#because that's what friends do of course

[softquietsteadylove]

Hey erm can we get something for the dressage one? Maybe Gil is working very hard for a whole week without proper rest and one day thena comes in to check on Olympia and sees her resting on the ground with Gil leaning on her and sleeping?

"He is beautiful, in his own way."

Olympia just stared at her. The horse was lying down comfortably, nestled in among the hay Gil had been unloading all week. The man himself was actually curled up on some loose straw and tucked into Olympia's side, currently.

Thena tilted her head. She would never get this opportunity again, and she couldn't help but observe the fine details of Gil's visage now that it was open to her. And she couldn't be caught staring.

Olympia bumped Thena's head with her snout.

"Stop it," Thena whispered, keeping her horse's nose out of her business. "Don't wake him."

Gil had been working nonstop since their return from the tournament. It still seemed ridiculous to her that there was no one to help assist Gil, let alone cover his duties when he was away. It was part of his contract that he get at least some time off.

She had been trying to catch him at a good time all week. But all he had been doing was unloading hay and securing stables and caring for the horses. She had barely seen him at all.

Thena smiled as Gil turned over slightly in his pile of hay. "Some might say he's rather cute."

Olympia fixed one of her bulbous eyes upon her with a look of clear disbelief.

"Oh, shush," Thena scolded her own horse. She leaned against Olympia, running her hand down the front of her nose with a sigh. "I know you like him, too."

There was a time when she wouldn't have allowed herself to admit that she liked him at all. She could barely believe there was a time when she was determined not to like him at all. But he had won her over, as she imagined he was capable of doing with anyone.

Olympia let out a whinny, far louder than just a simple puff of air.

"Olympia!" Thena hissed at her, putting her finger up as if that were going to do any good with a horse. Gil stirred and she rushed behind Olympia.

Foolishness washed over her as she crouched behind Olympia's neck. Her face flushed. It was not only foolish of her to be hiding after spying on him, it was foolish of her to be watching him sleep like some creep. What was she supposed to say if he woke?

No, she wasn't watching him sleep because of some deep held affection she had for him. It was purely because she admired him as an equine caretaker, of course.

"Huh?" he startled upon his hay, looking around and then up at Olympia. "What's wrong, girl?"

He asked, but Olympia all but laughed at his panic. She adjusted herself, shaking out her mane. Her movement exposed the top of a head of blonde.

Gil rubbed his eyes. "Thena?"

She sighed, thunking her head against Olympia's neck. This little mare could be such a brat. Thena cleared her throat, hoping to compose herself as she rounded the horse's head to face Gil. "Sorry, I really was trying not to wake you."

"That's okay," Gil rushed to stand and brush himself off. He blushed, "S-Sorry, I shouldn't be sleeping."

Thena shook her head with a smile. "You shouldn't need to sleep. They're woking you too hard."

He shrugged, ruffling his hair (which shed a few hay twigs). "We got the hay delivery and the food delivery on the same day, which doesn't usually happen. But I gotta get them all sorted and put away before the temperature changes tonight."

Thena just sighed. It was an impossible amount of work for any one person. And if it were anyone but Gil, she doubt they would have gotten done what he had. "Gil, that's-"

"And now that tournaments are over, everyone's leaving for the season, so I've been trying to prep as much as I can before I have all the horses in all the time."

Despite the stables being on club grounds, it was rare to have every horse in all at the same time. And she couldn't imagine what it meant for Gil's workload to not have any time when the horses were out in someone else's care.

"Thanks girl," Gil thanked Olympia, petting her nose gently. "I guess I need to recharge my batteries a little."

"It should be more than a little," Thena raised her eyebrows at him. "When was the last time you truly rested?"

"Well," he drew out, avoiding her eyes boring into him. "I've been getting up early to try and premix the food and get all the hay to loosen, if need be."

"And what is early?" she inquired further, crossing her arms at him. She wasn't here to nag him like some put upon partner. But she knew that his days already began at 6 in the morning on a normal day.

"Uh," Gil avoided looking at her even more than before. It almost seemed unfair, since he could look over the top of her head naturally. "Well, like...4-ish."

"Gil-" Thena crossed her arms at him.

"Thena, really, it's okay," he attempted to minimise what he was doing, again. "It's just for the next week and a half or so. Then it's pretty smooth sailing until everyone comes back for the next season."

Thena continued to scowl, and not just at how her fellow competitors could somehow have the heart to leave their horses at the club for two whole weeks. She sighed.

"I slept pretty well, actually," Gil tried to laugh it off as he started crouching down to collect the loose hay. "I can-"

Thena all but elbowed him out of the way to grab a handful for herself. He just stared at her, stunned, but she glared right back, daring him to tell her not to. "It will go quickly with the both of us."

She walked decisively towards the pens with her meager armful of hay. It was a drop in the bucket, she was aware. Olympia followed behind her, although once actually in her pen she turned around, making it clear she wouldn't be assisting further.

"Thena," Gil attempted to reason with her as she passed him, moving an armful at a time while he had some heavier buckets of feed with him to leave outside of each pen. "You don't have to-"

"And you shouldn't have to do all of this yourself, but here we are."

Maybe he had no defense to that, but he continued on in his work as she continued with hers, no matter how inefficiently. As much as she would like to, she wasn't delusional enough to think that she had the physical strength to move the hay bales. But it only made her more adamant on doing whatever she could to help him.

"You are not staying here until all hours of the morning--or waking up at dawn," she huffed at him in passing, making her third lap. "You shouldn't even have to stay here when the club is in its off season."

"Well, that's kind of the whole room and board deal," he shrugged, watching her huff and puff past him again and again. "They provide the room and I board."

She rolled her eyes as she dumped the last of the loose hay that had been serving as their daybed at Olympia's feet. The mare then had the audacity to flop down again, as if so exhausted from all the work of watching them.

"Come to mine."

"Huh?" Gil looked up in the middle of grabbing the hose.

She had blurted it right out, and perhaps a bit impulsively at that. She and Gil had gotten to know each other better but she wouldn't say that they were familiar enough for him to come over to her home. But she had stuck out the invitation like it was nothing. She cleared her throat, determined to follow through. "At least for tonight, you can have a meal that's not made in the guest suite kitchen. And I come to see Olympia everyday even in the off season anyway."

Gil was quiet, and the idea that he would reject her invitation, even if just to be polite, actually made her heart jump around in her chest. He had put down the hose. "There's a lot to get through, tonight."

She didn't waver. "Then we should continue on."

Gil let her pass him again. "Can you cook?"

"No, but I'm on good terms with every delivery driver in the area."

Gil laughed, loudly enough to make Olympia shuffle around in curiosity. But he picked up his hose again and started spraying down the pen doors. "Well, if we get outta here too late, I'm pretty good at whipping up even the barest of ingredients."

Of course he was a great cook of human food, too, Thena lamented. She crouched, dragging a bag of dry food mix into her arms. Between these and the hay, at least she could somewhat lift these. Although, by the time she got even one carried over from the open barn to the pen hallway, Gil already had two hefted up on his shoulder. She swiped at some sweat on her brow.

"Show off."

[egophiliac]

The funniest part of this new event is the fact I can't find out what's going on it from spoilers. All context is lost in the wave of Hot Eel Mom. I love her, all hail Georgina, mother of This and That, but where is the context? What *is* the event?

to be fair, we're still in the intro part, so not much has actually happened yet! Jade and Floyd were supposed to go to their mom's friend's wedding to help with the ancient merfolk marriage custom of

❤️❤️❤️~the Test of Love~❤️❤️❤️

but Floyd last-minute changed his mind (on account of being Floyd) and Azul was like "I'm not going if your mom is going to be there". at which point Jade realized he'd just been handed a golden opportunity to invite the absolute funniest group of people he could think of.

anyway tl;dr Jade manipulates a bunch of nerds into joining him to heckle/throw bricks at/try to drown a couple of randos in the name of love, what could possibly go wrong

[kelpermoosee]

My friend labeled this “toxic aromantic yaoi” and I couldn’t agree more

[technically-human]

The case of the lighthouse leapers

That's right, more Niko angst, but most importantly, more Niko and Charles bonding! This is the beginning of the improvement for their relationship, finally.

This was, of course, a commission for @i-am-as-normal-as-you-are

[wildstar25]

MiqoMarch Day 20 - Memory

Rare is it to see you so shaken. I can only imagine what thoughts must be consuming you at this moment, my love.

[danwhobrowses]

Goodness this is like the third episode in a row begetting discourse among the cr fandom. For me this discourse has two perspectives where the division depends on whose perspective you're looking at;

For the armies it was 'We've been sent by the gods and are here to help you stop Predathos as we pla-wait, you're a vessel of Predathos? Isn't that just like Ludinus planned??' which yeah is valid from their perspective

For the Hells it was 'We just came out of 4 back-to-back battles with Ludinus and Predathos itself, we have a solution to save the gods but change the dynamic but we want to discuss it privately with the gods first and now you're trying to kill us!?' which is also valid

What puts me more on BH's side is that we have the context; BH are allowed to be terse when people try to kill them and fail, least of all allies who don't ask for an explanation before asking their god to come down and smite them. They're not villains because they snarked at the person who attempted to sic their god on them, and it's not as if Imogen sic'd Predathos on them in retaliation. Once again they are met with the thankless job and burden that they neither wanted or asked for, but was thrust upon them anyway. With all the times Bells Hells have been criticized for being aimless and indecisive it seems a little strange to criticize them now for being focused and decisive.

Could they have explained from the start? Maybe. Would it have caused a different reaction the moment they said Predathos is in Imogen? Probably not. I can't tell you why they didn't come out of the Cage and immediately explain because I'm not the players; perhaps they wanted to avoid the hysteria and conflict, perhaps they were drained from the fight and wanted to wrap up the episode, or perhaps it was just down to Bell's Hells, as with all CR campaign parties, being infamously bad at communicating, I don't know.

But it's times like these where it's worth reminding that this is a DnD show, nerdy-ass voice actors having fun, it can't always be clean and clear-cut storytelling every second. And sometimes as a fandom we need to take a step back so we don't get ourselves stuck, because we're probably making it deeper than it is and getting annoyed at each other over our interpretation of two groups from the same side getting annoyed at each other. Just, take a breath.

[im-kinno-hello]

and if i made a comic about them making a blog for the weird demon dog they found in the woods just because they are being brainwashed by it and it told them they need to spread the word of what word they don’t even fucking know?

[chessb0r3d]

i cracked the code.

[somegrumpynerd]

Remaining kitties for the garden

Here are all the kitties who didn't make it to the website and their pet screens c:

^The regular kitties (The nothing option would make Error show up and just kinda glare at everybody lol and there would be mirror and paper bag options to see Dust and Horror again)

^The winter kitties (The snow option would bring out Blue and Dream, the christmas lights brought Fresh and the stocking was Ink)

^The special pairs (I don't think any of these made it to the polls lol but putting out a bed would bring Horror and Dust together, putting out a rainbow cushion would bring Color and Killer (this was how you would finally be able to pet him) and putting down comic books would bring Epic and Cross, who would finally purr when pet with his bestie)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS Disco Elysium AU part 2 - Psyche Skills

Part 1 - Part 3

[anghraine]

It's honestly kind of funny to me that catapulting into Kirk/Spock shipping has launched my usual "meh, not into jealousy as a metric of romantic love" shipping tendency out the window and instead I'm genuinely charmed by the extent to which they reflect the same unhealthy seething jealousy.

This is most obvious with Spock, but you'll get McCoy joking about Spock falling in love with a computer (not an android, a stationary computer) and McCoy being A Normal Guy Joking About His Friend Having a Hobby is immediately contrasted with Kirk's barely repressed jealousy (you can all but see him thinking "time to talk another computer to death" while McCoy just laughs at his own joke about it). Kirk gets more and more generally insecure until Spock publicly declares that, while he does like an efficient computer, Kirk is irreplaceable and he doesn't want to serve anyone or anything else, and Kirk looks like he's about to kiss him on the bridge.

(Kirk still talks the computer to death, btw, for plot reasons. But big "Edith Keeler must die" energy.)

I also enjoy Kirk's horror/outrage at Leila Kalomi and her obvious gloating over "taking" Spock from him in the docility sex pollen episode and Kirk's willingness to do or say anything to get Spock back vs Spock bleeding intensity throughout "Requiem for Methuselah" as Kirk falls in love with Rayna, then Spock numbly listening to McCoy's speech about how he can never understand the glories or agonies of romantic love triangles or passionate love before waiting for him to leave and then wiping Rayna from Kirk's mind. Just two bros who are totally normal about each other!

[tears-of-xion]

One of my favorite Hellradio scenarios is Lilith coming back from her sabbatical fully prepared to make reparations for her time away and repair her relationship with Charlie and reignite her marriage to Lucifer, only to find out that Alastor and Lucifer have started dating.

And rather than getting angry or attempting to break them up, she just summons a second bouquet of flowers and goes '😔I guess I'm also wooing the Radio Demon now! 🥰'

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

hello hello!! your fic pez dispenser debris brings me immense joy. and i wanna know if the other nejire and tamaki will be showing up. id love to see their reactions to fucking #leku. and i’d love to hear your thoughts on them in general if you have any to spare. the big three have such a fun dynamic to me.

Tamaki will appear. I’m not fully settled on Nejire. In my mind, she moved to Kyoto not long after she graduated but keeps in very close touch (if you read the battle of Yokohama posts, she was there during that fight because she was visiting Her Boys and insisted on a Big Three Sleep Over, which is why the three of them were together when Izuku called to begin with). They have a group chat that she started blowing up when the Leku news hit. All of them are painfully, violently aware of the fact Mirio is absolutely not dating Izuku and also of the fact that Mirio’s probably close to drowning himself at the mere thought.

I do really like the idea of the Big Three having been sort of outcasts before they were the big three, and I think canon supports this reading. They were all sort of the weird kids. They were each other’s only friends. After they started rising in the ranks, they became more popular, but they all consider the others their main people.

I also like the idea that they became the Big Three because of each other.

They were friends before they were the big three. And it’s not a coincidence that the big three were all already friends. They pushed each other to grow in their skills and surpass everyone else.

The reason why they haven’t been more present in pez is actually the same reason why I didn’t have them open a hero agency together: they all need to grow separately from the others for a bit.

Like. Here’s Mirio, with two very skilled and experienced heroes at his side, waiting for Izuku to graduate so he can start his agency. Why not go into business with the friends he’s already been fighting with for years?

I see the Big Three as people who all, for one reason or another, decided that they needed to learn how to be strong on their own at the start of their career.

Take Tamaki. He’s childhood friends with Mirio. He was briefly referenced in one of the tumblr posts as one of Mirio’s staunchest advocates after he lost his Quirk. So why isn’t he heroes with Mirio?

Well, he sort of is. He’s got a mutual support agreement with him.

Time to derail into my favorite topic: the economic models underpinning fictional societies. As you can probably guess I’m great at parties.

Mutual support agreements are contractual devices that I came up with in response to the convoluted economic structure of heroics compensation I discussed a few posts ago. In that post, I discussed independent/underground v. agency models with respect to public compensation and how I think that there’s an impossibly complicated matrix that grants heroes portions of the local budget based on their statistics. Briefly, I discussed how that calculation would cause conflict with big name heroes taking credit for their sidekicks’ work because agencies would necessarily need to be counted as one entity for the purposes of public funding.

What happens when multiple agencies are involved in the same incident?

As a reminder, the reason why they need to assign credit for a bust to one individual is because agencies are funded as a whole. This is a grant system that’s meant to be more than just about paying a salary—the government is providing funds meant to go towards an office space, supplies, everything. You could not give everyone in an agency public funding separate checks under that model. Public funding is made out to the agency as a whole and it’s up to the agency as to how to use it. But if you have six people from the same agency who all register the exact same take down because they all participated—well now you’ve got the one job reported six times over for the same filing entity. That’s going to horrifically skew the funding calculation. The government’s paying for the same bust six times over and you just incentivized hero agencies to send their people all to do the same job because it pays the same to have six guys stop one criminal as it does to have six guys stop six different criminals separately.

But hey—sometimes it’s a six guy job. That would more appropriately be considered an enhancement to a job’s relative difficulty than it would be to giving credit for a takedown. After all, the same job could require “six guys” or “one All Might.” If you focus on the number of heroes an agency uses in a job than you do on how difficult that job actually is, then you’re inadvertently penalizing better heroes because Mid Tier Agency needed six guys to handle what you did on your own, but since they needed six whole guys they get paid more for the same thing that you could do solo.

But the reason for this one man credit structure is because you’re getting one check for the government per agency. But what about when heroes from different agencies team up? Big Hero is not sharing a government funding check with Even Bigger Hero, and there’s absolutely no way that every single team up is just fucking pro bono for everyone but one guy. That’d make it impossible. So the same job would have to get counted multiple times when it involved different heroic entities.

The fact that you were teamed up instead of solo would go into the relative value calculation of each independent job. You get the full pot if you’re solo, but if you’re sharing the load, you’re sharing the credit. But at the same time, how much credit you get would also have to be determined on a case by case basis. Like. A hero that evacuated three civilians contributed to a fight, but they in no way should get equal credit and compensation to All Might, who fought the entire villain team solo.

So say Big Hero Agency and Bigger Hero Agency are doing a team up for the good of Japan. Big Hero Agency initiated the investigation, did most of the legwork, and invited Bigger Hero Agency onto the job. However, when it came to actually fighting, Bigger Hero Agency absolutely carried the day. Big Hero Agency would have been dust if Bigger Hero Agency hadn’t been there.

Who deserves more credit and compensation?

There is probably some kind of governmental dispute/appeal board to settle disputes about compensation, but like. As someone who does government work. The government’s absolute favorite thing to say is “we are not babysitting you, fucking figure it out like big boys.” They’ll have a way to resolve disputes, but they will also heavily incentivize voluntary agreement amongst the parties.

Planned team ups probably have legal working shit out ahead of time. Spontaneous team ups or heroes stealing each other’s fights a la Mount Lady and Kamui Woods in the pilot are probably the biggest headaches.

But what about heroes that are always teaming up? They’re your go to. Your homeboy. The daredevil to your Spider-Man. You don’t file your paperwork together, but you’re still always fighting side by side. Are you renegotiating who gets credit for what in every single little fight?

Fuck no. That’s a huge pain in the ass. Enter the mutual support agreement. It’s a contract that has a bunch of clauses meant to help streamline deciding who gets credit for what and resolve disputes before they happen.

You wouldn’t just want this for compensation purposes. Say Big Hero commits the hero equivalent of police brutality. Now he’s being sued. He’s apparently not that big of a hero as the name implies, because he’s got no fucking money. You want more money for your client, so you need a deeper pocket to pull from. At the time of the incident, he was working with Bigger Hero Agency. They’re not the same agency, but it was Bigger Heroes bust, and they work together all the time. Big Hero is basically one of Bigger Heroes employees hidden behind a different corporate structure. Should Bigger Hero be liable for Big Hero?

That’s a big fucking court case that can be headed off at the pass by the fact that Bigger Hero put indemnification and liability clauses in its mutual support agreement. There’s a lot of issues that would arise from the practice of heroics that you’d want to govern ahead of time with a contract. So you sign a mutual support agreement.

But the silly little fake tumblr post also said they weren’t popular and mostly agencies like Idaten used them. So why is that?

Frankly, because it’s not very worth agencies while to team up with other agencies on the regular. The system doesn’t incentivize it.

If you have all of your own sidekicks on a job, you can steal credit from them. The same is not true for heroes from other agencies. You get more public funding if you staff a job with all people from your agency instead of having part of the credit go to other agencies. And you get to stand in front of the cameras and say “Big Hero Has Saved The City Again” instead of having to say “Thank You To Our Dear Friends From Bigger Hero Agency Who Carried This Team.”

Idaten is the exception because, well. It doesn’t care. Idaten’s priority is cultivating the necessary talent and teamwork needed to get the job done. It doesn’t care if it has to go outside of the agency for that. Fuck, Tensei’s canonically willing to reach out to vigilantes. Its genuine focus is saving people, so it goes against the grain of what the system incentivizes.

Mirio and Tamaki have a mutual support agreement. They’re out working together so much that Fat Gum’s agency approved an overall disliked mechanism to facilitate their team ups. They are heroes together—so why aren’t they in an agency together?

I think Tamaki wanted to spend his first year in heroics forcing himself out of his comfort zone so he’d improve. Fat Gum will force him in front of the cameras. He’s focusing on learning how to communicate effectively with the public and with the media, and Fat Gum has the sort of resources and infrastructure where Tamaki can devote the time to learning that and improving. If he was in an agency with Mirio, he’d use Mirio as a crutch to hide from something he genuinely wants to improve in. Fat Gum forces him to grow.

Mirio himself sort of had to go independent. For one, he and Izuku decided to start their agency not too long after Mirio got his license. It was before Mirio debuted. Izuku had just finished his first year. No one knew who either of them were, and they had no clue just how famous they’d both become before Izuku graduated.

They both figured they’d be a couple of nobody heroes with a dinky little agency right out the gate of Izuku’s graduation and were sort of genuinely excited at the prospect. They’d just be heroes together, which is all they wanted. They’d figured no one would give a shit about them until well after they started their agency and started working and that Izuku would have 0 offers to work elsewhere because he wasn’t even going to apply to agencies. So Mirio decided he’d stay independent until Izuku graduated so he wouldn’t be tied up in an agency contracts and they could just start fresh.

The other reason is that most agencies wouldn’t touch Mirio with a ten foot pole because he was Quirkless, and even with the ones that would, he suspected they’d sideline or coddle him because he was Quirkless. Being independent meant he could do whatever the hell he pleased. So he bought the Mirio Mom Van and, for a brief, glorious moment, convinced All Might to supervise their bullshit so he could start going on jobs with Izuku (students have to be supervised by heroes with a teaching license, which he wouldn’t be eligible for for the first three years of his career, except in exigent circumstances. He couldn’t have Izuku as an intern himself but All Might sure could). For a few beautiful weeks it was just Mirio, Izuku, and fucking All Might in the Mirio Mom Van going on stakeouts, all wearing the world’s stupidest mustaches. The UA internship program revoked permission for this arrangement not long after it started formally out of concerns for the legality of this arrangement since All Might was no longer an active duty hero, informally because All Might, Izuku, and Mirio is the stupidest and most reckless combination fucking imaginable and they are killing Aizawa from the stress they are killing him. So now Mirio works alone while he waits for Izuku to be fully licensed.

Nejire I kind of see as someone who moved away from her hometown right out of the gate of graduation but visited home very frequently, which is why she moved to Kyoto after graduation but was having a fucking sleepover at Mirio’s place when Yokohama happened. She takes the bullet train back at least once a month and spends the weekend bumming on Mirio or Tamaki’s couch. I think she wanted to see who she was away from home and there’d never be a better time to do it. I also think she’ll move back so that way she can work more fully with Her Boys one day, but wanted to push herself out of the familiar first.

All of the trio’s reasons for not working together quite yet are mutable, to be clear. Tamaki just wanted the experience early in his career or he knew he’d never learn the public relation skills he wanted to get. Nejire also just wanted the experience somewhere else before she put down real roots somewhere and is liable to move back to be with her friends and family. And Mirio’s on the verge of opening his own agency, so he doesn’t have to worry about getting sidelined by his boss anymore or getting tied up in a bad contract.

[bruhstation]

who here loves divorce? I do. here's captain star and captain zero: two people who can't help but drag other unwilling people into their huge mess! including the youth. can't forget the youth

(bit of ramble in the tags)

[dragzo]

oh Red Son no-

[thewolvesof1998]

Has someone talked about how Buck’s wearing a lot more over sized clothing lately? I bet you they’re hiding a pregnancy, that’s how we find out buddie’s gone canon, it’s time for Buck to baby trap Eddie back.