#better cartoon. you are NOT going to waste your time doing that. it would be such a tragedy. now. remember again! absolutely do NOT follow

[ducktracy]

!!!NEW REVIEW!!!

another short prone to terminal Ben Hardaway-itis, Porky’s Baseball Broadcast is best seen as a bridge between two other Freleng directed shorts based on baseball—1936’s Boulevardier from the Bronx and 1946’s Baseball Bugs, the latter of which derives inspiration from this one. a spot gag cartoon under the duplicitous disguise of a Porky short, Porky serves as a commentary to guide the audience through a variety of baseball themed hijinks.

[thollandneedy]

Princess Leia Situation- Peter Parker

A/n: I always wanted to write this one, since i watched Friends for the first time. I hope you guys enjoy!

Warnings: Sexual but not a smut; Cursing; Awkwardness

Summary: Y/n tries out a sexy costume for Valentines day, but it goes wrong

Don’t forget to share, like, comment and leave your ideas here

Bellah’s Masterlist 🪻

Peter's bedroom door was closed, as he needed privacy at that moment. Peter's mouth descended slowly between wet kisses and hickeys on his girlfriend Y/n's neck, while the girl guided his head down her sensitive body with her hand. The girl could feel the slight pressure between her legs, and her boyfriend's heart beating hard against her chest.

The sexual air was very palpable, but lately Y/n seemed to be preoccupied with routine sex. Apart from the fact that it had already been an argument with her boyfriend, the girl had been searching every day for ways to improve their sexual relationship, but no idea seemed to be enough.

They had tried positions like 69 or a tantric massage, but nothing seemed to please Peter very much. Since they had started having sex in their third month of dating, he had always tried to show off his skills or introduce different objects to stimulate his girlfriend better. The brunette wasn't hard in bed, but he liked to learn more about his tastes every day by trying different things on his own or with Y/n.  St. Valentine's Day was approaching, as was the anticipation of a fuck he would never forget.

"'Babe?" Peter caught the eye of his girlfriend, who seemed to have lost her way.

"Hmm?" Y/n focuses her eyes on Peter, who looks at her with a slight smile.

"What were you thinking?" The boy uses one of his fingers to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, then kisses her. 

"Just about your Valentine's Day present. I want our night to be perfect."

"My darling." Peter looks at her lovingly. "Don't worry about it. It's already going to be perfect because it's you, so whatever you have planned, don't put so much pressure on yourself." 

"I know." The girl let all the air out of her chest as she replied, still staring at the image of her boyfriend with a white blouse clinging to his muscles. 

Fuck, he was so damn hot

"Sorry to break the mood. Can we go back?" The girl asks, receiving a silent affirmation in response.

Peter melted into Y/n's lips once again, bringing one of his hands up to the girl's exposed thighs and squeezing. His fingers were dangerously close to her crotch, causing a sly moan to be uttered. Y/n's body seemed to vibrate at her boyfriend's touch, making her raise her waist in search of the intimate touch she so desperately needed.

"I'll take care of you, love." The brunette slid his fingers between the girl's legs, letting all her worries go to waste when he found that perfect spot. 

(...)

Valentine's Day, and she still hadn't thought of what to do.

It seemed like everyone on earth had an idea for later, but she hadn't planned anything much, since Peter was going to cook for her in his apartment. Y/n woke up mentally yelling at herself, because as well as being in finals week, she hadn't liked the present she'd bought for her boyfriend. The white bag on her desk in front of the window was a reminder.

I shouldn't have bought a Grogu mug, Y/n thinks.

The silence in her house was customary, but she realized that she had woken up two hours before her lesson, giving her time to watch television and eat cereal like a child watching a cartoon. The girl in the pink sweater and slippers got out of bed, headed for the kitchen to prepare her cereal and watch Friends, as she did almost every day. Letting the streaming channel choose a random episode, she ran to the cutlery drawer to get a spoon, and finally settled down between pillows and a warm blanket. 

At the end of the episode, and the cereal, his brain exploded with the best idea he could have come up with. With an optimistic smile, Y/n kissed the television and laughed.

"Rachel Green, you're a genius. I love you" The girl in pajamas says to the screen, and runs to her room to change.

Later that day, in the apartment left by May so that Peter and Y/n could spend the night alone, the girl was tapping her feet frantically. The spaghetti bolognese seemed to go down her throat like water, not even giving her time to chew it properly. The lights were off, with only a few candles that smelled of pine cones. Peter, with a worried frown, asked:

"Are you in a hurry?" The brunette laughs to himself, and can hear Y/n's heart beating faster when she is asked.

Y/n brings her eyes up to his, staring at him with her mouth smeared with red sauce. The girl silently denies it, letting out a laugh covered by a napkin. Peter leans against the table, reaching out with the napkin to wipe the rest of the sauce off his girlfriend. The girl smiles, looking down at her black-heeled feet and long-sleeved burgundy tube dress. 

"You look beautiful today, you know that?" Parker compliments her.

The girl lets out a nervous laugh, looking down at her handbag on the kitchen worktop. 

Oh, fuck me

"You look wonderful as always." Y/n returned the compliment to her boyfriend, who was wearing a black polo shirt.

The student picked up the glass of white wine in front of them, raising it with the intention of making a toast. Coughing dryly, Y/n copied his boyfriend's action, smiling forcedly at him. Parker had never been much of a drinker, but he couldn't deny that wine always helped him calm down before sex, or even put him in the mood when he wasn't.

"Here's to us. May we spend every future Valentine's Day together from now on." The brunette said, causing a shy smile from his girlfriend, who still had her legs flapping under the table.

"To us" The girl clinked glasses, then drank the wine in one swallow.

"Shall we go and exchange gifts?" Peter stood up, picking up the two empty glasses and empty plates from the table covered in a gray cloth with gold details.

There was no escape

"Umm, of course! That's it, let's get to the presents. Of course" The girl straightens her babylissed locks and puts them to one side. 

Peter sits down in front of her at the table once again, but now with a small black and white bag with a red handle. As much as he would have liked to hide the brand of the bag, any woman could recognize that it was from Sephora. 

"I snooped through your Sephora bag, but you had more than 100 items curated and I still haven't been promoted to work in another area with Stark." Y/n laughs. "So, I preferred to give you this" Peter hands the bag to his girlfriend, watching her expectantly as she opens it.

"Peter! I really loved it." Y/n smiles as she finds a highlighter and a Fenty gloss. The girl stood up, walked over to her boyfriend and hugged him.

"Well, yours..." Y/n looked once more at the bag that held the mug. "It's not here right now." Y/n tries to explain.

"You can give it to me later, love. No problem." Peter nods.

"No! It's not that, I need you to wait in your room, so I can give you the present."

Peter makes a curious face, but not for a million years would he turn down a sexual offer as a Valentine's Day present.

"All right" The brunette heads for his room, closing the door and waiting for the gift his girlfriend has prepared. 

Shit! Fuck!" Y/n looked in her other bag for the mysterious gift she had rented from the costume store the afternoon after her last lesson. Stumbling over her own heels, the girl locked herself in the bathroom at the end of the corridor, cursing herself for coming up with such a miraculous idea at the last minute. 

Her hands tried to add a bun to her hair, securing it with bobby pins that fell to the floor because of the cramped room. 

"Shit!" Y/n curses as she loses the clips on the floor, then bangs her head against the sink.

The gold bikini seemed small in relation to her breasts, so she tried to make them fit without them slipping out of the factory. Her hands tried to make them fit, but every now and then, the knot on her back came undone, or one of her breasts slid to the side. When she looked in the mirror, her hair still didn't look the way it needed to. The side bun looked more like a bird's nest than a space bun. Groaning in discontent, Y/n grabbed her cell phone from the closed toilet and tried to do another type of hair that wouldn't cost her soul to make it perfect.

Peter, on the other hand, was undressed on his single bed, trying to find some position to receive his girlfriend. He didn't want to look like a sexy fireman on a calendar cover, but he didn't know where to put his hands, or even if he was going to cover himself with the rumpled sheet on his bed. 

A few minutes later, he was distracted by his cell phone, which was vibrating with Twitter notifications. As long as Y/n was taking, his lack of concentration meant that 15 minutes passed too quickly. Lying on his stomach with a pillow on his chest, the brunette commented on posts and was distracted by memes that appeared on his timeline every five minutes he slid further from the beginning.

"Peter?" Y/n's voice called his name, causing the boy to drop his cell phone and leave the shooting game he was playing on his cell phone.

"Yes?" The brunette lay down on the bed, covering most of his body as if he were already ready for bed, and switched off the main light in the room so that his lamp would be the only source of light in the room filled with posters and books.

Peter's bedroom door slowly opened, revealing his girlfriend's body in the most iconic Star Wars bikini. His girlfriend's breasts were perfectly embraced by the golden part of the bikini, while her waist was covered only by a long red skirt with golden details at the top. Her hair was in a messy braid, but nothing really said how Y/n looked. Even though many of the details were poorly finished, and especially the top was too small for her breasts, Peter looked at her as if she were too perfect for him. The boy cracked a slow smile, and his eyes seemed to pop out of his face with every step closer to his girlfriend.

"Y/n" Peter said, processing the surprise his girlfriend had given him. And without even realizing the movement of his body, one of his hands went to his mouth in an expression of surprise.

He hated it

Oh my God

He hated it or he thinks I'm pathetic

"I know! I know, it was a stupid idea, I'm sorry." The girl closes her eyes in frustration and shame. "I bought you a grogru mug, but I wanted to do something better because you always make everything for me so perfect, and I know how much you like Star Wars and I thought it would be cool to do the same as Rachel did in Friends and" The girl is cut off by a quick kiss.

"I don't have the hots for Princess Leia, but you look stunning." Peter holds both of the girl's hands, looking her up and down.

"Really?"

" Yes." Peter smiles. "And by the way, I broke my favorite mug last night. I really needed another one." The brunette smiles, which is answered by a loose laugh from his girlfriend.

"Aren't I an idiot?" The girl shrugged, looking at herself once again.

"Not at all." Peter replied, using his index finger to lift the chin of the girl, who watched him with innocent eyes. "Are you going to let me put my lightsaber on you now?"

"PETER!"

[cordeliawhohung]

Some Other Life

Simon "Ghost" Riley x fem!Reader - part five of "soft spot"

The Ghost himself is haunted. Not just by the past, but by what could have been. But he's not the only one running.

warnings: canon typical violence, descriptions of bodies/death/all that, reader is getting a bit of back story (so if that's not your thing... sorry ig lmao), angst/hurt/comfort, it's pretty light, though

wc: 5.6k

“Faster! Faster!” 

Joseph always loved airplanes. Whenever he was out with his parents, or stuck in the back seat of the car, he always watched the sky just in case he saw one. Even if it was too high up in the air to make out any details, he would cheer and point and exclaim to his parents, demanding their attention to the aircraft traveling thousands of feet high above them. 

No one knew where his fascination with the big hunks of metal had come from. The boy had never been on an airplane before, and he had never seen one up close. Perhaps it was on some cartoon that they hadn’t taken note of. Either way, for the time being, his Uncle Simon was the closest thing he’d get to flying in one. The man held Joseph up in the air who had his arms spread out to mimic wings. He was a giggling mess, asking his uncle to move him through the air faster and faster. Simon grinned as he looked up at his nephew, supporting the young boy's body with just his hands alone. 

“Go easy on your uncle, Joseph.” 

It was his brother’s voice. Tommy. He sat next to their mother on the couch with the lights of the Christmas tree illuminating the soft strands of his blonde hair. Joseph was a near spitting image of Tommy, and it was almost strange to see. It was like he had been transported back in time, though Joseph was considerably more kind than Tommy had been at that age. 

“It’s alright,” Simon assured his brother as he placed his nephew back on the ground. The boy giggled once more as he kept his arms straight out and took off running around the small living room. “You’re a lucky man, Tom. I’m proud of you.” 

And he was. He really was. Between the addiction and wasting his life away couch surfing, he was turning out to be just like their father. A mindless drunk and druggie that had no care for anyone else around him. But he pulled himself out of that hole. Married a beautiful young lady, and had a dashing little boy. It was the life he always dreamed his brother would have. 

“When are you going to stop saving the world and settle down?” Tommy asked. 

Simon could only smile at the floor as he sat back on his haunches, watching Joseph carefully as he zoomed around the room. When would he settle down? Would he ever? Could he ever? After everything he had seen, after everything he had been through; was a life like that meant for him? 

“Ahh… I couldn’t do better than you and Beth,” Simon admitted softly, unable to look his brother in the eyes. 

“Simon,” a soft voice came from the doorway. 

He looked up from the floor and his eyes found his sister-in-law. A beautiful woman with glowing auburn hair. She smiled kindly at him, like she did with everyone else she was around. Truly the angel that some high being sent to fix up his wreck of a brother. 

“There’s someone at the door for you,” she continued, her hand raising to scratch at her arm. “A yank.” 

Simon raised from his spot on the floor and weaved past Beth as he walked to the front. A figure stood in the door, illuminated by the light of the entryway, but it was wrong. It was smaller than the figure he had expected and it made his stomach churn. The person at the door wasn’t a yank; it was you. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Simon said lowly. It was like a warning; a threat. 

Despite his menacing tone, your cheerful smile was unwavering. It was freezing outside, but you didn’t wear a coat, and it didn’t even look like you were shivering. 

“You were the one who brought me here,” you retorted wittily. 

Your eyes looked past Simon and down the entryway where Joseph still ran around the living room. How long had he been running? He was going to get tired, or trip and hurt himself. But Tommy sat there, next to their mother, still smiling as he watched his son zip around the room. 

“You can’t stop it, you know,” you spoke up, eyes locked onto the scene playing out behind Simon. 

A hand absentmindedly raised to your neck where you played with the bead necklace around your throat. It was the one he had gotten you. Or, well, Johnny had. But you didn’t know him. Had he even met the man yet at that point? No…

But the necklace was wrong. Where was the green? Why was it red? Why was it so close to your throat, constricting so tight it looked like it was choking you? The beads were too big. It was wrong. All wrong. 

“I can. I have to. They didn’t deserve it,” Simon said, and his voice felt weak. Like he was sick. Like he couldn’t get his vocal chords to resonate loud enough to make a difference. 

“No, silly,” you said with a patronizing giggle. “I’m not talking about them.” 

You wouldn’t look at him, and it felt like his chest was about to collapse in on itself. You always looked at him. He wanted you to look at him, needed you to. Desperate hands reached out to cup your cheeks and he tilted your head up, but no matter how firmly he held you, your eyes strayed. Side eyeing the wall next to you, glancing up at the ceiling; your eyes would land anywhere but on him. 

“Look at me,” he said, his grip becoming so firm he felt as if he was about to crush your skull. Still, you refused. “Look at me!” 

“It’s okay,” you assured him, voice soft. The light in your eyes seemed more dull than normal. That shining glimmer that was normally there had been replaced with something else. Some sort of cloudiness he couldn’t peer through. “Ghost, it’s okay. You’re okay.” 

Liar. He wasn’t okay. You were there, standing in front of him, and you shouldn’t be. And you refused to look at him, or say his name, and your eyes were wrong, everything was wrong and he wanted to shatter it. To break it beyond recognition. 

“You can’t hold onto me forever,” you said, voice distorted and slightly gurgling. 

Your eyes finally landed on him. He thought it would make him feel better. He thought it would feel like home, but it didn’t. Instead, he felt sick, like his stomach was twisting in knots, like the breath had been ripped from his lungs, never to return. Why did you look at him like that? Like you were forgiving him? 

“Come on, you have to let go,” Tommy spoke up from behind him with a chuckle. Suddenly, a pair of arms had snaked their way around his torso, constricting his chest so tightly he nearly coughed. “You can’t do this forever, Simon.” 

But his arms weren’t right. That was all wrong, too. Where was his skin? Why was it all just milky bone; a skeleton dragging him backwards? Simon’s hands let go of your face as he went to try and pry the skeletal arms off of him, but it was no use. It was an iron grip. 

“I told you, Ghost,” you spoke up, still standing in front of him. Except now, he really got a good look at you. At the blood soaking your shirt, how it dripped onto the floor in thick, viscous splatters. How had he not noticed before? Had you been like this the whole time? Broken? Bleeding? “You can’t stop it.” 

He tried to scream. He wanted to scream. But when he opened his mouth, nothing would come out but a simple, pathetic push of air. More hands and arms came down on his body, dragging him back, and he was helplessly frozen in place as he watched the blood continue to spill from your body. Disgusting, slimy, rotten bones ripped at his skin while voices cooed in his ear. Tommy’s voice, his mother’s, Vernon’s, Roba’s… they were taunting him. 

“You knew what would happen.” 

“Did you really think it wouldn’t go wrong?”

“Everything you touch ends up like this, kid.” 

“You killed her the moment you entered her life, Simon.” 

When Simon woke up, he could still feel the bony fingers clawing at his chest, ripping the skin from his body, torturing him slowly. His breaths were labored, but not enough to wake you up in your shared bed. A thin layer of sweat covered his body, and the fabric of his sweatpants and the bedsheets clung to his skin, suffocating him. He laid on his back for a moment, staring up blankly at the ceiling as he willed his body and mind to calm. 

It didn’t take him long to settle his nerves, as it was something he was well versed in by that point. He was a soldier, afterall. There was no time for emotions or panic. But once he did calm down, he knew he couldn’t stay in that bed. 

His movements were slow as he twisted himself upwards, setting his feet flat on the floor. Darkness swallowed the room with the only light illuminating the room coming from the hallway through the ajar door. He glanced over his shoulder where he found your sleeping form nestled under the comforter. Vague features of your face shone through the darkness, and he found himself swallowing a harsh lump in his throat at the sight. Reaching behind him, he grabbed the comforter and pulled it up over your shoulders before standing. 

With quiet and careful precision, Simon rummaged through his dresser where he pulled out a shirt to cover his bare skin and a pair of jeans to change into. Once he was fully dressed, he slipped out of the room as he meandered down the hall. The entire apartment was frigid and drafty, as if someone had left a window open all night. He would have chalked it up to just his nerves if it wasn’t for the fact that it got like that every night. Both you and him had a suspicion one of the windows in the living room wasn’t sealed properly. 

He tried not to think too hard about it as he grabbed his boots from the entryway before meandering into the living room. Slumping onto the couch, Simon leaned down to lace up his boots, his fingers knotting the strings expertly. But he had only gotten one boot laced up before he heard the soft patting of your feet from down the hallway. 

“Simon?” you asked as you peered around the corner. Your hair was frizzy with sleep, and you wore nothing but an oversized sleep shirt. He took note of the way you tried not to shiver. “What’re you doing?” 

He made quick work of his second boot before he pushed himself off of the couch. Simon was a tall man, that much was obvious. But whenever he wore his boots it made him appear a good inch or two taller, which only made you feel smaller, especially as he walked up to you. 

“Just going for a walk, love,” he said softly, his voice deep with a heavy tiredness to it. “Didn’t mean to wake you.” 

You shook your head as you stepped closer, closing the gap between the two of you as you leaned into his chest for a hug. He returned the movement in kind, wrapping his arms around you. He hadn’t realized just how tense his body was until you touched him, as if your very presence melted that away from him.

“I wasn’t sleeping. I was trying to, but hadn’t quite gotten there yet.” You leaned back, hands still resting on his chest while his arms stayed firm around your waist. “Mind if I join you?” 

Simon quirked an eyebrow up at you. “It’s freezing out there, sweetheart.” 

“Well, it is December,” you teased while tilting your head to the side. “I don’t mind the cold, though.” 

You made a move to leave, but Simon wouldn’t let you pull away. His arms stayed firmly wrapped around your waist. It wasn’t trapping or demanding, just lonely. His eyes drank you in. Not lustfully, but not like he was admiring your beauty, either. What was that in his eyes? Some hint of distance? A fogginess you couldn’t quite peer through. 

“Everything alright?” you questioned softly. 

Things were quiet between you for another beat as Simon couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from you. Eventually, he gave you a small nod as his hands slowly pulled away from you, fingertips lingering on your waist like he’d never get to touch you again. 

“Yeah. Go get changed. You’ll freeze your arse off wearin’ that,” he said, earning him a playful eye roll from you. 

“Shit, and here I was hoping to get a little frostbitten,” you said sarcastically as you turned around to walk back to your shared room. 

Shared room. Simon was still getting used to saying that. Living with you had easily been one of the best choices he had ever made. Seeing your quirks, sleeping next to you at night, it was all different and something he was trying to adjust to, but welcomed nonetheless. 

As he waited for you, Simon looked around the living room. It was still pretty much the same as the first time he saw it, more or less. Same old sofa, side table, and Ikea lamp he had put together for you. The only major difference was the small Christmas tree that sat on one of the side tables. It was only about a foot and a half tall, and was a pathetic looking thing. Full sized ornaments meant for larger trees weighed down the synthetic branches. It was something out of a cartoon, really. Still, despite the fact the poor tree was crying for help after you placed the ornaments so carefully on it, you insisted that Simon was the one to place the little star at the top. 

“So much for tucking in early,” your voice carried down the hallway as you made it back to the living room. A thick winter jacket swaddled your body in a warm cocoon, and your fingers were busy pulling a beanie over your head and ears as your eyes landed on Simon. “It’s just past ten. We pretty much napped for an hour or so and now we’re gonna be awake all night.” 

It wasn’t long before you slipped into your shoes and you and Simon were out the door. He was right, it was freezing. Not that you were surprised. When night fell over London in winter, the absence of the sun made everything twice as cold, and the moisture in the air from the rain didn’t help either. It wasn’t as bad as it was in November, but you still found you shoving your hands deep into your pockets anyway. 

Despite the fact that the moon was out to play, the Christmas lights adorning the streets nearly drowned out her beauty with their own. Glittering, golden lights hung loosely over the streets and swirled up every lamp post. You found that if you stared at the pavement long enough, you could almost convince yourself it really was daytime. 

Every now and then you would glance up at Simon. With the colder weather, he donned a plain black balaclava and shoved his hood up over his head, almost fully concealing his face. If it was dark outside, he would nearly blend in if it wasn’t for the whites of his eyes. But something was on his mind. It was pretty obvious with his quietness and downturned gaze. But Simon wasn’t a talker. Not about himself, anyway. So you just walked with him in your own silence, enjoying his company, and the lights that surrounded you, hoping your presence offered a bit of comfort. 

Eventually the two of you stumbled upon a square of sorts. A massive Christmas tree stood in the center of it, bundled in a blanket of lights that twisted upwards, entangling in the tree’s thick branches. Someone had taken great care to put giant golden ornaments on the tree not just at the base, but all the way to the very top. An equally large and fitting star sat at the top of the tree, and it was a miracle that the thing wasn’t bending underneath the weight of it. 

A fair amount of people gathered around the tree, and their chatter could be heard echoing down the street. There were several small stands set in random places around the square where people seemed to be exchanging items. Upon taking a closer look, you realized it was a charity event; an organization gathering donations of either money or toys in order to provide presents for children who otherwise wouldn’t be able to get them. They had already gathered a small pile of toys, anything from Barbie dolls to toy airplanes or art kits. 

You and Simon walked through the square, as it was along his normal walking route anyway. Everyone was smiling, and really trying to sell the Christmas joy with their Santa hats and warm wishes. Yet as the two of you walked through, a familiar scent wafted through the air. 

“Is that hot chocolate?” you wondered out loud. 

At your question, Simon looked around, dark eyes carefully scanning the stands until he spotted the one closest to the Christmas tree. An electric soup warmer sat on a table, and volunteers dipped a ladle into the pot to pour rich, thick hot chocolate into styrofoam cups. Apparently all proceeds from that stand went towards the donations too, according to the sign on the side. 

“Want some?” he offered, hand already fishing in his pocket for his wallet. 

You bit your lip in thought for a moment while you looked at the small line of people. It really did smell delightful, even from your distance away from them. There was even a bowl of butter mints to throw into the cup to give the chocolate a hint of peppermint. 

“Maybe,” you said, adjusting your beanie on your head. 

“Come on, then,” he urged as he took a step towards the stand. 

Grinning, you followed along after him, hopping in line behind the other hot chocolate enthusiasts. Without them having to make each cup as ordered, the line moved fairly quickly. Cash would be exchanged, they would talk a little bit about where the money was going towards, they’d get their cup, and they’d go along with the rest of their night. 

Something was different by the time you and Simon got to the front of the line, though. One of the women serving the hot chocolate seemed to recognize you, and even called you by name. A pit of worry instantly formed in Simon’s stomach, as he remembered what happened the last time someone had exclaimed your name like that in a public setting. But this girl seemed nice enough. Her curled blonde hair blew in the slight breeze, but her own winter hat helped to keep it mostly intact. She looked at you with a dazzling smile. He couldn’t help but wonder if she whitened her teeth. 

“Ness?” you asked in disbelief. “God, it’s been a minute!” 

Simon stayed silent as he looked at the other woman at the stand. While you chatted away with someone who he assumed was a friend, he exchanged the needed cash with her for the drink and waited while she dished it out. 

“It’s so good to see you!” Ness exclaimed with a grin. “How long has it been since we last saw each other? Had to have been right before we went to Uni, huh?” 

You nodded your head while your fingers played absentmindedly with the buttons on your coat. “Yeah, it feels like forever ago. How’ve you been?” 

“Good! Things have been great. Graduated, got a job as a social worker. That’s one of the reasons why I’m here, actually. Helping to raise some extra cash for our kids,” she said with a bubbly chuckle. “What about you? How was The States?” 

Though he didn’t say anything about it, Simon couldn’t help but quirk an eyebrow up at that comment. You? In America? 

“Uhm, it was good! Enjoyed it a lot. Liking it much better here back home, though,” you explained, your fingers continuing to twist the buttons on your coat. The sound of the thread struggling was audible.

“Bet your mum’s glad you’re back. I remember her being nearly in tears during graduation. Couldn’t believe her little girl was going off to see the world,” Ness joked. “I remember you were the talk of the school for a bit because of that. Going off to America, I mean.”

The other lady at the stand handed Simon the styrofoam cup, and he muttered a quick thanks before turning his attention towards you. Though you were smiling, the small quiver at the corner of your mouth wasn’t lost on him. 

“How is she, by the way?” Ness continued. 

You coughed. 

“She’s alright,” you said stiffly. “Been a bit since I’ve visited her, though.” 

The button snapped off of your coat. Really, it was amazing it hadn’t broken earlier with how you kept twisting and twisting it. The thread could only take so much before it frays. You looked down at the small item in your hands and swallowed hard as you quickly shoved it into your pocket. 

“Here,” Simon quietly interjected. 

When you turned to look at him, you noticed he held a cup out for you to take, and you looked at it like you had forgotten it was the whole reason you were even over there in the first place. Still, you reached your hand out, the warmth bleeding through the styrofoam and into your fingers. You looked down at it for a long moment before glancing back up at Ness. 

“Well, it was good seeing you again. We won’t hold up your line any longer,” you said politely. 

With a quick and somewhat awkward farewell to your old acquaintance, you and Simon were off on the streets again, leaving the square far behind you. Despite the fact that you had been eyeing up that stand earlier, all you could do was stare down at the hot chocolate in your hands, unable to bring yourself to drink it. It was nice to hold at least, but the thought of tasting it made your mouth feel dry. 

Family wasn’t something Simon talked about. Just wasn’t his thing. Maybe it was to save himself from the heartache, or maybe it was just to try and preserve the only image he had left of them in his mind. Luckily, you never asked him about family; not his parents, if he had siblings, or anything of the sort. But you never offered that information up about yourself, either. It wasn’t his place to know, and certainly not his place to ask, but he couldn’t lie to himself and pretend that he didn’t know something was off about that conversation. 

“America, huh?” he spoke up, shattering the silence that had settled between the two of you. 

A soft scoff of sorts left your lungs where it turned into nothing but frosty air in front of your lips. “Yeah. I… got accepted to Yale on scholarship.” 

Simon hummed. “Never told me you were smart,” he teased. 

This got a laugh out of you, which made both you and him feel a bit better. Still, your eyes were locked onto the drink, unable to bring yourself to taste it. And that fucking button was burning a hole through your pocket. 

“I was there for their medical program, actually,” you explained, but you didn’t sound proud of yourself. “I thought it would have been cool. To go out and see the world. Just get out of here for a bit.” 

“Not what you expected?” he asked. 

“It was… it was amazing,” you said softly. “Just wished I could have stayed there longer.” 

Silence. But there was something there, stirring around. He could feel it. It was like blowing up a balloon and waiting for it to pop, or the painfully long time it took for a hand to connect to a cheek in a slap. 

“She’s dead. My mum,” you finally let out. It wasn’t exactly the sort of confession Simon was expecting from you, but either way, he already knew the words before they left your mouth. “I, uh… didn’t even get to finish a full year in America before she had gotten sick.” 

“You came back to take care of her?” he asked. 

“I was the only one who could,” you said a little bitterly. “She didn’t ask me to. She never would. But I knew she needed someone. So I came back, got a shitty job working in finance. I’d take care of her during the day, and work in a money transfer service place at night. I don’t… regret it or anything but…”

He nodded his head. You didn’t need to explain it. It was an odd sort of guilt that only someone put in that position could feel. Choosing between living your life, and helping someone go through the end of theirs wasn’t an easy decision. It was a sacrifice either way. Something you’d go through and not come out whole. 

“Doesn’t make it any easier,” he finished your sentence. 

“Yeah,” you agreed softly. 

Finally, you forced yourself to take a sip of that damned hot chocolate. It was much better than you had expected. For something they were serving on a semi-large scale, you had thought it would have been plain hot water mixed with cocoa powder. But the flavor was rich, and the drink was thick and filling. Perhaps maybe a tad too sweet. It didn’t make you feel any warmer, though. 

“Christmas was her favorite holiday,” you reminisced. “Decorating the tree was her favorite part. She’d always put up these god awful decorations I had made when I was a kid. Absolutely ugly, but she always insisted that it needed a little love, like all things do. So she’d put on some old Christmas songs and we’d decorate the tree together. She’d always have me climb up the ladder to put the star on. It was my least favorite part. Always thought I was gonna fall off the damn thing, but I knew she wouldn’t be able to do it herself.” 

You sighed as you swirled the cup in your hands while Simon listened to you ramble. Neither of you had ever talked about your families before, especially not in such a way. It felt terrible, but the kind of pain that needed to happen. Like cleaning a wound. 

“It doesn’t feel the same without her. Even though it’s been years, I always think about her. It feels stupid. Missing her so much.”

“It’s not stupid,” Simon assured you. He was quick to give you those words, and he said it with such conviction you almost believed him. But he wasn’t sure who he was saying it for; you, or him? 

Either way, it got a laugh out of you. The sort of laugh that was just air through your nose, but it was something. Instead of answering him right away, you quickly took another sip of your drink. The freezing air had cooled it down considerably, but the warmth of it still remained on your tongue for a fleeting moment. 

“She would have liked you.” 

Now that was comedic. Perhaps the funniest joke you had ever told him. Maybe he would have laughed if his mind wasn’t so fried. Instead, he glanced at you from the corner of his eye before shaking his head. 

“Was she blind?” he asked facetiously. 

“Oh, quit it,” you scolded him. “I’m being serious. She would have adored you.” 

But that wasn’t enough to convince him. For all his cockiness and jokes, Simon was someone who always seemed to think he was unlovable. Despite all the time the two of you had spent together, that thought seemed to eat him alive. It always felt like he was holding you in the palm of his hands, terrified that you’d fly away but refusing to crush you in his grip. 

“I get it. You’re brooding, and quiet, and a bit of a dick. You’re a military man, and not exactly every mother’s dream guy for her daughter. But you…” You paused for a moment to swallow. Why did it feel like this was a confession? “You won't ever admit it, but you’re kind, and some days I feel like you read my thoughts better than I can. For fucks sake you nearly broke Eric’s jaw. You know what my mother would have done if she was there? She would have handed you a bat and asked you to finish the job.” 

A breathy chuckle left your lips in a mist as you grinned down at your feet. Your body was starting to feel fatigued from a mix of the walking, the cold, and lack of sleep, but you pushed forward anyway. 

“You take care of me. You’re good to me. That’s all she ever wanted for me,” you finished. 

Just when he thought he had pushed all those memories and feelings aside, you brought them rushing back to him. Not just the blood, that sour scent of iron staining his skin. Not just the bodies haphazardly fallen onto the floor. But Joseph’s giggles, the shrill sound nearly bursting his ear drums but he would go deaf if it meant he could hear it one more time. The way his brother looked at his wife, how the two of them would share loving touches and grinning whispers. Or his mothers Christmas ham, with the thick honey glaze and that scent that made his stomach constrict with hunger. 

Maybe, in some other life, you could have met them. You could have joined them in their ugly Christmas sweaters, one you would probably bully him into wearing, too. At the table you could sit next to him and he could help dish out your plate. You and Beth would drink wine and maybe get a little carried away, leaving him and Tommy to help you and Beth into one of the spare bedrooms in his mothers house for a nap. Joseph would grin up at the two of you for the model airplane that was gifted to him, and he would promise to help the little tyke put it together. 

But he wasn’t in that life. He was in the one where they were nothing more but burnt carcasses with bullet holes riddling their bodies. The one where his childhood home was nothing more but an empty lot. The one where Christmas always made him feel numb. But he did have you, walking alongside him. You, the woman he got to wake up to in the morning. The woman who never minded his odd quirks. 

Simon had you, and he knew it was more than he deserved. 

“It’s getting late,” he said as his feet dragged to a halt. “And cold. We should head back.” 

He was right. Your hot chocolate had gone rather cold by that point, and your fingers were beginning to go numb holding the cup without gloves. You downed the lukewarm, and oddly thicker, hot chocolate before tossing it into a nearby trash can. The walk back home was quiet, but for some reason a little warmer. Still, as you meandered back through the square, neither you nor Simon spared even a single glance at the tree in the center. 

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

You were going to be late. God, maybe you shouldn’t have gone on that walk with Simon the previous night. No, that was a lie. Obviously you were glad you went on the walk with him. Got a lot off of your chest that night. Still, getting yourself out of bed was a hassle, and you were paying the price for it. 

So you scuttled around the apartment, brushing your hair, throwing clothes on, shoving your feet into shoes, but as you reached the coat rack, you realized your coat wasn’t there. You double checked that you hadn’t just tossed it onto the floor in the bedroom, but it wasn’t there either. Asking Simon was no use as he had already left to do some sort of paperwork on base, so you were on your own, nearly tearing the place apart as you were adamant on not freezing to death walking to work. 

Eventually you caught sight of the damn thing resting on the kitchen counter. It was folded into a neat square. You figured it was something Simon must have done as you had never folded anything so perfectly in your entire life. Either way, you were just glad that you hadn’t misplaced it and lost it. 

Throwing it over your shoulders, you slipped your arms in and began to button it up. Once your fingers reached the bottom button, though, you began to struggle. It felt oddly stiff, like the thread was stronger and less forgiving on that one than it was the others. You looked down to examine it, and you quickly realized that it was the button you had accidentally snapped off the night before. You had shoved it into your pocket, but there it was, firmly attached to your coat. 

You finished buttoning it up with a smile, and you gave the bottom of your coat a firm tug to adjust the fabric on your body. You had snapped it off so easily the night before. Now, it was the strongest button you had on there.

[maybeelse]

Supermarket Stillness

There's a mildly embarrassing shelf tucked away in the back of the supermarket, past the jars of pickled spells and the bottles of five-hour-Stillness. It's part of the store you've always been dimly aware of, but why would you ever need to buy some freeze-dried Purpose?

Well, today you have a reason.

You don't linger in front of it, just grab the first vacuum-sealed bag that looks right and try not to meet the cashier's eye as their hands blur through scanning it and all your other groceries.

You're sure they've seen far worse. It still sucks.

---

Back at home, your house-guest's wings twitch as she stares at the proffered bag.

"Seriously?"

"I just, I thought ... you said you needed some?"

"Yeah, but not this shit. I've tried it before, it's barely better than an MMO." She pauses for a moment, eyes you. "Or methadone."

"... oh."

"Like, I appreciate the thought," she continues as her broken halo sways above her head, "it just wouldn't help me at all. I'm sure it would blow you away, you've never even tried it, have you?"

You shake your head. "No, uh, everyone always said not to."

"Ha! They were probably right. Little thing like you's better off not fucking with that part of of the world."

"... yeah."

After that the conversation trails off into the usual day-to-day space-filling, words that hardly matter and mean less; a pantomime of connection.

You tuck the little vacuum sealed bag in the back of a cupboard (it cost too much to throw away, no matter how useless it is!) and try to forget about it.

---

Time passes, as time is wont to do.

Your house-guest leaves a few weeks later.

It's nothing to do with you, she explains. She's grateful that you were able to give her a place to stay, she's never liked having to rough it with the feral angels. But no matter those fleeting moments stolen in the depths of night, she needs something more than you can give.

She mentions that she's going across the city to live in one of the witch-houses, a place where she thinks she'll find what she needs. You wish her well, of course you do, and then ...

Your little apartment is empty again.

She stops replying to your texts after a few weeks.

That's how it goes, isn't it? There's hardly anything something like you can offer to someone like her. You're just a freeze-dried, mass-produced substitute discarded as soon as something better comes along; a worthless thing sinking deeper into depression's spiral.

A month later you're using a sudden upswing to clean out all the junk that's accumulated in your cupboards—all the almost-empty boxes, the dented cans and expired jars; the detritus of your dreams of Doing Things In The Kitchen—when you stumble across the bag of Purpose again.

It really doesn't look appetizing at all, even with the bright words and little cartoon halo on its label. Really, what were you thinking trying to offer it to a proper angel?

You really should just throw it away, but ...

You pause right before tossing it into the can.

Because, really, it would be a shame to just waste so much money on something you never try, wouldn't it? It would be a Waste, and that's so very close to a sin.

Just one taste couldn't hurt, just the tiniest morsel. Just to know what you've been missing out on. It'll be fine.

[powerpuffobsession]

Am I the only one who feels that Hazbin Hotel's overall vibe is far too naive and upbeat for an adult cartoon about hell and redemption of sinners?

I feel like before writing this cartoon, Vivzie and the other writers should have made a trip to unfortunate areas of the world and watch how the lifestyle there rolls. Because hell is said to be a place of misery, where there is no trust and a lot of hate, both internal and external... Adam is an object of pure unfiltered hartred (both from writers and fandom) because he dares to live in heaven, such a safe and friendly-natured place...

And yet the sinners who happen to be main characters act more like school kids on a field trip (even more carefree than those, lol) - their selfish and sinful motives are so artificial and are brought up only when these characters need to look like a victim, not like criminals who somehow deserved a place in hell

Obviously, it's a manipulative trope to put them in a better light than Heaven and Adam (who is forever silenced by the writers and not allowed to voice any thoughts and reflections other than "hurr durr murder I luuuv murdering and being evil because that's what I was since I was born, even though Lilith and Eve, born literally the same way as me, were innocent victims from the get go, and no logical explanation for that will be provided whatsoever - men bad, women good")

In the light of all that, the sinners are too eager to trust each other and form "da epic powar of friendship" mlp-sonic-style

In a society built on terror, anarchy and survival instincts, no one would ever bother wasting vital power on noticing someone's problems and helping them out. Everyone is focused on their own problems and desires, and that's what drives them to act. Well, the exception may be family members, and even that varies

That's why Husk's intent to comfort Angel after the later attacks him over nothing at the bar, looks really fake, considering the setting. At first I thought that "loser baby" where Husk insults Angel, was some sort of revenge and Husk laughing in the spider's face. But no, it actually turned out to be a comforting song that started their friendship. Husk literally had no motivation to want to help Angel, because he was annoyed by him all the time prior. If there was some kind of basis for their bonding, I would have believed it. But not like this.

And Angel had no reason to actually like that sort of comfort. I get it when your best friend or a family member cheers you up in a harsh way - you know them. And even when coming from people you trust that can hurt. Now imagine a complete stranger doing that to you. That's actually something that shouldn't be done - trying to playfully insult or jester a person you haven't communicated with for a long enough time to gain their trust. And to make this even more strange, Angel at first reacts negatively, but then suddenly snaps to liking that disrespectful way of comforting for no reason at all.

And why did Angel even vent his problems to Husk, a stranger bartender who he'd hurt before. Wasn't he actually afraid of being laughed at and of Husk using his trauma to spread gossip around or something?

Next, Sir Pentious. In the pilot (which is officially part of canon, mind you), he already felt like a joke sunday cartoon villain, but at least he had some edge to him that made him look like a sinner with some dark history. In the series however, he gets nerfed the very moment he steps into the hotel to the point where it's painful to look at

His tendency to abuse his henchmen, his physopathic demeanor, his hartred for Cherri (instead of embarrassing attempts to get blue balled by her), his sincere power hunger - where did all that go? Vanished in a blink of an eye. All that's left of a promising snake demon is a pile of fanservice. So morally unchallenging and harmless that a viewer theoretically simply cannot resist loving him

Well i'm kind disappointed. We don't even know in what way Sir Pentious had to improve, because the plot never focused on his past, his life goals, whatever made him want to lead turf wars and whatever awful things he did in life, what was the point where he started degrading... none of that. He just became a better person after one "sorry song" and acted perfectly innocent ever since and didnt put any effort into getting ready to sacrifice himself for other main characters

The sacrifice... to me it's baffling how fast the sinners, over the course of just 6 months, actually became Charlie's family figures and risked their lives for her hotel. Such pure child-cartoon-styled power of friendship, built in hell, with the aid of a princess who cant even think through her project of helping sinners without bringing them more trouble... realistically, Charlie would have had to fight angels alone (how convenient it is that no main characters died in that chaotic brawl, right?)

And Charlie herself is far too naiive and soft-natured for someone who is free to walk along the streets of hell looking at all the muder, rape and othe horrible stuff that's happening there. Given that she's 200, Charlie had more than enough time to built up her street smarts and guts and learn to be more practical and mindful, instead of staying with the mind of a 12 year old who needs other characters to do everything for her (Lucifer, Vaggie, Alastor) and then get praised for THEIR efforts. That's hell's royalty and our main character?

Aaand since sinners are portrayed as Charlie's "people" (as if they are a nationality), sweet babies who all deserve redemption and are called innocent by Emily (I can't believe how dumb the writers made angels be) - the true essence of exterminatons is never focused on. Adam and his exterminator army are seen in the wrong, like some kind of monsters who terrorize poor souls. However, think about this - child molesters, rapists, torturers, bullies, nazists, actual racists etc died in those exterminations. Doesnt that seem like something a lot of us would want? To have scum like this disappear as revenge for people they have hurt/driven to suicide?

Exterminations are not really an act of racism, bigotry or something like that. They are an excecution of criminals, which a lot of sinners are.

But the black and white writing is trying to conceal that rather prominent highlight of the rotten part of Charlie's plan (not all sinners deserve mercy or redemption). All that was needed was to make exterminators these icky "villains" who luuuv killing and are never willing to listen

All in all, a cartoon that has an ambitious premise that should be driven by psychological reasearch/analysis and dark serious themes... makes me roll my eyes with its cliche use of "power of friendship" and " strictly good main characters, strictly bad villains" tropes. Too bad such beautiful animation was wasted on such juvenile writing that never had any effort put into it

There shouldn't even be any villains or heroes in a setting like this. Allow the lead roles (sinners in hell) do something actually questionable and be unlikable, don't coddle the viewer in fear of making them even the slightest bit uncomfortable. Allow those, who opposes sinmers, have personalities and reasons, not cliche sociopathy for sociopathy's sake to cause forced sympathy for the main characters

Pristine "safe" writing should not have a place in adult cartoons. Or else they will stay a product that'd rather be watched by 7-14 year olds instead of adults (I can't picture a single adult over 22 who would unironically call hazbin hotel a show that tackles realistic issues in an observant way)

[midnightjewel]

BNHA Guys Reacting to Your Kids Cartoons and Movies

Kids shows and movies say some pretty out of pocket things that you usually won’t catch or find funny unless you’re an adult

Characters Included: Izuku and Todoroki

Part 1 Part 2

Izuku

You thankfully were able to get a day off of work after yesterdays battle. You had to chase after a villain who robbed a pharmacy for god only knows what! You were able to take the group down with the help of some of your other coworkers.

To put it simply, you were exhausted after that situation from overuse of your quirk. So of course your agency saw that it was best if you took the day off. Does that mean you relaxed? Of course not! There were things to be done around the house and errands to run. It was better to do it today then waste your weekend with doing household chores.

After a long day you picked your two kids up from school and made your way home. “Okay mommy worked really hard to clean the house today so let’s try to keep it clean!” You tell your kids as you pull into the driveway of the rather large house.

Being married to the number one hero had its perks but having that big house meant it took quite a bit of an effort to clean it.

“Yes mama” they smiled in the back seat not taking their eyes up from their comic book that the eldest son had gotten just last week. You smiled and shook your head, they loved all things superhero’s and it was adorable when they got along like this.

Once the kids got settled in the TV room to watch a movie and do their homework you began to get to work on dinner. Your husband would be home soon and he probably no doubt had a long day. So you figured a nice home cooked meal would be a nice ending to his day.

As you stirred the noodles to make some spaghetti you heard the front door open and close. “Hey honey” you heard your husband come into the kitchen. He hugged you from behind and you smiled “Hello my love” you responded “How was work?” You inquired “Ughhh so tiring” he hid his face in the crook of your neck

“The kids are watching a movie in the tv room, you know they always love to see you” you remind him and he nods “Of course, I love my munchkins” he smiles as he kisses your cheek and makes his way to the next room

Izuku had planned to say hi to the kids and then go shower before dinner but somehow his daughter convinced him to stay and watch the movie with them. They were watching the princess and the frog which is a movie he couldn’t say he was familiar with. Not that he was uncultured in the movie world he just never got around to watching it until now.

As you made your way to the next room to let them know dinner was on the table you couldn’t help but smile at the sight before you. Both of your children were nuzzled up to their father as they watched the princess and the frog.

You loved this movie so it most definitely caught your attention “exactly which is why a woman of your background would’ve had her hands full trying to run a big business like that” they spoke to Tiana and you couldn’t help but scoff at that scene.

“That’s crazy how they treated her” your husband spoke “Let this be a lesson, we never ever treat anybody that way” he informs his children and they nod in understanding

Todoroki

You and Shoto had to leave the twins with a babysitter tonight as it was the annual hero’s gala. It was a very exclusive event that was by invite only for all the great heroes and their spouses. It was a great night and you were able to catch up with all of your old friends from high school.

The night was successful as Shoto had won two awards and you were incredibly proud of him for it. You were sure to remind him that he would get an extra special reward from you later tonight and the blush that crept up in his face was unmatched.

As the two of you pulled into the driveway you hoped the twins hadn’t given the babysitter a hard time with bedtime. You were crossing your fingers that they were sleeping soundly in bed. Shoto parked in the driveway and told you to stay in the car as he turned it off, got out, and walked to your door and held his hand out for you to take it.

As you stepped onto the cement driveway you slightly hissed in pain. Truthfully you hated heels but it was a formal event so you felt as if you had to just suck it up for the night. “Your feet hurt?” He asks you and you nod “Yes, I hate heels” you sigh and he nods in understanding “Then I guess I’ll have to carry you” he chuckles and proceeds to carry you bridal style up the driveway.

“Let me just say, you look absolutely stunning tonight” he smiles down at you “Have I told you that yet?” He questions himself and you giggle “Yes Sho! Once before we left and at least five times while we were there” you reassured him. “Well what’s one more time” he laughs

“That dress” he sighs as he gently puts you down to get his house keys out of his pocket “as much as I love it, it’s going to have to come off here soon” he smirks as he unlocks the door and now it’s your turn to blush. “Let’s just get inside first” you remind him

When you both enter the house it’s quiet aside from the TV that seems to still be playing. You both assumed it was just the babysitter and went to the living room to pay her and tell her she could go home for the night. But much to your surprise the kids were still on the couch. It seems as if they had fallen asleep during the movie.

“Thank you so much Kimmy” you do your best to keep your voice down so that the kids won’t wake up “Here let me pay you extra, the kids love having you here” Shoto pulls $50 out of his wallet “Oh, sir you don’t have to do that” she reassures him “I absolutely do, I don’t know what we could do without you” he explains to her and convinces her to take the extra cash.

“Let me help clean up” she offers referring to the coffee table that was littered with dishes and snack wrappers “Nonsense, it’s late, you should get home” you reassured her

After you both made sure she got in her car safely you shut your front door once more, and decided to go check on the twins.

As you two approached the living room you had your fingers crossed that they would be asleep so the two of you could retreat to your shared bedroom. You and Shoto leaned over the back of the couch to find Yumi, the “youngest” twin and Sadao, the “older” one both tangled up in various blankets and plushies on opposite ends of the couch. The movie they appeared to be watching was Shrek, a familiar favorite of yours.

As you proceeded to pick up the dishes on the coffee table Shoto took the liberty of finding the remote to turn the television off. But as you walked off to the kitchen with the dishes in hand the children awoke.

“Daddy?” Your daughter groggily asked as she looked at her father. “Hello darling” he crouched down and smiled at her “Do you need something? Water?” He asked and she shook her head ‘no’

“When did you get back?” Your son rubbed his eyes and yawned “Just a few minutes ago” Shoto responded and ruffled his snowy white hair

“Would you two like to sleep down here or in your rooms?” He questioned “Dad can you watch just 5 more minutes of the movie with us?” Your daughter asked and he briefly nodded, “Of course, but it is a bit late so just five minutes” he confirmed with them

As you had gotten all of the dishes loaded into the dishwasher, you made your way back to the living room to say goodnight to your once sleeping children. But to your surprise Shoto and the twins were sitting on the couch watching the movie.

It just so happened that the scene where donkey and the dragon are sitting in the pile of gold in the castle. Of course you knew that this movie had plenty of scenes that provided adult humor. But, it seems that your husband wasn’t too familiar with the movie.

“Oh my goodness” he actually looked shocked that this was in a supposed children’s movie. “Well I love you two it is getting late” he laughs and shakes his head. “Goodnight” they both say in unison as they drift off back to sleep on the couch with the television still on.

Before you knew it, you knew it you were swept off of your feet and carried up the staircase. “Shoto!” You giggle as you reach down to open the bedroom door. He made sure to shut it behind you before dropping you to sit on the edge of the bed. He then proceeded to bend down and take your heels off.

“You’re so beautiful” he smiles as he kisses your shin while tossing your heels to the side.

[wewerebornsextuplets]

idk how but you draw in the Oso-san style so good i need to know your secret please

HAHA thank you very much!! im glad you think so :D unfortunately im not very good at explaining how i work, but ill try my best to show what i mean!!

once again this is long as hell. you know the drill at this point

to be honest, half the battle i fight with drawing in the osmt style is just. Looking at it. the ososan art style actually fluctuates pretty wildly depending on what you're looking for, whether that be the mobile games (for instance, tabimatsu and hesowars look nothing alike in terms of style despite both being the same source material), official art and merch, or even the seasons of the show itself!

using ichi as my example here since i draw him the most, but its pretty easy to play spot the difference with the varying styles. even within a specific season you can do this across episodes, especially with season 1!

when i draw, i tend to be a bit sacrilege and use references across different media; usually ill use the show [especially season 2, if only because its a bit more "uniform"] as reference for the actual features and colors/poses/etc, but i like to use hesowars to reference proportions, since they seem to be most consistent there.

SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO NOTE: theres a WEALTH of fanartists that have styles that are INCREDIBLY similar to the show, so be careful to check your sources! these artists deserve credit for their hard work, which they often don't get since their work is reposted under the guise of being official art.

once you've pinned down the exact style you'd like to emulate, and the character you're looking to draw, its really just a matter of finding references, which is pretty easy! you can scrub through different episodes for good angles/shots, or if you're going for one of the game styles the AU wiki has most of the games catalogued to my knowledge. if you're looking to draw an oc, use characters you think they would look similar to in the show. if you really wanna waste your time, though, you can always scrub through crowd scenes in the show to see if any background characters might look like what you're going for; the season 3 episode Mt. Takao comes to mind, there were a lot of cute mob characters there.

using keiko as my example here, you can see that i pulled her features from multiple different characters to get her to look right in the style. with ocs, its important to reference a number of different characters, since the likelihood of a background character being a 1:1 for your little guy is unfortunately pretty low. there WILL, however, be a lot of characters that look KIND of like them. the key is to figure out what parts go where!

to this point, most prominent ososan women have very similar stock anime girl faces with very minor differences, so if youre looking to make a cute girl oc, most of the womens' faces can be used somewhat interchangeably. if you want your cute girl oc to have a more unique face, though, the movie gave us some women with more unique faces in the form of the NEETs' old classmates! theres also no harm in referencing male characters faces in this regard. #butchswag #kiruminikuya

BUT. going back to the assumption that you're drawing a canon character, today I'll be drawing oso for my example

when you're first getting a feel for the style, tracing some of your references can actually be a really great way to acclimate yourself to the characters proportions and features. think of like when you were a kid, and would trace over pictures of pokemon or cartoon characters so you could draw them better. its basically the same principle! this was especially helpful for me when it came to eyes; they vary the most wildly of any other trait that characters have in ososan, so going over the different shapes to get a feel for each of them was very important.

when you trace, though, I recommend doing so a bit more loosely, sort of like if you're doing a photo study for anatomy; block out the basic shapes and do small markers for different features (i.e small lines to denote where the eyes start and and, distance from nose to mouth, things like that), and from there draw the rest on your own.

after long enough you'll get a feel for the basic placement of where everything should go! the eyes and nose are undoubtedly the hardest when it comes to the sextuplets, since they shift around a LOT between games/seasons/etc. so don't feel bad if you have a hard time with that, since there isnt really a "right" answer with how frequently it changes. i still fuck it up all the time myself!

as for some basic tips, heres some stuff i try to keep in mind when drawing them that just helps the finished product look a bit nicer!

when drawing the hair + fringe line, its important to swoop it downwards a little bit; the flat across look Can work, but if you're not careful you risk showing the tops of their eyes, which is um. ew! ick! nast!

when a matsu is facing forward, their hair will usually tend towards one direction to keep the silhouette. in most screenshots i saw, the bowl cut points left! that said, dont be afraid to point rightwards if its better for your specific drawing!

and lastly: USE THE LIQUIFY TOOL. LIBERALLY. i am not joking when i say this has saved my ass so many times, its hard to get the placement right on the facial features and even harder to get everything to LOOK good, so if its available to you i HIGHLY suggest just squishing everything around with a liquify tool until it looks right. you can always go back and correct the blurry lines. its really a life saver

BUT YEAH! i dont know if this was very helpful but i hope you're at least able to gain something from it :-))

[sweethartlullaby]

Are you gonna do a part 4 of the cheating imagine? I don’t mind if they don’t get back together, but I would at least want to see YN happier :(

word count: 515 genre/theme: angst, fluff (?) as always imagine who you would like... find part i herefind part ii herefind part iii here sweethartlullaby ꕤ masterlist

You check your phone…again. Still nothing. 

Maybe he isn’t coming, 

Maybe he forgot. 

He probably did. 

You’ve left the movie tickets in your pocket, knowing well that it’d be crumpled up if you are holding onto it. Most people have gone in and the room feels colder. You feel lonely, standing here in the center, with all the ticket booths facing you. 

Two workers have come to tell you that the movie is about to start but you keep saying you’re waiting for someone. The movie should be starting in about five minutes. 

And he’s still not here.

You feel weird and your legs feel like they’re going to buckle underneath you soon. So you quickly make your way to the bathroom, trying to look as least awkward as possible. 

You fix your hair for about five minutes, changing the way it looks every few seconds. And you keep washing your hands. You check your reflection every time you’re about to leave to make sure you still look decent. When your mind is occupied with whether the shirt is on right, you don’t feel like crying. 

When you finally come out of the bathroom, the lobby is still empty. You take the tickets out of your pocket and stare at them. Out of all the thoughts running in your head, the only one that feels justified is how your money is going to waste. 

You’re about to throw them away when you hear your name being called. Without a second thought, you look up to see him running through the entrance. In his hand, he holds what seems to be a small bouquet of flowers and in the other, a card. 

You blink at him, tickets on the edge of your fingertips.

“I…” He pants.

“It took…longer than ex…pected at the…florist.” He lets out, breathless between each word.

“I’m sorry, I thought I’d make it.” He takes a deep breath and hands you the two objects. The flowers are yellow and just looking at them made you feel a little better inside. The card had a cartoon bear holding a heart at the front. When you opened it, you saw the scribbled words ‘I’m glad we are doing this. I hope you are too.’ in his signature handwriting. 

You smiled, and the urge to cry washed away. 

“I know the movie started a while ago, but I’d still like to watch it with you.” He says. You haven’t seen him like this, shy and timid, in a while. It makes your heart flutter.

You nod.

“I brought some snacks too.” You show him your bag full of treats, illegally brought in from outside. He laughs and you feel his smile is the brightest it has ever been. Then, he does the unexpected.

He wraps his arms around you.

“I know I say this a lot, but I’m really thankful you’re here. I won’t screw this up, I promise.” He whispers into your hair. 

You melt into his embrace before bringing your arms up to hold him. And even though you don’t say it, he knows.

a/n: hello!!!! i've been soooo busy with so many things so i am so sorry for disappearing. but i saw the asks and i had to come back just for a bit to write! i hope you like this. when i read the ask, i was laughing a bit from the excitement (of getting an ask) and also because my page is mostly angst and i rarely end with happy characters haha. regardless, i am open to almost anything so please keep asking! if you have a song recomm for this part or any of the parts at all, please comment or send it over! i always love hearing what you guys thought or felt when reading my writings! thank you so much for asking (they always make my day) and thank you for reading! i apologize for any mistakes and the delay!

[amusedyan]

Safe in the Nest

This isn’t a good idea.

This isn’t a good idea.

No matter how many times he told himself what a terrible idea this was, how it was only gonna blow up in his face, Hawks couldn’t actually stop himself.

His handler had given him the address without hesitation, as if she was waiting for him to ask.

It’s a test, a trap, you’ll be punished.

Maybe.

But the address was real, a real apartment in a real complex in a nice neighborhood.

And as he rode the elevator up, Hawks wondered if it was better or worse that she had made the money last. The check must have been huge, he thought, watching the floors click by.

He hated dragging his feet, but he couldn’t make himself just land on her balcony.

The hallway was brightly lit, decorated modern- it smelled of lemon soap and floor wax.

The hallways in his childhood apartment complex reeked of mold, decay, garbage and burned grease.

Number 1207 was on the left- it faced west. The door was white and clean as a newly washed sheet. His knock was more sure than he was- a steady knock knock knock that stung his knuckles.

He waited, listening to footsteps on the other side. After a moment, he reached up to block the peephole.

Idiot, he snapped at himself. She won’t open the door now.

After all, what could he say?

“Hey Ma, let me in?”

This was a waste of time. Tomie wouldn’t open the door either way.

There was a shadow under the door, and he heard a soft grunt- then the clicks of the locks as they were undone, one by one.

Immediately Hawks stiffened. His mother would never open the door- not when she couldn’t see who was there. No matter how good things might be going for her, he was sure things couldn’t have changed that much.

A trap? 

And then the door cracked, and he froze.

--------

When the knocking had come, you hadn’t thought about it. Mama must have forgotten her keys again. So you’d climbed on your little stepstool and unlocked it- one, two, three!

But she hadn’t come in and scolded you for not looking, so you opened it for her, because maybe the bags were heavy? Except it wasn’t Mama at all, but a man with bright red wings and goggles.

“Hi!” You asked, “who are you?”

He stared at you, and swallowed. “Is this the Ukai residence?” He asked, and his voice sounded kind of funny.

You nodded, “yes,”. 

“Does Ukai Tomie live here?” He asked, and you nodded again, “that’s my mama!” You told him, and he was still staring at you. “It’s rude to stare, you know!” You told him firmly.

The man blinked and nodded too, and he was breathing kind of funny.

“It’s also rude to leave a guest standing on the mat.” His face did something weird, like he was trying not to frown. Or smile.

“...that makes sense.” You opened the door a little further and suddenly you were up in the air- the man was holding you up and it was so fast and you screamed. He flinched and put you down.

“I’m sorry, I just...” He swallowed again and he was staring again. “How long did Tomie say she was gonna be gone?”

“Um...” You looked at the clock and frowned. “I don’t know.” He frowned, and you wondered if you did something bad. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything kid. It’s about what I thought.” His smile was sad. “My name is Keigo. What’s yours?”

You told him, grinning, and even showed him how to write it. Keigo was very impressed that you knew how to spell.

Keigo turned out to be super cool- he wanted to know everything about you; what games you liked, your favorite shows, your toys. You showed him your room and he was super impressed with the potted plant that you had named Ukki. And he was so nice and so friendly that after he made you both snacks you told him about those weird tests they gave you awhile ago.

“They told Mama I was quirkless,” you admitted, and you thought that Mama might have been happy about it, but the men in the white coats weren’t, and Keigo got really quiet.

Then your cartoons came on, and you sat down to watch. Keigo sat awhile too, but then he went into your room for awhile.

Mama came home before dinner was done, though, and Keigo had packed up your clothes because he said that if Mama said it was okay, you were gonna have a sleepover at his house.

“What have I told you about using the stove?” Mama called from the hallway, and you heard the crinkle of bags. Keigo ruffled your hair and smiled at you, just as Mama rounded the corner, and her mouth fell open.

“Mama, this is Keigo, he’s a guest!” You shoveled dinner into your mouth.

Keigo smiled. “Sit down for dinner, Tomie. We need to talk.”

[warsamongthestars]

ONTO TBB - POST-SERIES

I am going to need to sit down, and go through all of the show, and I hope to (energy providing). Mostly to make a review, or series of reviews. Produce a few what-ifs. Someone might want the fanfic inspiration.

( I hope, I'm not going to promise because I am bad at energy, and I'm not going to promise things until I can actually deliver. So let's just say I want to do it, but we'll see if it happens or not. )

Look, I still dont' want to rain on people's parades this close after the Finale, so read at ye own risk. Lots of critical down below.

I would call the TBBshow a waste of time. But its not a waste of time, the reason being is that, I have dedicated an enormous amount of energy, to tearing this show into pieces. It soothes and enflames the rage that lies in my heart.

( Remember, I do love Star Wars, and I love the Clone Wars. And Anger and Fury are what happens when something you love, or something you cherish and care about, gets hurt very badly. And I find that the TBBshow is both the weapon and wound. But its a weapon I can turn against itself. And it is a wound I can remedy. )

Now for my bit thoughts on the finale, and bit thoughts on the show itself.

They're just big bits, because when I want to really tear into the little issues of this show, I will go molecule-by-molecule, atom-by-atom when I do.

I am going to be the fucking Saturday morning cartoon villain, with suit and cape and evil laughs, about it.

So...

One). Fifth Enhanced Clone and Omega wasn't it, remember? You remember that from the first Finale?

I remember. The show didn't.

I 'd like to think it was Emerie. It points it that. But even now, I have doubts.

Because what was the point.

They oh so twittered about Emerie, and that didn't end up much--and I'd know because the biggest TBB Fans here haven't talked jack about her. That's how good her character is.

Just listen to the silence and all those crickets.

Two). Remember how this was supposed to be the Republic becoming the Empire?

They didn't act like it, did they. You could place these scenes in the Clone Wars, and y'know, it would not only still make sense--it would be more pointed on how the Republic had always been the Empire underneath.

Because you don't get the evil of an entire instellar Empire out of nowhere. That just doesn't happen in stories that have any depth.

If it does happen, you're reading a kindergarten story then.

( ... Frankly the kindergarten story would prolly tell it better, honestly. )

THree). They killed Tech, and CX-2 meant nothing.

You can't tell me they didn't have time, because they spent 3 seasons bullshiting and then at the last minute went "Oh shit, we're supposed to have a plot! Uhhh THORW SOMETHING AT THE WALL AND WE'LL SEE WHAT STICKS"

They knew full well how much fucking time they were alloted, because TV time always allows at least 3 seasons unless you have fucked up that royally.

It is by Contract. They Knew, and they still Bullshitted.

They murdered Tech for Shock Value. Oh someone is going to say "But George Lucas didn't Like Tech--so it made sense to kill him!"

I know they're going to say it.

If they didn't want Tech, then they shouldn't have created him. If you didn't want the Apple Pie, you shouldn't have made the damn Universe. When you introduce a vital character, a main character, people are going to care about them, especially upon character development.

So when you kill that character for Shock value, and then made that value meaningless by lack of conversation and perceived impact, then all you've done is spat in the face of everyone who cared about him--who might've identified with him--or felt that they needed a fictional example of grief--or fucking hells, just WANTED TO HAVE CHARACTER IN YOUR FUCKING CHARACTERS.

Tech was the point where my fires started. He was the point, where I realized, there was no hope in this show. Can't repair the character dynamics, can't do anything of significance now.

And by their refusal to allow the characters communication and grief, they stamped Tech into the dirt by the heels of their imperial boots.

CX-2 had all this development, for fuck all. What was the point of the CXs if they weren't going to do jack with them.

Four). Spent an awful lot of time shitting on other ideas.

Every possible guest character that could appear, did appear, and it took away from the story. Worse, it took away from Authors, and Game Makers, and spat all over them with a "Haha this is OUR CANON NOW!"

Cid lost her appeal. Because it was an episodic format, and the series did not stick to an episodic format. Would've been a great minor villian, too fucking bad though.

Phee was a phenomenal character (even if I don't care for Indiana Jones / Lara Croft archetypes), and she didn't go anywhere. She stood nearby Tech, gave him a pet name, and that's it. They wasted her.

( I would say that the shippers went too hog wild--but shippers have always been hogwild. To say that they're overdoing it, means they've been underdoing it. They will go hogwild for "Nameless Twi'lek in Background". That's the beauty of the shippers. Keep shipping folks, the Empire can't take all of us out. )

They killed Scorch. Scorch, from Republic Commando, is dead now. You remember that happy go lucky guy? The one who wanted to go back for Sev?

( HE WAS MY PARTY MEMBER, GODS DAMN IT. I PLAYED THE GAME WITH HIM. )

Well. He can never go back now.

( From the bottom of my gamer heart--I felt like this was the greatest Fuck You of all time. Tech's death was already unforgivable, but this? This is as if you just executed Carth Onasi in front of me. )

( The only way they could've done worse, is if they had made a poor copycat of the deathstar as some star destroyer with a rip off of Darth Revan except he's like, the grandson of Darth Vader or something. And he like, murdered a lot of Jedi again, because they wanted to rip off the prequels... )

Why is VENTRESS EVEN THERE.

Why did we need KANAN AGAIN!?

Oh look, Rex, and... Clones... Fucking wonder what's going on there. I can't imagine that the sequel of the Clone Wars would have anything to do with Clone Wars maining Clones. Can't imagine why they might've been important for the Star Wars audience. They're just CLONES AREN'T THEY ITS NOT LIKE THE AFTER EFFECTS OF THE CLONE WARS WOULD HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH CLONES.

Completely dissed the Chip plot, for victim blaming, and all the victims paid for it. In fact, they even villianized the victims and punished them dearly. Through execution, or dismemberment.

And they just straight up murdered every villian they could get away with, for... no reason. It wasn't satisfying. It was bullshit.

The sheer audacity to fuck Echo up. He was our Audience Surrogate, on par with Ahsoka, and THIS IS WHAT THEY DID TO HIM? Made him a bit player in his own show?

Only gave Fives, one of the most important people of Echo's life, a mere throwaway mention.

Not gonna get into what they did to me boys the Bad Batch, because we'd be here all day. And I've got other things to do.

And finally, because this made me rage so fucking hard.

FIVES) The Spoken Message "Now we can be who we want to be!"

...

ARE YOU FUCKING FOR REAL. WHAT IS THIS SHOW'S MAJOR MALFUNCTION.

The Entire Point of the Bad Batch, was that they were already being who they wanted to be or who they were, since their introduction in Clone Wars. They were Unique Nonstandard Clone with Unique Abilities and excellent character (In the Clone Wars)

And suddenly the show wants to say "Oh by they weren't really being themselves--"

They didn't set that the fuck up. The TBBShow, spent the last 3 years fucking around in the ether. They had plenty of time, and they squandered it, and then they rushed jobbed like kids on final group project day.

If the "Good Soldiers Follow Orders" was the set up, then that is akin to saying "Oh don't worry about being drugged into doing something you didn't want to do, you can learn from the experience of having all your choices forced from you and against your consent, and be better from it!"

We can even take in-story!

They spent, so much time, never once talking to one another, about one another, setting up jack all. In fact, vast majority either followed Hunter's lead or ignored him, and left the Camera--there has never been any "Oh we can be who we want".

Unless you're Omega. And y'know, I tots watched a show called the Bad Batch, because I was totally clearly there for an original character not apart of the Bad Batch.

At the end of all it, I have to ask... what... story were they trying to tell exactly?

The show didn't dedicate itself to anything. It spent so long avoiding dedication that it robbed all impact, and left a constant sense of tension in every episode.

It didn't dedicate to a story. Oh it dedicated to the Rush, the New AND SHINY CONTENT--but that's it. Honestly, if they wanted the feeling of rush, they should've just dedicated themselves to Youtube Shorts, Vines and Tiktok.

I'm not here for the rush of content. I'm here for a fucking story, with characters. I have games that are decades old, I have the original Han Solo Trilogy, far before that fucking film.

And I go back, and I reread and replay, because I fucking love them. And that's what you do with something you love, you return to it constantly, its not a Fad that passes once the rush stops.

But I can only go back to the TBBshow, to take what little is good, And destroy the rest, and plant garden above the ashes.

(There are things good in this show that I want to drag out into the light and into better things. And I know, plenty of people have found that good too, and they have done the same. The sheer dedication of interpretation is a beautiful thing. )

There is no Replay Value here. By all accounts, they turned this into a throw-away show, that I guarantee, in about six months, half the fandom is going to be gone from because there's no substance here.

( I'd be shocked, but also not shocked, if it isn't, but I'm not hopeful here. )

And I'll guarantee to you, my audience, that I am going to be here with a never ending coal-fire in my chest.

Because as a lifetime Star Wars fan, from birth and unto where ever the end of my journey is, it has me--it can have my Love, or it can have my Never Ending Rage, but it has me regardless.

ADDENDUM

There are other things, believe me, I am not finished, but I wanted to get the big points down and out, to air my grievances. Twas an emotional response of sheer fucking unbelievable rage. The fires of mustafar would mean nothing in comparison to fires that lie inside. ( i'm in my darth vader arc. )

This hasn't been a waste of time... But fuck it was a Waste of Story and a waste of characters, and I will never forgive the TBBshow, for the fact that the Clone Wars lead me to love, and the TBBshow lead me to antagonizing rage.

The TBBshow story should've been a tragedy. That would've set some things to rights. If they had just, killed the team, and finally made the Empire into the tragic but villianous threat it really is, then that would've at least, made up for somethings. It wouldn't have fixed the show--S1 and S2 are still bad and no amount of good endings will fix that--but it would've been an anchor for it.

[enhappifier]

So, for the past two months, I’ve been dedicating some of my time into binge-watching more shows, as I wanted to expand my interests. I’ve decided to finally watch every episode of Wander Over Yonder, Gravity Falls, Amphibia, and The Owl House, and I gotta admit—these four are now some of my new favorite shows from Disney Channel (along with The Ghost and Molly McGee and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, of course). These shows not only have incredible animation, lovable characters, and heart-touching storylines—but they have also inspired many people as well as myself.

I’ve always had trouble trying to identify myself as a person. I’m still unsure of my future as I don’t know who I really want to be yet or what I truly want to do, and for the longest time I’ve lacked motivation and confidence to keep trying to figure that out.

Although, as I was finishing these shows, I’ve realized how much I can truly relate with the characters. For example, Anne Boonchuy from Amphibia stated that she’s always taken the easy route because it was, well, easy, and I feel like I can relate to that a lot. I felt like I was holding in a lot of wasted potential from being so afraid to challenge myself. Like Luz Noceda from The Owl House, I was really afraid of making mistakes. I was afraid I wasn’t good enough for anyone and that I was letting the people I care about down. And like Lunella Lafayette from Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, I sometimes felt like I didn’t have what it took to do the things others would expect me to do, and it felt like I was under a lot of pressure.

But these shows (and many more) have given me encouragement to keep going, to never give up and to be proud of what you’ve already accomplished so far. Making mistakes is part of what makes you human. It’s how you grow and develop. It’s how you become the best version of yourself. As a certain blue zbornak would say, realizing your mistakes is the first step to making things right.

I don’t know if I’m ready for change, or if I ever will be, but I’m hoping that in the future, I’ll learn to embrace it and use it to become a better person.

I would like to thank all the wonderful, hard-working people that have worked on these awesome shows for everything you’ve done for us. You’ve played such a big role in shaping us into the people we all are today. Animation and cartoons are truly inspiring to me, and I don’t know what I’d do without them. ❤️

[diy-fire-water-pups]

Can yall send me encouragement. I recently relapsed in self in*ury and I’m struggling trying to stay clean again

Dude, why would someone do that?!? It makes no sense!!!

Some people feel bad to the point they think they deserve nothing but pain, or something like that... I read about it when I was studying possible cases I could maybe be called for as an EMT.

Still doesn't make any sense to me, that's so untrue!! Why would someone believe that?? I mean, not even bad people deserve anything like that. You shouldn't mistreat yourself like that, Anon!

I don't even know what to say. That caught me completely off guard. I'm not able to process this.

Well... What I can say for now is that it's not worth it. If you're already suffering due to something else, when you do that you just add even more to it, instead of making things better for yourself.

First of all, you need professional help in person, there's not much I could possibly do from over here and I'm just a first responder EMT, not an actual psychologist or psychiatrist. Second, a wrong move and you'll just create even more trouble for yourself and everyone else around you, especially the ones you care about and those who care about you, which is certainly not what you're looking for. Keep that in mind. If not for yourself, then don't do it for them.

Last, but not least, leave everything that can be harmful absolutely out of your reach. Make it all very hard to get, with as many obstacles as you can ever come up with, like it's the most cursed ancient artifact ever created, which no one should not even take a quick glance at. Just the huge trouble and long time spent to get to it should give enough time for your mind to distract with anything else and give up in the meantime. Work some laziness to your favor!

There are alternatives which won't get you in trouble and will keep you clean, if it comes down to it. Play with some ice cubes, or scribble angry or sad stuff down in a paper, then rip it and throw it away. Writing down all your thoughts and then getting rid of the paper with them is good too. It's all psychological play, and you can play this to your favor as well.

Always remember: Your body is yours, you own your thoughts, not the other way around! This is the only body you have, you can't move to a different one if it breaks down, so take good care of it!

Go for a walk around the block where you live. It doesn't need to be a fancy walk in a fancy place like in the movies, just around the block is already something! Sit under the sun for a while - don't forget a sunscreen! Feel the warmth of it. Stand in the rain for a couple minutes and then have a nice warm shower, wrap yourself in comfy blankets and go watch some cartoon that makes you happy. Forget complicated series or movies, go for the easy to understand stuff, preferably something you've already watched before, because as you already know how it ends, you won't work yourself into anxiety by wondering what's coming next. Your brain needs some down time too! Get yourself a tasty snack. Stop checking the news about the world for a while, most of them are currently tragic and you need some "you time", get it? Call a friend over to just spend time together, play a light game (avoid online games with toxic players), or go over to someone else's house. Changing the air you breathe and seeing different things is always good for getting those thoughts out of your mind too, as it'll get you distracted.

There are just lots of simple things you can do and enjoy, rather than wasting time with that. Sometimes even just sleeping through an entire day is a good start, just don't stay in bed forever, otherwise it might go up to a depressing level! Make good and necessary things easier for yourself, like leaving a water bottle somewhere next to your bed or desk, so you don't need to go all the way to the kitchen for some water. Gotta stay hydrated or your brain will start eating itself out!

Wait, that actually happens?

Sort of. The cells shrink when they're dehydrated and it causes damage to cognitive functions, memory loss, brain fog, stuff like that. You can't think clearly, nor make clear decisions at all. And no, Zuma, salt water doesn't count as keeping yourself hydrated, before you even ask. The salt absorbs the water in your body and the effects will be even worse if you don't get yourself some fresh water constantly.

No wonder Ryder always made me carry a big water bottle in my hovercraft. Anyway, I hope you'll feel better soon, Anon. I don't know if it's any help at all, but I like to remember that after every bad storm, there's always a rainbow to appreciate. And even when the storm takes a very long time to pass, you can remember that above it, there's no storm at all, it's all peace and quiet above the stormy clouds. It's like that one song... "Behind the clouds, the sun is shining! Believe me, even though you can't quite make it out! You may not see the silver lining, but there's a big blue sky waiting right behind the clouds!"

Wow, you got Zuma to sing just like that. Anyway, same here, I hope you'll get help and recover well. That's totally messed up... Please don't do that ever again, stop lying to yourself to such a point!

[corellianhounds]

Criticism of Ahsoka Tano’s Character and Role in Season 2 of The Mandalorian

Word Count: 2.8k

—

I’m largely indifferent to and more critical of Ahsoka Tano’s live action appearances in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett than favorable. The short reason for why is that my introduction to her was the second season of Mando with “The Jedi” episode, and your audience only cares about Gandalf the White if they already know Gandalf the Grey.

The longer reason is that I don’t think she’s utilized well for Mando’s story. When I saw her for the first time I only knew through cultural osmosis that she was in TCW and was Anakin’s padawan. That’s it. I don’t know anything about her character and that episode doesn’t give me much to go on. I haven’t seen The Clone Wars or Rebels cartoons and I think it’s unrealistic to automatically expect your audience to know who this person is when this show was introduced as a standalone story with brand new characters, simply set in the world of Star Wars. There’s no indication that I should have seen two unrelated cartoon shows before going into The Mandalorian, so if you’re going to have this pre-established character from another medium, she should be written as if you’re introducing her for the first time. Don’t rely on what part of your audience knows about her, introduce her to this story as a new character because she’s entirely new to your main character (who in this show is also the audience’s proxy for new information). You shouldn’t be relying on our hypothetical prior knowledge for us to trust her or know where she’s coming from regarding the Jedi as a whole.

If your intention as the show runner is for your target audience to be people who have consumed select pieces/all of Star Wars media in the past forty years so you don’t have to do a lot of (or better) exposition, you have to be okay with automatically limiting your audience and likely having casual viewers (of which Mando had many) drop off when you start writing in characters without having more thorough storytelling establishing their place in this show. From a casual viewer’s standpoint, her character isn’t all that interesting, forthcoming, or fleshed out in “The Jedi,” at least not enough for me to care about the fact she’s apparently the main character of that episode since the central conflict/physical plot doesn’t affect or pertain to Mando’s overarching plot or character development, and the Thrawn name drop meant nothing to the audience regarding Mando’s story that far and— in the rest of two seasons of his own show and his participation in TBoBF— has yielded nothing as a result. What the episode did was introduce Ahsoka so she could get her own show and it largely wasted Mando’s episode and his involvement with Ahsoka for that entire season. We’re not given any indication that the information he gets could only come from her and not another Force user, and at that point the show would have been better served with an original character not constrained by or beholden to an established (apparently canon?) history or the episode’s focus on her.

Bo-Katan comes back at the end of Season 2 and is involved with the overarching plot. Cobb Vanth was apparently from the comics but I didn’t need to have read them for his character to make sense in the Krayt dragon episode because they DID lay out his character well enough I didn’t need prior context. Objectively, “The Jedi” episode is poorly written as an episodic installment of The Mandalorian, the script and characters on their own aren’t all that compelling, the music is what really indicates I’m supposed to care about Ahsoka/her decisions, and if you look at it from the POV of knowing Mando’s story with no knowledge of Ahsoka, she’s kind of wishy-washy and vague in her response to testing/training the kid and her explanation as to WHY she has reservations. I don’t find her character admirable when she refuses to go through with their deal in the end, especially since it’s apparent she has bigger priorities she should have been clear about from the beginning.

I know her being clear about her priorities would negate Mando’s purpose in staying there and the episode would follow him off to wherever he went next, but keeping Mando there for her for the whole episode only for her to go back on their deal makes her seem deceitful and not much different than Bo-Katan, who also used him for her own gain and changed the terms of their deal partway through the job once Mando was already working for her. The only difference is in their deliveries and personalities. The showrunners relied too heavily on the audience not wanting Mando to separate from Grogu to be what kept us from protesting about/criticizing Ahsoka’s decision; audience emotions are irrelevant to what will make a stronger story that will have more impact in the end. We don’t have to like every character who’s introduced, and our opinions about them can change over time as the story progresses and we see them develop.

If you don’t want me to think negatively of Ahsoka but you’re dead set on these circumstances being what keeps these two characters together for the length of the episode, she can’t have her mission take priority in the end. It’s that plain and simple. If she was never going to train the kid, she needed to be upfront about it AND you need to explain to Mando— somebody who has zero clue about the Jedi code or Force powers or the caution against attachment and it’s reason for existing in the first place— why the kid seeing him as his father is relevant to Jedi training at all. You can’t just say “You're like a father to him. I cannot train him,” you have to explain to Mando what being a Jedi™ means. The Jedi were peacekeepers specifically trained to uphold and defend what was best for the greater good and to serve as protectors of other people, meaning the choice to train the child as a Jedi would mean Grogu dedicating his life to this schooling, and that people with strong emotional personal attachments tend to have a harder time separating themselves from their loved ones and tend to prioritize those loved ones over everybody else, meaning they’re less likely to be good at doing what the Jedi specifically were called to do. That doesn’t mean the kid or anybody with similar tendencies is ‘bad,’ it means they shouldn’t dedicate their life to being a Jedi™. There’s more than one way to learn how to use the Force.

Does that ruin the chance of Mando staying there on Corvus because he would logically move on, meaning we as the audience wouldn’t see Ahsoka’s Cool Samurai Episode™? Yeah, but those are the circumstances Favreau and Filoni came up with, so either you change the story or change Ahsoka’s character or change Mando’s role in the Calodan conflict. Kill your darlings and write a better story. It’s not the Ahsoka show, it’s Mando’s.

However, the episode isn’t unfixable.

One of my biggest complaints with Season 2 is that it failed to establish/drive Mando’s character with the inner motivation of why he’s bringing the kid to a Jedi in the first place: yes, the Armorer tasked him with returning the child to the Jedi so that the boy had the chance of being raised by people like him who may already know him and would understand how to raise him to control the powers he has, but that’s the external reason. The whole premise of the show is predicated on the child being in danger and Mando wanting him to be safe. The Armorer says in the finale for Season 1 that the boy is too small and young to be trained as a Mandalorian, but given the fact he’s capable of powers that allow him to do these incredible things, there’s a possibility he can be trained to defend himself in other ways. The point of giving the child to a Jedi is that he’s given the cultural upbringing closest to what he would know as his own (an ideal the Armorer, Mando, and Mandalorian culture as a whole would understand the importance and value of), and so that he can learn to protect himself.

“The Heiress” should have established that as Mando’s internal motivation, and “The Jedi” should have been where the character voiced it because by this point in the season he should be at his most desperate. He’s finally found a Jedi and she’s reluctant to take him. Ahsoka’s his last lead. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is only one way for Din and Grogu’s story to end, and it’s with one of them dying before the other. The child does not age the same way humans do. He needs to be trained to use his powers so that he can defend himself when he’s alone. His proximity to Din makes him a target by association because Din simply being a Mandalorian invites conflict. Even when the Empire isn’t after the kid, the child is constantly in danger. Even if Din lives to a remarkably old age, the boy may still be a child by his species’ reckoning. Who’s going to take care of him once Mando is gone? What happens if they’re separated now and the child is in danger?

That’s a very real and compelling motivation for Din to want to give the child away for the child’s own good, permanently if he has to. If giving the boy to a stranger means he will be safe and taught how to keep himself safe, that’s the sacrifice Din is willing to make. That’s the kind of sacrifice any good parent with empirical evidence backing up their reasoning would understand, and Din has seen that evidence in spades.

We should see Din being scared for the child. That worry fuels his mission and it should stoke his anger and frustration when that mission continues to be foiled by dead ends (Cobb Vanth not being a true Mandalorian, therefore having no contact or information to give him), side journeys that cost him time, resources, safety, and possessions (the Frog Lady’s contact for information contingent on traveling sublight, which garners them the attention of the law), and personal conflicts and compromises (Bo-Katan’s heist, deception, and their culture clash). “The Siege” re-establishes that the child is still in the greatest possible danger he could be as a target of the Empire, and Mando is following his last flimsy lead to a Jedi who may or may not exist or even be on the planet he’s been sent to, considering the person who gave him that intel deceived him once already before giving it to him.

Mando should have been desperate for Ahsoka’s help. If she refuses to train the kid, he (as far as he’s aware) has no other options. If Ahsoka were honest about having larger priorities to attend to (ones Din wouldn’t object to if she explained she was fighting the resurgent Empire too), she could have told him about Tython at the beginning and the two would have parted ways without wasting Mando’s (and the audience’s) time on the Calodan storyline.

Mando wasn’t given enough time or personal connection to the people under the magistrate’s despotic rule for his bleeding heart and sense of honor to compel him to stay, and Ahsoka was honestly capable enough I don’t think she needed Mando’s help. She was planning to storm the castle herself anyway. Mando could have gotten the spear another way if that was to be his incentive for taking down Elsbeth.

In order to fix “The Jedi” and still have Ahsoka as the main secondary character and still have her be an honorable person by the end, a few things need to happen:

If Ahsoka was going to be a genuine option to take the kid under her wing, she should have been sent there by somebody else to depose the magistrate and gain the information about Thrawn that she would then relay back to her partner or employer, or she should had a personal vendetta against the magistrate (devoid of any connection to Thrawn) and genuinely needed help getting close enough to take her out.

Mando needs to be given more story and connection to the given circumstances of Calodan, forming connections with and gathering exposition from the people in town

Ahsoka and Mando’s discussion where she’s already reluctant to take the child as a student for personal reasons needed a better explanation based on how she saw her own master fall because of his flaws (just enough to flesh her out and give exposition to Mando/the audience who have no idea who she is), and Din’s own reasoning and desperation need to reach a boiling point where he reveals why he’s so insistent on the child needing a teacher (so the child can be taught to protect himself). This discussion needs to establish tension and stakes that make the emotional conflict (having Ahsoka take the kid and Mando’s mission being complete) dependent on the outcome of the physical conflict (the liberation of Calodan, Ahsoka resolving whichever conflict she has with Elsbeth)

That revelation allows Ahsoka to say she’ll consider taking the child as a pupil, but that it can’t be done until her mission is completed

The two of them have contact with other characters introduced from Mando’s more fleshed out connections and the story in town, grounding Mando’s involvement in this physical conflict

And most importantly, something Mando does in the ending fight/s inadvertently affords one of the citizens the chance to kill Elsbeth themselves before Ahsoka can get the information she wants. This reinforces Mando’s character as somebody who puts power into the hands of the people most affected by the conflict they’ve asked him to help with, and it inadvertently thwarts Ahsoka’s objective in obtaining information, forcing her to forgo the kid’s apprenticeship and continue ahead, trying to find the information elsewhere. This outcome, based on consequences driven by character decisions, is much more compelling and satisfying and more naturally prevents the main character from achieving his main objective, forcing him in the story to continue forward.

This doesn’t mean the two of them have to be enemies. Conflict from outside factors prevents Ahsoka from being the child’s teacher and gives a logical segue for Ahsoka to give Mando the next best thing since she can no longer help (information about Tython and the chance of finding another Jedi or Force user). It provides a more natural exit for Ahsoka to either stay or go in the larger story of Mando and the kid, and we don’t get her character being wishy-washy or deceitful at all. Things just didn’t work out for the three of them, and it’s time for them to part ways.

If anything, doing that episode right could have meant it became a two-parter in order to really get into some of the nitty gritty of each of those characters and more worldbuilding and hey! Now die-hard Ahsoka fans get two episodes with her, and Mando’s character is given meaningful involvement in town and we can flesh out the storyline with Elsbeth a little more, raise the stakes and really give it some tension.

(This episode could have also had the optional bit of exposition of the two of them coming to the realization that the child doesn’t necessarily need to be a Jedi, that was just the information Din was operating under because that was what was available to him, and what Din really means when he says he needs to find a Jedi is that he wants the child to be protected by people who understand him and can teach him self defense. Ahsoka or whoever you have filling her role (or even somebody in the town) can tell Mando that being a Jedi is not the only way to master use of the Force, that there are other avenues that would achieve Din’s inner objective, which in turn foreshadow and/or parallel Din dealing with challenges to his faith and the other ways he sees people being Mandalorians.)

(Him deviating from the exact wording of the mission the Armorer gave him is a non-issue. She gave him an objective with the broadest and biggest target she herself had knowledge of and she wouldn’t have cared if the kid ended up being given to a non-Jedi provided they were still a Force-user and they were who Din decided was best suited to fill that role. She trusts his judgment. This show had the opportunity to branch out into what else the world of Star Wars has to offer and diversify the setting so that we could have either gotten away from the Jedi or kept from rehashing things the audience is already aware of concerning them.)

[sparkle-d]

waiting game | daniel ricciardo

pairing: daniel ricciardo x you

summary: in which you switch your phone with daniel's without knowing

tags: falling in love; chatting and messages; kind of enemies to friends to lovers

warnings: insecure reader; f!reader; dumb people

chapter: 3/?

(you: blue/ daniel: orange)

✧.* tag list: @bloodyvalentine93 @organasith @verstappens-hat @idkiwantchocolatee @landhoe @theplobnrgone @iamasimpingh0e @chiliwhore @buendiabebeta

chapter 3 - secret

You enter through your apartment‘s door and lean against it when you close it. You feel tired - more like drained - arriving home late at night. You had to use all of your social skills with these drivers that you usually aren’t close with. Max and Lando were one hundred per cent okay, but who kept messing out and annoying you was Daniel.

He noticed that you were a bit stiff around him, not really distressed about being in his presence, but he wanted to make you get used to being around him. Daniel made jokes with you, about you and your best friends, debated with you about the world's economy even though he didn’t say anything that made sense at all and you were sure he was describing the plot of Game of Thrones without noticing. He dared you to take some shots and you only did two and fooled him into thinking that you drank more than that. 

Daniel was drunk and at some point you got comfortable with him. He made you laugh when he wasn’t being a pain in the ass and discussing with you about which racing movie was the best. Cars was the only option for the spot in your opinion.

“Listen up, the soundtrack is amazing, McQueen character development is amazing, his friendship with Mater is wholesome and in Cars Two there’s Lewis Hamilton, what’s better than that?”

You sound as drunk as Daniel when you start to state your points. Maybe being around him makes you as silly as him. You even stopped being so concerned about your surroundings while talking to him.

“The lack of a character based on me is what doesn’t make Cars better than Speed Racer.” Daniel answers you with a grin.

“Why would they put such an annoying character in their movie?” You smile at him sarcastically when he looks offended, feeling like you’re winning the discussion “Okay, Speed Racer is a good movie, but the cartoon is better. There’s no discussion here.”

“Exactly!” He shouts jumping from the couch “Now we are speaking the same language, cupcake.”

Without noticing, he steals another genuine smile from your face, turning it into a giggle.

Only when you left Max’s apartment, it’s when you realize how out of energy you were. Daniel got all of your attention and you didn’t notice that your phone had completely died out of battery  too. You didn’t touch it during the whole night.

You groan as you head to your room, searching for your charger. You connect it to the energy and use your time to get ready to bed. It’s when you lay down that your phone lights up and comes back to life.

You watch the messages pop up on your screen and notice that your phone has been off for way too long. 

buttercup said: daniel is so drunk

buttercup said: do we need to save her from him?

bubbles said: if she needs help she would’ve texted us about it

bubbles said: she’s just fine i bet

buttercup said: he’s telling her about his monaco win he loves to brag about it

bubbles said: he talks so much omg

bubbles said: we should wait until their conversation is over so we can leave

bubbles said: max is so wasted too

buttercup said: yeah

buttercup said: when she’s finished with daniel we can go

You slap your face almost too hard, because they could’ve saved you from the misery of listening to drunk Daniel, about things you didn’t care about because you were already annoyed about Daniel himself. But no, they decided to wait for you to come ask for help, as if they weren’t your best friends since forever and didn’t know when you were struggling with something.

blossom said: yes fuck face, i didn’t send you a bottle with a rescue message inside of it because my cell phone ran out of battery

blossom said: but i was asking for help with my eyes for you to save me from daniel

blossom said: i hate you two

After letting a snort out and closing your group chat with Pierre and Charles you go through your older notifications. There’s a couple of messages from your mysterious boy, and as you read the notifications, your face warms instantly. Your cheeks are red and your ears are so hot they even feel sensible to the touch. 

You read again, making sure your eyes didn’t fool you.

hot stuff said: well

hot stuff said: i ahve a lingerie kink

hot stuff said: does thsi count as a screet?

Your phone is on top of your bed and you stare at it, your hands landing on your hips as you sit on the bed to take a breath. You try to think about what you would answer to hot stuff. You aren't very familiar with these kinds of things, but you probably have an idea of what a lingerie kink is, and just thinking about it makes your cheeks red again.

Hot stuff likes to see people in lingerie, right? Well, you don't understand it very much, but he probably doesn’t enjoy seeing EVERYONE in lingerie, only certain and specific people. People he has second intentions with. You can’t even think about this matter without almost bursting with only the thought of it.

You need to be very sure of yourself to agree to be only in lingeries in front of another person. It’s too vulnerable in your opinion.

You try to think about yourself showing a part of your body to someone else like that. Maybe your torso? Or your legs? Your chest? You couldn’t do it. No, no, no, no, no. Your body isn’t something you think others would like to see. Not even with beautiful lingerie on.

Would hot stuff be turned on if you showed up to him with lingerie?

No.

Jesus.

Scratch that.

You shake your head, because your mind is going in a certain direction you don't want to think off. You shouldn’t think about it because hot stuff isn’t even a close friend of yours, why would you jump into something else like this?

But… you wonder what is hot stuff’s type.

You look good in dark blue…

Before you can continue on thinking about things you shouldn’t, your phone lights up with a new message. Your heart rate increases without noticing, it could be anyone, but from where you are, you can kind of see the “hot stuff” stamped on the notification.

You watch it for a few seconds, when another notification pops up, startling you. You decide you should answer it, at least show hot stuff you're there and didn’t disappear after he said something like that.

hot stuff said: well sorry for these messages skdjfng i think this was a very intimate secret for me to share

hot stuff said: i’m really ashamed right now that i’ve come back to my normal senses. i was a bit drunk and

hot stuff said: i-

You let a soft laugh escape, you could imagine hot stuff getting nervous from telling you about his kink out of nowhere. If he’s as anxious as you, he’s totally freaking out at that moment.

ma fraise said: no worries! i found it amusing that i think i can totally imagine it being your preferences 

You shake your head. Why would you imagine it being his preference? You don’t even think about these kinds of matters. You’re getting nervous too.

ma fraise said: but also it made me intrigued by it

ma fraise said: so that’s why i didn’t answer

ma fraise said: it had me thinking i guess

ma fraise said: are you still drunk?

You wait, but the answer doesn’t come very fast.

hot stuff said: what were you thinking exactly?

hot stuff said: no just took a shower and only embarrassment is left in my body

There’s two options here: you could simply end this conversation here and go to sleep, or you could answer hot stuff’s question. Even if you feel like this conversation is going in a different way than you imagined, you have nothing to lose here. It won’t hurt to chat a little with someone you enjoy the company of, after a horrible night.

ma fraise said: don’t worry we all get drunk sometimes xD

ma fraise said: well i was thinking about how different people are 

ma fraise said: i tried to think about what makes that your kink, and i think i figured it out, but that’s a very strange concept for me

hot stuff said: why is it strange? i think it’s a very common kink

hot stuff said: i mean…

ma fraise said: it’s not a very common thing for me about enjoying people using lingerie

ma fraise said: actually i wouldn’t know if i enjoy or not because i never thought of it

ma fraise said: what’s the basic criteria for your kink?

hot stuff said: be someone i have an attraction for like any other kink i guess

hot stuff said: i don’t crave on seeing everyone using lingerie - don’t get me wrong

hot stuff said: binotto for example i, not in a million year, will want to see him wearing lingerie you know

hot stuff said: he’s not my type

You have a small smile on your face, because he mentioned someone he’s almost sure you know since you let out by accident that you’re a Ferrari fan. Sometimes you think that hot stuff is very caring in your friendship and you feel like you’re growing more and more into trusting and enjoying having his company with you.

Maybe switching your phone with a stranger wasn’t the worst thing after all.

hot stuff said: but you i would be interested in seeing

hot stuff said: even tho i have no idea what you look like

And you throw your phone away from you.

(prev chap // next chap)

[sesamestreep]

New Taylor Swift prompts! 16, Matt/Foggy

16. I’ve missed you all this time (from this prompt list) I don't know what this is, but it's technically set in the 60s, even though I did not make that explicitly clear anywhere in the text and it serves no purpose beyond just...vibes. I mostly just wanted to write silly new year’s fic, don’t worry about historical accuracy or world-building, everyone be cool! happy 2024, you silly and sultry geese! on ao3 here 🥂✨

Matt can still hear the noise of the party, barely dampened even when he's several rooms removed. He’d be able to hear it from the lobby of the building, truth be told, but here he can still make out conversations without having to focus that hard. He tries to direct his senses somewhere else—somewhere with less overlapping chatter and clinking glasses and shuffling feet over plush carpets—and breathe deep, so that maybe he can regain some equilibrium and hopefully go back to the party in a few minutes and act normal. It’s almost midnight, after all, and who goes to a New Year’s Eve party just to ditch out before midnight?

“Matthew Augustus Murdock,” a voice calls out from the far end of the paneled hallway.

“Not my middle name,” Matt says, smiling, “as you already know.”

“But wouldn’t it be better if it was?” Foggy asks, as he slides down to sit next to Matt. 

“Yes, I imagine I’d have lived a much easier and more successful life, if only my middle name was…what was it again?”

“Albert,” Foggy says, “or something. Who cares?”

“Good point,” Matt says, pressing his shoulder into Foggy’s happily. “How’d you find me?”

“I used the one and only superpower God graced me with: I’m like a homing pigeon for you specifically. I always know where to find you. It’s eerie, frankly, and damned useless, but—“

“Not to me,” Matt interjects, too readily. “I mean, for what it’s worth.”

Foggy nods, his overly long hair that he keeps meaning to get cut rasping over his shirt's stiff collar as he does. “That’s a good point.”

“I make those occasionally.”

“Occasionally,” Foggy repeats in a comically shrill, tiny voice, like he’s doing an impression of a cartoon mouse, for whatever reason. He’s a little drunk, clearly, which Matt could tell from the way he’s talking and the way he’s moving and the way he smells and, well, that’s probably enough evidence. 

“If I’m ever in trouble, I know who to call,” Matt says, which is maybe too honest, but Foggy doesn’t have to know that.

“You wouldn’t even have to call, Matt,” Foggy replies, solemnly grasping his shoulder. “If you’re ever in trouble, I’ll know and I’ll come running.”

“I would pay real money to see you actually run anywhere.”

“You’d have to, my man. I imagine it would take a massive breakthrough in science for you to see anything at all, and those things tend to cost a pretty penny,” Foggy says, grandly. “And also, on a much more serious note, go fuck yourself.”

Matt laughs and collapses against Foggy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, I just know how much you hate running.”

“Which means you’ve entirely missed the inherent capital-R romanticism of me offering to do it for you! Classic Murdock. Absolute philistine behavior. I should expect it by now.”

“Your gallantry is wasted on me,” Matt agrees, still doing that thing of being too honest.

“I know,” Foggy sighs, theatrically, “and yet, here I am.”

“Why are you here, anyway?”

“Missed you, came looking. Same as ever.”

“Aw,” Matt says, leaning into his side even more. “You’re right, I really don’t deserve you.”

“I never said that. You said that,” Foggy says, poking him. “But anyway, I lied and the real answer to your question is that I got tired of girls coming up to me and asking where my handsome friend had got to.”

Matt knows two things with a decent degree of certainty: Foggy hadn’t been lying when he gave his first answer (Matt would have heard it in his heartbeat and likely noticed any other number of tells that Foggy has when he does lie, besides) and that no one would have had to ask him to go looking for Matt after he disappeared. His joke about homing pigeon-like tendencies is more truthful than either of them would like to acknowledge. When Matt goes missing—as he very frequently does at these types of things—Foggy always comes to find him. Matt’s been doing this since way before he met Foggy—having overly heightened senses does not make crowded social functions more manageable in general—but he can probably admit that he does it more now that he knows someone will come looking for him.

He also knows that girls like Foggy a lot more than Foggy thinks they do. He’s always talking about how girls seek him out to get in with Matt, but Matt doesn’t really believe that. There have been a few girls, here and there, certainly enough that Foggy’s right to be a little paranoid about it, who have turned their sights from Foggy to Matt, which on top of being unkind is just bad business sense. Anyone with a brain in their head would see that Foggy’s the better option of the two of them. And Matt’s got plenty of flaws, but he’d certainly never take up with anyone who hurt his best friend, so it doesn’t work out the way anyone hopes it will, anyway, when they do. Still, he's sure Foggy could have found a nice girl to keep him entertained until Matt got back to the party, if he put his mind to it, and that maybe he'd just been looking for an excuse to duck out himself when someone asked about Matt.

“This is where I got to,” Matt says, with a slightly pathetic shrug.

“Who says I meant you?” Foggy asks, absently. “I have other friends that are handsomer than you!”

“Not only do you not have a single handsomer friend in all the world,” Matt says, belatedly unsure if ‘handsomer’ is even a word, but otherwise too confident to turn back, “you don’t even have another friend at this party.”

“I’m exceedingly charming, Matthew,” Foggy over-enunciates. “Everyone at this party is my new best friend.”

Matt loops his arm through Foggy’s and leans his head back against the wall. “Sounds like I’ve got a lot of competition.”

“You’re not having fun?” Foggy asks, the change of topic so sudden and his tone so unexpectedly serious that Matt has a brief moment of confusion that he means with this joke they’ve got going. It takes a second to realize he means at the party in general.

“It’s fancy.”

“Too fancy, you mean…”

“You know I don’t go in for all this stuff,” Matt says, shrugging. 

“Like I do, you mean?” Foggy asks, lightly, even though Matt can feel him warming with embarrassment. 

“Like I used to,” Matt clarifies, and trusts his meaning to be clear.

“Right,” Foggy says, and the tone in his voice is the one he uses exclusively when he refers to Matt’s ex-girlfriend from junior year who almost caused him to drop out. “Fair enough, I suppose.”

“You can head back. Really, I don’t mind. I just need a few more minutes.”

“No, you’re right. It’s…a bit stuffy, isn’t it?” Foggy muses. “I mean, I didn’t even know people still had apartments like this, outside of, well, the Rockefellers.” 

The apartment belongs to the parents of one of their friends from law school and the only reason they have free rein over the place is because the parents are vacationing in Aspen with friends. Even without being able to see it, Matt can tell it’s a swanky place. The rug he’s currently sitting on is so plush that he can basically sink his entire hand into it. Every table he passed on his way to this hiding place smelled so strongly of Pine-Sol that there has to be a maid on staff, if not a team of them. He’s fairly certain this random hallway he discovered is actually a back passage to the kitchens, so the servants don’t have to be seen coming and going. He's not sure if he asked their host about it that they'd even know it existed. And Matt’s shoes, as well as most of his clothes, are secondhand.

“You were having fun until I made you feel bad,” Matt says, tucking his chin onto Foggy’s shoulder and trying to look contrite.

“No, I mean—I like having you around, Matt. You keep me honest,” Foggy laughs. “Two and a half years of law school, four years at an Ivy before that, I think I’ve just made peace with having to go to parties in uncomfortable clothes and to make conversation with people I don’t really like. I don’t think I’d call it fun, but it’s a social life of some kind, I suppose.”

“We should have gone to Josie’s,” Matt says, holding onto him too tightly, even with the excuse of a few drinks.

Foggy snorts, thinking of the beloved dive bar they sneak off to in Hell’s Kitchen whenever they can, whenever they’re home. It’s only a matter of blocks to get there, but sometimes, at school, it feels farther away than all that.

“I don’t dare imagine the caliber of our prospects for a kiss at midnight there,” Foggy says, with an exaggerated shudder.

“Can’t be any worse than our prospects here,” Matt replies. 

Foggy whistles, low, under his breath. “You’re going to be disappointing a lot of nice girls with that kind of talk, Murdock!”

“Better to disappoint them now than later,” Matt says, fully burying his face in Foggy’s shoulder now. He gets like this when he drinks. Foggy's used to it.

“Oh, that’s right. You don’t do the whole ‘going steady’ thing anymore,” Foggy says, leaning in conspiratorially. “You’re too damaged and that means you’re never going to get married, so you’d rather not lead anyone on.”

“You say that like it’s not true,” Matt whispers back.

“It isn’t true, you moron!” Foggy laughs. “One day, some beautiful girl is going to turn your head so quick, you’ll have neck problems for the rest of your life!”

“Sounds uncomfortable,” Matt says.

“And I’ll be there,” Foggy continues, like Matt didn’t even speak, “laughing.”

“Well, as long as you’ll be there, Foggy.”

“Did I mention you’re a moron?”

“Yes. A few times now, in fact.”

“Then, I’ve done my duty.”

“And what about you?” Matt asks. “When’s somebody going to turn your head?”

“Somebody turns my head every goddamn day, it feels like,” Foggy grumbles. “The problem isn’t my head. It’s everybody else’s.”

“There’s plenty of girls who’d be more than happy to trap you in matrimony.”

“Hmm, well, I’m sure that’s true enough,” Foggy replies, thoughtfully. “I guess it’s more about finding someone you wouldn’t mind being trapped with.”

“And you haven’t found her yet, I take it?”

“No,” Foggy says, sadly. The girl he dated for most of their sophomore year—the one everyone had been certain Foggy was going to end up marrying—had just gotten engaged last month. Foggy still wasn’t entirely over it, Matt was pretty sure.

“And you’re certain she’s not here?” Matt asks, encouragingly.

“Unlikely,” Foggy says. “None of the girls here would be caught dead with me in the daylight. One of them might be unscrupulous enough to let me kiss her at midnight, though.”

“So, go back,” Matt replies. “Find the girl in that room with the lowest standards and lay one on her!”

“I will if you will.”

“I don’t know this for sure, but I do have serious doubts that any girl in the room will let the both of us kiss her at midnight.”

“I meant, you should—you know what I meant!” Foggy exclaims, embarrassed again. 

“I was trying to be funny!”

“‘Trying’ being the operative word there…”

Matt sighs. “What’s the point of kissing someone at midnight when there’s almost no chance of seeing them ever again after tonight?”

“You’ve just described the point yourself! It’s just for fun, to start the year off right! There’s no pressure!” Foggy says, disbelieving. "What’s gotten into you? I thought zero expectations romance was your specialty!”

“Maybe I’m just not a New Year's kind of guy.”

Foggy hums thoughtfully. “Can I tell you my theory?”

“Your theory? About what?”

“About you, and New Year's, and all of that.”

“Oh. Sure. Go ahead.”

“I think you’re afraid,” Foggy says.

“Afraid?” Matt asks. “Of…New Year’s Eve?”

“You don’t want to participate in these silly little rituals, like kissing someone at midnight, because you’re secretly terrified that something good is going to happen to you, and then you won’t know what to do with yourself.”

“Really, Foggy. Be serious!”

“I am serious,” Foggy replies, casually. “You’re scared of being hit over the head with it again.”

“Hit over the head with what?”

“Love,” Foggy says, simply. “You felt it once and it nearly derailed your whole life, so now you avoid any situation where you might accidentally meet someone interesting or have more feelings than you’ve carefully rationed out for yourself for that particular day.”

Matt swallows, feeling utterly exposed. It’s not something he would have been able to say for himself an hour ago, but the words feel true to him coming from someone else. He doesn’t like anybody knowing him well enough to know all of that, though, and if it wouldn’t be so utterly obvious, he’d pull away from Foggy right now just to be safe. Like that would even help, he thinks reluctantly.

“You missed your calling not going into psychiatry, Foggy,” he says, stiffly, once he’s gathered his wits enough to form sentences.

Foggy’s hand, warm and a little damp, closes over Matt’s where it’s still resting on his arm. Matt wants nothing more than to flinch away from it, but he controls the urge in the interest of saving face.

“Don’t be mad at me,” Foggy says, quietly, like there’s a chance they might be overheard somehow and he wants Matt to be the only one who hears this. “I’m just trying to tell you that, in avoiding fun and frivolous things, you are not sparing yourself from being hit over the head. If you’re meant to get hit over the head, it’ll happen whenever and wherever Cupid so chooses. It’ll happen at the deli or the bank or while you’re waiting for the bus. Which means that the only thing you’re ultimately sparing yourself from is fun and frivolity, and that’s a stupid way to live your life. That’s all.”

“I think you just called me a moron again,” Matt says, weakly. He doesn’t know what else to say. The rest of it is...too much to consider.

“I called you stupid, actually, but I see your point.”

In the distance, Matt hears the noise of a crowd of people all simultaneously trying to shush each other, with limited success. He imagines even Foggy can hear it too a moment later when they all begin counting aloud.

“Last chance…” Matt says, tipping his head backwards in the direction of the room where everyone’s gathered.

“It doesn’t matter,” Foggy says, apropos of nothing, as far as Matt can tell. He’s about to ask what he means when Foggy continues, anyway. “I have someone who meets your criteria.”

“My criteria?”

“Yeah. You’ll only accept a kiss from someone you’ll see again after tonight, right?”

“Uh, I don’t think I said ‘only’, I just meant—”

“Too bad,” Foggy says, as the countdown reaches its conclusion. “Happy New Year.”

Matt’s halfway through formulating a question or an objection of some kind, which is the only reason he turns in Foggy’s direction at that moment. It’s clear from the noise of surprise Foggy makes that he absolutely had no intention of kissing Matt right on the mouth and was probably, in fact, aiming for his cheek, trying to be funny and charming after Matt was such a spoilsport about the whole kissing at midnight thing. If Matt hadn’t moved, there’s no doubt in his mind that that’s what Foggy would have done and then it would have been over and they’d already be laughing about it and moving on. But Matt did move and, even awkwardly off center, Foggy is kissing him on the mouth right now and they’re both just frozen like that, shocked and useless.

Matt doesn’t give himself much credit for genius. He’s reasonably smart, and can be even smarter if he applies himself to a subject and really studies up on it, but there’s plenty of people in any given room smarter than he is, most of the time. He has his moments, though, and this is one of them. He sees very clearly the two paths available to them. Down one, this moment stretches awkwardly and they allow it to become a source of discomfort and then outright pain that they'll avoid talking about for years, or maybe possibly forever. Regardless, it has the power to ruin their friendship and Matt simply can't abide that. Down the other, they don’t flinch from it and they don’t make it any stranger than it has to be and it becomes one weird but not fully objectionable moment in their long and storied relationship. They’re not going to trot it out as an anecdote at parties, sure, but they’re not going to become crazy about denying it happened either. If Matt can steer them in the direction of the latter, he thinks maybe it will all be okay, but it’s going to require him not to make matters worse. For whatever reason, the only way he can think to not do that is by kissing Foggy back.

It’s immediately apparent that, momentary genius or no, while it does not technically make things worse, it also does not make them better. Then again, Foggy makes a sort of interested noise as he feels Matt return the kiss, which Matt is infinitely better off for knowing about and having heard and being able to think about some other time when he’s alone preferably. 

They don’t take it any farther than just that. They’re not necking in some random person’s hallway or doing anything truly objectionable. They just stay there, mouths pressed together so that Matt can smell (and sort of taste) the champagne Foggy’s had and the last cigarette he smoked and a hint of that sugary gum he always chews, even though he hasn’t had a piece since before they came to the party. It mostly feels, more than anything else, like they’re breathing together and it’s not sexy the way wild, passionate groping in the dark can be, but it’s intimate in its own unique way. Matt, against his own better judgment, puts a hand on Foggy’s cheek, and he doesn't really know why beyond just really wanting to and that seems to be reason enough.

Foggy doesn’t try to slip his tongue into Matt’s mouth—despite the alarming reality that the moment Matt realizes that’s not what he’s doing, he also realizes he’d let him—or try to escalate matters one bit. His hand is still grasping Matt’s collar from when he first pulled him in, but his other one doesn’t roam. His lips, still pressed to Matt’s, only move to exert a little more pressure and to alter the angle at which they meet slightly. He takes precisely zero liberties and makes no effort to get fresh with him at all. It’s very gentlemanly, and Matt doesn’t know what to do with himself because it doesn’t feel awkward or fumbling at all. It feels like restraint, and once he knows that, everything is different.

The tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ reaches him from the other room, but it’s drowned out almost entirely by the sound of Foggy’s heartbeat in Matt’s ears. Foggy must hear it too, though, because he breaks their kiss with the worst sort of gentleness, pulling back only enough for them both to have space to breathe but not far enough that Matt can’t feel that breath on his face.

Matt traces his thumb over the curve of Foggy’s cheek before dropping his hand back down into his own lap and licks his lips as he slowly turns away. 

“Happy New Year,” he says, aiming for calm and unaffected and likely missing it by a lot.

“You too,” Foggy says, even though he already said it first. His heart is still beating too fast and too close and too loud for Matt to read his tone, which is too bad, because he’d really like to know how Foggy feels right now and if he feels anything like Matt does.

Because Matt feels like he’s been hit over the head.

✨

[powerpuffobsession]

All this Charlie and Lucifer conflict feels so fake and thrown in for drama points. Because it's hard for me to sympathize when watching two characters who barely have any hardship in their lives, imitate having to go through hardship. That's why I kinda rolled my eyes at "More than anything" part of the episode. No tears whatsoever

The whole daddy issues problem doesn't even make sense from a realistical stand point. You both are non aging, powerful (although Charlie refuses to use her powers, but they are clearly there) beings who barely have any problems in your lives. You were even spared from the exterminations, even though Heavens could have easily disposed of a fallen angel and his off spring a long time ago! (and Charlie just had to abuse that generosity) Everything is just dandy, lots of viewers of Hazbin hotel would kill for a life like that. Sinners who get killed can f*ck themselves. They are criminals, after all

Lucifer, I understand being upset the first few years after your wife left. But seven years? Wouldn't that get old? When you are a powerful being who has an already grown up daughter who doesn't need to rely on you, unlimited resources and his own kingdom (that he got for screwing up humanity, mind you)? Overkill much. Just find yourself a new love or go fix your damn hell ring and maybe ensure that rapists actually go to the boiling pot instead of owning a glamorous business to thrive on

Charlie is less guilty than her father, as he did ignore her and failed to teach her basic skills of standing up to herself and ruling a place. If a rich guy fails his kids that way, he's trash, because like, dude you've got resources and time, just use them to do bare minimum for your child. So Charlie's problems with running the hotel make sense (even though if she truly was passionate about helping someone, she would have made an effort to plan it out more properly so that the redemption doesn't happen by accident in a damn war)

That way, Lucifer's complaints about his life make me want to just roll my eyes. Even back in heaven he had one job of not giving the humans the damn fruit, I sincerely doubt that he, as one of the seraphims had no idea of the consequences of that. If he didn't wreck up his siblings' work, he would have still be living in Heaven. And, as I mentioned earlier, he didn't even get punnished properly for the fruit incident - wings still intact, all his powers and the ability to just magic up any goods out of thin air or to defend himself against a freaking angelic exorcist, let alone sinful criminals, is still there. So what's the problem?

Generally, what stops both Lucifer and Charlie from communicating/meeting each other? They never had any sort of fight that would have made their relationship truly sour, and Lucifer is not a heartless calculating abusive father he was believed to be in the pilot era. Charlie is barely loaded with the hotel work, she basically just plays trust games with sinners, and that's all

They like, stay away from each other when they have no reson to and then whine about it. Duh, some irl families who are actually struggling with life and actually have little time and vital strength do communication better than a fking rich magical seraphim and his daughter

And yes i'm jealous of a cartoon fallen angel. In canon biblical lore, Lucifer is actually punished for his actions. But not this Lucifer. You say Adam is spoiled? And least with him there's a possibility that he had to survive on Earth and go through some serious crap before earning his place on Heaven. Lucifer meanwhile can shelter himself in his castle for 7 years wasting time making ducks and be just fine! I even dare say, he fakes his depression because he thinks it's cool or smth. Put the guy on a minimum wage job and other difficulties of a normal human life, and the pussy'll just die