#but I knew from the get-go that I'm a “theoretical/thinking kind of job” person and not a “hands-on job” person

[fennthetalkingdog]

My flavor of giftedness isn't gifted kid burnout, my flavor is "never quite burned out but now is stressing because academics aren't the same as the real world and while I'm good at academics I'm horrible at real world stuff so I'm desperately trying to find a career that's somewhat close so I don't utterly fail whenever I get a job"

[cricket-of-the-hill]

So what's the deal with Fiddleford McGucket? Why's he like that?

Fiddleford as a character is so FUN because he's so complicated and tragic and honestly a little pathetic. On one hand you have this absolutely brilliant scientist with the potential to have been the in universe Steve Jobs who figured out that the universe is a hologram and built an honest to betsy transdimensional portal (with Ford's help, yes, but let's be honest: as mathematically brilliant as Ford was, I think his intelligence laid more in the theoretical side of things, really doubt he could have actually built the portal himself).

On the other hand, we have this man who up and leves his FAMILY to chase after a college friend who calls him one day saying "hey, I'm out in Oregon building a portal to another dimension. Little help?" and he doesn't even think twice before being like "bet" and getting his ass to Oregon. And even if you take in the context clues that things weren't going well with his marriage before he left (as pieced together by the brilliant @divorcedfiddleford in this post), he still had his son and McGucket Computermajigs and he just sets all that aside for this guy, which... 😶

I am gonna write this whole post on the assumption that Fiddleford was in love with Ford, but look, even if that's the case it doesn't make any of his actions less unhinged. Break here, because the post gets kinda long 😶‍🌫️

So here's the thing: in the fandom, it's fun to think that Fidds knew about Bill and they had some sort of taunting rivalry/love triangle thing going on and that's really fun to mess with, but FIDDLEFORD HAD NO IDEA ABOUT BILL. Ford never told him! So even if Fidds leaves California thinking he's gonna have his hot girl summer/queer arthouse romcom where he reconnects with the love of his youth and they spend the summer working in this secluded house in the woods where they can finally live out their romance, what he actually gets is a fucking psychological horror thriller where the guy he loves and is kinda trapped with is either slowly going insane or straight up getting possessed.

Now, all that is 😵‍💫 enough, but it gets worse because instead of doing the normal person thing and getting the hell out of Dodge, Fiddleford stays. He continues to help Ford to build the portal despite how weird the other man is getting, he continues to go cryptid hunting even after the nightmare goblin almost eats him, even if Ford clearly doesn't appreciate the work he does (research assistant? Not even partner? Come on), and never reciprocates the kind of gestures Fidds has towards him (like the infamous double Christmas gift bonanza).

Here's where the duality of Fiddleford Hadron McGucket kicks in: the thing is that he is incredibly brave in some ways and obviously really smart but also kind of a coward and an idiot when it comes to his relationships with others. He'll hit Thee Krampus upside the head with his banjo one day to save his friend and run away to Oregon instead of discussing divorce with this wife the next. He will leave everything he knows to pursue this one guy, but he will never ever ever confess to feeling anything other than friendship towards him. He'll put up with Stanford's creepy as all hell behavior but will never confront him about it even as Ford loses more and more of himself into his project (so no little intervention not even to help this man he's giving so much up for). Like, what was he expecting to get out of all this? If he was never planning to confess to Ford or leave his wife, what was he going to do once the portal was completed? Just keep on bouncing between wherever Ford went next and his family? Did he really think his wife and son wouldn't mind him leaving them behind without so much as a thought?

Operating under the assumption that Fiddleford is a closeted queer guy from rural Deep Down South Hillbilly County Tennessee (said with love, I'm also from the south, but we all know what homophobia looks like here) during the '80s (height of the aids pandemic which would have made everything worse) one can maybe understand why Fiddleford is like that. Why he is so so so afraid and why he ultimately chooses to erase his memories rather than just go back to his family.

So picture this: you are in love with your best friend but you can't tell him 'cause best case scenario he leaves you out to dry and worst case scenario maybe someone finds your boots down by the river and lets your parents know (and we know Ford is sweet and fruity himself and with a thing for outcasts and would never. Fiddleford probably knows that himself, but let me tell you that when you grow up with that fear it goes deep. Because you've most likely seen people who are kind get absolutely bent out of shape when confronted with the mere idea of someone like you existing in their near vicinity). Eventually, you get married and have a son because that is what you were supposed to do all along and even though you love your son and maybe even love your wife everything feels wrong. They expect you to be something you are not, you can never let your guard down, never be yourself, not even in your own home. So then that call comes and it's like a golden thicket: you can leave, give it a rest for a little while, go see your friend, stretch out those inventing muscles.

As much as the fandom clowns him for it, I honestly don't even think he went out there with the intention of cheating (emotionally or otherwise). BUT I do think he was hoping something would happen. It's just that it all depended on Ford taking that first step because Fidds sure as hell wouldn't. And then Ford didn't because he was too busy doing the sin cos tan with his trigonometry homework, but if he had, we could have had a brokenback mountain situation on our hands, lads. Then Fiddleford could have just gone along with it, and done all sorts of mind parkour to convince himself that that's somehow less bad than "outright" cheating on his wife.

So he gets to the cabin, right? And maybe things are good for a little while, like when they were in college. Fiddleford lets loose a little, Ford is happy with the company, they're friends! And I get the sense that they're the kind of friends that mesh really well, like their energies really match. As much as the fandom paints Fiddleford like a sweet cinnamon roll, that man is also a freak. He's out here building psychotic post divorce revenge pterodactyl robots and drinking abducted cow milk just to see what it's like. He's a bit unhinged! He and Ford are the two people in the world that can be like "I think the universe is a hologram." "Cool! Let's prove it mathematically, bro" and "I want to build a portal to another dimension. Just cause." "Catching a ride to your place with my toolbox as we speak, buddy." (My own personal head cannon is that Fiddleford didn't really become such a shaky jelly until the nightmare goblin got him. Like, he was never as adventurous as Ford, but I think before that particular traumatizing event he was all right for it).

Anyways, things are good for a bit, but the real world is still out there. Fiddleford has to make trips home every now and then, and every time he comes back it seems like something is different. A little off. At first it's nothing big, just a smile a little sharper than usual, a coldness in a look, Ford calling him "Specs" where before he was always a variation of his name. Then it's pointed comments that Fidds chalks up to a lack of sleep (is Ford even sleeping at all? Because he could have sworn for the past three nights he he has appeared in the same place Fidds left him when he went to sleep). Then it's a flash of yellow eyes, a maniacal laugh that Ford never used to make before, spells where he seemingly forgets how to use his body (bumps into things, tries to drink soda with his eyes?). As time goes on it starts to become more and more obvious that something is seriously wrong with this friend. And things back home are just getting worse and worse, Emma May isn't happy about Fiddleford skipping town so often, Tate wont stop asking for him, and look, was Fiddleford even making money while he was with Ford? He gettin' paid? Is Emma May back home trying to bring home the bacon while virtually single parenting? (How was Ford even supporting himself while studying anomalies? I can't imagine there's a lot of grants for that.)

But Fiddleford can't leave his friend and he can't really own up to how much messier things are at home because of this whole thing. So he keeps coming back to Gravity Falls, where he also can't really face up to Ford and either demand a clear answer as to what is going on or try to get him some help (an exorcist, maybe). Because if he does say something and Ford decides that he doesn't want Fiddleford around asking questions he's gonna have to go back home where after the Christmas thing he's honestly not sure he's really wanted anymore, not really sure he deserves it if he still was. So he keeps on doing his thing, telling himself "this is fine 🙂," while he sits in a room on fire with a bill-possessed Ford hanging from the ceiling like a spider and an disapproving Emma May looking in through a window.

I think the portal incident was what finally opened his eyes to the reality of his situation, in an ironic way. He destroyed his relationship with his wife and left his son for nothing. Left his own dreams and aspirations aside just to find out that when push comes to shove his opinion and well-being matter so little to this man he was ready to break the laws of physics for. He can't stay with Ford, and he sure as hell can't go back home, because that would mean having to face that he's done burned down all his bridges. So where do you go from there? Let me tell you, if I had the chance to forget the lowest, most selfish, stupid thing I did for a person who didn't even notice it, I'd do it in a second.

[allwormdiet]

Thinking about Worm (Arcs 1 to 7)

I was thinking about making a post where I stop reading for just a second and think aloud about what's happened so far. I was told, while navigating around spoilers, that Arc 7 was the right place to cut it off, and looking at the cliffhanger in 7.12 and Interlude 7 I can guess why. This is the last thing we're going to have something resembling the status quo or a minute. So, let's talk.

The thing that I knew about Worm in an academic sense was that it's in a near-constant process of escalation as the story goes on, starting with one big dragon guy and upping the scale and severity of the threat from there. What I didn't realize was how this would feel during the reading; I keep begging for Taylor and everyone else to just have an arc, half an arc, where they don't have any looming threat over their heads or simmering anxiety beneath the surface, but fuck me I guess because the spaces to breathe keep feeling less and less like they're enough to cool down from the last threat. How much fluffy slice-of-life fic is there in this fandom, and how much of it is from the dire need to see these kids get a fucking break? Every time I go read something sappy or play mindless games (reinstalled 2048 on my phone, still fun), it feels like I'm coming up for air.

And Taylor... I don't think she realizes how much that story about her mom and the balding guy has already become applicable. The only person she has that could even theoretically act as an anchor for her is her dad, and the moment he put any effort into making her fess up to anything she basically ran away from home. Everyone else in her life are her literal partners in crime; they're not going to check her on her bullshit unless it is some extreme bullshit, and even then it's not guaranteed. The fact that she's horrified and outraged by Dinah's situation is evidence enough that she hasn't fully lost her grip, but "being upset by a guy who kidnapped a twelve-year-old and keeps her drugged up in his bunker" is kind of a low bar? It's taken her very little time to plunge into the villain life, to such a degree that she has nowhere else to go when she's faced with the possibility that she can't stay with it.

Now that I've read that back over, I wonder. Is it something about parahumans that pushes them to separate from their normal lives? Everything we've seen about Protectorate heroes suggests that they're basically unmoored from everything except each other and the PRT, the Wards have some semblance of a life outside their status as heroes but that's probably because it's harder to explain them dropping out of school than it is to just maintain the charade. Taylor was, briefly, the only Undersider to commit to a regular school life, and Brian is only pretending to have a normal job outside the team in order to improve his chances of becoming Aisha's guardian. The ABB capes were all full-time members with no pretense of a separate life, the closest thing we've seen to a maintained connection is Purity's apparent job as an interior decorator (I wonder how many of her former clients would get their houses redone if there wasn't about to be a fucking kaiju attack); even Kaiser, as the CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation, is using his fucking Nazi street gang to enhance his power and wealth as an extension of the company (although that's still fucking stupid for reasons I muttered about during Arc 7). Even New Wave, for all that they pride themselves on operating openly and transparently, seems to be kind of insulated, and I have to imagine that an all-parahuman family is a fucking nightmare of overlapping and incompatible traumas. Five bucks says one of the kids explicitly triggered because of their parents, honestly. If we take seriously the idea that this is a cosmic horror story that's mimicking a superhero story (which I'm pretty sure it is), it would suggest... hmm. Maybe whatever Crystal Superpower Cthulhu wants out of parahumans (if it wants anything) works more efficiently if they're unmoored from human society, or maybe there's something about suddenly being some indeterminate percent crystal alien that makes parahumans feel less connected to the rest of the species. I could be getting really far ahead of myself with this, but I'm not going to let the Crystal Superpower Cthulhu fucking slip out of my mind any time soon. That's a final boss-ass entity if I've ever seen one.

It might have been harder for Taylor to detach entirely from civilian life if there was much of a life there. Winslow High School utterly failed her at every turn, her first, oldest, only friend turned into a vicious sadist over the course of, what, a week? Less than a month? There's nothing but Danny to keep her moored to that side of her life, and the first reason he gives her to feel like he's betraying her, she lets go of that bond and leaves.

Looking at the shape of the arcs, the impression I get is that this rundown through the major gangs of Brockton Bay is going to be kind of the last time we sweat about gangs in general for a while. ABB gone, Empire in disarray, Coil acting as a boss for both the Undersiders and Travelers, and that leaves, what, the Merchants? The gang nobody likes or respects? They'll probably end up being a speed bump compared to the fact that we're about to be dealing with a fucking Endbringer (Leviathan, iirc). The Undersiders have already tangled with the most dangerous gang in the city, and although it wasn't an ironclad win or loss, things are about to get a lot more serious. All I can do is hope that the Endbringer fucking obliterates them and I never have to sweat their ongoing existence ever again.

Then that would just leave Coil, of course. Fucking Coil. Oh how I hate this man. If/when I get around to writing fanfic he's going to be taken out every single time, him and the Empire both. Utterly wretched to deal with, smarmy and grandiose but no substance, using people's dependencies to keep them under his thumb, shortsighted and cruel and letting both of those things foul up his pointless little schemes. I hope he dies screaming.

Anyway, that's the broad strokes stuff. I'm gonna make a post after this where I talk about each specific character that's given me anything to think about, so stay tuned for that.

[buckets-and-trees]

🍭 - Ask a creator about one of their favorite creations. for the All Treats No Tricks event

Baaaabe, you know how much I love your stories and all the universes you create, how you develop dynamics between Readers and MMCs. I could shower you in long praises 🩷

I won't ask which of your stories is your favorite, I know how hard it's to pick. But I want to ask which of your own stories you had the most own emotional journey with as you wrote it?

Oooh! Thank you for sending such an intriguing ask, my dearest Eva!

There's a long Bucky series that I started writing in 2021 and that I still haven't published a word of. That Bucky I literally wrote for me. She lives in the city I want to live in, she has a job that I would love to have (I love my job now, but just kind of an if-I'd-chosen-a-different-career-path job), her background is pulled from a lot of my own background, and their story takes place over 10-12 months, and so sometimes when I go home for holidays or other life things happen, I put bits of the dialogue or feelings or anecdotes into my notes for that story. I don't know if I'll ever post it. In some ways, it's almost too personal now. But I also wanted it to be theoretically cannon compliant with the larger MCU, but I've waited too long now to incorporate some of the other characters the way that I wanted to. And I know it's fanfic and I can do whatever I want... I just have to decide what I want to do. It's also before I started writing x reader fic, so it's written with a female OC. I'd need to decide if I want to rewrite to x reader or if I think people would be interested enough in x female oc since I've built the expectations/lured people based off producing x reader content.

But more interesting for me to answer is stuff I've actually shared, of course!

I got very upset while writing chapter four of I'm Your Man. It's the part where Andy went around you to meet your parents and told them you two are getting married. Him robbing you of the chance to tell your parents - who you're close to - about such a big piece of news was really devastating to me, even though I was the one who planned that, and I knew it the whole time, but then actually writing it? Oof. It hit me hard.

The other work that's become really emotional for me is the Exiled Nomad series. When I started it, it was just hot rough sex with Nomad Steve. But now that I'm fleshing out that story... I'm deeply attached, and I think about them a lot. They're a go-to when my brain just slips into idle/relaxed creative time - like if I'm doing dishes, taking a shower, on a drive somewhere, etc. Now that I'm getting into more of the ties between them and how real/not real those ties are, I'm putting a lot of my thought into how I want things to eventually be between them.

And don't shower me in long praises - just stick me in a shower with a MMC and that should do the trick! ����

[fandomtherapy44]

castiel x reader

Summary: This story is from the perspective of Y/n Winchester. The sister Of Sam and Dean. We will be starting from season four since sadly we did not get Misha Collins as Castiel throughout the whole series. It will start off as a friendship, but it will grow more as the series goes on. I will be skipping some episodes even though they are great episodes they do not push the story forward. I am so excited to get to write this since they are not many Castiel X reader stories out there. Okay without further due Love War & Grace enjoy the Story.

Paring: Castiel X Reader

Word count: 3,330 words

Warnings: Some language, Typical Supernatural violence, Spoilers for season four of Supernatural, Reader gets hurt

Chapter 9: On The Head of a Pin

POV:Y/n

Another person died, another life lost to this stupid war between things, and a possible coming of Satan that theoretically should not even be real! And she's dead because of me. I keep on thinking about this on repeat. That I'm not even paying attention to the tense conversation going on between my two brothers.  “Y/n did you hear me?” Sam asked me from looking at the rear-view mirror. My eyes were starting to tear up from me staring at the window without blinking and things were becoming blurry. “Huh? What?” He kind of huffs. 

“I said Ruby will meet us outside Cheyenne. She's been tracking some leads. I know she's not exactly on your Guys Christmas list, but if she can help us get to Lilith—” Of course it's Ruby. My favorite person along with Alice from Hell-land. “Look Sam I couldn't really give a rat's ass. If you work with her or not. "I said back tired of this bullshit because of Ruby. “I agree with her.” Dean said as he looked back at me nodding letting me know he was standing with me. “What's your guy's problem?” “Pamela didn't want anything to do with this and we dragged her back into it, Sam. I did.” I said back at him quickly, getting madder at myself and slowed down thinking about my words. 

“She knew what was at stake.” Sam responded and, in that moment, I really just wanted to scream. “” She knew what was at stake.” you know what, fuck off Sam a person should not have to practically die every time they help us, we’re doing such a damn good job! So, Pam dying was totally not in vain.” I finished with a tear running down my face. Both boys look at each other than at me. “Y/n-” “I'm so tired of burying friends Guys.” “Look, we catch a fresh trail—” Sam said, trying to move on. “And we follow it, we know. Like we said, we’re just—we’re just getting tired.” Dean answered for us. “Well, get angry.” Sam responded. Oh, I'm basically the hulk at this point.

We get our room keys and all I want to do is get drunk and cry myself to sleep but I guess someone else had a different Idea. “Ah, Home crappy home” Dean said dis heartedly flipping on the lights. Just once it would be nice to have a room that didn't look and smell like it was made by a drunk guy who hadn’t showered in three days. When the lights come on their standing is Cas and my bestie Uriel. “Winchesters” Uriel said with a hint of disgust. “Oh, come on.” Dean said in return. "You are needed.” Needed really, we can’t ever catch a break huh? “Needed? We just got back from needed.” Dean said standing up for us while I was trying to keep myself from going full Winchester on Uriel. “Now, you mind your tone with me.” Well, I tried. 

“No, you mind your damn tone with us.” I said, stepping up to Uriel. “We just got back from Pamela's funeral.” Sam said adding in to drive the fact into these Angels that a life was just lost for their stupid war. I kept it going. “Pamela. You know, psychic Pamela? You remember her. Cas, you remember her. You burned her eyes out. Remember that? Good times. Yeah, then she died saving one of your precious seals. So maybe you can stop pushing us around like chess pieces for five freaking minutes!” I know Cas didn't mean for that to happen but in that minute all I saw was red and I was ready to start my own war.

“We raised your brother out of hell for our purposes.” Dean stepped next to us. “Yeah, what were those again? What exactly did you want from me?” “Start with gratitude.” Ok I'm about to go WWE on him. “Dean, we know this is difficult to understand.” Cas said to him trying to reason with him. “And we—” Uriel looked at Cas in a very weird way and he looked back. “—don't care. Now, seven angels have been murdered, all of them from our garrison. The last one was killed tonight.” Uriel finished in a very serious voice. Wait Angels being murdered dammit now I got to care for Cas's sake now if it was just Uriel, I could live with that. “Demons? How they doing it?” Dean questioned and how do we know it was demons I mean I guess it makes sense, but could they be that careless and dumb never mind, Ruby is one of them. 

“We don't know.” “I'm sorry, but what do you want us to do about it? I mean, a demon with the juice to ice angels has to be out of our league, right?” Sam said to them, and he was right, we are just humans. “We can handle the demons, thank you very much.” God I just want to smack that smug look off his face. “Once we find whoever it is.” Cas said, diffusing the tension. “Ha So you need our help hunting a demon? Now that’s funny” I said walking closer to Uriel. "Not quite. We have Alastair.” Cas said, looking at me. “Great. He should be able to name your trigger man.” Dean said to them hinting that they don't need us. “But he won't talk. Alastair's will is very strong. We've arrived at an impasse.” Okay so what do they need? 

“Yeah, well, he's like a black belt in torture. I mean, you guys are out of your league.” Dean said to them. “That's why we've come to his student. You happen to be the most qualified interrogator we've got.” Uriel finished and I am filled with more rage first this angel insults me and now he wants my brother to do torture and if he does, I know it will torture his own soul. “Dean, you are our best hope.” Cas said to him pleading I know he would not be asking this if Uriel was not here. “No. No way. You can't ask me to do this, Cas. Not this.” Uriel walks up to him, and I know what he is about to do so I grab Dean’s hand. “Who said anything about asking?” And we disappear.

We drop into this room and Uriel comes barking at me. “How dare you go against the direct order of God you cockroach.” “How dare you think I would let you kidnap my brother and force him to do this you chicken wings.” I said getting right back in his face. Cas comes in between the two of us.”Y/n Will stay.” “No, she will not.” “I'll just walk back here every time, Uriel, so either leave me alone or you spend the whole night trying to get rid of me your choice.” I said standing victoriously. Dean did not say anything; he was too distracted by the room.

“This devil's trap is old Enochian. He's bound completely.” Cas said about what Alastair was in trapped by. “Fascinating.” Dean said, walking away. “Where's the door? Come on Y/n.” “Where are you going?” Cas questions. “Hitch back to Cheyenne, thank you very much.” We start to walk but Uriel blocks us. “Angels are dying, boy.” “Everybody's dying these days. And hey, I get it. You're all-powerful. You can make me do whatever you want. But you can't make me do this.”

“This is too much to ask, I know. But we have to ask it.” I don’t know what is up with Cas, but I know he does not want this as much as us. “We want to talk to Cas alone.” Dean said, turning to Uriel. “I think I'll go seek revelation. We might have some further orders.” “Well, get some donuts while you're out.” Dean said back to him. “Ah, this one just won't quit, will he? I think I'm starting to like you, boy.” Before he leaves, he gives me a glare. And I give him the middle finger.

“You guys don't walk enough. You're gonna get flabby.” Dean jokes. “You know, I'm starting to think Junkless has a better sense of humor than you do.” He said referring to Cas. “Uriel's the funniest angel in the garrison. Ask anyone.” Wow, they really need to get some basic cable tv. “Tell Uriel, or whoever...you do not want me doing this, trust me.” Dean asked, pleading with Cas. “Want it, no. But I have been told we need it.” Told? “You ask me to open that door and walk through it, you will not like what walks back out.” “For what it's worth, I would give anything not to have you do this.” “Dean, you don’t have to do this.” I told him with my whole heart. “Yes, I do Y/n not just for the Angels but for myself I'll be okay.” He said hugging me and kissed my head. He let’s go and walks towards the torture table.

Dean has been locked in the room with Alistair for about thirty minutes and all Cas and I have been hearing moans of pain. I break the silence. “What's going on, Cas? Since when does Uriel put a leash on you?” He looks at me like he is a little ashamed. “My superiors have begun to question my sympathies.” “Your sympathies? What the fuck does that even mean?” “I was getting too close to the humans in my charge. You. They feel I've begun to express emotions. The doorways to doubt. This can impair my judgment.” I go to sit on the big middle table and pat the side to me for him to sit. And he does. “Look Cas that sympathy that you feel is good, it means that you have your own thoughts and feelings. It is what makes you well you. Also screw Uriel and every other Angel like him. And well I wouldn't be friends with you if you weren’t.”

 He gives me a warm smile and our hands are right next together and our pinkies are almost touching. Just then the lights explode, and we jump off the table and their standing is Anna. “Anna.” “Hello, Castiel, Y/n.” Anna said to us. I'm surprised she’s not dust condensing the last time we saw her she exploded in light. “Your human body—” “It was destroyed, I know. But I guess I'm sentimental. Called in some old favors and…” She gestured to her body. Alistair screams louder and we all look to the door. “You shouldn't be here. We still have orders to kill you.” Cas said to Anna with an intense look. “Somehow, I don't think you'll try. Where's Uriel?” “He went to receive revelation.” “Right.” “Why are you letting Dean do this?” she asked Cas with emotion. 

“He's doing God's work.” He responded back I didn’t say anything I wanted to see what he would say. “Torturing? That's God's work? Stop him, Cas, please. Before you ruin the one real weapon you have.” She was right but Cas had to see that for himself. “Who are we to question the will of God?” “Unless this isn't his will.” “Then where do the orders come from?” “I don't know. One of our superiors, maybe, but not him.” “These orders are wrong, and you know it. But you can do the right thing. You're afraid, Cas. I was too. But together, we can still— “She goes to touch his hand, but he pulls away.

“Together?” He yanks away his hand. “I am nothing like you. You fell. Go.” Dammit Cas. “Cas.” “Go.” Anna looks at me and we both nod at each other in general respect and she vanishes. Cas looks pissed. “She’s right Cas do you really truly believe this is the will of the loving father you believe so much in.” “Why can't it be! “He raised his voice at me, and I wanted to yell back but instead I recognized his voice and how there was pain in it. I start to lift my shirt and show Cas. “Why are you doing that?” “Because I want to show you what happens when you have blind faith in something, sometimes it doesn't always be there for you.” I show him my scar. 

“This is from when I was thirteen my brothers were at some sleepover and my dad thought it would be a good idea to go on a hunt when he was coming off a drunken bender and I got slashed by a werewolf was close to death, but he had enough conscience to call nine one one. I just so wanted to spend time with him, so I ran into that forest without hesitation with no plan. The boys don’t even know I didn’t want them to know the only people who do are my joke of a father, Bobby, and well now you. And all this is to tell you is to trust yourself and make sure what you're ever doing is for yourself and no one else." 

I finish with a small smile. We stare at each other for a second before we start to hear grunts from the room. We burst and Dean is getting the shit kicked out of him of a supposed to be strung up Alistair. “Dean!” Alistair throws him to the ground and goes to check on him when Cas goes to fight Alistair and he wasn’t moving. I start to hear chanting and I look to see Cas getting his ass latined by Alistair. So, I come up behind and throw him off. He sets his sights on me. He goes after me, and I dodge and go to punch him, but he catches my hand and twisted it. “Ahh” I am brought down to my knees by the pain. 

“After I kill your Angel boyfriend and your favorite brother I will do ten fold to you what he did to me.” I hear a crack and I scream. “Wow you've got strong bones, it looks like just a sprang, how about we make it broken.” “Get the Hell away from my sister,” It was Sam.

“Stupid pet tricks.” He said to Sam as he pushed him against the wall. “Who's murdering the angels? How are they doing it?” “You think I'm gonna tell you?” “Yeah, I do. "Sam twists his hand. Alastair's eyes roll white, and he chokes. And I watch in horror. “How are the demons killing angels?” “I don't know.” “Right.” “It's not us. We're not doing it.” “I don't believe you.” “Lilith is not behind this. She wouldn't kill seven angels. Oh, she'd kill a hundred, a thousand.” Sam stopped choking him. “Oh, go ahead. Send me back, if you can.” “I'm stronger than that now. Now I can kill.” Excuse me? I watch as gold light flares inside Alastair as he screams. Alastair's host collapses, dead. 

“There you go, now go very easy on it and take pain meds as needed.” The nurse was explaining how to take care of my wrist as if I hadn’t sprung it a billion times, but she doesn’t know that. “How did you do that again?” “Uh, bike accident I’m very clumsy.” “Yeah, you might want to stay off the bike.” “Yup you are totally right, thanks again.” I get up and walk out of the little room I was in. 

Knock knock “Hey how’s he doing?” I ask Sam as if I didn’t know the answer. “Uh good as you can be on a breathing tube how about you?” “Well Alistair was right about one thing; it was just a sprang guess I do have strong bones.” I said trying to lighten the mood as much as possible. I notice that Sam is not really looking at me but behind me. It was Cas walking away, Sam and I followed. 

“Sam—” “Get in there and heal him. Miracle. Now.” “I can't.” “What do you mean You and Uriel put him in there— “I said to him. “No.” “—because you can't keep a simple devil's trap together.” Sam was right. “I don't know what happened. That trap...it shouldn't have broken. I am sorry.” I know he was. “This whole thing was pointless. You understand that? The demons aren't doing the hits. Something else is killing your soldiers.” “Perhaps Alastair was lying.” Cas said, trying to justify in a way what just happened. “No, he wasn't.” Sam walks back to Dean with that. “Remember what I said Cas trust yourself.” I linger for Second looking at him and walk back to Dean.

Sam and I are now just waiting for Dean to wake up and I realize I should probably call Bobby and tell him what happened, but I don’t have my phone neither does Sam we were too concerned about getting Dean to the ER. “Uh, can I have the keys I need to get the phones.” “Here, be careful.” Sam called out to me as I was walking out the room “Always am.”  

I walk into the elevator down into the car garage and the lights start to flicker. Note to self-check for ghost readings when you get back up. I walk to the car about to open the door when I see a reflection of Uriel. “It’s all because of you!” I turn around and he looks pissed more than usual. “What are you talking about Uriel?” He was getting closer. “Ever since he’s met you, he has been disobedient!” “Woah this is about Cas! for the last time he his not your fucking Dog!” He then hits me down. “He was a loyal soldier then he met you little slut.” I kicked him up. 

“You can call me whatever you want but Cas. Punch Is. Punch Not. Punch A. Punch Dog.” He grabs my hand. “Ah I see a sprained wrist, why don’t I heal it for you.” He slowly twists it until it breaks. “AHHH!!!” “Aww that hurts huh this could have all been avoided if you had left him alone. He could have helped me.” “What … are … you…talking … about.” I said between bloody breaths. “You killed the angels, didn’t you?” “Yeah, I did and I'm about to add one small stupid human to the list. I'll just tell Cas you were killed by a demon. He’ll be sad but hopefully he can turn that into bloodlust.” He is about to stab me but instead he is. It’s Cas, Uriel drops. “Oh Y/n I'm so sorry.” I look up and go running into his arms and hug him tight. “I thought… I thought I was dead.” He hugged me back. 

We walked back into the hospital, and I was lipping. “Oh my gosh did you get on a motorbike!” It was the nurse from before. “Yeah, something like that.” They took me to a room and Cas looked worried and I gave him a smile. 

“What the Hell, so Uriel huh.” It was Sam. “Yeah he was secretly for team apocalypse if not for Cas I would-.” “Well, you're not you're still my annoying little sis right” “Yeah” “I should probably go tell Dean and hope he doesn't freak.” “Oh, come on Sam he is Dean Winchester he is definitely going to freak.” We both laugh. “You'll be, ok? For a few minutes.” “I'll be fine.” He gives me his goofy smile and walks away. Cas walks in.

“Hey.” “Hi.” “How are you doing?” He asked me. “Oh good, the strong pain meds really help.” He looked sad. “Look, this wasn’t your fault.” “Yes, it is I should have seen-” “You couldn't have seen anything. I would rather have a hundred broken wrists than not stand up for you” “You shouldn't have too” “But I will always for the people I care about.”

Hey everyone, hope you all are having a good day and that you enjoyed this chapter! I think that was our first hug of many with Cas. So, the next episode is it’s a terrible life which should be fun to write a different version of Y/n. Also, I am going to post a playlist for y/n on Spotify to add to the story so listen if you like!

NEXT

[mdhwrites]

about your aventurine rant- i don’t think agreeing w/ ratio’s assessment is the best stance to go with. ratio admits himself to his personal bias and he’s shown to be a jackass to people he thinks are stupid. even if he wants to spread education, he’s still mean and rude to people who are ‘less educated’ than himself, and saying aventurine is stupid despite knowing he had no education as a kid is kind of…? and agreeing with the (again, opinionated and biased and ignorant!!!!) statements from sparkle and ratio isn’t the best. aventurine isn’t stupid, gambling requires a level of logic and maths that isn’t elementary, and if he was stupid he sure as hell wouldn’t be one of the stonehearts. we also aren’t sure WHAT ratio’s motives are or how ‘allied’ he is with aventurine. from what little we know they can literally just be allied for one small thing, ratio isn’t against the idea of working for his own goals and we don’t know if ratio would betray aventurine. caution for a gambler isn’t a dumb move.

Before I get into this, I will actually admit that I didn't provide as much evidence as I should have in the first blog for what I knew was a controversial take. Let me correct that.

Let's start first just with your supposition that Ratio isn't an ally of Aventurine's: They are LITERALLY working together. They are LITERALLY both a part of the IPC (the Intelligentsia Guild is a branch of the IPC). Ratio only tries to leave so as to tell their BOSSES that the person assigned to lead this fucked up at step one because he managed to lose all of their leverage. They are LITERALLY working together but here's the thing:

Ratio just wants to know that this gambler has a plan that has a chance to succeed. He would have worked with him if Aventurine had even TRIED to give him one.

Now I won't say the scene is perfect. As far as I'm concerned, Ratio seems to flip flop a bit character wise because he's willing to actively try to hurt Aventurine when later apologizing that he didn't mean to offend. The latter is much more in character for Ratio, who does judge people on merit, even if harshly. Also, the line where he calls Aventurine a Sigonian thrall is just... Not good because it's entirely without reason to be brought up. It's not an answer to Aventurine's question, it's just to point out that he was a slave. It's really bad exposition which a LOT of the stuff about him Sigonian feels like. Not character work, just exposition. This becomes even more true as not true to Ratio's character because Ratio actually does give Aventurine a lot of time despite Aventurine still not being willing to tell him his plan. If it were just that Ratio was racist and biased, he would have left when he said he would and not listened to another word out of Aventurine's mouth. He would have been looking for any reason to drop this Sigonian Thrall like a hot rock. Instead, he sticks around despite the fact that the second Aventurine walks in, the onus of trust is on HIM right now. Aventurine has already fucked up in a slight way by being late and wasting his colleagues time, but also in a major way by losing his gifts and the cornerstones and so now he needs to give Ratio a reason to believe that Aventurine can do this. To trust him as the lead on this job.

But he doesn't. Instead, after trying to point the question back at Ratio, he plays his parents being dead for pity, a manipulation to get Ratio to drop the trust thing because otherwise he has no reason to bring it up. Even in the next line, he admits that his parents DID teach him life lessons. So Ratio should trust him because his parents are dead and because this grown ass man, who has had to theoretically work with a LOT of people, doesn't understand the foundation of literally any partnership. Not because, I dunno... Anything else? Anything tangible? Like Ratio hasn't, besides the out of character racism (again, the man does judge people by their merits and someone who supposedly is against ignorance should not lean into something almost always built on ignorance), given Aventurine a reason not to trust him. To not want to work with the person who is in this room to WORK WITH HIM. But then again, Aventurine gives NO ONE a reason to trust him. Not because of his race but because he's an asshole who seems to think he can just tell people to work with him and they will. The ONLY time he actually offers someone a reason to work with him is at the end of the patch when he's talking to the trailblazer about their deal. Even Black Swan admits she has no reason to work with him besides the fact that she thinks she can trust him because he's a 'good businessman'. He doesn't give Ratio a reason though and he doesn't even TRY to give Sparkle a reason. He doesn't even resort to "Don't you want to be on the winner's side."

Speaking of the racist part: This is... Rough. I am against bigotry in all forms. In theory, I empathize with someone who has been mistreated and mischaracterized for their race. It is dangerous to bring in racism for a fictional race though because it's a very complicated topic, especially when you're using it as effectively exposition on that race. It is how we know what people think of Sigonians after all. If this is meant to be negative stereotyping though, that people are judging him for his eyes and not his actions, then these traits should appear untrue in regards to him. Then he as actually experienced racism.

So what are the traits? Especially the ones most assigned to Aventurine? For the race as a whole, they are, as described by Sparkle to literally point out how Aventurine is following the stereotype: Liars, thieves, social manipulators and wolves in sheep's clothing. So, if we want to say that Ratio and Sparkle are being unfair to Aventurine, ignoring his actions because of his race's stereotype, rather than just pointing out that he is a Sigonian for *shrug* Character exposition mostly frankly? We have to interrogate if Aventurine matches this description:

Liars: I will give him this. While he makes a couple claims he can't verify 100%, he actually hasn't appeared to lie to anyone. The closest he comes is claiming his parents didn't teach him life lessons before then, you know, saying they taught him a life lesson once Ratio drops the subject the statement was useful though. He does actually even correct someone though when it would have been useful for him to have let her be wrong as admitting you stalked someone for longer than they thought is kind of a bad look for you.

Thief: We have not seen him steal anything so this is bluntly untrue. However, he is also never accused of theft or given a chance where stealing might be useful to him and passing it up/or doing it so it's really still up in the air.

Social Manipulators: Aventurine claims that his parents died before he could be taught that trust is an important part of any human relationship. However, he literally says, no ambiguity, that they taught him, "Friends are the weapons of the Avgin." Then with Sparkle, he confirms, "I am an Avgin."

...Did... Did you literally just say that above actually working with people and being nice to others, your culture taught you to use people and see them as tools? Which mind you, IS how Aventurine treats everyone. Everything is quid pro quo. Everyone is out to backstab each other. You cannot escape his game because you're already trapped in it. He will KIDNAP you, say it was saving you, and portray others as villains (he cannot prove Acheron killed Duke Inferno. His story instead could apply to pretty much everyone here but blaming it on Acheron is the most useful here. He also only lists murderous aeons for what she could be, even though he doesn't know. Again, that paints her as dangerous and thus he is the 'safe' option) so as to make his arguments more enticing. He literally uses the death of his parents to get Ratio to drop a subject. Sparkle accuses him of being silver tongued as the only truly direct insult on his character. THIS is the trait she is using the Sigonian bloodline to interrogate and it's the one that holds up the most true for him, especially since he STALKED HER FOR FORTY FIVE MINUTES! If I were in her shoes, I'd have a pretty negative opinion about this creep too, especially because only do that sort of thing to gain information you can use on someone else because you know you don't have leverage on them if you just went and talked to them like a human being, which Aventurine isn't treating Sparkle as even before talking to her.

The ONE kindness I will give him here is that he doesn't blackmail the trailblazer with the truth he has. He promises he'll give us an option after he shows us it. That is a genuinely good moment and good for any redemptive qualities of his character. It is a moment that helps but by no means fixes the rest of these problems.

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Acheron saves us. As far as we can tell, he uses honeyed words and an excuse to be in our room in order to make us vulnerable so that he can better use us to his ends, like a wolf pretending to be a sheep. Then he finishes his talk by menacing us and saying that we are already a part of his game. As far as the presentation goes, it looks like he's about to grab us by the shoulders and drown us in the dream pool. It is shot like the moment before an over the top action villain murders one of his henchman with sadistic glee. So yeah, he counts for this one too in my opinion.

So for the stereotype of his race, especially of the one that he is actually accused of being... He just is it. They are not being bigoted towards him, they are being ACCURATE, at least with what he is most commonly doing. After all, even the talk with Himeko ends with him excited to see what his 'friends' will do for him. Now, it is still wrong for them to do. Bigotry is awful but you do have to treat it differently in a narrative where YOU decide what those stereotypes are. To write a character who leans so hard into the negative stereotypes of the race you made... is not a great way to write a character who is trying to gain sympathy because racism is happening against him, especially when he honestly comes across like he'd potentially use this to his advantage.

Final point: Him being a Stoneheart or gambler proves nothing. They are only titles. If you want to SAY it means he's smart, go ahead. Show always beats tell though. A character's actions are more important than their words or titles. Meanwhile, this dumbass rejected help from a colleague who is there to help him and work with him, who he kept waiting, in the same conversation he's talking about needing friends. He stalked someone for 45 minutes who he wants to make his 'friend' which gives her ZERO reason to want to work with him in any capacity. Then he menaces someone he wants to be his FRIEND for NO REASON. Aventurine is not good at his job.

The closest he ever gets to a win is against Himeko, who is BAFFLING in this update, because he's right. She asks for a favor for nothing in return except a title which I just called out as meaningless. He also calls this out, which is showing his hand, before accepting the soft power which... Also makes the soft power moot, meaning he actually did do exactly what Himeko wanted him to. Give him what she wants while owing him nothing. After all, the idea behind soft power is that you garner good will with someone by doing acts that have no strings attached. That people want to be around you because you are simply a good ally to have, not just because you can make a deal with them. Aventurine on the other hand explicitly makes it clear that he's doing this because he plans to call on a favor from us. Not that we HAVE to do it (you know, until the end of his conversation with us in our room which is effectively him saying we WILL help him) but that he WILL make a price for this, removing the good will that he should be trying to gain.

Aventurine having a tragic backstory and having people bring up his race does not dismiss these flaws in his character. When a villain talks about having faced adversity when he was young, that doesn't justify the cruelties he performed. When you tell a bully their abusive to others and they say their parents abused them, that doesn't make continuing the cycle of violence and horrendous treatment correct.

It just means that as a writer, you are using these real world elements to manipulate your audience rather than actually interrogating these matters. Aventurine is not some deep exploration of racism or the effects of slavery on a person. He's a dumbass with a tragic backstory who still needs to prove he's a good person, regardless of his race or upbringing, because so far he is simply not. He could improve with future updates but for the guy we are literally forced to work with in the end?

It's not exactly a good showing, for him or his people, or for the idea that him having been the victim of such injustices is going to actually be explored or have any nuance to them. In other words: It's bad writing.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[cyberstudious]

hi, im an high school sophomore interested in computer science and im also new to your blog. i was wondering if you would recommend conputer science and what have been your strengths and pitfalls with the field? thank u so much for your time.

Hi! Welcome to my blog, haha thanks for stopping by and sending an ask!

My path was self-taught game dev/web dev -> CS degree -> cybersecurity, so that's the perspective I'm writing from. My current job is basically just writing code for cybersecurity-related things (which I really like!). I do enjoy computer science and I think it's a great field to get into because you can do so many different things! I listed out my personal pros/cons under the cut but the tl;dr is that CS is a good field if you like constantly learning things, building things, and knowing how stuff works under the hood.

things I like about computer science:

so many options and things you can learn/specialize in

having programming skills and knowing how computers work gives you the foundational knowledge to succeed in a lot of things, both practical and theoretical/research-based. if you don't really like programming, there is plenty of theoretical math stuff you can do that's related to CS (this is what my partner is going back to grad school for haha)

lots of info available online for self-guided learning

do you want to learn how to make X? someone has almost certainly already written a tutorial for that and put it online for free. there are lots of open-source projects out there where you can read their documentation and even look at the code to figure out how things work!

there is always more to learn

tech evolves and you have to keep your skills up to date - that means there's always something new and interesting happening!

being able to build things

do you want to make an app? a website? a video game? a quick script to automate some annoying task that you do all the time? you can do that. all you need is a computer and some time! once you have some skills, it's amazing when you realize you can just Make Stuff literally whenever

understanding how things actually work

in a world of apps & operating systems that actively try to hide the technical layer of how they work in favor of "user friendliness", there is power to understanding what's actually happening inside your computer

problem-solving mindset

this kind of goes hand-in-hand with being able to build things, but eventually you get the hang of looking at a problem, breaking it down, and figuring out how to build a solution. this is something that I knew was an important soft skill, but I didn't really have any concrete examples until I started working with some technical but non-programmer coworkers. knowing programming & how to build things really does just help you solve problems in a concrete way and I think that's pretty cool.

things that can make computer science difficult:

programming is a cycle of failing until you succeed

programming is not something you get right on your first try - there's a reason that patches and updates and bug fixes exist. this might take some getting used to at first, but after that it's not an issue. failing constantly is just part of the process, but that means that solving those problems and feeling great when you figure it out is also part of the process!

there's so much to learn, you will have to go out and learn some of it on your own

a CS degree will not fully prepare you to be a professional developer, you will likely have to learn other languages & frameworks on your own (this is kind of a good thing btw - the average college probably isn't updating their curriculum often enough to teach you relevant frameworks/some professional coding things).

there is always more to learn

this is the other side of tech always evolving - sometimes it can feel like you're constantly behind, and that's okay - you can't learn literally everything! just do your best, explore a bit, and figure out the subset of things that you're actually interested in

lots of screen time

there are tech jobs where you can be active and move around and stuff, but I work from home and write code most of the day so I spend a ton of time in front of my computer. this isn't a huge problem, I just make an effort to spend time on my non-computer hobbies outside of work. something to note when you're looking for jobs, I suppose!

occasional toxic culture?

I'm thinking of "leetcode grindset bros" here because that was a common character at the college I went to - just ignore them and do things at a pace that feels comfortable to you, you'll be fine

on a related note, in my experience there will always be some dude who has been programming since like the age of 5 and seems to know everything and is kind of an ass about it, ignore these people too and you'll be fine

things are getting better, but CS is still very much a male-dominated field. however, there are plenty of organizations focused on supporting minority groups in tech! you can find a support group and there will always be people rooting for you.

that got kinda long lol, but feel free to reach out if you have any more questions!

[aroceu]

memes i've been tagged in

thank you @telomeke for tagging me in a couple of these! i'm gonna answer them all in one post since i don't do these very often but i do like talking about myself :)

get to know me

do you make your bed?

no-ish. sometimes i do if i wake up early enough but uh. usually i wake up late. on the weekends i try to, with varying results.

what’s your favourite number?

17 but it's not that serious to me

what is your job?

generally speaking, data entry

if you could go back to school, would you?

no

can you parallel park?

yes, it was mandatory for my driving test.

a job you had that would surprise people?

i think i've been pretty upfront about the jobs i've had so i don't think they're really that surprising? i also think they are very me-core. except maybe the last one (receptionist at a pet place) but that's how i met duke :)

do you think aliens are real?

my belief system does not include whether or not i think things that we have no definitive proof of but can theoretically exist are real

can you drive a manual car?

no

what’s your guilty pleasure?

telling people on reddit that they're wrong

tattoos?

yes! i have two - a stick n poke, and one i got on my birthday a couple of years ago. i'm also looking to get another one for my birthday this year :)

favorite color?

a slate grey-ish light blue. but when it comes to personal customization related things (such as fashion) i also like pink and reds because they stand out more than blues

favorite type of music?

any kind of pop! my music taste is vast but generally the closer to pop a song is, the more i will like it

do you like puzzles?

yes

any phobias?

yes

favorite childhood sport?

basketball (yes i am short)

do you talk to yourself?

yes, a lot of times i record voice memos in my car just to talk to myself (even though i usually don't listen to them back). otherwise i'm just muttering to myself

what movies do you adore?

kimi no na wa, the iron giant, and wreck-it ralph

coffee or tea?

tea because i can drink it more regularly, but i do love the taste of coffee as well

first thing you wanted to be growing up?

an actor, even though i was never into even the idea of acting, it was just the first career i knew that was associated with being famous (i no longer want to be famous). however i do think this contributes to me being surrounded by theatre kids my whole life

get to know me (better)

3 ships:

pat/pran from bad buddy

wangxian from mdzs

[insert one of my shameless rpf ships here]

first ship: gonna be real i started off being really into self-insert stuff and harry potter (neither of which i really want to detail here) so uhhhhhhhhhhh sasuke/naruto

last song: alligator tears by beyonce

currently reading: don't worry about it

last movie: i should watch movies again. pretty sure it was glass onion

currently craving: nothing

not tagging anyone but if anyone is interested in any of these please feel free to pretend i tagged you :3

[crestfallercanyon]

BEEN A WHILE SINCE I POSTED SOME AU SHENANIGANS — but now I’m back to my regularly scheduled bullshit (read: could not sleep and this is what I came up with at 4 am)

Let's go! TMR AU: Inception (because I love that movie and I’m stuck in the 2000s apparently)

Here’s the team:

Thomas — the extractor (Cobb/DiCaprio’s role). The extractor is the person who is sent in to get the information from a subject via the dream. Cobb learned about dream sharing and such lucid dreaming techniques from Mal's father, and then shortly after Cobb and Mal began testing the bounds of dreamsharing. This is pretty much the quintessential Thomas move as Thomas, due to an innate curiousness and other qualities, tends to forego the rules in pursuit of what he deems are greater interests (TMR is freedom). I could see him doing what Cobb and Mal did, which is try to see how far deep they can go until they got trapped in Limbo. He’s an extremely guilt ridden character in TMR so his guilt over what happened with Teresa matches well, and I think Thomas as a character is peak “trying to learn from my mistakes” and “my failures will not be futile/in vain”.

Teresa — the shade (Mal/Marion Cotillard). The shade refers to the fact that Mal was just a projection of Cobb's guilty conscience and grief over his wife. Mal was the one who founded the idea of totems, "an elegant solution for keeping track of reality" which seems very like Teresa. Teresa is clever and curious and enchanting to Thomas, which is why she fits Mal's role well. Mal loses sight of reality when she goes too far into the dream space with Cobb, and abandons reality in order to cope with living in limbo (I'm not sure Teresa could cope with the idea that there is no cure in TMR, losing track of her own personal humanity -- betraying Thomas -- to try to save all humanity, so I think this kind of parallels well). I can see her and Thomas falling in the same pitfall, becoming intensely fascinated with dream sharing and, with Thomas, going very deep in the subconscious until they are stranded in Limbo, get an idea implanted in her head, and unfortunately dies as a result. To be a guilt-born remake of herself in Thomas’s subconscious, I think unfortunately suits her character.

Gally — the architect (Ariadne/Page’s role). Architects build the setting of the dream world for the subject, supplying the requisite paradoxes and safes for information to be stored and the team can extract. Gally built the glade up from nothing as a teenager. In the inception world I think this could parallel to how Ariadne is approached because she can think outside the box. Dream-architecture gives the intellectual opportunity of pure creation, which I think Gally would be fascinated by, even if concerned. He also would constantly question Thomas’s approach to dream-sharing and the dangers he’s potentially putting them all in like Ariadne does. (in TMR this makes him an antagonist, here he wouldn’t be like Ariadne wasn’t) (also yes while I can't bring myself to ship Cobb/Ariadne, I would plan that here in this au thomally would be endgame, fight me)

Minho — the point man (Arthur/Gordon-Levitt’s job but I think he’d have the personality more like Eames/Hardy). Minho’s an organizer. The way the point man worked was basically the extractor made the theoretical plan for the mission and the point man did the research, organization, training, and detail work to be able to make that plan an actionable reality. They also are the one relied upon to support improvising if the plan goes awry. Minho ran the entire maze and made a detail oriented map about it, was able to track how the maze shifted and knew its schedule. That takes an amazing amount of skill and detail-oriented mind. He is able to survive well on his own (especially movie Minho who gets kidnapped and almost breaks out/does some damage without help) and is overall the one who seems more meticulous than he comes off.

Newt — the forger (Eames/Hardy’s role but I think he’s have more Arthur’s personality). Forgers in dream space aren’t people who can forge documents, rather they forge people and personalities well enough to be convincing in a dream (i.e., they know the ticks, mannerisms, and personality of people in a subject’s personal sphere — family, friends, lovers, enemies — and are able to become them by replacing them through a mirror in the dream). Newt’s incredibly good with people. He is compassionate, observant, and clever. As Alby’s right hand man in TMR he fills the role with a sort of docile strength, intensity, and firmness with others. As Thomas’s second in later films, he is a lot more gentle and only uses firmness when Thomas is being unclear/they need immediate answers. This shows a lot of perception into what people need/want, which I think would make him the forger.

Brenda — the chemist (Yusuf/Rao’s role). The chemist creates the drug that is used to provide for stable sleeping that won’t be interrupted/disturbed so that the team can share the dream through multiple levels of dreaming (i.e., provides the stability in order for them to support sleeping within sleeping creating multiple layers of dreaming). I pick Brenda because while she and Jorge are not exactly super supportive in the beginning, she is somewhat of Thomas’s/the group's stabilizer in the Scorch providing them at least some sense of direction (particularly in the movies). I also could see her being fascinated by other people who wish to do such dream sharing and deep dive but be less inclined to actually go that far herself, staying upon surface level dreams (perhaps due to concerns raised consistently by Jorge).

That's it, that's the au -- I'll never write this fic but to play around with the idea is fun so I thought I'd share. Enjoy.

[thetriggeredhappy]

okay forgot I sent you that ask cause it was like the middle of the night but the homoeroticism was because I was playing on hightower as scout and this blu sniper was legit the best huntsman sniper I've ever encountered. he'd get me as I was leaving spawn and I'd get him when he wasn't paying attention. funniest fucking thing was I missed my jump into their middle spawn area and landed below the wall there, so I just tucked myself in the corner between and wall and the crates, looked up and waited for him because I knew he saw me. a second passes and then there's an arrow in the wall next to my head. I back up, he's behind me looking at the arrow, he looks at me, I look at him, then the arrow, back to each other, then we're both asking how the hell he missed from point blank. either way I sort of wanna turn that into a fic but idk. not sure why I'm telling you about this but I figured you'd probably find it funny

writes a fic abt a theoretical in-game situation because im a fuckin. goobus

(warnings for canon-typical violence, consider this one pg-13)

-

Thump. “OW, FUCK!”

Scout clamped a hand over his mouth a moment too late, eyes wide.

Okay, so, shit. Not ideal. That was a twisted ankle—hell, maybe even a fracture—and here he was, alone by the BLU restock room, having just completely and utterly failed what was supposed to be an easy jump. The easiest jump.

And that bastard BLU Sniper for sure just probably heard him.

He pinned his shoulders back against the wall, eyes up towards the ledge above him. Okay, he had to think fast. He still had his gun, even if ammo was looking a little… thin at the moment. He wasn’t defenseless. He just had to play it cool. Keep his head on his shoulders. Which, yeah, was kind of the problem lately, since apparently the BLU Sniper was just a real douchebag with that bow and arrow, but whatever.

But the pain was distracting enough, and his focus narrowed so firmly to the ledge way up above him, that he didn’t process the sound of footsteps before the sound of a hard THUNK just to one side of his head, making him jump half a foot into the air and yelp in a way that was extremely un-manly.

And then he looked to his right at the arrow embedded into the wall a foot from his head, and then he looked at the BLU Sniper standing not even two dozen paces away.

A beat of pause.

“How the fuck did you miss?” Scout asked, utterly baffled.

“Bugger off,” the Sniper barked, looking similarly confused.

“No, seriously, how’d you fuckin’ miss?” he repeated, standing up and turning to look at the arrow again. “What the shit? My guy, I could’ve thrown it overhand and hit closer than that.”

“Well how does a bloody Scout miss a four-foot horizontal jump to flat ground?” he challenged right back.

“Oh, fuck you. I’m not the one who couldn’t hit a still target at eight fuckin’ yards.”

“I’m not the one who fell eight feet and yelped like one of those yappy sorts of dogs!”

“I’m not the one who wears sunglasses in the middle of the fuckin’ night.”

“Oh bugger off,” the Sniper spat, jaw tight, “now you’re just getting personal.”

“Wanna talk about personal?” the Scout challenged, moving forward, feeling particularly bold just then as he processed that closer range meant he was in less danger when it came to a Sniper. “If we’re talkin’ about personal, we can talk about how you’re gettin’ all personal! What’s with the target on my back, huh?”

“Well why are you wasting time bolting up to beat my head in instead of doing your buggering job?” the Sniper challenged right back, eyeing the way the Scout moved in but not backing down.

“Hey, you’re the one shooting at fast targets for no reason!”

“No, you answer the damn question,” the Sniper sneered, taking a step in as well, and it made Scout stutter to a halt, suddenly much closer than he was entirely on board with now that he noticed the knife hanging on the man’s hip. “What’s got you picking fights with blokes a kilometer out from the damn fight? You got a bloody death wish?”

“Maybe it’s just ‘cause I like you so much,” Scout teased in a sing-song voice, and didn’t anticipate the hard shove to the chest that sent him stumbling back, and it caught his leg wrong, made him hiss through his teeth at the sharp spike of pain, and too late he recovered his balance.

“Not so brave now, though, are you?” the Sniper jeered, fronting on him now, and before Scout could shift his weight to defend himself another hard shove sent him stumbling back further, off balance again. “Caught out neck-deep on enemy territory with a bum leg, and there goes that bravado, doesn’t it? Maybe now you’ll learn to mind the attitude.”

“Ain’t ever minded my attitude before, why would I start today? Because some fuckin’ punk gets his kicks playing with his food?” Scout mocked, absolutely committed to not looking like a coward. This Sniper wasn’t gonna get that satisfaction. “Where’s that professionalism now, huh, crocodile man?”

“Are you ever going to shut your damn mouth?!” the Sniper growled, and every nerve in Scout’s body screamed ‘danger’ at his expression, his body language, everything. Back literally to a wall, the tail of that arrow from earlier in his periphery, the Sniper closing in. “Will you just shut up already?!”

“Make me,” Scout sneered, and the Sniper practically snarled, surging forward. He processed the painful click of teeth foremost, but his limbs caught up faster than his brain, and within seconds he had arms up around the Sniper’s shoulders, yanking him down to kiss him harder, longer, and man, he was so fucked.

This was like fighting too, fighting to hold on tighter, to pull back to breathe. He was being crushed a little, ribs aching, but it was good, the fighting.

He pulled back to gasp hard, and coughed a little at how the closeness didn’t let him get the whole gasp’s worth of air, and a second gasp followed at the feeling of the Sniper pushing his head back, setting his mouth in against his neck and getting to work. Scout huffed for air, digging fingertips in to grip at him, lips tingling and aching. He was pretty sure he could taste blood, but he wasn’t sure whose.

Wait, what the fuck was he doing?!

Like ice water, brought to his senses, he caught sight of the arrow out of the corner of his eye. It was easy to reach, but a little harder to yank out of the wall, and then easy to jab down somewhere into the Sniper’s ribcage.

A choked noise, the Sniper rearing back despite Scout’s clinging arms, and he didn’t see him reaching for the blade but he felt it lodged down through his shoulder.


God fucking damn it, he had good aim. Already his vision was swimming and going dark. He didn’t have long.

“Kill ya later,” he managed to quip, grinning as wide and smug as he could manage, and it was hard to tell, but at least he probably got the Sniper too from the way the man teetered. And he tried for a wink, but waking back up in the Resupply again, he couldn’t be sure he managed it.

Oh well. He’d have next time. And if he wasn’t determined before, he was now—there would be a next time.

[mimisempai]

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you 2/3

Summary:

Loki would like to express his feelings to Mobius but doesn’t know how to do it, he finds a sympathetic ear in Miss Minutes, without knowing that Mobius is suffering from the same problem…

Chapitre 1/3 - Chapter 2/3 - Chapitre 3/3

A little story, of love, of friendship, of two idiots in love…

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32351812

3804 words - Rating G

"Good job Loki!" Mobius smiled at Loki before continuing, "I'm really going to believe you're trying to steal my job," and then he headed for his office.

On the way, he thought about the weeks that had passed since they had taken over the TVA and completely restructured it. Loki had settled in incredibly well and was completely invested in his job as a TVA agent. Mobius wanted to tell him more often how proud he was of him, but he didn't want to sound condescending.

What amazed him even more was how well they had both fitted in with each other. For two beings as different as they were, the life together was going pretty well.

Mobius found it quite amusing, even touching, every time Loki was confronted with ordinary things, such as doing the dishes or putting away the laundry. Loki, god of mischief, adapting to a domestic life, what an incredible concept! Moreover, although Loki was now allowed to use magic without restriction, he preferred to do without.

When Mobius decided to use Loki to catch Sylvie a few months ago, he never thought they would get that far, and yet here they were. Loki had managed to get into his heart, without even having to use one of his tricks. But what Mobius never expected was that his affection would be returned.

Loki seemed to be very fond of him, but Mobius always feared the day when he would realize that he could do better, much better. That's why Mobius hadn't told him. Loki deserved to be free, and Mobius didn't want to be the ball and chain that held him back.

Sitting at his desk, he let out a sigh and shook his head as if to chase away his gloomy thoughts.

"What a sigh! It looks like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders!"

"Sylvie!" The young woman was leaning in the doorway.

"Tired of married life already?" asked Sylvie impishly.  She stepped forward and sat down on one of the armchairs opposite Mobius.

This had been the second surprise, the friendship he had formed with the one who had been his nemesis for years, when he had been a pawn on Ravonna's chessboard.  Loki had told him that there was nothing surprising about it, because not only did Mobius' caring nature make him capable of forming bonds with anyone, but since Sylvie was theoretically another Loki, it was only natural that some of their common traits would have allowed Mobius and the young woman to form this bond.

"Tired of married life? It would be quite the opposite."

"That's perfect then!"

"It'll only be harder when he leaves." muttered Mobius softly.

"Huh?"

"Don't play dumb, you heard me just fine."

Sylvie leaned forward and replied genuinely surprised, "Oh I heard you very well, but I'd like to know what makes you think Loki is going to leave?"

"Everything! Look at me and look at him! What do I have that would hold someone like Loki back? I'm just a plain person, nothing extraordinary. "

Sylvie pretended to tear her hair out, "No, but really, you are the dumbest couple of idiots in the universe! Loki doesn't care about any of this, do you realize that the day you first told Loki that you didn't see him as a villain, you tied him to you for life?!"

Mobius protested, "That's gratitude, not am-"

"Shut up you idiot! You know what Loki once told me? That the day you asked him to help you catch me, he was ready to follow you, and you know why? Because it was the first time he had the possibility of a relationship not based on lies. You knew everything about him and you didn't lie to him about what you wanted. For Loki, that's extremely precious. You didn't see him after you were pruned, I did. He was devastated, Mobius! Devastated! I really thought I couldn't reach him. You don't feel that kind of emotion for someone you want to leave!"

Mobius protested again, more weakly, "but that was different, the context was different, he didn't have enough perspective to assess the situation objectively. Now that he has time to think, he'll quickly realize that he could have someone better."

Sylvie interrupted him again, "You're just a moron. You're not going to be like everyone else before you, deciding what's best for him, are you? You freed him from his destiny, so let him make his own choices!"

Mobius muttered, "But what if that choice isn't me?"

"I wonder why I'm wasting my time, it's not even me you should be talking to about this!"

She stood up abruptly, "Come on, come with me! And no discussion!"

"But-"

"No discussion I said!"

He surrendered and followed her. Seeing that they were coming near Loki's office, he stopped and said, "No Sylvie!"

"Shut up and follow me!"

He reluctantly followed her, not being at all ready for this kind of conversation. They arrived at the half-open door, she turned and motioned for him to be quiet. Loki's voice reached his ears.

"But it's true! I swear! It makes me want to take off those jeans every time!"

"Lokiiii! That's enough!" Miss Minutes gave him a little kick and Loki laughed out loud.

Mobius behind Sylvie could not see them well, but he heard perfectly what Miss Minutes said, "Loki, tell Mobius, tell him everything you just told me, I don't know any person in the world who wouldn't like to hear everything you just told me."

His lover's voice sounded sad as he said, "But what do I have to offer him? I am not a good person for him. And I'm still waiting for the day when he can't stand my kind anymore and tells me I have to leave."

"A couple of idiots, that's what I'm saying." said Sylvie loudly before Mobius could stop her.

Loki shouted, "Sylvie?!" then turned around and shocked, shouted again, "Mobius?"

Sylvie opened the door fully, pushed Mobius into the office and with her hands on her hips said curtly, "I've done my part of the job, come on Mimi, we'll let those two idiots talk.Two true kings of communication."

"I'm coming." The little clock jumped toward her.

Sylvie closed the door saying, "Lock up behind you guys, wouldn't want anyone to stumble upon you in a compromising situation!"

"Sylvie!"

Both she and Miss Minutes laughed as they heard the outraged shouting of the two men behind the door followed by the unmistakable sound of a lock being closed.

[imagining-in-the-margins]

Hi! You often give alot of insight into anons like this and your my fave CM blog so that's why I'm here! So I'm finishing up the last seasons (and lord it is hard to get through) and they just introduced Max and I cannot stand her. She was just so rude and it felt like she had 2 different personalities the entire time she was on screen. And I worried that this meant I was like hating women because I don't like other female characters like Maeve, JJ, Hailey, and Seaver. But then I started thinking and I honestly think it's cause these Characters are women poorly written by men. But then I wondered how they created likeable Characters like Emily, Kristy, Blake, Tara, and Penelope (leaving out others like Savannah because they're under developed in my opinion) I don't know what's the difference in the writing for these Characters or of there isn't any at all and I'm just being hateful in a way. What are your thoughts?

Ah, I think about this a lot. Thank you for thinking I’m interesting enough to answer this, also!

I think you’ve really hit the nail on the head with the writers doing a poor job at most of their female characters. However, I think it’s possible (and very common in this fandom) for people to dislike any character Spencer showed an interest in, which is also problematic and rooted in internalized misogyny. To me, it all comes down to why you dislike the characters.

(A LOT More Below - Bit of a Rant)

The first step I took when reflecting to see if this was my problem was rewatching and seeing which female characters I loved. Along with the ones you listed, I also found a number of side characters I greatly enjoyed, including Lila, Austin, Dr. Linda Kamura (from Amplification, the anthrax episode), Einstein, Megan Kane, and a few other random case characters. So, right off the bat I found multiple characters who Spencer showed an affinity for. I also greatly enjoyed Cat’s character, although I found her to be underdeveloped in canon (Fanon has done a good job, IMO) and often contradictory in her character design.

If you didn’t like any of these women, and your reason is related purely to Spencer’s reactions to them, chances are you might be suffering from a bit of jealousy rather than improper character design - not that you need to like them all (or the ones that I like), but because they are all very different. You should, theoretically, find something to enjoy about at least one of them.

But the CM Writers have a TERRIBLE habit of writing women that are easy to hate.

There’s a bunch of controversy I see over Haley Hotchner, but the truth is that they wrote her to be hated. That was her sole purpose. Her character’s decisions were poorly thought out and she was shown to be malicious 80% of the time. This was intentional. She was written to personify the trope of the nagging housewife. If you dislike her, you have done nothing but follow the narrative.

That being said, you should also criticize why they wrote her this way. Because it didn’t make any sense. She married a prosecutor - a dangerous, time consuming job. She had Jack when she knew he was with the BAU. Why did she randomly change her tune? Why did she suddenly demand he gives up on his dreams that she was fully aware of for years? I’d argue they wrote it like this to further the narrative of “the wife who traps you with a child to force you to do what she wants” which is garbage writing. I wish people could look at the potential she had if they hadn’t written her like... that.

Maeve, I find, is problematic on multiple aspects and I’ve talked about it before. Her narrative was poorly thought out because as soon as they pitched the idea of a long-term love interest for Spencer, everyone (most notably Gubler) rejected it. They didn’t think it was necessary for his character, who already had a lot going on with the ignored plot lines of his drug addiction and mother.

There were multiple problems associated with her character that were never addressed. The fact she essentially just took advantage of a patient because she was bored, she seemed to “correct” his interests and show annoyance when he disagreed with her, she lied about having a fiance, she was shown to be considering breaking up with him... there’s a lot.

Her character is poorly written. It had a lot of potential, but they just kind of stopped caring once they decided to kill her off. She had more faults shown on screen than redeeming qualities. For many, they liked her because they see there was a potential that we’ll never see (fair). But for people like me, we interpret it as a idealized fantasy of what could have (but probably wouldn’t have) been, which is not healthy for Spencer.

JJ is an interesting character because you can feel the constant struggle between AJ Cook and the writers. They really sabotaged JJ at every step of the way. I’ll be honest and say that I think there are some reasons to hate JJ, but they aren’t the reasons I see most often. Almost all of the JJ hate I see is surrounding the idea that JJ is an evil, manipulative, jealous bitch. But.. she’s not. Even in Truth or Dare, when she pulls that asshole move that was wildly OOC for JJ (in my opinion), she isn’t shown to be jealous or cruel about it.

I think she’s the most likely target for people who’s hatred is driven from jealousy or disliking conventionally attractive women and assuming them to be bitchy by nature of looking “beautiful.” I think Lila Archer* also falls into this category.

But as I said, JJ was also written with a lot of flaws. I think it’s fair if you don’t like her character or the way she treats Spencer, but I also hope that you similarly criticize the whole team in the same way, and don’t just pity Spencer because he is smol uwu babie who needs protection.

(* Yet another reminder that I ask everyone to not message me about J Depp or Amber Heard. Reactive Abuse is an extreme trigger for me and I will block you if you try to get me to talk about it)

Seaver got a lot of hate based off one line of dialogue. I think it was a bad line. If they had left it out, there would be essentially no reason in my mind to dislike Seaver. I used to dislike her a lot, but the more I rewatch the show, the less she bothers me. She was just a young student who wanted to learn about her father/herself. She was MASSIVELY underdeveloped because they kicked her off just as quickly as they invited her in.

NO character was developed that quickly. Her scenes were a bit cringey and the plotlines were bad, and her character was mediocre. I don’t think she deserves the hate she gets. She is a lukewarm character.

I hate everything Max’s character represents. She was introduced to show that Spencer could be trained to be “normal” and it’s anti-autistic bullshit. She had no personality besides “I hate my low-brow job as a teacher and couldn’t be fucked to change it until a man told me I was smart.” She was cracking high-school-clique jokes while her family was about to be murdered. She immediately abandoned said family to make out with her boyfriend who just admitted to enjoying kissing the woman who tried to murder her family.

Her character makes absolutely zero sense. I do not understand how she is so liked. I really don’t (other than the fact that RLC is absolutely wonderful).

If they had left her character out, I think we would have been better off for it. We could have seen Spencer wrestle with defining himself by the women in his life and learning to love himself (without just replacing those women with... another... woman...)

That being said, those who cling to Max for hope of a happy ending for Spencer... I felt that. Fanon and fanfic can solve all character deficiencies. I believe in you.

So, yeah. I’d say if you’re worried about why you dislike women characters, you’re probably on the right path. I’d just reflect on why you dislike the characters you do and whether they are written as misogynistic stereotypes. It makes complete sense to reject characters written for the purpose of making you hate them, but we should all pour one out for the brilliant actresses that had characters with so much potential if not for men ruining it.

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

Omg I just thought, and I highly doubt I'm the first to think this, but do you think Rakepick's personality shift was due to the curse Riddle put on the DADA position? 0:

Also you have THE MOST beautiful cat I've ever goddamn seen

As much as I would love it for there to be some kind of tangible explanation provided for such an abrupt shift in her character, I really don’t think that’s how the DADA curse works.

 If we look back on all of the examples of the Curse taking effect...well, there’s Quirrell. He became a Death Eater but both Snape and Dumbledore were onto him from the beginning and he literally had Voldemort sticking out of his head, so it was basically a given that his days were numbered. Lockhart had the same problem, to the point where Dumbledore not only knew he was a fraud, but hired him specifically because he knew this would expose him. If it hadn’t been The Basilisk, there would have been some other kind of terror that Lockhart would have been expected to defeat (Hogwarts is just that kind of school) forcing him to flee the way he did. Remus is a teacher who theoretically could have stayed, but it was already playing with fire to bring him on when Snape was around. Sooner or later, Snape would have sabotaged him somehow even without the existing circumstances, would have revealed his secret, because that’s just the kind of person Snape is. Barty Crouch Jr was never planning to stay longer than a year, his purpose at Hogwarts was to get Harry to Voldemort at the end of the Triwizard Tournament. Umbridge? Yeah, she was never gonna last. Everyone hated her, she didn’t fit at Hogwarts, and her timeline there was tied to Fudge’s timeline in the Ministry - both were going to end when everyone learned Voldemort was back. Next came Snape, and it was actually a combination of factors that led to him losing the job. Naturally, his killing Dumbledore changed the game, as both he and Dumbledore knew would have to happen. But he could have easily stayed as DADA teacher...except he became Headmaster. Whether Snape himself asked for this, or it was Voldemort’s idea, who knows. Finally, the Carrows were only ever going to last until Voldemort was defeated, which happened to be a year. 

Examining these cases makes it very clear that the Curse doesn’t create abrupt circumstances that force a teacher out. Rather, it reminds me of a theory about how backwards time travel would compensate for the potential of paradoxes. Say you went back in time and tried to shoot your own grandfather, preventing your existence. One theory suggests that it would be physically impossible without appearing to be. Suggests that you would simply be unable to do this. Either the gun would jam, somebody would see you and stop you, your grandfather would survive the bullet wound, or he would die - but surprise! It wasn’t your biological grandfather. Just the worst stream of bad luck that a potential grandpa-killer could have. In other words, the timeline will naturally correct itself no matter how hard you try, but always in ways that are organic, that would have always happened. I believe that’s how this Curse works. Hence how people have figured out that the job must be jinxed, but it’s treated as an urban legend or popular theory, not something that anyone knows for a fact. Technically, even Dumbledore doesn’t know for sure that it’s true. Because if every case was like Rakepick, people would start to gather evidence beyond just stuff that could be a string of shocking coincidences. Rakepick having to leave the post does make sense, based on what happened. It’s just that what actually happened is very confusing and still doesn’t make any sense. 

SIDE NOTE: My kitters appreciate your kind words! They’re being camera-shy right now, but they always like it when a human shows appropriate adoration of the superior feline race. 

[seventhfracture]

q. 3, 16-19, 26, 28, 32, 34-36, 38, 40, 44, 51, 53, 58, 66, 73, 85, 96, 97, 100 please? (feel free to not answer, I'm aware these are way too many questions but consider! I had to choose from 100 when I just wanted to ask `em all- again no pressure to answer all of these)

TUMBLR FUCKED UP THE NUMBERS FORGIVE ME

1. Do you really think there is somebody for everybody? That presumes everyone wants someone. Which I don’t think is true. If you do want someone… well there at what? 9 billion people? Statistically your odds of finding someone are pretty good. But if you want something you can’t just want it. You have to take steps to make it happen. And that might mean compromise or action.

2. Do theoretical ethical debates have any value? Is it important people discuss ethical dilemmas, e.g. the trolley problem? I think a lot of pressing social issues started as a “theoretical ethical debate” in one circle or another. “Should we free the slaves?” was definitely a thought experiment before it was a reality. If we go real obtuse like “What if reality is a simulation, does that change anything?” etc. Shit we can’t really know. Then I still think there’s interesting stuff to pull. And philosophy has contributed a lot to different parts of society. Thinking is good.

3. Did you have imaginary friends? Do you still have them? Lol I think lots of people keep their imaginary friends in some way or another. “God” or “my roleplay blog” or “my online persona” or “my sexually dominating side” or “my OCs in my WIP” etc. etc. Whatever you call them I think its kind of natural?

4. Are you religious? Do you think your religion is ‘correct’? I was raised a polytheist. I’m a form of Pagan in practice. I believe there are lots of gods. I don’t really bother with asking if another religion is “real” or not. If someone believes something, then that’s fine. But I think you should be prepared to argue your point. People use religious belief to justify stances all the time. So you should be prepared to argue why your religion is good or right if you’re going to use “well my faith says…” as your justification.

5. If you aren’t religious, do you wish you were? Why? Religion is interesting, I could talk about it for ages, but I’m glad I’m not more religious. I think if I couldn’t take science into account when asking certain “should we/shouldn’t we?” questions that’d suck.

6. What’s the most life-changing choice you’ve made so far? Probably to transition. I transitioned after high school. Which in some ways was a blessing but I got doctors, I changed all my documentation, I picked a new name, I had to come out to all my family, my work… It made me very happy but it was huge.

7. Would you want to live forever? How about for a billion years, a million, a millennium, a century? I believe in reincarnation but I think it’s natural to be scared of death. Frankly if I could avoid the gamble I’d rather live. Even if I’m just a brain in a jar. If I can be here that’s better than being nothing.

8. Was your childhood happy? Uhhhhh….?? Um…. Well—Uh—Next question.

9. What are you missing from your life? A way to make money doing things I’m passionate about. I’m still figuring that out.

10. Have you ever met someone who had a very similar personality to your own? Did you get along? I knew someone who was very like me when I was a very different person. They were trash, I was trash, and I’m glad that 1) I changed and 2) we don’t speak anymore. I was a fucking psycho.

11. Is your life what you expected it would be five years ago? Totally different in some ways. Exactly as planned in others. I’m happy, so who cares? I made the best decisions I could with what I had at the time.

12. What makes a person ‘good’? Are you a ‘good person’? “Good” people do good things. Even if they think awful things. “I fed the poor, but I only did it to fatten my ego!” The poor don’t fucking care. They got fed. Likewise a person who has good thoughts but doesn’t act on them (aka “well I think gay folk aren’t hurting anyone, but God/my church say they’re against the bible so I guess—”) are bad people.

13. How often do you lie? Is all lying inherently bad? Are you generally truthful? I lie a lot. I think you should. I think we should stop demonizing lying. Most people don’t care about your details. They just need the gist to get the job done. And if it doesn’t involve someone, they don’t deserve to know anything. It would be truthful to tell your landlord you got a promotion, but they’re not entitled to that information. You should be as honest as you feel comfortable being. Even if that’s not very honest at all. And, yes, there are consequences. You have to deal with those.

14. What question could you ask to find out the most about a person? One question? Oh man that’s hard… probably “who do you love most?” Because do they answer themselves? Their partner? Their parents? There’s info in all the options.

15. Which beliefs do you have that is most likely to be wrong? “Eat the Rich, literally” will not actually solve anything. But I think cannibalistic revolution has been overlooked too long as a viable option.

16. Are we eventually going to ‘run out’ of new combinations for music, art, language, etc.? Is there a limit to human creativity? Never. I mean you could argue we already have. Isn’t everything just an old story repackaged? Or an old song dressed up? I think the ‘when’ and ‘where’ something is released is as powerful as ‘what’ it is.

17. How do you feel about the idea ‘an eye for an eye’?| My dear friend has a policy “do no harm, take no shit.” And I abide by that. I think you should care about people, I think all life is improved when we improve the rights/conditions of others, but if you start shit I’m going to end it.

18. Would you fight for your country? Do you feel a sense of loyalty to your nation? My country? Eeeeeh my country is flawed. My rights? My way of life? My home? Yeah, sure. It’s not about the flag.

19. Do you think you would be happier if you had been born a different gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality or religion? I think I got pretty damn lucky. My life would be MUCH harder if even one of those factors was altered. Yeah, I’m trans but it could be waaaay worse.

20. Is your perception of yourself similar or the same to how others perceive you? People are usually a lot nicer about me than I am to myself. I like that. Generally, I like myself too but it’s not always easy. More than once my relationship with my body or mind has been purely antagonistic.

21. Are you overly analytical? I guess? I have too many opinions lol. Things would be simpler if I cared less.

22. What belief do you have that isn’t logically grounded, but you still firmly believe in? I’m a Pagan. And I hate the “these essential oils cure cancer!” stuff but I definitely believe you can curse someone. And I get that’s a little crazy lol.

[japanessie]

Hi Shelly! I'm sorry you're feeling blue! I was going to ask that about Taka and Hiro, too, but was worried I'd get too upset but since someone else asked anyway...It just kind of made me wince with hurt for Hiro when a few years ago Taka ranted on instagram about privacy (for his own life, not about his family). Like, where was your voice when your own fans were BULLYING your baby brother or when they posted on a forum after the ONE time Tomohiro finally showed his face, they asked if he was...

[2/3] Adopted! He already had issues being on camera (hasnt been on since, cant blame him). So, Hiroki looks too much like Taka but Tomo doesn’t look enough? They’re his little brothers, I think bullying BOTH Little brothers is when the time to speak up is. I’m not saying the bros cant handle themselves but I just feel Hiro, aside from mfs, has been on his own. It would be nice if his eldest brother took responsibility for his so called “fans” who attack his family and stood up… 

[3/3] Sorry it just hits close to home. I know what it’s like 2 not have your older bro there when u need him most. When he leaves u in a house burning with hatred (i got to hear my parents accuse each other of cheating while my bro was out smoking & drinking. It makes me wonder what Hiroki heard when no one thought he was listening). I dont mean to take it personally or anything, I just feel like Hiroki & I are very similar. It’s why I like mfs. I’m sorry, I just have no one else to talk about it to.

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Hi 😊. I combined your messages together into one for easier reading

First of all I’m sorry for the pain that you personally had to go through. I hope you’re doing okay 🤗. At the same time though, I see uniqueness besides similarities in everybody’s situation. 

1. Someone who is broken can’t be a crutch for someone else

In a traditional family setup in many cultures, even more prominent in Asian cultures, the eldest child is always the one assumed to carry responsibilities of looking after the younger ones. In a family crisis situation, while the younger ones theoretically have the one they can turn to, the eldest child has nobody and is usually left to fend for himself and everybody else. 

Some elder kids have the inner strength and maturity to carry it at young age but some really struggle with it and only develop at a later age. Your brother and Taka seem to be in the latter category. Like Taka, your brother walked out because he was hurting and that was the shortcut way he knew how to surpress it and to stay away from what was troubling him at home. He couldn’t be your pillar when he was broken himself. Just like Taka who took the quick way out and his story had been well documented. 

Also, a lot of times, someone who feels worthless doesn’t understand why anyone would feel hurt to see him walk away. I’m sure Taka himself only fully began to understand NOW, as an adult, the hurt he caused Hiro when he walked away back then. In his mind, he was a loser. Not doing well in school, stressed out over the parents’ marriage breaking up, not getting along with their father, very unhappy and not knowing where his future was heading. Certainly not someone for little Hiro to look up to. How would he look after Hiro when he could barely take care of himself?

* The Moriuchi brothers in those days when they used to be around each other a lot, before OOR moved out of Japan 😊

2. Some people need to pull themselves together first before they can love others

That dark period in Taka’s life was not something he’s proud of. He acknowledges it in interviews and his lyrics. Even OOR members admitted that Taka wasn’t exactly a pleasant person to deal with when they first found him. But once he got his life on track, things fell into places. He made amend with his father and got back the Moriuchi name. While Taka couldn’t give back the years with him that Hiro lost, he let Hiro hang around his friends and be a part of his life back in that way. 

Even Hiro never denied the perks of being Taka’s brother. The most significant was when one of Taka’s close friends K from Pay Money To My Pain befriended Hiro and how that friendship led to the formation of MY FIRST STORY. 

Think again, would Kei Goto a.k.a the late K simply befriend a random underaged high school kid just like that? I highly doubt it 🤔. Hiroki Moriuchi was NOT some random high school kid. K and Taka were buddies and Hiro the high school kid was Taka’s little brother. I doubt Taka would let his little brother hang around someone he didn’t trust. He knew Hiro was in good hands. All these happened only after Taka got his life back on track and was able to be the big brother figure he was meant to be for Hiro.

3. Taka publicly standing up for Hiro would be bad for Hiro’s image

Yes, it would be counter-productive for Taka to do so. You see, the ROOT of the hate and cyber-bullying towards Hiro stemmed from how easy things happened for him because of his family connection. If Taka had spoken out, it would make Hiro appear weak and ultra-dependant on his big brother. 

“Duh! Not only he got a band because he’s Taka brother. Now, he needs to be protected like a baby!” 

Hmm … does that sound good to you? We also need to see things from the haters’ perspective too, you know. Oh, with Papa being a multi-millionaire? Trust me. Hiro would get even less respect if any of his family members had spoken out for him. The bullying might get even worse. 

As for Tomo, anything his family members say would bring unnecessary attention to him. He appeared on TV that one time because of his job at the station. Otherwise, he’s very private. It’s unfair on him if his famous family gives more reasons for the public to scrutinize his life when that’s the last thing he wants. 

4. Being seen publicly as a brave independent fighter would be far more beneficial for Hiro

It worked well for Taka. He only started displaying his bonds with his parents AFTER he had firmly made a name for himself even though they had been on good terms since the early days of OOR. Likewise, Hiro would be less relatable to many fans if he is constantly being taken care of by his more famous and successful family members. Isn’t that the public perception Hiro is still trying hard to break away from? 

Not just the Moriuchi, I have never seen being publicly defended by family members work well for ANY celebrity in the world. It may work for ordinary folks but things work differently for famous people. 

I do support Hiro but I think even his most ardent supporters would agree that he somewhat gives off these “baby” vibes. MFS members themselves seem protective towards him. They let him be mischievious, loud and boisterous with them but they’re always there to hug him when he cries. Therefore, independence from his family would balance that out nicely.

5. Taka made a conscious choice to speak only for himself because he knew any reaction to it would be directed to him and ONLY him

As opposed to Taka speaking out for any of his family members, whom the public might hurl the hate and negative reaction to instead. 

Things just work differently for celebrities. In a way, to minimize the bullying towards their loved ones, staying out of their public battle a lot of times is the better way to go. By not bringing more attention to it. 

Likewise, none of Taka’s family members said anything when Taka had to face a barrage of criticism and angry reactions at the time. The ones who publicly defended him were his friends and peers. Guys like Mah (SiM) and Masato (Coldrain) among some. For celebrities, somehow testimonies from people they have worked with or even strangers they have encountered hold much higher values than family members. 

With their chosen careers, backlash and criticism come with the territory. That’s what their parents want to instill in the two brothers. “You have chosen this path. Learn to deal with it.“

6. Rude fans are rude fans nonetheless

Rude people don’t suddenly become angels just because their idols ask them to. Just look at the backlash against Taka. It was quite brutal. Just like how Hiro got pictures of a woman pooping by his haters, I saw a photo of a “hairy ding dong” for Taka among some, along with truckloads of really scathing words. By his own fans (or should I say “ex-fans"?). If this kind of fans are willing to treat Taka like that just from ONE social media post, then nothing good can come out of it if Taka had said or done anything about Hiro’s haters. The ones who would cheer him would still be the same ones who already support MFS anyway. 

Remember when fans were speculating that OOR’s song Right By Your Side as being dedicated to Hiro? Those who like MFS thought it was a sweet gesture but those who don’t like MFS used it as an excuse to say, “Look! Taka wrote a song for Hiro. Yet he still wants to call Taka his rival. What a low life!”. Yes, I’ve personally seen comments like that. So, see? Whatever Taka does regarding Hiro, mean-spirited people will still find a way to set fire to it.

7. There must be more than meets the eye

Fans went nuts when the brothers wore this pair of pants. I doubt it’s a coincidence that Hiro suddenly is comfortable wearing Taka’s look when he used to be sensitive about being called Taka’s copy before.

But that’s not even something new. in January 2018, Taka posted a photo of himself wearing this Monster’s Inc hoodie at Disneyland. That same month, Hiro was wearing that same Disney hoodie at his 24th birthday party.

Heaven knows what Taka had said to Hiro in private especially after MFS Budokan show 🤔. At the end of the day, they are family and though I also know many families who cut ties from each other, Taka and Hiro clearly are the ones who keep theirs 😉.

2 more cents

I feel that Taka is doing the right thing by staying away from Hiro publicly. Not responding to the negativity surrounding Hiro but still letting fans know that his little brother has his full support.

[taz-writes]

What's Violet like (I LIVE for gorgeous and deadly fairies)? Are she and Lavender really close? What powers does she possess exactly??? What's her arc throughout the series?? Also, in terms of character rankings, who is your second main character, Aelia or Violet?? Sorry for the bombard of questions, I just really love Violet! (also, I'm pretty sure you've answered this before but I can't find it anymore, what's her sexuality??)

thank you for the questions!!! I love Violet so much, I consider her one of my best characters just because of how many layers she’s grown for herself. Her story is really close to my heart. 

Shortest answer first, I don’t think either Aelia or Violet is more important? They serve different roles in the story by nature, and they both have their places. Which one is the secondary “main” character depends a lot on which part of the story you’re looking at. In book 1, Vi’s actually more of an antagonist than a hero. She’s mean. Aelia’s a tertiary lead, because she can’t physically contribute to the plot, she has to do everything through long-distance communications. Violet is the secondary protagonist in book 2, where she does the bulk of her character growth. Aelia’s the secondary protagonist in book 3, which is all about her arc. In book 4, they’re about equal, but Aelia’s more relevant to Sayara’s plot. 

As for what Violet’s like, well. She’s a born and bred tsundere. She cares a lot about her family and friends, she’s very defensive of them, but if you try to get close to her emotionally then she will viciously defend herself as well. She also refuses to admit when she cares about people most of the time.... she desperately wants a white knight romance where she’ll get swept off her feet and whisked off into the sunset, but at this rate, she’s too cranky for that to ever happen. She’s a very private person, to the point where even the people she cares most about don’t always know what’s going on inside her head. She masks all her ‘softer’ personality traits under a sharp pointy facade of responsibility and protection, she considers it her duty to be the heiress and be the protector of the family so that nobody else she loves has to. 

Violet and Lavender are very close. Vi tries to pull her tsundere act on Lavender constantly, but Lavender never buys it, and they know each other well enough that she never will. They share a psychic link, so they feel each other’s emotions and sometimes also each other’s physical pain. They definitely know when the other one is hurt. Despite this, after certain events in book 1, Violet shuts herself down and locks Lavender out of her thoughts for a while. She’s really depressed, and she’s one of those people who self-isolates a lot by instinct, so Lavender doesn’t know as much of what’s going on as she used to. 

-Vi’s a psychic! She specializes in the darker ‘attack’ side of mental magic. She can twist someone else’s mind and cause excruciating pain, she can read minds, she can keep herself from being read. She teleports very well even in book 1, she also has impressive telekinesis. Violet can do mind control. This is intimidating. The rules for mind control in Feilan are pretty strict--you must have eye contact to attempt control, the ball is always in the defender’s court and you must navigate their mind in order to dominate it, if eye contact breaks then the link is weakened and it’s easy to lose control, etc--but Vi knows how to use it. Plus, she’s theoretically capable of mirages and misleading literal Illusion magic, but she hasn’t trained this area of magic as thoroughly and doesn’t use it often. 

Violet’s primary magical element is Darkness, despite her favorite abilities being Illusion-based, so she can access some Dark magic too. This manifests as a cloud of shadow that won’t be easily pierced by Light magic or other means, or as a move I’ve nicknamed ‘air shatter’ which literally creates a controlled black hole and destroys everything near it. These are mostly book 3 abilities, which develop after her ninth or tenth evolution. 

Later on in the series, she also develops psychic foresight, which is exactly what it sounds like. She has the limited ability to (involuntarily) see bits and pieces of the future as defined by various decisions. These flashes are not binding truth, but they can act as guides, suggestions, or warnings. 

Upon her final evolutions, Violet develops into an animaris, which is a specific type of primary-Dark secondary-Illusion psychic with some cool unique abilities! She’ll be able to manipulate sound as well as vision, and use a form of mind control that’s more like puppeteering where she doesn’t need eye contact. The puppeteering magic is super scary, and very OP, and won’t manifest in time to be relevant to canon. It’s worth pointing out, though! I think it’s neat. 

-Violet’s canon arc is about cracking her shell and defrosting her bad attitude. She’s a secondary antagonist slash rival archetype for Sayara in book 1, but her overall series role is the lancer. Her serious attitude and dark outlook on life contrast Sayara’s optimism and brightness, and where Sayara wants to be responsible but doesn’t know how, Violet knows exactly how and never asked for this. They learn a lot from each other. 

See, Violet’s depressed, but Violet has worked herself into a mental state where she’s firmly convinced that she has no other option. She actively resists trying to get better and learning to cope with her PTSD because she believes it’s a waste of time, and she’s made herself into a martyr figure inside her head. She’s actually really toxic to be around in the long term, her adamant refusal to solve her own problems is ripping her family apart. She insists that she does everything to protect her sisters, and she really genuinely means that, but she also subconsciously expects them to fix her when she’s broken and deal with her mental issues without ever questioning them. She’s built up an image of what her family is in her head, and that’s what she sticks with, even as they grow and change and defy what Violet’s preconceptions of them are. She puts a lot of weight on Aelia in particular, because she has a single-minded obsession with Elli’s wellbeing, and she perceives Aelia’s desire for independence as some kind of slight against her. In her mind, when Aelia says “I need breathing room,” it actually means “I hate you and I don’t want your help and I’m going to let myself get killed out of spite.” When Aelia says “you should go see a therapist,” Violet hears “you’re weak and pathetic and can’t fulfill your job and responsibilities to our family.”  It’s bad. 

Over the series, Vi learns to calm down a little and trust that her family can handle themselves. The hair-trigger temper and instinctual distrust of literally everyone is the first thing to go--she has to accept that sometimes she doesn’t have access to the bigger picture, and she needs to wait for evidence before lashing out. She has to develop enough to accept Sayara’s apology in book 2 after Sayara says some fucked up shit, she has to develop enough to learn that not everyone is out to get her. Moving forward in the series, she’s still dealing with the anger issues, but she also starts learning to actually manage her mental health. Her depression/anxiety/PTSD/etc is screwing over her whole family, and that’s a serious problem, and that’s what she has to solve in the latter half of the series. By the end of book 4 she does give in and go see a fucking therapist for her problems. Everyone is very proud of her.

-Sadly, Vi is the token het in the cast, but I do have a funny story about how that happened. What with the psychic link between Violet and Lavender, it wasn’t easy! 

So the twins have this empathetic link, and they feel each other’s emotions, and the closer they are physically the stronger that bond is. As little kids, they spent a LOT of time together, and when they started having dumb little puppy crushes they couldn’t tell whose feelings were whose. The twins knew one of them liked boys and the other liked girls, so at first they assumed they were both straight b/c this was back when everyone thought Vi was a boy. But then they started wondering, because they weren’t really sure, Violet in particular was super insecure. There was some awkward 10-year-old flirting, everyone felt weird about everything, nobody knew what was going on. The twins were always inseparable. And then Vi came out, and things got even MORE confusing, because they started pretending they were identical, and it worked so well that no one could tell the two apart--even some of their love interests. And then they went on a summer trip overseas together and got involved in an Actual Preteen Love Dodecahedron... 

They didn’t actually figure out whose orientation was whose until they turned 15 and Lavender went on a study trip to a medical school in the south, so suddenly they were far enough apart to tell the difference. Lavender’s the gay one, Violet’s the straight one, it’s simple enough but it took them years and years to find out. Pro tips for parents: when your psychic kids start having soap opera level romantic drama, maybe get them to spend time by themselves for a bit? It might solve some things!