dragging yourself out of your dad’s bed, Pollux snores loudly next to you after hours of working on Castor’s shroud. Sleep wasn’t expected for either of you, but being unconscious was the only way of giving your brains a reprieve. The both of you have been busy doubling down on the preparations, even if it means Mr. D won’t be back in time while he’s out rallying gods for war.

The faster Castor’s earthly body is reconnected with his soul, the easier his trip will be into the Underworld, Nico says, and it’s funny how comforting the little emo pipsqueak can be when it comes to matters of death.

Perhaps this is the solace you bring to others with things you’re able to control—keeping camp afloat is something you were always good at, and helping every traumatized child that comes up to you for a juice box or a lullaby eases the guilt that follows you. Walking around Camp Half-Blood for more than a weekend made you feel like a judge, jury, and executioner. Though most of the campers from almost five years ago have either aged out, defected, or died—the ones that remain still look at you like you’re trouble.

Perhaps you always will be.

You even found yourself with the time to pray to Hermes last night for your brother’s safe passage into the afterlife, though if he’s angry at Annabeth, he must hate you for letting Luke go. Dinner didn’t seem appetizing enough anyway, so your whole plate was tossed into the hearth. You hope he likes chicken and rice.

But if a god can’t fight fate, what did he expect you to do?

The Iris Message to your dad last night was difficult, to say the least. Pollux’s hands shook as he continued to paint grape vines onto the silk cloth and the both of you didn’t say anything when your father started to cry. He out of all of the gods knows what it’s like to be tested to the limits—to endure pain and it’s a gift you and your brother are grateful for in times like these. Watching the god display the human emotion that either of you couldn’t as freely made it more real though.

There was also the interesting predicament of Chris Rodriguez being locked up in the basement of the Big House. Replacing screaming fits with serenity was almost second nature, and your gentle hands were what got Clarisse to truly respect you again for the first time in years. You could hear her sneak downstairs and talk to him while he slept (and the look in her eyes when you’d greet her with a cup of coffee made it known to you that she finally understands what it means to love someone who’s lost—two demigod daughters filled with a lot of rage and hurt were more alike than they think).

So the morning of your little brother’s funeral, you found yourself on the shoreline of Canoe Lake, setting your Redbull against the post of the dock and looking out onto the water.

You needed to do something with your hands. In the past few days, if your fingers were not occupied by pen and paper, a guitar, supply crates, or anything else that was helpful to others and all the more distracting for you, it’s been so easy to pick at any little thing. Perhaps it was your subconscious trying to reflect the damage on the inside, but today, your nail polish was chipped beyond belief. A small price to pay to not lose it without a signature boyish smile to ease your worries and amber eyes that could help you escape from the routine.

Running camp was always easier back then with your runaway boy and his scarred cheek.

How pathetic.

Crouched over in the sand, you plucked stones and filled your pockets with them. They knocked against each other — weighing your pockets down as you walked closer to the dock. Swinging your feet off the side and chucking them into the water, you could barely achieve a ripple.

It’s so quiet that you end up wondering if the rocks in your pockets would weigh you down to the bottom of the lake. It must be nice down there, to exist away from everything.

Bubbles surface slowly in front of you, then Percy’s head bobs in the water as he squints at you through sunlight.

“You chucked a rock at my head!”

A smile tugs at your lips, almost indiscernible but definitely there, “I was trying to skip them. Didn’t know you were doing water tricks in there, kid.” His grin gleams like freshwater pearls, pulling himself up onto the dock as his hand clasps yours. Shaking his sopping hair, Percy’s gangly frame sits next to yours like a wet bag of sand—all wrinkly and misshapen and sprinkling you with lakewater.

“Maybe next time don’t pick rocks the size of your fist. How many have you got in there? Your aim is scarily accurate,” he laughs and you huff and shake your head when his hand sticks into your pocket and takes out a few smooth ones to roll around in his hand. You mirror him, watching him skip a few stones into the water that reach a good distance before sinking into the depths of the lake.

There’s something sad about feeling comfortable to trauma dump on the teenage son of Poseidon, but with the way he grabs your arm at your third unsuccessful toss of a rock, you can’t do anything else but sigh.

“Why didn’t any of you call me, Percy?”

He was waiting for this question—it’s been banging around in his head since the beginning of Annabeth’s quest, and perhaps her talk with you yesterday didn’t go as expected so once again he’s left with the difficult part.

Things happen to turn out pretty difficult for him a lot, he's noticed.

Many things could have been made easier in the past few weeks: Ariadne being your stepmother and her blessing to you would’ve made the Labyrinth easier to navigate, and having another demigod to fight alongside him instead of a mortal girl would’ve been a plus too. But he looks at you with ocean eyes and a smaller smile that reminds you of how he looked at you when you dropped him off in Montauk the summer you met him and quit your head counselor job.

“You’ve already made a lot of difficult decisions. We weren’t sure if…”

The rotten wood beneath you creaks under your shifting weight as you turn to him, tucking your legs underneath your bottom.

“Didn’t think I could handle it?”

He shakes his head, “The opposite, actually. Annabeth has this notion that you’re the only one that can save him. You know, back on my first quest I met Luke’s dad and he told me something…”

You swallow instead of answering. There’s no way Percy is giving you Hermes’s advice right now. Somehow this feels like karmic retribution after years of spiting that asshole, and what he tells you next is more of a sign that it must be true.

“He said, ‘Do you know what that feels like? To be so close to someone you love knowing neither of you has any choice but to keep hurting each other?’ I didn’t get it then, but I do now.”

“With Luke and his mom?” you ask, picking at the remaining slivers of varnish on your thumbnail.

“With you and Luke. I didn’t call you, because… why would I want to see you hurt after everything?” Percy says this like it’s something he would do for everyone.

Perhaps it is, but the knot that forms in your throat feels as heavy as the boulder you almost sunk into his skull. He’s tall enough to lean your head against now, and you don’t mind the water spots that will form along the side of your funeral outfit. The shape of him it leaves will remind you of the little brother you gained through so much loss.

“Plus he has a new girlfriend. Absolute horse of a girl,” he jokes. It slips over your head but you still giggle, “I could’ve taken her.”

“I know, that was Grover’s worry. You’re prettier anyway…” Percy pauses, and then clears his throat, “You’ve always taken care of this place, y’know? Even after….I just think someone ought to take care of you.”

Your shoulder bumps against his as you finally skip a rock. It only bounces across the water twice and you think Percy might have had something to do with it, but you’re not bothered by the help this time around.

—

You wake up in the dark of night to see your dad looming in the doorway to his office. With drool and a post-it stuck to your cheek, he comes over to ruffle your hair in amicable silence.

“Hard at work or hardly working?” he chuckles, leaning over your shoulder to scan over the paperwork sorted into piles for him to sign from his absence.

“Hm. You wish,” you scoff, leaning against your arm as you look at him. He’s not in his usual eyesore of attire, wearing a clean-pressed suit with his hair slightly slicked back.

“You look good. The meeting went okay?”

“Grover will be fine. The Council of Cloven Elders? Not so much. Neither are the gods ready to take sides. Putting out little fires everywhere as we speak.”

The wheels of the office chair roll as you swing your feet, and if you both listen closely enough you can hear Pollux snoring upstairs. Chiron loved the earplugs you gave him.

Your father’s face smooths out a bit at the sight of you and the sound of his son’s breathing upstairs and he asks, “Are you? Good?”

A shrug slides off your shoulders, “How does one be good in a world like this one?”

A startling scream echoes off the walls of the Big House, rattling the floorboards from below as your father grimaces.

The work is never done for you two.

“Don’t look at me like that. It was worse when he first came here.”

“Don’t doubt it,” he mumbles, brushing lint off your shirt before he notices you’re donning neon orange. “Didn’t do laundry, princess?”

“Pollux and I haven’t gone back to our cabin since... I can wake him up if you—”

Mr. D shakes his head and goes to toss his body onto the couch against the window, shutting his eyes and taking a deep breath.

“Dad? Do you think Chris is a bad person?”

A beat passes and you think he may have fallen asleep, but then his voice sounds like gravel scraping up his throat.

“I don’t think anyone can be bad, kid. I think it is more often that people get lost. What Rodriguez needs is someone to take hold of him gently, and hand his life back to him—you…Clarisse… that’s what we’re giving him.”

Now you’re silent, staring at the dust on his name placard at the edge of the desk.

“Do you think otherwise?”

He calls your name again, and you look up like you’re about to lie to him but don’t have the energy to.

“Princess, do you think you’re a bad person?”

He stands up and walks around to your side of the desk, sitting on the edge so you have to look at him.

“I killed someone. During the battle. Didn’t even think twice about it, slashed his neck as soon as Castor went down and…” you sniff. “I kill monsters, Dad, not children. How does that make me any different?”

The last time blood was on your hands like this it was Luke’s in the Garden of Hesperides. All these years later you ended up being right— the only person you vowed to get bloody for is Luke Castellan, and now in a twisted turn of fate, you’ve bloodied your hands because of him.

“Because you did it for your brother. There are no other explanations needed.”

He sees the exhaustion in your eyes, the drop in your shoulders, but your dad also sees the strength in your bones that spans generations and he knows you and Pollux are strong because you are both his.

“Humans believe in life everlasting—glory, as some call it, but they’re too focused on achieving it on earth instead of enjoying what life has to offer,” he scoffs, “Everyone has the guts to die, but no one has the guts to truly live. How sad.”

“His name was Rowan. Son of Hecate. I taught him how to whistle the summer I left. This is all my fault, Dad,” you say shakily as he comes near and pulls you into his side. He shushes you but you relent.

“Luke’s killing all these people to fulfill a promise he made for me. I’m just fucking disgusted with myself for being the cause of it all. What good life can I deserve when wherever I go I leave a trail of blood?”

Love and addiction must be so alike; to know that to be sober you can’t indulge in the vice ever again—not only does it hurt you, but others around you. But through the years you’ve always kept the taste of his name in your mouth, the feeling of his skin under your fingertips, and the knowledge of why he’s destroying the world so he can make you a better one. Insanity stems from fighting for so long that you embrace the pain; feeling something so intensely that when it consumes you you’re able to walk out the other side and wear it as armor.

Not everyone is hardwired to persevere.

There are moments like a night like these where it would be easy to give up. Instead, you pour two glasses of whiskey you’ve conjured and hand one to your dad. You both sip on your drinks slowly, embracing the crawling feeling of the burn.

“Liquor is one way out and death is another,” your dad sighs blissfully. He almost looks rejuvenated by the alcohol he knows he’ll hear about from Zeus later, but perhaps the death of his son is a good enough pardon.

“For some of us, we don’t have to think about the answer.”

Mr. D grabs a pen off the desk and starts signing papers to do something with his hands, and then you speak again, “I think I’d rather die for people I love,” and your dad’s attention whips to your blank face staring at the moon outside the window. “Instead of killing for them. I’ve never been a good soldier, Dad.”

Mr. D looks at you thoughtfully and wonders where all the time has gone that you sit there in front of him with more knowledge than him at your mortal age before saying, “You’re my daughter. You’re a fighter. Death is for chumps anyway.”

He lifts you by the arm to try to usher you up the stairs but you stay in his office chair swatting his hands away.

“Got work to do, you and I. Not getting rid of me until it’s done.”

“When are you going home?” he asks, pulling up a chair next to yours.

“I am home.”

You don’t look up from the papers you were filing, stubbornness leaking through your voice.

“If there is a war coming, I want to be home as much as I can. I’m finishing my last semester and I’ll be here before and after classes. You can’t stop me, dad.”

And he knows that too.

There is no such thing as leaving Camp Half-Blood for you.

Never for too long. Your love for it is scattered everywhere campers can see.

—

In all these years, you never believed I loved you. And I did. I did so much. I did love you. I even loved your hate and your hardness. - Tennessee Williams

[ananxiousgenz]

HEY YOU GUYS KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS????? JARTHUR COWBOY AU TIME!!!!!

this one also comes with a bit of info for the beginning:

@percymawce-arts and I have finally given this monster child of ours a name!! from here on out, this fic shall be known as "When the Land was Godless and Free" (a lyric from the song foreigner's god by hozier)!

the chapters we are posting are like. severely out of order. we've just been going crazy behind the scenes (we keep getting good ideas and then discussing/writing them for literal hours, it's a great time). percy basically wrote all of this and i just did some minor edits and left all caps comments screaming about how fucking GOOD this is, so any and all compliments should be directed at him <3

and some trigger warnings: this chapter contains alcohol and some suggestive themes!!

@izel-reblogs and @ellamenop (if you guys want me to stop tagging you please lmk)

“Here’s to John and Arthur! Arthur and John!” Noel shouted, stepping up onto the bar and raising his beer, some of it sloshing over the side of the cup with the motion. “Freaky-ass, sharpshooting, vigilante crime-fighting extraordinaires! Without you two, those gangsters would still be shooting up this charming little town.” He flashed a wink and a gaggle of girls seated behind John giggled. John rolled his eyes. “To John and Arthur!”

“To John and Arthur!” the bar echoed, jovial sounds of conversation and rowdy drinking soon filling the space again. John smiled into his drink, only to choke and nearly fall out of his chair when Noel clapped him on the shoulder. 

“Get ready for a lot of free drinks,” he said, hopping down to the floor. “This town’s full of generous rich folks just waiting for a chance to throw some money around.” 

John groaned. “Does that mean I have to talk to people?”

“I’m afraid so, darlin’,” Noel said, all easy charm and swagger as he leaned up against the bar next to John. “Uh oh. Don’t look now, but there’s one coming up behind you.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” John swore under his breath as a young blonde woman in a pink (and startlingly revealing) dress came up to the bar beside him. “That was fast,” he whispered to Noel, who barely managed to hide a snigger.

“Hi!” the woman squealed, her pitch akin to metal nails on glass. John winced. Voice aside, her general disposition was the near equivalent to staring straight into the afternoon sun, and the neon pink of her dress didn’t help matters.

“Can I buy you a drink, cowboy?” she crooned, gently brushing a hand over his shoulder as she smiled far too brightly (the whole blind sharpshooter gig tended to work better when only one of them was blind). 

John shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Oh, I don’t-”

“It’s on the house for you, sweetheart. I’ll pay for everything, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. So, how about that drink?” She moved in closer beside him, her hand drifting up his neck and along his jawline. John was only beginning to think of how to politely decline when he felt a looming presence over his shoulder.

“Only if you buy for all of us,” Arthur said, not unkindly. But John had been traveling with him for long enough to recognize the hint of something else beneath the politeness. Not what it was, just that it was there. The woman giggled.

“Well, of course! Anything for our dashing heroes!” John glanced over his shoulder at Arthur. His face was set in stone, watching the woman like a hawk on a rabbit as she slipped a few coins into the bartender’s hand and waited for drinks in return. He looked… tense. Like he was a piece of rope, stretched to the verge of snapping, and if that annoying woman made one wrong move, he would.

Noel raised an eyebrow at Arthur. “You must be a real hit with the ladies,” he murmured into his glass, looking Arthur up and down as he did so. Arthur paid him no mind.

The sunshine woman was not the last to buy them a round of drinks, not by a long shot. Plenty of flirtatious ladies (and a few flirtatious men), thankful patrons and impressed watchmen approached them, hoping to show their gratitude by buying them a shot or a glass of whiskey. Arthur didn’t leave John’s side the whole night, quick to shut down any attempts at seduction by feigning ignorance to the intentions of anyone who approached them. But John knew better. John could see the hard set of his jaw, how he gripped his glass too tightly whenever a scantily clad lady twirled her hair around her finger, or a rambunctious young cowboy leaned too far into John’s personal space. It made John’s heart flutter wildly in his chest. 

The drinks only slowed as the saloon emptied out, leaving Noel, Arthur and John three sheets to the wind, laughing uproariously at something stupid as the morning sun came over the horizon (Oscar had retired hours before, drunker than anyone at the bar much, much faster. Arthur had squeezed his shoulder and bid him goodnight with an expression of concern that made John’s heart clench).

Noel wiped tears from his eyes and looked over John’s shoulder, out the window behind him. When he saw the beginnings of daylight creeping over the horizon, he sighed. (He watched them, Arthur and John, engaged in a quiet but passionate discussion about something he couldn’t parse. They were both flushed and leaning in too close, chuckling at every other word that passed between them, oblivious to the rising sun or the empty saloon or Noel’s hands on their arms, steering them towards their room at the inn upstairs).

John chuckled (he did not giggle, he chuckled) as Noel tossed him into their rented room, with Arthur following soon after. He tripped over a trunk near the foot of the bed on his way in, falling forward onto the mattress with a gentle oof. Arthur laughed at him much too loudly for whatever time it was. 

“Alright, you two,” Noel said, trying to hold back a laugh, “wash up and go to bed. God, I should’ve never given that toast, you’re both insufferable drunks.”

“Oh, shhhhhhh,” Arthur hushed, pulling John out of bed by his wrist. John leaned fully against Arthur in an effort to stay upright. It mostly worked. “You loooooove us,” he laughed. Noel smiled.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, rolling his eyes but unable to keep the fond expression off his face. “You keep telling yourselves that.” He wiped his nose and tipped his hat to them. “Goodnight, you two.” Then he closed the door, and it was just them. John and Arthur, Arthur and John. 

“Okay, come on,” John said after a long stretch of silence, inelegantly turning Arthur in the direction of their shared washbasin and mirror. Arthur giggled a bit as John tried to move him forward, mumbling some drinking song under his breath that John didn’t recognize (maybe it’s a British one, John thought lamely). They tripped over each other's feet a few times, but ultimately made it to the edge of the sink without completely falling over. 

When they did, John braced his hands on either side of it with a tired sigh, watching his reflection in the mirror. There was a thin sheen of sweat across his forehead and a flush to his cheeks from the alcohol, but otherwise he seemed in decent condition. A few cuts and scrapes, some new and some old, and his braid was a little out of sorts, but nothing really concerning–

Then all the haziness of the alcohol and the late night was gone because Arthur’s full weight was at his back, his warmth permeating the fabric of John’s shirt and vest. His hot breath fanned across John’s ear and jaw, his eyes fluttering closed with the weight of inebriation. John inhaled shakily, suddenly brought back to shifting bodies and whiskey and fireworks with such vivid clarity it could have been real.

But it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. John was drunk. Arthur was drunk, he could barely stand up straight, for fucks sake. He was just using John for support, falling asleep on his shoulder, and… 

And pressing his nose behind John’s ear, ghosting his lips over the back of his jaw. Breathing his name with a pained expression. John’s own expression matched, half lidded eyes never leaving the mirror, tense and pained and wanting, oh-so deeply, for the one thing he knew he couldn’t have.

Despite himself, John’s eyes slipped closed. His shoulders relaxed, tension leaving his body as Arthur hands came up to rest on his hips. His head tilted, granting Arthur access to more of his jaw and neck. And Arthur took it. He didn’t kiss, but he skimmed. Barely there, almost not real, deniable. Like a spirit. Like a gut feeling. Like instinct.

“John…” Arthur breathed. John felt a shiver work its way down his spine at the sound of Arthur’s voice at the base of his skull, reverberating in his head like it was meant to be there. It took every ounce of will that John had to keep the small moan building in the base of his throat from escaping.

“Arthur,” he answered, voice hoarse and quiet. He wanted to open his eyes. Wanted to see himself in the mirror with Arthur over his shoulder, arms around him, nosing at his neck and shoulder, resisting the urge to press warm kisses into his skin. Or maybe to bite. To draw blood. John had never been shown a difference between violence and love. Maybe they weren’t so different. He hoped so. He wanted… 

He wanted to see the look on Arthur’s face. Would it be like it was that day in the cabin? Shocked and a little confused but mostly needy. Yearning for something. Yearning for John. Or would it be darker? Dark like the clouds before a storm, the kind of storm that drowned you with rain and filled the air with electricity. Would it be dark like he was holding back? Like John was? 

But John didn’t open his eyes, no matter how badly he wanted to know. If his eyes stayed closed, he could pretend Arthur’s gentle, delicate touch wasn’t there at all. Just a taste of something more, enough to leave John wanting. Enough for him to imagine. Enough for it to stay a pleasant, alcohol induced dream. If he opened his eyes it would be real, and it would have to stop. And John did not want it to stop.

“John,” Arthur murmured, his voice just above a whisper now. “Open your eyes.” The timbre of it was deep, so much deeper than John had heard it before. How could he have possibly known? How could he know John so well in so little time? So completely? The moan John was holding on to finally slipped past his lips when Arthurs grip on his waist tightened, ever so slightly. “John,” Arthur choked. 

“I can’t,” John whispered as Arthur’s fingers moved from his hips, leaving a burning heat behind in the shape of Arthur’s palm. They trailed up and up, tugging at the buttons of John’s shirt as they went, making his breath hitch. Up to his open collar, nails dragging across John’s collar bone and hollow of his throat. Until they wrapped ever so gently around his neck, the thumb coming up to guide John’s jaw this way and that. John was breathing hard, now.

“Why?” Arthur asked, pressing himself closer, still, to John. John whined.

“I…” I want to. God, I want to. Make me. “Please, Arthur, don’t make me. Please, just–”

John gasped when he felt Arthur’s teeth scrape lightly over the skin of his neck, his hand flying up to grip Arthur’s hair, his shoulder, something. To hold Arthur. But he was stopped by a strong grip on his wrist, which guided his hand back down to the edge of the sink, holding it there. Pinning it. 

“John,” Arthur whispered. John’s chest was rising and falling like Akke’s after a long sprint, his heart fluttering like a hummingbird’s. Arthur’s thumb caressed his knuckles, white with the strength of his grip on the sink.

“Please,” they said at the same time. John’s brow furrowed, his lips hung parted in anticipation. His mind swung wildly from the present, between Arthur and the mirror with a hand around his throat, to the cabin, pressing Arthur to the wooden floor, pinning his wrists above his head. The burning momentum between them suddenly halted by John’s fear, like a landslide on the track before a train. Now the train was out of control again, brakes screeching against wheels that just wouldn’t stop, sparks flying. Sparks like fireworks. Sparks like live wires. Sparks like exploding gunpowder.

But then the warmth at his back was gone. Along with it the hand at his throat and the one  pinning his own to the sink. The teeth at the junction of his neck and shoulder and the hot breath on his skin vanished, leaving only a stark coldness where they’d been before. John sighed, whether in relief or disappointment he didn’t know, and opened his eyes.

The flush on his face had migrated down his neck and chest, which was exposed now (when had Arthur done that?) and heaving. The ‘light sheen’ of sweat was beading at his temples and brow now, falling in drops down to his jaw, along the bridge of his nose. His lips were parted and his eyes were wide and his neck was bare. 

And Arthur, leaning drunkenly against the wall behind him, arms crossed, expression chilly. He was breathing heavily too, and his face was red like the first hints of daylight in the sky. But it was the hard set of his mouth and brow that made John shiver.

“We should go to bed, John,” he said, voice still raspy. A needy, sad little sound rose from John’s throat then, and John’s hand flew to his mouth, as if to force the offending sound back in. Arthur swallowed and turned, ready to head back to one of the twin beds awaiting them. Side by side and yet still miles apart. “And don’t worry.”

“It’ll all feel like a dream, tomorrow.”

[hbbethany]

9 months on Estrogen!

I promised another update like this. My last one was 4 months ago and this is a good time before I change my meds.

I've split this into 3 sections for medication, physical changes, and emotional changes to make it easier to read.

All details under the cut because I know long text posts on your dash can be annoying sometimes 😊

Also I'm going to add a "weeks on estrogen" tag to all my other posts making them easier to find

Medication

I am currently on 3mg of Estrogen a day and 5mg of Finasteride. About to start on 4mg of Estrogen and 12.5mg of Cyproterone.

The big change being from Finasteride to Cyproterone. Finasteride blocks some effects of testosterone but is not actually a blocker. Cypro however is actually a T blocker so hoping for better results.

Physical Changes

Physically there's been a lot of changes over the past 9 months.

My face looks longer and more feminine, facial hair growth has slowed down but it's still just as dark. I am currently shaving every other day with day 1 looking great almost no hair/darkness at all. Day 2 definitely looks blue with small hairs on my lip and chin. It's definitely clockable but it's not long enough to shave. Shaving at this point makes my face go all rashy from razor burn. Day 3 I can shave again.

Boobs have grown to a B cup. My nipples are also a little bigger and puffier and definitely more sensitive.

I still have a bit of belly but it's definitely softer but my waist has narrowed a little and I have wider hips. Combined with my broad shoulders I have a bit of an hour glass figure even with my belly. Honestly with how my belly is shaped, in certain outfits it looks like I'm 3-4 months pregnant from the side.

My penis has also shrunk by maybe half an inch. Both erect and soft. Erections aren't as frequent but playing with my newly sensitive nipples definitely gets me there 😉

Emotional Changes

I am definitely much more emotional than I was before. There are certain songs that when I try singing along I get all choked up. But I am also really happy. I love how my body has changed and it makes me excited to show it off. Especially in dresses and I love flashing my wife and all my followers too 😉

It's hard to describe but the best way to say it is I feel my emotions much deeper and more intense. Happy just feels happier, sad cuts more deeply, I cry at things now.

Overall I love the progress I have made. I love the woman I am becoming and looking forward to my next changes. I might even post before and after photos with face reveal when I hit 12 months.

That's how confident I am and how much I am loving the way I look 😊

[undermine-the-instinct]

Title: Just Barely

Cyno x Bard! Reader ▪︎ Warnings: None ▪︎ Wc: 830+

Bard!reader masterlist • Continuation here

So I've been having thoughts on a sort of Bard!Reader that travels all around, spreading music and song wherever they go, and now they end up in Sumeru. Before the Sumeru quest of course.

Sumeru is not big on unapproved performances!! Especially from foreigners!! You ditched your Akasha ages ago so they can't track you or steal your dreams, and you pop up everywhere!! Singing your insipid little songs and dancing some hillbilly jig the Sages scoff at.

You're not anything significant – except the fact that with your appearance, more people are getting bold about their performing arts, especially that performance theater, so the Akademia decides to make an example out of you. So, they send their General Mahamatra.

Cyno is not one to question rules or orders. The law is just and he will uphold the law and punish those who defy it. And if you're disrupting the natural order then he will deal with you. Only, it doesn't go that way.

Every single time you're in a crowd. You choose your battlefields cleverly, and it doesn't matter how many other matra he has guard the exit posts, you always manage to scurry off. Sometimes you're already gone by the time he arrives, a whisp disappearing behind a corner, sometimes, he'd see you meld back into a rushing crowd with a smile and a wink, and you're gone. It's annoying. He has paperwork to do.

The chase gets to be long enough that his superiors just tell him to keep an eye on you, and apprehend you if he catches you in one of your performances. You visit Port Ormos and sing to the sailors, you visit the Grand Bazaar and dance with Nilou, you strum your lyre for children and bedridden nobles. Apparently, and according to rumor, you greet the Sun and Moon with a song as well. Too many people are fond of you already.

But he can't catch you. You disappear into the waves when you catch a glimpse of him, you dash across courtyards with shrieking laughter and jump out of windows and vanish just before he can get his hands on you, leaving nothing but crackling lightning and strange sear in his chest.

And, what? What will he do? Chain your hands and feet and tell you to stop singing? Cyno can see that this is the life of you. He has seen your feet dance faster than you run and once he heard your voice at the break of Dawn, indistinguishable underneath the bird's morning call but sweet and soft and calling, sending his heart trilling. Your hands flutter over strings, and he jolts when you pluck a note too high.

He sees it now as you sit on the curb near the Akademia, strumming your lyre. You're getting bold now.

He strides over, and the crowd's murmurs fall into frightened awe as he stops before you, and you don't even open your eyes or raise your head.

"General Mahmatra Cyno, to what do I owe this pleasure?" This is the closest he has ever been to you and never mind the way that your eyelashes brush your skin or the way your smile pulls your lips.

"Musical performances are banned on the grounds of the Akademia."

"But I'm not performing…? I'm simply tuning my lyre. Does that count?"

"Yes. Furthermore, loitering is also prohibited."

"Hm. I hate those two rules, you know? They exist everywhere here." Your scowl is pretty to. He does not know why he thinks this.

"They are meant for a reason. They exist for a reason." His hand tightens on his pole arm and he does not like the way his shadow falls over you, or the way you don't raise your head.

"They make it illegal to exist or be anywhere." You continue, unhindered.

"They prohibit the arts, practically ban it, and you want to know why?" You do not wait for an answer. "Because the arts have always been a means of human expression. An act of rebellion. And when we rebel and speak our truth through art and song, it means change, it makes people afraid.

"This is not what we should be frightened of. There will be fires and there will be storms, toppled gods and kingdoms, and there will be darkness again. And songs about the darkness." Your eyes cut up to him, suddenly, and they're not anything extraordinary, whether in color or shape. But you hold his gaze, and that is extraordinary enough.

"Why do you think this makes them afraid, General?"

He grits his teeth, and hears a crackle of lightning by his ear. He doesn't know why he's entertaining you.

"I am not here to debate the worth of the arts to you. Remove yourself from the premises immediately or you will be escorted out."

You just look up at him, and sigh, and draw yourself up, joints clicking. You pop your joints with a furrowed brow as you turn away, but before that you ask a question.

"Cyno," the audacity you have. "Riddle me this. Do you believe that the law is just, or do you believe that upholding the law is just?"

"There is no difference." By the pitying look on your face, you beg to differ.

You leave, and the passing breeze of your departure smooths itself over his skin like a kiss. He doesn't watch you go. His fist tightens.

[feedthefandomfest]

Hiya!

I love this blog and just wanted to ask- do you know any advice on formatting and tagging for AO3?

Or just general etiquette!!

I'm not new to AO3 (reading or writing) but I haven't interacted with the actual community much and would love to know more :)

oof, I still feel like a newbie posting stuff on ao3, and tagging is something i've always struggled with. and actually formatting is also on ongoing issue 😅 so with that in mind, here's what i try to consider:

TAGGING

relationships -> tagging the main is obvious, but i'm sometimes torn about tagging side relationships that feature in the fic, especially since it's annoying to be searching for that pairing and get a bunch of results where they're not the main focus; unless the other pairing is a prominent feature, i leave it out of the relationship tags and at most add it to the additional tags

characters -> i remember updating the character tags on my early fics every time another character popped up in the story, but now i'm of the same mind as the side pairing issue; unless the character is prominently featured, i leave them out of the tags

content warning/advertising -> if i know the fic features an element that some people might wish to avoid, i always tag it and also always fret that i've forgotten to tag something in that regard. when it's more about advertising what's in the fic, especially sexual content, i sometimes feel silly listing every flavor of physical encounter unless the fic is pwp/smut (in which case i gleefully list all the depravity); i sometimes worry that over-emphasizing the sexual content in the tags is misleading? like of this 100k fic, if 15k is spent fucking, how do i get the tags to reflect that while also tag cw appropriately? is there an established tag for that?

sometimes i see fics with TONS of tags, like an exhausting amount, and sometimes i see fics with very minimal tags... sometimes frustratingly few. i also know some writers add chapter-specific warnings in the author's notes. in the end, so long as you're making it possible for people to find or avoid your fic as needed, then you're good. Here are some good posts that dive into it more!

(i remember when people on tumblr would scold writers for monologuing in the tags on ao3 like we do on here, claiming it was a strain on the system, but i believe that's been debunked?)

FORMATTING

i've noticed some MEGA annoying quirks with copy & pasting over from Google Docs and Word, and I know there are some tricks to get around them, but i tend to just slog through the Rich Text window fixing everything manually 🙃 OKAY I FOUND SOLUTIONS LINKED BELOW.

spacing problem #1 -> pet peeve of mine, but i dislike it when the paragraphs have massive spaces between them (ditto for indented paragraphs). idk why, but it's tiring for my eyes to constantly leap the chasm between paragraphs. so whenever i copy and paste from Word, which for some reason ALWAYS appears with double spacing between line breaks, i go in and manually fix it. SOLUTION

spacing problem #2 -> when copying over from Google Doc, whenever there's a punctuation mark following an italicized word, a random space appears between them. and yep, i have to go in and fix every one because typos make me twitch. (this might not be an issue for everyone; i overuse italics and dashes like it's my job) SOLUTION

spacing problem #3 -> again probably a me issue, but i tend to include song lyrics a lot, and it's always a headache to format because when pasting from the doc, ao3 embeds these spaces between the lines that i can't remove by backspacing. only fix i've found is to copy and paste lyrics directly from a website, and then it formats fine. random and annoying and weird. (no solution 😔)

since this section has just been me whining about finding SOLUTIONS for formatting issues, i'll offer one tip that's more about general editing: i try to proofread best i can in Word/GDocs, but it's always easier to spot errors when i'm reading the draft on my phone. the typos always jump out at me from a phone screen. it's now my favorite way to edit!

every writer has their own preferences on formatting, and every reader has their own level of tolerance for formatting quirks. in the end, so long as the formatting doesn't interfere with the reading experience, you're all good.

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Gale Reviews: Miraculous: Ladybug & Chat Noir. The Movie

Welp I finally got the miraculous Movie so now I get to review it.

So For this review, I plan viewing this SOLELY on the movie. I will not be judging it completely based on the show. This is Zag's take. (The view on who did it better will be for another Post)

(Thanks @knightsweeties for the picture)

How I will be reviewing it.

Plot

Characters

Lesson

Animation

Music (Because yes, this is a Musical and should be judged)

Final Thoughts.

________________________________________________________

Plot

So its pretty simple. A villain named Hawkmoth appears that wants to use the power of the butterfly miraculous to get the two miraculous he needs to attain his goal. But two heroes will rise in order to fight him, Ladybug and Chat noir. We will see another take on the show that inspired the movie. A new world for Ladybug and Chat noir.

Overall, this movie's plot is pretty generic, its not going to be winning anything for originality. BUT it sticks to the script and does everything it needs to do to set up Ladybug and Chat noir's respective character arcs and setting up one heck of a final confrontation with hawkmoth. The emotional drama is there and mostly hits the points it needs to. And while not everything got a laugh out of me, some things did.

It also ties up a good amount of loose ends while leaving Sequel bait.

For the most part. 7/10 for non-fans

9/10 for fans.

Its engaging enough and does what it needs to do.

______________________________________________________________

Characters:

Marinette: She is likable and you do enjoy seeing her on screen when she starts getting confident. I do think the pacing of the movie does impact her a bit, but its never to the point where its unbelievable. Also as Ladybug, her banter with Chat noir is top notch. There is some really good chemistry there. That being said, I find it harder to believe that she fell in love with Adrien over chat noir. But its a nit pick.

Adrien: I admit it took a bit for me to actually like this adrien, but I think thats intentional. Chat noir starts out arrogant and annoying, while Adrien starts shut off and quiet. He is a boy mourning the loss of his mother and his father is so distant that he seems gone to. But then he meets Ladybug, he sees this girl and how incredible she is. He finds someone he can relate to and his heart opens. Its beautiful seeing him fall in love with her and pull out all the stops opening up to her. He even gets to confront his father. Its quite a biting scene. I must say this maybe my favorite iteration of Adrien. (Careless whisper is the only song he listens to.) I do wish he was in it a bit more as adrien, but its not that bad.

Gabriel: I dont know how they did it, but they managed to make Gabriel sympathetic. Showing the lengths he is going, how lost he is, the survivor's guilt he has. He blames himself and wants to bring his family back together again. And Hawkmoth they made wacky and yet TERRIFYING. And we see this especially in the finale and the moment we think he wins, he sees his son. He sees it was Adrien, the one thing left in his life that he wants to protect him. This is a gabriel that deserves some sympathy but doesnt shy away from the fact he committed crimes.

Alya and Nino: Now they are both not in this as much as the actual show, but they are great supports and some of the changes done to both of them are wonderful. Alya being supportive of Marinette, Nino being such a bro to adrien while also simping for Alya (Chef's kiss). I do wish Nino and Adrien's meeting but their friendship is good.

Chloé: This chloé is exactly what she needs to be. A bully character but never so excessive that it detracts from the plot. She is spoiled and she is probably the funniest character. (For those that know the show, think Season 1 chloé with a dash of season 2) I think they got a different english VA for her, and honestly it works.

Plagg and Tikki: I found Plagg a bit annoying with the fart jokes, but outside of that he is pretty similar to his canon counterpart. Tikki on the other hand SHINES in this movie. This is what I wanted from Tikki, motivational, curious, fun loving. this is what I picture with the kwami of Creativity.

Fu: He is the mysterious old man character. He plays it well, though he is hardly in the movie. But at least he actually shows up for Ladybug and Chat noir almost right away, instead of just hiding.

The other characters play their roles and there are some funny bits, the akumatized villains are fun and play their role. Lady Magician and the Mime are both phenomenal.

Also the Gargoyle, I feel so bad for him. He wins the award for most Tragic akumatization.

Overall Solid 8.5/10

I do wish we got more Alya and Nino, and less fart jokes from Plagg

____________________________________________________________

Lesson

There are 3 lessons to take away from this movie.

The first one "Stronger together"

Having help and working with those around us can help us grow, we have to be willing to let others in and help us be our best selves.

The second is "Believe in yourself"

Marinette's main character arc is coming to terms with what she can do and finding the inner strength that she always had, even without powers. (Done better than a chunk of films these days)

The Third lesson, "Power of Love"

It was love that helped stop Hawkmoth, it was love that helped chat noir and ladybug overcome their weaknesses and fix paris. It was even love that helped them at the very end.

That being said... the execution on all of the lessons was not perfect, the first one sort of fell off by the end, but the second one and third lesson still applied. There could be some work but I still enjoyed it.

6/10

___________________________________________________________

Animation:

The Animation looks great, the character designs look great, and while I was originally iffy on them, after seeing it I must say the designs work.

The Lighting in itself if Heavenly to say the least. Whoever was in charge of the lighting needs to be given a deep tissue massage and a raise.

It does feel a bit Disney for my personal taste but I cant complain with how crisp the fights look. Great Choreography and it really sells the intensity of the scenes. The details and call backs, the foreshadowing.

Its solid animation, I would say that it is missing a few bits to really make it stand out, some sort of Stylization. But outside of that. Its good.

The scenes that they want to focus on look great, the imagination bits are grandiose. There was care put into this and not just a cheap cash grab.

9/10

_______________________________________________________

The Music

This movie is a musical, very disney-sque.

And as a courteous, I listened to the songs in French and english. I know the english VA's arent the one's singing. And I have to say, it feels SO WEIRD for Marinette in the english dub. But Its not that bad. I think the French one is just more consistent sounding. But english and french both sound fine. Also Chat noir's VA isnt singing, but I think the singing voice for him fits him a bit closer but the french is still the best. "My Lady" is a great song for Chat noir.

The songs are fine, nothing that really blew me away, but they were fun. "I believed in me" fits Marinette well as an opening song.

Tikki's rapping in english is surprisingly decent. But SO WEIRD.

But Gabriel's singing voice, THAT through me off.

Villain song 101. Love it in the english dub. "Chaos Reigns"

But the song "Stronger together." That hit me. The duet in both iterations are great.

The Background music always seems to fit the mood... Except Careless whisper (But that was always used in amusing ways). The BG should be praised

7.5/10

_____________________________________________________________

Final Thoughts

Overall, if I had to rate it objectively, without knowing the show or series. 7/10. Nothing ground breaking but its a good film in itself, its entertaining and fun, and it has some good moments. Pacing is a bit all over but it’s under 2 hours so it’s more of a pick your battles thing

If I had to rate this as the Show fan that I am and my personal enjoyment.

8/10

It does nearly everything I wanted it to do, and added to flair and changes.

Now not everything is perfect, since limited time to tell a story. But its coherent and cuts some of the bloat that was a problem in the OG series. Now some things I enjoyed were also cut though.

I like how it isnt a 1 for 1, it changes some things and gives a fresh tale.

Now which one is better I will address in another post

[handsomethrowrug]

To be a devil's advocate to the dash (now that I am on a tram back to my bus).

-

I know the discussion of the day was Scar's violent behaviours, but I would like to propose that Be Prepared was not him actually being violent toward the hyenas.

What I noticed was that when he arrives, he keeps a distance away, he doesn't want to interact with them in any way. It's only when the song starts that he goes down and does so. Given the jubilant mood he was suddenly in, I would argue that it was actually more akin to play fighting than anything that actually hurt. In the example where Ed is kicked into the bones, none of the hyenas seem annoyed at this, at least to me. Of course, I do assume the actual reasoning for this part was to not mess with the flow of the song, but the trio did seem in good spirits.

Of course, this doesn't explain away his actions later, and I am an advocate in letting Scar be a terrible individual. I certainly do think he turned violent toward some of the hyenas. He didn't blame them for the drought (I wrote before that he believed it to originate from the Great Lions of the Past trying to test him), but they became a sort of 'scapegoat' for his frustrations.

When he makes the comment about Simba still being alive and side-eyes the main trio, all three are nervous and retreat. As mentioned by others, something happened to skew the dynamic that he been there previously (to some extent, as Scar didn't fully reciprocate the camaraderie).

The tendencies for this are clear from his introduction. He plays with his food, he threatens Zazu twice, and he deliberately chooses to sass his brother in a way that he knows will get a reaction. It becomes more obvious post time-skip, but I don't think he was as open about it beyond instances of showing his authority/standing his ground.

However, in the midst of all this, I think people have overlooked another key moment for Scar: the way he calmly watches the stampede unfold below him like it was a test rather than something dangerous.

[starshard17]

Hello! I saw you reblog a post about wanting more tumblr asks from me so here I am sending you one!

Im not part of the trolls fandom but i really like seeing it on my dash because of you, so what are your favorite trolls ships :0?

AAAAH OKAY OKAY

Putting everything under read more cause this gonna take a bit

Starting with the main ship of course we have Broppy! The two main characters of the franchise, Branch and Poppy 🩵🩷

These two are a classic. I don't know any trolls fan who doesn't ship them. Their story is followed throughout each of the movies and the holiday specials and it is so beautiful watching their growth with each other. What I love about the show is that it focuses more on the friendship aspect of Branch and Poppy as opposed to the romance which is covered in the movies

Next ship I'd like to talk about is Breek 🩵💜 Branch and Creek

Now if you know nothing about trolls, Creek isn't exactly a good guy. Yes he was a villain in the first movie but! In the first show, Trolls the Beat goes on, he's seen to be at least a little better as he tries to integrate back into Troll society.

This is Creek when he first tries to reenter the village. He looks Bad. I want to point out that his colors are fading here! This was a main plot point of the first movie. When trolls are sad, depressed even, they start to lose their color!

Branch knows the feeling very well, I'm sure you know the classic meme "because _____ killed my grandma!" Yea Branch's grandma dying is what caused him to lose color 😔 and he's been without color for YEARS

So naturally the thought process is that Branch understands Creek and what he's going through. So ignoring how the beginning of that episode actually plays out, I like to think that Branch actually spends a lot of time with Creek getting him used to being back in the village and helps him get his colors back 💜

Moving on from that, if we look at Branch and Creek's actual relationship throughout the show even though they're shown to not like each other at all they spend a ton of time together!! There's even an episode that showcases all the times they fight with each other, often times alone! Which leaves us to question why they're alone together in the first place?

In that episode they also get their hair tied together by Poppy, leading them to look as though they've become the best friends in the world and acting like the queerest trolls on the planet I swear 😭

They even almost got "married" in this ep. Yea.

Last Breek point I'd like to point out is in a later episode when Creek makes an excuse as to why he didn't provide the fondue for a fondue party

Before Creek arrives to the party everyone's trying to figure why Creek isn't there which leads to this amazing scene where Branch perfectly imitates what Creek is going to say as the start of his excuse for not providing for the party

And yes while very funny is just goes to show how well Branch knows Creek like. Okay Branch I see you 🤨

So while they are painted to hate each other, they do know each other very well! Like better than you'd think. And they spend a surprising amount time together. Honestly Branch puts so much of himself into hating Creek it's almost like an obsession, and it's the same with Creek annoying Branch

Like if you didn't like Branch would you be this touchy with him? I don't think so Creek. Also the only times Creek ever sings in the show is when it's about Branch. And they have a very gay song together 💜🩵

Next ship! My friend has very kindly dubbed this rarepair Glitter Dads 😌🩵💛

This ship is Guy Diamond and Sky Toronto

Where do I even start with them?

My friend and I were watching the show together and started shipping these two as a joke before we got onto the episode showcased in the above screenshot where Poppy attempts to "friend match" them

The friend matching ends up not going well and they get in this big fight even singing a song battle (killer song btw)

Poppy breaks up the fight, admits to what she was doing and the two of them start to walk away before being like "we did make excellent music together-"

And they end up singing a softer, sweeter version of their duet and just like that they become friends all on their own without Poppy's pushing

This of course leads to the intricate analyzation of their characters and what it would be like if they got together XD

Guy Diamond is Glitter Troll of the Year, most famous glitter troll in all of Troll village. He's the life of the party, attends just about every party in town and always makes himself the center of attention

Meanwhile Sky Toronto is the owner of the party factory. He makes every party supply in town, runs his fun business every day with minimal rest time. The queen herself said Sky Toronto has the hardest most important job in Troll village. Even more important than her being queen!

Put that together and you've got the most popular power couple in all of troll village

I will avoid going into more details because I will be stuck ranting about them forever but I would like to point out that Guy Diamond does eventually become a dad, so it is fun imagining what Sky would be like as a fellow dad with Guy to their son Tiny Diamond

Next ship I like is Bappy, Barb and Poppy 🩷❤️

I don't have a lot to say about them other than I think they'd be cute and nothing wrong with some lesbian troll <33

Which this leads me to Breekappy, which is the ship of Branch, Creek, Poppy and Barb

Although I don't see them all as being romantic with each other 🤔 I see it as Branch and Creek being romantic, Poppy and Barb being romantic, and Poppy and Branch being romantic while the remaining pairs are all platonic

Onto some ships I don't have much to say about

Bridget and Gristle, the two bergens who fall in love in the first movie and are married by the third 🩷💚

Clay and Viva, co-owners of the putt putt golf trolls area. I think they're super cute, maybe more platonic than romantic but hey 💚💛

Bruce and Brandy. They're married with 13 kids, kinda feels like a given that you should ship them but also they're just so cute with each other, how could I not 🧡💜

Veneer and Floyd. This one is more platonic. I just think it'd be sweet if after Veneer had his mini redemption arc if he and Floyd were able to become friends after 🩷💚

Satin and Ripley. They were shown interacting in one episode of the show but they were really sweet and I would've enjoyed seeing more of them 🩷💙

Smidge and Milton. In the show Smidge was paired with the gentle critternarian Milton Moss. They are the sweetest couple I have ever seen and I really wish their relationship was explored more because they are just the cutest! 🩷💛

If there are any more I have I can't think of them now, but thank you for asking!

Sorry I got a little carried away, I just love trolls XP

[wolfcake101]

hey can we know wolfie's goofy sad fucked up backstory

OH YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OF COURSE!!!!!!!!!!!!! HEHEHEHHEHAHHAEHAEJHEJHEJEAJHA YOU HAVE UNLEASHED MY ANNOYING ASS WRATH

okay anyways soooo this is inspired by a baldi basics song (the baldis basics musical by random encounters.....sigh) also you will probably think its cliche as hell but i thought it was cool ok :(

Okay so. Wolfie was sitting at her house one day right? just a normal day for her. Oh by the way her name isnt really Wolfie, its a nickname (she doesn't like her real name). She gets this tOtAlLy UnSuSpIcIoUs GaMe in the mail n stuff. She's kind of suspicious at first, but then she puts it on her computer and she just decides to use windows defender or smth to see if its malware or something. It comes up as clean so Wolfie's just like 'yknow what? sure ill boot it up' (this was hinted in the background of this artwork) and then woopsie she blacks out and wakes up in the beautiful ~here school~

All the school faculty and students in BB+ are not in the school coincidentally (they're still like, enrolled/working at the school ofc but they just coincidentally have an off day today, so wolfie doesnt know about them yet.) Anyways, Baldi greets Wolfie yadda yadda, she learns that she has to get 7 notebooks to escape the game.. so she gets to work on that. But woops, looks like something fucked up and Wolfie gets an impossible question on the 2nd notebook. Baldi gets pissed (though good news i have decided that usually baldi doesnt get pissed...unless if theres some null bullshittery going on. so like yeah) and the real "fun" begins.

I'm realllllyyyyyyyy lazy so I won't bother explaining most of her time trying to get 7 notebooks, but just know that there was a lot of close calls. After a long stressful time, Wolfie grabbed he 6th notebook. She's very close to escaping. And when she goes to search for the 7th, ol' Gotta Sweep comes over and takes her to a random place in the school. with baldi in reach. and playtime on the other side of her. So, she panics and just decides to dash into the nearest room because wolfie swears she hasn't been in that room before, so SURELY it must have the 7th notebook. She was wrong. she had been there before. Baldi closed in on her, and she was unable to escape. her fate was sealed.

She woke up the next day or whatever. Good news, everything's normal again! (aka no null bullshittery) Bad news, though. she's stuck here forever. she just cried. for hours. she ruined her only chance to get out. After a lot of weeping she tried to explore around the school. she was terrified after learning there was now TWICE the people to deal with (all the plus characters are now back at the school oh boy) Wolfie had to slowly get used to this new way of living. she ended up taking a liking to dr. reflex as you all know and thats about all of it!!

im sorry this was a very long post oofg,,,,,,

[malka-lisitsa]

Confident is annoying, you're loud and proud about being good and it puts people off. You wouldn't look like a bitch if you were less in your face about things. That is "what's wrong with being confident"

You know, I KNEW when I posted that song that I was gonna get an anon. I can't help but think that if I were a man this confidence wouldnt be viewed quite as negatively.

You have absolutely no idea what ive been through, and how hard I've worked to GET this CONFIDENCE, and quite frankly I dont owe you a back story. Perhaps you should get some confidence, then maybe you wouldnt need Anon to hide behind. Maybe with some confidence you could talk to me like a person instead of hiding behind the grey face. Would you like to borrow some of mine? I have plenty, clearly.

You're not looking close enough if you're letting the confidence put you off, and that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with people being shallow. Ask anyone whos actually gotten to know me. Sure it takes a little work but the reviews are in and almost all of them are positive- minus of course the people with self-esteem too low to be able to see past their own insecurities. Which mind you, I am always happy to help people work on.

It's one of my favourite things to build positivity and build people up.

But of course you wouldn't know that, if you didn't bother to look past the "off putting confidence." I like how I am, I like my confidence, I like my dash presence (which mind you is different on Elena so hmmm?) To those that don't like my confidence, I'm sorry you don't respect a confident woman- but I intend to continue to be unapologetically so.

If you need me, I'll be doing boss bitch things over here. Toodles &lt;3

[daz4i]

whats up man. got any opinions or things to share with the crowd? love to hear your thoughts on whatever

HI HELLO FIRST OF ALL MWAH MWAH MWAH THANK YOU 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

i started typing a rant in a new post but then i remembered your ask. thank you for giving me an opportunity to ramble 🫡

ok so. inspired by a thread i saw on my dash

i still don't get why so many ppl on this site use electroswing as a punchline and treat it like it's the worst genre and such. like it's one thing to dislike a genre but this one's used in a lot of jokes about bad music and???? i don't get it

i mean. setting aside the whole "just because you personally don't like this music doesn't mean it's bad"/"just because you didn't like the few songs you ran into doesn't mean the whole genre is just these songs" arguments bc that's a given and it's not like people making jokes do it out of some burning hate (usually. i hope). it's just a bit disappointing to see ig 🤔

but i really don't get it. i saw someone in the original thread explain and i didn't get their explanation either. "it's riding a trend that wore off years ago" sometimes people just like a genre so they want to make music in it regardless of popularity?? "it's overproduced" i don't think that's a genre issue i think you just ran into some specific songs that fit this description and decided that's representative of all electroswing. also that's probably smth you can find in some songs in every genre? it's not unique to just this one

ig the core of it all is. why is this some running joke i feel like i'm not in on. i think making fun of people's personal taste is always kinda mean spirited as is but why do ppl keep coming back to hating on electroswing specifically. if the trend wore off years ago then where do you even run into this music if you don't actively look for it. how do you keep finding yourself annoyed by its existence enough to be vocal abt it (it feels like a lot of people are just joining in on the joke without actually knowing anything abt the genre or more than a few songs in it if at all, just bc they wanna be involved)

(i'm ngl i think that's a thing in a lot of. um. for lack of a better word i'll say types of culture? the whole finding one thing and consistently making fun of it even tho it's not uniquely bad. you usually see it in smaller things like for example fans of a game series hating on the most mainstream one, but here it's more general and not even hating on a popular thing 😭 like the average person doesn't even know what that word means. which again makes me repeat that part from the last paragraph, how do you keep finding yourself annoyed by its existence enough to start making memes and jokes about it and having a kneejerk reaction to make fun of every online stranger who mentions liking it)

so tldr my opinion here is. making fun of people's personal taste is mean. and this repeating gag of making fun of this completely harmless thing that people like is annoying. get a new joke 👍

[starpiastri]

FIRSTLY i do not know how i hadn't seen your ao3 before now and i'm losing my MIND i'm about to read it all bc i just read casualty of you and now i'm SCREECHING secondly... the fic writer questions: 11, 4, 30, 49! x

FIRSTLY AWAHHHH THABK YOU SO SO MUCH!!!! i hope u enjoy <3333

secondly gonna stick these answers below the cut!!! just because i started rambling ehe

11- Are you partial to a certain character/pairing or are you more equal-opportunity? If you are partial to any character/pairing, why do you think that is?

oh absolutely pairing-wise it will always be sebmark for me… i think i am just entirely struck by the different phases of their relationship? 2009 is an entirely different vibe to 2013 who is an entirely different vibe to 2017 and that makes fic writing them sooo fun for me its never a chore to write sebmark. beyond this teammate rivalries are just absolutely compelling to me i think the dynamics and intricacies are so so interesting, especially gaining more insight on that from marks book was just eeeee i loved it (fuck u helmut marko for everything you ever do). personality wise too they both suit each other well in terms of rpf and they dynamics that i’ve always written and like writing.

character wise i love writing seb. i rlly hope i do him justice because i just love his voice and his humour and his mannerisms. he’s my love ever and i love him so any pairings with him in i am always heart eyes over.

4 - What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?

i’m gonna take this as any fic i’ve written so! i think anything in good men die too verse i am hugely proud of. i did a bit of research for crush about street racing (a lack of in thoroughfare which i often get annoyed about but oh well) and so i think i got the car types right. either way it sounds professional so shrug!

an unreleased fic i have a bit of detail on is my siren!seb fic, its entirely unfinished but i did some research about mythology surrounding mermaids and sirens and think it’s pretty good in that!!!

30 - Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

oh boy most of my ot3 fest fics (i have three fulfilled hopefully! haha 3) were quite a new experience. i won’t spoil a ton but writing threesomes is hard man. lots of limbs

49 - What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

ehehehe. its a another fucking sebmark au! heir to father’s business seb nearly gets assassinated and his driver mark (annoying, gets in the way, keeps making fun of him) saves his life and thus is made his bodyguard in order to protect him. he hates mark already but this really pisses seb off, a constant shadow. also it’s called bad for business yes like the sabrina carpenter song

it’s going to be my first multi chapter and i’m anxious as balls about it and i really kind of hate the tone at the minute so it needs reworking. first chap is basically done but want three written before i post anything just for my own sanity. but here’s a little snippet of them winding each other up

+

Why has Britta put the medicine on the top shelf, for fuck’s sake, she knows he’s not that tall. He gets on his tiptoes, but the box is pushed further back by the tips of his fingers, rather than grabbing it.

“Let me, Mr Vettel.”

And then, the lean body of Sebastian’s driver against the back of him, reaching up to the shelf with zero effort. His fingers dash against Sebastian’s, and it’s a much more successful retrieval, bringing down the box of pills to his height.

Sebastian turns, putting his back to the countertop, the bare skin under his hoodie just brushing the cool marble. He’s close enough that he can smell Webber’s cologne - sharp. Masculine. Like the rest of him, ever predictable.

Webber takes a short step back, probably assessing how abnormally close they were. He puts the box into Sebastian’s open palm. The pills shake inside upon impact. He’s pleased, but through gritted teeth, like a dog finally being allowed a treat.

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

+

so yeah!!!! i rlly hope i do finish it and get it out because the idea has been brewing for months.

thank u so much for all the questions and ofc the love for casualty of you <33

[solivcgant]

slaps my url and a cookie down

SEND A URL AND I WILL ANSWER THE FOLLOWING;

Do I Follow Them?: yes, more supernatural muses to remind eiji his life is anything but mundane

Why Did I Follow Them?: i cant remember ouo but i do remember seeing your return post recently and naturally had to supports 

Do We Role Play?: yes, but we can always rp more now that eiji knows doris is a cafe owner who games

Do I Want To Role Play With Them: of course! soon eiji will go annoy both doris and lilim 

An AU Idea For Our Muses: stealing from your wanted plots you posted a while back, but it stuck with me heh. i'm not sure of all the details yet-- but eiji is very protective uvu;; so naturally he will do his best to protect in anyway he can.. and then if he does do something that gets him hurt doris (or lilim) can show off their powers and kick butt. ψ( ` ∇ ´ )ψ showing eiji magic exists and that they don't need someone to protect them uvu #selfsustainingladies

A Song For Our Muses: 「magic」 - mrs. green apple. perhaps i cheated.. but the song fits.. and the title does too. heh. but i feel doris would use her magic just to make days in the cafe more exciting once she's able to share. いいよ もっともっと良いように, いっそ楽しもう Magicで日々を

Do I Ship Our Muses?: cries. i think we'll have to see how the chemistry with eiji flows first ouo for now he's just that random cafe customer who plays games cries.

What I Think About The Mun: i am happy to see you return! we haven't spoken very much oof since your return, but that's okay. it's still nice seeing a familiar url on the dash. i do like how your writing clearing differentiates between doris and lilim! i think finding your muses voice especially on multiuse is rough. but you fond a good balance! i hope we can talk more ooc soon and plot or just throw our muses at each other to see what they get into next.

Overall Opinion: a good dual-muse blog, both muses are complete opposites but still very fun to interact with. or in my case read interactions bc i haven't reached out as much as i should-- i think its a fun take on 'hiding' their identities while acting as regular humans for our interactions. bc we all know doris could tell eiji she is an archdevil, and he'd go 'in your graveyard game--?'

Blog Rate: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 1∞

[precuremusictournament]

Honestly I like the minipolls though I do wish you'd split them up a bit more instead of having a bunch going at once. So like instead of having all the Yes! 5 polls at once for example you'd do polls for Dream, Rogue, and Lemonade for 3 days, polls for Mint, Aqua, and Milky rose for 3 days, and a singular poll for the group songs for 1-2 days. That'd take longer but honestly as someone following multople Precure blogs I'll often see the poll show up 2-3 times in a row on my dash, if not more, and that's not including your own reblogs.

I know it's a personal problem but having my dash be full of polls, and often the same polls from one singular blog, is kind of annoying. I know it's not your problem but I definitely feel like spreading out the polls would help aleviate some of that.

that's interesting, i wasnt actually doing that to save time, i was doing it because i was worried people would get bored if there was only one poll to vote on in a day! didnt even occur to me that people might feel like it was /too many/, totally the opposite of my worry

maybe part of that worry stemmed from the way engagement dropped off when i got incorrectly marked as spam? so i went "oh no, gotta entice people to come back now that they can see me, using All These Polls!" but it would certainly be easier to do minipolls AND only post one a day. i will 1000% take that into consideration! thank you for reaching out!

[catflowerqueen]

#i think this ties into my other post i made a long time ago about Danny siccing the GIW on Vlad

#like we KNOW in CANON that if Danny was even a tiny bit more like Vlad he would literally become a supervillain

#villain is such a stupid word i hate how it's spelled. why is it like that

#anyways i need to like. rewatch DP cuz i remember shit & then i'm like

#did that actually happen. because that sounds too insane

#but like. he Did That. didnt he

#i think that's what i love about this character. but a lot of people ignore it

#Danny is like. gritting his teeth going ''do good do good'' it isnt effortless it isnt easy he doesnt even want to do it half the time

#& sometimes yeah he WILL do crimes or get back at people who've been assholes to him or whatever

#he WILL use his powers for bad sometimes

#he'll be like ''dont do that it's bad'' but like. he WILL do it himself

#the whole ''i'm a hero'' thing he's got going on is like. more of a. how do i put this

#it's like when you're drawing or writing & saying ''it doesnt have to be perfect it just has to BE''

#like Danny isn't a hero sometimes. he's got morals & has a general understanding of good & bad

#but also he's 14 & being attacked every day

#i would start saying bad words & threatening people that annoy me too man

#okay i glanced over the scene again for the first time in years & Danny was literally in the middle of outing Vlad to the whole town???

#hello?? are we really ignoring this?????

#VLAD TORNADO VLAD TORNADO VLAD TORNADO

#this show is so stupid i love it

#love how Sam & Tucker immediately backed him up yeah fuck Vlad all my homies hate Vlad

There is also the fact that during the literal theme song that plays every episode he immediately uses his powers to get back at Dash after being shoved in his locker.

Also that one time he unmasks Valerie in front of her father to try and keep her off his tail. Or something like that.

But at least he keeps things to mostly petty behavior. Unlike Vlad.

hey i feel like we're really sleeping on that time Danny possessed Vlad & framed him for assaulting a minor

Editing with the clip because people don't believe me. Episode is 41: Eye for an Eye.