#BUT AS IT EXISTS i find the love story really cute! it's lighthearted and honestly cute and i like that!

[thewhizzyhead]

when i first started checking out d.e.b.s aka that old 2004 cult classic with lesbian spies, i was simply expecting a kinda-raunchy and very campy movie. i was not expecting said kinda-raunchy and very campy movie with aforementioned lesbian spies to be actually kinda cute-

[frosted-luckycharms]

why i love the sentiadrien theory.

(NOTE: this isn't a list of reasons why i believe the theory's true, i know that's already been talked about and debated a lot. these are just reasons i think it's a good twist in the story.)

it has the potential to be so powerful for adrien's character arc. whenever he finds a way to free himself, whether that's by getting a hold of his own amok, or even figuring out how to destroy his connection to it (personally i love the foil-miraculous theory so im rooting for the concept of a cool upgraded cataclysm), it'll be so meaningful as a symbol of overcoming abuse and finding freedom. ESPECIALLY if that comes in the image of using the power of destruction he was given to cataclysm his metaphorical shackles just like how he's cataclysmed physical cages and walls so many times throughout the show. just. the SYMBOLISM. chefs kiss

whenever mari/ladybug finds out about this, hopefully we'll get to see her go all Fierce Protector Mode to defend adrien/chat and encourage him that he's still an amazing and valid person (please?? this would be so cute????)

also since marinette, who holds the miraculous of creation, is known for her bravery, agency, and creativity- traits adrien as a senti never had a chance to have growing up- it gives more reason to root for her and adrien's relationship. she can help him heal, bring out his humanity and grow into himself. if that makes sense?? i read a rlly cool meta on this once but i forget who wrote it:(

it gives a meaningful reason for emilie's death. the plot of the show literally wouldn't exist if not for emilie dying (or falling into a coma if that's what you prefer), and it would be a bit anticlimactic to find out that the reason she died was because she just wanted to create, idk, robot assistants or a pet dog or something. whoever emilie created, she DIED for them, and so imo it only makes sense that the being she created was adrien, her child.

sentimonsters are such a good metaphor for abuse. since the show's for kids, it's hard to talk blatantly about heavy topics like abuse, but this lets them deal with it in a kid-friendly way. and i know this has been discussed already, but i don't think that using a magical metaphor lessens the gravity of the issue at all. as i saw someone point out, miraculous has always been a show that uses magical metaphors (akumas, superhero disguises, you name it) to talk about real-life issues both kids and adults deal with, and personally i think that's really beautiful.

it just..... honestly makes the show so much more interesting/dark/angsty???? in a way that's chillingly unexpected, but also makes so much narrative SENSE looking back on it, which i think we can all agree is the best kind of plot twist. personally as much as i love the lighthearted funny parts of the show (i do!!!), i've always been drawn to the contrast of its more tragic, epic-scale side (especially since seeing cat blanc aka my favorite episode lol). IM NOT EVIL I JUST LIKE PAIN, OK

all the potential for angsty fanarts/fics/other fanworks. i've seen quite a few of these but i know there's also a lot more out there i haven't seen yet, and i just love all the concepts that fans are exploring because of this theory.

sentimonster jokes/memes are hilarious sorry. but not really sorry because i am 1000% sure adrien "i-cope-with-my-problems-with-humor" agreste will be TOTALLY on board the jokes too once he gets over the initial shock/existential horror/etc

ok i think that's all i have off the top of my head but if anyone else thinks of more reasons plz reblog and add on!!! let's get some more positivity for this show's writing and for our senti cat child because he sure deserves it <333

[ladyloveandjustice]

Belated Spring 2020 Anime Overview: My Next Life as Villainess

For the Spring 2020 anime season, I mostly watched continuations of shows I was already into. The one new show I did pick up was My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! follows Katerina Claes, a spoiled young noble girl deviously scheming to win the heart of a prince- oh wait, never mind, she hit her head and remembered her past life! Turns out she’s an eighteen year old Japanese otaku chick who died and got reincarnated as the villainess in her favorite otome game. 

If you don’t feel like reading the wiki article, an otome game is basically a female- targeted dating sim where you play as a blank slate main character and date a bunch of pretty boys (and sometimes girls, but usually only if you go outside the mainstream ones), unlocking their backstories and collecting all the romantic endings.

Having played this game, Katarina is well aware that the Villainess character- who constantly tries to interfere with the game’s heroine and whichever boy she’s pursuing- is either exiled or killed in all of the games endings. And now she IS that villainess, living in the world of the game and all its characters! Does that mean she’s doomed to a horrible fate? What’s a girl to do?

Well, if you’re Katarina, what you do is be supportive and kind to the people around you and in doing so accidentally get every single character in the game to fall in love with you. And yes, this includes all the boys the heroine is supposed to date, the other female romantic rivals the heroine is faced with and the game’s heroine herself.

That’s right, we finally got us some bisexual romantic comedy hijinx last anime season, my friends! My Next Life as a Villainess was the delightful little show I really escaped into during these anxious pandemic times . All these girls casually falling in love with Katarina without it being treated as ‘weird’ was what particularly drew me to this show and warmed my gay little heart to see. It was honestly the perfect fluffy, low stress watch during these high stress times.

Anime has long been oversaturated with ‘harem’ stories- where a usually unwitting protagonist somehow gets a bevy of beauties in love with them- but it’s still unfortunately really unusual to see bisexual harems, especially ones with a girl at the center, so right away there’s a big draw to this story that helps it stick out from the rest.  (And worry not, the story is largely focused on Katarina having fun with these pals-who-are-not-so-secretly-in-love-with-her, rather than having a ton the dubious shenanigans you see in more sexually charged tales.)

Harem protoganists also famously tend to have the personality of potatoes, being so painfully bland it’s unclear why so many people would fall in love with them in the first place. But that definitely not the case for Katarina. She’s brash, ridiculous, kind and INCREDIBLY dense, and that for a pretty dynamic combination in this setting! She does genuinely come off as a fun person to be around. Unlike a lot of modern isekai shows, she doesn’t stumble into having incredible magic powers or skills, so her compassion is genuinely her greatest strength and what saves the day and wins hearts time and time again.

Katarina’s five brain cells doing their weekly check-in

(The moment she won my heart was when she responded to a tragic Frozen style situation with her friend locking himself away from people because he believed his magic was dangerous by taking an axe to his door. My kinda girl!)

The premise also allows for some plausible built-in reasons for the characters to take such special notice of Katarina- having been raised in a different world, she isn’t beholden to all the social rules, class divisions and noble family drama all the other kids in this very specific midevial-esque fantasy world are so embroiled in. This combined with her naturally earnest, accepting and straightfoward nature means she’s able to cross boundaries and reach out to them in a way they aren’t accustomed to. She was significant in each character’s life because she genuinely was the first to show them acceptance and affection without pretense, if only because she isn’t even aware there was supposed to be a pretense.

Katarina’s focus on trying not to die and her fear she’s going to meet the same fate as the villainess in the game also at least gives some kind of a basis to her comical obliviousness to everyone being in love with her. She assumes that everyone has to be into Maria (the heroine) and terrified of her because that’s how the game GOES okay, that’s CANON! Of course, this logic stretches thin as time goes on and it would be abundantly clear to most people that things have diverged greatly from the game’s storyline, but the show makes it clear that Katarina’s determined, one track mind is as much a gift as a curse. 

Her bullheadedness when it comes to picking up how everyone REALLY feels about her is an intentional gag on the show’s part and even her love interests are well aware of what a colossal dumbass she is and not afraid to point it out!

My Next Life as a Villainess isn’t without its flaws, and the personalities/backstories of some of the ‘love interests’ Katarina gathers may be a stumbling block on some- mostly the male ones.  Geordo, “the black hearted prince” has a bit of the “ possessive shoujo bad boy” archetype about him, and though he’s far from the worst that genre of love interest has to offer (there’s not much bad he can get up to due to Katarina’s obliviousness, the lighthearted nature of the show, and his rivals constantly getting in his way), the way he refuses to break Katarina and his engagement off despite her repeatedly asking him to, as well as some of his lines here and there, are definitely NOT cute. 

Keith is Katarina’s adopted brother, but clearly has a thing for her too. On one hand, they only first met when they were nine and he fell for her pretty immediately. On the other hand, he still refers to her as “sister” constantly which is kinda eesh. 

The other two guys are all right- Nicol’s big thing is he’s inexpressive and doesn’t talk much which, considering show doesn’t spend much time inside his head, doesn’t make him a very interesting character in the ensemble (maybe he comes across better in the novels) but there’s nothing wrong with him. Alan is undoubtedly the Best Boy in my book. He’s another common trope- rambunctious and competitive with Katarina but clearly soft for her- but he’s done well and they have a lot of cute moments together.

I find the girl love interests to be a much more interesting group overall, though this may be my obvious bias talking. Sophia has the strongest connection to Katarina, their backstories being intertwined in a surprising and touching way (I’m told in the novels her affection for Katarina was treated as more platonic, but the anime definitely plays it up as having romantic elements). Maria’s original role as the game’s heroine puts her in the most interesting position (and would make her the most narratively satisfying choice of love interest, if the show was actually interested in choosing). And while Mary is comically tenacious in her pursuit of Katarina, she’s doesn’t ever act ‘sinister’ or overstep boundaries in the way Geordo does, her “scheming” only really amounting to straightforwardly asking if Katarina wants to ditch her fiance and run away with her. 

As I mentioned, one thing that really contributes to My Next Life as a Villainess being a relaxing watch is that the queer characters are treated with casual acceptance. Mary in particular isn’t subtle about her crush on Katarina, but nobody bats an eye at her and she’s completely open and comfortable with herself too. The observing maid notes that the girls are in love with Katarina with the same bland affect as when she notes she notes the guys are. And while the social practices of the nobles are pretty heteronormative- girls are always engaged in arranged marriages to guys, the guys are expected to dance with the girls (something Mary complains about!)- there’s apparently a booming queer romance novel industry that inspires our young wlw.

Katarina, having grown up in a different world, seems to be the one most prone to heteronormativity of her group. She never really considers  that a girl would ever fall in love with her, but is also never hostile to the idea. It’s telling that when Mary very clearly indicates her desired romantic partner would be a girl, Katarina’s the only one that gets tripped up and has to walk back her assumption that Mary would be talking about a guy. 

Mary LAYING DOWN THE LAW

Also, Katarina has  SEVERAL “she’s so cute! My heart is beating faster!” moments with the other girls, on par in frequency with her moments with the guys. This strongly hints she’s an oblivious bisexual disaster.

So, My Next Life as Villainess is a fun, frothy watch and the rare positive example of silly wish-fufillment that’s inclusive to a wlw audience. But is the actual plot good, or remotely complex? The answer to that is no, the plot is fairly predictable and one definitely shouldn’t got into this story expecting a deep examination of the nature of fate or anything like that.There’s no real explanation of big reason as to why why Katarina was reborn into this game world and so on.

 The antagonist that does eventually emerge plays off otome game tropes a bit, but ultimately isn’t that interesting or built up all that well. . The attempts at drama the show makes towards the end fall a little flat, especially since it tends to rely on very-late-in-the-game-exposition-dumps (dark magic isn’t even MENTIONED as existing in this world until like, the second to last episode where it becomes relevant and we get a vague infodump explaining its mechanics). The conflict honestly almost feels shoehorned in and the climax is pretty standard and doesn’t really utilize the big cast of characters all that well

But in the end, that’s okay! The show makes it abundantly clear from the beginning it’s not here to be Deep, but to be some silly fun. And it really fulfills that purpose well, from it’s catchy, peppy theme tune to its consistently warm tone. It MAY get repetitive at times for some, and I do have some quibbles- like how I found the childhood segments to be some of the shows best material and wish we could have stayed in that section for a bit instead of rushing through it, how I wish Katarina had kept her cute little scar, etc- but overall, it was definitely the soothing balm I needed during a very rough time and I absolutely recommend it if you’re looking for a chill, feel-good watch.

 And hey, a second season’s supposed to be on the way too, so there’s something to potentially look forward to!

[myaekingheart]

20 [Fanfic Writer] Questions Game

Thank you so much for tagging me, @lemony-snickers! This is tons of fun, I love answering these kinds of big questionnaires 😂💕 Also putting mine under a cut because there’s a lot of questions and I like to ramble. 

Also gonna go ahead and just tag whoever wants to do this! 😅💕

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

As of August 27, 2021, I have a total of 77 works on my AO3! 

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

Funny enough, I was just looking at this, specifically, earlier today and kind of laughing about it. Right now, my total word count across all my works is 1,148,941 😬 

3. How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

Apparently 12, but some of them I don’t really consider “big” in my fandom repertoire. Naruto is my greatest fandom with a total of 60 fics so far, followed by The Chronicles of Narnia and Rise of the Guardians. The rest are ones I either did crossover fics with or just did one-off little pieces with--The Incredibles, Tangled, Brave, How to Train Your Dragon, Arthurian Mythology, Disney Princesses, Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, Back to the Future, and Frozen. 

4. What are your Top Five fics by kudos?

The Scarecrow and The Bell (Naruto) - 470 kudos The Day Kakashi’s Mask Slipped (Naruto) - 139 kudos Sunflowers (Naruto) - 92 kudos Sakumo the House Husband (Naruto) - 81 kudos Someone to Lean On (Naruto) - 67 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I always try to respond to comments, because I like to acknowledge when people respond to my work. I cherish comments like nobody’s business, especially when they’re kind and reactionary. I just really love seeing/hearing what people think of the way a story is progressing, or what they thought of a one-shot. Comments keep me going especially when it comes to longfic so I want to be able to let readers know that I do in fact see their comments, that I’m acknowledging what they’re saying, and that I appreciate them. Plus, it can be kind of fun to tease upcoming events in a fic through responses to people’s comments, too. Because I’m mean. 

6. What fic have you written with the angstiest ending?

Definitely Hothouse (Rise of the Guardians/The Incredibles; Jack Frost x Violet Parr; American Horror Story AU). This was the first multi-chaptered fic I ever wrote to completion and I honestly cringe when I remember it exists both because it’s so poorly organized (and full of nasty plot holes) and because I just went ham on the gore factor. It definitely has a really bittersweet and heartbreaking ending to it, too. 

7. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

I think I’ll definitely have to say Temptation. The story itself was kind of a ride, and it’s only the first installment in a series, but it follows the plot of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe but remixed due to the presence of an original character, but the ending is still roughly the same as the original: they defeat the evil, the Pevensies are all crowned kings and queens, happy days. Reading the last few paragraphs of the last chapter honestly still gets me all up in my feelings. 

8. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I used to be more of a crossover writer due to one of my main ships being a crossover ship. They weren’t super crazy, though, because they were both CGI-animated films. The craziest crossover I’ve ever written is an in-progress/unfinished multichapter piece, Kakashi, Enchanted, that sees our favorite Copy Ninja get kamui’d into the Disney princess dimension and has to help the likes of Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel on his journey to find a way back to his own world. It’s a super weird premise but definitely one of my more lighthearted works and fun to revisit when I need to decompress. 

9. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don’t think I’ve ever received hate so much as I’ve received criticism. The closest I ever got to hate on a fic, I think, was someone left an overly personal and mentally disturbed comment on a chapter of my main fic that made me convinced they needed to seek therapy and deal with their own personal issues rather than take it out on a fanfic about animated ninjas. 

10. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Maybe 👀 I’m super vanilla when it comes to smut, though. I think the wildest thing I’ve ever written in smut is breeding kink. 

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of, and I hope I never will. 

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet! I had someone ask to translate a one-shot of mine in Russian but I never got a response back when I laid out my terms and conditions. 

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have not! I used to do paragraph-style roleplay which was kind of like cowriting fanfiction but writing is so personal and sacred to me that I don’t know if I could ever actually cowrite a fic with someone. I like brainstorming with other people, but writing for me is more of a deeply personal and independent endeavour. 

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Oh god, this is a tricky question because it depends on fandom. I absolutely love New Dream (Rapunzel x Eugene, Tangled) and have for the past ten years, and my love for them as only grown since watching Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure. I don’t write or even really read a ton of fanfiction for them, though. I’m also still highly dedicated to my favorite crossover crackship, Frostfield (Jack Frost x Violet Parr, Rise of the Guardians/The Incredibles) and to this day, if you search for that ship on AO3, I am the sole provider of every single fic about them so far. I’m not as active with them as I used to be, but they got me through some really rough times back in the day and still mean so much to me. A lot of my favorite ships across fandoms, though, are honestly canon x OC ships of mine because I am a self-indulgent bitch who needs to project. So Peter Pevensie x Eilonwy (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Kakashi Hatake x Rei Natsuki (Naruto) are really important to me and I’ve poured so much of myself specifically into their stories. I think it’s safe to say Kakashi and Rei is my all-time favorite ship across all fandoms, though, just because of how much their story means to me. The Scarecrow and The Bell is my magnum opus, my pride and joy, and I’m sure it will be my biggest fandom footprint of my entire life. I’ve dedicated the past three years to this story and these characters and I intend to continue doing it until it no longer brings me joy (which I hope it always will). There’s just so much I could say about this story and Kakashi and Rei’s relationship but I don’t think we have enough time or space in this post for that 😅 Just know that they mean the world to me and I will always hold them in the highest regard as a beautifully messy, flawed, passionate, soulmate-y ship that I love with all of my heart 🥺

EDIT: I also feel obligated to tack on some of my absolute favorite Naruto ships because I may not have written for all of them (yet) but they still make me unbelievably happy or I find them really compelling and enjoy the idea of exploring them: 

Naruhina is precious happy sunshine and The Last honestly felt like a wonderful Disney princess movie to me, it was so cute and the romance was so on-point, Naruhina just makes me so incredibly happy and I love them with all my heart. 

MinaKushi also gets me all up in my feels and I adore them with every fiber of my being. Their romance also gave me Disney princess movie vibes which I love, their story is just so damn sweet as is their character dynamic and I am still so heartbroken that they never got to be a happy family with Naruto because you know what? It’s what they deserved!

SasuSaku is so compelling to me and I really feel like we were cheated out of seeing their relationship develop and evolve postwar in the same way The Last did for Naruhina. They’re my favorite angst ship and while I don’t think they were written that well in canon, I love the possibility and potential of them together and am excited to explore them more in-depth in my own writing. 

NejiTen is just too cute, I really love the way Neji and Tenten’s personalities compliment each other? I don’t have much else to say about them except that I really love them together and think they have so much untapped potential that I also can’t wait to explore in more depth in my own writing. 

15. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Paper Hearts and Impromptu Bookmarks, probably. I love the premise of this story a lot and I have so many interesting ideas for it but at the same time, it also feels kind of cheap and cringey to me, in a way? It takes all of these ideas I probably would have had if I had been into Naruto when I was a kid and kind of compiles them all into one big story. Kakashi and Aiko’s relationship and story is still really important to me and I want to continue it someday but for right now, I just haven’t had the motivation or desire to write any more of it. I think I’m just so overwhelmingly preoccupied with writing Kakashi and Rei’s story that I can’t imagine writing any other Kakashi x OC fics right now. 

16. What are your writing strengths?

I want to say that I’m really good at capturing complex emotion? I don’t know, I write a lot of angst and mental upheaval in my fics which can be really difficult to try and capture, but I think I do a decent enough job of it? And just writing difficult subjects in general. I think it’s really important to address difficult topics such as mental illness and relationship difficulties and everything but I also want to try and write those topics in a way that is both authentic to the experience while also still tasteful. I don’t want to drive readers away with heavy subject matter but rather present a situation that feels real and authentic while also still being digestible. I may not be doing a very good job of that during the current arc of my fic that I’m working on, but I’m trying haha

EDIT 2: I also want to add onto this to say that I’m really proud of my organizational techniques for writing longfic. It’s not necessarily a strength in terms of the prose itself but it’s something that’s taken me years to really get a grasp on and find a method that works perfectly for me and so far, it’s been extremely helpful and beneficial to me. I don’t know where I would be now as a writer without these essential tools in my pocket. 

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I feel like I do a really bad job of the “show, don’t tell” thing. It can be really hard to balance descriptive prose with straightforward writing that moves things along. I don’t want to dwell on mental dialogue to the point where you lose track of what’s going on, but I also don’t want my stuff to read like “Character A did xyz. Character B said abc. They went to 123″, whatever. Another thing I struggle with is sentence variation. I always fall into the same patterns when I’m writing prose and I get really self-conscious about it because I don’t want to sound repetitive or disrupt the flow of the writing. One of my favorite things about prose is focusing on the cadence of the words, I think it’s one of the most beautiful things about writing in general, but it can just be really difficult to get a good grip on that. I’ve been told in the past that I apparently have a really good grasp/control of the language or whatever but sometimes I just find that really hard to believe when I look at my work with such scrutiny. I think one of my biggest pet peeves with my own writing, too, is feeling like I start all of my sentences the same five different ways. I’ll read other people’s works and they’ll write sentences like “Glass-blue water lapped against the shores of a deserted beach as a lonely woman gazed off into the distance” and I can just never figure out how to realistically write sentences that start like that in the context of my prose and it drives me fucking crazy, like I’m definitely jealous  😅

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I’ve never really thought much about it before, but I think there are pros and cons! For bilingual/multilingual readers, I think it can be a really enriching reading experience because they know what’s being said in both languages. For people who only know one language, however, unless a translation is provided, I feel like it can be really alienating. I think the best use of that for both worlds is using it as a means for miscommunication humor. Other than that, I think it can be a slippery slope that depends on what kind of reader you are and how it’s written. 

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The Chronicles of Narnia! My very first fanfiction was a Narnia fanfic that I barely remember except that it laid the basis for Temptation and my Narnia fanfic series as a whole. I never posted this first iteration anyway, but I remember it was 2008/2009 and I wrote a solid 80 pages (which was wild for me at the time) and had gotten halfway through remixing the events of Prince Caspian when my computer crashed and I lost absolutely everything. I’m still heartbroken that it’s gone forever, not because I’d want to go back and read it necessarily (since I’m sure it was actually hot garbage) but at least for nostalgia’s sake. Either way, like I said, this long-lost fic laid the basis for the very first fanfiction I ever posted, the first published (and never finished) iteration of Temptation back in 2011 on deviantART and the since-defunct Figment. I fell out of the fandom around 2012/2013 and left the story alone for a while before ultimately deciding to completely redux and rewrite the story when the fixation swung back around again between 2016 and 2018. 

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Despite the fact that it’s still in-progress, definitely The Scarecrow and The Bell. This fic just genuinely means so damn much to me and I will cherish it for the rest of my life because of how much it’s given me, how much love and passion and time and even parts of myself that I have poured into this, and also just how expansive of a story this is. Not only does it touch on some very dark and heavy topics, but I’ve also created so much of my own characters and meta for this story that it’s almost an entire universe in and of itself. I’ve just contributed so much additional world-building and created so many new OCs to fill important roles in this story and in Rei’s life, and they’ve all become so deeply important to me as they’ve developed further over the years. I’ve come up with so many interesting ideas for everyone and their lives, which are all slowly becoming so rich and varied. Not to mention that it’s my most popular fic to date as well as my longest fic at 632k and counting. I’ve really just genuinely poured so much of my heart and soul into this story, it’s my absolute favorite thing I’ve ever done and I really mean it when I say that I will cherish it for the rest of my life. 

[blue-lions-baby]

Blinded by Love (Dimitri x F!Reader) Ch. 1

(a/n) hi i'm like practically dead at this point LMAO i've got like 3 finals this week and i want to cRY

i'm sorry for my absence. i honestly didn't realize how much time has passed until it suddenly hit me that i hadn't visited tumblr in a *hot minute.*

instead of posting this colossal fic as one whole entry, i wanted to split it up into smaller chapters (~1000 words each?) so you can take the story in smaller bites and not have a whole ass meal every time you sit down and read my stuff. plus, this might help with my posting schedule-- i think working on and posting smaller chapters would be a much better method compared to writing one big fic.

doesthatmakesenseiamsotiredpLEASE

anyways, without further ado, please enjoy the first chapter of Blinded by Love! as always, no spoilers :)

also, it’s been a hot minute since i wrote anything remotely creative please bare with me as i get back into it ok that’s it thanks bye

~*~

"Is everyone ready?" Byleth stared deeply into the exuberant eyes of her Lions; their bright, starving hues were hungry, aching for the exhilarating taste of battle. Dimitri, barely managing to contain his excitement, nodded resolutely.

"Yes, Professor."

"Very good," Byleth spread the torn map on a desk and motioned for everyone to gather around, "we are being dispatched to a village not far from the monastery. Some bandits have grown unruly as of late and have begun tormenting the villagers. The Church is sending us to get rid of them."

They pointed to a particular spot on the map and proceeded to explain the roads you all would take to get to the relatively out-of-the-way village. As they were doing that, Byleth quickly and succinctly explained the strategies the Lions would be deploying, as well as last-minute shopping lists.

"Before we leave, we should resupply on vulneraries and whatnot." Byleth gazed around the room; seafoam greens met (E/C) hues. "(F/N), can you and Dimitri take care of this please?"

Snickers bounced around the room as you and Dimitri adopted the same flustered expression. You reached out and silently took the scraggly piece of paper in your hand as you felt the prince's antsy presence accompany you from behind.

"Any questions?" Byleth looked at their bushy-tailed Lions again. "Be smart out there. Safety should come naturally."

Byleth, with a wave of their hand, dismissed their students.

"We'll be leaving in about an hour, so be sure you're fully prepared by then."

"Yes, Professor!" Everyone scurried out of the classroom (not without a few jabs prodded into Dimitri's side and a couple of knowing, teasing glances cast your way). Dimitri, after making sure enough rosiness dissipated from his cheeks, cleared his throat and slowly tapped you on your shoulder. The royal watched as your entire body seemingly glitched into the fifth dimension before turning around to meet his wavering gaze.

"I-- uh," the blonde stiffly cleared his throat, dedicating way too much brainpower to simply hold your gaze. "We should... um... t-the supplies--."

"Y-Yes." You squeaked, crumpling the shopping list closer to your racing heart. You and Dimitri's eyes scurried to the scuff marks on the stone floor, absolutely immobilized. Byleth, with a loud 'ahem,' subdued the sparks fluttering between you and the prince; you both spun around to your instructor and bowed hastily.

"Our deepest apologies, Professor!"

"We'll be heading out now!"

As Byleth watched the backs of their students scurry out of their classroom, they chuckled.

"How cute."

♠ ♥ ♣ ----------------------------------------------------------- ♣ ♥ ♠

"Hm... I think this should be enough vulneraries. What do you think, Your Highness?"

"(F/N), please. I've told you plenty of times to just call me Dimitri." The prince smiled warmly at you before glancing at the somewhat copious amount of vulneraries messily amassed in your arms. "I think this should be enough. It is just a routine bandit culling, after all."

"That's true... And, I feel like I'm being-- I don't know-- disrespectful? If I call you by your name. I feel it's only proper for me to address you by your title." You countered as Dimitri took a majority of the vulneraries in his strong arms.

"Nonsense. I want you to address me by my name," he coughed and looked away, "o-only if you are comfortable though. If you truly desire to address me by my title only, then that is fine as well."

"Oh, no! I just-- I thought-- are you... really sure it's okay for me to call you by your name?"

"Of course!"

"O-Okay... Dimitri." You smiled, color dabbling your cheeks. Dimitri almost dropped all the vulneraries watching your delicate fingers tuck a stray lock of hair behind your ear. "I have to admit, it feels kind of... strange saying your name."

"...oh." Dimitri's lips, still cast upward, did not match the downtrodden expression the rest of his features bore. Realizing your egregious choice of words, you let out a cry of surprise.

"I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean it like that!" You bowed. "It felt strange because I wasn't used to it! But... I like it. I like saying your name, Dimitri."

The extinguished look in his eyes instantly flared up with life and excitement.

"R-Really?!"

A lighthearted laugh escaped you; Dimitri's grin grew wider at the natural melody in your voice.

"Yes! Dimitriii.~ Dimitriii.~"

The prince's sides had begun to ache from all the laughing; he buried his burning face in the pile of vulneraries.

"I love hearing you say my name..." He muttered, his voice muffled by the sacks of medicinal herbs.

"Sorry, what was that?"

"N-Nothing important. Let's head back, shall we?"

"Mmkay!" As you cheerily skipped through the marketplace with the prince at your side, a glimmer from one of the stalls caught your eye. Your feet froze mid-air and your boots made a loud clonk as you fell back down to earth. Dimitri, surprised at the sudden shift in mood, looked up at you worriedly.

"(F/N)? Is everything all right?"

When he looked over, you and all the vulneraries you were carrying had essentially disappeared from existence. Dimitri, his heart throbbing a quickening pulse in his temples, spun to and fro in the middle of the street, growing more and more panicked at your continued absence.

"Excuse me, how much is this?"

Dimitri's head had never whipped around so fast.

"Ah, you got a good eye, lass! Bought this from a fella off the coasts of Brigid. 'Posed to bring you good luck, he said." The merchant's gnarly voice had a distinct ring that overpowered the rest of the bustling marketplace.

"It's so pretty..." Breathed a response.

After a crowd of people on his right dissolved, Dimitri found your vulnerary-laden form stooped over a table flooded with jewelry and glittery accessories. He breathed out, thanking the Goddess as he felt years subtracted from his life slowly be added back on. He hurriedly made his way to your side and glanced around the vast treasures laid out for sale. The merchant threw his head back and roared in glee.

"Indeed, indeed! One of my best finds, I tell ya. A true beauty."

Your (E/C) eyes shimmered brighter than any jewel Dimitri had ever seen as they excitedly landed on his placid blues.

"Dimitri, look! Isn't it gorgeous?"

"Er... Which one? They're all quite lovely." Dimitri politely smiled and nodded his head at the merchant, who puffed his chest out with pride.

"That one!" You motioned with your chin, pointing your lips at a particular brooch. Upon closer inspection, the mound of metal quickly took on the shape of a lion. The simple sheen of silver contrasted nicely with the array of crystalline colors surrounding it. The artisan's mastery over fine metalwork translated beautifully into the gorgeous detailing in the mane and face of the feline; a permanent roar was etched onto the refined ore, its eyes ablaze with ferocity and vivacity. It stood majestically on its hind legs, seemingly ready to jump into the fray of a battle that will never come. A jewel the shade of bright blue skies was incrested in its paws; the radiant glitter of the gem sailed across its surface like clouds on a cool spring day.

"It... is quite breathtaking." Hummed the prince. "How much is it?"

"10,000 Gold!" The merchant smiled widely, more holes than teeth in his mouth.

"T-Ten--?!" You stumbled backward, the spell that the brooch had put you under snapping like a strained thread.

"Yup yup! But for a fine lass like ya, I'll cut it down to... hm... Let's say 7,500. Deal?"

"That's... still a lot..." You looked despondently at the brooch, the luminous blue darkening as a storm approached. The merchant frowned.

"Sorry, lass. Can't go lower than that. I'd be sellin' at a loss past that price."

"T-That's okay... Um, I think I'll stop by another time. Let's go, Dimitri..."

Without waiting for a response, you turned on your heels and sulked away, your shoulders hunched forward and your head hung low. Dimitri's heart splintered into pieces as he watched your form slowly homogenize with the crowd. With a small nod (and a few moments reserved for the neat pile of vulneraries he built at his feet), Dimitri whipped out a pouch that clanged a tune that would make any merchant's heart sing.

"Can I still make good on that previous offer?"

[kareofbears]

persona 5 strikers thoughts and feelings

This is going to be a long post. Like, the type of post you’d only really have time to read when you’re trying to sleep but you’re not ready to be unconscious yet so you’re just looking for something to do to spend your time with minimal effort. 

So in 2018, a masterpiece was born into the world: Into the Spider-verse was released and it was amazing—it’s honestly the best spiderman movie we have without a doubt, and it’ll be very far into the future before Spider-verse is beaten as the best spiderman movie. Them’s the facts. Then in 2019, Spider-man: Far From Home was dropped. It’s a great movie! Great characters, great continuation of who these characters are and works fantastic as a continuation of a story. It’s really hard trying to take the torch of a previous movie (or in Marvel’s case, juggling twenty something movies) and come up with a new movie that both works on its own, as well as being the next step in this series of films. Thus, with that idea in mind, I think it’s kind of unfair to judge into the spiderverse and far from home, because these are two movies with two completely different objectives in mind. 

Okay, so this is still a persona 5 strikers post, I promise, but the idea is the same: Persona 5 could basically do whatever it wanted—new story, new characters, new everything, and it’s just plain old awesome. However, Persona 5 strikers did not have that sort of freedom. It was bound to the original game, and it had its own rules and stuff it had to keep intact, characters they had to work with, and on top of that, it had to justify its existence as a sequel (lets pretend money doesnt exist lmfao). 

SO, the big question is: did it do that? Did it justify its existence? 

And my answer: holy fuck did it ever do that

I came into this game knowing the extreme bare minimum. I knew there was someone named Sophia, and i knew there was roadtrip, and i knew there were Personas. That’s my knowledge of it before i played it on the Switch.�� I should also clarify like, early on, that i was not expecting anything from this game. At all. I was the world’s biggest cynic of this game—if you scroll down my p5s tag far enough, youll just see me complaining about a game that hasn’t even come out yet. I was fully expecting to have this be a Waifu show, and any male character that isn’t Akira to just be shoved aside like some kind of nerd in a high school hallway, and i have never been more pleased to be wrong. In fact, i actually owe it an apology, because of how fucking rude i was for no reason!!! Because this game deserves everything to be honest. 

Persona 5 strikers is, frankly, insane. Insane in the sense that it got to pull shit off that just would never have existed in the original game, because the original game is scared. It had to be as impressive as possible and garner as much attention as possible. Strikers does not have that problem—every single person who bought that game does not need to be convinced that persona 5 is a good game. They already played it. That means Atlus can just fuck around and have a good time, and man did they have a good time. There’s still scenes that still shock me if i think about it too hard, because i’m used to atlus having to follow this sort of rule set when it comes to persona 5 (or any of the main games im assuming, but i havent played them.) And on top of that, there’s still shit that’s Atlus Trademarked Branded in a good way. The style of story of story telling, and revealing the mystery that is so integral to what p5 is, is still there. 

So, to make this even a little bit comprehensible, i will make a list! 

First of all, What is this game?

In short, this game is an OVA of an anime. It’s bonus side content that has one thing in mind: to showcase these lovable characters more by putting them in fun situations. That’s it, and it is just phenomenal. That was the main point of, i’d say, like forty hours of the game. It’s just fun times with fun characters. 

But to get deeper of what i think is happening, or what they were thinking during the development, is that this is a second opportunity. Persona 5 (as we all know) had a lot of problems, and we were not quiet about those problems. We yelled it all out, made posts, made complaints on every social media platform ever. And Atlus heard all of them, and Strikers is a way to mitigate those mistakes. Aside from being a fun OVA, Strikers also works to be a deeper exploration of these characters—more specifically, the characters that did not receive much in the original game. Creating this sequel is having the ability to redo what they felt (or to be more specific, we felt) in the original game while adding new ones. I will get to that in a second.  

The format of the game 

Absolutely brilliant to throw them on a road trip. P5V already forced us to experience Shibuya for 200+ hours, and im so glad that they didn’t do that again. Going from town to town, making us experience these new places alongside our favorite characters is so good, and it just makes sense. It’s fun, it’s lighthearted, and it’s actually shockingly good. But one thing i do want to talk about early on is the way the story unfolds and the villains that they use, and what they do with it because it’s very interesting. 

So as we explore japan and stuff, we encounter jails, and with those jails comes an antagonist. This antagonist works to be a parallel to one of our characters. That character will find it in their hearts to feel bad for the antagonist, because the antagonist could have been them had the original game not happen. At first I thought all of the thieves were gonna get an antagonist, and i was really hyped for the ryuji one. And then came to hour forty of the game where i realized “yeah that’s not gonna happen. There’s just not enough time.” And i was right, and the game ended. But i am not salty at all, honestly, because the people who got a direct antagonist were: Ann, Yusuke, and Haru. (we wont count zen and sophie). 

Is there a trend??? Yes. these are all characters in the original game that have received the worst treatment by atlus. The three of them are basically cast aside the minute they finished their original arc, and its horrible! BUT that’s why this is the path that atlus chose for them—to give them more depth, and screentime, and a way to show their inner self. That isn’t to say that the ones who aren’t those three (makoto, futaba, mona, akira, ryuji) didn’t get anything. Futaba still has her thing at the end with ichinose, and she was very prevalent and animated during the rest of the game. Mona and Akira have to be a focal points, that’s just the nature of the game. The other two though, I will talk about in depth in a second.  

Makoto

Y’all i poke fun at shumako fans sometimes cause its kind of easy and fun, but i honestly love makoto. In my very first playthrough of p5 (my first ever jrpg game, first persona game, i had no idea what i was doing), i had only maxed out two characters: ryuji and makoto. And i know she had a lot of screentime and love in the original game which is great, but i truly felt like she was dissed in this game. Her only roles were

A driver

Someone to tell them “we don’t have a choice. Let’s keep going and see where this takes us.” (seriously, if you replay this game, you will see how much she does this)

Idk, i just wish she had more to do, especially compared to how much love they gave the other characters. 

But let’s talk about some of the new characters! 

Zenkichi

Damn you atlus. Damn you and your insistence at bringing in cop characters. I was fully on board with hating zenkichi, i was fucking ready for it. I was convinced that there was nothing they could do convince to like zenkichi. I was immune to their copaganda. 

And then i ended up loving him, which makes me sad a little bit. I didn’t realize how desperate i was to have an adult who has a persona. Someone who wants the world to change just as much as they do, while still having that aspect of them that makes them adult. Like??? As someone who is technically an adult, its a breath of fresh air. An adult. Who fights. For justice. Using a persona. And god i love akane so much, and her obsession with the thieves (that scene is probably in my top ten fave scenes of the game). Also what i loved about zenkichi is that he fucking hates the cops!! He hates the system of the cops!! And thats why i actually really started to love him!! Because i thought it was atlus saying that the systematic problem of the police cannot be solved by one person, and zenkichi threw away his badge. I actually cried at that part!! 

But then he became a cop again, and i was just :/ but as a character, i really love him to bits and would love to do a study on him, or at least use him as an outside pov. But! i absolutely love his persona, since im a les miserables fan hehe

Sophia 

she’s probably my favorite new aspect of the game. I was ready to not like her—again, i just suck like that, lmfao—and when i saw her, i was scared that she was just another waifu. I mean, she was very cute after all. But then as the game went on, i thought she was a little too cute. And even further into the game, i finally slapped myself in the face and realized oh my god shes not a waifu. Shes a sister. 

That blew my mind, im ngl to you. A female character that isn’t supposed to be romanced? By jove, what a miracle! 

And she…is an amazing character. Im sorry, i just love her so much. I love her so much that she  probably ranks as my fifth or sixth favorite character which is surprising even to me. Everything about her is delightful and invigorating. She’s funny??? Her comedic timing is amazing, and she has such chemistry with the rest of the team. She’s actually useful to the plot, and while her character design is a little too on the nose for me in terms of cuteness (i mean, good god she’s wearing oversized sweater to show how cute and tiny she is, and her hair has literal hearts in it), she is absolutely lovable. 

But what i actually really wanna gush about for a second is sophia at the last stage of the game. You get the idea, i dont really like to get excited over things, so at this point i figured that there was nothing this game could do to shock me. 

And then sophia had a persona awakening. 

Like. holy fuck did i yell. I didnt realize what was happening until the music had already kicked in. and its just so fucking smart!!! Sophia??? The ai?? With no heart?? gOT A PERSONA???? AWAKENING??? BECAUSE SHE LEARNED WHAT THE HEART IS AND THE PASSION THAT YOU NEED IN ORDER TO GET A PERSONA??? I started crying honestly, because it was just so smart. And looking back on it now, its obvious!! Of course it would lead to this, it only made sense that the culmination of her character arc leads to her getting a persona, nothing else would have been as good. Also, her voice actor is just amazing?? When she was talking to ichinose at the end, i actually got incredibly emotional because of the line reads. Its just so spot on and it really captures the essence of sophia.

Muah. five stars Atlus. You got me. 

Ryuji <3!!!!

Oh man. Oh boy. Okay. so where do i start. 

Yall know i love him. Hes probably my favorite fictional male character of all time, and he is the one i was the absolute most cynical about in this game. I was expecting literally nothing. Nothing. Like. nothing. I thought he was just gonna keep being used as a joke, or a gag, and he’s gonna be super horny all the time for the other girls and it was gonna make me mad and there was gonna be some insane homophobic/queerphobic jokes in every other scene and i know i was being unfair, but i cant help it. 

And then i played the first two hours of the game, and i cried the entire time. Because ryuji has never been better than he is in this game. Its crazy. 

The ryuji in persona 5 strikers is who ryuji should have been/how he should have been treated this entire time. From the actual funny jokes (for example, the gold bar joke + his reaction to it in the beginning of the game), defending his female friends instead of being the one people need to defend from (natsume arc), and the fact that he was the one to be there with morgana and akira in the very beginning of the game. Its such a small thing that they didnt even need to do, but it was such an integral part of the original game for me, that i just was convinced that nothing like this was going to happen. But then it happened. Its just small stuff like that that could have been overlooked but it wasn’t because this game? Persona 5 strikers? Fucking loves ryuji. 

The actual respect they gave this boy is insane and i wasn't ready for it. Like, they gave the shujin trio lunch, they gave the little charm of the katana when they were in natsume’s jail, and, in my opinion this is the second-best thing that they could have given ryuji is sophia. Ryuji and sophia are the pinnacle of a brother & sister bonding relationship in the game that isn’t akira & futaba. And its really prevalent too?? Small stuff from the beginning of the game (pulling her out of a jail, calling her shorty), but then you have the iconic “shut the fuck up” scene, and that scene was so well characterized and written and voice acted, that somehow him saying “fuck” was the least exciting part of that scene to me. Ryuji is an older brother to her, like its undoubtable, and its only further cemented at the end of the game where Ryuji helps out ichinose because he knows how much sophia cares about her. This game. Love ryuji. And i love. This game. 

You know what else i love? Akiryu. 

Guys. i was fully prepared to starve in terms of akiryu. But theres just. So much of it. I wont get too deep into it, because i think this aspect of the game for me still needs marinate a little bit. Like, what was that last shot when EMMA died and Ryuji walked to approach Akira so they could relish in their victory together?? And the smile from both of them??? What the fuck. That was amazing. Also Joker being saved by Ryuji when he was about to fall from the cliff to save sophia??? WHAT. The LEADER AND HIS RIGHT HAND MAN? WHAT. anyway. If theres anything i want to keep for myself in my own brain, its the akiryu aspect of this game, so i wont talk too much about that part of things (instead, itll probably manifest in fic lmfaooo). 

Sure, there’s tidbits of stuff i dont like that they gave ryuji: sexualizing ann in that one cut scene and making him touch the jails even though it hurts, and i recognize those and frown at them, but for the most part, i am blown away with how they treated him.

Basically, Ryuji has never been better. From the opening of the game with him being the first text message and the one to sling his arm around akira, to the very last cut scene where it was ryuji wordlessly leaving because he’s so confident that they would never be separated for long, this game adores Ryuji and i am so so happy to say that.

The Royal aspect of things

Yeah, i had to talk about this, but itll be a short thing i just wanted to point out. Because the last part of this game...is persona 5 royal. Which is curious. Like taking reality and giving that power to someone else so you dont have to experience suffering anymore? And even like, the final section just looked a lot like the top half of maruki’s palace?? And whats even crazier is that we had a boss fight with sophia, just like how we had a boss fight with sumire? Royal and Strikers have like, the same thesis statement. It’s kind of uncanny.It’s interesting, it’s like atlus came up with these two ideas, and then just decided they liked both of them so much that they just did it twice. I don’t mind though—actually, in terms of how the last Palace/Jails go, i probably like them both about equally. 

Though i did love the final battle in this one more than i did in royal. Splitting into teams?? Thats cool as fuck, and really innovative and i didnt see it coming. It also kicked my ass. A lot. 

Now for the last stretch: the small stuff!

The music — bomb as fuck. In my heart, Daredevil is ranked the same as Rivers. Axe to grind is also amazing, but Daredevil owns me

Akechi — i really debated whether or not to talk about him, but i figured a bullet point should be enough. Im really shocked that he wasnt in this at all. Like not even a name drop. If this is an OVA, and the point of the game is to please the fans, and akechi is arguably the fan favorite character, i was really ready for something. But there was nothing, except for the pancake hallway if that even counts as a reference. Thats it. Thats all i wanted to say about him.

The humour — FUCKING HILARIOUS im convinced that in my fifty hour playtime, five of that is dedicated to me laughing and unable to continue the game 

Akira — so much personality! His lines of dialogue are crazy sometimes (like. Whats up with him saying Ryuji has ‘nice abs’ when they were in bath? Im crazy and even i dont know what the fuck that could mean) 

Battle system — oh my god i almost forgot to talk about this. I love it! I kind of miss the turn based aspect just because i found it very comforting for some reason, but this hack and slash style of gameplay is so invigorating because i do feel like it justifies shit like the baton pass and huge attacks.  This battle system fully encompases how the Phantom Thieves are supposed to fight, you know what i mean?

Anyway, thats my thoughts on strikers. Loved it. Amazing. 9.3/10, wouldve been higher but Konoe’s Jail almost bored me to death. Also im a monster and i didnt do any requests that isn’t a fun one, teehee. As if i play persona 5 for the persona aspect of things.

[chibinekochan]

Hmmm, I dunno why I imagine this but, what happens if MC made the brothers (+undateables if possible) watch human world anime, what anime should it be??

Sure I will just use anime that I watched. I'm calling myself out here lol.  

These are just recommendations to them, not really a reaction. It would just be you and them sitting somewhere being comfy and cuddling with you while watching any of these.

                                                   Leviathan

Kaguya-Sama: Love is War (Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen) - No brainer here. It's a romcom with a lot of shojo insider jabs. It's funny and meta. Also the main characters are cute together. (JUST DATE ALREADY)

     Pretty Rhythm (and it's male version king of prism)

sion)- So this is an ice skating/idol kinda think. It has music, fashion, and some good drama. It gets very strange. This series is a delightful drug trip. Especially the king of prism movie/series is something else. Well I just want Levi to wtf about it with me. 

(Yeah it can get a bit boring since it's an idol anime. Much like the Pripara series, but like at one point one girl gets processed by a dress. Where else can you get that?)

                 Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! (Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei Bu Love!) - It's a magical boy series. It's 90 percent comedy and 90 percent gay, the rest is hot springs. It's honestly a lot of fun. As a lover of magical girl anime Levi will surely enjoy this spoof of the genre. (Also watch Cute High Earth Defense Club Happy Kiss!)

           Zombieland Saga - Zombie Idol girls. Enough said. It's honestly fun to watch.

*Literally every anime you have ever seen*

                       Satan

The Case Files of Jeweler Richard (Housekisho Richard-shi no Nazo Kantei)- This one is like a detective story but with gemstones. It's very interesting. It has some interesting facts and it's a bit like Holmes and Watson but without murder. *Also Richard looks very good*

                                        Ascendance of a Bookworm (Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen)- A girl that loves books gets reborn into a world where books don't exist, so she has to find a way to make them herself. This is a very good anime. The heroine is very knowledgeable and it's a fun anime to watch. (Dr.Stone is also an anime that is a bit similar to this one, so might as well watch that too.)

             Beelzebub 

Yakitate!! Japan - An anime about making bread in Japan. It's an a bit older anime and it's pretty long but it is pretty interesting. It follows a typical sport anime formula but with bread.

             Haikyuu!! - Volleyball anime. The boys are pretty hot. *My fave is Kenma.* 

           Asmodeus

Free! - Hot boys in swimwear. What else do you need? *You all watched this one already*

Yuri on Ice - Ice Skating but with romance. *I don't need to explain this one.*

                          Lucifer 

Chihayafuru - Japanese poem memory sport? I'm not sure how to explain this but just picture a sport anime but with more drama. It's somehow very interesting. * I dunno how good it fits but it got poems so well?* I recommend regardless.

                Kono Oto Tomare!: Sounds of Life - School/Sport/club anime but about learning the Koto. It has classical music and an interesting drama. Even some romance.

                  Mammon

Senryuu Girl - This one is about a girl that just communicates with Senryuu poems. She doesn't speak and the anime doesn't “fix” her. The boy in this one is an ex delinquent but a very good boy. It's very sweet.

Astra Lost in Space(Kanata no Astra)-some teenagers get lost in space. (It's much more than that but I don't want to spoil anything). Good drama/mystery, nice locations and good romance. Mammon might learn something from the resident Tsundere.

             Belphegor

Uchitama?! Have you seen my Tama?- Anime about cute cats and dogs but they look like humans sometimes. It's cute and funny, the episodes are pretty short and lighthearted for the most part. *One episode is heartbreaking*

Mewkledreamy - Magical? Girl anime. They go into other people's dreams. (I dunno why I watch this one either. I think it was the cat plush)

               Barbatos

Black butler - Not to call anyone out but you know. He is one hell of a Butler.

                  Diavolo

                                       Dance With Devils- I just love this anime so much. Demon musical with romance. I just feel like he will enjoy this one. *I use every excuse I can to at least add one otome anime lol*

Simeon

My Roommate is a Cat (Doukyonin wa Hiza, Tokidoki, Atama no Ue.)- It's about a guy that adopts a cat. It's cute and it's sad and the cat is very cute. Also the guy is an author.

                            Luke

Pretty Cure - The entire library of all the different series. That will keep him busy. It has some good friendship and team lessons. Also magical girls and pets. 

Yumeiro Patissiere - is a very cute anime about a girl that wants to become a Pastry Chef. It will probably give you diabetes.

                            So here we go. Shoutout to the 500 anime that I didn't add.

Feel free to add some of your own.

              Check my Obey me! Masterlist for more content          

[generallybarzy]

smile like sunshine

Introduction: ~7,600 words

mat barzal series

summary: A lot changes in ten years, and a lot changes when someone grows used to having constant attention, fans, and fame- so surely the boy you knew back then was long gone. Even if you had been the closest of friends that one month back in 2008, there was no way he remembers you, or even wants to talk to you anymore...

an: Here it finally is!!! I know, I know, it's super long. I was gonna split it up, but it made more sense to keep the intro in one part for the backstory and setting up the main plot and then have the rest of the story on the beach. I really hope this comes together like I want it to!

From the moment you first saw him, you knew you were going to be best friends; but what you could never know, at only nine years old, was that you were going to fall head over heels in love with him one day.

Looking back now, he was adorable as a child, but that wasn’t what your little nine-year-old mind was thinking at the time. All you were focused on back then was the sheer awesomeness of that sandcastle he was building and the overwhelming amount of loneliness that was overtaking you on what was supposed to be a fun, month-long family vacation. He was just a boy, caked in sand from crawling around on his hands and knees to construct what you thought back then was the most complex structure of architecture in existence, and you were just a girl, your desperation for a friend to play with outweighing your shyness. Your parents seemed too busy with the new babies to pay attention to you, so you had to find someone else to hang out with, and here was this boy. You had approached him hesitantly, just really wanting something to do and someone to play with other than your annoying siblings, hoping that he wouldn’t turn you away.

“Did you make that?” Your first words to him were spoken shyly, hesitant, and had him looking up at you, squinting from the sun through his dark locks of hair.

“Yeah.”

“All by yourself?” He nodded again, looking proud. “It’s awesome!”

“Thanks!” He glanced back to his work for a second before pushing himself to his feet and offering you a sand bucket. “You wanna help?”

“Yes, please.”

“Cool.” He smiled brightly, showing off a missing tooth, and you smiled back, it was impossible not to with how full of sunshine this boy seemed to be. You followed him out towards the water to scoop up some wet sand. “I’m Mat.”

“I’m (Y/N).”

It was really that simple to become friends. You soon came to find that Mat was really funny, one of the funniest people you’d ever met- and still to this day you couldn’t forget how green his eyes sparkled in the sunlight while he was laughing, even if he was just laughing at his own silly jokes. The two of you slaved away at building your sandcastle in the hot sun and laughing at each other’s jokes for what seemed like hours before your parents came over to find you playing with a new friend. Your parents and his talked- about nothing you cared about at that age- while you and Mat sat with your feet in the water, eating ice pops and getting sunburned without a care in the world.

You still thought back to that month to this day. It was still one of your happiest memories: those hot watermelon and ice pop summer days giving you sticky faces and hands and sunburnt skin, eating ice cream on your tenth birthday and skipping along the pier next to him with your moms chatting behind you, collecting shells and messing with crabs together, being splashed with seawater and laughing even though you wanted to be mad at him. That was your happy place.

One conversation you remember distinctly from later that month was when you and Mat were sitting on the beach, sifting through the sand and collecting shells. Well, you were the only one actually collecting shells; Mat thought it would be funny to sit there and throw little crustaceans at you and make you shriek. Eventually, a hush had fallen over the two of you, and Mat spoke up. “I’m gonna be in the NHL one day.”

“The what?” Mat laughed at you, but you genuinely didn’t know what he was talking about. You laugh at yourself today, looking back.

“Do you know what hockey is?”

“Duh. My dad watches it.”

“I like to play hockey. I’m going to as a job one day.”

“That sounds cool!” Your young mind couldn’t even comprehend having any adult job, let alone knowing at this age what you want to do for the rest of your life Obviously, Mat was a boy who had plans. “It looks dangerous, though, do you get hurt?”

“I don’t really get hurt much.”

“I bet you’re good at it, then.”

“I am!” You smiled and laughed with Mat and leaned over your pile of shells to hug him, the deepest form of showing affection you knew at that point.

“I’ll come to see you play one day. I promise.”

Remember when life was so simple that a sandcastle was all that was needed to spark the beginning of a wonderful friendship, even if it only lasted a month? Remember when we didn’t have to worry about grades and work and money and taxes? Sometimes you wished you could take yourself back to that month, so you could have a distraction. You’ve been looking for a distraction like Mat had been all your life- while your parents fought from the other room, while you stressed over tests in school, during heartbreak after heartbreak, while you dealt with pressure taking standardized tests or getting your first job, or moving to New York City alone only weeks shy of your 20th birthday during the summer before you started college. Every now and then you would forget about that summer, but the moment you’d stress over something, your mind just drifted off and daydreamed of that lighthearted smile, and those shining green eyes, and you hoped he was happy wherever he was.

Mat.

Damn it, you would have tried years ago to google him or something if you knew his last name, or even where he lived. Unfortunately, those aren’t topics of interest to children, so they never popped up in your conversation, and neither your mom or dad seemed to care enough to remember what they talked about with his parents, probably too busy fighting all the time, you mused.

The fall after you’d moved to New York for college, your roommate Amy, who was extremely welcoming and always made you feel at home, decided to introduce you to the sports teams of the city in an effort to get you out of your apartment and away from your work. It was just your luck, you realized later, that she was especially into hockey. You were vaguely familiar with hockey, your dad used to be a huge hockey fan in your youth, but stopped many years ago in the midst of your parent’s marriage practically falling apart. Now he only watched it occasionally, a few years behind on who was up-and-coming. “Hey, might as well learn the sport. Maybe one day you’ll reconnect with that boy from your long-ago summer romance!” She spoke teasingly, lightheartedly, always loving to hear the sweet story of your childhood best friend who had slipped away and may have disappeared forever. She was always one for cliches. You had told her many things about your time with Mat, but never used his name; no, that felt too personal, as if he was a secret for only you to know about.

“Oh, come on, Ames!” You laughed, but you couldn’t help but hope. “We were, like, ten! I don’t think that qualifies as romance.”

“Maybe not, but the way you describe him… If you would’ve met in your teens, that story would have ended with some cute, awkward first kisses.” She loved a good love story, and you smiled and shook your head. Yeah, honestly, you wish you’d known him later in your life.

“Yeah, maybe.”

So, eventually, she took you to an Islanders game, letting you borrow a blue hoodie of hers from her large collection of NHL merchandise so that you would look like more of a fan. You sat through the game with her, excited and interested and eager to learn as she kept pointing things out to you to help you understand the game. Despite it being an NHL game, you hadn’t thought of the boy that sparked your interest in the sport all night, until, about halfway through the game, you saw a name mentioned overhead.

Mathew Barzal.

You knew it was nothing. Literally nothing. There are plenty of other people named Mathew, idiot. But you couldn’t help the soft spark of memories in you. You pushed it out of your mind and went back to the game, even though something, just something was nagging away in your head. When you looked up to the screen above the ice, you caught a glance of the name again. Mathew, spelled with one ‘T’.  A vivid memory pops to your head- you and Mat tracing your names and other words into the sand with sticks, just for fun, because that’s what entertains a ten-year-old apparently.

“I’m gonna be in the NHL one day.”

Mathew. One ‘T’. NHL. You knew it wasn’t that big of a deal, plenty of people probably spelled it that way, and you were probably grasping at straws, but hey what were the odds? A hockey player, Mathew. If only you could get a good look at the guy. Or… or something. You probably wouldn’t even recognize someone after ten years of not seeing them; you could hardly recognize ten-year-old you in photos! In your head, Mat was still eleven years old. Honestly, was there even a way to figure out if it was him or not? Ask him if he happened to meet a girl on a family vacation a decade ago? Yeah, and when would you get the chance to ask a professional athlete such personal questions?

...Well, tonight, apparently.

As you left your seats after the game, everyone happy and celebratory after a win, you almost had a heart attack when Amy grabbed your arm and shrieked. “Oh my God, oh my God, (Y/N)!” She pointed to her phone in shock, and you still couldn’t tell what she was reacting to, but calmed down, realizing it probably wasn’t life-threatening.

“Holy shit, Ames, are you trying to kill me?”

“Listen, listen.” She calmed down a bit, letting out a small laugh. “So let's just say someone I know, knows somebody,” You laughed a bit, knowing this was gonna be some new interesting gossip. “And they know where the players are going out to celebrate tonight.” She sent you a suggestive, winking look.

“No way. You want to go and… interact with them? Professional athletes? Us, talking to professional athletes?”

“I mean, yeah. Are you telling me you don’t want to flirt with a hockey player?” She saw the look on your face and shook her head. “Or! Or not even flirt. Just talk. Get a picture with them, or a signature? Or just let me talk and you can wave to them. I can promise you they’re all pretty nice to their fans.”

“You sound as if you’ve talked to them all before.”

“No, only one. And it was more of me talking and him saying ‘cool, cool.’ while he signed my jersey. But I always hear that they’re really sweet.”

“Well,” you thought for a moment. It would be pretty freaking cool to try and befriend a professional athlete, or even just pretend for a night that you knew them. You definitely don’t go out enough, you hadn’t really been to many bars- you had only turned 20 a few months ago and couldn’t drink yet, so what was the point? In fact, you’d barely left your tiny apartment since moving, and even though you weren’t one for bars or clubs, you were in New York City, for fuck’s sake! Might as well go out and live, right? “Alright, let’s go. But if we actually see them, you have to be my wing-woman.”

“Oh, hell yes.”

The bar you were going to wasn’t far from the rink, and according to a google search of the place, it didn’t seem too sleazy or gross- that was good. Of course it’s not sleazy, why would someone as rich as a bunch of professional athletes go to a sleazy bar? Because it was only a little further than where you had parked, the two of you walked together. As it settled in your head that you might actually see professional hockey players tonight, you started feeling a little nervous. Partially because you’ve never been in a place with that many famous people at once, but also because of the name that was still circling your brain.

“Hey, so I’ve had something on my mind because of this game.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You’re gonna think I’m completely crazy, but listen.” She looked up with a face, ready for your story.

“Give it to me.”

“Okay, so... this kid I told you about, that I met that summer? His name was Mathew. Spelled with only one ‘T’, I remember that clearly.” You laughed a bit, wondering how crazy you must have sounded to her. “And he told me he was gonna play in the NHL, right?”

After a second, you saw it click in her head. “No fuckin’ way. You think it’s Barzal?”

“Ames, I don’t know, I don’t know! There are plenty of Mathews who play hockey, right? But maybe he doesn’t even play hockey after all. Kids aren’t great at choosing their career paths, ya know? I just never learned his last name. I need his age or... something to identify him with.”

“He’s… like, 21, I think.”

“Yeah?” You paused. Why was this all actually matching up? “Yeah. So ten years ago he would’ve been eleven.”

“Holy shit, hoooolllly shit.”

“But I’m sure there are plenty of Mathews who are 21 right now.”

“Girl, holy shit. Look up a picture of him right now. If you had a summer romance with Barzy, I need to know immediately.”

“Okay, it still wasn’t really a romance, but same.” You pulled out your phone and typed his name into the search bar. “I don’t even know if I’ll recognize him after ten years.” Immediately after you opened the images tab, the first thing you noticed about him was the hair. Dark and thick and kind of wavy and looking extra soft in a few pictures, it did remind you of your Mat- whose hair had been full of sand and salt water and kept drying softly as he ran around in the sunlight- but you still couldn’t be 100% positive. It was after you scrolled past all the on ice pictures where you couldn’t really see his face well behind the helmet and found a picture of him- unstaged and off the ice and genuinely smiling- that you felt a strange spark ignite inside of you. Sunshine. His smile felt like sunshine. Maybe. Just, maybe.

Scrolling through other photos, your eyes caught one in particular. You opened a close up of his face and zoomed in a tiny bit more. Those eyes, shining all pretty and green in the sunlight. You could never forget them- not after ten years, and not after a hundred. His eyes, his chin, even the size of his goddamn nostrils, all the tiny, stupid details in his face… was this actually him? “Biiiitch....” Amy leaned closer to you and bumped shoulders with you in acknowledgment.

“What? Do you recognize something?”

“Kinda, yeah. It’s so weird.”

“So you think it’s seriously him?”

“I don’t know. But the last picture of his smile, I’d recognize that smile anywhere and… this. His eyes- that eye color…. I remember thinking it’s so pretty… even his fucking nostrils, Amy!” The fact that you took note of his nostrils might have been funny at another time, but you were currently having a crisis as to whether or not you were once friends with fucking Mathew Barzal.

“Yeah, I mean, they’re kinda big…”

“I… I don’t want to say that I think it’s him, that might just be me being too hopeful. But...”

“Holy shit. You might have been Barzy’s friend at one point. You could reconnect with him, and we could hang out with the players!” You shot her a look, and she knew to calm down. “Sorry. Alright, whether or not it was him, I’m still gonna get you to talk with him tonight.” You hadn’t realized that you had basically arrived at the bar, and you felt your heart start pumping you full of nerves as she opened the door. “You have my word.”

The bar wasn't too crazy- there was music playing overhead and that weird hazy bar feeling lingered in the air. Immediately you could see that there was a celebratory group of of tall men, some standing at the bar talking with each other, others talking with girls- some shared wedding bands with the women they were talking to, their wives apparently. So you figured those were the players. 

 “I can’t believe it.” Amy was still in shock next to you; you were too, but you needed to pull it together. “You and Barzal…”

“Well, we don’t actually know yet.” You pulled her into you by the elbow. “But please please don’t mention that to them, I don’t need them to think I’m crazy before I even talk to them.” She nodded back, but before either of you could comprehend what was happening, somebody- obviously one of the hockey players- seemed to catch her eye as they came into view near the bar. “A player you like?”

“Anthony Beauvillier.” She pronounced his name with an obvious swoon and you laughed. Oh, so this was that favorite player that she kept talking about. “Tito. Yeah. He’s cool.” She nudged you, smirking. “Oh! And he’s besties with Mat! I bet I could get him for you.”

“You? Talking to them?” As much as Amy liked to talk and wanted to meet the players, you knew she wasn’t the type to just go out and throw herself into conversation with somebody, and you knew she easily got tongue-tied- that’s where the two of you were most similar. But maybe it was just the fact that she was trying to help you out that gave her the boost of confidence to begin chasing after him. “Hey, actually, maybe we shouldn’t bother them. I’m sure they’re tired of dealing with fans.”

“We won’t pester them or anything. I’m sure they’ll see we’re not like, crazy crazy fans. Anyway we have a mission.”

“A mission?”

“Operation… I don’t know, Operation Find Mat Barzal for (Y/N).”

“Wow. Creative.”

“I know.” She laughed and smiled at you reassuringly. “Come on, both of us need to learn to be more assertive, don’t you think? We’re not annoying them, just telling them we think they’re cool, and maybe getting a picture. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.” There was nothing you could say before she was- to your horror- reaching out and tapping Anthony’s arm. You were sure you looked nervous as he turned to look at the two of you, and your friend started rambling with a big starstruck smile on her face. “Hi, uh yeah. You’re cool.” You weren’t only feeling embarrassed yourself, but also for her. “I’m a big fan!”

To your surprise- or maybe not, he seemed like a sweet guy- he smiled back at her, and you almost melted under kinda his blue eyes as he looked between the two of you. He thanked her as she complimented his performance tonight and motioned to the phone in her hand. “You want a picture?”

“Yes please!” You took her phone for her to snap a couple of pictures of the two of them, glad that this guy seemed so chill and friendly. After the picture was taken, Amy still didn’t let him leave, no, to your absolute horror, she motioned to you. “My friend here, (Y/N), tonight was the first game she’s ever been to.” You could feel your cheeks heat up when he looked over at you, but couldn’t help but smile back up to him. Oh, he was kinda really cute...

“Oh yeah? Hope you enjoyed it.”

Oh. Oh, he was actually talking to you! “Yeah, yeah. I didn’t understand everything that was happening, I’m still learning, but.. it was still really fun!”

“Actually,” you felt Amy’s arm fall across your shoulders, and you looked over at her. God, what was she planning now? “(Y/N) happens to be a big fan of Barzy.”

“Oh God, Ames stop…”

“And I’m sure she’d like a picture with him. So if you could, I don’t know… point her in his direction, please? If he’s here? And if you think he’s got time for it?” You were in the middle of burying your red face in your hands in embarrassment when you heard him laugh goodheartedly.

“He wouldn’t mind. He likes talking to his fans.”

“Really?”

“I’m sure he’ll be especially happy to meet a new fan. He loves the praise.” All three of you laughed a bit, and you couldn’t believe that you were currently chatting with an NHL player. He looked behind his shoulder for a moment, before moving aside and motioning to the bar. “He’s over at the bar somewhere, by himself for the moment. Better hurry before someone else beats you to it.” There was a certain lilt in his voice, was… was he teasing you? You smiled- but it probably looked pretty nervous- and glanced over to Ames.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” She winked at you and nudged you in the direction of the bar. “Go!”  

You bit your lip to hold back the growing smile at the thought of getting to talk to him, whether or not he remembered you at all. You looked up at Tito with a quick “Thank you!” before snaking around him and finding your way to the bar.

It didn’t take you long to notice him- he had a recognizable face, and you’d recognize him anywhere after looking at pictures of him for the whole ten-minute walk from the rink to this bar. He was standing at the bar, drink in his hand, and scrolling through his phone, a lock of dark hair drooping onto his forehead. His skin looked so golden in this light, as if he was back under the sun on a hot summer day- and it gave him a striking resemblance to the boy you knew ten years ago. There was something so different about seeing him in person rather than as a photo on your phone- it sparked up a weird feeling inside of you. If this was really him, it had been ten years since you last saw him, and a lot changes in ten years of somebody’s life. It may have been a strange thought but, wow, puberty really hit him in all the right places. He looked… wow. His cheekbones, his jawline,…. Okay, maybe it was kinda thirsty- ogling him like this- but you couldn’t help it.

Not only had he obviously changed physically, but he might be a completely different person. He was a professional athlete now- why would he need you anymore? That much attention changes a person. He might not be as kind as he was back then at eleven years old, he might not want to be friends with you or reconnect.

That is, if this even is him.

You swallowed down all your nerves and slid up next to where he was standing.

“You really made it to the NHL, huh?”  No shit he made it to the NHL, you thought. What the fuck kind of conversation starter is that?  It was a painstakingly slow moment as he directed his full attention away from his phone and towards you, and could practically feel the shot of confidence and adrenaline draining from your body when his pretty, confused eyes met yours. Oh, they’re a lot more light brown than they are green, you noticed, and you wondered if maybe all your memories of his “dazzling, gleaming green eyes” were wrong. You realized how strange you must look to him- you were just a random girl, approaching a super successful, let alone attractive, professional athlete at a bar. He probably thought you were trying to get a drink off of him or get into his pants for the clout.

Maybe you were expecting him to look up and immediately recognize you after ten years and sweep you up into a hug like in the movies, but it certainly didn’t seem like that’s what was coming.

“Yeah…?"  

He looked confused- his eyebrows furrowed up a bit as he looked you over, sizing you up or checking you out or just trying to figure out why this stranger was approaching him about his career choices. Suddenly, you found it difficult to hold eye contact. Of course he didn’t remember you. Who needs to remember their one-month-long friendship when they’re busy getting into the NHL? This was really starting to make you feel pathetic for holding onto the memory of your super short friendship for so long.

Well, you officially wanted the floor to open up and swallow you. Right now would be great. "Okay… that probably sounded really, really strange if you don't remember me. Or if it’s not even you. Umm, we hung out together in 2000 something…. 2008? The summer of '08?” You laughed awkwardly, trying desperately to lighten the mood. “We were, like ten, eleven?" He still said nothing, just watching you with a strange, unreadable look in his eyes. Oh god, you wanted  lightning to strike you dead, NOW. Literally anything would be better than standing here waiting for him to say something, anything! Even if he just says 'Who the fuck are you?' It would be better than silence. The silence was humiliating. "Okay, I’m so sorry. I probably got this all wrong and look like a weirdo." Right as you started to back away to run to find Amy and get the hell out of here, he held out a hand.

“Wait, wait!" His eyebrows shot up as if he couldn’t believe something, his outstretched hand reaching back to run through his hair. "Holy shit. Is it… (Y/N)?"  Your heart almost stopped right there, the moment he said your name, either that or it was beating so fucking fast you couldn't feel it. He said your name. Your name. He knows your name.

"Yeah.” You watched his face relax into a gleaming smile. Like sunshine. It’s him. You knew it now. “So I’m not crazy? It's… it’s actually you? Mat?"

"It's actually me." For the first time since you set foot in the bar, you felt yourself relax completely, and although you hadn’t had any alcohol, you felt all warm and fuzzy inside. Jesus, it was actually him. You crossed your arms on the bar and lay your forehead down on it. "Sorry, I just, it took me a second. I should have recognized you sooner.” You laughed a little bit into your arms at the sheer craziness of the situation. He still had that same warmth to him, the way he was always able to make you feel happy and safe, like when he distracted you on the beach while your parents were yelling inside or when he went too far trying to scare you with crabs and had to hug you and promise you he’d protect you from them.

“I can’t believe this.” You lifted your head to look back up at him, and he had a wide smile spreading across his face. “We actually ended up in the same city ten years later without even knowing each other’s last names.”

“Holy shit. Ten years? I feel old. Sometimes it feels like just yesterday.” Your heart soared at the idea that he still thinks of you- of the fun you two had together that summer. He took a sip from his drink, going quiet and just staring at his glass with a smile.

“You still think about it?”

“Sure, sometimes. I wonder how you’re doing, and where you ended up. I guess you ended up in New York.” He looked back up at you, eyes catching yours and gleaming all honey-hued golden brown and sending butterflies straight to your stomach. You could barely contain yourself, it didn’t matter that this was Mathew fucking Barzal you were talking to because to you he was still just your Mat, and that was even better. The sandy little boy with scraped knees. You couldn’t help but imagine how many people would kill to be in your position right now.

“I guess I just thought you would have forgotten about that summer, considering how successful you are now and stuff.”

He shook his head, smiling softer and reassuringly. “C’mon. I could never forget about that. It was my favorite summer to date.” He extended an arm and dropped it across your shoulder, pulling you in closer- no closer than two friends should be, but much closer than you ever thought you’d be to someone of his "social rank". It wasn’t any closer than you’d been in the past, but you were children back then. Now, you were young adults with hormones. He was a man. You would be crazy not to notice how warm and built he felt under his hoodie from obvious years of playing hockey, and there were dirty thoughts spinning around your head as soon as his large hand dropped to your arm and the dizzying scent of his cologne hit your nose. “You want a drink?”

You blushed and stuttered, shaking away any indecent thoughts. “Uh, I- I can’t. Yet.”

He seemed confused for a moment before laughing. “That’s right! You're a year younger than me, right? Aww, you’re still a baby. Can’t even drink yet.” He ruffled your hair gently, careful not to actually mess it up, and called the bartender over and asked for a glass of water, making sure to let him know that you weren’t old enough to drink yet. You could only laugh, remembering how much he loved to tease you back then. He obviously hasn’t changed in that department. “Ya know, you could’ve just DM'd me or something as soon as you found me. You didn’t need to dramatically approach me in a bar.”

“Well, I did kinda only find you tonight,”

His eyes went wide with a smile. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, like an hour ago. Listen...” You launched into your story as to how you came to realize that your long lost friend was NHL star Mathew Barzal, and how you didn't actually know who he was as a player. He actually listened intently, unlike any of the disappointing boyfriends you’d had in the past. Man, whatever girl he gets is gonna be lucky. “I wasn’t sure if it was you or not. I spent the entire walk here looking up pictures and trying to decide if I actually recognized you or if it was just my brain being hopeful.”

“Wow. I guess I’ve changed, huh?” He rubbed a hand across his face, still smiling that stupid, beautiful smile that made you all nervous, and your eyes followed, tracing over the familiarity of his features- from his eyes up to his hair and down to his chin, maybe lingering for a second too long on the way his lips looked so soft and tender right now, curled up at the corners into a little smirk.

“Not that much, actually.”

You hadn’t realized how intimate that moment seemed until he caught your gaze, smiling cheekily, and you were pretty sure he knew you were just checking him out. “Lucky for you, you got to skip past my awkward teenage years.” He lightened the mood, poking fun at himself like he knew how to do. Brushing the hazy hot feelings out of the air and blaming them on the rush of meeting your childhood friend after all these years, you reached for your water in order to cool the fire inside of you and the blush on your cheeks.

“Oh, I’m sure I would’ve loved to see that.”

You and Amy were over the fucking moon when you went home that night. You had exchanged Instagram handles and said your goodbyes to each of the men you had been talking with- she claimed to have been talking to Tito for the rest of the night and honestly, you’d believe anything at this point, after learning that your childhood romance- ahem, friendship- was with Mat Barzal. It took everything in you not to shriek like crazed fangirls. As soon as you got out of the bar, the realization finally hit you that you finally found Mat, and meanwhile, Amy was starstruck, having spent the night actually talking to NHL players and actually holding solid conversation.

“Holy shit please tell me everything! Right now!”

“Ames…” You could have told her what it was like to talk to him, disregarding anything in your past, the way he listened intently and made you feel like the only person in the world when his eyes were on you. You took her hands and looked into her eyes seriously, “Ames, we were right.” Okay, so much for not shrieking. Your friend threw her arms around you, jumping up and down for you. You couldn’t blame her, everything that happened tonight was crazy.

“You’re telling me that the kid you hung out with at ten years old has evolved into the one and only Mathew Barzal? Did he remember you?”

To be honest, it had taken everything in you not to try and drag him home with you or go home with him. He was intoxicating in all his warmth, the way his nose scrunched up, and his eyebrows arched when he smiled. The way he threw his head back when he laughed. The scent of his cologne had buzzed around your senses all night, clouding your judgment and making you want to say “fuck reconnecting as friends” and jump him right there. In fact, it still lingered around you after being pulled against his chest all night, and part of you wondered if it was the alcohol in his system, though not enough to make him drunk, that caused him to wrap his arm over your shoulder. If you had maybe harbored a tiny crush since your summer with him, it was heightened times 100 because of tonight.

You could tell that reconnecting with him- and eventually becoming friends again- was going to take a lot of self-control if you were gonna feel like this the whole time.

“Yeah. And he wants to catch up tomorrow. He said he’d DM me.” Amy was in the middle of shrieking in joy for you when, as if on cue, your phone buzzed in your pocket, and the first thing you saw after opening it was a message.

barzal97: Get home safe :)

“Girl, he loves you!” You laughed and shook your head as she shook your shoulder and patted your back, “You snagged yourself a hockey player!”

After you left, Mat didn’t see any reason to stay out longer. He almost couldn’t believe it- had someone slipped something in his drink? Was this just a dream? But then he opened Instagram and scrolled through your Instagram momentarily after DMing you and stopped on a picture of you and your friends, it was clear- he’d found you. You’d found him, more like. After ten goddamn years. It felt like a movie. You still had the same vibe, he could feel it in him the moment you were beside him. What was it…? Familiarity. Warmth. Comfort. Nostalgia. Whatever it was, it was you. After taking a moment to reflect on everything that had just happened, he was quick to finish his drink and find his friend, wanting to head home and prepare for his little meetup tomorrow.  

As he was heading out the door with Tito, Mat knew he needed to confide in somebody. “You’ll never guess what happened.”

“Does it have something to do with that girl I sent over?”

“(Y/N)? You sent her over?”

“Yeah, I was talking with her friend. I noticed she didn’t come back after going to look for you.” Mat noticed the suggestive tone in his friend's voice and felt his face go pink at the thought of hiding away in a bathroom to make out- and maybe more- with you.

“No! Nothing like that. She was my friend when we were kids.” He had a serious look on his face, and Tito knew that Mat wasn’t kidding about this. “Really. We have a crazy story. We met ten years ago on vacation. We hung out for a month, and I haven’t heard from her since. I didn’t know her last name or anything, and she didn’t know mine, so it’s not like we could look for each other. But she found me.”

“Wow. She just said she was a fan.”

“Well, wouldn’t you think they were crazy if they told you that story.”

“It does sound like a movie.” He laughed a bit, patting Mat’s back. “So, what’s the deal with her now? Friend? Do you liiiike her? Do you like-like her?” The teasing tone in his voice didn’t go unnoticed.

“What are we, in middle school?” But he still shrugged, sighing. “I don’t know. We’re going out to catch up tomorrow.”

“Ooh.”

“Shut up.” He went silent for a moment, wondering over his question. Did he like you? He wasn’t sure. “Ya know, she’s with me in almost every photo from that summer. That’s how much we were together.”

“Well, if you guys hit it off, you should date.  I don’t need a competitor for best friend.” It was a joke, Mat knew and smiled at it, but he honestly couldn’t shake the idea of dating you. No, no, he’s only feeling this way because he hasn’t seen you in a while. It’s nothing but a bunch of resurfacing memories.

Hopefully, anyway.

The two of you really did hit it off the next day. And the next. And the next. And the next. You still got along just as well as you did when you were young, and maybe even better, now that you were adults and had more interesting things to talk about. He was funny, even funnier than he was as a child, and despite your original thought that the fame of being in the NHL must have changed him, he was actually kind of modest and shrugged and smiled with a pink flush on his face when you brought up his accomplishments. It was easy to be with him. He could talk and talk about his life and still keep you comfortable, inviting you to tell your own story, gushing over accomplishments that felt so small to you.

And that one catch-up date ended up being months and months more of friendship.

Friendship with Mat was one of the best things that ever happened to you. He was the ideal friend, he listened to you and kept an eye on you and pushed you out of your comfort zone when it was necessary. He loved hearing you talk about things you enjoyed and tried his best to find joy in your hobbies, even if he thought some were funny or boring. He was sweet, endearing, teasing. And it wasn’t long before he began bringing you out on casual outings with some of his personal friends, gushing and getting really into telling the story of how you were separated for ten years and reunited by maybe fate, maybe luck, who knew.

The only problem was that you wanted him to kiss you.

You wanted him to kiss you when you went out with him and Tito and Amy on Christmas, singing carols together and teasing him, asking him to sing louder because you loved the sound. You wanted him to kiss you on New Years, when you stood hand in hand in Times Square, shivering and smiling with red cheeks, but instead settled for a hug. You wanted him to kiss you after returning from his first All Star game in January, you wanted to congratulate him on being an All Star, because he spent so much time praising you and you wanted him to know he was just as amazing. You wanted him to kiss you when he was drunk on his 22nd birthday, all red-faced and giggly and dancing in the nightclub with a red solo cup in his hand and that stupid snapback on that made him look like a frat boy but suited him so well. He was hugging you to his side with one arm and, even like this, you were just praying that he would lay a messy, drunk kiss onto your cheek.

You just wanted his lips on yours. So, so bad.

But despite that, behind Amy, who was still holding onto the title of best friend, he was always the one you went to when you needed comfort or a companion or a distraction, or just to talk about certain things. Things like this.  

A week after his birthday, seven months into your friendship, you showed up at his door without warning, slumping against the doorframe when he opened it. “I have a problem.”

“With showing up unannounced? Yeah, I know.” He was joking and smiling, but maybe you missed it with how stressed you were. When you didn’t respond, he must have noticed the tired, strained look on your face and his happy expression dropped. He let you into his apartment, snaking an arm around your shoulders and pulling you into his chest. It wasn’t an odd thing in your friendship, he was always a touchy guy, especially when you were down, and you always welcomed it. He pulled you over to sit at the island in his kitchen and sat across from you. “What’s wrong?”

“I got a voicemail from my parents today.” You were already pulling out your phone to play the voicemail for him. Ever since that one month on the beach eleven years ago now, you and your family had been going back every summer for a week, up until four years ago, when you suddenly had a summer job and couldn’t afford to take a week off. You missed the beach, sure, but you definitely didn’t miss the way your parents would always find a way to argue and fight. Now, they were calling you and asking if you could come along this year.

“I think I’m missing the problem here. What’s so bad about a beach trip?”

You sighed and lifted your head. “Well, I want to go, and I already got my boss’s okay to take that week off. I really miss the beach. But my family is just… so overwhelming sometimes. I could try to hang out alone the whole time, but I’ll go crazy before the week is over.” There was a pause as Mat leaned back in thought, considering his options. Was this crazy? Was he crazy for doing this? Definitely. But, fuck it, ya know?

“I can come with.”

You scoffed. "No way, I'm sure you have other plans."

"Not really. Not that week." He saw the look on your face, and he really didn’t want you to have to deal with your family all alone for a week. "Look, I'll pay for my share of the trip, and I won't bother anybody." You laughed. There's no way Mat could go a week without bothering anybody. He laughed along, glad to see you happy. "Seriously. If you need somebody, I'll be there."

And that was it. That was how you ended up on a beach trip with the one and only Mathew Barzal, eleven years after you first met..

The first few hours of the trip down were blurry. Your family, in true vacationer nature, decided that all of you, your parents, siblings, you and Mat, should carpool together. So, at 8:00 AM, you loaded into the car, your parents up front, obviously, your younger twin siblings behind them so they could be monitored, and you and Mat in the very back. This was definitely a bad idea, 100%, but you couldn’t help the giddy feeling that sparked up inside of you when you told your family you would be bringing a boy along. Or the feeling you got when you looked at Mat sitting next to you, looking worn out and sleepy after six hours of travel-rest stop-travel-gas stop, with four more hours of travel left and suggested he try to get some sleep. You slept through the rest of the day, only waking up for bathroom breaks and rest stops, until eventually, you woke up around six in the evening with your head on Mat’s shoulder and his body angled towards yours, snoring softly and looking ever so soft.

“Mat, Mat wake up.” You shook him gently, laughing at the way he was drooling a little bit. He blinked his pretty eyes open and looked around, a little dazed.

“Are we there?” His sleepy, mumbling voice was so cute.

“Technically, yeah. But we can’t get into the rental house until tomorrow morning. So we found a place to sleep.” He groaned, his eyes slipping shut in protest, and showed no sign of moving from his seat. “Come on, you’d rather sleep in a real bed than this car, right?”

Those words had him slipping out of the car, his eyes half shut and holding your hand loosely, dragging his feet the whole way as you led the way to your shared room. He looked so cute in this outfit, grumpy and soft in a tee shirt and shorts and his hair looking extra messy. There was nothing you wanted to do more than sleep, but one detail had you stopping in your tracks as you opened the door.  Your parents had paid for three rooms- one for them, your siblings, and you and Mat- and of course, since your parents hated each other and apparently can’t stand to sleep in the same bed anymore, you and Mat got stuck in the room with one bed. Mat didn’t seem to care though, as he dropped his slides by the door and immediately collapsed in the bed, falling asleep almost immediately after mumbling for you.

“C’mon, (Y/N), get in...”

As you dropped down beside him in bed an appropriate distance from him and tried to ignore the sleeping beauty beside you, you began wondering if this whole trip was a bad idea. No, no way, you quickly pushed that thought away. This was Mat, your Mat, and you’re actually on the beach again with him. You fell asleep that night with a smile on your face, listening to the soft snores of the man beside you and trying to imagine what your week had in store for you.

Realistically, there's only one thing you can predict about this trip- it’s gonna take a lot of self-control.

[shima-draws]

Shima can you pls hit us with some anime recs?? ówò

OH YELL HEAH I GOTCHU FAM

Putting all this under the cut because inevitably it got long lmao

Eden of the East

Eden’s one of those animes where you start watching and then decide you’re not going to stop until you finish it. It’s absolutely binge worthy and has such a unique concept with a lot of mystery and romance sprinkled in here and there!

Eden of the East is about a girl named Saki who goes to Washington to visit the White House. There she meets a boy named Takizawa who, for some reason, shows up completely naked, and just had his memories wiped, so he has no idea who he is. As Takizawa and Saki start to bond, Taki starts to put together the pieces of his past. Apparently before his memory got wiped he was involved in a “game” with 11 other people, and each of them were gifted 10 billion yen to attempt to change Japan for the better. Taki discovers more and more about the person he was before he wiped his memory–he might have been involved in terrorism, that’s great–and he and Saki start falling in love with each other and it’s really. Really soft.

It’s 11 episodes, and then there’s two sequel movies after that!

Mawaru Penguindrum

ONE OF MY PERSONAL ALL TIME FAVORITES…MP is such an underrated series and it’s so unique and just out there. Everything in this series has symbolism, though it may not seem like it upfront–everything has a deeper meaning! The series pretty much rides on symbolism and reference to other media in the background.

The story follows twin brothers Shouma and Kanba Takakura, who live on their own with their terminally ill little sister, Himari. In the first episode, Himari passes away, but is miraculously revived by a strange spirit inside of a penguin hat. The spirit demands the brothers find what’s called the “penguindrum” in order to keep Himari alive. The siblings are gifted with the help of three strange penguins who are invisible to everyone except for them. Their search leads them to a girl named Ringo, who has a mysterious diary that can apparently “change fate”. Believing this to be the penguindrum, Shouma gets heavily involved with Ringo’s schemes to chase her one true love, Tabuki, who also happens to be the twins’ teacher. (Which, inevitably, ends in disaster lmao.) As the series goes on the themes get darker, as the twins discover more about their parents’ past and their involvement with a terrorist act many years ago. 

I should warn you that while MP is VERY good, it definitely gets…weirder as it progresses, and darker, like I said. There’s a couple triggers I should warn ya’ll about if you plan to watch it: (minor) incest (Kanba kisses Himari in the first episode and that’s like. The extent of it), attempted rape (a character wants to become pregnant with a guy’s child, but they’re stopped before they can go through with it, and there’s also another one with two women), terrorism, sexual and physical abuse, and…I think that’s it? Wow I honestly forgot how dark this series is tgnakdsasda

Anyway I highly suggest it, it’s one of my favorites, but it’s definitely…strange, and not for everyone. You have to have a certain taste to really take to MP, but I promise it’s worth it, especially since Shouma is baby and I would do anything for him and his stupid pretty long eyelashes

I love these boys so much they’re so sTUPID

This one’s 24 episodes!

Kobato

This one is absolutely ADORABLE and soft and a very feel-good anime. If you wanna sit down and relax with a lighthearted series with romance and slice of life definitely go with this one!

The series is about a girl named Kobato who wants to fulfill a lifetime wish of going to the place she wishes to go. It isn’t really specified where until the end of the series so I won’t spoil ;) In order to do so she has to collect the healed fragments of people’s hearts inside of a bottle. However, she has a time limit–one year to complete the task. Unfortunately, Kobato is ditzy and naive, which leads her into a whole bunch of troublesome situations, and this makes it hard for her to connect with people. She’s guided by her partner, a little dog plush toy named Ioryogi, who was apparently cursed and trapped in that form due to his meddling in the affairs of the heavens. If Kobato completes her mission, Ioryogi will also be allowed to return to his original form. Kobato soon learns that being herself–honest, kind, and sweet, is the way to heal people’s hearts. She gets involved with a kindergarten and begins working there to help out the principal, Sayaka. Also part of the kindergarten is Fujimoto, a very handsome yet sarcastic man who is very closed off from everyone. As the series progresses, Fujimoto’s initial irritation and annoyance with Kobato fades away, and they start falling in love. 

They’re so cute I LOVE THEM 😫

This one is 24 episodes as well!

Senyuu

Of course I’m going to suggest Senyuu do ya’ll even KNOW ME

For those of you who don’t know, Senyuu is one of my all time favorite series in existence–unfortunately the anime doesn’t even cover the good parts of it, as it only adapts part 1, which is just the beginning of the whole mess. I’m still going to recommend it nonetheless!

Senyuu’s about a hero named Alba and the royal soldier assigned to him, Ros! Alba’s more of a wannabe than anything, and can barely hold his own against super low level slimes. He’s sarcastic and witty and acts as the straight man in a comedy routine with Ros. Ros, on the other hand, is sadistic, snaky and rude, and his favorite pastime is teasing Alba incessantly. Together the two of them are out on an adventure to find the Demon Lord, who was apparently sealed away a thousand years ago by the Legendary Hero Creasion. The Demon Lord released tons of monsters into the human world, causing problems for everyone. When they do encounter the Demon Lord, however, they discover that she’s actually the granddaughter of the original Demon Lord, and that the appearing monsters were caused by a mere accident. Alba and Ros decide to help the girl, Rchi, find all of the monsters and send them back to the Demon World where they belong. They go after the Big Twelve, the most powerful demons in existence, and end up in a lot of trouble regarding a conspiracy in the kingdom!

Senyuu’s basically a comedy until the last few episodes where shit gets Real and secrets are revealed! If you enjoy the anime and want to know what happens next DEFINITELY read the webcomic, part 2 is my personal favorite and where a whole bunch of crazy plot twists happen. 

There’s 26 episodes, they’re only about 5 minutes a piece, so you could finish the entire anime in about 2 hours 👌

And that should be a good start for now :0c If you guys need more suggestions hmu again, I’m happy to share my good collection of shows to watch ;)

[mobagehelllocal]

“do you even lift bro?” extra notes i - iii:

I finally finished rereading all my “do you even lift bro?” stories! Man, I feel like I wrote them ages ago. As I mentioned before, I have been going back to do grammatical edits and what not. In the process, I’ve also been noting down my thought process for writing these pieces, and little easter eggs I put in for fun~ This extra notes will contain my thoughts from versions i to iii! 

*please do not read if you haven’t read “do you even lift bro?” ver i - iii. 

The title came to me immediately upon reading the request hahah. originally, it was meant to just be fluffy and cute... but I think it’s actually pretty funny. To me, at least hahah. 

Divus’s was the one exception, but i’ll get into that later.

The reader personality was based on one of my ocs. She was also the oc in my special Malleus x OC story, “bright eyes.”

I went with her because she was an OC, who, in my opinion, is the epitome of a optimistic fangirl lmao. If you’ve read “bright eyes” then I think you’d understand what I mean hahahah. 

For ver i--I think I definitely wrote Riddle’s first. followed by Leona, Azul, Malleus, Kalim, Vil then Idia. 

One of my best friends is a super huge Riddle stan (if you’re reading this, hi sis!) so I wrote his story primarily with her energy in mind. In short, she would most definitely bench press Riddle. 

Her energy + the base reader personality makes Riddle’s story one of the most fun actually. His reader is probably the most mischievous ones--which I thought balanced out well with Riddle’s actual personality. 

Leona’s story is heavily influenced by pride dynamics. It’s common knowledge that it’s the female lions who hunt hence why in Afterglow Savanna--the women are stronger. Leona is royalty, so I assumed that from a young age he’d be told to wed a strong woman. 

I also need to note that Leona is described as respecting women. here’s the thing, I’m pretty sure it’s specifically women from Afterglow Savanna because they could bench press him. That’s not to say he doesn’t respect all women--he probably just puts women from Afterglow Savanna on a different standard because of his experience with them. Either way, you surprised him greatly, and assume that Leona will not be able to look you in the eye for awhile.

Azul’s story specifically takes place after Jamil SR Lab Coat episodes and Azul’s R PE Uniform episodes. I found their relationship funny, and thought it would be fun to continue off from there. 

Most of Azul’s stories come from me just wanting to fluster the hell out of Azul... that being said, I did delve a bit into the magic of TWST for this one. I remember it was Crowley (was it in the prologue?) who noted that magic is dependent also on how much someone believed in their ability to do something. This is why Azul falls down haha, his will faltered and he stopped believing. 

Jamil doesn’t get a break at all, doesn’t he? The reader and Jamil actually vibe really well because they both understood enough about Kalim to know what he was doing.

I think I remember being pretty stuck on which one to do for this. I think it was reading Jamil’s SSR Dorm Uniform story that really made me have an ‘aha’ moment on how to write it--since something like this happens on there. 

Surprisingly for Vil, once I had figured out that I wanted to write him getting mobbed, and being saved by his reader--it flowed out really fast from there. 

For Vil, I always end up bringing up the issue that he’s something like a celebrity and you are one in the million who adore him. I thought that this was just one way to sort of tackle your relationship together. 

I really enjoyed highlighting how you love Vil different from the rest who adore him. The importance of how you see his flaws and still love him--especially because as an influencer Vil has a certain pressure to appear in a certain way. 

Idia’s was the last one I wrote, but I had a lot of fun because I stuffed it full of references. I figured that Idia’s thought process would be more of him thinking life as a game, that’s why he uses terms like support level often in my writing. 

On that note, I know ‘Gao-Gao Dragon-kun’ is a reference to Tamagotchi, but I decided to just merge up Tamagotchi and Pokemon in this case. Hence why ‘Gao-Gao Shield and Sword’ existed lmao. I didn’t put too much effort in that and just switched ‘Shield and Sword’’s order HAHAH. I did consider making it ‘Gao-Gao Gun and Wand’ though. 

‘Water Crest: The Seven Dorms’ is a reference to Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I felt incredibly clever when I came up with that HAHAH. But also, when he references support levels, he’s talking about a gameplay in Fire Emblem. For people who aren’t familiar with this, essentially, FE has a system wherein the more you use two units together the likely their support will rise. The supports go from C-B-A-S, with S as the highest. When Idia says he works hard on S Support, he literally means he went out of his way to spend time with you and befriend you. Isn’t that cute? When he references SS Support, it actually doesn’t exist HAHA, but he didn’t realize there was “another level” sort of thing xD

When I write funny Malleus stories, the other members of Diasomnia are likely to be hiding in the bushes. Most funny stuff probably fly over Malleus’s head so... The other Diasomnia members pop in to react hahaha.

To Malleus, your tendency to treat him as a regular person, and not treating him as a lord--makes him incredibly fond of you. It’s because you treat him as an equal, that makes him treat you as an equal. I also think this was the piece where he started calling you “bright light.” There’s no deeper meaning to it, he really just sees you as a bright light--like a brilliant star. You, literally, light up the world. :,) 

Ver ii order of writing--Ashton, Dire, Divus. I had come up with the premise of Divus first though. 

I think Dire was the hardest one for me, because I kept worrying about things like--’what if he’s not actually like this,’ or ‘what if that isn’t how he would actually act’ etc etc. but I think it turned out pretty alright.

Dire, for all his claims of being a kind person--I think actually is a kind guy. He does have the tendency to be a little manipulative and whatnot... but at the end of the day he does care.

For Divus, I sniffed GBF Belial’s Perfume because I wanted to get inspired (and I sort of headcanon they smelled alike) but it went horny too fast. 

Divus is naturally intrigued with you, and he’s also very aware you’re attracted to him. So it amuses him to fluster you. He’s very aware of how good-looking he is, and he doesn’t mind flirting with people.

How I chose to portray Divus is actually based on how @avionvadion writes Divus in her story “Once Upon A Dream.” please check it out! It’s a super cute fanfic about a girl in Twisted Wonderland~ 

Ashton... I was surprised at how fast I was able to write his piece actually hahha. I went with a no braincell, but cheerful and all-around good guy. 

I don’t think there was a lot of Ashton to really research about, but... I just tried to make him good guy Gaston... for now xD 

Ver iii--it went Floyd, Jamil, Jade, Rook, Lilia, and Epel.

There’s this scene in, I think, the first episode of Avatar: The Legend of Aang where Appa wouldn’t fly. So Sokka just straight up... insulted? Appa? i guess. Then Appa suddenly COULD fly, and Sokka was just straight up amazed and yelling... Yeah that was my primary inspiration for Floyd’s story.

Floyd... Floyd is twins with Jade, let’s not forget that. I’m sure Floyd is actually really intelligent, he just isn’t in the mood to be sometimes. Hence he’s able to really understand something when you say something seriously. I think Floyd would always take you seriously when you say something important. 

For Jade’s story, my inspiration was the story of my dad tripping. It was only witnessed by him and mom. My mom talked about how terrifying it was to watch a six foot tall man fall down. My dad just found it funny. Hence, I thought, Jade should trip. 

Other than that, the general idea I wanted was that it’s our time to pamper Jade. He’s one of the two characters who I know would love to pamper his reader. So this was his lover’s chance to pamper him. Also, he’s also one of two characters who would have an idea about your insane strength.

Jamil, much like Jade, is the type of guy who pampers the people he loves. He doesn’t take to being pampered too well. He’s not used to it. 

Jamil also appreciates getting his hard work recognized, so I’m sure he has a praise kink hahah. He’s also easily embarrassed. I think Jamil needs someone who acknowledges all of his hard work, who also accepts his mistakes. 

Epel was the last one to write, and actually a genuine struggle for me. I always... end up writing something in relation to his struggles with his face and femininity. Epel is someone who wants to be seen as a real man, so I worried about what he’d think of a reader who had the strength he wanted. 

I figured if it was anyone else, it might inspire jealousy in Epel--but because it was his lover, he was able to push aside his negative feelings and look at the bright side. You’re truly his ideal, and he wants to learn how to be strong from you.

Rook was another tough one. There did exist a version where you surprise him... but the more I thought about it, the more I found it impossible for Rook to not know or not have an idea. He’s the other character who would have an idea about your strength.

On that note, thinking about a romantic partner for Rook... I thought what was best was someone who wouldn’t find him odd. Who would actually try to learn about him. 

Lilia’s... was also pretty easy given he enjoyed hanging upside down a lot in the main story hahah. Lilia cute, I love him. Also, when will Lilia stop messing with Idia? Probably never tbh. 

I touched upon the topic of mortality and immortality, but because I wanted this to be lighthearted--I chose not to pursue it. It would drag the mood down, but honestly--it’s something we can’t ignore and is very integral in relationships with Lilia or Malleus.

[acnhmedlilove]

List of TV/Movies to watch that have that ‘Animal Crossing’ feel while we wait for NH!

For me, everything recommended below gives me the same feeling I get when I play Animal Crossing, that warm, calm, peaceful feeling. I thought I would make the list for others to enjoy, while we all wait for March 2020 together!

Find on YouTube/Online

Obviously, the original Animal Crossing movie comes first! Was made during the early era of AC and has a strong nostalgic feel to it. Reminds me of simpler times, and great to see some of our faves in a feature film.

-

Found Online/DVD

Honestly, I could probably put any Ghibli film on this list and it will work, but there is something about this often forgotten film about a community of Tanuki Raccoon Dogs turned eco warriors that gets me feeling all warm inside!

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It’s a bit of a long post, please click to continue reading!

Found on Youtube 

Babar is a classic French/Canadian children’s cartoon from the 1990′s about the lovely royal household of Elephant Kingdom. A surprisingly profound backstory, (including his Mom being SHOT DEAD by a hunter) most episodes revolve around King Babar teaching his young children using stories from his childhood. He was invented in 1931!

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Found on Netflix

Hilda is a stunning and beautiful children’s story based in a semi magical world full of mythological creatures, ancient beings and the Cub Scouts! Very new with amazing animation and acting. Very strong feelings of wonder and curiosity. So cute and surprisingly deep!

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Found on Netflix

Similar to Hilda, wonderful animation, and totally unique storytelling, isn’t afraid to get a bit scary and very magical. Lots of talking animals and getting lost in the forest. Fantastical music too.

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Found Online/DVD

Amhrán na Mara is made by an Irish Animation Studio called Cartoon Saloon, everything they make is visually stunning, some of the most unique styles I’ve seen in film. Lovely, magical storytelling with strong themes of home, belonging and Celtic history and mythology. Lots of cute animal/human friendships!

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Found on Youtube

The original 1990 Moomins tv show has a special quality to it that is hard to describe. Having all the lovely residents of Moomin Valley just living their lives and contemplating life though both lighthearted and scary storylines is just too much, I want to live in Moomin Valley forever!

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Found on Netflix

This is a bit different, but is super super relaxing. People outside of the UK may not know Caroline Quentin? I want her to be my best friend. She is so friendly, down to earth and funny that when her and her architect friend Pierres travel the world, visiting the amazing houses super rich people get built for them, it’s extremely satisfying to watch. All these homes are beautiful in their own way and designed for relaxation, really interesting to see

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Found on Netflix

Cute animal co-existing in a big and varied population? Check. Main character constantly questioning her purpose in life, while developing intense coping strategies to survive the misogynistic, monotonous and overbearing work place culture that is constant in the day to day working life of many millennials living in Japan? ...err...check?

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Found on Netflix

Modest Heroes is a compilation of three short films on Netflix made by Japanese animation studio Ponoc. Really interesting and sweet stories that capture the home and daily life of three extremely different set of characters. Strong Ghibli vibes. Go watch!

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Found on Netflix

This slow, relaxing, quiet show focuses only on a handful of characters. It’s stop motion and looks amazing. Very cute set decoration makes you want to live in that tiny flat with them. Very satisfying to watch, even if the main human character can come across as quite depressed at times. Super super cute!

Got any to add to the list? Here’s to March 20th 2020! Enjoy!

[devourer--of--books]

if you’re not the bride (deluxe version)

So you may be wondering why is it you're seeing this. Hello, it is I again. If you're here, maybe you're familiar with the original "if you're not the bride', which I posted about three years ago. In case you're not, then, hello, welcome, when I was 15 I wrote a story under this same title. Then forgot all about it. But every so often someone would come across this story and I was reminded of its existence. Then, back in september 2019, I decided to read it again, correct some grammar and call it a day, you know, just so I could rest assured I hadn't written something horrible. Turns out, it got a bit out of hand and I decided to rewrite the whole thing. However, due to the fact that college is the worst, I never finished it and, well, forgot about it, again. Now, as quarantine came around, I found my rewrite from 6 months ago and since I got the time why not, right? This is now more than double the size of the original and has a lot more of backstory than intended. You can still find the original with some corrections here on AO3 and , and the cursed unedited version somewhere on tumblr for the sake of nostalgia. Warnings: There's cursing, some drinking and good old make outs. July 2020 edit: here I am, re-edting this thing again. This all said, welcome folks, to the deluxe version:

"You're going to what?!" Agatha raised her voice, tightly holding her phone to her ear. Surely, she must have heard Sophie wrong. Her friend did have a reputation for being over the top, but this was beyond absurd.

When people said that being friends with Sophie was…an exotic experience, they weren't completely wrong, per say. Being friends with Sophie could be a lot like being friends with a hungry animal. She was ruthless, dangerous and not trustworthy about 60% of the time. Sophie would do most anything to get whatever she wanted and absolutely would step over you in the process (sometimes for no reason other than because it amused her to do so). It wasn't personal, mostly. It was simply her nature.

For her, there were two kinds of people: her friends and her enemies. It was very easy to go from one category to another and anything in between simply couldn't be processed by her brain.

Sophie was a difficult person.

Agatha could tell you in more detail, she would know. Being Sophie's best friend wasn't exactly a dream come true. It had its perks of course, and when all was said and done, Sophie was an okay-ish person and a mostly good friend, but you gotta give it up to Agatha; it was no task for the weak-hearted.

They had been friends since kindergarten and were as different from one another as it gets. Had they met later in life, Agatha is certain they would've never become friends at all. Sophie was a loud, gorgeous (and kinda mean) blonde bombshell and Agatha was a grumpy, average-looking mostly nice girl (she wouldn't call herself kind, really, her niceness was more of a subproduct of her aloofness than anything else). The two of them disagreed in most anything and had not that much in common. Yet, it somehow worked. They argued a lot, as in, a lot, but it was always fixed within a weeks' time, in a coffee shop, over a good old vanilla latte and some black tea.

An odd pair, to say the least.

Which was fine by them. Sophie… was a work in progress. She was trying.

Nevertheless, every once in a while, something like this would happen. Because Sophie was still Sophie and her head worked in mysterious ways.

"I'm getting married, Aggie," Agatha could practically hear the blonde rolling her eyes on the other side of the device, "people do that all the time. It's, like, a thing."

"Sophie, you're not even done with college yet! Getting married with what money? As far as I know, your modeling barely pays your rent and don't even get me started on your student loan and credit card debt! And getting married to whom? Last time I checked, you weren't even going out with anyone!" She tried to cool her head, catching her breath while trying to recall any possible groom Sophie could have taken. "Unless… Are you marring Hort?"

A disgusted groan was heard.

"Ew, no. Not Hort, for God's sake. What do you think I am? Desperate?"

A bit, but Agatha didn't dare say it out loud.

Hort was a guy who lived at the apartment just below Sophie's, in a tiny complex downtown. They've known each other for quite a long time now. It was practically common knowledge that Hort acquired the biggest crush on her the moment he first laid eyes on her. It was all the old ladies from 1A and 2C ever talked about.

Over the years, he became quite easy on the eyes, even Sophie had to admit it. No longer the scrawny awkward kid that helped Agatha drag Sophie's couch upstairs (while Sophie flirted with the trucker, trying to get free shipping for her mattress, which, by the way, she got), but a fully formed man, completely jacked, and with a growing bank account to match, due to his fitness-program-thingy taking off. Agatha didn't really know the details of that, but she knew it was going well, mostly because Sophie told her so.

Anyway, he claimed to not want anything to do with her friend nowdays.

Yeah, right.

Agatha felt bad for him, she really did.

Loving Sophie was like loving a hurricane. Violent, brutal and downright painful.

She had initially assumed it would go away with time, that he would eventually see that they weren't compatible and let it go.

However, it was a bit more complicated than that, as most things in life tend to be.

She knew he and Sophie had hooked up, in fact, she knew that they did so often. Sophie hadn't told her, but she didn't need to. Agatha knew. The aftermath was never good, and for the sake of keeping things short and lighthearted, Agatha shall spare you the angst and just say that, as mentioned above, Sophie was fantastic at getting whatever she wanted and disregarding other people's feelings.

Honestly, Hort could say he wasn't into Sophie all he liked. At the end of the day, he was still living at that shitty apartment (even though he could probably have moved somewhere better a long time ago), hadn't seriously dated anyone since meeting her and was responsible for at least half of Sophie's modeling gigs, which were her friend's main source of income. Agatha had warned him, several times, mind you, but all you can do is all you can do. The heart wants what it wants, she presumes.

"If not Hort, who then?"

"Oh, you don't know him yet," She could practically see Sophie twirling a golden lock on her fingers, a mischievous smirk on her face.

"Clearly," Agatha rolled her eyes and put her phone on speaker to be able to look around for her keys more comfortably. Reaper, her cat, had a bad habit of hiding them in the weirdest places. "Why didn't you tell me you were seeing someone last time we went out for coffee?"

"Because I wasn't seeing anyone at the time," the blonde-haired woman sounded a bit annoyed, seemingly not understanding why Agatha was having such a hard time believing her ludicrous story.

"Sophie."

"Yes, Aggie?"

"That was literally three weeks ago."

"It's true love, Agatha. I can feel it. This is my real-life fairytale. I found the perfect guy for me. He's so different from anyone I've ever met…" Agatha tuned her out, finally realizing what was going on.

For Sophie, everyone she dates is her one true love. She was intense like that. There were lots of "perfect guys" on the list, too many, and eventually Agatha grew tired of counting them. Neither did she remember their names. Why bother, when Sophie would grow tired of them soon enough?

Her friend's drug of choice just so happened to be was serial dating with lots of love-bombing on the side.

Parents got divorced? Look at this cute basketball player that will probably cheat on me.

Bad day at a shoot? Oh, that barista is so sexy, bet he'll hook up with me anyway.

I have no idea where my career is going and hate my major? Why not call Hort up, right?

But getting actually married? That's new.

Agatha sighed, picking up her keys from the pot of her balcony plant. Time to be the be the grown-up. Again.

"Sophie, are you 100% sure you want to get married to this guy? Can't you wait a few months at least? How about you guys move in with each other first?" If Sophie doesn't tire of him, that would terrify the poor thing into ending this madness. Again, Agatha would know. She had to stay at Sophie's for a few weeks once, back when she had split with a partner whom she had been living with; it was hell on earth.

"Weren't you hearing, Aggie? We. Are. Soulmates. He is very serious about me. He's so in love with me, he would never hurt me, and I need to tie him down before he runs away. Isn't this what people always say?" Her friend's voice was getting snappy. Oh, no, not good.

"Sophie, I just think you should be more careful and reasonable…" Agatha tried to pacify, tiredly.

Did she not own any clean jeans? Damn. Why does she keep forgetting to do her laundry? The blue skirt she wore to work would have to do.

"It's always reason, with you, Agatha! You never listen to your heart! I thought you would be happy for me! You're always telling me just how much potential I have! He brings out the best in me! What do you even know about relationships anyway, you always end up ru-"

"SOPHIE!" She interrupted, before her friend could say something she'd regret and crush whatever good mood was left in Agatha's body. "I'm just surprised, that's all. Tell me about this guy…?"

Fuck it, she decided. Agatha was in currently in a hurry and this could be solved later. She wasn't going to be able to win Sophie over the phone. Maybe she could sit her down on sunday, have one long talk about red flags in relationships, again. Convince her to stay engaged for a bit longer, just enough for her to get bored and then call it all off as soon as the new whats-his-face walks through the door.

Now was not the moment to be arguing, especially if she wanted to be on time.

"…And he's so great and wonderful, he's tall, has these hypnotizing eyes, they're so intense, it's like they suck you in, Aggie! His hair is just wow, it's a very uncommon shade of blonde, the undertone is beautiful, so expensive-looking... but it's natural, he swears. And his skin is so soft, you wouldn't believe, his name is…"

Agatha tried to listen. She really did. However, all she could hear was "bla, bla, bla, perfect, bla, bla, bla, handsome". Lord, not this again. Did it get worse every time...?

The brunette stuffed her wallet in a handbag, grappling to close it (it had been a present from Sophie, and as such, probably hardwired to annoy her and look good at the same time), and gave herself a look over in the mirror, before frowning. Oh, time for her limited make-up skills to be of use.

Damn, she looked rough. She left in hurry that morning, so her bare face stared back at her in its full sleepless-racoon glory.

It has been a long week of nothing but late nights trying to get her workload done. She couldn't believe she was saying this, but she missed college. At least back then she didn't have to worry about rent. Oh, to be young, broke, dead-inside and living on a dorm. The wonders, truly.

Concealer, blush, eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick. There. Done.

Kinda?

"… So, are you up to it?"

What.

"… Hm, sure?" She responded, still trying to evaluate if her liner was acceptably symmetrical. It wasn't. It never was, but it wasn't always this bad. Really, not her best work. Maybe she could fix it, somehow?

"That's amazing, you'll look so pretty, the dress I picked is perfect for your undertone, you'll be the best maid-of-honor ever!"

Oh, god, no. No way. What has she done?

Should she do that red-flag-talk now?

"How… nice of you to say that," Agatha replied, barely contained horror coming across in her tone. Not that Sophie paid her any attention.

"I set the date for the engagement brunch-party for tomorrow around 10am. At the terrace. And speaking of dates, I must introduce you to someone, he's great, Aggie, and I think you guys could…"

No. No. No. Agatha is drawing the line here.

"Oh really, cool, hey I have to go, callyoulaterbye-"

Agatha throws her phone on the bed, groaning loudly. Reaper stirs in her pillow, but is otherwise unbothered by the conversation, unlike his owner.

Of all things… getting married. Agatha was now her bridesmaid. Engagement brunch…?

Sophie, why. Why?

Agatha was now an accomplice of this crime against good judgement, wasn't she? Should she call Sophie again…?

Ugh, you know what? She'll sort this out this later. Sophie could wait a few hours, Agatha earned this night out.

…This totally is going to come back to bite her, isn't it?

Well, too late, Agatha's leaving. Because, unlike Sophie, who clearly had too much free time in her hands, Agatha had things to do and couldn't just waste her precious friday nights on this kind of bullshit.

.

.

.

"You're late," is the first thing Hester says to Agatha, not even lifting her gaze from her phone as she approaches their table.

It was the usual one, right by the wall, perfectly placed so it was far enough from the dance floor but close enough to the bar, so it was still socially acceptable to be seated but not too "loser-zoned", in Hester's own words.

Hester herself looked the same as always. Dressed head-to-toe in black and showing off an impressive number of tattoos per square inch of skin, she made quite the intimidating sight. The only tip to her actual day job was the discarded white blazer and sleek suitcase lying on a chair beside her. Back in school, Agatha used to find it hard to picture Hester being anything but a witchy-biker or a badass-tattoo-artist, but she supposed scary-lawyer suited her friend just fine.

"Nice to see you too, Hester. I've been well, thanks for asking," Agatha sits down, annoyed. She knows she's late. She missed the "early-comers, free entrance" time, and damn if the isn't pissed that she's now 15 bucks broker then she already was. "Anadil, Dot, it's great to see you guys too"

Both women acknowledge her presence quietly: Anadil nods,before getting up from her spot and leaving to god-wishes-he-knew-where and Dot hugs her briefly, headed to the bar.

Hester rolls her eyes and repeats herself.

"You're late."

"Shut up, I'm here, aren't I?!" Agatha snaps, before she bit her lip and propped her elbows onto the table, head in her hands.

The gesture makes Hester lift her eyes from the phone, finally.

"Well, someone's had a bad day."

"Look, I'm sorry. It's been one looong horrid day. Have you ordered any drinks? Or are we going for beer tonight?" Agatha asks, going over the familiar menu, even though she has every beverage price there already memorized.

"Okay, slow down," Hester yanks the menu out of her hands. "Have you eaten? I'm not going to take care of you if you didn't."

Yes, she would, but that's not relevant.

"Yes, mom," Agatha rolled her eyes. "I'm tired, tomorrow is gonna suck, let's drink."

"Tomorrow? Tomorrow's saturday, loser, sleep to your hearts content," Hester reminds her, but at seeing Agatha stare back at her in misery it occurred to her what, or rather, who, this was about.

"Blondie has been texting me non-stop about brunch. At 10. What's up with that?" She lifts a brow, her judging eyes scanning Agatha's expression. Agatha in turn, lets her elbows drop and bangs her head onto the table, harder than originally planned, a whimper leaving her lips.

Hester sighs. She loves Agatha to the death, but when it comes to Sophie, she has always been way too forgiving. Agatha was not Sophie's mother, she shouldn't have to look out for her and bend over backyards to help her. Personally, Hester and Sophie didn't get along very well.

Which lead to: Sophie never invited Hester anywhere, unless she wanted to rub something in Hester's face.

"...Apparently, she's getting married in, like, two weeks?" Hester's brows lift in surprise. "...To some guy I don't know?" Higher. "...And I'm a bridesmaid?" Almost disappearing into her hairline by now.

Awkward pause.

"Okay," Hester breathes in and out, "what the actual hell?"

"My words exactly."

"She'll be over it in a week," the tattooed woman deadpans.

"No doubt," the other replies.

Three more seconds go by, and it's far too long for Agatha, whose leg starts to twitch under the table.

"You're doing it again," she states.

"Doing what?" Hester asks, crossing her arms, lying back at her chair.

"That thing."

"What thing?"

"You know," Agatha vaguely gestures at Hester's face, "that thing your eyebrows do when you're being judgy."

"I am not."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"I so need a drink right now," she tells her before leaving the table.

.

.

.

At the bar counter, Agatha sits down on a stool and waits for the bartender, Chaddick, to show up, ignoring Hester's glare on her back.

Now for some unnecessary backstory, in case you're interested: Agatha and Chaddick had a bit of history (read, beef) long before this club, The Woods, opened and even before Agatha and Hester started to have their monthly night-out there.

Chaddick was a jock whom Agatha went to school with, all the way from sixth grade to senior year of high school. To be brief, he was the worst ™. He made fun of her, tormented her days, spread rumors about her (including one that she was witch, which lasted for years) and even stole her stuff once. In senior year, he had even developed this habit of showing up with his friends at the tea place her mother owned, where she had worked a few shifts from time to time, ordering not a single drop of fucking tea, being loud and annoying for hours and only leaving when closing hour neared.

Agatha was sure that if you googled 'jackass', his picture would turn up. He'd been so full of himself, all because he had some cash, was athletic and was "cute", you know, in that white-upper-middle-class-way that most school-aged popular boys tended to be. But then, flash-forward: Chaddick now worked wednesday to saturday as a bartender at Agatha's favorite club. Apparently, his parents went bankrupt or something during college. Agatha felt kinda bad for him, but not really? She supposed he wasn't as terrible of a human being nowadays, but she was not about to go ahead and call him her friend, no matter how many times she had to make small talk with him for the sake of bar etiquette.

"So what's it gonna be today?" The bartender asked, not quite politely, but she lets it slide, for she could tell he was as thrilled about this conversation as her.

Chaddick, too, looks the same, to no one's surprise. He looked more tired, but still douchey enough that Agatha didn't feel too horrible of a person for not feeling as sorry for him as she probably should.

"Surprise me. I've had a very bad day."

"Is Sophie actually up to something then?" He asks while grabbing some bottles, "I hear there's going to be a brunch-party tomorrow…?"

"Who told you? Reena?" Chaddick dismisses the name casually with his hand. "Gisele?" 'no', he denies with his head. "Beatrix then?" he nods, uncharacteristically shy, and Agatha nearly felt pleased, before she remembered what they were talking about before. "Bingo. But yes, there's a brunch-party tomorrow. An engagement brunch-party."

He hands her a cup, wide-eyed, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"Engagement? Do I even wanna know w-"

"You don't. Trust me on this," Agatha cuts him off, taking a sip of the beverage. She doesn't recognize its taste, which makes her wary. She knows her alchool. "What did you even put here?"

"It's a secret, tonight's special," he winked mockingly, before hurrying on to the next client.

Agatha briefly wonders if she should drink the rest of it, eyeing the cup curiously. It didn't smell bad and she kind of liked the taste. Should she trust Chaddick? Probably not. Then again, Agatha needed a drink tonight.

It would be fine. She is no lightweight, Hester is here, tomorrow's saturday. Right?

Another thing that would probably bite her later. So, she braces herself and downs the cup in a few large sips, heading back to her table.

Bring it on.

.

.

.

Two other cups of who-knows-what and an hour later, Agatha was back at the bar, now sitting in different stool, as far from Chaddick as she possibly could be, when a body drops on the sit next to her.

It's Dot, giggling loudly like a high school girl on heavy drugs.

The giggling persists for quite some time.

... It's kinda creeping Agatha out.

"Penny for your thoughts…?" She tries, taking a sip of her drink.

No response.

Giggle.

More silence.

"Hm, Dot?"

She continues to stare at her joyfully, still smiling like a madwoman.

Agatha found Dot adorable and friendly, which was a surprise since she was one of Hester's best friends. The two of them weren't really that close themselves, but she did enjoy her company. Being friends with Dot was as easy as it was harmless.

"Don't look, but there's a really hot guy right by the pool table who hasn't been able to take his eyes off you for the last fifteen minutes."

Agatha's eyebrows shot up in Hester-like fashion and she fights the instinct to turn around and check if Dot isn't messing with her.

She knows she is not the most attractive female in the room. Agatha tends to think of herself as more of an acquired taste, truly. Yet, every blue moon someone would come over to try their luck with her. Sometimes they're cute, sometimes they're funny and sometimes they're just desperate. So far, "hot guys" haven't really been her target demographic.

"So what? What's the big deal?" She tries to keep her nerves out of her voice, mostly succeeding, but Dot's smile only grew more and more mischievous, as if seeing right through her.

"Turn around. I dare you not to remember him. Pretty sure Sophie told you about how she met him again a few weeks ago, at that event she went to? The one sponsored by Camelot International?"

…Okay, so Agatha might be a bit of a bad friend. She didn't listen to 90% of Sophie's rants about guys or modeling events, so most likely she had told her about him as Agatha did something else. Something important, really.

…Like playing games on her tablet.

She worked a lot, okay? Can't have people hogging all her free time. Even if it was Sophie. Her best friend.

Shit.

Agatha's face must have betrayed her because Dot laughed even louder than before.

"You seriously don't?" she managed to ask between giggles, as Agatha blushed, frowning.

"I should?"

"Most likely yes. Sometimes you're way too funny, you know?" Her smile was dangerous. Stop smiling at Agatha like that, woman.

It was at times like this she could see why Hester and Dot were such good friends.

"Thanks, I think?" Agatha eyes her companion carefully "How hot is this guy any…"

"Hot enough for you to talk to me, I hope," a male voice announced behind her, seemingly amused.

Not her day. Definitely not her day.

"He's right behind me?!"

Dot giggled loudly a final time before walking away to Hester's table. Very helpful. Forget what Agatha said about liking Dot. She didn't. Dot was a horrible person.

Agatha turned on her heels, facing the stranger with a sheepish smile. She was not ready for what was about to bite her.

Oh damn, please do.

…Figuratively, fuck. She meant in a figurative way.

Before we go on, Agatha would like to clarify that she blames any less than pure thoughts on Chaddick, because who knows what he put into her drink.

(Yeah, it's totally Chaddick's fault)

Amen, praise Jesus, okay?

Embarrassingly, her first instinct is to say that yes, he was totally hot enough to talk to her. Or come home with her. Or marry her (too soon for this joke, scratch that). That's not what she did, however. Oh, no, she stood there, in silence, and stared for quite a while before her brain rebooted and she finally gained control of her own body again.

Agatha is the first in line to advocate on why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but she had eyes.

He was tall. As tall, if not taller than her, and Agatha was a tall woman. His jeans looked expensive and his light blue social shirt was tight on his chest, almost as if it were a size too small, the top buttons open, defined muscles visible to even the most casual observer. The shirt was paired with a grey-ish tie that hanged loosely around his neck, a bit too effortless-looking to be unintentional. His features were sharp, sculpted even, a certain California-sunny-surfer meets Adonis-next-door quality to them. Soft blond locks had an unnatural shine under the club's lights, as if they were made of gold.

And his eyes, my god, they were so blue Agatha felt like sinking and drowning in his arms right then and there. Unfortunately, she couldn't. Because you see, she is a grown woman and had a little thing called dignity.

Not that she didn't want to though.

Focus.

He did look kind of familiar. Had they met before? Agatha doesn't think so. This man looked like he just walked out of a Calvin Klein ad, and she sure as hell didn't know many people who look like that. One of Sophie's model friends? If so, she certainly hadn't introduced the two.

Yet, the way he was looking at her right now indicated the reality that she should probably know who he is. Maybe he was from her old gym, back when she let Sophie talk her into going for a few months? No, there were no hot guys there, just old ladies and teenagers.

Okay, so, plan B, say something smart.

"Hm…"

Say something.

"…So…"

Anything!

He doesn't look very impressed by her articulate conversation skills, but Agatha can't place where she had seen him before. Maybe they had been neighbors at some point? She moved quite a few times in these last years and keeping track of all of them was impossible. But that didn't seem quite right. A friend of one of her exes then? Did they meet at pride or something?

Seriously, who was this guy! Acting all smooth, as if she should know who he is! He's good looking enough to be memorable sure, but clearly not memorable enough.

Hell, did she sleep with him? He must have been the worst one night stand ever for Agatha to somehow forget him. Maybe he was so bad that she forgot about him completely...?

"I give up, I can't remember you."

He looked a bit offended. Maybe he was indeed a Calvin Klein model.

"The name's Tedros…?"

Tedros, Tedros… Tedros?

"Nope, doesn't ring a bell," she concludes, "but, I'm, hm, Agatha?"

"I know," he responds, curt and firm, nearly glaring at her.

"Neat."

"Nice."

"Good."

"Great."

"Awesome."

"Amazing."

"Extraordinary."

"Now, that's a big word," he mocks. Agatha suspects he just didn't know any bigger ones to keep up. Part of her wishes to strangle him with his own tie and part of her wants to call him out on his shit. He approached her, okay? She is under no obligation to recognize him.

Her eyes narrow and she sips on her fourth cup again.

"Do you need for me to tell you what it means?"

"Oh, no, I'm fine."

The passive-aggressive-ness of this conversation is starting to exhaust her and kill any buzz she had, but she can't just let Mr. everyone-knows-who-I-am-and-I-look-like-walking-sex win. He needed to go down (on her). What.

"Hm, Tedros, you're going to order something or what?"

Chaddick cuts the stare contest between brown and blue and Agatha makes a note to leave him a nicer tip tonight.

"What's the special of the day?" Tedros' tone is amused, as if he and Chaddick are old friends. Ugh, of course he would. He sounded douchey enough. Maybe he went to school with her? That sounded about right, she could picture it. Pretty-boy-Tedros, walking down the hall wearing a football jacket with a cheerleader or two on his arm.

"Nice little things I've put together," Chaddick wiggled his eyebrows. "Want some?"

"Is it safe?" Tedros asks him, cautiously.

"Well, Agatha here is still fine at four, I would say so."

Soon enough Tedros is downing his second cup, sitting on the stool next to hers.

.

.

.

Agatha wasn't sure how or why, but things went from point A to point B very, very quickly.

Point A being sitting beside Tedros at the bar and point B being heavily making out with him in a corner.

Agatha wishes she was joking. She wasn't. It just…somehow…happened?

Fuck.

It all started when Tedros eventually caught up to her and from there on they held a little amicable drinking competition.

("I bet you can't do more shots than me." "Oh, you're so on!" "You drink like a fourteen-year old, dude." "Oh yeah?" "Yeah.")

Then, they paid for their drinks. Well, Tedros did.

("Did you just... pay for me?" "It's called having manners." "Excuse you?")

After that, Chaddick kicked them out to the dance floor, something about the two of them 'grossing him out'. Agatha is not much of a dancer, so she tried to go back her table but Tedros said something (she can't quite remember what it was) that made her realize that she kind of didn't want to. Leave, she means.

They danced for a bit before she stepped on Tedros's foot, or maybe he stepped on hers first?

("Ouch." "Get out of my way!" "Make me.")

From there on it was incomprehensible screaming over loud music for a while and they somehow ended up being way too up in each other's personal space. Agatha eventually just lost it, and grabbed him by his collar, bringing him down to place a forceful peck on his lips, before backing away, partly horrified, partly proud.

It took two mortifyingly long seconds of silence and pure embarrassment for Tedros to grab her by the waist and kiss her roughly.

They stumbled to a more secluded corner, until Agatha's back hit a wall, but she was distracted from the pain of the impact by Tedros licking her bottom lip, seeking her tongue, a small sound escaping her once he found it. What the hell is she even doing, this should not be happening. And yet, she cannot bring herself to care.

This is a wild, passionate kiss and not at all Agatha's expertise. She always considered herself more of a slow-vanilla-soft kind of girl. But out the window with that, Tedros was nowhere near close enough, no matter that they were already flush against each other. Maybe this is why Sophie thinks every guy she meets is her soulmate. As cheesy as it sounds, she feels somehow connected to this stranger, almost as if they were meant to be or something.

Ha, as if.

Any thoughts, of soulmates or otherwise, are forgotten when Tedros' hands start to wander, one goes from her waist to her hip and the other moves to explore her tight, squeezing it deliciously. Agatha retaliates by pulling on his hair, not as lightly as she probably should've, but is rewarded with a husky groan and a bite on her bottom lip.

(She does it again because that might be her new favorite sound.)

What. Is. Going. On.

Her last braincells are on fire. She was on fire.

Okay, young lady, de-attach yourself from the handsome male slo…

Oh God.

She's pretty much breathless when he decides to break the kiss, her lips chasing after his for the slightest second as he pulls away. Her heartbeat has never been this loud and she has no time to overthink, as, suddenly, his lips are on her neck. Agatha lets out a quiet, but embarrassingly needy, whine (as quietly as she could, but it didn't really matter, he heard her anyway) when he nips on her ear and then trails down to suck at her pulse point. Her hands snake their way from his hair to under his shirt's collar and Tedros shivers once she drags her short nails lightly on his upper back and shoulders, but she can still feel his very attractive smug smirk against her skin.

She felt drunk. She doesn't feel like that often.

Not the completely-trashed-I-just-had-countless-drinks kind of drunk and certainly not this don't-care-keep-going-my-blood-is-on-fire kind of drunk either. Like she wanted to keep touching Tedros for the rest of her life (the idea doesn't sound half bad), as fireworks danced around them and… God, if Sophie knows this guy how she could not marry him on the spot, because fuck…

He's leaving quite a few love bites along her collarbone, teasing, attempting (and succeeding) at drawing tiny sounds from her and Agatha can't take it anymore. She drags him back up to her mouth and somehow pulls him even closer. She did not like feeling weak, but to her surprise, Tedros seemed to possess the superpower of turning her completely boneless in the best kind of way.

Wait.

Agatha is making out with Tedros.

Tedros is making out with her.

Agatha's eyes open in late realization and the two of them stare at each other for a few seconds.

So, this happened, huh?

"I… hm… have to go. Out of here. Home. Alone. Yeah, that," Agatha makes way around paralyzed Tedros, whom looks very confused and disoriented. His lips are tainted with coral lipstick, he's panting for air, his bright eyes dark with desire, clothes looking disrelished, pants looking a bit too tight, and he just looks throughfully kissed.

No, Agatha does not feel even a little tiny bit of pride by seeing him look like that because of her, what are you talking about, not sexy, not sexy at all.

… Maybe he could come along?

No. No, no, no.

She doesn't run away from him exactly, but she sure as hell wasn't walking. As she passes Hester and Anadil, the two of them raise eyebrows judgingly, but Agatha does her best to school her expression into neutrality.

If she waited a bit longer, she might have heard Tedros saying:

"Until tomorrow then."

.

.

.

Agatha regrets every single life choice that led her to this point.

She's sitting on a ridiculously shaped chair at Sophie's apartment building's terrace, brooding silently in the corner, with a big headache, while eating some diet cake that tasted like foam, listening to violin versions of bad pop songs, probably dying of heatstroke, and if that doesn't kill her soon enough, can someone please end her misery…

Hester and Anadil are not here after all. Agatha doesn't blame them. It might be for the best, because Agatha doesn't need to deal with Hester's judgy eyebrows right now. Dot is down in Sophie's apartment, at the kitchen, most likely trying to steal some wine and she is pretty much the only person here Agatha can stand.

She partly wonders if Hort will show up but decides she does not care. She's running on aspirin, her head feels like it was smashed against a wall multiple times, and it's too hot here, okay?

It's a hot sunny day and the limited shade would not be enough to cool Agatha down even if she wasn't wearing a scarf. Agatha hates this scarf. It was another one of Sophie's gifts, and Agatha hates it because it's an evil scarf that pinches her every five seconds. However it's the lightest scarf she owns, and she can't it take off.

Otherwise, someone might notice the dark mark on her neck, which her shirt could not hide, as was the case for the other ones, lower, in her collarbones.

Tedros freaking marked her. The nerve.

She's not nearly as pissed as she should be, because honestly she's kinda into it.

Taking off the scarf would lead to too much teasing and questions, she had no turtlenecks available (damn you, past-Agatha, for not doing your laundry) and if only she had the skills to cover it up with makeup. Not only was the scarf evil by itself, it made it impossible for her to not think of yesterday, therefore, making her even more irritable.

She is not the kind of person who kisses people at the club. She sure as hell wouldn't bring a guy she's just met, at the club of all places, home. What if he'd been a psycho? She doesn't know him. He'd know where she lived. She wouldn't go to his place either, that sounded even more irresponsible. But she wishes she had at least gotten his number, you know, instead of freaking out and running away. Well, he knew Chaddick, so maybe she could ask him?

No, that would be humiliating, and Agatha is trying to hang on to whatever dignity she had left.

Also, it had been almost an hour at this damned terrace party and she hasn't seen a single trace of Sophie's fiancé, but the blonde assured her he would be there soon. He's the late-type, hm.

Okay, so Agatha hates him already.

She has been to this terrace quite a few times, it was the one pro of Sophie's building, aside from cheap rent. But she was running out of both will and things to point out in small talk with all these models and small influencers. If she hears "Sophie has such a lovely terrace" one more time…

Suddenly, there was clank, signaling that someone pushed the terrace door open. As Sophie lit up and moved to greet the newcomer, Agatha felt the cake climb up her throat.

Holy hell, is that Tedros?

What is her life, really.

Agatha gets up from her chair quietly, observing the scene from behind a plant, trying not to be too obvious, just, ya know, casually chilling in the middle of the scorching sun. Sophie hugs him tightly, placing a kiss on his cheek, grinning as she laces their fingers together and starts walking in Agatha's general direction, pulling the handsome man behind her.

Hm, no.

Agatha resists the urge to pace in circles as she tries to gather her thoughts. It might be the hangover or the diet cake but seeing the two of them together made her wanna barf. Not because they didn't look good together. They did. In fact, maybe too good. Sophie's long soft hair was a shade or two lighter than Tedros', but other than that, they might as well have been made in the same Instagram-model-facility. Like a set, Barbie and Ken.

What is this feeling?

Oh no, she can see them approaching. Abort mission, leave, get out, hit the road…

"Aggie, darling!"

Agatha forces herself to fake a confident smile, as if she could always be found casually hanging out behind plants on saturday mornings. It turned out to be more of sheepish grin, especially when compared to her friend, whose pretty smile is almost too big for her too pretty face.

Sophie looked particularly gorgeous in her pastel green summer dress and peep-toe heels. Her tanned skin glows under the sun, the light catching in her green eyes on that special way that made photographers all around the industry want to work with her despite her inexperience, the grace within her movements creating an allure Agatha doesn't think she'd be able to recreate even if she were to be born again.

This is not good. Leave, abort mission, repeat, abort miss…

"Aggie, this is Tedros, you know, the one I was telling you about yesterday," she winked. "Teddy, this is my bestie, Agatha, you remember her, right?" Sophie nudges him lightly using her elbow.

Tedros looks even better now that she can see him in natural daylight. Which should be illegal, truly. He's wearing a plain white t-shirt and jeans, his hair made of pure gold looked just messy enough to not look too try-hard, yet something about him looked weirdly… staged? Agatha couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"I surely do," Tedros lets go of Sophie's hand, shoulders tensing, and Agatha thinks he might be blushing. Is he nervous? "We-"

"Nice to meet you," Agatha interrupts him, grasping his hand on a firm handshake and letting go just as fast, as if touching his skin would burn her. "Sophie told me a lot about you."

Play along, please. I beg you.

"Oh, hm, it's very nice to meet you too?" Tedros responds, confused, but not calling her out. "Nice scarf," he adds, his lips curling upwards, so very slightly she might have missed if she wasn't micro-analyzing his every movement. Smug bastard. She is all too aware of his gaze lingering on her neck, a hint of pride showing in his bright eyes, the teasing in his voice making her want to pull him down by the collar, whether to choke him or to kiss him she couldn't tell.

"Oh, isn't it cute? See, Aggie, I told you that color looked great on you!" Sophie cuts in, reaching to touch said scarf. Agatha steps back self-consciously, making an effort to not scratch the back of her neck as not to call more attention to it.

"Quite the bold fashion statement for the summer, may I add," Tedros continues as he casually leaned one elbow on Sophie's shoulder. Subtle enough that Sophie wouldn't read too much into it, but Agatha could see right through his shit. "But I like it. You look very pretty, Agatha"

How dare he, truly. No sham-

Wait.

"So, I need to get going, work emergency you see, but I'll make it up to you, Sophie," Agatha excuses herself, quickly. She tells herself it's just the heat that it's bothering her, but her brain is going 300 miles per hours and she needs to leave. Now.

"Aggie, tomorrow we'll be having lunch at the country club, don't be late!"

"Yeah, be there, alright."

Agatha sprints down the complex's stairs as discreetly as she can, which is not much. By the time she's at her car, the weight of her realization hits her full force.

.

.

.

"I'm getting married, Aggie"

"Not Hort"

"You don't know him yet"

.

.

.

"Aggie, this is Tedros, you know, the one I was telling you about yesterday."

.

.

.

"That was literally three weeks ago."

"I dare you not to remember him. Pretty sure Sophie told you about how she met him again a few weeks ago at that event she went to? The one sponsored by Camelot International?"

.

.

.

"…Oh he's so great and wonderful, he's tall, has these hypnotizing eyes, they're so intense, its like they suck you in, Aggie! His hair is just wow, it's a very uncommon shade of blonde, the undertone is beautiful, so expensive-looking, but it's natural, he swears, and his skin is so soft you wouldn't believe, his name is…"

"bla, bla, bla, perfect, bla, bla, bla, handsome"

.

.

.

"He's so different from anyone I've ever met…"

"She feels somehow connected to this stranger, almost as if they were meant to be or something."

.

.

.

"Acting all smooth, as if she should know who he is!"

"He looked a bit offended."

"The name's Tedros?"

.

.

.

"God, if Sophie knows this guy how could she not marry him on the spot…"

"Sophie hugs him tightly, placing a kiss on his cheek, grinning as she laces their fingers together and starts walking, pulling the handsome man behind her."

.

.

.

Agatha is a very bad friend, isn't she?

She bangs her head on the wheel.

Then, she regrets doing so, opening the car's door, so she could vomit some diet cake and last night's alcohol on the parking lot's floor before driving away.

.

.

.

By a miracle, Agatha survives the drive home and makes it back home in one piece.

As she walks into her own apartment, she does not feel half as guilty as she thought she would be. But she was very, very angry. Furious, actually.

At herself for being both a dumbass and a bad friend, at Tedros for being a player, at Chaddick for being a dick in general, at Sophie for being Sophie, at Dot for not warning her and even at Hester for not being at the party today so Agatha could at least not freak out by herself.

She can't do anything for the rest of the day, because trying to work, read or sleep is useless, since she can't focus with all the internal screeching her mind is doing. Her existence now doesn't make any sense and Agatha is about to tear her hair out, lying down in her bed, staring at the celling.

(There's a long crack on there and for whatever reason, it reminded her of a river. Probably because it didn't look like anything else.)

She contemplates calling Hester and telling her everything but ultimately decides against it. She can't bring herself to explain this out loud, least of all hear any possible lecture Hester might give her. Is this how Sophie feels when she decides hide things from her-

Oh my God, Sophie.

Tedros was engaged. To Sophie. He was Sophie's fiancé.

Agatha is not freaking out at all.

.

.

.

At last, ten long hours of sulking later, Agatha is feeling a lot guiltier, still very much pissed and just confused as a whole.

She made out with Sophie's fiancé. Should she tell her? Yes. Would she? To be decided.

Maybe they wouldn't even get married. Come on, a few weeks? There's no way Sophie will keep up this insanity. Telling her about the club incident would only hurt their life-long friendship over a guy who wasn't even gonna last two months. Years of companionship out the window. She had no intention of doing it again so, did it really matter? What the eyes don't see, the heart doesn't feel, right?

She hadn't even known he was Sophie's fiancé!

But then again, Sophie had told her all about him. She didn't listen because she was a bad friend! Was she really gonna play the "I didn't know" card...?

It was the truth!

But no one would believe her. Fuck, if Agatha were Sophie, she wouldn't believe herself. Agatha was a smart grown woman, godamn it. What kind of dumb bitch even-

This wedding wasn't happening. No need to worry, right?

For now, Agatha has two long weeks of supposedly weeding-related bonding moments with Sophie to survive, without accidentally letting slip that, oh, talked, drank, danced and made out with Tedros.

Well, shit.

.

.

.

Even if one ignored the fact that the guilt was starting to eat Agatha alive from inside out, the next day would still have been a long, tortured journey of nothing but cringe and regrets. Yet she bore it, because she, even if accidentally, brought this on herself.

Agatha got up early on a sunday (name a bigger crime) to try and get something done, since she would probably have little time to work in the following weeks. Then, she went to have lunch with Sophie at a fancy country club (that Sophie couldn't afford by the way, which earned her a lecture on credit cards and personal finances) hoping to have that "red-flag" talk.

It did not go well.

Sophie had invited him along. Of course, she would. Apparently, since she was getting married soon, Agatha should be used to have him around. And, of course, Sophie would have decided to tell her he was coming the moment he walked in, headed to their table.

This is Sophie's fiancé. Do. Not. Stare.

What kind of cosmic karma is this? He isn't even her type.

WHY-

"Afternoon, ladies."

Sophie greeted the blonde with a smile and a hug, as Agatha merely nodded his way, scanning the room for the closest exit.

"Hi Teddy!"

"Tedros."

Lunch is awkward as hell and at this point Agatha is just waiting for a waiter to come and stab her. It ends up being both not so terrible and the worst lunch ever because she does talk quite a lot with Tedros, against her better judgment.

She learns that Tedros did go to her school, for three years. Sophie asks him if he remembers Agatha, and from Tedros' silence, Agatha assumes he doesn't want to admit to having been part of Chaddick's... shenanigans.

Her friend then talks astrology, and Agatha learns that he is a leo (because of course he would), is kinda proud of it but says he doesn't believe in astrology, prompting Sophie to start a discussion on why he wouldn't believe in astrology if he believed in tarot. The way he blushes and stammers is cute and makes Agatha feel horrible for thinking so, but she asks him about tarot anyway. She's just being polite, okay?

He mentions he'd turned 26 a while ago and recently moved back to the city, as he moved away to go to college in Avalon. She tells him she almost went there, but her scholarship did not include a dormroom and she knew no one there to share an apartment with. His answer is a blunt "I know", which both confuses and pisses her off.

Tedros offers her no further info on it, but they engage in conversation again after he mentions he is working at Camelot International.

("As one of the main executives on the board," Sophie adds, "it's one of the most powerful companies in the country.")

They quickly bond over their massive workloads (Agatha may not be a main executive of a huge corporate empire, but damn if being head finance director for SGE Enterprises didn't keep her busy enough), until Sophie slips that he must be very lucky to be the sole heir to the Pendragon Group.

Oh.

Tedros Pendragon. Are you kidding? Agatha remembers seeing his family's name being all over the news back in school and she feels dumb for not remembering that Tedros and 'that Pendragon boy' were the same person. Hadn't his parents had a huge cheating-divorce-scandal that caused the stock for the company to plummet a few years ago?

Tedros frowns at Sophie before saying that, "Yes, indeed, he's very lucky."

The blonde doesn't seem to notice the way his hands grip the fork tightly as he pronounces the last word, but Agatha does.

It adds on to the list of things that keep her awake later, after she does her damn laundry and stress-cleans her entire apartment. She curses as she turns and tosses on her bed, because it's 2 AM, work starts in a few hours and she needs to sleep.

.

.

.

The next four days are not much different, the routine is pretty much the same, except they have dinner plans instead of lunch. Work, eat, work, do bridesmaid shit with Sophie and Tedros somewhere, avoid his gaze, talk for a bit over something like choosing the best flower arrangements, and then hightail out of there, only to come home and be restless.

She was still very confused, because honestly, Tedros didn't seem bad at all. The more she talked to him, the least she wanted to stop talking to him. He definitely had some family issues and was doing some overcompensating, but nothing that made him, like, a total trash human.

And yet, he was still the guy who hit on her (fucking made out with her), knowing exactly who she was, while being engaged to her best friend.

She always thought herself a good judge of character.

Anyway, she did her best to act aloofly polite and if he ever seemed to hint at the night at The Woods, Agatha cut him off before he could. It was a good plan. Wait it out. And it really was working just fine.

Until the dress store.

For some reason she cannot wrap her head around, Tedros is there too.

(Isn't there a tradition against seeing the dress of your bride before the wedding or something?)

At some point, Sophie struggles to get into a particularly complicated dress at the dressing room, yelling at the poor employees like a harpy on a rampage and Agatha is about to intervene when he manages to pull her aside, his grip firm but with a certain gentleness that made her skin burn.

He semi-drags her across the store through a sea of sparkly white dresses and into this small nook between sections. Agatha does not want to admit that the main reason why he is able to do that is because she allows him to.

Things only go downhill from there.

He has her cornered, her back nearly merging with the wall as he stands close to her, his posture tense, moving slowly, like one would in presence of a startled animal. He doesn't look like he is trying to purposely intimidate her, and she doesn't feel particularly unsafe. No words are spoken between them and the silence allows Agatha's senses to pick up on a deliciously rich smell. Is that Tedros' cologne-

Agatha forces down the rash that is creeping up her neck and tries to focus on doing what she does best, aka, running away from her problems. She looks anywhere but his face, but he is not making ignoring him an easy job.

"I don't get you."

What.

"Excuse me?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about."

Agatha scoffs, arms crossing in front of her chest.

"I truly don't."

Her response seems to annoy him, which she counts as a win, but Agatha might have declared victory just a bit too soon. Tedros, who was a couple of feet away has managed to get way too close (yet again). His hand raises her chin and forces her to look into his eyes. Her resolution to run away falters and she's scared he might hear her heartbeat speed up.

"Playing dumb doesn't suit you, Agatha. One second you don't like me, then you do like me, then you don't again… I don't understand the game you're playing here… So, I'll make this simple, you won, congratulations, now stop playing games, now you know I'm interested."

Agatha blinks. This is… not the conversation she thought she was going to have.

Of course, during her nightly overthinking sessions she thought about what she'd say if he confronted her about the previous friday, even if she didn't think he'd have the balls to actually do it. But she seems to have been reduced to this dumpster fire nonsense. Tedros never did what she thought he was going to do and it was short-circuiting her braincells.

She's way too aware of the hold he has on her, the compromising situation they're in. One of his hands cages Agatha in, placed on the wall behind her head, while the other keeps her from adverting her gaze from his. Tedros is too close, he smells too good and his mouth looks too inviting.

She hears him, but she doesn't really hear him, his presence fogging up her senses.

Agatha briefly entertains the idea of giving into temptation and kissing him. How nice it would be to grab his collar, invert their positions, slam him against the wall and kiss him senseless, so he could feel just how helpless she felt having him corner her like this. Kiss him and just leave him there, wanting, begging, and…

What. Wow, fuck. Stop.

A new thought hits her like a ton bricks.

This guy is an asshole.

Tedros looks irritated and Agatha wants to punch him.

So she does.

She's strong enough to give him a black eye, but she (unintentionally, Agatha swears) holds backs and aims for his chest. However, she can tell it hurt a lot by the way his eyes water and he backs away several steps. She hears Sophie yelling their names across the store and giving Tedros one last glare, she turns around and walks away.

The nerve.

Why would anyone marry him?

Sophie needed a wakeup call. And fast. Because while Sophie could be a nightmare, she did not deserve to be played like that.

.

.

.

Agatha was not a superstitious person.

If she forgot her umbrella at home and it started raining when she left the dress shop (Tedros and Sophie both offered her a ride but she would rather choke, honestly, and said no, forgetting that she rode here with Sophie in the first place), it's not fate, it's bad luck. If she gets sick and loses her voice (and therefore can't go do neither her work or her bridesmaid duty), it's not conspiracy, it's simply a coincidence.

Well, call it fate, call it bad luck, call it conspiracy, call it coincidence. The case is that Agatha has lost her voice and has both a running nose and a fever. She considers texting the whole story to Sophie but changes her mind when she imagines the blonde woman's reaction.

Agatha, you're such a slut.

She is going to tell Sophie about this… this… this individual. Yeah, she was going to come clean and expose Tedros. No wedding.

Why was Tedros marrying Sophie anyway? She could understand why Sophie would go for Tedros. He did seem like her type. Young, rich, successful and handsome.

(Not really what she herself looked for. Agatha tended to go for witty, responsible people and who did not mind her blunt nature. Never in the history of ever, had Sophie and Agatha been interested on the same person.)

Anyway, he would give her lots of exposure, would look great on her Instagram feed, would be able to save her from her terrible apartment, student loan and infinite credit card debt, and would open up the world of fancy designer shoes and pretty gowns Sophie always dreamed of.

But why would he do that?

Tedros was, again, young, rich, successful and handsome. He hardly expressed any special affection towards Sophie or had the usual lovesick look most of Sophie's victims sported when they found themselves bewitched by her. They didn't really agree on much, from what Agatha gathered on their conversations, had no shared interests, lived completely different lifestyles, had different moral values and overall didn't seem to have the grandiose connection Sophie spoke of at all. Maybe he was with her because she was pretty? But again, why. There werw thousands of pretty girls willing to date young rich men, why Sophie in particular?

Something about this seemed off. She needs to talk to Sophie.

…When she recovered.

.

.

.

Alright, maybe it was conspiracy. The wedding was in two days.

Two days.

She supposes time does go by quickly when you're procrastinating something you really, really don't want to do. Nearly two weeks gone by in a flash. And, as she should, Agatha finally gets herself together. She is going to tell Sophie.

Well, she was going to tell Sophie. The blonde and a few of her friends were at The Woods for a last girl's night out. Meaning:

Sophie was currently drunk.

But maybe she wasn't?

She probably was though. Sophie was the most lightweight person Agatha knew, likely because she was so skinny. Girl could not hold her alcohol and drunk-Sophie was messy-Sophie. Unwilling, untamable and unimaginably difficult to have a coherent conversation with.

But, maybe she wasn't drunk? Agatha was not going to risk it.

She forces herself to hurry. She doesn't change out of her work outfit (merely discarding the suit's jacket), stopping by her house to feed Reaper and leave some important documents. Agatha even nearly forgets to lock her front door, calling a car to the club, hoping it might not be too late to come clean. But she was late anyway, as proven not only by the 15 bucks that left her wallet (for the second time this month) but by-

"Aggieeeee! You're better! Have you taaaasted this? It's amaziiiing!"

Agatha glares at Chaddick, who has the decency to look away. He knew the amount of alcohol Sophie was capable of processing, namely: none.

"Yeah, I have…"

"You should have seen, Sophie; the other night Agatha was so wasted she ma…"

"Chaddick, don't you have somewhere to be? As in, not here?"

The ex-jock walks away with a smirk, knowing he had some nice blackmailing material on her. Could this get any more horrible?

Now what? Should she just take Sophie home? Sober her up, tell her everything then beg for forgiveness? She couldn't. Then what to do, what to do…

"Sophie, I have to tell you something, it's really important, you see…"

"Oh Aggie, I'm sure you can tell me laaaaaatteerrrr! I've been so stressed lately! Time to let it goooo! Come on, I'll even pay your first drinkkkk!"

Her friend lifted a glass of what looked and smelled like a vodka and gin disaster waiting to happen.

"Sophie, what is even that?"

"Not sure…but Chaddick told me it was good."

Agatha sighs. She should tell the truth, right here, right now, shouldn't she?

"… Alright."

And she would have if she were a better person. But to her shame, she downs five more after the first and suddenly she can't remember why she came here on the first place. Something about a guy?

(Lies, Agatha knows exactly what she is doing, but for a few more hours she gives herself the benefit of the doubt.)

Whatever, she'll just deal with it later. She hasn't said anything for the past few days, surely it can wait some more, right?

.

.

.

Said and done, five hours later Agatha concludes she is a horrible human being. She should just quit. Leave the job of human being for people who will not mess up. Like Hester. Hester never messes up shit. Yeah, great plan.

Sophie is knocked out cold, sleeping with her face in a table, drooling, besides said Hester, who has her usual judgy face on, glaring at the blonde woman, like she was some kind of disgusting creature.

Agatha doesn't think she could feel worse.

She should have just told Sophie the truth right away. The moment she found out Tedros was, well, Tedros. Instead she had gone along with a wedding that was sure to be a fiasco, because not only was the groom a liar and a player, but Agatha was therefore his accomplice, and her silence was probably the greatest betrayal of their entire friendship.

She picks up her phone to call a car, so she could at the very least wallow in misery at home, but before the app even loads someone snatches her phone.

Turns out she can indeed feel worse.

"We need to talk."

His voice sounds as it always does whenever she's around, half-annoyed and half-something else Agatha doesn't dare name. As usual, he looks nice. His tight shirt and tie are still in perfect place, unlike the last time she saw him here, signaling he too probably came straight from work.

"This is girl's night; you're not allowed here."

"Oh, I'm not?" Tedros mocks her, but she can tell his heart isn't truly in it. "Then please do tell me the circumstances in which I can talk to you, because you sure don't make it easy."

She is so tired. Trying to avoid him is hard enough, trying to avoid him knowing that she doesn't really want to is impossible. She has always read people so well, and he always seems so genuine. It makes her wanna believe he is not the bad person she knows he is.

"…I've been… avoiding you. It's not that I don't want to talk to you. Is just… that I shouldn't," she hesitates but ends up answering honestly.

Tedros' expression softens at her candor, peering at her with concern.

"Are you drunk?"

"No. Maybe."

He sighs, then digs his car keys from his pocket, still holding her phone hostage on his other hand.

"Look, I'll give you a ride home. I really just wanna talk. We have…unfinished business."

Agatha considers. All this wedding-baloney made her poor, Tedros is so pretty, he looks so wholesome and honest, and she just wants to sulk at home for the next few hours. Maybe he could stay for a day or two. That shirt of his would look great on her floor…

No, bad idea.

"I don't wanna get into a stranger's car," she blurts out the first excuse her mind can manage. In retrospect, that was some obvious bullshit, seeing as they had talked for hours last week and he had already given her a ride before. Granted, it had been Sophie's car and Sophie had been there, but still, that didn't make much sense.

"Oh truly?" he holds up her phone, the ride app now open, "You're gonna pull that one on me?"

It's Agatha's turn to sigh.

"Okay don't go using logic on me, mister. For all I know, you could be planning on kidnapping me and selling my organs on the black market," or worse, actually talking to her.

"Can never be too careful, can we?" he looks partly amused and partly annoyed. "Look, I'm serious here, okay? I'm not going to do anything to you, we can talk to Hester on our way out, I'm sure she'll hunt me and string me up upside down at her soundproofed basement in case I even dream of harming you. Alright?" Tedros's eyes never leave her face in the twenty seconds she takes to decide, and it's really distracting, but she manages to answer:

"Okay, fine."

They talk to Hester, rather, Tedros talks to Hester while Agatha avoids her gaze shamefully. Why does Tedros know Hester? Did they ever talk during school?

Agatha doesn't know and she doesn't ask. Her gaze lingers on Sophie's drooling face and she feels her chest tighten.

The two of them walk into the parking lot awkwardly, in mortifying silence, and enter a silver Porsche. Agatha notes that it looks very out of place, since most cars belonged to employees and looked rather humble next to the silver beauty. Why was Tedros here? He came in his car, so he was not here to drink. Did Sophie tell him to pick her up? Or was he here to see Agatha?

Her heart skips at beat at the thought and she doesn't ask him any of this either.

"Nice ride," she offers instead.

"Thanks."

Tedros drives in silence, with Agatha occasionally telling him to turn on certain streets. She keeps her gaze on the empty roads, but she does catch quite a stunning sight of his profile when she forgets she's not supposed to look at him at all.

To avoid getting too in her head, she decides to turn on the radio. The song that starts playing is familiar and she guesses the radio must be on CD mode. The letters in bold red on the visor tell her she is correct, and this is indeed the song she thinks it is.

"You're into this kind of stuff?"

Tedros grips the wheel, almost defensively.

"They're really good, okay? I've been listening to them for a few years and so far, they're my favorite band. I know their sound isn't for everyone and-"

"I know."

"…It's not what most mainstream artists are doi- you what?"

Agatha blushes when she feels his incredulous gaze on her face, and it occurs her that this is the first time he looks directly at her since they got into his car. She hopes he'll attribute the redness on her cheeks to the red light they're currently stuck at and hesitates before answering, in a quiet voice, meeting his stare:

"They're my favorite band too."

"Oh."

The rest of the drive is less awkward, one would even say comfortable if not for the leftover tension. They sing along quietly to the vocalist and Agatha is sure Tedros stopped himself from doing the guitar once. Not cute, not cute, not cute.

Eventually, they get to her apartment building. She reaches over and turns off the radio, the deafening silence almost too much to bear.

Agatha tries reaching for the car door, but it's locked.

"I did tell you we needed to talk."

Usually, she'd be scared if a guy trapped her in his car in the middle of the night, but Agatha's frustration just comes back at full force and topples over anything else.

"What's to talk, you're clearly into someone else."

Tedros' eyes go big, and Agatha can't help but think he must be the world's greatest actor. Oscar nomination performance. The academy is shook-

"What? Did you, like, not hear anything I sa-"

"I'm not that kind of girl, Tedros," Agatha interrupts him firmly, "I don't hook up with anyone who's in a relationship, especially in a relationship with my best friend, no matter how stupidly short said relationship may be."

"I… Did Sophie tell you-"

"She didn't need to? You guys are engaged, and I am not going to get caught in between, okay? Please, please leave me alone. Don't talk to me. Don't look at me. Don't give me rides when I'm drunk."

Suddenly, Tedros' confused expression is gone and his eyes are gleaming with what looks like joy. He looks like he might kiss her and Agatha is not sure how well her defenses will hold in case he does.

"Agatha, I think you got this all wrong, I'm not-"

"What, you have amnesia? Or, let me guess, it's your twin brother who's engaged to her?"

Tedros burst out laughing and he sounds like an angel, throwing his head back, and Agatha forgets for a second that she's mad at him. But eventually reality brings her back and she pushes him, with just enough force to get his attention.

"Leave me the fuck alone, dude."

…Asshole.

This time when she reaches for the door, it's unlocked.

She glares at him from the sidewalk one more time, before entering the building.

.

.

.

Agatha doesn't hear a word from him after that.

It's for the best, she tells herself. Agatha spent so much time wishing he would just go away and take these weird feelings he gives her with him that she didn't even consider that once he did go away for real, new, stronger, and even more angsty feelings would appear. She only knew him for two weeks. He wasn't even hers. She has no grieving rights.

She goes out with Sophie one more time, and now it's just the two of them. It would be the perfect time to tell her. She has no excuses. No drinking, no sickness, no Tedros-

Agatha doesn't.

.

.

.

Today is the day.

It's a clear summer night, which is unfair with how angsty and conflicted Agatha feels. Hollywood lied to us all, hasn't it?

Agatha is dressed in a silky blue dress Sophie chose for her. It suits her and she thinks she looks quite pretty. Someone who actually knew what they were doing did her make-up, and for once she managed to tame her hair into submission, putting it into a fancy-looking up-do youtube taught her how to do. She's wearing her best shoes and her fanciest earrings. Agatha is looking and smelling like a daydream outside the main room of the church, but her hands are shaking and she's terrified.

She's not ready. Far from it really.

The rules were simple. If you're not the bride you don't wear white, you don't overdrink, and you never, ever, under any circumstances, fall in love with the groom.

No matter if they were hot, if they smelled good, if their eyes made you feel weak at the knees, if they shared common interests with you, if their taste was impossible to forget, if they went out of their way to get your attention or if they felt like they just might be the one.

You just didn't okay?

Shit, this was messed up. Still, Agatha brought herself to breathe deeply, trying to contain her anxiety.

The ceremonialist tells her it's her cue and she's soon walking down the aisle, clutching a small bouquet of pink carnations like a lifeline, looking around the church.

The place is crowded. Their entire social circle and their grandmother seem to be here. People from their childhood neighborhood, people from school, both of Sophie's parents, her stepmother and step siblings, quite a few models and influencers and a bunch of people she had never seen, probably Tedros' friends, family and co-workers.

The flowers and decorations look as amazing and beautiful as she would have expected from Sophie and she might have seen Hester, Anadil and Dot on a row somewhere, but that's not what made her almost freeze, nearly stumbling on the red carpet.

The groom.

He's wearing an expensive-looking white tuxedo, his hair is an unnatural platinum blonde and his eyes are disturbingly intense. He's tall, sharp and everything about him screams fancy. He's attractive in the way some snakes are attractive, beautiful and deadly, but the big deal is:

Agatha has never seen that man in her entire life.

She goes to her spot standing by the side, her brain running a marathon, tons of data just being tossed aimlessly on her mind as she tries to wrap her head around what the actual fuck is going on when her eyes meet someone else's.

Seating on the third row on the left, Tedros' blue eyes are shinning in complete and absolute amusement, his hand is over his mouth in a barely controlled laugh. The music seems to be on his side, because no one hears him. Agatha schools her expression into anything other than the overbearing wrath she feels, but she's not sure if she's doing a good job.

She's somewhat aware of the chaos that seems to be unfolding around her; the ceremonialist's screeching, the groom's rage, the crowd's confused mumbling and Sophie's absence. But it does not matter.

Agatha really wants to choke Tedros with his tie.

.

.

.

Turns out, Sophie's groom was named Rafal. Not that Agatha would remember his name a few days from now.

He is the current CEO of Two Brothers, a huge company, often associated with the mafia for fucks sake. Known playboy and womanizer, with a criminal record for drug dealing, as well as physical and sexual assault. Also, partially involved on the illegal leaks of information that caused the media scandal around Tedros' parents' divorce all those years ago, she later learns.

Great guy, Sophie. 10/10. Husband material right there.

At least she didn't follow through, Agatha argues to try and calm herself down. Oh yeah, Sophie ran away from her own wedding. No one was surprised honestly. Maybe Rafal. He looked very, very angry. Agatha didn't really blame him, after knowing that he was the one paying for the wedding, after party and honeymoon, no matter how horrible of a person he seems to be.

By now, Sophie should be in Paris, enjoying her honeymoon tickets and reservations. Through text, she tells Agatha how lonely and sad she is and how she'll tell her everything that happened in complete details on their next café meeting in a about month and a half. Agatha suspects she is not as lonely as she claims to be because Hort's Instagram stories tell her he is currently in Europe as well, if not in Paris. But then again, she will not concern herself over this matter. "No wedding" was good news enough to keep her in a great mood for any of Sophie's shenanigans for the next following weeks.

And since the reception was already paid for, everyone just decided to come enjoy it.

Yes, when she says everyone, she means everyone.

"Hey, you."

Oh, Lord, no.

Agatha doesn't lift her head to look at him, continuing to type a half-assed reply to Sophie's whiny texts. She won't give him the satisfaction. Instead she downs whatever is left of her whisky, because that's what one does when courage lacks.

She's sitting at the main table of the ballroom, by herself, mostly because it's where she's been assigned to sit, but also because she's not up for the questions the other guests will probably feel entitled to ask if she were to sit with them. Hester is nowhere in sight, but Agatha is sure she's making herself scarce on purpose. She saw Chaddick back at the church but they politely ignored each other and Dot had been missing for quite a while.

"Not speaking to me?"

"No."

"Come on, it was pretty funny."

"No, it wasn't," she finally looks up at him and he must have sensed true resentment in her perfectly lined brown eyes, because his smug, perfect façade crumbled, and he looked very awkward suddenly. Tedros pulls up the chair beside her and she notices it has his name on it. Sophie was not being subtle on her matchmaking at all, was she?

God, Agatha was so dumb.

"Well, it wasn't very funny to me either then, but I do laugh quite a bit now," he offers, sipping on champagne, trying to keep busy.

"I'm glad my pain amuses you," she's quiet for few seconds, considering what she's going to say. "Tedros?"

"Yeah?" he looks up from his flute of champagne, hopeful blue eyes shining in the half light of the candlelit ballroom and keeping her from saying what she was actually going to say, so instead she blurts:

"I'm not sorry for punching you."

"I didn't expect you to be," his smile is friendly and contagious. He downs the last of his champagne and extends a hand to her. "Okay, let's start again. I'm Tedros, I'm so single it hurts, and when we were in high school, I had a crush on you."

The way he says this so openly, his voice so even and clear nearly drowns out the vulnerable look on his face. Agatha herself can barely register his expression because she's pretty sure her brain has short-circuited. Again.

"No, you did not."

"But I did."

Tedros proceeds to tell her all sorts of things.

He tells her about how he first saw her as a rival because of her grades (she never really paid any attention to the scoreboard, she thought it was bullshit, but in retrospect she does remembers his name was always under hers), and about how sorry he was that he laughed and partook at Chaddick's antics during junior year, mostly because he the felt like 'the new guy with a big name and no friends' and felt she was a threat.

"That's some real introspection and self-awareness right there, hm"

"I'm just fortunate enough to have had a really good therapist," Tedros responds, "Merlin is like a psychology-wizard. He was the one who kinda sorted out that maybe part of my teen angst was repressed attraction to someone who fed the cats behind the library"

"Oh, then you've been my stalker for quite some time then."

Tedros blushes and Agatha is both flattered and embarrassed at the same time.

He then explains about how shit blew up on his face during his parents' divorce, how his grades dropped, how he got kicked out of the football team and how he started to spend a long ass time sulking at the library. Which just so happened to be Agatha's favorite hangout spot at the time. Tedros tells her how he thought she was cute, how she was one of the people who hadn't changed with him (even if unintentionally) and how he wanted to get to know her.

What.

"I just… wasn't sure how to approach you? I always dragged Chaddick to your tea shop when I didn't see you at the library but then chickened out and-"

"...I take neither of you were huge tea fans?"

"Yeah?"

"That does explain a lot," Agatha mumbles.

"I was going to talk to you about Avalon when I heard you were going there, but… Since you didn't tell me that, I kinda found out when Chaddick took your math notebook to be my 'wingman', I didn't think you would have…appreciated.

"Wait, that was Chaddick playing your wingman?" Agatha burst out laughing.

"The plan was that I was supposed to casually hand back to you something you forgot, but he kinda grew tired of waiting for you to actually forget something," Tedros chuckled. "If you thought Chaddick was bad then what big word is Miss-best-in-class going to use to describe Sophie's take on playing wingwoman?"

"Horrendous," Agatha deadpans and now it's Tedros turn to laugh.

Silence sits between the two. It's not uncomfortable and kinda welcome. Agatha digests the last forty minutes of enlighting conversation as they eat the main course of the night. A waiter comes to pick up both of their plates and she decides she still has some questions.

"Well, do you still do?"

"Do I still what?" Tedros questions, his head slightly inclined, like a confused puppy.

"Have a crush on me," Agatha mumbles, her cheeks burning.

Tedros' expression goes from 'confused' back to that mischievous look he had back at the church, leaning towards her ever so slightly.

"Maybe."

"Good," she offers her hand, as he had before, "I'm Agatha, I jump to conclusions, but I am very interested in getting to know you."

Tedros however, doesn't shake her hand as she had his. Instead, he takes it to his lips, pressing a light kiss to her knuckles, relishing in the shocked look on her face before she can school her expression back to unaffected aloofness.

"Are you free at six next friday?"

"Late meeting, but I'm good at seven. Pick me up?" she asks, an unspoken challenge laced in her words.

"As the lady wishes." Challenge accepted. "Any preferences?"

"Anywhere but 'The Woods'. But make sure to text me first if it's somewhere fancy," she smiles. "You know what? I still don't have your number."

Tedros confidently stands up, his hand yet to release hers.

"A number for a dance?"

Agatha told him that night at 'The Woods' that she isn't a very good dancer but again, he insists. It's fine, because they don't dance for long anyway. By the time Tedros gives up, fumbling with his phone to call a car, his hair is already a mess, Agatha's broke free from her up-do and there is lipstick everywhere.

I'm not sorry This was so much fun to revisit. I forgot how fun SGE was. I kinda fell out of touch with the series. I did read QFG, I just can't remember what happens in it? Idk. I felt the series should have concluded on TLEA. If possible before the whole Agatha and Sophie baloney stunt, because I never bought that. Please leave me comment and share your thoughts with me! Hope you are all safe during this quarantine, friends

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-04-02

Alright I’ll fix the broken images later right now lets goooooo read the updaaaate I’ve been only spoiled on the chapter title

I don’t even wanna guess.  Jake?  This makes me think of Jake for some reason, even though that doesn’t make much se-- oh right the Vriskas are locked in a school closet with a dead clown.

> CHAPTER 7. Distress Call From the Closet

Yep.

Also, this is how a car design looks when it was invented to have its first appearance be it flying with a human named Tavros looking out from an open side door.

(I’m not ENTIRELY against designing something for its immediate-art-use-purpose first and functional or historical-origination thought later, but usually when you make it that obvious that that’s what your doing it’s best to make that fact funny.  Like the Conveniently Shaped Lamp.)

Also I appreciate this using of Candy as kind of more lighthearted breaks in the action?

> (==>)

I thoguht that protruding fang (?) was drool for a second and wondered what the fuck they were up to in this closet all of a sudden.

Vriska, thriving on it, has not felt so decadently alive in a very long time. Tavros has never in his tragic existence felt so close to death, which is surprising to him.

Vrissy is trying her best not to grapple with any cosmic truths at the moment, since she’s getting a phone call in the middle of hiding for her life.

Vrissy’s implied to be somewhere in-between all that by this joke.  I bet she’ll be comparing herself to Vriska and Tavros alike throughout this mess, wondering where on the spectrum she lands and being ashamed of it AND both of them regardless.  Vriska Original had a ghost version who went on a fair bit of a Page dress-up thing and personality shift, so maybe we could expect Vrissy to struggle with being caught in the middle of the scales... or does that qualify as overthinking it classpectways?

VRISSY: Yeah Harry I would say we are Extremely Aware of the Situ8ion. VRISSY: As it Unfolded the fuck all around us.

Good Christ, Vrissy’s selectively-capitalized Kanaya-isms continue to be cute.

Oh, he’s on speakerphone.

> (==>)

Yep, telling Rose and Kanaya would be the smart thing to do, but it isn’t the Them thing to do.

--ROXY’S PLACE?!??  Hoo boy.  On the other hand, though, we get more Roxy, so it evens out.

Also, I like how Harry Anderson has to spell out Harry Anderson’s entire name for his Harry Anderson chat tag every single time.  Harry Anderson.

> (==>)

Part of the reason, Tavros thinks, that he’s been so game to continue on with the worst plan anyone has ever concocted, is that the more bullshit they endure, the longer they can put off actually doing anything that matters.

If he’s getting sprayed with a sprinkler and getting clown feet in his face, it’s a farce. It can’t hurt him. But if they get to the part where he’s shoving the uncooperative weight of his uncle’s corpse in an incinerator, he will stop floating in protective semi-consciousness above his body and it will all be real.

Ouch.

Can’t one of you assholes just captchalogue him?  Or did you leave all the appropriate-strength moduses at home?  Even you Vriska??

Oh, right.  Everyone knows and you can just leave him here.  Good call.  I mean you don’t really have to worry about forensic evidence with the pictures circulating.

> (==>)

VRISKA: 8ye 8itch.

Oooh!  That feels satisfying!  Yeah, tell off Gamzee’s corpse!

...Wait.

If they just leave Gamzee there, Jane can revive him, can’t she.

Fuck.  Maybe it’s up to Jake to try and stop that.

> (==>)

Karkat and Meenah resistance-time, then, with them presumably hearing about this development on the internet.  Wow, Meenah’s horns are getting long fast.  Plus a hint more of her grown-up self’s height.  I didn’t think she’d keep maturing so fast with her absurd lifespan ahead of her.

Oh shit, I didn’t see at first--

Right, Candy might still be lighthearted compared to the broader plot just due to lowered stakes, but it’s still the Carpet-Bombing-and-War-Filled Shituniverse.

Trolls are made for the battlefield.

From the moment a troll oozes out of the mother grub’s pulsating sphincter, through the trials of the brooding caverns, across the brutal day to day slog of Alternian society, all the way to their Ordeals, to the sucking void of space. They are bred for nothing but endless war.

But Commander Vantas...Commander Vantas is different.

Is... is Meenah narrating right now?  Because fuck.

Or so all the pamphlets say.

The actual Commander Vantas has blisters on his heel and has been taking pot-shots at scouting drones for the last six hours. He could use a bath, honestly.

Or is this one of the trolls on the side narrating who’s kind of internalized the stories of trolls’ prior warlike nature?

> (==>)

MEENAH: yo nubs is that u MEENAH: pretty rank KARKAT: OH MY GOD. KARKAT: I FLATLY REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT YOU CAN SMELL MY NATURAL MUSK OVER THE STENCH OF BLOOD AND BURNING FLESH.

I guess it probably was Meenah narrating, then.  Unless it’s a really biased alt!Callie doing the talking.

MEENAH: didnt i warn u bout thinking tho? KARKAT: GOD DAMMIT MEENAH, DON’T MEME AT ME.

I don’t know what meme this is and I really don’t want to know.

They have had this argument more than once. In fact, both of them could play either side of it. Karkat has done his time in the field, of course, leading small guerilla operations to free prisoners and sabotage Crocker’s supply chains, but Meenah and the rest of the council is right. Which is why he’s here, instead of at the front lines with his rebels, where he belongs.

His true value is his face. His symbology. At the end of the day, he is a fucking ad campaign.

...is KARKAT narrating here???

SWIFER: boss check the news!

Oh shit, right, Swifer is in the resistance in Candy instead of just a breeding assistant in Meat as the bonuses remind us.

KARKAT: OH FUCK. MEENAH: what KARKAT: JESUS CHRIST. MEENAH: nubs i swear 2 god KARKAT: IT’S GAMZEE. KARKAT: HE’S DEAD. MEENAH: oh MEENAH: well shit KARKAT: I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS. MEENAH: u okay KARKAT: NO!

Huh.  Them’s some complicated feelings that could fall in basically all directions at once.

Also, I can’t believe Karkat has hung around humans enough to fully internalize the full-throated exclamation “JESUS CHRIST”, which wouldn’t even really be a thing on Earth C with people who aren’t from Earths B or A.

MEENAH: u outlawed fishpuns i gotta make my own fun

How could you, Karkat.

KARKAT: AND I GUESS IF YOU CALL AN OBSCENELY PUBLIC PALE ACT, PERFORMED IN A FUGUE OF DESPERATE PANIC INTENDED TO PREVENT HIM FROM MURDERING ALL OF MY FRIENDS INSTEAD OF JUST HALF OF THEM “A THING”. KARKAT: THEN YES, I GUESS WE HAD A THING. KARKAT: BUT IF YOU’RE ASKING ME IF I’M SAD THAT HE’S DEAD? KARKAT: ABSOLUTELY THE FUCK NOT.

Okay, I’d hoped not, good...

KARKAT: THAT’S NOT WHY I’M SAYING FUCK A BUNCH OF TIMES. MEENAH: u need a reason to say fuck a buncha times KARKAT: SHUT UP. KARKAT: LOOK AT THE PICTURE.

--Right!  That’s a good reason to not be okay.

KARKAT: I DON’T THINK SO? I CAN’T SEE HER EYES IN THIS PICTURE, BUT SHE’S COVERED IN BLOOD, AND SHE’S CARRYING GAMZEE, SO SHE’S CORPOREAL AT LEAST.

I love this form of analysis somehow.

KARKAT: OKAY...HERE. OH. OF COURSE. CROCKER IS CLAIMING HER SON WAS KIDNAPPED AND FORCED TO PARTICIPATE. KARKAT: AND THEY’VE NAMED ME AS THE MASTERMIND. MEENAH: well we woulda taken credit for it anyway so this saves us the time MEENAH: thanks jane owe u one

Meenah isn’t the “concerned” type.  Lemonade out of lemons.

> (==>)

That middle tweet is my favorite.

Oh dear, “#GamzeeAnon”...

KARKAT: SHIT. OF COURSE THIS WOULD HAVE TO DO WITH FUCKING SERKET. KARKAT: LITERAL MONTHS OF PLANNING, HOURS AND HOURS OF LOGISTICS, AND ALL OF IT GOES UP IN SMOKE BECAUSE OF ONE SPIDERY ASSHOLE. KARKAT: SHE *WOULD* FIND SOME WAY TO WRECK MY SHIT FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.

indisputable

KARKAT: NOW? KARKAT: NOW WE PIVOT FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS.

Um...

What does that mean?

I’m having a lot of trouble not only understanding the basic meaning of what he’s saying, here, but understanding why KARKAT of all people would employ it.

......it’s a meme, isn’t it.  Gotta be.

> (==>)

(Ooh, an eyepatch designed to invoke a Strider-shade.  Nice.)

KARKAT: I NEED TO TALK TO EGBERT.

But....... why??

> (==>)

Oh right, cause his son’s girlfriend is involved.

> (==>)

Oh my goooood what a pair of John and Roxy caaaars! :D

He is too busy with these mental gymnastics to notice his father’s car parked outside.

Ah right.  John’s... not on the best terms with him, I recall that.

> (==>)

Ohhhh myyyy goooood what an image!!!

John, Roxy, and Harry Anderson proceed to have the tail end of a conversation they had before, in another medium.

What the fuck!?  Harry had that conversation WHILE this dead body situation was going on?!  Let me reread that linked bit...

(And she has such a somber smile on her face, but given the conversation content it’s not surprising.)

Harry Anderson looks at the two of them all teary and laughing and hikes his bag higher on his shoulder, shifting his weight. Roxy sees a muscle tighten in his jaw. Her beautiful, smart boy. She wants to run over and hug him, to protect him from the possibility of pain at talking to his father, but she doesn’t. She knows how much he’s wanted this, no matter how much he jokes about it.

She looks back at John, and sees her own awe mirrored in his face. She wills him not to cry, not to fall back on his self-imposed suffering and blame loop. Something about the last hour must have done the trick, though. John stands up, brushes his hands on his jeans, and walks, back straight, toward his son.

JOHN: hey harry anderson. JOHN: it’s really, really good to see you. JOHN: do you wanna go for a drive?

The muscle in Harry Anderson’s jaw clenches a few more times, but when he smiles, it is genuine.

HARRY ANDERSON: yeah, dad. HARRY ANDERSON: that could be cool.

Oh son of a bitch.  Well isn’t that entertaining.  Harry you’re just going to ditch your friends for I’m kidding, this is life fulfillment you’re aiming for, of COURSE you’re going to agree.  (Too bad bringing the current situation in is gonna throw a wrench in things.)

> (==>)

Oh right, that means more of THIS Vriska and THIS John.  They’ve had a good start talking already, I wonder what more they can learn from each other.

HARRY ANDERSON: but no worries, i asked my mom to pick me up some snacks so she’ll leave to go to the store in a sec. HARRY ANDERSON: just sneak in after she leaves and hide in my room, and i’ll be back in a bit.

Harry you enormous shortsighted asshole.  And John’s about to learn all this from Karkat over the phone to blow his cover.

> (==>)

aaaaa roxy art i cannot :D

Wonder if her stealthiness attunement is gonna catch them in the act?

> (==>)

From this jealousy bit, I wonder to what degree Earth C humans are used to Troll quadrants and their various interplay mores.

> (Room: Examine yourself.)

Oh, a proper room introduction for Harry Anderson!  Very fashion-focused, very liking the spotlight--

Oh wait, shit.  This is traditionally where classpect associations are hinted more obviously than anywhere else.  Time to stop holding back on the classpect stuff and take in every fucking word with capital-C Classpect fully in mind.

A bedroom stands empty. There is no boy standing in this bedroom, or indeed anyone else. However, if the boy whose bedroom it was were here, one might remark that his name was HARRY ANDERSON.

And FUCK, one might say, does he like MUSICAL THEATER.

Spotlight, definitely.  But is it for the attention? The possibilities? The acting?

He has been in his fair share of school plays, but he has LOFTY ASPIRATIONS to STAR in bigger and better productions. He especially appreciates modern MUSICAL REMAKES of classic OLD EARTH MOVIES. It's a craze that not everyone is happy about, but in the absent boy they have found a DEVOTED FAN. There is also just enough overlap between his taste and his father’s to allow for SOMEWHAT STILTED CONVERSATIONAL BONDING from time to time.

Hmmmm.  Is it about the majesty of important works of media (I see “Pokémon” and “Alien vs Predator” up there...), or is it about the fact that they’re remakes of past works?  Those are a lot of awards and stage lights now that I zoom in to look... and hats... hats could be important......

The boy who is not yet here has also been known to dabble in ACCESSORIZATION. He could be described as a COBBLER ASPIRANT, a NEOPHYTE MILLINER, or even a BIT OF A WHIZZ WITH A NEEDLE AND THREAD.

Oh, interesting!  Not just putting out different outfits, but making them?  And Milliner is hat-specific creation...

His mother got him his first SEWING MACHINE when he was 10, to keep him from using hers all the time. His looks are HAND-CRAFTED, often IMITATED, but never DUPLICATED.

Space is obviously possible from sewing, but-- A focus on uniqueness!!!  The broader theme is getting VERY specific.  You might feel where I’m leaning already.

His COSTUMES appear in various AMATEUR PRODUCTIONS, the devising of which takes up most of his FREE TIME. His friends are usually LESS APPRECIATIVE of his attempts to dress them up than he would like, though.

Holy fucking shit.  He dresses up and makes unique HATS for his friends and others.  Specifically so they can use them as COSTUMES to act parts!!!!

And the other unique thing mentioned about him here took the time aside to note how he appreciated the intersection in personal interests between him and his father for it.

So you all know what I’m thinking, right?  HATS???  It’s got to be Heart, isn’t it.  Maybe even a Page of Heart, with his long-off aspirations and talent for arming others with it.  Any other additive/giving class might do the trick, too, like Sylph or possibly Maid.  Knight could technically still fit pretty well, but I feel Page is better given what little we know so far, what with so much outward focus bleeding out.

(You can comb through the saga on my infamous hats tag or the summary on the Aspect Duality post, but the gist is that hats (and others’ clothes, but especially the hats. even shoes -- SO many shoes in that picture!) represent the gist of an expressed identity, personal uniqueness whether innate or affected ala a costume.  Nepeta, Dirk, Terezi, and even Stitch have given us examples, some of them deeper than we realized, MOST of them probably overthought bullshit like I thought when I first created the hats tag and started tracking the wonderful importance of hats. ¬_¬)

I’d like to see anyone else’s interpretation. (EDIT: One more potential Nep-allusion in this room.)

> (==>)

Oh nooooooo!!!!  Tavros’s sprite is the saddest looking thing I’ve ever seen!! D:  Like a mix of Jane and Jake that thoroughly regrets his entire existence!  Which he practically does!  D:  Why the Caliborn-like clothes though?

(Some hint at “how different alt!Callie’s Caliborn must have been” like the commentary suggested exploring in fanfiction?  Was the suggestion meant to divert attention from the idea that it’d be addressed in the plot?  Andrew pulled that trick a time or two, why not these authors?)

Also:

Pffff.  Vriska just accessorizing immediately--  Oh, wait.  That might just be a bandana she had at some point coated in Gamzee’s blood. 

Tavros is looking at the news on a borrowed phone -- nice call on disabling the tracking on yours, Tavros.

> (==>)

TAVROS: It’s getting a bit surreal to see my, uh,, frozen mask of horror on every news site,, TAVROS: It’s a good shot of you,,, though, Vrissy, VRISSY: It really is Shockingly well composed.

Heheheh.  It’s fun that Tavros knows exactly what Vrissy/ka would care about.

And yes, Vriska is over there trying out ALL the bandanas.

> (==>)

VRISSY: Oh, is trying on all my 8oyfriend’s accessories not passing the time well enough for you? VRISKA: Desper8 times call for desper8 measures, Vrissy. VRISKA: And this is some dire shit.

They stare each other down. Did she mean the fugitive situation, or Harry Anderson’s fashion choices? Vrissy feels silly wondering this, but despite the situation they’re in, she can’t help but feel more acutely anxious about Vriska’s presence.

She likes her life, and she trusts her own choices. But now, looking at everything from Vriska’s vantage point, it all feels silly. Unimportant. Childish.

She can’t tell if she wants Vriska to rip in to Harry Anderson or if she wants her to stay silent. To put off the moment where she has to defend him or join in.

Real interesting.  Like she’s caught between these worlds after all.

> (==>)

They say it was a long drive, but...?

...WOW.  What a chill, disinterested-looking affect his sprite makes for.  Huh.

He kisses Vrissy’s temple and she leans in to the warmth of him.

HARRY ANDERSON: aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. HARRY ANDERSON: so sorry it took so long. HARRY ANDERSON: can’t rush a heart to heart, you know how it is.

Stop making me deliberate whether you’re trying to drop teasing Heart-aspect hints.  You already know I’m going to be obsessively scrutinizing every word of dialogue around Harry to see if it fits, story. No need to rub it in.

VRISSY: You actually had a Heart to Heart with your dad? How many times did he Cry?

I DIDN’T EVEN READ THE NEXT LINE QUIT SAYING HEART TO HEART YOU EVEN GAVE IT PROPER CAPS THAT TIME

HARRY ANDERSON: but god, it was a mess. i had to keep talking to keep him from looking at his phone or turning on the radio. HARRY ANDERSON: i may have told him more about my deep passions and emotions in the last hour than the whole rest of my life combined, just to keep him from hearing the fucking news.

Holy shit.  You exploited conversation about your deep passions and interests for a separate goal???

Aaargh!  Classpect everywhere!  I’ve relapsed!!!  D:

> (==>)

JOHN IS SO HAPPY

John Egbert has not had a day like this in a very long time. He can barely keep track of this series of epiphanies he’s having. He stretches out on his couch to relax and process the gifts of advice and connection his friends and family and ex-family have just given him.

OH RIGHT TIME TO RUIN IT WITH MAXIMUM SHENANIGANS

JOHN: hey karkat! great timing! JOHN: so much just happened and im kind of reeling about it. KARKAT: YEAH NO SHIT.

Ohhhh.  Much of the time I hate dramatic irony, but those moments before someone is about to be let in on the discrepancy... oh man I love that.

JOHN: is something going on? i just spent the afternoon with my son, and i think he would have told me if something was up with his friends? KARKAT: OH MY LUSCIOUS SHITTING CHRIST JOHN LISTEN TO ME. JOHN: listening!

"Luscious”??  Did they try to type “Lusus” and get autocorrected?

Who’s writing Homestuck on their phone???

> (==>)

J...John?? Are you okay?? XD

This picture.  These two paragraphs.  I fucking love them.

(Wow, being closer to the “canon” story due to ridiculous shenanigans right after his back-to-back self-insights and outlook changes have really been healthy for him huh.  He can probably sense HS^2 reaching him out here.  And you can see the helpless comedian his probably-still-depressed ass became on Earth B in his reaction here. EDIT: Also, how appropriate that even by DYING, the Bard of Rage managed to fulfill his role and shatter the last vestiges of John's narrow-outlooked despair?)

John can’t answer. He can’t speak. His body has given itself over to the long-lost feeling of manic euphoria. It had felt like Harry Anderson was holding something back on the drive earlier, but he had already told John so much. He hadn’t wanted to press for more.

Yeah... after what John’s gone through across his life and session, finding out Harry managed to hide THIS for a whole car-ride is the best sort of punch-line for him.

John can’t breathe. Something is happening. Something is finally fucking happening, and he’s finally awake enough to appreciate it.

--yep.  I was just guessing earlier, but this kind of confirms it’s in part a closer-to-relevance, closer-to-canon feeling bleeding in.  Something is happening that’s important enough to SHOW onscreen and not skip over.  I guess he really does like being anchored in Light after all.

> (==>)

John wheezes himself into relative calm. He has to get Karkat to understand. He clears his throat and breathes.

JOHN: karkat, this can be how we win. JOHN: i know what we need to do.

...holy SHIT.

Karkat, how did you know calling JOHN about this would work out this well??

John actually taking confident action to solve a problem, in a way that isn’t going to end up depressing like his attempt to provide Tavros escape in the Epilogues... this should be interesting.

See you next time.  (I had to image-fix some stupid linked hat posts for this blogpost and I’m out of energy, so I’ll fix the other old post I promised that asker to fix in like, a day or two; I’ll post when I do.)

[cosmicjoke]

Ash and Recognizing His Innate Goodness

I’ve talked a lot about my belief that Ash was, from the very beginning, an innately good person, and that, while Eiji gave Ash something extremely special in giving him, for the first and only time in his life, the experience of what it felt like to be unconditionally love and accepted, I don’t think you can give Eiji, or anyone else in Ash’s life, credit for making him a GOOD PERSON.  I think Ash just always was, it was just that his life was so hard and difficult from so early on, that he had to develop this hard, cold exterior as a way to protect himself.   But it wasn’t something created in him through the kindness of others.  I think the reason Eiji connected as deeply as he did with Ash is because Eiji was able to see past that armor and see Ash for who he really was.  He saw how much pain Ash was in, how much it cost him to have to do the things he did, that he wasn’t some emotionless monster, and that he never was in danger of even becoming one.  The one time the two of them really fought was when Eiji started to make the same mistake everyone else had made, thinking, because Ash was doing the things he was doing, it was because he was losing sight of his own humanity.   The same way Shorter accuses Ash in Angel Eyes of becoming like the people who abuse him.  Just like he was with Shorter, Ash is incredibly upset that Eiji would think that, and gets extremely angry, because it’s not true.  It hurts Ash that Eiji could think that.  That he could believe Ash could be someone who hurt others just because he can, or because he wants to.  Ash isn’t killing Arthur’s men because he enjoys it, or because he wants to.  He’s killing them because if he doesn’t, they’ll kill him and all of his own boys.  He’s doing it because Arthur and the rest of them forced the issue by refusing to back down.  Ash gets no pleasure out of what he’s doing.  Just like he got no pleasure out of seducing Ricardo.  It’s an act necessary to survival, and that’s all.  Eiji eventually comes to understand that, and that’s the real turning point in their relationship.  That Ash didn’t kill because he was a devil or a demon or a ruthless killer. That Ash didn’t kill because he was a bad guy.  He killed because he had no other choice if he wanted to keep living and if he wanted to protect those he cared for.  

There's so many things that point to Ash having an inherently kind and caring heart. The fact that he cares as much as he does about everyone around him, even before he really gets to know Eiji, like Griff, Skip and Shorter, and everyone in his gang.   A good example of this is the fact that Ash is only working with Dino at the beginning of the story still because he needs the money in order to pay for Griff’s medical bills.  Dino is Ash’s worst abuser, his longest abuser, and the last person Ash wants anything to do with.  But he keeps working with him just so he can care for his big brother.  He subjects himself to being around a man who raped him repeatedly as a child so he can have a way of keeping Griff safe and alive. This is the definition of self-sacrifice.  This is before he ever meets Eiji.  Definitely Ash was influenced by Shorter and Eiji, in terms of how he was able to open up and be outwardly softer and less harsh, but other people don’t determine for you what’s in your heart.  They can’t create a capacity to care in another person.  That has to be inborn.  I feel like the fact Ash is as good as he is from the start of the story really proves he always had a strong, moral inclination. Really it’s in SPITE of all the horrific pain Ash has been through that he's as good as he is, because anybody with a shaky or nonexistent moral foundation, if they had gone through even a fraction of what Ash did, would have turned out viciously cruel.  Yut-Lung is a good example, actually.  Yut-Lung has been through similar experiences, though not entirely the same, as Ash, and he acts in ways that are entirely selfish and petty.  Yut-Lung didn’t really have anyone in his life to help guide him, but even despite this, we see moments of regret and remorse in him, because he isn’t ENTIRELY without goodness.  Still, he’s noticeably selfish, self-centered, petty and vengeful in a way Ash never was. Even at his lowest and most desperate moments, even when he was most alone, with no friends and no one to support him, Ash never hurt anyone who didn’t first hurt or try to hurt him, and he never hurt anyone out of spite, or jealousy, never tried to take anything away from someone just because they had it and he didn’t.  Ash, from the very beginning, only ever acted out of self-defense. Even with positive influences like Shorter and Griff and Eiji, if Ash hadn't started out with having a strong, natural sense of right and wrong, given the truly massive scale of his suffering, he would have been a lot more morally corrupt from the start. The greatest tragedy of Ash, I think, is that he's really such a good person, who's been forced into such an awful, brutal existence through no fault of his own, and it's driven him to hate himself. I think the whole point of Banana Fish is to show the true damage that child abuse can cause. That it can take a good person like Ash and make him believe he's a bad person.

I think people can influence you, definitely, and can influence the way you turn out, but I also think there's an equal balance between nature versus nurture. I don't think you can create a strong moral nature in someone if it doesn't exist from the start.  It’s why you can find genuinely bad people who have never experienced anything traumatic in their lives, and they still go out of their way to cause harm to others. Like basically everyone in the story who abused Ash.  It’s also why you can find people who have experienced truly traumatic things, and they’re still good people deep inside, wanting to do the right thing, even if they’re also damaged and maybe don’t always understand how to go about it.  Like Blanca, and of course even more so Ash himself.  If that goodness DOES exist from the start, other people can nurture it and grow it and give it a safe place to express itself, and that’s what Eiji and Shorter did for Ash.  But you can't give a moral conscience to someone who doesn't already have it. Kind of like you can't create talent or intelligence in someone. They have to be born with it, and then you can develop it. I just think, with everything we know about Ash, about the way he was from the start, the way he reacted to things, the things he tried to achieve, like keeping his friends and family safe, even trying to spare enemies of his, trying to break free from Dino, etc… and the things he didn’t ever care about,  like money and power, the way he cared about people, the value he placed on human life, despite all the hell he'd been through, etc... it shows that he always had a good heart, he just lived in a world where if he let that show, it would get him killed. Which, the most tragic thing of all, it eventually did.

One more point to make about all of this is a parallel we see between Private Opinion and Angel Eyes.  There are scenes in both stories in which Blanca and Shorter see Ash smile and laugh genuinely, in the carefree, childlike way children do, and they're both struck by how sweet and cute Ash is. Because they're seeing Ash as he really is in those moments. This sweet, adorable little boy.   They’re amazed and stunned, because it’s the first time they’re actually getting to see the real Ash, and it's so at odds with the detached, uncaring facade Ash usually wears. Ash shows that part of him to them in moments of lighthearted, carefree abandon. He smiles and laughs like that around them after he's come to realize he can trust them, and that they won't hurt him.

I think what's important to remember is that, as horrific as the abuse Ash suffered is, and honestly, it’s about as bad as it can possibly get, it never defined WHO Ash was.

The abuse he suffered destroyed his life. Absolutely.  It ruined his life.  It changed, irrevocably, the course and direction of where he ended up. It changed and affected the way Ash interacted with people and situations.  It altered and affected the way he behaved.  It forced him to harden himself, to become harsh and blunt, to cut himself off in order to survive, to push people away because he couldn’t trust them, and because he was thrust, through no fault of his own, into a desperate, cruel world of violence which made him dangerous to be around.  It damaged him in permanent, irreparable ways, emotionally and mentally.  Caused him to develop dangerously low self-esteem and other, deeply unhealthy habits and ways of thinking.  It made him hate himself, made him think of himself as worthless and not deserving of love. It caused him painful and overwhelming stress and anxiety, and forced him to live in a constant state of fear and uncertainty, leaving him unable to ever relax, unable to stop, unable to be himself, unable to be a boy, unable to just LIVE.  It affected and changed and dictated every aspect of his life.

But the one thing it never changed, the one thing it never altered, was who Ash was fundamentally inside himself.  The abuse destroyed his life, but it never destroyed HIM.

Despite it all, Ash never stopped being a good person.

This is so vitally important to the story, I think. To realize this about the story. Ash's abuse didn't turn him into an abuser. It didn't make him a bad person. Ash says to Foxx, right before Foxx rapes him, that he can do whatever he wants to him, because it doesn't matter, because Ash's mind and spirit are his own. He's telling Foxx that no matter how badly you treat me, no matter how hard you try to make me like you, I never will be. I'll never be as ugly as you are. Ash never lost himself, despite the sickening hell he suffered, and I think that's exactly in line with the message of Banana Fish. That even if you've suffered trauma that's destroyed your life, it doesn't mean that trauma defines who you are. It doesn't mean that trauma has destroyed you, or made you a worthless person. That your trauma isn't WHO you are. It's something you've been through, maybe even something you can never move past, but it doesn't mean that's all you are as a person. It doesn't mean that's what you are as a person.  That bad things happening to you don’t make you a bad person.  They may affect the way you act, the way you behave, the decisions you make, but it doesn’t change what’s in your heart.  And Ash’s heart was always golden.

[wistfulcynic]

I love The Meet Cute, dealer's choice whether you answer a fluffy question - what's your favourite meet cute set up to read - or a meaty (meet-y?) one - how do you manage to strike a balance between writing something that's fluffy and easy to read, while also have real substance to the story? Please and thank you :)

Haha I’ll take the second one, because you’re not the first person to say something similar to me, that they like how I write fluff with substance. It took me by surprise at first because I hadn’t ever really thought about it that way, ie “Let it be fluffy but also... deep” because honestly I don’t think those things are in opposition to each other, or in any way mutually exclusive. 

I know that some people think of “fluff” as meaning “set in a perfect world where nothing bad ever happens” but while I absolutely appreciate the appeal of reading something reliably happy especially in times of stress and anxiety, the fact is that people are layered and complex, and manipulating them (in fictional character format) into situations where Everything Is Right And Happy At All Times can’t help but strip several of their layers away, leaving a much shallower interpretation of them. All I do is keep the layered characters--the ones that have insecurity, stress, fear, worry, and all those lovely things we all experience--and frame them within a lighthearted scenario that will absolutely and without question lead to a happy ending. For me as both a writer and a reader this is the most satisfying framework, because it provides real characters that feel the things we feel and have the problems that we have, and say dumb things and make mistakes just like we all do, but no matter what everything always works out in the end. It is this, the “it all works out in the end,” that is the escapist fantasy for me. In the real world things all too frequently don’t work out in the end, and so I like to write stories where I can guarantee readers that here, at least, they will. I don’t especially like to read, or write, stories where everything is perfect and conflict doesn’t exist, not because they are any less realistic than what I write (it’s all escapist fantasy) but because I find these sorts of scenarios unsatisfying. There still has to be conflict, even when it’s very low-stakes and centred around searching for and finding romantic love. 

-

it’s fic writer Friday, ask me anything! 

[zetalial]

A look at the old FMA Fangame Bluebird’s illusion

Hey there. One of the more interesting things to come out of the FMA fandom is this fanmade visual novel called Bluebird’s illusion. It was made in October 2004. I’ve recently tried it out so why don’t I share?

It’s based on the FMA manga but was clearly heavily influenced by the anime as well with it’s cute artstyle and much of the music. The manga was of course far from finished at this point and perhaps what drew plenty of attention to this little fanproject was its speculations. (And the impressive art.)

So, the story takes place in a seemingly happy future where Ed has restored his brother’s body and now lives with Al in a lovely house in Central. He still works for the military and has just started a new job as the Fuhrer’s secretary. Mustang is also around, of course.

However all is not well... (Long post by the way).

(I’m going to be spoiling this games plot pretty liberally just for the warning.)

It is called Bluebird’s illusion because the brother’s seeming happiness is just an illusion that cannot last. It is revealed that in order to restore Al’s body, Edward made some sort of deal with the Homunculi. However, his current body isn’t good enough to hold his soul and it’s starting to disappear. Plus the homunculi are still watching in the background.

The game at first is pretty lighthearted with lots of jokes about Ed’s height, about Roy’s avoidance of paperwork, Breda’s fear of dogs etc. and the beginning is honestly pretty boring to play, in my opinion. Yet, it gets darker and in fact this game has no happy endings. 

There are three main endings to this game plus one joke ending. 

The most infamous ending is definitely the Pride!Ed ending. 

Ed gets taken into the basement beneath Central HQ where the Homunculi’s Father awaits to use Ed to fulfill his vision of creating a new, perfect world. This happens in every ending actually. 

The Homunculi’s Father is Hohenheim, by the way. (As I said, it’s following the manga but at the time it was created it was not yet clear that Father and Hohenheim were different people.) He speaks to Ed with a strange amount of fondness, calling him his most beloved son. (Which is quite something when its in front of the other Homunculi. I found this a really interesting dynamic) 

Ed of course tries to resist, even with Hohenheim-Father promising to create a new permanent body for Al. He is held captive in the basement for five days before someone comes to rescue him. In that time he gets pretty abused by Envy but manages to disrupt the Homunculi’s plans some.

In this ending, Roy and Al come to save Ed but things go rather badly. 

Both Roy and Al are defeated and dying (from facing Bradley(AKA Wrath) and Envy) so Ed, in his desperation and heedless of his own wounds, attempts a transmutation to bring them both back. All his efforts bring the basement crushing down and almost no one survives.

Seeing how Ed is not fully dead and the great power he possesses, Hohenheim-Father decides to bring him to life as the Homunculus Pride (A name he has never given to anyone before as he felt he had never had any children worthy to bear the title until now.) 

Ed’s pretty much dead inside however. Pride is a cold, heartless creature who can’t seem to remember who he was. His new life seems to feature following Envy around (the only other Homunculus left.) 

For all the love around Pride!Ed, the game only has this one screenshot, featuring an admittedly really cool design. (I love how he’s got two arms again but only one has a long sleeve). If you search for fanart there’s loads of Pride!Ed with this design. (It’s also rather impressive how this game predicted a Homunculus could be made out of a human as this was before Greedling existed and the method seems pretty similar.)   

So, that was the real downer ending, (Roy dead, Al dead and Ed having lost himself). The other two endings hit closer to bittersweet.

If you go down the Al path in the game, by going home early each day and spending time with Al, you can unlock the Veg!Ed ending.

So, you do things like agreeing to help Al with housework and agree to go out with him on your day off and you deal with the serial killer plotline. (Yeah, that’s a thing, it’s a little weird.)

Anyway, this time when Al and Roy come to rescue Ed from the basement, Al is particularly self-sacrificing. Actually this end kind of reminds me of the end of the anime. I’m sure you can see why.

Envy stabs Al through the chest and so a distraught Ed decides to sacrifice himself to save his brother. He trades his soul for a new body for Al.

Al lives this time, (As does Mustang) and his body is restored permanently. However Ed has given up his soul. He isn’t quite dead - he’s physically alive but unresponsive. Al takes him back to Risembool and continues to talk to and take care of Ed in his vegetative state, hoping his brother will some day respond to him.

But there’s no sign of any recovery.

...

Right, the next ending is known as the Roy end. This is the ending you get if you follow Roy’s storyline.

His storyline also deals with him remembering Hughes, who’s been dead for quite a while. You’ll notice in the picture above that one of the books has one of Hughes’ knives inside. 

In this storyline you are invited to go out with Roy on your day off rather than going alone or with Al. It includes getting in a fight with him at one point.

(They go into a pub and initially Roy orders two alcoholic drinks. Then he corrects himself and orders Ed something non-alcoholic. His first order had been for Hughes.)

Sadly, this ending is bittersweet as well. Al and Roy go into the basement to save Ed but this time Ed can’t save his brother. Alphonse disappears permanently. Ed’s still messed with the homunculi’s plans as he does every time and Roy and Ed manage to get out alive though Ed’s crying.

Ed is extremely broken by the loss of his brother. For the next two weeks Ed locks himself away in his house alone, willing himself to believe his brother isn’t truly gone. Then Roy, who is now the Fuhrer, comes to see Ed. He’s cold as ever, telling Ed that his brother’s gone and that he needs to move on and start living, that Al would want him to be happy.

Ed does start to move on, and continues his life by working under Roy in the military. (For RoyEd shippers this could lead into an angsty relationship between the two in this ending. It’d be a pretty good dynamic.)

So, how about the last ending - the joke ending? It’s called the Tea alchemist ending. In this game, one of Ed’s jobs has been to serve tea every day to the Fuhrer. Yeah.

To get the tea ending you have to go down the King Bradley route. Basically you need to serve tea to him first every day and work overtime every day. On your day off, Bradley should call you and asks you to come into work on your day off. If you agree then Ed gets a permanent position of serving the Fuhrer as the Tea Alchemist and he never gets taken down to the basement. 

(The person patting Ed’s head in the above image is Fuhrer Bradley by the way.) Working overtime every day has Ed get closer to the Fuhrer. 

Ed gets given some cookies made by the Fuhrer’s wife. Another time, Ed falls asleep and looks absolutely adorable on the couch. Another day, Selim calls Ed and they have a friendly chat. Selim says he wishes he could see his father more often. Then the next day, Selim has gone missing and Ed is able to tell them where to find him. King Bradley is very grateful, hence the fatherly pat on the head. Honestly, this might have been the most surprising storyline for me in the game. I didn’t expect anything like it at all (whereas I knew about the dark endings).

So that’s all the endings in this game. The only other thing to mention would be all the fanservice stuff. If you ship Royed, EdAl or Edvy, this game gives you fodder for all these ships. (Or if you don’t ship them then you can just ignore it pretty easily). 

Of all the character designs in the game, Envy’s is probably my favourite to be honest. 

I love how his spiky hair seems to be all wildly different lengths and, well, just everything about his design. He’s as cruel and smug as ever of course. (When I say there’s shipping fodder, there’s no tender moments just typical Envy tormenting Ed and whatever his companionship with Pride is supposed to be.)

Roy is probably the one with the most obvious shipbait. At one point he convinces Ed to wear a dress to disguise himself as a girl. If that sounds random and fanservicey, it certainly is.

(Yes Roy looks that smug for pretty much the entire game.) He and Ed are practically constantly arguing. 

Ed meanwhile, looks incredibly cute throughout the game.

(His pajamas are adorable. It’s has little cartoon Alphonse heads on it)

All versions of human Alphonse tend to look pretty good, I find. And this game does not disappoint in this regarding. For an obvious bit of fanservice, this game gives a particularly random shot of Al in the shower. (Getting that particular event was also kind of annoying and random.)

Yeah, there’s no explanations for some things. 

Oh, this isn’t necessarily fanservice or anything but I thought that Breda’s design looked surprisingly good, of all people. 

It’s the casual open uniform look. Makes him feel big and strong.

Finally there’s also a few outtakes that become available if you complete the right parts in the game. Most of them weren’t much to talk about but I found the one between Wrath!Bradley and Father Hohenheim to be rather funny. 

It’s a silly outtake so it starts with Hohenheim commenting that Wrath is a good and dutiful son to him. Then he notes that Bradley is a father too and asks how Selim is. Wrath replies that Selim is the cutest boy in the world. Hohenheim has to argue though and says that, no, his son Edward is the cutest in the world. This goes on for a bit. Then Mustang (who has been secretly hiding with Alphonse) appears in order to interject that he believes Edward is indeed cuter than Selim. This is a mistake. 

Wrath kills Mustang in anger. And the conclusion is that you should never mess with a father’s pride. 

Gosh, that line has some layers in it. Anime!Bradley actually is Pride ironically enough. And later in the manga it would be revealed that his son Selim is Pride. That hasn’t been revealed yet though and the only Pride in Bluebird’s illusion is in fact Pride!Ed. 

Now, I’m sure Selim is absolutely adorable in this verse but can he really compete with Bluebird’s illusion Edward? 

Heh, so this has become an incredibly long and detailed post that hopefully explains everything there is to know about that old fangame. It was an interesting thing to try out for sure. I’m not sure I’d actually recommend trying it out as it’s a bit slow and I’ve already explained pretty much all the interesting things about it. 

If anyone has any further questions, I’d be happy to try and answer if I can though.

I personally love the headcanon that Hohenheim is in fact Father and I think I would have preferred it if the manga had actually gone that route. If only for the creepy fatherliness he might exhibit towards Edward. The odd love twisted with being evil and wanting to destroy the world would have been amazing in my opinion. Just the sample this game gave me was great.