#characters who dip out of morally grey and who fuck up a lot and are selfish and pigheaded i just um :heart_eyes: i want *you*

[darth-ted2745]

Started an Astarion origin playthrough and I've been trying to play him as close to his "canon" as possible in terms of how he interacts with others. In doing so I've been thinking about who on earth he would romance out of the other origin characters as there is obviously no Tav to seduce and manipulate. Who would he latch on to for protection? My first thought was Shadowheart, since both of them have their secrets. But thinking further, my mans is nosy as fuck and would want to be all up in her business. If he found out from the rip that the artifact she was carrying was what was keeping him from turning into a mindflayer, I think he would steal that shit so fast and dip out. If he didn't know it was what was keeping them from turning, I think he'd probably try to at least figure out what it was and if it was worth anything. I don't think he'd care about her following Shar, but I do think he wouldn't be convinced she would protect him if Shar demanded Shadowheart abandon him. I think she would see through his bravado if he tries to seduce her and not fall for it. Next thought was Lae'zel. She's strong, fierce, good in a fight, and closer to morally grey like Astarion. She doesn't care about helping others over herself, and actively disapproves of it. I think it's possible he could worm his way under her stony exterior, but unlikely that he could keep her on the hook. She seems much more interested in something casual romantically and (in my experience) will choose to sleep with either Astarion or Wyll at the tiefling party if Tav rebuffs her. I think Lae'zel would view Astarion as an asset, but she gets real spicy about his vampirism. They're also inherently at odds as she will stop at nothing to rid herself of the tadpole, but Astarion wants to control it. In my personal headcanon, Gale and Astarion bicker constantly, so trying to imagine them together at all doesn't really make sense to me, but for the sake of the thought experiment let's do it. I think Astarion just finds Gale insufferable and can't get past it. Having to find magical items to feed to Gale would annoy him since they're now completely useless to the party at a point where Gale's damage output is pretty low. Additionally, Gale is a slowburn romance and Astarion is tryna FUCK. Gale has a lot of emotional baggage (and this isn't me saying Astarion doesn't because we all know he does), and Astarion doesn't have time to sort through all that if he's trying to secure an alliance with seduction. I think Wyll is a top contender. He's such a do-gooder that I think he would protect Astarion no matter what, even from the rip. I do, however, think Wyll's desire to help people would grate on Astarion, as we see it does in a "good" Tav run. That may not put Wyll out of the running, but I think his need for a more "traditional" romance would. Once again, Astarion needs to seduce or his plan won't work. I think it's possible Wyll might still fall for that seduction, even without the sex, but Astarion's tried and true methods will not work. Karlach is the other top contender in my mind. Yes, the seduction would physically not work since he can't touch her at the beginning of the game, but we know she's satisfied with just words for a while. Karlach is so starved for touch and affection that I think Astarion would pick up on that right away and use that to his benefit. I think in trying to keep her on the hook without being able to touch her, he would absolutely fall for her. She's so endearing and the second she gets her engine fixed and he can touch her, I think he would TRY his typical "seduce to protect me" tactic but at that point he might be in too deep. She's also v strong, BIG, and always warm, and we know our baby boy is always cold!!

[vonlipvig]

It’s been a few days, but I wanted to update you on my Trauma Center play through, cos a lot has happened since I last did!

1) Tyler is a very interesting character, with a grey morality that I had to spend a good day or so thinking about. I wasn’t expecting euthanasia to be brought up in the way that it was, especially with it being a topic that (in my opinion) has so many different variables to take in to consideration when debating the ethics of it. I felt like the game did a pretty decent job with it (so far at least), along with the fact that euthanasia is something that can very easily slip away from being ethical, particularly if you’re basing things (as Tyler was with Amy) off of your own emotions.

2) I met the bastard triangles, and I lost to the bastard triangles… and I lost to the bastard triangles again… and then I realised that if I froze time right at the start, I could yank all the thorns out at once and get all the bastard triangles off in one, with all the care and precision of someone scraping ice off their car. Mario was still way harder for me, but I have a nasty suspicion that I haven’t seen the last of those bastard triangles, and that my quick fix method might not work in the future.

3) I’m still only getting rank C in surgeries, including the one I did on a damn plane that was experiencing turbulence at the time! So what if the patient died seven times before I healed him, I did veRY WELL GIVEN THE CIRCUMSTANCES! AND WHO’S GRADING ME ANYWAY??!! YOU THINK YOU COULD DO THIS JOB!!! WELL COME ON UP AND TAKE THIS SCAL- oh you did a better and faster job than me….

4) I have now not only met Victor, but worked under him in surgery! The whole experience was the closest I may ever come to working as the capering and cavorting minion of a much hotter and more competent supervillain. Victor had to watch me chase that blob around that man’s chest for an honest to god five minutes, unable to hit anything as I was. At one point the patients vitals started to dip, while Victor watched in disbelieving horror as I tried to dutifully inject liquid into the patient’s already overflowing lungs. Then he told me to get back on the laser and shoot the damn blob (I’m pretty sure it was laughing at me getting chewed out), and I saluted my DS, so into the character I become… and accidentally thwacked myself in the forehead…

That said, watching me Wile E. Coyote my way around a man’s lungs apparently prompted Victor to take pity on me and he turn the game into Professor Layton a couple of times. Thus allowing me to get the only two A ranks I will ever see!

Ignoring my pleas to be reassigned to a different, easier genre, I was put back in surgery under Victor again, where I am now stuck. But that’s ok because Victor is kind of hot.

that's wonderful, i expect a full report of every surgery happening in this hospital every 3-5 business days /j

GOD YEAH, TYLER.........i love that they did the whole dr. death thing with him, especially since you see him and he's so...sunny. but yeah, it's such a great mini plot point that they added, and it makes him suuuch a complex character, and i just love him.

TRITI, MY MORTAL ENEMY. yeah, no, i see you, the trick is definitely to get rid of ALL spikes before they start to grow again...i was just BADDD at it, my god. it's still a running joke with my best friend that i hate triangles, all because of dear ole triti ♡.

OH MY GOD I FORGOR ABOUT THE PLANE SURGERY. this game fucking rules. atlus, look at me. make another one. i'm not asking.

I LOVE VICTOR HE'S SO GOOD he's definitely one of my faves, i love that he's kind of cunty, but like, because he knows he's the shit. i swear to god this game has such fantastic characters, it's sooo overlooked.

KEEO GOING, YOU CAN DO IT! (you have to tell me when you get to, hmm...the Puzzle).

[but-ter-flie-ge]

Finally. My reread of Crooked Kingdom actually did happen.

I was way more excited for the second book of the duology. So my prediction consisted of me rushing through SOC and then starting CK a bit less as if the apocalypse is going to break out if I don't finish it within a few days.

Jokes on me: I got so excited about different scenes that I still flew through it. So my brain is jumbled and my life is falling apart but I guess I did finish it, no?

For my first read of the second book in the duology, I actually understood the hype a bit more. It granted us the last two background stories of the characters and had a whole lot more banter. Which is one of the strongest elements of the books. However, I feel like CK manages the riddles and hidden plans of Kaz way better. It feels more deliberate than just being based on pure luck. Not everything of course and it probably still is 80% luck but it is covered up more thoroughly.

There were just so many details I simply forgot and was shocked to learn about once more. Even things I hadn't fully understood the last time I read it.

The writing style is a bit more poetic in my point of view. I could be wrong but that's what it felt like and I think it gives the text an emotional smoothness in-between the edges that come with the fighting and the comedy.

Still the pacing is awry sometimes.

The point of view changes get so frustrating in some parts which I didn't feel too much in the first book.

If you shoot someone and the next page is a lengthy description of what the surroundings look like, I won't read that. Or I will read it but my brain will zone out of this universe. For others this may work but not for me.

What I need to add to this though is that when there is a brawl at the end of the one character it is almost certain the next one will experience something that reaches the same level of stress which makes the scenes afterward easier to flip through.

I did not like the Pekka Rollins ending in the church.

Kaz hasn't struck him or really confronted him through the whole length of two books. Now in all of this chaos, attention shifting every few seconds and nerves on edge for other reasons he decides to finally do what we waited for.

I understand that there probably wasn't enough space or time to write an extra plot point for this so I will just watch the show whenever I'm craving Kaz's vengeance.

One of my favourite chapters in the whole series got to be chapter 14 of CK.

It is also the only chapter that plays outside of Ketterdam and it almost feels like a bittersweet nightmare. Or a dream? It's so hard to decide how to feel, being torn from "Oh his mother lives!" To "Holy fuck his mother lives..." To "I can't do this- she painted him..." While everything plays in this unfamiliar setting dipped in the afternoon sun. Wylan is not just retelling what happened but we are actually there while it happens. It helps to stir my pot of emotions.

This song was running on repeat when I was reading this:

The time has come. Whilst we're at iconic scenes I have the physical urge to throw in the "Who the hell is Jordie" - Jesper Fahey.

My friends are probably already wailing over the fact that I'm once again explaining my issues when it comes to Kaz Brekker. I'm sorry, my dears. I love you all very much.

Book one he redeemed himself and even in book two at the end I felt lighter, the anger issues not going complete berserk when thinking about him.

A huge part why I didn't like him is caused by his anger towards Jesper. I established that in my first review as well but in CK this burning rage of and therefore for him just flames higher.

I understand why and how and what and when and blablabla but I still don't think it's acceptable. And I think the fandom handles it wrongly. Maybe this is because there are a lot of young readers in the community. (Even though the SOC duology has very morally grey characters and it shouldn't be young adult-- that's a discussion for another day.)

I know I'm chronically online for this but children listen: Kaz can't just stomp his bestie in the ground because he has PTSD. Why do you think Inej left before the same fate could happen to her? It's so painfully obvious it makes me convulse. Jesper already has doubts about himself and his right to be loved, have friends, be trusted. And that just worsens in the presence of Kaz and his jabs here and there. You also have to keep in mind that Kaz actively fed into Jespers addiction which were the cause of him accidentally betraying the crows. Additionally: who gave Kaz the right to speak for Inej? She is the one who got hurt and she's the one who will settle it. Which she did. (Brilliant scene by the way.)

The way Kaz reacts just strengthened my belief from the first book: he never trusted Jesper and he just lets out his pain at someone who was foolish enough to stay with him.

Now I know I've been antagonizing him a lot but it's my opinion on the fandoms matter not on the overall of his character because I feel like in the books it's perfectly clear that this is a fight where he's in the wrong.

Shockingly, my very one-sided view on Kaz changed. Otherwise I would've not enjoyed the book as much as I did. I hold the moments when Nina and Wylan say that he accepted them very close. Or him giving Wylan the heritage he deserves even if it was just to taunt Van Eck into madness I have the (most likely false) inkling it's not only that. Probably just another scheme to use Wylan later on but we don't think about that. When he tells Inej that Jesper is missed I felt like the Pekka Rollins incident was finally wearing off just as the memories.

And of course there's Inej whom he gifts her her ship and brought her back to her parents. We all love to see her happy and even if he earned the simp-stamp during this, it is still a scene that makes me tear up.

Talking about more scenes I like: the fights between Inej and Dunyasha are awesome. I find Dunyasha super interesting as well as the way Inej views her.

Her character design is fun and her belief system so twisted and messed up. I don't know it just was a "fresh wind" of insanity outside of the common crowd we already knew.

And Inej grew through her. Inej's character growth has always been kind of shoved in your face with very obvious metaphors but I learned to absolutely love and appreciate it this way. It leaves you with very impressive scenes that are bound to her with connections and further consequences.

Speaking of character growth: Matthias. We finally got his final big bear form. It's funny how he transformed from being this irrational crazy murder husband of Nina to kind of the innocent-not-so-innocent-simping-lovely-idiotic-diplomat of the group.

We all know how his story takes it's end though. And once again I find myself wondering if the pace is just too fast or the pov change destroys this particular moment. But I couldn't really engage in it. I found it sad but not in a way that really stuck and made me mourn his character which I find a bit unfair. Because he deserves to be mourned. No pun intended.

I'm surprised that I don't think it was unnecessary or something that was just done to hurt the reader. Or Nina for that matter. Maybe it is but that's not how it seems to me.

I think he deserves better, obviously. I think he could've survived and the book would've been just as good, maybe even better.

But he dies and I feel like it just shows how luck does run out sometimes. And all it took was a younger version of Matthias plagued by hatred and a clouded mind shakingly holding onto a pistol. Matthias did change, wanted to help and free his family from the ice but cruelly he wasn't given the chance.

Scenes I'm unsure about would also be the pure comedy gold of Jesper mistaking Kuwei for Wylan.

When I first read that I was so on edge. Why wasn't "Wylan" saying anything? Why's he randomely sitting there not playing? Why on god's green earth is he grinning? (Also side note: how the hell could Jesper say their first kiss would be a great thing as a distraction?)

Anyways oblivious Jesper kisses Kuwei and in turn this dude is just glowing with pride.

It is memeworthy and I'm happy it's not a messed up love triangle or any of those sorts.

Still the voices bro, the freaking voices! "How could this be used for a meme moment?"

I can live with it though. It's okay. The show gave us what we didn't have and I'm ready for further angst if the spin off does come out.

Conclusively I'd like to say that the books grew on me through the fandom, the show and maturing as a person. It's quite the funny journey. I'm going to reread my first two reviews now and see what bs my younger self created. Chances are high that I just repeated myself but that's okay. I'll just ride with that. Have a good day.

[youngpettyqueen]

unpopular opinions ask ds9 edition: black heart and broken heart

I forgot about the emoji asks I reblogged for a second and was sitting here going "I dont remember an episode called black heart and broken heart I need to go look it up for my hot take on it" and then I. remembered. good morning I promise im awake

YES good questions lets see...

🖤: Which character is not as morally good as everyone else seems to think?

DS9 is one of those ones where I feel like most people get that literally everybody has moral nuance and everybody either lives in or dips into grey areas. that said, there is sometimes a tendency to over-babify Julian and act like he's done nothing wrong ever in his life, when that is very much not the case. I love him, he's my favourite, he's rewired my brain, but like. while Julian does staunchly stick by his own moral code as much as he can, he does show a willingness to do some fucked up shit. see Extreme Measures- Sloan is horrible, yes, but what Julian does to him in that episode is fucked up! see also his suspect behaviour towards women at times. and Chrysalis, where he pursues a relationship with Sarina- I know this one's hotly debated, but at the end of the day, Sarina is his patient and it is wrong to pursue a relationship with her. granted, on that one, Star Trek did love to do doctor/patient relationships in the 90s regardless of whether or not it would be in character for said doctors to pursue said patients, but still. it happened, I will acknowledge and include it here as an example that Julian isn't perfectly morally good

I feel like this take on him stems a lot from how its a widespread headcanon that he's autistic- a headcanon I share- because people tend to infantilize autistic characters which is. incredibly frustrating. I dont see it super often, but it tends to run in circles where people treat Julian like he's an insecure sad child and therefore could do no wrong. I could do a whole rant about that lol

💔: If you had to remove one major character from the series, who would you choose?

YOU CANT DO THIS TO ME I LOVE THEM ALLLLLLL. I genuinely dont know who I would remove. removing any one of them is devastating to me personally I love themmmmm but also removing any one of them would lead to some major differences in the series which I think could be fascinating to explore? some examples-

removing Odo would, in my opinion, have a massive impact on how the crew of DS9 interacts with the Changelings and the Dominion War. I do wonder how not having Odo around would affect how they approached the engineered disease against the Changelings- it was easier to protest it and try to find a cure when their friend was suffering, but if it was only the enemy? I wonder how that would've shaken up

removing Kira could be a big shake up with Federation/Bajoran relations in a scenario where instead of having a Bajoran as his secondhand, the Federation assigns Sisko a Starfleet First Officer. even with several Bajorans onboard both as Bajoran Militia and as civilians, I think without a Bajoran as his secondhand, even with his status as the Emissary, Sisko and by proxy the Federation's dynamic with Bajor would've been a lot more tense and maybe even hostile. beyond just being a Bajoran though, Kira specifically is so fiery and passionate and willing to butt heads with and go against Sisko, that taking her out and having somebody less fierce, less angry in her place would've also massively shifted the dynamic

I dont know if Garak necessarily counts as a major character but im counting him- I would be fascinated to see how the crew navigates some of those more morally dark scenarios without the convenience of handing it off to Garak or getting his help. In The Pale Moonlight without Garak would be a VERY different episode. it'd be interesting to see just how far people would be willing to go, without the convenience of someone like Garak around who's more than willing to do the dirty work

removing Ezri from the last season would be an interesting change in how everybody handles Jadzia's death. with Ezri there, there's this space that's filled, if only in the physical sense of another body filling that gap because, of course, Ezri isn't Jadzia and it isn't the same. it would've been interesting to really feel that absence through the last season- its desperate times and maybe nobody new can be brought in, and the crew just has to deal with this gap in their lives now. always one empty chair, one empty space, the absence of a laugh, a witty remark. I wonder how this would've affected the way everybody grieved, how things would've progressed differently, if Ezri wasn't there to help things along

just a few examples there, I honestly cant settle on a character I would remove, but I think removing any of them makes for a fascinating change in the series and how things progress. the one character I would say you absolutely cant remove is Sisko- you NEED Sisko in DS9, you cant take him out. anybody else you could take out and it could be interesting, but Sisko is a necessity he has to stay

[cloneslugs]

actually while im here i just wanna say catra sucks like. just for real she kinda really sucks & is a bad person like i wouldnt even toe the line of actually calling her evil but she is a shitty friend !!!! and is just like not a good person and thats why she shouldnt have any like “successful” romantic relationships or anything rn bc like w/ scorpia its just one sided bc again she’s shitty and like w/ adora?? that would just be a mess & also adora is. obviously moving on better than her i think  & like? before she can have anything meaningful she needs to reevaluate herself or else its like ? i’d feel bad for the other party :/ as of now i dont like the idea of scorpia edning up w/ her bc like? even tho she’s horde too she’s like a good friend and cares about catra :)  

uhh i was gonna talk about more outside of romance but i forget everything @__@ 

i just think catra is really shitty & like obvs she’s ? like a villain and antagonistic character so thats like. yeah cool but she’s like ofc not irredeemable but regardless she’s my :) :) :) just bc i will continue my streak of liking complicatedly shitty characters bc thats my brand !!!! 

[collisiondiscourse]

i have decided i am now going to blow up your inbox bc i csn i’m sorry codi focnnf

b u t!! anyway i’m going to rambling abt my new dad for all au [whixh was the au i sent you that ask abt]

alrighty so all might is now midoriya’s dad. that’s a thing. i like to think that inko and toshinori were high school sweethearts who broke up after graduation but met again when all might was called to recuse some hostages and inko was one of them!! anywho all might recuses her, they go on a coffee date, realize they’re still in love and start again

they get married and have izuku, who keeps inko’s maiden name [midoriya is now inko’s maiden name bc i do what i want]. he’s the cutest baby who has inko’s green hair, but has one blue and one green eye! [these are /important/] inko and all might talk abt maybe giving izuku all for one when he’s older, but they decide against it bc they don’t know if he’ll have a quirk or not

spoiler!! bitch baby has a quirk!! he gets a quirk that’s so much different than inko’s quirk and !!! ahhh!!! the basic explanation is that all might’s all of one genes mixed and then “corrupt” inko’s like 3 generation quirk-having genes or smth and izu has a very, very complex quirk now. it’s called astron, and astron allows him to fucking astral project into the center of the university and shit chxnc

astron works two different ways: using his blue eye he can project other people into his own personal astral plane and do whatever he wants. while the person’s physical body is still where it was, their mind is in the astral plane. if he uses his green eye, he can project himself to his astral plane and fuck around without consequences!!

[there’s an untold third ability of astron using both of his eyes, but izuku tried doing that when he first got his quirk and immediately fell into a coma for like a month? it was bad and his mind couldn’t handle the stress and dipped lol]

ANYWAY, izuku grows up with a bomb ass quirk and still has his kacchan with him thru his childhood so things are a lot different than canon? the wonder duo are little shitheads together and i love them, they wreck havoc and i love them

i have more ideas for this story but this is all i have for now, codi this is so long i’m sorry i’m blowing up ur inbox 🥺😭

me opening my askbox and seeing the length of this au: holy shit

me reading the actual whole au: HOLY SHIT

AJ I LOVE THIS HIGHKEY!!! I LOVE THE IDEA OF OP DEKU W A FUCKED UP QUIRK JUST TERRIFYING EVERYONE HE COMES ACROSS!!!! heterochromia is SO so good as a character design element and i LOVE THE WAY THIS IS IMPLEMENTED YELLS. I WANNA DRAW THIS SO BAD!!! THIS LOOKS SO COOL

(serious writing/plot below - blood and vomit mention)

oh god and now im imagining deku like. being this extremely feral and annoying lil shit whos extremely powerful and now bakugous got someone on his level so hes a lot more humble as hes growing up but also him and deku are the?? BESTEST OF FRIENDS. and i imagine when bakugou is being a little shit deku just. astral projects him out of his body for a while and apologizes to whoever kacchan yelled at LMFAO---bakugou comes back to his body and is all like “....fucks sake stop doing that”

AND THEN omfgkjfds imagine morally grey deku who does whatever he can to win?? he knew he wouldnt get into UAs hero course fair and square (all might offered him a recommendation but he declined because he wanted to get there on his own with kacchan) because robots didnt have souls he could astral project so he practices his quirks limits like YEARS prior and he tells bakugou about it but never rlly shows him but on the day of the entrance exam?

he shows up. everything goes as normal and he finishes the written exams and then moves on to the practical exam (still seperated from kacchan like in canon) and like. Every one goes dashing forward and deku doesnt really try to beat anyone. He waits until theyre all in the center engaging with robots when he walks to the center of the room.

and he sees the zero pointer in the distance.

“THE ZERO-POINTER’S HERE!” He yells and points at the gigantic mech heading their way. All at once everyone’s heads whip up to catch sight of the robot, enraptured by its sheer size and power. 

As they all look to one direction, Deku makes eye contact with them and smiles.

All at once, every single participant in the area goes limp. Astron throws their souls into the astral plane with little fanfare and everyone watches in awe and annoyance as their bodies uselessly crumple to the ground from the outside. The green-haired boy is suddenly given free reigns of the arena and they seethe as one by one he deactivates or disables robots that were once under their purview.

(What some of the smarter ones notice however, is the way he seems to be leaving some stray 3 pointers untouched... almost as if he was doing the calculations in his head as he goes... on how to ensure the number one spot while others can still score points...?)

One by one however, they start struggling and reaching to reconnect with their bodies. Their gleaming bright souls bob up and down with frenzied energy and Deku feels it. He feels it like itches on his skin and goosebumps that turn into hills that dance up and down his back. He feels it like he feels his limit reaching.

Its still around 10 minutes though before he actually loses control and everyone comes back to their bodies. His quirk times out and almost like its angry, the astral plane takes his body in exchange for the dozens he kept in there. He gets sucked through and passes out while everyone else runs and destroys the remaining bots. It doesn’t matter though, because he knows he’s racked up enough points to stay on top. He lets himself rest and observes the blue-haired tall guy with engines who contemplates carrying Deku’s body to safety.

Until, he sees her.

Just under some rubble and very close to getting crushed by the Zero-Pointer’s foot, Deku spots a brown-haired young girl that he recalls has some kind of floating quirk. He sees as everyone runs past her, prioritizing their own safety instead of hers.

He makes a decision.

Quickly--recklessly, a familiar gruff voice says in his ear--he forces himself back into his body and looks around. He runs to the girl and attempts to dig her out from the rubble before she gets crushed. The robot comes ever closer.

Using the little strength and flexibility he’s learnt from years of sparring with Kacchan, Deku abandons her in favor of climbing up the broken concrete and metal to meet the robot’s visor. He knows he won’t save her by digging her out of there, but by god is he gonna let her get injured without a fight. These robots weren’t designed to kill, but they were designed to destroy.

Focus. Focus and listen to what’s around you, Izu-kun.

The world around him reduces to tunnel-vision and suddenly Deku is face to face with the Zero-Pointer. It stops, as if calculating how to discard of Deku without hurting him severely with its own strength.

Everything has life in it. You only need to focus and look for it.

Izuku Midoriya looks at the robot.

In a whirlwind of blue and green, he reaches inside of himself and searches for life. Cold steel and hard-wired code meet his gaze and he plunges even deeper. 

Focus.

Then all at once, everything in his visions snaps into sudden clarity, like he’s never seen before. He feels everything. Sees Everything. Smells, tastes, hears--and he hears how the metal beneath him bends and groans. He feels how it winces and shudders. He sees it as it opens its maw and its visor bends in a facsimile of eyes, pleading him as if asking how?

The robot beneath him comes to life and stumbles back.

Quickly, he scrambles to the nearest ledge which happens to be a broken support beam. Distantly, he thinks he feels his arm being sliced open on the edge of it and the warmth of blood streaming down his side as he nearly falls. 

“HEY! YOU WITH THE ENGINES!” He hoarsely screams to the still remaining, slack-jawed contestants. “I CAN’T KEEP THE ZERO POINTER DOWN FOR LONG! GO HELP THE GIRL AND TAKE HER TO SAFETY NOW!”

With a sudden burst of energy, the fellow participants start taking others out from the rubble while the blue-haired boy helps the brunette he was protecting earlier. As he watches them clear the rubble to drag her out, he feels a pang.

Who am I? a lost voice calls out. It’s raspy and almost-robotic sounding and only he can hear it. Where am I? What am I?

And Deku’s vision flickers.

In and out, he sees flashes through eyes that aren’t his. He hears voices that are simultaneously faraway and way too close for comfort. The world tugs at the sides of his perspective and a strain is pulling at the back of his head tearing his brain to shreds. He doesn’t know what he’s focusing or straining on, except that its working and keeping the zero-pointer down.

He grits his teeth. “Hurry the hell up! i can’t do this any longer--”

Bursts of pain appear behind his mismatched eyes and he wants to scream so bad and if he were looking any clearer he’d see the way that the zero-pointer thrashes on the ground in time with the pounding on his skull. Bile crawls up the back of his throat and Deku screams.

“SHE’S CLEAR! YOU CAN LET GO NOW, MIDORIYA-SAN.”

Izuku lets go and his vision goes black.

[meikuree]

i was tagged by @lightdescending for this a while ago - thank you!! it also happens to be the last day of 2020, which makes it a good time to reflect on my first year dabbling in fannish writing/arting. (a happy new year’s eve/new year to anyone reading this!)

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 favorite  works (fics, art, edits, etc.) you’ve created this year and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you’ve brought into the world in 2020. If you don’t have five published works, that’s fine! Include ideas/drafts/whatever you like  that you’ve worked on/thought about, and talk a little about them instead! Remember, this is all about self-love and positive enthusiasm,  so fuck the rules if you need to. Have fun, and tag as many fellow  creators as you like so they can share the love! <3

1. blood to gold - Pieck/Hange, Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan: this was the third fic i ever wrote, i believe, and i did it in one cathartic 1.5 hour sitting. it allowed me to work through ideas about trust, realistic compassion, and the nonlinear process of grieving/mourning. i remain proud of aspects of the writing in this one, especially with economy of expression and the use of imagery/metaphor.

2. twenty years of snow (Chapter 2) - Pieck/Yelena, Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan: i have First Fic Syndrome with the first chapter of this fic, and i CANNOT read what i wrote back then without cringing, but i’m prouder of the second chapter - i wrote it unabashedly for self-indulgence, in the style that felt natural to me, and still enjoy rereading it sometimes!

3. the topography of pieck’s grey morality - a meta/analysis i wrote about a character i was fond of. this was the first time i attempted some sustained meta writing, on a topic i hadn’t seen anyone in fandom talk much about yet, and although it’s not very polished it did lead to some interesting conversations between me and other people about the complexities of said character!

4. lost girls: this is one of the art pieces i’m more proud of that i did this year, of two fictional ladies i care a lot about - i loved putting them together, even though they haven’t interacted much in canon, because i think there are some strong thematic similarities between the two (you’ll realise that’s a theme with me: i like exploring connections between women who might not get a lot of screentime together).

5. just some gfs cuddling - this was a self-indulgent one that was fun to draw. it also also got me to practice gestures/anatomy, and i like how the facial expressions came out

6. Behave Yourself (Translation) - I’m going to cheat and add one more to this list, which is an English translation I did of a chinese fic. the exercise taught me a lot about the work involved in translation - you can read my reflections on that here. it happily also helped me brush up on my chinese, which is my mother tongue but also a language for which my proficiency has dipped over the years, for various reasons. I’m very grateful to the original author for giving me permission to translate this :)

i’ll tag: @chocochipbiscuit @leksaa90 @kerumie @frumpkinspocketdimension @onehandwhisky and any other fanartists/writers who want to do this. no pressure if you don’t want to!

[hackedmotionsensors]

Hey I feel like you’ve already answered this but what are some of your favorite iron man or Captain America comics and why? What story lines would you recommend? I’m curious about the more modern stuff. What’s some of your fav comic artists when it comes to marvel?

OKAY SO. 

holy shit this got long so UNDER THE READ MORE WE GO

This is always kind of a hard question to answer because I personally have not read everything in regards to either Iron man or Captain America. I’ve read the Tales of Suspense stories a lot because I keep trying to start over from the very beginning. And that’s not always helpful if you just wanna dip your toes or give Iron Man/Cap a go.

So what I CAN tell you is here’s what I did when I was first getting into comics around 2012.

I went to Borders/Barnes and Noble and a I read a bunch of the compilations they had in the store. Someone has already done the work FOR you so its really easy to just pick up a book and read from there. 

I started out with Invincible Iron Man  (I’m gonna link to Amazon but I suggest not buying from them because Bezos is a demon [comixology is owned by amazon as well but it is a convenient app]) 

Marvel has its own comics app but if you also read and pay for other comics its not ideal. There are places to “read comic books online” and for older stuff I definitely do this now but for newer comics I’ll try to pay for them especially if its indie. Support indie comics!!! 

Anyway. Invincible Iron Man. A polarizing story in terms of Iron Man lore. But its definitely an easy one to get into and read especially if you’re coming in from MCU and are just testing things. You don’t necessarily need to know all of his history but it covers the basics. 

Next I’d try Demon in a Bottle It’s the original alcoholism arc. A must read for general Tony’s lore. This isn’t the one where he ends up a hobo on the street where Cap helps him escape from a burning building. But this is where he goes off the rails the first time. Bethany Cabe is his current girlfriend and tries to help him. And he kind of recovers. I’m not sure this is exactly a FAVORITE but it has a lot of the important shit for Tony. His temper is something that doesn’t get talked a lot about I think but he DEFINITELY has one. The art is very..........lol its not BAD per say but its also not like wow what gorgeous art. 

Another important Tony lore is Armor Wars So you wanna read the first few times Tony and Steve fight about REAL SHIT. This is it. This is the classic story where he realizes his tech is being used by bad guys and HE’S THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN STOP THEM NO CAP NOT EVEN YOU BECAUSE YOU’RE A GOOD GUY AND I MIGHT HAVE TO GET DIRTY. It has the classic Steve sitting in a dark room waiting for Tony to come back with his date and then throwing his shield at Tony going “I don’t want your trash”

It also has a lot of good Tony being in a morally grey area. *chef’s kiss* 

And then basically read all the fun stuff with Kurt Busiek in Vol 3 (This isn’t an amazon link but the marvel database so you know roughly where to start) 

VOLUME THREE HAS SUCH HITS LIKE

The Sentient Armor: Tony accidentally kills Whiplash in a lightning storm. The Armor comes to life. The armor falls in love with Tony and WANTS TO BECOME ONE WITH TONY. Tony does not want this. Tony is beat up and kidnapped and taken by the armor to a deserted island. The Armor is like Tony I love you so much GET IN ME NOW. Tony is about to die from a heart attack. The armor RIPS ITS HEART OUT AND SHOVES IT INTO TONY. Bye Tony I love you now we’re one forever. RIP

Tiberius Stone’s 2 arcs (they’re not in consecutive order but they’re both hella gay): Tony’s old boarding school friend shows up again and is a TV mogul and is DEFINITELY NOT Slandering Tony in the press or blowing up his buildings or framing him for MURDER oh my god Tiberius is a pain in the ass and we definitely boned down as teenagers but he would never frame me for MURDER but his TV devices that seep into your brain like the boob tube thing from Batman Forever are pretty suspicious. Oh no Tiberius IS a bad guy and he got me naked (why?) and hooked the both of us up to the TV machine and now we’re trapped in his horny tv dream why am I dressed like Alice in Wonderland???  ALSO HE SLEPT WITH MY GIRLFRIEND!!!!??

(This is why I will FOREVER get upset that Killian in Iron Man 3 isn’t Tiberius Stone. He IS LITERALLY FOLLOWING THE TIBERIUS STONE PLAYBOOK INCLUDING THE PHYSICAL LOOK WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE FEIGE YOU OWE ME MONEY!!!!)

Also at the beginning of Vol 3. Tony gets the absolute holy hell bejesus shit beat out of him. And that lasts for a WHILE and seeps into the Avengers Vol 3 (which you should also read its fun and I like that George Perez actually tries to make people look ethnically diverse but also you can tell Clint from Cap)

There’s also a part in vol 3 where Monica from FRIENDS shows up at a party and that’s a wild thing that happened.

But basically I think you can start just about anywhere with Iron Man and have a good time if you’re a deep Tony fan. He has a lot of great stories and its why he’s my favorite. Even this last run with Slott I still KIND OF LIKE ANYWAY??? bc its Tony. Its not always written to what a lot of long standing Iron Man fans would say is canon but I mean.....he’s got 57 years worth of comics behind him so he’s bound to change here and there. He was once a super villain, died, brought over as a teenager from an alternate timeline, and then merged with another Tony I forget the details but its silly lol

Side universe reading Iron Man Noir, Ultimates (Hickman’s run is very fun but also Ultimates 1 and 2. DO NOT READ ULTIMATUM IT IS GROSS, I HAVE READ IT FOR YOU ALMOST EVERYONE DIES ITS GROSS.

Ultimates is literally half of the basis for the MCU. Don’t read Ultimates Iron Man tho. Not only is it written by a creep its also extremely stupid and doesn’t even really make sense in terms of what happens later in Ultimates. It basically gets RetConned immediately.

Also Ultimates universe has Gregory Stark. Tony’s fun evil twin brother who for some reason is blonde. I can’t really give you a specific story to read with Ultimates because its the most god awful confusing universe to try and find stories from so I literally don’t even remember. I’d check an Ultimates fan blog for that.

AS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA.

I love Steve Rogers. I really do. I think he’s a fun character. B U T. His comics for me can be very boring. He has some great arcs as someone who is supposed to be a representation of what a GOOD AMERICA can aspire to or whatever. But America often times SUCKS A LOT (our current times being very obvious). Cap definitely fights for what he believes and so that’s why he often takes off the garb of Captain America and runs around in a slutty v neck and a cape as Nomad. Or when he comes back from the dead and his BFF is the new Cap (WITHA  KNIFE) and wears the sexy Secret Avengers uniform. Very sexy. We stan the Colonel Rogers uniform very much. But his early comics are a lot of “OH MY GOD I KILLED BUCKY ITS ALL MY FAULT BUCKY!!!!! RICK JONES PUT ON BUCKYS CLOTHES THIS ISNT CREEPY I PROMISE”

A GREAT run in Avengers is the Cap’s Kooky Quartet or as I call Cap Joins the Baby Sitters Club. This goes WAYYYYYY back to Avengers 17 

It runs for a very good while before Giant-man and Wasp come back because Giant Man can’t shrink back down lmfao idiot. But its a lot of fun and establishes Cap as being a really good leader even tho he’s thrown into the hot seat because he was out on a mission and everyone else was like “We’re taking a vacay bye Cap. Good luck with the kids” *John Mulaney doing Andy Cohen impression* HUH WHAT WHY

I have no idea what to Rec really lol I know @sineala is part of a SteveTony 616 discord and they do readings every month(?) of either very SteveTony based arcs or specifically Steve or Tony arcs. But I think they have a better grasp of Steve stories than I do.

I would say most recently the run with Mark Waid and Chris Samnee as the artist is a VERY good read. The story is pretty nice and dry lol but the art. Holy shit.

I know there are a bunch of artists that really REALLY get Cap but Chris Samnee is probably my number one favorite Cap artist. Even his sort of retro style works with Cap SO WELL. And I like Mark Waid’s writing. Or at least I don’t think I’ve ever been really mad at it like with Dan Slott or Gillen (We will never forgive for what he did to Tony’s backstory and taking Maria from him) lol

Uh...but as far as I could tell the entire run where Bernie is his girlfriend is VERY good. She first shows up in Captain America 247 . Cap is an illustrator on the side (or as his main job) and man what a dope. His art habits are worse than mine like get a desk Steve. But this arc through Bernie goes through a lot of Steve being kind of stuck in the past and not knowing how to embrace the modern or future and Bernie is there being the coolest fucking chick in the world who’s studying to be a lawyer, watches Wrestling, listens to Bruce Springsteen (I think lol I forget), dunks on Cap for being a weirdo old dude. Very put together woman of the 80s. She proposes to Cap and because I think the writers changed he’s like I HAVE TO LEAVE IMMEDIATELY BYE. 

This isn’t on any of the main timelines but its a good read Captain America Man Out Of Time. Basically Cap coming to grips with the future and realizing the past sucked ew. lol Also he listens to Radiohead which Tony gives him a personal concert for because of course he does.

And then of course there’s this fucking TOME of a story Captain America: The Winter Soldier .

Im gonna sound a little negative but I don’t mean it against anyone’s favorite but I have the most exhausting time trying to read this story. I’ve tried at least three times lol. I think maybe Brubaker’s weird obsession with the Cold War (Remember when he called people who were yelling at Slott for being a creep a ‘Bunch of Commies’) is just so fucking heavy handed that I can’t personally get through it. I would much rather watch the movie.

HOWEVER. There’s good old Bucky coming back from the dead. Natasha. Sam Wilson. Sharon Carter. All big players in this story. So uh lol good luck with this one. If you’re also a Bucky fan this is a must read but as I only peripherally like Bucky I don’t care to read this one. 

So I’d check out this arc.

Also a personal fave of mine is 

It starts here on Captain America 402 . Its the best story IN THE WORLD. ITS SO ICONIC. NOTHING CAN COMPETE. I LOVE CAPWOLF SO MUCH lol

[zankivich]

Can’t Help Falling in Love with You: Werewolf!Shawn x Black Reader: In My Blood Universe

a/n: hiya. This is a companion piece to In My Blood which you can read HERE if you haven’t yet.  I really loved those characters and Shawn was MADE to write werewolf AUs for, and MADE for to write fall AUs for. I wrote this one day when I was really sad that I couldn’t go the apple orchard this year. She (the story) makes me feel warm and soft. I hope you like. K bye. 

*Shawn’s point of view*

Fall is her favorite season. Which means that fall quickly becomes his favorite season. And not out of blind allegiance to his mate either, but because she became actually the cutest human being in the world more than usual in the fall. It was the cozy sweaters, the leggings that were so soft and melded to the curve of her thighs with ease, the scarves that she made with her own two hands. How was he not meant to fall even deeper in love with her in the fall? It was ridiculous.

He’s sitting on the living room couch with Brian and Zeubin discussing parameter checks for the week when she plops down on one of the chairs and lets loose a dramatic sigh for the whole room to hear. He pauses and stares at her, a grin forming on his lips, but ultimately keeps speaking. When y/n doesn’t get the attention of her mate immediately she decides to plop more aggressively against her chair and sigh louder. You know, like an adult?

“Darling, is something bothering you?” He asked, pausing his conversation.

She peered over at him with what he liked to call her bambi eyes. They were as effective as they were ridiculous.

“Me? Oh nothing.” She hummed.

“You sure?”

“Oh I’m sure!”

The problem with the fact that she was lying was that once he thought about the fact that she clearly wanted something, he couldn’t really think of anything else. It was the problem with being mated to someone. He was designed to serve her. It was his moral compass of sorts. Making sure that she was happy and taken care of and satisfied. So, despite the fact that he had actual shit to do, it would all have to wait. The love of his life needed something after all.

“We’ll finish this later.” He muttered already getting up to head over to her.

“Annnnnd conversation over.” Brian chuckled.

She was in his Harvard sweatshirt and a pair of shorts so when his fingers tugged at her legs to make room for him to squish into the small space, he can marvel a little at the feel of her thighs. It helps that she immediately falls into him, throwing her legs over his lap, and her arms around his neck.

“Baby,” He cooed softly into her ear. “why don’t you just tell me what’s wrong? Maybe I can fix it.”

“Apples.” She mumbled.

“I’m sorry?”

“I want apples.”

Needless to say he was a little confused.

“Oh...well I think we might have one in the kitchen, love? Is that all you were upset about?”

She rolled her eyes and cupped his cheeks in her hands. She was really beautiful. And a little scary. HIs favorite combination of hers.

“I don’t want those sad ass apples, Shawn. I want them straight from the tree. I wanna go to an apple orchard! But your sad ass town doesn’t have one of them. I already looked.” She whined.

“Awww. Babe, I’m sorry. You’d know I move us closer to one if I could.”

He rubbed gently at her back beneath her--his--sweatshirt as he worked to console his mate.

Her eyes widened. “Wait can we do that?”

“Do what?”

“Move!”

He chuckled softly. “Not quite, sweetheart. It’s kinda hard to protect the town, if I don’t live in it.”

She sighed and nestled her head against his shoulder, her fingers hidden in the sleeves of his sweater. The frustration and sadness on her was difficult for him to swallow. He hated seeing her so down, and he hated more than anything that he couldn’t do anything about it. It might be as simple as an apple, but his heart didn’t know that. All his heart knew was that she was sad, and that everything in him wanted that not to be the case. And so he would fix it. Because her heart desired it.

***

*Y/n’s point of view*

You loved the house in the fall. Shawn’s land was all hidden, a forest of greenery and trees, so when they all began to turn it was the most beautiful array of colors that one had ever seen. On the weekends, you loved nothing more than curling up in the living room with all the windows and knitting while Shawn played guitar. Your home, though only a few miles away from the pack house felt sacred, felt like your own space, and Shawn did everything to keep it that way. All pack and general wolfy business was there. When he came home, he was yours and no one else's. The way you liked it.

He’d gotten out of bed that morning far too early for you. One moment he was wrapped around you, arms warm and solid and firm. The next moment the bastard was letting you go. Rude.

“No.” You whined rolling over to snuggled deeper into his chest. “Mine.”

He chuckled softly. “Your’s, aye? I’m no longer a person?”

“You can be a person all you want.” You mumbled, eyes still closed. “Just as long as you stay in bed while you do it.”

You felt his lips begin to press along your hairline where your skin and bonnet met. He dipped down to your neck and nibbled slightly at the skin. Just enough to piss you off.

“I need to go to the main house to check on things, love. I’ll be back. You know that.” He whispered.

You opened your eyes finally to see him looking at you. Gentle and smirking and sexy as all hell. It was ridiculous.

“I want you here.” You argued. “In bed. With me. Holding me. Don’t I deserve that?”

He nodded. “You do. You deserve the world. Which is why as soon as I’m done checking to make sure everything is okay, I’m going to come back here and make you breakfast.”

You rolled your eyes. “Shawn your breakfast sandwiches are not going to stop me from being annoyed this time.”

“No?” He asked softly. “Not even if I took you on an adventure afterwards?”

You raised an eyebrow.

“An adventure?”

“An adventure. But...you know, if you’ll still be angry with me, I could always call and cancel. Let me just--”

He went to grab his phone off the nightstand and you immediately tackled him back down into the bed. Shawn’s alpha-ness had nothing on the power of you being his mate. He fell to you immediately. And then of course quickly rolled you over to show who was still in power. At least in his mind.

“Okay, okay! Go be an alpha or whatever. And then come back. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned. “I love it when you get all dominant on me. Now get that ass over here and kiss me good morning.”

Mmmm. Love.

So, while Shawn was off doing his job, you took the liberty to slide into one of his sweaters and went about making breakfast yourself. Just because home boy worked at a coffee shop didn’t mean you couldn’t throw down too. By the time Shawn came back you were pulling bacon out of the oven and toasting your english muffins for some eggs benedict. When his arms wrapped around you, it felt like home. Like you never wanted to be anywhere else. And that was how you knew he was everything.

“Did you miss me?” He hummed moving your curls out of the way to best kiss your cheek.

You shrugged. “Little bit.”

“Little bit, aye? I missed you a lot-a-bit.”

“Yea?”

“Mhm.”

“Well then I guess I missed you too maybe.” You smiled.

“Yea, alright. Come here already.”

He kissed you silly against the kitchen counter until your english muffins burned and you had to remake them. It was worth it.

If fall was your favorite season then your favorite part of fall was the shift in Shawns’ wardrobe. Nothing made you more soft and happy than that man in a big ole sweater and tight skinny jeans. He was the epitome of warmth and softness and it just gave you everything that you needed. Despite him running 102 degrees on a cold day, he continued to implement the sweaters into his wardrobe for your own benefit, and that ladies and gentlemen is why you loved him so much.

“What are you smiling at so hard over there?” He chuckled, sliding his watch onto his wrist.

There was nothing you could do or say but to run up to him and hide your face in his sweater. When his arms wrapped around you, it was all comfort. You wondered endlessly where this man had been your entire life. It was so rude to only discover him now.

“I love you so much.” He whispered, pressing a kiss to your head.

You smiled up at him, head tucked beneath his chin.

“Me too. So much.”

A ride in Shawn’s jeep was always a good way to spend the day. The rain today was more of a mist than a downpour which meant it surrounded the car on all sides cozily as he sped through the streets. You quickly passed through all of the houses and stores in town before heading out of the limits and towards the city. You peered out the window in interest, with zero idea where your mate might be taking you. Things got more confusing when instead of heading for the exit that would take you to the city, Shawn kept going farther and farther away from anything that might look like an adventure. Needless to say you were a bit confused.

“Babe, where are you taking me?” You asked peering around as the trees turned to fields of corn and grass.

“It’s a surprise, honey. Be patient.”

Patience. Not in a Black woman’s DNA.

Another thirty minutes go by. And then another fifteen. At this point your knee is bouncing in anticipation. The rain had stopped, leaving behind soft, muted grey clouds. You were just about to ask your boyfriend again where exactly the hell you were going, when finally a glimpse of life appeared. A sign. But not just any sign. A sign with a big ass apple on it.

You reach out involuntarily and grabbed his arm with all your might and shook.

“No you fucking didn’t!”

He laughed. “Surprise, sweetheart.”

“H--How! How did you find it?”

“Just took a little digging. You’re right that there’s not one in town, and there’s not on in the city. But two cities over we have: Peggy’s Orchard. You happy?”

“Yes! Yes! This is the best thing anyone has ever done for me! Let’s go!”

Without the rain around you’re free to pick your apples in peace. You take time to pull them from the trees and eat and share with Shawn. He holds your hand and picks the apples from the top of the tree when you need him to, which is often because the best apples are always at the top of the tree. Children run around with their parents, playing games between the trees. It smells like fall and feels like fall. It’s everything you wanted and more. Cause he’s there. Which makes it infinite.

“I love seeing you happy.” He admitted quietly as you tucked another full bag of apples into the back of his jeep.

“Huh?”

You turned around only to find him standing right in front of you. He moved closer still, using his hips to press yours intimately against the back of the jeep. His hands joined your hips and you practically melted into him.

“You’re just so beautiful to me when you’re happy. I mean you’re beautiful to me always but...I just wanna make you happy for the rest of forever okay?”

You smiled and tucked your face into the warmth of his neck.

“I love you so much.” You mumbled taking a second to still yourself against him. “Ew. We’re so incredibly sappy.”

He reached to skim his fingers along the back of your neck. They were so warm that you shivered.

“It’s okay to be sappy every now and again, I think. As long as I’m with you.”

After apple picking, he takes you to this amazing little village that’s set up with different activities for kids and adults alike. There are caramel apples galore and apple cider and caramel popcorn. It’s everything you loved about fall and the person you loved most. He wrapped his arm around you as you walked and took pictures in the hay with you. It was clear that this day mattered a lot you, and knowing that Shawn cared enough to put the effort in meant a lot.

“Can we get the biggest pumpkin we can find?” You asked as you came across the pumpkin patch. “I’ve never been with someone with werewolf strength who could carry it to the car.”

Shawn laughed wide and bright and perfect. Ugh.

“‘Course we can, sweetheart. Whatever you want.”

It’s a cumbersome process. The perfect pumpkin doesn’t just reveal itself easily. You have to search for it. You have to rub your fingers across the curves of the pumpkin. You have to become one with the pumpkin. The wild part is that he’s right there beside you the entire time. He knocks against the side of the pumpkins listening for the hollowness that you described to him. He rolled them over in search of that weird green stuff that sometimes appeared. He was in it with you, and he didn’t rush you or get annoyed or angry. You were having fun and so was he. And it felt like one of the most special days you’d ever had. Just you and him.

When you find the pumpkin, it’s so beautiful you could cry. It’s so big you couldn’t lift it if you used every muscle in your body. It was tall and round with a nice long stem on the end. Shawn picked it up with ease and brought it back to the car with promises of carving it together. He was again maybe the most perfect thing in the world.

“What do you say we go get some cider and sit by the bonfire before we head home?” He murmured when the pumpkin was put away. “I don't want this day to end yet.”

You smiled so hard you could feel the stretch in your cheeks.

“Yes. Absolutely.”

The bonfire at the center of the village seemed to be the beacon for couples and families. As night overtook the tiny town seemingly in the middle of nowhere, a chill set it. Shawn had wrapped a blanket from his truck around your shoulders and doubled up with his own arm. You got to lean your head against his shoulder and drink apple cider while staring at the fiery embers. It felt like home. You never knew that you could crave someone’s physical proximity so much. That you could just enjoy the essence of another being in the way that Shawn’s seemed to bring endless comfort to you. Part of it was that you were mates, sure, but you had a feeling that without it you still would have been drawn to him. He was like the sun. Just endlessly warm and kind and giving. You seemed to take up his entire line of vision, as if you were all that mattered even if you were far from it. You wondered if he knew that he was all that you saw too.

“Hey.” You murmured head nuzzling deeper into his neck.

You pressed a kiss there and love the way you could feel his body react.

“I love you.”

His arm tightened around you tugging you closer until there wasn’t an ounce of space between you. He pressed a kiss to your forehead and placed his hand on your knee.

“I love you too, pup.”

You squirmed slightly in his hold. “I hate when you call me pup.”

“How come? I like it so much. You are my little pup.” He chuckled before sobering up. “You’re my mate, you know? My everything.”

You tilted your head up and he was already there staring at you with his eyes all big and warm and brown. It’s too much and he knows it, but you’ve always been helpless to stop him.

“Fine. Pup it is then.”

You turned to look back into the fire, the smoke and the heat swaddling you like a perfect cocoon. Shawn’s arms never left you.

“Hey. I--I have something for you.”

You pulled the blanket a little tighter around your shoulders and looked on as he stuffed his hand in his pocket.

“Shawn, I really think you’ve given me more than enough today. Seriously, today’s been perfect.” You assured him.

His oversized hand settled onto your knee, fingers curled loosely in a fist as he smiled.

“I know. Today has been perfect. But, that doesn’t mean I couldn’t make it a little better, right?”

“And just how could you possibly make this day any better?”

He unfurled his hand and stared down at your knee.

“What are you--”

You may have gasped and jumped back from him a bit. It probably wasn’t exactly the response he was looking for, but how else is one meant to respond to such a thing?

“It’s my mom’s.” He breathed softly holding the ring closer to you so that the light of the fire would make the diamonds light up. “My dad gave it to her. She uh she wanted me to have it once she found out we were mates. She wanted you to have it. I wanted you to have it.”

You bit your lip and sniffled as your eyes began to dampen.

“Is it...What’s it for?”

He smiled up you, his own eyes wet as well.

“Well it’s for you. If you want. And I--I would be for you, forever, if you want.” He mumbled before chuckling nervously. “We’d be married, basically. I’m asking you to marry me. I’m just doing a shitty job of it.”

“Yes.”

His eyes widened and he turned to you.

“Yea?”

“Yea! Are you kidding me? YES!”

You leapt into his arms and he caught you just as you were pressing your lips to his. You could taste the salt of tears and you couldn’t tell if they were yours or his, you just knew that it was the happiest you’d ever felt in your whole life. The people around you, having caught on to the tiny proposal, clapped and cheered, but even that was hard to recognize when the greatest person you’d ever known asked you to be his forever and ever. In the realm of mates, it meant so little, but in the realm of human beings it meant a lot. It was another example of Shawn meeting you where you were at, of making life as easy as humanly possible for you. It was more than you could ever ask for.

“I love you.” He mumbled still pressing his lips over and over again to your cheeks. “Can I take you home now?”

“Yes. Let’s go home.” You smiled.

And just like that you walked hand in hand towards the car, bonfire long forgotten. He only let go of your hand for the time that it took him to walk to his side of the car and get in. But then your fingers quickly intertwined again, the smooth metal of the ring touching his skin. You held hands the whole way home, the night caressing you on all sides except for the brightness of the moon. You had never felt more at home, more safe, more loved.

The end. 

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[intersex-ionality]

I’m sorry for asking but I cannot seem to find any answers. I see a lot of stray anti posts complaining about hazbin hotel, and I can’t for the life of me understand them because I haven’t seen the show. I read a summary of the plot, but perhaps you could explain better. What is it and why do so many hate it (and why have I seen no fewer than 4 unique posts claiming it’s “what happens when you let billdip shippers make things”?)

Now, I was never a billdip shipper, but I suppose I can see the, like, similarity in vibes between Alastor (a demonic radio host with untold evil powers and who speaks in a 1930s radio jockey voice), and Bill.

And since antishippers hate Bill and they also hate Vivienne Medrano, the attempt to compare “billdip” to an entire original cartoon property is, I guess, a logical connection for them.

But let me be clear: there’s absolutely fuck or all that can be said to parallel the popular interpretation of billdip, in no small part because there no Dipper character, and in much larger part because of Alastor extremely rejects all romantic, sexual and even platonic advances.

Antishippers hate Hazbin Hotel because they hate the woman who came up with and spearheaded the project. They loathe Vivienne Medrano for being a successful independent artist capitalizing on the desperate need in the general viewing public for the bright colors, musical numbers, and zany antics that only animation can provide, but without the stifling restrictions of being targetted towards children. Most “adult” animation is focused on being drab or viscerally disgusting as a form of schadenfreude humour. And while children’s animation certainly fills that bright and zany niche, because it is obligated to adhere to the morality of various broadcasters, it’s often very suffocated in what it can or cannot do or say.

The aesthetic that HH/HB has created is clearly a callback to two major styles of animation: the adult-aimed slapstick of early Warner Brothers, and the long-and-lanky exaggerated flailing limbs that were popular as a design choice in low budgets (TV, off-brand film) and fandom animation in the late 2000s.

Since this style of animation is also associated heavily with fandom’s last big burst of creative and sexual freedom before the whole “no boundaries, no barriers, the search algorithms can and will put porn on every child’s dashboard” disasters of 2013-2015, some people are naturally off-put by it, because it reminds them of the time a bunch of corporate overlords decided that they should destroy their own platforms. For whatever reason (it’s the capitalism, probably), people blame individual artists for this trash fire rather than the platform holders that purposefully destroyed organization and boundaries between groups in a desperate bid for ad revenue.

Antishippers have a deep-seated reflex reaction towards hating that art style. You can see it in the hatred of HH/HB, but also in the hatred of things like, “cringey once-ler fans” and of “people who draw all the homestuck like twinks,” and "people who draw Pearl like a man” and all kinds of other places.

Additionally, Vivienne Medrano was at the centre of a few other antishipper fiascos, because her previous projects involved what they call a “pedophilic student-teacher relationship between a child and an adult.” Of course, in truth, the relationship in question is between an 18 year old student and her 19 year old student-tutor, but when have anti-shippers let facts get in their way.

Likewise, she made a living for a while taking commissions for (SFW) furry art work, and has always had a very positive relationship with the furry community (despite not being a furry herself). People upset by her success as an artist are also quick to say that she has sex with animals, “like all furries do,” because as we all know, calling queer artists sexual cirminals is Good Praxis that has Never Caused Harm /sarcasm.

In effect, Vivienne Medrano is a perfect storm of things anti-shippers hate: successful queer creators who refuse to assimilate to heteronormativity; successful creators of color who refuse to assimilate to white respectability; unrepentantly proud of her art; unafraid to engage with sexual themes in a fun rather than puritanical and hateful way; popular in the late 2000s/early 2010s; an ascended fan who was able to turn her fandom credentials into a successful professional project.

Their hatred for all of these facts about her are presented in a way that lets them feel good about lashing out at someone they dislike/are envious of. Namely, by saying that her work is an act of sexual, racial, or gendered violence, rather than, you know, fictional and fun.

HH/HB is not somehow a perfect piece of art. I have made my own discomfort with facets of it very clear. And there are flaws other than my wariness of rehabilitation themes.

Some of the sound design is overwhelming, with a few scenes bordering Johnny Test levels of excessive sound effects; in some cases the editing has clipped too much quiet-space between the presentation of a joke and its punchline; those traits combined with the lack of closed captioning can make the show very hard to process for someone like me who has difficulty with speech.

The immense budgetary constraints of the animation can sometimes be seen in framerate dips or in peculiar background details. Zoomed out shots of the cast as an ensemble are particularly identifiable as places where what would have been filler art in a higher budget production were ultimately left in because there wasn’t time or money to replace them.

The show is extremely upfront about sexuality and especially queer and professional sexuality, which can easily be off-putting to people. Conservative Fox News hosts’ extreme homophobia and violence are put on full display--for the purpose of mocking them for being enormous sacks of shit, but on display nonetheless--which can likewise be uncomfortable.

At one point you see the clearly exposed brain of a cartoon egg, which I won’t lie, makes me gag every time it happens, no matter how stylized and brief the shot. (Why! Does the egg! Have a brain inside it!!!)

But, unironically, HH/HB is the best series of adult animation I have seen in probably a decade or more. Maybe in my entire life. Prior to this, the only option for adult animation that isn’t rooted in sadism or grey-beige palettes was anime, and the design direction and acting of anime are ultimately very different than that of western slapstick.

Obviously, not every anti-shipper is so outraged because they envy the success of an artist other than themselves. But a great many are fuelled by envy, either that they aren’t the success story, or that someone they perceive as The Enemy is a success story.

This is far from the first time that anti-shippers have proudly taken the same side as anti-queer bigots and as open and avowed racists, who also hate the show (for being gay, for featuring an interracial relationship, etc). It won’t be the last. But, for all that their actions are often indistinguishable from the queerphobes and the white supremacists, their motivations are at least meaningfully distinct.

[dcathwithoutglory-blog]

it’s jay. again. my browser just crashed. so i’m just gonna copy and paste my old intro. there’s no time to try and make it better. rip !

⌊ priyanka chopra, cis woman, antigone ⌉ ⏀ have you spoken to ALEXANDRA “ALEXA” MEHRA recently? the THIRTY-FOUR year old who’s been in seneca for SEVEN YEARS or so? either way, they always seem to remind me of FLOWERS PLACED ON A GRAVE, A RUSTY COMPASS, STORMS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT whenever i see them on main street. on a good day they’re pretty MORALISTIC, but they can also be RESISTANT. ⌊ jay, 19. est, she/her ⌉

the story of antigone that y’all probs already know but jic.

triggers: brief implication of incest but like wbk, brief mention of suicide, death, creon bein a bitch

brief overview of antigone (character + eponymous story):

antigone was born to oedipus and jocasta.

we all know what happened there. after that, oedipus was like “see no evil feel no evil” and jocasta yeet’d out of living.

her brothers went to war against each other. when creon ascended to the throne, he allowed burial for eteocles with honors, but was like “lmao if u bury polyneices i will kill u”

but antigone was like ‘lmao SURE JAN’ and tried to convince ismene, her sister, to help her bury polyneices. ismene was like ‘ok that’s a rly bad idea like good luck but count me out tbh.’

antigone is rly bad at digging graves tho so polyneices’s body was found and creon was like ‘oh my GOD’ and she’s like ‘fuck the government viva la morality!’

then creon was like ‘ok anyway rmr when i said u wld die if u buried polyneices so ig now u have to be buried alive in a tomb’ then antigone was like ‘actually i’ll be hanging myself before u can do fuck the government’

then he was like ‘at least u’ll be dead! oh wait -

Y’ALL GO SAVE EVERYONE’ but then it was too late

antigone and his son had both killed themselves and everyone, including himself, were just like

“get WREKT creon!!!!!”

alexa ( play despacito ).

triggers: suicide (x2), death (x3), mental illness implications, war, brief mentions of torture and murder

ok now onto alexandra ! so, like i did for valda, i looked up names that shared the same meaning as ‘antigone’ (which essentially means “against”) and one of the suggestions was alexa but i also wanted it to sound. super valiant. but at the same time. i wanted it to be something that could have a conversational nickname. so im already hc’ing that she has ‘despacito’ saved on her phone. also alexandra is my middle name so like?? stan list?? OK ANYWAY.

alright, so alexandra was born to a very upper-class family. her father was a politician and her mother was a successful lawyer. they provided well for the perfect nuclear family –– two sons, two daughters, a golden retriever, two cats in the yard life used to be so hard now everything is easy cause of-

like... her early life, say birth to age 14, was... nice. actually normal and nice. have i ever done that before? has my own edgelord ass ever done that before? i don’t think so.

which is why things obviously took a turn for the worse

but yeah. when she was 14, she was like “hey mom idk how to do pre-algebra” (a mood) but there was no response from her mom. so shrug city, you know? she just went to her older sister instead. but like... so much time passed.... and nothing....

finally, this nosy bitch decided to be like “ok i’m gonna go see what tf she’s doing” and that was just... a terrible idea. instead of finding her mom doing her nails or talking on the phone or any number of reasons she may not have come out yet, she found her mother hanging from the ceiling fan.

she tried to get her brothers’ and sister’s help, and they tried so desperately to help (you know, while also calling 911 and their father), but it was to absolutely no avail.

after this hella traumatizing experience, the children grew closer as the father grew farther.

he began getting lost in his own mind, sometimes accidentally mixing the past with the present, a la willy loman style. he would hold slight conversations with their ‘mother’ while at the table, then began holding them with various others from the past. it was pretty clear that his mind had just been looking for an excuse to snap, and the death of his wife had been the perfect scapegoat.

although it had originally just affected him in his home life, he began holding said conversations in the presence of people outside his family.

this is not good for a politician.

i mean it’s not good for anyone but...

his support immediately began dropping. his team gradually left him, finding there was no way he would ever be able to gain another victory if he kept on living in a limbo between the past and the present. given that he’d started ‘talking to his brother’ during one of his speeches... 

rest in peace to his career.

alexa (play despacito) was 18 at the time, her sister - 20, one of her brothers - 21, the other - 24.

they were all legal adults! some of them had even moved out! so their father figured his next move would not affect him in the way their mother’s death had!

so he shot himself.

the only people who showed up at his funeral were alexa and her sister. her eldest brother proclaimed that flying across the country would be too much of a hassle for that, and the other brother simply did not respond.

her eldest brother did, however, enlist in the army after setting legalities in place that would allow him to send money back to his siblings. he had joined simply because it was an easy opportunity (what with all of the propaganda), but his decision prompted the other brother to do the same –– this time because he was talented at ‘the art of fighting.’

and bc more money but like... get wrekt.

alexa’s sister dropped out of college to work a full-time job –– one that paid fairly handsomely. alexa took some odd jobs.

aka, everyone was trying to make money.

creon was right when he said “money! nothing worse”

so things kind of dipped when the eldest brother was killed. after an accusation that he’d become a traitor, their other brother had taken it upon himself to ‘anonymously’ torture and shoot him. but the other side did it!

which everyone knew was a lie.

because of the accusations, he was not only not allowed a military funeral, he was also not meant to be buried in any honorable fashion. instead, his body was returned to his hometown to be buried there following a quiet and uneventful funeral.

his grave was left unmarked.

nonetheless, the grave was visited every day, new flowers laid atop.

meanwhile, their other brother was considered a newfound military icon. he’d gotten rid of a ‘traitor’ (they continued to pretend it was someone from the other side, of course), he’d killed many an enemy, he’d done this and that and this and that and it all made him look so morally grey to alexa and her sister (who, granted, had yet to find out he’d killed their other brother), but like such a white knight to his fellow soldiers.

he truly rose in the ranks. it was what he was meant to do.

but the more he killed, the more he tortured, the lack of grief towards his brother’s death...

alexa’s sister wasn’t buying her hypothesis. it wasn’t necessarily because she saw their other brother was some pure being, but because she simply didn’t believe he was capable of that.

the next time alexa saw her brother, she got confirmation enough. what to do with the information, she wasn’t sure, but she knew she had to do something...

murder wasn’t the solution... she didn’t have any military connections that would allow for her to spout some lie about why he needed to be dishonorably discharged... but what he did couldn’t skate by...

to this day, she is still wondering what she can do to fuck him over. his success in the military keeps growing grander and grander, thus rendering any fake dishonorable discharge excuses completely moot. her sister still doesn’t believe that there really is a solution –– that, while it is greatly harmful, there’s absolutely nothing they can do and ruminating on it is worthless –– trying to find some quest to defeat their own brother is absurd.

although she has since moved to seneca, attracted to its small town appeal, she continues to visit her eldest brother’s grave every week –– it’s about a two hour drive, so it’s worth it.

she’s taken up work as a cemetery caretaker

because of COURSE she would.

and, although its pay is.... lousy, she’s been making due. for the tombstones no one visits any longer, first she’ll look them up to make sure they weren’t slave-owners or anything, she’ll bring them their own flowers. the dead deserve just as much respect as the living, hm?

personality.

i just realized i didn’t do this for valda (aka, i’m about to update her intro with it), but a total enneagram type 2.

too empathetic for her own good, too ‘this person whom i do not even know deserves flowers’ for her own good, too ‘i’ve got to protect _______ by doing _________’ for her own good

a capricorn

so driven by her own moral compass, she does not CARE about anything that says she has to go against it

her moral compass can be super faulty sometimes tho

pretty quick to make assumptions tbh, but has so far been right abt most of them.

so also driven by gut feelings ig

dramatic tbh. i mean she’s the adapted version of a character whose first lines contained “there's nothing, no pain—our lives are pain” SO.

also p independent (as in i said valda was independent), but her vendetta isn’t against men in general, rather just her brother who is still alive

so like,,, that said,,, holds grudges.

im bad at personality sections!! as has been stated before!! but i think the gist has been gotten across!!

wanted connections.

so rn i only have one specific one which is her sister and can be found on the wc page

will come up w/ unique ones later but until then open 2 hearing urs/brainstorming!

tl;dr.

(refer to triggers listed before the bullets.) a lot of death? like mom kills herself then dad turns into willy loman then dad kills himself. brothers both join the army. one brother kills the other brother for being accused of being a ‘traitor.’ said brother doesn’t get a proper funeral and his headstone is unmarked. the other brother rises in the rankings and alexa knows what happened. convinced her sister of it, but her sister is more logical and let her know that she was very angry too, but making her entire life about it would do nothing but endanger herself and others. moved to seneca because she liked the small town feel. still visits her eldest brother’s grave every week to leave flowers. works as a cemetery caretaker bc WHY NOT. brings flowers to graves that are either unmarked or no longer visited. i hope you read all of that and just thought ‘oh my god fckin EDGELORD’ because you’re right.

alright ! fin.

like this or hmu if you’d like to plot !

[norton-addiction]

THE RISE OF MR JAMES NORTON

Britain’s brightest TV star on breaking into Hollywood and whether he could be the next James Bond

Mr. James Norton is not a man to be underestimated. The first time I noticed the London-born, Yorkshire-raised actor, he was playing an earnest young lover in Death Comes To Pemberley, a cosy whodunnit set in the world of Ms Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice. I had him down as a production-line fop, the kind that elite English schools crank out as reliably as the Disney Club cranks out Mouseketeers. He seemed… nice. Agreeable. The sort of teacake your granny would like.

I certainly couldn’t see him pulling off someone such as Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley, the most haunting TV psychopath of recent years. Or earning admiring reviews from the Russians for playing their national literary hero, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, in the all-star BBC adaptation of War & Peace. But in projects as varied as the clerical mystery Grantchester and dystopian drama Black Mirror, Mr Norton has demonstrated that enviable quality – range – and has configured his career to use it to the fullest.

“That’s the joy,” he says. “Most actors would agree that the reason why you go into the job is that there’s a hunger for experience, a general inquisitiveness. When you have a group of actors at a restaurant, everyone will try everything. It’s not just a sensory thing. It’s about wanting to suck up everything that life can offer.”

Life is offering Mr Norton, 32, a lot right now, and it couldn’t happen to a more grateful individual. His conversation is peppered with “I’m so lucky”, “It’s a privilege”, “One of the joys”, etc. His first Hollywood studio production, Flatliners, is about to hit cinemas. It’s a remake of Mr Joel Schumacher’s cult 1990 psycho horror, which starred Mr Keifer Sutherland and Ms Julia Roberts, about a group of medical students experimenting with near-death experiences. In the remake, Mr Norton stars opposite Ms Ellen Page and Mr Diego Luna. And he’s taking the lead as the son of a Russian mobster in McMafia, a BBC/AMC international co-production that stands out in the autumn TV schedules. “One of those situations where everything is in place, and all you need to do as an actor is not fuck it up,” he says.

One of the co-writers is Mr David Farr, who adapted Mr John Le Carré’s The Night Manager for BBC, which was widely seen as Mr Tom Hiddleston’s audition for the role of James Bond. So it will do Mr Norton’s chances of leapfrogging his fellow Cambridge graduate on the shortlist no harm at all. They’re both 8/1 with William Hill. “It’s nice to be in that conversation,” he says. “But I’m certainly not saying no to stuff because I’m holding out for that.”

For now, Mr Norton has asked me to meet him at the National Theatre in London. I assume he’s in rehearsals for some top-secret project (though he does confess an ambition to play Hamlet here one day), but no, he just wants to spare me an off-Tube trip to Peckham in south London, where he lives. He turns up in “vegan trainers”, made by Veja, black Levi’s and an old grey cashmere jumper, with what looks like a duelling wound on his neck but turns out to be a scar from an operation on an old rugby injury. He is profusely apologetic for being approximately five minutes late. And prays leave for another 60 seconds of my patience so he can purchase a croissant.

He’s a Type 1 diabetic and a “little munch” will ensure he doesn’t die during the course of our interview. Mr James Geoffrey Ian Norton grew up in a timeless bit of North Yorkshire and remains a country boy at heart. It is rare that he passes a body of water in which he doesn’t want to take a dip. “I love being outside, swimming in the lido or Shadwell Basin,” he says. “There’s a bridge near where my parents live where you can jump in. It’s so wholesome and English.” His dream is to have a river in his garden, so he can frolic among the trout and herons each morning. His childhood was idyllic but also instructive. Both his parents are academics, both took an equal role in domestic duties and both encouraged reasoned debates around the kitchen table. Young Mr Norton was sent to Ampleforth boarding school (posh, monastic, Catholic) and went on to study theology and philosophy at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, before a spell at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. People often assume he’s religious – the dog collar he wears for the 1950s period piece Grantchester doesn’t help – but he says his youthful interest in Christ was more one of “moral intrigue and the love of storytelling. I loved the gospel reading at mass every Sunday. But it became a relationship of intrigue rather than belief. And most of my degree was about Hinduism and Buddhism in any case.”

Still, you can see why he makes such a convincing vicar in Grantchester and why he’d want to break away from that mode. “I remember early on in my career people would say to me things like, ‘You have a very period face.’ I was like, what does that mean? They’d seen me in a couple of period dramas and imagined that would be my career.”

So he was elated when the supremely depressing Happy Valley came along. Ms Sally Wainwright’s critically lauded BBC series (now streaming on Netflix) gave him the chance to play a working-class ex-convict whose soul descends to the very depths of hell. “I will be forever grateful for that role,” he says. “To be given the opportunity to prove myself like that was just great.” He sees each role as a licence to go out and learn. “Not just from an academic point of view, but in an emotional, embodied way. The word we always use is empathy. There’s nothing more powerful than that. I’d never managed to empathise with a serial killer from any article about them, but when you’re actually inhabiting them, you have to learn to love them, however abhorrent they are.”

I guess it’s about getting to know the part of yourself that could kidnap and torture, were circumstances different. “It’s like undergoing a crude form of psychoanalysis on your own,” says Mr Norton, but confesses that it’s also kind of fun. “I’ve been wary talking about this because it could be misconstrued,” he says slowly. “But it was incredibly empowering not to care at all what people think, to go the other way and want people to be afraid of me. For someone like me, who goes around the whole time being very polite, to be allowed to spend some time not giving a fuck what people think was fucking cool.” He smiles bashfully. “I remember walking on set and seeing people’s reactions to me with a skinhead and tattoos. People started to treat me completely differently.”

He’s no method actor. He and his co-star, Ms Sarah Lancashire, tried to keep the mood light between scenes. But still, he found Tommy hard to shake off. “He’s so mistrusting of the world,” he says. “The sadness in that character was that he thought the world was so inherently hostile that the kindest thing he could do for his son was to take him away from this suffering. That’s dark.” He was haunted by “weird, dark dreams, me being horribly abusive”.

McMafia ought to draw on similarly dark currents, albeit in more glamorous circumstances. Mr Norton plays Alex, a “Michael Corleone-type Russian guy”, who ends up being pulled back into the family business (crime, extortion, money laundering) despite his efforts to escape. “His dad was a Mafia boss who was exiled by Putin, but Alex has tried to turn his back on that and set up his life properly, with a fiancée and a good job.” Mr Norton is particularly excited about this one. Mr Farr’s co-writer is Mr Hossein Amini, who created Mr Ryan Gosling’s tour de force Drive, and it’s inspired by investigative journalist Mr Misha Glenny’s book. The cast includes highly respected Russian actor Mr Aleksey Serebryakov (from Leviathan) plus a host of stars from Israel, Mexico, Brazil and Turkey. “It was such an interesting set,” says Mr Norton. “I don’t think there can have been many casts like it. And with what’s going on with Trump, Russia, the Panama Papers, all that, basically our show lifts up the curtain and shows what state-level corruption looks like. The Mafia isn’t a family with a protection racket in a city. It’s a multi-national globalised corporation where all the parts are linked. You always want to be chasing the zeitgeist. With this, for the first time in my life, I felt the zeitgeist was chasing us.”

On Flatliners, he seems a little more tentative, perhaps wary of incurring the wrath of fans of the original movie. “Everyone remembers it very fondly,” he says. But it was the first time he’d been let loose in a big studio. “The money, the toys, the stunts – Ellen and Diego had done all that before, but I was like this token Brit, running around having lots of fun.”

As for the other sides of success, he’s readjusting. Last we heard, Mr Norton was in a relationship with Ms Jessie Buckley, the English actress who played his sister in War & Peace, but when I ask about his love life he makes a complicated face and asks if we can avoid this particular subject. “Having this dream job, it compromises family, friends, relationship, because you’re always away,” he says. “I have 12 cousins and we’re all very close, but there have been a few family occasions where I’m the only one who isn’t there. And your relationships do take hits.”

He’s politically engaged, too – “As I think we all are right now” – but isn’t sure if and when to use his celebrity to promote his causes. “I must be the most boring person to follow on Twitter,” he says. He essayed a few politically themed tweets recently, but found the response a bit dismaying. “I tweeted a photo from an anti-Brexit march a few months ago, and said, ‘Let’s get behind a second referendum, there is hope!’ and I’ve never received so much hate and vitriol. And I thought, what’s the point? Well, there is a point, but maybe that’s not the right way to make it. Maybe it’s better to start a conversation, to listen rather than to shout.”

That doesn’t seem a bad idea. He’s itching to get behind the camera, he says. He has stories he’d like to tell. “I don’t want to be sanctimonious, but I’m interested in using my voice as an artist to…” He trails off – that English habit of not quite finishing his sentences – before remarking how much he admired Mr Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake, a devastating indictment of the British welfare system. But it seems his own thoughts are more to do with young men and their place in the world. He’s been reading Narcissus And Goldmund by Mr Hermann Hesse, which is about two monks taking divergent paths through the world – one as an artist, one as a thinker – at the time of the Black Death. It seems to have struck a chord.

“There’s a lot of confusion now about men’s place in the world,” says Mr Norton. “There needs to be a conversation. I’m putting together a script about how a young man deals with that confusion. We’re being pulled in different directions. I think for women, the feminist movement is a lot clearer. And we do need to redress pay inequality and, of course, men are implicated in that. But we also need to recalibrate our own position. Men whose identity is to do with being a protector and provider and full of testosterone are finding it harder.”

When it comes to redressing the gender imbalance, however, he seems more than happy to take one for the team. He is a reliable source of “phwoar”-style headlines in newspapers. “Female actors have been putting up with this tenfold for ever,” he says. “So I don’t feel male actors have a particular right to cry out about this. I don’t feel objectified, put it that way.”

[jamesginortonblog]

Words by Mr Richard Godwin

Photography by Mr Mark Kean

Styling by Ms Eilidh Greig, Fashion Editor, MR PORTER

Mr James Norton is not a man to be underestimated. The first time I noticed the London-born, Yorkshire-raised actor, he was playing an earnest young lover in Death Comes To Pemberley, a cosy whodunnit set in the world of Ms Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice. I had him down as a production-line fop, the kind that elite English schools crank out as reliably as the Disney Club cranks out Mouseketeers. He seemed… nice. Agreeable. The sort of teacake your granny would like.

I certainly couldn’t see him pulling off someone such as Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley, the most haunting TV psychopath of recent years. Or earning admiring reviews from the Russians for playing their national literary hero, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, in the all-star BBC adaptation of War & Peace. But in projects as varied as the clerical mystery Grantchester and dystopian drama Black Mirror, Mr Norton has demonstrated that enviable quality – range – and has configured his career to use it to the fullest.

“That’s the joy,” he says. “Most actors would agree that the reason why you go into the job is that there’s a hunger for experience, a general inquisitiveness. When you have a group of actors at a restaurant, everyone will try everything. It’s not just a sensory thing. It’s about wanting to suck up everything that life can offer.”

Life is offering Mr Norton, 32, a lot right now, and it couldn’t happen to a more grateful individual. His conversation is peppered with “I’m so lucky”, “It’s a privilege”, “One of the joys”, etc. His first Hollywood studio production, Flatliners, is about to hit cinemas. It’s a remake of Mr Joel Schumacher’s cult 1990 psycho horror, which starred Mr Keifer Sutherland and Ms Julia Roberts, about a group of medical students experimenting with near-death experiences. In the remake, Mr Norton stars opposite Ms Ellen Page and Mr Diego Luna. And he’s taking the lead as the son of a Russian mobster in McMafia, a BBC/AMC international co-production that stands out in the autumn TV schedules. “One of those situations where everything is in place, and all you need to do as an actor is not fuck it up,” he says.

One of the co-writers is Mr David Farr, who adapted Mr John Le Carré’s The Night Manager for BBC, which was widely seen as Mr Tom Hiddleston’s audition for the role of James Bond. So it will do Mr Norton’s chances of leapfrogging his fellow Cambridge graduate on the shortlist no harm at all. They’re both 8/1 with William Hill. “It’s nice to be in that conversation,” he says. “But I’m certainly not saying no to stuff because I’m holding out for that.”

For now, Mr Norton has asked me to meet him at the National Theatre in London. I assume he’s in rehearsals for some top-secret project (though he does confess an ambition to play Hamlet here one day), but no, he just wants to spare me an off-Tube trip to Peckham in south London, where he lives. He turns up in “vegan trainers”, made by Veja, black Levi’s and an old grey cashmere jumper, with what looks like a duelling wound on his neck but turns out to be a scar from an operation on an old rugby injury. He is profusely apologetic for being approximately five minutes late. And prays leave for another 60 seconds of my patience so he can purchase a croissant.

He’s a Type 1 diabetic and a “little munch” will ensure he doesn’t die during the course of our interview. Mr James Geoffrey Ian Norton grew up in a timeless bit of North Yorkshire and remains a country boy at heart. It is rare that he passes a body of water in which he doesn’t want to take a dip. “I love being outside, swimming in the lido or Shadwell Basin,” he says. “There’s a bridge near where my parents live where you can jump in. It’s so wholesome and English.” His dream is to have a river in his garden, so he can frolic among the trout and herons each morning. His childhood was idyllic but also instructive. Both his parents are academics, both took an equal role in domestic duties and both encouraged reasoned debates around the kitchen table. Young Mr Norton was sent to Ampleforth boarding school (posh, monastic, Catholic) and went on to study theology and philosophy at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, before a spell at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. People often assume he’s religious – the dog collar he wears for the 1950s period piece Grantchester doesn’t help – but he says his youthful interest in Christ was more one of “moral intrigue and the love of storytelling. I loved the gospel reading at mass every Sunday. But it became a relationship of intrigue rather than belief. And most of my degree was about Hinduism and Buddhism in any case.”

Still, you can see why he makes such a convincing vicar in Grantchester and why he’d want to break away from that mode. “I remember early on in my career people would say to me things like, ‘You have a very period face.’ I was like, what does that mean? They’d seen me in a couple of period dramas and imagined that would be my career.”

So he was elated when the supremely depressing Happy Valley came along. Ms Sally Wainwright’s critically lauded BBC series (now streaming on Netflix) gave him the chance to play a working-class ex-convict whose soul descends to the very depths of hell. “I will be forever grateful for that role,” he says. “To be given the opportunity to prove myself like that was just great.” He sees each role as a licence to go out and learn. “Not just from an academic point of view, but in an emotional, embodied way. The word we always use is empathy. There’s nothing more powerful than that. I’d never managed to empathise with a serial killer from any article about them, but when you’re actually inhabiting them, you have to learn to love them, however abhorrent they are.”

I guess it’s about getting to know the part of yourself that could kidnap and torture, were circumstances different. “It’s like undergoing a crude form of psychoanalysis on your own,” says Mr Norton, but confesses that it’s also kind of fun. “I’ve been wary talking about this because it could be misconstrued,” he says slowly. “But it was incredibly empowering not to care at all what people think, to go the other way and want people to be afraid of me. For someone like me, who goes around the whole time being very polite, to be allowed to spend some time not giving a fuck what people think was fucking cool.” He smiles bashfully. “I remember walking on set and seeing people’s reactions to me with a skinhead and tattoos. People started to treat me completely differently.”

He’s no method actor. He and his co-star, Ms Sarah Lancashire, tried to keep the mood light between scenes. But still, he found Tommy hard to shake off. “He’s so mistrusting of the world,” he says. “The sadness in that character was that he thought the world was so inherently hostile that the kindest thing he could do for his son was to take him away from this suffering. That’s dark.” He was haunted by “weird, dark dreams, me being horribly abusive”.

McMafia ought to draw on similarly dark currents, albeit in more glamorous circumstances. Mr Norton plays Alex, a “Michael Corleone-type Russian guy”, who ends up being pulled back into the family business (crime, extortion, money laundering) despite his efforts to escape. “His dad was a Mafia boss who was exiled by Putin, but Alex has tried to turn his back on that and set up his life properly, with a fiancée and a good job.” Mr Norton is particularly excited about this one. Mr Farr’s co-writer is Mr Hossein Amini, who created Mr Ryan Gosling’s tour de force Drive, and it’s inspired by investigative journalist Mr Misha Glenny’s book. The cast includes highly respected Russian actor Mr Aleksey Serebryakov (from Leviathan) plus a host of stars from Israel, Mexico, Brazil and Turkey. “It was such an interesting set,” says Mr Norton. “I don’t think there can have been many casts like it. And with what’s going on with Trump, Russia, the Panama Papers, all that, basically our show lifts up the curtain and shows what state-level corruption looks like. The Mafia isn’t a family with a protection racket in a city. It’s a multi-national globalised corporation where all the parts are linked. You always want to be chasing the zeitgeist. With this, for the first time in my life, I felt the zeitgeist was chasing us.”

On Flatliners, he seems a little more tentative, perhaps wary of incurring the wrath of fans of the original movie. “Everyone remembers it very fondly,” he says. But it was the first time he’d been let loose in a big studio. “The money, the toys, the stunts – Ellen and Diego had done all that before, but I was like this token Brit, running around having lots of fun.”

As for the other sides of success, he’s readjusting. Last we heard, Mr Norton was in a relationship with Ms Jessie Buckley, the English actress who played his sister in War & Peace, but when I ask about his love life he makes a complicated face and asks if we can avoid this particular subject. “Having this dream job, it compromises family, friends, relationship, because you’re always away,” he says. “I have 12 cousins and we’re all very close, but there have been a few family occasions where I’m the only one who isn’t there. And your relationships do take hits.”

He’s politically engaged, too – “As I think we all are right now” – but isn’t sure if and when to use his celebrity to promote his causes. “I must be the most boring person to follow on Twitter,” he says. He essayed a few politically themed tweets recently, but found the response a bit dismaying. “I tweeted a photo from an anti-Brexit march a few months ago, and said, ‘Let’s get behind a second referendum, there is hope!’ and I’ve never received so much hate and vitriol. And I thought, what’s the point? Well, there is a point, but maybe that’s not the right way to make it. Maybe it’s better to start a conversation, to listen rather than to shout.”

That doesn’t seem a bad idea. He’s itching to get behind the camera, he says. He has stories he’d like to tell. “I don’t want to be sanctimonious, but I’m interested in using my voice as an artist to…” He trails off – that English habit of not quite finishing his sentences – before remarking how much he admired Mr Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake, a devastating indictment of the British welfare system. But it seems his own thoughts are more to do with young men and their place in the world. He’s been reading Narcissus And Goldmund by Mr Hermann Hesse, which is about two monks taking divergent paths through the world – one as an artist, one as a thinker – at the time of the Black Death. It seems to have struck a chord.

“There’s a lot of confusion now about men’s place in the world,” says Mr Norton. “There needs to be a conversation. I’m putting together a script about how a young man deals with that confusion. We’re being pulled in different directions. I think for women, the feminist movement is a lot clearer. And we do need to redress pay inequality and, of course, men are implicated in that. But we also need to recalibrate our own position. Men whose identity is to do with being a protector and provider and full of testosterone are finding it harder.”

When it comes to redressing the gender imbalance, however, he seems more than happy to take one for the team. He is a reliable source of “phwoar”-style headlines in newspapers. “Female actors have been putting up with this tenfold for ever,” he says. “So I don’t feel male actors have a particular right to cry out about this. I don’t feel objectified, put it that way.”

Flatliners is out on 29 September

[oncethrown]

We! Are! Family! (2x16 Review)

Building on last week’s awesome character stuff, this episode also did a lot of deep character stuff, did a fantastic job of using it’s ensemble cast to explore the same topic in different ways, and then offered us a lot of drunk Clary nonsense as a palate cleanser between scenes of actual substance.

If palate cleansers tasted overwhelmingly of garbage.

Alec Learns About Black White and Grey

Setting Alec against Robert for this whole episode, particularly given the hints we currently have about the upcoming episode, was masterful writing. Robert’s disgusting corruption against Alec’s naivete. Robert’s decimated morality against Alec’s barely challenged innocence.

And Robert’s dead marriage vs. Alec’s brand new love.  

Alec and Magnus’s relationship has faced very few internal challenges. Alec and Magnus are very firmly in the honeymoon stage, and the previews are hinting that may not be the case next week.

Enter Robert. Robert has been half of a complicated marriage for decades, and is currently married to a woman he no longer loves, and presumably hasn’t loved for a long time. We know Maryse and Robert were fighting last season, and in the books Robert cheats on Maryse sometime around Isabelle being either conceived or born, I don’t remember.

I’m not condoning cheating, but adult relationships are complicated, and I believe Robert when he says “It’s complicated”. There are thousand things going on in his and Maryse’s marriage. Maryse’s ambition, her dedication to the Lightwood legacy. Their shared past as members of the circle. Their shared exile from Idris, their shared scapegoating of Hodge. These are two people who, when they were young, fell under the sway of a madman, and then betrayed him and ran from their homeland with their baby and probably weren’t the same people any more afterward. Were not the same people who had fallen in love to begin with.

But Maryse said in the last episode that they weren’t going to get divorced because there was the legacy to think of. The two of them have probably had that legacy conversation a thousand times. They’ve probably loved and hated each other, tried to convince themselves they could get divorced, then ultimately decided that they couldn’t over and over again. And kids make everything a nightmare. They probably both love the kids, but disapprove of the way the other loves them, (and let’s be honest, they both abuse and neglect the kids, and probably only think the other does) and we know that neither wanted to hurt the kids by saying anything too true about the other. These two people are genuinely caught in this impossible, ugly snarl.

That ugly snarl is similar to Alec’s political position. He wants to run an institute, but it’s difficult to follow Clave orders and still be the leader he wants to be. He wants to move up in the Clave, but knows its rife with corruption.

It’s nothing like his relationship status though. He and Magnus are firmly ensconced in the honey moon stage. There have been challenges and problems, but nothing that changed the fundamental internal ease of the relationship. They haven’t had a conflict that wasn’t solved with love and honesty.

But that doesn’t last. And Robert is standing there in Alec’s office trying to explain to his incredibly black and white son that grey sometimes shows up when you aren’t expecting it. And Alec is going to understand that when it means how to discuss the whereabouts of the soul sword… but it’s going to be a lot more complicated as a lie of omission to Magnus. Being the head of the Institute and sleepin in the High Warlock’ bed every night doesn’t stay easy. In a way, Robert is a harbinger of doom for Alec’s story.

But Alec is also a grown up, and he has to accept parts of his father’s grayness as their story moves forward. He acknowledges that his father is right— he has to stay in the institute even though Jace is in trouble. He has to acknowledge that his deeply imperfect father does care about him, and is using the influence he has to try to protect him.

But he also has to acknowledge that his father’s influence has a dark origin and that his father has done a lot of bad things.

Which is a super awesome story to pit against Sebastian and Valentine.

Sebastian and Alec actually have very similar statuses in these two plots. They are both sons whose fathers have failed, and they are both struggling with that failure. Alec’s is corruption and infidelity, and Sebastian is evil and being sent to hell… so they are… ya know. Wide parallels. But parallels nonetheless.

Sebastian almost gets to be the emotional outlet that Alec will never be allowed. Sebastian and Alec are equally angry with their fathers, but Sebastian is the one that gets to scream and threaten and let loose on his. Sebastian could be Alec’s Anger Translator. It also gives us an inverse of Alec’s storyline. Robert fucked up and Alec didn’t. Robert is indisputably the bad guy in that pairing. And then in Sebastian and Valentine’s story, it’s not that easy. Sebastian murdered people. Because of what Valentine made him. Valentine was afraid of Sebastian, because of what Valentine made him. Sebastian is a monster because of Valentine’s fear, and Sebastian is demanding retribution because what Valentine did is unforgivable. It’s Alec and Robert’s storyline with the brakelines cut, and it’s a really well done emotional compliment to that story line.

What makes Simon’s entry into this Sons and Families storyline so interesting is that it’s so thematically similar, while every other element of it is wildly different.

The only person Simon has to forgive in his storyline is himself. On a day of atonement, Alec and Sebastian have long lists of the sins of the father, but Simon is angry with himself, and… in the end forgives himself (Neither Alec nor Sebastian forgive their fathers). Simon clearly blames himself for his mother’s drinking.  He blames himself for worrying his sister with the blood thing. He doesn’t hear Bubbie Helen’s criticism of his not going to temple, but it’s clear that he would blame himself for not going.

And none of them place that blame on him. Helen sort of hand waves not going to temple, his mother blames himself for the drinking. His sister seems to blame the other band mates for the weird blood gimmick.

Maia echoes this when she talks about her family and says that it’s not anger that keeps her from reconnecting with her family, it’s guilt.

And then Simon almost lightheartedly accepts blame for not knowing more about Maia’s hopes and dreams. He admits that he’s been self-centered, but they don’t agonize over it. Also, everyone apologizes to Maia when Helen assumes she isn’t Jewish.

It’s also worth mentioning that Alec and Sebastian deal with antagonistic father/son relationships, but Simon is in a scene with four women.

This is the kind of thing I really wanted to see Shadowhunters start doing, and they really hit it out of the park. Those parts of this episode were cohesive and important. They built on each other, echoed and contrasted each other and gave us this super solid thing about sin and forgiveness, father’s and son, and how complicated family can be. They also fleshed out our characters, telling us all kinds of things we didn’t know about Maia and Sebastian and gave us peices to keep the plot going forward— like Robert’s mysterious (and crazy gross) backchannel with Imogen, the real location of the soul sword, Sebastian having Valentine and why he took him. Simon and  Maia chemistry.

And Then there’s Clary

I’m actually getting exhausted with hating Clary, but the writers won’t cut me a break. Not every plot has to be on the same wavelength, it’s completely fine that Clary’s story line just dipped it’s toe into the main theme with her wide eyed “My brother is alive” shit at the end… but this plot line was a disaster, and should have been given half the time it was given. This plot accomplished 4 things:

1. Showed us that Clary’s Super Special Powers! Are so Super Special! That she is the only non warlock who can do the portals. 2. Taught us that Lake Lyn exists (probs important later) 3. Tried (and failed) to create post incest Jace Clary lost when Jace’s Super Special Powers! Save Clary from Lady Madness 4. Let Clary know that she still has a brother.

And like…from a writing perspective, I’m sure those things are important for something they are building toward, and it’s not their fault that I already know what it is because I’ve reading the steaming horseshit pile of source material.

But they have written 26 episodes now where Clary has no goal. No motivation. And yet another episode where she’s weak and pathetic and has to get rescued by whoever wants to put his penis in her the most.

She shouldn’t be the main character if she’s just a battleground for dick-wetting.

And like… an hour mystic drunk in the woods is the closest she’s come to experiencing consequences the whole time, and it takes two people to rescue her.

In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Seventeen I don’t want to watch the main female character cured of hysteria by the right dick. I hate everything about it, and that makes me hate Clary and I don’t want to hate Clary.

And the writers have restrictions placed on them by the fact that they are adapting from a book… but compare Shadowhunters to something like True Blood? The books True Blood are based on are impossible to read sober, and the True Blood abandoned them by like episode 9 of the first season.

If you want me to give a flying fuck about Clary “Blink at You Until You Love Me” Fray you have to give her a story. You can’t rely on shitty storylines from a decade ago (and a tumultous decade at that) to make me give a damn about her and frankly I’m offended that the writers are lazy enough to think they can. They’ve been coasting on Clary since day one, and if that’s all they can do… fine. But then Clary can’t be a main characters. Maia can be the main, Izzy can be the main, and Clary can just show up in a wet dress from time to time with her crusty eyelashes, and eventually get killed off.

I haven’t quite hit the point where Clary is just the irredeemable nonsense that I forward through… but I’m getting damn close.

Live Reactions:

They have to do something about this fucking intro. 

It is impossible to watch this show in a room that isn’t black out dark. We’re not all rich enough for TV rooms or curtains, Shadowhunters. Turn on a fucking light on set. 

Simon and Maia also have chemistry. Alisha and Alberto could have chemistry with moldy bread. 

Gross. Robert. 

This father son conversation about where the black and white and grey go is interesting. And it’s fascinating to compare Alec and Maryse’s interaction to Alec and Robert’s. Especially because Maryse was terrible to Alec… and Robert was terrible to Maryse. 

Fuck you, Clary. This isn’t Jace’s fault. You could have not fucked your best friend when you weren’t sure what you wanted. You are the worst. I hate that they keep pretending you’re the lead. 

I kinda doubt you need to fake Magnus’s hand gesture. 

You are very pretty, Sebastian

You sent him to Hell? What the fuck are you going to do?

After 90 seconds of Show Sebastian, I am totally invested in his story. I cannot wait to see what he does and I need to have him be a main character. 

UUGGHHHHH Clary, our female lead, is now helpless and falling down in the woods. FFUUCCKKKKKIINNGG Shadowhunters

Under enough stress to scream at a 9 year old until he won’t leave his room? Cheating? Existing? I want Robert dead by Mid Season 3. 

Listen to Izzy. She’s smarter than everyone you know, and the Inquisitor is obviously dirty. 

Emeraude is the only one who says “by the Angel” like it’s a real phrase she has used before. Official award for this to Emmeraude. 

I would care that you found a pile of Jace guts… but I’m sure that you’re just hallucinating or some shit because you are the weakest character on the show and women aren’t allowed to succeed at anything on Shadowhunters. Maybe, despite the cold, you’ll be in a wet white dress by the end of the episode. 

Wow. Okay. Will and Alisha are now the stars of this show. They would be so good in a scene together is the writers could possibly write a scene good enough for the two of them to be in. 

Gross. Robert. 

This is just so much Clary being on screen with no drive. I’m super frustrated with how Clary doesn’t have to have a story to be the lead. Everyone in this episode wants something and has multiple layers of want and opposition. Clary is lake drunk in the woods. That’s not a plot. That’s halfway decent weekend. 

Oh no. Not lose her mind forever. They might have to put her in the gard. We might never hear from her again. Oh no. 

You know… Valentine deserves that. I’m on board. 

Izzy could also be the lead of this show. She stuck to her beliefs while the Clave threatened to derune her. She actually gives a flying fuck about downworlders and has repeated it with fewer lapses than everyone else. The downworld respects her. She overcame being forcibly addicted by a superior who wanted to rape her. She’s the best shadowhunter in the Institute. She’s smarter than everyone. Izzy is the Hermione Granger to Clary’s Giant Squid. 

Boy-magic saved her. Girl magic got her in that mess to start with. Thanks Shadowhunters. 

This dialogue made me throw up my wine. 

Gross. Robert.

Yes! Stand up for your baby brother Alec. 

There is no way Robert threatened to do anything to the Clave. He’s lying. He’s always lying. 

Feeling bad about sending your son to hell doesn’t make him less sent to hell, and he still doesn’t see you as a son, Sebastian. Just an experiment.  Kill him, it’s fine. 

Maia and Simon, you are the best. Please be one of the most important parts of the show. 

Is Maia and Jace fucking ever going to come up again? If not what was the point?

Careful Clary, he’s sexy reading and you are but a wee pathetic lass

That is the most obvious chain they could have possibly picked. Why not just tape it to his forehead?

Clary’s desperation to find her brother had better be linked to her mother’s death. The writers have got to be able to make that teeny tiny leap.

[prinzenhasserin]

Yuletide!

Dear Yule Goat/Creator/Person I Will Love Forever,

I am very excited for anything you write for these fandoms. Please feel free to take my prompts and likes any way you wish, as long as you stick to my dislikes. Don’t feel like you have to stick to the prompts! I’m always open for other characters. Generally, I will be delighted with any rating from gen to explicit. I hope you have fun creating!

My AO3 name is Prinzenhasserin, here. If you want to browse more of my letters, here are some at my exchange letter tag. 

Likes:

fake/pretend relationships, arranged marriages

loyalty

odd couples

found family, dysfunctional families that nevertheless love each other

historical stories for same-sex pairings that aren’t unhappy but that fit with the society of the time (so like, spinster ladies living together; bachelors-for-life)

cultural differences, age differences, height differences

heists, rescue missions, case fic

dragons, fairy tales, magical realism, urban fantasy

competent characters

people not realising they’re the most competent at their job/hobby

people failing their way to success

happy endings, earning your happy ending, open yet hopeful endings

cynical humour

mutual pining

suits, corsetry, fancy dresses

Identity shenanigans (secret identities, mistaken identities)

Blatant Lies

Enemies finding common ground and becoming friends/lovers; rivalry

outsider POV, 1st person narrator

epistolary, fictional non-fiction, worldbuilding, interactive fiction, poetry

orange/blue morality (that is, not entirely human morality); grey/grey morality

people not usually found in law enforcement solving crimes

non-verbal expressions of affection

contradictions: that is, I like my fantasy with the mundane (doing taxes in a mythical land of dragons, or space pirates!) and I like my mundane fiction with outrageous happenings.

Kinks:

wall sex! overcome with sudden desire! sex with clothes on! 

shifting power dynamics (outside the bedroom, and inside the bedroom), actions on both sides, basically

stiff characters letting go of their iron control inside the bedroom; characters feeling guilty of their desire but not guilty enough to stop; coming to terms with the guilt

lots of foreplay, drawn out orgasms, edging

desperate sex, drunk sex, we-just-can’t-help-it!sex, sex for life-affirming; sex pollen

sex toys

Dislikes (Do-Not-Want):

rape played for laughs, or as backstory

sexuality, or gender as the focus of plot or used for drama

suicide

tragic endings (ambiguous endings are fine, though!)

RED (Movies)

(Characters: Victoria, Sarah Ross)

This movie, goddamn it. It’s so silly, and so! much! shit! explodes, but I can’t help but find it charming and adorable.

If you want to write me Victoria teaching Sarah how to handle her weapons and shoot shit up, I am absolutely here for that. I would also love secret spy shenanigans, or a situation where only the secret skills of the customer service person Sarah or the filling skills of a bored bureaucrat (also: Sarah) save the day in a spectacular manner.

Or Victoria taking Sarah under her wing and teaching her everything she knows about life, men, and how to end both. Or trying to protect her from the fucked-up shit in her life, and then maybe realising that maybe Sarah doesn’t need to be protected.

I am a fan of the age difference, too, and I do ship them together, if you rather want to write that. Give me all the fucked up femslash! Going on murderous rampages together, and having sex amid the slain corpses of their enemies, yes, that. Bedsharing because circumstances have them hiding out in the Siberian Tundra. Victoria dressing up Sarah and taking her as a trophy wife to diplomatic functions? Seducing Sarah so Victoria can rub their togetherness into Frank’s face. Taking people of guard, because the expected a toy boy, and not -- whatever Sarah is.

DNW: mommy kink

Gokusen (Manga)

(Characters: any -- Fujiyama Shizuka, Kuroda Ryuuichirou, Sawada Shin, Yamaguchi Kumiko)

How do I love this manga so much? I have no idea. I’m not even near high school age anymore, and yet the plot (and tbh, sometimes its ridiculous nature) always gets to me. I’d read more about any aspect of this canon, and if you want to bring in any other characters, and leave others out, feel entirely free to.

Post-canon would be great, but anything goes really. Focusing on just one character would be terrific. Having all of them would be great!

Kumiko has adventures with another class, or her minions! Does she continue with being a school teacher? Maybe she starts leading the Yakuza group, and still goes to school to teach her kids manners, and morals, and how to fight the system?

Shin goes to law school/Africa/some place, but gets lost on the way there! Will he come back to Yankumi? Will he eventually lead the Yakuza group?

Fujiyama Shizuka doesn’t get why she’s the one without the beautiful student toy-boy, and tries to find one herself, and instead falls in love with, idk, the new female teacher? one of Yankumi’s brothers? the new janitor? Or she watches and cackles a lot as Yankumi and Shin date, and then maybe found a Yakuza orphanage, and/or marry.

Kuroda Ryuuchiro and his quest for the rightful heir to his Yakuza group! How does he feel about his granddaughter running around with the police chief’s son — does that bother him more than the whole student thing? Does Shin really inherit the Kuroda family group? Does he become a Yakuza lawyer? Or does Yankumi make him stay away, or maybe Kuroda makes them stay away?

I ship Shin/Yankumi but gen is delightful also.

How does Shin convince Yankumi to have sex with him? Is he getting kidnapped left and right before they actually get together because all and sundry already think they’ve been doing each other for years?

If they are already in an established relationship, how does Shin deal with Yankumi’s students (especially when one of them develops a crush)?

I have no problems about depicting violence, or graphic criminal activities, but please keep the violence perpetrated by the nominated characters within the spirit of the manga? I like to root for morally ambiguous characters, but not if they are truly evil.

Roundtable Rival - Lindsey Stirling (Music Video)

(Characters: Durango Black, The Violinist (Roundtable Rival))

I love this music video! It’s so silly and fun! It is here, if you want to watch it yourself, but basically, people are fighting each other with music instruments to a jaunty tune, set in the Wild Wild West.

Basically, fighting with music! Foiling dastardly plans! I want to read more about this! And anything goes, really. If you want to focus more on one character, or want to show this from an outside perspective, either would be great.

Lowkey, I’m really a fan of rival-dynamics, and love to ship enemies, so bringing a lovestory between Durango Black and the Violinist would make my day. Or if there’s a dynamic like "You are the only one allowed to catch me"? —Perfection

Maybe they know each other from before? Maybe there’s epic discussion about different ways to fight each other with music (I’d be into reading about that!).

Would also be into PWP where the Violinist dominates Durango Black. Some Bootlicking, maybe? Or creative uses of the music instruments. Or clothing porn!

Or case fic where The Violinist tours around the country, catching criminals; or just a glimpse into how music developed its own fighting style — or performing tricks like shooting an apple out of the air, just with music instruments!

(Additional question for worldbuilding: What is that clear liquid they serve in beer humps?)

DNW: rape (dubcon is fine, though!)

British Romantic Writers RPF 

Characters: John Keats (British Romantic Writers RPF), Lord Byron (British Romantic Writers RPF), Percy Shelley (British Romantic Writers RPF)

Okay, I’m not even vaguely sorry. Here’s my confession: I ship all of these with each other, as pairs, or as threesome. I’d read them writing spite!fic, or rather spite!poetry, about each other, though! Or a zombie!AU, in which they are all stumbling incompetently around the dead suddenly among the living. Or maybe they turn out to be surprisingly competent at killing/evading zombies! (I’d expect nothing less from Percy Shelley who seduced people on graveyards, tbh)

Hey — at least they knew of each other! I am into the really very dysfunctional relationships with each other, here. Who is to say they wouldn’t have been very happy with each other in various constellations? Lord Byron seemed to have detested Keats — or at least thought his poetry as "mental masturbation" — I’d dig them in a rival relationship, that suddenly develops into a sexual relationship. Maybe even romantic? (Definitely romantic in the original sense)

And I can definitely see Lord Byron condescending down on Keats for his poor upbringing, without being aware that this is what he is doing, and Keats so not having that. And Percy Shelley with his continued efforts into giving all his money to charity while having the luxury to seduce women and traipse around the continent!

How about an AU in which Keats doesn’t die and joins Percy Shelley in Pisa (and for some reason Lord Byron is there, too — I will not read this for the historical accuracy, believe me)

Basically! Literature! Orgies! Seducing people in graveyards, and skinny-dipping in French rivers, that’s all I really want. I’m not saying no if you do decide to go down the historical accurate road, but I’ll also read all sorts of wild AUs.

Or adventures in Greece during the revolution in an Everybody-Lives!AU?

Percy Shelley wrote an elegy about Keats, and said this when he invited him to Pisa: "I am aware indeed that I am nourishing a rival who will far surpass me and this is an additional motive & will be an added pleasure." Added pleasure? (He means fucking! says me) I am just very into rival relationships that turn sexual or more.

Look, I’m just here for Lord Byron and Percy Shelley seducing a reluctant Keats — and Keats maybe anchoring them a bit down to earth. Or various combinations.

I am not into the long-term effects of drug use and the suffering thereof, but if you want to mention it, that is totally fine. I wouldn’t want it glorified.

DNW: contemplation of suicide, vore

Miss Marple - Agatha Christie

Characters: Jane Marple

I am a fan of Miss Marple. I, too, have lived in a quiet town where you can see into the abysses of the human condition :D

I’d love to read something that lead her to the person we know her as, maybe when she went to the girl school in Switzerland? Maybe during her time in the cypher division, during the war — maybe the cypher division was really a cover for Miss Marple’s spy activities for the war office?

I’d also love fic about her as we know her: spending time in St. Mary Mead’s and solving crimes, quietly knitting her nephew another sweater. Holiday themed fic! Somebody keeps stealing the geese for the holiday celebrations!

Honestly, I’d also really like to read about her in a relationship, especially one that people wouldn’t expect of an elderly woman. Did she have a youthful indiscretion with the prime minister, and now that he is widowed, he visits her again, and Jane’s nephew is entirely shocked by the whole thing?

Was she maybe in love with a woman the whole time? Did she quietly retire into a cottage with her best friend, and they have a romantic relationship with each other?

(Or crossovers! It would be super interesting if Miss Marple knew a wizard from the Harry Potter universe, or maybe she’s a squib or a with herself? Or maybe she knows Phryne Fisher, or Lord Peter Wimsey!)

Island of the Aunts | Monster Mission - Eva Ibbotson

Characters: Dorothy (Island of the Aunts)

Look. This is one of my favourite books. I would read absolutely anything about every single character— I choose Dorothy, simply because she’s my most favourite, but if you want to write a story where she’s not the focus, I’d still be ecstatic.

That said, omg, Dorothy. I love her (and her wok!) and I would read countless stories on adventures she had while going off of the island in a rage to be angry at polluters, or hunters of endangered species, or both. I like that she seems to be the most competent in dealing with outsiders, even though usually she rather likes to resort to violence.

So! Pre-Canon, or Post-Canon, whatever; either would be great!

How is the work on the island? How is Dorothy dealing with her piranha farm? Maybe she decided to pursue some other, even stranger, protection against various and sundry? Does the Kraken return to the island?

How does Dorothy deal with the mermaids? Is she tolerant of their foibles, or is it a similar relationship to the one she has with her sister Betty, that is: polite bewilderment?

How does Dorothy feel to be suddenly the responsible one, who didn’t kidnap children and make them work with her? How’s her relationship with Etta, and does Dorothy milk it for all that it is worth?

Did Dorothy ever fall in love? Was it someone off the island, campaigning for more environmental protection? A mythical creature of her very own?

Who did she meet in prison? (Was Archie someone Dorothy pulled in?) How did she deal with prison in Hong-kong? Is Dorothy the reason there are now forest cities in China (— this is maybe a bit of a reach, since Hong Kong isn’t really mainland China and all, but I’d love if the Aunts have a bit of an influence on the world, even though Fabio is probably never going to be Brasilians prime minister. Though I would read a story about that.)

(Burning questions I have that aren’t relevant to Dorothy as a character: Is Herbert ever going to return? Is the younger Kraken?)

DNW: unhappy endings

If there’s something confusing, please don’t hesitate to ask! (Anon happens to be open, too.) And I hope you have a fun Yuletide!

[salzspektrum]

A / B (i totally know which one you're choosing here kjgdsj) / L / N / T

Arya Stark: okay so this is probably gonna be long, just like the other ones lol sorry #somebody stop me. she’s hands-down my favorite female got/asoiaf character and most certainly one of the most complex characters of anything ever imo. her entire life she felt alienated, felt like she was ugly and worthless. she didn’t fit in bc she wasn’t what people wanted her to be. she loves her family, even sansa. she misses them and she longs for them, yet she doesn’t dare to dream of seeing them again bc she’s afraid that something bad’s gonna happen (and it happens bc this is got, afterall). arya develops a deep bond with her wolf *casually side-eyes the show writers* and feels like she belongs somewhere. she’s afraid of rejection, she’s a senstive girl with a lot of love in her heart. *side-eyes people who want to paint her as a brutal mass murderer,also side-eyes show writers again* i love all these sides of her character, she is so multi-layered and it makes so much sense for her character. she has dark and bright sides. another thing that i admire and love is her kindness and openmindness (is that a word?). also she’s a fucking feminist. not that kind of “feminist” that says shit like “girls are stupid, girls who like feminine things are stupid” *side-eyes show writers one more time* she admires and respects all kinds of women and befriends people who are lower in class than she is, simply bc she doesn’t care about class. she cares about people. holy shit i guess i’ll stop now before i end up writing a huge essay lol sorry.

Bran Stark: yeAH YOU WERE RIGHT IS ANYONE SURPRISED BY MY CHOICE I KNOW I AM NOT!! (i’ll probably be mixing show and book stuff, sorry in advance) okay so this boy hardly gets any love from the got fandom since the writers love to forget that he’s an actual character and not just a way to show some exposition. also the fandom is hella ableist but let’s not get into the fandom drama, maybe another day. all this boy ever wanted is to become a knight, he dreamed of it. but one day he just happened to be placed into a terrible position and his entire life changed (truly fuck you jaime tbh). being disabled is a challenge, especially for a little boy like bran. honestly before I start writing down his entire arc, i will just name what i love about him: i love his kindness, for the smallfolk, his family, his friends; i love his intelligence and resilience; i love his determination to find the three-eyed raven. i also love how good he did when he was lord of winterfell. he’s in a position now, that he never wanted,a powerful and dangerous one. he still takes responsibility bc he knows that’s the best for the world rn. honestly his chapter in adwd was incredibly dark and sad, i read it and i was getting really sad bc you can really see how much all of this affects him, and now the three-eyed raven wants bran to accept the darkness. he has a deep connection with his wolf and he sees warging summer as some sort of escapism, he can run around and he feels whole. that’s just so sad. yet he’s such a strong character with so much love to give. truly before i start crying, i just wanna say that it’s a fucking shame that the fandom doesn’t appreciate bran for more than just his “cool powers” and the flashbacks. he is a wonderfully complex and interesting character and i hate this shitty ableist annoying fandom bye (wow i got angry REAL quick).

Lito Rodriguez: look;;you know how lovely this dude is.he is just!! so!! for real tho, he is one of my fave characters in sense8 (can’t choose 1 single fave bc nOoO) and I love his arc, how he overcomes some personal issues and learns to accept and love himself as a gay man and be brave enough to state that publicly. just the way he progressed is so beautiful imo. also he is super dramatic so I absolutely #relate to that.

Nyssa al Ghul: okay so she is absolutely badass and beautiful. this amazing lesbian queen will kick your ass if you’re a uglyass gross dude trying to hit on her, she has no time for shit like that. she’s daughter of the demon and should be the rightful heir, if her dad only wasn’t an asshole. she’s also super adorable and enjoys dipping her french fries in a milkshake, even tho it confuses her. she’s everything omg.

Theon Greyjoy: okay so this boy has been through some S H I T. not everyone enjoys him but to me he has one of the most complex story-arcs in the entirety of got/asoiaf. he started out being kinda dickish, yet somehow some of his behavior is understandable since he’s been raised as a ward and therefore as a less important member of the stark household. he didn’t belong with the starks but in the end he realized that they were his true family. and then he gets back home, gets rejected by his father, fucks some shit up and ends up being tortured for several years. the horrors that he goes through are insane and he is changing completely, trauma and all. now, i love this man bc he is incredibly complex and morally grey. he did some fucked up shit but for some of his decisions you can kinda see why he did what he did. he didn’t deserve any of this, he didn’t deserve torture and sexual abuse and he almost gave up on himself and life. almost. i don’t wanna write too much here bc i’m getting emo. just know that this man is a highly intriguing character and his chapters in adwd were my favorite, by far.

Drop five letters of the alphabet in my ask box, and I’ll give my favorite characters whose name starts with those letters.