#as an OES person I love the idea of having both

[sunandsstars]

i’m so in love with zdinarsk can we pretend like she didn’t die and instead gets saved by a pretty na’vi lady and eventually they fall in love and zdinarsk changes her ways and they live happily ever after 😩

AND AFTER YOUR DEATH

Recom!Zdinarsk x Metkayina!Reader

Summary: She expected to die that night, she got close to it too, but she didn’t expect to wake up in the arms of a pretty Na’vi girl. Warnings: Swearing, Wounds, Death, A little suggestive Word count: 1.5k A/N: Anon, I love that idea. My thirst for Zdinarsk rn is mad crazy. She needs more content 😫 Also i’m so sorry this is late! I’ve been thinking about how to put this story into action. It’s a bit short ngl, but I have another Zdinarsk fic in the works 💪

“shit”

Her side was in agony, searing white hot pain flooding the lower end of her body. Zdinarsk did not expect to live from that, Sully’s crazy bitch shot a long arrow into her and yet she still stands. Barely. All the soldier could think of is whether the rest of her team is ok, she knew not all of them survived, seeing one of her comrades just a few feet from her, lying on his front and a puddle of blood surrounding his body proved that.

Her heart quickened and her breath became shallow, these where her brothers. They fought together on Earth, they shared memories of each other that not many people get the pleasure of. They laughed together, cried together, and now they die together.

A small thump sounded behind where she sat, slouched against some crates by the edge of the SeaDragon. Zdinarsk had no energy to fight, her gun long forgotten by her feet, turning her head at the sound and glancing behind part of the crate she saw a woman. A Na’vi woman. She was checking the pulse of one of the recoms a bit further down. The savage was teal like the other islanders, with the weird tail and funny arms. Z-Dog thought to grab her gun and shoot her but she decided not to, seeing the alien move around towards some humans and doing the same.

What was she doing?

___ glanced around the ship checking for survivors, she wasn’t in Tonowari’s clan. She didn’t live in Awa’atlu but another island more further away, her Tsahìk knew of this attack against the people and like any other Na’vi she was angry, but Eywa has spoken, talked of redemption in blue demons. She was one of the best warriors in her clan and was sent with a few others to look for these strangers, to help guide them and see.

The Metkayinan saw movement in the corner of her eye and shot her head towards it, seeing the quick turn of a head. Creeping towards it the woman looked around the hard box, at first she saw an arrow, it was long and had yellow and green feathers sticking out the end. She could only assume it was from one of the Omaticaya people since the Metkayina only use spears. But upon closer inspection her blue eyes landed on blue skin, a darker shade than her own green with different markings and thinner limbs. Looking at the face she was caught off guard by bright golden eyes, slightly dimmed with lost life but marked out by the bioluminescence freckles that dotted the skin.

___ went to grab the arrow, she had to pull it out or it would cause more trouble for both of them but a growl made her pause her actions. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” the sky person sounded angry, her thin tail swishing and smacking on the hard wet ground below them, her forehead creased and teeth bared.

“Oe srung nga” the Metkayina woman blinked, her extra eyelid getting the excess water out from her eyes. She went from looking at the other woman’s face towards her hovered hand, then to the arrow piercing her side.

Zdinarsk groaned in annoyance, of course they wouldn’t be able to understand one another. But at this point she didn’t care, if she where to die here, on this ship with her comrades. She’d be happy to. Not to mention the woman next to her wasn’t half bad looking…

While the soldier was distracted ___ grabbed the hilt of the arrow and pulled. A gasp forced its way out of the forest Na’vi’s mouth and a choked scream refused to come out. Z-Dogs eyes widened, her hand immediately left her side to grasp the strangers wrist, clamping it in her grip and turning it slightly purple. “syeha si, just breathe, you’ll be ok” ___ reached into a little pouch on her side and brought out a few long pieces of seaweed, pressing it into the woman’s side and wrapping them around her torso. She held the hand that was connected to her wrist onto her chest and breathed deeply to instruct her.

Zdinarsk felt the slightly wet chest of the woman and in any other circumstances a smirk would’ve etched its way onto her face. Maybe she would’ve said a few sly comments too, but instead she listened to the slow beat of her companions heart and followed it. Breathing in deeply and slowly pushing the breath out. “Oeng zene hum” ___ pointed to the water and moved her hand slowly across the sea, telling the recom that they must go back to her home and away from this fight. The soldier got the point and nodded, she figured that the Na’vi woman wasn’t a threat to her, she would have killed her by now if she were right?

___ helped the recom up onto her feet with great effort and as soon as they both stood up she noticed a height difference between them. The sky person was a few inches taller, the tip of her head only reaching just below her shoulders. The Metkayinan heights usually differ from person to person, but a female would typically be smaller than a males, being tall isn’t something valued in the sea like in the forest. Both woman walked (or limped) closer to the edge of the ship and ___ did a series of clicking sounds from her mouth, calling out her tsurak. She helped Z-Dog get over the banister and into the water, luckily the boat was tilted far enough to do it without struggle. Then she dived in herself and linked with the creature, staying above the surface while they swim back to her home.

Zdinarsk can’t remember the last time she got to relax.

It’s been a few months since the fight broke out and her wound has fully healed, the flesh however was scarred and tender to the touch. But she has never felt more free, her clothes have been changed to those of the Na’vi and she has learnt the ways of a warrior, being a soldier it came easy to her. That and she had a great teacher.

___ has looked after her, cleaned her wounds, made her food, taught her the customs and the language. She also comforted the recom when she woke up from sleep, sobbing out for her comrades and experiencing that of extreme stress. War does that to people. The Metkayinan always rubbed her shoulders and sang comforting songs to ease her back into slumber before dozing off next to her, they were never too far from one another.

Currently Zdinarsk was feeling her hair, she kept the shaved sides but the mohawk grew out, it being put into little braids that would make it easier for her to have in the water. “Do you like it?” ___ softly whispered out, her tail flapping on the floor nervously, “if you would like beads i can add them, i know the forest people use them”.

“Oe tìyawn fi’u”

___ grinned and grabbed her companions hand, placing it onto her chest where her heart beat can be felt. It was pacing fast. Zdinarsk couldn’t help but tease her “I thought that a fast beating heart is bad for the water” she chuckled as her tail swung in glee, they knew of the feelings they held for one another, but it was unspoken and whenever approached words where shy. She wanted to change that.

“It is, but you are not water” ___ looked at her through lowered lids and Zdinarsk couldn’t help but take a breath. She was absolutely beautiful, eclipse was near and the sky’s where filled with pinks and oranges, it reflecting sweetly onto her teal skin and shining off her blue eyes. The recoms eyes drifted to her lips where they sat plush on her skin, they were soft and kissable, a cute shade of pink.

___ caught the other warrior staring and grinned, fangs slightly poking out “What is it you say? See something you like?” Z-Dog choked on her own spit. I guess ___ caught more onto English than Zdinarsk with Na’vi. The Metkayinan chuckled at her expression, the atmosphere went from playful to calm, blue eyes met yellow and it was like the world stopped.

Z-Dog cupped her face and leaned in, lips meeting each others in a sweet kiss. Both faces flushed in a scarlet, tips of the ears becoming darker. Zdinarsk would never have thought she’d be here, in the enemies home learning their ways and falling in love with one of them.

“The way of water connects all things” ___ broke apart from the kiss to exclaim, “from your birth and after your death” she whispered. “A part of you died on that ship, the human side. Now you are Metkayina. You are one of us now” she rested her cheek on Zdinarsk’s shoulder, looking towards the setting sun. The other warrior couldn’t help but agree, she found a new life, a new home, she knew that the sky people will be back, but unlike her old life, this time she’ll fight amongst her people. With her mate by her side.

[flecks-of-stardust]

what are those mods that were cooler than MSC? if they're that good i have to try them out

So upon further thought of this topic, I think i’m misrepresenting my thoughts on my enjoyment of MSC. A more accurate way to put it would be that I had more fun with a lot of other mods. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to compare MSC to them, because the goals of MSC are different from that of other smaller mods. I guess this counts as an analysis post; this will be long.

TLDR: I had more fun with a number of region mods and I think some modcats are cool, but Rain World’s design makes having a DLC that stays true to its core ethos difficult, so I find it hard to really blame the MSC team for MSC being a lackluster DLC.

Regions

When I say that I enjoyed other mods more than MSC, I think a lot of it is in the level editing (ie, lediting), in the sense that region mods have consistently wowed me far more than MSC’s regions ever did. Conceptually, the regions that it added were incredible; I loved seeing Moon as close to her prime as she could ever be shown in Spearmaster’s time (ie LTTM the region; DM), but also finding her ruined structure (MS) as Rivulet, and the idea behind Silent Construct (CL) is also fantastic. But gameplay wise? I didn’t particularly enjoy any of these regions, especially not CL. I hated the spider clogs that I had no way of dealing with, and overall I really just bumrushed it and cheated to get to the story. Metropolis (LC) and Outer Expanse were okay in terms of gameplay, but LC’s tiling and geometry is just kind of boring, if I had to be honest. It’s quite repetitive and not particularly unique, except for maybe Atop the Tallest Tower at a stretch. OE was fine by virtue of not really having another region to compare it to and also being comparatively more plant focused, but honestly, other mods have still wowed me more. So I dunno.

Like when it comes to having regions that feel interesting to explore and are also nice to look at, there’s always Pilgrims’ Ascent and Scorched District, both by Myrmice, and these two also fit so well with vanilla Rain World’s vibe to me. These two, along with the Mast from Snoodle, are all but canon to vanilla to me, because they just fit so well and add to vanilla while still maintaining their own identities as regions. And even beyond having to feel vanilla necessarily, because that’s not always the point of mods, there’s regions like Stormy Coast, Coral Caves, Howling Rift, more that I won’t list because of how long the list will get, but the point is that all of these regions give me more engaging gameplay and paths for exploration than I felt I got for any MSC added region. Granted it’s been a while since I played MSC’s content in full, and my memory of this stuff is generally poor, but I’d rather explore Aqueducts (OA) again than do MS. OA was big and I kept getting lost even with a map, but it was big and disorienting in a way that just felt better to me than MS. The same goes for Deserted Wastelands and CL, personally.

MSC regions feel very vanilla-like to me, in that they’re kind of easy to filter out of your conscious processing so you can focus on other things. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but for the price that you have to pay for Downpour, I think it falls a little short. The thing is that MSC is very much story-focused, putting more emphasis on the slugcats you play as and their stories rather than the lediting of the regions exclusive to them (in my opinion anyways. I ain’t a leditor). Which brings me to my next point:

Modcats and Story

This might be a bit of a hot take, but I think Rain World is inherently a gameplay focused game that doesn’t support much overt story or plot. The lore in all three vanilla campaigns is entirely optional, and if you kill Moon? Fuck you! No lore for you! And even if you wanted the lore, you have to figure out that pearls have to be taken to her to be read, and that the colored ones have unique lore, and you have to find them and hope the scavs don’t take the pearl first. Even with Hunter, you can choose to toss the green neuron and do your own thing. It doesn’t even stop you from ascending either. The story is entirely optional in Rain World. So then to add any story focused campaign at all inherently takes it away from Rain World’s initial design. And on top of that, you’re playing as a slugcat. It’s really hard to add any sort of story in Rain World that doesn’t circle back to iterators in some way. But then what else do you do besides ascend? Eat a few specific types of food? Gourmand does that. Kill a specific creature? That’s Artificer’s thing. Talk to all the echoes? That’s Saint, and kind of Hunter in a way. What else can you do without radically changing the structure of Rain World itself? And to that end, would that still be Rain World? I’m not saying it’s impossible to have a story based campaign that doesn’t involve iterators, but I do think that it’s really difficult to have them be completely irrelevant to the story and still have an engaging story, because Rain World itself is so not story focused. But if you don’t add story, then what do you do in the campaign that doesn’t make it just a rehashed version of Survivor’s campaign?

So like. I can’t really take issue with MSC’s story based focus that much, because genuinely, what else do you do? And basically any modded slugcat available in 1.9 that I think is worth trying falls into the same category. I think Pitch Black is really promising, but it introduces A Lot of changes to the world, and there’s currently almost no story. Vinki isn’t iterator focused necessarily, but their story still hinges on pissing Pebbles off and is overall very silly (not in a bad way! But it doesn’t fit the vibe of Rain World). And Gravel Eater,, you can’t get more intertwined with iterators than with GE’s story, but they’re still my favorite modcat because of how detailed their story is and how interesting their mechanics are. And if you just have a scug with abilities and no story, that’s… not really interesting to play, because then it’s essentially just Survivor, but you’re able to like, say, make spore puffs for free.

Maybe I’m just not creative enough in this aspect, idk. But genuinely I can’t think of much else to do in this game that doesn’t involve iterators in some way. If you know me, you’d know I’m Iterators McGee who has written 70k+ words about a character who has literally no canon dialogue. I fucking love iterators, but I think their stories should be separate from that of slugcats, but in game, just. How? I genuinely don’t know.

Other Thoughts

I think in some ways I view MSC as more of a framework that has allowed other people to build their own stories off of it. The only other mod that has a scale even remotely comparable to MSC is Drought, which is also iterator centric in story. I can’t speak to its lediting since I haven’t played Drought myself (but I’ve heard the quality… fluctuates?), but story wise… yeah. I don’t know. I just don’t think Rain World can really have a DLC that doesn’t pull it away from its original ethos in some way. I would not want Drought to be a DLC either, as cool as I think it is, and I still value a lot of things about MSC. It’s lackluster as a DLC because again, what sort of campaign can you add that doesn’t add a story that isn’t iterator related in any way?

I guess the way to summarize this is that I think MSC tells some really interesting stories through its gameplay. Even the parts I hated are part of the story it’s trying to tell, and on that front I think it does well. But by virtue of being story focused (and, by virtue of story in this game being very iterator centric), it doesn’t feel as much like Rain World, and so it’s not as good as a DLC as it would have been as just a mod. And now that it exists and is widely used, other people have been spurred to make their own ideas and show their creativity, going bigger and bolder than MSC in some aspects. And regarding me enjoying region mods more than MSC’s lediting, I think enjoying the region for being a region is kind of the fucking point of playing a region mod, whereas that isn’t exactly MSC’s focus. So some things are hard to compare.

This is kind of an incoherent ramble but I hope I got the main points across. I still like MSC and I won’t tolerate anyone bashing it here. You will get blocked.

[kohakhearts]

for fic writer meme: 7, 18, 26, and 40, and feel free to answer for both fic and original work if you want :D

thank you!! :D

7: how do you choose which pov to write from?

in terms of 3rd/2nd/1st, usually i default to 3rd but some stories just...are meant to be 1st person, if that makes sense lol. like i have one original project where the mc gets possessed by a demon at some point and it's told in 1st person to like...really solidify the idea that they've become one person in a sense. in terms of which character the pov follows, that's just a result of blorboism LOL. in original works it's just...who the first character i conceived of was, usually. i'd say the protagonist but lets be real - nerissa is NOT the protagonist of osa. she's his older sister :p (she gets protag status by oes on account of getting herself killed so he doesn't have to put himself in harm's way anymore ofc)

18: do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? how do you come up with titles?

it really depends on the fic. sometimes i have a title before anything else. sometimes it comes midway through after i've written a particular line and been like "oh that's good, let's make that the title!" and sometimes it's well after the fact when i'm staring at the ao3 draft like what the fuck do i call you. i'd say usually it's the first scenario though, and then i try to work the title into the text somehow. i've taken inspiration from a lot of things for titles, but in general i like my titles to reference specific lines or motifs in the fic itself!

26: which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

...pretty much any multichapter i've ever written LOL. i'll give a special shoutout to ratc and entanglement for being ideas that i was like "oh this will be like 10k words probably lol" and then turning into novels. entanglement in particular, for getting so long i had no choice but to divide it into chapters lmao

40: if someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

ok there are actually a lot HAHA. i was going to commission a piece of nerissa and poseidon from the scene in oes where they're sitting on the back step at emerson's house after poseidon accidentally possessed her. that's definitely one i'd love to see an artistic rendition of. and probably the final scene in oes, too, or the scene in osa where nerissa carries him out of the sea at namthi!

as for fic...i have a lot of fic, so i'll try to keep this short hjsdfhjdkf but in terms of recent ones...there's this scene from this year's christmas fic where goh kissed gary for the first time:

or tbh...i'd love to see an artistic rendition of my palletshipping hanahaki au. y'know, for the flower imagery

or like ANY scene from sound sleepless, honestly. i love those quiet, late-night conversations (relatedly...a friend drew a scene out of common ground a few years ago, which i ADORE). the scene near the end with ash and lucario is also a fave of mine that i think would make a really sweet drawing.

there's also a scene in entanglement that i won't share bc it's big plot spoilers but it's one of those sappy "character a is crying and character b wipes the tears off their face" scenes we all know and love haha

ok i'll stop here but genuinely....there are so many. and i have received a few fanarts for scenes or character in osa that i love so, so much. and i would love any kind of art someone drew for something i wrote. i love that spirit of collaboration that comes out of things like that!!!

get to know your fic writer!

[monarch-boo]

Hypothetical Side Order Update Hopes/Rambles

I know it may not be super super likely but I really do hope there are some updates to Side Order eventually.

I wanna talk about some things I would like to see:

☆ New Cipher shop items! Especially the banners and especially especially gear, since those are the two smallest sections.

Today's Find will still be unlocked for people who unlocked it by now, but my idea for those who haven't: the new things added after launch will only be unlocked if you bought out all of the launch items in that section. Cipher's shop is formatted very similarly to the Grizzco shop, so this could kind of be Cipher's equivalent of how some Grizzco items are greyed out until you spend a certain number of each scale. Buying out the launch items in every section will unlock Today's Find as well as all items added in any hypothetical update(s). Update items will of course be immediately unlocked for those of us who already bought all launch items.

Ideas for what new items they could add? ● Pixels of characters that may or may not even have palettes: Acht, Judd, Grizz, Cipher, etc?

● The order weapon pattern banner that was accidentally shown when they showed off the CoroCoro banner. People pointed out, based on its placement and the lack of an Acht banner, that the weapons banner was most likely unfortunately just an early-development banner, scrapped in favor of making the Acht one. BUT if they still have the file(s) for it I don't see why they couldn't just plop it into Cipher's shop in an update.

● Outfits of any Side Order character(s) that do not get an amiibo, or all Side Order character outfits if it turns out the amiibo don't just give the figure's outfit.

Dataminers found two upcoming amiibo, and animations found in Side Order seemingly suggest one is Marina. The other is not identified afaik. I don't think they would make an Eight amiibo unless there actually ends up being more than two, I feel like they would wanna make both the masc and fem promo designs like with OE. My theories: • Marina + Pearl Drone • Marina + normal Pearl • Marina + Acht • Maybe, maayyybe, Marina + only fem Eight. (Masc Eight wasn't really shown a whole ton in promo stuff anyway afaik, sooo...) I'm kind of hoping for Marina + Acht, because as much as I'd love for another Pearl + Marina pair to exist... an Acht figure would just be so cool. I'd probably never be able to get ahold of it anyway because I've been having a ton of trouble getting amiibo figures, but eh.

If the other amiibo is a Pearl, I think you would get Pearl's Side Order outfit from her amiibo regardless of whether the figure is normal her or Drone her. Whatever the amiibos are or what they give, the outfits of remaining Side Order characters, or all of their outfits if the amiibos give something totally unique, should go in Cipher's shop. That could/should include both the masc and fem Eight outfits from OE, if they don't get SdOdr amiibos, or if their SdOdr amiibos give something else.

● The Chaos/Order news gear from Splat2. Or at least just the Order ones.

● Any and all other gear you would get as rewards from OE. The gold takoyaki pick, Neo Octoling gear, etc etc etc.

● Locker figurines of the little NPCs outside, the jelly things and the little shrimp ladies etc.

● Maybe figurines of the bosses as well.

☆ Jelleton badges! Full-color, silver, then gold, just like Salmon Run. The app already tracks your kill counts so why not?

For the more common ones like Languendo, Andante, Lento, the requirements for their badges could be incredibly high just for the fact that they're so common that you can rack up tons and tons and tons of them relatively quickly (I'm personally at over 55k Andantes, for instance, and I haven't even played much since mid-March.) Less common or more incendental enemies like Alla Mambos, Portals (I mean why not count these since the app counts em), etc, can have smaller requirements, maybe on par with Boss Salmonid badges.

Bosses (Rondo, Marciale, Canon, Overlorder) can just be the same numbers as King Salmonid badges I feel like.

I would love a Marina Agitando badge in this manner, however her count does not go beyond x1 even if you re-fight her through memories, which makes perfect sense since only the first fight was even real. Maybe they could add one as a "Cleared the Initial Spire" badge...?

And an idea I had is maybe you could have both Overlorder and Smollusk badges. These both have silver and gold versions and you get both Overlorder and Smollusk of each color simultaneously upon meeting the milestones, kinda like the Deep Cut badges (even though Deep Cut doesn't have silvers, but you know what I mean).

☆ More weapons! Lore-wise clearing every existing weapon we have at the moment means that the problem with the simulation should be fixed I think, meaning no other souls could be pulled in and become palettes...? BUT we do still keep climbing the Spire afterwards if we want, just for the hell of it and so Smollusk isn't alone.

So I think maybe it could fit lore-wise if Marina just came up with some "fake"/"dummy" Palettes, i.e. Palettes not linked to any soul, just to play around with for funsies. Experimental builds are fun to play with so having some of the weapons that have unique gimmicks could be really exciting.

Some ideas:

Explosher! Tones could maybe be Power and Range just because a high Splash Damage + high Splash Radius combo would go so hard on this thing.

Snipewriter- This could possibly have a new chip for Shots-Per-Charge. With no chips it maybe starts at 2 shots per charge just so it's different from the normal Order Charger. And then, kinda like how Order Dualies can go beyond Tetra's four rolls when you put enough Extra Dodge Roll, many Shots-Per-Charge chips can put the Snipewriter beyond its multiplayer five shots per charge.

Any/all Grizzco weapons! I don't have clear ideas for aaaall of them, but I have some thoughts. Possibly all of the more ink-hungry ones, but DEFINITELY Grizzco Slosher, should have Support as a common tone. Having only four sloshes on a full tank in the Spire sounds like a fucking nightmare so that damn thing needs ink saving/recovering chips like we need air. Maybe for Grizzco Slosher, Support is its most common, while the other ink-hungry Grizzco Weapons have it as their second most, if they have it at all.

Grizzco Dualies would probably be affected by Extra Dodge Roll chips just like the normal Order Dualies, but since Grizzco Dualies get so many dodge rolls in SR, it should start off with slightly more, and build up to *much* more, rolls than Order Dualies do.

I have no fucking clue how Grizzco Charger could work, since you can essentially turn the regular Order Charger into it anyway. Maybe this one would not even be added for that reason?

For Grizzco Splatana, I don't really know how it not having a ranged attack (the "blade" of ink that Wiper and Stamper throw out) could be handled. Maybe getting one Main Range chip will add it at a kinda short range, and you have to stack multiple Main Range chips to make it even better?

☆ Misc/smaller things (either *actually* small changes or just stuff I don't feel like I talk super long about):

     • Some other hacks / adjustments to existing hacks would be neat. I for one really wish you could be able to set Double Chip Rate to absolutely zero, instead of the minimum being 5%. Would make specific design runs a bit easier... I like making checkerboards and sometimes I refresh a ton, FINALLY find the color I need... only for it to be a x2 and I don't have enough money to room reset anymore.

     ▪︎ ... Either give us some sort of opportunity to spend Prlz while we are actively inside the Spire, or *stop putting Prlz in the vending machines if we're maxed out on them!* Slots that could have a chip or Sub or Special I could use are taken up by unbuyable Prlz a lot of times!

     ▪︎ More story stuff, somehow. Where is the explanation or even acknowledgement of #35 caught? What the hell is Cipher? I know it's a Lucifer Prawn but I mean, like, what is its purpose besides being a shopkeeper, is that it's only purpose? Is it a manifestation of something like Order/Smollusk was? Why did it pop up? Even Marina doesn't seem to know. Also I'm a little tired of the repeated dialogue now, some new stuff to stop and read would be cool.

     ▪︎More floor types? It feels unlikely they would do that at all let alone add very many (unless they come up with some kind of infinite mode), but itd be neat of they added enough new levels that you could hypothetically very easily do a Portal-only run, or Zones-only, etc.

     ▪︎More bosses possibly? If I remember old Splatfest datamined correctly, at least one of the bosses is based on a Splat1 boss. So like... even if they just remix a nostalgic boss fight to add a new boss, that's still something to add more variety to runs. And if they do the badge thing I mentioned before then that's more cool badges to get, more stuff that completionists can work toward.

[amerricanartwork]

Welp, I'm absolutely saving this for reference! I too am a bit torn between whether or not Suns is actually part of Moon's Local Group, and I hope to at least resolve my personal headcanons on that soon. I tend to lump them in just for ease of talking about the main iterators and because they seems to have been good friends with both Pebbles and Sig, but all of this seems like reasonable evidence to suggest it's more likely they're officially part of a different local group, but still relatively close as implied by Spearmaster's journeys.

Given the info you laid out, here are my current guesses as to the distances from the other iterators to Moon and Pebbles's facility grounds, from closest to furthest:

Unparalleled Innocence - They were able to get their overseers inside his superstructure for the rot pictures and discover his condition before anyone else, and their overseers (I currently believe they own the white ones, since I was told Wind's are most likely the purple ones) appear only in the Outer Expanse just beyond Pebbles and Moon's facility grounds, so they must be pretty close to them, and likely in whatever direction the slugcats travel to get to OE.

Chasing Wind/Grey Wind - Besides seeming to be an official member of Moon's local group and thus "in the loop" of what goes on between them, their purple overseers also only appear in OE, and them bringing up Erratic Pulse always gave me the impression they were suspicious of Pebbles's activity early on or frequented some of the same chat rooms he did. I'm willing to bet they're also pretty close to explain how they got that information about him so soon. They could be about the same distance from Pebbles as Innocence, and likely in a similar direction too, once again given their overseers' presence.

No Significant Harassment - Like you said, Hunter probably traveled a decent distance to get to Moon, and I agree strongly with the idea that Hunter's rot came from Sig rushing to finish them out of desperation. But without any internal navigation means, which that rushed creation implies, Hunter would have to either be exceptionally smart/have a good memory to figure out where to go, or more likely, the distance isn't quite as far as Suns is to Pebbles, so he was able to cut those corners without jeopardizing the success of his mission as much. It's also likely that he's to some degree west of Pebbles and Moon, since Pebbles's pilgrimage quest places the Farm Arrays, where Hunter starts, as to the west, yet also in a similar or adjacent direction to CW and UI because the green overseers (assuming they're his) also appear exclusively in OE and Subterranean.

Seven Red Suns - Based on your above info, Suns is probably the furthest away from Moon and Pebbles and thus the least "in the loop" about what happens between them, outside of when he and Pebbles were friends and probably talking frequently. However, in the past I've also contemplated the same implications you brought up about Spearmaster being able to complete the journey from them to Pebbles at least four times with minimal assistance. Combined with the fact their overseers can reach all the way to Pebbles's puppet chamber, Suns likely isn't too far away from him and/or the distance is otherwise easy enough that Suns would trust a relatively small animal to travel it without a ton of guidance. Additionally, because Spearmaster starts their campaign in what seems like some kind of sewer or other pipe system in the bottom of Outskirts, right before the gate that leads to Outer Expanse, it's possible that they are in a similar direction to Wind and Innocence.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Thanks for compiling the info on this subject, shkika! The location of these iterators in relation to each other is something I've been thinking about for quite some time now, so it's nice to have more details to develop a clearer hypothesis!

Also, if anyone else sees this, I'd love to hear any other details/hypotheses for the locations!

[RECORDED BROADCAST : 1681.662] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, Chasing Wind

CW: Have you had any contact with Five Pebbles recently?

SRS: Not in a long while actually! Unless worrying about him counts.

CW: One of his neighbors, Unparalleled Innocence, sent an overseer to his can and got some images. They were made public in the local group, in an effort to be mean I suppose. There's no other way of putting it he looks awful.

SRS: Tell me.

CW: He's got the rot, very badly. Big cysts have become mobile and are scattering down the west and middle legs. He does listen to you, and few others by now, so you should talk to him.

SRS: I will try to contact him. Does Moon know?

CW: Moon has been unavailable for some time.

[Pending upload to local group records by dispatched Overseer. Unit will enter read only state in 432 cycles.]

UI leaked pebbles rot images in the local group, but suns didn't know until CW told them, which might imply that they are not part of the local group

THIS DISCUSSION IS GOING!! I've gotten a bunch of asks about this along with tags and replies oh my. Just gonna state that Suns to me and in my ask-blog is part of the local group and honestly at this point even if James himself came up to told me I'm wrong I can't change that cause I set it up already ..? SO UHH hm

ANYWAY LET'S RAMBLE!!

I honestly think the strongest pointer to the implication that SRS isn't part of the local group is the fact they didn't know about Pebbles' situation first. So Chasing Wind had to tell them!

I see it! I've always made the assumption they just weren't active in the local group messages (just like how we haven't seen a single word about Innocence in the game even if she's canonically closest to Moon and Pebbles out of the others)

^ Especially, because I assumed this meant that UI spread the information further than just the local group. Which! I don't know!

I don't think my assumption is FULLY baseless, just because of how the approach the conversation with NSH is?

They're being vague about hurting someone. If the chats were in the local group, which NSH has access to, but SRS doesn't it feels so bizarre to me they'd try to vague point at it as if there's any chance NSH wouldn't have already seen. Like what hopes do you have buddy?? The fact that Pebbles has the rot and is in such a terrible condition is like uhm... well yeah.

Still they've never been active in a local group chat and it was through Chasing that they found out about the rot situation so I don't know!

Also a good point!! Once again I read it differently! I thought the "She's very close to Five Pebbles" wasn't a descriptor, but more so a reason on why he's worried about her. "She's close to him (rot infested doofus) and I'm her friend man"

Them not knowing Moon very well isn't too much of evidence for either statement. What they did not understand about Moon is why she wouldn't force Pebbles to stop dead in his tracks and save her life. Which is an extremely valid question, because as his administrator she had the power to do so. NSH is a close friend of hers group or not and explains.

They do still call her Big Sis Moon which is rather weird if you're not part of her local group? Aside also shortening her name to just Moon. (which could be either familiarity or convenience, no solid evidence)

They also got into contact with Five Pebbles VERY soon after he was put online according to SRS themselves which is possible both ways! Just felt more likely if they were part of the local group.

AND SPEARMASTER.

We don't know what "local group" means, but I always assumed, because of the name it partly meant distance.

Iterators are VERY far from each other, usually. Like quite far even local group wise. I assumed that for a slug cat like Spearmaster to have been capable to make the journey to Pebbles and back... and then do the same AGAIN, it meant that SM made a long journey, but one that was like... y'know not from one part of the continent to the other big.

I assume distance plays a role, because in a cream pearls..

The implication is that Local groups held out together the longest.

I can't imagine this poor creature covering a such a massive worth of land on foot..!

SM was given the pearl inside their chest mainly for it to be hidden, but also as an instinct that's true! So they know where to go.

Hunter doesn't have that not because it isn't needed, but because NSH was rushing. As implied by these lines.

NSH was rushing them so much they ended up with the rot, I doubt there was any time left to perfect a homing instinct or do much of anything really. I think NSH is probably closer than SRS (just for poor Hunter's sake honestly), but I don't know by how much really- iterators seem to be built PRETTY far from each other. The only other closest neighbor is UI. Which means NSH is farther than her.

But either way yeah. I've dug info for a WHILE now I can't seem to find any super solid evidence for either. I'm just sharing my interpretation as always. You can headcanon either one of these and call them canon in my book really.

[mizumoues]

happy new year everybody! 2021 was 'something' and i'm hoping this year will be better for everybody because that's how it should be. being on this site made my year better than it would've been since i made a lot of friends on here, so thank you to everyone who made last year the best!

@shotorozu — no 1 ashlyn anti hello! we haven't talked in a week or so but ever since i pmed you (past me was cringe), you became one of my closest moots and friend on here. your writing is literally so amazing, your past experiences are really funny without context, your green themes are pretty and you're still swag even with the bad haircut 👍🏽

@uravichii @uxavity — i cannot make two different ones for you two because almost all the memories i have of you both include the other 😭 i love how when we talk in pms we always mention the other and then just move on, while you can be a bit annoying you're both so sweet and nice and you never make me regret joining this hellsite

@meowersockerz — athie bae, you're so nice like wtf, thank you for putting up with my weird chaotic jokes and thinking i'm funny without even trying. i love how i gave you around 15 song recs that one time but you only liked around 4 of those 🤩 thank you for insulting me but being sweet so i can move on from the previous matter

@bubble-bootie — raestie the rodent hi. you're an idiot but you're a cool idiot and i love the chaos you bring to my dash. i would say thank you for putting up with my chaotic ass but i put up with your,, concerning ass so it's okay. here's a new year resolution idea for you: don't poop in ashlyn's inbox again.

@shoyotime — we haven't talked recently but you and your writing are both amazing. you're really smart and amazing and your music taste is similar to mine and we both like horror so that's a plus. you're a genuinely nice person and i miss talking to you.

@rinesei — i almost tagged you as melsun but moving on, love your vibes and literally everything about you. you're an amazing writer and an amazing, smart person (tho you're weird and forgetful af sometimes) and i miss our 4 hour long convos so you should maybe do something about that /j

@melin-oe — one of my first moots!! your tattoo is hot ✨ but you're hotter and cooler ✨ you're really nice eventho you like the ugly gremlin and are a really chill and sweet person. your music taste is top tier and you should give me more recommendations soon

@sunarent — my grandma managed to lock herself out in the balcony again /j i know we don't talk much but when we do our convos are hilarious and very eventful and i love that. your angst is really good too but i'm still holding a grudge for that pic you sent me.

@belsumu @katsdni @therealcozyy @xingqiusleftearring @izukus-gf @veenxys @tiiredcorpse @megurulvr — we didn't talk much last year but i'm hoping to change it this time around!

i love all of you and i'm hoping you have a good year! <3

to all my other / new mutuals, and everyone who follows me, i hope 2022 will treat you well! thank you so much for following me and being apart of my 2021, i love you <3

[jamespotterthefirst]

Hey, hon. What do you think happened with Lale and Aslan and how they died? Any theories? Do you think they tried to save… stop Vlad? Or both Vlad and Aslan tried to safe Lale? Also any ideas when and why Vlad decided to let darkness in? Was it because war? Or to save Lale what he obviously failed…

Love you ❤️❤️❤️

Love you, L ❤️

Leo/Aslan

Personally, I think Leo may have not died. He's definitely supernatural too based on the conversation MC overhears about him. He probably didn't initially remember he was Aslan because something caused him to have his memory erased? Maybe he was suspended in time and didn't return until now (like Captain America lol).

I think all this went down when something was happening with Vlad/ and as he's trying to protect MC. Like there's going to be some Armageddon moment with Vlad and this darkness and some battle. Aslan will defend Lale to the death (see below)

Vlad

As for Vlad, the last chapter made it clear he's going to war but he might rebel because he doesn't want to fight for the OE's cause. His path is definitely diverging from Aslan's

This is where they fundamentally disagree despite their friendship. And it's going to cause problems.

Maybe his path is even separating from Lale's too. Or she's caught in the middle.

I really wonder if somewhere along this path, Vlad encounters this darkness and is starting to get seduced by it.

As mentioned above, there's going to be a major battle scene where Vlad and Aslan (and Lale) find themselves on opposing sides. And this conflict will be over where their loyalties lie. What they view as their homeland.

I truly believe this to be true because

Lale/MC

And Lale... If I was writing this, I would make her die as an accident.... And as a result of something Vlad did. So that he blames himself. And, devastated, he finally lets the darkness in. He has to live with this guilt for centuries.

Until she is reborn in MC.

And that's why her touch hurts him.

(But that's if I was writing it. I'm a bitch lol)

Also, I'm still not sure how to work Sandra into this since we don't know much about her past self yet.

[surveillance-0011]

Finally made my own musician tierlist! A handful of these are tentative or possibly placed a lil lower or higher than I should’ve placed em bc anything past the 2nd and maybe third tiers is kinda,,, nebulous in my mind ig. Further elaboration below the cut.

Tier 1: The babygiiiirrrrlllsss. Favorites, hopefully forever. Main target of fixation and projection and general appreciation!!! I don’t prefer one over the other.

Callie: Part of me feels bad for choosing Team Marie when it was like 50% bc I wanted to be on the team I knew would win (but also like 20-25% bc I agreed with her other splatfest sides and 25-30% bc I liked her a little more at the time), but I think it was the events of 2 that made me love her so much! Even if I wasn’t always on her side - though I was DEFINITELY on both Team Spongebob and Art- she’s won me over now, between the depth of her character and the pizazz she added to the Octarian Army... seriously, love the glitter! Have the plush, love bomb rush blush, love the hair and the outfits and can’t wait to see her again!

The First Child of Algin, The Hidden Blade of Yakiharaas: They’re just... I love everything about them. The fact that they look like a more realistic fish compared to the other two by a lil bit. The fact that their cello is designed after a salmon steak. The fact they are like fifty years old. The scraps of their personality we got from haikara walker, describing them as stubborn as hell and also sensitive enough to care abt specifics when it comes to atmosphere and presentation. The actual cello music provided by an extremely talented cellist whose songs I’ve discovered through this game. Think about this guy daily. I just hope that any additional info or in-game presence they might have in the future makes them even more likeable and not the other way around.

Tier 2: Beloveds!! The googoos!! Other favorites. Only ever so slightly below the previous two. Not necessarily in order of preference, I like the first like... 5 the same amount.

Marina: Agh my heart,,, I love her so damn much. She’s so sweet and endearing and awesome,,, Her shyness and occasional dorkiness is relatable and her backstory is super interesting. She also has the better idea for a lot of the Splatfests... ketchup, no pulp, villain,wizard, teleportation, ketchup, superstar...Also, the tupac outfit.

Marie: Love her 2... she’s so silly she’s my silly girl... ok but seriously I love her personality, design and, as mentioned before, a good chunk of her splatfest choices! I was on sandcastle, night owl, team blue... She can be very sarcastic, but she really does care for Callie (you and me both, sister...), and their bond is very sweet.

Pearl: I, for one, have always loved her design. All those attempts to “fix” it during her debut were uncalled for. Her antics are fun to watch. Spoiled rich “brats” are a favorite trope of mine, but she’s not just some brat; I adore how she cares for Marina, and how she reassures her in OE and the FinalFest dialogue. Speaking of FinalFest, I was on Team Chaos, and it’d be wrong for me not to love our Chaos Queen. Also, the Biggie Smalls outfit.

Loyal Servant of the True Salmon King, Hizunamasu: I think if I squeezed them hard enough their eyes would pop out like one of those bug-eyed pencil topper-keychain animals. They’re just so... shaped and silly and all. What info we do have about them though unfortunately points to them being an unbearable jackass. Hopefully they’ll be more funny than annoying if we ever hear them open their mouth! Either way, their musical skill will probably make up for their disrespect

Valiant Green Flame Born of Trout Hell Canyon: He’s grown on me for sure. He’s kind of basic, but like the DJ his design is very ugly-cute and I appreciate his passion.

Noiji: What a ray of sunshine! I care for him... Not much else to say except I think we could be friends!

Paruko: Omg a gamer girl... Very cute design, wish she wasn’t neglecting her clownfish tho.

Tier 3: Not quite favorite-favorites but certainly favored. I feel like I could be friends with like. All of them. Kinda-sorta in order of preference. Won’t say too much either.

Namida: Cute design, seems easy to get along with, love the synth as well.

Paul: He’s ten years old and he makes ytps I care deeply for him. I would kill for him I would die for him.

Yoko: I want to see her cheer up. Someone get this girl some orange juice (no pulp). Maybe a mimosa.

Raian: I want to go to an arcade with them... they seem rlly cool

Karen: Mom friend material! Also cool to see a nautilus.

Bibi: Pretty...

Tangle and Fin: Very silly guys! Love their frenemy bond. Fin seems a little disagreeable but I could vibe with them maybe... Could totally be Tangle’s bestie tho I love this fail seaweed man...

Ryan: Love her voice, and she seems reliable.

Ryu-Chan: Uncle material. Generally seems cool to hang out with.

Aachin and Kitamura: Just generally loveable. I like both their designs and personalities. I especially appreciate how the latter looks like Maggie Simpson.

Tier 4: Enjoyable fellas! I like them and think about them. Also kinda-sorta in order of preference. Will skip over some bc I cant rlly elaborate I just... yeah theyre cool

taichi: VERY shaped. Silly silly guy

Blow: I want to see his daughter...

Ikkan: No thoughts in there huh. Except for violence and bass playing...

C-Side eel(?): Ok I know the other members are in the last tier but. They’re just so cool lookin!!!

Ichiya: Seems like he could be a lil rude but I appreciate his talent. And design. I’d go on a walk with him.

Dedf1sh: I like her but she is like. Dead and all. and unmentioned. I think I need to see her in person! Love the music tho...

Taka: Also seems like an asshole! But a little less than LSTSKH.

Octavio: Could’ve been a lil higher. I like him he’s just been out of sight and therefore out of mind- I haven’t touched Hero mode in a while!

Warabi: Kaworu vibes. Interesting character, but I’m not entirely sure how I feel about him...

Tier 5: The Forgotten. Don’t get me wrong they’re cool I just... forget. It’s hard to keep track of them all. I think Muruta might leave this tier tho, I’ve thought about them more lately....

Tier 6: No real opinion yet! Either too obsure or too new. Like their designs a lot tho!

[fadebolt]

This is an amazing question, one that I've been thinking about quite a lot. The game does give a couple hints, when it comes to this matter. Though nothing is outright confirmed, leading to a situation where there isn't a right or wrong answer (unlike with the story of the two iterators we meet, where we do know exactly what has happened with them).

A lot of people like to point at Gourmand's crafting mechanics, when it comes to points about their campaign not being real. And I have to agree - the game prides itself on being incredibly immersive, yet it has also given Gourmand some abilities that don't make a lot of sense in-universe (namely, the damage to creatures through falling/sliding/rolling, the ability to craft strange things like Fire Eggs or Singularity Bombs, and the ability to both craft and cough up living being). This has never bothered me, considering that one of my other favorite games has buildings catching on fire when they get whacked by swords and axes. So I just accepted that games often don't make sense, and often don't tend to be realistic, which has been true even before the video game medium has existed (case in point - the Queen being the most powerful fighter in Chess).

However, Rain World is a bit different from most games, as there was a genuine attempt from the devs to make everything as believable as possible. There are a few parts of the base game that don't really make sense when you think about them, but they're concessions the devs had to make, to ensure that the experience of playing the game will actually be good. They're decisions the devs were forced to make. This does not apply to Gourmand. Downpour's devs were not forced into giving the Slugcat these crazy unrealistic abilities that don't make any sense, yet they added them anyway, knowing that good immersion is something the audience is expecting from the game.

Because of this, I'm really not feeling the third option - as it implies that the devs didn't think Gourmand's campaign through, which I would heavily doubt, considering the incredible quality of the DLC. There's no way the devs would be careless/incompetent enough to leave such large and obvious plotholes within one of their campaigns. Looks to the Moon's response to Fire Eggs is a pretty strong indication. She says "Ah, well, if it tells a good story then I won't question it too much~" for a reason, and I'm very much getting the impression that the devs knew exactly what they were doing.

The first two, on the other hand, are options that both could potentially be true. But if I'd have to pick one, I would definitely go with the second option, as the first would require a new explanation to the Outer Expanse karma gate being open for Survivor and Monk, while the Slugcats would also need the appropriate knowledge about Hunter, their condition, and the Rot. The second option simply doesn't require these extra add-ons to make sense. The one last factor to consider are the OE karma gates being opened only if the player actually finishes on Gourmand run on the savefile. This means the canonicity of it is a bit up for debate. My personal interpretation is that it's a player choice type of thing (sort of like LttM's Cloak), where Gourmand doesn't actually go out on their expedition, until the player starts up and finishes their campaign.

It might be a tad far fetched, but I did put a lot of thought into this, and the details do line up. You could say my ideas lean more towards the 'something else', but they are very much centered around the concept of the story being true, but exaggerated. Apologies for going a bit too long here. Rain World theorycrafting is quite fun, and I enjoy rambling about these sorts of things. I love Gourmand, and I wanted to take the opportunity to explain some of my thoughts on them, and their campaign.

[flightofaqrow]

YOUR CHARACTER IN FIVE QUOTES!

( repost, do not reblog. ) Tell us your favorite quotes from your character. Give us an idea of who they are by five things they’ve said.

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Alright, buckle up, I’m stealing this meme and repurposing it for my own use. Probably more than five, and including some quotes from others about him, though I’m going to try to keep it in groupings, and also not meant to be exhaustive of qrow’s character, but rather, to point out some very poignant lines that have effected my portrayal and... some possibly in an unpopular way compared to what I’ve seen in the fandom? I think Qrow Branwen is more complex than fitting the broody broken boi trope would give credit for (though he at least fits it as an overall stereotype).

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1) I’m absolutely sure Qrow had a rough start and transition from the tribe to ‘civilized society’, coupled with typical teenage hormones and mood swings, but generally, Beacon was a good time, and he sees himself as a good huntsman, and (though we may joke about it sometimes) he absolutely does not have an active nor passive death wish.

Yeah, yeah, I know he has a song all about how he self depreciates and carries shame, but that’s a theme of his attitude, not backed up to be every single aspect of his life by actual canon. Quite the contrary. 

I don’t know where fndm gets the idea that he constantly lost his battles (especially to Raven) or was perpetually looked down on or stayed an angsty, broody teenager (who could never possibly have ever even breathed a single happy breath on his own without Summer??) all four years. As if school was hell and he never came into his own until STRQ was a graduated unit or something? If ever?

Leo tells Raven she and her brother are evenly matched. Raven herself - who takes pride in being stronger and more clever than others - describes them as a pair: “we were good.”

“you're talking to a member of the coolest team that graduated Beacon! ...we were pretty well known back in the day. ...hey, we looked good! and I have a number of inappropriate stories to back that up!”

“let me tell ya, these kids are way better than we were at their age. ...well, not better than me, specifically...”

“a professional huntsman like myself is expected to get results as soon as possible.”

The way Qrow talks about his past, as well as carrying a memento of team STRQ around with him, it’s very nostalgic for better times. The way he talks about his work, if not himself, can actually be to the point of being self-aggrandizing, instead of depreciating. He’s even able to admit that his dreaded semblance, Misfortune, “comes in handy in a fight.”

“lots of us thought you were just layin' low. eventually, we just came to accept that you were probably dead. but the stories about you, i based my weapon off of yours. i wanted to be as good as the Grimm Reaper.”

Qrow talks about himself as striving to be better. It seems he never really sees himself as reaching that standard, but it certainly implies he knows he’s not at the bottom - he had an ideal he wanted to reach and likely worked towards. Notice the use of “us” and “we” as well - he talks about himself as part of a group of larger huntsfolk circles. Who knows if this refers to students or licensed professionals or both, but this heavily, heavily implies that he was more than just a sad, outside loner, at least for a time; he chatted with others and traded stories about goings-on and missions and idols.

Somewhat related and leading into...

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2)  At least around this blog, Qrow does not have an inferiority complex because of Raven.

Does he have some internalized shame about being soft that he can’t quite shake? A few insecurities about being unwanted compared to her natural leadership and competence? Yes. Does he consciously view himself as lesser than her? No. 

Also... he’s not co-dependent on her. To a degree, for while? Yeah, there was probably an unhealthy reliance going on there. But Qrow and Raven establish themselves with their own identities at some point, they’d have to, to chose different paths so stubbornly. There’s a rift there, eventually, if not always having been at odds in some ways and comfort in others.

“Raven's got an interesting way of looking at the world that I don't particularly agree with. [The weak die, the strong live. Those are the rules.]”

“...they were killers and thieves.”

We are shown that the twins were raised with this weak/strong dichotomy. Raven bought into it, but Qrow explicitly separates himself from that belief. Shown again when he mocks Raven with, “because that was your rule, right?”

He believes in true family, he believes in protecting the weak, he believes in doing good, he believes in standing up for what’s right. He may not like being emotionally vulnerable, but he shows softness and kindness to others, and for as much as he likes his flourish when fighting, he also isn’t afraid to look an absolute fool either.

He is shown de-escalating conflict time and again, even if he also falls back into violent, defensive patterns at times, too. He resents Raven for the choices she made, and as far as I interpret, thinks she’s the lesser one for running away and abandoning her family and her mission. (Meanwhile, she thinks the same of him for turning his back on the tribe.)

He all but spits on the tribe’s way of life, is willing to attack them outright to get the Spring Maiden. Why would he judge himself by those standards any longer? No, he lives by his own code, a huntsman’s code, and even has some pride in that. It’s why he can call Clover out on it. It’s why he folds when Robyn holds him to it.

It’s why it hurts when he finds out what gave him more meaning, aligned more with his own heart, than the tribe’s dogma may not actually have any purpose at all...

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3) There’s so much to unpack here:

“No one wanted me... I was cursed... I gave my life to you because you gave me a place in this world... I thought I was finally doing some good... Meeting you... was the worst luck of my life...”

No one wanted him? I believe this means the tribe, maybe even Raven, maybe trying to make friends, but no one until Oz? Does this include STRQ? I have trouble reconciling that one with everything else we’re shown. I still maintain he was part of bigger circles, but we get confirmation that these were probably fleeting or superficial. He knew people and was known, but no one stuck around.  Also more confirmation of his values. Gave me a place sounds like so much more than refocusing to me. It’s not gave me a direction, not told me what to do, it’s took who i am and gave that person a place to thrive - despite the bad that comes with - to work towards something better. Just like he always wanted.

But then he backtracks. What is it he regrets?  We do know how he likes to go into dramatic hyperbole about these things when he’s upset. [eg. “we’re not family anymore.” “i shouldn’t have come. i shouldn’t have let any of you come.” “we can kill the man who put us here.” “gone. like everybody else.”] (I love that crwby lets their characters do it. we all say things we don’t mean in the moment, give voice to those intrusive thoughts.)

I’ve talked before about how I picture him having flashes of all the lives he could have had instead. Would he have gone back with Raven and at least still had her? Would he just have been a normal huntsman defending people from Grimm without the crushing extra knowledge? Might he have been able to have a relationship or family of his own had he not signed up for the vagabond spy life? Does he just resent losing Summer and Raven because of how things went down? We don’t know, and I think the point is that he probably doesn’t either, but the weight of sacrificing all those alternatives and putting so much faith in Ozpin, stacking so much of his life’s work and identity on being part of the inner circle, comes crashing down on him all at once. 

also quite fitting...

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4) "Nice place to raise a family. ...If you're ...into that sort of thing."

This is from his World of Remnant narration, talking about Patch, but it hits so damn hard. The softness and warmth in the first half of the statement, followed by the harsh need to qualify it in regards to his own outlook... We learn all we need to know about his opinion of the subject. 

We see the conflict right there - the possibility of such a thing brings a wholesome lilt to his voice, yet he implies that it’s not something he personally intends to pursue. Is that because he doesn’t want it or because he thinks he can’t or shouldn’t have it? I don’t think that’s clear, and he may not know either. 

At the very least, I fall into the camp of him believing he doesn’t want it. Combine that with the fact that he does pick up that spy life, which makes keeping his distance a necessity, and makes settling down near impossible, and then he definitely knows it’s not in the cards for him. 

So I think it ultimately falls somewhere between. Why would he make the commitment to being a lone spy if he had dreams of love and a family? ...But then why would he resent making the sacrifice of that possibility later if he didn’t? 

Having his nieces around probably softened him up to the idea, but he’d already made his decision by that point. He’s also solid and generally happy with his choices at the point it would most matter. He’s married to his job. He’s fulfilling his missions well, in well-suited ways for his strengths and flaws. He has his nieces around as a balm on any sort of biological clock. He has his purpose with Oz.  Until he doesn’t.

This is an incredibly long-winded way of restating that one of the headcanon hills I do stand to die on is: Gray-romantic Qrow.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

5) “some people are just born unlucky... my semblance isn't like most - it's not exactly something i... do.”

I am constantly confused by the amount of people trying to do character analysis around Misfortune and Qrow based on standard semblance lore, when he has yet again stated explicitly to the contrary. We all have carte blanche ya’ll. We can do whatever we want with this, because he’s already told us his semblance breaks the rules. 

My full headcanon for it is here and my opinion about the direction I hope it takes is here but tl;dr

Unless we learn otherwise, there are very, very few ways I believe Misfortune is a reflection of Qrow’s soul, if at all. This is from the first headcanon, but it’s worth restating, because it’s important to me, aaand fits the theme of pulling in some quotes from other characters:

Everyone likes to quote Ren and his description of someone’s personality being incorporated into a semblance. I don’t buy it for qrow. Here’s the FULL quote: “A common philosophy is that a warrior’s Semblance is a part of who they are. Some say your personality and character can define your Semblance while some claim that it is the other way around. Of course, there are still many who don’t see a connection at all.”

So unless we find out otherwise I will also die on the hill that qrow is an example of the middle part. Qrow’s personality/soul has nothing to do with why his semblance is what it is, but being forced to grow up and live with Misfortune has defined him tremendously.

OKAY, there are some smaller quick ones, but I’ll stick to my five points like I promised at least, and maybe do a lesser version some other time. :]

[bopbopstyles]

9. Itches to Scratch

SERIES RATING: M (sex)

CHAPTER WORD COUNT: 8.8k

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Y/N promised herself she would never date a musician. It was her one rule–her only rule, actually–when it came to dating. But then, Harry Styles rolled into her life and asked her to break it, just this once. And this is what happened.

a/n: only two more chapters left! what the actual FUCK!!!!! thank you so much for all the love on OE, they. are my little babies and i love them so much. slide into my DMs and tell me what you think!

pls reblog to spread the word about only exception! 🥰

“H?”

Harry was in his dressing room while Y/N showers before his show in Bologna. She was leaving in a week and he spent every waking moment trying not to think about it. He had loved having her on tour with him—waking up with her in his bed, seeing her belly grow and her body change right in front of him, being able to sing to her. Bounding off the stage and directly into her arms was his favorite part of the night. They had also gotten really good at having sex in his dressing room without anyone hearing them, something he was going to miss. Desperately.

At the moment, he was on his phone texting Gemma, checking in on what she was up to at work. But at the sound of Y/N’s voice he perked up, on his feet immediately. He beelined for the shower and then paused in the doorway of the bathroom. “What is it, love?”

She shoved open the shower curtain and Harry was met by a wet Y/N looking flustered, a razor in her hand and soapy legs. “I can’t reach my fucking legs, Harry.”

Oh. He toed off his shoes, then his clothes, and walked straight into the shower with her, despite her protests that he really didn’t need to get all the way in the shower. But Harry would walk through fire for her, the water didn’t really do much. “Why are you shaving in the first place?” He asked, turning down the intensity of the shower. “I really don’t care if you’ve got hair on your legs, baby.”

“But I do,” she pouted. “Makes me more…attractive, I guess.”

His head bounced up from where he was studying her dainty ankles. “Why would you be less attractive?” She had brought up to him only once or twice before her insecurities about her appearance since she’d gotten pregnant and he flat out didn’t understand her concern. He didn’t think he’d ever been more attracted to her—she fucking glowed, she constantly wanted to touch him, she let him do things for her, and she was carrying his child. (And her tits were utter perfection.) So when she said things like that, he just didn’t know how to reassure her more.

She pushed her wet hair out of her face and avoided his eye contact, much to his dismay. It was hard to read her when she didn’t look at him, although he was getting better and better at telling from her body language as they spent more time together. “I just feel so…not like myself.”

“Hey,” he murmured, rubbing the skin at her thighs. “You’re still you. You’re my Y/N. Same person, same utterly drop-dead gorgeous person.” Her eyes finally met his, a blush on her cheeks he adored. He loved that he still made her blush. She didn’t reply, didn’t fight him on his words, so he started to run the razor down her legs, the hairs collecting on the blades before he rinsed them in the water. They were quiet as he worked, delicate strokes on her skin so he didn’t knick her. The last thing he wanted to do was to make her bleed. “Feel nice and soft,” he informed her as he moved to her other leg, making short strokes on her knee since the skin was thinner and harder to shave.

She mumbled something he didn’t catch, but he didn’t ask her to clarify, knowing it was probably some snide remark about his work. Instead, he massaged her calf, smiling at the gasp he heard over the shower. “Harry…” She said, voice in a warning.

“I know, I know.” They didn’t have much time—he was due for hair and makeup in probably a few short minutes, and after that there wouldn’t be time until after the show. “Just let me mess around, huh?” She rolled her eyes at him, but didn’t protest, so he continued his actions. He shaved her hair and massaged at her skin, peppering kisses on the bits closest to him. The precise swipes of the razor were leaving her hairless and glistening under the florescent lighting in the bathroom, and Harry surveyed his work with pride. “Think I’m done,” he said, leaning back and letting her rinse off her leg under the water. “Can touch it up later if it’s not up to your standards.”

He stood up and captured her lips in a quick kiss before she pushed him away, telling him to dry off before Ayae got there and had his ass for being all wet and drippy. He chuckled and left her to her own devices, finishing the shower while he got ready for the stage.

Harry gripped Y/N’s hand the minute he was off the stage, pulling her behind him all the way to the dressing room, ignoring her questions entirely. He was a man on a mission, and when he shut the door behind him and pushed her against it, his lips capturing hers, she knew what for. Hands covered every free inch of her skin, his ring-clad fingers desperate to touch her.

“Thought about you when I was on stage,” he said, wrenching the neck of her top to the side, exposing her bare collarbone. “About fucking you, about your wet hole, about hearing you moan for me.”

Her hips bucked into his without trying to, his words stirring a fire in her. “Couch,” she breathed out when he sucked into her skin. “Need to feel you properly, H.” Because of her belly, her seven-month pregnant belly, she couldn’t touch him the way she wanted to.

“Yeah, baby?” He walked them backwards to the couch, him sitting down with her on top of him. He leaned back deep into the cushions, the angle allowing her to grip his thighs behind her and grind, her clothed center brushing against him. The rings of his fingers dug into her thighs when he rucked up her dress, one of the many Harry Lambert had found and ordered for her, loving the opportunity to explore maternity fashions. The cold metal made you gasp and you looked from the ceiling to his eyes, loving the devilish look in his eyes. “Can I make you come?” He asked, nose nudging hers.

She nodded, the prospect making her desperate. He could feel it in the way she shuddered at the idea, the way her eyes fell to his mouth and watched him lick his lips, something he did just to taunt her. Delicately, he rolled her, her back hitting the couch cushions and Harry dropped to the floor in front of her, not minding that his hot pink pants were going to get ruined from the rug. Her hands pushed at his matching suit jacket and he shrugged it off, letting her untie the bow tie around her neck that she had helped him with only a few hours before. And when he was free, he bent down, not wanting to waste a second of time.

He dove into her without warning, without prep, knowing she wouldn’t need it. She was already dripping for him, the effect of his words driving her wild, but the feeling of his tongue inside of her had her squirming against him, hands pulling on his hair and his name falling from her mouth in a chant. He loved going down on Y/N because it was when he loved how she responded to it—how she pulled on him, touched him everywhere she could, held his head close to her.

“H,” she breathed, “need your fingers.”

Her wish was his command. He slid two fingers in, the sound of her groan as she adjusted making him smile. As he slid his digits in and out of her, curling them deep inside, he rested his cheek against her thigh, watching what he was doing to her. And then he looked up at her, only to find her watching him, breathless. “I know you wish you could see,” he said softly, because she had told him more than a few times, “but can you hear what I’m doing to you?”

It was loud in the room, the sound of her juices as he moved in and out of her, the slick of her skin against his fingers. She nodded, licking her lips as they dried from her pants. “Feels so good,” she whispered, head lolling as he kissed her clit tenderly before sucking on it. “Gonna come,” she breathed out as he stroked her clit with his tongue over and over again, a brutal course set on her skin.

“Want to feel you come on my fingers,” he told her, knowing that his words were what she needed now. “Can you do that for me, love? Come around me, squeeze me tight like you do my dick? Hmm? Know you can, want to feel it though.”

“Fuck,” she said, drawling on the word as she bucked into him, his fingers brushing her back wall just the way she needed. That was what made her come, squeezing around in a vice grip, thighs clamping around his head as he watched her drip onto him, juices dripping around his fingers.

He lapped at you, tongue picking up every last drop, not wanting a single bit to go to waste when he pulled his fingers from you. “Beautiful,” he murmured, pressing kisses to the rise of her bell as he lifted his head. “Can I have you, baby? Need you so bad.”

“Please.”

It took some logistics to figure out a position that was comfortable for both of them, but finally they found it. He was lying down on the couch, her in reverse cowgirl perched on top of him. He hated not being able to see her, but whatever was most comfortable for her was what he wanted. And if he couldn’t see her face at least he could see her ass, her back, her hair cascading down her back, the curve of her spine and her shoulder blades when she moved. He dug his finger into her ass, her head tipping back at the feeling of his rings on her skin.

Knowing she was sensitive already and how ready he was for her, he didn’t wait. He pushed at her hips, urging them up, and pumped his dick twice before nudging against her slit, the sensation drawing moan after moan from both of them. When she sat down on him, she didn’t hesitate—she took him fully, sitting against his hips so deep he had resist the urge to buck up into her, knowing she was adjusting around him. He loved it when she was in control, loved letting her set the rhythm and bounce on him at her own pace, basically using him as she needed. It never ceased to make him want her more, and he sat up slightly, changing the angle and making her squeal, so he could hold her belly. He knew it made it easier for her, and he didn’t want her to be in pain.

“You doing okay, angel?”  He asked, sucking harshly on her shoulder.

Her head rolled back and found his lips, mouths fighting for dominance as she rose and fell on his cock, his hands holding her up. When she rolled her hips against his her head fell back onto his shoulder behind her and he was essentially fully supporting her. He loved it though, the feeling of her sweaty back on his chest. He pushed his hips up into her slightly, making his dick brush her walls in the way she loved and his name a prayer in her throat.

He swept her hair over her shoulder so he could nibble at her neck, murmuring praises to her skin. “So good for me, baby, huh? Love feelin’ you all around me, squeezin’ me just like that. God, you feel like heaven, love, know that? Made for one another.” It had her squeezing around him tightly, her hands scrabbling for the couch cushions at her side for support as she rose and fell. She was chasing her orgasm and he wanted her to find it, knowing that her orgasm was what he needed to come. “Need you,” he said, suckling on her earlobe, swiping a circle underneath the tender skin. “Need to feel you come around me for me to finish.”

“Oh my god,” she whimpered. “Can you touch me, H? Can’t reach.”

His movements were immediate, moving one hand from her stretched skin to her clit, thumbing rapid circles over her clit. She shuddered in his arms, back curling into him as she bent forward. It was crushing his hand but he didn’t care, loved the reminder that she had his baby inside of her, that she was the mother of his child. “C’mon love, want you to come for me.”

The feeling of her clenching around him, her thighs threatening to shut as pleasure rocked through her body had Harry coming right behind her. She slid up and down him a few more times, movements shaky, but it was just what he needed as he finished, his lips sucking into the back of her neck as she rode him. His ring-clad hands gripped her hips, holding her to him as they both caught their breath, not ready to let go of her yet.

Then, Y/N rose up, his dick slipping out of her, and turned around so that she was sitting in Harry’s lap, but facing him. His fingers brushed across her stretched skin, and pressed a kiss to the rise of her belly. “I’m going to miss you,” she murmured as she ran her hands through his hair, sweaty from the stage and then sex.

Harry looked up at her, the sad expression on her face, and his heart broke. “Wish you didn’t have to go. Wish I could go with you.”

They’d spoken about it last night at length, about how if Harry could, he would cancel the rest of tour and go home with her. He loved laying down with her and talking to little Peanut or doing vocal warmups aimed directly at their child growing inside of her. Watching her body change, talking about how she was doing, calling their parents together to check-in. He didn’t want to experience it all from thousands of miles away through the tiny screen of his iPhone.

She kissed the top of his head, and then his nose, then the corner of his lips. “I know. But this is how it is, hmm?” Harry nestled his head onto her chest, sitting right above her breasts. They had taken her dress off earlier, but her bra still held them up, and he pushed at the strap gingerly, pushing it off her shoulder and exposing the flesh to him He nibbled at the skin, Y/N whining at the feeling and pulling at his head.

“Harry…”

“What?” He asked, licking at the sensitive skin and smiling as she squeaked.

“You need to shower and we need to get going,” she reminded him. It was approaching time for them to head out, let people finish cleaning up and for them to get to the hotel. Y/N was exhausted and she had an important meeting tomorrow that she needed to be awake for.

“I’m only showering if you come too,” he said, resting his chin on her sternum and looking up at her. He made his puppy dog eyes at her, which he knew were her weakness, but the thought of not having her skin next to him was torture. “Please, baby.”

“Fine,” she said, pushing at his head. “But no funny business.”

“Me? Funny business?” He scoffed as she pulled off of him. She rolled her eyes and walked towards the attached bathroom, the same one he’d shaved her legs in hours earlier. The sight of her, naked except for expensive underwear set he had bought for her because her old bras were too small and he wanted her to feel gorgeous, made him hard all over again.

She was literally going to kill him, he thought to himself, before pushing himself off the couch and following after her into the shower.

Y/N was only two weeks into being in Harry’s house alone and it was already hell.

She missed him like crazy. She would wake up in the morning, back aching and desperately having to pee, her hand stretched out to his side of the bed, which was empty. Every night she slept in an old shirt of his, one of the few that still fit her, but it had long lost his smell, so she kept spraying it with his cologne so she could pretend he was there with her. The one night she hadn’t because she ran through the leftover bottle he had at home she hadn’t been able to sleep, and when she’d mentioned it to Harry he had overnighted her a new one. Told her he didn’t want her to be without a piece of him. He threatened to make a custom dildo for her of his dick, knowing how horny she was, but she had refused, telling him it was dangerous for him to make a mold of his dick and send it off somewhere, to which he burst out laughing. “What are they going to do love, start making Harry Styles dildos?” She wasn’t too sure it wouldn’t happen, though.

She filled the void by worrying herself sick over the pregnancy and being a mom. When she had been with Harry they did it together—the learning, the late-night Googling, the questions to her doctor. But now she did it alone, or to Harry in texts. Questions like: Do we need another bib? To which he would reply that No, love, already got four, right? He was always correct, somehow keeping an inventory of every purchase they had made for the nursery logged in his head despite being on another continent. She had started calling her mom when Harry was asleep, just to have someone tell her Yes, you’re going to be a great mom, Y/N.

The worst part was that she and Harry hadn’t even settled on names yet. The gender was going to be a surprise, but she wanted to have names picked out at the very least, but they hadn’t been able to settle on any. They had a long-running list in the Notes app on her phone, a strikethrough over the ones they had decided against. Harry for some reason was obsessed with the name Rose, but Y/N had a bully in school named Rose and she just couldn’t get over it. They’d played around with gender neutral names, but quite honestly neither of them really liked the options they could think of all that much.

So they just texted each other names that popped into their heads, and Y/N added the ones that they both liked to the list. They decided they would pick once he got home, wanting to decide in person rather than over the phone. He would be flying home on June 1st, right after his last show in Mexico City. It was cutting it close, but it was the best they could do, and she was just praying that she wasn’t early.

Although she was very much was done with being pregnant, that was for sure.

The constant back aches, having to pee constantly, her feet getting swollen to the point where she was about ready to wear Harry’s slippers to work. All she wanted was to have her baby in her arms and out of her body, but at the same time, the prospect of the baby actually being there was frightening at the same time. Sometimes she would find herself looking in on the nursery, the crib and rocking chair staring her in the face, almost mocking her. As if to say, yeah, we know you’re freaked out, but guess what? No backing out now!

The truth was she was fucking petrified. And she didn’t know how to tell Harry, because he was so over the moon about becoming a Dad. When they’d FaceTime he would tell her about how big little Peanut was (who wasn’t quite so little anymore) and say he was reading some pregnancy books while they were on the road and he’d learned about some supplement he wanted her take. At first, she didn’t buy them, but then Harry could ask her about how they were and she was caught in a lie, so she started doing it. Some of them tasted awful, but she did it for him, because she knew it made him feel like he was involved, despite the distance.

So telling him that she was so scared to be a mom that she had a panic attack last night? It would just send him into a tizzy, and she didn’t want him to worry about her from so far away. She knew it would do nothing except make him feel like shit, and she didn’t want that. He was so good to her, far better than anything she could’ve hoped for, and the last thing she wanted was for him to feel inadequate, or that it was his fault.

She moaned about it to Hanna over decaffeinated tea, but Hanna had nothing to add but telling her she was going to be a good mother. Which did nothing for her at this point.

“It’s just, what if I fuck my kid up?” She said, twirling the cup in her hands. They were sitting on a park bench, coffee mugs in their hands and a long-forgotten lemon poppyseed scone between them. “I don’t want to be the reason they’re in therapy for the rest of their lives.”

“Y/N,” Hanna said, setting her cup on the bench, “we’re all in therapy at some point. We all get shit from our parents, okay? There’s no way to avoid that. You’re just going to do the best you can, and you’re going to do amazing.”

“But what if I don’t?” She could feel tears rising in her throat as she picked at the hem of her dress, a summer dress that her mom had sent her.

Hanna wrapped her arms around Y/N and pulled her in, holding her best friend close as the sobs broke through. A hand rubbed up and down her back, just like Harry would do, and Y/N suddenly missed him even more. She wanted him to be comforting her. But he was in Singapore or something. “I need you to listen to me, okay?” Hanna said, arms still around her. “You’re one of the kindest, most caring and generous people I know. You think through every single thing you do, you work harder than anyone I know, and you love more loyally than anyone else. And you’ve got Harry, who I think is literally meant to be a father. It’s insane how much of an amazing father he’s going to be to your baby. So you two as a team? Unbeatable.”

“What if we’re not a team?” The thought tumbled from Y/N’s lips before she could catch it, the fear that had been niggling in the back of her head breaking through.

Hanna pulled away, looking her in the eye. “What?”

“I just...What if having a kid pulls us apart? It’s all fine now, but what if after nights with no sleep and diapers and bottles, he gets…bored? And doesn’t want us anymore?”

“Harry is not going to get bored,” Hanna told her, voice firm. “He forced you to let him be in your child’s life, remember? Fought you on it. Fought to be here, to know his child. There’s no way in hell he’s going to let the opportunity to raise a child with you slip through his fingers. But, if things go south, you’ll be okay. You’ll both be okay.”

The thought made her stomach turn—the idea of breaking up with Harry at some point. Because having a child with him, it meant he would always be in her life, even if they weren’t together. It made her want to vomit. “I don’t want to be a single mom,” she mumbled, voice soft. “I want my baby to have two parents who are together. I didn’t get that.”

“Then you need to make sure it doesn’t happen,” Hanna said. “Talk to him about all this, Y/N. He needs to know about your fears and worries—deserves to. He tells you, right?”

All the time, she thought to herself. He was so open about how he was feeling, texting her about when concerts didn’t go how he wanted or if the crowd wasn’t as good, or when he messed up on a note. When he responded to a text too harshly and beat himself up about it, or was pissed off he wasn’t with her. It was his default state, somehow. But it was anything but hers. She was trying—fuck, she was trying so hard to get it right with him, but this was the part she kept tripping up on. The part where she expected him to fuck up and ended up convincing herself it would be horrible before she even got a chance to talk to him about it.

“I’ll tell him,” she decided, picking up her tea cup. “You’re right.”

Hanna nodded. “Know I am. Always am.” The reply made her laugh, something she desperately needed.

A few nights later, Y/N finally plucked up the courage to have the conversation with Harry. He was in Tokyo and it was the late morning for him. He had the day off and was spending the day talking to her instead of doing sightseeing like he normally might. He was curled up in a hotel bed, hair still messy from sleep, chest bare and duvet covers up to his shoulders. Meanwhile, Y/N was on their couch, a blanket around her legs and a bowl of ice cream on her lap.

They were talking about his tour, but he could tell something was amiss. Y/N wasn’t focusing well, her eyes darting all over the place, short answers to his questions and comments. Finally, he asked, “Y/N? Everything okay, angel?”

She gave a sharp exhale, fear curling in her stomach. But it was now or never. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something that’s been worrying me,” she said softly.

On her phone screen, Harry sat up, running a hand through his hair before replying. “What is it?”

“I’ve been feeling really…anxious lately,” she explained slowly, searching for the right words. “Had a panic attack about a week ago.”

“What? Are you okay?” Harry’s face changed immediately, concern ripping through his features. “Fuck, love, why didn’t you tell me?”

Y/N ducked her head down, trying to pull her emotions together. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Oh baby,” he murmured. “Can you look at me?” She looked back at him and he’d smushed his face closer to the screen, as if he couldn’t look closely enough at her. “Hey you. It’s okay,. I just want to know what you’ve been so anxious about.”

“It’s the baby,” she replied, watching Harry nod, understanding in his expression. “What if I’m a shit mom? Completely screw our kid up and then they’re in therapy for the rest of their lives, talking about how their mom messed them up?”

“You’re not going to be a shit mom,” Harry said, “and you’re not going to screw our kid up. If we screw our kid up, we’re going to be doing it together—no way I’d let you take all the credit for that.” It made her chuckle, and Harry gave her a small smile, happy to know he had cut through her stress a bit. “But I’m serious, love. We’re going to figure it out together. Neither of us really know what we’re doing, but that’s okay. No one really does, right?”

“Guess not.”

“Exactly. Is there something else that’s been bothering that pretty head of yours?”

It was as if he could read her mind, even thousands of miles away. “I…I was thinking about how both our parents are divorced,” she said finally. “Does that mean we’re destined for the same thing?”

Harry’s face dropped, and she could tell the prospect of it hurt him in the same way it hurt her. “No,” he said, voice soft in her ears. “No, it doesn’t, baby. We’re going to give it our all, okay? You, me, little Peanut.”

“We’re not damaged goods?”

“No,” he said, choking on his words at the sight of Y/N brushing at her teary eyes. “Not at all. Listen to me, okay? I’m not going anywhere. You and our little one come first, always, no matter what anyone else wants. If that means no more music, no more touring, no more press, moving to fucking Antartica, I don’t care. I’ll do anything for you. For Peanut. For us, for our family.”

At some point in his speech, she started to cry, a combination of her emotions and Harry’s words sending her over the edge. It was in moments like this that she wondered how she had found such an incredible man, how she had gotten so lucky in life for him to be at a Christmas party and make her break her rules. “I love you,” she told him, sniffling. “I’d do the same.”

Harry gave her a smile, a tear of his own streaking down his face. “See? That’s why we’re going to be okay. Both too damn stubborn, too.”

She laughed, and then looked down at her ice cream. “My ice cream’s melted.”

“Go get some more then, and tell me about work.” Harry settled back into his spot on his hotel bed and Y/N got up, her heart settling now that she had told Harry about what she’d been worrying about. He always managed to put her at ease, even from far away.

Harry usually loved touring, but right now, he fucking hated it. Usually he would be all excitement and energy, but with Y/N halfway across the world with his child growing inside of her, his mind was elsewhere constantly. Couldn’t focus during interviews, the whole time he was on stage he was thinking about when he’d get off stage so he could call Y/N, since it was the daytime for her. He’d stay up late talking to her or wake up early, his sleep schedule fucked not only from touring but also from waking up at all hours of the night just because he wanted to hear her voice.

The band loved that Harry was excited about the baby, but he could tell they were getting tired of him showing them photos of Y/N’s adorable pregnant belly multiple times a day or him jabbering on about some new thing he had learned in the parenting books he carried everywhere. He was listening to a podcast, too, wanting to fill his every free moment with either talking to Y/N or learning about how to be the best dad he could be.

In the back of his mind, he knew he should be putting in more of an effort to be present, if not for the fans than for the band. But he also just frankly…didn’t care as much as he cared about Y/N and little Peanut. It filled his every thought, awake and asleep. He had dreams of Peanut and he’d send her voice memos explaining them, still half asleep and unable to coherent type. Most of the time she was awake and would send a voice memo or text back, and he’d end up staying awake talking to her until she chastised him for not sleeping.

When he couldn’t talk to Y/N about how excited he was to be a dad, he talked to his mum. Anne was his second favorite person to blab to about his approaching fatherhood, because she was just as excited to be a grandma and was full of advice and good thoughts. She’d suggested a few books, even, the classics she had used while pregnant with him and Gemma. It was nice to have someone to share his fears with too, someone other than Y/N. They’d been better about sharing, being more open, even while he was touring but he also didn’t want to overwhelm her. She had plenty going on with her job and preparing for her maternity leave, getting ready for the baby, and just being generally pregnant. His biggest regret was that he couldn’t be there to take some of the load off. He tried from afar, checking in, ordering her groceries when she was too busy and having them delivered, got her a massage or two to help with her back pain, but it just wasn’t enough. He wanted to be the one giving her massages, picking up the groceries, dropping her lunch off to her at the office when she was too busy to meet him.

For one of the first times in his career, he was so homesick it was almost painful.

When it was just the two of them, it was manageable—he’d done it before, been in a relationship while touring. It was never pleasant, but he could do it. But his girlfriend being pregnant while he was on tour? It was something Harry never wanted to experience again. The thoughts swirling through his head of would he tour once the baby arrived? never seemed to cease, but he didn’t have the answer. He had talked to Anne about it, Mitch and Adam and Sarah even, but none of them had answers or him. He’d even talked to the therapist he had while he toured about it, to no avail. Everyone kept telling him it was his decision, his and Y/N’s decision, but the issue was he didn’t want to even have the problem in the first place. He didn’t want to have to choose.

And he knew it was selfish to not want to choose, to ignore the problem and let it fester, but the thought of it stressed him out to no end.

So those were the thoughts swirling through his head when he was sat on the couch in the dressing room, dressed in the suit of the night, and his phone buzzed. It was Y/N, telling him she was on her lunch break, asking if he was free to chat before the show. He called her without even looking at the time, knowing someone would come get him when it was time to go. His extensive pre-show ritual was a thing of the past, forgotten in lieu of conversations with Y/N that did a better job of calming him down than any meditation or mantra could.

“Hi babe,” she said when she picked up, her sweet voice floating through his phone. It instantly had him relaxing into the couch, the stress in his shoulders lifting.

“Hi you. What are you having for lunch?”  

He heard the click of a microwave, the beep of buttons being pressed. “Leftover pasta. Made that spicy one you like.”

“Mhm,” he hummed, the thought of a homemade dinner with Y/N suddenly the most glorious thing he could imagine. “Sounds delicious. How’s work going? Had that presentation this morning, yeah?”

“Yeah, went well I think. They seemed to like the direction we’ve chosen, said some good things about the design mockups. Supposed to let us know by the end of the week, all things going well.”

He smiled, the prospect of a success at work for her a win for them both. “I’m sending good vibes into the world for you,” he said and she giggled, the sound making his heart swell. “How about little Peanut? They doing okay?”

A beep went off—her pasta—and she paused, before saying, “Sorry, had to grab the pasta. Peanut’s good though. I had some wild dream last night, but apparently that’s normal?”

He had read about this the other night in his book and he beamed, excited he could offer some insight. “Yeah, that’s normal for the third trimester. Do you have varicose veins at all? Any clumsiness?”

Y/N chuckled and he heard a drawer open and close. “Yes to clumsiness, no to varicose veins, thank you Dr. Styles.” She said hello to one of her co-workers and Harry listened to the sounds of her in the office, going out to the patio where she ate her lunches and spoke to him most days.

“What about leaky breasts?”

The sound of Y/N sputtering had him smirking, loving that he could still get a rise out of her from afar. “No, Harry, my breasts are not leaking. What the fuck kind of question is that?”

“Apparently it happens in the third trimester,” he replied. “Sorry, angel.”

“Fucking hell. Now I’ve got that to look forward to, I guess.”

“I’ll still love you when your breasts are leaking.”

She scoffed. “You better, it’s all your sperm’s fault we’re in this position anyway.”

“Hey!” They’d had this joke running for so long it no longer got him all moody and annoyed, instead just making him laugh. “You’re beautiful all the time, lovey.”

She was quiet for a moment. Harry knew that compliments made her uncomfortable, especially now, which was exactly why he showered her with them. “Thank you, H.”

“Harry?” He looked up and saw one of the stage managers standing in the door. “Time to go.”

“Okay,” he replied. Then, to Y/N, he said, “Sorry, love, time to go on stage. Give Peanut a kiss for me?”

He listened to her smooch her fingers with a smile, a tradition they’d started where she kissed her fingers and ran them along her belly, sharing his kiss with their child. “Good luck, babe. You’ll do amazing.”

With another I love you, he hung up, tossing his phone to couch before standing, checking his hair in the mirror. As expected, it was a bit messier, but at least his nerves were settled and his mind clear. Talking to her always brought him down a couple notches, even if it was just this and that. Any time he could talk to her was time well spent, in his book.

“Y/N, you’ve got to have a shower,” Hanna said, leaning onto the counter. She and Jamie were over for dinner and a movie night, having declared that Y/N needed more fun times. They claimed she was working too hard, but the truth was that it was about all that distracted her from missing Harry all the fucking time. Plus, she had her maternity leave to prepare for—she was training her replacement, a girl fresh out of college who she prayed wouldn’t steal her job.

Hanna and Jamie were trying to convince her she needed to have a baby shower, but she was unconvinced. She didn’t need people bringing her a bunch of gifts for her kid when they didn’t need them—Harry had made it clear that he could afford anything they needed and she didn’t want her friends and family to feel like they had to get them anything at all.

Plus, the idea of people all fawning over her pregnant belly made her uncomfortable as hell. “No,” she insisted again, turning off the oven. “Not only do I think they’re stupid, Harry would want to be there and he’s not home until two weeks before the due date.” She opened the oven door and pulled out the lasagna she had made, waving the oven mitt over the top to help cool it down. She was starving, although she had been in a perpetual state of hunger for eight months at this point.

“Harry doesn’t have to be there,” Jamie said, taking a sip of sparkling water. Her friends had promised not to drink around her in solidarity, which meant they were resigned to sparkling water in wine glasses and pretending there was liquor in it. “But if it’s important to you that he is, it can be right when he gets home. There’s no time stamp on when you need to do it. I think you might regret it if you don’t do it, Y/N.”

She sighed before pulling down plates for dinner. “I just—you both know I hate being the center of attention. A shower sounds awful.”

“Think of all the cute baby clothes you’ll get, though!” Hanna said, bustling over to your side to help cut the lasagna and serve.

“There’s also the privacy thing,” you reminded them. “I don’t know how Harry will feel about it.”

“Keep it small then.” Jamie grabbed his plate and followed you to the couch. You had given up on eating at a table where your belly didn’t fit comfortably quite a long time ago. “You’re both pretty private people—just invite your closest friends, your parents. It doesn’t have to be a big to-do.”

You took of a bite of the lasagna—fuck it was good—and then said, “But then what’s the point? If it’s just our close friends?”

“The point,” Hanna said with the roll of her eyes and a poke to your knee, “is that your pregnancy is a reason for celebration, not shame. You’re happy you’re having this baby, yeah?” You nodded. “And so is Harry?” You nodded again. “Then why not celebrate the little Styles kiddo with everyone you both love?”

There was some truth to what she was saying. Somewhere between the unexpectedness of it and the fact that you and Harry wanted to keep quiet about it, avoiding paparazzi photos and staying mostly inside, that you had felt like you were hiding it. That you should be ashamed to be the Girl Who Made Harry Styles Cancel Tour and the Girl Who Is Having Harry Styles’s Baby! Both of the headlines were real and they had sent you into more of a tizzy than you liked to admit. So many subconsciously the thoughts had festered, creating a shame that you hadn’t really spent the time to think about.

“I’ll talk to Harry,” you conceded, and Hanna beamed. “No promises. But if I do it, you two are planning it because I have no patience for that shit.” They both immediately began to jabber about themes and games and attired and Y/N sighed, resting back into the couch, her plate balanced on the rise of her stomach.

The next day, Y/N called Harry, who was on a short break between Japan and Argentina. He was spending the time in Italy doing a shoot for Gucci, which she was jealous of—under normal circumstances, she would’ve forced him to let her come along, but she was unfortunately not allowed to fly. He would be home in about two weeks, and she was itching the time to arrive. It had been too long within him in her bed, joining her in the shower, coming back sweaty from runs and rubbing his sweaty skin all over hers just to annoy her.

When she broached the subject of a baby shower, Harry immediately squealed, a sound she rarely heard from her boyfriend’s mouth. “A shower? Yes! Of course! Can I be there? Can you wait until I’m home?”

Of course he was over the moon at the idea. Now that she had asked him, she was confused how she had ever thought he wouldn’t be. “Yeah, I can wait, babe. Are you sure you want to? I didn’t know if it was too much, I know how private you’ve wanted to be about this all.”

“I appreciate that, love, but having a small one is completely okay. I don’t want my fear of people getting all up in our business preventing us from having a life, yeah?”

“Are you sure? Absolutely positive?”

“Yes angel, I’m sure.” She could heard shuffling in the background.

“H?”

“Sorry,” he mumbled, voice garbled, “spilled some water on my pants and now it’s all over the floor, fuck.”

She giggled, the thought of Harry balancing his phone between his shoulder and ear, on the floor wiping up some spilled water. “Which pants are you wearing?”

“Just some linen ones,” he answered.

“…want to show me?”

Harry was quiet for a moment, and then a sigh came through her phone. “You’re such a little minx, Y/N.”

“And? You gonna show me?”

“Fuckin’ hell,” he murmured. “Of course I will. Can’t refuse you anything, you know that.”

Y/N laid back on their shared bed, knowing that he was going to rile her up just how she needed. Two weeks couldn’t pass soon enough.

Harry pushed open the door to his house with a sigh of relief, the air conditioning hitting his skin immediately and the smell of Y/N and home wrapping through his body like a blanket of comfort. Usually when he got home she was downstairs waiting for him, a smile on her face, ready to pull him into her arms. But this time, she was nowhere to be found. He called her name through the house, setting down his duffel and letting his suitcase rest against the wall. The rest of his luggage was in the trunk of the car, but it could wait—he wanted to know where Y/N was.

However, he got no response. He dropped his keys to the counter and toed off his shoes before making his way through the house. The living room was empty, and porch lights were all off, so she was probably upstairs somewhere. He climbed the stairs, the floorboard creaking slightly under his weight, and he smiled. He had missed those sounds of home. When he crested the top of the stairs, he called her name, but still no response. The door to the nursery was shut tightly, as were the other doors, all except for the one to their room.

Once he reached it, he immediately knew where Y/N was. The sound of Phoebe Bridgers floated through the room, and under it was the sound of running water, Y/N’s voice singing along. She was having a shower and hadn’t even realized he was home.

The thought of surprising her was too enticing, even though he knew she would hate him for it. He pulled his hoodie over his head, his sunglasses resting on the dresser, and pushed his trousers and boxers down his legs. Being naked in a shower with his girl? A dream. He padded over to the open door of the ensuite bathroom, smiling at the sight of her body swaying to the music, eyes shut. They had a clear shower door along with a rain shower head that they both treasured deeply. It made their bathroom one of the best rooms in the house, the massive tub on the other end of the room making it even better.

When he pushed open the door to the shower, Y/N screamed, her eyes fluttering open immediately. “Harry! What the fuck!”

But his arms were already held out to her, laughing at her reaction. She gave him an annoyed glare, but then gave up. It had been too long since she had seen him to stay mad for long. “Hi, baby.” He mumbled into her hair when she folded into him. His hands ran up and down her spine, sighing into the feeling of closeness.

“Scared me half to death,” she told him, her head resting on his chest. “You know I hate it when you sneak up on me.”

“Couldn’t help myself.” He pressed an open mouthed smooch to her forehead and she smiled into his skin.

“I didn’t expect you back for another hour,” she said, lifting her head so her chin rested on his sternum, her eyes meeting his.

He nodded, another kiss to her forehead. He couldn’t stop putting his lips on her. “Plane left early, shockingly enough. Texted you when I was on my way, but I guess you didn’t see.”

She blushed. “I’ve been in here for a while, I guess.”

“Runnin’ up the water bill, huh?”

“Hush up.”

He laughed, before letting her move away. He grabbed their shampoo from the caddy and squeezed some into his palm, but then she caught his hand. Slowly she swiped the shampoo from his hand and massaged it between hers, twirling a finger for him to turn around. Harry followed her directions willingly, tipping his head back so she could wash his locks, the curls having long since relaxed after hours of him running his hands through them from the stress of traveling. His eyes closed easily, giving himself over completely to her control.

He was putty in her hands and didn’t mind one bit.

She pulled him a few steps back so the water hit his hair, and she ran her fingers through them, getting all the soap out. Then, she squeezed conditioner out, scrunching it into his ends before patting his shoulder. “You’re supposed to keep it in for a while, you know.”

“I did know that,” he informed her. Some stylist told him years ago, he just chose not to care. “Just annoying so I don’t.”

Y/N rolled her eyes at him. “For someone in the public eye, you’d think you gave a shit about what your hair looked like, and yet you’re either pinning it up with one of my clips or forgetting to wash it for days on end.”

He grabbed at her hips, desperate to touch her again. Fingers danced over her stretched skin, his eyes absorbing how her body had changed since he had last seen her in person. She had sent pictures, but they didn’t capture the sight of her belly hanging lower, her belly button popped out and her breasts heavy in his hands. Beauty in every way, he thought to himself. “Good thing you don’t mind.”

“Can you scrub my back?” She asked, changing the subject and handing him the loofah.

“‘course. Turn around for me, love.” He rubbed some soap onto her skin before rubbing the loofah over her sky, humming at her soft moans of pleasure at the sensation. “Feel good?”

“Mhm,” she murmured. “Had this spot that’s itched for ages and couldn’t reach.”

He chuckled, brushing at her lower back. “Thankfully I’m back so I can scratch all your itches,” he teased, and she slapped at the hand that was wrapped around her waist playfully.

“I know of another itch you can scratch,” she said, tipping her head back to look him in the eye.

Harry could feel his dick plumping immediately. The sight of her naked and wet in front of him had done plenty to get him going, but when she suggested sex herself it always made him need her immediately. And on their bed, not some hotel sheets or a couch? A dream. “Yeah?”

“Missed your cock,” she whispered into his ear and Harry groaned, her hand coming down to wrap around him. The loofah was long forgotten on the floor of the shower when Harry turned them around, letting the water run through his conditioned hair before hauling her out of the shower. She squealed and he didn’t care. Wrapped her in a towel, just enough so she wasn’t dripping wet, and then was hoisting her into his arms, thankful for the extra time he had spent working out so he could lift his beautiful pregnant girlfriend.

Then, he carried her to the bed and hit all the spots that itched, clawing at the sheets and marking up her skin, reclaiming her as his, her name on his tongue the song he loved to sing most.

Afterwards, they laid curled up in bed, Y/N playing with the ends of Harry’s hair. They were tossing around baby names, as they often did in moments like this. She had brought out her phone list and they’d crossed through some more. It was coming down to the wire and they both were anxious, not having found the perfect name. Harry wanted something gender neutral, as did she, and they had decided long ago that if it was a girl, the middle name would be Anne, and Peter for a boy. So the name had to work with those names, and with Styles, which wasn’t an easy last name to work with.

Harry hummed as she scratched at his scalp, his thumb resting on her phone screen as he surveyed the list. Then, suddenly as if out of a dream, it came to him. “Emerson,” he said. His eyes lifted to hers, wide and waiting for her reply.

It was if the air knocked out of her chest, hands still in his hair. It was perfect. Simple, yet elegant, nick namable, and worked with the middle names. “Emerson Styles.”

The grin that spread across Harry’s face settled it immediately. “That’s our little Peanut,” he murmured, a tear pricking at the corner of his eye. “Emerson.”

TAGLIST: @smokeinherperfume @afire-hes @harryinsweatersandbandanas @marinalima3 @havethetimeofyourstyles @ursogoldenshan @inmygardensuit @marinalima3 @amaridon @harrys-watermelons @dontgiveupthedayjob @cronias13 @apples2019 @laula843 @afterstylesmadeit  @kait-brin @harrys-watermelons @groovybaybee @clumsywithlove93 @1142590m @erin0717 @ketchuplukehemmo​  @harrysclementines​  @meetmeinfleetwood​ @kakaym @harrystyles-concepts @harrymoncheri @berrynarrybanana​ @samjo1986 @adams-tammy72

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LAST CHAPTER COMING AUGUST 1ST @ NOON CST

[apenapaperandadoofus]

Kagami really went and kabedoned a bitch

GODDAYUM

I like how Adrien's true self is who he is a chat noir, and how Kagami can't see that. It makes more sense as to why the relationship doesn't really work, bc Kagami still can't see the 'real' him, the problem is in both of them with this one.

Meanwhile Luka really didn't deserve all that pain :(

He was indeed wrong for going for Marinette when he knew she liked someone else, but first of all: Marinette does the same thing with Adrien, so c'mon, I couldn't blame him for havig a bit of hope.

And then he was always there for Marinette no matter what :"( ah this boy is way too perfect.

I wish he had a bit more of depth to him tho, y'know? Oe more episodes to develop his relationship with Marinette, maybe show her falling for him a bit. She can be in love with Adrien and still find her feelings for Luka grow a bit. Maybe she falls for Luka bc he's actually there for her, and does show that he likes her and that he's interested.

And then due to Ladybug not being around as much, maybe Adrien starts falling out of love a bit, and then starts noticing either Kagami or Marinette.

It would be pretty cool if he was with Kagami bc he thought he liked her, but then due to the whole "i don't see your real self" thing and then maybe since Marinette starts letting down her guard more around Adrien bc holy crap ma'am it's been so long, you stuttering and falling was all season 1 shenanigans YOU'VE LITERALLY DANCED WITH THIS MAN HOW CAN YOU STILL NOT TALK TO HIM, YOU'RE F R I E N D S.

And then Adrien is like OH FUCK MARINETTE IS ACTUALLY PRETTY DOPE, but oh oh! She's with Luka! And so it becomes a bit meow like that. Idk, it would be a bit better imo, bc rn I've no idea what's going on.

Look, to make it even better, have Marinette break up with Luka, and Adrien confess to her, and she's so happy bc omg she actually really likes him! But she rejects him. Why? Because she can't have a boyfriend right now. She's far too busy.

Chat Noir is the only one she can relax around with.

Both LB and CN just spend a whole episode together bc they're sad, heartbroken. Adrien bc he missed his chance and can't be himself, and Marinette bc she can't be with the person she loves and is far under too much pressure right now.

It would make the reveal of their identities even more dramatic.

Marinette finds out Chat is Adrien and is like oh my lawd, and Adrien sees that Marinette is Lb. Maybe they can have a bit of tension bc they did sort of break each other's hearts.

It'd be more dramatic y'know? HEY LADYBUG CREW, TOM, IM ALWAYS HERE IF YOU NEED A SCRIPT WRITER, I GET IT IF Y'ALL HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO ANYMORE THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE THAT HAVE SO MANY IDEAS OK HOW TO MAKE THE SHOW EVEN BETTER JUST P L E A S E STOP TORTURING US LIKE THIS

[regrettablewritings]

Hello! Id like to request 3, 5, 13, and 22 for Poe please?

Hello! Stuff’s below the cut, assuming Tumblr has stopped assing around!

3. Who is the most romantic?: As much as people like to joke about him and play him up as a rowdy boy who takes very little seriously, it’s quite easy to forget that Poe is canonically a sentimentalist at heart. He keeps his mother’s wedding ring on his person so that he can one day give it to someone whom he wants to be with, for crap’s sake! I think what also makes him showing off his romantic side a bit out of place is that no matter what anyone says, love blooming during a war is still something happening during a very chaotic time. Maybe inspirational, arguably a little too optimistic, but always and most definitely out of place. And considering his rank as general, Poe’s got a lot on his plate. Even when he wants to take you out to a nice dinner and do any usual courting actions, the likelihood is just so low . . . But don’t underestimate him. Poe can be quite resourceful in addition to being determined. Some nights when it seems quiet, he’ll set up a blanket somewhere for the two of you to sit on. If you’re on a ship, it’ll be by a window; if it’s on a planet, he’ll find a nice, quiet spot that’s not too close to base but not too far just in case; if you’re in more of a bunker, he’ll find a nice, quiet corner as far from everyone as he can get and sketch a randomized star chart that probably isn’t based anywhere near reality. Whatever the case, you’ll see stars and planets of some kind and he’ll encourage you to make a game of it, pointing at random dots and he’ll either identify the planet or make up a name for it and then go on to make up silly or amazing stories about the adventures he’s hypothetically had there or the dates you could go on while there. It’s very sweet, and also rather promising about the future.

5. Who says ‘I love you’ first?: It would depend, honestly. I don’t think Poe’s above saying it, but I think under certain circumstances, you might beat him to it. Circumstances that include the ship coming under attack and him having to fly out in defense. You’re nervous obviously. You’re always nervous whenever he flies out, even if it’s just for a recon mission. But in the middle of a blitz? You can’t understand why he seems so calm about it all! Why does he always seem so sure of himself when he jumps into that piloting suit? How does his brow remain unperturbed whenever he places that bulky helmet on his head? Is it all a facade? Or is he genuinely that confident? To your dismay, the only thing to rip you out of this fearful reverie was a sudden blast from the attack, the rattling sending you off balance. It was a mere stroke of luck that the man of the hour was already at your side, keeping you steady. “Gogogo, get to one of the pods!” he demands, his unwavering sense of leadership prevailing. “Be safe, okay?” It sounds so simple, yet when he says it, you know it’s not just some phrase to give you comfort. It’s an actual plea. Even as he parts, you can see the worry in his eyes. It’s the only hint you have that he might not be as dauntless as he seems. As you released, stumbling to keep moving forward, you turn back to see him heading toward the direction of the X-Wing hangar. You don’t know what you feel first: The pang in your gut; the thunder of your heartbeat; the scrambling of your mind as panic hits you. The only thing you notice (and in hindsight, no less), is that you called after him: “I love you!” He stops for a moment. He stares at you. You weren’t sure if he intended on doing anything. Maybe some part of you hoped he would respond in turn -- respond at all, really. But before anything could even happen, a shower of sparks from the breaking walls interrupted you, causing you both to stumble backwards. “Get to a pod, (Y/N), I’ll find you later! I promise!” you heard him call out to you. By the time the rain of static ended, he was gone.

13. When do they realize they should get together?: Poe comes to this conclusion first. Or rather, he is more accepting of this before you are. Deep down, you’ve been wanting to be with him for ages. How could you not? He’s handsome, brave, smart, sweet, funny, protective . . . But he’s also fighting as a general and pilot in the Resistance. You’re involved, too, of course, but you’re not anywhere near the front lines as he is. And as selfish as it may be, the fear of one day learning he won’t be flying back leaves your body filled with a heavy, dark bile of sadness and fear. Besides, surely a man of his standing would prefer a woman befitting of his caliber? Perhaps another warrior soul with a gorgeous face . . . Meanwhile, Poe already knows: You’re the one he wants. You’re smart, you think fast, you like his sense of humor, you’re loyal and kind -- and those are just the things he can think of on the spot if he didn’t have time to go into detail about how you were resilient, a different breed of hero he could respect. The tipping point that brought him to this, though, probably happened when everyone had gathered one evening during dinner hours and began to swap stories about their lives before the war and what they planned on doing after. When it came to Poe, he talked about how he kinda liked the idea of exploring the galaxy more, seeing places and embracing them without the cold grip of a looming war, helping to rebuild and maybe potentially help to establish stability on more outer realms . . . And these were all true, he did want these! But the more he talked about it, processing his thoughts into words . . . the more he couldn’t help but feel something missing. He never added that last little tidbit, but it did stay in his mind for the rest of the night. It didn’t leave until the next day when he saw you shuffling out of your sleeping quarters, hair a mess, eyes still crusting with sleep. “‘Mornin’,” you muttered as cheerily as your morning-broken body would let you. And just like that, he knew what his plans were missing: You. He wanted you to be there in all of his efforts, by his side. And, likewise, he wanted to be there with you. To support you, to experience what more life had to offer with you. He tried after the fact to see him doing any of these things without you but frankly, it just felt wrong. Incomplete. In short, you had been wanting to be with him after getting used to him. Poe wanted it after realizing he didn’t want it any other way.

22. Where does their first kiss happen?: Sooooo remember when I said you blurted out your love confession at a dramatic and less-than-ideal moment? It stuck with him. Even as Poe sprinted toward his X-Wing, even as he and a handful of other pilots took off to handle the threat. Honestly, it was a miracle he was able to stay focused just enough to avoid getting injured or even killed. But he did it, and now he had a promise to keep. Meanwhile, you were dealing with a lot. All the escapees managed to warp and regroup to a backwater planet for the time being, giving you one less thing to worry about so you could go ahead and worry about everything else. Like if Poe was safe, what the next steps were for this branch of the Resistance, and, oh yes, the fact that you had confessed your love to a general in the midst of an attack. Simple stuff. Of course you wanted him to return safely. You wanted that more than anything! But every time you tried to even consider what would happen next after the fact, your mind would collapse into a blob. To your dismay, you still didn’t have any answers when the X-Wings landed. Against your brain’s screaming pleas, you felt obligated to run with everyone else to the designated landing area and greet the heroes. The screams only silenced when you saw him. Your mind just couldn’t function enough to make any sounds or movements. You didn’t even so much as flinch when your brain registered that he had caught sight of you . . . and was walking towards you. “(Y/N)?” His voice sounded so distant, and yet you could hear something in his tone. You just weren’t sure what. Concern? Hesitancy? You felt his gloved hands cupping your cheeks. You could smell his sweat, hints of smoke from the mission, trace amounts of the soap he’d used this morning for his shower. You could see those brown eyes that you loved so much, how they practically shined with gladness and adoration -- Wait, what? You didn’t really have time to think back: The moment you felt his lips, warm and needful, connecting with your own, your mind went blank.

. . . I think I went a little overboard 😅  But I hope it came out alright! Thanks for asking!

[ilikelookingatthings]

akatsuki no yona chapter 184: youtube comment I’m proud of: Joo-Doh has no right to talk to hak about Loyalty

That's kind of interesting. I ctually think Hak is right. I think king Il didn't physically kill his brother. like for one thing Il isn't a war general. imaging Il killing his brother or fighting him and WINNING with a sword is really hard to imagine. His brother is a BEAST. We definitely find out relationships between the two brothers weren't completely loving...there was some complicated stuff in there. but we know for a fact king Il was king and his brother apparently expressing to soowon that he just wanted to support his bro. I think there could have been a fight if yu-hon decided to go wage war after his brother told him no or something. but unless yu-hon was found to be involved with killing the mom its hard to imagine king Il even raising the blade to his brother and not being wracked by guilt all the time if he did kill his bro. but yu-hon was litlerally oe of the strongest in the kingdom and king il was already getting fluffy/bubbly.

love your reacting to Hak calling out joo-dou. Joudou was making a big deal about how he KNOWS Hak hates and wants to kill soowon so why would they let hak into the army that directly protects the king. trying to get Hak to swear loyalty to soowon or fail to o so and get kicked out of the sky army.

but what really hit me hard with Hak asking why did the king have to die and both him and yona get betrayed like that ws h was calling out Joudous loyaty and what do oaths mean. after all even if Il wasn't a good king Jou- Dou and the sky army SWORE a oath of loyalty to protect the king and royal family. Jou-dou even knew yona on a personal level and was one of the to people.

yet jou-dou here is trying to get Hak to swear loyalty and lecture hak?

Jou-dou and others in the skytribe army who own loyaly guards that hawk probably even trained with snuck in during Yonas party celebration and planned to cver up the tre prgins of king Il's death. they DIRECTLY betrayed the king.

forget soo-won. that burn where hak basically threw in his face that joodou is a oath breaker and that empty vows or loyalty don't mean anything. Hak could sweat that oath and sneak in a kill soo-won because in the end unlike joudou and many in sky tribe army....hak was ACTUALLY loyal to the king. hak didn't just see the king as cowardly. he knew there were lots of issues with the king and his methods and ideals. but the king won haks respect and loyaty and  hak found him worthy for a reason. He ws able to see why the grandpa king(king il's dad) chose king Il.

and what even more interesting is Hak was soo-won's best friend. his right hand. he also wanted soo-won be be king just traitors they fought for. honestly probably even more than them. he was willing t happily put aside his feelings for yona to encourage them both to marry an be together so he could serve the two people he loved th most. the traitor and Joodou use the excuse it was to save the kingdom an we could be fooled since we know he wasn't a good king... but unlike them he knew a peaceful solution had just been in reach. hak knew yona was in love with soo-won at the time and that she fought with the king because she wanted to be allowed the option to marry soo-won. and there even seemed to be slight progress at least on soo-won finding out her feelings. 

Hak has even more trust in soo-won's skills. I like hak thinking soo-won could have talked with king Il and they then used the death of th brother as a reason talks couldnt happen. but he knows if yona is willing to care about soo-won and suck up that he killed her dad in front of her to work o the good f th kingdom than soo-won definitely ould be able to. that could be naïve. maybe king Il DID kill the dad and Il would refuse any talks with soo-won. but that's excuses. soo-wo could have kept trying to talk to king ill and negotiate. but I like Joo-dou trying to hide behind that as a excuse for their behavior because even if joudou chose to swear loyaty to the idea of soo-won as king. It doesn't excuse he swore a actual oath of loyaty to the actual king and they broke it and deliberately caused his death right under haks nose. 

and Hak is STILL loyal to Yona his princess and given her support. I also like you bringing up that hak brought up yona in the discussion because even if Il killed soo-wons dad. yona was innocent and it was still betraying her. though my guess was th plan was to kill king Il while yona was innocently asleep in her quarters and that she'd be obvious to the true culprits who killed her dad and she'd see soowon as innocent. maybe the plan was to use her as a figure head or for soo-won to rule in her stead while she grieved but they hadn't actually planned to kill her until she had appeared unexpectedly and witnessed the murder. which then they had to silence her. I like how you phased hak saying 'I don't believe you' and why should I believe you' XD after all we know that shady advisor is the WORST...he tried to get zeno and jaeha shot with arrws. encouraged soowon to kill yona after she witnessed the murder. dude gives ALL the disrespect to yona with the seating arrangement. and I can't help by wonder since the dude is so a yuuhon fan...that maybe that advisor dude got disappointed yuhon didn't want to take over the kingdom from his king Il. so killed yuuhon himself and then puts all his eggs into the basket of into making soowon king and planned on killing king Il, who he saw as having stolen the rightful place of yuhon even though it was decided by the grandpa king and king Il didn't deliberately steal anything. like the adviser I could see having a grudge against King Il on his own on prince/general yuu-hon's behalf. trying to recreate the dream he thinks the ideal yuu-hon would have actually wanted if yuhon didn't hold back on his brother. he tried to stall on a peaceful solution in discussing stuff between the tao and kouren and soowons people. the advisor tried to stop that. 

I also like hak seing it more of a surface excuse. in th end everyone else betrayed king il because they wanted sowon on the thrown and didn't approve on how Il handled the country. but they are still in the wrong for breaking that loyaty and betraying them. 

and jodouh cant argue that hak isn't loyal to yona if he gave up his place in the wondtribe general to care for his tribe and her. 

I like your excitement over soo-won's hawk visiting hak XD I also wonder if haks jab at jou-dous loyalty might also imply king Il was right to choose hak over joudoh as Yonas boyguard and being in charge of the guards at the castle. 

Joudoh might be afraid of hak honestly but he cant say hak's anger at soo-won isn't justified after the betrayal.

[darksaiyangoku]

RWBY Versus XV: Addtional Final Fantasies

When I first announced this project months ago, the intention was to do a crossover fanfiction between RWBY and Final Fantasy XV.

The reason why I chose the 15th entry of the series is because I felt it fit RWBY’s universe the closest. Both are science fantasy stories within a contemporary setting, mirroring that of our world.

However, as I was in the midst of planning during my hiatus, an idea came to me. I decided to aim bigger and make this into a new kind of fanfiction. It will no longer just a crossover of RWBY and FFXV, but rather RWBY and Final Fantasy as a WHOLE.

Now, this is admittedly a pretty risky move, as there’s no way I could possibly fit all of this into my fanfic, right? After all, each game is different from the last, with their own lore and systems. How the hell am I possibly going to make this work?

Well, I’ve decided to take a rather radical approach and use Final Fantasy to expand on the history of Remnant and this fic aims to combine the best elements of both series. It’s my own personal love letter to RWBY, Final Fantasy and the JRPG genre.

(and for anyone asking, no I won’t be adding Kingdom Hearts. Sorry. 😞)

While Final Fantasy XV’s storyline and lore will be used alongside RWBY’s, other games will have their own impact on the story. I’ve divided them into two catergories; Old Era (OE) and New Era (NE).

Old Era- History of Ancient Remnant

New Era- Rebirth of Remnant

This is a pretty big task I’ve set up for myself, huh? But....... I’m actually pretty excited for this! Seriously, I haven’t this excited to write a fic in a while and I hope to god to nail this! Final Fantasy is one of my all time favourite video game franchises and I hope to do the series justice.

Look out FNDM, darksaiyangoku is back!

[kamikui]

OK so more notes building off of what @ge has for the ibashu spirited away au bc i JUST finished rewatching the movie.......... I’m basically working backwards in these notes forgive me

first thing i want to get down: yubaba ordeal w twin sister, baby all that

hiromasa can be yorimitsus “twin”; kagura can b baby but not like, fucking huge baby, just her regular self. 

the curse shuten can have placed on him is one of the things preventing him from regaining his memories, something that yori put on him-- hiromasa’s thing can be something that slowly makes him become more and more ill similar to whats in the original movie, so as the story progresses shuten is getting more and more weak

the thing he stole can just be. the same golden seal thing. put a bow n arrow pattern on it so it’s relevant to hiro LMAO

love can still be what breaks hiromasa’s curse

shuten can turn into a dragon, bc i . i personally think shuten can take any form he wants in onmyoji canon, so why not a dragon-- but he’ll look different from Haku’s dragon.

relevant bc when they’re returning to the bathhouses for the deal he (shuten) makes with yori, ibaraki talks about how he remembers being saved by shuten, and how onikiri accompanied them. Shuten breaks his dragon form all ecstatic about remembering, because all of their memories come back at once

once back, yori and onikiri are there, ibaraki calls to oni by his real name, and thats when it hits oni too-- BUT he doesnt say anything bc yorimitsu Right There, but shu and iba Know that he knows. yorimitsu does not

so like the deal in this case can be like, shuten will ‘return’ kagura to yorimitsu if ibaraki can be sent back to the human realm; bc as of that moment shuten didn’t exactly remember the two of them leading the whole thing

yorimitsus test can basically be a fight to the death, considering u kno, they’re adults in this, yorimitsus a dick, and he needs to die. kagura and shuten obviously fucking hate this test, along with everyone else who lives in the bathhouse, so those in the bathhouse Very subtly help ibaraki kill yori in this fight in different ways 

onikiri gets the last blow bc he deserves it.

anyways once that’s done, despite never having owned the bathhouse to begin with, shuten takes that spot over, and both him and ibaraki take back their land, which is all of the area once you go through the tunnel and the like

ibaraki very temporarily returns to the human world to retrieve a few things, but the pull on the bells is so strong he can hardly spend a day there.

and then they’re happy and back to themselves!

but NOW, going to the BEGINNING bc i have some THOUGHTS

in the beginning beginning, ibaraki was also moving to another area when he became curious about one of the side roads. since he had the time, he went down it, and that’s how he ends up at the entrance

the thing that makes him get out of the car is his bell anklet pulling at him. at first he kinda figured maybe he unknowingly shifted and the anklet was just moving bc of that, but the tugging became MUCH more obvious

he gets out, and when his foot is fucking YANKED he’s like “UM. OK”

so then he goes through, he goes through the city, he gets to the bridge, and that’s when he meets shuten briefly, who tells him he needs to get out as it’s getting dark.

it gets dark, he’s still stuck there as spirits go in, etc. etc., basically the same as the movie up to the point of ibaraki getting to the boiler room

i have NO idea who to make Kamaji/the boiler man, so he may just stay the same? unless someone can think of anything

the soot babies r Baby Baby ibaballs, but varying from white to grey to black. ibaraki doesn’t really connect them to himself because he doesnt have his horns (yet)

as Aja said in this post Len/the woman who helped Chihiro is Hoshiguma (referred to as Hoshi as the like. whole stolen name thing)

The Radish Man Is Umibozu. :)

the HUGE ass nasty man that comes in for the large bath can probably remain the same bc idk WHO in onmyoji could replace that. unless i really want to do Orochi dirty but idk how well that would fit.

it might fit.

OH yeah when ibaraki goes up to yorimitsu to get a job, his name is just shortened to Iba bc im lazy

maybe like. downtime of ibaraki in the bathhouse dealing with things, shuten sneaking around to visit him, etc. etc.

im thinking no face can stay being no face. 

all throughout this there can be hints of like, old mt. oe, onmyoji lore/world building, cameos from other shikigami, all that, just to flesh out everything

and UHHHH probably a lot more but this is so long as it is i hope it’s like, comprehensible