#Of course I'm always up for someone closer to the culture to have their own say in how a mummy movie should be made.

[hasellia]

You know what, screw it! I’ll make my OWN Universal Studios shared cinematic monsterverse! Starting with the Mummy!

The Mummy; Fractured language

The movie begins with an antique dealer breaking artifacts, in order to sell the individual fragments for a higher profit. This accidently completes the rivival ritual that awakens Imhotep. The mummy then goes on a museum looting spree and killing several people. A French private collector and a totallynotatalltory minister meet in London and decide to form a small syndicate to find the one looting the artefacts and stop them. A cat and mouse chase is on between Imhotep and the syndicate as they rob and destroy artefacts in museums around world. Imhotep burning/breaking them to enact his revival rituals and the adventurers blowing them up to stop him. Imhotep realizes things are getting heated and decides to switch priorities to revive Anck su namun.

Through the film it is revealed that Imhotep was actually a priest from Ancient Nubia(?) 3,000 years ago (where modern-day Sudan is). He was exiled and died wondering the egyptian desert. 1,500 years later he is reawakened when someone accidently knocked over a pot in a museum within ancient Egypt, completing the revival ritual. Lost, he assumes the identity of a Medjay before rising through the ranks as a priest. (Note, Imhotep doesn’t introduce any ancient knowledge into Egypt, just saying “there are impressive things you can do and there are impressive things I can do”). He catches the eye on princess Anck su namun and the two agree on a mutual partnership on political grounds. This partnership evolves into a romance. Anck su namun is set to the bare the pharaohs child, who Imhotep raises as his own son. One day Anck su namun is assassinated. Hearing what happened, Imhotep attempts to flee with his son before his son is murdered too. Imhotep enacts an ambiguous revenge on the dynasty before leaving Egypt. Imhotep wonders east for the next several hundred years, reaching India before deciding to turn back to try to revive his wife and child. He finds that he cannot do it and falls into a depression. He decides to fall into a long slumber, unknowing if he’ll be awakened.

In the modern day, Imhotep is successful in reviving Anck su namun and informs her their son died shortly after her. They decide to do what they can to finish the ritual for their son, killing most of the adventurers along the way. Eventually the chase ends in the Athens Museum with the sole surviving Londoner adventurer holding the last artefact that could revive the Egyptian couple’s son. Anck su namun races towards the adventurer to try save their son, but after all the rampage he’s done Imhotep is frozen in fear. He turns on an intercom, gets on his knees and begs the adventurer to just let them revive their son and be happy. The adventurer decides to ignore it and blows up the artefact. It is quiet afterwards for a few seconds, before the adventurer hears Imhotep’s wails. It then dawns on him just what he’s done and what this actually meant to the mummy couple. Anck su namun catches up to the adventurer and rather than kill the adventurer decides to enact one of the few curses she knows. Voicing her title as the last true heir to Egypt she declares her royal punishment on the adventurer as to listen to her husband’s wails whenever the adventurer is just about to fall asleep and in his dreams. The movie ends with Imhotep and Anck su namun watching a sunset over Athens, wondering what their future is going to be.

The Mummies and the child of the night

The sequel is a wacky family adventure film. The mummy couple discover and adopt a runaway teenage Wolf Girl. She ran away because after being accepting of her sexual identity the wolf girl thought it would be safe to reveal her wolf lnature to her bio family. It wasn’t and now she is being chased across Europe by Dracula who claims she is his daughter as “a child of the night”. Hijinks ensues as the mummy family try to get Dracula of their arses. At one point Imhotep revies a holy cat, Nedjtet, who warns and wards off Dracula with other evil spirits. Nedjtet cannot speak but the wolf girl and Imhotep can understant them. There is a running gag where Imhoptep and the wolf girl fawn over Nedjtet whilst Anck su namun is pissed that Imhotep revived this specific cat because it ate their son’s favourite pet goose. At one point Imhotep shouts “fuck” in ancient Egyptian. Towards the end of the movie, Dracula’s unholy army and the mummy couple’s technically holy army fight each other. Anck su namun hears from Dracula’s unholy army that he’s a shit leader and as Pharaoh she lectures Dracula on effective leadership. Eventually the wolf girl calls off the fight, saying she will visit all her families on her own terms. The movie ends with the mummy couple vacationing in Mauritius when the wolf girl knocks on their door. Revealing her bio family is now accepting of her wolf nature, but after spending some quality time with him, she actually does fucking hate Dracula. There is another knock at the door. Imhotep opens the door to face Dracula’s unholy army with cats in baby pouches strapped to their chest. Anck su namun says in ancient Egyptian something to effect of “Oh fuck not again”.

The post credit scene is of the mummy couple with the wolf girl finally relaxing in the sun on the beach. Imhotep says something to the effect of, “When we’re happy like this, I wonder where all our troubles fly off too?” Anck su namun responds with "Oh I know", before the movie cuts the sole survivor of the first movie sitting quietly in a therapist office.

[xhoneygirlxx]

More Than Just A Dream

best friend! Eddie Munson x fem reader

summary: Eddie can't understand why you would ever ask him a question like that.

warnings: set in modern times, mentions of cellphones and current pop culture references. swearing, insecurity issues, fluff, slight angst, Eddie being down bad for reader. friends to lovers. bad writing and grammar mistakes. not proofread bc a girl is tired. 18+ Minors please go away.

a/n: being someone who was constantly over looked, only ever being the girl that people were nice to so they could get close to my friends, i really wish i had someone who loved me. now in my twenties, i see all my friends in relationships, getting married, and having the life i want. basically i'm in my feels tonight and i'm going to pretend that i have my own personal Eddie.

You and Eddie were hanging out in his room, you mindlessly scrolling on your phone while he plucked mindlessly at his guitar, contently sitting on his bed. This wasn't uncommon for the two of you, always finding comfort in just being around one another, never caring what it was that you were doing.

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

When the question leaves your lips, Eddie is instantly confused, stopping his fingers movements on the strings he had been messing around with. Your face stayed stoic as you continued to scroll on your screen, almost like you didn't realize you said anything at all. It also confused him because it shouldn't even be a question at all.

Instead of saying the obvious answer, he did the worst thing possible, he laughs. His laughter isn't at you, it's at the stupidity of the question. Of course you're pretty, he thinks you're the most beautiful girl to ever walk the face of the planet.

You don't take his laughter to be kind, your face showing it when your lips drop down in a deep frown.

"You could've just said no, Eddie. Didn't really need you to laugh at me." Your tone is annoyed with a hint of sadness. Eddie wants to smack himself in the head, especially when he made you upset.

Quickly setting his guitar down beside the bed, Eddie's quick to lean up from where he had been sat up by the headboard of his bed, moving so now he's closer to your body that's sat opposite of his at the end.

"Honey I wasn't laughing at you, I was laughing at the question," his ringed hands move to cradle your cheeks, forcing you to look up at him, "Of course I think you're pretty. May I ask why you asked me that question?"

Although his tone is gentle, you shy away from his gaze, looking down at your phone that's still in the palm of your hand. He can see the gears turning in your head, the lie that you're trying to come up with to save yourself from whatever it is that is going on.

Shrugging your shoulders, you continue to look down at your hands, now playing with a loose string on your sweatpants.

"Baby," he coos and you melt in his hands that still hold onto the fat of your cheeks, "can you look at me?"

When you finally find the courage to look up at him, he can see the unushered tears in your eyes, the doubt that hides in your mind. Maybe it's not the best time to think this but he can't help but think how gorgeous you are, how lucky he is to be this close to see the different flecks of colors in your eyes.

"That's my girl, there she is. Now can you answer my question, love? What's goin' on in that pretty head of yours?" He moves his hands to push back your hair behind your ears, only to return one his hands to your cheek where he softly stroked it.

"I-um, I just," you let out a loud sigh, obviously overwhelmed with the emotions that are going on in your body. Eddie nods his head, a silent encouragement to continue.

"I just wanna be pretty, ya know? I just wanna be the girl that everyone falls in love with. I know it's unrealistic but I- I see all these girls on Instagram and the way that people comment all these wonderful things, and I just- I just want that so badly. These girls are so pretty and their bodies are so nice, and then there's me."

Eddie can't wrap his mind around what you just said to him. He can't fathom the idea that you can't see what he sees. He also can't help feel this incredibly disgusted with the way social media can warp a persons brain.

The rage in his body has started a wildfire, not with you but with society's expectations. He knows that you follow some of the famous socialites, having watched a few episodes of the Kardashians with you from time to time, and how you always comment about how you wished you looked like them.

There's been so many times he's heard the small insults you say about yourself, he hates that you try to play it off like a joke when deep down you're saying how you really feel.

When he wipes the tears that have since fallen from your eyes, he fights the urge to tell you everything he's been dying to tell you since the two of you became friends.

You're the girl of his dreams, the one that he wants to call his and show off to everyone to make them jealous. Every part of you is beautiful. He has dedicated the feel of your skin on his own so that when it's gone he can still feel it.

Every dip, curve, scar, and inch of your body that he has access to seeing is burned into his memory. You look like his favorite song, so perfect that it fills his heart with joy every time he sets his eyes on you.

"I wish you could see what I see." That's all that he can say, the only thing he can say without putting his friendship with you in jeopardy.

"What do you see?" Your eyebrows pull together and you look up at him with those big pretty eyes.

"Well if I'm being honest, you're the prettiest girl I've ever seen." You go to say something and he cuts you off. "Shh, let me say this. There is not one person on this earth that I think could hold a candle to you. Baby, you are so breathtaking that it hurts for me to even look at you."

"I know that the poets would just eat you up, writing line after line about you. Anyone would be lucky to love you honey, seriously you are out of everyone's league. There is not a doubt in my mind that you're gonna find someone who doesn't feel the same way, and if they don't I got a knuckle sammich comin' their way."

To emphasis his point, Eddie brings his knuckles to his fists as if he's reading for a fight. When you laugh he can't help but smile, feeling the butterflies in his stomach fly around with glee.

"Thank you Eds," wrapping your body around his middle in a tight hug, he enjoys the feeling of your warmth on his skin. Selfishly he kisses the top of your head that rests on his chest.

"No need to thank me, sweetheart. Any time you need me too I will gladly remind my girl just how beautiful she is."

Pulling away from him quicker than he likes, you crane your neck slightly to look at him. Your face is shining with the sticky tears that had fallen onto your cheeks, lips red and slightly swollen from the way you bit them, and all Eddie wants to do is take a picture.

"Do you wanna know what I think?" A sly smirk falls on your lips, a playful glint in your eye, and it makes him nervous.

"What's that?" His tone is light and playful, just like yours.

"I think that I wouldn't want just someone." You say while lightly tracing over the letters on Eddie's shirt. Looking down at you with raised eyebrows, he's sure his face is beat red.

"No?" It comes out like a whisper, so soft you almost miss it. When you shake your head, Eddie tilts his, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

"Then who do you want?"

"I want the boy who think's poets would right write line after line about me."

Pointing a finger to his chest, he mouths the words 'me?', still reeling with everything that just happened. Biting your lip to suppress the smile fighting its way on your face, you nod in agreement.

Finally when everything catches up to him, he reaches for your ribs, slightly pulling you over to lay next to him. Mounting himself on top of you, he can't help leave tiny kisses on your face, like an excited puppy who's waited all day for it's owners return.

"I've *kiss* have *kiss* been waiting *kiss* for you to *kiss* say that *kiss*" When he's finally done setting kisses on every square inch of your face, he sits up slightly to get a good look at the pretty girl underneath him.

"Well I've been waiting even longer, Mr. Eddie Munson."

"Well wait no further, baby. You're stuck with me forever."

Eddie goes back to attacking you with wet kisses, like if he stops he'll never be able to do it again. You return the favor by placing a delicate kiss on his lips.

All Eddie can hope is that this wasn't a dream because he's not sure how he'd be able to handle it.

----------

this is booty cheeks but im sad so let me have this lmao. also thank you for reading <3

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/768731859531235328/im-a-cis-woman-who-sometimes-likes-to-roleplay-as?source=share

yeah, anon, along with people pointing out that drag is a thing that exists and most drag queens/kings identify as cis outside of that performance (though plenty don't), there's also all kinds of sexual roleplay that doesn't involve wanting to be that thing 24/7. lots of people love to play "doctor" who have no desire to actually go to medical school and become real doctors, because the sexy version is fundamentally different from the non-sexy one. why would playing with gender be any different from that? of course it's true that some people do try those things on as kinks and then it awakens something in them - in the same way that most of us who are into anime knew a "guy" who really liked crossdressing cosplay and would always jump at the chance to do it, and now that person is, well, no longer a guy. sometimes it can be a way to try on an identity that you are considering but not yet sure about. likewise, there are more than a few drag queens who end up realizing that they are trans women down the line. but many more who don't! anyway, my point was that i went through this journey. i used to have a lot of fantasies about having sex as a man specifically, with both men and women - and i played with the idea that i might be trans or genderfluid. but for me, i realized that a lot of the appeal of it was that it was temporary, something i could turn on and off at will (and not just in the sense of gender-expression, but like a complete physical transformation). i wasn't interested in being a man if it meant i stayed a man. i still wanted to be a woman most of the time. (also, i identified as bisexual at the time and these fantasies largely went away around when i realized i was actually a lesbian. i'm not sure what exactly that says, maybe that it was more rooted in anxiety around women's expected "role" in sex than it was about actually wanting to be a man? maybe that the idea of being with a man was more appealing if it was gay, closer to the thing i really wanted? who knows) from when i've talked to trans people about this, a lot of them say it's easy for someone for whom the answer was "i'm trans" to in retrospect see signs everywhere - and therefore assume that the same signs mean the same to other people. and of course, they often feel like they lost years of their lives to an identity that didn't fit them - of course they want to save others from the same fate! but it's just that we all have a bias toward seeing the world through the lenses of our own experiences. that it meant one thing for them doesn't mean it means the same for you, especially in isolation. most cis people aren't totally wedded to everything about our genders, either, and a lot of us play around and experiment with gender in our own ways. (so basically, i see it as similar to those "comphet lesbian checklists" that were floating around tumblr a few years ago - yeah, a lot of those can be signs you might be a budding lesbian, but half the shit on that list is true for women who turn out to be completely heterosexual, too, a lot of it's just about the bullshit of female puberty) again, useful to think of it like anything else. religion is one that comes to mind: oftentimes, a strong hyperfixation on a particular religion or the culture surrounding it can be an early sign that you want to convert to that religion. lots of muslim converts, for instance, talk about being fixated on middle-eastern/north african culture or islamic history for years before they converted. but also, there are just as many if not more people where those hyperfixations turn out to be fleeting ones, or even where it remains a lifelong passion but is purely academic (you meet a lot of them in academia, naturally).

--

[thisgirlnamedblusy]

Hi! I enjoy suffering for a couple of minutes with your angst stories hahaha

It's a fact that Donna is a very cultured woman so how about a storie where she and reader are soon to be married and all that, but reader insecurities have been eating her alive cuz she doesn't feel intelligent enough next to Donna, like they don't share the same music taste, maybe reader enjoys pop and newer artists unlike Donna and she tries to suppress that. reader thinks donna will think less of her or something.

one day maybe one of donna's siblings makes fun of reader's lack of knowledge in the arts or something and that makes reader just snaps and cause a fight back at home and throwing the wedding ring to donna and telling her to find a wife worthy of someone smart like her. donna comforts reader telling her she only wants her, and already noticing that reader doesn't know the same things like her, tells her she knows about other stuff and has other talents making reader realize she is also smart, but with other stuff. fluff at the end of course, not all can't be angst 😅

Yesss!!! I don't know if I should feel flattered to know you suffered... (I'm just joking :P) Thank you for your support and for your request!!! I hope you like it and sorry about the language mistakes!!!! :))))

Not enough for you

Pairing: Donna Beneviento x Fem! Reader

Warnings: Angst, fluff, insecurities…

Word count: 7,155

Summary: You thought she was perfect, and you just were stupid....

N/A: Sorry about the language mistakes!!! Just a heads up: Everyone has their own talents, and I don't think someone is less smart or intelligent. All the people are genius in doing something, the thing is to find what, just remember that!!! Requests are open!!! I'm waiting yours :))) I love you all!!!

“Do you think it can be fixed? Maybe we should call the Duke and…” Donna commented as you crouched down, looking at the old record player.

“Mm, let me take a look,” you said, opening the closet doors and illuminating the intricacies of the device with a flashlight. “Yes, I know where the problem is, come.”

The lady in black nodded suspiciously, looking at the place you indicated while arching your eyebrows, satisfied.

“I don't see anything, tesoro,” she said, frowning.

“It's this piece here, it seems that time has passed too quickly for it,” you said amused, moving away from the closet and searching for something in a toolbox. “It just needs to be replaced.”

Donna nodded slowly as you searched for the desired item with a concentrated look.

“Aspetta, (Y/N), it might be dangerous,” the lady said, putting a hand on your shoulder before you started to dig around in the record player. “It might give you a cramp or…”

“Bah, calm down,” you sighed with a distorted voice, as you grabbed the flashlight with your teeth. “Mm, jusft, a bif, tighfer and… voilà,” you finally said, with a satisfied smile, standing up and brushing the dust off your dress.

“Is that it?” she asked, looking at the machine with curiosity. “That easy?”

“Look,” you said with a triumphant look, bringing the old piece closer to the lady. “Do you see this thing here? It seems that it was so worn out that it wasn't able to make the disc tray spin,” you explained, running your finger along the frayed piece. “I think that's why we always listened to the same 2 seconds over and over again.”

“Oh,” Donna sighed, making the same gesture and confirming your words. “It seems that nothing lasts forever”

“It will last, as long as I'm here,” you said arching your eyebrows and putting away the tools. “There is no device that can resist me.”

“I see,” the lady in black said, laughing amused and unexpectedly grabbing your waist while placing a soft kiss on your lips. “Thank you, Lady Beneviento.”

You blushed and gave a soft punch to her shoulder while you struggled amused against her kisses.

“Hey, you haven't stolen my last name yet, let me enjoy it while I can,” you joked, stealing another kiss from the lady. “There's still a month left,”

“I still can't believe you're going to be my wife...” Donna whispered, joining her forehead with yours while her hands caressed your cheeks. “Sometimes I think I'm dreaming and that one day I'll wake up... and you won't be here anymore...”

You opened your eyes and shook your head, lifting the lady's chin.

“Hey, Donna,” you said, getting her attention, taking her out of a brief sad moment, of painful memories. “This is better than any dream.”

She smiled, kissing you again and lifting you in the air, spinning you like one of her old records, creating tender laughter that bounced off the walls of the old mansion.

It had surely been a long time since that wallpaper and those wooden panels had witnessed the happiness of their owner.

“(Y/N)… my wife,” the lady murmured with a tender smile, brushing her nose against yours and making you blush again. “I never thought there would be someone like you in my life, someone to marry, to start a family with…”

“Wow, slow down, darling,” you said amused, pushing the doll maker away with a frown. “Don't go so fast, you are immortal, aren't you? We have enough time for that.”

“You're right, I'm sorry,” she said in a low voice, blinking to get out of her own fantasies. “Sometimes I get too excited.”

“It's okay, I like the way you are, Donna,” you responded to her apologies, stealing one last kiss and definitely moving away from her. Otherwise, you couldn't do it; you were terribly addicted to her kisses.

It was another day, another day that joined the countdown of the most important moment of your life.

In that sinister village, love was the last thing you could expect. Fidelity to the Gods, responsibilities to them and the Lords kept you, the poor villagers, from wishing or dreaming of a normal life.

But you always lived in your dreams, in the desire to change the destiny that had been programmed for you when you were born. You weren’t a fervent devotee like the rest of your friends, and to you, Mother Miranda, and her adopted children weren’t deities but obstacles to deal with.

You always tried to stay away from that fanaticism. You never wanted to follow the complacent and submissive flock. Surely you deserved to be punished for your lack of faith, but soon you learned that your different attitude wouldn’t give you problems, but quite the opposite.

When you met her, when Donna Beneviento, youngest Lord and a dark woman, crossed your path, you began to think that perhaps in some way they were Gods. You didn't think so because of her powers, her living doll, or her beauty, one that took you too long to discover.

The attraction you began to feel for her was very different from your previous love infatuations. Donna exerted an unknown, addictive and merciless influence on you, forcing you, shortly after kissing her lips for the first time, to fall madly in love with her.

Yes, it wasn’t easy to deal with a woman like her; a woman with complexes about her appearance, a sick woman who from a very early age had to see herself enveloped in the halo of darkness that the embrace of the Black Gods gave her without asking.

Difficulties, crises, jealousy, doubts… It was an odyssey worthy of telling in a boring romance book, but it was your odyssey, your adventure, the conquest of a wounded heart, of a lost soul that found its place with you.

After several years in the old mansion, of kisses, hugs, passion, laughter, tears… the lady in black couldn’t wait any longer to strengthen your commitment, to impatiently ask you that words stop being just that, and become an unbreakable union.

Fearing that your romance was only fleeting, full of doubts and insecurities, Donna took the next step to convince you and herself that you would never leave her, that there would be something, a ceremony that would say that indeed, your love was forever.

You couldn't say that you had no doubts about marriage, because that would be a lie. It seemed a little hasty to you despite those 4 wonderful years. Maybe it was because you never considered getting married as something truly important in a place like that.

But, above all, it was important to Donna, and that was all you needed when the lady knelt down and swore eternal love to you by showing you a shiny ring. You rambled for days about what your new status would be: wife of a Lord, consort Lord, wife of an immortal demigoddess...

All of that was just rambling, the product of the innocent doubts of a 21-year-old girl facing something as serious and adult as marriage. You stopped seeing it that way very soon after and you knew exactly what you would be: You would be Donna's wife, and that was more than enough; you would be just (Y/N) Beneviento.

“My love... Are you okay?” you asked carefully when you saw that the lady didn’t move from the spot, looking at the floor. “Honey, you are shaking...” you said worriedly as you took her hand.

“No, I'm not okay,” Donna murmured, blinking erratically, breathing the same way. “I-I got suddenly nervous...”

“Mm,” you murmured caressing her cheek, sad to see how the lady's madness always chose the worst moment to show itself. “Shh, calm down, honey... Oh, Donna, are you having another crisis?”

The lady only nodded, letting herself be comforted by your caresses.

“I-I need a moment,” she whispered with a broken voice, surely fighting against the demons in her mind. “I have to make them shut up…”

“I'll tell Angie to stay with you,” you whispered in a tender voice, enduring the excessively strong grip of her hand in yours. “I'm going to... I'm going to make you some tea.”

“N-No, io...” she stammered, shaking her head. “I'll go, (Y/N), I want to be alone... yes, I... I'll be right back.”

“Okay,” you sighed, nodding and being an expert in controlling those episodes, knowing what to do at every moment. “Okay, honey.”

Poor Donna. Fate had been terribly cruel to her, leaving the illness of her mind as the only memory of her family. It was terribly painful for her but for you, it was much worse.

Luckily, over time you learned to take care of her, to comfort her when the voices in her head whispered horrible things. For you, nothing was impossible with her, nothing would ever stop you from loving her.

“Perdonami, (Y/N)” Donna whispered, moving away from you and walking quickly towards the elevator hallway, letting a sob escape from her lips.

“Donna…” you sighed, feeling helpless for not being able to do anything else for her, resigning and letting yourself fall on the couch, looking for the book you used to read. “Well, I can only wait.”

The truth is that you were never bored during those waits or during Donna's work with her dolls. It was a big mansion, with many old devices to tinker with and an unfinished mountain of books to read.

Besides, you always had company, the Angie doll always ran away from her owner's fits of madness for fear of being deactivated. Well, that’s what she told you, you knew that in reality, even if she denied it, that irreverent doll enjoyed your company.

“It was the detective,” the doll said, pointing at your book with enthusiasm. “I'm sure, silly.”

“How could it have been the detective? Angie, haven't you heard the story?” you asked amused, turning a page. “It was the dressmaker.”

“Oh, you're so sure of your words,” the doll hummed, sitting on your lap. “Where does it say that?”

“It doesn't say that, that's the point,” you said. “Do you even know how to read?”

“I can read your mind,” Angie hissed, getting too close to your face.

“Oh, really?” you asked as your eyes wandered over the letters of that detective story. “Well, I hope you're not reading it to me right now…”

“Hey, you shouldn't judge any character before knowing the truth,” the doll snapped at you, making you roll your eyes. “You have no proof.”

“Oh, I have,” you said nodding, turning another page, looking up when you heard the familiar sound of heels on wood. “Donna, are you better?”

“Sì,” the lady replied, her expression more relaxed, embarrassed. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” you said, going back to your book.

“Hey, Donna, Donna,” the doll said jumping off the couch and tugging at the lady's black dress. “The fool thinks she's Sherlock Holmes or something, she says it was the dressmaker.”

“We were reading,” you explained, letting the lady come closer, giving you a soft kiss on the cheek and glancing at your reading.

“The Tape-Measure Murder,” she commented, whispering the title. “Mm, I'm convinced you don't need to read the end to find out the truth.”

“Sometimes Agatha Christie makes it too easy… it's obvious that it was the dressmaker,” you said amused, raising and lowering your eyebrows.

“You see? She thinks she's Miss Marple,” Angie said, pointing at you mockingly. “It was the detective.”

“I don't want to spoil the ending,” Donna said with a tender smile, pinching your cheek. “But (Y/N) is right… it was the dressmaker,” she whispered, making you protest with a sigh.

“Eh, thank you very much,” you said closing the book. “But well, I was right after all,” you said, looking at Angie in a satisfied way, making her grunt.

“I'm sorry, I'm not as discreet as I thought,” your fiancée apologized, shaking her head. “Mm, but you had barely started reading it,” she commented curiously. “How did you know?”

“The clues were too clear,” you said with a petulant tone. “It might seem like a setup, something so obvious it couldn’t be true, but you know, I’m good at crime.”

Donna laughed, giving you a soft kiss on the lips, to which Angie protested with a disgusted grunt, making you both laugh cutely as you separated.

“Mm, detective stories are fine, but I think you could start with something a little more serious,” Donna commented, standing up towards a bookshelf.

You nodded curiously, picking up the bulky book the lady handed you.

“Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dos… Do… Dostres…” you read, frowning at the author’s complicated last name.

“Fyodor Dostoyevsky,” Donna corrected in a friendly tone, to which you arched, nodding absentmindedly. “If you like crime, I think you might be interested.”

“It seems… broad,” you whispered, flipping through the old pages. “Is it funny?”

“Well, depending on how you look at it,” Donna said, with an elegant smile. “It goes deep into the thoughts of a man who wants to commit murder, his conscience, his fears…”

“Oh,” you said disinterestedly, frowning. “But there are unsolved crimes?”

“Read it, it's worth it,” your girlfriend told you, patting you on the shoulder. “I think I'll be a little more boring,” she murmured amused, picking up another book and walking towards the entrance. “I'll put on some music, taking advantage of the fact that my future wife has fixed the record player…”

“I love you,” you whispered confidently, blowing her a kiss in the air.

The atmosphere was calm. Classical music was playing to give even more serenity to the room, but that didn't necessarily have to be a good thing. As you read that complicated book, accompanied by the soft chords of Donna's favorite music, your eyelids seemed affected by gravity.

Yes, you liked detective novels, and you were downright good at guessing the culprit before they revealed themselves, but the book Donna gave you was much more complicated than that and the words jumbled around in your brain.

You liked reading, of course, but you liked to something much lighter, not something that was undoubtedly, inducing you to sleep.

“(Y/N),” Donna said, nudging you slightly. “Are you falling asleep?”

“What?” you asked with a hoarse voice giving away the correct answer, settling down on the couch “No, no, it's... interesting.”

“Honey, your eyes are closing,” she said amused while you maintained a proud pose. “You don't like the book?”

“Oh, yes, yes, it's very entertaining,” you lied, feeling a familiar pang in your chest, an embarrassed blush appearing on your cheeks.

It wasn't the first time it happened. Donna Beneviento, contrary to what was often said in the village, wasn’t just a madwoman. She was a terribly cultured and intelligent woman, and you loved that about her.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you felt that her intelligence was far superior to yours, that somehow, you were a little more… normal. Of course, you ignored all these senseless paranoia, but, from time to time, they came back to haunt you.

You didn't want to seem like an uncultured girl, or uninterested in complicated subjects like art, history or philosophy. You had long since begun to pretend that you weren't so bored by a complicated reading or the soft melody of a work composed centuries ago.

 You didn't know what Donna would think if she knew that all of that made you sleepy, you didn't want her to think that you were inferior to her, in any way.

“It's this music, it's making me sleepy,” you said yawning and looking for an excuse for your sudden sleep.

“Oh, I thought you liked classical music,” Donna said, looking at you curiously.

“Yes, and I like it…” you lied, getting up from the couch to clear your head. “But I'd prefer something more… lively.”

“Okay,” Donna nodded, getting up to the record player and stopping that soporific melody. “What do you want?”

“Oh, no, no, no not on that old thing,” you said amused, walking towards an old music player you bought from the Duke and that you fixed yourself. “Now it's my turn.”

“Um, (Y/N)…” the lady said, playing with her hands while you manipulated your record collection.

“Let's see, let's see…” you murmured, feeling Angie climbing up your body.

“This one, this one!” the doll squealed, pointing to one of your favorite records.

“Isn't it a bit old?” you asked with the box in your hand. “Well, it could be considered classical music, don't you think, honey?” you said to the lady, handing her the CD, as she looked at it curiously.

“Spi… Spice…” the lady murmured, looking at the cover.

“Spice Girls, honey, a classic,” you corrected with a smug smile. “This sure lifts my spirits.”

“A classic? It says here that it's from 1996,” Donna protested, frowning as you snatched the box from her, putting the CD in the player. “You could say that it was just yesterday, (Y/N).”

“It's been over 20 years, Donna, so it's classical music,” you joked again, pressing the button. “Hey, Angie, I think you know the first song…”

“Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want!” Angie sang as the music started playing, jumping up and down on the floor.

“So tell me what you want, what you really, really want,” you continued, high-fiving the doll, the only one who seemed happy with your choice.

Donna stood with a frown, gently lowering the volume on the player as you sat back down on the couch.

“Ah, much better,” you commented, picking up the book again and looking at the lady over it. “Hey, honey, aren’t you coming?”

“How can you read with this music? It’s impossible,” she said in a slightly childish tone.  “Cos’è questo?”

“Music, dolcezza,” you said ironically, shaking your head. “I would have liked to play something more recent, but lately the Duke is short of contraband material.”

“No wonder. This is horrible, they don't even know how to sing,” the lady said, crossing her arms as the music seemed to destroy her ears.

“Donna…” you sighed, rolling your eyes and moving a leg to the rhythm of the music. “Stop complaining and come here.”

“You can't even dance to this,” she protested again, approaching you and glancing sideways at the stereo. “Is this really music?”

“Angie knows how to dance to it,” you said amused, pointing at the doll with your head, a doll that moved to the rhythm of that catchy song.

“Mm,” Donna murmured, letting you sit her down with a quick movement. “No, I can't.”

“Donna, stop fooling around,” you said with a hiss, shaking your head. “You always choose the music.”

“Forgive me for preferring a soft melody with perfectly ordered chords and notes to the screamers of hell,” she protested, getting up again. “This has nothing to do with the true meaning of music. It’s not elegant, they just seem like stupid brainless girls.”

“Maybe they are, but it's cool,” you said distractedly, scratching your hair to try to concentrate on the heavy reading. “Hey, where are you going?”

“To the basement, it's impossible to concentrate here,” the lady explained, disappearing among murmurs in Italian that you initially didn't give importance to.

“As you wish,” you sighed, glancing sideways at the player.

Naturally, Lady Beneviento and you came from very different times. Education, culture, everything was distant, but normally your two worlds coexisted in harmony, like those melodies she liked so much.

However, since you got engaged, you tried to take better care of those kinds of details. You knew Donna loved you. She was the one who wanted to take you as her wife so she would never lose you, but sometimes you wondered if she really bothered to really get to know you.

You didn't know what to do, whether to give in, show yourself as you really were, or pretend a little more. The idea that Donna saw that you were nothing but an ordinary girl with ordinary tastes was disturbing. She was intelligent, complicated, cultured, and you were just a country girl who enjoyed the little things in life, who didn't even bother to wonder about the origin of her existence.

You felt somewhat insecure as the days went by, unable to get along with her refined tastes, with the readings that she was passionate about. Of course none of that seemed like a problem, and maybe you were giving it much more importance than it had, but the expression of weariness, of discomfort with your simple tastes made you see you were wrong.

Donna was a wonderful woman and you were just a simple village girl, would she really still love you when she realized you weren't as cultured as she was?

The question terrified you; it made you stay up at night, it made you change, it made you carefully pretend that you were starting to be interested in such boring things. Being who you weren't wasn’t your favorite way to deal with the problem, but, with a month to go before the wedding your nerves made you make impulsive decisions.

You wanted to make her see that you were just like her, that everything she liked was also your passion. It really was hard, but you managed to fool her for a while, thinking that maybe that way, you would never disappoint her.

How ironic, you were trying to make the lady in black, the disturbed Donna Beneviento, the same one who feared so terribly to lose you, not to leave you.

“What are you doing, tesoro?” the lady asked when she finished with her dolls, finding an almost comical scene in front of her.

“Reading,” you said amused, holding the heavy book while letting the lady kiss your forehead affectionately. “Oh, and you were right, that music of yours is much more relaxing,” you commented satisfied, with the classical chords in the background.

“Mm, well,” Donna said, nodding, resting her head on your shoulder. “What do you think of the book?”

“It's good,” you answered with a fake smile, full of the wisdom you obviously lacked.

“I'm glad,” she sighed, frowning and picking up a cup that was on the table. “Did you drink a whole cup of coffee?”

“Yes, I needed to cheer myself up,” you said, downplaying that slight caffeine overdose. “Maybe I went a little too far.”

“The coffee pot was empty, did you drink it all?” Donna asked, taking your shaking hands. “(Y/N), so much coffee is not good for you.”

“Do you know what's not good?” you asked, closing the book and sensually climbing up the lady's body, with a seductive purr. “Having you so close to me, making my heart beat wildly...”

“That's because of the coffee,” she joked, caressing your legs, which rested on either side of her hips. “Mm, tesoro...”

“Shh, Angie's not here,” you murmured, biting her earlobe. “How about having fun?”

“Sounds good to me,” the brunette sighed, giving herself to your eager lips, moving your body with hers in an erotic dance, anticipating a pleasant afternoon of passion.

“Make me yours, my wife,” you whispered, slowly unbuttoning her dress, abruptly interrupted by the agonizing ringing of the phone. “Oh, it just can't be…”

“Don't pay attention,” Donna said, laughing amused, caught by your desire to love, by the desire to make you hers like only she knew how. “It will stop ringing soon… “

“No, I…” you said, getting off her body with a look of resignation. “You should pick it up, maybe it's Mother Miranda. Don't worry, I'll be waiting.”

Donna nodded, kissing you quickly and getting up with a nervous gasp, taking the phone while you seduced her by getting comfortable on the sofa and biting your lower lip.

“Pronto,” the lady sighed. “Oh, Alcina… yes, well, actually… Oh, well I don’t… Yes, I think it’s a good idea… sure, of course she’ll come, see you later, ciao…”

“Mm?” you murmured with some disappointment when you saw Donna turning back to you while fastening the buttons again. “Alcina?”

“Yes…” she sighed, also frustrated. “She says she wants us to go to the castle for tea.”

“Have you said yes? Donna… I wanted to make love,” you protested, pouting. “Come on, if we hurry we can…”

“Alcina says she has something for us, you know, for the wedding, it’s not right to reject her kindness,” the lady explained, shaking her head. “It’ll just be tea, tesoro, we won’t be long.”

“Well, okay,” you said, defeated. “You are always so polite…”

“I wouldn't want to disappoint the only family I have left,” Donna commented, with a sad tone. “I'm going to get the veil, oh and… get dressed,” she whispered amused, pointing at the underwear that you yourself pulled down to make her more nervous. “You will make me lose my mind.”

“Mm,” you murmured, stealing a seductive kiss from her. “You owe me one, my wife…”

Of course, the best thing about the trips to the castle was the journey itself. Angie made fun of you as you walked hand in hand through the forest, in silence, enjoying the contact of your skin, the tranquility of a life that would only get better.

Alcina Dimitrescu was the eldest of the Lords, and her attitude and behavior were even more refined than the lady in black’s. Her seductive voice, her glances and the conversations that always traveled between art and wine weren’t your perfect plan to spend an afternoon like that, but you couldn't complain, you knew that Donna cared about her.

“Here it is, my dears... it really is hard for me to part with this jewel, but I feel calm knowing that you and your future wife will have it,” the lady of the castle said, pointing to a small painting.

“Wow... it's impressive,” the Angie doll said, shyly approaching the painting. “Picasso?”

“Picasso,” Alcina answered as Donna tilted her head to better observe it. “It's one of my favorite pieces. You know that during the second world war the looting of works of art was pretty common. Poor stupid soldiers, they thought that this place would be ideal to hide it…”

“Was it from some soldiers?” you asked, trying to make sense of that work of art that seemed to fascinate your fiancée. “Wow, I'm sure it's a mind-blowing story.”

“Mm, the story of how it got here is unimportant, dear. Don't you know what you have in front of you?” the lady in white asked, running a hand over your shoulders. “It's real art.”

“Yes, well,” you said with a frown, confused. “To me it looks like some badly done doodles,” you commented by mistake, making the tall woman gasp with irony.

“Doodles?” Alcina asked, while Donna controlled the doll's impulses to touch the painting. “How can you say that?”

“It's what I see,” you murmured, trying to make sense of those messy figures. “Is this really art?”

“Donna, dear,” Alcina said, ignoring your comment and drawing the doll maker's attention. “Your fiancée doesn't seem pleased by my gift.”

“Perché?” your girlfriend whispered, approaching you. “Don’t you like it?”

“Like isn't exactly the word,” you commented, getting a little closer to the painting. “Was that Picasso guy really that important?”

“Well… he really was,” Donna murmured, looking at you and then at the doodles. “It's abstract art, (Y/N), it doesn't have to make sense.”

“Oh,” you said, nodding. “Well, I guess it's okay…”

“But dear, don't you know anything?” Alcina asked, coming closer again. “I see that your knowledge of art is not at all exhaustive.”

“The truth is that I’m not very interested in art,” you confessed with a shy smile. “I don’t understand it and…”

“That’s obvious,” Alcina joked, laughing sinisterly. “Well, it’s not that important, I’m convinced that you have other… virtues.”

“What do you mean?” you asked, a little annoyed by the comment, nervous.

“Oh, nothing, little bird, I’m just saying that Donna has surely seen other things in you,” the lady said, looking at you with bright eyes and a mocking smile. “Mm, I can imagine what kind of things, my dear.”

“Hey, Alcina!” Angie protested. “Stop flirting with my Donna's fiancée.”

“Please…” the lady in white sighed, making Donna suddenly tense up, starting to suffer another attack of jealousy. “She may be beautiful but… well, beauty isn't everything.”

“Um, yes, we better go,” the lady in black said, uncomfortable, just like you, who lowered your head, starting to think about your insecurities again. “We're taking the painting.”

“Oh, no, no, dear,” said Alcina, looking at you out of the corner of her eye with a regretful expression, surely noticing your sadness. “Mother Miranda told me that there are some loose lycans around, it will be better if I send it to your house when that uncomfortable matter is solved.”

“Va bene,” your girlfriend nodded, taking your hand and observing you cautiously. “(Y/N), tutto bene?”

“Um, yes, yes I… I would like to go home,” you said with a broken voice, with your bad thoughts eclipsing your reasoning.

“Of course, um… Thank you Alcina,” Donna said, pulling your hand towards the exit of the castle.

“Little bird…” the vampire interrupted. “I hope I haven't offended you.”

You didn't answer. You looked away and continued walking. There was no more laughter, no more holding hands on the way back.

Your ignorance was something you always tried to hide, something that was natural to you and that seemed to be of no importance to Donna, but after that unpleasant visit to the castle, everything in your mind changed.

Donna Beneviento was a cultured, intelligent woman, passionate about art, and you were a simple villager, a lover of crime novels, short stories that were easy to read. You weren't on her level, no matter how much you tried to pretend otherwise.

As you walked home, you thought about the near future, about what your life would be like after marriage. You loved Donna, you loved her just the way she was, you loved her mind, her intelligence… but she… what was it that she loved about you?

You weren't sure of the answer and your nerves began to tense. You could pretend for a year, two, but no more. You weren't the intelligent and cultured girl that Donna deserved, you were simply nothing compared to her; you had nothing to offer her.

“I'll make dinner, tesoro,” the lady commented when you were back home, taking off her veil with a tender smile. “Hey, amore mio, what's wrong?”

“Donna, I…” you murmured with a sad sigh. “What did you see in me?”

“Cosa? What's that question about?” she asked, frowning. “Oh, you didn't take what my sister said seriously, did you?”

“How can you expect me not to take it seriously? She's right, I'm stupid,” you growled, clenching your fists. “Donna, stop pretending.”

“Pretend? Um, tesoro, I don't know what you're talking about... I told you not to drink so much coffee,” the lady said worriedly, cupping your face in her hands.

You pulled away with a furious gasp, shaking your head.

“It's not the coffee!” you screamed, releasing a pressure in your chest that was already unbearable. “It's not about that Donna, it's about me, about us.”

“(Y/N), you're scaring me...” she sighed, grabbing you by the shoulders. “Calm down, please.”

“No Donna, I'm not calming down... Why? Huh? Why me? Are you so desperate that you'll settle for any stupid girl who's capable of having children? Is that what you want from me? Then what, huh? You'll kick me out of your life because I'm not what you're looking for…”

“You're delirious, I don't know what's wrong with you,” Donna said, very nervous, shaking her head. “Why do you say such horrible things?”

“They're not horrible things, it's reality,” you hissed, pointing at your fiancée in an unpleasant way. “Donna, I hate classical music, Crime and Punishment is a boring book and I have no interest in art…”

“(Y/N), but,” she interrupted, desperate to get you to come back to your senses. “Tesoro…”

“Disappointed? I assumed so…” you whispered with a dark look while Donna was speechless, just shaking her head. “This is me, a stupid and ignorant girl who gets bored with everything you like.”

“That's not bad at all. I don't…” she said, with a marked accent that betrayed her nervousness. “…I don't care about that.”

“You say that now, but…” you said, laughing nervously. “You'll realize that we're from different worlds, that I'm of no use to you and you know what? I should have realized it sooner.”

“(Y/N)…”

“No, Donna,” you said, sobbing and shaking your head. “I'm tired of pretending that I deserve to have your last name when it's not true. You're a wonderful woman, the most wonderful woman I've ever met in my life, but I'm not, I have nothing to offer you…”

“S-Stop… stop… Stop talking nonsense!” Donna shrieked, furious, unable to control her nerves. “What's this about? What have I done wrong? Why do you say those things?”

“You know I'm right,” you hissed, with a much darker voice, glancing sideways at the shiny ring that decorated your finger. “Now you love me, but soon you'll realize that you've wasted your time with me. I'm not what you deserve; I'm not what you're looking for, Donna.”

“How do you know what I'm looking for?” she asked, grabbing your arm. “Why are you torturing me!?”

“Donna, you’re hurting me,” you protested, breaking away from her grip, watching as the lady slowly lost her mind. “It doesn't make any sense for you to get like that when you know it's true.

“It's not true!” she shrieked, kicking childishly. “(Y/N), don't you dare…!”

“Shh, that's it,” you whispered with your voice broken by crying, approaching her cautiously. “Donna, this can't go on like this, I don't want to ruin your life.”

“Ruin my life? P-Please, let's talk things over, you're not thinking clearly,” Donna said, grabbing your hand again, breathing heavily.

“No, honey, no…” you whispered, caressing her hand and bringing the other to the ring, slowly taking it off your finger. “I'll never be able to think clearly.”

“What are you doing? Why…?” Donna asked, looking at the ring already off your finger, a ring you placed in the palm of her hand, closing her fist over it.

“It's okay, I know when to back off,” you sobbed, clenching her fist. “You should give this to a woman who is better than me, a smart girl like you, who deserves to wear it.”

“(Y/N), il tuo anello… put it on, per favore,” she whispered nervously, playing with the jewel, grabbing your hand tightly. “Per favore! Don't do this to me!”

“I'm sorry, darling,” you said with a sore throat, returning the ring to her hand, squeezing it tighter. “I don't deserve you, you should find someone who does.”

“No, no, wait, wait,” the lady said, pulling your wrist as you prepared to leave the mansion. “No…”

“Goodbye, Donna,” you sobbed before turning around and running to the exit, leaving the lady in black paralyzed, dropping the ring, which bounced on the floor.

“What are you doing, silly Donna!? She's leaving, do something!” Angie shrieked, pulling at her dress.

Donna didn't move, she was just sobbing in shock, motionless.

You looked at her one last time and opened the door, leaving her life forever.

“Donna, Donna! You can't let her go! Donna, react!” Angie continued, while her voice became more and more imperceptible. “The lycans, Donna, the lycans…!”

Her screams were barely whispers as you ran through the dark forest, crying panting, having made the hardest decision of your life. No, Donna didn't deserve you, she didn't deserve a brainless girl like you, you would only make her unhappy. You were completely convinced.

The tiredness made you relax your steps, panting and screaming desperately. You had lost the love of your life, and it wasn't because of something you had done, but because of who you really were. She could never love you. She could never love a stupid girl like you, even if she forced herself to do so.

A sinister roar brought your consciousness back for a moment. The place was terribly dark and you lost your bearings. Going back wasn’t an option, but you didn't know what was in front of you, which was the right way after leave the elevator.

“I'm so stupid that I don't even know where...” you lamented, walking until you collided with something hairy, with a horrible creature that made you trip.

Normally, lycans didn't roam the territories of the Lords, but you soon remembered Alcina's warning about some rebellious beasts that escaped Miranda's control.

Your arm hurt and the moisture on your clothes told you that you were bleeding, but that wasn't the worst part, the worst part was seeing how that beast raised its claws before you to tear you apart, giving a pathetic end to your pathetic life.

“Stop!” a voice behind you said, causing the beast to obey and back away in fear.

The dim light of the place illuminated the silhouette of the lady in black, who was slowly approaching, terrifying the lycan just by her mere presence.

“Fuori…” Donna hissed, making the creature whimper, forcing it to protect itself with its claws. “Get out of here!”

The lycan fled, and the lady crouched down next to you, checking your condition.

“(Y/N), parlami, per favore… where did it hurt you?” she asked, being pushed unpleasantly by you, getting up on your own.

“Donna, I'm… I'm fine,” you said, grabbing your injured arm. “I… er… thank you.”

“Amore mio, you're bleeding,” Donna said, holding your arm and taking a look at your wounds. “Come, I have to…”

“No,” you said coldly. “You don't need to take care of me, not anymore,” you said, giving in to crying again, inevitably throwing yourself into her arms. “Donna…”

“Shh, you're very nervous, tesoro, come, let's go home and… I'll heal you and…” she stammered, crying, but keeping her composure better.

Silence. That was the word that best defined that moment. While Donna healed you, you sobbed under her watchful gaze, unable to say anything, unable to stop feeling at ease in what until a while ago, was your home.

“Perché? Perché, (Y/N)?” the lady murmured, wiping the blood from your arm, looking away from you.

“Donna, I've already explained my reasons,” you murmured distractedly, not wanting to go back. “Thank you for healing me, but I'll leave as soon as you do.”

“You can't…” she sighed, closing her eye to keep calm. “You can't just leave like that, without giving me a reason. You’re breaking my heart…”

“I'm sorry, but it's for the best, I love you too much to let you waste your time on me,” you said with a broken voice, but firm in some way. “Donna I... I'm not like you. You're a cultured, intelligent woman and I... I'm just a stupid village girl who likes to listen to stupid songs and read books that could be for children. I'm not what you think.”

“But you are what I want,” she murmured, bandaging your wound delicately. “Do you really think I want a pedantic girl like my sister by my side? No, (Y/N)…”

“It's what you deserve,” you sobbed again, pulling your arm away.

“You're just talking nonsense, (Y/N), I love you just the way you are. I would never pretend to change you, I... (Y/N), tesoro, you have to believe me. I'm not looking for anything because I've already found it, I've found you…” Donna sighed, lifting your chin. “You are the love of my life, the one I want to be my wife, my family.”

“You've chosen wrong,” you said with a nervous laugh, shaking your head. “I'm just a stupid girl.”

“You're wrong, (Y/N),” the lady hissed, darkening her gaze. “Do you think a person's intelligence is measured by their knowledge of art or literature? No, tesoro…”

“Well, but…”

“No, now you're going to listen to me. You're not stupid. Just, just look at everything you've done during all this time. I would never have been able to fix the record player, or the projector… (Y/N), you bought the Duke a broken device and fixed it, you made it work again as it were magic…”

“Not that…”

“Taci,” she interrupted, with a brusque tone, cupping your face in her hands. “You are capable of much more than you think, of things that I would never be capable of, never… You say you are stupid for not knowing anything about art, for considering a complicated book boring, but that’s not true.”

“Donna, I…” you tried to say, silenced by a finger on your lips.

“Amore mio, you are intelligent, much more than me in many ways. You are funny, decisive and have an amazing capacity for deduction, or do you forget that you never finish any of your detective stories?”

“Well, that’s because…” you explained somewhat confused, relaxing the demons that were hovering in your mind.

“Because you know the ending before reading it. That is intelligent, tesoro, those are your abilities, just because they are not the same as mine doesn’t mean they are insignificant,” she said, with a desperate smile, trying to make you reason, starting to achieve it. “I fell in love with you just the way you are, I love you just the way you are…”

“But Donna, I…” you protested unsurely, beginning to give in to her pleasant words. “I don't think that… that I can contribute anything, I…”

“(Y/N), you are the missing part of my boring existence, you are that joy that lights up my life. Please, don't abandon me because without you… without you, art would cease to be…”

“That's very nice,” you said while blushing, letting be guided by her hand until her lips rested on yours with a soft and salty kiss, an intense, deep love kiss…

“Hey, hey, hey!” interrupted Angie, comically separating you by giving something to Donna, something that made her look at you sadly. “You dropped this, silly Donna, why don't you put it back in its place?”

She sighed, looking at the ring Angie gave her and gently grabbing your hand.

“(Y/N), sposami…” she asked in a soft voice. “Don't leave me alone, don't let me get lost without you because… because without you I'm nothing…”

“Donna…” you said, letting the ring slide back down your finger, starting to get rid of the bad thoughts in your mind, realizing that deep down you knew she was right, that intelligence wasn't measured by tastes, but by many other things.

“Donna, I love you… of course I'll marry you…”

[otakusheep15]

Obey Me Flufftober Day 17

Prompt: Clothes

Pairing: Mammon x reader

Word count: 456

A/n: I'm lowkey so tired right now, but I refuse to go to bed until I finish writing. I refuse to fall behind so late into the month!! Also, it's finally time for Mammon! And I really like this prompt for him.

Mammon was naturally possessive. It came with the sin after all. He was possessive of anything and everything he considered his. This included money, clothes, food, accessories, trinkets, and, of course, you. Even before you two got together, he was so greedy for your attention. If you ever talked to someone when he was around, he would get super pissed off. At first, he didn't do anything about it, but as y'all got closer, he began dragging you away from conversations. He doesn't do this as often when you're talking to his brothers, but even they aren't always spared.

To be honest, you'd find it adorable if it weren't so inconvenient. Mammon loves you more than anything, and that's very sweet of him. However, the ways in which he expresses his love could use some work. Since he's so possessive, you suggested the idea of you wearing his clothes when out in public. That way, you can still interact with people while letting them know that you're already taken. Mammon liked this idea immediately, and that's how you found yourself where you are now.

Your closet now has more of Mammon's clothes in it than your own. The two of you are not the same size, so a lot of his clothes fit awkwardly at certain angles on your body, but you don't mind too much. This compromise has been great for the both of you, as it's given Mammon some ease of mind and allows you to function as a normal member of society. Plus, you can't deny that Mammon has lovely fashion sense, and that's always a bonus in your eyes.

Mammon also has a tendency to steal your clothes. You know he does, so sometimes you'll purposefully leave out the clothes you've worn recently so that he can take them. After talking with the brothers, you learned that demons have a heightened sense of smell, and Mammon likes taking your clothes because he can smell you on them. It's comforting to him, so you've been making sure to lend him new clothes about every week or so.

This exchange has been going on for a while now. He'll give you some clothes to wear, and you'll give him some clothes as well. Most of the demons around you have noticed Mammon's lingering scent on you and visa versa, and Mammon absolutely eats it up. He knows how many demons of jealous of him, and he loves it. That greed of his really plays a part in this whole scheme. Again, it would be cute if it weren't slightly strange as well. Demon dating culture is still a bit confusing to you, but you suppose you can get used to it for Mammon's sake.

[outlandish-dreamer]

I've been feeling kinda down lately, but can I request some headcanons for Cg!Hobie with spiderman!regressor!minor!reader who's trying to get into punk culture but feels like they're copying him? im sorry if im way too specific :c

(can I be 🕸️anon, please?)

Of course 🕸️that's not too specific at all! I'm sorry it's taken me a minute to get to, but I hope you're feeling a little bit better :) And I hope this is okay!!

Given that he's Spider-Punk, he'd have immaculate music taste and once he gets to know you, shares it with you too! It's something you bond over, even if you're not exactly into the subculture just yet.

He casually recommends you some bands like the Bad Brains, or The Muslims, just because it's stuff he thinks you'd be interested in. You give 'em a listen and after just general interest, you find yourself falling deeper into the culture as a whole. It's not just about the music of course, so you delve a little deeper into what it actually is.

Once you do though, your kind of unsure of what it means to you. How to really immerse in it. So much of it resonates with you and you want your own perception of it, but you're not quite sure where to start. That doesn't mean you don't have a good example though! Hobie's a ton of inspiration.

I can imagine that when he finds out, he's nothing but supportive. Like, he gets genuinely excited, eyes lit up and everything. He has someone who's into the same thing he is? Hell, yeah he'd be into it. "Wait, really? Thas' amazin'! No, really. You think I'd lie to ya? Pfft no chance mate. I'm just excited we got somethin' in common!"

He'll try to hang out with you more often now that he knows you're both into the same thing! Not only is it something you can both talk about, but it brings you closer.

He doesn't mind at all if you take inspiration from him or "copy" him. He knows it's not the easiest to figure your way out with this sort of thing. He wants you to have your own thing, but he's cool with it either way. Even giving you some advice and especially helping you out whenever you need it.

Brings you to his shows and even teaches you how to play if you're interested! (Or if you play a different instrument, you play together) If music's something you bond over that is. If not, he finds other ways to share it with you/get into it.

Fuck societal and gender norms, you two do whatever you want. The more people who're just utterly confused, the better because hey, it's not their life!

And fuck capitalism too, in every way. You pirate, help out those who need it whenever you can regardless of their "status," and just do/be whatever you want. That's the whole point of it anyway, and Hobie couldn't be happier to do it with you.

And really, you both are like two peas in a pod. Different yeah, but always there for each other. You're friends! And being a part of the same subculture only brings you closer together. Even if you weren't, you'd still be close, but it's just nice to have that. Plus, Hobie's got someone else to relate to and he wouldn't trade that for anything 🖤

[nolita-fairytale]

burn your life down: the director's cut, or rather, fun facts about this story now that it's over

luca's last name in my fic is davies, and formally davies-bernardi. bernardi in italian means 'strong as a bear' which, was truly a perfect coincidence that i originally thought it sounded good hyphenated with davies. it felt like the perfect little nugget to drop in here.

this one kind of took on a life of its own. I thought maybe a headcanon or a few chapters, then 46.5k words later... before writing a fic, i always like to map out where i'm going, because it helps me zero in on what story i want to tell. as someone (and who hasn't, truly) who has plenty of abandoned fics, i like to get clear on what story it is i want to tell before beginning to write so that i know it's a fic worth writing for me. no, i don't think finishing a fic should be a marker of success, but where i'm at right now, it feels like the best way for me to see if i have a story to tell or not.

speaking of stories to tell, the reason i wanted to have our main character divorced was because i wanted to try something different. i wondered how i could differentiate this mc (while keeping the reader neutral so you could picture yourselves in it if you wanted to) from others that i have written / will write in the future. the divorce and growing apart is actually kind of inspired by my previous upstairs neighbor who i met a year after his divorce. i wanted to imagine what the inner world of someone who had experienced a divorce that wasn't messy, but its relationship had just run its course and i the end, left two people who weren't sure who they were and how to talk to each other anymore would be like.

music and playlisting really helps me envision and feel into the world that I’m building. I ask myself questions like: what does their love sound like? what does this relationship shound like? how do i want the world i'm building feel, and how do i convey that in sound? and then of course, what songs could underscore certain moments of this chapter? listening to the playlist i create as i go really helps me get into character aka enter the world of the story when i'm sitting down the write.

so many of my fics and interactions are based on my own real life experiences, which is why they often feel so human and so real. i weave in little details like conversations i've had, a person i reminded of. i often write dialogue after i've imagined the scene in my head down to the cadence of how characters speak to one another to make sure it feels grounded.

speaking of, we've got to talk about the food in this fic, something that you all complimented me on at the very beginning! it was important for me to have the food feel deeply personal to reader, and be an expression of her identity through the years. yes, i wrote it with an mc with asian heritage in mind. however, i wanted to make space, again, for you to picture yourself in this fic, which is why mc's ex and family were written with japanese heritage.

a lot of the dishes were inspired by dishes i've had that were similar to what i think her culinary pov would be, and a lot of it is the way that i cook as well. i am not a chef by any means, but i am AM a home cook who occasionally does pop ups who very recently discovered my own culinary pov. food for me is something that not only helps me express myself, but has helped me connect to parts of my own identity. in so many ways, as someone who describes themselves as a cultural melting pot, food helps me feel closer to myself; it helps me find and define, and express who i am.

the culture of food and the role it plays in allowing us to connect was really important for me to weave into this story as well.

for the mikkelson twins, i pictured timothee and pauline chalamet as jesper and mathilde.

for the kimuras: rina sawayama would play astrid, darren barnet would play joe, and gia kim would play lina.

let's talk about luca's character development: so many things were so will poulter-coded/borrowed for will poulter, which felt right to do considering he wove his own life into the luca's tattoos. examples? the nike book, the kendrick lamar on the playlist, how much internal work the man has done on himself.

in the end, I initially had mc have a way bigger freak out than she did -- that it would be her final: holy shit am i ready to be loved moment, but as i wrote it, it ended up being luca who brought up the main conflict. it just ended up going in a different direction and didn't feel right to go with my original plan, because she felt so in their relationship already that i pivoted.

i watched a lot of travel and lifestyle copenhagen vlogs because i'm obsessed with youtube.

after season 2 of the bear, i wanted to explore what positive relationships with mothers could look like in these characters. that's why mothers (and single mothers) are the superheroes of this fic.

i knew i wanted this fic to be about these things: second love, loss, trusting the beginning that comes after the end, inspiration, following your heart, and mothers. these are the guiding principles that i used when writing, knowing that these were the pillars i wanted this story to be about.

looking forward: i am working on two oneshots that will live in this world, one about marcus visiting again -- an eat, pray, love for him of sorts -- that's about mothers and loss and life. the other one is a fun, sexy little smutshot that will hardlaunch their (she and luca's) restaurant so keep an eye out for those. truthfully, i've only just started workshopping the marcus one and am prioritizing finishing my carmy fic first.

opening myself up for q&a! feel free to ask any questions about this fic or my writing process in the comments.

[broodsys]

this has been on my mind a lot lately, so i'm going to talk a bit about "delulu" and why i'm so staunchly opposed to it

but first: i do not experience delusions. i prioritize own voices and personal experiences, so with that in mind, i'd urge people to seek out the opinions of actual delusional people. however, the general opposition is something i have seen delusional people discuss

delusions and delusional are actual experiences. they are symptoms of mental health conditions and are quite serious; as with all mental health symptoms, severity differs, so i won't say they're always miserable experiences or always fine ones, but they are symptoms.

they are not traits, they are not aspects of personality, they are not deliberately held beliefs - despite this, delusions are, of course, part of what and who a delusional person is. but you aren't delusional if you don't have delusions, y'know? it's not a characteristic

"delulu" specifically takes a real, psychiatric term and makes it into a joke. i'm going to address some of the arguments i've seen in favor of delulu now:

"it's not that serious" - well. but it is? language matters. how we communicate matters. we are a social species, and linguistic communication is our primary form of communication, whether verbal or written. the words we use matter.

"the way some people use delulu means something else" - this is kind of the exact problem. similar - but not the same, of course! - to how "gay" was a catch-all term to insult people with while i was growing up, where calling something gay meant it was stupid, illogical, pointless, etc., twisting the real term into something else dilutes the meaning and complicates the experiences of people with real delusions.

(note before anyone jumps down my throat about this: i am in no way pathologizing sexuality here, i am simply making a comparison that might hit closer to home for queer but neurotypical people. i am also aware of the history of pathologization of sexuality and am not trying to make light of it. comparisons are useful, but can be complex; i hope you'll all take this as intended)

but i'm using it to refer to actual delusional people and experiences! - okay, well, first, i don't think that makes it any better. if an actual delusional person wants to call themselves delulu, i'm certainly not going to object, but to have someone else come in and slap the label onto people is bad for a number of reasons.

1) armchair diagnoses are never a good thing, really, there's no good version of this,

2) whatever one's intent is, the impact can serve to reinforce the confusion around the term, and

3) whatever one's intent is, the impact can serve to alienate the people around you who experience delusions or other stigmatized symptoms.

simply put, if you use it, you contribute to the social distortion of the term, and you make it harder for neurodivergent people to trust you

this tedtalk ("How Gen Z's 'delulu' culture impacts their reality"), which is genuinely really interesting and i'm not condemning at all, explores that part of the utilization of the term amongst Gen Z is based in their current reality feeling completely untenable.

thus, "i'm delulu" becomes less about true delusions and more about maintaining hope when the world around you seems hopeless.

first, i understand this pov. second, the tedtalk presenter understands this pov, but also gently encourages people away from it.

this perspective also serves to pathologize hope, which i don't think is particularly healthy for the people using delulu to describe themselves in this manner. so really, everyone loses with this.

to make some comparisons:

the r-word was widely used when i was growing up as an insult (and is still in use today, for that matter). for people who are diagnosed in this way, or who were previously, the term has gained a lot of unnecessary baggage and complexity, its actual meaning being diluted

saying someone who is neat and tidy is "so OCD" also dilutes the meaning and nature of the condition. this is one where i do speak from experience, as i have OCD and genuinely do not even want to admit that or say the acronym or name anymore because of how deeply it's been made into a one-dimensional parody of what it truly is

feeling that a person is truly a bad human being and calling them a psychopath or sociopath has so deeply distorted these actual psychiatric terms that it's not only complex but can be actively dangerous for someone who is so diagnosed

and, again speaking from experience, borderline personality disorder is another deeply stigmatized disorder. my therapist and i agreed that i have it, but we also agreed that it would be safest to not diagnose it, because if i was ever hospitalized i would likely be subject to psychiatric abuse and/or negligence. people with bpd are described as toxic monsters, as stalkers, as violent abusers; people who are violent abusers are often armchair diagnosed with bpd.

but i really want yall to sit with this for just a second: my therapist knew that this disorder remains so stigmatized within her field that she did not want to diagnose me with it, even tho i have it. to have that diagnosis might endanger me. a large part of this stems from the distortion and corruption of the term to mean something else, to apply only to a certain type of person who makes certain choices, as a catch-all term for someone who's abusive and irredeemable. and it's far from the most stigmatized disorder out there!

all this is to say, the path from "casually" distorting the meaning of a specific psychiatric term to actively harming the real population who experiences that disorder or symptom is not hypothetical; it is real, it is recurrent, and it is profound and insidious. i could keep listing villanized mental disorders or symptoms, but this has already gotten quite long, so all i'll say is that there are many, many others i have not discussed here

you might feel that "delulu" is innocuous. a silly meme. or you might agree with the tedtalk presenter's pov, that it's meant to uplift people who are experiencing profound uncertainty, a rejection of the fatalistic view of reality for a more hopeful, optimistic one. but memes are not always harmless, jokes are not always harmless, and i truly believe that individuals are capable of saying what they mean rather than hiding behind very loaded terminology

so i just want to end by saying... if nothing else, don't personally use delulu. it's not going to be a big loss to retire one very new term from your vocabulary

[mania-sama]

if you need me, dear, i'm the same as i was

Strawberry Wine - Noah Kahan

➼ 03 - if i could lose you, i would ❧ Information (Summary, Tags, Chapters) ❧ Previous Chapter ❧ Word Count: 8,372 ❧ Cross-posted from Archive of Our Own

Iwaizumi has only had one mental breakdown in his life before the heart spasm. He’d been close before then, on occasion; the rare panic and anxiety attacks weren’t foreign concepts to him. When someone has Oikawa Tooru for a best friend, they are bound to get pulled into the honestly fucked up shit that occurs in his life. Emotional whiplash is par for the course.

The mental breakdown didn’t happen with Oikawa, though, unlike most of the near-misses in his childhood. This occurred in the United States at UC-Irvine while studying for exams, and everything had come crashing down on him in one wave that rivaled the tsunami of 3/11.¹

He’d coped well with the original move. His overseas stay would only be for two years, and in the worst-case scenario, he could come back home and try his luck at a Japanese university and company. He didn’t have to do this internship with Utsui, and the chance to study at UC-Irvine was more of a package deal with the internship than a true desire to attend the university over all others in the first place.

But Iwaizumi had wanted this for himself. He wanted more than anything to succeed.

So, he’d made it work. He refused to let the new world and culture daunt him. His boss was Japanese, at least, and he’d stayed a week in the United States before this during his second year at Tohoku University. Instead of approaching his issues head-on like he’d done his whole life, he’d stuffed his anxiety and confusion into a corner. If he couldn’t see it and couldn’t feel it, then it simply wasn’t there.

(Upon reflection, Iwaizumi realizes why he did this when it’s not something he’d been prone to doing before. He was missing someone, someone who’d force him to acknowledge and deal with his emotions, because that was something that they’d always done for each other. After four years, he supposes he’d forgotten how to act with no one there to keep him in check. Not that his friends didn’t try. They did. It just wasn’t the same.)

He was studying for his second exam of three. He didn’t notice anything was wrong, really, until he’d set his pen down and didn’t pick it back up. He’d stared at his laptop screen, not comprehending any of the words because they were all in English. And he’d understood English perfectly fine.

Then he’d shifted his gaze and saw the barbecue-flavored Lays chip bag he’d been feasting on to keep some of his energy levels up. He heard the recorded voice of his professor speaking in English with a European accent so thick he could barely make out any of his words. He was sitting cross-legged at his desk, back slouched and hand cramping, in an American apartment. His T-shirt had some logo brand on it that he’d been gifted by his roommate, who was an American he had trouble communicating with on occasion, who had been very kind to him but also never understood the references Iwaizumi made or genuinely tried learning the Japanese language, who had taken him out to baseball, basketball, and football games instead of volleyball matches since those were more popular.

Iwaizumi was in the United States, but everything and everyone he knew was eight thousand miles away, so far out of his reach, and there was nothing he could do about it unless he wanted to give up.

It had taken him three days to recover from his complete breakdown. His roommate, the saint she was, had tried so hard to help him despite her own studies and work, but all he had wanted was home. It didn’t help that he was surrounded by the agitating factors constantly; the western couch he was cocooned on, the American brand Pizza Hut she ordered once for him (for the following meals, she had stuck to Japanese restaurants because they were, at the very least, a little closer to his culture), the sound of her car keys, her perfect English slang in her perfect American accent. He had barely heard any of the things she said to him in the days he spent floating between panic, dissociation, and what he could only assume was Hell.

By some miracle, he’d passed all three of his exams. The professor with the heavy European accent even complimented his work; he’d made the second highest grade in the class.

It wasn’t traumatic, per se, but it was certainly an experience Iwaizumi was in no hurry to recreate.

So, this really, really fucking sucked.

The circumstances and conditions for his mental breakdown at the Olympics are so wildly different than his previous one that Iwaizumi not only could not prepare for it, but had been socked so hard in the jaw by it that he swears he could feel the physical pain in his body. His team is there for him, just as his roommate had been all those years ago. They talked to him when he needed it, gave him adequate food and water, and spent an exorbitant amount of energy shielding him from the press.

But, like how his roommate couldn’t bring him home to Japan, his team couldn’t bring him what he wanted. They couldn’t bring him Oikawa Tooru.

—

“You know, he had no reservations talking about you,” Hinata says to him, in Iwaizumi’s first clear conversation after piecing together the shattered bits of his psyche. “He said that he’d make it to the Olympics, and that he’d meet you again, here.”

They are sitting in Iwaizumi’s Olympic dorm kitchen, eating lunch and avoiding the press. Even though Iwaizumi feels like his normal self, he still isn’t ready to be bombarded with cameras and microphones. He has unanswered emails and voicemails backlogged into oblivion asking for interviews and statements.

He doesn’t want to give them anything until he’s had time to talk with Oikawa, and his team has been unbelievably kind and understanding of his stance. Their support has taken him a long way in terms of recovery. Warmth encapsulates his chest, knowing that he can trust them as much they trust him.

Iwaizumi grunts, indicating for Hinata to continue.

“When we met up near the start of the Olympics, he even talked about you again. I think it’s weird. That he seemed so excited to see you again, but you didn’t?”

This is a conversation he really doesn’t want to be having. Iwaizumi could tell him off here and steer the conversation away, but he figures it’s going to come back up again and again like whack-a-mole. Hinata had done well to not talk in-depth about Brazil or his budding friendship with Oikawa for this long; Iwaizumi should reward him.

“Oikawa mentioned that he blocked me, right?” Iwaizumi says, measuring both his response and Hinata’s facial expressions. Tentatively, the player shakes his head.

“He said you guys lost contact. And he told me not to tell you that he talked about you.”

Iwaizumi huffs and hopes it hides the pain spiking in his chest. “Doesn’t surprise me. I thought he’d moved on with his life.” And from me, he doesn’t say, but he thinks Hinata hears it anyway. “He still has me blocked on all his socials.”

Because of course, he’d checked. During his more lucid moments, he’d had his phone open, switching between all of his socials to see if he’d somehow missed Oikawa breaking his eight-year silence. He’d told his entire team about Iwaizumi, after all, under the alias of his affectionate yet somewhat demeaning nickname. The one that really shouldn’t still be in use for two grown men at the age of twenty-seven.

Yet that asshole still has him blocked.

“Maybe…” Hinata hesitates, picking at his noodles. “Yeah, that’s even weirder.”

“Tell me about it.” Iwaizumi tries to loosen his white-knuckle grip over his chopsticks.

“But you still care?” The player questions, though it’s less out of uncertainty and more out of curiosity. It isn’t a matter of if he cares; that much is obvious. It’s a matter of why, when he and Oikawa ended on such a poor note and haven’t spoken in almost a decade.

“I never stopped,” Iwaizumi answers quietly before stuffing his mouth with chicken dumplings. Hinata follows suit, and the silence that stretches between them is not awkward nor unkind.

Finally, when they finish with their lunch, Hinata pipes up again. “I know it’s not the same, but, I get it. When I was in Brazil and Kageyama was still home, and then I came back and we were on rival teams… It was hard. I did block his number and… everything, one night, because I didn’t know what to do with what I was feeling. I unblocked him immediately after because I felt so bad. But, just hear him out, okay? I know it was a dick move, but we can all be a massive dick sometimes when emotions get in the way.”

Hinata grins, unabashed, and clearly, this has been something he’s been preparing to say for as long as Iwaizumi has known him.

In the back of his mind, he hears Oikawa’s teammates call him Iwa-chan. It’s all foreign and unnatural, but the way they say it — it’s like Iwaizumi is the sweetheart from Japan, sitting at his childhood doorstep with a bouquet of roses and a welcoming laugh. Like he is waiting for him at the end of Oikawa’s road no matter how hard he tries to push Iwaizumi away. Like he is Oikawa’s everything.

“I’ll decide whether or not he gets a second chance,” Iwaizumi eventually responds.

Because Oikawa doesn’t have the right to believe that Iwaizumi would wait for him for eight years, or for however long it would take for him to walk back to that doorstep. He doesn’t get to see Iwaizumi sitting there, his flowers long-wilted and throat raw from choking up blood.

Hinata nods in understanding, and they sit together until Hinata leaves to catch the bus to watch a track-and-field event.

—

At three in the afternoon, Iwaziumi is still moping around his apartment. He can’t go out because the reporters will bombard him for answers, and he doesn’t have those answers because he hasn’t talked to Oikawa, and he hasn’t talked to Oikawa because Oikawa isn’t awake, and Oikawa isn’t awake because he had a heart spasm and was put into a coma following his surgery for his own safety.

He plays ten rounds of sudoku on his phone while an Olympic running event plays on his television screen as background noise. He could be there, but that meant everyone else would be there, too.

Namely reporters.

At four-fifty-three, someone knocks on his door. They don’t wait for Iwaizumi to answer or let them in before they start shouting.

“He’s awake!” That’s Bokuto’s voice. Who let Bokuto deliver the news?

Iwaizumi rushes to greet Bokuto, who promptly pats him on the back and says: “Don’t worry, we’ve got a whole plan to get you there without anyone stopping ya for interviews, ‘kay? Leave it to me!”

If it’s not specifically pertaining to volleyball, the words leave it to me are truly horrifying to hear from Bokuto’s mouth. However, Iwaizumi doesn’t have much of a choice, so he nods and lets Bokuto direct him down the hall and out of Team Japan’s dormitory tower.

—

Oikawa is not awake when Iwaizumi gets there.

He’s lying on his side, arms pulled out of the way by the restraint on his wrists so he’s not crushing the tubes sticking into his flesh. Iwaizumi doesn’t have any doubt that he was awake; Oikawa had always been a side sleeper, and they certainly wouldn’t have positioned him like that after surgery.

And, oh, God.

Despite the wires and cords and tubes keeping him together, and the disgusting drool slipping past the edges of his lips, and the unflattering mess his hair has turned into, Oikawa looks just as beautiful as the day Iwaizumi lost him. At this close, it takes all of Iwaizumi’s dignity and respect not to reach out and run his fingers across his exposed skin.

“Oh, you just missed him!” The nurse tells him, giving a practiced smile as she gently repositions Oikawa onto his back. “He even asked for you by name!”

What did he call me? Iwaizumi, Iwa-chan, or Hajime? How does he speak my name so freely while every time I say his, I feel like I’m spitting blood?

“When will he wake up again?” Iwaizumi asks, his mouth dry and stinging eyes stuck on Oikawa’s sleeping form. The way his chest rises and falls, the steady beeping of the heart monitor — all of it had been out of his reach. They hadn’t let any visitors in to protect Oikawa’s fragile stability from “outside contamination”, or something of the relation.

"He had to be resuscitated on the operating table," Sakusa had told him sometime during that two-day timespan of Hell. " They can’t risk visitors until he’s stable for forty-eight hours."

The nurse purses her lips. “He wasn’t awake for very long, and it was his first semi-lucid state after coming from a coma, so I guess… six hours if you want to try and have an actual conversation with him. Anything between now and then is probably going to be a few short seconds of awakeness—” she puts that awakeness in air quotations “—where he’s not going to actually comprehend anything.”

Iwaizumi mumbles something, incoherent to even himself, before pronouncing more clearly: “Right, uh. I’ll be back, then.”

“Okay,” she says, her voice and face softening a notch. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”

He might in the beginning, but Iwaizumi imagines their conversation won’t sustain that delusion for very long.

A few members from both the Argentinian and Japanese teams greet him outside the room. His expression must be revealing, because their faces fall into sympathy and pity. “You’ll get him next time!” Bokuto whoops while the others nod their assent.

“Sure.” And that’s that.

—

The reporters are waiting outside the hospital, with their cameras and microphones and equipment ready to catch the elusive athletic trainer who has some sort of personal connection to the Argentinian player he saved the life of. They are unrelenting in their pursuit, reaching Iwaizumi despite the players that stand several inches taller than them. 

It’s Ushijima who steps in front of the microphone and camera that’s pushed into Iwaizumi’s face.

“Iwaizumi-sensei will not be taking questions at this time.” His voice is as it always is: matter-of-factly, monotone, and commanding. “Go home.”

By the time he reaches his Olympic dorm room, Iwaizumi has answered zero questions.

—

“JAPAN ATHLETIC TRAINER SPOTTED LEAVING OLYMPIC HOSPITAL WHERE ARGENTINA PLAYER IS RECOVERING”

Iwaizumi finds it funny that the clearest shot they have of him is only of the very edges of his figure. The rest of him is blocked by the 192.7 centimeters tall, broad, intimidating Ushijima Wakatoshi.

The article speculates wildly on their relationship, as articles tend to do when the only accessible records of their friendship are from school volleyball lineups dating back to elementary school.

It’s more than funny. It’s hysterical.

He doesn’t laugh. Instead, he throws his phone harshly across the couch, because it’s the only thing he can do to express himself without severely damaging his expensive electronics, body, or government-owned property. 

He buries his face in his hands and tries very hard not to gouge out his eyes.

—

When Iwaizumi — sixteen, stupid, and smitten Iwaizumi — had come to visit his best friend at the hospital after his knee surgery, he’d found Oikawa staring numbly at the television screen in the corner of his hospital room. It had been playing an old rerun of Naruto, an episode Iwaizumi didn’t exactly recognize. It’d been a long time since either of them had watched anything animated.

“I asked for them to play a volleyball match. They said there weren’t any on,” Oikawa had said, sulkily and unprompted, his gaze still trained on the TV without glancing even once at his visitor.

Iwaizumi had laughed, then, a large portion of his anxiety draining from his body to see that Oikawa was both very much alive and still the same old bastard he’d been before resigning himself to surgery.

He’d returned with: “Clearly it’s all their fault that they couldn’t make a volleyball match magically appear to appease your needy ass.”

Oikawa had scowled and thrown a pillow at him, which Iwaizumi had been fairly certain was against the rules of orderly conduct on hospital grounds.

Iwaizumi — twenty-seven, tense, and tired Iwaizumi — walks into Oikawa’s new hospital room. New because he is four days out from surgery and stable, no longer needing the intense regulation of the ICU wing and thus moved to the PCU floor when visiting hours were over.

Oikawa is watching the television screen in the corner of his room intently, gaze not moving from the TV to see who entered. “They won’t play the reruns of the gold match,” he says, sulkily and unprompted. “They stuck me with Naruto instead. Like I’m twelve .”

Only people who have never experienced déjà vu talk about déjà vu, and Iwaizumi knows this because they don’t describe it like how it actually is. Déjà vu is a one-second panic attack that packs the same amount of power as getting punched in the face by Mike Tyson at the prime of his career. Déjà vu is being sixteen again, petrified, because what if it all went wrong? Déjà vu is being twenty-seven, reeling, because he doesn’t know where or who he is until he’s mindlessly speaking.

“I see you’ve still got your shitty personality.”

People who have never experienced déjà vu don’t describe the moment it ends, either. Déjà vu ends when someone does something completely different. Déjà vu spits on his bruised, bleeding face, knowing he isn’t a boxer but rather a kid with a broken heart.

Oikawa turns to him, and his face makes an unnatural expression. His brown eyes, velvety and smooth, gain a glassy sheen. His lips twitch. His eyebrows furrow. His entire body tenses, causing the bed springs to make a small, almost inaudible squeak. The pillow behind his head stays in place.

The heart monitor beats seconds faster than it had before, and in the dense silence that falls, Iwaizumi points at it. “It’s telling on you.”

“Is it? It got so annoying, I blocked it out,” Oikawa says, a little breathlessly.

Iwaizumi supposes they are having this conversation now because his mouth runs off before his mind can catch up. “Figured. You have a tendency to do that sort of shit.”

His pent-up anger and bitterness come out in the venom dripping from his voice, and a large, vocal part of him regrets his tone for the way it makes Oikawa’s face twist into something akin to agony. His hands twitch at his side, feeling the phantom snaps of Oikawa’s ribs shattering under his palms. It could be a hundred years of silence. It could be one agonizing minute. It doesn’t matter; Iwaizumi will always be the one hurting Oikawa like this. He will always be bringing Oikawa down so he can see the damage he’s causing.

His fingertips remember the silent pulse. His callouses remember the dead, unmoving chest.

Oikawa’s lips open and close for a few seconds, his shiny gaze flickering between Iwaizumi’s eyes as he struggles to find an appropriate response. Iwaizumi thinks it might be an apology. He doesn’t want one. He doesn’t need one.

He needs—

He doesn’t know what he needs. All he’s done so far is pick a fight neither of them can conceivably win because they are Iwaizumi Hajime and Oikawa Tooru: an immovable object and an unstoppable force.

“Thank you,” Oikawa says, “for saving my life.”

An irritating flurry of concern, as natural as rainfall in spring, runs through Iwaizumi when he spots the green fluctuations of Oikawa’s heart rate from the corner of his eyes. The monitor continues ratting Oikawa out, destroying the masked strength and surety in his voice.

“The surgeons did that,” Iwaizumi counters eventually, making his way to the uncomfortable chair beside Oikawa’s bed.

Oikawa shakes his head. “They said — they said I could’ve had brain damage if you hadn’t restarted my heart in time.”

“You need to have a brain first before it can be damaged,” he says easily, like he’s seventeen and nothing between them has changed. Except, everything has changed. His barb isn’t teasing anymore; it’s laced with malice and a decade’s worth of pain. Oikawa scrunches his nose and closes his eyes, and his lips form an uneasy, pathetic sort of smile.

“Cruel, Iwa-chan.”

Iwaizumi, despite himself, sucks in a sharp breath.

Hearing that nickname from Oikawa’s teammates is one thing. Hearing it from Oikawa himself, after hearing nothing from him for eight whole fucking years, is an entirely separate beast. Iwaizumi pilfers through one of his pockets, drawing out the keychain he’s intimately familiarized himself with in the past four days. He doesn’t have to feel it anymore to know where the small rips in the fabric are, and he doesn’t have to see it to know how faded the red dot and his signature have become over the years.

He sighs, heavy and long-suffering, dragging his thumb over the lines of his name’s abbreviated hiragana. Oikawa watches him in rapt attention. “I don’t know what’s worse: that I gave you this, or that you kept it.”

“You saved my life with that, too,” Oikawa says, and his voice warbles in time with his beeping heartbeat.

Iwaizumi had his first breakdown in the United States, nine weeks in and studying for his midterms. His family and friends were all one phone call or text away. At the end of the day, his career and life didn’t ride on his success in America. He wasn’t alone. He could have returned home anytime because that’s where his future was, anyway.

Oikawa had been completely, utterly alone. He’d blocked his best friends’ numbers and socials. His happiness could only be found in the volleyball courts of Argentina, where people only knew him for his skills and not the players he compared himself to. He couldn’t return home because Japan didn’t want him, no matter how much he wanted Japan.

Oikawa swallows, his gaze dropped to where his hands fiddle agitatedly with each other on top of his white sheets. “I didn’t find it until three weeks after I landed.”

What? “How?”

“I— I don’t know. It slipped to the bottom of my bag and I guess I just never emptied it out enough.”

The keychain suddenly feels heavy in Iwaizumi’s palm. Before it can crush every little bone in his hand, he ungainly tosses it to Oikawa. It lands around where his knees should be. Oikawa takes a moment to stare at the keychain before reaching for it and settling it in between his fingers.

“I don’t want it,” Iwaizumis spits, and his voice cracks like asphalt during an earthquake. “I gave it to you for a reason.”

Oikawa looks at him, then, with that pained gaze Iwaizumi has spent eight years trying to forget. The same gaze that analyzes every piece of his soul for something Iwaizumi doesn’t know what or how to give, that Oikawa has never known how to verbally ask for.

His eyes don’t quite focus on Iwaizumi, though. His pupils don’t narrow in all the way as they slightly cross over his nose, and Iwaizumi realizes with a start he barely represses that Oikawa isn’t wearing his contacts. His glasses are folded on a small table next to his bed, where a few unopened colorful envelopes have already been stacked up.

The prescription is visibly higher than when they were kids.

“Why does the universe hate you?” Iwaizumi mutters, tearing his gaze away from the glasses and back to Oikawa’s crossed eyes. Because it’s always something with Oikawa; his single, hard-working mother, his poor eyesight, his knee, his atrocious mental health, and now his heart.

In America, Iwaizuma had watched a woman waste away from diabetes. She had been a star track-and-field long-distance runner in high school. At twenty-two, the same age as Iwaizumi, her left foot was amputated. At twenty-three, nearing the end of his internship, she was well on her way to losing her entire lower leg.

Iwaizumi has put himself in the way of people who have tragic lives, and whose bodies do not want them to succeed. He sets out to help these people, to get their lives back on track.

Yet, he has never met someone who has had to fight the world every step of the way to achieve his dreams. Just when they thought that all of the cards had been played, when Oikawa escaped Japan, escaped Iwaizumi, escaped the claustrophobic coffin he’d called life — the universe changed the rules of the game.

A fucking heart spasm that could happen, feasibly, to anyone in the world at any given time. Exceedingly rare, especially for an athlete who spends every day maintaining a healthy diet and training regimen, and yet.

And yet.

Oikawa smiles, but it’s more a baring of teeth, like an animal showing its fangs to scare off any potential threats. “I’ve come to embrace the struggle. You know, it makes me stronger, or something like that.”

“Did they teach you that in therapy?” Really, Iwaizumi did mean to put his tone in a teasing lilt to try to bounce off of the energy Oikawa had created with his barest attempt at a joke, no matter the bitterness hardening its edges. Yet, Oikawa freezes at Iwaizumi’s words.

“You… How do you know I went to therapy?”

And, well, shit. Cat’s out of the bag, though he’s pretty sure Oikawa hadn’t known there was a cat in the bag in the first place.

Iwaizumi narrows his eyes, trying to find a good response based on the queues Oikawa is giving him – namely that which he can’t control, which is his beeping monitor that displays, against his will, his fluctuating heart rate and rising blood pressure. His face is carefully drawn into neutrality, calculating and unwanting of Iwaizumi’s constant scrutiny.

Some things really, really don’t change.

He doesn’t pry into people’s lives. He doesn’t. Anything that Oikawa hasn’t wanted people to know for the past eight years, Iwaizumi hasn’t gone out of his way to find out about. Not like he did when they were kids and Oikawa’s mental and physical health were on the line if Iwaizumi didn’t force open the truth. Also, they grew up attached at the hip. Secrets were kind of hard to keep from each other in general. Iwaizumi had only managed one in their entire fifteen years together, and even then, he was pretty sure Oikawa had known about it.

So, Oikawa going to therapy isn’t, by any means, a secret. He’s talked about his past struggles with mental health and seeking professional health in several interviews, and his social media is full of reposts supporting athletic psychology.

It’s just that. Well. Oikawa has him blocked on everything. In essence, Iwaizumi isn’t supposed to know about any of this. Oikawa must have assumed that Iwaizumi had given up on him, had been so angry and bitter that Iwaizumi wouldn’t go out of his way to create new, unaffiliated accounts to keep up with his social media, to seek out every new article put out about him, to read how Oikawa carefully skirts around mentioning Iwaizumi by name, but saying, always:

“I started playing with my childhood best friend. It was because of him that I even became a setter in the first place. I thought being a spiker was the only way to be valuable on the court, but he showed me how to shine in a different position.”

Or, in more recent interviews:

“My best friend at the time… He’s probably the only reason I didn’t, um, die, in one way or another. He was always there for me when I couldn’t be there for myself.”

However, it was never anything more than that. He never expressed a desire to reach back out to Iwaizumi, and he never talked further about his “former best friend” than he strictly had to.

It is an odd feeling, knowing that Iwaizumi had, apparently, meant so much to Oikawa, and yet his phone number was blocked. They don’t speak to each other, despite fifteen years of companionship. Oikawa must have known how his words tore into Iwaizumi's chest and ripped out his bleeding, broken heart.

All of his talk to his teammates and Hinata about the famous Iwa-chan —- it’s all been bravado. He must have truly thought that Iwaizumi wouldn’t be waiting for him, with his flowers and his blood and his permanent scowl. He must have thought Iwaizumi had gotten up from their doorstep and left them behind.

Iwaizumi wishes he had the strength to do that.

“Your mother told me,” Iwaizumi insists, and it sounds tight and unconvincing even to himself. He deflates at Oikawa’s unimpressed eyebrow raise. “Fine. It— you know what? No. Of course I know you got therapy. I can tell how much you’ve changed. Your confidence isn’t fake anymore. You move and talk and act like you actually know your worth for once. So don’t fuck with me here.”

Oikawa gives him another smile. This time, tight-lipped and desperately hiding emotions they both know Iwaizumi will get to the bottom of it, just like he always has. “Do you know when I started?”

“... No. Why would I know or care?”

“Three years ago,” he says, as though Iwaizumi should know the significance of that number. Oikawa continues after a brief, confused silence. “I read a really good paper on athletic mental health by some student at the University of California. It was in English, though. Mine wasn’t good enough to read the paper myself, so I had one of my teammates translate the entire thing for me. Cost me ninety-three thousand pesos because it wasn’t a short paper and he really didn’t want to do it. But,” he shrugs, gaze flickering aside briefly, “it was worth it. I got my act together and sought therapy. It’s been good for me.”

Iwaizumi stares at him, and for once, Oikawa is struggling to meet him.

“I wouldn’t have made the national team without it,” he keeps on because Iwaizumi is quiet, and it’s obviously making him uncomfortable. “I quit a little while ago, but it’s always open to me if I want to go back. Which I might do after when I get home. Um, please say something.”

“When was that paper written?”

Oikawa’s answer comes quickly. “The same year I read it.”

“I hate you.” Iwaizumi leans back in his chair and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. He was one of two students in his graduating class to publish a dissertation in 2018, and their topics had been completely different. Iwaizumi’s first paper had gotten him an internship in America; his second paper had made him famous as an athletic trainer.

Nobody had written about an athlete’s mental health in relation to their physical health like he did, after all. There is, quite literally, only one paper that Oikawa could possibly be talking about.

He would have to have been keeping up with Iwaizumi in order to read his paper so fast. It’s not something he would have stumbled upon by mere chance, either, especially if he hadn’t been considering therapy by that point. Even more unlikely would be someone showing it to him. Iwaizumi’s paper mattered to the people it was supposed to matter to: the people of his profession and those wanting to learn more about athletic medicine.

This wasn’t something Oikawa was supposed to know about, just like how Iwaizumi wasn’t supposed to know that he went to therapy.

Ninety-three thousand pesos for a personal and complete translation. What a fucking joke. “I hate you so much.”

“I know,” Oikawa says, somewhat miserably.

“Why did you do it? It’s clear neither of us want this. Why did you never unblock me? Why?” Iwaizumi squeezes the tips of his fingers into his hair, recalling his conversation with Hinata. “I’ve kept up with you and care for your family. And you’ve kept up with me, despite everything. God, you told your teammates about me. Why? Why do you keep doing this?”

“Of all the people who wanted me to pursue my dreams in Argentina, I didn’t want you to be one of them.”

Iwaizumi takes his hands off his face. “What?”

“Did you even want me here?” Oikawa asks, and Iwaizumi watches as he drops his mask in real-time. Iwaizumi’s eight years of conflicting turmoil, of resentment and regret, are reflected in Oikawa’s face. “You never said a word against it. It’s like… it’s like you wanted me gone. And I— it hurt. It hurt so fucking much.”

“That I wanted you to be happy?”

“That you never asked me to stay!” Oikawa is yelling, now, in response to Iwaizumi’s raised voice. “Not once! I figured that if you were just so ready to move on from me, I’d collapse the bridge you started burning! That way, you could live the life you so clearly wanted, away from me, and have none of that damn obligation to slowly fizzle us out!”

“If I had you asked you to stay—”

“Which you didn’t —”

“— you would have stayed.” Iwaizumi finishes, his entire body tensed as tightly as a coiled spring. “That’s why I never asked. I wanted to. God knows I wanted to, but I didn’t. Because if I had told you that I couldn’t bear the very idea of you being further than a train ride away from me, you would’ve stayed in Japan, and you would have been miserable. The only thing here for you was me, and I am not good enough to get in the way of your career.”

And Iwaizumi can’t stop now. “Here’s something that you don’t understand, Oikawa. When you love someone, you let them go.”

Since they have known each other since they were three years of age (and became inseparable for fifteen years thereafter), there are very few things that they never truly talked about. Even the most uncomfortable stuff that other young boys their age had trouble talking about in sincerity — emotions, mainly — had been discussed by them. Whether it be under the glow-in-the-dark stars on Oikawa’s ceiling, peppering a volleyball, or walking back from school, they forged a relationship where nothing was sacred and everything could be said unjudged and receive a thoughtful response if their tone required it.

That way, they could say what they felt without the incessant fear of severing their friendship.

However, that didn’t mean they talked about absolutely everything.

Both he and Oikawa applied to the same high schools. It made sense to them, at the time, since they had already made it eleven years as friends and worked better than any other duo on the volleyball court. If any school wanted one of them, they would have to take the other.

They both got accepted to Seijoh. Shiratorizawa, despite the unappealing factor of living in dorms, was their top choice of school, because they were a powerhouse in both academics and volleyball. However, neither of them was accepted, so they went to their second choice. Aoba Johsai’s volleyball team was amazing and they didn’t have dorms, so they weren’t really even all that disappointed.

Iwaizumi had been living his life perfectly normally and chatting with Mother Oikawa, who had the rare afternoon off and wanted to cook a family dinner. Iwaizumi, being her favorite son since Oikawa was a prick, was obviously invited to this dinner. They got on the topic of their new high schools, and Iwaizumi had off-handedly mentioned not being accepted to Shiratorizawa.

At that, Mother Oikawa had nodded and said:

“Oh, that’s a shame. You’re such a bright kid and amazing player! Tooru got a volleyball scholarship there, but he rejected them in favor of Seijoh. Between you and me, I’m glad he didn’t go. I’m not ready for him to leave me so soon.” She’d winked across the table at Iwaizumi, not having seen the way his entire perception of his best friend had shattered in an instant. Beside him, Oikawa hadn’t even flinched.

He’d laughed and said: “Purple really isn’t my color.”

His mother had hummed. “It was your top choice, though? Boys like you change your minds so fast! I remember when you said you wanted the new Mortal Kombat game for your birthday, then a week later, you wanted…”

Iwaizumi had tried to talk to him about it. He’d asked him why Oikawa had given up his dream school for his second choice, and Oikawa had resolutely refused to answer. For once in his life, Iwaizumi hadn’t pushed for more. When there was only one reasonable explanation for Oikawa choosing Seijoh, Iwaizumi simply didn’t need the verbal confirmation nor the fight it would take to get it.

Later in the year, Oikawa started seriously talking about moving to Argentina, and Iwaizumi would’ve been damned if he let Oikawa throw away his happiness again.

Because, well. Iwaizumi loved him.

“When I found that keychain, I thought you were mocking me,” Oikawa tells him, his whole body shaking something violent while his monitor beeps wildly. “But I kept it because it was the only thing I had that was distinctly you. I was terrified all of the time. I was alone and scared, and every day, I thought about giving up and going home. And then, I just had to look at this thing, and see your name with Japan, and it was like I had a piece of you wherever I went. It’s the closest thing I have to home.”

Oikawa clutches the keychain in his hand. Iwaizumi realizes, now, how well-maintained Oikawa has kept it if he’s always holding it like that.

It’s a cheap one- yen gift from a shitty gas station in Sendai.

“I miss you,” Oikawa says. “I miss you more than you could ever know.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t point out that he just told Oikawa he loved him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s said the word love and gotten away with it, and it wouldn’t be the first time that he’s had to stop himself from desperately searching for a sign that Oikawa reciprocates his non-platonic affections.

“I don’t know about that,” Iwaizumi mutters. “Only one of us based his entire career on your injury.”

Oikawa laughs at him. Laughs, like the asshole he is. It’s choked and awful and Iwaizumi’s heart crumbles.

“I told your mom I’d bring you home,” he tells Oikawa, and it gets him to stop making that horrid sound.

“Ah, well,” Oikawa shrugs. “Can’t go home until I get my gold medal.”

Cold metal burns against his chest, and he knows he can’t stall on this longer. He digs under his shirt and yanks on the cord around his neck. The golden pendant pops over his jacket, and Oikawa’s eyes latch onto it in shock. His gaze flicks back and forth from Iwaizumi’s face to the pendant, then back again.

“Your team gave it to me. They said that you would be honored if I stood in your place. I didn’t take it, but Gallo handed it to me after the podium ceremony anyway.” He thinks that’s what happened, in any case. His memories of the two days immediately following Oikawa’s heart spasm are shattered into pieces he’s spent hours putting back together. “They also wanted me to be the first one to see you.”

Oikawa is still staring at him, and—

Those are tears in his eyes.

“It’s always been you and me, Tooru. Promise me you won’t lock me out of your life again.” Iwaizumi grips the gold medal like a vice, fingers tightening painfully around the smooth, circular edge.

“I promise.” Oikawa lifts up his hand and curls his fingers into a fist, save for his pinkie. “Promise me you want me?”

Iwaizumi stands, needing only to take a few steps to lean over Oikawa’s bed, and slips off the gold medal. He presses it lightly into Oikawa’s chest while taking his pinkie finger in his own.

It feels like they are five again when he vows: “I promise.”

Except, when they were five years old and unaware of the pain life had in store for them, their gazes didn’t linger on each other’s clasped fingers. They didn’t slowly move up until their eyes met. And, most certainly, Oikawa didn’t yank Iwaizumi down by his neck to smash their lips together.

There is another thing that they never got around to properly talking about.

Sexuality wasn’t taboo between them. Oikawa had been the first to break the ice on the subject when they were thirteen, admitting to Iwaizumi while walking back from the movie theatre that he wasn’t sure if he was entirely straight. Iwaizumi had shrugged then, supremely unbothered by whatever identity crisis Oikawa was going through, and said that he didn’t care who Oikawa thought was attractive.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that Iwaizumi realized that he liked guys. More specifically, he was attracted to all of the actors that kind of looked like an older version of Oikawa, and he had never spared more than a second thought at any girl other than the occasional she’s cute, I guess. Then, at fourteen, he came to the very sudden and horrific conclusion that he was deeply infatuated with Oikawa.

Oikawa had never talked about his own sexuality again, though they’d never shied away from sexuality-adjacent topics. They’d spoken about other queer people, tv shows, how they both agreed that homophobia was weird, and the like. Thus, Iwaizumi hadn’t been concerned that his best friend would put his head on a spike if he found out Iwaizumi liked the same gender. He was more terrified that admitting his queerness would get him to admit other things, too. Things that would tear their relationship apart.

If Oikawa liked someone, he made it known. He flirted with whichever girl was in his fancy, talked Iwaizumi’s ear off about her, went on a date with her (it was rare he was ever rejected), then moved on after the first date or two was unsuccessful. He’d managed only two long-term girlfriends during high school, both for a year, and both ending over the fact that Oikawa was, generally speaking, a terrible boyfriend. If he wasn’t playing volleyball, he was either at home studying or hanging out with Iwaizumi and, occasionally, the other two members of their friend group. He rarely changed his schedule to accommodate one-on-one time with his girlfriend.

This was all to say that if Oikawa had liked Iwaizumi back, Iwaizumi would have been the first to know. Oikawa was a flirt; he’d tease Iwaizumi on occasion, getting a little too touchy than beyond normal, and Iwaizumi would push him away. However, when Iwaizumi dipped his toes in the water and flirted unintentionally, — a genuine compliment slipped from his tongue, a hand placed at an odd angle, a lingering glance that Hanamaki texted him about later — Oikawa would physically retreat.

Iwaizumi was in love with Oikawa. He never told Oikawa, as it was one of the very few Things We Don’t Speak About Out Loud. He never tried to flirt, and when he did on accident, he gave Oikawa the space he needed.

But, Oikawa never left him. That was their unspoken rule: if Iwaizumi never said anything, then Oikawa could pretend it didn’t exist. No matter how hard Iwaizumi wanted to believe that when Oikawa flirted with him, when he would pull out, “I love you” while laying out in the grass of Iwaizumi’s backyard, or when Hanamaki and Matsukawa sat Iwaizumi down and said, “Dude, he’s in love with you”, it meant that his feelings were reciprocated. He and Oikawa weren’t like other friends, and therefore nobody outside could possibly understand just how differently they said I love you to each other.

He’d thought that letting Oikawa go would mean letting go of that love.

It didn’t. Impossibly, it had ruined Iwaizumi further. He couldn’t date anyone for longer than a month. He couldn’t hook up, couldn’t do much of anything except wonder why he wasn’t experiencing those firsts with Oikawa as he had with everything else in his life up until they were severed in the Sendai Airport. Eventually, that painful, never-ending longing became as much a part of his adulthood as it had his childhood.

He had thought he would die that way, with his heart, bloody and broken, clutched in the hands of a man who didn’t want to speak to him ever again.

“Please, tell me I didn’t fuck everything up,” Oikawa whispers after drawing his face away from Iwaizumi’s and stewing in his stunned silence. Their kiss had been quick and simple but desperate all the same.

Iwaizumi searches Oikawa’s terrified gaze. His lips are tingling. The heart monitor is wailing around them, but all Iwaizumi can think is that, at fourteen years old, — at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen — Oikawa had been just as scared of losing their friendship as Iwaizumi was.

They are both massive idiots.

“I promised you, didn’t I? I want you.” I have loved you since the day I met you, he doesn’t say, but he knows Oikawa hears it all the same.

“You have me. You’ve always had me.”

Iwaizumi has been waiting his entire life for this. He lets go of the medallion and winds his hand behind through the back of Oikawa’s hair. Diving back down, he almost reconnects their lips when the door abruptly bangs open, and three hospital staff members rush in. 

“Let go of him!” One of the nurses screams, and Iwaizumi practically launches himself off of Oikawa. They flit around the patient and the various machines in the room updating his vitals and keeping him alive. It’s then that Iwaizumi registers that the monitor has been alerting the entire hospital for the last minute or so of Oikawa’s critical heart failure.

After they conclude that Oikawa’s elevated blood pressure and heart rate aren’t actually a sign of another heart spasm, the doctor whirls on Iwaizumi. “What were you doing?” She demands.

Embarrassingly, Oikawa and Iwaizumi recount, in the most vague manner possible, their reunion and why that caused Oikawa’s heart monitor to display 187 beats per minute alongside a blood pressure of 164/83. The apology they are forced to mumble is only a marginally more mortifying ordeal.

They put a forty-eight-hour ban on Iwaizumi’s return to the hospital, which is entirely fair. The only thing that makes it worse is that both Sakusa and Miya are waiting outside to guide him back to the Olympic dormitories. Those two spare no mercy in mocking him, and he wonders, briefly, if it would be worth his entire career to smash both of their heads in with a heavy rock.

He manages to restrain himself; he owes his patience to Sakusa. Without him, Iwaizumi wouldn’t have trusted himself enough to catch Oikawa before he fell. If he hadn’t been there, hadn’t been the one to break his ribs and restart his heart, and hadn’t been the one to hold Oikawa’s dead weight, Iwaizuimi wouldn’t be here now, with Oikawa’s accounts following him on all his main socials, with a new text from an unknown number being a simple smiley face emoticon, with his hands tingling from Oikawa’s hair and pinkie finger.

Iwaizumi doesn’t thank Sakusa directly since he’s being a Grade-A asshole with Miya. However, when Miya is distracted, Iwaizumi mimes zipping his lips shut and flicking away the key. Sakusa stares at him, wide-eyed, before swiftly schooling his expression when Miya turns back around.

He’s funny, Iwaizumi thinks while watching Sakusa hold himself together by a thread. Then it’s suddenly not so funny when he realizes that Matsukawa and Hanamaki were in Iwaizumi’s position for all three and a half years of high school.

Iwaizumi and Oikawa owe them a sincere apology.

—

“Okay. That’s perfect. Bye, Iwa-chan. I love you.”

Iwaizumi quirks his lips, momentarily stunned by the way Oikawa professes it with such ease, as if they’ve been saying those words for their entire lives. “I love you, too. See you in a few days.”

The call ends, and Iwaizumi is left staring at the nearly bare text message log between him and Oikawa. It’d only been a few hours since he’d been kicked out of the hospital, but Iwaizumi had demanded they call as soon as possible so he could get one prevailing headache cleared.

Calling. It’d been eight years since he last received a text from Oikawa, much less a call. Oikawa hadn’t even fought him on the matter, seemingly jumping at the opportunity to reconnect regardless of how little time had actually passed.²

Maybe this time, when Oikawa has to inevitably return to Argentina, everything will be okay. Iwaizumi is willing to believe that. After all, it is a truth universally acknowledged that Oikawa is one stubborn motherfucker.

It is also now acknowledged that Oikawa is as in love with Iwaizumi as he is with Oikawa. Now, they don’t have to let go. They have their careers, their homes, and their mutually pitiful romantic relationships to show for how much they’ve stayed in love despite the time and distance.

He quits dawdling in his thoughts and courses through his voicemail. Landing on the contact he’s waited four days to get back to, he presses on it and puts the phone to his ear.

“Hello? Higuchi Rika speaking,” a professional-sounding woman answers on the second, the same voice as the one who had left the original voicemail.

Iwaizumi swallows, looking down for reassurance at the notes he’d hastily compiled in his hour-and-a-half-long phone call with Oikawa. “Hello. This is Iwaizumi Hajime. You wanted to interview me?”

¹ On March 11, 2011, a massive tsunami hit Japan’s Pacific coast. It had massive waves, reaching up to 132 feet in height. According to National Geographic, an estimated 15,500 died and left hundreds of thousands homeless. This tsunami has been dubbed “3/11” by Japanese citizens, and for good reason. It absolutely devastated the Tohoku region.

² It wasn’t just time and distance. Oikawa realized he never got to make a perfectly well-timed joke about not having to sleep in cardboard beds anymore, and he had to tell it to Iwaizumi before it was too late.

[sketchehm]

Going back to the whole bastion situation since let's just say after the mafia comes back to the bastion, that place does not have a single piglin brute when they're done. When sapnap first sees them he goes right over to where shadoune is and is blubbering and crying that they all left him. While the others are currently on a piglin killing spree, shadoune is calming sapnap down while he's clinging to him like a koala. It's earlier on, so I think this is before he gets a lot closer to the other guys and is very clingy to shadoune. He still thinks farfa is the coolest if a bit scary. He also likes serpias since he's one the nicer ones at the beginning, and with shadoune convinced the other guys to keep him around.

When they're all finished, they go straight up to shadoune and sapnap to make sure he wasn't hurt. Luckily, being fire resistant and having the best toddler armor is pretty good for protection in the nether. I think they'd all in their own way comfort him whether it be serpias giving him a couple of kisses on the top of his head, hand pats, ruffling his hair, or just talking to him from the others. I think it opens their eyes to see sapnap so clearly distressed and overstimmulated. He's had tantrums, but he looks more upset than they've ever seen him. He probably won't leave shadoune's arms until they get back to the overworld.

Then, when shadoune lets him down is when peele comes back, and he goes straight to the toddler and tries to make him laugh and get his mind off of the scary experience. That's when they set the rule of someone having to watch sapnap and making sure there's always eyes on him. They mostly give a lot of shifts to goncho, but they also all take turns when they go on missions or grinding materials.

I'll definitely have to write out different interactions for everyone, but they each have fun with him. They each get even more attached than they expected. (Especially farfa which they tease him about endlessly. See the juan incident lol)

I just want you to know I read this before going to bed last night and I told myself, "this is gonna be mine at least for tonight" LMAO

I did NOT want to share because I love this SO fucking much

I imagine once sapnap is back and is reunited with Peele, he's much calmer and is just exaggerating how amazing he was at the bastion to Peele

Peele knowing better: Oh WOW. You were very braveee!

Sapnap: Si si si si!!!! Muy brave!!

Shadoune with his shoulder covered in snot and tears: yup.....

I assume the rest of Team Mafia will tease baby Sapnap of the incident for a while after that too (I know my dad always kept bringing up the Traumatic Baby moments when I was a baby lmao) though I think they'd learn eventually that while Sapnap will go "nooo >:( I'm not a crybaby!!" he does get a nervousness when the nether is mentioned more often now...so they try to avoid it for awhile

There's this thing my mom and grandma used to do when you get Scared:tm: pretty badly that I'm not sure if other hipsanic cultures do? But its rub an egg all over you, crack it in some water, and it'll soak up the Traumatic energy(there's more to this but I forget oops) and the wisps of the egg whites in the water indicate how badly you were actually scared if the spikes of the wisps are crazy. I was always fascinated by it and I still believe it works to this day haha, my own superstitious belief you can say :>

I imagine a baby Sapnap getting nightmares after this and one them having to rub an egg on his and humming to him so he feels better in the dead of night. Just being soft with him in general. Sapnap waking back up and seeing the egg cup and is like >:0!!!! All the scary is out of me now!!! Look!!! It's all in this egg!! He'd tell Sylvee about the magic egg during their next playdate of course

[skydigiblogs]

back on my bullshit (thinking about translation theory in the context of my silly little monster cartoons <3)

(this ended up so so fucking long so i put it under a read more lmao)

specifically thinking about it in the context of like a handful of world/postcolonial lit courses we took and some anth courses

what i mean by that is like

when it comes to just literature there are already so many things that have to be taken into account for translation! let's say you're taking a poem. in its native language, that poem has a sound, a rhythm, a way of communicating that a lot of poetry in a lot of languages do. when you translate it to another language, like english, are you going to translate in a way that preserves the meaning most, or a way that attempts to approximate the meaning while preserving the synesthetic qualities of its sounds?

the homeric epics are a really fun example for comparative translation analysis imo. and i mean fun because there are so many translations of them into english, and at least one madlad decided to make a prose translation of an epic poem. only recently did the first translation of the poem by a woman get published, and that revealed that a lot of biases in the linguistic nuance were kind of getting smoothed over like a crease in clay.

(i have a copy of emily wilson's translation but am not the guy who reads classics in our system, i just write the essays lmao. but she wrote multiple times about the theory of translation she was working with and if you're at all interested in this topic, look her up.)

but even if you aren't translating a text from antiquity and are, say, working with a more contemporary example of literary translation, you still have to bridge the gap between two cultures that may be very different. just a word for word translation may not work too, because figurative language like idioms might not be understood by the language you're translating to.

the amount of cultural knowledge required to sculpt a truly effective translation that preserves the image of the original while making it comprehensible to an otherwise ignorant audience is just. so cool to me. i say this as someone who could never really do translation work myself, on account of not having that kind of complex grasp on another language than my native one, of course, but you don't have to be fluently billingual to understand what i'm talking about here, imo.

another example, and one that i actually wrote comparative analysis on, is work from charles baudelaire's les fleurs du mal ("the flowers of evil"). works of short poetry are effective case studies in what different translations can look like, because translations of baudelaire's poetry still portray the subject matter in a way that is presumably true to the original french. while something may always be lost in translation (there's a saying for a reason there), the philosophy behind one's translation can also highlight one's own reading of a text, and offer a closer insight into said text for foreign audiences (me, it's me, i'm the foreign audience reading charles baudelaire in world lit and going absolutely insane about translation theory).

for my mileage, you end up seeing a paradigm between translations that span between "strict" and "loose," if that makes any sense. a strict translation makes no changes in its translation, preserving the literature in its entirety as it is translated, to the best approximation possible where a direct translation is impossible. a loose translation meanwhile may make more artistic choices in its translation, foregoing certain details in order to better articulate the artistry in the original work.

okay, now, the reason i'm thinking about this today, right now.

in literature this is already a complex subject, but when you get into other forms of art, like animation in the case of this blogs primary topic, there become a lot more moving parts. like with literature, there's going to be the simple fact of looking into a cultural window and trying to communicate that snapshot to foreigners.

with subtitling, you can add things like translator's notes. this is a non-diegetic method of communicating information to your audience, and you can see it present in literature as well (footnotes or endnotes are a frequent addition to many translated works; hell, they're common even in non-translated works). in animated works where there are vocal tracks (like anime openings or insert songs), you can also have subtitles for those, no problem!

however, when it comes to dubbing, you automatically include more elements to juggle in your translation work. you have to take into account individual voice, background tracks, visuals, etc. etc.. the method most dubs handle translating the work often discourages non-diegetic methods of communicating information, so you're less likely to see translator's notes in dub work. sometimes this even includes changing on-screen text so that a foreign audience can read it.

the lengths to which a dubbing company is willing to censor in translation is also, obviously, a conversation worth noting (see again my losing my shit at pinnochimon packing heat). a phenomenon i'm sure we've all noticed when it comes to dubbing (as opposed to most translations of literature i've seen) is that dubs may market to a specific age range in translation. sometimes that may end up defanging a work's themes, or changing them entirely. the censorship of a dub may come out of a cultural difference or hesitance to show certain subjects to a younger audience, but regardless it is part of the theory behind some dub work.

i don't really have a conclusion to this, but it's just in my mind a lot while i'm watching some of these series for the first time subbed. by all means, i don't think dubbing is a bad thing (if anything it's complex), but having the experience of watching the sub is allowing me to do a type of comparative analysis i don't think i've ever had the chance to actively do.

i know that there are folks who have done more thorough comparative analysis work than i'll probably end up doing, of course (there are so many wonderful blogs here on tumblr alone about that meta-analysis). it's just that i'm enjoying engaging with a childhood interest in a way that i suppose i didn't know i wanted to do so badly.

[jerek]

What's really weird is these fleeting moments of genuine respect I get from my mom now that I'm making money and have my own car. Like... you're going to do this now? Nearly a decade after I started being abused online and you didn't want to talk about it, NOW you want to show me what I could've had? Every day I think back to the single moment I wanted to kill her the absolute most.

It was 2021 and we were walking our elderly, on-the-way-out dog in hopes he could sniff out our other missing dog, after she'd stopped answering phone calls because of telemarketers.

The dog tugged on the leash, because he was poorly socialized and hadn't been walked in years, and she hunched down and started growling at him. She'd been berating him the entire time, and now she was growling in his face.

We were standing on a bridge, and I had a vivid image in my mind of grabbing her by the ankles and just... tipping her over. She would've dropped like a rock, head-first. Not sure she would've died from it, actually. It was 15 feet, bare minimum, probably closer to 20. I was already suicidal. I fantasized daily about public suicide at this point, until my little brother started being suicidal too (and then it was all about him.)

I was convinced that white Americans were not capable of familial love. They probably weren't even capable of romantic love. They could approximate it, sure.

At the same time, I would go on walks daily, which I still do. But I would spend extra time on the residential streets, not staring in the windows but not really trying not to. Daydreaming about being born into literally any other family. Daydreaming about being switched at birth. Daydreaming about going back in time and switching babies in the hospital myself.

I've always had a weird obsession with being adopted. Even as a 5 year old, I had these passing daydreams about what would happen if my grandma suddenly dropped me off somewhere and informed me I wasn't really hers. Then, later in life, it became an embarassingly enthusiastic interest in any culture that wasn't my own. I figured it was a white people thing until I started having dreams about being allowed to just... assimilate. Having dreams where I was 5, outside a Jewish school in an unfamiliar neighborhood, no parents in sight, and someone just takes my hand and leads me in.

Then I met the most responsible person in the teen center, and he was basically my father but 10 years younger and Venezuelan and actually invested in his own life.

I figure I get enough use out of my mom nowadays that I'm glad I didn't do what that vision told me to. Of course, I couldn't tell you how I feel on an emotional level: just an intellectual one.

I wish people still loved me even if I misspoke. Even if I threw tantrums as a kid. Even when I forget things. Even when I drink or get high. Even when I showed symptoms of disorders they had too. I wish there was something appealing about me besides my capacity to produce smut. I wish people still loved me when I had other friends, or other things going on. I wish people would still love me even if I couldn't justify it. I wish I didn't have to make up for being born with a fleshlight between my legs. I wish people still wanted me around, and I wish it was for all the things I hate about myself, but I think I've been stuck here so long that my resentment has whittled away everything but my worst impulses.

I wish it was as simple as murder-suicide. Maybe if I did kill my mom.

[formulatrash]

What do you think of Juri Vips being with RLL at Long Beach? Is it likely that he will get a seat there? I don't know if you even know IndyCar stuffs but I don't know who else to ask 👉👈

I'm undecided of what I should think about him then again he did some sensitivity training and at least he apologised what other people Armstrong or Danny Ric never did. Do you think he should get another shot? You don't have to answer if you're not comfortable was just wondering.

the answer to this is: I don’t know. which makes me lean to the idea he shouldn’t. 

(to my knowledge Daniel actually did apologise, incidentally - I definitely remember it at the time; it wasn’t a stellar apology but it did happen)

with Jüri: a lot of what happened was not about him. Red Bull’s frantic response was not really about a junior driver doing something racist, it was about the fact they were increasingly getting a reputation as a racist team. the speed they acted about Vips was definitely accelerated by someone in Austria having realised there was a marketing consequence to the way the team had become associated with racist fan behaviour. 

that isn’t in any way to defend Vips or say that he shouldn’t have faced consequences: it was absolutely right he did. just that the consequences he faced weren’t particularly about him or what he did so much as they were face-saving for Red Bull to break its association to him. which means that, in addressing what he did or what it means to him, they weren’t necessarily very effective because that was never what it was about.

so a sensitivity course was a way of RB saying ‘we distance ourselves from this, this isn’t our institutional culture even though it is widely documented in the Hamilton commission report that in fact this is endemic to Formula 1′ rather than being something genuinely intended for educating Vips. 

he may have been undertaking more reflection and education since. he hasn’t spoken about it if he has but knowing how to speak publicly in a way that is useful rather than performative about that kind of thing is also not a hugely widely-available skill in motorsport and shutting the fuck up might be better, all things considered.

so the reason I don’t know is: I don’t believe the original consequences Vips faced were intended to teach him anything and I don’t know if he has learned anything since. 

even if he had: motorsport careers end all the time, prematurely. people run out of money and opportunities all the time. there’s always the call of becoming a hanger-on or a team manager or a driver coach (and those are the ones that stay in the industry) just the same cigarette-paper-width away as a barrier you either avoid or cause €180k damage into. 

so there’s no ‘fair’ about whether he comes back or not. it’s an unfair sport. being publicly racist is a better reason to end your career than a lot of the people I’m interviewing for my book who just ran out of ways to carry on. 

is he a good driver? yes, when he doesn’t lose his temper. even before he decided to drop racial slurs he’d been sabotaging his own results by making mistakes when he was in the lead and screwing up under pressure. whether that was the F1 seat being closer than before (I think he likely would’ve got the AlphaTauri seat this year if this hadn’t all happened) or the pressure of running simulator work and FP1s for F1 and then stepping back to the F2 car or the fact Hitech is a pretty aggro team or what, I don’t know. it wouldn’t excuse him being racist whatever it was - plenty of drivers have difficult seasons; Pourchaire’s last year in F2 was pretty mentally brutal but it wouldn’t get him out of dropping slurs. 

and an 11th place finish in F2 doesn’t at least showcase a generational talent, if there happens to be one in him. 

other people - well, person - disgraced for racism in F2 have found a home in IndyCar. Santino Ferrucci seems to have some sort bullet-proof cheque book that means he can come back from anything. I don’t think Vips is anything like as shitty a human being as Ferrucci (who terrorised his Formula 2 team mate with racial abuse, tried to run a Trump-supporting livery and then claimed he can’t be racist because he’s Italian before receiving a year-long PR tour from the IndyCar promoters)

the difference between Vips and Ferrucci - and also Vips and Armstrong, in terms of racers who’ve come out of F2 without stonking results and are looking for an IndyCar seat - is that he doesn’t have any funding. it was why he didn’t go to F2 a few years ago and had a sort of ambling junior career around anywhere Red Bull could find somewhere bargain bucket enough. so I don’t know that he’ll be outbidding anyone for an RLL seat, especially since his name isn’t going to be catnip to sponsors. I know he’s done some testing and is probably gunning for more, a way to impress enough to get seen. 

unfortunately - and I’m not saying this is right, it isn’t - the way that motorsport seats get allocated isn’t fair. it’s not about talent and it’s not about potential and sometimes it’s not even about money. I don’t call the shots on where Vips sits in that decision-making knot and I can’t read the minds of the people that do but there is a regular tendency for people to feel like they need to give white, cishet, male athletes another chance when they’ve faced any kind of consequences for something they’ve done that isn’t afforded to other people.

[ashleighneville]

Your Hatters tags on the archive post were so cool! There’s definitely a project for someone to use the National Media Museum photo archives to write more people that aren’t white cis men back into English football history

Yes!! Particularly if it could be done in combination with oral history. Honestly i find the social history of football absolutely fascinating. I'm going to yell about it below the read more because honestly i just think it's so important that when football is being increasingly controlled by money which is concentrated in a small number of clubs that people remember the importance of community and communities to football (and that those communities has always included women and minorities)

My grandad is very much more invested in social side of football than the sport itself so most of his stories have very little to do with actual football and are far more focused on people. He talks about the rover's player who lived up the road or his dad having the sports paper sent down from Wigan and sending them info on a Yeovil player they were interested in. Even when they are a bit more football focused it's his dad's adventures in getting tickets to the famous Yeovil vs Sunderland match in 1949 and the back up goalie who was forced to play and barely played again. I feel so much closer to my grandad since getting into football because we have something to talk about and bond over and it's really really lovely.

And then you have the geographic (and subsequently demographic) aspect. I've never been more aware of my locality since getting into football: my family's migrational history (both that 3/4 of my grandparents aren't English and the only familial connection with football i have is through my English grandfather but also movement within England), the difference in culture between the west country and the rest of England (i.e the preference for rugby over football which kind of reflects the relationship between wales and the west country and the greater presence of like celtic culture in the area even if it's not actually linked) and just being from my side of Bristol because the rivalry here is geographic. Nicknames are often reflective of local culture, industry and history (Bristol rovers are the pirates for example but we're also known as the gas because our old stadium was right by a gasworks and the smell carried into the stadium.) I'd be fascinated to know why there are comparatively so many west country clubs called the robins, whether it's a coincidence or what.

But you've also got things like Spurs' Jewish connection. i think it would be quite difficult to detangle spurs from a (particularly social) history of the Jewish community in North London and of course vice versa you can't talk about the history of spurs without talking about the Jewish community in north london. I'm sure football would feature very heavily in the history of many other communities as well, I think Arsenal have had a large Black following for example. Just the fact that football is a working class sport and even today the majority of footballers come from a working class background. Then you also have, particularly across europe, political and class aspects in rivalries like Barça v real madrid and celtic v rangers. Even things like Manchester vs Liverpool has it's own history that goes beyond yet very much includes football.

It's one of the reasons i hate trophy logic and debates on whose a big club and man city has no history because while it's obviously a competitive sport and there is a conversation to be had about money and sportswashing, a club doesn't have to be big or traditionally successful to have history and value and importance and yes success. And i don't think that community and big clubs are incompatible and while I would encourage all football fans to engage with their local clubs, i think the whole support your local thing is overly simplistic to say the least (particularly when employed by prem fans) and doesn't actually address the issue people want it to which is that particularly big clubs are pricing out fans both local and not

If you could gather people's stories and memories of football you can create such a rich tapestry of football culture and history but even just having proof that people who have had their own history and relationship with football erased and banished allows space for these things to be discussed and acknowledged

[ell-vellan]

who out of all your ocs is closer to you in terms of personality and who out of other fictional characters is also closer to you?

This is such a cool question, thank you for asking! I've been thinking about it all day and it got me on a tangent on how I make characters, so I hope you don't mind that I rambled.

So, I'll start off saying that part of my process of making new characters is to give them one or two characteristics of my own that I'm very familiar with and dial them up to 11, or I infuse characters with opposite traits that I have. First because I have to have something relatable about my characters to write them, and also it's just kind of impossible to fully avoid when you're spending so much time with them. You're either writing them going through stuff which passes through the filter of your imagination and your experiences, or you're literally role playing as them in a game. It's easier to either go "this is what I would do" or "this is what I would NEVER do" and then go from there, especially when starting out with a new character you're just starting to get to know.

Eventually their paths diverge from yours, but you gotta start on common ground. Or I do, anyway.

A character's upbringing, religion, philosophy, culture, etc is a huge part of what makes them who they are. So because I don't share those same background experiences, my characters act how I would extrapolate someone with those experiences to act given the traits we share. That's sort of my "in" to that character's mindset, helps me see their very different life through their eyes. Especially when it comes to Dragon Age OCs, lol.

So with all that said, I think because I've spent the most time with Ellawyn while writing nearly 200 thousand words with her, and because I set off with the plan of making an insecure Inquisitor who struggles with it, and also crafted her as an opposite to Iron Bull, I've probably given her more of my own traits than anyone. The anxiety, Eldest Daughter Syndrome, and earnest do-gooder-ness, but way more intense. Her anxieties are different, but I understand that part of her, which helps me figure out how she feels about all the other stuff that goes on in her story. I can't imagine how it would feel to have magic or kill in self-defense, but I can relate way more to anxiety about being in charge and trying to do a good job.

Growing up I really didn't see a lot my personality in fictional characters because I was a quiet, shy kid who was scared of doing stuff, and those aren't main character traits! Because of course the confident, powerful character is the one that affects change, they're the ones driving the plot, and they're the interesting character to follow. Main characters can't reject their destiny and decide to stay home where it's safe, because then there's no story. So I like to write more unassuming characters who typically wouldn't be the hero. Ellawyn having been accidentally Inquisitor and feeling like she isn't up to the task but having no choice was interesting to me.

For my Cousland, she's the absolutely typical hero, because I always want to be the Lawful Good character in games and get everything right and help everyone have a happy ending lol. So that was my in with her. But Cousland gets an added dash of bloodthirsty revenge goals and a sheltered, privileged, ignorant origin story.

Mahariel is most my opposite - the cold orphan who has never regrets anything and is looking only to selfishly survive, without bringing his people down with him. He's the character is fed up with an unfair world and just says "Fuck it, I'm gonna watch it all burn." Sometimes it's fun to play as someone who doesn't give a shit about anyone but themselves, lol.

There are characters I've written that I've given negative traits of myself from past or present. It's fun for me to explore character arcs for people with similar traits but who took different paths. I've written a main character with agoraphobia, a mom-friend, bookish loners, cheerful optimists, headstrong rebels, Type A honor roll overachievers...because it's what I know. (Side characters are different because they often serve a narrative purpose to support the main story so they tend to be more a mix of different archetypes.)

But I definitely try not to fully put myself on the page because, again, I'm boring and wouldn't make a good main character, lol.

I did relate to Jane Eyre, especially her as a child. But one of the first characters I really felt like I saw a reflection of myself in was Cath from the book Fangirl, because she was a writer who was too scared to eat in the college cafeteria by herself, so she lived off food bars in her room. Which is something I literally did.

Those are the only ones I can think of! There are characters I admire for being the kind of person I *wish* I was, but that's a different question, lol.

Probably why I write the types of people I do, because I'm drawn to write what I want to read.

Thanks for letting me get on my soapbox and explore this super interesting question! You always have such insightful ones, too!

[bleedingmyway-blog]

Disenchantment with japanese culture

I've always been a weeaboo. To me, that is the one subculture I've always identified to in the same manner that a sports fan may immediately and proudly answer that they've been a madridista/yankees fan for as long as they can remember. I have been watching anime since I was a wee young lad; at the time I was growing up, french television was ripe with animated shows that were the result of collaborations between japanese and french/italian societies (these collaborations themselves the result of laws instigated by european countries to reduce the invasion of japanese shows on children's tv).

While said shows were closer to cartoons and typically had a more western thematic, there also was a channel called "Manga" which aired a lot of anime, and I'm not talking about older anime that was already fully voiced by the early 00s, i'm talking about anime which was pretty recent at the time and already voiced in french : cowboy bebop, wolf's rain, gurenn lagan, as well as some classics (which at the time were not-so-classic and more obscure) such as neon genesis evangelion, fullmetal alchemist, code geass, amongst others.

I grew to absolutely loathe live-action TV (i could not bear to see "real" people on tv as i called them, it irked me to no end as a child) and had gained some sort of an affinity towards japanese culture in general; as cringeworthy as it may sound. Of course, I was also a big fan of super-heroes (like any child), but anime was my "main" thing. It did not help that I was more of a nintendo gamer when i was younger, meaning you'd typically end up with a game between your hands that was more influenced by japanese folklore than say, your average ps3/xbox game at the time.

As soon as I was able to scour the internet for my own devices, I naturally orbited towards the anime sphere -and I wouldn't use the weeaboo term, as i was not really involved in a fandom community-, starting by using the wonders of the internet to rewatch certain anime i was fond of, like city hunter or haisukuru kimengumi (at the time, i found it incredible that you could use youtube/dailymotion to watch any episode of any show you wanted when you wanted to).

I then started getting into the classics, watching/reading death note at the time (and getting ultimately spoiled for no reason whatsoever in middle school, despite being the one to have showed spoilerish classmates the anime), bleach, highschool DxD (which was incredibly trendy at some point), the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya and so on.

I hardly watched any movies save for those that would occasionally air on tv, or series; i was exclusively into anime and reading manga when I was in middle school. I'd like to remind you, dear reader, that the reason you may believe what I'm saying is not too interesting or uncommon -save for my subpar writing skills and failure to keep your interest- is because it has now become widely accepted to indulge in this subculture of anime/manga/japanese culture.

I shall not go into detail, but whereas it is now conventionally acceptable to go out wearing an anime shirt or tell your co-worker you spent the friday night watching the latest one piece episode with your friend/partner, I grew up in a time where this was seen as incredibly nerdy, cringeworthy, and anime was typically known as "chinese cartoons". You couldn't just up and go wear an anime shirt either; you'd have better luck trying to tell a chick about your last wow raid than try to greet somebody without getting weird stares directed at your chest. Worse : an outgoing weeaboo was basically seen as a walking talking -and sweating- cringemachine by other more recluse weeaboos.

There was some sort of an excitement to finding someone else who bore the curse of taking drawn big eyed and pink haired girls making a transformation into a bikini outfit for the sole purpose of fighting seriously, and indulge as well as recommend each other anime. By the time I went to highschool, I was deeper into the entire thing : i started watching more moe anime (which i equate to the moment where regular substance use becomes addiction), getting involved in pretty obscure animemes community (i am talking about the weird love live! plushie memes, kemono friends and such) as well as watching more obscure anime such as serial experiments lain, ergo proxy, casshern sins, and others i am probably missing. You may find me a pedant for calling these obscure, but prior to instagram (sadly) making the boa opening song trending -i cannot describe the feeling when i first heard it on instagram on a coworker's story and being in complete disbelief- lain was quite obscure and there wasn't a lot to be found about it save for the very closed online forum, the cyberia music, and a lot of theories. By college, i was mostly reading manga, going for things like Dorohedoro, Blame!, that one with the fish/mushroom girl (shimeji watchacallit) and so on.

But at the time, it felt like fodder. I was going through a pretty rough phase. I numbed my general misery by cramming in as much obscure manga, anime and fan art as possible : it helped keep me away from thinking at all. I hardly participated in online communities as I did before : i was content in my lonely indulgement, and I felt like my tastes were a tad too specific for me to bond with people who had a budding love for anime which was starting to get some pretty serious traction before covid hit (attack on titan, my hero academia and such becoming increasingly popular). But I also listened to a lot of american music, read more and more american books as well as started really getting into movies. As covid hit, I was pretty much over that very nasty phase of depression I was going through; and with it, I quit accessing the twitter account which was filled with obscure japanese artists, and started unsubscribing to pages of meme content for some communities i no longer felt like i was identifying to. I still watched anime, but treated it more like a medium which had gems but mostly had content that didn't further me in my litterary and spiritual pursuits as western media did : there was no japanese equivalent to the "holy mountain" movie by alejandro jodorovsky or to naked lunch. I also got into marvel comics during covid, which frankly didn't help.

But lastly : i felt like i no longer belonged in the anile community.

One, I didn't like the mainstream stuff. It irked me, isekais were too generic, i had my dose of shonen in my teens and mainstream anime wasn't my cup of tea. I couldn't really communicate with new weeaboos : i felt like we belonged to two different worlds. Seeing someone wearing anime merch in 2021 hit different than seeing that in 2011.

Second, I didn't identify with weeaboos either. I wasn't one of the weird wehraboos who would go on strange alt-right rants while having a girls und panzer pfp, and I also apparently was too outgoing for certain communities - i don't consider myself extroverted, but i'm not exactly keen on spending my day in a community loathing "normies" and "stacies".

Don't get me wrong : there are some wonderful people my age in those moe anime communities, but the amount of alt right/self-loathing creeps i'd have to wade through demotivates me. I was growing more uncomfortable with weeaboos in general. As time progressed, i developped new interests, and the more i indulged in them, the less I felt a connection to the weeaboo community. And as of 2024, I simply haven't watched a single anime/read any manga, for the first time in my life.

I no longer "feel" those memes, which are either sexually innapropriate (and i certainly don't write this to get anybody'd approval, i just sincerely believe loli memes are not funny and just concerning past a certain age) nor for the more bizarre female archetypes portrayed; i believe interacting with a woman on a level other than platonic one allows you to see that "anime mommies" are just the result of massive sexual frustration in the japanese anime culture. And finally, on the subject of portrayal of sexuality in anime/manga, I have no interest in getting into some bullcrap manga because it's "not like the cuckoo liberal western shitty content ! animu still shows us breasts !". I'll watch something if I judge it to be interesting enough, not because I want to make consuming any media some sort of an act of revolution.

So, ultimately, I don't know where that leaves me. I still love anime. I still love the fan art, i still feel like watching some classics which I've never watched or finished, but I think I've grown overall disenchanted with it. Anime/manga cutesy tropes just upset me now, character archetypes don't feel realistic to me, and so on so forth. I don't think I've got much to say left save for thank you for reading if you've made it this far.