#and she does not intend to endear herself to him but it happens accidentally

[mothmothwoth]

Found myself strangely obsessed with Skizz and Lizzie… there are apparently brain chemicals in there

[bonbonbunny]

Do u have any good lady's isekai falls-in-love-with-a-prince-from-a-novel type webcomic recommendation? I read 2 and now im hooked

Do I EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most of these I find on Webtoon. If you join webtoon and read regularly, you'll see them suggesting more things you might like, and new stuff on the main page, and you'll discover more and more of them, too. 💖

Happily Ever Afterwards - The heroine is reborn AFTER the epilogue of her fave novel, after her favorite character has been exiled from the kingdom due to the story’s events (he’s a tragic, sympathetic character).  She sets about traveling to the cold, difficult kingdom of his exile to try to convince him to marry her, so that she can give him the happiness he deserves to have after all of the sad events from the book!  This comic is SOOOOO sweet, cute, and fluffy-fluff! ☁️

-

The First Night With the Duke - Starts out with a lot of comedy, but has gotten much more serious as the chapters have progressed, with some intense scenes that I haven’t been crazy about.  The heroine completely derails the plot of the novel by being born as a random, unnamed side-character who accidentally seduces the male lead, and no romance between him and the actual female lead ever even has the chance to happen. 😅

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The Matchmaking Baby Princess - The heroine is born as a tiny baby princess, who uses her super cute charm to influence the characters around her so that things turn out better for them than the way the novel goes.  This one is still fairly new, so the episodes haven’t shown a whole lot about how she derails the story yet, but, it is REALLLY CUUUUUTE!!  And has very beautiful scenes of palatial gardens and such.  Also obviously the heroine herself is not the one that the romance happens to lol.

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His Majesty's Proposal - This one is a bit similar to The First Night With the Duke, with a rando side character getting proposed to by the prince after spending a night with him.  A fun twist with this one is that the heroine is reincarnated from a crotchety old woman in her previous life, so she uses all kinds of old person slang (like calling people “whippersnappers” and stuff like that lol) and is kind of rude and grumpy lol.

-

Every Rose Has a Death Flag - Pretty typical isekai where the heroine is reincarnated as the villainess and knows that all of her ends are bad ends, so she tries to remove herself from the attentions of the prince and the other main characters, but through the process ends up endearing herself to them instead.  Good stuff without any weird quirks or gimmicks. 👌

-

Tricked into Becoming the Heroine's Stepmother - The protagonist is actually one of the AUTHORS of this novel, so she is familiar with exactly what will be happening to all of the characters!  She is reincarnated as a rando townsperson though, and doesn’t have much influence, until she appeals to the prince and just spills the fact that she’s the author and knows everything that’s going to happen to the princess (his daughter) in the future lol?!  And he believes her??  And employs her to his household in order to prevent any of the princess’ suffering???  Also did I mention that the princess is the most adorable little toddler ever, with fluffy hair like a chestnut? 😭😭

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The Male Lead's Girl Friend - Again, the heroine is reborn as the villainess of the story, and attempts to distance herself from the male lead as much as she can (endearing herself to him in the process).  Some of the interesting quirks here are that she ships the male and female lead SUPER HARD, and is trying everything she can to hook them up together, but they both only seem to fall for her harder with every attempt. 😄 There is also a cool school/academy setting to this one to set it apart from the others with similar plots, as well as BIG YURI VIBES between the protagonist and the female lead.

-

How to Survive a Romance Fantasy - This is the most comedy-intensive of everything on this list.  In fact, it just kept getting sillier as its chapters went on, and I actually dropped it from my reading list because it wasn’t making me laugh as hard anymore as it was in the beginning.. 😅 In this one, three normal-world folks are reborn in the fantasy world, as the heroine, the prince, and the villainess, and ALL THREE of them hate it and want nothing to do with the plot, so they run away as far from the plot as they can, and are also keeping their identities as the main characters secret from one another.  It is very, very silly.

-

Non-Webtoon Webcomics

These have not been officially picked up & translated.  To read them in English, you will have to find them online where they are posted by fan translators.

The Villainess is a Marionette - This is for real probably my very favorite comic on this whole list, and can you believe how beautiful the art style is???  The tone of this one is totally different from any of the others here.  The protagonist is reborn as a malicious villainess with particularly cruel endings in her future, and she sets about to avoid them by using her power, influence, and wiles to manipulate the royal intrigue happening around her.  She’s... RELATIVELY kinder than the original villainess was in the story, and several characters that were her enemies in the original story are endeared to her now, but she’s still got her claws sunk into the royal family’s shady dealings.  This is a “bad boss b*tch” kind of heroine lol, and it’s super satisfying to see her come out ahead of the other villains with her crazy 4D chess manipulations.

-

Sincerely: I Became a Duke's Maid - A super snuggly, sweet, and fluffy story where the protagonist is reborn as a maid during the tragic antihero’s childhood.  He is afflicted with a painful curse, and the protagonist, knowing that only more pain is ahead for him, does her best to befriend him and make his youth a little bit lighter.

-

Who Made Me A Princess - Yet again, a tragic end awaits this princess that the protagonist is reborn as in her childhood, so she uses her cute charm to change the king’s attitude toward her (he was neglectful in the original story).  Some interesting original-plot-derails happen in this one, where her innate magic power is much stronger than it’s supposed to be, and she needs the help of a magical pet creature and a very handsome wizard to sustain her life in this world.

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Seduce the Villain's Father - This one wins the award for having the most hilarious title in this list. 😆 It’s much cuter and lighter than it sounds!!  This protagonist derails the original plot by allowing herself to be kidnapped by the villain’s kingdom instead of the intended character (her sister).  She is reborn among characters the generation before the events of the novel, so the villain himself isn’t here yet - but his handsome dad is!  And if she can convince him not to marry the woman that would become the villain’s mother, then the storyline is saved!  Probably!

-

Special mention:

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Roads Lead to Doom! - This anime is probably the main “reincarnated as the villainess” isekai that introduced most of us to this concept. 😅 I’ve linked to where you can watch the anime for free on Crunchyroll, but there is also a manga if you’d prefer to read it!  While there are many, many comics that use this plot hook, this is the only one that made it to anime form, so it’s like, required watching!

-

To close this long list up, all of these recs are JUST ISEKAI!!!!  If I were recommending my favorite webcomics in general, there could also be Cursed Princess Club, The Remarried Empress, The Princess’ Jewels, and Men of the Harem in this list...

There are so, so many comics with beautiful art styles featuring gorgeous princesses, it’s crazy!! 😭😭 I could for real spend my whole life reading them probably?? 👌👌  Those millions of women that read romance novels about dukes falling in love with noble women are suddenly extremely relatable.

[enigma-im]

Something About Her

Rating: General Relationship: Alien x F!Human Warning: Meet-cute, Stowaway on a ship, Confessing feelings, fluff

Word Count: 2756

Little stowaway endears herself to the ship's captain via botched escape attempts

-------------------------

The captain is far too busy. Working upon a freighter has never left room for idle joys. Every second is spent working for this poor man. Even conversations from his workers are sorted by category: important and not. If it can be handled without his help then he can't bother to remember it. Like his head of security informing him of a stowaway found in one of the unused rooms near the storage is. Once he said that it would be dealt with then he mentally threw it into the 'finished' bin.

Sorting through messages as he walks down the hall he barely pays anything a thought besides the tablet before him. Reaching a fork in the hall he looks up faintly hearing the pitter-patter of bare feet rushing towards him. Looking ahead he catches eyes with someone he doesn't know. The two freeze mid-action, looking to one another confused and cautious.

A woman stands before him, looking outlandish in her ragged clothing on such a prestige ship. She seems well into her age, around 30 if he had to guess based on his limited knowledge of humans. Her hair is wild and untamed like she has just woken. The captain would argue it still looked appealing though unkept. She was all-around attractive to the captain's surprise.

"Hello," he greets conflicted on what to do. A smile tweaks her lips for a moment before voices call from down the hall. The woman jumps into action, running away out of sight down the hall. The captain watches amused as his men run after the female, calling out to her in frantic attempts to cease her escape.

With a snort of a chuckle, the captain eagerly follows the crowd.

ouououo

The next time he meets the strange woman is in his office, a place he assumed was impenetrable to unwanted visitors. He is working at his desk like every day, growing strained at the hours of uninterrupted focus. He is startled by a loud thud by the corner of his room. A thin vent by the wall catches his attention, the noises seemingly coming from there. A critter couldn't have possibly gotten into the walls, right? They haven't been planetside in months, there is no way one founds its way on the ship.

The grate pops out from the floor, a hand following it as it claws at the floor. Another hand soon follows and then a head. The woman gasps as she rests her cheek on the ground, panting from the experience.

"You do know I have a door," the captain joked, smiling to himself. The woman snaps her head up, looking at him frightened. He chuckles, amused beyond belief on how this human managed to crawl through such a small hole. The way her shoulders are pinched strangely tells the captain that it was no easy feat.

After a moment of staring does the woman attempts to crawl back through the vent, shimming frantically. The captain jumps up out of his chair, reaching down and grabbing her arm.

"Now there is no reason to kill yourself going back down there," he scolds. She fights him till her hips tug on the walls of the vent. With a sigh she crawls out, standing before the captain with a stubborn amount of determination. He snickers to himself, adoring her more and more.

"Relax, take a seat," he walks back to his desk, pointing towards the chairs in the room. Confused, the woman looks around for some sort of trap before sitting. The captain plops into his seat, looking to her with an unrestrained smile.

"We haven't been properly introduced," he starts," I am Captain Reebok of the eighth division freighter."

She snorts, "reebok?" He can't help but grin when she says his name.

"That is me," he bows slightly.

"Your name is a shoe brand," she chuckles. He tries to take offense but her laughter numbs that feeling. He lets it pass, resting his head on his fist as he admires her.

"And who might you be," he asks. She stiffens, eyeing him skeptically. He can see the urge for her to run, it's written all over her tense shoulders.

"Monica," she spits out.

"It's lovely to meet you, Monica," he smiles.

uwuwuwuwu

The little human has made herself quite the menace on the ship despite everyone's constant reassurance of her safety. Her denial to speak with everyone has gotten them nowhere in figuring out where she is trying to go, or if she does intend to get somewhere. Though the captain and she have a tendency to cross paths. Those moments seem to be the only time she sits still, talking with him for a while before the crew comes to find her.

With a last-ditch effort, the crew keeps her in a heavily guarded room. No means of escape possible according to the security officer. The arrogant man is so confident in himself with this proclamation.

The captain makes his way down towards Monica's new room, eager to speak with her again. He meets up with the officer on the way, listening to him praise himself for keeping the sneaky human still for days now. The captain hears a bell of foreshadowing ringing every time the officer gloats about his measures.

The officer unlocks the door, smug as he walks in. The captain can almost hear a bell go off again as the officer walks out confused and angry.

The officer looks to his workers," where is she?" The captain bites back a snicker. The two guards look in the room, confused above all else. The three begin arguing, frantically looking for her while the captain takes a leisure stroll down the hall.

He looks to the ceiling, grinning like a fool as he stops. The officer quits his yelling to watch the captain reach up towards the ceiling. He hits a panel, knocking it off with a loud clang. Quickly he jumps up and grabs something, a startled squeak echoing through the hall.

The three security workers watched dumbfounded as the captain cradles the human in his arms, laughing as she huffs in defeat.

"Hello again, miss Monica," he sets her down," I can't wait to hear how you managed to get out this time."

"Wasn't hard, just tedious," she grumbles as she dusts off her shirt. Reebok shakes his head amused before waving her with him as he walks back down the hall.

"Come, I have lunch awaiting us," he says as she trots up beside him.

"Did you get those little cookies," she asks eagerly.

The three security guards watch completely bewildered as the duo walk ahead. They chat amicably like she wasn't just caught trying to escape once again. The officer sighs, this girl is going to be the death of him.

Ououou

"So why are you making my crew run around like a bunch of fools," Reebok finally asks. Monica expected the question at some point, surprised he was more interested in talking about other things first.

Monica lounges back on the couch, looking at reebok upside-down. "At first because I was scared. Stowaways aren't treated well, in my experience. Now, it's for fun," she says as she hangs her arms over the edge to touch the ground.

"I'll admit, watching my head of security get all red-faced is nearly the highlight of my week," he smirks. He fiddles with some work, having not intended to entertain this evening. Though she is currently hiding from the crew, what was he to do but take her in?

"What is the highlight of your week then, if not officer grouchy," she asks. Monica twists onto her stomach, watching him. He works on his tablet, looking as if he isn't paying attention.

"Catching you mid escape. I always adore the conversation after when you explain what happened," he nods to himself," it's not like there is a lot that goes on here besides work. I think the crew secretly enjoys chasing you around, gives them something to do besides stand about."

Monica smiles wide. It's nice to feel wanted for once.

"Is it honestly so boring around here that my company is wanted, even delighted in," she jokes but truly asking.

He shrugs," I don't think it's the sole reason. Speaking for myself here when I say that having you around has been a treat and if offered any other company I'd choose you every time."

"Flirt," she flusters, turning on her back to look at the ceiling. The captain finally sets down his tablet, admiring the woman. He didn't intend to sound flirtatious, it was the truth. He enjoys having her around, even thinking about offering her a job here instead of dropping her off at the next station. Yet, does his feeling go farther than casual feelings? Did he accidentally flirt with her? He hasn't done that in years.

He ponders this well after she sneaks off.

Ououou

It's a good few days of silence that unnerves the captain. He hasn't seen hide nor hair of miss Monica and it's starting to grate on him. It seems that the crew hasn't seen much of her lately either. The revelation that Monica is truly missing shakes the whole crew.

The day they realize she is gone is the day they drop all their work and look for her. The security workers ask everyone the last time they caught her snooping around. A lot of 'he said she said' tells that Monica was last seen a day ago, but only just barely. The captain looks high and low for her, meeting up with the head of security for updates. He is truly worried, feeling panicked at the idea of her hurt somewhere on his ship.

It's late in the day cycle when he finally finds her. He nearly misses her, walking past a room he previously scoped out. Doing a double-take he finds her in a low storage room sitting on the table that rests in the center of the room. She is holding her legs to her chest, resting her chin on her knee. The captain sighs, releasing the tension for just a moment.

"Monica," he says, entering the room. She snaps her head up, meeting his worried gaze.

"oh, hey," she fidgets, unclasping her legs in favor of sitting cross-legged. It picks at Reebok that she is looking towards the floor now, not smiling like she usually does. He stops near the table, giving her a once over in hopes of observing what's wrong.

"We've been looking everywhere for you, no one has seen you for a few days," he explains smoothly, keeping his tone low. The timber comforts Monica.

"Sorry," she grumbles," I just wanted some time alone." he nods. The captain understands wanting to be left alone, it's what a lot of his workers crave when crammed together on this ship for months on end. Yet, this is different.

"Is something wrong," he asks.

She shrugs," kind of?"

He ducks down to meet her eyes," do you wanna talk about it?"

She shrugs again, shifting on the table to make room. Reebok catches on, climbing onto the table. He feels a bit ridiculous sitting up there instead of in one of the chairs littering the room but he can't bring himself to care. Instead, he waits patiently for her to speak.

"I'm worried," she starts," I've been here far longer than I meant to. I barely noticed till shortly after leaving the first waystation. It sort of just hit me then. I have never been on a ship this long. Hell, I haven't been caught in so long. Being a stowaway has become easy, jumping from ship to station and back again. That was my life. Now… now it's different. You guys don't treat me like a parasite stealing your food and using you for free rides. Despite the rocky start, you guys are nice. I like it here…"

"And that scares you," he finishes for her.

"yea," she sighs, dropping her shoulders," I like the crew and the mischief they get into. I like the security guys who run around like idiots all day trying to keep up with me. I also like you."

"because I hide you from the idiots trying to keep up with you," he jokes. He manages to get a smile from her, warming his heart.

"No, I just like you," she answers, looking to him," I really like you and I think that's the scariest thing of all."

Reebok is truly caught off guard at this moment. He stares dumbfounded at her, his heart running like a racehorse. So awestruck that he can't even figure what to do. The absents of a reaction rips at Monica, making her curl into herself.

"But that's ok if you don't have those feelings, I just wanted to get it out there. I was planning on leaving at the next station, which I heard is where you guys unload all this stuff. Was kind of funny actually, getting rid of storage while getting rid of the stowaway," she rambles on. Reebok would find this adorable if it wasn't so alarming. Hearing her admit her feelings is euphoric, but hearing her plans of leaving is like a cold shower.

Reebok reaches over and grabs Monica, spreading his legs to tug her between them. He hugs her, cradling her to his body. Her little hands press against his chest, feeling his heart pulse quickly against her palm. He presses a little kiss to her hair, gaining some courage before speaking.

"I don't want you to go," he starts," I've had more fun with you here these past few weeks than my whole time serving for this ship. I want nothing more than for you to stay, work for me, and be a part of my life. I like you, Monica, more than I'm willing to admit right now."

She stiffens, shoulder bunching and fist clenching, as he speaks. The words sounding like a melody to her ears.

"You like me," she asks with glee. Reebok pulls her away to look at her, smiling with a gleam in his eyes.

He presses a kiss to her cheek," of course I do, I'd be a fool otherwise."

Monica flusters, reacting with giddy as she grabs him and kisses him. He grunts, startled before overjoyed. He kisses her back, holding her dear while trying to fight back a wide smile.

"I want you to stay," he parts long enough to say," will you work for me?"

She chuckles, resting her head against his," what a weird proposal." he flounders at that, sputtering on his words. She stops him with a kiss," I'll work for you."

They sit amicably on the table, Reebok holding her as she drifts off to sleep. It seems this problem has weighed heavily on her shoulders for a while now, keeping her up. Though he rather she slept in an actual bed he can't deny wanting her in his arms more.

Steps echo from down the hall, bursting the private bubble they made here. Reebok looking over to the door catches sight of his head of security followed by two guards. He walks through the door, ready to speak before Reebok shushes him. The guards look from him to her, softening as they watch her sleep.

"Glad you found her," the head of security whispers," I'll let the crew know."

Reebok nods," can you also get some employment papers set up?"

He smiles," of course. Glad to have her aboard."

Reebok waves them out before scooting off the table, holding her as he walks out the room. He walks her towards his quarters, letting her rest in his bed for the time till her room can be arranged. Setting her down he tucks her in. He takes a moment to admire her, feeling calm at the view. With a sigh he turns away, thinking about all the neglected work piling up. A hand stops his retreat.

"Don't go," Monica grumbles half asleep. Her hands drop as she fully fades back into slumber, leaving reebok with a choice. He looks to the door then back to her, sighing in clear defeat as he kicks off his shoes.

Reebok crawls into bed behind her, wrapping his arm around her waist and falling lax into the bed. Monica clenches his hand in hers, holding it close to her chest with a satisfied hum.

"Night," he kisses her shoulder.

"Night," she mumbles back.

------------------------------

Taking next weekend off for posting, be my first weekend this year I won’t post original content. I’m taking the time to finish up the ‘12 tropes for christmas’ stories. I so far have 7 out of 12 done and i’m excited to get them out on Dec. 14th - 25th.

Check out my Archive | Masterlist | Main Blog

[silverisbestboy]

Sonic Boom x Reader

Requested by @blackace1993: Conversation was accidentally deleted but from what I remeber of it, they wanted hc for the Sonic Boom characters who has a partner who frequently gets into trouble and/or captured by Eggman. They didn't specify which character they wanted so I just did all of them minus Tails. Hope you enjoy!

Sonic:

There's no denying it

Sonic was smitten

The moment you set foot on the island Sonic was taken aback by you

To him, you were drop dead gorgeous with a great personality so I guess you could say it was love at first sight for him

This boy is a fool for you

It's actually quite funny watching him zip across the island at the slightest remark that you need something

"Man, you what? I'm feeling kind of hungry"

"Say no more!" He'll say as he zooms away and reappears seconds later with a chili dog in hand

"Uhhhh"

But, unfortunately for you, being in any sort of relationship with Sonic is not wothout complication

Eggman sees you as a new oppurtunity to best Sonic and ends up taking you hostage on a regular basis

The first time it happens, Sonic all but destroys Eggman's fortress looking for you

But after it continuously happening, it starts getting kinda old

"Greeting Sonic! I see you've come to rescue your little girlfriend"

"Yeah, yeah. Can we just we just get to the part where I clobber you?"

It gets to the point where Sonic starts teaching you how to defend yourself so you can hold your own against Eggman

Not that he doesn't mind rescuing, it's just he can't always be there to protect

With the amount of times they've had to save you, the team are already very familiar with you and consider you apart of their friend group

But as you get better is self-defence, Sonic officially announces you as part of the team and you start joining them on missions

While Sonic does tend to stick to your side more than his other teammates during battle, he's glad to have you fighting alongside them

After all, he's happy to spend as much time with you as possible, even if that means having to bash Eggman's robots to do so

Knuckles:

You're not a bad person

So what if you have anger issues

So what if you get into fights from time to time

So what if you've been in trouble with the cops before

Doesn't mean you're a bad person, it just means you've.... got some issues

One day you're not in the best mood and have already had a pretty shitty day, and you're just a ticking time bomb waiting to explode

So it's no wonder that when a big guy bumps into you and causes you to drop the tray of food you're holding, you go off on him

Unfortunately for you, this guy is huge, a tall red echidna with bulking arms that looks like he could punch you into next week

But you're not one to back down from a fight, you've beaten up guys twice your size before and you're not afraid to do it again

"Woah, hey, sorry about that, didn't see you there."

What, is he dense?! Who does this guy think he is barrelling into anyone he pleases just because he's big? You bet he was just gonna walk off without even helping you. Well, you'd show him!

Without warning, you lunged at the echidna with the intent of knocking him over the same way he almost did to you

But you underestimated his initial strength and reflexes and he caught you midair with your legs kicking and your hands clawing for his face

"Woah, dude chill! I said I was sorry!"

He just kinda holds you up in air at arms length with you kicking and screaming until you eventually tire yourself out

The echidna stares at you cautiously

"Are you good now?"

After a moment, you reluctantly nod, and he gently sets you back on your feet

He then carefully leans down without takong his eyes off you and grabs your burger which is still wrapped in foil and reaches it out to you

"How about we start over? I'm Knuckles."

You thought after that encounter, that was the last you'd see of him

But one day, you've gotten yourself into another fight, and to say you're losing would be an understatement

It's once again, a guy twice your size and he's absolutely beating the crap out of you

But by some miracle, Knuckles happens to be walking by and immediately notices you

He steps in to save you, and the guy you're fighting knows about Knuckles being part of Sonic's team and doesn't even bother attempting to fight him

Knuckles takes your half conscious body to Tails's work shop where they fix you up

After that, Knuckles refuses to leave you alone

Even if you try to leave, he always ends finding you to make sure you don't get into more trouble

He helps you find outlets for your anger by sparring and working out with him

You grow a soft spot for Knuckles that you'd never thought you'd have for anyone

He's your big goofball that somehow always manages to calm you down and get you out of whatever trouble your in

Though it's beyond you why anyone would want to put up with you, eespecially a lovable ray of sunshine like Knuckles, you're so grateful that you have someone like himin your life to keep you in check

A/N: Might make more hcs for that because I absolutely love the idea of big, strong goofball Knuckles having a little ball of pure rage as a partner.

Amy Rose:

Some would say you're a pacifist

Some would say you care too much

Some would say you're too nice

But you like to think that you're just trying to do good in the world

You're definitely the type of person that hates conflict and wants everyone to get along, and you're more often than not a bit of a pushover

You like to give people benefit of the doubt and prefer to see the good in people, although sometimes, this affects you negatively

A kindly looking (or at least in your opinion) wolf with a showman's top hat and a certain glint his eyes one day stops you in your tracks and asks you ever so politely if you would kindly lend him some money to help feed his family

Of course, you're quick to help, but little do you know that this is none other than T.W. Barker himself, and he's been watching you carefully for some time

He notices the way you jump at the oppurtunity to help someone in need, and he being a con man at heart, decides to take advantage of that

But before you can lend the man all the money you have in your pocket, a certain pink hedgehog decides to interfere

"Hey, you leave her alone Barker! Go find your own ATM machine!"

Amy Rose herself stands not far behind you, hammer in hand and ready for trouble

"N-now, now, let's not be too hasty. I was simply accepting a generous donation from this unsuspecting-- I mean self-less young lady."

"Yeah right. Beat it before I hammer you into next Tuesday, punk!"

You're in utter shock as the seeming wolf in sheep's clothing (pun intended) makes his escape

"Gotta look out for scumbags. Seems this village is getting more and more of them everyday. Anyways, I'm Amy, what's your name?"

Since then, Amy keeps a close eye on you to make sure you don't become prey to anymore scam artists

Now Amy will never admit she has anger issues, but she does get... irritated from time to time

On more than one occasion, you're there to help her calm down and have a sleepover planned or a spa day for when things get particularly rough for her

Whenever she needs help choosing which paint to redo her wall with, or which dress she should wear to a party, she calls you up, because no matter what you're interests are or how inconvenient the timing might seem, you're ready to help a friend, even with mundane things

Amy has you become a part of the Sonic family, and while you never do join them in battles, you help keep the peace between the team whenever there's an argument

And Amy always makes sure your overly caring attitude isn't being taken advantage of

No matter the time or the place, Amy knows she can always count on you, and you know she's always got your back

Sticks:

Well this is quite the predicament you've gotten yourself into

A lot of people would descibe you as clumsy, but you knew you just bad luck

And to prove just that, here you were dangling upside from a rope trap after deciding to take a liesure stroll through the forest

What are we, nomads? Who sets out traps in the middle of the woods anymore?!

After about 20 minutes, the blood is rushing to your head and you're starting to feel faint

But just as you think that your bad luck will finally be the end of you, figure bursts from the bushes with a fierce battle cry

It's a badger girl with a boomerang clutched in her paw, ready for a fight

But after a moment she realizes just who's gotten caught up in her trap

"Hey, what's the big idea?! Why're you in my snare?"

"Why am I in your snare? Why did you put out a snare you loon?!"

After about 5 minutes of arguing, Sticks reluctantly cuts you down, begrudgingly explaining that she set out a trap for any woodland monsters

You run into her again on another walk, crossing a small stream before tripping on one of the stepping stones and almost falling in before a furry arm wraps around your waist

"You outta be more careful out here. The wilderness is no place to be a klutz."

"Hey, I'm not a klutz. I just have bad luck is all."

And what more to gain the attention of a superstitious badger than the possibility of supernatural forces at play

"You could've been hexed by a witch. Or worse, there could be a vengeful spirit after you! We gotta get you an exorcist!"

"I'm fine, I'm just unlucky. Always have been always will be."

"We should still burn some sage in your home just to be sure."

You let Sticks do what she wants with you, after all, her superstitious perspective is a nice change from everyone just thinking your clumsy

You think her attempts to "cleanse" you are endearing, she tries something new everyday, and you end up learning a thing or two about survival and the corruptedness of politics from her

Weeks later, her attempts slowly dwindle down, and she just comes to accept she's just gonna have to keep an extra close eye on you, especially when she sets out booby traps

The time y'all have spent together, although it was somewhat motivated by Sticks not wanting to get whatever curse you exposed her to, lead to y'all having a close bond

Everyone has their quirks, she's paranoid and you're clumsy, but you two always manage to work things out

And that's the beauty of a relationship

A/N: Sorry I haven't been that active lately, so take this as an apology. Four hcs for the price of one!

[crystxlclear]

sudden desire

chapter seven: mornings are for coffee and sexual tension

part eight of sudden desire

prologue / one / two / three / four / five / six / masterlist

synopsis: the morning after.

word count: 3.2k

warnings: the briefest and vaguest implications of sex (about as pg as it gets honestly), mutual pining (they’re oblivious idiots what do you expect from them at this point?), not beta’d

author’s note: i’ve not been in a good headspace lately and deleted my twitter app the other day to try and clear my head (✨a great move for someone who’s being crushed under crippling loneliness✨) so i feel like this really isn’t my best work, by a long shot, but writing this was the only thing that seemed to cheer me up, so we’re rolling with it! enough about me here’s the good stuff!

Some mornings beat her down. She’ll wake with a terrible wait on her chest and her head in a haze, and the day will stretch on in slow motion. Sadness and pain and upset stretching the hours for miles and miles. Those days, she hates to leave her bed. Her body feels too heavy to move from the mattress. But those days come far less frequent than they used to; every couple of months, when the rain lashes heavy against the window panes and the fog rolls over the river. Melancholia lingers like the smell after it rains and hoodies keep her together and the gazes away.

Others are rosy, honeysuckle sweet and tipped in golden sunshine. She’ll wake to the familiar smell of roses and fresh cotton, of cinnamon and citrus and the candles she’d burned the night before. She’s weightless as she rises, breezy dresses and peach lipgloss, and it’s like a never-ending summer, even when the weather turns frigid and she’s freezing in dresses made for the heat. Those mornings are mornings made for Marcus and syrupy sweet coffee in tiny coffee shops.

But some mornings exist alone; those mornings when anticipating hangs in the air, when change still has yet to set in. Mornings she doesn’t know how to feel when she wakes surrounded by her duvet. Mornings that can become the best or the worst of her life.

Mornings with Marcus over coffee in the sunshine are usually the best.

They’re filled with familiar laughter.

Coraline wakes to the sun streaming into her bedroom, bright, golden and insistent. The curtains are cracked open a little - disturbed and out-of-line, no longer drawn together like they had been when she’d fallen asleep - and the gap lets the warm morning sunlight in. A chill pulls through her; even as she tugs her duvet up underneath her chin for a moment. It’s thicker than it normally is, the weather proving to be much harsher than she’d ever anticipated it could be as Spring edges closer, and it’s even worse when she feels the bed beside her empty and cold. Coraline stretches an arm out over the sparse half of the bed, the sheets there cool, neat and frustratingly unoccupied.

Her heart sinks a little at the realisation. 

Even if she isn’t entirely sure what she would have done if she’d woken up with Marcus by her side.

Marcus is a morning person, only allowing himself to sleep in on weekends . But Coraline is usually always the first one of them awake; the one who wakes him up with a text or coffee at his front door. He normally claims her to be ridiculously - and, she’s sure, annoyingly - springly in the early mornings, no matter what time she wakes, no matter how many hours of sleep she’s managed. It takes a while, and far too many cups of coffee, and she usually crashes in the late evening when things catch up on her with ferocity. She knows, this morning, Marcus has done the gentlemanly thing and left her to sleep in those precious few hours, before she has to wake up and head to the heavy load of interviews she has peppered throughout the day. But she really wishes he’d woken her, even just to say goodbye, before he’d left for work. 

Coraline knows he’d never intended on staying the night. It wasn’t that kind of arrangement, they both knew that, but it had just happened. And, honestly, neither of them had been entirely made about it, either. He'd made a joke about how her bed was so much comfier than his and she’d giggled and yawned and tucked herself into the warmth of his side, without a second thought. Neither of them had complained about the closeness. Her eyes had grown heavy with sleep and her words quiet, and Marcus had traced patterns into her lower back until she’d fallen asleep a few moments later. 

She digs a knuckled into her eyes to rub away the sleep that weighs down her eyelids and groans as she stretches out her aching limbs. Everything aches - even places she didn’t know could ache - especially her back as she lifts her head to glance over at the alarm clock. She’s utterly exhausted, the late night catching up with her, but she’s too worried she’s overslept to even think about going back to sleep. 8:04 blinks back at her in glaring white fluorescent.

Blinking up at the ceiling, laying flat on her aching back, blinking away the weariness that clouds her eyes, Coraline finally finds it within herself to climb out of bed. Some mornings, she can rarely leave the comfort of her blankets. The weight of something always seems to press down on her; sometimes, she doesn’t even know what that weight is. This morning is one of them. She groans when she stands and her feet touch the wooden floor. She stretches her limbs out, every joint in her body seeming to crack as she moves, and yawns so wide that she’s glad no one is around to see it. She’s sure she looks ridiculous on a morning - with wild hair and watery eyes and bright flushed cheeks - but, now, with no one around to see, she doesn’t care.

Coraline slips her glasses onto the bridge of her nose and shuffles her way out of the bedroom. Her father’s old Eagles shirt - the one she’d stolen from his drawers when she’d left for LA; the one that reminded her of her childhood and smelt so reminiscent of him - brushes the middle of her thighs as she moves. It was the first thing she’d grabbed the night before, still balled up at the foot of her bed. 

She’s greeted by a sight she hadn’t expected to see when she steps into the kitchen.

The low, slow bubble of the coffee machine, followed by the rich smell of coffee beans. Marcus Pike stands, leant against the counter without a care in the world, with two mugs perched in front of him; one is Cora’s favourite — her Death Cab For Cutie mug — and the other is the old one with the chip in the rim Marcus had accidentally made when he visited her apartment the first time. She’d meant to throw it out, but it reminded her of him, and she’d always reach for her mug whenever he made coffee at hers. 

She wishes she’d made an effort to make herself look presentable for him; he’s never seen her look so rough, and she hopes to god that her early morning appearance doesn’t scare him away. But it’s like she’s stepped into an entirely new world where it’s only the two of them left; no one else matters because they don’t exist. Coraline and Marcus are the only two people left in this world.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” he calls cheerily at the sound of the bedroom door clicking shut behind her. 

He doesn’t turn, just continues pushing the buttons on the coffee machine as he places her mug beneath, but she can hear the smile in his voice when he speaks. She’s struck by how relaxed he looks. The whole sight seems familiar, somehow; he’s relaxed against the counter, his suit jacket and tie slung over the back of one of her chairs, and he’s humming some indiscernible tune quietly as she steps through the space.

“Good morning.” Coraline returns his greeting and leans her elbows against the island behind him. She watches him with a fond smile on her face. She can’t help it. Everything just seems gentle and wonderful, and she wouldn’t be against this becoming a weekly sight. But it wouldn’t - it couldn’t - and maybe that was for the best.

She’s staring.

She can’t help it. Her heart aches along with the rest of her body; she can feel it skipping in that awkward rhythm, fluttering like butterflies trapped between her ribs, along to the tune of the song he’s singing. A little out of tune but endearing, nonetheless. It’s a little embarrassing that she’s feeling this way over a friendship, of all things, and she knows better than to kindle that little fire within her that she knows will reach out and swallow her whole. She’s been burned by it in the past - so has he, more than she, unjustly and unfairly, and in ways no one should ever have to be burned - and maybe it’s better that they keep their distance from feelings that aren’t entirely platonic.

“I was going to wake you before I left,” Marcus calls back to her before he turns and offers her out the mug of coffee. “Didn’t seem right to leave without saying goodbye.” He leans back against the counter and he’s looking at her like he always does, like a best friend does, with a small smile and sparkling eyes and a friendly fondness that makes her feel appreciated each day. She’s glad last night hasn’t changed anything; if he’d been looking at her any differently, she thinks it might have broken her.

She’d expected things to be awkward and heavy. She’d fallen asleep hoping they wouldn’t, that things would be as normal as they are now, a repeated mantra in her head to remind herself that things don’t have to bear a terrible weight, but she’d expected inescapable tension in the air between them when they saw each other for the first time after what they’d done the night before. The terrible consequence of their agreement and how it would fall flat instantly when the realisation of their terrible idea sets in. Instead, the only thing that hangs between them is that easy informality that comes so easy to them, that her brother had joked about the night before. Maybe what they were doing was a terrible, ill-conceived idea - an idea that anyone else would think was utterly insane - but she’s glad it hasn’t tarnished the friendship that she holds so dear and is too scared to lose. Because he’s here, a gentle look on his face, making her coffee in her favourite mug. She doesn’t think she could ever get tired of seeing that damn smile. The smile that makes her feel so appreciated, so grounded, it’s so familiar and welcome and if she ever goes too long without seeing it she’s sure she would feel cold and brutally alone. He makes her feel at ease and, even despite her wild hair and sleep-kissed cheeks and the shirt that’s too baggy and slides off her shoulder, she doesn’t feel like so much of a mess. She’s forgotten the chill that had swept through her when her feet touched the freezing floorboards. 

She’s staring at him again, staring like she’s trying to figure him out, a puzzle to her eyes, staring at the fond smile on his face that tugs gentle at his lips, and blinking back at him without a reply.

But his smile only grows at the sight of it.

“You didn’t have to make me coffee,” Coraline insists after a moment, placing the mug onto the kitchen island and letting her chin drop into her hands where they’re propped up against the counter. She tilts her head to the side when he grins and shrugs his shoulders. “I’m serious, you’re my guest. I should be the one making you coffee.”

“Well, what can I say? I’m a great friend.”

Friend. He really is a great friend. 

Her best friend, the one person she really would dare to tell all her secrets to. 

They’ve become so used to joking with each other, the lighthearted jabs and sarcastic comments, that it comes as second nature. But she still can’t help but roll her eyes as she chuckles and takes another sip of her coffee; it’s sweet and just how she likes it. She knows that an inevitable sugar crash will come in the late afternoon but it seems worth it. 

Coraline runs her thumb around the rim of her mug idly, a distraction, she supposes. Manicured nails tinker against the cheap but long-loved ceramic. She’s half-sure Marcus is going to mention something about the night before — about what they did or what it meant to the feelings between them, or even when they were going to do … it again — but he never does. He just makes idle conversation from opposite her, too far away for her to touch but close enough for her to smell the lingering remnants of his cologne from the night before. It clings to the fabric of his shirt, to the curve of his neck. She’d recognise that smell a while away; sweet and strong and comforting, just like him. 

“I should be heading back to my apartment,” Marcus announces suddenly. He places his empty mug into the sink and reaches for his jacket and tie.

Coraline can’t help but frown. “You’re not staying for breakfast?” She doesn’t know why she asks; not long ago, she’d accepted the fact that he’d left for work without waking her, now she wanted him to stay longer.

She thinks Marcus sighs, but it’s too quiet to hear, if he does. “As much as I would love that.” His eyes are soft - that surely unintentional puppy-dog look of apology that melts her heart and softens her soul - when he turns back to her, looping his tie around his neck. “I think people might notice if I show up in the same clothes as yesterday.” His shirt and jacket are wrinkled from where they lay on her bedroom floor all night. There’s an especially deep crease, stark grey against the crisp white fabric, that runs from the collar to the waistband of his pants. 

Coraline sets her mug down and rounds the island towards Marcus. She smooths her hands down the creases in his shirt, trying to brush the wrinkles from his usually-pristine cotton before she bats his hands away from his tie. She can feel his gaze burning into the top of her head as she fiddles with the silken material, out-of-practice hands working the material like she does this everyday. She loves the simple domesticity of it all. It gives them both a moment to breathe.

“Cora-” His voice hangs low in his throat. “-what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

Marcus exhales deeply out of his nose and runs his hands up her arms. “You don’t have to,” he hums. “I can do it myself.”

“What can I say?” She smooths down the back of his collar and the knot of his tie. She tilts her head to look up at him. “I’m a great friend.”

She thinks for a moment he’s going to kiss her. There’s an unreadable look in his eyes; it’s intense and searching, and his brows are furrowed yet he’s smiling still. He holds her gaze for so long that she’s almost sure of it. That he’s going to kiss her despite their agreement that they’re just friends, nothing more and nothing less, and it’s still going to mean nothing because of the night before. Because they’re just friends and they know that. 

But Coraline wouldn’t mind if he did kiss her.

“So handsome.” She smiles, after a moment of soft silence, patting his shoulders once she finishes knotting up his tie. So damn handsome it’s painful. The smile is sweet and saccharine, welcoming yet still dismissive of any romantic intentions. She really wouldn’t mind if he kissed her, but he can’t. She really wouldn’t mind if this was a daily thing, if every morning she could wake up to him and his gentle smiles, but she can’t. Coraline wonders if the timing was different - if they’d met some other time, some other place, before their heartbreaks or when the reluctance of moving on had waned - would it be more than a friendship? Cora knows that friendships like this are hard to find amongst the fickle fire of Hollywood relationships, and she’d be damned if she ever let him slip between her fingers.

She hears Marcus hum low in his throat when she turns to drop her empty mug into the sink. The water runs and the heater hums, and Coraline pays no mind to the way his gaze lingers.

Marcus watches her; even in her early morning muddle - shirt far too baggy, slipping from her shoulders, drowning her slightness in it’s black, worn material; hair a near-tangled beautiful mess, twisted against the nape of her neck and mussed up on the side where she’d curled up against his chest; rosy red cheeks, pink-flushed like the sky during the sunset; the smile on her lips, soft and lazy with sleep - he still think she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. He’d let himself drown in her beauty if he could, if there weren’t a life-preserver of past holding him above the calming waves. His brain placates his desire in the form of a platonic friendship and he keeps her close enough to quell the unintentional desire. Marcus rushed in headfirst and headstrong; somehow, this ill-thought out arrangement makes more sense than figuring what exactly it is that lingers between them.

They assume it’s friendship. That makes the most sense.

But he’ll remember this when it’s over - when the sleepless nights and exhausted days come and there’s this small, delicate thing that relies on them both just to get by - because how could he ever forget. He’ll remember her kitchen in the soft morning sunlight as the sun continues to rise and spills through the window, mellow unlike he’d ever seen it before, and he’ll remember the feel of her warmth at her side as she sleeps. Every fleeting moment he spends with her - between work and happenstance and everything that keeps them mindlessly busy for weeks on end - feels like a lifetime of teenage summers when friendship and sunshine are the only things that matter. 

“Thank you,” he hums again. He pulls on his shirt jacket; it’s wrinkled, like his shirt, from a night spent crumpled on the floor. He’s glad his apartment is within walking distance and he doesn’t have to take the Metro looking as disheveled as he does. Anyone awake enough would realise why he looks the way he does.

When she turns back to him, she’s smiling wider than before. The coffee has cut through the sleepy haze she’s worn since she’d woken and the Coraline he’s used to - the Coraline with the sunshine smile, golden and bright, and the enthusiasm that sparkles in her eyes - is back. Though he realises he’s just as fond as both versions of her: the drowsy woman in the morning light, blissful and comfortable when pulled from her dreams and the one who’s bright and vibrant and whose smile lights up his entire day. 

Marcus mirrors her smile and leans over towards her. He kisses the corner of her mouth; so close, yet so far away. Her eyebrows pinch together at the feeling, the gentle brush of his plush lips over her skin, barely an inch touching the curve of her lips, but settle before he pulls back and notices the pull on her expression. “See you around, Sunshine.” He bids her farewell before he sweeps from her apartment and she’s left to sigh and slump back against the kitchen counter.

Damn that man and the effect he has on her.

taglist: @wheresthewater @ah-callie @its--fandom--darling

[fuzzbuns]

Can we get your ramblings on comphet Nyaa-chan?

idk why I keep getting anons who wanna open up the Pandora's box that is my mind but like I would literally LOVE to talk about comphet nyaa so I will!!!!

(under a read more tho cuz this is gonna be long once again)

Before I start I just wanna say: I’m a lesbian and I'm gonna be talking about from my own personal perspective/ experience so obviously there is gonna be some bias and projection going on (Also I’m assuming everyone who is reading this knows what comphet means/is but if not comphet stands for compulsory heterosexuality). I don’t think Oso staff was literally making an episode to comment on comphet (I refuse to give Oso staff more credit than they deserve) so this is probably all accidental but I'm obsessed with reading the episode this way because I think it just fits so well and also totonyaa.

So let’s start with when Nyaa notices Oso. When we first see Nyaa interacting with Oso she honestly seems pretty guarded. She is glad that he saved her baby but she quickly pulls her kid away from him and gives him an awkward nod as if she is saying “ok thanks but now you can go”. However, the second her baby seems to show an interest in Oso (reaching out for him because his big brother charm is just so strong...) Nyaa’s reaction shifts. She keeps and eye on Oso while they are at the park and when he leaves she laughs to herself. 

This is the first aspect of comphet I want to dive into. From personal experience, I found that a lot of the “crushes” I developed on men usually stemmed from the thought “omg he is so funny lol”. To this day, the only fictional men I end up interested in are ones that make me laugh. Nyaa seems to be doing something really similar here. When she and Totoko are talking about Osomatsu she says:

In the beginning the only real opinion she can form about Osomatsu is that he is funny. When Totoko presses her for more Nyaa isn’t able to offer up much other than “you know”. She is interested in him because he is funny and she wants to get to know him more because he is funny. It’s really easy to mistake these feelings of thinking someone’s funny as endearment and attraction even when it isn’t that deep. You can tell it’s not that deep because Nyaa can’t explain to Totoko what about him is so great. And lets be real... its not like Osomatsu is a super hot guy and Nyaa is just being superficial...... she’s not infatuated with him because of looks.... Whatever it is that is attracting her to him has to be his personality but she doesn’t know much about him outside of him being good with kids and funny. She just runs into him now and then and is interested in knowing more.

Totoko goes on to tell Nyaa that he has issues to which Nyaa pretty much responses to with “epic. I like him,”. We end up seeing Nyaa do this a lot. Totoko and the others will point out undesirable things about Osomatsu to which, in response to, Nyaa will just re-affirm that she likes him. We will get into this more later when its more relevant but liking unattainable men is textbook comphet. Also the way she says “I like him” kinda sounds unsure. Like as much as she is trying to convince Totoko, she is also trying to talk herself into it. It’s ok if Osomatsu has issues because she has already decided that he was going to be the guy she likes. 

Totoko goes on warning Nyaa and we see on Nyaas face that she is getting annoyed. If you wanna go full totonyaa here then you could argue its because Nyaa is wondering why Totoko won’t just say “date me instead” but like.......... i would never argue that lol..... me??? no..... haha.........................................unle-

So Nyaa is getting annoyed and starts bickering with Totoko like they usually do and from here on I would argue Nyaa is purposely trying to piss Totoko off. She says she was “just sort of interested in him” and goes on to say you dont know what kind of person they will be unless you date them (not true at all queen). Totoko tells her that’s stupid and this REALLY upsets Nyaa. It almost feels like Nyaa was trying to make an excuse for why she should date Osomatsu even if she wasn’t totally into the idea. Comphet makes you think that maybe if you try hard enough, even if you don’t feel anything now, eventually you’ll have to feel something romantic for a guy. Totoko shooting this idea down is essentially ruining that excuse for Nyaa. So she angrily says: 

Which......... if I were... like a totonyaa....... enthusiast... I could say like.... This is Nyaa basically doing the classic “why do you care about who I date” thing...... that would be crazy tho haha.............................unles-

I also think Nyaa saying “choose” is interesting (tho I'm aware I'm going off translations and she might not actually be wording it like that) because with comphet you literally are choosing who you fall in love with. 

Totoko responds: 

And its clear that Nyaa is escalating her attraction to Osomatsu out of no where. In this scene alone we have gone from “he is funny” to “I like him” to “I was just sort of interested” to “love” even tho nothing has happened to change her feelings. She is escalating because Totoko keeps shooting her down and in order to reaffirm her feelings she has to make them more intense. She is also pissing off Totoko in the process. We see it again when she goes:

I’ve been joking about it but like... totonyaa goggles on... she is clearly doing this to annoy Totoko and get her attention. The way this line is delivered makes it so clear that she is not actually interested in getting Osomatsus number. She wants Totoko’s attention. The next frame is literally her smirking at her phone as Totoko starts panicking. Nyaa likes having Totoko’s attention and the best way to get it is to bicker with her. She is choosing a guy Totoko clearly does not like (I mean I think Totoko and Osomatsu are pals but like she knows he’s a P.O.S) and continues to egg her on about it to keep having Totoko telling her to not date him. Another key aspect of Comphet is trying to constantly get the attention of other girls. Plus, speaking from personal experience, talking about a “crush” you have on a boy with the girl you are actually interested in and having them tell you no feels nice and when I was little and the ceo of comphet I would do it constantly. 

So Totoko gets the brothers involved and Nyaa seems uncomfortable and less into the conversation (probably cuz its no longer just between her and Totoko but that's just me). Her tone is less confrontational and more just confused. It’s almost as if she feels the point of the conversation isn’t there anymore. None of these opinions matter to her. What she said to Choro was harsh but she had a point. She doesn’t know these people!! She wanted to talk with Totoko about this. However, she doesn’t seem to keep that same attitude with Osomatsu? Like what makes Osomatsu any different from Choro? 

She ends up asking everyone to leave and saying:

Once again she is using the word “chose”. She is stating she loves him despite not knowing anything about him besides his crimes against humanity (Which she agrees to that being vile so????). It really feels like she is just being stubborn. She said she likes him so stop confronting her about it because the more holes you poke in her story the more she has to try and convince herself that she genuinely likes him despite her knowing deep down that she doesn’t.

So fast forward to the night they all get together. That part about her liking a man that is unattainable is showcased here in full force. 

She loves the idea that he does not give a shit about her. The idea that he isn’t interested just makes her like him more. I can not overstate how textbook comphet this is. When the guy you picked to like turns out to not be interested in you; that is the best scenario a closeted lesbian could imagine. You get to keep “pinning” over a guy and playing the part of a straight girl without the pressure of acting on it. He isn’t interested so you are never put into a situation where you have to prove that you are. All the things he does that show that he isn’t even considering her (like not fixing his bed head and literally going after Totoko instead) are things she loves. The more disinterested he seems, the more perfect he is. This reaches its peak when Oso literally doesn’t even remember her and she says:

The idea of Osomatsu not even being bothered to remember the moment they met literally has her rolling on the ground lol. 

Osomatsu jokingly askes Nyaa if she is interested in him. She gets really quiet. Obviously this could be read as embarrassment and its probably what was intended. However, continuing with the comphet theme it could also be her realizing that she has to make a choice. She’s interacting with Osomatsu now and he’s (jokingly) flirting with her. She can’t keep acting like he is unattainable at this point so she prepares herself. He jokingly asks her out and she says yes without hesitation, confirming that she would like to date him and even adding a “please”. Because... this is what she wants right? She has been arguing for this the whole time and she was finally given the chance. Why should she say no? This is the beginning of the end.

We see Totoko and Oso having a drink (and she looks so pretty in this scene I fall to the ground and die). Totoko leaves and her body languages looks so emotionally exhausted. If I were a totonyaa enjoyer I would say “she told Osomatsu that she loves Nyaa but wants to see her happy”............... oso staff DIDN’T PUT ANY DIALOUGE IN SO ITS MY CITY NOW-

We see nyaa excited for her date and picking out clothes because!!! this is what she wanted!!!!! she fell in love and got a date! everything is going perfect!

Then she wakes up.

She is startled. Whatever she realized in her dream it was a lot to unpack. mayhaps... a dream about toto-

She sits up and you can tell from her body language that she is really reevaluating. Her feelings vanished over night. She can’t shake the feeling that something is missing. Even though everything is going right and she should be excited and happy, she isn’t. Something is wrong. It’s like the second it hit her that she actually has to go on the date and that Osomatsu is showing interest, she loses any interest in him that she had. She liked the idea of going on a date but the second it starts looming in and becoming a reality she can’t do it. 

When Nyaa apologizes and turns Osomatsu down you can tell she is embarrassed. 

She runs away, unable to face him, knowing that its her fault. See, if she woke up and was like “oh shit he IS a P.O.S” I don't think she would be so apologetic. But she is. She is apologizing for leading him on and knows that she can’t keep up the façade anymore. She knows she caused him a lot of trouble feels miserable.

So to sum it up: Nyaa was in love with the idea of having a guy to pine over. She liked that Osomatsu was an unattainable guy and that being interested in him annoyed Totoko and made her pay attention to her. But the second things got real and she actually had to go out with him, she couldn’t follow through. This can all be explained by comphet and I would even argue its like one of the only explanations for the ending that makes sense but I might just be bias. 

also I think Totoko and Nyaa should just make out...... Happy Valentines day!

[xaspiringbeamoflightx]

A Brief Timeline of Tina and James’ Tumultuous History for the Uninitiated !!

Tina and James have been an ongoing riot-fest since 2019, but not everyone knows just how complicated their relationship actually is. They might look all cute and cuddly now, but it’s been a long time coming and they’re still working on it. Also, there are some things here that happened with a previous Peter so they’re sort of... half ret-conned but kind of not, we’ll see? Please note that this is a huge post also! Trigger Warnings: Emotional and Physical Abuse, Violence, Injury (self-harm and caused by someone else), Hospitals, Sex Work, Drug Mentions, Sex Mentions. These are all mentioned briefly but not spoken about in great detail.

So, James and Tina began life as mortal enemies. Tina started working at the Neverland Hotel when she was 19, mostly to look after Peter. They both absolutely hated James because he was a “pirate” (see: adult) and was always grumpy and bossing them around (you know, as a boss/ adult does) and they were always causing trouble for him.

Cue 2019. Tina was still firmly in the James bad pirate camp, but James finds Tina quite funny and endearing, if absolutely terrible at doing her job.

Incident 1: Tina attends a house party and while drunk catches James walking by and decides to cause some trouble for him. He follows her into the house, she continues to wind him up, and then he scoops her up and jumps into the pool with her as a bit of revenge for trouble making. (It should be noted here that Tina cannot swim and hates water, so she is absolutely livid and very embarrassed because the whole party saw this incident occur.) For a few days after, Tina avoids James in case she tries to kill him because she is #pissed.

Incident 2: The whole ordeal has been annoying Tina all week, and it culminates in her going in a huff while trying and failing to put clean sheets on the hotel beds. James investigates because she isn’t doing her job, and is a bit concerned for her. They begin to argue because Tina is in a bad mood but James doesn’t let her storm away and then the unexpected happens and Tina shows a vulnerable, meek side that neither of them saw coming. She let her guard down for a second (and it was our first oh shit moment), and then James was internally like “that was odd”.

Tina didn’t like that she let her guard down, so she's back on the must cause trouble and forget that ever happened BS as soon as she gets the chance.  

Cue Incident 3: Halloween! James thinks it would be a great idea to make Tina try on some Halloween costumes for a themed Halloween Hotel thing as revenge for her throwing an absolute tantrum. Somehow... Lord... Somehow they end up flirting?? Tina is doing it to be a little shit because she thinks it’s funny, James is doing it to see what Tina does. About halfway through this, James has an epiphany! (You know, a good old Oh Shit I fancy Tina, fuck my life moment). She’s standing there in a fairy costume, James has her near enough against the wall and just as it looks like it's about to go too far, Peter swoops in and saves Tina from the evil pirate.

Incident 4: A curveball.

It’s mid-November, 2am. James is taking a walk home from his fight club, and he happens upon Tina’s street. She doesn’t sleep well because there’s always something worrying her that she 100% doesn’t let anyone know about because she doesn’t let her guard down for anyone, so she makes herself a wee cup of tea and she’s sitting on her front step drinking it. (This thread was so soft I swear) Tina is very sleepy, so her guard is fully down at this point, and for some reason she invites him in for a cup of tea if he promises not to tell anyone. She’s actually nice and honest for once, and the conversation is lovely, which has James like heart-eyes everywhere.

They talk a bit about how James used to be in a gang, and he mentions that he has a scar from where he was stabbed as a young man. In a sleepy state, Tina realises James is actually an okay person and tells him “You’re not so bad”. He mentions that the hotel is going to be refurbished, and Tina starts giving him sleepy ideas and then eventually accidentally falls asleep on his shoulder on the sofa. He puts her to bed, but quickly finds out Tina is clingy AF as she grips his arm and won’t let go when he puts her down. So, James has no choice but to sleep on her floor because he doesn’t have the heart to make her let go.

A little while after this the hotel had to close for refurbishment - it was being pretty much rebuilt from the ground up, so Peter had to go live with Tina in her tiny one-bedroom apartment, and she didn’t have to go to work for a while, but James kept her paid and employed. 

Incident 5: There were some slowly building conversation between the sleepy 2am conversation and this incident, so it doesn’t come fully out of nowhere.

James gets a phone call from his estranged father, who he hasn’t spoken to since he was a child because of his mother, and asks to meet him. James panics that his life isn’t what he thinks it should be - in other words, he’s completely alone and unloved and doesn’t want his dad to know that - and asks Tina to pretend to be his fake fiancé for a few hours and says he’ll pay her for it.

She’s like “FINE if i’m getting paid but you also have to get us free McDonalds”. Tina stupidly suggests they pretend to get engaged in McDonalds for free chicken nuggets because it would be hilarious. Afterwards, they go to meet his dad, Tina pretends to be the fiancé and they eventually leave thinking all is swell. (Tina has not told Peter about this plan at all but she knows Peter doesn’t want her near James.)

Then shit just... hits the fan...

Incident 6: “Why did it have to be you?”

James, at this point, has realised he really, really, really likes Tina... And that he thinks he actually loves her. Instead of keeping it to himself, they’re walking back to the car, and he just comes out with the bombshell that he loves her and Tina does not take it well.

After a lifetime of always being strung along, Tina thinks he’s playing a cruel joke on her, because Tina wanted someone (Peter) to love her her whole life and she never got it. People have always toyed with her feelings like this in the past. When he insists he’s not joking she gets even more angry and says “Why did it have to be you?” which really stung James who has already been made feel worthless his whole life (to be revealed in a later point). Tina thinks James used her, and it’s a whole mess. They end up fighting and there are bitter tears and they have to sit in the car home like... not feeling great!! In an unexpected turn though, Tina softens and tries to lighten the mood before they get home. James’ self-worth has tanked by this point, which leads to self harm when he finally gets home, but a text from Tina pulls him out of it.

They think that’s the end of it, that Tina will never speak to James again, and James will be sad forever, but there’s more!

Incident 7: Word gets to Peter that Tina and Hook are engaged, and he is absolutely livid at Tina and demands she never speak to him again (but little does he know that somehow Tina felt so bad about what she said that she started texting James again, not apologising but like making jokes and somehow she ended up flirting with him again, and they were kind of low-key talking again. Basically by this point Tina is like Why can I not stop talking to him?) Tina insists to Peter that the whole thing was fake and that she only did it for the nuggets. Tina has promised never to speak to James again, and for a hot minute she “saw sense” and intended on not seeing him again except for work, so no more weird plans or anything because Peter said.

Then Incident 8: We are roughly at the end of January 2020. One night, at 2am Tina gets a phone call from James. He sounds awful, and he tells her he loves her again at which point Tina is confused, thinking he’s drunk. Before he can answer Tina’s question, someone takes over the call. He had been on his way to the hospital because he had been stabbed by a member of his old gang and was, y’know, actively dying.

Tina freaks out for multiple reasons, but mostly because she realises she actually really cannot lose James because he might actually be her friend, and he’s nice to her and he treats her well. (At this point she’s feeling something else but it has fully not clicked). In a pure blur, she rushes to the hospital, not telling Peter, because she thought he was legit going to die, and she was the last person he wanted to talk to before he went. Tina waits there on her own the entire time (for actual hours) while James is in emergency surgery, not knowing what’s going to happen or why she’s so scared.

In the early hours of the morning, he finally is in recovery, and Tina gets to see him, distraught talking to him while he’s out for the count.  He comes around for a little bit, they have a cute, melancholy conversation and she gets to go home when the fear of him dying is gone.

Tina hen visits him almost every day in the hospital “for work related things” because she made a moodboard for one of the hotel room’s themes and needs an excuse to talk to him more. (Somewhere around here is Valentine’s Day and James feels jealous that Tina is making Peter something for dinner.)

James eventually makes a recovery and gets out of the hospital and Tina has continued to see him through the whole journey and not tell a single person that she was there on the night of the emergency. (She is completely bottling it up at this point and it’s not doing her good.) Unfortunately, James’ past catches up to him a second time.

Incident 9: He has been home for a short amount of time, but one afternoon James sends Tina a text saying that he doesn’t want anything to do with her any more. He gets quite harsh with her to really send that message home, and Tina is raging because she’s like you put me through all this emotional turmoil for nOTHING?!?!?! I think the fuck not!

He suddenly stops replying, but instead of taking the hint, Tina decides to go to James’ house for a stern word with him. James starts by trying to get her to leave angrily, but it doesn’t work because she’s stubborn. We quickly find out that the reason he wants her out of his life is to protect her from his mother! She heard about the “engagement” and wasn’t happy about it.

This is where James reveals the really hard life that he has led up to this point -   His mother blamed him for his father leaving them, and then made it seem like James died to hurt his father. James ended up in care until he was 18 (and was in a gang through his teens and 20s), and was later forced to become a male escort when his mother came back for more revenge. She was just... hella abusive, not a fun time, and now, after a few years of James thinking he had gotten away from that life she showed up because she couldn’t let him be happily engaged.

The woman turns up at the house while Tina is there and starts fighting with James. At some point Tina sees nothing but red because dont treat him like that!!! and she ends up going on the attack. They finally get the woman out of the house and from that point on Tina is like nope I’m in this, must protect James!!!!!!!

Tina and James are fully not processing any of this at this point. The emotional turmoil they've both had in a short space of time is so bad that they're both 5 minutes away from a full mental breakdown and they're fully attached to each other at this point because of it.

So, one of Tina's personality traits at this point is that for sOme  reason she just cannot help herself from trying to wind up James because  it gets her attention. It always leads to low-key flirting that she  won't admit to because she's fully in denial that she fancies him at  this point, and James goes with it because he DOES fancy her and thinks  it's cute. They have a few conversations after this where they're being  nice to each other and whatever so there's a slight build up to this next part that Naomi and I didn't see coming until we got there...  

This leads us to Incident 10: The infamous Bubbles thread.

SOOOOOOOOOO Tina, looking for attention, shows up to James' house with the intention of bugging him until he agrees to throw a party at the hotel. Totally innocent, the following was genuinely not planned on Tina’s part. Anyway, Tina shows up and James is in the bath but by this point she's fully on the I'm here for attention and this will be hilarious road so she straight up just walks into his house, goes looking for him, finds him in the bathroom and kicks off her shoes to sit on the edge of the bath for a casual conversation. (There are bubbles so do not worry, she sees nothing!)

James is rightfully thinking “wtf Tina?” but she just keeps insisting on this party like this is a normal way to ask for anything. He gets sick of it and just pulls her into the bath fully clothed. There's too much flirting going on, but they get out and get changed, and we thought that was gonna be the end of it.

But then tension builds and builds, and the penny drops. It goes where you think. They end up sleeping together, which only complicates the matter because Tina isn’t over her feelings for Peter at this point, and she is TERRIFIED that he will find out about it, so she asks James to keep it a secret.

All of this tension and drama is building and finally Tina has an actual total meltdown a few months later because at this point she hasn't told anyone any of this, and it's been building for months. [Note: This was triggered by a plot in the RP we were in at the time, which is ret conned plot-wise here, but the meltdown and following comfort still occurred because it was important. Essentially, there was a mass spiking of drinks at a festival, which made Tina paranoid and all the previous trauma hit her on the come comedown, which sent her into a 3-day-long depressive episode] Following her crisis and meltdown, James came along to see if she was okay because he couldn't get a hold of her for 3 days and she confesses that she fancies him (but hasn't said love yet).

They're fully attached to each other at this point and end up with this weird secret relationship thing going that Tina is trying to keep from Peter because she gets so paranoid that he'll never want to speak to her again. (This is where all of Tina’s Peter issues are completely heightened because she has this terrible, debilitating fear that she will hurt Peter and that he’ll hate her, because Peter’s happiness is supposed to come first.)

Eventually, Tina finds that she has no choice but to tell Peter because it's driving her nuts and she doesn't want to tell him accidentally because she's having another meltdown. It isn’t fair on James either, who genuinely loves her, and is so kind and warm and loving toward her and she is ajkgajghuahg every time she is near him. James issues her an ultimatum, but she has to tell him or he will be finished with her. She realises she can’t let that happen either and she’s stuck in the turmoil of not wanting to lose the two most important people in her life.

(Somewhere in here James ends up caring for his younger twin sisters, but this is a story for Naomi to explain if you need it.)

Incident 11: Tina tells Peter some time in November, leading to another meltdown. She confesses that there has been something going on between her and James, tells part of the emotional turmoil from the hospital and so on, and that she lied and broke her promise. [This happened in between Peter players, some creative liberties were taken]

Peter was rightfully livid about the whole thing. Read this for the meltdown.

As punishment for lying, and having a thing for thee Pirate James Hook, Peter banishes her (which in Lost Boy speak is basically death. She was terrified he would banish her and he did it) for two weeks. Tina has another total meltdown following the banishment  and for the first time ever calls James to ask for help because she's so  heartbroken that she can't function thinking she had lost Peter  forever.  

Peter disappeared some time during this two-week period, returned briefly at Christmas pretending nothing happened, and then disappeared again until recently so Tina is all over the place.  For the first week she literally can't do anything, but also has been  thinking a lot a lot, and then on the second week at some point she  finally tells James she loves him.  He showed up to fix the cabinet door she broke mid-meltdown and she's just like aiuhauighiuahgu shit i love you.

Incident 12: The Blackout, December 5th. James had plans to propose now that he really knew Tina loved him, but the blackout and the hotel being thrown into chaos threw his plan completely out the window. Until it didn’t.

Tina accidentally used the proposal mug on the final day to make James a cup of tea to de-stress while they were at the hotel, inadvertently proposing to James by accident. After a proper explanation, James finally pops the question and Tina says yes. (Because we love chaos, they snuck away from the hotel for a while for... some not safe for the workplace things) and later returned like nothing happened.

So now they’re engaged and that’s us just about up to date. I think?

Now all that’s left to do is tell Peter about the engagement...

[mimymomo]

Orphydice/Weathering With You AU Part 1

Okay this AU has been bugging me all night so I have to scream about it to my unknowing followers. (Damn it Mo, not another AU! You don’t have time for this!!) Do not be alarmed inner me, this AU will mostly be confined to a list! This one in fact! Or another one is this one does on too long...

I know for a fact that no one in this fandom saw this movie so I’ll try to explain it as best as I can here:

Eurydice was a runaway. Even at the bitter age of 16, she knew what kind of situation she was in and it wasn’t a good one. Neglectful parents, living in a small town where everyone knew one another’s business but that didn’t mean they were gonna help you with shit.

She tried to get emancipated once, saved up a bunch of money from side temp jobs between school but that plan ended up dead in the water before she could jump off the diving board. Her parents found and stole her savings, her hard-earned money. They gave her hell for it, going around telling stores, not to hire their “problem child” and she couldn’t find a permanent job afterward.

So she ran. Hopped on a bus and set out for the city. While traveling, the weather got bad. The weather had been doing that more and more recently. Sure it was April and storms happened, but not violent snowstorms that lasted days and frozen over lakes and roads, inches piling high along street-sides. Or rain showers the flooded fields and drowned basements. Thunder and lightning shaking homes and striking trees. Winds sweeping children off their feet, soaring in the sky like a tangled kite.

One such storm occurred during the journey, heavy rains and violent winds, forcing the driver to make an emergency stop at a motel and wait out the storm. As Eurydice steps off the bus, one of her bags (a small drawstring sack) gets swept up in the wind aim the direction of the street and she gives chase. As she reaches down to grab her bag, she sees a light in the corner of her eyes, shining bright and drawing closer, closer.

Suddenly she’s yanked back as a honking car zooms by. She’s being held snug against someone’s chest, someone who smells of something floral and a hint of alcohol. “Gotta be careful, girl. Don’t wanna be turned into a pancake now do ya?”

Eurydice turns around and freezes- the woman is beautiful: long ankle-length dress the shade of healthy green grass, her brown curly hair is braided back, flowers of different colors twisted in the mix. Her eyes warm and attentive. She’s carrying a small bag herself, with what looks like a few bottles of wine sticking out the top.

She introduces herself as Persephone and before Eurydice knows it, they’re sharing a room together. Eurydice tried to protest but the woman clad in green insist already arranging a room with a double bed. A few hours later, they’re showered and laying on their beds, room service spread out on trays and Seph half finished with a crack open bottle.

Persephone tells Eurydice she was visiting her mother up north (her mom apparently owns a vineyard) however her trip was cut short when her husband demanded (her words) her to return. “That man,” Seph curses drunkenly, waving her bottle, the liquid sloshing around the funneled glass. Eurydice’s only know Seph for a few hours but she’s already enamored with the woman and her attitude.

The next day when they arrive at the station, Seph offers Eurydice a business with her information on it: “Anthomania” in flowery lettering along with an address and phone number. A flower shop.

“I never asked but what brings you to the city? I can tell from your expression that you’ve never been here before.” Eurydice wasn’t ready for that question. “Oh just visiting, uhh some...relatives! Yeah, relatives! For spring break.” Seph rolls her eyes, not believing the girl for a moment but deciding to play along anyway, “so you know where you’re heading then?” Eurydice nods and they separate.

The first week is a struggle. No one will hire her with her limitations (no resume/references, she’s underage and constantly asked where she should be in school, she doesn’t have an address nor her social security number, and she can’t give out all her information in fear of her name popping up on a missing child’s list). So to put it lightly...she’s kinda screwed. She’s been staying in a really cheap hostel living off corner store food. She gets in trouble for loitering a few times and once while rummaging through some trash she came across a gun and decides to keep it for safety reasons (this will be important later)

One day, thinking she’s walking into a job site, she accidentally stumbles into an old, rundown bar. There’s barely anyone in there besides two people sitting at a table in the far corner, a man passed out at the counter. The air smells musky, traces of pungent alcohol fill the air and also the smell of someone buttery. Eurydice’s stomach growls. She didn’t have money to spare on breakfast or lunch recently. She knows she shouldn’t but she takes a seat at one of the tables, her back facing the bar counter. She contemplates what she’s doing and maybe if she should go home. But that thought disappears just as quickly as it showed up.

Out of nowhere, a tray of two burger sliders and a basket of fries are set down in front of her, followed by a glass of water. Eurydice whips her head and is met with two hazel eyes, the prettiest eyes she’s ever seen. The boy is young but has a charm to him. Lanky and tall, his brown hair sticks up to the sky as if his fingers had just run through them. “Sorry if I’m overstepping but you looked hungry and lost so...” his voice is soft and awkward as hell, but she finds it endearing. “Also Mr. Hermes will be back soon and he probably won’t like seeing someone underage so I’d eat that quick.” “How do you know I’m underage?” Eurydice shoots back with a raised brow. The boy flushes pink, blood floods his cheeks, ears, and neck, “oh! I’m sorry! I just thought-”

Eurydice laughs, “I messing with you.” “Ohhh...okay,” the boy smiles, scratching lightly at his cheek. Eurydice finds herself fighting a blush as well. ‘Why is he so cute??’ “I can’t pay for this.” The boy waves her concerns off, “it’s on the house.”

Before she can argue and refuse, a customer yells for around round and the boy begins to shuffle away. “Thank you,” Eurydice butts in, “for the food, I mean.” The boy grins and walks away.

That burger and fries were the best food she’s had in years.

The next day, she finds herself standing outside Anthomania, the brick building sits on corner, wide windows that let you see completely inside the shop. It’s flowers, everywhere- flowers along the walls, in stands amidst the floors, in pots, small and large, arranged bouquets in buckets near the front. Eurydice steps in and is overwhelmed by the sweet scent, sunlight bleeding in from the washed windows. What catches her eye is a small bouquet of carnations: reds, pinks, and whites. “Didn’t expect to see you here so soon.”

Eurydice jumps and spins around to see Persephone with her arms crossed, her green dress replaced with a garden styled apron. The two catch up and Seph calls Eurydice out for lying about visiting relatives. Eurydice stays the rest of the workday and later as Seph is closing up shop, she intends to walk about to her hostel room but Seph offers her a ride. Once the get there Seph forces her to grab her things and pays the bill. And drives her to her place.

It’s huge, a mansion guarded by a gate at the edge of town. The inside is just as beautiful as the outside but eerily quiet and somehow suffocating in a way. She meets Seph’s husband, Hades. He works as a CEO of some company, mining? Electric? Eurydice doesn’t know. He doesn’t seem particularly fond of her especially after Persephone announces that girl would be staying with them for now on and being working as an assistant/apprentice at her flower shop. Hades fights her on this but the woman wins out in the end.

As the days go on Eurydice notices how dysfunctional the couple are. They definitely love each other but...oof. Eurydice, when she’s not working her shifts, starts cooking meals and cleaning around the house and starts winning over the man of the house and the three slowly start to become a sort of family in the following month.

One day a customer comes into the flower shop, bracing the stormy weather. He’s an older gentleman wearing a silver suit with dark skin and gray hair. He’s coughing hard but still cheery. Seph and the man catch up and Eurydice figures they must be close. She doesn’t mean to eavesdrop but she hears them talking about something crazy: an urban legend of a child blessed by the gods who can control the weather. She thinks it’s stupid and doesn’t realize she said that fact out loud.

“Maybe child but you never know,” the man chuckles. Seph laughs at Eurydice’s shocked face, “brother, this is Eurydice. She’s working for me as an apprentice as sorts.” The man shakes her hand and begins to cough harshly again. “You should really go and get that checked out,” Persephone persists. The man waves her off, “I’m aight, just a little cough from the weather. Plus money’s been tight with the bar and all plus the boy.” He buys a few bouquets to be delivered next week and leaves. Eurydice ponders about why he said, ‘it’s impossible,’ and she leaves it there.

She’s the one who has to make the delivery. Turns out it’s the same bar she met that boy at. She hesitantly walks inside hoping to see the boy but no dice. She drops off the flowers and says hello to the man who she still doesn’t know the name of and heads out. Halfway back to Anthomania she sees something that catches her eye, no, someone. ‘It’s that boy!’ He’s being dragged by two older men, his face nervous. She can instantly tell something is wrong. She follows them and sees them leading him down a dark alley in the direction of a shady building. Before she realizes she already running. She grabs the boy's hand and they’re off.

The two men chase after them and corner them, knocking Eurydice to the ground. Eurydice reaches into her bag and pulls out the gun. The men at first think it’s a fake and start to roughhouse the boy saying that he set them up and will have to pay which causes Eurydice’s blood to boil. She grips the gun tightly, her fingertips turning white, she trembles and her vision goes hazy from rain and adrenaline, then suddenly...bam!

A shot gets fired off.

No one was hit but everyone is shocked. The boy is surprisingly the first to recover and he pulls Eurydice to her feet and they run away.

The escape to an abandoned half-underground train station. Trains covered in moss and plant life lay there rusty as sunlight barely shines through dirty grime-covered windows. Despite its uncleanliness, there’s something magical about this place, Eurydice can feel it in her bones.

“Why did you do that? Where did you get the gun?” the boy asks, huffing and puffing, athleticism is not one of his strong suits. “I thought you were in trouble,” Eurydice fights back. “And I found it.” The boy dips his head, “my guardian is sick but he always says that he doesn’t have the money to spare to get checked out. I needed to make some extra money and they promised me a well-paying job at this not exactly savory club if I performed there.”

Eurydice gapes, she has so many thoughts running through her head she doesn’t know where to start so she just says, “you’re a performer?” The smiles, “yup, I sing and play guitar. Plus I write my own music. I never introduced myself huh? I’m Orpheus.” “Eurydice.”

“Do you want to see something cool?” Orpheus asks, acting as if the previous incident with the gun didn’t just happen. “I mean, sure but it’s kinda a mess out there,” Eurydice points out. Orpheus ignores her and offers out his hand. Eurydice takes it and they walk back to the entrance.

When they reach the outside, the sky is gray and cloudy. Rain and sleet pour from the sky mixing with the dirty dusting of snow on the ground.

“Would you like the weather to be better?” Orpheus asks. “I mean of course I would,” Eurydice shrugs, “but I doubt that’ll happen anytime soon.”

“I don’t know,” Orpheus says, his eyes shut lightly. “I think the weather can surprise you. Just watch.” Eurydice looks around not sure where she should be looking until...

“La, la la la, la la la~!” A heavenly voice rings out, echoing among the buildings.

Suddenly the rain stops and the clouds part and disappear from the sky. Rays of sunlight breach out coolers by a rich sea of blue. The sun...Eurydice hadn’t seen the sun in so long.

“Oh my god, you’re a weather child! You can control the weather!” Eurydice screams, turning to Orpheus who finishes his song as a small red flower appears in his palm. A red carnation.

He offers her the flower and smiles. “Yeah, I guess you could say that I am.”

...

Wow, I typed all of this and only got like...1/3 of the way into the movie...so part 2 coming soon? I love this movie and subsequent au so it’ll probably be out tomorrow if people want it?

[pianoperson]

Revised Cradlesona Character Sheet

Because I got more ideas for my Cradlesona so :’)

Also I made a new artwork!! (I was trying to shade but it looked too ugly sooooooo)

And here’s the updated character sheet!! (Also posting it now because I’m writing for the school event ongoing)

CRADLESONA CHARACTER SHEET

Basic Info:

Name: Angel Burnham

Nickname: None; call her Angel

Birthday: December 12

Age: 22

Height: 150cm

Blood Type: O+

Physical:

Eyes: Her right eye is a natural dark brown color. Her left eye, however, is a mix of colors that resemble a galaxy. It used to be the same brown color as her right eye until she first performed magic. When using magic, both her eyes take on the galaxy colors. Nobody knows why this is the case, although Angel has a feeling it’s because of her heritage.

Hair: Dark brown hair; in some angles, it looks black, while in others, it looks brown

Accessories: Two rosary bracelets on her left wrists and a St. Benedict’s ring on her left middle finger

Features: Other than her left eye, nothing too significant

Illnesses: Aside from allergies to most seafood except fish, none

Social:

Affiliation: Neutral initially, Red Army after two months

Occupations: Originally worked as a waitress in a cafe, but days after she discovered her magic, she was recruited by the Red Army to help them in the war

Relationships:

Blanc and Oliver: These two were the first people Angel met when she first arrived in Cradle. Blanc had been nothing but kind to her while Oliver was more merciless with his words; nevertheless, Angel was able to get along with both of them. Blanc had even given her a tour around Cradle. Angel stayed in their home for a few days until she requested to stay in another place. Blanc and Oliver also helped her find a job.

Fenrir: Fenrir and Angel became immediate friends when he stopped by Blanc’s house. He even gave her a food tour around Cradle. Fenrir found out her new home when he visited the cafe she worked in and since then, he has made occasional visits. He was there for Angel after she learned about her magic and also helped her move out of her apartment after she was recruited by the Red Army.

Lancelot: Angel found him intimidating. She even disliked him for not allowing her to go out of Red Army HQ on her own. However, after finding out about what he had to go through to keep Cradle (and her) safe, she realized he is actually kind.

Jonah: Angel found him very attractive the moment she first saw him during her tour around Cradle. She saw him eating mille-fueille while having a lunch break in another cafe and found it really endearing. When she was made to serve the Red Army, Jonah was assigned to be her (main) bodyguard. They grew closer because of it.

Edgar: Angel found him sketchy, despite his kindness to her. Much to her annoyance, Edgar teases her about her crush on Jonah. However, when he teases Jonah, she either enjoys the show or joins Edgar. Sometimes, if Jonah is really busy, Edgar takes the role of bodyguard.

Kyle: Angel likes his chill personality, especially since she grew up in a lax environment. Kyle has brought her out to the bar he goes to twice. The first time went off without a hitch. The second time, however…

Zero: Because of his quiet nature, Angel doesn’t know him that well. They do talk about their annoyance towards Edgar. If Jonah and Edgar aren’t available, Zero is her third bodyguard.

Personality:

Angel has Filipino and Cradle blood. She was born and raised in 21st century Philippines, having a pretty decent life with a loving family, enough sustenance, and (as decent as it can get) WiFi. Although her elementary and high school taught her, Angel isn’t particular about manners. She can act properly if necessary, but she prefers to let loose and be chill.

When you first meet her, you might be intimidated by her serious expression. However, once you try to talk to her in a friendly way, you actually see she’s really friendly and great to talk to. She’s particularly energetic if you talk about similar interests, such as Pokemon, TwoSetViolin, etc. (sadly no one in Cradle knows about those things). While Angel likes to chat, she is an introvert and can get tired easily during hangouts.

Angel is generally a relaxed person. She would rather go with the flow than organize things because for her, things become messier if she does plan it. She acts chill around people, never trying to get mad at anyone because for her, it makes it much easier in the long run. This is also because Angel hates conflict and problems and would rather stay away if she can.

However, in unfamiliar settings, Angel gets very tense. If she is made a leader, she gets easily nervous and can break down. She wishes that she was more confident, however, so she can be someone people can look up to. In very familiar areas, however, she has more confidence, to the point she can seem arrogant.

Because of her relaxed nature, Angel tends to laze around and not finish whatever projects she herself started on unless there are more people involved in it. This also causes her to not have many passions for things. However, she has two things she really likes: astronomy and music. Stars always make her feel better and she gets excited over space. As for music, she is a pianist and a flutist. Music is the one thing where she feels confident and very much like her ideal self. After discovering magic, however, she had a rocky relationship with it for a while. Angel also likes maths, writing, and drawing, partly because it makes her feel smart but mostly because she likes doing it. She tends to get lazy with those three, however.

Angel is also an honest person, never one to tell a lie. She can also be blunt, especially when the situation calls for it. She is also a very loyal friend, not wanting to turn her back and hurt them.

Deep down, she hates herself to the point where every time she’s asked what positive quality she thinks she has, she wouldn’t be able to give a response. She wants to be good enough for people to even want and appreciate her but feels like she isn’t. Sometimes, she feels like telling someone but she fears she’ll burden them.

Because of this low self-esteem, she attempts to raise it up by counting her blessings every day. Occasionally, this causes her to be arrogant in a way, but she really doesn’t intend for it to be that way. This awareness of her arrogance tends to attack her ego, bringing her self-esteem back down.

Family and History:

Angel is actually from the 21st century who recently graduated from college with a degree in music. While walking back to a condo her family owns, Blanc bumps into her and drops his pocket watch, which she picked up. The rest is history. 

Angel’s family is actually a mix of two worlds. Her mother was a Cradle citizen, born into a family of magic users, while her father was from the Land of Reason. Her mother, dared by her friends, entered the Garden on the full moon via teleportation and accidentally ended up being transported to 21st century Earth, where she met Angel’s father and fell in love. They hid this from Angel and her other siblings and she only found out during a chance encounter with her mother’s parents. Because of the magic and resistance to it being passed down, she inherited both abilities, which are most powerful in music.

Skills and Special Abilities:

Magic: Angel can cast magic like typical magic users. When she uses magic normally, it’s far from the power of magic users such as Lancelot and Harr. However, when she plays piano or flute, her magic becomes much stronger, possibly stronger than the aforementioned two. Using it, however, can cause fatigue, fever, and even fainting.

Magic Resistance: Due to her roots in the Land of Reason, she also has the ability to nullify magic, making her one of the most powerful people in Cradle– and a target. Strangely, when she makes TwoSetViolin references, her magic nullification ability is more powerful. (It was how she even found out about her magic resistance. She remarked “iNtErEsTiNg” once and the nearby lights went off. The crystals in the light bulbs were newly installed.)

Pianist: She has a decade and a half worth of experience.

Flutist: While not as experienced with the flute (only having played it for around 5 years), she can still play it.

Writing: She writes in her spare time.

Drawing: She’s less confident in her drawings and would rather not show them to anyone. She does draw in her spare time. 

Paired with: Jonah

Life in Cradle:

Angel just recently graduated from college when she first encountered Blanc, who bumped into her. Blanc seemed very antsy and, after apologizing to her, ran off. He dropped his pocket watch, however. The same thing that happened to Alice the Second occurred, except Blanc actually was nearby when Angel was falling to 19th century Cradle.

The portal closed immediately after Blanc caught Angel, so she was trapped in the unknown world.

On the first days staying in Cradle, Angel was nervous, even with Blanc and Oliver helping her. Often, she was reminded of how tense she was.

During one of the days Blanc showed her around, Angel saw a troop of Red Army soldiers, being led by Jonah. Angel found him attractive and kept glancing at him. 

Eventually, Angel asked Blanc if she can get a job and her own living space, since she didn’t want to burden him. Blanc helped her find a job as a waitress in a cafe and got her an apartment to stay in.

She found out about her magic nullification abilities when she moved in to her apartment.

For two months, she carried a rather mundane life as a worker in a cafe. There was a day when, during break, she ate in another cafe at the same time as Jonah (and found him cute as he ate his mille-fueille).

A few days after the news of the former King of Hearts being assassinated was announced, Angel was eating out with some friends from work. The restaurant had a piano, so she decided to play Sonata Pathetique mvm. 3. Midway through the piece, she heard screams and shouts of pain. That was when she found out that she was unleashing magical attacks through her playing and started to panic when she realized her hands were moving on their own. That was when an explosion occurred.

She was brought to Kyle thanks to Oliver. She was the only one who survived the fiasco, which was dubbed the Night When Death Sang. She also found out her left eye changed color.

Because of the fiasco, she was fired from her job. 

She encounters her Cradle family by chance near the fountain in Central Quarter. They bring her to her house and decide to teach her how to control her magic.

A week later, Red Army declared war on the Black Army. The next day, they faced off. Angel was nearby when it happened and was praying in her head for nothing bad to happen. That was when she accidentally repelled Lancelot’s magic, confusing everyone. It was enough for Blanc and Oliver to arrive and stop the conflict.

Two days after the face-off, Edgar finds Angel in her apartment, taking her to the Red Army HQ. There, Angel is made to serve the Red Army by using her magical abilities against the Black Army.

Because of what she did at the restaurant, however, Lancelot orders his officers to be Angel’s bodyguards whenever she goes out. Jonah is her main bodyguard. 

[icescreamaree]

THIS HAS BEEN SITTING IN MY DRAFTS FOR A YEAR AND A HALF

lil basic relationship chart for the bloodborne gang, mostly for my own reference -u-

grimma’s the centre of the web since hes the protag lol

@yharnamopossum

Grimma

Nat - distrust - Grimma’s always been confused by Nat; she saved him and diligently worked for a cure, was invested in his well-being yet seemed to detest him at the same time. As a result, he’s never been able to fully trust her. However, after she threw him out and threatened a painful death should he return, what trust he did have was gone. Grimma doesn’t necessarily believe she would follow through on her threat, but he doesn’t intend to find out.

Rundola - friends - Grimma quickly became attached to the tired, reserved doctor, and looked up to him. Rundola’s acceptance and exasperated tolerance was, honestly, the nicest treatment Grimma had received in a long while. Grimma feels terrible about accidentally almost causing Rundola’s death, and is hurt by Rundola’s subsequent rejection  (”I’m Sorry” - Diamante)

Alfred - crush - To Grimma, Alfred is kind, funny, charming, and handsome. Alfred’s apparent obliviousness/immunity to flirting frustrates Grimma. (”More Than Friends” - meesh)

Zeka - distrust - Grimma accidentally woke Zeka in his search, and wound up striking a deal with the undead witch. He doesn’t trust Zeka, despite her promises to uphold her end of the bargain, but he has no other option than to find her amulet and return it to her. This distrust is only heightened when he learns the history between her and Ami, and Ami warns him against working with her. However, he’s reluctant to take her advice and to assist Ami in defeating Zeka. (”Red Right Hand” - Karliene)

Ami - friends - After the initial shock of their first meeting, Grimma found a sympathetic friend in Ami, who could relate to his fears and advancing condition.

Nat

Rundola - love - Arguably the only person Nat feels like she can be herself around, Rundola is her closest friend. She adores him, but, being out of touch with her own emotions, is struggling to recognize the romantic nature of her feelings.

Grimma - enemies - Nat never did like Grimma; boisterous, unpredictable, and, most of all, annoying, Grimma was nothing but a headache. However, having saved his life and treated him, she begrudgingly held an interest in his well-being. He may have even, just a tiny bit, begun to grow on her. But when Grimma’s actions nearly resulted in Rundola’s death, Nat refused to forgive him and threw him out. No longer just a headache, Grimma was now a major threat in Nat’s eyes, and what little compassion had made her tolerate him evaporated. 

Rundola

Nat - love - Rundola’s former apprentice, Nat and Rundola have a long history. Nevertheless, when Rundola wrote her for help he was surprised when she, despite the hopelessness of the situation, came running to his aid. He trusts her wholeheartedly and when she’s around he feels like, for the first time in a long while, things might get better. He’s impressed by her relentless drive, and enjoys her company and acerbic wit. Rundola would admit that his feelings have become more romantic than platonic, but personal feelings of inadequacy and a fear of rejection keep him from doing so   (”Down for the Ride” - Slaves)

Grimma - distrust - Rundola’s feelings for Grimma are complicated. They were friends, and Rundola almost began to feel paternal towards his weird, wayward patient. He genuinely wishes Grimma well and remains concerned for his well-being, despite all that happened. He doesn’t hold a grudge against him as Nat does, however, he is wary and would prefer Grimma keep his distance. 

Alfred

Grimma - friends - Alfred thinks Grimma’s a great pal but is, for the most part, oblivious to Grimma’s feelings.

Ami - distrust - On a personal level, Alfred finds Ami kind of irritating (he feels she likes to pick on him) but otherwise alright. However, he distrusts her on principle of her condition and his own allegiances.

Ami

Zeka - enemies - Cruelly subjected to Choir experiments under Zeka’s direction, which resulted in her beastly condition, Ami feels nothing but cold hatred for her former tormentor. She feels no remorse for the revenge she took, and would gladly do it again. When she learns Zeka is still alive (or, well, undead) she’s furious and vows to put her down for good. (”Challenge” - Cellar Darling )

Grimma - friends - When Ami first met Grimma in the Forbidden Woods she thought he was a reckless idiot, especially after learning he’d struck a deal with the witch, Zeka. However, Grimma proved himself a caring and understanding friend and Ami pledged to help him. She still thinks he’s kind of a reckless idiot, but he’s her reckless idiot now.

Alfed - neutral - Ami finds Alfred a bore, and a little too righteous, but otherwise pretty okay. She’s aware Alfred doesn’t trust her and tries not to provoke him, although her friendly bullying sometimes strikes a nerve (”Ugh, if you love Master Logarius so much why don’t you just go marry him.”)

Zeka

Ami - enemies -  Humiliated and enraged by Ami’s revenge, Zeka bears a burning grudge against her. 

Grimma - neutral -  Promising Grimma the knowledge he sought if he returned to her her amulet, Zeka manipulates him to her advantage. She finds Grimma amusing and, to an extent, endearing, but ultimately she sees him as nothing but a tool.

[ghostbustermelanieking]

AU where Melissa is abducted rather than Samantha (like the sibling roles are reversed, but Mulder and Scully's roles are the same if that makes any sense).

1. November 27, 1973. In Greenwich, Connecticut, Fox and Samantha Mulder poke idly around their new house. They bicker about the biggest bedroom. Their mom calls up the stairs for them to unpack. They ignore her. They’re bizarrely thrown by this new life of this, the new house and the sudden absence of their dad from their life. They have no idea where he is, no idea where to call him, and their mother won’t say anything.

They end up sitting on the bare floor of the big bedroom. Samantha digs the Stretego board out of a box and begs her brother to play. After a lot of begging, with a sigh, Fox complies. The two play Stretego until their mother calls them for dinner.

In San Diego, Maggie Scully leaves her children home alone for an hour while she drives to the store. With four kids, a trip to the grocery store is always a headache, and Billy and Missy always insist that they’re old enough to be in charge, at thirteen and eleven. She wouldn’t usually leave them, but they’re pleading, and she has no help from Bill, so she leaves Billy in charge and leaves, intending to be back as soon as possible.

She gets caught in traffic. She gets caught up in talking to a friend. She gets home much later than she meant to, and is horrified to find three of her children huddled in a corner. Billy shielding the others, shaking, clutching his old Little League baseball bat. Nine-year-old Dana and five-year-old Charlie clutching each other’s hands, Charlie whimpering, Dana’s cheeks red and smeared with tears. Melissa isn���t there. Melissa is nowhere to be found.

Billy and Dana don’t remember a thing, they insist. Not a thing. Charlie is sucking his thumb, clinging to his sister when his mother offers little comfort, and he says in a soft voice, “It was the lights. She was taken by the lights.”

2. Melissa is never found. They look for nearly a year; Bill Scully comes home from sea, and organizes search parties, and holds his wife as she weeps in the kitchen. Billy tries to help search, and his face falls when he’s told no; one particular member of the search party wants to know why Billy couldn’t protect his sister, and he locks himself in his and Charlie’s room and won’t come out. Dana tries to help, too, but is largely overlooked in comparison, largely ignored. She lets Charlie sleep in Missy’s bed and color on their floor and looks towards the door every few minutes, as if her big sister is going to come running back in.

After a year with no leads, Missy is officially declared dead. They buy a headstone and throw a funeral and dress in uncomfortable black clothes. Billy avoids eye contact with everyone, Charlie refuses to leave Dana’s room. He clings to Missy’s bedpost, screaming, “She’s not dead!” Dana knots her hands in the hem of her black dress and stares at the hole in the ground, chews at her lower lip. She doesn’t know what to believe.

Maggie grows protective, moreso than she was before. She doesn’t want to let them walk to school. They have to come straight home after school. They can’t play outside very much, and she never, ever leaves them alone. Billy conforms, becomes quiet and stern and murmurs things about joining the Navy out of high school. Charlie rebels openly, tries to run away, sneaks out of the house, throws temper tantrums until he grows out of them. Dana rebels inwardly. She’s always been the quiet one. She cleans her room—her room, now, Missy isn’t there, and they make Charlie move out—and does the dishes and walks with Charlie to school, even when she’s going to a different school, holding his hand in hers. She thinks about her sister, about the disappearance and the search, and how she’s dead now, even though there’s no body. About how they’ll never know what happened to her. About how she wasn’t able to help her. She doesn’t remember that night, not really, but she remembers something small: clutching at Missy’s hand. Billy yelling and Charlie crying, and she held Missy’s hand until she couldn’t anymore.

They move to Maryland eventually. Charlie is furious; he doesn’t want to leave Melissa behind, he says, and their mother blinks hard and tells him not to be silly. Dana is reading books that make her mother blink disapprovingly. She tells her mom that she thinks she wants to be a police officer, and her mother shakes her head and says no, says if we lost you, says I already have a son and a husband in the Navy. She resents that she can’t join the Navy herself, like she knows Charlie does. She turns to medical school instead. She tells her mother she wants to be a doctor, but inside, she’s thinking pathology. She wants to find answers, the answers she never had for Melissa. She wants to find the people who hurt other people, she wants justice.

Dana goes off to college and takes her brother’s phone calls and studies furiously. She bonds with her roommates and thinks about her sister, wonders if they would’ve been close like this. Painting fingernails on the bed and whispering secrets back and forth. Dana wonders what her sister would’ve thought of her. She misses her, at times like this.

Her college years are strange, muddled and confused. Charlie gets in a furious fight with their mother and runs away, for real this time. He comes to her first, promising to keep in touch, making her promise to tell their parents he is okay. She has an affair with her professor that makes her feel horribly ashamed, foolish and guilty. She fights with her parents—over Charlie, over Melissa, over her job path—more often than she ever thought she would.

When the FBI recruiter comes, years later, Dana doesn’t hesitate for a second.

3. She is furious when she’s assigned to the X-Files, initially. It couldn’t be further from her plans, her goal of joining the FBI to help people; she’d thought she was doing so well, and now she’s being assigned to investigate fucking ghosts and goblins and aliens? It disgusts her. She has better things to do.

Her mind is changed almost immediately after meeting Agent Mulder. He’s charismatic and goofy, and he makes her laugh. He makes a good first impression. He’ll make a good partner, she finds herself thinking after that first case. And she was wrong, about the X-Files not helping people. It’s not the way she ever would’ve expected, but she is helping people. She is.

The thing that surprises her, she thinks, is how much Mulder wants to be her friend. He argues with her easily, the believer to her skeptic, but he seems to like her as much as she likes him. He asks her out to drinks, he introduced her to his friends (“They’re paranoid as shit, Scully, it’s kind of funny,” he says), he always waits for her to finish with autopsies or reports or the like to eat on cases. He’s overeager in an almost puppylike way, and she finds it endearing. She wants to hang out with him, despite all of her attempts to avoid liking him. She accidentally lets it slip to Ellen that she thinks he is cute and blushes furiously.

He’s willing to confide in her, too. Over a tiny table in a bar, he tells her the story of his absentee father, the one who disappeared out of his life and never got in touch with him or his sister again. How he found the X-Files on a whim and became intrigued, wanted to dig further. How he’s gotten some shit from higher-ups for it, but he hasn’t been discouraged. Scully thinks about confiding her life story, the secret of her sister, but for some reason, she cannot find the words. She nods along and smiles, pats his hand and tells him she’s sorry about his father. If she understands anything, it’s distance with your father.

She doesn’t tell him about her sister til a case in Iowa. A teenaged girl disappeared from her tent she was sharing with her little brother. Mysterious lights reported by both mother and brother. Mulder thinks it’s alien abduction. Scully stubbornly ignores the similarities to Missy’s disappearance because her sister is dead, and she wants to find this girl alive. But the sight of that little brother sitting forlorn and alone in front of the TV, writing down ones and zeroes, responding quietly and shortly to their questions, makes her think of her brother. Sitting on the floor of her bedroom, coloring with broken crayons and insisting that Missy wasn’t dead. It leaves a lump in her throat, leaves her quiet and distracted, spacy. She tears up when they find the girl alive, has to step away while Mulder is talking to the mother. The little brother was right there beside his sister. She wipes her eyes, presses her shoulder against the wall.

She doesn’t hear Mulder coming until he’s already there, in her personal space again, his hand against the small of her back. “Hey, are you okay?” he asks in a soft voice.

She sniffles, forces a smile as she turns around. “I’m fine,” she says, but her voice wobbles. Mulder tips his head to the side questioningly, like he can tell she’s lying.

She sighs, wipes her eyes again. “I… I had a sister,” she says in a soft voice.

Mulder’s brow furrows in confusion, and then smooth out in understanding. “I thought you only have brother’s,” he says, just as softly.

She clears her throat, wrapping her arms around herself. “I do.”

She tells him the story over crappy hospital coffee, his knee bouncing up and down. He listens attentively, and at the end, he touches her hand gently. Tells her he is sorry. She never intended to tell him, but she is suddenly desperately grateful for his friendship.

4. “We could investigate it, you know,” says Mulder.

They’re sitting in a tiny Alaska airport, swathed in coats and flannel, quiet, cloaked in the distrust of the evening. I want to trust you, he’d hissed at her in a storage closet, and she’d felt the back of his neck, and she’d been filled with relief that she hadn’t lost him, that he was still who he was. She can still feel the rough pads of his fingers against her neck. She shivers. “Investigate what? The worms?” she whispers. “They’re gone now, Mulder. There’s nothing we can do.”

“No. No, not that.” He nudges her side through her coat. She looks at him, and he’s looking at her almost apologetically. “I meant your sister,” he says softly. “We could look for her.”

She swallows hard. “There’s nothing to look for, Mulder. My sister is dead. All we could do is try to find who took her, and the case is twenty years cold.”

He nods gently. He doesn’t push. She expected him to push, but he doesn’t. He just touches her side again, briefly, and shifts in his seat so he’s facing the gate again. “I just wanted you to know I’d be willing,” he says quietly. “After everything that happened with my dad… I know it’s not comparable at all, but I know what it’s like not to have answers.”

She bites her lower lip. She looks at her hands in her lap. “Mulder, do you think my sister was abducted by aliens?” she whispers.

It’s a ridiculous theory, and it’s not true. It’s not. But she’s thinking about it since that case at Lake Okobogee. About the lights. About her little brother, sticky-faced and insisting to their mother, their father, the police, everyone, that the lights took her sister. She doesn’t believe it. But she’s wondered what Mulder thinks.

He takes a deep breath, clearly uncertain. He says, “I don’t know, Scully. I really don’t. I… I remember what you told me, about your brother… and I thought maybe… but I don’t know.”

She chews at her lip. She blinks hard. She doesn’t say anything.

“Scully, d-do you think your sister was abducted by aliens?” he asks softly. “Is that why you’re asking?”

Her jaw tightens. “No,” she whispers. “No, of course not.”

5. Mulder doesn’t bring up again, and she’s grateful for that. They keep working cases, their solve rate soaring—Scully is incredibly far from her goal of debunking Mulder’s work. They keep hanging out outside of work, every now and then: trips to the Smithsonian like the ones they took after their trip to Jersey, stopping by tourist sites when cases are over, getting a drink after work sometimes. She accidentally meets his sister, Samantha, when she’s in town and instantly likes her. She’s feeling more and more comfortable in this assignment every day. Ellen asks her pressing questions about Mulder, and she waves then off immediately. They’re just friends, she tells Ellen. Just friends. No matter how many times she thinks about that night in the storage closet, the way he looks at her sometimes, the way she feels around him. They’re just friends. Good friends. She likes to hang out with him. She calls him first after her father dies, without even thinking about it.

The funeral is hard, perhaps made even harder (as most family gatherings are) by  the absence of their sister. Bill tries to support their mom above all else—he’s been trying to be the golden child above all else for twenty years. Trying to make up for what happened that night. Scully and Charlie huddle together, as they usually do. Charlie has a lot of pent-up resentment for their father, as expected, and Dana does, too, but it’s mixed with a childhood affection that wasn’t completely stifled at nine. Billy was blamed, Charlie was stifled, but Dana was forgotten. She still remembers her father reading Moby Dick to her as a little girl, calling her Starbuck. He called her Starbuck the night he died, and it almost made her cry. She’s been trying to make them happy for years.

(She’s been in denial about seeing her father’s spirit, but it’s getting harder and harder to deny. Now that it’s over, all she can think about is the questions she would’ve wanted to ask him. Were you proud of me? Did you resent me? Did you know what happened to Missy? Is she there? Is she there with you? She doesn’t know if she saw her father, but she’s been haunted by the ghost of her eleven-year-old sister for much longer.)

Charlie drives her to the airport to meet Mulder and fly to North Carolina. He doesn’t argue with her, the way Bill and her mother did; if he understands anything, it’s grief. They’re trying not to talk about their father, which somehow turns right into talking about Missy. The forbidden subject they’ve been trying to discuss for years. Scully tells her brother that Mulder offered to help her look for Melissa, and Charlie’s eyes widen in astonishment. “Seriously?” he asks incredulously. “He offered to do that? Jesus, Danes, what did you say?”

She fidgets with the child lock on the door. “I don’t know, Charlie,” she says softly. “Missy’s been gone for so long, and… you know that none of us really know what happened that night. But Mulder… Mulder thinks it was aliens. He thinks aliens took Missy.”

She’s expecting laughter, ridicule, but she gets neither. She turns her head and sees her baby brother staring at her. “You… you don’t believe that, do you?” she asks softly.

Charlie works his jaw back and forth, rubs at her forehead. “Dana, y-you know better than anyone what I think,” he says. “I never thought Missy was dead. I’m still not sure I do.”

Dana blinks hard. She hasn’t heard her brother say that their sister might be alive in years. “Charlie…” she starts tentatively.

“I don’t know if aliens is the case. But your partner… he sounds like a good friend. And a good investigator. And maybe… maybe he can help you find answers. Help us find answers.” Charlie looks at her, dead serious. “I think you should do it,” he says. “I think you should ask for his help.”

6. Dana doesn’t make any promises. She doesn’t think she can. She has a case to work. And of course, the case turns out to be personal to Mulder, and the psychic claims he can channel her father. She follows the leads clumsily, even though Mulder clearly disapproves, because she doesn’t know what else to do. She thinks some small part of her wants answers. Needs to talk to her father one last time.

And then Mulder gets hurt. Gets shot in a dirty warehouse. She shouts his name and falls to her knees beside him, thinking that she can’t lose anyone else, she can’t. First Missy, and then her father, and now her best friend? She can’t. She covers him with her jacket, presses her hand hard over the wound in his thigh, tells him in a soft voice, “Hold on, Mulder. You’ve got to hold on.”

From then on, it’s not about her father. It’s about saving Mulder, saving the kidnapped kids they came to find in the first place. Mulder lives, and the psychic invites her to his execution, promises to tell her what her father wanted to tell her. Her chance at answers. But she can’t go. Something inside her won’t let her.

She goes to Mulder’s bedside instead. She confesses she’s afraid to believe. He touches her shoulder, she reaches up and takes his cold fingers in hers. “Thank you,” she says softly, “for holding on.”

Samantha Mulder flies down to check on her brother, bringing gifts and worried questions from their mother. The three of them end up hanging out in Mulder’s hospital room, cracking up entirely too much, Mulder and Samantha egging each other on and Scully scolding them half-heartedly. It’s good distraction from her grief, but it’s hard not to look at them and think of her own broken family. Her little brother insisting Missy wasn’t dead. Her little brother asking her, just a few days ago, to dig into this.

She thought she needed a criminal for answers. Thought she needed the spirit of her father. But maybe she doesn’t need either of those things. Maybe it’s time she commits to the real reason she joined the FBI.

Samantha leaves first, to go back to her hotel, telling her brother to listen to the nurses and to his partner, and to do her a favor and not almost get himself killed again. (Scully can agree with that sentiment.) She stays, longer than she probably should, until Mulder starts to give her concerned looks from his bed. “You okay, Scully? S'getting late,” he says, his voice slightly slurry from the painkillers that are definitely starting to wear off—he was a lot loopier an hour ago. “You should go rest.”

Scully bites her lower lip. “Mulder, do you remember what you said to me in Alaska?” she asks softly. “About my sister? That you would help me look into her?”

His eyes widen, soft and sincere. “Yes,” he says immediately.

She swallows, looking down at her lap. She says slowly, gingerly, “I-I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve talked to my little brother about it, a-and I know what he thinks… and I think I’m ready. I want to find out what happened to Melissa.” She looks back up, meets Mulder’s dark eyes. “If you’re still willing,” she adds tentatively.

He nods immediately, in an earnest way that suggests the painkillers are definitely still in his system. “Of course I am, Scully,” he says immediately, grabbing her hand and tugging it in his. “Of course.”

She swallows the lump in her throat. She smiles. She doesn’t know how to thank him.

It feels right, like maybe this is why she was put on the X-Files. (Which is a silly assumption, because she knows exactly why she was put on the X-Files, and she’s sure she’s doing the exact opposite, but it feels right.) Like maybe she and Mulder were always meant to walk into the darkness together. To find answers.

[kcwcommentary]

VLD1x11 – “Crystal Venom”

1x11 – “Crystal Venom”

The title of this episode is one of my least favorite episode titles from the entirety of the show. It feels so clunky to me.

We open with Allura talking to the hologram of the copy of her father’s mind. Clearly, she’s missing him and feels lonely in this 10,000 year later world she woke in. Through his dialog, the show continues connecting Allura to the theme of sacrifice. The show makes her character arc so bleak and dire all the time. Coran comes along to tell Allura she needs to rest; looks to me like she was resting. She was using the holographic system to give herself a pleasant environment to sit in, she was having some tea. Sitting in bed isn’t always the most restful action to take, Coran.

The team seeks to extract Sendak’s memories under the premise of getting intelligence about Galra troop locations. Of course, a person’s memory would be less reliant and less detailed than actual data, so I still can’t help but think it’d be more useful to try it get it from some Galra computer system. Pidge: “How exactly does this work?” Coran proceeds to skip over how it works and just says the information is stored on a data storage device once extracted, so question not answered. I like the time-lapse sequence of them waiting. Keith gets restless and goes to train. Pidge goes back to her lab. Hunk is hungry. Coran has a lot of other work to do. I love the one moment in the sequence where Lance is all up in Shiro’s face staring at him, and how through the whole sequence, Shiro stands in exactly the same spot. At the end, Lance wants to go off and get some chill. The scene does a fair job of tailoring each character’s exit to be character-specific.

Hunk gets attacked by the food goo dispenser, and Pidge comes to his aid. I guess it’s mildly humorous? Coran has assigned Lance to help him with ship maintenance. They’re cleaning the healing pods, and Lance gets trapped in one. I would totally freak out too, Lance! Keith is swordfighting, but the training robot won’t shut off. Obviously, the ominous lingering shot on the Galra’s purple crystal in Pidge’s lab means things are malfunctioning because of it. The episode does a nice job of building atmosphere for the episode, creating an almost ghost-story vibe to everything (even without Lance making it obvious by saying the ship’s haunted). Shiro’s talking to the unconscious Sendak definitely adds to the creepiness.

“The ship might seem like a fantastical, magical creature to you, but it’s really just a big embodiment of advanced, supernatural technology that cannot be explained by science alone,” Coran says. I really, really don’t like the bigger-than-science-can-explain fake-poignancy lines this show gives. The ship is the product of engineering; if you can’t explain it, then you wouldn’t be able to build it.

Hologram-Alfor wakes Allura up in her room. Seeing her room, yeah, it’s a big room, big bed, but it feels stuffy, so I don’t blame her for wanting to sit in a field of flowers, even if it was a holographic field.

Lance’s freaking out over the various things happening to him on the ship is so on point. I’m not sure if it’s bravery or foolishness on his part to go charging into the air lock because he hears obviously-not-really Coran’s voice saying he’s trapped in an airlock. Given malfunctions, it would make sense to be at least a bit cautious, which Lance isn’t here. But he is rushing in because he thinks someone’s asked for help, so that’s endearing. He ends up the one trapped though, and the airlock is in the process of opening.

Shiro continues his interrogation of the unconscious Sendak. He starts hearing Sendak’s voice, and it really freaks him out. There feels like there’s something more, something unexplored about Sendak’s taunt about how Shiro should join Zarkon. Aside from Shiro’s time as a gladiator, we don’t really know much of what happened to him for the year he was captured by the Galra. It feels like this taunt from Sendak is supposed to be referencing something about that time not yet revealed to the audience.

Hunk is hanging out with Pidge. Given that Pidge is a technology person and Hunk’s an engineer, it makes sense that their intellectual focuses would result in them spending time together, and thus potentially becoming friends. As much as I get Pidge would want to study the Galra crystal, that the Castle has a lot of needed repairs, as Coran’s said, I would think having two people skilled with technology like Pidge and Hunk helping him would make sense, but they’re not. I guess since the source of the problem is the Galra crystal, the episode does need them messing around with it. It turns off the artificial gravity in this room. Pidge asks Hunk if he “accidentally hit the anti-gravity switch.” Anti-gravity would be the opposite of artificial gravity. This is a space ship in space; there would be no need for an anti-gravity system since just being in space puts you in a low- or zero-G situation. This really is simple science that the show should get right. Also, the tables and equipment wouldn’t suddenly start floating upward just because artificial gravity was turned off. Unless something acted against the tables and the equipment to overcome the objects’ inertia, they’d stay where they were (and it can’t be the ship since the objects were moving with the ship already, so they have the same inertial reference frame).

Keith is still fighting the robot, but thankfully comes upon Lance as he’s being “sucked” out into space (you’re actually blown out, not sucked out). Keith saves Lance and disposes of the robot in the same action. They jointly freak out over their experience.

Allura’s sitting in the flower field talking to Hologram-Alfor, who tells her that he can take her home to Altea, and she wants to go. Cut to a different angle and perspective on the scene, and we see the mice watching her from her bed. If we’re to assume that the holographic system is limited to that one room she was in at the beginning of the episode, then she’s hallucinating here rather than looking at holograms. Or are their holographic projectors all over the ship sophisticated enough to make it look like one’s in a flower field outside of that one room? If the issue is that the Galra crystal is corrupting the Castle Ship’s systems, then it would suggest it would have to be the latter, but I don’t think we’ve seen anything to suggest there’s a ship-wide holographic system. If she’s hallucinating, is it supposed to be from her having performed the ceremony on the Balmera? Being drained of quintessence causes one to hallucinate? I don’t feel the episode is clear enough on this.

Pidge has Hunk kick her across the room trying to get to a control panel, but the gravity comes back on when the door opens, and Lance, Keith, and Coran come in. I like that Hunk and Pidge fail in their effort; it’s more realistic to not always succeed. They discuss the problem being the Galra crystal corrupting the system. Maybe Sendak just didn’t anticipate whatever compatibility issue that’s happening now, but the Galra did intend the crystal to power the ship, so it is a bit odd that it’s causing the ship to not work correctly when the point of the Galra using it was to power the ship. The nature of this crystal doesn’t really make sense to me. The Galra had taken over the Balmera in order to harvest crystals from there to use as power sources, so what makes this purple crystal Sendak had installed on the ship different?

Back to Shiro. “We’re connected, you and me,” Sendak’s ghostly, disembodied voice says. “Both part of the Galra Empire. You’ve been broken and reformed. Just look at your hand. It’s the strongest part of you. Embrace it. The others don’t know what you know, they haven’t seen what you’ve seen. Face it, you’ll never beat Zarkon. He’s already defeated you.” Shiro freaks out. He’s still got deep trauma from what happened to him during his year in captivity. I guess there are two possibilities here. One, Shiro is hallucinating Sendak’s voice because of his trauma. If so, then the things Sendak’s voice says are Shiro’s fears being expressed. Two, Shiro is not hallucinating but the ship’s corrupted systems is somehow creating Sendak’s voice and having it say things, potentially influenced by the memories being extracted by Coran’s process. In that case, it would suggest Sendak is actively taunting Shiro. Either way, this scene is a big part of why the writing not letting Shiro defeat Sendak in season 7 is disrespectful of Shiro as a character.

“Do you really think a monster like you could be a Voltron Paladin?” Sendak’s voice says. These verbal attacks on Shiro are so specific. I think this might be one of the show’s deepest scenes. This line is interesting knowing that in later seasons Shiro’s clone will wrestle with similar thoughts about being broken, being used by the Galra, wanting to be a Paladin but having people say he isn’t, having people call him a monster. I don’t know what to make of Sendak calling him a monster here though. I don’t see how it could be connected to the clone program. I guess maybe it’s just getting at Shiro feeling bad about what all he had to do to survive over the course of the year. He had been an eager space explorer and pilot, but he had to become a fierce, physical fighter to survive. Maybe he thinks that the brutality he experienced as a gladiator makes him a monster.

He punches Sendak’s tube, and it looks like Sendak wakes (but that could just have been Shiro hallucinating it), and he hits one button and it ejects Sendak into space. What is this ship’s system!!? Are all stasis pods on this ship set up to eject the people in them into space? Why would the two systems be connected like that? It’s a nice height of tension having Shiro eject Sendak, but I don’t see why the ship would be designed to work that way.

The ship continues to trick Allura, now having her piloting the ship right into a star. Pidge says the star’s about to explode, but I don’t know how she can determine that just by looking at it. Allura thinks the star is Altea, but through her hallucination, she can hear Coran’s voice. He gets through to her by asking why there’s no fragrance to the flower she thinks she’s holding. This makes it seem like the flower isn’t a hallucination but a hologram. We don’t see anyone else seeing the flower field though, so maybe Coran’s only going off of hearing her talk about the flower? Allura’s mind clears. Hologram-Altor tells her that he’s trying to kill them all because he doesn’t think Zarkon can be defeated. Hologram-Alfor briefly speaks with his normal voice to tell Allura to disconnect his power source. I would have liked it better if Allura doing so was solely her doing and not just her doing what her father tells her to do.

Coran says that if they disconnect the power source they’ll lose Alfor forever. Allura still decides it must be done. It is an emotional decision. I don’t see how it’s technologically realistic though; how would being not connected to a power source cause the data of the holographic program to cease to exist? It’s still really sad though.

“You don’t have to make this sacrifice,” Hologram-Alfor says. It’s a direct callback to the beginning of the episode when he told her that her being a leader would necessitate her making sacrifices. (Why the glass shattered just because the power was disconnected from the system, I have no idea.)

They escape just as the star explodes. Eh, it’s a cliché last-second escape, but it is beautifully animated.

I like hearing Allura afterward make clear that the hologram was not her father. It sort of marks her acceptance of her loss in a way that she had not been able to do before.

While I have a few small complaints about the realism of a few elements of this episode, and I don’t like the title, I do like the episode a lot. (I think because I like the episode as much as I do is why I wish it had a better title.) While the other characters do have their respective parts in the episode, the most emotional, impactful scenes are those involving Shiro and those involving Allura. While I’ve enjoyed a lot of the show up to this point, this is the first episode to make me really feel hit in my emotions.

[garden-ghoul]

come listen to me talk about wizard sexism, see wizard sexism neatly resolved, and continue to have wizard sexism in every other book about wizards pratchett writes after 1987! time: 17:28. transcript under the cut. 

Hello and welcome to It’s Yelling All the Way Down, where ONCE AGAIN we’re talking about wizards. But at least we’ve got some witches to balance them out. Yes, this week I’ve rolled up Equal Rites.

I would like it to be clearly understood that this book is not wacky. Only dumb redheads in fifties' sitcoms are wacky.

No, it's not zany, either.

This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn't pretend to answer all or any of these questions.

It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless the characters get totally beyond the author's control.

Yeah. You remember in the Sourcery notes I mentioned how Sir Terry likes to talk about “if a man was a witch he’d be a wizard”? This book is Completely About That. And he wasn’t really lying in the introduction, it’s very seldom even funny. Maybe he was just trying to get away from his first two books, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, which are zany to the point of irritation as I recall. Despite being pretty obnoxious, it’s a good introduction because it clearly states the purpose of the book: to be a response to pop culture concepts of wizards in the 1980s. He describes Discworld as a place “where things are less as they are and more as people imagine them to be,” which makes it the perfect vehicle for discussions of culture!

The book begins, again, with a wizard dying and passing on his staff. He’s come to Bad Ass to meet the newly born eighth son of an eighth son—a smith, as it happens. Granny Weatherwax is the midwife and she does keep trying to tell the smith and the wizard that the eighth son is a first daughter, but it’s too late! The baby has already held the staff. She’s a wizard now. Which I guess answers how Rincewind became a wizard—presumably he inherited it because no-one could have predicted his total lack of magical aptitude, although I don’t remember him having a staff or any kind of magical artifact. Is that why he’s such an awful wizard? Well, after the wizard dies Granny tells Smith to burn the staff, because she’s adamant that a woman shouldn’t be a wizard because “it’s the wrong kind of magic” and “she’d never grasp it.” Which is a bizarrely strong sexist opinion for her to have, but then, she is a traditionalist. She tries to destroy the staff but it’s not having that, and she gives up in a huff.

We skip some time. The little girl, Eskarina Smith, grows up with a love of the outdoors. She has the protection of her staff (which is so bound to her that she’s hurt when it is) and a mean apple tree (which turns out to be the wizard, reincarnated). She also seems to have an instinct for the rules of magic and the kind of laws it obeys. We start out with a really charming little kids’ adventure where Esk and two of her brothers go to Granny’s cottage to bring her some food and find her apparently dead on her bed. Esk has heard there will be demons trying to take the body and has barred all the doors and windows, but something is trying to get in the chimney, so she runs out the door and into the thick snowy night. She comes across a pack of very hungry wolves… which are summarily dispatched when her staff flies over and beats them all up. Granny gets back into her own body after a stint as a crow and takes her in to talk magic.

Esk’s instinct for magic manifests as a leaning toward fire spells, something any apprentice wizard can do but something a witch can’t, because a fire hasn’t got a mind. An interesting distinction early on: a witch manipulates minds, not physical properties of matter.

Borrowing was the sort of thing wizards could never know. If it occurred to them to enter a creature's mind they'd do it like a thief, not out of wickedness but because it simply wouldn't occur to them to do it any other way, the daft buggers. And what good would it do to take over an owl's body? You couldn't fly, you needed to spend a lifetime learning. But the gentle way was to ride in its mind, steering it as gently as a breeze stirs a leaf.

Granny figures if Esk learns witch magic it will overwrite the wizard magic or something, so she takes Esk as an apprentice. Witch’s magic is knowing things other people don’t know. It’s making yourself strange to other people. It’s watching closely for signs and pattern recognition. Granny tells Esk it relies on “headology:” if people think you’re doing magic, then you are. But also… you can directly manipulate minds. She teaches Esk Borrowing, but Esk has uh wizard thought patterns from the staff, I guess? And she wants to take over the eagle’s mind that they’re practicing on. Esk takes full control and jets off, leaving Granny to carry her body home.

The next day Granny has to get the staff to carry her to where the eagle is because Esk has completely lost herself in it and her mind needs to be, hm, manually extracted. She sleeps deep and in the morning Granny gives in and presents her with the staff. Esk turns out to have an instinct for FIREBALLS, which is the last straw: Granny decides she’s got to study at the university, otherwise she might burn down something important. Also, she turned her brother into a pig.

Granny is going to escort her to the University despite not knowing where it is. It’s actually kind of endearing how Granny has never been out of the mountains, doesn’t know anything, and is EXTREMELY suspicious of anyone from the city. (Here read: town of a couple hundred people or more.)

Esk does her best to get lost in the crowd and inadvertently curses a bunch of people; has a misadventure with an innkeeper who wants to use her staff to turn all his beer into brandy; and accidentally stows away on a merchant boat going down the river. We get a very cute little section detailing her powers, which partly consist of seeing things as they really are (a power I suspect wizards and witches share), and partly of rearranging the world to be more convenient (that one’s all wizard). But power, when you’re a small kid, doesn’t necessarily make people respect you. Most of the time it makes them want to take advantage of you, so she has to leave the boat merchants and fall in with a caravan.

In fact, she happens to fall in with a caravan that has a couple of wizards, who are for protection and/or starting fires in the wilderness. Esk spends some time talking to the teen apprentice wizard, Simon, who’s basically a cruel caricature of everything teens have anxiety about: acne, speech impediments, and being good at things right up until you try to show them to someone. She also talks to his master wizard, who is very wizard-stylish and explains VERY condescendingly why women are too stupid to be wizards. Esk runs off into the wilderness in tears and we get this fabulous bit of narration:

Why was it that, when she heard Granny ramble on about witchcraft she longed for the cutting magic of wizardry, but whenever she heard Treatle speak in his high-pitched voice she would fight to the death for witchcraft? She'd be both, or none at all. And the more they intended to stop her, the more she wanted it.

She'd be a witch and a wizard too. And she would show them.

I feel like Pratchett is at his best when he’s writing about kids crying in frustration about how tough it is to be a kid. And isn’t this a huge gender mood? This is kind of how I feel about gender, at least. Pratchett is very willing to write gender-nonconforming girls and I only wish he would do boys the same courtesy. But women wanting to be men is basically a fantasy staple because a man is Empirically the better thing to be, SO. Blech.

Esk goes to sleep in a bramble and has what looks to be the familiar Dungeon Dimension dream that apparently all wizards just have every night from opening their minds to the Things that lurk outside reality. Wow that sucks. Instead she has a dream that she’s trying to get into an enormous door by blasting at it with her staff, but it absorbs everything she throws at it and then sniggers at her. When she wakes up she is sure it’s a True Dream, as she tells Granny, who has caught up to her finally. (Spoilers: it absolutely is a true dream, but I’m not sure whether that’s a coincidence).

They make it to Ankh-Morpork and get lodgings in the most dangerous part of the city because who’s going to rob Granny Weatherwax? In fact she makes off pretty well because a city needs a witch even if they’ve never met one.

She was at first annoyed, and then embarrassed, and then flattered; her clients had money, which was useful, but they also paid in respect, and that was a rock-hard currency.

There’s a subplot where Granny starts putting on airs, which is as close as this book gets to comic relief, and it’s really cute.

Esk does manage to get into the University with Simon and his master, who apparently thinks it will be funny to bring a nine-year-old in to be laughed at by a bunch of grown men. Simon, who is applying for entry, demonstrates some kind of very difficult and impressive spell that not only invites in the Dungeon Dimensions but makes him pass out as well. Esk asks if she can be admitted too but when called upon to demonstrate any wizard magic she gets stage fright and everyone laughs at her. Poor mite. When Granny hears about her horrible failure she gets Esk in the back way: by ingratiating herself with the head housekeeper and getting Esk hired as a servant.

Esk has an easy time! She gets to sleep in until 5 AM and the staff does all the sweeping for her. She can listen in on lectures but they’re all nonsense, and she comes to the conclusion that if she wants to be a wizard she’s going to have to learn how to read. So she goes to the library and picks up the first book she sees, which is the Demonology Maleficorum of Henchanse the Unsatisfactory (not a good first book to pick). And she finds Simon, of course, a great reader.  Simon is a bit of an odd one; sometimes when he’s just giving a talk the Dungeon Dimension starts to bleed into reality, and again in the library we get the impression that it just follows him around waiting for its opportunity to get in. The books start to become agitated. The floor starts to become sand. And Esk’s staff whacks Simon to make him stop being a conduit for extradimensional horrors. It seems to want to murder him, which on a utilitarian value-scale seems like a pretty good idea. Especially when we find out that Simon won’t wake for days afterward: like someone gone Borrowing, his mind is outside his head. He’s basically been taken prisoner. And in a delightful callback to Granny’s Borrowing at the very beginning, she warns Esk that something is probably going to try to get into his body and pretend to be him.

Granny goes into the Great Wizard Hall to yell at the wizards so they know what’s going on, but  gets completely distracted having a duel with the Arch-chancellor. REALLY, Granny. So it’s up to Esk to save Simon and the universe. To my delight, when she encounters the locked door into Simon’s room, rather than trying to blast it open she solves the problem the witch’s way: she Borrows the University building and  gently uncurls one finger.

She wakes in the Dungeon Dimension, watching a thing that looks like Simon shaking a little snow globe with her entire planet inside, trying to crack it open. She steals it and sets about kicking all the Things in the shins that are watching him, and to her surprise they fold like wet cardboard. At least until they figure out they can hurt Simon to make her do what they want.

Outside of Esk’s head, Granny and the Arch-chancellor have gone on a perilous journey in the storm to retrieve her staff, which she threw away after it sensibly tried to murder Simon. Granny puts it on her unconscious body, but she can’t use it, and somehow Granny deduces this is because she isn’t an official wizard yet. So she gets the Arch-chancellor to declare her one. Suddenly dream-Esk has her staff, and the Things are never so afraid as when she refuses to use it. They feed off magic, see, and if all the wizards stopped using it, why that’d be terrifying!

“I'd really like to work this out,” said Simon again, turning the staff over and over in his hands. “We could set up some experiments, you know, into deliberately not using magic. We could carefully not draw an octogram on the floor, and we could deliberately not call up all sorts of things, and—it makes me sweat just to think about it!”

The kids are all right! They come out just fine. Esk receives a wizard hat and for some baffling reason Simon has left his stutter in the dungeon dimensions, because no story can have a happy ending if someone still has a speech impediment at the end. Is Sir Terry implying that only insatiably curious magicians stutter? That the stutter represents unwise magic use? Does he think people only stutter out of a lack of confidence? Anyway, in the short epilogue Granny and the Arch-chancellor fix wizard sexism and Esk and Simon develop a whole new branch of magic that is incomprehensible but very nice. Sir Terry fails to mention this for the next thirty years. The end.

(I mean, maybe he mentioned it in Unseen Academicals or something and I forgot? And I’ve heard Esk is in the 5th Tiffany Aching book. But honestly this is such a bombshell to drop RIGHT at the beginning of your series and never follow up on. I’m disappointed in him! Because this is a really, really exciting paradigm shift to leave us with, and not getting to hear about it is like torture! I can’t wait to see Esk becoming a confident young woman who argues with everyone and has loads of cool friends! Say what you like about Sir Terry, say what you like about him being kind of sexist, but he really does understand that women are people, which is a low bar that fantasy OFTEN does not pass, still in 2019.)

 Well, anyway. Time for themes.

First theme: Gender is fake and the only thing that really influences how people think is the people and/or wizard staffs that bring them up.

Second theme: Gender is extremely real and fucks people up constantly. Obviously magical philosophy is used as a standin for gender, here, which makes Esk bigender or possibly trigender. Simon can come too. I’m here to make everyone trans.

It also has slightly more helpful things to say about Being Different than our last book, Sourcery. Sourcery tells us that if we have needs and abilities that don’t fit in our best option is exile in the eternal loneliness dimension. Equal Rites tells us that if we have needs and abilities that don’t fit in we will be mercilessly mocked for it but there may be a way to carve out a space if we find other weirdos like ourselves!

Relatedly, being a kid or a teen basically sucks, because no-one will take you seriously, or if they do they’ll try to make you into whatever they want you to be. I think this book captures a little of the inherent messiness of growing up, and once again advises readers to try to find someone else who’s having a hard time to commiserate with.

 So that’s this week’s thought: in what ways are you weird? In what places are you uncomfortable? How can you make these places more comfortable for yourself and other weird people? What unlikely alliances can you make?

Honestly this is my favorite bit of the podcast. All right, all right, we’re done here. Shabbat shalom and have a great week, everyone! Bye!

(non-transcript note: do you want to cohost an episode of yelling all the way down? talk to me! I’d love to do a book club thing! you WILL have to be patient with me while we figure out how to record a voice call, though.)

[punkbakugo]

Kacchan & Deku's Subconscious Understanding: A Sports Festival Analysis

“...They’ve know each other since they were kids, so it could be that they had something in common, something that they understood about each other since they were little. That’s why [Bakugou] tends to pick fights with Deku, and Deku, despite it all, tends to stick together with him. I think they have a subconscious understanding.”

-Masahiko Minami, head of Studio BONES (x)

I’ve wanted to talk about this arc with regards to Bakugou and Deku’s relationship for a while now because their dynamic in it is so interesting to me. The Sports Festival Arc focuses mainly on Todoroki, his backstory, and his character development and Bakugou and Deku only interact directly once or twice throughout the entire arc, but it’s their lack of direct interaction that actually makes their influence on each other shine through all the more.

The first instance is at the very beginning of the arc, two weeks before the Sports Festival. When the festival is announced, everyone gets pumped. The students are told that this is one of three (since it happens every year) major opportunities they will get to showcase their talent with hopes to get scouted. It's touted as a pretty make or break situation for them and as such everyone takes it very seriously. Except, at first, for Deku. In his mind, he already has the #1 hero as a mentor and so he doesn’t have the motivation to stand out at the festival, he doesn’t have the need, he’s complacent with where he is.

And this stands out because not only do his closest friends’ enthusiasm (particularly Ochako’s hyper-enthusiasm) not sway him, but a direct request from All Might to use the Sports Festival to announce his presence doesn’t even convince him. His idol is telling him this festival is an integral step for him as the #1 hero’s successor and yet

Even a threat in the form of Shinsou declaring war on 1-A and his intent to use his performance in the Sports Festival to steal a place in the class for himself doesn’t seem to motivate him properly. It isn’t until an offhand line from Bakugou (which reminds him of Bakugou’s declaration after the Battle Trial) that the importance of this festival sinks in for Deku.  

It’s Bakugou’s words that finally inspire him to take this seriously when even All Might’s didn’t. It’s Bakugou, the way it always is, that spurs him on.

And that’s just the beginning.

I intend on going more into detail on this in a later meta, but Bakugou and Deku are two sides of the same coin. And by coin, I mean the greatest hero. At the core of it, Bakugou embodies the 'winning' aspect of being a hero and Deku embodies the 'saving' aspect of being a hero. These are what they admire in All Might respectively and what drives them in their pursuit of becoming heroes. But their sole emphasis on either 'winning' or 'saving' unbalances the two of them. However, as I've stated in a previous post (spoilers for the manga), Deku has the upper-hand in that, in addition to his admiration of All Might, he has his admiration of Bakugou, his self-described "image of victory".

After the obstacle course, All Might expresses his concern that Deku's innate selflessness would be his downfall during the Sports Festival but after Deku's victory he’s relieved that he was proved wrong. And how did Deku come in first in the obstacle course?

Yeah. Taking inspiration from Bakugou has, yet again, proven to be one of the keys to Deku’s success and forward progress as a hero.

The difference in their philosophies is something I’m going to come back to. For now, onto some of Bakugou’s side of things, because for this arc the counterpart of Deku taking inspiration from Bakugou is Bakugou’s fixation on Deku.

At the very beginning of the Sports Festival, Bakugou makes his blunt pledge to “be number one”. His classmates were dismayed but not surprised and to everyone else it just reinforced their view of him as an arrogant ass. For Deku, our resident Kacchan expert, he understands Bakugou’s words and actions for what they are: He’s purposefully cornering himself.

This is a nice little scene to show how much insight Deku has when it comes to Bakugou, but it’s also indicative of just how much focus Bakugou tends to put on Deku. Bakugou’s intent to corner himself is made clear, and then he immediately goes out of his way to bump into Deku in a subtle declaration of war (which people just love giving him in this arc). It’s also a bit of a callback to something he said in middle school.

The direct translation for what Bakugou says is something along the lines of "standing in the same ring" as him but the sentiment behind it is very much the same (he is, in fact, in the same ring as Deku right now) and so I love how this translation makes the parallel stand out so much more since Bakugou's silent little challenge is a literal rubbing bumping of shoulders. It’s an indirect acknowledgment of Deku’s strength, because as much as Bakugou would like to deny it, on a subconscious level he does think highly of him and, therefore, singles him out like this. He is, the way he always seems to be, using Deku as a means to measure his own strength.

And he really did intend to face Deku at some point during the festival. I mean, look how disappointed he seems when Deku loses his match against Todoroki. (I almost want to say that it feels like he expected Deku and himself to end up the final two in the tournament.)

Bakugou’s fixation on Deku really just permeates the entire arc. There’re little things, like the way his consistent preoccupation with Deku stands out when we see that he couldn't be bothered to remember his classmates quirks let alone their names. He doesn't even remember Kirishima's name at first even though they had to fight together during the attack on USJ.

And there are much bigger things, like in his match with Ochako, despite being one of the only people to not underestimate her for being a girl, he still underestimates her as a person and that the reason Bakugou was so cautious in his fight against her was because he knew she was friends with Deku and therefore had to have had some sort of scheme from him up her sleeve. There was no real reason for him to assume this, he just did because Bakugou can’t seem to keep Deku off his mind.

Because if there’s anything Bakugou expects from Deku, it’s scheming and being needlessly self-sacrificing. And the fight gave him so much trouble that he was convinced it had to be Deku’s plan and had to be told that it was actually Ochako herself that gave him trouble.

Even Bakugou’s petty little rivalry with Todoroki is at least somewhat dependent on Deku. The roots date back to the insecurity Bakugou felt when watching Todoroki in action for the first time back at the Battle Trials, but actual rivalry was kick-started when Todoroki challenged Deku before the festival, since Bakugou calls Todoroki out for “declaring war on the wrong person”. Of course, Bakugou would obviously hate one of the strongest in the class challenging Deku instead of him, but he always seems a bit irritated when Deku accepts these challenges and expresses desire to beat Todoroki, something that Bakugou probably believes should be reserved for him. And like I said before, Deku was the one Bakugou wanted to end up fighting in the tournament, not Todoroki.

And speaking of Todoroki, let’s move on to Bakugou and Deku’s respective matches against him. There’s a lot to unpack, but I’ll try not to ramble too much.

Its interesting to note that, despite having multiple examples of Bakugou's analytical skills (figuring out Dark Shadow's weakness to light, realizing Kirishima wouldn't last in a drawn out fight against him because of something he thoughtlessly said, the same way he figured out that Kurogiri had to have a physical body back at USJ) Deku and Todoroki's fight is the first time we actually get a proper internal glimpse into Bakugou's thought process. And it's remarkably similar to Deku's. 

(coincidence or not, I find this mirroring of habits way too endearing)

We even get a moment where, not only do Bakugou and Deku come to the same conclusion about todoroki's powers at basically the exact same time, but they use the exact same phrasing to make a point.

But it doesn’t stop there. In the middle of Deku’s match with Todoroki, he gets frustrated by the fact that Todoroki’s paying more attention to what will make his father angry rather than taking the match seriously and giving it his all. To this, Deku yells, “Where are you looking?”

When it’s Bakugou’s turn to face Todoroki and he accidentally waltzes into Todoroki’s prep room before the match, he gets frustrated by the fact that Todoroki is too busy ruminating on his match with Deku and thinking about his mother to pay Bakugou any mind. To this, Bakugou yells, “Where are you looking?”

(I had to use FA here instead of Viz Media because they completely changed Deku’s line in the official translation)

Todoroki even points it out; they both said the exact same thing to him.

There’s also this nice little parallel between the two’s matches that shows off their similar drive and motivation.

And the last thing I want to mention is regarding Deku yelling for Todoroki to do his best and not lose during Bakugou vs. Todoroki. He's obviously still concerned about Todoroki's familial issues holding him back, but I can't help but feel like Bakugou's own rant about not wanting to win against someone if they're not giving it their all pushed his little outburst, especially since Bakugou specifically mentions Deku and how there'd be no point if he couldn't do better than him and win against Todoroki at 100%, getting him to use his fire like Deku managed to. And regardless of whether or not Deku was consciously trying to help Bakugou out as well, attempting to motivate Todoroki to use his fire was something that Bakugou seemed to genuinely appreciate.

It’s just. Those two are so ridiculously in sync when they don’t have their personal issues to navigate around. I love it because it shows that, despite the fact that they’re opposites in so many ways, they still have this unifying core to them. Combined with the way their differences balance each other out, their innate similarities allow them a certain level of subconscious understanding (title drop) which is why, when they actually manage work together, they make a great fucking team.

And to tie this all up, I’m coming back to an earlier point to say that the outcomes of their respective matches against Todoroki exemplify their differing philosophies and more specifically, what that makes them lack, that unbalance I mentioned. Deku gets so caught up trying to help Todoroki face his demons that, while he manages to get him to use his fire, he loses the fight and winds up permanently injured for his efforts. Bakugou wins his fight, living up to the pledge he made at the beginning of the festival, but he fails to get Todoroki to use his fire resulting in an empty victory that he feels he didn't earn. 

Two sides of the same coin indeed.

[whipped-for-kpop-fics]

BTS “badboy” au

Thank you for the request anon! I hope you like it

Requests for bts, got7 and exo are open so don’t be shy!

Hoseok (J-Hope)

That one guy that can't handle his alcohol but no-one realises?

They think he's gone crazy at predrinks so when he's drunk after a few drinks at a party no-one calls him out

Party animal bad boy

Throws all the best parties

Lives for parties

If there's a party, you can bet your left foot Hoseok is there

Just out to have a good time

Carefree drunk that throws himself around

Always drunkenly breaking shit

That guy that has a collection of traffic cones in his apartment and no idea how they got there

Honestly has a lot of random shit in his apartment he doesn't remember stealing

Luckily his housemate his usually there to nudge his brain back into function and make the memories surface

Once, Hoseok tried to return someone's mailbox and almost got arrested for it

Has never tried to return anything he stole since

But he always feels bad looking at the items around his house so he sells a lot of it to his rich guy that seems to want all this shit Hoseok sells

Winds up with all this cash in his hands which is way too much for the junk he steals but he doesn't complain

People start thinking he's drug dealing from his house when a car with blacked out windows rolls up every Saturday without fail 

The more this car comes around, the nicer Hoseok's clothes get

Hoseok sells everything he steals except for one stupid garden gnome that stands pride of place on the front porch

He just can't seem to part with it and he has no idea why

(I know the gif isn’t relevant to the writing but I HAD to use it)

Jimin

Back in school, Jimin was a shy, timid little angel boy

Never did any wrong

Always smiling

Then he goes away for Uni after a gap year travelling and when he comes back for the holidays he finds out his parents are divorcing thanks some guy?

Storms straight around to this guys house and is surprised to find the guy is younger than him and that makes Jimin even angrier

Beats seven shades of black and blue into this homewrecker leaving him a bloody mess on his doorstep

When he goes back to uni and steps into his first lecture, that same guy is sat there right next to Jimin's usual seat

Results in another beating and the pure rage and ferocity Jimin emits starts his reputation for being a really fucking dangerous guy

Nothing Jimin does gets him back his angel boy rep so he decides to live up to his new feared reputation

One day sees the homewrecker and he doesn't care anymore

Homewrecker approaches Jimin when he spots him and asks him to teach him to fight 

Jimin refuses and after two straight weeks of pestering, they negotiate Jimin coming to his rescue when he needs it

He never expected to get called every damn week to rescue this kid but it makes them bond

Honestly, the guy isn't all that bad, except that he thinks with his dick

Jimin gets some tips unwillingly but it somehow results in them sometimes getting into a threesome and they soon make a habit out of it

Jungkook

It started with one older girl liking him

And now here he is three years later known as the guy that fucks married women and breaks relationships

He never intended to break up the first relationship

But he can't seem to stop now that he started

He's just weak for older women

There's a rumour that he fucked his friend's mum and that's why he doesn't have any real close friends anymore

The rumour is actually true tho so he doesn't blame anyone

but she was just so fucking pretty and naked and throwing herself at him

She was the start of his unhealthy obsession with married women

One time he split up the parents of this guy and it wound up getting Jungkook beaten the shit out of

But somehow he made friends with this guy and he's now Jungkook's back up?

Neither of them know how it happened but it did and they meet up often 

Jungkook never fails to mention the fact he fucked his mum

"That motherfucker" "No, I'm the motherfucker" 

sometimes Jungkook will go for a girl his own age but there's no challenge so it doesn't always get him in the mood enough

Once a rumour spread about him having a problem getting it up because of his inability to be attracted to girls his own age

The rumour left when Jungkook fucked the uni's entire female swim team in one night just to get his rep back

Namjoon (RM)

Although he's quiet and doesn't get in any trouble willingly

He always ends up in the middle of it

There was this one time he told this rich guy about some gun and ever since the rich guy seems obsessed with firearms

Another time, he got arrested for being with a guy vandalising a wall

He had even been accused of sleeping with a married woman by the woman's son

This guy has terrible luck

Especially when out with his housemate that's a bit of a kleptomaniac when drunk

Honestly, Namjoon often debates just getting up and moving town

But, he's too attached to the life he made for himself

Pretty much settles for being an accidental "bad boy"

Helps his housemate throw great parties and makes the music when his housemate learns he can rap

Quickly gets a name for himself in the underground rap scene

His usual accidental destructive personality and the company he keeps makes him king of the underground scene pretty quick

At one point, these guys start appearing at his house for parties regularly

Soon he's part of this group of five and he's somehow the leader

At first he tries to correct people when they claim he's a gang leader

But they never believe him so now he's a "gang leader" of these idiots that have claimed his home at his base

(^”I’m a gang leader? since when?”)

Seokjin (Jin)

Rich AF and uses that to his advantage

Turns up unannounced to big events and tossed a wad of cash at the entrance and bam, he's in

Likes old weapons because one day this guy told him some history on a particular gun and the guy looked so into it that Jin himself found his heart pulled to weapons

Kind of hopes that one day he'll meet his history buff again 

Not very secretive about his large collection of firearms

He doesn't see why he should be, it's not illegal

Technically, he's not actually doing anything wrong

Except that one time he accidentally bought from a black market arms dealer

But that was a long time ago and people should really get over it already

Actually has a permit to carry a gun with him at all times just because he wants to show off his collection

New weapon strapped to his body every day and people notice

Everyone thinks he's involved in gang stuff

Little do they know his gun is never even loaded

One day he spots his history buff going into a house and totally doesn't wind up stalking him to see if that's where he lives

Jin knows it's weird and fucking creepy but he doesn't care

Notices this buffs housemate always posting stuff online to sell...Jin hasn't paid someone to find his buff online or anything and learn everything about him...not at all...

Jin wants to meet his little nerd again so he buys literally everything the roommate puts up for sale in hopes of meeting his buff again

Doesn't work

Somehow the buff is always out when Jin arrives to collect his purchase

Without fail tosses whatever he bought in a dumpster on the way home a little begrudgingly

He spent way too much money on the item just to throw it out but seriously, who really wants a collection of 14 traffic cones?

Taehyung (V)

Artist of the spray cans and public surfaces variety

"graffiti is art too!" 

Honestly, he's really shit at it, he's much better with a pen and paper

But that doesn't stop him

You can guarantee that every night he's out painting the town

Often alone but sometimes his new friend joins him

Tae often gets too caught up in his artwork that he doesn't notice the world around him

That's kind of why his new friend makes the effort to join him

He's the lookout keeping Tae from getting arrested

Though there was that one time it was a little too late before either noticed the oncoming trouble

They didn't run fast enough and that was the first and only time the lookout let his guard down

Sure, they were only locked up overnight due to a mysterious anonymous person bailing them out in cash

But neither want to experience that again

Still hasn't stopped Tae going out with his bag of spray cans every night

Somehow ends up at a party where his lookout is one of the hosts

Makes friends with his lookouts housemate

Tae gives up one night a week to start with to go to parties with the pair

And then it turns to twice a week and Tae spends his free daytime at the house

There's a couple of bad boys from their uni there a lot too and Tae makes friends with them

They're a weird mismatched bunch but Tae is never bored

More than once got a picture message from the fuckboi of the group and the picture is often a girl giving oral to him with one of Tae's paintings in the background

Tae feels oddly endeared everytime he receives the photo???

One day recreates one of the photos on a wall in the spare room of the house

A party is thrown to show off his art and he becomes the king of "wall art"

Yoongi (Suga)

Has that careless attitude and doesn't talk much

Everyone is highkey scared of him

I mean he has a pretty nasty stare when he doesn't want to deal with people

Which is 24/7 

His reputation is all assumption

"Did you hear he served time" "I heard he's been arrested so much he has his own reserved cell"

Never actually been arrested

He never actually does anything to get himself arrested

Except that one time he got roped into one of this random guys drunken schemes to steal a garden gnome from this rich AF family

They nearly got impaled on the spiked fence climbing out and running away

Yoongi still has the scar on his shin from it

Honestly, he kind of wants to meet that guy again

He was the only person to not be instantly scared of Yoongi and involve him

Yoongi misses the drunken guy with the sunshine smile

Always at parties totally not looking for his sunshine boy 

Gets a job from a rich guy to research someone

Very few people know that Yoongi is incredibly good with technology and can find pretty much anything online about anyone

He probably could hack into private servers and databases if he wanted to but he never has a reason

But this rich guy pays him a lot and well, Yoongi is late on rent and could really use it

The guy doesn't seem dangerous just a little too interested in the person

So Yoongi researches him and what the fuck??? This guy he's been paid to research lives with sunshine boy??? Holy shit

This is Yoongi's opportunity

He goes to the next party sunshine boy hosts but he doesn't have the nerve to approach him because damn that smile reminds him of that night 

And it reminds Yoongi how it felt to be so easily accepted and it makes Yoongi's heart flutter and ache at the same time

Takes up a job at the rich guys driver just so he has more chance to be near his sunshine boy

AN- Honestly I don’t know why I always put so many gay undertones in these aus but I do and I’m sorry lol no im not  ~Chee

Masterlist

[aerislei]

MHA Season 2 Wrap Up

First, for my wrap up specifically about the stain arc go here. If you have any interest in my thoughts specific to that arc, there you go. Lol. It will get mentions, but I’m not intending to reiterate anything that I covered more in-depth there because it seems silly. 

Second, I’m sorry but this thing is huge. In the future I may break up character discussion and possible theories into a separate post. Is that a thing you guys would prefer? Or do you like the whole wrap in one?

Now. Holy... wow. A lot happened in season 2, and the arcs felt like distinct arcs. By that I mean... like um. In season one everything felt like a natural progression, from one to the next - meet all might, train with all might, get into school, school classes. I know it’s technically broken into “arcs” but it didn’t feel like it, really.

In season 2 each arc is extremely distinct, though of course they are tied together so they don’t feel disjointed. We start with the sports festival, which ends hinting at the stain arc, then we flow into the stain arc, and then, almost anticlimactically, we come back to school and do our final exams because this is a school, remember? And all the chaos that has happened over the semester doesn’t change that.

So, generally, I’ve got to say the extra episodes did this season a load of good. The extra screen time did wonders for allowing a little more exploration with all the characters. Some are still way less fleshed out than others, but almost none of them are just floating question marks. ... At least not out of the 1-A members.

This is super pleasing because it was one of my biggest frustrations out of season 1 - because we spent so much time gearing up for UA that we didn’t really get to explore much of the class that was suddenly tossed in front of us. And because class time was limited, obviously, by screen time, we got a somewhat limited view of who was who and who did what. Personalities were very vague at best and while I had impressions for several characters I didn’t... feel much for any of them, outside of a select few I already knew something about either because they were important (Midoriya, Bakugo) or because I had pieces of the puzzle handed to me in the form of spoilers (Kirishima, Todoroki, Momo/Jiru).

Things went better this season in terms of giving us information about everyone, at least in a limited form, and thus in endearing more of the cast to me.

Sports Festival Arc

Okay, so. First arc of the season. It gave me all the information about Todoroki I could have asked for - even though I guessed at least 80% of it with the pieces of the puzzle I’d already been handed and my parallels to prince Zuko. Despite that it was a wild ride. I enjoyed the arc in a way I don’t enjoy most tournament arcs.

Biggest negative, in a sense for me was that the fight I was most looking forward to - and, imo was the most hyped up - was in round two of the event (Todoroki vs Deku) and... to me at least everything after it fell flat. None of the fights after Todoroki and Deku made any real impression on me. Even the final battle between Shoto and Bakugo was comparatively uninteresting. I know that was important, I do. I know why Shoto “stepped back” so to speak, I get that he had something to figure out for himself before he could really keep charging forward there.

... But the fight was dull and it had very little weight for me. I’m quite sure that that’s an unpopular opinion, but here we are.

The tournament set up a lot of important things and it opened a lot of doors, so to speak. Which does redeem the anticlimactic final battle, if only because it wasn’t “just” a tournament, important things happened there too.

Stain Arc

One of the biggest events of our protagonist’s careers so far, quietly skated over by the media and the glory given to someone else. Other than Stain’s ideology blowing open the doors for the Villains to explode into action, we get a lot of growth for Izuku, Shoto, and Iida. We also got some significant growth for Uraraka as far as combat goes.

We get our first look at the real villain that Midoriya is eventually going to have to face, and some important exposition about how One for All came to be. We also got to see a ton of other pro heroes in action which was a lot of fun.

Final Exams

You know after Stain, this arc was a nice lowering of the adrenaline. I know I called it anticlimactic up there - because it was, in a sense - but it was also rather important for it to be. First, it reminds us that our main characters are still in school and they’re still learning. And second it highlights the fact that life doesn’t stop no matter how disastrous the world seems to become.

Still, it was in no way boring and the exam itself was a nice reminder that our characters have a long way to go before they’re ready.

The BakuDeku fight was my third favorite thing this season. (Stain fight in first, Tododeku fight in second). I was so pumped to see those two have to work together for something and they DID IT. Not well, especially not at first, but they were able to put aside their differences and in the end did succeed against All Might.

And then, of course, the end of the season gave us what to expect next time (hey we’ve got training in the woods for a week coming up) and also gave us the current stance of the Villains - All for One being pleased at Tomura’s finally gaining a firm resolve to destroy All Might. It was a good place to end the season all in all.

Again, not going to do every character by any means, just going to touch on a few. More than I did last time though because I have things to say.

Yaoyorozu Momo

So I was surprised to see her lose so much confidence in herself after the Sports Arc - but then again she got in on recommendation not by her own actual talent. She didn’t earn a score, she didn’t have to fight nearly as hard. Momo is... that character who’s used to her family name getting her everything and coming to UA she’s realizing that not only is it not that simple in the real world, she doesn’t want it to be, because she wants to do it herself.

But she’s not used to failing. She doesn’t seem to be used to other people showing her up, so to speak, and apparently losing to Tokoyami really shook her up.

I’m glad the exam with Todoroki did her some good in getting her feet back under her and I hope we get to keep seeing more of her because she actually seems to be a fun character.

Todoroki Shoto

Todoroki is our other character that is the character who’s used to getting by on his family’s name alone. ... Except dialed over into the Family Issues troupe and so he doesn’t like getting anywhere with that name. Seemingly unlike Momo he works much harder because of his father’s name - because he wants to be separate from it. He wants to do it himself.

But he undeniably has gotten to where he is because of his father. And also undeniably his father’s training affects absolutely everything he does - including how he interacts with his classmates (see: flatly laying out his plan to Momo without asking her anything even though she clearly wanted to say something.) Yeah.

I’m hoping the exam with Momo remains as a lesson that communication is kind of a two way street, and a partnership requires compromise on both sides. The whole thing could have been avoided if they’d actually spent pre-their exam discussing how they wanted to handle it instead of coming into the arena and then sharing the plan.

(These two are interesting to put side by side because they basically come from the same place - roots that can get them wherever they want to go in life, but they’re learning how to stand on their own too.)

Midoriya Izuku

His growth this season was glorious. Once Gran Torino got him thinking about One for All the right way, he made leaps and bounds of progress - maybe a little too quickly - but we can’t have everything. There was also some personality growth that is starting to show through. He’s not the same as he was in season 1, even only by the end of his first semester. He still gets nervous but it’s less often, he still cries easily - too easily - but it’s not as often.

He’s gaining confidence in the fact that this is his path to walk now, like he’s always wanted.

Shigaraki Tomura 

So as far as villains go he’s not really my favorite. He lost a lot of his creepiness from the first season as we see him more and more. ... Probably because he mostly acts like a petulant six year old in an adult’s body.

I accidentally spoiled myself looking for something else, so I am aware of his actual identity. But it doesn’t change the way I honestly feel about him. (I do look forward to seeing how/when it’s revealed in the show, because I’m curious if All Might knows.)

The more he talks, the less scary he seems. He throws his power around, and that’s about it. ... His quirk has the potential to be devastating so there’s that.

I’m hoping now that he’s gained his... resolve or whatever we want to call it that he centralizes into a more interesting threat and less like a kid playing a video game and whining when things don’t go his way.

Dabi

So. He’s just a question mark. Mostly. Adult, early-to-mid twenties if I had to guess an age. Turquoise eyes. I happen to know that his quirk is fire based (I told y’all I’m terrible at staying out of trouble lmao). And he is specifically endeared to Stain’s ideals.

There’s also a pretty prevalent fanon idea that he is the eldest Todoroki child. And I uh, I’m not going to lie, but it’s a pretty intriguing idea, and I can easily see how someone raised by endeavor - especially someone who was deemed ‘unworthy’ the way Shoto’s siblings all were - might come to support the ideals of someone who believes heroes should be heroes selflessly.

I look forward to seeing how things go forward with Dabi and the villains in general. ... I also feel like Dabi and Tomura are not done clashing quite yet.

So for final thoughts...

This season opened up a number of doors and set into motion a lot of things all around our characters. Some of those things they are aware of, others... well, there is time enough for them to find out about later.

Our heroes made it through their first semester at school, but it’s pretty clear that their story has only just begun.

I was right, the extended season does this show a lot of favors, and I’m glad to see that season three is similarly long.

See you all next time!