#and i think you just gotta get to a point where you acknowledge that. painting random activities as secretly progressive just. isnt doing it

[jackass-jones]

So much leftest online discourse seems to be younger people being unwilling to accept the truth that their identity does not inherently make them an activist and they start scrambling and making up reasons why all their interests are secretly Woke actually and that’s how we end up with people saying shit like tswift is punk and mental illness makes you incapable of fighting for anything cuz no one wants to actually do anything

[astermath]

nemesis; part two.

pairing: carmen berzatto x fem!reader

summary: with carmen reworking the restaurant, you’d think his mind would be far too occupied to even think about anything else. yet he can’t shake the guilt from what he’d put you through a month prior. after some talks in therapy, he decides to take a leap of faith and see if he can talk it out with you. he not only wants to convince you that he can be better, but he's got an offer for you too. one you truly can't refuse.

♡ landing page ♡

word count: 4.9K

tags: carmen being unsure about his feelings but trying to be better episode 3265742, letting reader in a little more, APOLOGIES!!!, cursing ig, carm goes to therapy yippee, syd being the absolute realest, regular font below!

notes: sorry this took literally forever omg, I lost my carmen muse for a bit but we are SO back baby. I missed him so much and so sorry if some things don't follow the canon completely (I've been watching season 2 on and off bc I've been so busy lol BUT my fics never follow the canon completely anyways),, hope u guys enjoy and let me know if you'd like a part three ;))

lmk if you'd like to be added to the tag list for further carmen berzatto related content! comments and reblogs are highly appreciated!

Carmen’s life hadn’t known a moment of mental rest in ages. If you asked him when he last sat down with his thoughts or acknowledged his mental anguish, he probably would have said he couldn’t remember the last time. If ever.

With plans to completely revamp The Beef and everything that came with it, now his feelings should be the last thing on his mind. Renovation plans, unforeseen costs and a completely new menu, sure, he could worry his ass off about those, but feelings? Absolutely not. Good thing he was usually so good at suppressing those anyways.

So why was it that he couldn’t shake the thought of what he did to you?

Why, every time he had a moment to himself, would he be overtaken by this intense feeling of guilt? He didn’t even have to be alone, just a second of quiet and the image of you crying in distress would intrude on his thoughts.

It was getting to a point where he’d told his sister, Natalie, about it. Well, not all of it, he wasn’t even sure if he knew all of it. Just that he knows he hurt you, and that coming to terms with what he projected onto you might be a good first step in understanding himself better.

Or maybe it was something more along the lines of “I gotta talk my shit to some people”. Probably that.

To his surprise, it was actually helping. Besides the group therapy sessions where he’d talk about Mikey, the business and his future, he was talking to other people in his life too. Even told Sydney about you, kind of on accident. The words just seemed to… Flow out. It was probably the exhaustion doing its thing.

“I guess I just felt like,” he kept his eyes on the floor he was sweeping, “she was doing it all to fuck with me. I don’t even know where I got the sick idea that she had some obsession over me, but it— it drove me at the same time. It’s like her being on my heels at every aspect of culinary school just made me want to try even harder.”

“Maybe you painted her in that light because you knew it was a good way to keep pushing yourself.” Sydney spoke almost absentmindedly, sweeping the other side of the room. She listened to everything he said in the meantime, and though what he was telling her was a bit worrying, she was glad they got to have talks like this. Carmen often doesn’t like to bring up his past like that.

“Huh,” he paused sweeping for a moment, “yeah… yeah, maybe. Or maybe it was something else.”

Sydney wasn’t even sure he knew what he was referring to. It sounded like something entirely different, like a crush, but what kind of person treats their crushes like that?

Probably an overworked, pressured, overachieving culinary student with a dangerous need for validation. But she wasn’t about to tell him that.

“So yeah, I visited her restaurant, and… It just felt the exact same as back in New York, you know? Like she was rubbing it in my face again, and— and I know that sounds insane, or conceited, but I just can’t let it go. It’s like the thought of her is stuck to my brain like a stubborn piece of gum.” He wanted to smack himself for that stupid analogy, but what was said was said.

“So how’d you handle it?” Sydney’s head perked up, some of her braids now draping over her shoulders.

“Handle what?” Carmen became more and more uneasy the more he talked about you. Like his chest was tight, it was uncomfortable, but not in the way he was when the health inspection came by, it was different. Weirder. Unfamiliar. He didn’t like it, because he didn’t understand it.

“The talk with her.” She emptied the last bit of dust into the trash bag.

“Oh,” his mind took him back to the parking lot a month ago. The way he could almost taste the tears of your skin from how close he stood, he could hear the shakiness of your breath and the profound desperation in your voice when you apologized to him, when you really had no reason to.

If it was still so clear in his mind, then what must it be like for you?

“Carmen?” Sydney snapped him out of his oncoming train of thought.

“Yeah? Sorry, I— Uh, I don’t know it was…” He runs a hand through his hair, suddenly finding it in his best interest to look anywhere else but her face. “Bad. It was— It was bad.” He looks a bit shameful when he meets her eyes. “I fucked up. I like, went all New York boss on her. And then I just… Left.”

His colleague just stares at him for a moment. She knew what he was like when he snapped like that, but that was with his staff, people he liked. So how badly did he snap on you, a person he’d been resenting for years?

“I’m gonna go take out this trash, and uh… Head home.” She lifts the grey plastic bag she was holding. “But uh, Carm?”

“Yeah?”

“You got issues, man.” She has a bit of an awkward smile on her face, but he knows she means it. He knows she’s right. She usually is.

He nods, silently, letting her words sink in. He did have issues, everyone knew that, but most people didn’t just say it. That’s why he liked Sydney, she was so real, so honest. She was so good for the business, for the kitchen. And maybe her saying that to him was all part of grounding him in the reality of it all. Of his issues, just that they existed.

“Heard.” he says. His voice comes out raspier than he expected, like he’s struggling to say it.

“Goodnight, chef.”

“Night.”

He’d thought about what Sydney said the entire night. He does have issues, he knows that, he’s just mad at himself for letting everything get this far before seeking help. It scares him. Because it reminds him too much of Mikey. Or what he heard about him when things got bad.

He doesn’t want to make the same mistakes his brother did. Lock people out of his life just because it seems easier, because it’s better to minimize the damage than to figure out why you’re doing damage at all. And yes it’s uncomfortable, yes it’s scary, terrifying even. But he keeps being reminded of how it must feel for you.

It’s something he’d never considered before. He always thought he had you all figured out, all fake smiles and backhanded compliments to distract him. It never occurred to him to just… Ask. It was always just easier to assume. It fit his view of you and it kept him going, even if it was at the expense of ever getting to know you at all.

He’s hoping he can change that with a few text messages and a long, probably uncomfortable, talk over coffee. Just hoping, trying, that’s really all he can do. He’s well aware of how bad he is at communicating, but he has to give it a shot. For you, at least.

He stares at his phone screen for far longer than is necessary, continuously rereading the messages he’d typed. His eyes keep flicking to your contact, making sure he sent it to the right person. The only thing you two had texted about before was a time and place for him to try your new restaurant. His heart aches at the exclamation points and emojis you’d sent; you were so excited, and he drove all that excitement straight into the ground.

He closes his eyes and shuts off the phone. His chest hurts, like he’s been holding his breath the entire time. Maybe he has. You could have that effect on him, making it harder to breathe. He always wondered why he had such nervous reactions around you specifically. He always figured it had to do with your one sided rivalry, but it feels… Different. More complex.

Your eyes are finally peeled off your computer screen when numerous phone notifications alarm you. Truth be told, you’ve been trying your best to keep yourself occupied as much as possible. That usually helps when you get waves of emotions like this, keeping busy, distracting your mind from overthinking.

Ever since your last encounter with Carmen, you’ve been so on edge. Always trying to do something, anything, so you wouldn’t have to think about what happened, why he acted like that to you. Because you know if you did, you’d just start blaming yourself again, and you’d be back to square one.

Your eyebrows raise at the name of the contact. You were sure he’d blocked you, or at least deleted your number after last time. He was avoidant like that, and frankly, you weren’t sure if you wanted him to talk to you again after that anyways. Maybe it was just to drive the point home, make you feel even more worthless.

Still, you were curious. Even if it was just to cuss you out even more, at least you knew what to expect, right?

[carmen]: hey, I really want to talk to you about what happened last time.

[carmen]: well

[carmen]: I want to apologise

[carmen]: but I can’t do that like this

[carmen]: I’d much rather do it in person

[carmen]: if you’d let me

[carmen]: meet me at odette’s tomorrow around 10? coffee’s on me, I just want to talk

[carmen]: please

The last message was sent minutes later than the rest, while you were reading them. He was desperate for an answer, and though you wanted to hear him out, to talk to him, something in you felt off about the whole thing. Like he was just doing this to clear off his own guilt, only to then ditch you just like he ditched you after culinary school. Because you’re rivals, apparently. That’s what you do.

But then there’s something else in you too. The part that’s still nostalgic about New York with him. About the glances back and forth when you were timed on preparing certain things, about the way he’d stare at you when you got feedback, the ignorant bliss you lived in. When you still believed he might have liked you just a little.

That part of you takes the upper hand when you reply and take his offer. Your heart is in your throat, nerves overtaking you already and you weren’t even with him yet. He had that effect on you sometimes, making it harder to breathe.

You wondered what that meant.

Carmen sits alone at a booth, all the way at the back of the café he’d chosen. It’s rather quiet, as most Mondays are, yet at the same time, it’s so loud. Loud in the way he hears the clinking of every spoon against porcelain cups, the crinkling of a napkin and the not so subtle ticking of the clock above the entrance. 10:06. You were late.

Suddenly he's filled with more regret than he's ever felt before. He's not ready to see you again, only to be reminded of how he made you cry, and of his own tumultuous emotions and shortcomings that lead to this moment. It's surprising how fast the emotions he associates with you changed; he's not angry anymore, he's scared, guilty, nervous. He wants to see you so bad and yet he feels like you'd be better off never talking to him again.

It's too late to make a run for it when you finally walk through the door. Hair a little damp from the rain, just a bit disheveled from what he could only assume to be rushing over to the café. And that same angelic smile you offer to the barista that greets you, the same one you'd offer him every morning, whether he looked at you or not.

He had no choice but to look now.

Your smile falters into something more nervous, a little melancholic, when your eyes meet his across the café. Though you knew he was going to be there, something in you feels surprised to see him again. Maybe it’s because he isn’t yelling at you or throwing insults at your head this time. Or maybe because he’s actually looking you in the eye. Since when did he get so good at that?

You sit down across him, taking off your coat and putting your bag besides you.

“Hey.” You smile again, much more awkward this time.

“Hey.” He returns the same thin lipped smile.

It’s quiet for a few seconds. Carmen swears the whole café has gone silent in that moment, leaving the two of you to listen to the sound of your own breathing and heartrate picking up. You’re not sure where to look, not being used to being in such an intimate setting with him.

“Do you want a coffee?”

“Sorry I was late.”

You both talk over each other, and the urge to chuckle about it overtakes you. Carmen can’t help but smile as well. You seem nervous, and somehow that puts him a little more at ease. Like he’s not the only one who’s in their head about it.

“Sorry, I, uhm, yeah— I would like a coffee.” You scramble over your words. “Please.”

“Sure,” he nods, “and no worries.”

“Hm?”

“That you were late. I haven’t been here that long either.” He lied. He’d been there half an hour early, cursing himself for letting him sit along with his thoughts for that long and psyching himself out into almost leaving.

You both order and another heavy silence sits between you two. You both know why you’re there, what needs to be talked about. Yet neither of you know how to bring it up.

You’ve lived most of your lives believing this version of each other you had in your minds. Because it kept you grounded. Because it was easier. He never let you in and for the longest time, you were at peace with that. You could have a slightly distant view of who he was, your classmate, your rival. And he could do the same. Keep you out, pretend you were there to keep him on his toes, to always try to outdo him.

Those facades of each other don’t work anymore. The real world has forced you to reconcile with each other, whether you liked it or not.

Your coffee gets brought to your table, and both of you feel this urgency to say something, anything, at least.

“The pastries here are good too, if you want to get one.” He finally broke the awkward silence. He can start with talking about food, something he knows. If all else fails, resort back to that.

“I haven’t tried a pastry besides my own in a long time. Maybe I could learn a thing or two here.” You admit. He knows that feeling. He’s not nearly as adventurous with his food choices as he wants to be, but as a busy chef on the brink of a new entrepreneurship, it’s usually beef sandwiches and frozen meals.

“I think yours were better though.” He takes a sip of his coffee.

“Huh?” You look up, realizing you were avoiding eye contact by staring into your cup.

“The danish I tried at your place. It was fire.”

“Oh. Right. Thank you, we make everything from scratch.”

“I could tell.” He takes another sip. “I guess I— I kinda forgot to tell you that. In the heat of it all.” He huffs to himself. “Food was so good it made me upset.”

“Upset?” His word use frustrates you. Upset is when they forget to give you your sauce with your order. What happened back there was not upset. That was rage. Wrath. You raise an eyebrow and he realizes he said something wrong.

“Well, more than upset. Listen, I— We need to talk about what happened.” His blue eyes peer into your own. They’re almost distracting enough to avoid you noticing his fidgeting hands.

“I’m listening.” You lean back slightly in your seat. You’d played nice with Carmen all your life, given him every chance to return it. Now it was his turn to try.

"Right." Of course he has to talk. It's his fault, isn't it? He's the one who snapped-- why did he even imply you'd have to explain yourself? He runs a hand through his hair, and there he goes again, eyes darting across the café to find something to focus on as he sought out the right words. You'd almost find it endearing, how bad he is at this, if it wasn't so important to you.

"You don't do this often, do you?"

"What, like-- meeting up for coffee?"

"Talking about stuff. Your feelings and shit." You hid your slightly amused smile behind your coffee cup before taking a small sip.

"Oh. Yeah, no, I-- I don't. Not until recently." He takes a deep breath. Just like they had told him to. “I’ve been going to this therapy thing my sister recommended. S’not much, but… It’s a start. Talked about the restaurant, my brother—“

“Your brother?” Your eyebrows raise slightly.

“Yeah, my— my brother. Mikey.” He looks a bit surprised. He’s come to the shattering realization that he’s never told you anything about his personal life, ever. You don’t even know about one of the most important people in his life, his main drive. You’ve known each other for so long yet you know so little. “I never told you about him?”

“You never told me anything.” You answer curtly. “We never really… Talked, you know?”

“Yeah— yeah, you’re right. I just thought… Wow.” He smiles, more out of shock than anything. He feels so stupid. How immature is it to be feuding this much with a person who doesn’t know anything about you?

“I guess I really don’t know much about you either.” His fingers rake through his messy curls again. “Makes me feel like even more of an idiot for going off on you like that. Like I had you all figured out.”

“Yeah, that was uh... That was something." The mood shifts a little. His smile fades as soon as he sees the melancholy in your eyes return. Of course it wouldn't be that easy for you to forgive him, to feel better about all this. "You know, I never knew you thought of me like that." A small smile graces your features. Somehow it's sadder than the expression you had before.

"I mean, I knew you didn't like me. I was pretty much at peace with the fact that you were never going to like me, either. But I never thought you hated me that much." You sniffle, trying your hardest to blink away any oncoming tears. "Like your life, your entire career, would have been easier without me there at all."

His heart aches at the sight of you, all teary eyed and trying to be brave. You're much braver than him. Sadness is a much harder thing to express than anger. He's starting to figure that out more and more.

"I don't hate you." He starts. He sees the confusion contort your features, and he knows he's not making any sense. "I mean I did-- I did hate you. Or, maybe not you, just... The fucked up idea I had of you. And-- and that was on me, that was my own fault." He feels an urge to touch you; to rub your back, hold your hand, anything to comfort you. It's tearing him apart to know that he's the cause of all this.

"But why?" A single tear rolls down your cheek, leaving a wet streak on your skin in its wake. "Why did you think that about me? I-- I get that we had a little rivalry going but jesus Carmen, did you really think I spent my whole culinary school career trying to outdo you?"

"To be honest... Yeah." He feels ashamed. So ashamed. He hopes the waitress doesn't walk by and listen to any of this, see you crying, and make you feel even worse. "Cooking was always just... My thing. If I was good for anything, it would be that. So seeing you do so well at something I'd started to base my whole existence around, it made me jealous, so fucking jealous." He meets your eyes, even if it's hard. You have to know he's being sincere.

"And it's-- it's unfair, it's so unfair to you, I know, and I'm really fuckin' sorry. I'm trying to work on myself, on everything, and I hope I can prove that to you." His face has that red tint you recognize whenever he's nervous or stressed. You can tell this is taking a lot from him.

"Is that really all? You were just jealous?" Your voice is quieter, fragile almost.

"I don't know. I wanna think it's that simple but I really don't know. There's a lot I don't understand about me, or you, or us. My mind doesn't know how to react when I see you anymore I think, now that things are different." He takes a deep breath, like saying that took a physical toll on him. "You have this-- this weird effect on me, and I don't know how to cope with it. I think it was just easier to be mad at you than to be anything else."

Anger is easier to express than sadness. The easiest out of all emotions, actually. Sometimes a little too easy.

You look to the side, wiping your cheek with the back of your hand. You huff out something close to a laugh, and though he’s caught off guard by it, he doesn’t mind it. Even if you’re laughing at him, at least that means you’re not crying.

“You’ve got issues Berzatto. You know that?”

“Yeah. I’ve been told.” He smiles, and it’s heartfelt this time. Not nervous, or sad, or awkward. He’s happy to see you a little more at ease.

“It’s just really crazy to me.” You trace your finger over the edge of your coffee cup as you talk. “I spent so much time in culinary school looking up to you. And then I find out you were always just trying to keep up with me.”

Carmen’s eyebrows raise a little at your words. “Looked up to me?”

“Yeah, like… Your drive, your passion, it’s so impressive. Always looking to improve, to do better, it just— it inspired me to do better too. As cheesy as that may sound.” You smiled. “S’why I opened up in Chicago, you know.”

“Really? Huh.” He leaned back in his seat.

“Because I wanted to work with you. Or for you. Either would have been fine with me.” You sigh. “I like owning my own place, but… I don’t know, for some reason I always imagined us working together.” You smiled. “Is that stupid?”

“No,” he replied quickly, “no not at all, I— I totally get that.” He’s quiet for a few seconds, and you can practically hear the gears turning in his head when he stares at you for a moment.

“I mean you’re a remarkable chef, really, like— insanely remarkable, and, well, we’re revamping the restaurant completely right now. We need people— more people, new people, and so, I was wondering— or I’ve been thinking—“ He stops himself from losing his breath from all his rambling, before he freaks you out even more than he already has.

“I want you to come work for us at the Bear.” He puts his hands together, as if he’s about to beg. “Please.”

You can almost hear yourself blinking out of confusion. There’s suddenly no more loud silences, no, the café seems dead quiet for once. All you can do is stare at him, wait for a laugh, because clearly this was a joke right? There’s no way Carmen Berzatto, chef supreme, arch nemesis of yours, would want you anywhere near him, let alone work in his own establishment.

“I’m sorry?”

He feels stupid already. You had every reason to say no. He’d been the biggest asshole in the world to you, he’d kept his distance all his life, and now he expects you to be his employee. Or, well, colleague, more so.

“I’m uh— we’re redoing the restaurant entirely. New equipment, new staff, new everything.” He swallows; the thought of everything that needed to be done arises for a moment. “We need people that work hard, who know what they’re doing and who are passionate about it. And I barely know anyone who’s better at what you do than yourself.” He pauses, waiting for you to stop him. But you don’t.

“So I’m asking if you’d work for me. With me. It won’t be anything like old days, if anything I— I need to learn from you.” He scoffs at himself. “Could take a thing or two about how to communicate with my staff.”

You smile, and he genuinely thinks you’re about to start laughing at him. You chuckle, but it’s not mean, it’s honest. Cute.

“You know, you have great timing.” You grin.

“I do?” the smile on his face reflects the hope he feels.

“One of my chefs wants to take over the place for me. Well, has been wanting to. I haven’t had an exact reason to say yes to her yet.” You shrugged. “Guess I do now.”

“…Is that you saying yes?”

“It’s definitely not me saying no.” Your eyes meet his, and there’s something between you both that’s different now. It’s not like there’s a switch that’s been flipped. It‘s more like this conversation was the turning page of a new chapter.

“I’ll think about it. I want to see it first. Maybe talk to some of your staff.” Carmen’s chest strains a little when he thinks about you interacting with Richie. Then he’s reassured when he thinks about you interacting with Sydney or Marcus. You’d fit in well, you have great feeling for people.

“Yeah— yeah, I get that. Totally. I can arrange that. Uhm, we’re renovating right now, actually, it’s all really kinda wild, but if you wanna stop by, chat with Syd, or Nat, or talk about the plans, let me know. I’m sure they’d love to talk to you.” He’s not lying, you seem like you’d get along well with them. Especially Sydney. Your thinking processes are very similar to each other. And to his.

Carmen gets the bill, even though you try to pay for it.

“It’s just a coffee, just let me get this one.”

You let him have this one, simply because you can’t argue with him after the conversation you just had. You’re in too good of a mood after his proposition too.

He walks you to your car, hands in his pockets when you reach it. It’s cold outside, and his breath comes out in visible puffs of air. His nose is a little red, but you think it looks cute.

“Thanks for coming, by the way,” he starts, “I know you didn’t have to. Like— after how I acted to you. But— But I really do appreciate that you’re givin' me a chance here.” He’d always been confused about how positive and faithful you were in people. He never thought he’d be grateful for those exact features too.

“No worries, I… I had a good time. I’m glad we talked.” The keys jingle as you fidget with them. Among them is a keychain in the shape of a cherry, he recognizes it. It reminds him of how little you’ve both changed. And how much.

“Yeah.” He sighs. Relieved, almost. “Me too. But I’ll let you leave, might wanna tell your chef the good news.”

“Good news?” You quirk an eyebrow.

“That you’re selling them the business.”

“I haven’t decided yet, Carm.” You scoff. But he can tell you have, you look too excited about it all to not have your mind made up yet. It excites him too. Scares him a bit as well, but what’s a new chapter without a bit of tension?

“Right. Sorry.” He huffs. “Just text me when you wanna head over to see the place. It’s uh… It’s a work in progress, but it’s getting somewhere.”

“I believe you. I’m looking forward to it.” You lean back against your car a little.

“Yeah. Me too.”

“See y’around?” You unlock it and walk up to the driver’s side.

“Course. Uh, don’t be a stranger.”

You grin, leaning down to get into the vehicle. “Never with you, Berzatto.”

He watches you drive off, standing in the cold for far longer than any sensible person has any business standing there. But he feels good. He feels warm.

He thinks about what you said to him before you left. You were right, you were never a stranger to him. You were always like a constant in his life; whether you were actually present or not. And even if he didn’t know that much about you, which he was insistent on changing, you were never a stranger.

Never with him.

tag list <3

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[blenderfullasarcasm]

"tell me what happened" + "wake up, come on, there's something i wanna show you"

Something pokes Furuya in the cheek and one hand is wrapping around the weapon under his pillow and pointing it at the culprit before his eyes snap open.

He comes face-to-face with Edogawa Conan, looking incredibly unimpressed. "Come on, wake up," he demands, for once sounding like a child his age should.

"Ah, so it's just you, Conan-kun..." Furuya says, painting an amicable smile across his face as he slips into his Amuro Tooru persona as easily as he silently slides his weapon back under his pillow. "You should be careful if you wake someone up like that. You don't know how they'll react."

Conan rolls his eyes. "Sure thing, Amuro-niichan!" he chirps, playing along with Amuro even though it's clear he doesn't see the reason for it.

Furuya is grateful for it, because he knows for a fact that his apartment has been bugged by the Black Organization. It seems he's on thin ice with them at the moment, and he would really rather not have deal with the repercussions of whatever Conan's about to tell him.

(He does not know how Conan knows where Amuro Tooru lives, and Furuya can't ask him right now, when anyone listening might discover that a six-year-old had managed to find his safe house. He doesn't think Bourbon's reputation could take the ding.)

(He makes a note to investigate later, though.)

"So, why are you here, Conan-kun?" Amuro prompts, still smiling genially. "Does Mouri-sensei need me for a case?" he adds, to provide the bugs with a reason that Conan would know his address. Furuya makes his eyes go hard and flat, pouring some of Bourbon into his gaze so that Conan knows he needs to agree.

Conan gets the message. "Yup! Oji-san says you gotta come right away, or he's leaving without you!" he chirps, even as his brow furrows, glancing around Amuro's apartment like the Black Org is made up of amateurs who would leave bugs in plain sight. "There's something I wanna show you first, though!"

Conan's eyes narrow, his gaze piercing and bright, and Furuya knows that this part of their conversation, at least, is not a charade at all.

"Is it the ice cream shop on the corner, I wonder?" Amuro asks dryly, even as he inclines his head slightly in acknowledgement.

Conan forces a giggle that manages to sound mostly natural. "Maaaaaaaaybe..."

"Let me get dressed first," Amuro says, ushering Conan out of his room and into the kitchen. He quickly changes into some of Amuro Tooru's light pastels, ignoring the darker clothing at the other end of his closet, then heads back into the kitchen.

Conan is standing more or less where Amuro left him, and that's how Furuya knows that he's snooped around approximately half of his living space in the five minutes he had taken to change.

(Furuya isn't particularly worried about that, though. There's nothing in this apartment that isn't Amuro's or Bourbon's.)

"Ready to go?" he asks Conan, who nods and scampers over to the door. Amuro follows him at a more sedate pace, which Conan seems to think isn't fast enough.

"Come onnnnnn, Amuro-niichan! We're going to be late!" he hollers from halfway down the hallway as Amuro pauses to lock the door behind him. Amuro frowns slightly, then hurries after him.

"Tell me what happened," Furuya demands, once they're a block away from his building. Something must have happened, if Conan had felt it necessary to invade his apartment so early in the morning.

Conan levels another unimpressed look at him. "You forgot, didn't you?"

Furuya frowns, running through his three mental calendars, only to come up blank. He doesn't have a shift at Poirot today; he isn't meeting Kazami until this evening; and his only current orders are to investigate Mouri Kogoro, who is more than likely planning on spending today watching TV until a new case happens upon him.

(Honestly, Furuya had been planning on spending today catching up on paperwork and laundry.)

Conan sighs, with more exasperation than Furuya thinks is called for. "Mitsuhiko's birthday, remember? You said you were going to take us camping, since the professor has that conference this weekend and Okiya-san's car is too small for all of us."

Furuya's frown deepens. "Mitsuhiko-kun's birthday is next week." He knows this for a fact, because even though Amuro had volunteered to drive the Detective Boys to the campsite on Mitsuhiko's birthday, none of them had seen fit to tell him what day it was. Furuya had asked Kazami to look up Mitsuhiko's birth certificate, and that had taken care of it, or so he had thought.

Conan frowns right back at him. "Yeah? But his parents and his sister are taking him out for dinner that day, so we're going camping the weekend before his actual birthday." Suddenly, his body language turns sheepish. "We...may have forgotten to actually tell you that, though..."

Furuya sighs. There goes his quiet day of doing laundry and paperwork.

---

send me prompts for this ask game!

[hughjidiot]

Thoughts on Episodes 7 and 8 of TDI Season 2

Well I got to see the two newest episodes, and I have quite a few thoughts on them. As always spoilers below the cut.

Well it looks like Axel and Ripper are our double eliminations. And in a... really stupid way if I'm being honest. Axel gets voted off, Ripper freaks and grabs on as the Drone of Despair flies away with her and Chris just calls them both eliminated? Kind of an ass pull, won't lie. Oh well, that's Total Drama - you gotta take the good with the bad.

At least Axel lasted longer this time and we got some more depth to her, like that she has an artistic side being into painting and poetry and is somewhat of a romantic. And as I mentioned previously I found Ripper's character to be greatly improved over how he was last season, I found him way more likeable.

Also out is Zee. Not sure how exactly he knew everyone's secrets like that, it felt kind of out of nowhere. I'm gonna miss how hilarious he was, but at least he set up some drama before he left...

Caleb and Priya's subplot has taken a sharp turn: Caleb finally acknowledges he actually likes Priya as more than an alliance partner, they had their first kiss... and Zee goes and spills Caleb's original plan of only being nice to make an alliance. I can understand how some fans aren't happy that Priya is part of another major subplot after she was already one of the main characters of season one, but again this isn't a new thing for Total Drama. All I can say is I am interested in seeing where this goes, but it's not the subplot I'm most interested in.

Wayne and Raj didn't do a whole lot these episodes so I don't have too much to say. I like them well enough but still hope one gets eliminated so we can get some solo development for whoever remains. My guess is that Wayne will be going home at some point, and him getting separated from Raj in episode 8 was foreshadowing of that.

Damien has already found the immunity idol! Will be very interesting to see how that comes into play, especially with how Julia sent anonymous letters about the idol making Damien paranoid.

And speaking of which, Julia continues to increase her villain cred by messing with Damien's head and wearing down Zee until he spilled those secrets. She even messed with MK during episode 7; something MK wasn't surprised by and doesn't seem to be too upset about, but we'll see what comes of that.

And speaking of MK, holy fucking shit the start of episode 7? MK flat out teasing Julia for "liking her"?? And the way Julia awkwardly tries to deny it??? At this point I'll be genuinely surprised if Mkulia doesn't become canon.

Oh yeah, and Owen was the special guest star of episode 7! And apparently he has some great genes since it looks like he hasn't aged in 15 years. And he's now canonically the winner of season one. I always preferred to think of Gwen as the real winner (she was one of my faves in Island) but oh well.

And that's everything. Wasn't crazy about a couple of things in these episodes, but overall I still really like this season. Somewhat interested in what happens next with Priya and Caleb, and very interested to see what will go down with MK and Julia.

[desire-mona]

Could I ask for a mini ramble on why Keating is your favourite character? Poised with a notebook and pen to take down notes haha

YES!!!!!!!

BECAUSE NOBODY EVER TALKS ABOUT HIM AND THATS HONESTLY SO RUDE!!!!!!!

so like. keating; let's talk about that

we desperately need to acknowledge that keating is an amazing man right down to his core. he is so passionate about living life in a way that makes him feel fulfilled that he makes it his main goal to teach others how to do the same.

he experienced the same exact thing as the poets, remember, the movie makes a big deal of how nothing at welton changes. he had the same exact oppressive environment growing up as they did, so he knew exactly how to connect to these boys.

HIS INTENTIONS AND ACTIONS WERE NOTHING BUT PURE, AND THATS WHAT MAKES HIS ENDING ALL THE MORE DEVASTATING.

every single one of his peers and superiors fully believed that neil's death was keatings fault, and actively shunned him for it. not a singular person that wasnt a Teenager in his community understood what he was trying to do. welton painted the narrative that keating taught these insane useless lessons about breaking the rules BUT NEED! I! REMIND! YOU! HE MADE A PRETTY BIG EMPHASIS ON THE FACT THAT U GOTTA BE SMART ABT IT! he called out charlie for the call from god thing for a reason!!

another crazy devastating thing abt keating + neils death is the fact that neil was understanding exactly what carpe diem mean's IMMEDIATELY. AND WAS ACTING ON IT!! he pursued things that he knew would make him happy and fulfilled in the long run, he knew what he wanted to do with his life and he took the first opportunity to get it. the exact fucking definition of seizing the day. keating was REACHING THIS KID SO WELL!! HE WAS UNDERSTANDING EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS SAYING!!! AND THEN!!! AND THEN!!!!!!!!!!

so imagine this. you grow up in the most rigid, boring, unchanging environment and decide fuck it, im gonna Do Something for Myself for Once. you start to think oh, this is actually kinda sick, doing things that make me happy. you escape the environment that aims to essentially make these Children into what their idea of successful is. (quick reminder that there are actual children also attending welton. like kids. like 9 year olds n shit.) you actually chase after every opportunity to be what your idea of successful is, and were so passionate about that way of living that you learned how to teach others how to do it. and also poetry and stuff.

so youre doing exactly that, you finally got to a point where youre doing exactly what you wanna do, and teaching these kids in a situation just like yours. and its going SO WELL! there's this one kid who just GETS IT and is doing it flawlessly and then - oh !

and now everyone around you is like um wtf this is your fault actually. SO YOU HAVE TO PROCESS THE FACT THAT YOUR STUDENT IS DEAD ON TOP OF HAVING TO RELIVE THE ENVIRONMENT YOU HATED AND ACTIVELY WORKED AGAINST YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. AND NOW YOU HAVE NO INCOME OR COMMUNITY OR HOME OR FRIENDS. AND THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT KNOW YOU ARENT A MURDERER ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18. AND YOUR WIFE LIVES IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. OH AND ALSO YOUR RESUME IS RUINED AND ITLL PROBABLY BE PRETTY HARD TO FIND ANOTHER JOB IF YOU CAN AT ALL.

AND YOU HAVE CANCER. HE HAS CANCER IN THE OG SCRIPT.

keating is my personal description of raw devastation. all of who you are and what you wanted to be is in shambles because of something that isnt your fault. but almost everyone around you thinks it is your fault. and we're just gonna move on from that? thats it? thats the end of the story? no more keating after that?????? downright evil. more people gotta talk about this wonderful man!!!!!

also very sorry if this makes no sense, im quite high. but also shameless self promo pls interact with my ask blog @ask-captain-keating bc i lob running it. pleags. ily for asking this btw!!!!

[volivolition]

hey, so your drama skilltober drawing (which is amazing btw!!) got me wondering, do you headcanon that the skills are like, aware of how many levels they have? like obviously endurance and volition have those health pool meters but theyre kinda special cases lol

but do you think the others are consciously aware of their levels or do they just kinda vaguely know its easier/harder to do their job when harry is wearing this or that clothing, has this or that thought internalized, etc

HI OMG THANK YOU!! yes they do! not aware of the whole game aspect (except Tutorial Agent who is Very Aware of All Of It), but the skills are often aware of meta things in my fics and headcanons, where they acknowledge things like skill points, tasks, giving harry choices, check difficulties/successes/failures, and a few other mechanics (usually when it'd be funny tbh hgdhjf, i find a lot of humor in leaning into the fourth wall <33)

for clothes specifically, i have a whole bit in Meet the Parts where they suit up in Shivers bonuses so they can go talk to her hjkgjgs

SAVOIR FAIRE – Best to dress for the occasion!  INLAND EMPIRE – Her voice can be elusive otherwise, lost in the bluster and breeze. VOLITION – Which ones are her favorites again? I know your big white coat is one. She gave that to you. ESPRIT DE CORPS – The RCM patrol cloak. It’s one that she and I share. A keen knowledge of the city while searching the streets in her name, to protect her people. All of your half-siblings serve her well, wearing this. She guards us as you guard her. SUGGESTION – The scarf with the spring perfume! PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT – Ugh, I hate that thing. You want to talk to the big lady while sneezing all over her? I don’t get what she likes so much about it. Though, her tastes aren't all bad. She likes the Hjelmdall shirt too. AUTHORITY – I thought you said they *aren’t* all bad. The shirt is terrible. You’re an officer of the law, not some T-shirt wearing hooligan. Zip up the coat if you're wearing it, that's an order. INTERFACING - Alright, that's +3, which totals 7 for the city.

^ as a note: Polar Anorak gives +1 Composure (<- he says something after Esprit's line actually, i cut it for space) and +1 Shivers, RCM Patrol Cloak is +1 Esprit and +1 Shivers, Scented Scarf gives you +1 Shivers, but -2 Phys Instrument (due to allergies lmao), Hjelmdall T-Shirt gives +1 to both Phys Instrument and Shivers, but -2 to Authority hkgj (since you can't wear both jackets, it's only a +3)

all this to say, yes, they know their levels!! :D actually, in my headcanons, Conceptualization created the skill chart specifically so they could all keep track of skill points!! it's a tangible thing in their headspace, built right into the control board (if you look closely, you can see it under volition's right hand here actually!!) :] all the skill portraits? that's Concept's art style babey!! xe painted all of them, Logic sorted them, and Interfacing set it up to work! gotta love some skill teamwork <333

[renard-dartigue]

A Guide to Sleep Token

This will be a post for new fans looking to learn some basic/surface level information about the band Sleep Token. 

*Cracks typing knuckles*

So basically, Sleep Token is an “atl-prog-blackened shoegaze”(what it sounds like to me) band from Britain. People mostly associate them with heavy metal (myself included) But in reality, no one really knows what genre they are and I think the band likes it that way. 

(cont.)

The Bands Symbol

Lore / Terms to Know

Their lore goes that the lead singer had a dream where he encountered an elder God called "Sleep" (its actual name is impossible for the human tongue to speak) thus, he created the band to make music in worship to the God.

They call their songs "offerings", presumably to Sleep.

Concerts are called "rituals".

When you buy merchandise, you are "consuming" it.

The term "worship" is used by the band and fans as a form of acknowledgement.

The band has a total of 7 members and are known as "vessels". All are anonymous, using masks, body paint, and robes to hide themselves. It is said they do this because their music is more important than their identities.

Band Members

4 of them are at the front and are identified with Roman numerals:

I / Vessel

(I) Also known as Vessel (V or Vess) is the lead singer/vocalist of the band and wears a sculpted mask with an exposed mouth. His mask changes based on the album. His vocal range is like no other, at one point singing like an angel before immediately shifting gear into a black metal scream.

II

(II) is the drummer. A fantastic one at that. His solos are godly, very reminiscent of jazz or gospel. (I believe he started the band alongside Vessel) Check out “An Offering from II” on YouTube to see him go crazy.

Recently he did an interview with Drumeo on YouTube where he talks about his influences and does drum playthroughs of a few songs that demonstrate his drumming prowess.

III

(III) is the bassist, or the "bassy boy" as many fans call him. He is quite the character on stage. His energy is unmatched. You'll often find him prancing on the right side of the stage or laying on his back trying to get Vessel's attention (and Vessel does)

IV

(IV) is the guitarist, often has a covert/cool energy to him but he can be just as captivating as III. Over time he's developed a bit of a flirtatious side toward the crowd. Fuckboy energy(affectionate). He also provides sub vocals, raw screaming certain parts when Vessel is busy singing his heart out lol.

Vesselettes

Then there are the 3 last members, the choir or vessellettes. They are the three cloaked figures in the back who provide sub-vocals/harmonies. They may not be too audible on certain recorded tracks, but live they sound absolutely heavenly, making songs go from amazing to spectacular!

Music

Song structure-wise, the best way I can call it is measured emotional chaos. Fans are still trying to decipher their meanings here and on Reddit. 

But what seems to be the theme is toxic relationships, unhealthy coping, romantic trauma, bitter sweat endings, and eventual closure. It's really gripping stuff I'll tell ya. You gotta hear it for yourself to really understand.

There is ALOT more but that's about a general rundown.

They have 2 EPs called "One" and "Two". These are the band's earliest work but they are still fantastic.

They've only got 3 albums out as of writing this. "Sundowning", "This Place Will Become Your Tomb", and "Take Me Back to Eden"(the one released this year)

Songs I recommend as a launch point:

Jaws

The Offering

Higher

Hypnosis

Alkaline

The Love You Want

The Summoning

My personal favorites :)

All of "One"

All of "Two"

Dark Signs

High Water

Ascensionism

Vore

Take Me Back to Eden

They also have Instagram for the band and their personas. But please avoid trying to uncover their identities, They wish to remain anonymous.

https://www.instagram.com/sleep_token/

https://www.instagram.com/ii_sleeptoken/

https://www.instagram.com/iii_sleeptoken/

https://www.instagram.com/iv_sleeptoken/

Hope you like these spooky goobers.

Other fans are free to comment and/or reblog with additional information or fun facts I missed. 

Worship.

[bloggingboutburgers]

re: "let me know if you found something that works" -- all ive ever found in response to not finding the fandom representations you want is that your imagination and intuition are just as valid as a written story. that sounds bad so let me give some conditions:

it's cheap, and it can feel useless to just daydream. or like making the work happen again. but those little points where you think "omg this video is EXACTLY what those two are like!" when it's unrelated -- i like to think those are little nods from a universe that understands your perspective may not be written down, but is a truly necessary and valid one.

they're characters, but as entities they deserve at least our acknowledgement that we can't control their relationships or feelings. we can paint pictures of them, sure, but aren't the metrics of your soul and heart better at finding the material you want? and wouldn't that heart space be a more reasonable measure than someone who wants to write or read some consumable relationship package in a story? there's SO much less bias in the former, save for our own fears and loves staining things. which is fine. that's us.

the downside to this method is you gotta drop it when things click badly -- e.g. if something just brings you anxiety, it is probably just anxiety. but in all my years of fandom media i've found the best connections with our favorite characters really do come from the heart, not text on a page.

you're contributing to their world in a way just by believing what you believe. so trust that there are odd ways for "confirmation" to occur that would function just as well, if not more intimately, as/then a well-structured platonic/familial fic or artwork.

(that being said. seriously. as the "mom" of many characters, the lack of tags is, frankly, disturbing. i'm with you on the prayers for much more wholesome and general-audience fan works!!)

That's definitely a good thing to do – and I agree, we can always take comfort that we'll at least always have more control over our own brain, and how we experience things for ourselves. That much will always be a good thing.

But... If all of that's just never gonna leave your brain, it's still a pretty lonely experience. What's getting to me isn't an inability to engage with a work in a way I like for myself. What's getting to me mostly is that I'd like to make connections with people who enjoy those works, I wanna be able to talk about my feelings about something I love with someone else, and I can't seem to be able to in a way that doesn't make me feel like an outsider or a very far afterthought. And it's getting to me that I can't seem to make friends over these common interests the way pretty much everyone else seems to be able to.

[lintwriting]

the logic of bashing fics

I love the parallels between a certain type of character. Tell me if you've seen them before.

Ostensibly “noble” adults generously helping orphan protagonists. For such generosity, they get the orphan's undying loyalty. Within the story, these adults are portrayed as good, or at least ambiguous in morality. Never explicitly evil, as often we're hearing from the perspective of the kids they save--who worship them -- and not from the fellow adults around them. Or, if we do, those adults who DO badmouth them have ulterior motives that muddy the waters.

And, yet... The cracks are there.

For an example: DUMBLEDORE.

With Dumbledore, the cracks are unintentional. The casualty of being in a genre where you need young kids getting into dangerous action without adults getting in the way. What you get is this strategic figure who neglects him to the point of abuse and views Harry's life as his sacrificial pawn in war, where death "is the next great adventure," but this is all painted as a Christ-like sacrifice rather than a disturbing one.

Oh sure, the characters are horrified by Harry's death and abuse, but not to the point of ever questioning Dumbledore's character over it, nor does the audience. In many ways, Dumbledore has groomed Harry into his role as sacrificial lamb, but it's justified within the narrative to us and the characters.

This leads one of my favorite phenomena: people getting unreasonably mad at genre conventions.

For instance, your average action media featuring teenagers will have them putting their lives in danger, and, thus, will create excuses for why adults aren't there to stop them. Your casual viewer will accept these shallow excuses for what they are-- a plot device without much thought put into it. It's a mundane part of their suspension of disbelief, so they can watch magical teenagers fighting monsters. They don't need much thought put into this because they understand that it's just the conceit of the show.

But sometimes it's a little fun to think deeper about the implications of these flimsy excuses. Listicle sites go viral off of these types of "Why Hogwarts Should Have Been Shut Down Years Ago" articles. It's nothing more than a fun little thought experiment to them, but it gets really funny to me when I stumble across people who get genuinely ANGRY and PETTY about this. Seething at the gall of "children's fantasy show writer #218" for writing such abusive parents and not even acknowledging it within the story! I mean, it kind of takes the lightheartedness out of "children fighting--the genre" if you acknowledge that parents shouldn’t be okay with their preteens being sent off to magic fighting, guys. Like high school American football, we gotta brush the danger to the kids under the rug to enjoy the show lol guys.

And who are these angry guys? They're the people who genuinely felt tricked when they realized that the excuses (that everybody else took as a farce at face value) don't make much sense.

Why? Because they bought in WITHOUT suspending their disbelief. Like when kids believe high school will be just as trope-y as their fanfics/TV shows until they get there! Because they were little kiddos too young to know when they first watched these shows that these tropes are unrealistic.

This famously applies to the Bible, where we need to see God as an all-good father in-universe, and therefore indoctrinate kids young and invent "faith" as a genre convention to avoid thinking too deeply about His actions. In reality though (out-of-universe" if you will), when you become an ex-Christian, you realize all the ways god acts as a textbook abusive parent (which you can find out more about on the channel, TheraminTrees), and you feel tricked and betrayed by the religion that you taught you to "think" (read: faith) otherwise.

This especially affects media targeted at an audience that “grows up” with the work, such as Manga or YA book series. So if you’re an adult reading Harry Potter or My Hero Academia whatever magic teen fighting book for the first time, you’re going to write that kind of stuff off as the genre conventions and tropes.

But if you’re a kid, you’re going to take these tropes at face value. And then, when you grow up, you suddenly start realizing that this media you’ve been idolizing is actually not as thought out as you imagined it to be as a kid

You’re in that edgey phase where you realize the nuances of what’s wrong with the world and are searching for media to reflect that (which isn’t exactly a priority for the magic teens fighting genre). You’re going to be disappointed and betrayed and frustrated

And itching for an outlet for all that anger—

And thus, many a meta and Dumbledore bashing fics were born.

read more here: bashing and deconstruction

[aardvaark]

WELL I meant like. the writers could have just said he was good at playing violin but gets stage fright about it, like they just say Eliot is good at guitar and singing but gets stage fright about it. it seems mean to give Eliot that but not Hardison. the man is already getting dragged around every heist by his ear they could have let him have this one thing.

Anonymous asked: Also there's the tea-making scene from the Reunion Job where they demonstrate that Eliot is actually pretty weak to Sophie's brain-manipulation tactics and when Parker points it out, both of them react like Sophie keeps doing this to HIM in particular before, like buddy... hardcore enough not to crack under torture... touchstarved enough to get fully brainhacked by just a couple of affectionate arm-sqeueezes

Anonymous asked: Also NLP in particular is absolutely a pseudoscience lmao but I can always forgive a bit of fun hokum in my daytime tv. for the bit. it just seems so mean to cheapen one of Hardison's few non-computer skill W's yknow. ok thank you and sorry for one million anons

omg def don't apologise for sending asks, im so happy to get them!! hi again i hope your day is going well!!

YES re: stage fright being a better option. thats is a much better idea anon!! makes more sense that he simply DOES play violin. he has a LOT of skills. i mean, hardison is a genius, full stop. he can do what he puts his mind to, plus he's shown to be incredibly talented at a lot of things which aren't directly related to his job, like painting. i don't think he gets enough credit as being seriously extremely gifted AND seriously extremely dedicated to honing some of those skills... he has a lot of talents that he's very causal about, but then the ones like hacking that he focuses on? those are mentioned to take so much effort, sleepless nights, etc etc. there's a reason that he's the best hacker on a team of people who are the best in their fields.

and this is all while he's still half-learning. leverage is crime university for him, as episode commentaries tend to say lol. he's... i forgot, 21-22? when leverage starts (ik aldis hodge had just turned 21 when he was hired for the role. looking back on s1 especially, he is soooo young. ik im 20 but like. 21 is so young. it really is). and he's been learning & teaching himself for years already, but it's still early days in his crime career & he seems to already be better than anyone else at what he does. and is somehow fairly well-adjusted unlike anyone else on the team lol. but he does have his own trauma, and his own problems he encounters. eg he hasn't really had a long-term relationship (according to commentary on... im gonna say girls night out/boys night out jobs? idk. s4 somewhere), so while we get a lot of parker dealing with a relationship that she finds kinda overwhelming due to the total lack of safe connections she's had in her life etc etc, we also gotta remember that the parker/hardison (*cough* /eliot too, *cough*) relationship is a pretty new and intimidating thing for him too. and. oh i just realised how off topic i am. wow. if going on tangents was a sport i'd be an olympic athlete.

(and aldis hodge btw is also so multi-talented, he designs watches and paints and, of course, acts. i remember some commentary from the bank shot job saying how they were gonna have hardison be fairly awkward on the grifting, but aldis hodge is just ridiculously good at doing those scenes where he totally stumps the mark/lackeys/cops/etc, and a lot of it is improv. irrelevant ik but i just think it's cool just how good he is at those quick grifting scenes).

anyway. eliot is so touchstarved :((( and he loves his family even when they annoy him or brainhack him lol. he's kinda immune to threats and pain and stuff for sad reasons but the smallest affection, he responds to. which is upsetting to think about, how much pain you have to have to no longer acknowledge it, and how little love you have to experience/accept for any amount to be disarming. but yeah thats true, idk why sophie says hardison was a particularly good target then... i guess her NLP stuff is supposedly easier to do subtly than hypnotism? maybe. regardless, the NLP stuff is absolutelyyyy pseudoscience, but as you said, i just allow for sophie to be able to magically do that stuff lol. its not real but sophie can do the impossible so i just go with it for 42 mins lmao.

[jack-of-heartstrings]

Some of us take it very seriously. There are a few things you have to accept if you want to enjoy Miraculous Ladybug, is all.

First is just that it's built like this:

You have to accept that watching it means dealing with the extremely over-the-top aspects, the stupid and the absurd, whether funny or frustrating in a given case. You have to accept that the world as a whole is heavily exaggerated, that Marinette memorizing Adrien's schedule for three years is this world's equivalent of an awkward teenager learning her crush's class schedule and going out of her way to bump into each other a few more times a day in the hall, etc.

You have to be willing to accept that everyone is frustratingly stupid. There are like four characters who own 98% of the world's braincells, and Marinette is only allowed to use most of hers when she's fueled with overwhelming anxiety on the behalf of others rather than her love life. Everyone else is surviving by passing around the last 2%. In that regard, yeah, maybe you've gotta not take some parts too seriously, be willing to groan or laugh or both at the absurdity.

But if you can deal with that or are the sort of person to find it fun more often than frustrating, then what Miraculous does well, it does really fucking well.

It's not always right away, and I feel like a lot of dissent in this fandom comes down to impatience or lack of faith in the ability to achieve a satisfying payoff when things aren't going like people wanted Right Now. (Ex: Chloe was set up for failure from the start, Marinette made numerous bad choices discouraging her progress and encouraging her to backslide, s3's finale explicitly said she lost hope, the most comically "evil" parts in season 4 follow a distinct pattern, and now she's finally had lasting consequences and been removed from the easy comfort enabling her behavior, but rather than think breaking down the world around her could be room to finally rebuild something new, all I see anyone take from it is a "bad ending", as if they don't think she's coming back, as if she's not living in the city where Felix, now a part of the team, also lives, and as if Audrey's words didn't hauntingly echo Tomoe's to Kagami. Like.... There's potential here guys. Yes this was a whole tangent mini-essay, I digress.)

But the themes? The symbolism? The subtle background worldbuilding from the very beginning? The rewatch value when you realize how long Adrien has had A Weird Relationship With Feathers, or you see the statue outside his house and how it differs from its real life counterpart, or you look into the painting Emilie's portrait is based on, or you've watched long enough to develop a Pavlovian chill down your spine when anyone says the word "Perfect" anywhere near Adrien or Kagami? The direct acknowledgement that Marinette's romantic fantasies are straight up turning her anxiety into a form of escapism so that she never actually has to DO the things she's Too Worried About and thus can escape the risk of rejection, and the fact that she's aware of what she's doing?

The way they've built Lila/WHATEVER-her-name-is up slowly but surely over time, starting with the chronologically last episode of season 1, and the first of the series to REALLY say, "Hey, this won't always get resolved in 22 minutes, actually"? The way her whole thing is LYING, and that's treated as horrible, and at the same time, a literal requirement for all heroes? The degree to which Marinette lies all the time? The bad excuses world champion? To the point that Luka, whose entire character was so deeply tied to truth and openness, experiences one of his biggest moments of character growth via embracing a bold-faced lie? The way season 5 set The Big Liar up as the new main antagonist while simultaneously setting up the biggest and most soul-crushing lie Marinette has ever told?

And yeah, to OP's point, the way characters parallels interact. Gabriel and Marinette, the humble tailors who fell for the beautiful rich blondes who never actually cared about being rich, but wanted to be free and loved. Gabriel and Adrien, the only two Agreste Boys to ever exist (with Gabriel's name change reveal and all), and the way Adrien's love for Ladybug was often all too much like his father-- obsessive, needy, prone to angry outbursts-- never on the same level, but something that might have gotten there, given time. Marinette, who has been desperately trying to stop overplanning for every single thing, but has been validated for doing so again and again, and punished numerous times when she didn't account for enough. Marinette, who wants so desperately to ensure that everyone and everything is okay that she ends up trying to control everything, precisely the kind of thing Gabriel spiraled from.

And yeah, Nathalie seeing those tendencies sounds like exactly the kind of thing we can hope to see, and dear GOD I hope you're right OP in that she'll oscillate between enabling habits and trying to do better as a mentor than she did as a peer.

Yeah man. Miraculous Ladybug has an insane amount of stuff that can be taken very, very seriously. It's not everyone's cup of tea. The writing in early seasons is very different than later ones, and if people would like the later ones but can't get through the earlier ones (or lack the same investment for trying to skip them) that's fair, and if people liked the more light-hearted silly adventures and don't like the show taking itself so much more seriously, that's fair, and if people like the serious parts but find the remaining absurdity too tone-clashy for their taste, that's fair! It's not flawless. But for what it is and what it's trying to do and be, for those who like the things it's trying to do and be, it's really, really good.

thinking about how Marinette and Gabriel are the same

and how Nathalie is going to be uniquely positioned to be able to see that from within the narrative

i wanna see season 6 Nathalie project Gabriel onto Ladybug. i wanna see her fall in to old habits to both her and Marinette's detriment.

and i wanna see her recognize the worst aspects of Gabriel in Marinette and guide her away from them

[vaspider]

'only tenet of TERFism is transmisogyny' EXCUSE ME NO ITS ALL TRANS PEOPLE. They don't want any trans person to exist. What the hell.

Some people just gotta center their own suffering always, even when they're hurting other people by doing so. I've seen this a lot in younger queer folx of all stripes, this need to be the one that hurts the most, you know?

There's a reason the phrase Oppression Olympics exists, and it's because it's a common behavior or phenomenon in oppressed communities. I see it in the disability community, too.

What I think is important to understand when we talk about how trans people suffer under transphobia is that different groups are targeted differently. I'm not the first person to say this, of course.

Now, like, this is very rough sketchy stuff, and each person's individual experiences will vary, but in my general experience, the rough breakdown of the way in which transphobia lands on trans people kind of breaks down like this:

Binary trans women tend to suffer under a lens of hypervisibility. Everything they do is seen, analyzed, and torn apart. Their struggles are generally the ones centered in the arguments of allies, "allies," and transphobes. Even when trans women are the focus of helpful attention, that hypervisibility can cause exhaustion, because they need to perform perform perform, and be perfect, all the time. It's hard for trans women to just be without feeling like they're on camera, all the time. A lot of the time, they are on camera, because trans women's bodily autonomy and right to privacy are just never respected by transphobes (and often by supposed "allies" who feel free to ask the most invasive questions and get upset when trans women won't answer them), and even if they're not literally on camera, they're supposed to perform as the best examples of transfemininity, because if they don't, then they become the next 'look at this bad trans, all trans are this bad trans' example that TERFs point at and use as a broad brush to paint all trans women. If they're not perfect all the time and have a day where they snap at someone while someone is recording, or make a mistake, or anything, it has a horrible tendency to go viral. You can think of at least three instances right now off the top of your head, right? Right.

Binary trans men tend to suffer from hyperinvisibility. This comes from inside and outside the community -- a lot of trans men talk about being told they can't lead in community because they've 'got male privilege,' that their struggles are discarded, that they're talked over and unable to discuss the things they face, which means they don't get the support they need. Now, there are TERFs and transphobes who absolutely do focus their attention on trans men to the exclusion of or to the deprioritization of the oppression of trans women -- that's where we get Tavistock and Irreversible Damage and Fourth Wave Now and all the other bullshit which focuses on the idea that trans men are "transing the gay away," specifically "transing our butch lesbians" and "stealing butches." But again, generally speaking, trans men face harmful levels of invisibility where trans women face harmful levels of visibility. That's why transmascs in general have issues like lack of understanding even by supposedly trans-competent doctors as to how HRT affects our bodies, why trans men (and transmascs in general) report things like transphobes attacking them with transmisogynistic comments and assuming that every trans person online is a trans woman, etc.

Non-binary (here used as an umbrella term for all identities outside of binary man/woman, to include agender, genderfluid, non-binary, and infinite other identities) AFAB people tend to suffer from a different, very specific form of hypervisibility, unless they start to appear too masculine, and then they slip into hyperinvisibility. This is where we get things like "women and non-binary people" that codes all non-binary people as "AFAB people I can sort of squint and view as women," and people who fall into this category tend to get a lot of attention, a lot of derision from all sides of the spectrum. This is the "blue-haired tenderqueer" sneering that we get from both within and without the queer community, where there's an assumption that these people are just cosplaying an identity, that they're not really trans, etc. Having been in the visibility category and slipped into the invisibility category within the last, oh, year or so, and having two binary trans women in my family to compare notes with, the experiences are unnervingly similar. The difference between the experience that those women have had and the experience that I have had is that according to transphobes, I'm a traitor to my womanhood and performing femininity wrong and taking on a fake identity to escape female oppression because I'm not strong enough to bear up under it, but too cowardly to become a trans man, or... something, whereas they're taking on a fake identity to sneak into women's spaces because they're perverts.

Non-binary (umbrella identity etc) AMAB people tend to suffer from their own very specific form of hyperinvisibility, unless they start to present "too feminine", and then they slip into the hypervisibility which affects binary trans women, but with a little different fuckery in which everyone just assumes they're a trans woman, and therefore they get misgendered by everyone across the spectrum of queer/non-queer/etc. Non-binary AMAB people are generally treated like they don't exist, and when they are spoken about, are often discussed in the context of 'they should just admit they're trans women or gay men,' or if they present 'too feminine,' are subjected to the same sort of horrific attention that trans women get.

Again, a lot of this is very simplistic, and doesn't add in a lot of other complicating factors like race, disability, class, etc. Trans men of color, for example, can run into a different sort of hypervisibility because as they move further through their transition, they begin to be seen in the world as a man of color. It's not really mine to speak on beyond that, but I don't want to neglect saying 'this is really really simplistic and there's more to it than that' over and over.

I really hate breaking it down this simply because it feels like creating another binary (our society does like a binary!) for non-binary people, but like, I can't really talk about my shared experiences with other trans people without putting some framework around it. Someday, I'll be able to do that without categories. Wouldn't that be awesome?

I think we do our entire community a huge disservice when we talk about transphobia as if it's a single snake trying to take bites out of only one part of the community, and not a many-headed hydra, able to attack us from multiple different directions. I also think that focusing on one form of oppression keeps us from forming meaningful solidary and coalitions; the more divided we are, the easier it is for the people who literally want us all to stop existing to pick us off one by one. We see this all across the queer community and it's only ramping up as the attacks on our community escalate from without; people tend to turn on the ones closest to them when they get really scared, and to blame the person standing next to them for the pain they're suffering. It's the "close enough to hit" phenomenon, and it's why we see ridiculous things like "bi women make cis men think that lesbians can be won over," rather than acknowledging that bi women aren't the ones causing that: cis men are the ones causing that. The bi women in that case are close enough to hit. Transmascs are close enough to hit. Trans women are close enough to blame for the problems of transmascs, which makes it possible for TERFs to lure transmascs in and attempt to detransition them, subjecting them to gaslighting and manipulation and then using them as sock puppets.

TERFs do focus a lot on transmisogyny. They focus a lot on transmisandry, too. Debating which one is more prevalent and 'worse' not only misses the point, because transmascs and transfems face very different and totally rotten attention from cis society as a whole, including cis queers. We need to like, not do that anymore: we need to give each other the space to talk about our unique circumstances, but we also need to work harder on looking at each other through a lens of solidarity and trying to see that our struggles are different but not unrelated, and that if we keep downing on each other like this, we're not going to get anywhere except in a much more difficult situation as the people who don't want any of us to exist keep picking us off.

[omegafan101]

You know what? It’s been a while since I shared my thoughts on the IDW comics, and I wanna get back into that. Let’s talk about Issue 55!

Right away this cover art is fucking GREAT! Might be some of the best in the series. I’m a big fan.

First off, the Egg Walkers back! Cool! The Egg Mobile is nice and all back Eggman tromping around in a big legged version of the thing has always been fun.

Secondly, love that Metal just rushed in to attack Sonic immediately without Eggman’s orders. Weather it’s just Metal’s prime programming to kill Sonic, or his own free will beginning to creep through is up in the air. And I like that.

Really faked me out here, thought for sure we’d have the classic horror trope with Surge jumping down right before Eggman fully realizes where she is. But Eggman being quick witted enough to realize where she is and shooting that close to her is way better!

Also Eggman having a gun will never not be funny to me. Sure it just shoots lasers but god the image of Eggman holding a pistol is metal and hilarious at the same time.

I’m so god damn happy with what Ian and Evan have been doing with Eggman this arc. The fact that this is the second time in 6 issues that he has grabbed and attacked a character with his bare hands is amazing and really paints him as the threat he’s meant to be. Eggman being physically stronger than he looks, while still needing to rely more on his machines, is just a fantasic bit of characterization.

God I love the way the ENTIRE panel is washed in color whenever Surge uses the wisp powers. It’s absolutely stunning and is a FANTASTIC showcase of her power.

HOT DAMN CHAOS DRIVES ARE BEING ACKNOWLEDGED!

You know after two mini-series of “Starline manipulates people for his plan, they find out, he almost dies, Starline manipulates people for his plan, they found out, he DOES die,” it’s great to be reminded, post-mortem, Starline is an absolute genius and could have been a genuine terrible threat to the world had he not been so focused on one upping Eggman.

I love how Sonic and Eggman aren’t working together yet here, but are smart enough to know that both of them are enemies to Surge and coming at her from both sides like this before confronting each other is a good play. Also Metal looks AWESOME!

I continue to feel so bad for Surge it hurts. The crippling paranoia and anxiety over both her own safety and Kit’s is heart breaking and really makes me want to see her come out okay in the end, which unfortunately I don’t think will happen at this point.

I have nothing of value to say here i just like the image of Eggman drinking water like a professional athlete.

I gotta say it’s a little jarring to see Eggman so quickly accept Sonic’s help after he was so stubbornly against it in Sonic Frontiers, but I guess he just knows that he’s in a completely modified base that he’s unfamiliar with, has no form of transport anymore, and his only form of defense is Metal Sonic who would probably struggle against Sonic and Tails at the same time.

Plus I really can’t blame the writing team for it since they were almost certainly writing this before Frontiers came out and only Ian knew what was going on in that story and he didn’t work on this issue.

And there it is folks, that sweet, horrid realization that Surge isn’t just some brute who Starline hired, but a horrific creation of Starline who doesn’t know anything else than to hate Sonic. God this arc is creepy.

And once again a reminder that Starline is an evil genius on the same level as Eggman, just blinded by his own ego. Eggman admitting himself that Starline was brilliant but only AFTER he’s dead is great to see. I adore a villain who respects their enemies abilities and Eggman is prime for that.

Kit continues to look creepy and Sure is doing the Vegeta pose.

But enough about that I wanna talk about how calm Surge looks in those first couple panels. Or at the very least not angry like she usually is. Surge has been fighting running around and fighting non stop since Issue 50 and she’s clearly scared of the fact that Sonic and Eggman are working together. She’s tired, she’s scared, and she doesn’t know what else to do but to fight Sonic.

And oh BOY this last page is pretty!!! I cannot stress enough how amazing the art of this series is, it’s astounding!

Conclusion

Surge and Kit continue to be really fun and compelling villains and I’m so glad they’ve been added. Feels like we’re getting close to the end of this first major arc involving them, but whatever happens next issue I hope that the two of them can continue to appear in later comics down the line. Giving Sonic more of a rogues gallery is always neat to me, even if Eggman deserves more of the spotlight.

8/10

[narumi-gens]

Okay but would Naoya have a secret breeding kink when blue ball queen was dirty talking him about “filling her up” or would he just be infuriated 👁 👄 👁

note: even a broken computer isn't enough to keep me from digging in the trash 😣 warnings: smut, impreg kink, misogyny (naoya, duh) words: 1.7k (because I’m the trash queen) related drabbles

As Naoya watches you underneath him, practically folded in half from the way he's pushing your knees to your chest with his hands on the backs of your thighs, he finds himself angrier than usual.

But for once, he can't blame it on you despite how much he wants to. He can't blame it on your disrespectful mouth that never shuts up or your inability to recognize him as your better.

No, he's angry at himself. Because instead of focusing on the way your tits bounce with every brutal thrust or how your fingers are furiously rubbing at your swollen clit or the string of moans escaping you, all he can pay attention to is your stomach.

Or more precisely, all he can pay attention to is the thought of what it would look like if he didn't pull out like he usually does.

The last thing he wants is for you to end up pregnant with his kid. He doesn't need any bastard kids running around, especially not ones that would tie him to you for the rest of his life.

But the thought pumping you so full of his cum that your pussy is overflowing is too tempting for him to ignore. He imagines your stomach swelling, your tits getting big, your body changing like nature intended because of him. 

In spite of himself, he finds his hips pounding into your ass even harder as his grip on your thighs tightens.

He wants to be the one to show you that all you're good for besides fucking is getting pregnant and having kids. He wants to force you to accept that you are truly the weaker sex by design. He’ll make you see that any notions you have about "self-worth" and "agency" are nothing more than misconceptions.

He’ll turn you from a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered, disrespectful jujutsu sorcerer into a wife and mother who bows her head when she talks to him and knows her place. 

The thought of breaking you in is so tantalizing that it almost has him coming on the spot.

"Gonna show ya," he pants, his eyes squeezing shut as his mind paints the image of you so fucking big with his kid on the backs of his eyelids. "Ya ain't good fer anything else."

"Shut up," you're quick to reply between moans, but it only urges him on. You won't be so mouthy when you're taking care of his kids, when you're cleaning up after them, when you're breastfeeding them.

He lets out a low groan as he pictures how big your tits will get when they’re full of milk for his kid. It's enough to push him over the edge and before he knows what he's doing, his burying himself as deep as he can inside of you and coming with an almost animalistic growl.

His hips give a few jerks as he fills you with his cum, his hold now so tight on your thighs that finger-shaped bruises are a guarantee. His shoulders rise and fall rapidly as tries to catch his breath.

When he lets his cock slip from you, he can't tear his eyes away from the way his cum slowly leaks out of your messy cunt and trails down the crack of your ass. He continues to hold you in place for a few moments longer before collapsing onto his back beside you in bed with a self-satisfied smirk on his lips.

He runs a hand through his sweaty hair, already reflecting back on how that may have been the hardest he's ever come before. He pointedly ignores the fact that imagining you pregnant with his kid was the cause.

But while he's busy luxuriating in the aftermath of his orgasm, he's completely ignorant to the storm brewing beside him.

"You fucking came inside me!" you shout, sitting up in bed and hitting him hard in the face with the pillow that you had been using.

He recovers quickly and grabs it from you so that he can place it behind his own head with a smirk.

"Yeah? And?" he asks, his tone bored. He watches you from the corner of his eye as you angrily get out of bed and pick a discarded shirt up from the floor that you slip over your head.

"You're so fucking lucky I'm on the pill," you hiss as you storm off to the bathroom, loudly slamming the door shut behind you.

"Good! That means I don't gotta keep pulling outta ya anymore!" he yells after you with a sadistic grin. He wonders what you're more upset over -- that he came inside of you or that you didn't get to come.

You're only gone for a few minutes. He hears the toilet flushing and the water running before the door opens and you come back into the bedroom.

"You're fucking useless," you mutter and he closes his eyes as he stretches with a loud yawn. "I should've just gone with my vibrator. It doesn't have a mouth and doesn't make a mess. And it also makes me come every time."

"That ain't my job," he scoffs, a truly amused smirk playing at his lips at the idea that he's here for your pleasure.

He cracks an eye open when he hears you sliding opening the door to the balcony just off your bedroom. He catches just a glimpse of you holding something in your arms before you disappear onto the balcony for a few moments. When you return, your arms are empty.

He watches you as you pick up his boxer briefs before slinging them at his face. His reflexes are quick enough that catching them before they hit him is an easy feat.

"Get the fuck out," you say without sparing him a second glance on your way out of the bedroom and he chuckles to himself. Frustrating you is almost as gratifying as sex. 

His amusement persists even as he sits up and slides on his boxer briefs. But it doesn’t last much longer because he’s quick to see that your bedroom floor is now empty, his clothes nowhere in sight.

He glances at the sliding glass door that’s still open and his eyes widen when he suddenly remembers that you had carried something onto the balcony, only to come back without it. 

No. 

You couldn’t possibly have.

No.

In the blink of an eye and with the speed he’s known for, he’s on your balcony and tightly gripping onto the railing as he searches the mostly-empty street below. When he sees his shirt, kimono, and hakama scattered on the sidewalk, pure rage explodes in his gut.

“Fucking BITCH!” he yells with no care for your neighbors or the late hour. 

He’s moving so quickly that in the back of his mind he wonders if it’s the fastest he’s ever been. One moment he’s on your balcony and a millisecond later, he has you pinned on your back on the couch where you were sitting. 

He straddles your hips as he wraps a hand around your throat, his grip growing tighter when he sees how your eyes are dancing with mirth.

“You already up for another round?” you ask, a slight wheeze to your voice from how hard he’s squeezing your throat. His fury is so all-consuming that he doesn’t even notice the way his cock twitches.

“You fucking bitch,” he seethes. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

You raise an eyebrow at how his anger actually has his Kansai accent easing, like his ire is great enough that it’s actually able to override any pronunciations and verbal ticks.  

“Well, before you do that, you might wanna go get your clothes,” you point out, sounding almost bored. “The bars are getting ready to close and all it takes is one person who can’t hold their alcohol before they’re throwing it all up.”

He wants to argue with you, call you a bitch some more, and punish you for thinking you have the right to talk to him like this and treat him this way. But he  also knows you’re right. He needs to recover his clothing or else all he’ll have to wear on his way home is a tight pair of boxer briefs. 

“It shouldn’t be too hard to get them back for the world's fastest sorcerer," you mock with a rasp and he lets his hand close even tighter for a few moments, wanting you to think your life is truly in danger, before he releases you. 

He’s gone before you even know what’s happening and he’s already halfway through getting dressed by the time you make it out onto the balcony to watch him struggle. He ignores the heat of your gaze on him, as well as the stares of the few passersby who stumble upon the bizarre scene playing out in the middle of the street.

“Oi! Zen’in-sama!” you shout down to him as ties his hakama. He refuses to acknowledge that he’s heard you, although how could not have with how loud your voice carries. It’s enough to catch the attention of everyone down below. The mocking tone is gone with your next words, your voice as cold as ice. “I know my cunt’s so sweet that it’s hard to resist, but the next time you come inside of me without permission, I’ll cut your balls off so that you can’t make that mistake again.”

He looks up at your balcony, but you’re already gone. He growls to himself, seething that despite everything, you’ve still somehow managed to not only end up with the last word, but also to have humiliated him.

Now that he’s no longer buried ball deep inside of you, he can think with a clearer head and even through his anger, there’s an irritating note of relief that you’re on the pill.

It’s already bad enough that he can’t seem to give up your pussy, but that’s at least a habit he hopes to one day break. A kid would keep you in his life permanently. 

A chill runs down his spine at the idea, disgust curling in his stomach. He tries to ignore the hint of arousal that lurks just underneath it. 

[darkmasterofcupcakes]

DHMIS Review: Short 1, Creativity

First off, I have to say that I kind of love the way the short begins in total silence before Sketchbook (in reviews I’m going to refer to the Teachers/Students by their official names, rather than any headcanon names) starts singing. It doesn’t even go on for all that long, but when the short itself isn’t even four minutes long and you just spend like, five seconds at least just scanning through the set before the song suddenly starts...I know that for most people, the point where they start realizing this isn’t just going to be a normal Sesame Street style video comes later, but in hindsight, that build up helps with developing a sense that things are maybe going to be a bit unsettling. Also, despite the fact that I feel like everyone just calls the episode “Creativity”, I guess the actual title is “Get Creative”, if the little post-it note that we briefly see is any indication. Bit of early installment weirdness, considering most of the episodes from this point on just have the title be the subject of the lesson.

Not really a criticism, since obviously I know that the first short is going to be the least polished, but when you go back to this episode after seeing literally any of the ones that came after (especially after watching the TV show), it’s almost jarring to see what Yellow Guy’s original puppet looked like. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still impressive how good it looks on what I assume is a pretty low budget...but it’s still amazing how in this first short, the puppet has a much more clearly handmade look to it - it kind of looks like a stage between a very simple hand-puppet and a Muppet-style design - and then upgrades so much in just the next short. Another thing to note is that I didn’t realize Sketchbook’s mouth was actually on their puppet until someone else pointed out that was a difference between them and later Teachers like Tony, who had their mouths added in post. Honestly it doesn’t really effect too much besides kind of explaining why the top and bottom “lips” sometimes cross over when Sketchbook talks; because it’s probably hard to perfectly line up the strings after each word spoken.

Obviously it doesn’t excuse what they do later, but a small thing I noticed in both this and the next short is that, really, the Teachers don’t seem to start acting all that hostile until one of the Students (actually, I think it’s Red Guy in both cases) says something that they see as an insult? Like here, Sketchbook seems perfectly cheerful until Red says that them using their hair to express themselves is “boring”; then they start slipping into anger, if just slightly.

Honestly kind of wondering if the “using your minds to have a good time” was just there because they thought it’d be a good lyric, or if they already had the second short planned and that was foreshadowing. Not really helping are the possible hints that there is some connection between the first and second shorts that none of the others really share, but I’ll go a bit more into that later. Also, feel bad for Yellow getting his painting wrecked when he’s literally the most engaged in the lesson....but, also I need more fandom stuff that acknowledges that the Sketchbook can apparently just...summon oil (or paint?) from nowhere to cover things they don’t like.

Gotta love both the iconic “Green is not a creative color” line...and the fact that, despite being the Teacher of creativity, Sketchbook just rhymes color with itself; though I guess there weren’t many other options that would have really made sense so maybe it’s fair. 

The “creativity explosion” segment is just pure chaos and I honestly love how it’s unclear how much of it really happened and how much was literally just the Students letting their imaginations go a little too wild? I think most people lean towards it being real, but I’ve seen at least one interpretation that it wasn’t, and having the Students go completely off the walls and do all those things just in their heads was how the Sketchbook effectively made the lesson “poison” by making them afraid to try and be creative. Personally, I do lean towards the idea of it being unintentional, just because of the way the Sketchbook looks stunned when things calm down. Like even they’re shocked by just what kinds of things those three apparently come up with when they really get creative. 

And, honestly, that’s something I think needs more acknowledgement in the fandom - the possibility that the Students were so intense when allowed to fully unleash their creativity that it actually freaked out the Teacher.

So that’s the first short and the first thing of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared ever released. Obviously not as polished as later installments, but still a lot of fun and obviously gets a lot of nostalgia points since, without this, we wouldn’t have everything else. Gonna give it a solid 4.75 out of 5 stars. Nearly perfect to me, but it does feel like it’s over just a bit too quickly and I can’t completely ignore how rough some aspects of it are. 

[mutigold]

∞ teacher’s pet — i.n.

summary: in which the top student fails a test and gets extra help from his favorite professor.

pairing: student!jeongin x teacher!reader

genre: college!au

warning: sub!jeongin, dom!reader, pet play, noona kink, exhibitionism, handjob, ear licking, humiliation, quirofilia, seduction, he still has his braces.

word count: 1.9k

authors note: i really don’t know where this idea came from, but all i know is subby jeongin = 🤤. thank you for supporting me! watching people like my little writings really make my day.. hope y’all enjoy this <3. stream “Going Dumb”!

“would anyone like to explain what it means to be dependent on an organism?”

jeongin’s eyes concentrated on you, as he listened to your voice encompassing the leveled platform. today’s lecture was based on the living organisms in the world and you seemed to be determined for everyone to learn the curriculum.

however, jeongin could not focus on anything except your figure. you were wearing a white skin-tight turtleneck and black formal pants that emphasize your ass. all topped off with a large suit jacket and black louis vuitton heels.

it overall made his heart jump for joy just enjoying the view.

he thought about how those heels would look wrapped around his waist as he pounds into you; screaming his name. or maybe how your tiny hand would slip around his throat as he begs for your come.

“mr. yang?”

jeongin quickly snaps out of his trance to hear you calling his name. and not in the way he wanted.

you looked up at him with sad eyes, upset at him for not paying attention to your favorite lesson. “what’s going through that head yours? is it more important than organisms?”

he quickly fixed his posture, shaking his head rapidly, and responded with, “n—no, i’m sorry noona. i just was thinking too hard about something. i’ll promise to listen from now on.”

you hummed with caution, continuing the biological lecture. the student sighs gratefully for you letting him go off easily and tries to at least take some notes.

“yo, i.n. you okay?” a familiar voice whispered.

jeongin turns to see his two close friends, seungmin and felix, staring down at him in question. “yeah, you seem a little off today.”

confirming he says, “uh. y—yeah; i’m okay.”

“mhmm. okay with staring professor y/n down huh?” felix smirks.

the heat on i.n. 's cheeks becomes noticeable when hearing about his staring. he then tries to ignore the statement by writing his name and the current date in his notebook.

“leave him alone felix. he’s just probably having some problems with the lesson; you should perhaps ask noona for help.” seungmin tries to intervene.

“yeah; i mean, maybe noona can also help you with other problems. if you know what i mean.” felix grins bumping jeongin’s arm.

“f—felix!”

“boys?! care to tell us what is so interesting other than my lesson?” your voice suddenly booms throughout the room. jeongin jumps at your tone and begins to apologize again once making you soften.

“that’s alright, but please pay attention. oh, and jeongin, stay after class for a few minutes to speak with me.”

he didn’t know what to think at that moment; with felix oohing in one of his ears and seungmin trying to shush him in his other or the fact that you wanted to talk to privately.

alone, with no one around, made his mind officially shut down.

“you wanted to speak with me noona?”

you shifted around to see jeongin’s stiff form; then took note of how nervous he looked and gave him a light smile. “hey, kiddo. i just wanted to see how you were doing lately.” you wished to see some type of relief release through him.

but unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

he still looked kind of anxious to speak with you, letting you know how intimidating you seemed. “hey it’s all good, you're not in trouble or anything, i promise. i’ve noticed how you’ve been acting recently in my class and how your scores dropped a little,” you reassured.

“ai! i’m so sorry noona!”

you giggle at the student’s consistent apologies. in your mind, you thought how cute he was; like a puppy aching to gain approval from its owner.

maybe you could make him as your puppy and work hard for that admiration.

immediately, you shake your head from the naughty images. ever since the semester started a few months ago, your thoughts almost ran around yang jeongin.

how his pretty smile, concealed by clear braces, shined at your speaking, how his crescent-shaped eyes followed your every move; making you feel sexy, how large and veiny his arms grew over time within the season, etc.

“that’s alright, jeongin. i just want you to feel comfortable in my lectures. how about this, you and i have a session later this evening to cover the material for the next exam. what do you think pup’?” you offering, accidentally calling him by the pet name you gave him.

after catching the tiny nickname, jeongin clumsy drops his possessions while feeling something swell in his pants. he begins to overthink the word. pup’? why did that sound so nice coming out of your mouth? and how was he gonna hide the fact that his dick got hard in the middle of their conversation?

“i–i’m sorry!”

“oh! no worries hun! here; let noona help you out.”

you instantly proceeded over, bent down, and gathered i.n.’s school objects. starting with some of his blue pens, his macbook, and then his green two-subject notebook. “n–noona! i got the notebook, it’s okay.” jeongin stuttered.

it was almost like he was trying hard to hide something in the notebook, and suddenly it all made sense as it opened to the front page.

yang y/n. it was his surname combined with your first name.

it seemed as if time swiftly froze with silence when discovering the secret. however, it didn’t bother you essentially much as jeongin thought it would have had. “aw, pup’, this is cute. yang y/n has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

the air that was in jeongin’s lungs properly stopped working when distinguishing how seductive your tone became. “i–i..”

“relax a lil’ pup’. listen, will you promise to meet me later this eveningfor some tutoring. i think you could really use it. plus if you’re good–”

you shifted closer to the student’s ear lobe and whispered, “–noona could give you a reward.”

jeongin swore he felt some pre-cum drip down from his pants. “y–yes, noona.” he swallowed trying to moist his dry throat, then jumped moaning in pleasure when your small hand gripped around his erection.

“good. see you then, pup’.”

a few hours later, jeongin ends up at the university’s public library, not knowing what to expect. though, he did make sure to be ready for any possible situation. what did you mean by rewarding him? did you feel the same way he did?

you must have since you did touch his swollen cock during your conversation. or maybe it was just his imagination?

jeongin sighs restlessly thinking of the concept while waiting for your arrival. that soon ends as he hears your alluring voice greet out, “hiya pup’! ready for our lesson?”

he peers up from the library’s table to see you wearing informal clothing. a tight crew neck that reveals your smooth arms extending down to red-painted nails and large breasts bouncing with every step you take.

“ah! i hope you weren’t waiting too long, i got held up in traffic.”

“t–that’s okay noona! i just got here.”

you smile at his nervousness, now acknowledging where it came from, and sat down in the hard chair right next to him. “good, we can get started. i hope you’re ready,” you whispered, feeling an urge to dominate.

jeongin gulps recognizing a certain excitement coming from his pants within hearing your tone and replies with, “r–ready?”

“so, what does adaptation consist of?”

jeongin couldn’t comprehend what you were saying being he focused on the way your glossed-up lips looked. the way he could imagine it wrapped around cock or it traveling up and down the side of his neck molding kisses; it worked him to the point where he was solid hard.

“pup’, what is going through that mind of yours?”

“s–sorry. it’s just, i guess this lesson isn’t grasping in my head yet.” he tries to explain not wanting to upset you.

however, instead of upsetting you, your colored eyes just darken. “oh! i have any idea; remember when i said i would reward you if do good–”

jeongin nods excitedly, making you giggle.

“–well, i know you understand the concept of this chapter. so to push you a little more, i’ll ask you a question and if you get it right, that little cock of yours will get to come.”

the student freezes up at your approach, thinking it was a dream too good to be true. “w-wait what?”

“what is the definition of homeostasis?”

“i, uh, i think it's an organism's constant adjustment to maintain stable conditions in itself?”

you reached under the table discreetly and unbuttoned the pants on jeongin grasping his swollen cock. “o-oh my god, noona!”

“shh, pup’. you gotta be quiet for me; now onto the next question. who created the biogenesis theory?”

jeongin’s breath became too much for him to handle feeling the pre-cum drip from his blood-filled tip. “n–noona, please.”

“come on puppy, tell me the answer or i stop.”

his mind starts to rush trying to find the answer before you let him go. it took him a couple of seconds, but once he got it, he hurried to speak. “henry charlton bastain!”

“good puppy.” your tiny hand moves faster, satisfied with the statement. you felt his cock throbbing with every stroke you took. like jeongin, you dreamt of this same exact moment. you wanted to control the poor student every time he walked through your room, when he made eye contact with you, or even when his plump bottom lip was bitten from his teeth.

and finally, it was happening.

“oh, who’s a good puppy for noona?”

“m-me! i am noona.”

“that’s right pup’. next question, what are the five steps to the scientific method?”

i.n.’s vein from his cock popped out sensing the rubbing moving faster than before. “i only know four noona!”

“too bad, i wanted five or i slow down.” you coldly demand.

jeongin began to try to think hard on the five steps letting the sensation run through his body. “o-okay. it’s defining the problem, making a hypothesis, testing it, analyzing the results… then..”

your hand slows at his hesitation. “give me the last one puppy.”

“oh! noona, don’t stop! i–i. is it d–drawing the conclusions?”

“good puppy!”

his cock grows bigger when your finger grips at the base. then, you painted nails lightly scratch at his tight balls. “oh! noonaaa. that feels sooo goood. pleaseee.”

“continue to answer like a good pup’ then i’ll keep going.”

soon after the next few questions, jeongin sits near his breaking point. “nooonnnaaa! please!”

“grab your textbook and hold it up.”

i.n. clutches the hard-covered biology book to cover both you and him from public eyes. suddenly, you lower yourself to his lips, deeply kissing him with tongue, and wander towards his earlobe. “one more question, pup’. what does stimulus mean?”

“uh! noona! please let me come! make your puppy come!” he moans a little too loud.

“shh. answer the question, then i’ll let you come.”

“s-stimulus? it m-means anything an organism responds to.”

you then move your head to spit down to moist his penis. “good puppy! getting your small cock rubbed in front of everyone like a little slut.” you cup the back of his neck feeling the shivers release through him.

“you can come pup’, come for noona.”

jeongin then lets go, coming hard in your hand. “o-oh! thank you, thank you noona!”

after guiding him to his high, you let go of him and licked the white, sticky substance from your hand.

“good puppy. i’m sure you’ll be ready for that next exam.”