#(of course also the few notable girls are pretty so that just ADDS to his bi crush crisis)

[chaoscheebs]

A headcanon:

Jounouchi 100000% clocked Yugi as queer all on his own way early in the friendship and hadn't said a word because bros don't out bros, dude.

By the time, years later, after high school, Yugi actually feels comfortable telling other people about it (he feels no shame about it, but he knew being out about that in THAT high school would get him hit even more), Jou's like, "yeah, obvs, your weird Kaiba crush was visible from the moon, bruh. You can do better, by the way."

(Yugi is holding his head in shock, was he THAT obvious the entire time?!?!?!?!? Also thank god Jou didn't seem to notice the obvious crush on HIM that he never acted on because he didn't wanna ruin their friendship??!?!?!)

[bunni-v1]

the latest post was real funny lmaoo, do u think u could also write abt the 2nd and 3rd years finding out the prefect is a girl? doesn't have to be immediate, take ur time <3

Second Years Find out You’re a Girl?!?!? (NOT CLICKBAIT) 

TW: Swearing; You have a smell (Ruggie); Floyd and Jade; Bunni can’t write Silver lol

Info: Ruggie, Jade, Floyd, Jamil, and Silver x Reader (Separate; Platonic/Romantic)

🍓Hiiii. Skip the intro if this isn’t ur first rodeo and buckle up cowboys (and cowgirls, and cowtheys, and cows). There is a notable lack of third years and dorm leaders because!!! They get their own part rip. I will (eventually) add links to the other parts, but I have a lot of homework to catch up on from being sick all week so it has to wait :). BTW it's long, but each part is pretty even. Love you all enjoyyyyy <3

First Years

Ortho & Sebek

Third Years

Dorm Leaders

-Okay so, I know we’re all wondering, how the hell do you get away with hiding your gender for so damn long?

-Firstly, those ceremonial robes do great at hiding the figure. The only tell would maybe be your hair, but feminine men aren’t unwelcome at Nightraven College, so you mostly get a few questioning stares and that’s it.

-Secondly, Crowley wants to save his own fucking ass. He already has to hide from the press that he has a MAGICLESS student from ANOTHER DIMENSION here, he doesn’t need the fact that you are a woman ALSO on his plate. So, obviously, he helps you hide your gender from others.

-Grim knows, of course, and he keeps his mouth shut for a few yummy cans of tuna (and threats of being expelled from Crowley <3)

-Even when you were just a janitor, he couldn’t have the rumor that he put a “helpless” young woman to work. (Like it wouldn’t be expected.)

-So how do you two do it?

-Baggy ass uniform. Crowley gave you at least three sizes too big.

-Your figure is completely hidden. Sure, you look completely homeless, but at least you’re hidden.

-For your voice, you simply deepen it. After some point, you blackmail Crowley into giving you a potion to help with it, since it's so taxing on your voice. (Or maybe your voice is naturally deep!)

-Sam provides you (for an unfairly pretty penny (not too different from your original world…)) any feminine hygiene products you might need.

-Honestly, you’re set for being cared for, but it’s the adjustment period that’s the hardest part. 

-Truly, it’s very jarring to suddenly be thrown into both a magical world and be isolated in a man's world with nowhere to hide.

-At least in your world you had other women who could understand your struggles. Here though? You’re completely alone.

-You notice how… messy some of these guys could be. How some of them smell… really rancid. -How rough they were with you and each other.

-Honestly, it’s kinda eye-opening. The way men show affection to each other is oddly refreshing to watch and experience!

-Ace and Deuce specifically are a good… trial run.

-That’s not what we’re here to talk about though…

-For the most part, it's incredibly easy to hide yourself for the first while on campus. Everyone on campus is so self-absorbed that they don’t bother questioning you.

-Your only real risk factor is Savannaclaw, but it's easy to avoid those guys (minus Jack, of course).

-However, you can only hide your gender for so long… It’s mentally draining to keep up this facade all the time around people you care about.

-So… how do they find out?

Ruggie

-Ruggie is… unique when compared to Jack. 

-The three beastmen in the cast are all oddballs in this case, but I feel Ruggie is the oddest.

-See, Ruggie finds out nearly immediately. I’m talking like… first day when you and Grim set the school on fire immediately.

-It’s my personal belief that he has the strongest nose between Leona, himself, and Jack so he doesn’t have to be close to smell that something is different about you.

-Now he wasn’t sure for sure. The smell of a person, especially humans, has a lot of factors playing in them. Plus the fact that you’re… not exactly a normal member of Twisted Wonderland’s Society.

-But he had a hunch. That hunch was only confirmed when he decided to steal your sandwich for Leona. 

-He got a nice big ol’ whiff of your smell, and he won’t lie and say it didn’t throw him off, for a second. He almost lost control of his spell on you.

-Luckily he didn’t, he got his sandwich and got away, but it left him with a lot to think about.

-(Bunni interjecting opinion here, my bad) See, Ruggie isn’t exactly afraid of the women in his cackle. They’re civilized people, after all, they’re not out there beating on every guy they see, but they are kind of intimidating.

-He was raised to respect and fear women by his granny, and he’s never really had anything that directly opposed that moral code impeded in him.

-That was until you started to get a little too involved in sniffing Leona and him out for injuring other students.

-Why couldn’t you keep that stupid little nose of yours where it belongs, huh? You’re making more trouble than it’s worth.

-Tries a ton of different ways to scare you off for your own good, but you are damn stubborn and Ruggie both hates and admires you for it.

-You figure he and Leona both know you’re a girl. Hell, Leona outright implies it every time he sees you (thank god your friends of choice are morons). 

-Ruggie though? He looks at you weirdly. You can’t be sure, but he’s a bit more cautious around you. Careful he doesn’t hurt you, but also sure to give you a spook or two when he needs.

-It’s all so odd.

-It’s not till Leona overblots that both of you get your closure. 

-Both you and Ruggie are left alone to recover after your friends leave and Leona’s family drags him away for forced bonding time.

-He can’t help but test the waters.

-“Yer weird y’know.”

“Gee, thanks. That’s how you talk to the guy who saved your life earlier.”

“Hey, that’s how I talk to everyone. Don’t matter if you saved my life or not.”

“Whatever. What's so weird about me then.”

“Why’re ya hidin’ who ya really are.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Yeah, ya do, yer the one who was insistent on that gym shirt that’s clearly three times yer size.”

“…

…..

…Fiiiiine. You got me.”

-He’s smug about it for the longest time too. Constantly cracking jokes and poking fun at you.

-Honestly, it's the start of a really cute friendship! 

-You two are far more chill and friendly after Leona’s overblot. So much so that Grim, Ace, and Deuce call it into question, but he won’t tell if you don’t.

-Besides, you need a good friend to hang around where you don’t have to constantly hide who you are all the time.

-He’s the chill presence that you need on campus, and he’ll keep his mouth shut with no problem. (So long as you keep providing him that sweet, free lunch).

Jade

-He doesn’t think you’re too good at keeping secrets.

-Unlike the beast men, he doesn’t have an amazing nose. In fact, Jade would say his smelling ability is rather lackluster compared to Floyd or Azul. 

-However, he has a crazy scary intuition.

-He doesn’t know right away, of course. He doesn’t have x-ray vision to see through your baggy uniform.

-What gives it away for Jade is your mannerisms. The way you react to different things your more… masculine peers do or say. The discomfort on your face with the more touchy-feely students on campus.

-To our lovely (bastard) Jade, it's all a dead giveaway. He knows by the start of book three when you first make your deal with Azul.

-It’s like he’s looking through you in that crowded little office. His gaze and placid smile pierced through your skin.

-He won’t say anything to anyone though. What fun would that be? 

-To him, it's quite funny seeing how unaware both he and your friends are of the truth.

-He gives you the chills every time he’s around you, but he’s not giving you any reason to believe he knows anything more than what you’ve told him.

-He uses the correct pronouns and treats you as he would anyone else. The only thing is that he’s got this knowing glimmer in his eyes.

-It scares you. Not in the ‘oh god he’s gonna do something to me,’ way, but in the ‘Oh god he’s looking at me again, why is he looking at me again’ kinda way.

-He really does not give you an inkling of an idea that he knows. Just stares at you, smiling like a creepy doll.

-Eventually though, at some point after Azul’s overblot, he corners you (quite literally).

-You honestly think he’s about to kill you, he’s very tall and his face doesn’t change as he leans down to whisper in your ear.

-“Your secret is safe with me.”

-And he walks away.

-What. The. Fuck. Honestly, the scariest thing he could’ve done. Scarier than anything Floyd could ever do honestly.

-To his credit though, your secret is safe with him! Floyd and Azul find out completely on their own, and in fact act surprised when you ask if Jade was the one who told them.

-And honestly, if you can ignore how scary his smile is, he’s always lovely to talk to when you’re in his serving section at the lounge.

-He’s actually the one who convinced Azul to give you a part-time gig when you tell him about your… difficulties affording Sam’s prices.

-Makes sure that your uniform fits the way that makes you most comfortable, and keeps the more rowdy customers AND servers (including Floyd) away from you.

-Very kind! Very weird! 

-When you ask him why, he just tells you, “What’s the fun in letting our little secret get out.”

-Creepy! But at least you’re sort of safe around him.

Floyd

-Now, I am aware that Floyd is a very smart person. As smart as both Jade and Azul, in fact.

-However, homie has ADHD like crazy, and if something doesn’t have his attention he is not learning anything about it.

-Therefore, when it comes to you being female, it takes him a little longer than Jade and Azul to figure it out.

-You don’t really pique his interest for a while. Sure, you’re from a different dimension and all, and you’re a magicless student at one of the most prestigious magic schools ever, and you defeated two of the strongest students at NRC’s overblots.

-So what! Who cares! Certainly not Floyd!.

-You don’t interest him, plain and simple. He finds you kinda boring beyond all that “superficial” stuff out of your control.

-That is honestly for the best, you think, You sort of have Jade’s attention already, and that’s scary enough for you.

-You’ve heard the terrifying tales of what Floyd does to Riddle, you’d rather not be an object of his “affections.”

-It’s not until he’s forced to pay attention to you that he gets… interested. (Yayy for you!)

-It’s not immediate, of course. 

-He thinks you signing the contract with Azul so confidently is really funny. 

-Your determination to pretend you’re not scared of him and Jade is kinda cute, sure.

-When he realizes you’ve caught Jade’s eye he really starts to wonder about you.

-What is so interesting about you that Jade, his brother who only ever really liked peculiar people, has been keeping an eye on you like you’re his prey or something?

It really makes him think, but he doesn’t get it. Seriously. What's so different about you.

-Realizes what’s up when your baggy uniform manages to hug just the right place just long enough that he notices in the heat of battle.

-He gets it now, Jade. How silly you are, little shrimpy, hiding something like that from everyone.

-Suddenly, after Azul recovers from his overblot, Floyd is really friendly with you. 

-Not even in the creepy, stalker-ish way that a lot of people like to portray him as. (Though he does, in fact, do a lot of creepy stalker-ish things. It’s in his blood, he’s an underwater predator after all.)

-It’s more like a really, overly excited, not well-trained puppy who just wants attention from its (new) favorite person.

-And, you have to admit, he can be pretty pleasant to be around when he’s in a good mood! He’s funny, easy to talk to, and always has something fun he wants to do.

-It’s annoying to him that everyone gets in the way of him talking to you, though. He’s not gonna hurt you or anything, just wants to give you a squeeze is all.

Jamil

-Jamil has literally no reason to interact with you, ever.

-He, quite honestly, tries to avoid you at all costs.

-Trouble seems to follow you everywhere you go, and with Kalim always trailing him like a puppy, it’s not a mixture he wants to deal with.

-So, Jamil doesn’t know. Nor does he care to know at all. He doesn’t want to know anything about you.

-Alas, you both attend NRC. Nothing goes well at NRC.

-So, you bump into him in the kitchen during winter break. 

-If he’s completely honest, you are incredibly nice and easy to be around. Smarter than he’d thought too, seems that your bad luck only comes from your goodness of heart.

-It couldn’t hurt to let you eat with the rest of the dorm just this once… could it.

-It could. It very much could.

-It’s in his nature to be observant. He easily picks up on people's mannerisms and tells them so he can adjust to them as quickly as possible.

-Your mannerisms, however, are particularly different from every other guy on campus. 

-You act more like you belong in Pomefiore in a lot of ways, and you tend to flinch at the slightest bit of contact.

-You keep your distance, wear baggy clothes, and your voice sometimes sounds really strained.

-All of these things are odd, but… everyone at NRC is a little weird. He’s a little weird.

-So what. He writes it off and moves on.

-That is until he has to give you the Scarabia uniform after pointedly deciding to kidnap you for a while.

-Your very visible discomfort at the idea of having to wear the new clothes, which he picked specifically to be closer to your actual size, was quite a big giveaway for him.

-He simply smiles and hums and goes to fetch you something a little bigger, for your comfort. He’s not a monster after all! He wouldn’t want a young lady to be uncomfortable around him.

-Keeps it to himself, like a little prize. He was the only one who knew, and he wanted to keep it that way for a while without letting you know.

-It was for no reason other than to fuel that ever-growing ego in his chest.

-However, he gets a little annoyed when Kalim asks him if he thinks you’re a girl or not. He also gets very annoyed when you outwit him and fly to Octanivelle for help.

-Then he finds out that not only did Kalim manage to figure it out on his own, but Jade, Floyd, and Azul have known for ages now.

-It’s just a fun little bonus stressor that adds to his ultimate overblot.

-The overblot in which he exposes your secret to the whole of Scarabia. The overblot where he is just a little too creepy for you to be okay with him for a while.

-Needless to say, you do not have a good relationship with Jamil after all of that.

-He does, however, apologize properly for what he did during his overblot during the music training camp arc.

-You two never really fix things, but you become amicable enough. 

Jamil doesn’t really care enough to try and out you to the rest of NRC, but he does owe you a semblance of kindness thanks to what he put you through.

-So he makes sure Scarabia students and Kalim don’t go yapping to everyone after school starts up again.

🍓I have to be fully honest before I write this, I don’t… know how to write silver. I’m not up to date with chapter seven, and he hardly has any in-game content, so I’m sorry if I got him wrong. I’m trying my best to learn the Diasomania characters, but I don’t have the time to sit down and read ALL of chapter seven. (I do, however, have the time to get about 30 hrs a week on Mercy overwatch so maybe I should get my priorities straight…)🍓

Silver

-Silver is one of the last people to find out on campus.

-Not only do you never hang out with the Diasomnia students (other than Malleus), but you and Silver have absolutely nothing to talk about.

-He’s always in a weird sleep-fueled daze, and he’s super quiet and stern. He’s not exactly an easy guy to talk to, but he is nice when you do talk to him.

-The greatest extent to which you’ve interacted with him is through Lilia, and you hardly interact with Lilia outside of Malleus.

-So yeah… Silver doesn’t really have a chance to find out on his own.

-Besides, even if he did suspect something, he’s too upstanding and nice to bother asking you about it.

-Like Jack, he would just assume you were trans, or you’d tell him if you wanted to tell him. 

-Besides, gender isn’t all that big of a concern at NRC, let alone for someone who was raised by a pretty open-minded guy like Lilia.

-So, really, Silver has no reason to suspect or ask anything at all.

-However… he does… overhear Lilia talking about something like that with Malleus.

-More specifically, Lilia scolded Malleus and made him promise not to say anything to anyone else. (Silver wonders who he might’ve spilled to…)

-It’s not like it’s his business. You two aren’t super duper close or anything. He’s a royal guard anyway, he can keep his mouth shut. Besides, he could’ve just misheard the conversation.

-.

-..

-…

-….He’s kinda curious though. Damn his human nature, he just wants to know that’s all.

-So, he asks you outright one day.

-“Are you a girl?”

“…No hello?”

-He doesn’t get why you’d hide something like that. Women are strong, what’s the point in hiding that you’re a woman.

-You explain it to him, and suddenly he’s much more sympathetic.

-Offers to protect you if you ever need it out of the goodness of his heart. (What a sweetie)

-Otherwise, he doesn’t change all that much, maybe waves at you in the halls now, but he’s not going out of his way to talk to you unless you want him to.

-He’s another good guy <3

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 6th February

There's a distinct calendar to the charts, just in a pretty straightforward, basic sense. You get Christmas songs at Christmas. You get summer songs in summer. You get other songs at temporally appropriate points. This is a very simple concept. So why, in the name of all that's holy, do we have this week's song now, on the 6th February already?

April Love - Pat Boone (peaked at Number 7)

Aside from being premature, I should also note here that this song stayed in the charts for 7 weeks. Which means it disappeared in March, well before the month it's actually talking about. This is just poor marketing, one has to presume - nowadays you like to think that somebody would be a bit savvier about it.

It's a Pat Boone song, possibly the Pat Booniest of Pat Boone songs, all comfy sentimentality. His voice, in particular, is soft and very gentle. It's not that he shies away from big dramatic dynamics, but he leads smoothly into them, and hangs back at points. This, combined with a few of the instrumental choices actually gives the song the same feel as a Christmas song, at points - subject matter aside, you could absolutely see this working in a classic Christmas film (à la Bing Crosby).

Lyrically, the song's about April love, which Pat explains is for the very young, when everything seems perfect and every star's a wishing star for you. So it's a song about being young and in love. Life isn't perfect - we hear that sometimes an April day will suddenly bring showers - but even that can become something beautiful, the rain growing flowers for your love's first bouquet. It's all very sweet, very cutesy.

Of course, Pat being an old fogey at heart, even at the ripe old age of - *checks dates* - wait, twenty-four? This man is twenty-four?! That's wild, literally incomprehensible to me. In my mind, I can see him in his slippers and cardigan, perhaps smoking a pipe by the fire, he's not allowed to be twenty-four! That's younger then me!

Well, my shock aside, Pat's grandfatherly sensibilities mean that he's just got to add a little bit of melancholy old-man wisdom, singing about how April love can slip right through your fingers / So if she's the one, don't let her run away. Young love's great, but it can be fragile and fleeting, so hold on to it, if you think it's the real deal. Sound advice, I guess, though really, Pat should be out there falling in "April love" himself. He's twenty-four, that's still pretty young! I know age expectations were maybe different in the 1950s, but really, what happened, Pat? Why are you so jaded and wistful? Who burnt you?

We don't get a solid answer. Instead, we get a little bit more noodling around, before a surprisingly mellow ending, with this slightly jazzy trumpet. It's maybe my favourite thing about this song, helping to sell Pat's entirely age-inappropriate wistfulness with this absolutely gorgeous chord.

I should probably note, in wrapping up, that the song is from a film of the same name, starring Pat Boone. It sounds like a fairly standard-issue romance between a joyrider on parole who gets sent out to his relatives in the sticks, and a girl who's into horse racing. They notably don't kiss on screen because Pat didn't want to upset his wife (sucks to be Shirley Jones, his co-star, I guess) and even more notably, a critic apparently gave this review, which I think really is damning the film with faint praise, describing it as a musical with "two of the nicest-looking young singers to be found anywhere, a batch of pleasant tunes, some nifty Kentucky scenery in good color and absolutely no plot". There is a cousin who was killed in the Korean War, which is interesting, if a bit tangential to the actual plot. But yeah, otherwise it sounds really quite dull. Sorry, Pat.

Anyway, I'm not going to lie, I'm mostly still in shock about Pat Boone's age, here. There's even a photo of him on the album cover, I can see that he's young, but my mind clearly had not processed that until now. (He must have been twenty-one when we first saw him in this project, that's crazy!)

Favourite song of the inappropriately-nostalgic bunch: April Love

[shadelorde]

- Aang is absolutely not a static character. He makes decisions and choices that push him in a way that allows him to move beyond what people expect of him. He’s become far more mature, and better understands his own beliefs. The reason they were not fundamentally changed is because these adults and others pressure him to give up his core values which come from a genocided culture-if the only way you know of character development is them being forced to change their fundamental beliefs, you have a shit sense of what makes a dynamic character.

-You’re a Zutara shipper, so let me ask you: are you not clearly projecting onto Katara to live out your fantasy of being with an uwu hot boy older firebender anyways? (Whose characterization you undoubtedly butchered but that’s a different conversation)

-Aang is twelve and is struggling with some jealousy. He’s twelve and doesn’t like sea prunes. How very terrible. (And may I point out the hypocrisy of again, a Zutara shipper whining about Aang disrespecting Katara’s culture when Zuko shows up in THE FIRST EPISODE and threatens Katara’s entire village in exchange for Aang, even grabbing Kanna?)

-The comics are complete bullshit writing for every single character and everyone knows that.

-Lot to unpack here for sure. Let me address these things in order. Yes, Aang, a twelve-year-old kid, kisses Katara without her consent. And then immediately afterwards feels terrible and berates himself. On the Day of Black Sun, the kiss is far more reciprocal and Katara reacts positively. Yes, Aang, a twelve year old kid, has a crush on Katara and daydreams about her. How completely terrible. He’s not a “Nice Guy”, he’s a kid who is kind. A nice guy explicitly acts nice in order to “get” a girl. Aang is shown repeatedly to act ethical because of his own internal values and is kind to everyone, not just Katara. (though of course, you whined about them not being challenged, so maybe you’d prefer if he was an asshole?) The Kataang ship is centered on BOTH pov’s, shown notably in the Cave of Two Lovers, the end of the Fortune Teller, The Headband, to name a few. You just can’t project onto Katara. (And AGAIN, may I add that Zuko grabs Katara without her consent while she looks visibly frightened in the Waterbending Scroll, and uses her necklace-the single most important thing to her-to blackmail her.)

-Aang values his culture because it was fucking genocided. He doesn’t hold it above other cultures, but uses his own to make his own decisions. In fact, other characters hold their culture above his and dismiss his, notably Zuko. (Calling him naive, dismissing his values as “airbender preschool”.) Other adults, such as in the Avatar State, use blackmail and put Aang’s friends in danger to force him to use violence.

-Wow. A twelve-year old not wanting to train. How completely unusual for twelve-year-olds.

-Yes, Aang keeps his values from a culture that was genocided by the Fire Nation, and uses them to defeat the current leader of the Fire Nation. As previously established, you clearly think a twelve-year-old keeping the values he was raised with is bullshit however. Somehow you think a kid who is trying to preserve the way of life that was genocided is entitlement and privilege. I’d call that pretty damn racist, actually.

-A traumatized twelve-year old? Running away from horrifying problems that should not be a twelve-year old’s responsibility in the first place? Never. How inconceivable.

-LoK’s writing all-around, like the comics, is completely inconsistent with ATLA.

It seems the only advantage you’ve been given for being a snobby “OG” fan is that you’ve been stewing in the same fandom wank for years.

It also seems as if overall, you want Aang punished for being an Air Nomad and holding to those values. Which is pretty racist, to be honest.

how are u gonna be an atla fan but be “anti aang” mf did u watch the show lmao

[chriscdcase95]

So I'm watching Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U back to back, and it occurred to me a while ago how close they come to being a Life is Strange movie. 

Mainly the elements of time travel, alternate timelines, a murder mystery that juxtaposes with a teenage girl working on her personal relationships, be it her friends or her family. 

There's quite a few differences in the actual story and themes, I did notice parallels between the character of Tree Gelbman, with Max, Chloe and Rachel. Mostly the latter two. 

 1. The Time Travel aspect, although that's the most Tree has in common with Max. Other than she comes out of her shell because of the time travel aspect. 

 2. Like Chloe, Tree has a Death Cycle throughout the story. There's also an alternate ending to the first HDD, where Tree dies anyway, rendering everything she went through moot, so add that to the Chloe comparisons. 

 3. Tree, like Max and Chloe, takes up a junior detective/vigilante streak to get to the bottom of the mystery afoot. 

 4. Tree an ostensible Alpha Bitch status among her peers, which is where the Rachel angle comes in. I was gonna make a Victoria Chase comparison, but the parallels don't fit as much. 

 5. Tree like Chloe has an arc where she starts off as a hardass bitch, who let the death of her parent send them down a spiral, almost letting it make her a toxic person; over the course of the story we see more of the person she is behind the stereotype. 

Unlike Chloe, Tree doesn't have the factor of an abusive father figure, a missing best friend, but they at least got being targeted by a psychopath thing in common.

6. Now Rachel also has issues toxicity issues, that going by Before the Storm, can be attributed to parental issues. But most notably, Tree and Rachel are both having affairs with grown ass men (their teachers no less). In fact, this affair is key to why Rachel was killed/why Tree is being targeted.

As a bonus, like Jefferson, Dr. Butler turns out to be a killer in 2U, but since Tree wasn't having the affair in that world/timeline, I'm not sure it counts. It's at least a coincidence. 

As for other character comparisons, the easier one would be the character of Carter Davis; on surface level, the easier comparisons to make would be with Warren Graham, being a movie nerd, and friendly Nice Guy - an unironic Nice Guy at that - but when you get to the meat of it, Carter is really the Max to Tree's Chloe. Carter barely knows Tree, but goes out of his way to help her, expecting nothing in return; he helps her in the murder mystery and is the one Tree opens up to about her problems; their ultimately relationship ends up being a pretty important factor in Tree’s arc, almost as much as Max and Chloe’s.

 There is a "Max-Like" character in HDD in Lori Spengler, in that she’s a shy, “mousy” brunette...but seeing as she's the killer on the first film, that's a surface level comparison, but it’s weird how close it would be if Lori took the place of carter. If Happy Death Day wasn't heteronormative; if Lori wasn't the killer, but instead in a queer/queer coded relationship with Tree, as her "partner in time", (and if Dr. Butler was still the killer) LIS and HDD would be a lot more comparable.

 ...okay, right as I wrote the last bit, I realized what I just described almost fits 2U.

[imagine-that]

Hiccup! Hiccup!

Warnings: lots and LOTS of fluff. Like, your teeth with probably be rotten by the end.

Pairing: Nathaniel (Nate) Archibald x reader

AN: this is just something I came up with earlier today and finished pretty quickly, I’m actually super happy with how it turned out? That’s a surprise to me lol. Hope you guys like it as much as I (think) I do 🤗.

You swiftly move around the crowd of Manhattans elite who are in the middle of some sort of gossip and walk to the table holding refreshments.

With a small sigh of stress, you grab a glass of water, chugging it back until the glass is empty.

Nate Archibald was smitten with you. Absolutely positively smitten. The two of you had been on a few dates after school hours and on weekends and holidays and suddenly you were absolutely inseparable. But this party was the first time you were meeting any of his friends from the Upper East Side other than Serena, who was always incredibly kind to you.

When Nate invited you to join him, you’d been absolutely ecstatic at first. But when you’d met all of his friends, the most they did was look you over up and down and had their noses turned up in disgust as they surveyed your outfit.

The girls had whispered, boys had snickered and the adults were all far too busy with their own problems to notice or care how their children were acting.

Even Nates own mother had absolutely no interest in meeting you, the person her son was clearly falling quickly in love with, after hearing all everyone seemed to have to say about you or where you’d come from.

It all felt like way too much at once for your laidback taste.

Once you’d excused yourself, you’d overheard Nate scolding them in a hiss, clearly angry with how they chose to treat his date.

You felt honoured but also like a burden, like he felt he was obligated to protect you and your feelings instead of actually wanting to.

You’d hidden outside for a while but then people decided it was a perfect time for a smoke break and the air began to reek of cigarettes and god knows what else so you slipped inside just before you let out a cough at the stench.

Watching the group nervously, you guzzle down another glass of water.

“Hey! I was just looking for you.” Nate says as he joins you at the table with one of his huge grins.

You smile back, ignoring the feeling of discomfort at where you were.

“Well here I am! You found -hiccup- me.” You say, promptly interrupted by a loud and embarrassing hiccup. You feel your cheeks warm in embarrassment, smiling apologetically.

A series of more hiccups escape your lips over the next few minutes, making you quickly smack a hand over your mouth.

��I’m so sorry Nate.” You mutter between jolts, tears not only from embarrassment but also from your eyes watering everytime your body makes a sudden movement with your hiccups.

“Hey, hey look at me.” He instructs, moving in front of you so he’s directly in your line of vision.

You reluctantly do as he says, meeting his eyes with your own.

“I’m -hiccup- ruining your fun.” You sigh, frowning down at your shoes in shame.

“No you aren’t. These parties are always a bore anyways. You’re what’s making it fun y/n.” He tells you, holding your hands in his own to try and keep them steady.

“Are you -hiccup- are you sure?” You ask, searching his face for any tell of a lie or fib. He nods his head, not breaking eye contact with you.

You could feel the judgmental eyes of all the teen heiresses surrounding you narrowed on the two of you, their noses crinkling even more in disgust at every hiccup.

“It’s not gonna -hiccup- it won’t embarrass -hiccup- you?” You ask, looking at him sceptically.

“I promise it won’t.” He says with a small chuckle when you smile up at him only to be stopped by yet another hiccup.

“It’s not -hiccup- funny!” You groan, leaning into him a little.

“No no! It’s uh... it’s not-“ He says unconvincingly, notably trying hard not to crack up. “It’s adorable.” He adds, placing a kiss on your forehead.

“It’s -hiccup- annoying.” You pout, crossing your arms over your chest with a hiccup covered sigh.

“Awwww.” He teases, smiling at you.

His facial expression changes suddenly, a sign that an idea is forming.

“I’ll be right back.” He promises, walking off without another word.

Before you have the chance to follow, Serena comes walking up to you with a friendly smile, tugging a brunette along with her by the arm.

“Hey!” She squeals, pulling you in for a hug of her own. You giggle between hiccups, smiling back as best you can.

“Blair, this is y/n. She’s/he’s/they’re here with Nate. You knew that right?” She asks, looking to the girl next to her for answers.

“Yeah. Hi.” The girl mutters, reluctantly offering you a hand to shake. You take it, shaking it out of curtesy but feeling overly intimidated the entire time.

“Nice to -hiccup- meet you.” You murmur, cursing the sounds escaping your lips for the embarrassment.

She gives you one last one over, nose high in the air before walking off to join yet another group.

“I’m sorry y/n. They’re all kind of... judgmental sometimes. But you’ll fit right in! At least when those hiccups go away.” Serena sighs, giggling a little as you nod with another hiccup.

She gives you a squeeze on the shoulder in sympathy and wanders off to join the group of private school girls chattering away, leaving you to your own devices.

“I’m back.” A voice says behind you as an arm wraps around your waist.

“ -hiccup- hi.” You breath, your ribs starting to ache from the amount of bouncing around your body was doing due to the hiccups.

“Here. Swallow this.” Nate says as he moves in front of you.

He holds out a literal silver teaspoon filled with sugar.

“Nate-“ You start but are quickly interrupted by yet another one.

“You know what, gimme -hiccup- it.” You grumble, grabbing the spoon and shoving it in your mouth.

You wait a moment and just as you think it actually worked, another one bursts through your mouth.

“Damnit.” You curse under your breath.

Nate sighs, looking at you with his brows furrowed in concentration.

“Oh! Try swallowing three times fast.” He offers.

You do just that, waiting yet again and groan in annoyance as it happens again.

The course of the night is spent with Nate trying, with no success, to get rid of your hiccups. You groan and moan whenever you find out they aren’t gone, almost whining like a child by the time the party is winding down. Since it’s at his friend Blair’s penthouse, the two of you are able to stay a little longer.

“It’s no use, they’re never -hiccup- going away.” You sulk, looking up to him with shining puppy dog eyes.

“Wait. I have one more idea.” He says with a small smile grazing his lips.

Suddenly he drops the crystal glass of water in his hand, letting it shatter on the floor.

“What are you-“ You start to hiss but you’re interrupted, this time not by your hiccups.

“Was that one of my mothers crystal glasses?! Those are very expensive and vintage!” A shrill voice shrieks, moving closer to where the two of you are.

“Y/n did it!” Nate calls out. You look at him in shock, eyes wide in fear and confusion.

As the angry girl storms closer and closer towards the kitchen, Nate grabs your hand in his again, pulling you out another door you’d hardly noticed until then and towards the elevator.

“Bye Dorota.” Nate whispers to the kind but now very confused maid as you move quickly.

“But- but Mr Nate!” She calls after him, but the two of you are already in the elevator and on your way down.

“Don’t take offense to this, but your friends are terrifying.” You breath, looking at him with a small grin.

He chuckles nodding in agreement.

“What was that for though Archibald? I thought you liked me living?” You ask, raising an annoyed eyebrow at him.

“I absolutely do. But I also like you happy and hiccupless so.” He says with an innocent shrug.

“You- you were about to get me killed just to get rid of my hiccups?” You cry, blinking at him.

“Well when you put it like that...” He says with another chuckle.

You roll your eyes, grabbing him by the shoulders and kissing him hard on the lips.

“You’re an idiot. But I love you.” You say with a bit of a laugh.

“I love -hiccup- you too.” He says, laughing as the sudden jolt becomes his.

You giggle a little behind your hand, still smiling over at him as you hear the higher pitched noise come from his mouth yet again. “Oops. I forgot- hiccups are sometimes contagious.” You tease, still giggling as he goes into a hiccup fit.

“Yeah, you seem to have forgotten that.” He scoffs with a grin, letting you know he isn’t actually upset.

“Don’t worry, you’re still absolute perfection to me. Even with the weird hiccups.” You grin as he tries to scoff again, unable to due to the hiccuping.

“Gee thanks, that means so -hiccup- much.” He says sarcastically, shaking his head at your giggle fit. “They really -hiccup- are -hiccup- annoying though.” He whines, pouting dramatically at you.

“Well, that just means it’s my turn to help cure you.” You promise nonchalantly with a shrug, smiling when you see his own teeth gleaming.

“I think I can probably -hiccup- live with that.” He laughs, pulling you into his side and hugging you tightly, making you giggle and squirm everytime his body moves with another hiccup.

[joneswuzhere]

hello join me in thinking about some books and authors that are, or might be, part of s5′s intertextuality

5.10 in particular offered specific shout outs, and also u know i’m always wondering what might be ahead so i have some ideas on that:

- first, as mentioned in a previous ask post, i know i wasn’t alone in keeping an eye out for 5.10 parallels to the lost weekend (1945) the film that gave episode 1.10 its name and several themes - or to the 1944 book by charles r jackson which the film is based on

- s5 has not been shy about revisiting earlier seasons, especially s1. altho i feel that 1.10′s parallels to the lost weekend centered characters other than jughead (mostly betty), a 1.10-5.10 connection involving jughead and themes from jackson’s story (addiction, writers block, self reflection) seemed v possible if not inevitable

- but like,, , for a hot minute after the ep, i was really stumped on understanding how anything from the book or film could apply, even tho the pieces were almost all there

- jackson’s protagonist don birnam goes thru and comes out the other side of a harrowing days-long drinking binge that could be compared to jughead’s one-night hallucinogenic writing retreat

- but jughead is struggling primarily with traumatic memories, not addiction and self control like birnam. and tho drinking activates birnam’s creativity, it paralyzes his writing as he gets lost in fantasies; he’s never published anything. jughead’s drug trip recreates circumstances that already helped him write one successful book. even the rat that startles him mid-high doesn’t line up with birnam’s withdrawal vision of a dying mouse, symbolic of his horror at his own self-destruction thru alcohol

- and maybe the most visible discordance: in the film there’s a romantic motif around a typewriter. first it’s an object of shame; birnam’s failure to write, tied up with his drinking, makes him flee his relationship. he tries to pawn the typewriter for booze money and finally a gun when shooting himself feels easier than getting sober. but with the help of relentless encouragement from girlfriend helen, he quits drinking, commits to her, and focuses on typing out the story he’s dreamt of writing. rd goes so far to avoid setting any comparable scenario that jughead has brought a wholeass printer into the bunker so there can still be a physical manuscript to cover in blood by the end, even without his own typewriter. the subtle detail of his laptop bg image is a little less noticeable than his avoidance of betty’s gift

- tabitha might be closer to a parallel than jughead is, but she’s still no helen. both refuse to take advantage of the inebriated men in their care, but birnam takes advantage of helen, financially and emotionally. jughead refused a loan from the tate family and now has resolved to deal with his shit before he considers a relationship with tabitha. instead of helen’s relentless and unwelcomed attempts to get birnam sober, tabitha reluctantly agrees to help jughead trip safely bondage escape notwithstanding. she even helps him get the drugs.

- whatever potentials exist for parallels to jackson’s story, they were not explored for this episode. ok so why tf am i even talking about this? what was there instead?

-  i have arrived at the point

- s5 has been revisiting s1, not directly but with a twist. and jughead’s agent samm pansky is back. u may recall, pansky is named for sam lansky

- jughead’s trip-thru-trauma is a story device tapped straight from lansky’s book ‘broken people’

- lansky is like if a millenial john rechy wrote extremely LA-flavored meta but just about himself no jk very like a modern successor to charles r jackson. both play with the boundary between memoir and fiction. lansky is gay; jackson wrote his lost weekend counterpart as closeted and remained closeted himself until only a few years before his death. both write with emotional clarity and self-scrutiny on the experiences of addiction, sobriety, and the surrounding issues of shame and self worth

- i feel like a fool bc after this ep i had been thinking about de quincey and his early writings on addiction (c.1800s), but i failed to carry the thought in the other direction, to contemporary writers in the genre, to make this connection sooner

- lansky’s second book, broken people, follows narrator ‘sam’, mid-20s, super depressed, hastled by his agent to write a decent follow-up to his first book, but too busy struggling with his self-worth and baggage from several past relationships. desperate, he takes up an offer to visit a new age shaman who promises to fix everything wrong with him in a matter of days. not to over simplify it but he literally spends a weekend doing psychedelics and hallucinating about his exes. jughead took note

- unless u want me to hurl myself into yet another dissertation about queer jughead, i think his parallel to sam - who, unlike jughead, has considerable financial privilege and whose anxieties center on body dysmorphia, hiv scares, and his own self-centeredness - pretty much ends there

- But,, the gist of the book could not be more harmonius with a major theme shared by the 2 films that inform the actual hallucination part of jughead’s bunker scene: mentally reframing past relationships to get closure + confronting trauma head-on in order to move forward

- so that’s neat. what other book and author stuff was in 5.10?

- stephen king and raymond carver get name dropped. i’m passingly familiar with them both but u bet i just skimmed their wiki bios in case anything relevant jumped out

- like jughead, carver was a student (later a lecturer) at the iowa writers workshop. also the son of an alcoholic and one himself

- i recall carver’s ‘what we talk about when we talk about love’ is what jughead was reading in 2.14 ‘the hills have eyes’ after he finds out about the first time betty kissed archie (at that time he does not respond as would any of carver’s characters)

- this collection of carver stories deals especially with infidelity, failings of communication, and the complexities and destructiveness of love. to unashamedly quote the resource that is course hero, ‘carver renders love as an experience that is inherently violent bc it produces psychic and emotional wounds.’ very fun to wonder about the significance of this collection within the s2 episode and in jughead’s thoughts. and maybe now in the context of the s5 state of relationships. or, at least, the state of jughead’s writing as seen by his agent

- anyway pansky doesn’t want carver, he wants stephen king

- i have too much to say about gerald’s game in 5.10, that’s getting its own post someday soon

- lol wait king’s wife is named tabitha uhhh king’s wiki reminded me of his childhood experience that possibly inspired his short story ‘the body’ (+1986 movie ‘stand by me’) when he ‘apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train tho he has no memory of the event’

- no mention of that in this rd episode but memories of a train could be interesting to consider with the imagery that intrudes on jughead’s hallucination. i still feel like it was a truck but the lights and sounds he experiences may be a train

- ok now we’re in the speculation part of today’s segment

- if jughead’s traumatic memory involves trains, then it’s possible this plot will take influence from la bête humaine <- this 1938 movie is based on the 1890 novel by french writer émile zola. this story deals with alcoholism and possessive jealousy in relationships, sometimes leading to murder. huh, kind of like carver. zola def comes down on the nature side of the nature-vs-nuture bad seed question (tho i should say he approaches this with great or maybe just v french compassion). also i can’t tell if this is me reaching but, something about la bête humaine reminds me of king’s ‘secret window’ which we’ve observed to be at least a style influence on jughead post time jump

- but wow a late-19th century french writer would be a random thing to drop into this season, right? then again zola also wrote about miners, which we’ve learned are an important part of this town’s history + whatever hiram is up to this time.  and most notably, zola wrote ‘j’accuse...!’ an open letter in defense of a soldier falsely accused and unlawfully jailed for treason: alfred dreyfus. archie’s recent army trouble comes to mind.

- since the introduction of old man dreyfuss (plausibly Just a nod to close encounters actor richard dreyfuss, but also when is anything in this show Just one thing) i’ve been wondering if these little things could add up to a season-long reference to zola’s writings. but i had doubts and didn’t want to speak on it too soon bc, u know, it’s weird but is it weird enough for riverdale??

- however,,,

- (come on, u knew where i was going with this)

- a24′s film zola just came out. absolutely no relation to the french writer, it’s not based on a book but an insane and explicit twitter thread by aziah ‘zola’ wells about stripping and? human trafficking?? this feels ripe for rd even outside the potentials here for the lonely highway/missing girls plot.

- that would add up to a combination of homage that feels natural to this show

- anyway pls understand i’m just having fun speculating, most of this is based on nothing more concrete than the torturous mental tendril ras has hooked into my skull pls let go ras pls let go

[nileqt87]

Thoughts on WandaVision by a non-Marvel fan

As someone who had only seen a single Marvel movie (The Avengers) and only watched Jessica Jones season 1 for David Tennant (while hating nearly every other character in it), which had none of these characters, I only watched WandaVision precisely because it dared to break the mold and be even remotely ambitious instead of doing the same old CGI cartoon fest over and over. And somewhat because of what Marvel has done to the film industry, television has completely and utterly overtaken film as where emotional, dramatic storytelling now happens.

And okay, I happen to have had a major TVLand addiction growing up and binged a ton of the shows referenced in WandaVision long ago (yep, those very same '50s-'80s sitcoms). I couldn't pass up the retro. Love at first sight. Combine that with what promised to be a tragic, human/non-human romance. Sold. I knew little else about the characters.

For a long time, I've seen female fans (in particular) comment on how part of the reason they write fanfiction for Marvel is that they have to read between the lines just to add the implied dramatic content of the relationship focus variety that never quite gets developed in canon (certainly not up to the standard of what a fic reader expects). I saw a few comments that pretty much described WandaVision as exactly that: a fix-it fanfic before tragic reality invaded Pleasantville. Wanda's whole Hex was essentially a glorified fix-it fanfic.

For this reason alone, I can only hope the success of WandaVision gets them to create a season 2 that is dedicated solely to Wanda trying to put her family (Vision) back together that does the tragic romance justice in a way that giving them side parts in other people's movies just isn't going to cut it.

I feel like Vision's ultimate resurrection or even Wanda's struggle with her grief is better left to her own headline story, whether be it film or television. Television is the only medium that is going to allow the actors to really sink their teeth into this sort of star-crossed, tragic drama and not have it relegated to a minor side-character plot. Either give Wanda and Vision their own movie (hopefully, with heightened focus on character development as a lesson learned from television) or wait to integrate the mind and body of Vision in another season that gives both of them center stage with room to develop it.

Them having their twins for real might also be worth a season 2 in a way that probably wouldn't even work on film, as showing such a feminine pregnancy storyline would be a helluva departure for a Marvel movie that goes from action set piece to action set piece.

I wouldn't even hate it if Wanda's sitcom comfort zone made a few more appearances, even if it is merely the occasional domestic fantasy or dream/nightmare, so there is a way to not completely divorce a potential season 2 from season 1's "gimmick". It could be merely as simple as her pointedly doing something Sam/Jeannie-esque with her magic. Cooking with floating kitchen items would be an easy nod.

Probably not what Marvel is thinking of doing, but as a non-Marvel fan, WandaVision has a real opportunity to pull in new viewers with very different tastes that have so far managed to give the films a wide berth. It would do so much better as a show.

Go the route of giving these characters their own headlined projects and Marvel could have a real juggernaut of a 'ship, as well. My impression was that WandaVision got a lot of fans talking about the characters and their relationship in a way that the previous films and comics had not; some even making comments they had barely paid attention to the characters before the show.

IMO, the mere character descriptions sound like some of the most interesting and fleshed-out characters Marvel has got right now with real opportunity for real dramatic depth. And that's putting aside that Scarlet Witch is one of the most powerful characters on the entire Marvel roster. Making a whole television season about a character going through the stages of grief and about a woman who just wants the family she lost back (a woman who desperately wants a husband and children, no less) was very different territory for Marvel. Human/non-human, in addition to having the level of doom that makes tragedies very, very memorable.

There's tropey drama potential there that hasn't been mined with the non-human who becomes more and more "human" (it's the stuff of fairy tales and sci-fi both). Hayward or someone like him could easily be used as a character who doesn't see Vision as equal to humans, for example. Delve into the sort of existential questions about artificial life achieving consciousness no less feeling than a human's that stories like Data on Star Trek, Blade Runner and Bicentennial Man pose. That species difference without the magic of sitcoms could be mined for a gorgeously dramatic plotline. What it means to be human explored through the non-human--one of my favorite tropes.

And of course, it's the stuff of fairy tales--most notably Pinocchio (the once-inanimate learning to and desiring to become real by proving himself worthy and because it fulfills the greatest wish of the person who loves them most), combined with the interspecies romance elements of The Little Mermaid (tragic ending or not--see also the desperate acts taken to achieve this cosmically-denied togetherness, only for such a tragic ending to come of it in the original work).

Given that the MCU movies just lost a bunch of their A-listers, they need something big like this. Marvel needs philosophical and character-driven meat on its meager dramatic bones. Here are two actors who could carry something more ambitious and pick up an entirely different audience. Marvel could get an even bigger female audience with these two, IMO. And it wouldn't be cheap girl power pandering either (I say this as a girl). These characters are legit with incredibly warm, likable, endearing performances behind them. This chemistry works 100%.

I think White Vision having an existential crisis where he's questioning what he is if he has all the memories of a being who clearly can feel every human emotion (the idea that we are our memories), but at the same time knowing that he's only artificial life, would be an interesting lead-up to Vision being fully restored with his full consciousness in addition to the added memories of what he experienced inside the Hex.

A restored Vision would have to reconcile what Wanda did in her grief over him and her family. It's also a glimpse at the life Wanda wants with him, which included something that isn't biologically possible, though it likely is through her own abilities of creation. There's also the idea of balance that he's the one who might hold her back from the brink of going down any further dark paths as a figure of ordered stability for her, while she is key in the chaos of his becoming more "human". The to-be parenthood story is obviously hanging over them.

The situation with Hayward intending for White Vision to remain a mere machine that can be manipulated and used as a weapon in a way that an independently-thinking Vision can't be is also a path to go down. As I said, there's a potential storyline about prejudice regarding artificial intelligence, even if it has all the emotional capability of humans.

And on top of that, Vision is in a relationship with a human, even if it's one who could potentially be the key to restoring his consciousness through her own link with the original Mind Stone. It also furthers Wanda's role as a mother and creator if she can give him back his life in this way. While the heroic Avengers might not question them being "an unusual couple", who says everyone else would be so kind?

I really think he needs to be brought back. Wanda desperately needs him for her story to continue.

[technomaestro]

Oh? Tell us about the characters on that list then

*slaps character sheet* this bad boy can fit so much of my own repressed trauma in it

This one could be fuckin *all* of them, but it's probably Kelarvia Arana, aka Kel. Poor dwarven fighter exile from Orzamar who turned to the Qun, was trained wrong as a spy, failed her family, failed the qun, failed her friends, and kept trying to do right. She was... not bright. She took a face full of acid breath for her troubles, got repeatedly stabbed by everyone around her, and still kept fucking trying. She was not in a great place by the end of that campaign.

Closeted Trans Person Gender Envy Character™

So, while I'm very much cis, I did toy around with the idea of genderfluidity and transness at one point. And the closest character to that would have been a major NPC that I had in my pokemon game, Claire deVire. She was a literal illusionist / Fairy Type mage, and honestly one of my favorite NPCs to use in the game. I played her as a confident and experienced trainer who had an air of mystery, was clever and flirtatious, and who had a very accomplished team including trans icon Sylveon. She is/was one of the main *villains* of the campaign, but that's besides the point. If I was a girl, she's who I'd want to be - but I'm pretty solid in my gender at this point.

sexy

That would be Lucas Maignard, the Silver Lion. Not just your average silver fox, but a nobleman who absolutely could rock it. Think Rollo from Vikings except salt and pepper hair. He was power hungry, a staunch revanchist of his family's ancestral title and he would go to every length it took to reclaim it, including trying to seduce the King's consort. He, notably, caused at least one if not more international incidents by insulting the soccer abilities of a neighboring kingdom.

He may have had the highest charisma of any character I've played.

idealized version of myself

Allow me to introduce you to Broderic Gullet, a 6'6 tall constantly drunken scotsman Barbarian with a hammer who was unkillable. Literally - he actually died at one point and came back to life because he was too damn stubborn to leave before his friends had gotten to safety, and some passing spirit possessed him and turned him into an abomination. He was jovial, friendly, could talk to his cat Mr. Pickles, and wonderfully buff enough he could hug all his friends at once. Plus he was a trained chef.

As Fruity And Extra As Possible

Oh this is easy. The Satyr Diplomat Cheldric delWolpertinger, a man who *honestly* should have read the recommended reading before being sent to deliver very important documents (these were actually talking frogs!). He was supposed to board a new train on the mountainous passage to Westport, but forgot his ticket. When the train left, he literally jumped (and I mean I cast "jump" and specifically was a Satyr for their Mirthful Leaps feature which adds 1d8 to my jump distance) onto the back of the train. Unfortunately, the murder of the conductor was a bit of an issue, but Cheldric and some other passengers put their heads together to solve the mystery.

furry

So, allow me to set the stage for Albie, Traitor to Crowkind. A Kenku that was as much benefit to the party as he was walking, curse triggering hazard, this absolute buffoon would do what he could to simultaneously help the party while also doing his best not to piss of Strahd too much. A lighting bolt cast into the middle of melee that hit everyone totally gives him plausible deniability for who survives.

I think my favorite memory though is when one of the other party members just opened his beak and he started reciting the Book of Strahd like Stitch plays that record in Lilo & Stitch

A good runner up here would also be Nilbo, a Kobold Druid who only became a druid because it let him wild shape into progressively bigger lizards and dinosaurs. No other animals, just scales.

I Saw One Of The Extra Fantasy Races That Aren’t In The Player’s Handbook And Almost Had A Stroke

Listen. Listen to me. I fucking love Warforged. I will *always* go to bat for magical robots. They're amazing and I've played so many, from psions to storm domain clerics to the most recent one, Hymn, a gender-neutral Celestial Pact Warlock Warforged who got his abilities because he was a socialist. No, I'm not joking - he was made for usage by the Church of the Sovereign Host, but when a wandering heretical priest came by wondering why the church didn't do more, Hymn started going out at night to perform direct action and mutual aid. Being not that smart, he accidentally wandered into a cult's base and released a captive celestial, who gifted him the power to help more.

a race + class that typically would not go together

I'm of a tossup here - the Halfling Artificer Posco Harfoot, who was a member of the Justicars and in order to even the playing field, built himself a goddamn magitek mech in order to go toe to toe with the other peacekeepers, or of Tiberius Vanderwhinn, an elven Path of the Zealot barbarian who was *extremely* keen on getting his libraries late fees sorted, and gods help you if you dared shout in his library.

sexy criminal

Very few things are sexier than a tiefling, and that would be Boreo Lieran, the Tiefling Bard. Boreo was a staunch contender for the "As fruity as possible" but this pansexual beast is much more in line here because the man seduced half the party prior to or during session 1. Having a prehensile tail and the ability to pick up the gnome lass in the party by it for him to tease probably helped.

Of course, such a man was hilariously illegal, because not only did he smuggle and steal like, 90% of his luxury goods that he used to pamper himself with, he would absolutely flaunt a total disregard for property rights and find himself making grand entrances into peoples homes and lives as part of his wayward caravan, leaving a trail of chaos in his wake.

himbo

One of the more recent characters I've played. Cadmus, Son of Abraxes! A "human" wizard on the plane of Theros, this man is the half-divine son of the literal personification of the pride of a polis that was wiped off the face of the world by the gods for their Hubris. So, an active devotee of the god of victory, and actively blaspheming the goddess of destiny at every turn (As he would put it, we hold the pen in our hands, she merely hoards the ink), his goal was to perform deeds good enough to earn a place as a constellation under the stars. He would only *ever* sleep outside at night, even in cities, because he wanted to rest with them as he knew one day he would for eternity.

[zirkkun]

I have a question that you might be able to answer. How would I write a trans sans AU? Like male to female without making it offense. They're skeletons so I'm not sure how make it work out.

I mean I'm notoriously bad at explaining gender to people, but I can do my best! It's one of those concepts that I understand but don't quite understand how others can't since it just works in my brain, ahah 💦💦

I do know that there is a short AU comic that I read a while back that had a trans Sans. I can't remember the name... "Spring Before Another Winter" maybe? Something like that. That might help you, too!

But the thing with gender is that it's not biological. It's just... a way of expressing yourself, I guess? Being trans is just going from one side of the spectrum to the other (or transitioning from whatever your assigned gender may have been. In the case of Mettaton and Mew Mew notably, they were both non-binary originally before transitioning.)

Besides, monsters aren't exactly depicted canonically to have any reproductive biological differences, and monsters are pretty open when it comes to gender (calling Frisk "they" rather than "he" or "she" as a default; ghosts all being essentially agender until they decide otherwise such as with Mettaton and Mew Mew; Papyrus's door saying "No boys, no girls, only Papyrus allowed;" probably many other examples). It's to be inferred that they probably don't really have the same binary system that humans have. Which, actually, this may seem like useless information for writing a trans character -- but considering this is a pre-established work, taking into account the culture and society of monsters is actually pretty important! It would be strange for monsters to suddenly have human customs or suddenly go against what they usually believe.

There's a few different ways I often see writing characters as different genders goes, too, but they all are pretty different, despite on the surface being the same.

1) Writing a character just in general as a different gender from the start. For example, Aqua (ULR!Muffet) is like that for me, being that they are genderfluid. Or people tend to have different interations of Frisk or Chara, such as XTale. Or, another example is nekojaf's Idoltale, where all of her Sanses are girls. If you were to write Sans as trans from the start, it's probably best if you establish them as a woman and have the topic be brought up naturally. A very cliché way of revealing a trans character tends to be a "Oh no, I walked in on you dressing" scene or something, which I would highly advise not doing, because this has a lot of implications that go against the gender spectrum itself by enforcing "biology defines who you are" and creates and uncomfortable scenario for the viewer and characters too. (Obviously, the characters are characters and not people, but I mean this as... it's not a good way of establishing relationships between characters.) That and it's just very overdone. Unless this Sans you're writing is younger -- Sans by default is an adult, and is definitely (despite their jokester attitude) mature enough to bring it up if necessary. But you also don't have to bring it up at all! It could just be something in your notes and you go through the whole series writing Sans as a woman. Mettaton, for example, is a character that is wholly written as a man despite being trans. It's only clarified in his diaries that he used to be a ghost.

2) Writing a genderbend, which is... often frowned upon. I separate this from the first one, because genderbending is typically done in a manner that is more focused on the idea of "biological gender," and often it's done to either be a gag or sexualized. Some people just do it for designs, but even still it often makes people uncomfortable. (Frankly, changing anything from canon will always make people uncomfortable, but genderbending has always been a touchy subject.) I'd try to avoid this, ESPECIALLY if you're trying to write a trans character.

3) And, of course, writing a character who is still discovering more about themselves! This can be a bit more difficult to write, especially if you've never experienced this yourself. If you're uncomfortable or unconfident in this, you don't have to write it -- but either way, I WILL advise reading or studying how trans folk think and feel when discovering more about themselves (if you don't have any personal experiences with it yourself.) I feel as though the experience is pretty similar for a lot of people, just based on the ones I know and have talked to. I know for me I actually figured out I didn't fit my assigned gender at a really young age, like before middle school (though I didn't know what it meant) just because of my surroundings being harassed for wearing the "wrong" clothes and following around my very gender-ambiguous sister. However, it took me until I was 18 to really feel remotely confident in who I was -- and honestly, I still question it. It's a learning process, and people tend to be really flexible in going between a few different things before they settle on something that really clicks.

I... think that's about all I can think of. Anyone else can feel free to add on to this!! Or.. remind me of the title I forgot earlier lol. But I hope this helps!!! Like I said this is kinda hard for me to explain sometimes so 😅

[cyberp-ssy2077]

Cyberparents 2077: A Day in the Life // Part Two: Afternoon (Johnny Silverhand x Female!V)

Part One

Link to AO3!

A/N: Part two is finally here! Google "shopping cart with car" to see tyhe kind of shopping cart V is using. It's a liiiiittle angsty, so I hope I did okay!

“We should have tacos,” Sam opined with great seriousness from her seat in the plastic car that took up the front of the shopping cart.

“Sure, but what kind though? Beef, fish…?” V ventured, scanning the aisles. She was just there to pick up a couple essentials, but her daughter made an extremely compelling suggestion.

“Bleh, no fish!” Sam giggled, tugging on her little steering wheel. “Can we have chicken?”

“Now, that’s an idea,” V smiled, turning the cart towards the back of the store.

As they made their way, collecting items on their list, they inevitably drew attention. To be fair, V was eye-catching enough on her own; with her edgy haircut, riotous hair color, dark lipstick, extensive tattoos, and alluring figure, she was unapologetically alternative and rocking it. When you pair that aesthetic with a child of all things, it’s so seemingly incongruous that it seems nigh-on unnatural, to some.

Of course, when you add Johnny to the mix and all three went out together, it didn’t get any better. Sure, they got fewer comments (likely because Johnny looked like he was ready to cut a bitch at any moment), but the looks they got were still penetrating in their intensity.

V didn’t mind terribly what other people thought, especially the closed-minded people who took issue with how she presented herself. It was beneath her attention. She knew that Johnny definitely didn’t give two shits. What she struggled with, though, was the agony of Sam having to learn how to rise above others’ narrow views and how to react to them. V cast her memory back as they walked through the store, and remembered the first day that there was a real tipping point in Sam’s understanding of the situations they ended up in when they were out as a family.

V and Johnny had been waiting outside Sam’s school, waiting for the bell to ring and for their little girl to run out to them, excited and beaming, as she did every day. They were chatting and joking amongst themselves, Johnny having tucked V into his side with an arm around her waist. As time crept by, it became apparent that the school security guard was shuffling closer in their direction as he stood idly by the school gate that separated the classrooms from the parking lot.

Anyone who knew them knew that V and Johnny were not the type to be intimidated. So, they kept to themselves and ignored the encroaching party, until he was mere feet from them and began clearing his throat noisily. Johnny, in true take-no-shit fashion, raised his chin and looked the man directly in the eye.

“There a problem?”

“I could ask you folks the same thing,” the security guard replied. “There are kids getting out of school soon, so I need you to stop loitering so that parents can pick up their kids.”

Johnny pulled down his aviators and fixed the security guard with a piercing look. “Yeah, and one of those kids is my kid. Once she gets out, we’ll go.”

The guard looked taken aback at this, mentally weighing his options, and he slumped back over to the gate and pulled out his walkie-talkie, glowering at them as he brought the walkie up to his mouth.

“If he causes a fuckin’ scene…” Johnny trailed off. The sharp trilling of the bell rang out not a moment later, and soon enough kids of all ages began pouring out of the gates. V and Johnny scanned the pre-school area, and after a few moments Sam walked out.

The scene played out in slow motion; Sam’s class was led out by her teacher, and the little girl began making her way over to her parents. V glanced back at the security guard. He was no longer sulking at his post, rather walking towards Sam and calling her over once it became apparent where she was headed.

“Are you kidding me?” V asked angrily, pulling away from Johnny and marching over to where her daughter stood with the security guard. As she got closer, she started to hear what he was saying.

“...wait with me until your parents show up, okay? Just want to make sure you’re safe and nothing bad happens to you.”

Johnny had followed her as soon as he connected the dots himself, and he was fuming. “If you don’t get away from my daughter, something bad’s gonna happen to you, pal.”

Hearing her dad’s voice, Sam turned to face him and smiled. She ran over to cling against his leg and he picked her up and held her on his hip; instinctually, he wanted to be closer to her and he knew that if he had her in his hands, there was less chance that this tool would end up with a mouthful of Johnny’s chrome prosthetic in his mouth. For her part, once Sam had digested the expression on Johnny’s face and the tone of his voice, she appeared to be very confused.

Before anything serious happened, Sam’s teacher stepped in and apologized profusely to V and Johnny for the security guard’s over-zealousness. On the way home, Johnny and V had to explain to Sam why someone might assume that she doesn’t belong with them, and it broke V’s heart to see Sam’s eyes so sad. Later that night, Johnny and V sat together, both emotionally drained and contemplative over the events of the day… That wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was the first time that Sam had noticed and asked about it. They were in for a long road ahead of them.

Today in the grocery store, everything seemed to be going well enough until it was time to check out. As V and Sam went through the line, Sam decided to bring up one of her favorite topics of conversation: dyeing her hair. She wanted badly to have “pretty hair” like her mom, but so far Johnny and V had held off on doing that for her due to the dark color of her locks; in order to achieve any notable change, her raven-black hair would have to be bleached. Despite their own views on self-expression and rebellion, both Johnny and V were holding off a bit when it comes to going that far with their child. In the meantime, they had the secret agreement that they would get her some hair chalk for her next birthday so that she could still join in the fun.

“I wish my hair had pretty colors,” Sam sulked, looking up at her mom with big eyes. “Me and Estrella both want pretty colors.”

Estrella was Jackie and Misty’s little girl, and Sam’s partner in crime. The two of them were thick as thieves and twice as mischievous, and of course they were universally adored by their parents and their parents’ friends. They went to the same school, despite being separated into different classes, and they both took martial arts classes together.

“What are you talking about? Your hair is a pretty color,” V said, tickling Sam’s sides as she climbed out of the cart. She noticed that the woman behind them in line was giving them a curious look, but it wasn’t outright hostile yet so V put it out of her mind. She began checking out, going through the motions of swiping her card and loading bags back into the cart.

“I want my hair to be purple!” Sam declared, smiling big. “I want it to be purple all over, like in my room!” Purple was Sam’s current color obsession, so it was not news to V that it was also the choice for her future hair color.

“That sounds pretty cool, I bet you’ll look awesome,” V replied, brimming with affection.

An intrusive voice piped up from behind them.

“You look rather young, so I’ll give you this advice: parents shouldn’t encourage such things. You never know what she’ll be asking for next.”

V pasted on her fakest smile. “Thanks, but I didn’t ask for your advice.” Ready to leave, V quickly sat Sam in the traditional shopping cart seat, facing her, and looked to make her escape. Before she got too far, Sam’s little voice piped up.

“I think you would look very nice with pink hair, ma’am,” Sam chirped, grinning toothily. The woman blustered, clearly not having a response. V couldn’t help herself, laughing out loud as they left the store. She’d have to tell Johnny about that one later, he’d get a kick out of it.

The drive to drop Sam off was rather uneventful, and Sam was bouncing in her seat by the time V put the car in park. As soon as she was let out of the car, she shot off like a rocket to the front door, with V trailing behind. By the time V got up to the porch, her perceptive (or precognitive?) friend had already let Sam in with a smile and was offering a greeting to V.

“How’s it going? You’re glowing, having a good day?” Misty asked dreamily, examining V as she handed over Sam’s dojo/overnight bag.

“Yeah, something like that,” V laughed. “We’ve had a good day so far. How are you doing?”

Misty shrugged. “Can’t complain. Star’s been bouncing off the walls all day, you’d think she didn’t just see Sam yesterday,” she said, a light smile playing on her lips.

“All right, well mine and Johnny’s cells should be on if anything comes up. I’ve got groceries in the car so I’ve gotta run, but see you tonight!”

“Yeah, sure thing,” Misty replied, glancing over her friend once more with a knowing smile. “You gonna tell him tonight?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” V replied, a massive grin betraying her words. As she hopped in the car and started to drive home, she started to feel a tingling excitement grow within her. Now, just to get through the rest of the afternoon and the evening would come soon enough.

Part Three

[troddensodden]

Physical Features OC Ask Game !! 👁 What is your OC’s eye color? Do they have any eye-related habits, like winking or rubbing their eyes? Do other people tend to notice their eyes? 💇 What is your OC’s hairstyle? How do they maintain their hair? Do they wash it and/or cut it regularly? Have they ever dyed their hair? 👖 What type of clothing does your OC generally wear? Why? Do they have any “signature” accessories?

since its the only ask i have so far, im gonna answer each of these for all three of my current ocs :D hope thats okay!

cedric: fallout 4 || alistair: fallout 4 || emil: fallout new vegas

eyes—

-cedric: blue-green eyes! however he actually only has one, in a sense, because a bomb once blew up close enough to his face that it burned the skin, and damaged his left eye enough that he went blind in it. he tried to take care of the injury, but the commonwealth doesnt exactly have many medicine or skincare products. it ended up getting a pretty gnarly infection, which only made it worse after scarring. so now, he wears an eyepatch over it! he regularly wears a gas mask out in the wasteland, mostly for radiation protection but partially because he is somewhat insecure about his eye, and the look of the skin around it. when he isnt wearing one though, people do definitely notice his eyes for that reason, more than anything else. he doesnt have any particular habits, other than consistently wearing an eye covering.

-alistair: his eyes arent anything particularly special, really. just a plain dark brown, dark enough to look black from a distance. he doesnt have any specific habits, per se, as he is a synth and thats not necessarily in his program. however, if hes close enough with someone, he will make a fair amount of (bad) jokes or comments and accentuate them with a wink or an eyebrow raise. also, when hes frustrated he sometimes will rub his eyes with his palms, or do long drawn out blinks and eyerolls. his eyes arent all that notable though, so people dont take much notice of them often, outside of their expressiveness.

-emil: a sort of grey, green, hazel, blue, combination? really, they dont seem to have much of a set eye-color. its hard to determine. so on the occasion that someone asks, theyll give a different answer every time, sometimes answering with a color that is definitely not even close to the actual color. furthermore, theyre quite the mischievous and flirtatious type in some cases, so winking is something they do quite often, and are able to do with either eye. other times, theyll look someone up and down when facing them, but with an absent expression that makes it hard to tell whether theyre checking the person out or sizing them up. their eyes dont get noticed often because again, they arent anything particularly special, but when in a relationship, they do find that partners seem to take a particular interest toward the confusing matter of their eyes, specifically the color.

——

hair—

c: pre-war, he kept his hair relatively well-managed, a tidy crop with maybe a bit more length than the "average" mens cut. post-war, however, he frankly sees getting his hair done as too much effort, only occasionally stopping for a trim and otherwise letting it grow out, and tying it up if it gets in the way. his boyfriends quite fancy this, liking to play with it when they spend time together. maccready, on occasion, will even braid it if hes stressed or in a bad mood, as a way of calming himself down. (when he does this, cedric tries to keep the braid in as long as possible.) washing hair isnt necessarily easy, in a world where even just clean water itself is in short supply, let alone soap. however, he does try his best to clean it when he can, because he doesnt like the feeling of dirty hair. he also has never dyed his hair, because hes always been content with his natural brown color, even if its a bit "plain."

a: he keeps his hair close to a stubble, consistently. his hair doesnt grow very rapidly, but still, he will likely be seen getting his hair cut every couple weeks to keep it from growing out. he likes looking put together, and will rarely ever be caught genuinely dirty. any chance he gets to clean himself, he will, and any time he needs a haircut, you can bet he'll be on his way to the nearest place that offers it. he refuses to dye his hair, saying that it creates a look of unprofessionalism, (and hair dye doesnt go well over black usually.) nobody really understands why hes so insistent on looking put-together and professional all the time, but they accept it, even if he sometimes takes more time to get ready in the mornings than anyone else.

e: shaved on one side, long on the other. its also naturally got a bit of curl, which adds volume so it doesnt get too flat and stringy when it goes unwashed. they dont wash their hair as obsessively as alistair, though they will do a quick clean if they get the time. they dont particularly like the idea of using irradiated water to clean off, but its that or use purified water which is in relatively short supply. however, foraging is a bit of a strong point for them, so they will use natural supplies for cleaning off if possible, from plants and such. keeping hair maintained is hard in a relatively desolate area like the mojave, but whenever they find scissors and some free time theyll do a trim. scissors arent exactly a match for a nice set of clippers, but you learn to make do. they have dyed their hair with some temporary colors before, but never anything permanent—they actually quite like their natural gingery-blond color.

——

clothes—

c: whatever will protect him while also being comfortable enough that he can tolerate him with his sensory issues. however, in situations where he needs to looks somewhat "official," he will wear his minutemen-issued jacket over a decent shirt and pants set. however, he will rarely ever be seen without some sort of mask, unless the situation happens to be one where a gasmask or something similar would be improper. even then, the eyepatch stays on. so id say the eyepatch is somewhat a "staple" of his wardrobe, though its less of a fashion choice and more of what he deems a necessity.

a: if possible, he would regularly wear a button-down and pants that match. however, in an irradiated post-war wasteland, with hostiles around every corner, thats not a particularly feasible option; thus, he wears whatever is available that is in good condition but also effective. effectiveness is his priority, of course, but it does frustrate him if his clothing doesnt at least look decent. people see him as a bit of a pansy for it, but when he was in the institute, he was used to wearing a uniform that was focused on looking clean rather than being highly functional. so after escaping, that stuck with him a bit. he does, however, have an accessory he refuses to be without, and thats his and noras wedding ring. even after forming new relationships and finding a new purpose in the world, its impossible to move on from someone who was his whole world, what feels like only a few months ago.

e: emil most definitely prioritizes function over fashion. appearance is important, sure, but they recognize that it definitely is not the most important, when youre traveling across a hot desert full of giant scorpions and gang members. however, one thing that they always have, whether theyre wearing it or just has it in their pack, is this one puffy jacket, with a fur-lined hood. they found it in the dresser of a destroyed house they were scavenging through, and it somehow was in near-mint condition. the reason it was so special to them, though, is because it had a note in the pocket, from a girl to her older sibling. the girl being emils sister, who moved away with their father after their parents got divorced. the letter was addressed from her to them, but was never sent. and sure, while they knew that this almost definitely confirmed she had died, they were just happy enough having something from her. so they never go without the jacket, even though its warm (and a bit heavy.) impractical, but sentimental.

[the-final-sif]

Actually, now that I’ve talked about my headcanon that Katsuki was kidnapped several times as a child, let me talk about a complete random scene/story arc inspired by that and the fact that Katsuki + Izuku + Shouto are all interning with Endeavor now.

Overhaul breaks out of jail and gets his arms back somehow. He’s gone quite a bit nuts. A lot nuts. He’s surpassed ‘focused villain trying to do one thing that he sees as right’ to more of a ‘just want to watch the world burn’. To that end, he sets about getting a team together to catch a certain group of meddling heroes, and to rekidnap a certain child.

A second hideout raid of sorts is planned and goes down, only this time, it was a trap. Izuku/Shouto/Endeavor/Hawks/Kirishima/Tamaki/Fatgum/Tsuyu/Ryuko/Ochako were on the raid team and were caught. Aizawa who was watching over Eri while she had a playdate with Tsuyu’s younger sister, Satsuki, are all also captured. Overhaul had a very specific team set up, knew about them in advance and planned out counters for each person. Alongside that, he used his quirk to create a giant beast like robot that’s made of metal able to withstand even Deku’s punches and Shouto/Endeavor’s flames. Said robot is roughly modeled/made to take on the LOV’s nomu, but non-organic. Notably, Katsuki wasn’t on the hideout raid team (or aware of the raid), because he had a Obligatory Family Trip planned on the same day and so wasn’t at the internship then.

Izuku had managed to put in a distress call before he was taken down, but all the heroes + victims were moved to a different location afterwards in an old long abandoned hideout in the middle of the woods, and there’s about no chance of anyone tracking them down any time soon.

So that leads us into the main scene. The heroes are all captured/restrained up near Overhaul whose ranting on about using Eri to destroy the world/destroy quirks once and for all and then rule over it with a robotic army which is the only thing he considers “clean” anymore. Meanwhile, Eri and Satsuki are down in a different location in a cell of their own (to prevent the heroes from comforting the children), and there’s a camera system in place so the heroes can see the helpless children.

Overhaul demands Eri be brought to whatever Evil Machine he’s devised, and one of his goons goes to get her, but Satsuki fights back against the goon and actually does a pretty damn good job of it. Which leads to Overhaul demanding that the goon kill her.

There’s nothing any of the heroes can do. Satsuki fights back as best she can, as does Eri, but they’re both only 6 years old and Eri’s quirk isn’t working. They struggle, but it’s looking hopeless, and Aizawa tries to tell Tsuyu to close her eyes because he knows what’s about to happen next.

And then the entire dungeon the two girls are in shatters.

Everything is chaos for the next minute as Overhaul tries to figure out what the hell just happened, getting his cameras back in order until finally he gets a visual and contact with one of his goons just before they get taken down and it’s Katsuki.

He’s in a flannel, regular pants and his combat gloves, very clearly confused/pissed off/not prepared for whatever the hell is going on here, and it takes them awhile to figure out what’s going on.

As it turns out, Katsuki has been hiking a trail near this hideout since he was 4 years old. His family drags him up to a nearby location to visit some extended family, he has 0 interest in doing that, so he goes and hikes/camps along a trial instead. Every year he hikes this fairly long trail, and every year he sees this weird abandoned building that he’s gone to explore a few times, and every year the first thought in his mind is ‘Man, that place looks exactly like a villain hideout’.

Then this year, he comes up on it, minding his own business with his headphones in, and he sees the building active again with people with weird masks running around in it, and he’s got a super bad feeling in his gut that just slams into him and he goes ‘Alright, fuck it.’

So now Katsuki is here, he grabs the kids and gets them to a semi-safe location, getting info from them and trying to understand what’s going on. Once he gets it, this turns into a game of him keeping the kids safe from Overhaul, taking down his goons as he goes and working his way towards where the other heroes are. Only, we’re going with the aforementioned headcanon that Katsuki has been kidnapped a bunch of times as a child and never realized that wasn’t normal. This leads to the heroes watching him on the cameras with an increasingly pissed off Overhaul as he walks the two children through how deal with being kidnapped as if these are normal everyday life skills.

Overhaul really, really wants him dead, but unfortunately his team was handpicked to counter the heroes who he’s already captured, and he wasn’t counting on Katsuki showing up. Katsuki’s quirk is flexible and very destructive + Katsuki’s combat skills means he’s pretty much a worst case scenario for Overhaul. Even worse, Katsuki successfully took down the com lines so there’s no communication through the scattered goons, and Katsuki played in this abandoned hideout as a child so he knows his way around it. 

Ideal things happening during all of this:

Aizawa torn between being overjoyed that Katsuki saved Eri and then horrified/so done with this child as he walks Eri and Satsuki through how to use knives and grenades.

Katsuki being confused that neither Eri nor Satsuki know how to use a knife.

“Okay, did I have a weird childhood or did you two have a weird childhood. I can’t tell.”

Katsuki gives both children knives, and gives Eri a second knife when she loses her first one (and by loses I mean it ends up embedded in a bad guy’s shoulder)

Izuku keeps pulling notebooks and pencils out of seemingly thin air since Katsuki is openly discussing his quirk/aspects of it with the kids as they make their way through the base and by god he needs to write it down. Overhaul keeps taking his notebooks/pencils but the moment he looks away Izuku somehow has another set.

Katsuki keeps mentioning offhandly things from his childhood and the more things he mentions the more all the other heroes are like “????????”

Finally, Overhaul realizes there’s no chance of his guys taking down Katsuki as Katsuki finishes off the last or second to last one, and so he unleashes The Robot.

By this point, Katsuki already called for backup, but it’s at least half and hour out. He sees the robot and he’s like “Ah fuck.”. Eri and Satsuki already told him a little bit about it and particularly that it’s built to withstand anything short of a nuclear weapon. Not to mention it’s decently fast/agile.

And then when Eri is hurriedly relaying all this to Katsuki, she mentions that Overhaul built it himself.

Katsuki: “Wait like, he actually designed and built it. Overhaul’s the guy with the weird purity/evolution obsession right? He made this? Not somebody smarter?”

She confirms and Katsuki is suddenly No Longer Worried: “Okay, you two chill here, I got this.”

So then he goes to fight the weird beast robot, and nobody’s really sure what he’s planning. As he starts fighting it, he seems to be blasting it’s head into stuff a lot/slamming it around, but that’s not doing any actual damage, right?

Wrong.

See, Overhaul’s somewhat of a moron who put all of the robot’s processing/”brain” into the head area, because that’s how things are supposed to be in his mind. Katsuki figured the guy would probably pull something like this, and so he gives the robot a bunch of repeated strikes to the head area/knocking it around. Because even if the outside is super tough, that kinetic energy still travels through and can do damage to delicate circuit boards.

In layman’s terms, he gives the robot a series of minor concussions until it adds up.

The robot starts to malfunction, going somewhat rouge/pausing/getting stuck places/etc. But it’s still not destroyed and the heroes aren’t sure what Katsuki’s planning next. Katsuki is quite sure of what he’s planning next though. He lures the robot outside and then traps it in place with some large rocks or some rope or something. It’s not going to hold it for very long, but it’s enough to keep the weakened robot in place.

Then he takes aim with one arm as if he was doing an AP shot.

Everyone (heroes and Overhaul included) are kinda like ‘okay what the heck’ because even Katsuki’s strong blasts aren’t enough to really damage the robot’s exterior. Why would trapping it change that?

Then blue starts to spread up Katsuki’s arm along his veins, his hand starts to crackle and there’s 1-2 seconds of “wait WHAT” before Katsuki unleashes a blast on par with that of a small nuclear weapon. The explosion is bright blue, narrowed down to a fine point like Katsuki’s regular AP spot, but once it hits it’s target, it explodes outwards disintegrating the robot and taking out a good chunk of the surrounding land. The whole hideout is shaken to it’s foundation. Windows shatter, some cameras crack, and when the dust clears, Katsuki’s standing tall.

His left arm is still covered by that spiderweb blue though, and it’s hanging limply at his side.

Okay, so this is 90% me making up science but shhhh

So as the heroes quickly learn as an exhausted/barely on his feet Katsuki stumbles back to the kids who of course have questions, this is apparently something Katsuki has been able to do since he was 6.

He calls it “Blue Core”, and it makes his explosions super powerful by pulling nitrogen from the rest of his arm/blood stream/flesh and stocking it all up.

However, he basically never uses it because it comes at a really high cost, namely it takes several seconds of charging, does a ton of collateral damage, and by using it it takes whichever arm he used out of commission for at least the next 24 hours. He can still use his quirk a little with the other one, but it’s heavily weakened.

Obviously he can’t use this in training either, so he never thought to mention it to his teachers.

The heroes + Overhaul just watch stunned for like a solid minute as he starts making his way towards where the heroes are being held hostage with the kids because what the fuck.

Finally though, Overhaul snaps out of it and goes to fight the weakened Katsuki. The kids hide when Overhaul comes out and he throws Katsuki against a wall or something b/c he’s heavily weakened and can’t really fight with his quirk anymore, and then he struts over to him monolouging and ready to claim victory as Katsuki is laying there, slumped over and barely breathing.

And then the moment Overhaul gets close to him, Katsuki is up in a flash and the heroes can hardly even see what happened, but the next thing they know Overhaul is on the ground screaming bloody murder clutching his eyes and Katsuki is holding a blood stained knife. Then he gives Overhaul a curb stomp and he is OUT.

It should be noted, this is not any of the knives that he gave to Eri/Satsuki.

Someone, maybe Aizawa: “How many knives does he have???? I thought he was hiking????”

Shouto: “Oh yeah, at one point during the remedial courses we were babysitting kids together and he mentioned to me that he had 7 knives that day, and I honestly couldn’t tell if he brought more or less knives than he normally carried because of the children. Still not sure actually.”

Izuku: “I know he usually carried around 4 knives when we were kids but part of that was he had limited areas to hide them back then.”

Fatgum and Tamaki are both completely baffled and trying to fit this guy they’ve just been watching with the person that Kirishima described Katsuki to them as.

Anyways, so then Eri & Satsuki get the keys and go to free the heroes which are fairly close by while Katsuki guards Overhaul to prevent him from pulling a ‘gotcha’ on them. And also because the heroes are up a flight of stairs and Katsuki physically cannot walk up them right now.

It’s very emotional as Eri rushes to Aizawa and Satsuki rushes to her big sister who is now crying. And then the group heres a noise and all eyes go back up to the camera screens which are still somewhat up and running, currently focused on where Katsuki and Overhaul’s battle went down.

Turns out, before this whole mess started, the LOV sent Dabi to go take care of Overhaul because He Cannot Be Allowed To Have Arms, Goddamnit We Were Making A Point With That.

But then Katsuki went ahead and did Dabi's job for him, so Dabi radioed back to Tomura and Tomura changed his objective to "You know, while you're there anyways and he's weak, might as well grab the kid."

There’s two endings to this:

1)

 The door to the room Katsuki is in swings open and fucking Dabi waltzes in probably saying something like

"So, is this a bad time?"

Katsuki turns to look at him and in the most done, tired, angry, voice: "You asshole."

After drugging Katsuki somehow (because unlike Overhaul, Dabi is not stupid and isn't getting with 10 feet of Katsuki without being damn sure he's down for the count), Dabi kidnaps Katsuki for the second time and the two of them are teleported out of the area about 10 seconds before Aizawa/the other heroes are freed just barely too late to do anything about it.

This ending would mostly be because I'd want Dabi and Katsuki to have back and forth banter of Katsuki being so 110% done with everything and Dabi being like:

"Yeah, I'll admit, this is kinda a dick move and the universe definitely has it out for you today."

"You don't get to say 'the universe has it out for me' when you're the one kidnapping me asshole"

And also because it sets up some serious hurt/comfort.

or, ending 2)

Katsuki stumbles his way over to a doorway on the other side of the room to go grab some rope so he can tie Overhaul up. He opens the door, and Dabi's just standing there, having been about to open the door so he could capture Katsuki.

They just stare at each other wide eyed for several long seconds before

"Is now a bad time-"

And Katsuki slam's the door shut.

"N o !"

He takes five seconds to just stare at the door being pissed and then is like "No, fuck this, I have dealt with enough today." Then he proceeds to barricade the door as he goes through various forms of the words 'No, nope, fuck that, not happening', still exhausted and beaten up and done but 100% N O T   H A V I N G   T H I S.

The heroes get down there to help and and they search for Dabi only to discover on the camera footage that after Katsuki slammed the door on him, he apparently thought it was so funny that he just kinda shrugged, turned around and actually fucking left. Because, you know, his main objective was already completed, and he didn’t really feel like going the extra mile today.

All of this is on camera too, so it quickly spreads as a meme, along with other choice moments from the whole hideout fight including several ‘vibe checks’, one of Satsuki throwing a grenade into the face of on of the goons that was harassing her before, and also ‘knife check’ becoming a thing.

[gascon-en-exil]

Who Can Say if I've Been Changed For the Better?: Ferdibert Does Wicked

This concept has been a bit in building. It started from a much-loved cover by Hubert and Ferdinand’s VAs inspired by their support line and the broad observation that these two are a musicals couple who absolutely would sing their feelings in all manner of theatrical AUs. It continued through my later observation that there’s ample material to carry that idea even further, albeit with a shift outside of Crimson Flower for a better tonal match. Still, I’m not quite sure what to call this project; it’s not really a headcanon nor is it fanfic by any means. I’ve written a handful of longform character/narrative explorations before, although when it comes to FE I’ve previously been inspired to do so only for Jugdral characters. That setting is somehow both underdeveloped and deceptively dense - and I suppose in a way you could say the same of Three Houses as well, insofar as it’s been incredibly popular for fan content of all sorts.

Regardless of what this post is in terms of my fandom output, the following isn’t exactly a Wicked AU as such. Rather, it’s how I would envision a hypothetical blend of the non-CF routes of FE16 centering around the Eagles trio and set to the structure and songs of the musical as organically as possible. There are no 1:1 analogues with characters and plotlines from Wicked, because few if any would exist without a lot of tweaking; to use the VA cover example, Ferdinand might be a decent proxy for G(a)linda, but the mere presence of Edelgard substantially complicates Hubert’s claim to the Elphaba role. The similarities only unravel further from there, but I did my best.

Writing this out gave me the opportunity to play around with Edelgard’s character as a way of addressing what I and many others in my circle have long considered to be some of the major problems with her canon presentation. For Ferdibert meanwhile I got to make use of my headcanons for how their relationship would develop outside of their support line, in a way that mostly preserves Hubert’s delightful evil wickedness. Add some ruminations on how one would splice together the non-CF routes in a dramatically satisfying fashion, some snark directed at the non-character of Byleth, and a bit of background Dimidue/Lions OT5 for spice and that just about sums it up. Enjoy this…whatever this is.

Act I

“No One Mourns the Wicked”

The show opens on the citizens of Adrestia celebrating the death of their emperor and the end of her bloody war. Ferdinand rides in, resplendent on his steed, and is hailed as the new Duke Aegir as he relates to the crowd the news of Edelgard’s death at the hands of the combined army of liberators. The “Are people born wicked?” flashback sequence is replaced with a summary mostly in pantomime of Edelgard’s backstory: the Insurrection, her being taken to Faerghus and then returning, and then being experimented on by the Agarthans before agreeing to work with them. Notably Hubert is not named or referenced anywhere in this song, appearing only as a boy at Edelgard’s side at appropriate times during the flashback.

“Dear Old Shiz”

Someone in the crowd finally brings up Hubert, the emperor’s vile and murderous minister, and accuses Ferdinand of having been his friend. With Ferdinand even more flustered than Glinda since his “It depends on what you mean by friend” definitely carries sexual undertones, so begins the flashback to Part 1. There’s an equivalent intro of Garreg Mach, so one may feel free to insert any headcanons for school songs here. The following dialogue scene establishes the student body in general and the dynamic of the Eagles trio in particular: Ferdinand pompous and eager to one-up Edelgard at any opportunity, and Edelgard and Hubert cold and dismissive toward his antics and just about everyone else for that matter. Edelgard is instantly enamored of the quiet new professor, of course. Because the room assignment conflict doesn’t make a lot of sense with the monastery’s setup, instead Ferdinand is incensed that Edelgard is chosen as the Eagles’ house leader over him even though it’s been ages since a Hresvelg has attended. Neither Nessarose nor Morrible has an exact equivalent (although Seteth can act in Morrible’s role as the academy’s main authority figure), so the segue into the next song ends there.

“The Wizard and I”

Now alone together, Edelgard and Hubert have a brief dialogue outlining their villainous plans for the school year. This establishes Hubert’s hypercompetency but also how detached and professional Edelgard is around him. Then comes the song, now “My Lady and I,” which serves as Hubert’s character introduction. In tones more sinister than Elphaba ever reaches - you know he’d have fun with “When people see me they will scream” - he outlines his history with his lady, that he delights in serving her because she validates his work ethic and gives him an outlet for his ruthlessness and cruelty. Where Elphaba fantasizes about the Wizard removing her green skin, Hubert instead goes full Nice Guy, believing that once he’s given Edelgard her continental empire and crushed all her enemies she’ll be so grateful that of course she’ll put out for him.

“What Is This Feeling?”

You could rip the tone of this one directly from the Ferdibert C support and change nothing - homoerotic subtext included. I like the thought of Hubert replacing Elphaba’s deadpan one-word summation of Galinda with a mocking imitation of Ferdinand's most memetic line: "He is Ferdinand von Aegir!". The chorus can be made up of any number of other students excluding Edelgard, who’d happily agree that Hubert is ugly, creepy, and downright unpleasant.

“Something Bad”

The content of this song and surrounding scenes would have to be completely altered, but they work as a necessary reminder that the plot of Part 1 is still going on in the background of all the school drama. Seteth runs through the major events up to Chapter 9 of the game, including the bandit threat, Flayn’s kidnapping, and the experiments on the Remire villagers. The audience/accompaniment for this exposition dump ought to be Dimitri and Claude with Byleth as a silent observer (more on them later), with Edelgard brushing off the news and eventually being the one to shut down the song as Morrible does. There could be some small side character moments in here as well particularly involving the Lions and Deer since they get so little focus in this story.

“Dancing Through Life”

Speaking of which, this was an awkward sequence to place. It matches up chronologically with the ball in Chapter 9 and the main part, Fiyero’s, is a dead ringer for Sylvain and his flirty, hedonistic nihilism (“Nothing matters / but knowing nothing matters!”), but it’s hard to tie into what’s going on with the Eagles trio particularly with the Ferdibert timeframe preserved, i.e. unlike Elphaba and Galinda they don’t become closer until after the timeskip.

As such I see this song as an opportunity for little vignettes with the other students: Dimitri angry over how Dedue’s talked about and hoping they can share a dance (fitting contrast with the coldness of Edelbert), Felix prickly between Dimitri’s recent outbursts and Sylvain’s showboating, Claude hinting toward the bigger picture with Hilda flitting between her excitement over the dance and knowing more than she's letting on, Dorothea casually taking note of Edelgard’s fascination with Byleth (see just below), Bernadetta as a wallflower who doesn’t want to be disturbed (a setup for Act II), etc. Thanks to one of the Forging Bonds events in Heroes I had the thought that the "You/we deserve each other" through line that later gets attached to Nessarose can become one for Dimitri's relationships, with Felix initially throwing it out at him and Dedue and the two of them then turning "We deserve each other" into a romantic line...and then an ironic one and finally a triumphant one come Act II, by that point with Felix et al included as well.

I’m not sure that the following scene of Galinda and Elphaba bonding on the dance floor really needs an equivalent, although it could be altered to something Edeleth-related. In any case Ferdinand ought to get a dance scene of some nature, so he can try to show up Edelgard as he brags about in canon.

“Popular”

It would be a travesty to have a musical starring FE16’s cast and not give Dorothea and/or Manuela a solo. This song works quite well for the former, and it doesn’t intrude on the Ferdibert development with the aforementioned timeframe and how the lightly sapphic vibe doesn’t translate well to two guys. Dorothea has taken note of her good friend Edie’s crush on their mysteriously wooden professor, and she senses the opportunity for a makeover. Not as exaggerated as Dorothea trying to make over Hubert, naturally, but I still think this works out well. Also, Galinda’s observation on leaders, “Did they have brains or knowledge? / Don’t make me laugh! They were popular!”, is darkly comedic when said to Edelgard.

“I’m Not That Girl”

This song comes with preceding dialogue scenes for setup, so those first. Edelgard emerges fresh from her makeover (given her general hot for teacher fixation, I’m thinking she’d lean pretty hard on the naughty schoolgirl look) to Byleth silently grieving Jeralt’s death - bad timing there. She’s as callous about it as she is in canon, only now with more clumsy flirting, and while it’s impossible as always to tell if Byleth notices or cares Hubert most certainly does. The scene segues into the Eagles trio together, with Edelgard alluding to the upcoming events in the Sealed Forest and indicating that Hubert should meet up with her later for some more villainous scheming after he’s ditched Ferdinand. Ferdinand, indignant about being left out of the loop as he is in canon, grumpily points out that he was a much more splendid dancer at the ball than Edelgard, makeover or not. To his utter surprise, Hubert acknowledges that this is true before leaving. This leads into the actual song, altered from homoerotic via triangulation of desire to an outright sexual awakening for Ferdinand. He realizes that part of his jealousy toward Edelgard is that he wishes Hubert were devoted to him instead, and tells himself not to get his hopes up because he’s, well, not that girl or even a girl. We shall of course leave aside how anyone could be attracted to someone as repulsive as Hubert; that’s part of the inherent comedy of this pairing.

“One Short Day”

This was the hardest song to place in this whole project. The touristy trip to the Emerald City just doesn’t have an analogue in the story of Three Houses, especially not late in Part 1 when tension is mounting toward the upcoming reveal and war. It took me a while to realize that it works wonderfully as an Edeleth piece: Edelgard invites Byleth to Enbarr for her coronation, but that scene is left offscreen in favor of a light romp through the city that further highlights Edelgard’s crush as well as her emotional immaturity in spite of everything she’s about to do. She just wants to have a fun day out and take in the sights and eat sweets with her beloved teacher, and it’s all very “Edge of Dawn”-esque where Edelgard knows she’s about to do terrible things that will change everything forever and hopes to prolong the time until she has to take that step. Adjustments to the lyrics could even work in reference to that song to make the similarities more apparent. An awkward/funny issue here is that I envision Byleth to be totally silent throughout this musical with no sung or spoken parts, which would naturally make them having a duet impossible and make Edelgard’s fascination with them even weirder. Even their gender should be left ambiguous throughout, somehow never confirmed if it’s m!Byleth or f!Byleth. It would take a lot of reworking, but I can see the value in it.

“A Sentimental Man”

The core of the Wizard’s character is not all that different from Rhea’s. Both were thrust unexpectedly into positions of authority that required them to enact a large-scale deception to maintain their power/safety, and both are driven somewhat by parental feelings. The tone of the Wizard’s songs doesn’t align well with Rhea, but once you cut out the vaudeville and do some rewording I could see this one working as Rhea addressing her child (among other things) Byleth at the Holy Tomb just before the Flame Emperor reveal. Of course the dramatic irony hits differently; Rhea knows who and what Byleth is whereas the Wizard doesn’t learn about Elphaba until the end of the show. Nonetheless this would still establish Rhea’s character and motivations as well as set the stage for the impending betrayal.

“Defying Gravity”

Said betrayal being Byleth’s, who decides to stand by Rhea and condemn Edelgard as the Flame Emperor when she arrives with her army. This is another song in parts that would need to be broken up. Edelgard gets the bulk of it, but the middle sections between Elphaba and Glinda could work as a kind of separated duet with Edelgard and Hubert attempting to convince Byleth and Ferdinand respectively to join them. Because of Byleth’s silence only Ferdinand can reply in song; only he and Edelgard add the “my friend” bit to the end of this segment, to illustrate the unevenness of Edeleth and Ferdibert at this point in the story. Then things turn to full bombast, albeit darker than in Wicked proper. Edelgard does the belting, Hubert’s sinister laughter reverberates below her (would it be too tasteless for him to be leering up her skirt the whole time?), Ferdinand has Glinda’s mournful “I hope you’re happy!” toward Hubert, and through this and the reprise of “No One Mourns the Wicked” the major events of the timeskip are enacted in pantomime or silhouette. Byleth tumbles off a cliff, Rhea is taken captive as is Dimitri but Dedue rushes after him, and Claude makes a tactical retreat. Side note: “And if I’m flying solo, / at least I’m flying free” is classic Edelgard fixating on Byleth and forgetting that Hubert exists.

Act II

“Thank Goodness”

A surprisingly tough one here. The core of the song, pivoting around the double meaning of “I couldn’t be happier,” suits early Part 2 Ferdinand perfectly, second-guessing his choice and, outside of CF, melancholy about fighting his homeland. In terms of plot it’s an easy translation too, with the crowd announcing the terrible things the Empire has been doing to win its war - persecuting believers, abducting civilians and turning them into Demonic beasts, consorting with inhuman shadowy figures who can disguise themselves as ordinary people - and the assembly working as a way to bring together the leads of the three routes: Byleth, Dimitri (who had Dedue always at his side and thus never had a full psychotic break), Claude, and Seteth, with Ferdinand representing the Adrestian resistance. It’s only the wedding announcement that’s hard to pin down, and I toyed with a number of ideas including Dimidue making yet another public declaration of devotion to one another or Ferdinand planning to follow through with his arranged marriage to Bernadetta they have in their supports (which makes more sense in light of the following sequence). In the end though I don’t think the marriage element is strictly necessary, leaving the song as a means of catching up with the cast five years later and seeing them united against Edelgard - with Ferdinand’s private regrets the only sour note.

“Wicked Witch of the East”

More a dialogue than a song, but still important. Bernadetta is arguably the Eagle other than Hubert most comfortable supporting Edelgard, because all Edelgard has to do is put Count Varley under house arrest for Bernadetta to sing the emperor’s praises. I can also see her as the same sort of self-centered, negligent ruler that Nessarose becomes in Wicked, not because of an unrequited attraction but because of her reclusive desire to be left alone. I see this scene playing out as Hubert surprising Bernadetta at her estate, angry about rumors that she may be helping the rebels and/or engaged to Ferdinand if going with that plot point after Edelgard has done her the favor of locking up her father. He’s fully prepared to, ahem, “persuade” Bernadetta, but before he can break out the torture implements Ferdinand arrives asking for her to support the rebels’ cause.

Farcical, sure, but it gets the two of them together again after five years and underscores how strong their UST has become in their time apart, with Hubert too flabbergasted to attack a known enemy and Ferdinand expressing how happy he is to see Hubert again despite everything. Each learns that the other isn’t as happy about his chosen path as he’d hoped, in Hubert’s case because his lady has grown ever more distant from him as the war has dragged on. Bernadetta cuts through the tension by bringing things back to the song (sort of) and blurting out that she knows both sides are marshalling their forces near Gronder Field. Ferdinand is too caught up in the fraught romance angle to do more than leave with this new information, but Hubert recovers enough to condemn Bernadetta for her flagrant misrule (venting by inference his frustrations toward Edelgard in the process) and resolve to set her on fire for her treachery.

“I’m Not That Girl (Reprise)”

The Gronder rematch happened offscreen - and Bernadetta was indeed set on fire - and on the Imperial side Edelgard is left increasingly frustrated over her losses and hurt that Byleth still refuses to listen to her and continues to fight her regime. You may notice that I’ve shuffled around the middle of Act II, necessary at this point in order to better line up with FE16’s story and Hubert and Edelgard’s separate narrative climaxes while also ensuring that those climaxes don’t overlap too much. This song is only a brief reprise, but it’s a significant one; Hubert finally realizes that Edelgard will never love him. It’s also kept gender-neutral, because Byleth.

“As Long as You’re Mine”

That segues naturally into this moment. Ferdinand sneaks into Enbarr using his unexpected stealth powers (I usually talk about Dedue having them, but Ferdinand shows he’s no slouch in his Mercedes supports) and encounters Hubert. Their UST boils over in a furor of awkward, impassioned sex and also this song. I like the idea of rewording some of Fiyero's lines to incorporate Hubert's acidic snark: “Maybe you’re brainless, / maybe you’re wise.” It’s all very desperate and sensual, ending with Ferdinand taking Elphaba’s line about feeling wicked for the first time - which will have a dark reverberation two songs from now.

“Wonderful”

Again, axe the vaudeville and it’s a solid Rhea song. There’s just the small problem of Rhea being captured at this point in the plot; I thought about moving this number toward the very end at first before reconsidering. While Hubert and Ferdinand are rolling in the sheets, a distraught Edelgard confronts Rhea in prison. Rhea responds to Edelgard’s frustrations with Byleth with her backstory in song, much more somber than the Wizard but, like him, still willing to rehabilitate her estranged listener. The bits of this song about the nature of history are especially relevant to what Edelgard falsely believes about the church and what she views as her own legacy, so I could see this as an interesting character study on what Edelgard actually wanted with her war apart from dragon genocide. There’s a lot that could be done here in the dialogue surrounding those revelations.

“No Good Deed”

However the interrogation of Rhea turns out, Edelgard takes a leaf out of SS Dimitri’s book and visits Byleth alone at the monastery, only to be as harshly rebuffed as is possible to be without the rebuffer speaking. Then comes this song, which was incidentally the one where I realized that Edelgard would need a major role in FE16-does-Wicked even with the Ferdibert focus. Hubert fully embraced his evil wickedness long ago and wouldn’t think twice about being wicked or being perceived as such, but Edelgard is a different matter. Here she breaks down, admitting that her good intentions were largely selfish and that she regrets that her war has cost her any relationship she could have had with Byleth (continuing the joke at his expense, Hubert goes unmentioned when Edelgard names the people she’s lost/failed). It ends with a foreshadowing of her Hegemon form, the sign that she’s abandoned all pretense of goodness and become truly wicked.

“March of the Witch Hunters”

Another ensemble/vignette piece, checking in with the various members of Byleth’s army as they prepare to storm Enbarr. Dimitri hopes for the chance to forgive his stepsister, Claude has big plans for the continent and wants to remove the threat Edelgard poses, Seteth is desperate to find Rhea, and Byleth…is there. As in many of the songs, the self-righteousness of the crowd here rings more sincere and less hypocritical than in Wicked given Three Houses has actual villains, but it still works.

“For Good”

The song that inspired this whole thing, now with many paragraphs of context to set it up instead of only some fluff based on the Ferdibert A+ support. Ferdinand sneaks into Enbarr (again) ahead of the battle, and their second love ballad is more somber as they resign themselves to their fates. As in the VA cover, Hubert refuses to ask forgiveness for anything and Ferdinand is fine with that.

“Finale”

Wicked reduces the final battle from The Wizard of Oz to silhouettes backed by sections of “No One Mourns the Wicked,” and that’s what comes here: Ferdinand and Hubert facing each other in battle, Edelgard becoming the Hegemon before being defeated and then dying as in AM’s final cutscene, and Dimitri taking the throne with Dedue at his side and proclaiming his intention to do all he can to restore both the Kingdom and Duscur - and that his first act as king is to announce that he and Dedue have decided to open their marriage up. This is met with much manly cheering and stripping and someone (Ashe?) saying incredulously that he didn’t even know they were married. End silhouettes.

The final scene with the Wizard and Morrible becomes Claude, Seteth, and Byleth rescuing Rhea. Rhea names Byleth her successor as leader of the church and says that she will go into quiet seclusion and do what she can to correct her mistakes. This all suits Claude just fine, who tells everyone that he’s off to take care of some other business and that Byleth will make a great archbishop - and also they can have the Alliance, no big deal. As with the King of Faerghus’s gay orgies, the King of Almyra’s grand ambitions are too large for this story to do more than allude to.

Next, Ferdibert does a version of the Elphaba/Fiyero scene, with Ferdinand revealing that he had Hubert spared on the condition that he help root out any remaining Agarthans and that he remain under house arrest at the Aegir estate. Ferdinand was also required to assume governance of the Empire, because Dimitri wasn’t getting that dumped on him as well. They can be together, but the general population can’t know that Hubert survived lest Ferdinand’s reputation and basic ethics be compromised…which in a darkly funny hypocritical twist then segues to Ferdinand pontificating before the crowd at the beginning of the show, reprising “For Good” with Hubert until they’re drowned out by “No One Mourns the Wicked.” Thus the story concludes on one of my favorite things about Ferdibert: perhaps even in this non-CF continuity Ferdinand wasn’t changed for the better by falling in love with the Most Wicked Man in Fódlan, but they’ve both been changed….

[maeamian]

This isn't really related to anything I just don't know where else to say it, but while researching that post I took a look at the list of fictional physicists, they've got a lot of the ones you'd expect, of the 35 listed about a dozen comic book people, all the ones you'd expect but some notable exceptions (except I don't care about them), a decent amount of book and movie characters including The Gate of Angels which is a book and not the name of any character in that book although the main character is one so partial credit on that answer, I guess. It also has Amy Wong which is true although I had entirely forgotten that it was, also, apparently McGuyver, which I guess makes sense cause like, in any of these situations all these characters have to do to earn their degree is have the author say that they did (looking at you Reed (noticeably absent from the list)).

Anyhow, that's all a bunch of trivia, there's a lot of people missing, like no one in the Disspossessed is on it even though half the characters in the book are physicists, which was my personal gripe but I'm a shameless partisan and won't apologize for it.

But that's not what this post is about either, it's another aside, no what has me scratching my head and writing posts about it on tumblr dot com is that of all the characters on the popular sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, there are exactly two. Unfortunately I watched that show for a while cause the girl I liked was into it and I wasn't really thinking critically about it or anything and then I started to and stopped liking it as much, although I also stopped liking it around the time we broke up so maybe I'm just justifying that to myself, the important point I watched enough of it to be able to say I have a fair sense of it, and I can tell you that many more than two of those characters are, in the fiction of the show, physicists, like half the main cast and another half of the supporting characters are cause they work in the physics department so it's a natural characteristic to give anyone who's in the space, as a character.

Anyhow, I haven't bothered to count, but I'd say by a quick glance at the list of Big Bang Theory Characters page you could probably add at least a dozen characters from that show who had at least recurring roles. A few real physicists did appear as themselves too, including at least one nobel prize winner, and how fictional they are is an open question since they were playing characters that was simultaneously them and also in a very real sense not them.

The important thing, the reason I've gathered us all here today, is that there are, in fact, exactly two big bangs on the list. And I know what you're thinking, okay sure, but there's only two main characters, to varying degrees, while there are other members of the main cast there are two principle characters who primarily drive the main plots of the episodes, it's ol' Bazinga and his friend. You'd be right to think that, but in fact ol' bazongo isn't even on the list, no the second character is, instead, a Sean Austin character from the final season who is only noteworthy enough to merit a mention on that list of big bang side characters alongside fellow guest star Kal Penn, who quite frankly I intuit from the character description is also a physicist, although I stopped watching at that point and refuse to do any more research on this topic.

Out of the entire set of fictional physicists contained in the big bang theory of which there are at least three in the main cast, the two that made the list of fictional physicists are like, the audience surrogate boring main character and some dude who didn't even merit his own entry on wikipedia dot com despite being played by the inimitable Sean Austin. It's wild I am fascinated by the person who composes a list of fictional physicists and includes those exact two characters from one of television's most patronizing sitcoms. Or is it two people one of whom is a shameless Sean Austin lover and the other of whom assumed someone else could add Dr. Bazoningers? I long to know but will not check the edit history to find out.

So what am I going to do about it? After all, I seem to be so invested in it, you might reasonably ask; it's pretty clear at this point that I am absolutely out of my gourd. And of course, dear reader, the answer is nothing. I am absolutely not going to do a thing with this information. I might go fix that Dispossessed thing, but on the other hand I absolutely might not, so if you go check up on it and notice that now there are more than 35 entries on the list and several of them are characters from Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed, then either that was me or someone took pity on me and did it for me, but if any more than two of them are big bang theory characters I want to be absolutely clear that I had nothing to do with that.

[godkilller]

@magical-girl-coral​​

So we already know which arrancars are the best, and which ones are the worst, but who are the most fun to prank/ have the funniest reaction to being pranked?

          out of character.  Gin voice: all of’em are th’ best to prank. No but this is an excellent question and since I’ve already taken a few shots at Gin’s opinions on each Arrancar / Espada, I’ll go ahead and just jump into the nitty gritty details of this one. WE ALREADY KNOW WHO GIN HATES THE MOST IN THIS LIST, but that doesn’t mean Gin won’t pass up on a chance to prank them. In fact, it may even make them the top victim !

DISCLAIMER:  Keep in mind that the opinions listed here are Gin’s, not mine. All of the Espada are neat and gifted us with an absolutely amazing era of Bleach. Keep on rockin’ on, lil Hollows, ilu.

Nnoitra. He’s so fucking stupid and falls for shit pretty damn easily, plus that short temper of his makes for comically explosive reactions that really can scratch Gin’s itch for mischief with a rewarding aftermath of Nnoitra going absolutely batshit. He may not be, technically, the BEST Espada to prank regularly since Gin doesn’t want to deal with him trying to start a fight, but he IS the most animated, idiotic on the list that’s just smarter than Yammy enough to understand when he’s being insulted, but too dumb to know how to avoid said insults.

Yammy. With the above being said, it’s pretty funny to prank Yammy in a similar but notably less rewarded fashion. In fact, if Gin has decided to prank Yammy, it’s usually not even for Yammy’s own reaction, it’s for whoever’s with Yammy. Because the Espada himself typically doesn’t realize he’s being joked about, and certainly doesn’t catch all of Gin’s sly comments, sneaky insults, and other teases. They tend to soar over his incredibly high up and thick skull. The endearing side of this is that, if Yammy realizes he’s been fooled, there’s usually a high chance of him laughing about it while simultaneously mentioning that he should really punch Gin for that. Gin doesn’t disagree.

Grimmjow. Definitely requires a little more absent-minded thought for Gin to truly trick this one. Grimmjow becomes more and more reckless the more riled he gets, and he kid of switches his brain off  ( in Gin’s opinion )  after a set amount of time once riled. So teasing and pranking him requires a gradual build up to sufficiently work, and Gin can’t drag things out for too long or else he’ll catch on and try to either fight him or ignore him. Usually Gin can reel him back by waving around permission for him to try and redeem himself via a World of the Living fieldtrip, see Ichigo again, yada yada... of course, Gin ultimately doesn’t fulfill that tease either. It’s funny to see him huff and stomp around.

Barragan. He’s so serious and stuffy and senile that Gin can actually step on his nerves with little to no effort. Barragan’s bitter and has a pretty strained relationship with Aizen as is, so Gin’s just salt to that wound. IT’S A LITTLE DANGEROUS TO TAUNT THE EX-LORD OF LAS NOCHES. But Gin’s always been one to flirt with death, so he pokes and prods to see just how patient, how tolerating, this supposed king can be. You know, people attribute a level-headed temper with leadership, and if Barragan wants to be seen as regal, Gin’s that ultimate test !  Plus, it’s funny to watch him try to keep his Fraccion from viciously defending his honor like untrained yappy dogs on leashes, barking and yipping at Gin as though they could ever harm him. It’s a buy one get one special to Gin: bothering Barragan, and the pranks involved, brings with it his loyal subordinates too.

Aaroniero Arruruerie.  Not really fond of scientists, Gin tends to not prank this one too much outside of vastly mispronouncing their name(s) on purpose. Gin’ll switch it up lots, even within the same meeting just absolutely butchering it in a different way. A list of names Gin has called them contains, memorably: Aroo-nylon Aroo-roo, Lava lamp, Ararararararara, Thing one and Thing two, Aerodynamics, Glubglub, Adidas, The Glob, Ariel and Aaron, Two Floating Balls, Autocorrect and Autocomplete, Cola and Two Mentos, and many many more.

Szayelaporro.  Gin’s not fond of him either due to the whole Mayuri vibe he catches a whiff of. He avoids pranking him since he knows that, if bitter and petty enough  ( which Gin knows Szayelaporro can become quite easily )  then there may or may not be new trap doors installed on Gin’s route to his bedroom. Besides, others bully this Espada all on their own, so there’s no need.

Starrk.  Gin doesn’t gain much of a reaction from the top dog, but the pup that’s connected to him ?  Lilynette’s fun to mess with for as long as Starrk tolerates the other portion of his soul being taunted. Gin tries not to be too needlessly cruel, though, since she is just a kid -- even if that’s technically not the truth since she’s a Hollow compiled from multitudes of other Hollow and also technically her and Starrk are two parts of one whole, but I mean... that’s where things get confusing. Gin’ll go for more funny pranks, lighthearted, but sometimes he’ll drop in the existential crisis on her and see how she works that whole can of worms out. What even are you, Lilynette ?  

Zommari.  He’s near the bottom because he’s too level-headed to get a rise out of, and Gin’s not interested in such a strong-feeling Aizen enthusiast. He’ll let the guy meditate in peace, or whatever the fuck he’s doing. Snapping his own neck like that ??? No thanks !  Bye bye !

Ulquiorra.  The poor lad just wants to understand human emotions and Gin’s got to pull the whole “oh you mean the soul / heart ? yeah, here’s some really deep insights on the concept of having those emotions and poetic information for you to store in your little emo boy brain but here’s the catch ! i’m just speculatin’ all this shit since i personally don’t have any of those so-called feelings. best’a luck, though !”  Gin won’t prank Ulquiorra too harshly, though, outside of that knee-slapper moment of Gin pulling his leg whilst simultaneously joking about his own lack of emotions masking the fact that he’s, also, having a an entire internal crisis about his heart. Same hat !

Harribel.  Nah. Gin won’t ever prank her. She puts up with enough bullshit being the only female Espada, he won’t add to it. Plus, he kinda doesn’t want to be drowned in his sleep if he manages to really piss her off.