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avatarmerida · 2 years ago

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Chapter 4: A Bowl of Spiders

It’s the Emerald Entrails first game! And maybe some other firsts too…

Read on AO3 or under the cut

“…but what if there was a reason Willow never got the note?” Hunter said defeated as he finished catching up Luz with his latest attempt.

“The reason is Boscha who never wants Willow to be happy so her taking the note means it would make Willow happy!” Said Luz. “If anything Willow not getting the notes means she was definitely supposed to get the note!”

“What?” said Hunter, confused.

“You’re too much in your head, hermano,” said Luz simply, patting his back. “The only people who should have a say in whether or not you and Willow get together are you and Willow. And also me.”

Hunter playfully rolled his eyes as Stringbean slunk her way onto his shoulder and nuzzled his cheek as though to say it will all be okay, stop worrying, silly.

“I know it’s important to you but maybe you just need to take a break and stop overthinking it,” offered Luz as Hunter scratched the top of Stringbean’s head. “I know we said try something simple, but maybe just stop… trying?”

“You mean give up?”

“No! I would never tell someone to give up on love!” Luz said dramatically before shifting to a gentler tone. “I mean, just stop overthinking. I know you care about Willow and you’d do anything for her but you’re putting too much pressure on yourself.”

“You’re right, I need to focus on the game.”

“That’s not exactlywhat I meant but I do like being right,” decided Luz. “And if it makes you feel better, I can hand deliver the next note myself and make sure she reads it.”

Hunter smiled. “Thanks Luz,” he took a deep breath to calm himself as he spotted Willow and Gus ahead of him, happily chatting. Was it weird that the best way to get Willow off his mind was to spend time with Willow? He didn’t have time to agonize over his missed chances, he needed to help her rally the troops. He needed to be there for her, so the anxiety attacks he wanted to have at how stunning she looked with her hair pulled back would have to wait. “And uh thanks for lending me Stringbean.”

“Are you kidding? She’s been having the time of her life,” said Luz as she went to scratch her palisman beneath her chin. “Haven’t you Stringy? Are you gonna help uncle Hunter impress his girlfriend? Yes you are! Yes you are!”

“Shh! Not so loud! She might hear you!” Shushed Hunter, though Luz of course knew Willow would not object to being referred to as his girlfriend. Because that was how she referred to herself. “Now go find a seat, I have to go warm up.”

Willow’s face brightened at the sight of him. “Hunter! Perfect! Just in time!” She ran over and leapt into his arm and he quickly spun her around as the paliman flew happily around them. “Are you ready to kick some butt?”

“Affirmative captain,” said Hunter as Stringbean returned to sit atop his head. They both laughed as Clover flew over to join her new friend, snuggling in Hunter’s hair as though it was a grassy meadow.

”Hey now, don’t get too comfortable,” laughed Willow. “We have a game to win, there will be plenty of time to cuddle with Hunter afterwards.”

Hunter laughed nervously, not fully understanding why, as Willow reached up to retrieve her palisman and gave the him a little wink. He once again did not understand exactly why.

“Hey Willow! Guess what!” Viney's voice came from behind them. They turned around and saw Viney and Skara rising over on Puddles, each of them holding a large box in their laps. “They came! Just in time!”

“They’re so cute!” squealed Skara, kicking her legs in excitement as they landed.

“Oh my Titan! The uniforms are in!” exclaimed Willow, shaking Hunter’s arm as she jumped up and down in excitement as the girls began handing them out. The team murmured in joy and awe as they donned the garments, complementing each other as they were elated to look the way they felt.

“Hunter, here put yours on! I wanna get a group photo before the game so we can remember what they looked like before they get covered in mud and blood,” laughed Willow. She tossed the shirt to Hunter as she put on hers over her tank top, twirling like it was a ballgown so excited to have tangible proof that her team was real. “This is so amazing! Hunter, do you-?”

But when she looked up to see how Hunter looked in his uniform, she saw he was still holding it, examining it with wide, confused eyes like he couldn’t believe it was real.

“You… used my drawing?” Hunter said in a faint voice, running his fingers over the green letters.

“Of course,” laughed Willow. “It’s the perfect logo! Bump said we had to incorporate at least one of the school colors, but your design was the perfect way to display the team name. Oh, just wait until the jackets come in! Which reminds me we need to decide what we want the back to say so we should ask everyone what they-” She looked closer and saw unshed tears staining his eyes. “Hunter, what’s wrong?”

“It was just a silly doodle…” Hunter said faintly, holding his shirt tighter.

Willow’s eyes grew wide. “Oh no,” she said, stepping closer. “I’m so sorry! I-I should’ve asked you first. I just thought that was why you did it! I thought it looked really nice and I thought it was appropriate since you named the team and you’re one of the reasons the Entrails is even-.”

“You thought it was good enough to be the symbol for the team?” Hunter said in wonder and Willow saw his tears were not from disappointment but disbelief. She offered him a soft smile as she put her hands on his arms.

“Of course,” she said. “What could be more perfect than something you made?”

Hunter sniffled and gave the jersey one final look of adoration before slipping it over his head. It fit perfectly.

“Well?” asked Willow. “Does it feel as good as it looks?”

Hunter’s words were currently not with him so all he could do was nod. Willow beamed as she reached out to link her arm with his. “Well come on then lieutenant, let’s go get our games faces on.”

The pair ran over to where the rest of the team was doing each other's face paint. Hunter happily followed suit as Willow swung him around and sat him on the bleachers. She grabbed a container of face paint and went to work, having thought up the perfect design for Hunter to commemorate the season's first game.

She balanced her knee on the seat beside him to get closer and Hunter held his breath as he watched Willow focus on bringing her vision to life. She stuck her tongue to the side as she outlined the shape on his face, standing so close that Hunter could feel her breath on his face. Willow either didn’t seem to notice or mind the proximity but Hunter knew his face was a dead giveaway as to how he felt about it. He knew he was a display of green and red that Willow might mistake him for a Christmas ornament.

“Hmmm,” Willow muttered to herself as she sat back from a moment and looked at her progress so far.

“W-what’s wrong?” Hunter asked.

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Willow, stroking her chin. “Your hair is just getting long again so it keeps getting in the way. I need something to push it back… ah! Here!” Willow reached up and took out her signature hair clip and placed it in Hunter’s hair. Satisfied, she went back to finishing her design as Hunter sat in front of her paralyzed. He may not have known much about romance, but he knew the significance of wearing someone else’s jewelry on the Isles. Did a hairclip count? He knew it was one of Willow’s prized possessions and she had just allowed him to wear it without a second thought.

“H-how does it look?” he asked timidly as Willow placed one hand on his jaw to steady his head as the other finished the last detail just under his eye.

“It looks nice. Your hair looks really cute pushed back,” Willow said with a wink as she ran her finger along the edge of his hairline.

“R-really?” he squeaked.

“Mhm-hm,” she smiled, continuing to play with his hair. “Gus, will you please tell Hunter that his hair looks cute pushed back?”

“Don’t involve me in this,” Gus said bluntly as he went back to describing his Cosmic Frontier design to Skara who was doing her best to capture his detailed vision in only green.

Willow laughed as she finished ruffling Hunter’s hair and pulled out her scroll so he could take a look at her work. Hunter was blown away by what he saw as his hand hovered over the carefully curved lines that swept across his face. The silhouette was too familiar.

“Is… is it…?”

“Flapjack,” confirmed Willow. “Well, it’s supposed to be. I tried to base it off one of your doodles but you’re a much better artist than I am. I thought it would be a nice way to have him be a part of today. Do you… like it?”

For the second time that day he looked at her with wide, tearfilled eyes as he tried to comprehend how the girl before him managed to be the most wonderful person he had ever met. “I love it.” he said, careful to keep the tears in his eyes so as to not smudge the paint. “Thank you, Willow.”

“Yeah, of course,” said Willow, it was her turn now to be the timid one as Hunter's loving gaze surrounded her like a long, comfortable cape. She tucked her hair behind her ear and Hunter thought for a moment maybe he should return her hair clip to her but before he could offer she smiled and handed him the paint. “Think you can make mine match?”

----

The match was intense from the very beginning. All the drills and late night practices were really paying off as even the newest players were holding their own. But the other team were last year’s champions for a reason and soon it was down to their star player and Willow for the victory.

“She’s got it, she’s got it,” said Hunter, watching Willow dodge and weave the other team’s attempts to grab her flag. But she was focused and flew with a speed the Entrails had never seen before. The score was tied with one flag left on each side to deliver and everyone in the crowd was on the edge of their seat. But the Entrails had no doubt. “She’s got this. She’s got this.”Hunter repeated as he shook Gus’ shoulder, unable to take his eyes off his captain.

She twisted and floated, sending vine after vine as the other player as the two danced around each other until finally one vine made contact and delivered the flag to her hand. Willow wasted no time and bolted to place it. The crowd cheered as Willow’s competitor did not give up and attempted to knock her off her staff, sending a collection of abomination goo her way.

She quickly leaned back, turning to grab her staff as she turned and flew high up vertically before turning back suddenly to jump back to Clover, kneeling down to better her balance as she became untouchable. Clover delivered her to the pole and placed the flag on the final spike, securing the victory.

“She did it!” Exclaimed Gus as the stands burst into cheers. “Hunter, do you- Hunter?” When he turned to share his excitement with the older boy, he was surprised to see he was gone. It didn’t take much for Gus to figure out where he went, a golden streak of lighting leading to Willow provided his answer.

As Willow descended to the ground and hopped off Clover she looked around for her team but before she could look too far, she was swept up into the arms of a collection of gold that swiftly spun her around as it sung her praises.

“You did it! Willow, you did it! Captain, you were amazing!

She buried her face in the nape of his neck and hugged him back, laughing hysterically as he darted them around just above the ground. Hunter was unable to contain his joy as every compliment seemed to transport them. Eventually he brought them back to the ground as they both delivered words of excitement, overlapping and increasing and seemingly unaware of the crowd surrounding them.

“I couldn’t have done it without that move you showed me!” she gushed, moving her head so she could absorb the sight of him, his face paint smudged and his hair a mess but her hair clip somehow still safe and secure. Her glasses were askew, a new bruise was forming on her cheek and her hair was a collection of flyaways but the utter joy in her voice made Hunter feel like she had never looked more beautiful. He brought up one hand to cup her cheek, totally mesmerized by everything she was. This was everything she wanted, everything she deserved, everything she worked for. Seeing her in her moment, she had never shined so bright and he couldn’t help but be drawn to her light.

“You are just so…” Before he knew what he was doing, Hunter lunged forward and collided his lips with hers.

Willow was surprised but not the least bit disappointed as she instinctively closed her eyes as she melted into the contact, moving her hands from his shoulders to around his neck pull him closer to her. His lips against hers sent a freezing bolt of lighting down her spine and the smile she felt them form sent a wave of lava over her chest, generating the perfect storm. She felt like they were back in the air. The stars were aligning. Their first official win. Their first official kiss. It was a celebration! It was fireworks! It was absolutely breathtaking.

It was all a blur to Hunter. His adrenaline caused him to dash too fast for his filter to catch him and just seemed to keep moving until suddenly the world was in slow motion as the elements likewise consumed him. Everything was soft, even the air was soft somehow. It was as though he was inside a dandelion basking in the sun. How could something so new be so familiar? But just as the warmth surrounded his body to the point where he was certain his heart was an ember rather than a galderstone, the reality of the moment caught up with him.

He pulled away, he saw Willow’s eyes open slowly as she tried to process it all. Hunter didn’t dare to imagine what must be going through her mind. He had kissed her with such intensity that her glasses were nearly off her head and she had been seized so quickly she was losing her balance and one foot was popped in the air. He could not believe the months of planning he had just undone in mere seconds. He tried to find an explanation and apology in one as he stumbled over his sentiments waiting for Willow to cut him off with words of disappointment.

But Willow just stared at him in stunned silence. He had to assume she was too disappointed to speak. Grom was one thing, but a sports match was hardly the time or place for such a display. She must've felt so disrespected! So undermined! So betrayed! He had taken her moment and made it about him and his feelings for her and how in awe he was of her. How had he let this happen?

And then there was the curse! The team was in jeopardy! What must she think? That he believed they were only capable and deserving of one victory? That one kiss was worth more than her efforts to bring the team together?

But Willow’s mind was blank. All she could focus on was how the setting sun shone behind his head and framed him in a sea of pink and gold like he was the center of a chrysanthemum. He was so bright and gentle and warm she forgot everything else, where she was, how to speak, how to exist outside this moment. The tiny chrysanthemums that collected in her hair and and by her feet tried to speak for her. But Hunter could only hear his own voice screaming in his head.

Hunter carefully removed her from his grasp, mumbling fragments of an apology as he disappeared into the approaching crowd as the rest of the team ran over to offer their own congratulations. Willow’s eyes followed him until there was nothing left, stuck in the trance as her soul rejoined her body back on the ground.

---

“She didn’t say she was upset but did she seem upset?” Hunter asked as he laid on Gus’ floor, his legs resting on the edge of Gus’ bed as he held Willow’s to his chest as though it was some kind of calming crystal. “Like that time those kids trampled her garden looking for their ball and they felt bad so she told them it was okay but you could tell she was hurt.”

“Dude, she just won the first match of the season against last year’s undefeated team. I don't think there’s anything that could bring her down,” said Gus, spinning in his chair. “I think the only thing she was maybe upset about was not seeing you at her house after. We all went over to celebrate and she kept asking where you were. Why didn’t you come?”

“What am I supposed to say to her?” asked Hunter. “I’m her lieutenant, she trusts me to do what’s best for the team and then I just betray her trust because I can’t control myself when she does something cool?”

“I think I can promise you that she did not view it as a betrayal,” said Gus with a smirk, but Hunter did not seem convinced. Gus thought about telling Hunter that Willow had changed into the green dress that Hunter once told her reminded him of O’Bailey’s love interest, Ivy. Gus knew that Hunter became an idiot when Willow wore that dress and so did she, which is precisely why she picked it for the party. The lip gloss she kept reapplying suggested she intended to repeat Hunter’s so-called ‘mistake’ the moment she was given the chance. But instead Gus watched her watch the front door all night, convincing herself that every time it opened he would be standing there.

But Hunter could not bring himself to face her.

“But what about the curse?” Hunter groaned sorrowfully.

“What are you talking about?”

“The curse? On teams at Hexside?” said Hunter as though it was so obvious. “When two players start dating the team is doomed to fail! My big mistake could get the Entrails suspended or disqualified or jeopardize her scholarship or-.”

“Okay, first of all; that curse isn’t real,” said Gus. “That’s about couples who have a bad breakup and let it affect the team and make them take sides so playing together is impossible, and you guys would never let that happen.”

“That’s true,” sighed Hunter as he fiddled with Willow’s hair clip, carefully tracing the flower’s outline. “You’re right, we’ve been through harder things. I don’t know why I’m so worried. I know she cares about me, I mean after Grom she said she still wanted to go out together so even if we were to-.”

“Wait,” said Gus, jumping up from the bed to look down at Hunter. “Wait wait wait. Hold the phone, now give the phone to me. Willow said you should what ?”

“Oh well after Grom she asked if I wanted us to go out together so I said-“

“Willow asked you out? At Grom?”

“Did I not tell you that?”

“No! You did not tell me that!” Said Gus harshly. “You spent 20 minutes telling me about how she took a sip from your glass of punch and how that was a ‘major milestone’ but you failed to mention that you two started going out!”

“We didn’t start ‘going out’,” corrected Hunter. “We’ve gone out plenty of times. You were there sometimes, like when we went to the grocery store and found out what bananas were, remember?”

Gus took a deep breath. “Hunter, dude, I’m pretty sure Willow was not talking about bananas.”

“Well, I guess there are plenty of other-.”

“She was asking you out like asking you to go out,” Gus specified. “With her. Together. Romantically.”

“What? No way,” said Hunter nervously. “She just meant ‘out’ like running errands together like we did in the human realm.”

“Did she say ‘out like running errands together’ or did she just say ‘go out together?’”

“She… she said…” Hunter’s eyes widened as Willow’s words replayed in his ears. The setting, her tone, as he looked at from the outside it didn’t make sense for her to be talking about errands then. But something inside him wouldn’t let him believe it. “I mean, it was probably like a ‘would you’ not a ‘will you’ type question.”

“Dude what are you talking about?”

“Well it’s like a hypothetical, right?” Hunter offered, starting to sweat. “Like if I asked you ‘would you eat a bowl of spiders?’ I’m asking you if a situation presented itself where you were able to, would you want to. It doesn’t mean I currently have a bowl of spiders for you. So, when Willow suggested we go out she was asking if that is something I’d do, not like she was offering or… ya know…” He looked to Gus for reassurance but all he found was a look of skepticism.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Gus exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air.“Why can’t you just accept the fact that Willow likes you and wants to go out with you?”

“Because that doesn’t make any sense!” Hunter exclaimed in a panic. He quickly covered his mouth, regretting what he said and how loud he said it as Gus moved to sit on the ground beside him. He took a deep breath and tried to explain himself. “It’s just… I mean I just started liking who I am and having Willow as a friend is one thing but the idea that she might like me the way I like her… I just don’t get it.”

Hunter stared at the ceiling, holding Willow’s hair clip even tighter and Gus couldn’t help but smile. “Ya know, you and Willow have a lot in common,” said Gus. “For a long time, you both let other people tell you what you were worth but you always went out of your way to help people. And you two are always lifting each other up, literally and metaphorically.” Hunter couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “I’ve never seen Willow look at someone the way she looks at you and she’s looked at you the same way practically since the day you met. She’s always known there’s something special about you, even if you didn’t. And I see you do the same thing for her. She’s my best friend, so believe me when I say I wouldn’t encourage you to go for it if I didn’t think you were good enough for her.”

Hunter knew Gus was right, Willow knew him well enough to know he would never purposely do anything to jeopardize her or the team. And an approval from Gus should put any doubts to rest. Even so, he still owed her an explanation.

“Now, so you wanna lay on my bedroom floor mopping or do you wanna answer one of Willow’s hundreds of messages?”

Hunter looked at his scroll at the messages Willow had sent him throughout the night. She started asking him if he was and if he was coming and then when he neglected to respond she sent him small updates and assurances that he could come whenever, no pressure. Even while playing hostess, she wanted to make sure he knew he was welcome. Even after what happened, she wouldn't stop including him.

“I think I need to answer her in person.”

---

When Hunter arrived at the Park residence, he realized he had arrived without a plan. He stood at the edge of the walkway, looking up at Willow’s window. The light was still on, that was probably a good sign. She had said he could come over whenever, though he was pretty sure she didn’t mean after the party had already ended. He had too much he wanted to say, he didn’t know where to start. He should’ve written it down, he should’ve rehearsed something. But when had that helped him before? He reached into his pocket and felt her hair clip, maybe if all else failed he could use returning it to her as a way to justify his presence.

He summoned his courage and the next thing he knew he was on Willow’s small balcony. He missed the mark by a few inches and had landed on the outside and clung to the railing. He was here. He was ready as he’d ever be. He just didn’t… know what was next.

Did he knock? Message her? Should he have thrown a rock?

“How did you come all the way here without a plan?” He whispered frantically to himself, beginning to sweat as he clung to the railing. He could feel Flapjack tugging and fluttering against his rib cage trying to bring him forward. “Shush! I have to think of what to say!”

Unbeknownst to Hunter, Willow was watching him through the window able to recognize his panicked whispering anywhere. She peaked at him from the side of the curtain, waiting for him to knock or call, finding the sight of him hyping himself up to be the cutest thing she had ever seen.

“Oh, I should’ve brought flowers,” Hunter cursed himself in a whisper. “Why didn’t I bring flowers? Who shows up without flowers? Maybe I should just-.”

Willow took that as a sign to make herself known as she quickly fluffed her hair and went to slowly open the curtain, hoping to make a graceful and romantic entrance. But she accidentally pulled too hard on the curtain’s string and instead sent it flying up, making a loud noise that startled Hunter and caused him to lose his balance and nearly fall.

“Oh my Titan! Sorry! Sorry!” She whispered, rushing forward to grab his hands to help pull him up and regain his footing.

“Oh no, it’s fine!” Hunter said as he managed to pull himself up. “I’m not even supposed to be-.” He brought his face up to look at her as he went to apologize and saw how close they were as she came to his rescue. “-here.”

He audibly gulped as Willow stood close enough to see subtle remains of green face paint below his eyebrow and on his cheek. She couldn’t help but smile at the flustered look on his face as his eyes shot to the ground, knowing this meeting hadn’t gone according to plan for either of them but she couldn’t argue with the results.

“Hi,” said Willow softly, an airy giggle swirling within her voice.

“Hi,” he said back equally as softly, struggling to summon his breath as he felt her hands steady his own, making sure he was secure on the ledge. His eyes focused on their hands as the words quickly poured out of him. “Uh, s-sorry, I should've messaged or called or used your front door. I just didn’t realize how late it was until I was already here and I didn’t know if your dads would mind but I needed to see you and then I thought you might be sleeping but I saw the light was on and luckily you look beautiful.”

Eventually, he managed to bring his eyes up to properly see her and when he did he saw she was still dressed up and looked absolutely radiant. She was wearing the green long sleeved dress that reminded Hunter of the botanist from Cosmic Frontier and made Willow’s eyes pop. She looked so effortlessly stunning and he was still in his derby uniform. He realized his thoughts about her had interrupted his sentence and he quickly tried to correct himself. “I mean, awake! Awake! Luckily you’re awake!”

“Hmm, lucky me,” she said in a warm, dreamy tone that Hunter couldn’t name but made him feel like a vine had coiled around his lungs. She brought one hand up to rest her cheek on as the other delicately brushed his knuckles. “We missed you tonight, by the way. All of us, after the game.”

But especially me, her eyes seemed to say. This was definitely not the vibe Hunter was expecting to be greeted with but he could hardly complain.

“Oh, yeah,” said Hunter. “I uh, was just kind of tired I guess.”

“I figured,” she said sweetly. “But is there something else going on? You left without saying goodbye so I wanted to make sure you weren’t-.”

“Willow, I’m so sorry!” Hunter just couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“‘Sorry?’” she repeated, genuinely perplexed. “Hunter, it's okay if you were tired. You played a great game and I know you were up late so-.”

“No, I mean…after the game when I… kissed you,” he whispered the last part as though it was taboo. Willow tried to hide her budding smile at the fresh and already frequently revisited memory of Hunter sweeping her up in his arms, looking at her with adoration, and pulling her close to him in the heat of the moment… what was there to apologize for?

“Hunter, you really don’t need to-.”

“Even if the curse isn’t real, it's still unprofessional and it could have embarrassed you and I guess I just…” Hunter struggled to find the words. “I mean, of course I was excited but it’s more than that. Willow, I…” He looked directly into her eyes, the light of the moon making them even bigger and pulling the rest of the words out of him. “I have certain feelings… for you. But I shouldn’t allow them to make me act in such a way.”

But Willow just smiled. Of course he would be concerned about balancing things. She had seen him act the same way when he felt guilty reading for pleasure when there was research to do or when he would stay up late messaging her when he should be preparing for patrol. Hunter still had a hard time letting himself enjoy things and categorizing them helped him ease into it. It made sense that he’d want to set a boundary for himself.

“Okay, so we don’t kiss on the flyer derby field anymore,” she said with a shrug, happy to compromise as a twinge of mischief twinkled in her eyes. “Buuut we’re not on the field right now so…”

She bit her lip, also grateful she had freshly applied her lip gloss when she spotted him standing on the balcony. She leaned forward a small bit and eagerly waited for him to fill in the blanks.

“Oh… oh!” Hunter hit his forehead like it was so obvious. “I’m sorry! I should’ve done this earlier. I know it’s late and I shouldn’t have just assumed you want to talk about flyer derby. I should’ve responded to your messages to make sure you were free, I can come back at a better time if you-.”

“No no, Hunter it’s fine,” she assured him. “I’m always happy to see you. If there’s something you wanna talk about, my dads saved you a plate from tonight. Maybe we could go up on the roof and…”

She tried one more time to let him figure out the rest, but there seemed to be something on his mind that prevented him from thinking about sharing a fairy pie with her as they gazed at the stars.

“No, no thank you but no I… need to say this before something else happens,” Hunter took a deep breath as he adjusted his grip on the railing, squeezing his eyes shut as he allowed the words to pour out of him once more. “Willow… the feelings I have for you… they’re r-romantic feelings. I’ve had them for awhile and I wanted to be sure of them before I told you but they just keep getting stronger and I felt you had a right to know because I don’t want there to be secrets between us because you’re important to me and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t make you uncomfortable because I think you’re really amazing.”

He took a deep inhale, forgetting how to breath as he finally managed to communicate everything that had been weighing him down.

“Awh Hunter, are you saying you have a crush on me?” Willow teased, but Hunter did not pick up on the playful nature of her tone.

“Yes,” he said sternly but softly. “I know this may come as a surprise but I’ve been trying to figure out the right time to tell you and I guess… this is it.”

She chuckled, waiting for one of his signature smirks to show he was joking or flirting but he didn’t say anything else. He didn’t wink or laugh or do anything he usually did when he was joking. He had a unique sense of humor but this seemed off brand for him. Why did he look so guilty about kissing his girlfriend after a month-

Her face dropped. This was the first time he was telling her. He had no idea how she felt about him and he genuinely thought that she had no clue how he felt about her. Had Grom been a misunderstanding? Something separate? And if they hadn’t confirmed their feelings at Grom then that meant….

“Oh. Oh.” Willow whispered, realizing what had been going on. Or rather, what hadn’t been going on? She had just thought Hunter was shy, that he was taking things slow. But she had been so lost in the lavender haze that she didn’t realize she had been so far ahead of him.

He was waiting for her to say something more, and under different circumstances she would pull him over the balcony and kiss him silly and let him know that of course she felt the same way.

But she thought she had already done that.

Her mind was spinning. Was he telling her just as an explanation for his actions or because he wanted something to come from them? She waited for him to finish, to say he wanted to be official, for there to be no misunderstanding about what they were to each other.

But they were both waiting.

“Um, Hunter I…” Willow started but a vine came and wrapped around her wrist and ventured over to his, hoping to keep him there. But Willow knew how it looked and she didn’t want Hunter to see it and assume it meant something else. Because she wasn’t entirely sure what this feeling was. She quickly shook it off and hid her hands behind her back. “… I should get back inside. I-it’s kinda late.”

“Oh, yeah of course,” he said. “I uh, yeah I’ll see you… tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” said softly, backing towards the window. She wasn’t upset. She wasn’t sure what she was. She wasn’t sure what they were.

“Soooo? How did it go? Did he like the dress?” said Amity, flipping through a magazine as she laid on Willow’s bed having promised to cover for her if her dads came upstairs. When she looked up to her friend, she was not wearing the starstruck smile Amity had been expecting. She looked perplexed. “What’s wrong?”

“Um, what do you do when your boyfriend, who you've been dating for almost a month, tells you that he has a crush on you? I'm asking for a friend.”

#huntlow #huntlow fanfiction #toh #the owl house #willow park #Hunter toh #winter toh

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atopvisenyashill · 11 months ago

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Hello! I have a question and I hoped that you might help me. I’ve seen a lot of posts in the asoiaf tag where people claimed that GRRM is criticising feudalism. My problem is that I don’t understand why would he? Feudalism isn’t a system that actively exists anymore. It’s not like criticising capitalism or totalitarianism which still exist. And it’s a fantasy series and most fantasy series have a somewhat medieval setting. It doesn’t make sense to me.

oo fun question anon.

well, first off, i would say he’s not just critiquing fuedalism. he’s also critiquing monarchies, which unfortunately still exist, and power structures in general, which definitely still exist. for example, that famous broken man section, sorry for length but the whole thing is good:

“Ser? My lady?” said Podrick. “Is a broken man an outlaw?” “More or less,” Brienne answered. Septon Meribald disagreed. “More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They’ve heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. "Then they get a taste of battle. For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe. “They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water. “If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world… "And the man break. “He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them…but he should pity them as well.”

When Meribald was finished a profound silence fell upon their little band. Brienne could hear the wind rustling through a clump of pussywillows, and farther off the faint cry of a loon. She could hear Dog panting softly as he loped along beside the septon and his donkey, tongue lolling from his mouth. The quiet stretched and stretched, until finally she said, “How old were you when they marched you off to war?” “Why, no older than your boy,” Meribald replied. “Too young for such, in truth, but my brothers were all going, and I would not be left behind. Willam said I could be his squire, though Will was no knight, only a potboy armed with a kitchen knife he’d stolen from the inn. He died upon the Stepstones, and never struck a blow. It was fever did for him, and for my brother Robin. Owen died from a mace that split his head apart, and his friend Jon Pox was hanged for rape.” “The War of the Ninepenny Kings?” asked Hyle Hunt. “So they called it, though I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war, though. That it was.”

Bolded parts mine! All of it, but especially the bolded parts can apply just as easily to soldiers in the war of the five kings, the war of the roses, world war 2, vietnam, and every war in between. Think about the way military recruiters show up to high schools with cool gadgets and the promise of free college, and the way Meribald talks about the lords showing up pressing young boys into service. Think about the fact that the British military executed three hundred and six soldiers suffering from PTSD after WWI for "cowardice" and the starving soldiers Meribald talks about abandoning their armies just for an extra mouthful of food. when meribald talks about the soldiers looting from peasants, think about the fact that the innocent people in gaza are starving to death while a handful of miles away, there are restaurants booming and food enough to throw away. War is war, regardless of whether it's being waged a thousand years ago or a thousand years from now.

it's important when discussing asoiaf to remember that george is often holding a mirror up against our own society - he is saying that this, the violent patriarchy of westeros, is our natural endpoint if we continue to treat each other the way we do. it's about taking these typical tropes and roles and archetypes and asking what they are really like, how hard they really are, how awful they really are, and if this is the life we want to befall our own children. it is about asking if we, as in the reader, are capable of breaking the cycle of violence as surely as it is about asking if the characters can break that cycle too. There's a reason, for example, Ramsay's story is so tied up in domestic violence, or why Robert's character focuses much more on the way he has failed his family than anything else. There's a reason there's so many sibling groups (Martells, Daynes, Starks, Lannisters, Tullys, Baratheons) that get wrecked by the Rebellion and that the series tracks the way this wreckage seeps out into the realm. Yes, asoiaf is about feudalism but it is about us as well.

second, while feudalism doesn’t technically exist any more, the relics of feudalism still haunt the world; from hereditary noble titles to literal monarchs with absolute power to extreme barriers to social mobility and even serfs. you'll see a lot of academics, especially since the pandemic started, talking about "neo-feudalism" and the idea that just like the middle ages was shaped by pandemics that ravaged populations and made it easier for upper classes to get richer and stop social mobility, the pandemic has enriched the richest people in the world and made everyone else exceedingly poor. while george obviously wasn't writing about the neo feudalism people are talking about today, this is a concept that's been kicking around since the 1980s so I think it is likely that George had done some research into the relics of feudalism and the criticism of modern governments working like corporations. Because this history may seem a long time ago - the war of the roses ended over a thousand years ago, after all - but feudalism and it's relics are still very much within living memory. Russia still had serfs until the 1860s, Bosnia and Herzegovina up until 1918, and Bhutan until the 1950s! There are also still countries all over the world that still have what is basically legalized slavery, whether it's workers stolen from one country and trafficked to another, a minority group that is used as slave labor, or prison labor. I think George is also knocking at the remnants of it as well. I mean, the UK monarchs aren't even that powerful in the grand scheme of things and yet every time they have one of their lil events, they destroy tent cities and mass displace the unhoused populations of London because like, homeless people are gross instead of actually doing anything to help those people. Diana was a teenager when she married Charles. Yeah, that's a far cry from like, poor Rhaella but that doesn't mean it's not still a fucked up institution that is worth taking aim at!

but thirdly!! feudalism exists in fiction constantly still - as you said, a lot of high fantasy has a medieval-ish bent (even books pulling from non western cultures or authors from non western cultures still tend to pull more from history that falls pre-1500s; this is mostly just my opinion as a librarian and fantasy reader, but it's really only been the last decade or so that fantasy has branched out into non medieval time periods like with stuff like babel, six of crows, some of katherine arden's stuff, etc). the divine right of kings is still alive and thriving in fiction and (again, this is my amatuer opinion here) I do think at least part of this is because a lot of american fantasy writers have never lived under a monarchy, so the bad affects of it are far off and easier to romanticize. as well, you get a lot of "times were simpler" PoVs from non americans who have lived under some sort of monarch as well. and that’s why i believe he’s criticizing it - he’s critiquing the genre itself for its romanticization of feudalism, monarchies, kings and queens, and the idea of the divine right of kings. he's saying "look realistically this shit sucked for everyone" and then rubbing your face in how bleak the feudal system actually was. It's the aragorn's tax policies aspect - there is more to being a leader than a watery tart throwing a sword at you!! it's jaime's entire riverlands arc - house lannister won the war on a technicality, and yet the horror, the desolation, the despair are still fresh in the minds of the common people, in the minds of the people who lost their loved ones.

#asks #anons #grrm #rani attempts meta #getting on my soap box

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lorei-writes · 2 years ago

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Miss Fortune

Mitsuhide x MC Mafia AU Bodyguard AU Action; Fluff-adjacent; Fake Relationship Word count estimate: 1.7k

Oh my, did this get out of hand a couple times. Written for Different Universe, Same Love 2 CCC by @xxsycamore & @queengiuliettafirstlady <3

Content Warnings: gun mention, blood mention

“It is instrumental to act in accordance with your predicament, Ma’am.” The heels of Mitsuhide’s dress shoes hit the golden yellow tiles, each individual tap climbing up the cobalt walls of the narrow corridor located somewhere deep within the entrails of the auction house. His footfall split into more of its kind, the thus created echo mingling with a much similar, although fainter, sound. There was nothing in that space but him and the woman whose hand he clasped, the cascade of scarlet silk running down the length of her legs… and perhaps the curious camera lenses lurking up above. Never once slowing down, Mitsuhide met the artificial eyes with his own. “And now your predicament demands,” he continued, “you do not leave my side, Miss Fortune.”

Auctions were hardly an unusual occurrence in the world of wealth, much less in its darkest corners. Between vintage cars, works of fine art, chemical-induced sense of joy and exuberant (although fake) smiles, the list of items made obtainable with ostentatious amounts of money was beyond expansive – and even longer did it grow with but a handful of good luck. The very thing Miss Mai Mizusaki, the charm of the Oda clan, specialised in… Despite any objections to the fact she might or might not have had. She was, the one and only, Miss Fortune.

***

“It is instrumental to act in accordance with your predicament, Ma’am.”

The heels of Mitsuhide’s dress shoes hit the golden yellow tiles, each individual tap climbing up the cobalt walls of the narrow corridor located somewhere deep within the entrails of the auction house. His footfall split into more of its kind, the thus created echo mingling with a much similar, although fainter, sound. There was nothing in that space but him and the woman whose hand he clasped, the cascade of scarlet silk running down the length of her legs… and perhaps the curious camera lenses lurking up above. Never once slowing down, Mitsuhide met the artificial eyes with his own.

“And now your predicament demands,” he continued, “you do not leave my side, Miss Fortune.”

Mai nodded without a hint of delay and pressed a hand to her chest, her fingers tracing an outline of a miniscule box through the fabric of her gown. She let herself be led, her gaze trained on the man who played the role of her bodyguard – if she was to trust her luck, of course. For all she knew, the freelancing Silver Fox of the underground had quite a reputation to speak of… Not that she had got the taste of that. Yet.

Breath caught in Mai’s throat as her world spun, upheld on the very edge of the heel of her stiletto. Her eyes opened wide, the entirety of her vision being taken over by a certain thin smile. Her back pressed against the wall. Close. Much too close.

“Pray tell,” Mitsuhide whispered, his body leaning into hers, “what have you just done?”

“I don’t think I understand, Mister E,” she replied, hands firmly set on the lapels of his suit jacket… But he made nothing of it, his breath sowing goosebumps over the nape of her neck. Mitsuhide laughed a quiet, mirthless laugh.

“We happen to already be plenty suspicious as we are, Miss Fortune. Please, refrain from giving our dear auctioneers any reasons to send hounds after us. It would be most troublesome, I assure you.”

“Are you not doing just that?”

“I? No, not at all. After all, I am your lover, aren’t I?”

Mai swallowed thickly, strands of soft silver nearly tickling her cheek as he straightened his back. As if nothing had happened, Mitsuhide readjusted his tie.

“Now, shall we? We cannot exactly afford to loiter around.”

He offered her his hand.

And like a fool, she took it without a second thought.

They walked down the nearly endless corridor, slower now, the sounds of fervent bidding coming from both their left and right. Mitsuhide’s expression hardened, although to untrained eye, it would appear he remained rather relaxed, calm. He listened in closely to each distorted word that made it out of the auction halls, perhaps examining it, comparing it against the database of various voices stored in his mind – whichever the case, his eyes lit up suddenly. He pulled Mai forward, his arm hooking around her waist.

“Miss Fortune?”

“Yes?” she suppressed a stutter, hid it behind a poorly constructed smile. Mitsuhide shook his head. Truly, she should have refrained from emulating his craft, yet…

“Remember, you are my Miss E. For now, at the very least.”

Her lips parted, however, any words of protest Mai held at the moment withered just as soon as they had sprouted. The hall behind them opened. Clearly, his ears had picked up on things she couldn’t possibly have. For now, ‘at the very least’? she repeated in her mind, gazes of two – judging by their voices – young men drilling into the back of her head. No time to dwell on that… Do your thing, luck.

“Excuse me,” one of the men called.

Average, Mitsuhide surmised. “Is there any issue?” he replied.

“The woman with you. Who’s that?”

“Why, Miss E.”

“Missy? Missy who?”

“Miss. Miss E,” Mai corrected, with a pout. “Why do you even ask?”

“You’ll have to come with us. We’ll let you go once we find Miss Fortune.”

Mitsuhide stepped in front of Mai, a perfectly hair-raising smile on his face.

“And what gives you the authoritative power to demand that of a guest?” he inquired, his brows drawn close in a budding frown.

“The Boss –”

“Call your Boss and inform him you’ve detained Mister E and his partner. We shall talk after that.”

The men looked at each other, eyes opened wide at the brazenness of his tone. Nevertheless, their expressions faltered under his gaze, the newly emerged air of impatience urging them to act. They nodded at each other, one of them lifting a radio, when —

Mitsuhide wasted no time. Brass around his knuckles, he delivered a quick punch to the temple of the first man. He then turned swiftly, his other arm raised in a guard. Thud. His target hit the ground, but his eyes were already on the other hound, the man putting distance between them while reaching into his jacket.

“The door!” Mitsuhide called, dropping back to pull Mai along and rush them both into the nearest auction hall.

Mai held her breath. However, the bidding did not stop. Whether it was the acoustics, the commotion or the soundproofing of the space, that much was both unclear and irrelevant then. His arm around her shoulders, Mitsuhide ushered them past aisles of cushioned seats, the door snapping open behind their backs. Mai clutched at her chest, her heart hammering against her ribs with the enthusiasm of a toddler introduced to a xylophone, each of its beat falling within the realm of somewhat-melody-adjacent cacophony. However, the box was still there. In an attempt to calm herself down, she dared look around… Mai clung to Mitsuhide, too preoccupied with the grey irises following their path to even take note of the bloodied brass knuckles he still held in his hand.

“He’s here,” she hissed, a living mountain of a person raising from his seat.

“Lucky us,” Mitsuhide chuckled, but held her firmer than before.

They rushed towards the stage, curious heads of various Misses and Misters turning towards them as they nearly ran, Mai barely managing to keep up. Mitsuhide stole a quick glance across the room.

“Ma’am, I’m afraid your shoes are becoming a safety hazard.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Discard them,” Mitsuhide offered – and Mai obliged, satisfied with her newly regained agility.

The stage was there, as was the door right behind it. His hands on her waist, Mitsuhide hoisted her up onto the boards, following right after her. The world? What world. Too dazed to take note of anything, Mai put her trust in his hands, their joint fingers her lifeline, the only thing keeping her from breaking into panic in presence of the bullet that made it just past her head. The clamouring of her heart devoured the sounds, the only thing left silence – and his arms. Her body did move, she was aware of that much. However, it was very similar to what she assumed would be being a marionette, hoisted on strings and directed by somebody else… And hopefully, for she could only hope, the play would not involve any tragic plots.

Mai blinked, the corridor speeding past them. Mitsuhide ran, all the while carrying her.

“Fox?” she spoke, his original alias rolling off her tongue quite naturally, despite her strained voice.

“Put your arms around my neck, Miss Fortune.”

She did.

By the strange twist of fate, the – otherwise, very secure and clad in steel bars – window at the end of the staff passage was being replaced. Mitsuhide glanced over his shoulder one last time, an undercover-Kyubei-induced accident slowing the Tiger of the House of Kai. His lips formed a thin smile, thunderstorm clouding the inside of Shingen’s eyes. Perhaps, perhaps some other time, when somebody else guards the mouse, he will snatch away Nobunaga’s lucky charm and use her to his advantage. Not then, however, not from under his nose.

Mai clutched onto him as if he was her dear life itself. The very next moment, they leaped off the sill, straight into the river below them. The skirt of her dress fluttered, scarlet matching the hues of the bleeding sun, the last few rays of light dying her hair red, golden shimmer rousing within Mitsuhide’s eyes. They burned, they – the Icarus, the present their collapse… The water welcomed them in its fluid embrace, just the way they were, the cold shrinking the air residing in their lungs. Despite the discomfort of it all, they were safely out of the auction house. At last.

***

Silk clinging firmly to her skin, Mai dragged herself onto the shore, arms and legs barely complying with her wishes. A rat from sewers would be a less sorry sight than her, however, when she patted her chest and found the box still in its place, she did not appear to mind. To the opposite, in fact – she laid down, smiling eyes set on the stars above. Mitsuhide sat to her right.

“I take your objective has been accomplished,” he more so declared than asked.

“Boss will be pleased.”

A van pulled onto the side of the road. Mitsuhide turned his head to look, however, he needn’t have bothered, a familiar voice – shout – of his partner reaching his ears in a record time.

“Mitsuhide!” Hideyoshi cried. “It took forever to find you! Did you really had to jump into the river?! And the client… The client… Oh god, I will bring you a jacket to cover up, Ma’am, you’ll catch a cold otherwise. I’m so terribly sorry for all those misfortunes.”

Oh, if only he knew that that was exactly what Mai Mizusaki called her luck.

Tag list: @lancelotscloak @violettduchess @the12thnightproject @oda-princess @tele86

Tell me if you'd like to be added to my taglist :)

#mitsuhide akechi #ikesen mitsuhide #ikemen sengoku mitsuhide #ikesen #ikemen sengoku #ikemen series #different universe same love ccc #different universe same love 2 ccc

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science-lings · 3 months ago

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just wanted to say i love your art. i don’t ever really know who the characters are (i followed you a long time ago for loz stuff, and now everything i know about ace attorney is through your posts) but your art is always beautiful!! you’re really good with colors and i love the way you do hair in particular

(also. i’m loving that you might be getting into batman. this fandom always needs more gay people and people who understand that peak batman is wet cat batman)

Thank you! That means a lot to me! Ace Attorney was definitely something I could not have expected that I would get into but the funky early 2000s coded gays with unexpected fantasy elements entrailed me.

I'm glad you like the way I do colors bc I do not know color theory I'm just going with the vibes.

(batman has always felt like the kind of character that only dudebros like who doesn't have much of a personality other than 'tough man who is good at everything' but then I discovered that he is mentally ill and an adoptive father and there is definitely something so so wrong with him in that way that begs to be studied. I am currently reading a fic where he and Harley were buddies in medical school which I love because they are opposites in every way except in the way that they're both so fucked up. They are so funny to me. Also my favorite DCCU film is Birds of Prey and that probably affects things. I wanna see fully goth introvert Pattinson Bruce Wayne having to deal with some optimistic excitable character like Harley or Dick or Clark, I think it would be so fun to see. However, Batman movies haven't liked fun since they made the lego one.)

#someday im going to write something thats just an excuse to do a bruce wayne character study I just need to come up with a plot #ask andromeda

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dandelions-could-never · 4 months ago

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Spilled guts and stitched hearts

———

I don’t usually trust this easy,

I have bad experiences with opening my heart,

I’ve had people try to take it and run,

Trailing viscera from my chest as they drag me along,

I’ve had people tell me to put it away,

Disgusted by my spilling guts,

This kind of person tiptoes around my entrails,

While apologising for not being enough,

What they are really doing,

Is not caring enough to clean up my blood,

I did not open my heart to the two people I trust,

They peeled back my ribcage,

Demanding answers for irresponsible actions,

One held me in place while the other held my stitched-together heart in their hands,

Neither of them cared that my blood stains like ink,

That I am impossible to get rid of,

Both of them cradled my bruised heart,

And told me it would be alright.

Since then I’ve all but sutured my chest cavity closed,

Two people who admire and understand is more than I deserve,

But one bleak autumn day you were frogmarched into my life,

‘Escorted under guard’ as you word it,

And I saw you again,

And I thought fuck it.

You let me attack you,

Try to rend your golden flesh and peel back your armour,

But instead all I did was pop the stitches in my gut,

And spill out my heart again.

I am not one to be held with reverence,

But you hold me like I’m worth the gold you’re made of,

And in that empty, creaking playground,

We named each other loved.

#mine #moots #poetry #my poetry #you know who you are #the doe the crow and the dandelion #trust issues #cw gore

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theatrum-tenebrarum · 2 years ago

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Hi,

I was reading your post about Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer Morningstar and you said that angels are genderless beings. I’m just wondering if you could maybe talk about how relationships and sexuality work (or rather don’t work) in that context.

Thanks!😊

Hello! That's an interesting question! Some opinions are such that all spirits, be they of angelic, demonic, fae or whichever origin do not possess a gender. There is no definitive answer as to why that is so, but some things in favor of this theory are: 1. they are from different realms/dimensions/modes of existence and we cannot know that gender (or sex) actually exist there, and if they do exist we don't know how they manifest there 2. it is speculated that all of these beings from other dimensions don't possess a body at all, but are actually forms of energy (therefore most humans cannot physically see them, but they can eventually feel them!). However, being forms of energy, it is thought that they can manifest or inhabit a body they prefer. That would mean spirits could choose a sex or gender for themselves, if they wish to become visible to human beings or interact with them.

When it comes to possibly forming a relationship with one of these beings such as angels, there are plenty of standpoints we could talk about this from! The first would be the standpoint of mysticism. More specifically, Christian mysticism, which is very interesting and probably not what you think! Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish nun and mystic who lived in the 16th century recounts her experience of physically confronting an angel, a Seraph or Cherub, with an ecstatic, sexual twist. After explaining how uncommon it is too se an angel in its physical form and describing its appearance, she recounts: "I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it." There's actually a stunning piece of artwork depicting this exact scene, by the great Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini! So delicately ethereal and otherworldly, but at the same time rather corporeal and tactile.

I think Teresa's experience doesn't require any input from my side, and it surely points to the fact that it IS possible for angels to manifest in a corporeal form so humans can see them and communicate with them. In this particular case, she speaks of the angel as being male, but she also writes about how most times she is able to perceive angels "intellectually" and in that case she doesn't mention them being of any particular sex/gender. So again, it could be implied that angels assume a sex/gender only when manifesting in the physical dimension. Now the other standpoint would be the one of occultism. Generally, in occult circles it is thought that compelling any type of spirit to appear in physical form before the one conjuring it is extremely difficult, almost impossible to do. Most occultists try to commune with spirits in their non-corporeal forms, but when doing so prefer to use some sort of physical object to represent the spirit, such as a picture of them that is preferred by the one who wishes to get in contact with them in order to contact the spirit more easily. Humans need anthropomorphism, it is a way for us to understand phenomena that would otherwise be hard to grasp. Therefore it is thought that by having a physical representation of a spirit, one can ease into the energy that is behind it. This is also the way religious statues are supposed to function, especially ones from the Medieval Gothic era, where literally thousands of statues used to be made for one cathedral only (!), EACH one representing a certain idea, concept, religious figure or mythical being people could connect to through these physical forms. Ways of communicating with angels and other spirits are numerous. Some are tied to certain magical traditions and some aren't. There is absolutely no way to talk about spirit communication in one post, but it absolutely is possible to develop relationships with angels and other spirits from the standpoint of occultism. Speaking of sexual relationships with angels and spirits, there are a lot of possibilities. The first one would be that such a thing is impossible since they are essentially forms of energy - unless the spirit chooses to inhabit (possess) a body or incarnate in the physical form. Yet, there are accounts and stories of sexual encounters with spirits in their non-corporeal, energy forms. The most common stories of this kind are those of spirits that are able to have sexual relations with humans while they are asleep, which likely happens in the same phase of sleep as the one where sleep paralysis or astral projection can happen. In some mystical and magical traditions, each contact with divinity is considered to be an ecstatic, almost orgasmic experience. This contact with the divine could surely be angelic as well, such as in the case of saint Teresa of Avila I mentioned earlier. She explains how the encounter with the angel left her with a "great love of God".

Now there is no easy way to sum all of this up, as I only went through some of the basic theories on communicating with angels/spirits. A kind of TL;DR would be that it is possible to form relationships with angels and other spirits, as there are accounts of such experiences both very old and new, coming from mystics and other people initiated into various magical orders. How one can develop these relationships depends on how sensitive a person is to subtle energies, on the type of magic they practice or the magical tradition they are initiated into and, as well as on other factors that might be out of one's control - such as the angel's/spirit's willingness to communicate! This communication can include sexual activities as well, which could be possible no matter if the spirit is in corporeal form or not. Sexual energy created in contact with some form of divinity is said to be all-powerful and practitioners of magical arts greatly cherish such experiences.

This is a very broad and interesting topic! I hope I managed to cover all the important bits and answer your question. If there is anything you would like me to write about some more, feel free to drop me an ask! Once again, thank you for the question! :)

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the-present-is-a-gift-au · 11 months ago

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Chapter 15: In Which Grovyle and Darkrai Have a Chat

“I don’t believe I’ve ever met Jirachi before. Are you quite certain he can juggle?”

“Better than I’ve ever seen him grant wishes, dear. It’s a little shocking, honestly.”

The conversation Darkrai found himself in with Celebi was pleasant as always. She was an excellent conversationalist, and it was refreshing to speak to her. Twig might be kind, but she was also curt and taciturn when conversing with him— at least for the most part. Her hour-long raving about the misdeeds of Team Skull stuck out in his memory, still fuzzy with his gratitude for her trusting him enough to speak on the subject to. Even so, Celebi’s open warmth was very much enjoyable as they chatted in Twig’s front room.

Grovyle’s stormy entry through the front door cut their conversation short. Celebi fluttered over to her companion, asking if he was well, but Grovyle’s eyes didn’t leave Darkrai.

“We need to talk,” he spat, and Darkrai followed him onto the porch as cordially as one could when they were led by someone who seemed desperate to rip out their entrails.

Grovyle’s shoulders were tense as he whirled around to face him. “I’m not happy about you being around,” he hissed.

“I’ve gathered as much,” Darkrai replied.

“Twig is raking herself over the coals for your sake, you know.” He stepped forward, leaves sharpening their edges in what seemed a subconscious expression of his distaste, though not one that Darkrai was foolish enough to look past. “I don’t care if a Legend can’t die by mortal hands— if you ever step out of line— if you ever act up, even once— if you ever do anything to hurt Twig in any way— I’ll be the first to prove that thought wrong, and I’ll kill you as slowly as I can.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

He blinked, taken aback. “... What?”

“I am grateful for your willingness to defend your loved ones. I would even say I’d be much obliged if you would relay your oath to Twig. I suspect she’d take comfort in it.”

“You’re not… You’re not upset about it. You’re not upset I said I would kill you.”

“No.” He tilted his head. “Why would I be?”

“Why wouldn’t you be?”

“I’m no fool, Grovyle. I am not so oblivious to Twig’s fearfulness as you might assume. Nor am I blind to her withholding the truth of my past from me, similar to how you— while not as prone to blatant dishonesty as Twig herself— are withholding your knowledge of the truth as well.” The grass-type tensed, and Darkrai put up his hands in a peaceful gesture. “I am put out by this, I will admit, but I am willing to learn at the pace that you will allow me, though I may prod a bit for answers here and there. You are good people. I understand you must have your reasons for delaying my learning of my past.”

Grovyle stepped back, shifting his weight to a more restful posture. “You’re much different than I expected.”

“I hope that my difference from your expectations is for the better?”

“We’ll see.” Grovyle turned his eyes to the fence at the edge of the property. “I’m going to check on Twig.”

“Please inform her that Celebi plans to prepare supper on her behalf. Unfortunately.”

He grimaced. “Tell Celebi that she’s not allowed to put any unidentified roots in what she makes. She might like to insist that they’re good for you, but not everyone can stomach the things.”

With that, they parted ways, and Darkrai dearly hoped that they did so on better grounds than they met on.

#pmd2 #pmd eos #pmd sky #pmd explorers #pokemon mystery dungeon #pmd fanfic #pmd fanfiction #pmd fic #the present is a gift au

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thiswaycomessomethingwicked · 2 years ago

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The Committee of Public Safety

i. In flammable cornfield you paw me into position saying, Napoleon loved Josephine Napoleon said he’d kill himself for Josephine I’ll kill myself for you I’ve no heart to point out Napoleon declared he’d kill himself for Désirée too heady August days you announce us soulmates and get rooftop drunk hymnal skin burning on shingles these things aren’t meant to touch a wine filled water bottle in hand you preach, Josephine didn’t deserve Napoleon Josephine didn’t understand love how we understand love watch me carve your name into my arm, you show me your dad’s hunting knife. ii. Paris is claustrophobic cats in heat crawling over each other Napoleon’s writing: come back to me or I’ll not move when a carriage comes see head beneath hooves cracked pomegranate smashed grape entrails dogs howling over dead masters’ strawberry necks summer brings men of virtue declaring terror as love of country Josephine gets a letter a day dream-girling her incomparable sweetness grace personified are you vexed why have you not come to me you’re a vixen I love you you hurt me write me don’t write me I give you a thousand kisses I give you none who do you see who do you talk to I hate them I envy them you are my life She reads them aloud to friends and laughs. iii. You build worlds full of us and redwood forests cacti seaweed filled beaches kaleidoscoping you clutch my arm crowing call me Napoleon call me Caesar I’ll be your Cleopatra who do you love Sulla Cromwell Robespierre who did they love I’ll be them I’ll be whoever they loved since you’re them are you Napoleon or Josephine am I Josephine or Napoleon Napoleon’s pulse was hard to find fingering mine you anger we don’t match you wanted us so much to match telling me You’re Marius the Roman you’ve always been better suited to cold marble than me you weep that I cannot love you because I am Rome then copy out Napoleon’s letters to Josephine leave them between my bed sheets I sleep without removing them. iv. Crossing Hannibalian Alps Napoleon writes to Josephine Soul of my life, write me else I shall not exist. Josephine confides to a friend He frightens me when he says it’s love. v. It’s night when you call to say you’re dying will continue to die if I won’t love you you’ll keep dying keep calling keep carving names into arms I ask where you are: bathroom floor with the marble sweet and cold like you I love you I love you I love you I’ll not move from here until you love me--

By S. Patterson, in South Florida Poetry Journal, (x)

#poetry #poems #napoleon bonaparte #self harm mention #suicide mention #writing

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averagebacchaereader · 2 years ago

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may 8th

Liza

Christian (get it because priests are… y’know)

CW: heavy sexual content, religion.

CHRISTIAN takes centre stage. kneels.

CHRISTIAN: i am a depraved man. cruel. i see wicked things, and i savour them, i run my tongue along them, soaking in every taste and i’d beg for more, i would. i do. i crave passion and sex because it makes me feel alive. desire makes me feel alive. sometimes i think it’s the only thing, and that’s fucked, there’s more to life than sex, i- but when i feel her. god. when i feel her. it’s vibrant. how she trembles. how i… respond. every twitch is sticks breaking ahead of me, i’m a wolf, a fox with a mouth dripping blood, i need to nurse on a fleeing rabbit. feral. disgusting. god help me. i pray, but i… it’s hollow. no words will make me stop wanting this. no faith. i’m ruined. i’m… no longer human. i feel something worse.

LIZA appears behind him, lit from behind, an angel.

CHRISTIAN: i feel everything. more. i feel nothing. i feel angels, i feel hurt. burning. everywhere.

LIZA: oh, take pity.

CHRISTIAN: angels.

LIZA: get up.

he does. still, he does not turn to face her.

LIZA: you want me.

CHRISTIAN: more than anything.

LIZA: you’re a dog.

CHRISTIAN: i know.

LIZA: i spit on you.

CHRISTIAN says nothing.

LIZA: hm. men. i tailor myself to you, and it takes, it takes, it takes. look how you flush. are you embarrassed?

CHRISTIAN: i-

LIZA: don’t speak.

she’s right behind him now. laces a hand over his chest. she feels his heart.

LIZA: so close. and is this god to you?

he says nothing.

LIZA: speak.

CHRISTIAN: yes.

LIZA: you feel your life in my hand.

CHRISTIAN: yes.

LIZA: you want me closer.

CHRISTIAN: i want to consume you.

LIZA: greedy.

CHRISTIAN: always.

LIZA: and you’d still want more.

CHRISTIAN: you’re an exceptional slab of meat.

LIZA: i’m an absurdist piece of theatre nobody gets but everyone pretends to understand. i’m a mouthpiece for a despondent author. no i’m not. yes i am. i’m a carefully crafted divinity in the form of a woman. i’m whatever skincare routine is currently trending. i’m fucking ancient and i’ve eaten boys alive, starting from the wrists. i swallow.

CHRISTIAN: yeah, fu-

LIZA: yeah.

CHRISTIAN: i want you.

LIZA: he wants me, he wants me. am i supposed to feel good?

CHRISTIAN: i feel you press against my back.

LIZA: you’re flushed. you swell.

CHRISTIAN: you’re the hottest fucking thing i’ve ever seen.

LIZA: i’m a nightmare. i drip in grime. i’m obsessed with blood and entrails.

CHRISTIAN: i’d give you mine.

LIZA: what?

CHRISTIAN: intestines, and shit.

LIZA: hm.

CHRISTIAN: if you’ll bite my chest. tear me open with your teeth.

LIZA: i’ll think about it.

CHRISTIAN: you think about me?

LIZA: sometimes.

CHRISTIAN: i pray for you.

LIZA: i heard. is that helping much?

CHRISTIAN: it’s making everything worse.

LIZA: typical. you can get back on your knees, now.

he does.

CHRISTIAN: gladly.

she moves, to be beside him now. he can finally look at her, and he does, greedy, drinking her in. maybe throw in a whimper or two.

LIZA: weakness. slobber. you drool for me.

CHRISTIAN: i can-

LIZA: it’s a metaphor.

CHRISTIAN: huh?

LIZA: shh. just go with it.

CHRISTIAN nods.

LIZA: i am fond of you, after all that.

CHRISTIAN: yes.

LIZA: it’s unfortunate.

CHRISTIAN: collar me.

LIZA: god what is it with all of you?? “collar me”??

CHRISTIAN: i-

LIZA: sorry. i’m being rude. i love you. i like your silly curly hair.

CHRISTIAN: it’s not curly.

LIZA: no, but when it- sometimes it looks like it is.

CHRISTIAN: uh.

LIZA gets down on her knees.

LIZA: you’re boring me. grab my tits.

he does. hungrily.

CHRISTIAN: will you kiss me?

LIZA: will you eat me?

CHRISTIAN: i’d be glad to.

LIZA: the sentiment is returned.

LIZA kisses him. they embrace. a sort of peace. eventually, they fuck. this can be as abstract as wanted, haha theatre weird stupid theatre stuff metaphors wow drama i’m so educated and good at writing.

LIZA (during sex): i don’t believe in holiness. i used to, i was raised religious, but i don’t think anyone is pure, and i don’t think anyone is “ruined”. greed is natural and not something you can be trained out of. no one is entirely selfless, and if they are, i’m sure they think they’re not, and guilt is imperfect. impure. i wish i could believe in god, but i don’t, i don’t want to think there’s someone up there judging us off a stupid, rigged universe. you want me to believe in god, the christian god, when the majority of christians are portrayed as- you know? in the media? i am not homophobic, or transphobic, or anything like that, i think people should believe in whatever they want, all that stuff. i don’t think it’s right for god to condemn me for not wanting to stand with a crowd that’s so often represented like that. and if he is going to condemn me, i may as well get a couple orgasms out of it. god, that's good. harder.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

i must be the most fuckable and esoteric fisherman at the pond.

what was i listening to while writing?

my slut playlist for sluts of course!

#playwriting #writing #thoughts on sex and being a woman also the fleabag priest is not as grand a person as everyone pretends he is

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desmondkane-of-ao3-fame · 1 year ago

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DOING AN ENTIRE CHARACTER ASK SHEET FOR SKARA AND WILLOW BECAUSE I CAN PART 1 (Questions 1-10)

1. Canon I outright reject

You know how in Sense and Insensitivity there’s that bit where Skara kisses the King cardboard cutout and runs away with it? That bit that made that one Sking shipper a thing? Yeah, so this is a really mean prank played by either the twins or Boscha using an illusion, and Skara only ever thought Rulers Reach was ok. My evidence for this is the fact that I will personally beat you to death if you imply my daughter did Titan-knows-what with a standee of an 8-year-old cat-dog-hybrid.

While I’m at it, let’s also make it clear that she was never living furniture for an adult man either. Again, that was a prank because N O.

(Can you guess why Sense is my third worst episode of the show?)

Literally the second half of Any Sport has Willow acting so OOC you’d swear it has to be a really bad fanfiction. She gets kidnapped by the same dude who spent the entire afternoon lying to her about who he was, threatened not one but two of her best friends in his last appearance, and works as the second-in-command of a fascist religious order she canonically rallied the Isles against, and she… blames herself for it. She has the opportunity to defend her friends against Darius and put up a real fight, and instead she does some of her weakest magic in the show so Hunter can swoop in and save her. And in the last 30 seconds of the episode she just casually tells shows off the pic of the Entrails with Hunter like it wouldn’t cause Amity to go into a PTSD-inspired rage. I literally rewrote the entirety of the episode in my head, but if I can’t reject the whole episode, I’m at least rejecting its second half.

(Can you guess why Any Sport is my top choice for worst episode of the show?)

2. A canon or headcanon hill I will die on

Skara is a chaotic bisexual gremlin and you can’t convince me otherwise. If chaotic bisexual gremlin energy could be used as a power source, Skara would be the only battery the world would ever need.

A slightly more serious Skara head cannon I have is that she left Boscha because Skara wanted to apologize to Willow, and Boscha not only refused to join her but outright mocked her for it, leading Skara to go do it herself. She never spoke to Boscha after that day unless she had to.

Willow has a lovely singing voice and sings to her plants when she waters them. It’s part of why Skara fell so hard for her. She hears it one while walking past the Plant Track room and thought to herself ‘Wow I really am a chaotic bisexual gremlin.’

3. Obscure headcanon

Skara is a great chef. She loves to cook and bakes for her friends all the time. I have no evidence for this other than the fact I think it sounds adorable.

Willow didn’t go to H.A.S. in the first season only because she would go straight home to work out most of the time. In reality she loved learning about humans, even if she had more of an understanding then Gus that most Witch information was probably a stretch.

4. Favorite line

“Good game Willow.”-Skara, in her one positive interaction with Willow in Wing it.

“I’m a sneaky sneakster.”-Willow’s most adorable line, from Hooty’s Moving Hassle.

“Not if I don’t look down.”-Willow, casually dropping the funniest line in the entire first season during Escape of the Palismen.

5. Best personality trait

For Skara it’s her ability to accept responsibility and grow from her mistakes. It’s a difficult thing to do, to admit you were wrong for so long. It’s not something that came naturally to her either: she had to work hard at it, and it was a painful process. But Skara did, and now she’s a teacher cause she wants to help other kids avoid her mistakes while learning the same lessons.

For Willow, it’s her kindness and unwavering defense of her friends. She’s always looking out for everyone, always doing whatever it takes to make sure they’re safe and cared about and know that. It’s a trait she always had, but it grew over time as she matured into a true blue protector.

6. Worst personality trait

For Skara, it’s her guilt. Her self reflection has sadly burdened her with a deep sense of shame for her bullying, and while she never bullied anyone after she leaves Boscha, she still hates herself sometimes for how she used to be, something that causes her to become more reserved and isolated. Willow can tell when she gets like this though, and always tries to remind her that her past is in the past, and she’s moved on to become a better person.

For Willow, it’s her inability to regulate her own needs. She gets better at it with time, but even after Future she still can’t always take time to just think of her own feelings. She’ll push herself till breaking point until one of her friends reminds her it’s ok to care about herself for a bit.

7. Age/height/weight headcanon

Sometimes I see a bunch of Willow art I wonder if it’s a headcannon that she was ever chubbier than Amity or Luz, given how often people seem to make her just as skinny…

Skara is the taller of the two, even if most of that extra height is her hair, something she’ll playfully tease Willow about from time to time. Thankfully Willow has the advantage of being less of a full blown simp, so she can easily pull Skara down to her height for a kiss.

8. Unpopular opinion about them

Skara was never as big a bully as Boscha. She was A bully, and I don’t want to deny that, but I think it’s canonically wrong when people make her to be as bad as Boscha. It was clear throughout that she could tell when Boscha was going too far, and there’s a few moments where she seems even scared of Boscha, like when they run into her during the King segment in Swap or when Boscha’s about to burn Luz alive in Wing It.Most likely, Amity bullied Willow because she felt she had to, and Boscha bullied her because Amity did, and later because she felt Willow stole Amity from her, while Skara, Cat, and Amelia probably just stuck to the sidelines because they wanted to be accepted by the others. Again, it isn’t cool, and I know that Skara feels like garbage for how she acted to this day, but please don’t act like Skara was as big a bully as Boscha.

Everyone used to act like Gus was the character who deserved more respect from the show, deserved more story’s, but really, it was Willow who got shafted in the end. Gus has 3 unquestioned spotlight episodes (Something Ventured, Looking Glass, and Labyrinth Runners), he drives two subplots (Understanding Willow and Grom), and eventually even steals Willow’s bits, like her glowing eyes (I know Dana said it’s a thing all Witches can do under intense emotion but that’s a retcon and we all know it). In contrast, Willow seems like she has more, but she honestly kinda doesn’t. Sure, there’s Teenage Abomination and Hooty’s Moving Hassle which are good and perfectly Willow centric, but then things get a lot fuzzier. Understanding Willow would be better named Understanding Willow’s Relationship with Amity Primarily through Amity’s Lens, Wing It is solid but mostly used to drive Lumity, her only real moments in season 2A were getting Clover in Hunting Palisman and having all her bones broken in Looking Glass, Any Sport PRETENDS to be about Willow, but in the end is more about Hunter then any other of his team up episodes, to the point the second half spends most of its time making Willow weak and self loathing JUST SO HUNTER COULD LOOK LIKE A HERO, her subplot in Labyrinth feels a lot worse when you remember that Any Sport actually proves that Amity was completely right to think Willow couldn’t fight the Emperors Coven (also Willow shows more anger towards Amity here then she ever did to Hunter which is cool, totally fine, not aneurism causing at all), and honestly, as nice as it was to see Willow have a bit of an emotional arc in Future, it was more a way to get Hunter a girlfriend then anything (also the fact it’s pretty much a complete ripoff of Luz’s own arc in Reaching Out). In less words and as less of a ramble, Willow may technically have more stuff then Gus, but honestly, Gus stories are actually about Gus, while Willow stories are almost exclusively used for other people’s development, whether it be Amity’s, Lumity, or *sigh* Hunter’s. And I wanted her to be more than that.

Also, Willow can be angry. Like, really, genuinely, righteously angry. She’s a someone who spent her whole childhood being bullied by her former bestie and unironically was willing to BURN HER MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS ALIVE TO DESTROY SAID FORMER BESTIE (technically that was Inner Willow but still). It seems like people kinda just forget that though. Hell, the show seems to, what with stuff like her, like I said, getting more mad at Amity in Labyrinth then Hunter in Any Sport.

(Also Skarlow is better than Huntlow but you can read my blog to see that so.)

9. Scene that first made me love (or hate) the character

For Skara, it was probably her at Grom. It’s such a hilarious bit, her going from a swooning teenage girl on a date to Magic Prom to her just getting so damn into the fight. That tux looks expensive and she rips it off of her like it’s nothing in a fit of bloodlust. And there’s just something so endearing about her Grom photos too. I love (most) of her earlier stuff too of course but Grom to me is the peak of Skara.

For Willow, I don’t know the exact moment, but it was probably somewhere early on, almost certainly around seeing her go from green eyed at Amity’s bullying to apologizing and rushing to help Luz from her plants. I love characters who are both adorable and badass and I think that’s what Willow, at her best, is.

10. Best moment on screen (or in the book)

Skara’s best moment would been her redemption arc if she had one, but otherwise I’d say, again, it’s Grom. Just, *chefs kiss* The best.

Willow has a lot of actually good moments, and I originally answered this question a while ago with her during Understanding, but thinking more on it, I think the best moment for Willow is really her and Amity in Follies. It’s an incredibly minor moment, something you’d be forgiven for forgetting happens if you haven’t seen it in a while, but looking back it’s all of Willow’s best traits in one scene: Her ability to go from intimidating to adorable in a matter of seconds, her emotional maturity in helping Amity with her problems (even if that bits offscreen for shock purposes), actually confirming she works out in the show instead of just saying it in an AMA, her complicated feelings about Amity… there’s like, so much in this one scene that embodies why Willow Park is amazing and deserves all the love.

This… took longer to write then I thought and was a lot more rambly then I expected. Still, hope you enjoyed, and I’ll try to do the next 10 questions sometime soon.

#the owl house #skarlow #willow park #skara #headcannon #toh skara #toh #character asks

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shadexfeather · 1 year ago

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The Doodoos: Personality and a little Backstory.

( They are not blood related, just grew up together and learned to love each other like sisters.) First Sister

MERCEDES :

Very analytical. Feels she has to keep calm and under control for her sisters. Very much like Bela, but Mercedes practically raised the other two. She knows when to turn on the mom voice. She enjoys peace and quiet, but usually if it’s too quiet she worries what her sisters are doing. Smokes and drinks… I think Lady D and her would get along. Or at least understand each other.

Parents passed due to an incident while traveling. They barely paid her any attention, which plays a heavy part in caring and raising her sisters, the way she wanted her parents to. Before they died she was a prodigy as a violinist. She came from a wealthy family and hates that she and her sisters don’t live in luxury. So she works tooth and nail to educate herself and the other two to rely on each other and gain wealth.

She had to do… odd jobs and even ones with… explicit labor in the beginning. She carries no shame or regret when her fruits of her labor allow her to give her sisters a chance to have a decent life.

When she can, Mercedes will shift and hunt. The hunt allows her to let out steam and eat men. Like scratching an itch, she had the easiest time-even welcomed the change she and her sisters under went.

She’s very possessive of her violin and specimens, particularly a petrified baby goblin shark. If she catch her sisters in her room, lord only knows what will happen.

She can’t STAND Cassandra, the middle Dimitrescu is worst then both her sisters combined. Really she’s just jealous how Cassandra has so much freedom to be her murderous self, something Mercedes feels she cannot be. So to get back at her, she flirts to throw the huntress outta whack.

Cassandra: I. Hate. You!

Mercedes: You want to kiss me so bad, it’s rather sad~

Cassandra: I WILL HANG YOU BY YOUR ENTRAILS FROM THE CHANDELIER YOU BIT-!!!

Little did she knows, Cassandra starts to flirt back… in her own way.

Mercedes: WHY DO I HAVE A TWO HEADED RAT IN MY ROOM!?!

Cassandra: I saw it and thought of you~

Mercedes: WHAT!?!

And done. The Nadia will be explained next.

#resident evil village #lady dimitrescu #bela dimitrescu #cassandra dimitrescu #resident evil 8

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sinceileftyoublog · 1 year ago

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Home Is Where Interview: We’re Already Here

Photo by Texas Smith

BY JORDAN MAINZER

“It’s a whale.” That’s how Home Is Where vocalist Brandon MacDonald answered to me, over email, my question, “What’s the story behind the cover art?” referring to the front of their incredible sophomore record the whaler (Wax Bodega). On the surface, given the amount of energy she poured into writing and recording the record--along with performing the songs on a nightly basis--I don’t blame her for the brevity. Dig deeper, and the whaler is riddled with simple verses, or at least direct statements chiding life’s paradoxes. They come sandwiched between comparatively complex verses likening the world to a self-eating organism, an animal or a human devouring its own entrails in an act of desperation. In its 35-minute runtime, the whaler journeys through cultural and sociopolitical history, from 9/11 to the death of Dale Earnhardt (Florida’s 9/11, as MacDonald says). It’s an emo concept record whose concept isn’t that far-fetched: We live in a world where we’re getting used to every day life getting more horrifying.

You can understand why the whaler is a mere reflection of real life for the Palm Coast, Florida quartet. It’s been an emotionally trying few years for MacDonald, who suffered a nervous breakdown in 2021. As the band released their debut album i became birds to critical acclaim, rendering them the unofficial ambassadors of fifth-wave emo, MacDonald transitioned. But as a result of horrific anti-trans legislation passed earlier this year in Florida, both she and guitarist Tilley Komorny, also trans, left the home state they loved in order to protect themselves. With this added context, the emotional outpour of the whaler becomes all the more powerful. MacDonald describes it on opener “skin meadow” as “spilling guts to the gutless;” “Forgive me for giving a shit!” she barks, on a song that contrasts Komorny’s gorgeous, twinkling Midwest emo guitar arpeggios with warbling singing saw, horns, and gang vocals scream-chanting the title. In general, the instrumentation and composition on the whaler thrillingly wavers between emo/hardcore and Americana, sometimes within the same song, emphasizing the band’s influences, and something that’s actually a positive cultural output from this godforsaken country.

The narrator on the whaler--whether that’s MacDonald herself, a character, or a collection of characters--concerns themselves with how we interact with both other individuals and society as a whole. On “lily pad pupils”, the titular whaler kills whales because, simply, it’s what they do. “I am the whaler,” MacDonald repeats as if to give the narrator’s life meaning, over Komorny’s banjo and Dan Pot’s pedal steel. A hangman brings flowers to an execution. Everyone is trying to extract beauty from an ugly situation. On the flipside, the loveless couple at the altar on “yes! yes! a thousand times yes!” are lying to themselves and each other, faking normalcy, getting eaten up by mosquitos as the song transforms from disco beat to hardcore blast, their camouflage wearing off. “9/12″ consists of twinkly piano, a sample of children speaking, and a single line: “And on September 12th, 2001, everyone went back to work.” It recalls the oft-memed picture of George W. Bush reading to a classroom, dumbfounded as he’s being told that planes have crashed into the Twin Towers. Everyone’s numb, and nobody knows how to react or move on. On a smaller scale, the twangy “daytona 500″ illustrates the cyclical aftermath of localized death: “Animal control came to collect last night’s roadkill form the roadside / Where fathers of drunk drivers plant a cross / For their loss when the wreck is hauled off,” MacDonald sings. Her sneer, knotty delivery, and imagery all recall Jeff Mangum, an admitted influence, from fever dreams of fluids and loose teeth to “lips knitted kissin' like pigeons shittin' on windshields.”

If there’s a line on the whaler that acts as the album’s thesis statement, it’s on “whaling for sport”. MacDonald knocks down the idea of a traditional higher being when she sings, “An all-knowing God doesn’t know what it’s like / To not know anything at all.” Twenty three years ago, Isaac Brock sang, “The universe is shaped exactly like the Earth / If you go straight long enough, you’ll end up where you were,” and MacDonald’s pearls of wisdom recall a similar idea. The folks uniquely positioned to comment on our hell-scape are not the usual talking heads--they’re the ones who on “chris farley” watch as a garden grows over a buried body, who on “floral organs” are “spitting teeth into each other's mouths back and forth until we make a smile.” The wheels of their racecars spin and spin, until they lurch into forward motion, even if they crash. the whaler ends on a tape loop, the same as the start of “skin meadow”. We wake up and do it all over again.

In the middle of their tour, MacDonald was nice enough to answer a few questions over email about the whaler, her writing style and mindset, and playing live. Read our exchange below, edited for length and clarity.

Photo credit: Texas Smith (Prairie Creek Productions)

Since I Left You: the whaler imagines a world where every day is 9/11 and we've become numb to tragedy. How close do you think we are to that world in reality?

Brandon MacDonald: Reality is subjective and easily manipulated. I wouldn't recognize it if you pointed it out. We’re already here. We've been here for a long time.

SILY: As sad as it is, some folks become numb to tragedy as a means of self-protection. Would you say that's the case for any of the characters on the record?

BM: I don't see it as self protection, I just see it as what happens after being inflicted with endless tragedy. The characters on the record are all different people, and at the same time, the same person. I don't feel protected by the numbness, just bored and afraid.

SILY: There's some tongue-in-cheek humor on the record, from Florida lore to a song named after Chris Farley. How important is humor to you as a coping mechanism, writing strategy, or both?

BM: My grandmother always says after something rough happens that, “If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry.” That's where some of the funny comes from. It’s hysterical and unnerving.

SILY: Despite the song "9/12", you've posited that 9/11 was the true turning point in our history, a before-and-after type event. Do you feel that way about any other world events or eras, even if not quite as impactful?

BM: When Dale Earnhardt died. That was Florida's 9/11. Praise Dale.

SILY: Were there any newfound musical influences on the record?

BM: Not really. We just stuck to what we like. Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, Joan Of Arc, Hank Williams. things like that.

SILY: Do you pay attention to reviews of your music or what the general public says about it? Has your relationship to the record changed at all since it's come out?

BM: I see some--I don't really think about it too much. The record is complicated for me because the writing happened during a really dark period, but recording it and touring on it has been the most fun I've had. I like that some folks like it.

SILY: The record has such a wide array of instruments on it. How do you adapt these songs to a live performance?

BM: We have very different approaches to playing them live than in the studio. I want the songs live to be intimate and fun. In the studio, I can't help but want to add layers and mess around. Some of the more dense songs are strange to play at first, but folks don’t seem to mind the absence of certain instruments. Maybe we don’t need them at all?

SILY: You recently shared a tribute compilation for I Became Birds. Even if not part of the same "scene," how would you describe the kinship you feel with the bands that were included on there?

BM: I don't really know what the scene is. I just have some friends, and they make good music. I admire all the acts on the comp. We all owe a lot to Heccra for what all of us are doing with music, whether we know it or not. He's the first.

SILY: What's next for Home Is Where?

BM: LP3. DVD copy of Barnyard.

Home Is Where tour dates:

7/13/2023 Nashville, TN Drkmttr 7/14/2023 Atlanta, GA The Masquerade 7/15/2023 Orlando, FL Wills Pub 9/13/2023 Phoenix, AZ The Rebel Lounge 9/14/2023 Santa Ana, CA Constellation Room 9/15/2023 Los Angeles, CA Knitting Factory NoHo 9/16/2023 Berkeley, CA 924 Gilman 9/19/2023 Portland, OR Holocene 9/20/2023 Seattle, WA El Corazón 9/22/2023 Salt Lake City, UT The Beehive 9/23/2023 Colorado Springs, CO Vultures

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missxnsuppxrt · 2 years ago

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“Because you’re my friend!” she snapped back, just as hotly. She didn’t understand why he didn’t understand that she was trying to help. She was angry that he was just dismissing her own feelings like they didn’t matter. And maybe they didn’t to him. She had hoped the case would be different but…even if he hated her after this, she wouldn’t give up on him. Everyone else might have, but everyone else hadn’t been abandoned in an orphanage as a child. No one else understood that feeling of abandonment and anguish. She refused to let anyone she knew feel that. Even if they fought her tooth and nail. No one deserved that. No one was going to feel abandoned and alone on her watch.

“You’re my friend and I care about you, damnit!” she wiped violently at her face as she felt frustrated tears forming. She would not cry right now. She needed to be strong. “You think I don’t know how you feel?! I’ve spent my life trying to do the same thing! You know how many people I’ve had to bury because of this shit?! You think I don’t feel like it's hopeless?!”

She did, oftentimes. She never showed it. She had to put on a brave face for everyone. Had to be strong for the people who depended on her. She had a file cabinet–a large one–filled with the files of agents that died. It was filling more and more every year, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t stop the death. She couldn’t reach through her comm piece or the body camera and help them. No, she just had to watch as they faced those horrors on their own and do her best to help them in whatever way she could. God, the number of times she had to listen and watch people die. Listen to people choking on their own blood while she told them it was going to be okay. See people blown to pieces. Listen as people drowned or were eaten alive. Seeing their entrails being torn out while they screamed for their mothers. She clenched her jaw and slammed her eyes shut. Not now. Deal with it later. She had to help Leon. That was more important.

“You are important to me, Leon. I would miss you, if you died. I want you to live. Not for me, but because you want to. This isn’t all there is to life; there are good things out there. I want you to be able to realize that. I don’t want you to give up, okay? That’s why I’m here. Because I’m scared for you, and I don’t want you to be alone. I…I know what that’s like. Being all alone. Feeling like no one loves you and you’d be better off dead. So I’m sticking with you. You’ll have to shoot me to make me stop.”

Thread Relocation for new editor || @missxnsuppxrt || (Link is gone but its okay bc we know where we are)

☣ - Hunnigan

Just like Leon, Ingrid had been at this for a very long time. Most of her life had been dedicated to the FOS by this point, and in her time there, she had seen horrible things. Seen people eaten by T-virus zombies, watched as G-virus monsters crushed the skulls of former friends, had to listen to someone beg her to tell their family they loved them as they succumbed to death. She had seen things just as bad off duty; seen agents die at their own hand, victims of the job. Watched as other FOS agents broke down and had to stop working to salvage their own mental wellbeing. But she had stayed. Not because she believed in the work, not anymore. She stopped believing in that long ago. She did it because she cared about the agents who had trusted her with their lives constantly. Leon was one of those people she cared about, and she would continue to care whether he was on the job or not. It wasn’t conditional.

“You went AWOL, Leon,” she snapped. “Not a letter or a text or a phone call. Do you have any idea what that looked like?” she asked, her chest tightening with emotion. “People in the office kept thinking you had gone and eaten a bullet! Do you know what that’s like?! Do you know how many times I tried to get a hold of you? How many nights I spent trying to track your movements just to find out if you were still breathing?! The only reason I knew you were alive was because of New York.“

The minute he started walking off, she raced ahead of him. Wheels were faster than feet unless he tried to outright run from her. She swerved in front of him with her wheelchair and stopped in his path, glaring up at him. Others might have been intimidated by the much larger man who had killed people before glaring down at them, but she’d known Leon since the beginning. His scowl had little effect on her anymore. “You don’t act like an adult! I’m trying to help you and make sure you stay alive! I don’t care if you want to go to a bar, a restaurant or a strip club. I’ll take you, but I’m not leaving you alone. Not this time. I did that once, and you disappeared off the face of the earth. I mean it, Leon. We aren’t doing this again.”

As the disgruntled agent speed walked past the woman, Leon thought that his walking away would be the end of the discussion, unfortunately for him, he was very wrong in that assumption, Hunnigan was much too persistent, she didn't let him pass her, instead, she quickly wheeled herself in front of him and prompted blocked his path forcing him to stop in his tracks and once again face her as she didn't really waste time getting right back to the conversation continuing to berate him again. At this point, Leon was livid, why the hell wouldn't she just leave him alone?

Leon went radio silent on purpose in order to willingly distance himself from everyone, and everyone else seemed to get the message that he wanted to be left alone, or at least he assumed so since no one from his circle of friends had not texted him or attempted to contact him once -- everyone except Ingrid Hunnigan of course. This whole argument was completely stupid and pointless, he didn't want to keep wasting his time, much to his dismay, she was making that very difficult for him, his irritation only grew the more they talked about this, with the woman dragging out the topic even more when Leon very clearly wanted nothing to do with this conversation.

If everyone else could take the hint, why couldn't Hunnigan? Why couldn't she just give him space? There was a reason for his decision to disassociate in the first place. She had no idea what he was going through, she didn't know how difficult things had become for him ever since that mission in Washington.

Without even being aware of it, Leon's mental state was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode under the pressure he'd felt after all these years of fighting a losing battle -- a war that would never end, and something he just didn't want to be a part of anymore.

All the people he lost, all the things horrible things he'd seen, chaotic situations he would always face, it was like his career would follow him right to his grave, and quite frankly, he was just so very tired of everything, so tired of living like this. After his many decades of this meaningless fight, everything he had experienced, were finally catching up to him and it threated to overwhelm him.

There had been several days, where he honestly wished he wouldn't wake up and would pass away in his sleep, sadly, he kept waking up, living the same poor excuse of a life he had stuck on repeat -- there was no silver-lining for him, no sense of relief, or happiness, just pure misery, and the continued persistence from Hunnigan, wasn't helping and with her forcing him to be escorted by her and refusal to leave him alone, finally caused his temper to reach a tipping point, he couldn't hold it back anymore. Feeling his chest tighten and his muscles tense up, he fires away with his words.

[{ ☣ }] - "Why the hell does it matter if I live or die, huh?! This world doesn't have a single goddamn thing left for me!" He angrily snaps back, pausing for a brief second before he goes on with his banter.

[{ ☣ }] - "You stop one virus, and it only just paves the way for another psychopath to either create their own virus, or enhance an already existing one. I wasted half my fucking life dedicating it to my career, and all for what? For fuck all!"

He ragefully exclaimed, huffing a bit after negatively lamenting on everything he had witnessed, everything he'd done and how it slowly began to warp his mind -- even the strongest willed person wouldn't be able to handle what he had been going through. After he caught his breath following his short outburst. He spoke again, his volume a bit more lower this time , confrontational undertones still prevalent in his voice as a particular woman in red would next come to mind, only adding to his heavy levels of stress.

[{ ☣ }] - "Why do you care anyway huh?! I'm not even an active agent anymore, so we technically don't even need to talk anymore. No one else gives a shit if I'm living or breathing, so why the hell should you?"

#chxckandmxte #ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ listen to me carefully (ic)#ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ responsible for so many lives to the detriment of my own (main!verse)#suicide mention tw #depression tw #description of death tw

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