#BECAUSE I WAS LIKE 'this COULD be another tomboy cure or this could be a nonbinary cure or a main team male cure at LAST'

[regallibellbright]

[ID: The images show Cure Wing and Cure Butterfly from upcoming series Hirogaru Sky Precure.

Cure Wing has an orange theme, with pale skin, short orange hair with a large series of cowlicks and a long ponytail, and orange eyes. His Cure outfit consists of light orange and brown shorts with a frilled border and a dark orange, wing-shaped half-skirt with the back fabric aqua near the base and yellow at the tails, a light orange vest with red, yellow, and green buttons and brown piping, short white puffy sleeves with orange trim, a darker orange bolero, and orange boots that end just below his knees. He wears short light orange gloves over dark orange opera-length ones, a small brown top hat with pink trim, a pink ribbon tied around his right thigh matching Cure Butterfly’s, and two round orange earrings in each ear. He is also the second orange Cure in the franchise.

Cure Butterfly has a pink theme, marking her as the first supporting pink Cure in the franchise. She has pale skin, long blonde hair flowing to her mid-shins, and pink eyes. Her Cure outfit consists of a pink multilayered, ruffly halter top and pleated pink miniskirt with a black belt, along with dark pink boots ending at her mid-shin. On her right side is a huge, dark pink butterfly-like ribbon with a white ruffle. She has long pink back bows with a darker pink scalloped pattern, giving the silhouette of butterfly wings. She wears a large pink hair accessory with a light pink, butterfly-shaped bow and darker pink ruffles and ribbons, a purple stocking on her right leg, and a pink ribbon with a four-pointed star just below it on her left thigh, matching Cure Wing. She wears skintight sleeves that taper at the base of her middle finger, light pink at that point and becoming transparent near her shoulders. There are pink and white ruffly bracelets around both of her wrists.

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NEWS ABOUT HIROGARU SKY PRECURE

CURE WING (CV: AYUMU MURASE) is the FIRST (main) MALE CURE IN THE FRANCHISE!

CURE BUTTERFLY (CV: AYAKA NANASE) is the FIRST ADULT (18) CURE IN THE FRANCHISE!

Source here

[edwardelricsrightarm]

Riza Hawkeye as a child/young teen but she's just this Annie Oakley ass prodigal sharp shooter little shit who cuts her hair off with kitchen scissors and runs absolutely buckwild in the woods on her father's estate terrorizing small animals (humanely hunting I'm just being dramatic)

Roy boy is just this awkward nerdy little cornball who wants to get along, but they also kinda have that dynamic from the Swan Princess when Derek and Odette were kids ya feel me? Just watch the childhood montage from that movie you'll understand- ☠️

They have like nothing in common at the time (so they assume) and yet they end up thick as thieves cause Riza hasn't had many friends that she can see outside of her education and had an extremely isolated upbringing, so this goofy sweet baby faced dork just got her like that, even if he sometimes drives her nuts a little bit.

Riza would get upset fairly often bc her neglected social and emotional upbringing would get to her (bc realistically,,,,we know that was the case), and Roy got extremely good at knowing when she's upset and would often be the one to listen to her air her thoughts out (callback to the phone call scene after her encounter with pride, this lends background to how he knows her so well and reads her stress levels like a book even over the phone)

Mundane headcanons:

Roy would transmute little clay/dirt doves and targets for Riza bc he was worried about her shooting glass bottles and other assorted not necessarily safe objects.

Roy is trans, I can't untrans him that's just who he is to me. Riza is a self declared tomboy who I hc as nonbinary/demigirl. They're also bi4bi it's canon Arakawa told me.

Riza didn't really know good birthdays, and when Roy realized this it broke his heart bc Chris always tried to remember stuff like that for him and she's not even his own biological mother. So, he made an annual routine of gifting her something (often transmuted and unique).

Riza loved being out in nature back then and knew the wooded areas around the estate like the back of her own hand, when she and Roy had warmed up more to one another she made a routine of showing him all the neat little spots she'd found in the area for one reason or another, just for the sake of sharing that with someone. These remain some of their fondest memories.

Riza would be more likely to go out to shoot targets when she was angry or upset, if she was having a good day and had the time she would be more likely to go hunting because she enjoyed the hiking and tracking but couldn't focus on it when internally upset. Roy eventually figured this out as well.

Riza climbed so many trees, rocks, outcroppings, etc- and was always scraped up from something she probably shouldn't have climbed getting the better of her.

Riza used to have a nanny birddog named Otto, but he passed away before Roy came around, so making a new friend in him after that loss was a big comfort to her. She was hesitant to have other dogs until Hayate.

They're both autistic.

Relatedly, Riza would go nonverbal and lock herself in her room sometimes. Roy, concerned, would approach this by slipping little notes under the door offering company if needed, while not pushing her to talk.

Riza would sing/hum while doing chores or out and about exploring and on every occasion Roy overheard this he'd turn red from ear to ear- if she caught it and realized he'd heard she'd be twice as embarrassed.

Riza would take Roy foraging and showed him some useful/edible plants, and safe berries and mushrooms that she knew in the region. He was honestly always pretty impressed, especially considering some mushrooms that are safe have toxic siblings that look identical.

Both of them are varying levels of nerd. Riza is the type who's full of trivia, especially weird facts about her special interests (animal behavior, guns, bushcraft, navigation and tracking stuff, etc), Roy started out neutral to this but over time infosharing kinda became their love language, and he'd start to infodump right back. They'd spend hours like that some days.

Riza knows constellations really well for navigational reasons, and there were times that she showed Roy a way to get onto the roof from the attic and they'd stargaze. She would teach folk names of constellations, regional lore behind them, navigational uses for them etc; Roy would tell her basic facts about space and astronomy that come with understanding of alchemy.

Riza typically stuck to small prey (rabbits, fowl, easy to retrieve misc.), but Roy had an awakening when Riza first killed a whole ass deer (albeit a young one) and came back with it thrown over both shoulders with the determined energy of a small lionness.

Riza is REALLY good at cooking and baking because she had a bit too much free time to fuck around in the kitchen. She also learned how to cure and smoke meats bc of her hunting. It certainly helped them stay well fed.

Roy developed a habit of cooking for the household pretty regularly in a swapped routine with Riza after only a while of being around because he saw how much she had to be self sufficient in almost every way and honestly just wanted to relieve her of the constant responsibility and self parentification. He'd also help with chores constantly.

Roy had major internal conflict even early on because he respected his teacher greatly for his intelligence and brilliance, but also kned that Riza wasn't being raised well, and that no matter what he does, Berthold can only decline mentally. This is the root of his protective and caretaking behavior with her, ultimately.

Roy doodled and sketched a lot back in the day and had a little booklet that he guarded with his life bc it started out random assorted things, but eventually devolved into a book full of cute little doodles of mostly Riza jammed into the last half of the book (She can never know-). He still has it stored away.

Riza could easily pick him up even then, this never changed. She got to show this once when he sprained his ankle on a hike with her and she held half his weight as a crutch with no strain to herself. He never quite recovered from that (but boy did it make his crush worse).

Roy would notice rarely he'd have a shirt go missing and never could figure out why til he'd find Riza wearing an identical shirt. (She told herself it's just cause they're cozy of course- she just likes boys clothes too! They look nice under overalls and are comfortable to sleep in! nothing more /s) They never said a word about it even though it was right in front of them, they couldn't dare.

Roy had a bike, and she'd ride behind him down some of the rural roads and paths that could support it for fun sometimes.

During winter the home would get pretty chilly because of its size and not enough stoves/fireplaces to fully warm the declining estate, so when snowed in on miserably cold winter days they'd usually end up reclined in the study by the space heater or in the loungeroom by the fireplace reading separately, but still occasionally talking back and forth.

Riza stopped hunting post-Ishval. She couldn't bring herself to derive that same innocent pride and appreciation for the circle of life she once had, and felt she no longer deserved to have that respectful exchange with the cycle of life and death after what her skills had been used for. She never stops going to shooting ranges, but it's either for standard upkeep of practice or to vent.

[veeranger]

So you want to watch Precure!

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(Google Docs Vers & Changelog)

Maybe you follow people who like it, maybe you just love magical girls and never got into Precure, but there are over a dozen seasons and you don’t know how to jump in. Never fear, this masterpost is here to give you a rundown of Precure, and hopefully by the end you’ll have an idea of where you want to start. 

What Is Precure?

Precure (short for Pretty Cure) is a Toei Animation franchise started in 2004 and has been on the air nonstop since then. It’s a magical girl franchise, y’know like sailor moon or ojamajo doremi or other such shows. The main demographic is children so you don’t have to worry about any weird “fanservice” or panty shots or anything nasty like that, it’s very G rated. 

What Are The Shows About?

In a general sense, Precure is about a team of 2-6 middle school age magical girls fighting bad guys and giant monsters and saving the world on a weekly basis with pretty outfits and big flashy finishers and the power of love and friendship. Each season follows a pretty standard formula (toku fans should be pretty familiar with it for the most part), and each season is around 48-50 episodes long. 

In keeping with this toku-esque formula, most seasons will feature mid season additions to the cast, in the form of new precure heroes. For the sake of not spoiling these shows, these mid season cures will not be mentioned in our plot overviews unless they appear extremely early or something like that. Just know that almost every season will feature an additional cure joining the team later in the show. 

Additionally, every season has at least one movie, these days there’s usually two per season. Usually you’ll find the movies are a standalone self-contained romp, and a crossover movie with the preceding seasons, with a focus on the most recent 2-3 teams. These movies might as well exist in a continuity of their own, and have absolutely no bearing on the plot whatsoever, save for one except which I’ll mention when we get to that season. 

Why Should I Watch Precure?

Because it’s good. It’s a really stellar franchise with a ton of content and genuinely engaging characters and stories. Also this isn’t your mom’s magical girl show, these girls throw punches, and kicks, and big lasers. Precure is pretty well known for being extremely hands on with its combat compared to other magical girl shows, though don’t expect the same kind of fights you’d find in kamen rider or anything. Also a main draw for a lot of people is the amount of gay subtext in, frankly, every season. While there’s only one season with an explicitly confirmed gay relationship between two cures, every season has varying levels of subtext between cures, it’s pretty cool. We won’t discuss the subtext in every season overview but trust us, it’s in there. 

What Show Should I Start With?

It doesn’t actually matter which season you watch, every season is a new setting and with new characters and set in a new world (except for two sequel seasons i’ll explain later), so you’re free to watch whatever you want in any order! We’re going to spend the rest of this post talking about each season to give you, the beloved reader, a glimpse at what each season has to uniquely offer. Don’t worry, there’s no spoilers down there. 

Futari Wa Precure (We Are Pretty Cure) & Futari Wa Precure Max Heart

The original precure show that aired in 2004, and even received an english dub. Misumi Nagisa is a star lacrosse player living a normal life until one day a shooting star she wishes on turns out to be a fairy that careens right into her room, or rather, smacks her right in the face. The fairy, named Mepple, explains he comes from the Garden of Light, another world that’s been taken over by the evil Dark King and his Dark Zone in order to capture the Prism Stones, a number of heart shaped crystals that, if collected, could give Dark King the power to destroy not only the Garden of Light but also the Garden of Rainbows, Earth itself. Meanwhile, Yukishiro Honoka finds a box in her grandmother’s shed containing an item just like the one that smacked Nagisa in the face, and inside is the fairy Mipple, who explains the situation to Honoka. The two fairies, seeking to be reunited, drag Nagisa and Honoka along and the four of them end up meeting up, but are attacked by an emissary of the Dark Zone. Mepple and Mipple grant the confused duo the power to transform into the warriors of legend, Precure. As Cure Black and Cure White, Nagisa and Honoka manage to fight off their attacker and protect their new fairy partners. The girls are then more or less dragged into the battle against the Dark Zone, as the only hope for both Gardens, they fulfill their duty as legendary warriors despite their hesitations and desires to go back to being normal teenagers.

Futari Wa doesn’t exactly have any major themes to speak of, it’s just your standard magical girl vs evil bad guys kind of thing, forgive it for being the first season. What it does have to offer is the relationship between Nagisa and Honoka, as well as the action in fight scenes. The girls don’t start the season as best friends, in fact they barely even know each other’s names when they’re first flung together. It takes a few episodes and a major fight between the girls for them to really start opening up to each other, but soon enough they become inseparable and support each other in everything they do. It’s clear, especially near the end, that the girls cling to each other for support and strength in the face of the increasingly overwhelming odds they face as the Dark Zone gains strength. It’s very compelling to see their relationship deepen in the early season and see how deep their bonds truly go near the end. 

Futari Wa received a sequel show, Futari Wa Precure Max Heart, picking up the story where it left off in the first season’s finale. Honoka and Nagisa are still the main characters, and they’re still fighting the Dark Zone, but this time they’re joined by a mysterious girl named Hikari, who can transform into Shiny Luminous, not a precure but precure-ish. This time the girls are trying to recover the heart and soul of the Queen of the Garden of Light, before the Dark Zone can recover and destroy the queen in her weakened state. Also their precure costumes have changed slightly. 

The first season (that is to say, not max heart) is currently one of the few seasons available with official english subtitles on the streaming platform Crunchyroll

Futari Wa Precure Splash Star

Hyuuga Saki (Cure Bloom), a tomboy who loves playing softball, and Mishou Mai (Cure Egret), a quiet transfer student and aspiring artist, meet each other by chance one day under the Sky Tree, where they discover two creatures from the Land of Fountains named Flappy and Choppy. The two girls transform into the legendary Precure and are tasked with restoring Princess Filia and the Seven Holy Fountains, which were sapped of their power by the evil forces of Dark Fall.

Splash Star's main theme is the appreciation of nature. The main focus is on the girls rediscovering their relationships with their town and the nature and people in it. You get to meet a whole cast of characters in their community, who have a lot of heart and charm behind their writing and the show does a good job of getting you genuinely invested in their stories.

Unfortunately the romance in Splash Star isn’t much better than Futari Wa's (sorry to any Fujimura/Kazuya fans), but the main girls themselves are so engaging that it's easy to ignore. The villains are pretty goofy, but entertaining if you can accept that the show doesn’t take itself very seriously. There are two villains in the latter half of the season that really stand out, though. Without spoiling too much, I can promise you their character arcs will tear at your heartstrings in the best way.

If you've watched Futari wa Precure, Splash Star will probably feel familiar. Although it's the first "reboot" series in the franchise with completely new characters, Toei overall played it safe and Saki and Mai in many ways still feel like "Nagisa and Honoka 2.0". Splash Star is different in enough other ways to make the show stand on its own merits, but if you watch it immediately after Futari wa you might find yourself feeling some deja vu. Personally, I think it's interesting to see what Splash Star builds on and explores when compared to Futari wa, since it has many of the same themes and character archetypes but they play out quite differently.

Yes! Precure 5 & Yes! Precure 5 GoGo!

Nozomi is a cheerful, carefree girl, but she doesn’t have a dream. One day she meets a hot guy and finds a mysterious item called the Dream Collet, capable of granting any wish once all the fairies known as Pinkies are gathered inside it, in the school library. She discovers that the hot guy is actually a tanuki from Palmier Kingdom named Coco, and that the Kingdom has been destroyed by the Nightmare. Coco’s dream is to restore his kingdom using the Dream Collet, and Nozomi decides to make it hers as well. 

She’s joined by her jock friend Rin, Urara, an aspiring actress, Komachi, a writer, and the rich student council president Karen. Together they form Yes Sentai Fiveranger Yes Precure 5 and work together to prevent Nightmare from obtaining the Dream Collet before they can gather all the Pinkies. They also save Coco’s “”””””friend””””””” and fellow hot guy squirrel, Nuts, and he joins them as the second mascot/handsome love interest.

The theme of Yes is dreams and heterosexual furry romance. It pulls off the dreams part very nicely. The het furry romance is bad, mostly because Coco is Nozomi’s teacher at school and also her love interest. However, Coco and Nuts are fairly gay and if you look past the romance part they have very good dadly relationships with the rest of the team. 

Yespre, like Futari Wa, received a sequel show, Yes! Precure 5 GoGo!. After the defeat of Nightmare some time ago, a new faction called Eternal rises up and starts stealing treasures from various dimensions. When Eternal targets the Rose Pact belonging to the Cure Rose Garden, the precure are called back into action to fight against Eternal, with new cure outfits, a new fairy named Syrup, and a new cure-like teammate named Milky Rose.

Fresh Precure!

Fresh is sort of the defining series for modern Precure, introducing a lot of plot and thematic elements to the franchise that would be used repeatedly later on. 

A concert Momozono Love attends is attacked by a monster called a Nakewameke. When Love stands up to it, she is nearly killed, but is saved when she is chosen by a mysterious power to become Cure Peach. She is joined by Inori and Miki as Cure Pine and Cure Berry, and, together with the talking ferret from the Kingdom of Sweets, Tarte, they have to prevent Labyrinth, a grey world led by Mobius, from taking over the Parallel Worlds and transforming them into identical, machine-like dictatorships, and also figure out the secret behind the Magic Baby, Chiffon, that Tarte is entrusted with. 

Fresh’s themes are happiness and nature/technology and donuts. The donuts are important. Labyrinth operates by gathering misery; the Nakewameke are created from it and their function is to create more of it and fill the Sorrow Gauge. All the girls (and the mascot) have love interests and their familial relationships are explored a lot to bring out the general stakes and emphasise what they’re fighting for.

While Fresh is very strong in characters, plot, and thematics, its lack of budget is very apparent. It looks terrible. Fortunately, it isn’t that difficult to get used to the bad animation once you get into the show, although the lack of means tends to show up at inopportune moments, like new powerups.

Heartcatch Precure!

Featuring character designs and art direction from Ojamajo Doremi’s character designer Umakoshi Yoshihiko, and written by Ojamajo Doremi and Onegai My Melody writer Yamada Takashi, Heartcatch should look and feel familiar to fans of either franchise, especially Doremi.

After having a reoccurring dream about someone called Cure Moonlight being defeated trying to defend the “Great Heart Tree”, the shy and reserved Hanasaki Tsubomi moves in with her grandmother and ends up inheriting the will of Cure Moonlight and becomes the newest precure, Cure Blossom. Finding out her grandmother used to be the legendary Cure Flower, Tsubomi vows to protect the world as a precure and learn to change herself for the better. She’s joined by her new friend and the first person she saved as a precure, Kurumi Erika, a loud girl with a big heart who means well, but doesn’t hesitate to speak her mind. Erika becomes Cure Marine and the two become Heartcatch Precure, the newest precure in the long legacy of those who have stood up to the evil Dune, a mysterious invader who destroys planets and turns them into lifeless deserts. Heartcatch Precure fights against Dune’s minions: the mask wearing Professor Sabaku, his Desert Apostles, and the mysterious Dark Precure. Along the way they meet the former Cure Moonlight, now stripped of her power, and try to help her cope with her defeat.

Heartcatch Precure’s main theme is flowers and flower language. Everyone has a “heart flower” that the Desert Apostles take and use to create their monsters every week. As an interesting result of this, the monster of the week will be the main character in the plot of the week and often their big monster form will vent about their issues which will usually lead to a resolution when the precure return them to their regular bodies. Heartcatch also has a very nice backstory and lore to it. Unlike most iterations of precure, the Heartcatch girls are not the first precure to exist in their world, there are dozens maybe hundreds of precure that came before them, fighting against Dune and his forces for hundreds of years. It adds a lot to the narrative in small ways, especially later on in the season. Also the fight scenes are extremely excellent, especially when Moonlight is involved. 

Suite Precure♪

The musical paradise of Major Land falls under siege by the forces of Minor Land, led by King Mephisto. His goal is to steal the living notes of the “Melody of Happiness” and remake them into the “Melody of Sorrow”, throwing the world into a permanent depressive state. As a last resort, Queen Aphrodite scatters the notes into the human world and tasks Hummy, the cat-like fairy, and the Fairy Tones, to find the notes before the forces of Minor Lands can capture them. In the human world, Hummy meets Hojo Hibiki and Minamino Kanade, two girls who were best friends as children, but drifted apart as teenagers because of their tendency to bicker with each other. The two find themselves thrown together again by fate and transform into Cure Melody and Cure Rhythm to protect the things they hold dear. Not long after, the two rekindle their relationship and become closer than before, despite their bickering. Soon the girls run into the mysterious Cure Muse, a girl who appears to be a precure like them, but hides her face with a mask and refuses to join in their fight, claiming to be neither friend nor enemy. Melody and Rhythm battle against Minor Land and the giant Negatones they create from the notes they gather, as well as Siren, another cat-like fairy who used to be Hummy’s best friend before turning to evil and joining Minor Land. 

Suite Precure’s main theme is music, and it is a very encompassing theme. Hibiki and Kanade bond over their piano practice, the town they live in celebrates music frequently and is aesthetically music themed, and their powers take the form of musical instruments. Harmony is also a large theme for the two girls. Their precure power increases as they harmonize with each other, and the early season is very much about them learning to harmonize with each other. Suite also features several extremely well done mystery arcs, about the identity of Cure Muse, and various other things that I can’t very well talk about without risking spoiling things myself. If you manage to go into Suite not knowing anything consider yourself extremely lucky and be super sure not to get spoiled. The show staff went to great lengths to hide certain things, including leaking fake cure designs, and creating a second version of the second dance ending to further mask the identity of Cure Muse until her true reveal. 

Also something to note, usually precure movies have nothing to do with the plot of the show itself and can be watched whenever but the Suite movie is best enjoyed right after the arc revealing Cure Muse’s identity is concluded, it has a nice resolution to plot elements in that arc and sets the stage for the last few arcs of the show, so be sure to watch it then.

Smile Precure!

Written by Kamen Rider Kabuto head writer Yonemura Shoji, Smile Precure is the second season to feature a 5 girl team after Yes! Precure 5 Gogo!. Running late to her first day of school, resident happy-go-lucky klutz Hoshizora Miyuki runs face first into a small creature called Candy, a fairy from a place called Märchenland. The two are attacked by an anthropomorphic wolf named Wolfrun, and Miyuki transforms into Cure Happy to fight against Wolfrun and the big clown faced monster he summons called an Akanbe. After Candy explains that the legends say there are five precure, Miyuki recruits four new friends: the hot blooded Akane (Cure Sunny), shy artist Yayoi (Cure Peace), responsible older sister Nao (Cure March), and refined student council vice-president Reika (Cure Beauty). The five of them become Smile Precure and fight against Wolfrun and his allies in the Bad End Kingdom, who attempt to revive the slumbering Pierrot by trying to put the world in a “Bad End”. 

Smile Precure’s main theme is fairy tales, in a general sense. The Bad End trio are based off of the big bad wolf (Wolfrun), the oni from Momotaro (Akaoni), and the witch from Snow White (Majorina), and Miyuki herself is utterly captivated by fairy tales. The secondary theme is happiness, and the happy go lucky tone of the series often turns on its head during serious arcs to deliver extremely powerful emotional moments. Smile Precure is light on plot, and most episodes are an ultra happy experience, but the show knows how to get serious when it needs to and Smile is exceedingly competent at pulling off drama when the time comes. Smile knows how to get you invested in its characters and use that to pull on your heartstrings during the big moments. The last 10 episodes of the show are the absolute pinnacle of the show’s emotional drama, and each cure gets her own episode for closure before the finale sets in and emotionally destroys you. Also you get to play rock paper scissors with Cure Peace during her roll call so that’s always fun.

Doki Doki! Precure

Doki opens with Trump Kingdom’s destruction by the Selfishness as Cure Sword looks on, helpless. Switching to our world and brighter topics, we meet Aida Mana, Student Council President of Oogai Middle School, whose dream is to become the Prime Minister of Japan. Whenever Mana sees someone in trouble, she’ll help them out, so when a monster attacks the city, Mana does the obvious and tries to stop it. And when, chosen by the fairy Charuru (Charles? Cheryle? Cherry?) to become a Precure and defend the world, she meets Cure Sword, she has to befriend her and help her restore Trump Kingdom and find her happiness. 

Mana (Cure Heart) is joined by Rikka (Cure Diamond), her studious companion and supporter, and also the immeasurably powerful and rich (in that order) Alice (Cure Rosetta). Together they have to unravel the mystery of the man who gave them their transformation items, the missing princess of Trump Kingdom, the strange, evil girl called Regina, and Ai, the chaotic neutral baby who hatches out of an egg. 

Dokipre’s theme is love and selflessness. It also has Deep Lore, a lot of which is established in extra-series material. The show does try to explore concepts like past cures and manages a very nice repeating pattern effect with the plot, in terms of past and future happenings. There’s a lot of foreshadowing. Compared to most Precure seasons it’s very plot-heavy and even the filler usually ends up being plot-relevant. 

Happiness Charge Precure!

The 10th anniversary of Precure! The Phantom Empire is spreading across the world, and Precure are rising up all over the globe to fight them off. In Japan there are two active cures, Cure Fortune, strong and capable, and Cure Princess, scared and unsure of herself. As Cure Princess, Shirayuki Hime, struggles desperately to do her duty as precure, Cure Fortune refuses to work with her for reasons Hime doesn’t fully understand. Realizing her only hope is to find a partner to work with, Hime bumps into Aino Megumi, a super friendly girl who has a tendency to drop everything and help others any time she sees someone in need. Megumi becomes Cure Lovely, and bolstering Hime’s confidence, the two of them become Happiness Charge Precure, tasked with protecting Japan from Queen Mirage and her Phantom Empire. The two are joined by Cure Honey, and eventually Cure Fortune, and the four of them receive support from Blue, the God of Planet Earth. As the girls continue to fight and defend Japan, they are assaulted by Phantom, the ruthless Precure Hunter who has defeated and trapped countless Precure in his Precure Graveyard, and the Oresky Trio, the Phantom Empire generals who oversee the invasion of Japan. 

Happiness Charge Precure’s themes are romance and happiness. There are several arcs dedicated to the budding romances of the cures, and the backstory of the show is heavily tied to romance. Happiness might as well be Megumi’s middle name, she makes it her business to spread happiness to as many people as she can, and takes every chance she can to help others. Happiness Charge is also the first season to have form changes for the precure, each cure has a small selection of forms they can change to for different big attacks, and this concept would later be expanded and used as a core concept in Maho Girls Precure. Like Heartcatch before it, Happiness Charge exists in a world where multiple precure exist, but unlike Heartcatch all those precure exist at the same time in the present day. Other precure teams make cameos every so often and the concept creates a great world in which the whole planet is being protected by teenage girls with superpowers, creating a wonderful sense of scale that really makes the big victories of Happiness Charge Precure feel even bigger. 

Go! Princess Precure

The first precure series to take place at a boarding school! Years ago, a young girl named Haruno Haruka meets a very royal looking person named Kanata who gives her a Dress-Up Key, a big key shaped like a dress. A teenager now, Haruka starts attending Noble Academy, a prestigious boarding school, all the while holding tight to her dream of becoming a true princess, in a quasi-literal sense. Not long after starting the school year, Haruka meets Pafu and Aroma, two fairies from the Hope Kingdom desperate to revive the legendary precure to fight back against Dyspear and her minions who steal dreams to create their giant Zetsuborgs. Realizing what her Dress-Up Key is meant for, Haruka uses it and the Princess Perfume to become Cure Flora. Together with student council president Kaido Minami (Cure Mermaid), and Amanogawa Kirara (Cure Twinkle) a fashion model with huge aspirations, they become the new Princess Precure, tasked with learning to become true princesses along with protecting the Dress-Up Keys from Dyspear’s forces. 

Go! Princess Precure’s main themes are princesses (duh) and dreams. Dreams are a driving force behind all of the cures, and most of the plot of the week characters. Dyspear steals dreams to make monsters, and the precure fight to return those dreams. Characters follow their dreams with conviction, pride, and full commitment. This is also where the princess theme intersects, since it’s Haruka’s dream to become a true princess. One should note that princess is used sort of liberally in this series, it’s not that Haruka wants to somehow become someone of noble birth or have political power, she just wants to be strong, kind, and beautiful, the traits of a true princess in Princess Precure’s own terms. Also she wants to wear pretty dresses and such but who can blame her really. 

Mahou Tsukai Precure! (Maho Girls Precure!)

Quite literally putting the magic in magical girls for the first time in the franchise, Mahou Tsukai Precure was the first season to have its cures be actual magicians. Izumi Riko lives in the magical world, a world where magic is real and she attends a magical academy to hone her craft. She leaves the magical world to travel to the “non-magic” world, to search for a legendary item called the Linkle Stone Emerald. In the non-magic world she ends up catching the attention of another girl, Asahina Mirai, who sees her using magic. After trying to show off some magic and messing it up, Riko is attacked by Batty, a servant of the dark wizard Dokurokushe, who is seeking the Linkle Stone Emerald as well. As fate would have it, both Mirai and Riko carry stones that turn out to be the Linkle Stones Diamond, and the two of them use them to become Cure Miracle and Cure Magical, the legendary Mahou Tsukai Precure. Additionally, the power of the Linkle Stones grants life to Mirai’s lifelong companion, a teddy bear named Mofurun. Having discovered the world of magic and become a precure, Mirai is invited to spend time in the magical world learning magic alongside Riko, before the two, joined by Mofurun and a baby fairy named Ha, return to the non-magical world to search for the Emerald and protect it from Dokurokushe and his minions.

Mahou Tsukai Precure’s main themes are bonds and separation. It’s strengths lie in how it shows the relationship between Mirai and Riko. The show takes its time building their relationship in the first dozen or so episodes of their adventures in the magic world, highlighting their similarities and differences as they grow closer and learn to live with each other and fight as precure together. Well before the halfway mark it’s clear how strong their bond is and how deeply they care for each other, and the lengths they would go to for one another. Mahou Tsukai is an emotional ride in so many ways, every emotional moment hits its mark and the more you get attached to the characters the more the show will hit harder and harder with its moments, both sad and happy. Even side characters get satisfying and emotional conclusions to their storylines outside of the episodes they’re introduced in, it’s all wonderfully crafted.

KiraKira☆Precure A La Mode

Another return to the five cure format, Kirapre is also the second season to feature a sixth team member after Yes! Precure 5 Gogo!, as well as the second season to feature high school age precure after Heartcatch Precure. Usami Ichika is in her second year of middle school and loves sweets, especially making sweets. One day a hungry fairy named Pekorin finds her way into Ichika’s kitchen, and after being fed teaches Ichika about Kirakiraru, an energy source that exists in all sweets, and something that can be stolen and used for evil, leaving the sweets gray and tasteless. Utilizing the power of kirakraru in the shortcake she baked for her mother, Ichika becomes Cure Whip, one of the legendary patissiers, Precure. One by one other precure appear, the smart but shy Arisugawa Himari (Cure Custard), the rock band headliner Tategami Aoi (Cure Gelato), the fickle catlike Kotozume Yukari (Cure Macaron), and the responsible and helpful Kenjou Akira (Cure Chocolat). The five of them fight against the evils of Noir and those he has influenced: Julio, the mysterious masked boy who runs “experiments'' using kirakiraru, and Bibury, a mean spirited girl who uses her talking doll to steal kirakiraru and create monsters.

Kirapre’s main motifs are sweets and animals, and it has a pretty general togetherness and happiness theme going on, the standard precure stuff, mostly viewed through the lense of sweets and sweets-making. All the precure work as patissiers for one reason or another and it’s the main way the team bonds early on. The team, as well as the people of their small town, love sweets as a part of their culture and sweets maintain an important role as the emotional tie that binds most things together in the story. Overall Kirapre is a wonderful show with a great cast on both sides of the conflict, and a lot of care has been put into the show to make sure characters have their moments to interact with each other as well as have their own stories , even on a team of six every precure gets more than enough time to shine on her own. Kirapre is at it’s best when it takes two girls and puts them together for an episode, letting each unique dynamic play out in a fun and satisfying way. Kirapre is also noteworthy for the almost inarguably canonical relationship between two of the cures. It's not exactly explicit and it does leave something to be desired, since this is a Toei children's show, but there’s not really any other way to read the evolution of their relationship or their duet song, so I’m more than satisfied calling it canon.

This season is currently one of the few seasons available with official english subtitles on the streaming platform Crunchyroll 

HUGtto! Precure

Precure’s 15th anniversary! This season is in many ways a celebration of all things Precure, bringing together a lot of familiar elements from past shows into one. Hugtto! is another five cure season whose main themes are destiny and future. Nono Hana (Cure Yell) is a thirteen-year-old girl whose dream is to be a "cool and stylish woman," although she worries that others see her as childish. One day, a hamster named Harryham Harry and a magical baby named Hugtan fall out of the sky into Hana's house. They're being chased from the future by an evil organization called Criasu Corporation, who are trying to use Hugtan's power to freeze time forever. Hana makes friends with two of her classmates: the responsible class representative Yakushiji Saaya (Cure Ange) and the reclusive ex-figure skater Kagayaki Homare (Cure Etoile), and together they fight Criasu while taking care of Hugtan and figuring out the many mysteries surrounding her. Expect some light sc-fi elements and an emphasis on modern technology/social media.

Hugtto! explores its themes primarily through the lenses of childcare and the workplace, giving us a look at how each girl comes to terms with the transition from childhood to adulthood. This season does a good job of letting each member of the team shine; you spend several episodes with each girl (or duo of girls) and there's a real sense of a complete character arc for all of them. The romance aspect is, unfortunately, pretty bad: there’s a return of hetero furry romance between Harry and Homare, and Hana’s love interest exhibits some really creepy behavior towards her. There’s uncomfortable age gaps in both of these relationships too so it’s a just a bit…. Yikes. Thankfully, it’s fairly easy to ignore like past seasons, but a warning for it nonetheless.

Something that makes this season stand out is its LGBT subtext; there's a TON of it even compared to the normal amount that Precure is known for. Without giving away too much, two of the cures this season are heavily coded as lesbians (though not with each other per se), and there's a subplot concerning a side character who is pretty explicitly (well, as explicit as Toei dares to be) a gender non-conforming man/nonbinary person in love with another man, and it's all very wholesome and presented in a positive light. Again, this is Toei, so don't expect anything too radical, but I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised with how Hugpre handles it.

Finally I'll just say that while Hugpre is a fantastic season on its own, I would personally recommend waiting to watch it after you've seen some other seasons (notably Futari wa). It's not required, but since Hugpre is an anniversary season, there are a few episodes (especially near the end) that will really hit different if you have an emotional connection to the franchise already. Ultimately though this is a fairly minor part of the show, so watching this season first won’t ruin it or anything like that, it’s just something to keep in mind.

Star☆Twinkle Precure

Precure… in space! Our protagonist, Hoshina Hikaru (Cure Star) loves space and cryptids, to the point of drawing her own constellations. One of her constellations is an adorable alien puffball, who warps into Hikaru’s room almost immediately after she draws it. The puffball quickly befriends Hikaru, who names her Fuwa. They are later joined by Prunce, the team dad friend/alien mascot, and Lala (Cure Milky), a humanoid alien who is an adult in her own culture. After our initial duo gets off to a bit of a rocky start, they are joined by the student council president, Kaguya Madoka  (Cure Selene) and a biracial upperclassman who is considered to be the “sun” of the school, Amamiya Elena (Cure Soleil). Together, they explore the universe and befriend all sorts of aliens, while also defending them from the Notraiders, who want to rid the universe of all imagination. On top of that, the universe is dying and the cures need to find the 12 astrologically themed Star Pens to save it and the 12 Star Princesses. This series is notable for attempting to break the “monster of the week” format, instead making it a “fight of the week”.

The major themes of Star Twinkle are space, imagination, and maturity. The cures have to explore the universe to find the Star Pens, and in doing so, visit a bunch of different planets. About half the series is spent on Earth, but the world still feels developed! Honestly speaking, the theme of imagination is forgotten pretty quickly and I’d refer to it more as free will. The theme of maturity is where Star Twinkle really shines. All of the cures have had to grow up too fast in some way, and the series is partially about just allowing them to goof off. Lala is considered an adult on her planet, and this plot point is treated realistically. Well, as realistically as it can be. This is one series I’d recommend avoiding spoilers like the plague for, because part of the fun is in how the plot twists are pulled off. Also Star Twinkle is notable for featuring the first ever dark skinned precure, as Elena is half-hispanic. 

Healin’ Good Precure

The currently airing Precure season, as of this writing. The Byogens seek to revive their king by inflicting viruses on Earth, the Healing Garden sends three medical interns to combat them. These interns, fairies named Rabirin, Pegitan, and Nyatoran, along with a baby fairy princess named Latte, journey to Earth to find partners to become Precure. They end up meeting Hanadera Nodoka, a kindhearted girl who was hospitalized for most of her young childhood. After Nodoka risks her life to protect Latte, Rabirin chooses her to become Cure Grace. Joined by older sister type Sawaizumi Chiyu (Cure Fontaine) and the outgoing Hiramitsu Hinata (Cure Sparkle), they form Healin’ Good Precure, and defend their friends and the Earth from the Byogen’s newest wave of attacks. 

This season is currently one of the few seasons available with official english subtitles on the streaming platform Crunchyroll.

Where To Watch Precure Online

Unfortunately for us, Precure isn’t really a thing in the west. There was a dub of Futari Wa back in the early 2000’s and Smile and Doki both got “adapted” into Glitter Force over on netflix (I don’t really recommend checking those out), but really Precure just doesn’t exist over here.

However, as mentioned above, there are currently three seasons avalible for streaming on crunchyroll. The original Futari Wa Precure, Kira Kira Precure A La Mode, and the current season, Healin’ Good Precure.

Beyond these isolated examples of official releases, you can really only watch precure online on streaming sites or through torrents. You can find precure pretty much on any major anime streaming site, kissanime, gogoanime, the works. You can also try your luck torrenting the seasons, i’ve found that pretty much every season has a working torrent you can find on sites like nyaa.si or the like. For more recent seasons you should have little difficulty getting torrents, and last time i checked every season was on one of the aforementioned streaming sites. What I’m saying really is there’s no single place to find precure, but it’s not impossible to find for sure.

Thanks for reading this post, I hope you decide to check out precure and I really hope you end up loving it.Thanks to my wonderful friend @meltorights​ for writing the sections on Yespre, Fresh, and Dokipre, to @wonderlilane​ for writing the sections on Splash Star and Huggto, and @cure-cosmo​ for writing the segment on Starpre. 

If you have questions feel free to drop me an ask I’d be happy to help. I will literally go out of my way to help you if it means getting someone new into precure so please do not hesitate by any means. 

[mamomare]

Legacy Challenge - Gen #4

Heir: Gunnar Partner: Helena Children: Zion, Daxton, Rylan and Adelynn

Gunnar grew into a bit of a quirky music nerd. He joined the music career after mastering the Violin young. He became quite lonely after his mother passed away, but was struck by an intense, sudden attraction to barista Helena while visiting a cafe in Windenburg. The two fell in love and lust immediately, but little did Gunnar know... Helena had a secret. After finally getting married and moving in, Gunnar finally found out Helena’s true nature. She was a vampire! Before Helena met Gunnar, she was materialistic and evil, she didn’t care who she hurt or who got in her way. But something about Gunnar’s good nature and his sweet disposition inspired her to do better. He even demolished his family home, building a small little vampire-friendly starter home more after her tastes. It was entirely decorated in her darker, more gothic aesthetic despite Gunnar himself liking brighter more modern design. The only room in the house that he called his own was a music studio with a grand piano, his prized violin and his great grandad’s guitar. Helena loved this man and immediately dedicated herself to Vampire Lore, her aim was to cure her vampirism and become the Sim she knew Gunnar deserved. She even ordered plasma packs instead of feeding on others.... mostly. After joining the mixology career, Helena became pregnant and soon after gave birth to twin boys. Two more different sims could not exist. The eldest, Zion, a luscious blonde haired vampire, evil by nature with big dreams of international fame and fortune. The younger twin, Daxton, a bit more like his father. Floppy, long brunette hair and a bit of a goof, he preferred to dedicate himself to his studies and playing tricks on his family and friends. Their second child was yet another boy, Rylan, who although quiet, would dedicate himself to his family the rest of his days. Finally, after all their attempts, Gunnar and Helena welcomed the girl they always wanted - Adelynn.  Soon after Adelynn grew into toddler, Helena finally realised that curing vampirism was actually easy as fuck and she had been stupid the entire time. She had been focusing all her energy on levelling up her vampirism, when all she actually needed to do was read some dusty, old books and make a random drink with definitely trustworthy ingredients ordered off the interwebs. At last, she was cured! She noticed her core being changed, as her evil trait disappeared, making way for the Sim she had been under the curse of its evil. However, she saw the vampire traits starting to manifest in her youngest daughter and vowed to make sure Adelynn never followed in her footprints.

Despite being evil and an incredibly useless student, Zion finally found purpose in acting. He joined the drama club in high school and his family saw hope for him yet, despite the fact he kept disappearing at night time... for... reasons. However, just as Zion was starting to turn over a new leaf, tragedy struck. Whilst doing his darnedest to finish a school project, he forgot to keep track of time and was burned alive by the sun. 

The rest of the family never really recovered from the shock. They just continued their day-to-day existences. Helena making drinks. Daxton doing his homework. Gunnar composing mournful ballads on his piano. Adelynn... doing other stuff. Daxton soon left to attend University and Rylan moved to the city to find himself. 

Due to her vampirism and many pregnancies, Helena outlasted the love of her life, Gunnar, who eventually died of old age. Leaving poor Helena and Adelynn alone in the house. Adelynn, an awkward tomboy with an idyllic romantic heart, was much closer to her father and found it difficult to live alone with her mother, but she persisted for the love she had for her dad. Rylan stayed in close contact with them, especially Helena, and would often call and invite them over to his gross tiny apartment in San Myshuno. 

---

Just like the last gen, I wasn’t that excited for this heir. Because Yukio had already done the music thing with his guitar, I wasn’t really that inspired by Gunnar being a musician. However, I really loved the storylines that evolved after meeting Helena and she was honestly the saving grace of this entire gen. I haven’t really done the vampire thing, so trying to cure it and level it up was all new and exciting.  The child I was most excited for was Zion, I had so many grand plans for his future as an actor, but I screwed up and forgot about him and he burned up in the sun!! I’m also a bit angry at myself that I never got a proper family photo of all the children. It’s so hard to find a pose pack for the right amount of sims at the right ages, and because the boys were twins, it was even harder. I was kind of waiting for them all to age up, but Zion died before I could get the photo. I even tried to keep his ghost around, but then Gunnar died before I could figure out how to include the ghost in the picture too.  I used a lot from the gallery initially, but as the family grew I heavily modified it and I actually really liked the way it turned. Of course, I never thought to take a screenshot or save it, so it is now lost forever.

[van-goghs-smoking-skull]

Ok, now that I'm not in a rush to get to work...

There were more URLs after that.

So, some background. The guy was commenting on a post and took issue with me because I don't see a problem with kids using a different name or different pronouns in class to fit in. To him, it's all a big agenda, a big trans agenda. They're forcing kids through indoctrination to change their names to fit in and it's not right to bully kids like that, stop making kids read books with gay and trans characters as it's brainwashing them, and all that horseshit.

But, oh, the irony.

Tomboys are cool and shouldn't be bullied, but trans boys, trans mascs, butch? That's an agenda and they shouldn't be forcing 'sex-change operations' on 7-year-olds. And that's after it was explained that you don't NEED to have bottom surgery to be transgender, after it was explained that nicknames can be used and the kid doesn't have to be trans for that, and after it was pointed out that he was using a fake name to fit in on social media, himself. Somehow, he's convinced himself that gay and trans characters are grooming kids to be gay and trans, but doesn't see how straight cis characters could be said to be grooming kids to be cishet by that logic.

He was mad that people were talking politics with him when he has non-political blog right there in his bio. So, why did he hop onto a blogpost that he thought was political in nature? Why did he start arguing in the comments on that blogpost? Why does he list political affiliations on a non-political blog? Sus.

He was mad because by pushing anti-trans bills against schools, parents, and trans kids, he thought he was being progressive and helping the kids, because he believes in freedom.

And to think, I blocked him, but after raging for a couple weeks, he manages to make another account just so he can send me anon hate under the guise of leading me to Jesus and curing me of the science brainwashing?

It's all conspiracy theory and it's what it looks like when someone is actually chronically online and it's sad that people waste their lives dedicating themselves to trying to control everyone's else's life in the name of freedom. Clearly he wouldn't know what freedom was if it bit him in the ass, seeing as it's currently biting him in the ass and he still doesn't know what it is.

I got one hell of an anon (or so he thinks - great job outing yourself, sweaty) 'ask' in my inbox today, but it's so unhinged, I'm not answering it as intended, but simply posting about it. Not to worry, you won't miss much when a quarter of it was URLs to Youtube videos that supposedly prove god is real and being trans is ... idk, the devil, Ig.

He starts out with a URL, then goes off about how Snoopy (had to look that up, it's apparently a cartoon dog that sometimes imagines itself as shooting down a particular Nazi) was used as government indoctrination in school to make us believe in science. Ok, first off, we didn't watch cartoons in school. Snoopy was created by a cartoonist (so sayeth Wikipedia), and was not 'government indoctrination'. And as far as I can tell, it seems the cartoon celebrated play and pretend (you know, fiction?) and Snoopy's flights weren't science but imagination. Also, science is not a religion or any kind of belief system, so anyone 'believing in' science is doing science wrong.

Cue paragraph 2 with additional URLs to Youtube videos and a rant about how David Attenborough proves that there's something more than what's in the physical realm in his videos, proving god is real. This is that 'you sound like you live in an AU' thing I talked to you about. Yes, that does mean I know who anon is. I blocked him, so I don't remember the exact wording of his bio, but he's 'non-political' and 'libertarian' and 'liberal', and lists his Myers Briggs (which is just an early fandom-like quiz, not scientifically based at all) results, proud of himself for avoiding logic and reason and relying entirely on his feelings. David Attenborough is a biologist and I seriously doubt he's 'proving god is real', which in itself is impossible to do.

Then another URL and telling me I need to learn about Jesus so I can 'stop being a mess'. Funny thing- I read the Bible, multiple versions and cover to cover, which is why I'm no longer an Evangelical Lutheran and why I'm now an Atheist. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've heard of Jesus. I just also happen to be good at distinguishing between reality and fiction.

[caithyra]

I’m suuuure he’s shocked /s

GRRM: “Oh woes! I have created a perfect and supporting family for my main characters and I need conflict to make it interesting! What could possibly ruin a good family?”

GRRM: “Ah! A girly girl, of course!” *Creates Sansa.* “And a traitorous bitch at that who would chose to support and protect her child over her birth family who do not rely on her for protection! Surely all shall realize what a bad person she is! It’s not like her own mother would be condemned for abandoning a child that’s not even her own!” *Creates first outline.* “But wait! She shall be prepubescent at the start of the story...” *Starts creating the actual story.* “I shall introduce her through the resentful tomboy’s perspective! And I shall have grown men slobbering over this prepubescent girly girl because we all know that’s ~*historically accurate*~! Oh, people do not like her? I am shocked! Shocked!”

Like, it says a lot about a narrative that when the author wants to create conflict and shake up a healthy family dynamic in a supremely patriarchal world, that he introduces a prepubescent, feminine sister who is unfavored by her father compared to her tomboy sister (even Sansa’s betrothal is a sham even if it would have made her future queen-in-waiting. If everything went as Ned planned, her virtue would have been ruined on the Trident and after he breaks the betrothal with Joff by accusing him of being a bastard, Sansa’s play-acting at love and having been alone with Joff would have ruined her for good, future prospects and the best she would get is either a disinherited second son who no one else wants to marry or a jumped up house who wants some blue blood like the Freys, Baelishes or Westerlings-Spicers that no one important likes.

Arya, by being younger, and more like Lyanna, would have gotten the queenhood and crown prince by Robert’s second wife after Cersei is disposed of, since Robert really wants to marry his child to Ned’s children, so no one better tell me that Ned ever put Sansa ahead of Arya the same he puts Arya ahead of Sansa. He freaking hides behind his prepubescent daughter’s skirts while investigating what he believes are ruthless murderers who had no qualms killing the most powerful men in the realm in a hyper-patriarchy! And it is the other daughter he warns about dangers and gives lessons in fighting! Like what was Ned thinking would happen with Sansa? Did he even care? Did he think he could just sweep it under rugs and forget it? She will need to marry within recent memory of her scandalous conduct since she’ll be twenty in less than a decade! And marriageable age in Westeros is 16! And yet the fandom goes “Poor Ned to have that traitorous bitch for a daughter~” “She should have listened to Ned who never spoke to her and explained himself or the world wouldn’t be ending~” “I don’t hate Sansa but she was sooo stupid for not blindly obeying her loving father who punishes her for her sister’s sins and never explains himself~” is it any wonder my patience with Ned Stark’s parental fuck ups ran out? Congrats, fandom, you made me hate him by excusing his fuck ups and blaming them on his daughter all the time!).

GRRM tries to make it gray, but he knows full well what kind of audience he writes to when he writes the relationships between Cat and Jon, and Arya and Sansa and should have compensated.

Hell, he should have made Joff a good person, prince and promising future king that most girls would like to marry, only to show that’s not what Ned cares about (after all, unless Ned wants Sansa to be abused like half the fandom, he had no idea that Joff was bad when he betrothed them), he cares about birth and truth and “High As Honor” over practical things like “Winter is Coming and Staying for Ten Freezing Years and Does Not Care Who Sits On the Throne So Lets Not Start a Civil War with One of the Most Powerful Families in the Realm, hm?”.

I mean, no one likes Drizzt Do’Urden’s sisters/mother/the matriarchy as a whole, do they? The Dark Elf Trilogy predates ASoIaF by six years, and should have shown a competent writer exactly what the state of womanhood in the Fantasy genre was like. And if you’re going “well, the matriarchy is evil!” I would like to point out that people hate Cattie-brie who is not part of that matriarchy. Yeah. There’s a reason why Menzoberranzan could be written that way and published and become popular, and it was not that Fantasy readers love and support and makes the effort to identify with and understand female characters (nor does most authors, come to think of it... see female friendships in ASoIaF that are without any sexual, incest, or abusive~ Like Arianne and Tyene being as close as sisters in the Later Books Which Are Not Early Installment Weirdness... Oh wait...).

Heck, in the Belgariad, another series predating both of them, things were more subtle but hardly better for female characters; Polgara is a mother figure who gets to have a moment of being imperfect, but to anyone reading the story, it is clear that Garion is the true victim in the circumstances and conspiracies Polgara’s family has woven around him, and that his anger is the immediate reaction of finding out the truth (he just found out how/why he was orphaned and now has the world on his shoulders! And the characters bag on him for not being understanding of the 1000s of years old woman who lied to him and now is sulking. It is blatantly obvious to the readers that it is not the male character in the wrong). The less said about Ce´Nedra (half hyper-sexual dryad, spoiled princess who wants bigger breasts, et cetera) the better. Heck, the less said about the lovable oaf of the hero group committing marital rape on his estranged wife to cure her of being a bitch and turn her loving the better.

The Narnia books predates even that, and Sansa’s direct parallel is Susan, and, yeah... “A silly and vain young woman” with “Plenty of time to mend” sounds very familiar when you hear how people blame Sansa and wants to force her into abusive marriages with repulsive men to mend her.

Not to mention that in Lord of the Rings and related works women are either paragons of virtue, evil, unnamed or are chastised for being ambitious, with a few, notable exceptions allowed to make “wrong” choices, and, well, just see the Elwing discourse in fandom and how her murderers who kidnapped and kept her children (Elrond and Elros, yes, that Elrond for those not familiar with Tolkien’s Legendarium and only watched the movies) as hostages are their ~*real parents*~ after committing a third almost-genocide against her people.

Yeah, no. GRRM doesn’t get to pretend he’s shocked and/or confused by his readers’ reception to Sansa (and Cat). He does not live, read nor write in a vacuum. This shit has been part of Fantasy fandom since long before ASoIaF was an errant idea in his head.

[hathousehappenings]

Hare Cosplay

This has been a project that I’ve been working on since June and I can finally reveal the process.

Say hello to my Hare cosplay!

Originally this was a promise to myself that if I continued to lose weight during the summer, I’d let myself dress up as Hare for Halloween. Then it turned into something of its own.

First I started with the ears!

I used this tutorial by Kimidori Cosplay to make my ears. I made paper mock-ups first and used those as templates for making the finals. The first change I did from the source tutorial was that I ran two wires up the center of each ear to add structure as well as strength for attaching it to my headband. Yes, the second change I made from the tutorial was that I refused to wear a wig. So I attached the ears to a black headband and clip that to my head with numerous barrette clips. I literally have between 10-15 around my head when I wear this thing to keep it secure so I can move more freely. Could I do the Fondue dance while I’m wearing them? Maybe not. But I can shake my head around and they don’t fly off, which is nice. I took the wires from the ears and wrapped them around my headband and use those as anchor points for the clips to grip my hair. Everything is hand sewn as well because my sewing machine is a piece of crap. Below is an image of the finished headband before I hot-glued everything down.

Next is my suit! This was the part of the costume that I was the most nervous to tackle. I knew I’d have one chance at it and if I messed it up... this costume would become very expensive very quickly.

I started by scouring the internet for linen blazers and white cotton capri pants. I was lucky enough to find a cream blazer second hand on ThreadUp and the capris on sale on Amazon. While I waited for those to arrive (with the rest of the order I will cover later) , I watched episodes of the show to decide how I wanted to interpret Hare’s pattern on his suit. Earlier in the summer I had tie dyed a couple shirts to look like Hare’s, so I had an idea of what I did (and didn’t) want to do.

I came up with the above design and stuck with that through the rest of the dying process.

I laid each garment down and placed the stripes where I wanted them. Is this actually tie dying? Probably not. But I used tie dye kits, so it counts to me. I did each piece, let them to sit for 24 hours wrapped in plastic and threw them in the washer. The jacket got two coats of dye because the first pass was too pastel for my liking.

After washing the suit, I painted the black stripes and coral accents using fabric paint and a sponge. This then sat for 3 days to cure completely before it got one more run through the washer. By this point I was ready to wear the darn costume, but I had forgotten one of the most important parts of the outfit...

The makeup.

Let me start by saying that I took one “Make-up for the Stage” class in college 10 years ago, so I had no idea what I was doing. I’m a tomboy and don’t ever wear makeup. So I ran out to Target and bought way more supplies than I’d ever need and smeared it all over my face. With some guidance from some very patient friends, I came up with this:

As much as I’d wanted to, I couldn’t convince myself that this was a good time to learn how to sculpt and apply a prosthetic to my face. So I faked it using brown eyeshadows and an eyebrow pencil. Every time I do the makeup it comes out a little different, which I guess is part of the fun. I’m not a professional makeup artist, so I learn more each time I apply this look. But this is the general idea of what I go for. (Also freckles that I forgot to add to the sketch!) Is it exactly what I wanted? Nope. Not at all. But is it the best I could do with my current skill set? You’d better believe it.

With my formerly white capri pant Amazon order, I also got a pair of yellow gloves, a yellow button down shirt, purple bow tie, orange suspenders, a pair of both green and red knee socks (for that classy mismatched look), round glasses and fake bunny teeth. I grabbed a pair of yellow high tops from my closet and that is what made up the costume.

I took pictures and was fairly happy with the design... then I realized that I needed props. But those will wait for another post. For now, enjoy me hamming it up for the camera.

[hecohansen31]

Michael Langdon One Shots (Masterlist)

“Heavy Is The Heart Of A King” (Hades! Michael+Persephone! Reader) (*).

SUMMARY: Your husband lately has seemed distant and you are unable to stop yourself from goin anything but pushing away. Not everything is easy when you are the ruler of the Underworld…

WARNINGS: OOC! Michael, Not Based Onto Actual Myths, Hadestown! Inspired, Anger Outbursts, Mention of Explotaition and Sex.

“Reaching Ecstasy” (Art Teacher! Michael+Student! Reader) (*).

SUMMARY: When the times come for your interview with Mr. Langdon, your art teacher, you can’t help but be rather confused by his requests.

WARNINGS: Oral Sex (Female Receiving), Compromising Situation and Slight Dub-Con (Michael using his position of power over Reader, although she is consensual to the entire thing) (also Reader is absolutely legal, since she is 20, in this fic!), Blasphemous talk about Ecstasy.

“Shameless” (Dance Instructor! Michael+Prima Ballerina! Reader) (*).

SUMMARY: Your dance instructor has always been an enigma to you, till a lone night in the dance-room, where dance and secrets ends up tangled together (exactly as you and Michael).

WARNINGS: Unprotected (WRAP IT UP KIDS) Sex, Dom-Sub dynamics (with change of powers), Fingering, Guided Masturbation, slightly Dub-Con, Vulgarities, Mention of Satanism and Supernatural Themes, Slight Angst, Slut-Shaming and Religious Fanatism.

(Kinktober: (17th) Breeding Kink) (Supreme! Michael+Alpha! Reader) (*).

SUMMARY: Michael’s desire for you is suddenly so unhibited and strange and you can’t help but wonder what has caused it… although you are not complaining about it

WARNINGS: Oral Sex (Female Receiving), Unprotected Sex, Breeding Kink/Creampie.

“Little Love Notes” (Outpost! Michael+ Ex-Secretary! Reader): (*).

SUMMARY: You have grown accostumed to leaving little cute notes on your boss’ desk, and this got you fired, as soon as Mr Langdon discovered the identity of his secret admirer… but appreantly it does’t end here…

WARNINGS: Rough (Unprotected: guys… please don’t do it withouth a condom, it does not only protect from unwanted pregnancies, but also it is against STDs) Sex (with things such as spanking and a lot of rough handling), Oral Sec (Female Receiving), Semi-Public Sex (Reader is on the phone at a certain point). “Sir” Kink, but generally BDSM relationship going on!

“Those Worlds” (Outpost! Michael+Reader) (*).

SUMMARY: When anything fails, Michael has to resort to those words..

WARNINGS: Just Michael Threateing People… and Mention of Depression and Anxiety.

“A Change Of (H)air & Other Things” (Outpost! Michael+Short Haired! Reader) 

SUMMARY: Life at the Outpost is pretty boring, mosty when you are separated from your love and waiting for him… and this prompts a little change with the help of a fellow survivor…

WARNING: Mention of Sex, and Hair Pulling… (also just Outpost! Michael being a little shit).

“The Magic Word Is” (Fire & Reign! Michael+Secretary! Reader) (*).

SUMMARY: Although you might be Michael’s submissive, he is completely wrapped around your little finger.

WARNINGS: Dom-Sub Relationship, Spanking, Punishment, Sexual Themes, Mention of Sexual SItuations, Nudity, Mention of Self-Harm.

“Preying On You” (Vampire Sojourn! Michael+Human! Reader) (*).

SUMMARY: What was supposed to be a girls’ night out turn out much more bloody than what ou expected, but there might be some advantages to meeting a vampire…

WARNINGS: Unprotected (DON’T FORGET CONDOMS, KIDS), Rough Sex, Dub-Con, Blood Consumption and Blood Kink (THERE WILL BE BLOOD, KIDS!), Oral Sex (Female Receiving), Kidnapping (and mention of sexual trafficking, alongside use of drugs to kidnap), Michael being a bit of a stalker…

“My Burning Sun Will Someday Raise” (Vampire Crimeboss! Michael+Human! Reader) (*).

SUMMARY: Your Michael Langdon’s little mouse: costantly searching for secrets for him, but once the truth is out, you might become more and more important to the cold-hearted man.

WARNINGS: Unprotected (WRAP IT UP, PLEASE!) Sex, Oral Sex (Female Receiving), Blood (drinking and blood play), Mention of Violence, of Slut-Shaming, and Usage of Vulgar Terms.

“In The Garden of Evil” (Borgia! MIchael+Servant! Reader) (*). 

SUMMARY: The oldest story of all, the little mouse caugh in its own trap, as she spies something much juicier than any apple.

WARNINGS: Male Masturbation, Voyeurism, Exhibitionism, Mention of Sex and Incest, Blasphemy and Renainssance mentions.

“Only Destiny Can Judge Us” (Supreme! Michael+Alpha! Reader) (*)

SUMMARY: The cycle that the prophecy spoke about is going to start again, and your nightmares are only the proof of how horrid it will all be again.

WARNINGS: Resurrection Talk, Violence, Non-Sexual Choking, Prophecy, AU; Unprotected (DO IT WITH PROTECTION, BABES!) Sex, Oral (Female Receiving) Sex, Fingering, Hate-To-Love.

“I Know The Science of The Ancient Flame” (Michael+Reader, Modern AU).

SUMMARY: Stuck in a tiny elevator with your ex-boyfriend, you suddenly discover that your story might be more classical than you thought.

WARNINGS: Angst, Past Trauma, Break-Up, Classical Annoying Things, Claustrophobia, Claustrophobic Spaces.

(Kinktober: (28th) Master/Mistress) (*).

SUMMARY: Your jealousy sometimes just gets the best of you

(Also this is inspired by a conversation I had with @/dyns33, so thank you, sweetie I hope you’ll like it, and alongside this… I have another idea for them).

Also this is based onto this.

WARNINGS: Bloody (I didn’t have a blood kink before this pairing…), Fingering, Oral Sex (Female Receiving), Squirting, Slightly Dub-Con (Vampire Mind Tricks), Master, Vulgarities, Mention of Drugs.

“A Cure For Unrequited Love” (Hawthorne Michael+Witch! Reader+Cordelia) (*).

SUMMARY; When your crush for the headmistress of Robinchaux, ends up badly, Michael decides to help you get over with it, with a rather “unorthodox” method…

WARNINGS: Rough Unprotected (as always wrap it up before doing the dirty; it will protect you from both unwanted pregnancy and STDs, be smart and safe, lovelies of mine) Sex (specifically we are talking about Hate-Sex, so be aware of that), Spanking, Slapping, Sir Kink, Degradation through harsh words, Oral Sex (Female-Male receiving) and  Magic involved in the bedroom (because that’s what I would do with magic, I am a hoe…). Also Angst, Heartbreak and Unrequited Love.

(Kinktober: (19th) Double Penetration) (Fuckboy! Michael+Reader+Incubus! Michael) (*)

SUMMARY: Michael can’t help but love your devilish mind, sometimes.

WARNINGS: Vaginal/Anal Sex, Unprotected (USE A PROTECTION KIDS, I LOVE YOU AND STAY SAFE)/Oral Sex (Female Receiving)/Incubus involved in sex/Double Penetretation.

“Terrible Thing” (Hawthorne! Michael+Scorned! Reader): (*)

SUMMARY: Boys will be boys, but then girls shall be girls and take their revenge and when one specific warlock we all know decides to do prank another witch… well he is about to learn that a scorned woman is the most dangerous beast of them all (Also, little suggestions: if you want to feel the full extense of this…listen meanwhile reading to “Terrible Things” by AG & Brad Gordon).

WARNING: There is no sex, but there is a bit foreplay and dirty talk, alongside a good amount of nudity so… you better read this in your room, alone…

“The Tomboy & The Model” (Model Michael+Tomboyish! Reader) (*)

SUMMARY: You and shy model Michael could be the most different people in the world, but somehow you end up working quite well together.

WARNINGS: Sub! Michael, Dom! Reader (also brief mention of Dom! Michael and Sub! Reader), Spanking, Oral Sex (Male and Female Receiving), Orgasm Denial, A Bit Of Dirty Talk, Use of the F-word, and Drunken Assault.

(Kinktober: (23rd) Model! Michael+Tomboy! Reader) (*).

SUMMARY: On a particular hard day Michael shows you how beautiful you truly are.

WARNINGS: Fingering (Female Receiving), Body Worship, In Front of A Mirror, Stress and Anxiety Mentions.

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 191

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 42 - “Rin and Karen’s Secret Promise” Date watched: 1 June 2020 Original air date: 2 December 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/FiOgssJ Transformation Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/6k6SzS0 Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

Just a couple of gals being pals: part 2

Karen and Rin seem like an odd pair of friends. This has been pointed out before by me, and by the show itself. In a way, they resemble Nagisa and Honoka from the first series, so while they don’t share as tight of a bond as the original duo, they do have a unique closeness in that “opposites attract” kind of way. Today we’re going to explore that a little more!

The Plot

It’s now December so the girls get to decorating Natts House for the Christmas season sale. Everyone contributes in their way to make sure it looks immaculate, but they forgot to get flowers, so Nozomi voluntells resident flower experts Rin and Karen to go get some.

In Nightmare, Hadenya mocks Bunbee for his constant failure and reminds him that failures usually get the Black Paper. (remember this for next episode)

Rin and Karen arrive at Fleuriste Natsuki, only for Rin’s mom to ask Rin to tend to the shop so she can pick up the twins. Since Rin is stuck, she suggests Karen take the flowers back to Natts House by herself, but Karen offers to stay and help as well. Rin doesn’t think she’s up to the task, but Karen proves her capacity when she helps some customers while Rin is tied up with a phone order. Karen impresses Rin with her knowledge, and Rin impresses Karen with her people skills. Since they’ve been gone a while, Komachi begins to worry about them back at Natts House, and Urara fears they may have gotten into another fight over flowers. Nozomi, however, has full confidence in her decision to send both of them together and tells the others not to worry. Rin and Karen continue to work side by side, and at the end of the shift, Karen observes that Rin is really passionate about flowers, in a more tender way than herself, and tells Rin she could do this for a career. Rin admits that while she certainly enjoys helping out at the shop and playing sports, she doesn’t see them as future careers, and she has no real dream for the future. Karen admits to Rin that she’s in the same boat, even though she’s able to apply herself fully to any task, she struggles with identifying an actual long-term goal for the future. They each compliment Nozomi, Urara, and Komachi in their ability to find and work towards a dream so steadfastly. Then, Rin proposes that they make a promise: whenever one of them finds a dream, they’ll tell the other first. Karen agrees and they share a smile. Unknown to them, Bunbee is around the corner and overhears their conversation, silently mocking their shared goal.

A little later, the pair are on the way back to Natts House, each with flowers in tow, when Bunbee intercepts them, turning some falling leaves into a giant leaf Kowaina. Rin and Karen quickly transform into Cures Rouge and Aqua and start to battle the Kowaina but it overpowers them. Bunbee suggests that, since they have no dreams, they are in despair and should join Nightmare to gain more power. They rebuke him and vow to find their dreams someday. They argue back and forth with Bunbee about the validity and importance of hopes and dreams, similar to Nozomi’s fight with Despariah in episode 39, but he manages to kick them around. Nozomi, Urara, and Komachi arrive in time to tell him that their friends would NEVER fall to despair, and they transform into Precure. They kick the Kowaina a few times, but despite being a leaf, it’s very sturdy. They then turn back to the ideological debate with Bunbee, speaking of the important things they’ve learned from their friends Rin and Karen. Mint recalls the tiara that Rin made for the wedding (ep 32) and Milk remembers how Karen took care of her when she was sick (ep 34). Both instances displayed some true passion and sincerity, and it fosters a realization in Rouge and Aqua. They stand back up, newly energized by the amount of appreciation and support that their friends hold for them, and together they perform Rouge Burning and Aqua Tornado, destroying the Kowaina. Bunbee flees.

Back at Natts House, everyone admires the flowers Rin and Karen brought, but there is some latent curiosity about why they brought two different types: cyclamen and cattleya. Rin explains that they both felt two types would be better than just one, and Nozomi is happy about their choice. While the other three are busy, Karen confides in Rin that she may have found her dream, and Rin admits the same. They dance around admitting that it was the others’ strong words that made them realize how happy they felt working for others in the ways they did, and the audience is left to try to piece together exactly what their newfound dreams are for themselves. (don’t worry, we’ll get find out soon enough.) The episode closes on a shot of the flower arrangements.

The Analysis

Rin and Karen are a really fun duo to watch. I honestly do think it’s because they remind me of Nagisa and Honoka a lot. One is a short-haired working class sporty tomboy with feminine interests, the other is a long-haired intellectual from a wealthy family with absentee parents, and both are well-respected by other students. Before becoming Precure, they had little reason to interact, but now they’re friends. Obviously, the team dynamic means their friendships are different, but out of all the pairs of friends in this series, Rin and Karen bear the strongest resemblance to the originals. Regardless, I genuinely enjoy seeing them come closer, admiring and complimenting each other’s work, and opening up to admit that they don’t have dreams yet (another trait they share with their predecessors). Their promise to tell each other first if they find a dream is really sweet, and even Nozomi and Rin don’t have that kind of a friendship. I just love seeing their bond deepen here.

Unfortunately, the villain plot of this episode doesn’t do a whole lot to help, not in my view. I will always stand up for the girls standing up for the importance of hopes and dreams, which is what they’re doing here, but it just comes down to the same argument they had with Despariah a few episodes ago, or with Bloody the last episode: “Dreams are important!” “No they’re not, I’ll beat you!” until the girls prove that their friendship is actually more powerful. The kowaina is quite strange. It’s a giant leaf, but it’s as sturdy as a brick wall, but Bunbee does most of the fighting while the kowaina just stands around. To his credit, Bunbee is a pretty good fighter, with a devastating dropkick that incapacitates both clusters of girls, but fortunately everybody’s support for Rouge and Aqua inspires them to stand back up and finish off the monster. However, this episode also reinforces a running trend that’s been developing over the series, since the reform of Nightmare’s Dream Collet division: their opinion of Bunbee is in the toilet, and his constant losses do nothing to change this. In fact, this is the last time Bunbee will see the battlefield this season, as the next couple episodes will be fought by Hadenya and Bloody, and then Kawarino during the endgame. It was an alright final fight, but he didn’t use the full range of his abilities, particularly his projectiles, which would have been nice to see.

The best aspect to come out of this is that the Rin and Karen do finally start to realize their future dreams. They’re not expressed out loud quite yet, but this is also a 13 year-old series so I’m going to go ahead and reveal that Rin decides to pursue making jewelry and Karen wants to be a doctor. When you look at their past, it becomes pretty clear. Rin has had a penchant for it since she showed off the bracelet maker way back when, while Karen took her first steps way back in episode 6, when she was able to transform by realizing she wanted to help everyone. That’s the spirit she’s carried all season, and now she’s figured out how she can translate that into her goals for the future. I think it’s particularly great how it was choice words from their friends that made them realize what they love doing. Sometimes it takes that external push, people appreciating your passion when you don’t recognize it about yourself. I struggled with that for a long time, and while I knew kind of where I wanted to end up, a friend’s words definitely helped point me in the right direction. It’s good to see Precure do this, and it will be enjoyable to see how these characters grow and develop their dreams from here, over the rest of this season and the next one.

Some minor aspects I enjoyed were in the opening sequence, when they’re all decorating Natts House. Urara is trying to get position some spotlights just right on a display, because as a performer she knows how the right lighting can influence opinion. Komachi sets out a poem of hers intended to greet guests, and she gets flustered when Karen reads it. It goes:

“A holy day, a holy night. What sort of sky lies above you---... Once again, I wander in search Of you in the sea of stars this night...”

translation not guaranteed to be perfect

Also, Nuts is a total Scrooge, grumbling about how he doesn’t see the point of Christmas. Coco says the girls are enjoying it so it can’t be all bad, and Nozomi informs him that it’s a really important holiday for young girls. (Christmas in Japan is a big night for couples to spend time together.)

And the last bit is a little continuity, they use a Pinky named Clearkuman to copy fliers advertising their Christmas sale. This might be the only Pinky to recur, as it was seen doing the same task way back in episode 10. Also, I don’t think I’ve commented on the cards before that they use to summon Pinkies out of the Dream Collet, so here’s a look:

It’s just so transparently a toy, with the barcode and CARD IN on it. This is about the last chance they have to get kids to ask their parents for this big ticket item before Christmas, and then in 2 months the Rose Pact will be the hot new toy to have instead. So it goes.

All jokes aside, this was a solid episode with some characters I love spending time with and seeing grow, both because they remind me of the original pair and because they’re great in their own right. Next time, we turn our focus back to Komachi and her struggles with authorship. Look forward to it, it’s going to hurt.

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 3 kettei!

[amysubmits]

What areas of life would you say are out of the purview of a Dom? I remember a while back you responded to a post about a Dom telling their sub to vote for a particular political party and you seemed very against that. I would also assume any life-altering decisions (ie. moving, having a child) must be made by both partners, not merely decided by the Dom. Where do you set these boundaries in your relationship and where do you think is a reasonable place for others to set them?

Well, I try to be open-minded about the reality that all submissives are different and all relationships are different. So I think where those lines should be drawn can vary really dramatically depending on the people, the relationship, and other factors. I think if a submissive doesn’t feel assured that if they let go of an area of control, that their needs will still be met, and that the responsibility will be handled well, then that is ‘too far’ for them. But it’s also just possible that something may not be ‘too far’ in an unhealthy way exactly, but may just not be a way that the sub or the couple wants to do D/s. 

I think what you may be trying to get at is, what things are *always* too far? This is just my opinion that is largely based on my own instincts, which I think is all any of us can go on because we don’t have definitive answers on what may or maynot be damaging in D/s. But in my mind, D/s shouldn’t be used to change who someone is, to try to control their addiction or mental health. Those are the two main things that come to mind, I guess.

I think it’s great for D/s couples to support each other's mental health, but not to try to control it or take responsibility for it. I don’t think rules or punishments or rewards should be used to try to require a sub to avoid addictive behaviors or mental health behaviors. I just think it’s messy and potentially dangerous, and is kind of trying to ‘play’ psychologist. I also think it’s bad to see it as your responsibility even. I don’t think it’s good for partners to feel like ‘well they’re having a bad day so it’s my job to figure out how to make them happy’ or whatever it may be. You can’t take responsibility for someone else's wellbeing on that level. Try to support how and when you can, but don’t feel like it’s your job to fix their mood, cure their addiction, correct their mental health issue,etc. 

With identity or not changing who you are...that’s pretty subjective. But I don’t think it’s good to feel like you’re being asked to let go of a piece of what makes you, you. Or I don’t think it’s good if a sub feels like they’re having to become something or someone that just isn’t natural to who they are. In my mind, red flags related to identity and D/s would be things like trying to force a “tomboy” sub to wear dresses, or trying to cut off contact with the subs friends or family, or saying crap like ‘what you want doesn’t matter, you should find all your pleasure in pleasing me.” or “You don’t need to think for yourself.” or “Daddy is always right.” in genuine ways. As roleplay, pretend, dirty talk, that is no big deal. But genuinely thinking that a sub shouldn’t have needs and desires of their own outside of pleasing their dom, genuinely thinking a sub doesn’t need to think for themselves, genuinely thinking that a sub should always pretend their dom is right...those things all suggest to me that the submissives identity is being ignored and I don’t see that as okay. 

The identity reason is why I agreed with that ask about voting. I see voting as a way that we express our moral values and/or our moral priorities. And our personal values are just such a big piece of what makes us who we are. That the idea of a dom trying to tell a sub they have to vote the way the dom wants them to...that just tells me that the dom doesn’t value the submissives values/beliefs. Which to me is quite dehumanizing, really.

I agree with you that big decisions like moving or having children shouldn’t be solely decided by a dom. In my mind that falls into the ‘identity’ category. I think adults need a say in major decisions in their lives for their own mental wellbeing and sense of importance, respect, etc. However, in general, I don’t think that allowing an area of your life to be controlled by your Dom has to *at all* mean that it’s solely his decision. Even in the areas where CD has explicit control, I still get to share my opinion and preferences as much as I want. It’s just that he gets the final say, or like 51% of the vote. Which for me is really important. Even on insignificant issues, if I wasn’t allowed to express my preferences on something, I wouldn’t feel respected in the way I need to feel respected in order to have a loving relationship and to feel like a true partnership. I can feel respected if he hears what I want and tells me no. I can feel respected if I tell him how I think something would be best handled, but he decides to handle it another way. I can’t feel respected if he doesn’t even want to hear my preferences and opinions. That’s not to say that he specifically asks my opinion all the time, particularly on ‘smaller’ issues he might just tell me what he plans to do. But, I always know I can speak up and share my opinion whenever. And for bigger issues he always makes things a conversation and explicitly invites my input. He doesn’t want to decide big things entirely on his own as that wouldn’t feel good to him either. 

As far as where we draw our lines? Well, some of the ‘kinda farther out there’ things that CD gets the final say on would be where we live/move, big financial decisions, health care decisions for our dogs, health insurance decisions, our work/life balance, we practice sexual availability, etc. As far as what's too far for me? None of these are things CD would want to control but...when we have kids, what I eat, how I speak, and I just generally need to not feel micro-managed. For example, I wouldn’t be okay with a D/s style where he gave me a scheduled that mapped out every 30 minutes of my life all day long. I wouldn't be okay with having to ask to go to the bathroom. I wouldn’t be okay with being given ‘busy work’. I wouldn’t be okay with him wanting to do “too much” for me, like in general I wouldn’t want to feel like he was treating me like child. I’m sure there are others. It’s kinda hard to really think about because we’ve never really sat down and created boundaries, we’ve just always kinda naturally felt things out. Most of our D/s is based around domestic stuff and letting him lead our relationship. So if he wanted me to start mopping the floor on Sundays he knows he could just give me that rule pretty much without even asking. But he also knows things that are more emotional or sensitive for me that might be harder for me to let go of, so if he wanted to encourage me to work on something we’d talk about it and he’d ask in a case like that. So overstepping just isn’t an issue we’ve had, even though we don’t have a formal list of what is off-limits. I think we’re also just kinda lucky that our natural inclinations for what we both like him to control are pretty similar. But anyway, most of these things I that I say would be ‘too far’ for me, aren’t about being ‘too far’ for D/s in general they are just things that aren’t right for the type of submissive I am personally. 

[rockysavannah]

Videl vs. Pan! A Bored Burp-Off!

Description:

WARNING THIS STORY CONTAINS: Female Burping.

If you’re not into any of the above things, please do not read!

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This could be considered a distant sequel to 'Bulma vs Chi-Chi! A Baby Shower Burping Contest!'.

Pan and Videl are sitting at home one day, bored out of their minds. After a couple of accidental eructations from the pair, they decide to have a burping contest, with a wager set in place to make it more interesting. Will Videl achieve victory, or will her daughter dominate? There’s only one way to find out.

I hope you like it. Any constructive criticism in the comments section is welcome.

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Originally uploaded back on March 7th, 2017 on Writing.com.

This story was co-written with Jokermask18/JWAPPEL in my interactive.

Since Writing.com basically requires people to need a paid membership in order to do anything on their website, it’s practically impossible for many people to write and read there. Therefore, I’ve decided to post some of the chapters from my interactives onto my other accounts as full-fledged stories so that they can reach a wider audience.

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The Art of the Thumbnail is a blend of two images. (Since no one had drawn this concept...).

Videl by Seiya-Dbz-Fan.

Pan by Krizart-DA.

Text by me and Jokermask18/JWAPPEL.

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Son Videl, Son Pan, and Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, and Dragon Ball Super © Funimation, Toei Animation, Shueisha and Akira Toriyama

(A/N: This is a collaboration with Jokermask18 A.K.A. JWAPPEL.)

Content Advisory! This story contains:

Female Hyper Belching

Taunting

Series: Dragon Ball

Characters: Son Videl, Son Pan

Synopsis: Videl and Pan try to alleviate their boredom by having some gassy fun.

If you’re not into any of the above things, please do not read!

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It was a quiet Saturday afternoon for the family of Son Gohan. The man of the house was out on business, leaving his wonderful wife and daughter to fend off the onslaught of boredom by themselves. The duo engaged in a multitude of recreational activities—watching television shows and movies, playing video and board games, even training—but nothing could keep their interests for more than a few minutes at best. Both were currently lounging around in the living room, Pan lied half-asleep on the couch and Videl was playing with a paddleball. Videl checked the clock and her eyes widened at the time.

“Oh no, it’s almost dinner time!” she exclaimed, loudly enough to capture the attention of her daughter, “I better get cooking!”

“…Huh?” Pan muttered groggily, until the weight of those words truly hit her, “Wait, dinner?! That sounds great! I’m starving!”

The eleven-year-old girl’s sudden burst of energy got a small chuckle out of her mother, “Well, you’ll have to ‘starve’ for a little longer, because it’ll take awhile to make enough food to satisfy your appetite.”

Pan’s lips curled downward, “Can I at least get a soda to hold me over.”

With an approving nod from her mother, Pan moved faster than a normal human could track, seemingly vanishing into thin air for a split second, before returning to the same spot, only with a root beer in hand. While Videl was getting up from her chair and heading for the kitchen, Pan began chugging the contents of her can. The carbonated beverage cascaded down her esophagus before landing in the pits of her stomach, mixing with the boiling green acids that were already dwelling there, and forming large bubbles of gas from the chemical reaction. Pan put her right hand on her belly when she heard a low rumbling deep inside. She felt pockets of air shift around within her tummy, before some of it was dislodged and evicted up a valve at the top of the stomach. Pan barely had time to register what happened before a juicy belch blasted past her lips, catching her by surprise. Videl stopped in the kitchen and turned to look at her daughter, who just sported a look of content on her face.

“That felt good,” Pan commented with a giggle.

“Pan, you should show better manners than that,” Videl reprimanded with a stereotypical parental finger pointing.

Pan scoffed internally, wishing that her mom would loosen up once in a while, like what her dad said she was like as a teenager. Alas, Videl’s acceptance of her role as a housewife had meant that she sacrificed much of her cooler (in Pan’s opinion), tomboyish personality, so it was unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Videl was about to get the ingredients and kitchen ware needed to make a meal fit for a demi- and quarter-Saiyan, but was stricken with a sudden pang of thirst. Wanting to quickly quench it before getting to work, she fished through the fridge and picked out a can of Jetap, before popping it open and spraying some of the alcoholic liquid on her cheeks. Pan snickered at this, while Videl took a large swig of her drink, draining the can in a matter of seconds. Once the intoxicated fluid splashed into her gut, a similar reaction that happened in Pan’s abdominal area occurred here too. As soon as Videl removed the can from her mouth, a beery burp rippled out of it, having the length, volume, and smell to be comparable to her daughter. When the three-second-long eructation ended, Videl’s cheeks lit up in a scarlet flash.

“Ooohhh my goodness! Excuse me!” she apologized with her left hand clasped over her mouth.

There was a period of silence in the house before the juvenile giggling of the youngest Son member promptly shattered it. “Nice one, Mom! I didn’t think… that you had… it in you!” her compliments were intersped by fits of laughter.

Videl’s level of embarrassment continued to grow, “T-that was just an accident, sweetie. I didn’t mean to.”

Pan rolled her eyes and gave her an unconvinced smirk, “Not buying it, Mom. Dad told me how much of a tomboy you were back in the day and I bet that you miss that time.”

Videl widened her light blue irises, baffled at how her adolescent daughter managed to back her into a corner like this. Then, she started to think about Pan’s words; about how her ‘tough girl’ days were when she was at her coolest. But that was just a persona, right? An act that she didn’t need to keep up when she met her high school sweetheart. Without that, she felt comfortable sporting a more feminine appearance, like her wedding gown when she married Gohan, or the red dress and black leggings when she attended Bulma’s ‘39th’ birthday party. On the other hand, her feistier attitude did earn her some respect from her former classmates at Orange Star High School, and she still found some amusement when she thought back to the times that she beat various members of the student body in burping contests. Perhaps it would not hurt to relive some of that glory one more time.

“Maybe… you have a point,” Videl admitted.

Pan’s grin grew wider, “Great, because I’ve got an idea for curing our boredom: a burping contest!”

If possible, the Son matriarch’s eyes grew wider still, “Really? Well, what are the stakes?”

Pan tapped a finger on her chin in thought, “If I win, you order as much food as I want, when I want, for the next three months; If you win, I’ll do all of yours and dad’s chores on top of my own for the same time.”

Videl pondered Pan’s proposition. The risk was great, but so was the reward. After a few moments, she reached her decision, “Game on, young lady,” Videl answered with a smirk that matched her daughter’s, finally regaining her uncouth appreciation for the immature art of burping.

“Cool!” Pan’s eyes shone in anticipation, thinking that this would make for a gross, but fun, bonding experience.

Videl pulled out at least eight more cans of soda from the fridge and divided them between herself and Pan. After all, one needed the right ammunition for this kind of thing. Pan reached for her first one and chugged the whole thing in less than a minute! With a smirk, she then thumped her chest and let out a nasty sounding burp that sounded like it came from a hardened trucker. Videl was actually a little proud of her for that. That is, until she remembered she was looking at her competitor. The daughter of Mister Satan figured her turn was up and attempted to copy her daughter's opening move. Unfortunately, she ended up choking on most of the soda and launched into a coughing fit.

“You're losing Mommy,” Pan taunted in a sing-song voice before belching again. This one was ever bigger than the last, being five seconds long!

Videl's eyes narrowed as her competitive fire was beginning to reignite, “I'm not finished yet!” She began chugging her second soda, this time nearly matching her daughter's former pace. Pan was on her second soda as well, though sipping it in a leisurely fashion. It was clear she wasn't worried and this made Videl all the more angry.

Thumping her chest, the daughter of Mr. Satan unleashed her first real belch in the contest. It was decent, though only half as big as Pan's first attempt. Videl scowled, knowing she'd once been able to do much better. Pan responded with another huge belch that won her the bout and began opening her third can. Videl did the same and managed to start off with a belch that surpassed her daughter's previous attempt! The good feeling that came with that was quickly destroyed when Pan unleashed a belch that blew her mother's hair back! Once again, the daughter of Mister Satan felt oddly proud even as she began opening her fourth can. This truly was a bonding experience.

The contest continued on in this way. Videl had actually started to regain some of her old skill but it didn't seem to help. Pan dominated each bout and only grew cockier over time. “Get ready to order Mama, cause I am hungry!” The daughter of Mister Satan only scowled more deeply at this taunt. She refused to let her daughter win. It wasn't just about what losing would cost her either. Now, it was about pride.

But honestly, Videl was getting flustered. She had to admit that her kid was good. Scratch that, Pan was very, very good. As they went through what was now the seventh can for both of them, mother and daughter soon realized that it was almost over. There were only two cans left and one of them would belong to the victor. It was clear from her grin that Pan believed she knew which one it would be. “Ready to give up?”

But Videl refused. If there was anything left over from the Videl of old, it was that. She wondered, not for the first time, just what had happened to that girl? The tomboy who had dominated boy and girl alike in belching contests since she was seven! She even remembered winning a few farting contests in her time. Looking at Pan, she realized that she missed those times. She wanted them back. It was time for her to start thinking like the old Videl again, but how?

After the duo each finished their seventh can, Pan effortlessly belted out another first class burp. Though it was comparatively less powerful than her previous ones, it compensated with an odor that made the matriarch of the Son household go green in the gills. While Videl, with watery eyes, was coughing and trying to fan away the foul fumes, Pan was looking bored. Sure, she was certain that she would be able to pig out on as much food as she wanted to when this was over, which definitely appealed to her Saiyan nature, but there was another thing that her alien instincts craved: a good fight. Her father had gone on about how unladylike and badass her mother was as a youth, so Pan expected at least something resembling a challenge, just to make her victory feel more earned.

However, right now Videl was not proving those stories true at all. In fact, her burps were barely able to get much reaction out of Pan aside from condescending amusement. Either the stories were lies or Videl had simply lost her edge. In any case, Pan found it disappointing, not simply because of the aforementioned lack of challenge, but because she had a lot of respect for mommy dearest. All of the tomboyish tales about Videl, not just of how she shattered gender stereotypes by utterly decimating sexist boys in belching contests, but also of her beating up bullies and leaping into danger to stop criminals. It helped influence Pan into shaping her personality to mimic the mother that she idolized, both as a tomboy and as a hero.

Meanwhile, Videl’s mind raced to find a way to gain an edge over her daughter. Maybe she could use the Dragon Balls to wish for her old personality back. No, that would seem like a waste to use something so powerful to win such a juvenile event. Besides, what would Gohan say about it when he returned home? Nevertheless, if she cannot do that, then how will the daughter of Mister Satan triumph over the gaseous greatness of Pan? Suddenly, she thought back to what her husband said when he taught her how to fly all those years ago.

He said that you have to focus your energy from your stomach, she recalled in her head. Then, she also flashed back to when she heard Gohan say that his mentor, Piccolo, could fire ki blasts from his mouth, Wait a minute. That’s it! Videl breathed deeply and concentrated hard, gulping down air to fuel her belch. She soon felt a spark of ki in her belly and smiled, Alright, she thought, silently thanking Gohan and Piccolo for not teaching Pan telepathy, I’m on the right track, but I should try to limit how much ki I use. Otherwise, Pan will know what I’m up to and just copy me, then, I’ll be screwed.

And so, the metaphysical energy continued to manifest in her stomach, acting like fire boiling water to produce steam as it stirred up more gas than any normal human ever could. When she felt enough build up, Videl proudly forced out the gas using her ki creating a shockwave that blew away Pan’s orange bandana. When it finished, Videl sighed in relief and giggled at the befuddled face of her daughter.

“Wh-what was that?!” Pan exclaimed.

“Well, Honey, I guess I was just a little rusty,” Videl replied, lips curled up into a smirk.

Pan narrowed her eyes in suspicion. She may be somewhat naïve, but she was not stupid. The daughter of Son Gohan found it weird that her mom could just pull out a totally awesome eructation at the eleventh hour after a series of mediocre burps. In addition, Pan could have sworn that she felt a minuscule ember of ki coming from her mother, specifically in her tummy.

Maybe… The quasi-Saiyan pondered for a moment, before dismissing the idea entirely, There’s no way. That’s just ridiculous. She probably just got lucky, that’s all.

Putting the notion aside, Pan opted to pop open her eighth can of soda and began chugging it. Videl soon joined her and in a matter of seconds, both had completely drained their aluminum canisters of their sugary liquid contents. Pan patted her packed paunch playfully, feeling it press up against and peek out under her shirt. It was an expected result given that eight cans worth of delicious carbonated goodness filled that gut of hers, not including the can that she had taken a swig of before the contest officially began. Videl rubbed her own bulging belly, starting to wonder how this competition would affect her figure afterward. However, she pushed that thought out for the moment, instead focusing on the here and now.

“Well, do you want to start the final bout, little lady?” Videl inquired with a smirk.

“Sure, but you’ll regret it, trust me,” Pan replied, matching her mom’s smirk.

Pan proceeded to gobble down as much precious oxygen as possible, making her abdominal area inflate even more so. She held her breath, and after a while, she was starting to become blue in the face, which made Videl frown in worry. The mother was about to ask if her daughter was all right when Pan decided to unleash her outright abominable eructation right in her face. It was by far her greatest/grossest one in the whole competition. Pan’s oral expulsion of air lasted an astounding ten seconds, actually shattering some of the windows, which Pan had a feeling would come out of her allowance even if she won. However, the smell was again in a category of its own, as the guttural belch blast carried a sickly green cloud of gas out of Pan’s mouth. Said gas cloud was composed of an amalgamation of every food and drink that the Pan had devoured over the past week, which to a full blooded human would have been a month’s worth of nourishment.

“How was that, Mom?” Pan giggled smugly after finishing.

“Ohhh…” Videl moaned, wholly discombobulated, “That was so nasty! I think that I’m going to hurl!” she slapped both hands over her mouth to keep herself from doing so.

Pan giggled even louder, savoring her mother’s disgusted demeanor. Eventually, Videl regained her bearings and threw a piercing glare at her daughter, at which Pan only snickered, “I take it that you didn’t like my magnum opus.”

That straw broke the camel’s back, Screw it, Videl thought, I don’t know if it’s the lingering nausea or seething anger, but I’m going to put this brat in her place, no matter what! That’ll knock her arrogance ass down a peg.

Then, she got into a battle stance, her legs spreading out two feet apart and bending at a 90° angle, and closed her eyes. The quarter-Sayian cocked her left eyebrow, confused. “Uh, mom, what are you doing?”

However, Videl closed her eyes, tuned her  daughter out, and took deep breaths. Pan frowned at the silence, but widened her eyes as she felt something weird happen in her mother. Once again, the daughter of Mister Satan manifested her ki in her stomach, though now it was much larger, to the point that Pan could clearly sense it.

Huh? Why is there so much ki in her stomach? Unless… Pan thought, until her eyes widened in realization, It’s true! She did do it before and she’s doing it now!

As Pan was trying to process the current situation, Videl pressurized the gas in her stomach by charging up ki in order to increase the power of her burp. Meanwhile, a glow formed in her stomach, the heat of her ki causing her to sweat profusely. After a while, she felt a huge burst of energy finish building up pressure in her belly. This feeling made her smile in anticipation.

“Oh, boy, here it comes,” Videl exclaimed excitedly.

“Here what comes?” her offspring questioned.

Videl ignored Pan and used her energy to channel the gas out of her belly. The glow intensified as it, the ki and the gas traveled up her body before entering her mouth, causing her cheeks to bulge outward and filling Videl’s mouth with a light bright enough to make her puffed out cheeks translucent. Then, she raised her head slightly away from Pan to avoid possibly hurting her and became the first person in history to burp out a blast of energy.

“*buuuUUUrrrrrrRRUUUuuuuuuuUUUCH!*”

Suddenly, her mouth snapped open and she belched out a large yellow ki beam, which rocketed past Videl's lips and barely missed the top of Pan’s head on its trajectory through one of the broken windows. The burp itself echoed throughout the house, shattering the remaining windows, and knocking down several books, expensive plates, and other belongings. The duo looked to see the blast vaporize some nearby trees, both of them gawking at the trail of burnt grass and destroyed foliage.

“Whoa, even I didn't expect that,” Videl admitted with a blush.

Pan turned back to her mom, “That… was… awesome! Let’s keep going! I want to do that too!”

Videl paused for a moment, but then chuckled at the absurdity of the situation, “Ok, but the loser gets punished for six months in lieu of three.”

“Deal!” Pan shouted, her eyes shining with enthusiasm.

Both remembered their unfinished cans of soda and grabbed them for the true final bout. They were going to need it!

Once the beverages had been consumed, the empty aluminum husk that previously held them were discarded and Pan began the final bout by pausing to focus her ki then:

“*BRRRRrrrRRRRRUUUUUuuuuUOOOOOOOoo-oooooOOOOOOOrrrp!!*”

A big energy blast shot from her mouth, twice the width of her mother's effort, though it only did a little more damage to the house by burning a few extra holes in the walls.

Videl applauded politely, then sucked in and: 

“*beeeeeeEEEEEELLLLllllLLRRRRRrrroooOOOOOaaAAAAARRRRrrrrrRRRRP!!!*”

She not only managed to outdo her daughter, but shot out a stream of ki balls from her mouth in rapid succession. Pan was forced to jump on top of her chair in dodge in a rather comedic fashion. Videl laughed out loud at this when she was finished and an evil gleam suddenly entered her eye. Turning her gaze towards the ceiling, she forced out a small burp that resulted in a single ball of ki knocking some debris onto Pan's head, the quarter-Saiyan scowling in response.

“Okay Mama, you've had it!

*BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP AAAAATTTTTTTTAAAAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKKKKK!!!!*”

Videl's eyes widened as her daughter unleashed a huge belch that contained a variation of one of Vegeta's most powerful moves. It packed enough force to blow her through the wall of her home and leave her smoking on the already slightly scorched lawn. Pan laughed at the sight and began jumping up and down in an absurd little victory dance.

“Yes! I win! HAHAHAHA, I am the best!” This bratty sing-song voice awoke something in Videl and she slowly pulled herself to her feet, her eyes ablaze with fury. Pan watched with a mix of confusion and concern as her mother assumed a basic power-up stance and began speaking in grunts, as though she were on the verge of transforming into some new kind of super form. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised Pan at all if that were the case.

Little did the young girl know that during all this, her mother was reliving her past, watching various images of her rough and tumble self flash and the victories she'd achieved flash before her eyes. Everything from belching contests to looking best in a bikini passed her by. They were soon replaced by new images of Pan besting her younger self in all these same events. Other scenes were also included such as a rice eating contest and a farting contest. Every last one filled the Videl of the present with even more rage.

“No! I… Will… Not… lose… to a… little… girl! Even if she is my own daughter!” Pan watched in amazement as her mother's slightly higher than average power level suddenly skyrocketed, her aura blazing to life around her. Videl then bellowed, “Ka… Me… Ha… Me… 

*HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP!!!!!*”

The mightiest belch under the heavens, contained within the signature technique of both the Kame House and the overall Son Family, shot from Videl's mouth. It zeroed in on a horrified Pan and created a great explosion that destroyed the entire house! Pan lay amidst the rubble, somehow only dazed, “You win, Mommy.”

“Oh yeah!” Videl cried out in a rather good impression of her father, “I win! I'm number—oh crap!” The daughter of Mister Satan looked upon what was left of her home and decided to let Pan off the hook: she would need all the help she could get in order to collect the Dragon Balls and restore everything before Gohan got back!

[angelteyam]

There You Are (t.h.)

Pairing: Tom Holland x Reader/Unnamed Female Character

Summary: It takes a bad breakup and just a little bit of alcohol for Tom to finally be able to admit to both her and himself that he’s wanted to be more than friends for a very long time.  

Prompt: “Am I dreaming?” with Tom Holland

Word Count: 3,366

Warnings: Mentions of bullying, cheating, cuts and bruises, mentions of drinking/vomiting, some swearing

A/N: Finally, some good, honest FLUFF. This is my contribution to Kaylee @starksparker ’s Summer Writing Challenge! I basically wanted this unnamed female character to function as the reader, without having to use the second person or “y/n”. Clearly, this is based off the song “There You Are” by ZAYN – I hope you guys like it! Feel free to like and reblog, it means the world <3

--

They’d known each other since they were practically toddlers. Tom had almost face-planted jumping off a swing when she came zooming by, a Tonka truck clutched in her small, grubby hands. She had stopped at the sound of his cry, turning to him, and paused when she saw the little boy with a mop of curls clutching at a scrape on his knee. He was crying, large crocodile tears swimming their way down his cheeks. His mom was about to jump up from her spot on the bench nearby, but she stopped when the little girl bent down in front of him. Tom looked up at her, pouting his lips, when the girl extended her arms and offered him her Tonka truck.

He had smiled widely, wiping at his nose, suddenly cured, and had scampered off with her to the nearest sandbox, their tiny hands clutched together.

 Need you when I’m broken, when I’m fixed

Need you when I’m well, when I’m sick

 From that moment on, you couldn’t have separated them if you tried. They were always together. In primary school, she was the tomboy who would shove Tom’s bullies away by their shoulders despite her small stature, her eyes boring holes through their shirts. She wouldn’t even have to speak. She would get this look on her face that would send them running, before turning to Tom to make sure he was alright. She could go from sharp as a knife to concerned in seconds, and would pull him up off the ground, brushing the dirt off of his shoulders. They always shared their lunches, exchanging items they knew the other would like, and he would always bring her a carton of chocolate milk (her favorite) when he went to get his.

In secondary school, things got tougher. It became harder for her as the girls in her class got more and more ruthless, and Tom was suddenly the one who had to do the protecting. He couldn’t do much, as skinny and lanky as he was, but he was always there to stand up for her, and would present her with a compulsory carton of chocolate milk at the end of the day. He couldn’t care less that she was slightly different.

 Can’t see when I’m falling

Losing myself but then I hear you calling

 It got even harder when Tom started acting. Suddenly, they both were walking around with targets on their backs. Eventually their parents decided to have them switch schools, and after that, it got a little easier. It was at their new school that they met Harrison.

It was like he was meant to be in their group. They didn’t even have to try to include him; Harrison being around was just as natural as she and Tom being friends. But suddenly, when two became three, no one seemed to want to try to pick on them. Harrison was always a bit bigger than Tom was, and even though he was as thin as a toothpick, no one dared to try and pick on the boy with the icy-blue eyes. The kids in their class always knew that wherever the other two were, Harrison couldn’t be far behind.

Tom started acting more and more seriously, and the other two saw him less and less. Part of it was good; she and Harrison got to know each other more, and she found she got along with him just as much as she had with Tom. But on the other hand, they missed Tom. Him being gone all the time left them feeling like there was a massive hole where he’d been.

But no matter what, Tom always came back to them. And he always came back with amazing stories. She and Harrison loved it – they ate the stories up, and they always watched every little thing he acted in.

When Tom landed the role of Spider-Man, it was inevitable that the balance of their group shifted. Harrison felt left behind – he wanted to make a name for himself too. So he went off to pursue his own career, with her and Tom’s unyielding support, and eventually found his own success.

But each time Tom and Harrison returned to her, they seemed slightly off. Especially Tom. She felt helpless as she watched her two boys crumble under the weight of their successes, and Tom started to feel increasingly lost in the wide world of Hollywood. Sure, he had his family and his band of brothers to keep him grounded, but even then, he still felt like he was drowning.

So even though she couldn’t really understand what they were going through, as normal as her life was compared to theirs, she never hesitated to open her arms if they needed them. And boy, did she give good hugs. After weeks and months away from home, Tom and Harrison loved nothing more than knocking at her door to see her standing there smiling up at them, her arms already open to welcome them into a hug (or two).

 There you are, there you are

You’re there with open arms

There you are, there you are

And I run

 Harrison and Tom never really gave much thought as to how much they meant to her. It didn’t even cross their minds; they just already knew. But even they got caught up in their own worlds, swept away by the call of other commitments, and the times where they were able to reunite grew farther and father apart.

So they relished in the time they did have together. Eventually, when Tom’s name reached the farthest corners of the world, he got an apartment for him and Harrison and South London, and he never even hesitated to invite her to share it with them. All three of them living together was a dream come true, and it gave them the chance to have the quality time they missed when they were apart.

In the back of his mind, Harrison had always thought there was something special between her and Tom. As they got older, she would look at Tom wistfully when she thought he wasn’t looking, and most of the time he wasn’t. But occasionally, he had been looking, and their eyes would meet in a painful exchange for a half a second before they would flick their heads in the opposite direction. Harrison was growing increasingly frustrated as the years went on, always on the sidelines begging them in his head to just do something about it, for god’s sake, but nothing ever happened.

Until she suffered her first real heartbreak. Tom finally came home after months and months away from home to find her nowhere in sight, Harrison in the living room with a somber look on his face. Harrison hushed him as he came bounding into the apartment, welcoming Tessa into his arms.

“What’s wrong?” Tom asked, his eyebrows furrowed.

“She’s been in there for days.” Harrison gestured towards her room. “I can’t get her to come out. She came home in tears the other day, saying something about Tristan, but that was all I could hear. She won’t even eat.”

Tom suddenly felt himself grow hot with anger. He had flashbacks to secondary school, to the girls teasing her for being like the boys, and how even then she could bounce herself back because she knew what those girls thought wasn’t important. But Tristan had been important. He’d been her first real boyfriend, and they’d been together for over a year. Tom was going to murder him.

But Tom had other things to worry about first. He dashed out of the apartment towards the nearest shop, got the supplies he needed, and returned mere minutes later with shopping bags hanging off his arms.

“What’s all this?” Harrison chuffed as he ushered Tom into the apartment.

“Just a few things to cheer her up.”

“A few?” Harrison smirked.

“Piss off,” Tom replied, flashing Harrison a quick glare before slipping down the hallway towards her room. Harrison smiled to himself, and the cheeky part of him wanted to rub his hands together. Finally, things were shifting in the right direction. And as much as he didn’t want her to feel heartbreak or pain, he was glad that Tom was coming to her rescue.  

There were some things about her that even Harrison didn’t know. But Tom knew pretty much everything there was to know about her, especially things that would cheer her up when she was feeling low. And today required all of those things.

Little did Tom know, all she wanted then was him.

 Can’t see when I’m falling

Losing myself but then I hear you calling

 Tom knocked softly at her door. He waited for a moment, for a sign that she was at least alive in there, before he gingerly wrapped his fingers around the door knob and turned.

It wasn’t locked, thank goodness. He slowly pushed the door open, peeking his head around the wooden frame. All he could see was a lump under a pile of blankets, tissues surrounding the lump and scattered all over the floor. Mugs upon mugs of half-drunken tea littered nearly every surface. Clearly, Harrison had been trying.

“It’s me,” Tom whispered hesitantly. “I’m back.”

The lump sniffled loudly, and Tom couldn’t tell if that had been a gasp or a cough. “Tom?” She squeaked, poking her head out from underneath the covers.

Taking her in then, Tom felt his heart snap in two. He’d never seen her like this, and it physically was aching him that she’d been like this for days, and he hadn’t been there.

“Aw, babe,” he cooed, striding over to her and kneeling next to her bed. He pulled her hand out from underneath the covers, wrapping it in his. Damn, she felt cold, even surrounding by blankets. Tom had to push down the sudden need he felt to make her warm.

“Tell me what happened.”

She sniffed, wiping her nose, before she croaked, “I caught him with another girl. And he acted like it wasn’t a big deal…like I- like I didn’t…mean anything. Like we didn’t mean anything.”

She couldn’t say anymore before she was dissolving back into tears, turning away from him to face the wall. Tom sighed heavily, removing his jacket and kicking off his shoes before crawling next to her underneath the covers, his “supplies” left forgotten next to her dresser by the door. She turned back to him, hiding her face, as Tom opened his arms and welcomed her into his chest.

Now Tom was really going to murder him.

She shook lightly as she cried, her tears streaming down her face and soaking Tom’s shirt. But he didn’t even notice; he just held her there in his arms, rocking her back and forth ever so softly. It took a moment, but her tears finally dried and she lay still, dozing off in his embrace. Tom chuckled silently to himself, but then he remembered that she probably hadn’t slept at all these last few days, and he was glad she was finally getting some rest.

It didn’t take much longer after that for the jetlag to hit, and Tom found himself nodding off, still cradling her. He tried to fight the sleep fighting to take him over, but then he looked down at the girl sleeping in his arms, and he slowly started to realize that he really didn’t care.

 There you are, there you are

You’re there with open arms

There you are, there you are

And I run

 Harrison found them like that a few moments later, fast asleep in each other’s arms. He collected Tom’s supplies from earlier off the floor and stored them away in the kitchen, making sure to tuck the ice cream safely away in the freezer. Later that night as Harrison himself was headed to bed, he poked his head in to check on them one more time, and found them huddled even closer together, Tom’s arms wrapped securely around her and her back pressed against his chest, his shirt and jeans in a pile on the floor. Harrison smiled to himself, chuckling softly, before closing the door to her room and leaving them in peace.

The next day, Harrison woke to the shower in her bathroom running. As he left his room, still only in his boxers, he found Tom in the kitchen, busying himself with making breakfast. Tom turned as he heard Harrison shuffling in, sending him a quick smile before turning back to the stove.

“She’s up now,” Tom said happily, “She said she was feeling a little better today.”

“That’s good,” Harrison mused. “I’m glad you came back when you did.”

Tom smiled widely to himself, hoping Harrison couldn’t see. (He could).

“Yeah, me too.”

“Did you sleep well?” Harrison joked, smirking.

Tom frowned for a moment at Harrison’s sarcasm. “Yes, actually. Best sleep I’ve had in a while.”

“Good, I’m glad you two are finally getting your shit together,” Harrison responded before turning away, heading back to his own bathroom to get himself a shower.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tom shouted in response, but Harrison waved him off.

“Don’t burn the eggs, mate, I’m bloody starving!”

Later that week, when they finally had some free time, Harrison and Tom decided to go out to the pub to celebrate Tom’s return. They’d invited her to come along, but she politely declined, saying that she didn’t much feel like alcohol. It would probably just make things worse. They obliged reluctantly, shrugging on their jackets, before leaving the apartment, closing the door silently behind them. As they left, she snuggled up closer to Tessa on the couch, popping a movie on Netflix, settling herself into another night of being alone.

 Oh, I’m a little drunk now

That’s why I went to war

You are my sober when I’m on the floor

 She shot up from her spot on the couch to the sound of drunken laughs flooding through the hallway outside the door, and she sighed heavily. Checking the clock, she hung her head – it was 3:00 AM. How long had she been asleep, and where the hell were they?

She didn’t even have time to get up and go to the kitchen for a cup of tea before Harrison and Tom came barreling through the door, stumbling over their feet, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. Wide, loopy smiles were on their faces, and they were clearly as zonked as one could be.

She got a little more concerned when she looked at Tom a little closer and realized a bruise was starting to appear underneath his eye.

“What on earth happened to you two?”

Harrison laughed. “He tried to start a fight with me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Harrison shrugged, gesturing to Tom. “Ask him.”

Tom only huffed, his face suddenly turning a very peculiar shade of green. Oh no. She didn’t waste a moment as she moved to where they were standing, placing Tom’s other arm over her shoulders and pressing her body up against his.

“Let’s get him to the toilet, he’s going to be sick.”

They barely made it to the bathroom in time before Tom collapsed next to the toilet, vomiting up the contents of his stomach.

“Fuck,” he groaned, resting his head on the cool surface of the toilet seat. She bent down next to him, removing his jacket, before she knelt down by his side and began rubbing soothing circles on his back.

She turned to Harrison, her face suddenly stern. “Are you going to be alright?”

“Don’t worry,” Harrison responded cheekily, “I’m way better off than he is.”

He stumbled off down the hallway into his room and collapsed onto his bed, passing out cold, his shoes still on his feet.

She turned her attention back to Tom, who was now heaving up nothing but air. “Stay here,” she said softly, rushing off to the kitchen and filling up a glass with water. She snagged a bottle of Paracetemol on her way back to the bathroom as well as a clean rag, and bid Tessa to stay where she was on her bed.

Finally back in the bathroom, she set the water and the medicine on the counter before running the rag under some cool water. She squeezed out the excess and laid the rag gently onto the back of Tom’s neck, getting a few of the loose curls there wet.

Tom sighed contentedly, his breathing now returning back to normal, and she noticed that some of the color had returned back to his face. She resumed sitting down next to him, setting the water and medicine down next to Tom, before wrapping her arm around his back and resting her head against his shoulder.

A few moments later, Tom turned to her, his eyes drooping.

“I’m sorry,” he said, so softly she could barely hear him.

“No, don’t be sorry, love,” she responded soothingly, “I’ll always be here for you.”

When she was certain he’d finished emptying the contents of his stomach and she’d made sure he finished the glass of water and taken two pills, she helped him to her room where he collapsed onto her bed. She helped him remove his clothes, with the exception of his boxers, of course, before sliding into bed next to him and pulling up the covers.

He rested his head on her stomach, and she didn’t even pause before running her fingers through his hair, playing with the thick curls.

As they started to slowly doze off, Tom looked up at her, blinking slowly.

“Am I dreaming?”

She chuckled softly, “No, Tom. I’m here with you.”

“Thank God,” Tom sighed, tucking her into him and wrapping his arm around her, nuzzling his face into the crook of her neck. “I really don’t know what I’d do without you.”

He couldn’t see, but she was smiling.

“Me neither, love. Me neither.”

 Only you know me the way you know me

Only you forgive me when I’m sorry

Even when I’ve messed it up, there you are

 When they woke the next morning, finding themselves in each other’s arms, they couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I’m really sorry about last night,” Tom sighed, pulling her even closer to him.

“It’s fine, Tom, really,” she replied, snuggling deeper into his chest, breathing him in.

He really, really didn’t want to ever let her go.

“This has taken me way too long to say,” he stuttered, struggling a little to meet her eyes, “But I’ve loved you for a long time. Since before all of…this. And I’m really sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner. But I’d really love to be able to call you my girlfriend, if you’ll have me.”

She smiled up at him, resting her hand on his cheek. “I love you, too.”

Tom didn’t waste another second before he pressed his lips to hers, his hands coming up to stroke her cheeks. Somehow, they both knew deep down that they were always meant to be more than just the closest of friends. And yet the fact that they had been so close for so many years made it even easier for them to fall deeply, passionately in love with each other.

Just as she wound her hands around his neck to deepen the kiss, they heard victorious shouting from the hallway. They turned their heads to see the blur that was Harrison zip past the door, whooping loudly, his hands in the air.

“Fucking finally!”

She collapsed into Tom, them both shaking with laughter, as Tom wrapped his arms securely around her. They stayed there for the rest of the morning, pressing lips against lips and skin against skin, never going further than kissing. She couldn’t get close enough to him, and she relished in learning all the things about Tom that she hadn’t yet gotten to explore. And as much as he didn’t want to let her go, she really didn’t want him to either.

 There you are, there you are

You’re there with open arms

There you are, there you are

And I run

Tags: @starksparker @upsidedownparker @madmadmilk @hollandroos @parkerpuffwrites @gottaletgopete @eeyore101247

[aerinmelina]

Growing up, I used to spend summers with my mom’s parents. They lived in a lakeside community which was also near an ocean, and I enjoyed fishing and swimming and boating and crabbing and such as a teenager.

Anyway. During the summer between my 6th and 7th grade years, my parents bought a house and decided to surprise me by having it all ready by the time I came home from my grandparents’ house at the end of the season. I remember walking into the house - I’d been there before, because it had previously been owned by friends of ours - and my mom said we were house-sitting when I asked her why we were here when our friends weren’t. She then led me from room to room and kept asking questions like, “Why do you think they put this in here?” and “Why do you think they painted this room pink?”

I wasn’t stupid. I know that Something Was Up. I just never imagined that my parents would have bought a house at all, let alone this one.

“Maybe they’re expecting a daughter?” I said. It wasn’t a baseless assumption; the couple who had owned the house previously were young and the wife had been pregnant.

“No, it’s because this is your room now!”

My thoughts at the time?

Pink. Oh my gosh. It’s pink. Whyyyyyyy.

Hang on. Is my mom letting me move in with this family? I mean. I’ll miss my dad and brother. But like. Why this family? I like them fine, but I don’t want to live with them.

(^^That is literally how far fetched I believed the idea of my parents owning a house was. They were terrible with money. The worst. And houses cost money. Lots of it.)

Anyway. My mom was offended that I was offended because my room was bright pink when, at the time, I was going through this tomboy phase and liked all things blue and black and she knew that and she painted my room anyway in her attempt to “girlify” me, which was not lost on me at all, and which I was equally annoyed with.

I digress. I had a new, pink bedroom in a new-to-us house. With a back yard. Which wasn’t next to a metal factory, so that meant my brother and I could actually play outside without like. Worrying about getting metal shavings imbedded in our feet. (Story for another day.)

Along with this move came a switch in middle schools. My parents fought hard to keep my brother in his elementary school, but they didn’t even ask to try and keep me in my middle school. I was 12. I would have to make brand new friends. I was pretty shy. I was not happy about this. At all.

I remember going to my new school to fill out enrollment forms and such. The school was literally 3 minutes away from our new house, just up the street; I would be walking to and from school every day, something which I was actually kind of looking forward to. If I could look forward to anything. I hated this. I didn’t ask to move. Our apartment had been just fine.

Anyway. Sitting in the main office at the new school, I was given a list of elective classes and was told to number them in order of my all-star favorite to please-don’t-put-me-in-this-class least favorite. The office staff told me that because I was enrolling so late, a lot of the classes had already filled up, but they would do their best to put me in the classes I wanted to take along with the standard courses that every student would be taking. I looked at the list. Choir :), Accelerated P.E. (wow that sounded like a nightmare), Art :), Metal Shop!!, Wood Shop!!, Drama (nah), Speech (Super Nope!!!), and a few others which I’ve forgotten by now.

My list went something like this:

Choir

Wood Shop

Art

Metal Shop

Accelerated P.E.

Drama

Speech

Speech was at the absolute bottom of my list. The office staff told me that the teacher for Drama and Speech was amazing, talked him up, and asked me why I didn’t want to take that class. I said I was shy and had a fear of public speaking. Duh. They kind of grimaced and looked at each other, then said, “We’ll do our best,” and sent my mom and I on our way back home.

I wasn’t surprised when I saw Speech on my class list a week or so later. I wouldn’t have it until second semester, thankfully, but I was already dreading it.

Seventh grade at this new school wound up being a lot of fun, if I’m being perfectly honest. I hated being the new kid at first, but made friends with another new kid who was way more outgoing than I was, and together we eventually made friends with more people. I have lots of stories to share there, but today I wanted to talk about Speech Class.

My speech teacher was, well… let’s call him Mr. Jones. He was outgoing, had clear expectations, was pretty mellow, and honestly? He was charismatic and the entire student body loved him.

I was a nervous wreck when I stepped into his classroom for the first time (and for most of the following times thereafter as well). For whatever reason, I had no problems singing solos in front of the whole school (and I did so twice that year), but the idea of public speaking was petrifying. And I even had lots of opportunities to practice that through both my church and school.

(I know I’m not alone in this sentiment.)

One of the first things Mr. Jones told us was that by the end of the semester, we would be able to deliver speeches and oral reports without using “filler words” such as “like”, “um”, and “er.” He also told us that our vocabulary would expand considerably, thanks to weekly tests he would be giving us (noooo). And we would be delivering speeches to one another on a weekly basis as well, on a variety of different subjects, and those speeches would increase in length as the semester drew on. All students were to compliment each presenting student on something they did well with each speech they gave, and critique would be solely left to Mr. Jones to provide. (Which was good, because let’s face it, 7th grade kids can be positively evil to each other.) Mr. Jones made it clear that we were not to judge or criticize anyone else’s speeches, and told us that he trusted us to keep each other’s speeches confidential. He explained that he wanted his classroom to be a safe place for us to talk about whatever we wanted; things we enjoyed, books we loved, problems we had, negative life experiences, positive life experiences, etc.

These were all very important factors which, honestly, influenced and changed my life for the better. I’ll get into that in a bit.

Mr. Jones’ class was tough. And I was terrified. I tried to drop his class, but was assured by the office that all of the other half-year elective classes were full; I didn’t have any other options. So I bit the bullet and decided to try my best. I would call no more attention to myself than I absolutely had to, I would try to not fail the vocabulary tests, and I would listen to others and provide sincere compliments. I would also - gulp - do my best at giving public speaking a shot.

I don’t exactly remember the method which Mr. Jones used in order to get us to stop using “filler words” in our speeches, but it worked. I don’t remember specific vocabulary words I was forced to memorize, but he was right; my understanding of the English language, and the number of words in my arsenal, greatly expanded. And I learned several important lessons:

Courage doesn’t mean that there’s an absence of fear. It means that you follow through with what you know is right, regardless of however much fear you are feeling.

Sometimes we are given tasks which we feel are way above our ability to manage. These are times when we must challenge ourselves to rise to the occasion.

(Going along with #2) You never know what you are capable of until you are put to the test. You’d be surprised at what you can personally accomplish.

Other people have different experiences than you; you can choose to listen and learn from their experiences, and you can 100000% do so without being a jerkface to them, too.

Teenagers are capable of respecting the people around them, are capable of empathy, and are capable of keeping confidentiality/maintaining bonds of trust. These are powers which teenagers do possess, and powers which they absolutely can control, utilize, and choose to exercise. (I was deeply impressed by my fellow classmates.)

One semester of a speech class didn’t cure my fear of public speaking. Not at all. But it did give me valid tools which I still use to this day. It gave me a lot of confidence in my capabilities to gather my thoughts on a piece of paper, organize them into a cohesive flow, and then be able to read those thoughts aloud without stumbling all over them. Mr. Jones laid the foundation for me to begin to think critically. To really consider my words before I write or say them. He drilled into my brain that I had a voice, and that it was a voice worth sharing and being listened to. Those are lessons I will never forget. And, because of Mr. Jones and everything I learned from him, I entered a career field which ultimately led to me speaking in public on a regular basis. I am a leader in my office. I provide training for our new and existing employees. I am aiming to become a manager within the next couple of years.

I’m still nervous when it comes to public speaking (especially during those times when I am speaking in a courtroom). I will probably always be nervous about it. I have been extremely close to vomiting from nerves in the past. But you know what? I’ve spoken before, I’ve survived, I’ve been successful at it, and I’ll do it again in the future. My confidence really started to blossom with my 7th grade speech class, where I received tons of practice, and that practice was further compounded by other speaking opportunities at school and church as well.

Mr. Jones was an excellent human being. He was well-loved for a million reasons. He believed in us, and we didn’t want to prove him wrong.

I believe in you, too. I say this, because I know that a lot of you need to hear it. I’m being sincere. I believe in you. You can do hard things. You can make it through.

[szopenhauer]

When was the last time you watched a VHS movie? I don’t even remember but I know I still watched VHS when we had DVD already and most of ppl no longer used/owned VHS anymore

Do you know when to use ‘to’ & ‘too’? yup

Do you ever get frustrated&say 'nevermind’ when people just don’t get it? I do at times

What was the last thing you cleaned&why? I washed my hair if that counts XD

Don’t those weightloss pill commercials just irritate you? yeah

What happened in the last TV show you watched? I’ve learned a bit about Shadow weaver

*and now as I wanted to add a gif I found out even more...

Do you ever correct grammar/spelling errors your friends make? I try not to as much as I used to but I’m still tempted 

What physical features can you just not stand about yourself? my skin for an example

Do you still count with your fingers, even if only every so often? yep

The last time you spent money, what was it on & how much did you spend? my mom paid for the last things I bought in second hand - torba, bluza, koszula biała (wreszcie dorwałam) i legginsy SW

Don’t you believe you’re not really a vegetarian if you still eat chicken? watch Scott Pilgrim movie

In elementary school, were you more of the bully or the bullied? I’ve been the victim of bullying

How much do you say you walk in a week? lots

Is there anything you wish your parents did differently in raising you? maybe

What is the greatest source of anxiety for you? food allergies What was the last appointment or plan you had to cancel? Saturday’s meeting with my gf, she was supposed to visit me  What is going right in your life right now? I thought that my love life What is going wrong in your life right now? everything Did you do anything today that you can be proud of? I organized my wardrobe/closet/clothes Would you ever want to be an architect? more an interior designer

What is one thing you would do to make the world better? destroy/delete/cancel all diseases/illnesses What do you think makes you attractive to other people? ask my current partner Would more money make you happier? yasss What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do in your life? live

If you were a holiday, which one would you be? hmm... Are you afraid of anything that most people are not afraid of? I suppose but that’s personal Would you have a pet dragon? If so what color would it be? better not ^^” unless it’s tiny like in Moomins but doesn’t blow fire  If you could be skinny and miserable or fat and happy, which would you be? fat and happy  If you were to invent something, what would it be? cure for allergies (or just all health problems at once) Do you fear death? kinda If you could name your own planet, what would you call it? probably Lazzo or Chinpolsafryamerros If you could live another 200 years. What would you hope to see? world getting better How would you rate yourself? depends Do you still collect toys from Happy Meals? I’ve had only one - Eeyore  What have you achieved that you once thought was impossible? being in a relationship? What have you tried to quit, but weren’t able to? life... What do you know how to cook? water

Quick choose, green or blue? green Does the number ten have an special meaning to you? nah Who is better Superman or Spiderman? Spiderman Have you ever felt like you found ‘the one’? I feel this way now and hope I’m not wrong  Have you ever had a pet that you disliked? not really Do you need to clean your room? my desk How many TV’s are in your house? just 1 and we don’t use it at all 

Have you ever given a nickname to your pet(s)? my dog has several Does it seem like everything gives you cancer these days? sadly

Are you homophobic I’m homosexual so... Name a song that is overplayed some tik tok songs I guess What is the most expensive thing on you at the moment my slippers for about 20 PLN

Is there anyone in the room with you? I’m alone

Who have you texted today? mad and M. Sweet or sour? sweet, GERD makes all food sour enough :( Are you waiting for anything? for example - appointments Does the time 2 o'clock have any significance to you? nope Are there any stuffed animals in the room you’re in? ton Where’s your mother? sleeping Is there anything hurting you, on your body right now? more like itch/bother What’s the best time you’ve had in the past week? hard to tell What’s the last thing you touched that wasn’t a part of the computer? my chin Are you waiting for a phone call? in the middle of the night? :o When’s the last time you used hand sanitizer? today Wearing anything that isn’t yours? why would I?

Are you one of those people who are always cold? not as much as my mother but still

Are you anything like your siblings? uhm... When was the last time you shaved your legs? recently Are you a fan of Miranda Cosgrove? why did I thought about Devil wears Prada when her surname was Priestly?...

Do you like long bike rides? not long Will Friday be a good one? doubt it When was the last time something bothered you? atm Can you speak French or Spanish? neither Do you own a pair of yellow socks? mhm What school year do you think was the saddest? first year of middle school? Was today someones birthday that you know? no one I know  Have you drank any water today? obvi When was the last time you had a crowd at your house? how many ppl is the crowd in your opinion because for me that’s 4+ ppl lmfao Do you currently have any mosquito bites? luckily not Do you think it would be cool to have a gummy bear lamp? it’s cute but no thx Do you have a goat? ... no Do you say “Okay” or “Alright” more? ok, I don’t use alright like ever

Do you like your personality? it’s complicated Are you happy with your appearance? I have bunch of insecurities How’s your life at home? sigh... Do you have any mental disorders? couple Have you ever thought of suicide? constantly lately Do you know someone who committed suicide? those who tried

Is there someone you can’t imagine life without? yet we can’t live without whoever, sad Your enemy dies. How do you feel? ... Do you wake up in a good mood in the mornings? r u kidding me? What is your mom’s maiden name? not your business Would you rather receive balloons or flowers for valentine’s day? smth else Do you follow the crowd when it comes to trends or do your own thing? my own thing Where were you at eleven this morning? shopping with mom How was your day? not good Are you more of a tomboy or a girly girl? in between? Have you ever been proposed to? I have not been proposed to  Have you ever seen two people together and you got sick to your stomach? ha! common reaction Does the thought of marriage scare you? slightly Is it true that faith is believing when common sense tells you not to? in some cases? 

[elegiacmarquise]

More love for the pink damsel

This is a rant, the first and the only, that I wrote a while ago and which I posted previously on DeviantArt and reposted on the Mario Amino, few days after the release of Super Mario Odyssey, after a new wave of hatred towards Princess Peach...

Considering that, nevertheless, the princess' relationship with most fans has always been ambiguous, what may have seemed to be tolerable, now is no longer acceptable speaking from the prospective of Peach's admirer, and hoping to be a spokesman for who, like me, genuinely appreciates her.

--------------------------------------------------

But before starting with the proper rant, why do I post this writing, even if they passed almost two years when I did write it? A YouTube video made by the quite famous personality of RelaxAlax which I Iink below.

Quite shallow, huh?

But this will NOT be an hate speech towards Alax, the rest of his videos are actually enjoyable and sometimes funny, but despite what he says in the video is nothing more and nothing less than what most Peach's haters actually say, I'm fearing that even due to this video, people are convinced to hate the pink princess without even knowing the truth behind her character.

But I must've taken you a lot of time, let's begin this speech, which was inspired by an older one (now deleted) posted by a friend of mine on Deviantart.

Let’s get started from the most recurring insults about the personality

"Peach is weak!!!"

While it’s true that for most of the games the Princess is kidnapped by Bowser or any enemy, it’s also the case that several times she has proved to be not so helpless, and even trying to escape to her kidnapper more than once indicates that Peach is not just staying there to patiently wait her hero; indeed, she was the only one along with Rosalina and Toadette who was been able to defend herself.

Some proofs? Super Princess Peach, Super Paper Mario, Super Mario 3D Land/ World, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Super Smash Bros series...

"So why is she always kidnapped?!"

Nintendo logic. Just joking, I think that the reason is due to the fact that Peach, like anyone else, is an human being, with her fears and anxieties, and so what can she do if suddenly there is a monster bigger at least the triple of her accompanied by an huge army? Not everyone is badass, and she obviously is not always, but is it a good reason to hate her? I don’t think so.

Also remember that even two stronger characters like Mario and Luigi often struggle during the battles with Bowser, how could a delicate princess?

So, in a more general view, how much it’s wrong to blame the victims and not the kidnappers? Why does everyone hate Peach for this and not BOWSER?

And there are Daisy, Pauline and Zelda, who were kidnapped as well, but still worshipped as goddesses...

"Peach is stupid!!1!"

If the Princess was actually that stupid,she wouldn't be on a throne ruling a whole kingdom peacefully nor even to try a time machine or even called to try to find a cure to a plague that affected the Mushroom Kingdom. She may not have an IQ of 300 like Dr Eggman,but that doesn't mean she's stupid.

Characters who are REALLY "stupid" on purpose, like Wario and Waluigi, loved because they are. Now, people, don't tell me you aren't uncoherent.

"Peach has no personality!1!"

So, a sweet and kind personality shouldn’t be a good character trait? Great, so we wasted years and years of characterization in a video game character.

Even a little development is always putted in while creating a characte and, as we are seeing, Miyamoto and Nintendo are generally developing the character of the princess, in the best, demonstrating that even the princess is not a fossilized archetype in Mario's existence for thirty years. She’s so sweet and kind, but also has values, friends and a dignity that defends strenuously.

Guys, Peach is human, so she has flaws, and that's right, but saying that she doesn’t have personality is an insult to both her and Nintendo in general.

Let's compare for a moment Peach and Rei Ayanami from Evangelion, and see who is not supposed to have personality. (although Rei also has a very strong, still not obvious, characterization that develops in the course of the series)

"Peach is a Mary Sue!!!1!"

A Mary Sue would theoretically is a character with too unnatural characteristics for their universe or species, overly powerful and often accompanied by a tragic backstory; in short, it's misleading in their context. By applying this description to Peach, how should she be a Mary Sue?

As explained in the previous paragraphs, the Princess, still mostly human, has a magical power that is always inferior to those of other characters, such as Rosalina; and comparing it with the Star Guardian, shouldn’t be her chararcter be more similar in the description of a Sue? Consistency, this unknown concept...

I see you already with the forks in your hands, but let me clarify one thing, even a character like Rosalina is not a Mary Sue, she still has her flaws, and we love her as she is, but if Peach is one, Rosalina fits the definition WAY more.

Let’s talk about the character design

"Peach always wears pink!!1!"

Come on, guys, hating a character for a color is a such superficial thing that, would do kindergarten children the most.

Pink is a color like all the others, in the spectrum of colors, so anyone can wear it, even males.

(Trivia: up to a few decades ago, pink was more of a masculine color, given to boys since it’s a lighter version of red, a color considered manly)

Peach is looking good with pink and no one in Mario games seems to complain too much about that, and so, so why do we fans do?

"Peach is girly!!!!1!”

And so? A female character to be worthy of this name must be a tomboy or a badass with a gun on her hands? You have great prospects in mind, my dear ones, just like that.

Seriously, why does a character who likes to cure herself, should be banned from today's media?

However, almost all the girls in the Mario games are femminine, even Daisy, despite being described as a tomboy, so it doesn’t seem a good excuse for hating a character.

"Peach is blonde!!!1!"

Guys that stereotype that everyone who is blonde must be stupid it's not only extremely outdated, but there are a lot of people who consider it quite offensive. Open your minds! Go, go! The isn't any relations about the quantity of melaninine on the hair and the actual intelligence.

Even Rosalina and most of the Zeldas encountered in the games are blondes, but nobody seems to care.

"Peach has an annoying voice!!1!"

All the characters in the Mario games have their voices emphasized, guys, and Peach isn’t an exception.

There are characters with even more exaggerated voices, trust me, like Daisy, Toad or Rosalina's new dubbing, but for certain reasons, only Peach should be demonized for that by fans.

"Peach is a prostitute!!1!"

This is one of the most recurring insults that are ever placed against our hated Princess, and that's what I'm wondering where most haters have been losing their credibility.

Did Peach ever wear provocative clothes? NO. (unless you have a fetishism towards biker suits and similar outfits)

Has she ever tried to seduce anyone she saw? NEVER (what you see on Rule34 and other lewd sites is not canon, I'm sorry)

Let's be clear: Peach is just the opposite of the stereotype of the prostitute, as being a sweet, gentle, and that kind of girl who rarely makes sloppy thoughts; And yet Mario is not the kind of game that is suitable to show sensual girls often.

Another point: how do people define as that Peach and not Pauline or Valentina from Super Mario RPG, who are wearing much revealing clothes (and not even worthy to be called with those sick names)? Mystery of the Faith.

PS. Giving a prostitute to someone is not fashionable anymore :3

Now, let’s analyse that kind of insults that relate with Peach’s relationships with other characters

"Peach isn’t grateful to Mario!!!!1!"

Ever since Peach has never been grateful to Mario? WHEN? She kisses him, and fills him with cakes. What should the Princess do more with him? having sex is not a good answer, and it doesn't even marrying him.

Mario is still a sweet and family friendly series, if you want NSFW art, go to rule34 or look good at deviantart, but don’t expect explicit scenes in similar games.

"Peach is a tyrant who abuses Toads!!!1!"

But since that is so, seriously, did I miss some details? And no, The Game Theorists, aren’t worth as a source of inspiration since theirs is only a mere SPECULATION (also badly made imho).

To me Peach has always seemed like the OPPOSITE of a tyrant! She’s a good sovereign who’s caring for her subjects, and most of the Toads are happy with her guide and willing whenever she needs help.

I guess you are thinking of the Toad used from the princess during Super Smash Bros: If we analyse well what our beloved mushroom does during the frames in which we can see him, we can notice that doesn’t acts as a shield for the princess, but is determined more than ever to attack with his spores, so for me this isn’t a point to demonise Peach at all.

Then do you think that in Smash bros Rosalina does something way more serious?! She fights with a Luma, one of her CHILDREN all the time. But since she is our beloved star waifu, Peach is not worth to be compared lmao.

Again this time implore the sacred goddess of the consistency for forgiving their vain words...

"Peach betrays Daisy!!!1!"

Peach and Daisy have proven themselves to be best friends since the first time they appeared together, and even now their idyllic relationship hasn’t stopped being shown in the games and even in that LINE stickers that came out a while ago!

How Peach Should betray Daisy? For Rosalina, for Pauline? I think all the girls in the world of Mario are friendly to each other, so I don’t see any reasons in a betray, since at worst they are in a friendly rivalry.

"Peach is much less sexy than Rosalina / Pauline!!!1!"

If I can understand why Pauline can be considered sensual, how should Rosalina be? She’s wearing just a turquoise dress, which does not reveals much, and which can only be sexualized in the most indecent fanarts drawn by FANS indeed, but we all know the new religion that places the guardian of the Lumas to a brand new god.

However, all of Mario girls have been designed to be beautiful, not sex objects, not even Pauline, and none of them will agree to be your beautiful waifus condescending to all your fantasies, deal with it!

"Peach is not tomboy like Daisy is!!!1!"

And this is what connects to the previous point where the Princess was insulted to be girly. Assuming that even Daisy, in her own way, is girly (if she was totally a tomboy, she wouldn’t certainly wear those long dresses with ease, nor she would have her notorious passion for flowers), it’s not nice to have a bit of variety in the characters personalities? Go on, Peach is a gentle and sweet girl, Daisy is exuberant and sporty, Rosalina, calm and majestic, Wendy spoiled yet powerful, Toadette cheerful and curious, and finally Pauline concrete and passionate. Everyone compensates their gaps with the others, and this balance between the girls is fine, so please do not compare all the girls, Peach first, to Daisy.

"Peach appears too much in the games, so she's overrated!!!1!"

Guys, our princess is one of the protagonists of Mario's videogames, along with the plumber, his brother, Bowser and Toad, so it's natural that she often appears in the games. After all, Peach (after Pauline, who belonged for long time to another series) is the first of the princesses to appear, so it's logical that Nintendo would value that in this way.

And another little thing: the word overrated does NOT mean popular in its own universe, it means overly popular among its FANS.

And Peach has relatively few fans compared to the other main characters.

And, as the final cherry on the cake, let’s talk about Odyssey, who can have reassume prevous points, but what is equally needed, because of the following reasons

"PEACH IS A BITCH WHO HASN’T ACCEPTED MARIO'S PROPOSAL, STUPID AND UNGRATEFUL!!!1! THAT’S OBVIOUS THAT MARIO CHOOSES PAULINE!!!1!"

And here we come to the juice of the speech, and at this point I would like to ask: but have you seen the final cutscene of the game, or are you just knocking on your keyboards to don’t make feel the keys alone and misunderstood?

Let’s assume that after a long, tiring journey along the WHOLE world, with a monster bigger at least the triple of you who is doing everything to organize a NOT-wanted marriage with you; and  immediately soon after being rescued, at the end of an extravagant battle, you have not one, but TWO contenders for your hand, what are you doing? The doll who gives all of herself to her hero just because she saved you? But in which period are we, in the nineteenth century?

Guys, let's talk seriously, would you immediately answer to a such serious question, which can change the rest of your life, on the moon under such conditions? I really don’t think so.

So Peach did, showing her intelligence, and why not, joking over it. It wasn’t the place nor the time for Mario and Bowser to move such proposals, and I honestly think that Peach done right to refuse both of them, I believe, momentarily.

And so centuries of feminist struggles went cancelled because of a video game character...

"PEACH HAS LEFT MARIO AND BOWSER ON THE MOON!!1!"

Yeah, okay, Odyssey's final was what it was, but you can’t hate a character because she's not a puppet in Mario or Bowser's hand. Tell me, you first complained that Peach had no character and now that she has explicated it, in good, you hate her the same? Consistency, this unknown concept...

However, for this detail, have you noticed that Peach eventually called Mario on the Odyssey, even though it had already started to fly? Mario had all the time he needed to get on board with the Princess and her friends. Even if Mario couldn't make it to the Odyssey (which is also unlikely under a cautious analysis of the cutscene), I even highly doubt that not only Bowser but all the other wedding's guests (including PAULINE) were diying there, surely there was at least ONE other vehicle which could bring back them home.

Also think about Peach's dialogues in the post-game: she completely forgave Mario's misbehaving and she's still happy to see him to the point to give him all the moons she gets! So she’s not that ungrateful...

And that's what I needed to say. Guys, please stop hating Peach, she didn’t do anything, and certainly she doesn’t deserve your insults.

In these times, the princess is among the main characters the most hated, even much more than Daisy or Zelda, who have their great slice of fans, who would do anything for them and even considering them "better" in Smash Bros.

I'm sorry to have written this rant but I'm sure this time is really needed...

Fandoms, Mario included, can be beautiful places where you can meet fantastic people but at the same time you can witness this free hate episodes even from famous personalities...

Thank you for reading, and see you soon.

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P.S. Below I show you the main places where the princess is hated for the above reasons.

Gamefaqs, TheTopTens.com, Marioboards, DeviantArt and Youtube

P.P.S. Please, do not go to the video I've mentioned only to insult the youtuber: despite that entry is far from being well-crafted, he made enjoyable content as well. He deserves respect as well and if you really want to discuss in the comment section about the subject, please be polite

P.P.P.S. If you hate Peach and you feel to comment here, please write maturely, well-structured comments. If we can have a mature dialogue, it's best for both of us.

[call-me-insane-but-wth]

Reborn Akane

Reborn Akane:

Akane and Ranma eventually gets married. They live to a ripe old age together. They have no children. Ranma never receives the cure for his curse, not that he seemingly cared much.

A late night conversation during their middle age years enlightened her. Ranma’s admitted that the ability to get the best of both sexes was more convenient than inconvenient. Akane comforted him with the fact that she accepted him either way. Ranma returns the sentiment.

They loved each other.

Shampoo, Ukyo, and Kodachi have their own lives but they never stop their visits to discomfort the couple. Akane finds herself exasperated with Ranma’s inaction. Her love for Ranma is tempered under the weight of their years and his unrelentingly ambiguous attitude towards the trio’s attempts.

They have many arguments over their years together. Most arguments are centered on that point. Akane eventually sinks into resignation over Ranma’s refusal to deal with their ‘friends’ harassment. This ending state is helped by the people around them. They all counseled her* towards acceptance. They share their own anecdotes from their marriages and relationships. How imperfection can be excused in the face of family. In any case, it all seemed very innocent. Their attempts more in line to just draw a reaction from the couple than anything else. And such attempts are entertaining.

Akane resigns herself. Curbs her temper and hides her disappointment. One year at a party ruined by another hare brained attempt from Shampoo, Kasumi pulled her aside and tells her how proud their mother would be of her finally becoming a mature woman and keeping her face even though Ranma was currently screaming while trying to release himself from a Shampoo in a cat shape.

Akane forced a serene smile. She goes to untangle her husband. She endures Ranma’s brusque, embarrassed scolding. Her serene smile cracking as he lambasts her for her stupidity. Don’t you know that Shampoo is stronger than you?!- stop borrowing trouble tomboy! I can handle myself!

Shampoo leaps for him and Ranma shrieked. The two run away and Akane-

Her hand twitches for her mallet.

-But she swallows down her rage and just turned and walked away. Her serene smile hiding something cold and bitter and resigned. From far away, Kasumi sends her an approving nod.

Kasumi eventually married Dr Tofu in a confusing and suspicious series of events. She goes to live with Oono-San in his clinic and his mother. Nabiki remained single, amasses wealth, comes home every once in a while to hide out from her ex-rich paramours. She is the only one to see the cracks in her marriage to Ranma.

Nabiki is also the only one to see and allowed to jab at her with her dismissively cruel manner. She adored using ambiguous, irresponsible remarks designed to cut. And of course Akane would have to swallow down her dissatisfaction and defend her marriage.

These moments end one year when Nabiki married a rich foreigner and moved overseas.

But to comfort herself before then she cited like a prayer; “They love each other. There is true care and affection between them. That was enough.”

From what Akane had gathered from many people who couldn’t keep their well meaning counsel to themselves, love was more than could ever be expected.

Akane lives to be eighty years old. She is bedridden those final two years. They have many long, quiet conversations together. Eventually, as her body begins to fail, they speak of their deepest disappointments and regrets.

Ranma is weeping quietly at her side. He apologizes quietly over and over, admitting that he never treated her as he should have. He apologizes, and says mournfully that it is because he’d always been deprived of friends growing up.

But he’s always been faithful. That was enough isn’t it? He said so wearily in response to Akane’s resigned, and increasingly empty stares. He repeats that weakly over and over, an age old defense between them. He’s always been faithful. Akane’s the only one to have ever treated him with sincerity. He understands her value to him. He appreciates her for that. He thanks her for staying with him nonetheless.

Akane weeps silently, closes her eyes; “Wasn’t it enough?” Those words have haunted her through their years together. A rhetorical question she was forced to endure. Her lips curves in a smile.

Was it enough?

That question has been answered and been proven useless in its stupidity. What about it being enough or not? This was what was expected, this was what she and him had allowed. What was the point of regretting? What was the point of feeling defensive, or pointing fingers and assigning blame now?

In the end, this was the end.

And Akane…

Akane feels like a lifetime of this… Was enough.

Akane closes her eyes.

…….

Akane opens up her eyes. She is twelve years old. Her pillow is wet. Her hair is long and tangled on her pillow. For a moment she thinks that is strange isn’t it? Her hair had been short and permed and Ranma had combed it out so carefully as the nurses shut down the machines around her one by one.

“Was it all a dream?”