#and like. I realize in the scheme of things this is a relatively minor problem
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tj-crochets ¡ 2 months ago
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Hey y'all! I could use some advice, because when I developed asthma my family pretty much got rid of all our cleaning products besides like dish soap and clorox wipes for asthma trigger reasons, just using soap and water and elbow grease to clean things, but to be honest I just don't have that much elbow grease available. The fatigue is real lol That said, I am looking for your cleaning product recommendations (for cleaning anything! absolutely anything, just tell me what it's for please) in two categories: 1. What works best, regardless of asthma side effects or whether or not I personally can use it* 2. What you think will work for me, if you have any asthma-friendly cleaning product suggestions *I am not the only person in my household so if the cleaning product works really well but I can't be around it we can make it work
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the-boy-meets-evil ¡ 2 years ago
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along for the ride | lee seokmin (dk)
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pairing: lee seokmin (dk) x f.reader genre: idol!au (kind of?), smut rating: explicit, minors DNI warning: swearing, drinking, hoshi is a shithead (yes, that's a warning), honestly this is mostly just smut with a little bit of background smut warnings: thigh riding, fingering (f receiving), oral (m receiving), multiple orgasms, unprotected sex (don't do this), vaginal sex, they were drinking but it's not drunk sex, dk calls reader baby word count: 4140 (don't @ me) summary: you say yes to a vacation with the new group you're working with. what else are you going to say yes to? a/n: i really don't know what to tell you. this was supposed to be a drabble for a request that @playmetheclassics sent and here we are. thank you so much to @here4btsfics for being a wonderful beta reader and to @classicscreations for the banner (even though i wouldn't let her beta). i hope you like this, indigo! and please be gentle, it's my first seventeen fic
a/n 2: a second part is in the works so stay tuned 💕
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You knew a lot of things before you agreed to come on this trip. You knew that you needed a break, knew it was an all-expenses paid trip with little (if any) work, and knew it was a chance to get to know the people you were going to be working with better. 
So you quickly agreed. Who would say ‘no’ to running away to the sun during the coldest parts of winter? Certainly not you. There were definitely moments when you looked back and questioned your decision-making skills. This wasn’t going to be one of them.
Until it was.
Because there were things you didn’t know, too. You didn’t know how everything changed without eyes everywhere. Didn’t know how much more relaxed everyone got when they were truly alone. Didn’t know that you didn’t actually know much at all about these people that you worked with.
You certainly didn’t know much about Lee Seokmin. 
Previous interactions with him had been brief, usually. There wasn’t much reason for you to be hanging around him. Despite that, you knew him to be someone that was kind, caring, and generally always had a smile on his face. In the grand scheme of what you knew, he seemed relatively tame, innocuous even. Certainly not an obvious walking problem like Kim Mingyu, who you had been careful around so far.
And it was all fine, until you saw Seokmin sitting on the side of the pool in a bathing suit and realized just how thick his thighs were. Then you weren’t really sure what to do or where you could go that was safe. So you sought out the one person that you genuinely considered a friend and nothing more. There was one person among this group that you genuinely connected with. He had been an instant friend. You figured you would be safe with him.
“Are you hiding from Mingyu again? Because honestly, you’re gonna have to get over that,” Soonyoung said, more mocking than disapproving.
“No, I am not hiding from Mingyu. I haven’t hidden from him,” you hissed back.
“Mhmm,” Soonyoung hummed. 
“Can’t I just want to hang out with you?” you asked and rolled your eyes at him.
“‘Course you can,” Soonyoung said easily. 
Soonyoung seemed a little distracted and you figured it was okay to sneak a look back over to where Seokmin sat. He was laughing and trying to drag Minghao into something, an impressive accomplishment if he managed it.
“Ahhh, right year, wrong person,” Soonyoung chuckled. Apparently, he wasn’t distracted and you played right into his hand. When you looked over at him, his eyes were on Seokmin.
“It’s nothing,” you said, brushed any thoughts off immediately. “I just guess I didn’t know you guys that well before this.”
“It’s only the first day,” Soonyoung commented and that gave you pause.
You shook it off quickly. “Exactly, it’s the first day. I’m just getting used to everyone.”
“You’re used to me,” he said and you were worried for a second he meant it as a bad thing. If the smirk on his face was anything to go by, he was just causing problems on purpose. Again.
“You don’t count,” you said.
“Wow, rude, I’m a person too,” Soonyoung whined.
“I know you are,” you said patiently.
“And I’m hot too,” he added. Your eyebrows shot up at that.
“No, I’m not falling for that. Because if I agree that you’re hot, which you know you are, you’re going to ask me who else is hot since you said you were hot too,” you said and watched his smile fade.
“You’re no fun.” he pouted.
Crisis averted, at least for the time being.
Thankfully, the rest of the day was pretty easy and you were able to enjoy time with Soonyoung as well as some of the others. Although he made little comments, it wasn’t obvious what he was talking about. And that really was par for the course with him anyway. When you walked around thinking you were a tiger (that wasn’t all for the cameras, apparently), people took what you said with a grain of salt.
Dinner was a chaotic affair at best. With so many people, you had to spread out over several tables. It was easier that way for you too because it gave you a chance to have more personal conversations. You were fine in big groups, usually, but with so many people there often wasn’t room to get a word in. Especially when they knew each other so well and you were still brand new.
You sat down at the only two-person table, figuring Soonyoung or maybe Chan would sit with you. They had been the easiest to be around so far given they were the two you’d spent the most time with prior to the vacation. Easy. It would all be so easy.
“Are you saving this for someone?” 
The voice caught you off guard, mid-bite, and you wanted to curse at yourself for not paying more attention. Seokmin was standing before you, all smiles as he held his plate. Soonyoung was right over his shoulder and for a moment, you thought you might be saved. Seokmin followed your gaze and saw his friend.
“Oh, were you coming to sit here?” Seokmin asked, friendly as always.
“No, no, it’s all yours. I was going to sit with Jun and Jihoon,” Soonyoung said with a clap on the younger man’s back.
Yes, Soonyoung was one of the people that you knew best. So really, you should’ve seen that coming. You’d never met anyone else that got so much pleasure out of causing problems on purpose. Not that sitting with Seokmin was a problem. It obviously wasn’t and you hoped your face remained neutral while you internally spiraled. 
Dinner was easier than it should’ve been. Sitting at a table like this, it was much easier to just focus on what Seokmin was saying rather than any thoughts you had earlier. Not surprisingly, he had a lot to say and just as much that he wanted to ask you. He listened intently as you shared things that you thought were boring, insisted they weren’t, and smiled the whole time.
Maybe Soonyoung actually was good for something, not that you would ever tell him that. His head was already big enough. But you were also much more comfortable now and maybe he deserved a small thanks.
The warm feelings toward Soonyoung lasted until the next morning when he asked you to meet him in the gym to work out. You should have known something was off. Even though you had wanted to keep up with your gym schedule on vacation, Soonyoung had whined about it before leaving. Then, there was a sudden request and you were still thankful from the night before, and you didn’t think much about it.
Another mistake.
You walked into the small gym to find Seokmin and Chan working out with Soonyoung nowhere to be found. And okay, yeah, all those thoughts were definitely still there. Chan, being the sweetest human, asked if you were looking for someone and then laughed. Apparently, your friend was still sleeping. 
Soonyoung - 2, you - 0. 
That was how the next several days went. It was like a game to Soonyoung, just to get you to admit something that you didn’t want to because he knew it already. And because you were stubborn. He was doing this for his own enjoyment and you weren’t going to keep indulging him. So he’d wave the white flag, sometimes multiple times, lull you into a false sense of security, and then force you into a situation with Seokmin that was making it harder and harder to act normal.
“Okay, okay, okay,” you finally said and threw your hands up for good measure.
“What?” Soonyoung’s face was pure delight.
“Yes, you complete and total pain in the ass, I think someone here is hot. I mean, you’re all hot, but yes, there’s someone I’m struggling around,” you said softly.
“Mhm, and who is that someone?” Soonyoung pressed.
“Do I really have to say it?” you asked. You knew your cheeks flushed under Soonyoung’s gaze.
“No, of course not,” Soonyoung said and you exhaled. “We can just keep playing these games.”
“I knew you were doing all this on purpose, you fucking demon,” you hissed at him.
“Give me a name and it’ll stop,” Soonyoung responded, not even acknowledging that you were right. 
“Fine,” you shot back. “It’s Seokmin. Happy?”
“Ecstatic,” Soonyoung said.
Apparently not playing games just meant that he wasn’t going to keep trying to fabricate situations for you to end up alone with Seokmin. It did not extend to actual games, which he had on the schedule for that night. He was dying to play drinking games, or so he said, and he dragged anyone he could convince along with him. Some of them looked strong-armed and you wondered why he had left the rest alone. “I didn’t force anyone,” Soonyoung protested. “Did too,” you fired back.
“Please, you wanted to play,” Soonyoung said.
“What about Jihoon? Why’s he safe?” 
“Because that man could end me with a single look, I don’t fuck with that.”
Fair, honestly. Everyone’s secrets came out when they were drinking and you tried to observe more than anything. You didn’t want to reveal too much, that was the key. And the key to doing that was making sure you stayed clear of being truly drunk. Soonyoung, on the other hand, as the designated host, ended up pretty drunk. It was cute and you spent most of the game laughing so hard you were near tears. Until a couple of the guys announced it was time to call it and head off to bed, for Soonyoung most of all.
People filtered out until it was just you and Seokmin left in the living area. Unlike every other time, though, it was comfortable. Easy, even. A sort of silence settled around you and you soaked it in, not eager to break it.
“Are you having fun?” Seokmin asked after a few minutes.
“Yeah, it’s been really great to get to know you all better,” you answered.
“I’ve been, well I’ve been noticing we wind up together a lot,” Seokmin said and you looked over at him.
Was this going to be venturing out of easy again? That was the last thing you wanted. “Oh, yeah. I guess we have.”
“Sometimes I feel like Soonyoung has been setting me up,” Seokmin confessed.
It was the perfect opening to admit that you knew that’s exactly what your darling Soonyoung had done. The drinks made it seem like a good idea. “Why would you think that?”
You chickened out anyway. But as you felt dumb, Seokmin rubbed his hand along the back of his neck like he was embarrassed. Did he know? Was he about to let you down easily?
“Ah, well it’s kind of embarrassing? But I told him I wanted to get to know you better and was having trouble,” Seokmin admitted.
“What?” It was all you could blurt out.
“Yeah, I know, it was dumb…” Seokmin stumbled.
“No, no, it’s not. I will literally kill him though,” you said and Seokmin looked defeated.
“That’s, uh, a little drastic,” Seokmin said.
“No, oh my god, I’m so sorry,” you rambled. “It’s just…I thought he was doing it because he knew I thought you were hot and the whole time…we could’ve avoided all this.”
“You think I’m hot?” The question fell out of Seokmin’s mouth like he couldn’t believe it.
“Um, have you looked in a mirror lately?” 
“I…can I kiss you?” Despite your confession, his question was still unsure. You had both been drinking, sure, but you weren’t drunk.
All you had to do was nod and he closed the space between you on the couch, took your face in his hands, and kissed you hard. Like he really had been waiting to do it. Like maybe Soonyoung had done both of you a favor in pushing you together over the past several days. Even though it would’ve been a lot easier without the games.
But it was a weird angle, sitting next to each other, so you repositioned into his lap, enjoying sitting on top of the thighs you’d been dreaming about. Seokmin slid his hands up your thighs and around to your ass, holding you in place against him. Your skin burned under this touch. His lips were steady against yours, confident. 
You couldn’t remember kissing someone and feeling this much. How had you completely missed this side of Seokmin when you were considering who to be careful around?
You couldn’t take it anymore, needed to feel him against you even a little. When you broke off the kiss, he looked confused. All you’d done was kiss him but his hair was messy from your hands running through it and his lips were swollen. You pulled your shorts down so you could get back into his lap only in your underwear and t-shirt. 
And it was a lot. 
Everywhere your bodies met felt like it was on fire. He looked confident, nothing like the carefree and smiling person you had seen up until this point. Seokmin watched the way goosebumps erupted on your skin as he ran his hands along your bare thighs. Carefully, he repositioned you so that you were straddling one thigh, which was probably more comfortable and maybe meant that this wouldn’t be too rushed. Neither of you seemed to want to rush despite being out in a common area. 
You really couldn’t take it and you started to slowly roll your hips against his thigh. The muscles tensed underneath you and it only made you move a little faster. His hands felt like they were everywhere. They moved from your thighs around to squeeze your ass and up your sides under your shirt. It made you shiver with how he switched between gentle and firm. He sure knew how to drive you crazy.
Your hips continued to roll against his thigh and the friction of the fabric was doing more for you than it should have been. You let out a moan that Seokmin immediately caught with his lips. One of his hands returned to your ass to keep your hips moving against his thigh. The other found the back of your neck to hold you against his lips. Not that you’d want to be anywhere else. 
When you couldn’t take it anymore, you moved a hand down between you and started to rub your clit through your underwear. Seokmin’s hand moved from your ass immediately and pulled your hand away, gentle but firm. Like he was in control. You wanted to break the kiss to question why he pulled your hand away, but his hand on the back of your neck stayed firm. A second later, you felt his own long fingers moving your underwear to the side and taking over for your finger.
“Fuck,” you groaned against his lips. He still wouldn’t let you break the kiss.
This wasn’t something you had ever really done before. You hadn’t ever gotten off on someone’s thigh like this, but here you were. His finger rubbed circles over your clit and you rocked your hips against his thigh faster, chasing a high that you hadn’t expected. 
Seokmin finally broke your kiss and moved his mouth along your jaw and over to your ear. He nipped at your skin and smiled at the string of moans and encouragement that slipped from your lips. His fingers never broke their rhythm as he kissed whichever part of your skin that his lips could reach. 
“Please, I don’t think I can…I’m gonna,” you muttered, so close to a release.
“Come for me,” Seokmin whispered into your ear. 
It was all you needed to let go and his finger guided you through your release. Your breaths fell heavy as you came down, still straddled over his thigh. Without another word, he lifted his fingers to his mouth to suck them clean. And then he pulled you in again, kissing you deeply. 
Fuck, this man was hot.
You looked down at the space between you and saw the wet spot on his shorts. You had been so caught up in the moment that you hadn’t even registered that he was still dressed. 
“Seokmin, I’m so sorry,” you started and he shook his head, eyes still filled with desire.
“Do I seem like I’m complaining?” He was all confidence now, and it made you shiver.
“Well, no,” you said and he smiled. Not his usual smile. Something much less like sunshine.
You adjusted in his lap and brushed against his cock, already hard in his pants, which earned a groan from him. You were still so sensitive but you couldn’t stop yourself from rolling your hips again. Seokmin threw his head back and bit on his knuckle to muffle some of the moaning.
“Come on, we’re going to my bedroom,” he said.
There was no room for disagreement or debate and fuck, why was that so hot? He helped you get your balance so you could climb off of him and grabbed your shorts when he stood up. Part of you wondered if this was a good call. Then again, you’d already made a mess of his shorts, so there wasn’t much use in turning back now.
With so many people, you didn’t realize how he had gotten his own room and were very appreciative when he led you back to what seemed to be the most secluded part of the main building. It was a little late to even think about that, though, since you had just gotten off on his thigh in the common area.
Once the door was shut, and locked for good measure, Seokmin pulled you against his body and captured your lips in yet another kiss. How did they just keep building and getting more intense? That didn’t seem like it should be possible and yet it was. His fingers trailed along your skin at the hem of your shirt before he pulled it up and over your head. 
While the kiss was broken, your hand snaked down to palm him over his shorts and found he was already hard. Was that just from getting you off on his thigh? And you wanted to tease him, wanted to continue running your hand along him without giving him enough.
But you couldn’t. All you wanted was for him to feel as good as you had. You dropped to your knees and pulled both his shorts and briefs with you. You thumbed over the tip of his cock, spread the precum already there along the tip. When you looked up at him, you found he was watching you and so you licked a careful strip up the underside of his length. His eyes fluttered closed for a second. 
You experimented and took more of him into your mouth slowly. He groaned when your mouth moved back to his head and you swirled your tongue around the tip. His hand twitched like it wanted to hold you in place but he wasn’t sure if that was okay. It wasn’t like there had been time to talk about any of it. So instead, you grabbed his hand and put it on the back of your head. His eyes found yours and even from your knees you could see his pupils were blown. Like he couldn’t believe what was happening. Not that you could either. 
His hips bucked into your mouth and you hollowed out your cheeks as you sucked. You put your hands on his thighs as you bobbed, felt the muscles there tense under your touch. And you couldn’t help but run your nails down them. The shiver you earned in response was all the motivation you needed to keep going.
Until he stopped you suddenly and you looked up at him. He pulled you to your feet and kissed you hard. With his hand on your lower back, he molded your body against him as if any space would kill him. Something about him being so in control fucked with your mind. Made you a needy, whiny mess. You were sure he could’ve asked for anything and you would’ve agreed.
“I really need to fuck you,” he murmured against your lips.
“Fuck,” you whined in response.
He pulled away and you knew you looked disappointed. Your lips chased his for a second. “Condom?”
“I wasn’t exactly planning on this happening,” you responded with a light chuckle.
“Shit,” he said. His breaths were shallow.
“I’m clean and I have an IUD if you want…” you started and his eyes snapped to yours.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yes,” you breathed out and his lips were on yours again.
Strong arms traveled down your body and gripped under your ass. You gasped into Seokmin’s mouth when he lifted you and moved the two of you to the bed. Another thing you hadn’t realized about this man. Everything he did caught you off guard. And you should’ve been prepared by that point, but how could you be?
The two of you settled on the bed and your knees pressed into the mattress on either side of him. His hand trailed down your body and he let his fingers skim your folds. You were wet for him again and stifled a moan when two of his fingers entered you. Just a couple pumps and he pulled his fingers out again to grip his cock. You sat up so that he could line himself up against your entrance.
Seokmin let you adjust and you took him in slowly. As soon as you had all of him inside of you, he sighed. Told you how good you felt clenching around him. Told you how much he liked stretching you out. Told you a lot of things as you started to slowly roll your hips. The pace was slow and you knew it needed to be faster. But there was something really nice about having a moment of control. Something nice about watching him. Something nice getting him to beg.
“Please,” he whined.
And so you gave in. You rolled your hips faster, dug your nails into his shoulders, enjoyed his finger tips digging into the skin at your hips. Every sensation added to the next and only made you want more. More of him, more of this feeling, more everything.
As if he couldn’t help himself, his hips bucked up into you. When you let out a string of expletives, he took it as permission to do it again. His hips bucked up into you in rhythm and it was almost more than you could take. You were sensitive from your first orgasm but he felt so good. The pace quickened again as he thrusted his hips up into you. He was so deep and it was so much. You reached your hand down between your bodies to rub your clit. But he knocked your hand away and kissed you hard. A second later, his hand was on your clit.
It was all too much. His thrusts started to falter and you knew he was close. You adjusted so that you could make up for him faltering, rolled your hips as hard and fast as you could manage. Chased the high for both of you.
Seokmin swore and released into you. His thumb on your clit had you cumming right after him and you both rode it out together. You moved slower on him as he thrust into a final few times. You stilled on top of him and his lips found yours again, hands moved to tangle in your hair. 
This time the kiss was soft, almost like a first real kiss. It was so, so gentle and so filled with care. So at odds with everything that had just happened between the two of you. It was like being wrapped up in a blanket on a cold day, warm and familiar. You had a thought that you could kiss him like that again. That you actually wanted to.
But you needed to pull away. You needed to get off of his lap and you both needed to get cleaned up. Those were some dangerous thoughts and you didn’t really need to be having them. 
If only his face wasn’t all care and affection when you pulled away. If only he didn’t offer to go get some washcloths to help you clean up. If only he didn’t offer you his clothes to sleep in. If only he didn’t ask you to cuddle in bed with him that night. If only he didn’t look so cute when you agreed.
If only, right?
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i hope you all enjoyed that! please let me know your thoughts ❤️
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snekdood ¡ 6 months ago
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While this is obviously not universal, I sometimes think that a lot of the hateful behavior we see from supposed activists could be greatly reduced if they weren't just jumping into the most grandiose movements and "fights against the man" right off the bat.
I had a similar thing back when Trump was elected and we suffered through his presidency; I was incredibly angry and wanted some sense of comfort, and thus went to a website where there were other people like me where we could rage and be angry against Trump.
But the big problem I came to realize overtime was that this didn't really help my anger at all in the long term; I was just feeling burnt out, and arguably just as helpless and powerless as before, on top of also still being pretty angry. So I had to narrow my focus down immensely; I ended up focusing all my focus on one specific set of bills that I would oppose.
And truthfully the experience was really humbling, because even as relatively minor as my contribution was in the grand scheme of things, it still took an immense amount of work, research, and understanding the nuances of the situation to be able to achieve anything. You basically can't rush things, or expect grandiose glory and be praised as a hero when you're doing something that's necessary, but hard and easily overlooked. And overtime I had to shift my focus from merely hating the bills to actually standing for something, standing for the people who would get hurt by those bills instead of using the fight for my anger.
We're STILL fighting against those particular sets of bills to this day, years after I narrowed things down, but having that knowledge to some degree kinda made me much more cautious about bigger, more grandiose things like Free Palestine and the like.
Because really I think a lot of the people going into that movement are doing what I did with Trump, but whereas I was relatively safe because Trump was such an unambiguously evil man, and thus couldn't really cause that much damage (hopefully), the I/P situation is infinitely more complicated and far easier to indulge in our worst impulses and bigotries, and people are so fixated on finding something to blast their anger and powerlessness at that they're making a far costlier mistake as a result.
i dont feel like i have anything meaningful to add. you said it best
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mywatchhasnotended ¡ 2 years ago
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Daemyra fic recs ao3
(Credit to owners. Mostly 18+, so Minors DNI please. Completed fics are marked with '+'. Also, P1 and P2 indicate parts of the same series.)
MODERN AUs
+daffodil by burninghoneyatdusk
“I can take you to a place where you can experience and learn everything there is to know of pleasure.”
“Of pleasure,” she echoes, unable to help her breathlessness.
“Don’t you want to know more of the world before you dive head first into it?”
She scrapes her teeth against her bottom lip. “What kind of place exactly?”
His responding smile is wicked. “The kind of place with the richest indulgences and the utmost discretion.”
Or, Rhaenyra's uncle takes her to a sex club to learn about pleasure.
+potential by stannide
“Do you normally snog your friends?”
“Do you normally snog your nieces?”
One strange night throws Rhaenyra’s relationship with her ersatz uncle off-kilter.
+once bitten by kneeininjury
It's been twelve months since Rhaenyra last saw her uncle.
Or Christman AU
+Accession by Filmnoirefemme
 “Whoring and drinking are not hobbies, uncle.”
“Are they not? Someone should have told me before now.”
Where the unspoken something between Daemon & Rhaenyra spills to centre stage, and chaos ensues.
+A second tongue by OneEqualTemper
She’s twelve when he comes to her for the first time in the night, but it's only to say goodbye.
Semantics by CassieMarie
Rhaenyra is successful, beautiful, and incredibly chaotic. Daemon is wealthy, attractive, and dangerously impulsive. It's probably best they stay away from each other, but Rhaenyra cannot let the things that please her go and Daemon's resolve is paper thin.
+Let's ignite under the ember skies by grandlovescheme
It's been a while since Rhaenyra realized her feelings for her uncle are more than is usual. More than is... proper. After avoiding ever being alone with him, after dodging his every call... she decides enough is enough. She needs to find out if her burning passion and intense longing is reciprocated.
through the thorns, to the stars by edensgrief
Daemon Targaryen, professor and scoundrel, discovers secrets to his bloodline that are better off left in the dark. Yet the tempting hand of fate hovers tantalizingly close, ambition well within grasp — and he soon finds himself enlisting the help of his niece, graduate student Rhaenyra, in his schemes.
Or: Student/Professor Dark Academia AU + a dash of cult drama and a pinch of magic + incest as a crucial plot point
orange show speedway by admortems
“I do that already,” she spits out. “Have fun. I have lots of fun, Uncle Daemon. You wouldn’t believe what college kids get up to these days.”
Play Normal by camichats
The Targaryen family, as the only living royals, are celebrities. Rhaenyra can't go out for dinner without paparazzi taking her picture, but she wants to know what life is like for regular people. So she dyes her hair, finds roommates, and gets a job.
The only problem is Daemon. She wants to spend time with him like she's always done, but he's too recognizable. Rhaenyra doesn't know if she'll be able to make it through the full year she had planned, or if she'll cave and go back home.
dragon teeth, bite marks by rotting_goddess
The world is never without something: a family room full of furniture; a bedroom with semen-stained sheets; a correct idea of an alive city, a dead deer on the side of the road, guts half dragged into the bushes by a fox, a ghost, or two, or many; an uncle with matches, and a niece on fire.
“Alright, uncle. Teach me.” 
+Ecstatic by Fetchke
The first hour went by relatively simply. She would twirl and twist around in the bed; he would grab her if she was about to fall off it. She would get up sometimes, unsteady like a newborn calf; he would get up with her, hold her and guide her back to bed. She would moan and whimper and he would pretend not to hear it. Sometimes she would curl against him for a bit, he would put an arm around her and gently stroke her skin or hair until she pushed him off, probably overstimulated, and went back to thrashing around. He picked up a book to pass the time – he had to find paper instead of his usual tablet because his niece would periodically knock it the fuck out of his hands with a slap. He hoped she was at least having a good time.
or Rhaenyra takes too much ecstasy and Daemon is tasked with taking care of her while she's coming off.
+ P1 I Hate U by mzladybird
Time had a way of acting up under panic. Seconds or hours, Rhaenyra couldn’t say how long she stared at those three words, but in that breathless moment, she lived all the days that came before.
Byka dāria, are you going to behave yourself?
OR Rhaenyra sends a text.
+P2 Teen Spirit by mzladybird
He found her as he always did – at the center of everything, the axis upon which the world spun. Blood at her hairline, tongue on her lip. Cloaked in smoke and shadow, like the dragon he knew her to be.
OR Rhaenyra isn't answering her phone.
I'm Not a Bad Man, But It's Not For a Lack of Trying by BrightRed
We ditch the idea that a girl needs a man to show her about her own body - about pleasure.
Let's imagine an alternate narrative where Rhaenyra is endlessly curious - and her uncle becomes the reluctant object of her growing fascination.
Slow burn. Eventual Daemon/Rhaenyra
+legacies by sun_killer
“Seven hells, you’ve brought out the Bernardaud china,” Rhaenyra muses. “Who died?”
Viserys sighs heavily and at last meets his daughter’s eyes with a worried, level gaze. “It’s your uncle, Rhaenyra. Daemon has surfaced, at long last. Right here in London.”
Modern day AU: Daemon, as is he is wont to do, re-emerges in London after a betrayal, and banishment, three years prior. Older and wiser, Rhaenyra strives to beat him at his own game as she untangles her own web of wanting. Slow-ish burn, push-and-pull romance, with a generous splash of delicious flirtation.
+rosemary by charmtion
“We could rule it together.”
On her belly in the bed, the rumpled sheets smelling of sex. “Rule what?”
“You know what,” he said. “The empire. Everything our forefathers built.”
“Empire.” Her voice trickled slowly from her throat, the sheets shifting as she rolled onto her side. “I thought we stopped calling it that when fire and blood turned to coke and extortion.”
Daemon made a small, dark sound of amusement beside her. “There’s still fire on occasion,” he said. “The blood never stopped.”
Or, Daemon and Rhaenyra look to put their House in order.
+the love club by vanillacognac
viserys does not understand her, nor does he care to- but his brother does.
or: a look at how rhaenyra and daemon build a home within each other
The Rogue and The Heiress by ReyloRules
Rhaenyra’s having a rough few months. Her mother and younger died in a car accident, her father named her heiress to his multi-billion dollar company (the first time ever a woman has been named heir to the family company) and now her ‘friend’ Alicent and father just announced their engagement. UGH.
Angry and hurt, Rhaenyra runs off to her favourite bar where she meets a handsome stranger who goes by the name ‘Rogue’. A very handsome and mysterious man she is immediately drawn to despite all signs pointing to how dangerous he is.
When she arrives home, it is to even more disturbing news: she is in danger. Someone is plotting to kill her and in order to survive she must seek out a man she has not seen in nearly 15 years: her father’s estranged brother.
Things are not what they seem…
Can she trust anyone? Is anywhere safe?
Vanilla Panna Cotta by HarleyQuinn_23
I loved the way he kissed me, as if he had to, as if he'd go crazy if he didn't and had nearly waited too long
Or Sugar Daddy AU
Thunderstruck by notarussianspy92
Daemon hadn't even realised he was staring. It was just a bit of a shock because the woman was Rhaenrya.
Not a young girl.
A woman.
Which makes sense as she's twenty-two now. He'd sent her a birthday card a few months ago, for Christ's sake.
Why had he thought she would still look like a child? 
He hears her clear her throat. Shit. He’s still staring.
"You do remember me, don't you?" she chuckles.
"Of course," he says in an offended tone. "Rhaenrya…you look…uh, different."
She raises her eyebrow and huffs another laugh. "Well, that tends to happen when you grow up."
+Trapped in a dream by mirkwood131
“I know what you desire… I know you better than anyone at the court,” Daemon said.
“So what do I desire right now?” she asked.
“You desire something you can’t have…” he said, and his lips hovered over hers, tempting, only a sliver of air separating them.
Modern day!AU where Rhaenyra dreams she is a Targaryen princess in Westeros every night she goes to sleep.
P1 valar morghōlis by alschterin
”for she was his secret treasure, she was his shame and his bliss.” daemon is caught off-guard, for there is await and plea in these simple lyrics, and he is smitten, and plagued with it as it feels.
rhaenyra catches his bewildered gaze and smiles poignantly.
P2 valar dohaeris by alschterin
a dangerous, baleful mix of rage against lust, asperity against his acute caress.
WESTEROS AU
+Make me your wife by framboise
Since she was small, the princess has been wont to ask him the same question - whether as a childish demand, a youthful jest, a plea for protection or a romantic notion – but those words take on a different shine when spoken at her own wedding celebrations to another man.
Or, the five times Rhaenyra asks Daemon to be her husband, and the one time he asks her to be his wife.
ensnared by darthnoire
Daemon is back after many years. Her father has allowed him to stay at the Red Keep for a while to celebrate his victory against the Crab Feeder.
Rhaenyra goes to her uncle's room to see him and finds him struggling to dress his wounds so she tends to him.
Only A Dragon Can Truly Love A Dragon by lightning_in_a_bottle
This is a tale of want and wanting. Of years of suppressed yearning. Of stolen intimacies, unsated hungers, and fire in the veins.
Constantly hounded by rumors of their illicit relationship, Daemon and Rhaenyra resist temptation. Until they don't. Until the cracks grow and the damn bursts.
Spanning nearly 6 years, this is the story of what happens after their broken off tryst in the pleasure house.
+ P1 half a soul, dragon-fire by DonRodrigue
"no place for a dragon, he told her, desolate lands full of sheep and winds and dusts, lonely lands with no fire, no blood, no glory. Not made for dragons, he told her. Not made for us. Daemon, the Rogue Prince, the red dragon with scales simmering onto her skin, curling together underneath her left breast where her heart beats its secret beat — his."
+ P2 blossoms in the moonlight by DonRodrigue
"Cradles it close, this loneliness of his. A warmonger — he is, was, lusting after whores and blood and power, a rogue prince with a sword black as a pile of ashes burnt by dragon-fire. People whisper it ; awe and fear in their eyes alike as they watch him from afar.
Makes him angry, that her blood calls to him this way. Every time the same as he comes back to her and the shape of her pretty pink smile : the dragon on a leash that he is."
Glimpses of Rhaenyra and Daemon's relationship as she grows up from a little girl to a young woman.
+dōnus riñus (sweet girl) by EmWritesStuff_Sometimes
"If they want a show, uncle, a show is what they will get." And with that, you are naked before him.
He pauses, jaw clenching as his eyes roll over your exposed body. He flicks his gaze back to yours, a wolfish, predatory smile transforming his face into something almost savage.
"Let us begin then, niece."
As the second-born daughter of Aemma and Viserys, you never expected to be married off to your uncle, Daemon Targaryen. The wedding is here - and the wedding night. Set in Episode 6 - however, Daemon never married Laena, and he's returned to King's Landing after ten years in exile.
lean to my wound; burn on by narzissus
“Uncle,” she says.
Daemon approaches, suddenly before her. The world blanches around them. Her uncle is incandescent, smiling, his gaze finding her as though she is the only living thing in the world.
“It’s been a while, princess.”
Rhaenyra is infatuated with her uncle from early on.
DAEMON x READER
+dōna riña (sweet girl) by EmWritesStuff_Sometimes
"If they want a show, uncle, a show is what they will get." And with that, you are naked before him.
He pauses, jaw clenching as his eyes roll over your exposed body. He flicks his gaze back to yours, a wolfish, predatory smile transforming his face into something almost savage.
"Let us begin then, niece."
P.S. Clearly, I'm obsessed w them. If you have any other recs then comment below! And check out my work here.
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solomonish ¡ 4 years ago
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selfless (to a fault?) [demon brothers]
CW: allusions to past toxic relationships. minor description of injury in beel’s. belphie’s is a bit sad (happy ending! just melancholic vibes) and alludes to chapter 16.
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no problem nonnie! i hope this is to your liking <3
nowdateables: here!
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Lucifer
Honestly, he'd be a tough one to get to allow you to do anything for him. You know, the whole avatar of pride thing….and he also just generally has a habit of holding the weight of the world on his shoulders. He thinks - no, he knows he can handle everything on his own
If he's letting you in enough to help him - not only trusting you enough to think the tasks he delegates to you will be done to his liking, but allowing you to help and opening up the possibility that he might be risking his image of perfection - he can only expect you'll let him do the same for you. It's like your own special love language, right?
He does NOT like how jumpy you are about the subject. At first, he's miffed. Do you not think he can do the task to your liking? Has he given off the false impression that he cannot take any more work than he already has? Was your offer to help not based on affection, but pity??? It really ruffles his feathers.
He's the type to confront you head-on. At first, his voice is harsh because he's talked himself into thinking you've offended him, but when you start backing away and trying to dodge the conversation, apologies falling from your mouth about how the last thing you wanted to do was upset him, he softens. He doesn’t understand yet, but something is upsetting you and he intends to get to the bottom of it.
Not one who would pester you about opening up to him, but the sooner you do, the more of a show of good faith it is. He’ll trust your word entirely regardless, but it does a lot to soothe the upset of his own creation if you come back to explain sooner rather than later. After all, being vulnerable is perhaps Lucifer’s greatest show of love - it does not go unnoticed when you do the same.
Doing his best to talk through a solution is act of kindness #1 - and it helps you adjust a little since you worked with him rather than completely handed him the reins. He starts off his own plan to help you out by bringing in things he was already going to do for himself - offering you coffee when he gets his own, for example. He uses the fact that you’d feel bad for refusing against you for a little bit, but he means well!
You might notice him going softer on you for just a little bit - don’t say anything about it. He’s worried that he gave off the impression of using things against you because of how much of a disciplinarian he is. Besides, the two of you normally don’t get into arguments (he doesn’t have the time to let things simmer - if he’s that upset about something, he’ll try to address it immediately), so he doesn’t really know how else to change his behavior. He just hopes that allowing you the opportunity to open up to him again, should you need it, will alleviate the feeling that he’d ever use your kindness against you.
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Mammon
The first time you stiffened up after he tried to help you, he thought you were crazy. Lucifer had just given you a punishment for one of his schemes that you took the fall for (and he still isn’t sure why Lucifer let you take the fall when it was obviously Not You), and you insisted that you could do it by yourself! He wasn’t too keen on cleaning every window in the House of Lamentation himself, so he left soon after placing the offer, but his time was spent mindlessly wondering about you.
The next time was shortly after, when you came into his room and crashed on his bed. He offered you a hand massage, although he did it in a very muttered voice with dark cheeks - and you said no again! Forget being offended that the romantic hand-holding idea he totally didn’t get from a magazine he was reading waiting for you (that would’ve somehow ended in disaster anyway) wouldn’t play out - he was getting worried.
He doesn’t bring anything up immediately, but he worries about you and watches you intently. Sometimes you’ll catch him staring at you, and he flips out when you ask him what’s up. The only clue Mammon gathers is that you don’t seem to be angry with him, so what’s up? He’s used to his backwards advances working against him, but he’s making a genuine effort here!
He finally gets pent up in his frustration and asks you head-on. Mammon isn’t known for his tact - “Oi, why won’t you just let me take over once in a while? Cut yerself a break, MC!” - but there’s a certain...desperate tinge to his voice that makes you realize he really does care (and is driving himself crazy trying to figure things out on his own). When you DO finally tell him, he sort of deflates and his voice goes to that softer, more genuine tone.
“H-hey, I would never do that kind of thing to ya…” He starts shuffling in place, kicking at rocks (if there are any) and you realize he kinda looks like a kid. “You do so much for everyone, and it makes me feel real good inside. I just wanna make you feel that, too. Besides, we don’t need TWO cranky workaholics in the house. Lucifer is plenty.”
He knows one moment of honesty isn’t going to fix your entire way of thinking, but he goes right back to his blatant offers after that. Maybe if he desensitizes you to it, you’ll feel less weird about accepting his help! It doesn’t work, so he shifts to little things. Catch him running across classrooms as soon as you’re dismissed so he can grab your textbooks to carry for you off the desk before you can. 
Once he realizes you’re more receptive to him helping you, he’s ready to breathe a sigh of relief and be annoying about it again. Generosity doesn’t come easy to him, okay? Besides, he’s The Great Mammon! You should’ve known he’d be better than any other guy you’ve been with!
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Leviathan
Of COURSE you wouldn’t want someone like him to help you out. He’d probably mess it up, anyway…
Seriously, Leviathan is very sensitive to rejection, so the moment you politely decline any offers to help he backs up about a thousand miles and sulks when you’re not around. It’s hard for him to get out of his own head, and he’s so ready for you to just tell him what everybody else is thinking and how much he sucks…
It dawns on him, though, that you never gave up on him when he pushed you away. It’s totally not poggers sucky of him to just give up on you like that. You’re his henry! You’re his s/o! He’s totally ready to fight any boss for you!! …..after he levels up a little more.
Levi spends a TON of time looking up ways to talk to you, one-on-one. He isn’t good with emotions like this but he is capable of them and having deep, serious talks. It shouldn’t MATTER that his research material is a bunch of feel-good romance anime scenes that he based his most recent Top 10 OTPs of the season post on! 
Surprisingly enough, he brings it up relatively smoothly one night when you’re chilling in his room and he’s playing some relaxing simulator. You’re complaining about the things you have to do in the morning, and when there’s a lull in your conversation Leviathan turns and tentatively asks, “Hey...why don’t you try letting me help you out?” He can feel your refusal before it comes so he hurriedly adds “Please! I just- you stress yourself out so much and what good am I if I can’t even help you at all?”
Is it his impassioned plea for you to let him in? Is it his willingness to obviously step out of his comfort zone? Have your walls just conveniently crumbled at this moment? Whatever it is, you don’t have it in you to reject him when he’s so open about wanting to help you (and the pain it’s caused him not to). Either way, you sigh and give him a few, small tasks that you think you both could manage him having and he swears to do them well!!
Truly opening up to him about the reason why you were so hesitant on letting him help takes a while, and he doesn’t exactly pick up on it himself. Once you do tell him, though, in your journey to help yourself let him in, he holds you a little tighter and mumbles that he’ll never do that to you. Levi knows better than anyone that words can only mean so much, but he’s grateful for the chance to prove it to you. He won’t let his Henry down!
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Satan
Satan is perceptive, and he knows how to talk about emotions. He might even have suspicious about the root cause before you even think about letting him know what’s up. He’s already started doing a few things for you - carrying each other’s books, for example. Small acts of kindness to get the both of you through the day.
However, one thing Satan isn’t good with…..is dealing with emotions head-on.
He spends so much time keeping his own under lock and key! After doing his best to keep the most calm, analytical front he can, Satan tends to uh….forget about the emotional part of emotions.
So. When he asks why you won’t let him reciprocate in the relationship, attempting to display that he just wants the two of you to be on equal ground and he is worried about you, he sort of comes off...as cold. And like he’s accusing you of feeling a certain way. He definitely presents it as “I’ve noticed you feel x and i think y would be helpful for us to fix it” rather than “how are you feeling? What is causing you trouble? How can i offer assistance in a way that translates well to you?” And if that doesn’t bring back some memories…
He feels awful, and at the end of it all you’re crying (or presenting your stress and bad memories however you normally do) and he still doesn’t know how to fix things. Counterintuitively, he looks through his books for an answer, and it takes him a few days to realize that’s what got him into this mess.
So he goes to you directly and, albeit a little clumsily, apologizes and asks what he can do to help you through this. You say that’s just the problem - you don’t want his help - and he sits next to you and just asks why? The two of you wind up talking for hours, sitting next to each other and just...really talking. You aren’t the only one feeling vulnerable - Satan is talking about his emotions full-on rather than through a scientific lens and it makes him just as nervous as you are.
Satan doesn’t get into arguments with you. He runs from the possibility because he’s worried about what his wrath could do to you. But he promises you that he could never hold anything against you, especially something like asking him for help. It’s an honor that you let him this close, and he can only return the favor in kind. He hopes you have enough faith to believe in him until he has the opportunity to prove it beyond a doubt.
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Asmodeus
Asmo does things for people without asking. He gives unsolicited makeup and relationship advice, he offers to touch-up any products you may have on, he lends you clothes just because he felt like he should…
The thing is, Asmo will start before you even have a chance to ask him to stop. He’ll start before you’re even wondering if you like him. And at first, you’re ok with it. Well, you’re not, but you can decide he’s just testing the waters or that this is some weird demon way to earn your friendship or tell you he considers you a friendly presence, like cats. But it still rubs you the wrong way.
However, Asmo always notices that you...aren’t receiving it the way he wants you to. He invites you out and leaves you an outfit on your bed, and you come out wearing something entirely different. He leaves you a bouquet of flowers, and suddenly the dining room has a new bouquet in the center of it. (and you always avoid his gaze during those dinners, which is totally weird.) It’s almost like you’ve recognized the face he makes when he’s about to touch up your makeup, because you pull out a pocket mirror and check yourself over before he even has a chance to!
Are you leading him on? He doesn’t think so, but you are quite literally the only person he can’t literally charm the pants off of, and he isn’t quite sure how to navigate the signals you’re giving him. You seem fine with the relationship - it felt pretty genuine to him, and you looked thrilled when he made the romantic moves on you - so what was going on?
He finally caves and asks when he’s going through your wardrobe, sifting through it with you on the bed to make room for a shopping spree the two of you had been planning, and sees all the outfits he’d bought you hanging, still in their outfit bags. Some of the bags even had DUST on them!
He turns around and puts on a gentle voice. Though Asmo doesn’t know what’s happening, he can feel the air in the room shift and he knows he’s encroaching on some sensitive territory. “Hey, do you not like when I give you gifts? I haven’t been able to understand what’s been bothering you, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable…”
He does NOT like the way you turn your face away from him, but he sits a respectable distance away and keeps his hands in his lap. Asmo is as good at genuine advice as he is at gossip, so it isn’t hard for him to get you comfortable enough to open up to him. You don’t have to tell him everything at once - he’ll listen to whatever you’re willing to tell him, letting you lean against him when you’re ready.
Asmo is known for being petty, but you bring out sides of him nobody knew were there. He’ll swear up and down that he’d never turn your good heart against you - after all, it’s one of the many things he loves about you - but he does understand where you’d get that impression. If you’ll let him prove it to you, he will - and he’ll start by only pestering you to let him buy one outfit for you on that shopping spree!
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Beelzebub
Listen. Beel is a generous soul (for a demon) ((to those he really loves)). He just doesn’t ever really find himself in possession of anything worth sharing. Really, the only thing he is ever in the possession of is food. When he isn’t at his sports practice, working out or studying, he’s eating, and he’ll gladly share his food with you.
Oh? You don’t want it? He gives you a confused look - he’d ask if you were feeling well if he hadn’t eaten lunch with you just an hour before - but shrugs, his growling stomach winning over his concern. It’s not like you’re skipping meals, anyway. It isn’t until you get hurt helping him work out and refuse to let him pick you up to carry you to medical attention that he gets VERY concerned.
He feels awful enough as is. It was his fault you were even there - he just wanted to add more weight to his workout. (And, he won’t admit it, the idea of using a bench you were sitting on to lift over his head may have been a bit overkill. But he saw that little spark that said ‘that isn’t possible but man i wish it was’ when you saw it happen in that show and mmmmmmaybe he wanted to impress you. How was he supposed to know Mammon had broken it and left it there?) He could practically feel the pain in your ankle from the sound it made, and you were clutching desperately to your shin, wanting to press on the wound but knowing it was a bad idea. MC, there’s no way you can walk on that, why aren’t you letting him help?
The guilty puppy face he’s giving you is making the whole situation worse. It’s taking everything you can not to snap on, from the overwhelming pain in your ankle to the negative thoughts racing in your head to the knowledge that you’ll have to give in eventually. Finally, you face him head on and decide to just rip the band-aid off. “I don’t have the best experience with letting people do things for me. If you’re expecting to use this against me, I’m going to be out of commission for a while, so remember that.”
He is. So confused. Are you really mad at him? What are you talking about? It’s not that he’s stupid - because really, he isn’t - this just kinda came at him from left field and he does not know what to do about.
“What? I’m worried about you, MC, and there’s no way you can walk on your ankle. Come on, please let me take you to get help. I won’t mention it ever again if that’s what will make you happy.”
So maybe it takes a while to get to the nearest infirmary, and maybe he’s going extra slow so as not to jostle our injury, and maybe in the meantime he’s being so contemplative and quiet that you have a heart-to-heart. Beel’s too genuine not to trust him when he swears he’d NEVER use your kindness against you, but he understands it’ll take a while to show you.
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Belphegor
So. Um. This is awkward.
Belphie is a smartass, and he’s the youngest and used to getting his way. He’s definitely the type to dig his heels in and fight dirty in an argument, just because he’s used to winning. He’s also sadistic and has plotted with you to use his brothers’ weaknesses against them for fun. So he gets it. He totally gets why you would think he’d do it. Honestly, that’s basically what he did to free himself from the attic, only with more violence involved. He gets it.
Since Belphegor hasn’t exactly been the nicest to you in the past, he isn’t about to make you pity him with words like “yeah, of course you wouldn’t trust me after what I did to you…” First of all, on the off chance that it’s completely unrelated, he doesn’t want to put that idea in your head and give you a resentment you never had, but also he’s getting a hang of this redemption thing. Yes, on an average day he’s still a bratty, selfish little shit, but he does show you how sorry he is for using you and hurting you. It shows in the way he checks up on you in situations he knows you’re uncomfortable in, in the way he cares for you in that gentle way that’s so subtle you wonder if he’s even actively doing anything. (He is - offering you the best spot in a blanket nest, suggesting your favorite meals when the brother on dinner duty needs ideas, little things - and you both know it.) But how does he repent for something he doesn’t even know if he’s doing?
The way you stop cold when you peek in the kitchen and see him (and Beel) cooking the dinner you just complained about wanting hurts. The two of you have a stare-off for a moment, and Beel gets the message to slide out of the room. Belphegor clears his throat.
“What do you want?” You ask with narrowed eyes. Ouch, way to be a Lucifer. He instead says, “Nothing. I just wanted to do something nice for you.” “And you don’t want anything in return?” “Have I given off the impression that I would?”
You sigh and step into the kitchen to wash your hands, asking if he needs help since Beel left. He grabs your wrist. “You’re welcome to keep me company, but I want to do this for you.”
He doesn’t like you looking at him distrustfully, but is relieved you sit at the counter instead of leaving. He wants to ask you what’s up, but something is stopping him - he ignores that what’s stopping him is fear that you’ll have another thing to add onto the list of the unforgivable sins he’s committed. If you feel like telling him, he’ll listen - but until then, he’ll go back to quietly trying to prove his worth to you, hoping one day you’ll see that it’s genuine and let him give you all the good things you deserve.
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dmsden ¡ 4 years ago
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Crown and Fealty - Personal plot for the Noble background
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Hullo, Gentle Readers. For this month’s Personal Plot article, we’re continuing to work through the backgrounds in the Player’s Handbook. This week, we look as the first estate of medieval life - the Nobility - as represented by the Noble background.
Someone who chooses the Noble background is definitely telling you what kind of story they’re interested in. Nobles can be a source of background NPCs, plots and intrigues, gaining access to locations the average PC group might find inaccessible, and more.
If you have someone playing a Noble, it’s first worth working with the PC to see what they had in mind. The most likely option is that they’re the child of a minor noble, such as a knight banneret, or, at most, a relatively minor baron. They’re also probably not the first-in-line to inherit much of anything, because, if they were, their family would be unlikely to let them go off gallivanting all over the countryside. In medieval England, there was a phrase (and I’m paraphrasing here) that stated “one to the crown, one to the horses, one to the church.” This meant, if there were multiple children of a noble, one would likely be the heir, one would likely be knighted (and perhaps win gold and title by acts of arms), and a third would likely become part of the clergy. The rest...well...if there were any more, they most likely got a pat on the back and were left largely alone. All this means that, if your player wants to be the immediate heir to a Kingdom, they’re probably going to be disappointed, unless that idea works for you.
It’s worth noting that a Noble doesn’t have to mean part of a pseudo-medieval-European feudal society. A Noble character could be an aarakocra who is the daughter of a tribe’s chieftain, a Triton from a good family, the heir to a prosperous merchant house, or even the apprentice of a famous artist or musician. If someone is from or connected to a family that is well-known and, usually, well-off, one might be able to take the noble background to represent this.
Since family is so important in the concept of Nobility, I would work with the player to flesh out some of the family that’s part of their lives. Has the family been nobility for long? How did they earn the title, or has it been part of the lineage for as long as the Kingdom has stood? Are there older and/or younger siblings? Do they work in tandem like the Stark family, or are they rivals like the Greyjoys? Perhaps the PC is a bastard or foster child, knowing they will never hold title themselves, but still gaining some prestige by dint of their family name.
Another source of NPCs/plots that the Noble automatically calls to mind are those above and below them. Everyone in feudal Europe knew where they stood, and your Noble should, too. Does their family owe fealty to a Baron, Count, Duke, King, etc? Are there peasants who owe fealty to them and who must be protected and aided? This is immediate fodder for stories. Will a higher level noble command them to do something terrible, and, will they follow orders or enter rebellion against them? Will those below them revolt if they are abused or neglected? What if the Noble believes all is well but then realized that his family is part of the abuse being heaped on those who work the land, or selling peasants into slavery to pay a family debt? All of this can potentially be part of the Noble character’s story arc.
One classic trope is the wronged or deposed noble. One place you might allow the heir of a kingdom would be if their kingdom has been stolen from them. You could tie this in with your campaign’s major villain, who might be the one who destroyed their family or in alliance with them. Campaign One of Critical Role did this to excellent effect when Perceval de Rollo had to deal with the usurpers of his ancestral home of Whitestone. There’s no reason you couldn’t do something similar, or even put a twist on it.
The Noble’s special roleplaying ability is something you’ll need to keep in mind when designing your stories. The Noble is going to want to know who’s in charge and meet with them. This is easily dismissed with most D&D groups (why would the local Castellan bother with some riff-raff who drifted in?), but a Noble means that there should be serious consideration of allowing it. Your PC group gaining access to local nobility can make things easier or harder for you in various ways. It can move the plot along, allowing you to seed in information that you want the players to have. If you have an NPC noble refuse the audience, though, that carries its own kind of weight, plotwise, and you should do it sparingly.
One thing Nobles are made for is intrigue. No matter who the PC is and what rung on the ladder of the nobility they occupy, someone is going to find them useful. Whether it’s as an instrument to aim at their problems or as a possible supporter of a cause, someone is going to get the Noble embroiled in some kinds of schemes. Unless this isn’t the kind of play you and your players enjoy, in which case you can avoid it.
I hope these ideas have helped spark some ideas for Noble character personal plots. Next month, we’ll be delving back into the Elemental Evil Player’s Companion to look at the Genasi. Until then, may all your 20s be Natural.
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inevitably-johnlocked ¡ 4 years ago
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Hey Steph!🌟Do u have any fics with smut that is feelingy, ie more focused on the emotional aspect & how they're feeling while doing it than the phy sensations & descriptions? Hope u get wt I'm saying. Thx in Advance!💖
OOOOO Nonny! 
I’ve got just the list for you! and it will give me an excuse to do a part two to another list of mine!! <3 
I do have a Sensuality list in the works, so look out for that in a while, but I think for now this list and the “see also” is perfect for you! 
Feel free, friends, to add your own!
EMOTIONAL LOVE MAKING Pt. 2
See also: Emotional Love Making Pt 1 || [MOBILE POST]
Just Like That by sussexbound (E, 8,442 w., Ch. 1 || First Time/Kiss, Frottage, Virgin Sherlock, French Kissing, Anal, Emotional Lovemaking, Enthusiastic Consent, Tenderness, Crying John, Bathing/Washing, Insecure John, Toplock) – John doesn’t want to talk anymore. He wants. Oh dear god, how he wants. For the first time in what feels like years he WANTS.
My First, My Only, and My Forever by vintagelilacs (E, 6,220 w., 1 Ch. || Post-ASiB, Virgin Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Sherlock’s Bum, John’s Scar, Sherlock POV, Body Worship, Fingering, Bottomlock, Promise of Forever / Proposals, Misunderstanding, First Kiss/Time, Loss of Virginity, Virginity Kink, Seduction) – Sherlock narrowed his eyes. He was missing a vital piece of data, he was sure. John had been looking at him oddly ever since they left Buckingham Palace, and the ensuing incident with Irene Adler had only exacerbated his erratic behaviour. What was it? Why would he care that Sherlock was a virgin? There was nothing reminiscent of mockery or pity in his gaze. And then it hit him. John Watson was aroused.
The Haunting of 221B Baker Street by earlgreytea68 (M, 10,388 w., 2 Ch. || Post TRF, Halloween / Ghosts, Pining Sherlock, Ghost Sherlock, Stroppy Sherlock, Sherlock POV, First Kiss/Time, Angry Sex, Ghost Sex, Love Confessions, Open / Ambiguous Ending) – In which Sherlock Holmes is a ghost.
To be loved by Strange_johnlock (E, 12,436 w., 8 Ch. || Post S3, Established Relationship, First Person POV Sherlock, Pet Names, Soft Sherlock, Mild ADHD, Protective John, Captain Watson, Body Appreciation, Bottomlock, Rough Sex, Travelling for Holidays, Introspection, Sherlock Loves John So Much It Hurts) – John is so deeply integrated into the work, both as my conductor of light, and as a great shot with a vicious right hook who tackles men -and women- no matter their size all in my defense. He protects me with all he can without question, and this loyalty is surely more than I deserve. Or: Sherlock is counting his blessings.
The Invocation of Saint Margaret by Ewebie (E, 15,831 w., 1 Ch. || POV John,  Crossing Timelines, Light Angst, Fluff, Series 3 John / Series 1 Sherlock, The Matchbox, Mushy Romance, First Time, Bisexual John, Pining John, Bottomlock, Love Confessions, Sensuality, Emotional Love Making, Snippets of Time) – When Sherlock Holmes opens the matchbox from The Sign of Three and John finds himself years in the past, back to that first dinner at Angelo's with a much younger Sherlock Holmes. Is he dreaming?
The Palmyra Atoll by elwinglyre (E, 16,609 w., 3 Ch. || TSo3 Divergence / Episode Fix-It, Stockholm Syndrome, Kidnapped John Watson, John Whump, Evil Mary, Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Toplock, Limited 3rd John POV) – As John's preparing for the wedding, Sherlock is preparing to have his heart broken, and Mary is prepared to do the unthinkable. Intervention required. Enter Sherlock. Set before Sign of Three with a far different outcome. John is drugged, kidnapped, and left on an island, but not just any old island.
Permanent Fixture by vitruvianwatson (E, 18,836 w., 9 Ch || Post-S4, Parentlock, Slow Build, Friends to Lovers, They’re Good Parents, Blushing Sherlock, First Kiss/Time, Explicit Consent, Sexual Content, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Big Feelings, Crying, First Kiss, Fluff, Anxious Sherlock, Inexperienced Sherlock, Emotional Communication, Love Confessions) – Now, as Rosie sat curled up against Sherlock’s side, John watched and wondered exactly how he had ended up here. Domesticity had never suited him before, not at any point in his life. His disastrous marriage had been proof of that. But somehow, here in the warmth and safety of 221B Baker Street, here with Sherlock Holmes reading medical jargon to his daughter, Sherlock’s bony feet nudging against his leg, John couldn’t imagine anyplace that would make him happier.
Division by MrsNoggin (E, 19,542 w., 11 Ch. || Coffee Shop AU || First Kiss/Time, Fluff, Barista Sherlock, Clingy Sherlock, POV John, John’s Limp, Bed Sharing, Fluff, Sleepy Cuddles, Sensuality, Touching, Virgin Sherlock, Insecure John) – John likes mysteries. And every morning he dips into the local independent coffee bar with his newspaper and ponders another... one Sherlock Holmes.
The Wisteria Tree by SilentAuror (E, 29,773 w., 1 Ch. || Post-S3, Emotional Love Making, Amnesia/Memory Loss, Sherlock Loves John So Much, Sherlock POV, Romance, Angst with Happy Ending, First Times, Hurt/Comfort, Est. Rel., Retirement) – Sherlock wakes up from a month-long coma only to discover that he has no memory of the previous six years to his own shock as well as John's...
Only To Be With You by SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John (M, 40,768 w., 4 Ch. || Black Mirror / Future AU || Character Death, Future Technology, Sickness/Cancer/Illness, Heavy Angst with Happy Ending, First Person POV John, Pining John, Heart-Wrenching Angst) – I tell myself that next time I’ll come near this same place again. Wait around for the mysterious stranger in his coat to dash past me, hot on the heels of a new criminal in black. I think this all the way back to my Exit, planning where I’ll wait and what I’ll say when I see him. Scheming on how to get his name. It’s only once I reach the Exit Point door that I realize two hours and forty-five minutes have passed, and I realize that this won’t be the last time I Visit. It won’t be the last time at all.
Guidelines by WithLoweredVoices (M, 43,018 w., 15 Ch. || Winglock || Angels, Fantasy, Angst, BAMF! John, War, Jealous Sherlock, Possessive Sherlock, Jealous John, Falling in Various Ways, Needy Sherlock) – The Good Soldier, one of the oldest and strongest of the fallen, is offered a bargain: to live as John Watson and to Guide a fledgling archangel so that he will stay on the path of good. Of course, Sherlock Holmes has different ideas about his destiny. Fantasy AU. Warnings for violence, occasional gore, and a whole load of hurt and angst.
Anchor Point by trickybonmot (E, 49,856 w., 80 Ch. || Truman Show AU || Psychological Drama, Suspense, Slow Burn, Dark Characters / Fic, Alternating First/Third Person, Protective John, Anxious/Worried Sherlock, Tender Moments, Love Confessions, Hand/Blow Jobs, Cuddling, Jealous John, First Kiss/Time) – The world tunes in nightly for Sherlock, the ultimate in reality TV: Sherlock Holmes, a real person with a legendary name, unknowingly lives out his life in a staged setting contrived by his brother. Things get complicated when a retired army doctor joins the show to play the part of Sherlock's closest friend. This fic borrows its concept from the 1998 film, the Truman Show. However, you don't need to have any knowledge of the movie to enjoy this story.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by SilentAuror (E, 50,635 w., 1 Ch. || Post-S4/S4 Divergence, Case Fic, For a Case / Reverse Fake-Relationship, Conferences, Marriage Equality, Travelling / New York, Pride, Homophobia, Bottomlock, Marriage Proposal, John POV, Sexuality, Love Confessions, Emotional Love Making, Public Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, Passionate Kissing, Needy/Clingy Sherlock, Virgin Sherlock, Touching / Hand Holding, Bed Sharing, Little Spoon Sherlock, Intense Orgasms) – John and Sherlock go to New York to attend a conference run by the National Defence of Traditional Marriage Coalition in order to investigate the potential bombing of the annual Manhattan Pride parade. As the conference unfolds, John finds himself repulsed by the toxic ideology being presented, which becomes relevent to his own unacknowledged issues and his friendship with Sherlock...
Points by lifeonmars (E, 53,791 w., 42 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || HLV Rewrite / Canon Divergence, Married Life, Pregnancy / Baby Watson, Drinking to Cope, Boxing / Fisticuffs, Clueless John, Angst, Minor Medical Drama, Tattoos, Christmas, First Kiss/Time, Eventual Happy Ending, Love Confessions, Doctor John, Sexuality Crisis, Slow Burn, Case Fic, Drugging, Blow/Hand Job, Emotional Love Making, Parenthood, Passage of Time) – What if His Last Vow never happened? This fic picks up a few months after John and Mary's wedding, in an alternate universe where Magnussen doesn't exist, but Mary is still pregnant. Life continues -- just in a different direction. And slowly, Sherlock and John find their way to each other.
Isosceles by SilentAuror (E, 56,609 w., 7 Ch. || Post-S4, POV John, Original Male Character / Sherlock Dates Another Man, Love Triangle, Jealous John, Virgin Sherlock, Sexual Coaching, Angst, Romance, Domesticity, Unrequited Feelings, Miscommunication, First Kiss/Time, For a Case, Friends With Benefits, Bottomlock, Love Confessions, Spooning) – After solving a case for a major celebrity, Sherlock gets himself asked out. When John asks, he discovers that Sherlock has no intention of going, at least not until John agrees to coach him through whatever he might need to know for his date...
The Thing Is by TSylvestris (E, 56,743 w., 21 Ch. || Case Fic, Dev. Rel., Anal/Oral, Blow Jobs, Meddling Mycroft, Drama, Romance, Humour, Casual Encounters, Pining Idiots, Possessive Sherlock, Orgasm Delay, Rough / Alley Sex, Public Sex, John Whump, Drugged John, Emotional Love Making, Awkward Relationship, Marriage of Convenience, Switchlock) – The problem with living with Sherlock, John thought, was that you never, never, ever knew the significance of anything. Like your flatmate's nose buried in your hair. Whilst you're in bed. Part 1 of Nitroglycerine
White Knight by DiscordantWords (M, 69,840 w., 13 Ch. || S4 Compliant/Post S4, Marriage For a Case, Jealous John, Pining John, Janine / Sherlock Fake Relationship, Serial Killers, Case Fic, Undercover as a Couple, Weddings, John is a Mess, Misunderstandings, Wedding Planning, Jealousy, Drunkenness, Love Confessions, Angst with Happy Ending) – Green. The word green was used to convey a great many things. Illness. Envy. Inexperience. Standing there amidst Janine's chattering bridesmaids, watching Sherlock furrow his brow and study fabric swatches, watching him smile and simper and flirt, John thought it a remarkably apt colour choice. Because he felt quite sick to his stomach, he feared the source of said sickness might very well be jealousy, and he had absolutely no idea at all what to do about it. Or: Sherlock needs to fake a relationship for a case. He doesn't ask John.
Being John Watson-ish by elwinglyre (E, 69,902 w., 17 Ch. || Bodysnatcher AU || Author John, Cranky Sherlock, Angst, Sexual Tension, First Kiss / Time, Falling in Love, BAMF John, Past Soldier John, Feelings, Inside Someone’s Brain, Shy Sherlock, Sherlock Loves John, POV Sherlock, Switchlock, Slow Burn, Internal Dialogue, Mental Turmoil) – When consulting detective Sherlock Holmes steps on one toe too many at a crime scene, he's consigned to a desk job in an archaic office on the seventh-and-a-half floor of the New Scotland Yard. It’s in this bleak office that Sherlock discovers a portal into the mind of renowned author John Watson. Grander than his mind palace, this new wonderland affords Sherlock new vistas of experimentation. To learn more about the mystery behind the portal, Sherlock seeks out and befriends Watson. But then it all goes wrong when others find the secret portal door—including the man whose brain he visits.
Gold Rush by ShirleyCarlton (E, 71,783 w., 17 Ch. || Post S3 / No Mary, Friends to Lovers, Mentions of Past Sexual Abuse, First Kiss, Case Fic, Slow Burn, Alternating POV, Switchlock, Angst with Happy Ending, Marriage Proposal, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Abduction, Anxious/Insecure Sherlock, Miscommunication, Emotional Lovemaking) – John has divorced Mary and pops round to 221B one evening to find Sherlock in the middle of a case. As Sherlock tries to find the identity of a young woman’s stalker, John realises he can no longer deny his feelings for Sherlock – which then, to their befuddlement, turn out to be mutual. Shy kisses and tentative embraces ensue. But will Sherlock be able to cast off a shadow from his past that he thinks might prevent John from wanting to stay?
Two Two One Bravo Baker by abundantlyqueer (E, 114,574 w., 27 Ch. || Military AU || Afghanistan, War Story, Thriller) – Captain John Watson of 40 Commando, the Royal Marines, is assigned to protect and assist Sherlock Holmes as he investigates what appears to be a simple war atrocity in Afghanistan. An intense attraction ignites between the two men as they uncover a conspiracy that threatens everything they’ve ever known, but Sherlock is as much hunted as hunter, and everyone close to him is in deadly danger. Can he solve the case in time to save himself and John? Part 1 of Two Two One Bravo Baker Universe
Not Broken, Just Bent by Schmiezi (E, 87,585 w., 43 Ch. || Pining, Love Confessions, Rape/Sexual Assault, Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Villain!Mary, Suicidal Ideations, Main Character Death, Sherlock First Person POV, Parentlock, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Love Making, Possessiveness, Depression, PTSD, Kidnapping, Virgin Sherlock, Eventual Happy Ending) – "For a second, I allow myself to remember teaching John how to waltz. There is a special room in my mind palace for it. A big one, with a proper parquet dance floor. For a second, I go there. I remember holding him, closer than the World Dance Council asks for, excusing it with the fact that we are training for a wedding, not for a competition. For a second, I feel his hand on mine again, smell his sweat, hear the song we used. For a second, I allow myself to love him deeply. For a second, only a second, that love reflects on my face." Fix-it for S3, starting at the end of TSoT. Evil Mary.
Kintsukuroi by sussexbound (E, 91,823 w., 20 Ch. || S4 Compliant / Post-TLD, Grief / Mourning, PTSD, Internalized Homophobia, Therapy, Past Abuse, Alcohol Abuse, Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Depression, Anxiety, Bed Sharing, Love Confessions, Cuddling, Suicidal Ideation, Masturbation, Minor Character Death, Sexting, Frottage, Inexperienced Sherlock, Rimming / Anal / BJ’s, Emotional Turmoil, Finding Each Other) – “I love you.” Sherlock sees the words hit John with almost physical force. He reels back a little, jaw twitching and eyes filling. “I love you,” he repeats, a little softer, a little more gentle, as earnest as he possibly can. Because they’ve been teetering on the brink of this thing for years, and it had become painfully obvious over the last few months that they were at a tipping point. This had to happen. Now it has. Now they can see where they end up. The tears in John’s eyes spill over, and he wipes at them angrily. “Do you even know what that means?”  
Northwest Passage by Kryptaria (E, 95,157 w., 27 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Canadian AU ||  BAMF!John, Canadian John, PTSD, Anal / Oral Sex, Rimming, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Drug Rehab, Falling in Love, Pining Sherlock, Love Confessions, Sherlock’s Violin, Panic Attacks, Switching, Anxious / Protective Sherlock, Hugs for Comfort, Suicide Mentions, Healing Each Other) – Seven years ago, Captain John Watson of the Canadian Forces Medical Service withdrew from society, seeking a simple, isolated life in the distant northern wilderness of Canada. Though he survives from one day to the next, he doesn't truly live until someone from his dark past calls in a favor and turns his world upside-down with the introduction of Sherlock Holmes." Part 1 of Tales from the Northwest
Against the Rest of the World by SilentAuror (E, 151,714 w., 20 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-TRF, Hiatus Fic, POV First Person Sherlock, Present Tense, First Kiss/Time, Big Brother Mycroft, Escaping from Capture, Soft Sherlock, Toplock, Insecurity, Infidelity, Travelling, Introspection, Pining Sherlock, Depression, Fantasies, Yearning for the Past, PTSD Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation) – Sherlock has been away from London for nine hundred and twelve days and counting, and has no idea what sort of reception to expect when he finally returns.
Proving A Point by elldotsee & J_Baillier (E, 186,270 w., 28 Ch. || Me Before You Fusion || Medical Realism, Insecure John, Depression, Romance, Angst, POV John, Sherlock Whump, Serious Illness, Doctor John, Injury Recovery, Assisted Suicide, Sherlock’s Violin, Awkward Sexual Situations, Alcoholism, Drugs, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn, Body Image, Friends to Lovers, Hurt / Comfort, Pain, Big Brother Mycroft, Intimacy, Anxiety, PTSD, Family Issues, Psychological Trauma, John Whump, Case Fics, Loneliness, Pain) – Invalided home from Afghanistan, running out of funds and convinced that his surgical career is over, John Watson accepts a mysterious job offer to provide care and companionship for a disabled person. Little does he know how much hangs in the balance of his performance as he settles into his new life at Musgrave Court.
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delimeful ¡ 4 years ago
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sheer atrocity (4)
warnings: captivity, mild arguing
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After a brief break to eat and drink, Virgil was on the move. Again.
Considering dusk was quickly approaching and they’d been traveling or intimidating abusive dads for pretty much the entire day, Roman felt the pace they were setting was a little unreasonable.
He wasn’t the one walking it, sure, but he couldn’t help but wonder. Was this guy always so antsy, or was this a special occasion?
And while he was asking himself questions that he wouldn’t get any answers to, how long was the cast duration of this enchantment?
(More specifically, how much longer was he going to be small enough for beetles to look like dogs?
How much longer before Virgil decided what to do with him for real?)
He hadn’t seen the giant stop to recast, which meant that he’d been burning through a continuous enchantment for hours on end. Signs pointed to his magic reserves being massive. Chilling.  
Roman thumped a foot against the side of the jar that rested against Virgil’s side. “Are we wandering around the woods during twilight for any particular reason, or are you just lost and too embarrassed to admit it? Too used to seeing the trees from a loftier position, perhaps?”
Virgil glanced down at him, as though just recalling he was there. Offended, Roman made a mental note to make more of his internal diatribes to external diatribes. The only thing worse than being a prisoner with an uncertain future was being an ignored prisoner with an uncertain future.
“Go back to being quiet, I forgot you were annoying for a second.”
“Absolutely not,” Roman huffed, kicking his feet against the glass repeatedly for emphasis. “The moment we see another human I’m going to scream at the top of my lungs.”
“Oh, because that worked so well for you before,” Virgil said, rolling his eyes.
Roman shifted positions, trying to ease a cramp in his leg. “Haven’t you heard? Third time’s the charm, and personally, I have no shortage of charm.”
There was a short pause, and then Virgil ground to a stop, taking a deep breath.
Instantly, Roman stiffened, eyes locked on the face above him. He’d forgotten himself, making jabs as though they weren’t enemies, as though he hadn’t been trapped, threatened, and used by this monster. It was too easy to pretend, when Virgil did things that were almost decent.
Sure enough, Virgil grabbed the top of the jar and lifted it from his pocket to be eye level. Roman shoved his arms out to keep himself stable, avoiding looking at the long drop below him.
“As useful as your bullheadedness was before, I don’t actually want you to scare the daylights out of the person I’m looking for this time.”
“Yes, well, I don’t want to be the size of a newborn chick, so it looks like we’re both dealing with  struggles in life,” Roman snapped back, because he’d never known when to keep his mouth shut.
Virgil narrowed his eyes. “I could just muffle your jar, you know. I’m magic; I can do that.”
He could? Roman was sort of surprised he hadn’t done so already.
“But,” he continued with a sigh, “I think this one will probably be easier with your help. I’m not great at putting people at ease.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Roman snorted, and then jerked as the rest of the sentence sunk in. “Wait, hang on. ‘Put people at ease’? There is no way I’m helping you with any nefarious plots!”
“It’s not nefarious!” Virgil shifted his weight, glancing around impatiently. “And it’s time sensitive. Either help me or don’t, I don’t care.”
It couldn’t be that simple, but Roman wasn’t about to pass up a chance to see something other than the interior of a pocket. “Fine, but if I see you doing something evil, I’m not going to stand idly by!” And then, petulantly. “Also, I want out of the jar.”
“As long as you actually use your brain instead of your biases to judge me,” Virgil snarked back, but obligingly pried off the lid and tipped the jar on its side. Rather than pull or tip Roman out, he held his hand to the lip of the opening and waited.
It was almost more nerve wracking to climb into a giant hand willingly, but Roman managed it. The jar was whisked away, and Roman lifted to neck level. He stared blankly.
“Going to get off anytime soon?” Virgil asked, a hint of irritation in his voice.  
“What am I getting on? Your collar bones?” Roman replied incredulously. “Wouldn’t a shoulder be better?”
The hand under him shifted slightly, angling him towards the folds of the cloak where it met the hood. “The fabric has better grip here. You’ll fall off my shoulder if we’re attacked.”
Attacked by who? “Paranoid much?” Roman dallied for a moment longer, but the idea of falling really was an unappealing one, so he climbed up and managed to find a seat amongst the bunched up cloth.
As soon as he was settled, Virgil set off again, and Roman clung tightly, staring out at this strange new perspective of the forest. Weird, but definitely better than the jar.
They moved along in relative silence, Virgil surprisingly light on his feet for a giant. The sun had just begun to sink below the horizon when he finally jerked to a halt.
Roman opened his mouth to complain at the sudden stop, but Virgil’s head was tilted, as though carefully listening. After a moment, he turned to a nearby patch of shrubbery.
“Hey,” he called, voice lacking it’s usual edge. “I can hear you over there.”
There was a long pause, and Roman blinked as the shrubbery began to tremble slightly. There was actually someone in there?
“Easy,” Virgil said, lowering himself into a squat. “I’m not going to hurt you. I can help you find the way out of these woods, if you’d like.”  
After a moment, a small hand pushed part of the bush aside, peering out cautiously at them. Roman’s heart twisted at the kid’s face, smudged with dirt and tear streaks. They couldn’t have been more than eight.
Virgil shifted, and Roman felt a chill go through him, remembering who, or rather what he was with. He couldn’t let the giant lure the kid into whatever scheme he was planning.
“There you go,” Virgil coaxed, offering a hand to help the kid stand up. “It must have been scary, stuck out in the woods alone. You did good to stay in one spot.”
Roman bit down on the automatic urge to call out a warning, listening to the way Virgil carefully encouraged the kid to stand up and brush the twigs from their hair. This was important. He had to consider the situation from all angles before making a move.
If Virgil really wanted to abduct a random kid in the woods, he didn’t need to convince them of anything. He’d dealt with a trained slayer as though he was a minor annoyance, a kid wasn’t exactly a challenge. So why was he going to all this trouble?
Roman thought about the soft edges of Virgil’s expression when he gave Patton his coat back. Maybe… it wasn’t a ruse?
“I’m Virgil,” the giant in question said, shaking Roman from his thoughts. “And this is Roman. We’re travelling together.”
Roman startled, not expecting to be introduced. “Uh, salutations!”
The kid stared with wide eyes. “You’re so small!” they blurted, before covering their mouth hurriedly.
Virgil cut in before Roman could correct him. “He’s a pixie. Likes to cause problems on purpose.”
Roman huffed “I do not! Don’t let him fool you, I am a delight.”
The kid giggled, and Virgil’s shoulders relaxed slightly. Roman wished he could see his expression.
From there it was second nature to keep up a stream of chatter with the kid about everything from their favorite food (honey on bread) to their stance on frogs (cute but you shouldn’t kiss them). It grew darker and darker as they walked, and after the kid had almost tripped over stray roots thrice in rapid succession, Virgil had crouched and lifted them onto his back with ease.
Before long, the kid was snoring lightly, face smushed against his hood, and there was a surprisingly comfortable silence in the air between them.
Virgil broke it first. “Thanks for not freaking out. I didn't know you had it in you.”
Roman crossed his arms, ignoring how close he’d come to freaking out. “This doesn’t mean I trust you or anything. We’re still enemies, you’re just. Not as bad as you could’ve been.”
“Yipee,” Virgil deadpanned, shrugging his shoulder under Roman slightly to jostle him. Roman jabbed his elbow in the general direction of Virgil’s neck in retaliation. “Very gracious of you.”
“I certainly won’t be as gracious the next time you pass me off as a pixie,” Roman muttered, prompting a low, half-air laugh from Virgil. He realized belatedly that he’d assumed there would be a next time, and hadn’t been corrected. He wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or not.
What was it about this giant that made Roman feel at ease to speak his mind, even in such a precarious position?
Virgil slowed as they came up on the town again, crouching to gently nudge the kid awake and set  them on their own two feet again. “You’re home, kiddo.”
“Don’t go traipsing around in the forest again, y’hear?” Roman added sternly. “Not everything in those woods are as nice as us.”
The kid nodded solemnly, and then grumbled sleepily as Virgil ruffled their hair and pushed them towards the paved path into town.
Once the kid reached the town's edge, they turned around to peek over their shoulder. The two of them were already well out of sight, waiting until the kid had been safely whisked into the arms of their parents before departing.
Roman waited with bated breath, but despite their deal being over, Virgil seemed to have no intent of removing him from his newfound perch. He sunk deeper into the fabric as they continued to trek on.
For now, he could let himself enjoy this tentative peace.
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eclecticanalyst ¡ 4 years ago
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Klaus = Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town
There are three things I always watch every December: The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Year Without a Santa Claus, and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town. I’ll usually throw in ’Twas the Night Before Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas as well, and occasionally How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (the original cartoon). I used to watch The Polar Express, but as I got older that movie started getting on my nerves (for several reasons, one of which being that the kid does a lot of unnecessary things that seem designed to cause the greatest amount of problems).
Lately, I’ve been trying to expand my Christmas movie/special repertoire. I watched The Nightmare before Christmas last week for the first time, and a few days ago I watched Netflix’s Klaus, which came out last year (2019).
I enjoyed Klaus, but as the movie progressed I found myself thinking, “This is just a more complex version of the old Rankin and Bass origin story for Santa!”
Let’s examine the evidence, shall we? The first person we meet in SCCT (hereinafter my abbreviation for Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town) is Special Delivery Kluger (S.D. for short), who is responsible for delivering mail to Santa. S.D. claims to know everything about Santa, a claim which is backed up by him proceeding to narrate the rest of the special, so he clearly is close enough to the man with the bag for him to have at some point told S.D. about how he got started in the giving-away-toys business. I’m pretty sure S.D. is called S.D. because he is responsible for all Santa letters, so he probably sees Santa on a regular basis November through December.
In Klaus, the first person we meet (after a sequence that shows us that mail is Serious Business in this world, complete with a boot camp for postmen—incidentally, the importance of the postal service is yet another, although rather minor, similarity with SCCT, because SCCT has an opening newsreel that makes a point of describing the onslaught of letters the postal facilities need to send on to the North Pole) is Jesper, postman-in-training. Obviously the story has only just started, but as the audience we’ve seen the trailers or have a general idea of the premise of this movie, so we know that eventually Jesper is going to be the postal carrier who works closest with the Santa figure. Just like S.D. Kluger. S.D. is the narrator of SCCT, and Jesper is the point of view character for Klaus, so we have in both cases the person through whose eyes we see the story being the Santa-designated postal worker.
The plot of Klaus kicks off with Jesper’s father making a last-ditch effort to get his son to apply himself by assigning him to be the postman of Smeerensburg. Smeerensburg, according to the (hilariously intense) map Jesper’s father has set up in his office, is located on a remote island in the north. When Jesper gets there, he finds out that the people there are bad-tempered and the whole area pretty much lacks all colors except gray. Just like...
Sombertown! The Place Where It All Began in SCCT. Sombertown is also in the north, is also dingy and gray, and is ruled with an iron fist by the Burgermeister Meisterburger. This is skipping ahead a bit, but we’ll find out later in the special that the Burgermeister has banned toys and everyone’s sort of given into the hive mentality of wearing gray, washing stockings, and making sure not to violate any of the Burgermeister’s decrees. The Burgermeister is, of course, The Antagonist and The Evil Authority Figure in this story.
Meanwhile, as Jesper is getting his bearings in Smeerensburg, he meets his own Antagonist(s) and Evil Authority Figure(s): the heads of the Krum and Ellingboe clans, dedicated to maintaining their ongoing feud, which involves various acts of vandalism and occasional all-out street fights. It’s because of them maintaining the status quo of hating each others’ guts that Smeerensburg is such a horrible place.
Here’s where the comparison gets a little tricky. Jesper is the new guy in the Extremely Gray Town, and we learn about the town’s devotion to being miserable through his (mis)adventures. In SCCT, S.D. isn’t actively participating in the story since he’s the narrator, so the new guy in Sombertown is Kris Kringle. (Again, I’m skipping ahead a bit here for the sake of comparison. There’s a whole Kris-growing-up sequence before he actually goes to Sombertown, and we meet the toy-making Kringle family. I will return to the Kringles later.) Basically—stay with me here—Jesper is both S.D. and Kris.
The first person who actually explains a bit of what’s going on to Jesper is Alva, who essentially has a “Love Interest” sign hanging over her head in her first scene and throughout the rest of the movie. Alva moved to Smeerensburg a while back and was all set to run the town’s school, except the adults are more concerned with getting their kids on board with feuding than making sure they know how to read and do math. Alva is, as a result, bitter, and plans to leave Smeerensburg as soon as she saves up enough money from selling fish. She explains all this to Jesper, who has just barely escaped being trampled in a street brawl between the Krums and the Ellingboes. What’s this, you say? A love interest who is a teacher and is also relatively new in town, but has been there long enough to get the hang of things? Sounds like...
Jessica, who confronts Kris when he starts handing out toys to the children upon arriving in Sombertown. Jessica is, in one of the kids’ own words, “our new schoolteacher,” and starts scolding Kris for passing out frivolous items that are against the law until he wins her over by giving her a china doll. So in both cases, the teacher/love interest doesn’t like the new guy at first, but warms up to him later. (Alva takes longer than Jessica because she is a more complex character and the running time of the film is longer.)
Jesper has no success establishing a post office or getting anyone to mail letters, but he happens to notice on the map he’s pinned up that there’s a cabin a ways off from town and figures he has nothing to lose, so he heads out there to see if he can convince whoever lives there to send a letter. As I was watching this part, I decided the cabin in the woods matched up with the Kringle family cabin, as both are located at a distance from Extremely Gray Town and it is at these locations that the toys are made. However, after thinking about it, I revised my opinion--Klaus’s cabin is actually both the Kringle family cabin and the lair of the Winter Warlock. The latter is because Klaus is, like the Winter Warlock, initially an intimidating figure, but one who softens over time. He is self-isolating but gradually joins a chosen family. Also, the Winter Warlock practices magic. Klaus does not practice magic, but there are mysterious winds only he can see that kick up and disappear without warning and seem to be giving him messages, so he’s still for all intents and purposes surrounded by magic, or at least the supernatural. The atmosphere surrounding Klaus’s cabin is the closest we get to the mystical in Klaus, and the Winter Warlock is the only one with actual magic powers in SCCT.
Therefore, just as Jesper is a combination of Kris and S.D., Klaus is a combination of Kris and the Winter Warlock. Jesper has Kris’s roles as new guy in town, male lead love interest, and deliverer of presents through unlikely means, while Klaus has Kris’s roles as toymaker, friend to animals, and general Santa Claus-ness (beard, laugh, etc).
Since both Klaus and SCCT are Santa origin stories, we get the requisite explanations for various parts of the Santa mythos in each. In Klaus, we have the establishment of the Naughty List (Jesper using the prospect of no toys to get the meaner kids in Smeerensburg to stop messing with him), the coal (Jesper getting revenge on the mean kids and the precursor to Jesper making up the Naughty List), Santa’s omniscience (Jesper lives in town and judges the kids’ behavior), stockings as present holders (Jesper, cornered in the fireplace by dogs, putting the presents in the one place he can reach), the flying reindeer (not really flying, just happened to get some air time having careened down a mountainside and shot off a ramp, also they needed reindeer because the presents were too heavy for the horse), and writing a letter to Santa in the first place (Jesper’s scheme to have 6000 letters mailed). In SCCT, Kris isn’t a fan of crying and pouting, so he makes general good behavior a prerequisite for getting toys. There isn’t really any coal involved, because Kris is a softie and at one point remarks “I guess they’re all pretty nice” when checking over his list—also the kids in Sombertown don’t really act out the same way the Smeerensburg kids do. Kris knows what the kids are up to courtesy of the Winter Warlock’s (at this point just going by “Winter”) magic snowballs. Kris has the idea of hiding presents in stockings so that the Burgermeister won’t find the toys in his daily house raids. That’s an interesting one, because in both cases the hostile environment of the Extremely Gray Town forces Kris/Jesper to come up with more creative ways to ensure that kids get their presents.  The reindeer in SCCT really do fly, after having eaten Winter’s magic feed corn. The letters are a bigger deal in Klaus, as they are an integral part of the plot, but in SCCT Jessica does bring Kris an initial batch of letters from the children of Sombertown asking for more toys after the Burgermeister destroys the first ones he handed out, and letters continue to come in later, with Jessica and the forest animals in charge of collection and delivery.
The Antagonists in both Klaus and SCCT see the influx of toys as a threat to the status quo. The clan heads in Smeerensburg realize that the kids of both clans, in their enthusiasm for playing and their desire to not be on the Naughty List, have given up the feuding lifestyle and are causing their parents to do so as well. The Burgermeister’s main motivation is that he doesn’t like being made a fool of—his toy ban is a result of stepping on a toy while going down the steps of City Hall and breaking his funny bone (a diagnosis somehow confirmed by his doctor by taking his temperature). I suppose you could also say the Burgermeister values productivity and order, which are both threatened by children playing with toys.
Remember how I said I would come back to the Kringles? Here’s an interesting part of the comparison between Klaus and SCCT. Klaus is on the whole more complex than SCCT—more complex plot, more complex characters. We see Alva’s struggle between wanting to escape Smeerensburg and loving to teach, going from being in denial to using her own savings to buy school supplies (as someone with a teacher for a parent, that moment was very real for me). We get a (very tragic) explanation of why Klaus had so many toys piled up in his workshop and why he lives alone. There’s an entire secret motivation for Jesper that culminates in (what the other characters perceive as) a betrayal.
However! In the case of the people who fill the “elves” slot in the Santa origin story, SCCT’s characters actually come out on top in terms of complexity. The Kringles take in Kris as a foundling, raise him as their own, and teach him how to make toys. They are the ones with the most (I might even go so far as to say any) backstory out of anyone in SCCT: the Kringles used to be Royal Toymakers, but with the rise of the Meisterburgers (or something...that part’s kind of glossed over), they ended up forced into exile. They keep making toys because that’s the family business, and their desire to have those toys actually played with is what gets Kris to travel to Sombertown in the first place.
In Klaus, the “elves” slot is filled by the Saami villagers (alternative spelling: Sami). The Saami people are a real indigenous population based largely in Scandinavia and Russia. In the movie, they are represented the majority of the time by Márgu, who is dismissed by Jesper for a while, then used as someone to talk to, because she doesn’t speak English (or whatever language they speak in Smeerensburg that we the audience hear as English). Eventually Jesper and Klaus make the sled that Márgu has been asking for this whole time. A little later, Márgu’s people all show up at Klaus’s cabin and help with the Christmas preparations. In both SCCT and Klaus, the Santa figure’s distinctive clothing is actually a traditional outfit of the “elf” group—Kris gets a bona fide Kringle suit as his going-away present, and the Saami dress Klaus up in their red garb before his Christmas delivery ride.
Here’s the problem: we never really learn much about the Saami villagers. Why did they decide to hike all the way over to Klaus’s cabin and volunteer their assistance? Where are Márgu’s parents during all that time she spends camping out on the porch of the post office? Since we can’t understand them (unless you are fortunate enough to know their language), we have no real inkling as to their motivations. The only explanation we get is the “one act of goodwill” theme of the film, but it would be nice to get some sort of actual characterization beyond “appreciate a kindness.” Even the myriad citizens of Smeerensburg are not portrayed as a monolith—despite most of the town giving in to the newfound commitment to kindness, we see that there are a few others beyond the clan heads still clinging to the old ways of life. And yet the Saami, who fill an important slot in the Santa mythos, march into Klaus’s cabin as a group, help out as a group, fill the background of the cabin scenes as a group, and are essentially a mystery. The Kringles at least get in some banter as they discuss the arrival of a baby on their doorstep, and we also learn all of their names.
With the Saami taking up residence at Klaus’s cabin, the film culminates in a scene that is a direct parallel to the Rankin and Bass special. In SCCT, the Burgermeister’s soldiers ambush the Kringles, Winter, and Jessica at the workshop in the woods. In Klaus, the same thing happens to their counterparts: the Saami, Klaus, and Alva. Both of these ambushes happen when the Santa figure (for this scene Jesper is the Kris parallel) is not present. I should also point out that in both cases it’s the teacher/love interest who has advance notice of some aspect of The Antagonists’ offensive measures: Jessica hears the Burgermeister ranting about setting a trap for Kris and goes to warn him (but is too late so can only inform Winter and the Kringles), and Alva learns about the Krum/Ellingboe plan to destroy the toys and informs Klaus and the Saami so that they can prepare countermeasures.
After that, we just have some loose ends to tie up in order to solidify the new status quo. The teacher/love interest marries the Santa figure (remember, Jesper has Kris’s role of male lead in the love story subplot), the citizens of Extremely Gray Town reject The Antagonists’ miserable lifestyle once and for all, the Santa figure moves to an obscure and remote place (the North Pole in SCCT, the afterlife/spirit world in Klaus, as the eponymous character is the Kris counterpart for this bit), and the once-a-year appearance is established (Kris has too many toy requests to go more often, Klaus...is operating on spirit world rules? I’m fine with that not being explained). And we end on the postal worker’s closing narration, which affirms the ongoing presence and uplifting spirit of Santa Claus.
So nice try, Netflix! You may have gotten rid of the tendency for characters to break into catchy songs and upped the sadness factor by adding a grieving widower. But Klaus is still a remake of that old Christmas stop-motion classic from 1970. I rest my case.
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unproduciblesmackdown ¡ 4 years ago
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i am SO delighted to hear that the "detective and five people trapped on an elevator and one of them is the devil" movie is real and you saw it. also while trying to send this i accidentally clicked the Unfollow button (and then promptly refollowed), sorry about that
lmao i maybe wouldn’t’ve noticed, love Tumblr Notifications and how like, they display different on desktop vs mobile and the way it Condenses them is only so helpful cuz sometimes some of them only display for 0.2 seconds while i’m on mobile and it hasn’t Refreshed in a way that reshuffles everything and i can’t view that particular [Like from a certain person or smthing] ever again lmao like i hate this, it’s bad, just like that movie about people trapped on an elevator and a detective has to get them out and has to act fast b/c one of them is the devil
it is so stupid first of all like. it’s just overall not a great movie from Any of the angles it’s playing like. first of all the Detective is only around b/c he’s solving a nearby murder / death and making like. corny dumb “oh this is a Smart guy” observations about the Scene and someone is like “oh hey @ cops you’re already on the premises, come solve the mystery of Elevator Broke” like i don’t think that’s how it works and also i can’t even remember the reason they find this issue That pressing pre-realizing And One Of Them Is The Devil. maybe someone dies right off, idk. there is conflict on the elevator so naturally that’s a whole other thing like, we’re all trapped in this elevator together and maybe one of us is untrustworthy and liable to be dangerous to the rest of us like, i don’t know the Contrivance that makes these people think anything has to be done but just Stand Around for a while but it’s you know. that whole Thing where there’s a premise of “some shit is happening to Incite Conflict amongst strangers who are trapped in a bad situation together and they’re all apparently raring to judge each other’s moral fiber to decide who deserves Suspicion vs Protection.” but also, one of them is the devil
meanwhile on the outside it’s this dumb Cop Mystery Drama where this rando guy apparently sets aside the death he was investigating earlier to solve this elevator situation (i think eventually it’s revealed that that death was tied to the elevator situation all along. i think that the devil killed the guy. or something) and also, maybe there was Coincidentally some kind of heist going on at this place b/c i remember at some point the detective (and some partner there too involved in all this) like, find some tools hidden in a bathroom like “aha this was Used to do [whatever]” and despite having no idea what the details are i Know i remember this b/c of at the time going “oh my god that is so dumb Nobody Would Do This / this makes no sense” lol like. writing not great. and this was maybe Not the devil, but a regular separate scheme to. do something
also there’s some aspect where Main Cop has some tragic backstory and is like, not over it b/c it was so painful. i think maybe someone like hit and run his wife or something like that. you know how it goes. spoilers in that i think the person that the devil is here to kill (more on this devil assassination thing....) was Behind That somehow lmfao so it’s like really??? is that our resolution, that people’s stories are Converging in a very serendipitous way b/c the devil would like to give people emotional catharsis......idek. look, spoilers, this old lady who “dies” in the elevator relatively early on turns out to have been The One Of Them Who Is The Devil, Act Fast. and it was this weird thing where the devil is like “grr whoever i’m even here to Get in the first place is just Such A Bad Person that uhhh i guess i came here in person to take them to hell” like.....what tf kind of Lore......this is definitely going with “aaaah the devil is evil” approach, not any more kind of Neutral figure, but then in the end apparently the evil devil is just really Judgey and Disgusted by someone being A Bad Person like??? you ought to love this shit!!!!! and anyways the detective learns that One Of Them is The Devil b/c when they take him up to the security camera display hq it’s like a) look at this scary Moment where the elevator camera feed gets staticky and a scary face appears for a moment (im not sure if i could see what it was supposed to be lmfao) This Means Something and okay oh my god i reread the plot summary b/c for the life of me i couldnt remember the ending, it is so stupid oh my god
okay so first of all the Dead Person the detective was investigating had left like a suicide note like “i am killing myself b/c um. the devil approacheth” like wow okay right off the bat? amazing foreshadowing. why does this person Know this?? and why should he care b/c the devil is here apparently for a Special Soul Collection like, this has nothing to do with you, random guy?? you don’t even need to worry like. just stay home from work to avoid the fairly minor problems that occur (like MAYBE one guy dies in the course of this story but i think it’s a little ambiguous, meanwhile whoever Really Dies in th elevator was i think due to like, suspicion and infighting lmao. idk maybe the devil killed a few of them. it’s weird) but yeah the highlight is this
everyone please enjoy this scene. security guy ramirez is explaining the Devil Expertise courtesy of Where I Come From where toast falling jelly side down is evidence that the devil is hanging out in the elevator. 
while looking up “devil toast” the result immediately after that one was “the devil takes the toast” which is a devil takes the hindmost ytp which i feel is really fitting
it kind of undercuts the stakes i think when not only is the devil only sorta gently radiating Bad Luck but also is just super Righteous but like. yes it turns out that the devil is here to Claim a guy on the elevator was the same dude who Hit N Run the detective’s family (wife and kid apparently) those years prior......except like, it wasn’t even like oh he assassinated them On Purpose, it’s apparently already a Known Detail that although they ~never knew~ who killed detective joe’s family (idk what his name is idc) there was a Note left on the scene like “sowwy :(” like really? this is the Big Bad that the devil made a special corporeal visit for??????? and then, get this, when the devil is like “i’m not a dead old lady, i’m the devil, and i’m here to Get you b/c you accidentally killed a couple of people and i, the devil, am really disgusted by how sinful you are for that” the guy is like “yes that was me :’( i’m sorry” and then the devil is like “ah fuck you’ve Repented. i can’t take you to hell anymore. bye” like what!!! why did he only have to feel bad about it to get out of this whole situation when obviously he Felt Bad in the first place b/c he up and left a note like “[grimace emoji] aaa my bad” like, did he have to apologize To The Devil?? the lore i s2g. Jelly Toast Rules operating here i guess. 
anyways then the detective who witnessed this i guess is like “wow the guy who killed my family all those years ago but i’m still sad about it.....well i’m gonna arrest him now. but also, I Forgive Him.” oh and also for a while there the detective was so gritty he didn’t believe in The Devil b/c the vehicular manslaughter apparently made him think that human nature was evil enough to not need the extra help. so now he’s made the arc of getting uh, emotional closure on his family’s death by forgiving the dude who i guess super crashed into them on accident, And gets to know that the devil is real actually and he’s on the elevator but now Not b/c he was like “ah jeez thwarted by this guy uh, feeling bad about the accidental deaths even though he felt bad in the first place” and there was no other point to the detective being there b/c he didn’t Really do shit except i guess drive this sideplot where you are led to believe he Might figure out who the Bad Guy on the elevator is. (it is the devil. one guy has a crime record or something but, spoilers, he is trying to turn his life around with some good honest work as a security guard or something. idk)
it was amazing and very stupid and i was continually indignant b/c the writing was dumb and made no sense and just so fucking corny throughout. the entire movie is called “devil” and i remember it was like “tf is ‘devil’” and as soon as it involved an Elevator i was like omg omg is this And He Has To Act Fast Because One Of Them Is The Devil, and it was, so that was exciting. it was a dumb waste of time but also it was not b/c it was *slightly* so bad it’s good. mostly Not Even. but just watch the toast scene there b/c like. i think that’s this movie’s #1 contribution outside that post about the plot summary. 
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cryptovalid ¡ 5 years ago
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Some of the weird shit people have said about my disability, often without ill intent.
-[after explaining cerebral palsy because they asked me to while biking alongside my tricycle]: ’Oh so your parents fucked wrong?’
-[kids noticing my tricycle and riding alongside]: *doing a mean impression of what they think cognitive disabilities look like to mess with me*.
-[another drive by while on my tricycle]: WILL YOU BE OKAY?
-[to my twin sister when we crossed the road on bikes, not waiting for the light to change]: ‘how dare you endanger his life?!’ [this guy had no lights on at night.]
-[after casually mentioning my disability to a recruiter at a temp company]: ‘wow... heavy.’
-[countless situations, as a compliment]: ‘oooh I hadn’t noticed!’
-[countless situations, to be helpful]: ‘oooh let me do that for you!/ Be careful!’ (takes stuff out of my hands or tries to give unsollicited advice.)
-[during therapy]: ‘well you can sit here and refuse to learn how to deal with [practical problem], but even people without limbs can learn how to do anything if they try hard enough.’
-[after I confessed to my mom that I was insecure about dating]: ‘Oh have you considered dating a disabled girl?’
-[countless first encounters]: ‘what’s wrong with you?’
-[My parents after learning I was disabled]: *never bothered to learn even the name of my disability ‘cerebral palsy’ for 24 years* (I had to do my own research and find out a lot of my insecurities are just symptoms of a relatively common disability.)    
So it took me a long time to realize that this fucked up my ability to feel secure about my disability around strangers. That shit is FRAUGHT. My personality disorder can largely be traced to attempts to prevent these kinds of interactions. So when people suggest that mental disorders are treated worse than physical disabilities I’m like ‘WHERE?!’. Capitalism is inherently ableist. People are culturally encouraged to judge each other and exploit competitive advantages, even for an ego boost. 
Having an invisible disability is its own challenge with its own fucked up set of reactions, but don’t pretend that people have a healthy response to visible disabilities. I have a very minor disability in the scheme of things but people’s reactions had a major adverse effect on my mental health.
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solitaria-fantasma ¡ 4 years ago
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((Session 10 highlights, go!))
Fake Lord Hassan confirmed for “The Shadow” bandit we saw a bounty for waaaaay back in the early sessions.
We also found a set of money printing plates in the pile, so let’s add forgery to the long list of crimes committed here.
We also found (3) Potions of Speed, several boxes of (100) ‘mysteriously’ enchanted arrows, a silvered dagger, and a silvered mace.
I am rushing back and forth between taking notes and cooking a depression meal on mute and Google Docs is lagging HARD to update this 40 page document.
We wrapped up this arc of the story, and left the country to head on home!
We escorted Colette back to her homeland, and as thanks, she gave the party her blue Cloak of Protection.
I voted for it to go to Mountain, on the grounds that he is also blue, and it would match his color scheme….also he has the lowest AC of the party bc his player never upgraded his armor.
The rest of the party couldn’t decide, though, so the cloak went into storage as we traveled onward.
“So you all travel back to Phwie. You bond, and your hearts grow five sizes.”
We brought the magical dowry chest back to Lady Rose, and gave her the first key we’d found. She pulled out the other key and opened the chest in front of us.
Inside the chest was a tiny clockwork dragonling. It had been intended as a companion for Clarrissa when she was far from home, but Lady Rose gave it to the party, instead, as a tribute to her daughter who had always wanted an adventure.
This tiny dragon saw Udaji (a bigger dragon), decided “that must be my mom!”, and curled up on her flower crown.
Udaji had a sudden understanding of how her father felt when she hatched, cried, and was made its caretaker.
If we feed it metals, it gives us money, and it can also light small flames, and curl up into a pocket-watch form to hide.
It’s a tiny Transformer and I love them.
I’m going to name this clockwork dragonling “Filigree” and nobody can stop me.
The DM approved. ‘Filigree’ it is.
We head back out into town, and find out from the artificer we made a delivery to earlier that Maxine Von Trikona has been asking about us.
As soon as we seemed receptive to seeing Von Trikona again, she teleported our entire party - animals and all - right to her.
She tells us that she’s having a problem with her apprentice, Humphrey - he’s been going off to those ruins we first found him in and doing gods know what, and she wants us to drag him back.
We’re rich now and the reward isn’t super huge, but we’re still on good terms, and still owe Humphrey a semi-apology for stabbing him and only barely healing him in time, so we took the job.
We went back to the ruins where this whole campaign started, and found resurrected bandits waiting for us.
The DM had us roll for Perception and Udaji shattered all her records with a 16, allowing her to hear the muffled screams of some poor captive somewhere within the ruins.
We walked into a trap and every single one of us failed the Will save.
We blacked out, and woke up in a different room, tied up on an arcane circle as our life force was slowly siphoned away from us.
The new player is also tied up with us, and their icon is Dr. Strange. I like them already.
Also we got stripped of our armor and weapons and left in just our skivvies. Udaji is upsET but mostly because we’re lying on bloody stonework.
Aaaaand Humphrey is trying to kill us again. I wish I could say I’m surprised.
“I did not consent to this.”
Matthias keeps talking, and Humphrey keeps getting more and more annoyed, but he doesn’t stop the ritual.
I tried to freeze him with my ice breath, since I was tied up right beside him, and RIGHT as I did so, Mountain cloned himself, and charged.
Humphrey ran away like a little bitch, and teleported away with a magic circle, leaving all of us behind.
We got ourselves untied, and realized that Astrid - along with our dogs - is missing.
Oh nO FILIGREE IS MISSING TOO-
The new wizard - Sane - confirms that the portal Humphrey escaped through (though now inactive) is for interplanar travel.
There were a few more people around the circle who didn’t survive....
Udaji came in clutch with the high investigation rolls, and found a trapdoor in one corner of the room, as well as a lot of super-sketchy, nefarious arcane shit.
She grabbed a book of notes that looked pretty fresh. She may not  know what it’s all about, but Von Trikona probably will!
Mountain recognizes the dead bodies as the judge and a guard from the nearby town that we had dragged Humphrey to jail in early in the story for misdemeanor necromancy.
Claus found a strange pendant, but quickly alerts the rest of us not to touch it.
We open the trapdoor instead, and are instantly hit with the smell of rotting bodies. It’s the corpse storage space - chock full of bodies and personal belongings, all strewn around.
We find our stuff, and we find Filigree!! They’re scared, but unharmed!!!
We do not find our dogs, though.
If Humphrey has hurt Burnt Toast and/or Matthias Jr, I will return him to Von Trikona in a coinpurse.
We’re all missing something - Udaji’s Entertainer’s pack, a week’s worth of rations, a healing potion, and candles are gone.
Mountain is missing his leather armor (hah! Now he’ll HAVE to upgrade!) and his warpick.
Matthias is missing his beloved crown, one of his (stolen) luxury pillows, and his quiver (but not his arrows).
Sane found his psionic focus and cape, and doesn’t seem to be missing anything.
Claus also seems to be able to find all his things.
Astrid is still missing.
“Claus will not heal you [Matthias] if you keep stealing shit from the dead bodies he’s giving final rites to!”
Mountain apparently goes commando under his armor, and is not bothered by his lack of proper clothing. The rest of the party is.
“You’re gonna traumatize Udaji! She’s still a minor!”
Claus gave Mountain a cloak from one of the dead bodies purely for the sake of covering up.
Since the corpse room has no exit, we go back upstairs, and try the door instead.
The door is locked, and has no keyhole or handle. Udaji knocks, but no-one answers.
Mountain tries to bash the door down, fails, and takes four points of bludgeoning damage.
We still have the crystals Sane found, and the teleportation circle Humphrey left behind, but the crystals wouldn’t be strong enough to transport one of us out, let alone all of us, so we go back down to the Corpse Room to look around again.
Mountain found a pressure plate, and when he stepped on it, something clicked upstairs.
Claus is single-handedly throwing dead bodies up the trapdoor so that he can take them out of captivity and properly dispose of them.
We make it out the door…..aaaaand it’s a 10ft drop straight down into a hell realm.
Completely unprepared to explore another realm, the party went back inside and tried to get the portal working.
We failed, and after a while of debating amongst ourselves, we bit the bullet, and headed out to explore this weird realm.
The landscape eventually transitions from barren, craggy rock to green, fertile farmlands
There’s a few adults and a few children around, and Mountain goes up to talk to them, COMPLETELY FORGETTING THAT HE’S STILL    M O S T L Y    N A K E D-
I pointed this out in the chat, and the DM had to mute herself, she was laughing so hard.
We tell the adult Tiefling that we were robbed/nearly murdered by a necromancer, and for the sake of their child, they offer Mountain an outfit out of their closet that they weren’t really wearing.
I HAVE REALIZED THAT IT WAS NEVER SPECIFIED IF I LOST/FOUND MY LUTE AND I DESPERATELY NEED TO KNOW NOW IF I STILL HAVE IT-
The DM isn’t always looking at the text chat, and my mic is acting weird tonight so I can’t turn it on, so I’m just sitting here sadly as the others progress the story, waiting to hear if Udaji’s family heirloom and prized possession has been lost or not.
The Tiefling farmers tell us that there are a few gates back to our realm relatively nearby, but that the road between them is dangerous.
Our best bet is a semi-permanent gate maintained by a cult of Lythander, and Claus (a cleric of Lythander) perks right up.
The Tiefling farmers give us a very old map, and it turns out that by “relatively nearby”, they mean “on the same continent”.
I STILL HAVE MY LUTE: CONFIRMED!!! Udaji and I feel much better now.
Claus sees that the farmers’ well is a little dry, and uses magic to refill it for them. Suddenly, they’re more willing to give us better deals on trading.
We decide to head for the gate held by the cult of Lythander, and skirt around the magical ‘death zone’ by going through a territory ruled by an ice elemental.
Finally, Udaji’s ice resistance comes in handy!
We need to give a Potion of Darkvision to the wizard bc he’s human and can’t see otherwise, but I’m the one who’s holding it and no-one’s reading the text chat.
We’re starting to chat more than play now, and it’s past 11pm, so we’re probably about done for tonight.
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boldlygowriting ¡ 5 years ago
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Book Review #1: Aurora Rising
Aurora Rising published in April of 2019 is the first book in the Aurora Cycle series by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff is a sci-fi adventure. The second book of the series is set to be published in 2020.  Kristoff describes the book as a “Breakfast Club meets Guardians of the Galaxy YA sci-fi, action, adventure thing.”
Synopsis: The story starts with Aurora Academy Goldenboy, Tyler Jones, the day before the Draft. Since our best boy is well...best boy at this space-bound military academy, he gets first pick of his future space crew. Or he would’ve if he hadn’t gone out in space to calm his nerves and ended up rescuing a girl named Aurora who’s been cryogenically frozen for over 200 years. 
Bestboy Jones misses the Draft and ends up with whoever is left over ie. the people no one wants.  A space elf with anger management issues, a socially inept, trigger happy genius, and an alien techwiz with a physical disability who doesn’t know how to shut up--known as Kal, Zila and Finian respectively. 
Bestboy Jones also has his twin sister, Scarlet, and his best friend, Cat, who definitely doesn’t have a crush on him. (Books words, not mine, okay). Who are also especially good at their respective jobs as diplomat and pilot. 
Aurora sneaks aboard their ship during their first mission, murders and a cryptic message from the higher-ups set them up for a journey across the galaxy. The fate of Aurora and the rest of the worlds now in their quirky, all-to-capable hands. 
A lot is going on with this book and this is my first book review in this format so bear with me. 
The Pros
It’s fun. This book is really fun. Like watching Guardians of the Galaxy, you can have a good, pretty stress-free read of this book with little trouble. While reading this I found myself enjoying the adventure aspect of it, and I think they do it really well. 
Easy to follow. The book is action-packed that’s more interested in what’s happening than explaining all of the confusing lore that some sci-fi and fantasy novels can fall into. It’s not bogged down by a lot of space jargon and takes the time to explain the parts that a reader wouldn’t immediately understand. I appreciated that it kept things simple. 
Diversity*. Kristoff assured there would be diversity race-wise and in sexual orientation. Which is true. Aurora is half-Irish and half-Asian, Zila is black, and Finian has a physical disability and is either bisexual or pansexual (I’m not exactly sure. I mean, he is an alien so like I don’t know...look, all I know is I’m bi and black, I’ll take the representation where I can get it.).
The humor*. Think about it, 7 eighteen-year-olds stuck on a spaceship together. It’d be impossible for there not to be humor and banter between them. Not all the jokes land and there’s more than enough of nudging and winking in the prose, but there are definitely some chuckle-worthy moments. They also use humor really well when it comes to breaking up tense and heavy moments even if they don’t entirely land. 
The romantic subplot. I can’t say who obviously, but they’re pretty cute together. It was cliche, but, I think that by the end it was genuinely sweet and I appreciated the way they went about it by the end. It’ll definitely be expanded on in the following books and that’s what I like the most because it really is a subplot and they’re taking their time with it like a realistic crush turn relationship.
There are some things genuinely done well in this book that made me almost enjoy it, but for every action, there’s an opposite action. Starting off the Cons is my biggest issue with this book. 
The Cons 
The characters. I’m sure you could tell by my cheeky synopsis, I’m not exactly a huge fan of all the characters. In fact, I downright hated one. (Despite calling Tyler  Bestboy all the time, no, it was not him. I just wanted to clarify that).
I could honestly break down every character and talk about why I did or didn’t like them, but I think that’s getting too far into biased opinion. However, even for the ones I did like, they were still flawed...and not in the fun way. 
The characters are a huge weak point, part of that reason is that they’re all pretty flat. Flat, in this case, doesn’t exactly mean boring. A flat character is one that stays relatively the same from the beginning of the book to the end, and all seven of the protagonists are pretty flat. Even if it’s the first book of the series, knowing there’s time to develop characters, all seven protagonists shouldn’t be relatively the same by the end. 
There’s a lot of potential in most of them, but the time for their development is often rushed by and cut off by action. There are some real, genuine moments, but they mean very little in the overall scheme of things, especially when the team that’s supposed to be a group of misfits never feels like a group of misfits. 
The team is played up as a group of outcasts (or half outcasts), but they never feel like it. Both those movies the author compared the book to have a moment where they genuinely bond. There’s no point where the squad bond as a group beyond a few shared chuckles in between intense moments.
The skirmishes and arguments between them don’t really go anywhere and no one’s feelings are genuinely hurt for longer than a few pages, so when they already work pretty well together, I barely noticed any changes in their dynamic. I hope in the future books the authors expand on the group dynamic and the characters themselves because they could be really interesting, if I’m honest. 
Most of them had a glimmer of something, but a glimmer wasn’t enough to keep me from realizing they’re just semi-archetypal shells. 
This is a side note: this book switches the POV between the seven characters, and honestly, you can’t really tell much of a difference between who’s speaking. If switching POVs is not your bag, I wouldn’t recommend this book for you.
The humor. You know, it’s not so much the humor itself that’s a problem. The humor itself s pretty juvenile, but they’re 18 years old and I have a filthy, sarcastic mind so if you can stand a million sex jokes you’ll be fine. If not then you’re probably not gonna laugh much. The problem with the humor comes in the writing. There’s a lot of ‘winking and nudging’ involved. Finian (alien/techwiz/ can’t shut up), delivers a good portion of the jokes and after he says something, either he, the narrator or another character will comment on it. 
I once read when it comes to comedy, a joke isn’t funny if you have to draw attention to it. And if this is your kind of humor it is funny, but a lot of jokes aren’t allowed to stand on their own...making them, well, not funny. 
The plot and pacing. I’m not going to write a whole lot about the plot, partially to avoid spoilers. Tthe more I think about this book, the more I realize it’s a straighforward space adventure. The plot is simple because the adventure is what matters, but the fast pace of the book, while engaging, doesn’t spend a lot of time on it. One thing happens, then the next thing happens, and so on. 
At one point, I almost got the sense that quiet moments couldn’t last too long without another plot piece falling into place or something terrible would happen. The squad never flounders long despite how often they talk about how in over their head they are and how dangerous everything is. 
That might be a whole other gripe, but oh well. 
I said it was fun and it was easy to follow, but that’s probably because everything happens so quickly you aren’t allowed to think for very long. 
The pacing and plot go hand-in-hand because one bowls over the other and you get what I call the ‘you can infere events.’ 
These are events that you can infere obviously. In this case, they acquire a lot of items without actually showing how. I’m all for getting to the good stuff, but slowing down to show some things could’ve been a chance to expand on things like worldbuilding and the characters.
The worldbuilding. We’re getting into the minor stuff now if I’m being honest, but it’s a sci-fi story so I felt I couldn’t not write about the worldbuilding, which is a little lackluster. I’m pretty sure one of the planets is a Valerian rip-off. (I know that was harsh). 
Diversity. I debated talking about this too. I don’t know anything about the authors but I know readers say they’ve been inclusive in the past. I think they were here too, and maybe I’m spoiled or asking for too much, but I have to get some things off my chest.
First, Zila. 
I went back and forth on this a lot, but she kind of suffers from Princess and the Frog syndrome. Essentially, she’s a POC or LGBTQ+ character who is put into the story, but they either a.) don’t matter too much to the story or b.) are basically invisible. 
I went back and forth on this because Zila is quiet. She doesn’t speak a lot, she’s an observer. Sometimes I forgot she was in the book. I think having her be quiet and observant works in other character’s POV because no one really understands her. In her own POV it should be a different story. 
They opened that door so I have to comment on it. The chapters in her POV are significantly shorter than every other character. If her thoughts aren’t necessary to the story, why have them in there? It felt like she was there because they needed another warm body to advance the plot. I hope in book 2 she gets more than what she got. 
Second, the representation. Period. 
Tyler, Scarlet and Cat are the three members of the squad that stick together because they have a close bond. They’re not the misfits in this group. They’re also all white and presumably heterosexual as of this book. Zila, Finian and Kal are the outcasts of the group. Having the black girl, non-heterosexual alien with a physical disability, and the space elf with anger managment issues be the weirdos that the golden trio are saddled with doesn’t exactly read well on paper (pun intended). 
Third, queerbaiting? 
Don’t get your hopes up, I didn’t add the question mark because I think this might change. I added it as a Disclaimer: I’m not the authority on all things rainbow and beyond. Very few things raise my hackles when it comes to media and represenation even though there’s a lot that probably should. 
That being said, this might jimmy some people’s johns so I thought I might as well mention it.
We’ve all heard the “why don’t you two just kiss and get it over with line,” (yes, the book uses this line) and I’m kind of over it unless it actually ends in a relationship. Just a warning there kiss between two people of the same gender, and that line was directed at them but I can assure you it’s not going anywhere, it was a one off, and it wasn’t serious. After so much BS from other books, movies and TV shows, I know that’s enough to piss some people off, and if I mentioned Zila and the representation, I had to mention this.
That was weird. So much time is spent making sure you know how attractive every single main character is. Like...a lot. I was genuinely wondering if this would end with some kind of orgy thing. No matter what POV it’s in everyone was drop dead gorgeous with killer dimples and voices like melted chocolate and luxurious push-up bras. 
Consensus:  
I found this book on the 7th floor of my university library. Why they have a random YA space romp from 2019 up there, who knows? The important question is: Do I regret picking it up? 
Well…No and yes. 
Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t shell out the $18.99 plus tax for it. (I’m a broke college student, okay? I get anxious spending $15) 
Like I said, I had fun reading this. I laughed. It had me turning pages faster than Aurora can say “Holy cake!”However, this book isn’t clever and it doesn’t have a whole lot of heart, not all books do, but to be a space adventure with misfit characters...if you want to keep people engaged, maybe it should? 
Everything is sacrificed for the execution of this quick-paced, adventurous romp. The worldbuilding and lore, the characters, the plot, everything. All of it was obliterated for something quick and momentarily entertaining. 
If a quick, substanceless adventure is what you’re looking for (and there’s nothing wrong with that, not every book has to be a nail-biting, bloodbath), you’ll definitely find it in this book.
If you’re looking for a book that’s going to affect you and make you feel like you’re part of “the squad,” you should probably look elsewhere. 
TLDR: 
Pros:
It’s fun
Easy to follow
The humor*
The diversity*
The romantic subplot
Cons: 
The characters
The plot and pacing 
The worldbuilding 
The humor* 
The diversity*
Overall rating: 5.5/10. 
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ohmytheon ¡ 6 years ago
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Karma in Retrograde (15)
title: Karma in Retrograde
summary: When Dabi is hit by a de-aging quirk, he’s turned back to a 16 year-old U.A. Gen Studies student with self-esteem and parent issues, a destructive quirk, and no memory of the last five years. To help the Dabi of the past, present, and future, he is placed with Class 1-A. There, they must all face the question of whether he can change or if his destiny is already set in stone.
– Chapter 15: Ryouta gets a new wardrobe thanks to Aizawa that causes various reactions and gets beat up by Mina. Sort of.
Lanni notes: One of my favorite things about Ryouta is that he's both somehow hyper-aware about some things and also completely oblivious to others. Also, his budding friendships with the others mean the world to me. He's got a different one with everyone and they're all changing. This is definitely a more slice of life chapter after the heaviness of the one before. A little lightness in this emotional rollercoaster. I was rolling while reading some of the parts that Misty wrote. This was freaking fun to write. The song for this chapter is an English rendition of Hey Kids!
Tonight they'll don their masks, the kids that tear it down. And all these scheming lies will soon evoke the end. Turn up the temperature, Entice that golden taste. Give it some flavor, flavor, flavor. Just wanna hold your hand.
After they returned to the dorms, Ryouta immediately excused himself to the relatively safe confines of his room. Shouto tried to appear impassive, but he got the feeling that his brother wanted more of an explanation. They’d thought he was dead. Had it been just the lack of contact? Had he started to give off behavior that suggested he might do something to himself? Those horrific scars and staples flashed in his mind. He had done something to himself. They wouldn’t have been far off to think that.
Finally alone in his room, Ryouta couldn’t help but feel a little, treacherously, relieved. Reuniting with Fuyumi hadn’t gone terribly. It looked like she wasn’t angry at him, didn’t even blame him for the things that she really should. (How like her.) That was more than he had dared to hope for. Something like that seemed like it should have made the overall situation easier to handle. Yet when he thought about sitting down to have a long, proper talk with his twin, the lump in his throat remained. Hurried goodbyes with her promising to return were emotional in their own bittersweet way, but they were nothing compared to the prospect of climbing the metaphorical mountain that was communication.
Perhaps it was cowardly of him to delay the inevitable so readily. He was fine with that. The day had been overwhelming as it was. He wouldn’t say it - he didn’t want them to think he was too emotionally fragile to handle it or was going to back out (as if he could) because he had hit some sort of invisible limit - but it had been a lot of talking. Genuine discussion. Everything seemed to pass by in a tired haze for the rest of the day, his mind still trying to process what had just happened. It was fortunate that nothing important happened, because even if a hurricane full of sharks spontaneously hit the school, he couldn’t guarantee that he would have been able to pay attention.
Aside from himself and Shouto making an attempt to talk about what had happened, floundering, giving up, and changing the subject and a few more taunts from Bakugou that had him considering just buying a hat and getting it over with, nothing truly significant happened the next day either. That suspicious calm was brought to a screeching halt when he was called to see Aizawa the next morning.
Ryouta approached Aizawa’s office with a nervous feeling in his gut. He tried to remember what he had done over the past several days, sibling stuff aside, in an effort to figure out if he had done something wrong. Not that it mattered if he found anything or not. His entire existence was wrong. Arguing with Bakugou and failing to complete all of his work with Iida at once, while bad, paled in face of the fact that, at the end of the day, he was a villain. The staff of U.A. didn’t need any further reason to get rid of him. Wracking his mind trying to think of something that may have pushed them over the edge was merely self-inflicted torture.
He felt the urge to delay upon Aizawa’s door entering his line of sight and immediately squashed it. Whatever lay ahead of him, he would face it head-on and accept it with as much grace as he could muster. It was the bare minimum. Rather than slow down, he increased his pace. A few seconds later, he announced his arrival with a single sharp rap of his knuckles against the wooden door.
“Come in,” Aizawa called. His voice gave nothing away. Ryouta tried not to read into it.
It felt like the doorknob should have given some hint as to the nature of the meeting. Instead, Ryouta wrapped his hand around the cold, meaningless steel, the same as always. He opened the door with a quick twist and stepped inside the room. The motion was made less fluid than it could have been by his proceeding to hover by the door. “Sir. You wanted to see me?” It felt like a stupid question to ask, yet he couldn’t think of anything better.
Aizawa nodded. He began to move as if looking around the room for something, only to pause, his gaze catching on Ryouta’s face. It was a struggle not to fidget under that scrutinizing gaze, made even worse by the teacher’s absurdly strong poker face. He tried to search his expression for signs of disappointment or anger and came up with nothing. After a few heavy seconds, that was finally changed by the slightest of downturns to the teacher’s lips. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
Ryouta shrugged. “Is it?” He tried to keep his voice steady - not too uncaring, not angry, frightened, or amused, and certainly not impudent. This time, he wasn’t trying to be sarcastic, but asking a genuine question. That didn’t mean that he wanted to sound desperate either.
That incalculable stare lingered for a few more seconds before Aizawa answered. “No, you’ve been doing well.”
The relief that came washing over him was almost strong enough to be tangible. It was accompanied by the sense of something warm buzzing in his chest. He was reluctant to call it pride, as not fucking things up (more than they already were) was a truly pathetic thing to be proud over, but he wasn’t displeased. More importantly, Aizawa wasn’t displeased. He said that he had been doing well, even with the incidents with Bakugou and Endeavor and the lesson and the general soul-crushing awkwardness. That was…good.
“Oh.” Although it was better than it had been a moment ago, Ryouta’s posture remained tense despite the good news. He forced himself to relax some more before walking across the room to sit in the chair in front of Aizawa’s desk. Hopefully, the action didn’t look as difficult as it felt. “What is it then?” He tried to ignore how much shorter he felt than the homeroom teacher sitting across from him.
A gaze as blank as Aizawa’s had no right to feel like it was staring into his soul. Yet, when the homeroom teacher opted to watch him for a moment longer before responding, he couldn’t shake the uncomfortable notion that it was doing exactly that. “You don’t have any clothes.” Immediately, impulsively, Ryouta glanced down at his dress shirt, which prompted Aizawa to add, “Of your own.” He did not look back up. Suddenly, that unreadable state didn’t sound so bad.
Ryouta tried to force down the embarrassment threatening to overtake him. Circumstances meant that he didn’t own anything of his own, but at least he could take some comfort in knowing that he hadn’t been asking for charity. Sure, it was stupid of him not to immediately realize what Aizawa was talking about, but it was too late for him to do anything about that. “Ah.” He slowly rolled his eyes upward and forced his gaze to drift back over to Aizawa, prompting him to continue the conversation like a normal, functional person who understood that there was no point in dwelling on minor slip-ups.
Rather than continue speaking, Aizawa reached under the desk. He retrieved a large plastic and unceremoniously plopped it between them. “You already have your uniform, but you need casual clothes. Tell me if I got the wrong size or there are any other problems.” With that, he gestured for him to take the bag.
It took a moment for Ryouta to spur himself into action. He stared at the bag and took care not to open his mouth until he knew what he was going to say. “Th-Thank you,” he eventually managed. That was a mistake. He snapped his jaw shut the moment he caught the stammer, his eyes briefly widening in a moment of raw mortification. Don’t get weird, he told himself. Be grateful, but don’t make him think you’ll expect more. “You didn’t-”
Aizawa cut him off with a dismissive snort. “Someone had to.” His tone came off as factual rather than accusational or pitying. Ryouta let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. The hero gestured to the bag a second time. “Now, get going.”
“Right.” He reached out to take the bag, however, just as he began to lift it up by the plastic handles, he hesitated. “Thank you,” he repeated. This time, there was no stammer. The entirely unwarranted bubble of pride that threatened to well up over that was combated by his lingering shame over it having happened in the first place. Ryouta wisely opted not to tempt fate any further, finished removing the bag from the desk, and hastily returned to his room to inspect its bounty.
Besides being colors that he didn’t typically opt for, they looked like the right size and, more importantly, they looked comfortable. Ryouta had never taken fashion very seriously. As long as they fit him and he didn’t waste time pulling at them, clothes were clothes. He spent most of his time at U.A. in his uniforms. At home, shorts and a t-shirt was the best option. A lot of his clothing ended up burned or destroyed anyways, especially when he was forced into training with his father. He’d owned a few casual outfits, but nothing special. These would do.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he glanced at the clock and turned back to the bag of clothes. As soon as the time registered in his head, he snapped back to look again and swore, “Oh shit!” as he jumped to his feet. He’d gotten so distracted by his original panic over being called to Aizawa’s office and then the relief at not being in trouble that he’d completely forgotten that he was supposed to meet Uraraka and Midoriya at Gamma Gym. The speed in which he changed into his athletic uniform and shoved a change of clothes in the bag Yaoyorozu created for him would have impressed Iida.
Ryouta would confess to not being very strong and only fast in short bursts, having learned early on that dodging was easier than attacking, but he could run for long distances. He’d figured that out the hard way when his father had started his endurance training. By the time he made it to the gym, he was a little out of breath, bursting through the doors with, “Sorry I’m late!” before doubling over with his hands on his knees.
When he lifted his head, instead of being greeted by Midoriya and Uraraka, it was Mina and Uraraka who were currently stretching.
“Hey!” Mina called out, waving a hand. “We were wondering if you chickened out.”
“Uh, no, I just got distracted.”
Mina smiled. “I’m just teasing.”
Uraraka pulled herself to her feet and stretched her back one last time. “I hope you don’t mind that Mina joined us today. Deku had something come up.” She fist pumped Mina and the two girls laughed, the sign of an inside joke. Ryouta had never had one of those with any of his classmates. He’d had a few with Natsuo. In a way, now he was the inside joke of Class 1-A. “She knows how to kick more butt than Deku anyways.”
“No, yeah, that’s cool,” Ryouta quickly replied. “Cool, cool, cool.”
Setting his bag down next to theirs, he stretched and kept his attention elsewhere as the two girls talked. After learning more about hand-to-hand combat in the hero class, Ryouta had been forced to admit that he sucked at it. Aizawa had warned them that they needed to practice outside of class, but he also knew that he needed help. Since he’d been partnered with her in class and she was nice in a way that didn’t feel fake, Uraraka had been his safest bet. Midoriya had been with her at the time and had eagerly offered to help as well. Apparently, both of them had once been terrible at fighting.
Once he was done, Uraraka explained a few drills that she’d learned while interning with Gunhead. They were simple, but more interesting than Ryouta had expected. Endeavor had never focused on physical fighting during his training. It was all about strengthening and controlling his quirk. Ryouta’s quirk had to be stronger, faster, last longer, more focused. Everything else came second. It left him relying on his quirk more than anything else and put him at a disadvantage when he couldn’t even control the damn thing fully.
“I’ve learned more since then thanks to Kirishima and Mina,” Uraraka finished, “but I figured we could just start here and go from there.”
“And you’re sure this isn’t a waste of your time?” Ryouta asked again.
“Oh, it’s no problem!” Uraraka reassured him. “It’s good to review the basics every now and then to make sure my form is still good.”
Mina nudged her in the side. “Plus, she feels bad about kicking your ass so thoroughly in front of everyone.”
Ryouta shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not her fault that I never really learned how to fight.”
That seemed to catch their interest. He tried to smother a flicker of irritation. Throwing any sort of hints about what it was like for him growing up was a quick way to get questions that he had no intention of answering. He’d already let far too much slip when he’d been so tight-lipped before. Shouto must have been equally vague about his past or completely silent on the subject.
Everyone couldn’t help but wonder how the household of the then-number-two hero could produce an up-and-coming hero and a villain.
“Come to think of it,” Uraraka said slowly, “Todoroki relies mostly on his quirk too.”
“Who needs to fight when you’ve got all that power?” Ryouta lifted his hands, palms up, and gazed down at them. He didn’t call up his flames like he wanted to out of concern that it might make them uneasy. It was easy enough to picture them though. When he dropped his hands and looked back to them, their eyes flickered up to his and he knew that they’d been thinking about his quirk as well. He coughed. “You two ready to show me the ropes?”
Uraraka formed her hands into fists and gave him a confident smile. “We could do some drills and work on your form and then see how you use them against an opponent. Drills aren’t worth anything if you forget all of it once you’re in a fight.”
“Better give it your all,” Mina told him as she punched the air playfully. “I won’t go easy on you.”
Well, this was going to be interesting. He was taller than both girls but had no doubts that they could take him on. He had to be stronger - he’d started to gain actual muscle when he was thirteen - but they were better at this than him. The idea of a fist fight was so beyond him that he’d never thought to practice hand-to-hand combat until that class. He didn’t have a quirk meant for punching. That said, it was starting to occur to him that there were ways to use his quirk that he’d never considered before either.
Learning the drills themselves wasn’t that difficult. Ryouta worked on his stance, which would ground him better and keep him from getting tossed around as easily. Next, he practiced different kinds of punches before adding on dodging until it built into something along the lines of a violent dance move. They went at it like that for a while, working up a sweat. It wasn’t that difficult for him to do, as his temperature ran hot due to the nature of his quirk, but even the girls got really into it.
At first, when he’d realized that it was Uraraka and Mina, he had worried that he’d be too self-conscious. However, they were so laser-focused on what they were doing that he fell into it as well. It reminded him of when he and Fuyumi would get sucked into a book and lose hours together. Before he knew it, nearly an hour had passed and he knew a lot more than he had when they started. It wasn’t a lot, seeing as how he couldn’t learn everything there was about fighting in an hour, but it was a start. Aizawa would at least be able to see that he had put in the extra effort to catch up.
“Do you think you’re ready to put what you’ve learned so far into practice?” Uraraka asked.
Ryouta wiped the sweat off his face as best as he could and glanced over at Mina, who was lightly bouncing on the balls of her feet, like she wasn’t tired at all. He was definitely feeling the burn of his muscles and the first hints of being worn out. Still, he knew that he could last a long time. The kids in the hero course had endurance that would put most of the world to shame, but he’d learned to run on fumes years ago. He could burn and burn until there was nothing left in the tank and still keep on pushing.
“Sure,” he finally responded. He took a swig from his water bottle and tossed it back into his bag before languidly getting into a stance. Staring back at Mina, every inch of his body was screaming to tense up, but he kept himself relaxed, conserving his energy. If he lasted longer than five seconds, he’d be happy. Uraraka had done her best to teach him a few moves, but it would be different using them against an opponent that was actively fighting back and moving fast.
Despite the fact that she was about to kick his ass (or perhaps because of it), Mina wore quite a cheerful expression. She moved first, rushing forward and reaching to snatch him by the wrist. Fuck, she was quick. Ryouta fell back into his usual routine of dodging out of habit, sliding out of her reach. He slammed his right foot down behind him to strengthen his footing and then swung a left hook. She dodged it by twisting to the side, his fist sailing past her head uselessly, and then landed a precise hit in his side that forced him to stumble back.
“Gotcha!” Mina laughed.
“You left yourself wide open when you tried to attack,” Uraraka pointed out
Doubled over with a hand on his side, Ryouta managed to say, “I noticed.” When he stood up straight, his ribs stung, but it wasn’t terrible. He had a feeling that Mina hadn’t hit him as hard as she could even though she had said that she wouldn’t go easy on him. He would’ve really been bruised if she had. Still, despite being hit, he wasn’t mad or upset. In fact, as adrenaline seeped into his veins, he felt kind of, well, excited. Neither one of them were acting afraid of him and were actively encouraging him.
This time, Ryouta moved to attack first. Mina easily dodged his first attempt to hit her and then blocked his next attack. When she attacked, he blocked the first punch, but then caught her second with his hand, just as he’d done with Bakugou. It was a hard punch, but compared to a punch powered by an explosion, it only stung a little. He hooked a foot behind her ankle and shoved hard, tripping her and knocking her off balance. The thought that he didn’t want to actually hit her flashed in his mind, but then that was the whole point what they were doing here. She’d taken harder hits than he could manage with his fist alone.
Before he could follow through with a takedown, Mina used her momentum to do a backflip, using one hand on the ground to spring back onto her feet. The move was so graceful that Ryouta could’ve almost believed that it had been planned from the start. He inadvertently paused to gawk for a few seconds. There was no way in hell that he could manage a flip at this point. The mere idea of gymnastics made his mind attempt to jump through hoops.
She didn’t give him any time to recover from his shock, getting in a quick jab against his chest. When she went to hit him again, he snatched her by the wrist and pulled on her hard so that he could get her in a semblance of a hold, wrapping his arms around her from behind. He was stronger than her, judging from the way she jerked against his grip. His brief moment of pride was cut off when she hooked her foot around his ankle and kicked out, knocking his feet out from underneath him. Both of them fell backward and he hit the ground hard with her landing on top of him. It knocked the air out of his lungs and he loosened his grip on her enough for her to slip out. Before he knew it, she had him flipped on his stomach and an arm pinned behind his back.
Breathing heavily, Mina asked, “You give?” She was breathless, probably from the rough landing. He wasn’t exactly good cushion material.
With his face pressed against the mat and his arm pinned high enough to be just shy of being painful, Ryouta nodded his head and gound out, “Can’t really breathe.” Satisfied with his answer, Mina let go of his arm and rolled off of him so she could flop onto the mat. Ryouta rolled onto his back and sucked in a gasp of air as his lungs began to cooperate with him again. He took a few seconds to breathe before pointing out, “You didn’t go all out on me.”
“No,” Mina admitted, “but you wouldn’t be able to learn if I just floored you in a few seconds.”
“It felt like it was only a few seconds.”
“You did good,” Mina told him. Uraraka came over and helped her back to her feet as Ryouta sat up. When Mina held a hand out to him to do the same, he waved dismissively and pushed himself to his feet. It struck him that his refusal might’ve come off as rude, but brushing off help had been ingrained in him. It had taken him a while to accept Fuyumi’s help with changing his bandages, but it had made it a lot easier when he had.
“I did better than in class, at least,” Ryouta conceded, rubbing his lower back. Even though he’d landed on the mat, it had been more painful than the punches she’d landed on him.
Uraraka glanced at her phone and groaned. “Ugh, it’s almost time for dinner.”
“Ugh?” Mina questioned. “You love food.”
“I know,” Uraraka complained, “but Iida, Deku, and I are having a study session during it for Present Mic’s exam.”
Ryouta picked up his gym bag and started for the locker rooms. “Good luck with that.”
“You’re so lucky that you don’t have to take it,” Uraraka said as she and Mina did the same.
“That’s because I’ve done it already,” Ryouta pointed out. Seeing as how he’d finished his first year at U.A. and had been a month into his second, it had been decided that he wouldn’t have to take the final exams for the regular classes. He was already repeating being sixteen; he didn’t need to repeat his first year too. It gave him time to work on the hero course, which he was severely behind on.
They split up at the locker rooms, Ryouta going to the boys’ side. He took a quick, hot shower, the warm water soothing his muscles. This training felt different from his quirk training. He was tired and sore, but not worn thin and beaten up. Where he’d puked plenty of times and felt weak, he now felt hungry and ready for dinner. All in all, he felt good. Yeah, he was still leagues behind them in terms of combat, but for the first time in a long time, he felt like he was actually improving. He was changing. It felt good.
Having clothes that he could call his own was nice too. He didn’t mind wearing Shouto’s old clothes, but it was weird having to borrow clothes from his little brother. After putting on the outfit he’d gotten from the bag of clothes Aizawa had given him, he toweled his hair dry and walked back out to the gym where Mina and Uraraka were already waiting on him.
“You rea-?” Uraraka cut off the second she raised her eyes from her cell to him. They widened briefly before she furrowed her brow and bit her lip, looking like she was trying not to make a face. “Oh, um, new clothes?”
Ryouta hiked the strap of his bag further on his shoulder. “Yeah, Aizawa gave me some clothes so I don’t have to keep borrowing stuff.” He tugged on the hem of his shirt. “I mean, I usually don’t go for things this colorful, but it’s whatever. They’re not bad.”
Mina’s mouth was open as she stared at him, but strangely, she looked positively delighted. “Aizawa picked out those clothes?”
“Maybe?” Ryouta hadn’t really considered it. Getting handed a bag of clothes, having some small detail about him noticed, had combined with the fear that he’d done something wrong and forgotten to make a powerful distraction. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. They’re probably from a bargain store, but that’s fine with me.”
“And you like that outfit?” Mina asked.
“It looks fine to me. Doesn’t really matter. Clothes are clothes. All that matters is that they fit and are comfortable.” Ryouta looked at the two girls, self-consciousness creeping up on him. “Why? Is it…? Does it look bad?” He rubbed the back of his neck, his discomfort becoming stronger by the second. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing!” Uraraka quickly replied. “I mean, well, it’s just, um...a different look.”
Ryouta frowned. “Different good or different bad?”
“Just different,” Uraraka told him. There was a smile on her face, but it looked tense.
“Hey, it’s free clothes,” Ryouta said. Uraraka bobbed her head in understanding. She’d talked about her financial difficulties, so she of all people would be able to understand. “I can’t complain.”
Mina clapped her hands together, a bright smile on her face and still utterly delighted. “I think it looks fabulous.” Ryouta’s cheeks warmed. He didn’t even know how to respond to that. Fabulous was not a word he would have ever thought to use to describe himself. Was she being sarcastic? No, she looked and sounded genuine, which was weird. “But a few people might say something else about it.”
Rolling his eyes and starting for the door, Ryouta said, “If you’re referring to Bakugou, I don’t care. He’s going to say something no matter what I wear. It’s not a big deal.”
It really wasn’t. To be honest, over the past few days, Bakugou had been kind of tame. The coming final exams had proven to be a great distraction as they were more worthy of his time than insulting Ryouta. It was strange, but he’d noticed that, despite coming off as a hothead ready to fly off the handle, Bakugou was really serious about school and his work. Iida had told him that he was third in the class. It was surprising. His tormentor was kind of...a nerd. It had started to change Ryouta’s view of him. This kid truly wanted to be a hero.
“I still wish he wasn’t so mean, but, you know, he has a hard time letting things go,” Mina said, the smile fading from her face, as she walked at his right.
“He doesn’t have to,” Ryouta pointed out. “I’m fine with him hating me.”
“I don’t think he hates you,” Uraraka mused, which made Ryouta snort. He was pretty sure on a scale of one to ten on how much Bakugou hated him, he was at a solid thirteen. “He hates looking weak and you - well, Dabi - made him feel it. I know it sounds weird, but as awful as the whole kidnapping was, he’s becoming a better hero for it. I mean, he’s even starting to get past his issues with Deku.” She shook her head as they stepped outside. “Not that it was a good thing at all! It just made us all think about what we’re doing here and what kind of heroes we want to become.”
“And he’s gotten a lot better,” Mina added. “He can be kind of an ass. He still calls me as Raccoon Eyes sometimes when he’s in a bad mood.”
“But you don’t have raccoon eyes,” Ryouta interjected.
Mina smiled. “It doesn’t bother me. He’s given dumb nicknames for everyone. It’s like this thing.” She looked over to her right at Uraraka. “What did he call you?”
Uraraka blew a raspberry. “Round Face.”
“That is dumb,” Ryouta said with a snort.
“The thing is, all his...Bakugou-ness aside, he’s one of my good friends,” Mina continued. A mischievous glint that instantly made Ryouta wary appeared in her golden eyes. “But sometimes I think it’d be funny to give him a taste of his own medicine. We play pranks on each other all the time, but never as much with Bakugou. It’d be nice to really pull one over him.”
“You’re flirting with danger, girl,” Uraraka joked.
Mina winked. “What’s wrong with a little danger?”
“Most people try to stay away from it,” Ryouta said.
“Do I look like most people?” Mina laughed and Uraraka giggled with her.
“Uh, no? Most people aren’t pink.” Ryouta wasn’t exactly sure what kind of response she had been expecting, but apparently, his was good enough as the two girls laughed again. Even though he wasn’t a part of their group and he couldn’t exactly consider them friends, seeing as how he’d been stuck with them by force, it was nice of them to make him feel included. He still felt like he was on the outside - he didn’t know if he would ever be able to feel any different - but it wasn’t so bad. Neither Uraraka nor Mina had to come to the gym with him today, but they’d done it. They must’ve taken Iida’s declaration to heart.
That thought lead to another surprising, but not upsetting, one. Aside from Uraraka’s reaction to his outfit, which was another matter entirely, they hadn’t seemed particularly uncomfortable around him either. While it was true that they could have just gotten better at hiding their discomfort, that just signified more effort to make him feel welcome. Ryouta didn’t know if he should feel touched by the kindness or guilty about the inconvenience. He settled for glancing down at his feet and trying to find something else to think of as a compromise.
His solution came to him as he turned the corner into the common room. Granted, it wasn’t necessarily the one he wanted, but it certainly distracted him from any ill-fated attempts to figure out his companions. They were immediately greeted by a choking, wheezing sound. On a couch sat Midoriya, a cup of water which he had apparently partially inhaled in one hand, the other covering his mouth as he stared at Ryouta. Beside him was Iida, who, despite firmly pounding his choking friend on the back and continuously asking if he was okay or needed medical attention, also kept glancing at him.
The worst, by far, was Shouto. He all but jumped out of his seat and eyed him for a heartbeat before scrubbing his eyes with a hand and groaning. “I’d forgotten about this,” he grumbled.
Those words broke the stunned silence that the reaction to their arrival had generated. “Forgotten about what?” Ryouta asked. His brother lowered his hand and eyed the ceiling, looking for all the world like he didn’t want to be the one to explain.
Since Midoriya had stopped choking, Iida decided to lift the burden from his shoulders. He shot up like a springboard before starting to speak. “I am not admonishing you as you are not violating any dress codes or offending anyone. We were merely caught off guard. I, at least, did not expect you to enjoy…” Iida paused the chopping gestured his hands had begun making for a moment to stare at his shirt. “Kawaii. ”
He heard a small noise from Uraraka, followed by a gentle slap as she pressed her hand against her mouth. Mina reached forward to pat him on the shoulder. “Aizawa gave him some clothes,” she said, the earlier glee still lingering in her tone.
“Of course,” Iida said, although the soft wheeze that emitted from the still red-faced Midoriya signified that ‘of course’ may not have been the best choice of words. “I’m sorry! I did not mean to imply that they are bad! The… contrast of the bold colors and pastels…”
Ryouta tuned him out and looked down at his clothes. He wore a diagonally striped blue open-front shirt with pale yellow cuffs and, underneath that, a hot pink u-neck with a print of a yellow cat and the word ‘kawaii’ (or he thought it was meant to say ‘kawaii’, as it was written in english and had come out as ‘hawaii’ instead) with a claw-mark through it. His pants were a fairly bright pastel orange and his shoes simple black flip-flops. All in all, it was a comfortable ensemble that served its purpose.
“I think it’s fine,” he said. Even so, he could feel his self-consciousness begin to well up again, along with the feeling that he was repeating himself and would be for a while.
“That’s what I forgot,” Shouto murmured. Ryouta turned to glower at his brother, only to pause when he saw the faint signs of amusement on his face. Oh. The simultaneously alien and precious notion that his brother may be trying to playfully tease him wasn’t one that he knew how to respond to. He remembered such behavior from Natsu, but not as much from Shouto. Especially not this Shouto. His mind felt caught up trying to process the fact that it was somehow happening.
He was promptly reminded that the rest of the world did, in fact, exist, by Midoriya finding his voice. “I was a little surprised, but I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with it,” he said. “If you’re comfortable, you should wear it! Right, guys?” Midoriya flashed Ryouta an encouraging smile before turning it to everyone else in the room. He was met by a somewhat reluctant chorus of agreement and somewhat uncomfortable smiles.
There was definitely something off that he wasn’t catching onto. Even so, he nodded decisively and said, “Thank you, Midoriya. You have a decent sense of style, so I trust you.” Midoriya visibly brightened at that, although he could swear that he saw Uraraka struggling not to cringe out of the corner of his eye. He would have shot her a confused look if he wasn’t afraid of drawing his attention to it. Was something wrong with Midoriya’sclothes? He’d liked most of his outfits so far, his ‘shirt’ shirts were really funny, although his shoes were vaguely familiar in an unsettling way.
“There really isn’t anything wrong,” Mina piped up. ‘No matter what some people say,’ while left unsaid, was communicated easily through the encouraging look she shot him. “I really like the shir-”
“Oh.”
The sudden interruption drew Ryouta’s gaze back to the hallway, where Yaoyorozu Momo stood, staring at him, as seemed to be the trend for the afternoon. Her expression, however, was one of solid dismay, her hand held up to her mouth and her eyes wide in horror. It faltered as agitation flickered across her features before finally being replaced by something harder.
She marched into the room and began to speak in a voice that, for all its gentleness, held an unwavering undertone of firmness. “I don’t know who did this, but I expected better of my classmates. You know how we’re supposed to behave. This is…” she shook her head, looking almost disgusted. By the time she came to a stop in front of Ryouta, he was already very confused. What she said next did not help. “Ryouta, if you tell me who-”
“Aizawa, apparently,” Shouto interrupted. He probably imagined it, but it sounded like his brother was tempted to laugh.
The color began to leave Yaoyorozu’s face in short order. “ Oh,” she repeated. This time, the word was swimming in shame, although there was also a fair amount of lingering horror as well. She took a few steps back and looked at the wall, ceiling, floor - anywhere but Ryouta’s face. That was when it clicked.
“Did you think I was pranked?” he asked incredulously. Yaoyorozu’s head drooped and the guilt in her expression intensified, which immediately made him regret his words. The Yaoyorozu family was pretty rich. He supposed it wasn’t too ridiculous for her not to understand things like thriftiness and think that giving people brightly colored outfits was a cruel prank. She didn’t mean anything by it at the very least. He opened his mouth to apologize, only for another new arrival, doubtlessly attracted by the slowly rising clamor, to make her presence known before he could speak.
“What’s going on?” Asui said, her brows furrowed and head tilted slightly.
“Ryouta’s bad fashion sense almost killed Midoriya,” Shouto said.  Ryouta immediately snapped his head around to glower at him. His voice was a perfect deadpan, but this time, there was no mistaking it. That absolute little shit was definitely laughing.
“Now you’re just being an ass,” he snapped. His voice wavered as he spoke. It wasn’t a bad waver. Although it was beginning to look like he was going to have to repeat himself until everyone had seen him and knew how he got his clothes, which was undeniably irritating, and didn’t like how people kept looking at him yet refused to explain what was wrong, it didn’t feel bad. Despite seeming like it should do the opposite, Shouto’s apparent amusement in the situation was making his self-consciousness slowly melt away. It looked like he might be aware of it to some degree as well.
Shouto looked him in the eyes and raised an eyebrow. “Someone has to tell you the truth.” This time, Uraraka wasn’t able to keep herself from letting out a small snicker. He heard a small ‘thwack’ as Mina smacked her on the arm, which, despite a choked attempt to apologize, only made her laugh harder. Somewhere in the midst of this, Asui gave a neutral, “I see.”
Ryouta rolled his eyes and huffed before looking back at Yaoyorozu. She still looked guilty and was fiddling with her hands. He also noticed that Iida was sitting stiffly and had a blush lingering on his face, likely admonishing himself over something or other. Midoriya kept shooting him concerned glances. “None of you did anything wrong,” Ryouta assured them. “I guess I just… don’t care about clothes that much.”
Naturally, that was when Bakugou showed up.
“Holy fucking shit!” he exclaimed before falling into a fit of laughter that seemed to startle everyone just as much as his choice of clothing had. He had both hands over his mouth in an attempt to muffle his guffaws and was doubled over, as if he physically couldn’t stand straight. His face was even turning red as he tried to restrain himself. His laughter was the only thing to be heard, everyone else having gone very silent with various unsettled looks on their faces. Ryouta wore a blank expression as he watched Bakugou with a completely unimpressed stare.
Midoriya nervously glanced at Shouto and then Uraraka before venturing, “Are...are you okay, Kacchan?”
“Okay?” Bakugou shot back in between laughs. “ Okay? Shut the fuck up, Deku, this is…” He finally stopped laughing, but was forced to refrain from speaking so he could take a few breaths. “What the hell are you wearing?”
Sighting, Ryouta repeated himself for what felt like the hundredth time, “Aizawa got me some clothes of my own.”
“You’re telling me that our homeroom teacher, pro hero Eraserhead, who once expelled an entire hero class, went out and bought you clothes” - Bakugou pointed an accusing finger at him - “and he bought you that? And you just wore it without complaint?”
“I highly doubt that he bought them himself,” Ryouta replied defensively, folding his arms across his chest. Surely he had better things to do. Then again, it made him wonder who had bought them. Maybe he’d just asked for donations and people had put clothes they no longer wore in the bag. It would explain the random variety of colors and styles. “And why wouldn’t I? I’m not a complete jackass. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. They fit. They’re comfortable. They fulfill their function. They’re clothes. What else is there, Saggy Bottoms?”
The muscle by Bakugou’s right eye twitched, probably at the nickname, but at least he was confident enough in himself to not immediately pull his pants up. He did sag his pants a ridiculous amount. In the back of his mind, Ryouta knew that he’d pick at his clothes later, trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with them, but he was resisting out of sheer stubbornness for now.
“I don’t know,” Bakugou finally replied, still sounding incredulous. “Maybe that they look good and not like you dropped acid and went shopping in the kid’s section?”
“They’re not that bad,” Mina jumped in.
Bakugou shook his head. “No, no, don’t defend this disaster just because you like bright colors.”
“And Aizawa was the one that got them, so this is really on him,” Uraraka added.
“Maybe so,” Bakugou said, like that was a door he would open on another day. “But Dabi over here willingly put them on and thinks it’s perfectly fine.” He started to snort as he tried to resist the urge to start laughing again. “He looks like he’s going to a rave. At least it matches his hair.”
At that moment, Kirishima walked in with Kaminari behind him. The first thing he noticed as Bakugou laughing. “What’s go-?” His eyes landed on Ryouta and widened. “Whoa, um, wow, okay I was not expecting this.”
“Can you believe that the guy wearing this outfit grows up to kidnap me?” While Bakugou cooled down, everyone else wore distinctly uncomfortable looks. Uraraka shifted on her feet. Deku coughed. Shouto glowered in that way that made the room drop a degree. No one said anything though and Ryouta could understand why. It was up to Bakugou how he dealt with that part of his past. If he chose to be glib about it for whatever reason, they would let him do it. No one had the right to take that choice away from him. “I’m honestly kind of pissed, now that I think about it. How the hell could I have ever been-?” He cut himself off and narrowed his eyes. “Whatever. That’s tacky.”
What was it that Uraraka had said about Bakugou? That he hated looking weak and Dabi had made him feel that way? There was no way in hell he was going to admit that in front of everyone. Ryouta would’ve done the same thing as him: denied any sort of weakness or fear until he died or maybe even taken it to his grave. Having information pried out of him that he’d never willingly given away before was already awkward enough.
“Dude,” Kaminari said, his face filled with as much delight and mirth as Mina’s had been. “That outfit is electric!”
“No!” Bakugou shouted, letting off a mini explosion in his palm, to which Kaminari just laughed.
Kirishima shrugged his shoulders, by far the most neutral out of all of them, although he still looked surprised. “I don’t know, man. I mean, that outfit is, uh, loud, but if you feel comfortable wearing it and don’t care what anyone else thinks, that’s pretty manly.”
“No,” Bakugou said again, much more emphatically, “no, no. You do not get an opinion in this.” He pointed down at Kirishima’s shoes, which were unmistakably crocs. Ryouta raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t realized that people still wore those. “Not when you refuse to throw those things away.”
“You’re just jealous that you can’t rock them,” Kirishima retorted.
“Just leave them both be, Bakugou,” Mina said in a dismissive tone. She really wasn’t phased by him at all, talking to him like she would anyone else. “At least we don’t wear different versions of the same shirt practically every day.”
Ryouta eyed the other boy. “Now that I think about it, do you own any t-shirts that aren’t black with a skull on it?”
Bakugou glared at him. If it was possible for steam to come out of a person’s ears like in cartoons, Ryouta was fairly certain he would be doing that right now. “I’d rather do that than wear an outfit you could see from space.” He stood up straight and swept the room with a glare that dared anyone to protest. “I’ll be in my dorm giving my eyes a break from this. Thanks for making my week brighter.” And with that, he stomped to his dorm, leaving everyone confused about how to feel.
Well, in a sense, that was the most positive interaction that Ryouta had ever had with Bakugou, so he couldn’t exactly be mad about it. Yeah, he was a little disgruntled, but he was mostly feeling awkward about being the center of attention for so long. Was he going to have to do some sort of fashion show for the class so they could get whatever this was out of their systems? He was not doing that, but if they had this reaction every time it put on a new outfit, it would get old fast.
Mina laying a hand on his arm nearly made Ryouta jump out of his flip-flops. She pulled it away so fast that it was almost like he’d only imagined her touching him. “You okay?”
Ryouta blinked. “Uh, yeah, I’m fine.” For once, he wasn’t lying. He glanced at Shouto, who had eased up again now that Bakugou was out of the room. Every time the two of them were near each other, his brother would tense up, as if he had to remain vigilant in case a fight broke out, even if it was somewhere as mundane as the bathrooms in the morning while brushing their teeth. “It’s not a big deal, really.”
Around them, everyone began to disperse again. Uraraka had meandered over to the couch to sit with Iida and Midoriya, probably to start their study session. Kirishima and Kaminari had gone to the kitchen. Yaoyorozu moved to speak with Shouto about something, distracting him and leaving Ryouta with just Mina.
“You sure?” she asked.
“Yeah. If it’s not my hair, it’s my clothes,” Ryouta said, “but honestly, it’s a lot better than what it could be. I’m, you know…”
Bakugou could pick on him for a lot worse things than his looks. There was the fact that he was a villain. That would have gotten under his skin a lot more. He didn’t like it when Bakugou referred to him as Dabi, but that was the name he knew him by from back then. It was a name that he had apparently chosen for himself. What a shit ass name.
Ryouta shrugged his shoulders and added, “Like you said, it’d be nice to pull one over him so he knows what it’s like, but it’s not like I can do anything.”
Mina grinned and he couldn’t help but notice that that devious glimmer was back and stronger than ever. “I have an idea.”
@mistystarshine notes: Agreed that this was a fun chapter to write! As I read Lanni's chunks, I. Was. Howling. Of course, the story wouldn't be half as much fun without you readers. We're almost at a thousand kudos, which... holy cow! I love you guys so much!
Now we get to the fun part of my notes. We have fanart! The first piece is directly linked to this chapter. Have a reference of Ryouta in his horrible outfit, made by the wonderful @ccyans! You should also admire this titan of pastels for designing the outfit. We just put the vision into words.
Next, we have some memes by @wellthengetouttathesoupaisle! They were inspired by discord shenanigans, but believe me when I say that you don't need context to enjoy them.
Finally, we have been blessed with some ship art by Pseudowinner! Would you believe me if I said that Lanni and I didn't drop any spoilers for this chapter? (Aside from asking Ccyans for permission to use the wonder outfit, of course!) Getting this right before a chapter with so much interaction between them made me grin.
To anyone who's interested and didn't catch it before, you can find the discord here! We'd love to have you!
22 notes ¡ View notes
docandprof ¡ 4 years ago
Text
In Which I Review Literature
Say hey!
You delay, I delay – we all delay! Sorry it’s been so long, but fortunately we’ve been keeping up lately, so you have an idea of what I’ve been up to! I very much enjoyed reading your post, and I believe I have a few things to respond to, but I’ll begin with the easiest one – booze! Old fashioned and whiskey sour. What else could you need? Pro tip, make your own syrups. It’s just sugar and water in a 1:1 ratio. I recommend just doing a ½ a cup, since I don’t use that much in a short amount of time.
Now, on to the heart of the matter (see what I did there?). I am so happy that you’ve found love! It is not an easy thing to come by. I think it’s great that you paused and took some time for reflection too – a hard thing to do in the face of strong emotions! And you had a serious conversation about your future? Sounds like you’re in a real mature, adult relationship! You have found something special if I can believe you 😉 so hang on to her! I have learned with you how challenging long distance can be, so it’s great to hear you making a plan to be together soon. It sounds like it makes a lot of sense to enjoy the Nashville area while you’re young, and like you said it’s not forever. It is a tough situation though when you both have good opportunities in different areas, family to consider, etc. (for reference see my life, page 394). Of course, I’ll still remind you that my area is a great place for hip, young cool people like yourselves to move to 😉. And hey, no hard feelings towards the lady – I know you love me, and the love you and her share is a different kind of love. So I suppose I can share.
So besides being happy about you happiness, what have I been up to? Well, like the true yin to my yang, the peanut butter to my jelly, there must be balance between our circumstances apparently (more to come on destiny and fate later). Things have, in the grand scheme of things, been going just fine! But if you take a magnifier to the last couple weeks I’ve had you’d go AGH! To keep it short, and not fall into a rant, work has been incredibly stressful trying to get a release out (even though I know it’s not super critical) and some staff trouble looming for my Monday morning. That’s kind of the least important, but most prevalent (you know since I’m there 40 hours a week) stressor at the moment. My grandpa is not doing very well. I saw him on Mother’s Day and it was pretty bad. Luckily he got in to the doctor last week and seems to be doing better, but he is 92, so of course I want to keep him around as long as we can, but I am well aware of his age. And just today I found out my youngest aunt who has had health problems for years is not doing super well. Of course family health issues are always worrying, and to top it all off there’s been trouble in paradise, as you are aware. We haven’t had another discussion yet, so I’m still feeling a bit in limbo in our relationship, but I care about her so much and will try to work things out how I can, while still being true to myself and my values. I appreciate you offering your insights the other week, more than you may realize. So, it’s been a difficult time, but there are good days on the horizon! I am excited to move in August, some trips coming up in the summertime, seeing you crazy kook, and of course some sort of return to normal life as the pandemic situation improves.
Now, on to what you’ve really been waiting for – my lit review! So I just finished reading The Lady of the Lake, the final piece of the Ciri and Geralt storyline for the witcher books, and as I usually feel after finishing a series, I am full of emotions! I’ll avoid any direct spoilers for your sake, as I think you know enough about the witcher genre to follow with whatever philosophizing is about to follow. Not surprisingly, the ending was what one might call bittersweet. What I suppose I was more surprised by was to learn that the games are not canon. I had seen so many similarities between the games and the books, that I figured I would get to the end of the novel and see the jumping off point for the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Minor spoiler alert – I did not find that jumping off point. Sapkowski gets into some very interesting ideas weaving different myths and legends together towards the end of the series, which I thought was very neat as a DnD player who thinks planar travel and time travel are super cool. His “realism” or pessimism, depending where you look at things from, I also found a bit refreshing from a lot of modern media, where everything kind of works out for the best. Much like George R.R Martin, Sapkowski was not afraid of being brutal to his characters, and maybe it was easier because even though I am in love with his characters, it always felt like I was an observer, listening to the retelling of a story that was already written, the ink dried, the outcomes already made up, no matter when or how I turned the page. (One of the ways he did this I very much want to take as inspiration for DnD – between each chapter he includes an excerpt from a book that exists in his world; encyclopedias, a book of fairy tales, war records from opposing sides, etc.). So it was almost nihilistic to keep reading, knowing there wouldn’t be a happy ever after, but that didn’t stop me from eating it all up.
Everything has been, everything has happened. And everything has already been written about. ~ Vysogota of Corvo
Is this paragraph about the witcher too, you wonder? Why yes, yes it is. And that line is from a character that I was surprised by how much I ended up loving, despite his relatively minor inclusion (note I do not say minor role). In the last few chapters of The Lady of the Lake (which also, go figure, is a frame story – I bet you can put some pieces together), Sapkowski talked a lot about Order, Chaos, Evil, and Progress, which was all interesting and in the bar scene that these conversations took place, I didn’t find myself able to agree with any one character. It was a good reminder that although problems can often seem black and white (especially in the polarized political climate nowadays), many things are not so simple to categorize into right and wrong. Gosh there is just so much I could get into with these books, but to begin wrapping up, I was particularly interested in a short monologue about Destiny from sorceress Philippa Eilhart. I won’t get into it, since I plan to use a lot of the ideas for a certain elven ranger you might know, but it is such an interesting concept to think about, particularly when things happen in our lives beyond our control. Many times people say things like “Everything happens for a reason” and slap it on a picture of a mountain in fancy cursive writing to confront such hardships. My perception is that in this modern era we don’t talk about destiny, but maybe we still believe in it without realizing. Maybe we have to. We’ve explained so much through science and reasoning that one can make an argument against destiny, even some against religion, but I’ve always been someone who has been able to believe in both, despite any contradictions that might arise. Life, love, destiny, the pursuit of happiness – how can we know everything about everything? There will always be something beyond us, above us. It doesn’t explain away tragedies like the sudden loss of a loved one that too many of our friends have experienced recently, but the one thing I (and Sapkowski) think destiny offers us is hope. Maybe this was obvious to you all along, but it’s a realization I’ve only recently come to, and I’m grateful to these books for that, at least, in a time where I feel like so much around me is going wrong, I lean on destiny to remind me that it will be alright. Whether that is a good or bad thing to do, does that really matter? I don’t think so.
Well, having lived up to my title as Professor Souls, I’ll leave you to ponder. Naturally, I recommend you read these books! They’re a bit different in writing style, but I ended up falling in love with it honestly. And if you won’t read, then play Gwent with me! Or don’t. What media have you consumed recently that made you think deeply?
And at long last, you’ve reached the end of this post. The serpent Ouroboros has grasped his own tail, and an ending becomes a beginning.
Thinkin’ hard,
Professor
5.16.21
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theninjasanctuary ¡ 4 years ago
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The usual year-in-review post. Putting it behind a break because it is long and pretty boring.
Conflicted about giving a verdict, because obviously this year has been shit in so many respects even if I personally really didn’t suffer much beyond minor inconveniences and some anxiety and stress and an unsurprising death in the family. Yet in other respects, ngl, this has still been a better year than I’ve had in a while. It boils down to being in a relatively safe corner of the world and now being paid enough to make ends meet, basically, because I got a new job in a more or less secure field. (I was doing ok-ish last year as well, considering, but it was at the expense of taking on too much extra work, in hindsight I’ve no idea how I even managed teaching 3 classes last autumn semester.) I started it in a half-time capacity, but then switched to full-time in September when we found a replacement for my previous half-time position. I’m making local medium wage now and probably will for the next 4 years, and thus a massive source of stress in my life is just gone for the time being. I’m not buying-cars-or-real-estate rich, but I can afford not to worry, and let me tell you, that is so fucking nice. 
No, I haven’t been particularly smart about it. Yes, I did sort out the situation with my retirement savings plans at the end of December, and increased monthly contributions, but throughout the year, I’ve been spending furiously and, disregarding minor charitable donations, pretty selfishly. I’ve done a lot, A LOT of shopping, mostly online. Some of it was warranted to make up for all the lean years - it was not too soon to get new sheets, the old ones were literally becoming threadbare, the rug was looking miserable, the sofa was de facto broken, the hallway was depressing, etc. I don’t regret any expenses on nesting, including furniture and reno (with the possible exception of a pendant light I changed my mind about when it was too late to return it, but I still kind of like it and will find a use for it eventually). There’s an underlying pessimism, leading to a sense of urgency to check these things off the list before the good times run out again. As I’ve said before, I feel it’ll be easier to cope with precarity when I’ve established a baseline of relative comfort.
But there’s also no point in denying that a considerable chunk of the expenses this year built up from just comfort shopping out of anxiety and boredom. It’s not even a good self-soothing tactic, is it. Yet here we are, and the wardrobe has been upgraded and then some, again, but at least nearly all of it was either second-hand or reasonably priced. Too many favourites to list, but finding the perfect jeans (and getting 2 pairs) seems like an achievement worth noting. (I also had 2 pairs of my previous favourites, Uniqlo denim joggers from... 2017?, but my thighs destroyed them both by late last year. The new ones are lasting better in comparison.) Of course there was fairly little chance to wear all of these nice things, with the exception of loungewear. I last wore a dress in August. Hopefully things will eventually improve in this respect.
Bought lots of skincare, too. I am habitually mindful of getting the best value for money, but have definitely splurged on things here and there, and tried new stuff more than I used to. There are vague thoughts on perhaps simplifying the routines. Also, there’s been a shift towards stuff I can easily get in Europe, because there were issues with getting things from Korea or Japan, and I guess the novelty has worn off a bit, I can’t be bothered to sheet mask more than twice a month, max, and things I like keep getting discontinued.   
In contrast to all of the above, saved on travel, obviously. Due to all plans getting cancelled from March onwards, only left the country once this year, to Paris around Valentine’s day (it was mostly excellent and done in a budget-conscious manner). It is odd that I don’t really miss travel all that much either. Low-key dreading the next opportunity because it seems like a major source of anxiety after a long break. There were a few local day trips with friends or family over the summer and autumn, which I cherished, as well as the too-few chances to go out somewhere and see people (amid second-wave hindsight, wish I’d done it more during the summer). Even my introverted ass misses socializing by this point, despite also feeling that I’ve become really bad at it. As anyone ought to have realized after reading this far, I’m probably more boring than ever, too.     
Regrets also involve not getting out more and not getting enough exercise. Yes, even considering I’ve been going to weekly workouts with a physiotherapist/private trainer since June (using a compensation scheme paid for by work, but that covers about half of it) that has mostly fixed the issues I was having with my shoulders and clearly upped my general fitness level. The problem is, the workouts at home were on the easy and occasional side, and I have only gone on a handful of long walks all year. Part of it is scheduling, part of it is route issues and wanting to avoid public transportation because of the pandemic, and part of it was my tendency to get blisters for no good reason, but I fixed that with another late-in-the-year purchase of cold-weather-appropriate Skechers.       
In surprise achievements during this year: for the first time since actively having an ED, I have become mostly ok with weighing myself like a rational adult (no more than once a month though, and I take care to do it at a time where I’m not bloated, so the ‘rational’ part remains arguable). I didn’t really think this would ever happen, but it’s a side effect of the physio sessions. It feels a bigger achievement than the 5 or so kg of actual weight I’ve lost - I felt fat af in the late spring, and ngl, cookies and ice cream featured heavily on the lockdown menu. I also cut all the way back on sugar since May until late November or so, and intend to keep it up once sugar-binge-season is over.  
Ceiling-to-floor reno of a complicated hallway space on top of everything else that’s been going on is also a fucking achievement, even if it took too long and the guy is coming to put up 2 more lights next week.
I’ve been reading more just for recreation. Not ‘enough’, whatever that means, and not always or even mostly at reasonable times, but it counts and has made this year more tolerable.    
Items still on the to-do-list for next year: getting glasses, ffs. I have had the prescription since June. I want to go with the boyf and make him get new ones too, but zero fucking progress, and the environment isn’t helping, hard to shop for glasses with a mask on. Same goes for driving school, can’t do all of it online, but it needs to get done. Also, kitchen reno, even though at the moment that feels like too much, but I ought to make plans and order the supplies during winter and spring, and then hire the same guy to get it done quickly in the summer.
Resolutions: I guess my last remaining grandparent dying has contributed to feeling I’m sick and tired of kidulting. I want to get a fucking grip, get my finances in order, set adult goals and muster the will to work towards them. And I want to continue working on my fitness level. That’s about it.
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