#also sometimes brilliant people don't want to fucking teach

[deathspeaker]

I would like to point out that professors make garbage pay these days 75+% of professors are 'adjunct' professors. And most adjuncts get paid MINIMUM WAGE. And in some states that's the federal minimum wage. Which is 7.25$ an hour.

So there are 100% absolutely brilliant Ph.D.-holding people who 100% have to work a second job to be able to teach. So right now I have 0 doubt there are at least a good number of janitors out there who are actually professors.

They also don't get healthcare. I know, I dated an adjunct for a while. And due to how their work is he absolutely had to do work off the clock for his classes.

I had a friend who wanted to be a professor, she was on the right track, but then she realized she'd be making more money, and keeping her benefits, by giving up on her dream and just staying in the admin office. This was at the top school in Arizona BTW. Of which, has 3 fantastic universities, tuition and fees can range from 12k a year to 35k a year btw (spring and fall). That's per student (in-state vs. out-of-state).

So again, there are actual brilliant people who are currently working jobs that some (assholes) view as lesser or degrading.

America does NOT value its education system, from pre-k to post-grad.

I was debating pre- and post- smartphone existentialism with an older gentleman today and he stopped part way through and said “Why are you a security guard? Why aren’t you teaching this at some college somewhere?” And I didn’t know what to say so I went with “Well I used to make art but nobody pays an artist”

[isa-ghost]

qPhil & Other Egg Headcanons

Happy birthday original eggos 😭💚🎉

Note: Although I made these bc the og eggs are birth today, I've done at least one hc for each egg! They're a bit limited bc they're based off what I've seen through 3 POVs + osmosis through liveblog, but I included them all nonetheless. :D

qPhil headcanons masterlist

He thinks Leo has so much fucking swag. How does a literal egg look so fucking cool like at all times. How does she do it.

Secretly admires the shit out of Dapper. He's fucking brilliant. Hilariously unhinged. Insanely devoted to his collection habits. Adorably takes after Bad in looks and silliness. He's just such a badass little guy.

Pomme his fucking beloved. Brilliant just like her siblings, insanely perceptive, tough as nails yet still soft as flower pedals. He sees huge survivalist potential in her. He wishes she could shed some of the stress she's always seems to be under. He relates to her a bit too much sometimes. He hopes that poor girl gets a break.

He's absolutely gutted he didn't get to know Trump like at all. He saw little to nothing of him. He hopes he's at peace with Maxo.

GOD he wish he got more time with Flippa. She took him out like it was nothing. He would've loved training her alongside her parents. He bets she would've been an awesome pvper one day.

He wishes he could've seen more of Tilin. He was more familiar with her than he was Trump but still not enough.

Richarlyson makes it so hard not to pick "favorite eggs" besides his own. Richas is always on some wild ass shit, Phil fucking loves it. That kid's just high on life at like all times. Unreasonably funny on top of it all. God does Phil worry about him though, he's gotten way too into risking his life for the lulz.

Ramon practically feels like a third child to him (sometimes). Much like Dapper, he loves how brilliant he is and how cracked at his craft he is.

Bobby's death absolutely devastated him. He loved that little shit. And he loved how happy he made Roier and Jaiden. Seeing how severely his death broke them made his heart ache. He had nightmares about going through the same thing.

He's DETERMINED to get to know Chunsik further. Timezones are a bitch though. :( But he will be damned if something happens before he can get more familiar.

Empanada is unreasonably cute to him, and he loves seeing her take more and more after Bagi every time he sees her once more. He absolutely loves how close she and all her moms are. He genuinely fears the Pancake Mafia tbh, and he's convinced Empanada is the head.

He adores Sunny. She knows what she wants. They're not afraid to speak their mind as long as they're comfortable. She's silly and playful and sweet. Yet they still have this small, but palpable cool edge to them. Truly one spunky little girl. 😎

Phil is like 90% sure Pepito is just always going thru it, but has a sneaking suspicion that's just how Pepito seems at first glance, and maybe thats just what Pepito WANTS people to think. Either way, Pepito is just such a Creacher and Phil loves it. An absolutely loveable little guy.

He on/off considers commissioning Ramon or Dapper to make bombs to go fuck up a Fed building. He'd let them join him tbh.

He's so insanely afraid of accidentally hurting the eggs, but he'd love to spar with them and teach them more pvp skills so they'd be even better at defending themselves. He's only comfortable doing so with his own eggs.

God, he wants more times where ALL the eggs are together. He loves watching them interact, he loves their dynamics with each other and the chaos that unfolds when they're all in one place.

Phil: I don't want to build things bc technically that's doing the Feds a favor by making the island cooler. So fuck them. // Also Phil: *would build an entire city for these goddamn eggs if it meant they were safe and happy*

Watching the eggs all just talk and be silly together is literally Phil's favorite thing about their existence. Just watching them silently communicate in their Egg Ways, slapping down signs and punching each other. There's something so special and funny about their nonverbal communication.

He will NEVER be able to look at certain objects or accessories without thinking of the kids now.

He secretly has doodles of what he thinks each kid would look like if they hatched into dragons.

[perseusannabeth]

Chapter 1

A/N: Hi everyone, and happy holidays! This is my contribution to the @acotargiftexchange for the lovely @talkfantasytome! I want to thank the organisers for this absolutely brilliant event. It's looking like this fic will be 3 chapters, so fingers crossed that the rest of the parts will come soon!

This has chef Cassian and writer Nesta, aka my favourite combo. I also have to warn you, as per usual, Cassian's Illyrian cooking is in fact how I cook as a south Asian person.

AO3 is currently down, so I won't be able to post this on there until later, but it will be added. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this!

Summary: Cassian is deeply concerned about the fact that his neighbour cannot cook at all. He decides to start cooking for her to save her from an early death, and it becomes so much more.

Cassian had lived in his current apartment for a long enough time to know most of the people in the building. It wasn't a massive building, so it wasn't hard to run into people. The only person he hadn't run into was his neighbour, who had moved in 3 months ago. 

Thankfully, there were signs of life, like the post being checked, and he could hear the door opening and closing. The most concerning thing he noticed was that his new neighbour seemed friendly with the fast food delivery drivers. Cassian didn't like judging food choices because he knew that people around him already felt self-conscious when they talked about food. Being a chef meant people assumed he knew best, but he could easily teach people he was willing to learn. Still, his neighbour was concerning him a lot. They must be on their way to a heart attack with the amount of fast food they consumed, and from Cassian's observation, they sometimes got food at least once a day or more. But Cassian had never assumed his neighbour's eating habits would affect him.

"So, have you seen her around? It's been a few days, that's all, and I'm a little worried about her," said his delivery driver, Toby. 

"I'm sorry, I'm so tired right now that my brain barely functions. Please, can you repeat yourself?" 

"Nesta, your neighbour. She orders from us daily, but I've not had any deliveries for her for 3 days. I'm just a little worried about her, that's all," Toby said, blushing now. The poor guy couldn't be more than 20 years old. At 20 years old, Cassian can't imagine he would've had the guts to do what Toby was doing, so he had to hand it to the guy. 

"I'm sorry, I haven't heard from her," Cassian replied, unwilling to admit he'd never seen her before and had just learned her name from Toby. "I'll check on her though, don't worry," Cassian said, to both reassure the man and to get him to leave because, god damn it, his food was getting cold!

"Thanks, man, I really appreciate it. She seems nice, and she tips really well." Toby smiled. Cassian just nodded awkwardly and then waited for Toby to finally (finally) move from his door. 

Cassian practically inhaled his food because, yes, he had promised his delivery driver that he would check on his neighbour, but if he was going to check on a potentially dead person, he would not be doing it while he was hungry. Fuck that; he had been in the restaurant since 6am, and he had planned on eating and then collapsing in bed. Now he had to check on his potentially dead neighbour because the delivery boy liked her tips!

By the time he had finished his food, he had managed to work up some energy, mostly just the rage he had to check on his neighbour and delay his sleep. Still, before leaving his flat, he checked his attitude at the door because he didn't want to be rude. He was being neighbourly, even if he was tired. 

When he knocked on the door and didn't hear any movement on the other side of the door, he was suddenly wide awake. He had horrific visions of breaking the door down and finding a corpse as he knocked again, trying to delay the rescue mission playing out in his head. When the door flew open, Cassian nearly jumped out of his skin.

The lady in front of him looked pretty annoyed at him, especially as he gawped at her like an idiot. Her hair was pulled up in something that might have once been a bun but was now just a tangled mess. She was in a long t-shirt that had seen better days; it was stained and faded, and underneath, she wore leggings that were in a similar state. But somehow, despite all this and the deep bags under her eyes, she still was the most beautiful woman Cassian had ever seen. 

"Can I help you?" The woman said, giving him a quick once over. 

That snapped Cassian out of his trance. "Sorry, erm, I'm looking for someone called Nesta?" Cassian asked awkwardly.

The woman had gone from droll to actively suppressing a laugh. "Oh my god, did Emerie actually do it? Are you a male stripper?"

Cassian's eyes widened as he quickly stepped back to distance himself from the beautiful, crazy woman. "Woah, I have no idea who Emerie is. I'm flattered you think I could pass for a stripper, but I'm no magic Mike. I'm Cassian, and I'm your neighbour." Cassian said, pointing at the open door to his apartment.

'Oh," the woman said, now also looking awkward. 

"Look, I just need to know if you're Nesta and if you're alright. I ordered some food, and the delivery driver said he was worried because he hadn't heard from you in a few days," Cassian explained, not wanting to linger in awkward silence. 

The woman's face went bright red at that, so Cassian assumed that this was, in fact, the mysterious Nesta who tipped really well and ordered food every single day. "Listen, I'm assuming you're Cassian, the chef Mrs Culpepper mentioned. I can only imagine what you think of me since Toby felt chatty today. I'm gonna be honest with you, I can't cook. My friend said not to burn down the building, so I've not tried. Really, my takeaway habit is saving everyone, and as my neighbour, you should be grateful, so don't judge me,"

Cassian held his hands up in surrender. "I'm not judging. Just because I enjoy cooking doesn't mean I assume everyone will. I am, however, slightly concerned. Is that all you eat? That can't be good for your health," Cassian said, frowning as he calculated how expensive that must be and the calories. He wasn't the best with numbers, so he couldn't be sure, but he was pretty sure that was a bad time. 

"My friend said the same thing, so she batch-cooked me a few meals. I've got a deadline for work, so I've been even worse than usual, but that's why I haven't ordered any food. When it runs out, which will probably be tomorrow, I'll be back to ordering from Toby," she said with a shrug. 

"Okay, I said I'm not judging, but that sounds horrific. I can't let you carry on like that. I don't think my conscience can take it," Cassian said, looking at her wide-eyed. The way this woman was going, she'd be dead of a heart attack in no time.

"I'll be fine; you don't need to take pity on me," Nesta said defensively. 

"Listen, it's Nesta, right?" she nodded, eyeing him suspiciously now, which made him want to laugh. She hadn't been suspicious before, but now he was questioning her food intake; she was wary of him. "I get to take leftovers from my work. It's one of the perks, but there's sometimes a lot. I tend to bring them home and make myself something with whatever random stuff there is. It's way healthier than ordering out and helps me not waste food. It's a win-win situation for both of us, really." 

"So, you're basically offering to be my personal chef?" Nesta said, trying to figure out what the catch was. 

"Well, within reason. If there's anything you hate or won't eat, I'll consider it, and obviously, any allergies. And if you want something specific, I don't mind making that, too, as long as I have enough time to get the ingredients. And I don't really mind cooking; if I didn't love it, I wouldn't do it as my job." 

A silence lingered, and Cassian wondered if he had gone in too hard on the sales pitch. He wouldn't be shocked if she said no; it was a weird request from your neighbour, whom you'd only met. But there was something about this woman that made Cassian want to offer to cook for her outside of work. His friends knew he never shared his food, not when he was outside of work. He made traditional Illyrian dishes when he was at home. It was a way for him to stay connected with his culture and mother despite his distance. These recipes had been handed down through generations of his mother's family, but there was something private and intimate about them. But he would share them with his neighbour. 

"Are you even real?" Nesta said, staring at him in a bit of a daze. Then, she reached out and poked him in the cheek. "You feel real," she said as she continued poking his cheek.

"I- I think I'm real?" Cassian stuttered, really not sure how he should react. Cassian wasn't shy, but this woman was just something else. 

Clearly, his talking pulled her out of whatever daze she was in. "I'm so sorry; I've been working non-stop for my next deadline, so I'm losing my grip on reality right now," Nesta said, shaking her head to get rid of whatever weird thoughts were in her head. 

Cassian pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to her. "Add your number, and I'll text you so you have mine. Then, you can text me any allergies or anything you wouldn't eat. I'll probably just tell you some dishes I can make with the leftovers, and you can let me know what sounds good. Is that okay with you?" Cassian said.

Nesta nodded, handing his phone back with her number added. Cassian shot her a quick text and then put his phone away. "Thank you," Nesta said awkwardly. "You really don't need to do that, but I'm certainly not going to look a gift horse in the mouth," she said with a shrug and a quick smile. 

Cassian smiled back, said his goodbyes and went back to his apartment. As he shut his door, he took his neighbour in, who was watching him walk away with a contemplative look on her face. He shook his head, shutting his door. Cassian was doing a good deed for his hot neighbour, but he hoped and prayed that his friends wouldn't find out about it. 

With that, he quickly got ready for bed, practically collapsing into his bed. As he drifted off to sleep, he noticed that he was smiling and had been since he had said goodbye to his neighbour. 

***

Cassian had forgotten entirely about the events of the night before when he woke up in the morning. It was so surreal; it felt like a dream. It wasn't until he was getting ready for his morning run that he realised it was true. 

He had a strict no phones policy in the mornings, mainly because his doom-scrolling habit was an awful way to start the day. So until he was ready to leave the house, he wouldn't look at his phone. It had helped with his mental health a lot and made waking up for his job so much easier, too. 

Since he had the day off, he slept till 9, which was late for someone who left the house at 4am every day for work. When he finally looked at his phone, he froze for a second, because there was a message from his neighbour. 

Once he had processed that yesterday had, in fact, not been a dream, he quickly made a note of the things she didn't like (kale being called the devil's lettuce made him laugh way more than it should've); he had a quick glance in the fridge to see what he could make. He figured he would make a quick tuna and avocado sandwich for lunch, and then for dinner, he would make pasta. Both seemed reasonably safe first options for her meals. Then, he could also give her leftover pasta for lunch the next day. 

As he finally left and started his run, he realised this could be the perfect opportunity to work on some new recipes for the restaurant. He wanted to update the menu and add more traditional recipes, but he had been nervous to test them out on anyone. By the time he got to the point he turned back, he had a massive grin on his face. He whipped his phone out and sent Nesta a text. 

Cassian: I've just had an idea. How would you feel being my new taster for some experimental recipes?

Her reply was instant, which surprised him. 

Nesta: you're doing me a favour so if i can help then i'm good with that. Although idk if i'm the best taste tester since my own culinary skills start and end at cereal 

Cassian: All I need is your honest opinion, everyone else in my life is too biased.

Nesta: i'm not afraid of cutting a man down, so dw

Cassian laughed at her message, sending her a quick laughing emoji before he put his phone back to go back home. He was in a good mood and excited about cooking for someone new. Of course, he got to cook for new people at his job every day, but cooking for someone one-on-one was so different. He could get her reactions, and she would give him feedback. This wasn't just a faceless customer; it was his neighbour. 

When he had assembled the sandwich, he put it into a Tupperware box and then cleaned up the kitchen. Once he was done, he finally gave Nesta her sandwich, trying to ignore the excitement and nerves bubbling in his stomach as he knocked on her door. 

Nesta flung the door open with a massive smile on her face. "Well, hello there, neighbour," she said, wiggling her eyebrows at him. "What do you have for me?" Nesta said, looking at the box with excitement. 

"I've got a tuna and avocado sandwich with red onion and some homemade sriracha mayo," Cassian said, presenting her the food with a flourish.

Nesta didn't hesitate to open the box to have a look. "Oh wow, this looks so good, like one of those fancy coffee shop sandwiches which is really over-priced. Did you make the bread, too?" she asked, tapping the sourdough. 

"Oh nah, absolutely not; I'm not much of a bread maker; it's so faffy, but I love the smell of fresh bread. There's another chef in the restaurant who makes bread, but there's never any left, so this is just some supermarket bread."

"Oh, well, I thought you used leftovers," Nesta said with a frown. 

"I do, but I like to jazz them up, so I use things I have at home, too. Don't worry about it, though."

"Nah, absolutely not. I need to pay you for this if you're using your money to feed me. That's not fair on you!" she exclaimed. "I'm not a charity case."

"I don't think you are!" Cassian said, alarmed. "You're going to help me, remember. Maybe I'll develop a new menu for the restaurant."

"I still want to contribute to this because you're saving me a lot of money. Let me pay half towards your groceries at least," Nesta said sternly. 

"I- okay if you insist, but I feel bad taking your money," Cassian said awkwardly. 

"Well, that's too bad. Text me your bank details, and I'll transfer you the money, and if you don't, I'll just have to hunt you down and hurt you," she threatened. 

"You seem like a busy woman, so I'll try to avoid that happening," Cassian winced. Changing the subject, he asked, "So I never asked, but what do you do?" 

"Oh, I'm a writer!" Nesta said excitedly.

"Oh wow, that's amazing! What kind of stuff do you write? I've not had time to read in a while, but maybe I should start that up again."

Nesta's eyes widened at that. "Do not read my books. You're not the target audience, and frankly, I would probably have to avoid you if I knew you'd read them."

Cassian frowned at her, and then it dawned on him. "Oh my god, you write porn books!" he exclaimed. 

"They're romance books! Sometimes they might have some smut, but they're not porn!" she hissed. 

"Right, of course! Well, I'm gonna get going since you've probably got some sex scene left to right or something," Cassian said with a shit-eating grin. 

Nesta froze but then smirked. "Actually, I finished writing that last night after you left. You know, since you weren't the male stripper I was hoping for," she said before turning around and slamming the door in his face. He stood there gaping for a while before eventually shaking himself out of it. My god, that woman was something else. 

***

"Cassian bheta! It's been too long since you called me," his mother said as she answered the phone. He had decided to ring her while he cooked because it was the best way to cook. He couldn't help but smile at his mother calling him son in their native language. He loved his Illyrian culture; the fact his mother had taught him so much of it gave him such pride. 

"Mama, I called you 2 days ago, and I've been texting you too!" he protested with a smile as he diced onion. 

"But you're my baby, my bacha, you don't understand. One day, when you have your own children, then you'll understand," she loved saying that line. It was one of his favourites. Now, he was nearing 30 and not even close to being married. 

 He ignored her comment, knowing no good could come from delving into that subject. "Mama, I'm making Illyrian-style pasta for my neighbour right now."

"Ohh, is your neighbour Illyrian too? Rhys's mum told me that the lady who used to live across the road from her has a daughter in the city! Her name is-"

"Mama! Velaris is a big city; you know I won't run into every Illyrian here, so stop trying to match-make! My neighbour isn't Illyrian, but she said she's happy to try different things. I'm cooking for her because she can't cook for herself."

"She can't cook?" his mother said, sounding scandalised. 

"No, and let me tell you, how I met her was crazy."

He relayed the events of yesterday evening while he sauteed the onion in some ghee, diced up some bell peppers and drained the sweetcorn. After the onions started to go soft, he added the basaar, a mix of spices that Illyrians added to almost every dish.

"Well, it's a good thing you're here to look after this girl; the poor thing has been living off those takeaways; she's in desperate need of some good, home-cooked food!" his mother said the word takeaway like it was dirty. She had always been very strict about eating out when they were younger, telling him they could make it better at home. Only as he got older did he realise they probably couldn't afford to eat out for more than the occasional treat. 

"That's why I offered mama."

"That's because you're my good bacha," she said fondly. "What's this neighbour's name anyway? And what does she do?" she asked. 

Cassian smiled. Illyrian mothers could never resist fishing for gossip, even if it was people they didn't know. "Oh, her name is Nesta, and she said she's a romance writer."

His mother gasped, making him almost drop the pasta as he drained it. "Are you cooking for the famous writer, Nesta Archeron?" his mother asked, her excitement tangible. 

"I don't actually know her surname. Why?" he asked, suspicious. 

"Oh my god, Cassian!" her mother screamed, so excited that she didn't seem to mind busting her son's eardrums. "Cassian, that woman is my favourite author!"

His eyes widened at that. "Mama! I don't want to know if you read those books!" he said, taking deep breaths and trying to clear his mind of that information.

"Pfft, why? Those books are brilliant, and you're a grown man now, stop being a baby. There are no men in my life, but those fictional men are something else," his mother sounded breathless, which was just too disturbing to think about. 

"Mama! Stop, I'll be sick if you carry on, and then how can I feed your favourite author?"

His mother was outraged at that. "Listen here, you! She's writing her next book, so you better feed her well because I've been waiting for this book for a year."

"Geez, mama, I promise I will; now I have to go. I'll give it to her now while it's warm." He said, sprinkling cheese on the pasta he had put in the two Tupperware boxes for Nesta. His mother said her goodbyes because he needed to feed Nesta, not because he said he needed to go. She made it clear her loyalties lie with Nesta, which was concerning. 

He knocked on Nesta's door, and she came quickly this time. She eagerly handed him an empty box from lunch, which had been washed, and took the pasta. 

"I'm not sure if you know this, but I can smell when you're cooking things, so I've been able to smell this for a while, and I'm starving right now. This smells absolutely amazing, so if this is what Illyrian food is like, keep it coming," Nesta said, not taking her eyes off the pasta. 

"Well, this isn't Illyrian food; this is just pasta with an Illyrian twist on it, in all fairness, but I'll keep that in mind." Nesta nodded eagerly. "By the way, my mother wanted me to check. Are you the author, Nesta Archeron?"

Nesta looked up at that. "Yes, I am," she said slowly.

"Right, well, my mother is a big fan and said I need to feed you well so you can write your book because she's very excited. She's basically gonna disown me if I don't cook well for you," he laughed. 

Nesta smiled at that. "She sounds sweet. Let her know that you're doing an excellent job."

Cassian smiled back and returned to his apartment, giving her instructions about how she needed to eat the 2nd box for lunch tomorrow because he would be at work. Nesta thanked him profusely, licking her lips as she eyed the pasta. 

Cassian got out of there quickly after that because seeing Nesta lick her lips did something weird that he didn't want to think about. He had only met the woman yesterday, so whatever he felt, he would ignore it. 

He got a text as he dug into his own pasta while watching a modern family rerun on TV. 

Nesta: this might be the best pasta i've ever had omg you're a god!!!

Nesta: i would eat this for the rest of my life if i could

Cassian: It's not too spicy for you?

Nesta: nah, this is fine, the tomatoes calm it down. Idk if i'm strong enough to handle more than this tho, my tastebuds are probs dead with everything i eat 

Cassian: Lolll, noted

Cassian cleared his dishes and got into bed since he'd have an early night the next day. Before putting his phone away, he quickly googled his neighbour, and lo and behold, a list of her books came up. She was popular, and he had to admit, he was impressed. Her fans were practically rabid for her next book. It looked like a series, so he ordered the first book before he could think about it too deeply. 

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[kimbapisnotsushi]

shiratorizawa/inarizaki headcanons bc i miss them and i love them and i crave yamagata and reon content so i have to be the change i want to see in the world. so let's go!!

reon, the love of my life

i actually think he really likes comforting cozy slice-of-life sim games, like stardew valley and animal crossing and such

okay this is the part where i retcon the entire haikyuu timeline bc i really like the idea of everyone piling into reon's and tendou's dorm and watching reon game on a switch

or just like. gathering in the common area and squishing onto the couch or whatever while reon roams his island collecting fruits and bugs or whatever

(these games are the only sense of peace and stability reon gets at this goddamn school)

anyways it's funny bc tendou screams every time reon runs into a wasp's nest and yells "RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN" until reon either gets stung or successfully evades them

admittedly i do think the ds and gameboy are sacred and, for the sake of nostalgia, are definitely used to play pokemon (of which everyone has a favorite gen and get into endless arguments about it)

tendou DOES teach goshiki how to pirate shit and get ROM hacks and emulators and such tho

reon and semi are the most popular members out of the third years btw

they're both polite and calm and generally nice and don't have an RBF that makes people nervous

too many people keep trying to fight yamagata just bc they think he's glaring at them and he is SO tired

yamagata (slightly inspired by my own recent purchase) decides to get a phone charm to see if it'll help him keep track of his phone btw

he mentions this idea to semi who mentions it to reon who mentions it to tendou who blabs to the whole team. and guess what? everyone gets the absolutely brilliant idea of gifting yamagata a phone charm!!!

so now he has like a dozen different ones. and he's STILL losing his goddamn phone, so now his convos are like "have you seen my phone? yeah right now it's got a little phone charm hanging off of it, so just keep an eye out for that. what does the charm look like? oh i meant it's a charm that is literally a phone. of course it was tendou, who else do you think it was"

tendou has also taken to putting stickers on yamagata in an attempt to make him "less scary". sometimes yamagata knows about it. sometimes he doesn't.

kawanishi: "yamagata-san, pardon me for asking, but why do you have one-punch man on your butt" yamagata: "i have what now"

tendou meets someone he can talk to manga about online in some fandom/community forum or whatever and he is absolutely BETRAYED to find out that it's akagi michinari of inarizaki

okay not really but he is SUPER dramatic about it and keeps going on and on to akagi about how he can't be caught fraternizing with the enemy

akagi is just like "yeah yeah now are we going to talk about the complexities of yoru being both a victim and a perpetrator and his inevitable redemption arc or what"

(GO READ GOKURAKUGAI I AM BEGGING)

aran is still scared of tendou btw. like he won't outright admit it but he's still not over the time tendou yelled that he was going to piss in his pants from all the way across the court.

when akagi tells him they've become friends aran is like "are you SURE about that"

also i know tendou gets pissed off at suna. but i think it'd be REALLY funny if suna got pissed off at kawanishi

something something "he should be more sure of himself, he'll never stop aran-san like that" something something "and i thought i was a sarcastic little bitch" something something "no i DON'T think he's cute what the fuck are you on about"

(i didn't mean for it to go that way when i started typing it but i DO think it'd be an absolutely hilarious development)

i htink kawanishi and shirabu go on a lot of study dates, holing up at coffeeshops and boba cafes with their backpacks and notebooks and spending hours on homework and studying

shirabu worked his ass off to get into shiratorizawa and he intends to keep it that way!! he's a model student. probably even the top of their year. everyone knows him as the high-achiever.

kawanishi is there to make sure shirabu doesn't get lost inside his head and gets him take breaks and makes sure he doesn't get sucked into the endless soulless spiral of academic rigor at an elite private high school

basically: shirabu's consistently on the path to burnout and kawanishi is there to keep the flames alive

(hey that would be a good fic summary)

maybe that's another thing, then, that helps kawanishi and suna become friends. because suna's been there. suna knows, sometimes, that feeling of imposter syndrome. feeling like you don't belong. feeling like you have to prove your worth, your entire existence, just to be able to stay in a place you love, even if that place might not love you back.

and kawanishi knows shirabu would rather shove a volleyball down his throat than open up about the bad days and the bad feelings, so he picks suna's brain instead to find out how he can help. what he can do. what shirabu might be thinking and how kawanishi can fix it

you can't, suna tells him, you can't fix something like this. he has to learn to live with it. to grow around it. to believe in something better until it's the only thing he believes in. but having people you care about care about you helps. it did for me.

and so kawanishi is there to draw the blanket around shirabu's shoulders, and he's there to put snacks on shirabu's desk, and he's there to flip shirabu's textbook close when the clock hits eleven they need to sleep, and he cares for shirabu in all the ways shirabu can't care for himself and hopes that it's enough

[beanghostprincess]

My thoughts on Sanuso's children!!

I recently got a Tumblr ask (I'll edit this later and write the link) that talked about Sanuso adopting a child, and it has opened my eyes to make this whole post about the three children I think they'd have!! (Also shout out to @latinokokonoi for the idea of Zolu's daughter).

The Strawhats are still together after finding the One Piece, being together still and enjoying their own dreams for a while without separating yet (honestly, with how fast this story is going they're gonna find the One Piece quickly af, just pretend they've already found it). Sanji and Usopp are 25/23 when they have their two twin daughters (accidentally. Because they are idiots and did NOT listen to Chopper's talk about protection). Even if they weren't planned they're still extremely excited to form a family together! They're a bit worried about what will happen from now on, but they've taken care of children before on their adventures, so how hard can it be? The answer is pretty fucking hard but, you know, it's not like they don't have other children in the crew (Zoro and Luffy found a 2 y/o in a treasure chest when they were 23/21 and they've been taking care of her for two years now. Called her Kuina!). They believe they'll be just fine.

The girls are named after their moms, Sora and Banchina, and they're Usopp and Sanji's little princesses. They instantly get along with Kuina, by the way, as they grow up together. She kind of acts like an older sister to them, being 4 years older and all. If anybody asks, they're cousins! I won't go into much detail about Kuina here because this is about Sanuso's children, but I love the idea I have of her already.

The thing is, the girls grow up to be brilliant and also a menace. They're twins but you can easily tell who's who when they're not together!

Sora: Oldest sister for, like, two seconds and she's always reminding everyone about that (in a good way. She takes pride in protecting her sister). She has Sanji's morals and ambition. She's passionate and pretty intense when it comes to protecting the ones she loves. But also she's an adventurer like Usopp! She loves getting into trouble, too, and she's strategic enough to know how to come out of them (most of the time. Well- Sometimes. Most of the time Kuina is the one saving her ass. But, you know, at the end of the day Kuina gets lost and Sora is the one to find her... They make a pretty good team). She dreams of being a pirate and having her own crew someday with Banchina. She's a natural dreamer. A bit idealistic. She has Sanji's smile and Usopp's skills. She wants to learn how to fight in every damn way. She asks Sanji to teach her how to fight with her legs and Usopp to use the slingshot (prefers Sanji's method, tho). She often trains with Kuina, too! She reminds people of Nami (that's, like, her favorite crew member if you ask her. That's her auntie!) because of her mischievous personality and ability to steal. She's also very impulsive because she has Usopp's sense of adventure but Sanji's inability to back down. So... Yeah. Luffy fucking loves her. But at least she's good at strategies! She would do anything for her sister and has been by her side forever. Often asks her to join her shenanigans and schemes and that's when Banchina is a bit more playful! Loves Sanji's cooking and eats almost just as much as Luffy. She talks about Usopp's stories, being so so proud of being his daughter! Her favorite aunt is Nami and her favorite uncles are Luffy and Zoro.

Banchina: The sweetest of the two sisters. She's pretty much like their mothers, personality wise. She's a cutie pie. She loves cooking and drawing because she grew up watching her fathers doing these mundane, more domestic and calm activities. If Sora is the clumsy more adventurous one, Banchina is the caretaker who's just done with her sister's bullshit but loves her a lot. She has Sanji's need to help and Usopp's anxiety (but not in a really nervous way. More in a careful, thoughtful way). It's not that she doesn't know how to defend herself, but she uses her slingshot only when needed and to back up her sister. She's more of a support person! She loves to cook but prefers to draw. Spends the day drawing. Kuina and Sora are very protective of her but she's usually the one who ends up rolling her eyes and taking care of them when they get injured somehow. However, she can be very playful too when Sora manages to get her in her schemes and shenanigans. She's a sweetheart but she protects her family when she needs to do so. She prefers more calm spaces but she appreciates the company of her sister and Kuina, finds them amusing. Basically, calm and helpful, very done with the chaos but secretly loves it, and ends up playing around when she finds it funny. Her favorite aunt is Robin (they spend time together reading and drawing) and her favorite uncles are Jinbe and Brook.

They grow up together and somehow they're not only the crew's most precious treasure, but also they're very helpful when they fight. I mean, they don't usually let them fight, but they always end up helping without being asked.

They're 10 and 14 when they find Takumi (Sanuso is 35/33, if you're curious) on a boat, fainted, and very very injured. The kid appears to be around 7 and he has chains on his arms and a metal collar around his neck. That doesn't sit right with any of them, so the kids call Luffy and the others and they instantly help him to get into the ship.

Long story short, they take care of him for a day or so, extremely worried about his well-being. Sanji and Chopper look after him until he wakes up. The thing is, the kid wakes up when he's alone with Sanji, and he's instantly frightened. Sanji promises they're not going to do anything to him, but the kid is only begging him to not bring him back to where he was. Anything but that. Sanji is- Well, saying he's worried would be an understatement. When everyone goes to see him, he doesn't want to tell them anything. For some reason he grows attached to Sanji and won't let go of him, apparently, and he refuses to tell anybody what happened to him. However, Luffy offers him to break his chains and Takumi hesitates but obviously says yes. When Luffy does so, he just smiles widely at the sight of Takumi's relief and says: "See? Much better now, isn't it?" And Takumi stares at him and whispers "You look..." Luffy only tilts his head, confused, and Takumi blushes shyly. "I just- You look like someone I know." And he tightens his grip inside the pockets of his hoodie, holding something they can't see but don't ask about either.

Basically, they take care of the kid but he isn't quite ready to socialize yet and his injuries are still bad. The only ones allowed to spend a long time with him are Chopper (he's looking after his wounds) and Sanji (brings him food and, well, he's apparently the only one Takumi is comfortable with enough to talk. Besides, Takumi apparently won't eat any meat or fish and he doesn't explain why, but Sanji makes new dishes for him gladly). The three girls want to know him better, but they're forbidden from bothering him (although they definitely sneak out to talk to him for a few seconds when the adults are busy).

Sanji sees a lot of himself in him. The scared eyes. The trembling voice. He's even blond, for God's sake. He spends a lot of time with the kid, and Takumi even asks him to sleep next to him most of the time. Usopp sees this and he just knows they're keeping him because now there's no way they can say goodbye to him. One day, Takumi has a very nasty panic attack and Sanji has to help him through it. When the kid asks how he knows to deal with this, Sanji thinks it's only fair to open up to him about some stuff about his own past. This makes Takumi open up too, finally explaining what happened to him:

Takumi's mom is a celestial dragon that cheated on her husband with a slave. Of course, this didn't go unnoticed and she died in an "accident" while the slave was brutally murdered (when you think Celestial Dragons can be worse, they- They just get worse). The man didn't even give Takumi a name, he just took the kid and made him a slave the second he could start working. That's all he's ever known. Long story short, he's locked in a cell for a while as a punishment along with some other slaves, thinking there's no hope. But there's always hope, because the revolutionary army suddenly shows up! Sabo frees all of the slaves from that cell, Koala leading them to their respective boats. But... There's a kid who won't move. Chained. Injured. It shatters Sabo's heart into a million pieces. Sabo tries to help him with reassuring words but the kid is visibly shaking. Sabo asks him his name, but the kid won't answer, to which Sabo just smiles and says: "Well! Isn't that just great? Now you can choose your own name!" and the little guy is all confused, but it's the first time there's true excitement in his eyes. "Really?" / "Really! Is there something you like a ton? A name you want to make yours?" The kid seems to think about it, a bit shy about his answer. "I want- I want to go to the sea." / "Oh! I come from there, actually. Is there something you want to do there?" / "It's dumb-" / "No dreams are dumb. Now tell me." / "I want to build things. Things that can help people! Like- Like machines but- But good ones. I dunno how to explain it..." / "Umm. Well. How about Takumi? You can write it however you want it can mean both sea and craftsman. Also an outstanding person. The person you'll become once you get out of here. How does that sound?" Takumi nods and takes the name as his, as long with Sabo's glasses. He says Takumi will use them way more than him one day.

However, there's a lot of chaos and Takumi gets lost in his boat. All alone. And ends up fainting in the middle of the sea until the Straw hats find him.

Sanji knows it will be too much for the little guy to tell him all he knows about this story, so he just comforts him and lets him rest for a few days until he's ready to come out of the room. He has dinner with the rest of them, finally, one day. And even though the three girls are curious about him they have a very calm dinner, respecting his space. That's when the crew does their presentations, Luffy being the last one... And of course, he says: "I'm Monkey D. Luffy! Captain of this ship and the king of the pirates!". Something inside of Takumi switches, a huge surprised smile decorating his face. "You are Sabo's brother! That's why you reminded me of him!" / "You know Sabo?". Takumi tells them about his story and shows them the glasses, saying he's worried about Sabo because he promised to take care of him and he's sure the blond blames himself for this. He tells them, also, about Sabo talking about Luffy ("The world is scary out there, but pirates aren't all so bad, all right? Monkey D. Luffy is my brother! The king of the pirates! And he's the best man I've ever met.") and Takumi couldn't be happier to have found him.

Basically, Takumi stays with them for a long time and grows closer and closer with everyone. The girls and he get along, even if he's still very overwhelmed by everything and has to take things slow. They protect him when there's a fight and they spend time with him, playing and teaching him everything there's to know. He also sleeps with Sanji and Usopp most of the time, also growing very fond of the sniper and his stories late at night when he has nightmares and refuses to wake up Sanji. Usopp is always there to distract him from bad thoughts and Sanji is always there to hug the anxiousness away. Sora and Banchina love him like a brother, so much that they even start calling him that. Sanji and Usopp don't say a word about it, but it hurts to know that there's a possibility of him not staying with them. Sanji says it's fine. That the kid deserves a better life. But Usopp knows Sanji wants the kid to stay with them.

Sabo appears one day with the intention to see Takumi again. They catch up and have a fun day together until Sabo offers Takumi the option of going away with him. However, Takumi says he prefers to stay here. With his new family, if they accept him. And so Takumi stays with them!

That's when his personality starts to form a little bit more with the passage of time. He loves spending time with Franky and Usopp, building things. Little machines and inventions. Turns out Sabo's glasses do end up being useful to him! He's still a bit shy. A very anxious kid. But he's so, so smart... A brilliant, outstanding kid who wants to make the world a better place with his inventions. He keeps being reserved and he isn't very fond of fighting, but he supports the whole crew with his inventions! Usopp couldn't be more proud. He also likes the revolutionary's ideology and lets Robin talk to him about it for hours and hours. Cooking is just like science, in his opinion, and once he says it Sanji's heart melts because that's exactly what Usopp told him once.

They end up figuring out that he ate a devil fruit, one that helps him talk to animals. That's why he refuses to eat them. Sanji tells him that it's amazing. One of the best powers in the world. Fascinating, even. He's his special boy and Sanji's just so jealous he has a power like that but he's glad Takumi is the one to have it and not some horrible pirate out there. Usopp and he grow closer talking about bugs and different types of beetles and arachnids! Sanji loves to see it, but can only talk about Takumi about it when it comes to regular animals.

They're so, so similar in a lot of things... Even if they are not his real parents. Yet. He hasn't called them that yet.

Until one morning Takumi calls Sanji dad and he has a whole crisis about it, the kid thinks he has killed his father but Usopp calms both of them down. Sanji asks the kid if he truly wants to be part of his family. Because if he does, he'd be glad to call him his son. And Takumi couldn't be happier. Do you know who's even happier? Sora and Banchina. They are THRILLED to have a little brother.

I've made these picrews based on the idea I have of them (if you like the idea I'll post more information about them):

Sora

Age: 10 (Older twin for literally seconds of difference)

MBTI: ENTP

-> She's an adventurer, hence the bandages and band-aids. Prefers long hair because she refuses to cut it, mostly. Uses Usopp's overalls and Sanji's shirts because they're comfortable and they don't fit her dads anymore, so she gets to keep them!!! She likes nature (the bees and her leaf earring) and loves stealing Zoro's money at poker (Nami taught her).

Banchina

Age: 10

MBTI: INFP

-> Usually has a ponytail or buns to keep them from bothering her while she draws. Lil' toad on her head (Wano Usopp reference, he kept that toad). She likes butterflies and bugs, too!! Big comfy clothes and a calmer, comfier energy.

Takumi

Age: 7

MBTI: INFJ

-> Lil' crown of leaves his sisters gift him. Animals around him all the time. He likes big clothes but usually just wears a synthetic leather jacket Usopp gave him and never takes off Sabo's goggles. Big sweaters, too. He's very tiny even for his age.

Kuina

Age: 14

MBTI: ESTP

-> Long hair for the same reason as Sora: Refuses to cut it. Bold of you to assume she showers, honestly. Lil' ponytail to see better. She has one of Zoro's earrings and a necklace with a sun (iykyk). She also has a bandana around her neck (Zoro moment). Have you seen her clothes? She wants to go to Wano so fucking bad.

Picrew

[least-carpet]

MDZS characters and Western astrology: Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng

I was thinking about the pure comedy of Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian, and Jin Ling all being Scorpios (genuinely fucking hilarious move by Ms. MXTX) and was like: but what is the rest of everyone's chart?? (I was also like is this too niche? but I assume this fandom is full of other queer people and some of y'all must also be into astrology, right? Right?)

That's biting off way, way more than I can chew. HOWEVER. Some Big Three placements (sun, moon, rising) seem more reasonable. (Has someone done this already? Is there consensus?)

Does it make sense to analyze this work through the lens of Western (rather than Eastern) astrology? Probably not! This is just for fun. Take it with many, many grains of salt.

TL;DR I think Wei Wuxian has a Gemini rising and a Sagittarius moon to go with his confirmed Scorpio sun, and that Jiang Cheng has a Capricorn rising and a Cancer moon to go with his confirmed Scorpio sun. If you're an astrology fan then you know that I'm saying WWX is wildly annoying and Jiang Cheng is a champion grudge-holder from hell. Still thinking about Lan Wangji.

Wei Wuxian

I don't think he has a lot of earth placements, if any. My guy is brilliant, dynamic, impulsive, and completely shitty at managing practical stuff and long-term consequences. He's also otherwise pretty well-balanced, so I think he likely has one of each of the other element. Scorpio provides a fixed water sign. I would guess that he has Gemini as his rising sign and Sagittarius as his moon sign.

I love a big Gemini placement, but they are incredibly annoying. Charming-annoying, outgoing annoying, won't shut the fuck up annoying. This also means that his rising sign would trine Lan Wangji's sun sign, which is a generally harmonious aspect. Gemini is a mutable air sign.

I think his moon sign has to be a fire sign, and I want to say that it's Sagittarius. This would put it into his 7th house of committed partnerships. I feel like it's suitable there for a variety of reasons. But truthfully, this pick is purely based on vibes. Sagittarius is idealistic, likes to lead through teaching, and is the fire sign most prone to just straight-up escaping if feelings gets too real. The avoidance and idealism are linked; the desire to maintain distance comes from the desire to maintain the idealism, which might not survive conflict or intimacy. IME they're also wild-ass party animals who love a drink and hold it well (said with the greatest affection and admiration). Sagittarius is a mutable fire sign. That said, I would also buy Aries or Leo.

For more about Gemini risings, check out Alice Sparkly Kat's breakdown here.

Jiang Cheng

Contrary to Wei Wuxian, I would guess that his chart is a lot less balanced. He's shrewd, grounded, and effective. He's also got Big Fucking Feelings. With that in mind, I think his moon sign is another water sign (water ruling the emotions) and his rising sign is an earth sign. Specifically I think his moon is in Cancer (the cardinal water sign) and his rising sign is Capricorn (the cardinal earth sign).

The Cancer moon-Scorpio sun combo is a pretty brutal one-two hit. Congratulations, you now have every feeling and you will get over them precisely never! The other important thing to know about the moon is it sometimes represents the mother; Cancer is additionally ruled by the moon; in my experience, people with notable Cancer placements have particularly significant, overdetermining relationships with their mothers. With the rising sign I've picked, it'll be in the 7th house of committed partnerships—which, uh, his mother's relationship to his father and how that relationship is explained to him absolutely affects how he understands partnership. That's why dude is still fucking single when it would make a lot more political sense for him to marry and have a kid. He experiences partnerships through the lens of his mother's disparagement, humiliation, and rejection, because he's always been identified with her by his family. I digress.

Anyway, now that we have a person who has comically huge feelings, how do we account for his political success? I think his rising sign is Capricorn. Out of the earth signs, Taurus is too lazy (I say, with my own Taurus rising—Nie Huaisang is also a Taurus sun) and too slow getting started. Virgo is too idealistic, it loves a system, it wants things to be simple. It has incredible hustle but what I've noticed about people with big Virgo placements is that they struggle with the disjunct of how they think things should work and how things actually work. It also is a sign with a tendency to wilfully impose itself on others. Capricorn, meanwhile, is pragmatic, strives for self-control, and is sensitive to boundaries. This also puts his sun in his eleventh house, which is the house of the collective. Jiang Cheng's life trajectory is public leadership, which he's born to, groomed for, and sacrifices hugely in pursuit of.

Alice Sparkly Kat also wrote a breakdown for Capricorn risings.

I wanted to put Lan Wangji in here, too, but I'm still rotating him around in my brain... I kind of think he might have both an Aquarius rising and an Aquarius sun. He has big Saturnian energy.

[makima-s-most-smile]

Trigun Maximum 10.3

What? You demand more pain? Don't worry. Nightow is giving it out in spades in this volume!

Trigun Ultimate: 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 Trigun Maximum: 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 6.2, 7.1, 7.2, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5

05: Final Battle

It truly is Wolfwood's final battle.

Oh, I didn’t get it without @/alena-reblobs that Wolfwood avoids the missiles of Razlo and turns around to use the following explosion to jump the distance towards Razlo. Wolfwood is such a brilliant fighter and his fights are the best. His weapon is so stupid looking, but the way Nightow makes use of it is so fun to watch. Though… sometimes it is really difficult to follow the action.

I mean… is Razlo really the best wielder? Having three always read as overcompensation for me. With three he can easily overpower his opponents. But look how Wolfwood wipes the floor with Razlo since he knows how to use his weapon.

And Vash is watching. He respects Wolfwood’s wishes. But I also assume that he desperately tries to burn every second of Wolfwood’s last minutes into his memories, since this is the last time he will see his friend. And in the end, this fight IS what Wolfwood is, protection, the good in humanity. Their destructive power is used to save someone.

I just love how Wolfwood reads and taunts Razlo. I just wish it was in a more brotherly, peaceful situation. This fight is just so good. The way Wolfwood overpowers Razlo so easily made me believe in the first read through that this was just a scare, that Wolfwood is not dying, that this is not his last action.

I didn’t see it the first time. Wolfwood’s Punisher has a white cover and Razlo’s are black. Something about Wolfwood fighting to protect others, while Razlo’s main motive is to get recognition from the husk of a human called Chapel. Selfless vs Selfish.

Wolfwood is the master of the Punisher. He knows his weapons flaws and strength and can adapt it to any fight. Not only Razlo’s body takes a hit, his confidence, too. Not only that, if you look back how he was willing to kill Chapel, but not for any revenge reasons, but for the future safety of the kids... Wolfwood gave out punishments, but neutral ones, not pain for his own selfish gain.

And then Wolfwood adds the worst insult. He throws the Punisher aside. This stopped being a fight long ago. This is a trashing. And more so, it is much more intimate. This is not a fight between two fighters, this is an older brother who gives Razlo a reality check. Wolfwood teaches Razlo not only fighting lessons, but life lessons.

06: Return

Wonder who will return?

Razlo never had someone be his equal. 

I learned from a colleague who became a kindergarten teacher, that the trickiest part about that was that when a kid was stronger than the rest they often hurt other children without really understanding it. So he was in the position of having to teach the kid the other position without overstepping any line. 

Razlo reminds me of that. He never had someone being equal to him, he never had to go all out. Chapel would have wiped the floor with tiny Raz and by the time he got that build he already was totally under his thumb. And we saw that little Raz was able to kill more than a few people without breaking a sweat. Wolfwood is the first person who can take him on and who can teach him that: Damn, being hit hurts. I don’t want to hurt. (And the consecutively end of that line: I shouldn’t hurt other people)

I just cannot see Razlo as someone evil, he is a survival mechanism of a lonely kid that got out of hand.

Positioning Vash there… Yeah… While Razlo confronts his mortality for the first time, Vash is crumbling under the loss. He will never be the same again. Vash cannot even imagine being without this pain. He just found a hope for himself, he just started to imagine a future and it was ripped from him, again. How many times is he expected to get through such a pain?

Fucking red herring of the third vial. It gave me hope on my first.

Razlo does not understand empathy or care. He has never been cared for. He is unable to get that Wolfwood cares for Livio and consequently for him. This is a fight for death for him. ‘Wolfwood is just playing with him’. But Wolfwood tries to reach Livio.

I need to look like four times to finally understand how this bretzel-Vash is twisted and how he connects his hits with them. Wolfwood wanted to fight Razlo one on one and Vash will make that happen. He has his buddy’s back, especially since it is the last time.

Another misdirection. I like how Nightow uses them.

Livio appears again! Finally! Took only nearly ripping the head of his body off.

And another misdirection.

Who is the Judas now?! Wolfwood, who betrayed his abusive mentor to protect others or that mentor, who was ready to stab his other, devoted pupil in the back to kill Wolfwood?

Also, Chapel returned for a little comeback before he finally croaked.

Who would have thought…

Sarcasm aside. Again, Razlo is a little kid. He trusted Chapel blindly after what he had done “for him”. But that devotion was one sided and used for Chapel’s benefit. The safety of being useful was a false one. L/R was always alone in the EoM. His explosion of anger is a bit like a temper tantrum. He cannot deal with these emotions, he cannot deal with the betrayal. And he lets it out on his surroundings and innocents. In his pain he is even unable to realise that Wolfwood just saved his life. Everyone is against him right now, since even the one person he trusted turned out that way.

And finally, the real return of the chapter! Livio comes back. Wolfwood’s sacrifice has reached him. It may be a mixture out of the beating and, especially, shoving L/R aside when Chapel attacked.

Wolfwood becomes Livio’s role model as Livio finally emerges out of his cocoon that protected him against rejection.

How much blood does his body have? But it feels nice that Wolfwood accomplished what he set out to do and even lived long enough to see Livio return.

[odetteissinning]

ghost notes vol.i

a fragmented collection of thoughts and feelings about my practice, art and teaching that I just want to get out

i.

Devany Amber Wolfe is an artist that I've followed for a long time, today she announced that she was stepping back from social media and honestly, her post resonated a lot. One of the biggest struggles I've found in trying to use platforms like instagram to share work is that it rewards content creation, not creativity because creativity takes time. To make something, to follow a project through its ebbs and flows is not quick, it's not a process that can resolve in time to please an ever hungry algorithm. Content creation, is inherently not creative because in this manner, it's simply reproducing that which is popular and formulaic. It doesn't actually require much thinking, just a bit of technical know how, but to do something really creative takes time, and a lot of that time is fucking stuff up so you eventually get to a finished product. I don't necessarily think social media is the cause of all the worlds ills, but I have noticed in the students I work with such defined subjects and trends that they stick to rigidly and don't think to push past them. I think that is certainly something that is caused by social media, and herein lies the issue. When you're making things to please an algorithm or to be brand/family friendly it automatically limits the spaces that you get to explore with your work. The boundaries you can push, because anything that pushes too far from easy consumption and makes people think about difficult things, it's hidden via shadow banning and straight out censorship. This is something that the Art Newspaper has written some interesting articles on too. Is Instagram censorship changing art itself? // Are you being 'shadowbanned'? // Censored: the exhibitions that Instagram doesn’t want you to see // Censorship on social media not only limits artists' online reach—it can prevent future opportunities, too // Invisible by numbers

You can see the whole post by Devany Amber Wolfe here

ii.

Finished assessing student work this week, and as much as I love my job it's also deeply depressing sometimes. It's a short unit but a lot of submissions felt so very half arsed and I just don't get it. Art school is a place where you get to fuck around for three years before you have to jump into the real world, and it's not exactly a career you can go in if you want to be really employable, so surely you should be doing an art degree because you're passionate about it? But, just no. It's like a lot of my students just don't really care, like they barely even like doing photography and it just seems a waste to me. I won't pretend I'm not jealous of the fact they get to have that freedom just to play and learn their craft so I guess I find it extra galling to see so little passion or enthusiasm for the medium they elected to study.

iii.

We live in an era of camera's so good at making images that often times you feel more like an operator that someone actually crafting an image. I used to have a Sony A7iii, and as a work horse camera it's brilliant. The eye/face af is incredible and it makes you really have to think less when you're shooting.

But apparently for me, that seems to be the problem. Nowadays I have a cropped sensor Fujifilm, with fine autofocus but not on part with the Sony's and honestly I actually enjoy using it more as a tool. It's got its quirks, and now I'm using a lot of cheap manual focus lenses nailing the shot is much harder and more involved but I actually feel like I'm making things again. Not relying on the camera to do the hard work for me. Think I finally crossed the threshold from being a photographer to being an artist and i feel 40% more pretentious.

[vaguely-concerned]

Happy healing post-DA:I things for my Hawke and company

because if anyone ever deserved that soft epilogue it's these guys

Hawke giving Merrill a griffon feather from Weisshaupt

Hawke getting a new mabari puppy (maybe also kittens? can we work kittens into this as well?). Hawke and companions playing with and petting said puppy. said puppy falling asleep in people's laps. it dozes off on fenris' head once and he just lies there and lets it with great equanimity until it wakes again. varric and isabela try to teach it wicked grace. it's better at it than anders was.

Bethany can live at home now ;_______; the last of the Hawke family finally getting to actually live in their ancestral home together, after all their hopes and hard work in act one ;_________________________________; she could get married if she wanted to, she could have kids, she could have whatever part of a 'normal life' she feared she never would and her magic, not having to hide anymore ;__________________________________________; (a big thank u to leliana the murderpope my best homie <3)

Bethany bringing some of the apprentices she's taken under her wing and Merrill bringing some of the alienage kids who're in extra tricky circumstances, and the big empty house is not so empty anymore

Hawke training Bethany's apprentices and Merrill's wards in physical combat -- "My father always said that the real trick of magic is knowing when not to use it. Doesn't mean you can't throw a punch about it tho". the kids sometimes gang up on him when they're playfighting and bethany looks on like :') because he pretends to be vanquished & defeated, alas proud warriors your strength combined is too great, in exactly the same way he did with her and carver when they were little

Fenris and Hawke friendly sparring! Isabela watches while drinking rum.

Hawke hanging around the Viscount's office, pretending to be there just to make fun of Varric (and annoy Aveline let's not forget) but actually helping out unceasingly. don't tell anyone tho he has a reputation to uphold as a rich idiot with no day job even though he's been doing every fucking job in kirkwall for like a decade now, ssssh he has to feel like he's still fooling someone

First Wintersend party at the Hawke estate where most of the gang is together again. (My canon always has Hawke send Anders away at the end of DA2 and sometimes there's a romance involved for double heartbreak too so y'know. bittersweet there but at least the rest of the family gets to be together again.) Varric and Hawke mutually pretend they don't notice the other one getting teary-eyed during the dinner because sometimes that's what friendship is

kirkwall book club? kirkwall book club. fenris hasn't gotten to read a lot of books yet, so it sort of starts as people giving him recs, evolves to a covert war among the gang to get their fave books/series read first, and then it keeps escalating from there until they're all fully in it. isabela frequently derails it into friendfiction night.

what if merrill got to do some gardening. huh. what about that. I just think that would be nice.

varric writing some black fox stories just because he knows hawke likes them ;__; (you find the black fox codex entry in DA2 in Hawke's mansion and one of the DLC outfits you can get for them is said to have belonged to him as well, so I like to think Hawke has a weak spot for that Robin Hood/Zoro-esque thing deep down lol it would explain a lot about his life)

just varric and hawke hanging out honestly. varric writing while hawke lounges around in his room. every time he has to name a character or something and gets stuck he throws out the basic concept and hawke provides a name without missing a beat or indeed looking up from whatever he's doing. it's always brilliant or awful or brilliantly awful. varric does his shitty little he he he laugh and/or offers hawke his hand in marriage yet again and goes back to writing. all is right in the world, if only just for a while.

[itsawritblr]

You do not learn "intuitively." Not unless you're home-schooled by an illiterate. Schools teach you words and their meanings. They teach you grammar and how to form sentences. This is fucking basic.

Wow, I so do not understand your way of thinking.

As a child when I read words I didn't understand I'd look them up in the dictionary. It was fun! I enjoyed discovering new words and their meanings. They added to my vocabulary.

At 10 I read Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. There were many words and concepts I didn't get. So my Mom and I looked them up. I loved it! It opened new worlds for me.

You can't write coherently or with any art if you choose a word for its "vibe." For writers, real writers, dictionaries and thesauri are well-loved, well-used tools. Read The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald chose every word carefully. It's brilliant because of that. To choose a word because of its "vibe" is like AI writing an English term paper.

"Sometimes words you didn't grow up hearing are used frequently in writing and you aren't going to stop every page or so to find out what it means, as it interrupts the flow." That's what first drafts are for. In the second draft you begin revising and polishing by choosing the words which truly fit what you mean.

"Especially if you didn't happen to have either of those texts handy before the advent of the internet." "Once upon a time there was no dictionary or thesaurus."

Dictionaries and thesauri have been around since forever. An Alvearie, or Quadruple Dictionarie, was published in 1580. Shakespeare fucking used it (my Father was a Shakespeare scholar). Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, everyone who ever wrote before the "advent of the internet" used them. Including me. I was writing decades before the internet existed, and yeah, I'd stop writing, reach over and look through my dictionary. Like, why the fuck wouldn't I??

Why the fuck don't you?

What I'm hearing is lazy writing. "Oh, I just want to go with the flow, I don't want have to check to see if what I've written really means what I intend it to." If that's your mindset, your writing will be mediocre, at best. The only people who'll think it's good are people who also can't be buggered to use the two best tools writers have ever had.

I shared this post with my editor (I'm a professional, full-time writer.) She wrote back, "This explains the level of the manuscript submissions I receive." Y'know, all the shit that gets rejected.

After reading the Notes:

Man. I have never seen so many people so proud of being ignorant.

the problem with reading and writing leading to a strong vocabulary is that you tend to know the vibe of words instead of their meanings.

if I used this word in a sentence, would it make sense? absolutely. if you asked me what it meant, could I tell you? absolutely not.

[wemlygust]

I was browsing libby, looking at popular scifi titles currently available to borrow from my library, and so many of these blurbs read like they just threw totally unrelated book titles into a blender.

Like, this here is Cloud Atlas meets Twilight meets Ready Player One meets Foucault's Pendulum, if it were written by James Patterson in collaboration with Ben Bova, with Naomi Novik on guitar. Perfect for fans of Michael Crichton and Susanna Clarke! And you know it'll probably match literally none of that description. And a lot of the books are obviously themed around climate change or reproductive rights, and the blurbs are like: In an afrofuturist noir vision of a near future that feels so close you can almost taste it, the brilliant CEO of Exobio Inc - a company whose mission to send all life to space as quickly as possibe before nuclear war breaks out surely won't go wrong in any way - has abandoned her teenage idealism and embraced a life of luxury. She owns 6 cars, 3 cats, countless spaceships, and one cozy Earthside house, which she shares with her beloved husband of many years. But things (drumroll 🥁🥁) go wrong! Our small, relatable hero who happens to be a CEO, is set adrift in a galaxy far larger than she, by events beyond her wildest imaginings. She must face betrayals, horrors, the obligatory dissolution of her marriage, the sudden urge to re-evaluate her life choices, and when it all comes down to the wire, a single looming question: just how totally and completely fucked are we?

I think the seeming prevalence of afrofuturism is more a function of my rad local library than it is a general trend (could be wrong). And to be clear I'm down for that, or for noir. I'm just tired of climate disaster news and don't really need it to be the focus of my longform entertainment that I'll spend hours and hours reading. And I'm tired of the way blurbs are written, and of protagonists who are much richer and more powerful than me, and of neoliberalism presented as the ultimate good without any genuine questioning of its tenents, and of forced conflicts that feel like they were just thrown in because the author is following 3-act film structure (which I am also VERY tired of) or their editor thought the book needed more drama, and of being told by a book's cover that the story will teach me the meaning of family and life and make me feel Emotions and Profundity or what the fuck ever. And I'm sleep deprived now, so I'm expressing all this in the most roundabout way possible. Anyway. This is part of why I seem to be stuck in a pattern of browsing regular fiction... browsing some more... checking out some books, maybe reading a little.... And then usually ending up thinking "I'd really rather be reading fanfic right now." It's where the market forces that keep things same-y ain't, I guess. Nobody is beholded to 3-act or otherwise standard (boring!) story structure, or to an editor who wants a romance sideplot added in, or to the author's idea of what might sell well, or to the marketing department's idea of what is publishable or what can never see the light of day, or to the small set of acceptable story length settings (series, standalone 300-500 page novel, short story, sometimes a novela if you're lucky) per the requirements of the publishing industry and the markets (and often narrowed down further by genre and by whether the author is a newbie vs already established &tc). I mean, there are definitely trends in fanfic, still; it falls into patterns and ruts and has room to grow or improve or explore more in some directions than it does, but at least those trends are directly controlled by the readers and writers (who are often the same people), with no multi-year delay between writing and publishing to slow everything down, and the mood of the day can change and evolve in a really fun way because everyone is allowed and encouraged to play with everyone else's toys and influence each other back and forth.

And writers are free to write anything - a love story one day, but maybe a horror or a mystery or a totally unhinged crack story the next - without having to worry about the personal branding concerns that make published authors write with consistent styles and themes and moods, only deviating from the norm their audience expects with the help of a pseudonym or three. And fic is SO much better organized, with our beloved ao3 tagging system, so I'll find something good or even great really quickly most of the time. And a lot of it somehow feels more human-scale, even when the plot is literally about a world-end threat or some ridiculous magical drama or whatever.

And I feel like people get to be happy more often, in fanfic. Couples can just be happy together sometimes - no misunderstand or big dramatic mid-book breakup required - and people hug each other sometimes. And if really bad shit happens to someone, it tends to have actual on-page consequences (vs. mr. Protagonist has just been tortured for 3 pages but don't worry it'll never come up again he's fiiiine) and/or they get some TLC after.

[patriciavetinari]

I had an interesting conversation the other day that brought me to some troubling realizations.

So a coworker and I were talking about our mothers. I mentioned how I resent mine for not socializing me, not helping me much through school bullying. Very breifly, my complaint was that her only ever answer was

a) don't pay attention, they're just jealous of you (for my looks – though i was the fat kid bullied for my weight in a heroin chic era and we couldn't afford nor find in my size any clothing fashionable with the Youths at the time, and for my brains – though I was hardly ever brilliant and kept more towards the middle with my grades and just read a lot to cope with bullying)

b) oh it'll toughen you up, if we change schools that'll mean the bullies won, so you have to Endure (actual literal thing mother said to me)

And

c) just beat them up, I'll talk to the principal if you'll get in trouble.

Interestingly, at no point did mother want to talk to faculty BEFORE the beating up she fantasized about would occur, nor did she ever teach me HOW to beat someone up when you're one against thirty. Anyway.

What I'm coming to is that my coworker AGREED that this was a good method. Because look, it did toughen me up and made me a gorgeous, steel lady who takes no bullshit. Yeah sure.

We're not close enough for me to tell that coworker that steel lady is also chronically lonely, had to socialize herself in her mid to late twenties, and can't get a date to save her life. But I digress.

Anyway, I strongly disagreed with her. I said no, at some point teasing and ganging up on someone and ostracizing and marginalizing one of the group stops being 'kids learning how the world is' and starts being traumatic harassment. Bullies should be stopped. Not everyone needs to be friends with everyone or make school connections last a lifetime, but bullying has to be investigated, noticed and meaningfully stopped. Kids have to be helped through that because there is no pre-installed autopilot that magically helps them figure it out among themselves.

Coworker disagreed back. No, she says. Bullying just happens, it's inevitable, some kids are just assholes, that's how grown up assholes come to be. There's no point in trying for a world where that doesn't happen.

And that's the realization that struck me. People, parents, pedagogues, childcare and education institutions abd just random childless schmucks see bullying as an inevitable part of life. They sometimes make some effort to resolve most outrageous and/or physical parts, like obvious beating (though not even that sometimes, we've all seen outrageous cases of bullying go unpunished). But then there was that post detailing really well how all those anti-bullying campaigns ultimately fail because they assume bullying just happens and targets random kids by the will of the Providence of something, while it's actually a failure of parents and teachers and society to install norms of decency and basic respect, as well as societal acceptance of marginalizing certain groups – fat kids, queer kids, neurodivergent kids, kids that differ from their peers by skin color, nationality, wealth, class or whatever else.

I'm sure there are specialists who know this to be true and are writing meaningful science on the topic, but it's not mainstream, is it? My school had no anti-bullying campaign. It had no socialization efforts. It had no talks of diversity and inclusivity. And not only did no adults help me with my situation, teachers afflicted additional trauma or dismissed me when I did gather my puny little underdeveloped courage and spoke out about my fear of my classmates.

Not one of them suffered any consequences and I was punished for speaking up, and at the same time mother at home was dismissing me in one word and in the next inflating my ego by going through my class photo and calling every other kid in my class ugly and stupid and how I was secretly better than all of them. It was a fucked up way of being a child, and holding on to that false, harmful, dangerous self-importance and superiority was also a way to cope with simultaneous feeling of deep inferiority.

Bullying has to be investigated and stopped. Not only for the sake of the kid being bullied, but someone needs to sit the bully down and fix them. Work with them. With kindness and knowledge of behavior psychology a specialist like a teacher or therapist needs to state a question: why do they feel the need to bully. How can we change that. Yes bullying often comes from some dark troubled background but sometimes, also very often, it's a kid being an asshole because they are young and inexperienced and are getting away with a rush of power over another human being.

Most animals, when they play, sometimes hurt each other with teeth or talons or claws or beaks or whatever, and have to be taught by elders and by peers not to do that, to know the limits between harmless teasing and inflicting trauma. Humans and small humans are not an exception.

Bullies are not the norm. Bullying should be a brief learning curve, not an inevitable part of child collective. It should be treated as a serious matter. Socializing is a skill and I don't think schools are teaching it beyond 'let's all get along' and an awkward made up movie or two depicting situations that never happened. It's a shared responsibility of parents, caretakers, teachers and society at large.

And the truth is, most of us are actually completely fine with 'some weird kid' being bullied, gossiped about or dunk in the toilet, because it has become so ubiquitous and normal and an inevitable part of childhood and adolescence, we're happy to keep the wheel of 'kids will be kids' going.

[beanghostprincess]

I am so delighted to see we can send platonic ship and that you are insane about it!! (same here i love it so so much, tahat all my life) so what about Nami&Robin or/and Nami&Zoro

there are so many people asking me my opinions i can't believe y'all actually care about what i have to say ilysm <33

nami/robin: i love them and i wish they had more scenes together in canon :(( i love that they share a room and their beds are literally next to each other. i'm sure that they cuddle when they sleep. no doubt about it. robin reads out loud while nami does her nightly routine with makeup and stuff and then they talk for a bit before falling asleep. i love that they're the only girls in the crew but their role isn't just that. they both keep the guys in place but robin has that silly, satiric dark side that scares nami sometimes, and nami has that impulsive, thief side that robin loves too. and kjsdcjksdnjkasd they make me ill. they have girl nights. they go shopping. they talk shit about people together. they eat sanji's food together. nami talks about how much she misses her girlfriend (vivi, i miss you too. come back) and robin comforts her but instantly nami complains about her "not getting it" because she has her husband on the damn ship!!!!! then nami goes and hugs robin back again. i think they're the smartest and brightest girls ever and they deserve all the love. neither of them has ever had real friends and now that they have the chance to live freely, they finally can hang out together. robin is older and tbh i think she sees nami as this cute, young, brilliant girl with so so much potential. and nami sees robin as, like, this older, mature woman that's also her bestie and that's awesome!!! a lot of people ship them romantically but i personally see them as besties or sisters ngl. i think robin is still getting used to having friends like a normal person and nami teaching her how to enjoy life is so,,, so beautiful,,, they also have their own shenanigans and i need them to have wayyy more scenes together c'mon!!!

nami/zoro: i am so not shutting up about them i apologize- i love them. i am obsessed with them. we need to talk more and more about them. "they're overrated" they should be. they deserve it. i fucking love everything about these two. so, so much... the thing that makes me like them it's probably the fact that they're part of the romance dawn trio, and i'm very nostalgic about those three. they're all important to luffy, of course, all of his nakama are. but... there's just something about zoro and nami being the first ones that makes me insane. they're the ones that had to deal with luffy together when they first met, and ever since, they've just been sooo chaotic. i'm happy opla gave them scenes together (uhhh not so much the fact that people see them romantically. it's obvious they wanted to make them romantic. please don't, netflix, i'm watching you) because they mean so much to me! they have this lesbian/gay solidarity and hostility (yes, at the same time) that i LOVE. i'm obsessed with zoro being all edgy-wannabe (he's just quiet lmfao his dramatic gay ass wanting to be a dark swordsman is so funny) and nami like "??? shut up you're just dumb". the fact that they argue and zoro complains about her manipulative behavior but still always helps her and saves her every time,,, that's so,,, i love them. i know we all say zoro is luffy's guard dog, but that's not true. zoro is luffy's cat and nami's guard dog. he stays behind nami protectively with a dark stare and nobody dares to approach her bc they know they'll die if they try to hurt his navigator. he'd never admit it out loud, tho, but he cares for her an insane amount. and she loves him too. thinking about them cuddling when it's too cold and zoro's just the perfect pillow!! zoro braiding nami's hair!!! nami helping him clean his swords!! they look after the other all the time,, and they are the ones that know luffy the best, of course they're going to be the first ones to talk things out together if something's wrong with him. also, my zolu shipper heart needs to say that nami would be the first one to find out about them. in every universe. i love them.

[crymeariveronceagain]

;;;;;-;;;;; TYSM

I will say that the filial boldness thing comes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, number 2610 or page 627 in my edition. It's about how Jesus taught us to pray, and it reads, "Just as Jesus prays to the Father and gives thanks before receiving his gifts, so he teaches us to pray in filial boldness. 'Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you will receive it, and you will.'"

I once heard an interpretation of this specific line which made it out to being more than just asking for whatever you need, but bringing your whole heart, your whole self, to God. The priest talked about how God loves you as you are.

I also combined a lot of that with the work of Flannery O'Connor, my favorite writer, who in her short story The Temple of the Holy Ghost, asks the reader to question how much of who we are is sinful imperfection. The answer she comes to is that a great deal of our personalities, our being, and even our bodies, as flawed as they may be at times, are not going to be fundamentally changed by coming to God, but instead will be glorified and made radiant, not lost. She communicates this through the dream of a little girl, who's been struggling with her own personality and her idea that she is not what she should be. In this dream, O'Connor writes about a person on display at a circus telling the crowd, "

"God made me thisaway and I don't dispute hit," and the people saying, "Amen. Amen." "God done this to me and I praise Him." "Amen. Amen." "But he has not." "Amen." "Raise yourself up. A temple of the Holy Ghost. You! You are God's temple, don't you know? Don't you know? God's spirit has a dwelling in you, don't you know?" "Amen. Amen." "If anybody desecrates the temple of God, God will bring him to ruin and if you laugh, He may strike you thisaway. A temple of God is a holy thing. Amen. Amen." "I am a temple of the Holy Ghost." "Amen."

And that quote has haunted me.... Gosh. I don't know for how many years. There's something gorgeous and wonderful, especially with the crowd eventually answering back "I am a temple of the Holy Ghost." I once had a professor tell me that the entire story is about how much of you is redeemed.

I sat in the church a few months later staring at my hands and having a mental breakdown because these are the same hands, callused and with bitten nails and scars, that God wants in the afterlife.

He wants all of me with him, all that's broken, healed, and somewhere in between. life is a process in the between but even then a great deal of that between is beautiful, lovely, and good. We are good. We are created in the image of God.

Something about that story makes me refuse to hide anything, or put on airs.

It came out, very strongly, in Jason. He's angry. He's broken. Beaten down. And he refuses to put on airs or pretend like God doesn't want him as he is.

It comes out most strongly, i think, in that one line when he's talking to Bruce:

Jason jerked around and stared at his father. “Hell fucking no.” “Jason,” Bruce said, wincing, “You’re in a Church---” “God made this mouth,” Jason snapped, “He can handle it."

It's the same sort of thing, in my mind, to "You! You are God's temple, don't you know?" And Jason does know. It's one of his greatest strengths, most brilliant graces.

He doesn't know much, but he knows that God can handle him. Whatever he is, whatever he looks like, and he doesn't see the reason to hide that from Him.

I sometimes sit on the floor of the chapel at my college and have long conversations with God. I'm embarassed when someone else walks in on me, sees me having these conversations, but I am not afraid of the person I'm having the conversation with. He made this. He can handle it.

I used to freak out about people not being able to handle all of me, unable to handle my heart or my anxiety or my various pains and problems.

I don't fear that, anymore.

Because God made me, he can handle it. He's the only one who needs to.

And that's the filial boldness I gave to Jason.

I want everyone to look at God with the confidence that he can handle it. Because that, right there, is probably one of the biggest steps of faith that anyone ever takes.

@crymeariveronceagain I can only cry in silence and hope that conveys the extent of my appreciation.

This is so amazing? What the heck? This work just changed my brain chemistry.

It’s honestly amazing, and one of the best things about it is that it is so human.

The relationship with God, the ‘filial boldness’ as you called it in the comments (yes I have read all of the comments also), the “God speaking in the silence”, “listen for the silence”. I have no words. That’s literally my relationship with God, and you just gave me words for it! I’m amazed!

Also, i’m totally gonna use all this newfound knowledge to aid me in answering one of my asks, so tysm hihi🤭

Edit: by the way I shed tears. I Bawled. Multiple times. I really did cry you a river lol

Plus it’s only got 1376 hits?!?!? HOW?!?!

[marchioness-caprina]

Swapped

{ Part 3 }

Read ; {Part 1} , { Part 2}

Pairings : Katsuki Bakugou x Reader

Warnings : Cussing

Writing style : 3rd Person

Word Count 1843

3rd Person's POV

" I thought we were going out to patrol again" Uraraka muttered and a majority of the class nodded in agreement.

They were supposedly going to the agencies they were training under to do their daily rounds of patrol but a sudden shift of their schedule got all of them gathered in Ground Beta for another suprise Physical Test Exercise.

" You were supposed to but unfortunately; a Villain attack happened near the train station and it caused damage on the tracks. It won't be fixed until Tomorrow. Meaning you're all stuck here doing 'Kiddy stuff' " Aizawa replied in his usual bored tone; hands buried inside his pockets as his shoulders sagged. The dark circle under his eyes were clear indication that he didn't get any sleep last night.

" Aww But sens--"

" Stop complaining. If you wanna be a Hero then you got to take it slow, Don't rush things. Plus... You don't see me complaining when I have to put up with all of you... " Aizawa Cut Sato off as he rubbed his temples " And dealing with all of you is not an easy job" He grumbled the last part and everyone picked up on his mood and just shut up.

" So... What exercise are we supposed to be doing today? " Momo questioned and everyone seemed to be interested in what their te aver had in store for them.

They were up for anything. As long as the penalty isn't an expulsion, the fear of their first day with their teacher still struck everyone with fear knowing how ruthless he could be.

" It's simple... Android Bots " Aizawa called out and from the entrance; loud stomping noises were heard, the stomping wasn't from just one but an army of Robots came marching out of ye entrance, stomping their metallic foot with in perfect harmony.

" Woah! "

Gasps of awe were heard from a few students as they stared at the bots with wonder.

" Let me guess... We're gonna be facing those junks here? " Y/n stated in a matter of fact. Katsuki who was right behind the female with arms wrapped around her waist and his chin resting on her shoulder just gave off a satisfied humm when y/n placed her hand ontop of Katsuki's own.

Aizawa who was too tired to give a sassy remark to his student's comment just nodded; and he won't even point out Bakugou's Clingyness seeing how the boy had reacted yesterday when he told him to minimize his Skinship with y/n. It didn't end well.

" This ain't cutting shit. Knowing you... There's a twist to this crappy test right? " Y/n countered and with a sigh Aizawa began to explain ;

" You're right Miss smarty pants. There's a twist. You guys will be judged individually, these bots can't do much damage but the bombs inside them are the ones you need to watch out for, if you destroy a Bot directly without dismantling the bombs first then... Of course you go Kaboom " Everyone flinched at Their Teacher's explanation especially with how nonchalantly he is as he did so.

" Ehhh!? B-but sensei... Isn't it a little bit too.... Cruel? " Mina interjected and aizawa shook his head.

" As a hero. You must always be prepared of every possible scenarios and surprises. Such as this, of course there are subtle indications whether a bot has a bomb or not.... So you gotta put your observational skills to good use and put that brain of yours to work. Spot the difference, dismantle the bomb and you're free to destroy it... Simple as that " Aizawa yawned as he waved off his student's shocked and terrified expression.

Everyone knew their team her isn't going to give them any more clues.

" He just wants to see us suffer.... " Jiro dead panned and everyone couldn't help but agree.

" You said we'll be graded individually.... So you're saying that we have to take out loud portions of those robots ourselves?" Y/n raised a brow when her sensei gave her a spine chilling smile.

" Yes, that's also part of the lesson. It's not everyday you'd get lucky to have another Hero to he paired with you... Sometimes you gotta work alone and most of the time The villain's you're gonna be facing won't be alone. So multi-tasking is the key... And since you're my 'favorite' student... You'll go first " Aizawa pointed at her lazily and she shot him a gentle smile.

A smile that seemed too gentle for this y/n to pull off. Something wasn't right with the way she smiled and everyone knew it.

" But... She might get hurt... I'll stay with her" Katsuki murmured tightening his hold around the girl.

" What? You think I can't handle myself? Get off me already loser. I need to release some stress and you're getting in the way. " Y/n without thinking much of how bad her words had affected Katsuki grinned as she pushed him off her roughly.

Katsuki tumbled back and he looked at her with a pained expression.

" Y-you think I'm a--"

" Get him outta here. He's fucking up my mood. " Y/n snapped as she jogged away from the group.

Katsuki who was fast to try and run up to her was pulled back by aizawa's scarf like fabric.

" Let her go Bakugou. "

" No! I Need Her! Y/n! " Bakugou whined and he had to be knocked out because he was starting to get aggressive.

"Everyone. To the Control room" Aizawa groaned and his students followed his command but go course they felt sorry for their classmate who was passed out cold.

_____________________

" Fucking Die! Hahahaha "

Everyone was silent as they stared at the screen; gawking at how monstrous their classmate could be. Was that even y/n? Because that screaming creature murdering those innocent robots while crushing them to pieces reducing them to junk was scarier than any villain they have ever seen.

" ..... Remind me to never piss y/n....ever" Kirishima gulped when 10 robots were sent flying off the ground with the girl wildly swinging a metal pole like a mad man continued her assault.

" S-she's doing a very accurate job at controlling that new quirk of hers though " Kaminari mumbled as he began thinking.

" But... That is not the opposite of her quirk... Unless.... Oh could it be? The quirk she has is a combined and mixture of mine and Bakugou's quirk ... I underestimated that villain's quirk " Kaminari began to mumble his thoughts out loud and it didn't go unnoticed.

" Well... What do we even call that quirk? "

Kaminari paused and gave a nod towards Uraraka " I suggest Electrical Combustion would fit the spunk" .

" She's doing a tad too good don't you think? "

" She's y/n. So it's no wonder "

___________________

Y/n slammed both of her hands on the ground creating an electrical current as well as a loud eruption of explosion to ensue underground sending the both flying before being completely engulfed and destroyed by either the flying debris, the roasting electricity or the destructive explosion.

With fluid like movement she shot out explosive electric bombs out of her palm that violently detonated when it came in contact with the robots.

She didn't have to worry about the exploding bombs inside the boys because she herself was more explosive than all of those bombs combined.

Her movements were accurate, powerful and spontaneous but her eyes showed how calculated and focused she was if people would ignore that sadistic grin spread out on her face.

She was merciless and with one final punch of the ground that sent a combined jolt of electricity and explosion that caused a mass breakage the fight was over. With no bots left standing at all.

The area was crumbling with ruined buildings and flying rocks and debris mixed with chunks of broken metal.

" Ahh... That hit the fucking spot " She grinned stretching her limbs after her little 'workout'

Meanwhile ------

Everyone was speechless at the display of power of their classmate. She was far too ruthless and she looked more like a villain---no monster from the screen.

And if you squint really hard earlier the students could see how the bots were running away from her instead of actually attacking her.

Y/n gained both the respect and fear of everyone after that bit of course they admired her for her brilliant performance meaning they didn't have to do the test because she destroyed all the bots in a blink of an eye.

" That..... Was so Manly! " Kirishima cheered and his cheer was joined by everyone else.

" Man! Who knew she knows some pretty sweet moves like that! I should ask her to teach me a few of those moves! " Sero commented punching the air.

" Well if you ask me that was rather terrifying.... The continuous onslaught of those poor robots was enough to petrify me for eternity. Not to mention she left us with nothing at all! " Iida sighed as he pushed his glasses up.

" Jeez, loosen up. She did all of us a favor " Jiro replied placing her hand on the slightly disappointed Iida.

Izuku on the side was vigorously writing down on his notebook with such intensity it made everyone pause for a moment to look at him; no doubt about it. He was taking notes about y/n.

Everyone was happy and Aizawa looked more like a proud father than an angry teacher.

But the same couldn't be said for Katsuki. He was sulking in the corner. Eyes dull and fists balled.

The little demon called jealousy was beginning to creep up again. He remembered the other day about Y/n wanting to be partners with Deku or Half and Half. And now that everyone saw how amazing his Girlfriend is, it made him sink deeper as his own insecurities began to swallow him whole.

" .... Do I even... Deserve her? " He mumbled to himself. Tears were already rolling down his cheeks while he pitifully sniffled.

His classmates were gazing at him. They looked inside of what they should do. They still couldn't get used to this new Katsuki.

Kirishima was about to approach and comfort his friend when suddenly Katsuki's body jolted from his spot before collapsing on the ground.

" Bakugou! " Kirishima exclaimed but another gasp was heard from the back.

" It's Y/n-san and Kaminari-san! " Izuku pointed out. Jiro was holding onto an unconscious Kaminari with the help of Tsuyu and on the screen it was pretty clear that y/n had also experienced the same thing and was now sprawled down on the ground.

Unmoving .

........ To be Continued.

[lunapwrites]

7, 16 and 26 please!

love you! 💞

my beloved!!! <3 <3 <3

7. has your writing process changed and improved, and how?

Good lord has it ever lol. I can absolutely attribute this to finally joining the community and not just tippy-tapping away in secret like the little hermit I am was. The thing that I think is wildest to me, personally, is that a lot of what I published earlier in 2020 was not that indistinguishable from what I published in 2008. Basically the narrative voice had matured (because I had matured), and I was handling subject matter a bit more gracefully, but otherwise? It had the same sort of patterns, because I just write how I think. I also didn't used to have any kind of editing process aside from "do a once-over for typos." And now I actually am running things through Grammarly, and I am using alpha and beta readers, and I am being more thoughtful in my editing process and keeping in mind things like continuity and clarity in addition to flow. I also kind of actually outline things now? When I first dove into this series I'm writing, I dove in with nothing but where I was starting and where I wanted to end up, and everything between was a giant question mark. But now I actually have like. Beats I want to hit in my story haha. It's pretty neat. And you can actually see, in Louder Than Love in particular, the point where I started really talking to other writers and incorporating feedback. I mean, maybe a little less so now that I'm quietly editing the first couple of chapters so they stop being sins against god (IMO) but otherwise, you can literally see a shift around... chapter 5? I think chapter 5 was after I got on Discord. Anyway, yeah. Mostly just having access to creative feedback and getting the opportunity to both teach and learn has been HUGE for me.

16: what's a comment/piece of feedback you received that really made your day?

OK, so I don't usually post up whole-ass comments like this, but it didn't just make my day, it like... validated my entire existence. Like, I think about this comment every time I start doubting myself, and it's literally giving me strength to continue so BIG updoots to this commenter.

I've been reading through this series for the past few days and I guess this is just the point where I need to comment.

This may be my absolute favorite characterization of Remus of all time. Like, your characterization of everyone is so perfect and gives them all so much depth and actual humanity, but your Remus is incandescent. I love his anger and his rough edges. It feels like what he would be if he wasn't only a character in a children's book or a person being perceived from a child's (book Harry's) perspective. I adore how you describe relationships and create connection between Remus and Sirius and Dora. It's just so real and layered and brilliant.

One of the things that really hooks me into a fic is when people can capture the entire flavor of what a long term relationship is. It's not just angst or just love or just flirtation. Sometimes its being absolutely fucking livid with your person but still wanting to make them a cup of coffee because you can love someone and be angry with them at the same time. It is many and varied. You do a great job of portraying love very realistically, especially in the chapter here where Remus runs away and how we see everyone's reactions when he comes back.

I'm rambling, I've got a lot more I could say, but I'll leave it here. Thank you for this universe.

Like I am just. Floored by this. I'm pretty sure I actually cried over this one lol. It's also on No Code, which I'm actually planning on rewriting because my dumb ass posted Louder Than Love and its sequel concurrently, without having either of them completed, and so things have shifted slightly to the left. And just. Ugh. I appreciate every comment that I get, even if it's just a heart emoji, because someone took the time out to tell me they liked what I read and that is life-giving to me. But comments like this one in particular keep me up at night for the best reasons.

#26 I answered over on another post, and it's another long boi, so I'm just going to link to it here!

Thank you for the ask!! <3 <3 Love you! :D