#and she has such a different viewpoint on my dad since she's been out of the home for so long

[dreamwritesimagines]

The Eye of the Hurricane [19] - Couples Therapy

A.N: Thank you so much for your wonderful feedback, you made my day! ❤️I hope you’ll like this chapter as well, and please don’t forget to tell me what you think! ❤️

Summary: A therapy session can be enlightening.

Word Count: 2300

Pairing: MobBoss!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Violence, guns, crime, blood, explicit language, dysfunctional relationship. This is an AU, friendly reminder that I don’t condone any of the actions depicted on this story and please read with care.

Series Masterlist

It wasn’t like you thought taking Bucky to couple’s therapy for your technically fake marriage was going to be easy, but you didn’t think it would be this difficult.

Bucky bounced his leg beside you on the sofa while you both sat in the waiting room, his eyes darting around the room as if he expected someone to attack him at any moment.

“What happens if she asks me questions?” he asked you gruffly and you pulled your brows together.

“You’ll be fine.”

Bucky huffed out and turned to you.

“How about instead of doing this, I just pay you money to walk out of here?”

“Not gonna happen, Bucky.”

“I’ll put the weekend house under your name, you like it there.”

“The weekend house will be mine once we get a divorce anyway,” you reminded him. “It’s on the prenup.”

Bucky licked his lips. “Do you want another house?”

“Stop trying to bribe me,” you told him as he eyed the door to the therapist’s office before fixing the gun in his waistband and you gasped.

“Why did you bring a gun to the therapy?!” you hissed and he narrowed his eyes.

“We don’t know what expects us in there!” he whispered back, making your jaw drop.

“Do you seriously think—Bucky, look me in the eye and tell me you think our therapist is going to try to shoot us in couple’s therapy—”

“Mr. and Mrs. Barnes?” the therapist’s voice reached you as the door opened and you both turned to her before you smiled at her sweetly.

“Hi!”

“You can come in,” she said, stepping aside and you let out a breath, then stood up, holding Bucky by the arm to signal him to stand as well. Bucky heaved a sigh as if he was being tortured but followed you into the room dutifully and you both sat down on the couch, the therapist taking her seat soon after.

“Dr. Raynor,” you said and she smiled back at you.

“Mrs. Barnes.”

“Y/N is fine,” you said and motioned at Bucky. “And this is Bucky.”

Bucky gave her a curt nod quietly and you cleared your throat, shifting your weight.

“My therapist Dr. Cooper recommended you,” you told her. “She speaks very highly of you.”

“Dr. Cooper is a very respected colleague of mine,” she told you. “The feeling is mutual. So what brings you here?”

“Well, we’ve just got married,” you said. “And I’ve been in therapy since I was a child, basically. Bucky on the other hand has a more distant stance towards it so I figured it could help us both if we did it together.”

Dr. Raynor nodded and turned to Bucky.

“And what about you Bucky?” she asked. “What brings you here?”

Bucky raised his brows before pointing at you with his thumb. “She did.”

You crossed your arms, leaning back in the couch and Dr. Raynor hummed.

“You don’t think you should be here?”

“Honestly doc, I have no idea why I’m here,” he said. “I’m fine, our marriage is fine, so...”

“It hasn’t been a month since we got married,” you added. “Just putting it out there. But I think it’ll help Bucky if we build this—habit.”

She turned to Bucky. “And how about you?” she asked. “How do you feel about therapy, Bucky?”

“My dad would always say whatever your problems are, they should stay between your two ears instead of anyone else’s,” Bucky replied, bouncing his leg again. “Hate to agree with the guy, but he has a point.”

“George isn’t exactly the epitome of good mental health, Buck.”

Bucky shrugged his shoulders. “Either way.”

“Fathers may have different viewpoints especially when it comes to mental health,” Dr. Raynor said. “Given their generation.”

Bucky clicked his tongue. “Well, he and my mother have never been to therapy and they’re fine.”

“Your father had like one thousand mistresses,” you pointed out, making Dr. Raynor raise her brows and Bucky made a face.

“Allegedly.”

“It’s not allegedly, Becca literally told me she once—”

“Bucky, how would you describe your parents’ marriage?” she asked and Bucky heaved a sigh.

“They’re fine.”

“Would you say you look up to their marriage?” she asked. “Or that you want to have a similar one?”

You scoffed. “Good luck with that.”

“You wouldn’t want to have that?” she asked and you shook your head.

“Bucky can’t disrespect me like that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

You pulled your brows together, then shrugged your shoulders.

“Both,” you said without looking at him. “We have a deal, so I believe he will hold up his end of the deal.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you could see the proud smile curling Bucky’s lips and Dr. Raynor nodded.

“Anything else you feel like you took after your father, besides your opinion on therapy?”

“Why are we talking about my father?” Bucky asked back while you tried to hold back the retort. “I thought this was couples therapy.”

“We can talk about anything you feel like we need to talk about,” Dr. Raynor said. “But most of the time, our parents’ relationship is the blueprint of our own relationships even if we don’t realize it.”

“That’s not what’s happening here,” Bucky said, motioning at you. “It’s different.”

“How?”

“What she said,” Bucky said curtly, nodding in your direction and you heaved a sigh. “He’s good with my mom, and he’s great with my sister, no need to talk about him.”

“But not with you?” Dr. Raynor asked and Bucky dragged his tongue over his teeth.

“He’s fine.”

“Bucky,” said and he shot you a look.

“What?”

“He’s fine with you? Really?”

“Y/N, not everyone needs a father, okay?” he insisted. “Some of us need a boss while growing up in this business.”

“I don’t think you needed a boss instead of a father when you were a kid, actually,” you insisted, making Dr. Raynor tilt her head.

“Would you mind explaining that?” she asked. “That boss comment?”

Bucky drummed his fingertips on his knee.

“It’s a part of…” he stopped himself and cleared his throat. “My father knew what I was capable of, so he pushed me until I saw it. Until I proved myself. That’s not a terrible thing, it worked out after all.”

You licked your lips.

“Really?” you asked. “So you’d be totally okay with following his footsteps?”

 That made him stop for a moment and he scoffed.

“Fine, I wouldn’t do the cage fight because that shit’s medieval but it was because he knew I could handle it,” he defended him. “He’s great with Becca, and I don’t need him to be good with me. We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

Your stomach did a painful flip. “I forgot about that.”

“Cage fight?” Dr. Raynor asked and you both turned to her, Bucky crossing his arms over his chest. You nibbled on your lip.

“Um,” you said. “Our fathers are... CEOs and we both have family companies. There’s this tradition that—the family company has a boss and an heir and when you’re the heir, you need to show that you can handle the job.”

She frowned slightly.

“And the job can get pretty physical,” you said as Bucky let out a bitter chuckle beside you. “And one of the requirements is…when an heir is picked after years of training and everything, once the boss decides it’s time for them to prove themselves, they put you in a cage with other um—” you thought for a moment. “Some professional fighters that happen to be in the business as well, working under the family. Bodyguards, if you will.”

Not bodyguards.

They would put the heir in a cage with the best fighters working for the boss.

“But usually the bosses ask the heir to prove themselves right before they pass the crown, so to speak,” you said and stole a look at him. “Not George though.”

“I was ready to prove myself.”

“At sixteen?” you asked him. “No one fucking asks that of the heir at sixteen, Buck. My father didn’t even put Ian through that yet.”

“I was already his heir, he wanted to make sure,” Bucky said. “I beat everyone up in that cage, didn’t I?”

“Your nose was broken,” you counted with your fingers. “Three of your ribs, you could barely see through one eye for like two weeks because of how swollen it was—”

“But I proved myself,” he pointed out, making you clench your jaw and Dr. Raynor sat up straighter, trying to shake off the shock. “I’m glad I did it, I’d do it again.”

“You see?” you asked. “And then he asks me why we need therapy.”

“I don’t need therapy,” Bucky shot back. “I don’t even know why I’m here, I'm perfectly fine.”

Dr. Raynor licked her lips, then grabbed the notebook by her side while Bucky pursed his lips, slipping a little on the couch.

“Great,” he said. “She has a notebook and everything. Charm, how soon can we leave?”

                                                   *

Well, no one had gotten shot during your first couples therapy session, so as far as you were concerned, it was a success. Bucky had to drop by his office for half an hour to check on something, and after that you figured you could go to lunch together to discuss the next step in your plan so you tagged along.

Becca was already there in his office when you two walked in and Bucky tilted his head.

“What are you doing here?”

“Mom sent me,” she told him before coming to kiss your cheek. “Hey!”

“Hi there,” you said, kissing her cheek back. “We’re going to grab lunch after this, do you want to come?”

“Sure, I could eat,” she said, flinging herself on the couch. “Steve is here too, by the way.”

Bucky frowned. “Did you two come together?”

“Nope, I ran into him by the entrance,” she said while you took your spot next to her and Bucky walked to his laptop to switch it on.

“Mom sent you?” Bucky asked and rolled his eyes. “Let me guess, dad asked her to?”

Becca raised her hands while you gritted your teeth at the mention of George.

“You can’t shoot the messenger, there’s truce now.”

“Then why does it feel like I’m going to get shot by the messenger?” Bucky asked back, making her grin.

“You know how mom is,” she reminded him. “She wants all of us to get along. I take it you’re not willing to have another dinner anytime soon?”

“Fuck no—”

“Hey,” Steve said, knocking on the door and waved at you before turning to Bucky. “You’re busy?”

“Not at all,” Bucky said. “Did we have a meeting today? Did I forget?”

“Nah, I was just around,” Steve said. “Figured I could give you the news myself. Clint is flying to Chicago.”

Bucky pulled his brows together. “What?”

Steve shot him a grin. “My reaction exactly,” he said and came to sit on the other sofa. “How was therapy?”

“Ask Y/N,” Bucky said, clicking on something on his laptop. “She was the one who dragged me there.”

You rolled your eyes at him. “He brought a gun to therapy.”

Becca’s eyes widened. “Did you shoot the therapist, Bucky?!”

“No!” Bucky exclaimed. “Jesus, you two have zero trust in me.”

“How was it, really?” Steve asked you and you shrugged your shoulders.

“He’ll find it easier in the following weeks.”

Bucky frowned at you.

“Following weeks?” he asked. “We’re going there again?”

“Bucky, therapy is not like getting vaccinated,” Becca pointed out. “You can’t just have one session and expect it to fix your shit.”

“I don’t have the time—”

“I already talked to your assistant for the next month, try me,” you said sweetly and Bucky let out a groan, then turned to Steve.

“What is it about Clint and Chicago?”

“Well, he seems to believe that he can convince Rhett.”

Becca’s head whipped up and she blinked a couple of times while you tried to keep a straight face, and subtly pressed your index finger on your lips, giving her a slight grin. She let out a breath, then turned to Steve while Bucky scoffed.

“Yeah, that’s impossible.”

“What’s that about Chicago?” Becca asked and Steve heaved a sigh.

“Chicago’s prince became the new king recently,” he explained. “I thought it was hard to talk to his father, I spoke way too soon.”

“Yeah, he’s a dickhead,” Bucky pointed out while you bit inside your cheek to keep your laughter in. Becca sat up straighter.

“Why?”

“He doesn’t trust anyone who’s not from Chicago,” Steve said. “Refuses to do business with anyone else.”

“But doesn’t he kind of have to do it?” Becca asked. “Even we do business with other cities.”

“Chicago is different, Bec,” Bucky said. “They have their own rules, and as of now, they don’t actually need other cities.”

“Word on the street they might have to do it soon though,” Steve said. “Every boss in New York is trying to convince him, but as Bucky said, he’s a dickhead so…”

“That’s pointless, I’m telling you,” Bucky said as he typed at his laptop, then slammed the lid shut. “Okay, I’m done. Lunch?”

“I have a meeting with Sam,” Steve said as he stood up from the couch and he and Bucky walked to the door while Becca clicked her tongue, turning to look at you with a huge grin on her face.

“So,” she said and you hummed.

“Yes?”

“I take it he doesn’t know?”

“Nope.”

“None of them do?”

You shook your head, still smiling and Becca let out a laugh, then threw her arm over your shoulder.

“Nice plan,” she said and you giggled.

“Thank you,” you said, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Let’s go, you know how hungry therapy makes me.”

Chapter 20

[zuko-always-lies]

Ashes of the Academy First Impressions Review

Non-Spoiler version: I didn't like it, and if you're looking for good Azula content or good young! Dangerous Ladies content, you should look elsewhere. And if you are looking for Maiko content, that's pretty limited at best.

However, if you are looking for more fiction that sabotages its own themes by demonizing little! Azula, you are in luck!

Spoilers under the cut:

As always, ATLA media is so dedicated to demonizing Azula that it undermines it's own themes. The supposed theme of the comic is that the Fire Nation Royal Academy for Girls corrupts the youth and teaches them to be violent, cruel, and mean. Supposedly Ursa believes that the Royal Academy might have been the point where Azula "started to go wrong."

Yet the actual comic has several flashbacks to young Azula, and she's depicted as having been mean and cruel and entirely awful from the start of her attendance there. Hicks could have depicted a progression, where Azula becomes progressively worse as a person the more time she spends in the academy, but she choose not to. Moreover, some of the casual cruelty Azula does feels more Zuko-like than anything else. It's not impossible to imagine Azula doing everything she does, but some of it feels more like stuff Zuko would do.

As always, every demonized depiction of little Azula adds to the "Azula problem," where she's somehow a much better person at 14 than she was at 8, despite only having entirely negative influences over the past six years. Given Azula was apparently already totally awful from the moment she stepped into the Academy, maybe Ursa was the real bad influence on Azula!

Moving beyond that, another way Hicks undermines the themes of the comic is through the depiction of little Mai. Hicks could have depicted little Mai as someone who became a worse person under the influence of the academy and did things that grown up! Mai now regrets, but she didn't. Apparently Mai is entirely immune to all the corruption the Academy imposes and is, of course, "inherently good."

Mai of course is entirely good, entirely anti-imperialist, and entirely against the bad practices of the academy from the start. Better writing might have Mai start out fairly indifferent about it all but gradually turn against the Academy as she sees it's practices from a different viewpoint and realizes that what it put her and her friends through was cruel and wrong, but this is the Avatar comics. Mai can't have learning experiences where she learns to be a better person, since Mai was always a good person the whole time.

A few months ago, I posted that any depiction of Azula and Mai at the Academy needs to explain why they became friends. The good news is that Ashes of the Academy offers an explanation. The bad news is that it sucks:

Mai's father pushed Mai to become friends with Azula for their family's political advantage, but Mai didn't want to since Azula was so, so, so very mean, but Mai's father was persistent, so Mai eventually gave in and agreed to it. And Mai got Azula to like her by showing off her knifethrowing skills (OK, that actually sounds like something which could have happened).

Mai thus was an entirely false friend to Azula from the start, only pretending to like her for her father's political ambitions. Why Azula never noticed this, despite going to an Academy which encouraged people to be paranoid about their best friends, is a too sophisticated question for this comic. And of course "spending a decade pretending to be friends with someone I hate so my dad can get more power" is not something that canon Mai, who transparently couldn't give a rats ass about his ambitions, would do.

Of course, this does raise the question if Zuko and Ty Lee should be on the lookout for Mai being a false friend to them. After all, I'm sure Ukano pushed to Mai to seduce Zuko...And if Mai is willing to put up with two of her biggest relationships in her life being entirely fake, who's to say she wasn't only pretending to be Ty Lee's friend out of convenience? After all, we know she disliked Ty Lee girliness, but maybe Mai was willing to put up with it in exchange for having a chi-blocker on her side if she needed it.

Now, moving beyond Mai and Azula, the other aspects of the comic are just pretty uninteresting. I know a lot people were baited into buying it for the Maiko, but there's barely any Maiko in it, and their relationship struggles are definitely not resolved at all. The weirdest thing is Zuko telling the Headmistress that Mai will be a teacher at the Academy before he's bothered asking Mai. That's kind of an asshole move, to be honest.

I don't remember how Smoke and Shadow depicted Michi, and I'm not going to bother looking it up, but she's oddly warm toward Mai here, both in the flashbacks and in the present. It really seems like Hicks missed the point of what the cartoon said about her.

Kiyi and her friend have a pretty boring role which doesn't really drive the plot of the comic at all, and they don't get to do anything interesting. Better writing would have Kiyi begin to be corrupted by the continued awful practices of the academy, but this is the Avatar comics.

The headmistresses conversion to good felt distinctly unearned and unrealistic, but I suppose she's not Azula, so she was always inherently good.

I wasn't expecting any of the political stuff to be good, and it wasn't. All the Fire Nation elite families apparently hate everything Zuko is doing, which is fair and unrealistic. Why they haven't just slit his throat in his sleep is unexplained.

The evil old headmistress felt like an entirely unnecessary plot element, added only so the comic could get a fight scene. The Dai Li who for some reason work for her also felt very unnecessary. If they want Azula to become Firelord, shouldn't they have been putting their effort into assassinating Zuko?

These Dai Li were depicted as still being completely loyal to Azula, despite not having seen her for many years. A better written and more interesting work of fiction might raise the question of what Azula's ability to create durable, lasting loyalty in people she barely touched says about her as a person, but this is the Avatar comics.

About the only thing I liked is Ty Lee. She had a brief appearance at the end of the comic, solely in the present, and she actually felt like she was mostly in character, including through violating Mai's personal space against her wishes. A much, much better writer might have had Mai remember how Azula was careful not to do that, but this is the Avatar comics, and we got to keep our expectations low.

[pink-princess-pussy-pop]

FEARLESS - You Belong With Me

Rafe Cameron x Reader Taylor Swift AU

Warnings: Not with the OBX plot, Sofia sucks, Rafe low-key sucks, language, not proofed

You're on the phone with your girlfriend, she's upset. She's going off about something that you said, 'cause she doesn't get your humor like I do.

You were sitting in your room, pushing yourself in circles on your desk chair while Rafe was on the phone with Sofia, sitting on your bed. They've been going back and forth about a comment he'd made about Homecoming.

I'm in my room, it's a typical Tuesday night. I'm listening to the kind of music she doesn't like and she'll never know your story like I do.

You had been working on your APLit homework, and had light music in the background, something that Sofia had commented on when Rafe called her.

"Jesus, what the fuck are you listening to?"

"Uh, sorry, hey could you turn it down?" His hand was muffling the microphone. "Thanks."

Now, you could hear her yelling on the other line that he didn't take her out yesterday like she'd told him to.

"Babe, I told you, I had a meeting with my dad's company. I couldn't take you anywhere."

Sofia wasn't hearing any of it.

"Rafe, you are my fucking boyfriend. You aren't treating me right. You're probably hanging out with Y/N, right? How many times have I told you to stop talking to her?"

Rafe immediately got up and went to a different room.

You watched as he left, heart sinking to the depths of your stomach.

'Cause she wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts. She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers, dreaming 'bout the day when you wake up and find that what you're looking for has been here the whole time.

You blocked out Rafe's muffled conversation, thinking about the differences between you and Sofia. She and Rafe were the perfect high school movie plot-line. The quarterback and the leader of the cheer squad. You were always at his games, just cheering on from the bleachers. Your viewpoint allowed you to see all the flirting Sofia was doing with all the other players with access to Daddy's Money. It annoyed you to no end that Rafe couldn't see her gold-digging tendencies.

If you could see that I'm the one who understands you, been here all along, so why can't you see? You belong with me, you belong with me.

You couldn't see how Rafe was blind to the fact that you were the one for him. You had always been there for him.

Walk in the streets with you and your worn-out jeans. I can't help thinking this is how it ought to be. Laughing on a park bench thinking to myself, "hey isn't this easy?"

You thought about the nights you and Rafe would hang out before he started dating Sofia. He was just so easy to hang out with. You weren’t thinking about acting a certain way or watching what you were saying.

And you've got a smile that could light up this whole town, I haven't seen it in a while since she brought you down.

You remembered a joke you had told him that made him laugh the hardest you ever seen from him. His laugh, and smile, were contagious. The way his white teeth lit up everything and the sparkle in his blue eyes when they crinkled.

Now looking back on that day, you hadn’t seen Rafe smile like that since.

You say you're fine I know you better than that. Hey, what you doing with a girl like that?

You wanted to ask him about it, but his relationship was a touchy subject. You didn’t want Sofia, or God forbid Rafe, to get suspicious of your feelings toward him.

'Cause she wears high-heels, I wear sneakers. She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers, dreaming 'bout the day when you wake up and find that what you're looking for has been here the whole time.

In order to pass the time, you pull up Sofia’s Instagram, scrolling through the mass of photos she’s posted. She is gorgeous. Of course she is… you zoom in on a particular photo of her and Rafe on the football field at half-time of a recent game. He looks at her like she’s his whole world and she’s smirking at the camera. Almost like she’s taunting you.

If you could see that I'm the one who understands you, been here all along, so why can't you see? You belong with me.

Further in the background of the photo, you can be seen, holding Rafe’s helmet, smiling at him like a goofy love-sick child.

Standing by and waiting at your back door. All this time, how could you not know, baby? You belong with me, you belong with me.

You shut your phone off and get up from the chair, opting for the comfort of your bed. The front door of your house opens and closes. As you open your blinds to peer through, you get a text from Rafe.

Had to go, sorry. See you at school.

You could hear his truck start, the headlights lighting up your room. You like the message and then curl up to the head of your bed.

Oh, I remember you drivin' to my house in the middle of the night. I'm the one who makes you laugh when you know you're 'bout to cry.

He always chooses her. Every time. You think back to all those times when Rafe would call you crying after a fight with his father. You'd always welcome him with open arms. comforting him as he sobbed into your shoulder. Consoling him with kind words after he would berate himself about not being good enough. The way Ward made him feel broke your heart.

I know you're favorite songs, and you tell me 'bout your dreams. Think I know where you belong, think I know it's with me.

Staring at the ceiling of your room, you begin to feel anger. You knew other people in the Outerbanks thought it was odd that Rafe was with Sofia and not you. Topper had even talked to you about how he and Kelce were always "Team Y/N" and not "Team Sofia".

"You know everything about him and she is only with him for the sex. It's so weird."

You rolled your eyes at Topper.

You and the guys, Rafe, Top, and Kelce, were at the country club. Rafe had just stepped outside to answer yet another one of Sofia's angry phone calls.

"To be honest, she's such a bitch."

"Kelce!" You look behind you, double-checking that no one of importance is behind you. "You shouldn't say that."

Kelce merely shrugs.

Can't you see that I'm the one who understands you? Been here all along, so why can't you see? You belong with me.

You opened your own instagram, scrolling through the numerous photos you had posted with Rafe. It was a mirroring of his with Sofia. You were looking at him with all of the love in the world meanwhile he was just smiling for the camera.

Standing by and waiting at your back door. All this time, how could you not know, baby?

Had you not made it obvious enough? Cancelling plans at a text from him saying "Can I come over?". You were so in love with him it was laughable.

You belong with me, you belong with me.

Opening your texts with Rafe again you began to type a message.

I love you

You belong with me.

Your shaking fingers hover over the send button.

Have you ever just thought, maybe, "You belong with me"?

Just then, a text comes in from a new number.

you need to stop talking to rafe or ill make you wish you were dead.

Your heart stopped.

Sofia.

You belong with me.

You deleted your message to Rafe, shut off your phone, and curled into a fetal position.

All you wanted was him.

All you wanted was for him to love you back.

Hi. Lol.

[morganski-19]

Bobby reuniting with his family - 9-1-1 8x11 Spoilers below

I really liked this storyline for Bobby. I think adding in the dynamics between him and his estranged family was a nice change of pace compared to his other storylines. It also connects the backstory we learned about Bobby from season 7, which was nice to see that get brought up and not just permanently forgotten.

And the dynamics between Bobby, Charlie, and Ann were very interesting to see. I had this thought before the episode about whether or not they were going to do a story inspired by the Prodigal Son, and they did, just not the way I had thought.

I had initially thought it would be interesting to see the two brothers play out the Prodigal son story, as they both had their loyalties to a different parent, and were both the son that stayed and the Prodigal son in a way. However, that's not exactly what happened.

What really happened, at least in my interpretation, was that Charlie was the father, Bobby was the prodigal son, and Ann was more the role of the son that stayed.

I mean this because it's very clear that Bobby is the prodigal son in this instance because he left Ann and Charlie on his own terms and placed that no contact between them.

However, the story differs from the traditional story because Charlie, who would typically represent the son that stayed, was welcoming to Bobby in the same way that the father was in the story, where Ann was resistant to it much like the son that stayed.

Which I think is very interesting considering the last time we saw Charlie and Ann in the flashbacks in season 7.

Because Charlie, now that him and his mom have left his dad, could grow to replace his father's role. Since his mother is so eccentric in her profession and life, he can fulfill that role of stability and wisdom, trying to keep her extreme on level ground. And we kind of see that in this episode, where he's trying to bring Bobby back into their family and forgive the distance between all of them.

Where Ann doesn't want to reach out because she doesn't feel like she should or have to. And is confrontational toward Bobby.

Seeing Charlie be that open, loving, and grounded archetype was an interesting dynamic to see, as it wasn't one that I thought we were going to. However, it was nice to see that him and Bobby still hold so much love for each other, and that Charlie will always be open to welcoming Bobby back into his home.

Now, we get to the parent reconciliation portion of the episode, one that I have an interesting perspective on.

But before I get into all of that, I just want to make it very clear that I do not support 9-1-1's effort to forgive shitty parents. Nor do I think that Ann should have been forgiven by Bobby. I just am sharing a different viewpoint.

I said in my general thoughts post that I think out of all the characters, Bobby forgiving his mom makes the most sense. And after some thought, I found out the reason why.

It's because she's dying.

Now, do I think that just because shitty parents are dying, that means they should be forgiven, no I do not.

I do however know how that knowledge of someone dying can affect a person, and how despite the actions they have committed, you still grieve them.

Which is the perspective I'm sharing here.

When someone, specifically a parent, who has caused you pain dies, it's an interesting experience. It can be a relief, it can cause anger, it can cause grief. It depends on each individual and how they react to those feelings that a death such as this brings.

And with Bobby, when he deals with grief and similar emotions, it always ends up with him trying to find forgiveness, and mostly that forgiveness for himself.

So because Ann is dying, and because Bobby is a character that is constantly surrounded by situations of "what ifs", he would probably have carried some guilt in the event of his mom's death. And would have probably gone through the same motions he does here.

Forgiveness can also be multifaceted. Here, Bobby is getting rid of those "what ifs". He is forgiving himself (even when he doesn't have anything to forgive, but he doesn't always believe that) for never trying to make amends with his mother.

My only problem with this is that Ann herself got to see that forgiveness in life, which I don't think she should have. I think this whole story with Bobby could have been very impactful if it was in the aftermath of Ann's death.

Overall, I liked this story and thought it was a very nice change of pace from Bobby's typical stories.

And Bobby and Athena are finally going to have a house, thank god.

[reason-with-the-underdog]

haikavetham & childhood finances, pt 1

(analysis of alhaitham's & kaveh's attitudes towards money, with a focus on kaveh since more of his character story is about financial struggles)

Quick note: speaking from US-based pov but imo many things about poverty can be generalised & ofc these are all my hc’s! happy to debate and listen to different viewpoints on this subject~

Lets start with alhaitham!

alhaitham comes from a family with multiple famous scholars (both parents + grandmother), making them at least “middle class”

He also inherited multiple properties + a book collection

He seems to have pretty healthy financial habits:

stable job,

buys household “staples” like alcohol in bulk as a likely cost-saving measure,

enough “financial freedom” to buy ugly furniture and pay Kaveh’s alcohol tab, etc)

so that's alhaitham: he was born comfortable and continues to lead that comfortable life through careful decisions and choices.

now let's move onto kaveh

my overall argument for the arc of kaveh’s financial status is:

Early childhood: middle-class, stable finances

Tween-early teens: asset-rich but not much income, possibly living off dwindling savings, unstable finances

Teen-late 20s: rising wealth (rising young professional, able to save money), stable

Late 20s: bankruptcy & homelessness

Late 20s (immediately post AQ): broke (no assets, high income, high debt), unstable but has alhaitham’s support

none of these should be controversial beyond pt 2, so i'll focus on explaining that stage:

Kaveh’s bg started out similarly (both scholar parents, faranak was a famous architect)

but i argue that his family experienced financial instability and poverty after his father’s apparent abandonment + eventual death

First off, kaveh’s dad left to help aaru village for what seems like at least a few months, during which time it would have been just Faranak & a young kaveh at home

He never even communicated with them, judging by that half-finished letter,

and was considered “missing”

Faranak was a trooper during that time of apparent familial abandonment

bc she only seems to have broken down after his dad died

She couldn’t draw or work on designs, so she stopped working as an architect for some time

quite possible they lived off savings + neighbors’ generosity for at least a little while

the timeline’s unclear for the time in between kaveh’s father’s death, when faranak’s grief subsided enough for her to start working again, and when he entered akademiya...

I think a reasonable reading of this timeline is:

Kaveh’s father dies, faranak quits working

Kaveh enrolls into kshahrewar at “schooling age”

Faranak visits fontaine, gets architecture job offer, & moves abroad (kaveh is “all grown up now & could live independently”)

The sticking points here are how much time passes between points 1 & 2 vs 2 & 3. Which honestly comes down to what “schooling age” means imo

I interpret his chara story as implying faranak’s fontaine travel to be soon after he started attending school (when he has less time with his mother)

It sounds like she only visited once before getting a job offer & wanting to move abroad permanently (aka 2&3 are close together)

Given that at pt 3, kaveh can argue successfully that he’s “grown up” he’s at least a teenager (13+, teyvat is rather loose on how much responsibility teenagers can hold, look at diluc being cavalry captain at 14),

this suggests kaveh entered school as a late tween/young teen

Which pushes the gap between pt 1 & 2!

Because at pt 1 kaveh is referred to as “young” and “child” (also he wanted to play with the diadem as a toy), i think his age at pt 1 (pre-father's death) is around 7-9

So that’s potentially 4-6 or so years between pt 1&2 (kaveh entering school)

We don’t know if faranak gets a job before pt 3...

Lets say that’s worst case scenario. still that's pretty extreme & they must've had significant savings given that kaveh credits her with “raising [him] as a single mother”

and kaveh kept his childhood house until he was an adult

their finances were ok enough to not need to sell the house to stay afloat (altho not being homeless doesn't mean that they didn't struggle in other ways)

There’s room here for a variety of hc’s on how well off faranak & kaveh were during those pre-school years

So here’s where i explain why i strongly believe he experienced financial instability verging on privation (what might be described as “cash poor”, where you have assets but not much money to spend on bills and needs)

I fully admit that this is just headcanon without much canon evidence but in my defense,

kaveh being poor as a kid (& aware of it) explains some of his financial behaviors:

1. His lack of saving / him being very fast to spend his mora

Despite him being a big name architect, he complains that he “can’t seem to hold on to it” “it just disappears..."

many kids who grow up in poverty and later earn more either:

become big savers (never want to go back to being poor again) OR

are huge spenders

think about it... when you owe some million mora to dori.... that 10k mora given to charity is barely a fraction of your monthly payment 🤷.... Might as well do the nice thing and donate it (even if its a scam, more on this attitude later!)

2. Making impulsive financial decisions

kaveh decided to sell every single asset he owned to rebuild the Palace in a single night, which has HUGE repercussions on his entire life

(later on he says he underestimated how hard bankruptcy/homelessness would be, but still. no regrets)

Growing up poor and then dealing with economic uncertainty (ie, the palace’s destruction) is associated with increased impulsivity

3. Not looking for better financial terms

Dori’s interest rates are ���somewhat reasonable”

....according to Kaveh, a super unreliable narrator who's quite nice to Dori despite the way she treats him

AND kaveh is already factoring in that he’s a genius famous architect prepared to overwork himself

Personal loan interest rates vary a lot depending on your credit, but it seems like 20% is average, 30% for bad credit

when kaveh says “rates that high” he’s referring to fakhr charging rates higher than 30%

while we dont have a true upper limit, given that kaveh uses 30% as a standard, it could be that dori’s interest rate is around that much, which is rather high considering kaveh didn’t actually have bad credit when he got the palace loan from her.

he already had several years of financial prosperity as a successful architect and had built up “savings” along with his property in terms of assets...

But this is dori so its believable, and kaveh in general doesn’t really seem to think he can get better from her (or in general)

And that type of helplessness when it comes to getting better treatment from financial institutions is common to people who grew up in poverty

Middle class folks might know that they can call the bank to have an overdraft fee reversed, but poor folks often don’t have that option (and even after not being “poor” anymore, they won’t know that they can call and might get the charge taken off)

Another example of kaveh not seeming to think he can protest grotesquely unfair terms at all

(he might have been able to contest the contract, etc... the legal system isnt that well defined in teyvat but still, he gave up with barely a fight instead of exploring his options)

And yes, ik it’s bc he’s more focused on the good the library will do for the children of aaru village...

but i’m trying to paint a larger picture here about behaviors that suggest a history of being financial insecure as a kid

part 2 link here

[your-queer-dad]

I've had a few discussions with my father about transgenderism as a concept and no matter how much I try to point out that different parts of his argument don't really back each other up well he just says something like "you're comparing apples to oranges" and it's really frustrating. He's so closed-minded and I don't know how to help him understand any differing viewpoint without flat out telling him he's a horrible father and person.

My mother knows I have trans friends, and if she's paying attention she might wonder if I'm not cis either, but her indifference is no better than father's hostility. She's always silently implied her support for whatever he said even if she actually disagreed with parts or all of it.

I'm also autistic though so I use that as an excuse for complaints about my body. "I don't like the way my body feels because it's a sensory thing" is a very effective substitute for "I don't like the way I look because it doesn't feel like me" but I hate hiding behind these lies.

Since I started seeing myself as a girl I've actually enjoyed thinking about myself. I look forward to a future where I can see myself in the mirror. I never thought about dying before but now the concept scares me. I want to keep living so I can finally see myself happy. Maybe I can even learn to smile.

But living with my parents is suffocating me. I can't be myself except online and my online time is very limited. I became a legal adult recently so I know I'm closer than I've ever been but I'm still so far away. I have to get a driver's license that has the wrong gender on it. I have to keep being a fake person until I finally find a safe environment. I have to make enough money to survive.

Sorry this is so long, normally I write most of this in a journal but that's been getting harder to do recently. I should be venting to my friends, the people who care about me. I should let them be concerned about me but I'm not used to letting myself take up space. It's hard being a traumatized autistic trans girl but it also makes up most of my favorite things about myself.

Maybe I'm just opening up more because this is anonymous. So it doesn't feel like I'm taking up space because it can't be traced back to anything that actually resembles me. But I'm going to sign this anyway so I don't know if it really makes a difference.

~D1

Hey kiddo, I know things are really hard right now and the situation with your parents sounds really really hard to deal with- but I promise you things will get better. You're almost there and you have so much to keep going for. 🫂🫂

- dad x

[synergysilhouette]

Hot take: Asha should've been written similar to Charlotte La Bouff

Eventually I'm gonna be able to move on from my dissapointment that is "Wish," but then I remember it's been less than a year since the film's came out, and I don't feel that bad. Anyway, allow me to explain my viewpoint: why Asha, the charismatic hero of Rosas who overthrows the (suddenly) power-hungry king, could've leaned more into characterization similar to Charlotte La Bouff, a spoiled rich girl in New Orleans.

Their exposition and personalities--Asha is introduced to us as a teenager from the get-go, with us introduced to her family for a split second before starting her job as a tour guide to Rosas, while Charlotte's first scene is as a child in her father's mansion with her friend and her mom (as her father is her "best customer" for ordering custom dresses). First impressions are everything, and both leave VERY different impressions: Charlotte is depicted as a spoiled child while Asha is a young woman who's kind and outgoing. However, while this makes Asha SOUND better, it in reality shows how shallow her characterization is: her qualities are indistinguishable from other Disney women, particularly ones of recent films. Meanwhile, Charlotte's flaws are presented first, showing that she's used to getting what she wants as a rich white girl in the Southern United States (Asha's own culture isn't really explored; it isn't a requirement, but her grandfather at the very least is older than Magnifico, and where he comes from and her mother's North African heritage isn't featured, either). Even her brief interactions with her father offer more than Asha's with her mother and grandfather, showing how much Big Daddy has enabled her. I would've enjoyed more situations into Asha's family life and how they influence her (especially since her dad is a huge influence on her but he's mentioned, like, only a handful of times), as well as her being less cookie-cutter. Her personality doesn't help her stand out from Moana, Anna, Mirabel, or Rapunzel, at least not positively.

Ideally, Charlotte's spoiled behavior would've been a neat personality trait for Asha. Disney's tinkered around with a female lead with significant flaws, ie Raya and Judy having prejudice against certain ethnicities/races, but it's not something the characters fully embody, with their positive traits shining through until the climax when their perspective on their journey changes. Making Asha someone who's spoiled and expects her wish to be granted (perhaps because she's a tour guide and in her mind, brings a lot of positive press to an already magical country) sets her up in a unique space for a Disney protagonist, having gotten what she wanted from her family (maybe they were poor before Rosas and spoiled Asha when they arrived) and often told that if anyone deserves their wish to be granted, it's her. This is a sharp contrast from the film, where Asha's goals are altruistic and wants her grandfather's wish to be granted. Asha being self-centered would also explain why she has seven "friends" who feel very underused; she sees them as only important when they're around her, and since she likes the focus on herself, she often doesn't like to be part of a big group. Making her a Kuzco figure to where she actually doesn't realize how harmful she is also gives some likeability to her, since marketing a hero who's deliberately cruel and says "and what?!" would probably not be the best at being marketed, even if she changes. It'd also give rise to why she thinks she should be Magnifico's apprentice; her fame, greed, and self-centered personality makes her entitled to the role, to which the wizard-king rebuffs, as well as rejecting to grant her wish, either because it's vague, dangerous, or she's undeserving, setting up the conflict.

2. Their flaws--Asha isn't written with any, tbh. She tells Magnifico that she "cares too much," but aside from coming off as disingenuous whenever someone says it about themselves, there's no time in the film where her caring about someone so much ends up hurting her or anyone else (well, you can argue it does, but it's not acknowledged as being her fault or something she needs to work on). Charlotte, on the other hand, is seen as a work in progress. For most of the film, she's depicted as a young woman who means well, but is often blinded by her own life and making her ignorant to other people's problems, ie helping clean Tiana up after her restaurant plans go under, but failing to ask why she was upset. Tiana was her friend, but her happiness was a bonus for Charlotte rather than a requirement (maybe not all the time, but a lot), and it isn't until she sees that Tiana is in love that she's willing to give it up. Honestly, it's slightly surprising; while Charlotte isn't completely selfish, she doesn't go through a journey of self-reflection where she realizes she hasn't always been an emotionally present friend for Tiana, and it's actually her innocence and daydreaming of fairy tales and love that convinces her to help Tiana, showing that her positive traits (that some may have labeled additional flaws) helped her come to a fair conclusion.

Connecting to part 1, Asha being selfish gives her a significant flaw that affects her journey and how she interacts with others. Charlotte likes to socialize, and her father's finances allow her to live in ignorant bliss to what goes on around her. She can be demanding and rash, wanting what she wants WHEN she wants it, and the shallowness makes her easy to manipulate in Dr. Facilier's (and Lawrence's) plan. Making Asha a selfish dream-chaser could have her undervalue her friends; perhaps she took advantage of Dahlia's connections and used them to get access to the castle and an interview with Magnifico (assuming her being hired as a tour guide was done informally; still confused about that). Perhaps she grants an evil wish, or her dream of getting her wish summons an innocent star that helps give her her wish, not realizing the consequences of either actions. It's a "what could possibly go wrong?" situation driven by tunnel vision. Seeing how she hurt others and how it causes them to resent her--and even make Asha resent herself--changes her mind to how she sees things, even remembering her time with her family and how when her father died and her family showered her with gifts and attention, she sought out power to fill the void she developed at her father's death.

3. Their inspiration--In TPATF, Charlotte's mindset isn't just driven by her riches, but her romanticism of fairy tales. She dreams of finding a prince, becoming a princess, and living happily ever after. She equates the fantasy with her future reality, and believes that Naveen's handsomeness and exoticness is just like princes in her storybooks, which isn't surprising, since the USA hasn't been tied to a monarchy in centuries and thus conflates them with other fantasy aspects rather than practical aspects. Since Naveen is popular in the tabloids (but apparently his lack of resources is a recent development, as knowledge of it not to be widely known), Charlotte has probably seen the life he lives and wants a life like that of her own. Asha, on the other hand, has her dreams motivated by her father, who is unnamed and seen once in a brief flashback during "This Wish" and mentioned only a couple times. Meanwhile, her mother and paternal grandfather, like her, are archetypes, providing support to her until she challenges the king. However, when the king himself reveals his nature, they support her. They don't have any specific characterization outside of her grandfather's wish to make a song to inspire the next generation (which IS super vague, to Magnifico's point, and kinda cheating in an artistic sense), and Asha's mom's own wish is never stated. They feel very flat and cheap; they could've easily been replaced by Asha's friend group.

In my opinion, I feel like the perfect idea for a Disney anniversary movie is to make Asha either love or despise fairy tales, and while it may scream "I'm not like other protagonists" at first, I'd go with the latter. Asha being someone who doesn't care for fairy tales and considers them misleading (seemingly because they make achieving a fairy tale ending sound easier than it is, but in actuality she's concerned that her actions and words are more equated with a fairy tale villain) but comes to love and appreciate them encapsulates the Disney company's message of having dreams. Charlotte's love for fairy tales helps her overcome her own selfishness in order to support her friend, and Asha realizing how powerful dreams are and that wishes carry a lot of weight (and you know, actions have consequences that you can't always avoid) would be a nice celebration of Disney's legacy.

This ended up being longer than I thought, but tell me what you think! I was also gonna use Nakoma from "Pocahontas" for the discussion (essentially making it a "What a rejected Disney princess could've learned from Disney princess' best friends" essay), but she and Charlotte are so distnct that I didn't wanna go off on two different tangents when talking about how Asha could've been written--but a sarcastic girl who likes to avoid trouble but likes to have fun still works.

[highway-35]

since nobody asked me about my ideal hwlr season 3 im gonna do it myself spoilers ahead obviously

under the cut bc its getting stupidly long and also 👉 mostly unedited rambling you have been warned

ok so for starters. rearview backstories are overhauled. i dont like professor rearview being a camper with dash originally, it doesnt match with his initial motivations of disliking cars if he's out for dash SPECIFICALLY. also its a lame and overused backstory especially in kids tv. so instead he's an outside force through and through who dislikes cars for multiple valid reasons, ie accidents, dependence on cars in infrastructure, poor urban development, lack of freedom etc. he's absolutely an r/fuckcars user (and i say this as someone who agrees with this viewpoint). he's big on bikes specifically (why else does he have the bike helmet lol) besides his monsters. im keeping the monsters bc like once you remove the monsters hes basically an entirely different character. i ALSO dont want to make him too much like dr. eggman bc hes kind of an eggman ripoff already. also 👆 since dash is an inventor/roboticist in her own right it adds a nice contrast between mechanical and biological inventions. ALSO also rearview and dash do NOT look the same age at all (dash is like 20-30 tops and rearview is 50-60) so it doesnt make sense for them to have been campers together (since the campers in the show are in the 10-13 range i think). to ME. also he seems like a cornelius to me. (he adopted rearview as a nickname yes i KNOW eggman already did this and that i SAID i didnt want him to be an eggman ripoff but this doesnt have to come up in the show ✋🤚)

once thats out of the way cruise is his not-yet-adopted nibling, not his child. rearview was single and childless (he preferred it that way), a biology/bioengineering professor somewhere outside hot wheels city. i see hot wheels city in the show as equivalent to manhattan so he'd be in like upstate new york or boston. but his sibling/s were killed in a car accident- he already disliked cars and hot wheels city, but this motivated him to take things into his own hands. he developed these large animal like monsters (more fleshy and realistic compared to dash's cartoony, stylized robotic obstacles) to ultimately destroy the ultimate garage and bring the whole city down. because he was cruise's next of kin, he got custody over them. cruise is rearview's nibling and not child here since like. coop has HIS dad and axle has HIS dad and its like the writers didnt have any other familial relationships on hand. also yes i know uncle larry's there but he doesnt have the same primary caretaker role coops dad and striker spoiler do

(now i COULD ALSO make cruise bioengineered that would be sick but mega wrex put a bad taste in my mouth so im gonna say no. do NOT bring up brights, she has a prosthetic, that's different. ALSO DO NOT BRING UP SQUEAKERS in my ideal hwlr squeakers is a decently intelligent roomba kinda deal that dash made as a companion but hes like. aibo level. and people just project onto him as people tend to do with robots)

with that out of the way CRUISE is this little orphan kid that just got adopted by their uncle. they go along with it bc a) that's their uncle like xe lives with them. b) its fun to make the other kids really mad (cruise was a bit of a bully but was defensive instead of offensive since they had like 0 friends and werent popular at all so they think everyone hates it). c) its fun to be evil and d) revenge for the death of xyr parents. instead of the street shrieker being a sports car, its a bike augmented with car power shit. not a motorbike bc i dont think rearview would be into those but a really souped up, high performance e-bike. with scale patterns (prof. rearview's has more of a sinewy, muscle texture).

professor rearview was initially reluctant to let cruise race but it appealed to his ego to let a bike user win against car racers so he relented but is still VERY concerned over cruise's safety. he's still shaken up by the accident while cruise shoves that shit down and is headstrong/stubborn. cruise gets super involved in the races when they happen and starts to really enjoy racing, rearview doesnt exactly enjoy that fact? but is happy cruise has something they like.

(i should mention here that while i do hc cruise as enby, they aren't out yet. everyone still thinks xe's a girl and refers to xem as such. cruise is still figuring itself out, especially now that it's growing into puberty (around 11-12yo). cruise doesnt feel safe coming out to either their family or the campers).

everything is mostly the same in seasons 2/3 except that i took megawrex out back. yeah theres no megawrex here he gives me. INCREDIBLE fury i want him torn to shreds. he pisses me off. if they REALLY want to include monster trucks make it a cartoon and the real megawrex has a human driver.

but when cruise wins the ultimate garage, they start to really like it. rearview thinks he owns the place and uses all the cars to cause chaos in the city, while cruise explores the insides of the garage. remember: theyre a very vulnerable, emotionally charged and orphaned kid who just won the keys to the city. when professor rearview decides to destroy the garage via self-destruct, cruise remembers that xe won the garage, not xyr uncle. so when coop goes to shut off the self-destruct, cruise gets there first and officially takes over the garage, kicking its uncle out in the process.

cruise's keeping of the garage is a little bit selfish (wants all the cool amenities for themselves), a little bit selfless (doesnt want people to be hurt in the collateral damage), but mostly they just want to keep racing and thrive off the struggle of their opponents. xe enjoys playing the heel! so cruise's plan is to control the garage, let the campers and other racers struggle to win it, and (eventually) pass it on when they felt like it. they didnt think this through all that well tbh.

also this is at the top of their game. cruise has the world in the palm of xyr hands (so xe thinks) and this is when cruise decides to come out. its very casual. axle just mentions like ugh its professor rearviews evil niece and cruise says "oh actually im not a girl." more softly than they'd like. the campers are confused ("wait you're a boy?" "it doesnt sound like you are" "maybe she's actually a monster in disguise!!") until xe clarifies they aren't a boy or a girl. they're nonbinary. have been for a while, but now that they have the ultimate garage, they're confident enough to say it out loud! after all, none of the campers can stop xem, and neither can xyr uncle. what's anyone gonna do about it? professor rearview gets all huffy like UGH im your UNCLE i CARE FOR YOU WHY DIDNT YOU TELL MEEE and cruise goes stfu you suck and are generally unpleasant to be around (he also tends to misgender them and thinks winning the garage got to their head which is why theyre nb now).

this goes on for another season bc hwlr NEEDS the extra runtime badly blah blah blah coop wins the garage back on some technicality. cruise thrives on technicalities xe loves technicalities and loopholes. and living at the garage has been nice and all but also very lonely. but they can't just give up now right? theyre not ready and cant ever be ready, not like this. coop offers to let them stay and they decide not to. cruise leaves their baggage in hot wheels city, goes back to their uncle's old place upstate, cat in tow. maybe go back to school, get into the trades, professional racing? there's so many more possibilities out there, when the road forks.

[iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid]

can we....can we hear a little bit more about Sig? 👀

CAN you! absolutely!

first of all, it has to be said, i was not thinking about the fact that loki's mythological wife's name is sigyn when i named this guy sig, i just did what i did for all of my asgardian OCs and looked through a list of norse names until i spotted one that felt like it fit. also my childhood crush on sig from the jak and daxter games may have had something to do with it shh

ANYWAY. sig is my obligatory "regular asgardian citizen" viewpoint that we don't really get if we're always focusing on thor, loki, val, or heimdall. any of the asgardians are many times stronger than the average human, but he doesn't have magic like thor and loki do, and he doesn't have centuries of training like val does. he DOES have centuries of smithing behind him, so like, he's not a twig, but until ragnarok he'd never really seen any serious battles, and he'd certainly never killed anyone - that marauder he killed with loki's sword was the first. he's gonna get through that with minimal angst though, because asgardians have different perspectives when it comes to killing in battle, and also because he's got his daughter to worry about, so there's bigger fish to fry. like, this man will try to 1-v-1 against the collector if given the opportunity and if his daughter's in danger. asgardians are brave idiots and he is no exception, and also, after ragnarok, runa is literally all he has left

so like, sig is a dad above all else. he's a nurturing kind of person, he's really good at talking to people and kind of coaxing them out of their shells (hence his first interaction with bruce) and he's sort of taken it upon himself to look after runa's friends, since their parents didn't make it through ragnarok. he's not the only person caring for runa's friends, since asgard has sort of by necessity become more of a communal situation where there's a lot of childless parents and parentless children, but he's always keeping an eye out for them (when he's not light-years away being dragged on an adventure to save his daughter from an infinity stone and a bunch of bounty hunters and a superpowerful megalomaniac, anyway)

as far as his relationship with the revengers: he sort of implicitly trusts thor, because that's asgard's golden boy and everyone is sort of in agreement that they'd all be dead if thor hadn't shown up in a blaze of lightning and fought hela off while they escaped. he VERY implicitly trusts heimdall, and honestly no one on that ship doesn't after he kept them all safe during hela's attacks. he's a little starstruck about val but manages to be cool about it, and he loves that there's an honest-to-god valkyrie on the ship with them, because it certainly makes their precarious situation feel a bit safer. bruce, he's immediately bonded with and now considers a friend. and loki... okay so it helps if you know that my headcanon is that all the asgardians knew or at least suspected that it was loki posing as odin that entire time, they just didn't care because there were no wars going on and he wasn't actually doing a bad job as odin, so they just sort of... let him get away with it?

so, you're sig. your planet's been destroyed, you're grieving your wife and your home and the rest of your family, you're trying to keep your daughter safe, but now she's been possessed(?) by an infinity stone and the only person who can probably help her is the guy you'd only heard stories about before, who was impersonating the king for a few years and also might have committed some treason at some point, you don't really know the details. but now he's teleporting you and your daughter across the cosmos, and he's definitely saved you and your daughter more than a few times even if he's being kind of standoffish about it, and also he might be suffering from a little infinity stone possession of his own, but shit, you don't know how any of this works, he's the magic guy, but also it's a little concerning that the guy who's supposed to be helping you with your daughter's infinity stone problem also kind of looks like he's got a foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, and his eyes and his veins keep glowing blue which, i mean, that can't be a good sign, can it?

fast forward way past the events of the revengers to avoid spoilers, but i like to imagine that eventually, the little mini-oneshot i posted on tumblr happens (you'll find it under my "revengers: the show" tag if you haven't already seen it) where runa seeks out loki years later and demands to learn magic because the whole infinity stone situation sparked an interest in it, and she wants to know how to do all that stuff he does, and THAT would be the "meticulously crafted 100K of slow burning build up" that i was referring to earlier, where loki's teaching her magic and sig's, like, VERY reluctantly allowing this to happen. because like, yeah, he and loki are cool now, but he's seen how out-of-control magic can get, he's seen how reckless loki in particular can be, and this is his daughter. loki is on thin ice forever as long as runa's involved.

but yeah, that's sig. and you may have seen me mention this before, but i've fancasted him as dev patel from the beginning. it just feels right, and that's who i'm picturing when i'm writing his scenes :)

[longsightmyth]

It's like. Of course Aneryn thinks Renwick can be a decent dude despite Everything (TM) because she has known him since she was 5 (AND SHE LITERALLY GOT HANDED TO HIM LIKE A GIFT?!)(the northern court is fucked up)(her mom saw that her daughter's best chance was being handed to This Fae In Particular)(GUESS SHE WAS RIGHT)

Anyway he basically raised Aneryn and she has SEEN him help other people when he could and help/shield her in specific for twelve years. Aneryn is The Right Choice to give us a view that Renwick can be believed, where Random Blue Witch Number 37 Just Knowing Renwick can be a good dude would make no sense. It's a good writing choice both because it makes sense and isn't downplaying the very real horror Renwick's existence could be to literally any other blue witch [who hasn't seen him trying to do better in visions]

Though actually because he almost always has Aneryn with him and blue witches can't see each other, that means they... haven't been able to see him much.

...which also sort of means Aneryn is probably going to be around him for a very long time

...which makes sense for this genuine but deeply complicated relationship these two seem to have

Anyway my point is this: both in giving a living example of someone Renwick has had (her) lifelong power over and showing that he only used it to help, the book allows us the readers to know that he is actually very serious about it. By having Aneryn be the one to acknowledge HIS pain, we the readers can acknowledge his (horrific) backstory without having someone he has hurt have to be A Super Forgiving Mouthpiece Of Peace With The Oppressors. (though as Aneryn points out, EVERYONE in a community is hurt when you start targeting them even if some don't suffer physically)(so maybe I should say, without someone he has hurt purposefully, no matter how unwilling he may have been later)(or even in the beginning! HIS FATHER SENT HIM TO TORTURE CAMP FOR SUMMER BREAKS)

Aneryn gives us a perspective that allows us to accept that Renwick isn't an unmitigated monster. The other blue witches give us a perspective that makes us acknowledge you don't have to be an unmitigated monster to hurt people terribly.

It makes sense for Aneryn to be the softer viewpoint in a way that books that try to include this nuance often miss: she CAN be the softer viewpoint, because she has a different experience.

I'm not sure I'm making sense, it's 2:22am

But if this was a sarah janet novel we'd have good blue witches who worshipped the ground Renwick walked on because he apparently suddenly decided to stop torturing people and we'd have bad blue witches who didn't believe he was good now, the meanies.

Well okay actually in a sarah janet novel Renwick's childhood torture camp would be justified in some way and his dad and uncle retroactively trying to save the world while secretly Baba Aaru was the true evil all along because she was chill with them dying to free her people.

Don't look at me like that. That's basically the side plot of crescent city.

[percontaion-points]

Fearless (HMA 4) chapters 13 & 14

Click to see the rest of the snark & image descriptions

Click here for the rest of the series!

Chapter 13

“How’s my mom?” 

Pearl grimaced and wrapped her arms around herself again. There was none of her usual sneering confidence as she said, “Physically she’s fine. Marrow really is acting like she’s an important guest and ally. But she doesn’t seem to get it comes with strings, or that she’s basically his prisoner.”

I’m not even surprised. Somebody stupid enough to get themselves into this situation would 100% think this, yes. 

“But you heard that woman with Holland. If I’m still a void – or call it what you want – then she won’t be the last one to look at you differently.”

I thought that we’d already established that there’s no such thing as “voids”, only people who shift into different animals other than wolves. 

All of this trouble with the Marrow pack was because of me, after all. It was my grandfather who snatched our people up like they were pieces on his game board.

How the hell does she go from “this was all my fault” to springboarding from the ACTUAL problem?

Of course, I could have waited until after the great morning sex before I hit him with that viewpoint, couldn’t I?

Chapter 13 summary: Pearl explains that, since they are literal children, even Johnathan is getting a little fed up with their endless energy. Pearl told him that she was going to take the children “for a walk”. They made it to the boundary of the Marrow estate before guards set down on Reed. He led them away simply so that Pearl could escape with the twins. Marnie is angry over the entire thing seeing as how they’re due to be mated and everything. But Jasper is of the opinion “You all did what you needed to do in order to rescue my brothers. Reed is trained for this; he’ll be okay.” 

Vail goes to her shared bedroom with Jasper, where she transforms into a cat and snuggles up with one of Jasper’s hoodies. Jasper comes in with his brothers, who share more images with Vail. Despite the fact that she’s now a cat and they’re wolves, the cat enjoys the babies. The four of them snuggle up together to sleep.

In the morning, things start to get a little hot and heavy between them. But then Jasper remembers his brothers are supposed to be there, and Vail grumbles that he should have waited until after sex. 

Chapter 14

“You knew about her all along, but you never told me. I get that you couldn’t, because of the pact with my dad, but there was time for you to tell me before you bit me. And then you had Callum bring me to you, shit scared and completely confused. Maybe you thought that was okay because you’d known about me for most of your life, and you just assumed this is how things were going to be between us. But it was all news to me. And instead of giving me time to work through it, you took what you wanted. You didn’t stop to think if my cat wanted you back, Trey.”

YES GIRL. CALL HIM THE FUCK OUT. 

“You didn’t stop to think if my cat wanted you back, Trey.” 

“She does,” he said through gritted teeth. “You do as well, only you won’t admit it.” 

I was already shaking my head. “You’re wrong. Jasper’s the only mate I’ve ever wanted.” 

“Too bad,” he snarled, grabbing my wrist. “We’re mated, and you can’t change that now.”

Why is this coming off as “he’s mansplaining her feelings to her”?

“Everything I’ve done has been to keep you safe.”

Ah yes. Leaving her with a man who turned around and sold her to the highest bidder was 100% keeping her safe!

I sniffed. “Okay, dad. Just hurry home.”

Chapter 14 summary: As Vail eats breakfast, two random dudes come over and tell Vail that they’re basically her personal assistants-slash-bodyguards. That they’re eager to please her by doing whatever she wants. Vail then stands up and announces to EVERYBODY in the dining hall at that time that she wants to decorate for Christmas in an effort to cheer everybody up. So her two assistants eagerly leave to go find a tree. 

Vail leaves the caves with the twins in order to let them run off some energy. However, as she’s loping around with them in her cat form, Trey joins her. He runs with them for a little bit before he transforms back and tells Vail to do the same. However, her cat has a mind of its own, and refuses to listen. She’s also so powerful that Trey using the cat version of “alpha power” to force a shift no longer works. Not since Vail took control over the cat side of her. 

Anyway, after a moment, Vail does shift back, and she calls Trey out on his shit. That he’s been lying and manipulating her for as long as she can remember. She wants nothing to do with him… Full stop. 

She meets back up with her two gophers as they come back with the tree, so she and the twins go back to the caves. However, as people come together to start decorating things, Vail gets a call from her father. Her actual father. 

He obviously warns her to stay away from the Marrow estate, full stop. But then goes on to say all of this stuff about “it was all to protect you” and “your mother wanted you to grow up feeling loved”. None of which actually happened for Vail, thank you kindly. 

[purplesurveys]

1689

What was the last upsetting thing that happened to you? The fucking toddler who shrieked for four hours straight on my flight to Malaysia. I think a part of me died that day.

What was the last thing you ordered from Starbucks?  I can’t remember the last time I went to Starbucks, actually! I 100% got either an iced Americano or caramel macchiato, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you which pastry I got...I like to switch it up often.

Do you trust your doctor?  I don’t have a doctor I regularly go to. I don’t really go to the doctor at all, unless it’s huge emergency or if I need to get a checkup for work.

Do you ever question if your mother loves you?  I know she does but she tends to be tactless, something which, to her credit, she has acknowledged. It doesn’t necessarily make me question her love for me per se, but it’s this tactlessness that frustrates me and makes us clash a lot because I’m not exactly the type to stay quiet when I feel disrespected. 

Do you ever feel scared or unsafe around your dad?  Not at all. When he’s around I feel like literally nothing can go wrong. 

Do you have a pastor you can trust and talk to whenever you need to?  I am not religious and I feel like pastors/priests would be the first people to have viewpoints different from mine anyway.

Do you have a best friend who always has your back?  Yes.

What is missing in your life?  Spontaneity. My recent travels made me realize that. I thought I was already living a relatively comfortable and free life here in Manila, then I went to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur and realized the things I could be doing...can you believe the biggest thing that upset me was how pretty the park in KL is? I went there for three days straight, even let myself cry it out on the final day. The trees were so pretty, the water was so clean, I love how they had drinking fountains everywhere, and it was so cool to see benches everywhere. Everyone not in the Philippines, you guys are so lucky to have parks. 

What color shirt are you wearing?  It’s a white tube top.

Who was the last person you talked to on the phone?  It was an admin from one of the communities I’m in touch with for work.

Who is your least favorite doctor you’ve been to?  I feel bad for saying this but it has to be the doctor that my family has been extremely close with ever since I can remember. He prescribed some useless medication for my UTI – aka the UTI that gave me the fever from hell – which didn’t do jack shit and my 39ºC fever raged on for a few more days. Eventually Angela’s mom swooped in and gave me a prescription, and upon getting the damn medicine I was fine within, like, an hour.

Who is your least favorite nurse?  Idk I never really get to be around nurses.

What is your favorite type of Lunchables?  I’ve never tried those.

What gives you migraines?  Working for too long with my screen brightness set to max.

What is the worst medication side effect you’ve ever had?  I’ve never had terrible side effects from a medication, but injections are a different story. For all the times I got my Covid vaccines/boosters the side effects were consistently shit, I had always gotten a fever, and my skin felt like glass.

When was the last time you remember your life being good?  A week ago when I was in Bangkok. It was a rare, precious pause in life where the biggest thing I had to worry about was not losing my passport. Easily one of my favorite memories already and I will always be grateful for the experience.

What makes you forgetful? I am oftentimes forgetful at work but it’s because I typically handle anywhere between 30-40 tasks on my to-do list every single day.

Do you block stupid, ignorant people on Facebook? Sometimes. My usual instinct is to report them to get the job done more easily.

What is your favorite magazine to read?  I haven’t read a magazine in years.

What is your favorite thing to order at Taco Bell?  We don’t have a lot of Taco Bells here, so in the extremely rare occasion that I find myself in one I just get some burrito.

What was the first color you dyed your hair?  Ash brown. I wanted to go crazy immediately and do green, but I was told that the first time has to be on the milder side so that my hair doesn’t, like, die from the bleaching. Anyway, I’ve gone with purple twice since then and have never gotten back to the green that I originally wanted for my hair hahaha.

Do you trust your parents completely?  No. I know my mom still snoops around in my bag, but then again my trust in her died out a LONG time ago, lol.

Do you have someone you feel completely safe around?  Yes, my closest friends.

What church do you go to?  I just attend my local parish that you don’t need to know about, but if you meant denomination then I am Roman Catholic, at least in the legal sense.

Have you made a lot of mistakes?  Haven’t we all...?

Do you take risks often?  Every now and then, but I wouldn’t say it’s a way of life. I play it safe when I want to.

Who was the last person you called on the phone?  Angela and Hans when I wanted to meet back up during the Yoongi concert.

What color is your favorite whiteboard marker?  I don’t have a favorite whiteboard marker.

[thegodsaremyhome]

Hello, I'm very new to worshipping and I have a few questions if you Don't mind.

I've been thinking of worshipping Aphrodite for a while now, I've bought a small statue for her and I went to somewhere with a beach a few weeks ago and got some shells there as well since I read that she is often associated to the ocean.

I did a DIY altar in my room next to my work table, I was wondering if it was alright to have an altar for her in my room?

Aside from that, I have a problem with my religion, I'm catholic and recently my mom has told me to go back to Saturday bible class in our village, I said yes because I was already a part of it before I got busy, is it a no-no to worship Aphrodite while also being catholic? My parents are pretty strict and would probably freak out when they find out I'm worshipping a deity, sorry for the dumb questions ^^

Hi, I don't mind at all! They aren't dumb questions! No question is a dumb question.

So first off, no, it's definitely not bad to have your altar in your room! An altar can be anywhere. Mine is also in my room, and I've never heard any complaints.

As for your second question, Its a bit more complicated. I got another question sort of similar to this, so I'll take the opportunity to answer them both

(Hello to you also, btw<3) So, basically, it depends on how you look at it. If you look at it though the eyes of a pagan, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with having faith in both Aphrodite and Jesus. I don't feel like Aphrodite would mind at all, plenty of pagans worship multiple Gods from different faiths and they seem to be doing alright. However, from what I understand, in catholicism (I wasn't raised catholic but my dad was. All my info comes from him, so please correct me if I'm wrong!) One of the main tenants is that you can't worship any god other then the big man himself. So basically I'm thinking, if you want to personality identify yourself as catholic, then I don't think you can worship Aphrodite. However, if you wish to become pagan and worship both(and you obviously don't have to say anything to your parents if that would create a dangerous situation for you) then you're free to do so. I don't think Jesus would be upset, but that's just my outsider viewpoint.

[robininthelabyrinth]

genderbent wens, like the siblings and the head family?

ao3

“- and in one generation, they were all women, every single one of them!” Lao Nie laughed so hard he was very nearly hiccupping, but Lan Qiren supposed that was understandable on account of the other sect leader having consumed a truly unbearable amount of wine. Some of which was on his behalf – Lao Nie had been in a strange mood during the conference, especially excited, and had boisterously interjected himself into Jin Guangshan’s regular attempts to get Lan Qiren drunk by volunteering to take all his toasts for him – so Lan Qiren felt obligated to stay and keep him from making a nuisance of himself. “So be careful what you wish for, Jin-xiong!”

“Let go of me!” Jin Guangshan yelped, and really, getting squashed like that by Lao Nie tipping over onto him was exactly what he deserved. Only Jiang Fengmian was nice enough to try to help him, and all that accomplished was to get him pulled, laughing, into the drinking as well.

Possibly that had been his goal.

“That seems remarkably unlikely,” Wen Ruohan remarked. He, at least, was sitting properly, and had for once restrained himself during the festivities – he was friends of a sort with Jin Guangshan, which never seemed to go well for anyone else, but Lao Nie’s rowdiness had apparently severed that for the night. He looked sidelong at Lan Qiren. “Don’t you think, Sect Leader Lan?”

Lan Qiren could never figure out if Wen Ruohan meant for that term of address to be an insult or a compliment, and he was tired of trying.

“What is so unlikely?” he asked, having been paying more attention to Lao Nie’s stability than his words.

“An entire generation born as women,” Wen Ruohan said. He was playing with the cup of wine in his hands rather than drinking it. “Statistically possible, but highly improbable, given the size of the Nie sect.”

“Well, I assume he’s accounting for the misaligned,” Lan Qiren said, because Wen Ruohan wasn’t wrong – the Nie sect might be smaller than others, but it was still a Great Sect; it was very far from being small. “That would affect the numbers.”

“Misaligned?” Wen Ruohan echoed.

“A tradition among the Nie,” Lan Qiren explained, because it wasrather unusual. “They believe that the reincarnation cycle occasionally errs, with the soul of a woman ending up in a male body or a man in a woman – or I suppose neither and both, I’m not entirely certain about that one. At any rate, it’s not terribly common, but neither is it especially uncommon, so I suppose it’s possible –”

“Isn’t it a punishment?” Wen Ruohan interrupted.

Lan Qiren blinked at him, not understanding.

Wen Ruohan was looking down at his cup, which he had started to hold rather tightly – his knuckles were white, and it was only his especially good control over his cultivation that was keeping the cup from shattering. “The misalignment,” he clarified. “It’s said that those who commit sins in one life will be condemned in their next: reborn as an ant, or a chicken raised for slaughter. To be reborn into a body that does not fit you would surely seem to be along the same lines.”

“I suppose I see the argument,” Lan Qiren said, relieved that for once Wen Ruohan was in the mood for a theoretical discussion rather than causing trouble just to show that he had the power to do so without consequence. “I believe the Nie would argue in turn that being born as a thinking being capable of expressing oneself is sufficient basis to assume error rather than retribution – we’re all cultivators fighting the dictates of fate, after all. If one can seek immortality against all heavenly restrictions, then seeking to be recognized in the manner of your soul rather than your body would appear to be a much smaller issue.”

He shrugged and took a sip of his tea, rolling it in his mouth first to confirm it hadn’t been spiked with anything alcoholic.

“My assumption entirely,” he added. “I’m not actually that familiar with the Nie sect doctrine on this matter. Lao Nie is not the most academic, and if anything seems more bemused by our lack of understanding on the matter.”

Wen Ruohan was frowning into his cup, but at least he wasn’t gripping it so tightly.

“Fighting the dictates of fate,” he murmured. “Yes, I can see that. If you decide you are something, who dares say that you cannot be that, even the Heavens themselves?”

Such a Wen sect way of thinking, Lan Qiren thought to himself, shaking his head. Arrogant, defiant and proud – always raising their heads up high. Admirable in small doses, irritating in large!

“What would you do?” Wen Ruohan asked him, and Lan Qiren looked at him, surprised. “If there was – something like that, but in your sect? The Lan is the most orthodox of the sects; you do not even permit intermingling between men and women.”

“We don’t – men and women live separately; it’s not the same thing as not permitting intermingling,” Lan Qiren protested, but he supposed he could see the value in the question. “If one of my sect disciples informed me that they believed themselves to be a misalignment, I would – accept it, I suppose. Perhaps after a period of supervision, to ensure that they were serious and understood the consequences of their actions, that they would live and be perceived socially in the manner their soul for the rest of their lives; that would help ensure no one would engage in such a thing lightly or as a prank.”

He thought about it a little more.

“Yes, I think that’s right,” he concluded. “There are many rules that touch on the subject of being true to oneself, and none requiring adherence to the gender of one’s body; therefore, it is more in accordance to the rules to permit it. In such an event, I might also send them to the Unclean Realm for a time to further their understanding of the concept, to allow them time to reflect on the proposed change and to ensure they have access to a place where they can feel safe in exploring –”

“What if it were you yourself? Given your position?”

“Me?” Lan Qiren blinked. “I’ve always been comfortable being a man, so it isn’t an issue. But if it was, I would imagine that the same would apply to me as to anyone else in my sect. After all, we have precedent of a woman taking the role of Sect Leader, so that isn’t a consideration.”

“I suppose you do,” Wen Ruohan said. He seemed thoughtful. “What do you think the other sects would think of it?”

“Well, I can hardly say. Of the Great Sects? The Jiang sect would probably approve of it; their sect motto is ‘attempt the impossible’, and their emphasis has always been on freedom and finding your own way – I can’t imagine them objecting in a way that wouldn’t make them come across as complete hypocrites. The Nie would of course accept it. The Jin…”

The Jin sect, under Jin Guangshan, would reject it utterly. Perhaps it might be different under a different sect leader, but Jin Guangshan was even more wedded to the idea of people being in what he considered their ‘proper’ place than most. He hated the newly rich, the self-made upstart, even the poor young men who fought their way up from nothing – in his view, immortality was best reached by nothing ever changing. It was, perhaps, an understandable viewpoint from a man who felt as though he already had everything, but still rather disgusting given how despite all of that Jin Guangshan still grappled and sought after even more power and wealth than he already had – as if he were the only one allowed to rise, and everyone else had to stay where they were so he could more easily step on them on his way up.

“Oh, the Jin. Leave Jin Guangshan to me,” Wen Ruohan said with that dangerous smile of his, the one that promised blood on the ground.

Lan Qiren nodded agreeably, then frowned. Since when had they been discussing how to convince Jin Guangshan to be more open to an admittedly idiosyncratic Nie sect custom?

He was about to ask, but then Lao Nie started singing – with Jiang Fengmian providing the harmony, insofar as ‘harmony’ could be used to describe something that sounded not unlike a duet for elephants in heat or possibly someone using a brick to bludgeon people mid-opera – and they all got distracted in the unified effort of trying to get them to stop.

Lan Qiren then forgot about the entire conversation for approximately two months, and abruptly recalled it when Wen Ruohan issued an announcement that the Wen sect now permitted female sect leaders, that, furthermore, shewas the first one, and, finally, that if anyone objected on any basis whatsoever they were welcome to fight her personally.

Which –

Well, in all, Lan Qiren wished his fellow sect leader the best and started resigning himself to having to suffer from even more of Lao Nie’s flirting at the next discussion conference. That man had never yet met a man or woman who could kill him that he wouldn’t try to sleep with, and he generally preferred women…

-

“It’s nice to have the company of another girl,” Jiang Yanli said with a smile.

Wen Xu snorted. “I agree, even if I wish it were under different circumstances.”

Jiang Yanli managed to maintain her expression of peace and tranquility for exactly four breaths before she burst out into giggles, an incredibly infectious sound that finally made Wen Xu start laughing as well.

“It’s mean,” Jiang Yanli said, only laughing harder. “I should – I’m glad they’re happy! Really!”

“We can be glad that they’re happy and also think that our parents are insane,” Wen Xu said. “I can’t believe – your parents are already married! To each other!”

“They weren’t very happy, though,” Jiang Yanli said. “I honestly think Sect Leader Wen has been very good for them. Even if I don’t want to think too hard about it.”

Wen Xu nodded. They were both twelve, which was exactly the age at which you tried very hard not to think things like I’m pretty sure my mom’s railing your dad while your mom provides commentary with his face in her lap right this very instant and yet you did think it because the adults were very not subtle sometimes and then at that point there was nothing to do but laugh.

“I heard that lots of people thought she was going to get together with Sect Leader Nie at first,” Jiang Yanli said. “You know, because they flirt so much?”

“My mom says that Sect Leader Nie flirts with anyone who can kill him,” Wen Xu said, and still marveled a little at being able to say things or think things like mom. Before, she’d only ever been allowed to refer to his father through the most formal terms, with any attempt to use a more intimate sobriquet being viciously punished – she’d often thought that her father would rather she called him Sect Leader Wen instead, and maybe she’d been right.

Her mother was a lot more easy-going about that sort of thing now, though. Wen Xu still wasn’t sure whether it was because she preferred ‘a-niang’ over ‘a-die’ or if it was just that, having blown up the entire cultivation world through her gender choices, her mother felt a lot freer in ignoring the rest of the expectations that had burdened her, too.

“So he’s not serious about her?”

“I mean, maybe he is, I don’t know,” Wen Xu said. “But apparently the whole thing with my mom deciding to announce that she was a woman happened right around the time he was getting back together with his second wife so I guess he was taken?”

“Wait, he got back together with – wasn’t she dead?”

“Apparently not? I really don’t know what happens in the Unclean Realm.”

“Probably for the best,” Jiang Yanli said. “I mean – I don’t – uh, that is –”

“If you’re talking about the fact that my mom still wants to take over the entire cultivation world and declare herself an immortal Empress, trust me, I know.”

“Oh, good,” Jiang Yanli said. “I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.”

Wen Xu shrugged. She mostly just hoped that her mom’s current relationship with the other sect leaders was such that she didn’t actually murder them all in her inevitable effort to take over – it had always been something of a concern, and greater now that she actually knew Jiang Yanli was pretty cool.

“I also thought…” Jiang Yanli hesitated. “You yourself…?”

“Oh, no, I’m different. My birth mother made me pretend to be a boy,” Wen Xu said. “So that I could be the heir and she could keep her place as my father’s main wife, though of course in the end it didn’t really work out that well for her…I think A-Chao’s like mom, though. She wants to be a princess.”

“So she’s like your mom in the – ambitious sense?”

Wen Xu snickered. “Yes, that too. Actually, it’s a little funny. The whole thing started because my mom overheard Lao Nie talking about how a whole generation of Nie sect got cursed to be girls one time, and now I think mysect’s current generation is all girls.”

“Oh! Are they really?”

“Well, not really, but almost?” Wen Xu said. “There’s really just my mom, A-Chao, and me in the main branch, though we have some cousins that got sort of pulled into the main branch after their parents died – A-Qing and A-Ning. They were both born as girls, but recently A-Qing’s been saying that he thinks he might be happier as a man…it’s interesting. He’s not unhappybeing a woman the way I’m pretty sure my mom hated being a man, but he really likesbeing a man, and according to the Nie sect that’s the same thing, just a different expression of it? I don’t know.”

“How old are they?” Jiang Yanli asked.

“A-Qing’s about our age, and A-Ning is your brothers’ ages. You can meet them the next time there’s a conference in Qishan…”

-

“Can I bring Jiaojiao?” Wen Chao asked, and quailed under Wen Qing’s glare.

Wen Ning was just happy to remain underfoot and out of attention range. Her brother had a wicked way with needles when he wanted, and she wanted no part in any of that.

“Are you serious right now?” Wen Qing demanded. “You want to take your whore with you when we run away from home?”

“I’m not leaving Jiaojiao behind!” Wen Chao insisted. “And she’s not a whore! She doesn’t sleep with anyone but me.”

Hasn’t doesn’t mean wouldn’t, Wen Ning thought, then promptly felt bad for thinking it. It was a very catty thought and she was ashamed of it, even if Wang Lingjiao did strike her as rather…mercenary.

“Also I don’t understand why we have to run away anyway,” Wen Chao said, pouting. “So what if Mom started a war? We’re going to win, and then I’ll be a princess.”

“You’re an idiot,” Wen Qing said. “We’re not going to win.”

“But we control half the cultivation world!”

“Yes, and maybe if your mom was as ruthless as she used to be, she would’ve done the things necessary to win the war,” Wen Qing said. “Like take out Lao Nie early on, maybe. Now that the Nie sect’s got both him andNie Mingjue, any of our cultivators that go to the Unclean Realm are going to be slaughtered.”

Wen Chao winced, acknowledging the point.

“And ever since Lao Nie and Lan Qiren started their thing, it’s not like the Nie sect won’t also go defend the Lan sect, right?”

“…right.”

“And of course there’s the Jiang sect, which we probably couldraze to the ground if we really wanted to. But we’re not going to, and you know why?”

“Because Mom is fucking their sect leaders.”

“Because your mom is fucking their sect leaders,” Wen Qing agreed. “And that is why we declared war first on the Jin sect, because no one likes them.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that the Jin sect makes no sense at all as a target! If we take over the entire stretch of territory between Lanling and Qishan, Qinghe gets completely cut off from Gusu and Yunmeng and there’s no way they’re going to let that happen, which means that they’re going to declare war on us. And that is why we are running away from home, because we do not want to be here when the Nie sect shows up.”

Wen Ning’s brother was awesome and everyone should listen to him.

“Maybe your mom will rethink her actions once she’s seen that we’ve run away,” Wen Ning told Wen Chao in a low voice, since she was still scowling. “And I think it’s fine if you bring Jiaojiao. She’s your girlfriend, right?”

Wen Chao frowned. “I mean…she’s someone I’m sleeping with. For now. That’s all – she’s just a maid.”

Wen Ning would normally refrain from commenting, but… “If she’s just a maid, then why do you care about her potentially dying when the Nie sect invades?”

Wen Chao’s face did something. “I – maybe I just want to have her around to keep sleeping with her!”

Wen Qing looked on the verge of saying something, but Wen Ning stepped on her foot.

“Maybe you should think about it,” she said. “I don’t think we can let a servant to come with us – same reason we can’t take Wen Zhuilu, since he’d just report the whole thing to your mom – but if she was your girlfriend and you trusted her…”

She trailed off and shrugged.

Wen Chao’s face was doing weird colors.

“A-Ning, stop trying to teach A-Chao to have mature emotional reactions, it’s a hopeless case,” Wen Qing said. “Keep packing instead. If I was smart, I’d let A-Chao stay here with her Jiaojiao and her dreams of being a princess.”

“No!” Wen Chao exclaimed, then flushed red.

“No? Then pack.”

-

“How about we just assume girl until otherwise proven?” Wen Xu suggested, patting the baby’s back to try to keep calm. Whether the person to be calmed was the baby or Wen Xu herself was unknown. “She doesn’t need to have gender imposed so early.”

“Deciding that she’s a girl is imposing a gender,” Wen Chao said. Her head was in Wang Lingjiao’s lap, and she was pouting. “I can’t believe we have to take care of a baby.”

“She’s family,” Wen Qing said.

“Her parents aren’t!”

“Mom’s rules are that anyone who has the Wen surname and blood who doesn’t have parents gets adopted into the main family.”

“Do Sect Leader Wen’s rules even matter any more?” Wen Ning asked, wringing her hands. “With her being under house arrest…”

“It’s temporary. Once she vows not to wage offensive war without approval of the other Great Sect leaders, she’ll be released and things will go back to normal. Mostly. Possibly with slightly less war?”

“Yes, but in the meantime, why do we have to be in charge?”

“Uh, because you’re the heirs?”

“I’m not the heir,” Wen Chao sniffed. “A-Xu is.”

“This is so stupid,” Wen Xu said. “I can’t believe our mother’s military campaign and inevitable tragic defeat was derailed by the giant man-eating tortoise A-Chao found.”

“Anyone could’ve stumbled over that cave!”

“We weren’t even supposed to be heading in that direction! If you hadn’t stolen the map and insisted on being the navigator –”

“It all turned out for the best,” Wen Qing interrupted. “No blood feuds – or at least, not any we can’t afford to pay off – and that awful Jin Guangshan isn’t around anymore, which the other sect leaders are pretending to mind but really don’t. Mom will be back in charge of the sect soon enough, and with luck will forget all about trying to take over the world and will instead go back to fucking her two lovers that swooped in and saved her life instead defeating her because she’s incredibly touched by that even if she’s pretending she’s not. It’s like a scene out of a bad play.”

“Can we get back to the bit where we got a baby?” Wen Xu said. “I don’t want to deal with a baby.”

“I already explained –”

“I’ll take A-Yuan,” Wen Ning volunteered. “She seems sweet.”

“Girls usually are.”

“We are not saying everyone is a girl until otherwise determined!”

“Why not?” Wen Xu wanted to know. “Worked out pretty good so far.”

“I – that is – I mean…” Wen Qing floundered, then scowled. “Okay, listen. Not even the Nie sect does that, and I refuse for the Wen sect to be weirder than the Nie. All right?”

Everyone considered that, and agreed.

They might be weird – but they weren’t that weird.

Right?

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 302: As the Todoroki Turns

Previously on BnHA: 

Today on BnHA: We have a very fun chapter in which (1) Shouto grows up lonely on account of his parents being worried that his siblings will literally try to kill him, (2) Natsu and Fuyu grow up neglected on account of not being special and/or self-destructive enough to attract attention, (3) we get to revisit all of that exciting spousal abuse from chapter 39, and (4) Touya burns to death right on cue, pretty much exactly like we expected it to happen. Thankfully since this is a shounen manga, Horikoshi finds some hope in all this misery as the Todoroki family rallies together, with Shouto getting his long-overdue credit for being a perfect sweet angel who put up with all of this shit for sixteen years and somehow came out of it strong and kind and empathetic and determined. Anyway, so that flashback was a barrel of laughs. But now that it’s over, we can put all of that angst behind us, and move on to... well I guess, probably, more angst. Look, we’re short on variety at the moment. Bear with it.

ouch. we knew this was coming, but still

A+ parenting move there. “ho boy, our eldest just tried to murder our youngest, now what? hmm how about we isolate our youngest from all human contact”

though in their defense, we probably shouldn’t have expected this rabidly strength-obsessed fire man and his wife who was groomed since childhood to obey her family’s whims to have any idea of how to raise stable, well-adjusted offspring

SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS

this is a perfect example of Enji’s tragically self-revolving viewpoint right here. just because being a hero is your entire world doesn’t mean you can just excuse yourself from anything outside of that and act like it’s out of your control. “alas, all I care about is hero stuff and my son can’t be a hero, we are doomed to inhabit two different worlds” no you jackass, it’s called having more than one hobby?? figuring out how to spend some time with your son that doesn’t involve training?? the same exact thing you were telling him to do last week, while ignoring that you’ve never done that yourself in your life??

that said, yet again we have that complexity though because it’s obvious that Enji at least on some level is aware of his own flaws, even though he seems unwilling or unable to confront them. honestly, from what we’ve seen so far, Enji’s obsession with surpassing All Might might be more accurately called an addiction. he literally can’t let go of it even though he’s fully aware of how it’s slowly destroying his life. and so in the same way that a lifelong smoker or alcoholic might tell their child to stay away from cigarettes and booze, Enji tells Touya not to follow down the same path as him, even though he himself doesn’t know how to leave that path. so yes, it’s hypocritical as fuck, but there’s also an element of helplessness there as well because Enji literally doesn’t know how not to be like this

though all the same he sure could stand to put in more than just a token effort. but it is what it is, and we already know how much he’ll come to regret it

and meanwhile Baby Shouto has frozen his sleep bubble with his quirk lmao. so I guess his quirk did come in early. that’s a recipe for chaos right there

once again Shouto is ruining every single dramatic panel in this flashback

this was so dark and intense... and then I spotted the lil bubs in the corner. Horikoshi please control yourself

“some hero you are, running away” and then all of a sudden, “FIVE YEARS LATER” lol what. OKAY THEN

(ETA: love the confirmation that eight-year-old Natsu comes from the Iida school of puberty and is basically a fully grown man, and meanwhile Touya comes from the hobbit school of puberty and has been perpetually eight for the past five years.)

“HEY BIG BRO WANNA COME RECREATE AN ICONIC FLASHBACK SCENE WITH US. WE’VE GOT THE SOCCER BALL RIGHT HERE, BUT HURRY UP OR WE’LL BE TOO LATE FOR SHOUTO TO WALK ON BY AND STOP TO LOOK”

lol and that’s literally the next three panels. but Horikoshi did add this extra bit after Endeavor starts to drag Shouto away

seriously Enji what the hell did you expect was going to happen here. “Touya went nuts and tried to kill his little brother out of jealousy, so let’s make it clearer than ever that Shouto is the important child and all the other children are just rejects. this will definitely not make the problem 100x worse, and will surely lead to Touya giving up and living a happy life, having been emotionally abandoned by the person he admired more than anyone.” good for you pal you figured it all out. no need for that plan b, “we all just go to therapy”

anyway so he’s telling Shouto he can’t play because he needs more endurance training. and meanwhile Touya’s patented Todoroki Drama Genes are going through puberty as well

definitely the face of a happy, emotionally stable child who’s not still plotting to murder his younger brother in his sleep

“WELL ACTUALLY MAKESTE” lol I stand corrected??

apparently during the five year interim Touya actually stopped blaming Shouto and realized Enji was the one at fault. good for him! a bit inconsistent, given what we know happens later, but I assume we’ll get to that in good time

anyway. “yeah man I agree that dad sucks, but it’s the middle of the night and I’m only eight and you’ve been monologuing for the past two hours bro”

LMAO

the manga is making my jokes for me, only better. fine then

looks like someone’s still miffed about that disagreement he had with his baby sister back when she was like four

“Fuyu doesn’t get properly riled up like I want her to so ranting to her is annoying.” okay but having been in Fuyu’s shoes, it really is just a different way of coping, and I can guarantee she’s not as fine with the whole situation as Touya might think. but making your peace with something is often a decision that’s made for emotional self-preservation reasons. and I sure as hell don’t fault her for trying to shut out a situation that she had no control over, and trying to make the best of it, and scrape together as normal a childhood as she could manage

and now in Touya’s defense as well, that is of course easier said than done, and I’m sure if there was a “push this button and instantly get over all of the trauma in your life” switch readily available for Touya then he would have pushed it too. unfortunately it’s not always that simple

so now Rei is pleading with Touya not to go train up on his little emo hill again, but it doesn’t seem like much has changed since he was eight

I don’t think he gives two figs about being a hero; he just wants his father to look at him again with pride. fucking hell, stop doing this to me you damn Todorokis

guh, they keep telling him the same thing over and over again

even if we hadn’t already known he was gonna go melt his jawbone off soon, I wouldn’t have expected a line like that to go over well

yep. fuck

that Todoroki puberty angst, though. nothing else quite like it

“you have a part in this too, Mom” ooooooh man

okay but look, he’s not entirely wrong. like, I’m not saying any of this is Rei’s fault at all! she’s in an impossible situation where she’s afraid to stand up to Enji (who by this point has shown that he’s willing to physically attack her if things get too heated, which is terrifying), and doesn’t really have anywhere to turn for support. her parents aren’t helping much if at all, and Japan in general is just a terrible country to be in when you’re in a domestic abuse situation. everyone’s expected to put on a brave face and deal with their problems all on their own in private. Rei is basically completely isolated at this point, and she doesn’t know what else to do, and so she’s just trying to keep the situation as stable as possible for the kids

but on the other hand, “for the kids” is also where that argument starts to break down a bit, because at this point Shouto is also being physically abused by his father, and the other kids are continuing to be neglected (emotionally if not physically), as they have been for years. so the situation really isn’t stable at all for them. and as a kid, what you end up learning in that type of situation is that you can’t rely on either parent. not the abusive one, certainly, but also not the other one who can’t protect you from any of it. even if they love you and they’re trying, they’re just as helpless as you. Rei is struggling to deal with all of this with one hand tied behind her back, and I get it, and I’m not blaming her at all. but all the same, particularly given that she’s (understandably) putting almost all her focus on Shouto, the end result is that the other kids have basically been left to fend for themselves

so yeah! a shitty situation all around. and one of those cases where it’s not really anyone’s fault (aside from Enji’s), but I can understand the resentment Touya is feeling all the same. and I’m so glad Horikoshi is acknowledging this, because it’s something I probably would have been too uncomfortable to bring up otherwise. as it is it’s still an incredibly heavy subject, and one that I probably have too many personal feelings about

anyway, so once again the whole “we’ll try talking to him and then just shrug our shoulders when it doesn’t work” parenting strategy doesn’t really pan out for the Todoroki fam

sob this boy is Anakin Skywalkering before our very eyes. all that’s missing is AFO to come and start whispering in his ear. any minute now...

“anyway so then he got taller and his fire changed from red to blue”

guess we’re getting pretty close then huh. this is the part of the flashback that I really don’t want to see, but also unfortunately the part that I’m most curious about :/

oh for fuck’s --

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN IGNORING HIM FOR FIVE YEARS DIDN’T ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM” sob. back to the drawing board I guess

I thought he got taller, why is he still only like a third of Enji’s height here

oh fuck me these are armor-piercing feels. this is the heavy artillery right here

ENJI I’M BEGGING YOU PLEASE STOP AND THINK FOR ONE MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE BEFORE DOING SOMETHING YOU’LL REGRET FOR THE REST OF ALL TIME. your child just told you that he still thinks beating All Might is the only thing you care about, and that he believes his existence is a mistake unless he finds some way of doing that for you. please stop for a moment to contemplate that and choose your next words with care and grace and oh who the hell am I kidding

-- OR WE COULD JUST BLAME REI

go on and blame everyone but yourself then!! that’s a great solution!! jesus christ man I know this is Endeavor at his literal worst but still this is fucking hard to watch

POOR BABY SHOUTO IS YELLING AT HIS DAD NOT TO HIT HIS MOMMY THIS LITTLE BRAVE BOY NEEDS SO MANY HUGS OH MY GOD

AND MEANWHILE THE OTHERS ARE HUDDLED IN THE NEXT ROOM TRYING NOT TO CRY AH FUCK

(ETA: Fuyu covering Natsu’s ears cuts RIGHT TO THE CORE OF ME. Horikoshi if you’re really not gonna get these kids some therapy then at least consider giving your readers some. what is this.)

you know it’s bad when you’re starting to think the part where the kid burns to death might actually be a less traumatic thing to cut to right now

holy shit, actual Rei thoughts

“I was the one who ultimately made that choice” well there we go, wonder if that’ll put that whole argument to bed at last. I doubt it, but you never know. actually who am I kidding it’s not gonna settle jack shit lol

oh thank god, they decided it was getting too intense and cut away back to the present to narrate this next (final?) part

get ready to cue up that Alicia Keys. THIS BOY IS ON FIREEEEEEE

yeah I think that’s one thing we can mostly all agree on. neither of them had any clue what the fuck they were doing pretty much at any point. though I will say that the hypocrisy of him being all “WHY DIDN’T YOU STOP HIM” followed by him IMMEDIATELY DOING THE EXACT SAME THING is a bit rich

(ETA: and he still has this problem, doesn’t he? he froze up when Ending snatched Natsuo, and again when Dabi was attacking Shouto. he’s so afraid of doing the wrong thing that he ends up not doing anything, which of course is exactly what led to Touya’s death. damn Enji I guess you’ve still got some additional character development to unlock.)

and of course neither of them could possibly have known how badly it was going to turn out. like, the consequences here were WAY disproportionate even for the shittiest of parenting. no one expects “I didn’t know how to talk to my son” to snowball into “my son burned to death and then somehow came back as a villain and murdered thirty people”

ohhhhhhhh fuck me

LITERALLY INCINERATED THE ENTIRE HILLSIDE. fuck. and I am so not ready for the scene of Enji finding the remains of his jawbone afterwards. at least we were spared anything super-graphic (for now at least)

I feel like the timeline here is off, btw?? wasn’t Touya’s death supposed to happen after Rei got hospitalized? this might be the first actual retcon of the entire flashback. although I think it makes more sense this way tbh

I do appreciate that ten years later Enji is finally reflecting on the fact that if he’d just given up his stupid obsession he could have stopped his family from crumbling apart. that probably sounds sarcastic as fuck, but it’s not. there are countless jerks out there who would have still managed to find a way to blame literally everyone and everything under the sun except for themselves. at least he finally figured out how to take responsibility, even if it came too late to stop his son from dying and being radicalized into a villain terrorist organization

and speaking of, it seems to me we’re missing a third and final part to this little tale of woe, and one which only Touya himself will be able to shed any light on. so we’ll see how that goes

oh man seeing the other kids blaming themselves even though none of it was their fault hits hard af. Rei wasn’t kidding when she said they’d been bearing that burden of guilt far longer than Enji

SHOUTO I SWEAR TO GOD IF THE NEXT PANEL IS YOU APOLOGIZING FOR BEING BORN, I WILL... WELL I’LL BE VERY SAD, I GUESS. SO DON’T DO IT

oh good he’s just being quiet. good. it absolutely is not your fault lil bean. it’s not theirs either, but feeling guilty about things that aren’t your fault is a time-honored shounen tradition

goddammit I braced myself for the angsty Shouto panel a page too early. gotta do it all over again now lol. okay here goes

;_;

well well well would you look at that

imagine that. talking things out with your child before they make a rash decision. looks like the Todorokis’ parenting skills are finally leveling up

OH MY GOD

holy shit. this is the most quintessential moment of father/son Todoroki bonding in the entire series. for me it even tops the “nice scar” scene lol. Enji sobbing at the fact that he still has a chance to set things right. and Shouto offering his hand in what is actually the most mature and selfless gesture I’ve ever seen, and being all “we’ll stop him together” to his dad who he hates, but also doesn’t really entirely hate anymore. and all of that is incredibly moving... BUT ALSO HE STILL REFUSES TO MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH HIM AND HE WOULD LIKE HIM TO STOP BEING SO FUCKING DRAMATIC ALREADY IF YOU DON’T MIND. “WHEN YOU’RE DONE CRYING...” fkjldsk

OH MY FUCKING LORD

(ETA: wouldn’t be a Todoroki drama fest if there wasn’t somebody listening in on the whole thing in secret just around the corner lmao.)

“you think we should have waited somewhere else?” “yeah, probably.” “are you feeling a lot of secondhand embarrassment too?” “god, you have no idea.” STFU HAWKS IT’S NOT EMBARASSING TO BE MOVED TO TEARS BY YOUR FAMILY ALL COMING TOGETHER IN YOUR DARKEST HOUR TO GIVE YOU HOPE THAT YOU PROBABLY DON’T DESERVE BUT ARE NONETHELESS INDESCRIBABLY GRATEFUL FOR

and anyway you chose these guys as your found family, bucko. too late to back out now. next time go get yourself adopted by the Iidas then

AND MEANWHILE NO WORD ON THE WHOLE “HOW DID A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD SURVIVE A FIRE THAT COVERED HIS BODY WITH HORRIFIC SCARS AND MELTED HIS JAW OFF, AND HOW DID HE SOMEHOW THEN MANAGE TO GO INTO HIDING FOR TEN WHOLE YEARS, AND WHAT HAPPENED IN THAT INTERIM TO CHANGE HIS GOAL FROM ‘SURPASS ALL MIGHT TO IMPRESS MY DAD’ TO ‘KILL ALL HEROES TO MAKE MY DAD SUFFER’.” as if we don’t know the answer to that. but still, would it kill Horikoshi to just confirm AFO’s involvement in all of this already. at this point it’s basically just a formality

so here’s hoping next week we’ll either get that, or more Hawks action, or (DARE I EVEN SUGGEST, I’M AFRAID TO JINX IT) finally cut back to Bakugou and Deku and All Might omg. either way I’m hyped

[thismaydestroyme]

Little Did I Know

Summary: In this short story Harry is famous, and he moved into a town during the summer to relax and potentially write some new songs for his upcoming album. I’m not sure if I’ll include some song lyrics, but if I do, I will take a piece of a lyric from a different song and pretend it’s his. 

Word Count: 2,272

“Sweetie, can you walk Cosmo?” Y/N hears her mom shouting from downstairs. 

“Yes, mom!” She says.  

Y/N is on her bed with her headphones on due to having a neighbor who’s living across her street who just moved in. For the past weeks there’s been a lot of moving trunks and ruckus because there’s a musician living among them. 

Y/N is a 21 year old girl who wants to be part of the music industry, but she doesn’t know shit. All she knows is that she loves music, and music is part of her. It was her dad that introduced her to music, like music that was before her time. Like Billie Holiday, Frank Sintra, The Rolling Stone, Queen, Otis Redding, Nirvana, The Knack, Elton John, The Doors, The Clash and so many more. That’s all she knew and all she wanted was to find a way to have that without having to know how to play the instruments, knowing how to sing. She simply just wants to go wherever the music takes her. 

She finally drags herself out of bed and starts putting on her sneaker and throwing on an oversized hoodie. She swaps her earbuds to her airpods and off to walk her dog. 

She walks down the stairs heavily which alerts her mother, and before she gets to the last step her mother hands her Cosmo’s leash. 

“Ugh. Couldn't you do - sorry mom.” She reaches for the leash that’s in her mom’s hand. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, darling.” She says giving her daughter a peck on her left cheek. 

Y/N bends over to put the leash on Cosmo’s neck, which Cosmo gives her a lick on her face. Y/N loves this dog of hers. He provides her safety and security, which she needs because let’s just say she has a breakdown every couple of days. 

Y/N stands back up and gives Cosmo a nice tug so he knows he’s ready for his next adventure. By adventure it means walking around the block she’s been doing for the past three years since Y/N got him. 

It’s around 3 o’clock which means the summer heat is hitting hard right about now. But it’s too hot to harm Cosmo in any way. Cosmo is the love of Y/N life. 

Cosmo and Y/N went on their typical route which they go past their new neighbor's house. Y/N realizes the new neighbor door is a jar, and she can smell bacon, which isn’t good for Cosmo because he’ll tend to escape and run towards the delicious smell he knows so much about. To Y/N not so surprise Cosmo started tugging on his leash that has Y/N being yanked and pulled. 

“Cosmo. Stop it right now!” Y/N shouts to Cosmo which she knows that wouldn’t help a damn thing. When he has something in mind there’s no stopping him. Cosmo has to be on something because it’s like he’s on some x game mode. Y/N starts tripping on her own feet and losing her own balance. 

They were running in the middle of streets when they received some honks and screams at fellow drivers on the road. Which Y/N give them a nice finger and simple “fuck off.” Y/N let’s go Cosmo leash because she isn’t in the mood to eat shit, so when she felt safe nothing could happen to Cosmo she let him go.

Cosmo went straight towards the slight jar front door, which I had to pick up my steps. Before Y/N could even be on the same street as the house, the new neighbor came out his house, holding Cosmo’s leash quite aggressively which had Y/N switch her mode to attack mode. 

“Hey, what the fuck? you didn’t have to pull him like that?” Y/N says aggressively while walking towards the house, when she gets in a hand reach, she pulls the leash so the neighbor doesn’t have his grubby hand on the leash. 

Oh you want to know Y/N neighbor? It happily to be Harry Styles. Forgot to include that in, sorry. 

“Are you getting mad at me? your dog happened to be in my house without any guardian. Your dog jumped on my couch, which I’m not too fond of. So anyone here who should be a little bit bitchy, it should be me.” Harry says hostile. He’s wearing a wife beater shirt that has his arms tattoos on display. For his lower part he’s wearing a nice black booty short which shows off that magnificent tiger tattoo. “Are you just going to stand there?” He snaps back. 

Y/N brought her eyes back to him which Y/N doesn’t approve of his tone. Y/N scuffs and rolls her eyes to the back of her head. “Sorry for your inconvenience. Enjoy the rest of your day.” Y/N plants a fake smile on her face. “C’mon Cosmo, let’s go, but this time I'm walking you.“ Y/N whispers to Cosmo while turning around to continue their walk with a small intermission they encountered. After a couple of steps Y/N turned her head around and when she did Harry was still standing there with annoyance on his face, which Y/N turned her head back around. 

“He’s going to be fun.” 

***

It took Y/N twenty minutes to walk her dog today. She wanted Cosmo to enjoy himself which he did because he saw a lot of squirrels today, and on top of that she didn’t want to ‘run’ into Harry again. Y/N should be excited to have a big celebrity living among them, and hopefully she could get reinspired about her future, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. Probably Harry is just having a bad day, and last year and the beginning of this year he had a lot of things going on. He’s officially a grammy winner, he filmed two movies, his latest album Fine Line has been doing phenomenally well, he was the first male to have appeared solo on Vogue magazine,  he was announced Hitmaker of the year, and so many more. So maybe he just needed to get his energy back, which Y/N understood. But man, it really had to be their first impression. 

When Y/N and Cosmo took a turn to walk to their front door, Y/N couldn’t help but to look across the street to see if Harry was there or not. Surprisingly he was, and he’s looking right at her. Y/N looked at his lips while he blew out a smoke. Fuck, he smokes?! 

Y/N doesn’t understand why he’s looking at her, but she doesn’t give a shit because the way he’s looking at her was his way of trying to figure her out. Whatever that fucking means. 

She broke eye contact and flipped her head around to her front door. She starts digging her hand in her pocket to fetch her keys out. Cosmo starts barking because the keys jiggles so he thought it was a new toy. “Oh you hash it.” She got the keys and shove it in the lock. Thank god, her mother didn’t lock the top of the door. 

The door finally releases and Cosmo immediately runs through, probably heading to his water bowl. “Thanks sweetie for walking Cosmo for me.” Y/N hears her mom in the kitchen probably smothering Cosmo. “Yep. I would say anytime, but I would be lying.” She says while walking up the stairs to head to her room. “Fuck off.” Her mother giggles. “I love you too.” That was the last thing Y/N said before she shut her door.

Y/N takes off her beat up vans and soon after plops on her unmade bed. Y/N stared at the few holes on the ceiling due to having a young Leonardo DiCaprio poster on her ceiling when she was younger. Young Leo hits different. 

Y/N couldn’t help it, but her brain went back to her small and rough interaction with Harry. She wished she met him on a  better note, but fuck it. But how could she move on from him? She’s a fan of his music and his viewpoint on the world. He’s a man of few word, but when he does talk, it’s fucking loud and impactful. He’s the main reason she took a few steps back off of social media. She’s barely on it, but when she does go on it, she isn’t on there for long like she used to. 

An hour went by and her mother started knocking on her door and then she came in. “You know mother, the purpose of knocking is to see if you're welcome to enter the space.” Y/N says nonchalantly sitting up to see her mother, but at the same time trying to hold in her laugh. 

“Well, if you want to contribute to paying the bills, I’ll happily reconsider waiting to be called on.” Her mother threw back. “Nope. You’re good.” Y/N says shaking her head. 

“Mmmmhh. Well, I’m going to hang out with the girls from work. Do you want me to make you something before I go?” That’s one thing Y/N loves about her mother, she is so selfless and she always makes sure I’m good before she wants to do something for herself. 

“I’m good. Enjoy your night.” Y/N gave her mom a smile to know she’ll be alright. “If you’re sure, then I’m off,” Her mom says all happily. “If you need anything just text me. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Y/N got up to give her mom a nice, strong hug. “love you.” Y/N whispers. “Love you more beautiful.” We pull back and she’s off to the race. 

Y/N walks to her window to pull the blind. She sometimes likes looking out her window and just stares off into space. Something about watching people live their life comforts her. She loves people watching. 

Y/N found herself mumbling some words, while people watching, but she couldn’t help but stop her little rampage. Y/N feels heavy and she’s unable to even grasp the concept, so when she starts feeling that way she tends to start saying random things. It could be something she could use in the future. To make sure she doesn’t forget she whip out her phone to go to the notes app where she has a folder filled with random words and sentences. There are things in there that could potentially be useful like, “More or less a painful experience. Only ever real if you're delirious. the summer before you,” “I think you're gonna be my biggest fan.” So on and so forth. That’s what the folder is filled with fragments and potentially some song lyrics. 

Y/N tossed her phone to her bed, and left her phone to bother Cosmo downstairs. Y/N loves that sucker. Before Y/N could even smother him with love, he’s currently sleeping on his bed in the corner of the living room. 

Fucking great. 

Y/N just wanted something to do, and her damn dog couldn’t give her that. She looks at the clock on the wall in the living room and it’s currently 6 almost to be seven. Y/N could go upstairs and ask one of her friends to hangout, but she doesn’t want that. The best alternative could be taking a walk and seeing where her feet take her. She likes that option better, so she quietly went upstairs so she doesn’t wake up Cosmo.

Y/N changes her attire to ripped oversized mom jeans, an oversized graphic tee she bought on Depop and once again her infamous black and white vans. She grabs her airpods, and her keys. She’s finally ready for the evening. 

Y/N went back downstairs to check on Cosmo and make sure he has food and water ready for him just in case he wakes up while she’s still gone. When she felt everything was in order she ended straight to the door. 

The weather feels astronomically better than before which had Y/N feel much better with her decision. Y/N isn’t sure if she should take the right or left. If she decides on taking a right she’ll pass Harry’s house, but if she does decide to take a left she wouldn’t. Y/N starts going back and forth, but she decides on going left. 

There was a nice breeze in the summer air, and she’s listening to “I’m a Slave 4 U” by the one and only Britney fucking Spears. “What's practical is logical. What the hell who cares. All I know is I'm so happy. When you're dancing there. I'm a slave 4 U.” Y/N finds herself singing to herself. She’s been walking around aimlessly and rocking out to her songs for about thirty minutes. She’s aware she’s probably creating attention to herself, but she couldn’t find herself to care. Y/N is enjoying herself. 

“I’m a SLAVE FOR YOU!” Y/N shouts out with her eyes pinch shut, when she finally opens them she finds herself in front of Harry’s house. The worst part wasn't that she was walking in a circle. It wasn’t that she belted out to her songs. It wasn’t she was flinging her body around like she was the balloon thingy at the cars dealership shop. Nope. None of those. 

The worst fucking part is, Harry Fucking Styles is currently outside watching her. Fucking watching her. Once again fucking smoking. Again.