#and pairs that I love and enjoy

[harper-collins]

I'm one of those people who tend to have one or two hyperfixations at a time, and I get so scared that I'll lose them (especially when I'm writing a fic) that I try and obsess over them even more and avoid other fandoms just to make sure I stay there as long as possible.

When I write, and I am hyper-fixated on this pair, fandom or whatnot, I then get nervous that if I stop hyper-fixing, I'll lose the love or the motivation to do that fic...

Do other people experience this?

[dizzybizz]

they got that ND swag

these shirts man omg pls i love em so much

[fishfission-dc]

“Who’s the best Robin?”

My favorite character that has been Robin is Jason Todd.

I think Tim Drake was the best at being Robin.

Dick Grayson is the most successful and the best hero, but it was after he was Robin.

Damian

Stephanie changed what it meant to be Robin, and empowers me the most as a woman.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

and! barbarian!fig! its her

[infiniteentertainment]

So we saw Tammy Thompson sing the national anthem in the first episode of s4...

Which prompted Robin and Steve to give each other looks because they remembered Robin's coming out moment in the bathroom, where they made fun of Tammy's singing...

Vickie overheard them joking, and Robin took the opportunity to talk to her, saying that she "used to think that Tammy sounded good because I had this massive crush—um, we took a massively hard class together. We were in Mrs. Click's class together," reminding the audience of Robin's explanation that, in the class, she wanted Tammy to look at her, while Tammy only looked at Steve.

So episodes later, in the boat out on Lovers Lake, where Robin looked at Nancy looking at Steve? Yeah. This was a direct callback.

And it's interesting that even though Robin's crush was specifically mentioned when talking to Vickie, it's this scene with Nancy that we see what Robin referenced in action.

But the question is: why do any of this?

Even though Robin said Vickie is the girl of her dreams, we saw Vickie for approximately 3 min of s4, and it's within the last 20 min of the final episode that they had their first actual on-screen conversation. Meanwhile, Robin had been glued to Nancy's side all season. The writers are smart, they could've inserted Vickie into the main group at any point, to give her and Robin a chance to bond, and to develop their relationship. It's been done before with other characters. If anything, it seems like the last thing the writers would want is to give clear preferential treatment to Robin's dynamic with a character who's (supposedly) not meant to be a love interest for her (especially in the season where the actual love interest is first introduced, and the audience has been mentally prepped for Robin to have romantic interactions). I'm not saying Robin can't have platonic female friends, I'm just pointing out interesting writing choices, and the usage of show vs tell.

[makiswirl]

can i just say. and this is probably a niche hill to die on. that i am so gobsmacked every time someone vaguely hints at the idea that jotaro doesn't care meaningfully for the other crusaders, usually particularly kakyoin and joseph, when those two actually tend to be the ones he reacts to being hurt the hardest

like he cares for his loved ones!!!! that literally plays into his character motives in every single part he shows up in!!! stop lying to me!!!!!!!

[calmbigdipper]

What you mean to me

[mossdogs]

last prom

[sincerely-sofie]

Thinking about @gehtsis’s children and how terrifying it would be to get their team assigned to help you escape from a mystery dungeon.

If these are what my heroes look like I'm 99% certain I'd be screaming and running the other way. Menacing cryptid-looking grim reaper and cursed psychic clay doll. I love them.

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Look people can discourse about how problematic a ship is and how terrible people are for shipping it all they want, but the reasons they try and assign for shipping something are usually pretty ridiculous. The only actual point of discrimination on whether or not I’m gonna ship a pairing is just how narratively compelling the character dynamic is. Do they play off each in an interesting way? Is there some good narrative symbolism involved?? I’m there.

Yes that does mean I’m often a basic bitch and end up enjoying whichever slash and femslash ships are popular BUT there’s usually a reason why a bunch of writers have gotten into something! Tbh! Shit being popular doesn’t mean it’s bad, stuff usually pops off for A reason, regardless of it’s a reason you personally agree with.

[redhhound]

the suns

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

My dude that butterfly howdy is the most handsome man I've ever seen. You gave him all the things...long hair AND FLUFF...and BIG OL WINGS...I'm looking at him respectfully but DAMN 👀👀👀👀👀

its my Duty as an artist to make him as pretty as my skills allow

(bonus barnaby having a mild crisis)

[little-pup-pip]

could you do a pet regression style moodboard for a tuxedo cat, is that ok? (neutral or male/no paci)

Yeah!!

[ohnoitsz1m]

Hhhhhhhgghghg ive been thinking about them

[willowser]

one thousand lonely stars, hiding in the cold—

android!shouto x reader

wc: 2k+

tags: angst, cyberpunk dystopian setting, financial vulnerability, explicit language, minor mention of sex work + sex workers, reader has strong/conflicting feelings about their situation, and — as always — the question of true humanity.

notes: what a great opportunity this was for me to continue exploring this idea !! tysm to @shoto-brainrot for not only giving me the chance, but also for being such a support and helping me to figure out all this commission jazz !! i so appreciate you, and i hope you enjoy it ! 🩷

original post

You’ve yet to find out what caused the damage to Shouto’s faceplate.

By the time you discovered him outside the credit exchange, he had been busted open and left for—whatever the equivalent of dead is for an android. A gaping hole in the left side of his disturbingly human face exposed his inner circuitry to the rain and you think that should have finished him off, truly, but—he's still kicking. 

Technology in the lower district is distinct. The most careful hands could have crafted him down in the best underground salvage yard and he still wouldn't have lasted half an hour with his face submerged in a shallow mud puddle like that. Wiring would have been shot, fuses blown.

Even if the Todoroki Corporation symbol on his wrist wasn't glowing, a blinking light in time with his would-be heart, you'd know what he is. You'd know he didn't belong down here, beneath the smog, in the industrial bones of your dying city.

And yet—

The left side of Shouto's face took the brunt of whatever blow he'd been dealt, and the scarring—if it's even called that?—has extended down over his cheekbone and backward, so violently that his ear had only barely been hanging on. Without the bandage you've wrapped him up in, he's quite a sight: half a tangled mess of wires and pins, a dull cyan light glowing in his orbital socket. With the wrapping, however, he’s almost exactly as he was meant to be: seamless.

The fate of his detached ear had been unknown. Until this morning.

It still works, much to your surprise, learning so only after wondering aloud the whereabouts of your data docket and hearing Shouto answer from across the apartment. Whoever put him together, you realize, took great care to make him durable, adamantine; the carbon nanotubes and polymer arrays that make up his cochlea were hardly affected by the assault.

Someone—or something—meant to harm him, and you know that for certain, now. Such wreckage couldn’t have happened naturally, not to a Skin-Puppet like him.

(When you look at him, you can’t help but consider his creator. How far he is from them and why. If the hands that made him and the hands that ruined him are the same, if he meant to leave or if he was cast out. You haven’t asked, but it’s odd that a machine could keep such information to himself—itself.)

(Given the brutality behind his mutilation, perhaps it’s best you don’t know the answers.)

Working tech from the richer district—KōkyōLuxuria, above the smog, built high into the clouds—could not only earn you enough to eat this week, but also to pay off all your debts to the League. Maybe even finance a decent apartment a few stories up.

And that’s why you’re here: racing through the slums in the rain, doing your damndest to make this sale before time runs out and you’re forced to find another buyer. Coming across a Hack with 1,640,254 credits in their docket is rare; who knows when you’ll find someone from the Trade in Musutafu sector again? You’re likely to sooner perish—either from your empty stomach or that broker that demanded payment two days ago.

Shouto, however, doesn’t see the urgency.

“Hello, handsome! Awful cold out tonight…care to warm me up?”

“Oh, hello.”

At the even, all-too-friendly lilt in his voice, you halt your sprint again, and spin around with a hiss. “Shouto!” You snap—but it comes too late; the Entertainers have struck like lightning, already scrambling his code. 

Out of habit, you’d pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head before leaving the apartment, and now the material separates his image from view—though you can easily imagine the pleasant expression showing on his face, illuminated in pink under the NanotechNymph advertisement.

At his easily captured interest, two women strut from the open doors of the low-lit den, all allure and swaying hips, mirage flickering beneath the heavy rain. They only meet him halfway—too far from the emanator deep within the club—and you dash forward to stop him from wordlessly accepting their offer. You can’t afford to owe anyone any more than you already do.

“Shouto,” you say again, mouth twisting when he looks at you simply. Despite the hood, his bandage grows dark from the rain and—despite his framework, worry fluxes in your stomach at the thought of him getting too wet. “We have to go.”

“Aww,” an Entertainer says to you, girlish pout pulling down her full lips. “You don’t want to come inside and play with us?”

“No,” you try not to look at them any longer, just in case that racks up a charge, too. Rock solid as he is, Shouto allows himself to be steered away, much to your relief. “Buzz off, holo-ham.”

“I’d like to play.” Shouto pipes up, peeking behind his shoulder when the girls squeal in excitement. “Can we come back once we’ve finished?”

“Not for that kind of play.” You put a hand on the back of his head and swivel it, all while shoving him down the sidewalk. You almost remark on how man-like he’s acting, before chasing the thought away.

“What other types of play are there?”

“Just—hush.” 

And he does, finally, when you loop your arm through his: a presumably innocent gesture that draws his attention fully back to you, as physical touch seems to do, with him. Beneath the material of the jacket, he feels natural, all muscle and bone, even leaning into you as if the weather has made him cold. You can feel him tracing your face with his one-eyed gaze—scanning you—and you pretend not to notice.

“Your heart rate has gone up. Have I made you angry?”

“Yes,” you tell him, though he hasn’t, really. “You and your curiosity are gonna make me late, and then we’ll be in some serious shit.”

He looks away then, down to the soaked pavement, a mimicry of disappointment. From the corner of your eye, you can see his manufactured Adam’s apple bob, and the muscle beneath your hand shifts.

“They seemed nice, the holograms.” He says, and you can’t help the soft snort such a comment merits. 

“Yeah, they’re nice, alright, until you can’t pay them.”

Shouto looks at you once again, stride threatening to falter until you tug him along. “Do you know them?”

You already know where he’s going with his question, and the corner of his lips quirk up when you cast him a filthy look. “Well, no, but—”

“Then how do you know—”

“I just do, alright?” You frown at him and he accepts it in full, studying once more. Whatever he finds in your expression amuses enough that he’s placated for the moment, though you know it won’t be long before he’s piping up again.

He does it often—studies you: body language, physiological changes, speech patterns, vocal cues. Human behavior he catalogs and streams to someone back at the Corporation headquarters, finding the miniscule details he can use against you, some day. Whatever the reason behind his damage, he is still a product of his evil overlords, made for reasons you can only imagine. 

This is what you tell yourself. 

As his fingers shift until their smooth pads are brushing the delicate veins in your wrists, as he tightens his arm around yours when another stranger on the streets knocks your shoulder, as he leans into the warmth of your humanness: this is what you tell yourself.

You’re overcome with a sense of loss and you don’t know why, and you clear the strange lump hardening in your throat. “Life lesson number six, Todoroki,” you murmur it closely to him, nearly into the fabric at his shoulder, though he doesn’t react to the name. “Everybody wants something from someone, holo-hams included.”

Shouto seems to process your words, for a moment, and his face is expressionless when you steal a peek up at him. Technicolor rains down on your both, swathing him in a wild array as advertisements dance on the buildings that tower above you, and again you think of his creator. The careful hands that crafted his smooth cheeks, the sharp line of his nose, the leanness of his body. You wonder if he’s ever been deemed precious.

Nearly all of the residents relegated to the lower districts owe the Todoroki Corporation in some way. Be it through credit loans or applied interest rates on subsidized housing or hidden costs and high premiums on mandatory, shit insurance—Enji Todoroki sits in the lap of KōkyōLuxuria, has probably never even stepped down from his pedestal. 

There’s no good reason a product of his could have found its way to you: this is what you tell yourself.

“And you want my ear.” Shouto says, looking back down at you as your shoulders tense. There isn’t a byte of hostility in his voice, but he must understand the sharpness to what he’s saying.

“Yes,” you admit with a nod, and some underlying, rogue streak of guilt has you pressing into him, as if your proximity could make up for your selfishness. “The sensors in your ear are gonna pay for our dinner tonight, handsome.”

His stride falters once more, and despite the time clock ticking in the back of your mind—you let him stop you. Maybe you want him to. Nothing ever goes unnoticed by him and you know that and maybe it’s cruel of you to say such a thing, to offer a comfort you can’t admit to, but Shouto looks down at you in all his ruination and—

Before he can say anything, a fat drop of water hits the tip of his perfectly manufactured nose. It makes him flinch, delayed, and the surprise he wears and the scrunch of his brow seem so—human, there before you. Shouto tilts his face to the dark, smoggy sky, and again that worry bites you, about too much water trickling into his core.

“We’re going to be late,” you repeat, though it’s much weaker than it was earlier. This is one those moments in which he overrides all your defenses, uploads something warm and hopeful and frightening into your chest cavity; you can’t tell if you want to run because you have to, for the sale—or if it’s a result of watching him now, haloed in neon.

He’s not one to ignore you, but he doesn’t respond, instead retracting his arm from your grip in order to push the hood back off his head. Raindrops soak into his bandage and the excess pools, dripping down over the line of his jaw and the column of his throat. So close to him, you can see the goosebumps that break out across his skin.

(You wonder if he’s ever been deemed precious. You wonder if he meant to leave, or if he was cast out. You wonder if he was created for continued corruption—or if someone out there wanted him to experience life, no matter how rusty.)

(You wonder if he feels as human as he looks. If he can blush, or if the soft skin below his ear can bruise.)

A small sound bubbles out of him, like a light laugh of disbelief. 

You found him face down in the rain; you’re not sure why it could cause such a reaction now, but he turns to eye the commercial playing behind him, before watching the path of a man walking by the two of you. Rain collects in his perfect cupid’s bow until he licks it away, and his hair slicks to the side when he pushes it out of his face. 

Shouto turns his attention back to you rather plainly, though the edges of his smile pull up a little higher than they usually do, enough that the apples of his cheeks round. He asks you, “What’s going to be for our dinner?” and the question is oddly worded, but each one is intentional. 

Maybe it’s not the rain that amuses him—and maybe it is. Maybe it really is that simple, that innocent. Maybe it’s the microtremors in your voice and your increased heart rate, all the little details that could never go unnoticed. 

There isn’t a way that this could end well: this is what you tell yourself.

You nod once and turn to face back the way you came, resigned, before looping your arm through his again. You trace the delicate veins on the inside of his wrist, careful not to cover the slow-blinking symbol embedded there, and you decide it doesn’t matter what his creator did or didn’t want. Because he has wants of his own, just like anyone.

“Okay,” you sigh, and when you slosh through the puddles collecting on the sidewalk, Shouto seems happy to follow along, this time. “I can probably sweet talk Toyomitsu into buying us some takoyaki, but you’re gonna have to play it cool.”

“Is this the kind of play you were talking about?”

That lilt has returned to his voice, even and friendly and amused.

“No,” you swat at him to hear his little huff of laughter, “now stop asking about that.”

Of course he doesn’t.

[gay-meowmeow]

me on tiktok whenever i see nc scene discourse, someone saying how "traumatized" they were by seeing 2 queer people having sexual encounters onscreen, or demonize any bl/gl that isnt pg13, "wholesome", or "pure".