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theediviners · 2 years

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𝘗𝘪𝘤𝘬 𝘢 𝘊𝘢𝘳𝘥 - 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘵 𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴

Collaborative reading between @daarlingdatura, @neptunianspell, @astrodoll2, & our newest member @m00nt4r0t !!

PILE ONE @daarlingdatura

So while I was shuffling I heard the number 8. So I do believe that a majority of the people in this pile likely have 8 spirit guides.

So first of all, your twin flame is actually one of your spirit guides. What I’ll do here is break down the 3 most prominent spirit guides and talk about who they are, what their energy is & why they chose you. GUIDE #1 Your Twin Flame their energy? We have: the comic, aletheia, the healer, and the temple. The moon rx, the 10 of cups, temperance rx, and the 6 of cups.

So as we see with the comic and the 6 of cups, they are a very jokey type of person. I get the idea they could purposefully prank you sometimes by making cards fly out of your deck- or maybe even blowing on the back of your neck. I’m really getting peter pan energy here lowkey. I feel that your twin flame gatekeeps a lot of information & energy for you. They lowkey do a lot of transmutation for you as well, they upkeep a lot in the physical and spiritual realms for you. Whenever you feel alone, just know that your other half is right there with you. I do see herer that this is also a very nurturing and healing energy, your twin flame is likely very sweet. They could bring sweets into your life. I keep seeing red roses and red indian paintbrushes (flower). I also believe that your twin flame brings a lot of hard truths to you. Unfortunately, they are very jokey.. and like to do it in ways that piss you off. I feel that they want you to learn to loosen up and laugh sometimes. You can get so caught up in your stress, anxiety, day to day mundane life that you forget to smile.

I don’t think I really need to elaborate on why your twin flame chose you, like… they are you.. So I will move on to the next guide now.

Guide #2

This guide doesn’t seem fully ready to reveal to you who they are yet. Although I did just hear the name “nathan” so idk if that will resonate with anyone.. But- anyways.

Let’s get into this guide’s energy,

The Storm, The Poet, The Heart, The Thread Creation, The Secret, Truth rx The Hierophant rx, The Lovers, The Chariot, Justice rx, Judgement

So, this is a very groundshaking and uncomfortable yet comforting and genuine energy. You are karmically connected in some way to this spirit guide, as the thread card literally has a red string in it. (The red string of fate.) Perhaps you were lovers in a past life? (im seeing a theme here lmao), anyways…. I feel that this guide brings uncomfortable and life altering truths and situations to the forefront in order for you to find completion. They may be rather harsh, and when you act out of line they may be a fan of “poetic justice” lol. I definitely see that they are hard on you and want to see you doing right by yourself and others. I Feel really as if they are a life line in many ways. In some of your lowest times they can bring in energy, resources, and other needed things in order to help you stay afloat. It seems like even if they don’t act like it they do genuinely have a soft spot for you. They could rally like the color blue, I keep seeing blue bonnet flowers. I also heard bluebells? I feel like they want you to make better decisions and be more clear with your intentions as well? They feel like you slack at times in friendships or important connections or overlook details that you deem minor but actually mean a lot in the long run. I also see that this is a very non-traditional type of spirit guide in terms of how they teach or guide you with the way the hierophant is in reverse here.

I asked why did they choose you?

I have here the lovers, the queen of cups, and the 10 of swords. It’s possible that in a past life you died before him, or perhaps he mistreated you? He wanted to make things right. They really care for you and want to help you heal a karmic cycle they created.

Guide #3

This honestly made me really emotional. Your third spirit guide is some kind of mother figure. This feels extremely sacred to me.

The Eternal Child, The Heart, The Orphan. The Moon, Ascension, Entanglement, The Path. The Queen of cups, the ace of wands rx, the 9 of swords rx, strength, the high priestess

This energy is beautiful and nurturing, this feels very ephemeral. It’s interesting because it really to me feels like this is a divine mother energy. It’s possible you have been neglected in many lifetimes as a child- including this one. You may not have had much and she has always done her best to provide for you ever since you were young. I’m not sure if you were neglected physically as a child- or like ever dealt with malnourishment or hunger- but I do see that she did what she could. I saw when I closed my eyes before I began shuffling a woman with flowing black hair. A blue dress, and very beautiful pale skin. It was interesting, because that’s how the high priestess looks in my tarot deck. She is an energy that might feel confusing at times, not purposefully- but because it is extremely lunar. This is someone you have known over and over. I would not be surprised if this was not a human. I honestly keep thinking of Hekate. I don’t want to jump to conclusions though. As I am not well acquainted enough with Hekate to speak on this. Anyways. She is here to bring you wholeness. She helps you work through your anger and anxiety, she may be a very comforting presence for you. Someone you can lean on & talk to about absolutely anything. Light a black or blue candle and maybe leave some cornflower as well around the candles. She seems to like hard candies as well? Peppermints, swedish fish, banana laffy taffy?

She chose you because you are her child, and she wishes to protect you. -------

PILE TWO @m00nt4r0t

intuitive messages from your guides!

you have a specific flow to you that your guides do not want you to move against or change for any reason. if your flow changes, then you are being asked to flow with it instead of against it. you are also being asked to start of slow/gentle with something, and then pick up the pace naturally over time, sort of like a race but this doesn't have to be in terms of competition. something about your dreams is significant. you could be getting important messages from your dreams, although they may be very confusing and difficult to decipher. for some reason i am not under the impression that it's important for you to decipher them right after you wake up, but more-so over time. somethings may not make a whole lot of sense to you right now, but it will eventually. also, if you have not been meditating, you're being asked to incorporate meditation into your daily routine because it cleanses and purifies your energy and thoughts. my heart felt activated and then i heard a mini explosion from outside so i think there's going to be something that happens to you very soon that makes you very very happy, and you'll feel very loved; you'll also have a lot of love to give back as well.

who are your spirit guides?

[the hanged man + two of pentacles + six of wands] before i pulled any cards, i kept being called by the ocean but i wanted to make sure that was accurate so then i pulled the hanged man which is correlated to pisces energy. so your spirit guides could be from the ocean or it is literally the energy of the ocean that is guiding you. there is so much unknown information about the ocean and what it holds within it, which is making me think that there are aspects to your spirit guides that they wish to keep hidden. that, or their energy just goes so deep that it's inaccessible to very many people who are scared to go that deep. your guides may also be a bit playful but also very serious; i'm getting laborinth energy. they may make things purposefully confusing in order to test your imagination and expand your mind. your guides are spirits who are very adament about their time and energy and they're also very well known to the public, so a lot of people may know about this spirit/deity/god/goddess. the most obvious one that came to mind is aphrodite because we all know she was born from the sea and quite literally everyone knows of her. however, she's not the only guide i'm picking up on. there's someone else who is helping you financially, but they aren't the type to give you everything you ask for right away. they'll have you put in effort and revaluate why you feel you need this and make you question what you're truly working for and if it's even worth it. also, your guides seem to be the type to sort of toss you into new waters to test your adaptability. i can see them being like "oh, you've never wrote a song before? okay well here's a music offer that you can't deny and you're going to write a song by this date at this specific time and you're going to do it whether you think it's good or not." they may not be that harsh, but i do see that they want to test your abilities and have you expand your horizons. this is because they see all of your potential and they want you max it out! they're going to bring you success and even public recognition in some way or another.

the energy of your spirit guides!

[strength + three of wands reversed + eight of pentacles reversed] i think your spirit guides like to downplay their energy? they kind of give me trickster energy but not in a malicious way. like i said i do think they're playful with you lol. but i'm also getting that they like attention and they may require a bit more effort from you than other spirits would require. they don't want to be forgotten about. however they do have a disciplined energy to them and they don't want anything to be too in excess. they care very much about self-improvement and they do want to see you put in work for what you want and work into your relationship with them. your spirit guides have the energy of growth and expansion and this is what they're here to help you to do, as well. i feel like they may not give you things as easily as you may wish they would; they want you to meet them halfway or 3/4ths of the way, to be honest. they definitely do like to test your strength and see how hard you're willing to work and how far you're willing to go. you may get frustrated with them sometimes, but i think that they feel proud of you whenever you do?? they like whenever you stand up for yourself, as well as when you set boundaries and put your foot down; this is also what they're teaching you to do. they see a lot of potential in you and they want you to fulfill it, and you can't fulfill it if you're getting everything you want by the snap of your finger. you can't challenge yourself and expand when you're sitting in your comfort zone; this is the logic they go by. although your spirit guides can be a bit playful with you at times, they feel very stern and they do have high expectations of you. they have this idealized "perfect" version of you and they are pushing you to reach that. i do feel like there's a mixed energy and your other spirit guides (who are more playful) tell the other ones to chill out and cut you some slack. i can sense a bit of conflict among your guides, but i do feel like they balance each other out!

why your guides chose to guide you!

[three of pentacles reversed + death + king of swords] your guides chose to guide you because there's this "loner" energy to you. even if you're working with a lot of people, you sort of go off on your own and do your own thing. you prefer to work by yourself and your guides know this and like this about you because you're less likely to become distracted and influenced by others. you're also someone who has gone through many different changes and transitions, which proves that you're fit for the growth and expansion that your guides expect from you. since the king of swords is sitting by death, i do think that you speak clearly with them and those who are on the spirit realm. you're able to understand signs and synchronicties which is obviously extremely useful to them. they don't have to send you a million different versions of the same message in order for you to get it, you're quick at understanding their language. also, since you usually prefer to be/work alone, you don't have others in your ear telling you that you're "crazy" for believing in the divine or trying to convince you to do something else aka straying you away from your purpose. your guides chose you because you tend to view everyone as equal, even if they are extremely rich, very beautiful, very talented, etc. you don't like to put people on high pedestals in life. this doesn't mean you don't recognize that some people just simply do certain things better than others, but you don't treat people differently according to these types of things which your guides really like about you. your guides chose you because you're prepared for battle, although you do not instigate it, and you come hard with the facts and truth rather than trying to hurt people's feelings. you do not need a whole friend group behind you in order to feel powerful and stand your ground. overall, your spirit guides chose to guide you because you are a very easy channel and you're able to decipher messages clearly, you're very powerful and able to get things done on your own, and you're very fair when it comes to how you treat people.

--------- PILE THREE @astrodoll2

I specifically got that you have 4 spirit guides💐

Spirit guide #1

This is someone who you had a very close friendship with that later on formed into a relationship in a past life, this is someone who you experienced a lot of love and fulfillment with, you guys always had a good time together and many fun memories, this is someone who cares about you deeply, this is a soulmate, they choose you to guide you to the right directions, you can call on them whenever you need strength to keep pushing forward and whenever you need clarity on a confusing situation they will bring you the answers. Whenever you go through heartbreak especially romantically you can call on them to bring you love or make you feel loved in that moment, the message I got from them is “I’ve never met anyone like you” I see that they were very in love with you when you were together. They want to remind you that the people you meet are not coincidences and they are bringing you closer to your life purpose. Also know that you’re never alone because they’re always with you. Their energy is very warm and inviting.

Spirit guide #2

So sadly enough I actually have 2 of your parents here as guides whether it may be you lost someone in this life or these are past life parents you once had so this one is your mother

She choose to be your guide to help you heal, she’s coming up as the warrior, she is someone who is very strong, considering I have both your parents here and I can see the difference in their energies I feel like your mother was the one who was a little more stern or strict than the father, but it was because she was very protective over you, she always the best for you, she’s here to help you form boundaries, forgive others who hurt you so you can have peace of mind but know when it’s time to walk away. She will remove others from your life when they no longer serve you and I promise you she is very picky with who she allows in your life, she wants you to learn your own lessons of course but she still has this very protective motherly energy over you who worries a lot. With the message of “we just can’t be together right now” I feel like she misses you alot, you can call on her when you need help with spirituality, your psychic powers, when you’re giving birth or creating new things/ artistic abilities, also to help heal your inner child. I don’t know if the name Marina is significant to you but I heard that.

Spirit guide #3

Your father from a past life or current if you lost them in this one, it’s interesting because even if they’re not here physically they still have that fatherly provider energy, if you ever need help with finances call on them and they will help bring the right opportunities to you, they may attract alot of fortune to you if you ask for it, they love watching over you which is why they chose you they’re just as protective as your mom but have more of a playful energy they may have been those type of adults that refused to grow up or lose their childish side, and because of that they like bringing light hearted events into your life, and making you laugh. They miss you greatly and this is someone that for some reason you guys may have not had closure maybe in a past life it didn’t end on the best terms and they deeply regret that, maybe they weren’t as present enough or feel like they didn’t give you enough which is probably why they also chose to be your guide, to give to you the things they couldn’t on earth. They want to remind you to get out of your head and this imprisonment you may put yourself in at times, you’re free to do whatever you want don’t let anxiety hold you back, but on the other hand if there are doors closed on your face know that it’s for a reason or simply not the right time.

Spirit guide #4

(I say she here but remember to switch the pronouns to whatever suits you)

This is your higher self, they seem very mature ofc because they’re experienced but they seem to purposely hand you challenges to see if you’ve learned your lesson or not, like if you’ve been put in many similar situations with people or circumstances and you know what the outcome will be are you going to choose a different path or are you going to have to make yourself repeat the same lesson?, they are that inner voice that guides you, if you want to connect with your higher self more mediation and being in a quiet place Is recommend. They get frustrated with you when you don’t make long term plans, miss opportunities because you think the results will be too slow, they also want you to make better financial judgments and decisions. Your higher self is funny she is someone very direct so if you ever need an answer to something she won’t sugar coat and will make sure the answer is right in your face so you have no excuses but to take it for face value. Her message is “you’ll hear from me soon” so watch out for any downloads you may receive soon or any synchronicities/signs know that they’re from her trying to tell you something. She loves when you introspect because that’s when you’ll hear from her most since this is a very mental energy. All the answers are within.

------------ PILE FOUR @neptunianspell

who are your spirit guides?

your spirit guides consist mostly of ancestors and one deity whose name or role i cannot identify at the moment but i hear that they appear often in your dreams. you come from a long line of hard working, strong people that had to sacrifice so much in order to make a living. it might not resonate for immediate family but rather generations that had walked the earth long before you were born. they seem a bit possessive over you? in the way that they are so attached i could feel them right from the moment i started pulling cards. i know that guides (based on my knowledge) have left their ego behind but yours are making me feel some type of rage. they could be angry at those who have caused harm to you and whenever something similar happens, they take immediate action. i wonder if the deity i was speaking could be one that harbours a lot of force like ares or athena, because now I am starting to feel very driven. i don't get much information if i am being honest, as if your guides would prefer more privacy (and something is telling me they want you to keep certain details to yourself as well). it's a weird thing for me to say but they are honestly cool??? like the type of guides anyone would want to have because they are so inspirational and badass yet humble? they have a very grounded energy which isn't overwhelming yet it creates an impression. this reading is all over the place and disorganized and so is my way of expressing the channeled message but i always take it as a sign that there is something that needs to be discovered by the person who is receiving the reading. now, when i think about that specific deity my mind goes to a hawk and i am sensing that they are the one you should go to for advice and direction in life. they follow you every step of the way, trying to pull you towards the right side and sending a specific angel number you frequently see. they might even visit your dreams as a hidden figure who is half present, half distant and you can't make out who they are. as for your ancestors, most of them could be women and their role is to help you grow specifically? one of them is tougher than the rest in particular and any time you make a wrong choice, that is either morally incorrect or immature, they give you somewhat of a spiritual slap. it comes as the air being knocked out of you or tripping over nothing. another one comes to you when the night approaches and watches you in your sleep, most of the messages received then being sent by them!

what are their messages?

lovely, you are doing a great job with your healing! i know thongs haven't been going exactly the way you've expected or you believe your progress is slower than you would have wanted but that couldn't be further from the truth. all that tough energy from before has now turned into an ocean of love and warmth, your guides wishing you could feel how proud they are of you! you need to take more breaks, especially after you work or you put your energy into something draining and allow yourself to enjoy just the present. they also want you to continue shadow work and introspection and make it a main focus in the few months to come. i got the ten of cups and in my deck, the image represents a parental figure embracing her children in a happy, content way. this shows me that you should pay attention to your own inner child's needs and wants. play with it more! try to think about the positive moments from your past and really embody that innocent energy, no matter what your age is. i am just feeling as if you should not pay that much attention to the future but more the present moment and past moments that have a special place in your heart. there is always calm before the storm and by this, your guides are telling you there are great things to come, it's just that you need to be still for now. there is a male in your life represented by the emperor that has to go is what they show me. whether it's a friend, coworker or a lover, someone with a masculine energy has been causing you to feel tired, as if they suck you dry of energy. it doesn't have to be a male, it can be a woman too whose personality is very similar to this card's.

#tarot online #tarotblr #tarot reading #tarotdaily #tarot community #pac #pac reading #pick a card #pick a card reading #pick a pile #pick a picture #spirit guides

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raedshadowlegends · 1 year

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LO Ep 249 (MINOR FP SPOILERS)

TW for SA

Ok so here's the thing. I've had issues in the past with this kind of topic. I don't want to elaborate much upon it but I just need to preface all of this by saying it is something that has affected me.

However, I am not normally triggered by SA in media. It takes a lot to get me to that point and even more so with a comic like LO. I just need you all to keep that in mind.

This episode has a trigger warning. I genuinely didn't this RS was going to include one given the preview on Thursday (It was a Hera/Kronos one btw). Since she didn't put a warning in with the last Hera and Kronos episode, I was pretty damn surprised there was one here. However this warning only said "abusive relationship dynamics."

And yes that was very prevalent. The ENTIRE comic was nothing but uncomfortable moments and a lot of moments attempting to "humanize" Kronos or whatever the fuck. There's a line that says, "The Titan King Kronos was a tyrant. But the Titan King Kronos was still a man." And it's disgusting. He's a tyrant! Hera said it herself! He's an abuser and an implied r*pist. And that just gets worse and worse and WORSE through the episode.

There were three panels in the middle of this episode that genuinely terrified me for a moment. Lore Olympus has never made me PANIC before. Despite all of the disgusting, rage induced moments, I have never truly panicked with an episode.

I don't even really want to talk about it because it was just so unsettling for me.

And this brings me to the thing I really want to say;

Fuck you RS. This is one of the most upsetting and insensitive things I have read in my whole life. What kind of story is this? What is happening? It seems like every week it's another piece of rage bait to get people pissed! What else could be going on here?! This is genuinely disgusting and I'm pissed off!

This story is being consumed by teenagers! Most likely, very young girls! With the bright colors, stylized appearance, and twenty billion ads on Webtoon, OF COURSE KIDS ARE GOING TO READ IT. This comic has some of the most uncomfortable themes and it wears them like badges of honor. The age gap being one of them.

I am terrified for the people who are younger than me and who do not comprehend the messages here. I am genuinely terrified. This comic is normalizing age gaps, power gaps, and for some reason ROMANTICIZING THE GROSS ABUSE BETWEEN HERA AND KRONOS, and young girls are seeing it. And they are internalizing that this is ok because it wasn't shamed in the source material.

We know what has happened between Hera and Kronos. We have heard about it many many times at this point. Why are we actually seeing the awful things told to us? WHY? It is not ok.

I am very sure that this episode and its contents only exist because RS has no idea how to follow up with the last ep's cliffhanger. She spent all her time doing nothing and now she has to come up with a way to pad things out so she can come up with a plan. Y'know, a lot of writers plan things out before making a story. Just saying.

But this is just not ok in any way, shape, or form. My skin is actually crawling from those panels. I feel disgusting. I'm so tired of this comic. I need RS to stop trying to "own the haters" and reflect on what she's done. This is far from the feminist its acclaimed as. I am so sorry to anyone who read this fp. This is awful.

I apologize for the long winded, not-sober rant. I couldn't not say anything about this one. Anyways, that's all I got.

#anti lo #anti lore olympus #lo critical #lore olympus critical #unpopular lore olympus #unpopular lo

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leaffiii · 1 year

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*shows up from the sewers like alligator, with headcanons and 1 drabble in teeth* hello :)

I like to think that Pharaoh man is the old man of this team.

Maybe he was fighting along with other robots in Hard war somewhere far away, was able to survive and run away from government long enough to be considered a legent, waiting for the right moment to rejoin in this lost war again.

Maybe he heard about Silicon city's many attends from other robots to overthrow humans ones again but without any luck and decided to lend his hand there. And so he travels and eventually arrives and joins your terrorist club. Maybe he even seems badass first time we get to his introduction. A legend thought to be long gone, a experienced warrior that can survive in extreme situations, a hard war veteran and ect.

And then hes like "how do you do fellow kids" and the badass points that he has? Long gone.

Expect the "in my time-" and "I've seen better" routine. And don't even try to ask about his past, because you just will be stuck in unskipable cutscene of him telling you all about it, like at least 3 hours, bare minimum. Usually the victim of this "cutscene" is Hard man, because he's to slow to make a getaway in time before Pharaoh starts telling story and to nice to actually walk out if he started it.

Also i just think that solar shot (or whatever Pharaoh uses) is actually one of few things that beats Hard mans defense. Like, dude can be dence as much as he wants but can he stand the plazma with a heat that feels like surface of the sun?

Imagine Snake asking Pharaoh about Hard war, and thinking that now that he has a literal veteran he won't need to steal documents about that ever again and walking out of that same room 12 hours later and be like: i wish that i was stealing documents and failed rather than be stuck in a room with him like this ever again.

Pharaoh is pretty affectionate toward Metal man but in a "grandfather that tells u suck after barely telling that he's proud of you" kinda way. Like "man, Metal you actually not half bad with repair stuff, i dont feel anything wrong with my arm animore. But i still had better, so you have room to improve."

Also Pharaoh sometimes uses slangs in hes speeches, so it leads to situations like this:

Hope you recovered from whatever you had and that you have a great day! Bye *goes back into sewers*

Reaches out of my trashcan and munches on this like a raccoon eating grapes (Had a busy day lol but FINALLY got on my laptop to reply)

Oh my GOD this is such a treat, actually!! I've been having a bit of trouble characterizing him and this is PERFECT for him. Pharaoh being a veteran is such a good idea! It also officially marks him as the oldest of the group. I'm still deciding on what his abilities will be specifically, since I'm trying not to have too much overlap between them lol. Poor Hard Man though, big man has to deal with so much lol

I do imagine Pharaoh and Skull being from the same creator (Some FC version of Dr. Cossack) BUT keep in mind I haven't touched the comics at all, aside from skimming the articles on the Wiki. This is already an AU of sorts anyways, which I'll elaborate on eventually. That being said I think Toad should also have come from the same creator for shits and giggles lmao THAT DOES REMIND ME i gotta finish Pharaoh's ref, hes been legless for so long oops (and I gotta do one for Metal and the last two guys. whoops.) I recovered from my cold a bit ago, I'm doing well now!

#other people's art #other's headcanons #croc pop #leafy speaks #mega man #mmfc #mega man fully charged #megaman #mmfc au #fc!pharaoh man #fc!metal man

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jasontoddiefor · 2 years

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Oh dear, I think you really stirred up everyone with that one post about the killing😅 I personally, I'm really interested in how you see it.

Like you stated in one post that you think killing does more damage than good. Who do you think gets damaged? And is this more of a theoretical thought on your side, like a in an ideal world sort of thing, or something you think should also apply in the real world?

Because one thing I found very compelling about Jason killing people in the comics, is that 1. He's actually sure people did whatever he's killing them for (that ones not real world applicable) and 2. As a former victim people can have absolute surety that whoever hurt them can't do it again. Which to me sounds pretty good. And coming back to be before do you think the damage is too much to pay for peace of mind?

Now whether Jason should be killing people is a whole other question. I'd say probably not on ground that he is very fucked up, but then again so are most DC characters and we give them the benefit of the doubt regarding that they know what they are doing. And I feel like it's dismissive to say that just because someone is hurt they don't have a right to agency in their own life.

In general I'm really impressed you just went out and said what you believe in regardless of whether others agree or not. I'm over people reacting like someone just killed their pet because someone else has other ideas regarding Fandom, please people get a life.

Yeah this discussion escalated a Hot Second I didn’t quite expect this either. I don’t even remember what exactly triggered my original post.

Now to your question!

Who is damaged/hurt by killing?

Whoever does the murder. I don’t think people can kill, on purpose or on accident, without this having some sort negative influence on their mind. Even if they were hurt by the person they ended up killing, I don’t think this is just something you can walk away from.

The murder victim. In most cases, probably intentionally, but often enough, you get the wrong guy. I’m not sure if this is something I have many opinions on bc I’m a black guy, but I am genuinely terrified of being falsely accused of a crime simply because of racism. Anyway, point stands: whoever is killed, either dies quick and fast or slow and violent.

The families of both. Whether they believe the murder was warranted or not, families of both “participants” have to deal with the emotional fallout and having to support each other.

Any bystander. Witnessing a murder is traumatizing as hell. Don’t think this needs more elaboration.

Theoretical or Real World?

I do also think irl that killing is bad. I believe that nobody can come away from such an act of violence - oh, yes, guns make it easier, but murder isn’t easy and it isn’t pretty - without massive follow up problems.

I understand why people do it, I also believe that it probably can bring people peace of mind thinking others are dead or even knowing they themselves did it, but I think the aftermath will bring them a whole new slate of problems.

So my take on that is that prison, therapy, and support is much better than killing someone because there will be a person who has to bear the burden of ending a life. To bring this to the theoretical level - I think this is, narratively, what Batman should be about. On a genre and media level, I think this should be the content of Batman™️

Don’t get started on a discussion of the prison system and all it’s failures, this breaks the scope of this discussion.

Jason in the comics

As you also pointed out, Jason 100% knew his victims were guilty, but this isn’t real world applicable.

So this is where we run into narrative issues sort of on how much irl laws we want to be applicable in comics. For Batman, as a genre, the “I can’t be 100% sure so I won’t do it even once” works. As long as Jason works in a scope of Batman, I don’t think he can kill because you’re working with two different narrative moral systems. Combining them will lead in a more Batman heavy narrative to condemning Jason and in a more Jason heavy narrative to making Batman seem unreasonable.

Permanently locking someone away is, when your focus is on protecting people, equivalent to having the perpetrator dead. They’re away from people, they can’t hurt anyone. And to come back to the Joker example (or KGBeast shooting Dick), having them dead won’t fix what they’ve already done. However, I do think, coming back to potential damages, than being confronted with the person who hurt you and inflicting violence on them, will give victims additional trauma.

Like, I think if Jason killer the Joker, he’s gonna crash because it didn’t fix anything. Okay, Joker’s dead and can’t hurt anyone else, but Jason’s still the same as before.

Should Jason kill? Eh, this question tbh also kinda goes outside of my original discussion that was just about Batman (and isn’t it kind of fascinating how all discussions about Bruce killing in fandom are always about Jason and never any of the other kids hurt—). But as you said, Jason’s mental health is specifically fucked. Taking away his agency is going to make him worse, but I also think his hurt is so great that he needs someone to hold his hand so he won’t crash and burn. That’s just how people are, we weren’t meant to suffer on our own without support.

I also think he’s not gonna get better until the writers find a place for him. I like to keep him in the batfam so I think he shouldn’t kill. I don’t think he can keep killing and narratively stay inside the batfam.

So I guess that’s my take on it all? It’s not flawless, there are many holes you can poke into this but that’s what analyzing any media is like.

And it’s not very impressive to say your opinion when this wasn’t meant to be a huge “oooh let’s have a discussion” thing in the first place or I would have phrased it differently. There are enough DC blogs - who are actually still actively into DC unlike me - that toss out their opinions all the time. Mine just unfortunately got notes.

But I get why people take it personally. When I was into DC, Jason was my poor little daddy issues self project meow meow. Heck, I don’t like reading fics (or canon comics) where Bruce is a shit dad. I go out of my way to avoid it because it personally ticks me off. So yeah, I get why people react the way they do. Though I think the inability to gouge tone through online text adds to how these kinds of discussions tend to go. It’s why I usually only have with friends.

Anyway, Cheerio hope this reply was enlightening

#dc #ask #anon #Batman #Bruce Wayne #Jason Todd

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veryspecialfungus · 2 years

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you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but what classpects would you give the interns?

On a scale of one to ten, how humiliating is it that I have actually considered this question before this ask? How much more humiliating is it that I always at least think about it for almost every fandom I've ever been in?

Now, I don't actually remember WHAT I came up with the first time around. It's a fun thought exercise more than anything. My days of actually producing Homestuck crossover content were over before they started. Much like the comic itself, classpects are an elaborate indulgence that's just too fun not to partake in.

Now it's been a hot minute since I actually read Homestuck, and I'm almost certain I missed a lot of the fine details the first time around. Time has only dulled what I do remember, so I'm using the wiki and the extended zodiac to remember how each classpect works. I'm not about to try and read the whole thing over for this so if I get stuff wrong: sorry. Also I'm basing this on what I think would make the best story as much as what I think fits the characters as is.

ANYWAY...

Raz: Seer of Time. Seers primarily coordinate the other and I like the idea that Raz can't run off and do everything himself when he can't get the others to help this time around. Like his personal SBURB journey involves getting the others to respect him for who he is, not just what he can do for them. Also, time would be an interesting challenge for him, considering how many logistics there are to keep track and how Raz can be prone to acting without considering all the consequences. Also the whole "Time players never give up" thing which...yeah, that's Raz.

Adam: Rouge of Light. Void might have also worked here, but Adam seems more like the kind of guy who wants to tell you about the cool history stories he learned WAY more than he wants to work behind the scenes to make it, if that makes sense. Mind would have also been good, but I dunno, I like that this one plays to Adams strengths in that he likes to share his knowledge, but also challenges him through the luck aspect; Adam had the supreme good luck to be assigned the Grand Head of the Psychonauts as a mentor and the supreme bad luck that he was in a coma the whole time, but he tried to play the bad part down to such a degree that it didn't matter. Maybe part of his development is coming to an understanding of what he can and can't control.

Gisu: Maid of Heart. I really tried, I REALLY TRIED, to not be super obvious here, but I think it just fits too well. Gisu is drawn to huge emotions and big expressions of love and I think her journey involves just...maturing into an understanding of her own emotions. Like, honey, your heart is never going to help you win money at the racetracks. Gisu doesn't really seem to be a HUGE jerk to her friends, but she is to people she doesn't know, so maybe she can also learn to be less immediately standoffish? Sorry, we're back to this problem where I don't really understand Gisu as a character too well.

Morris: Knight of Hope. Morris, boy, you gave me such trouble here. I went back and forth between Hope and Breath a few times, but I think there's an intentionality to Morris's actions that Breath doesn't cover. Morris wants to be seen as a rebel, an iconoclast, a freethinking renegade. He's still young enough to rock and not old enough to die, as the saying goes, and his personal quest is all about actually...becoming that instead of a disobedient jerk with a crummy radio station that only has one record.

Norma: Mage of Mind. Norma was easy. She thinks she already knows everything there is to know about people and how they work and she really really doesn't. She doesn't really know herself either, and learning about both is going to be exactly what she needs to do, even if she doesn't like what she finds.

Lizzie: Witch of Space. I wanted to avoid overlap with canon Homestuck characters, but it just can't be helped here. Witch just fit better than any of the other similar classes. Anyway, there's a theory in fandom where Norma is the golden child in her family and Lizzie is very much not, thus Lizzie's bad attitude and goth punk kind of fashion sense and I like that idea enough to play off it here: Guess what Lizzie, after a life of being ignored in your sister's shadow you are now one of the two most important players in the game. Figure that one out, girl.

Sam: Bard of Life. Somewhere back on my blog is a WIP someone made of Sam as a Bard of Life, and I just can't do better. Sam ruins the lives of every animal she encounters already, so turning it into a method of healing her team enables her to step it the fuck up. I'm picturing her building some kind of animal-run hospital on her planet, the kind of hospital that cuts funding for gauze bandages while building fountains in the entry way and makes all the animals work 12-hour shifts every day.

And just to go ahead and answer the follow up question I suspect is round the corner...

Dion: Page of Blood. I mean, it just makes sense to me. Dion feels his family, his blood ties, are falling apart and the Page class is a character characterized by a lack of something. Also I like the idea that Dion has a lot of potential that he might achieve if he breaks away from his family a bit, gain more trust that they love him rather than trying to cling to the way things have always been, make more friends and expand his world, become more confident in his ability to forge bonds...He could have a really interesting arc.

Frazie: Prince of Doom. I like this bit in the extended zodiac that says "The Doom-bound won't fix you; they aren't healers. They are commiserators, aware that sometimes the only thing you can do for a person is let them know that they are not alone in their suffering." That seems about right: Frazie is NOT going to try to artificially cheer you up if she knows you fucked up, but...maybe she should get a better handle on what needs to change for the people in her circle to achieve their dreams. Some sacrifice is important, and getting a better handle on when to hang on and when it's OK to let go.

Mirtala: Sylph of Breath. Um, I still don't really understand how a Sylph differs from a Witch, and the wiki was really no help. There's an aspect of healing in the Sylph that I think fits Mirtala pretty well, as she could definitely be a healing factor for her family.

Queepie: Heir of Rage. OK...hear me out...I thought it was funny. BUT ALSO as the baby of the family, Queepie is likely well aware of all the dysfunction in his family structure, and it can really wear you down. We saw that Queepie really didn't want to share his music with Raz and he was trying extremely hard to find at least a little time for himself. I think Queepie is having a lot of emotions relating to his family, and they drive his actions more strongly then probably even he realizes. I don't think he'll be going on a Gamzee-esqe killing spree, mind, but I think figuring out his resentment will be a big theme of his growing up.

#Psychonauts #Homestuck #I actually had a really hard time figuring out how to explain my reasoning for some of these?#So if something doesn't make sense I'm sorry it sounded good in my head

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derangedhyena-zoids · 1 month

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Tell me your thoughts on backdraft, I wish to know! You’ve got so many tasty headcanons, I bet your backdraft headcanons are just as tasty!

part of the problem is that I don't know where to start, re: articulating a lot of it? which is why stuff starts oozing out of my ears when I talk about something tangentially related. I've had a few false starts on comics about some specific backstories, but I'm not sure they "accomplish" anything. The comics need a strong A-to-B progression to work right. I've had a few elaborate dreams about the political maneuvering involved in everything. which more-or-less is just my brain having a hissy fit that stuff doesn't exist when it's clearly hinted at. like their little pins. they're obviously related to rank, seniority, something. But Sara only has 2? And everyone is just... listening to her, lol. (tbh that's where I started with the whole "there is active, aggressive manipulation at play here") (and if they're rank, why does Polta have none when his title is literally Major? I thought maybe folks who regularly pilot don't get them, but Stoller (4) and Sanders (1) have them. Alteil has the most of anyone (6). Layon didn't get any, etc. Vega doesn't have any. whyyyyy) maybe make that timeline I keep talking about. which I should make one anyways for general hcanon history. I want to get back to working on my setting-site soon. The main overarching idea though is that it's a huge org that started as one thing (underground resistance to the fledgling-dictatorship Guardian Force, courtesy of dissatisfied Imperial nobility) and developed into another entirely (the bloodsport mafia) - and has the serious internal schisms to show for it. !!they actually have the most complete historical records too!! NC0 only makes them lean Team Rocket because the reality of what a group like that would actually be is way too Much for that show

#I've adopted basically all of the Backdraft characters as Some Gremlins

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kinetic-elaboration · 11 months

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October 21: Valentine (2001)

The depressive feeling from yesterday didn’t magically go away by sleeping, so I’ve had kind of a lousy day. Through fault of my own, of course. Actually taking a shower and getting tea DID help (hahah I did know this) but by then it was getting kind of late and I didn’t want to rile myself up to writing. Maybe I should have… I could feel some ideas coming back. I don’t know. I don’t know.

I decided instead to watch a movie and then go to sleep “early” (which, like I’m not up to absolutely ALL hours so I guess that’s something) and the movie I picked was Valentine (2001). I’d seen it before, not when it actually came out because I was a bit too young, but probably not that long after, when I was in high school. My cousin and I watched it together, which, in retrospect, was perhaps a little weird. Anyway, I remember liking it at the time in a sort of better-than-I-thought kind of way but after 15+ years I forgot a lot. I remembered the basic premise and who the killer was, though almost nothing else.

This re-watch… I would still say it was better than I was anticipating. I tried to lower my expectations again because at the time I’d probably seen like half a horror movie ever and now I like to think I have more discerning tastes. As a slasher, it wasn’t that scary: I thought the tense scenes weren’t terribly tense, and while the kills were, upon reflection, actually pretty good (Paige in the hot tub in particular was quite elaborate but I also like the death by arrows in the weird Valentine’s Art Exhibit), nothing in it was really that revolutionary. But it was solid; it was fine. I like slashers but I don’t really care about ‘creative kills’ so much because I’m actually a bit squeamish about gore. I did really enjoy the characters, though. Am I that easily swayed by a nearly all female cast, by a group of girl friends being friends? Perhaps. Perhaps.

The… message of the film was a little hard to parse in some ways. Maybe I’m overcomplicating it. On the one hand, it’s very simple, right? All men everywhere are horrible all the time. The daily life of a woman is harassment and loneliness as she is constantly beset by losers on all sides. Like, the men in this film were almost comically terrible in every respect. The blind date who talks in the third person and takes zero hints about your disinterest. The neighbor who’s always hitting on you. The string of terrible blind ‘turbo’ dates. The ‘wax it’ guy. The father with the bride young enough to be his daughter. The gold-digging creep whose business just needs one more investment. The pretentious artist who tries to trick you into a threesome and who literally can’t hold a conversation because he’s too busy being horny. The detective who wants to ‘do something about the sexual tension’ he’s totally made up. Even the slumlord landlord is a guy! This is a 90-minute film. Every 3 minutes another terrible man shows up. And there are scenes like the speed dating and the video date guy that seem to be there for no other reason than to cram in as many losers as possible around the kills and to really beat into the audience how much it sucks being a single young woman in 2001.

Even the best of the guys, the only one with multiple personality traits, the potentially really good boyfriend, is an alcoholic and he gets scary when he’s drunk. Oh and also he’s the killer, surprise.

So I guess in this way one of the ways to read Jeremy is as an incel-type: still mad all these years later that the girls rejected him at the dance, now grown up and systematically killing all of them. And yet, I don’t know, he was more than rejected, you know? He was branded a predator, beaten up, and sent into the system, from which he basically never emerged. And it was really one girl who did that more than any of the others, but the rest (save one, the final girl) were witnesses that helped seal his fate. Of course, the nature of the slasher is that the killer IS the victim of a prank, and then gets a bloody vengeance that can only be stopped by the final girl, etc. So that’s just part of the formula. You can see what triggers the violence without condoning it, obviously, or being on the killer’s side. Maybe this is no more deep than that: he was reacting to a real harm that was done to him, but in a deranged horror-serial-killer way, because that’s the genre he’s in, and because the other message of the film is ‘wow men suck,’ he’s able to hide in a crowd of loser suspects.

But in general I’m sort of inclined to set aside the whole origin story of the killer, honestly. Adam Carr as the killer, regardless of who he was presumably-pre-plastic-surgery is the real core of the film, and the story there is coherent. He doesn’t really need a reason, honestly, if you look at it from the point of view of the women. In this sea of creeps, there’s one guy who seems to stick out as not as bad: Adam. We know he has a drinking problem but we don’t actually see him drunk or scary, and he seems like he wants to get better. The love story with Kate is sweet—maybe it will work out this time! Except, just as with wax it guy or Mr. Dot Com, there’s a secret side to Adam; he’s a monster underneath. Kate didn’t know he was an alcoholic when she met him, as Dorothy points out. It’s implied that he might be abusive when drunk (“I was afraid you would hurt me”), and what is being a slasher but just another, exaggerated, genre-specific form of abusive behavior: literally killing all her friends and a bunch of other randos around her? He honestly doesn’t need a reason, any more than he needs a reason for being an alcoholic. It’s about what is hidden, not why it’s hidden.

Some of the kills fit into this theory because honestly I didn’t really get why he killed half the people he did. The women, yes, that’s part of the whole revenge plot. The detective, okay, because he might be a threat to Adam getting away with it all. And the creepy neighbor was being weird to his girlfriend, so that was almost chivalry. But Mr. Dot Com and his ex-girlfriend were people who were bothering Dorothy, not Kate—and Dorothy was really the one most responsible for Adam’s misery! And Dorothy’s maid literally did nothing wrong at all; she was just around. The only explanation we get for those kills was ‘well when a person is lonely and angry they just do weird stuff,’ which, okay, sure.

I remembered Adam was Jeremy but not the little extra twist that he is not either killed or brought to justice and I did think that was an interesting conclusion. There’s a classic slasher backstory, classic kills, a final girl, and even an ‘evil lives on’ ending. But the mystery is only solved for the audience, not the final girl herself, and she doesn’t actually defeat the slasher. She is actually still victimized, in part by being led to believe that one of her best friends was a cold-blooded killer. Adam had his revenge on all the other girls, and he got a particularly nasty revenge on Dorothy: not only did he kill her, but he ruined her memory, just as she ruined his reputation. He was branded a rapist when he was not, and she was branded a killer when she was not. And he gets away with this! And what is Kate left with? All of her friends are dead, and her charismatic and handsome boyfriend is left to pick up the pieces. She’ll rely on him more than ever now, probably, and ignore the issues that come along with his drinking, and any red flags of his violent nature. The true hidden terror remains hidden. He’s not a comically overdrawn douche of a man like the others, and that makes him so much more dangerous. That’s what the whole movie has been illustrating—ultimately, maybe, its whole point.

#the year 2023 #2023: movies #2023: fandom thoughts

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dilfdoctordoom · 3 years

Text

On Tom Taylor, the Current Nightwing Run & Ableism

I did mention I was gonna do a post about it, so here we are. There are some things I want to make clear before we begin: the issue exploded on Twitter on the very first day of disabled Pride month; disabled people have been discussing the ableism in Taylor’s Nightwing run since it began; nobody has blamed Taylor for what happened to Barbara in 2011. We are, however, blaming him for the way she is written in his series during 2021.

I am also going to be discussing the ableism in the fandom in this post. The reactions I have seen, from here to Twitter to TikTok, are showing not only a great misunderstanding of the situation, but a purposeful misunderstanding. The very real reasons disabled people are angry right now have been twisted to make us seem ridiculous and overly sensitive and I cannot help but feel that is very intentional.

Another quick addition: disabled people are not a monolith. Barbara Gordon spent over 20 years as a paralyzed wheelchair user. Stating (and I would like to note, never truly showing) that she is a part time cane user now is still erasing her disability. These things are not interchangeable.

So, with that out of the way, let’s begin.

Tom Taylor’s run is ableist. That is a fact of this situation. He made the active choice to include a version of Barbara Gordon that is ableist caricature. Story wise, the role that Barbara plays could have easily been filled by anyone else. There is no real season, within the narrative and outside of it, for Taylor to include this version of Barbara Gordon, who has received a decade of criticism from disabled people. It’s very well known that this iteration is problematic, to put it kindly, and Taylor is aware of that.

He made the active decision to include her, anyway, showing, at the very least, that he is passively, if not actively, ableist. Passive ableism is still ableism and disabled people are allowed to take issue with that.

That alone is reason enough for disabled people to be angry. But that’s not why things exploded on Twitter.

On July 1st, the very first day of disabled pride month, the new design for Barbara was dropped. After months of teasing Barbara’s return to a wheelchair using Oracle (see: Last Days of The DC Universe, Batgirl (2016), etc), they debuted... a new Batgirl costume that the artist has openly said draws inspiration from the Burnside suit.

There’s a lot of issues to unpack here, so let’s start small: the issue with consciously calling back to Burnside. The Burnside era of Batgirl stories was... beyond awful. The villain of the series’ first arc, was an AI based on Barbara’s brain patterns when she was disabled. It was evil because of all the rage and pain Barbara felt. The actual Barbara, on the other hand, was good -- because she was able bodied. Because her PTSD had been tossed aside. It was a horrifically ableist era that drove the idea that Barbara’s life was terrible when she was disabled; that it was some horrible, twisted secret.

Comics have kept that narrative going. Barbara is seen hiding books on chronic pain; she reacts aggressively to the mere idea that she could be in a wheelchair again, acting like it would be weakness. Whereas Barbara had once been Oracle not because of, but in spite of, her disability, who was fantastic representation for the disabled community, she now acts like it is the most shameful thing in her life.

To call back to Burnside is to call back to that ableism and make no critique of it. If anything, it’s to embrace the ideas of that era.

There is also the design itself to consider. Many people have pointed out the inclusion of a back brace, as if that saves it from ableism -- it does not. Any person who has ever worn a back brace can take one look at this design and know that they did not consult a disabled person. Hell, by how impractical that thing is, I doubt they even Googled a picture of a back brace.

It’s a superficial acknowledgement that Barbara is supposed to be disabled. Something that was apparently thrown in to appease the numerous complaints of Barbara being able bodied; something that no one working on it put any effort into.

When it comes to aids, this is not a new thing for Barbara in Infinite Frontier. She’s said to be using a cane occasionally, that we got a better look at in Batman: Urban Legends, and as any cane user can tell you... that is not a cane that could feasibly be used. It’s another pathetic attempt to acknowledge that Barbara is supposed to be disabled, without actually doing anything of importance.

[IMAGE ID: A segmented cane with a tri-pointed handle with a wrist strap. There is a stripe across the sections to connection them, labelled “solar battery charger buttons”. The text reads: “telescoping antenna doubles as cane or weapon if needed”. END ID]

Dropping this design (which we have now established to be problematic) on the very first day of disabled pride month is a sickening move. The very first day, and DC has doubled down on their disability erasure, thrown in superficial things like a back brace to act like it’s fine.

Tom Taylor is definitely involved in this, whether you like it not. No, he is not in anyway responsible for the events of the New 52 and what they did to Barbara Gordon, but that does not absolve him of blame for what is currently being done to her in his run.

When the design dropped, it started trending due to disabled fans reactions. To be clear: we were directly calling out the ableism in this design. This was Tom Taylor’s response:

[IMAGE ID: A tweet from TomTaylorMade that says: “Hey, @Bruna_Redono_F I think our new Batgirl suit is getting some attention.” He then adds a winky face emoji and tags @jesswchen and @drinkpinkkink. Attached are a screenshot showing that Batgirl is trending in the United States and a picture of the design itself. END ID]

This is him, bragging about how the disabled community reacted. Perhaps before this tweet, you could’ve made an argument that he was not ableist, but after he flaunted the fact that disabled people were rightly furious over this, like it was something to be proud of? No. If you are defending him, you are a part of the problem.

Taylor has included ableist writing in his Nightwing run, beyond the inherent ableism that comes with the current iteration of Barbara Gordon (whose inclusion, yet again, is his decision).

[IMAGE ID: A panel from Nightwing #79. Barbara and Dick are standing in his apartment. Barbara is saying: “I have some pretty new technology holding my spine together. I’m happy to do most things -- eat pizza in the park, take down low-level thugs -- but leaping from rooftops seems... unwise.” END ID]

What Barbara says in the panel above has bothered a lot of disabled people. The implication that she couldn’t “eat pizza in the park’ and “take down low-level thugs” without a spinal implant that conveniently erases her disability is... fucked up, to put it mildly. Those are both things that Barbara has done in a wheelchair. The first one is something wheelchair users can do and the implication that it’s not is beyond offensive.

But, let’s leave Barbara behind for a moment. I have previously mentioned that disabled people have been discussing the ableism present in this run long before July -- and that ableism is not only centred on Barbara. Dick is also a player in all this.

Dick Grayson was shot in the head. I don’t believe I need to retread the story, but just in case: Dick was shot in the head by KGBeast, developed amnesia from the event, and went by Ric Grayson for a long enough period in comics. If you have been active within the DC fandom for the past year or so, you know all about this controversial storyline and its fallout.

The Ric Grayson arc concluded itself the issue before Taylor became the writer for the series and ever since his tenure has begun, Taylor has completely ignored the reality of Dick being a disabled man. We understand this is comics, that things do not function the way they do in our world, but still -- it is clear that this gunshot wound to the head has affected Dick massively. We had an entire arc dedicated to how he struggled to find himself in the aftermath.

Taylor is choosing to write Dick as an able-bodied man, despite his canonical injuries and how they would impact his life.

This man is choosing to give empty gestures towards Barbara being a disabled woman (as discussed above, the completely dysfunctional back brace, etc) whilst writing her as able-bodied as possible. He writes both Dick and Barbara as able bodied as humanly possible. That is ableist. He is ableist. This is the same man that said he made a dog disabled ‘in honour of Barbara’. I do not think I need to elaborate on why that is bad.

The least he could’ve done, was get a sensitivity reader. We know that Taylor is not beyond getting people from marginalized communities to consult on his work (see: Suicide Squad), so why, when writing two characters that should be disabled, one that the disabled community have been criticising for a decade, does he not reach out to a single disabled person? A mere Google search could’ve improved the situation massively. In both the new design and the current writing, it is beyond clear that this is not just an able-bodied person writing it -- it’s an ableist person.

He could have listened to the numerous disabled fans that spoke out. Instead, he chose not only to refuse to do that, but to describe justifiable anger as ‘raging’. He treated us like we were crazy for daring to speak out about blatant ableism being parading around of us in our pride month.

Tom Taylor has failed to do the bare minimum and in doing so, he is, at very, very least, guilty of complicity. Again: passive ableism is still ableism.

The argument at hand is not just about Barbara Gordon and the continuing ableism that shines out from her current writing. The argument is about the treatment of disabled characters in his run. It has also become about the way he treats physically disabled people.

We also can’t have this conversation without acknowledging the fandom’s role in it all. I waited a day to write this up, to allow all the reactions to flood in... and I am sickened.

We have everything across the board. Able-bodied people that have actually listened to disabled people, who have supported us (which is deeply appreciated). Able-bodied people who may have had good intentions, but a skewed sense of the situation and perpetuating some of the more insidious lies being spread around (IE. that this is only about the new costume).

There are, obviously, the ableist reactions, though, that we will be discussing here. People deeming the current issues as ‘crazy’, calling disabled people ‘overly sensitive’ and ‘delusional’. Many people have completely glossed over the examples given for why Taylor, specifically, is ableist, and instead have resorted to telling disabled people that we are wrong and should be mad at DC instead.

It’s important to note that Tom Taylor is an adult man. He doesn’t need a fandom to attack disabled people for daring to call him out. He is not the victim in this situation; he has, for quite a few disabled people, been the aggressor.

I have seen claims that Infinite Frontier is a ‘slow burn’, implying that disabled people need to patient... as if we have not waited a decade for less ableist writing. There is a complete refusal from able-bodied fans to actually listen to what disabled people are saying. They would much rather rush to the defence of the (honestly rather mediocre) current Nightwing run.

Disabled fans know that comic book spaces are ableist. We know that both DC and Marvel and many of their writers are ableist. We are still allowed to be pissed as hell about it and acting like the current reaction being had right now is disabled people being ‘overdramatic’ is yet another example of how the able-bodied side of the fandom both refuses to listen to and undermine disabled people when we call out ableism.

We know it when we see it. We always do and we always will and we will always be able to recognize it far faster than an able-bodied person. If this many disabled fans are coming out and talking about an issue, calling it ableism, then it’s time for you shut up and listen.

Stop being a part of the problem and start supporting disabled fans for once.

#barbara gordon #dick grayson #nightwing #batgirl #tom taylor #tw ableism #okay to rb

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bloody-bee-tea · 3 years

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Bell

Nie Huaisang has barely sat down when Jiang Cheng speaks.

“I’m ready to marry,” he says without warning and watches in amusement as Nie Huaisang fumbles with the tea pot.

Jiang Cheng decides not to mention the stain he leaves behind on the table.

“What the—uh, I mean, that’s great, Jiang-xiong,” Nie Huaisang finally manages to get out and then he shifts in his seat. “It’s just that—you’re great and all, and good looking of course, and everyone would be flattered, really, but I’m not?” he finishes weakly and Jiang Cheng hides his amused smile behind his cup of tea.

“I’m not speaking about you,” he eventually tells Nie Huaisang and it’s almost comical how he sags in relief.

“Then why the hell would you tell me this, Jiang-xiong, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” he wines and finally gets around to pouring himself a cup of tea. “What brought this on?”

“My Sect is stable for now and it feels like the right time to settle down,” Jiang Cheng tells him with a shrug. “A good alliance won’t hurt either, and my Elders are getting on my case about a marriage. I figured, why not.”

“And there’s someone you like?” Nie Huaisang wants to know and Jiang Cheng nods.

There’s even someone he loves.

“I still don’t see why you would tell me about this,” Nie Huaisang says after a moment and Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes.

“I’m looking for your approval,” Jiang Cheng says and gives Nie Huaisang enough time to widen his eyes in surprise before he goes on. “I wish to marry Nie Mingjue.”

“Oh,” Nie Huaisang whispers and suddenly he seems tense and sad and Jiang Cheng frowns.

This is not the reaction he expected.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Nie Huaisang lowly says and Jiang Cheng puts his cup down harder than he wanted to.

“So I’m good enough for you but not your brother? Is this an insult to you or to me? Didn’t you say anyone would be flattered? Are you lying to me now, Huaisang?” he demands to know and Nie Huaisang flinches before he hides behind his fan.

Jiang Cheng glares at him, because Nie Huaisang damn well knows how he thinks about that.

“Of course not, that’s not it,” Nie Huaisang nervously says. “It’s just—da-ge isn’t doing so well,” Nie Huaisang finally admits and that at least Jiang Cheng can understand.

Even if a pit of worry opens in his stomach at hearing that.

“What do you mean?” he prompts Nie Huaisang when he falls silent again and Nie Huaisang’s fan speeds up.

“His qi deviations—it’s getting worse,” Nie Huaisang admits.

Jiang Cheng has seen a few of them over the course of his friendship with Nie Huaisang, mostly because Nie Mingjue didn’t seem to think twice about leaving his Sect for days or weeks at a time, always deciding to join Nie Huaisang when he came by on one of his visits to Lotus Pier.

Jiang Cheng just didn’t think it was this serious, yet.

“Worse?”

Nie Huaisang nods.

“More regular and more violent. Even er-ge—he told me—I should prepare, he said,” Nie Huaisang brings out and Jiang Cheng frowns.

If even Lan Xichen no longer has hope that his playing is doing something, then it really must be serious. The guy is a notorious optimist and for him to be pessimistic about it—Jiang Cheng doesn’t like it.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t played for him yet,” Jiang Cheng decides on a whim but a plan is forming in his mind.

He will not allow Nie Mingjue to die before he turns thirty. There’s no way in hell that will happen.

“Jiang-xiong, what do you think to achieve if even er-ge can’t help anymore?” Nie Huaisang wants to know but there’s the tiniest bit of hope in his voice.

“Maybe Lan Xichen goes about this wrong,” Jiang Cheng decides, the plan taking more concrete shape.

It would make sense if Lan Xichen’s playing isn’t having the desired effect if what Jiang Cheng thinks is true.

“Can you even play the song?” Nie Huaisang asks and Jiang Cheng grins at him.

“No, but I know a master who might be willing to teach me.”

He’s not talking about Lan Xichen, they both know it, and Nie Huaisang’s eyes go wide.

“It’s impossible, Jiang-xiong,” he then says with a shake of his head. “Even if Lan Qiren would be willing to teach you one of their secret songs, are you even good enough to learn it? And why would you think that you have more success than er-ge?”

“You seem to forget what my Sect’s motto is,” Jiang Cheng tells him and takes another sip from his tea. “Attempting the impossible is literally what I do,” he says and that, at least shuts Nie Huaisang up.

Jiang Cheng guesses it’s mostly because they are sitting in what was a burned out husk just a year ago but is now again a bustling, thriving Sect.

No one imagined Jiang Cheng would be able to rebuild Lotus Pier like this and he proved them all wrong.

He’s going to prove them wrong about Nie Mingjue’s impending death as well.

~*~*~

“Sect Leader Jiang,” Lan Qiren greets him when Jiang Cheng enters the room.

“Teacher Lan Qiren,” he respectfully gives back and Lan Qiren waves him off in the same move he tells him to sit.

Jiang Cheng settles down and waits for Lan Qiren to pour them both some tea before he speaks. He did learn his lesson with Nie Huaisang, as amusing as that was.

“I intend to court Nie Mingjue,” Jiang Cheng says and just like Nie Huaisang, Lan Qiren jerks with his words.

Jiang Cheng would be offended that this is everyone’s first reaction, but honestly, he thinks it’s more amusing than anything.

“Why are you telling me this?” Lan Qiren wants to know after a moment and Jiang Cheng gives him a winning smile.

“I need help with the courting gift,” Jiang Cheng tells him and watches as Lan Qiren’s eyebrows go up.

“What do you intend to give him that you think I’m able to help?”

“I need the Song of Clarity,” Jiang Cheng says without beating around the bush and Lan Qiren freezes.

“That’s a Clan secret,” Lan Qiren reminds him and Jiang Cheng shrugs.

“I know, but I’m counting on the fact that you care too much to deny me this,” he says. “Nie Mingjue’s death would devastate Lan Xichen and you love your nephew too much to want that to happen.”

Lan Qiren regards him in silence for a long moment before he sighs.

“If you want to marry him, it would devastate you, too. And you already lost so many,” Lan Qiren says and Jiang Cheng is surprised enough by his words that he falls silent.

He doesn’t see why Lan Qiren would care about if it hurts him, but it’s nice to know that he does.

“Which is why I won’t let it happen. But I need to learn to play the song.”

“What makes you think that you can achieve what my nephew cannot?”

“No offense to your nephew, but I think he’s going about this wrong,” Jiang Cheng says with a shrug.

“Elaborate,” Lan Qiren says, but his voice doesn’t snap like it used to in the classroom when he was outraged and Jiang Cheng counts it as a win.

“Lan Xichen is a formidable musician, but outside of a fight he’s too soft. I haven’t heard him play for Nie Mingjue but I’m guessing he’s trying for a gentle, soothing approach. It won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Have you known Nie Mingjue to be gentle and soothing?” Jiang Cheng shoots back and Lan Qiren frowns. “Even when he cares about someone he’s gruff about it, an undercurrent of anger always there. It’s just who he is,” Jiang Cheng says, because he has witnessed it enough times to know it to be true.

Nie Mingjue doesn’t care about anyone more than his brother and even with him he can’t be gentle and soft. It’s just not who Nie Mingjue is as a person, and that’s perfectly alright. But Lan Xichen is trying to appeal to that side of Nie Mingjue, so it’s no wonder he’s not making any progress.

“What is your plan, then?” Lan Qiren inquires. “To sit on him and force him to listen instead of having him meditate?”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng bluntly says, because he guesses that’s the only way he’ll get Nie Mingjue to listen and it would be the most effective. “The song doesn’t have an effect because Nie Mingjue is not gentle and soft, there’s nothing the song could react with. If you play the song when he’s angry and ready for a fight—it might wield more of a result.”

“You gave this a lot of thought,” Lan Qiren muses but he hasn’t yet snapped at Jiang Cheng and that simply has to be a good sign.

“Of course I did. I didn’t just wake up yesterday and decided I would marry Nie Mingjue.”

That happened a few weeks back, but Lan Qiren doesn’t need to know about that.

“Can you even play the guqin?”

“I was raised as the heir to one of the five Great Sects. We all had to learn,” he says with a shrug.

“But can you?” Lan Qiren asks again, clearly not buying Jiang Cheng’s bullshit.

“I have a basic understanding of it,” Jiang Cheng finally relents and a cold shiver goes down his back when Lan Qiren smiles at him.

“The Song of Clarity is one of the more complicated ones,” he warns him but Jiang Cheng has never met a challenge he wouldn’t take.

How hard can it be, anyway.

~*~*~

It turns out the Song of Clarity is a fucking bitch to learn and Jiang Cheng hates the song with a passion. It’s unnecessary stupid and hard and just out to make Jiang Cheng trip up over seemingly innocent looking notes and if he never has to play it again it will be too soon.

But he learned it for a reason and he did not go through all of this pain and hassle to simply never play it again.

“You’re ready,” Lan Qiren says two weeks into his lessons. “You can play it for Nie Mingjue.”

“Thank you,” Jiang Cheng says, as he bows to Lan Qiren over his guqin.

“Did you send an official courtship letter yet?” Lan Qiren wants to know and he frowns when Jiang Cheng shakes his head.

“No. I talked to Huaisang, who told me not to marry his brother, because he’s bound to die soon. I doubt Nie Minjgue’s answer will be different at the moment, and I’m not accepting that. Huaisang did give me his blessing to try though, so there’s that.”

“I see,” Lan Qiren says and strokes his beard. “If Mingjue accepts, you send him here, for a talk.”

That makes Jiang Cheng freeze.

“A talk?”

“Jin Ling is too young to give Mingjue a fair warning as to what will happen to him if he makes you unhappy, so I’m going to step in.”

Jiang Cheng is unable to find his voice for the longest of times, because that he didn’t expect. He knows Lan Qiren has to like him at least a little bit, otherwise he would have kicked him out the moment Jiang Cheng barged in with his outrageous demand but this—this almost speaks of family.

“Thank you,” Jiang Cheng chokes out and when Lan Qiren smiles at him this time, it’s a soft thing.

“You’re very welcome, Wanyin. And now go and court that stubborn man.”

“I will,” Jiang Cheng says and gathers up his guqin. “I damn well will.”

~*~*~

Nie Mingjue is frowning at him when Jiang Cheng refuses to take a seat in the great hall.

“Why do you have to be so contrary today?” Nie Mingjue presses out and Jiang Cheng can see it, the unnatural anger, caused by the always threatening qi deviation.

He doesn’t like it, but he will damn well use it for his own gain here.

“I’m itching for a fight, can’t you see?” Jiang Cheng gives back and bares his teeth at Nie Mingjue. “Though I doubt you can take me today. I bet the anger makes you all sloppy,” Jiang Cheng teases him, fully aware of Nie Huaisang’s nervous flutter of his fan in the corner of the room and of Nie Mingjue’s narrowing eyes.

“What do you want, Wanyin?” Nie Mingjue snaps and for this Jiang Cheng softens his smile as much as he knows how to.

“I want to marry you,” he says and doesn’t let Nie Mingjue’s surprised gasp deter him. “But not if you’re going to make a widower out of me in the week after our wedding. So you’re going to endure me playing the most boring, difficult fucking song for you, or I will force you to.”

“Force me to,” Nie Mingjue repeats and gets up. “You think you can force me to listen to it?”

“Look at you,” Jiang Cheng scoffs, though his heart is beating quicker with the threat hanging over him. Nie Mingjue is a formidable warrior after all. “Your hands are already shaking. You can’t beat me.”

Jiang Cheng and Nie Mingjue have sparred a lot when he came to visit Lotus Pier and Jiang Cheng did win a few times, but it was too rare for this kind of confidence and Jiang Cheng knows it.

He is counting on the fact that Nie Mingjue really is too far gone already to put up much of a fight.

“Fuck you,” Nie Mingjue hisses but he reaches for Baxia.

“You can, if you win,” Jiang Cheng cheekily gives back. “If I win, I will sit on you and you will damn well listen to me play.”

~*~*~

The moment Nie Mingjue hits the ground, Jiang Cheng is on him, whipping out the guqin Lan Qiren gave him as he settles down on Nie Mingjue’s back.

Jiang Cheng makes himself heavier than he usually is—using one of the many talismans Wei Wuxian came up with back in the day—and Nie Mingjue struggles under him, cursing and yelling, hitting the ground and kicking his legs.

Jiang Cheng will never get a better opportunity than this.

He starts to play the Song of Clarity, his own emotions running high from the fight and from his worry for Nie Mingjue and he thinks it might just be okay like that.

Clearly Nie Mingjue doesn’t react to the gentleness with which Lan Xichen plays for him; maybe he needs to have this song played a bit more aggressively as well.

Nie Mingjue doesn’t stop his struggling throughout the whole song but Jiang Cheng isn’t deterred by that. When he ends it, he looks over his shoulder down at Nie Mingjue who is glaring at him.

“You need me to play it again?” Jiang Cheng challenges him and Nie Mingjue huffs.

“I hate that fucking song.”

“The feeling is mutual, but you’re not getting out of this the easy way. So what will it be?” he demands to know and Jiang Cheng startles when Nie Mingjue slaps the ground, apparently in anger before he sags.

“Play it again,” Nie Mingjue says and Jiang Cheng can’t fight the rush of happy satisfaction that runs through him.

So he plays the cursed song again and then one more time for good measure, though for that last one he allows Nie Mingjue to get up and go through forms with Baxia and when he finally, finally vanishes the guqin again, Nie Mingjue’s grip is steady and his eyes are clear.

“How the hell did you do that?” Nie Mingjue demands to know once he’s done with his form and Jiang Cheng gets up to stretch his legs.

He never really was one for sitting down.

“I played the song, same as everyone else,” he gives back but Nie Mingjue shakes his head.

“Yours is different.”

“Because I don’t try to soothe you with it. I don’t want to get rid of your anger or your gruffness. I want to get rid of the death that could follow it, so I play for that.”

“Is that why Xichen’s song doesn’t work?”

“Probably,” Jiang Cheng says with a shrug and then he startles when Nie Mingjue simply drops Baxia to the ground.

There’s a heart stopping moment where Jiang Cheng fears that he overdid it, or that he did something wrong, that Nie Mingjue is experiencing a qi deviation at that very moment, but before he can move and try to help in any way possible Nie Mingjue’s hands are on his face and Jiang Cheng is being pulled into a scorching kiss.

“I don’t know what you intend to give me for our wedding, but nothing can compete with this,” Nie Mingjue breathes out when they part and Jiang Cheng darts in to nibble on his lower lip.

“Try me,” he says and claims Nie Mingjue’s lips again, because he can and there is nothing else he wants to be doing at that moment.

Judging by how they just barely make it to Nie Mingjue’s room, the feeling is mutual.

(Jiang Cheng does have a better gift at the wedding; he modified the Yunmeng Jiang Clarity Bell in a way that allows it to resonate with Baxia, to clear away resentment and to replicate the effects of the so despised song without Jiang Cheng ever having to play it again. It turns out Nie Huaisang is the most grateful for that, actually, because he started to hate the song with a passion, too.)

Link to my ko-fi on the sidebar!

#bt writes #the untamed #mdzs #mingcheng #jiang cheng #nie mingjue #lan qiren #nie huaisang #fix it #song of clarity #cursing #getting together #courtship #humor #jc is not going to let nmj die of something as trivial as a goddamn qi deviation #just watch him

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lemon-pilled · 2 years

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Similarities between TF2 and Splatoon (2)

by me (a sploon 2 player) and @d-9542 (a tf2 player) (they barely ever post tho and anyways this was my idea lol)

i cant cut posts in half on mobile sorry

TLDR, splatoon and tf2 are very similar in many ways

team vs team (turf wars and regular tf2 battles idk what theyre called)

team vs game (salmon run and MvM)

COSMETICS AND GUNS (self explanatory.)

events (idk if they count as seasonal lol but splatfests and scream fortress)

(i almost spelled fortrass in that last one LMAO oh my god im so sleep deprived)

stupidly elaborate lore (my friend isnt wrong ngl)

something something, precious resource stolen (zapfish and australium)

GMOD + SFM communities (i think splatoon has the biggest sfm community that isnt for a valve thing but dont quote me on this)

competitive scene (lots of games have this but honorable mention or something anyways ranked battles/league battles and competitive mode)

similar game modes (will elaborate later)

color themes woo (red vs blu, the iconic orange vs blue from splatoon 1, green vs pink in splatoon 2 and yellow vs purple in splatoon 3)

family rivalry i guess (like theres the whole mann brothers thing and i guess the sploon 1 final splatfest counts as well as the whole plot of sploon 2 hero mode? idk.)

'voice commands' (tf2 has A LOT. splatoon has like.....4. and they display as text with inkling/octoling noises. but they all have a different versions in different languages i think)

shinies (the australiam weapons and gold frying pan for tf2, and the stupid fucking golden toothpick from the DLC that im never getting because i absolutely cannot figure out how to beat girl power station someone send help)

bombs (literally demoman and the different bomb sub weapons in splatoon 2. i think he would have fun with those, especially fizzy bombs. im getting distracted fuck)

main and sub weapons (technically tf2 has a lot more categories but for the sake of my sanity im seperating them like this. sub weapons in splatoon ARENT limited to bombs only, for those of you who dont play.)

special abilities (while splatoon specials are different for each weapon, the abilities are dependant on the class in tf2. eg, ink armour and ubercharge, both of which makes you temporarily invincible and can affect teammates. but ink armour is the whole team, while uber is like, yourself and one other person. also charge times lmao the bane of my existance. the pain when you really need to use your special but the gauge isnt filled yet :[ )

"Cut off from developer support 😔" (my friends words. also technically not true because tf2 got updates about like last week as of posting, while splatoon is getying a THIRD GAME IN SEPTEMBER LETS FUCKING GO.)

stories! (tf2 has the comics, and splatoon has official short stories on their site.)

similar(?) gamemodes time pog

(a lot of the splatoon gamemodes can be compared to multiple tf2 gamemodes so thsy may show up several times lol)

online gameplay

online gameplay woo basically the same thing? the goals are a bit different cause in splatoon youre trying to get the most turf inked but literally you just shoot at people. pew pew.

salmon run and mann vs machine

this is like literally the same thing. the goals are different but basically a team of players have to fight against several waves of salmonoids/robots. you get stuff by beating the waves (i think?????? i dont play tf2 and my brain is, again, too tired to comprehend what the wiki is trying to say) and stuff and you win ONLY if you get all of them.

control points and tower control/splat zones

i think symmetrical cp is closer to tower control than the other ones. like, all of the splatoon maps are symmetrical so....

anyways

both teams have to take over a certain amount of spots to win. in splatoon 2 this is done by riding the tower (which is more like a payload thing but i think rainmaker is more similar to that than tower control) while in tf2 this is done by standing at the capture point. it takes a while to capture each point for both games, tho in splatoon you dont have to recapture, since it isnt exactly like capture points? thats more of a splat zones thing.

speking of splat zones this one is similar to cp in the fact that you have to literaly capture zones. usually1, but there may be 2. capturning the zones is similar to how its done in tf2, except instead of just standing there you have to cover the area with your teams ink. the counter only goes down if your ink is majority and you have all the zones.

im too tired to do all the big brain thinking to explain this more so MOVING ON

payload and rainmaker (and also the peristalsis stage in octo expansion)

you move a thing to a goal. you win if you get that thing to the goal! thats the very basics but while payload is like a move the cart via a track thing rainmaker is literally just grabbing the rainmaker and getting it to (or as close as possible) to the podium on the opposing teams aide of the map and actually i take back my earlier statment payload is quite similar to tower control.

HOWEVER. in splatoon both teams are fighting to get the rainmaker to their respective podiums. in payload, only one team moves the cart, while the other team tries to stop them.

the peristalsis stage is basically the same thing but with 1 player only cos the octo expansion DLC is a single player campaign. that and you have to shoot at it to get it to move.

king of the hill and splat zones

literally the exact same thing????? like im not even kidding. theres a certain area you have to capture, and once you have that area a timer starts to count down. but if the enemy captures it from you the timer for your team pauses and the enemys counter starts. this is kinda short cause theres not that much for me to point out lol

PASS time and clam blitz

theyre both semi based off of irl sports? except in passtime theres only one ball i think, while in clam blitz you have to collect clams to make a bigger football clam to throw at the enemys basket to break it so you can throw clams into it before it repairs itself

anyways i think this is everything? man idk i did this on a whim cause i was bored.

#tf2 #splatoon 2 #long post #splatoon

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mrskurono · 3 years

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title: N/A || Megumi Fushiguro x FemSorcerer!reader a/n: this is old and converted from a fic I ditched with an oc so I reformatted it to a reader x type of deal word count: 1.7k tags: mentions of death, reader is queer (pan or bi you decide), comfort ish fic, fluff, based mostly on the anime since I wrote this prior to reading it character(s): Megumi Fushiguro (jjk)

"Oh, you're awake."

That voice wasn't a surprise. Megumi had heard it before as he lie in bed taking the most of his recovery time. Before it had just been to the tune of his eyes closed and his laying still in bed while she either talked to him or any number of nurses that had come and gone over the past twenty four hours. Sitting up in bed now Megumi locked eyes with his visitor.

A nonverbal acknowledgment to the second year. It took but a moment for the sorcerer to see the small wrapped box you had brought back with yourself. You took heed of your underclassman staring at what you'd brought back. So you took it upon yourself to share without him asking about it.

"Something to eat," you smiled sweetly. Just as you took up you seat once more at his bedside, this time you placed the wrapped box on the table swung over his bed, "I didn't think hospital food sounded good after that long of a nap."

Megumi looked at the fabric covered tote box placed before him, "That wasn't a nap, I was passed out."

"I know," you nodded, no fault of your own as your smile persisted, "Just telling myself it was a nap calmed my nerves."

He looked up from the unopened treat box. Sincerity in your eyes just as there had been from day one. Megumi questioned how someone so soft would align with such a life. He broke eye contact just to look at the box again.

Never had he mentioned having any favorite foods to you. Which was partially true. If it tasted good then he'd eat it. Simple as that. So Megumi admitted to being a little taken back by what you could have brought him that wasn't already just easily provided by the hospital.

"Open it already," you coaxed, "I heard your stomach rumble hours ago before you woke up."

He was famished. No lie there. Megumi carefully untied the knot of the neat lunchbox. Unwrapping it's contents to be more than just surprised about what you'd brought him. Delicately worked on onigiri with the three of them sporting different flavors. Crisp tempura fried vegetables laid carefully next to it. And what looked to be a small cup thermos nestled off to the side. He had an idea whatever was in it probably was as good as the rest of the food laid out.

Seeing the spread all he could muster was purely a question, "Where did you buy this? It looks...nice."

You shook your head, "I didn't. It's all homemade don't worry."

Admitting to the labor that had gone into this gesture only magnified the oddity that was your continual kindness. It wasn't prevalent in a jujutsu sorcerer's life. And simply one not displayed by sorcerer's as a whole. It left Megumi more than a jumble of confused words why his upperclassman could maintain kindness when also baring a curse like the rest of them.

"...thank you, y/n." He looked up from his meal at you, "Really, thank you."

Brimming with a cocky smile that never faded, you gestured to the meal, "C'mon don't thank me without trying it. It could be complete garbage and you don't know."

Megumi handled one of the onigiri as he brought it to his lips. Not meant to hide his soft smile, he still took a pause before biting it, "I know it's good, you made it."

Without a shadow of a doubt he was right. Everything you'd packed into that plain little bento was everything but plain. Delicious down to the last crumble. Megumi hadn't realized it was gone before he was taking the last dribble of soup from the thermos. When he finally set it down to realize his plate empty and stomach full, he found himself wondering once again the same question.

"...you're such a good cook too," Megumi added to the list of things he'd already told you, you were good at. "Why are you here when you could clearly be doing so many other things."

A shrug with a chagrined look on your face, "Well the other second years are just overreacting with the exchange anyways, and you were here so I thought I'd-"

"No," Megumi shook his head to stop the dodging you always did. "I mean here doing this."

This question again. You had run into it a few times before with Megumi's questions as well as some of the other students. It never seemed enough to just say one saw curses. Here they wanted detailed information on what landed someone here. As secretive as the jujutsu sorcery field was. You never felt it necessary to divulge your background like it was some stat to be learned in a comic book. You were here and you were learning. What else did people need?

"...I can see curses. Not a lot I can do with that," you answered just as sweetly as any other time the question arose. Where that answer sat just fine with everyone else. Be it maybe a lot of jujutsu sorcerers were a little self centered. Making your kindness stick out like a sore thumb and get seen more than once as a weakness. It also alleviated the need to elaborate most times. But where you found relief in other's laziness not to ask too many questions. It was Megumi's consistently deadpan prying that perhaps drew you to befriend him. That came with the price of his constant inquiry about why you did the things you did. Especially if they involved him.

So again, for what seemed like the hundredth time now in your friendship, Megumi asked, "How did someone so kind get cursed though."

If it were anyone else perhaps you'd ignore it with a sweet smile. Act like it didn't matter and it was just a fluke in your character. There were a million things you'd would rather do than relive the cause of this career choice. Presented with Megumi's brush with death caused a waiver in your conviction to stay out of personal affairs though. You'd made some superficial friendships here. But when the first years, or at least when two of the three first years, returned from a botched first grade curse mission. Very present negative emotions flooded you. Ones all too familiar and worrisome. You were forced to relive a glimpse of your heartache from years ago. With a heavy heart you knew sitting at someone's bedside night and day warranted some kind of explanation.

"...I...I lost someone," you looked down at your empty hands, "When I was younger of course. I guess they were my bestfriend."

Lots of people lost friends and family. Death was present but not normally the clear cut reason to harbor so much negative emotions that fueled Jujutsu Sorcerers. Megumi looked over at his upperclassman wringing your hands together nervously. If death was the cause he knew this couldn't be easy for you to talk about in a setting like a hospital.

Megumi didn't want to upset the semblance of friendship he respected with you, "You don't have to if you don't-"

"No, heh," Looking up from your hands you smiled through a thin veil of tears threatening your distant glazed over eyes, "I'll tell you because...I was just as scared that you were going to die too. And- well, I just don't know if my heart could handle this all over again."

"Your heart?" He didn't show it but Megumi kindled a bit of surprise in his mind knowing he liked your company but didn't know it was reciprocated beyond courteous nature from you.

A quite nod from you. Your body was present but when Megumi met your eyes it was clear you weren't thinking about the here and now.

"...when I was in primary school I had a best friend I did everything with. She was...she was everything to me." You smiled just at the fuzzy memory, "Nothing fancy I guess, bad things happen everyday. And it was just another day...We were walking home when it happened. A cough, I didn't think anything of it since kids get sick all the time. But before I realized it that would be the last time we would walk home together. The last time we'd do anything together." You brushed the tears from your eyes but didn't let your smile fade, "I couldn't see her before she passed away, something about more kids getting sick and infectious. How I didn't get sick is beyond me. We spent every moment together. Before I knew what happened, my mom broke down telling me she'd died and well...I was just left to process it."

Megumi held his tongue for a moment. There was no trauma. No indicator that it really would be enough to cause anguish such that a curse would be born. While his heart ached for a moment of compassion at your loss, he was still confused as to what upset you enough to bring on the change young Jujutsu sorcerer's experience to put them on this path.

He didn't need to wait though or even ask when seeing the curses started. You looked at him with the biggest grin while tears rolled down your cheeks and in all sincerity finally told the truth to someone, "It wasn't until later when the curses started showing up and my heart never really healed. I realized what was haunting me....I loved her and never got the chance to tell her that."

Loss of love and innocence. Deadly and deceitful to a human. Survivors always carried a heavy weight and you were no different. Megumi understood what inflicted your curse energy. It was something that wouldn't leave you until the day you died. Heart wrenching like all jujutsu sorcerer's, it left one question pertinent to Megumi more than anything.

He looked from you. To the things you'd brought. And finally back at you with the small things connecting in his mind, "Does that mean..."

Your distant stare returned to the present to meet up with Megumi's green eyes. Holding his gaze for a drawn out moment as you fought with what was inside you. Finally you couldn't keep it together and cracked with an incredibly soft smile playing on your lips. You couldn't live with another curse like this so you came clean, "...yeah, I think I love you too."

#tw death mention #mentions of violence #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk writing #jujutsu kaisen writing #jjk x reader #megumi fushiguro #fushiguro megumi #jjk megumi #megumi fushiguro x reader #fushiguro megumi x reader #megumi x reader

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crescentsteel · 4 years

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Keeping a Secret - Part 5

pairing: Tsukishima x f!manager of Sendai Frogs genre: sexual tension/crack/fluff/slow burn wc: 6.8k

[a/n]

Let me know if you want to be part of the taglist uwu

AO3

Part 4 || Part 6 || masterlist

“Your lips aren’t disgusting,” Tsukishima says quietly, but loud enough to reach your ears. You did hear him the first time though. You just didn’t understand what he meant so you brushed it off as garbled words induced by your sleep-deprived brain.

You didn’t expect him to contradict the subtle insult you unconsciously threw at yourself. From his reaction to your suggestion a while ago, you’d think he’d be glad that you instantly discarded it instead of pushing it further.

You pull back just enough to see his somber expression meeting your baffled one.

“I thought you didn’t want to do it again,” you mutter softly even though the kiss snapped you out of your drowsiness.

“I changed my mind,” he simply says.

“Uhhh. Care to elaborate?” you ask, still confused as to what his change of mind entails. Does he now agree to your earlier proposal? Or is he just saying that he doesn’t mind kissing you again?

...Wait, isn’t that the same?

Okay, so apparently your mind is still fuzzy and not digesting the situation clearly. His closeness isn’t helping either.

Maybe you’re actually still asleep and you’re having sleep paralysis on their sofa. In just a matter of seconds, Tsukishima’s face will turn demon-like and scream at how moronic you are for dreaming about this.

“You’re allowed to kiss me when it’s just the two of us,” the boy sitting in front of you announces.

Tsukishima tries not to look away so you wouldn’t think he feels awkward agreeing to your suggestion the same way you offered it. You look way better and more alert after he kissed you so he’s expecting you to say something sassy to get back at his brutal words.

Instead, you wrap a hand around your throat. Before he can even process what you’re doing, your hand is already joined by the other.

“What are you doing?” he asks both confused and worried as your hands tighten on your neck, but you don’t answer. He only confirms that you’re indeed choking yourself when you start gasping for air.

“What the fuck!” He hurriedly yanks your hands away from your throat, gripping each wrist and pulling them away from one another.

You inhale sharply from the absence of your hands blocking your windpipe.

It didn’t work. You’re still in sleep paralysis and with absolutely no idea how to get out.

You close your eyes and dejectedly lean on his chest. “I’m too tired to tell if this is real or a poorly conjured dream. Demon, begone,” you mumble while feebly knocking your head against him.

“Tsukishima will think I’m an idiot,” you add.

He usually doesn’t care about the aftermath of his words. The more they get under a person’s skin, the more it amuses him. But you seem to have really taken his words to heart this time, and he hates the fact that he’s bothered by it. He’d rather be annoyed by you than plagued with guilt.

He admits he was being a complete dick earlier, but he didn’t expect it would get to you like this, to the point that you’d even think you’re dreaming.

He sighs, accepting that he needs to deal with the consequences of his sharp tongue. “You’re not an idiot, y/n,” he softly says. You lift your gaze and look at him like he’s grown two heads. “So stop acting like one already,” he spurs on, unable to help himself as his true nature immediately returns.

You detach yourself from him as life returns back to your eyes. “Okay, I’m not dreaming. You’re definitely Tsukishima.” You shake your hands, probably to shake off the lethargy from your nap, then slap both your cheeks with your palms.

You steady yourself as you face him again. You verify the vague exchanges you two had with one question. “I take it we have a deal then?”

He holds your resolute stare, trying to come up with some set of rules but weariness is already hitting his cognitive capabilities. However, there is one that’s extremely necessary for the both of you to follow.

“No one should know about this.”

You scoff at his answer. “No one will know about this,” you repeat his words with a more convincing variation. So despite the insane premise of the arrangement and its lack of detail, he agrees.

“Deal.”

Tsukishima heads straight to the kitchen as soon as he gets home. In spite of the audacious agreement you now have, neither of you felt awkward when he walked you to the main road to see you off. Once again, you were right. Accepting that he is also attracted to you somehow cleared his head. He still doesn’t like it, but it’s better than constantly being irritated at the strange pull you have on him.

Since you’ve proven yourself to always be right, he’ll give this a go. It’ll only be until the end of the project anyways, which won’t be long from now considering the timetable you laid out.

As he gets a pitcher of water, he sees Akiteru approaching the kitchen as well. He moves away from the fridge to make way in case his brother is going to get something from it. But Akiteru passes him by and leans on the counter next to him instead.

He pours himself a glass while growing prickly of Akiteru’s not-so-subtle staring.

“If you’re going to say something, just say it,” he snaps.

Akiteru laughs lightly at his displeasure. “She’s very lovely,” his older brother comments randomly, and yet he already knows Akiteru is without a doubt talking about you.

Lovely?

His mind instantly goes back to when you were: (a) dancing like a crippled fledgling; (b) squawking like a dying seagull to imitate a crocodile; and (c) choking yourself because you thought you were dreaming.

“If an alien in a human suit is lovely, then sure,” he answers dryly as he returns the pitcher back to the fridge.

“She’s really just a classmate?” his older brother probes.

Akiteru has been insinuating for a while now that he should get a girlfriend, as if not having one will cause him to miss out on this ‘great’ experience of life. So now that he’s finally brought someone home, Akiteru had decided in his head that you’re a potential romantic partner.

“How many times do I need to answer that?” he responds sourly.

His brother smiles apologetically, but his face shows a regaled glimmer. “Sorry, Kei. I must have misunderstood since I don’t kiss my classmates on the lips.”

He stills right as he was about to bring the glass to his lips.

He did not hear Akiteru’s steps back then. If he did, he’d quickly give himself adequate distance from you. He’d blame you for the distraction, but you weren’t really doing anything outrageous at that moment. You were actually unobtrusive and reasonable for the first time. It was him and his guilt that preoccupied him well enough to not notice Akiteru.

He finishes his water and leaves the glass on the counter. “Goodnight,” he says without looking at Akiteru as he hurriedly goes back to his room.

It hasn’t been an hour since you two made the deal but someone -- worse, his own brother, has already found out. His only consolation is that Akiteru doesn’t really talk with his social circle so there’s no need to be worried. Also, Akiteru is not really the type to babble about stuff like that.

The disadvantage is also the same as its advantage, it’s Akiteru. He might get all excited and continue assuming that there’s more to the two of you than this limited agreement, when the truth is you’re just two individuals who agreed to make out in secret.

But that’s something he wouldn’t dare reveal to anyone, most especially to Akiteru.

When he reaches his room, he immediately texts you.

‘We meet in your place next time.’

Hopefully, Akiteru will forget whatever he saw tonight if you don’t come back.

Surprisingly but not really, you and Tsukishima are getting along swimmingly since you made the deal. ‘Swimmingly,’ meaning he still ignores you and regards you as a pest during practice. During your private meetings, however, he is agreeable.

It still seems unbelievable to you when you actually think about it. You and Tsukishima exchanging kisses when no one’s around? You’d have a good laugh if someone even suggested that idea to you before you shared that first, completely unintended kiss.

It is indeed comical, how you two would sit across each other, and with only a certain glance, both of you already know what’s up. Eventually, it became a bother to stand and go over to one another just for a kiss so you two sit side by side now.

Tsukishima is funny though. Sometimes, he wouldn’t act upon it because he expects you to take the initiative. You don’t mind doing it, but it’s fun to see him all bothered while trying to study.

“Tsukishima, you look weird. Are you okay?” You feigned concern even though you clearly know why.

He didn’t spare you a glance at all and just mumbled, “I’m fine,” while typing.

“Hmmm, alright! I’m done so we can wrap up now,” you let him know as you started fixing your stuff up. You thought that he’d hold on to his dumb ego and follow suit since you’ve finished cleaning up, but he still hadn’t done anything.

You held back a smile when you felt him grab your arm. You swiftly composed yourself before turning to his direction.

“What?” you ask like you don’t have a clue.

He glowers at you. “You know what.”

You pursed your lips to the side as you gently shake your head. “I am very confused right now,” you acted persuasively.

He puffed tempestuously before he grabbed your nape and roughly descended down on your lips, utterly disregarding his unnecessary pride. You willingly reciprocate it. You latched your fingers in his wrist beside your cheek as you responded to each suck and nip of his lips.

When it ended, you smiled into his mouth which effectively gave you away.

He harshly pulled himself away from you. “You fucking knew,” he muttered furiously.

You scrunched up your nose and grinned mischievously as you gently tapped his cheek. “Of course, I knew. See you tomorrow at the match, Tsukishima,” you said, gesturing to his scattered belongings.

Needless to say, he was extra salty with you during the match with the Lions. But hey, at least they won the game.

However, despite the Lions now out of the picture, your workload isn’t any better because winning only means needing to prepare the next opponent’s profile. You’re just a bit thankful now that unwarranted and unexpected kisses are no longer bothering you since the two of you acknowledged the stupid attraction you have for each other.

Still, that doesn’t mean that your body has magically recovered and you’re no longer stressed all of a sudden. Because you are. You are stressed as fuck. With your academic load also on the line, you can’t rest yet.

You’re starting to feel overwhelmed and whenever that happens, you succumb to your one coping mechanism: stress eating.

You’re about to meet Tsukishima but you have a few minutes to spare, so you head to the nearest cake shop. You buy a mini cake for yourself and one slice for Tsukishima. You don’t feel like sharing yours so you just get him his own.

With a paper bag in hand, you see Tsukishima waiting for you by your dormitory’s entrance. You waste no time and ask him to follow you even though he probably already knows where exactly your room is.

One would think that when the door closes, you two would jump on each other’s arms and just get on with your deal, but nah.

You two get to your usual seats with your mind solely on the cake you bought as both of you take out your notes and laptop.

After you pull up the journal you need to look at for the day, you eagerly bring out the cake.

‘Hnnnngg,’ you groan internally. The cake’s design is so pretty that you almost don’t wanna eat it. But of course you will. You’ve never had strawberry shortcake from that shop before, so you’re curious to taste if it’s as good as it looks.

Just as you’ve been ogling at your cake, you catch Tsukishima staring at it as well. “Do you want some, Tsukki?” you ask before you give the slice you got for him.

“Why would I want something childish?” he asks back with a scowl.

“I don’t see how a cake is childish but okay.” You would’ve felt bad, but you’ll have the extra slice for yourself anyways so it’s not really that bad.

Normally, you would like to savor the pastry while doing something fun, but you don’t have the time for it right now. You’ll just eat it while doing your assigned stuff for the day.

For someone who thinks cake is childish, he keeps glancing at you with tiny hints of envy every time you take a bite. When he sees you catch him peering at the cake, he instantly flicks his eyes back to his laptop.

To verify your hunch, you moan exaggeratedly the next time you take a spoonful of the cake, instantly earning you a menacing glare from the blonde across you.

“I’m sorry. It’s just so good, you know. The bread is so fluffy. The cream is not too sweet. The strawberry filling has actual bits of strawberry.” You enact a chef’s kiss after your detailed remarks.

“Amazing. Best I’ve ever had. 10/10 would recommend and buy again,” you give a positive review before getting another slice.

When you get another spoonful, you groan again and roll your eyes for added effect. You look at Tsukishima and you can tell that it’s getting to him. Yet, he’s still not saying anything. He only keeps staring as if silently imploring you that you should let him have a taste as well.

As if you’ll bend to his will just like that.

“If you want some, just say so,” you taunt him with a smirk as you scoop the last spoonful in the plate, giving him not much time to swallow his pride and ask.

Before you can put it in your mouth, he stops you. “Fine,” he says as he grits his teeth. “I want some.”

Tsukishima really is funny. It’s only cake but he sounds so angry and embarrassed just because he asked for a tiny piece. How can you not tease him just a bit more?

You take the remaining piece and move beside him. You get the spoonful of cake, extending your arm and offering it to him that way.

He looks at the cake and then you. “I know how to eat,” he enunciates coldly at your attempt to spoon feed him.

You shrug it off with an ‘okay,’ then proceed to withdraw your hand so you can have it for yourself.

“Wait.”

You comply and let your retreating arm stay in place. A faint pink tint surfaces on his cheeks as he leans down and takes the cake from the spoon with his mouth. When he starts munching on it, he looks away and slump a little while savoring the small remains you gave him.

You press your lips together to repress a smile cause you know he’ll be even more embarrassed. But holy crap, Tsukishima is so cute like this! You want to take a picture of him right now and just ogle at how adorable he is when he’s this flustered.

The Sendai Frog’s nastiest middle blocker, standing at 6’3, likes strawberry shortcake. You’re reeling internally at your astounding discovery.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he snarls with the tiny blush still on his face.

You can’t help it anymore and give him a tight-lipped smile. “Nothing,” you squeak out from how hard you’re trying not to gush at his cuteness.

He suddenly regains his composure as he narrows his eyes while studying your face.

It’s your turn to be conscious from how he seems to have discovered something about you as well.

“What?” you ask warily.

You’re completely caught off guard when he puts a hand on your shoulder and lunges down. His lips capture the skin just beside the corner of your mouth, delicately sucking on the skin before brushing his warm tongue against it.

You go rigid on your seat at the totally unexpected action from him. It’s not even a kiss but you feel goosebumps prickling your skin while the air you’re breathing gets stuck in your throat.

That’s all he does then hoists himself back up, his features devoid of any emotion as if he didn’t just do something bold. His hand on your shoulder goes up to spot he just licked and strokes it with his thumb.

“You eat like a ten-year old,” he says blankly.

Just like that, the situation is reversed. He now has the upperhand while you’re completely frozen as your mind helplessly tries to come up with something, anything, to hide the fact that you’re a complete muddled mess on the inside.

But nothing. Your mind does not work and all its attention is still on the little stunt Tsukishima pulled just now.

Being the manager of the Frogs, you’ve always seen them as cute little puppies you need to take care of. You’re the one in charge of them so you always feel like you’re the one in control. The sense of control is even more reinforced with other male athletes getting swept away with your antics during matches.

Even with the several kisses you shared with Tsukishima, it’s only now that you’re rendered utterly disconcerted. Your lips start to tremble while your brows contort with horror from the foreign feeling that’s creeping on your whole body.

Fuuuucck, you curse silently at your mind’s incapability to come up with a solution to handle the situation.

To make it worse, the corner of his lips start to tug up, forming a smug grin that suits him ludicrously well.

“You okay, y/n?” His pompous demeanor lets you know that the question is not out of concern. He is very much aware of the effect he has on you. He’s just milking it.

And it’s fucking working.

He drags his thumb to your chin and tilts it up to get a better view of your features growing even more at loss by the second. “What’s wrong, hmm?”

You press your quivering lips together as you harshly avert your gaze from his. “Nothing,” you say too softly, losing the playfulness you had not long ago.

“What’s that?” He pretends to not hear it.

Seems like you’ve had enough because you swat his hand away from your chin and cover your whole face with both hands.

His grin spreads wide from your surrender as a chuckle escapes his throat. To entertain himself even more, he pries your hands away from your face. It’s easier than he expected since your wrists are like twigs with no strength in them.

Your face is a furious shade of rose as you glare at him with both shame and anger. You try to retrieve your arms but he’s obviously way stronger than you. “Tsukishima, you smooth li’l shit, let go of me!”

With that, he releases you as he cackles from your remark. He can now see the merits of acknowledging the inexplicable magnetism between him and you. Now that he doesn’t have to feel conflicted about it, he can relish breaking your previously impervious defenses by teasing you this way.

There wasn’t even any cake on your face. He just made it up to get back at you for toying with him like one of your dumb admirers.

You give off one enraged puff then you go back to face your laptop. You try to look fine but you’re trying too hard. He can tell that you’re still bothered by it even when you’re focused on your screen now.

He gets back to his own as well, the same grin he had earlier still there. He thought you’re going to keep ignoring him for the rest of your meeting, but before he can even focus on his own task, you awkwardly slide him the paper bag you had.

“I actually got you a slice in case you wanted one,” you huff timidly while meeting his surprised gaze. You don’t say anything else and get back to working.

That was… thoughtful of you. You got him one even if he didn’t ask for it. And despite teasing you like that, you still gave it to him. If it was him, he wouldn’t have bothered.

He gets the cake and saves it for later at home. He’d like to enjoy it alone away from your cheekiness, ridding you the chance to make fun of him the second time.

When he looks at you again, you give him a brief glance before settling in to do your assignment. He does the same since you two have frolicked enough for the day.

He had learned something about you from your former meetings: you have unbreakable focus when you start concentrating on something. You don’t talk. You don’t fiddle with your phone. You don’t even peel your eyes away from the screen unless you’re checking something on your notes.

The remarkable thing is how efficient you are. You work fast and come up with decent output. He’s seen it both in your write up for the project and in the reports you give to the team.

It’s almost impressive, if not for its inevitable downside: you run out of steam just as fast, which is what seems to be happening right now. He’s ignored the first two yawns he’s heard from you, but he can’t dismiss the third consecutive yawn.

He looks at your direction and confirms that you’re indeed starting to drop your attentiveness. Your eyes are becoming lazy and you’re just pressing your keyboard too hard one key at a time.

“Oy, it’s still early for you to be sleepy,” he scolds you.

You tap your face, a futile attempt to wake yourself up because your eyes are still dazed when you look at him. “It’s the cake. I overfed myself and now I want to sleep like one.” You groan as you realize your mistake. “No worries though. I just need coffee,” you mutter.

He slams his palm on the wooden surface of your table. “Do not get coffee,” he warns almost threateningly. He does not want a repeat of what happened the last time where you’re one wheeze away from death because of your damn coffee.

“But I need it,” you protest.

“No, you don’t. What you need is rest.”

“Don’t wanna. It felt weird last time. I don’t like slacking off when someone else is being productive,” you insist further.

He sighs irritably at your obstinacy. There’s no need to rush because you two managed to get back on the schedule you set, but then again he understands why. You’re trying to get as much shit done before your responsibilities become too much for you.

That’s probably how you’ve been getting by for the past three years, being a university scholar while managing the team. If being a student while being an athlete is already difficult for him, how much more for you who has grades to maintain while working as well?

If it were anyone else, they’d have exploded from the humongous amount of work that entails. Yet, you come to the gym with that carefree attitude of yours like you’re not burdened in any way. In all the times you’ve met with him outside the gym, not once has he heard you complain about it.

You don’t whine. You just do what needs to be done.

It’s something worth respecting, to say the least. But you should really rest when your body tells you to.

“I’ll stop doing the report and watch volleyball clips from last year’s Olympics. Take your nap,” he says.

Your face brightens up at his suggestion. “Can I watch with you?”

“No.” The point of him watching is so that you can rest easy, not for you to join him. However, the look on your face tells him you won’t budge unless he lets you watch with him.

“I swear, it’ll do me better than a nap,” you press on.

He rubs his temple with irritation as you leave him with no choice but to agree. “Fine.” You squeal at his approval and scamper to his side.

He opens his folders of volleyball clips he’s yet to watch while you tuck your knees together the same way you did last time you watched documentaries for your project.

Halfway through the first clip, he feels your head bump his shoulder. He peers at you from his peripheral and sees your hazy eyes fighting off sleep. He doesn’t say anything and just waits for your drowsiness to successfully take over.

By the end of the first video, he feels your head bobbing forward which he can no longer ignore. “Can’t you just go to your bed and sleep?” he asks almost desperately.

You fix your posture and open your eyes again. “I’m fine.”

He rolls his eyes and gives a resigned huff as he skids his laptop to your front. You shoot him a puzzled look while he positions himself behind you.

“Continue watching then.” He scoots closer until your back is pressed to him, effectively caging you as he extends his legs on your both sides. There’s no use trying to convince you to sleep when you’re this stubborn. So, he’ll just provide you the means to do so.

You frown at him which he answers with a raised eyebrow. In the end, you just shrug it off and go back to watching.

Just as he anticipated, you’re already unconscious in a matter of minutes. Your head falls back to his chest. He lets you settle deeper in your sleep, watching you unconsciously find a position you’re most comfortable in. By the time the second video ends, you’re no longer wiggling around and have found refuge on the front of his shoulder with your arm loosely wrapped around his bicep.

Although he did say that he’ll slack off with you, he sees no reason to uphold it now that he’s finally got you to rest. Unlike you, he works at a normal pace. He needs to continue doing his own tasks so when you wake up, he’s already done as well.

He carefully reaches for his laptop and closes the video currently playing. He gets back to working on the current draft of the project, feeling the strain on his back with nothing to support him while you lean against him.

He shouldn't be doing this. There is no reason for him to be inconvenienced this way by you. This isn’t part of the deal.

But seeing how you’re working so hard yet still face everyone else with that vexatious cheerful smile of yours, he deems you deserving of that serene look on your face while you’re peacefully snuggled within his grasp.

Just as he allowed you to kiss him, he also allows you to hold on to him like this.

“Hey, number 17!”

Tsukishima hears someone yell. He’s sure that it was him who’s being called because he recognizes the voice. It’s someone from the Jaguars, the team they’re up against after winning against the Lions the previous game.

Still, he’d like to pretend that he doesn’t know it’s him the other athlete is shouting for. The gym is filled with other number 17s from different teams anyways. He can easily dismiss it.

However, he hears his last name not long after, automatically singling him out from the other players who also wore his jersey number.

Even though he despises small talk, it would be rude to ignore other players when they specifically call for him in public. Not that he bothers about what other people think of him, but more about how he represents his team.

In high school, he didn’t care at all. But things are different now in the professional level. He’s forced to engage in insignificant nonsense with other players.

He just hopes that this time it won’t be one of those times and that whatever this is is actually important

He turns around lazily and sees not one, but two Jaguars approaching him. It’s their starting setter and their pinch server. “I thought you couldn’t hear us, dude,” the setter says. He doesn’t reply and just stands his ground while waiting for what they’re going to say.

“Anyways, mind if we ask the number of your manager?”

It’s worse than nonsense. They approached him because of you.

They turn towards each other and simper at how they seem to think that it’s a genius idea to ask him instead of you.

“You can ask her yourself. She’s just over there with the rest of the team,” he passively suggests. He’d be glad to lead these two poor hopeful souls if they want to. He’s sure you’d be more than happy to entertain them, in your own kind of way.

“Nah. We know how she disses everyone. That’s why we’re asking you, Tsukishima-kun,” the pinch server counters.

He’s the least protective of you compared to the rest of the team. He doesn’t care if you flirt all day long with these people or if you give your number to every single person here at the stadium.

But whatever these hoodlums the idea that he’ll be the one to give your number to them? It’s not his to give. It’s yours. “It’s not really my decision to make,” he responds.

“Is she really that good of a manager that you won’t share her?”

He would’ve not perceived anything out of it if not for the malicious grin that surfaced on the setter’s poor excuse of a face. The two athletes step closer and speak in a volume only for him to hear.

“Come on now. Don’t tell us you guys are not touching that hot piece dangling itself in front of you.”

‘Lowlives.’

That’s the most fitting word he can describe these two uneducated imbeciles who talk like you’re a slice of meat. No one deserves to be treated like that, especially you who madly dedicate yourself out of actual interest and affection for the team and the sport.

Yet, these two fucking dimwits are insinuating that you’re available for him and his teammates to sleep around with. It’s more than just disrespect. It’s an absolute mockery of the effort and commitment you have for the job.

It’s not his place to be angry. He’s not the one being slighted. But the image of your exhausted features fighting off sleep to do the report of these scumbags in front of him makes him want to do something about their blatant lack of intelligence.

“Don’t look so scary now. We’re not going to steal your manager. We just want to know what it’s like to have a hot one managing us,” the setter once again proves his brainlessness to Tsukishima, successfully provoking him to do what he’s been itching to do.

He offers them a too-pleasant smile that he gives to people who are about to get a taste of his snide irony. “Sorry, but it’s not really my problem that no one wants to manage a bunch of unsightly goons.”

A vein on the setter’s temple looks like it’s about to pop out as his hand yanks Tsukishima’s collar.

“The fuck did you say?!” The setter of the Jaguars lashes out, quickly losing his temper amidst the public gymnasium.

The feigned smile on Tsukishima’s face is replaced by a genuine smirk as the two dimwits react exactly the way he wants them too. Although he can rile them up even more than he did, something tells him that these peabrains will actually resort to violence if he does so.

They’ll definitely be held out from playing the game if they do get violent, but so will he if he gets involved.

Even though he looks unmotivated and lazy, he actually likes being on the court. And if he’s going to be honest, he looks forward to blocking the tosses of the setter who’s clutching his shirt at present.

“You shitty blocker,” the pinch server backs up his teammate.

The shift of attention from you to Tsukishima doesn’t surprise him at all. From slandering you, they quickly move to verbally attacking him. His eyebrow twitches up from the remark but doesn’t bother responding to it.

Why would he when he’ll just prove them wrong later? Instead of engaging with these two, he should be getting back to the rest of the team to get ready for their match.

He’s about to grab the setter’s wrist to yank it off him when a set of feminine fingers beat him to it.

“My, my. Thank you for wanting to be friends with one of our players, but he really needs to warm up now,” you say with congenial sympathy to the upcoming competition.

They seem to have forgotten that you’re the reason why they approached him. The setter releases Tsukishima’s shirt with a glare before the two Jaguars walk away.

“Bye, bye! Let’s get along well, yeah??” you shout and wave at them way too enthusiastically. You probably didn’t catch them talking about you, which is a good thing because you didn’t need to hear that kind of horse shit.

You put a light hand on his shoulder, making him anticipate a lecture from you for dawdling around. But you only tell him that you two should go back already.

As you both turn around, the smile on your face drops while your grip on his shoulder tightens.

“Did it bother you that much?” he asks as you both walk back to the court.

“You bet it did. The gall of them to call you a shitty blocker, those fuckfaces. I swear to God, I would’ve,” you take a sharp breath then slowly let it out as you take your hands off him. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. It’s just the usual gibberish talk among athletes,” you say to yourself, more than to him.

“What about what they said before that?”

Your brows scrunch up as you try to figure out what he’s talking about. “You mean when they assumed I’m sexing everyone from the team? Nah. I know some people think I’m a slut because I’m too sexy for their lame asses. I’m used to it so I don’t really care about crap like that,” you explain way too casually.

He thought that at this time and age, people would be a little more progressive with how they think. Apparently, he was wrong. He’s always observed how you put yourself out there, entertaining any flattery that’s thrown at you. It’s also very obvious how open you are to showing affection for the team.

But he didn’t think people would have such indecent assumptions about you. What surprises him even more is you’ve been aware of it for some time now. Still, you continue being yourself.

“But Goooood. Their childish shit talking really pissed me off.” Your previous attempt to calm yourself down fails as anger graces your features once again.

“Promise me something, Tsukishima,” you tell him a few steps away from the court.

“What?”

“Up your blocking game and win. I want to see those fucktard’s faces pulverized with defeat,” you announce as you seethe with fiery determination.

“There’s no need to promise,” he says calmly before the curve of his lips form a subtle yet definite grin. You immediately get his message as you mirror the arrogant pride on his face with a smirk of your own.

—

You’re not particularly competitive. Even as the captain of your own team before, you did not play to win. You played with your very best because you want to experience all the sport has to offer.

Maybe that’s why you stopped playing and decided to be a manager. You love the sport, but not as an athlete. You just love pushing people to their potential and being their support so they can give their all during matches.

Although you do like winning, you’re not hellbent on it. As long as the team gives their everything and you see them at their best, you’re happy with that.

This match is an exception.

At 23-24 with the Sendai Frogs on their match point, you’re clutching your notebook way too hard that the pages become crumpled and the edges dig in your palms.

When you saw Tsukishima earlier approached by the two Jaguars, you didn’t intervene immediately. You were near the area, watching and listening as to how things will unfold. You didn’t hear much of their mumbled conversation, but you caught enough words to put together that it was you they’re talking about.

You do gain a lot of attention, but some of them are not exactly wholesome. Apparently, being outspoken and open equates to being easy to bed.

You just wish they said something more interesting because you almost yawned at how unoriginal their speculation is. You fucking around with the Sendai Frogs? Groundbreaking.

What amused you though is Tsukishima’s response. Right at that moment, you wanted to kiss his snarky mouth. Not because he defended your honor, but from the clever snide comeback he quickly spat at their faces.

Your amusement was quickly ruined when one of them laid a hand on him. You didn’t care that the fuckfaced setter did it in public. Even if he did it with no one around, your blood still would’ve boiled. But when he said that Tsukishima was a shitty blocker? The palm of your hand itched to get roughly acquainted with the opposing setter’s face.

If this isn’t a tournament, you would’ve had a hard time deciding whether or not you’d have done it. But since this is a tournament, you can’t do that. You need to be civil and maintain good relations with every team, even if some of their members lack basic decency and proper manners.

Luckily, there is a way to get back at them: that is to win this match which has got you to the edge of your seat as soon as it reached the 20s of the second set.

With Tsukishima, Eiji, and Kogane in front, there’s nothing to be scared about. It’s just that you really want them to score that last point already.

The ball gets to your court and is received by Kogane, effectively cutting out your most optimal set-up to attack.

“Tsukki!” Kogane calls out. Tsukishima runs to the center of the court, right in front of the net. The opposing blockers observe him to predict who he’s tossing the ball to, only to leave him completely open as he dunks the ball to the Jaguars’ side of the net.

You were sure it happened fast, but the pounding of your heart made it seem like the ball hitting the ground was in slow motion. You wait for the referee’s signal, hoping that there were no misplays on the Frog’s end that would prolong the game.

The referee whistles and extends his arm to the Frog’s court, letting everyone know that it’s your team’s win. Cheers from team members themselves roar inside the gymnasium, soon joined by the applause from the audience.

You’re supposed to check the losing facade of the Jaguars, but the joy and relief of winning floods you that you completely forget about how they insulted your clever middle blocker. You leave your tally notebook on the bench and rush to the court along with other members.

You’ve always been impressed with Tsukishima’s blocking skills, but to win from his offensive mindfuckery with the other team just sent you to a whole different level of being proud. So it’s him you first go to.

Without putting any thought to it, you wrap your arms around his waist. You don’t mind that he’s sweating and that his body heat is emanating from his skin. You’re too thrilled that he scored the winning point to even care.

“Good job, Tsukishima!”

Right after saying it out loud, you feel him tense beneath your touch. You lift your gaze up to him and meet his eyes which are wide from shock and panic. Immediately after, your eyes do the same when you realize what you’ve done.

The loud cheers from the team have stopped. You slowly turn your head to see why, even though you already know the reason.

It’s like a paused scene from a movie where everyone completely halts whatever they’re doing. The only difference is they stopped with their attention completely on you, specifically on how your limbs are enclosed around Tsukishima’s waist and your cheek flat on his chest.

Shit.

You’re hugging Tsukishima in public, in front of the whole team.

Part 4 || Part 6 || masterlist

taglist (those crossed out can’t be tagged)

@ameliaxo @suikrem @akaashisslave @tsumurai @loving-unicorns106 @flairlust @geektastic84 @anaiss97 @berna-dette @just4readingfics @suteorra @xxekitten69xx @simp4tsukkii @music-is-all-i-need @keshinslittlegirl @raspberrysunshinebby @iminlovewhaikyuu @pdiddy11 @lightyagamami @sailorscout1902 @lovershaikyuu @expectonothinfromme @finnydraws @namelessidentity @hqbeesun @yatoatyourservice @mrkozume @suzuyamitsuki @celestialarchiveshq @yongboxerrr @gomenpudding @kutiekoge @fizzfrick @flamingosis @korean-bbq

#tsukishima x reader #tsukishima smut #tsukishima fluff #tsukishima angst #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu angst #haikyuu smut

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createandconstruct · 3 years

Note

can i ask about amarant coral? the monk in red himself~

Can you ask about Amarant Coral? *cracks fingers* Oh I insist that you do. Welcome to my Amarant Appreciation Post:

favorite thing about them: First off best thing about Amarant? His theme. The percussion and the guitar. It’s great and it captures him so well. People out here like “take Amarant out of the game he adds nothing.” EXCUSE ME? You remove the Amarant you remove the Amarant Theme my friend and that is something I do NOT vibe with.

least favorite thing about them: I wanna know more about him. Now Amarant doesn’t need a backstory or history in the game. In a sense, he already has one that connects him to Zidane and explains his motives and actions and eventual arc. But my issue is, Square never gave him anything else. If you look at Ultimania there’s additional lore about other characters, like Steiner for instance. You learn Steiner was a war orphan who was saved by the Pluto Knights - explaining his devotion to them. Amarant though? Square was like “uh... yeah he was born....? And then he uh got famous...? Idk then he met Zidane. You figure it out.” Square. I hate you. 18 years from his birth until he became “well known”. WHAT WAS HE DOING. WHY’D HE BECOME A SECURITY GUARD. WHAT WAS ON HIS RESUME. TELL MEEEE. Like, okay, what the actual in-game canon gives us on Amarant is sort of enough. He’s a purposely written mysterious “cool-guy” character so we’re given scraps to make him unknown but come on. In the published after-game canon, like Ultimania, we could have been given a bit more. He says he doesn’t remember anything about his origins or parents, but why. Was he another victim of Gaia’s wars? Probably. Was he born on a battlefield? Fighting for his life, living without comrades, taking scraps whenever he could? Was he betrayed when he was young? Is he a supposed to be a version of Zidane had he not been adopted into Tantalus by Baku??? These are questions I deserve answers to, Square.

favorite line: “’I can't just walk away. It goes against my nature...’ You're a real simpleton. Forget it, guys. There's no stopping this fool." I love this. Amarant figures Zidane out pretty quickly after Ipsen’s Castle. Zidane is hardheaded and also an actor. He acts cool and pretends his reasons for doing things are loose but when he’s decided something it’s always for a reason. You don’t need a reason to help people, but Zidane has his reasons for helping Kuja and while Amarant doesn’t give two shits what they are he knows Zidane won’t be stopped because, despite everything, Zidane saved a loser like him. Also this line “Tell me! Why didn't you kill me!?" Because I quote it all the time and it makes myself laugh. Amarant is such a drama queen and Zidane knows it. Zidane’s like “dude... what is your damage, it’s 5 pm on Tuesday in Madain Sari. I ain’t getting blood on my gloves cause you’re having a temper tantrum.” And then Amarant runs away to have an existential crisis. He’s 26 but compared to Zidane, he’s the real teenager with angst.

brOTP: I could talk about Zidane or Freya with Amarant but instead I’m gonna say the underrated dynamic of Amarant and Eiko (and also Vivi). Amarant with the kids is truly the greatest gift given by his presence in the game. Amarant has never known true suffering until he became a designated legal guardian of a group of minors. It also kills me how he’s the one to volunteer to carry Eiko and Vivi up the Iifa tree. He looks at Zidane and is like “you have seriously been the ‘adult’ of this group???”

OTP: Gotta say the Freya and Amarant dynamic. I really enjoyed their unlikely friendship in the game but then the content. The fan content. The Freya x Amarant fans out there, you win. Ya got me. You captured me and I am now imprisoned by their banter and begruntled allies to lovers story. Even if they’re not romantic I love them together and really wish the game gave us more of them. But even Lani and Amarant together are valid, though I prefer them as butting head bros. Not much content for my girl Lani out there either, she deserves more.

nOTP: Nothing I can think of. I tend to like platonic pairings for Amarant. The dude needs friends because he can barely define the word friendship.

random headcanon: Before Zidane returns at the end of the game Amarant wanders around a bit, unsure of what to do. He doesn’t feel any place with the others in Alexandria, Burmecia, or Lindblum. I imagine he goes off on his own for a bit like before but this time he’s not after Zidane or a fight. Instead he’s got no particular destination. Yet he somehow always finds himself running into people just like him - or the old him - friendless lonely people who are looking for a fight. He doesn’t go out his way to find these folks he simply runs into them and decides he might as well knock some sense into them. He does however make it his business to go after any murmur of people hatching any ideas of going after the far off little village on the Lost Continent. The home of the genomes and black mages. They were so helpless, so weak that anyone who’d want to mess with them is pathetic in Amarant’s book. Until Zidane returns, no one has the chance to even look at the Black Mage Village the wrong way because in the shadows Amarant lurks, making damn well sure of that.

unpopular opinion: I kinda love that he’s just there for most of the game? While I agree he gets the short end of the stick in the same way as Freya, not receiving additional individual character spotlight (which could have very well been supplied through discoverable lore in the world/npcs or through sidequests) I never considered his “standing off to the side” as a detriment to his character.

Many would probably agree that Amarant always felt like a bit of a parody of the loner character, or at least the stereotype of the loner character. Amarant is so easily paralleled with Squall and Cloud’s surface-level attitudes because his dialogue always felt like something to poke fun at. As the player we’re supposed to align with Zidane’s way of thinking and how he views Amarant. When Amarant loses to Zidane and pretty much grits his teeth and goes “KILL ME,” along with Zidane we’re supposed to kinda raise our brow at him and go “...really, dude?”

Amarant’s a character introduced as an antagonist who has more in common with the power hungry villains of the game. Like many of the characters in FFIX, Amarant is in search of purpose in life, which he has never found, because he was always looking in the wrong places - in places of violence and power. Very toxic-masculinity of him. Amarant is “cool” on an aesthetic level but in reality he’s the polar opposite of cool in terms of what FFIX states about the need for others to be intertwined in your experiences so that you can live a full life.

I sort of love that he’s like a grumpy pitball following a 16 year old and his friends around. Then he sits in the corner when they all meet up and discuss current events acting like he doesn’t care (not to mention he casually walks as everyone is running as fast as they can to escape Terra - made me laugh cry on my first playthrough) He is “just there” but that’s because he has no where else to be, no where else to go, he’s a man without a home. And until Zidane offers his hand, at the point where Amarant is most willing to take it at Ipsen’s Castle, he’s not truly a party member. He IS an outsider for almost the entire game but at Ipsen Castle he joins the party, becomes a comrade, and decides he’ll allow himself to change paths and start a life where he has friends and lives, as well as fights for them. Which is why after that moment, Amarant finally has a victory pose.

song i associate with them: I was scratching my head for so long trying to think of a song or track that had Amarant vibes until it hit me. Outskirt Stand by Tsukasa Tawada (from Pokemon Colosseum). Amarant is so chill, he’s not a bombastic guy, so he needs a theme that drops me in the rocky open desert of the Lost Continent like I’m just lumbering around looking for a monkey-tailed menace. Some other Amarant tunes: Pyrite Town, The Under, Snagem Hideout tracks from Pokemon Colosseum. This post is just an elaborate call to action for everyone to listen to the Pokemon Colosseum soundtrack. Tsukasa Tawada is so great and he has a YouTube. Check him out.

favorite picture of them:

Yoshitaka Amano’s Salamander Coral. I love him. He had too much power.

Also everything drawn by @crispy-ghee. Everything. I will think of this Comic forever until I die. Tattoo it on my flesh. The banter, the dynamics, the post-game content, the Zidane prince-consort outfit, the new Amarant outfit, the stuck-in-the-same-place relationship him and Freya have. Perfect. Go read it and consume Crisipy’s stuff. And also check them and their current art out, they just consistently get better and better. Here’s a first panel preview of my fav comic. Read it.

@hannahlady‘s Amarant art and their Freya/Amarant art is just ugh. *Chef’s Kiss* Here is another preview because you should go look at it.

Here’s a piece that deserves so much more love by @snackage. I LOVE how they drew Amarant. Here’s a little preview. It’s SO GOOD

Anyway TL;DR: Amarant is love and life and you’ll have to pull him from my little gremlin hands.

#asks #scriberat #amarant coral #ffix #final fantasy ix #amarant #final fantasy 9 #freya #amarant x freya #lani #zidane tribal #eiko carol

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darkpoisonouslove · 3 years

Text

Winx Club Rewrite Is a Go

I don’t know how I ended up here because I’ve always maintained that rewrites aren’t my thing (and I still kinda do) because it feels a lot like reading the same thing over and over again and to me it can be annoying. Yet, here I am with my very own Winx Club rewrite.

I started writing the first episode today but I have A LOT planned out already. Seasons 1 and 3 are pretty solid already even if there is still a lot of character work to be done and logistics to be figured out. I also have some structure for seasons 2 and 4 and I figured out the backstory of the Wizards of the Black Circle yesterday and that gave me an indescribable feeling which is pretty much what I took as a sign that it’s time to talk about this project.

To explain what I am doing - I am taking everything and changing it while keeping it the same. If that doesn’t make sense, then imagine that I am keeping the major plot points and most of the episodes (I have removed some because they are just irrelevant) have the same starting and ending point as they do on the show but there are big changes between those. Seasons 5, 6 and - you’ll find out in a sec - are going to have a lot more changes. I have removed transformations and switched around some of the transformations so that they are earned at a different point than in canon. I have picked a place to end this already and I have arcs for each season.

Now when it comes to the seasons, I have removed season 7 which will be done as a “movie” and will have additional plot still because there really is THAT little to season 7. Season 8 becomes season 7 in my rewrite and is the last and final season. It is the end of Winx’ journey and I think it is a satisfying end to a pretty long story. I am keeping the movies but:

1) There will probably be “movies” after seasons 1 and 2 as well just to make the structure make sense and because I feel like there is enough to be talked about between the seasons.

2) SotLK is majorly different from canon because there was no sense to that movie and only plot holes instead. I’ve saved what was salvageable from it and mostly put it in season 3 to free the whole movie for more interesting and logical stuff to happen. The end goal is the same, though - bringing Marion and Oritel (and Domino) back.

3) Magical Adventure is the least changed but there will be several changes here as well. The plan is to make the movie relevant on a wider level than just to Winx and the Specialists but I still don’t have that clear a vision of it. Just some things that I want to see but need piecing together.

3) The “movie” after season 5 will deal with the season 7 plot instead. I have switched them around. There will be Kalshara and Griffin and Faragonda and some major Bloom drama as well. I need to make these pieces connect, too, but this one feels almost coherent at the current time.

4) Politea is saved for the last movie that is after season 6. You’ll see why. Anyway, major Daphne and Bloom feelings are planned for that movie... and I don’t know what else yet. We’ll see.

I am currently working on all of the seasons and all of the movies at once so it is a bit of a mess. I write down and rewrite ideas. Everything is one big map in my head that isn’t completely translatable to someone else. Anyway, you can find everything I have posted about this in the “wc rewrite” tag. You can ask me questions if you have them and I’ll see how much I’ll share while trying to resist the urge to spoil everything because I have been at this for about 5 months now and I have so many ideas that I adore and want to talk about. Despite that I have no idea how quickly I can work on it. This is bound to take years which was the hardest part of this project for me to reconcile with but I really want to do it. So let’s see how that goes.

I want to say that I am planning on doing one episode a chapter but because I have decided to both develop the characters and be self-indulgent, that will make the chapters long. I don’t think that they are devoid of tension or action, however, because this thing is packed with so much stuff happening. Here’s a little sneak peak from the first episode:

“Bloom, honey, wake up,“ Vanessa’s mellow voice reached her through the colorful explosion into which her dream was retreating.

“Just five more minutes, mom,” Bloom mumbled as she wormed her head under the pillow to block out the interruption. She reached for the fairy princess in her dream with hair of liquid light and a touch like sinking through the reflective surface of a mirror that showed none of Bloom’s own features to her. She’d lose not just the way but her own self if she let go of the figure in front of her.

“You’ll be late for school, sleepy head.”

The woman evaporated in a heap of steam with a nasty hissing sound that rattled Bloom’s bones as she jumped into bed. Vanessa’s apologetic smile came into focus to draw a groan out of Bloom’s parched throat as she threw her head back.

“Not funny, mom,” Bloom grabbed her fallen pillow from the floor and plopped herself back down on her mattress, eyes wide open as the image of the fairy burned in her mind. “I wanted to see where she’d lead me!”

“Who?” Vanessa sat down on the edge of the bed.

“The fairy from my dream,” Bloom covered her eyes with her free hand to narrow her focus to the woman. “I’ve seen her before, I just...” she threw the pillow next to her on the mattress. “I can’t remember where.”

“Well, I’m not surprised. You’ve read every book on fairies that you could get your hands on. It’s only natural that they’ve started blurring together,” Vanessa chuckled.

“Yeah, but it’s not that.” Bloom shot up once again, her vision spinning for a moment from the sudden action. “She’s not a character. She’s something... someone else.” She twisted a strand of hair around her finger looking for the warmth enveloping her at the presence of the mystery fairy. It couldn’t be the first time she’d dreamed about her but she couldn’t recall more than that. “Grandma always said that dreams are important.” Another reason not to let go of the fleeting imagery in her head.

“I’m pretty sure she meant the other kind of dreams,” Vanessa’s amusement was more of a ghost itself now that Bloom had mentioned the newest loss in their family. It was her who had to stay open and talk to Bloom about Mike’s mother when he froze every time the topic was brought up until Bloom could no longer bear to cause him that. “Did you finish your art project last night? I sure hope it was inspiration that kept you up so late and not the lack of it.”

Bloom beamed despite the deflection. “I did!” She jumped out of bed as her mom made space for her to launch herself at her desk where her masterpiece was covered by stray sheets to keep her parents from peeking without her there to see the reactions. Finals had really inserted themselves in all areas of her life–including dreams–to throw a wrench in her works. Finishing a drawing she’d been sitting on for over a month had let her breathe fresh air again. “Here it is.” She pulled two sheets from the pile. “This is the sketch I did during spring break.” She’d spent a whole day wandering Gardenia looking for the building to put her vision into. “And here is the one I’ve reimagined.”

Vanessa gasped, hands flying to her mouth as her eyes gleamed with unformed tears. Not unlike her response to Bloom’s first steps in art back when she’d been three but, somehow, her reactions had developed to match Bloom’s growing skillset without giving undue credit.

Bloom’s heart swelled in her chest with pride boosted by the trust she had in her mom. Her work was almost complete now that it’d accomplished the desired effect with one parent. She’d been in awe herself by the alterations she’d made to Earth architecture to make it elaborate and alien enough for a fantasy... something. She still couldn’t decide what format she wanted to create her world in. Comics were a handy option but a vision of an elusive deal for a TV show still reared its head every time she reached for a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. And there was, of course, the popularity of video games accompanied by her lack of skills or contacts when it came to coding. There was always one more step to the door of her fairy utopia but she had to focus on the art for now.

“I hope that keeping this up will be easier after school is done stifling my inspiration,” Bloom chewed on her lip as she waited for her mom to collect herself enough to give the verdict of whether a summer job was about to take over that function now.

“Uninspired? You?” Vanessa shook her head in disbelief. “Honey, you have the imagination to create worlds and I am sure that one day you will,” Vanessa reached out cautiously towards the museum Bloom had created for her fantasy world. Her fingers barely brushed the paper to leave no traces of their presence and the bittersweet look on her face was too much for Bloom to stand. Her art was not meant to be an untouchable monument. It was supposed to be a temple, a home. Maybe her yearning had come through too well.

#winx club #wc rewrite #winx bloom #winx vanessa #my wips #my writing #my fanfiction

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