#and he says it in many ways

[naluwalker]

Rinbachi, Rinbachi, Rinbachi

I have a lot of love for Rinbachi, so I suffer a lot from it being a somewhat strange couple within the fandom. This love comes in part from Rin and especially Bachira being my two favorite characters, so I like to constantly visit this couple's tag on Ao3.

My taste for crossover stories also makes me regret that there really aren't any good crossover stories about this couple, or at least I haven't been lucky enough to find any, so I'll start throwing out ideas here, to at least expel the insects that eat away at my brain.

Let's start:

Some time ago I found a Rinbachi fic in which after his fight with Sae, Rin simply sends everything to hell and leaves football to start dedicating himself to art, which surprised me quite a bit because considering that Rin is a person who literally he lives and breathes football one would think he would never give it up and continue like in the manga, using his anger as a shield and moving forward with determination and spite, but on the other hand, Sae also hurt him a lot and a normal person could also just let it all go and distance yourself from the sport simply so as not to be hurt again. If he doesn't have to play then he wouldn't have to see Sae again, right?

Knowing Blue Lock's Rin, he would never do it, but a Rin from a different universe could make this decision, and that's how this starts.

Attention to the crossover with Welcome to the Ballroom.

After the admittedly traumatic fight with Sae, Rin simply sinks into depression and abandons football completely. Just seeing a ball is painful, being on the field causes him a panic attack and he has a complete collapse. In another universe, the Itoshi couple does not pay much attention to how the relationship between both brothers deteriorates and the damage this causes in the future, in this Mayuri Itoshi, totally concerned about her son's mental health, but without knowing how to help she talks to her husband Jun to do something before Rin gets worse than he is and they both feel that staying in the house causes more damage than Rin can bear at the moment, so they send him to Rei Itoshi's house, the Jun's recently widowed mother, thinking it might be good for both of them in the long run.

In this way, Rin Itoshi ends up moving to her grandmother's very large mansion in Chiba.

Rei Itoshi is a woman of regal bearing, strict and cold like her name, without his grandfather by her side to soften her thornier side, Rin does not know how to interact with his grandmother and cannot even say that he knows much about her.

Despite this, Rin spends the first week of his new life peacefully, until Meguru Bachira arrives knocking on the door and making a fuss, disrupting his life again.

In another universe, Meguru Bachira and Rin Itoshi would meet years later in the middle of a survival of the fittest project created to test their desire for victory and, above all, their egos, in the Japanese soccer world. In this universe, Meguru Bachira was born with the opposite gender.

Having been born a woman, in a country like Japan and involved in a sport like soccer, no matter how much drive, talent or love for the sport she had, things were not on Meguru Bachira's side and unfortunately she was crushed by people's expectations around her, and the ensuing bullying caused her to leave the field halfway through her second year of middle school, even though she never put the ball down.

In the midst of the biggest downturn of his life, while dribbling around town, Meguru found himself helping a grumpy old woman find her lost purse. Having spent the next few hours helping said old woman find her lost bag, Meguru found herself approached by the old woman, who, having noticed her depressed state, sat her down next to her so she could tell him her worries and in that way, Meguru found herself minutes then crying profusely and spilling her guts in front of a total stranger.

The old woman patiently listened to the girl talk and vent for the next hour, about her situation, her desires, her dreams, and the damage that other people's expectations were doing to her, and that sometimes she felt like she was simply sinking, unable to handle her own feelings emotions and sometimes not even her mother's support could get her out of the spiral of anger, pain and sadness in which she was drowning.

By the time she finished, the night was closing in on them and Meguru's throat hurt, the old woman stared at her with her eyes the color of the frozen sea and she was beginning to feel uncomfortable. When she finally spoke, the old woman told her to see her the next day and gave her the direction of her house before simply getting up and leaving Meguru sitting on a small bench.

Meguru found herself the next morning standing in front of a mansion that was probably worth several times her own house and was beginning to feel nervous. When the old woman opened the door, Meguru was beginning to wonder if they were going to sell her organs somewhere before the grumpy old woman led her into the house and guided her towards a specific room, and when she entered, her mouth dropped open. what could only be a large ballroom.

The old woman introduced herself as Rei Itoshi, declared that Meguru would become a competitive ballroom dancer and that she was not allowed to refuse.

Even though any complaints she might have had crashed into the stone wall that was Rei Itoshi, Meguru decided to listen to the old woman and dove hard into ballroom dancing, and before she knew it, she was totally in love. It wasn't football and it would never be the same, but suddenly, Meguru didn't feel so alone or so pressured by others, and even if they still saw her strangely, Meguru found solace in the intensive training and muscle soreness that came with each day of training as she moved tirelessly around the room..

She learned a lot about dancing, and found herself becoming close with the woman who had forcibly brought her to the ballroom. She discovered that despite her strict and perfectionist character, Rei Itoshi was a bleeding heart and could not help others when she had the means to do so; that she had recently lost her beloved husband and was too stubborn to follow him so quickly, but the loneliness of his departure still haunted her strongly; that she loved her family, but without Kiyohiko there to soften her strong character she didn't know how to connect with them without being scorching and prickly; that she was worried about her eldest grandson, who was pursuing his dream abroad and barely communicated with his family; and mainly that Rei had been a competitive ballroom dance teacher for over fifteen years and had a gold medal at the World Games. She swears her jaw dropped when she heard that last bit.

As Meguru moved forward with competitive dancing, she ran into the annoying wall of her peers not lasting long. Either they couldn't keep up with her or they found her strange or creepy, and while the latter hurt her, the former were her main source of irritation. In soccer she could do things alone without them being a total impediment, here the partner was essential and she would throw a giant tantrum at Rei-baachan if she couldn't support her next partner for the time necessary to participate in competitions.

Then, while she was complaining about her situation she was informed that Rei's youngest grandson was moving into her house indefinitely and that she needed the boy to settle in and relax, so she had a week off and used it to find a competent companion or she wouldn't be allowed to train until she got one, much less participate in a competition. Meguru sometimes thought that Rei-baachan was a first-rate tyrant.

After a week of going around and asking every male acquaintance she had, Meguru finally returned with her tail between her legs to report her failure in her quest and face Grandma Rei's judgment, until she was met with the most turquoise eyes and the most toned legs she had ever seen.

Meguru Bachira only needed one look to decide that Rin Itoshi was the man she needed and she was determined to make her teacher's grandson her definitive companion.

On the other hand, Rin doesn't know how to get rid of this crazy girl who watched him for two seconds before jumping on him and asking, begging and crying for him to become her dance partner. His grandmother on the other hand doesn't even try to help him and she simply compliments the girl on her excellent eye for finding good men, Rin doesn't really want to know what that means. Thus, Rin Itoshi, like Meguru Bachira years before, finds himself thrust suddenly into a dance hall.

[cuntylouis]

Ignoring the real possibility he intentionally let himself be caught from the little we know so far Luigi Mangione's case is a fascinating combination of astonishing brilliance and confusing stupidity. This young man plans and executes his assassination and escape with such a meticulous care and calmness that it's suspected that he's a professional hitman. He comes up with Riddler-sque moves like writing his manifesto poetically on the bullets and leaving his backpack behind full of Monopoly money. He carefully wears a mask to avoid being identified but removes it because a woman who was checking him into the hostel was flirting with him and wanted to see his smile. He still manages to escape the most surveilled city in the country in the midst of ongoing national manhunt only to get caught in the middle of bumfuck nowhere Pennsylvania while eating at the McDonalds. Because for some reason he had the same clothes and mask as in New York and was carrying the same gun and suppressor. And when the cops detained him he showed them the same fake id he used in New York. And oh yeah he's a frat bro gym rat who has a masters degree in computer science from Penn but reads stupid self-help books about being on the grind and is 'anti-woke' while being bisexual suffering from anxiety and wanting to end oppressive capitalism. Not even god himself could invent a person like this

[ruushes]

sleeping arrangements (not sure tara would ever actually deign to sleep in the same 20ft radius as shovel but who can resist those big shiny insectoid black eyes 🥺)

plus:

[brucie-baby]

the fact that alfred was the one to put up jason's memorial is so important to me

[starcurtain]

Teyvat's "Most Down Bad" Award Goes to Alhaitham for a Second Year Running

Seeing everyone making fun of Alhaitham for his "stalkerish" tendencies in this event is funny, because I feel like a lot of people missed that "Be literally everywhere Kaveh is" has been Alhaitham's MO from the day Kaveh appeared in the game.

From only grabbing his house keys after Kaveh returned from the desert (he couldn't have had both sets of keys at the end of the Archon Quest unless he went home and got Kaveh's copy) to ditching conversations to get back to his house only after Kaveh came home, to showing up without any warning or explanation in Kaveh's hangout with some ridiculous excuse about hearing his voice through noise-cancelling headphones... Refusing to offer any help in the Temple of Silence story quest other than staying in the library with Kaveh...

Since when does Alhaitham willingly cover anyone else's duties?

But this trend of "Be everywhere Kaveh is" didn't start when they were adults. It was already in place when they were still Akademiya students--and it's a trend that didn't end even when they had their fight.

Even when they weren't speaking, Alhaitham dogged Kaveh's every step through published responses to Kaveh's research articles in academic journals. He insisted on keeping a line of communication between himself and Kaveh open, even if the only way to do that was through very public ideological clashes. Pulling Kaveh's pigtails to get his attention lolol. It's implied that, for at least the few years between their fight and Kaveh moving in, this was the only communication between them--Alhaitham's refusal to allow their connection to entirely fade away. (And the fact that this is revealed in Kaveh's character stories--through his precious journal that records the moments of his life that had the most impact on him--shows just how deeply he values the fact that Alhaitham didn't give up.)

Another relevant side note: Alhaitham never asked Kaveh to give up his half of their house. Knowing half of it belonged to Kaveh, knowing that Kaveh may one day want to reclaim his part of it, knowing that it was listed as theirs, Alhaitham moved into the house and made zero effort to change its ownership. He was completely fine with living in "his and Kaveh's house." The stories suggest it was only months later (or even longer) that Kaveh even noticed he had the house, and he transferred away ownership of his portion without Alhaitham ever asking him (or even seemingly wanting him) to do so.

Please, let that sink in. Alhaitham actively left his grandmother's (presumably comfortable) house to move into "his and Kaveh's house," with no apparent explanation for why, and after doing so, he made no attempt to change that "his and Kaveh's" label. He moved into the house with no promise that Kaveh wouldn't show up on the doorstep the very next day and move in too. It almost feels like another deliberate provocation--I've moved into our house, are you going to come stop me? LBR, if Alhaitham had had his way, Kaveh would have been living there with him from Day 1...

There's also the fact that Kaveh literally can't write on a single message board anywhere in the entire nation of Sumeru without Alhaitham hunting his messages down and responding to them (which absolutely no one else does, by the way).

"NUH-UH!" "UH-HUH." "NUH-UH!"

Alhaitham's own character stories tell us explicitly that one of Alhaitham's defining character traits is "He is never where you need him to be," yet somehow...

Shot, and chaser:

Any time Kaveh is in the slightest bit of need or danger or just wants Alhaitham near, Alhaitham is "coincidentally" exactly where Kaveh needs him to be, whenever Kaveh needs him to be there.

Alhaitham didn't just "happen" to run into Kaveh in Port Ormos, an entirely different city from where he was supposed to be working. He didn't just "happen" to read the same terrible book as Kaveh when we know he otherwise would not waste a moment of his time on poorly-written literature...

He didn't just "happen" to appear when Kaveh was upset and needed a distraction in the House of Daena during Kaveh's hangout. He didn't just "happen" to be sitting around waiting when Kaveh needed answers after the Archon Quest. He didn't just "happen" to find Kaveh's academic publications and every single message board posting and respond to them at length and in public.

Which is exactly what Kaveh's mother told Kaveh he needed.

What level of down bad is "Abusing your powers as an Akademiya employee to keep tabs on your crush's library loans"? Just asking for a friend.

The only person for whom Alhaitham just "happens" to be available is Kaveh, over and over and over again--because he is very deliberately making himself a constant presence in Kaveh's life.

(Like, out of all things, I think people really underestimate the devs deliberately paralleling the romantic relationship between Kaveh's mother and father with Kaveh and Alhaitham's relationship. If you want to point to one thing that says "These two characters are intentionally queer-coded," it doesn't get any more obvious than this.)

Alhaitham, are you not embarrassed to be this transparent??? 🫣

[sameboot]

Simon petrikov coping FAIL compilation

[hailsatanacab]

Family Dinners - dpxdc

"Holy shit, you're Bruce Wayne!" Danny gaped, jabbing a finger at the man sitting at the head of the table.

The bustling dining room goes silent as everyone turns to look at him.

"Danny, who did you think was going to be here?" Tim asks, disbelief plain in his voice and Danny feels his face flush red.

"Sorry, I, uh, I guess I just never put it together. Tim Drake-Wayne. Wayne Manor. It, uh, makes sense now." He laughs sheepishly and scrubs at his neck before slumping back down into his chair.

"Well," Tim says with an indulgent sigh, "at least I know you're not just friends with me for my connections."

"Yeah, I'm really sorry, I just never thought about it, I guess."

Danny sinks lower as everyone around him laughs. Come to dinner, he said, the food is the best, he said, ignore the family, he said. Danny really wishes he'd listened to Tim and just ignored them—almost as much as he's regretting accepting the offer in the first place—but... he's having dinner with Batman.

Ancients, that's so weird!

The last time he saw Batman was in the future and, suffice it to say, it was not going well. There hadn't really been time for family dinners there.

Wait. Family dinners?

He peers around the table, openly gawking at everyone as it all clicks into place.

"Everything alright, Danny? Now realising who everyone else is?" Tim asks with a roll of his eyes.

"Uh... something like that..." Danny mumbles as everyone laughs again.

From further down the table, the smallest Wayne scoffs and clicks his tongue.

"I thought you said he was smart, Drake?"

"So, you all do it, too, then?" he asks, ignoring the jibe. Danny's only a little bit jealous as he thinks of how much easier they must have it, how much easier it'd be if his family had been on his side, too. "You all work together?"

"Nah," Dick says from across the table with a brilliant grin. "Tim's the only one that works with Bruce, we all have different jobs. I'm a police officer in Bludhaven."

"Disgusting." Danny blurts out without thinking—because seriously, what kind of self-respecting vigilante would also be a police officer?—before clapping a hand over his mouth. "Sorry."

The whole table laughs again, the loudest being the blonde girl a few spaces down from Dick. Look, Danny wasn't really paying attention to names when they were all paraded in front of him. Dick only gets remembered because his name is a joke.

Come on, Danny, recover!

"That's, uh, not what I meant, though."

"Oh?" Dick asks, cocking his head slightly to the side. Is it Danny's imagination or does his smile tense slightly?

"Yeah, I mean like, you know, in costume. It must make it so much easier to have everyone together like this."

"Costume? What do you mean?"

Yeah, Danny's not imagining it, everyone tenses up at that. It's really only now that he's realising that this probably isn't how he should bring up that he knows about their... night time activities. In fact, he probably shouldn't be bringing it up at all.

"Uuhhh..." Danny looks wildly around the table as he continues making his stupid noise. Think, think, think! There must be a way out of this!

"Danny?" Tim asks, looking concerned.

"Oh, Ancients, this isn't how I wanted it to go at all," he mutters, slipping even further into his chair. He's almost on the floor now and he so, so wishes it could just swallow him up.

His real first meeting with Batman was meant to be cool! He had planned to be Phantom, maybe save them from a tight spot, prove his worth as a mysterious and powerful ally as thanks for the help Batman gave him in the future.

"Danny, what are you talking about?" Tim starts tugging on his sleeve in an attempt to pull him back up from his pit of despair.

Eventually, Danny relents and sits up straighter, hiding his face in his hands and whining all the while.

"I'm sorry, I just didn't expect him to be here and it threw me off so now I look stupid and it's so embarrassing!" he wails, flailing his arms wide. "Why wouldn't you warn me that Batman was your adopted dad, Tim? Couldn't you have let me know?"

"I'm sorry, what? Danny are you alright? There's no way Bruce can be Batman, look at him!"

"Yeah," the blonde girl laughs from the bottom of the table, "look at him! That's a wet noodle of a man! Batman can actually do things, B is incapable of pretty much everything."

"Thank you, Stephanie," Bruce sighs, massaging his forehead.

It's... Those are the first words Danny's heard Batman say since everything went down and it's enough to knock him out of his embarrassment.

It's really good to hear his voice again. Especially now, when it's strong and healthy and full of personality—even if that personality is little more than a tired father right now—far better than how it had been, at the end.

Danny sits up, back straight, and grins. He's got this. He remembers it perfectly. Some people count sheep to fall asleep, Danny repeats his mantra to be certain that he'll never forget it.

"Gamma alpha upsilon tau iota mu epsilon, 42, 63, 28, 1 colon 65 dash 9."

Once again, the whole table falls into silence.

"Holy shit..." breathes the other D name (Duke? Danny's pretty sure he's Signal) from opposite Stephanie. "Isn't that...?"

"The time travelling code." The littlest Wayne says stiffly. "We have met in the future?"

"That's not just the time travelling code, Dami." Dick says, looking between Danny and Bruce. "That's the family time travelling code."

Danny's grin freezes in place.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"1 colon 65 dash 9." Dick explains, still flicking between him and Bruce. "It means you've been adopted into the family and we should all treat you as such, no questions asked."

"Tell you what, I'm about to ask a question." Danny says, dumbstruck. "You just told me it was a code to identify time travellers, not anything about being adopted! What the hell, B?"

Bruce looks about as shellshocked as Danny feels.

"We must have been close," he says finally, after opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water a few times.

"No! Not that close!" Danny reels back, taking a deep breath ready to refute it all, but... "Well, I mean, you found me when I first got stuck, and you helped me get better despite being... And then we fought together against the, uh, bad guy, before he, um, he... before you couldn't."

An uncomfortable beat passes while they all pick up on what Danny tried so hard not to say.

"So, you're not from the future, then, you travelled there and came back?" Tim asks, breaking the tension and leaning forward with a glint in his eye.

"Yeah, it was a whole end of the world thing, but don't worry about it," Danny says with a hand wave, "It's all kosher now, won't ever happen."

"What did happen?"

"Seriously, don't worry about it, we cool."

"How long in the future was it?"

"About ten years? You were pretty spry for an old man, B," Danny laughs, wishing they'd get off the topic of what happened and get back to the adoption bit.

Everyone shares degrees of a cautious smile as they relax out of the shock, and Dick—whose grin is the biggest—says, "No wonder you got the family code, you're already riffing on him like one of us. How long were you there for?"

"A week, before I managed to get back to my present and stop him then."

"A week? Jeez, B, that has to set some kind of record, seriously."

"Oh!" Danny says, sitting bolt upright and blinking in surprise before pointing at Dick and bouncing in his seat. "You're Nightwing!"

"What?"

"That's exactly what Nightwing said when Batman told me the code! Makes so much more sense now."

Dick laughs and claps his hands, delighted.

"You were not formally adopted?" The grumpy small one—Dami?—asks, his face pinched.

"I didn't even know I was informally adopted."

"And your parents? Are they alive or dead?"

"Damian, stop—"

"They were dead in the future, but they're alive now." Danny says, looking down. He fiddles with the tablecloth, twisting the fabric around his fingers as he fights down the pang of sadness that he always feels when he thinks of them now. He forces a bright smile on his face and hopes it doesn’t look too strained. "I just, uh, can't talk to them much, anymore."

"Damian," Dick warns, "1 colon 65 dash 9. Treat them as family, no questions asked."

"This is Damian treating him as family, the little turd has no manners." Tim scoffs, rolling his eyes, but he gently bumps shoulders with Danny to knock him out of his funk. Danny can't help but send him a watery smile.

"I have the most exemplary manners, Drake, unlike some people." Damian spits, crossing his arms with a pout. "I was merely ascertaining his status to see how he could possibly fit into the family."

"I know this is all a bit sudden, Danny," Bruce smiles, ignoring Damian and reaching out to lay a warm hand on his arm, "for all of us. But if I felt strongly enough to give you that code after spending a week with you in the future, then you are more than welcome in this family, if you so choose it. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we'd like to get to know you a bit more."

"I know a threat when I hear it, Bruce." Danny snorts. "But, yeah, I get it. I'm sorry this is all so weird, it really wasn't how I wanted to find you again, but... I'm glad I did."

"So are we, Danny." Dick says, with a warm smile. "And formally or not, 1 colon 65 dash 9 means you're family. Welcome to the fun house! No take backs or refunds, sorry. You're stuck with us."

[tubbytarchia]

so ranchers huh

[platoapproved]

armand + a few offhand lines that give some insight into how he thinks (imho)

[just-null]

wrestling to be the first to greet you (they broke into your house)

[sarcastic-clapping]

claudia BEYOND justifiably hating lestat and louis and dying hating them because they didn’t see her as a person with her own agency and treated her like a child at best and a toy at worst and both are ultimately to blame for her suffering BUT louis and lestat both genuinely loving her (in their own fucked up and deeply inadequate ways) and seeing her as their daughter and being irreparably traumatized by her death and their culpability in her suffering and the knowledge that she died hating them and it’s their fault and they can never make it right ever

[bookalicent]

yeah so this was insane

[trek-tracks]

kidnappers of outer space, beware

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Council of lovefools.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[celendiar]

highkey in love with the idea that when it comes to their relationship, charles and edwin are the complete opposites of their usual behaviour.

charles, normally with zero impulse control or patience, is so so so careful and attentive with edwin, concerned about doing it all just right, spending hours planning their dates and content to take it all slow

meanwhile edwin, normally prim and proper and patient and self-disciplined, has repressed his wants and needs and feelings for 100+ years and now that he no longer has to?? he has no fucks left to give and will kiss charles senseless whenever he damn well wants to

[lauraneedstochill]

She’s lost a bit of the composure that you’re used to seeing in Alicent, and she simply tells him, you know, “You need to do what’s needed of you, which is (nothing).” And it’s the most devastating, the most demeaning, belittling thing she could’ve said to her son in that moment.

— Ryan Condal talks about Alicent’s cold attitude that pushes Aegon to leave for Rook’s Rest (Inside the Episode S2, Ep 4).