#also this just so happened to be my 100th post on this blog

[dailymewo]

*Gives MEWO a bowl of milk* hey MEWO -_-

Meow! (Oh, hi Aubrey!)

*mewo slowly drinks from the milk*

Meow! (Thanks for the milk!)

*she drinks some more*

Meow? (how’s it going?)

[impeccablebackside]

i may be weird. how do the queen's pussys smell like?

I do not think it is that weird of a question anon. If we lust after and imagine what pussy looks like and feels like (and one person sort of once asked what it sounds like), then the next thing would be smell as well as taste (which sensory / neurologic-wise are related).

However, I am going to be real with you anon, I do not have a good answer to this. I do not know what pussy smells like in real life :(, so I cannot really give a valid answer. Smell and taste are objective(ish) experiences too, so it would still be hard to explain I think.

I would surmise that all of the queens have a pussy that smells relatively similar purely on the standpoint that is all the same anatomy. I am sure differences are appreciable given diet, whether they are older / younger, and whether they are 'owned' cats with houses or strictly feral. Their total scent also probably gives some uniqueness to what their heat smell like too, particularly with fur capturing smells.

Anyway, apologies if it seems like I am reading way too much into your question anon, but sometimes I am way too analytical when tackling a 'problem' so to speak and I need to build context. I am sure they all smell and taste very good, and it just makes the whole experience better.

I would bet that Vic smells and tastes the best though. I have always thought that, especially taste-wise. Otherwise, Cass would have the most unique smell / taste combo in my opinion.

[batsplat]

can’t ask via side blog so this is matchvedev 🫡 you mentioned catalunya in that reblog of vale celebrating his 100 wins… 👀 what’s the story behind that and are there any other fun anecdotes that come to your mind looking at that poster? only if you wanna talk about it ofc but super lowkey, just anything you might wanna talk about

(x) oh yeah sure! I'm gonna leave the other bits of the poster for another time because this post is already long enough and tbh I need to find a version where I can make out a little more of the poster. but I will at some point!!

so, assen 2009 was the race directly after catalunya - a race that valentino also of course just happened to win. it's actually super convenient that these were consecutive wins, because can you imagine if they'd had to lug that massive poster everywhere they went until valentino finally got his 100th? anyway, catalunya was very much the turning point of the 2009 season. going into that race, valentino was in a little bit of trouble... actually, y'know what I do have a post about this race already so I'm just gonna plagiarise from that:

so, long story short, obviously that race was a banger. if anyone reading this hasn't watched it, please go and do that. valentino won it with a final corner overtake on jorge at a bit of the track you're not supposed to be able to overtake at. every time this race comes up, I'm legally obligated to remind people jorge was going around telling pundits that as long as you're ahead going into the final two corners of the last lap, you're safe. which, obviously don't do that! casey did take a break from almost fainting so that he could rag on jorge for not preventing the overtake - not least since valentino had employed that overtake on casey two years earlier, which jorge was also aware of and was later kicking himself over (here, here and here, but don't click on that first link right now). so there's plenty of fun lore with that overtake... anyway, valentino goes full ham with his celebrations. he's now tied in the championship standings with casey and jorge. more importantly, he's shown that he's still got it AND he's beaten his annoying young teammate at home. he breaks out of parc fermé to accept the adulation of jorge's home fans and also interrupts jorge's interview to shake his opponent's hand... just in case jorge is less than generous after his brutal defeat, this interaction will be nicely caught on cameras and mics

there's one more thing he does in his celebrations - but we're going to need a bit more context here. let's go back a few years, to the early noughties. (I promise this is relevant.) now, fun story, did you know that casey was talent-spotted by dani's long-time manager alberto puig and that's where he knew dani from? (stick with me here.) also, did you know that this is actually the reason why dani and casey run consecutive numbers, 26 and 27 respectively? from casey's autobiography:

I'd wanted to use the number 66 when I raced, but another rider had taken it. Number 66, or 166 if there had to be three digits, had always been my number in dirt-track because Dad had used number 6. I had run 66 in the Aprilia Superteens but it had been taken in the British Championships so I'd used 48, which is what I was given. For the Spanish series Alberto had block-booked all the twenties for his riders and I was given the number 27. It was the number I would keep from then on.

and here's another bit later on:

Unfortunately my favourite number, 66, was again already taken, this time by the German rider Alex Hofmann, so we decided to stick with my number from the Spanish Championship, 27. That same year in the 125cc class Joan Olivé would be running number 25 and Dani Pedrosa number 26, so having the number 27 on the front of my bike was a subtle but nice way to maintain my association with Alberto and his team of riders and show my respect for him.

something nice about how those two numbers always remained linked, isn't there! now, back to jorge: for most of his career, he'd been running the number 48 (yes, coincidentally, the number casey had used in the british championships), in honour of his manager dani amatriain who he met when he was ten years old. more on their relationship here, but the most relevant bit is this:

so, until the start of the 2009 season, he'd had the number 48 on his bike (minus the one year where he ran the number one plate). he then had this massive and pretty traumatic falling out with his manager, and he went so far as to change his number to distance himself from the man:

which, good - it was obviously meaningful to him. he later chose to use the number one plate after his first premier class title but stuck to the 99 for the following two... in the end, he really made that number his own

except, one more thing. why 99? so apparently, he ran a fan poll at the end of 2008, and he chose the number that won. here, from an article after the 2015 season:

unfortunately, this doesn't give you a lot of detail about the fan poll... but if you get creative with the wayback machine, you can find an article from the motogp website from 2008 that gives you a little more to work with:

so he didn't really use a fan poll, he got the fans to just... slightly narrow down his preexisting choices. which is important context! fan poll this or that, he did basically choose the number himself

now, regrettably the next bit basically just urban legend. I have found no good source confirming this, it's just something you see on forum posts, it might just be conjecture. but... well, let's just take a second to consider who his three major rivals were at this point: dani, casey and valentino. and if we do some basic arithmetic...

26 + 27 + 46 = 99

look. I have zero evidence that this was actually the reasoning behind jorge's choice. but you have to admit it's one hell of a coincidence, and quite a funny one at that. there's something kind of charming about the idea that all four of those numbers ended up being connected in some way, first through the dani and casey thing and then by jorge linking all four of them together... and of course, it'd also be hilarious if this is how jorge approached choosing his number. 'actually, I'm all three of my rivals combined' - sorry, but I buy young jorge doing this. apart from anything else, that is a man who was canonically obsessed with his rivals, especially vale and dani. is this a dig at them or a tribute? both? neither? what's going on here? who's to say

maybe this isn't actually the explanation! either way, in 2009 jorge rocked up with his new number, having distanced himself from his manager and determined to be his own man now. he might have pretended like he didn't have big title ambitions for that season, but obviously he wanted this to be his year. at latest by the time he got to catalunya, he believed he could win this title and really wanted to beat valentino... he would have loved nothing more than to beat his teammate in a close and dramatic duel at home. except valentino gets the better of him, in pretty much the cruellest way imaginable

remember how we've established that assen was valentino's 100th victory? well, in an extremely annoying coincidence, catalunya of course just had to be valentino's 99th victory. because of course it was. and of course, because it's valentino, he does actually remember this while he's celebrating

funnily enough, the dorna commentators have no clue why he's doing this and are a little confused by valentino pointing at the 99 on jorge's bike. but I got it, valentino, don't worry! which is just... wonderfully irritating, isn't it. during his extremely extensive celebrations where he's really rubbing it in, taking control of the season and all that... he's also remembered exactly what number of wins he was on and decided to be an arsehole about it. think about all the things that had to play out the right way for this celebration to hit the way it did. even if you don't believe jorge's number was directly inspired by [valentino plus his other rivals], it was still a number he'd only gotten THAT year, just in time for this duel. of all the wins that could've given him 99, it had to be one of the very finest of valentino's career. it's just. so annoying

which brings us to assen 2009, victory number 100. they had two weeks to complete their lovely poster and choose the photo they'd take for victory number 99. of course, there's really only one way you can go here:

now, some scholars may recognise this photo as the 'knee retraction shot', where they got very close to making contact. this is headed down the main straight on the penultimate lap, where jorge has overtaken valentino on the straight but valentino has taken the outside line to out-brake jorge in order to reovertake him... and he's so close he actually has to briefly retract his knee to get past (see here for a little more detail). on the final lap, jorge does flirt with running valentino off the track to prevent this, so he did learn his lesson! still, it's the perfect shot: you've got the two numbers clearly displayed and they couldn't be closer together (actually *checks motegi 2010 notes* I suppose you can get them a little tighter still). yes, it's the obvious choice for the 99th victory photo - but again, incredibly annoying behaviour from valentino

one more fun thing: there was actually a second dramatic duel between jorge and valentino in 2009 that unfortunately has gotten forgotten about a little bit. this one was at the sachsenring, and again valentino emerged on top... another decisive blow against his young teammate's morale in a title fight he was increasingly in control of. let's just quickly check in on the painfully slim winning margin

now, I have zero proof for this, but in my heart I truly 100% believe that valentino both noticed and appreciated the coincidence. this whole thing is just very him, isn't it? jorge changes his number for deeply personal reasons, goes through some extensive introspection and an overly convoluted public process to choose his new number which may or may not have been directly inspired by his closest rivals... and then valentino (with an assist from the whole bloody universe, apparently) spent the next half year making this into another new fun part of valentino's story. it's valentino's super special 99th career win! it's part of the 100 career wins poster now! what a lovely coincidence, isn't valentino lucky! doesn't everything just somehow work out perfectly for him! wouldn't he fucking infuriate you! god

[yutasbellybuttonpiercing]

long time no see!

i am happy to announce that i am not better! but more back! not entirely tho... requests still give me the heebie jeebies atm.

but! as you can see, this is the 100th appearance change in the history of this blog, so there must be something happening. and there is. a lot.

but unfortunately it's just a lot of unfinished stuff.

still, i decided to finally do a little thing that i wanted to do for a while which was to make a carrd. and i did! and i combined that idea with making a post about work in progress fics that are... well, in progress.

so! feel free to check it out! feel free to also follow my other blogs/instagram and read the little tmi autobiography i put in there! watch out tho: i'm oversharing. 👎🏻

anyway! enjoy! mwah!

[eoieopda]

i’m going to discuss this one (1) time in full and then i will no longer devote my time, energy, or blog space to this topic. i simply cannot be assed to keep having this conversation. i will continue to block these anons as they pop up. in fact, i'll see y'all in a minute when you inevitably come calling.

here’s the tldr for anyone who is curious but does not have the capacity and/or desire to continue seeing this shit*.

*i have neither, and yet this is somehow still not over??

this whole thing is both buffoonery and goonery. i am so, so tired.

the people doing this are more concerned with hurting M and M’s friends than they are with their allegations of racism.

it’s gross as hell that people have misappropriated and devalued what could’ve been a meaningful discussion about an important topic... to instead shit on people they don't like.

i see you, besties 👀

tw: racism as written by white creators & as i have personally experienced (examples of micro-aggressions, racist messages i’ve received, etc.,) anonymous messages, harassment, cyberbullying.

p.s. i recognize that this is an exercise in futility and that literally nothing will convince these people to stop. i also recognize that saying something will probably make things worse for me. that's a problem for future jade™️, though, because present jade™️ is on one.

as we’re all aware, somebody is engineering an anonymous hate train against some of the writers on this site. these anons have been in their feelings (and the inboxes of writers, hate blogs, their own vagueposts, etc.) for weeks.

for what is probably the 100th time: my opinions are my own. i speak for myself, loudly and exclusively. not everyone is going to agree with me; that’s fine. my problem is not — and has never been — that people have different opinions than i do about the things i’m about to discuss. i’ll get into that later.

where it started:

an anon sent a message to a tea blog (read: hate blog) about M, who is white. the anon’s stated issue was that M included a depiction of racism/xenophobia in a chapter of a fic; and anon didn't feel that they should have. the position they took (if it existed in a vacuum) was valid and within their right to take. the way they went about all of this (by posting on a hate blog? in the year of our lord 2023?) was — in my opinion — sus as hell.

and that was before we all figured out what was happening here.

my position on white ppl writing about racism:

if a white writer can’t depict nuance or demonstrate any meaningful understanding of the issues they want to discuss, it’s my opinion that they have no business doing so.

for example: i’ve seen stories by white writers in which BIPOC react exclusively with violence or harsh words when confronted with racism. this, to me, is an “orange flag” because actual BIPOC have to do a lot of calculating in these situations. sure, the impulse to hulk out is there, but so is the risk that our immediate safety would be compromised further by hulking out. if that ^ kind of consideration isn’t fleshed out, i have a problem. when i see that ^ in stories, it tells me that the writer is not viewing the events they’re writing about through the lens of someone who actually experiences them and has not done their due diligence.

when i read racism as written by white authors, i primarily look at four things:

is the racist action depicted believable, or is it clear that the writer has absolutely no clue what they’re trying to talk about & made no attempts to learn?

does the inclusion of racism make sense in the context provided, or was it included for nefarious purposes (shock value, wokeness points™️, etc.)?

is there inclusion of the characters’ race, ethnicity, and/or culture in the fic outside their experiencing racism, or is that the only representation we get?

how do the characters process/react to this racism?

important context:

at the time i read the fic that sparked this whole ordeal, i’d just “met” M. this was around the time we became mutuals and started getting to know each other. all that to say, when i read this fic and formed an opinion on it, that was done as a reader, not a friend.

not as an “ass-licker,” “boba liberal,” worshipper of whiteness, and/or whatever else these anons have called me, either.

my opinion on the fic/situation hasn’t changed now that we are friends. if anything, getting to know M as a person (and not just as a writer whose fics i liked) has reinforced my opinion. regardless of what these anons have said, the M i know is a deeply empathetic and supportive friend. they consistently uplift me — and others — and make me feel seen/heard.

the only people who are indicating otherwise haven’t publicly identified themselves or stated any basis upon which their opinions (or borderline obsessive behaviors) are founded.

for what it’s worth, none of them that i’ve seen have even claimed to be asian. this will become relevant in a moment.

my position on the fic in question:

i'm a korean immigrant living in the united states. the chapter in question showed racism experienced by korean people in the united states. i'm qualified to make up my own damn mind about this.

i didn't have a problem with it, based on that four-part analysis i described up yonder. here's why:

(1) the depiction was of something i personally experience on a semi-frequent basis. in my life, racism often takes the form of micro-aggressions, as was the case in the chapter.

for example: being compared to people i look nothing like and/or aren’t korean simply because they’re also asian; people rolling their eyes when i correct the pronunciation of my (obviously) asian name like it’s not worth their effort; and tokenism/fetishizing, as if i’m a collectible item based on where i was born and not a full-fledged human being who is many things beyond simply being korean.

in my opinion, M’s portrayal of this more “subtle” racism (aka no slurs, no violence, etc.) was believable. to me, them making this choice demonstrated an understanding of what others experience, despite not experiencing it themselves.

(2) the scene made sense to me in the context of the chapter. bts encountered racism when they broke into the US, and the characters were in the US for an award show. frankly, i appreciated the acknowledgment of how asian immigrants/international tourists are treated in america because it’s not something i noticed non-asian people pointing out at all until COVID hit.

(3) the MC is a reader-insert who lives in korea and speaks korean. yoongi is obviously korean. the racism/xenophobia experienced by the characters in this chapter is not the only time i saw these things depicted in this series. importantly, the other references to korean culture were thoughtfully made, and they were either neutral or positive, not negative. the conclusion i came to was that M took this seriously, as they should have.

(4) the reaction of the characters is one i frequently have (not engaging, walking away) and i think it was communicated well in this scene why they reacted the way they did.

this was significant to me.

reading that, i got the impression that M had discussed this with BIPOC in their life and listened when they shared their experiences. that impression turned out to be accurate, though i didn’t have confirmation of this at the time i read the fic.

(conclusion) if i thought that any of these four things weren’t handled well, i would’ve brought my thoughts to M directly because it is important that these conversations happen. it’s also important that white writers listen. from where i’m standing, M has been open to those conversations with others, on or off anon. i believe that they do take this feedback to heart; and that they were taking steps to remedy those things — prior to being bullied off the platform at the end of april.

why ✨ i ✨ have a problem

i’ve discussed this issue already here, but i’ll elaborate further.

i have no reason whatsoever to believe that these anons are/were looking for changed behavior or remedial action because they continued to harass M — on M's blog, through the hate blog, and on the blogs of literally any person who has so much as perceived them — when M was addressing the issue. based on that, i have serious doubts that these anons care about the issue of racism the way they purport to. worse, they’re now harassing BIPOC in their inboxes and on the aforementioned hate blog.

on park jimin's internet, no less!

i haven’t spent much time discussing the substantive issue (hence this post) but have been very vocal about how shitty the anons’ behavior is. again, see here for the only take i’ve posted thus far (spoiler alert: cyberbullying is bad.)

for reasons that aren’t clear to me, that take resulted in metric ton of shit in my inbox. here’s a small sampling of what i've been forced to read with my own two (2) eyes in the past 24 hours:

*i did not include screenshots of other users’ inboxes in which anon messages reference me, or untagged submissions on the hate blog that very clearly allude to me.

at some point ?? they were mad about racism ?? but now the racism ?? is calling from inside the house ??????

and one last thing before i go touch grass….

i have reason to believe that this entire situation was orchestrated by small people with big feelings about M as a person, not about what they wrote. that’s not my story to tell, though, so i won’t.

when this shit kicked up, the majority of us who were/are being harassed installed IP trackers on our blogs because the identity of these people was suspected but not confirmed. that means we can see who they are, what they do on our blogs, and how many times per day they view our blogs (hint: a lot). we know that they are jumping from one blog to another as if they’re stopping on a goddamn mail route.

some of us (myself included) have alerts set to notify us via email when they pop by for a visit.

their presence on my blog this week lines up with the hostile and blatantly racist anonymous messages i’ve been receiving. i don’t think that’s a coincidence.

they’re either the ones sending them, or they’re lurking to see if/how i react to these messages.

that’s categorically fucked up.

[mysterycharacterbracket]

Full Tournament Recap

I've been doing one of these every three rounds, so why stop now? Here is a complete recap of everything that has happened in this tournament so far:

Submission Phase

Back in May of 2023, I noticed that bracket blogs were all the rage on Tumblr. So I decided to try my hand at my own. But I didn't like how sometimes I would vote for or against a character solely because I knew who they were. So I decided the identities of the characters in my bracket were going to be a mystery! I recommended propaganda to be vague enough that even fans of the same franchise might have trouble guessing, but at the same time specific enough that the character COULD be identified. I decided that, so that I could participate too, I would not look at which character matched which description until they were eliminated.

I opened submissions for the bracket on May 15th, and kept them open until the 24th.

Format

When all the submissions were in, I counted the characters to find that we had a total of 297. I then calculated that 297 / 3 = 99, and suddenly I had a formula for the bracket. The characters would battle in 99 randomized polls of 3. I would split up the polls into 9 batches of 11.

Then the 99 winners, and the 29 losers with the most votes, would be placed into a winners bracket (for an even 128 characters), while the remaining 169 characters would be placed into a losers bracket. This meant that I had to split them up further: the 82 losers with the fewest votes would compete in 41 first-round matchups, while the 87 characters in between would enter the tournament in the second round. The losers from the winners bracket would enter the next round of the losers bracket and be given a second shot.

First Round

So we cycled through each batch of polls. For each poll, I put the characters' descriptions in red, green and blue. I didn't want to wait until all the polls were finished in one batch to start the next one, but I also wanted each batch to have a buffer of at least one day on either side. So I posted the 9 batches of weeklong polls somewhat randomly, staggered throughout the week -- so one batch might be on day 5, while another batch was on day 3, and another was just starting.

In the process I decided that a tie for first or second place would trigger a 24-hour runoff vote. A first-place tiebreaker would only be used to determine which character won, but the vote count for seeding purposes would remain the same from the original poll. A second-place tiebreaker was just for fun.

Then once all 297 characters had been revealed, I received 3 messages stating that some people had problems submitting their characters. So I created a special 100th poll and adjusted my math slightly:

100 characters would win and go on to the winners bracket

28 characters would lose, but earn enough votes to move on to the winners bracket

84 characters would enter the losers bracket in the second round

And 88 characters would compete in 44 first-round matchups in the losers bracket

June 24th was when the round came to a close, but we still had some ties to break. So I created the...

Tiebreaker Round

At this point the characters were grouped as follows:

100 characters had won their polls and were headed to the winners bracket

26 characters had lost their polls but received 57 or more votes, and were also headed to the winners bracket

2 of those 26 characters were tied for 2nd place in poll #100, so they competed in a tiebreaker poll.

3 characters were tied with 56 votes. The math dictated that 2 of them had to go to the winners bracket and the other one had to go to the losers bracket, so I put them in a tiebreaker where you had to vote for one of the two winners. Then later I realized I could have done it so you could vote for the loser.

79 characters had lost their polls but received between 35 and 55 votes, so they were headed to the second round of the losers bracket.

9 characters lost their polls with 34 votes. The math dictated that 4 of them had to go to the second round while the other 5 went to the first round. I posted a single 9-way tiebreaker where the top 4 characters would get byes. Then I later realized I could have done it with 3 posts, where the winner of each post got a bye along with the top wild card.

The remaining 83 characters lost their polls with 33 votes or less. These characters were automatically entered into the first round of the losers bracket.

I also posted a poll to decide which colors I would use for each poll, and another one to decide how I would handle seeding. The choice for seeding was "keep the original numbers", and the choices for colors were pink and purple for the winners bracket, and green and blue for the losers bracket.

Once the 24-hour tiebreakers were complete, I also decided to re-randomize the characters within each round (which is why the numbers were all across the board).

Stage 1

Stage 1 was unique. Each character had just been re-randomized. No character was initially matched up against someone they had competed against in the first round. Now each poll only had two options, with the loser being eliminated from the winners bracket or the tournament at large no matter how much they lost by. And we started to cycle through the two brackets in a pattern: two losers bracket rounds, followed by one winners bracket round.

The first losers bracket round (L1) was unique in that it had 4 batches of 11 polls each, plus one 24-hour bonus poll to decide whether I should stagger the rounds as well as the polls. The answer was yes. So I did.

After the first round I switched to batches of 8 polls. This pattern remained in place until there were no longer enough polls in a round to do it. So round L1 lasted 4 batches of 11 polls, and rounds L2, W1 and L3 each lasted 8 batches of 8 polls.

Stage 2

Not much changed in stage 2. It included rounds L4, W2 and L5, which each lasted 4 batches of 8 polls. But because the website I used to make brackets could only create brackets of 64, I had to create 16 losers brackets, and round L5 was the semifinals for each one.

Stage 3

Because round L5 was the semifinals for each of the 16 losers brackets, round L6 had to be the finals. Then we took a break from that to play round W3. When we came back with round L7, the 16 remaining losers were in two new brackets along with the 16 losers of round W3.

Stage 4

At this point there were only 8 matchups remaining in each round, so I combined them all into one batch. I started a new pattern: round L8 started a day after round L7 concluded. Then round W4 started two days after round L8 started. Then round L9 started a day after round L8 concluded.

Stage 5

Rinse and repeat. This time with only 4 matches each in rounds L10, W5 and L11.

Remember what I said about the website only allowing me to make 64 character brackets? For this reason, there were two winners brackets. Round W5 was the semifinals for each. And round L11 was the semifinals for each of the second round of losers brackets.

Stage 6

This time, there were only two matches per round. Round L12 finished off the losers brackets. Round W6 finished off the winners brackets. Then we were ready for the final bracket that you see in the masterpost today. (Speaking of which, I kept that masterpost updated with links to each active poll, as well as a picture of each active bracket.) Round L13 was the start of that final bracket.

Stage 7

At this point, only one poll remained for each round. The winner of each poll would move on, and the loser would be guaranteed a certain place in the tournament. The loser of round L14 took 4th place. And the loser of round W7 moved on to round L15 to take on the winner of round L14. The loser of round L15 took 3rd place.

Which brings us to right now. March 2nd, 2024. The championship will be posted in just a few minutes, and it features the following two characters:

Character 5: She's a terrible driver even though she's been driving since before the age of 12. She only has 1 name. She's autistic. She's the best in the world at what she does. She's been searching for a family her entire life and when she finally found one that actually loves her she reciprocated that love by pushing them off of buildings. She's a terrible liar until her family teaches her how to lie (for fun and profit!!). She's a badass on paper but in reality she's the weirdest fucking person you've ever met.

And character 67: Is part horse. Can cause others excruciating pain with their own anger. Joins an illegal rebellion at age 13. 3 elves are all in love with her. One of them is her cousin. A grumpy short man tried to get her exiled from society because she has brown eyes.

Who will win? You decide!

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Hi guys!

Since Admin 1 is very busy with work and dating their soulmate, the one writing todays post, and the one taking responsibility for its contents, is Admin 2. This isn’t about any one specific thing but I simply wanted to give you a sign that we’re still around, assure our fellow vminies that we still very much follow vmin and watch over what they’re up to and we’ve very much not lost any kind of faith in their bond or started to doubt what we’ve laid out across all the posts on this blog. Quite on that contrary, actually, we’re been rather satisfied as we’re watching vmin in recent months.

Writing this post today was also sparked by someone in our ask box, but more on that later.

Let’s begin at the beginning.

Like I said we’re still avidly watching and following what BTS are up to, as well as the members individually, especially Tae, Jimin, Jin and Namjoon, since those four are the ones that our blog focuses on most. A few months have passed since the FESTA dinner and time shows us exactly what I thought about vmin in the last few years and in recent times. Judging by how vmin present themselves and support each other in their individual activities I don’t have any doubt that, and still uphold my opinion that, vmin are the closest bond within the group and I think the bond will continue thriving and getting closer. What led me to that conclusion was watching what’s been going on and through that observation a lot of what we saw already in the past (end of 2019 and onward) have gotten a new/deeper meaning and it also elevated the meaning behind the words between and actions between vmin. 

I mean that vmin (+Hobi once) were the ones who mentioned wanting the group to remain together for a long time/forever the most, or even were the only ones to do so repeatedly in such a manner. Tae said he wanted to see the members until their end and Jimin even claimed (jokingly) he would be willing to take over the leader role and how it would be great if the group would still live together and keep creating music together for a very long time. That also heavily reminds me of what vmin said in Friends where Jimin asks Tae to stay with him even after the fame will be gone. So it’s easy to see that Friends being on MOTS7, now knowing that the band was originally supposed to go on hiatus after MOTS7 and its tour, now takes on an even deeper meaning than the song already had when we analyzed it in the past. So vmin and only vmin mark their bond between them with the want of staying together forever publicly. All gestures between Jimin and Tae in Bon Voyage 4 and things that came afterward, like holding hands on the airport at the end of December 2019, “this is my love for you” from the behind the scenes of the 100th RUN episode when Jimin gave Tae a bunch of heart shaped balloons, Tae’s 95z is love comment on weverse, show a want to mark just how special their bond is during a time when they used to think that the end of chapter 1 was approaching (before the pandemic came and changed everything). 

Of course I don’t want to negate the bond between all the seven members because it’s very much there and strong and will also be something that’ll stick with them forever, but vmin are the only ones who in such a manner underlined their subunit within the group.

Everything that happened later, all our posts, our analysis, all moments between vmin and other duos, they also get put in a somewhat different light now that we know things that we didn’t know yet back then.

What I’m trying to say is that, despite the group being in its second chapter and working on their individual projects, vmin still stick to each other in their own ways and support each other, like Jimin quickly ending his live yesterday because Tae was about to go on air and so he wanted to send ARMY over so they would listen and support Tae. Or in the previous live Jimin did when Tae came by to comment along and how they agreed to do a video call right after and whatnot. Those are all signs for me that we have no reason whatsoever to worry or doubt vmin, and there’s even less of a reason to pay attention to weird behaviors and thoughts from other shippers or individuals who can’t quite deal with their half of vmin interacting one way or another with others, or the strange and fabricated rumors floating around. There’s no reason at all to doubt Tae’s words about liking Jimin the most, because their bond is unique and special.

Furthermore I wanted to add that, since I’m a Tae bias, am very much annoyed about the rumor that I think is simply stupid and baseless.

I’d also like to say that we’ve made many individual observations about vmin but there are no reasons and there’s no need to write out each of them and support it by some kind of comparison, the way other shippers feel the need to each time, so we will keep that to ourselves. What vmin are doing is more than enough on its own. 

If you really listen to what vmin say (without leaving out or twisting the context) and do, then a lot of the noise from other shippers stops holding any kind of meaning or importance and instead simply fades somewhere far into the background. 

Personally I’m very curious to finally find out a date or hint or anything when it comes to when we might finally hear something from Tae music wise that I could look forward to, but even here Tae is showing us his independent personality and the fact that he won’t allow others to pressure him into delivering something before he is entirely satisfied. Which of course also makes me happy, because if we finally get to hear any of it, I’d want it to be exactly what Tae wants it to be and how he wants it to be. So I’ll continue to patiently wait. 

At the same time I’m also curious about what kind of music we will get from Jimin. His photofolio already was quite the surprise look wise, since I’ve never seen Jimin as harbinger of chaos (he was a tattoo in one of the pictures that says Tailor of Chaos) so I was rather surprised to see him presented/presenting himself this way. So after that I’m even more curious about his music, especially after we’ve seen the different producers that flew to Korea to work with him.

Next I’d like to talk about Hobi, especially since we know he��s quite close with vmin and we know both of them supported him a great deal during his solo activities, especially when he was performing at Lollapalooza. For me Hobi’s album and the performance were truly the event, the moment. Personally I’m extremely happy that Hobi finally got the recognition and the status he rightfully deserves. At the same time I’m also happy that we could get to know Hobi in ways we haven’t quite before, like finding out that Hobi is just as much of a social butterfly as Tae and has a gigantic social circle of friends and acquaintances across different fields. Jack in the Box was like the music moment of this year and I love it so much.

And now lets get to the point that inspired me to want to write a post after a rather long time. As in the anon message we got in our ask box about Namjoon.

Dear anon I assure you I care a great deal about Namjoon, I respect and cherish him a lot, and that we even have a lot of hobbies and interests in common. Through the art that he shows us we can find out a lot about Namjoon the person, his thoughts and feelings, and also through that I feel close to him, in a way. And as such, I cannot imagine how someone can look at this very intelligent person that is Namjoon, who you claim to care about so much, and truly think he would go and post this mysterious boyfriend you claim he has on his social media with stickers over his face. BTS keep their privacy safe for a reason to the point that we literally know nothing expect for the few things they tell us themselves, and yet still Namjoon would go out of his way to post his boyfriend with a covered face?

I still stand and agree with what Admin 1 said in their post about this topic, as in that either these are his friends, a manager or other type of staff, or a trusted family member, and they surely aren’t someone he stands in a romantic connection with Namjoon, which is why Namjoon sees no reason not to share them with us with their faces covered. What I’m saying isn’t leaning on my thinking that namjin are a thing, but that is what I think and I surely won’t try and go around to convince others of that, but instead it’s me trying to get you to respect Namjoon a bit more. I also don’t negate that Namjoon might be in a relationship with someone else than Jin, though I honestly doubt it, but obviously that’s always a possibility, regardless of what gender that partner might have. This isn’t me being delulu or trying to push a narrative or agenda, but instead my thoughts and opinions based on my conclusions reached through what we’ve seen over the years.

Despite your triple dare we will not be posting your ask and the link it had because it leads to a blog filled with posts that we do not agree with and we very much are not interested in leading more people there and running the chance that people might get misled by them. 

This whole Namjoon’s mystery boyfriend topic has been floating around for months now and we’ve already posted about it back in December last year, and since then nothing has changed so, as it stands, you can lay this topic to rest. And if you don’t agree with our blog, perhaps it simply isn’t the place for you since this is a BTS, vmin and namjin blog. There are enough other bloggers who support your thoughts so you might feel happier there instead.

I’m happy that Namjoon is doing well, that he’s getting so much appreciation in the art would, that we could catch a glimpse at how much fun Namjoon had with Hobi at the Billie Eilish concert, and that he’s been steadily working on his music and seems satisfied with the work he’s doing.

Another thing that I/we kind of missed (as in mentioning it on the blog) was Jungkook’s birthday and his live with Jin and the whole situation around this day and how it’s practically the most anticipated date of the year among xkook shippers. That kind of passed us by. I watched the live and I must admit that it didn’t feel quite the way like the previous lives he’s done and the weverse post Jin made after he left Jungkook’s apartment, about how he should continue his live professionally, led me to believe that he didn’t feel quite as enthusiastic and energetic about the live as he did with the previous ones. For whatever reason. But one thing this showed us was that Jin is watching over Jungkook and that their bond is very close and brotherly with older brother Jin caring a lot about his beloved younger brother Jungkook. At the same time I hope that the whole day, and what happened on it, will finally put certain things to rest for people who think clearly who maybe finally saw or will see that the bond the entire group has with Jungkook is exactly the same and none of them are romantic. That vmin treat Jungkook the same, one and the other. That you can see that in some of their gestures and behaviors, in Jimin's like in Tae’s, that they care about Jungkook the same way the other members do as well, and that their bonds with Jungkook don’t have any romantic connotations. Jungkook is simply the baby of the group and nothing and no analysis will change my mind about that. 

Going back to vmin for a closing summary or thought. Everything that was to be analyzed about them has been analyzed and really everything that could be said about what we’ve seen since 2013 has been said, and knowing that chances are rather slim that we’ll get anything more than this, I don’t think there’s a need for further analysis of each and every new word and gesture we get since they all following and fit in with everything we’ve seen so far, none of it is new or shocking or anything like it. What we see now is just the way we thought it would look like. My stance on vmin is known among those who read our blog and everyone knows that I’m the Admin that is convinced that vmin are together, but I’m also convinced that we will never get any kind of confirmation, as in something official like a statement or anything like it. Or at least not now or any time soon.

So I’m remaining firm in my opinions but I will not try to convince anyone of them either. 

[bahamutgames]

100th Post Celebration! Wahoo!!

Hello everyone! Yes you read that right, I've officially reached 100 posts on this tumblr! How exciting!

I know it's not really that crazy of a milestone, but considering this blog was completely inactive not too long ago, I'm happy to see it. It's become a blog I really enjoy and genuinely love coming to update and make little posts about video games on. And I hope you all enjoy seeing me talk on and on about random games too!

Also this account randomly jumped from under 10 followers to just over 50 this year. Which again isn't a lot but still its NUTS to see. I know a lot of you followed specifically for gifsets and I haven't made any in a hot minute. But I appreciate you still being here and maybe even enjoying my ramblings about games I play? Probably not... Maybe?

Regardless if you only read whatever interests you, if you somehow have the mental fortitude to read EVERYTHING, or don't read anything at all and are just wondering where the gifs are. I do appreciate you being here!

Mainly I just wanted to make this post to give a bit of an update on what's happening here. In the new year I still plan to run this blog the exact same way as I did this year. At this point I REALLY like the set up I have for posting my game thoughts and prefer much MUCH more over the old way of sharing thoughts through twitter threads. And I have no intentions of stopping, so I hope you look forward to seeing all the random stuff I play in the coming year!

Outside of just afterthoughts stuff, I do want to make more gifs. I haven't even really scratched the surface of what I could do with just the dozens of smash bros. games, mods, and fangames I have on my computer. And there's tons of other stuff I could make gifs of, and if they do become popular enough I may even consider taking game requests eventually (no promises though)

I have also been considering making some videos for more visually focused afterthoughts or to facilitate my more insane brain worm fueled video game ramblings. Like maybe gushing about random Xbox 360 RPGs or ramblings about Smash Bros. characters. This is just a concept though cause I REALLY don't want to become a youtuber and would only make videos for fun cause I think the stress of doing it regularly would kill me.

Then of course I have a lot of work to do, both for games I'm a part of and my own personal games like Once Upon An Adventure! I really want to buckle down and get some good progress done on it in 2024 (I say this every year so don't hold your breath lmao). But sadly I will also be moving in the first part of 2024 which will, as all moves are, be a long and stressful process. So I probably won't get a TON of gaming done for a bit outside of smaller games and maybe playing some old stuff I've been sitting on for a bit. But we'll see.

Regardless, thank you all VERY much again for your continued support and your interest in anything I say even though it's all pretty much pointless ramblings of an insane person. Look forward to more video game stuff from your pal Bahamutgreen in the future.

Have a great day, happy holidays, and here's to a lovely 2024!

[nikos-oneshots]

Update (like my 100th update)

oh my god niko isn't dead!!

surprisingly, lmao. Sorry i have been dying and coming back to life for like, the entire year. I've just been kinda busy, but also not really writing fanfiction that much. A lot has happened. For one, I turned 18! Wow, I am a legal adult [so legal]. I've been looking at colleges to go to since I technically graduated highschool in june of this year, and thats been taking up a lot of my time (Going to open houses and all) along with my victory lap in highschool.

Uh, fandoms have been pretty wack too. I've been obsessed with spiderverse as of late. Only reason I didn't write anything for it is because 1. I am only obsessed with Hobie Brown, and 2. I dont want the spiderverse tag to make fun of me because I don't know how to write his accent :(. I might just take the plunge, but idk.

Because I don't have a lot of consistent interaction, i don't think a lot of people keep up with this account, but I was considering making an alternate blog just for me to just talk, maybe give updates because I don't like to clutter this blog with stuff like that. Would you all be interested in that? It will also be like a personal diary and stuff like that. I'll also probably post my art there and stuff like that.

Anyways, uh, happy american thanksgiving (Im not american) and I hope i dont die again.

-Niko <3

[trickarrows-bishop]

LIVE BLOG OF ME REACTING TO EPISODE FIVE OF HSMTMTS

was gonna do this for episode four and forgot, kinda wish i did after all of THOSE scenes but anyways episode five lets GOOOOOO

[open with caution, i didn't realise how mentally unprepared i was]

THE WAY EJ WAS ON THE MOTHERFUCKING BANNER MADE ME SCREAM TBH LIKE BROTHER U WANT ME TO CRY FR FR

"richard bowen" "elton john" caswen is upon us (i cant even say im delusional because madlyn deadass nearly happened last episode)

"the musical is going swimmingly" girl u drowning dont lie

BYE NOT THE NEVER-ENDINGLY USED PLOT OF THE IDEA OF THE MUSICAL BEING CANCELLED I CANT GET AWAY FROM THIS FR

i gotta say kourtney repeatedly getting her moment is insane. like im so fucking happy rn over it its insane. like she's going therapy (WOOOOO THERAPY !!) and actually looking at her future !! im so happy for her im fr putting ms girl in my pocket

also when i found out her mom is played by dara's actual mom i screamed (not lying im so dramatic bye)

"lets start with questions!!" "great 'cause i have many" she is me and i am her. i am kourtney greene coded fr

4 JOBS??? EJ'S DAD CAN SUCK A DICK FR IDEC HE IS SUCH AN ASSHOLE MAN

i cant even say i want it made up bc ej said its a breath of fresh air and HE NEEDS THAT AIR FFS

"talking to val" WOHOOOO MENTION OF PAST CHARACTERS INSANE BEHAVIOR FROM THE WRITERS !! INSANE !! (im in delusion that nini will be back)

"you do look good" "thanks. you do look... terrible" real. ricky bowen me coded fr

cant believe we havent had one season where gina can just. have the lead. and no drama. like pls tim i was BEGGING like. at season two.

caitlyn (actress playing quinn the director) is so hilarious to me like i've been following her online for ages and bro its so funny seeing her on hsmtmts and doing exactly what she does in her other videos LMAO

"g force" i'll puke. fuck off.

GINA KINDA GAGGED QUINN THERE ???

LMFAO NOT HER CHANGING HER MIND JUST AT THE IDEA OF WINNING AN AWARD

EJ and ricky's duet lol they hate me. they want me to cry. im eight mins in too. cant wait to cry to this fr

update: crying over this duet what the fuc

can i just say how for certain songs on this soundtrack they've been HITTING or absolutely MISSING ???

this girl harper is GAGGING kourt LMAO "i see you standing here right now !!" SHES SO FUNNY FOR NO REASON

miss jenn is not using siri rn.

CARLOS BB :(

SIRI SHUSH WITH UR BEEPING

trust the process WOHOOOO

why is it thunderstorming JESUS

22 pages U FUCKIN WHAT (never been in a musical idk seems like a lot)

why is she always wearing a cheer outfit its deadass like the character's personality is cheer outfit bro

"3 children" i need to buy a GUN

quinn i was just routing for u babe why u posting such bullshit on instagram. and was that a FILTER?

BIG RED???FHHSDHFADSJGHFKSDJHFASDKJBFSKV

BIGGIE ???dFHAKSDHFAKSJDHGFKASHDG IS THAT MY SON ???? MY SON ???? IS HE ALSO WEARING GLASSES WHAT THE FUCK OF FUCKS

anyways let me actually play the scene LOLZ

HIS FIRST WORDS ARE "ASH YOU LOOK AMAZING" BYE CANT DO THIS WHY WAS I ROUTING FOR MADLYN FFS

YK WHAT? ASHLYN HAS TWO HANDS. YEAH. THAT CAN WORK FOR ME

grandma red's 100th!! everyone cheered fr (i am everyone)

"your last text said you had something important to tell me" no i am not about to witness redlyn break up. nononono.

I KNEW IT

THE FUCKING MOMENT SEB SAID HE CHEATED I CONNECTED THE DOTS I WAS LIKE

"HMMMMM BIG RED JUST CAME OUT AS BI ??? YOU CHEATED ???? IDK ??? MAYBE SEB HELPED OR SOMETHING" LITERALLY SAID THAT SHIT OUT LOUD AND I WAS RIGHT HOLY FUCK OF FUCKS

"surprise!!" boy- i don't have TIME to even unPACK-

"you okay?" "i am GREAT" me when i LIE

HOLD UP

DID HE JUST

DID RICHARD JUST

MENTION NINI???? WHA

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

THIS WASN'T ON MY HSMTMTS SEASON 4 BINGO CARD?!!!!????

yeah im salty about how shit of an exit that was for nini. next question.

"afraid of the truth?" do u want me to try and make this gay or not richard cuz i stg u are giving me some mixed ass signals

nevermind this is really sad and heartbreaking let me shut the fuck up

AND NOW WE GO BACK TO REDLYN OKAYYYY

THE MOVIES??? BIG RED AND SEB AT THE MOVIES ???

all of this is just so out of character for big red and seb like what

like ej was right there tim come ON

"we were at a harry styles movie" not the fucking millennial ass writing coming in NOW

"my bi origin story" how am i supposed to feel rn??? because i don't know how to feel. like. anything. at all.

GIRL YOU BETTER TELL HIM ABOUT VAL OR MADDOX ???

"yeah!!! she was cute!!!" "yes. she was." BAHAHHAHAJHFGDSKJ

"wait..." NOT THAT BEING THE WAY SHE CAME OUT BAHHDSJH

"there were fireworks... literally"

OHHHHH SHES TALKING ABOUT MADDOX TOO UHM

"YOU almost kissed MADDOX" bro idk if ur disgusted or proud pls elaborate

OH HE KNEW FROM THE DOC LMFAO

wait so im just like ??? meant to let go of redlyn ??

"im happy for you" kms where can i get a big red

aLSO I WANT A NAME REVEAL tim PLEASE

just watched redlyn break up. now FUCKING WHAT

"friends, though... right?" YOU BET YOUR ASS KING

"i will apologise to carlos. BUT YOU NEED TO CALL MADDOX" SO REAL THANK YOU BIG RED UR SUCH A KING

ashlyn stop doubting urself like GIRLIE everyone with EYES is down bad please. PLEASE.

WHY AM I WATCHING CARLOS AND MISS JENN HAVE A CRY SESSION ON SOME RANDOM ASS COUCH ???

why is rehearsals starting at 7 in the evening. that would not fucking slide at my school. ( if i ran a school) (not happening)

"FIFTY SIX MINUTES" girl even made me move tf?

KOURTNEY'S SHOES WHAT THE FUCK I NEED THEM RIGHT NOW

oh come on just hearing all of that she HAS to go to lewis

"i just learnt mack and gina are minors" GIRL ??? WHAT DID YOU THINK-

quinn shouting "CUT!!!" louder every time

"which felt like... nine days" WHY AM I LAUGHING

"because we're friends-" bro fuck off idc

GAG HIM G IT DONT MATTER

THINK OF THE MUSICAL GINA.

ricky PROMISED FR HE BETTER BE THERE

"hugs i love that we're doing this now!!" emmy I CANT NOT LOVE YOU

ASHLYN U MAKE THAT PHONE CALL THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU I NEED MADLYN RN

oh fuck i didn't realise that left carlos and big red FUCK

suddenly i DON'T want to be here

carlos can never be fully mad like if i found out someone had kissed my partner im 100% going to jail bc im so pissed off & i've probably killed someone, but why is he saying mf "good day!!" as he stormed off

MADISON FUCK OFF I AM NOT IN THE MOOD

fuck im really gonna have to have madlyn dragged out for me ffs

bro what is this weather on about tho

last time weather was important to plot it was like. keeping nini back in s2 e3 LMAO ???

EJ saying some important shit to ricky and its gonna make me cry again (its not even the finale and i have 17 mins of run time left of this episode FFS)

"im actually hurting them?" "no, you're actually hurting yourself" HOLY FUCK IM TOO VULNERABLE FOR THIS

CASWEN HUG AND IM GONNA RUN WITH IT FR

"stealing my girlfriends" BYE I CANT DO THIS

[bertilakslady]

I posted 968 times in 2022

That's 784 more posts than 2021!

12 posts created (1%)

956 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@foreignobjecticus

@notagarroter

@kholly12

@neil-gaiman

@earlgreytea68

I tagged 557 of my posts in 2022

Only 42% of my posts had no tags

#sherlock - 82 posts

#blake's 7 - 38 posts

#art - 35 posts

#writing - 28 posts

#kerr avon - 25 posts

#adlock - 24 posts

#roj blake - 20 posts

#gareth thomas - 19 posts

#paul darrow - 13 posts

#meta - 12 posts

Longest Tag: 125 characters

#he thought it was about my grandma but it was to tell us my best friend’s 4yo sister had been killed in a family car accident

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

See also: politicians. Advertising slogans. (And often, sadly, song lyrics)

2 notes - Posted May 10, 2022

#4

Hahahaha I was just reminded of the following by @margysmusings. Back in the heady days of S3, I’d bought a little Sherlock figurine. My mother (then well into her 80s, she’s 90 now) took a fancy to him, so I let her keep him. She placed him on a high shelf, somewhat (I thought) precariously. When he fell off, she commented:

“Well, that was bound to happen, I suppose.”

4 notes - Posted November 23, 2022

#3

Well worth reading for linguists and movie historians alike:

8 notes - Posted April 10, 2022

#2

I thought the Beeb would be bound to have something from Sherlock in its online exhibition celebrating its 100th Anniversary, and I was not disappointed!

The Coat (under the Objects rubric) 😍

8 notes - Posted January 3, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Wow. 10 years since A Scandal in Belgravia. It’s still just about the most perfect piece of television I’ve ever seen. Everything about it.

The writing: The narrative structure, all built around parallels; “I always hear ‘Punch me in the face’ when you’re speaking, but it’s usually subtext”; “S H E R L O C K E D”. Genius.

The casting: Lara Pulver as Irene Adler

The acting: “Because I took your pulse”

The cinematography: the way the Buckingham Palace scenes are framed; the Phantom camera in Irene’s apartment

The music: Sherlocked will always be one of my favourite pieces of classical music. It’s sublime

And all the rest

Finally, BTS: this is the perfect remedy in moments of sadness

56 notes - Posted January 2, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[pathfinderunlocked]

Princess of the End - CR22 Half-Devil

For my 100th monster, please enjoy the final boss of my four year long dark fantasy campaign, which ended two weeks ago!

Artwork by Kimbears on Twitter (though they’ve since deleted this post), badly edited by me.

My four year long dark fantasy campaign ended just two weeks ago, and happened to approximately coincide with the milestone of the 100th monster I’ve posted here!  So I thought it would be fitting to post the monstrously over-designed three-page-long stat block of that campaign’s final boss on this blog.  Her impressive magic items and unique powers, especially her legendary actions, increase her CR by +3.

This former human sorcerer was transformed into a powerful half-devil, gaining the powers (and to some degree, the appearance) of a barbed devil, as well as six arms and spined wings.

Personally, I also included six Arcane Cannons in the fight, as well as the Disguised Formian Vizier which was disguising itself as the princess and dominated by her through the use of an artifact.  Hard to keep a sorcerer alive without allies on the field, insane infernal powers or not - although she can also summon an ice devil, so that helps.

In battle, she holds her scythe in two hands, uses a mithral buckler with the same hand she uses to hold her phantasmal gem, holds her two metamagic rods in two of her hands, and keeps her sixth and final hand free for spellcasting and claw attacks.  As a result, she can only make one of her two claw attacks when the battle begins - but as soon as a metamagic rod is depleted, she drops it, and if she has a chance to stow the phantasmal gem in her bag after she’s done with illusion spells, she does so.  Once she’s done either of those two things, she has two hands free and can use both claws if needed.

Although she has incredible destructive powers and a focus on evocation and enchantment spells, this boss tries to start the fight with trickery, using Persistent Image to create a duplicate of herself and Ventriloquism to disguise her verbal spell components so they sound like they’re coming from the illusion.  She has a lot of other buff spells and summoning spells, which she casts on herself for as long as this illusion can keep the PCs’ attention away from her.

She can do a lot of useful things with her legendary actions, but if the temporary hit points from False Life have been depleted, she prioritizes replenishing them rather than using any kind of offense or other buffs.  Similarly, she uses Inspire Greatness as often as possible, sacrificing only level 1 or 2 spell slots for it and potentially even re-casting it before it’s worn off, in order to regain the temporary hit points from it any time they’ve have been depleted.  Because of her low hit points, she relies on her multiple sources of renewable temporary hit points to survive.

She begins the battle with Grand Destiny already cast, and saves it to use on saving throws.  She uses her Legendary Resistance against major conditions if Grand Destiny doesn’t do the job.

If a character locks her into melee combat, she uses a legendary action to move away.  If for some reason she can’t escape, however, it turns out that Smite Good is astonishingly effective for a sorcerer with three natural attacks plus a weapon, especially if she’s also cast Haste on herself.

Her unique magic item, The Princess’s Red Cape, gives her a health refill and a final phase when the battle is getting grim for her.  Activating the cape’s second command word destroys it 2 rounds later, lowering her AC and saving throws by 2.

It’s possible she has some spell with an expensive material component that I forgot to include.  Just assume she has enough material components to cast it once.

If you want to support this blog, now there’s an easy way to do so through my Ko-Fi page!  https://ko-fi.com/lockez  

Princess of the End - CR 22

Before your eyes, the top half of the princess’s dress is shredded to pieces as she sprouts four additional arms covered in white spines, as well as a pair of similarly spine-covered wings.  She shrieks, “Finally!  It worked! After so many tries!”

XP 614,400 Unique Half-Fiend Human Sorcerer 17 LE outsider (augmented humanoid, devil, evil, human, lawful, native) Initiative: +6 Senses darkvision 60 ft., see invisibility; Perception +13

DEFENSE

HP: 198/198 (17d6 + 136), 27 temp HP (from maximized false life) AC: 33, touch 19, flat-footed 26 (+6 Dex, +2 deflection, +1 dodge, +4 mage armor, +4 natural, +6 shield) Fort +17, Ref +16, Will +17 Defensive Abilities barbed defense, legendary resistance (3/day), heroic legends, take your best shot DR 10/magic Immune poison Resist acid 10, cold 10, fire 30 (10 without Resist Energy), elec 10

OFFENSE

Speed: 30 ft., fly 60 ft. Melee: +3 flaming scythe +19/+14 (2d4+10/x4 plus 1d6 fire), 2 claws +13 (1d6+2 plus fear), bite +13 (1d4+2) or 2 claws +15 (1d6+5 plus fear), bite +13 (1d4+2) Touch Spells: Touch +16 Ranged Touch Spells: Touch +17 Special Attacks fear, legendary actions, maximized false life

Half-Fiend Spell-Like Abilities (CL 17; concentration +24)     1/day—Darkness, Desecrate, Unholy Blight, Poison, Contagion, Blasphemy, Unholy Aura, Horrid Wilting, Summon Monster IX (fiends only)

Sorcerer Spells Known (CL 17; concentration +24)     8th (4/day)—Prediction of Failure (DC 25), Stormbolts (DC 26), Sympathy (DC 27)     7th (7/day)—Greater Age Resistance, Mass Demanding Message (DC 26), Mass Hold Person (DC 26), Magic Army (+3)     6th (7/day)—Hellfire Ray (2 rays), Disintegrate (DC 23), Repulsion (DC 25), Geas     5th (7/day)—Damnation Stride (DC 22), Summon Infernal Host (1 magaav or 1d4+1 gaavs), Grand Destiny (already cast), Greater Command (DC 24), Persistent Image (DC 22)     4th (7/day)—Fear (DC 23), Shout (DC 22), Locate Creature, Threefold Aspect (already cast (young adult))     3rd (8/day)—Fireball (DC 21), Haste, Heroism (+3 on self, already cast), Stinking Cloud (DC 20), Major Image (DC 20), Nondetection, Suggestion (DC 22)     2nd (8/day)—Force Wave (CMB +26), Summon Monster II, Resist Energy (+30, already cast (fire)), Scorching Ray (3 rays), See Invisibility (already cast), Hidden Presence (DC 19), Locate Object, Alter Self, False Life (already cast, maximized)     1st (8/day)—Burning Hands (DC 19), Mage Armor (already cast), Alarm, Charm Person (DC 20), Ventriloquism, Expeditious Retreat, Vocal Alteration, Moment of Greatness     0th (at will)—Detect Magic, Message, 7 others

MODIFIED STATISTICS

Without mage armor, threefold aspect, heroism, grand destiny, resist energy, and see invisibility, the princess of the end has the following statistics: AC 28, touch 18, flat-footed 22, Resist fire 10, hp 181, Fort 13, Ref 12, Will 15, Dex 20, Con 22, Wis 16, CMB +13, CMD 31 All Skills -3 lower

STATISTICS

Str 20, Dex 22, Con 24, Int 15, Wis 14, Cha 25 BAB +8, CMB +16, CMD 32 Feats: Diehard, Dodge, Endurance, Eschew Materials, Greater Spell Focus (enchantment), Heighten Spell, Heroic Defiance, Iron Will, Multiattack, Persuasive, Quicken Spell, Shield Focus, Spell Focus (enchantment), Spell Focus (evocation), Toughness Skills Bluff +15, Diplomacy +34, Fly +20, Intimidate +34, Knowledge (arcana, planes) +9, Knowledge (history, nobility) +11 (+18 vs. humans), Perception +13, Spellcraft +20 Languages Abyssal, Common, Infernal SQ heroic echo, imperious bloodline Gear The Princess’s Red Cape, intermediate metamagic rod of widen spell, intermediate metamagic rod of empower spell, phantasmal gem, +3 flaming scythe, +4 mithral buckler, belt of physical perfection +4, headband of mental superiority +4 (diplomacy, intimidate), amulet of natural armor +3, diamond dust worth 8500 gp, silver crescents worth 500 gp, crushed pearls worth 6000 gp, canine statuettes worth 50 gp, 355 gp

SPECIAL ATTACKS

Legendary Actions (Ex) The princess of the end has three legendary actions per round, which reset at the beginning of her turn.  At the end of any other creature’s turn, the princess of the end can use certain abilities by spending legendary actions.  The princess of the end can only use a single ability in this way at a time, which may cost one or more legendary actions.

The princess of the end can use the following abilities by spending the listed number of legendary actions:    1 action—Melee attack    1 action—Attempt to escape from grapple    1 actions—Disengage and fly up to fly speed    3 actions—Maximized False Life (see text)    1-3 actions—Cast a Sorcerer spell of the same spell level as the number of legendary actions spent

Maximized False Life (Sp) When the princess of the end casts Maximized False Life as a legendary action, she can maximize the effect of a False Life spell she casts as if with Maximize Spell metamagic, without increasing the spell level or casting time, and without knowing the Maximize Spell feat.  Maximized False Life only uses a 4th level spell slot instead of 5th when cast in this way.

Legendary Resistance (Ex)

Three times per day, when subjected to an effect which allows for a saving throw, the princess of the end can choose to automatically succeed on the saving throw roll.  Alternately, when subjected to an effect which allows for spell resistance, she can spend a use of Legendary Resistance to ignore the effect.

Six Arms (Ex) The princess of the end has six arms.  She can make claw attacks with any of her six hands that are free, but can only make two claw attacks per round.  She can use a manufactured weapon in each hand, but takes stacking penalties as if using two-weapon fighting for each weapon beyond the first.

Smite Good (Su) Once per day, as a swift action, the princess of the end can smite good as an antipaladin of the same level as her hit dice.  The smite persists until the target is dead or the princess rests.  The princess of the end gains +7 attack, +7 AC, and +17 damage against a specific good-aligned target, and bypasses any DR her target possesses.  If the target of smite good is an outsider with the good subtype, a good-aligned dragon, or a good creature with the Aura or Aura of Good class feature (such as cleric, paladin, or warpriest) the bonus damage is doubled for her first successful attack.  The attack and AC bonuses are based on her Charisma.

Imperious Bloodline Arcana (Su) Whenever the princess of the end casts a harmful spell, she gain a bonus equal to the spell’s level on Intimidate checks made against any creature adversely affected by that spell until the end of her next turn.  Adversely affected typically means damage, but it can also mean debilitating effects or conditions.

Take Your Best Shot (Su) If the princess of the end is targeted by a harmful spell, spell-like ability, or supernatural ability and suffers no or reduced harm from it, whether because of a successful saving throw, spell resistance, the attack missing, or some other protection, as an immediate action she can make an Intimidate check to demoralize the creature that produced the effect, but only if the creature that used the harmful effect is within 30 feet and can clearly see and hear her.

Heroic Echo (Su) Morale and competence bonuses cast on the princess of the end are +1 point more effective. If the bonus affects multiple targets, she can spend an immediate action to grant them all this +1 extra bonus.  This affects the Heroism and Grand Destiny spells that she begins having already cast on herself.

Heroic Defiance (Ex) Once per day as an immediate action, the princess of the end can delay the onset of one harmful condition or affliction (such as panicked, paralyzed, stunned, and so on), including permanent and instantaneous conditions. Activating this ability delays the onset of the condition until the end of the princess of the end’s next turn, after which time the condition takes its normal effect. This ability has no effect on hit point damage or ability damage.

Barbed Defense (Su) A creature that strikes the princess of the end with a melee weapon, an unarmed strike, or a natural weapon takes 1d8+5 points of piercing damage from her barbs. Melee weapons with reach do not endanger a user in this way.

Fear (Su) The princess of the end's fear attack affects any creature she damages with her claws.  A DC 24 Will save resists this effect, otherwise the victim becomes frightened for 1d4 rounds.  This is a mind-affecting fear effect.  The save DC is Charisma-based.

Impale (Ex) The princess of the end deals 3d8+7 points of piercing damage to a grabbed opponent with a successful grapple check, and each round she maintains the grapple (at the end of the grappled creature's turn), if she uses at least two hands to do so. She can grapple an enemy with two hands while still using the others for attacking, spellcasting, and her shield.

Heroic Legends (Su) The princess of the end may inspire greatness or inspire heroics as a bard of her sorcerer level by sacrificing a spell slot as a swift or move action. The effect lasts a number of rounds equal to twice the sacrificed spell’s level.  These performances are mind-affecting abilities and rely on audible and visual components.

Inspire Greatness (Su) The princess of the end can use her performance to inspire greatness in herself or up to 3 willing allies within 30 feet, granting extra fighting capability.  To inspire greatness, all of the targets must be able to see and hear the princess.  A creature inspired with greatness gains 2 bonus Hit Dice (d10s), 23 temp HP, a +2 competence bonus on attack rolls, and a +1 competence bonus on Fortitude saves.  The bonus Hit Dice count as regular Hit Dice for determining the effect of spells that are Hit Dice dependent.

Inspire Heroics (Su)

The princess of the end can inspire tremendous heroism in herself or a single ally within 30 feet.  To inspire heroics, all of the targets must be able to see and hear the princess.  Inspired creatures gain a +4 morale bonus on saving throws and a +4 dodge bonus to AC.

[davidmariottecomics]

100 Blogs (Give or Take): FIGHT!

Hello! 

Welcome to my 100th* blog! 

*Or, rather, blog week 101 over on my website. In terms of actual blogs, I'm probably more in the 70s-80s? I try to update as much as possible, of course, but some weeks things've not uploaded properly. Occasionally, I've had just too much life stuff or I haven't really had much to write about. And sometimes, on the extreme ends, I've had way too much to write about and have been overwhelmed at trying to parse out everything I needed to. Last week, when I missed the actual week 100, was somewhere inbetween those: feeling uninspired because I was so tired from both stuff in my personal life and the many many many things happening in the world at large. 

I've, unsurprisingly, still got a lot on my mind. Like 200 organizations have pledged their support for KOSA and sounds like they might not all understand exactly what they're supporting (but you can still make your voice heard on why not to let it pass, namely the continued safety and security of LGBTQ+ folks online who might otherwise get explicitly banned from the most public online spaces, or at least implicitly banned through shadowbanning--as well as all the kids that could be harmed from the inability to access information that they might actually need.).

The U.S. blocked a U.N. call for ceasefire singlehandedly, despite the rest of the security council (minus abstaining U.K. and... that was noticed, guv) being in favor and, of course the overwhelming national and international support for a ceasefire (one progressive thinktank's polling suggested around a 60% US support for ceasefire, to whatever extent those kinds of polls can be trusted, however, the feet on the ground at protests, making calls, sending emails, trying to get into Senatorial offices with ladders, etc show a pretty vocal support for one).

The website formerly known as Twitter gave me just another reason to leave with their new AI. I don't want to see anything about it because I, y'know, get that it's like dunking on the people who wanted to use it for evil and that's funny or whatever, but it's also another AI system that's almost certainly just regurgitating things actually people said and thought and made and ought to be given credit and/or money for the use of. We shouldn't be letting our guard down around an AI just because it's telling transphobes to go fuck themselves--this is still the same shit that is stealing from artists or denying people their medical coverage!

And, also mostly on Twitter because it's a bad place (and I'll remind ya now, I'm leaving by the year's end. I'll be here on the blog and you can find me on Bluesky and I have a couple spare invites if you might need one, but my Twitter's coming to an end soon and I think my Facebook/Insta aren't too far behind...) multiple dirtbag comics guys decided to make the rounds again. They've had their airtime and I have no interest in giving them a platform, but boy, they sure were around. 

Plus, y'know, all the other stuff that has just been continuing, from the continued assault on Ukraine to Covid hospitalizations and deaths going up again.

It's the end of the year and cha'boy is tired. It has been a long, long year and I'm very much looking forward to it ending for whatever that is worth and the time of relaxation I get to have around that end. And so, I wasn't really feeling like writing... but then, I saw a post on Bluesky from Marcus Jimenez asking all comics folks about crafting fight scenes. And so I wanna talk about that this week because I don't often get a chance to talk about the mechanics of comics within comics, and that can be really fun! 

Squaring Up

As someone who has written and edited a lot of fight scenes, there are a lot of different ways to go about it. As I think I've said before, in my own writing, I tend toward a little more description and full dialogue so the artist has those space considerations in mind when working from my scripts. As an editor, I've worked the "Marvel" way where pages are more plotted with with less dialogue and specific action. I've worked with folks who do more of a rough pass where they focus on the concrete smaller moments and then leave a lot of the action up to the artist. I've worked with folks who're even more prescriptive than me. And there's something to finding the right balance on all sides with all these folks--from the writer and artist meshing in terms of what sort of detail they want from each other to having complimentary colors and letters. 

But for myself, and something I have sometimes talked to creators about, one of the first things I focus on when it comes to an action or fight scene is the specific things the character(s) can do. When I think about some of my bigger fight sequences in say Transformers vs. the Terminator or Transformers Wreckers: Tread & Circuits (both available from my webstore, *hint hint*), one of the most apparent things is that I loaded them with a lot of characters doing a lot of things, so... sorry to my artists (no, I know Alex and Jack loved working on them--again, if you can, write to the artist's strengths and I happened to work with guys I knew were excited about these sorts of big scenes). But in that, there are a lot of characters with specific abilities. Generally speaking, right, in TF/Term, we've got three different types of combatants: Sarah Conner is a human, the T-800 is a Terminator, and the Transformers are Transformers. So the skills Sarah has are different from all the robots and, obviously, the Transformers have the ability to convert modes which is something unique to them as characters that can make for really exciting sequences. And even within the Transformers, there are different combat capabilities: Skywarp can teleport. Soundwave has sonic attacks. Megatron has a huge arm cannon. Optimus has an energon axe. The Seekers can fly. And characters like Velocity are medics, who she doesn't really shoot to kill, she can hold her own after millenia at war, but she's not a fighter first and doesn't wanna do terrible damage to anyone. 

To me, it's the same thing as a fight with Spider-Man. You know he's got the proportional speed, strength, and agility of a spider. You know he has web-fluid (unless he doesn't and that sort of circumstance is interesting in a fight). He can stick to things and sense danger and all the standard Spidey tricks. And if you want a scene to be engaging, you wanna know what your characters can do in it that is unique--either to other characters and stories, or within this specific scenario. Seeing Spidey use his webs or his wall-crawling or his spider-sense is more interesting on a page than him just swinging his fists (generally). These are all sort of tools in the toolbox that determine what they can do in a fight. I also think that when you combine them with the circumstances of the fight, you start to see how they'll act in a fight. Why they make the decisions they do. 

So, to use TF again, in TF/Terminator, let's talk about the set-up to the big fight that runs through issues #3 & #4. It starts out with Bumblebee and Sarah scouting out the Decepticons who are up to no good. And the instigating question is, if Bumblebee's a good scout, how does someone sneak up on him? Well, Skywarp is a teleporter. So he just appears! But he's also maybe a little dumb, so he announces himself. Bumblebee's first priority is protecting Sarah, so the best way to do that is for him to shift modes around her as a running shield. They'll go faster. If he gets hit, it'll reduce the impact on her. Etcetera. He could do other things--he could stay and fight and blast at Skywarp, but because the option is open to him to change modes and to drive away, he's going to because that's fun and it makes sense with his character. Then he tries to do some fancy driving to trick Skywarp into ramming into Megatron, but because Skywarp can teleport, hey, he gets away in perfect position to take another run at Bumblebee. But because he teleported higher to get a better position, it also left him more open to get shot by Optimus in the heroic arrival of the rest of the Autobots. The characters' abilities made a really clear picture of the sort of action that could occur with the setting and are reflective of why they act the way they do. 

Throw a Punch A lot of the action is going to flow pretty naturally, from a writing standpoint, once you've got it started. If I know who my characters are, what they can do, and the basic scenario they find themselves in, as long as I've got that in my head, I can just sort of play them off each other and see how the action goes. But there ar some other practicalities I try to take into account as I go. 

1. How many characters do I have to keep track of? Like I said, a lot of my fight scenes have been bigger. I've got groups fighting each other, with civilians to worry about. And while you don't need to show every beat of every action, you do have to keep roughly in mind how everyone is reacting and to what extent you do want to switch between POVs and protagonists. I tend to measure my beats to either pages or page turns, rather than doing too much action switching on a single page unless I'm trying to convey just how hectic things are and just how simultaneous actions are occuring. 

2. How fast is your action moving? Two things I think about a lot when I'm writing action are that a round of combat in Dungeons & Dragons is supposed to be 6 seconds, and that the coolest fight I've ever seen on film is the almost 6 minute fight scene in They Live. (6 minutes later...) I'm back! Okay, so either way, I think what both of those are very representative of are how quickly action occurs in a fight and how much of the time in a fight is the other stuff. It's the non-combat movement. It's catching your breath or setting a trap or focusing on another problem or putting sunglasses on a guy. And in comics, you have the ability to dialate time as you'd like, so each panel can be a second or a matter of seconds, with the gutters allowing time to pass out of frame. You want your action to be logical and continous, but it's okay to have other things happening in the flow, and maybe more importantly, to chose which moments have the most impact.  In D&D, 6 seconds can take like 6 minutes. And on film, you're getting so many constant frames. Comics lets you be a lot chosier in how you expand and contract the time around those moments. 

3. How text heavy is the fight? Here's the other side of things. I know that I tend to be a talker. I mean... look how long it's taken to get to this point! I like dialogue in my comics and often have characters trading verbal jabs during the action. And that takes time and space. As do sound effects. So, I try to balance my fight scenes to the essentials. Much the same as the issue of time, I'm trying to select the moments of greatest impact with what we're "hearing". The more that's being asked of an action panel, the less text I try to give it. Let the art take over. But if I can use the action as a punctuation: If Optimus or Thunderclash or whoever is giving his hero speech and can toss a punch at a baddie to make his point, I'm going to use it. And if action is the visual punctuation to dialogue in this way, SFX are the visual punctuation to the action. They're an exclamation point on what sound is important. A lot of the time, it'll be no sound. But if it'll clarify the action or if it'll enhance the mood, go for it! 

Most important to a fight scene is that *generally* they're supposed to be fun. They're moments of fantasy where a side that's in some sort of right and a side that's in some sort of wrong clash and there's a victor and we all cheer because it's entertaining to see Rowdy Roddy Piper get his ass handed to him up until the end, but when he finally gets one over on Keith David, you know it's because he was right. So while you're thinking of all this stuff, if you give in to the fun, it'll propel you through a lot of it. Now, there're obviously also moments when the fighting is supposed to be building tension or showing the horrors of violence, but I think that goes to a lot of the same mentality as we've already got. It's about making the characters respond to the situation of the fight and if their responses fall in line with that, it'll still be smooth sailing because it'll be what makes sense.

I think that's it for me for this week, but maybe in a coming week, I can do something like a mini-version of something I did on my Patreon when I did an annotated version of the Wreckers #1 script and  do sort of a practical walk-through of a new original fight scene. 

Until next time. Happy Hanukkah to those that celebrate! 

What I enjoyed this week: Blank Check (Podcast), Dungeons & Daddies (Podcast), Reverse 1999 (Video Game), Nancy (Comic), Lego Masters (TV show), Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror (Short story collection), Factory Summers by Guy Delisle (Comic), It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood (Comic), Slaughterhouse-Five (the Comic adaptation by Ryan North & Albert Monteys), being almost done with all gift shopping and wrapping 2 weeks early, Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links (Video Game), Dandadan (Manga), our little mall Model Train Museum, Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville (Comic), Blue Beetle (Comic), Birds of Prey (Comic), Christmas lights, finding a good deal on a present for myself (I found the G.I. Joe Bishoujo Scarlett statue for a mere $40 at a local secondhand store and I think she's really pretty), not getting sick even tho Becca was, and I guess The Killer (Movie). Not my favorite Fincher by a lot. We're tentatively gonna see Godzilla: Minus One tomorrow, so looking forward to that and will try to figure out seeing Boy and the Heron, Eileen, Dream Scenario, and maybe The Marvels (tho it being a Disney film makes it a tougher sell) before they're out of theaters... and maybe Priscilla... and maybe FNAF on the big screen since Becca's really into FNAF right now. Too many movies! And I love movies! 

New Releases this week (12/6/2023): Sonic the Hedgehog #67 (Editor)

New Releases next week (12/13/2023):  Sonic the Hedgehog: Winter Jam (Editor)

Announcements: Look for a kind fun thing I contributed to this week! I'll share it when it's live! 

The Cartoonist Cooperative is still doing E-Sim cards for Gaza. You can donate a digital sim card so that residents can get access to the internet and have more functional phones and, in exchange, get some comics or a drawing or whatever else is available from the many participating artists. You can also give more directly. If you don't have money, and I get it, you can call or fax or email or show up at the offices of your representatives. There are a ton of demonstrations happening this weekend and you can see if you can put your actions in on one of those!

If you aren't a Patreon backer yet, remember, it's a great gift for someone or yourself. At my $10 tier, last month, I got Becca to record an Adults-Only podcast called "Abandoning the Premise" with me. You should be able to hear a short sample at the link. And if that seems cool to you, you can get the whole episode, but a bunch of other weird stuff on my Patreon! This month's "Something Weird"s are going to be a root beer review (I bought 6 different root beers and Becca suggested I talk about what I thought of them and there'll be a little more to it that that) and hopefully posting next weekend, a Holiday Gift Guide written, chosen, and designed by me (be careful if you're a person who might get a gift from me... you might see your present in there)! 

And keep an eye out for more news soon. Really hoping to have some cool news in the new year if not before! 

Pic of the Week: So, last Wednesday, I made a trip up to the IDW Los Angeles office. Because we have a lot of people spread out, we have a couple office locations. But the LA office happened to host some friends from SEGA and, specifically, some visitors from Sonic Team! We gave them the tour, talked about the comics, gave them some to take home, all the good usual visiting stuff. But Karasuno-san, Kanemoto-san, and Hoshino-san very generously did some sketches for us before they left. So, should you get a chance to tour the IDW offices in the future, you might see this sketch page hanging on the wall. 

[etherealbelphie]

Until You're Ready (Ft. Beelzebub and GN!MC)

Warnings: Season one spoilers, mentions of death and murder, panic attacks, implied romantic relationship.

Length: 1.4k words

Genre: Angst, hurt, comfort.

Summary: You've been avoiding Beel ever since Belphie's return. He wants to know why.

This fic is part 3 of an ongoing series of oneshots, here are the links to the other parts:

 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (You are here) |  

Hey, look who's still active! (It's me :D) So...this is actually my 100th post on this blog! So I figured it was only right to continue the series of one-shots regarding lesson 16. If you were one of my early followers, you'll know that 'Selfish' was the first post I ever made on this blog. (Except maybe those ones I made trying to figure out how to use Tumblr I don't remember if that was before or after. They're deleted now. I'm sorry if you had to see those-)

Anyways, I tried to tag the right warnings, but if I missed one, please feel free to let me know! I hope you enjoy the story!

-Ethereal (✿◡‿◡)

Story below, please don't claim as your own!

The week Belphie came back, everything was off.

Lucifer would always brush against you before you left the house.

Mammon somehow managed to be even more protective, keeping an arm around your waist at all times and growling whenever someone got too close. Including his brothers.

Levi hated leaving the house, but he would always go with you if no one else could.

Satan cut his reading time in half and spent more of it with you.

Asmo would spend less time out, and more time in your room, gossiping and having spa days.

You were a lot quieter than usual, and when you were home, you never left your room. You also spent a lot more time out with the members of Purgatory Hall, the residents of the castle, or with your other friends from RAD.

All of that was unusual, but things were especially off for the twins. You were avoiding Belphegor, which was disappointing, but not surprising.

You avoiding Beel was both.

He could definitely understand why Belphie wasn’t at the top of your hang-out list, but why were you shutting him out too?

Had he done something wrong too?

He wanted to find out.  

Nothing in his recent memory seemed bad enough for this level of tension between you two. He accidentally ate your yogurt the other day, but you assured him over and over again that it really wasn’t that big of a deal.

And now that he was thinking about it, that whole yogurt thing didn’t happen until after you were already acting strange.

Well, it doesn’t really matter what caused it, does it? The fact is, you were avoiding him, and he wanted to find out why so he can could go back to spending time with you.

 Finally outside your door, he faintly heard Lucifer’s voice. Sounded like he was assisting you with one of your latest homework assignments.

Hopefully you wouldn’t mind his interruption.

He knocked a few times.

“Who is it?” You called tentatively.

“It’s Beel.”

“Alright,” you answered, prompting him to come in.

As expected, you and Lucifer were seated at the large wooden desk in your room.

“We need to talk,” he informed you. He glanced at his older brother for a split second, then back to you. “Alone.”

Lucifer looked to you, a silent question. You rolled your eyes, waving your hand as if you were literally trying to brush off his concern.

Lucifer scoffed, gathering his papers. “Very well. I’ll be on my way. I’ll be in my study if you need me,” though that last comment was more directed towards you than Beel.

You realized Beel hadn’t moved from his position, so you moved from your desk to his bed. You scooted to one side, then patted the space next to you.

Beel sat down, though he was cautious not to sit too close to you. Not till he figured out what was wrong.

“So…what’s up?” You asked, giving him a slightly-off smile.

He figured it would be easiest to just come out and ask the question that’s been bothering him the past week. “Have you been avoiding me?”

There was a beat of silence, and your gaze fell to the floor.

“It’s…been a really weird week.” That much was true. Your circumstances were pretty much one of a kind. “There’s been…a lot happening.”

You fell into thought for a moment, then shook yourself out of it. You can’t dwell on…that for very long or you would fall apart it.

“Ahaha.” You let out the most unconvincing laugh, shaking your head. “Anyways, I’m sorry if I’ve been weird.”

“That’s the thing. It’s just me and Belphie-“ you visibly flinch at his name “-who…you’re acting weird with…is this about Belphie?”

The second he asked that, he felt stupid. Of course it was.

The look on your face shows that he hit the nail on the head. “It…it’s complicated,” you answered. Your smile was becoming faker by the second.

“Could you try?” he prompted.

You opened your mouth, then just a quickly closed it. You shook your head, the smile dropping off your face completely .

He didn’t know if this was better or worse.

He waited a moment as you tried to gather your thoughts.

“I know you’re happy Belphegor is back.” That wasn’t a question, that was a fact that both of you knew.

He nodded, encouraging you to continue.  

 “Which makes sense. He’s your brother, and…I don’t blame you for being excited about his return.” You paused. “But like…I just…can’t with him right now,” you said, unable to phrase it any better. “Honestly, I kind of wish I just left-“ You cut yourself off, cringing.  

“Left him up there?” He finished your sentence, though there was no judgement. Just understanding.

You looked..almost ashamed. “Yeah.” Your voice broke, but you continued. “And I know you’re excited he’s back, but I don’t want to…think about him, like, at all right now.”

Beel scooted closer to you, throwing an arm around your shoulder and pulling you towards him. “That’s fair.”

“You think so?” You sounded surprised.

He smiled sadly, though you couldn’t see it. “I love Belphie, but I love you too. And it makes me mad when people hurt people I love. Even if I love them too. If you’re mad at Belphie, that’s okay.”

“Mad doesn’t quite cover it,” You mumbled.

“How do you feel?” He asked.

“…honestly?” You asked.

He nodded. “Always.”

“Okay.” You paused. “I’m mad at him because he hurt me. I’m mad at myself because I was stupid enough to trust him. I’m… scared, because…I’m scared it’ll happen again. You’d think with the amount of times I’ve almost been killed would’ve gotten me used to it, but…nope,” you exhaled hard, a weak laugh at something that really wasn’t funny. “…I think the worst part is that I miss him.”

“You do?” Beel asked. “I know where he is, if you want to see him.”

Your response was instant, freezing up and clutching him tightly. “No, no, no, I don’t want to,” you repeated insistently.

This wasn’t what he was trying to do.

He immediately settled back on the bed. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” He pulled you with him so you two were cuddling against the pillows. “Maybe I misunderstood what you meant.”

You nodded, trying to slow your breathing. You hadn’t quite crossed the line to a full-on panic attack, so it wasn’t as hard as it could’ve been.

He rubbed your arm soothingly, and eventually your iron grip on his shirt ceased.

“I’m not making you see him if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want,” you managed to gasp out after a second.

“Message received.” He flashed a thumbs up as double confirmation.

“Okay.”

There was another pause before you spoke again.

“What I meant was, I miss the version of him that I knew. I don’t even know how much of it was actually him, and how much of it was a façade.”

“I do,” Beel said, causing you to shoot him a questioning glance. “You know Belphie and I share a telepathy link, right?”

You nodded.

“That means I can tell when he’s lying.”

“Really?”

“Mhm. Is there anything you want to know?”

“Is he sorry?” Your reply was instant.

“He is,” he answered. “He’s…so sorry.” Beel could’ve told you for certain that the guilt ate his brother alive, but he didn’t want to guilt-trip you either. “He wants to apologize, but he’s not sure how he would even start. He’s not sure you’d even want him to.”

“Honestly, I don’t know either,” you admit.

“That’s okay,” Beel said. “He’s the one who’s in the wrong here. He can wait for an answer until you’re ready to give one.”

You nodded, grateful for his acceptance. “Thank you.”

Beel hesitated before he spoke again. “And honestly, if you ever do decide to talk to him, I’ll be there to support you. And only you. I’m on your side with this.” He tugged you closer, gently kissing your forehead.  

“That…that means a lot,” you said. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” He kissed the top of your head. “Now…I hate to ruin the moment, but I’m starting to get a little hungry…” his stomach growled.

You giggled, wiping away the tears you didn't know had fallen. “Okay. Let’s go grab something to eat.”

“You’re okay with leaving your room?” He asked.

You looked a little unsure, but nodded anyways. “Promise to stay with me, though?”

“Of course.” Gently pushing you up, he sat up as well. “I’ll always stay with you. Now, come on. I want to eat some food with you.”

[junko-and-riri-domain]

warm embraces & sudden kisses | ot7

↬ ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: ot7 x reader ↬ ɢᴇɴʀᴇ: fluff | requested | drabbles/headcannons ↬ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢs: none ↬ ʀᴇQᴜᴇꜱᴛᴇᴅ ʙʏ: anon ↬ ʀᴇQᴜᴇꜱᴛ ᴡᴀꜱ: “ENHA REACTION TO YOU KISSING THEM OUT OF NO WHERE OR JOW THE CUDDLE WITH YOU PLS AND THANK YOU 🙏” ↬ ᴀ/ɴ: 

since this is the 100th post on this blog I decided to do an ot7 one

simultaneously, this was a request so it worked out !!

anon said or but I decided to try & write both in here :$ so there’s kinda 2 mini scenarios for each member

also i wrote this on my phone in my notes while i was out today which is why everything’s lowercase :)

anon if you’d like me to rewrite this less as scenarios and more as bullet points just lmk!

Lee Heeseung

[a light’s on in the kitchen]

you wake up with the feeling of warmth no longer around you. looking around, you see that heeseung’s no longer in bed with you. your hand makes it way to your phone on your nightstand, 3:07 am greets your eyes and you hear faint sounds from outside the room. you get up with a yawn, the haze of sleepiness still on you as you make your way around the apartment the two of you share, a light’s on in the kitchen. he’s making ramen, you think to yourself. he stands tall by the stove, your footsteps are quiet as you hear him singing a song. when you get to him, your arms arm around his waist as he turns around to greet you, you jump up to give him a quick kiss, intending to meet his lips but because of how tall he is, your lips meet his cheek. he smiles, pulls you in closer to him, tilting up your chin but teases you by pressing a kiss to the top of your head.

[finally home]

you’re nestled up on the couch while a movie plays on the tv. today wasn’t a good day, to say the least. you woke up late which didn’t give you a chance to eat breakfast with heeseung, when you ordered lunch the fries were burnt and the food undercooked, and when you got home heeseung texted you to let you know that practice was running a little late which meant he wouldn’t get to have dinner with you. your eyes stayed settled on the tv until the sound of the apartment door greets your ears, bringing you out of that movie marathon haze you were trapped in. heeseung smiles as he sees you, makes his way to you, as he hands you a takeout bag.

“i bought some food on my way home, i’ll change and then we can eat, yeah?” he notices that you’re sad but doesn’t press you on about it. you nod, taking the bag from him. when he comes back, the two of you eat while a new movie is running. when you’ve finished all the food, his arm wraps around your shoulders and his head rests on top of yours.

“you ok?” he asks. his embrace is comforting and safe, similar to what it feels like when a blanket is draped over you just before you fall asleep.

“i am now that you’re finally home.”

rest of the boys under the cut !!

Park Jongseong / Jay

[flustered and red]

jay’s making dinner in the kitchen while you’re setting the table. you hear him chattering, more to himself than anything as he tries to make dinner the best that it can be. with how busy his schedule was and how much you’ve been swamped with your own work, the two of you haven’t had much time for each other. so, the you both having a free day today was something you were definitely going to take full advantage of. after setting the table, you head into the kitchen to see him slicing up lettuce for a last minute salad. you let out a smile as you see him make a honey based dressing and decided to surprise him by hugging him from behind. usually, he does it to you. despite his confident appearance and composure, you can already tell that he’s getting all flustered and red.

“Yah, who said you can sneak up on me like that!” he says, but makes no effort to pull away. You move so that you’re in front of him,

“If that’s how you react when I hug, how will you react when I do this?” Going on your tiptoes, your arms make their way around his neck as you feel the softness of his lips on yours. Guess honey was good as moisturizer…

[i built us a house]

jay was sitting in his gaming chair, his gaming set up in its own room while you were in the living room doing your own thing. while you were typing away on your laptop you hear your name being called, causing you to look up.

“i wanna show you something,” he said.

“i’m busy, hon,” you reply.

“real quick, i promise.” you sigh, knowing damn well jay wasn’t going to leave you alone until you went with him. so, following him into his game room he sat on his chair.

“why am i here?” you asked. he patted his lap, motioning for you to sit on him. as you did, one of his hands moves your hair to the other side while an arm stays settled on you. you can feel his breath on your neck, the butterflies in your stomach now doing somersaults.

“i built us a house.” your eyes look at the screen to see it on his minecraft server as his character walks around. you smile, turn your head so you’re looking at him,

“this is our house?”

“one day i’ll make it happen in real life.” despite the large promise, deep down you knew jay was going to find some way to make it a reality.

Sim Jaeyun / Jake

[just a little more]

you were on the living room couch, layla’s head on your lap while you pet her. as you do, you’re typing on your phone with your free hand. jake makes his presence known by sitting next to you, his head popping into your line of sight. you set your phone aside, smiling as you pat his hair. he frowns,

“you’ve been giving layla your attention all day, what about me?”

“layla’s cuter than you,” you reply with a teasing smile. he frowns, sighing slightly as he looks at the sight of all your attention on layla. jake heads to your room, glad that you loved layla as much as he did but wished you loved him just a little more. you head to the room, seeing jake seated by the edge of the bed, you settled yourself so that you were sitting on his lap, your legs around his waist.

“i want your attention too.”

“someone’s jealous.”

“naur, i’m not jealous,” he says, looking away. you lean forwards, pressing a kiss to his lips that lingers on for a few seconds longer than it should.

“yaur, ya are,” you tease. he smiles, kisses you again as his grip on you tighten slightly,

“it got you here, didn’t it?”

[a pair of fuzzy socks]

you’re half asleep when you feel warmth to your feet and suddenly a pair of fuzzy socks have been placed over them. you say nothing, wanting to go back to sleep more than anything. a few seconds later, you feel a dip on the bed, two actually, and you’re aware of both jake and layla around you. jake lifts up your head gently. you hear him whisper,

“layla, don’t wake up your mother,” and the feeling brings tingles to your heart, fireworks spreading throughout your body. he snuggles closer to you, intertwining his legs with yours as he traces random patterns on your back just before falling asleep.

Park Sunghoon

[cold]

for as long as he could remember, park sunghoon has lived life cold. on the ice he was cold. towards people he acted cold. you entering his life was like the sun rising after a freezing winter night. you were the heat that rid himself of the icicles stuck to his cold exterior. you melted the snowflakes of winter and turned them into roses of spring. you were the warmth he never knew he was missing. he was in your apartment, washing the dishes after you made lunch. you headed to him placing your hand on his arm. he looked over to you, smiling as you hugged his side. you leaned up as you kissed him, he couldn’t hold back his small laugh. as he felt your lips on his, heat rose to his cheeks. but despite the shyness in him about to take over, he fights it, leaning into you and kissing you once more.

[cold hands]

sunghoon has always had cold hands. and whenever he cuddled with you, he made sure that you knew it. the two of you were joking, running around the apartment when you and sunghoon both ended up on the bed. a glint appeared in his eyes, a plan forming in his head. the tips of his fingers met your stomach as you started bursting out in laugher.

“HOON WHY DO YOU HAVE COLD HANDS,” you yelled as you tried to fight him off. he smiled, vampire teeth showing in all their glory as he settled next to you in bed. his hand rested on your stomach as he brought you to him, his cold feet pressing to yours.

“you’re my personal heater,” he said, pulling you closer to him.

Kim Sunoo

[a little too close]

sunoo has always been clingy around you. some days, he’ll grab your hand out of nowhere and start fiddling with your fingers. at the most random times, he’ll play with your hair and think about how to style it. being in sunoo’s embrace is something that you’ve always welcomed. you were sort of the opposite, accepting and welcoming his touch but never really initiating it. until, today that is. you noticed someone talking to sunoo getting a little too close to him. you didn’t think much of it knowing how friendly sunoo was towards people and how others naturally gravitated to him. but, you couldn’t help yourself when you made your way to them and held onto sunoo’s hand, practically staring down the other person. sunoo smiled, intertwining your hands together while bringing you into the conversation. unsurprisingly, the outsider moved closer and without even thinking, you kissed sunoo’s cheek. his eyes slightly got wide as he looked at you, but it was an action he was glad for. in return, he kissed your cheek with a smile and couldn’t stop talking about it for the rest of the day.

[a tough day]

you were having somewhat of a tough day, having cramps, on and off headaches, and an annoying ringing in your ears that you just couldn’t get rid of. sunoo came home to find you layed on the couch, his heart breaking at the sight. he got some things and brought it to the living room,

“what are you doing?” you asked.

“spa day!” he replied excitedly. he rubbed lotion on your hands, placed cucumbers on top of your eyes, and combed out your hair. the night came to an end with you and sunoo laying on the couch together, him patting in the face mask then rubbing soothing circles on your stomach. with sunoo came a bubble of warmth you never wanted to leave.

Yang Jungwon

[make me]

jungwon’s in a playful mood today and with that playful mood comes teasing you. you’re in the living room where he decided to grab your sketchbook and hold it up above your head.

“won, give it back!” you exclaimed in annoyance, glaring at him. he has the audacity to look amused and he tells you,

“make me.” he’s always found joy in teasing you for your height and right now was no different. a plan forms in your head as you take some steps backwards. as you practically run to him, his eyes widen with fear as he’s forced to let go of your sketchbook to catch you and you end up latched onto him like a koala. you kiss him, in those few seconds the entire world stops and it’s as if no one but him exists. the kiss lingers on a second or two longer than you intended as jungwon’s grip on you tightens so that you don’t fall. on his face you see him smiling and those dimples that you’ve always loved appear. jungwon was never good at hiding his emotions, his love for you no different. you close your eyes as he leans down, you expect a kiss returned but instead, he kisses the top of your head. lightly flicking your forehead gently,

“that’s what you get for being short,” he says.

[i'm here]

with all his responsibilities and the things jungwon needs to take care of at such a young age, coming home to you is the one constant in his life. to him, the second he’s able to wrap his arms around you, revel in the scent of your shampoo, and gets to hold you, everything is just complete. at 1:06 am, he came home. it was late, he was exhausted and all he wanted to do was sleep. he headed into the room you two shared, only to see you still awake.

“you’re up?” he asked.

“no, i’m asleep,” you reply sarcastically. he sighs, setting into bed next to you, “someone’s tired,” you said.

“i want cuddles,” he mutters unable to hide his need for your affection. you shift and his head lays on your shoulder. you run your hand through his hair while you kiss the top of his head,

“i’m here.”

Nishimura Riki / Ni-ki

[bungeo to his ppang]

more than anything, ni-ki liked to be by your side. whether it was while he was watching something on his phone, showing you a new dance routine, or asking you to dye his hair, as long as you were just with him, he was happy. sleeping is something that ni-ki has always enjoyed, how could he not when it grants him a few moments of peace before a busy day? the two of you are in the car, he rests his head on your shoulders. unlike normal, he doesn’t fall asleep this time. he pretends to, he closes his eyes, stays still while enjoying your warmth, but he’s not actually asleep. you didn’t seem to notice, he feels you messing with his hair a bit, something he’s never minded as long as it was with you. he hears you talking about how cute he is, practically fangirling over him. he feels you kiss the top of his head lightly,

“sleep well, ni-kitty,” he hears you whisper. he doesn’t move, doesn’t show any sign that he’s affected by your sudden actions of love. but deep down, he feels a happiness around you that’s greater than how he feels when he’s on stage. when he performs he enjoys the thousands of eyes that watch him but all he thinks about are how your eyes look at him with adoration and pride. it was in this moment that he knew, you were the bungeo to his ppang.

[take a break]

after dinner, you’re sitting on the floor of the table in front of the tv, trying to get some work done. suddenly, you feel a weight on your lap. you look down to see ni-ki’s head on your lap, his eyes closed but he’s clearly still awake.

“yah, get off,” you said, slightly lifting up your leg.

“no.” you roll your eyes, deciding not to pay attention to him as you go back to sleep our work. it seems that ni-ki had other plans as he took your one of your hand and starting fiddling with it.

“ni-ki, i’m busy.”

“take a break,” he said. you look down at ni-ki… how could you refuse? you put away your things, shifting so that your full attention was now on him. he smiled up at you, fiddling with the edge of your clothes while saying the most random things that made you laugh.

↬ ᴀ/ɴ pt. 2:

if anyone’s read up to this point pls lmk how it was, i’m not really good with ot7 scenarios typa things 😭

❦ written by riri @enhykkul | blog masterlist

requests are currently open! rules can be found here | anon emojis

[trash-but-respectable-trash]

First of all, I like your blog! Second, I have a request: all the boys go to McDonalds with MC. Imagine how funny it would be to see 9 demons, 2 angels, and one shady sorcerer going to a fast food chain, ordering greasy and salty foods, and maybe getting a Kids Happy Meal from MC? Lol

Thank you! I’m glad you’re enjoying my blog!

PS: sorry this took so long I wrote this in one night and completely forgot to post it after that

A trip to McDonald’s with the brothers (chaotic)

Lucifer:

- This man is way too sophisticated to have eaten at McDonald’s before (expect all the times Diavolo forced him to go when they were in the Human World, but his brothers do not need to know that) he really likes their McNuggets

- Obviously going to McDonald’s with Diavolo and Barbatos AND going with you and his brothers are two COMPLETELY different things

- He doesn’t even get to eat his food as he’s too busy screaming at his brothers. When they finally calmed down his food was cold and his McFlurry melted :(

Mammon:

- You know this man needs to make money one way or another at every possible occasion

- How can this dummy tries to make money you you ask? Well, by standing right in front of the McDonald’s playground and telling kids it’s 10$ to enter, of course (just pretend they still exist if they don’t exist anymore at your local McDonald)

- So instead of witches being angry at Mammon, it’s parents that are mad at him and chasing him out of the restaurant while all the kids are crying. Good job Mammon!

Leviathan:

- It doesn’t matter if Levi is at McDonald’s or at the fanciest restaurant in the country, he’s still gonna wear his headphones and play on his phone, that’s pretty much it

- Or that was his plan until he saw the cute figurines in the display that came with Happy Meals as he was about to order. He needs them and he needs them all right now!

- Somehow persuaded all of his brother to get an Happy Meal so he could get as many figurines as possible

- Imagine his reaction when the staff told him that they can’t sell Happy Meals to people over 12 years old. Let’s just say that he was very close to summoning Lothan

- Fortunately for literally everyone in the entire city, his amazing brother has a special power that makes him able to seduce anyone

- So as the amazing brother that he his, Asmodeus used his charming power to make the cashier give Levi every type of figurines they had in the store... and he conveniently did it while Lucifer was busy hanging Mammon by his feet on the McDonald’s sign outside no one dared question it, not even the staff

Satan:

- This one is just eating his meal in silence, appreciating the chaos unfolding in front of him

- Until Beel spilled half of his Coke on Satan’s new book

- And as anyone with a will to live would, Beel started running for his life inside the McDonald’s playground as Mammon yelled at him that he owed him 10$ now for entering without paying

- Meanwhile, Belphie suddenly woke up from his 100th nap of the day, sensing that his twin was in danger

- Right as Beel was getting up from the slide, Belphie got in front of it getting hit by Satan, as he was sliding full speed, sending them both to the floor, leaving Beel enough time to hide until Satan calmed down

Asmodeus:

- Eww this man won’t eat McDonald’s food ever. The food is way too greasy and it would make his skin breakout. We cannot have that!

- Lucifer asked him what he was gonna eat instead

- Luckily, Asmo spotted a fancy sushi place two blocks away and that’s right where he’s heading

- Also, everyone should be thankful that Asmo stayed long enough to be able to seduce the cashier, otherwise no one would have been able to eat their food, it being McDonald’s or sushi

- As soon as his job is done, he leaves to get some sushi and you’re free to join him, of course!

Beelzebub:

- Well, before the accident with the Coke and the book happened, Beel was having the time of his life. There’s so much to choose from the menu!

- Yeah, he gets everything from the salads to the desserts and everything in between, including all the drinks

- That’s actually why Satan’s book ended up being ruined. With more and more food being placed on the table, by very annoyed employees, an accident was bound to happen

- It took Beel only one false move to have his life flashed before his eyes and running down to the kids playground

- Yeah, next time Beel’s gonna take a table all to himself

Belphie:

- Belphie ate his food super fast so he could sleep for longer

- He took a normal size meal and a McFlurry. Nothing too special

- As soon as he finished his meal, he pushed everything on the table aside, not even bothering to disposed of his food tray. As long as there’s space for his pillow on the table, he doesn’t care

- He was sleeping really well, dreaming of coming back to the human world with only you and his twin this time, when he suddenly woke up, sensing that his brother was in danger

- Without even fully waking up, he walked straight to the slide, ready to sacrifice himself

- After being thrown on the floor, he didn’t even bother to get up and just took a nap there, sleeping peacefully knowing that his twin was safe for now at least

The datables + Luke will be in another post!