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stagefoureddiediaz · 3 months

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Costume Meta 7x05

Hello, Hey, how we all doing??

Ready for another super long meta post??

There is so much to talk about this week - admittedly mostly Buck and Eddie related, but there is also plenty going on for Hen and Karen as well.

No Bobby this week as we only see him in uniform, and only the one costume for Athena as well. I also want to say that I am not doing any of the costumes from the Madney wedding that we saw at the end of the epsiode - I want to give them the space they deserve and I will probably write a separate pre episode meta for those costumes specifically! All I will say is Maddie looks stunning, Buck in white - hello! and Eddie in a just a collar making him look like a pink priest - hilarious!

The rest is under the cut as always 😎

Let's start with some of the guest characters.

Alien Hand syndrome man continues to prove the check means bad things theme, which makes me happier than you can ever know!!

Then we have Deidra in her very bright pink coat. If you read my promo meta for this episode you will have read a fairly sizeable section at the end on my thinking about the use of pink in this season (going to make a separate post during this hiatus so its all in one place). All of the times we see it in this episode, play into (and I guess prove) my thinking. Deidra is acting with good intentions and while I don't think she's naive or innocent in the strictest sense of the word, she is perhaps continually being naive in thinking that not revealing Mara's past is the right way to go (don't come at me about child protection etc I am fully aware of what the real world laws state, but this story arc really highlights the fact that in trying to protect children who are at risk and in the system, they can also cause ongoing harm if things are not taken on a case by case basis - its a whole other essay that I am not getting into here).

Then we have Mara herself who is never without pink - namely her pink blanket. The pink plays into the theme of innocence especially with Mara and while she may not be innocent of the act of maiming Denny, her innocence goes much deeper. Its meant as a very clear signpost of the innocence of childhood - that pink blanket and her clinging onto it is a symbol of her clinging onto her childhood, despite the fact that she has gone through a terrible loss and trauma. she is still a child and the show is clearly going to play into the idea that as she settles into the Wilson home and is able to work through the trauma, her need to cling onto her childhood in this way will diminish and we'll see her slowly become less attached to the blanket. We already have signs of progress with the colour journey her tops have been on - lavender, pink and then the turquoise one at the end. Lavender is also a colour associated with childishness or lethargy, pink the colour of innocence, and childhood. While turquoise is a colour of calmness and clarity. its signalling HenRen's breakthrough with Mara and that she's growing and beginning to feel secure.

Hen and Karen

Hen and Karen go on a real colour journey this week - I'm doing them together (along with Denny) because they very much work in tandem clothing wise (and also because I was running out of pictures again - whats new there!)

So first up we have Karen in this beautiful dip dye ombre dress in purple, pink and mauve. it also has this drip staining pattern which has deliberately been created during the dying process. The lavender at the top of the dress is representative of hope and serenity, this is Karen in a great place - about to expand her family and fulfil a dream. The pink as I've said is all about innocence and naivety - more innocence in this case - both the new baby being innocent and Hen and Karens innocent hopes for their future. The dark mauve at the bottom of the skirt - eating into the pink is such a choice - gathering storm clouds, foreshadowing the turmoil about to come - taking away the innocent hope. mauve can be standoffish and withdrawn, and in this context those are great descriptors for Mara and her struggles that Hen and Karen will need to help her work through.

Hen's in cyan blue trousers - which is a colour associated with clarity and balance. whilst the cream, black and blue jacket with stars on is the beginning point for a theme that runs through the Wilsons arc this week - black is a power colour, associated with many things, but for Hen and Karen in this arc it is very much about protection and strength. Here for hen it is mostly about protection - protecting this new baby they are about to take in. The cream is warmth and tranquility.

Hen is wearing check - foreshadowing the upcoming struggles with Mara. Karens bronze and black Jacquard trousers are a symbol of strength - bronze as a colour means strength and support, it's also a symbol of faithfulness. It's telling us that Karen will take the lead on supporting Mara and being strong for her.

We see a lot of white on Karen in this episode, white, like pink is a colour of innocence, but it is more associated with purity and balance. It is also a colour of neutral refelction. By this I mean that it amplifies other colours by providing a neutral background - allowing other colours to shine. I find this a really interesting thing when connected with Karen - it amplifies her strength and supportive nature when the Wilsons meet Mara.

Hen adn Karen in bed are in dusty versions of blue and pink - Karen innocently tries to touch Mara and that is when the screaming starts. Putting Hen in blue is about relaying her trustworthiness and sets her up as a soothing and calming presence for Mara - hence the sleeping on the floor of her room!

At the hospital, We see Denny in red - he was wearing it when Mara woke the house up and its an indicator of what is about to befall them (in the same way Bobbys red in the cruise ship disaster adn Athenas red in relation to Harry, or Bucks back in s5 when Eddie broke down).

We again have Karen in white amplifying the other colour she is wearing, which in this instance is this buff/brown oversized sleeveless coat in teddy fleece. The brown is stability, dependability and responsibility - playing into the fact this episode really highlights Karen's position in the family as this stable rock which Hen and Denny lean on when they need support. Karen's unswerving and solid personality is once more being shown off. Its really a key thing for them to show as it feels like a set up for Mara and how she is going to bond and rely on Karen and that dependability as she unpacks her trauma.

The orange jumper is a really interesting choice. I do love the loose threads on the design of it - paying into the idea that Hen and Karen are at a loose end and unsure what to do going forward. But, the orange itself is generally an open minded colour, its energetic and its also a colour of transformation. These are all things we know are true of Hen and Karen and it hints at the fact that they will fin a way forward. Once again we have Karen in white amplifying Hen's orange and the energy and idea of transformation the colour brings.

Denim jacket and white tee. I love the distressed nature of this denim jacket and the way it plays into both scenes we see it in - playing into the distress Hen feels over finding out what Mara has gone through and how it explains why she has become non verbal and incredibly protective over her pink blanket.

Again the white of amplification and purity. Hen has pure intentions and the white amplifies Karens black when they are at dispatch listening to the 911 call.

We also have the Karen necklace back - once more showing this ism't about Hen - its about Karen and their family.

Black on Karen for this scene is such a choice. Black is a power colour, it means strength and protection. Here it is showing Karens determination, as she gains understanding, to protect Mara and support her through her trauma - it is representative of Karen choosing to use the power she has been given through gaining information. The gold highlights hint at success.

I love these lavender pyjamas on Karen - lavender is a soothing and sleep inducing colour (along with its scent which is possibly where the association came from for the colour) along with a Japanese print of mountains and trees, which plays into the idea of serenity and peacefulness.

Hen in contrast is wearing fairly bright and bold black and green. The green is all about that growth and learning once more, the growth of Hen and Karen, learning more about the issues Mara faces and seeking a solution, but also the growth of their family. The black is a reflection of power - much in the same way Karen wearing black when they heard the 911 call Mara made, here it is Hen, representing the protection that Hen and Karen are offering Mara.

Athena in green - again with the mesh open weave knit - this may be a theme for her this season - potentially something to do with feeling caged or caging someone/something - especially children as both scenes we've seen it so far have been to do with young people and the law in some respect - ending up in the system - Harry through is crime and Mara through her parents death.

Chim

This dark bottle green with a fawn brown (what I think is a polo) shirt underneath is Chimneys only non uniform costume this week . This kind of dark green, is as always a signal of growth, but its also a colour of harmony, and right now - everything in Chim's world is harmonious.

Maddie

I don't thinkI've said it yet, but I am so happy to have Alayna back dressing Jennifer - I feel like we're really back on track with Maddie's costuming after last season where they somehow managed to make Maddie look terrible. The costuming overall last year was fine - not as good as Alayna's work, but it was for the most part good - except for Maddie where it was all over the place!

Anyway - Maddie in black here is very much about focussing the attention on Hen and Karen - like with CHimney's muted green, in tandem they are making the viewers eye focus on Hen and Karen - especially Karen - who is the brightest in the room.

Maddie wearing this sage green colour when Buck comes out to her is sheer perfection from my perspective - we, once more have the green of growth and renewal, the green of learning - Maddie learning more about her brother - this new thing that he is realising about himself and choosing to share with her (even if inadvertently). But this green is also sage green - sage as in the play on sage advice - which we see Maddie give him. Buck needs that good advice - he needs to hear that its ok, that he can take the time to figure himself out and that its ok that he's only just uncovered this aspect of himself and that it doesn't invalidate him being an ally up to this point!

Ok not going to lie - I got a little carried away from here on out - so sorry in advance for the rambling mess you're about to read!

Marisol

I'm doing Marisol in a weird order - because I wanted to talk about her date night outfit in tandem with Eddies - because its relevant. So we start of with virgin Mary Marisol! Honestly this outfit is just perfection from the costume department - they saw the brief and went to town and I love it. Its so good to see what they can do when they get to play!

One of the things I really love about this costume is the blue that they chose. Because that blue - that is Bucks blue! the virgin Mary blue is usually a much brighter royal blue. It really helps to place Marisol in parallel to Buck and we get the play on t he fact that Eddie seeing Marisol in this way changes everything for him, whilst later on, whilst Buck is in the same blue, he reassures him that nothing will change between them.

Look, I'm not going to lie, when I saw Marisol in blue and yellow for this scene I laughed because Blue and yellow (as I've gone on a million times about) means queer coding so to blatantly put Marisol in it - in a washed out form, and very much connecting her to Catholicism - genius move. It marks her out as a roadblock, but also puts her into the role of beard (unknowingly on her part) because Eddie is still in the midst of his repression, even if it is beginning to unravel now.

The black top with spaghetti straps is clearly a theme they're going with on Marisol, as are the ditsy prints. The yellow high waisted trousers are interesting because of the specific shade of yellow. Yes the whole communication theme still applies here -and we see it in action, but this shade of yellow is sallow and sickly (one of the reasons its called sickly yellow is because its the colour of a lot of medications!!) - this relationship and its restart are ill and that automatically means its going to struggle to survive.

It plays into the more negative meanings around the colour - uncertainty and idleness and cowardice. For me the cowardice aspect is an interesting one in relation to Eddie - he has behaved cowardly up to this point - hiding out and not having the conversations that need to be had, and even in this scene it is Marisol who takes the lead.

It's really giving us an indication of things Eddie needs to work on in regards to himself - and once more it comes down to communication. Communication has always been Eddies major flaw - that he isn't good at it, unless really really pushed into it - essentially under duress. The other thing with communication is that it plays really well into the catholic guilt aspect - this idea that growing up catholic has taught him to repress part of who he is - to go along with what is expected of him, but that it also taught him not to ask for what he needs, to not communicate. We see it in this episode with his inability to say no to Marisol (the whole hiding out at Bucks so he doesn't have to have sex speaks volumes) even down to suggesting there's a third type of guy - who just needs a minute. Because, while that might be true to a certain extent, the fact that he says this off the back of her expressing her distress and upset about how all guys are one of two things, speaks volumes - its not him saying this because that's how he actually feels, its partly him saying it because he is pushed into a position where he doesn't want to be the bad guy. its really not a good place to be restarting a relationship from.

We also have the ditsy print of doom in play again - like I've said before, ditsy print on Eddies girlfriends - never a good sign - its really playing into this idea of Eddie jumping in headfirst with gay abandon (pun intended) and then regretting his life choices. Shannon wore ditsy print a fair amount - especially in the I think I'm pregnant' and 'we should get a divorce' scenes. Ana wore ditsy print A LOT - she was wearing it when Eddie had his panic attack in the shop and at other key moments that marked the death knell for their relationship. And so this appearance of ditsy print here marks the same - the relationship is not long for this world

OK date night Marisol. The way this outfit played out more or less as I expected, She was very much an 'innocent' bystander in this scene (whilst also creating one corner of a triangle with Buck and Eddie) , and the ditsy print very much played into this. Like I said in my promo meta, both Shannon and Ana were costumed in ditsy print as well as in lots of pink!!!

The other aspect of this outfit that is making me laugh is the fact that the skirt is giving me 1980's/early 1990's teen vibes (not to out myself as old but trust me I had some just like this back then and I wouldn't be caught dead in it now as a grown woman!!) and the baby pink handbag looks like something an 8 year old would have to play dress up with - its all very childish and immature - naive one could say, and while it didn't play out quite how I was expecting, her being a novice nun, sure explains a lot of why she comes over as pretty immature.

The other aspect of this childish style we're seeing on her plays into Eddies narrative of looking for magic and trying to recreate what he had with Shannon. He's attracted to Marisol because she is immature and childish - it reminds him of what he had with Shannon when he was young, and when you're trying to recapture that, its easy to fall into the trap of thinking someone behaving in a naive manner is you finding what you'd been looking for. Eddies journey, along side his catholic guilt, is about learning that he cannot recapture or recreate that magic he had when he was young - that the love of youth - in all its innocence is not something that is sustainable or actually what he wants in the present.

Then we have Eddie in white. I spoke in the promo meta about how the white set him and Marisol as opposites and that remains true - very true on more than one level. What I especially love about it and something I could not have predicted is how it plays into the novice nun aspect of their story this episode - truly this show is a comedy! Because nuns wear black and white this is an obvious play on that, but it is also a play on the fact that Marisol is still a practicing catholic, whilst Eddie is very much not. The other aspect of this white is that of Eddies two non uniform costumes, it is the first one and we get this black and white play on religion - the black and white of nuns and priests - the black and white of being religious or not. Eddie never questions if he wants to become a practicing catholic again - he is lapsed and that is how he intends to stay.

Eddie in uniform, with his green trainers, blue towel and water bottle. the blue towel and bottle play into the buck and Eddie blue green theming we see with them. But what is interesting is though is that Eddie is fulfilling all the colour theming on his own - he is both blue and green - to me this is about Eddies own struggles within himself as well as foreshadowing the Eddie Marisol break up down the line (green shoes suggest a road needs to be to walked before we get there) - it hints at Eddies internal struggles and implies that its will ultimately end in a break up a bit further down the line.

I also think it's only when in Uniform that Eddie can admit to his catholic guilt. Because we all know when Eddie is struggling with some form of emotional turmoil, he wears a black singlet - and he could've been wearing the same here, it would've been totally fitting with the situation - he is going through something emotionally and struggling with it.

But he's in his uniform. Part of it is to have him on a different level to Buck - they are both struggling with something in this scene. When we have previously had Buck and Eddie scenes like this one at work, the one dressed in uniform, tends to be the one offering advice to the one not in uniform. That isn't the case here. Part of it comes back to Buck not actually needing advice, but needing to reveal something about himself - to confess. Eddie is the one who needs advice.

This is a flipping of the traditional narrative for these scenes and is proof that even though Eddie might later tell Buck that nothing is going to change between them, that it has in fact already changed, it is just that neither of them are fully cognisant of that change at this moment in time. It is a key indicator to use the audience that this has happened before but that things are not going to play out the same way this time.

Put it this way - Eddie has form for doing something extreme with his relationships with women in the aftermath of Buck doing something dumb - its one of the manifestations of his repression. This time its asking Marisol to move in with him in the immediate aftermath of Buck going full green monster over Tommy.

Last time it was in the aftermath of Buck begins and then doubling down with Ana after the shooting when Buck had hooked up with Taylor and before that in the aftermath of Shannon's death and Buck suing the department he went and joined a fight club - but he has form. Its completely in character for him to pull this sort of a move. I know he says he's going with his gut but I argue he is in fact ignoring his gut - or at the very least confused about what his gut is telling him, because that would mean actually looking at why his gut reaction to Buck doing something dumb makes him do something dumb in turn connected to these women in his life.

Eddie in black - this is the same shirt as the white one - just the reverse colour - which is important. This shirt has several layered meanings to it. its about the reversal of what Eddie wants - from him being bubbly and excited about Marisol moving in, to the dread of her having moved in and wanting her to move out - his feelings go from white to black - light to dark - happy to unhappy and it all sums up the relaity of that relationship - while it was new and unserious, it was fun and light, when things got real - it becomes dark and oppressive.

I'll go into more detail about this shirt when I get to Bucks costume for this scene - because they are connected!

The other thing about this outfit is that the green trousers have been replaced with jeans. Now I see a couple of reasons for the wardrobe department doing this. Firstly is that it plays into the 'nothings is going to change between us' of it all. Its a visual indicator that in fact things have changed (along with Buck wearing a brighter shirt than we normally get in these buddie heart to hearts that take place in Bucks loft but more on that later) the Buck being bi and going on a date with Tommy of it all aside, this is the first time we've actively seen Eddie hiding out at Bucks to avoid his girlfriend - this was a barrier that had existed between them previously that has now been broken down. Then there is the fact that Eddie does go home to Marisol - and he couldn't be wearing green at that point because she was wearing blue and Eddie in green would've meant break up time - only the Marisol as a plot device arc isn't yet over (it will be soon I promise - all the costume signs are there!) so that couldn't happen.

Tommy

This dark olive green shirt that is almost brown. The brown undertones hint at the stability he represents while the green is hinting at his military past and once more paralleling him with Eddie. One of the things about green as a colour is that its not only a symbol of growth and renewal, but its also a colour of learning, and in an episode titled 'You don't know me' it feels like all the green is very much about education - learning about other people - and the growth that results from it. It feels especially important here for Tommy and Buck - that is after all what going on a date it all about - learning about one another and seeing if you're compatible.

The other fun thing about this green shirt is though that the green plays into the blue green colour theory when it comes to Buck and Eddie and their partners and the end of relationships. This one before its had chance to begin.

For Coffee we have a grey Henley and a blue zip front hoodie with a grey striped undertone to it (I am pretty sure this is actually a hoodie we've seen on Chimney but I can't remember when and I don't think it would be the very same one as pretty sure Lou would not be fitting into Kenneths clothes ever, but Chimney has definelty worn the same style!!). Again Henley's are an Eddie thing, so we once more have the parallel with Eddie being drawn.

The interesting thing here is that the grey blue is the same colour combo Buck wore on their first date attempt - the costume department played a lot with flipping colour in this episode, so to have it done here as well is really fun - the fact there is more grey than blue is also interesting. It's a neutral colour, it is seen as a colour of stability, but is also a colour of uncertainty. It really plays into that theme of uncertainty running through the Buck and Tommy arc. The blue hoodie is actually pretty important because we've had one of Buck and Tommy wearing something dark blue in every scene they've had together - usually the one on the back foot. Tommy in this scene is relatively neutral in terms of position for most of this scene - they are equals - but he is put onto the back foot by Buck asking him to be his date to Maddie and Chim's wedding.

Buck

Where to start with our beloved bi disaster!

I obviously spoke a fair amount about the date night shirt in my promo meta. The navy blue knit bowling shirt with these silver/grey close together pinstripes running down the front playing into the Buck wearing vertical stripes theme we've has running with him for at least the last 2 seasons.

What I said about false starts and this date absolutely played out - in the same way the sperm donation shirt represented a false start on that donation, this shirt also represents a false start on Bucks dating life as a bi man. The white trainers are also carrying on the theme of Bucks Journey towards happiness

What I find most interesting about this outfit though isn't colour theory related. its all about the fit of the clothes. Because these are ill fitting on Buck - not something we see from him very often - in fact I think the only time we see him in anything close to ill fitting to this extent is back in season 1 when he was figuring out who he was and if being a firefighter was the right for him and exploring relationships and what he was trying to find in that arena. The trousers are the most ill fitting of it all, but I'll come to the trousers later on as they are part o a wider Buck costume theme we have going on!

The shirt is a little roomie, but not overly so, it just stands out more because we're so used to his shirts fighting for their life, here this one is baggy and really helps to sell the idea of defeat, but also that h was trying on this new part of himself for size and that it doesn't quite fit. It's the only time this episode we see his clothes not fit him in this way and its a really small but expressive part of costuming that I love to see.

Then we have this blue broadcloth jacket over a white tee and with these plum/brown coloured trousers - they're a bit blink and you'll miss them so its hard to be sure what type of trouser they are, but I think they are essentially smart joggers - jersey material but trousers!

We all know that Buck in white means trouble, I'm putting him outing himself to his sister as the bad thing - along with the fact that the date didn't work out.

I'm really fascinated by the fact that we really seem to be leaning into navy blue and Buck being bi. Navy has always been a colour we've seen a lot of on Buck in general, but there is something about the fact we've seen him (or Tommy) wearing it in every single scene that is about his bisexuality. I'm talking from the kiss scene onwards, not anything before that as Buck wasn't aware of his bisexuality before the kiss. I can't wait to see if it continues!

The green shirt jacket is an interesting one. it obviously helps to play into the buck and Eddie blue green theory, but it does in a smaller way play into the blue green theming we see around Buck and Eddie and their relationships - specifically around issues arising. Both Buck and Eddie wear green when they break up with their significant others and while there is no break up here, there is a break of sorts. This was Buck about to try and tell his Best friend that he was actually out on a date with Tommy and that he's bi

symbol of growth - Buck went in with a goal - to tell Eddie he was on a date with Tommy, but changed tack when he saw Eddie needed to go through something - this is Buck growing as a person - not making something about him.

The other thing about this outfit is that its basically the same as the one Eddie wore at the airfield (even down to the badding of the trousers) - just in reverse - Eddie black trousers, black jacket, green top, and here Buck is black trousers, black top and green jacket - I find this fascinating as a metaphor for where the two of them are on their respective journeys.

Buck is now bi and out (he's told his sister) and has been on a date with a guy (regardless how successful it was - he cannot put it back into the box) - his growth is externalised and therefore expressed through the wearing of a green jacket. We get a lot of storytelling through the various Jackets Buck wears (we've seen him in over 35 at this point!)

While Eddie - who we could say was being taken on a date by Tommy - even if he didn't know it (because who flies someone to Vegas to a sold out fight if its not a date??) wearing a much brighter green that we've seen on him before now (pretty much all of his greens are more army green with a couple of exceptions - much darker greens akin to Bucks jacket in the below picture) - still in the army green wheelhouse, but much bolder. Eddie's queer status is still very much internalised - hence it being underneath the black jacket.

Buck coming out to Eddie from a costume perspective was a glorious parallel that I have already mentioned in the promo meta (I've run out of pictures so you'll have to go watch the scene yourself if you want to see what I mean). Its actually a bit deeper that I appreciated in that promo meta, but that is in part because at the time of writing the meta I wasn't 100% sure it was a coming out scene and I didn't get to see the way it was shot and how that also played into the paralleling.

Costume wise - I already spoke above about Eddies black shirt and how it is reversing him in the episode. But what I didn't mention is that fact that it parallels in colour terms, what he was wearing when Buck informed the firefam that Connor and Kameron were pregnant. Eddie wore a black marl henley - black with flecks of dark grey running through it, and Buck here is wearing a slightly darker blue version of the same top he wore in that same scene. He is standing in the same place at the counter of his kitchen, or sitting very close to the same position and we get similar camera angles. As a whole the parallel is very loud - Buck was happy and proud of something he had done and wanted to share it with his friends - wanted their approval. He was feeling good about himself and confident in his decision.

The biggest thing about the blue - this shade specifically is the way it play into the blue theme we saw last season with Buck - the theme that started in the 5x18 finale at Hen and Karens vow renewal, when he was free of Taylor and moving forward and essentially restarting his search for happiness. We saw it weave a thread through the entirety of season 6, being worn at key moments that played into that theme - after Lev died, at various points in the sperm donation arc, and a key points in the aftermath of his death and rebirth.

The successfully helping create life aspect of this is so interesting. It on a low key level plays into the you don’t find it you make it manifesto that’s been at the heart of bucks arc since s2. the whole year if yes was supposed to be about this very thing - about Buck creating the life he wants for himself - the sperm donation isn’t about the baby it’s about Buck and about him figuring out what he’s missing (which comes back to not only Thomas and Mitchell, but also Lev).

The other thing that ties into this theme is that Eddie isn't really changing but Buck is. Whenever we have a scene at the loft between Buck and Eddie Bucks costume and colour varies, but Eddies stays more or less the same. Bucks colour Palette for these scenes goes - dark grey in the you want to go for the title scene, then we have the grey blue on the balcony and now this much lighter blue. This is highlighting Bucks progression while Eddie who remains in his black shirt and that progression - while Eddie essentially remains steadfast - is key - it’s showing us that while buck is still doing dumb things, he is learning - he is listening to whatever Eddie is telling him - that he’s accepting Eddie’s absolution of his sins more and more - growing and understanding.

It’s building on his long running arc - his fear of being left behind, of not being important enough for people to stick around for - and showing us he’s increasingly understanding that that fear is unfounded - that he’s found his personal- the one who will stay and who is steadfast in that. That’s why we see Eddie unchanging in his black shirt green cargos while buck gets lighter - more unburdened by that fear.

Before you think all is lost on the Eddie front though, we are seeing change - the army green trousers are gone and have been replaced with jeans - perhaps, in the same way Bucks growth into his bisexuality began with his beginning to wear jeans again, Eddies own growth into his own queer identity also begins with jeans - moving him away from Eddie the soldier - fighting for others - being a rock for others and now into a position where he can do his own growing.

In the sperm donation arc, Buck was finally able to donate and was wearing that super pale mint green polo. we don't see the same with the outcome here at this point in the story (although the beige/mint green jacket from the bachelor party is making me👀👀👀 at this moment in time!) - we get this cream open weave linen shirt with black and terracotta and golden brown vertical stripes.

I love that they went with a shirt that has such an open weave - playing into the whole concept of Buck being open and embracing this newly revealed part of him that he's discovered. But what I love most about this shirt is the way it ties back into the Buck learning to accept himself and find his happiness.

Because this shirt is so similar to the one from 6x01 - when he decides he doesn't need a new couch, what he needs is to be ok on his own and with himself.

lets talk Buck and his trousers because the trousers are a whole thing this season and I am truly in love with the long game the wardrobe department have been playing on this one. They know that we have all been out here raising eyebrows at Bucks trousers for the past few seasons as they've gotten shorter and shorter and ill fitting. I know I've made comments in previous costume metas about the fact they must be doing something intentional with them being so short in the leg - that them doing this is giving the appearance of a child who is still in short trousers and isn't fully grown - hasn't moved on to wearing full length trousers yet.

Well it would seem I was right and thats exactly what they were doing, putting him in short trousers to show that he wasn't his fully formed self - that he was growing and learning and figuring things out. because - I've gone back through my spreadsheet and checked his trousers out for all of his scenes and there are only a handful where he has trousers on that are well fitted and the correct length. One of them is at the start of season 6 - at the end of the episode where he moves his armchair instead of getting a new couch - the one time in season 6 we see him most at peace with himself

I remarked in the 7x04 meta that we only saw Buck in his too short trousers in the one scene at the airfield, and from then on, he was was in jeans. Now the jeans are a mimicking thing - Buck hasn't worn stone wash jeans since Eddie appeared on the scene back at the start of season 2, so for him to start wearing them again as soon as he becomes jealous of Eddie and Tommy - and Tommy is wearing jeans - was pretty telling in its own right. It's Buck trying to get Eddies attention (not Tommys - Eddies) because, we do not see Eddie in jeans in 7x04 - but we do see Tommy in them - and in Bucks head he is loosing Eddies attention to a guy wearing stone wash jeans - so if he wears stonewash jeans then maybe he'll get Eddies attention back.

That obviously didn't work out how Buck thought it would, but it did lead to him figuring a new part of himself out.

We can see how his trousers are all now sitting at the correct length, I grabbed this still of the black ones, and you can see in the full length still from the date those are as well (even if they're too big more generally) but the others are all sitting at the correct length as well.

We also see the jeans back for his scene with Tommy - I truly am fascinated by the choice to put him back in stonewash jeans aafter so long as a theming choice for his bisexuality, I really am enjoying this more relaxed looking Buck from a costuming perspective - the journey we've been on with his costumes is great - the increasingly formal style thats just a little too small and tight we've seen over the seasons now slowly relaxing once more into something much more comfortable and well fitted - showing just how far he has truly come.

And thats me out for another week! Sorry it turned into another epic - it would seem `i cant stop myself! Not sure if this has come out longer than last weeks, I think it might've, but I can't be bothered to check! Thank you as always for reading this monster and I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the costumes for 7x05. I'm off now to hyperfixate on Bucks bathroom door and get myself though this mini hiatus!

Tagged people below

@theladyyavilee @gracieryder @xxfiction-is-my-realityxx @bewilderedbuckley @spotsandsocks

@bewitchedbewilderedbisexual @rogerzsteven @wanderingwomanwondering @oneawkwardcookie @leothil @copyninjabuckley @shammers86 @crazyfangirlallert @missmagooglie @katyobsesses @radiation-run @gayandbifiremenofmine @bi-moonlight @crazyaboutotps @princesschez75 @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove @sherlocking-out-loud @satashiiwrites @lover-of-mine @yramesoruniverse @extasiswings @favouritealias @pop-kam

#kym costume meta #costume meta #911 costume meta #911 colour theory #eddie diaz #evan buckley #911 abc #hen wilsom #karen wilson #maddie buckley #chimney han #Tommy Kinard #long post #kym writes things #deep dive

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athinasaurus · 5 days

Text

Enchanted

(1/?)

AN: Can't stop thinking about a witchy supe character except her abilities only include healing (womp womp)

Pairing: Butcher x oc f!reader

Words: ~600

Warnings: It's The Boys so you know already the themes include gore and violence, sex too?? Just overall, 18+ mdni. Also, it's a very rough wip.

*⑅*❀⑅*❀⑅*❀⑅*❀⑅*❀⑅*⑅*❀⑅*❀⑅*❀⑅*❀⑅*❀*

Being friends with Starlight has its perks. You met her during your time at Vought before they discarded you like yesterday's news. You were born with the ability to heal any kind of wound - your only limitation was that it drained your energy and it was your sole power. Unlike Homelander, practically Superman 2.0, and Queen Maeve with her strength, you meant nothing to the company. You were fine with that, you'd just wish you could've avoided being V'd up constantly and used as a lab rat.

It came to no surprise when they tossed you to the curb, concluding you would never make progress. Thankfully, the public didn't pay attention to you either. You didn't have to keep a low profile until Starlight introduced you to Hughie. It took you a while to warm up to him. As soon as you did, he confided in you about the group and asked you to join.

"So..what do you think?" Hughie asked. Although revenge on Vought was on the top of your bucket list, you needed a bit of a push.

"Can I think about it? This is...a lot to take in, you know that, right?" You replied hesitantly. He let out a small smile and assured there was no pressure. It didn't take long until you called. You knew the risks, but what's the point of being alive if you're not having some fun? You'd be wreaking havoc and you'd probably die, but it's for a good cause. What better way to go?

"Today's the day, you ready? Starlight gleamed, she seemed so happy about the fact you're meeting the rest of the group while you...you seemed like you were going to shit your pants, if you're being honest.

"Yeah definitely! It's not like I want to throw up from how anxious I am..", you replied sarcastically and forced a weak smile, yet she rolled her eyes. The supe grabbed your hands and tried to dispel your fears. By the time you get to the bunker, you're met with the eyes of multiple strangers, all suspicious of you aside from Hughie and Starlight. Being rejected was Vought was bad enough, but it couldn't compare to the anxiety experienced now. You could hear your heart pumping in your throat until a voice broke the silence, "Alors...is the witch mute?" The french man ceased the awkward moment, a puzzled look remained on all their faces.

You were about to speak until Starlight stepped in and introduced you to the team.

"Hey everyone, I want you to meet one of my closest friend's, y/n. She's been with me since my days at Vought." She spoke in a soft tone, giving you the spotlight.

"It's nice to finally meet you all, I'm glad to be joining the team." You gave a tight smile, hoping to ease the tension.

The group mostly gave you a curt nod, a few giving a small 'hi' while an older man in the back with his arms crossed kept your stare. The strained atmosphere was alleviated as Hughie stepped in to explain what your ability was, but the leader didn't seem convinced.

"So love, mind showin' us what makes you so special?' He asserted with his brows furrowed, eyes scrutinizing you as you stood frozen.

"Well, I'd need-"

You were cut off as he grabbed the sharpest thing next to him and sliced his hand. Surprisingly enough, no one seemed fazed by the sudden action aside from you, biting the inside of your cheek. Butcher walked towards you with ease, his Hawaiian shirt slightly unbuttoned and a curved smile plastered on. As blood started to trickle from the wound, he gave you his hand, accompanied with a look practically asking 'what are you waiting for?'. Gently, you took it. His leathered skin contrasted yours as your delicate hands got to work. He studied them attentively as you quickly got to work. After all the experiments Vought put you through, you were able to heal cuts in seconds. You met his gaze, waiting for his approval. He hummed lowly.

"Y'know how to use your hands, eh? Quite impressive, love. Come back tomorrow; we still got some details to sort out." The man ordered. You gave a curt nod, ignoring the warmth in your cheeks from his recent comment.

"Oi, rest of you, we've got a mission. Get off your lazy arses, c'mon then," Butcher barked.

To anyone who's read it entirely and hasn't ripped out their eyes (yet), thank you :>

#billy butcher x reader smut #billy butcher x you #billy butcher smut #billy butcher imagine #billy butcher x reader #billy butcher #my ocs #oc

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obscenely-overdue · 4 months

Text

[OOC] Weighted Pregnant Belly Instructions

Hi everyone! For those interested, I've jerry-rigged a method to pad/simulate/wear-a-fake-pregnant-tummy-for-kink-purposes with some real weight and firmness to it that I think people would like! It works very well for me but is also functionally a prototype/first pass at the idea, so there are certainly areas that it could be improved. (which is me saying "experiment and improve upon this, we can make it better!")

I'll preface this with the fact that, if you pay full price for everything involved, assuming you have NONE of it to start, it's probably about $120. That said, about $20-25 of that comes from a specific kind of pillow and blanket, which you very well may have, which would bring it realistically down to $100, and some of it is stuff which can be bought on sale pretty easily, which would land you in the neighborhood of $80. Again, it isn't cheap, but it has something not even a fancy Roanyer tummy has:

WEIGHT and BULK

It's also made of inconspicuous or otherwise easily hidden items, so if you have roommates or family who could see this stuff, it's great at being tucked away or hiding in plain sight. If you're curious, I have pictures, a shopping list, and step by step instructions, as well as some further tips and info. It's pretty long so I'm putting it under a cut...

Let's get started!

What you'll need:

One piece of fully body shapewear (the mauve one on top) and one piece of "tummy tuck" shapewear (black on the bottom). The full body one is about 2 sizes too big for what it's meant to do normally (so for me, an XXXL. This is the same shapewear I use for my squishmallow tummy for RP blog pictures), and the tummy tuck one is the "correct" size for my body (XL). The tummy tuck one gives you all the support, so you don't want it too oversized. DON'T GO UNDERSIZED EITHER as what we're going to load this up with is gonna cause some compression, and too much pressure on your abdomen can be harmful. When in doubt, go at your size or maybe one size bigger, but no farther. Both of these run $20-30 a piece at a target but also can be found on sale for $10-20. Target is going to charge you more than Walmart, and it doesn't have to be top of the line.

One soft, round pillow. This is like a $6 pick up from Walmart. It's not just soft from it's fabric, but it's specifically not firm to the touch. It's all give and is very malleable. Technically you could use a regular pillow too, but this being roughly disk shaped helps it do its job as basically the "lower belly" that keeps the weight from shifting too low.

An averaged sized blanket. Softer materials that fold and bunch up easier are preferred. You PROBABLY already have something that will work for this, but if you don't, again, Walmart will charge you like $15-20 for one.

And finally...

A 20 lbs kettlebell. This BASTARD is the single most expensive thing you'll need, and unfortunately is required if you want it to be properly heavy. This one came from Target, and ran me $55. You might think you want to go heavier, but trust me, this thing has all the heft you'll need. If you really want to, you could feasibly go for a 25 lbs. one, but those are even more expensive. The kettlebell shape is important because it's mostly round, unlike a dumbbell, so we can wrap it up and use it for a reasonably pregnant-shaped belly. A dumbbell of this weight might be a little cheaper, but if you're already going to drop $40 on an oddly shaped weight, another $15 so it can fit the tummy shape is worth it.

Putting it on:

[DISCLAIMER: If at any point something HURTS while putting this thing on or while wearing it, safely but quickly remove it. The weight is supposed to be cumbersome and a little uncomfortable for the fantasy of it, but if anything HURTS, something is wrong, and you need to take it off. If you lay on your back with this thing on for too long, get ready for ab muscle aches, possibly the next day, as your tummy will be supporting 20 lbs of external weight just pressing on it, and those muscles don't get used unless you work out. I've never worn this thing overnight to sleep, but I don't advise it, as extended period of compression can be harmful. Same logic as to why AFAB people who don't want visible boobs shouldn't bind for too long.]

Start by putting on the fully body shapewear, and then putting the tummy tuck shapewear over that. The fabric under my shapewear here is my sports bra, which isn't part of the belly process.

Next you're going to load the soft, round pillow into the full body shapewear. It's going to kind of fold in on itself and that's not an issue, if anything it gives a nice little landing zone for the next thing we're going to add.

Don't fight trying to get the pillow under the tummy tuck shapewear, right now just roll it down to your waistline under the pillow bulk like so.

Next you'll take your blanket, lay it out, set the kettlebell inside of it, and wrap/bunch it up. You want it something approximating 'round', making sure the kettlebell isn't going to roll/fall out when you pick it up.

Next, you load the wrapped up bastard in, setting it on top of the pillow. The kettlebell is going to shift, and try to sink deeper, that's fine, just maneuver it so it sits on the pillow, allowing the pillow to spread the weight more evenly.

Before you pull up the tummy tuck shapewear, it's going to look like this, notice how the bottom of it is lighter because that's all pillow, with the blanket over top.

Now comes of trickiest/most strenuous part, you gotta pull out the tummy tuck shapewear and get it out and around the bulk of your "tummy". You'll have an easier time if you pull the back part up a little first, so it's not fighting you, which you can see in the above photos. If anything starts to hurt during this process, stop and take it out, because likely something is too tight or too heavy.

Once the tummy tuck shapewear is pulled all the way up, it should look about like this, and you're loaded up and ready to waddle!

Notice how much more contained it all is? It's not spilling off of me anymore, it's firmly held against me. Now, just top with your favorite maternity shirt!

Or don't!

Now, clearly, it doesn't LOOK very pregnant. It's lumpy and awkward and it'll come out downright lopsided your first few times. But this isn't for taking pictures for an RP blog, this is for simulating something close to the feeling of carrying something heavy like a pregnant belly around. For those of us who can't or don't want to actually get pregnant, this is a decent approximate that's reasonable to buy and easily hidden. This is for nights after everyone else is in bed or you're home alone, and it can be a LOT of fun.

Great, now what do I do with it?

This is the end of the instructions and is more just ideas for some fantasy fulfillment. Feel free to drop your own ideas in replies or reblogs!

So something that sets this belly apart from just a pillow, or bunched up clothes under your shirt, is that it's very firm, and independently held against you. A pillow under your shirt is dependent on the shirt for structure. If you lift the shirt, pillow falls off. That is not the case here, so suddenly, you've unlocked the ability to put on too small clothes, or button ups, or robes, whatever, that's too small for you now, and can fuss and mess with it without affecting the stability of the belly. You can wear pants that don't button or simply bunch up under that heavy, firm underbelly. Hell, you can simulate getting dressed with a 20 lbs mass hanging off of you. Put on socks around this thing, it's the stuff of preg kink dreams!

Getting up and down, laying in bed and rolling over, the shit that's easy to do now, takes a LOT more effort all of the sudden. Again, I urge you not to lay flat on your back too much, because I did that while padding before bed, and woke up with some muscle aches centered on my tummy, in muscles that I hadn't used in god knows how long. Don't over exert yourself with this thing. I'm bringing this up a lot because I don't want anyone getting hurt.

Taking the stairs is nuts. Going up is way more effort, and going down feels almost hazardous as you wont have vision of your feet anymore.

If you're into the domesticity of pregnancy, try doing some household chores with this thing on! Loading a dishwasher, doing some laundry, maybe some tidying. I personally have found it weirdly exhilarating, waddling around loading the washing machine around this heavy bulk. Have fun bending over to pick up something you dropped!

Even just chilling and gaming with a lap full of heavy belly feels kind of new and exciting. When you're not used to it, even the mundane shit gets hotter with a tummy like this

That's about all I got. If someone else gets everything and tries this out, let me know your experiences with it and how you've improved it! I've had an ask suggest a weighted medicine ball, so that could also work if you have one you're willing to test out. Please enjoy, and share with your pregnancy loving mutuals! Thanks for reading!!!

#fake pregnant belly #ooc #weighted belly instructions

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goldengalore · 2 years

Text

Perception

Summary: Y/N has social anxiety. When she and Harry go on a double date with Jeff and Glenne, Harry thinks everything is going extremely well. It isn’t until they get home later that he realizes Y/N didn’t feel the same way.

Word count: 3.5k

Warnings: anxiety, eating problems due to anxiety, use of alcohol as a coping mechanism (which I do not condone), implied smut

A/N: I focus on H’s POV throughout just to show how much his perception of events differs from Y/N’s, which is tainted by her anxiety. Hoping to write more fics with this concept in the future! :)

***

“You know, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” says Harry, entering the master bathroom where Y/N is meticulously applying her makeup.

They have dinner plans tonight with two of Harry’s closest friends—his manager Jeff and Jeff’s wife Glenne. Y/N has met Jeff a few times but only in a professional setting, and she has yet to meet Glenne. Although the four of them have tried making plans to hang out before, they never came to fruition because Y/N’s anxiety would always spiral out of control leading up to the event, causing Harry to make up some excuse for why they have to cancel.

“D—do you not want me to go?” asks Y/N.

He frowns, slipping his hands into the pockets of his brown corduroy pants. “What? Of course I do.”

“It’s just...” She pops open the cap of the lipstick in her hands and stares down at it. “This is the third time you’ve said that to me today.”

His eyes fall shut for a moment, as he realizes how his words must have come across when repeated that many times. “Fuck. Sorry, lovie, I hadn’t meant it that way. I just don’t want you to feel pressured to do something you’re not comfortable with.”

“I can’t bail on them again, H. I’ve done that enough times already.” She sighs. “And besides... Life’s about getting out of your comfort zone, right?” She forces a smile and returns to applying her makeup, leaning forward to get a closer look in the mirror.

He notices a slight tremor in her hand as she glides the rounded edge of the scarlet lipstick across her bottom lip, then the top one. Her lips now match the colour of her knee-length, satin dress. She spent longer than usual getting ready for tonight, going the extra mile to ensure that her makeup was flawless and every hair was in its place.

Now, as he watches her eyes scan her reflection in the mirror, it’s almost like he can read her mind, like he can see her mentally scrutinizing every little aspect of her appearance that she perceives as an imperfection but he perceives as one of the many things he loves about her.

“You look stunning,” he tells her.

She smiles at him. “Thank you, baby.”

He walks over to her. She turns to face him, leaning her hip against the counter. The movement causes a perfectly curled strand of hair to fall over her shoulder. He gently brushes it back. She truly does look stunning, and it’s making him imagine all the things he wants to do to her right now but can’t because it will only end up making them late for dinner, which won’t be any good for her anxiety.

“I hope you know you don’t need to impress them or anything like that,” he says. “They already love you.”

She gives him a skeptical look. “How can they already love me? They barely know me.”

“Um, not true. I talk about you a lot. Probably far too much. In fact, Jeff has told me to shut up on a few different occasions because I wouldn’t stop going on about you.”

His admission makes her laugh and paints her cheeks a cute shade of pink.

“So, they already know lots about you,” he continues, “and they think you’re amazing, which means there’s nothing to prove. All right?”

She nods. He analyzes her expression closely but still can’t discern whether she actually believes him or not; he can only hope she does. He starts to lean in for a kiss but stops an inch away from her lips. She gazes up at him in confusion.

“I really want to kiss you,” he says, “but your lipstick’s going to get all over me.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re such a baby. Come here.” With a hand on the back of his neck, she pulls him in to complete the kiss, then effortlessly wipes the residue off his mouth with her thumb. “See? All gone.” She smiles sweetly, making him want to kiss her all over again.

“Okay, now get out,” she says. “I need to pee before we leave.”

“Fiiine. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

***

They arrive at the restaurant at nearly the same time as Jeff and Glenne. The four of them convene in the parking lot before heading inside together. The reservation is under Jeff’s name. He speaks to the hostess, who guides them to a booth in the private dining area. It’s quieter here, the dim lighting and soft jazz making it feel even more intimate.

Each couple takes one side of the booth. Harry lets Y/N slide in before him. As they get settled, Jeff asks Y/N if she has ever eaten at this restaurant before. She shakes her head in response. Jeff lets out a dramatic gasp.

“What?! H never brought you here?” He shoots Harry a judgmental look. “What kind of boyfriend are you, man?”

“An amazing one, thank you very much,” Harry retorts, adding, “We’ve just never had a chance to come here.”

The real reason Harry has never brought Y/N here before is that eating in public triggers her anxiety. She tried apologizing to him once for her anxiety preventing them from being a “normal” couple who goes on “normal” dates at restaurants, but he refused to let her apologize for something that’s out of her control. And anyway, they don’t need to go out to fancy restaurants to have fun. As long as he’s with her, he’ll have fun no matter where they are.

“Well, Y/N,” says Jeff, “I can assure you this place serves the best food in all of Los Angeles. I would even go as far as saying all of America.”

“Okay, don’t oversell it now,” Glenne intervenes. “You’re going to set her expectations way too high and she’ll be disappointed.”

“Impossible,” he states confidently.

Glenne rolls her eyes and turns to Y/N. “He’s obsessed with this place, in case you couldn’t tell. Brought me here for our first three dates. Not one, not two”—she leans forward to emphasize—“but three.”

“Oh, you loved it.” When she doesn’t refute his statement, a victorious grin spreads across his face.

Y/N seems enamoured with their exchange. “How did you guys meet?” she asks.

They launch into a story about their very first interaction and how that cascaded into them falling madly in love. A story that Harry has heard a million times now and never gets tired of.

He is a hopeless romantic through and through. He loves love.

Jeff and Glenne have always seemed like the perfect match. In all his years of knowing them and especially on the day he officiated their wedding, Harry often found himself wishing that he could find a love like theirs someday—so pure and everlasting.

Although he and Y/N are still in the early stages of their relationship, having dated for only a few months, something keeps telling him that this might be the love he’s been yearning for all along. And every time he’s with her, that feeling is reinforced.

The waiter—a man of average height with neatly styled blonde hair who introduces himself as Dylan—comes by to deliver their menus and obtain their drink orders. When he leaves, Harry, Jeff, and Glenne begin discussing the menu items, bouncing ideas off each other about what to get and commenting on dishes they’ve previously tried.

Y/N is silent. When Harry looks over at her, she’s staring down at her menu blankly, brows furrowed, teeth nibbling on her bottom lip. The menu items do have strange names, and the brief descriptions accompanying them are not very informative, so he can understand her confusion as a first-timer.

He leans over to her and points at an item on her menu. “I think you’ll like that one.”

She seems relieved to finally have some input on what to order. “Okay, I’ll get that then. But, um...” She glances at Jeff and Glenne, who are immersed in their own conversation about the menu, and drops her voice as she asks, “Do you mind ordering it for me? I’ll probably butcher the name if I try.”

“Sure, no problem.” He straightens up in his seat, then leans back over to her to add, “But just so you know, I’ve butchered plenty of these names before, so you wouldn’t be the first to do it.”

She gives him an appreciative grin.

After some time, Dylan the waiter returns with their drinks and notes down their orders. From the corner of his eye, Harry notices Y/N down a large portion of her cocktail in one go.

Ever since she opened up to him about her struggles with social anxiety, he has been trying to read up on it to understand and support her better. He recalls reading somewhere that people with social anxiety often use alcohol to soothe their nerves before and during social interactions. He has certainly caught Y/N doing that on several occasions. It may not be the healthiest coping mechanism, but he doesn’t judge her for it. He knows from experience what an effective, though temporary, salve alcohol can be for difficult emotions.

“So, Y/N, how did you and H meet?” Glenne asks. “I’ve heard the story from him, but I want to hear your side of it.”

The three of them stare at Y/N expectantly. Her leg is bouncing up and down under the table. Harry places his hand on her thigh, squeezing it gently, reassuringly.

She clears her throat. “We, um, we met in a Zoom meeting.”

“Isn’t that so romantic?” Harry jokes, eliciting a laugh from them.

Y/N seems to relax a bit.

“Wait, hold on,” says Glenne. “Rewind before the Zoom meeting. Harry told me Jeff reached out to you about getting your help with some merch designs?”

“Right, yeah, I’ll start from there,” says Y/N. “Jeff actually reached out to my friend Rosie. She handles all my social media and helps my art gain exposure—all the things I’m not so good at,” she laughs. “So, Rosie called me and said that Harry’s team had reached out to her about my artwork and asked if I would be willing to help design some new exclusive merch for him. I was about to say no at first because well, the thought of my art being seen on such a massive scale was... terrifying. But Rosie convinced me that it would be a great opportunity, so I said yes.”

“Thank God,” Harry mumbles off to the side.

She smiles, continuing, “So, Jeff and Rosie set up a Zoom meeting for the four of us. I was absolutely terrified. Rosie had to do all the talking. I probably said five words the whole time.”

“I remember exactly what she said.” He counts on his fingers as he lists off the only phrases she uttered that day, “She said ‘hi,’ she said ‘thank you’ twice, and she said ‘bye.’”

Glenne chuckles, looking fondly between the two of them.

“The second meeting was much better,” says Y/N. “I actually had to talk since Rosie couldn’t make it. Harry made me feel really comfortable, and I realized he wasn’t scary at all. He also kept reassuring me that I would get credit for my work, as if he thought I was afraid he’d take my designs and run off with them.”

“Yup, classic Harry,” Jeff remarks, nodding along.

Harry’s cheeks grow warm. “Well, I thought that was why you were being so hesitant!” he explains to Y/N. “It’s happened to other people. Didn’t want you to think I was like that. I’m a man of integrity, you know.”

“Oh, I never doubted that, baby.” She places her hand on top of his on her thigh.

“What a sweet story,” says Glenne.

“Who knew people could find love over Zoom?” Jeff jokes.

“Maybe they should change their branding and become a dating website,” Y/N adds facetiously, earning a laugh from all of them.

It delights Harry to see her opening up to his friends. This is the Y/N that he wanted them to see—the funny, opinionated person beneath the shy, reserved exterior. There are so many layers to her, and he finds himself uncovering more and more each day.

Their orders arrive a few minutes later. Everyone except Y/N digs into their food ravenously. She takes several sips of her drink before even touching anything on her plate. On the way there, Harry told her that she could sneak her food onto his plate if her nerves were making it hard to eat.

“You’re just saying that because you like stealing my food,” she said when he suggested that.

“You got me,” he replied with a smirk.

Dinner goes swimmingly. Y/N loosens up more and more as time goes on. He can’t be sure whether it’s the effects of the alcohol—she’s had a few refills of her drink—or the fact that she’s growing comfortable around Jeff and Glenne, but he would like to think it’s mostly the latter.

After they’ve finished eating and paid the bill, Y/N and Glenne take a trip to the restroom while Harry and Jeff wait for them outside the entrance.

“Y/N seems awesome,” says Jeff. “I can’t believe you’ve been hiding her from us this whole time.”

Harry gives him an amused look. “I haven’t been ‘hiding’ her. She’s just shy. Takes her a bit to get comfortable around new people, you know?”

“I get that. Hopefully, she can start coming out with us more often. Seems like she’s going to be around for a while.” He smirks and playfully nudges Harry, who coughs into his fist to cover up the boyish grin on his face.

The door to the restaurant swings open, and out comes Glenne with her arm wrapped around Y/N’s. They’re both laughing about something.

“Someone’s a little tipsy,” says Glenne, as they approach the men. “She almost walked into a wall coming out of the restroom.”

Y/N hiccups. “It came out of nowhere!”

“Good thing I caught her in time.”

“Thanks, Glenne,” says Harry. “I’ll take it from here.” He puts an arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders, pulling her close to him.

“I’m really not that drunk,” she insists, hiccupping again.

“Whatever you say, lovie,” he teases, planting a kiss on the side of her head.

***

Y/N hardly says a word on the ride home. Harry doesn’t think anything of it. He’s still musing over what a wonderful night it was and how happy he is that his friends got along so well with his girlfriend.

When they get home, it’s still pretty early, so they decide to watch a movie on the couch. Y/N lays with her head on his chest, face directed towards the TV. She hasn’t moved or spoken in a while, so he assumes she must have fallen asleep in the middle of the movie, but then she suddenly sits up.

“I’m pretty tired,” she tells him. “I think I’ll head to bed, but you can finish the movie without me.”

“Are you sure?”

She nods and gives him a kiss goodnight before standing up and leaving the room.

The movie is still playing, but Harry can no longer focus. Something about the way Y/N avoided his eyes when she got up and her brisk steps toward the stairs has left him feeling strange. He tries to tell himself that she probably was just tired and eager to crawl into bed, but that explanation doesn’t quite satisfy him.

His gut is urging him to go upstairs and check on her. He waits a few minutes before doing so, quietly climbing the stairs and approaching the bedroom at the end of the hall. The lights are off, but the door is open. He peeks inside and sees Y/N laying there under the covers, wide awake, staring up at the ceiling.

“Lovie?”

She jumps a little at his voice and turns to look at him. “What are you doing here? I said you could finish the movie without me.”

“It’s no fun without you.” He walks in and sits down on the bed next to her, switching on the lamp on the bedside table. “Wanna tell me what’s going on in that pretty head of yours?” He lightly taps her forehead, bringing a small smile to her lips.

“Nothing. It’s stupid.” She closes her eyes and sighs. When she opens them again, there’s a sadness behind them. “I’m sorry, H.”

“For what?”

“For embarrassing you in front of your friends tonight.”

He frowns. “Embarrassing me? Is this about you getting a bit drunk? There’s nothing wrong with that, you know. It’s not like you were climbing on tables and cussing at bystanders. That would have been embarrassing, albeit hilarious.”

“It’s not just that.” She shakes her head. “It was... It was everything. I was trying so hard to act normal, but everything that came out of my mouth just felt awkward, and then there’s the fact that I hardly ate anything and I know Jeff noticed that because he kept glancing over at my plate and I could tell he was wondering why I was acting so strange, and I also feel like I wasn’t contributing to the conversation as much as I should have, but I—I just didn’t know what to say and now I’m worried that they think I’m boring or—or—”

“Y/N, hey.” He places a gentle hand on her chest to halt her rambling. “Take a deep breath for me.”

He feels her chest rise as she inhales deeply, then fall as she exhales slowly.

“Good. Now listen to me. You did not embarrass me, so get that out of your head right now, okay?”

She nods.

“And all those worries floating around in your head? They’re not real, my love. Dinner went really well. You were wonderful. I was having a great time, and I thought you were too, but I might’ve misinterpreted things—”

“You didn’t. I was having a good time. It was only after we left that I started getting in my head about it...” She pouts. “I just really wanted them to like me.”

“They do. I promise they do. You know what Jeff said to me while we were waiting outside for you and Glenne? He said you’re awesome and he hopes you’ll come out with us more often. Now why would he say that if he didn’t like you?”

She shrugs. “Maybe he was just trying to be polite?”

That almost makes him keel over with laughter. “Sweetheart, Jeff and I are way past the point of politeness. If he doesn’t like someone I’m seeing, he does not hesitate to tell me.”

She stares up at the ceiling again, biting on her lip. “Did he really say that?” she asks eventually.

“He did. But in case you don’t believe me, let me show you a text I received from Glenne after we got home.”

He takes his phone out of his pocket and opens up his messages with Glenne. The most recent one says, “Hey, I completely forgot to get Y/N’s number. Would you mind sending it to me? I’d love to plan a shopping trip with her sometime.” He allows Y/N to read it for herself.

She looks at him when she’s done.

“Believe me now?” he asks.

“Yes.” Pulling the covers up over her head, she releases a frustrated groan. “Why am I like this? Why do I get so in my head about these things?”

He lies down next to her and brings the covers back down below her face. “It’s okay. It’s just your mind playing tricks on you, that’s all.”

“How do you even put up with me?”

“The real question is, how do you”—he shifts to get on top of her, his face hovering above hers—“put up with me”—he kisses her lips—“constantly wanting to be around you”—then her neck—“all the bloody time?”

She giggles and squirms at the feeling of his lips leaving sloppy, open-mouthed kisses all along her neck. As he continues showering her with kisses, all the tension seems to evaporate from her body. She melts into the mattress. Determined to help her relax even further, he lifts up the covers from the bottom and ducks under them.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“I’ve heard the best remedy for anxious thoughts is an orgasm.”

He can hear the amusement in her voice as she replies, “Oh, is that right?”

“Mhm.” His hands slide up her thighs, spreading them apart to make room for himself.

“Did you read that on WebMD?”

“Something like that.”

***

Thank you for reading! For more anxious!reader and other fics, check out my MASTERLIST

#harry styles #harry styles one shot #harry styles fluff #harry styles smut #harry styles fic #harry styles oneshot #harry styles blurb #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #anxious!reader #harry styles writing #harry styles fanfic #harry styles imagine #my writing

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wrinkly-fucking-qtip · 1 month

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Mickey vs I Love You

Against popular opinion, I do believe Mickey's "I love you" in 5x06 was the first time he ever said it. Let me explain.

His type of hesitancy with the phrase is not that of fear out of someone listening. No. It seems to me, he noticed Svetlana was in his shared space after he says "I love you" and does a double take when finishing the voice note with "call me back." While I do like to think that he could've said his first "I love you" somewhere within the aftermath of 4x11 and early s5, the only reason I don't think that is because it feels too easy... I think Mickey was too in his head in the aftermath, thinking of how fucked this all turned out. The baptism, the coming out, the brawl, them returning home to wash themselves clean, the sex (implied because they wake up naked together the morning after) it's too much...

Such an admission would be lethal for his brain chemistry at the moment. "I love you" is the peak of vulnerability, where he already is painfully aware of everything he has endured, on top of being completely aware of his feelings to the point of unease, like clothes sticking to your skin. Suddenly you know the shirt there, even though it always has been, just subtly.

I believe that during these times, Ian was probably "comfortable" with saying it. Sparingly. Again, it's too much, it's all too real, and even though Mickey literally sacrificed his life that night, a huge call to action due to the ultimatum, he let fear be his enabler. For saying "I love you," though... it's too close. He can do everything else, a man of action as he always is, and saying things like "what you and I have makes me free" which, you could argue is MORE of a big deal, Mickey chooses very specific words, and they all mean too much coming from someone like him with such awful background, and that's where his comfort lies. Letting Ian know about his feelings through actions, not the words. And knowing how much Ian loves to use them, words, he knows the weight behind them. It's still too much and he feels it.

Not long after, Ian's depressive episode is in full effect. How could he ever find the chance to say those words? Ian is practically paralyzed, and the events from the night before are still fresh, and now he has to process this entirely new thing? Too much yet again. I said earlier how Ian would say "I love you," but very sparingly. I like to think the first time he said this to him, maybe early s4-s5 transition, once the depressive episode cessed, Mickey had the same silent reaction Lip did when Mandy said it to him, but for entirely different reasons. It's like his entire world became this miniscule thing within the pools of his heart, and Ian could read his expression instantly. It wasn't a silence of rejection, he was almost in awe.

And some sick part of me wants to think if he gets scared because he knows there's been strange behavior on Ian's end, that of course, he doesn't understand to its capacity, and maybe Ian says this as a result of that, or if he does know Ian wholeheartedly means it, he loves this boy, as much as Mickey loves him, but still unable to vocalize it. Would he be able to discern between the two?

"You don't have to say it back" spoken in a whisper. Mickey still lost in Ian's eyes. They probably hold each other. Ian acknowledged this dazed boy before him. He knew what the words meant. Jumping back to the "you love me, and you're gay," he was done imposing his feelings onto Mickey, done projecting (not forever, but for a while). Mickey can do this on his own terms, when he feels he can, when he deems it ok to feel it all at once, recognize that everything is, in fact, all too real. And the moment came, although bittersweet.

Cause Ian wasn't there face to face to hear it, he left, and he was manic, the possibility of loosing him due to some negligence suddenly being too real. Familiar even. Things that became too much all of a sudden. So why now? Because the stakes are somehow higher this time. The fear of the unknown is higher. Mickey is dealing with a version of Ian he can barely recognize. When in 4x11, he already knew what he could lose, and his odds against Terry, he already knew what he was going to deal with, as much fear that overcame him, he knew. This? This he does not know.

And I'm thinking about the fact that so much has happened now, this slow, gradual observation of Ian losing himself, Mickey might think that it's now or never. Maybe an "I love you" is enough to snap Ian out of it? Saying it because he has no clue of Ian's whereabouts, and with extreme thinking, that he probably may not see him again for some time, the same way 3x12 happened. And it's like the words come out like a punch to the gut even though his brain doesn't know those words came out. Just look at his face. That's a legitimate face of hesitancy of admission. (courtesy of ajcrowleys)

Everything became too real again, and this one big word couldn't be held back any longer. He hears himself say it, finally admitting what he knew was true all along, just like a shirt. But who knows if Ian heard the voice mail. I think yes, at some point... maybe... but it breaks my heart.

I'd definitely would like to know other opinions, I have so much to say about Mickey's "I love you's."

#Mickey Milkovich s5 #mickey milkovich #shameless #shameless us #ian gallagher #gallavich #shameless tv #ian and mickey #gallavich meta #shameless meta #5.06

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hedgehog-moss · 1 year

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Bird update: Unfortunately I’ve had to say goodbye to my rooster. I quite liked him but if you’ll remember, he was here on probation and after a few weeks of good behaviour he started pestering my hen a lot. She started looking a bit unhappy (huddling under the outdoor table instead of trotting about), then she stopped laying and I thought perhaps she was moulting and it could explain her moodiness and missing feathers, but the pattern of missing feathers seemed to point to the rooster as a culprit. Then he hurt her wing, allegedly (I have no proof so I’m protecting myself from a libel claim.)

On nice days Dru likes to sit and soak up the sun, stretching her wings one at a time, and on a couple of occasions I saw her stretch only her left wing, never opening her right one. I poked her wing gently and she didn’t bite my hand off which was a good sign, but then I picked her up and placed her on a chair, expecting her to jump off straight away like “I never asked you to put me here, mind your own business”—and indeed she jumped but she only flapped her left wing to slow her fall.

I called the vet to ask if it meant the other wing was broken and what I could do, and she was pretty reassuring, saying if the wing was held closed in the right position it would heal on its own—if it were dangling on the other hand I would need to find a little toddler’s t-shirt for my hen to wear, to keep her wing against her body. The vet also said what vets always say—“as long as the animal is eating normally it’s probably going to be fine!” (and that’s the case)

But I couldn’t keep the rooster any longer—even if he weren’t the one who hurt Dru (innocent until proven guilty) it wouldn’t help the healing process if he kept trying to mount her, so I put him in a box and took him back to his natal farm. They weren’t terribly happy to see him again, but well. I wanted to give him a chance but the circumstances (with only one hen) weren’t auspicious and I sort of expected this experiment to fail. Best of luck, rooster...

A couple of days after his departure, Dru lay an egg again for the first time since mid-February, so I think the message was pretty clear!

Also, that’s a tall bale of hay (from a chicken’s perspective) so I’m not sure how she managed to climb on top of it without boosting herself with her wings. Did she fake a wing injury to get the rooster ousted? Pampe would fake a wing injury without hesitation but chickens strike me as honest. I mean they're unrepentant food thieves but they’re upfront about it.

Final bird update: on Friday I managed to get a new hen! I hope having a new coopmate won’t put Dru in a bad mood again and cause another egg strike. The new hen is very young and still looks like a gangly teenager, and she seems quite vivacious and curious, here she is determinedly strolling into her new home:

One notable fact about her is that she doesn’t speak chicken. She doesn’t kot kot like an adult hen, and she doesn’t make the incoherent gurgling sound that baby hens make, either. It’s more like a dissonant quack. I’m not sure what to attribute it to—maybe she was raised near ducks and picked up a foreign language? I might have to call her Daisy if she keeps this up. I tried to record her but she’s pretty scared of me for the time being so she’s all shy and quiet when I’m nearby...

Dru isn’t amused by any of this. New hen tries to follow her and chat with her and gets snubbed a lot. Well, I did hear Dru cluck amicably the first evening when I brought the new hen in the coop, but she didn’t get an answer, there’s a real language barrier here. I hope the new hen learns French soon because right now Dru just keeps running away from her!

Poor Dru, she lost her good friend and then had to deal with a dude who woke her up every day at dawn crowing as loudly as possible, and now a new roommate who speaks duck. It’s only been two days though; I’m sure they’ll get along eventually!

#crawling along #initially this was going to be a 1-paragraph post about the rooster and the new girl but it's hard to be succinct when it comes to chickens #there's so much coop drama to talk about every time #as you can see from the pic dru still runs around and is generally energetic and behaving normally so if #the wing really is hurt it doesn’t seem to bother her too much #i'm still not excluding the possibility of a clever ploy to get the rooster evicted

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hitlikehammers · 4 months

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Starring Steve Harrington in a Leading Role as 'Mom Husband Disappointed in YOU PERSONALLY'

rating: teen tags: future fic, established relationship, Eddie commits a capital offense, bitchy Steve strikes again, Eddie loves him so much, married steddie, rockstar husbands ✨for @hbyrde36 at my BIRTHDAY MONTH PROMPT FEST for the prompt: “I assume I deserve this, but can you tell me why you want to kill me this time?”

One look is all it really takes.

As in: Eddie doesn’t have to do more than pulls his key from the lock, kick the door closed behind him, open his mouth to spill his usual litany of adorations, multiple at least tenfold for the uncommon days—plural, two whole days—spent apart from his husband, from his beloved, from less his other half and more his entire whole, the soul and breath of him, the rhythm-maker of his heart entire, his—

Eddie gets so far as turning to start on spilling all the love he’s had to bottle up because Steve wasn’t next to him for a whole 63 hours, and voicemails are fine, phone calls are nice, texts are a gift from god but also the bane of his existence because they’re starting to pretend—as in, the wider-world-of-they—but they’re starting to pretend they’re sufficient, that they’re enough and, and…

Fucking never.

But Eddie’s been gone—label negotiations, shit they were digging their heels on being in person for no goddamn reason, as proven by the actual days in person—and now, as he takes in his husband at the island, sat on one of the bar stools, those legs danged low and crossed at the ankles, the fucking socks on him tantalizing, good goddamn, but he’s leans back from the waist and those…those arms. Crossed over his chest.

That’s never meant anything other than judgement. Than what the kids used to term Mom’s disappointed in you personally.

Except Steve is his partner. His til-death-do-us-part-and-then-some. And…

Oh. Oh, he’s got his glasses on when he’s not working—Eddie scans the countertop for papers, nothing obvious—which only enhances the effect of the look; gives it a whole new dimension of accusation as he looks over the tops of the frames and lets his gaze fucking…just sear into Eddie. Uncompromising. No mercy.

Eddie will not try to pretend his doesn’t fucking gulp, the violent motion of his throat around it undoubtedly obvious: but Steve doesn’t budge. Doesn’t grant him quarter.

Fuck. Right. Okay.

Diffusion tactics.

“I assume I deserve this,” Eddie starts, pitches the words to land gentle because, well, they’re honest. Steve’s a fucking drama queen, absolutely: but it’s never been without his reasons, and Eddie loves him with his everything, right, so he respects his reasons.

Even when they’re fucking absurd.

But there’s no evidence here yet either way, about the what, about the cause of the sheer fucking inferno blazing in those eyes, the venom that Eddie can almost taste in the air that seeps from his lips for just breathing, that could probably land a death blow on its own when he actually deigns to speak, and so: yeah.

Eddie does assume he deserves it, one way or another. Because Steve loves him with his everything, too, like for like and then some, both ways and all ways. So he doesn’t react quite like this; doesn’t pull this sort of shit lightly.

“But” and he’s still picking his way through the minefield, takes only the barest step closer palms open near his hips, plaintive-like as he…yeah, kinda he pleads:

“Can you tell me why you want to kill me this time?”

Steve—okay, so, in any other circumstance: the sounds Steve makes, the guttural fucking growl that rumbles from his chest: that’d be hot as shit.

In fact it’s still hot as shit, but: not the time. Because those eyes are still…like, third-degree-burn to the touch.

“You lied.”

Eddie blinks, because…he hears Steve’s words. They’re very simple, and very clear.

But they’re nonsensical.

“What?”

“You lied to me.” And then Steve’s grabbing something behind him, flinging it closer to where Eddie stands at the end of the island and oh, okay, a magazine and—

Oh. Oh.

Okay.

A magazine with Eddie on the front with some…

Wait.

“Stevie,” and Eddie’s not gonna be placating, he’s not going to be evasive or dismissive—Steve knows the other party hanging off Eddie in the photo, it’s Lance, the band’s media intern who has a not-so-secret infatuation with Steve of all people, and is about to be replace by a kid, Marvin maybe, in his senior year in PR and media studies who, honestly, Eddie suspects may have an even bigger infatuation with his husband, but that’s not a concern for right now; the concern for right now is that Steve’s looking at Eddie, glancing every half-second toward the photo again and looking…somewhere between enraged and betrayed.

And it’s so fucking sour in Eddie’s chest, god: he needs to fix it. He’s just, he’s got to fic it but—

He doesn’t know what the hell it even is.

“Baby, I would never, not ever lie to you. And you know Lance,” Eddie tries to point out soothing, rational, no hint of patronizing because he wouldn’t, he would never, especially not like this.

Steve’s scowl just depends, and he taps hard enough on the page to leave an indent, to score a line with his nail.

Right. Okay.

“Stevie—“

“You,” and Steve leans toward the far side, grabs something out of view before he points the something at Eddie almost threateningly:

“Lied.”

“Steve,” and Eddie’s eyeing the instrument leveled at him carefully before he notes what it actually is: a pen.

A red pen and oh. His Stevie. Always the consummate educator.

And Steve does the growling thing again, probably because Eddie’s face goes lax, all soft and shit in the face of Steve being all competent in his profession in the small, sweet ways that pop up all the time, that Eddie loves so deep, so hard, but then Steve’s scribbling and oh, it’s one of the fancy pens, more like a marker that’s bright against the magazine gloss and he’s circling, he’s making arrows, there’s no rhyme or reason—

“Lies!” Steve declares, definitive as he throws down the pen and shoves the marked-up photo toward Eddie so it’s skids across the island, so Eddie has to catch it, and he squint a second, tries to make sense of what’s circled over and again and—

“You fucking promised me,” and Steve…yeah.

Steve sounds like Mom’s disappointed in him personally to a fucking T.

But so much worse again: because this is his husband.

“I did—“

“No!” Steve cuts him off; “no more bullshit,” and oh, fuck, Eddie knows it’s serious, that word’s got a premium still in their household, and then Steve’s leaning closer pointing forcefully at the image, at the red-ringed offenders:

“That,” Steve snarls; “is fucking frizz, Edward,” and Steve looks up at him, again, some combination of livid and offended on principle; “why did I even bother to pack you the conditioner that you swore to me you’d use—“

“I did, Stevie!” Eddie protests, pleads for leniancy; “I did, I swear, my bag got delayed the first night, it was only that first night that I showered without it,” and fuck, how’d they even get that photo, how the fuck did it get to print and in Steve’s hands even, how—

“You cannot maintain your curl pattern without proper maintenance,” Steve grits through clenched teeth and yes, yes: Eddie knows. He’s learned, and learned again, and learned some more, for…for years.

He kinda loves it. But he’ll never love making his husband sad. So, because he’s skilled on his feet, he tries for a compromise. A Hail-Mary, in sports ball speak—or he thinks that’s the right thing to call it.

“Maybe you can salvage it,” Eddie proposes, damn-near begs, and yeah, yes: he means that wholehearted, too; “maybe we can go upstairs and you can save it?”

And Eddie’s not even trying to make his eyes big, knows Steve’s largely immune unless he chooses not to be, but his eyes are stinging for how wade they’re stretched, and he holds the gaze, stares pitifully at Steve, pleads so hard, and then—

Steve smacks Eddie’s forearm with the rolled-up magazine and makes to leave the room; Eddie just stands, a little frozen, a little bewildered, until—

“Well, get your ass up here,” he hears from the staircase; “you better hope I can work miracles, dipshit, else your photocalls are gonna be stringy and sad all goddamn week.”

And Eddie grins because like: he knows his husband—and the man himself is already kind of a miracle.

So miracle working is kinda his area of expertise.

permanent tag list (comment to be added/removed): @pearynice @hbyrde36 @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson @estrellami-1 @bookworm0690

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dreamii-krybaby · 8 months

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Theory on Nori’s actual personality

Ok but what if it’s revealed that Nori isn’t necessarily malicious or evil or satan’s spawn, like specifically during her time at the labs and camps.

Like yes I know she seems to be enjoying herself after the core collapse thanks to the pictures in EP4 and at the interview shown in EP6 despite Alice going berserk and smashing her own head and Yeva hurting and terrified. Not only her body language but also the fact she is resting her arm on one of the sentinels as if they were mere pets gives her almost disney villian vibes

Because to me she could be somewhat similar to N. She is a beacon of positivy, it may be simply her personality or a developed coping mechanism

It could be that her chill and cool vibes are astonishing. So it’s not that she doesn’t care or anything, she simply isn’t aware of the gravity of the situation or takes things easy.

Plus the fact that the goddam sentinels are so chill around her that even one of them lets Nori put her arm on top of them can maybe be seen as the sentinels not perceiving Nori as a threat, and more as a companion, maybe even as a friend.

Her EP6 appearance may be a red herring or is purposely made so we draw the wrong conclusion.

Bc most of her bad actions where when she was under the influence of the AS:

- Like before the core collapse happened we clearly saw in EP6 that Nori was fully possessed bc of her yellow eyes. And we in the footage you can see drones or even human limbs scattered around her, so all of that was when she was possessed.

- after the core collapse she shows to be quite friendly, it could be that she doesn’t remember a lot after her possession. Unlike Yeva who probably was still processing everything.

Tho tbh I can cut her some slack if she indeed was happy after the humans perished after the core collapse. Since you know, she was experimented and probably witnessed a lot of fucked up shit.

- When Alice mentioned that she left them to die, she also later added she had yellow eyes, again, Nori was possessed at that time. Alice probably didn’t know that the one who probably left them to die was the AS, not Nori

- Now this more of an assumption, but the fact that in Nori’s closet Khan kept boxes and boxes of “happy family memories” it probably meant their relationship was pretty good.

- And things only went south when Nori started to get visions(?). Also she constantly told Khan to build doors against the coming sky demons. Clearly she was trying to protect herself, Uzi and Khan, and probably the rest of the colony (which also included Yeva, which would go against the interpretation that Nori didn’t care much for Yeva). Also remember, it was Khan who wasn’t there for Nori, she needed him, she tried to warn him.

-Its also worth mentioning that Yeva might have not been harmed by Nori during the interview shown at EP6. Bc first there is no sharp object that could potentially be used against Yeva. (Wait now that I think about it, there is a JCJenson pen, and if u remember the pilot, that pen could have actually been used to cause Yeva’s injury but it seems to be lacking oil stains)

And its a higher possibility that Alice could have done it, as it seems she has gone berserk and drew with her own oil on the walls and is clawing at the wall, and maybeee she also used Yeva’s oil to draw.

Also Nori couldn’t have used the AS directly on Yeva due to both having the AS. And a interpretation made by @capnsaltsquid said that Yeva’s eye got damaged by the AS itself, it fucking blew up, due to her body not being very “compatible” with the AS. (Yeva my poor gal :( )

Again I think it all depends on interpretation.

Now does this mean she is a pure holy saint? No. Murder Drones is a show where most ppl aren’t really a saint. Yes..probably not even my gal Yeva. But Nori could be that at the end she wasn’t evil or smth. She could have a similar situation to Cyn.

Now personally would enjoy if she actually started off as antagonist or even villian when she got the AS at the labs and had to unfortunately learn the hard way about the dangers of the AS later. Wouldn’t mind at all if she occasionally showed moments of villainy.

And me being me, how about devil’s advocate?

Maybe she was indeed a son of a bitch at her time at the labs maybe she was happy after the destruction she caused after the core collapse.

What if Nori actually planned to get possessed? What if the AS offered her freedom by getting rid of the humans. Bc the AS drawing below her shown on the EP6 footage surrounded by body remains gives me “summoning the local Eldritch god inside of my body to do silly stuff” vibes

For all we know the AS could have given her a sense of control, power, and superiority and for a lab rat surrounded by robo-raptors and other, more aggressive lab rats, that must have felt amazing.

Also it would be nice to have a villian who fully embraces the AS, even for only a period of time.

Before you say we have Doll, I don’t think so, well partially:

-She immediately feels sorry for Uzi upon learning she also has the AS, and she promised her to help her once she finds what she is looking for.

-She also calls the AS a “sickness” via Tessa’s comment on EP6.

-A lot of ppl and myself included infer that what Doll is looking for is a cure for the AS

-Even if she uses the AS a lot more than Uzi I think Doll is simply taking advantage of it while she has it, its the only ready available tool she has. But I don’t think she necessarily likes having it. Plus Doll has more control over her body over the AS unlike Uzi.

So I would love for Nori at the beginning to embrace the AS, that loves it. Sees it as a blessing rather than a sickness. That feels a rush of control when using it.

Or we could go the more, chill route, she uses it more due to carelessness and ignorance.

And perhaps for her later go “Well maybe I don’t want this thing anymore”

But realistically from what I gathered, I see her someone who is chill, open, easy going, sociable and perhaps, careless.

Tho am begging on my knees for her to be a morally grey sassy lady.

#murder drones #murder drones nori #nori murder drones #nori doorman murder drones #murder drones nori doorman #nori doorman #murder drones theory

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creweemmaeec11 · 2 years

Text

Smoke & Deliveries

It's finally done! I can't remember the last time I was this proud of how a snippet turned out! Please tell me what you think! I'd love to know!

A villain had ordered a pizza. That was a fact civilian was still struggling to wrap their head around as they drove.

Since when do villains order pizzas from small local pizza shops?! Surely they had... people for that? Or something? Especially a villain like Vapour, who would have been upped to supervillain status if only he were meaner and more aggressive.

That so wasn't the point.

The point was he'd ordered a pizza, and civilian had been tasked with delivering it!

Vapour got his name from his ability to control any substance in its gaseous form, along with the ability to sublimate himself into smoke and back on a whim. Because of this, he couldn't be caught despite everyone knowing where he lived. Even if someone managed to get him into handcuffs, he could turn to smoke and poof right out of them.

He was also deadly, considering he could control all gases, including the oxygen your lungs required to function. He could force it to expand inside your chest if he so wanted.

Civilians' hands were so sweaty they were almost starting to lose grip on the steering wheel. They kept swallowing, but the excess saliva never seemed to leave their mouth. This was one of the first deliveries they'd done where they didn't have to look up the directions on their GPS; everyone knew the big mansion on Noles Dr at the top of the hill. It was the only house on the street and was pretty hard to miss. Most people spend their time avoiding the place.

But here they were... driving up to it... late at night.

They weren't getting paid enough for this.

The entire area was fenced in, and the two colossal iron gates at the base of the driveway certainly looked like something out of the Addams family. The comparison was only strengthened when a gust of wind blew the gate open right as they drove up.

They continued up the driveway, hesitantly pulling up to the front of the closed garage.

Okay. Okay. They could do this. Thankfully, the villain had already paid online, which meant they didn't actually have to get close. Screw getting a tip. Maybe... they could put the pizza on the doorstep, ring the bell and then run? That... probably wouldn't get them killed... right?

Shakily, the civilian got out of the car, grabbed the pizza and began walking toward the house. They couldn't postpone it any longer lest they risk the pizza getting cold.

The front door was large but not obnoxiously so. Tall plants sat in large stone pots on either side of it.

Civilian approached cautiously. Right as they were about to set the pizza down, they heard the faint click of the lock on the front door and froze solid. The door swung open, unveiling no one there.

They weren't sure if that was better or worse.

Was this... an invitation inside...?

They continued to stand frozen, staring into the entrance hall; the blood-red carpet runner that ran over white marble floor, illuminated in warm light somehow seemed to mock the blood that felt cold in civilian's veins.

Their grip tightened on the cardboard box.

Suddenly they felt something like a ghostly push on their back, causing them to stumble forward a step. Encouraging, not forceful, but clear enough for the civilian to know it wasn't just the wind.

*Go on, come in*

They swallowed, and with a deep breath, they took a step inside. They felt a little lightheaded.

The hallway they stepped into went straight ahead, stairs to the left and what looked like a kitchen past that. They assumed they were going in that direction, but a gentle breeze blowing past them told them otherwise.

The room immediately to the right seemed to be a lounge of some kind. But when they walked in, the civilian nearly dropped the pizza.

The front half of the room was a lounge, with velvet couches and floor-to-ceiling shelves full of books and trinkets, jewelry and gemstones of all kinds. Halfway through the room, however, the marble floor stepped down into a pool with clear glass walls that stretched outside, hanging over the garden below that sparkled with the blinking lights of fireflies. The full moon beamed through the open wall, shimmering off the water and reflecting prisms through the glass. Twinkling fairy lights hung around the edges of the ceiling.

It was like something out of a fantasy; there were so many things in this room, each fascinating and pretty in its own way.

"Whoa," civilian whispered to themselves, speechless.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" A new smooth and velvety voice mused from right behind them.

The civilian spun around so fast that they nearly slipped on the marble floor.

They turned to meet Vapour, who was standing behind them, hands clasped behind his back, armed with an affable but alluring smile. He wore a luxurious black robe, tied at the waist. It looked so soft.

He was also incredibly attractive and, unfortunately, entirely too much the civilian's type, causing their heart to pick up just that little bit more.

"Oh, gods-" civilian panicked, retreating a step and bumping into the back of one of the couches, "I'm so sorry I wasn't trying to invade your privacy or anything I-"

The villain in front of them cut them off with a laugh that was so much prettier than civilian would have imagined, "Breath shutterbug, as cute as you are, I'm not about to eat you. I won't bite unless asked; I promise," the villain smirked, teasing, but something glinted in his eyes that made civilian's stomach do flips. The promise of danger, like a weapon in a glass case. Yet it had the same seductive pull of a siren call.

Civilian felt their cheeks growing hot. A villain just- did they hear that right?

"I- right- I- uhm," they stumbled, before clumsily jerking the box forward, "Your pizza,"

Vapour chuckled again, "Much appreciated, shutterbug," He took it in his hands in one swift, fluid movement before turning towards the table, robe trailing behind him in a silhouette eerily similar to his signature cape. "stay here a moment while I find your tip," he said, laying a hand on civilian's shoulder in a gentle, reassuring motion as he walked by.

Said shoulder felt like it was on fire from the brief contact. It lingered, the ghostly touch igniting their skin even through the thin fabric of their cheap delivery shirt, which felt so remarkably out of place here that it almost fit in an ironic way.

"O-oh! You don't need to do that! Really it's-" the civilian tried, forcing the words out, but the villain merely waved a dismissive hand toward them.

"Oh, nonsense. I know they don't pay you anywhere near enough," he surmised, "besides, not many people are willing to make the trip all the way out here, a bit outside town and all,"

Sure, as if that was why people wouldn't make the trip.

Still, civilian wasn't about to argue with a supervillain, that's for sure.

"So, what's your favourite kind of pizza?" Vapour asked as he slid the box down onto the table.

Civilian blinked, "I- what?"

Villain sent a disarming yet amused smile over his shoulder as he pulled out his wallet, "I'm trying to encourage you to breath; you look like you're about to faint,"

"Oh, right-"

*Right, right, right. Breath.*

"So, pizza?" Vapour prompted again.

"Meat!" Civilian replied a little too quickly before blushing slightly, "like, I mostly like meat on my pizzas, pepperoni, bacon, beef, sausage. I think meat generally tastes good with cheese. I don't like veggies or fruit on it," they babbled nervously.

The villain's eyes glinted again in that dangerously enticing way, "How fun, we like the same,"

Another blink, startled, "R-really?"

"Mmm," the villain hummed, closing their wallet. Suddenly, smoke swirled up their legs, and just like that, they were gone, with only a dense smoke hovering in their place. Before civilian could even react, the smoke rushed towards them, materializing to reveal Vapour standing with the same charming yet teasing smile and two $50 bills extended in his hand.

That little display made this feel all the more real.

Civilian's breath stuttered, wide eyes flicking between the villain's face and hand. Vapour just stood there patiently, though the growing amusement in his eyes seemed to betray his reassuring smile.

"I-" it was like they'd forgotten how to speak, "are you sure? That's so much-"

"Of course," the villain replied, voice gentle and rumbling, like the warm hum of a gas fireplace. Encompassing in a way akin to the warmth it spread. He extended his hand slightly closer to civilian in emphasis, "Go buy yourself something nice; I'm sure someone as cute as you certainly deserves it,"

The civilian immediately felt their face flush again, but they tentatively reached out to take the money, "Th-thank you,"

"Can you see yourself out?" The villain asked, tilting his head questioningly, in a stupidly charming way that his hair fell just above his sharp eyes, pupils catching the reflected moonlight like the edge of a broken bottle...

The civilian blinked out of their trance, blushing furiously, "yes!" They replied a bit too vehemently, which only caused them to blush, "Yeah, I can see myself out. Uhm, enjoy- uh, enjoy your order..."

Vapour smirked, "I'm sure I will; drive safe shutterbug," he winked before turning back around and making his way towards the sofa.

Civilian took their chance, spinning around on their heels and quickly scurrying out to the hallway and through the front door.

Luckily, that was their last delivery of the night, so they drove straight home after getting into their car. It wasn't until they were through their front door that they finally let the events of the night full hit them.

*That had all happened*

Civilian fell back, leaning against the inside of their front door.

*Vapour called me cute*

They felt their cheeks heating up and couldn't help the way their hands came up to cover their face.

The villain's voice kept echoing in their head, the way they called them shutterbug, with an almost fond teasing in their voice.

Civilian barely slept that night, and it wasn't out of fear.

Part 2

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mx-darling-1 · 1 year

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I don't know if you're taking requests or not but if you are then could I get a wally x g/n reader who nearly passes out of being dehydrated and too hot?

This almost happened to me today (thankfully someone was around)

Please disregard if you find it triggering at all, have a good day

Absolutly! My requests are always open!

This was definitly a bit theraputic for me to write! I've struggled some with stuff thats caused me to be in that situation far more times then I'm proud of. Remember, always drink electrolytes if your going to be out in the heat! I'm no doctor but thats whats always helped me! TW: Dehydration, poor eating/hydration habits, and fainting/blacking out

Wally Darling X Dehydrated GN Reader A Summer Picnic

This was youre first summer in your new neighbor hood, and it was far hotter then anywhere youve ever lived. Usually as long as you wore lighter clothes you were fine in the summer. You often forgot to hydrate and sadly today was no different. You were in a pair of jean shorts and a tank top, something light for your picnic this afternoon. You were honestly excited, your first summer, and first date with Wally Darling. It is going to be absolutly amazing, at least thats what you thought. But, you hadnt eaten all morning so you would have an appetite for lunch. What you forgot to take into account was that you went to bed without dinner the night before simply because you were exaughsted.

Your date with Wally was going amazing y'all had been eating and chatting, a beautiful red blanket drapped across the perfect green grass. Being seated under the sun, you didnt even notice the heat against your skin or the sweat that began to bead off of you. You just happily chatted away with Wally, a bright smile on youre face. The two of you talked about anything and everything, but your vision began to get blurry. "Hey Wally, did we remember drinks?" Wally thinks for a moment before responding to you. "Oh dear, I can't believe I forgot! They are on the counter in Home!" You couldnt help but laugh gently, knowing that Wally meant no harm by this small accident. "Okay, then I'll go get it!" Without a second thought you stood up from the blanket and oh no.

Your vision begain to go black, white balls of lights appearing as your balance began to faulter. You didnt realize you were falling until you awoke in Wallys arms, him desperately fanning your face. "Neighbor! You fell over! Are you okay? Oh dear, we really must get you inside. I'm sure Home wont mind!" Wally stands up, you in his velvety arms. Thats something you dont know if youll ever get used to, he's almost two feet shorter yet can hold you with ease. Though...he eats with his eyes...so you suppose the size difference doesnt mean much here.

You didnt even realize you were at Home, so lost in your thoughts and stuggling to focus. You probably wouldnt have noticed if it werent for Wally speaking up. "Hello Home, please open up. Our dear neighbor fainted outside and I must get them cooled off." Home creaks with concern before opening its doors to let Wally get you inside. After only a few moments you were laying across Wallys couch, your date in the kitchen, although you arent quiet sure what he's up to. In fact, you had no idea until he walked back in. He was holding a damp towel; a bottle of water that seemed to be cold, well you assume so from the condensation; and he had a thermometer.

Wally walks right over to you and places the cold damp towel against your forehead. "Hey, do you know why you fainted like that darling?" Usually you'd be far more flustered from the nickname, but you were far to dizzy and exaughsted to pay that much attention. "Mm...I forgot to drink....I'm sorry Wally...I didn't mean to ruin our date." Wally shakes his head gently, handing you the cold water. "Drink up precious neighbor." You took the water bottle, opening it up and taking a few sips. Only once you took your first swallow did Wally began to talk again.

"You dont need to apologize to me dear. I still loved our date, and your health is more important to me then some picnic." Wally gently moves hair out of your face before placing the thermometor on your forehead. "I'll make sure you drink more from now on. I wouldnt want you to get sick or faint again like this. Especially if no one was there to catch you...oh dear well that would just be no good." The thermometer beeps and Wally checks it, a small sigh of relief leaving him as he puts it down on the stand beside the couch. "How....are you not mad at me?...I ruined our date..."

Wally cant help but shake his head, kissing your forehead before responding. "I would never be mad at you for something like this Darling. I doubt I could ever be angry with you for anything. I love you [Name], thats why I invited you on a date. If your health would make me upset with you, would I really love you?" You couldnt help but smile, leaning into Wally as he places a hand on your cheek. "Thank you Wally..." Wally strokes your cheek with his thumb, looking down at you adoringly. "Dont thank me dear neighbor, caring for you is a pleasure to me. Not a favor I'm doing, but something I do because I want to. Becuase I love you [Name], I truly do."

I hope you liked this chapter! I definitely enjoy writing Wally fluff, so I'm probably just going to keep requests open at all time! That way I can work on stories whenever! This request was really nice, but please make sure to take care of yourself!

#oneshots #wally darling #wally darling x reader #welcome home #dehydrated reader #caring wally darling #Wally Darling fluff #wally darling fanfic #omg i want wally to comfort me like that

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matan4il · 4 months

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I admit I’m kinda suspicious hearing that the IDF investigated itself and found no wrongdoing

Maybe I’m just jaded given how often that happens with us military and cops

I usually try to answer by the order I get the asks, but I am guessing you are referring to this IDF investigation, and I think that is important enough to address it right away, as a completion for that daily update.

Anon, IDK if I'll surprise you, but I actually get where you're coming from. It does sound weird for anyone to investigate themselves. I should know, I def am very suspicious of the UN investigating themselves when it comes to UNRWA.

That said, there are a few reasons why I have more faith in an IDF investigation in this specific context.

For one thing, there's a difference between when an organization investigates a specific incident, versus when it is looking at something much more systematic. It's easier for a system to put together a team within it, with independent authority to investigate another part, focus on "a few rotten apples," than if it has to admit that the whole system is rotten, and cut off its own heads, or even worse, admit that the system has no right to exist (*cough* UNRWA).

In that respect, when the IDF has to be checked on how it failed to prevent the Hamas massacre on Oct 7, it is NOT going to investigate itself. It is already conducting an investigative procedure to look into where the issues were, in order to learn from them, but this is done in addition, NOT instead of, an external investigation, with the actual power to recommend for people to pay personal prices for what happened. Which is as it should be. IDK that I would trust it any other way, as much as I do think that quite a few of the heads of the army and security forces are decent people, who have already taken responsibility for the failure to protect Israeli citizens, and will probably resign at the end of the war, regardless of what the investigation will say about them.

In contrast, UNRWA has stopped having a right to exist decades ago. No other UN agency has a similar decades long mandate. A similar UN agency meant to help South Korea following the 1945 partition of Korea into two (UNKRA) operated from 1950 to 1958, and then it was disbanded. As it should be. UNKRA certainly didn't continue operating in North Korea for decades, with an overwhelming majority of its staff being North Koreans, and intertwining it to an inseparable degree with the North Korean dictatorial regime, which is who this agency would have had to cooperate with, in order to continue working in NK. That's the equivalent of what UNRWA has become, so it has to go. It is complicit in employing terrorists, as well as indoctrinating Palestinians to be antisemitic and terrorists. And the UN has KNOWN and HAS ALLOWED THIS TO GO ON FOR YEARS. And that means that, beyond how antisemitic the UN inherently is (especially so long as it gives antisemitic and dictatorial regimes an equal vote), this organization also HAS to delegitimize Israel, because that's the country exposing the UN for its complicity. THIS goes all the way to the top. That's why the UN investigating itself is beyond questionable to me.

Back to the IDF. It's also in its own interest to justly investigate such specific incidents. Soldiers who defied orders are an issue for any army, especially if they show other soldiers they can do the same. Soldiers who defied orders and intentionally killed uninvolved civilians, causing their army and their state real damage (and in this, Israel is inspected in a way no other army and country are), are a danger for everyone. They can get every IDF soldier arrested for a sin only a few people had committed, which is why it is in the interest of almost everyone in the system, to make sure there is a clear distinction between such people, and the rest of the soldiers, who do follow the ethical code of the IDF. In fact, Israel's own legal system stopped an attempt to undermine the possibility of the IDF prosecuting its soldiers.

Lastly, there's past experience. If the record had shown that the IDF always absolves its soldiers, never prosecuting them for breaking orders, then I would be way more suspicious of its investigations. I think the most telling recent example is actually the accidental killing of the three Israeli hostages in Gaza by the IDF. There was no one at the scene other than the soldiers. They were in a war zone, no journalists around, in the middle of the battle chaos, if they had wanted to bury this and claim that Hamas terrorists were the ones who killed the hostages, or that the hostages were killed during an exchange of fire with Hamas terrorists, we'd probably never know the truth. But those soldiers reported what happened. And the IDF passed the truth along to the families, as hard and painful as that must have been, and to the public, whose faith in the army has already been shaken by the failure to prevent Oct 7. That tells me something about the army and the people leading it.

Does that guarantee that everything will always be transparent? No. But I am more inclined to trust an army willing to freely admit its own fuck ups, than the anti-Israel crowd, who will forever call anything the IDF does "a massacre," whether it qualifies or not, and who can't even accept it when foreign countries and independent investigators look into anti-Israel accusations and find Israel in the right, such as in the case of the al-Ahli hospital, where it was determined by multiple external investigations that the one conducted by the IDF was right, and the rocket that landed there was fired by Palestinian terrorists from Gaza, accidentally fell in the parking lot, and didn't kill anywhere near the 500 fatalities figure that Hamas is still claiming to this day.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #antisemitism #israeli #israel news #anon ask #israel under fire #terrorism #anti terrorism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish #ask #unrwa #un

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 6 months

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GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Wednesday declined to say slavery was a cause of the Civil War, arguing instead that it came down to “the role of government.”

At a New Hampshire town hall, a voter bluntly asked Haley, “What was the cause of the Civil War?”

Haley, the former South Carolina Governor and former U.N. ambassador who is aiming to present herself as the top Republican alternative to former President Donald Trump, gave a lengthy answer but did not mention slavery — the primary cause of the war.

“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run — the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” Haley said at the beginning of her response.

She went on to say: “I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people.”

“Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom,” she said.

“We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.”

After the voter responded by saying he found it “astonishing” that Haley had not used the word “slavery” at any point in her answer, she asked, “What do you want me to say about slavery?”

Haley then moved on to the next question.

The exchange drew a swift response from Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison. “This isn’t hard: condemning slavery is the baseline for anyone who wants to be President of the United States,” he said in a statement.

President Joe Biden also responded with a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying, "It was about slavery."

Haley’s campaign responded by citing remarks she made addressing the issue during a New Hampshire interview Thursday morning.

“Yes, we know the civil war was about slavery,” Haley said in the interview. “But more than that, what’s the lesson in all this? That freedom matters. And individual rights and liberties matter for all people. That’s the blessing of America. That was a stain on America when we had slavery. But what we want is never relive it. Never let anyone take those freedoms away again.”

The response to Haley’s town hall comments follows similar criticism that a GOP rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, faced over his remarks about state standards that teach about the “personal benefit” Black people derived from slavery.

DeSantis was asked in July about the Florida Board of Education’s wording in its guidance for teaching about slavery and said, “I didn’t do it, and I wasn’t involved in it.” He went on to say, “I think what they’re doing is, I think that they’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into, into doing things later in life,” referring to enslaved people.

Haley was Governor when South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from its Capitol following the 2015 shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. She has previously talked about how the shooting was the most difficult time for her emotionally as Governor.

#us politics #news #republicans #gop #2023 #nikki haley #american civil war #slavery #2024 gop primary #new hampshire #Jaime Harrison #president joe biden #gov. ron DeSantis

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syn4k · 1 year

Text

oh ok this is going to be an entire essay. Oh fuck. Okay yall buckle up i have a lot of thoughts on this topic let's go

Inventory Headcanons in the MCYT Universe, specifically relating to Fanworks and Common Interperetations of the Minecraft Inventory in art and writing

+ my personal ideas for how it works because yippee autism

Part 1: How the Minecraft Inventory Works Inside the Game

Okay, starting off simple here. If you are reading this, then you probably know how the Minecraft inventory system works. I do not care. I am covering all of the bases here.

This is a screenshot of the Minecraft inventory! (I am aware that it was taken before the update that added the offhand slot, but bear with me here.)

All of the slots that are shown here except for the armor slots can hold any 64 items or blocks, with exceptions for containers of liquids, tools, armor, and weapons (nonstackable). Exceptions are also made for snowballs, eyes of ender, ender pearls, and buckets, which stack up to 16. The crafting grid can contain any 64 items as well, but these don't stay in place after you exit the inventory screen.

All of these slots are carried physically on the player itself, which has caused a LOT of discussion amongst the Minecraft community on how the fuck this 6-foot-tall square man is able to hold uhhhh [checks notes] 4 billion pounds of gold. Damn.

The answer, naturally, is that this is a very simplistic video game not meant to be realistic at all (it's cubes, goddamnit) and Steve can just do that. Moving on.

For the purposes of this essay, we are going to be completely ignoring the physical feats of this inventory and focus specifically on the mechanics of it.

1a: The Boring Stuff (Mechanics of How it Actually Works)

The inventory can be accessed by pressing a button on your keyboard, Switch joycon, phone, Samsung Smart Fridge, VR controller, or whatever the fuck you guys are playing Minecraft on these days. Here's a list of the default settings used to open the Minecraft inventory.

PC or anything with a keyboard: E

Xbox 360, Xbox One controller: Y

PlayStation 3, 4, and Vita controllers: The green triangle

Nintendo Switch and Wii U (wait WHAT): X

Mobile Devices: The … on the right hand side of the hotbar

Items go into the hotbar first when picked up and into the top-right corner of the inventory first if the inventory is empty and the hotbar is full.

You can close the inventory by pressing more buttons on the keyboard which I won't include here. Just look it up.

1b: Shulker Boxes and +NBT Chests

The shulker box is a placeable item in game that is obtained by visiting the End. It has 27 item slots, which is 9 less than the full player inventory, and unlike chests and barrels it does not drop all of its contents onto the floor upon being broken. You cannot access the contents of shulker boxes while they are inside of your inventory.

If you placed 27 stacks of gold blocks into 36 shulker boxes and placed all of those inside of your inventory, that would be a fuck ton of gold in there. This is a well-known fact.

Also in Creative mode you can middle-click a filled chest and get the entire chest plus its contents right in your inventory which will be there which I wanted to mention. Oh right. Creative mode. I should pr

1c: The Creative Mode Inventory

You can access the entirety of the game's materials in Creative mode except for a select few of them, which players have naturally figured out how to get anyways.

1d: INFORGOT TO MENTION THIS BUT YOU CAN MAKE ACTUAL MODIFICATIONS TO THE IN-GAME INVENTORY.

With resource and data packs, you can change the color and opacity of your inventory. You can also hover over shulker boxes to view their contents without having to actually place them on the ground and open them.

Modifications to the game (colloquially shortened to "mods") can also increase the inventory size. I will not be focusing on these because the possibilities are literally endless here and I am tired.

Part 2: A Slightly Unhinged Analysis on Fanworks and Fanart on General that I have Pulled Straight Out my Ass.

Okay. So we have an inventory. How the hell does this translate to fanart, fanfiction, etc?

For the answer to this, we are going to have to take a look at how people actually take the universe of Minecraft and translate it to a semi-realistic or realistic style. You thought it was going to be a straightforward post about interperetations of inventory in Minecraft but it was me, Dio! I should really turn this post into a video essay.

2a: Canon Compliance, Canon Complicity, and This Is Only Technically Minecraft but I Have To Add It Here Anyways for the Sake Of My Autism

Generally in fanworks, there is a scale on how strict the work keeps to the actual canon interperetation of the universe. This also applies to the stories being told within the universe but don't worry about it I'm not poking that lion today.

The points I have labeled on the scale (really oversimplified) are:

Type 1 (Hold very strict to the game mechanics and how the inventory works within the game.)

Type 2 (Still within the universe of Minecraft, or in a setting that at least resembles Minecraft, but with some creative liberties taken with how game mechanics and inventories work- sometimes completely ignoring them for the sake of whatever the creator chooses.)

Type 3 (Not even in Minecraft at all. I'm only including this here for the amount of characters from roleplays that are placed in other video game settings or just fuckin' into real life.)

I think those explain themselves and if they don't then I have failed as a writer.

Part 3: The Part People Actually Clicked On The Readmore For (Types of Inventory Descriptions and Depictions in Fanworks)

3a: Text-Based Works (Fanfiction and Meta-Posting)

Generally in Minecraft-based or Minecraft-adjacent settings (type 1 and 2 works), authors either do not mention the inventory at all, bring it up in passing but do not explain how it works, forego the inventory entirely in favor of real-world storage solutions like pockets, bags, and boxes (almost entirely restricted to Type 2 works), or come up with creative in-universe ways to explain the inventory, some of which use the Minecraft enchantment system.

Authors who do not mention the inventory or mention it but don't explain how it works in the universe can't really be expanded on due to its meaning meant to be interpreted by the reader.

Of the authors who do elaborate on their inventory systems, there are a couple ways I have seen this done:

Real-world solutions (pockets, bags, etc), sometimes used in conjunction with fantasy solutions.

Edited real-world solutions, such as infinite pockets or small bags always on the player's person.

Sigils, magical objects, enchantments, and things of that sort that allow the player to access their inventory via gestures or tactile movements. This also includes the use of holographic displays and in-game commands.

Straight-up summoning or storing the relevant items at will.

This gets an honorable mention because it's fucking hilarious but there was this one tumblr post like "the player says e and teleports into a pure white room"

I KNOW there's more out there but these are the examples I've seen around Tumblr and ao3.

3b: Visuals-Based Works (Fanart, including comics, animatics, and posters)

Most visual interperetations of the Minecraft inventory are type 1 or just use the "real-world solutions" option. You don't see a lot of these in the wild in my experience, but from the things I've seen, some popular visualizations of the Minecraft inventory include:

Holograms and command screens, often used in conjunction with the in-game chat as a multitool

Straight-up summoning at will

Backpacks! People draw them to look SO COOL on a character-by character basis.

all of these designs fucking slap so hard by the way i dont make the rules. mcyt artists are out here doing the work of renaissance painters for zero dollars and next to zero credit

3c: Other Forms of Media (Live-Action Adaptions and Plays, I Guess?)

I have ZERO idea how someone would translate the Minecraft inventory to a real-life setting but I assume the result would be a Type 3 real-world solution, due to real life not having magic and also not being in the Minecraft universe.

If anyone ever figures out how to carry 162 million pounds of gold on their person without instantly eating shit and dying, firstly I respect and fear you secondly hit me up my back fucking sucks and I have too many books in my backpack at any given time.

3d: Customization Within Universes and Cross-World Universal Items

Many artists in the MCYT fandom, whether their wheelhouse be writing or visual art, have been in several subsections of the fandom or are actively in several at once. Due to the overlap in creator circles and the fact that Minecraft is over ten years old at this point, this is quite normal and the same creator behind a character may be on several different servers or have several different characters currently being played at the same time.

Due to this, many artists and writers have developed different designs for several iterations of the same character, for lack of a better way to explain it. This can be expressed in clothing changes, nonhuman characteristics, and, a common one that popped up alongside the rise of the DSMP, universal communicators.

Communicators are not in the game as a physical object. Rather, they are an entire fan-made concept that allows the characters to chat universally across a server they're in, no matter how far away. (Hermitcraft is an interesting case here. I'm looking at you, Solar. I saw that radio range comment in DATD.)

Since inventories do not share their contents across multiple worlds, the same is also true for most fanworks including them. Nevertheless, there are some exclusions and more permanent items on some characters, varying between artist and character. Some of these include:

Emotionally significant items (i.e ones that remind them of friends, family, lovers, etc)

Little trinkets hung from belts or keychains

Items that aren't really affixed to the character but are either shown in the character's Minecraft skin or are prominent in fanon (i.e, Slimecicle's glasses, Xisuma's helmet having admin-y properties, Pixlriffs' Empires SMP Season 2's character having glasses and sometimes a knee brace)

These items and how they may apply across some servers but not all could be an entire post of their own. Fanon is huge and I'd love to document that but that is Not the point of this essay. Maybe later.

On the subject of different designs for different characters, I'd like to bring up:

Sort of relevant to section 3d: different inventories depending on characters

Basically, some characters could have bags. Some have holograms. Some have magical tattoos or sigils that let them access it. Some defy all known laws of God or man and do some crazy shit with their inventories just because they can. It all depends on the artist or author's preferences, baby!

This often is related to headcanons and character designs. It can also vary for server, universe, etc.

Which NOW brings me to,

Section 4: Thoughts? You have thoughts on this? Share your thoughts maybe?

yeah i have no consistent anything for anything. really it just depends on the setting and what i'm in the mood for.

for example, in our Type Two fics like Ashes AU and Twice, generally the characters use real-world solutions with modifications (enchanted bags, etc). But for quicker oneshots and crackfics, we tend to elaborate on inventory space and let the game mechanics do all the work.

The Summary:

Fandom is huge and theres so much layers to this shit its legitimately unreal. I could write an entire thesis paper on the MCYTblr side of things alone and I might just do that when I hit college, if I ever do. For now, though, I'm just gonna sit here wondering why the fuck I dedicated an entire section to how the minecraft inventory works like what the fuck dude. why did i do that.

thanks for reading. i write words. follow perhaps if you would like to see more?

#mcyt #mcytblr #minecraft #ray's tag #i aint tagging all the mcytblr subfandoms. if people like this essay then they'll reblog it #this one is a doozy #essay #fandom meta #fandom #writing

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fortunatetragedy · 24 days

Text

did somebody say "cutting entire passages is a fun thing to do"?

I don't know if anyone actually said this, but here I am. Cutting 1100 words out of a WIP. Again. Because I was merrily reading over what I wrote yesterday and then found an entire passage that is complete dogshit.

Here are the reasons why it is dogshit:

Marisa, Cayden, and Luz are Not the Protagonist.

It gives Thiago and Dr. Horta more detail--we're about to leave them. Any details I haven't given already, who gives a shit.

Frames what Khalid does in "Among the Elements" as an event in the characters' awareness, which see the above point.

"AtE" is getting retconned so all I see this accomplishing is reminding anyone who hasn't read it of its existence.

They spend so much time arguing about what Khalid is or isn't they accidentally told me what Khalid's ultimate end-of-his-life fate is, which is not something that needs to be thrown at the reader at the end of Part 1. That sounds more like a revelation for Neil to have, and no one has met Neil yet.

So the only good thing that happened for me is I realized "No one knows how Khalid's life ends because it literally doesn't, he Ascends."

That sounds like a spoiler, but it isn't. I don't intend to stay with Khalid until he Ascends, I intend to stay with Khalid until he fixes a problem his actions caused in Part 3. Nobody gives a shit if he Ascends. He's 15 right here and we have so much shit to get through between 18-35 orz.

SIDEBAR: If you've played BG3--I'm vaguely aware the vampire party member wants to Ascend--in World of Darkness, Ascension is an event that almost never happens in-character, so there are no game rules that I can find in Revised. It's probably in Masters of the Arts, so I might read that again later for more information to dump on you nerds. Most characters will never reach Arete 5, let alone Arete 10. These characters have been Arete 3 for years at this point, and are all in their 20s. There's a bit of a law of diminishing returns with certain means of acquiring XP, at a certain point a Mage has to buckle down and commit themselves to learning, which Khalid has been doing his entire life but these dorks haven't. Off the top of my head explain: it's the ultimate expression of Awakening. I'm 99% sure it means the Mage becomes one with their Avatar and stops having a physical body. I'll get back to you, as the idea of Ascension being tied in with Khalid's absence of a Destiny and no Seer being able to ascertain how he dies is interesting to me and I need to explore it more. Unlike the vampire in BG3, a character's Ascension is only a huge world-ending problem if they're a Nephandus. In which case it's called Descension. That's... you don't want that either.

Anyway I need to put this somewhere because IDK what I'm going to do with it. Probably keep it in my "you fucked up" folder to count at the end of the year and ignore the fact it exists until then.

In the meantime, please to enjoy ~3 pages of The Research Team Learning Things in between assignments.

From time to time, Cayden and Luz and Marisa would meet up to read each others' futures. They would choose from among the possible ones, the ones they could see. Luz had the most, and Cayden only had a few. He never wanted to watch as far as they could, even though he had the option of knowing exactly how he might die.

In the beginning of their relationship, when Luz was still learning to manipulate her own perception of Time, they would read each others' pasts. It was fun to practice with no clothes on. To get Cayden to come out of his shell, a little at a time. He was cute even when he was sad.

Luz had come so close to passing her Seeking. She was still a Disciple of Time. That was fine with her. All it meant was she could not yet direct the flow of Time. She could only alter her own position in it, and sense others'.

For giggles, they had read Thiago's and Cory's and Khalid's, the last time they were together. They had had a bit to drink, and were, perhaps, feeling guilt, or nostalgia, or hope. Definitely felt a bit of guilt, doing it without any of them present. She just wanted to see if she could do it, and for how long.

Five years, they could track people who weren't present, whose fates were unpredictable.

Thiago was the most predictable of the three. He was going to become instrumental in keeping the Midwest out of Technocratic control. Not that they were vying for it--but he would make sure the Web stayed scrubbed. It would become a safe place to drive through, if one did not want to gamble with flying. He would never have to leave his house again, and Thiago would have everything he needed.

Cory, Dr. Horta, was a little harder to follow. He did what he wanted, when he wanted. He had traveled to Realms and Dimensions that frightened untested Chakravanti, and he would be able to open his own portals soon. But he was the main character of his own story. He would be fine, on this assignment. This was a side quest for him.

The Council hadn't read his future enough to tell whether he would impact the course of Dr. Abandonato's life, yet. Whether he would accelerate his acquisition of the Time Sphere or do as he was supposed to, and keep him under control.

The three of them thought it was hilarious, in a sad way, that Horta would still be in a storage unit in Colorado if it hadn't been for Khalid, half a corpse from what they'd made him do, kicking up a fuss as Cayden carried him to the van. That that vampire would have kept Horta in stasis another fifty years. They didn't think it was quite so funny he was carting Khalid around on field assignments as if he were an assistant, but he had been taking Khalid on those assignments for the last three years, and Khalid hadn't died once.

Khalid's near future. What he was going to do in the next five years. Not even five. As far in the future from now as they were from when he died.

They were at a midpoint for him. He was going to do something impossible, when he was an adult.

"What the fuck?" Luz had said, watching and unable to look away. "He's lonely," Cayden realized. "Nobody would do all that if they weren't." "Yeah, but..." "Are we driving him to that?" Marisa asked. "No," Luz shook her head, "there's..." "He cuts himself open." "Yeah," Cayden said, in awe. "That's so weird..." Luz murmured. Cayden shrugged. "I think it's kinda beautiful. Look how happy he is." "No, not that."

With a huff, Luz dismissed the scrying pool's vision and reeled in her friends' collective attention.

"There's another path he could take to get there, and there's a different path he could take after, but that's... I think the experiment itself is a fixed point for him. It always happens." "... wow," Cayden said. "Glad I saw that," Marisa said with a shocked laugh. "I am, actually. This kid is..." "... terrifying," Luz said. Cayden shook his head. "I was going to say amazing. He does it all by himself. That's what we drove him to." "Well... I said what I said. He's terrifying. He has a Seeking after this, right? Leaves Horta in the parking lot, looks like, and walks off and comes back an Adept. But then he has another one while he's..."

Luz couldn't bring herself to say conducting his experiment. They all saw the moment he stopped thinking of his child as an experiment. Or, rather, the moment when he would. It hadn't happened yet. If Luz was right, it was inevitable.

"Say 'pregnant,'" Marisa laughed. "He's in, what, sixth grade? I will not say that." "He has a Ph.D., Luzzie." "And he passes his Master Seeking at the age of nineteen. While... pregnant. Yes. That is fucking terrifying." "I think the Storyteller needs him alive," Cayden said. "That's why he let us revive him." "The Storyteller didn't have anything to do with it," Marisa scoffed. "You knew what you needed to do." "If the Storyteller needed him alive," Luz said, "he wouldn't have a character sheet." "Yeah, but you can't see the end of his life, right?" "If he's like Horta..." Cayden picked at a loose fiber in his sweater as he reasoned out the rest of what he wanted to say. "... Horta has too many to sort through." "No," Luz shook her head, and stood. Unnerved by what she had seen, and not wanting the others to judge her for it. "No, he only has two paths. The one that was always there, and the one that might happen. He was alone there, right? The other one... I see someone but I'm not going to look again."

Marisa laughed, because she was still uncomfortable. Marisa still, after all these years, had not changed her mind about children--their existence, the possibility of making one. Of being a mother. Marisa doesn't want any of that. It disgusts her, in a way that she doesn't understand.

Luz went on, "Neither of them end. Even if I sat here and extended my Sight until daybreak, I wouldn't see the end of it. That's... I think Khalid's going to Ascend."

Later, when they brought their hypothesis to Thiago, the Virtual Adept would shrug and say, "He's an NPC. He keeps getting more powerful because he's not leveling up at the same rate a player character would. Of course he's going to Ascend. Fuck, I wish you hadn't told me all that."

Hey a tag list! Let me know if you want on or off <3

@leahnardo-da-veggie @the-golden-comet @cowboybrunch @finickyfelix @lychhiker-writes

#wip: a living machine #garbage words #this was only 1/4 of what i wrote yesterday it isn't the end of the world #talking to myself #it's so hard not to edit this LOL like IT'S GETTING BINNED WHY ARE YOU EDITING FOR GRAMMAR

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