#because this version makes it more obvious he bleaches his hair instead of being a natural blond lol

[gymleadercheren]

i am still chipping away at SOSFOMT, waiting for fogu to complete the SOSAWL guide because i need all the secrets but have fun marrying rock for the nth time

I feel ya, I feel so naked going into this game without the help of my beloved fogu……… but I’m scraping by just fine lol.

he’s so stupid… (clenches fist)

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Seklos and Gaylen, They Were Cagemates! Chapter 5: Cagemates

Plans are made by the boys' families. Kubritz offers a deal.

After four chapters, the boys are finally cagemates!

So, during the longer-than-planned hiatus, a movie was released. Don't worry, not only do I refuse to watch said movie, the exact events of RotT cannot happen in this universe because of things that happen in my outline for the AU.

Content/Spoiler warning: Grieving, loss of child, and suicidal ideation

AO3

FFN

The first thing Merlin had done when he felt his magic return to him was cast his senses outward to look for Hisirdoux.

Well, no, not exactly. The first thing he had done was groan in pain as his many injuries began to heal themselves. Morgana had already brought him to the brink of death twice, only healing him enough so that he would live, and she could continue to torture him. But, after groaning in pain, Merlin had cast out his senses to find his son.

There was no trace of Hisirdoux anywhere. Archie had been a clear signal, as was the Trollhunter. Nari, as distant as she was, had been a powerful beacon.

Hisirdoux’s magic was nowhere in this world. There was only one explanation for this: Merlin’s son was dead. And so, for the first time in many centuries (even whilst ignoring the ones between Killahead and now), Merlin Wylt allowed himself to cry. He did not allow himself to cry for long, of course. He couldn’t let his grief consume him. There was work to be done. An Eternal Night to reverse, a familiar to collect, a sword to repair, and a Heartstone to find.

Merlin had done two of those things, and he had tried to convince Archie to come with him. Merlin owed it to Hisirdoux to at least try to protect his familiar. But, as usual, Archie was too proud to listen to reason. He always thought he knew best on matters concerning Hisirdoux. And, in some ways, Archie had known better since he had known Hisirdoux for longer, but he was clearly in denial of the obvious.

That was a day ago. Now he was in the process of doing the fourth of those things. Merlin had to deal with a tribe of irritable trolls, all crammed into a too-small cave. The sun wouldn’t set for another hour.

Merlin felt a wave of energy pass through him.

It was like an agonized cry of distress coming from his son. It was short, and it was brief, but Merlin could feel Hisirdoux’s fear.

For the briefest of moments, Merlin almost hoped that maybe Hisirdoux was alive. Alive, scared, and in pain. Perhaps hoping that his master would come to save him, as selfish as Merlin knew the thought was.

But no. Hisirdoux was dead. This was merely an echo of his last dying moments, and Merlin must have been close enough to feel it. He wasn’t sure why Hisirdoux had died so far from Arcadia Oaks. Even if in life Hisirdoux hadn’t been the best at following instructions, that one was simple enough that he should’ve been able to follow it easily. Besides, there was no reason for Hisirdoux to abandon Archie like that. Could it have been Morgana? He had foreseen her trying to kill Hisirdoux, and clearly Merlin’s visions had been wrong since the formerly human Trollhunter was even younger than Hisirdoux should be now. But no. Morgana wouldn’t have killed Hisirdoux so far away. She would have dragged Hisirdoux to where Merlin lay gasping for breath and tortured and killed Hisirdoux in front of Merlin.

And to think she had once cared about the boy, or at least, seemed to have cared about him. Merlin wasn’t sure if he would ever know how early her betrayal started.

Merlin would never know how Hisirdoux had died, not unless he stumbled upon what was left of his son’s body. And call Merlin selfish, but he didn’t want to see it. Seeing his son’s corpse would only be useful if Merlin was planning on reanimating it. Bringing his son back was an act of dark magic, and Merlin would not partake in it no matter how desperately he wanted his son to be alive.

Merlin knew how the Trollhunter and his allies saw Merlin. A washed-up, bitter old man who had failed to do nearly anything useful. And Merlin had failed. He had failed his last two apprentices. He had failed to stop Morgana from going down her dark path, whether by guiding her better or just by annihilating the threat no matter what cost it would bring down, Merlin killing the king’s sister.

And he had failed Hisirdoux. For a millennium and a half, Merlin had not taken in another apprentice because he had always planned on returning to his apprentice. Tradition dictated that Merlin only take on a new apprentice should Hisirdoux die, become a master wizard, or should Merlin decide that Hisirdoux was too much of a nuisance to keep around and break the apprenticeship. No matter how frustrating Hisirdoux was sometimes, whether it was disturbing Merlin with his lute or trying to get out of doing his chores by wrestling with a broom, Merlin never would have abandoned Hisirdoux. He was far too attached to his son to do that, and so he had not taken an apprentice during the absence.

Perhaps it was time to change that. There was, after all, an orphan wizard nearby. One who had learned the hard way why a staff was only something a master wizard could safely wield. First off, though, he would need to see if she had any skill beside shadowmancy.

“Fair lady Claire,” Merlin said, approaching her. He kept his voice steady and even, betraying nothing of his grief. “Levitate that rock for me?”

She flinched.

“Sorry, Aja,” Stuart said. “He wasn’t anywhere in Arcadia. Or at least, I couldn’t find him.”

“It’s… it’s not your fault. Zadra and Steve couldn’t find Krel either,” Aja said. It had been a long day of searching for everyone gathered around the dining table of the Mothership. Stuart, Zadra, and Steve had scoured the town and woods for Krel, while Aja and the Blanks had been more successful in their search for the core scanner. Even the success felt weak, though. Between the crash and Krel’s sense of organization, it had taken her all day to find it. It hadn’t helped that three horvaths into searching, she had found herself wanting to walk up to Krel and lecture him on how just because he was smart it didn’t mean his organization patterns were the best ones to follow since only he could find things, but then she’d remembered he was missing and burst into tears. She probably wouldn’t give him the lecture when they found him, not until she had to look for something else he’d hidden away in a place that was only obvious to him.

“But we will find him,” Aja continued. “We have to.”

Aja didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if she didn’t find her brother. She placed the core scanner on the table. “Stuart, do you know how to make a second one of these? We only have one, but if we had more we could split up and look for Krel. Krel and Varvatos.”

“I can try,” Stuart said, “But I get the feeling that I won’t have all the parts. At best I can make a version with a very, very short range.”

“You still want to find the traitor?” Zadra asked.

“Our first priority is finding Krel, but if we find Varvatos in the process we’re not going to leave him to suffer,” Aja said. “We’ll bring him home to the Mothership. He sacrificed himself to save my parents, and I won’t let that sacrifice be in vain.”

Besides, depending on how badly hurt Varvatos was, he might be able to help search for Krel.

For all she knew, Varvatos had already found Krel and was trying to take care of him, especially if Krel had been knocked unconscious and Varvatos no idea where the Mothership was. That happened to Krel a lot, so surely it wasn’t too unreasonable to hope for.

Right?

Krel slowly began to wake up, and he realized he was laying on his side. That didn’t make sense. In his cage, it was impossible for him to lay on his side; he had to remain sitting up. He almost began to hope the past several delsons were all just some awful dream, but he was in so much pain from the cuts and the beating he had endured.

Krel opened his eyes.

He had been transferred to a larger cage, one where he could lay down. He tried to push himself onto all four of his hands and knees and gasped as moving brought more pain to him from every place the batons had struck him. He pushed himself up onto his lower pair of arms instead and saw Douxie laying barely a foot away from him in the same cage. White hair hung in front of his closed eyes. Krel frowned; Douxie’s hair had been darker before. Was that a normal thing that happened when he used his magic? Krel couldn’t be sure, but if it was then capturing Douxie and any other wizard must have been easy if there was unexplained glowing and hair lightening. Humans didn’t glow.

Douxie looked almost peaceful in his sleep, enough so that a small part of Krel was loathe to wake him up. That small part was very easy to ignore. Krel began to nudge at Douxie with one of his upper arms. Douxie groaned out something about arches.

“Please, please wake up.” Krel shoved a little more forcefully. Douxie had sounded hurt back when he had used his magic. Maybe that was normal. Maybe being a wizard was a constant sacrifice, which sounded extremely inefficient.

“What do you want?” Douxie hissed even though his throat hurt. Why were they even in the same cage, for that matter? Douxie wouldn’t have minded if it weren’t for the shoving.

“Oh, good, you’re okay.” Douxie opened an eye to find Krel looking concerned, except something white was blocking most of Douxie’s field of vision. Douxie opened his other eye and focused on the white strand of –

No.

No.

Oh, fuzzbuckets, no!

As the memories of what he had done flooded back to him, Douxie sat up straight and away from Krel’s hands. His head was swimming and he felt sick as he pinched his bangs between his fingers as he glared at the stark contrast.

His hair was white.

Of course it was white. There was a reason why wizards who chose to dye their hair did not let it go bleached for very long, according to Zoe. Dark magic attacked life forces, and that attack could make dyed hair into something eternally white. Of course, this was only if the wizard using dark magic survived.

Douxie hadn’t planned on surviving. He’d planned for himself and Krel to escape, with Douxie’s escape to be death and Krel’s escape to outside of the base.

A woman in green walked towards the cage, hands on her hips. As Krel tensed, Douxie realized she was the same one who had tased Krel. She stopped in front of the cage and gazed at the boys smugly.

“I don’t think we’ve ever been properly introduced,” she said. “I’m Colonel Kubritz, and I’m going to give you two a deal.”

“Oh, really? And what do we have to give you to let us go?” Krel asked. He didn’t trust this colonel at all, but it was worth asking.

She chuckled. “Oh, no, both of you will be spending the rest of your lives in captivity. I just have a way for you two to extend those lives: if one of you resists experimentation or an order, the other will be punished.” She turned around and began to walk away before casting a glance over her shoulder. “Oh, and keep the conversation quiet, or there will be consequences.”

“Resist as much as you can,” Douxie said in a low voice as soon as she exited the room. Krel looked towards him and saw him staring at the ground. “Don’t pay what happens to me any mind.”

“What? Didn’t you hear her say that you’ll get punished if I resist?” Krel suspected that they’d get punished anyways, but any minimization was a good thing.

“Even if I somehow get out of here, I won’t have anywhere to go. I’ve used dark magic, and it’ll be obvious to everyone.”

“Dark magic?”

“It’s dangerous, and it feeds on life forces, and only evil people use it. Evil, or desperate, like I was desperate to save you. You’re welcome, by the way. But they won’t see it as desperation.”

“Thank you,” Krel said. You don’t seem evil to me, he didn’t say. An evil person wouldn’t have saved Krel, except what did that make Varvatos? Varvatos had saved Krel over and over again, despite the danger it had posed to Varvatos. Despite the way that Varvatos betrayed the Tarrons and had led to Krel and his family being hurt over and over again.

“My familiar, my master, and my,” Douxie cut himself off, shaking his head and biting his lip. “The coven I’ve been taken in by will all outcast me at best. They might just outright kill me for being dangerous. You, though, I’m sure you have something left to live for. If you resist, you might live longer than if you don’t.”

Krel stared at Douxie for a long moment, noting the defeat in his posture. “No.”

Douxie looked at Krel. There were tears forming in his eyes. Krel found the strange urge to hug his companion, but no. The two of them were getting unwanted touches from everyone else, so why should Krel do the same to Douxie? Granted, he had already shoved Douxie, but he would be better from now on.

“No, I’m not going to let you die here,” Krel continued. “Even if everyone else casts you out, you can stay with me. My sister will come for me, and when she does, I’m going to make sure that both of us escape with her.”

Author's note: Now that Claire has officially been made more important to this fic than she was in 3Below season 2 what no I'm definitely not still salty that freakin' Kanjigar got a cameo while Claire only got mentioned in the last five minutes she probably won't show up again (though she may get mentioned).

[wickedmilo]

THE BETTER HAWKEYE | MILO & ORION

PLACE: Outside the University of Maine TIMING: 12:39 AM SUMMARY: Milo runs into Orion and, after not seeing each other in over a month, the two manage to reconnect. WRITING PARTNER: @3starsquinn CONTENT WARNINGS: Addiction, alcohol, drug abuse

Milo had always been the type to wander at night, but usually he had a goal in mind. There was always a dealer to meet, a club to go to, a stranger he could go home with. Now, he wandered the streets because he could. Because during the day he was confined to the house, itching to do something, for the sense of freedom he used to have. Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly melancholy, he walked past Tower Comics, thinking about the excuses he was going to give his boss when he was ready to return to work. And now he was outside his old college building, staring up at the structure, remembering what it felt like to walk through the doorway, and into a class. Usually late, usually smelling of pot, always with a coffee in his hands. Sparking up a cigarette, he leaned against the brick wall behind him, observing the college from across the quiet street. There was nobody around at this time, despite all of the lights being on. And it was weirdly comforting to reminisce.  

It didn’t take very long for him to be drawn from his memories, though, as a familiar figure began to make his way down the entryway steps. Orion, he would recognise him anywhere. They had attended school together, though Orion had been far too shy to make his acquaintance back then. It was only after getting a job at the comic book store that they really began to get to know each other. His colleagues used to tease him endlessly about the boy’s very obvious crush. But as far as he was concerned, it was pretty harmless. Orion had never once made a move, and he didn’t exactly seem the type. He missed their conversations, he missed the routine of work. Although he had never been one to keep to a schedule, having somewhere to hang out and talk to people away from the nightlife of the town had been nice. He enjoyed it. Pushing away from the wall, it was probably a bad idea, but he couldn’t stop himself from crossing the road. He was feeling relatively mellow. With a handful of pills in his system, freshly fed thanks to Harsh and his generous supply of blood bags, he was in control. He wasn’t a danger. “Hey!” He called, exhaling a breath of smoke. “You do know they don’t give you extra credit for studying in the middle of the night?”  

Some time out of the house would do Orion some good. Following his most recent meltdown, he stayed at the campus library until the sun had fallen. The place was popular for all nighters with college students. He had done his own on multiple occasions, or at the very least used it as an excuse when he was trying to avoid his family. When he finally left the building it was with books tucked beneath his arm and the smell of rain in the air. Incoming rain it smelled like. That, and cigarette smoke. But aside from that, Rio didn’t tell there was another person around at all until the voice called out and scared the crap out of him. He jumped, one of the books slipping through his arm and falling to the ground. “Jesus. Sorry. Hey.” Rio breathed, bending down to grab the book and not even bothering to check who the person was saying hi to him. His cheeks flushed when he finally turned and saw Milo. “Oh. Woah. Hey! It’s been awhile.” Milo had been a familiar and friendly face at the comic book shop. One that Rio remembered fondly from high school even though the two never spoke. He also remembered how flustered he had always been trying to have a conversation with the boy at the comic book shop post graduation. He could remember just how awkward those first few discussions had been until Rio started to get a bit too passionate about the history of comic books. The only thing that could overcome his bad habit of crushing on any guy that was nice to him was how much he loved nerding out over things. 

Luckily for both of them, Rio was a bit less flustered around boys than he used to be. “Ha ha. Very funny. I focus better at night.” Rio shrugged as an explanation. It wasn’t technically a lie, although on this particular night he was just using it as an excuse so he didn’t have to go home. “I haven’t seen you at Towers recently. Do you still work there?” 

Milo felt a wave of guilt when Orion dropped one of his books. He had forgotten how easily flustered he could be. Before he was able to reach down and pick it up, Orion had it securely back under his arm, so he offered him a sheepish grin instead. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he admitted, his version of an apology. He watched, incredibly amused, as his company realised who he was talking to. Taking a drag from his cigarette, he blew the smoke away from where they were standing. “Yeah, I guess it kind of has.” It made him sad sometimes, to remember the simplicity of before. His life had always been turbulent, and unpredictable. But through his own choice. He had still been in control. Tower Comics had been a brief escape from the never ending cycle of getting high, and coming down. He showed up, he stood behind the counter, he sold comics. It was too easy. A quiet laugh escaping him at the mention of being able to focus at night, it felt too relatable given his current circumstance. “Things got a little… weird, for a while.” Like that wasn’t a ridiculous understatement, but he wasn’t sure what else he could say.  

“I, uh- I don’t actually know.” Did he still work there? It had been over a month since he last showed up for a shift, but his boss had always managed to tolerate his bullshit. Missing shifts wasn’t unusual for him. Neither was arriving late for them, sometimes he even left early, slinking away when nobody was around to stop him. He had a feeling if he walked in with an apology and an explanation, he would be able to keep his job. “It’s been like... a month, which is probably not great. But they’ll let me back. I mean- I hope they’ll let me back. Why?” He asked. “Are you still stopping by? Have you been missing me?” He was teasing, but just barely. He genuinely missed Orion, and he liked to think the enjoyment of their conversations had been mutual.  

“It’s fine. I’m notoriously jumpy” Orion admitted with a small laugh. He would have thought that with all the training that he had been doing recently that he might get a bit less anxious. As it turned out, getting rid of that instinct wasn’t going to be easy. As if he needed any other reason to loathe his deceased parents. Now that he had composed himself, he got the chance to study Milo. Rio couldn’t remember how long it had been since the two had talked in the comic book shop, but he knew that it had been awhile. Something about him seemed… different. Physically, he didn’t appear to look very different than he had at Towers, but something was definitely different. Just as Rio was a lot different despite the relatively small change to him physically. Rio’s bleached blonde hair was gone, but he was still stick thin. His baggy hoodie also hid any new muscle definition his training had afforded. “Weird?” Rio questioned. He had an entire list of theories of what Milo might mean by that. This town had no shortage of weird things. But maybe against all odds, Milo’s troubles were completely mundane and non supernatural. “Sorry to hear that. Are things uh- getting better?” 

“Fingers crossed for you. The guy that owns the place seems pretty nice, right?” He had no idea what may contribute to disappearing from work for a month, but he didn’t exactly know Milo that well. The two had been friendly enough at the comic book store, but the friendship hadn’t exactly extended outside of there. “Well I don’t get to rant about comics with anyone else in the store, so yeah for sure. I missed having you to chat to.” Though Rio didn’t go there as much anymore, he had stopped there a few times over the last month or so. Admittedly, Rio had been going there less and less for far longer than a month. While dating Winston, the two stayed busy working at the Scribrary or hanging out with their friends. After Winston left town, Rio had thrown himself into his work. “I drop in when I can! I’ve been busy lately, so I haven’t been able to go as much. But if I knew you were going back I’d definitely try to swing by more often.” He cringed at his own statement. “What have you been up to? Outside of Towers, I mean.” 

Milo continued to smile, feeling a strange sense of affection for his friend. Seeing him outside of the comic book store was a rare occurrence, but it was comforting to know while his life had become so new, and disorientating, it had carried on as usual for other people. The world was still spinning, Orion was still buying comics. Things were going to be okay. Shifting uncomfortably on the spot as Orion observed him, he couldn’t help but feel as though he was being read. In the same way his mom always knew when he was on something, or under the influence, before he had even said a word to her, maybe Orion could see somehow that he had changed. “Yeah,” he laughed, only a hint of bitterness lacing the sound. Taking another drag of his cigarette, he tapped ash absentmindedly. “Really fucking weird.” He admitted. “Don’t be sorry, though. S’not like it’s your fault.” He caught his company’s eye again, showing him his sentiment was sincere. “I mean- I think so?” It was hard to gauge, when everything was still so fresh. But now that Harsh was helping him, now that he had someone there, he didn’t feel so lost. The hopelessness that had been weighing down on him wasn’t quite as heavy as it used to be. “Yeah… yeah, they are.”  

His smile growing at the mention of his boss, he nodded, reaching up to push his hair back away from his face. “He’s pretty chill, I don’t think he’ll mind too much if I just, you know… say I’m sorry.” He knew taking responsibility wasn’t something he was good at, but hopefully his boss would be able to see he was serious this time. This absence wasn’t his fault. “Oh, yeah? Well I’m here now if you need to ramble. Immortal Hulk is still going, right? I don’t suppose you’re caught up?” Raising his eyebrows, he knew it would be unfair to openly tease Orion for his comment, but he couldn’t resist the flirtatious expression. What harm could it do? “So, what you’re saying is I’m the best thing about Tower?” He laughed easily, offering a casual shrug. What have you been up to outside of work shouldn’t be such a loaded question. But how was he supposed to answer? Oh, I died, found out the world I thought I lived in was very much not the world I was living in. Developed a mad craving for blood, hurt one of my closest friends when she randomly decided she wanted to kill me, then shacked up with another vampire who realised I had no idea what was going on… “I’ve, uh- I’ve been around.” He muttered, dropping his cigarette to the floor, grinding it beneath his shoe as an excuse to avoid eye contact. “You?”  

Orion’s brow furrowed as he considered his best course of action. There was still a chance that Milo’s definition of weird was vastly different from Rio’s. “Right. Yeah I know, it’s just- it still sucks. And I’m sorry that it sucks.” Rio rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. At the very least, Milo confirmed that things were getting better. That had to be a plus. If nothing else, there was something positive. He was tired of things only getting worse. He needed to know that things really did get better for some people in this town. “Well I know that we aren’t like uh- you know super close or whatever. But if you ever want to talk about the weird stuff, I’m a great listener.” He hoped that Milo could pick up on the differences between Rio then and Rio now. Back then Rio was far too flustered and infatuated to ever be able to sustain a genuine friendship. He wasn’t nearly as hopeless as he used to be when it came to making friends.  

“Oh! Yeah I think it’s still going. I started it, but I’m behind right now. The series is really interesting, even though I’ve never cared much for Hulk comics. Right now I’m following Strange Academy pretty closely. It has a lot of like, Young Avengers or X-Men school energy. And I’ve always been a sucker for the teen or young adult superhero groups! I’m hooked.” It was comforting to see how easily he was able to slip back into conversation with Milo. Rio groaned at Milo’s very pointed comment. “Well maybe I’m saying you were” Rio laughed, imagining how he would have reacted a year ago if Milo had made the same comment in the store, “Until you disappeared. Now it has to be like the gaming tournaments or something. And I don’t even participate.” With his incredibly vague response, Rio was all but convinced that something very supernatural had occurred in Milo’s life. Teetering the line between nosy and understanding, Rio kept his mouth shut. The two ran into each other out of luck, not exactly the ideal scenario for either to be spilling their secrets to each other. “Me? Well my friend moved out of town and left me in this giant house by myself. So I’ve basically been a hermit for the past two months. So my life is very, very boring.” 

Milo hadn’t been expecting such a genuine apology, it caught him off guard. It was very clear that, despite not being incredibly close, Orion cared about him, and it hit him that he cared about Orion in return. It was strange how easily somebody could become a fixture in your life, but it certainly wasn’t unwelcome. He felt his throat close, as he fought to suppress whatever emotion was attempting to overwhelm him. It would be embarrassing to explain why he was suddenly choked up. He refused to become the person who cried every time they were offered a shred of kindness. “Thank you…” He said, his voice quiet. He wondered whether it was obvious how touched he was by the sincerity. “That, uh- that means a lot.” Unable to stop a sudden laugh from escaping him, he shook his head, falling back into his usual demeanour. “No, honestly-  you don’t want to hear it. I’d only sound fucking insane, and I kind of brought it on myself, anyway...” Brushing off the comment, he jumped at the chance to talk about comic books. This was an easy subject, this was something he knew.  

“Hm, I’ve heard good things about Strange Academy. Do you know who’s doing the artwork? I know how fucking basic this is but I kind of miss seeing Skottie Young, his variants are always insane.” Grinning, his eyes shining with mischief, he couldn’t help feeling genuinely flattered by Orion’s admission. Not many people saw him as anything more than a waste of potential. It felt good to just be Milo, the kid in Tower Comics who enjoyed making conversation. “I knew it.” He teased. “I’m going to assume the past tense is because I’ve been gone for a month, and not because you’ve changed your mind.” Nodding at the mention of gaming tournaments, he tried to remember whether he had ever attended one. He wasn’t the type to be drawn into the world of comic cons, and gaming. He enjoyed comics because, as far as he was concerned, they were a form of literature. Any extension of that enjoyment never quite managed to capture his attention. “Well, I’d hate for you to settle. I’ll be back soon…” He knew it wasn’t a promise he could make, but he so wanted the statement to be true. “And then your very, very boring life will maybe be a little less boring again.”

Whether it was the scholar in Orion or the side of him that desperately wanted to be better friends with Milo, he absolutely did want to hear more about whatever had been happening in his life. But he also knew enough from his own experiences avoiding a topic that Milo didn’t want to dive into it right now. “Of course. And seriously, anytime. I may be easily panicked but I’m slightly less easily surprised.” That may not exactly be the truth, but when it came to the supernatural it was becoming more and more true. “No pressure or anything. The offer stands for whenever.”  

This definitely didn’t seem like the time though. Instead, Rio enjoyed the comic conversation instead. “Good question. I don’t actually. It looks familiar though I’m sure they’ve done other stuff. I’ll have to look it up.” Rio made a mental note to do some research on it in the morning. “Oh yeah I totally get that! He’s great! I’ve always been a big fan of Jimmy Cheung, but it may just be because of how much I love the Young Avengers. Which I’m sure is annoyingly obvious so I won’t shut up about them.” Nor did he ever plan to. He loved those comics. Loved the idea of rebelling against their parents and the adults trying to hold them back from doing what they thought was right. It resonated with Rio in a way that he was always too cowardly to do for himself. Well, until he murdered his parents apparently.  

“Okay, okay. I admit it. Don’t let it go to your head though.” Rio smiled and raised his hands in surrender of the information. This was all… good. It was nice to be able to hold an actual conversation with him outside of comic books for once. “Well I’ll be on the lookout for that. And maybe sometime we could also do something that wasn’t in a comic book shop too? Like hang out or something?” Rio found himself asking, surprising himself by the suggestion. “In a purely platonic way of course. I mean uh- I don’t like still have a massive crush on you or anything. So this is not me like making a move or whatever.” He sighed, only realizing after that he had basically just admitted to his Milo that pre-Winston, Rio had a crush on the guy. “Not that I ever had a crush! Unless it was super obvious. But even if it was, please for the love of god forget that this last part ever happened.” Jesus. 

Endeared by Orion’s explanation, Milo made a mental note. Maybe he couldn’t tell his friend everything, but it would be nice having somebody he could confide in about certain struggles, even if he did need to be somewhat vague about them. “Maybe, one day…” He offered Rio a warm smile, making it very clear that he meant what he was saying. He wanted to, it just wasn’t quite that easy. Glad of the subject change, he focused on the conversation, thinking back on whether he had ever taken in the name of the artist. “Oh, Cheung is awesome! Whenever I want to imagine what a character would look like for real, I go to his work.” Laughing when Orion mentioned talking endlessly about the Young Avengers, he tried to convey with his expression just how much he enjoyed that fact. It was never an annoyance, hearing someone speak so passionately about the thing they loved. “Definitely not. You could never annoy me.” He insisted, not trusting Orion to accept the sentiment. “See, I’m more of a Jekyll and Hyde kind of guy, maybe that’s why I’m drawn to the Hulk. It’s one of my all time favourite tropes, you know?” Maybe if he took the time to dissect why, he could talk about how he related to the internal struggle, the constant battle between desire and a need to be in control. But that struggle had become much more real to him recently, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to talk about it. If he was being entirely honest with himself, he had never been ready to talk about such a personal observation.

“Oh no, it’s too late. It’s gone to my head.” He continued to tease. Raising his eyebrows, he wasn’t expecting the invitation, but he was incredibly grateful to receive it. Any relationships he had cherished before being turned had basically been burned to the ground. He wasn’t sure how to navigate them now. This was a welcome reminder that it was possible, that he could still have friends. Distracted by the blush creeping to Orion’s cheeks, it was the first time since approaching him that he considered the blood coursing through his veins. His skin was flushed, he could hear his heartbeat. It was difficult to ground himself, but he managed. Turning his head away from the direction the wind was blowing, he made an active effort to avoid his scent. As quickly as he had begun to feel normal, any semblance of normalcy was stolen from him. But he refused to get caught up in bitterness, not when he was so close to reclaiming a piece of his old life. Taking a hesitant step backwards, he attempted to frame the movement as casual, carefully fixing a grin back into place. He was genuinely amused by what he was hearing, everything was just so difficult. “Maybe not super obvious.” He assured his company. “But my colleagues might have pointed it out to me.” It was his turn to hold up his hands, more than willing to grant the request. “Already forgotten. And I would seriously love to. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything. I mean, even this is just… a relief. I guess that sounds dumb. I just- I really fucking missed this.” 

Though the conversation was sidelined, Orion grinned at the thought that there was more to Milo’s story. A book that hadn’t completely closed. Rio wasn’t sure that there was a friendship outside of Towers. That it was just a worker passing his workday by humoring the awkward gay kid with a crush on him. Rio was thrilled to learn that was not the case. Or not entirely at least. So the conversation about his mysterious weird experience would be shelved for another time. “I’m so glad that we agree on Jim Cheung’s superiority. I would have given anything to be like Kate Bishop. She was like, the coolest comic book character ever.” He spent a lot of time wishing he was more like Kate Bishop, though her entire character’s premise didn’t fit perfectly. The imperfect family, sure. But Kate’s entire strength was that she was the only non-powered person on an otherwise super team, temporary status of Eli Bradley notwithstanding. Rio’s own super abilities, wanted or not, sort of ruined that desire. He still wished he was as confident as she was. “Ooh! Yes that’s a fascinating trope! Fun fact, Robert Louis Stevenson was actually inspired to write the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde while he was trying to work on a play about an actual person named William Brodie. Apparently this guy, William was like a big figure in his town. City council and all that jazz, but ended up being outed as a thief. Robert was fascinated by how someone who had such a clean public image could do such terrible things.” Rio was partly staring up at the sky now as he rambled on about the history of a book that was already a couple hundred years old. He could tell that the rain was about to start. Compliments of the super senses he couldn’t forget about. “Sorry I uh- get passionate about random history things.” 

Rio tried to fake a serious tone, but he couldn’t stop laughing. “Oh god, I created a monster. You’re never going to let that go are you? You know, I’m sure there’s plenty of other employees at Towers that I could go and annoy.” As much as Rio was enjoying the positive energy, he couldn’t help his face from heating up at openly talking about his old crush. “Oh god. You said that way too nicely. It was definitely super obvious.” Rio sighed. His face was on fire now, and he could only imagine the bright shade of red his cheeks must be. “Thank you for taking pity on me. Because I desperately need this too. I’m very tired of sitting in my house doing nothing all day.” 

“Kate Bishop, huh?” Milo echoed. He had definitely heard Orion talk about her before but hearing about his favourite characters always intrigued him. He had such a way of explaining himself, he could say the same sentence over and over and Milo was fairly certain he would listen regardless. “Poor Barton, just brushed to the side.” He teased, his eyes shining. He didn’t know an awful lot about Kate and her backstory, but more than once he had been flicking through a comic book, only to stumble upon a mention of trying to please an emotionally distant father. Boy, did he know what that felt like. His father hadn’t been absent. In fact, he had many memories of playing catch as a child, of being read bedtime stories, and baking on the days designed for them both to spend time together. But Oliver Summers had never talked about his feelings, and had always made his expectations incredibly clear. The moment his son was able to read on his own, he was expected to. The moment he was able to study on his own, he was expected to. The moment he could fend for himself, cook his own meals, do his own research, he was expected to. It was academia, and independence above all else. And now that he was officially off the rails, he had grown all too familiar with his stern disappointment, shame and frustration often simmering below his carefully arranged expression. “Bishop is pretty cool though, I’ll allow it.” Falling silent again, he recognised the look on Orion’s face and knew he was about to learn something. At the very least, hear about something interesting.  

He could vaguely remember covering the topic at university, but he had been in and out of his classes. Incredibly unreliable, and incredibly not sober. Which made the information feel fresh, and exciting. “Don’t apologise for being passionate.” He hated to think anybody ever made Orion feel bad for sharing the subjects he enjoyed, even if that person was Orion himself. “People are complicated… it’s fascinating, really. I guess you never really know a person’s motivations. Not unless they outright break them down for you.” Grinning suddenly at the choice of phrase, the irony wasn’t lost on him. They were talking about monsters within literature, but hadn’t he also kind of already become one in real life? He would usually wallow in that, but with Orion it felt easy to see the humour. “Maybe you have.” He admitted, mischief lacing his tone. “And no, I am definitely not. You’ve already confirmed I’m the most interesting employee, so if you want to go and bore yourself with the others then I guess I can’t really stop you.” It was impossible not to notice how flushed Orion was, his skin pink with embarrassment as a quiet sigh escaped him. But there was just enough distance between them both for his friend not to feel like a temptation. The last thing he would ever want to do is hurt somebody he cared about. “I’m not taking pity on you, moron. I want to hang out.” He insisted. “And not many people describe me as nice, so I’ll take it. Thank you for the compliment.” He felt guilty for being pleased to hear Orion spent so much of his time alone, but it only justified his decision. He could spend more time with Orion because Orion wanted company. And, Vampire or not, where was the harm in that? 

Orion only shrugged in response to Milo's question about Barton, “Hey Kate said it best herself when she called herself the better Hawkeye. She wouldn’t lie.” The first drop of rain hit against Rio’s forehead. It ran down his face, a welcome drop of cold against the burning skin. He could just barely hair the sounds of droplets hitting against the pavement now. It didn’t seem like it would start pouring right away, but the rain would probably only get heavier from here. In preparation, Rio slid his bag off of his back and opened it, revealing even more books stuff inside. It was a tight squeeze trying to get the books previously held under his arm in. He was just barely able to zip the bag up. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it would protect against the lighter rain until the conversation with Milo faded. Rio wasn’t in much of a rush to leave right now.  

“Right. Sorry. I’ve been told I over apologize too. Example A, two seconds ago.” Rio had found a decent group of people that had embraced or encouraged his sometimes overbearing passion for history, but each time still came as a surprise. He was used to passive annoyance. A feigned interest in the topic before all too intentionally taking an opportunity to change the subject. But he finally knew people that didn’t do that. He really liked those people. He was just glad Milo was one of those people. “No. Not at all. People always surprise you.” Rio agreed a little too aggressively, eyebrows rising in unison with his emphasis. Hunters were a perfect example of this. Trained to kill, taught to blend in. Some were just better at it than others. “I’m totally going to regret telling you that” Rio rolled his eyes and wiped away at the stream of water running down his face from the rain. “Okay, okay. You don’t have to get all defensive about it. We’ll hang out then. I’m looking forward to it!”  

Milo laughed, he couldn’t really argue with Kate Bishop herself. And though he hadn’t actually read very many of the Hawkeye comics, it was clear Orion knew what he was talking about. “Okay, okay, you win. Kate is the best Hawkeye.” He surrendered, feeling the first drops of rain begin to hit his skin. Glancing up at the night sky, the clouds were dark, and thick. The water was as cool as the night air, and it was a welcome sensation, but he had a suspicion it might be the start of a downpour. He knew it was unfair, expecting Orion to feel the same way about the weather, but he didn’t want to leave just yet. He watched patiently as his friend did his best to save his books, wincing a little as he considered just how heavy his bag must be. “Are you apologising for apologising?” He asked, raising his eyebrows with a quiet smile. “Come on, which way were you walking?” He readied himself to start moving again, absentmindedly brushing down his hoodie before forcing his hands into his pockets. “Let’s get you out of the rain, I refuse to be responsible for your shit getting ruined, and it’s getting cold.”

Waiting to be given a direction, he mulled over what Rio was telling him. As far as he was concerned, he had always been incredibly predictable. His parents always knew how and when he was next going to screw up. As a Human, when he disappeared, Dani always, always knew how to find him. “Maybe some people.” He said finally. “I don’t think I’ve ever surprised anyone.” Offering an easy grin, he hoped his warm expression might be enough to take back the insult, he so often forgot not everybody was used to his humour. It wasn’t as though he could call people names while he was working, and he had only ever spoken to Orion at work. “You won’t regret it, don’t worry. I’m not that mean. And an insult from me is a compliment, I swear. I didn’t mean anything by it, I’m just excited-” It felt ridiculous to admit, but it was undeniably true. “I haven’t had anyone to talk to in a while, so…” Anyone regular, anyway. “It’s good to see you. I mean it, Rio...” 

“It was barely even a fair fight. Hawkguy never stood a chance.” Orion laughed. Talking about stuff like this was one of the few times he seemed to excel, or at the very least accomplish, at normal conversation. He missed being able to just talk and laugh and even joke without spending the entire conversation constantly second guessing every single word before he even said them. “That’s uh- Kate starts calling him that when they start working together. Since they’re both Hawkeye.” Rio picked the bag up and swung it back over his shoulder with relative ease, tucking his arms through the straps. “I’m pleading the fifth on that one.” Rio shrugged, but began walking with Milo. He wasn’t sure why Milo thought he needed an escort to his car parked around the corner of the library, but he assumed that it was probably the same reason that everybody assumed Rio needed an escort or a protein shake or regular exercise. But like with most hunters, even Rio was an example of how looks could be deceiving. Most people didn’t peg the sickly looking gay frail kid as the one that could rip a car door off. “For the record, it’s not your fault at all. I’ve been doing a great job ruining my… stuff all on my own.” 

Walking towards his car, Rio spun and walked backwards to look at Milo. He wasn’t sure what Milo meant by that. That he had never surprised anyone. He supposed it could have just been an offhand comment that didn’t require much digging into. But something about it seemed incredibly sad. Rio started to consider his own stakes on the word. In a way, Rio had tried his whole life to be as unsurprising as possible. He had wanted to blend in, be a good person and fly mostly under the radar. He supposed that same tactic would backfire though. It was only more surprising when someone found out he was a hunter now. “You surprised me like twenty minutes ago. Like genuinely scared the crap out of me. Not that that’s super hard to do.” Rio laughed, but hoped it helped at least a minimal amount, “I’m honestly surprised you even like, came up and talked to me tonight. So there you go. First time for everything.” Rio’s foot caught on something on the ground and he almost tripped, stumbling backwards a few times before righting himself. That’s what he got for trying to walk backwards and talk. They got to the mostly empty parking lot and Rio lead Milo to his car, “Welp. Here we go. I uh- yeah. Same here. I could use a friend right now so…” Rio pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it over to Milo, “Want to put your number in? So we can plan a hang out. Or text or whatever.”  

Milo smiled, listening to Orion as he continued to talk about Kate Bishop, and Clint Barton. It was obvious to anyone how his demeanour changed when he was talking about something that he genuinely loved, and he sincerely hoped he wasn’t the only person to appreciate that. “Maybe I should make more of an effort to get into Hawkeye.” He admitted. When… if he was allowed back to the comic book store, it would be the first thing on his to-do list. “Wouldn’t it be easier to take up a new mantle at that point?” He asked, trying to imagine working with somebody else named Milo without things descending into confusion. It didn’t go unnoticed just how easily Orion swung the bag over his shoulder, but he chose not to comment. He wasn’t about to embarrass him, not after his admission. Maybe he was right, maybe people really did have a way of surprising you. His smile faltering momentarily, he had a feeling there was a lot more to the words than Rio was letting on, though he brushed them off. If he wanted to elaborate then he would. “Exactly, so you don’t need my help.”  

Following his friend to where he could only assume his car was parked, he moved slowly, allowing Orion to face him walking backwards. The rain was falling with a little more persistence, but there was nowhere near enough water to soak them through. Pushing his damp hair back away from his face, he caught Rio’s eye with an easy laugh, oddly touched by the sentiment. “I guess that’s true, you know… I can’t argue with you on that one.” It wasn’t quite the same, but it felt like enough. “I do like you.” He insisted. “I’d jump at any excuse to talk to you, you don’t know how boring my shifts used to be when you didn’t show up to see me.” His step faltering as Orion stumbled backwards, the boy righted himself before he even had the chance to fully react. “If you were hoping I was going to catch you and sweep you off of your feet, you need to be a good 2 yards closer.” He teased, as they finally came to a halt in the near-empty parking lot. Accepting the phone gratefully, he hurried to plug in his number. Mainly in an attempt to keep the device out of the rain, but also because it felt good to have a contact, he wanted Orion to have a way of reaching him. Handing it back, he pulled his carton of cigarettes from his pocket, ready to light one for the begrudging walk home. Harsh was probably wondering where he was. “I guess, I’ll- uh… I’ll see you around then?” 

Orion had often wondered that same thing about the Hawkeye issue. Though he supposed it did change a bit depending on how far someone dived into the character. “Great question. I actually think in some of the comics that Kate Bishop sort of drops the hawkeye name because she becomes a private detective instead. It’s a whole thing. But regardless, I’m interested in getting your thoughts on it!” He was mostly excited to have someone to talk comic books with again. 

There had been a surprising amount of honesty and sentiment in what had otherwise been a fairly comical conversation. With how bold Milo was being in his statements, Rio found it hard to focus. As the conversation about comics died down, so did Rio’s ability to talk apparently. But he had to try to force himself to not reverse back into his old habits. He wanted to be actual friends with Milo now. Not just a customer with a crush. “Uh-” Rio drug the word out for far too long before snapping back to focus, “Thanks. Same to you.” At least the cold air would help fight any further blushing. “Very funny, Milo. I am not that person anymore! I’m just a clumsy comic book nerd. Not a clumsy- uh- crushing comic book nerd.” Yikes. That wasn’t as smooth as he was hoping it would sound. “Anyways. Thanks again.” Rio said, opening his car door and tossing the bag of books across the center console and into the passenger seat. He was about to pull himself into the car when he turned back around. “It’s only going to rain harder. Probably, I mean. Do you have a car? If not I can give you a lift?” 

“I guess I have some reading to do.” Milo was becoming more determined by the second to pick up the Hawkeye comics. It wasn’t the first time Orion had managed to convince him to start a new series. “I can’t promise I’ll have anything interesting to say though. You’re way better at talking about this shit than I am.” Grinning as he waited for his friend to find his words, he hadn’t been expecting a joke about his crush. “Eh, two out of three aint bad.” He teased. “Though I am offended you got over me so quickly.” He added, the look on his face making it very clear he wasn’t being serious. He wanted to ask why he was being thanked, surely not for the compliments, but he didn’t want to draw attention to any potential lack of self esteem. That hardly seemed fair, and he could make it clear he genuinely enjoyed Orion’s company in other ways. It made him happy to think there would be opportunities in the future to spend time with him.  

Caught off guard by the sudden offer, he shifted awkwardly on the spot. He hadn’t been in a car since becoming a vampire, and it definitely didn’t feel smart to get in one now. Especially not with a human, somebody whose heart was beating, pumping blood through their veins that he could smell, even from where he was standing. “No,” he murmured finally, his voice melancholy as he remembered just how much he could no longer do. He had spent the better part of the past seven years saying yes to absolutely everything, taking risks without considering the consequences, walking headfirst into danger because if he told himself things would be fine then it became all too easy to believe. Now… for the first time in his life, he was being forced to think, to contemplate every action before making a decision. It went against every instinct he had, it wasn’t in his nature. But it was necessary to keep other people safe.  

“No, I’ll be okay. I’m not staying too far from here…” He absentmindedly sparked up his cigarette, needing something to do with his hands. “Thank you though.” Shooting Orion one last smile, he held his gaze, needing him to understand his sincerity. “It really was good to see you. Text me.” The moment the words left his mouth, he turned away. Before Orion could call out to him, or tell him to get in the car. Before he could change his mind and put anybody at risk. Before he could think too deeply on his new limitations, and what it felt like to say no. To have no choice. So much had been taken away from him, and wallowing in that fact had become a past time. Though, he realised, with a strange sense of clarity, he may have just gained a friend. It was this thought that carrying him, as he left Orion in the parking lot. This thought making the night feel a little less dark as he disappeared into the shadows. 

[seyaryminamoto]

I feel like i'm gonna regret asking this but what is hiby

Oh. Ohohoho, oh. I recently answered this to someone else (not on this blog), I suppose there are so many newcomers in this fandom lately that HIBY has become slightly less known than it used to be.

HIBY stands for How I Became Yours, the most polemic and catastrophic fancomic in the history of the Avatar franchise. If you thought any of the official comics were problematic in any sense, woah boy, they’re goddamn flawless masterpieces compared to this thing.

Every possible angle of HIBY is problematic. Spot-on accusations of tracing were the main reason why Deviantart took down Jackie Diaz’s profile and comic from their platform. I heard Nickelodeon also got involved legally, not 100% sure on that front, but if true, they cracked down on her because she attempted to profit off this clunky mess of an inconsistent story by claiming it was somehow an official sequel to ATLA. To clarify, this last thing is something I was told, I can’t find actual sources to confirm it… so maybe I heard an exaggerated account of the tale of HIBY and it never went that far. Nevertheless, this comic didn’t need to escalate into a legal problem to be absolutely abhorrent.

In regards of art, HIBY somehow keeps discarding the asian-inspired setting seen throughout ATLA and instead favors showing the characters in European castles and outfits that don’t fit anywhere within ATLA’s world at all:

Katara is basically wearing a red version of Belle’s dress from Beauty and the Beast, if I’m not mistaken. The architecture of the place they’re at is so European it’s baffling (if I’m not mistaken, this is supposed to be Toph’s family’s house :’D). Also, it’s blatantly obvious that the background is a photograph, so she could’ve just as easily looked for photos of asian locations instead, but she picked european architecture because yes. Yet more blows against the possible artistic merits someone could offer this comic (if there’s any).

Now, though, the BIGGEST problem in HIBY is, of course, the story:

To recap: ATLA ends with Aang and Katara kissing at Ba Sing Se. Whatever problems someone may have with their relationship, or Mai and Zuko’s, or Sokka and Suki’s, it’s unquestionable that those three ships were canon by the end of the show.

Jackie Diaz’s SEQUEL COMIC doesn’t acknowledge this finale: somehow, Aang is in love with Toph but they’re not together despite there’s literally NOTHING in their way, since Aang and Katara weren’t together at all, according to Diaz. And Katara? Oh, she’s pining endlessly over Zuko, who somehow married Mai…

… Despite wanting Katara too.

… Despite he literally knocked up Katara back when the war was ending, which resulted in a miscarriage because of Mai’s wicked schemes~~!!

Can someone please explain to me in what world does it make sense for Zuko, FIRE LORD ZUKO, to be in a relationship with someone he doesn’t want, when the person he does want is RIGHT THERE, AVAILABLE, when there’s no real political consequences to ANYTHING that happens in this comic? You could say “oh no the Fire Nation people wouldn’t accept a Water Tribe woman…” … but then Zuko ends up with Katara anyways and the only problem is that Mai wants to kill them for that :’) so… no excuse works.

Basically there’s no real plot, the whole thing boils down to “I want these ships to happen and I need them to face hardships even if they don’t make sense”. The main hardship is that Mai doesn’t want her HUSBAND to carry out an affair with Katara. Zuko’s response to Mai’s obvious and reasonable complaint about their illicit relationship is to TURN VIOLENT WITH HER. And he’s the good guy :’)

Mai has a non-existent older brother Sho, who looks like a BLEACH character with Ozai’s hairstyle, and together they will try to kill Katara because, welp, someone has to give them trouble, I guess. In all fairness, the only character with a relatively logical flow of thought in this damn trainwreck is Mai. I mean, “my piece of shit husband married me for political clout, got his mistress pregnant, I didn’t want the kid to be a problem for me so I induced a miscarriage in Katara by poisoning her, probs just wanted Katara dead altogether but whatever, I only got the kid. Then Zuko threw me away despite I’m his legal wife and I’m really pissed about it so I want Katara dead” is the smartest writing in this entire comic. And no, that’s not a compliment, it’s still stupid as fuck but that’s how much more stupid everything else is. 

So, the happy couples are, like I said, Zuko and Katara, who get together despite Zuko is married to Mai, Aang and Toph, who somehow weren’t together despite there’s nothing in the way, AAAND… 

… Sokka and fake!Azula. Because I refuse to acknowledge that thing as the Princess we all love and adore.

Frankly, I consider it a miracle that HIBY didn’t destroy our ship completely when it was posted online, seeing as it was amongst the most talked-about fanmade content in Avatar’s fandom at the time. If people no longer associate Sokkla with HIBY immediately, we’ve definitely done a good job saving our poor ship’s face and showing it’s got a fuckton of potential compared to the shitfest that comic portrayed.

Why is Sokkla so problematic in HIBY? Because of fake!Azula, of course. Why is she fake!Azula? Because she’s got plot-convenient amnesia! Turns out that, for some reason, Azula forgot all the events from ATLA (let’s be real, so did Jackie Diaz so it’s not just her) and she shows up in this comic as a completely different character, so much that, upon hearing about the TERRIBLE THINGS SHE DID AND WAS, her reaction is…:

Fascinating, am I right? :’D She’s nice, sweet, shy and as good as brain-dead. And as she’s so sweet and cute now, somehow that becomes absolutely appealing for Sokka. And he falls for her, she falls for him, they bang dramatically, and so on and so forth…

Eventually Azula sacrifices herself in the final battle when Mai and her brother try to kill everyone and oh no! Sokka’s love interest dies again! Such a shocker, however, that Sokka goes to the Spirit World to save her, and unlike Iroh he succeeds… but what does Azula look like post-Spirit World shenanigans?

… Yeah, okay, fake!Azula calling anyone her “little angels” is just proof of how IC she is, if you had any doubts still.

But isn’t it FUNNY. Isn’t it HILARIOUS. That Azula not only undergoes an atom-deep brainwipe that turns her into a flat non-character, but that after dying she’s revived with WHITE HAIR, dressed in blue clothes and whatnot…?

My interpretation, and honestly, I don’t know if there’s any other possible interpretation… Jackie Diaz wanted Sokka to be with Yue :’) She fucking wrecked Azula’s character to turn her into a fake!Azula, who would eventually turn into fake!Yue after being resurrected because oh that’s just perfect to close off Sokka’s storyline, isn’t it? Only, he’s not with Yue nor with Azula because it’s neither of them. Just as it isn’t really Sokka either, or Katara, or Zuko or Aang or Toph.

Now, revisiting this trainwreck, there is a throwaway line where Ty Lee, in her (I think) only appearance in the story tells Katara that Suki and Sokka broke up. So um, Suki does exist, officially, in this comic, and she did date Sokka but it ended, and she’s back in Kyoshi Island with her team. 

Which elicits the question… why the fuck is she Mai’s maid?

I assure you, if you decide to delve deeper into this mess, you’ll absolutely find a lot more things to laugh about, to be outraged about, and to facepalm about while you wonder how on earth would someone, ANYONE, create something like this and not die of cringe looking at the finished product. It’s baffling to me.

At any rate, if you’d like to torture your own eyeballs reading this comic for yourself, there’s a Tumblr blog that gathered HIBY perfectly neatly for all curious eyes eager to torture themselves with this OOC fest. If you want more details than I care to remember about this catastrophic mess of a story, there’s always the TV Tropes page, which I think illustrates everything rather well. 

So… that’s HIBY. While I don’t think it should be sentenced to oblivion (we had best never forget the lowest lows the fandom has reached, else someone might be tempted to outdo them), this particular fanwork is quite the trainwreck in just about every regard. I really don’t think there’s anything worth salvaging in it. So, if you wanna read the whole thing (I’d be surprised if you would xD), knock yourself out in the blog link I posted up there. Otherwise, have a nice day if you still can after reading my answer to your ask :’D

[hamiltalian-creates]

Summary: Philip just got home from college and he thinks he’s going to have a cute reunion with his boyfriend, only to end up having one of the most awkward moments of his life. To make matters worse, everyone involved and everyone who he doesn’t want knowing about it get together for dinner the next night and there’s no way he can escape. 

Pairings: Piperson 

Words: 2,691

Warnings: None

Who knew it would be so impossible sneaking out of your parents house for the first time? Philip figured that now, as a 22 year old man instead of a clumsy teenager, that it would be easy to figure out, but no. He still ended up bruised and scraped outside of his first story window after the climb, but at least nobody would be questioning where he was going. 

Philip had just started summer vacation and while he went to a pretty close university, that didn’t stop his parents from smothering him with attention now that he was actually living at home again for a few months. Fortunately, they agreed to leave him alone at night. Which is how he ended up walking down the street to his boyfriend’s house in the middle of the night. 

Philip felt butterflies as in his stomach and he walked and a stupid smile managed to find itself on his face, but it wasn’t like he was just being a stupid kid. He hadn’t seen Thomas in almost 4 months. It was too risky with his parents down the street from him and with the fact that his dad and his boyfriend worked together fairly frequently in a failing attempt by their boss to get them to work better together. On the bright side, that meant that this was a complete surprise to Thomas, especially since Philip did have a key to the house, something Thomas had trusted him with that past Christmas as kind of a one year anniversary present. 

Quiet as he could, Philip snuck up the front walkway and up to the door, using his key to get inside and closing the door behind him silently. He smiled widely as he saw Thomas sitting on the couch, watching a movie. There was a tiny part of him that was afraid he was just interrupting some personal time, Thomas had his hair up, which he never did, and a bottle of wine was resting on the coffee table, but he was already there, so what was the harm in at least trying? 

Philip smiled widely and crept up behind the couch, pulling Thomas’s head back and kissing him firmly on the lips as soon as he was close enough to do so. The taste of vanilla chapstick on his lips was definitely different, but it did seem like Thomas was having a quiet night in, so Philip didn’t think much of it until he pulled away from the kiss. “I bet you’re really regretting giving me that key to your house now,” he joked. 

Thomas just stared up at him with a bewildered expression, his face a deep shade of red that Philip had only seen when he first started flirting with the older guy. For obvious reasons, Philip thought it was because of the sheer shock at the fact that he’d pretty much broken into the house, but he couldn’t have been much further from the truth. 

“I’m Lafayette,” apparently-not-Thomas said, making Philip’s face go white. 

“You know we should really do these movie nights more oft- Philip?” 

Philip looked up and saw his actual boyfriend, Thomas Jefferson, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. 

“What are you-” Thomas was cut off as Philip began screaming for a good minute. 

“He kissed me,” Lafayette explained as Philip went quiet, though it was evident that he himself was far from unbothered by the fact. 

“Oh my god, please don’t tell my dad,” Philip pleaded, clasping his hands in front of him. 

“Of course I won’t!” Lafayette assured. “He’d kill you on the spot before dying of shock!” 

Philip sighed with relief before letting disgust take over. “I can’t believe I kissed you! You’re my best friend’s dad! And you’re basically my uncle!” 

“You say that like it’s not weird for me!” 

“I’ve heard stories from Georges, I know that kissing me is not the worst thing you’ve done.” 

“I mean, that’s true, but-” 

“Guys!” Thomas shouted. “Come on, you guys don’t need to be freaking out that badly, it was just an accident.” 

Philip groaned. “You don’t get it.” 

Lafayette rolled his eyes. “Okay, how is kissing me weird, but sleeping with your father’s mortal enemy isn’t?” 

“Because you’ve slept with my dad!” 

Thomas stepped back out of the room, having heard way too much for one night. 

Lafayette rubbed his temples. “That’s the last time I have a wine night with Georges...” 

“Yeah, you’ve raised someone who can’t keep his nose in his own business and now I’m the one suffering for it!”

“That’s not the issue here!” 

Philip waved his hands. “Fine. Let’s agree never to talk about this again. If my father hears about this, we’re both doomed.” 

Lafayette nodded and looked back towards the kitchen. “You can come out, Thomas, we’re not shouting anymore.” 

Thomas hesitantly walked back into the living room and looked between the two before settling on Lafayette. “You’ve slept with Hamilton?!” 

“Oh my god, that was so long ago!” 

Philip decided not to point out the fact that a few months was not, in fact, a long time, and instead turned his attention to his boyfriend. “Okay, this is not how I wanted this surprise to go, Thomas. The point is, I’m back from college for the summer and I’m glad to see you. If you need me, I’ll be bleaching my mouth.” 

“Don’t forget that you’re the one who came up behind me and kissed me!” 

“God, don’t remind me!” Philip stormed to the bathroom and took a few moments to compose himself, thinking about all that happened. He went over to surprise his boyfriend. He kissed someone who wasn’t his boyfriend and, of course, it was one of his dad’s best friends. Lafayette promised to keep it a secret, but it wasn’t like Philip could just stop worrying. Lafayette wasn’t exactly great at keeping secrets. 

Rather than worry himself any further, Philip shook his head and splashed his face with some cold water before going back out to the other two. “I’ll go home and let you guys enjoy the rest of your night..” 

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Thomas argued, patting the space on the couch beside him. “You already came over, you might as well stay. Lafayette already said he wouldn’t mind it, right Laf?”

Lafayette nodded. “Of course I wouldn't mind, this is Thomas’s house, he’s allowed to have whatever guests he wants. Besides, it’s not like you wanted to interrupt our movie night on purpose and I’m sure it was pretty tough to get here. I’d have to be a real jerk to ask you to leave.” 

Philip smiled awkwardly. “Alright.. I just don’t want to make things weird or anything..” 

“It’s only weird if we let it be weird,” Lafayette responded. “Just join us, it’s one night.” 

“Okay..” Philip went over and sat beside Thomas, leaning against his side as he started the movie again. It definitely wasn’t what Philip was expecting when he snuck out to go over, but he couldn’t deny that it was nice, even with Lafayette a few feet away. 

Now, there was only the matter of seeing if Lafayette could keep a secret or if Philip was going to have to go down in flames. And at that point, the most disappointing part would’ve been that Philip figured out how to climb out of his window for nothing. 

The next morning, Philip did his best to play off the events of the previous night, which wasn’t particularly hard, since Philip was feeling too embarrassed to get horny after everything that happened with Lafayette. But the universe seemed pretty hellbent on making him pay for being a young adult sneaking out of his parents’ house. So, of course, that night happened to be the night that his parents had coincidentally forgotten to tell him that they were going to have dinner at the Washingtons’ with all of George's favorite people, including one of his favorite employees - Thomas Jefferson - and the man whose relationship with him was definitely more ambiguous - Lafayette. 

Philip would’ve faked an illness, but the last thing he wanted would’ve been to seem suspicious. Of course, he could’ve lied and said he wanted to spend some time with his younger siblings, all of whom were staying home that night, but he was nervous and didn’t think about that in time, okay?! So, he was stuck going with his parents to the dinner, an undeniable awkward energy filling the air the second that Thomas finally showed up. Fashionably late as always, Philip noticed. 

As Thomas walked in, George gave him a look and nodded towards Philip’s dad, who seemed to be dreading their seemingly mandatory interaction as much as he was. But, George was the boss, so Thomas walked over, faking a smile. 

“Hamilton.”

“Jefferson.” 

“And it’s always a pleasure to see you, Elizabeth.” Thomas’s smile became a little more genuine as he went back to pretending that Alexander didn’t exist.

Philip’s mom smiled, though she was clearly genuine about it. “I could say the same about you. You remember Philip, right?” 

Remembered and memorized, yep. “Of course I do. If I remember correctly, you said he’d just graduated?” 

“Uh.. Yeah, I got my degree in English,” Philip responded, shaking Thomas’s hand. This wasn’t the first time that they had to pretend they didn’t know each other in front of Philip’s parents, but it was definitely different from other times. 

“I don’t remember telling you anything about him graduating,” Alexander said, glaring up at the other man. 

“Really? Well, I guess I’m not exactly sure where I remember hearing it from.” 

Philip stayed calm on the outside, but there were about 20 mini versions of his head running in terror and sounding alarms. 

“Oh, that must’ve been me,” Eliza admitted. “I remember going into the office to look for Lafayette and invite him to Philip’s graduation. I know the two of you are close, perhaps you were nearby.” 

Thomas snapped his fingers, as if Eliza cleared up everything. “That must’ve been it, of course.” 

Alexander huffed and crossed his arms, upset that he was out of things to yell at him about. 

“Speaking of Lafayette, I’m going to go say hi to him, but I hope you three have a lively night. Congratulations again, Philip.” 

Philip nodded and watched Thomas walk off, resisting the urge to admire how well his pants fit him. 

“Honestly, Alexander, do you have to be so hostile every time you see him? I know you two don’t exactly get along, but can’t you leave that alone for one night?” 

“Of course I can’t! I mean, look at him! He’s such a pompous bastard.” 

Philip coughed to hide a laugh. When Lafayette was busy, Philip was the one who Thomas vented to and that sounded exactly like his impression of Alexander. 

“See? I bet that god awful cologne he wears is making Philip sick.” 

Philip just assumed that his father was making fun of his cologne out of spite, since he was the one who helped pick it out. 

As everyone sat down, Philip’s one ounce of luck went to making sure he didn’t sit next to Thomas, instead sitting beside his mother at the end of the table. It was a fairly quiet dinner, one that Philip spent silently praying that Lafayette didn’t let anything slip. And he almost didn’t. 

Of course, as the youngest person at the table, Philip got his fair share of teasing from almost everyone, seeing as most of the table consisted of his father’s friends. Ordinarily, it would’ve been fine. But just as Georges couldn’t be trusted to stay out of other people’s business, his father could be counted on to never be trusted with a secret. 

“I don’t believe that you made it out of college without dating someone,” said John Laurens, who was practically Philip’s uncle. And, at the moment, was a little drunk. “Come on, a good looking guy, great writer, you could’ve picked up any girl you wanted.” 

Philip wasn’t actively hiding his bi-ness, but he was hiding the one guy he’d ever been attracted to, which seemed to have the same effects. “I didn’t find anybody at school that I really liked,” he said with a shrug. At least it wasn’t a lie. 

“You know what, I took you to a bar to celebrate your 21st, I’ll take you somewhere to celebrate your graduation and I’ll help you find someone.” Okay, maybe he was more than a little drunk, seeing as he was the one now spilling secrets. 

“I should be mad, but I’m not even surprised,” Alexander groaned, rubbing his temples. 

“Lay off of him, John, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t need help finding a guy,” Lafayette said, starting up those alarms in Philip’s head again. 

“Does the French boy know something we don’t?” John asked, clearly asking the question that most of the table was thinking. 

At the other end of the table, Aaron Burr and James Madison whispered, trying to decide if this was going to be too much drama or the juiciest gossip they could ask for. 

Lafayette began laughing awkwardly. “What are you talking about? You know me, I forget straight people exist sometimes.”

John rolled his eyes. “Laf, you’re pan. You’re, like, half straight.” 

“... What kind of wine is this, I really like it,” he said, very unconvincingly. 

This would’ve been the perfect place for Philip to intervene and brush it off as being out as bi to Lafayette, who he asked not to tell, but he was too busy thinking about his own funeral arrangements to figure it out. Besides, his father’s stare was no different from Medusa’s, turning Philip into stone where he sat. After all, as much joy as it brought him, Alexander knew what Thomas looked like nervous and, boy, was he starting to get nervous. 

“Guys, we’re all embarrassing him,” Eliza said, coming to her son’s rescue. “Lafayette and John have clearly had more than enough to drink, I don’t think they’re the most reliable sources of anything right now.” 

John giggled a bit. “Yeah, you’re right, I have.” 

“I guess I have,” Lafayette admitted with a small laugh. 

And just like that, a crisis was averted. Once it was time for everyone to leave, Eliza only had Alexander’s big question to answer and it wasn’t a particularly hard one. 

“But why did Jefferson seem so nervous? Anybody with eyes could see how he was squirming like the snake he is.” 

Eliza shrugged. “He does talk to Lafayette a lot, he was probably just afraid that Lafayette was going to spill some big mystery about Philip and that he was next.”

“What kind of dirt do you think he has on him?” Alexander asked. 

“If you want to hear my truth, I think you’re not the only person Lafayette has slept with recently.” Their relationship had always been pretty open, Eliza didn’t care and she knew that Philip had to know, being friends with Georges. 

“Oh god, never give me that mental image ever again,” Alexander groaned, dropping the topic. 

Once the three of them got home, Philip joined his mother in the kitchen for a bowl of ice cream, a tradition between the two to unwind after formal events. 

“Things almost got really crazy back there, didn’t they, ma?” Philip asked, hoping to completely seal the topic away. 

“Oh, you don’t have to play clueless with me,” Eliza assured. “A mother knows, but your father doesn’t have to know a thing.” 

Philip felt his face go white. “... What?”

“I’ve seen you staring at him since your second year of college and I invited Lafayette to your graduation over the phone. As long as you’re happy and things are healthy, I won’t say a word.” 

Philip’s face went from white to red in a matter of seconds and he couldn’t do much more than laugh awkwardly. Lafayette may have been shitty about secrets, but that didn’t matter when Philip had his mother helping him keep things under wraps.

[orihara-infobroker]

I should be writing but instead, my brain is meandering. I was thinking about the visual presentation of the characters in Durarara a few days ago and went flipping through the first novel. The anime presents them very differently than the descriptions in the books and it kind of makes me sad to see those changes because I don’t think they’re positive ones. 

Specifically, the one that I think bothers me the most is our protagonist, Celty:

^^ Anime version of Celty

Below are some descriptions from the first novel, where we are introduced to her:

The shadow of a figure stood over him. Not metaphorically, either—it was a shadow. The figure was dressed in a black full-body riding suit without a single pattern or logo on it, making it look as though the black material had been dipped into even darker ink. Only the reflection of the parking garage lights signified that there was even something physical there at all. From the neck upward was even stranger. An oddly designed helmet sat atop the figure’s neck. In comparison to the uniform blackness of the body, the shape and patterning of the helmet seemed somehow artistic. It didn’t clash with the overall dark look, however. The faceplate of the helmet was like the dark mirrored glass of a luxury car. It showed nothing of what lay behind the glass, only the distorted reflection of the lights overhead.

<The guy riding the black motorcycle—has no head.>

Celty had been patrolling Ikebukuro for twenty years, and for much of that time, she’d known this man. Of course, he had no idea of Celty’s true nature or her gender, but Shizuo was also the kind of man who didn’t bother with little details like that.

Hair as black as darkness, just tracing over her eyes, features that were carved into her heart long in the distant past—right atop the shoulders of the woman stumbling across the sidewalk in her pajamas!

Rumors had spread about the headless rider, but the rumors didn’t identify her as a woman or a dullahan. She didn’t feel a particular need to hide these things, but neither did she plan to reveal them.

So yeah... We have an androgynous form of a person that almost everyone mistakes as being male. Even Shizzy. Also, her head has black hair.

Yet the anime puts her in a catsuit, gives her obvious female features ( . Y . ) and changes her hair to brown, which I am guessing is to emphasize her not-Japaneseness? But there’s no significant reason to change her physicality. Especially when you’re talking about Celtic fae who are very often quite androgynous in their beauty.

And the catsuit thing is just plain objectification. Biking suits do not look like catsuits. They are actually quite different. They’re leather and usually armoured to protect the wearer from injury. They don’t have the vinyl catsuit look that is given to Celty (or later Vorona whose biking leathers also look more like catsuits than actual bike gear).

I know there are plenty of reasons why they might have made changes to characters, some of which might actually be valid, but it still bothers me because I know that on some level the choice was sexy-sells because Celty isn’t the only character who faces this.

Shizuo is actually spot-on between books and anime, for example. As are Mikado and Masaomi.

But Big-Tits McSchoolGirl (Anri) is not. Nowhere in the first novel is she described as having big tits.

Izaya is also not entirely the same. I mean, on the one hand, they make him an anime pretty boy, which he is in the books, but they give him a very nondescript outfit and that’s not how he’s described. You can’t get more generic than black slacks, black shirt, black jacket. but the novel says this of him:

But in the next moment, all of that was destroyed as a fresh new maelstrom of anxiety and excitement burst into life. “Hey.” It was a very pleasant voice, crisp and clear and vibrant, as though being hailed by the pure blue sky itself. And yet, the instant he heard that voice, Masaomi grimaced as though he’d been shot in the back with arrows. He slowly turned in the direction of the voice, an instant sweat congealing on his face. Mikado turned the same way and saw a young man with an equally pleasant face. He looked soft and gentle, but with a bold, intrepid edge—a perfect materialization of some ideal of handsomeness. His eyes were warm and all-accepting but glinted with a hard scorn of anything that wasn’t himself. His outfit, while possessing its own personality, did not show off any obvious features or characteristics. All in all, he was very difficult to grasp or classify. Even his age was indistinct based on appearance alone. He had to be more than twenty at least, but there was no way to tell anything beyond that.

Everything clicked into place for Mikado. The man not to get involved with. The man not to make an enemy out of. But the fellow standing before him didn’t seem all that dangerous. Aside from his sharp gaze and handsome features, he seemed like any other young man. Even his plain, glossy black hair stood out amid all the bleached and dyed hair around him. He looked like the kind of sharp young man that would be teaching at a cram school out in the country somewhere. He’s more normal than I expected, Mikado thought, and decided to introduce himself.

Izaya chuckled shyly. If that expression was the only thing to go on, he’d never be mistaken for someone fully immersed in the criminal underworld from head to toe.

In Izaya’s left hand, held behind his back, was a very sharp knife. The scariest part was that Mikado had been watching the man’s movements the entire time, but he never noticed where the knife came from or when he’d slashed the bag free of the strap. Izaya smartly folded up the knife and slipped it into the sleeve of his suit jacket, all one-handed behind his back. Mikado felt like he was watching a magician at work.

Now I don’t know about other people but I don’t find this:

To be an outfit that has any personality. Aside from the coat. Which... Maybe this is because I am Canadian but... coats with fur lining aren’t that weird? I mean, not even winter coats but we have fall/spring coats with fur trim? So why does everyone comment on his coat? Why is it so weird to y’all? But the rest of his outfit has absolutely no personality whatsoever. Literally, the blandest thing you could wear.

And the last quote: when he meets Mikado during the bullying incident, he’s wearing a suit, my dudes. A suit. In which he hides knives. :3 Give me more Izaya-suit-porn pls. Need it. For research. :3

I know anime has a habit of sticking characters with a single, identifiable outfit but honestly, they could have given him something better. And it’s not that I’m opposed to his look exactly... I just don’t think it entirely lines up with his character.

So yeah... These are just some points from the first novel. I might go through more of the novels at some point and do this for other characters too because I’m curious. When I read them the first time, it was with the anime images already in my mind as visuals so I didn’t pay as much attention to physical descriptions.

Done rambling for now... XD

[singing-and-humming]

The loving is easy when i’m with you

Domestic fic written for @cloudfiveclub writing challenge (sorry for the delay)

Title from Kwaye – Sweetest Life

You just woke up but you are already sitting at your kitchen table waiting for the coffee machine to finish dripping while scrolling through your Instagram feed when your phone buzzes signaling a new text. You smile when you see that it was from Richard. He always remembers to send you a text or a pic in the morning but instead of the usual greeting, the message you’ve received was :“Help! How do I deal with this hair situation!”. 

Definitely not what you expected.

Obviously, you can’t wait to finally do something about his hair. He got an haircut a few weeks ago which got rid of the really damaged ends but he insists on continuing to bleach it. Maybe, he finally understood that he needs to take care of it consistently.

You answer him that you’ll be there at 1 p.m. as was agreed, because you have an appointment. You finish your breakfast before getting ready for the day. You were invited by Erick’s family for a gathering in the late afternoon. You make sure to pack more of your hair products in addiction to those already in your overnight bag before heading out.

--

When you finally arrive at his place, you find Richard in the kitchen, cleaning the remnants of lunch. He greets you with an a hug and a long soft kiss.

“Hey you. I missed you so much.

- I missed you too. Are you almost finished, we’re going to need some time to work on the mess on your head before we head out

- What are you talking about? What mess on my head?

- “I thought you wanted me to help you?

- Yes! With Aaliyah’s hair!! ¡Si, con el pelo de Aaliyah!

- Babe…I will help you with Aaliyah but we’re definitely working on your dry hair! Now, where is my princess?

- She’s playing in her room…”

You leave him to find Aaliyah in her room where the little girl is drawing at her desk.

“Good morning Aaliyah!” you say as you enter the room.

As soon as she hears you voice, she runs to you and you squat down to give her a hug. You ask her how she is doing. You sit on her bed with her and she starts telling you all the exciting things that happened to her since you last saw each other. You make sure to asks her some questions, even though you already knew some of it from you phone calls to Richard or his brothers.

“Daddy told me you were coming to do my hair. He tried but he was bad!” You look up and see that her curls are tied up in a loose ponytail as if he just gave up, which is certainly what happened.

“I can see that sweetie but we’re going to get you all cute for tonight. For now, I’m going to help your Dad with his and then I’ll come get you, alright?”

You let her get back to her drawing and go join the Dominican. You grab the bag full of supplies, drag him to the living room and make him sit on the floor in front of the couch.

“Babe, I don’t think this is necessary. I just wanted some help with Aaliyah so she has a cute hairstyle for tonight.

- Yes, it is necessary. I KNOW I’m not the only that told you the same thing, so we’re going to try to deal with it. Really, I don’t understand how you can just go around like this.

- Com’on! It isn’t that bad. You know I don’t have time and even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to do.

You grab you oil mix and lather his hair with hit, finger detangling the stringy strands of blond hair and putting them in four braids.

“All right, this need to sit a little while. Go get Aaliyah”, you instruct him.

When they come back, you make the little girl sit on a chair. You wet her hair with a spray bottle and apply some leave in conditioner to help detangle her hair.

"- I’m just going to show you how to do a simple hair style today. I’ll do one side and you’ll do the other, ok?"

You part her hair in the middle and section a big piece on the front to do a braid. You gather the rest of the hair, put a bit of hair gel all around and brush it to smooth everything before securing the hair in a bun. It is quite simple but you go slowly so that Richard can see what you’re doing and replicate it. As it turns out, he can follow instructions pretty well when he wants to. The braid wasn’t very symmetric to yours so you make him do it again but the final result was really cute.

You then tell Richard to go shampoo his hair to remove the oil bath and to call you when it’s done.

You go into the kitchen with Aaliyah to start on the desserts you’ll bring to the Colon’s in the afternoon. You make her stand on her chair next to you and show her how to knead the dough. She has the same intense look as Richard when he’s concentrating on a task but to be fair, she always looks like a mini version of him. You hide a smile when she frowns at the dough sticking too her small hands.

You join the blond when you hear him call your name. You apply a good amount of the deep conditioner you brought. When he sees you approach with the plastic wrap, he opens his mouth to protest but with a sharp glance he understands that he will NOT win this argument. You explain to him that he has to keep the product on for at least one hour which earns you a low groan.

“You know, it’s usually a good time to do some exercises because it will to warm your scalp.

- Too bad we can’t do my favorite cardio exercise", he replies playfully, wiggling his eyebrows.

He goes to put some music and that’s how Aaliyah finds you two dancing around in the bedroom. Of course, she joins you to show off her best moves.

“Daddy we should put face mask like Mama does when she does her hair! She suggests.

- Why not. Y/N, do you have some? He asks you.

- Hum yeah, I didn’t think you’ll want to try. It took long enough for you to take care of your hair!

- Hey! I’m trying now.”

You bring out several for him to choose from but you go to the kitchen to whip out one with yogurt for Aaliyah because you’re not sure yours will be appropriate for her skin. When you all get your mask on you resume your dance party and take some videos.

Later, when everything is rinsed off, you all go to the living room to watch Mulan. You get Richard to sit in front of you again so you can apply some proper products, making sure to show him in what order and quantities before quickly styling it with some twists. He gets a bit overwhelmed and because you know he likes having you taking care of him, you know that he doesn’t make any effort to remember any of it.

“That’s a lot!

- It’s to make you pretty too Daddy!

- But I’ll never be as pretty as you and Y/N!

She pretends to thinks for a second and answer “That’s true!” which launches you both into a hysterical laugh.

--

At some point during the movie, Richard gets up to answer a phone call and he comes back to Aaliyah asleep against your arm. Richard sit down carefully on the coffee table in front of you.

“Do you want me to take her, mi amor?

- Don’t worry, she’s perfect just where she is”

You look down softly at the little bundle next to you. For a long time, you were scared of how Aaliyah was going to react to you. You didn’t know if she was going to accept your presence in her father’s life. You knew how family, and especially her, was important to Richard, and that any uncomfortableness from Aaliyah might have been a deal breaker. You are still trying not to overstep but you are confident that is going to be okay. You know that’ll do anything not to lose this feeling of belonging.

Richard’s life was hectic and being in a serious relationship came with a lot of complications, but you know that it is worth it, that HE is worth it.

“I’m so glad that you get along so well. Some people pretend to be okay with their partner having a child but it’s different to actually care about them.

- How could I not care for her? She’s such a good kid. You know that I love her right, I’m not pretending for you sake or anything.

- Yeah, I know. He passes his hands on his newly styled hair.

- You know it was so bad. It does feel softer than before. How about we do that every Sunday when I’m home?

-  Sounds good. I’ll have to buy more products to keep here because I’m not about to carry everything back and forth.

- You can just let what you have here.

- I do need it during the week as well, Babe

- I know, what I’m saying is they might as well stay here and so should you."

You reflexively straighten to look at his expression better before remembering that Aaliyah is still resting against you. You check on her to see that she hasn’t woken up.

"- What are you saying? You ask slowly

- I’m saying or more asking if you want to move in. No, it’s probably better to find a new place near your job because you’ll still be alone in it sometimes and we can’t stay in yours because we need a room for Aaliyah. And…"

You let him continue to ramble for a while before finally wondering “I don’t think we can skip tonight to start looking for our new house?”

The blinding smile and the obvious love in his eyes that get in return makes you realize that have already found your home anyway.

[jadedselfconclusion]

Normies, Horrible movies and The Joker.

Okay first I want to state the obvious, I am a comic book fan. Some have gone as far to say I'm a purist. That being said here are my PERSONAL thoughts and OPINIONS.

So apparently people are uppset about the new Joker movie. Saying its too dark/ graphic/ will make white men murder...yada yada yada. Now some these SJW cunts and cucks are hypocrites. Why? Because they were perefectly fine with the Dark Knight Joker...

Portrayed by the late great Heath Ledger, this joker had no back story or Origin story and was pure chaos and fire. Killed multiple people, started fires...Joker shit. Yet he was praised for his "Realistic and Dark" portrayal of the infamous Joker.

Confused? Lets jump back to 1989, 30 years ago when Tim Burton directed the cult classic Batman.

This is Jack Nicholson, who played Joker in the film mentioned aboved. The late 80's portrayal of joker was just as "Dark" but more comic book ( Not a bad thing in this case). Nicholson dig deep and gave a award-winning performance. With wit, style and murder. Many who claim to be SJW's loved this Joker.

Yet here they are trying to ban the ingenious and well crafted film that is the Joker, a one off stand alone Origin story.

There is no definitive Joker Origin story with in DC nor should there be. I personally love the Killing Joke Joker ( the graphic novel not the trash woke animation) but this movie deserves its place. It was like watching a DC graphic novel of the Joker.

This is Joaquin Phoenix, who played this "problematic" ( God I fucking hate that word) Joker. This origin story went deep into mental illness and the dark path Arthur ( the joker's name in this version) is pushed down and his transformation into the Joker. With an unsettling but wonderful gritty realism. It's rated R ( which honestly anything that includes a proper Joker should be rated)

Now the SJW's have their panties in a bunch but yet no out cry of the senseless violence shown in the upcoming Harley Quinn movie. It's titled Birds of prey but ...let's be honest its HQ show. Not even a true portrayal of The red and black PhD wise craking, fun loving harley from the days of the Batman the Animated Series or even from Gotham City Sirens ( which Birds of prey was suppose to be named, but due to the fact Catwoman and Ivy might over shadow thier cash cow and the fact DC has a bunch of eggs in other baskets it was changed.)

https://youtu.be/XDlZ1eJOUKc

We can all agree suicide squad was TRASH. Not only did it not pull enough from its graphic novel counterpart or multiple sources and storylines with in the comic book world. It's casting, writing and production left everyone wondering ( everyone except the Normies) what the fuck is this shit?

Well to capitalize on wokeness and forced female leads they pull out birds of prey. Race bending black canary and other issues. Like the fact that harley isn't in Birds of prey and it focus is mainly on Huntress, Black canary and sometimes batgirl/ batwoman ( not the lesbian one but Barbra Gordon as shown below)

Normies are those who do not read the comics, or just know the mainstream characters. ( nothing wrong with being a Normie) unless you are dictating what should and should not be in a live action film based off the comics. Then we have a problem. Because of this awful woke culture some of my favorite characters have ruined, race bent, gender-bent or just emasculated for the sole purpose of pleasing SJW normies.

https://youtu.be/Yg1uqV2E4aE

This is a problem because not only is it disrespectful to the character, the source material and those who've bought/ related to these characters and storylines but to those who created these characters and stories.

My point is this, stop compromising great writing and storytelling to please people who do not really give two shits about it. These people are hypocrites and have never understood the source material. The dumb bitch who wants to change the name of the Xmen because she thinks its sexist? Does she even know why Xavier named them this? No, she doesn't if she did she wouldn't have opened her goddamn mouth.

Xavier sought out Summers and enlisted him as the first of his X-Men, Cyclops. Xavier called the team "X-Men" because each one had an "extra" power that normal people lacked. (Not so coincidentally, of course, "X" was also the first letter of Xavier's last name, and he himself took the code name "Professor X.")-

furthermore to prove my point -

From a social policy and philosophical perspective, Xavier deeply resents the violent methods of those like his former close friend and occasional enemy, the supervillain Magneto. Instead, he has presented his platform of uncompromising pacifism to see his dream to fruition – one that seeks to live harmoniously alongside humanity, just the same as it desires full-fledged civil rights and equality for all mutants. Xavier's actions and goals in life have therefore often been compared to those of Martin Luther King Jr. for his involvement with the American civil rights struggle, whereas Magneto is often compared with the more militant civil rights activist Malcolm X.

The character's creation and development occurred simultaneously with the civil rights struggle, taking place in the 1960s, while Xavier's first appearance dates to 1963. The fictionalized plight in the comics of mutantkind faced with exceptional intolerance and prejudice was done in large part to better illustrate to audiences of the day what was transpiring across the United States, just the same as it also served to further promote ideals of tolerance and equality for all.

Did you catch that? Equality for All! Well I'll be damned X-men isn't sexiest after all. This is the glaring problem for me at least.

So lets go back the Joker and his source material shall we?

In his comic book appearances, the Joker is portrayed as a criminal mastermind. Introduced as a psychopath with a warped, sadistic sense of humor, the character became a goofy prankster in the late 1950s in response to regulation by the Comics Code Authority, before returning to his darker roots during the early 1970s. As Batman's nemesis, the Joker has been part of the superhero's defining stories, including the murder of Jason Todd—the second Robin and Batman's ward—and the paralysis of one of Batman's allies, Barbara Gordon. The Joker has had various possible origin stories during his decades of appearances. The most common story involves him falling into a tank of chemical waste that bleaches his skin white and turns his hair green and lips bright red; the resulting disfigurement drives him insane.

Now just sit with that a bit.

[yoon-kooks]

Witch Hazel- Pt.1

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader 

Genre: FanficWriter!Jungkook, Idol!Reader, College!AU, Angst, Fluff 

Summary: There are two students in your art class with a secret: you and the quiet Jeon Jungkook. You’re a problematic idol singer, infamous for your ice cold reputation and perpetual resting bitch face; he’s the artist and author behind the viral comic series based on a certain ice queen idol. After a blowup of destructive rumors, lost motivation and inevitable solitude, you stumble upon Jungkook’s comic and find a new and unexpected light.

Word Count: 3.6k

Warnings: none

Parts: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // ?

A/N: after a million years, it’s finally here guys! my first jeon jungkook series :’)

“For homework this weekend, I want you all to sketch a self-portrait. It can be realistic or abstract, but just make sure it still represents you,” your professor says before dismissing class.

As you shove your sketchbook into your bag and pick up your guitar case, you hear one of your loud classmates, Kim Taehyung, talking with his friend who’s always so quiet in class that you don’t actually know what the fuck his name is. All you know is that he only ever wears oversized hoodies.

“Psst, Jungkook. Wanna draw my face for me?” Taehyung makes a flower pose with his handsome face.

“What’s in it for me?” Hoodie Boy throws his eraser at Taehyung to make him stop, perhaps out of secondhand embarrassment. You snicker silently to yourself as you pass by them to exit the room, but not before they mention something that triggers you.

“I’ll pay for your ticket tonight.”

“And tomorrow night, too, lol.” 

“Bitch, I’m not even going to tomorrow’s concert.”

“Then I guess you have time to draw your own face~”

“Wait, Jungkook. I’m busy tomorrow. Really. I have a date, remember?” Taehyung is basically pleading for his life at this point, and you can’t really blame him. Out of the entire class, he’s the only other non-art major besides you, so his drawing abilities are almost as shitty as yours. “And besides, we both know you could spend five minutes on the assignment and it’ll still look better than if I spent an hour on it.”

“Fine,” Hoodie Boy sighs. “I’ll take a ticket to tonight’s concert and a signed album instead. Thanks in advance.”

“Deal… I just don’t understand how you can be so whipped for an idol like Snow. She might have a nice body and a pretty face, but her personality is the worst. Even worse than Y/N’s,” Taehyung spins around to wave at you. “Right?”

“Ew, don’t compare me to her, Tae.” You give him an unimpressed face. The boy literally talks to everyone as if they’re his friend, and it kind of pisses you off.

“But you agree she has a shitty attitude, yeah?”

You notice Hoodie Boy is keeping a close ear out for your opinion on his supposed favorite idol. He accidentally makes eye contact with you for half a second before flailing around to gather his shit into his camo backpack. Were you really that intimidating to make those around you so flustered?

“Her shitty attitude isn’t the problem,” you hum as you walk away before they can bother you some more.

When you arrive home, you only have half an hour before you have to head out again. After tossing your bag and guitar case off to the side, you slip into slightly more fashionable clothes and break out your makeup bag. A quick layering of shadows, winged liner, and falsies paired with contouring and rose lip tint is enough for you to transform out of your barefaced college kid self. With a mask and your signature icy blue lens, you leave once more.

-

“You’re late, again,” your manager, Kim Seokjin, only sighs as you casually walk into backstage with a nonfat latte in hand. “I’m the one who’s going to be fired if you keep showing up late for soundcheck, Y/N.”

“It’s not my fault, Jin.” You pass your latte over to your cranky manager, who’s long overdue for another caffeine fix. He takes a sip, still glaring at you. “I was held up after class by two cute boys~”

“Cute boys? Y/N, you know you’re not supposed to be-”

“I know, I know. I’m just fucking with you,” you shrug. “All they did was ask me about Snow’s shitty personality. Oh, and apparently they’re coming to the concert tonight.”

“Don’t let them recognize you.” Seokjin finally hands you back your latte after chugging down half of it.

“I’m sure they would’ve said something months ago if they recognized me in class, Jin…” No one at school knows you’re an idol. As a matter of fact, no one in the world is aware that you, Y/N, are the idol with a cold piercing gaze and an even colder personality, Snow. No one except Seokjin, of course. He’s the only one you trust enough. “Besides, taking that art class has improved my makeup disguising skills, so don’t worry~”

“Well speaking of cute boys attending your concert, there are a few other idols that’ll be coming as well, so be careful.”

“Great, because all we need is another dumb dating rumor to get out of hand.” You’ve already experienced far too many of those in your short idol career. As an idol equally looked up to as you are frowned down upon, you’re pretty much at the center of every rumor or scandal. And it fucking sucks.

“Just try to stay positive about it, and don’t put yourself in a situation that the media can take advantage of, okay?” Seokjin has a worried look in his eyes—not for his own sake, but for yours. It’s his genuine tenderness and concern for you that keep you from walking away.

“Okay…”

The concert goes as usual. There are no technical difficulties, your vocals are on point, and nothing scandalous happens on stage. But at what cost?

Fan engagement is always kept at a minimum—the most fanservice you can offer is a split second of eye contact while you’re singing. You often wonder why anyone would want to see you perform live when there’s an invisible yet obvious wall standing between the stage and the audience. Like Seokjin advised, your company is doing what they can to ensure that their loose cannon idol stays out of any potential problematic situations.

But this distance doesn’t simply go away after your concerts. If it did, you wouldn’t be known as the Ice Queen, and your personal life wouldn’t be such a mystery to everyone. And for that, you cannot even put the full blame on the strict rules of your company. A large part of you appreciates the privacy that comes with this distance. Even if it is a little selfish and unfair to those who only wish to support you and your music.

As your concert comes to a close, you’re finally given the opportunity to address the dedicated fans who came out to see your performance.

“Thank you for coming tonight.” I’m sorry if it feels like you’ve wasted your money and time.

“A lot of you might be busy with school and studying right now, but you still made time for me.” I know because I too am a student.

“That means a lot, even to an Ice Queen.” I know what my reputation is, but please remember I’m human as well. I’m really grateful even if my resting bitch face doesn’t reflect that.

“Let’s meet again next time.” Next time, I’ll try to show a better version of Snow.

“Good night, everyone. Please get home safely~” I hope I was able to make you guys smile at least a little bit.

On your way out, you do your best to avoid both the media and the crowd. If you’re quick enough, you’ll be able to make it home in peace. Tonight is not that night, however.

You don’t even get outside of the venue before you see two familiar faces from class sitting on the stairs near one of the exits: Taehyung and Hoodie Boy. This is exactly why you never take off your makeup or lens until after you’re home where you don’t have to face anyone.

Of course it’s the loud one who approaches you. Hoodie Boy stays put on the stairs and watches from afar. You give them a halfhearted wave in hopes that that’s all they want, but of course it’s not.

“My friend is a huge fan of yours, Snow,” Taehyung lowkey pointed his thumb back at Hoodie Boy. He pulled out a copy of your latest album and a black sharpie. “Of course I love your music too, but would it be alright for me to get an autograph for him? He said he didn’t want to bother you himself.”

Usually you’d refuse. Whenever people say their “friend” is a fan, you get the impression that they’re just too ashamed to identify themselves as a fan of you. Like they don’t want to be associated with the kind of idol that you are.

But you’re certain that Taehyung is telling the truth since you heard that same promise being made earlier in class. And you know how shy Hoodie Boy is. So just this once, you’ll allow it.

You take the boy’s album and pen. “What’s your friend’s name?” You want to know, not only so you could write his name out, but also so you could stop calling him Hoodie Boy.

“Taehyung,” he says in a rather hushed voice.

“Taehyung?” That asshole. You glance over at Hoodie Boy just for a second. He’s busy taking pictures on his phone—not of you, but of the now empty venue. You feel bad, but there’s not much you can do besides sign the album to “Taehyung”. As you hand back the album, an idea pops up, “May I ask what your name is?”

“Me? Uhh-�� You catch Taehyung off guard. “It’s Jungkook.” The name sounds familiar to you.

You nod and pull out a spare album from your bag to sign for Jungkook. You even decide to get a little fancy and draw a cute heart next to his name, just to spite Taehyung. “Here,” you say, looking back at the real Jungkook once more, only to find that yet another unwanted visitor had appeared. In moments like this, you question your decision to become an idol despite hating the attention.

Quickly you shoo away your classmates before the media shows up. You wouldn't want there to be another “misunderstanding”. The other boy now approaching you is already more than you’d prefer.

With his bleached ash blonde hair and an expensive yet casual fashion, you recognize him as fellow idol, Park Jimin, aka Korea’s Sweetheart. If you’re the devil, he’s most certainly an angel.

You’ve never spoken to the boy, but you’ve seen him at music shows plenty of times and have even competed against him for several awards. The two of you are “rivals”, or at least that’s how the media loves to phrase it. To you, there is no such rivalry; it’s clear that Jimin is the likable one. Your name is only ever placed next to his to generate newsworthy content.

“Is it really a good idea to visit your rival at her concert?” You don’t know how else to welcome the unwelcomed idol.

“It’s always good to scout out the competition,” Jimin shrugs, going along with your unfriendly greeting. “But for real, the concert was a lot of fun.” He glows with sparkles in his eyes. You can’t deny he has the most gorgeous smile.

“I’m glad…” It’s reassuring to hear compliments, especially from a fellow idol. But at the same time, you know Korea’s Sweetheart would never say anything rude—even if he feels differently. He’s perfect, after all.

“Anyway, I heard from the boy in the black hoodie that you’re handing out free autographs?” Jimin tries to point back at Jungkook, but he and Taehyung have already vanished. “I thought you were notorious for refusing autographs?” He pokes fun at you, but not in a way that annoys you like Taehyung had.

“They were bothering me and that was the easiest way to get them to leave,” you explain in half-truth. “Should I give you one too? It’d be better for you to leave before the media shows up.”

“Only if you have a stash of albums hiding in your bag.”

“I don’t.”

“Why did you happen to have one with you?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“I’m just curious. Idols don’t just carry around their own albums like that.”

“…My friend gave it to me,” you say after a moment of hesitation. That isn’t a lie, but a vague truth.

“Your friend gave it to you as a gift, and you just gave it away to a stranger?” Jimin chuckles, amused by you for whatever reason. “Living up to your reputation as Ice Queen, huh.”

You narrow your eyes at him. You hate when other people call you that, and you hate it even more when they aren’t wrong.

“I’m just kidding, Snow.” The way he smiles while speaking is so mesmerizing that you almost forgive him. “I know you did it with good intentions. And because of that, those two boys were able to leave here with a smile.”

“Good.” Your expression softens. “Anyway, did you need something or…?”

“I just wanted to say hi before heading home,” Jimin shook his head. “But let’s hangout some time, yeah?” He waves farewell and leaves before you can properly reject him.

On your way home, however, you take the time to consider the boy’s offer again. Truthfully, it would be a nice opportunity, especially since you don’t have any friends besides Seokjin. Plus, Jimin is pretty fucking attractive in your eyes.

But the conclusion you come to remains the same. There’s no way you can say yes.

By the time you finally return home, it’s late, you’re exhausted, but you still have that self-portrait to draw. In all honesty, you’re quite jealous of Taehyung who has a friend willing to do the work for him. If anything, Jungkook should draw your face, since you were the one who ultimately ensured that he got his signed album. But that’s just you being salty.

You pull out your sketchbook and pens and stare into the oval mirror that hangs from your bedroom wall. Your eye makeup is smudged, your dark circles are prominent through the fading concealer, and your eyes are as icy as ever. To finish your homework as soon as possible, you don’t overthink anything and just draw what you see. At this point you just want to get it over with so you can roll into bed and laze around.

“Finally~” you squeal about an hour later, plopping yourself onto your bed in your pink penguin pajamas. You’re always in a more cheerful mood after taking a shower, so you snuggle up under your blankets and take the time to check up on social media before dozing off. This wouldn’t be the first mistake of the night.

According to the latest news that has blown up on Twitter, you’re apparently dating and fucking Park Jimin, who made a special trip just to see you, his secret lover. How. Fucking. Romantic. You laugh because you notice a confused Jungkook with his hoodie and album in the shadowy background of the tabloid photo. But other than that, you’re pissed.

You want to post a tweet to express your outrage over the dumb rumor, but those kinds of messages need to pass through PR first, and you’re sure as fuck your company’s not going to approve of anything you have to say. As always, they’d just rewrite your statement in a more civilized manor, and at that point, it’s no longer your words.

So instead, you move away from the toxic hellsite that is Twitter and move somewhere a little more tranquil. You wish you could just find a few posts about fans who enjoyed the concert—that would be enough to set your mind at ease. It isn’t easy, considering all of the positive posts are buried beneath the massive amount of shit you’re getting for sleeping with the Park Jimin, but you eventually reach a cute blog post.

“guys! i saw snow tonight and shes so pretty😭💕”

“her vocals? fUCK. yes pls”

“also she might have rbf but shes super sweet ok”

“btw new fanfic coming tomorrow bc i was suddenly inspired lol👋”

You’re not sure how to feel about being the central subject to someone else’s fictional fantasies, but you do really love that you’ve inspired this person. Being able to have a positive impact in someone’s life; that was perhaps the deciding factor for you to walk the path of an idol. You only hope that this rewarding feeling can outweigh all of the bad.

Before closing your eyes, you check the name of the blog: jk.seagull. What a funny name, you giggle to yourself. But at least there’s someone out there who’s able to make your cold-hearted soul laugh. And for that, you’re as grateful to that person as your fans are to Snow.

-

7:27AM jinnie❤️ “We have to cancel today’s concert.”

7:28AM jinnie❤️ “There have been multiple threats made against you overnight after that rumor broke out, so we believe this is the safest thing to do.”

7:31AM Y/N “at least now i have more time to spend with my boyfriend park jimin~”

7:32AM Y/N “(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻”

7:33AM jinnie❤️ “Y/N, just take it easy today, okay? I’ll keep you updated on everything.”

7:35AM jinnie❤️ “Let me know if you want to talk.”

7:40AM Y/N “can you come over now?”

7:41AM Y/N “and can you bring another album please?”

You roll out of bed much earlier than expected to change out of your pink penguin pajamas and into sweats. Usually, you’d kill time by scrolling through Twitter, but since you aren’t in the mood to see all of the death threats, you decide to check up on that jk.seagull blog instead. You’re delighted to see that there’s a new post waiting for you. It’s a comic of some sort.

The first thing you see is a cute drawing of a pouty magic girl with bright blue eyes and a tiny snowflake in her palms. You’ve never seen fanart of Snow before, but you’re pleasantly surprised by the amount of detail and effort put into the drawing. It looks a lot like you, except cuter.

What impresses you even more is the storyline of the comic. Snow is a powerful ice witch who wishes to protect the world from evil. The only problem is that the world fears her and bans her from using magic. Rather than shunning the world that has shunned her, she decides to find new ways to be a positive light for others without the use of magic. She decides there are other ways to be a hero.

You want to keep reading, but there’s a knock at your door.

“Ooh, pancakes~” you sniff the plastic bag of sweets that your manager hands to you as you sit him down on your couch. “Thanks, Jin~”

“You’re in a rather good mood, despite all the shit that’s been going on,” Seokjin says, putting a warm hand against your forehead to make sure you’re not sick.

“I just read an interesting fanfic.”

“You read fanfics?”

“Not usually, but this one was super cute by this funny person named jk.seagull.”

“jk.seagull? He’s a pretty popular writer and artist for Snow fanfiction, you know.”

“How would you know that? Are you saying you read smutty fanfics about me, Kim Seokjin?” you smirk.

“I never said anything about smut!” He gets overly dramatic whenever you tease him, but you always find it adorable.

“So anyway, has anyone addressed the dating rumors yet?”

“Jimin apologized for the misunderstanding, but that’s all so far.”

“We shouldn’t have to apologize.” You take an angry bite of the pancakes. “I’ll deny the rumor, but I’m not going to apologize for something that didn’t happen.”

“Look Y/N, I understand, okay? But you should at least relay a statement to PR so you can clear things up on your end.”

“Just tell them I’m sorry for interacting with another human and I’ll never do it again.”

“Y/N…”

“What, Jin? It’s bullshit. I can’t do anything without it being twisted into something scandalous and getting a shit ton of hate for it. And the company isn’t even trying to help. The only reason they want me to apologize is to save their own asses, not mine.”

“Then what do you want to do?” Seokjin speaks in his calm voice.

“I want a break,” you sigh. What’s the point of being an idol if you’re doing more harm than good?

“I’ll ask the CEO on your behalf,” Seokjin pinches your cheek. “So cheer up.” He hands you the album you requested before heading out to give you some space to think.

The rest of the day is spent being a sad potato. You honestly don’t mind the threats or rumors by themselves, but what irks you is the fact that you’re not the idol you hoped to be. You’re not a light that people look to when they’re feeling down. You’re not someone who’s made a positive impact on the world. You’re no one’s hero.

You pick up your phone and go back to jk.seagull’s comic and reread everything that’s posted so far. You’re not sure why, but it’s as if this comic understands you—not just you as Snow, but also you as Y/N. The only difference is that the Snow portrayed in the comic is a much better version of yourself; a version you’re not sure you can achieve.

One other thing you don’t yet comprehend about the comic is the title: Witch Hazel. Who would ever name a story after skincare products? Then again, who would ever name himself jk.seagull?

After looking over Witch Hazel once more, you’re finally done being a sad potato and log back onto Twitter. You link the comic to tweet and post it out to the world. No caption is attached to the tweet. You want the comic to speak for itself.

[jetzelda]

A Shinigami, a Pirate and a Mafia Boss walks into Konoha

While tracking Madara and some Dark Phantoms through one of Naruto’s dimensions, Tsuna (Reborn!), Ace (One Piece), and Ichigo (Bleach) pay Konoha a visit out of curiosity. Of course, when they find a young, neglected version of Naruto Uzumaki scraping by in life, the trio don’t have the heart to not interfere.

It probably should have been harder than it was for three unaffiliated teenagers to get into the capital ninja village of Fire Country. They only told the gate guards they were wandering vagabonds in search of jobs and Konoha seemed a good opportunity. The guards seemed to buy it, despite the trios odd clothes. (It had been a separate pain in the ass to get Ace to wear a shirt so no one went crazy over his obvious pirate affiliated tattoo. He compromised on an sleeveless, flimsy, open vest).

They had journeyed to this Elemntal Nations Dimension with Naruto, Rukia, Reborn, and Oga and Baby Beel. They had noticed a tear in the Dimension and assumed it to be the work of a Dark Phantom. They entered the tear together, and split into two groups to cover more ground. As much as Naruto loved Konoha, it would bad if he got identified there. The village was large enough to call a city, and yet blended with the forest enough to call it a town, or a village. Tsuna was drinking in the sights with open wonder. He never got tired of seeing nature and civilization blend so effortlessly. Ichigo’s interest was more subdued, dodging the crowd and spotting the occasional spirit. He was never certain which dimensions would have spirits. Ace was more interested in finding the nearest food. Which was probably why he was distracted enough to allow a blur of orange and yellow to smack into his face while shrieking.

The small child, because that was apparently what the shrieking blur was, lost its grip on its bucket of paint, which miraculously soared over Tsuna’s head to land perfectly upturned on Ichigo’s, drenching him in pink paint. The child was quick to scramble off Ace and flee. Two dark green blurs followed the child’s pursuit from the scene.

Ace rubbed his abused nose, and yet snickered at his ally’s predicament. Tsuna fretted, hands ready to take the bucket. “Ichigo? Are you okay?”

The teen slowly removed the bucket from his head. “Fantastic.” He bit out flatly, eyes smouldering. “If you excuse me, I need to teach a kid a lesson he’s clearly never been taught before.” He dropped the bucket, turned on his heel, and stalked off in the direction the kid fled. Tsuna sighed and followed. Ace trailed them still snickering. It wasn’t hard for Ichigo to follow the kid’s spiritual signature across the village. Though apparently his dark green clad pursuers gave up halfway through the village. The teens ended up at a wide open space, labeled a training ground. The orange clad child was crouched, facing a large tree, with his back to the teens. He was very involved in whatever it was he was doing, and had not noticed their arrival. Ichigo stalked up to him silently. Only when the orange haired teen was feet away did the child perk up and spin around. But Ichigo’s hand struck like a viper, grabbing the kid by his collar and lifting him high off the ground before he could flee or react some other way.

“Gah! Leggo! You big bully! How’d you sneak up on me?!” The child cried, squirming. No answer came from Ichigo immediately. He was busy being stunned by the revelation of the kid’s whiskered face. All three teens recognized it. It was hard not to. Ichigo was holding a younger version of their sunny comrade. Naruto Uzumaki. Well crap. This put Ichigo in a tight spot. It was mutually agreed between all the heroes that they would not interfere with the personal life of one of the others’ dimensions without permission or unless absolutely necessary.

And here Ichigo was. Holding a small Naruto Uzumaki. Very small. And growing concerned the longer Ichigo held him and remained silent.

Well, Ichigo wasn’t one to back out of what he started. “Uh, Mister? Will you put me down now?” Little Naruto asked cautiously. “You see this paint.” Ichigo said, instead of answering.

“Uh...”

“This is your paint.” Ichigo said flatly. “Anything you got to say to that?”

“...Pink looks good on you?” The blond offered sheepishly.

Ichigo scowled more. Little Naruto winced at the sight. “Try again. Last try before I find those adults that were looking for you.”

Blue eyes widened in panic and he mentally scrambled for what the teen could possibly want. “Uh-ah-I’m sorry?” Ichigo arched a brow at the questioning tone. “I’m sorry!” Naruto affirmed. “Real sorry! Honest! I didn’t mean too! I was just trying to ditch those chunin!”

Ichigo grunted and lowered Naruto to his feet. “Better.” He moved his hand to through blond spikes and turned the head to Ace. “Now him.”

“Uh...”

“He was the body you hit.”

“Oh..” Naruto fidgeted in place. “I’m sorry muscle guy. Honest. I didn’t mean to run into you.” He had been totally focused on fleeing the chunin.

Ace grinned. He liked his nick name. “No worries, squirt. Not a scratch on me.”

This was all very new for Naruto. It wasn’t the first time he got caught, not by a long shot. But this was probably the first time without people yelling at him, or saying they were disappointed, or punishing him. When the scary faced one took his hand off his head, he didn’t feel like running.

“Good.” Ichigo crossed his arms, looking down at the kid. “And what have you learned from this?”

“Uh..” Naruto tilted his head to the side. What had he learned? No one asked him that besides the old man, and never ever after a prank. “To...uh...watch where I’m going? And hold on to my paint bucket?” He offered.

Ichigo grunted. “Good enough.” This probably the most interfering they should do before talking to their Naruto. “Let’s go.” He said to his companions, shoving his hands in his pocket and turning back the way they came.

Ace ruffled Naruto’s hair as he passed him. “See ya, squirt.”

Tsuna gave the blond a warm smile. “Stay safe, Okay?”

Naruto openly gaped at the retreating backs of the three teenagers. That never, EVER happened after a prank. “W-Wait!” He called, chasing after them.

Ichigo groaned. So much for not getting involved. Tsuna couldn’t help the chuckle. “Positive attention does wonders.” He murmured. They would have to get a message to their Naruto later. The little blond caught up with them quick enough. “Who are you guys?” He questioned. “Aren’t ya, ya know, mad at me?”

Ace snorted. “Nah, I mean, Ichigo’s probably pissed for turning into a pink berry-” “-Go F*** yourself, Ace!” “-But it was funny as shit.”

Tsuna rolled his eyes. “You should watch your language.”

“He’s probably heard worse.” Ace dismissed. “Ichi’s just being grumpy.”

“Call me that again, I dare you.” Ichigo threatened. Ace grinned and mouthed ‘berry’ at the back of Ichigo’s pink head.

Naruto smiled a little at the banter. He nearly melted when the brunet turned a warm smile back onto him. “I’m Sawada Tsunayoshi, But call me Tsuna. The one you hit is Ace, and the one you covered in paint is Kurosaki Ichigo.” Ace gave a grin and two fingered salute. Ichigo grunted.

The small blond puffed up. “I’m Uzumaki Naruto! And I’m gonna be Hokage, dattebayo!” He declared loudly and proudly. The glares villagers shot the blond didn’t go unnoticed by any of the teens.

Tsuna didn’t turn off his warm smile. “That sounds like a big goal, but I’m sure you’ll make it there some day.”

Naruto was floored once again. Only the Old Man  or Teuchi and Ayame at Ichiraku ever gave Naruto positive feedback at his Hokage declaration, and Naruto was pretty sure they just said that cause it made him happy.

“But being Hokage is hard work, right? He’s the strongest ninja in the village, in charge of protecting all its citizens.” Tsuna recited what their Naruto had told them. “So you’re gonna have to work really hard to become the strongest.” Tsuna paused in his walk when he felt a tug on the back of his shirt. He turned around to see. Little Naruto was holding Tsuna’s shirt between his fingers, face pointed to the ground. Ace and Ichigo stopped to see the holdup.

“Do...Do you really think I can be Hokage?”

Oh Naruto. Tsuna directed another warm smile at him, placing his hand on his head. “Why should I think otherwise?”

That certainly did it. Naruto followed them around like a lost puppy after that.

When Naruto found out that the trio were foreigners, he took it upon himself to give them the Uzumaki Naruto Tour!

“Over there is the Ninja Academy! That’s where I learn to be a super awesome ninja!” “Over there is where the super important family compounds are. I’m not allowed over that way, but it’s super easy to sneak in. Well, kinda easy.” “That really tall building is the Hokage Tower! That’s where the Old Man is, keeping it warm until I take the hat!” “Over there is the bar I painted pink! The owner dropped a plate on my head!” “That’s Hokage Mountain! All the Hokages faces are there! Mine will be too!” “That’s the market street. Everything’s a lot of money there.” Whether little Naruto knew it or not, his tour was incredibly revealing on how the village treated him. Big Naruto had already informed him on how shitty his childhood had been, in retrospect. But hearing it was very different than being here and seeing it. Ichigo was returning every villager’s glare with a fierce one of his own, which sent them scurrying, even if he was still pink.

But otherwise, they didn’t actively interfere. It wasn’t their place, not until they talked with big Naruto anyways. The trio still lead the way through the village while Naruto pointed out the sights. They needed a place to stay, and already had an idea where to go. Little Naruto’s voice began to falter as they entered the Red Light District. He shuffled closer to Ace as women in heavy makeup and scanty clothes leered at them and scary men eyed them. “Old Man says this area is bad..” He trailed off.

Well, Ichigo had hoped it would scare the kid away. The kid was tougher than he looked “It’s not bad.” Ace corrected. “It’s got it’s bad parts, sure. But it’s mostly misunderstood.” He patted Naruto’s head. “People who don’t have a lot of money go here. And we don’t have a lot of money.”

Naruto furrowed his brow as he considered his answer. He stuck by Ace’s side while Tsuna and Ichigo entered a bar. He considered his apartment that he didn’t actually pay for, how it had a bed, and a kitchen, and a bathroom, and good windows and door. He looked at some of the buildings with broken windows, and the bright flashy lights, and people smiling as they talked to each other. Not bad. Not really good though. Like him. Tsuna and Ichigo exited the bar. “Well, we got a place to stay.” The grumpy teen said.

Ace grinned “Lead the way.”

The walk took them straight through the Red Light District to a more forest part of the village. It was just outside of the district, bordering a more abandoned training ground. The space was big and open with a very large, old house. The house was probably nice once. A large home for a large family. But it was weathered by time and very old fashioned. The whole structure was made up of only wood, shoji screens, and tatami mats. No modern doors or windows. The home was raised up off the ground with a space big enough for little Naruto to crawl under.

Little Naruto followed the teens into the house, politely leaving his shoes outside like they did. They explored separately. All Naruto found was a lot of dust. But Tsuna announced they had a working sink and toilet. And Ace found a closet full of old futons, blankets and pillows. The small blond frowned when Tsuna and Ace settled on the outer wooden pathway surrounding the building, satisfied. Ichigo was using the sink to wash off the pink. Little Naruto didn’t understand. “This place is old and crappy. Why do you want to live here?” He asked. Whiskered cheeks puffed in annoyance when the teens chuckled. Ace ruffled his blond spikes. “When you live out in the dirt and rocks, any place with a roof, water, and blankets is amazing.”

Naruto considered this. “But my apartment is loads better, you can stay with me.” He offered.

Ace shook his head. “Nah squirt. That’s real nice of you to offer. But we won’t fit.” He grinned. “Don’t worry. We’ll do just fine we don’t have much. And we don’t need much, not when we’re together.” He ignored Ichigo calling him a sap from inside.

Naruto pondered this. And he continued to ponder it later that night when he was sitting with a cup of ramen, alone in his apartment.

The next day, Naruto was silent in class. His teachers were unnerved and his classmates confused. But no one approached him about it. No one usually did. Though Iruka-sensi did shoot him a few concerned looks. He didn’t even complain when he lost a Taijutsu match to Sasuke.

Naruto ignored all of them and exited school the way he entered it, silent. His mind was focused on the three teens that treated him like no one else in the village did. He didn’t even spend a whole day with them, and yet they made more impact on him than anyone in the village ever did. Aside from the Old Man...except maybe they did?

He frowned and kicked a rock in his path. He never spent all day thinking about the Old Man. And he just spent a whole day thinking about those teens And this thinking was so confusing. Ugh. He wanted ramen.

Except he ate the last cup of ramen last night. And he really should buy more ramen for home instead of going to Ichiraku’s. Even if the market sucked. He heaved a sigh and headed to the market.

Naruto passed Ichigo as he walked to the market. He stopped and backtracked to the teen. The scowly teen was relaxed with his eyes closed. His tall frame was tilted back in a small chair with his arms folded behind his head and feet propped up on a tiny table. There was a jar on the table with a tiny bit of ryo in it, and a sign in front of the table.

“Whatcha doin?”

Ichigo didn’t crack an eyelid. “Read the sign, brat.”

The word didn’t sound malicious from the teen, unlike how most of the villagers used it (brat!), so Naruto ignored it. Instead he squinted at the sigh. “Uhm...”

After about a minute, Ichigo frowned and opened his eyes. “Can’t you read?” He asked. It was more curious than condescending, but Naruto bristled anyways.

“I can read!” Naruto defended hotly. 

“Then what’s my sign say?”

“UH...Talk ta goats for a ryo.” Ichigo scowled. Naruto winced. “Uhm...I’ll just-” He turned to flee when Tsuna walked up, carrying shopping bags. The brunet smiled and Naruto just wanted to melt.

“Hello again Naruto. Doing well, today?”

“Yeah..I was just gonna get some food, so-”

“New plan.” Ichigo interrupted sharply. “You’re going to help Tsuna carry the groceries home, and tell him what my sign says.”

“But I-” Ichigo silenced Naruto’s protests with a look that Naruto didn’t want o find out the meaning of. He puffed his cheeks in a pout, and took some bags from Tsuna. Tsuna shot Ichigo his own confused look, but ending up shrugging and going with it.

The walk back to the old house seemed to stretch on forever. Tsuna waited until they reached the Red Light District to break the silence. “What about Ichigo’s sign?”

Naruto puffed his cheeks again and grumbled. “I don’t see what the big deal is about stupid goats.”

Tsuna blinked. “Naruto...His signs wasn’t about goats. It was about ghosts.”

“Oh...” It took a few seconds for the implications to process. “H-He can talk to ghosts?!” He squeaked out. “Ghosts are real?!”

Tsuna tilted his head. “Naruto, can you not read?”

Naruto wilted and looked away. For some reason, he couldn’t get angry around Tsuna. He blamed the warm, gooey smiles. “I can.” He insisted. “Just....it doesn’t always make sense.” “So reading is a struggle for you?” Tsuna clarified. Naruto nodded. Tsuna hummed. “Can you not ask your teachers for help?”

“They don’t like me.” Naruto said, dragging his shoes on the ground while they walked. “They ignore me when I ask. So I stopped asking.” His downcast gaze missed the tightening of Tsuna’s eyes and fists.

“And your classmates?” Naruto gave a shrug. Tsuna hummed again.

The two came upon the house. It looked exactly the same as the day before. Just as old and dirty. The only difference was Ace snoozing away in nothing but shorts on the outer wooden walk way. Tsuna bid Naruto to wait for him while he put groceries away. Naruto sat on the walk way with his feet dangling off the edge. He listened to Ace’s snores and wondered why he told Tsuna he had trouble reading. Now Tsuna was gonna think Naruto was dumb just like everyone else did.

The blond looked up when Tsuna returned with a few books, and a plate of veggies. He frowned. “What’s that for?”

Tsuna smiled. “I’m going to help you read better.” He didn’t even laugh when Naruto’s jaw dropped.

Despite knowing they shouldn’t interfere without their Naruto’s permission, the boys couldn’t help but want to shower little Naruto in everything he was lacking. The boy was so starved for positive attention that he practically moved in with them. They didn’t even turn him away when he got annoying, they just directed him on each other.

Ichigo had two younger sisters. He knew how to handle kids. He just imagined little Naruto as Yuzu, who needed more attention, and was louder. The blond usually came to Ichigo to ask random questions about ghosts. Ichigo managed to be patient, but when he needed his space he would sic him on Ace.

Ace was all grins and jokes. When he wasn’t sleeping, he would listen to Naruto’s talk of pranks, and would even throw in his own advice. Little Naruto was a lot like little Luffy had been. And now that Ace was older, he knew how he should’ve handled little Luffy. Naruto didn’t often get on his nerves, but if he needed to sleep, Ichigo was where he sent him. But if both Ichio and Ace were done with him, little Naruto would seek out Tsuna. The sky teen had the patience of a monk, or even a god. He never ceased to give Naruto those warm smiles that made him fuzzy and happy. Lambo and I-pin instilled the patience and child-rearing in him. Tsuna would sit and help him with his Academy homework. And it actually started to make sense! Naruto actually started carrying his back pack and books again. Any questions he had from school he would take straight to Tsuna. Ichigo would join in occasionally. Ace usually just slept through anything school related.

Naruto even started sleeping at the house. The first time had been an accident. When he woke up, he panicked, apologized, and fled. The next time Tsuna had to inform Naruto that he was welcome to stay. The unsure look on his face almost brought Tsuna to tears, and Ichigo and Ace to finding some asses to beat. After being repeatedly assured he was welcome, Naruto would typically end up cuddling one of the teens in their futon. And considering the teens usually ended up splayed out or cuddling in their sleep (body heat served better than blankets, especially with Tsuna and Ace’s fire), none of them truly minded. After the third night of sleeping over, Naruto dubbed them all his nii-sans. It was after about two weeks of this that someone new appeared in the routine. Naruto ran straight from school, waving to the ladies in the Red Light District as he passed (They were actually really nice and thought he was cute! Him!) He came upon the house and froze. Ichigo was sitting outside on the walkway again, talking to a girl. She had black hair, and was probably as short, er, tall as Naruto was. She was real skinny and wore a pretty blue dress. She turned to him and smiled.

The blond shuffled awkwardly and considered running. He didn’t talk to many girls besides trying to ask Sakura-chan out. And that always ended badly (He didn’t really count the ladies in the Red Light District. They were older and just...different-er). But Tsuna came outside with drinks, and Tsuna’s drinks were real good. So he walked over slowly and sat next to Ichigo. The girl had to lean forward to look around the tall teen.

Naruto sipped his drink as he felt himself being looked over. “Uhm....I’m Uzumaki Naruto. Who’re you?” He introduced, remembering what Ichigo and Tsuna said about manners. Ace never really cared.

The girl nodded in approval and smiled. Just introducing himself to her felt like when Iruka-sensei gave quizzes. “I’m Kuchiki Rukia, a friend of Ichigo’s.”

“Oh.” Naruto looked up. Ichigo was purposefully and loudly drinking from his straw, ignoring both of them. “I didn’t know Ichi-nii had more friends.” Ichigo’s drinking got even louder when Rukia laughed.

“Oh we have lots of friends.” She said. “And you’ll probably meet a lot more of them, eventually. We’re busy people with important things to do.” She told Naruto seriously. The blond nodded in acceptance of this information, just as serious “I’m here cause I had to deliver a message. But I’ll probably stick around a while.” Naruto fidgeted with his glass. “Uhm...What was the message?”

Rukia flapped a hand. Oh, just permission from another friend. Not important.” She clapped her hands together. “What is important is I hear you’re a ninja! Now show me what you’ve got!”

Naruto swallowed nervously.

Ace poked his head out of the doors. “Wait, so what was the message?”

Rukia glanced over her shoulder at him with a small, knowing smirk. “He says “Give him a the childhood I wanted.”“ She answered slyly. Naruto tilted his head in confusion. Him who?

(”Don’t think I forgot you broke one of our own rules!” Rukia declared, kicking Ichigo in the head!)

The first time, Naruto was walked to school by Tsuna. He had woken up late in a panic. Ichigo had already headed off to ‘work’, and Ace and Rukia were still sleeping. Tsuna calmed him down, made him breakfast, and walked him to school, holding his hand. Tsuna had warm, soft hands. Naruto arrived just on time, with no idea how Tsuna managed it. The blond never noticed the stares and whispers.

The next time, Ichigo was walking him and quizzing him for a test that day. This time he did notice the stares and whispers. But Ichigo told him to ignore them and focus on the test. So he did. Naruto didn’t manage to remember all of it, but he managed to barely pass the test.

The time after that, Ace complained loudly on being left out. He carried Naruto on his shoulders to school, much to the blond’s delight. He didn’t even care people stared and whispered.

Rukia was more subtle in her jealousy. She walked him to school, holding his hand. Her hand was kinda  like Tsuna’s hand. Hers were soft like Tsuna’s, but colder. He still liked it. She was serious like Ichigo, but nice like Tsuna. She kept his mind off the stares and whispers.

Soon, it was common to see Naruto with one or more of the teens, walking to and from school. And really, they were surprised it took so long for someone to approach them.

It was a day Tsuna and Ichigo walked Naruto to school. The blond managed to wheedle  Ichigo to carry him on his shoulders, while Tsuna carried his books and read to him from a chapter further than what the class was on. They just reached the gates of the school when another group approached, drawing more stares and whispers.

Narutos face lit up. “Old Man!’ He jumped off Ichigo and scrambled to give the Hokage a hug. The ANBU remained in a defensive and deceptively loose square around the man. The Hokage smiled like a kind grandfather and hugged Naruto back. “Hello Naruto, doing well?” “Mhmm!” Naruto grinned. “Real well! I got a 68 on my last test!” He announced proudly. “Tsuna-nii is real good at explaining!” The Hokage’s eyes flicked to the teens.

“Indeed. Nii-san you say?”

“Mhmm!” Naruto pointed. “That one’s Tsuna-nii! And that’s Ichi-nii! Tsuna-nii’s really nice! Ichi-nii’s grumpy but awesome!” The Hokage chuckled at the description.

“You should probably head to class before you’re late, Naruto.” Tsuna advised.

“Oh yeah.” Naruto detached himself from the Hokage and ran to class. “Bye Old Man! Bye ANBU! Bye Ichi-nii! By Tsuna-nii!” He yelled.

The atmosphere turned serious without the blond. The Old Man folded his arms behind his back. “I’m sure you can understand my concern at four teenagers with no viable story to suddenly take an interest in one of the village’s orphans.”

Ichigo tilted his head as he gave the Hokage a flat stare. “Not really no.”

The Hokage frowned. “It is quite suspicious.” He insisted.

“How? Tsuna countered. “He’s an orphan. No parents to help him, and clearly no friends or other family. Why should a man of your standing care about one orphan in a village that probably has more of them than they should?”

“Naruto lives on his own, that essentially makes him a ward of Konoha and therefore of mine-”

“Then why doesn't he live with you?” Ichigo responded sharply. “Why don’t you do the parenting?”

“Well, I am quite busy, as I’m sure you can realize-”

“Did you know he couldn’t read?” Tsuna asked calmly.

“What?” A new voice cut in faintly. A brunet man with his hair in a high pony tail and a scarred nose had approached. He looked ill at the new information. Tsuna recognized him as Naruto’s teacher based on his description.

“He couldn’t read, at least not well enough to match the level of his peers.” Tsuna continued without remorse. “With no friends to help him, and teachers who could help him, but don’t.” He shot the teacher a pointed look.

Ichigo crossed his arms. “And let’s top that off with a village that obviously hates him and actively sabotages his home life, while also overpricing him in all necessary monetary activities or just flat out banning him from necessary establishments, like the library and store.”

“But please.” Tsuna continued. “Be suspicious of the teenagers that come along and want to take care of him. Because that’s totally logical and what a leader of a village who has actively abused and neglected him should do.”

The Hokage took a deep breath and rubbed his forward. When it was laid out like that, in public no less. “What do you want?”

“To take care of Naruto.” Tsuna said. “To help him be the ninja he wants to be.”

Edited 4/10/2018. Expect a Second part.

[valomile]

Captain’s Log: March 26 - April 5

March 26th:

While I was walking out of the mall at the end of my shift, I winced for a second as I heard somebody wailing at me from a car--it turned out to be Abby and K--Abby yelled from the passenger window, “Val!! We saw a crow!!” and I replied, “Cool, you saw a friend!!” Abby sent me a picture of the crow later.

March 27th:

Before work, the cute asian ?girl who works at Starbucks asked me if my name is pronounced “Valentine” or “Valenteen.” It’s always nice to see ?her.

Abby seemed a little off which activated the old-lizard-brain-threat-based-anxiety in me. Instead of assuming it was about me, I asked her how she was doing; she was scatterbrained from having so much to do.

As I was finishing up, my boss--the one that I suspect is a vampire and once said that a long time ago her regular breakfast was a fudgsicle and a coke at the bus stop--told me about a phone call she just had. Some kid was quite nervous about coming in to shop for his aunt. It went something like:

“I’m a boy.”

“Okay.”

“Is it okay if I shop here?”

“Absolutely.”

“Should I call ahead before I come in?”

“Not at all! Whoever’s in that day will be happy to help you.”

My boss thought it was sad and cute at the same time: sad, for obvious reasons, and cute, because he was very happy it wasn’t a problem for him to come in, and it’s always nice to make somebody happy without actually having to do anything.

March 28th:

I got up not that early, showered, flossed my teeth and put on a pretty great outfit: ripped black denim, a white sleeveless hoodie littered with holes (sleeveless hoodies are #ftm culture), and my olive corduroy jacket with the fuzzy collar that I call the “Rick Grimes Jacket.”

The sky was still miserable but the air was crisper than yesterday. I waited at the bus stop feeling not to hot and not too cold, refreshed, and relieved that my hair might not get too poofy for once even though it was still damp.

Note: While I was getting a mocha at the Tim’s in St. Joe’s, I saw a beautiful person leaving the cafeteria. They had round glasses and bleached hair, and literally turned my head. I was in such a good mood after seeing them that, when I was walking home I didn’t even care when I spilt my coffee on my nice outfit. I just thought, “well, ain’t that how it is.”

March 29th:

At skills group, we each wrote down a thought about P, our group member who passed away suddenly of natural causes, on colourful slips of paper. I noted simply, “she participated,” because she did, more than anyone else in our group at the time.

The group leader’s face flushed red as she read each card. She started to cry as she read the last one sitting in the bottom of the metal bowl she collected them in--it was about how P wanted to be a better mom.

M, the older guy, was also quite emotional about P being gone. I remember thinking, “I wish I could be that way. I can’t even cry when I’m by myself.” D, who doesn’t talk much and looks like a girl version of Ben, commented that it was brave of him to be so vulnerable and that it showed that he is a strong person. I noticed how sad and vulnerable she herself looked when she said that: dark under the eyes, swallowed up by her coat.

March 31st:

I went to Shoppers to pick up my meds. While I was there I bought toiletries and a squishy pink Easter rabbit with creepy little nodules all over it, like the Easter chick K bought for me. Later I found out that it also lights up when you smack it. I sent K an Insta story of it lighting up, with the caption, “more Shoppers bullshit <3.″ She replied, “Val I love it so much! Body Farm the shit out of that!!”

April 2nd:

Entry is a Body Farm drawing of PTSD Boy and a worm mermaid.

April 3rd:

Stock didn’t show up at work until later in my shift, so I just kept up with cleaning up the old shit. When the “Bad Man” eventually came with his boxes, he also brought a friend. “I wonder what’s in this box,” vampire boss remarked, “it’s so heavy and awkward.” Either the Bad Man or his friend replied, “that’s what they said about me in highschool.”

Note: Things that I want to do but don’t while in retail hell include wearing as many bras as possible, tagging my shirt with one hundred sensor tags and walking out of the store, and hanging the longest clothes hanger waterfall ever from the ceiling. All good uses of my time.

April 5th:

When I got on the bus to go down the Mountain, the bus going the opposite direction pulled in to the stop across the street at the very same time. The bus driver on my bus was one that I definitely recognize and he said, “hey!” It was very satisfying.

At group, we got stuck on the concept of “enoughness” for a bit. The group leader drew a scale on the smartboard, with 0% Enough on one side and 100% Enough on the other. L, the one that looks like a brown version of Abby, said that although she doesn’t like her, Amal Clooney is 100% Enough. Sadly, one person offered themselves as 0% Enough. I, being a smartass, said that depending on the context, anyone could be anywhere on the scale, given how abstract and unquantifiable “enoughness” is, and the group resident nodded.

The group leader asked, “does anyone really know what it means to be enough?” and L replied, “I do. You just know.”

[saranel]

Do you think UraYoru has lil parallelism with IchiRuki bond and chemistry ???? 😊😆🐕🎩 🐇🍓✨

Tagging @cocosy who asked the same question

I think they have some big differences in terms of dynamic, seeing as how the personalities and combinations involved are quite dissimilar, but I can definitely see ways in which they are alike.

Fights against Yammy are pretty romantic, I guess?

(more under the cut)

1. Chemistry

Okay, let’s start with the obvious one! There’s a reason both are such popular pairings (the most popular for each character by far), and chemistry has a lot to do with it.

Anyone who’s ever done any creative writing can attest to this, but certain characters simply take over and do the work for you, so to speak, once you become familiar enough with them.  I’ve only ever written the one IchiRuki fic, but when I tried to write dialogue for them, it just… flowed.  Same with Kisuke and Yoruichi.  I may have to tweak and polish to get the final result feeling as IC as I can make it, but the way they interact with each other feels natural and easy to replicate on paper.

And it’s all due to the fact that these two pairs have been set up in canon to work so well together.  Both Ichigo and Kisuke interact with plenty of other characters in the story with fun results, but when they interact with Rukia and Yoruichi respectively?  That’s when we get sparks. 

2. Bond

As a pair with such a long history, Kisuke and Yoruichi have an understandably deep connection.  There’s little doubt in my mind that they ‘clicked’ from the start, whenever that may have been, but there’s no denying that their centuries-spanning relationship contributes to their intimacy (both platonic and romantic).

For earlier adopters of the manga, I imagine the wait from the moment Yoruichi first gave the audience a glimpse of her shared past with Kisuke, to seeing them share panel time again must’ve built a lot of hype.  Kubo went on to be a tease for years concerning those two.  The nature of their relationship was even brought up in Kisuke’s Radio Kon interview, so this was obviously something the readers were wondering about from early on.  

And I think that one of the earliest events of the Arrancar arc was basically Kubo’s response to the audience’s rising curiosity:

Kisuke and Yoruichi were a big mystery to us at that point (NOT TO MENTION ELEVEN YEARS LATER), and Kubo displays some tremendous, economical storytelling here by giving us a succinct, yet rich answer as to what exactly Kisuke and Yoruichi are to each other:

Partners.

In every sense of the word.

I’ve often seen fans talk about the shadier aspects of Kisuke’s character and exclaim, aghast, “Does Yoruichi even know about this?!!!” and it always makes me laugh.  Because honestly, does anyone truly believe there is a single thing Yoruichi doesn’t know about him by this point?

Yoruichi knows exactly who this man is and she accepts him, warts and all. And vice versa. 

They know each other well enough that words are hardly ever needed:

And this is why it astounds me that Ichigo and Rukia reach such a level of understanding in only a few short months.  

Like I said, I firmly believe that Kisuke and Yoruichi were also a pair that developed a deep bond very fast, but given their long-standing relationship, they serve as an example of an unbreakable bond in the manga.  No one in their right mind is going to dispute those two are close, so when it becomes easy to draw a comparison between them and other pairs in the manga, that’s when you know it’s real:

^^^ What she actually says is more along the lines of: “Well I thought I might as well use this piece of crap you made so you wouldn’t whine, but without it, I would’ve dodged just fine!”  which is a tsundere’s way of saying ‘I love you’

And now you know why Kisuke wears that little half-smile in that panel ;)

3. Personalities

A few months ago, I made this super long post about the bond between mentor and student, and in writing it, I was surprised to discover ways in which Kisuke and Ichigo are alike that I hadn’t considered before. 

I like to think that this is one of the reasons Kisuke chose to mentor Ichigo: because he sees everything good about himself in his student, but none of his worse qualities. He sees a version of himself that was once more optimistic and a little less pragmatic, fiercely protective in a way that bordered on carelessness. 

Kisuke was a lot like Ichigo before the events of TBTP and his exile, and though he learned to trust in his subordinates and colleagues, his more sentimental side always shines through when someone he loves is in danger, façade and common sense be damned.  He couldn’t stop himself from following Hiyori, and he couldn’t stop himself from rushing to Yoruichi’s aid, either, instead of joining Ichigo against Yhwach.  

Similarly, Ichigo is the ‘softie’ of the pair to contrast Rukia’s stricter, more militaristic personality.  It’s Ichigo who found a little ‘sister’ to protect in the middle of the damn Hueco Mundo desert, Ichigo who will fiercely defend and show concern for people who were once his enemies:

It’s Kisuke and Ichigo who will drive away even the people they love in order to protect them (it’s worth noting that Rukia also does this at a certain point, but the circumstances are different and I’ll get to why shortly):

And it’s a similarity Kisuke himself remarks upon:

That’s not to say that Rukia and Yoruichi are cold in comparison, or not just as protective; not by a long shot.  But perhaps because they were both raised as nobility, they often fight a visible war with their own feelings:

In Yoruichi’s case, this is far more pronounced, to the point that she appears borderline emotionally stunted at times (see: tsundere).  Yoruichi was most likely taught that emotions are a weakness since she was a child (see: Byakuya, too).  I have this headcanon (last section) that Yoruichi must’ve been a very lonely child before she met Kisuke, carrying the immense weight of a legacy on her shoulders from a very young age.  And if, as I suspect, she had to compete with other candidates to earn the title of Clan Head, she was forced to sacrifice many things about herself in the altar of duty.    

Rukia’s upbringing for the first few years of her life was radically different, but we know for a fact that she was forced to grow up fast, in order to survive on her own in the Rukongai.  When she lost every single friend but Renji, she was the one who kept on pressing forward, the one who suggested entering the Academy.  And in a perfect storm of terrible events, her own feelings of inadequacy were only exacerbated when she was adopted by the Kuchiki Clan and treated so abysmally by Byakuya.  Rukia has been swallowing her own feelings since she could crawl: she swallowed the pain of being alone for a big part of her childhood so she could toughen up and survive, she swallowed the pain of losing her friends, the pain of under-performing in the academy, of being so blatantly ignored by Byakuya, the tremendous guilt over what happened with Kaien. 

What’s fascinating to me is that despite all this pressure, despite their loyalty and recorded sense of duty to the Gotei, both these women are in possession of a heart that always steers them in the right direction when it matters:

At this point, even Rukia has resigned herself to the fact that Ichigo is going to die.  She doesn’t think there’s any chance of survival, and yet instead of begging and pleading for forgiveness, for mercy, she doesn’t hesitate to make matters even worse for herself. She is literally throwing her life away just so she can be there for him in his final moments.

And then, of course, there’s this:

Do I even need to say anything here?

Yoruichi was a woman who had everything: beauty, wealth, status, respect, power, a family, friends, apprentices, and she left it all behind without a moment’s hesitation, when she didn’t even have to.

Both these women seem to struggle with expressing affection at times, but their actions always speak louder than words.  And when it comes to giving their men a swift kick up the ass when they desperately need it, they don’t hesitate even for a second:

4. Bonus: Design

It’s a well-known fact that Kubo’s original concept art for Bleach (then ‘Snipe’) had Ichigo in glasses, with black hair, but he famously changed the design specifically so it would match Rukia’s:

“Before the story was decided a Shingami uniform popped up into my mind. Unlike the design we have now it was like a uniform from Catholic school where they wore a black jacket over a white blouse with a black bowtie… and they carried a huge scissors. I thought that was what Shinigami was like. After that, to match Rukia’s design I changed Ichigo’s character design. Like Rukia had black hair so it’s best if Ichigo didn’t have black hair.”  

– Tite Kubo

And I just… I live for this kind of crap in fiction, because when it’s applied to a pair that already works well on so many different levels, it becomes the icing on the cake:

THEY LOOK SO DAMN GOOD TOGETHER.  

I love that they’re opposites in many ways, but still similar in plenty of others.  There’s always a great deal of love for pairs that are completely opposite, but from personal experience, these kinds of relationships aren’t built to last.  Give me pairs that complement each other, not pairs that are always in disagreement.  Pairs that challenge each other, but can still coexist harmoniously.  Ichigo and Rukia have their moments of tension, there’s spark, there’s passion, but they’re on the same wavelength where it counts.

And I can’t help but feel this also applies to Kisuke and Yoruichi to a T.

Kubo never made a similar declaration about Kisuke and Yoruichi’s design, but looking at this panel*** makes me think that he applied the same design philosophy here as well.

Black hair, fair hair; dark skin, pale skin; black uniform with white obi, white uniform with black obi; black turtleneck, white undershirt.

Even in their color versions, they are created to look harmonious: the pale yellow of Kisuke’s hair is complementary (i.e. opposite on the color wheel) to the purple undertones in Yoruichi’s; her golden eyes are similarly complementary to his bluish grey eyes; green, purple and orange form a color triad:

Yoruichi shows up early enough in the manga (albeit in her cat form) to make me think that Kubo conceived of Kisuke and Yoruichi as a pair from the beginning.  They were designed to look good together, and they do.  

*** Not to mention that in the manga, this panel is framed in black, making it a memory.  And since it’s Yoruichi speaking, this is her memory.  Notice how Kisuke looks on ahead, looking happy and lively, while Yoruichi is the one who’s looking at him, showcasing a gentle, affectionate smile we’ve never seen before or since in the manga.  

She’s always been a happy, laid-back person, but expressions of open, genuine affection are extremely rare from her, and the fact that she looks at him with such pride, smiles at him so softly, is really all the proof I need, tbh.

[newstechreviews]

A child opens a box. He starts jumping and screaming with joy—not an unusual sound in the halls of Mattel’s headquarters where researchers test new toys. But this particular toy is a doll, and it’s rare for parents to bring boys into these research groups to play with dolls. It’s rarer still for a boy to immediately attach himself to one the way Shi’a just did.

An 8-year-old who considers himself gender fluid and whose favorite color is black one week, pink the next, Shi’a sometimes plays with his younger sister’s dolls at home, but they’re “girly, princess stuff,” he says dismissively. This doll, with its prepubescent body and childish features, looks more like him, right down to the wave of bleached blond bangs. “The hair is just like mine,” Shi’a says, swinging his head in tandem with the doll’s. Then he turns to the playmate in the toy-testing room, a 7-year-old girl named Jhase, and asks, “Should I put on the girl hair?” Shi’a fits a long, blond wig on the doll’s head, and suddenly it is no longer an avatar for him, but for his sister.

The doll can be a boy, a girl, neither or both, and Mattel, which calls this the world’s first gender-neutral doll, is hoping its launch on Sept. 25 redefines who gets to play with a toy traditionally deemed taboo for half the world’s kids. Carefully manicured features betray no obvious gender: the lips are not too full, the eyelashes not too long and fluttery, the jaw not too wide. There are no Barbie-like breasts or broad, Ken-like shoulders. Each doll in the Creatable World series looks like a slender 7-year-old with short hair, but each comes with a wig of long, lustrous locks and a wardrobe befitting any fashion-conscious kid: hoodies, sneakers, graphic T-shirts in soothing greens and yellows, along with tutus and camo pants.

Mattel’s first promotional spot for the $29.99 product features a series of kids who go by various pronouns—him, her, them, xem—and the slogan “A doll line designed to keep labels out and invite everyone in.” With this overt nod to trans and nonbinary identities, the company is betting on where it thinks the country is going, even if it means alienating a substantial portion of the population. A Pew Research survey conducted in 2017 showed that while 76% of the public supports parents’ steering girls to toys and activities traditionally associated with boys, only 64% endorse steering boys toward toys and activities associated with girls.

For years, millennial parents have pushed back against ��pink aisles” and “blue aisles” in toy stores in favor of gender-neutral sections, often in the name of exposing girls to the building blocks and chemistry kits that foster interest in science and math but are usually categorized as boys’ toys. Major toy sellers have listened, thanks to the millennial generation’s unrivaled size, trend-setting ability and buying power. Target eliminated gender-specific sections in 2015. The same year, Disney banished “boys” and “girls” labels from its children’s costumes, inviting girls to dress as Captain America and boys as Belle. Last year, Mattel did away with “boys” and “girls” toy divisions in favor of nongendered sections: dolls or cars, for instance.

But the Creatable World doll is something else entirely. Unlike model airplanes or volcano kits, dolls have faces like ours, upon which we can project our own self-image and anxieties. Mattel tested the doll with 250 families across seven states, including 15 children who identify as trans, gender-nonbinary or gender-fluid and rarely see themselves reflected in the media, let alone their playthings. “There were a couple of gender-creative kids who told us that they dreaded Christmas Day because they knew whatever they got under the Christmas tree, it wasn’t made for them,” says Monica Dreger, head of consumer insights at Mattel. “This is the first doll that you can find under the tree and see is for them because it can be for anyone.”

The population of young people who identify as gender-nonbinary is growing. Though no large surveys have been done of kids younger than 10, a recent study by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that 27% of California teens identify as gender-nonconforming. And a 2018 Pew study found 35% of Gen Z-ers (born 1995 to 2015) say they personally know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns like they and them, compared with just 16% of Gen X-ers (born 1965 to 1980). The patterns are projected to continue with Generation Alpha, who were born in 2010 and later. Those kids, along with boys who want to play with dolls and girls who identify as “tomboys” and don’t gravitate toward fashion doll play, are an untapped demographic. Mattel currently has 19% market share in the $8 billion doll industry; gaining just one more point could translate to $80 million in revenue for the company.

Mattel sees an even broader potential for Creatable World beyond gender-creative kids. In testing, the company found that Generation Alpha children chafed at labels and mandates no matter their gender identity: They didn’t want to be told whom a toy was designed for or how to play with it. They were delighted with a doll that had no name and could transform and adapt according to their whims.

Photograph by Angie Smith for TIME. Shi’a, left, and Jhase play with Mattel’s gender-neutral doll

But it’s parents who are making the purchasing decisions, and no adult is going to have a neutral reaction to this doll. In testing groups, several parents felt the “gender-neutral” branding of the toy pushed a political agenda, and some adults objected to the notion of their sons ever playing with dolls. Mattel’s President Richard Dickson insists the doll isn’t intended as a statement. “We’re not in the business of politics,” he says, “and we respect the decision any parent makes around how they raise their kids. Our job is to stimulate imaginations. Our toys are ultimately canvases for cultural conversation, but it’s your conversation, not ours; your opinion, not ours.”

Yet even offering customers that blank canvas will be seen as political in a country where gender-neutral bathrooms still stir protests. Mattel joins a cohort of other companies that have chosen a side in a divisive political climate. Just in the past two years, Nike launched a campaign starring Colin Kaepernick after the NFL dropped him from the league for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism. Airbnb offered free housing to people displaced in the face of President Trump’s travel ban. Dick’s Sporting Goods stopped selling assault-style weapons after the Parkland shooting. All these companies have reported eventual sales bumps after staking their claim in the culture wars.

When pressed with these examples, Dickson admits that staying neutral is not an option if you want to be perceived as an innovator. “I think being a company today, you have to have a combination of social justice along with commerce, and that balance can be tricky,” Dickson says. “Not everyone will appreciate you or agree with you.”

In fact, dissent among boomers, Gen X-ers and even millennials may be a positive sign, according to Mattel’s own researchers. “If all the parents who saw the dolls said, ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for,’ we wouldn’t be doing our jobs,” says Dreger. “That would mean this should have already been in the market. So we’re maybe a little behind where kids are, ahead of where parents are, and that’s exactly where we need to be.”

***

Walking into Mattel’s headquarters, it’s difficult to imagine a gender-neutral world of play. A huge mural depicts some of the company’s most recognizable toys. A classic bouffanted version of Barbie in a black-and-white bathing suit and heels squints down at visitors. In another picture close by, a little boy puffs out his chest and rips open his shirt, Superman style, to reveal a red Mattel logo that reads “Strength and Excellence.” Even a toddler would be able to discern the messaging on how a woman and a man are expected to look from these images.

But the evolution within Mattel is obvious once visitors make their way past the entryway and into the designers’ cubicles. Inspiration boards are covered with pictures of boys in skirts and girls in athletic gear. The most striking images are mashups of popular teen stars: the features of Camila Mendes and Cole Sprouse, who play Veronica and Jughead on Riverdale, combine to create one androgynous face, and Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard, who play the main characters on Stranger Things, blend into a single floppy-haired, genderless person with sharp cheekbones.

In the past decade, toy companies have begun to tear down gender barriers. Smaller businesses like GoldieBlox, which launched in 2012 and builds engineering toys targeting girls, and large companies like Lego, which created the female-focused Lego Friends line the same year, have made STEM toys for girls more mainstream. Small independent toymakers have pushed things further with dollhouses painted green and yellow instead of purple and pink, or cooking kits that are entirely white instead of decorated with flowers or butterflies.

Perhaps it’s surprising, then, that nobody has beaten Mattel to creating a gender-neutral doll. A deep Google search for such a toy turns up baby dolls or strange-looking plush creatures that don’t resemble any human who ever walked this earth. Nothing comes close to the Creatable World doll that Mattel has conjured up over the past two years.

Scientists have debunked the idea that boys are simply born wanting to play with trucks and girls wanting to nurture dolls. A study by psychologists Lisa Dinella and Erica Weisgram, co-editors of Gender Typing of Children’s Toys: How Early Play Experiences Impact Development, found that when wheeled toys were painted white — and thus deprived of all color signaling whether they were “boys’ toys” or “girls’ toys” — girls and boys chose to play with the wheeled toys equally as often. Dinella points out that removing gendered cues from toys facilitates play between boys and girls, crucial practice for when men and women must interact in the workplace and home as adults. She adds that millennials (born 1981 to 1996) have pushed to share child-care responsibilities, and that battle ought to begin in the playroom. “If boys, like girls, are encouraged to learn parental skills with doll play at a young age, you wind up with more nurturing and empathetic fathers,” she says.

And yet creating a doll to appeal to all kids, regardless of gender, remains risky. “There are children who are willing to cross those gender boundaries that society places on toys, but there’s often a cost that comes with crossing those boundaries,” Dinella says. “That cost seems to be bigger for boys than it is for girls.” Some of those social repercussions no doubt can be traced to parental attitudes. In Los Angeles, the majority of the seven parents in an early testing group for Creatable World complained the doll “feels political,” as one mom put it.

“I don’t think my son should be playing with dolls,” she continued. “There’s a difference between a girl with a truck and a boy with a Barbie, and a boy with a Barbie is a no-no.”

The only dad in the group shrugged: “I don’t know. My daughter is friends with a boy who wears dresses. I used to be against that type of thing, but now I’m O.K. with it.”

In videos of those testing groups, many parents fumbled with the language to describe the dolls, confusing gender (how a person identifies) with sexuality (whom a person is attracted to), mixing up gender-neutral (without gender) and trans (a person who has transitioned from one gender to another) and fretting about the mere idea of a boy playing with a doll. A second mom in Los Angeles asked before seeing the doll, “Is it transgender? How am I supposed to have a conversation with my kid about that?” After examining the toy and discussing gender-fluidity with the other parents, she declared, “It’s just too much. Can’t we go back to 1970?”

After the session, Dreger analyzed the parental response. “Adults get so tied up in the descriptions and definitions,” she said. “They jump to this idea of sexuality. They make themselves more anxious about it. For kids it’s much more intuitive.”

Why, exactly, a new generation is rejecting categorizations that society has been using for millennia is up for debate. Eighty-one percent of Gen Z-ers believe that a person shouldn’t be defined by gender, according to a poll by the J. Walter Thompson marketing group. But it’s not just about gender — it’s about authenticity, whether real or perceived. Macho male actors and glam, ultra-feminine actresses have less cultural cache than they used to. Gen Z, with its well-honed radar for anything overly polished or fake-seeming, prefers YouTube confessionals about battling everything from zits to depression. When the New York Times recently asked Generation Z to pick a name for itself, the most-liked response was “Don’t call us anything.”

Perhaps their ideas of gender have expanded under the influence of parents who are beginning to reject practices like gender-reveal parties that box kids in even before they are born. Jenna Karvunidis, who popularized the gender-reveal party, recently revealed on Facebook that her now 10-year-old child is gender-nonconforming and that she regrets holding the party. “She’s telling me ‘Mom, there are many genders. Mom, there’s many different sexualities and all different types,’ and I take her lead on that,” Karvunidis said in an interview with NPR.

Perhaps it’s that a generation of kids raised on video games where they could create their own avatars, with whatever styling and gender they please has helped open up the way kids think about identity. Perhaps the simple fact that more celebrities like Amandla Stenberg and Sam Smith are coming out as gender-nonbinary has made it easier for other young people to do the same. Generation Alpha, the most diverse generation in America in all senses of the term, is likely to grow up with even more liberal views on gender.

“This is a rallying cry of this generation,” says Jess Weiner, a cultural consultant for large companies looking to tap into modern-day markets and navigate issues of gender. “Companies in this day and age have to evolve or else they die, they go away … And part of that evolving is trying to understand things they didn’t prior.”

Photograph by JUCO for TIMEMattel, which calls this the world’s first gender-neutral doll, is hoping its launch redefines who gets to play with a toy traditionally deemed taboo for half the world’s kids.

Mattel isn’t the first company to notice the trend among young shoppers moving away from gender-specific products. Rob Smith—the founder of the Phluid Project, a gender-free clothing store that caters to the LGBTQ+ community in New York City—says several large corporations, including Mattel, have approached him for advice on how to market to the young masses. “I work with a lot of companies who are figuring out that the separation between male and female is less important to young consumers who don’t want to be boxed into anything,” he says. “There’s men’s shampoo and women’s shampoo, but it’s just all shampoo. Companies are starting to investigate that in-between space in order to win over Gen Z.”

Still, Mattel enters a politically charged debate at a precarious moment for corporations in America, where companies that want to gain customer loyalty are being pushed to one aisle or the other. A study from the PR agency Weber Shandwick found 47% of millennials think CEOs should take stances on social issues. Some 51% of millennials surveyed said they are more likely to buy products from companies run by activist CEOs. Now, if you walk into a Patagonia store, you’ll see a sign that reads, “The President stole your land. Take action now.”

Such activism is often born of self-interest: companies want to appeal to liberal customers and retain young employees and their allies. They face little risk by speaking up, but major consequences by sitting on the sidelines. In August, customers boycotted Equinox and SoulCycle—two companies that have aggressively courted the LGBTQ+ community—when reports emerged that their key investor was holding a fundraiser for Trump with ticket prices as high as $250,000. According to data analyses by Second Measure, a month later, SoulCycle attendance is down almost 13%.

Weiner says SoulCycle’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale. “I think businesses of any size now recognize that their consumer base values transparency over any other attribute. They want to know that your board is reflective of your choices, and that’s caught a lot of businesses off guard,” Weiner says. “You can’t talk about gender equity in your commercial and then have no women on your board. They have to be savvy.”

Now, a toy company has chosen to make a product specifically to appeal to the progressive part of the country. Lisa McKnight, the senior vice president of the global doll portfolio at Mattel, says major retailers have been enthusiastic about Creatable World. “They’re excited about the message of inclusivity,” she says. “The world is becoming a more diverse and inclusive place, and some people want to do more to support that.” When pressed on the risks, she lays out the alternative. “Candidly, we ask ourselves if another company were to launch a product line like this, how would we feel? And after that gut check, we are proceeding.”

Photograph by Angie Smith for TIMEThe dolls faces betray no obvious gender: the lips are not too full, the eyelashes not too long and fluttery, the jaw not too wide. Here, the dolls faces are painted at Mattel’s headquarters on September 5.

Mattel will launch Creatable World exclusively online first, in part to better control the message. That includes giving sneak previews to select influencers and leaders in the LGBTQ+ community. Selling the doll in retail stores will be more complicated. For one thing, there’s the question of where to place it in stores to attract the attention of shoppers who might not venture into a doll section. Store clerks will have to be trained in what pronouns to use when talking about the doll and how to handle anxious parents’ questions about it. And then there are practical concerns. Dickson admits the company is ready for the possibility that protests against Creatable World dolls could hurt other Mattel brands, namely Barbie.

Mattel has taken risks before. Most recently, in 2016, it added three new body types to the Barbie doll: tall, petite and, most radically, curvy. It was the first time the company had made a major change to one of the most recognizable brands—and bodies—in the world in the doll’s almost-60-year history. The change helped propel Barbie from a retrograde doll lambasted by feminists for her impossible shape to a modern toy. She is now on the rise. Her sales have been up for the last eight quarters, and she saw a 14% sales bump in the last year alone, according to Mattel.

But Mattel felt late to the game when it changed Barbie’s body: For years the Mindy Kalings and Ashley Grahams of the world had been championing fuller body types. Parents had been demanding change with boycotts and letter campaigns. By contrast, Creatable World feels like uncharted territory. Consider children’s media: Disney hasn’t introduced a major gay character in any of its movies, let alone a gender-nonconforming one. There are no trans superheroes. Even characters whose creators say they are queer—like Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series—haven’t actually come out on the page or the screen. In that pop-culture space, a gender-neutral doll seems radical.

Even though there is no scientific evidence to prove that this is the case, there will be customers who say that even exposing their children to a gender-nonbinary doll through commercials or in a play group would threaten to change their child’s identity. This debate will spin out into sociopolitical questions about whether the types of toys children play with affect their sense of identity and gender.

That conversation, if it comes, is worth it, according to Dickson. “I think if we could have a hand in creating the idea that a boy can play with a perceived girl toy and a girl can play with a perceived boy toy, we would have contributed to a better, more sensitive place of perception in the world today,” he says. “And even more so for the kids that find themselves in that challenging place, if we can make that moment in their life a bit more comfortable, and knowing we created something that makes them feel recognized, that’s a beautiful thing.”

[itsfinancethings]

September 25, 2019 at 12:01AM

A child opens a box. He starts jumping and screaming with joy—not an unusual sound in the halls of Mattel’s headquarters where researchers test new toys. But this particular toy is a doll, and it’s rare for parents to bring boys into these research groups to play with dolls. It’s rarer still for a boy to immediately attach himself to one the way Shi’a just did.

An 8-year-old who considers himself gender fluid and whose favorite color is black one week, pink the next, Shi’a sometimes plays with his younger sister’s dolls at home, but they’re “girly, princess stuff,” he says dismissively. This doll, with its prepubescent body and childish features, looks more like him, right down to the wave of bleached blond bangs. “The hair is just like mine,” Shi’a says, swinging his head in tandem with the doll’s. Then he turns to the playmate in the toy-testing room, a 7-year-old girl named Jhase, and asks, “Should I put on the girl hair?” Shi’a fits a long, blond wig on the doll’s head, and suddenly it is no longer an avatar for him, but for his sister.

The doll can be a boy, a girl, neither or both, and Mattel, which calls this the world’s first gender-neutral doll, is hoping its launch on Sept. 25 redefines who gets to play with a toy traditionally deemed taboo for half the world’s kids. Carefully manicured features betray no obvious gender: the lips are not too full, the eyelashes not too long and fluttery, the jaw not too wide. There are no Barbie-like breasts or broad, Ken-like shoulders. Each doll in the Creatable World series looks like a slender 7-year-old with short hair, but each comes with a wig of long, lustrous locks and a wardrobe befitting any fashion-conscious kid: hoodies, sneakers, graphic T-shirts in soothing greens and yellows, along with tutus and camo pants.

Mattel’s first promotional spot for the $29.99 product features a series of kids who go by various pronouns—him, her, them, xem—and the slogan “A doll line designed to keep labels out and invite everyone in.” With this overt nod to trans and nonbinary identities, the company is betting on where it thinks the country is going, even if it means alienating a substantial portion of the population. A Pew Research survey conducted in 2017 showed that while 76% of the public supports parents’ steering girls to toys and activities traditionally associated with boys, only 64% endorse steering boys toward toys and activities associated with girls.

For years, millennial parents have pushed back against “pink aisles” and “blue aisles” in toy stores in favor of gender-neutral sections, often in the name of exposing girls to the building blocks and chemistry kits that foster interest in science and math but are usually categorized as boys’ toys. Major toy sellers have listened, thanks to the millennial generation’s unrivaled size, trend-setting ability and buying power. Target eliminated gender-specific sections in 2015. The same year, Disney banished “boys” and “girls” labels from its children’s costumes, inviting girls to dress as Captain America and boys as Belle. Last year, Mattel did away with “boys” and “girls” toy divisions in favor of nongendered sections: dolls or cars, for instance.

But the Creatable World doll is something else entirely. Unlike model airplanes or volcano kits, dolls have faces like ours, upon which we can project our own self-image and anxieties. Mattel tested the doll with 250 families across seven states, including 15 children who identify as trans, gender-nonbinary or gender-fluid and rarely see themselves reflected in the media, let alone their playthings. “There were a couple of gender-creative kids who told us that they dreaded Christmas Day because they knew whatever they got under the Christmas tree, it wasn’t made for them,” says Monica Dreger, head of consumer insights at Mattel. “This is the first doll that you can find under the tree and see is for them because it can be for anyone.”

The population of young people who identify as gender-nonbinary is growing. Though no large surveys have been done of kids younger than 10, a recent study by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that 27% of California teens identify as gender-nonconforming. And a 2018 Pew study found 35% of Gen Z-ers (born 1995 to 2015) say they personally know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns like they and them, compared with just 16% of Gen X-ers (born 1965 to 1980). The patterns are projected to continue with Generation Alpha, who were born in 2010 and later. Those kids, along with boys who want to play with dolls and girls who identify as “tomboys” and don’t gravitate toward fashion doll play, are an untapped demographic. Mattel currently has 19% market share in the $8 billion doll industry; gaining just one more point could translate to $80 million in revenue for the company.

Mattel sees an even broader potential for Creatable World beyond gender-creative kids. In testing, the company found that Generation Alpha children chafed at labels and mandates no matter their gender identity: They didn’t want to be told whom a toy was designed for or how to play with it. They were delighted with a doll that had no name and could transform and adapt according to their whims.

Photograph by Angie Smith for TIME. Shi’a, left, and Jhase play with Mattel’s gender-neutral doll

But it’s parents who are making the purchasing decisions, and no adult is going to have a neutral reaction to this doll. In testing groups, several parents felt the “gender-neutral” branding of the toy pushed a political agenda, and some adults objected to the notion of their sons ever playing with dolls. Mattel’s President Richard Dickson insists the doll isn’t intended as a statement. “We’re not in the business of politics,” he says, “and we respect the decision any parent makes around how they raise their kids. Our job is to stimulate imaginations. Our toys are ultimately canvases for cultural conversation, but it’s your conversation, not ours; your opinion, not ours.”

Yet even offering customers that blank canvas will be seen as political in a country where gender-neutral bathrooms still stir protests. Mattel joins a cohort of other companies that have chosen a side in a divisive political climate. Just in the past two years, Nike launched a campaign starring Colin Kaepernick after the NFL dropped him from the league for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism. Airbnb offered free housing to people displaced in the face of President Trump’s travel ban. Dick’s Sporting Goods stopped selling assault-style weapons after the Parkland shooting. All these companies have reported eventual sales bumps after staking their claim in the culture wars.

When pressed with these examples, Dickson admits that staying neutral is not an option if you want to be perceived as an innovator. “I think being a company today, you have to have a combination of social justice along with commerce, and that balance can be tricky,” Dickson says. “Not everyone will appreciate you or agree with you.”

In fact, dissent among boomers, Gen X-ers and even millennials may be a positive sign, according to Mattel’s own researchers. “If all the parents who saw the dolls said, ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for,’ we wouldn’t be doing our jobs,” says Dreger. “That would mean this should have already been in the market. So we’re maybe a little behind where kids are, ahead of where parents are, and that’s exactly where we need to be.”

***

Walking into Mattel’s headquarters, it’s difficult to imagine a gender-neutral world of play. A huge mural depicts some of the company’s most recognizable toys. A classic bouffanted version of Barbie in a black-and-white bathing suit and heels squints down at visitors. In another picture close by, a little boy puffs out his chest and rips open his shirt, Superman style, to reveal a red Mattel logo that reads “Strength and Excellence.” Even a toddler would be able to discern the messaging on how a woman and a man are expected to look from these images.

But the evolution within Mattel is obvious once visitors make their way past the entryway and into the designers’ cubicles. Inspiration boards are covered with pictures of boys in skirts and girls in athletic gear. The most striking images are mashups of popular teen stars: the features of Camila Mendes and Cole Sprouse, who play Veronica and Jughead on Riverdale, combine to create one androgynous face, and Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard, who play the main characters on Stranger Things, blend into a single floppy-haired, genderless person with sharp cheekbones.

In the past decade, toy companies have begun to tear down gender barriers. Smaller businesses like GoldieBlox, which launched in 2012 and builds engineering toys targeting girls, and large companies like Lego, which created the female-focused Lego Friends line the same year, have made STEM toys for girls more mainstream. Small independent toymakers have pushed things further with dollhouses painted green and yellow instead of purple and pink, or cooking kits that are entirely white instead of decorated with flowers or butterflies.

Perhaps it’s surprising, then, that nobody has beaten Mattel to creating a gender-neutral doll. A deep Google search for such a toy turns up baby dolls or strange-looking plush creatures that don’t resemble any human who ever walked this earth. Nothing comes close to the Creatable World doll that Mattel has conjured up over the past two years.

Scientists have debunked the idea that boys are simply born wanting to play with trucks and girls wanting to nurture dolls. A study by psychologists Lisa Dinella and Erica Weisgram, co-editors of Gender Typing of Children’s Toys: How Early Play Experiences Impact Development, found that when wheeled toys were painted white — and thus deprived of all color signaling whether they were “boys’ toys” or “girls’ toys” — girls and boys chose to play with the wheeled toys equally as often. Dinella points out that removing gendered cues from toys facilitates play between boys and girls, crucial practice for when men and women must interact in the workplace and home as adults. She adds that millennials (born 1981 to 1996) have pushed to share child-care responsibilities, and that battle ought to begin in the playroom. “If boys, like girls, are encouraged to learn parental skills with doll play at a young age, you wind up with more nurturing and empathetic fathers,” she says.

And yet creating a doll to appeal to all kids, regardless of gender, remains risky. “There are children who are willing to cross those gender boundaries that society places on toys, but there’s often a cost that comes with crossing those boundaries,” Dinella says. “That cost seems to be bigger for boys than it is for girls.” Some of those social repercussions no doubt can be traced to parental attitudes. In Los Angeles, the majority of the seven parents in an early testing group for Creatable World complained the doll “feels political,” as one mom put it.

“I don’t think my son should be playing with dolls,” she continued. “There’s a difference between a girl with a truck and a boy with a Barbie, and a boy with a Barbie is a no-no.”

The only dad in the group shrugged: “I don’t know. My daughter is friends with a boy who wears dresses. I used to be against that type of thing, but now I’m O.K. with it.”

In videos of those testing groups, many parents fumbled with the language to describe the dolls, confusing gender (how a person identifies) with sexuality (whom a person is attracted to), mixing up gender-neutral (without gender) and trans (a person who has transitioned from one gender to another) and fretting about the mere idea of a boy playing with a doll. A second mom in Los Angeles asked before seeing the doll, “Is it transgender? How am I supposed to have a conversation with my kid about that?” After examining the toy and discussing gender-fluidity with the other parents, she declared, “It’s just too much. Can’t we go back to 1970?”

After the session, Dreger analyzed the parental response. “Adults get so tied up in the descriptions and definitions,” she said. “They jump to this idea of sexuality. They make themselves more anxious about it. For kids it’s much more intuitive.”

Why, exactly, a new generation is rejecting categorizations that society has been using for millennia is up for debate. Eighty-one percent of Gen Z-ers believe that a person shouldn’t be defined by gender, according to a poll by the J. Walter Thompson marketing group. But it’s not just about gender — it’s about authenticity, whether real or perceived. Macho male actors and glam, ultra-feminine actresses have less cultural cache than they used to. Gen Z, with its well-honed radar for anything overly polished or fake-seeming, prefers YouTube confessionals about battling everything from zits to depression. When the New York Times recently asked Generation Z to pick a name for itself, the most-liked response was “Don’t call us anything.”

Perhaps their ideas of gender have expanded under the influence of parents who are beginning to reject practices like gender-reveal parties that box kids in even before they are born. Jenna Karvunidis, who popularized the gender-reveal party, recently revealed on Facebook that her now 10-year-old child is gender-nonconforming and that she regrets holding the party. “She’s telling me ‘Mom, there are many genders. Mom, there’s many different sexualities and all different types,’ and I take her lead on that,” Karvunidis said in an interview with NPR.

Perhaps it’s that a generation of kids raised on video games where they could create their own avatars, with whatever styling and gender they please has helped open up the way kids think about identity. Perhaps the simple fact that more celebrities like Amandla Stenberg and Sam Smith are coming out as gender-nonbinary has made it easier for other young people to do the same. Generation Alpha, the most diverse generation in America in all senses of the term, is likely to grow up with even more liberal views on gender.

“This is a rallying cry of this generation,” says Jess Weiner, a cultural consultant for large companies looking to tap into modern-day markets and navigate issues of gender. “Companies in this day and age have to evolve or else they die, they go away … And part of that evolving is trying to understand things they didn’t prior.”

Photograph by JUCO for TIMEMattel, which calls this the world’s first gender-neutral doll, is hoping its launch redefines who gets to play with a toy traditionally deemed taboo for half the world’s kids.

Mattel isn’t the first company to notice the trend among young shoppers moving away from gender-specific products. Rob Smith—the founder of the Phluid Project, a gender-free clothing store that caters to the LGBTQ+ community in New York City—says several large corporations, including Mattel, have approached him for advice on how to market to the young masses. “I work with a lot of companies who are figuring out that the separation between male and female is less important to young consumers who don’t want to be boxed into anything,” he says. “There’s men’s shampoo and women’s shampoo, but it’s just all shampoo. Companies are starting to investigate that in-between space in order to win over Gen Z.”

Still, Mattel enters a politically charged debate at a precarious moment for corporations in America, where companies that want to gain customer loyalty are being pushed to one aisle or the other. A study from the PR agency Weber Shandwick found 47% of millennials think CEOs should take stances on social issues. Some 51% of millennials surveyed said they are more likely to buy products from companies run by activist CEOs. Now, if you walk into a Patagonia store, you’ll see a sign that reads, “The President stole your land. Take action now.”

Such activism is often born of self-interest: companies want to appeal to liberal customers and retain young employees and their allies. They face little risk by speaking up, but major consequences by sitting on the sidelines. In August, customers boycotted Equinox and SoulCycle—two companies that have aggressively courted the LGBTQ+ community—when reports emerged that their key investor was holding a fundraiser for Trump with ticket prices as high as $250,000. According to data analyses by Second Measure, a month later, SoulCycle attendance is down almost 13%.

Weiner says SoulCycle’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale. “I think businesses of any size now recognize that their consumer base values transparency over any other attribute. They want to know that your board is reflective of your choices, and that’s caught a lot of businesses off guard,” Weiner says. “You can’t talk about gender equity in your commercial and then have no women on your board. They have to be savvy.”

Now, a toy company has chosen to make a product specifically to appeal to the progressive part of the country. Lisa McKnight, the senior vice president of the global doll portfolio at Mattel, says major retailers have been enthusiastic about Creatable World. “They’re excited about the message of inclusivity,” she says. “The world is becoming a more diverse and inclusive place, and some people want to do more to support that.” When pressed on the risks, she lays out the alternative. “Candidly, we ask ourselves if another company were to launch a product line like this, how would we feel? And after that gut check, we are proceeding.”

Photograph by Angie Smith for TIMEThe dolls faces betray no obvious gender: the lips are not too full, the eyelashes not too long and fluttery, the jaw not too wide. Here, the dolls faces are painted at Mattel’s headquarters on September 5.

Mattel will launch Creatable World exclusively online first, in part to better control the message. That includes giving sneak previews to select influencers and leaders in the LGBTQ+ community. Selling the doll in retail stores will be more complicated. For one thing, there’s the question of where to place it in stores to attract the attention of shoppers who might not venture into a doll section. Store clerks will have to be trained in what pronouns to use when talking about the doll and how to handle anxious parents’ questions about it. And then there are practical concerns. Dickson admits the company is ready for the possibility that protests against Creatable World dolls could hurt other Mattel brands, namely Barbie.

Mattel has taken risks before. Most recently, in 2016, it added three new body types to the Barbie doll: tall, petite and, most radically, curvy. It was the first time the company had made a major change to one of the most recognizable brands—and bodies—in the world in the doll’s almost-60-year history. The change helped propel Barbie from a retrograde doll lambasted by feminists for her impossible shape to a modern toy. She is now on the rise. Her sales have been up for the last eight quarters, and she saw a 14% sales bump in the last year alone, according to Mattel.

But Mattel felt late to the game when it changed Barbie’s body: For years the Mindy Kalings and Ashley Grahams of the world had been championing fuller body types. Parents had been demanding change with boycotts and letter campaigns. By contrast, Creatable World feels like uncharted territory. Consider children’s media: Disney hasn’t introduced a major gay character in any of its movies, let alone a gender-nonconforming one. There are no trans superheroes. Even characters whose creators say they are queer—like Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series—haven’t actually come out on the page or the screen. In that pop-culture space, a gender-neutral doll seems radical.

Even though there is no scientific evidence to prove that this is the case, there will be customers who say that even exposing their children to a gender-nonbinary doll through commercials or in a play group would threaten to change their child’s identity. This debate will spin out into sociopolitical questions about whether the types of toys children play with affect their sense of identity and gender.

That conversation, if it comes, is worth it, according to Dickson. “I think if we could have a hand in creating the idea that a boy can play with a perceived girl toy and a girl can play with a perceived boy toy, we would have contributed to a better, more sensitive place of perception in the world today,” he says. “And even more so for the kids that find themselves in that challenging place, if we can make that moment in their life a bit more comfortable, and knowing we created something that makes them feel recognized, that’s a beautiful thing.”

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Complexion Chronicles: Getting to the Root of Colorism in Diverse Families

When Lori Tharps, an African American writer, became the mother of Mixed-race children, she was challenged in ways that not only surprised her, but led her to write the book, Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families. (Available on Amazon and published by Beacon Press.)

This book, called “ground-breaking and urgent,” shines a light on and ultimately seeks solutions to colorism and identity politics in Multiracial families. Lori, an associate professor of journalism at Temple University, is the coauthor of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, and Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain, lives in Philadelphia with her family.

Q: What made you write Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families?

A: My Mixed-Race son was born light. From the moment he entered this world with light skin and straight black hair, my relationship with him was questioned. Most often people thought I was his nanny instead of his mother. By the time my son was two however, his skin had darkened and his hair got kinky, so many of the questions and stares stopped. But then I had another child, another boy. He too was born light, but he never “ripened up” like his brother. Thus, I now was the mother of two boys, one dark, one light and the world would never let me forget it.

As a writer, I am always inspired by the world around me. The process of being a mother to children of different hues (I now have three kids) is challenging in ways I never expected and I soon realized that this particular challenge was being experienced by many others besides me. So, Same Family, Different Colors Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families came from a yearning to connect and understand how families in the United States – families like mine – navigate color differences and skin color politics in a race obsessed world.

Q: What did you want to accomplish by writing about this topic?

A: I wanted to start a conversation about colorism and skin color politics across cultures. I wanted to give people a vehicle to open up about this taboo topic. I wanted people to know that colorism is not a “Black thing.” And I wanted to offer some hope and context to these issues. I think if people know that others struggle with colorism, they won’t feel so alone. I also think that if people understand that privileging whiteness is a form of oppression, not just beauty talk, then we might be able to have some real conversations about just how serious this issue is.

Q: What role has colorism played in your life?

A; I can honestly say as a medium-brown Black person who grew up in very White environments, I never even knew colorism existed until I was in my twenties. That’s not to say I wasn’t aware of an obvious bias towards light skin, but to my knowledge, colorism hasn’t been a major part in my life. As a mother to two boys with different hues of skin, however, I am aware that they will be assessed differently by society simply because of the way they look.

Q: What has made you so passionate about this topic?

A: Because it’s personal. These issues affect me. Plus, in my opinion, colorism, is just so stupid. It’s based on zero scientific evidence and color perception is so subjective. When you break it down, discriminating against somebody because they have one percent less melanin the next guy? It’s just so foolish. And I can’t stand foolishness!

Q: Who did you write this book for?

A: The audience for this book is anybody who sees color. So, that pretty much means everybody. Seriously. Before I started writing, I thought White Americans might not have any context for understanding skin color politics, but I was so wrong. White people come in just as many shades as people of color. They understand discrimination based on skin tone. Just ask some olive-toned White folks.

Q: Why did you focus on how this topic impacts families? A: I specifically chose to write about colorism in the context of the nuclear family so that the stories would be accessible to everyone, even if they themselves haven’t personally experienced colorism. People understand family dynamics, so using the family as a microcosm of society, I believe, makes this concept pertinent to a wide range of people.

Q: What makes this topic so important for Multiracial families?

A: Because we are the most colorful families out there! Plus, the range of genes in our genetic make-up means we never know what our kids are going to look like. It’s literally a crap shoot when two people from different ethnic backgrounds have kids. We need to be ready to normalize difference from the start so our children recognize that their colorful families are normal.

Q: What is it that most Multiracial families don’t understand about colorism?

A: I think most people forget about science when they’re planning a family. I know I did. Even though my husband is a pale Spaniard, I just assumed our children would all be brown-ish with curly hair. That’s not what I got. At all. Humans are hard-wired to assume our offspring are going to be mini versions of ourselves, both physically and mentally. So, when that doesn’t happen, which is so often the case in interracial families, moms and dads really have to figure out how to parent a kid who “racially” might not look like them. And that is really hard. If you are a proud Black woman and your daughter looks White, what identity lessons do you teach? If you are an Asian man and your son looks Black, what lessons do you teach him about who he is? We don’t prepare for this, but we really should.

Q: In conducting the research and interviews, what did you learn that surprised you most?

A: First and foremost, I just learned so much! I have a much deeper understanding of the insidious and global nature of colorism. I understand its history and why and how it continues to penetrate our perceptions of power. I also learned that people, from every ethnic background struggle with the same issues of dismantling a skin-color hierarchy, not just Black people.

Q: What did you learn that impacted the way you interact with your family?

A: Previously, I thought it best not to highlight the fact that my kids were three different colors. I didn’t know that it was my job to normalize difference. Now we talk about those differences a lot more often. And the world didn’t end.

Q: Is there a difference in the way that White people and People of Color understand and process colorism?

A: I really don’t think there is a difference in how White vs POC process colorism. I think the difference is between those who have been the victims of colorism and those who have not.

Q: What do you want readers to take away from the book? A: I hope people read Same Family, Different Colors and realize that colorism is the dumbest thing in the world. I hope they read this book and realize how damaging it is that we prioritize light skin over dark. Like truly damaging. I hope they realize that light skin is not a prize. I hope they realize that we all have an implicit bias towards lighter or darker skin tones and we need to recognize and admit it. Most of all, I hope they read this book and then share it with someone else and start all kinds of conversations about skin color politics. We need to keep talking about it until we solve the problem.

Q: What is the one thing you want the world to know and remember about colorism?

A: Like racism, colorism is an invented concept used to oppress those of a darker hue. Even darker-hued Whites suffer from colorist thinking. It’s such an arbitrary way to divide and judge people with absolutely no basis in fact. We should just be smarter.

Q: What are the most important actions one can take to get rid of colorism?

A: I have to mention that some industries often prop up these hateful “-isms” and the bleaching cream industry/cosmetics industry is a major supporter of colorism. They have a huge stake in making sure women and men the world over believe light skin is the key to success in all aspects of life – from the financial realm to romance. Believe it or not, Asian men are driving the robust growth of the global bleaching cream/skin lightening industry.

Stop buying bleaching and lightening creams; they are just fancy skin lighteners. Stop buying products manufactured by companies who also make skin lighteners and advertise them heavily in countries with majority Black or Brown populations. Do your research.

Speak out when you see blatant cases of skin lightening/photo shop or public figures promoting skin lightening in any way.

If you have a platform of any kind, use it to promote beauty and excellence in all shades. And most importantly, tell every young person you meet that skin color is just packaging.

You can learn more about Lori Tharps by visiting her website. Follow Lori Tharps on Twitter: @LoriTharps

The Complexion Chronicles is a bi-weekly column that explores the raw truths, nuances and complexities of Multiracial life.

Complexion Chronicles: Getting to the Root of Colorism in Diverse Families if you want to check out other voices of the Multiracial Community click here Multiracial Media

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A child opens a box. He starts jumping and screaming with joy—not an unusual sound in the halls of Mattel’s headquarters where researchers test new toys. But this particular toy is a doll, and it’s rare for parents to bring boys into these research groups to play with dolls. It’s rarer still for a boy to immediately attach himself to one the way Shi’a just did.

An 8-year-old who considers himself gender fluid and whose favorite color is black one week, pink the next, Shi’a sometimes plays with his younger sister’s dolls at home, but they’re “girly, princess stuff,” he says dismissively. This doll, with its prepubescent body and childish features, looks more like him, right down to the wave of bleached blond bangs. “The hair is just like mine,” Shi’a says, swinging his head in tandem with the doll’s. Then he turns to the playmate in the toy-testing room, a 7-year-old girl named Jhase, and asks, “Should I put on the girl hair?” Shi’a fits a long, blond wig on the doll’s head, and suddenly it is no longer an avatar for him, but for his sister.

The doll can be a boy, a girl, neither or both, and Mattel, which calls this the world’s first gender-neutral doll, is hoping its launch on Sept. 25 redefines who gets to play with a toy traditionally deemed taboo for half the world’s kids. Carefully manicured features betray no obvious gender: the lips are not too full, the eyelashes not too long and fluttery, the jaw not too wide. There are no Barbie-like breasts or broad, Ken-like shoulders. Each doll in the Creatable World series looks like a slender 7-year-old with short hair, but each comes with a wig of long, lustrous locks and a wardrobe befitting any fashion-conscious kid: hoodies, sneakers, graphic T-shirts in soothing greens and yellows, along with tutus and camo pants.

Mattel’s first promotional spot for the $29.99 product features a series of kids who go by various pronouns—him, her, them, xem—and the slogan “A doll line designed to keep labels out and invite everyone in.” With this overt nod to trans and nonbinary identities, the company is betting on where it thinks the country is going, even if it means alienating a substantial portion of the population. A Pew Research survey conducted in 2017 showed that while 76% of the public supports parents’ steering girls to toys and activities traditionally associated with boys, only 64% endorse steering boys toward toys and activities associated with girls.

For years, millennial parents have pushed back against “pink aisles” and “blue aisles” in toy stores in favor of gender-neutral sections, often in the name of exposing girls to the building blocks and chemistry kits that foster interest in science and math but are usually categorized as boys’ toys. Major toy sellers have listened, thanks to the millennial generation’s unrivaled size, trend-setting ability and buying power. Target eliminated gender-specific sections in 2015. The same year, Disney banished “boys” and “girls” labels from its children’s costumes, inviting girls to dress as Captain America and boys as Belle. Last year, Mattel did away with “boys” and “girls” toy divisions in favor of nongendered sections: dolls or cars, for instance.

But the Creatable World doll is something else entirely. Unlike model airplanes or volcano kits, dolls have faces like ours, upon which we can project our own self-image and anxieties. Mattel tested the doll with 250 families across seven states, including 15 children who identify as trans, gender-nonbinary or gender-fluid and rarely see themselves reflected in the media, let alone their playthings. “There were a couple of gender-creative kids who told us that they dreaded Christmas Day because they knew whatever they got under the Christmas tree, it wasn’t made for them,” says Monica Dreger, head of consumer insights at Mattel. “This is the first doll that you can find under the tree and see is for them because it can be for anyone.”

The population of young people who identify as gender-nonbinary is growing. Though no large surveys have been done of kids younger than 10, a recent study by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that 27% of California teens identify as gender-nonconforming. And a 2018 Pew study found 35% of Gen Z-ers (born 1995 to 2015) say they personally know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns like they and them, compared with just 16% of Gen X-ers (born 1965 to 1980). The patterns are projected to continue with Generation Alpha, who were born in 2010 and later. Those kids, along with boys who want to play with dolls and girls who identify as “tomboys” and don’t gravitate toward fashion doll play, are an untapped demographic. Mattel currently has 19% market share in the $8 billion doll industry; gaining just one more point could translate to $80 million in revenue for the company.

Mattel sees an even broader potential for Creatable World beyond gender-creative kids. In testing, the company found that Generation Alpha children chafed at labels and mandates no matter their gender identity: They didn’t want to be told whom a toy was designed for or how to play with it. They were delighted with a doll that had no name and could transform and adapt according to their whims.

Photograph by Angie Smith for TIME. Shi’a, left, and Jhase play with Mattel’s gender-neutral doll

But it’s parents who are making the purchasing decisions, and no adult is going to have a neutral reaction to this doll. In testing groups, several parents felt the “gender-neutral” branding of the toy pushed a political agenda, and some adults objected to the notion of their sons ever playing with dolls. Mattel’s President Richard Dickson insists the doll isn’t intended as a statement. “We’re not in the business of politics,” he says, “and we respect the decision any parent makes around how they raise their kids. Our job is to stimulate imaginations. Our toys are ultimately canvases for cultural conversation, but it’s your conversation, not ours; your opinion, not ours.”

Yet even offering customers that blank canvas will be seen as political in a country where gender-neutral bathrooms still stir protests. Mattel joins a cohort of other companies that have chosen a side in a divisive political climate. Just in the past two years, Nike launched a campaign starring Colin Kaepernick after the NFL dropped him from the league for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism. Airbnb offered free housing to people displaced in the face of President Trump’s travel ban. Dick’s Sporting Goods stopped selling assault-style weapons after the Parkland shooting. All these companies have reported eventual sales bumps after staking their claim in the culture wars.

When pressed with these examples, Dickson admits that staying neutral is not an option if you want to be perceived as an innovator. “I think being a company today, you have to have a combination of social justice along with commerce, and that balance can be tricky,” Dickson says. “Not everyone will appreciate you or agree with you.”

In fact, dissent among boomers, Gen X-ers and even millennials may be a positive sign, according to Mattel’s own researchers. “If all the parents who saw the dolls said, ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for,’ we wouldn’t be doing our jobs,” says Dreger. “That would mean this should have already been in the market. So we’re maybe a little behind where kids are, ahead of where parents are, and that’s exactly where we need to be.”

***

Walking into Mattel’s headquarters, it’s difficult to imagine a gender-neutral world of play. A huge mural depicts some of the company’s most recognizable toys. A classic bouffanted version of Barbie in a black-and-white bathing suit and heels squints down at visitors. In another picture close by, a little boy puffs out his chest and rips open his shirt, Superman style, to reveal a red Mattel logo that reads “Strength and Excellence.” Even a toddler would be able to discern the messaging on how a woman and a man are expected to look from these images.

But the evolution within Mattel is obvious once visitors make their way past the entryway and into the designers’ cubicles. Inspiration boards are covered with pictures of boys in skirts and girls in athletic gear. The most striking images are mashups of popular teen stars: the features of Camila Mendes and Cole Sprouse, who play Veronica and Jughead on Riverdale, combine to create one androgynous face, and Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard, who play the main characters on Stranger Things, blend into a single floppy-haired, genderless person with sharp cheekbones.

In the past decade, toy companies have begun to tear down gender barriers. Smaller businesses like GoldieBlox, which launched in 2012 and builds engineering toys targeting girls, and large companies like Lego, which created the female-focused Lego Friends line the same year, have made STEM toys for girls more mainstream. Small independent toymakers have pushed things further with dollhouses painted green and yellow instead of purple and pink, or cooking kits that are entirely white instead of decorated with flowers or butterflies.

Perhaps it’s surprising, then, that nobody has beaten Mattel to creating a gender-neutral doll. A deep Google search for such a toy turns up baby dolls or strange-looking plush creatures that don’t resemble any human who ever walked this earth. Nothing comes close to the Creatable World doll that Mattel has conjured up over the past two years.

Scientists have debunked the idea that boys are simply born wanting to play with trucks and girls wanting to nurture dolls. A study by psychologists Lisa Dinella and Erica Weisgram, co-editors of Gender Typing of Children’s Toys: How Early Play Experiences Impact Development, found that when wheeled toys were painted white — and thus deprived of all color signaling whether they were “boys’ toys” or “girls’ toys” — girls and boys chose to play with the wheeled toys equally as often. Dinella points out that removing gendered cues from toys facilitates play between boys and girls, crucial practice for when men and women must interact in the workplace and home as adults. She adds that millennials (born 1981 to 1996) have pushed to share child-care responsibilities, and that battle ought to begin in the playroom. “If boys, like girls, are encouraged to learn parental skills with doll play at a young age, you wind up with more nurturing and empathetic fathers,” she says.

And yet creating a doll to appeal to all kids, regardless of gender, remains risky. “There are children who are willing to cross those gender boundaries that society places on toys, but there’s often a cost that comes with crossing those boundaries,” Dinella says. “That cost seems to be bigger for boys than it is for girls.” Some of those social repercussions no doubt can be traced to parental attitudes. In Los Angeles, the majority of the seven parents in an early testing group for Creatable World complained the doll “feels political,” as one mom put it.

“I don’t think my son should be playing with dolls,” she continued. “There’s a difference between a girl with a truck and a boy with a Barbie, and a boy with a Barbie is a no-no.”

The only dad in the group shrugged: “I don’t know. My daughter is friends with a boy who wears dresses. I used to be against that type of thing, but now I’m O.K. with it.”

In videos of those testing groups, many parents fumbled with the language to describe the dolls, confusing gender (how a person identifies) with sexuality (whom a person is attracted to), mixing up gender-neutral (without gender) and trans (a person who has transitioned from one gender to another) and fretting about the mere idea of a boy playing with a doll. A second mom in Los Angeles asked before seeing the doll, “Is it transgender? How am I supposed to have a conversation with my kid about that?” After examining the toy and discussing gender-fluidity with the other parents, she declared, “It’s just too much. Can’t we go back to 1970?”

After the session, Dreger analyzed the parental response. “Adults get so tied up in the descriptions and definitions,” she said. “They jump to this idea of sexuality. They make themselves more anxious about it. For kids it’s much more intuitive.”

Why, exactly, a new generation is rejecting categorizations that society has been using for millennia is up for debate. Eighty-one percent of Gen Z-ers believe that a person shouldn’t be defined by gender, according to a poll by the J. Walter Thompson marketing group. But it’s not just about gender — it’s about authenticity, whether real or perceived. Macho male actors and glam, ultra-feminine actresses have less cultural cache than they used to. Gen Z, with its well-honed radar for anything overly polished or fake-seeming, prefers YouTube confessionals about battling everything from zits to depression. When the New York Times recently asked Generation Z to pick a name for itself, the most-liked response was “Don’t call us anything.”

Perhaps their ideas of gender have expanded under the influence of parents who are beginning to reject practices like gender-reveal parties that box kids in even before they are born. Jenna Karvunidis, who popularized the gender-reveal party, recently revealed on Facebook that her now 10-year-old child is gender-nonconforming and that she regrets holding the party. “She’s telling me ‘Mom, there are many genders. Mom, there’s many different sexualities and all different types,’ and I take her lead on that,” Karvunidis said in an interview with NPR.

Perhaps it’s that a generation of kids raised on video games where they could create their own avatars, with whatever styling and gender they please has helped open up the way kids think about identity. Perhaps the simple fact that more celebrities like Amandla Stenberg and Sam Smith are coming out as gender-nonbinary has made it easier for other young people to do the same. Generation Alpha, the most diverse generation in America in all senses of the term, is likely to grow up with even more liberal views on gender.

“This is a rallying cry of this generation,” says Jess Weiner, a cultural consultant for large companies looking to tap into modern-day markets and navigate issues of gender. “Companies in this day and age have to evolve or else they die, they go away … And part of that evolving is trying to understand things they didn’t prior.”

Photograph by JUCO for TIMEMattel, which calls this the world’s first gender-neutral doll, is hoping its launch redefines who gets to play with a toy traditionally deemed taboo for half the world’s kids.

Mattel isn’t the first company to notice the trend among young shoppers moving away from gender-specific products. Rob Smith—the founder of the Phluid Project, a gender-free clothing store that caters to the LGBTQ+ community in New York City—says several large corporations, including Mattel, have approached him for advice on how to market to the young masses. “I work with a lot of companies who are figuring out that the separation between male and female is less important to young consumers who don’t want to be boxed into anything,” he says. “There’s men’s shampoo and women’s shampoo, but it’s just all shampoo. Companies are starting to investigate that in-between space in order to win over Gen Z.”

Still, Mattel enters a politically charged debate at a precarious moment for corporations in America, where companies that want to gain customer loyalty are being pushed to one aisle or the other. A study from the PR agency Weber Shandwick found 47% of millennials think CEOs should take stances on social issues. Some 51% of millennials surveyed said they are more likely to buy products from companies run by activist CEOs. Now, if you walk into a Patagonia store, you’ll see a sign that reads, “The President stole your land. Take action now.”

Such activism is often born of self-interest: companies want to appeal to liberal customers and retain young employees and their allies. They face little risk by speaking up, but major consequences by sitting on the sidelines. In August, customers boycotted Equinox and SoulCycle—two companies that have aggressively courted the LGBTQ+ community—when reports emerged that their key investor was holding a fundraiser for Trump with ticket prices as high as $250,000. According to data analyses by Second Measure, a month later, SoulCycle attendance is down almost 13%.

Weiner says SoulCycle’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale. “I think businesses of any size now recognize that their consumer base values transparency over any other attribute. They want to know that your board is reflective of your choices, and that’s caught a lot of businesses off guard,” Weiner says. “You can’t talk about gender equity in your commercial and then have no women on your board. They have to be savvy.”

Now, a toy company has chosen to make a product specifically to appeal to the progressive part of the country. Lisa McKnight, the senior vice president of the global doll portfolio at Mattel, says major retailers have been enthusiastic about Creatable World. “They’re excited about the message of inclusivity,” she says. “The world is becoming a more diverse and inclusive place, and some people want to do more to support that.” When pressed on the risks, she lays out the alternative. “Candidly, we ask ourselves if another company were to launch a product line like this, how would we feel? And after that gut check, we are proceeding.”

Photograph by Angie Smith for TIMEThe dolls faces betray no obvious gender: the lips are not too full, the eyelashes not too long and fluttery, the jaw not too wide. Here, the dolls faces are painted at Mattel’s headquarters on September 5.

Mattel will launch Creatable World exclusively online first, in part to better control the message. That includes giving sneak previews to select influencers and leaders in the LGBTQ+ community. Selling the doll in retail stores will be more complicated. For one thing, there’s the question of where to place it in stores to attract the attention of shoppers who might not venture into a doll section. Store clerks will have to be trained in what pronouns to use when talking about the doll and how to handle anxious parents’ questions about it. And then there are practical concerns. Dickson admits the company is ready for the possibility that protests against Creatable World dolls could hurt other Mattel brands, namely Barbie.

Mattel has taken risks before. Most recently, in 2016, it added three new body types to the Barbie doll: tall, petite and, most radically, curvy. It was the first time the company had made a major change to one of the most recognizable brands—and bodies—in the world in the doll’s almost-60-year history. The change helped propel Barbie from a retrograde doll lambasted by feminists for her impossible shape to a modern toy. She is now on the rise. Her sales have been up for the last eight quarters, and she saw a 14% sales bump in the last year alone, according to Mattel.

But Mattel felt late to the game when it changed Barbie’s body: For years the Mindy Kalings and Ashley Grahams of the world had been championing fuller body types. Parents had been demanding change with boycotts and letter campaigns. By contrast, Creatable World feels like uncharted territory. Consider children’s media: Disney hasn’t introduced a major gay character in any of its movies, let alone a gender-nonconforming one. There are no trans superheroes. Even characters whose creators say they are queer—like Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series—haven’t actually come out on the page or the screen. In that pop-culture space, a gender-neutral doll seems radical.

Even though there is no scientific evidence to prove that this is the case, there will be customers who say that even exposing their children to a gender-nonbinary doll through commercials or in a play group would threaten to change their child’s identity. This debate will spin out into sociopolitical questions about whether the types of toys children play with affect their sense of identity and gender.

That conversation, if it comes, is worth it, according to Dickson. “I think if we could have a hand in creating the idea that a boy can play with a perceived girl toy and a girl can play with a perceived boy toy, we would have contributed to a better, more sensitive place of perception in the world today,” he says. “And even more so for the kids that find themselves in that challenging place, if we can make that moment in their life a bit more comfortable, and knowing we created something that makes them feel recognized, that’s a beautiful thing.”