#but they DIDN'T say otherwise so i'm going with it

[nadjasnandor]

what I don't understand is like .... they wrote the guillermo and nandor dynamic the way they did AND made both of them queer. like. nobody asked them to do ANY of that. so turning around and mocking everyone who very reasonably looked at what the writers of this show wrote and said "they are written like a couple" is just a baffling thing to do. imho

Exactly. And if you don't mind, I'm going to use your ask as an excuse to write out why I'm upset about certain things, because what you said is the root of my problem.

My disappoint doesn't come from Nandor/Guillermo not going canon in the traditional sense (at least not fully), but from the very 2010s-esque way everyone seems to be talking about fans post-finale. Basically saying they never intended Nandor & Guillermo to be anything but platonic and blaming the weird fans for wanting their pornographic whishes (🙄) to actually happen in the show, like they were not in any way responsible for creating those wishes, is insulting but, more importantly, not true. And they can't convince me otherwise because I was there, watching the whole thing unfold in real time.

I already mentioned being remotely normal about Nandor/Guillermo pre season 3 and there is a reason for that. During the first season the fandom was small. And by that I mean both Nandor/Guillermo shippers and also the people watching wwdits in general. During season 1, sometimes all you saw when going into the tags was about 5 of my gifsets in a row, for instance. Even if people watched the show, they didn't really interact with it in a fandom-y way. During the middle of s1, I complained about there not being Nandor/Guillermo fics at all and even between s1 and s2 I posted about there not being a lot. It was also this era when the first mentions of possible canon romantic feelings were brought up and it was by Harvey himself, who said he thinks Guillermo has feelings for his boss. This was, of course, only Harvey explaining how he views his character but I feel it's important because, as it's been mentioned before, Harvey came up with a lot of Guillermo's character, starting with his surname. He basically created current Guillermo. In the original pilot script, Guillermo is a 40-something, very bitter man. Quite different from our Guillermo and it's all thanks to Harvey.

But during this period, that is during s1 and s2, anything romantic between Nandor and Guillermo was purely accidental and mostly due to Kayvan and Harvey's chemistry. We all knew this, even if by s2 we did get the first articles about Nandor & Guillermo's relationship being maybe not fully platonic. By the end of season 2, the fandom has grown for sure but it was still nowhere near its current size. We also had Nandor say he treated Guillermo like a son, which was quite annoying but we at least knew where we stood with the show. Didn't stop us from shipping those two, of course, because fandoms have survived on less (Looking back, it is funny how much I hated that line when now it's just *vaguely gestures around*). It's important to note that after season 2, Jemaine left and Paul took over. And then came season 3.

There is a reason why I was so insane about the Cloak of Duplication and then Gail. The former canonized Guillermo's feelings for Nandor on screen for the first time and the latter showed that it was not just a single episode, throw away scene. Instead they continued with Guillermo being jealous of Nandor and his sexual partner. That was huge. But the fandom still hasn't blown up fully, that happened later during season 3. And I think it's important to say that because they wrote and filmed season 3 before the show blew up. They cannot say they wrote those scenes to please (or bait) fans. They weren't 'pressured' to do anything with Nandor and Guillermo. Season 3 was also when the very heavy Nandor/Guillermo promoting started. (Like the parody of The Bodyguard poster with 'Never fall in lo-', for example). Now, I don't remember if the first articles calling them the will-they-won't-they couple of the show came out during this season or later, but it was definitely past season 3. So by the end of season 3 the fandom has grown large and people were obviously very into the ship.

Now we can say shippers are pushy or annoying but fans can be annoying in general. People can be annoying lol. When your show grows big enough, annoying people you don't like are going to watch it too. (I'm sure if those annoying people are cishet men then this burden is easier to bear but I digress. I am a little bitter, after all). But at this point, fans had no reason to be pushy, we thought every sign was pointing to canon romantic Nandor/Guillermo.

At this point, the show saw how large the fandom has grown and how invested people were in Nandor/Guillermo. If that's not what they wanted, if they felt people were seeing things differently than how they intented, they could have pulled back. They had enough time between season 3 and season 4 to do that. But they didn't. Instead, they doubled down and continued to do the same for 2 more season. Even if by season 5 the latest we already had Paul saying weird things about the dynamic.

Instead it seems they decided to pull back in season 6 but by then it was too late. People were expecting them to come through on the thing they have been teasing for 3 seasons. And then they blamed the fans for not liking what they offered up instead. For wanting 'pornographic scenes'. Because it's 'not that kind of a show'. They say this about a show with an episode called The Orgy.

And even while saying all that, they didn't stop them from teasing the fans until the very last moment. Nandor's 'you know what would be cooler than being friends' is just cruel lmao. And that's why it felt more like mocking to me. Not only because of what happened in the show, but because when I watch those scenes, I can't seperate them from how the cast and crew talk about the ship and the fans in interviews. They apparently now think it's stupid and weird but will gladly tease it in the show for whatever reason? It's funny because fans are weird and kinky, I guess. Things unheard of in relation to this show.

I also don't understand Kayvan and Harvey's complete 180 turn. During the early seasons, Kayvan was not really into the idea of the ship, saying it's a bit toxic due to the power imbalance in their dynamic but he seemed to go full throttle later, even overtaking Harvey in hyping the ship up. And then in the first post-finale interview, he says that 'Nandor is never going to have sex with Guillermo', even if the show left that door open with the last scene. And then there's Harvey, who was the first to say Guillermo has feelings for his boss, who is now championing the repserentation of platonic gay male friendships on tv. In his case, I can give him the benefit of doubt, because he must have his own experiences with that and it's not my place to dismiss or doubt them. I do find the change strange and have complained about it but it's more understandable than Kayvan's. (EDIT: I didn't read this interview after the finale but it just makes things even more confusing, if I'm honest.)

I tried to be as coherent as possible and write out all my thoughts about this topic but I most likely still missed some things. I don't really like to talk about my feelings and thoughts this elaborately because I find it difficult to fully express myself but I tried my best because I felt like I was going insane.

[peppermintquartz]

Continuation of this

"Why do I keep thinking about shellfish?" Evan asks after he's eaten breakfast and downed half the bottle of water along with the painkillers.

Tommy pulls up a chair. "You were going on and on about oysters and the sea last night."

"Oysters?" Evan's brow creases adorably. "Why oysters?"

How is it that I can't let you go? Tommy doesn't voice the thought, though he does smile at Evan. "Beats me. You were the one who was fixated on it."

Scowling, Evan pouts as he tugs on the hem of his old tee. The color used to be a dark green but it's been washed so often that it's faded. "It musta made sense. Otherwise I wouldn't be talking about it." Then his brow clears. "You!"

"Me?"

"I was comparing you to oysters!"

Tommy grimaces. Yeah, Chimney did say something to that effect. "You don't like oysters, Ev- Buck."

"Not the ones here in LA, they're fucking overpriced and not fresh enough. Peruvian seafood is among the best in the world, and I had this amazing oyster ceviche once that blew my mind." Evan pauses, then smacks Tommy's arm. "And don't distract me. I'm trying to remember my analogy. Okay, so you're like an oyster. How are you like an oyster?"

"I have the consistency of snot?"

Evan glares at him. It's a cute glare. Tommy coughs into his hand, trying not to show that he is charmed. With a huff, Evan starts with, "Okay. You have cultivated a hard exterior to survive a difficult environment."

Tommy nods. "Fair enough."

"And in response to the difficult environment, you cling to the familiar and try to hide because you're actually full of soft and tender delicious goodness." Evan raises an eyebrow in challenge.

Tommy pretends not to be perturbed by the read. "I guess you'd know exactly how I taste," he jokes flatly. Evan ignores it.

"You hide in plain sight," Evan continues, on a roll now, "and it will take skill to pry you out from your chosen rock." He reaches over to grasp Tommy's forearm. "But there's something that's different between you and oysters."

Tommy can't look at him. "I'm not a mollusc?"

Evan's tone is infinitely gentle. "Yeah. Showing me vulnerable side won't kill you, Tommy."

Clenching his jaw, Tommy stands and takes the tray from the bed. "You can take a shower if you want. I've washed and dried your clothes. A-and you have the other clothes you left here."

"You didn't pack them up," Evan points out when Tommy's nearly to the door. "You could've packed them up with my stuff and returned them. But you didn't." He cocks his head and a sad yet hopeful smile crosses his face. "The way I didn't pack up yours. Because we still want each other in our lives."

Tommy can't breathe. He flees the bedroom.

---

Now that he is here, Buck plans to stay until Tommy really opens up to him. Even if he has to camp here forever. Even if Tommy throws him out physically and changes the locks.

He knows how to pick locks now - thank you, Lockpicking Lawyer - and he will not leave Tommy's home until that uncomfortable conversation about the breakup is held. Maybe several.

Oysters aren't shut forever. At some point they open up. And Buck is going to be there when Tommy does. He's done waiting for Tommy to make the first move. He's done waiting, period. Now he is going to act.

"I'm driving you home," Tommy declares at noon. He is resolutely not making eye contact.

"Good luck doing that," Buck says. "Are you going to carry me out of here? Big strong firefighter pilot like you, I'm sure you can do it."

"I could... I could report you to the police for-for home invasion."

"You brought me home, Tommy. Hen and Chim will vouch for that, and I'm sure there's security footage." Buck isn't smirking, not that Tommy will know since he isn't looking. He gentles his tone. "All I'm asking is for us to talk about our relationship. Why can't we do that?"

His face red, Tommy shuts his eyes. Then he mutters, "Fine. Fine, we'll talk about it. But please put some clothes on."

"You've literally eaten me out for hours before."

"That's when we were dating!"

"If I put some clothes on, promise you won't try to get me out of your house?" Buck says, deliberately shifting in the bed so his legs fall apart a little more. Watching Tommy squirm is kind of fun. (So sue him, Buck's feeling rather vindictive about the entire matter.) "Because I can and will strip in your car and have us both arrested. Then we'll have to spend the night in a jail cell together."

Tommy inhales sharply. "Fine. I promise. Now... now cover yourself up."

First chink in the armor. Buck grabs Tommy's LAFD T-shirt and pulls it on, appreciating the way it hugs his body, and pulls on his briefs. He's been shameless before, he can be shameless again. He'll show Tommy that it's perfectly okay to be vulnerable and open to the people he loves through visual metaphor if his words won't cut it.

Anything to get Tommy to be his again.

[thechy-fychannel]

You said you think pre-infarction house was an addict-can you expand on that? What drugs were he hooked on and why did he fully switch to vicodin and never used others again? Did he ever reach a go-to-rehab level addiction? How did wilson handle that? And what was Stacy's attitude towards his addiction? I think she would have been a lot more forgiving than cuddy because 1. She herself is a smoker who goes back to cigarettes during hard time and 2. Unlike cuddy, she didn't have a small child to worry about.

Ahhh thank you sm, I love this question!!! Let's get into it ✨

So my theory is that house was abusing morphine prior to the infarction. here are my reasons for thinking so:

1. Three Stories- the entire reason house's infarction was as bad as it was is bc everyone except house was convinced he was just drug seeking at first. it makes absolutely zero sense for them to think that unless he already had a history of drug seeking. unless I misremember (anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) he already worked at PPTH for a while before the infarction happened. so it was the same doctors he knew and interacted with every single day that saw him screaming in agony and chose to believe he was just trying to seek drugs and not actually in pain. he had to have a history, it just doesn't make sense otherwise for them to assume he was drug seeking.

2. one very specific line in No Reason (the episode where house is shot and the whole episode is a hallucination). when house, wilson, and cuddy are in her office and house is realizing they did something to his brain (the ketamine treatment) cuddy says this specific line: "You were out of control, you were shooting morphine!" This line has always stuck out to me and no one ever seems to mention it. It's very out of place bc the conversation they're having is about him being shot and them doing something to him while he was under. I think this was his brain connecting this event to the last time someone did something to him while he was unconscious, trying to rationalize these traumatic events.

3. In early s3 when the pain comes back, he begs cuddy to give him a shot of morphine in his spine (the scene where he drops his pants in her office and asks her in tears if the scar is all in his head too since she thinks the pain is all in his head.) cuddy gives him the shot and he comes back looking for another one later on, after the pain comes back again. she informs him that she never gave him morphine, it was saline. the fact that the pretend morphine worked suggests he had a mental dependency on it. I'm pretty sure this is the point where he goes back to vicodin (it's been a few months since I did my last rewatch so I could be wrong). I think had she actually given him morphine, he likely would've become addicted to it again. Just the thought of the morphine was enough to have him looking for more.

4. Wilson's tendency to jump straight to heroin use when he thinks house is on something other than vicodin. it happens more than once in the series when house starts acting just the slightest bit off, wilson leaps to the conclusion that he's on heroin. which is an insane leap to make unless it's something he's had to worry about in the past. I think the reason wilson would jump to heroin over morphine is if he knows what it looks like when house is high on morphine. If house used to abuse morphine, wilson would be able to recognize it and if he can't, it must be something much worse. this again plays into why I think he was an addict prior to the infarction even if it wasn't morphine, because who in their right mind would jump to their best friend using heroin if that person didn't have a long history of abusing similar drugs?

Now to answer your other questions:

Why did he switch to vicodin and not go back to others he may have been addicted to? I can tell you from personal experience that while morphine feels great, it makes you hazy and tired and out of it. I think once he was prescribed vicodin after his surgery and learned that he could function on it and not feel hazy, it was a match made in heaven for him (he says a few times in the show that vicodin doesn't make him hazy, so he immediately knows if he's on something else bc he feels hazy.) He didn't need to switch to anything else as long as he had access to vicodin bc he got the high, the pain relief, and no haziness. but when he got cut off of his vicodin during the tritter ordeal, he stole oxycodone (I think?) from wilson's dead patient. so if he didn't have vicodin, it's safe to assume he would go back to whatever he had access to.

Did he ever reach rehab level addiction? / What was Stacy's attitude towards his addiction? I think if we go based off his colleagues thinking he was drug seeking + cuddy saying he was out of control and shooting up morphine, I would say yes, it was rehab level addiction. But— I feel like if it had been that bad, stacy would've mentioned it in some sort of capacity during her arc when they were discussing their relationship. she never hints at him being an addict as far as I can remember. she loved and cared about house so much that she was willing to accept him hating her if it meant he was alive and healthy. I feel like if his addiction had been dangerous, she would've done anything to get him help the same way she did during his infarction. even if it meant going against his wishes and him hating her, she would've insisted he got help. so I'm conflicted on that question, honestly. I think maybe it depends on the perspective of those around him. maybe those at the hospital saw something stacy didn't, I'm not sure. but I agree with what you said about her being more forgiving and understanding of it than cuddy was. I think if he had been an addict while they were together, she would've given him an endless amount of chances until it became dangerous, that's when she would put her foot down and try to force him into rehab and their relationship probably would've crumbled for a whole different reason.

How did Wilson handle his addiction? I think house being an addict prior to the infarction plays perfectly into the theme of wilson emotionally neglecting his wives for house. we obviously don't have an exact timeline of his marriages aside from his first one ending just before house and wilson met, but it's pretty safe to assume that he was married to and even possibly divorced from bonnie before the infarction ever happened since he seems to have been married to julie for a little while in the beginning of the show.

[sidenote: here is my personal timeline HC for wilson's marriages.

Sam: 1991-1992 (canon)

Bonnie: 1993-1998

Julie: 1999 (before infarction) - 2005]

In the episode where house uses bonnie to get dating info about wilson, she says the iconic line, "You always needed him and he was always there for you. He had a wife waiting for him at home and you didn't care." And it just makes sense if the reason house always needed him was because of his struggles with addiction. house in general is a needy person who always wanted wilson's affection to himself, that much is clear, but wilson had to of had a good excuse to always run off for whatever it is house needed from him prior to him being disabled.

Getting into more specifics about how wilson would've handled his addiction back then— I think he would've handled it similarly to the way he did with the vicodin. he's an enabler unfortunately, he would've let house make excuses and made excuses for him because he tries to give house the benefit of the doubt that he can control himself. I think back then even more so, because house wasn't in pain and disabled, wilson had no reason to think house couldn't control himself. I think it's even possible that wilson was in denial about it too, he didn't want to believe his best friend was an addict and maybe he felt like he needed to protect house when others started accusing him of such. I think that may be why wilson asked cuddy to make that bet with house to find out if he was addicted to vicodin. he ignored it and denied it last time and he's enabled him for years since the infarction, he wanted to know if he was treating house's pain or still enabling an addict. the answer was both, which makes it no less complicated. but like with all of house's issues, wilson continues to stand by him and be there for him bc he loves him and wants him in his life, addict or no addict.

[bringbackmaes14]

My mom has her TV on in her room almost 24/7 and it's always on some news outlet or other. We talk a lot about politics and world/national/local events. And we do have a lot of varying views on a lot of things but we're both adults who are capable of saying "well we've both stated we have differing opinions and it's clear that we're actually arguing at this point and not just talking so let's put away the topic for now." But there are also other times where I'm just too overwhelmed by my own life to think about what's going on in the bigger world around me, so my mom knows to be hesitant to bring up news stuff with me (i.e. she doesn't just start talking about politics/world events with me rather she'll ask if I'm in the mindset to discuss things when she wants my opinion on something). This is all relevant.

We've always been able to talk about nearly everything from the economy to the school system to human rights to human tragedy and we've never tried to censor ourselves around each other (outside of getting too emotional with our language). But about two weeks ago when the United Healthcare CEO was assassinated, my mom, who is in her 50s, came to me and she said "Did you see that the CEO of United Healthcare got unalived?"

And I just sat there and looked at her completely confused and she was like "did you not hear about it? It's all over the news. It happened in clear view on the street." Like the problem was that I hadn't heard of the event not that my Gen-X mother had just in a real life conversation said the word "unalived".

And I told her as much. "Yes I've heard that. Why did you say 'unalived' instead of 'murdered'?

And she told me that she just thought that since I'm touchy about heavier topics sometimes (which is definitely true, that does occasionally happen) she thought it would be better to just not use the "heavy" words. I asked her if she realized, honestly, how stupid that was because regardless of the word she used, she was still talking about a murder, it didn't change the subject matter, she was only making the subject matter seem less significant and severe by changing the word to baseless internet lingo that a bunch of misguided, clout-chasing influencers spread.

She hadn't. She's doesn't use the Internet replacement words a lot, online or otherwise. This was a first. She thought this was a different situation, and a fine one to use it in, and like the above stories people shared, it's still not.

I'm allowed to say there are days where I want to avoid heavier topics because I'm overwhelmed. I'm allowed to not ever really discuss certain topics because they actually trigger me based on my own experiences. But people who are out here living their whole lives like just talking about about difficult or controversial topics, or asking questions about it, or enjoying media where it's portrayed (especially when it's actually portrayed respectfully) are being ridiculous, and they're handicapping themselves. They're never going to learn how to talk about hard things, or how to handle hard things. And honestly I feel bad for them.

Luckily, in my case, once I explained why my mom saying what she said was incredibly weird and honestly devaluing to the conversation, she backtracked and told me that (like I said above) she doesn't talk like that regularly and she has no intention to start; it's just that this was a huge news event and that day had been particularly rough for me emotionally and she wasn't sure how to approach it. So her intentions were good and I'm very lucky that she understands and also agrees that the Internet censorship language is incredibly unnecessary.

we have GOT to kill tiktok/twitter self-censorship i just witnessed a grown adult say the word “smex” out loud to our professor

[moonmeg]

Before Permanent... (requested)

"I'm home!"

Catherine exchanged her boots for slippers beside the door. With a circle in the air, the doors of the drawer opened and the boots found their place in the empty spot she had left when leaving this morning.

"I'm in the kitchen.", it called back.

Catherine allowed Opal to fly off and find comfort on the many vines around the house and herself strutted towards the kitchen.

"I thought you'd be in your room.", she walked up to her son sitting by the table over a sketchbook. She brushed her nails through his dense hair and pressed a kiss to his head. "How are you, sweetie?"

"Good.", he said not looking up from the page of the book, "I made lunch. Left you some, if you wanna."

Robyn pointed to the other side of the kitchen and Catherine's gaze followed. A pot was on the turned-off stove, a few utensils and herbs lying around on the counter. He must've forgotten to clean it up again after eating.

She smiled.

"Oh, my precious.", she squeezed his shoulders and pressed her lips to his cheek this time, "Thank you so much."

He smiled but still avoided her face. Something was up.

"Was school alright?", she continued and pretended her motherly senses didn't alarm her something was wrong. She wanted Robyn to address it on his own.

"Sure. The usual."

"Preparations for the exams going well?"

Robyn hesitated before giving a stoic "Yep." as an answer. Clearly it wasn't going well, she thought, but she didn't want to outright ask if something happened. She still hoped he'd muster the courage to tell her himself. They had a good relationship and he knew he could talk to her about whatever was on his heart or mind.

"Any wishes for dinner tonight?", Catherine attempted to break the silence.

"I'm not hungry."

"Well, obviously, sprout, you've just had lunch. But dinner isn't due for another few hours."

This time he merely shrugged in response.

Catherine's pretend-smile finally fell. She didn't like this, thus she decided to address it directly after all.

"Sweetie, did something happen?"

Robyn didn't reply. He only gripped the corners of the book before him tighter. She took his non-reply as an confirmation and in motherly habit decided to dig further on what happened exactly.

"Did you have a fight with someone? A teacher? Another classmate?", she hesitated before carefully muttering a "Micah?". Fights happen between couples and Robyn and Micah have been one for over half a year now. She knew that. She was happy for them, Micah was good for Robyn, but even they couldn't be spared from fights.

Robyn tensed in the chair. How can he tell this? He swallowed the lump that has been forming in his throat since he left Principal Hand's office this noon.

"I... did something. Without your permission or consultation."

A stone fell off her heart. She took a breath of relief. It didn't seem like he needed couples counseling. Catherine gently rubbed over Robyn's shoulders, one hand instinctly battling through his brown hair.

"Alright, sweetie. That's fine. Whatever it is, I promise I won't be mad."

Robyn took a breath. He was almost frozen otherwise. Like any movement would cause him to break in his colleced act.

"I had a talk with Principal Hand. I told them about the unlikeliness of my magic returning anytime soon and asked for permission to use glyphs instead."

His voice was so small in comparison to his usual voice. He hated how vulnerable and pathetic it made him sound. He wasn't a child anymore. He's just two and a half months short of 18. He told himself to pull himself together. 'Act your age'.

"And?"

"I got denied. Glyphs aren't researched properly. The teachers can't guarantee it's equal chances for everyone if I used them. They compared it to using Palismen on the exams. It's not *my* magic per say, I merely wield the powers of an outside force. But glyphs and Snowball are my only ways of using magic.", he somehow managed to get through that without his voice giving away just how much he felt like crying. He was surprised himself.

"That's... that's outrageous! Glyphs are just as legitimate a form of magic as-"

"-not how the school board sees it."

"I'll demand a talk with Principal Hand about this tomorrow. We'll fix this, sprout, I promise.", Catherine knelt down on her son's side, cupping his face - growing ever more into Caleb's - in her palms and freeing his face from brown strands falling into it. Robyn didn't give in. He avoided tilting his face down to look at her with all the energy he could give into it. Luckily, Catherine also didn't force it much.

"Don't bother, it's a battle you can't win."

"I will fight any battle I can for you."

"Not if it's already over."

"Nonsense. Chin up, Roby, you have my full su-"

"I am dropping out."

Four words.

Four words that stopped the world around her. She wasn't even sure her heart still pumped, or if her lungs still took in air. Her mind had gone blank.

"What?", she muttered in reflex, "D-dropped out? Robyn, sweetie, why would you?"

Catherine took his shaking hand in hers, running her thumb over his knuckles in an attempt to offer comfort.

"Because it's the smartest choice I could make. My options were to stay in school, take the exams and be guaranteed to fail every practical one except for potions, pause the term and wait until eventually my magic returns, or to drop out now.", he explained with more emotion in his voice slowly creeping in.

He finally glanced at his mother beside him. She tried to hide her shock but he had learned to see past his mother's mask. She had done it all his life. Pretend she's alright, locking her actual emotions away for the sake of minimising his worry.

"I didn't talk to you about this beforehand because I knew you would try to convince me of another option. But I actually already made this decision years ago. The moment my magic vanished, I thought about what I would do if it wasn't back by the time final exams came around. I kind of expected this to happen."

"You could've waited..."

He pulled his hand out of hers. Of course she would say this. He was afraid she would say this.

"How long? I lost my magic at 15. You told me it's my human side messing with my witch one. That I'm going through human puberty. That it would last years! But none of us knows anything about human puberty let alone when it ends. The only person who knows is dead. Years can mean two years or ten or infinity actually. How long do you expect me to put final exams on hold?"

The apathy had yielded to frustration further with every next sentence, the change most noticeably in his voice.

"Sprout, alright, I don't actually know how long human puberty lasts, but I know that when I met your father he was 25 and out of puberty. So you should be by your 25th birthday too!", she said in hope to deescalate and stim Robyn calm. He, however returned a look of disbelief at her.

"And you expect me to go back to a school full of teenagers at 25?! I have other plans at 25 but not to take some exams amongst 17 year olds! That is, given my powers return at all. What if they don't? What if 10 years of my own magic is all I get?"

He slammed the book on the table close and stepped around his kneeling mother, heading for the hallway. He stopped before taking the first step up the stairs, digging his nails into the wooden banister.

"Mama, this was my decision to make. It's not the one you wanted me to make but you have no idea what this is like. I can't blame you for being disappointed. If I was my own son I'd be too. I'm just-

I'm sorry I let you down."

He felt a hot tear running down his cheek. He fought with his quivering lip and the sob in his chest.

"Robyn-", Catherine rose to her feet again and took a small step towards him.

"Surprise me for dinner.", he blurted out and ran up the stairs without looking back.

"Robyn!"

Catherine herself ran up to the stairway and swung around the first pillar of the banister. She heard Robyn's door slam shut and stopped in her pursuit. She looked up the stairs, as if Robyn was standing there waiting for her to either follow him or leave him alone for a while.

She chose to give him space. He's been worrying about telling her those news for half the day... longer than that even. She knew her son. He was impulsive in situations like this. His words hurt sometimes but he didn't mean for them to cut that deep.

An hour later, she knocked at his door. She didn't get a reply but decided to push down the door handle anyways and peek around the doorframe. The curtains were drawn close, the lights in his bed-tree were on and a ball of a blanket was lying in the middle of the bed.

"Roby? Sweetie, do you mind if I sit?"

The blankets moved around to the left side of the bed, making space for her to sit down. A smile flickered across her face.

"Can I ask you something?", she asked as she sat down carefully on the bed. His only response was a sniff.

"Do you really think I'm disappointed in you?"

"Why wouldn't you be? What parent would be proud of their child quitting school?"

"You didn't have another choice..."

"I remember you were always so doting and proud when I cast any spells.", he started in a voice that was strained from crying, "You, gramps, grams, auntie Ana... you all told me I was doing so great. I had a talent, a gift. You spoke of high opportunities for me. All my teachers kept repeating it too. I-I was someone. You had a reason to be proud. Your son the magic prodigy, who does well in school and has such a bright future. Of course you'd be proud!"

There was a pause. She could hear him hic a breath before stopping again and taking a deeper, calmer breath.

"But I'm not that prodigy anymore. I *can't* be it. And now I won't even finish school. I-I'm so sorry, Mama. I'm sorry I'm such a failure."

She felt a sting in her heart that made her body tense up and her eyes widen.

"Don't ever-", she grabbed his shoulder and turned him around as gently as she could manage, "Don't you ever dare speak of yourself like that!"

She cupped his face in her hand again. His face was warm and wet. She wiped the trails the tears had left behind dry.

"You are the best thing that's ever happened to me in my life. You saved me. You are my every pride and joy. Your magic was never the foundation of that. I loved you years before I even knew whether or not you could cast spells in the first place. The moment I found out I was pregnant, I was overwhelmed with love and pride for you. I carried you underneath my heart for months and everyday my love and pride grew with you. I held you in my arms after hours of labor, my heart swelling of love and pride for you. I was always- I AM proud of you, Robyn. Simply because you are."

Catherine brushed through his hair softly. She was reminded of all the times her little boy had sought comfort in her presence when he had a nightmare, had hurt himself in his rowdy playing around the house and garden, or was lost in sadness when missing his father. She smiled softly in the reminiscence. How could he ever be anything but her little baby boy?

"I'm absolutely not disappointed in you. There was never a time where I was. And definitely not over a situation like this."

Robyn sat up slowly and rubbed his eyes dry as well as he could.

"But.. you wanted me to graduate..."

"The only thing I truly want is your happiness. I want only the best for you. I don't need a piece of paper with the school's emblem and your name smeared on it. Neither do you. It doesn't define your happiness. There's other things that do.", she adjusted the blanket around him and the pillow behind him, grabbing and handling him a long cushion in the look of a blood frog. It had been his favorite thing to cuddle to since he got it for his 3rd birthday. Hand-sewn by Ahana. Robyn dismissed it with a flush of embarrassment. He had told himself he should put it to his other toys in the storage room since 14 but could never truly part with it.

In the corner of her eye Catherine caught a colored drawing of Micah peeking out from underneath the pillow.

"And *someone* else too.", she smiled with a wink. Robyn quickly sweeped the paper underneath the pillow again, as if his mother didn't know he had a boyfriend or wasn't supportive of their relationship.

"Your happiness lies there. So should your future."

Catherine ran her knuckles down his cheek. Robyn leaned into it, like a cat who didn't want the petting to stop.

"You made the right decision."

"You think?"

"You have a bright future ahead of you. That is the meaning of your name after all. Robyn. 'Bright fame'."

"I thought you named me after that human realm bird?", he smirked.

"I choose the name for multiple reasons.", Catherine said in a playful defensive tone.

Robyn chuckled quietly and pulled the frog cushion closer to himself.

"So, will you join your old woman for dinner later?"

"Just because you keep calling yourself old, doesn't mean you are. 45 is not even scratching the surface of 'old'. So I correct: young woman."

"Sometimes I'm not sure if you picked up that charm from your father or your grandfather."

"Probably my mother."

Catherine shook her head amused. She rose from the bed and asked a second time: "Table for two?"

Robyn nodded.

[bree-peasant]

One for the Ages - a Kakashi x fem!Reader fic

Author's note: Hey guys! I've not written a fic in years, but I'm stuck at home with a broken ankle, so getting back into it! This one is a reader self-insert, but the reader has a pre-established past, that'll reveal itself throughout the story. A real slowburn, intended to have multiple parts, so please let me know if you enjoyed it and I'll keep going!

Word count: ~2.5k

Summary: A new shinobi joins the Konoha ranks and Kakashi finds himself inexplicably drawn to her. Includes scenes with Gai & Iruka.

Warnings: Mentions of blood and trauma, otherwise none!

Enjoy! ♡

-------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 1:

"I've gathered you all here because there will be a new shinobi joining your ranks..." The Third Hokage paused his address to the highest ranking village ninjas and glanced over to the woman standing beside him. Her face looked solemn but sure.

"Y/N is a refugee from the Village Hidden in the Wind and will be taking over one of the graduate genin teams as their sensei. I'm sure you will all make her feel welcome in our village's customary ways."

"But Lord Hokage!" Gai made his way through to the front of the small crowd. "I don't mean to challenge your decision, Lord Hokage, but how are we to accept this stranger as a shinobi, and a jōnin level one at that! Surely her skills must be put to the test beforehand!" A whisper of approval among the crowd followed Gai's words.

The Hokage turned to look at Y/N with a raised brow.

"I will do what is required of me." She nodded in return.

"Then it has been settled!" The Hokage turned back to the crowd. "Y/N will showcase her talents as a shinobi in a friendly fight. And I'm sure you won't mind being her opponent Gai, since you spoke so fervently on the matter." There was a note of playfulness in his voice.

"Yes of course, Lord Hokage! Maito Gai never backs down from a challenge!" The bushy browed sensei gave his usual flamboyant pose and a thumbs-up, not forgetting to throw a glance at his rival Kakashi, who stood towards the back of the crowd. For once Kakashi had put his book down, as he studied the new shinobi's face. It wasn't quite that he knew her from somewhere, rather, he knew that look in her eyes...

The crowd parted to make room for a make-shift arena for the match. Y/N and Gai stood in the centre, facing each other. There was a small smile playing on her lips as she watched Gai flash his stance.

"Forgive me if I don't go easy on you, newcomer!"

"I didn't ask you to."

"Confidence! I respect that in an opponent! Now let's see what you've got!"

In a flash Gai was behind her with a kick to the head, but despite his impeccable speed and technique, Y/N seemed to block it with ease. He followed up with a fury of punches and kicks, but none of them seem to land. It was like she could sense him coming from each direction. As Gai tried to land another powerful kick,  Y/N successfully dodged and tried to return the favour. Gai easily evaded her attack and jumped some distance away from her.

"You're fast, I'll give you that. But you've gone in too cocky." Y/N smirked, an evident smile creasing her face for the first time that day.

"It's time we ended this fight. Wind style, syphon jitsu!" A gust of wind rolled around Gai and pulled him towards Y/N like a torpedo. Before he could release himself, he was met with a powerful kick that sent him flying towards the end of the fighting area, cracking the ground beneath him with his fall.

"Well, I believe that's sufficient proof, wouldn't you say?" The Hokage pronounced from the podium. "Let's call it a day before someone gets a concussion!" As the Hokage and his men made to leave, Y/N approached Gai and extended her hand to him with a friendly smile, helping him back to his feet.

"Your skills are indeed formidable! But don't think I'll go down that easy on our next encounter!" He flashed her a toothy grin, which she matched right back.

"Your taijitsu is some of the best I've ever seen. Perhaps you could teach me in a friendlier sparring match next time?"

"I'd be delighted. You should see my student Rock Lee's taijitsu skills as well! He's quite the talent. Of course, Neji Huyga is also on my team and he's a real prodigy."

"A Huyga! I believe I might have one of those on my team too... I really must brush up on my knowledge of the village history and the next generation of shinobi..." Y/N brushed the sweat off her brow with a concerned expression on her face. She really had her work cut out for her.

"In that case you should speak to Iruka at the Academy. He's been teaching the last few classes of genin to graduate there, he'll be able to catch you up on things!" Gai gave her a thumbs up. "I will see you around, Y/N-sensei. Welcome to Konoha!"

She bowed in return and made her way towards the exit. Kakashi stood near the door, leaning against the wall with his book in hand. As she walked passed him, he looked up and his lazy eye met hers.

"Your book..."

"Hm?"

"It's upside down."

Flustered, Kakashi looked down, and then back up towards her, but she'd already disappeared. "I've never been worse at my job as a ninja, than in this moment." He thought to himself following the rest of the crowd outside. Perhaps following the new jōnin from afar wasn't the best tactic to employ here. He'd have to get to know her the old-fashioned way.

Next day:

The kids had all just piled out of the classroom when he heard a knock on the door frame.

Iruka looked up to see a female shinobi he'd not met before.

"Is this a good time?" She asked.

"Ahem, yes, what can I do for you?"

"My name is Y/N. I'm a... transfer from another village. I'll be training team 8 from now on. I was told you could help me catch up on the village's history, Iruka-sensei." A soft smile blossomed on her lips as she bowed her head to him.

Flustered by the way she had voiced her request, Iruka blushed and stammered out a response. "Of course, I'd be happy to help! What is it that you want to know?"

"Well, my students' backgrounds for a start, the village clan history, really anything I can get my hands on. I'm keen to do right by these kids."

Her words strung a chord with Iruka. "Yes, we all are. Well, I have some books with me here that you're welcome to borrow, and I have some more things at my flat that might be useful. I could bring them tomorrow... or if you'd like to join me, I have some spare time this afternoon, I can take you through them myself?" Iruka was bright red by this point, it had taken all the courage he had left that day to suggest it.

"That would be awfully generous of you, if you're sure I won't be imposing!"

"Not at all! I'll just finish collecting my things and we can head out!"

They walked back towards his place, Iruka filling their silence with stories of his students, often sending Y/N into fits of laughter. It was nice being in Iruka's presence, warm, light. Iruka, in the middle of a story, turned to her, gesticulating wildly for added affect when he bumped shoulders with someone.

"Hey! Oh... Kakashi... sorry, I wasn't looking."

The grey haired ninja stood in casual clothing with a grocery bag in his arm and an unreadable expression on his masked face. He nodded to Iruka without even looking at him, his lazy eye resting on Y/N instead.

"You two look like you're getting along."

Iruka blushed, but Y/N's face remained unchanged. She made a mental note of his name. Kakashi. There was something about him that made her feel uneasy. Like he could see right through her.

"Day off?" She casually asked.

"Not quite. I've been assigned a solo mission and just had some time to prepare for it."

"Well good luck on it." Iruka threw in. "We better get on, Y/N, it'll take me some time to dig everything up for you."

"Right." She bowed to Kakashi and followed Iruka, already a few steps ahead, eager to lose the notorious jonin. She couldn't help but throw a glance back at Kakashi, just to see his back lazily swaying as the distance between them grew. Something in her ached at the sight.

A few days later:

Another sleepless night. It wasn't that her new bed, in her new room, part of her new life, was uncomfortable. It was rather that things were too comfortable. She couldn't remember the last time she could sleep peacefully without fear for her life before coming to Konoha. The Hokage had been kind enough to give her time to settle in, so she hadn't been sent on any missions yet; still, her body jolted awake at night, her mind unable to tell reality from the demons that haunted her sleep.

Tonight was even worse, Y/N hadn't been able to sleep a wink, aware of every slight noise, the room stuffy, her body hot. In a moment of desperation, she'd jumped out of bed, grabbed a scarf and walked out in the cool night air. She strolled aimlessly, her eyes adjusting to the dimly lit village, her head spinning with thoughts about the past, the training she'd prepared for her newly acquired genin, whom she'd meet soon, but most of all (and she really did try to shoo that particular one away) she thought about the mysterious gray-haired ninja, whose single visible eye had bored into her soul.

As if answering her muddled thoughts, a sudden rustling caught her attention. A shadow jumped out of one of the nearby trees, landing onto the ground, stumbled, hand clutching side, but noticing he wasn't alone, tried to regain composure. The figure walked towards her, slightly strained until he came into sight.

"Kakashi! What are you doing sneaking around at this time of night!"

"I should ask you the same thing. A little late for a stroll, is it not?

His mask and clothes were covered in mud and dust, his whole look quite dishevelled. Noticing Y/N's eyes studying him curiously, he let out a slight chuckle.

"I've just come back from my mission, that's all."

"You're injured." She said plainly.

"It's nothing, really."

"I can smell the blood from here. I think you should go to the hospital..."

"No." He quickly cut her off. Seeing the look of persistence on her face, he realised he wouldn't get out of this one so easily.

"I can't go to the hospital, they'll keep me there for days, and I have... I have things to take care of tomorrow." His whole body sagged in resignation.

"Can I at least have a look?" She said softly.

"If you must, but I warn you, it's not pretty."

Kakashi unzipped his vest and lifted his shirt, showing a nasty, open wound on his left side. It didn't seem too deep, but definitely painful.

"Don't worry, I've seen enough blood i my time." Y/N stepped closer, as the darkness of night didn't allow for clear vision. She didn't fail to notice the strained muscles of his abdomen, or the way his v-line tucked into his trousers, but pulled all her strength into focusing on the wound.

"You won't go to hospital, fine. But will you let me help? If you don't take care of this, you'll wind up with an infection, that'll keep you in hospital longer than a few days."

"What can you do?" Kakashi's voice sounded unsure.

"Do you think you could trust me?"

He stood silent for a moment, studying her face. To his own dismay he nodded.

"Then follow me."

They walked together slowly, Kakashi tiredly dragging his feet at times.

"You can lean on me if you need to. I can handle the weight."

"No, I'm quite alright. Just tired."

"You're very stubborn, you know. I'm surprised you're even coming now." He could detect a smile in her voice, the thought of which made him shiver.

"Not as surprised as I am." He swallowed thickly. He hated talking about himself. "What were you doing out at this time anyway?"

"I..." Y/N fell silent for a moment. She still didn't know how to open up to strangers, how much of her past she could reveal without it becoming dangerous. "I find it hard to sleep. If I do manage it, I'm plagued by nightmares, the rest of the time I'm just... on edge. Walking outside seems to help."

Kakashi just nodded in response, hoping it didn't go unnoticed in the darkness that surrounded them. In truth, he wanted to tell her he understood perfectly, and that he couldn't remember the last time he got a good night's sleep. That he felt perpetually exhausted and feared the shadows that his mind conjured at night. Most of all, he wanted to ask if they could keep each other company on their sleepless nights. But it felt much too soon for any of that, so he said nothing.

"We're here." Y/N announced, standing at the door of her building. She pulled out her key and pushed the door open, making way for Kakashi to go in.

"Is this... your flat? Y/N, I hate to tell you this, but I'm really not that kind of girl." Kakashi tried to joke, but something caught in his throat and he coughed, writhing in pain from his wound.

"Very smooth." She scoffed at him. She lead him into the kitchen and turned on the light, revealing strings of drying herbs, hanging across her window.

"Sit here." She pointed at a chair and Kakashi silently obeyed, taking in his surroundings. She didn't have much, just enough mugs and plates for the comfort of one, no pictures or personal memorabilia hanging on the walls. So she hadn't brought much with her then.

Meanwhile, Y/N picked a couple of different leaves from her drying racks and started mixing them into a paste, adding liquid from little jars, strewn along the window sill. Finally she walked over with the mixture in hand.

"May I?" She asked, pointing at his wounded side.

Kakashi lifted his shirt once more, and kneeling next to him, she started carefully covering the gash with the sticky green concoction.

The room was filled with a grassy scent. Her hands were cold, which eased the pain of contact with the wound. Kakashi tried his best not to wince, but his body betrayed him by twitching away from her every time she touched him. He wondered whether it was just the pain, or the sensation of being touched by another, that had become so foreign to him outside of combat.

"There, there. Almost done." Her voice was soothing, almost sweet. Kakashi's body instinctively relaxed to the sound of it. They remained like this for a few seconds, him silently watching her movements from above.

"You know, you should take it easy on Iruka. I think he has a crush on you." He spoke quietly, testing the waters.

Y/N cocked a brow, but refrained from looking up, worried that her flushed cheeks would betray her.

"I think that's a stretch, he was just being helpful, that's all." She tried to keep her voice nonchalant.

Kakashi just hummed in response, unsure if he'd managed to find what he was looking for.

"Right, you can put your shirt back down. This should speed up the healing, and subdue the pain. It'll harden and act as a protector for the wound. Just wash it off in a couple of days." She got up, heading towards the sink to wash up.

"How did you know to do this?" He asked, standing up to test how it felt when he moved.

"There was a woman in my village." Y/N spoke with her back still turned to him, eyes focused on washing the mixing dish. "People were afraid of her, thought her a witch. But she was kind to me when not many others were." She placed the dish on the drying rack and turned back to look at him. There was a sadness in her eyes, that didn't evade Kakashi's notice. "She shared some of her knowledge of herbs with me. Insisted it could save my life some day."

They stood silently, staring at each other. It seemed they had both suddenly realised that they were alone in her flat, and weren't sure what to do with that knowledge.

"I should probably go." Kakashi was the first to break their silence.

"Yes. Probably should."

"I'll see you around. And Y/N... thank you."

Without waiting for a response, Kakashi turned towards the door, and left somewhat hurriedly, his heart in his throat. Y/N remained in her place for a minute longer, staring at the space he'd just occupied. How right it had felt to have him here, in her kitchen. How afraid she was of that thought.

[lsunstreakerl]

Famiglia-Familie

Chapter One Analysis:

First off- most of chapter one is kind of over a few concurrent days, so this is a bit shorter than my analysis for the other chapters is going to be.

- I imply in later chapters that Max sees more of the accident than what I actually write in chapter one, and that's true! There's a couple of reasons for that, one being that I just didn't want to write that, and the other being a super convenient excuse for reason one! the human brain, especially a young one (like, maybe, 14?) is going to block out a traumatic event, especially the finer details. Max's brain is literally rewriting what he's seeing in front of him and during the actual crash, in order to try and minimize the psychological damage.

- This ties into the way that Max struggles to even refer to the accident later on- he cuts himself off before he says "Jos", he won't call it "the accident" or even really think of it at all. Max divides his life solidly into a "before" chunk and an "after" chunk.

- "But issi/sunny, why was Force India even there?" Honestly, the way GP and Max meet in this fic is complete chance. There are so many spots where it could have gone otherwise, but it doesn't. I mention at the beginning of the fic that it's leading up to the race weekend, but it's still a wednesday, so there's a lot of the support staff driving around. A group of the Force India guys, including GP, were carpooling back to the hotel when they see the accident site, and they're genuinely just being good samaritans when they stop their car and start trying to help people.

- Max's arm is bothering him a bit while he's still stuck in the seatbelt, but the way that it has him restrained, (which he can't see) is actually doing him a bit of a favor at that point in the fic. It's cutting off blood flow, so Max isn't feeling how majorly fucked up his own bones are. (For curious minds: in this fic, Max has a spiral fracture down the body of his right distal ulna, comminuted fractures across his fingers in a few spots, and an impact fracture on the distal end of his right radius. There's some impact damage on the proximal ends as well, where the elbow joint forms, but it's not as severe as the fingers and wrist.)

- Because of the way Max landed, Hayden isn't able to see the way his arm is caught in the seatbelt until he asks Max to start moving, at which point he asks for the knife. Hayden does have a moment here where he's looking at the injury and wondering if it might be better to let EMS cut Max out, but he's worried they won't get there fast enough, and this is a kid, trapped in a metal van, when there's lightning out, and he makes the decision to cut Max out, and whatever those consequences are he's willing to live with them. (Triage is traumatic and stressful and for those of you who care about original side characters, yes, Hayden goes to therapy.) ((also because he saw a dead man))

- When Hayden cuts Max out of the seatbelt to pull him out, Max gets that blood flow back, which allows his arm to tell his brain "we have a problem!" Which is why he starts screaming. Rough night for him.

- Max is having such a genuinely awful night the entire time that that as soon as he's out of the car and someone (GP) is being kind to him, he decides he's going to cling, and he's not going to let go, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. GP is such a genuinely nice guy, and Max is tugging at all of his heartstrings, that he's like "sure I'll go to the hospital" because GP and the Force India crew could see Jos, and they know that Max is alone now.

- Max gets morphine in the ambulance. yippiee!

- Max is terrified in the hospital, because of everything that's been happening, and his arm, and all he has now is this unfamiliar stranger he'd decided to cling to, so he's like "fuck it, all in, I'm attached to this guy now" and then he doesn't want to even let GP consider leaving, which is why he makes life harder for the hospital staff by refusing to let go of GP.

- The Force India guys called Colin as soon as they pulled over, letting him know about the accident and that they were going to help. Colin keeps in touch with all of them throughout the night, finds out from one of the other guys that GP is with a random kid in the hospital, and acts accordingly. (Has people collect emergency supplies for a teenager and put it in GP's room)

- GP has a reputation in the garage for being soft hearted, so no one is at all surprised about how the situation actually ends up, because of course the guy who always breaks for squirrels and gets out of his car to carry a turtle across the road takes in a child in an emergency, that's just how Gianpiero is.

- When GP first calls Colin is the hospital, he's mostly just getting reassured that it's all okay, and to do whatever he needs to do for the kid. Colin tells him that if Max needs to come to the garage with him for the next few days, Force India can accommodate that.

- Max isn't really thinking about the "not talking" thing until he's confronted when the social worker, where he makes the conscious decision not to speak, both because "that makes everything real" and also because he's in an unfamiliar country, and he doesn't have a legal adult taking care of him, and he doesn't want to say the wrong thing and accidentally back himself into a corner.

- "He didn't get letters for very long" is one of the subtler more heartbreaking lines, because Victoria continues sending him letters for months, Jos just doesn't let Max know about them, so Max thinks Victoria stopped sending them, and Victoria thinks her older brother doesn't like her.

- GP goes through the legal hoops in the background of this fic. Colin has to vouch for his employment status a million times, he has to call the British Embassy in Germany to get the ball rolling on emergency foster certification and then standard foster certification, he has to get the emergency foster certification from Germany, and he has to juggle so many emails. Your average person would be completely overwhelmed, but GP is a race engineer, and being overwhelmed is kind of his job, so he handles it pretty well.

- Max goes into emergency surgery to handle some of the worst parts of his arms and fingers, but the hospital is still super clear with GP that Max needs to have some follow ups. (Max ends up with some serious hardware in his hand. He still has struggles with fine motor skills, and he's got killer osteoarthritis in his fingers, wrist, and forearm, but the brace helps with it.

- "issi/sunny, any hospital that lets a pediatric patient leave that soon after a surgery of that magnitude without a thorough welfare check should be ashamed of themselves!" IM NOT HERE TO BE REALISTIC IF I WANTED THAT I WOULD GO TO WORK.

- Max not looking in the mirror goes hand in hand with him not speaking, or acknowledging the accident. He knows he's injured, he knows as soon as he sees himself in the mirror with his injuries that he can't fool himself anymore, so he's not looking at all.

- GP has no idea what to do with a teenager, which is why he's kind of awkward at first. It's important to note that GP, again, has zero clue who Max is. GP thinks he's taking care of a kid who had a normal home life before a traumatic accident. GP does not think he's taking care of a kid who was already traumatized even before the accident, and he's not able to pick up on some of those warning signs until he and Max are living together.

- "Why doesn't Max go straight to Michael?" Max is 14, and has been told his entire life that nothing is more important than racing, and so of course this would be true for a world champion as well, and Max is so petrified of being a burden that he doesn't want Michael to know at all, because he knows Michael will drop everything to take care of him. (He's been raised to think that kind of behavior is soft and he doesn't need it.) He especially doesn't want to tell Michael right before a race as well. Max is also still trying to pretend it's not real, so the less familiar faces he's around the better.

- Max gets really into the data partially as a coping mechanism, because if he's looking at the data and trying to learn then he's not thinking about the accident. This is also why listening to GP read it out loud is soothing to him. GP has a nice voice, and Max can listen to him rattling off numbers and variables for hours. This is also the beginning of a little routine for the two of them when one of them is having a hard time, where they sit and they go over data together. (nerds)

- The Force India engineers are so excited to have someone genuinely interested in what they're doing that they fall in love with Max immediately.

- The Force India garage also knows why GP has Max- they know that Max is from the accident, and they know he's very grim and quiet, so they actually do kind of make a game out of trying to make him laugh, or at least smile.

- Yes, that is the actual qualifying and race results for Force India in the 2011 German GP.

- I don't actually know if Paul di Resta is a good guy or not, and I didn't want to look it up. ignorance is bliss and all that.

- Max taught himself to be ambidextrous because he thought it would be a cool party trick, and instead it's totally saved his ass now that he literally can't move his right hand.

- "issi/sunny, did you actually look at places for rent in Buckingham for this fic?" guys, I ended up on one of the Buckingham city council's 117 page documents detailing next years public transportation plans from like 2013. do not underestimate the depths I will go.

- Max trying to figure out what he would even want in his room is a bit heartbreaking, and GP doesn't understand why Max struggles with it so bad. (Again, GP is assuming Max lived in a house somewhere, when Max's house was the van, and the van is gone.)

- GP gets attached to Max almost immediately. Here is this quiet kid, from a horrific accident, and he's so scared, and for some reason he's putting his trust in GP, so GP isn't going to betray that. And then GP finds out that his quiet kid is so smart, and that he likes looking at the data, so of course GP is like "give him all the data he wants" and the garage loves him because he's quiet and well mannered and genuinely interested.

- Word gets around the paddock pretty quick about the accident in general, because it made local news, and then it also spreads that one of the race engineers from Force India is actually taking care of a kid from the accident site, so Max has always got people looking out for him when he's around the paddock. (Max doesn't realize this in the fic) he's quite literally a grid kid, in the realest sense.

- GP spends the entire time he's driving from his old flat to the new house freaking out about the whole thing. He's very careful and responsible to not ever show that in front of Max, but trust that there are multiple points in this fic where he is internally flipping his shit.

Feel free to ask questions/request clarification on things! If you actually read to the end of this 🫶

[ladyloveandjustice]

so like I saw this entire argument for the first time when someone reblogged this post a few weeks ago, and was like "well it was two years ago, it's cleary a reach but i'm not that invested, they clearly just REALLY want to yell about this issue of Batgirl rather than go with the most obvious interpretation that was clearly intended, whatever, it's fine" (If they had Jordanna bring up "are you poor" after Steph talked about "her own issues" it is supposed to imply she was poor, whether Steph answers or not (and why would she answer that), otherwise why would the comic bring it up, it's not deep)

but then i was looking at one of my old amvs and

Stephanie's house looks kind of rough there. Yet this was a flashback? No earthquake?

man looks rough there too and this was way before the earthquake. weird that doing-well middle class people wouldn't repair a cracked wall and window.

As I said, that there are plenty of other comics that show Stephanie's house looking run down, this is exhibit A that I just happened to run across. I didn't really have the energy to actually look but turns out I didn't have to.

Steph's dad put the family in a financial hole. That is stated in this very comic. "Using all their money" every time he comes back means a bunch of stuff will pile up and you have to dig yourself out of it. Including the house being in disrepair. In-universe, it's only been like what, a year? less? since the last time he did that in most comics she's in. People don't just automatically recover from that. And that was most of Steph's childhood, Arthur doing that. This is a comic where "we have financial issues" is directly bought up. Steph's Mom likely has very little savings.

That's all I say. Comics are inconsistent. The writers are not as thoughtful about finances as the fans sometimes. It's often hard to nail down a single interpretation. But people think Steph has financial issues because there's more than one comic where her house looks rough, because it's directly stated, it's not out of nowhere.

Like I said, not super invested, I'm not going to say else anything past this post. Steph isn't obviously in danger of being thrown out on the streets, there's miles of difference between her and someone who was literally homeless like Jason, but "struggling" isn't a reach. It's been accepted as a fact for 15 years, since the first time I got into comics, with every fan I talked to, and this is the first time I've seen it so hotly contested, even by people who were following my series of scans on scans_daily (liking it or disliking it), having bits from almost every comic Steph was in right in front of them.

(OH. oh. You don't like Stephanie. that explains the amount of passion here that was confusing for me, I didn't understand why it seemed you were so invested in refuting this. it's like a moral thing now whether she's poor? or a 'financially-concious middle class white girl" is that why white was bought up despite not being relevant to the current conversation about finances? or something? idk what's going on in fandom anymore. anyway.)

If you ever have the time/interest, would you break down the canon surrounding Stephanie’s economic circumstances/home life? It seems like a lot of people have chosen to take it a specific way so I’d love to see your reasoning

Sure. Thanks for asking, it’s honestly a fun topic.

Y’know it’s funny—I actually happen to own something that I think most people, even most Steph fans, haven’t seen: Steph’s first appearance. Not her Robin first appearance, her Detective Comics first appearance, her actual introduction. I happened to pick them up by accident at a con a few years ago because they’re also some of Tim’s first cover appearances. 

Other people might disagree with me on this, but I like to go back to the characters’ origins whenever I can to find the baseline of what they were originally intended to be and try to bring later interpretations in line with that. I like to think of retcons as new revelations, new plot twists in an ongoing story, and not a way to reset aspects of the past just to fit your story. It works especially well for this because Steph’s socio-economic status doesn’t actually change, there’s just kind of a game of telephone that happens across the decades that leads people to misunderstand. 

One thing worth noting in these early issues is just how much Steph, a 16-year-old girl, has at her disposal before she ever even glimpses Batman and Robin. Literally the first shot we ever see of the Spoiler is this: 

And because I am, in fact, that kind of nerd, I have gone in a couple of times and dug out old era-appropriate electronics magazines to figure out what that piece of equipment would cost you in 1992. Baseline for a parabolic microphone is $600, and that price is for much larger, more delicate pieces of equipment meant to be used for like, outdoor nature shoots, which wouldn’t be able to hear through glass. Steph probably dropped $1,000 on that microphone alone. 

Remember also that her costume is homemade—she doesn’t have any other way of getting it. She’s also shown using some pretty elaborate climbing and painting gear, with no indication that they were stolen or borrowed or anything, and you can see that she’s got a pretty well-stocked utility belt there.

Again, for some reason people tend to forget or overlook this but, right up until she demanded Bruce make her Robin, Steph operated as Spoiler with zero Bat support. She got some hand-to-hand training from Cass late in the game and tagged along on some of Tim’s assignments, but was otherwise being actively discouraged from vigilantism for most of her career. She made her own costume, bought her own equipment, and maintained her own motorcycle, all without the financial support of either Batman or her parents. 

So right off the bat we know she’s a teenage girl with a not-insignificant amount of personal disposable income, the only hinted source of which is the implication she works a part-time job somewhere—which I don’t think is ever brought up again when she reappears in Robin. 

We all know minimum wage went further in 1992 than it does now, but it didn’t go that much further. So it’s reasonable to assume that Steph has access to at least some money from her parents to support her vigilante habit, whether that’s in the form of an allowance, gifts that she carefully manages between Christmas and birthdays, or money that she’s able to just, take from Crystal without her noticing. 

But this page is more important to our current interests because it’s also when we see Steph’s neighborhood for the first time. We’re told here that Steph and her mother (who is called Mrs. Agnes Bellinger in this comic, although it’s possible she was using a fake name to visit her ex in prison) live in what is described as “115 South Holden Street, in Manchester.” 

Now keep in mind, the Gotham City map can be extremely fluid and tends to change depending on the needs of the story. But there have been attempts to map it, and “Manchester” has never been on any of those maps, so we have to do some extrapolation. At the very least, we can tell the neighborhood is clearly not in the city, given the very deliberate angle there in the first panel to show that they’re well away from the crowded downtown Gotham skyline.

This implies that Manchester is intended to be one of the mainland suburbs that feeds the island city of Gotham, similar to Bristol Township where the Wayne and Drake Manors are located. It’s not nearly as nice a neighborhood as Bristol—note the fenced-in front lawns, the broken shutters on the neighboring houses, and the vaguely racist lawn ornament on the Brown’s property—but it’s also not some rundown slum. People aren’t afraid to let kids play in their front yards or leave their garage doors standing open. And you’ll note those aren’t trailers, either, they’re decently-sized suburban homes.

Also worth noting: Crystal seems to keep this house perfectly fine on her own as a single mother. Arthur doesn’t live with them; when he’s shown having residences it tends to be apartments in the city by himself, and it’s not like he could support them from prison or with his ill-gotten criminal gains. And yet, we don’t see Steph or Crystal worrying at all about bills or mortgages or anything like that throughout any of their appearances. We see the interior of their house on several occasions and, while it’s often messy, it’s not in disrepair or neglect.

This is a constant portrayal throughout all of Steph’s appearances, from Robin through even her run as Batgirl. So, with that in mind, where does the idea that Steph is poor come from? Well, I’ve got a couple of theories.

One is the usual comics fandom problem: canon is huge, nobody can keep up with all of it, and some people go out of their way to be assholes about it, so misinformation gets spread like wildfire, in no small part because Steph is a character that a lot of people use as a self-insert and therefore she must be the misunderstood underdog in all things.

But on the more-interesting-to-talk-about front… I don’t think it’s controversial to say that Steph’s first big storyline was her pregnancy. Yeah? Like, it’s the first story involving her that really started getting critical attention. Whether it deserves that attention is more open to debate—personally, since reading Icon & Rocket for the first time, I’ve come to view it as Dixon pulling the comic book equivalent of white guys repackaging black music and watering it down—but the important thing right now is that it’s the first time people would’ve been specifically reading the Robin comics for Stephanie Brown. And in those comics, Steph’s house is shown as visibly run-down, covered in cracks and disrepair.

Thing is, there’s a context that people miss if you’re reading for the baby storyline and nothing else: this storyline plays out over the last days of “Aftershock” and early months of “No Man’s Land,” the storyline where Gotham is racked by a destructive earthquake that nearly levels the city and is abandoned by the federal government.

Again, we get the reinforced confirmation that Steph’s house isn’t actually in Gotham because it’s not destroyed in the quake—the neighborhood is damaged and briefly evacuated due to a gas line rupture in the immediate aftermath, but once that’s cleared up they’re free to return home, and their suburb is not part of the federal government’s evacuation. Nearly every building in Gotham is shown with similar damage during this time, including Drake Manor. 

This storyline also plays into, I think, the stereotypes that people jump on when it comes to Steph’s socioeconomic status. Like I’ve mentioned before: Arthur is a criminal, Crystal is a drug addict, and Steph is a teen mom. Therefore, they must be poor, right? Because good middle class families supposedly don’t have those kinds of problems.

But, as I’ve mentioned before, that’s an inaccurate stereotype that ignores reality: plenty of drug addicts, criminals and teen moms live in the suburbs. And the Browns’ specific circumstances are distinctly atypical of the stereotype—Arthur’s not some down-on-his-luck thief pushed to crime by economic hardship, he’s an arrogant former gameshow host who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and resents the world for not handing him the success he feels entitled to. Crystal’s not some crack addict, she’s a working nurse who used to get her doctor friends to write her scripts for prescription painkillers. And Steph is just a teenage girl who slept with a boy and got pregnant, with the costs of prenatal care and/or childrearing never seeming to be a factor in her decision to bring the child to term and give it up for adoption. 

I could go on but that’s pretty much the long and short of it: Steph is simply not shown as being poor in the comics. Ever. She’s not rich, she does clearly rely on her fists much more than any gadgets or fancy gear and lives with her mother rather than moving out on her own for college, but she’s also never shown worrying about student loans and can apparently pay for all her classes with some government assistance and a part-time job alone.

People just assume that she’s poor because they’re misinformed, or they’re projecting, or they’ve got biases they haven’t examined, or they need her to be an underdog to justify their argument against one of the other characters, or they really want her to be buddy-buds with Jason for some reason. 

Or, y’know, they just don’t want to acknowledge that they’re rooting for a middle-class white girl from the suburbs who commutes into the inner city to pick fights for fun. 

[blueishspace]

Hero, Villain God 35

(Prev) (Next) (First)

*Grian's pov*

You are still not allowed to go out as Cuteguy. You don't get why you have to wait so long to start doing hero stuff, was what happened at that inauguration thing really that bad? You doubt it.

Scar tried to cheer you up which was... weirdly sweet? Luckily for everyone you still have a few other ways to pass the time and won't get bored for a while...

...You go out as a Poultryman as soon as you can... what can you say? There is only so much staying still and being nice that you can take. Jumping roof to roof, stopping crime, It's just so refreshing.

You look down to the streets and see an hint of fire...oh! That's Flame! First time you have seen another vigilante around... thinking about it, it makes sense considering how big of a city it is...still, weird considering how many times you have stumbled on both heroes and villains by going out like this.

You open your wings and gently glide down to the ground...before snapping them close and dropping next to him.

"Hello there Flame!"

"Oh! Poultryman right? Didn't expect you to be here for this.''

"That's me! So, what's going on?"

"Oh, you don't know? There is a group of guys robbificating the mall like right now."

. . .

Rob...bificating? Wait, mall? Again? Why is this mall coming back so soon? You didn't think it had enough relevance to be robbed.

"The mall?"

"Yep, are you in for some ass kicking?"

Well, you know the mall is not yours but after yesterday It feels personal for some reason. Also kicking ass is always fun.

"Of course I'm in!"

And like that he just starts going,doesn't even wait for you... Mean. Of course you keep up though since you can fly but still, unappreciated.

You are at the infamous mall and- Ohhhhh right, the mall has a jewlery store, you were kinda wondering why someone would want to rob a clothes store or... figurine store at gun point. That does explain a lot actually.

As soon as you land they start shooting at you, are all mortals so trigger happy? If you were alone you would just take the bullets head on but all these guys are watching you and Flame is here and you aren't going to reveal your divinity to him like this...so you wave your hand when nobody is looking and their gun happen to suddenly stop working at that exact time... so weird and lucky for you.

Flame looks to you.

"Their guns are jammed, this is the best shot we have"

"Don't need to tell me twice!"

You jump on them, they shreak as you do...you hear Flame snort behind you as you land on them and push them to the floor, by the raising temperature you can tell he's joined in as well...you two do make a pretty good team it seems, something to keep in mind.

As the sirens approach and you begin to leave Flame stops you, silently he gives you a card with an address and a time written on it. Huh. Before you can ask about it he waves and leaves... You don't fly after him and he gets away. You are going to have to check this out aren't you? Fun! You are interested by what this could possibly lead to, you hope It's something fun...like arson! He even has the perfect power for it, it would be such a waste otherwise...

Oh well, no time to think about that now! You still have other stuff to do right now... not before trowing a few eggs behind you though, you are not forgetting that, It's very important to your branding.

You read the card a while after. The 26th? It's the same day as the movie marathon... Funny how life can be, huh?

[viktorrights]

hello!! right off the bat i just want to say i absolutely ADORE coming home and im not even done reading it, you have absolutely no idea how much it means to me already. ive been very emotional throughout LMAO

BUT im not here to talk about my thoughts (just know i think youre absolutely phenomenal and im so thankful youre sharing this story with us)

what i wanted to ask is! do you have any specific song/s that you think fit chapter 9 the best? ive been really loving your song choices for the chapters and before even reading them i always check for your song choice to read throughout them

i know you shared your playlist, but i just NEED to know the specifics, otherwise i might go crazy

edit?: i just checked the notes for the remaining chapters and you also dont have any specific ones written out so could you also share those if thats not a problem??

SO sorry if this is a stupid question or if this ask is jarringly incoherent its literally 2am i have work in the morning and i was literally about to read chapter 9 but i just dont think i can do it without your specific music choice LMAO

ANYWAYS if you do see this i hope you are having an amazing day/night/anytime and i hope you know how much this story means to us readers, thank you SO much <33

you are so kind thank you so so much both of you ! including this ask above in the mix too because they're both playlist related.

i'm fully aware my playlist is so like. emo lesbian pilled because that just happens to be the music I listen to (wonder why), but I also fully believe in my heart of hearts that they are very sufjanpilled.

your ask last night made me kind of do some reflecting on the whole playlist by the way? because I've been meaning to structure it more chronologically for a really long time. so I have - and I've added some new songs. I'm going to map it out here for you :)

so here's the playlist mapped by chapter

(stars mean for the flashback, there's a couple I've kept from adding that remind me of 13 that I'll add once the chapter's posted)

an added ramble because i'm annoying -

i have a lil poetry background and just love music and lyrics so much. heat lightning might seem an odd choice for chapter 9 - but in thinking about it - since its from viktor's pov - I didn't want something traditionally overtly romantic. i wanted something very heady and serious and cosmic that references a sort of surrender of self.

i also love recommendations

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

A thousand times yes! This gave me so much to think about. Specifically, your point about how his name represents his old self/identity is very interesting to me, given what we see from him with Cosette towards the end of the novel.

I find it striking that Valjean tells Cosette to refer to him as "Monsieur Jean," out of all things. It makes sense that, because of his conversation with Marius and their belief that he must be cut out of Cosette's life, he wouldn't allow her to call him "Father." And, even though he literally has a full, sobbing breakdown in front of Marius when it seems like Cosette will find out about his past (the only time we see him cry in front of someone else, I'm pretty sure?), he doesn't go by Fauchelevent to her. Cosette likely would've found that less unusual, since we see her refer to him as "my father Fauchelevent" quite naturally, and it would make sense that Valjean would want to minimize her suspicions. But his great denied desire, as he expresses to Marius, is to be a part of a family; that's exactly what he felt he couldn't do as Fauchelevent. Keeping that name would mean he would always be worried that "the mask would suddenly be torn away," and he would be driven out as a monster. He wants to be accepted and loved for who he truly is, and while this isn't by any means complete honesty, in confessing to Marius and dropping the alias with Cosette, maybe he feels a little closer to what he's longed for.

There's also the social and metatextual significance of having Cosette call him "Monsieur Jean." First, in dropping his alias (which supplied Cosette's maiden name), he further severs any perceptible social tie between the two of them. "Jean," as you mentioned above, is a homonym of gens, which is fitting, since JVJ views himself as having become "just another person" to Cosette. And yet, calling him by his first name indicates some level of familiarity; social norms at the time meant that formal address used the last name. "Monsieur Jean" is oddly straddling the line between distant and personal (as Valjean himself is attempting to do).

Maybe most interesting of all is that, as many have noticed, Hugo almost exclusively refers to JVJ by his full name, Jean Valjean. This is one of the only instances in which the last name is dropped, which is part of why it stood out so much on my readthrough. It feels noticably more intimate, but also incomplete. And I think it ties into what (as you mentioned above) his last name means: "voilà Jean/gens": "behold the man." He's not ready for Cosette to know the full truth about who he is, so narratively, it's fitting that the withheld last name (which would allow her to learn about his past) is one which itself references a full and raw perception. It was first used of the suffering Christ, naked and humiliated and condemned and innocent; Valjean, in his fear and self-loathing, does not allow that revelation of himself.

Les Mis Hidden Name Meanings: Jean Valjean

Every Les Mis character’s name is either a pun or has some deep symbolic meaning– or both at once! Jean Valjean’s name has a ton of layers so let’s dive in.

When we’re first introduced to him, Hugo tells us that his name is quote “a contraction of voilà Jean, or “here is Jean.”” We’re told that he was named after his father, and that his family name probably began as a nickname.

The word “Jean” in french sounds like the word “gens,” which means “people.” So his last name is a pun meant to make you think “viola les gens”/ “here are people.”

The most obvious layer to his name is that Jean Valjean is basically John Doe. He is the anonymous Everyman. His sister’s name is Jeanne, so she’s basically Jane Doe. They aren’t special or exceptional or unusual; they’re just behold! The regular people.

In fact his name is so common-sounding that it's a plot point. Champmathieu, the man who is mistaken for Jean Valjean, has a name that the police connect with his. Javert theorizes that "Champ" is a version of "Jean" in a specific accent, while Mathieu was actually Jean Valjean's sister's maiden name. ("Champ" is also the French word for "field.") The fact that Jean Valjean is a peasant everyman makes it easy for others in his position to be conflated with him.

But the other layer is that this is all an elaborate pun biblical reference!

When Pontius Pilate presents a bound Jesus Christ to the crowd before his crucifixion, he says the words “ecce homo” or “Here is the man!”/”behold the man!”

“Voila Jean” or “here is Jean!”/”behold Jean!” is meant to be a reference to that.

During his death scene Jean Voila-Jean even references the “Ecce homo” line explicitly, gesturing at a crucifix and saying:

“Voilà le grand martyr.”

Which Isabel Hapgood translates as “behold the great martyr.”

At another point in the same scene Marius says to Cosette:

“He has sacrificed himself. Viola l’Homme. Behold the man.”

But more references to that biblical moment appear throughout the novel; Jean Valjean is associated with it constantly, all the time. It’s one of his defining biblical allusions. He’ll be trying to live anonymously, or under an alias– and then suddenly his true name and criminal past will be revealed, he’ll be revealed to be ‘the man,’ and some great horrible act of martyrdom will follow.

Sometimes Jean Valjean is the one revealing his own identity, but sometimes Inspector Javert is put into the role of Pontius Pilate. Javert himself explicitly makes that comparison– Jean Valjean as Jesus, Javert as Pontius Pilate– when he’s contemplating suicide.

And this ties into one of the largest differences between the book and the stage musical.

In the musical, “prisoner 24601” is the name that represents Jean Valjean’s dehumanization–while “Jean Valjean” is the name he uses while standing up for his own humanity. He will be called 24601, and proudly declare that “my name is Jean Valjean” to assert he’s still a person.

And while this is a great storytelling choice, it’s almost the opposite of how the name “Jean Valjean” is handled in the book.

Because in the book…. Jean Valjean IS the name that dehumanizes him. Jean Valjean is the name that he’s running from. The name that Javert uses when he’s insulting him, the name that bigots use when they’re threatening him, the name that ignorant people use when they’re mocking him – it’s not 24601, it’s Jean Valjean.

And there’s a special kind of agony to that.

The name that is being used to torture, humiliate, and dehumanize him isn’t 24601– it’s his name.

He thinks of it as a “fatal name,” as a punishment. Living under that name is living in hell. When Jean Valjean is living under one of his aliases, concealing his identity, he thinks:

That which he had always feared most of all in his hours of self-communion, during his sleepless nights, was to ever hear that name {jean Valjean] pronounced; he had said to himself, that that would be the end of all things for him; that on the day when that name made its reappearance it would cause his new life to vanish from about him, and—who knows?—perhaps even his new soul from within him.

It’s no wonder that he ends up internalizing the way society views him, and developing so much fear and hatred of himself. He’s grown to see his name as just….well, ecce homo, behold the man. His name is just the two words people say before they violently punish him.

Names and namelessness are a major theme in Les Mis, and he’s the character who has the most complex relationship with his own names. He has a legal name, but it’s used to torture him, and he has a series of false names he uses to escape torture.

If I were to describe Jean Valjean– one of the most complex characters in all of literature, in one word, that word would be “grief.”

The criminal justice system takes everything from him, including things he wasn’t aware he was able to lose. His name, the last connection he had to his family and his old identity, gets warped into this thing needs to view with fear and horror. The thing society despises isn’t 24601, isn’t a number they’ve placed on him – the thing they despise is Jean Valjean, some intrinsic inherent part of himself. He isn’t hated for what he did, he’s hated for what he is, and that is something he can never escape.

{But speaking of complexity we’ve actually barely scratched the surface of how Jean Valjean reacts to names, because he spends most of the novel living under a series of nicknames aliases. And guess what! Each of these names also has some elaborate symbolic meaning! If you’re interested in more posts covering his different aliases, feel free to leave a comment in the replies!}

[thanks for reading! For more in-depth analysis, check out the @lesmisletters readalong or join our discord server!]

[scarlettaagni]

not true in practice, but Cyclonus imagines it's that way

based off this post

The moment Cyclonus learned they were both made by the Constructicons, he immediately went "wait a minute... THAT MAKES US BROTHERS?!" to which Megatron tried to explain that's not really how we do things and gets cut off with a "I'M BROTHERS WITH THE DECEPTICON LEADER..... WOW...."

The brief euphoria of finally having a living brother, gave way to him realizing he has competition (for the Constructicons' attention)

They have distanced themselves from Cyclonus for several reasons, not initially but most glaringly, it's because he's overly familiar with them and is Very persistent about it which pushes them further away

OH but they can talk to MEGATRON all the time! (the Constructicons have to interact with him because he is their boss. and Megatron is a likeable boss. so, yes, they like him, but they don't see him as a son. Cyclonus does not care)

[butyouaremymess]

Colin + his (many) love confessions for Penelope

[scoriarose]

She came up with a new activity

[kittymoonclover]

Blossick was the first ship I liked as a kid. And it also introduced me to whole "enemies to lovers" and the whole opposite attract streets mart x Booksmart debacle. I personally like them but as teenagers.

It kind of sucks that Majority of the Fandom's interpretation of Brick is him being booksmart and not streetsmart. Because Blossick gives me such "English please?" Energy. (The joke where the smart character says something and the dumb character doesn't get it so they ask the smart character to speak "english". To dumb it down in a way they can understand.

Playing Devil's Advocate:

The Fandom tend to think that RRB have the same personalities as their counterparts even though they Don't. If anything they are opposites personality wise.

Brick is rude, aggressive and Brash while Blossom is more cool headed and calm and polite, but Brick still the leader of the rowdyruff boys. He is just a different type of leader. Canon wise, Brick is the most self aware than Boomer and Butch. And Brick is probably in a lot of pressure Just like How Blossom is in alot of pressure in protecting the city.

Brick and Blossom maybe different people but their experiences can be similar to each other. (I mean who says that Boomer and Butch won't cut off Brick's hair one day.)

The most obvious example is Boomubbles. Boomer is airhead but he is also very aggressive, Snippy and considers Bubbles to be weak. He isn't the type to like Cuteness at all. He often times overcompensates for manly. While Bubbles is Sweet and Sugary, Boomer is a lil mean and snippy.

He may be airhead but doesn't mean he is the nicest (if anything he is shown to be the opposites.) But both him Bubbles are in the same roles. Being "youngest" and getting teased by their siblings. Boomer isn't a crybaby, He Broods more than cries.

(But the Fandom just interprets him as bubbles no.2.)

And Butch For some reason people cannot accept the fact he is the least aggressive out of 3. Like come on, Butch is literally only who doesn't hit his brothers. (Muiltiverse doesn't count because it's a mix of canon and headcanon). But if go buy the comics and Episodes from the Canon, You clearly that he isn't aggressive. Him being Buttercup's counterpart does not imply that he is. He is just a goofball who chooses to blindly follow and trust Brick rather than disagree with him like Buttercup does with Blossom.

Butch is a yes man, There isn't much evidence proving otherwise and Butch doesn't hit his brothers. He is actually just chill kid who enjoys the simpler things in life and is a goofball when Brick cues him to be one. (But the Fandom categorize him as unstable because he twitches.)

And it sucks because I think canon Butch and Buttercup would have interesting dynamic. They could learn from each other. But they still have same roles. (Butch is second in command).

They have both differences and similarities to their counterparts.

Brick/Blossom (Personality wise: Opposites) but they are both leaders and smart. I can't believe I'm saying this, But Compare to Boomer and Butch, Brick is the smartest one.

He may not be Booksmart level like Blossom but Brick is very good at reading people hence why he is the only who could tell that Blossom was being sarcastic in episode TBAIT, while Butch and Boomer took the hair comment as a compliment. He was angry because he is the only who could tell they didn't mean it. (Plus he remembered Boomer isn't afraid roaches.)

In the Octi, Episodes, Buttercup was trying to tell Blossom that her plan wasn't working and Blossom just straight up ignores her and suggested new plans. I honestly think Brick would be the opposite of that because there are moments where Brick genuinely compliments Boomer when he has good idea.(one was in bubble boy and the other is in one of the Action Pack comics) showing that Brick may not be as a commanding as he looks.

Bubbles/Boomer - (personality wise: Opposites) Like I said he is just as mean and Aggressive as Brick. And he isn't afraid to speak up. Even though it will get him hit by Brick. Yes, He is airhead but that doesn't mean he is sweet. (But he also gets picked on by his siblings)

Butch/Buttercup - (personality wise : Opposites) Butch is energetic and complains when he is bored. But, He isn't physically aggressive as Buttercup. Butch isn't Buttercup. He is just goofball, Who is more of a yesman to Brick who likes and enjoys the simple things in life. (If anything he is more of a go with flow type guy) . (And is also the second in command)

And that makes color code interesting. Both PPG and RRB are very different in terms of personality. But they have the same roles and experiences. That's the common ground.

They are on the same boat but with different flags.

(Also, I am not trying to convince OP otherwise. I just wanted to share my own opinion of them.

Tbh, When I rejoined the Fandom, I was surprised to find out that Blossick was the most popular. I always they thought they were the least popular XD)

i don’t like blossick

that ship is overrated

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah