#but I’ve been forcing myself lately to look at people romantically. I think just bc im lonely in a new town

[longappendage]

Having complicated aromantic feelings but also nobody to really talk about them with 😔

[inkbagel]

Okay I gotta ask: who’s Clancy?

I’ve been listening to a little bit more twenty one pilots lately just because I found a couple songs I like and I noticed the name pop up in Paladin Straits.

Is this a real person? Is there lore behind the songs? I’m dying to know, tell me their secrets /nf

OKOKOK OMGG OK SO

Clancy is a fictional character, idk if there’s actually a name for the lore other than the tøp lore but he’s from there

The guy on the left is Josh Dun/The Torchbearer, and the guy on the right is Tyler Joseph/Clancy.

Clancys the mc in the story and the Torchbearer is his kind of romantically coded best friend who’s also the leader of the Banditos! A rebel(?) group that lives outside the city of Dema.

If you go to twenty one pilots channel on yt, they have a playlist with every major lore video (but there’s plenty of extra stuff outside of that playlist that you can find on the Wikipedia, plus a livestream they did in-universe which is v pretty I love it dearly I have a link if you ever want it)

The whole story is a mediphor for battling with mental health, and tells it really well!! It’s really impressive.

The basic plot of the story is Clancy is a citizen of Dema, a large depressing city in the gorgeous fictional continent of Trench. The city is controlled by the Nine Bishops who enforce their religion upon its citizens (which is essentially telling everyone to be depressed and kill themselves) so they can “seize them” (bc the bishops can control dead bodies)

The city is nearly impossible to escape thanks to a giant concrete wall, but Clancy has escaped multiple times. Outside the wall he meets up with the Banditos (led by the torchbearer) and just kinda lives with them and is happy and loved and everything good. But Nico (the leader of the nine bishops) keeps dragging him back into Dema.

At some point Clancy becomes well known in the city for being one of like three people to escape, (and also for having a website dedicated to spreading propaganda but that part of the story gets confusing and no one really understands what happens to Clancy there) and the bishops decide to use this to their advantage by giving Clancy pink hair and pronouns and forcing him to be an entertainer.

(Side note during this arc Clancy started to flat out hallucinate the torchbearer bc he was so lonely which I think is really cute he missed his best friend so much)

Eventually Clancy escapes bc Nico is betrayed by another bishop, Keons, and gets washed up onto an island called Voldsoy where he meets the Neds!

(They look like this I couldn’t find a picture from the actual story and am too lazy to go screenshot it myself)

The neds give him the gift of their antlers which allow Clancy to control bodies the same way bishops do!

Another side note, the REAL torchbearer has the Jesus-like power of controlling Clancy’s hallucination to “guide” Clancy to places he needs to go (he guided Clancy to the Neds and also guided him back to the Banditos later)

After Clancy meets back up with the banditos (and more importantly the torchbearer), they all prepare for a final battle with the bishops and go fight them. This is where for the bajillionth time the lore gets confusing.

This happened in the finale which btw, right before releasing the video, Tyler Joseph (lead singer) said “let me ask you, do you think this is the end?” Bc this most recent album was supposed to be the finale to the story but now he’s acting cryptic about it? So a lot of people are torn on if we’re getting more lore or not (I think we definitely are esp after what they’re doing with the world tour)

But basically in the finale all the Banditos fought the Bishop controlled zombies outside the walls of Dema so Clancy could sneak in undetected and take out the bishops, and he takes down most of them but right at the last second Nico grabs Clancy by the neck and starts talking to him and then Clancy opens his eyes to stare Nico down and send a message that he’s not afraid of him anymore and the screen cuts to black.

Once again this is supposed to be the end of the lore. A lot of ppl are assuming Clancy is dead rn but now that the tøp world tour started there’s more lore involving different characters writing letters to each other. This is so far unrelated aside from the fact that they all talk about Clancy inspiring them to take action.

All the albums after Vessel are based on the story. They’re supposed to all be in the pov of Clancy (ofc) and if you look closely at the lyrics you can catch a lot of extra lore.

Blurryface is what Nico calls himself, Trench is the name of the pretty continent they live in, Scaled and icy is an enneagram for “Clancy is dead” (which in their Christmas single they said was propaganda) and also a play on the saying “scaled back and isolated” (bc it’s the album where Clancy is kidnapped and alone) and finally Clancy, the “finale”. It’s a really cool story.

There’s a ton of extra details I left out like the significance of the color yellow but yea that’s the main story and who Clancy is :) my siblings and I have been digging up all the lore the past month and with each new tidbit I get a little more fixated on this weird cat guy hope you like this unprompted infodump

[schizopilledjester]

bunny

i think it’s so funny how i’ve been looking out for you so often since getting romantically involved with you and it feels like ur both not looking out for urself or after me. i have been rlly locked in and ur rlly locked out. i’m gnawing and screaming and banging at the bars of my enclosure screaming for release as u panic to try to unlock the box u put me in realizing you lost ur key. u have been ill prepared and unintentional. for what dynamic we put our selves into there should have been more mutual check ins and more mutual accountability. there should have been more moments of clarity intentionality and gratitude. we should have been able to ground each other. i grasped for you while you slipped away to go look for ur key. i wanted to trust that you wouldn’t hurt me by having access to my vulnerability but you took advantage of my willingness to throw myself at you and be what u need. u didn’t think twice about putting urself above me. u said it was in my honor. for me. i screamed at you thru the bars “where? how is this for me? my body hurts! i put myself here for you!” you looked at me and told me i wanted this. is this what i wanted ? i wanted someone to pull me from the depths when i needed stability and someone to ground me into reality and my body when i need to get checked. i wanted someone to make me feel needed and appreciated and wanted and loved and cared for. i wanted to be able to let go. you took advantage of my body’s want to hurt. you didn’t show me kindness and care after u hurt me and took my pride. u reminded me that i’m just sexy. i wanted someone that could learn my love languages so when i look them in the eyes i know they see me.

i’ve been less afraid to look people in their eyes lately bc i shouldn’t be afraid to have access to a window into a soul. i looked into ur eyes and i knew you loved what you saw but i don’t know if u saw me. i know ur a loving person bc i know u loved me how i wanted at one point. i hope you can look me in my eyes and see me again. or maybe find a better way to show me if u already do. i wish that you understood my need for an equal. if u do understand it i wish u understood my need for communication. pls match my yap. i wish that i didn’t feel taken advantage of and used for character development by another age regressed hurting adult. i wish that i felt that u saw my child reaching out for urs.

once we got romantically involved i did it all for you and it wasn’t the right way. u told me you did it the same. i don’t know how we can love each other so much but be unable to find a proper way to show it outside of sex and sex alone. i miss being able to love you and it not make me cry. we cycled in a pattern i should not have been a part of. i should have been honored when i stepped into ur cage. i hope that me coming out of here means that i actually have autonomy again. i hope that you recognizing that we were imprisoned with each other like jasper and lapis means we don’t do that again. if i ever go in a kennel i need it to be safe. it has to be my safe space. u cannot force me into an uncomfortable position locked in a shitty claustrophobic box with no out until u decide it. i hope u deciding to let me out this time without either of us getting too hurt means that ur not going to hurt me again. i hope ur learning from ur mistakes. i definitely am learning from mine. if u ever try to put me in a locked box again i better have a key.

[liesoverthec]

Hi B! Hope you're doing great! Do you have a theory why Eddie didn't tell Buck about the will sooner? Do you think he was waiting for "the right moment"?

Personally, I think, he was scared to put to much pressure on him. But then Buck said the things he said in the hospital and Eddie was like "you know what, I gotta put a stop to this".

Much love xx

Hi Sam! 💛 I'm going through a couple of major life changes right now which are just, eating up all of my time and none of it is bad, but it’s why I’m so late getting back to you on this (although pls do not let it stop you from coming in my inbox! I love chatting w you and anyone else I just might have really slow response times for a couple weeks!) how are you???

Okay so I tend to start coming at this from a set/details/cast point of view and my thoughts on it are - Eddie is just. SO MUCH FUCKING SOFTER in s4 around Buck. Like he's always been heart eyes McGee, but the depth and the level of love he has for Buck is just astoundingly deeper. I could pull so many receipts on myself where around 4x04 I’m just?? baffled at how much softer Eddie is and I have no idea why (JOKES ON ME, P SURE IT WAS THIS). So I think the writing room told R.G. that something was going on with Eddie. I don't think the reason Eddie held off was bc the writers themselves didn't know. I'm not entirely sure if they knew it was a WILL that changed things, but I think they made an active choice to change Eddie's actions towards Buck to be more romantic, and softer, bc they knew Eddie was going to hold onto something big with Buck, which culminated in the guardianship-in-case-of-tragedy reveal end of s4, when they thought it would fit best for BOTH Eddie and Buck.

And then emotionally, I DO agree with you on that Eddie didn't want to put that pressure on Buck. I think it started bc basically as soon as Eddie has a chance to decide he’s going to do this legal mumbo jumbo guardianship change, Buck starts freaking out about Red. And Eddie, I think, was simultaneously like, ‘okay I know Buck CAN turn this down but he won’t, and he’s dealing w a lot right now so I’m not going to add this on’ and also ‘I’m going to wait to tell him til it’s final, so that he knows I’m not going to back out of this, it’s a done deal’, and probably also ‘I’ve never been this emotionally intimate with another person literally in my entire life, I have to give myself a chance to build up to it’.

And then before it’s done, they meet Abby again. And Eddie is NOT the sort of person to be explicitly personal at work - he’ll talk around his personal issues, eg talking to Brian during Jinx, but he doesn’t really come right out and pull a Chim or Buck and tell people all about his life. So he’s not about to open up in front of SAM of all people and tell Buck why he can’t risk his life recklessly like that.

But then after that, Buck settles into this period where he actually ISN’T being risky. He explicitly tells Bobby he’s okay now, and it’s absolutely reasonable of Eddie to assume he got closure and he wasn’t looking for validation through danger any more. Hell, Buck even gets a therapist! (Which side note - we never see Buck tell ANYONE Dr Copeland’s name, not even Chim and Maddie when he talks about it, but Eddie knows it in 4x04! So I like to think that while they were quarantining together, Buck told Eddie he was going to see a therapist, and that’s why EDDIE never teases him about his “lady friend” on screen okay side rant done lolllllllllll) So I think at this point, to Eddie, it’s awkward to say anything NOW it’s been so long, and besides he himself isn’t going die anytime soon it’s not a big deal right? (WRONG EDMUNDO).

And of course, Buck does risk his life in Buck Begins/factory fire, but it was really only dangerous bc HE didn’t know where he was, and he couldn’t get them out. It wasn’t as scary I think, to the rest of the 118, bc they could go get him - they had time to do that, so I don��t think Eddie really thought of that as Buck risking his life so like, he can keep this to himself still right? (Um sure I guess but like - EDDIE MY MAN!!!)

And then after that Buck still isn’t risking his life, and nothing crazy has been happening w the 118 - I think if the bomber had been the s4 plot, then I think Eddie would have told him earlier, bc Eddie would have KNOWN that someone was killing people at random in the city, but no one had any idea the sniper was a thing, so Eddie just kept going, keeping it a secret.

Because at this point, I think Eddie has at least a small inkling of his feelings for Buck. Giving your best friend your KID is a really big deal, and I’ve seen several posts talking about the fact that it’s basically a love confession. For anyone else sure it might just be a matter of paperwork, but for EDDIE - that was him giving his heart to Buck. And I think he just wasn’t ready to have that conversation with anyone, esp given the fact that he has the safety net of KNOWING Buck won’t give Christopher up. If Eddie died, and Buck found out that way, it would be awful for Buck - but it wouldn’t be something that could make Buck give Christopher up, so Eddie *technically* didn’t even have to tell Buck.

So TLDR - I think it started as Eddie not wanting to pressure Buck before it was official, ESP since he was panicking about his place in his family’s lives. But then I think it changed into ‘well he’s being safe, I’m not in danger, oh shit this is a Big Deal™ actually, I’ll tell him when I’m ready’ and the sniper ending up forcing Eddie to be ready - both bc Eddie almost died AND bc Buck was acting stupid again.)

Sorry if that was like, 10x more word vomit than you wanted - I just think this show is fantastic at giving characters complex emotional journeys and reasonings without having to be explicit about it, and I can’t just sum that in one paragraph I guess 😂

Lots of love to you Sam!!!!

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

[dynamightsfave]

My everyday text (2) - Owen Joyner

(gif not mine! credits to owner)

owen joyner x oc

summary: oc goes to a party for halloween and calls owen drunk. he’s worried

warnings: underage drinking (bc rowe’s 20), swears, mentions of sex

a/n: this has a part one that i recommend you read to read this one and a part three that you can decide if you wanna read

masterlist

***

It was a day before Halloween, and I was debating on whether to stay in my apartment dressed up and with a marathon of Halloween movies and a bunch of sweets like I used to do with Mads, or go out with Nora and her now boyfriend and some friends to a college party. Nora was very adamant on the second one.

“I’m just saying, you’ve been very stressed lately and you deserve to let go and go crazy. Get in a hot or cute costume, have fun, get drunk if you want to, maybe meet someone” she gave me a suggestive look and I rolled my eyes “Oh come on, Rowan! You need to get laid!”

“Nora!” I laughed, this time getting her to roll her eyes “I don’t know if I want to meet someone, even if it’s just for a one-night-stand”

“Are you serious?! Rowe, you spent all last year with one-night-stands! Believe me, I know. I have a list”

“No you don’t” I gaped, but Nora only hummed nonchalantly “Why would you have that?!”

“Well, people were coming in and out of here at least three times a week, and I was thinking that maybe I should’ve started to make them pay rent, ‘cause they always ate something from our cupboards. But then I thought that that would technically make you a prostitute, so I decided against it” while I still looked at my friend with a slacked jaw, I found myself not finding it that weird. Conversations like this were normal around here.

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t want a one-night-stand, it feels wrong for some reason”

“Is this because of that boy you talk to on FaceTime?”

“Which one? I talk to Owen, Char and Jer” it was true.

I had talked to all three boys on FaceTime. I didn’t talk to Charlie or Jeremy as much as Owen, but we had still had our times when we’d kick Owen out of his own call and talked with them alone, and I liked to think of them as my new friends too. Other times I’d just hang up on him and call any of the others —that I knew, because apparently there were a lot of people in this secret project I didn’t know about—, and most of the time I talked with them it was just a massive group call of us being stupid. Same thing happened when Jadah joined Madi and I.

“Which one?” Nora asked incredulously “The blond! The one that flirts with you! The guy! You fucking wrote him a song, Rowan!”

“I wrote you a song too. And he can’t flirt for shit”

“But it’s different! You like this boy, there’s deep feelings in that song. Mine is literally about how much you love me because I bring you pizza”

“Okay so maybe I have a crush on Owen!” I admitted “It’s not like I’m gonna do something about it, you know what happened the last time I had a crush on a friend. I don’t want that to happen again”

“Sweetie, you can’t just block romantic feelings for everyone” Nora sat down next to me and placed her hand on my knee “You were bound to fall for someone again, it’s not something you can’t control”

“Yeah, I know” I sighed “Okay, so what kind of costume did you have in mind?”

The blond smiled excitedly and jumped up, running to her closet.

[...] 

“Happy Halloween!” Madison cheered on her side of the screen “What are you gonna do? We’re going to have a party over here, I’m dressing as a devil and Jadah is going as an angel”

“Fitting” I nodded “How much candy have you had?”

“None. But I did have three coffees. Day started early, and I was basically falling asleep while I was standing”

“God, Dee. Anyways, I’m going to a party at a faculty. Nora lent me a black dress and bought me a pair of black feathered wings. Her words were “Rowan, you’re going as a raven”. But just in case, she also bought me some Maleficent horns, because I’ll probably end up losing the wings”

“A party? You going back home with someone?” she arched a brow as she whispered the las sentence, eyeing around her.

“Why does everybody think I’m taking someone home? I’m not!”

“Who’s not taking anyone home after a party?”

“Jeremy! My man! Can you please take my side? Is it really that weird that I’m not having a one-night-stand?”

“He doesn’t count! He doesn’t know how you were last year”

“I don’t, but I’d love to know” he quickly sat down, completely ignoring my offended look.

“You’re such a gossip. You already know about my famous crushes you don’t need to know about my love life status”

“Hey, you told me about them” he pointed his finger accusingly at me.

“But you didn’t stop me! You even made comments about some” I crossed my arms.

“Is it because of Owen that you’re not taking anyone home?” he arched a brow, smirking when he saw my blush and sharing a look with Madi.

“What about you, Jer?” I quickly changed the subject “What’s your love life look like? Girlfriend? Boyfriend?”

“He’s way passed that” Madison smirked “He’s engaged”

“No he’s not!” I gasped as a small smile and a giant blush appeared on the boy’s face “How did I not know that? You’re supposed to brag to everyone about your fiancée, dude. I wanna know about them”

“Her name’s Carolynn” he started, and once he started, there was no stopping.

I ended that call knowing the whole story about how the soon to be husband and wife met, how they had started dating, how wonderful and amazing she was and how happy Jeremy was with her. I couldn’t help the smile on my face as I watched him talk about Carolynn, it was very obvious he was very much in love with her and that he couldn’t wait to be married to her. Madi looked exactly like me, it was impossible not to smile at him.

[...]

“Hello?” I couldn’t quite comprehend the tiredness in the other person’s voice, but then again, I couldn’t quite walk straight “Rowan? You there? Why are you calling me at- four in the morning?”

“Owen! ¡Hola!” my tone was probably too overly cheery and happy, but I could care less in that moment “How are you?”

“Are you okay?” there was shuffling heard from his line, like he was moving on his spot.

“Of course I am! Why wouldn’t I be?” the words came out slurred.

“Are you drunk?” if I had been in a normal state, I would’ve probably identified the disbelief in his voice, but like I’ve pointed out a couple of times now, I wasn’t.

“Just a tiny bit” I neared my thumb and index fingers and narrowed my eyes, ignoring the fact that he couldn’t see me.

“Where are you, Rowes?”

“I’ve been walking around campus for a while now” I giggled “I can’t find my apartment. It’s usually with the residences, but I can’t find those either”

“Okay, uh... Rowan? I need you to listen to me, are you listening to me?” I hummed, nodding my head along “Okay, you know where the apartment is. I need want you to get there, can you do that for me?”

“Of course silly. I’ll do whatever you want” I smirked.

“As much as I like you flirting with me, it’s really not the moment”

“You’re no fun, I’m gonna call Milo. Maybe I can find him around here and we can go somewhere” I frowned and pulled the phone away from my ear, ready to hang up and call the funny tall boy Nora had introduced to me two days before and was now my best friend.

“Wait, wait, wait! Don’t hang up please! I just want you to get home safely. If you need to flirt with me while you do it, you can. I’m just worried”

“Aw, Owen, you’re such a softy. It’s one of the reasons I fell for you” I cooed “Don’t worry, cutie. I’ll get home just fine” and then I hung up.

I ignored all the text messages that popped up in my screen from different people, let all the calls ring and just kept walking. I did eventually get to our little apartment, and fell face first on my bed, not bothering to take my make up or contacts off. I was sleeping within three minutes.

[...]

I woke up the next day with a massive headache, and with a lot of trouble to open my eyes. “Fucking contacts. Fucking party. Fucking Nora. Fucking drinks. Fucking stupid brain.”

My phone rung in that moment, making me groan. I picked it up, answering the call.

“So loud. Cállate. Shut the hell up” I whined at whoever called me.

“You picked up. Oh my God, guys! I have her!” I furrowed my brows as I recognized Jadah’s voice, forcing myself to get up and make my way to the bathroom.

I rummaged the cabinet trying to find a pill for my headache. I placed my phone in speaker as I took my lenses off.

“Rowan María Flores! What the hell were you thinking?!” I knew that voice. That was Mr. Reyes, using his dad tone on me.

“H-Hey, King” I said hesitantly.

“Do not “King” me, señorita. Do you know how worried we all were?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked “I hardly remember anything from last night” I admitted embarrassed “But I just woke up, so it should all be coming back in the next half hour”

“You called Owen drunk, saying you were lost in the campus, Rowan” Charlie spoke, calling me by my name instead of the nickname he was adamant in using “Then you just hung up on him and never picked your phone up again. He woke me up in the middle of the morning worried sick and stressed out”

Guilt washed over me like a waterfall. When had I done that? Why had I done that? “Dammit drunk me”

“We didn’t know what to do, so we called Madi and Mr. Reyes and the others” he continued “We’ve all been trying to call you since. Your phone probably has millions of messages and lost calls”

“Are you okay?” Madison’s voice sounded broken, and all I could do was stutter out a “Yeah”. “Thank God. We were so worried, Ro-Ro”

“I’m so sorry” I whispered “I didn’t want to make you all go through this. Oh my God, what have I done” I ran my hands through my hair, looking down at the sink “Is uh- is Owen there?” I cleared my throat.

“I’m calling you” he stated instead of answering. He didn’t sound happy.

The phone call ended and two minutes later his contact name was requesting a FaceTime. I gulped. I didn’t care in the slightest of my appearance with my messy hair and smudged dark make-up, but I knew how he had been feeling for the past hours, because I had experienced it too with some friends. It was a terrible feeling of being worried for them and slightly panicking, scared because I couldn’t go save them, as I didn’t know where they were. He knew where I had been, but he couldn’t exactly jump on a plane to come save me.

I shakily hit the “Accept” button and breathed in.

“What were you thinking, Rowan?!” he all but exclaimed when he appeared on the screen.

His hair was the messiest I’d seen it —and I’d seen it just out of bed— and he had bloodshot eyes with bags under them. He only had a pair of sweatpants on, like he hadn’t bothered changing at all.

I couldn’t utter a word, my throat had completely closed, and he took it as his cue to continue.

“Do you know how worried we were? How worried I was? You call me at four in the morning, telling me you can’t find your place while you’re drunk, alone, after a party and on Halloween! And then you hang up and you don’t answer anymore! You’ve no idea what kind of scenarios were going through my head! I was this close to hop on a plane to make sure you were okay! Fucking hell, Rowan!”

“I-I’m sorry” I repeated, tears about to spill from my eyes “It’s just, it was Halloween, and I wanted to have fun, release all the stress and forget about the problems, a-and I lost track of how many drinks I was having, and next thing I knew, I was super drunk. I shouldn’t have called you, I only made you worried. God, what was drunk me thinking?”

I shut my eyes closed for a second and let my breath go, hearing him do the same. His voice was softer the next time he talked.

“It’s fine. I mean, it’s not, but I get that you wanted to let loose” he rubbed his face “I shouldn’t have yelled at you, I’m sorry. Shit, it was just so scary, you know? Not knowing what would happen to you”

“I get it” I assured “I’ve been through it too. So I know how it feels, and I can’t believe I made you feel it. I am so stupid”

“Hey, no. Let’s talk about something else. How about you get all that make-up off and freshen up? You look a little dead”

“Hey!” I shouted, only to hold my head and wince “I hope the pill kicks in quickly, otherwise I think I’ll die for real”

I took some cotton pads and my make-up remover, looking at my mirror to make sure I got it all off. I then left the camera to change into comfier clothes and came back to Owen with a sweater on and fiddling with his fingers.

“Rowes?” he called, and I hummed to show him that I was listening “There’s this thing you said yesterday, and I didn’t notice it at first, but I kinda ran over the conversation a million times in my head-”

“Owen, what did I say” I chuckled “It can’t be that bad”

“You said I was a softy” I rolled my eyes, but then he continued “and that it was one of the reasons you fell for me”

My mouth fell into a perfect “o”, and I felt my cheeks and neck get hotter. He was red too, but had a small smile on his lips. I stuttered trying to make out an excuse, but his chuckle cut me off.

“A drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts” he said with a smirk “Or a woman’s in this case. I knew you were crazy for me, Flores” I furrowed my brows at his teasing. Was he really making fun of me for having fallen for him? “Don’t look at me like that, Rowes. I like you too. A lot” he laughed a little “But it’s always me that is left stuttering whenever you flirt with me, so I thought I’d take advantage of it” he shrugged.

“You little shit!” I laughed “I’d kiss you if I could” I grinned, causing his smile to get bigger, if it was possible.

“First thing I’m gonna do when we meet, after squeezing you in a hug”

“Deal. I’ll sing you your song”

“Can’t wait”

“Yeah, me neither”

[...]

PREVIOUS     NEXT

[domreaderrecs]

Oh boy do I have some kink discourse for you. Here’s a wholeass list:

1. A female dominant does not need to be a sadist who is always torturing and abusing their sub. They can be soft and kind and caring.

2. Findom is a valid form of domination and is really a kink, it is not just women faking it to get money.

3. Online domination is possible, although there are more risks involved, it is still a valid form of domination.

4. Submissive black men are allowed to refuse to be called slave and their dom shouldnt be annoyed they can’t used their preferred honorific.

5. Kink and fetishes can be incorporated without the use of the power dynamic found in BDSM.

6. BDSM is still BDSM if the rope is pink and the outfit is white lace instead of red and leather.

7. It should be standard practice for there to be a safe word that means everything is fine so that the Dom can check in on the sub easily without breaking the scene.

8. It is only BDSM when both parties have discussed before hand, otherwise it’s sexual assault (yes that includes Chad who brought out the rope without warning and now Bethany is just going along because she likes him)

9. BDSM has always and will always be driven by the LGBT community.

10. Under 18 year olds do not have a place in the BDSM community. If they wish to learn, then they should do so by finding articles and books, not by asking people involved in the scene.

Yeah that’s about it for now. I’m realizing you probably didn’t want this much but oh well. We’re here now. Let me know what you think!

whewww so much to unpack here lets go its essay time

1. !!!! this is probably one of the most fundamentally misunderstood parts of femdom. it don’t gotta be ball crushing and whipping and calling him a worm all the time, or even at all. this is probably what turns so many women off from trying it or thinking they might be into a more dominant role. gentle femdom is way more palatable for beginners and for me personally, just way more enjoyable (even tho i definitely would wanna make a boy cry from time to time)

2. I used to be one of those people who looked down on findom. I still don’t understand why anyone would be into it tbh but findoms get a lot of shit for no reason... being a sugar baby is so glamorized but if you’re a findom you’re cold, or a bitch, or taking advantage. even though they’re both just people who get money from men who have money to throw at them for sexual favors... but one’s demonized and one’s all the rage... hm i wonder why

3. I have no real/successful experience with this... more on that in number 10

4. 100000%!! the stories i’ve seen from black subs in kink (mostly black women but still) are horrendous. a lot of doms will try to enforce a master/slave relationship, and try to exercise their authority to make subs agree to it. i know it’s a common dynamic, but that shit is wayyyy different to black people... any dom should know that. forcing your sub to do anything is wrong, but especially something so racially, historically, and culturally insensitive. and don’t get me started on the surprise “race play” stories i’ve heard... like i said doing anything without your sub’s consent is wrong but THAT kind of thing requires double consent with a cherry on top. this is part of the reason I’m so scared to enter the kink scene... this shit scares me. thats why the title mistress and master/slave dynamics in general just isn’t for me. it makes me think of my ancestors :/

5. again, 1000% agree. i’ve said this on my blog before, but i’ll say it again. not everything has to be dom/sub stuff. if you wanna peg your bf you don’t have to tie him up and call him names or boss him around, you can just peg him. i feel like ever since FSOG this whole dom/sub thing has grown way out of proportion, but that’s a whole other essay for another day

6. yessss I hate the stereotype of dom outfits as black, latex, leather, way too high to walk in boots... like does it look fire?? yes of course but pink and lace and knee high socks would make a fit that’s just as fire. 

7. this is non-negotiable to me. whenever I hear someone say “I don’t like safe words” or “I/We don’t need a safe word” it’s just a red flag to me. idc what anyone says safe words are mandatory.

8. Yes. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this but with the rise of the popularity of “rough sex” (again, thanks FSOG) there’s seems to be a rise in people who just assume their partner may be into something, or who just try to experiment on their partner without asking them first. I’ve heard a lot of friends and other girls talk about guys just going straight into choking them, spanking them, and pulling their hair without even asking if they like it (another reason I’m scared to get out there and do stuff, as a person who is very much not a sub or into being treated roughly or tossed around, it’s a big fear of mine). I’ve also seen a lot about girls just randomly trying to finger their boyfriends. If it’s not vanilla, and y’all haven’t discussed it, do not assume it’s on the table. We’ve gotten to a point that kinky stuff is so talked about and normalized (especially with young adults) that people forget it’s actually kinky. 

9. period.

10. okay so story time, around the age of 15/16 is when I started to realize I was into kinky stuff. The preference had kinda always been there, but I couldn’t really place a name to it. I had always felt like an outcast among my peers when it came to the way they would talk about romantic and sexual relationships (I was a year ahead, so all my friends were 1-2 years older than me, so they started to do that stuff earlier than I did) because the things they talked about and liked were way different from the stuff I would think/fantasize about, so I always stayed quiet (teenage girls are very vocal about having choking/daddy kinks but that’s definitely indicative of a much larger problem that i will not get into bc that’s a whole other very very long essay that I will definitely write on here one day but not now). So when I found out what gentle femdom was I felt like I had a community that understood me, and everything just clicked. I would lurk on online communities and I lived for the discourse on there but I could never actively participate because every community had a strict “no minors” policy. They would say exactly what you said, “If minors wish to learn, then they should do so by finding articles and books, not by asking people involved in the scene.” I didn’t want to make anyone catch a case and I didn’t want to get targeted by predators so I tried to follow their advice. i found nothing. There honestly just isn’t that much educational stuff for “kinky teenagers”, or at least none that fit me. There was no femdom oriented stuff. I mean sure there was the standard “consent is important especially in bdsm relationships” but like that didn’t really help me. I had so many questions, that I could never feel comfortable asking my mom or a therapist, and especially not my friends. I didn’t know how to express this part of myself. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it and I couldn’t even watch porn like a normal teenager (we all know the state of femdom porn. its bad) so I was this ball incredible frustration and confusion and i didn’t know what to do with it. So I unfortunately turned to twitter. There I made a little like minded friend. he was also 16 so i thought “this is good, a non adult also kinky teenager who I can relate too. what could go wrong :)”(I’m sure you see where this is going) I was so excited to have a new friend, but ofc, our convos soon took a turn. However, since he was the first person to ever show interest in me, and the only person my age who i could talk to who understood me, i started to catch feelings. But he was a teen just like me, just as horny and confused and sooo immature. He started to pressure me into domming him/becoming his domme, but I refused because I wasn’t ready (i saw on one of those online communities I used to lurk in that its not healthy for your first sexual experience to be bdsm and I took that to heart). he ghosted me. needless to say that “friendship” was toxic. i realized too late that he only saw me as a kink dispenser, and didn’t care about me on a personal level. it also made me realize how not “mature for my age” I was. i say all this to say, NO, teenagers should not be participating in kink. they are not mature enough. however education and resources for them are not where they should be. if we want to discourage them from putting themselves in these situations, we need to better provide them with education and healthy ways to relieve these urges/feelings (i eventually took up writing, it helped me a lot). i feel like had i found a healthier and safer way to express/explore that side of myself, I would’ve never gotten in that situation to begin with. That experience has kinda put me off from dipping my toe into the actual community (well that and the lack of diversity but we’ve already talked about that)

ALSO the amount of very young children i’ve seen in the kink “community” on twitter is alarming... you’re not a little you’re 12

anyways, thanks so much for this essay of an ask and sorry i wrote an essay in response to each one lol but like I said I could discuss kink all day

[almaasi]

reaction post typed while watching SPN 15x13 “Destiny’s Child”

so Destiel is a pizza metaphor now, I guess :o

--

05:24pm

i am LATE

because my doctor wanted to see me before the entire country goes into self isolation for 4 weeks. so i was there at 10am (an unGODLY HOUR) and they were doing all the appointments in the car park, with the patients in their cars and the doctors outside wielding those forehead-check temperature thingies. anyway i’m not dying. but i did have to go back to bed with wet hair because DECONTAMINATION

also i wore a surgical mask and now i have a rash where it touched me :/

-

05:42

almost done downloading. expectations for this episode: SOMETHING FUN. hopes: a hint (or a heap) of destiel. c:

-

05:45

alrighty it’s done!!! let’s go, lesbians

-

05:45

cas: “if the pizza man truly l--”

OH BOY WE’RE IN FOR SOMETHING

-

cas sexuality recap????????????????? iiiiiiiiiiiiiinteresting,,,,,,,,,,,

-

the pizza man.......... is dean............................

what 

is

happening

seriously what the fuck is happening

for 10 years i’ve expected a destiel recap and thIS WAS NOT IT, FAM

BUT I AM FUCKING INTO IT.

edit: wait, the pizza man is CAS, meg/the empty said later. so dean just wants all the pizza in his mouth i guess

-

05:49

my brain has rewired itself to be unable to see two characters together without worrying about covid-19. i can’t imagine anyone kissing without squicking myself. it’s weird.

and dean and sam are TOO CLOSE

take a little sub-step back there, ladies

-

05:51

other-dean-and-sam step out of their car

okay first off

1. the music. i like it. it’s awful in this show. i’m gonna look it up later.

2. the ANKLE. disgusting. i’m attracted to it.

-

2.1. wait no it’s sam’s ankle i take it back

-

05:56pm

sam: “it’s latin for ‘hidden’. where do we find it?”

billie. “i. don’t. know.        it’s.      hidden.”

i love her so damn much.

-

05:58

dean playing with the rubber band feels like a metaphor for the universes. he twists it into an infinity symbol and ooooooh

-

ahh look at this boy stimming

recently, the more i’ve watched dean the more i’m more inclined to think he’s also on the autism spectrum. just SO different from cas. and forced to hide all his traits by his upbringing, lifestyle, and surroundings, the way women with autism tend to do.

-

DEAN TRYING TO GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TO THE THING AND CAS SAYING NO !!!!!!!!!!

10/10

edit: probably my favourite part of this episode tbh. and i completely forgot about it until i was re-reading this post just now

-

06:05

anael/sister jo: “well, the healthcare systems sucks, so i pick up the slack”

resentful applause would be appropriate here

-

i like how she’s dressed! stripy blue turtleneck under a red satin cocktail dress under a bubblegum pink blazer!!!! nice!!

-

06:20pm

accidentally moved my computer and it turned off, lost a bit of this post. basically it was me saying ARE YOU TELLING ME ANAEL AND RUBY WERE CROWLEY AND AZIRAPHALE and having my fingers crossed for it being explicitly romantic somewhere in this

and then cas is talking to jack

cas: “dean feels things more acutely than any human i’ve ever known”

which, for one thing, only feeds my growing autistic!dean headcanon

and secondly, there’s a shot of the pizza as he says that!!!! significant

-

did dean just call sam ‘samwitch’ or is he referring to sam/rowena

-

cas: “the demon you were sexually intimate with”

which just reminds me how ruby was cas’ parallel that season.....

-

so i guess nowadays they just pop into hell like it’s a grocery store

-

dean’s gonna be so mad if cas dies forever

-

team free will dies if jack does it wrong

MUCH PRESSURE TO PUT ON TINY JACK O NOES

-

anael and ruby are definitely playing good omens

-

06:46

jack questioning this every step of the way probably Means Something

-

dean and cas standing in a church by the altar looks a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittle like a wedding

-

i question how the moon would be in exactly the right place and fullness in order for them to find that. one minute off and they never would’ve seen it. and ruby’s been dead 10 years and somehow knows where the moon is, topside???

-

SO CAS JUST FOUND A SNITCH AND THE SNITCH IS LIKE “EAT ME”

very harry potter

-

jack’s gonna eat the snitch isn’t he

-

snek

JACK HEARS PARSELTONGUE

there is SO MUCH good omens and harry potter in this, i love it

-

dean and cas at the altar again........ ugh <3

-

brazil iS NOT WHERE ANYONE WANTS TO BE

everything is Bad there

-

07:00

HOO

it’s over

well that was a different episode than the trailer made it out to be. good though. wow so much all at once. i enjoyed seeing the ladies again.

THE RECAP ABOUT THE PIZZA THOUGH. like... it wasn’t textual in the episode, just made people Aware of the subtext?? which means regular people WILL BE NOTICING THE DESTIEL GOING FORWARD. OH BOY.

i’m too tired to have coherent thoughts but i enjoyed this!! i love jack and billie and i love how concerned dean was about dead!cas, and the other-sam-and-dean were funny but THEY’RE JUST?? OUT THERE IN THE WORLD NOW??

10/10 and i am intrigued about what’s coming next........

but yeah there was destiel. it’s just a pizza metaphor now.

*pizza emoji*, *clown emoji*

--

edit: so i just realised this was a bucklemming episode and THAT EXPLAINS MY WEIRD FEELING OF “i enjoyed this but something felt off”. like parts of this fell flat and felt like they skimmed potential rather than delving into it, and i was like hmmmm, but ignored the feeling bc i am just really fuckin tired. but yeah that explains the busty asian beauties thing too. i didn’t mention it bc ugh can’t be bothered. but yeah. adjusting my rating to 8/10 because it really does make a difference knowing the author’s intentions were questionable

[sunsmitten]

     This is something that’s been bothering me lately and i feel the need to give my two cents. im starting to see homophobic comments abt gay ships on my dash and while the people saying them may not think it’s homophobic, it is. no one has to really read this, it’s just something i want to put out there. it’s my personal experience with a group of people that were very Straight Ship centered, heteronormative, and would frequently make the very same comments others are starting to make here: “gay ships are being shoved down my throat so now i hate gay shipping and want nothing to do with it” or you know, stuff along those lines. if two people rping two girls kissing or two boys kissing bothers you in any way, literally, in any way at all, it is homophobia. and here’s a good chunk of how shit like that grows and can become something very harmful;

when i very first started rping on tumblr i had made an oc ( both the oc and blog are looooong gone by now ) that wasn’t very attracted to women romantically or sexually. he didn’t define his sexuality, but throughout that blog i made it clear he wasn’t really into women.

i eventually made friends with this group of people who also rped on tumblr. in the beginning everything was fine, great and fun! but after some time they would make me feel bad for only putting my oc in a relationship with a man. in order for me to be included and not repeatedly discarded by them, i would actively have to put my oc in a ‘straight ship.’ and unfortunately, that’s what i did. i immediately noticed a difference with how they treated me when i finally shipped my guy oc with one of their girls oc’s, and i would have to repeatedly sit through them saying transphobic and homophobic comments abt other people’s ships and muses ( it was the transphobia in this community that made me leave in the first place ). they would constantly express their bitterness towards m/m and f/f shipping on the internet bc it was “more popular” than their m/f ships, and when i would try to explain how that wasn’t a good viewpoint to have, I would be ostracized, guilt tripped, and forced to apologize and ‘admit’ that i was wrong.

as i got older and more comfortable with my sexuality, i really only ever viewed/read content centered around m/m and f/f because like. im gay. and i wanna see gay shit, ya know? but that didn’t really fly with them. they’d would continuously make me feel guilty for this, call me misogynistic for liking m/m and f/f over m/f because to them being gay and wanting to see gay content makes me hate women, and i was called the big word itself. Heterophobic. 

one of the girls in particular, we’ll call her S, was very keen on telling me how awful of a person i was bc of my preference, how ‘straight shipping is oppressed’ on the internet and im only ‘feeding into the oppression.’ for 4 years she would manipulate me and make me feel guilty not only for the type of media i consumed, but for my sexuality in general. it got so bad to the point that i would have frequent panic attacks and i still got the throw up stain on my carpet to prove it ( i got one so bad bc of her i puked all over my bedroom floor and then fainted ). when i would try to reach out to the others abt what was happening behind the scenes, i’d either be ignored or my feelings were invalidated. to me, she was toxic, to everyone else, she was a wonderful friend. but that doesn’t excuse or make her treatment of me ok and it took along time for me to realize that. 

again, please keep in mind this went on for 4 years. this started when i was finally comfortable with myself and then to be thrown in and stuck in this situation bc i was too much of a coward to leave really fucks with a person. her distaste, hatefulness, and bitter attitude for gay people/characters/shipping was all taken out on me every week for 4 years. i’m doing my very best not over-dramatize this but yeah, it was every week for 4 years she would send me paragraphs of how terrible i was for just being me. how shitty i was as a person, how im a terrible friend, how the content i liked wasn’t fair to her, a straight person, that i was predatory for being a masculine identifying person looking at other guys, and how lucky i was to have a friend like her that tells me when i’m ‘in the wrong.’ 

near the end of last year she sent me another one of these multi-paragraph messages. at this point, i had finally become very aware how fucked up of a person she is and how i was never in the wrong through any of this like she originally made me believe. instead of agreeing with her and apologizing, a ended up snapping back. i told her how i felt, how she wasn’t being fair to me, and that i felt she was being very homophobic. admittedly, her response wasn’t at all like i had expected. She apologized, told me i had opened her eyes to some things and she’ll work on getting better. this made me happy! i thought that maybe we could continue our friendship without anymore of the BS. 

after that i took a good break from being online. i needed some time for myself and i needed to think some things over about my life. during this time, i realized how lax i was with S, how i let her and that whole friend group get away with so many things and i began to wonder if i should even go back. even after that talk i had with her, she was still very defensive against homosexual relationships and would get angry if someone expressed more interest in gay media than straight media. 

i was away for a good couple months, i was healing and rising above that bad mentality she forced on me. i logged out of all social media and messenger apps so there was no way her or anyone from that group could contact me. i hadn’t heard from her in months, until i received a letter in the mail. She wrote me a letter. A two paged letter. A LETTER. A REAL, WHOLE ASS LETTER. just so she can continue to try and tear me down. she started by telling me how much she missed me, a little starter paragraph kissing my ass until it, very abruptly, turned into the usual “youre shit, terrible, bad, you have no respect for me or anything i create, you hate me bc im a straight woman-” you get it. but this time i didn’t care! nothing she said in that letter got to me like it used to. the only thing that bothered me was her persistence to make me feel bad. she genuinely wanted to continue to hurt me. but with that time away and probably because i was so used to it by then, it didn’t faze me. 

i eventually went back to social media and kept my distance from that friend group. i still considered them my friends, bc when things were good, i had a lot of fun! and wanted to keep that in my life. But, I blocked S. I blocked her on everything so there’d be no way for her to contact me and if she wrote me another letter, i would simply rip it up. i made it clear i wanted to go our separate ways with no hard feelings, i didn’t talk to anyone abt what she had done. no mention whatsoever. i carried on my merry way bc i was moving past it. She did not. 

When she figured out i had blocked her, she threw a tantrum. she twisted my words and painted me as the villain by showing out of context screenshots of what i had sent in response to her second to last message ( the one before the letter ). she told the people i was still friends with that i abused her for years bc she was straight and put me on full blast on the internet. she did this because i blocked her.

it all happened in the time span of a second; i lost all my friends, i was blocked by everyone and not only called a piece of shit by her, but by everyone i still cared deeply about. i was forced to delete all my social media accounts so i wouldn’t continue to be put on blast. for a week i was upset bc really, who wouldn’t be? but after that week i realized that if these people i called my friends just took S’s word for it and were all so eager to tear me apart bc she said so, they were never my friends. they never cared about me so why should i care if im not with them anymore? it was a real eye opening moment and my dudes, im doing fucking great. im so much happier without them all in my life and i can finally do the shit i want. be gay and indulge on harmless gay content. 

so! to make the moral of the story clear. The people that are so butt hurt over gay shipping being more popular than straight shipping are people not to be trusted. it may seem unfair to lump them all into a category, and im not saying they’re all as toxic as S, but their mentality is homophobic. disliking anything gay bc it’s not straight, is homophobic. straight people are constantly represented in every source of media and if someone is bothered by the fact that gay people are indulging in gay shipping in the rpc, they are homophobic. there’s no way around it.

im still getting over S and all that she did. i know without her i wouldn't be as tough as i am now and unapologetic with what i like, but there’s a good part of me that wishes i never met her or that friend group. bc of her i struggle with my self esteem and my own internalized homophobia that only formed after i met her. i’ve come along way in the months after i officially cut myself off from them, but i know this is something that’s going to take some time. 

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #280

“this is the place in our mind with a crooked crown / we came to execute its own perfect shutdown”

Do you have a strong local accent? No. Do you prefer green or red grapes? Red, but either is fine so long as they’re crisp. Can you stand on your hands unassisted? pffff Who was the last person to knock/ring at your door? Pizza guy. How old were you when you last went trick or treating? No idea. Have you ever been bobbing for apples? ”No. That’s a gross game lol you’re dipping your head and mouth into water other people are dipping their head and mouth into.” <<<< This. What’s your most expensive piece of clothing? No clue. What’s the last thing you took a picture of? Guys I actually took a selfie bc for once in my goddamn life, I felt really pretty with the makeup Summer did on me. She's working towards a degree in cosmetology and is so talented with it. What’s the last thing you drew a picture of? A meerkat pup. Have you ever been on a pogo stick? Omg, yes. I got one for I think Christmas one year as a kid and I got SO into it. I learned how to do it really well. Can you down a pint (of anything) in one? Probably not without throwing up. Have you ever been banned from a public place? No. Have you ever been in a newspaper? A couple times, I think. I know once in elementary school for when I was in chorus; we went somewhere for a small Christmas show. Then I believe I was in it for another school thing? Idr. What football team do you support? I don’t care for football or sports in general. What did you want to be when you grew up? My phases included paleontologist, vet, movie director, author, game designer, aaaand I know I’m forgetting one. But my current and long-term goal has been to become a photographer. Being an artist as a free time “job” has always been an aspiration, too. Have you ever tie-dyed your own clothes? In school, yeah. How often do you buy new clothes? Very rarely. Usually just around Christmas or my birthday from gift cards I get. Are you reliable? In some ways yes, in other ways no. Are you proud of yourself? No. If you could ask your future self one question what would it be? If she’s ended up happy. Do you hold grudges? Nah. Do you decorate the outside of your house for Christmas? Mom does pretty much last minute, but only sometimes when looking at the past few years. Can you solve sudoku puzzles? Sure, they’re fun. What’s the most unusual conversation you've ever had? Who knows. Are you much of a gambler? Not at all. I don’t fuck around with money, especially when just $5 makes you feel great. Have you ever been to Disneyland? I’ve been to Disney World. Do you sing in the shower? Very rarely. Almost never now that I don’t play music while I’m in there. As a child did you ever suck your thumb or fingers? I mean probably? I do know I loved my pacifier and was SO upset when Mom’s doctor or someone playfully told me I was gonna have to give it up because my upcoming baby sister would want to steal it, and guess what? Nicole never fucking used a pacifier so I was tilted lmao. What time do you usually go to bed? Lol BRO it can be as early as 7 PM on bad depression days to as late as like, 2-3 AM. I’d say the average time is like… 9:30. What's your favorite animal? MEERKATS hngggggggggggggggg Have you ever been in marching band? No. Do you have any enemies? No? At least I don’t consider anyone to be. Have you ever been a cheerleader? As a kid, Mom wanted me to so I could do something with my sisters, who were actually interested in cheerleading. She certainly didn’t force me to or anything, I just agreed to it despite not being into it. We were with this Christian sports group for a long time doing various sports all the while being taught lessons in Christlikeness. I’ve actually got warm memories of it Did you ever date anyone on the football team? No. Do you sleep with stuffed animals? No, not that I’m against the idea tho. The plushy would just have to be very special to me and also comfortable to hold. How many consecutive days have you ever missed of school? I missed an entire week when I learned about Mom’s cancer. I could barely function. With how much school stressed me, I would NOT have managed. Have you ever been pregnant? No, not in my to-do list. When was the last time you wanted to speak out, but couldn’t? I’m sure it was recently over Facebook; most times, I keep my mouth shut over political things on there that might get me fired up because I’m afraid of confrontation. Are fingerless gloves awesome? I love them. Wore them daily in high school. I still have some of my favorites, though I’m doubtful they still fit my hands… Would you rather be cannibalistic or die in the wilderness? Okay so I’m gonna actually go kinda in-detail, so the squeamish be warned. Realistically, I think I’d choose to die. ESPECIALLY if I was the one expected to kill another person; then, there’s no question. I wouldn’t be able to do it either if I knew the person. If it was some stranger someone else killed and cooked, I don’t know with absolute certainty; starvation really can make animals out of people. I do know for sure I’d vomit. I far more heavily lean into still preferring to die, because I just believe some things aren’t worth living after they’ve been committed. I’d hate myself. I’d rather die feeling clean of conscience. Would you survive on a deserted island? Hell no. Have you dyed your hair eccentric colors in the past? Yeah, I want to do it far more often… What size drink do you usually get at fast food restaurants? Medium, sometimes small. What do you think is the best thing in life? Love, both platonic and romantic. Have you ever sold anything online either on Craigslist, eBay, Amazon, etc.? If not, what is your website of choice like any of the above for buying things? We sold our previous dog over Craigslist, and I sold my iguana there as well. I know Mom has used eBay and Amazon, but idk for what. Have you ever seen an animal give birth? Have you ever had a pet give birth before? I’ve seen old pet cats give birth many times. What is something you want to try to accomplish within the next year? I want a job that I’m content with and can mentally handle. Oh, and I REALLY want to make strong progress on recovering from the muscle atrophy in my legs. What’s the most unusual kind of pizza you’ve ever tried? I have no clue; I’m not that adventurous with pizza or food in general. If you were given the chance to decorate an entire house the way you wanted, with no limit to cost, how would you decorate it? GOTHIC AS A MOTHERFUCKER WELCOME TO THE GOTDAMN ADDAMS FAMILY. What’s one of your favorite things to touch/feel? My cat. :’) How often do you wear tights? Ew, never. Has there ever been anything you’ve become interested in much later than other people? I guess Instagram, but only as a viewer. I don’t have a personal one, just for my photography that I only rarely post. Have you ever had a veggie burger? Yeah, during my vegetarian streak. Burger King’s really aren’t that bad so long as the patty is made well. Do you like candles? Yeah, sure. When was the last time you wore a sports bra? Forever ago when I was doing Wii Fit. Where did you get the shirt you’re currently wearing? I think Hot Topic? It’s an oversized Umbreon shirt. Who last messaged you on Facebook? My friend Summer when we were planning our lil witch photoshoot w/ friends. Who last walked you home? lol you don’t just have someone “walk you home” here. Bundles of homes are way too far and in-between for reasonable walking distance. Did you make any new friends lately? If so, what are their names and how did you meet them? Not really recently, no. Would you rather see your favorite band/artist in concert with 2 other people or have a free $20,000 shopping spree to Walmart? Seeing Ozzy with my mom would be a DREAM, but to be realistic, I’d take the shopping spree pretty damn quickly. $20k? That would do WONDERS for us, especially as we’re about to move into a new place. When was the last time you threw up and why did you? A long time ago when I started a new medication. Do you want revenge on the person who has hurt you the most? … I’m gonna be REAL honest. For the most part, no. But ngl there are times I’m like “I’m gonna work on getting back in shape and become H O T” like a petty bitch lmao this is embarrassing to admit. Has anyone ever claimed that you saved their life? Yes. Did you ever have that near-drowning experience? No. Have you ever performed on stage? For dance, yes, but I never did a solo. Are you a jealous person? Not jealous (usually), but I’ve come to realize I’m a pretty envious piece of shit. Morning person or night person? I’m in my best mood in the morning because I have the “it’s a fresh start” ideology. Then I repeat exactly what I did the day before. :^) Have you ever written a poem for someone? Numerous times. Do you meditate? No, but I wish I could without it only causing more stress. Do you like cranberries that they serve for Thanksgiving? EW I hate cranberries. What don't you understand that frustrates you? Finances. Do you plan on going to college? I’ve tried college three times and dropped out each time. I’m done trying with school. Do you believe the governments hide technology and information from the public? AbsoFUCKINGlutely. Which is your favorite Pokemon? Ninetales! What horror fiction character scares you the most? What’s the name of the villain in the Scream series? Ghostface? I don’t feel like looking it up, but he TERRIFIED me as a kid, and I still think he’s mega creepy. Were you part of the Brownies/Cubs/Scouts/Guides etc? I was in Girl Scouts. Have you ever invented a fairly unique meal or drink? No. Do you have any family secrets? Don’t think so. Do you often read your horoscope? Never. They’re bullshit. Have you ever had a proper Tarot reading? No; also bullshit. Have you ever milked a cow? No. Do you love or hate rollercoasters? They’ve always scared me because I’m afraid of throwing up. Now with how dizzy I get, I absolutely refuse to try one because I WILL faint with all the movement. What’s your favorite sportswear brand? idc Who’s your favorite superhero? Does Deadpool count? Who’s your favorite villain/baddie? If we’re still in the comics/superhero universe, the Joker. Have you ever won a giant-sized cuddly toy from a fair? No. What would you say is your favorite album of all time? Black Rain by Ozzy Osbourne. I fucking adore it; it was my introduction to metal, and still after all this time, every track S L A P S. I deadass played that CD so much that it scratches at a few points. Do you dislike hairy people? lol fuck this question. I’m guessing you’re asking if I find them attractive and not as if people I “dislike” them, but in both cases, it’s no. We’re mammals, who the fuck cares how hairy you are. Do you like your own name? I actually do really like my name. My first one, anyway. Would you ever sign a Prenuptial agreement? NOPE. Want one? You’re gonna have to find someone else willing to, my man. How long has your longest ever phone call been? No less than two hours, but I know more. I have three instances in particular where I talked with either friends or Jason for SO long. Could you ever have an affair with a married person? Hell no. What is your family Christmas like? Nicole comes here so she and I open presents with Mom, then we spend the day at my older sister’s to be with the kids. We also try to squeeze visiting Dad in there the same day, but sometimes it has to be a different one. If you met a genie who offered you three wishes, what would you wish for? (more wishes does not count) Just three is hard… but #1 is indisputably world peace, and then uhhhh the end of poverty and maybe the cure for cancer. I’d have a super hard time picking a third; so many things matter to me. Have you ever had your national flag painted on your face? No, not in my plans. Do you have any strange body things? Well, define “strange,” I guess? Nothing like, really strange. What fairy tale character would you most associate with? Can I be Snow White and attract cute critters like moths to a flame? Also I would 100% take a Good apple. If a loved one was to serenade you, what song would you most like them to sing? It would depend on the person and our bond, really. Is there a cherished song between us? What is our relationship like? There’s no umbrella song I can think of. Is your dad an embarrassing dancer? GUYS!!!!!!!!!!! My sister’s wedding, okay? Father/daughter dance? He actually has MOVES and it was incredible man, never gonna forget that. What if any unusual objects have you swallowed? Nothing, I think. If you were stinking rich, would you only go to places other rich people went? Hell naw, man. There are plenty of great, affordable places in all categories. I could be a millionaire and you’d still see my ass in McDonald’s ordering a burger and fries lmao. Have you ever owned a slinky? My sisters and I had multiple as kids; those were d o p e. Teenage parents, good, bad, or indifferent? An AWFUL idea. A teenager is physically, most likely financially, and mentally unprepared to raise a child properly. It can seriously affect the kid, and of course the parent. What’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever broken? I’m unsure. Pirate downloads, good or bad? It’s bad… yet plenty (myself included) have/do do it. Democracy, good or bad? Good. It’s very important to me that rule should come from the people’s majority versus a small coalition of rich guys. While the majority is not always right, it seems like the best option to me. Communism, good or bad? Okay so to be totally honest I actually don’t entirely understand what communism outlines. Like I just read multiple definitions and small articles and I’m still kinda like “????”, though judging by the countries listed as those governed by communism, I would guess it’s bad? Have you ever been electrocuted? On an electric fence, but it wasn’t too bad. Have you ever been hit on by someone of the same gender? Yeah. The war in Iraq, good or bad? Get the fuck out of it. To start with, I’m a pretty fierce pacifist, and just… killing and killing and killing for YEARS is so goddamn pointless and is just a massacre. The war in Afganistan, good or bad? jfc ^ Have you ever appeared on YouTube? LET’S NEVER TALK ABOUT THIS lmfao Have you ever eaten anything prepared by a celebrity chef? No,, but that’d be dope. Have you ever been on radio? No. Do you prefer male or female singers voices? ”Their gender doesn’t matter, but their talent does.” <<<< Do you have a list of things to do before your ‘x’ years old? Goals should not be judged by age. I’m bad at this and have to remind myself of it a lot. A goal is a goal regardless of a number. Celebrate for *you*. Are you proud, comfortable or ashamed of your body? Very very much ashamed. Do you know html? Super poorly. Have you ever flown first class? lol hunny What are better, violins or pianos? Violins. How old is your oldest blanket? As old as me. My baby blanket is stored somewhere. Do you take enough vacations? lol hell no. I’ve maybe gone on three vacations in my entire life. Have you ever been sick on your birthday? Yup. Then one time I was recovering from a wicked stomach virus but went to Olive Garden anyway lol. I was fine though, and it’s actually a sweet memory because Jason (he worked there at the time) got the staff to do the whole “happy birthday” thing. I got a bombin’ brownie. Who is your favorite person? Sara and my mom. What do you do to stay healthy? lol you assume I’m healthy. What is your favorite form of exercise? Swimming. Do you like going to church? I never did. As a kid, I would cry when/if Mom decided we were going to mass after Sunday school lmao. It’s always been boring and too long to me, even when I was religious. Have you ever fallen asleep during a sermon? Probably as a kid. Do you like to pray for others? No. I don’t believe anyone hears them or will intervene somehow if I ask anyway. Have you ever witnessed a miracle? No. I don’t think I believe in those anyway. Have you ever been the recipient of a miracle? Definitely not. How did you or whoever come up with the name(s) for your pet(s)? I thought “Roman” was a majestic name for a male cat, and Venus has the coloration that the planet does. Who did you last walk a dog with? Sara and I walked Buster the last time I was there. It was windy as SHIT so we didn’t get far because my ass was absolutely freezing, all the while Sara was used to it. Ride bikes with? Wow, good question. I haven’t ridden a bike in many, many years. Hold hands with? My friend Summer did yesterday when she was trying to reassure me of something. For what reason did you last high five someone? Ryder and Aubree each caught Pokemon in Pokemon GO. :’’’’) I was watching them in the car while my sister/their mom was doing something at work, and they wanted to play it; they’ve come to learn that between my phone and DS, I’m the Pokemon provider, lol. I was the proudest fucking aunt ever bc they did SO GOOD after getting the hang of throwing the ball like Y’ALL. When Ash came back to the car, I gave ‘em each high fives before getting back in. What color and type is your vehicle? Don’t have my own car. Looking to upgrade or add any time soon? I doubt I’ll have my own soon. What animal do you have the most possessions *of*, or featuring? Like, décor or stuffed animals, things like that? Not the actual living creature? Easily meerkats, holy shit do I have a collection. What do you use to wash your dishes? Gain soap. Last thing you measured? Uhhh idk. Last thing you weighed? Myself. Last song you danced to? *shrug* What do you remember from your dream last night? I just remember it was a nightmare about Dad being angry. How old were you when you got your first credit card? Lol I don’t have one. Do you talk to your parent(s) [almost] every day? Mom, yes. Dad, no, because we don’t live together. What does your shampoo and conditioner smell like? I just started using a Dove brand shampoo targeting dandruff, so I don’t think it has a specific smell. I don’t use conditioner, just adds grease to your hair, plus mine is short anyway. Last person to tell you that you smell good? Idk. Last person you told that they smell good? I also don’t know. If you smoke marijuana, what is your preferred or typical method? I’ve never touched it. Last person you ran into unexpectedly? Ummm idr. How many plants can you see right now? There’re none in my room. Last compliment you received on your appearance? HA On your character/personality? That I was a loving sister. Do you remain friends with anyone you met at your first job? N/A Who have you hugged in the past month? My mom, Summer, sisters, niece and nephew, Dad… Newest musical discovery? 3TEETH is great. Like, I'm obsessed. Their cover of “Pumped Up Kicks” snagged my attention, despite actually being iffy about it at first. Guess what I’m listening to this minute lmao. Last thing you cleaned? A cup. What exactly do you carry around all your stuff in? A purse. What do you carry around, typically? Phone, keys, wallet, hand sanitizer, and my iPod are items of note. Where is your newest scar? It’s on the palm of my left hand from Roman playing with me. Where is your oldest scar? Idk. Last thing you disposed of? The milk carton. What was the last picture someone sent you? Mom sent me a gif from Hocus Pocus to fit the witch photoshoot Summer, her friend, and I did. Did you hear a siren today? No. What do you typically drink? I would rather not pretend I tend to drink soda lmao Last bad news you heard? My aunt’s brother committed suicide a couple days ago. Last good news you heard? I don’t really know. How far away is the closest cinema from your house? It’s like, 15-ish minutes away. Have you ever been to the emergency room? Many times. Are you one of those people who can’t go without their morning coffee? Y’all know me and coffee. But in place, I have my morning Mountain Dew, rip in fucking pieces. Have you ever worn fake eyelashes? No, though I’m honestly curious what I’d look like. Do you know the story of how your parents met? If so, tell me? They were coworkers; that’s all I know. What is your favorite Chinese food? I love pork fried rice. Do you live far from your parents? I live with my Mom. I live around 20 minutes or so away from Dad. What was the last hot food you ate? I’m assuming you mean spicy as opposed to just hot as in temperature. In that case, probably hot wings. Have you ever seen a meteor shower? No. Describe your current position: I’m lying down in bed, just kinda perked up by my two pillows. Have you used a microwave today? Yes; I had a Jimmy Dean breakfast bowl. Do you prefer going out for coffee or brewing your own? N/A Have you consumed caffeine today? If so, in what form? yikes- Do you know anyone who follows a raw vegan diet and lifestyle? Not that I know of. Have you killed a bug this week? Yes; we’re dealing with a lovely mix of gnats and fleas. What was the first food you learned how to cook? Scrambled eggs. Or maybe pancakes with Mom’s assistance. Idr. Do you have a Bachelor’s degree? If so, what in? No. How many email accounts do you have? Two. Can you go see a doctor alone or do you like to take someone with you? I like my mom to be with me. How long is your average shower? 15 minutes, maybe? It depends on the routine I feel like doing. When’s the last time you had a headache? Yesterday. What woke you up this morning? I think I woke up naturally? A rare occasion nowadays. Who was the last person you cried in front of? Summer, yesterday.

[pluviophile-bookworm]

Thoughts/ reaction to AWAE 3x10

So, I mentioned in a post I made around midnight (standard Bulgarian time), three hours before this episode aired, that I wasn’t feeling quite like living and that this episode was one of very few things keeping me alive. Since then, I went through a lot more that showed me life really is worth living, and after a small celebration of my birthday (I’m two decades old, yay not so yay really), it’s finally time to open my last, and, hopefully, best present. 

I’ve been going out of my way to avoid spoilers, which is something I never usually do (bc spoilers can be a lifesaving trigger warning), so I’m diving into this episode 100% unprepared for whatever is to happen. I hope I was right not to spoil it for myself. 

I’m rambling oof  So without further ado, here goes my reaction to AWAE  3x10:

Oh my my, what a start. I never expected this. Even after everything Moira has hit me with, I never expected a cold open to include a crying Winifred. Sure, I didn’t expect her to take it lightly, but, well, it seems just a bit too much to me - coming from her, that is. Other girls, on the other hand... by all means, I am immensely grateful that Ruby got over her crush on Gilbert before this happened. Of course, I am so happy for her and Moody, but even if she hadn’t moved on to somebody else immediately, I’m glad her romantic feelings for Gilbert no longer exist because seeing him get together with Anne, one of her closest friends (they are getting together soon, I know it), would have broken her heart. Was that last sentence too long? I hope not. Ok, moving on. 

So, I understand that Winifred must feel cheated, led on, used and whatnot, and that shows that, for whatever reason, she must really have very strong feelings for Gilbert. I’m not saying she loves him the way Anne does - because no one ever could - but I’m saying that for her to be so affected, there have to be some true and strong feelings. On a semi-related note, though, is the idea of her and Prissy getting together off the table? Because it definitely is still very much there in my head. Just saying.

I cannot believe this, and yet it seems to be true - Gilbert broke off the engagement with Winnie before it happened (good) while still thinking Anne doesn’t love him back (bad, so bad). How do these things happen? He must be very, very sure in his own feelings for her then. I cannot wait for him to find out... but how can he find out? I need answers. I need closure. Now. 

Props to Gilbert for telling Winnie that she is exceptional (true) and deserves to be truly loved (very true). Our boy might not love her, but he cares for her very deeply and it must be awful to watch her cry because of him... I hope they can still be friends. And I really hope Winnie and Anne can be friends one day. 

Did he just promise not to tell anyone he’s not engaged to Winnie for two weeks? Do you realise what this means? If he keeps that promise, it might be too late for him and Anne. And he still doesn’t know that she loves him back, and how can he possibly find out without bringing up the fact that he didn’t propose to Winifred? My, that was some cold open. 

My sweet Ruby... wasn’t it only half a season ago that she was only going to Queens to be close to Gilbert? And now she doesn’t want to go without Moody. I’m happy for her, but she seems to have re-attached very strongly in a very short time. I sure hope she doesn’t get hurt. I mean, Moody wouldn’t hurt her, right?

Anne eyeing Gilbert and Gilbert looking back at her... the room is filled with tension, and yet that between the two of them is of a completely different kind. I want this to be resolved already. 

Diana saying she’ll faint if she turns out to have passed the exams is ironic/ funny on a purely linguistic level. She’s practically saying she’ll pass out if she’s passed the exams, get it? No? Just me?

She got in! People, Diana got into Queens! With zero special preparation. I have no choice but to stan. 

The little smiles Anne and Gilbert exchanged when they found out they tied for first place... it almost looked like they forgot all the tension and were just genuinely happy for each other in that moment... and then there’s the extremely awkward “Congratulations” scene which is just another misunderstanding. 

“Potato light bulbs forever!” Well said, Moody, very well said indeed.

Poor Anne is still so disappointed in Gilbert not giving her any response to her note. Poor unfortunate note never reached him, or else things would be vastly different right about now.

Oh my, oh my, they will be roommates, if you know what I mean. What would I give to see this... unfortunately, there was one spoiler I could not avoid, and it is the very real fact that AWAE has been cancelled. But I really want to  see so many more things. Please, people, we can make it happen! #renewAWAE #AWAES4

Poor Diana. I hope there is a force on Earth that can convince her parents to let her go to Queens.

“It is your future, not theirs.” / “It’s not your future, it’s ours!” Oh the tragic parallel, I can’t even. Poor Diana. 

Ok, Winnie I can take, but Eliza Barry is going on my nerves with her crying. True, Diana did go to the exam by lying about where she was going, and she did one more secret thing that would positively make her mother self-combust (I’m talking about Derry and where is my Derry resolution?), but this is a bit too over the top.

Look at the Cuthberts + honorary family member Jerry picking corn together like a true farming family... how idyllic. Also, Jerry is back! And the looks on his and Matthew’s face when Anne starts talking about corsets is just priceless. I love these two. They need their own spin-off. 

Oh my, Matthew, what are you talking about? Sure, giving Jerry his own room at Green Gables is super heartwarming and, sure, the much missed smile was back on Jerry’s face for a couple seconds, but this is just such a callback to Anne’s original problem with Jerry when both of them first arrived at Green Gables - she feels like Matthew and Marilla are replacing her with him, like they’re getting the boy they originally wanted and she’s out of the family. What a heartbreaking turn of events. 

They’re showing us family after family, and in two out of three so far things have gone bad. I hope this is not the case with the Lacroixes. Hazel just told her son she’s proud of him. It seems like their misunderstandings of the past are water under the bridge and that makes me happy. Just please don’t let this take a turn for the worse.

Hazel being soft with her baby granddaughter is so heartwarming... but I’ve been hurt before and I just hope this scene isn’t giving me a false sense of security. 

Gilbert is alone at Green Gables. What could happen? What did he come for? Oh, I can’t, it’s the pen, you guys! Oh my, he’s writing a note to Anne... oh, the parallels...

“My Anne with an E”... I cannot, I simply cannot with this. I can’t, he’s talking about being engaged to her, calling her his Anne... and he still doesn’t know she loves him back. Boy has finally decided to act on his feelings. Took him some time, that’s for sure. That slate to the head must have totally dimmed his senses in order for him to miss the signs. I wonder what Anne’s excuse is.

I can’t help feeling that Anne has somehow reverted back to her 1x1 self. Getting Matthew a cup of water he didn’t ask for and asking if he needs help with the milkers, and just nervously trying to do any chore just to prove she’s useful... poor Anne. So many years of love and acceptance and found family happiness have been pretty much erased by Matthew’s comment about more or less replacing Anne with Jerry. Why, Matthew? I trusted you.

Their cows’ names are Pride and Prejudice? Doesn’t take much to figure out who gave them those names. But now one of them has been sold to the Andrewses. I just hope they treat her well. My, am I getting worried about a cow I don’t even know now?

Oh Anne, how could you say this? There is no way for any place you’ve been at to go back to the way it was before you. Seriously, Anne has this way of changing the world around her for the better that just can’t not leave a trace in a decent person’s heart. And Matthew Cuthbert sure is one. I know he didn’t mean what he said the way that Anne perceived it. I’m sure there is some explanation.

Oh my, Anne found the note. So far this one is doing better than the first one. And... I spoke too soon. Goodness, Anne, why? You couldn’t just read it, you had to tear it up beyond repair and throw it out the window. Shirbert should be banned for life from writing notes. 

Sure, Anne. Act before you think, think a second after you act. Dammit, smart people can be so stupid!

Anne stinks at puzzles. The way she arranged the words made the note look a totally different size than the original. And she saw it clearly before she ripped the life out of it. 

I just cannot with these two. Gilbert takes Anne’s drunken ramblings about pirates to mean she doesn’t love him. Then Anne rearranges Gilbert’s note, which she destroyed herself, to say he doesn’t love her. Thanks, I hate it.

Poor Diana, indeed. Can’t this episode stop making me suffer? This was supposed to be a nice birthday present. And this is supposed to be the last episode ever? No, guys, we can’t let that happen. I did not sign up for this suffering. 

Just seeing the way Marilla acts around Anne makes it perfectly clear that things have changed dramatically in the last three years, and yet somehow it feels like Anne still doesn’t feel like her place in the Cuthbert family is secure. But I understand her. I fell into a great crisis before going off to college, too. I just hope she gets to feel better soon. Girl has been through so much already. 

What could have made Bash jump up so suddenly and run like this? Oh, I cannot believe it. It’s Elijah. He’s back with John Blythe’s things and it seems he’s repenting. But Bash isn’t having it. Oh my, I knew things would get worse for the Blythe- Lacroixes, too, I was just hoping I’d be wrong. Why is this episode doing this to me?

Right on, Marilla. Talk some sense into Eliza Barry. She’s been needing this for a long, long time. 

“Soar to the highest heights” and “plunge to the deepest depths” - that’s Anne alright. She’s literally had both happen within the same day. Multiple times. She’s a “passionate individual”, after all, if I may use Gilbert’s words. 

This scene with Anne and Miss Stacy is such a beautiful contrast to the way they met. Anne sure wasn’t quite herself that day and I’m glad to see she and Miss Stacy are not just a passionate progressive teacher and a curious, headstrong student - they’re great friends now. 

So that letter Marilla received had to do with Anne’s lineage? I want to know any information about it just as much as Anne does. 

I don’t like it that it’s Matthew who has to be called out on his actions, but I’m glad Marilla is calling him out. Whatever his intentions were, and I’m sure they were nothing but good, what he said took Anne back to square one, only with so much more to lose now. 

This episode has too much crying in it. But now it’s coming from Matthew and it’s breaking my heart. 

Idyllic Blythe-Lacroix family scene in the orchard? Apparently this is not that scene. I see Eljah is still there. And from the way he acted at his mother’s grave, I could tell he truly repents for what he’s done. He just wants to be part of the family. And I want to know how that goes. 

It looks like they accept him in. For now, at least. I hope things can smooth over between them. 

Anne has her hair up... and she’s... is she wearing a corset? Little girl sure has grown up. 

I though Matthew would have that talk with Anne, but it seems like he, too has reverted back to his day 1 personality. What is this? Why are they both throwing their character- and inter-character development out the window like this?

Oh my, look at all the girls, all grown up. What girls, they’re practically women now. All so elegant in their lady dresses and their corsets and their hats. Such a glow-up. Not that they needed a glow-up, but it looks good on them all.

Deaf/ mute representation. I love it. Now more than ever we need a season 4 to expand on the girls’ relationship with Lily. And with curfew, which is “not a suggestion”. But especially Lily. 

The way the girls act in their dorm room just goes to show that even with the lady dresses and the corsets and everything, they’re still teenage girls that just want to have fun. I love these girls. 

I know Jerry doesn’t do all that much in this episode (where is my Derry conclusion?), but I’m just so glad to see that he and his beautiful smile are back. And right now he’s bringing the most important letter of all. And don’t worry, it’s not written by Shirbert, so it’s not getting lost or torn to pieces. 

I cannot with all these Shirbert parallels... at about the same time as Anne, Gilbert gets a life-changing letter, too. He’s going to the University of Toronto. I knew it. 

I just can’t... (gosh, this episode has stripped me of all the ability to can) Delly might have just lost her Uncle Gilby to UofT, but she’s just got her big brother Elijah back.

Josephine Barry... I like where this is going. If we get to also see Cole this time...

Now this is what dreams are made of. He’s there. He’s there and he’s looking as elegant as ever. I missed my boy. I’m still waiting for an interaction between him and my other boy Jerry... and we all know that ain’t happening unless we get them to renew AWAE... we can make it happen. 

I can’t. Once again I’m unable to can, this time because of how amazing Anne looks in this dress. I’ve been waiting so long to see it, and it’s more gorgeous than I could have imagined. Anne is, too. Matthew’s face says it all. Green dress who? No, I mean, it’s still absolutely stunning, but this one is way more Anne in my opinion. 

Why the suspense, Anne? Read it out loud, for goodness’ sake? The lack of background music and the ticking of the clock just make it so much more suspenseful.

See? This is why I missed Cole so much - well, not just this, but this too. His beautiful friendship with Anne, that is. Can you believe he hasn’t seen her in so long and yet he still knows her better than anybody else in that room, and, as Anne said herself, they’re all her family. I need more of their friendship. 

There we have it, guys, gals and nb pals, Matthew’s opening up. It was about time. I’m so proud of my man.

“My Anne”, along with the several times Anne was referred to as their daughter, or Marilla and Matthew as her mother and father... beautiful. I’m literally tearing up. 

So Mrs. Thomas does have information about the Shirleys after all. And while Anne is off exploring the town, her parents are looking for... her birth parents. And they’ve sort of found them in this book, The Language of Flowers. Turns out Bertha was a teacher. Like mother, like daughter. Even if she didn’t have the chance to raise her. 

I’m getting chills. Anne and Winifred... oh my, this is bad. This is a bigger misunderstanding than there has ever been between Shirbert, if that’s even possible at this point. Seriously, for two exceptionally smart girls, these two are dumb. 

Oh dear, Diana in her lady dress and hat looks so much like her mother, it’s scary. Well, that’s if her mother was an educated, brave woman ready to take risks for what she believes in. But in terms of looks... it’s almost creepy. 

Even dressed as a beautiful young lady, Anne is just as clumsy as ever. I love her just like that.

The look on Diana’s face scares me. Poor Gilbert here, a victim of the circumstances, doesn’t know what hit him... and it’s not a slate this time. This is not a school crush anymore. We’re talking courting and marriage here. And Diana, best of friends in the world, has had it with this series of unfortunate misunderstandings between Shirbert. 

Did he just jump off of a moving train or something? That’s right - run, Gil, run like the wind! We’re getting closure on this whole thing after all. I hope. 

Oh my, they’re going to- the time for words has run out. They were never any good when it came to these two. They’re going to kiss!

Wow, that was some kiss! It was like Gil here has been holding this in ever since that slate broke over his head. And I’m pretty sure that’s how it really was. Intense, wasn’t it? And then Anne pinching herself to make sure she’s not imagining this - are you telling me she’s been having fantasies of kissing Gilbert?

Wait, he’s still asking if she loves him back after they actually kissed? I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but - smart people are really dumb. 

A second kiss? Initiated by Anne? Now that’s the stuff of fanfiction. I may have to pinch myself too to make sure I really saw what I saw. 

“Pen pals?” Pen pals, huh? I mean, as long as they don’t intend to share one single pen and as long as they don’t hand-deliver the letters in the absence of each other... this could actually work.

Diana! And was that Mr. Barry coming to his senses after all?

Spare your steps, Gil! The guy really got on the carriage then right back off just to kiss Anne a third and fourth time - not counting the knuckle kiss, which, by the way, totally counts. 

The Cuthberts (yes, including a certain Shirley-Cuthbert) are going to make me cry... 

Funny that “I look like my mother” is the first thing she wanted to tell Gilbert in her first letter... but, I mean, that’s something incredibly important to her and they’ll be talking about all kinds of stuff, so why not? It’s actually beautiful. 

Sure, I want a fourth season with all my heart and soul, but even if we never get one (which we will), this was the most beautiful finale I could have imagined. 

I mean, there are certainly three things I wanted to see resolved by this finale: (1) Derry’s storyline - they sort of acted like it never happened and I’m not ok with that; (2) Ka’kwet’s family’s storyline - not even mentioned, like they were never there. This is the same kind of erasure that the White Man’s Burden prison school was doing. Not a fan. I demand closure on Ka’kwet’s story. (3) Closure on the Andrews family and Josie - this storyline can't have been introduced just for the sake of talking about abuse, consent and freedom of speech.

To sum up, in this rollercoaster of a season finale we saw: lots of crying - unexpected but justified from Winifred, way over the top by Eliza Barry, devastating by Diana, and heartbreaking by Matthew - bonus: a breakdown by Anne after a disappointing letter, then a tear of joy upon learning about her family; lots of the usual Shirbert stuff - tension, longing looks and misunderstandings; the misadventures of another love note; an overwhelming amount of parallels with varying degrees of subtlety; Diana gets into Queens, Gilbert gets into U of T; Elijah is accepted into the Blythe-Lacroix (mostly just Lacroix now) family; Anne and Matthew erase three years’ worth of character development - then get back on track, luckily; Diana is an absolute queen; a pair of cows named Pride and Prejudice - not actually shown on screen; all the girls looking classy in lady dresses and corsets; Marilla helps get Diana to Queens; Jerry + his smile and Cole are back for the finale; Shirbert share not one or two, but five kisses (counting the knuckle one); pen pals Shirbert.

[gedwimora-arc]

Something that bothers me a lot is that in their fervor to reject / put down sa.ns.an there are a lot of people who try and twist their entire relationship / dynamic in one that’s wholly negative, to depict Sandor as a predator or abuser or something when he’s just. Not. That’s just not the dynamic here at all.

I don’t wanna get to deeply into “ do i ship sa.ns.an / think sa.ns.an is good / etc etc ” I’ve varied on it over the years but generally my stance is that romance / love is an important element of Sansa’s arc / story as it’s part of the “ songs ” theme / narrative structure and so naturally I want her to end up in a relationship where she feels loved, protected and safe. Currently the seen / known / existing options for “ men who aren’t trash or related to her ” to marry her is like..... 3 guys and only 1 has she’s actually met which is Sandor. Assuming she’s an adult and in a good place to make these kinda choices and she picks him Great, have at it, if she meets Trystane or some other good boi™ who’s more her age and they hit it off even better. Mainly I just want her to be happy and for Sandor I just want him to be at peace, whatever form that takes, even if does mean he dies. 

My issue is really just that there are people who are so intent on ignoring the romantic elements of the ship that they blatantly rewrite the canon and misconstrue shit. I’ve seen people argue that the Unkiss ( a memory Sansa fabricated of Sandor kissing her during the BotBW scene, he didn’t he mostly menaced and cried tbh ) and her quasi-sex dream about him ( She dreams about her wedding night with Tyrion ( it’s own Yikes tbh ) but the Hound replaces Tyrion, she shows no indication of being upset about it compared to other nightmares she’s had canonically )  are coping mechanisms to deal with Sandor related / caused trauma which is just fucking BONKERS. They are, if anything, Sansa using Sandor as a vehicle for coping with other traumas. 

I think sometimes these people forget that for a WHILE there Sandor was the only person who was consistently on her side without ulterior motive and at times to his own potential determent. He’s not a good or nice man by any stretch but he genuinely cares about her and tries to look out for her. Sansa says it herself “ he was no true knight but he saved me all the same ” , he admits to her his grimdark origin story and she comforts him, then roots for him in the tourney. She understands why he’s so shitty but also calls him out on it when he’s being needlessly cruel to her. He protects her from beatings, rape and who knows what else as best he can, I mean shit if he was not her self-appointed bodyguard the mob attack scene would’ve been very different as he’s literally the only one who noticed she was gone before it was too late because he you know, gave a fucking shit about her safety and was actively looking out for her  in a dangerous setting.

I understand disliking it as a romantic ship and I don’t have beef with that, like I’m not always super hot on it as a romantic ship myself ? But I think it’s just willfully bad reading comprehension and douchery to try and make it like they’re not important to each other or that there’s not a romantic / sexual undertone. Before I get fucking shot for the last bit, the thing I think people miss on that part is that it doesn’t mean it MUST be acted upon or that it’s like a very serious thing ? Sandor does make crude comments about her and have some level of attraction to her, he’s also a crude dude in general and trying to shock her a lot of the time and purposely doesn’t act on his attraction when given the chance, even when out of his fucking gourd drunk and triggered to hell and back. He very clearly cares about her and while sure she’s pretty and he has eyes it’s much more emotional for him, she’s Kind and Good and Understanding towards him and he desperately craves that.

And with her side of it you can easily pin her fabricating the Unkiss, comparing the kisses of other men to that fake one with him, comparing men to him, her sexual/romantic fantasies now starring him instead of Loras as just part of both protecting herself from things that hurt ( her kiss w/ Tyrion at her forced wedding isn’t really her first that was Sandor! etc etc ) and her using him to explore her own sexuality safely. Loras is very boy band-y and Safe because there’s so clearly never gonna be anything there which makes him great crush material but given everything in her life so far, boy band isn’t really what it’s cracked up to be anymore. Whereas Sandor has proven in her actual life her safety is paramount to him, he’s been her faithful friend and protector as much as he could be. Sansa is a big fan of songs and a lot of his actions fit nicely into that narrative / aesthetic, saving her from the crowd, giving her his cloak to protect her modesty, offering to whisk her away from KL and he won’t hurt her. At that point in her life a man who’s built like a brick house, could snap a dude over his knee but is intensely protective and gentle towards her is honestly more appealing than being just a hottie. The concept of Sandor makes her feel Safe, she uses him, his attitude and his advice as a guide for how to navigate situations later on. Big shock that when she turns to explore her own sexuality and all that she uses Sandor as the tool to do it. Because he’s Safe. He’s not there, he can’t physically interact with her or act on anything related to these fantasies, he’s given her plenty of fodder and she can put anything “ mature “ or “ experienced “ on him to fulfill and enjoy exploring without feeling anxious about not knowing what she’s doing, she can just be like “ well Sandor would know how “ . It’s very much like if she was having the same thoughts about Theon, she knows him, he’s safe, and he’s not around to make this incredibly embarrassing. And you can literally leave that undertone at that and proceed forward figuring that, like with Loras, she’ll grow out of it with Sandor and move on to someone else, maybe whoever she’s in a healthy romantic relationship with. And that’s fine. Frankly I’m very good with her using Sandor for this considering she’s going to be engaged to a douche and Baelish is getting all Uncle Bad Touch, let her have her Sandor flavored escapist fantasies. And if you genuinely think he would for real touch her while she’s underage then I just need yall to get out Forever thanks.

If Sansa was really so traumatized by him from the BotBW or didn’t like him at all bc he’s a shitty and menacing professional killer who harassed her she wouldn’t have fabricated the unkiss, wouldn’t have kept his cloak, would not have compared other men to him with him being the positive example or compared sweet robin’s kiss to the unkiss again with Sandor in the positive. I don’t think these things inherently mean ~Romance~ I think they mean Sansa using Sandor to fill in a LOT of spaces in her life where she needs someone like a protector, a confident, a lover etc etc because he’s one of the few people who can fit them who she likes / trusts and isn’t fuckin’ dead. We don’t see much from his end since she’s a POV and he’s not hence why I’m speaking mainly about Sansa but it’s important to remember with him that she’s the best person in his life. She’s Special, he offers to save her from KL for a reason, because she’s good and kind and he wants tot help her. Sansa is the catalyst for his own self improvement just because she’s Nice, she quite literally pet this fucking dog and now he’d fucking die for her. That doesn’t have to be romantic so don’t fucking delete it just because you don’t like the romantic shippers. Don’t turn basic human compassion in to a sexual act. 

[freewheelshippin]

30 utapri questions!

Thanks @dekiaibadchoices​ for the tag, this was an awesome way to wind down after a ton of nonstop busy busy busy!!! (and thanks for tagging this blog vs the general utapri one so i can REALLY gush LOL) Here’s the OG meme! 

1. Your best boy?

BANANAMAN RAN WHO ELSE  

2. Your least favorite boy?

“least favorite” implies dislike which...not true! truthfully it’s much of HEAVENS by nature of ‘I haven’t spent as much time getting to know these characters so I don’t really know who they are.’ (though I already know I love to go for drinks and snacks with Van hehe) i do like all of HEAVENS quite a bit from what i’ve seen so far but that affection has not had time to ripen! 

3. A character that you never thought you would love as much as you do now?

mnmnj ranran tbh 

4. A character you can relate to in any way?

I can’t answer everything with Ranmaru but like. His ambition, straightforwardness, and how the soul and spirit of music motivate him to move forward beyond a tough past are things I same hat so much ;; But HONESTLY I also relate a lot to Masa and Tokiya, especially in their moments of self-doubt and dramatic commitment to to their art? 

5. A character that you think deserves more love?

Oh, Cecil, without a doubt. He’s such a resilient, committed, and open-hearted cutie and gets really shafted by canon tbh. Which makes it harder for everyone to see what a great boy this sweetie is! But I appreciate how Shining Live has given him some room to have really cute and standout moments so everyone can love him more but okay like, give me more Ceci and Ran palling around I love him most when they’re up to shenanigans 

6. A character you would want as your partner?

well we’re posting this fuckin here so you all fuckin know (im very embarrass rn i can barely say it lmao) 

(for the record i would also very much like to be friends with reiji and syo, they are cool people i think i’d get along with! and i know myself, if i knew otoya or masato IRL i’d just be like ‘well. that’s my son now’ and basically appoint myself their tough big sis-type-friend lookin out for them lol) 

7. A character you would want as your mentor/senpai?

I would swallow a pinecone before I called him ‘onii-san’ but teach me how to network kotobuki-senpai 

(No, like, forreal, I suck so, so bad at a ton of stuff Reiji is aces at, and I respect the hell out of his *waves* general everything and skilll navigating the industry. Since I’m a goofy, jokey, overenthusiastic teacher for work a lot it’d be nice to be on the receiving end of all that energy! and be a fucking decent kouhai that isn’t so horribly unappreciative of all his hard work and good cheer ) 

8. Your favorite ship?

shut your whore mouth i dont have the marbles to write it out 

(tbh it’s also Haru/Tomo, I just feel so much more romantic chemistry between those two than Haru and any of the boys u___u  Friends’ selfship stuff goes without saying, haha, and ngl I’m kind of About a Ren/Van rivalry hatemance? can i call it a kismesis thing? it’s a kismesis thing.) 

(actually no I think I’m just a member of the “Ren Fucks and sometimes it’s Hatesex” club) 

9. A character that you want to cosplay/have already cosplayed?

I had plans to cosplay Ranmaru a couple months ago bc it’s really not much of a stretch for my wardrobe, haha, but I dunno about that anymore! Part of it was wanting the Euphoria of looking like a tough, twunky, princely anime character but tbqh I’m already that every day of my life so 

I suppose if you were to pull my leg I’d go for cosplaying Van, mostly because I wanna try that mullet on for myself. 

10. Favorite side character?

TOMO!! LOVE U BITCH WHEN WILL I HEAR U SINGGGGGG 

11. Your favorite solo song?

god this is horrible how can I decide??? so many good ones??? I think it’s a draw between Top Star Revolution, No. 1, Brand New Melody, Wild Soul, Seien Brave Heart, and Junketsu Nara Ai ~Aspiration~ ??? 

12. Your favorite duet song?

HMMMMM again too many good ones. Three-way tie between Haru Hana, NorthWind and SunShine, and Original Resonance! 

13. Your favorite trio song?

Ahhh Dream More than Love is really nostalgic bc it’s the first Utapri song I really loved, but i gotta be real. It’s just Egoistic. There’s just no getting better than Egoistic 

14. Your favorite group song?

mmmm i’m be basic. Poison Kiss 

15. Your least favorite song?

I love Ai and Shouta Aoi’s incredible voice but......I’m really not a fan of super slow, overly-saccharine songs. u__u so A.I. really, really doesn’t land with me, much less so than easygoing (like Knocking on the Mind) or somber (like Winter Blossom) songs. 

16. Your favorite singer?

ranran...it’s always ranran...

(I do also adore Natsuki’s and Camus’s voices! I tend to like deeper, richer vocal qualities, but you just can’t beat Ranmaru’s subtle growls and high-energy rock!!!! <3) 

17. Your favorite group/trio/duo?

god what combo of these idiots DONT i love? I could watch Reiji prank and tease Ranmaru all fuckin day, and I also really like it when Ran’s at his most ‘tuff big bro-y’ with, like, Ai, Otoya, and Cecil!!! but honestly I do like how the Ran/Masa/Ren trio isn’t so straightforward and is more or less held together by a thin string of professionalism, there’s something i appreciate about not forcing ppl to just bury the hatchet and be Perfect Friends but you all can still care about each other? (Ranmaru needs to be nicer to them still but...) 

i need to suggest one that isn’t ranmaru centric fjdsioafjsa i fuckin love Soccer Buds (otosyo) and I loooooove it when Otoya and Cecil are good to each other!!! 

18. Your favorite member of Starish?

they’re all my favorite but if you REALLY had to make me pick.....Masato, probably, haha. I just...if you take yourself too seriously and care so much about everything but still know how to be Nasty how can I not love you??? 

19. Your favorite member of Quartet Night?

what do you fuckin think, hoss 

20. Your favorite member of Heavens?

I mentioned earlier I don’t really know Heavens well, so ofc this is all liable to change! But off the bat I love what a conniving yet wholesome bastard Eiichi is and Van is just the kinda guy I would rib and pal around with IRL!! 

21. Your favorite seiyuu/voice actor?

Ahhh that’s tough! I love all these goofbags, and Tattsun really is just so cool and makes music I’m pretty about. But I think I gotta give it to Suwabe, his performances are always so him but still pretty varied, and how can you not adore a man who loves his chihuahuas that much??? 

(if i’m being 100% honest Tattsun lost points bc he voices my absolute least favorite character in granblue ffjsfjisda) 

22. Favorite Drama CD?

HMMMMMMM see as a certified Giant Tool for Everything Mecha and silly and extra, I enjoyed the hell out of Polaris, but it really suffers from a lack of Ranmaru in my humble fuckin opinion lmao. So even though I’m not one for pirate stuff most of the time, I gotta give it to Pirates of the Frontier!! I really loved Ranmaru and Otoya’s dynamic in that one, and Camus was juuuuust the right amount of shitheel, too. 

I haven’t heard the whole thing but that thing from Egoistic where Natsuki squeezes Ranmaru to death and Eiichi’s just like ‘WUAHAHAHAHAH’ is also the mcfuckin best. 

23. Your favorite shining live card?

CAN’T PICK 

HOW COULD I POSSIBLY PICK?????????? LIKE??? I love the fucking dumb, dumb, dumb ostentatiousness of Evil Villains, I LOVE a good heel, and I also worked so so hard to t1 that event and had a lot of fun doing it!! But also, I just love his big smile and all the energy and mixed prints from Fortune and Prosperity, and it was literally the first time I ever got the exact card I was rolling for in a gacha on the last pull I had left!! (He also came home during a time I was really going through some shit, and ngl it rescued me a little bit!) but AHHHH Soulful Bass also came out right around my birthday, I love all the textures in the outfit and it’s generally the most My Aesthetique thing Utapri has ever released!!! And god, I just love it when he’s so confident and in his element like this, it sets me on FIRE to see him light up the stage wurghjgfj ;___; They all make me just want to HUG SO MUCH ARGGHHHHH 

24. Your favorite song beatmap?

Ahhh I think Shining Live really has great beatmaps across the board so that’s a tough pick! Almost all of them are super fun in their own way, but I think I gotta hand it to Wild Soul, Top Star Revolution, and Innocent Wind! 

25. Your least favorite song beatmap?

A.I. u__u Sorry, Ai...it’s just not fun for me.

26. Black Deja Vu or White Gravity?

Actually I’m really glad for this question bc I’ve been so busy lately I hadn’t given myself the time to really check them out! checking ......... 

and yep. Black Deja Vu. (I mean...Ranmaru is on it, haha.) But I’m so about this. Love this heavier sound and all these harmonies, this is so juicy. (White Gravity also absolutely kicks ass though!! I’m really liking that voice group, it’s making especially good use of those higher registers!) 

27. Utapri merch that you own/want?

Honestly I don’t have much u__u Not a lot of Utapri merch is my thing...you know? I’m mostly shopping for Ran merch if I’m getting any, but I’m very picky about how he gets drawn? Keeping his toughness and a particular clothing style about him is so essential, haha, and barely anything hits that sweet spot for me. But I will say I adored the whole ‘My Favorite Things’ series, and if I had the budget and space atm I’d love to get some of the Ran goodies from that line! 

28. How did you get into Utapri?

I first heard about it through some acquaintances from cosplay before Quartet Night was a thing. It didn’t appeal enough to my heavy metal ass to make me drop everything and try it, but I did have an interest in it I couldn’t explain and I’d always intended on trying it out. (especially after I got into Love Live and idol anime for a bit.) But it was Shining Live that got me! And I really only downloaded Shining Live because I was super exhausted after a business trip, didn’t want to leave bed once I got back home, and just wanted to sink my teeth in something new I could enjoy for hours while lying down, haha.  

29. A set theme in shining live that you want to see in the future?

This will surprise nobody, but something tougher. More rock, more punk, more metal. I want all of them in studs and spikes and leather, and I want less polish. More rough! 

I’d also love a wrestler set complete with who’s-a-heel-who’s-a-face but that’s a pipe dream and a half, lmao. 

30. Why do you love your best boy?

Oh boy. 

I think he’s this powerhouse of a human bean who can face a ton of pain and meet it with a big middle finger. And that middle finger is chasing after ambitious dreams, of spreading the power and soul of the same music that made me who I am and influences so much of my work, but also being ... you know, smart about it? He’s an idol because like, sure, maybe it’s not the OG dream, but you can’t dream if you’re dead, and you also deserve to give yourself a life and platform to share some of who you are, and you can do a lot of good with that, too. (And I won’t lie, I respect the drama of a man who takes his hair that seriously and commits so hard to the aesthetic he wears fuckin mismatched contacts i just. charm point ) 

But at the same time....I don’t know, this might sound presumptuous, but. I think. I just think he’d think I’m as neat as I think he is. I’m an ambitious, passionate person, too, and I also furiously stick to my ideals, and I also love the same kind of soul of music he does. I lean a little more metal than I do rock, but I think that’s nice, like sharing it has that ‘alike but different’ kind of familiarity and novelty all at once. Sometimes it’s tough sharing just how deeply rock and metal have sculpted me and my artwork (and therefore my career), bc it’s so deeply personal to me, and sometimes there’s weird elitism/misogyny/racism to deal with, too. But. The way he talks about rock, the way he describes the passion and how it transcends identity and is just a pure rush of power and sharing your feelings..................it just feels like he Gets it the same way I do. Just that unspoken, burning passion and understanding. I know it sounds weird to feel that strongly over just a music genre, but I just vibe with how to him, it really isn’t ‘just’ a music genre. I feel more accepting of myself for it, and I’d like to think he’d be real proud of himself for that.  

And listen, like....I’m very sentimental, but I really don’t like saccharine, flowery, romantic kinds of affection to be lavished on me. Just be straightforward but also a little tsun about it fjdsjfas and ..... those are the kind of feelings I can accept. And that’s the way Ranmaru is, and it’s also grounded in the kind of reality that I don’t like to be swept away from. He’s just so cool and hardworking and unwavering in his passion, it makes it easier for me to do the same despite all the bumps in the road. This got real long but Ran’s a cool dude, haha, I got a lot of positives to say. 

Anyways, I never tag folks for these things, but I love seeing everyone’s answers! If you see this and wanna fill it, feel free to count this as a tag from me :) I know this got real long, but with 30 questions how could it not haha? Thanks for reading and sticking around! 

[garbagequeer]

hey hello im writing a piece for laptop ensemble that involves sampling and i need the most repressed/tender/yearning quotes you got. just as gay and heart wrenching as you can. but also no pressure I know youre a stranger on the web I just feel like you post that kind of stuff a lot thank you bye

hope this isnt like too late school keeps me busy :( (also can you put a read more on asks? guess i’ll find out). i ended up choosing many quotes from the same texts cause im indecisive as shit but i’ll bold my favorites from those in case that makes it easier for you!

anyways first of all you can never go wrong w richard siken as obvious as that is. these are both from you are jeff

You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for.

Let’s say you’ve swallowed a bad thing and now it’s got its hands inside you. This is the essence of love and failure. You see what I mean but you’re happy anyway, and that’s okay, it’s a love story 

this one’s from planet of love (the format got fucked bc tumblr is not actually a finctional website but :/ )

I have a megaphone and you play along,                                                                 because you want to die for love,                                                            you always have.     Imagine this:You’re pulling the car over. Somebody’s waiting.                      You’re going to die                                            in your best friend’s arms.             And you play along because it’s funny, because it’s written down,you’ve memorized it,

from litany in which certain things are crossed out 

I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you’re            really there.Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?                                                       Let me do it right for once,

sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell                                    and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.            Especially that, but I should have known.You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together            to make a creature that will do what I sayor love me back.

We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,            smiling and crying in a way that made meeven more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I                                                                                just couldn’t say it out loud.Actually, you said Love, for you,                             is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s                                                                                                 terrifying. No one                                                                        will ever want to sleep with you.

from snow and dirty rain

I had a dream about you. We were in the gold roomwhere everyone finally gets what they want.

that scene from when harry met sally where sally says:

One day I was taking Alice’s little girl fro the afternoon. I’d promised to take her to the circus, and we were in a cab playing “I spy” - you know, “I spy a lamppost”, “I spy a mailbox” - and she looked out the window and there was this man and this woman with two little kids, and the man had one of the kids on his shoulders, and Alice’s little girl said “I spy a family”, and I satrted crying, you know? I just started crying, and I went home

(like anyone else sometimes cries when u see a family doing something nice? is it because i want to participate in a sense of family of my own but have been excluded as a gay person from it’s portrayals and it makes me go :^( cause i dont feel there’s room for me there but i want there to be and i just have to long for this nuclear family heteronormative way of life that i’ve been made to believe is idylic? is it because my parents got divorced and my dad’s an ass and my mom is just a very angry lady and i want to re-do my own childhood? who knows. should we ban movies? yes we should!)

from maurice (ultimate source of tender)

“There was something better in life than this rubbish, if only he could get to it, love, nobility, big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend”

‘Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Nothing else but just “my friend”, he trying to help you and you him. A friend’ he repeated, sentimental suddenly. ‘Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep’

we are all so lucky i don’t actually own maurice in english this would just turn into me quoting the whole book

ee cummings voices to voices, lip to lip

the thing perhaps isto eat flowers and not to be afraid.

from virgina woolf’s letters to vita

7 september 1925

january 21 1926 vita writes

I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this—But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it …

and on january 26 virginia writes back

Your letter from Trieste came this morning—But why do you think I don’t feel, or that I make phrases? ‘Lovely phrases’ you say which rob things of reality. Just the opposite. Always, always, always I try to say what I feel. Will you then believe that after you went last Tuesday—exactly a week ago—out I went into the slums of Bloomsbury, to find a barrel organ. But it did not make me cheerful … And ever since, nothing important has happened—Somehow its dull and damp. I have been dull; I have missed you. I do miss you. I shall miss you. And if you don’t believe it, you’re a longeared owl and ass. Lovely phrases? … 

from virginia’s diary, about vita on december 21 1925

I like her and being with her and the splendour–she shines in the grocer’s shop in Sevenoaks with a candle lit radiance, stalking on legs like beech trees, pink glowing, grape clustered, pearl hung.

from virginia woolf’s to the light house

What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? Could the body achieve, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of the brain? or the heart? Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs Ramsay’s knee. Nothing happened. Nothing! Nothing! as she leant her head against Mrs Ramsay’s knee. And yet, she knew knowledge and wisdom were stored up in Mrs Ramsay’s heart.

Love had a thousand shapes. There might be lovers whose gift it was to choose out the elements of things and place them together and so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life, make of some scene, or meeting of people (all now gone and separate), one of those globed compacted things over which thought lingers, and love plays.

there forced themselves upon her other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control her impulse to fling herself (thank Heaven she had always resisted so far) at Mrs Ramsay’s knee and say to her—but what could one say to her? “I’m in love with you?” No, that was not true. “I’m in love with this all,” waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children. It was absurd, it was impossible 

(fun fact: the spanish translation adds something that i’d translate as “one could not say what one meant / what one wanted to say”, which i really like and i was disapointed to find out isnt on the english edition)

It was love, she thought, pretending to move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of the human gain. So it was indeed. The world by all means should have shared it  

from the great gatsby

I didn’t want to go to the city. I wasn’t worth a decent stroke of work but it was more than that—I didn’t want to leave Gatsby. I missed that train, and then another, before I could get myself away (…) Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something and turned around. ‘They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’ I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him

from kafka’s diaries

may 27 1911: Today is your birthday, but I am not even sending you the usual book, for it would be only pretence; at bottom I am after all not in position to give you a book. I am writing only because it is so necessary for me today to be near you for a moment

parts from a from a letter he wrote to oskar pollak on february 4 1902

When we talk together the words are hard; we tread over them as if they were rough pavement. The most delicate things acquire awkward feet and we can’t help it. We’re almost in each other’s way; I bump into you and you - I don’t dare and you. When we come to things that are not exactly cobblestones or the Kunstwart, we suddenly see that we are in masquerade, acting with angular faces (especially me, I admit), and then we become sad and bored. Does anyone make you as bored as I do?

then I fall silent and you fall silent and you become bored, and I become bored and it’s all like a stupid hangover and there’s no use lifting a hand. But neither wants to say this to the other, out of shame or fear or - You see, we are afraid of each other, or I am.

Of course I understand it. It’s boring to stand for years in front of an ugly wall and it just won’t crumble away. Of course, but the wall is afraid for itself, fro the garden (if there is one), and you get out of sorts, yawn, have headaches, don’t know where to turn

You often talk with her, not only for the sake of talking. You walk around with her somewhere here or there, or in Roztok, and i sit at my desk at home. You talk with her, and in the middle of a sentence somebody jumps up and makes a bow. That is me with my untrimmed words and angular faces. That lasts only a moment, and then you go on talking. I sit at my desk at home and yawn. I’ve been trhough it already. Wouldn’t that separate us? Is that so strange? Are we enemies? I am very fond of you

from his leters to milena

Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.

jane wong. from clearing

We want to believe everything has meaning.Plums blossom over a power grid

and I am in love again. The shame of it.

from leslie harrison’s [sirens]

I’m not Penelope married to faith married to waitingbound in fine soft strands of silk dyed and stretchedin my world longing has teeth and fins has a tastefor blood longing is a room built entirely of knives

Lorde’s melodrama tour interlude

Don’t you wish you could go inside a heart, see the strings and atrium’s, everything beating and bleeding. It’s kind of funny, I spend almost every minute thinking about love. Being guided, and divided by love. But I’ve never seen it. It’s just a rumour, a comedown, an afterglow. I wanna see it, in colour. In the summer, I can almost picture it

from Andrea Long Chu’s on liking women

One day, you tell yourself, it will give you what you want. Then, one day, it doesn’t. Now it dawns on you that your object will probably never give you what you want. But this is not what’s disappointing, not really. What’s disappointing is what happens next: nothing. You keep your object. You continue to follow it around, stash it in a drawer, water it, tweet at it. It still doesn’t give you what you want—but you knew that. You have had another realization: not getting what you want has very little to do with wanting it. Knowing better usually doesn’t make it better. You don’t want something because wanting it will lead to getting it. You want it because you want it

ada limón, In a Mexican Restaurant I Recall How Much You Upset Me

But love is impossible and it goes ondespite the impossible. You’re the muscleI cut from the bone and still the boneremembers, still it wants (so much, it wants)the flesh back, the real thing,if only to rail against it, if onlyto argue and fight, if only to missa solve-able absence.

i dont think i need to get into mitski songs because you probably already know but basically pink in the night/come into the water/once more to see you/in happy when she says if you’re going take the train so i can hear it rumble one last rumble/in i want you from the first verse to the first time she goes “i just need a quiet place where i can scream how i love you” (YES the card thing is very important)/the first verse of i will (w emphasis on everything you feel is good i f you wold only let you)/abbey/strawberry blond

sufjan steven’s futile devices obviously predatory wasp of the palisades you know the drill 

was going to find some twin fantasy lyrics but i started thinking about famous prophets (minds) and like. emotionally left my body so. i wont be thinking about it or any other songs anymore it makes me too crazy

from frances ha

It’s that thing when you’re with someone and you love them and they know it and they love you and you know it but it’s a party and you’re both talking to other people and you’re laughing and shining and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes. But not because you’re possessive, or it’s precisely sexual, but because that is your person in this life and it’s funny and sad but only because this life will end and it’s this secret world that exists right there. In public. Unnoticed. That no one else knows about. It’s sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us but we don’t have the ability to perceive them. That’s what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess.

from ellen lee’s notes on twin fantasy that i revisit constantly

there’s no going back to deliver these words to the ones they were really meant for. That’s how heartbreak feels, I guess. It feels like your heart in between the teeth of someone who’s looking away. When you’ve lost your loved object, what happens to all the things you have to say to them? When they’re turned away, what happens to all the things that you couldn’t, but desperately need(ed) to, say to their face? He dissociates himself from his own romance until it becomes a fantasy. You have your bleeding heart, you have a finite set of memories — when nothing new enters and you’re unwilling to let go, then you have a fantasy. The loved object enters into you and transforms.

the journey home by dermot bolger(havent read this at all dont really plan to/dont know a thing about it either i just came across this shit like 2 years ago and i still think about it)

I wanted to hurt him; I wanted just to touch him. What I wanted I’m not really sure. If he had stopped and opened his arms I would have walked towards him; I would have sat on the kerb all night with him

adam b, sweet i have a (really gay) heart

i feel like my body is the extension of a lake. i feel really badabout not telling you the truth, sometimes. i feelreally small next to you. tall boys remind me of bean stalks.i wish i had your legs. i wish i could know your handsbefore i even touch them

aaaand i think that’s all i could think of and track down, hope this is actually helpful and not too long (i am indecisive no kidding). also ksjdfg it’s nice that you thought to ask me this and i did have fun going over all these quotes so thank you 💖💖💖

[nadziejastar]

It seems like Isa and Lea’s relationship will never be the same. They’ll never truly mend it bc we’re going to forced with Sea Salt Trio (Quadruplets I guess) moments instead. And that’s cute and all but Isa’s character got so badly shafted and treated like shit. And it leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

Saïx’s TRUE Purpose: The Power of Love

Xion: “…It was my choice…to go away now. Better that, than to do nothing…and let Xemnas have his way. I belong with Sora. And now, I am going back…to be with him. Roxas…I need you…to do me a favor. All those hearts that I’ve captured… Kingdom Hearts… Set them free.”

Roxas: “Kingdom Hearts… Free them?”

Xion: “It’s too late…for me to undo my mistakes. But you can’t let Xemnas…have Kingdom Hearts. You can’t. Good-bye, Roxas. See you again. I’m glad…I got to meet you. Oh…and of course, Axel, too. You’re both my best friends. Never forget. That’s the truth.”

I couldn’t agree more. I refuse to sugar-coat it: Isa got treated like SHIT. The conclusion to his story was so poorly-written, that it’s insulting to the players’ intelligence. And I totally agree that Lea and Isa’s relationship could never be the same. How could it? It was never acknowledged that Isa was a victim of Xehanort. He deserved the same level of empathy that Terra got from his friends after getting possessed. He deserved to get rescued with the power of waking and restored to his former self. In KH3, he got none of this. Instead, Lea was mad at him for “letting” himself get reduced to being Xehanort’s vessel. I’m not even looking forward to seeing their relationship in the future games because I don’t feel that the real Isa even came back.

I also agree that they are most likely going to push the Sea-Salt Trio FAR more than the relationship between Lea and Isa. It seems like they are going to push the angle of Skuld being Isa’s love interest, and Isa will be much more involved with her going forward than Lea or anyone else. He did say he “sacrificed everything” for her. I have no interest in that whatsoever. I view it not as a genuine pairing, but more of a desperate attempt to deflect from the original idea that Square-Enix and Disney were too cowardly to allow Nomura to follow through with: the idea of romantic love between two males. That is a terrifying idea to many people. But that’s exactly why it was so important.

Day 276: Behind the Truth

Saïx would laugh at people with no hearts calling one another friends, but that doesn’t make it not so.

From a writing standpoint, I don’t think it was appropriate that Roxas and Xion became the focal point Isa’s redemption arc. Those relationships and character arcs are entirely separate. Lea and Isa’s relationship with each other should have been the focus of his redemption. KH3 sent the message that only Lea’s friendship with Roxas and Xion was worth anything. I have noticed that many fans don’t even think Roxas and Xion should forgive Isa, and they disliked how friendly they were with him in the ending. That demonstrates just how badly KH3 failed with Isa’s character arc, and properly differentiating him from his Xehanort-possessed self, Saïx.

Day 352: What I Must Do

I love Roxas and Axel. I’m sure Saïx would scoff at that. Call it a trick of my artificial memories. But the time I spent on that clock tower was real.

I thought that Roxas and Xion’s friendship with Axel was not only very sweet, but very meaningful. 358/2 Days is a well-written story. KH3 is…not a well-written story. Xion sacrificed herself so that Xemnas would not win. She was more concerned with Roxas and Axel’s well-being than her own. Xion’s name means, “forget-me-not”. She may disappear, but she’ll never forget her friends, nor will she be ever forgotten by them. That is the power of the heart. The power of love. Roxas, Xion and Axel’s friendship sent a very beautiful message. Lea’s relationship with Isa was supposed to accomplish the same thing: send a very beautiful message about the power of love. Unfortunately, this important message got totally thrown by the wayside.

Larxene: “So, love has filled both their hearts with light.”

Naminé added data to Jiminy’s Journal in order to convey that the “pain” of those connected to Sora must be healed. Nomura said that Ansem’s research results would become the key to healing the “pain” of the characters in KH3. He said that data contained the details explaining the way to connect lost hearts. A press release for KH3 released in 2013 mentions something called the “Key to Return Hearts”. Here is what Nomura said about this key when asked about it in an interview:

There are two possible meanings of the “key.” One of which is the “hardware” key, which opens doors - this is what keys are in general, and the other is the “light” key, that opens something else. In this case, it is currently unknown as to which type of key Sora must find. This is the main storyline of Kingdom Hearts III - Sora must go on an adventure to find the “key” without knowing what or where it is.

The “key” being referred to was implied to be a key of light. The 7 Guardians of Light are important for more than their ability to wield a Keyblade. Their hearts have another power. The power of light. This light grants one the power to restore a lost heart. And the power of light…is love. That is the power of waking. Anna sacrificed herself for Elsa. That is the most powerful form of love that exists. Like the memories of Xion, it can never be lost or destroyed. It is the key to rebirth and new life.

Ansem the Wise: “Sora has a heart like that–uncorrupted, willing to see the good before the bad. When he sees the heart in something, it then becomes real. When a connection seems broken, he may have the power to mend it.”

Isa’s character deserved so much better. Instead of healing his pain, or doing anything with the concept of light or love, his redemption arc consisted of…procuring replicas, then quietly shuffling off into the background—even while Xemnas tried to kill his best friend right before his eyes. Again, it merely felt like deflection. Quick! Focus on Lea and Isa’s relationship with Skuld that never even existed until 5 seconds ago! How do we redeem Isa now? Just have him bring back Roxas and Xion! It doesn’t matter that Seekers of Darkness are not supposed to be capable of free will! Just do it!

Anything!! Anything to NOT focus on the love that exists between two male characters. Platonic love between friends and family is perfectly fine. Romantic love between a male and a female is perfectly fine. But romantic love between two males? That is NOT perfectly fine. I have no respect such artistic cowardice. I don’t know if this series is for me anymore, if the future is more oversimplified, big budget spectacles that are not allowed to take any risks with the story or characters.

“Kairi!” Axel shouted again as the girl struggled against Saïx’s hold. He readied his chakrams to hurl at Saïx when a powerful shock wave hit him.

“Traitors like you deserve to lose everything,” Saïx said.

Axel grunted and collapsed to his knees in pain from the direct hit. After only one strike, he felt his consciousness fading. His vision was going black. He couldn’t even tell whether he saw Saïx disappear with Kairi into the dark portal or whether that was only his own eyes closing.

Is this how I get turned into a Dusk…?

Saïx is not just completely cold to Axel emotionally. He tries to kill him when he turns on the Organization. This never happened in the original game, or even the Final Mix+ version. They decided to have Saïx try and kill Axel AFTER they came up with the idea of them being former best friends and (presumably) Isa partying with everyone in the ending.

“Don’t worry about that! Just go!” A Nobody glommed on to his arm, but Axel shook it off and hurled a chakram at it.

Right. Don’t worry about the why. I don’t even know the answer myself.

As he tried to catch his breath, more Nobodies set upon him. Pain surged like a fresh blow from the wound Saïx had dealt him.

Saïx was the one who gave Axel the fatal wound that would weaken him by the time he met Sora. Because Axel was already fatally wounded, he sacrificed the last bit of his life to atone for his actions.

Axel could remember fighting like this beside Roxas…

He wanted to fight that way again. He wished they had talked more, about lots of things. About nothing. He wanted to talk to his friend again.

But why do I feel this way if Nobodies have no hearts?

His time was running out, thanks to Saïx.

They made it abundantly clear that it was Saïx who was responsible for Axel’s demise.

“We don’t disappear… We’re only reborn,” Naminé murmured, perhaps to herself.

“I’m not like you and Roxas,” Axel said flatly. His hand holding the ice pop stick paused in midair.

“But—but you…” She looked down, clenching her fists.

“It’s because I don’t have a heart,” Axel went on. “I don’t want to disappear, but I’m not upset or sad about it.”

Axel truly did not believe he was going to have a “next life”. At the time of his death, he would have felt utterly alone and hopeless. Why would they have bothered making a character like Saïx his former best friend, unless they had something major to reveal about him later?

Luxord: “Perhaps he was ready for it. Perhaps he put his existence on the line and won what he’d been longing for.”

Saix: “That’s absurd. He won nothing, and IS nothing. He couldn’t stand the emptiness of being without a heart. And THAT led to his demise. He was foolish and weak.”

This is what Saïx says right after the the Organization learns of Axel’s death. Saïx genuinely wanted Axel dead. He was a traitor. Yet he looks to the floor with a troubled look, when Luxord says that Axel got what he was longing for. Saïx is seemingly confused about where his conflicted feelings are coming from. It seemed to me that he genuinely had no clue why he was so angry and sad about Axel. It truly made no sense to him. The way he acted reminded me of when Sora cried while saying goodbye to Hayner, Pence, and Olette at the train station. Sora couldn’t understand why he was so sad, because they weren’t really his feelings that he was experiencing.

Saïx: “Do you know what happens to those who lose their true purpose? Inevitably, they destroy themselves.”

This is what Saïx says right after Axel deserts the Organization to find Roxas. In fact, every new scene with Saïx in KH2FM+ involved his relationship with Axel.

Saïx: “There’s something I’ve meant to ask.”

Xemnas: “About Axel? The poor fool. How long will he keep chasing the illusion of friendship, when he himself lacks emotion? Trying so hard to retrieve what he has lost, when it may never have existed in the first place. He deserves nothing more than our pity.”

After Axel meets Sora in Hollow Bastion, Saïx asks about him. He actually seems concerned, which is uncharacteristic of him. Then Xemnas makes his cryptic comment about Axel STILL chasing the illusion of friendship. He truly pities Axel, and thinks he’s a fool.

“Vile traitor!” The great Claymore took shape at Saïx’s back. Axel didn’t waste a second grabbing his chakrams. But his body was reluctant somehow.

I don’t want to disappear… But still, it wouldn’t be so bad if I did. Not here.

Saïx fatally wounded Axel. He later feels sadness and grief over this, but doesn’t know why. Likewise, Axel knows Saïx wants him dead and doesn’t care about him any more. He wastes no time grabbing his chakrams to defend himself. But his body is reluctant somehow, and he doesn’t seem to know why, either. Despite how hopeless their situation is, they are continually drawn towards each other. There’s still a heart connection there. Lea and Isa’s relationship was supposed to be a VERY big deal in the future of the story. It really was not that hard to see.

Saïx: “You’re the one who went off and made other friends. Left me in the dust. I lost…all sense of purpose.”

It’s SO obvious what Saïx’s “purpose” was. His purpose was Axel! He just didn’t realize it. Isa’s heart was able to subconsciously influence how Saïx felt at certain times, particularly after Axel left the Organization. Isa still cared about Lea, and after he was gone, his heart lost its purpose. Saïx had no clue about any of this, though. He would just become enraged at Axel due to the inexplicable pain he was feeling because of him. Saïx wasn’t being too stubborn to admit his feelings. He genuinely didn’t understand them.

Xemnas: “Hearts full of rage, of hate…of sadness and bliss. Shining down upon us is the heart of all hearts—Kingdom Hearts. There in the sky hangs the promise of a new world. We will conquer hearts and make them our own. Hearts shall never again have power over us.”

Xemans hated how strong the heart was. He wanted to have full control over a person, and the heart was an obstacle to that. Yet he couldn’t turn someone into a vessel without a heart. It was why he conducted the mind control experiments in the first place. The Recusant’s Sigil is a symbol of his desire to conquer the heart and make it his own. When Xemnas is talking, the camera zooms in on the moon.

The moon hung in the sky outside the window, a great glowing heart. Sprawled in bed, Axel stared at it without really looking, idling the time away before he had to leave on a mission.

“We will conquer hearts and make them our own. Hearts shall never again have power over us.”

For the past few days, he had been mulling over what Xemnas could have meant by that speech. Hearts having power over them? What was that about? Whenever Axel was whiling away the hours by himself, that phrase kept bouncing around in his head. He didn’t know what was so compelling about it.

Axel had no idea what Xemnas was talking about underneath the moon that day, and it really bothered him. He was pondering this very issue when Saïx came in to interrogate him about Xion, much to his displeasure. Xemnas’ speech was very important.

No. VII SAÏX

Second in command who longs for the heart he does not have. Only the moon breaks his icy calm.

Saïx was always staring at the moon, longing for the heart he does not have. He has a Recusant’s Sigil scar on his face. It only makes sense that Isa was Subject X in the mind control experiments, and he was the sole subject whose heart didn’t collapse, turning him into a vessel. The survival of his heart would have been possible if he sacrificed himself out of love, just like his “Bunnymoon” weapon symbolized. The rocket to the moon was launched directly from a heart.

“Sora or Xion—it matters not. But we need one of them under our control. Bear that in mind.”

Saïx nodded, and a serene smile came to Xemnas’ face. If that smile meant anything it was beyond him.

Xemnas was completely confident that he won the battle over Isa’s heart.

“Don’t let us down now, kiddo. Shouldn’t be too much trouble without a heart,” Xigbar told Saïx.

Xigbar was totally confident about this as well.

In the Round Room, Saïx looked up at Xemnas high above.

“Are you sure we’re dealing with Xion and Roxas the right way?”

His tone was markedly different from usual, as if he spoke to an old friend rather than a superior.

Isa’s heart was captured and his body is now a vessel. Despite wanting to overthrow him, the novel describes Saïx’s demeanor with Xemnas as that of an old friend. Saïx’s heart is one with Xehanort’s, even if he doesn’t know it. On the other hand, Isa’s captured heart is full of rage, hate, and sadness. These feelings come out in his Berserk State under the light of the moon. But the last emotion that Xemnas mentioned was…bliss. And that seemed like foreshadowing.

Axel gazed out at the sunset, as red as ever. That color still looked the same to him now as it had when he was human. Some things didn’t change even when you became a Nobody.

Axel was always gazing into the sun, even before he became a Nobody.

The sun sank lower and lower as Axel watched, his mind wandering.

If he stared for too long, the image would burn itself into his eyes, visible even after his eyes were closed.

A phantom sun.

Someone had once told him why sunsets were red… Who was that?

In the novel, he was doing just that right before he gives Roxas and Xion his “hokey speech”.

“I just…want these days to last forever,” Roxas murmured, slow and pensive. “Hanging out after the job’s done, eating ice cream, watching the sunset…”

Axel peered at his profile as he did just that. The sunset’s glow touched Roxas’s face and Xion’s with warm red.

“Well, nothing lasts forever,” Axel mumbled, looking off to the side again. “Least of all for a bunch of Nobodies.”

At that, both of their expressions fell.

Seriously, you two? You’re always grinning or getting bummed out…just like real live people with hearts. Axel exhaled and gathered some words. “But, you know, hanging out every day isn’t the only thing that matters. We’ll still have one another, even if that changes.”

“Really?” Roxas perked up.

“Yeah. As long as we remember one another, we’ll never be apart. Got it memorized?”

He was clearly thinking about Isa beforehand.

Axel’s face was limned with the sunset’s glow, his red hair shining crimson.

“Bet you don’t know why the sun sets red.” He eyed Roxas mischievously. “You see, light is made up of lots of colors. And out of all those colors, red is the one that travels the farthest.”

When Axel uses his famous line about why the sun sets red, it even zoomed in on the sun—just like it did with the moon earlier, when Xemnas was giving his speech about the ability to conquer the power of the heart. In 358/2 Days, the Moon Arcana of Luxord’s Tarot cards is “Dual Gear.” Axel’s weapon in that category is called “Dive Bomb”. The Sun Arcana of Luxord’s Tarot cards is “Hazard Gear.” Saïx’s weapon in that category is called “Light Year”.

Roxas: “So he wasn’t fighting to protect the rose. He was protecting the people in the castle. Protecting her. She’s what matters most to him. But…Xaldin said it was the rose.”

Xaldin: “Feh. Cloying nonsense.”

Roxas: “Xaldin… When did you get here?”

Xaldin: “That’s none of your concern. Hmph. Love, from a beast? How utterly ridiculous.”

Just look at the way Xaldin speaks about the power of love. He couldn’t even tell that the Beast valued Belle more than the rose.

Roxas: “Love? What’s that?”

Xaldin: “It’s an emotion. The one deluding those two as we speak.”

Roxas: “Oh…”

Xaldin: “They think the power of love will save them? That’s the stuff of poetry, not practicality.”

Roxas: “Love is a power?”

Xaldin: “None you or I will ever grasp. Nor will they, for long. The love between them will wither and die. Love never lasts.”

He says it’s not a power that he or Roxas will ever grasp. 

Xaldin:“Our work here is done. We have the Beast’s weakness.”

Roxas: “We do?”

Xaldin: “That which we treasure has power over us, Roxas. His heart is captive to it. And that makes it his weakness.”

Roxas: “Captive…? I don’t get it.”

Xaldin: “Nor should you. You have no heart to love with. Let’s not linger here.”

In KH2, Xaldin tried to use the Beast’s love for Belle as a weapon, to turn him into a Heartless and Nobody. He wants absolutely nothing to do with love. To him, it’s nothing but weakness that make the heart a captive. I’m sure that’s exactly how Xemnas and Xigbar viewed the feelings “X” had for Lea. Like Xaldin, they would have used Isa’s love as a weapon, to turn him into a captive.

“Do you know what love is?”

“…’Scuse me?”

“It’s something powerful, right? Where does it come from?” Roxas was completely in earnest.

Love… Huh.

“It is powerful, but it’s not a power we get to have.” Axel had very little confidence in his ability to explain it. But whenever Roxas or Xion had questions about the mysteries of the human heart, he did his best to answer.

Compare the way Axel speaks about love to the way Xaldin spoke of it. Axel really wants to experience love, but he thinks he never will. And this deeply saddens him.

“Nobodies can’t love?” Roxas asked.

“Nope. You need a heart for that.”

“Oh… Right.” Roxas fell quiet, pensive.

Axel kept talking. “Love is what happens when there’s something really special between people.”

“More special than friends? Like…if they’re best friends? Inseparable?”

“Well, you can care about your friends, but that’s not exactly it…” Axel paused, groping for words that might make sense to Roxas.

“So it’s a step above best friends?”

“No—it’s not about steps.”

Roxas looked bewildered. As he’d expected, he wasn’t doing a very good job explaining it.

Axel thinks he cannot experience love until Kingdom Hearts is completed. Of course, this is just the lie that Xemnas told them. He used Axel’s desire for love as a weapon, to gain his cooperation and turn him into a vessel. Axel already has the ability to love.

“Not that it matters. We’ll never know the difference.”

Roxas wouldn’t let it go. “Do you think we would, if we had hearts?”

“Once Kingdom Hearts is complete, I bet you’ll be able to figure it out.” The magic words again, Axel thought. It’ll all make sense when Kingdom Hearts is complete. But was that true? No one had ever seen it happen before. So who knew? Still, all they could do was believe in it.

Pitiful Heartless, mindlessly collecting hearts…

“Kingdom Hearts, huh…?” Roxas said under his breath, gazing out at the sunset.

Axel watched his wistful profile and sighed silently.

Like Xaldin, Axel tells Roxas that neither of them can grasp the power of love. But they do so for entirely different reasons. Xemans and Xaldin are trying to complete Kingdom Hearts to conquer the power of love. Roxas and Axel are trying to complete Kingdom Hearts to experience the power of love.

Xemnas: “Ah, ever the rogue pawn. Knocked from the board early in the game. Utterly useless and forgotten. Now it ends. I will purge that light in you…with darkness!”

During the final battle, Xemnas feels like he’s won yet again. He thinks that Lea is a loser who has been forgotten about. He is confident that Isa’s heart has been conquered. He is so confident that he attacks Lea right in front of Saïx, knowing that he won’t do anything.

His words of being superior are reminiscent of the speech he gave while he was standing under the heart-shaped moon. Yet unlike before, Lea is defiant this time. He says that Xemans was never his superior. I have no doubt that Axel’s Mystery Gear weapon with the Recusant’s Sigil, was a reference to his final battle with Xemnas.

Aqua: “It’s the power of true love that defeated you.”

Maleficent: “I will not be defeated by something as insignificant as love.”

Aqua: “You don’t even know the first thing about it. You’re too clouded bydarkness to see that there’s something greater.”

The message of Kingdom Hearts is that Aqua was right.

Terra: “No more borders around, or below, or above, so long as you champion the ones you love.”

The message of Kingdom Hearts is that Terra was right.

Yen Sid: “Just as long as you love him…then Ventus will be able to find you when he wakes. He can follow that love back to where he belongs–the realm of light.”

Love is so powerful, it can even lead Ventus back to the Realm of Light. That’s what the whole concept of the power of waking is.

Day 150: Too Precious to Lose

Axel and I talked for a while about the things we can’t bear to lose. Axel thinks that for Nobodies, it’s our pasts, because that’s all we have to remember the pain of losing something.

Lea’s Keyblade is called the “Flame Liberator”. The Phoenix rising from the ashes represents the alchemical process of transformation, rebirth, and liberation. It’s the red stage of Rubedo, where a person finally realizes their true nature, and they are liberated from ignorance and suffering. But Xemnas destroys Lea’s Keyblade, leaving him totally powerless. Xemnas is about to finish him off, right in front of Saïx. 

Sora: “But if I put aside the hurt, I’ll lose my only ties to people that I cared about. No. My mind’s made up. I want to carry this hurt with me. I can be free of it the day I remember, but until then, it’s what holds together the pieces I left behind…and I accept it.”

Lea’s Keyblade may be broken, but he doesn’t need it. There’s another Key to Return Hearts. The “light” key Nomura mentioned. The power of love. No matter how much pain it caused, neither Lea nor Isa’s hearts could forget about each other. This should have been the moment where Isa’s heart showed its true power. Love is NOT a weakness. Love is what prevented Isa’s heart from being destroyed in the first place, unlike every other test subject. And love makes his heart so powerful, it refuses to submit to Xemnas’ will. This is exactly what the true meaning of a recusant is.

In canon, the relationship between Saïx and Axel felt totally pointless. Being told at the last minute that Lea and Isa became apprentices to look for Skuld is nothing but sequel bait. There was no underlying message to that revelation. It had no thematic value whatsoever pertaining to the Xehanort Saga. There was no ultimate meaning to Isa becoming Xehanort’s vessel and then reviving his friendship with Lea again. Lea and Isa’s relationship had no narrative purpose. But…it was supposed to.

No. I XEMNAS

Organization XIII’s leader. Through power over nothing, he seeks power over everything.

The true purpose of Lea and Isa’s relationship was to prove all the villains wrong. No matter how much he would like to, Xehanort cannot conquer the power of the heart, which is love. Like his description says, he has power over NOTHING.

[thelowlysatsuma]

Ramble in whatever form you choose. I won’t be able to be active all the time so if you want to be able to do it whenever you want I’d say text posts but I’ll also try to occasionally ask you about them so there’s some variety

!!! okay! well i think i’ll choose a couple from the list that i haven’t made many posts about before (aka no ts or go) and ramble on here!

oof under the cut bc idk how long this will get

steven universe

oh hon don’t even get me STARTED on su like that shit? that shit is so good? okay first of all i love the cast so much? gosh they’re just all so sweet and cool and sometimes they collab w/ thomas sanders and i love rebecca sugar and im gonna cry they’re so sweet im so soft

okay SECONDLY the show itself oof

okay okay im just? god im so soft?? like the music is so good, i can (and do) watch it w/ my parents, GOD do i wanna cosplay pearl’s new outfit (and rainbow 2.0, if i can pull it off), im in love with the concept and all the fusions and the story and the worldbuilding and god, this made me realize my utter love and adoration of COLOURS like they’re so PRETTY im in LOVE oh my gOD and just

god it has such a good message and such a good plot and such good characters i wanna be steven’s friend i wanna be all of their friends oh man i just can’t wait until my baby cousins are old enough for me to show this to them because i’m going to enjoy that experience so much

ducktales

oh jfc where the fuck do i even start with ducktales okay david tennant as scrooge mcduck makes my fucking life literally he’sthe best goddamn charaacter in the show – well, best besides the triplets (my BOYS), webby (!!! my KID), f e n t o n (god i love that nerd), mark beaks (what an asshole), mrs beakley (i wanna be her when i grow up), launchpad (!!! he!!), and so many others??? this is like serious every character in the show erasure but hot damn duck tales says gay rights and it does so in style (oh yeah also i love lena della donald oh webby’s new friend whose name i forget uhhh herules oh the inventor guy fenton’s boss that dipshit love him uhhh gandra dee who’s voiced by jameela jamil if im not mistaken??????) and yeah it’s a hilarious show but it’s also just a really good one for me to watch whenever i start to like. feel empty inside?? but then like i’ll put on ducktales and i’ll feel better

gravity falls

this show. this show RUINED ME. i started watching it like four years late (aka last year lmao) but GOD, im so in love with it. def another one i wanna show my cousins.

like?? just??? the ciphers and mysteries appeal so much to me and my love of mystery and crime novels, the characters are all amazing, alex hirsch himself is just such a g?? and like. it’s so good. it hurts me so much but then it’s all okay in the end and it’s just. it’s so good.

yeah i sobbed my eyes out when i watched that series finale.

camp camp, which somehow i forgot on my other list

god, is this show hilarious. like, fuck is it funny. it’s so good. it’s so fucking good. i was a little shocked when i saw the first episode but i’m so into it now, and i’m so attatched to all the characters bc they’re just dumbasses trying their best (or worst, in a few cases) and i love them for it. that’s peak fool energy right there and it speaks to me

orphan black

okay okay okay veering now into a much darker type of television, orphan black is??? phenominal???

okay so my best friend @fuck-me-gently-with-a-slurpee got me into it when i was like 14 or 15 i think and i honestly cannot thank her enough because this show is incredible. the plot’s super engaging, i literally cannot say anything about it without giving away spoilers, and the main character has quite possibly the best actor i’ve ever seen playing her

like. you think thomas sanders is good? he ain’t got SHIT on tatianna maslany

mythbusters

you guys. you guys. mythbusters was my childhood. like seriously, i watched that show religiously.

it’s what first got me into science, and it’s what kept me interested in explosions. it’s light and funny and ridiculous and scientifically accurate in the dumbest ways possible. i swear to god the main cast nearly dies once an episode

these guys are my idols. like, i seriously cannot overstate how much i love the mythbusters. adam and jamie, tori, kari, and grant.

when i was a kid, i wanted to be a mythbuster when i grew up, and god damnit, i still do. they mean that much to me

bill nye

fun fact! i actually had no fuckin clue who bill nye was until seventh grade, when i had to watch an episode of his show for homework because i missed a day of class. it was the episode on static electricity, and i remember sitting at my dining room table in the dim winter afternoon light, squinting at my computer, and thinking “what the FUCK am i WATCHING?”

needless to say, i’ve seen more since then, but that initial what the fuckery is still present and i love it.

not only is bill nye the science guy a flippin fantstic show, but bill nye himself? the coolest guy alive. god, i love him. what a g.

various comedians including but not limited to john mulaney,john oliver, and hasan minhaj

okay, as a gay, i am legally required to love john mulaney, but seriously that guy is so. fuckin. funny that i can’t help myself. his timing is priceless, the way he moves onstage is hysterical, just. god i love his stuff.

literally his comedic timing and style is half the reason people find me funny. i just phrase my sentences the way he would because, you know, i’m good at stealing things, and people laugh, and i go “hey. that actually worked”. and then i keep doing it

next, john oliver. okay, so while i don’t watch his show religiously, i do watch it when my parents do every now and again, and fuck is his stuff funny. like. just. shit.

finally, hasan minhaj’s patriot act is just. one of my favourite current events comedy shows out there. it’s in a similar vein to john oliver’s stuff, just more international, and shit, is he good at what he does. i lvoe it.

hoodwinked the movie (i am dead serious)

okay, while i haven’t seen it in over four years, this is still my favourite movie of all time. it also has one of my favourite villain songs of all times, and some of the best character exchanges just. ever. especially with wolf and twitchy

...god, i love twitchy. also the goat. i’m probably gonna be the goat when i grow up, let’s be honest

one day at a time

i just.

there’s so much to say about odaat. like. it’s so funny. it makes me nearly cry every episode (and makes my mother actually cry every episode). the characters, god, the characters

like. alex is such a cute dumb kid (who’s smarter than he looks), penelope is so salty constantly and i love her but she’s genuinely so cool and such a good mom and i cry??? elena is so amazing like god she’s such a fuckin nerd but she’s also so salty (takes after her mom) and is literally the best????

and then there’s abuelita, whom i adore. like, god, rita moreno is SO cool and SUCH a great actress and has SUCH an amazing sense of comedic timing and GOD, i LOVE HER

can’t forget about syd and doc berkowitz, which like. okay first off the good doc. just. god i love the doc. he’s so sweet and such a genuinely good dude and he’s a bit of a coward at heart but that’s okay because he genuinely cares and does his best and god he’s just such an amazing character im !!!!! and then syd is such a dork and i love them and elena and god, it made me so happy to see not only an actual enby character on a big sitcom, but also just?? like??? it’s not forced but it’s still there??? like there’s one episode where one of the plots is just syd and elena trying to figure out what elena should call them, since neither of them are comfy using “girlfriend” for syd since they’re not a girl, and they finally agree on “significant other” and schneider imMEDIATELY says “dont you mean, SYDnificant other?” and then they use that for the REST OF THE SHOW IT”S SO CUTE OKAY

and finally, schneider. he might be my favourite character in the entire show (which is a damn hard list to pick from!!!), but he’s just. he’s so sweet, he and penelope have one of the absolute best male/female friendships i’ve ever seen (which! never! turns! romantic! ever!!!), he’s actually got surprising depths but he’s also like such a nice goofball that when they get revealed, it hurts, and he’s just this canadian dumbass (heyyyyy repreSENT) with the worst goddamn canadian accent sometimes and he’s a hipster and The Dumb Friend and the weird uncle all rolled into one and GOD, i love him so much

the good place and brooklyn 99

okay, i love these two both so, so much, but i’m lumping them together because a) they’re both mike schur shows with a similar sense of humour, that say gay rights, and with characters who’d definitely love each other if they met and b) my hand is getting tired from all this typing but i still have so much  love to go around!!!!

okay so so SO! they’re both so good. they’re so fucking funny and amazing and i was immediately hooked on both of their pilots. their characters are all so genuine and flawed and fucking hysterical to watch, and the ships and friendships are all so amazing and pure and good and soft and they have their problems and they WORK THEM OUT HEALTHILY AND IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY OKAY!!!

god, i literally cannot overstate how much i adore these two shows. mike schur, you’re a wonderful, wonderful dude. thank you so much

many musicals (top faves include BOM, hamilton, legally blonde, chicago, matilda, and more!)

i’m putting the musicals together because while i do adore each and every one of them individually, i also just have great big deep-seated love of the art of musical theatre itself in general, ya feel?

like, as someone who’s been both performing and viewing them from a very young age, the sheer sense of utter joy they bring is almost unparalleled

not to be That Bitch who quotes musicals, but “and that hop in our hearts as the overture starts lets us know how lucky we are” might be the closest i’ve ever gotten to finding words to fit the feeling when the lights go down and the show begins. it’s simply phenomenal

the others series by anne bishop

okay, OKAY, if you haven’t read this series (first book called written in red – they have terrible titles but god, they’re worth it), then what are you doing with your life? like, not only is there the perfect logicality au to them (just sayin’), but god, it’s such an incredible series

the worldbbuilding is so cool and the characters are all great and god the ships are the damn hill i die on it’s got literally such a good “sort of enemies mostly just dislike each other to reluctant acquaintances to friends to lovers” ship and it deals with some serious issues rlly well and it’s got baby puppies!!!

like, they’re wolf puppies, but still, they are b a b e y

and finally (for now, at least), the mysterious benedict society, by trenton lee stewart

this book series was my childhood. i mean, there are so many other books i could be talking about right now that i utterly adore (the artemis fowl series springs to mind), but gosh, MBS just brings me such absolute joy to read that i just had to have it on here.

i’m not thinking straight at this point in the evening, but i just wanna say that i will never, not ever forget about reynie. about kate. about sticky. about constance. about rhonda and number two and milligan and miss perumal and my absolute son sq pedalian and, of course, i will never, never forget about mr benedict

it’s bright, and it’s bittersweet, and it’s beautiful.

and it’s good. simply, utterly, wonderfully good.

thank you for the ask, anon.

thank you.

[nogoodmox]

since it’s late n u guys have been so encouraging

i wanna preface this by saying....im not a Writer and this is pretty much the first wrestling-related thing i’ve ever written. also this was written at 3 am yesterday so pls keep that in mind ALSO it’s not very. romantic bc 1.) im not good with that stuff and 2.) it’s kinda covering the early stages of their relationship so they’re barely even friends yet! (this takes place right before war games!)

that being said thanks for being so nice abt it guys ur all the sweetest and i love u and i’m sorry this isn’t Better but constructive criticism would be appreciated! mwah!

Pete tapped his fist against his jaw in a needless effort to hype himself up.

The guaranteed brutality of his upcoming match didn’t faze him—brutality was his specialty, after all— but despite that, he couldn’t shake off an uncomfortable feeling.

Maybe it was the thought of having to rely on others for his victory, or maybe it was the thought of them relying on him. Neither were things that he was exactly used to.

He wondered, when the time came, if he would put himself in harm’s way for the sake of the others.

Pete thought of the last time he had relied on someone. It was ironic in a way, how the same person he had tentatively began to trust would be one of his opponents tonight.

He had never really thought of Roderick as a friend, just a sort of unavoidable ally. His eagerness had been irritating as was his general disposition, but Pete had chosen to put his trust in him. A choice he’d come to regret.

He liked to believe that the betrayal had made him all the more dangerous now. Not only could he use his desire for vengeance to his advantage, he’d also be sure not to make a mistake like that again.

Pete had operated just fine on his own for as long as he could remember. There were a select few times where he’d tried opening up, and each time he paid for it. It took a few experiences for the lesson to be drilled into his brain, but at least now there was no way he could forget it.

He should stick with what he knew best, and what he knew best was solitude.

Keep interactions short and bitter. You look out for one person, and that person is yourself. Everyone else is simply an obstacle or dead weight.

It was a philosophy he lived by, and one he truly believed in. There just happened to be times where he’d let it slip and thought maybe, just maybe, someone could be an exception. But they never were.

A steady knock on the locker room door disrupted his thoughts. A faint feeling of pain registered in Pete’s jaw as he realized he’d been tapping his fist against it this whole time. Before he could say anything, the door opened and Ricochet’s head popped in.

“You got a minute?”

Pete didn’t answer, he just raised an eyebrow when he noticed something in Ricochet’s hands. It looked like a tube of toothpaste.

Ricochet followed his gaze and held up the object, wiggling it in his hand. “Oh, this? Yeah, it’s kinda why I’m here, actually.” He walked up to Pete and held it out to him. Pete read the label, which only confused him more.

“White….face paint?”

The other man adjusted his North American Championship on his shoulder. “Yeah. Y’know, war paint for tonight. It was Hanson and Rowe’s idea. They figured we should at least look like a cohesive unit.”

“What’s the point of that?” Pete deadpanned. “Face paint won’t get us a win against Undisputed Era.”

Ricochet looked at a loss for a second, then sighed. “C’mon man. It’s to pump you up, get you excited to kick some ass. Plus it’ll look cool, yeah?”

Pete wasn’t very convinced, but he wasn’t in the mood to argue. He did admittedly like the idea of amping up the intimidation factor, not that he was going to tell Ricochet that. “Fine. Might as well fool people into thinking we’re a real team.”

“S’that supposed to mean? We’re a real team. Cole and his cronies are gonna see just how real we are tonight.” Ricochet declared, giving Pete a few taps on the chest.

Pete stiffened at the contact and glared at the highflier. Ricochet was someone who currently fell under the obstacle category in Pete’s eyes. He hadn’t forgotten the match where both their titles had been on the line. They never received closure, and Pete intended to change that next time they crossed paths in the ring.

He’d prefer for Ricochet to stay an obstacle rather than become dead weight.

“I’ve said it before, you’re just a guy carrying a piece of gold that I want. As for the other two, they’ve already got each other. We may be on the same side, but we’re not a team.”

The grin on Ricochet’s face weakened a bit. “Man do you like, practice this stuff in a mirror before you talk to anyone?” He chuckled at his own joke—was it a joke? The weight of Pete’s words didn’t seem to mean much to him, however, as he quickly bounced back. “Anyway, face paint, yes or no?”

“Sure.” Pete said.

“Great.” Ricochet tossed the tube of paint to Pete. “Doll me up.”

Pete barely caught the tube in time. He whipped his head up to face Ricochet, trying to make sure he had heard him correctly. “What?”

Ricochet had placed his title on the bench next to him and met Pete’s gaze expectantly. “What? I can’t put it on myself. There’s no mirror in here.”

“Then find one.”

“No can do.” He almost looked smug, as if he had planned this. “Bathroom’s closed for repairs, apparently Kyle and Bobby thought it’d be fun to flush Sullivan’s gear down the toilet. He caught ‘em in the act.” Ricochet let out a whistle. “It wasn’t pretty.”

Pete didn’t want to hear any more. For whatever reason, Ricochet was intent on sporting war paint, he might as well indulge him. After tonight, he could set his sights on what really mattered.

“Alright. C’mere.” Pete placed his championship on the bench opposite of Ricochet’s and squeezed some paint onto his fingers.

He lifted his hand only to pause suddenly, leaving it hovering in front of Ricochet’s face. “What’s their paint look like anyways?”

Ricochet thought for a moment. “It’s like…a V shape on each cheek.” He explained, tracing the motion over Pete’s cheeks with his finger. “Simple enough.”

“Right.” Pete grunted, doing everything he could to ignore the way his face had heated up. He pressed his fingers to Ricochet’s face and began painting the design, trying his best to keep his hand steady.

Pete came to a halt when Ricochet started giggling quietly. He gave him a strange look, pulling his hand away.

The other man took a moment to compose himself, then cleared his throat. “Tickles.” Came the simple explanation. Pete rolled his eyes and continued with his work, retracing the lines to smooth out the jagged edges.

He paused again to add more paint to his fingers, avoiding Ricochet’s gaze. Pete could feel the man looking at him and unconsciously tossed his head a bit to let his hair cover his face.

As Pete started on the other cheek, he noticed Ricochet hadn’t stopped staring at him at him, almost amusingly.

“What?” Pete finally asked, with a hint of challenge.

Ricochet seemed unbothered. “You’re just a lot more careful than I thought you’d be” He said, a little quieter than usual. It was unclear if the remark was meant to be teasing. It seemed sincere enough, but even if it was Pete wasn’t sure what the implications were.

Pete said nothing and averted his eyes again, finishing with a final swipe. “There.” He muttered. “All done.”

“Great! I’ll just have to trust that it looks good.” Ricochet reached up to touch his freshly painted face, then decided against it. “Alright, your turn!”

Pete froze, he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

He wasn’t particularly keen on anyone paying close attention to his face.

It was bumpy and weird; he knew this. Acne scars and uneven stubble were just the beginning of it. It was something he’d learned to accept, but he wasn’t exactly dying for others to get a good look at it.

Regardless, he knew Ricochet wouldn’t take no for an answer. If he had, Pete wouldn’t have just spent the past few minutes spreading paint on his face in uncomfortable silence.

Ricochet took the paint tube from Pete’s hands. “You mind uh…” He made a hair flip motion. “Getting that out of the way?”

Pete looked down at his hands, covered in white paint, and decided to go with option two. He swung his head to the side—a little too forcefully—and flipped the blond mess back. He was satisfied for a moment before it came toppling back down in his face.

It was times like this where he seriously reconsidered growing out his hair.

“I gotchu.” Ricochet intervened, looking even more amused than before. He tucked Pete’s hair behind his ear to keep it from coming loose again. “Sure got a lot of hair homeboy.” He commented.

“Guess you can’t relate.” Pete replied bluntly.  

Ricochet laughed out loud at that, almost too eager to make fun of himself. “Guess not.” He emptied what was left of the paint into his hand and got to work. Pete winced at the cold feeling, trying not to pull away. “But you know,” Ricochet continued. “The lack of hair could be the secret to my speed.”

Pete wasn’t fully sure if he was joking. “I reckon that’s why you got pieces missing in your eyebrows too?”

The highflier laughed again, this time not as loud, but a huge smile graced his face. “Man, you’re alright.”

Ricochet spread the paint on Pete’s cheeks with ease, moving just as smoothly as he did in the ring. Pete fought with everything he had to try not to break out into a fit of laughter. Ricochet was right, the feeling made him ticklish. His lip curved upward in a smile that he quickly pushed away.

“All set.” Ricochet finally announced, looking proud of his work. Pete didn’t doubt that the man had probably done a better job than him. “Now we look like a force to be reckoned with.”

Pete held couldn’t help but soften his expression a bit. He felt cool, and far more relaxed than earlier. Once again, he wasn’t going to tell Ricochet that, but he appreciated the feeling. “If painting faces keeps you from screwing up tonight, then so be it.” He replied with a shrug.

Ricochet shook his head, and if Pete didn’t know any better he’d say he was annoyed. “You never quit do you? Y’know we can do this whole rivalry thing without all the little remarks, yeah?”

“Cause make no mistake,” Ricochet’s tone grew serious. “I’m just as focused on that title of yours as you are on mine.”

The sudden change surprised Pete, but it didn’t faze him. After all, this was why he kept up his guard so high. He knew behind every person there was a set of intentions, and each interaction with him was a means of achieving them.

“I’m well aware.” Pete said evenly. “S’why I’m not buying this partner ruse. We’re not friends, and we never will be.”

Ricochet paused for a moment. “Just ‘cause you’re a future opponent, doesn’t mean we can’t be on the same page now. It’s no ruse, I’ve got your back tonight. I mean that.”

“Better to have your own back first.”

Ricochet lifted his hand to rub the back of his neck, looking unsure of where to go from there.

“You’re a tough nut to crack.” He said finally, leaning down to grab his North American championship. When he came back up, he was smiling again. “But I’m willing to prove where my loyalties lie out there. There’s no hiding in the ring.”

Pete eyed him for a moment, then nodded briskly. “That’s one thing we can agree on.”

“I’ve got another. We both wanna beat the hell out of those undisputed assholes, right?” Ricochet offered. “That snake Roddy’s gonna be out there tonight. If you ask me, you should focus on giving him the ass whopping he’s had coming instead of making enemies out of your partners.”

An odd silence followed his words. Pete didn’t know how to respond, and Ricochet’s intense gaze wasn’t making it any easier. In his heart Pete knew he had a point.

He was more than willing to take on all four members of the Undisputed Era himself, but he knew realistically he wouldn’t come out victorious. He needed Ricochet and the War Raiders whether he liked it or not.

Just one night couldn’t be so bad, right? Even if it involved putting his faith in other people. Ricochet had nothing to gain from betraying him. Hanson and Rowe, he wasn’t so sure, but considering how fixated they had been on the Undisputed Era for the past several weeks, it was unlikely.

Ricochet saved Pete from having to muster up an answer by reaching over and picking up his United Kingdom Championship. Pete’s eyes widened and he tensed up, ready to snatch it out of his hands.

There was no need to, however, as Ricochet placed it snugly on Pete’s shoulder.

He gave it a few pats, admiring the intricate design on the belt for several moments.

Ricochet took a few steps back, his own title sitting around his waist. “You look good.” He said finally. “Let’s do work tonight, mate.”

Pete’s partner tossed the now empty paint tube in his hand once, then turned to saunter off.

“Not your mate.” Pete replied in a half-hearted protest. He couldn’t see Ricochet’s face as he left the room, but Pete knew he was smiling.

“By the way, the bathroom’s perfectly fine. Just figured we could use a team bonding exercise.”