#and! it’s been going good… but also I do not have as much free time… | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

zepskies · 2 days ago

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Omg really? Wow, thank you so much. That's honestly amazing to me, considering this was one of the hardest for me to write in Smoke Eater. 💞

(But after reading your wonderful review, thank you for making me cry. 🥹💗💗)

First of all, please don't apologize for the heartfelt thoughts you want to share with me. No matter how long or short, I love hearing what you think about my writing, and this is genuinely one of the best reviews I've ever received, because I can tell it came from the heart.

What's crazy is my mom and I also used to watch Chicago Fire together when she was trying to recover from surgery (where she had terrible complications and wasn't well for a long time). It became her comfort show, and I was happy to introduce it to her/have that bonding time where it kept her from thinking about her pain. But I'm so glad you thought to come here to perk yourself up after a rewatch.

honestly I have so many thoughts for each wonderful chapter but I would feel super guilty for spamming :’) this chapter in particular though, hits me harder than anything i’ve ever read before — not in a bad way!🤍

lol girl that's the best kind of spamming. I'd never be upset with that! 😂 Oh good, I'm glad it doesn't hit in a bad way. I was concerned about that for readers when I was first posting this part of the story. 💙

my mom had epilepsy, and I was her caretaker pretty much my entire life. I connect so much with this story because it, feels like i’m reading a mirror, if that makes any sense at all. with all the doctors and the worrying, it’s written so authentically, which is understandable after reading your author’s note. i’m so sorry you’ve experienced such difficult hardships and losses yourself honey, I offer my sincere condolences. and i’m sending you the biggest hugs 🫂🤍🤍

I'm sending you the biggest hugs right back, friend. I'm so sorry about what your mom went through, and what you went through too. Being a caretaker is not easy. I've seen it enough in my family that that's what I drew from in order to write this, so I'm glad it felt authentic to your experience. 🫂💞

now these lines/parts specifically had me crying like a baby lol. december of 2021, my mom had to have surgery at the start of the month. her recovery was going a little slow, but well. however she passed away overnight, 2 days after christmas, completely unexpected. the day before she had been doing so well too— she had more energy and was more mobile without needing as much assistance. came to find out later that’s something nurses call a surge? :/ either way, those moments in particular really tugged at my heartstrings ❤️‍🩹

I'm so sorry for your loss, my friend. It is blind sighting when it comes so unexpected like that. I haven't shared this publicly, but something similar happened with my grandfather this past December. His health declined suddenly, to the point we had to take him to the hospital. After seeming to get better after a few days, he went downhill even harder, and he passed away in mid-December. It's not the same thing as your situation, but I understand the feeling of "why did this happen like this?" But now he's at peace with my grandma. And your mom is free from her pain and discomfort too. ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

this line too. I felt this way for so long after my mom died. I didn’t get the final cause for a while since she passed at home and not at a hospital, and to this day I wish I could go back. wish I could’ve done something different. but SUDEP (or, sudden unexpected death in epilepsy) is completely unpreventable so far. I just find it so cruel that this illness I spent my whole life helping her with, ended up taking her anyway and nothing I did mattered in the end. so reading that line, how she broke down, and everything she had been holding in, it really made my heart ache but I also felt less alone in a way.

And I'm sure you did everything you possibly could, just like the reader in this story. 💞 I didn't know about SUDEP, but I have a family member who takes medication for his epilepsy, so I'm going to be reading up on that. I'm so glad that this simple line made you feel less alone in any small way -- I also thought when I was writing that it not only fit what the character was going through, but that other people who've been caretakers for a family member like this would be able to identify with this feeling as well.

everything that followed, it’s like reading a reflection. I shutdown and just went through the motions afterwards too, but ohhh how nice it would’ve been to have a dean ❤️ his support, how he takes care of her, it’s so heartwarming. and it’s really comforting to read. <3

It's that awful "autopilot" thing that somehow allows us to get through the aftermath, in a way, right? If only we could all have a Dean to support us in those moments. Somehow, reading hurt/comfort fics help me feel better too though. 💓💓

a lot of my family distanced themselves afterwards which, it is what it is. that being said, the sentiment in this story of family isn’t always blood resonates with me a lot. my support system is really small, but they chose to be there for me unlike my blood relatives so, that theme in this story means so much — the way dean’s chosen family shows up for her as well, it’s so sweet. 💖

Ugh really? I'm sorry to hear that. 💙💙 But thank you for pointing that out -- that is the overarching theme of this story, a la SPN style. 🥹 Your chosen family can be just as powerful, if not more, than your blood family. And in this story, Dean's family is basically "adopting" the reader/you into it. 💕

I guess the gist of what i’m trying to say, is I wholeheartedly adore this series and it truly means so much to me 🤍 I appreciate your work so much, and I love the unique feeling each piece of your writing brings 💗💗 I know I may sound like a broken record but truly I don’t think I can ever put into words how much I love your blog. you are an absolute sweetheart, truly a light peeking out between cloudy skies 💞

Wow, I really did tear up of happiness. Thank you. 🥹🥹 I appreciate you right back for reading this story and connecting with it like you did. And I'm so glad that you enjoy my blog!! I've only been here on Tumblr for about 2 years actively, but connecting with people like you is what's keeping me here, and honestly gives me energy to write and express myself when I'm going through hard times.

This chapter specifically was very difficult for me to write for multiple reasons, as you saw in my AN, but again it makes me all the more grateful that this is the chapter you connect with the most. I'm very sorry for your loss though. I'm really touched that this story can give you some small comfort. 💞

(And no it's not too much. Thank YOU for taking the time to share this with me.)

Smoke Eater - Part 11

Pairing: Firefighter!Dean Winchester x F. Reader

Summary: Dean Winchester is the cocky, but well-respected Lieutenant at Firehouse 25. He leads by example, but he’s also known to break a few hearts. He’s starting to crave something he’s never had, though. Something stable. Something real.

That’s when he meets you, on a truly terrible day, trapped in a rickety old elevator.

🔥 Series Masterlist

Word Count: 5,400 Tags/Warnings: Major angst warning. But also major hurt/comfort.

Part 11: “Heart of the Home”

You sat very still.

Your hands were gripped together in your lap when the doctor entered. He was tall and lean and blonde, and he would’ve reminded you of your boss, except this man had a kinder face.

You were sitting on the edge of your grandfather’s bed, hoping the doctor would say the bloodwork and scans came back fine. That they wouldn’t need to admit George into the hospital for further testing. That he could go home in the morning.

But your life had never been quite that easy.

“Okay, George. I’m sorry, but we need to admit you,” said the doctor.

He explained that while the malignant tumor of his cancer had been removed last year, the scans that had been done last month hadn’t been able to detect the bright spots now formed on George’s lungs and lymph nodes.

The oncologist would have to confirm, but you all knew where this was headed. Likely those “bright spots” were tumors.

George nodded slowly at first, taking it all in. He asked what his options were, as far as treatment.

“Your oncologist will go over those options with you,” the doctor replied. “We’re going to move you up to Oncology shortly.”

George thanked him.

And you sat very still.

A hand fell on your arm, finally earning your gaze. George’s face was oddly calm, though the worry in his eyes was for you. You realized that he’d gently called your name, though you hadn’t heard him. Your ears were ringing.

His mouth parted to tell you something, but nothing came out. So instead, he tugged you into his arms, and he heaved a long sigh.

“I guess we’re here again,” he admitted. He let out a chuckle. “The Lord does like his tests…but maybe that car accident was a blessing in disguise, huh?”

You heard his voice, but your mind was buzzing—mainly with the doctor’s words, and with a bone-deep feeling that threatened to consume you.

Your car, your fault. Options, again. Here again.

Your fault.

When you didn’t answer, George pulled away a bit to give you a questioning look.

“Sweetheart?” he tried. You laid a hand on his arm.

“You still haven’t eaten dinner, have you?” you asked. Neither had you, for that matter. “I’ll get us something that isn’t rubbery turkey.”

George blinked at you, confused, with a growing edge of worry.

“Isn’t Dean getting your meds? Why don’t you wait for him to—”

“I’m fine,” you said, already getting up to grab your purse. “I’ll be back.”

George called your name again, but the ringing in your ears was now pulsing in time with your heartbeat.

You made your way down the hall to the lobby at a brusque clip, even with your neck brace on. You didn’t see Dean, but he certainly saw you as he was walking back into the hospital. Frowning, he followed and called out to you.

You slowed when you saw him, and he soon caught up with you. He rested a hand on your back.

“Hey, where you goin’?" he asked.

“We haven’t eaten in a while. I’m going to the cafeteria,” you said. Though you seemed distracted, your eyes meeting his only briefly. It triggered a small spidey sense running up Dean’s spine.

He gave you your prescription pain medication, which you took with a small “thank you.”

“Everything okay?” he asked. “How’s George doing?”

“Fine. He’s resting,” you said. And by the look of you, that seemed to be true. But he spotted the tremble in your hands when you took the pill bottle package from him. It made him stop you when you tried to keep walking down to the cafeteria.

“Okay, you wanna run that by me again?” Dean asked.

You frowned, and your brows knit together. “What?”

“Is there something going on?” he pressed.

You sighed, but you didn’t answer him. You looked exhausted, and like you’d rather swallow your own tongue than speak. You shook your head and laid a hand on his wrist.

“I’m fine. Dean, thank you for everything you did tonight, but you still have to work tomorrow. Go home, get some rest,” you said.

You turned from him again. That was your first mistake. He reached out and grasped your hand to stop you.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said.

“What?” you said in irritation. Your second mistake was not being able to look at him.

Dean was frowning in earnest now. Worry clawed in his gut, which was also telling him not to let you walk away from him. His grip shifted to hold both of your arms and move directly in front of you. He dipped his chin, trying to get you to meet his eyes.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he said gently. “I need you to talk to me.”

You inhaled a shuddering breath. A wave was rising inside you, threatening to pull you into its undertow. Your eyes burned, red and shining. Dean finally saw it when you raised your head, what little you could. Your mouth began to quiver, looking into his eyes. And it was done.

You could no longer be still.

Dean held you when you fell apart in the hallway.

Dean called out of work the next day to stay with you and George. Gordon would be acting Lieutenant until his next shift, and Dean was sure the man would take full enjoyment out of it.

He couldn’t care about that right now though. He felt that his place was here, being your quiet wall of support while you and George and the oncologist talked about treatment options.

“Normally, at the stage we’re in, I would be recommending chemotherapy,” said Dr. Benton.

“Normally?” you echoed.

“At the rate this is progressing, the treatment would have to be aggressive,” he said. His gaze focused on George. “However, at your age, and the current state of your overall health…at this point, I don’t think the rigors of treatment would be worth diminishing your quality of life.”

“What are you saying?” you asked. Your voice cut like a whip, earning the other men’s gazes.

George was the first one to lay a hand on your arm. “You know what it means, honey…he’s saying it ain’t worth it.”

“Of course, it’s worth it,” you retorted. With your brows furrowed and lips pursed, your eyes went from him to the doctor. “Just because he’s older, we shouldn’t even try? Is that what you’re saying, doctor?”

At that, even Dean drew closer to lay a hand on your back. Meanwhile, George squeezed your arm.

Benton shook his head gravely. “That’s certainly not what I’m saying.”

“How much time would I get, if I started treatment,” George asked, before you could volley further with the doctor.

Benton met the other man’s gaze.

“I’m going to be honest with you, George. You may get a few more weeks, or even a few months. But that is a best-case scenario.”

Dean drove you all home that day, after George decided to formally waive treatment. Both men knew you were angry in your silence, but neither one wanted to press you. Dean was too wary, and George was too tired.

Once he was settled in bed, you hadn’t even left his room yet before you grabbed a notepad off his desk and wandered into the hall. You started to make a list of things you still needed from the grocery store, among other things. Dean took that piece of paper out of your hands.

“Good. I’ll handle this,” he said. “Meanwhile, you can get upstairs, take a shower, take your meds, and get some sleep.”

You frowned at him. “You haven’t slept either, Dean.”

“I’m used to it,” he said, giving you a wink and a slight smile. Overnight shifts could be a bitch at a firehouse, but Dean was no stranger to having his sleep interrupted.

“Listen to him, honey. He’s speaking sense,” George called from inside his room. The bedroom door was still open. He was settling into his bed while trying to stifle a cough. He sipped at a cup of water you’d brought for him.

Still, you looked reluctant. Dean held your arms and pressed a kiss to your forehead.

“Come on,” he said. “You were in an accident yesterday. You’ve had one hell of a night. You need your rest, or you’ll be no good to anyone.”

And if you pushed yourself much more, he worried that he’d have to take you right back to the hospital. Dean would rather not have that scare so close to the last one.

He brushed your cheek with gentle fingers. With the limited mobility your neck brace provided, you did your best to look up at him. Your eyes were softer.

“Okay,” you breathed.

“Okay? All right, good,” Dean said. You held onto his jacket for a moment, leaning against him.

“Thank you,” you whispered. You felt the burn of tears behind your closed eyelids. A few of them squeezed past and slipped down your cheeks. Dean held your face, brushing the tears away with his thumbs.

“Hey, I’m here, all right? Just let me help you,” he said. “You can lean on me when you need to.”

“I haven’t had that in a long time,” you admitted. “Part of me doesn’t know how to lean.”

“I get that,” Dean said. But you both knew that there was a long and difficult road ahead. He knew he didn’t have to remind you of it. “Whatever you need, you just tell me, okay? If nothing else, I’ve got a strong pair of shoulders.”

Somehow, you smiled. You pressed your forehead against his chest and inhaled deeply, to steady yourself.

“That you do, Lieutenant.”

You left for your room soon after, but not before you brought him down to you for one more tearful kiss.

Dean then watched you climb up the stairs to your room and nearly went up to help you, but he heard George call his name. Dean ventured back into George’s room and heeded his beckoning hand.

“You hungry? I can scramble some eggs or something before I hit the store. I think I saw two more left in the carton,” Dean said. George shook his head.

“Come ‘ere a sec.”

Dean took the hint and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I just wanna thank you for everything you did yesterday. Everything you’re still doing for us,” George said. He looked exhausted, but whatever he wanted to say was important enough to fight off sleep. He clasped a hand on Dean’s arm.

“You don’t have to,” Dean replied.

George huffed. A smile made his eyes gleam brighter.

“I knew you were a special one, Dean Winchester. Knew it the night I met ya, on your very first date with her.”

Dean blinked, but his pause drifted into a reserved smile.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Well, I’ll be honest. When I heard that black Chevy rumble like hell’s wheels onto the driveway, I thought I might have to worry about you,” George chuckled.

Dean’s lips quirked.

“But no, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t the pretty flowers, or our mutual love of killer sharks,” George quipped, making Dean’s smile more genuine. “It isn’t your job either, or the fact that you saved her. I just believe that you can see a man’s mettle in his eyes…and I saw it in you when I shook your hand that night.”

Dean took that in for a moment. His hand flexed over his knee. Then he met George’s gaze, though he didn’t know what to say. Sometimes though, honestly was the best bet.

“I’m sorry for what you’re going through,” he said at last. “I can’t imagine…”

George let out a breath through his nose. “I’ll tell you a secret.”

He pointed to a picture frame on his bedside. It was of him and his wife, Sophie, when they were around your age and Dean’s. The couple were sitting on a pier that hung over the edge of the lake in their hometown.

She held him from behind, with her arms wrapped around his neck. Her long hair was being carried by the wind, getting swept into George’s eyes. He was smiling too hard to care.

“I’m ready to smile like that again,” he said. He had tears in his eyes, but he was already lighter at the thought. “I know it’s selfish…but I think I’ve missed her long enough.”

Dean paused. Then he cleared his throat past a small well of something he couldn’t name. He wondered if his dad ever had thoughts like that.

“Well, I’ll let you get your rest,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

George nodded and gave Dean’s arm a squeeze. “All right. Drive safe. Don’t hit any goddamn trees.”

He shot Dean a knowing wink, and it almost had the younger man laughing. George’s sense of humor was something else.

Dean then left George to rest. He made sure he had his wallet, keys, and your grocery list before he left your house and went back to the car. He checked his phone and saw a missed call…from Cas.

Dean was reminded again about Azazel, the kingpin who might’ve ordered a hit on his family. Along with the recent murders and arsons, and the connection from one of the victims to your company, Savage & Co.

Dean returned the call as he climbed into the Impala.

“Dean. Everything all right?” Cas asked. “Sam filled me in about the accident.”

“Yeah, everyone’s okay…well, not really. I’ll explain later,” Dean replied. “Listen, about what we talked about at the bar.”

“Yes.” Cas said gravely. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go to your father about this yet.”

“Funny, I was thinking the same thing.” Dean sighed. “My girl just got some real bad news. I know you gotta keep digging into Savage & Co., but can you keep her out of it?”

“Is she all right?”

“Yeah, more or less…it’s her grandfather.”

“Ah, I see,” Cas said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Thanks, man. I’d rather her just focus on what she needs to do right now, you know?”

“I get it. And believe me, we’re keeping the investigation of Nick Savage quiet for now,” Cas said. “But if we find something, or worse, if I can’t…I’ll likely need to question her. She works directly with Savage, and from what I can tell, she’s instrumental in bringing in and maintaining several of his major accounts.”

Dean stopped at a red light and took a moment to rub a hand over his tired face, rubbing his eyes. “You don’t really think she’s got any idea of what that asshole’s into.”

“I’m not saying she does. But in working so closely with him, perhaps she’s noticed things about her boss, and the company. Things she’s kept to herself, out of self-preservation.”

Dean frowned. He didn’t want to think about shit like that. It made his stomach churn at the thought of you working for someone who might be doing business with a crime lord, let alone Azazel.

“Well, when that day comes, give me a heads up, okay?”

“Will do.”

“Thanks, Cas.”

Dean offered to take another day off to help you, but you wouldn’t let him. He needed to go back to work, and you were able to arrange working from home for the next few weeks.

Even Nick couldn’t refuse to accommodate you in a situation like this. He knew very well that if he pushed you too hard, you’d go directly to HR.

So he backed off, and told you to take as much time at home as you needed. It allowed you to put him, and that afternoon in his office, away from your mind to focus on taking care of your grandfather.

Though you called your best friend the day you got home from the hospital, Andréa didn’t come by your house to see you and George until the end of the week. She cited mounting projects at work and some kind of tiff with her cousin Meg, but it all sounded like excuses to you.

However, she was gracious enough to bring dinner for the three of you on a Friday night. She cut up with George like normal, and even got him laughing, until a coughing fit forced him to stop. It also took most of the joy out of the rest of the evening.

While George went up to his room to rest, Andréa later joined you in the kitchen. You were washing the dishes, trying to focus on what you were doing. But your mind was buzzing continuously with future tasks and worries. Always, tasks and worries.

“How are you holding up?” Andréa asked. She rubbed your back, and you gave her a slight smile.

“All I can do is make him comfortable, for as long as possible,” you replied. There were tears in your friend’s eyes, but she dabbed them away with the back of her hand.

“What do you need? Anything, you just tell me,” she said.

It was a little easier for you to contemplate leaning on Andréa. You had been friends with her for years, and she was like another daughter to George.

On the other hand, asking Dean for help always made you hesitate. What you two had was still so new. You worried that this was too much for your relationship, too fast.

“Well,” you sighed as you wiped your hands dry on a kitchen towel. You didn’t exactly want to talk about it, but there were things you had to start planning, even if you didn’t know the exact timeframe.

However, as soon as you opened your mouth to reply, Andréa’s cell phone rang. She held up a finger to you and checked it. To your surprise, she actually answered it.

“Hey, babe,” she replied with a smile. You heard Benny’s deep voice on the line, asking a question. “Yeah, I’m still here. I’m probably leaving soon though.”

She continued her conversation for a few more minutes, but you didn’t hear anything after that. A tension headache was sharp behind your eyes, while anger (yes, anger) rolled hot under your skin. Your lips pursed. You busied yourself with straightening up the kitchen until she continued her call for another few minutes.

“Sorry about that,” she said, finally turning her attention back to you. “So what do you need?”

You put away the last dry dish and turned to her coolly.

“Nothing.”

Andréa frowned. She knew there was something off with you, but her furrowed brows betrayed her confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” you repeated. “Don’t you need to head out, anyway?”

“No, I was just…what’s up with you?” she asked.

“What’s up with me is my grandfather’s dying!” you snapped. You left her in the kitchen, precisely so that she’d follow you out. You grabbed her purse for her and went to the front door, where you stepped out.

Andréa was dismayed and confused as she followed you out onto the porch. She raised her brows at you when you shut the door and crossed your arms at her.

“I know you, and this isn’t just about that. What’s the problem?” she asked.

“You can’t seem to detach from your boyfriend for more than five minutes to just be my friend. That’s the problem,” you replied. “But why should I be surprised? Like always, you’re too wrapped up in yourself to consider anyone else.”

Her brows knitted together; she looked hurt by your words, but also defensive.

“How can you say that when you’ve been exactly the same way?” she accused. “Since you met Dean, I’d be lucky to see you once a week—”

“I call you every week,” you began, counting the list with your fingers. “You’re always busy, but you never give me a day that works for you. And when we do make plans, you usually cancel. Why? Because you’re going sailing with Benny. You’re going to a restaurant, hours away, just to try the new sushi bar beer garden, or whatever the hell. Or you’re going on an impromptu road trip, or you’re planning a summer trip to Greece. Give me fucking break, Dre.”

By now she was frowning angrily, her arms crossed. “You’re mad at me because I have a life?”

“No. I’m happy for you that you found someone. I really am,” you said. “But we clearly live in two different versions of reality. I just don’t have the time or the energy to entertain yours.”

You knew you were being too harsh. You felt incredible guilt as soon as it all left your mouth…but part of you also felt like a weight had been lifted off your chest. The problem was, you still felt heavy. Just in a different way.

Both of you were crying when Andréa left your house.

All too soon, a week became a month. In that time, Dean called you every day to check on you. He spent most of his evenings with you and George when he wasn’t on shift. And when he was, sometimes Meg would drop in.

She understood your argument with Andréa, and she respected you for taking a stand when you needed to. She even confided you that she’d had similar frustrations with her cousin lately.

But Meg wasn’t your only visitor. Ellen had come a few times to bring you lunch and dinner, even breakfast, though you hadn’t asked her to. You realized then how close Dean must be to his friends at the firehouse, along with the Harvelles; Ellen also refused to take any money from you for the food.

By the end of the month, George mainly spent his days sleeping. Pain medication made his days nearly painless, but not without struggle. You were doing your best to care for him while continuing to work full-time from home. You were also exhausted, though you refused to admit it.

Today was a better day, however, because George was awake. He was also more aware of his surroundings than usual.

He stopped you from adjusting his pillow so you would sit down on the edge of his bed. He took your hand in his, brushing a thumb over the back of it.

“I’m okay with this, you know,” he said. You pursed your lips, but he stopped you from whatever you were going to say. “I don’t want to leave you. You know that…but I’m so damn proud of you. Your Gram was, and still is…”

Your lower lip wobbled as you tried and failed to keep your tears at bay. They stung in your eyes and slipped past your defenses, down your face.

“The house is yours. But if that’s too hard for you, just sell it,” he said, heaving a deep breath. “It’s just the bones. You’re the heart. And you always have been.”

You opened your mouth to speak, but not a sound would come out. You held his hand with both of yours and stared down at them. Until his voice once again commanded your attention.

“I always thought…moving to the city ruined my daughter. That we should’ve stayed in Lebanon. That maybe I gave her too much freedom, and I failed her somehow along the way,” George said. His eyes were heavy with old heartache. And yet, they soon began to lighten.

“But the day we lost a daughter, we gained one too,” he said. Then, he chuckled a little. “And I know I never failed with you, sweetheart.”

That proved to be too much for you. He pulled you into his arms like you were still a child, and he held you for a long time while you cried yourself out.

Though he eventually spotted Dean hesitating in the doorway. He’d probably let himself in with the spare key you’d given him.

George raised a hand from your back and silently beckoned Dean inside his room. He was getting tired, drifting off thanks to the morphine.

“Hey, lookie there. The boyfriend’s here,” George whispered with a bit of cheek. You sucked in a breath and raised your head, wiping at your eyes before you turned around. Dean met you with an attempt at a smile and a gentle hand on your back.

“Just got out of work?” you asked. He’d been on a 24-hour shift, and you’d missed him. You stood and stepped into his welcoming embrace. He dropped a kiss on your forehead.

“Yeah. I’ve got the next couple of days off,” Dean said. He greeted George next and asked him if he needed anything.

“Just some water,” the older man replied.

“I’ll get it,” you said with a sniff. “Need to start dinner too.”

“I already brought some food. You like Italian, right?” Dean said, with a subtle smile. It earned your sigh and a grateful smile. He knew very well that it was now one of your favorites. Italian meatballs always reminded you both of your first date.

“Thank you,” you said, grasping his hand. He squeezed yours with a nod, before he let you go.

When you were out of earshot, George cleared his throat past a wet cough. Dean reached over and grabbed him a tissue. George took it with a nod. Again, he encouraged Dean to come closer.

“I’m not worried,” George said, between deep breaths. “You know why?”

Dean just stared back for a moment. He genuinely had no idea what the man might say next.

“Tell me,” he said.

“My granddaughter’s strong. Always has been, because she had to be,” said George. “But you’re gonna be there when she’s not.”

Dean considered the weight of that charge. The anxiety in his chest felt familiar; like the day he got his badge at the Fire Academy, knowing then the responsibility he held in his hands.

That’s a lot to put on just three months of knowing this girl, came a more selfish thought. It sounded a lot like the guy he used to be, not too long before he met you.

But when Dean thought about you, and what you’d begun to mean to him��

He realized that he only had one answer.

“Yes, sir. I am,” said Dean.

George gave a tired smile. “Good man.”

And that night, an agreement was made.

In the morning, your grandfather was gone.

Dean held you through what he thought was the worst of your heartbreak. But after that dour morning, it was like a switch flipped inside you.

In the days after George’s death, your shutters came up. You threw yourself into checklists and task after task—in funeral arrangements and planning and contacting distant relatives and friends.

This was your failsafe. Your version of “autopilot.” And these things needed to get done, after all.

But Dean worried when he no longer saw the softer side of you. Like your heart had been wrung dry.

He inevitably had to go back to work, but in between the demanding hours of his schedule, he tried to get you to slow down. He saw the warning signs of you running yourself into the ground. He just didn’t know how to help you land.

So Dean picked up slack where he saw it, often without you asking him to. He began fixing the house, one section at a time. He enlisted Benny’s help, since he actually had a small construction business. Dean even paid for the materials himself without you knowing.

And one sunny afternoon, he took a break from repaving part of the cracked and uneven driveway to grab a beer inside. You were sitting at the kitchen table with stacks of papers all around you, your cellphone on speaker as some kind of elevator music continued to ring on a loop.

“Can you believe I’ve been on hold with the funeral director for 20 minutes?” you told him in irritation. But you didn’t truly take sight of him until he came back from the kitchen.

He wore a familiar ensemble of jeans and black undershirt with a plaid shirt, rolled up to his elbows. He was covered in a fine layer of sweat, and his hands were dusty and stained from his work on the driveway. Dean looked tired, and that made you feel guilty.

Meanwhile, he frowned and popped open a beer. “You want one of these? Looks like you could use one.”

You shook your head. With a sigh, you hung up the phone. You’d try calling again later. Instead, you focused on the next item of your checklist for today.

“Food. Because we’re gonna need to eat after the service,” you inclined your head. “Okay, still need to come up with a list of caterers, because I don’t think I can cook for that many people.”

Dean nodded at that. “Let me talk to Ellen. She’ll give you a good price, and her food is good.”

You looked up from your notepad and considered him thoughtfully. You wouldn’t have thought to cater from a bar, but he was right. Ellen had great food at the Roadhouse.

“Okay, I’ll call her,” you said.

“No, I’ll call her,” Dean insisted. He set down the beer on the table and leaned his palms flat on its surface. “Sweetheart, I told you I’d help you with all this. You don’t have to do it by yourself.”

“Dean, you’ve done enough,” you replied. Your brows drew together stubbornly. “You’re paving my driveway right now, for God’s sake! This is my responsibility, not yours.”

Dean frowned, making you sigh. You leaned back in your seat and crossed your arms.

“Look, we’ve only been dating for three months,” you said. And in your mind, a good chunk of that time had been spent in the worst hell of your life. “This right here? It’s a lot. I’m not expecting you to deal with all this…”

You bit your lip, and your gaze fell away from his as your insecurities took hold. The thoughts that had been plaguing you every night since this all began, on the night of the car accident.

“And…if you’d rather take a break from us for a while, I’d understand,” you said.

Your voice was more collected than you felt. But that didn’t make it any easier when Dean stared back at you, mostly incredulous. You even thought you saw a thread of hurt there, and it made your heartache worsen.

Dean came around to your side of the table. He dragged a chair back and sunk into it, facing you directly.

“You think that’s the kind of guy I am?” he asked.

You immediately shook your head. You weren’t trying to upset him, or imply that he wasn’t reliable, or trustworthy, or whatever was running through his head. You were just trying to be realistic.

You’re so pragmatic it hurts, as Andréa had often told you.

“Dean, it’s not that…” you began, a bit helplessly. “I just—”

“Just, nothin’.” His chair scraped toward you as he reached out for your hand. He made sure you looked him in the eyes when he said this next part.

“I’m not leaving you with this.”

Your gaze met his, though you desperately tried to keep your heart from rising into your throat.

“I’m not leaving you,” Dean said. His tone, his eyes, his hold on your hand was firm.

For a moment, you stared at him, unblinking, even as tears swam in your eyes.

He’s not leaving you.

Not like everyone else in your life.

You were grateful. Too grateful, even, for words.

When you finally broke down into tears, Dean realized what an idiot he’d been. Your wall of stoicism had been just that—a flimsy wall. Now it was shattered, and so were you.

It scared him just how much, as he gathered you onto his lap and into his arms. You didn’t seem to care that he was dirty and covered with sweat. You clung to him strong, and he held you back just as tightly.

“No matter what I did, it wasn’t enough,” you confessed. “You save people all the time. I couldn’t save anyone in my life.”

Dean frowned. He cupped the back of your head, and he felt your tears sliding down his neck. His voice was thick with emotion when he was able to reply.

“Oh, baby. It’s not your fault.”

“I can’t…I can’t do anything. Anything that matters.” Your voice was a broken whisper. It damn near broke his heart.

“Now you know that’s not true,” he said. “I’m not gonna let you lie to yourself like that.”

You trembled and heaved with sobs, and he continued to hold you.

Just be there, Sam had told him, when Dean had called him from the hospital. Sam reminded him again last week, when George finally passed.

Is that all I’m supposed to do? Dean thought. His brows furrowed, but he tried to hide his frustration.

He was used to people depending on him. He led a team. Before then, he’d looked out for Sam all his life. Dean had never had to help someone get through this kind of grief though. He just wanted to help you, in whatever way he could.

Because he was worrying, just like you. That whatever he did, it wouldn’t be enough.

But he couldn’t leave you.

I can’t, and I won’t, he thought. So he took a breath, and he said the first true thing that came to mind.

“You’re the strongest woman I know, you know that?” Dean said. He spoke low and steady, but with the conviction he felt. “And that’s a tall order, considering some of the badass ladies I’ve got in my life.”

A smile tugged at his lips when he considered people like Ellen and Jo, Jody and Donna. He might’ve lost his mom, but he and Sam hadn’t lacked when it came to influential women in their lives.

“But I saw it the day we met. I see it every time we’re together,” he continued. “You work hard as hell. You take care of everyone around you…”

You were still quiet, trying to stifle your crying.

Dean let out a breath. “Man, if you only knew how much you’ve been helping me. Keeping my damn feet on the ground with this whole…arsonist mess my dad’s been investigating. Digging up the past, my mom, the whole damn thing.”

With a sniffle, you uncurled from him, just enough to reveal your face. Your grip on his shirt loosened, your palm flattening on his chest. He held your hand there and turned his lips to your forehead. He sensed that you were calming down. That you were listening.

“That matters to me,” he told you.

You nodded and tightened your hand on his. “Me too.”

Your voice was still shaky, but it sounded a little stronger.

“See? You might as well face it.” Dean grinned. “You’re a badass chick with a big heart.”

You snorted in response. Your lips even twitched at a smile. He spied it when he looked down at you. And you rested easier against him as your tears subsided.

“Thank you,” you whispered. He dried your cheek with a brush of his hand.

“For what?” he asked.

“For staying.”

AN: So first off, I'm sorry for the gritty "reality" of this one. It's just where the story took me, though it serves a purpose narratively and for both the reader and Dean's character development.

But also, I think this has just been on my mind, since both my grandmother and great uncle (brother and sister) died within a year of one another due to different forms of cancer. My great uncle passed in May of this year, and my grandmother two years this past October.

Again, I'm sorry if this one was too heavy, but art does imitate life and this was probably my brain trying to express those emotions I couldn't fully make sense of at the time. George will be missed, but will still be felt in the rest of this story, as I'm sure any of you who've lost close family members will understand. 💙

Next Time:

The identity of Azazel will finally be revealed in Part 12. But first...

You nodded. “By the way, it was nice of Sam and Eileen to come. And Meg and Cas.”

Dean smiled.

“They can be your people too,” he said. “If you want ‘em to be.”

You couldn’t help it. Your tears brewed and bubbled over. And you moved slowly across the couch to twine your arms around his neck. Dean’s lips tugged at a smile, and he welcomed you with an arm wrapping around your waist.

Both of you were still wearing the same clothes you’d been wearing all day; you in your black dress and Dean in his slacks and white buttoned-down shirt, though by now without the jacket, and the shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

You were infinitely exhausted. But one thing had become clear to you over the past few weeks.

“Thank you. Thank you for today, and for every day since we met,” you said shakily.

Keep Reading: PART 12

Dean Winchester Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Series Tag List (Part 1):

@hobby27 @kazsrm67 @letheatheodore @agothwithheavysetmakeup @jacklesbrainworms @foxyjwls007 @wincastifer @iamsapphine @simpforbuckyb

@vanillawhiskeyflavoredkisses @roseblue373 @this-is-me19 @emily-winchester @spnexploration @deans-spinster-witch @deans-baby-momma @iprobablyshipit91

@melancholictearz @nic-kolas @katherineann814 @sleepyqueerenergy @wayward-lost-and-never-found @thewritersaddictions @just-levyy @samanddeaninatrenchcoat @deanwanddamons @antisocialcorrupt @lacilou @adoringanakin @theonlymaninthesky @teehxk @midnightmadwoman @brianochka @branj19

@agalliasi @venicesem @chriszgirl92 @lyarr24 @ladysparkles78 @solariklees @xsophianicolex @deansbbyx @candy-coated-misery0731 @curlycarley @sarahgracej @bagpussjocken @ultrahviolentart @chernayawidow @beskarfilms @mimaria420

#genuinely one of the loveliest reviews I've ever recieved 💞💞#reader appreciation #lovely mutuals #smoke eater feedback

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mysoftboybensolo · 3 days ago

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Things I Don't Understand of Audiences Reaction of Nosferatu 2024

Complaints of how this is a ripoff of Dracula, and I am like, of course it is! The original 1922 film is the most famous ripoff in the history of cinema, but it is also one of the best ripoffs ever. Maybe know your history just a bit.

Why are people saying that Ellen dying was stupid or unnecessary? Firstly, that has been the ending in the 1922 and the 1979 film, this wasn't just anything Eggers pulled from nowhere. Secondly, people don't seem to understand that the Gothic genre never not one that allows it's characters to walk away unscathed, whether it is physical damage or mental damage. Blood is demanded, and hardly a truly happy ending is found, at best a bittersweet ending or at worst an ending where everyone is unhappy. I think not only is it true to the films this one is based on, but also the only satisfying ending. Ellen wouldn't have been truly happy if she had survived, because she still will be a seer, she will still have darkness looming inside, and Thomas is either incapable or unwilling to accept it. He's belief that killing Orlok will bring a reset to everything, even bringing Ellen back to how she was before, but the Ellen she was before was still suffered. He brushes aside her nightmares without comfort, he doesn't take into account how she views their marriage (when she insists that she doesn't need material things but he acts as if he knows better), and when she tries to express her suffering, he would prefer her to suppress it. She would never be truly free, but to die doing a good thing, to have control over her death the way she didn't in life, it's an empowering end, if bittersweet.

People complaining about the pace of the film, saying it starts off fine but then drags in the middle? I think the film flowed wonderfully, there was never a moment when I was thinking how much longer to the end or felt it rushed in the story. I personally cannot wait until we get the extended version, but I am happy with how it came out.

Where are people getting "Orlok groomed Ellen" from? Grooming is when someone goes after a minor and gets them to be emotionally attached to them for a long period of time in order to achieve some sort of goal (often times sex). People have been saying Ellen was a "literal child", but we don't know that for certain. Yes, Ellen described herself as a child, but it seems that the term child is used more as a synonym of "inexperienced" or "young". Also, we are not sure how old any of these characters are. If we were to go by actors ages as guidelines, Lily-Rose Depp was 24 when filming this, and all we get in between the first scene to the present day is merely "years later". That can mean two years or ten, we cannot be sure. And while Lil-Rose Depp can look younger than her age, no one better try and say she was playing a 12 year old or whatever in that first scene, because there is no way you can convince me she is as young as that. Also, Ellen hadn't been emotionally attached to Orlok between the years to make it grooming. I can make a better argument of grooming in another famous Gothic movie the 2004 "Phantom of the Opera" then I could with "Nosferatu".

Listen, this movie won't be for everyone, that is fine, but what I have an issue with is saying people are dumb or evil for thinking Ellen x Orlok is interesting/has romantic elements to it. One person commented on another's post about saying that the cast are dumb for seeing this as a love triangle, especially Lily-Rose Depp for not seeing Ellen as a victim. The director, who also wrote it, wanted this version to play up the Death and the Maiden themes, that was their vision, and I don't think it's right or fair to say they are dumb because the original movie wasn't a love triangle. If we were to be really anal about it, so many pieces of media we have we wouldn't be able to enjoy because it's origins are not the same. Sorry Disney's Hunchback fans, you can't enjoy the happy ending because the original was a downer. Sorry Wicked fans, it's nothing like "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", so it shouldn't be enjoyed. See how ridiculous it sounds? You can debate if whether or not they managed to achieve their goal, but you can't deny that was the intention and say people are dumb for picking up what they had intended.

I also feel that it's quite hypocritical of people to say that the relationship between Orlok and Ellen is evil and creepy, but then go off and say that the scenes where Friedrich has sex with Anna's corpse as "romantic" and Thomas' couch scene as "hot", when both deal with dubious/no consent at all. Just admit it, you are fine with dubious stuff so long as it's a hot guy doing it. The couch scene was quite uncomfortable for me, Ellen is clearly not in her right mind, even if not by some kind of possession, but emotionally, and it didn't sit right what Thomas did. I am not saying he raped her, but she wasn't in the right mind space to have this be a passionate moment. And he wasn't doing because of love or passion, he was doing it because he didn't like hearing Ellen say how he couldn't please her like the Count could. We had seen what they are like when they are in a good head space and the feeling mutual, as we saw in the den of the Harding's home. I feel like this scene wasn't meant to be a hot and sexy moment, but a incredibly distressing moment when two individuals are acting at their worst.

I don't understand how people feel that this film isn't a feminist film. I've seen people claim that the movie shames Ellen and that her not finding out how to stop Orlok is robbing her of her agency. Here's the thing, yes, many characters shame her for what she feels, but the narrative doesn't. As the audience, we feel sorry for her, feel bad for everything she is going through, and given the time period, of course there would be many people (mainly men) who will shame her passions or deny her darkness in favor for a more "womanly behavior". We are meant to see how the human world would never understand Ellen the way Orlok would understand her, why she would have called out a force that is inhuman, because humanity has turned her away. What's fascinating is that Ellen has control of Orlok, being able to call him, speak to him as an equal, and get him, a powerful centuries old being, to admit that she is his affliction, his weakness, and in the end, it's proven right. This mortal woman is able to defeat a supernatural being, all the while him loving her, how is that not awesome and feminist?

In regards to her finding the cure; true, in both the '22 and '79 film, Ellen figure out on her own what needs to be done to stop Orlok, but that doesn't mean '24 Ellen isn't smart or in charge of her own actions. We've seen Ellen say what the future holds multiple times, so it isn't crazy to believe that she would have seen what her fate would have been as it drew closer, and her need to talk to Von Franz read to me as her knowing the cure. When Ellen walks Von Franz to his home, she says that she knows what must be done, and they work together to make this happen, with him promising to keep Thomas away. Out of all the men, Von Franz had been the only one to take her feelings and thoughts seriously, and he does so here, including her in the plan (where Thomas had refused her to help), even giving her the chance to be stop Orlok without interruption. He isn't denying her agency, he's keeping others at bay so she can be the hero.

I like the moustache, just like a Romanian nobleman would have had, exactly what the director wanted. After leaving the theatre, my friend and I were discussing the film, and of course the design of Orlok was brought up, and she said "I liked it, especially the moustache, very Vlad the Impaler". She isn't a massive Dracula fan but she understood what was the inspiration behind it. Y'all are just uncultured swine.

In the end, I love this film, and wanted to just share my two cents.

#nosferatu #nosferatu 2024 #robert eggers #bill skarsgård #bill skarsgard #lily rose depp #count orlok #ellen hutter #nicholas hoult #thomas hutter

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456x001 · 1 day ago

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okay huge essay incoming:

and this is based off a post i saw earlier by my awesome mutual @midnight--sadness (her blog is awesome btw) where she talked about gi hun’s ability to forgive in ho. so i’ll start off by prefacing some of the great points she made about gi hun’s trusting nature and his selfless ability to forgive others:

we’ve seen time and time again how trusting gi hun is even if it’s to a fault. it’s simply in his nature to trust and love and to care about other people in the selfless way he does. given that, i think he could forgive in ho. if he sees in ho actually working to make a change and make things right for the betterment of others that have been wronged by the games (and whether or not in ho will or actually even wants to is what we’ll be getting into later), i believe he can forgive him. despite all the horrible things he’s done, despite the unforgivable, irredeemable mistakes he’s made. he’s more than justified in not forgiving him but i’m just saying he might because if anyone could it’s gi hun. he’s made the point time and time again that he isn’t like the masked men and would never become hateful in the ways they are.

now let’s talk a bit about gi hun’s relationship with young-il. gi hun's worry for young-il during the games is so raw and heartfelt. he’s not just strategizing or playing to survive-he genuinely cares about young-il's well-being, even in a scenario where survival often demands selfishness. his willingness to risk everything to make sure young-il was okay shows how deeply gi hun values connection and loyalty. in ho, as the frontman, watches all of this unfold. seeing how much gi-hun cared for his alter ego “young-il" must have left a mark, even if in ho wouldn't openly admit it.

when the truth comes out that young-il and the frontman are the same person it's going to hit gi hun like a ton of bricks. gi hun will have to reconcile the caring, vulnerable young-il with the cold, calculating frontman. it will once again challenge everything he believes about people and their capacity for change. in ho, for all his control and detachment, won't be immune to this confrontation either. gi hun's unwavering belief in him as young-il could be the thing that cracks his carefully built armor.

this dynamic is so layered with unspoken emotions, unacknowledged bonds, and so much potential for heartbreak and redemption. it’s no wonder they gave us at the edge of our seats. now here’s the crux of the discussion. do we think gi hun’s belief in young-il's goodness, his inherent belief in the goodness of people could be enough to pull in ho back toward redemption?

we don’t know the answer to that yet, but i will say this. we’ve seen the final defying act of the villain sacrificing his life at the end for the greater good many times before. however, redemption doesn't always have to end in self-sacrifice. it could mean in ho finding a way to dismantle the system from the inside or choosing to protect gi hun and others while carving out a new path for himself. gi hun's belief in young-il could serve as a bridge for in ho to reconnect with the part of himself that still values humanity, without needing to face total destruction.

in a show like squid game tragedy feels inevitable but in ho's complexity gives him the potential to break free from that cycle of the self-sacrificial villain. if the writers explore his humanity further, there's room for a story where redemption and survival coexist— where he doesn't have to lose his life to find the good within himself.

it’s okay to hope. even in a world as bleak as squid game. personally, to me that feels a lot more compelling than the trope of self sacrifice that we’ve seen in the past. it gives in ho a chance to truly live with his choices, grow from them, and navigate the complexities of redemption, rather than taking the "easy" way out of a grand gesture. it’s a more challenging story to tell for sure but it would also feel satisfying.

i know it may seem like i’m trying to paint a fairy tale but here’s why i think it could work.

squid game thrives on subverting expectations. taking in ho down a path where he survives, changes, and potentially becomes an ally or disruptor within the system could be far more groundbreaking than another shock-value death. it could challenge the audience to grapple with forgiveness and morality in ways that are more impactful than a tragic ending. gi hun's unwavering hope in humanity could become the key to helping in ho see his own worth and capacity for change. in ho is such a layered character, and his survival would be more shocking in a show as grim as squid game. it would challenge the bleakness and give the story a deep emotional payoff. the shock value of how he survives and redeems himself could carry as much weight as a tragic death.

i really value the complexity and emotional depth in this show gives us in within the narrative and i can’t wait to see how hwang dong-hyuk continues to challenge the bounds of storytelling and reach beyond the obvious in season 3 as he’s done with these past two seasons.

#phew that took a lot out of me #squid game #gihun x inho #seong gi hun #hwang in ho #gi hun x in ho #001 x 456 #457 #gi hun #front man #squid game front man

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nikethestatue · 3 days ago

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It was staring us in the face all this time, but it just dawned on me yesterday. Better later than never, right?

But Elriel WAS always endgame. From the very beginning.

We've argued for 4 years, pointlessly, but it was always right in front of our eyes. How?

Good, old Moriel.

Mor and Azriel.

Moriel was always the answer.

Now walk with me.

In ACOMAF, we have 3 couples seemingly established. Feyre and Rhys (a given), Nesta and Cassian (essentially a given, since he is crawling towards her on the floor with shredded wings when she is thrown into the Cauldron), and then, suddenly...Elucien. 'You are my mate' Lucien whispers to Elain. Done deal, right?

Who does it leave as 'available' at the end of ACOMAF?

Azriel and Mor, of course.

THE supposedly torrid romance of the last 500 years. But now, Cassian is out of the equation, because he met Nesta, and Mor and Azriel are free. Nothing stands between them.

So, if Moriel 'was the original ship' as so many claim, and Elriel were never meant to be, then the question arises:

Why didn't Sarah J Maas make Mor and Azriel a couple????????

Not only does she not make them a couple, she veers into a completely new and unexpected trajectory. She makes Mor absolutely unavailable to Azriel as a love interest.

SJM crushes Moriel in one fell swoop. ACOWAR, which should've been a Nessian and Moriel romance starter pack instead becomes a Nessian and Elriel starter pack.

Not only that, but SJM ships the newly minted mate Lucien away from his mate, and leaves Elain with...Azriel. And then proceeds to write complex and intimate scenes for Elain and Azriel.

She goes further--to drive the point home that Moriel is never going to happen, she makes Mor gay, and she also introduces Vassa, who has a much bigger story tied to Lucien than Lucien has with Elain. Additionally, SJM puts a cherry on top of that messy cake and reneges on Lucien's paternity, so he could be a spell cleaver.

Nothing, and I mean, absolutely NOTHING stopped SJM from writing Mor and Azriel. If she wanted to have them be endgame, she could've easily gone that way. And for those to claim that she made Mor bi/gay for some kind of DEI quota and 'diversity', she could've just as easily make Amren gay. In fact, Amren already implied that she preferred the female form, so the easiest and most logical thing to do was to have Amren say that she chose the female body and her sexual preference is also towards females. No one would've been surprised.

But no. Elain, even with a MATE, has been firmly attached to Azriel at the hip since ACOMAF.

Moriel was always a possibility, but not for SJM. She never changed her mind about one thing, and that is Elriel. There is no doubt that Elain and Azriel were always going to be endgame for SJM. Nothing's changed. There's never been any other options.

#elriel #elain archeron #azriel #azriel and elain #pro elriel #elain x azriel #acotar

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penbuddies64 · 12 hours ago

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Contining on this post i really like the idea that sqh's parents also come to the moutain bi-yearly for the hoildays (sqh comes to their house for the other years) and almost every an ding disciple knows them either it it bc sqh's mom makes and gives out the best desserts (they're free also!) Or sqh's dad (if you literally just bump into him) just teaching you random stuff from how to make maple syrup or how to safely fall from enormous hights (sqh's dad learned how to make maple syrup for sqh's mom bc she wanted to try a new recipe but she didnt have the maple syrup to make it) and when after you meet them they leave you with just so much good healthy parental vibes that they could heal your mommy or daddy issues for a day

Then sqq meets them and is like 'how did you end up like this then?? To sqh and sqh is like 'i said they were good parents, not that i was a good person' and luo binghes in the backround worndering if his adoptive mother had a younger sister bc sqh's mom oddly similar to her and they have somewhat similar personalities (honestly i just like making sqh related to lbg in some way), or theres this time when new years comes every other two years where sqh cannot be disturbed and even if you try to follow him you'll just end up knocked out on the floor (sqh keeps his location of his parents very secure so that they arnt used against him (it happened once when a demon in mbj court tried to make him leave or they'll hurt his family (that demon has been kicked out and killed and that was one of the only times that mbj has his human so filled with rage (it was also really hot)))) anyways sqh also put a fuck ton of protecting and warding talismans to the point where his parents were like

'are you sure we need this much a-hua?'

And he was like 'ma you could never be so sure'

and they were like 'hm okay...'

and then there was this one time when sqq tried to find sqh on the third year since they met to celebrate for new years and he spent like days trying to find him himself and on the 4th day he asked the disciple he saw the most with sqh where tf he is and the disciple was like

Disciple: 'oh you cant find shizun at this time'

Sqq: 'oh really? Why?'

Disciple: 'he just goes somewhere at this time for the new years, no one knows where its just that you literally cant find him and every time somebody tried to they just ended up knocked out at the nearest inn'

Sqq: '... huh'

(Sqq thinks hes going to mbj place)

And only then would he find out in post cannon that the 2 random ppl that he only saw on new years talking with sqh was sqh's parents by him seeing the middle aged man ruffle sqh's hair in a playful manner and the middle aged woman pinch his cheeks and chastising him for not eating enough and asking a nearby disciple who were they for them to be doing that and the disciple answering

Disciple: 'oh those are shizuns parents, they're really nice'

Sqq: '???'

And then later sqq pulled sqh by the robes and said

'YOU DIDNT TELL ME YOU HAD PARENTS???'

And sqh says

'Well i didnt really have the chance to???'

You could the insults from another peak

Tbh ive thought of somthing that i thought would be very funny, what if sqh had like a good relationship with his (transmigrated) parents, like they sent him letters regularly and he replies and he visits them yearly for the holidays or smth cause like ive realized that other than sqq no one in the main cast like has any friendly relationships and im pretty sure that no one in the main cast has any non toxic familal relationships (tlj doesn't count he like the dead beatest of all dead beats) anyway as i was saying i think it would be good for fun factor if sqh had just like a normal family like bc i could just imagine him like transmigrating as a baby and like being kinda bewildered that like his parents were like really good compared to his last ones and even if he was like a 25-30 year old in a toddlers body he still has a toddler brain and the inner desire to be loved by his parents and also being shocked that he didnt have the classic sad backstory like most of the other villians he wrote, so like for the first few years that he regained his memories he always thought that his parents would switch up or smth but after like a few months he began to trust them, and like i could like imagine sqq an offhanded comment saying somthing to sqh ab having no parents or loving parents and sqh being like

"Um actually i do have parents and they love me alot!"

And sqq saying

"Wait what?"

And then sqh showing him like a letter that his parents sended him and then sqq being like

"Wait so you actually have nice and loving parents?"

And sqh being like

"Yep"

Or like sqh having mbj meeting the parents and mbj actually being very nervous for it like hes getting stressed ab what to wear or smth and sqh trying to calm him down

Like i just really like this idea

#svsss #shang qinghua #scum villain #shen qingqiu #shen yuan #mobei jun #i just really like this idea ok!!!#sqh's dad: ok so you have ro make sure you're in this position so you dont break your back #some random disciple he met with daddy issues: yes da- i mean thank you for teaching me this valuable information #sqh's mom: ah i just made too much tanghulu who would help me not waste it?#multiple of sqh's disciples: I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE!!!!!!

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electricneonvalkyrie · 3 days ago

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Abby notices when you’re depressed. Let’s talk about how she handles that as your partner.

These are modern Abby headcanons. The list was much longer, but I cut it down considerably to keep it from getting too long-winded. I do have a piece written for WLF Abby. If it's something you want to see, let me know.

Thanks for reading. I'm glad you're here.

• Maybe it’s a slow descent this time… little by little, losing interest in your favourite pastimes and finding it hard to discover meaning in daily life. In the midst of trying to survive, there is suddenly no room left for indulging in your hobbies.

Abby, with every random blanket and sheet she owns, constructs a blanket fort in the living room, offering a pressure-free zone where you can do nothing but feel completely safe and loved.

Super cozy, not too busy, and mega peaceful against the demands of a world that is asking far too much of you in this moment.

Does she deep-dive Youtube tutorials on how to build epic forts that probably belong in a magazine? I mean, yeah. Give her a break, alright? Complete dedication is the way this girl operates, and I’ll die on that hill. Also, Abby is a tall, sturdy girlie, and she needs to fit inside it with you. If you’re going to live in this fort together for the foreseeable future, she needs it to be good for you.

Now, if you want an enormous blanket hanging precariously off the side of the couch with a half-dead flashlight and crinkled comics shoved underneath some pillows, date Ellie. Still cute, still the thought that counts, but she’s no Abigail it’s my mission to save you Anderson.

• Abby stocks up on all your go-to snacks because she gets that it's hard to think about the basics when you're too bone-tired to move… nevermind prioritizing measly things like providing yourself sustenance. She’s got you covered.

• She refuses to let you marinate in the feeling of being a burden. She shuts that shit down fast.

“You’re my person, okay? I’m not going anywhere. End of story.”

• Abby grew up around doctors, so she'll for sure be the one to look up therapists and leave the info pinned to the fridge beneath a small magnet that is, of course, a laminated photo of the two of you on your first date. She describes it as the most important day of her life and brings it up regularly.

“You know, I’ve seen this picture a hundred times, but every time I look at it, it hits me all over again—how much that day meant to me.” Her voice dips low as she confesses something so immensely sacred to her. “The day I realized you weren’t just someone I wanted in my life. I’d been waiting for you without even knowing it. I thought I had it all figured out before you. Fuck, was I ever wrong.”

(Just know there's no rush to decide anything big when it comes to choosing a method of healing, but it's there when you're ready.)

• On your hardest days, she stays close, but she doesn’t push. She’ll busy herself with repairs around the home or folding the mountain of laundry shoved up against the wall in your bedroom.

• Abby loves to buy those cute nightlights with little animals on them or the ones that change colours, and she scatters them around the house. When you’re lost in the darkness, right?

• She serves you warm drinks in your favourite mug and nothing else. She’ll handwash it a million times a day if she must.

• Abby's phone chirps with little alarms throughout the day, reminding her to do something special for you. This is all the time, not just when you’re depressed, to be certain.

• Weighted blankets everywhere. Vehicles included.

• I don’t care what anyone says, Abby is soft as a motherfucker, okay? Is she rough around the edges? Maybe. Yes. 100%. Fine, she’s a hot mess, but will she read you poetry aloud, until her voice is hoarse, and her lips go dry? Without a doubt. There are sticks and jars of lip ointment all over the place wherever Abby resides.

Fun fact: Abby hates when her lips feel dry, even slightly. She is constantly reaching for ChapStick and all its cousins. Whenever someone tells her she should stop using her precious lip stuff because it will improve the sensory nightmare in the long run, she’ll immediately do that pouty, nose crinkle thing at them and ignore the advice without a breath.

• Abby lets you wear all her sweaters. That’s a given. But when you’re depressed, she tends to reach for yours as well. It helps her feel close to you when she’s dealing with her own inner turmoil.

• She doesn’t fuck around when she senses you’re starting to spiral. Her routines are extremely important to her, but she will put them on pause to be there for you.

Now, does she gently, lovingly, force your ass to go on walks with her to get some fresh air somewhere you feel comfortable? Yeah, she does. This might be annoying at times when you’re really struggling, and she knows it. She’ll still encourage movement in a way that is manageable for you if leaving the house is too daunting.

If that means you’re standing on her feet, arms wrapped around her neck while she sways side to side with you, so be it.

• She'll binge-watch your favorite shows and movies with you until she drains all the power in the entire city.

• Abby won't make you feel awkward if you cry. She'll just start crying, too, even if she tries so hard not to. She gets better at keeping it to a little glossy eyed moment, but sometimes your pain is her pain, and the dam just… breaks.

• Abby is an actions over words type of human. She’s a doer. Also, timing doesn’t matter much to her. She is desperate to give you a future to believe in because she is so certain that what the two of you share is everlasting.

Abby proposes to you when your hair is a mess, and you’ve been in the same pajamas for days. Fuzzy teeth? Fear not. She isn’t afraid of the hard times. Her love is an anchor. A constant.

She wants to remind you that you’ll never have to face your dark times alone.

Shadows dance on the tapestry walls of the blanket fort, illuminated by the warm, flickering lights hanging inside. Across from you, Abby lounges with her legs stretched out and her back propped against a pile of soft pillows. She’s quiet for a moment, fiddling with something in her hands.

“You know,” she begins, her voice gentle and husky, like gravel smoothed by unrelenting water. “When I was little, I used to make forts like this with my dad. We’d sit in the middle of all the chaos and just… talk about random shit. Nothing outside could touch us.”

As she glances at you, there is a small, almost shy smile playing on her lips.

“That’s what this feels like—being with you. Even when everything else seems like it’s falling apart, you’re my safe place.”

Abby leans forward, her knees brushing yours, and you realize she’s holding a small velvet box. Her confidence wavers, revealing a hint of vulnerability you rarely see.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while. About us—what we mean to each other.” Her voice cracks a little, causing her to pause and clear her throat before she continues.

“I know you’ve been feeling lost. And I know I can’t fix it, even when it kills me—even when all I want to do is make the hurting go away. But I can promise you this...”

She opens the box, the ring glimmering in the soft light, her affectionate, earnest gaze meeting yours.

"I promise you'll always have someone by your side to help you through it. No matter how dark it gets, I’ll be right here with you. For the tough days, the good ones, everything the world throws at us. Because you’re it for me. You always have been."

With each word, her voice grows softer, filled with an unmistakable tremor of emotion.

“Let me be your person forever. Let me love you, fight for you. Let me build you giant blanket forts until we’re way too fucking old to do it by ourselves—and then let me find new ways to take care of you. Because it’s all I want in this lifetime. You’re all I see. Will you marry me?”

#abby the last of us #abby x fem!reader #abby x masc!reader #abby x reader #abby x you #abby tlou #tlou2 #abby anderson #abby anderson tlou2 #tlou #lgbtqia

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angel-dustspo · 3 days ago

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How would you recommend balancing things like school and work with all of the healthy habits you partake in? This is my biggest struggle :/

Hiii, thats a lovely question, thank you so much!! I used to struggle a lot with time management too and would constantly skip one thing to do another. It's interesting how humans live on a constant "not enough" basis: "I didn't sleep enough", "I didn"t work enough", "I didn't sweat enough". It's important to always actually think of all the little things that you did do today and to celebrate every small win of the day.

My most helpful time-management tips:

✮ Limiting social media

I'm not a social media person at all, but that's because I chose to stop mindlessly scrolling some time ago and get my life back in order, and I've never been happier with any decision that I ever made.

I don't use any social media except Tumblr and Instagram once in a blue moon. I used to have every app there was and my screen time could go even up to 12 hours a day, but now I post my stuff on here and chat with a few friends once every few days and that's mostly it. This alone gives me at least 8 more hours of free time that I can use towards any activities more useful than scrolling or liking stories, anddd it's so peaceful and you get so much more mental clarity from it. That's the only way I found that made me be present in my daily life and enjoy every little moment.

✮ Multi-tasking

This probably isn't the best for me, but I too don't have "enough" time in a day to do everything I want or should. My thing is that I walk a lot in my room while doing anything I have to do on my phone, and I also walk while brushing my teeth, getting (un)ready or even reading sometimes. Another thing that I do is to read or do extra school work in my breaks at school.

✮ The "eat the frog" method

It's something I saw on here, and I actually do it unconsciouslly a lot. My approach is that the first thing that I do in the morning in the hardest task of the day or just something productive. I get up, drink my water and start reading/doing my homework straightaway. I found that this helps me be so much more productive and makes sure that I don't procrastinate forever and actually get my work done, and I highly recommend this method!!

I hope this will help you to become better at managing your time!! Good luck on your joutney, take good care of yourself and I'm so proud of you <333

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brucebocchi · 15 hours ago

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Ranking 2024 anime, Pt. 5: #10-1

hey, this post is also available on my ko-fi, so please check it out and consider tipping/donating as i do this for free and am currently between jobs. you can find part 1 of the list here, part 2 here, part 3 here, and part 4 here. all of my seasonal reviews are on my ko-fi and under my anime reviews tag, mixed in with my occasional musings. thanks!

And we are in the home stretch! I didn't want to split up my top 10 like last year, so it took a couple days to get it all together. Thanks for your patience.

As you may have noticed, some of these reviews are longer than others. I've reviewed most of these shows before, so I didn't want to be too redundant while talking about shows I've already reviewed. You can, of course, go back and read my initial reviews in my previous seasonal roundups.

Also, I just wanted to quickly shout out a few shows that I haven't watched much or any of, but would likely have placed well in these rankings, namely Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction, YATAGARASU, the Spice and Wolf remake, Orb: On the Movements of Earth, Sound! Euphonium's third season, and the late Akira Toriyama's SAND LAND and Dragon Ball DAIMA. I only have so much time in a day, week, month, and year, but those series have been on my radar and I do intend to pick them up sooner or later.

But for now, let's focus on what I did watch. Off we go:

10. Blue Box

This is a slightly biased placement on my end because I picked up the manga this year and quickly fell in love with it, and I’m just happy that it got a faithful, well-made anime adaptation. If you have an issue with that, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: This whole list is biased. It’s MY list, after all.

After an uneven summer output between My Dear Friend Nokotan and Suicide Squad Isekai, WIT Studio is in full form adapting Kouji Miura’s gorgeous high school sports romance. Rising first-year badminton player Taiki has a huge crush on his basketball star senpai Chinatsu, who practices in the same high school gym he does. He’s happy enough to keep a friendly distance as they improve at their respective sports, but that distance is closed significantly when her parents go abroad for work and she ends up moving in under the same roof as him. The spirit of competition is in the air, and is that a whiff of romance I smell as well?

The reason I felt the need to call out my own bias at the start is because Blue Box’s debut cour is, on balance, probably just “pretty good,” but I was just so overjoyed that this anime even exists that I was willing to overlook the early story’s growing pains. Taiki, of course, is the POV character for most of the first cour, and most of the romantic tension we see so far is entirely from his end as he swoons and huffs and goes into cardiac arrest over any and every gesture Chinatsu throws his way. You know, teenage boy stuff. There have been criticisms that Chinatsu doesn’t get much interiority for a bit and that she’s a bit of an enigma in terms of her role in the central “romance,” such that it is so far, which is a valid criticism of a lot of shonen romance stories. I’m generally of the mind that these things are more potent when the object of the protagonist’s affection is treated as more than a puzzle for him to solve, but I think Blue Box does a fine job of establishing what Chinatsu means to Taiki before we do indeed begin to get a feel for how she operates and what she might think of him. If you found that part a little maddening early on, trust me when I say it’s worth sticking it out.

Regardless, the character writing is what made Blue Box such a hit in Weekly Shonen Jump. Taiki is a flat-out good kid, if a little naive, and his boundless determination to achieve and exceed his goals in both badminton and romance makes him easy to root for. Chinatsu is fairly taciturn, as mentioned, but that’s by design; she’s a notoriously difficult person to read, as even her friends and teammates note that they can rarely decipher what she’s thinking. She’s still an effortlessly charming character, and it’s not hard to figure out why Taiki’s got it so bad for her. The real highlight of the series, though, is Taiki’s classmate and longtime friend, Hina, a rhythmic gymnast and an absolute troll. She is an absolute delight in every scene she’s in, whether she’s knocking Taiki’s knees out from under him, focusing on rehearsing her next routine, or prying into Taiki’s love life and realizing that, oops, she really cares about him too. Hina is wonderful and I just want the best for her.

Characters this likable will need the voices to match, and I am over the moon about this show’s casting. Shouya Chiba is tremendous as Taiki, in a far cry from his Epic Based Stoic Chad role as Ayanokoji in Classroom of the Elite. Every line read for Taiki sounds exactly as gung-ho about sports and devastatingly down bad for his crush as you’d expect of a hormonal 15 year old. Reina Ueda is terrific as the soft-spoken Chinatsu, but I’m looking forward to hearing the always-delightful Xanthe Huynh (Haru in Persona 5, Marianne in Fire Emblem Three Houses) take on the role in the dub just as much. Akari Kitou channels much of the same gremlin energy she did for KamiKatsu to portray Hina’s mischief, and I look forward to hearing her nail Hina’s excellent upcoming character moments. And although it’s a secondary role, the casting I was most excited to hear was Chiaki Kobayashi (Mash in Mashle, Stark in Frieren) as Taiki’s teammate Kyo. Kobayashi’s languid tsukkomi affect was exactly what I had in mind whenever Kyo would put Taiki’s lovelorn antics into stark relief in the manga. It’s like he was born for the part.

This show looks tremendous, perfectly adapting both the soft, doe-eyed character designs from the manga as well as the lower-detail gags. The pastel color palette and gorgeous lighting effects are exactly what I was hoping for while reading the manga. If I have any complaint, though, it’s mostly that I want to see more of the sports action. The granular details of the badminton matches and basketball games are hardly the focus of the story, but the action panels are usually the best part of Miura’s art in the manga. Shot-for-shot, it certainly does hew close to the manga presentation, but it’s mostly a racquet swing or close-up jump shot followed by an onlooker’s reaction. I’d have liked a bit more follow through. The CGI used for background competitors can get a little distracting after a while, too, but it’s easy to forget about.

Blue Box is continuing into 2025, and I’m waiting for every new episode with bated breath. If you liked the first cour enough but still have doubts, trust me when I say it just keeps getting better. I look forward to coming back to the second half of this season in another year for my victory lap.

9. Girls Band Cry

This is one of the most inventive girls-band anime out there, certainly the most so since that one from 2022 that I swore I wouldn’t bring up by name. Gorgeous 3D-CG animation, stirring original music, and a compelling cast of characters combine to make Girls Band Cry even more than the sum of its parts.

More than anything, I think what makes Girls Band Cry a terrific showbiz series is that it depicts the uncomfortable reality that a lot of artists are just flat-out unpleasant people and often don’t mesh well with one another. Protagonist Nina is messy, stubborn, and angry at the world and her parents and will not hesitate to make it your problem. She butts heads with her friends and bandmates at any provocation, but stubbornness is a major driving factor in the plot: Each of the five members of Togenashi Togeari has something they’re trying to move on from with their music, and while they each have an opinion on how to get there, they do come to realize, after a lot of silly yelling matches, that they want to do so together.

As a vehicle to push Girls Band Cry and Togenashi Togeari as a real-world multimedia experience, this show is a success. It’s a terrific-looking show in ways we rarely see outside of Studio Orange productions (and allegedly Love Live! Sunshine!!, which director Kazuo Sakai also had a hand in); the 3D computer-generated character models and animations are terrifically expressive and lively, and creative visual effects add a compelling sense of synaesthesia to Nina's emotional highs and lows. The voice cast, all pseudonymous contest winners, are also the real-life band members, and they fully nail both elements of their roles. TogeToge’s music in the show is terrific, and as an already-existing Gorillaz-esque virtual band, I’m excited to dig into their back catalog.

Girls Band Cry finally got an official English translation, so there’s no longer any excuse to sleep on this one. It’s funny, it’s heartfelt, and above all else, it fucking rocks. Don’t let this one fade away just because you might’ve missed it when it aired.

8. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, second cour

When I ranked the first cour of Frieren as the best anime of 2023, I wrote:

The debut season of Frieren will continue into 2024, and if the quality remains a constant, it could very well be one of the best anime of next year too. It has remained as MyAnimeList’s top-rated anime ever for its entire run, warding off the legion of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood fans. Frieren deserves it.

A year later, it is still MAL’s top-rated anime, and by a healthy margin. Another 12 episodes aired to kick off 2024, and it was indeed one of the best anime of this year as well. I stand firm in my convictions that not only is it one of the best anime of the decade so far, it’s one of the best anime I’ve ever seen.

I really shot my wad by praising Frieren so profusely midway through its run, to the point where I still don’t really feel the need to add much more here. The second cour mostly focuses on the First Class Mage exam arc, allowing us to learn more about the present state of magic in the modern day and adding some much-needed depth to the cast. It continues to strike a lovely balance between the quieter moments and bonkers action sequences, as well as the more serious moments with laugh-out-loud goofiness. It may be a lesser arc in this story, but it would be a standout in so many others.

If I haven’t been clear enough, I remain over the moon about Frieren. The second cour looks and sounds just as incredible as the first, and this show’s success should serve as a reminder to the industry that investment in quality pays off. Madhouse knows they have a banger on their hands, and if the next season can maintain this level of production value for the major arc that is still to come, Frieren may very well earn GOAT status. Even if another season somehow never materializes, I’ll still be talking about this season in five years when it comes time to talk about the best of the decade. Watch this goddamn show.

7. A Sign of Affection

For all the romance anime and manga I consume, I’ve shamefully been lacking on the shoujo/josei front. I really gotta fix that. If reading more shoujo was what spurred Yukinobu Tatsu to make DanDaDan, then who knows what it might do for me? A Sign of Affection isn’t my first shoujo, strictly speaking, but it does feel like one of the first I’ve seen of the good old-fashioned flowery romance type.

What a gorgeous show. A Sign of Affection looks terrific, sounds terrific, and above all feels terrific. This is just a lovely, fluffy romance with low stakes and easy payoff; just two pretty people getting to know each other and learning to overcome their differences. It’s low on gimmicks and plot contrivances, and for as much as I like romcoms and romance stories with a unique bent, I love a good straightforward romance just as much sometimes. Everyone looks beautiful and likes each other and Jesus Christ look at the lips on these boys. There’s even a double-date to Costco, and what better depiction of marital bliss could there be?

I’m still pleasantly surprised at how this show handles the main character’s disability. Protagonist Yuki’s congenital deafness isn’t a single-note character quirk or a plot device to make her seem helpless; it simply is. It’s a part of her life that serves as the lens through which all of the people in her life see and treat her, and it leads to the only thing that resembles a major conflict in the show. Itsuomi, the main romantic interest, doesn’t baby her or walk all over her; he instead gently tests her boundaries while learning to accommodate her in a way to ensure her comfort. Her childhood friend Oushi, on the other hand, is very jealous of this development because he seems to feel entitled to her just because he did the bare minimum to accommodate her. The circumstances aren’t common, of course, but it’s a good lesson for a shoujo to have: Don’t settle.

My praise for A Sign of Affection mostly boils down to “it’s just really nice,” but it does “just really nice” so goddamn well. It’s fluffy, it’s comfy, it’s cozy, all of those adjectives that would set off my fight-or-flight response if I heard them from someone else, but I was enthralled by this show week in and week out. I can’t believe I neglected to start reading the manga, and I’m gonna have to get on that ASAP because I can’t wait for another season.

6. The Apothecary Diaries, second cour

I found myself more intrigued at The Apothecary Diaries at the end of 2023 than most other shows I’d watched that year. I grew more and more invested in the idiosyncratic Maomao as she investigated mysterious ailments and navigated imperial palace politics, all the while being a lovable little shit.

Before I’d realized it, though, the 2024 half of its run knew it had its hooks in me and took me for a ride. What looked at first like a series of one-off puzzles quickly began entangling into a much larger mystery, rapidly gaining momentum until exploding into a massive emotional payoff. So many of the small details in what you assume are episodic mystery-of-the-week mini-stories become relevant in unexpected ways and draw you in ever further. I adore this kind of lowkey long-term storytelling, and for it to be part of such an appealing package is basically catnip for me.

For as gorgeous as The Apothecary Diaries can be visually, sonically, and sometimes even emotionally, it’s worth mentioning that this show is also hilarious a lot of the time. Maomao is on permanent goblin mode whenever she isn’t carrying out official business, and any time the palace officials have to rein her in is a delight. The push-and-pull between her and Jinshi is endlessly entertaining to the point where I can wait forever for that payoff if I have to.

I neglected to read the Apothecary Diaries manga after the first season went off the air (though I nearly bought all of it sight unseen), and with the second about to drop, I guess I’m holding off for another six months. Can’t say I mind, though. I’m along for the ride and I want this show to keep surprising me for as long as it can. This is easily one of the best anime of the 2020s so far and I’m gonna be there front row center for every new episode.

5. Bang Brave Bang Bravern

People say “peak fiction” too goddamn often these days. Not that it was a meaningful term to begin with, but it’s been memed to hell and back and is mostly just thrown out ironically to mock garbage writing. To be honest, I’m not above it myself, but I prefer to ascribe it, even jokingly, to stuff that can only truly come from a brilliant and/or deranged mind. Preferably both. Peak fiction, to me, is the intersection where talent meets insanity, no matter the degree of either.

Bang Brave Bang Bravern is peak fiction.

I gushed about this show after the winter season, and I almost don’t want to say anything further about it, mostly for two reasons: Firstly, because I don’t really want to give the game away any more than I already did back in April, and secondly, because I think it may have permanently burrowed into a specific part of my brain and then melted it. All I’m left with is “this show fucking rocks, dudes rock, you need to see it, it’s peak, don't ask questions, just watch it.”

Indeed, Bravern is the Dudes Rock anime of the year, and an essential piece of Dudes Rock media. It’s Top Gun with aliens and a giant talking robot. And the robot wants to fuck his pilot. This show is loud, horny, stupid, and self-aware, combined just so into a cocktail of legitimate brilliance that is, for better or worse, unlike anything I’ve seen before or since. Nearly every single episode had me clawing at my hair and shrieking “WHAT THE FUCK AM I WATCHING,” and that is the highest praise I can give just about anything.

I might be overselling it just a touch, but Bravern is just as earnest as it is utterly wild. It’s an intentionally hilarious show, but it means everything it does and says. It’s a love letter to mecha anime and tokusatsu, and with its top staff sporting Gundam and Macross bona fides, that love oozes into every aspect. The mechs, both manmade and alien, all look tremendous, the music is a throwback to the goofy bombast you’d find in series like this as far back as the Showa era, and the ensemble cast outside of our silly leads are just as gung-ho and serious about Saving The World as you’d find in just about any other mech show. Anything that can be this goofy with a completely straight face is going to hook me in.

All in all, Bang Brave Bang Bravern is hypercompetent lunacy with heart. Call it weaponized genre awareness if you must, but it knows exactly what it’s about, grabs you by the collar, and takes you for a ride, all while doing badass tokusatsu poses and calling out special moves with silly names. This is legitimately what fiction is all about.

Also, if you don’t like Lulu just because she screeches a lot, you’re a weakling. Gaga-pi, motherfucker.

4. The Dangers in My Heart, season 2

This was a series whose first season was conspicuously absent from my 2023 rankings, but I caught up shortly after finishing that list in order to catch up to the second season. I’d watched a glut of slice-of-life romances in 2023 and figured I could afford to miss this one. I’m overjoyed at how wrong I was.

To paraphrase the second season’s exceptional OP, The Dangers in My Heart is indescribably beautiful. As I said with A Sign of Affection, I love me a straightforward anime romance, and this middle school slice-of-life is just that: Underdeveloped edgelord boy ends up making unlikely friends with, and falling for, the cheery popular girl in his class. This is easy wish-fulfillment on paper, but that’s hiding the trick: Kyotaro isn’t gonna get anything he wants by keeping his quills out for anyone who comes near, and he has some growing up to do if he’s ever gonna get what he wants.

Season 2 picks up right where the first left off, with Kyotaro’s arm still broken from his family trip and Anna feeling guilty because she thinks her distraction was what led to the injury. Right out of the gate, we see the care these two have developed for one another: Anna wants to help while he can’t do his own schoolwork, while Kyo is quick to try to cheer her up when she no longer feels like she’s able to. Already we’re seeing Kyotaro’s character development coming to light: The Dangers in My Heart isn’t a story about a Nice Guy getting the girl just by being there; it’s a story of self-improvement, of trying to become the type of person whom your crush would want to fall in love with. For a story about and ostensibly marketed to early teenagers, that’s a good lesson to have, and I absolutely devour stories like that.

As can be the case with plenty of adolescents, most of the conflict here is internal. Kyotaro spent the early part of his middle school education keeping a safe distance from everyone in order to avoid getting hurt, and as you can imagine, that did a number on his self esteem. Though he’s mostly kicked the chuunibyo mindset, Kyo still prefers to keep his distance, less because he doesn’t want to get hurt, but now because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone else. Specifically Anna. So much of this story is about him learning to be okay with letting people in and not just falling in love, but making friends and becoming somebody whom people just want to be around. It’s a chuuni rehabilitation story. You love to see it.

With all due respect to mangaka Norio Sakurai, the biggest surprise that came from reading the manga was how much better the anime looks than its source material. The anime looks tremendous in its own right, but compared to Sakurai’s doodly, occasionally messy style, the love put into the show stands in stark relief. Characters, backgrounds, and lighting are all soft, squishy, and warm, almost like the entire thing was run through the filter through which only a 13-year-old in love can see, even as a little edgelord. Little flourishes in the environment and music highlight the minute but consequential motes of progression in Kyo and Anna’s relationship. The OP ended up shaking out as my favorite of the year, even with 2024 being bookended by Creepy Nuts bangers. It’s that special to me.

And just like that, The Dangers in My Heart went from “eh probably not for me” to “yeah this is one of the best anime of the decade so far.” It’s a simple slice-of-life romance on paper, almost literally so in the manga, but this is a transformative adaptation. There’s much more of the story to tell, and I wouldn’t complain about more, but as it stands after two seasons, The Dangers in My Heart is damn near perfect as it is.

3. Oshi no Ko, season 2

Another year, another season, another top-four finish for one of the best manga adaptations I’ve ever seen.

The anime adaptation of Aka Akasaka and Mengo Yokoyari’s showbiz-revenge manga made shockwaves last year following its thunderous feature-length premiere, and its source material made even more waves due to some questionable plot developments that fortunately went nowhere. Doga Kobo was undeterred by any negative attention brought to the brand, though, and pressed forward into the next arc with a level of swagger you rarely see brought into an anime’s sequel season.

The 2.5D stage play arc in Oshi no Ko’s manga wasn’t my favorite, but it was one that you could tell just from reading it would translate well to the screen. Even then, I wasn’t prepared for just how hard Doga Kobo would go in adapting it. Character animation is sumptuously fluid, color used to amazing effect, and personal expression bursts forth into impressionistic abstraction to such a degree that it made manga artist Yokoyari cry. Everyone looks and sounds incredible beyond any way I could’ve imagined from reading the manga, which, at the risk of sounding defensive, is still very good as a whole.

This being a story largely about the music industry, the music remains as on-point as ever. It’s too soon to tell if the second season’s OP/ED pairing tops the instantly-iconic “Idol” and “Mephisto” from the first, but these are no slouches. This season’s OP, “Fatale,” is a whiplash-inducing banger by Tatsuya Kitani and idol Kento Nakajima, performing under the collaborative name of GEMN (itself a relevant name to the show; twins without the i/Ai, DO YOU GET IT???) with visuals that might actually top those of Idol. The new ED, “Burning,” is Hitsujibungaku at their fuzzy, 90s-style alt-rock best, and it takes on a brand new meaning by the end of the season. Of course, there’s also the story-relevant music; while the bulk of the season focuses on the stage play, the last few episodes give us a glimpse into the pop music process, with the season capping off with an in-universe music video that, while not sonically my exact cup of tea, features 90 seconds of some of the best-looking dance animation I’ve ever seen in my life. That’s a flex if I’ve ever seen one.

And just like the first season, the second capped off with an announcement that Oshi no Ko will indeed be returning for another season. At this rate, and with the anime’s success, they will adapt the entire work, which will raise some eyebrows. I’m not going to litigate the manga’s later controversial developments nor its widely-panned ending, but if Doga Koba was able to handle everything that came before those things with such aplomb, I have faith that it will at least be done well.

2. DanDaDan

I want to preface this by saying that I agonized over whether this or the final entry is my anime of the year. I’m comfortable with what I chose, but if I’m being realistic, DanDaDan is basically 1b. This is a masterpiece already.

Although the source material was a bit of a cult hit until this year, DanDaDan came with a considerable amount of hype. If you were even peripherally familiar, it wasn’t hard to see why: Yukinobu Tatsu’s art is absurdly detailed in almost every panel, character designs are easily recognizable (one of the leads dressing similarly to a Persona 3 character was fortuitous for the anime to drop in the same year as Reload), and so many bizarre things happen in the plot that relaying them to anybody who wasn’t already familiar would make their brain briefly touch the void. Above all, though, Science SARU was tabbed to animate it, and any project by them is immediately worth your attention.

Sure enough, DanDaDan made an instantaneous splash, its first episode adapting the manga’s bombastic, twisty 63-page opening chapter nearly beat for beat. I’m not gonna “don’t look it up, just go in blind” this one, but almost too much happens for me to properly detail it all without just writing a complete synopsis. It boils down to “lonely nerd boy believes in aliens, angry kogal believes in yokai, it turns out both are real and now they have to deal with it.” It’s silly, it’s wild, it’s action packed, and if you can stomach the sexually-compromising alien abduction of the girl, you’re along for the ride.

I’m not gonna harp too much on that last point. It does stink that the female lead, Momo, is stripped to her underwear for the sake of alien sexual “research,” but said aliens get their comeuppance before anything happens to her. It’s still not great, and it’s not the last time female characters are portrayed in their underwear, but I do promise it’s for story reasons, it takes a backseat to the onscreen action and is pretty clearly not done for the sake of fanservice. I know such things can be beyond the pale for some people, but if you think you can compartmentalize that, I recommend you watch the first episode with that caveat in mind and decide from there. You may be pleasantly surprised.

DanDaDan is effectively two stories at once; on one side, we have Momo and the boy, Okarun (a nickname Momo devised for him to preserve her own sanity), gaining wacky supernatural powers in order to fight back these occult threats and regain what was stolen from Okarun from his first encounter with the unexpected (IYKYK). Because these threats can come out of nowhere, their daily high school lives can completely pop off without warning. On the other side, we have quieter slice-of-life tension as Momo and Okarun get to know (and frequently misunderstand) each other and realize they are completely and hopelessly head-over-heels for one another.

Surprise, motherfucker: DanDaDan is a romcom.

Yukinobu Tatsu, formerly an assistant on the first saga of Chainsaw Man, long struggled to get his own work serialized. At his editor’s urging, he read something like a hundred manga for inspiration, including several shoujo romance series. That research shows through in DanDaDan; although the bonkers action sequences and off-the-wall monster designs are what draw in readers and viewers alike, what’s kept this many people along for the ride is the beating heart just barely under the surface in the form of the romantic tension between Momo and Okarun. It’s easy to write this off as some “lonely nerd gets the cute gyaru just by being a Nice Guy” wish fulfillment, but that’s not really the case here; Okarun was a weird little twerp right from the jump. Similarly to Kyotaro in the aforementioned Dangers in My Heart, Okarun believes early on that he’s nowhere near Momo’s league, completely unaware that she quickly grows to actually like having him around, so he puts in the effort to become a more well-rounded person so that he can be confident enough to be seen next to her. He also just wants Momo to think he’s cool, and she thinks that’s adorable. And she’s right! These two are cute as fuck together.

So you come for the wild action and stay for the tremendous character dynamics. It should go without saying that Science SARU nailed all of the above, but I’m gonna say it anyway. Reading the Manga+ comments on each chapter as I read through the manga, readers were begging a top-flight battle shonen studio like MAPPA or WIT to pick up the series, and I think these fans got more than they bargained for. Masaaki Yuasa hasn’t been in charge of a series at the studio since Eizouken, or anything they’ve put out since Inu-Oh, but his influence is all over their recent works, including last year’s fellow top-three series, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. It’s beyond impressive how, much like Scott Pilgrim, this series manages to maintain the source material’s art style while still looking very much like a Science SARU anime. Everyone is bouncy and malleable as their moods dictate, line weights are wildly varied, and action animation is kinetic and unpredictable. Each fight with an alien or cryptid is awash in eye-searing color or eerie greyscale. The music is a boatload of fun as well; even putting aside the Creepy Nuts OP (banger after banger after banger from those dudes) and Zutomayo ED, regular proceedings are punctuated by a wildly varied score, from funk to folk to an insane chase scene set to an electronic mashup of the “William Tell Overture” and the can-can. Everything about DanDaDan keeps you guessing.

I was looking forward to DanDaDan enough that I went to the theatrical premiere of the first three episodes and was sufficiently blown away. If you’ve seen the show, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that it looks and sounds incredible in a cinema setting. I left the theater positively buzzing, telling anyone who’d listen that they had no idea what was coming, but even knowing the entire story, I wasn’t prepared for more of what was to come. The literal next episode after what I’d already seen in the theater had one of the most bonkers action setpieces I’ve seen since Gurren Lagann, and just four episodes later an unbelievable emotional gut punch, prior knowledge of the manga be damned. Every single aspect of DanDaDan as an anime was given the same level of love and care that Tatsu put into his own work. It’s one thing for an anime adaptation to be faithful to its source material, and another entirely for it to elevate and transform it. DanDaDan is somehow both.

If there’s anything that held this back from being the anime of the year, it’s that this season kind of just… ends. With the 12-episode runtime that was given to the debut season, DanDaDan ends its first run right after the beginning of the manga’s next arc, which feels bizarre. There’s no resolution, but there’s no real cliffhanger here either. Which I kind of get, the story is driven by a constant forward momentum, but a little warning that the season was ending would’ve been nice. It’s only a six month break until the show comes back, but judged on its own, the way this season ended left me feeling a bit cold and the season itself feeling incomplete. Even shows that have year-long breaks between cours rather than seasons tend to put some kind of cap on each individual run, but DanDaDan just kinda left the toilet unflushed, and next to it a Post-It note promising to come back later. For something this lovingly crafted, that seems like a bizarre oversight.

That was hardly enough to temper my enjoyment though. Anything this well-made is deserving of the attention and success it’s attained, but to have this story, with these characters and this level of bonkers action made this well, is just an embarrassment of riches. And God help me, I’m shamelessly greedy. July can’t come fast enough. I need all of it.

1. Delicious in Dungeon

At the end of its run midway through the year, I declared Dungeon Meshi the best anime of the year up to that point and that I’d be impressed if anything would manage to overtake it. Though the other two entries in my top three made extremely strong cases, nothing else quite hit the spot and nourished the soul quite like Dungeon Meshi.

Barely a year removed from one of 2022’s best anime, Cyberpunk Edgerunners, Studio Trigger kicked off 2024 with another Netflix original, this time with its first proper manga adaptation since the studio split from Gainax a decade prior. It seemed an odd fit at first to have a studio known for wacky, hyperkinetic action productions like Kill la Kill and Promare to adapt this quirky fantasy dungeon manga, but hey, they also did Little Witch Academia. It turned out to be an odd fit, but in the best way: Dungeon Meshi is pretty offbeat as it is, so for it to get picked up by one of the more oddball prestige studios ended up making a tasty stew.

I struggled to elaborate on what makes this show so good after each of its cours, and six months later I remain a little lost for words. It’s an exceptional story adapted exceptionally well. Between the characters, the story, the setting, the emotional stakes, the comedy, the highs and lows, they nailed it all. Trigger just gets it. Even when characters go off-model for the sake of an intentional animation quirk, it still has that inimitable Trigger charm to it. It sounds just as good as it looks, too: The orchestral score highlights the quieter, sillier moments just as well as the tenser action setpieces, the foley work behind the dungeon’s bizarre and varied flora and fauna is immaculate, and the cast is perfect in both Japanese and English (I rarely ever say so but seriously, shout out to the dub).

I’m just as sick of saying “this show speaks for itself” when I have trouble finding the words as you probably are of reading it, but I have little else to add here. I’ve written plenty already. Just go watch it. This is already one of my favorite manga ever, and by the time the series wraps up at the end of its second season, it will easily end up as one of my favorite anime ever.

#anime reviews #blue box #girls band cry #frieren #a sign of affection #the apothecary diaries #bang brave bang bravern #the dangers in my heart #oshi no ko #dandadan #dungeon meshi

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agentoffangirling · 16 hours ago

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As the Supreme Court is now hearing arguments on the TikTok ban, I feel like this is an excellent time to remind everyone that getting rid of TikTok is NOT a good thing

And the reason I bring it up specifically on here is bc I have seen far too many people claim that the ban is for the better, that they're so glad it's gone, that people spend way too much time on it (side note, that's social media in general, it's not just TikTok babes. You're spending 15 hours on Tumblr alone, I'll bet). Even if you don't use TikTok and you absolutely hate its guts, trust me when I say you'll want it to stay

Firstly, there's been very little evidence that TikTok's Chinese owner, Bytedance, has been data mining Americans on order of China. Majority of the evidence has not been released to the public and the stuff that has has been censored. Of course the risk that it could exists-- but you cannot simply assume it's doing this all the time, 24/7, when no current evidence has been presented

TikTok has been taking massive steps to insure that American data is protected, primarily with Project Texas. All American data is stored in the United States and controlled by Americans. Again, American data is with AMERICANS

It is also one of the very few apps that is not dominated by American companies. Does no one find it odd that the only foreign-owned application is being singled out, when companies like Meta and Google have arguably done worse damage? Is no one pointing that out?

Due to this, it allows for less mainstream news to flourish on the app. Palestinians have been able to raise their voices and call to attention what is happening in the region, and activists have pushed the crises of Congo and Sudan to the forefront. No other major social media app and news organization has done this, in fact, Meta censored pro-Palestinian content and immediately toggled on a feature for all users that limited political content

And TikTok is just the start. If it gets banned, do you really think everything else is safe? You think you're safe here on Tumblr? On Ao3? On Instagram? NO

At some point they are going to start going after other apps. They'll celebrate and pat themselves on the back that they "protected democracy" but really they limited free speech. They limited alternative voices. It is not an "if" but "when" they begin going after apps that do not conform to their every single standard

If TikTok goes down, they all do

#also tiktok funnels a TON of money into the us economy #there are so many small businesses on tiktok that will have nowhere else to go #there are massive consequences to this #tiktok #tiktok ban #united states #supreme court

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stopbuggingm3 · 1 day ago

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An interpretation of Slenderman I love is the idea of him as a stalker, a predator, and a manipulator rather than a powerful or aggressive force. His tendrils and demon face/non-face? Cool as hell. No arguments there. But to me the way he's able to get into people heads and break them from the inside out the way he does is much more terrifying.

He's used force as a means of control before, such as with Kate, Masky, and Hoody, but he also leans heavily into manipulation tactics like he does with Alex, Toby, Cat Hunter, and Bones.

Slender, in my interpretation, manipulates and controls his proxies by taking away their identities and making them dependent on him. This can be seen in each of the proxies. Toby, Kate, Masky, Hoody, Cat Hunter, and Bones (just walk with me here) all had parts of their identities stolen by Slender in one way or another.

In my mind, Masky and Hoody were brought back by Slender/The Operator after the events of Marble Hornets to act as his proxies. Slender saw something in them, whether it be their strength, skill, cunningness, etc, and decided they were too useful to let go to waste. But, as their track records show, this isn't something they'd ever accept willingly, and so had parts of their identities taken when they were brought back to ensure their loyalty to Slender wouldn't slip (why wasn't Alex brought back? idk ask Skully i haven't read the MH comics yet. For now lets blame it on his temper making him too likely to step out of line.)

Kate I'm admittedly undecided on as of right now. Her psyche is definitely damaged, having part's forcefully torn away as a result of Slenders torment, but whether or not her animalistic behaviour is a learnt behaviour in order to cope with what's been done to her or a direct result of Slenders torment is unknown. She won't say, and she won't leave either. That's not an option for her anymore, she knows that much at least.

Cat hunter is a mix of both, in a way. His push to become a proxy was forceful, with Slender physically making him kill his father, but its the blows to his self worth and constant reminder of his actions that cause him to remain as one. Guilt has taken away his self worth, and all he can do is try fill the hole best he can with what he has

Toby had his memories from before his time with Slender removed, taking away any sense of identity he might've had before becoming a proxy and making him dependent on Slenders protection for survival. Where else would he go? He doesn't have anyone else, he's a wanted criminal. And besides, life with Slender is good. He clings to that false sense of freedom without even knowing why he holds it so dear. Why would he ever want to leave?

Bones has had her identity tampered with by Slender since she was young to the point she can't discern what parts of herself are truly herself and what parts were planted there by Slender. She grew up with his voice in her head, convincing her that his words are her own thoughts and that she can't be free unless she is with him. "That violence? That's normal. They don't understand you here, you don't have anyone. You're trapped and alone but I can set you free. Don't you want that?" She doesn't know who or even what she is without him and his "guidance". He's all she knows. He's all she has.

The proxies will never be free. They're going to die out there in those woods at the hands of a monster. And the worst part? Most of them don't even know they're trapped.

#creepypasta #slenderverse #creepypasta fandom #creepypasta headcanon #creepypasta proxy #creepypasta oc #headcanon #marble hornets #creepypasta ticci toby #creepypasta kate the chaser #creepypasta cat hunter #creepypasta bones #mh masky #mh hoody #mh alex

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obsidianpen · 16 hours ago

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unpopular opinion: admit it or not but no glory would've been more popular on ao3 than blood & gold if it wasn't locked, considering it's popularity on tiktok. even big accounts on tiktok about fanfic recommendations and stuffs, recommends no glory and their videos is always a hit. don't get me wrong i'm a blood & gold fan, like seriously. but i think no glory is more closer of getting popular along side of manacled, like seriously check tiktok and search no glory and all videos are hits. everytime i search blood & gold on tiktok hoping if some people read it, i barely see any videos compared to no glory. is this a sign to read no glory?😭

well this is certainly part of the problem - something being popular on TikTok is NOT a surefire sign that it’s a good story. There are a LOT of amazing fics that aren’t on TikTok. Like most of them probably. And honestly, I’ve seen some pretty atrocious ones get posted about and reccd there, particularly in tomione. Cough cough.

let’s talk about the tiktokification (and adjacent, instagramification) of fanfics! Like all things, I think there are good and bad parts of this. I think it can be fun when readers like a story so much they make a TikTok about it to hype up the author. That’s how the exchange of fandom is supposed to work: the writer makes and shares a story with the world for free; the reader says thank you by providing feedback in the form of a comment or in this case, reccing it on social media, maybe even going as far as to make a fun video or edit. Fine. Fun. Go at it.

(side note to give special thanks to all fan artists; I think I speak for most writers when I say this is the BEST???? Fanfic inspiring fanart is the best exchange ever, true fandom love)

where I find a problem with TikTok and all that is when writers themselves are hyping up their own work on social media like it’s a job, making catchy funny videos with the intent to reach many people as possible and blow up - on a site that where posts can be monetized. It feels very cringey to me. Like, ulterior motive-y. Sorry if I’m offending anyone with this take, feel free to disagree and do your thing!

but on to No Glory’s presence on TikTok - truly, this was a surprise to me when I first saw it. I don’t agree that it would be ‘manacled popularity status’ because… it’s harrymort. It’s a far cry from Draco and Hermione, that’s for sure (not that I can’t and won’t make a solid argument for how canon compliant - though admittedly very fucked up - harrymort is!). I think it’s fair to say that No Glory is a bit of a ‘despite the’ situation, meaning, it is somehow popular despite having graphic torture, death, trauma, rape, etc. And none of those things are done lightly, nor are they ever excused (the murderer/rapist is not pardoned for any of his bullshit nor is he coerced into doing any of it; he is a Villain, capital V). So yeah, it’s surprising to me that it is as popular as it is, given all that AND that’s it’s a WIP, seeing as there is also (I think) a big trend for people only reading completed fics (these folks are almost missing the point of fandom and how it works and they suck, but that’s a different rant).

I’m losing the plot. Er, I don’t think NG being locked for a while would have made TOO much a difference, but maybe it would have - I’m sure people were sharing it with those who didn’t have accounts and so it probably would have more ‘hits’ or whatever if it hadn’t been. But all in all I don’t think it would be ‘manacled popular’. Because Harry is a (poor young) man, Voldemort is Voldemort, the age gap is both much too large and much too small (if it were an inhuman number of years, book tok logic says it becomes okay again), and everything is so fucked and unforgiving almost all the time. And not in the cute ‘I can fix him and everything!’ way. In the ‘there is nothing that can make him redeemable ever so I’m going to disassociate until I implode over and over again’ kind of way.

#No glory #harrymort #rant #I was a trying to use a specific tag for when I go off like this but I already forgot what it was #was it #optalks #I dunno man we’ll just go with rant from now on I think

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should-know-better · 2 days ago

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A conversation through Instagram?

This post 'And if you're thinking of ME, I'm probably thinking of YOU, made by @thetruthisfictional made me think - WHY did Alex decide to point at the Mirrorball / Miles representation on that day?

So delved a bit further. A huge thank you to @nicoscheer for keeping such accurate records of Miles' stories and posts. It made this so much easier. (Also, this is all just my wild theory and I have no proper proof as usual.)

Friday 22/09/2023 Who knows what started this all off, but on this day, Miles posts two stories:

The lyrics for "Seen The Light" include: "Well what you do is up to you, / I'll take my hat and push on through," (full lyrics in link)

"Infa Riot" lyrics include: "time to take control again and be the only one." "It's not too late to free your mind" "cos I don't think any-one cares." (full lyrics in link) This could be interpreted as either Miles saying that he's going to be who he wants to be, OR if it's a message to Alex, it's suggesting that he stands up for himself.

So what happens?

Saturday 23/09/2023 Arctic Monkeys are at the Pacific Colosseum in Vancouver and debut, "HELLO YOU.” I know that AM could have been pre-planned that they were doing this track tonight but to me, the timing?? Idk it just feels so coincidental.

It's as though Alex is answering with that final hopeful verse, about in the future he'll go back to being that person he was aged 17 (the meaning behind, "Hello You," discussed here.)

To try to keep this short(ish) I'll quickly say that Miles posts more stories where he's having a a nice Saturday night in with Maxie, then out for Sunday lunch with his Mum. The music accompanying these are all from The Beatles, (which ties in with his Mum being there) but he could have chosen any songs, and these all tie in with the ‘conversation’. They can all be seen as having a double meaning (1) as an accompanying to the story and (b) a message to Alex. Check out the lyrics from each track:

Roll Over Beethoven - (esp verse 6 and "the jukebox blows a fuse" - there's a post referring to Alex as a jukebox here!)

This Boy

Do You Want To Know A Secret?

Monday 25/09/2023 Amongst the breezy 'up and at em' post that Miles makes, and, the feeling lazy Jim Royle stories, there's two more tracks.

The lyrics from "Good at Breaking Hearts," lyrics could have been written about the Milex LA split, they are so apt. However, the main theme behind, "Chunky," is to keep the party going and carry on as long as you can.

Again, if these are just random songs that Miles likes, then it's very spooky, because the next thing that happens is...

Tuesday 26/09/2023

https://www.tumblr.com/standingnexttome2012/772210477873938432

During Body Paint, Alex points at the Mirrorball and sings, "if you're thinking of me, I'm probably thinking of you."

I'm not sure if this is the only time he does this, but in many of the clips I've watched, he doesn't. So, once again, why on this date? Another coincidence? Am I just fitting song lyrics to a narrative? When you look closely, there seems to be something going on.

#also adding that in Dublin Alex mentions Miles before Bodypaint #my main point is the timing of hello you and mirrorball pointing #instagram conversation theories #my crazy theories #sorry another long post #miles kane #alex turner #tlsp #milex #mk insta

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loolilyumm · 19 hours ago

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I really like your interpretation of 3! Would be super excited to hear more about your 8 (or any other characters) :D

YAY THANKS FOR THE ASK!!! And I am so sorry about the late reply. I literally forgot I had this drafted 😭 I actually already rambled on about 8 a couple of posts ago - If you scroll down (or look for the agent 8 tag on my acc) you’ll find it! I think so much about her I hope you enjoy…!!!!!!! I’m so happy you like my little guys :))))))

AHEM Since you said..any other characters….I DO HAVE OTHER CHARACTERS!!!!! NOW I AM GOING TO YAP ABOUT MY AGENT 4!!!

THIS IS ELLIS! I actually love drawing him so much. I will admit that I have not thought too much about his backstory BUUTTT he makes up for it in personality!

Ellis was about 16 during splatoon 1, and he moved to the city for college when he was 18. Shortly after, he was recruited to the NSS by Marie. As of splatoon 3, he is 21 years old! He mains the Slosher Deco.

He is a freakishly tall lanky dude. He’s very book smart but acts goofy and stupid and snarky and lacks common sense. He’s a bit of a flirt and Marie acts like she can’t stand him. They tease each other a lot but they genuinely care for each other a LOT! But they’d never admit it!! Ew gross!!

He feels like a bit of a disappointment to his parents because he was supposed to be going to this fancy college in the city, but ended up leaving it and becoming an agent full time. PLUS he can’t tell them that he’s a secret agent saving the world, so they just think he works at a gas station or something 😭

Hero mode was a totally new experience for him. Marie never doubted him though. Now he’s an extremely talented agent. He’s really good at coming up with strategies and is extremely intelligent on the battlefield. He’s just so goofy that everyone forgets he’s actually smart.

In the beginning, he didn’t know who the squid sisters were at ALL because he basically lived under a rock until moving, and he was like, “pff, you can’t be that big of a deal.” LMAO.

He and Marie quickly became best frenemies. They often teased each other and had a lot of good banter and really good chemistry. Ellis developed a little crush on her but never thought it would be reciprocated!

One night, Ellis was injured on a mission. He is very deliberate about his missions, always having a plan - so he rarely gets injured.

When he came back, he saw a side of Marie that he’d never seen before. She was worried for him, helping him with his injury. The two of them realized that this was serious work. Ellis could have died. It also brought Marie to a realization. She really, really cared about agent 4. There was maybe a little crush starting to form…!!!

But the two of them STILL haven’t done anything about it. It’s been 3 YEARS. They are the definition of slow burn. Just because neither of them wants to admit that they like the other.

Near the end of splatoon 2 hero mode, Ellis became an agent full time and dedicated all his time to finding Callie. And they did!!!!! It was super awesome yay!!!!!

Currently, the NSS is bigger than ever before and they even made agent 3 the captain.

Ellis is still a goofball and loves to be silly with Callie and agent 8 (Olive.) Those two are like his sisters. The New agent 3 (Margot) is a little off putting but that doesn’t bother Ellis at all. Every once in a while, he works a salmon run shift with her, and it’s crazy how good she is.

Ellis understands that 3 and 8 went through a lot down in the metro and wants to do anything he can to help them free the sanitized octolings. (This is what led to him working on the memverse with Marina!) Sometimes the agents go down to the empty remains of Kamabo to see if they can find anyone. They are usually unsuccessful but it seems to clear 8’s conscience.

I still don’t really understand side order. Um. I kind of didn’t like how it was all virtual 😭 maybe I will make it a little different just for the sake of story. Idk yet. But yea!

That’s all I have on Ellis, he’s my boy! I think he’s my favorite to draw, and his design has been the only one not to undergo any change.

And that concludes my agent yap sessions! If you guys want to know anything about them (or send them asks or something) my askbox is always open! I love answering questions :) ((even if I am a little slow ahhhh sorry!!))

But yeah!! I’ll make official character sheets and stuff sometime soon :D thanks so much for sticking around if you made it this far!! 🫶🫶

#Lily yaps #Ellis/4 #fanart #side order #splatoon #splatoon 3 #splatoon fanart #digital art #procreate #agent 4 #inkling #new squidbeak splatoon #splatoon 2 #octoling

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echantedtoon · 2 days ago

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A Lover's Circle (Poly Haishira x Reader) Ch26 Red Means Many Things

Taglist: @shadyd3ar @jcrml

@tengensangel @miniverse-zen @mysteri0uz @jjamsbangtan

@the-unknown-fandom

@lavenderdropp @mimisweetz. @purplesoulsapphire

@kksmush @denkpanda18 @whomisi @lessthanimperfect @silver-rin

@namis-noodlebox

@k1ttyluverz @akiramente

@rascalraccoon @ravenclawkae1

@gilded-sunrays @crescent-blades

@yukari1k @bloodymarysgirl21

@artbyrebel @abaker74 @lunarluna9482

@rainbowidol @lanabanoms @whatarewe-choppedliver

Remember if you want to be added to the taglist lemme know

(The dress Y/n wears to the dance is above. Not mine. Found on Pinterest.)

"Gyomei. Y/n. Will you do us the honor of going to the dance with us?~"

There was absolute silence as you both stared at Tengen still on one knee(or in Gyomei's case blindly facing their general direction). For a full awkward minute there was nothing but silence all around other than the distant squeals and yells of children down the hall behind you and the clock to ticking on the wall.

You blinked as you stared at the men and women before you. Once. Twice. Shaking your head to be sure you saw what you were actually seeing and it wasn't a daydream or something else. But no. They were still there. Tengen on one knee and the others looking expectantly in suspense or nervousness. What was going on?

"What on earth do you all think you're doing?"

You ended up jumping as the deep voice of your boyfriend came out but it wasn't his voice that made you jump but the tone of it. F/c eyes glanced up at him as your neck craned to look at him and you stood there stunned by the deep frown set on his face. Eyebrows furrowing and lips tight as they turned down at the ends. You were not the only stunned person in the room because Tengen had also been rendered speechless by his sudden shift in personality.

"I-.." He started unsure of what to say as were you. "We-Well she mentioned that she never had a good experience with a dance so...I figured it would be a good time to ask her out?" Slowly he stood back up free hand rubbing his head with a nervous grin.

However his explanation had the opposite effect of what he was hoping because the taller man only narrowed white eyes harder at him. "Ask her-...What on Buddha's green earth are you going on about?"

"Well...I mean .." And for once the usually composed and confident Tengen faltered under the intense gaze of the taller man looking everywhere but his blind gaze and your shocked expression. "It ..was way more romantic in my head."

"I think what Tengen means is that we wanted to express what we feel now." Kanae mediated in the voice she usually uses when having to talk down Sanemi's temperamental spats or convince Iguro to not do something rash. With a calm smile she held up her hands. "The fact of the matter is, Mei...I think keeping it under wraps any longer would just hurt everyone in the long run by not telling her."

The much larger man crossed his arms still clearly unimpressed by the sudden bombshell dropped on you both. "And you all thought announcing it like this in public and without discussing it with ME first would be a good idea?"

"Oh. We didn't come to confess." Tengen once again held up the flowers as if he could smell them better. "We wanted to do that later. We just thought it'd be fun to give Y/n a good dance for once."

"..Is-...I-Is that what this is all about?" You had finally found your voice through the shock and immediately your boyfriend snapped his head to you in question. You glanced at him, then at the others, before sighing and gesturing to Tengen. "Um..Last month I mentioned that I.. wasn't going to the dance. Then Tengen asked me why and we'll.." You guiltily shrugged. "I happened to mention the only dance I've ever been to was just another bad date in my book of a bad dating life."

"Yeah! Exactly! I think you deserve to have a good time!" He struck a pose. "And what other flamboyant time would you have than with us?~"

Gyomei was silent continuing to stare at you before he sighed and reached a hand up to rub his face. "....You should have at least ASKED me first."

"We know. We're sorry. We just wanted it to be a surprise for you both."

"Well I won't deny it's really sweet of you guys to offer to go with me, but like I said I really wasn't planning on going." A disappointed 'Oh' left Mitsuri's mouth and you immediately felt bad that they had literally gone through all the effort to ask you. Getting you and Mei flowers and taking time away from classes and work to ask you in person. "But..." Immediately their heads perked back up. "It would be fun to hang out with friends for a night."

"SO YOU'LL GO?!," Mitsuri yelled out making Sanemi since next to her.

You shrugged. "Sure. It's not like I'd be doing anything else that night." Your head then turned up to Gyomei. "But only if you want to go. I'd hate to go without a date."

He hummed loudly. "..Agreed." white eyes turned back to the group of people who stood there. A firm hand pointing at them all. "But if you all are accompanying her, it's going to be strictly just as friends. Do I make myself perfectly clear on the matter?"

"Oh yeah. Absolutely. Totally fine."

"Good. Then if you all don't mind we have to get back to work." He turned half way before pausing in seeming quick realization before turning back to point at them firmly again. "Tomorrow evening all of us are going to have a VERY important talk. Whether everyone likes it or not."

Everyone exchanged looks similar to spooked children knowing that they had done something wrong and were going to get scolded by their parents. You rose a brow confused at all of them but before you could say anything a large pair of hands was already turning you around by the shoulders and ushering you back to the nursery and daycare. Your neck craned to look over your shoulder at the quickly disappearing people before confused you turned back to the irritated giant.

"Mei, what just happened back there?" You jabbed a thumb over your shoulder. "What did Tengen mean by confessing?"

He didn't say anything at first before he sighed tiredly. "I'll explain everything to you but let's wait until after work so we can properly talk."

You were highly bewildered about everything that was going on right now but didn't have a chance to say anything else about it when your boss poked her head out of the daycare in question to what was going on, holding a little girl sipping on a juice box on her hips.

"Is everything ok? Lacey said there was a big commotion outside."

"Everything's ok," you assured her holding up a hand. "Some friends just wanted to stop by is all."

Her brows furrowed. "Well tell them they can't just visit you during work hours. Those parents pay for good childcare and we can't just drop everything for some chit chat!"

"I'll make sure they know."

"Good. In the meantime come help me pass out this veggie platter. It's snack time, and you get back to the nursery before those babies start crying."

For now you both got back to work handing out the little snacks and taking care of the babies, but you were highly concerned about what happened just a little while ago...You HAD a good idea now of what was going on and it made a rock form in your stomach at the thought of it. But you were PRAYING that you were wrong and just overanalyzing things.

You really, REALLY hoped you were wrong.

It felt like forever as you both worked trying to get your mind off what just happened but you couldn't, especially when Sanemi came to get Koto as usual. Only this time he gave you a large smile and lingered a little bit longer before he had to move for a tired dad holding a cup of coffee coming to pick up his daughter. Oh no. You had a bad feeling about this. The nervous rock in your stomach grew from a pebble to a rock to a boulder through the entire routine of cleaning up and leaving, only to run into the giant man waiting for you in the lobby.

The sight of him took you aback. You hadn't seen him so dead serious before as he turned to you the moment he heard your familiar footsteps. There was no room for dilly dally. Your mouth opened to say something but found nothing came out. Instead he only silently reached out to put an arm around your shoulders and guided you outside.

The drive back to your home was silent, felt like an eternity driving back in the awkward silence even though it really wasn't more than maybe fifteen minutes or so. But with each stop sign or red light, your worry grew more and more intense with each passing moment. Until you finally got back to your house and walked through the crunching snow towards the door. Each crunch was like glass breaking in the silence between you both as you just silently fumbled with the keys and eventually was able to unlock the door before letting yourselves inside.

"Are you hungry?," you finally decided to break the silence going to remove your coat and scarf.

He shook his head. "No. ...I think we should talk now and not stall the inevitable."

"Right. Right."

His head turned following your movements as he listened to his girlfriend shuffle on over to the sofa and sit down. After a moment he joined her walking on over to slowly sit down with a sigh, both hands reaching up to rub his face. There you both awkwardly sat in the silence with him bracing himself for what was ahead until he eventually gave up and just turned to her worriedly.

"Well there is no getting around the subject. I want you to know that no matter what happens next, I very much love you and enjoyed our time together." A large hand patted around until he found one of yours and grabbed it. "And if you want to break up after this then I will completely understand that and respect your decision-"

"Whoa there!" You held up your other hand to stop him from spouting anymore. "You're jumping the gun there, Mei. Why would I ever want to break up with you? You haven't done anything wrong."

"Perhaps not but you may change your mind once I tell you what I've been dreading to tell you ever since I spoke with Kyojuro."

"Mei." You squeezed his large hand with both of yours in assurance. "Whatever it is I won't get mad. I promise. You can literally tell me anything and I'll listen. I promise."

He stared at you for a long silent moment before he shakily inhaled and exhaled. "Alright then. But I must warn you to brace yourself. The news will greatly..shock you."

"Tell me. I can take it."

"Alright. I'm just going to say it how it is." He looked dead at you more serious than ever before. "My partners have fallen in love with you."

Silence.

Gyomei say there face still facing you and serious. You sat there holding his hand and smiling still, f/c eyes cartoony wide. The processing of words hung in the air between the two of them as the pregnant silence continued to go on and on.

".......... Come again?"

"My partners fell in love with you."

"......Define love."

"As in they are VERY romantically interested in you." More silence came from the darkness in front of him causing him to tilt his head at you. "Y/n?"

"...Oh. Is that all?"

"Are you alright? You sound.. shocked."

"I think I am in shock."

"I'll go get you a glass of water."

"Yeah..thanks."

You continued to sit there staring off into space as he slowly got up to go fetch a glass of water. Leaving you sitting there, alone, and staring wide eyed at the wall. If was quiet for a very long, LONG moment before a sound that could only be described as a cross between a choke and gasp escaped your throat.

What?! How did-..Why were they-....HUH?! You didn't hear that right! You couldn't have POSSIBLY have heard that right! There was absolutely no way a whole bunch of your friends just happened to fall in love with you! No, no, no! That must've been a mistake! You must've misheard him! They loved you.. platonically! Yeah! Like how you loved Murata As a brother figure! Or how you loved your Aunt Dakita! Or-...Or Gyomei was playing a joke on you! Yeah that must've been it! Just one big joke and he was going to say sike any moment-

You blinked as a glass of water was suddenly held up to you and you blinked before slowly looking back up to you. "Here." Gyomei slowly sat back down on the sofa making it dip under his weight. "This might help calm your nerves."

"T-Thank you." You shakily took it from him and just stared at it for a long moment. "...This..is t a joke. Is it?" There was still a shred of hope that it was but that ship sank as he slowly shook his head.

"No. I'm afraid I'm quite serious. However I didn't think they'd want to make a grand gesture like that."

Wait..

You snapped up to him again. "Wait. You KNEW how they felt the whole time?!"

In turn he quickly held up his hands. "I was not aware of them all feeling this way. As far as I was aware only Mitsuri, Kyojuro, Sanemi, and possibly Kanae had feelings but they agreed to not overstep any boundaries when I had spoken to them. There wasn't any real changes in behavior with anyone else so I assumed that they had just started to view you as a very good friend."

"So you weren't planning on telling me that at least four of your partners liked me?" You raised a brow at him and for once he looked guilty.

"I-...*sigh* No. They were all in agreement with me to not overstep because they wanted to support me in the first successful relationship I've had, and you all were getting along so well that I was afraid of what might have happened if I ruined everything by scaring you with this."

"You wouldn't have ruined anything!" You insisted frowning with annoyance. "I'm dating YOU, Mei. Even if they confessed..Uh..I guess they had. But nevermind that. I want YOU. I like them too but I'm gonna have to let them down. I'm more mad that you didn't trust me with this."

The man's face blinked in surprise from where he sat but it quickly became guilty again. "I know. No amount of apology is going to make that alright. I'm-.. I'm so very sorry."

You inhaled deeply and in response chugged down the water making him blink as you placed it hard against the coffee table with a thud. Standing up, he blinked more turning his head following as you began to randomly pace and rub your face.

"This....Is crazy."

"Im very sorry. If you wish to call things off I completely understand."

"Mei, I'm not breaking up with you over people having a crush on me." You clarified firmly rubbing your temples still. Why did all these complicated dating things happen to YOU?! WHY?! WHAT DID YOU DO IN A PAST LIFE THAT WAS SO BAD THAT YOU WERE CURSED WITH A TOPSY TURVEY DATING LIFE?! "I'm just... processing everything right now."

"Oh." He sounded completely surprised at your response. "You are taking this rather well."

"No..I'm just very numb to sudden stressful things happening to me by now." You slowly inhaled before exhaling. Ok. Think about this logically. "Ok. They all have feelings for me right?"

"I think we have already established that yes."

"And if I reject them then they'll completely understand right?" You turned to his puzzled face.

He slowly nodded. "Of course. They are not bad people."

"Then our problem is solved!" You brightly smiled. "I'll just let 'em down gently and see can all move on like nothing happened!"

"Would you agreeing to go with them to the dance not contradict that?"

You waved him off with a PSB sound. "You already established that we'd all go as friends. There's nothing to worry about."

He didn't look like he believed you for a moment. "How about we calm down?" His head glanced at your still pacing feet. "A movie and pizza sound nice?" Something that could distract from this awkward situation right now.

"Yeah, yeah." You nodded taking a deep breath in. Pizza sounds pretty good right about now. "I'll order us some wings and some drinks too. And maybe some of those chocolate cakes from Pizza House."

"Sounds delicious."

Spoilers alert!! You in fact did NOT forget about anything that had happened to you that day even with the small date night you both had. You just kept the entire thing in your mind and kept you up late that night making you tired all next morning on the drive there and even as you plastered on a customer service smile to greet the awaiting parents and kids. Feeling that dreaded feeling elevated once a man with white hair came walking in.

"HI, NICE LADY!!," Koto announced loudly waving his tiny arm at you with a bright smile.

You did smile genuinely to the toddler. "Hi, Koto. Are you ready for another day here? Ms. Lacey is gonna be reading another chapter of Pete Rabbit today."

"Yay!! Bunnies!!" He cheered reaching out to you as you easily heaved him out of Sanemi's arms with a smile.

"Oh. You getting to be so big." You spoke adjusting him on your hip before looking at his big brother expecting to be handed over the diaper bag of extra clothes, personal toys, and anything else Koto needed.

Sanemi did plop down the black backpack onto the front desk, but you were also surprised when he placed down one of those giant gift bags you'd buy at the local store for big birthday presents or something. "We forgot to leave these with you yesterday." Sanemi spoke to you with a smile before reaching out to ruffle his brother's head, smiling brighter as Koto giggled. "Right. You be good, Big Man. I'll be back and then we can go play at the park for a little bit."

"Yay! Snow!"

"And I-" You jumped as he looked back to you and pointed smiling. "-will definitely be seeing you later, Babe.~"

You froze staring wide eyed as Sanemi turned and just left without another word walking out as happy as can be with his little brother waving a hand to him. "Bye bye, Nemi!"

You continued to stare at where he left, holding the door open for a young mom and her baby before he really left, before stiffly turned to the giant gift bag and slowly reaching out a hand to pull back the top. You saw a whole bunch of flowers, mostly red roses but there was a bunch of different colored ones too, that peeked up to you. The same flowers they had been holding just the other day.

It was definitely hard to pretend to get through the rest of the work day and greet Sanemi again once he came back to get his little brother and of course your boyfriend noticed despite not being able to see you. Guess you weren't disguising your voice well enough to hide your nerves because he pulled you aside before you had a chance to go out to your car.

"Y/n, are you alright?"

"I'm...fine. I-I think I'm still nervous about this whole situation, and confused. Bu-But I'll be ok." You put the bag of flowers behind you hoping he wouldn't be able to smell them. "I think I'm just going to go home and take a hot shower and long nap."

He hummed raising a brow before slowly nodding. "Alright. It's understandable you'd need time to process this entire situation. Do you want me to walk you home?"

"No. I can drive. Do you want a ride?"

He shook his head. "No. I still have that long talk to give to them." Oh yeah. You'd forgotten about that. "I'll be seeing you later. And, Dear."

"Yes?"

"You might want to put those flowers in some water before they start withering."

Crap-

You decided that you did not want to stick around for whatever fireworks would come from Gyomei talking to them and did go straight home with your unlikely gift. Also you had decided to not bring up Sanemi's little flirt to Gyomei in order to spare him from whatever further trouble might arise from it. Instead you tried to just forget everything else was going on but was not meant to be because the very next day you had to face Sanemi again and you were a nervous wreck going to work and changing into your pink apron and awaiting the arrival of Sanemi as usual. Except the white haired man came in with the most guilty expression you'd ever seen on him as he walked up to you, Koto absentmindedly playing with a toy in his hands.

"Hey," you greeted him with a smile.

"Hey...Look. About everything that happened this week," he started looking guilty at the countertop. "We're all really sorry for springing everything on ya."

"Oh." You guessed that whatever Gyomei said must've stuck with them, or at least for Sanemi it did. "I-It's ok." He rose a brow glancing back to you. You raised your hands. "Really. I'm not mad. Actually I'm more shocked about it and confused than anything else."

"Yeah. Well Mei didn't seem too thrilled about it last night. He made us all promise to apologize to ya before he could forgive us."

"Well it's understandable. You guys should've talked to him first before doing anything, but I'll him know that you apologized and see if I can get him to calm down. Ok?"

He looked surprised. "Wait. Really?"

"Yeah. All's forgiven. Do you still wanna be friends?"

"Hell yeah! I mean-" He quickly cleared his throat before glancing around. "I mean yes. That'd be great..Thanks. I mean it."

"I know you guys do. While I appreciate the whole-" you gestured between you both. "-gesture, I think it's best we all just stay friends."

Sanemi sighed. "Yeah. I figured that'd probably be the result of this."

"Don't be upset. I'm happy you guys were honest with me, just maybe next time go about it a different way. Will you tell everyone else no hard feelings and we can stay friends?"

He nodded slowly handing over his baby brother. "Yeah. I'll drop a message in the group chat before class."

You lit up brightly glad things would go back to normal. "Thanks, Sanemi. I'll see you later."

"Um. Ye-Yeah." He turned to go. "You too."

You watched him start to leave before a cheeky idea crossed your mind and you smirked. "Oh, Sanemi." He stopped to raise a brow back to you in question. You smiled evilly. "You're absolutely ADORABLE when you're shy.~"

"EH?!"

In an instant his face went from pale to a dark cherry red as he stared at you making you instantly start giggling. He sputtered out something that sounded like a flustered peacock noise before quickly turning to leave, accidentally running into the door with a loud THUD, before frantically scrambling to shove the door open and run out.

You couldn't help but giggle louder at his flustered state. "And to think people find him scary."

"Nemi not scary," Koto piped up in your arms.

"No. You're right. He's actually pretty cute.~"

You turned to go take Koto to the daycare and got halfway down the hall before you stopped. A realization dawning on you. You thought Sanemi...was CUTE. ..Uh oh. Well that's fine. You can admit someone was attractive without being attracted to them. For example Murata was a decent looking guy, and your aunt was very lovely looking for her age.

Mitsuri and Suma was absolutely adorable with their bubbly personalities. Shinobu and Kanae were both very radiant. The rest of Tengen's wives were absolute knockouts. And speaking of the flashy man he's absolutely gorgeous! No wonder he's a successful host. Kyojuro was absolutely handsome too! His personality only heightened that. Sanemi was very handsome in that rugged bad boy way even though he was nothing but a sweetheart. Obanai was similar to Sanemi, but he was more charming in the tsundere sense all shy and cute when he gave you that poem and...And. ..

"...Crap."

A small finger poked your cheek as Koto scolded you. "Bad word."

You needed to talk to someone else about this, but it's not exactly like you could just talk to the people who like you because they might take your mixed feelings as a miscommunication. Gyomei was definitely an option but he might be upset again with them or you. Your first thought was Murata but knowing how he felt about your friends/boyfriend previously he'd probably just insist on breaking up with Gyomei. No. You needed someone who would be unbiased. Who'd listen to what you had to say. Someone who was REALLY good at helping people with their complicated feelings about love!

"-and I think I'm starting to lose it."

It had been the Saturday before Valentine's Day. You had to painstakingly wait the entire rest of the week between work and classes to get a chance to go talk to your aunt again. In the meantime dealing with the awkwardness of seeing Sanemi dropping off Koto, the girls at the cafe, asking Giyuu or Shinobu for class notes you missed, and Gyomei still being a little annoyed with them all. He'd mellowed out definitely hearing that Sanemi apologized to you and hearing you get like a million texts that night from multiple people asking for forgiveness but it was still awkward to an uncomfortable extent.

So now here you were. Sat down on your Aunt's sofa worn out from years of use but she refused to throw it away only gluing patches of fabric over the years so it looked more like a quilt than a couch. Head in your hands and groaning

The older woman in the room hadn't spoken a single word since she greeted you upon opening the front door and giving the go ahead to explain everything to her. The entire time she had all but done the usual thing. Instead of sitting down and looking at you like a normal person would when listening to someone poor their hearts out, she was busy humming away with a smile on her face and using a cloth to polish a few of her crystals. Her pet tarantula, Sir Fuzzykins McSpiderweb the Fourth, was absentmindedly crawling around the table she was standing at stopping when his owner placed down the rose quartz near him.

"Wow. This is way better than any romance novel I've read," she said waving a hand. "You can't make up this kind of stuff -"

"Can't you be serious for once!?" You shot her a scowl. "I'm starting to lose my mind here!"

"What's there to be lost over?" With a few twirls of her legs like a ballerina she held up her arms. "You've fallen in love at long last!"

"Yeah. With Gyomei! My BOYFRIEND?! You remember him. He's the guy who you told embarrassing stories too like the time I got stage fright in the school play." You scowled harder as she sighed in nostalgia.

"Oh yes. Such fond memories. You were the cutest butterfly." She waved her hand again turning back to the table of crystals. "But I know you're not going to stop howling like a dog until I get back on topic. So you say that these lovely young people proposed to you?"

"No. They didn't propose but they asked me out to a dance and confused their love." Your head fell into your hands again. "Now my boyfriend is made at them, and they're all... awkward. And now I think I'm going crazy thinking about them. But I can't possibly return those feelings because I'm already in love with my boyfriend!"

"Just to be clear-" She looked over her shoulder at you with a look that something should've been obvious. "We're both talking about the same boyfriend who is in love with eleven other people right? Why would he be upset if you also fall for them or they all fall for you? I mean doesn't that just make things more easier for everyone involved?"

"I'M NOT POLY!!" Your voice echoed out ringing off the walls and scaring Sir Fuzzykins into climbing up your Aunt's arm whom was completely unphased by your outburst. "GYOMEI IS!! Which I'm fine with that but I made it clear to everyone else that I was only dating HIM not his partners and everyone else was fine with that! But now I'm scared that I-..."

"That you might be polyamorous after all?"

"No! That I might upset Gyomei even further! And I don't know that! I can find someone attractive without being attracted to them! Like your favorite movie actor you think is really good looking."

She nodded in agreement. "That's true. But, Honey, I think you're misunderstanding something." Her hand reached out to rub Sir Fuzzykins's abdomen to calm him down from where he rested on her shoulder. "From what you told me, it doesn't sound like your man is mad at his partners FOR having feelings. More so he's angry about how they went about expressing those feelings without regarding him first."

Your brow rose. "You think so?"

She nodded humming. "Honey I see it ALL the time. It's like proposing to someone. There's factors you got to ask them about before you even think of proposing." She counted on her fingers as she listed off reasons. "Do they want a public or private proposal? Do they feel like they've been together long enough to propose? Is there a time or place they want to get proposed to? Do they want a gold or silver ring? Would that person even WANT to be married?" She looked at you. "Those friends didn't ask before making the leap and now they must deal with the consequences of it."

"Then what do I do to get Gyomei to stop being mad at them?"

"Nothing."

"Excuse me?"

"You're excused." You deadpanned looked at her again and she sighed before turning around to face you with Sit Fuzzykins in her hands. "Look. The fact of the matter is, they did that to themselves. There's literally nothing you can do to make him not mad at them. He's going to have to stop being mad in his own time. Don't worry. He's the understanding type so it won't be too long before everything blows over but you shouldn't push it. Relax and let everyone settle down."

You inhaled before slowly exhaling. "You're right. Mei's not the one to stay mad at anyone for too long." Especially people he loved. That's at least two things you didn't have to worry about. "But what do I do about my feelings?...If they even are feelings and not me overthinking things or me thinking I like them when I really only admire them or something."

"Oh that's easy. You tell them."

A duck sound went off in your head. "What? You're kidding me right?"

"Nope! If you want to resolve your feelings you need to tell them and your man and discuss things." She turned to go put Sir Fuzzykins back in tank. "Then together you decide what you want to do. Do you wanna explore these possible feelings or do you want to remain friends?"

"But I already told them that I want to just be friends."

"Ah. And THAT is why you need to have a talk. Because nothing gets resolved until people talk. I don't get why people avoid the most obvious solutions and play the beating around the bush until it's too late game?" She slowly placed the spider down on a heated rock before turning to you. "You wanted to know what to do? Sit down. Talk. And then decide what YOU want to do from there. THAT is what must be done. "

"But-" You groaned and ran a hand through your hair. "It's not that easy."

"Of course not. No one ever said it was easy. The phrase easier said than done is a phrase for a reason. But then again nothing about love is that simple."

"I know. I know but-...*sigh*" You deflated. "You're right. I just hope it's not going to backfire on me."

"Oh trust me. Everything's going to be ok in the end. Just be sure to do it as soon as possible. The longer you wait the harder it usually is."

"Yeah. I'm going to do it but I'm not gonna like it." You slowly stood up feeling both relieved and more dread. "Thanks, Auntie. I really needed to talk to someone."

She waved you off with a shrug. "Ah. Forget about it. What are family for? OH!" She suddenly perked up remembering something with a loud snap of her fingers. "That reminds me." The same fingers pointed at you. "You're going to the dance next week right?"

You paused staring wide eyed at her. "..How did you-"

"I told you my cards never lie," she said matter of factly before turning to start walking towards the den, her hand gesturing for you to follow her towards. "I know how important it is to you so I got you a little something to celebrate your first college dance."

"Got me something?" You were confused but followed her.

She walked on over to the door to said den before just opening the door and walking inside without a care in the world. You followed up to the doorway before stopping dead in your tracks at what was inside. Inside was a model mannequin, the kind you'd see in display windows at clothing stores.

But it was ON the mannequin that had you staring.

A beautiful silver and purple ball gown was draped over the mannequin delicately as the fabric fell to the floor and the ruffles sparkled in the right, as realistic roses held onto the waist and start of the parting of the first layer of fabric. Your aunt just lifted the entire thing up by the waist and brought it on over to you without a care in the world.

"You remember Mr. Satoshi right? The man that owns the bridal and tailor shop." She placed the entire thing in front of you. You knew Mr. Satoshi. Your aunt had helped him gain a lot of business from brides searching for that perfect wedding dress to teenagers who needed a prom dress before graduation to simple business men who just simply wanted a nice suit for that next business trip overseas. But you didn't pay attention to that too transfixed on the gorgeous dress. "He owed me a favor and I still had your measurements from when you were a bridesmaid for your cousin's wedding you remember that. So I cashed it in. Do you like it? I think he did a wonderful job."

"Oh my god. Is this real?" You felt like you were looking at another one of Tengen's paintings come to life. Your hand reached out to gently touch the soft fabric to make sure it was real. "It's real."

"For the amount of business I give him it better be!," your aunt laughed before smiling at you. "You're going to look beautiful, Hun. Take it with you. You'll need it next Friday."

"I don't... know what to say." You looked at her in awe. "Thank you."

"Ah. No need to thank me, Kiddo. But if ya really want to make it up to me, take a picture and give it to me for my scrapbook."

"Scrapbook? Since when have you kept a scrapbook?"

"Since you were that cute butterfly in the play."

"...I thought we agreed to not ever talk about it again."

You never knew how nervous you ever felt just by picking up your phone that night and staring at your phone's contact numbers in it. You hadn't really texted them since they bombarded you with apologies a couple of days ago, since then it had been nothing but dead silence other than the few times you had spoken to them in person. Perhaps Gyomei had told them to give you space or maybe they felt extremely guilty about what happened? Either way your Aunt Dakita was right. If you were going to solve this dilemma then you had to break the ice first. But who would you talk to first?

Someone who'd be the calmest of them all.

Sanemi was a bit too temperamental. Mitsuri too emotional. Kanae seemed like a good mediator but Sanemi might be with her. Shinobu seemed really calm but she might take it too seriously. Your first choice was Kyojuro but Tengen or his wives would be wife him and this was all Tengen's idea to begin with. He might take it the wrong way again and decide on another flashy gesture. In the end you decided to text who seemed the most calmest, most neutral, most patient person that wasn't Gyomei in the group.

Y/n: Hi, Giyuu. R u awake rn?

You sent the text and then waited. After a few minutes of pacing and checking your phone every few seconds you thought maybe he was asleep or something when a response finally came through.

Giyuu: Good evening, Y/n. Do you need some more class notes?

Whelp. No going back now. Taking a deep breath you sighed and continued writing.

Y/n: no. Is Shinobu there with you?

Giyuu: No. She's working a late shift. Why?

Y/n: I wanted to talk to someone about something important. Do you remember the day you guys asked me to the dance?

Giyuu: Yes...Are you made?

Y/n: Not at all. I just wanted to talk to everyone about it.

Giyuu: Why? Did you change your mind about going?

Y/n: No. But I did change my mind about the conditions of going.

He didn't respond right away. You continued staring at the phone holding your breath for what seemed like forever until he finally sent something back.

Giyuu: I'm confused. What do you mean by that?

You hesitated before breathing in. Well might as well be honest since you had already set the table.

Y/n: Do you remember when Mei said we'd only go as friends?

Giyuu: He made that very clear.

Y/n: Well I changed my mind about that bit.

Giyuu: You want to go with just Mei then?

Y/n: What if I said that I was thinking about going with you guys more.. romantically?

Again there was a longer pause. You were pretty much expecting this actually and why you chose Giyuu to send this too first because he'd hopefully have a calmer reaction to the news than everyone else. There was a good ten minutes as you watched the screen nervously before there was finally a response from him.

Giyuu: This isn't a joke right? Like to get back at us or something?

Well should've expected that question.

Y/n: No, Giyuu. I'm dead serious. Is everyone free tomorrow so I talk to you all face to face?

Giyuu: YES. WHERE AND WHEN?!

Y/n: everyone knows where Tengen's is right? I'll get Mei and head over there tomorrow to meet everyone. Will you please let everyone know?

Giyuu: Absolutely! I'll be waiting there tomorrow.

Y/n: Ok. See you then.

With that you breathed a sigh of relief out before taking a moment to breath. That was one thing down..only there was one other thing to do. Guilty picking up the phone and going through the contacts again before you stopped on one, pressing the call button before holding it up to your ear. It rang a few times before someone picked up.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Mei. It's me. You got a minute? I gotta tell you something pretty important."

***********************

"Are you sure you're not mad at me?"

"For the twenty third time no. I am not angry with you, but I will say that I certainly am surprised. This was not what I had expected to happen at all."

The ground was still caked in snow being February and the cold outside nipped everyone outside. For now it was just yourself and Gyomei squished uncomfortably in the passenger seat next to you but he didn't complain, in fact he seemed to be quite calmer now. Not annoyed like he had been the past few days, so maybe he was finally done being mad or the sudden news of you telling him you'd want to try giving this dating poly idea a chance was shocking enough to make him forget about ever being mad in the first place. Either way you were glad he was back in a normal mood.

"Well I just wanna be sure. Cuz I know it's really sudden and I know that I said I wasn't interested before..but something popped up and I really think I'd at least see what happens. I figured that the worst thing that could happen was that it doesn't work out and we can just go back to being friends." You turned to him. "Right?"

He nodded. "Of course. But are you SURE it's because it's something you want to do yourself and not something you're doing just to try and appease everyone?"

You nodded firmly. "Yes. I had like a week to think about it constantly." And you got help processing your feelings with the resident love expert. "I'm certain that it's at least something I want to try. If nothing comes off it, no harm no foul. But I wanted to make it clear to everyone else that's what I'm doing and not jumping into that kind of relationship before testing the waters."

He nodded. "That's a good idea."

As you drove, the familiar two story house came back into view. Tengen's home. The familiar knot in your stomach formed again as you slowly pulled up right in front of the home to a stop. Slowly forcing yourself to get out and hear the snow crunching under both your feet as you nervously stared up at the house.

"Are you nervous?"

"Is it that obvious?"

He chuckled walking around the car towards you. "It's quite alright. I felt the exact same way when we all spoke about trying this relationship, but I will be here for you if you need me."

You smiled at him already feeling better. "Have I ever told you how much I love you?"

He chuckled at him. "Plenty of times, but we shouldn't keep the others waiting."

Yeah. It wouldn't be right to bail on them after you just asked them all to be here for you.. Steeling yourself, you walked with him right behind you up to the door where you knocked and then waited. You both didn't have to wait long before the door opened up and eleven pairs of eyes stared at you both.

"Hey, Everyone. I think we need to talk."

****

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