#but you can’t rip the girl away from the hyperfixation

[emchante]

too sad to watch the race today. catch me sulking under my pile of blankets about what should’ve been. may die for a few hours to avoid too much about the race, but will answer dms and my nonnies soon<3

[calliopes-corner]

shame — cate dunlap

fandom : gen v

pairings : mentioned jordan x marie & cate x marie

word count : 659

summary : cate realizes something about herself

warnings : internalized lesbophobia

author's note : i literally just finished gen v and i'm hyperfixating on it and cate ( especially cate ) so hard. . . she is a lesbian TO ME !!!!!!!!!!! mariecate is real TO ME !!!!!!!!!! ( i live in delusion ) i don't know if this is even remotely good but i desperately needed to write something for her so :33 , mitski title also

The pitch dark encompasses Cate, swallowing her and her surroundings, leaving her with nothing to distract herself from the unwanted thoughts. The kind of thoughts that creep in only in the dark when you’re unable to hide even from yourself. Her mind conjures up all of the moments she’s stared just a second too long at Marie, the shameful unsatisfied feelings she’s buried after sex with Luke despite how fucking perfect he is. Was she quickly corrects herself. And another memory resurfaces. 

Her stomach twists as she recalls the split second of relief she had felt when he’d done what he had done. It was sick and it was twisted and she blocked that memory out for a reason. Of course she had been heartbroken after that second and that’s what mattered. It didn’t mean anything, it was just a result of the shock of his death. She had lost her boyfriend after all. The boy that she had loved had been suddenly ripped away from her. 

She had loved him, hadn’t she? Yes. Of course. She tells herself firmly but she’s not so certain if it’s true. She was supposed to love him. She definitely had liked him but she’s not quite sure she’s ever really loved a boy before. She’s never felt the nervous butterflies or the giddy excitement that people always talked about when they talked about being in love. Not with Luke and certainly not with Andre. She had never been “boy crazy” or had particularly strong feelings about any of the boys she’d dated. She’d always felt uncomfortable when Luke told her he loved her- when any boy had. Forcing herself to say it back was even worse - how could she reassure someone of something she wasn’t even sure about herself? At least she told herself she wasn’t sure. Deep down she knows she just hadn’t cared about them the way they cared about her. She wanted to love them - she wanted it desperately. Maybe there was something wrong with her. Maybe there still is. 

Or maybe, just maybe it’s something else. Marie isn’t the first girl she’s caught herself staring at. There have been others… She’s possibly felt that shy awkwardness of wanting to be noticed by someone else you like maybe a little too much. She can’t help but feel the shameful nauseating feeling of jealousy whenever she sees Marie take Jordan’s hand or offer them a secret smile. And there are other things too… She often finds her fantasies full of soft skin and long hair, and too often she plays the role of the male partner in them. She’s never once questioned her gender, she’s definitely a girl, but it’s far too shameful for her to imagine her real self with another girl in that way. 

No, there’s no way that she, Cate Dunlap, could be anything but straight. It’s not that she’s homophobic or anything - she’s perfectly fine with other people being queer - but it’s not an option for her. Plus, everyone has had those kinds of thoughts about girls, haven’t they? They’re just a part of growing up, aren't they? It’s silly for her to even entertain the possibility of her being… like that. 

Still, she lays there in the dark and a part of her knows. Lesbian. She examines the word in her mind, repeating it over and over again. Lesbian. Lesbian lesbian lesbian lesbian. She repeats it until it doesn’t sound like a threat to her, to everything she’s ever known. She repeats it until it doesn’t even sound like a word anymore. 

Tears prick her tired eyes. She can’t think about it anymore. She’s overwhelmed and God she’s tired. She’s beyond tired - she’s fucking exhausted. She tries to think of anything else. Something calming, comforting even, anything to get these shameful thoughts out of her mind. Still, when she eventually drifts off into a fitful sleep all she can think about is Marie’s sweet smile.

[miliamin1]

Stubborn, single minded and obsessive (15176 words) by miliamin Chapters: 5/? Fandom: Wednesday (TV 2022) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Wednesday Addams/Enid Sinclair Characters: Wednesday Addams, Enid Sinclair Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - High School, nevermore is not a boarding school alright, Autistic Wednesday Addams, Enid Sinclair Has ADHD, Panic Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Underage Drinking, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Fluff, Angst, Fluff and Angst Summary: After a full school year Enid can’t really call it a hyperfixation. Or a simple crush really. But falling for an anti-social girl means that the two months of summer break will be enough of a strength test on these feelings to either get rid of them or solidify it as ‘love’, dooming Enid for an unrequited high school cliche. If only Wednesday didn’t develop a sudden habit for window break-ins demanding favors.

First chapter excerpt:

The first time Enid fell in love was during AP Calculus class. Starting at a math quiz even. One of many that year. This teacher loved to give five minute quizzes out of nowhere with so little time being justified by the fact that it was multiple answer papers. Real chance of passing by just guessing. 

There was no chance of passing if just looking at the questions made you freeze and lose all semblance of thought. So little time. So many of those failed already. Enid was screwed. Mom found one with a big red F on them and yelled at her for hours. How she needs to pass all of her AP classes with better grades. How she’s always a disappointment. How she needs to stop being a failure. How she needs to get better. 

There was no getting better when her brain started to swim instead of thinking. Words and numbers jumbling together and not making sense, ticking of the clock speeding up impossibly. 

TICKTICKTICKTICKTICK. 

She could never do anything properly. 

Never.

Never.  

Never. 

Air was heavy and moving sluggishly out of her, requiring all energy spent on getting it in and out. Not enough oxygen. Even her lungs were failing to do their job. Her mouth completely dried up. Her heart beat so fast it hurt.  She felt as if she could fall down any moment. But she couldn’t move. Only clutch at her pen and be stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

The test paper slid away from her. Of course the time was up and she failed already. Of course-

The paper moved only slightly to the left and a tan hand deftly picked up the pen from her hand. Quickly filling out boxes and then moving the quiz back in front of her. Cold fingers moving up from her wrist, pressing on the muscles to relax so a pen can be put back into the nearest hand of the owner.

Enid instead tried to hold onto them. With all her strength. They squeezed back, tightly and repositioned them under the desk.

Wednesday didn’t try to free herself the whole rest of class. Even after Enid's breath evened out. Or to be able to write with her usual right hand. Enid felt guilty because it wasn’t like her dominant being free meant she wrote anything. She was so exhausted all she could do was examine the blue veins, tiny scars and manicured black nails on the tether that kept her still in this world. The coldness of the skin made reality easier to latch onto. 

She was too exhausted to remember that Wednesday never needed to write down that many notes. Not until the ripping sound of paper got accompanied by being given instructions of extremely dumb downed new formulas and how to use them in a question. 

She only noticed she’s crying when she noticed wet marks discoloring the black ink. But  they were so far from being caused by pain. Blissful feeling in her chest, making breathing easy, fed on gradually disappearing coldness of skin. Like it needed it more than oxygen. Her neck tensed as she tried really hard to not look at the girl beside her and risk her crying to become noticeable beyond the stray tear or two. The feel of her firm touch was so sweetly overwhelming enough as it was. Eye contact would make her fall apart in the opposite direction.

By the end of the period their hands achieved thermal equilibrium and Enid’s heart learned a new beat.

[starry-skies-116]

Neurodivergent Elizabeth Headcanons! (Part 2/3)

Elizabeth absolutely LOVES to stim, most often by playing with her hair. She has naturally extremely curly hair that she loves to tug on and twirl around her fingers- the texture of her curls soothes her, and when she’s particularly stressed she tends to stroke and twirl her hair rapidly and relentlessly. She also loves to wear soft skirts and dresses for the purpose of twirling and spinning around in them.

Pigtaaaails~ Elizabeth loves pigtails for the sole purpose of stimming with them- literally this girl loves just twirling her hair so damn much.

Other stims include flapping and flailing her hands (and sometimes her entire body) excitedly, twiddling with her thumbs, scribbling down in paper and stomping! Whenever she gets REALLY excited she basically has no filter and can’t read social cues at all- she starts giggling, stimming aggressively, and speaks really excitedly and fast and in a passionate, loud tone of voice with both no filter and no volume control.

Exercise great caution when mentioning her hyperfixations and special interests with her around- she will JUMP at the occasion to ramble and infodump for several minutes on an excitement-fueled tangent about said interests.

Elizabeth when she was younger tended to mimic some of both William and Evan’s behavioral tendencies and mannerisms- William’s consciously, Evan’s subconsciously. It was basically just like how when Evan was an infant, he idolized and dearly loved Michael and wanted to be just like him, looking up to him and mimicking a number of Michael’s mannerisms (it’s the reason why one of the traits all three siblings share is a fiery temper and deep, strong and intense emotions).

Elizabeth is incredibly impulsive, although this is involuntary because she’s essentially dopamine starved. She’s extremely picky with her food and seeks out sweets (specifically ice cream being her safe food) just for a rush of dopamine that she gets from eating them. Whenever she gets stressed or emotional, or has an emotional meltdown or sensory overload, ice cream and gentle arm and/or back massages (while talking her down in a warm tone of voice) is a great way to soothe her.

Circus Baby is a MAJOR hyperfixation for her. That’s it that’s the headcanon. Also ice cream and French fries? Literally her safefoods.

Both her and Evan have terrible motor skills. One time she walked into a room to see Evan in literal hysterics trying and miserably struggling to make an origami butterfly for Michael’s birthday present and she never related so hard to her other older brother than in that moment.

Just like Evan, she is very touch sensitive and picky about what clothes she wears. Oftentimes she spends way too long browsing clothes because for the clothes she would wear, they had a terribly itchy texture.

Velvet. Holy sHIT velvet. Where do I begin to explain how much Elizabeth hates touching velvet? It’s just. No. Ew. No offense to any ND’s who actually like velvet, but for her it’s just terrible on all sorts of levels. It’s staticky, it feels icky, it’s WAY too soft and fuzzy to the point where you get static shocks, and it makes you sweat a horrendously uncontrollable amount if it’s in clothing. 

One time Elizabeth had to wear a velvet and silk (holy sHIT silk) dress to a special event and she was just. Itching. The whole goddamn time. She couldn’t concentrate on ANYTHING because it was literally SUCH sensory hell. The very MOMENT she got home she practically RIPPED OFF the dress and just. Flapped. Just, y’know- FLAILED her ENTIRE BODY WHILST LAYING ON HER BED, FLOPPING LIKE A FISH OUT OF WATER until the Bad Texture™ went away.

Unclear instructions are the bane of her existence, and so is task initiation. “Get the thing from there.” Bitch what thing from where?? There’s a million ‘things’ and there’s a million more ‘there’s’.

Elizabeth’s short term memory is terrible to the point of being basically unreliable, and might as well be swiss cheese given how many holes it has. Whether certain bits of information can go into her long-term memory or not is a gamble all the time that she has to constantly make. The WORST part of it is FEELING herself forgetting- she could just be doing a random task, a thought could appear, and she’ll FEEL the information slip from her mind’s grasp almost on a physical level.

Elizabeth also gets understimulated incredibly easily without stimming, comfort foods, hyperfixations, an environment of optimal stimulation level, or anything of the sort. However, overstimulation is just as bad for her. But when she’s understimulated, she gets incredibly distracted by the prospect of dopamine, resulting in recklessness and impulsivity (not thinking things through and heavy insistence on sticking to plans she’s already made in order to earn that burst of short-term gratification and pleasure, similar to Evan except he by contrast voluntarily follows through with the plans he makes strictly).

Oh, and did I mention that this girl has literally no volume control? And is atrociously horrific at organizing due to time blindness? She also chronically loses items of hers due to a gaping lack of object permanence.

Executive dysfunction and procrastination go brrrr~ sometimes she wants to get started on a task, but her brain literally outright refuses. Oh, and long-term goals? She WILL cry- she had to do an activity in kindergarten one day when everyone wanted to set long-term goals, but her brain literally just lagged and malfunctioned like a broken computer when she tried to think of ideas whilst her neurotypical peers were so sure of what they wanted to achieve in life. William told her when she complained to him that the other children were just wholesale making stuff up, but she didn’t quite buy it- something else was going on.

Being incredibly eager to please her father as well as her superiors (but especially William), and getting incredibly disheartened and depressed and anxious of failure to the point where she feels like one screw-up could send her whole life spiraling down into the point of no hope nor return? My girl. My bestie. Have you heard of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria? It’s the WORST.

Especially during her life as Vanessa her RSD worsens greatly- so do her ADHD symptoms, further causing her anxiety and making her spiral even more. Yeah, having an abusive parental figure in her life spelt doom for her self-esteem and self image since the beginning.

There could be pLENTY of food to eat in the fridge and she would just. Not eat anything. Because there’s none of her comfort food and all the food is food she’s supposed to cook first (blegh).

However, whenever executive dysfunction isn’t beating her up, she’s actually very good at cooking! She settles for recipes that don’t require an elongated attention span because she could leave the rice cooking and suddenly the entire kitchen is in flames the moment she looks away for what she perceives to be about a minute.

Elizabeth Afton RSD Queen real not clickbait!!!?!/?!?!//!?!?!11/?!/1!?!/

Overall ADHD gaslight gatekeep girlboss og. 11010139101010039/10.

[scrawnytreedemon]

Shit I’ve Been Winding Up For A Long Time Now But Am Very Aware Will Probably Hold No Relevance Should I Actually Go Into This More--

This is about Bhunivelze.

I.

You know, when I was chilling out, on my bed, that evening on that half term in early June, deciding to check up on ClementJ64′s FF retrospective because-- Hey! It’s been awhile, I wonder if he’s got around to doing the final bit of the FFXIII saga --You know, I was there, chilling, just for a laff. Just a laff.

The rest of that week was spent spiralling into a hyperfixation I absolutely did not anticipate in any way, shape, or form, because the way they introduced that character was “wwhdhfjjhHJDFJKHKJHW H A T??”

That retrospective and a good amount of wiki-scrounging is all I have as a basis for this. This is not a coherent character analysis-- Though I might tag it as that for ease of access. This is not, by any means, the thoughts of someone deeply familiar with FFXIII on the whole beyond plot synopses and overarching themes.

I don’t think I’m brave enough for that.

Reading the vast yet surface-deep lore on those wiki pages on my birthday while in a delirious state of mind was enough to make me somewhat nauseous.

Do you think I’m going to go through all of that in real time?

(Someday, someday.)

Ugh, I don’t know how to begin, but let us, I guess. I’d recommend you read this church-mime-demiurge’s FF Wiki page if you want the same level of base-knowledge I had, and maybe the aformentioned retrospective if you want the experience, because I don’t think I have the wherewithal to get into all of that from the bottom-up.

I am also, so, so fucking sorry for any remaining FFXIII fans in advance. There is like, a good chance I may be butchering the characterisation completely, so bear with me here.

With that... we begin?

Where do we even start with this guy?

How on earth to you begin to explain the absolute monolith you’ve constructed from crumbs of a Guy, some material no doubt spliced in from the Pale King, Sephiroth, y o u r  o w n  G o d  O C and other characters, and the mountains of religious trauma you carry around at all times that is probably the only reason you’ve been able to latch on as hard as you did?

I’m going to try.

What gets me, in summary, about Bhunivelze is how he’s a prime example of how love and concern can become deadly forces if in the wrong hands. His first acquainting with human emotion was by deceiving and possessing Hope, reverting his body to a teenage state, and planning to live among humanity through him. He sees human sorrow and suffering, and decides that, to End This(because it must be ended, you see) he’s going to destroy all the souls of the deceased that make up the Chaos that’s been eating this world for the past five-hundred years so they all forget and Are Happy. :).

Capital G God here hasn’t been present for the vast part of human history because he’s hidden himself away from Everything due to paranoia from killing his own mother and throwing her body into the Cosmic Basement, THEN creating the beings that would come to create humanity and OTHER beings because he didn’t have the keys to the cosmic basement. And also he believes death is a thing because she’d’ve somehow cursed all things to pass(including him) out of Spite.

Which explains why he’s so fucking averse to it and anything to do with it.

Bhunivelze, to put it lightly, is Shit at stepping into others’ shoes and Getting their experiences-- All the FalCie in FFXIII are, but him especially. It’s clear(again, in the f u c k i n g JP--) that he makes attempts to sympathise with them and does what he can to help, but it’s with such a loftiness and a complete inability to Understand why anyone would want grief, The Worst Fucking Experience In Existence, and even less why they’d be willing to Go Up Against Him And HisThe New Perfect World just for it-- And what would it matter, anyway, forgetting their loved ones. It’s not like you can grieve lost memories, right?

Right.

It reminds me of when at the end of the story of Job in the Bible, where, after putting this man through hell on earth, God rewards Job by giving him ten new children to make up for the ones that he lost. I. And that’s fucked! Nothing can replace the sheer uniqueness of each individual person you loved so dearly! But if you were a nigh-omnipotent deity high and mighty, with a cursory, almost mechanical knowledge on the functionings of the human psyche, that would seem adequete; enough.

Bhunivelze is doing that on a cosmic level.

I now want to get onto the romance: that being, his affections for Lightning. I don’t know how much I’m going to say, but it’ll probably be alot. It’s something that hits very close to home.

There is this... thing, within certain branches of Christianity, perhaps even in those of various Abrahamic faiths, where God’s love is posited to be the love-- The ultimate, most-fulfilling, all-encompassing love you could ever imagine --Because, well, he is love, so the story goes, and so often the best way to convey that is through the imagery of...

Marriage.

Giving up yourself so completely, to serve, to be the Bride; to be bound by him for all eternity; and for there to be no higher bliss than this.

This angle is pushed on young girls and women the most; from the mere parallels to the woman’s role in marriage, all the way down to downright-horrifying ultra-Evangelical purity pacts. With men, God is your dad, your best bud and confidant, your boss, your king, your this, your that, and the ‘marriage‘ as it were is relegated to a sort of half-thought; a metaphor.

For me, God was an attempt at all that, and my arranged groom.

(It was almost incestuous; was incestuous, that my own Divine Father would reach for my hand in marriage.)

Bhunivelze experiences Emotions™ for the first time through Hope, experiences Hope’s sheer overwhelming admiration for Lighting(whether there were any baby-crush feelings mixed in, I can’t say), and promptly falls into a nigh-romantic obsession with Lightning, deciding that she will be Etro(his all-but daughter)’s replacement, will be his Goddess of Death to-be-- He even calls her as such, before the final boss-battle--

...In the JP.

What happened in localisation, probably due to a number of factors, all the way back in early 2014, was that everything emotionally challenging about Bhunivelze was scraped off, like it was extra fat, and tossed aside, leaving us with the bland, clichéd shell of a foe-god we’ve seen time and time again. And I mean everything. I mean his very love for humanity; the fact his ploy was, in his eyes, to save them. Because if they’d left that all on, then it would raise the question of even if there was such a seemingly pure, all-knowing, loving being hell-bent on setting things “straight,“ would they truly be unquestionable? Would we have the right to fight for our humanity in the face of the Creator of the Universe?

To reject a love so personal?

That’s what gets me about FFXIII’s tackling of God, no matter how hackneyed and poorly-executed. It’s personal.

It’s from a feminine experience.

I know that terming is... vague, and problematic, but the way Christianity and much of the video game industry handle femininity itself is weird and problematic, so as it stands, I’ll have to simplify it. Apologies.

What sets FFXIII’s Let’s Kill God™ plot aside from most JRPG Let’s Kill God™ plots is that with our protagonist being a woman, and one who is very in touch with her femininity alongside her sheer strength; often, in these stories, God is reduced to Yet Another Foe, expected or unexpected, and you are tasked with taking him down unquestioningly for the Good of Mankind-- You will fight God, because you are right to, and you will go man-to-man-to-however-many-men you decide to bring along for the bloodbath.

And that just, doesn’t speak to me.

Even as an Extian.

Especially as an Extian. And an AFAB one with a deeply complicated experience with my gender, at that.

Leaving Christianity was painful. Questioning God was painful. Coming to terms with the fact that I had been mentally, emotionally, and spiritually traumatised under the guise of All-Encompassing Love was so, so fucking painful. I had been taught since I was five years old to devote myself to him, spent my life desperate to feel something, anything, to stay connected because I just, I never could Feel It on a deeper level, never could Give Up Myself, all I was, couldn’t Die A Spiritual Death And Be Reborn As His Eager Vessel, thus deeming myself to be worthless and a broken vessel for years and years on end... And for all that to have been... Nothing.

Lightning is hollowed out, the shards of her dead sister ripped from her in-stasis, leaving her emotionally numb for the majority of the game, Bhunivelze sweeps it under the rug, pretends he’ll perform a miracle and return Serah to life in exchange for her compliance, then sends her on her way to do his work, all the while knowing he’s going to pull said-rug from under her and elevate her such dizzying heights in the aftermath--

That he’ll deny her humanity.

Sand down all the rough edges that make her her, and polish her up afterwards, gild her as he is gilded, make her a Goddess.

And he’ll do it all because he loves her.

You can’t fight God like you can everything else. To fight It is the fight Existence Itself; FFXIII even conveys that by making Bhunivelze’s model part of the arena; it’s baked into the fabric of the game, no matter how minute.

While Lightning Returns is far from perfect in its execution of this concept, and that in itself makes me wince, not even taking into account the horribly botched excuse for a localisation Bhunivelze endured, it speaks to me more than anything else I’ve seen so far.

And it’s helped uncover some things within me. Helped me untangle them, just a little more.

So, yeah. I have alot of Thoughts on Bhunivelze, I want to share them, and I’m kinda really sad I have no one but my currently-absent friend Vee to share them with. I could get into alot more, like his very Fucked relationship with familial bonds, and how Lightning’s role as saviour so deeply parallels the overwhelming panic and never-ending guilt of Evangelical proselytisation, but I think I’ll leave those for another time.

In short, Bhunivelze is the epitome of Divine Love gone deeply wrong; on all fronts.

And if all of that isn’t enough to intrigue you, then, in Vee’s words, Lightning and Velze are literally canon endgame Sefikura lmaOOOOOOOOOOOOOO--

[fbfh]

domestic cozy moments with leo - an anthology

i should really be asleep

aged up to 18+ obvs,,,, rlly wishing this was real rn lmao,,, also it’s fluff if u couldn’t tell 

1600 words

You set down your last box, hearing a thump in the next room as he sets his. You will your legs to carry you into the next room where he’s waiting, standing, looking at you. The glaring over head light still somehow makes him look good, and you can tell, by this point, that he’s thinking something similar about you. He pulls you closer with one strong comforting gesture, and you both flop unceremoniously down onto the bare mattress on the floor. You tuck the crook of your elbow over your face to block out the harsh light, and gently rub your face into the material of his shirt; a dark flannel over a deep red hoodie, some quote splashed across the chest. The arm wrapped around you bent, his hand brushing the hair at the top of your forehead. 

“We did it,” he breathed.

“Yeah,” you replied, “now we just gotta unpack everything.”

“And organize.”

“And decorate,” you add. There’s a beat of silence.

“God, this is gonna be a nightmare, isn’t it…” he laughs, head resting on top of yours. A slow, tired chuckle rocks your body. 

“Yeah, probably…”

You’ve both been up since about 4am, and have only just finished moving into your apartment. It’s around one or two in the morning. You’re beyond exhausted, the thrill of the move and shitty, delerious humor keeping you running for the last few hours. 

“Y’know what,” he moves, kicking off his shoes, “I say we just crash for the night. Deal with the rest of it in the morning.” He’s already mumbling, his voice groggy - groggier than before - and you can tell he’s losing orbit. Against your wishes, you make yourself sit up. You kneel over to a box a few feet away, and rip the tape off. You pull out a duvet, and shuffle back over to him. 

“Yeah,” you say, already slipping out of your sneakers and throwing some of the blanket over him, “sounds good.” You curl back into him, into a slightly more comfortable position, and start to settle down. 

“Shit,” he hisses, “the light.” You realize the light’s still on and groan.

“Oh god… we’re really that dumb,” you can feel the sleep deprived laughter taking over.

“Wait, wait,” he giggles, the infectious laugh spreading. He leans over, fumbling for the mop next to the broom and vacuum, and holds the flat head, the pole in between his fingers. You feel him shift, and pry your eyes open. He’s almost got it. You make some encouraging ‘oh, ooooh!’s as he lines up the loop at the top with the light switch on the wall and darkness engulfs you. He lays back down in a heap, setting the mop on the floor next to him. 

“Nice!” you press a kiss below his ear, the closest place you could reach, and he mutters sleepily, “Thank you, thank you, I’ll be signing autographs in half an hour,” laughter seeping into his words like a teabag in hot water as he pulls his hood up. Your limbs are already tingly with sleep. He mutters something you can’t make out, and you’re pretty sure you tried to ask what, but you don’t remember anything after that. You don’t know who fell asleep first, but you both slept really well that night. 

~

Your piping was migraine worthy. 

That’s what Leo had said after about a minute under your bathroom sink. 

You had noticed the water pressure in the sink got really weak after a day or two. Your apartment was pretty old, so it wasn’t surprising. 

“Should we call the superintendent?” you asked through a mouth of ramen. A smile hit his eyes, and you finished the thought he hadn’t said.

“To let him know,” you shoved his chest playfully, “I know you can fix it, that wasn’t a question.” It backed off, and instead he said, “You can try, but I’m pretty sure he’s one of those three-to-five-business-days types.” 

“Well, at least he’ll know what’s going on.” He still had that look. “I’ll tell him not to call a plumber. My boyfriend’s an engineer and can more than handle it.” He seemed satisfied, and grabbed his tools. 

“I’m just saying, I think I know a thing or two about this stuff…” You pulled the still ringing phone from your face. “Duh, you’re the-�� the phone stopped ringing. Voicemail. You rolled your eyes as the beep sounded, and left a brief message explaining who you were and the situation. After you finished talking, you hung up. 

“God, I hate talking on the phone,” you mutter. You turn the corner to the bathroom doorway. 

“How’s it looking?” you lean on the door frame, and suppress a chuckle at the sight of your boyfriend laying on a skateboard under the bathroom sink. 

“This makes… no sense…” he muttered. “I mean, who- why would you put a dual check there?” You smiled, loving when he talked about his hyperfixations, even if it barely made sense to you. You decided to check back in a bit, and went to transfer some laundry. 

It had been a while. You had checked on Leo two or three times, and he was still doing something under there. He had come out once or twice to get some parts or piping from his supplies, then went straight back to work. If only you had a dollar for every time you heard him sigh, “there’s gotta be a better way to do this…” It’s been two hours and he needs a break. 

You walk back into the bathroom, step over him, and sit down, your hips right on top of his.

He stops.

He pushes you both out from under the sink, skateboard rolling slowly, his eyes locked with yours.

“Hello,”

“Hi,”

~

You just wanted to take out the trash, that was all. But when you entered the back alley and saw a little kitty cat looking so scared by the dumpster, you couldn’t stop your instincts. You set the trash down slowly, scooped up the cat, and marched back inside. You set her - or him? You weren’t sure yet. You set them in the bathroom, made a little nest of towels close to the radiator, and left, closing the door behind you. You came back in with a small storage bin with cat litter - which Leo luckily had on hand for absorbing oil spills in his garage - paper bowls with some tuna and water, and a small ball of yarn from a long since abandoned craft project. The kitty ate all the tuna in record time, and looked at you, asking for more. 

“Wait for that to digest, then you can have seconds.” you said, softly. You gave them a little head pat, and they skittered away, unused to affection. It made your heart a little sad. But it’s okay, you reminded yourself, kitty’s gonna get lots of love from now on. You adjust your seat on the edge of the tub, trying to stop your butt from going numb. You pick the cat up to put them in their makeshift bed, and check under their tummy. Yup, girl kitty. She lets out a high pitched meow, and you can tell she’s still pretty young. You pet her back, and she arches up, her tail curling. She moves away from your hand, still not used to it yet, but a loud purr resonates through her chest and off the walls. You hold back a delighted squeal as she curls up into a ball. Oh jeez, do you have any blankets? You could cover her with a towel, but do you have anything softer? You leave to check, closing the door securely behind you. You dig through the linen closet for a few minutes before you hear the door open and close. 

“Honey, I’m home,” Leo quipped, putting his jacket on the coat rack. You picked up a small fleece decorative blanket you had no use for until now. 

“Hey,” he turned the corner, and placed his hand on your face, and your free hand rested on his. He pressed a warm kiss to your lips, and pulled away even though he didn’t want to. “Hey, Sparky,” you replied, a smile only he could give you blooming on your face. 

He started to tell you you two could catch up in a minute, he just has to wash the stubborn leftover machine oil off his hands, but you stopped him before he could.

“I have a surprise.” You said.

“Okay,” he replied, smiling, “what is it?”

You bit your lip, and quickly pulled him into the bathroom, closing the door quickly behind you. 

“Woah, babe,” he smirked, “if you wanted-” his voice cut off when he saw you kneeling next to a small kitty. 

“Her name is garbage, cause that’s where I found her!” you giggled, quoting the episode of The Office you two had watched just last night. 

“Aww,” he cooed, and began to wash his hands hastily so he could pet her, “she’s adorable!” his voice was soft, and higher than normal, and it was the cutest thing you’d ever heard. He dried off his hands, and bent down to give her a cuddle. You stayed like that for a while, watching her play with string and baby talking her. 

“By the way, Estrella,” he said, breaking his baby voice to look up at you, “we’re not actually naming her garbage, right?”

“No!” you laughed, “She’s too cute, that’d be mean…” 

He giggled at your face, and you two batted names back and forth for a while, trying to find the right one, and eventually settling on Jackhammer, maybe Jack for short.  “She’s definitely as loud as one,” Leo mused when he’d first heard her purr.

She purred a lot more after that.

[popculturebuffet]

Amphibia Weekly Reviews: Bessie and Mircroangelo/The Third Temple “The Things We’ve Set into Motion Cannot Be Stopped”

Hello all you happy people. It’s been a long road, with an even longer road trip, but the season’s almost over: just two more weeks of Amphibia.. and with all the build up weighing down on our heroes two things are clear: this cannot end well for Anne or anyone involved, and this is going to hurt. It’s going to hurt a LOT. it’s going to be some...

... how have I not used more MST3K gifs. Questions for later. Point is with emotional pain immient, a revolution on the way this episode only ratchets up the tension.. while also sparing some time for makeover jokes and a breather episode about snail mentorships, fashion montages and giant crabs. I do love me some giant crabs. And i’ll tell you allllll about it under the cut. 

Bessie and MicroAngelo:

This episode finds our heroes preparing for the third and final temple, loading up the wagon and preparing weapons, maps, potions, all that good stuff. 

We end up getting two plots out of this. The first is the titular one: so Polly can help prepare, Hop Pop gives Bessie the task of watchin gher snail and certified cutie MicroAngelo, that tiny Snail who I assumed would disappear forever after his intitial apperance because that’s usually what cartoons does. But much like One Piece, Al Ewing and that owl what watches me while I sleeps, Amphibia never forgets. 

It’s some Looney Tunes style shenanigans.. not the bugs or daffy, more on him later today, kind more the “Bigger more responsible party protects the smaller more vunerable or reckless one” kind you’d see eveyr so often. Tom and Jerry also really loved this. And Amphibia wears it well, with some good gags and really cute bonding and some really excellent animation on Bessie, giving the old girl plenty of life and animation. The only part I genuinely do not like is Hop Pop  blaming Bessie for.. running after micro angelo afte rhe ran off. Aka doing the job you assigned her. 

Someone i’m looking at. Regardless otherwise it’s just some fun, adorable slapstick with a downright precious ending. And hop pop DOES apologize.. and wish he was a cute snail. I do not have time to unpack all the implications there nor ponder what Hop Pop would look like in a snail costume. This week’s given my brain enough nightmares. 

So anyway, our subplot has Marcy trying to give Anne a Makeover... and her past attempts with Sasha have been objectively horrifying so Anne is rightly scared, though the armorer who comes to help with it has a blue crab so tha’ts where all my attention. I fucking love crabs.. they just look so neat. Some see the fact a spider crab being out and about in animal crossing as horrifying. I see it as oh look at my cool terrifying crab friend. About the only crab I don’t like is this asshole. 

And even then he can be VERY funny. .he’s just also an exploitative douchebag and having worked in food service, let me tell you I.. I get why Squidward is the way he is. That said Krabbyland is a masterpiece entirely because he’s such a terrible person, so it ballances out when the show’s doing it’s best. 

Point is I like crabs and I like this subplot.. though mostly because it says a LOT about who Anne and Marcy are and where there at. Part of why Marcy is so gung ho about helping Anne is she figures this is her last shot to be whoever she wants to be. But really she’s just projecting: it’s been obvious since we properly met her that Marcy.. likes living HERE more than earth. On earth she’s an outcast: her hyperfixations, her tendency to babble about things she likes, her smartness... alll things that just make people turn away from her or pick on her on earth, with only two people relaly understanding and appricating her.. maybe more but we don’t know the situation with her parents yet. As someone who is a lot of those things, I get where she’s coming from. 

So ending up in a world straight out of an rpg... she florished. Everything that made her life difficult at home suddenly made her florish: her skill with RPG’s meant she could blend in easily with the courtly high class of Newtopia, gave her a love of taking on missions, and allowed her to put her hyperfixation, knowledge and enthusasim to real world use, creating massive improvments in an already ritzy city. Everything that made her an outcast in our world made her a hero there. It’s why I worry about what’s to come: to both Grime and Andrias.. she’s the perfectly made pawn: too desperate to have Sasha back to see the kinfe he wants her to plant in Marcy’s, and too happy to be accepted to see the rpg convention, the benevolent ruler turning out ot be a puppet for the big bad, starring her in the face. Amphibia’s given her her freedom.. but it’s also left her very vunerable and may leave her alone. 

As for Anne.. she realizes how far she’s come: from selfish and kind of distructive to selfless and self reliant.. and still kind of destructive but hey, you can’t cahnge eveyrthing about yourself. It’s why when given heavy armor.. all she needs is the core of it.. something simple to guard her but nothing too complex. She’s fine with who she is.. and it’s why she’s in the best place of the three girls. And why she’s left smack in the middle of the war to come. A war she can’t stop and that will leave her having to choose one... or do the right , hard thing and choose neither and try and free them from the bad influences they’ve embded themselves in. Either way this is going to hurt both her and the audience. 

Final Thoughts: Bessie and Mircoangelo is good classic cartoon fun with a suprisingly deep subplot. Simple, but a nice pallete clensar, especially since the next episode is pretty tense and given it’s ending and eveyrthing that’s been building this season, it’s likely only going to get worse from here, so it’s nice to have a quick and breezy break before hell comes to frogtown. 

The Third Temple:

Before we get to the final temple we get a flashback showing how Sasha met Anne and Marcy. The other two were playing on the swings when two big dillholes pushed them off and Sasha selflessly and fearlessly stood up to them. And promptly beat herself up more than the bullies who dodged her and eventually got so freaked out by whatever the hell this was they ran and a friendship was born. But noticably she’s a lot diffrent 7 years ago, aproximately, than she is at 13: she’s every bit as fearless and willfull.. but the compassion she once had got buried under a need for control. It’s easy to see now WHY Marcy and Anne loved her so much: she was their friend, their protector, she cared about them.. and while she never STOPPED somewhere along the way it became less about doing the right thing for the women she loves and more about getting her way. 

And now the two have had time to heal from what their friend girlfriend became.. it’s time to rip that wound wide open as finally, after almost a season of waiting, Sasha reunites with Marcy for the first time and Anne for the second. 

Naturally her return is in time for her gem to be charged, though our heroes unware of that didn’t seek her out before going in. This time Frobo’s riding claw though weirdly dosen’t come inside. Which is a problem with Frobo’s addition to the cast as the whole: they’ve kept him out of any episode since his induction into the family and only properly explained it once. It just dosen’t make a lot of sense to me; Yes he is massively powerful but his childlike thought process counters that. He’s easy enough to write in but is left out becasue the writers don’t want to deal with an extra character. And I had more than enough of that shit when watching Ducktales. I don’t need it when your main cast isn’t NEARLY as large or hard to juggle. It’s just galling to have spent an entire season showing he was following them, give him a whole episode.. and then just forget about him because i’ts convient. Hopefully he’ll play a bigger role as things progress and we find out where he came from because his misuse is a dark spot on an otherwise great second half of the season. 

Frobo does get to prove himself useful though and open s the temple door he just weirdly dosen’t come along. But this does leave the door open for Sasha to come in as our heroes struggle with the first puzzle: Turns out this dungeon was built by a bro, seriously the temple languge is very broey and VERY hilarious contrasted with how normal for a fantasy setting the others were, as is fitting the strength gem, so our heroes have to compete feats of strength. Unfortunately this does not mean wrestling the ghost of Jerry Stiller to the ground but instead fighting some Lava Worms, and fighting just ONE of them and lifting the provided warhammers is a challenge for Anne.. and she’s the only one who can with Marcy not having enough upper body stregnth and the plantars all de-hydrated spongebob style. 

So naturally Sasha ends up being their savor, easily dispatching them and getting some help from grime who while also dehydrated, is still phsycially strong enough to be of some help. Marcy is overjoyed to see her.. and is the only one. Given Marcy hasn’t been on the wrong end of Sasha and Grime like they have, it’s understandable: while Marcy’s grappled with Sasha’s actions and grip on her and Anne, it’s been clear it hasn’t hit her as hard as it has for Anne and she likely dosen’t get the full scope of it like Anne does. To her Sasha just made a mistake and she’s back now and tha’ts what matters. To Anne and the Plantars... sasha and grime tried to kill them and Sasha then tried commiting suciide to save them. The scars of that haven’t really healed for them, nor should they. 

And given Sasha has spent the season clearly blamiing everything on Anne defying her and has been raising an army based on her resentment, and given she flew into a jealous blinding rage at finding her exes were fine and dandy without her she.. wholheartdly apologizes. 

Yeah she apologizes.. but tellingly while she talks about her and Grime being left homeless following the battle.. she leaves out everything after: The fight with Yuan, the growing rebellion, driving her friends away, the horrifying army Grime now commands. Something’s off. 

Anne naturally dosen’t trust her to do this herself and insists on coming along sitll. The next task is juts.. asking how much you lift bro, which Sasha easily passes by lifting, bro. 

The final test in Jim Crunch’s Temple of Fitness, I mean who else could’ve wrote this, is of course a big fight with a giant statue of a toad, fitting how each temple so far was built by one of the civlizations: there were frog statues and symbols in the first temple, the second was guarded by a newt and the last now has a toad guard.Though curiously.. the test itself is wholly designed for a human. Before it wasn’t 100% clear even with the hyroglyps if the chosen ones had to be human or not.. but now it’s impossible to argue otherwise. There were hints : The fact the guardian pegged her as a possible chosen one on sight , the ruins in the background of the title cards which also depict the watcher with a thousand eyes (which is what i’ll be calling him till we get his, her , they or it’s actually name. ).. but here the chamber includes a gravity increase dbz style, meaning our heroines are the only ones who can stand as the Plantars and Grimes frog and toad bodies respectively aren’t strong enough to stand anymore. And while Marcy tries it ends up falling on Anne and Sasha with Sasha being Angry Anne doesn’t trust her.. and Anne not refuting it, pointing out she has EVERY REASON not to. As she puts it “it’s not just toad tower”. For most of their lives Sasha has been controlling, caring about what she wants and not what the people she loves wants. It wasn’t just the fight there... it was simply the wakeup call to how bad a person Sasha had been. 

And for the first time in the episode.. Sasha is geniune, apologizing for what she did, and genuinely admitting how she treated Anne wasn’t wrong. it was something she coudln’t admit to herself episodes ago.. but faced with both loosing two more people due to her behavior, and having plenty of time to reflect on said behavhior.. she finally relaizes it’s her. Fuck man.. what else is there to say. 

Oh right the giant monster thing, which Anne trusts Sasha to finish.. and we get anothe rDBZ homage as Sasha removes part of her armor, which creates a CRATER, which lowers her weight enough to fight the thing. She gets a thumbs up and the honor of recharging it. 

Anne suggests opening the box.. but Marcy is VERY quick to shoot that down and suggest talking to the king. And while her reason SOUNDS good,, they don’t want to get warped somewhere ELSE at random.. it’s very clear from her actions and how quick she tried to stop it that she needs them to get to Andrias for whatever he’s talked her into. And I emphasis talked her into: Marcy trusts the king, and was in a very emotional place when he was about to talk to her at the end of season 2a... and he knew it. He knew she was at her most vunerable, most malable and trusted him completely.. and knew right then and there was his shot at getting vengance.. for him and his master. Whatever he has planned.. it’s not good. The mechancial lovecraftian horror he keeps in his creepy basement full of lost souls is a dead giveaway from that. But I don’t.. fault Marcy for it. It’s not just because I sympahtize.. to her Andrias is a good noble king trying to help her. He’s the kindly mentor she always wanted, a person who enjoys her skills dosen’t care how much she talks and has complete faith in her, something even Anne struggles with. 

But it’s VERY clear, to me at least he’s been likely using her from the moment they met: to her sh’es just an optomistic pawn, someone gullible enough to do whatever he says. I’ve always felt that her “missions” probably had some darker purpose she wasn’t aware of: getting Andrias things he needs for his army, an army she has no idea is opressing people. She’s insulated from that and instead surronded by adoring people who accept her for once. Even going to wartwood, she hasn’t yet made the connection between the toad towers and what their purpose is. I think deep down she might suspect this stuff.. but she can’t ACCEPT that the one person who every had nothing but faith in her.. is a horrible person who opresses others and somehow has even WORSE plans in store. 

Sasha likewise is facing the pressure of her parental figure.. while her patching it up with Anne was legitmate... her and Grime’s own plans rely on getting in there and Grime simply sees the other two as pawns , and just like the king he wants he wants to overthrow, their use expires once his plans in motion. 

But the thing is.. it’s clear despite assuring Grime she’s still all in.. her face in the last shot, as seen above.. says otherwise. Her apology was legitmate, not just an attempt to get close to the one thing in her way of power, but what she’s come to realize: she’s gone from blaming Anne for it.. to realizing it was her. But she’s also stuck: while Marcy is unaware of the strings her pupeteer is pulling her towards.. Sasha is all too aware of what her mentor is planning. And the thing was she was all too willing to go for it. She blamed Anne for what happened at the tower, blamed Anne for turning marcy against her and blamed the plantars and co for turning anne against her. But in the harsh light of day... none of that’s true. Marcy dosen’t hate her, neither does anne, they didn’t turn against her.. they were just tired of her shitty behavior and wanted the friend they found that day on the playground back, the woman they loved who’d go to hell and back for someone and not the bitter, manipultive person she became. She’s once again realized it was her fault.. the question is if that’s enough for her to do the right thing or not. And the hardest question of all is IF not reblling isn’t the right thing. Wfhile the Toad’s probably shoudln’t be in charge either, Andrias REALLY shouldn’t. There’s NO easy answers here, no happy outcome that makes everyone live’s better. There’s no easy way out, no shortcut home.. just the louder and louder drumbeats of war and one girl’s decision of whose side she’s going to take.

Final Thoughts on the Third Temple: As with the other four sasha episodes thus far, this was frogging brilliant. Shoudln’t be a suprise and it makes me both look forward and dread the war to come

Next Week: The plantars try to bury the hatchet with Sasha and Grime, the girls enter a battle of the bands, and the finale comes ever closer.

If you liked this review follow me for more, and join my patreon. At just 2 dollars a month you get acess to my discord, exclusive reviews, and get me closer to my stretch goals. See you at the next rainbow

[poisonedapples]

The sides except they go to a tech school

This is extremely self indulgent but I apologize for nothing

Roman’s Program: Digital Media

Roman’s big dream is to be an actor, but he also has a very intense need to know a whole bunch of stuff about the production field and be a jack of all trades, basically

He’s also autistic and has a huge special interest in movies, so he’s just on cloud nine

He had a really hard time making friends at his home school, which is also another reason why he most to go to the tech school instead. He wanted a second chance and to meet new people who loved the same stuff he could never seem to shut up about, but he’s also very nervous and just really wants to make some friends this year

He’s also extremely salty that Remus followed him to his new school. Remus was always the talk of the school and Roman was always in his shadow, so this time, his strategy is to pretend that Remus doesn’t even exist

Remus will not take this as an a solution, but Roman’s not giving up anyway

He also met Patton, Logan, and Virgil in his College English class. Their seats were assigned next to each other, but it was Patton that actually started getting all of them to talk to each other

Speaking of Patton, him and Patton went together like a moth to a flame. They hit it off day one and have acted like the best of friends since, and it makes Roman extremely happy

Roman and the others also became closer friends because of a Digital Media project Roman did about the different programs around the school. Since all his friends are from different programs, he interviewed them all, and it was the most fun project ever because of everything they did behind the scenes

They mostly just goofed off when not on camera. It was lovely

He refused to let Remus take part in that project though. RIP to Remus

Patton’s program: Cosmotology

Patton’s biggest dream is to mostly help people feel better about themselves. He wants to make people feel happy and learn a little more self love, because nothing makes Patton happier than seeing other people enjoying themselves

He’s also an extremely sociable person, so a need to help people like who they are mixed with lots of talking? Without getting a master’s in psychology? A perfect mix to become a hair stylist!

He loves all the different styles you can do and how different everyone’s hair can be from another person’s. The program also has you learn stuff about makeup, and he loves putting makeup on people as well. He practices on the girls in the program a lot, and they always get so excited when they see the finished product. It fills him with happy butterflies

He doesn’t tend to wear makeup on himself, though. Not because he thinks boys can’t wear makeup, he just hates the feeling of it on his skin. Hence why he will take any willing participant to be his canvas

His extroverted energy also shows a lot in his academic classes. The first day of English, he immediately turned around and started talking to the kid with a camera

It took him a little longer to get the boy sitting next to him to talk to him though. Apparently “We have the same glasses!” Isn’t an acceptable conversation starter

He did, however, get the kid named Virgil to agree to let Patton to put makeup on him. Patton started that conversation by asking about his eyeshadow, but nope, apparently those were just eyebags

Though Virgil still liked makeup anyway, so score, Patton still got what he wanted

Now if only he could get Logan to laugh out loud and cut the serious act. Then he’d be a winner for sure

Logan: Mechatronics

Logan’s a nerd. A huge nerd. Hence why he fits in with the mechatronics program so well

Logan has always loved robots and tinkering with technology. More than anything, he wants to work on space aircrafts as a mechanical engineer, hence why he’s in the mechatronics program

He also has ADHD and his biggest hyperfixations are in robots and space, so he’s completely in his element. It’s nice to spend most of his day in a class where he can talk about spacecrafts and how they worked, and not only will people listen, but they’ll also care about it almost as much as he does

Though, he’d prefer to keep his closet full of robotic kids toys he keeps breaking apart and fixing again to himself. At least for now

Though because he’s in mechatronics, he’s required to be in all advanced classes for his academics to get college credit. Which he doesn’t mind at all, but in his college English class, he definitely sits next to quite...the eclectic bunch

He acts like they inconvenience him, but he actually enjoys their company. Even if Roman can be a little loud, but him and Roman actually hit it off quite well with their debates and frequent conversation jumping

(It’s the ADHD-autism solidarity)

Logan also has quite the liking to Virgil, mostly because they’re both looking into the engineering business and have similar interests with space

Logan pretends like Patton annoys him, but he’s not very good at it. He hates that Patton knows he has a secret love for puns and keeps using it against him to try and make him laugh. How dare he

(Patton just keeps trying because he knows Logan likes it and he’s also a bit of a little shit)

Logan hopes that all three of them consider him one of their closest friends as well. Because actually, now he has more to look forward to in his English class than just the poetry and seeking for alternate meanings for things in text

Now, most of his entertainment comes from saying “Romeo and Juliet is an awful love story” and seeing Roman go off an a rant about how it’s not even a lOVE STORY it’s about THE GENERATION DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PARENTS AND KIDS and it’s STRUGGLES, CALCULATOR WATCH-

...It’s quite amusing

Virgil’s Program: Aviation

Anxiety is fight or flight. Well...Virgil literally just wants to take flight

His dad used to take Virgil out on vacations quite often when he was younger and his dad’s job was more focused on traveling, so Virgil has flown in planes a lot. He’s always been an anxious kid, always afraid of so many things, but for some reason...flying was one of the things to calm him the most

Except for going through security, fuck airport security

But still, there was never anything more satisfying than looking through the window on a plane. He’s always loved it, and he’s known since a very young age that he wants to learn to fly things, even if he decides not to become a pilot

He’s seventeen now and still wants to be a pilot, even if his shyness has turned into an anxiety disorder. It’s been a while since he’s been on a plane since his dad is now a psychologist, but he still loves it and misses it almost. So when he heard his district’s tech school had an aviation program, he signed up so fast

His teacher has to practically pry him away from messing with the drones and planes when they need to do other stuff, it’s kinda funny

It’s also great that he met Logan in his English class, because Logan loves engineering and aircrafts like Virgil does. One of Virgil’s backup plans is to be an aerospace engineer, so their conversations are always fun

He also has no idea how Patton figured out his secret love of makeup but now he’s being used as a canvas, apparently

Plus, Roman asked if Virgil could fly a drone for him to get an aerial shot for some digital media projects, so holy shit Virgil made three friends in one day when he’s been trying to make one friend for YEARS

He just bursts into his house like “DAD GUESS WHAT I MADE F R I E N D S”

His Dad is very proud but also very concerned

Virgil just ignores that though and sends memes to the new group chat with all four of them in it

Remus’ Program: Auto Collision Technology

Remus loves broken stuff. Especially big broken things, like cars

Of course, there’s no job for purposely wrecking stuff, but looking at damage in cars and how to repair it is exciting enough for him. His parents are just happy he found something to put more...positive energy into, instead of always causing trouble and getting popular for being “the bad boy”

He had lots of friends at his home school, lots of which he still talks to, mostly because his chaotic energy entertains a lot of people willing to deal with it. He has that same effect at the tech school, but the one person he’s never been able to get more on his side is his own brother

Remus has always been a bit too chaotic for Roman’s liking, and he knows that Roman wanted to go to the tech school for a fresh start. But Remus won’t stop himself just to make his brother happy, so it Roman’s salty about Remus doing something good for himself, then so be it

(Remus is a little salty about Roman being salty, but they’re brothers, what do you expect)

But Remus doesn’t need him anyway! Twin brothers are overrated! He’s got plenty of other people in his programs!

But his closest friend he’s gotten since coming to the tech school? Janus. Him and Janus go together like two chaotic peas in a pod, even if Janus has a whole lot more braincells than Remus ever will

Though, Remus has never had more fun with a friend than with Janus. He’s had lots of friends that come and go once they’re bored of him, but Janus feels real. He feels genuine, and Remus...really doesn’t wanna get rid of that

He likes Janus a lot, hence why he invites Janus over and lets Janus into his super secret eating spot he goes when he doesn’t wanna act like a crackhead at lunch. It’s actually quite nice

Roman just has to deal with the fact that, if he’s gonna be a salty bastard, then Janus is his new ride or die

(Please someone help these twins they’re saltier than the Dead Sea)

Janus’ Program: Firefighting Technology

When Janus was a young teen, he got trapped in a house fire that scarred the left half of his body. Firefighters were the ones that saved him, and since then, he’s always had a huge respect for them. Enough so to really want to become a firefighter

He’s always been very focused on self care and secretly very empathetic, so that mixed with past experience from being saved from such a dangerous event actually makes him a great candidate for a firefighter. He’s not one giant on talking, but he’s still good with teamwork when others want him to work with them

He has a good set of friends in his program, but his best friend was someone he met during lunch when trying to get away from the noise of the actual cafeteria. He also noticed that same kid was also in his anatomy class, so...destiny, I guess?

Remus can definitely be an eclectic person, but Janus secretly thrives on a good set of chaos. It makes life interesting, and Remus can definitely be described as interesting

He’s also the only person Janus has met that thinks Janus’ scars are cool as hell, so double win

It’s also immensely entertaining to join Remus on his quests to constantly annoy his brother. If he had a brother he’d probably do the same, honestly

Mostly, he’s just here for the chaotic ride. He gets to be a sarcastic bastard with a secret love for the dramatic flair and somehow make friends at the same time

He still needs to find a way to get under Patton’s skin, though. Patton never gets bothered by Janus, but that’s probably because Patton has known Janus as his neighbor for literal years

Damn him. Janus will get him some time

Though for right now, Remus gets most of the wins of weirding out Patton. That is, until Roman shrieks and chases them both off

Yup. Janus chose a good best friend. Even if he’s a chaotic, salty bastard

[miracul0us-multishipper]

Welcome to the back (Part 16)

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Shoutout to @loosescrewslefty for coming up with a wonderful name for Cat!Felix! It sounds great!

- - -

Felix’ heart was racing as they ran down the abandoned corridors. Everyone else must have escaped already, or at least found a safe place to hide because they hadn’t seen a soul on the entire floor. It was dead silent, except for their exhausted panting and the distant rattle of chains.

“In here!”, Marinette commanded and threw open the door to a janitors closet. With her other hand, she ripped off one of her flats and threw it down the hallway. Before he could ask what the hell she was thinking, she pushed him into the small room and closed the door behind her. The rattling of metal links came closer and they held their breaths. There were small slits on the bottom of the door, to let the air circulate. Felix dropped to the floor, trying to see what was going on.

Cathexis shadow was visible first, followed by its caster. His chains carried him through the hallway like servants their prince, their clatter and the creaking of his armor far too loud in Felix’ ears. Was it his imagination or were there... less chains than before? Some looked shorter than the others, for sure.

The Akuma looked around.

“Marinette~!”, he called in a playful singsong. “Come on, show yourself!”

The metal snakes swirled through the air, ready to pounce at the slightest movement.

“I’m not mad, I promise!”, the delusional boy continued. “You won’t be in trouble if you come out now.”

One chain came particularly close to the door and he could feel Marinette tense. His own heart seemed to hammer in his chest, so loud he wondered how Cathexis didn’t hear it. If he found them now... they were lost.

Luckily, it was this moment that Cathexis noticed the shoe further down the hall. Immediately, he went to investigate.

“Aw, did the princess lose her shoe? I should bring it back to her, don’t I?”

With that, he disappeared around a corner. They sighed, the pressure on his lungs lifting like fog. They were safe, for now.

“Clever.”, he commented as they walked out of the closet. “The shoe trick, I mean.”

“Thanks.”, she replied, looking around the corner to make sure he was gone. “He’s obsessed with his fairy tale happy ending, so I figured drawing on popular tropes might distract him.”

She took his hand - he was grateful for that, even though he wouldn’t admit it - and guided him towards the stairs.

“We need to get out of here. Maybe we should split up-“

“Absolutely not! I won’t let you out of my sight until Ladybug arrives.”

Marinette twitched, but didn’t fight him. He could’ve sworn he heard her muttering “Oh boy” under her breath, but right now, he didn’t care. There was No Way he’d leave this reckless mess of selflessness to herself!

“This way.”, she directed him to a glass door. The elevators were obviously a bad idea - trapped in a small space during an akuma attack? No thank you! - so the stairs were there only option.

“I don’t get it. Why Cathexis?”, she murmured to herself. “I mean, it’s probably a Cat-pun, but the rest is nonsense. And why chains? Is Hawkmoth running out of ideas?”

He shrugged, remembering all the books about Psychology he’d read before starting school. For once, his encyclopedic knowledge of random topics seemed to be useful.

“Cathexis is a fancy word for neurotic hyperfixations.”, he explained. “Freud’s original term was “Besetzung”, Possession in English. It describes the investment of emotional or mental energy in a person or object.”

He remembered what Cathexis had done with his glowing chain, and how Lila had looked after being infused with his light.

“Maybe that’s what he did to Rossi. He did call it an investment, didn’t he?”

“It might also be a pun.”, Marinette mused. “Cat-hex-is, because he... well, hexed her.”

“Now I’m kind of jealous.”, he murmured grumpily. “Hawkmoth gave him a deep, psychological phenomena as inspiration, and with me? He named me Sentiquill and called it a day! Favoritism at its finest.”

Marinette giggled.

“If it makes you happy, I liked your costume more. Black suits you.”

Her eyes sparkled mysteriously at that, as if she knew something he didn’t. He would’ve asked if he hadn’t been so busy hiding his red cheeks.

“Let’s hurry up.”, he said to distract her. “We still have twenty floors to go, and-“

“Wait!”, she hissed and he froze. There were footsteps audible from further down, lighter than Cathexis’s and without the metallic sound that always accompanied him. He held onto Marinette a little tighter when the person leaned over the railing of the stairs to look up at them.

“Chloé?”, Marinette asked and relaxed immediately, sighing in relief. “You’re okay! I thought Cathexis caught you.”

The blonde girl grinned untypically widely and Felix tensed.

“Marinette!”, she chirped and raised her hands to her mouth. “There you are.”

She took a deep breath, then started to shout.

“I FOUND HER!”, Chloé yelled loud enough to shake the doors, making Felix jump.

“She’s under his control!”, he realized. “That’s why there were less chains than before!”

The one he’d used on Lila had disappeared as well! He startled when a door two floors above them flew open. Cathexis maniacal cackling echoed through the staircase.

“Run!”

Marinette didn’t need to be told twice. She ripped open the door closest to them and raced through, Felix followed suit. They dashed down the corridors and halls, Cathexis laughter close behind them. Every second Felix expected to be knocked off his feet, every step made him fear it might be his last. But Marinette seemed to know where she was going, and Cathexis wasn’t as familiar with the building as she was. Soon, the rattle of chains grew farther and farther, until they finally collapsed behind a corner.

“We need a Plan B!”, he stated the obvious, his breath erratic and panting. “We’ll never make it out of here without him intercepting us.”

Marinette, just as exhausted as he was, looked on the verge of panic.

“Chloé’s out of commission!”, she whispered in shock. “And if she is, then so are Alya and Nino!”

Pulling at her hair, she groaned.

“My plan has failed before it even begun! That’s so typical for me.”

He shook his head, confused.

“What are you talking about?”

Slowly, she let go of her Pigtails and straightened. When she looked at him, it was almost apologetic.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”, she said calmly. “This time, I wanted it to be different. No pressure or emergency, just... different.”

She shook her head, eerily serious as she took out the pendant she wore around her neck.

“We don’t have time for explanations, I have to go.”, she stated with no room for discussion. Her hand was steady when she placed the pendant in his hand, closing his fingers around it. “You need to keep this safe for me, okay?”

He blinked, not understanding what she was up to. But she stood up before he could ask a single question.

“You don’t have to use it.”, she announced and looked a bit sheepish for a moment. “I don’t even have a fancy box for it, and I have no speech prepared either. But... you are smart, and loyal, and exactly what I need. Trust me.”

She inhaled slowly.

“You... you are perfect. I can feel it.”

Her smile was so fond, so convinced and trusting he had to gulp before speaking.

“Marinette, What-“

A crash interrupted him. Cathexis was closing in, judging by the sound of his chains, and Marinette looked up.

“Go and hide.”, she ordered him with an authority he’d never expected of her. “This isn’t destiny or fate or something, okay? It’s a choice. You decide whether to accept or decline, and I won’t push you to do anything. But now that Adrien knows I have it, I can’t keep it on me anymore. Just... keep it safe.”

She smiled.

“I’ll be fine, I promise.”

Wait. Why did this sound like a goodbye?!

“Marinette,” he whispered, fear stifling his voice, “don’t you dare-“

Once again, he didn’t get to finish. Cathexis came crashing through the wall behind them like a bulldozer, his chains breaking through with ease.

“Marinette!”, Felix screamed, but a wave of debris tore him away from her and onto the ground. With one last look at him, she turned around and ran.

“Come and catch me if you can!”, he heard her taunt as she dodged the swipe of a chain, then disappeared into the next corridor.

Cathexis didn’t waste a second with Felix. Growling, he started his hunt and followed Marinette, leaving him behind.

Felix’ head was spinning from his fall and he barely managed to get up, let alone follow them.

“No...”, he wailed, horrified. Crashes and shouts came from the direction they had run off to, and this time, Marinette was alone with the Akuma. “No, no, no!”

He got to his feet, accidentally dropping what Marinette had given him. The clear, clanging sound of something light rolling over the ground made him pause. He looked down, picking the thing up.

It was the Chat-Noir-merchandise Marinette had shown him, but now that he could take a closer look... it was warm in his fingers. It felt heavier than it looked, and he could swear he heard a pulse.

His blood drained from his face and he went pale. It... It couldn’t be, right? Where should Marinette have acquired the real Miraculous of Destruction?! And why would she wear it on a string of goddamn yarn instead of... of... putting it in a safe or something? Or using it? Unless she... she already had...?

Another crash made him start. They weren’t far from him, if he hurried, he could reach them.

But what was he supposed to do? Throw pens at the akuma?! Make a knot in his chains? He was just a teenager, he wouldn’t be of any help. His gaze fell back to the ring in his hands. The warm, heavy, pulsing and authentic looking ring.

Oh, goddamn it!

Without further analysis, he slipped it on his ring finger. For a second, nothing happened and he chastised himself for thinking something this ridiculous. Then an otherworldly glow covered the metal and he stumbled back. Sparks flew around his hand and a green light shot out of the ring, turning it silver and circling him before fading into a tiny, black creature. It had triangular ears and a feline tail that waved through the air.

Felix was frozen in shock as the... the thing yawned.

“Oh geez, that was quick.”, it complained in a high, nasal voice. “They can never give me time to nap, can they?”

It’s inhumanly green eyes turned to him and it grinned, revealing sharp, white fangs.

“Hey, it’s the cold blondie!”, it - he? - cheered. “Not ideal, but better than mean or dense blondie. I can work with that.”

”Who are you?”, Felix finally regained his voice. The floating cat flicked its tail and combed back its fur.

“Plagg’s the name, rookie. I’m a Kwami! Incredibly powerful, good looking, and - as Tikki would say - “high maintenance”. Got any cheese?”

“A Kwami?”, Felix asked, ignoring the last part. “What’s that supposed to be?”

Another crash came from a distance and he shook his head, reminding himself of Marinette.

“Okay, scratch that. Do something so I can help Marinette!”

Plagg sighed deeply.

“Oh geez, another loverboy.”, he grumbled. “Fine! Say “Plagg, claws out!” and you’ll get cataclysmic superpowers, and a much needed make-over.”

He glared at Felix’ clothes.

“Is that a tie?! What are you, an insurance lackey?!”

“It’s called style, you- Argh, I don’t have time for this.”, he snarled, raising his hand. It didn’t matter where she had gotten this from, or why she wasn’t using it herself. She had given it to him for a reason, and he wouldn’t disappoint her.

“Plagg, claws out!”

-

Transforming had been easier than thought. She’d simply slipped around a corner, said the magic words and waited until Cathexis followed her to punch him into the ceiling. She’d caught him by surprise, and so it wasn’t hard to deliver a kick hard enough to send him into the wall behind him. He groaned and shook his head as she scanned him. Where was the akuma, where was the akuma, where was- his bracelet! It’s shape looked just like her lucky charm, though bleached beyond recognition. He pulled his arm away when she tried to grab it, his chains hurling her away from him and down the hallway.

“My Lady!”, he cooed happily, already forgetting he’d been chasing Marinette. Hyperfixation, she remembered Felix’ words. He could only ever concentrate on one thing at the same time. “There you are!”

She had landed on her feet - practice made perfect - and adopted her fighting stance.

“Let’s make this quick!”, she hissed and Cathexis pouted.

“Oh, My Lady! Don’t you recognize me? Your loyal partner?”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Loyal?”

He had the decency to look ashamed. Nervous, he scratched his head.

“You are... still mad at me, aren’t you?”

“For what? Sacrificing Rose, abandoning me or attempting to kill me?”

He raised his hands in defense.

“It was an accident! You know I could never hurt you, don’t you? I love you!”

He sunk on one knee, stretching out his hand as if pleading.

“Allow me to prove it to you, Ladybug! You’ll see, we’re meant for each other.”

She was so tired of this. Without a warning, her yo-yo wrapped around his outstretched hand.

“You can prove it by giving me that bracelet!”, she suggested and pulled. He lost his balance and fell over, but his chains caught him easily. They wrapped around her yo-yo to prevent her from escaping, but she didn’t intent to. With a battle cry, she launched herself at him. He didn’t see her coming, and before he could fully straighten himself, she slammed him into the wall again. But she had underestimated the speed of his chains. Just when she wanted to take the possessed object, one of them wrapped around her waist and threw her to the floor. She grinned in pain and tried to dodge, but now they were coming from every angle. Her yo-yo was carelessly dropped to the side when Cathexis stood up, wrapping the chain holding her around his wrist to pull her in.

“Why won’t you even give me a chance?!”, he raged. “I asked you so nicely, and you just attacked me! How could you?!”

“It’s my job, idiot!”, she snarled and tried to wriggle out of her restraints. “And it used to be your job as well! We beat up and purify Akuma’s, remember?”

She laughed bitterly, eyes burning into his.

“Or, that’s what I did at least. To you, this was only ever some kind of game, wasn’t it?”

He hissed.

“Just ‘cause I’m not as stuck-up as you doesn’t mean I’m not a good superhero! We won every time, didn’t we?”

“Because I had to save the day! How often were you even conscious and yourself for the final battle? Most of the time, I had to save you as well!”

“Argh!”, he roared. “Only because I sacrificed myself for you! Without me, you would’ve lost a long time ago!”

She bared her teeth and growled.

“Without you, I wouldn’t have had to worry that every battle might be my last, just because you decided to ditch me in a flashy attempt at self-promotion! You weren’t heroic, you were reckless! And unpredictable!”

He opened his mouth to shout back, but the purple butterfly outline returned to his face and distracted him. When it disappeared, Cathexis simply huffed and crossed his arms.

“You’ll see it my way soon enough.”, he said and wrapped the chain around his wrist once more, to get a better grip. “Soon, you’ll see everything my way.”

The root of the chain began to fill with his cold white light and Ladybug started to panic. Her yo-yo was out of reach, no way to summon a Lucky Charm. She couldn’t move, the chain was too tight. Her toes slid over the floor without finding foothold and her arms were pressed to her sides uselessly as the light came closer and closer and-

“Cataclysm!”

Both she and Cathexis startled when a black-gloved hand grabbed the chain. Rust spread over the links, dissolving them and eating its way towards Cathexis’ wrist - towards his bracelet!

The akuma gasped and shook his hand, getting rid of the chain and detaching it from its armor just before it could infect his bracelet. It coiled in on itself as it disintegrated, setting her free. Immediately, she grabbed her weapon, jumped back and landed at a safe distance with her savior next to her.

“Thanks!”, she grinned at him as she checked out his new suit. Felix nodded stiffly. Doubtlessly wondering why Ladybug was here all of a sudden, and Marinette wasn’t. If he’d put one and one together, he didn’t say anything.

“You’re welcome.”, he replied and took out his batons. He kept them separated and crossed on his back, which wasn’t the only difference from his predecessor. His hair was longer, wilder, and his iris was more blueish than green. The bell was missing from his collar, and he had an additional, smaller belt on that was equipped with trackers and other gadgets. His tail was longer, but seemed to move on its own accord. And his boots made no sound when he changed his stance to face Cathexis, which might come in handy for stealth. Overall, his costume was less... shiny. Less reflective, more of a spandex-like fabric than leather.

“No...”, Cathexis whispered, eyes wide with horror. “No! NO! I’m Chat Noir, not you! You’re just a cheap replacement!”

Felix blinked in surprise - he hadn’t known Chat’s identity, she remembered - but recovered quickly.

“Actually,” the new black cat hummed. “I don’t think I’ll go by Chat Noir anyway. Too many bad connotations, thanks to you.”

He grinned and raised his chin.

“You can call me Chatvalier instead. Because unlike you” - he raised his baton - “I won’t run from a fight.”

Cathexis roared with wrath.

“This can’t be- You can’t be- GIVE ME THE RING!”

His voice was erratic and his expression completely unhinged when he charged at them, chains wildly striking through the air. Their movements were devoid of their previous elegance and precision, it was all instinct and anger and hurt.

“You can still back out, you know?”, she asked her newly dubbed Chatvalier. “It’s a heavy duty, and you’re not forced by any cosmic will or something. If you don’t want this, I can handle him by myself.”

Her partner looked at her with narrowed eyes, as if reminded of something. Then he smiled.

“I don’t doubt that.”

He readied his claws and gave her a look so soft she felt her heart flutter.

“But... it can be nice to know someone has your back.”

He smirked.

“Remember?”

Oh yes, she did. When she faced Cathexis storming towards them, her smile was confident and unwavering. They were in this together.

“Ready?”

Her yo-yo swung through the air and he laughed.

“Guess we’re about to find out.”

- - -

If you don’t know what to make of this last “have your back” exchange, you might want to take another look at chapter 4 (their first real conversation). I love giving phrases more meaning than they should have, because DRAMA!

[johannesviii]

So I guess I’m hyperfixating on Death Stranding at the moment

And since I’ve finally finished the story after playing it for like 100 hours over the course of seven months or so I guess I have Opinions(tm) about things I didn’t like in the game

They’re eating at my brain so I’m gonna put them all in a single post to get them out of my system once and for all so I can enjoy the rest in peace

Spoilers, obviously

Hi welcome back to ‘Johannes is obsessing over yet another video game with horror elements in it’! I guess!!

Our latest entry in that category was Until Dawn but since UD can be played in like 6/7 hours and I spent 100 hours of my life on DS, as you can guess we’re talking about a full-blown hyperfixation, the kind that physically hurts because I can’t focus on anything else even after having finished the storyline

But it was super gradual. Again, seven months. I barely made any progress from December to May because I was only doing side-deliveries at the beginning of Chapter 3 instead of... you know... advancing the plot. It became an honest-to-god special interest about two months ago, then 6 days ago while playing chapter 10 it reached hyperfixation levels and now I am in PAIN

I hate my brain

Anyhow

At first I wanted to list the good and the bad hings in it but there’s too many good things to list them all in full, excruciatingly long details, so

Very Quick And Very Incomplete List Of Good Things That I Love

It’s a post-apo game based on travel, logistics, and good will, and it straight up goes AGAINST the whole ‘survival of the fittest’ trope that SO MANY post-apo things try to push!! YES

I insist but it’s built on helping each other and keeping everyone alive, seriously that is my shit right there!

The online community is wholesome?? People leave stuff everywhere, you never see anyone but people put little helpful signs and send you likes, and in my game we almost managed to repair all the roads together

There’s so many new & strange allergies and disabilities and phobias in this post-apo world and? nobody is trying to ““fix”“ anyone?? Like Heartman with his padded floor and his little box that brings him back to life constantly. He’s just... living like that. Nobody’s going “hey maybe you should get another heart operation buddy”

The hero and his phobia of being touched. I. Loved. That. The quiet scenes when he was just talking with Fragile, sitting next to her. In any other context this would just be two people sitting next to each other and talking but it always feels so soft and intimate everytime he allows another human being to just. be next to him. I love it. I love them

Everyone crying constantly because of chiral allergy!!

I loved all the important characters bar one (Bridget/Amelie)!

Why is this walking simulator so enjoyable why am I enjoying the fact that holding L2 + R2 while walking feels like holding your backpack and that you have to relax at times just like you’d have to if you were actually holding a backpack

Seriously. Why

The atmosphere was so great, the music was fantastic and the visuals were on point. A E S T H E T I C

The ghosts!! The giant Beached Things!!! Chiral crystals look! like! creepy hands reaching for the SKY!!

THE RAIN DESTROYS THINGS AND KILLS PEOPLE BY ACCELERATING TIME THIS IS SO COOL SHUT UP

Everytime the game got surreal it was electrifying

THE SURREAL WAR SCENES ON CLIFF’S BEACH

Everyone is using emojis

There’s guys addicted to delivering packages in that game and they’re trying to steal our stuff and we’re like “haha they’re dumb” but we’re basically addicted to delivering packages as the player. So yeah that was pretty fun

Terrorists thinking humanity isn’t going extinct fast enough and wanting to just rip the bandaid and speed things up. Simple but effective concept

People ask for SUPER VITAL ITEMS right next to completely trivial stuff and I’m LIVING for it. “Please fetch my toy dinosaur”. I feel you dude

The most isolated characters are like "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THIS THING I LIKE" in your emails because they haven't had contact with other humans in years, it's super relatable

There’s a farm where people use the fact that Timefall rain accelerates time to grow food super quickly in one (1) Timefall and harvest everything just before it starts to die and I LOVE that detail of worldbuilding so much

YOU’RE FIGHTING BEACHED THINGS WITH YOUR OWN BODILY FLUIDS IT’S SO STUPID BUT ALSO SO COOL?? I love yeet-ing my own blood at eldritch entities

THE T W I S T S

All the fanservice (bar one detail that I’m gonna complain about later) is on dudes. This game reeeeeeally likes to show dudes naked or somewhat naked. Mostly the main character but this mocap also L O V E S Mads Mikkelsen and there’s a shit ton of homoerotic shots in there

I love Sam the antisocial papa wolf delivery man and if someone touches him or his baby again, I will cry

LOU. LOU LOU LOU PRECIOUS BABY I’D DIE FOR YOU. Wait I did

I love Fragile and how brave she is and how she keeps helping people even if most of them wrongly think she’s a terrorist and yes I will eat this cryptobiote thank you

I love soft science boi Heartman who keeps dying again and again and is a bit too much interested in bodily fluids

I love garbage man Higgs and how complex, funny and still somewhat tragic this memelord actually turned out to be in the end

Seriously I want to stop fixating on this character but you can’t give me YET ANOTHER character who wants to die but at the hands of someone else, that is unfair to do that right after my fixation on the new Doctor Who Master

So yeah Higgs is yet another character who makes me want to grab him by the lapels and shake him and yell WHY! ARE! YOU! LIKE! THIS! STOP! BEING! LIKE! THIS!!

Cliff broke all three of my feelings beautifully and in excruciatingly well-acted scenes that transcended the sometimes lackluster dialogue

John made me cry during That Scene

Mama your background was tragic and terrifying and you didn’t deserve any of this shit and I love you

Deadman was more funny than anything, really, but I still liked him even if he had no sense of personal space whatsoever and it clashed horribly with Sam’s phobias

The ending had some sad parts but was mostly positive, thank goodness

Now I’m gonna explain things I dislike and this looks long but it’s actually only 5 main things so I bolded them to avoid confusion

Things I really disliked (and could have been handled wayyyy better)

We all know it but Kojima isn’t a master of subtlety and some parts of the dialogue kept repeating the same informations again and again AND AGAIN and I was like “ok ok I get it”

The dialogue can be so bad at times seriously

Kojima is a bad writer there I said it

It was particularly annoying with Amelie/Bridget and the fact she’s a horrible person trying (and failing) to justify her actions wasn’t helping

Bridges protocols are incredibly intrusive. All of them. I know it’s framed as bad and Sam hates being spied on all the time and in the end he destroys the device that does that, but I wish someone else would openly criticise it in-game

I guess Deadman sort of did but still

Also I know the whole BB technology was Bridget’s idea, and since she’s the actual villain it’s framed as a twisted, evil thing during the ending, but I wish that had been framed like that much earlier ; a lot of Bridges employees just... seem to accept the idea that their employer is using premature babies and their dead mothers as useful, if disturbing, devices. They seem to justify it by “uh we stole that technology from terrorists” to try to cope with the idea but... yeah.

I mean, one of the points being made very early on is that Sam sees his BB as his child who must be protected at all costs instead of a detection device, but I really wish he wasn’t the only one to object to that thing

Again, the game DOES frame "using babies and their dead mothers as tools” as evil and twisted, I just wish it was given a lot more weight and way sooner

Now let’s talk about the Token Straight(tm) in this game

In any other kind of context it would be a joke! But Death Stranding literally has a Token Straight Guy!

I mean, there IS a few hetero couples among the Preppers. Not a lot, mind you. Like, there’s the Montaineer and his wife for instance. But they’re just there and it’s not what their side plot is about

No I’m talking about this piece of shit right there

This f█cking Junk Dealer guy complains the girl he loves is dead because of Bridges and emotionally blackmails us by sending us old holograms of her before her supposed death (somewhat disturbing holograms too because she looks... pretty young in them), then he sends us on what’s essentially a suicide mission in a BT infested zone, THEN when we give him proof she’s still alive and living in another bunker nearby, he won’t go there himself to check??

But SHE’s like “ok, bring me to him, then!”

He doesn’t deserve you, girl

I’ve already seen several people pointing out that carrying a woman as cargo on your back is... debatable at best and sexist at worst, but that part didn’t really bother me to be honest? She asked to be carried to him and it’s her choice. She was talking to us the entire way too, so that made things a lot less awkward. Also Sam has this phobia of being touched by other people so I bet carrying another human being on his back isn’t fun for him. It was also super stressful to do, to be honest.

And then there’s this EXTREMELY AWKWARD scene when they’re reunited and decide to get married, and thankfully Sam finds it just as awkward as we do because he’s standing super far away from the bunker in a “can’t they talk about this later - I’m right there” way. And I’m under the impression it was intended as cringy, in a “yeppp young people in love are Like That” sort of way, so I can accept that, to be honest. If you don’t take that scene seriously, it’s pretty fun in, again, a cringy sort of way

BUT

Then you receive more emails later and this piece of shit guy complains about her and he’s like “ugh WOMEN” or “marriage is the worst” and they end up divorced in record time and she goes back to her bunker

Which isn’t my problem with this subplot either, I promise I’m gonna explain myself eventually but this context is important. It’s okay to have characters who are pieces of shit like this guy who reeks of incel cologne. It’s alright. Not every character has to be a role-model. It’s good to have characters you can hate.

BUT THEN they get back together later to try to patch things up and you learn he was part of a gang who murdered her parents even though he protected her against the rest of the gang and that’s what I hated about that storyline. I guess if you squint it can be read as “this woman is making REALLY BAD life choices” but I read it as “he saved her so she owes him something, he can’t be entirely bad” and y i k e s this left such a bad taste in my mouth, good lord.

But yeah miss Chiral Artist you’re making really bad life choices please get away from this dude as soon as you can, thank you

Also don’t do this ‘sending Likes’ pose ever again, it was hilarious but also you made me use the word “cringy” several times in this paragraph even though I absolutely hate cringe culture, look what you made me do

Now I have to talk about a scene that was intentionally disturbing as hell but ONE (1) detail in it was disturbing for the wrong reasons

To be honest, I really don’t like the Metal Gear Solid games and one of the reasons is the rampant sexism in them so I... was kind of bracing myself for Death Stranding and expecting it to have at least SOME really bad fanservice with a woman at one point or another but to my surprise?? There was none? All the fanservice is on dudes??? Hello? I really liked that (well at some point Fragile takes a shower in our room but we see literally nothing except her shoulder and then Sam looks away)?? What a refreshing change

THAT BEING SAID

And if you played the game you know exactly what I’m about to talk about

Yep this is the part where Johannes complains about how the bomb flashback was shot

Ok so I guess I should also give some context in case someone is reading this but hasn’t played the game, but the deal with this scene is that our friend Fragile was betrayed by her colleague Higgs who used to be a porter but became a terrorist after meeting the “main“ villain of the game. First he secretly put a thermonuclear bomb in one of her deliveries so she’d nuke an entire city without even knowing it, and everyone after that thought she was a terrorist. And then he tried to do that shit A SECOND TIME, but she noticed and decided to toss the second nuke into a bottomless lake of tar. But he caught her just before she reached the lake and he decided to give her a sadistic choice, which was “teleport away and the bomb stays there and nukes the city, or carry it to the lake but only in your underwear under this rain that speeds up time and it will do enormous damage to your health and your body”

And of course being the hero she is, she decides to take the second option

And it’s an incredibly disturbing scene and it’s genuinely hard to watch

But it’s also the ONLY time a woman is in her underwear in this entire game and there’s A COUPLE of shots that were male-gaze-y at the beginning before she started to run and the really horrific part started.

So in a way I guess it could have been worse? way worse, even

But it still tarnishes an otherwise disturbing (and harrowing at times ; seriously I know I’m oversensitive but it was physically painful to watch) scene with unnecessary shots

We know Fragile had a young body before this happened, this isn’t the point of this scene, guys

Whoever decided to keep these shots (probably Kojima let’s face it), that is bad and you should feel bad

Idk how to do a visual transition for that next one because I do not want to screen that memo

So here’s a screenshot with a nice landscape instead

tw: acephobia

Now I have to talk about something I like the GENERAL IDEA of, but not how the IN-GAME MATERIAL ABOUT IT was written

Because I have to talk about that “asexual world” memo

First I have to say that I absolutely love the fact that a mainstream game openly says in-game “this future is full of asexual people" and?? it’s just that, it’s a part of this world. That’s just how things are. It’s normalised. I love it. For crying out loud this memo has the word demisexual in it. I can’t think of any other mainstream game that had this word in it so far.

It should have stopped there and let me enjoy that in peace but it didn’t

THE MEMO ITSELF WAS CLEARLY WRITTEN BY SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THESE CONCEPTS and there’s some really bad stuff there. I’d say it’s accidental acephobia but it’s still there. I’m not the best person to talk about this because I’m bi, but it still rubbed me the wrong way

The words this memo uses near the beginning are “"sexless lifestyle” among young people” and yikes, my dude. “Lifestyle”, uh? Really?

And then it goes on about how these new labels were already more and more common “among young people before the Death Stranding” and it also rubs me the wrong way, in a “wow young people and their weird labels lol” sort of queerphobic way?

However I’ve seen a post pointing out that the line “One theory posits that the Stranding accelerated the proliferation of these sexualities” was maybe a way of saying ‘yo asexuals are causing the end of the world’ but... I don’t see it, tbh? In the context of the game, society is extremely divided and a lot of people live in complete isolation and social norms have heavily shifted and it’s kind of normal that there’s queer people visible everywhere now, aces included obviously, because nobody’s bothering to hide it anymore. It’s a post-apocalyptic world! People are just being themselves! A lot of characters also seem to be bi/pan! They’re just vibing ok

At least that’s how I read that part, I can understand if someone had a problem with that bit but I didn’t

BUT! THAT’S NOT ALL because the memo concludes (I’m paraphrasing) “the birth rate has dropped, which might be a problem, but harassment and assault have also dropped, which is good, so idk it’s 50/50″ and. like. I get the intention. But it’s clumsy as hell and very bad. Please don’t confuse abuse of power and attraction. They don’t go hand in hand. Don’t do that. Please. And you know that aces can have kids if they want to, right. Come on. It’s 2020 my dude. This shit is harmful

Also. Like. It’s the end of the world in this game. People don’t want kids. It... has nothing to do with aces. Reality itself is crashing down. People are reluctant to have kids because reality.exe might f█cking crash down at any given moment!

Or a Beached Thing could VoidOut their city!

Or someone might send them a nuke, not naming names!!

Anyway!!!

It’s really badly written and whoever wrote it should educate themselves and maybe get an ace to re-read their stuff next time??

Again I’m not the right person to talk about acephobia and I bet an actual ace would have plenty more to say about this

Thankfully it’s a memo written in-game by a random Bridges councellor and NOT by any important character that we actually know

"I must preempt myself by admitting that I do not have any empirical data" yeah so, f█ck off maybe

So I’m just gonna call that guy “another piece of shit character” but it still doesn’t excuse the fact that the memo was written by someone who thought it was a good idea to put it in the game

Just let me enjoy my super queer post-apo world in peace and don’t write shit like that in your game thank you and goodbye

Minor stuff I also disliked but it wasn’t as awful

I get that Sam is upset at the end because Lou is dying but the way he said goodbye to Fragile broke my heart. It was abrupt and you KNOW he’s upset and wants to have nothing to do with Bridges anymore and that’s very understandable but it isn’t her fault

Seriously I want them to be friends again

I’m gonna pretend they’re friends again after Lou is saved and that Sam is a freelance porter again and sometimes their paths cross and they just talk together in the middle of nowhere and share cryptobiotes

The pacing is weird, there’s this deluge of plot in the beginning and the end but not much in the middle?

The BT boss fights could have been these epic Shadow of the Colossus showdowns but no, they were relatively standard boss fights. Wasted opportunity

The running on the Beach scene sdfghjhgfdsdfghjhgf that was... dumb

A lot of preppers are interesting in one way or another but some are just boring. Also I wish the design of their bunkers was more varied

Amelie/Bridget’s motivations are all over the place, both creating Bridges AND the Demens is... a lot? I know she both WANTS and DOESN’T want the actual, final end of the world to happen but that is a lot to take in and it’s all very confusing

Who the hell cares about ‘rebuilding America’ I just want to build a network where people can help each other

The ‘likes’ are fun but don’t make much sense

In conclusion

Death Stranding Good

Some stuff Bad

Some stuff Very Bad (but it’s just one memo out of 100+ memos, thank god)

I’m still hyperfixating

Send help

[self-ships-ahoy]

🎫 here's a gush pass! feel free to gush about whichever f/o you want, however much you want, then send this ask to 3 other selfshippers!

Do you have any idea how much I wanted to receive this?? How much I needed a pass right at this moment??? I’m doing it, I’m pressing E!!

MEDIC GUSH HOURS

I have a lot to say so if you want me to edit this with a cut I will. Cuz this will be LONG.

Oh where do I even start? I love him?? I can’t believe I thought this was familial, there is no going back to that. I’m honestly surprised I was able to suppress it for so long without noticing. I even remember hearing him and thinking what an appealing voice he has-- and not thinking anything of it?? Voices always have something to do with me falling for someone! It’s just how I am! But I’m so happy I realized what I truly felt before too much time passed. Now I can spend Christmas with him as his girlfriend! :D 

And speaking of his voice, it’s instant serotonin. Accents drive me crazy. His is ADORABLE. I love how he pronounces ‘-tion’ as a heavily accented ‘schun’, like dude that’s so German and I love it. The r’s coming from the back of the throat, w’s sometimes halfway between sounding like a v and a w, and...just the way he says his long o’s. X3 And do not get me started on those hilariously cute voice cracks. I once counted 3 in one sentence. Adorable. Can girls get Gomez Syndrome? Cuz when he speaks German it makes my heart go Uber.....and I never got the implant surgery. o///o

Ok...Idk if this is gushing or outing myself...but this man has no right to be this physically attractive. That chiseled jaw, that defined nose, those piercing, focused eyes...not to mention the man’s freakin ripped. The way his coat flows in the wind, how he rolls up his shirt sleeves just past the elbow... It’s been bothering me for days. He’s too good looking. It’s illegal. This is how he became a mercenary: killing people with his good looks. A doctor so attractive, they took away his medical license cuz he kept smirking at patients and killing them. I bet he knows it too. The smug devil. This is a stunning male specimen and I have no idea how he exists. How he’s been allowed to walk the planet like this. Who gave him the right to be that...that good looking?? 

You know what doesn’t help that? Actually, what’s the biggest reason I know about this?? INSTAGRAM EDITS!!! Like oh my gosh some people are just so good at turning us into simps. 

*deep breath* Ok...I’m gonna come down from that to talk about his personality.....and how much of a dork he is.

Well first of all this:

Look at that. Look at how happy he is. Having the time of his life playing polka in his home town. I love this little dork. Hearing him laugh fills me with so much joy! Whenever I’m having trouble smiling, I just listen to his laugh and I start to feel better. You know why? Because him being happy-- genuinely happy and carefree-- is all I want for him. I see him conga dance or do-si-do or play the accordion like this, and just act like a doofus without care, or I see him act all cute and loving to his doves...that’s him enjoying life! And when I see him doing that, it makes me want to do that, because I, too, am a secret doofus. I don’t have to worry about my moods or hyperfixations distancing him and me, cuz we’re the same kind of weird (well...experiments aside >_>). He’s a dork and a diva and kook and I get to be that with him. 

Listen...I do acknowledge his “”problematic”” side, him being a morally grey boundary-breaking surgeon, and sometimes can be emotionally erratic or distant to his patient’s needs....but I’m not scared of him. He’d never hurt me, threaten me, intimidate me, or even tease me if he knew it made me really upset. I’m terrified of needles, so he keeps me at a distance when he’s using them around me. I am respecting who he was designed to be, though also as a self shipper with a whole tf2 comfort au, I...do reserve the right to tone it down a little. Also I’m pretty sure he’s got an undiagnosed mental illness, and I gotta respect that in his characterization. I saw a post talking about how we really should normalize Medic feeling a wide range of emotions instead of just being deranged or manic. He does care about his loved ones; heck he calls his team his friends, now come on, he didn’t have to say that but he did, that’s gotta mean something. That’s the side of him I like to portray, to sort of make him more human. And the great thing about that is, I don’t feel like it’s an uphill battle because even canon recognizes this about him. ...I think this is the paragraph that makes the least sense, cohesively, but bottom line: I know he’s a troublemaker, but he’s also a human being (albeit a fictional one) and I love and respect him no matter what.

I sure hope he’s not suffering too much mentally because of it. If he’s ever emotionally overwrought, I’ll be there for him, whenever he wants me.

That being said.....gosh do I love imaging fun and domestic stuff with him. Cuz again, he’s capable of that! I wanna do that dorky stuff with him I mentioned back there! Sneaking out of the base to go dancing, joining a conga-line mid-battle, playing with the doves, watching our favorite shows on tv together (very sure he watches Hogan’s Heroes X3), doing some R&R after a tough mission, creating inside jokes spoken in German so no one else understands, holding his gentle hands and kissing them, wrapping my arms around him to tell him to take a break from work, watching each other’s faces light up as we talk about science, just....just listening to the sounds of each other’s voices... He has a very nice inside voice (which he rarely uses unprompted, so it’s a treat). I really think he’s as crazy about me as I am about him (for lack of a better word). Gosh just thinking about him being as lovestruck and distracted as I am right now, wow, he probably had to confess or else he’d explode. XD 

You know he can be surprisingly affectionate? Lots of x reader blogs have attributed this to him, one even calling him an “attention-seeking baby’ and honestly I agree. There probably won’t be as many cuddles as I want, but I’m glad at least he likes being loving at all. I can’t wait to tell you about our first kiss. But this is getting very long, and my brain is giving out. I decided to do this at night, when everyone’s in bed! XD

Anyway, this concludes the gush, I love him so much it physically hurts. :D Chances are, I’ll have more to gush about later!

[gins-potter]

ummm so i did a thing and wrote some hp next gen hc’s fuck you j.k the order they’re written is the age order (idk if there is a canonical age order for all the weasley cousins but this is my take anyway) under the cut because this is long

Teddy Remus Lupin.

hufflepuff

pansexual 

soft boy who can and will make friends with absolutely everyone

his family use he/him pronouns out of habit but he’s open to any pronouns

has 5 parents in his mind, remus, tonks, andromeda, harry, and ginny

calls ginny and harry, mum and dad, and lives with them for a while after he graduates hogwarts

making head boy is one of his proudest moments and he never saw it coming because he’s a bit of a troublemaker

but his troublemaking is usually limited to sneaking out of bed to get food from the kitchen, and changing into teachers to scare students

is one of those people that is genuinely liked by everyone, teachers and students

even filch can’t bring himself to yell at that cheerful smile

doesn’t play quidditch, but watches because so many of his family members play

but watching also makes him nervous because he’s scared someone will get hurt

his feelings for victoire kind of come out of nowhere the year after he graduates hogwarts and she’s no longer there teasing him

they don’t get together until victoire is of age though because although he’ll never admit it, bill scares the hell out of him

wants to be a healer after hogwarts

Victoire Weasley.

ravenclaw

the sorting hat almost put her in slytherin

considered going to beauxbatons, but didn’t want to move away

hates the dumb blonde trope and works her ass off to get at least an E in all her subjects

despite hating being mistaken for just a pretty face, she does have an impeccable fashion sense, and her makeup is always on point

wishes she and her sister were closer, and it takes until they’re in their seventh and fifth years respectively to realise how similar they are

lives to intimidate people

and loves seeing the looks on boys faces when they realise how smart she is

and she really is scary smart

has this witty, banter going with teddy but is in denial about what it means until she’s in her sixth year and realises oh crap she’s in love with him

has a ridiculously complicated coffee order, which teddy knows off by heart

incidentally the first time he orders for her, getting it perfect, of course, is also the moment she realises she’s in love with him

is the eldest official weasley/potter child and finds it s t r e s s f u l

thinks her siblings/cousins are crazy

ends up teaming up with James and Molly to keep them all in line

James Sirius Potter.

gryffindor

jock™

joins the gryffindor team in his second year, plays chaser, and is good enough to give both his mother and his grandfather a run for their money

shameless flirt and acts so much like his two name-sakes that it sometimes makes mcgonagall catch her breath when he winks brazenly at her in the middle of transfiguration

becomes the first half of a brother duo to play for the english national team

feels a lot of pressure to keep up good grades, keep the gryffindor team winning (especially after he’s made captain in his sixth year), look after all his siblings and cousins, and maintain the happy-go-lucky attitude that he’s come to be known for

is diagnosed with anxiety during his seventh year

harry cries when james tells him how dark he’d been feeling

lily researches plants that are proven to lift spirits and brings them to him until he feels like smiling again

has his father’s crazy hair (though his are auburn curls) and his grandfather’s hazel eyes

unlike his brother he likes hearing how much he looks like his family

Dominique Weasley.

slytherin

feels like the night to victoire’s day

takes her coffee black

likes to wear ripped jeans and old band shirts

dyes her hair

would never admit it but lily luna is her favourite cousin

gets a tattoo of a snake down her spine when she’s fifteen and her parents hit the roof and ground her for the entire summer

she expected her dad at least to be cool about it

likes boys and girls, but thinks most of them are idiots

has the best eyeliner game in the school

is fiercely protective of her little brother

never even considered going to beauxbatons

even though they annoy her most of the time she could never be away from her family that long

also loves to intimidate people

wishes her sister wasn’t so perfect all the time because she thinks it puts more pressure on her to be better

Molly Weasley II.

gryffindor

is dyslexic but it took everyone a long time to realise it

thought for a long time that she was just too dumb to get above an acceptable in any of her classes

rose eventually works it out, and it gets better after that

or at least her teachers are a bit more considerate

is a whiz at classes where she doesn’t have to write a lot of essays

loves care of magical creatures and helps Hagrid teach Grawp English

her uncle charlie is her favourite uncle and considers running away to live with him in her fourth year

has a very strained relationship with her father because he tends to be very impatient with her and used to say she wasn’t trying hard enough in school

really good at sewing and cooking (much like her namesake) and can usually be found in the kitchen of the weasley house experimenting on a new recipe

gives the best presents

is the best at wrangling the weasley/potter brood

is that person who remembers every single birthday, anniversary, favourite colour, pet’s names and so on

shameless romantic

Rose Granger-Weasley.

gryffindor

everyone is surprised af when she gets sorted into gryffindor, including rose, but she grows to love the crazy, loud house

is in love with scorpius for about 3 months in third year but gets over it pretty quickly when she sees the way scorpius looks at her cousin

so she just settles back and waits for them to figure it out

pretends like she hates quidditch but has a secret love for it that only her dad knows about

and she of course supports the chudley cannons

is one of those annoying ‘gets perfect marks without studying’ type of people

likes to rock the space buns look with her cousin roxanne

thinks she might be ace/aro but really isn’t sure

her mum is her hero

goes through a rebellious phase in the summer between her fifth and sixth years, and lives with her aunt ginny and uncle harry for a few weeks

is the first person to realise her cousin molly is dyslexic

Scorpius Malfoy.

ravenclaw

is the first malfoy in history to not be in slytherin

thinks albus potter in glasses is the hottest thing

thought his father would hate him for being sorted into ravenclaw

he doesn’t

thought his father would hate him for being gay

he doesn’t

his father tells him once that raising him is the best thing he’s ever done and it’s one of the most important things anyone has ever said to him

professional piner

is in love with al since almost the first time he ever saw him

plays chaser in his 4th and 5th years but is really glad when they find a replacement for him

he prefers watching his boyfriend play

loves his mother

kinda hates his grandparents and hates himself for that

when he’s in The Zone™ good luck getting his attention

has a tendency to hyperfixate

hates parties but goes because al and rose like them

has a touch of social anxiety

Albus Severus Potter.

slytherin

tries out for the slytherin team in his first year, but isn’t selected

is called in to play for the grand final against gryffindor that year when the other seeker is injured, they lose but it’s still one of the best moments of his life and makes him the second youngest person to play for a hogwarts team after his father

goes on to play on the english national team with his brother

is best friends with rose and scorpius

is constantly being told by teachers how much the three of them remind them of his father, uncle ron, and aunt hermione

likes boys

knows he likes boys pretty much from birth (his parents are also unsurprised when he tells them)

doesn’t work out that he’s in love with scorpius until they’re in their fifth year, and it still takes them most of the year to get their shit together

needs glasses but hates wearing them, so he usually wears contacts

is always down for a nap

Louis Weasley.

hufflepuff

came the closest to studying abroad, but just before he was set to start he had a minor panic attack and realised he couldn’t do it

he was worried for a long time that his mum was secretly disappointed that he went to hogwarts just like his siblings, but she told him she could never be disappointed in him

he knew from a young age that he had been born into the wrong body but wasn’t able to tell his family until he was around 10, 

he didn’t want to go to hogwarts with no one knowing who he really was

his parents didn’t pretend like they had always known, but they accepted him nonetheless

always harboured a hero-worship-lowkey-crush on teddy which eventually developed into a mutual friendship, despite the almost 10 year age gap

plays seeker on the hufflepuff team only because they desperately need a seeker and lucy begs him

loves his older sisters but wishes they weren’t so protective

sometimes wishes he was closer to fred, lucy, and roxanne who are all in his year and are very close but then remembers that they’re all crazy and if he hung with them more he’d probably be in detention every week

loves muggle studies and wants to work with muggles after hogwarts

collects muggle coins 

Roxanne Weasley.

gryffindor

practically invented the space buns look

holographic aesthetic

friends with everyone

headgirl

is friendly with absolutely everyone but also plays beater so people are very ???

likes being a twin and usually gets pulled into fred and lucy’s crazy schemes

has the highest detention record of any head girl ever, but most of those are fred and lucy’s fault

the one detention that actually is her fault is when she throws her beaters bat at her brother because he let slip who she had a crush on in the middle of commentating a quidditch match

it worked out pretty well in the end because the girl found her after the quidditch match to ask her out

one third of the unholy trinity (lucy came up with the name)

she’s the third who tries to keep them out of trouble

has the chillest nature and can’t stand to see any of her family hurt

wishes uncle percy wasn’t so hard on molly

is one soft lesbian

physically incapable of holding a grudge

Fred Weasley II.

gryffindor

doesn’t play quidditch but takes after his godfather and commentates

likes to try and throw his sister off her game when she’s playing quidditch

second third of the unholy trinity

honestly does not know how he gets in so much trouble all the time

seriously wonders if he was born without impulse control

like it’s not his fault that he’s curious about absolutely everything and has the patience of an excited puppy

is really good at charms

always knows the most obscure spells

has no idea what he wants to do after he leaves school but isn’t worried about that

Lucy Weasley.

hufflepuff

plays chaser

troublemaker ™

last third of the unholy trinity (the name was her idea)

her and lily are either the best of friends or the worst of enemies (there is no inbetween)

god help you when they’re at each other's throat because their arguments could wipe out city blocks

you can imagine how much worse they are when they’re teaming up

thinks she maybe wants to be an auror after leaving school

her dad hates the idea

which of course makes her want to do it even more

loves mystery novels and can always guess the ending by about halfway

thinks her uncle harry is the coolest

invites herself along on lorcan’s world travels after he finishes hogwarts

loves to smack him over the back of the head when he gets too obnoxious

but secretly loves it when he starts ranting about the topics he’s studying

Lorcan Scamander.

ravenclaw

smart boy

thinks his mum is kinda nuts but loves her anyway

thinks his brother is kinda nuts but loves him anyway

doesn’t know how he got basically adopted into the weasley/potter family but can’t bring himself to be mad about it

loves arithmancy and nerding out with hermione about it

wants to do too many things after he leaves hogwarts

ends up taking some time off to travel for a bit and learn more about the different wizarding cultures

lucy surprises everyone and invites herself along as a break after she finishes her auror training

no one can work out if they hate each other or are secretly dating

lysander can’t work out if he hates her or wants to kiss her

Lysander Scamander.

hufflepuff

eptimosises the dumb blonde stereotype

too pretty for his own good

gets shoved into keeper position on the hufflepuff team because no one else can/wants to play, and is The Worst

gets distracted by cool clouds and pretty butterflies during quidditch games

finds that he actually really likes quidditch because it turns out he loves flying

he still sucks at keeping of course

but at least he’s having fun now

thinks his mum is a genius

pansexual

knows that hugo is the one for him as soon as they start dating

favourite thing is the way hugo’s ears go red when he’s flustered

thinks ron is hilarious

Lily Luna Potter.

slytherin

smol, smol, smol child

is five feet of pure rage, sass, and protectiveness

will fuck up anyone who messes with her family

parents started her in quidditch to help vent her frustrations but quickly grows to love the game, or at least being able to hit the fuck out bludgers

plant nerd

starts a herbology club with her uncle neville (who she refuses to call professor longbottom no matter how many times he reminds her)

she is one smol lesbian

hates it when james is going through his anxiety because for the first time kicking someone’s ass won’t fix it

less than zero impulse control

she finds an old photograph of her mum rocking an undercut and immediately goes for the electric razor

the end result is horrible, and she ends up calling victoire and dominique to fix it for her

did i mention she’s super smol?  

thinks that her dad doesn’t understand her very much but cries a little when uncle neville let’s slip that he’s been borrowing herbology books to learn more about her favourite subject

works with troubled teens after she leaves hogwarts

works out at age eight that is she arranges her cousins a certain way in family photos they can spell out bad words with the letters on their sweaters

her parents don’t know if they should be angry or impressed.

Hugo Granger-Weasley

ravenclaw

is the quieter kind of smart compared to his sister, who is always correcting people

surprises the fuck out of people when he’s put in ravenclaw and gets near perfect grades at hogwarts

studies a lot

is the only person who can beat his dad at chess

has a bad habit of falling asleep while reading

is jealous of how good all his cousins are at quidditch, and thinks for a long time that his dad is disappointed because he’s too scared of heights to play

is a self-confessed morosexual and is shamelessly in love with lysander scamander

almost gets stuck on the hogwarts express one time because he was too busy reading to realise they’d arrived

prefect

always has ink stains on his hands

usually gets said ink in lysander’s hair when they kiss

has a thing for lysander’s blonde curls

[yourdeepestfathoms]

idk much about the ladies in waiting help me out here,,,,

Everyone sees them in a different way because they’re the band, but here’s my characterization of them! (with some hcs that i use all the time)

These four gals are a family. A band as a family, a bandily, if you will. they are closer than the queens and you can rip that from my cold, dead fingers :)

Bessie (Bassist)

• Mom Friend

• Powerful Bisexual

• Sunglasses

• I just always imagine her wearing sunglasses

• The other three are her dumbass kids but she loves them a lot

• Tough, prickly, and confident

• You know how Jane is the Mama Bear? Well, Bessie is an actual Mother Bear. She is built like a bear. She can and will kill you if you mess with her family.

• If you harm one of the other ladies in waiting, she will go after you. She will find your weakness and needle that until you’re in tears. Even then she probably won’t stop

• Could actually kill you and get away with it

• Okay she seems like an asshole but she’s actually super chill and soft

• Unlike Aragon and Jane, who will yell if their kids make a scene in public, she really doesn’t care as long as nothing gets broken

• Like the other three could be blasting Pomp and Circumstance in the park at max volume and she really wouldn’t care

• However she will flip shit if they all run off and she can’t find any of them

• Nonchalantly makes references to gen z humor and it makes the other three go absolutely nuts (she does it because she likes seeing them so excited)

• Probably has a pet black cat

• Cannot Be Killed

• But she would die for her family

Joan (Keyboardist)

• Big Sister

• Lesbian

• Really cool!!!!

• She served under Jane so she’s got those Mom instincts

• Could kinda be the Other Mom?

• But is more chaotic than Bessie by a mile

• Strong

• She could kick you apart and you would thank her

• Protective but lenient

• Will give piggyback rides so just ask

• Sleeps on the ground floor and uses that to her advantage to get food in the middle of the night

• And yet she still manages to wake everyone up because she knocked down the entire cup shelf

• She has the same energy as the Vine that goes “Siri what’s my name?” “You’re Tom, but you asked me to call you vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina”

Maria (Drummer)

• Somehow simultaneously the Fun Aunt, Cool Big Sister, and Soft Mom

• Pansexual

• Chaotic but like

• A total softie

• Really fun and sweet

• Poofy Hair

• Everyone loves her hair

• Wild child but isn’t as batshit crazy as Anne

• Calms down the moment she’s needed

• The Best cuddle buddy

• Warm

• Literally a space heater

• Gives the best hugs

• Blows a kazoo to alert the others of a family meeting

• Always knows when one of the others is sad

• Respects boundaries and triggers

• She’s just so nice

• Bought Maggie a sheep wool rug because she saw her look at it for, like, ten seconds

Maggie (Guitarist)

• Baby

• Baby Gay

• Also asexual

• Can’t swim

• Deathly afraid of dogs

• Has ADD (attention deficit disorder) and RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria)

• On medications for it. Takes 40mg of Adderall

• Really shy and anxious all the time

• Only really calm when she’s with her family, so she’s around them a lot. But she’s so much more upbeat and excited with them

• She’s actually pretty cool just give her, like, five tries to get it right

• Hyperfixates all the time

• Poor attention span and auditory processing issues. You’re gonna have to repeat things to her a few times because she’ll start to zone out

• Meltdowns are very common for her, poor girl

• Bites herself and pulls her hair as destructive stims

• Responds best to Bessie’s voice and heartbeat when having a meltdown, but can be calmed down with music, too

• If you yell at her she will die

• Her RSD will also go fucking nuts and the other three will kill you so maybe don’t shout at her

• Has a pet snake named “Forgery”

• Give her a plastic cup and she’ll be distracted by at least two hours

• Very touchy. She likes to feel things

• Absolutely loves Maria’s hair

• The prayer book Anne gave to her is her most prized possession

• Watched Anne get beheaded and never really recovered from it

• Sleep paralysis

• Never fucking drinks water

[qanoor]

@epochryphal said: 

mm, the analyzing of feelings and body as symptom of evil and danger. i don’t think chasing away and monitoring do any good, though i know that doesn’t make them any easier to stop. i don’t think they’re at all linked to goodness. and just… yeah, compassion. and there not being objective truth, and no reparation in flagellation, and. hah. i mean, this is why i eroticize abjection, to deal with this

how do you get beyond the fear of what it could mean to eroticize abjection, though? how do you convince yourself that it’s okay to do so, that it doesn’t make you more likely to be violent? i mean, intellectually i know these things, and god, i know that you are safe, but, me? it’s another story. i just never know.

and oh god this got so long and rambling & obsessive-compulsive but:

yes, i don’t think the monitoring does any good either, and yet i keep doing it, i can’t stop, it’s this endless compulsion.... because the alternative to self-flagellation and self-monitoring feels so horrifyingly abject. it’s kind of -- oh, i was just watching the third season finale of broadchurch, and it’s a show that really exposes the horror that human beings can do to each other, and it’s a pretty brilliant show albeit too sympathetic to police -- well, and it has these semi-typical murderer/rapist-exposés in the end, you know, when the mystery’s figured out -- a bit more intense than usual, and so just now there was this serial rapist talking about how he feels proud of the rapes he’s committed, he feels like there’s something beautiful about the power of it or something. && this shit tends to really trigger me, because -- well, i’m always terrified of somehow having any capability of being like that. i’m so terrified that i could contain that, and when i’ve had some really psychotic episodes, when i felt more multiple and more entrenched in red / my headmate ‘deep red’ -- it felt like that, like i wouldn’t care about doing anything more, like i just wanted pure violence and pure control, and this -- well, i was so very glad that it never went beyond being huddled on the bed talking alternatively freaking out and coldly collected to sophie -- i could never go beyond that -- but there’s always the fear, like what if, what if, if i stop monitoring, if i let go for even a second of the anxiety, that that’s the base of it, this total ability to do horrible, horrible things. & my therapist and i, we talk about this, about how i am so afraid of letting go because letting go for me signifies losing control in such a way that is utterly horrifying, abject in a purely harmful and violent way, and how to -- ha, let go of this idea so i can properly let go of myself sometimes without thinking it’s going to turn out so horribly? and i can trace this to so many things in my life -- i am too afraid to let myself go in the context of sex, for many reasons, but this is one -- as if orgasm, or pleasure in any sense really, could mean being closer to pure violence. i am too afraid to breathe -- my breathing is always tense and i have a lot of shortness of breath -- in a way i cannot really dream if it’s not a nightmare, because i have to always be afraid in that regard, i have to constantly expose myself to my fears in my dreams. i can’t -- i mean, my body just feels like this terrible errant thing, full of all these synapses and feelings. when there’s rape in tv shows and movies i’m always terrified of feeling any kind of -- like, i mentally check my body for signs of arousal (i remember i’ve read about other people with ocd like, checking their genitals with their hands for signs of arousal, but this feels too direct, too close, for me, so i have to -- i get scared of physical contact -- i don’t know if this makes any sense at all) -- and it’s so twisted because i think i’ve developed this thing where i will have some kind of sensation because i am searching for it and trying to monitor it so much, like my therapist says, sometimes you think of something sexual related, even if it’s not quite, even if it’s violent, and you might feel aroused, but this doesn’t actually mean you get off on hurting people! && i don’t know, but then there’s the -- what if i did, and then the intersections of kink and -- i just, it’s so hard for me to even really begin to explore kink because i’m so afraid -- i kind of want to eroticize the abject and i guess i do in some ways but i’m so afraid of it being like, i mean, like one thing i really hated about this season of broadchurch, actually, was the way they directly linked pornography and kink to rape, as if that’s what has to happen, and i hated that, and it’s everywhere in the media -- and, oh, i’m just, i’m used to this bizarre conundrum where the media at once exposes our fantasies and twisted desires and also condemns them -- but i just. i don’t know. i’m constantly failing to express -- i don’t know i wish i could write about this truly -- i wish it -- like, there’s the intellectual pondering -- would it really be so terrible to eroticize things that one shouldn’t actually do? as fantasy? people roleplay so many fantasies in kink that they’d never do nonconsensually, even if it’s imagined nonconsensually. & intellectually, i don’t think that fantasy = behaviour, à la foucault etc. i do understand the body as polymorphously perverse (oh god, reading the history of sexuality vol. 1 just really made so much sense to me -- yes! the categorization and the codification of desires and the body and -- everything has to be a threat, a case for punishment, the endless proliferation of terminologies to condemn the body) -- so intellectually i may understand certain things but when it comes to me i still -- i can’t let go because i’m terrified -- of being this essential inherent danger to others, to children, to animals, to other vulnerable people, to anyone really -- and sometimes i can laugh at the psychotic ideas that i’ve gotten into when ‘deep red’ fronts more, like how bizarre, but then there’s a part where it seems to make sense or even could be desired to just -- commit mass violence, and i don’t know if this is my ocd hyperfixation or if it’s something else or both and this is why i would purposely institutionalize myself over and over

and i keep coming back to: if i hadn’t been treated like such a threat when i was fifteen and spiralling out of control with my intrusive thoughts and ideations, if i hadn’t been institutionalized and abused then, maybe i wouldn’t have to feel like there’s this part of me that’s evil, that needs to be tempered and controlled and medicated, and this makes me so fucking sad and i just can’t get over it, i can’t get over how i spent years going back to the psych ward again and again, literally submitting myself, knowingly, to abuse, i just, i don’t know how to deal with that, and being a psych survivor advocate and movement person doesn’t actually fix it at all, because i don’t meet a lot of people that have this very particular story, or maybe any, i don’t know, and i don’t know how to talk about this girl i was then, when i was younger, and how it felt to be marked as abject then, how it felt to be assessed as a threat and i just. i don’t know how to ever heal from that, and so now i can’t do anything in my life without being afraid, without having to monitor, and it varies in intensity, but i just. i don’t people when they tell me i’m okay -- because how could i? i know what it’s like to be told i’m okay and then have that ripped away from me. i know that, and i know what it’s like to have people literally want me dead (whether because of all kinds of righteous social justice abusive bullshit or because of the psychiatric medical industrial complex, which are very very similar actually), and it’s just. i just hate it. but every time i have a thought of compassion i have to have a critical or paranoid thought. i have to constantly check myself, and i just don’t really see a way out of this. medication dulls it a bit sometimes, therapy helps, but what about when i have to get a new therapist, or when this medication stops working at all, or, you know? i want to be able to hold myself at my most abject and know that i’m not going to commit terrible crimes. i just want to know that, i want it to be true. and i know it can’t really be true for anyone, and this is what broke me when i realized this from raine, this is why i fell apart then, because i had been clinging so much to this idea that, well, i’m basically a good person, but once that’s taken away and all that’s left is this, well, this psychosis that can’t be explained away anymore, then there’s nothing to really do except completely not be able to function anymore. and so, you know, i’m glad raine helped me realize that people aren’t essentially good or bad, that we all have the ability to do terrible and great things, but i also just don’t think she knew what that would mean for me, it sounds simple enough, but it isn’t, not when whatever precarious sense of self i had was predicated on the idea that i was basically good, and since then, i’ve just... well i floundered for years, and now... i don’t know. i don’t know. i wish i could just allow my body to exist without thinking of all these sensations as threats, without sexualizing sensation, without -- it’s so dirty and filthy, really, it all feels like wanting to be holy and pure, and never being able to be. it’s funny because so many of the fleeting desires i’ve had / have around gender transition stuff have been about wanting to have all sexual characteristics / feeling / reproductive body parts removed precisely because i want -- and it’s impossible, really, to remove all nerve feeling -- i’ve wanted to just not feel any of it anymore, to not have to worry about sensations, to have a body that is purely, essentially, totally desexualized. and i don’t actually -- want this? i wish i could turn sensations on and off, i wish i could dislocate my limbs and leave them in places to return to later, i wish i could be more of a cyborg, i wish i could change my anatomy and genitalia and all kinds of things. but the wanting to turn sensations off is so wrapped up in this trauma of abjection, of fear that my desires are actually rotten, cruel, evil desires, that i could desire the wrong things.