#earlier the person that has basically only been condescending to me was like

[scorndotexe]

genuinely sorry about all the dndposting recently it hasn't even been interesting but i'm so desperate to dm. i've got storytelling skills!!! i've got improv skills!!! i want to build a story around characters!!! i want to see what players do with what i give them!!!

[bitter-panacea]

Goultard's introduction in the Dofus manga, his confrontation with Clustus Part 2

Part 1

Let's get right back to the fight. Clustus tells Goultard he talks too much and attacks first.

Clustus : You shouldn't have been called Goultard the barbarian but Goultard the chatty!

I still think the D at the end of Goultard's name was supposed to be silent. First of all because in french the D is usually silent in words that end in -ard-, just like here in "bavard", but also because they make a lot of rhymes with his name and none of them work if you pronounce the D. Goultard le barbare, le bavard, le bâtard etc

ANYWAY! Back to the fight. Goultard is hoping this fight won't be yet another disappointment...

Goultard : King Clustus, I hope you have more to offer me than a pityful crow spell.

Turns out Clustus isn't king of Bonta for no reason and is actually quite skilled in combat. And Goultard seems pleased to see it. Maybe this won't be as easy and boring as he expected.

Goultard : Well, well, well... This old man can do some damage.

"Bonhomme" is a very interesting word to me. It can mean "man" or more accurately "fellow". For example "bonhomme de neige" is a snowman, "un bonhomme" is also what you'd call a child's drawing of a person, there is something childish about it.... It's informal and can be affectionate or condescending, maybe even both at the same time. Goultard calls Joris "petit bonhomme" (little fellow), but he's not the only one who uses that word to describe him. (If I'm not mistaken, Gou affectionately calls Arty bonhomme... I might be wrong but I'm too lazy to check right now)

BACK TO THE FIGHT

Clustus invokes the royal crackler (whose name happens to be Kabor). Goultard gets crushed by Kabor and buried under the rubble but frees himself and destroys him with ease.

Rip Kabor

And Goultard starts talking again (he wants to be mysterious so bad but he simply cannot stfu)

Goultard : You said earlier that you knew me... But I'm not so sure, you must be wrong. Because, you see... If you really knew me, you would hold more of a grudge!

Clustus basically tells him to "be more clear or shut the fuck up".

Clustus : A grudge? What do you mean by that? Be more clear, if you will, I'm too old for guessing games. / Goultard : I'm much older than you, Clustus, and I still love riddles... But let's not get distracted, what I meant to say... Oh!

Goultard loves riddles apparently, (I find that hard to believe but why not.) Goultard says "let's not get distracted" and immediately gets distracted by a cool sword he saw. Clustus attacks while Goultard has his back turned (to pick up the cool sword he saw.) Goultard parries the blow and slashes Clustus across the chest (with the cool sword he just picked up.)

Goultard: As I was saying...You can't know me, we've never met before. However, I know you, and I've known, your father well. The king Balbosus Sheran Sharm! / Clustus : What... Impossible!

Goultard : a king well-deserves a few explanations before dying! You see, Clustus, I've spent wonderful moments with your father. He even almost "freed" me. Shortly before I took his life!

Clustus' reaction to that information

Clustus : It's impossible. My father died sixty years ago! I don't know what you're playing at but your story makes no sense! He lost his life facing a monster named Dark Vlad.

Goultard shapeshifts into Vlad just a moment to make Clustus understand they're part of the same entity.

Clustus : You killed my father... He was a good man... Generous and certainly the best king Bonta ever had! / Goultard : Maybe...

Goultard : But once again... That changes nothing! You all are nothing but humans. Whether rich or poor, kings or peasants... Only your combativeness and eagerness interests me!

(I will explore this whole thing with Goultard's contempt for humans, how he doesn't see himself as a human yet wishes he could feel like one, his self-loathing, in a future post focusing on Gou and the symbiote)

Goultard : And to get back to your father, know that he didn't hesitate to sacrifice his men to get me! And when time came for him to be reunited with his ancestors, he begged me to spare him...

Goultard : If you're saying the truth and he really was the greatest king this city's ever known... I don't dare imagine what the others must be like!

We don't know anything more about Goultard and Balbosus' realtionship but I go absolutely fucking bonkers imagining what it could have been like. Wonderful moments, knew each other well, almost freed him, but in the end sacrificed his men trying to capture him... I could talk more about it but It's all stuff I completely made the fuck up in my head. In my head Balbosus wished to free Goultard in a messed up dehumanizing savior complex way "I must free this creature and if I can't, i'll be the one to kill it". They fought many times but Goultard would always let Balbosus live because he was amused and intrigued by his weird obsession for him. A sick game of cat and mouse. Goultard enjoying the thrill of being chased... Until the symbiote grew more possessive of his prey, or Goultard got bored of Balbosus, or he felt betrayed when Balbosus sent his men after him... The fact Dark Vlad is the one who killed Balbosus in the end could also imply Goultard lost control at some point before he finally decided to kill him... Much to think about.

Goultard then starts to shift between his different shapes, revealing only now that, all along, Vald (who we thought was dead), was a part of Goultard, or that Goultard and Vald are both part of a whole. He talks briefly about Vlad and Vald having 50% and 5% of his potential strength, respectively. Clustus calls him insane.

Goultard : No, in hindsight... You could have only beaten me in my Vald form.

Clustus : Well, boy... Seems like you have a couple bats in the belfry! Quickly, put me out of my misery, I've had enough of your ravings... (why is he so funny)

Goultard : My... ravings? My ravings, as you say, make my immortality easier to put up with. / Clustus : If you say so!

Goultard HATES being immortal. Being immortal is a curse, unbearable without adapting by developping a dissociative disorder.

Goultard gets bored of talking to Clustus and decides to leave to find something better to do. Clustus realizes Goultard isn't going to kill him after all.

Goultard : Time has already taken its toll on you, Clustus. You're but a shadow of your former self. So don't count on me to give you the warrior's death that you dream of so badly! It's much more cruel to imagine you passing away on your throne like the senile old man you are.

Clustus shouts at Goultard to come back and finish him off. But Goultard is gone.

Volume 6 continues with Goultard's backstory and ends when Goultard finds Arty and offers him to fight. I'll probably make a post comparing Goultard's manga backstory and the animated one.

[sirjuggles]

Worm Reading - Part 7, Arc 7 Buzz

Ok so confession time, last night I got really wrapped up in the story and read up to Arc 10 without taking notes. I’m gonna go back and skim the previous chapters and record some thoughts. I’ll try to keep knowledge of future chapters out as I go.

Hah Taylor has such a crush. Boy ever since Lisa made her actually notice those feelings she has not been able to get that out of her head has she? I wonder what Lisa’s motivation was behind bringing that up? Hoping Taylor’s romantic feelings will encourage her to stick around?

We can actually draw an interesting little analogy from this sparring scene. Taylor is smaller and weaker than Brian, so she has to be very careful in how she approaches him, and given the chance should choose to just wait out of reach until an opening presents itself. When he attacks her, on the other hand, she has no real way to effectively fight back. This is basically the same situation the Undersiders would be in if they officially take over a territory for Coil. They are weaker in combat than most of the other teams in the city, and have only been effective because they can pick and choose their engagements. They have little to no defensive ability.

Oooh some background on Alec. That’s a crummy situation to come out of, definitely abusive and cult-y. We haven’t really seen the depths of depravity that super-powered individuals can get up to yet; Empire 88 and ABBs are scummy, but mostly in sadly common ways.

Honestly feels a little crummy the way the whole group is pressuring Alec to talk about his past. I get why they need to know the level of threat, but some of this just feels like them wanting to hear the juicy details of life around this famously evil person.

I love love love this entire section of Taylor hanging out with Rachel. I’ve made no secret that I’m a fan of Rachel, and this is exactly the sort of interaction she needs to help her make connections with people. It’s been so obvious from the beginning that Rachel relates more to dogs than she does to people, and she needs someone to be blunt but loyal. Someone who will put in the work to show Rachel that they’ll treat her fairly and carry their own weight, and who cares about her without being condescending. This whole section is so satisfying for me.

Taylor’s new suit-of-bugs approach is handy, though even with her bug-affinity powers I gotta admit I don’t think I’d have the stomach to cover myself like that. I wonder if she’ll lean into this angle? I can picture an older Taylor having a really intimidating appearance as being cloaked in bugs almost like Grue is cloaked in darkness. Assuming she grows more powerful over time, could she reach a point of controlling large swarms into large shapes or figures and using that offensively?

Brian and Taylor are totally correct on the dogs being a liability and in a bad/indefensible position. I understand that Rachel wants to run a punk canine rescue program, but she straight-up does not have the resources to keep these dogs safe, and it’s a problem. This is a time where her defensiveness and instinct to insist she’s self-sufficient is a serious liability.

Awwww Rachel gave Taylor dating advice. That’s both funny and subtly sweet. I just want Rachel to have a friend.

And we have the info bomb with all of Empire 88 getting doxed. I’m actually a little bit surprised, from the interlude with Kaiser and Purity I had kinda gotten the impression that their secret identities weren’t that secret. Maybe I read it wrong, or maybe it was the kind of thing that only people in certain circles knew the truth.

And we have now made my point from earlier about the sparring. The Undersiders are very much not equipped for a defensive fight. Going to ground is the right call, though hopefully there won’t be too much collateral damage from people trying to hit them where it hurts.

Ah, it’s Sophia! I was actually wondering when we were going to run into one of Taylor’s schoolmates eventually. This is, unfortunately, basically the worst one of them to come across...

(Future Knowledge for a moment from reading ahead, spoilers for Arc 9) Kind of hilarious how Sophia blatantly checks out Brian when getting on the bus. If she knew that was Grue her reaction would be sooooo different.

Aww yeah! Distraction makeout! Go for it girl! Let the people who tried to tear you down see you flourishing in the life you’re living now! Admittedly it’s not a totally truthful portrayal, but I can appreciate the sentiment.

Jesus H. Christ! Sophia is a psycho! I mean... I guess that shouldn’t come as a surprise after what she’s already done but like... still kinda caught me off guard a little there. I understand why Taylor doesn’t use her powers on Sophia, and objectively it’s probably the correct call, but I don’t think I’d have the self control to resist covering her in wasps after all this craziness.

Ugh god and she lies to the shopkeeper and slips away again. I find most of the villains in this story entertaining, but I gotta admit I really dislike Sophia and Emma. Which, I mean, they’re serving effectively in their story roles but bleh blech gross hate them.

Awwwww Brian with the shootdown! Huh. I really got caught up in the narrative of Taylor having a crush, I didn’t really consider that his answer would be “Oh uh nah.” His answer was relatively straightforward, I don’t think he handled it poorly, but that sort of rejection hurts no matter how well it’s given. Poor Taylor. Just when she was thinking that her future with this group might be nice.

Uh-oh Purity’s snapped. I recognize various powers have their pros and cons, but I do feel like high-powered flying blasters like her are basically untouchable if they decide to fully let loose unless you have an equally powerful flying blaster/shielder.

Hang on someone took her kid? Oh that’s a whole separate issue from this doxxing thing. Wow that strikes me as a super dumb idea on whoever did that.

I don’t have much to say about the fights with Empire 88

Interesting that Grue’s power makes him scentless. Rachel’s dogs mentioned it in the interlude earlier, and Hookwolf said the same. Honestly, basically none of the fights the Undersiders have been in would have been at all feasible if not for Grue’s ability to heavily shape the battlefield and allow them to break contact when needed.

Speaking of power effectiveness, we have seen a number of fights now where Taylor’s bugs are basically ineffective due to the physiology or abilities of her opponents. I know they haven’t had much down time, but long run if she’s going to be a frontline fighter she needs to sit down and strategize some ways to make her bugs more of a threat. Maybe that means getting her hands on more dangerous types of bugs, maybe that means finding a way to have a larger size swarm at hand, maybe that means experimenting with the limits of what she can and can’t control. But with bigger threats, she needs a better plan of action than “sting them and put flies in their face.”

Wow after you just got trounced by the Empire lieutenants, you’re immediately going out to take on the captain? Uhhhhh that’s not a plan, it’s a recipe for disaster.

Oh New Wave is already here and handling the situation! And the Wards! Undersiders, you need to learn to recognize when a fight is Above Your Pay Grade, and this one is! Sit this one out, let the big guns do the work!

Geez this fight got so ugly. I’m gonna skim over this one in the interest of time. I do like the way that Night has specialized in all sorts of ways to blind her opponents and obscure observation. It’s kinda funny to realize that part of Night’s power must basically be a video-game-style Detection Indicator that tells her if she’s being observed or not at all times.

So Tattletale just straight up tells Purity where her kid is. Probably the right move to bring the heat level down, but... what did this whole escapade accomplish? For anyone? I guess Empire 88 leadership got their cover blown, but somehow I don’t see that hurting them that much in the long run unfortunately. I don’t see what Coil or anyone else gained from this.

Interesting to see the inside of Coil’s operation looks like. He truly is a supervillain, complete with a lair and an army of henchmen. There are logistics associated with that which are usually glossed over by superhero media, I’m curious how deep into that this series will go. Will we see his HR people who hire his mercenaries? The cafeteria and showers? The janitorial staff who clean the place?

Oh oh oh! The missing girl! I did catch that when it got dropped in the news story earlier! Oof. Yeah, we are starting to see that, while Coil is a pragmatic villain, he is still a villain. If he was all on the up-and-up and going to only do nice things then he wouldn’t be playing the game they’re all playing.

Oh now this is interesting. Technically what I just said about Coil also goes for the Undersiders, and I think Taylor has been letting herself forget that recently. Taylor is jaded with the heroes, for good reason. But the truth is people who take the Villain title and roll around in the villain turf wars are out there committing crimes and hurting people. Taylor has only done a couple of actual jobs with this crew before everything switched into Villain vs. Villain warfare. But in the long run, if she stuck around, what would they end up doing? Crimes of some sort. That was what the Undersiders did before she came along, and the others had no problems with it. All of her teammates are here because they want to look out for themselves, even at the expense of others. If that wasn’t the case they could go Vigilante like Shadow Stalker, or Rogue like Canary or Parian. They chose a life of crime, and Taylor let her attachment to her friends blind her to that.

This is also a very visceral character moment for Taylor, because she is basically in the shoes of her old teacher Mr. Gladly. She has just seen someone being victimized right in front of her by someone who she is nominally allied with. Is she going to turn around and walk away because it would be too inconvenient for her to step in?

I hope Angelica recovers ok. I care about the puppers very much.

And she chooses to leave. And they choose to stay. At least for now. That sucks, but I think it’s in-character for both sides. But what does she do from here? If she’s staying true to her moral compass, I think the answer is she should try to bust Dinah out of captivity. But honestly I don’t think that’s feasible within her capabilities alone. And the only way she would be able to get support now would be to go turn this info over to one of the hero teams, which A) she doesn’t have much confidence in, for good reason, and B) would be tantamount to declaring war against Coil and her former teammates. I’m not sure Taylor has it in her.

Ooooh Endbringer. Well, I kinda take it that all of this juicy tangled web is about to get sidetracked. Wonder how Danny is handling all of this?

[o-uncle-newt]

I think that the thing is that Sayers a) always has SOME kind of a point if you don't take it too far and b) she's such a good and convincing writer that while you're reading, she can basically convince you of anything just by saying it. I noticed this when reading Unpopular Opinions, her book of essays, which are great but which rely a lot on "I am saying this and making it sound true so it is true, you have to trust my Vibes." And guess what, for a bunch of it I absolutely trusted her Vibes, even after I thought about it for a while with the book closed! She's just a fascinating combination of an incredibly clever and often actually wise person who combined that element of herself with weirdly nostalgically conservative politics. Always SUPER fun. (At some point I need to do my Sayers and the Jews essay but I want to do some reading first.)

The thing with Bunter is that I don't think there's much discrepancy there- the relationship between Wimsey and Bunter where Wimsey treats him somewhat like an equal wouldn't be the same if Bunter didn't already go out of his way to treat him as a superior. Wimsey can make the overtures of semi-equality because he knows that they aren't in equal positions- not in the sense of it being false or rubbing it in, but him also being more sensitive to their class differences because he's aware of them. (Incidentally, I was just reading Clouds of Witness and Wimsey stops Bunter before he can accidentally "forget himself" and insult the Duke's intelligence... as though that would be a step TOO far.) Sayers often returns to this well of "when everyone knows their place in society then everyone is happier," with the corollary being that the place of the aristocracy is to be friendly and condescending (in the non-negative connotation) to the common people and servants in a way that shows that they value them and are looking out for them. In Busman's Honeymoon, she basically has Harriet say this outright and appreciatively about Peter slotting into the role of local squire; and Murder Must Advertise, a book that seriously annoys me as I mentioned earlier, has this scene:

“Well,” said Mr. Smayle, “Tallboy always says that Dumbleton is a public school.” “I daresay it is—in the sense that it has a Board of Governors,” said Ingleby, “but it's nothing to be snobbish about.” “What is, if you come to that?” said Bredon. “Look here, Smayle, if only you people could get it out of your heads that these things matter a damn, you'd be a darn sight happier. You probably got a fifty times better education than I ever did.” Mr. Smayle shook his head. “Oh, no,” he said, “I'm not deceiving myself about that, and I'd give anything to have had the same opportunities as you. There's a difference, and I know there's a difference, and I don't mind admitting it. But what I mean is, some people make you feel it and others don't. I don't feel it when I'm talking to either of you, or to Mr. Armstrong or Mr. Hankin, though you've been to Oxford and Cambridge and all that. Perhaps it's just because you've been to Oxford and Cambridge.” He struggled with the problem, embarrassing the other two men by his wistful eyes. “Look here,” said Miss Meteyard, “I know what you mean. But it's just that these two here never think twice about it. They don't have to. And you don't have to, either. But the minute anybody begins to worry about whether he's as good as the next man, then he starts a sort of uneasy snobbish feeling and makes himself offensive.” “I see,” said Mr. Smayle. “Well, of course, Mr. Hankin doesn't have to try and prove that he's better than me, because he is and we both know it.” “Better isn't the right word, Smayle.” “Well, better educated. You know what I mean.” “Don't worry about it,” said Ingleby. “If I were half as good at my job as you are at yours, I should feel superior to everybody in this tom-fool office.” Mr. Smayle shook his head, but appeared comforted. “I do wish they wouldn't start that kind of thing,” said Ingleby when he had gone, “I don't know what to say to them.” “I thought you were a Socialist, Ingleby,” said Bredon, “it oughtn't to embarrass you.” “So I am a Socialist,” said Ingleby, “but I can't stand this stuff about Old Dumbletonians. If everybody had the same State education, these things wouldn't happen.” “If everybody had the same face,” said Bredon, “there'd be no pretty women.”

To me, this is kind of the summation of Sayers's whole attitude toward class and education as relayed in the books- if you stay where you're meant to be, you're taught the way of dealing with your class and privilege/lack thereof in life, how you're supposed to relate to others, etc. If you socially climb then you end up in uncharted territory where you're a) not meant to be and b) made to feel out of place, which you then end up pushing onto other people, making them feel uncomfortable.

You can kind of see where she and others who look at it so nostalgically like that are coming from- as depicted/essentialized here, part of Wimsey's privilege also meant responsibility for those beneath him, and part of a more "common" person's commonness meant, or should have meant, a sense of security. While MMA goes a lot into anti-consumerism in a way that's hard to deny, in Unpopular Opinions her essays get a lot more into it as a problem in that it destroyed the normal order of work- where instead of having a hundred shoemakers all (apparently) happily making 10 pairs of shoes a day, you have five shoe factory managers and forty-five miserable and overworked employees making two thousand pairs of shoes a day and fifty people without their "proper job." It's a totally different angle on the issue that rings a bit more false when the ideas of both class essentialism and, as you note, bio-essentialism are removed from the picture.

...And of course that's what makes Parker so interesting! On one level, Sayers clearly doesn't believe in an "aristocracy can only marry aristocracy" kind of a thing because Peter marries Harriet- and in fact there's a through line in the books about Gerald and Helen's marriage being a cousin-inbred disaster with Harriet pointing out in Busman's Honeymoon that the injection of common blood into Parker and Mary's marriage made their kids basically normal. So that's not inconsistent. But it's also so interesting that Parker is himself this innately religious, conservative kind of a guy- in many ways more so than Wimsey, who describes him as a "perfect Victorian"- and he himself, in two separate books, is insistent on highlighting the class lines that exist between him and Mary as a barrier between them, with Wimsey essentially having to give him permission to a) have interest and b) later act on it. Though, of course, in the end he actually DOES act because Wimsey suggests that his indecision is making Mary unhappy... so it really is about love and not permission, I suppose!

What's fascinating to me is that at the end of Strong Poison, when Peter is trying to convince Gerald that Parker's suitable for Mary, he makes the point that Parker will climb the ranks and will likely eventually end up with a title/knighted. Obviously, to a degree that's him trying to speak Gerald and Helen's language, where they REALLY care about that kind of thing. But it does I think speak to something else which is that Wimsey and Parker seem to have become friends because Wimsey saw something in Parker and let him in. And I think that your point about Parker kind of earning his way out of the lower/middle class by being not just smart but dedicated and, in his way, intellectual is very solid. It's made clear that he had a decent grammar school education, works to transcend it while also not being pretentious about it, tries to improve his French, reads religious commentaries, is conservative socially... it's like Sayers is drawing a sketch of someone who isn't trying to climb but is trying to be the best of the kind of person who he innately is, while also having the talent to back it up. And THAT is what makes him worthy of Lady Mary. Because, of course, upon marriage she descends to his level in terms of lifestyle and such (even with all that money behind her for their kids later). He's not trying to climb so he's allowed to.

I just re-read Gaudy Night, and it's interesting how it feels very relevant and very dated at the same time. There's so much discussion about a woman's "place" and whether a woman can (or should) still have an intellectual life/job outside her husband if she's married, and it seems like many of the academic women in the story feel on some level that they have to choose one or the other. On the one hand, this debate, again, feels very dated in an era where most women do have jobs regardless of whether they're married or not. On the other hand, women still are frequently expected to put their families before their jobs, while men are usually not; and women are still frequently expected to sacrifice their own careers and interests for the sake of their families, while men are usually not.

The "question" of whether women belong in academia no longer seems to be a question in mainstream culture, but women in academia still don't get the same amount of respect or opportunities as men. And while British and American society no longer demands that unmarried women remain celibate, I think there is still a great deal of discomfort at the idea of women who choose to remain single, and with the idea of voluntary celibacy in general.

It's also interesting that the Senior Members of the college (all women) seem to more or less jump to the conclusion that the college "poltergeist" is expressing some kind of psycho-sexual frustration born of celibacy and academic isolation, when in fact it's someone seeking revenge. It seems like even though these women have been in academia/running the college for decades, they still harbor some insecurity over the legitimacy of their profession and lifestyle.

And then, of course, there are the casual mentions of eugenics and the one woman who thinks execution is wrong and that murderers should be used for scientific experiments instead (because that's more humane somehow??). There's also the instance where one of the porters (who is otherwise very likeable) says that Britain needs "a Hitler" who will put women in their proper place. Interesting times...

Idk, Gaudy Night fascinates me because there's SO MUCH going on in it that even on my second read, I think there's a lot that I'm probably missing. The various philosophical debates in it make me really curious about what Dorothy Sayers' own views were.

[wof-reworked]

wait you mentioned Peril x Sunny earlier I would love to see your thougths about it :0

AN EXCUSE HAS BEEN GIVEN, IT’S TIME >:Dc

the short version is: love me some foils plus look at this quote:

Long version is under the cut:

Sunny and Peril are both dragons who have been shoved into boxes their whole life that they feel like they can’t escape from so they try their best to adapt to it, but that gnawing upset feeling stays in them.  No one doubts Peril is scary (because she is), people give her their attention and consider her a threat, but of course, they don’t consider her a dragon capable of kindness/she’s a “monster”. Vs Sunny, who everyone loves and treats as a friend, but who no one takes seriously or considers capable of anything dangerous.

I also think Peril’s resentment of Sunny is so interesting too !! I forget where it comes up, but there’s this implication that Peril doesn’t like Sunny, presumably because of her proximity to Clay but also... people seem to like Sunny without her even trying. Peril takes a lot of pride in being strong/scary because in part that’s the only way people ever view her, and Sunny, despite being a small, unassuming dragon with no special abilities, builds connections seemingly without trying. And I think Peril defaults to anger when she doesn’t understand emotions so this ends up turning into resentment, but there’s this like. Note of yearning to it. Wanting to be someone who people don’t look at and immediately assume the worst of (you also have Sunny being a very casually physically affectionate dragon and that is something Peril has never been able to do).

I think Sunny is too emphatetic to have the same kind of turmoil as Peril/too aware of how rough Peril has had it, but like. I think it would be interesting if she had a similar dilemma, of sort of wanting to be like Peril, who commands space without trying, whose presence says “get out of the way.” Sunny’s book is basically entirely about how much she wishes people would take her seriously, and even with her being more self-aware I can picture her... daydreaming about it, what it would be like to be seen as intimidating instead of cute. 

And really at the end of the day their personalities just mesh in a way I find enjoyable! Both of them are very curious/inquisitive dragons, both are surprisingly practical, while you don’t see it as much with Sunny, she’s aware of the cold/crueler options, she just personally is a pacifist who doesn’t like hurting other dragons. She’s empathetic, but she’s not dumb like her friends assume. They’re not so opposite they could never work together or get along, I think at their core they’re potentially similar dragons, just molded in different ways and with a difference in empathy. They would honestly make a great detective duo, with both of them being observant/smart but with radically different approaches to most situations. 

 I think Sunny gives Peril a space to be quieter and gentler than she feels safe doing around other dragons, while Peril doesn’t condescend to Sunny and takes everything she says seriously. 

Some assorted headcanons to finish this off:

(these are all taking place in my head after Escaping Peril bc we need that good good Peril Growth)

-tall Peril and short Sunny where Peril ends up looming behind Sunny like a giant terrifying condor while Sunny is like “who wants to make friendship bracelets with me and my gf :D” to a group of students

-Honestly Peril seems to really like hanging out nearby her friends/loved ones so I picture a lot of Peril hanging out near Sunny or walking around w her, Sunny’s funky giant orange shadow.

-I think it’s funny if Sunny is very much like “my girlfriend Peril, the girl I am dating whose name is Peril, my girlfriend who I love <3″ vs Peril whose closest public admission of affection is something along the lines of “Sunny is,,,, fine,,,,,,, I guess,,,,,,,,,,” (she is blushing like it is the end of the world and conveniently not making eye-contact with anyone but shhhh).

-Sunny who loves showing things she finds interesting to other dragons, and Peril who might not always care about what Sunny brings her but is always touched that Sunny thought to show her something.

-Sunny who also finds ways around the firescales to give bits of jewelry and home-made bracelets and earrings to Peril, who loves feeling pretty and will 500% show off her new bling.

-Everyone’s brainstorming how to handle a situation, and Peril suggests a typical Peril-style plan (fire, a little bit of attempted murder, probably crashing through the entrance) and everyone expects Sunny to disagree and she just goes “no I like that, let’s go apeshit”

-Sunny who is way too forgiving and Peril who’s like “ok but give the word if you want them dead. Like I know you said you forgave them and I respect that but also. Tell me if you want them dead.” 

-also just. Peril coming to Sunny for comfort and reassurance that she isn’t a monster and Sunny who encourages Peril to grow and never loses faith in her ability to change and be a better person and at the end of the day Sunny who isn’t afraid of Peril !! Even when Peril is scary and messy, Sunny who never loses sight of the potential for good in Peril. 

-Sunny with an animus-enchanted item that lets her touch Peril and Sunny who is always casually in contact with her, twining tails or brushing wingtips, Sunny who has infinite affection to give and Peril who is so fuckign touch-starved and soaking it in.

-Alternatively, if we want to keep Jerboa’s anti-animus thing, Sunny and Peril who find ways around physical affection, Sunny who’s not afraid to stand close to Peril bc she knows she won’t burn her, Sunny who trusts Peril entirely and Peril who takes that trust to heart and makes sure it isn’t misplaced. 

-I think the idea of them in this situation moving sort of in-sync, Peril leans close to Sunny and Sunny without thinking moves away but it’s in this way that isn’t Sunny trying to avoid Peril but Sunny who’s always aware of where Peril is and like. the two of them just managing to be physically affectionate even if they can’t actually touch. Like how birds will sometimes move together like one entity. 

-Sunny is getting talked over in a meeting and struggling to get people’s attention and Peril just bodies her way into the conversation (potentially literally) going “let Sunny speak.” and not budging until they acknowledge what Sunny has to say.

-I’m just a sucker for ships where character A is used to being talked over and ignored and is saying something smart or hatching a good plan or w/e and clearly expecting character B not to really care or acknowledge it but character B just turns and fixes them with their full attention and is like “Keep talking.” I AM A SIMPLE MAN OK 

-I like to think their relationship starts out because of outside circumstance (i.e. they’re stuck together, maybe on a mission or, potentially funnier, co-teachers) and once they start spending time together it just sort of grows 

-Peril also who’s in absolute denial of her feelings to start with and is actively trying to pretend they aren’t happening which just makes her a bit of a mess around Sunny (who is amused and confused about why this is happening)

-I also think with that,,, Sunny who doesn’t even really think of Peril as being an option bc A) the whole Clay situation and B) why would Peril ever be interested in Sunny. Sunny is acutely aware of how other’s percieve her and her lack of anything notable and assuming Peril feels the same way as everyone else/thinks of her as a little sister at best and a nuisance at worst

-And maybe Peril does originally think of her that way (bc hey everyone else does) but the more time she spends with Sunny the more time she realizes how much Sunny is hiding under the surface and starts to grow this strange respect for her, which unsettles the shit out of Peril who isn’t used to respecting most people, least of all this short weird golden dragon, and we get the Perunny ball rolling >:).

-And y’know. Sunny is also in denial but in a different way, I like aro/ace Sunny but I think specifically I’m leaning towards ace lesbian Sunny who kind of views everyone in the same affectionate light and hasn’t ever consider she could like girls but Peril is sort of making her reconsider 

-She’s very much like “haha I’m not interested in Peril I just like everyone :)” meanwhile going out of her way to hang out with Peril and wanting to impress her and feeling sad when she’s not there.

Anyway I love them so much I just want both of them to be happy and I think they could both make each other happy. 

[littlepadika]

Calling Home (1) | Frankie Morales x Reader

Summary: You are a receptionist at the VA. Frankie Morales keeps calling. Yearning ensues...

Rating: M -> E in later chapters

Warnings: fem!reader, age gap (legal), praise kink, voice kink, discussion of addiction/PTSD/trauma, no use of y/n, no beta reader, reader is bad at Spanish, Frankie has a sexy voice 😩

Masterlist here

AN: My first fic. Pedro writers have inspired me to finally start writing again 🥺. Concept inspired by the movie RED. I hope you like it ❤️Set after triple frontier.

Chapter One

~~~~~~~~~~~

The first time he called was an ordinary Thursday.

“Veterans Affairs, how can I help you?”

You had been working at the VA office for about two weeks. Fresh out of college you felt lucky to have a job in the first place. You went to school to be a writer but your big idea for 'The Next Great American Novel' had yet to present itself. At least here you had access to the most inspiring stories and interesting people. Men and women who had seen more and done more than you probably would in your entire life. You loved talking to clients on the phone. It was weird but something about only being able to hear people’s voices excited you. You would sometimes write little stories in your head about the people you'd talk to, filling in the details that were unknown.

Your desk accessories reflected your love of books and writing. You had your growing collection of books sitting on your desk sandwiched between baby pink bookends. Next to them was a matching desk organizer filled with your favorite sparkly pens and sticky notes. You had decorated the plain cubicle walls with posters of quotes from your favorite books. You also brought your favorite candle from home. Even though you couldn’t light it you still liked to lift it to your nose once and a while and smell it between chapters. When you weren’t on the phone or scanning documents you would read. You finished To Kill A Mockingbird in your first week on the job and were now halfway through Murder on the Orient Express.

You were starting a new chapter when Frankie Morales called the first time.

You picked up the phone on the second ring already mustering your chipper 'customer service' voice. “Veterans affairs.” You stated your name. “How may I help you?”

“H-Hi. My name is Frankie- uh-Francisco Morales." A deep voice answered you. "I’m calling because I have gotten my benefits check yet. It’s been a month. I was hoping you could tell me if it got sent?”

“Okay Mr. Morales." You flipped on the computer. "Let me check. Can you spell your last name for me?”

“M-o-r-a-l-e-s”

“Okay... let's see.” You clicked on his account. You were momentarily distracted by his picture likely taken when he graduated basic if you had to guess based off the uniform. He looked sweet. Sharp nose and strong jaw balanced by kind eyes and a shy smile. You could imagine how age would continue to soften his expression making him even more handsome. The image was a strange juxtaposition to the voice you were hearing on the phone which was much deeper and rougher. His profile said he was special forces. A pilot. The rest of the information was blacked out. Something you were used to seeing on many people's accounts but even his years of service were redacted. He must have been involved in some dangerous stuff, you thought to yourself. The dates that were not redacted were mostly in Latin America. You clicked over to processing requests. “Looks like the check got sent one week ago.” You informed him.

"I'll look again but I haven't seen anything-" It sounded like he was apologizing when clearly it was not his fault.

"No no. It's probably a mistake on our end." You interrupted. With how shitty and outdated the payroll interface was you wouldn't be surprised if there was a mix up. "I’ll go ahead and let payroll know to send another."

"Great. Thanks." He replied sounding relieved. The roughness in his voice gave way to a smooth baritone.

“No problem. I'm sorry for any inconvenience it may have caused. We'll get it sent right away." You hoped he was not relying on this benefit check for anything important. While you could promise you'd fix the problem, the administration was notoriously slow. When he didn't respond you asked, "Is there anything else I can help you with today, Mr. Morales?”

“Uh-no" The roughness back in place. "Thank you." He paused before adding your name onto his thank you which made you smile. People usually never remembered your name.

“Alright. Have a nice day and thank you for your service.” You chirped before hanging up. The smile he put on your face lingered for a few minutes as you returned to your book.

The next time he called was exactly twelve days later.

“Veterans affairs” you answered, your routine greeting cut short as your eyes were still on your book.

“Hi- I’m calling because uh I still haven’t gotten my benefits check. This is Frankie Morales.”

“Oh Mr. Morales.” You recognized his voice even before he even said his name. You quickly shut your book, pushing your hair out of your face. Had you been thinking about him? No! Okay maybe you stared at his picture for a few minutes longer after he hung up. Yes, it was probably very unprofessional but you couldn't fight the curiosity. You were trying to rationalize the contrasting sharpness and softness of his features with his voice. How it all worked together. How one person's voice could change textures and colors so easily. You wondered what kind of things this man might have seen on the job. Most of the veterans you would help day to day did not have so many redacted missions and deployments. You were in the middle of Narcos season one so you immediately thought of drugs or something equally dangerous. After much pondering, you had come to the conclusion that Frankie Morales was both insanely attractive and insanely courageous. “Still no check, huh?”

“Nope.” He sighed the sound making the phone's shitty speaker crackle as you held it to your ear.

“Let me just check that it was approved...“ you found his profile again and scrolled to the status page. “Hmm... it says it was sent out last Friday after we spoke. That’s so weird...”

“Yeah. Really weird.” He echoed your frustration on the other end.

Typical payroll, you thought to yourself as you rolled your eyes. “I'll get another one sent to you right away. I'll see to it myself.” You tucked the phone under your chin and typed out a short email to Mary in payroll letting her know you'd be stopping by her office to explain the situation. You realized he hadn't hung up yet.

“Sorry for the back and forth.” You said, trying to fill the silence.

“It’s not your fault." The earlier irritation gone. "You’ve been really helpful.” His voice sounded warm and reassuring. Less gruff than it was last you spoke. Instead it was that rich baritone that you caught of glimpse of last time.

You feel your face warm at his compliment. It was this annoying reflex you had. Praise always made you blush no matter what context but it was worse when it came from a (you assume) gorgeous stranger.

“And just to verify that your address is correct- you’re on Maple Lane in Miami, Florida?”

“That’s right.” He confirmed.

“Okay. Sent!” You clicked send on the email, which caused the window to close and reveal Frankie’s profile page again. “I was curious-" You spoke before you really made the decision to speak. You didn’t want to overstep but once again your curiosity got the better of you. Honestly, you were just searching for a way to keep him on the phone. The day had been so boring.

“Your profile says you were stationed in Costa Rica.”

“For a bit.” He replied after a moment. He didn’t sound too defensive but there was definitely some tightness in his answer that made you feel bad for asking. Like you were scratching a wound.

“Did you like it? The country I mean.”

“Are you planning a trip?” He sounds a little amused.

“Yeah- well- kind of. It's more a trip in my head right now. I’d like to go there one day. It looks so beautiful.” You sighed closing your eyes trying to imagine the heat on your skin.

“It is." He agrees. "Really humid though.”

“Mm that sounds nice.” You would kill for some warm weather after such a long winter in DC.

“It was too muggy for me at times." He grumbled. "If you do go, stick to the costal areas where it’s more breezy or else you’ll just be sweating the whole time.”

“I don’t mind a little sweat” you shrugged, still thinking of the awful east coast winter you were currently suffering through. The sexual connotation of what you said hit you hard as soon as you heard the statement in its entirety. You felt your face flush again, though the man on the other end would never know.

“I’m learning Spanish!" You announced loudly trying to move the conversation past your awkwardness.

“Wow. Muy impressivo.”

“Si” you replied but after a moment you admit “I don’t really know what you said.”

Frankie laughed loudly on the other end and you couldn’t help but join in, drawing dirty looks from the elderly lady, Donna, working in the cubicle across from you. You ducked your head behind a stack of papers to avoid her glare.

“Fake it till you make it.” He chuckled.

“Maybe you should help me out.” You took on an indigent but still playful tone. “You sound better than duolingo” Your smile widened when he laughed again. His laugh was what you hoped it would be, by all your assumptions from his picture. It was an unencumbered, unburdened, rich sound with only a hit of roughness from the air behind it.

“Tell me you’re not using that dumb app to learn.” he scoffed, saying your name in an almost scolding tone.

“I’m got my thirty day streak today.” You boasted.

“You’ll be a total tourist if you go by duolingo.”

“But the owl is so cute every time I get something right!” You argued your voice taking on a more childish cadence.

“That’s how they trap you, silly girl.” He teased right back. Usually such a condescending nickname would piss you off but something about the affection behind him using it made you feel very differently. You felt warm like you were proud to be silly as long as it made him laugh.

“Then you saved me just in time, Mr. Morales.” You bit your lip. His scoffing and laughter died down on the other end.

“Frankie” He corrects you.

“Frankie…” You repeated it, smiling at how well the nick name suited the voice over the phone. Honest, sincere, and not pretentious at all. Way better than the pompous guys you know with equally stuffy names like “Edward” and “Christopher.”

“So what do you want to know?” Frankie interrupted your thoughts. “Dime”

You started asking him questions in Spanish to the best of your ability. Granted they weren't particularly probing questions. What is your name? What is your favorite color? What is your favorite animal? What's your favorite book? I am reading Gone Girl. He answered them all with patience and amusement, occasionally interrupting you to correct your pronunciation or explain what a word meant. Every time you’d repeat the word back correctly he would say something like “good” or “there you go” or “you got it”. You hated to admit that his kind words and his praise was doing something to you. You didn't even realize you were clenching your legs together unconsciously, almost in anticipation of his next correction or next answer. His low voice so sweet and encouraging against your ear, more tangible when he was speaking Spanish. You just wanted to hear more of it. Would it be this sweet in other situations? Would it get huskier or rougher? If you closed your eyes it was like he was sitting right next to you. It would be all too easy to slip into that daydream and escape the dull office.

Suddenly out of the corner of your drooping eyes you saw a flashing red light on the phone console meaning another caller was waiting.

“Shoot- i’m sorry, Frankie- I have to take this call.” You shot forward in your chair, legs uncrossing.

“Of-Of course. I should let you get back to work.” He sounded a little sad or so you hoped. You felt bad for interrupting him after you both were having so much fun. You wanted to say he could wait on hold but he killed that idea when he said, "I have work too. Technically I'm five minutes past my lunch break."

Your pout turned to a smile. He was spending his precious lunch break with you? Get a grip! you snapped at yourself.

“You’re welcome to call again if you want.” You threw out the offer in a small voice, scared you would be rejected. You peered over the cubicle wall to see if you were still being glared at. Thankfully Donna was away from her desk. Probably out for a smoke. “It’s really boring here and usually no one calls.”

“Maybe I will.” He replied and you could hear the smile behind those words. You felt your heart clench weirdly in your chest like it didn't know how to process the sudden spike in emotions.

“Bye, Frankie.” You beamed.

“Bye”

This time the smile on your face lasted for hours. Frankie’s laugh echoed around in your head, taunting you, sending your mind to the gutter. His voice went from grit to molasses on a dime. You wanted to be the one to bring out those sounds. You wanted to hear his voice bend and stretch and strain as you fucked him. What the hell is wrong with me? you screamed internally. You had never been so depraved and with a stranger no less! You clearly needed to get laid fast because this much yearning would not end well.

Frankie got the second VA check a few days later and this time he didn’t even feel bad about ripping it in half. He was already reaching for the phone to call you.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: Message to be added 💕 no minors please!

[chaeiimimi]

O5 𝓑𝓪𝓫𝔂 𝓟𝓪𝓷𝓲𝓬!

Synopsis: Sakusa Kiyoomi, a young ravishing man, an athlete for the Japanese volleyball team and comes from a very prominent family around Japan. He was perfect, looks, wealth and fame. But you can’t have everything in life, can you? Sakusa, the germophobic athlete, suddenly wakes up one day and sees a baby boy in a basket in front of his door step, in the basket was a letter, a letter from his past lover, saying that the child was his. The panic look on the spiker’s face was almost comical, knowing that his life would turn into a complete 360, that day was his first time ever to miss a volleyball practice and to call Komori to ask for a babysitter. You.

Notice: the only thing I own is the plot, the art and the characters aren't mine and they all belong to their respective owners.

Days turned into months and before you knew it, it has already been three months since you started working as Kaito’s nanny and Sakusa’s house helper, a lot has changed since you came here.

Kaito was already babbling and started rolling and even crawling, his father was always busy with volleyball and the company that the only time he would have for Kaito is the evenings, he would devote his weekdays to volleyball for an upcoming big game next month and his weekends on the company

Sakusa was looking very tired, it was a game against a foreign team and the company was demanding more from him than usual and this has been going on for months

You look at your boss who was focused on his desktop, the bags under his eyes were prominent, there was a huge mountain of forms to fill for the big game and he has yet to finish his work for the company

You took out the sour dough bread you baked earlier and made brewed some coffee, you placed them on a tray and carefully walked over to your boss

You cleared your throat and temporarily set the papers aside as you put the cup of coffee and a bread beside his desktop

He looks up at you and nodded a small “thanks” falling from his lips

You smiled and nodded

You organized the papers on the table and quickly recognized that they were forms needed for the games, it consisted of basic information about the player like, blood type or height

“sir, do you need help?” you asked your boss as you looked at the form

He looks at you, confused, how would you be able to help?

“I did a research on you once, at school, so I know a lot of basic things” you say shyly, in your defense, you didn’t know that months later he was going to be your boss

“are you sure?” he asked, his voice a few octave lower, tiredness evident in it

You nodded silently

He sighed “alright, you can help me fill out the forms, you can ask me the things that you don’t know” he says

You happily walked to your room, took a pen and went back to the table, you sat in front of him as you fill out the forms

You were mind-blown by the amount of forms athletes need to fill for a game

You sat there for hours in silence, and from time to time, you would ask him things you didn’t know or you weren’t sure about

“y/n” he called for you

“yes sir?” you answered, your eyes never leaving the paper

“didn’t you go to college?” he asked you

You were shocked, Sakusa was known to be tight-lipped, stoic and stern, it surprised you that he asked you about something other than Kaito and the house

“yes sir, I did” you said as you continue with your task

“Do you mind telling me why you stopped? If I’m not being too intrusive”

You really haven’t had a private or long conversation with Sakusa before, you were shocked by his eloquence and courteousness when speaking, in your defense he did look and act condescending when you first met him, but hearing how Sakusa spoke now, it reminded you that he was the son of a very prominent and elite family

“I didn’t have enough money for med school sir “you answered him and smiled

“I see…” he says and continues on with his work

“sir?” you called

You’ve been wanting to ask him for a while now, but it seemed to be too awkward to ask him, so now’s the only chance you can ask him

He hums in response

“does your parents know about Kaito?” you asked

He stops typing and looks at you, you were prepared to get a scolding

“now that you mentioned it, I forgot to tell them I have a son now”

Your lips parted in shock

Did this man literally just forget to tell his parents that he has a son? He said it so casually too and started typing in his computer again

“sir? Would they get angry?” you asked

“angry? They’d thank the heavens, they’ve been bugging me about children for a while now”

You nodded, worry still evident in your face, you were still worried about their reaction when they find out about Kaito’s mother abandoning them

“if you’re worried about Nami, don’t, my parents don’t like her, she cheated on me, our family cut ties with hers”

You quietly let out a sigh, there was a number of scenarios floating inside your head

You smiled

“sorry for asking you something very personal sir” you apologized

“it’s fine, I know you’re just looking out for my son” he says eyes on the monitor

“Kaito is a precious child, yet his mother despise him, abandoned him, my heart aches for him, I don’t know what I’ll do if he gets the same treatment from his grandparents” you say, eyes glazed with unshed tears

You quickly rubbed your eyes to get rid of the tears and apologized profusely

“you really liked kids don’t you?” Sakusa says, his eyes now on you

“yeah, I was an adopted kid so yeah” you chuckled

“I did not know that” Sakusa says, his eyes softened

“it doesn’t really matter, I was took in by a family who loved me and took care of me even when they didn’t have much” you smiled and continued on with your work

There was a few minutes of silence between the both of you when he finally spoke up

“hey y/n” he calls

“yes sir?” you asked

“let’s take Kaito to my parents tomorrow”

Taglist: @meri-soni-meri-tamanna @seashellmichellee @tetsuhoes @akaashislovelywife  @strawberryzos  @kuroohoeee @underratedmage @popping-cherries @uwu-iwanttodie @wonhyuksstuff @  @knmsapplepi    @stormcastello @si-m-p

[whatiwillsay]

submission: we need to talk about ttb (spade-riddles)

Hey Cam. Seeing that ask defending TTB’s doxxing has sort of pushed me to finally share some of my story on Tumblr, I guess. I haven’t had the opportunity to talk about this to anyone fully, so this will probably be long, but I hope you don’t mind me venting.

I’m one of the people that got emailed by TTB. I don’t feel comfortable posting this off anon, but I was in a Discord server with you and @bisluthq and some other people back in Dec/Jan. I don’t know if you remember me, but my name on there was one word and began with an L and ended with an S.

I want to share the full story, but I also don’t feel comfortable with sharing certain details publicly because I’m still very wary of getting outed further by her if she sees this, so I’m gonna be vague about some things

Request to her followers — If you see this, please don’t send this to her. Like I’m genuinely asking you not to because I don’t trust her not to cross any more lines. My dad is a major homophobe with serious anger issues who has literally been arrested for violence before, and she doesn’t really think carefully or maybe even care about how any actions she takes could lead to people being harmed, so I’m not eager to see how she might react.

Anyway, I first got an email back in December, and I was really freaked out by it at first. I spoke to one of my mutuals about it, and although we both agreed it was super weird and invasive and creepy, we ended up trying to see the funny side of it. So, I kinda just brushed it off and moved on. I was mainly just really confused about why I had been targeted because at the time, I thought it was only me who’d gotten an email like that. I didn’t understand why she’d specifically targeted me instead of other people who she clearly disliked a lot more.

About a week later, I saw someone on Tumblr mentioning a strange email, and I realised other people must have gotten them too. I spoke to Nat about what happened to me and ended up in the Discord

At the time, I felt like I’d gotten off really easy comparatively to others because I initially didn’t realise that she’d contacted anyone else. And so I tried to act chill about it because I didn’t want to make things about me, but honestly, I was extremely anxious. I felt on edge for over a week. I would keep checking her blog again and again because I was super worried that she would post our personal details publicly. I scrolled through my entire blog from start to finish and deleted a lot of posts that were either personal or that I just didn’t want anyone I knew in real life to read.

This part I have to be vague about because it would basically give away who I am, but it was only a while later when I thought I was in the clear that someone I knew in real life texted me and mentioned seeing a weird email about me. The email had been sent a while back, and they’d been shown it by the original recipient/s. Multiple people had been shown it, but luckily (kinda), only two of those people were actually people I saw on a regular basis

I’m mostly closeted, but I’m kind of technically out to a few of my immediate family members. But it’s very much a DADT situation because they’re not accepting, and they like to just pretend I’m straight. And so I basically have to act closeted even when I’m around them, and I can’t even ALLUDE to being gay.

But with my dad, it’s different. He’s very homophobic. I’m only gonna mention this next part so that people understand what kind of dangerous situation that TTB could have put me in. (And the other people that she doxxed too because she didn’t know how safe their individual situations were). It’s all really personal, and I wouldn’t ordinarily feel comfortable sharing any of this at all, even anonymously, but I think it needs to be said because her actions were extremely fucking irresponsible.

Right, so when I first “came out” to my dad, it was actually an accident, and he reacted… extremely badly. This was back in like… 2018 or 2019, I can’t remember the exact year

(TW // physical abuse, homophobia)

He was extremely angry, literally shaking. He yelled at me, he described in graphic detail how he was going to “break every bone in my body”, “strangle the life out of me”, “drown me”, etc. He kept telling me that I’m disgusting and going to Hell, you get the idea. He was having a lot of fun with making strangling motions and stabbing motions with his hands, and he kept slamming his hand onto the table. That went on for about 15 minutes, and then he stood up and threw a chair from the dining table at me. That was fun lol. And he punched me in the head pretty hard which kinda knocked me back. I felt dizzy, I had to sit down on the floor. At that point, my mum who had been crying and asking him to stop physically intervened, and he ended up storming out of the house instead. My mum’s a genuinely good person btw. She’s a little homophobic, but she cares about me a lot, and I’m very grateful for her. She hates him too, but she’s kinda stuck with him… It wasn’t her fault

He literally hates gay people. He complains about us on the regular. One time, he threw the remote at the TV and cracked the screen just because there was a gay male couple kissing onscreen. Another time, he threw a rock at a gay man on the street. There was also a time where he forced a few of my siblings (who didn’t want to do it) to throw peeled oranges out of the window at people celebrating pride while he drove past them and yelled insults at them. He found that really funny. Anyway, I’m sure you guys get the idea of what kind of person he is

He hasn’t laid a hand on anybody in several months though, so I do think he’s trying to be better at least. Like he’s still verbally abusive and controlling and awful, but I appreciate that he’s at least making an effort to calm down with the hitting and kicking and stuff

Anyway, with my dad, it’s less DADT and more that I think he’s got it in his head that he managed to scare me into “seeing the error of my ways” and that I’ve “stopped choosing to be gay” and that I’m now straight. So, if it had been HIM who had gotten that email, it would’ve been like… extremely bad. Like I’m getting anxious just thinking about it. And this is why I’m so angry at TTB. It was extremely, extremely irresponsible of her to not consider these kinds of possibilities before she sent out her stupid emails. She’s supposed to be an ally, but it didn’t even cross her mind that these emails would lead to people being outed and possibly even harmed?? It’s not okay at all. I’m just very grateful that she didn’t send one to him because I don’t even know what kind of situation I would be in right now.

Anyway, enough about my fucking awful dad… I feel uncomfortable that I even typed all of that out, but I wanted people to understand how dangerous her actions could have been. Like I mean, my dad’s got PTSD and extreme anger issues from his teenage years, so I do try not to judge him TOO harshly, but there’s no excuse for being a huge bigot or occasionally violent. The idea of him being the one who got that email is still so scary to me. Like my heart is racing just thinking about it

One of the people that DID read the email was the male friend I mentioned earlier though. He was shown it by someone else for a particular reason, and he was a very important person to me. Like he was a good guy, we were close, he helped me out with certain personal issues I have and is one of only two people that I know in real life that I felt comfortable confiding in about them. We’d always meet up once a week, sometimes twice, and we’d just talk about stuff and make an effort to help each other out with things. Like he was very important to me.

It turns out that he’d looked through my blog before I’d got around to scrubbing it, and he asked me if I was gay in person the next time we met up. I couldn’t lie because like… he’d have known I was lying right to his face. So, I told him I was, and you should have seen his face. It made me feel so awful about myself. He looked really stunned and shocked and kinda uncomfortable. Like it got so awkward, and I started rambling and making things worse. He was avoiding eye contact, and my voice was shaking.

I ended up making up an excuse to leave about 5 mins later and had an actual anxiety attack. Again, this is embarrassing and something I’d never usually talk about online, but I just want to get it all off my chest so that I can move past it all.

So, I was like on the verge of tears (I don’t cry easily), I couldn’t breathe properly, I was pacing around the building, and I just wanted to escape, so I headed straight for the doors. There was a queue of about 100 people lined up and waiting to leave, and I couldn’t think straight or breathe and just needed to be outside, so I tried to go out through the other exit which is for staff only. The security guard stopped me and basically publicly humiliated me in front of all of those people. He loudly shamed me and said I “didn’t have any decency” for attempted to jump the queue, lectured me in this really condescending tone, and then sent me right to the back of that huge line. Meanwhile, I was literally in the midst of a bad anxiety attack.

And then I eventually got outside and had to call my mum to come and pick me up instead of just making my own way home like I usually do. She’s amazing though tbh because she actually came to get me and didn’t even question why. I had to skip all of my plans for the rest of the day and instead just hid upstairs in my bedroom with the lights off until the next day. I refused to tell any of my family members what had happened even though they kept asking. I just felt so, so awful, and my anxiety was through the roof

To be honest, before that happened, my mindset was like: “I mean, if I get outed, it obviously wouldn’t be good, but I think I’d be able to deal with it fine”. But then, when it actually happened, and I saw the way my close friend reacted, I had like a whole emotional breakdown lol. It’s like, you think you’d be fairly chill in a situation, but when it actually happens, your reaction can be really unpredictable. I was so embarrassed by everything about that entire incident. I didn’t even want to show my face the next day.

It’s been almost two months since that happened, and in that entire time, my friend has contacted me once. We literally used to meet up once or twice a week (and during lockdown, we’d do video calls or phone calls instead), but since then, we’ve barely even spoken. Things are just so awkward now. I know this sounds stupid, but I feel like TTB’s taken one of my best friends away from me. I don’t think he’s a homophobe or anything, he has openly gay friends and is fairly accepting, but I think it’s just the way that he found out that has just made things so weird between us now. I feel like if I’d had the chance to come out to him myself in my own way, he wouldn’t have reacted like that. But I’m gonna text him next week and see if we can maybe try to fix our friendship, but I doubt it at this point

The other people who were shown the email, I mostly just avoid. I don’t really care about them knowing that much because I wasn’t close to them, but it’s just really embarrassing knowing that they probably scrolled through my Tumblr blog before I scrubbed it

And about Tumblr… This used to be the only place that I could fully be myself. It was like a “safe space” for me which feels ironic now. But I haven’t been active on my blog since December. I still lurk occasionally, but I just don’t feel comfortable here anymore. I did consider deleting my current blog and starting afresh with a new one, but I don’t think it’d make much of a difference… Like she’s kind of ruined Tumblr for me. I do still enjoy reading people’s blogs every now and then, but I don’t feel relaxed here anymore, I just feel on edge.

It’s mainly the fact that SHE’S still here. She still has a platform, she still has a bunch of followers. It’s been so hard seeing her face next to no consequences whatsoever for the horrible things that she’s done to so many different people. And it upsets me that she hasn’t even acknowledged that what she did was wrong. Plus, it makes me feel even worse that the Hard Kay blogs and some other people are still supporting her and pretending that this whole thing just didn’t happen. Like do they just not care? Or is it that she’s twisted things and made them believe that the situation was different to what it actually was?

And tbh, this whole situation has even set me back in my own sort of personal self-acceptance journey. I had such bad internalised homophobia when I was younger, and it took me so many years to get to a place where I had mostly accepted myself. But now I just feel ashamed again, and I’ve gone back to my old habit of trying to force myself to be attracted to men. Like I downloaded Tinder the other day and set my preference to men and was swiping through profiles. It’s kinda silly actually. I did snap out of it and delete the app the next day though. But I don’t know, I feel like this whole thing has just kinda fucked with me a bit. I am trying to work this stuff out and get back to normal though. I think I’ll be good again in maybe a month or so, hopefully.

And… yeah. I just really resent her, and this situation upsets me. Because the reason she did this was so petty and ridiculous, and I guess she didn’t even realise how much it would impact people? Like I do know that my situation wasn’t as bad as some of the other people’s situations, and I feel really bad for them, and I hope they’re all doing okay. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for them. But it still has impacted me a lot more than I actually thought it would. I thought I’d get over it within a couple of weeks. But it’s been like two months, and I’m still not completely over it

I know it might not sound like a huge thing, but being outed really does affect you, even if it’s only to a few people. Because to me, I feel like I’ve had my sense of like, security and comfort taken away, and it’s kinda distressing. Sorry if I sound dramatic with any of this, I just really needed to say all of this stuff to other people besides myself lol

Like her actions have literally led to me being outed to a few people. A close friendship that I had has basically been ruined. I don’t feel comfortable or secure on Tumblr anymore, even though it used to be an important outlet for me. I’ve had a resurgence of anxiety about my sexuality. Etc.

And again, my dad is extremely homophobic and literally made death threats to me and physically attacked me back when I accidentally came out to him in 2018 or 2019. And if he had gotten that email, I don’t even know what would have happened. I don’t think he would have like… SERIOUSLY physically harmed me, but there would definitely have been a repeat of the first incident. More throwing chairs at me and hitting and screaming and death threats. I don’t really want to think about it.

It just bothers me that she didn’t even consider that? Like did it not even cross her mind? And my dad is bad, but I’m sure there are people in the fandom who have even worse parents, and she could have got one of those people instead. It’s just so… I don’t know, it’s just so frustrating to me.

Anyway, I just hate her for what she did… Like maybe I shouldn’t, but I really do resent her so much, and I don’t think I could forgive her even if she apologised to us all (which I don’t think she even would because she doesn’t seem to have any decency whatsoever). The least she could do is at least express some kind of remorse, but she just genuinely doesn’t care, and that’s super messed up. All over some stupid Tumblr blog that is much less important than she thinks it is.

But anyway… I apologise for the whole rant, and if anybody read all the way down to here, I appreciate it. I do actually feel a bit better now that I’ve got this all typed out. And I’m sorry for the oversharing lol, I usually don’t do this, but I just felt like I really needed to tell people and get it off my chest so that I can try to get over it — L

submisssion⬆️⬆️⬆️

ok L i am trying to remain calm here because this isn’t about me.  but i am very emotional right now.  i am so so so infinitely sorry that you had to go through this harrowing and terrifying experience.  ttb (now blogging under spade-riddles) is absolutely disgusting, lower than dirt, that she would put your life, safety, and well-being at risk over a fucking kaylor blog.

please please please im me or get in touch somehow because i want to offer you support.  have you been financially impacted by this?  we can raise money.  do you need therapy?  we can help you find the support you need.  this community is unequivocally here for you.  whatever you need, if it’s in my power to help you get it, i will.  you have my solemn promise on that.

i am so deeply and desperately sorry that you have gone through this.  i was shaking while reading your story.

i am in touch with other people and we are in discussion about the best way to let tumblr know what happened.  this will be a safe space for you (and all of us) again if it’s the last thing i do.  this community is 100% here for you in any way we can help, sending you all the support and love we have.

[hopelesshawks]

Are you still taking song drabbles? If you are, then could you do "Monster" by all time low ft blackbear for Dabi? ty <3

I am!! High quality song choice btw 👀

Sorry these are taking me so long but I really hope this one and the others I’ll eventually get to 😬 are worth the wait!

Tw for depiction of a toxic relationship, disassociation, mention of (but no actual) drug addiction, mild sexual content, degradation, mentions of dacryphilia, edging, and overstimulation

“You need to leave him (y/n) this isn’t healthy.”

It’s the same spiel you’ve heard a million times before.

Every time Dabi disappears on you you’re left a mess. And every time your friends are the ones who pick up the pieces of you and put you back together again as best they can. It’s always a long, drawn out process as they force you to do the most basic of tasks like eating and showering. It almost always takes at least a month to get you to a point where you can function in public for even the briefest of moments and every time they reassemble you the end result is always just a little bit more not right. Then after weeks of radio silence he’ll come creeping back and you’ll fall right back into his arms until the cycle repeats itself.

“He’ll call. He always calls eventually,” you refute. The incredulous and exasperated look you get back is as pointless as it is expected. Your friends just don’t get it. What you and Dabi have is special right? Right. Sure he’s been a ghost even longer than usual this time but he’ll call. He will. And then it’ll be alright. And one day soon, once he’s accomplished all his goals, the two of you will runaway together, leaving Japan behind.

Except another month passes

And then another

And then another

Until suddenly it’s been a year with no word and even you have lost hope.

You make your way to your friend’s house in a fog, barely processing the world around you, feeling like your body is merely a puppet you were struggling to yank forward. You’re not even sure you fully remember the journey, just one moment you’re about to cross the main road by your house and the next you’re turning the corner to theirs. They take one look at you before pulling you into a hug and inside the apartment. It’s like the show of affection is the final straw necessary to break your loyalty to Dabi and as you sob into your friend’s arms you decide that for real this time, you’re done. You’re done waiting around for him to call you again, done waiting for him to love you the way you deserve.

So you start to move on.

You lean on your friends, focus more on work and the few healthy relationships you have left, and slowly but surely you put back the pieces of you you thought Dabi had burned to ash. The craziest part? It works. With each passing day you get better, stronger, happier, and your friends beam with pride. You’d think you were a drug addict from the way your friends would talk about you “getting clean” but you can’t find it in yourself to blame them when it feels like Dabi was your own personal brand of heroin.

It’s New Year’s now and you’re giggling in the cab with your friend on your way home from the New Year’s Eve celebration you’d both attended. You feel light and bright from the champagne you’d sipped and the city lights are just a blur outside the window. When you finally do arrive, you slip out of the car, stumbling slightly and still giggling as your friend waves goodbye from where they’re still seated. You turn to walk to your door but your friend calls out to you, drawing your attention back. They’re half leaning out the car’s window, the cab driver looking thoroughly annoyed by now but your friend doesn’t care as they grin at your drowsily. “I’m so fucking proud of you (y/n),” they beam and the smile you give them back is even more radiant than the fireworks you’d watched earlier. As the taxi finally pulls away someone starts setting off another round of fireworks so you redirect your gaze to the sky as you turn back towards your front door. When your eyes slide back down, however, you notice a figure leaning against your front door, illuminated only by the explosions bursting above you. As you take a hesitant step closer your eyes suddenly meet familiar electric blue ones and your blood runs cold. Another firework bursts and in the resultant light you can more clearly see the scars and the condescending smirk.

“Hey Doll, miss me?” Dabi asks, smirk widening.

You’ve imagined this moment in your head quite a few times over the past year of healing. Sometimes you’d imagine yourself screaming at him, cursing him for making you waste years of your life trailing after him, coming up with swears no one had ever heard before just to express your hatred and anger for him. Sometimes, and these had been your favorite scenarios, you imagined yourself being completely indifferent to him, shrugging off his words and respectfully asking him to leave. You liked imagining you were so far removed, so thoroughly over him, that you didn’t even care anymore that he’d returned.

It turns out you do neither of those things.

Instead, without your say so, you find your feet carrying you towards him, slowly at first and then suddenly you’re running. You throw yourself into his arms and as he chuckles the vibrations through his chest and into yours rattle the pieces you’d worked so hard to mend in his absence and send them all shattering again. He is your weakness, your kryptonite, and you are helpless to his innate magnetism. So you let him inside your home and you don’t question why he abandoned you for two years and you don’t yell or scream or dismiss him at all. You let him tug you to your bedroom and treat you as if no time has passed.

He’s balls deep inside you, having just bottomed out, when you start crying. He doesn’t really care, but you’re blubbering unattractively and that’s not the kind of crying he’s looking for right now. He wants tears slipping down your cheeks from how full you feel, from being denied your orgasm when you’re so close, and then again from having too many once he’s decided you’re allowed to cum. He doesn’t want whatever emotional bullshit you’re spewing right now as your hands find his cheeks. Your glassy eyes stare into his and all he can think about is how pathetic you look as you force your sobs down enough to make whatever stupid point you’re trying to.

“Please just…. Tell me that you love me even if it’s fake,” you finally whimper.

He laughs in your face.

“You really are a pathetic little whore,” he continues to chuckle and it fucking hurts but then he’s continuing, “but you’re my pathetic little whore. I love you (y/n).”

And just like that you’re hooked again.

Later that night when he’s finally been sated and you’re curled up on his chest, you can’t help but think about how disappointed your friends would be; how disappointed the you from only a few hours before would be, if they could see you now. You don’t mean to voice your next words out loud but they slip from your lips unbidden just like the tears pouring out of your eyes and wetting your cheeks:

“Why do I run back to you like I don’t mind if you fuck up my life?”

Dabi doesn’t answer.

He just smirks.

General Taglist: @ahtsuwu @oikawaandkuroostan @oliviasslut @black-rose-29

[abirdonalilactree]

First gay ship I watched that actually became canon. (kinda toxic tho-)

Y'all remember the first time you saw your gay ship become canon? I suppose for many of you it was Supernatural. 

For me it was back in 2013 when the series finale of Rules of Engagement came out, which is pretty early if you are talking about gay stuff. Not only did we get a slowburn spanning over several seasons, it also ended in a gay wedding.

In this essay I will talk about why this ship is so important to me and why it also was toxic as feck.

The show is about two couples and their single friend, all at different stages in their relationships, deal with the complications of dating, commitment, and marriage. From season three on, there kinda is a slow burn until season seven ends with the two unmarried couples getting married as well.

What started as a horrible boss messing with his assistant turned into a surprising love story.

 I'm not sure why I came back to this series after so many years in the first place. Some of the jokes are quite offensive so here is a warning for that. But on the other hand, all episodes are up on YouTube for free soo… Right now, in the September of 2021 we have exactly 20 fics on Ao3 by amazing authors. We are a really small fandom. The show ended in 2013 but like three or four people are still here.

Let me introduce the main characters:

The married couple consists of Jeff and Audrey Bingham. Jeff has been a financial manager and husband of Audrey since 1995. He has a rather deadpan, cold and sardonic personality and sense of self, particularly when dealing with Russell and Adam, but he is not sadistic or unkind, thereby rendering these traits as merely ironic and biting humor. He loves sports, shuns anything that might resemble sensitivity and often views his marriage as a competition or war, refusing to let Audrey "win" the upper hand at anything.

Audrey is an editor at Indoor Living magazine before later resigning and the assertive, modern wife of Jeff. She tolerates her husband's insensitivity because she knows he is not malicious and will do whatever it takes to make the situation right once he realizes his mistake. As a couple, they both can be very condescending and manipulative towards each other, in order to gain the upper hand, and typically don't like to concede to the other that they were wrong.

Adam Rhodes, a sensitive and well-meaning, but extremely naive and super extremely stupid, co-worker of Russell and Timmy, and Jennifer's fiancé throughout the series until they are married in the series finale. He is a neighbor of Jeff and Audrey, looks up to Jeff, and often acts on Jeff's relationship advice -This usually results in making the situation worse for himself. Jennifer Morgan is the fiancée and eventual wife of Adam, who endures his faults because of his good looks. She is very self-conscious of him, and will often try to spare him from embarrassment.

Timir "Timmy" Patel was introduced in season 3 and became a season regular from season 4-7. He first appears when Russell hires him as his assistant.  Although he is fluent in seven languages and holds an MBA, Timmy is often forced to do menial work or to solve Russell's trivial problems which often annoys Timmy. While many of Russell's schemes disgust him, Timmy will often see them through so that he can enjoy Russell's deserved penalty. 

Russell Dunbar on the other hand is wealthy, only due to his trust fund, which he uses to impress and seduce women. He is presented as a seedy and sleazy man who only cares about how many women he can get. However, it is shown that he has a softer side. His relationships within the group are seemingly conflicted, many of the group dislike his behaviour and mock him, as they do everyone else, but it seems that he expresses just as much distaste for them as he does not choose to invite them places unless he needs them to. Through Timmy, he is analysed by a psychiatrist to have sociopathic tendencies which explains his destructive behaviour.

He is also self absorbed and immature.

...But the thing is sometimes he isn’t.

While all three relationships show a lot of signs of toxicity, Timmy and Russell’s relationship is certainly the most destructive one. Which is mostly Russell’s fault.

But let me show you.

From a psychological point of view, their relationship ticks most of the boxes of a toxic relationship.

Toxic communication

Instead of treating each other with kindness, most of their conversations are filled with sarcasm, criticism, or overt hostility. Yet sometimes kindness is in fact seeking through.

Jealousy

There is so, so much jealousy going on. Russell really does everything to not allow Timmy to get together with a woman. Although only as the show goes on, it becomes clear that Russell is jealous because he has fallen for Timmy.

Controlling behaviors

Russell is questioning where Timmy is all the time or becoming overly upset when he doesn’t immediately answer texts are both signs of controlling behavior, which can contribute to toxicity in a relationship. And it gets so much worse than that. But more to that later.

Resentment

Yes.

Dishonesty

Yes. ALL the time.

Patterns of disrespect

Being chronically late, casually “forgetting” events, and other behaviors that show disrespect for each other's time are a red flag. This makes it red flag number six. 

Constant stress

A normal amount of tension runs through every relationship, but finding oneself constantly on edge is an indicator that something’s off. Yet another red flag.

This ongoing stress can take a toll on the physical and emotional health of a person. Which is one hundred percent happening.

Ignoring needs

Going along with whatever one partner wants to do, even when it goes against the wishes or comfort level of the other one. From his first episode in the show on, Timmy is forced to do absurd stuff he doesn’t want to do and honestly no one should do for their boss.

Lost relationships

Stopping to spend time with friends and family, either to avoid conflict with a partner or to get around having to explain what’s happening in the relationship.

Hoping for change

One might stay in a relationship because they see the other person’s potential or think that if they just change themselves and their actions, their partner will change as well. And it’s the little moments when Russell shows for only moments the tiniest bit of being a good person that make Timmy stay with him.

Walking on eggshells

One worries that by bringing up problems, they’ll provoke extreme tension, so they become conflict avoidant and keep any issues to themselves.

Lack of support however is arguably not always one of their problems. But we’ll come back to that.

And still, they share their sweet moments.

The following clip, made by CBS itself shows really well how it is for them to work with each other.

https://youtu.be/GfPI3HgMYoI

And then there is character development. Here the group of friends talks about Jeff lying to his wife about another friends bachelor party because he doesn’t want to spend time with her aunt.

https://youtu.be/LQPIFcrBltQ

Russell doesn't want to get married, clearly. This clip also conveys pretty well how horrible those people are. 

There is this tension and the gay jokes. This clip also shows really well how manipulative Russell -tries- to be.

https://youtu.be/XkdycXzX4ag

And then there are moments like these: In season 6 Timmy wanted to impress a woman who only wants to date singers so Russell teaches him how to play the guitar with the ulterior motive of Timmy embarrassing himself in front of the whole company. This idea backfires when Russell realises that he can’t watch Timmy suffer like that and he joins on stage and they start this duet that’s like super gay.

https://youtu.be/UH3P_LfBBQo

To be with you by Mr Big is an interesting choice of song. -Not only because it’s quite romantic but also because the lyrics seem to be surprisingly fitting at second glance.

Let’s analyze it because Music is an important aspect.

“One of the great unrequited love songs, "To Be With You" has a true story behind it. Mr. Big lead singer Eric Martin wrote the song when he was still a teenager - 16 or 17 in his estimation. The girl was Patricia Reynolds, and he had it bad for her.

"We were really, really good friends," Martin said in a Songfacts interview. "I was totally enamored with this woman. She was beautiful. Smart. I mean, brains, beauty, break down the walls, made me crawl on my belly like a reptile!

I just loved this woman, but she just wanted to be my friend. She'd have tons of boyfriends, and maybe she misconstrued promiscuity for love. But I wanted to be the knight in shining armor. That's what I was, a knight in shining armor. But basically, I didn't get my feet wet. I wrote it about how I would have done anything to just be more than a friend and a confidante."”

-https://www.songfacts.com/facts/mr-big/to-be-with-you

So much to the history of the song. Do you see the parallels? Do you see them? Do you?

Anyway. When Russell joins Timmy on the stage, he starts with the lines:

Build up your confidence

So you can be on top for once

Wake up, who cares about

Little boys that talk too much

I think this has to be taken literally. Not sure how much I should go into detail here. 

This however brings us back to the point of support from our list earlier.

I've seen it all go down

The game of love was all rained out

So come on baby, come on over

Let me be the one to hold you

I'm the one who wants to be with you (I'm the one, yeah)

Deep inside I hope you feel it too (feel it too)

Waited on a line of greens and blues (waited on a line yeah)

Just to be the next to be with you

That’s kinda Gay.

There are jokes all over the seasons that Timmy and Russell are gay but it becomes most clear that Russell is in love with Timmy, in the last season, when Timmy leaves to go on vacation and Russell misses him so much that he gets a girlfriend and turns her into a copy of Timmy.

Things get worse when Timmy finds out that Russell completely lost his marbles and chipped him to always know his whereabouts. This finally makes Timmy leave the company and get a new job where he finally gets treated with respect. It is shown how they miss each other despite everything. But then Timmy loses his work Visa which turns out to be completely Russell’s fault.

Right after Jenn and Adam marry in the last episode, Russell proposes to Timmy so he can stay in America but it becomes clear that there is more than his conscience that made him do this.

Russell turning his girlfriend into Timmy. (There is no heterosexual explanation for this):

https://youtu.be/sX1xTybc6vI

Timmy finding out how much Russell really stalks him. (like. he is totally in love with him):

https://youtu.be/jPWKdwpXCLU

Their Wedding (seems pretty gay to me):

https://youtu.be/Ymp-zaTmnD8

 You need to see the whole show as it is. A bunch of horrible people that are made fun of.

Furthermore you could argue that they don’t actually kiss. But maybe marriage is even more meaningful. 

I suppose that since we get so little representation, we like to clasp onto everything we can get. Because when I watched this I was too young to understand how offensive the shit they talk about really is. But after all it meant a lot to my gay little heart.

So many years later I gotta say that it needs to be said that it’s a toxic relationship after all. Don’t try it at home. Don’t try it with your boss or assisstant.

In the end it’s a green card marriage. But there is this whole arch of Russell falling in love with Timmy. Most clearly in the last three episodes but also starting a lot earlier. It’s a slow burn after all. It’s never said out loud but we got two bisexual characters right there.

Now I’m asking around my friends what their first gay ship was that became canon. The results really show that we don’t get enough representation in series. Just wow.

Hannigram became canon. kinda. They jumped off a cliff together instead of kissing. That one dude from supernatural you guys keep talking about got sent to super gay hell after confessing.

What I want to say is I just wanna see a healthy gay ship become canon some day.

Thanks for reading!

...So what was your first gay ship that became canon? 

[eolewyn1010]

Warning: This is a rant.

So, there’s someone in the Charité fandom with a few, eh, interesting(?) ships. Namely, Anni/de Crinis as a romantic ship or, more recently, Anni/Christel. Which, whatever. I don’t shit on your ship, you leave my boats alone and all that; I guess the person in question is just into villain/protagonist ships. You do you. But I do have an opinion and I’m gonna elaborate on it now. (It’s a history- and canon-oriented breakdown; feel free to ignore.)

First of all, Max de Crinis was a Nazi. I’m not sure inhowfar the person in question is aware of that because they only ever seem to be talking about the character de Crinis in the Charité show (more on that later) and I don’t think they’re German; thus they might not have the cultural background to take this with the same queasy feeling I do, but yes, we’re talking a real-life Nazi who gave his expert reports on which people were to be “sorted out” in Aktion T4. Meaning, he actively participated in the mass murder of disabled people, adults and children alike. And no one can tell me he didn’t know what he was having part in. That man was influencial, way up in the hierarchy. He lived the superiority ideology of the Nazis, he preached it. We are shown that in the series. We hear the way he talks about people, about the Dohnanyis, about a traumatized woman who thinks she has lost her child, about homosexuals, and I think it’s not far-off from what we know of historical de Crinis. He was a monster, responsible for the deaths of hundreds or thousands and not sorry about it. He’s not shown as a redeemable antagonist in the series, and I don’t see him at all with Anni, a character who is very much shown to be redeemable. Anni is passive and complacent, which is another category of bad, but she is, to some degree, unaware. It is at least partially a willful unawareness, admittedly, but she is young enough to have been raised unaware. And once she overcomes this, she realizes that what happens around her, what her highly adored mentor preaches and practices, is nothing she can morally justify. That’s when her redemption begins. With her breaking down crying eventually as she can’t cling to her worldview anymore, we know it’s a painful process, and it’s supposed to be.

De Crinis is at no point unaware. He is a Nazi, and we’re never shown at any time that he wants to change that. We’re never shown him in pain, up until it’s about his own life. Because there was never any indication for that in the historical person and this is a historical show.

Secondly, the character we are shown in the series. He’s married, y’know? Admittedly, his wife is extremely non-present, showing up only to die by his side, but it’s one of the things that make de Crinis behave in that condescending mentorly way toward Anni instead of being actually flirty with her. So, the ship would have to do away with the wife. Then, it’d have to away with Artur because - oh, right, Anni already has an irredeemable Nazi asshole she’s married to. From what we’re shown, she and Artur are very much in love initially. It’s not an easy separation for her. Easiest solution? Make them both single from the get-go, I guess, have de Crinis be Karin’s father; he’d conveniently be protective of his own child and stuff... and wind up as Artur, basically. Who’s all, “yeah, other people’s children, but not mine, of course”. To overcome that, de Crinis would have to realize that all human life has inherent value. Which means, he’d have to renounce his work, his loyalty to the Nazi realm, everything his life and ego consists of. All the things he’s built his reputation on, might I note. There are others who watch him. He’d be dead in no time. And if we say he was like that from the get-go, then he never gets into a position of power in the first place. Scientist? Even several of his contemporaries thought his work was worthless. (We’re shown that in series-canon, too, with Sauerbruch and Jung grinning at his self-adulation.) His hostility with the Dohnanyis / Bonhoeffers? Wouldn’t be there; he’d be fighting for their cause. His psychological torture and persecution of Martin and Otto? Why would he hunt down homosexuals if he had internalized that all human life has value and Nazi ideology is wrong?

There would be nothing left of his character. What point is there in shipping Anni with de Crinis when the latter isn’t de Crinis anymore? Just make a new character then? 

Third, his points of redemption potential? ...there are none. His favorism of Anni? Based on her being a good little sheep who looks up at him with her wide, Aryan eyes and admires him. His soft spot for kids, shown in his disgust with Magda Goebbels’ planned murder of her children? He’s appalled that the virtuous paragon of the Nazi model family is shredding yet another bit of his pretty, pretty worldview; that’s all. He doesn’t give a shit about children. He doesn’t try to stop her or talk her out if it. He tells her where she can get poison to go through with it. When Anni mentions that “Karin has been evacuated”, he doesn’t even blink. And he knows what “evacuating” means for a disabled child. He doesn’t care. He has the point of view of Nurse Käthe, of Prof. Bessau: That child’s no good; make new ones. His taking flight, knowing that he has committed crimes he will be prosecuted for? Yeah - but he doesn’t seem to suffer from it. When Anni acknowledges herself as guilty, she breaks down and lashes out, realizing what she might have been and was capable of. De Crinis? Takes flight. He’s not a bit shaken, not a bit surprised by what he has been up to. He has always known that what he participated in is wrong; he just didn’t care so long as there were no consequences for him personally. The one and only thing that made de Crinis watch-worthy in the series is that Lukas Miko is a damn fine actor who gives one hell of a chilling performance. That doesn’t make his character any less of a piece of shit, nor does it diminish my urge to go take a shower after the de Crinis scenes. I wouldn’t mind watching Miko play a de Crinis anthithesis, but that definitely wouldn’t be de Crinis.

To make this ship work, there are exactly two possibilities: Give up all of de Crinis’ character - or roll with him being the evil bastard that he is and that we are shown he is, and give up all of Anni’s character. That’s it. Just... don’t act like there’s canonically anything good about de Crinis.

Same goes for the Anni/Christel ship, btw. “Everything is the same, but Christel is not in love with Otto but with Anni”. That... means nothing is the same. It means everything changes thoroughly. Christel was always the only real threat for Otto and Martin - if she isn’t, there’s not much for them to fear in their own ranks. They’re careful; they wouldn’t have been found out without a denunciation. Means, they don’t get arrested, Otto doesn’t have to save Martin, Otto goes out to war, Otto dies before the war is over because those last months of battling were desperate and ugly (even more so than the earlier, I mean). So, we’d get a new gay at the cost of killing another? Eh. A Nazi accepting homosexuality, coming to terms with herself as an adversary of her own creeds and abandoning Nazi ideology to Do The Right Thing is not “missing dramatic content”, either. It’s Anni’s arc. And it’s a character arc that Christel, with the way she’s written, with “too much compassion is a sign of weakness”, is not capable of.

The scenario doesn’t only include Christel accepting herself as a lesbian; it also includes her helping Anni with Karin. Which brings us back to the same problem as with de Crinis: She’d have to abandon everything she’s convinced of. Accept the value of all human life. And I think her definition of a “worthy life” is even narrower than that of de Crinis; that’s why he recruits her in the first place: Because Christel is a very passionate Nazi. Much more so than de Crinis. She has a backbone, he’s an opportunistic chickenshit. He takes flight. She fights. To the very last second, she clings to her idea of the Nazi realm. When she breaks down, it isn’t for realizing that what she believes in is wrong; it is because what she believes in is lost. That’s one of the things that make me be more shaken with her than with de Crinis, even more in awe of Frida-Lovisa Hamann than of Lukas Miko: Christel never knows that she’s in the wrong. Like Anni, she’s young enough to have been raised unaware, and different than Anni, she very decidedly declines the chance to break out of this. If she’d been brought to court for her deeds, she wouldn’t have been able to defend herself, and she wouldn’t have denied anything, because in her worldview, she never did anything wrong. Realizing that would be, again, an extremely painful process and, again, it wouldn’t leave anything of her character. Why would she go on a date with Otto and propose to him? Why would she tattle on little Emil? On Hans von Dohnanyi? On Martin? Why would she be in conflict with the Sauerbruchs? Why would she lead Volkssturm kids into the hospital if she wants to protect Anni? Why are there any conflicts at all instead of all of the Charité staff being morally upright and good and a united front against the Nazis?

They aren’t. There’s a story being told, and if they’d change out these chilling, well-written antagonists for lukewarm knock-off protagonists, they’d have to make up new antagonists to make any of the story work. It’s a historical series, dealing with living amidst Nazis; inside this framework, the characters won’t function as theirselves if their core values are flipped.

Conclusion? There’s only one legit ship in there, and it’s de Crinis/Christel. I can totally see that; it’d leave both their characters intact. He could rush back to tragically die by her side - BAM, there you’ve got your Nazi-apologetic drama. Or make it Magda Goebbels/Christel, if one wants to go for psycho lesbians. Personally, I don’t care much for finding a happy end for obvious Nazis that were written as Nazis and have absolutely nothing that would turn them away from being Nazis. And I don’t see Anni being either’s romantic partner. Why on earth would she want to? Isn’t Artur punishment enough?

[caloroso-cosmos]

Hi Autumn☺️💖 I just had a little idea for an AU for you and Jonathan. How about a Scientist AU? I mean Jonathan is more or less a scientist. But instead of a psychiatrist, he's now a botanist who studies the effects of certain plants - especially the fear inducing effects. He regularly travels to remote parts of the world and he takes you, his eager lab assistant, with him.

I don't know if that makes sense😅 Feel free to delete my ask, this was just something that randomly popped into my head. Anyway. Sending you and your darling Jonathan lots of love🥺❤️❤️

Hello Sue!! 💕 It's lovely to hear from you, thank you for sending in this AU idea 😊 The idea you suggested is pretty unique - how did you think of it, I wonder? I'd love to know (whether in a comment to this post or DM)!! To be fair (and you might have surmised this already), my self shipping writings incorporate fairly light material from canon and sometimes they don't even touch on material from canon at all. When considering your suggested AU idea, I found it difficult to bring canon material in (and it probably doesn't help that I haven't watched the films or read up on him in a while) 😅 (more under the cut...)

Having said all that, and having considered the suggestion for about a week, I sat down to write the headcanons...only to discover that I found it quite challenging to come up with detailed headcanons because I got stuck on technicalities. But it's not like I had zero ideas/inklings so here are some headcanons but they're more like 'sketches' and don't even attempt to answer to the technicalities. I hope this is okay with you, Sue? 😅

Without further ado, here are the headcanons:

TW: mentions of anxiety and not eating well near the end

First, let's establish that this version probably took place before Jonathan Crane decided to work with Ra's al Ghul to bring fear and terror to Gotham City

And I actually first met him when he's already involved with Ra's al Ghul and so on so for the sake of this version, let's just pretend I met him earlier than that and have been in a relationship with him for some time (because if not, he wouldn't have asked me to go with him on his travels - that's just the type of person he is)

I think Jonathan actually enjoys sharing his knowledge so when he collects samples of the plants, he'll be almost giving me a one-on-one lecture on the plants such as "look at its leaves, they have these features....which are...." and so on (details are omitted because I know nothing about botany 😅)

He gives these 'lectures' in an endearing one in my opinion. Like there's literally nothing condescending about the way he shares his knowledge of the plants with me, all that's coming through is his passion

You can bet that whenever he says "look here at this...", I have a tendency to get distracted at staring at his hands, noticing the peculiarities in his movements like the way he gestures with his hands, how he handles the plants etc. Not because there's anything weird about his movements...you know how every individual has their own unique way of moving like walking, gesturing? It's basically me wanting to know him better by observing and taking note of his own unique way of moving

Oh and I can't possibly omit the fact that I'm pretty much just admiring him/his hands too. I mean I already observed him even before his travels and admired him but every time it's like I'm rediscovering it all again...

"...did he just trace the outline of the leaf with his finger like that, so sure yet so careful...breathtaking......oh wait, I gotta tune back into what he's saying about the leaf..."

Jonathan can read me like a book (you might have read this somewhere on my blog already) so he knows when I get distracted but he's gracious enough not to point that out. Plus, nobody in his life ever admired him the way I do so he's probably just savouring the feeling of being admired

Secretly, he's also kind of admiring me in a similar way...? Like when I'm writing down the measurements and stuff for him, he'll just, be wondering why he hasn't spontaneously combusted with how much love he feels for me in that moment?

The feeling of even though I'm on a strange land and pretty much everything is unfamiliar, being with him feels like home

Travelling unsettles my stomach (actually it's the anxiety that's the problem) so I tend to not be able to eat much/enough when that happens

So I really appreciate it that Jonathan doesn't ever try to get me to eat more and say things like "just one more bite, dear" which doesn't help at all and is a sure way to make me become even more anxious (I'm not going to go into the why and how because it would be too long)

Instead, he packs bite-sized snacks so if I get hungry later, I can eat those. And he lets me eat a few bites of his food without me ordering my own meal if that's what I feel like, without questioning me or making me feel guilty about it. He's just so calm and understanding about it that by the end of our travels, I'll be pretty much eating normally again because I don't feel so much anxiety anymore

And I'll give him massages to release his muscle tension from working. Actually, at the start it'll just be an offer because he's so used to being independent and not caring about this. But all that disappears when he got a particularly bad case of shoulder/back pain and I actually helped with that

...our fingers clasped together loosely, tenderly as we board the ship/plane one last time to return home...

This ran longer than I expected. Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed reading!! Thank you again for suggesting this idea 😊 I hope you and J are well ❤️❤️ Sending good thoughts and much love your way 💖💖

[gffa]

I’ve been thinking about Qui-Gon a lot lately (through various things like creator commentary, some fic that managed to make me really adore him, fandom reactions, my eternally conflicted M&A feelings, etc.) and honestly I keep coming back to how we have so little of the character that almost anything anyone says on him is pretty much pure projection.  You can say some nice things about him in TPM, but you can also say some less than flattering things about him in TPM. Like, the idea that Qui-Gon shows more compassion than Obi-Wan for calling Jar Jar a “pathetic creature”?  This is the same guy who said, “The ability to speak does not make one intelligent.” and was condescending right to Jar Jar’s face.  No, Qui-Gon was not kinder to him than Obi-Wan was.  (And the “pathetic lifeform” thing is clearly not serious, imo.  Especially considering, in The Clone Wars, it’s Obi-Wan who is shown to be the one who does things like making a special effort to avoid the attacking creatures on Ryloth.)

You know who else wasn’t kind to Jar Jar?  Padme makes her disdain for him BLATANTLY clear, right to his face, on Rodia.  But that never seems to comeup, either because it’s TCW or because she’s not a Jedi.  It’s a thing that a lot of characters do, including on TCW. You know who is pretty damn nice to Jar Jar, though?  Mace Windu.  He’s obviously annoyed at some points, but he treats Jar Jar with respect and kindness, far more than Qui-Gon ever did. And Qui-Gon as the most compassionate Jedi?  Again, no, because what he did to Obi-Wan in the Council Chamber wasn’t cruel, but it was really uncaring of how that would affect Obi-Wan.  It was focused entirely on Anakin, like Anakin was the only person who mattered.  His kindness to Anakin was very sweet!  But he was kind of a dick to Obi-Wan, even if I think that Obi-Wan understood why and wasn’t that hurt by it and Qui-Gon trusted that. Then you have M&A where Qui-Gon never really talks to Obi-Wan.  He thinks all these things about Obi-Wan, but never actually says them.  And when Obi-Wan questions him, Qui-Gon gets real defensive and snippy.  And that’s setting aside that he had a chance to actually help shape the Jedi in the ways he thought would be better and then he said no after the Jedi Council specifically asked him to be part of it because he had different opinions.  That’s part of the book, that’s canon. He’s not a bad person!  He cares very much.  I think Obi-Wan understood why Qui-Gon did what he did.  But we really don’t see much of who he is beyond the movie and M&A and neither of them ever show us Qui-Gon being particularly compassionate or caring above and beyond what you can find Obi-Wan or Yoda or Mace or any of the other Jedi doing. And, as much as this was inspired by Dave’s comments, I’m actually really :/ about his whole thing about how Anakin not having a dad was a “failing” as if nuclear families are the only kind of love that are important, as if a supportive, caring community means nothing.  As if we don’t see Jedi taking care with their younglings.  As if children without father figures are incomplete somehow? Like, I usually love Dave, but everything he said about TPM only works on the surface and pretty much everything he says is contradicted by the movie itself or George’s commentary–like George has specifically said if Anakin had been found by the Jedi earlier, he would have been fine, that’s not “only Qui-Gon could have kept him from falling”. I get wanting to defend the prequels and their place in the story and their connection to the themes, but I really disagree with his entire take on that movie, based on the content of the movie (Qui-Gon being a dick to Jar Jar, to Obi-Wan, etc.) and George’s commentary on the movies. Again, Qui-Gon is not a bad character, but he’s a very blank character, you can project pretty much whatever you want onto him, that’s what’s so frustrating, because there’s just not enough either way, and what little we have in canon really contradicts that whole theory. ETA: Okay, I’m going to add some George Lucas quotes to this to better show what I mean, because this was originally meant to be just an informal thing but I think it would help to be a little more serious about it: Qui-Gon Jinn commentary from The Phantom Menace: “So here we’re having Qui-Gon wanting to skip the early training and jump right to taking him on as his Padawan learner, which is controversial, and ultimately, the source of much of the problems that develop later on.”  –George Lucas, The Phantom Menace commentary That… is really not what Dave said about Qui-Gon. “The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through [Anakin’s] life and that he can’t hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he’d have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them.”  –George Lucas, Attack of the Clones commentary Basically, if Anakin had been found earlier, he would have been fine, he would have been trained to love people, as per George Lucas’ words.  Ie, YES THE JEDI DO LOVE PEOPLE. The only time I’ve seen George talk about Anakin’s fate is when it’s specifically about Anakin’s choice in it, not outside influences making choices for him: “It’s fear of losing somebody he loves, which is the flipside of greed.  Greed, in terms of the Emperor, it’s the greed for power, absolute power, over everything. With Anakin, really it’s the power to save the one he loves, but it’s basically going against the Fates and what is natural.“ –George Lucas, Revenge of the Sith commentary Because Star Wars is about choice just as much as it’s about family.  And that family shouldn’t have to be a nuclear family to have a loving, supportive community.  As if Plo Koon didn’t love and support Ahsoka.  As if we don’t see Obi-Wan reaching out to Anakin over and over again in care, concern, and support, in the movies, in The Clone Wars, in the comics, in the novels, etc.  As if we didn’t see a whole gaggle of Jedi ready to jump up and teach Ahsoka because they cared about her.  As if we didn’t see Jedi after Jedi after Jedi sacrificing themselves in Order 66 to save their Padawans. Dave Filoni, you read Kanan: The Last Padawan where Depa sacrifices her life for Caleb or watch the Order 66 scene in Jedi: Fallen Order where Jaro Tapal sacrifices himself for Cal AND YOU TRY TO TELL ME JEDI DIDN’T LOVE.

[cloudykaii]

Care

pairing: bts x eighth member!reader [platonic]

summary:  omg i just real some of your eight member scenarios and eveerything was so good!! i wasnt into eight member things before but now.. im super in! 😭 can you do a scenario about compilation of the members little caring act on stage, backstage, when theres camera or not, something like that to the eight members?? if you make it then i would be so delighted. than you !!

warnings: none, it’s just really fluff :( some of it might not make sense, but i really love this

A lot of things could be said about your brothers. Each and every one of them had their moments and mistakes, just like you did. Some people would call them rude, or selfish amongst other things, but the one thing they could never say, is that they didn’t care about you. ARMY pointed it out all the time; they even had compilations of moments the eight of you cared for each other, but your favorite were the ones titled things like: “six minutes of proof that bts’ world revolves around y/n.”

Jin jumped as your head fell against his bicep. You were at an afterparty for an awards show the eight of you had been asked to present at. The music wasn’t too loud- you used to joke that it was because everyone knew rich people liked to brag. You had no idea where the rest of your brothers were but you and Jin had been perched on the oddly comfortable sofa as he socialized. He could feel your hairpins digging into his shoulder. 

“Y/N, are you okay?” You didn’t answer and he moved slightly so that he could reach across and tap your arm, but you moved with him. He felt your even breathing and sighed. You still had around two hours left before they could leave. 

One of the girls he had been talking to chuckled as you gave a tiny shiver in your sleep. “She must be tired.”

He smiled at her before slipping off his blazer to cover you with it. “She works hard, sometimes I think she works harder than the rest of us,” he chuckled, pulling you closer so that he could make sure she was comfortable. 

No one knows how a fan account had that video trending on twitter under the hashtag #BabyY/N three days later. 

✦✧✦✧

One bad thing about being the only girl in an idol group, is that sometimes you get the least amount of consideration. Not because they didn’t respect you or anything like that, it’s just that after styling for seven boys, you think sometimes the staff tends to forget you are not a guy, or maybe they had never seen a girl in real life.

Or at least that’s what the short dress you were wearing had you feeling like. It’s not like it wasn’t pretty, a black skirt and connected by a thin, white lacy strip that wrapped around your abdomen. It was gorgeous, and the silky ribbon of a choker around your neck made it look even better, but it was just.. so short. 

You powered through like a trooper, despite the fear in the back of your mind that you were flashing the entire audience while you danced. The minute the song stopped and everyone moved to get a drink of water, Yoongi was taking his jacket off and tying it around your waist. 

Not speaking into the mic, you let him do as he wanted but asked, “Are you even allowed to do that? Won’t the stylist say something about how you ruined her outfit?”

Tightening the knot of material, he rolled his eyes. “Honestly, I don’t give a fuck what the stylist has to say right now. Not only is your outfit not okay, but it’s obviously making you uncomfortable. You can wear this until the next outfit change.”

“Thank you,” you hugged him briefly, glad he had your back. 

✦✧✦✧

There was a time where you guys were recording a live during a long break while at practice. Fans talked about it for ages afterwards. Taehyung sat against one of the mirrors, holding his phone, while Jimin was in the picture beside him. 

“Basically, that’s it. We haven’t really-”

“Y/N, stop running around, you’re going to hurt yourself!” Jimin’s voice cut in, making the other man look over. 

“What is she doing?”

Jimin huffed, “I have no idea, but she’s going to- Y/N, at least t- no actually come here, I’ll do it for you.”

And when you bounced into the view of the camera, only for all the fans to see Jimin pulling your foot to him so he could tie your shoe. “Be careful this time, even if you’re playing tag.”

✦✧✦✧ 

Jeongguk laughed at the camera, the comments being ridiculous. He was doing a live, answering questions about the embarrassing moments he chose to talk about. “No, it was funny! He fell, but then he tried to play it off by doing pushups, but he feel while trying to do that, so-”

He heard the door open in the background, and the camera saw him turn to the side just before he let out an “oomf.” The side profile of your face was visible to the viewers as you moved to curl against him on the bed. You rubbed your eyes sleepily, and he frowned. “It’s really late, you’re supposed to be asleep.”

You mumbled, “I was, but then I got scared and woke up. I didn’t want to be alone.” He pouted at that. You tended to have nightmares whenever you were stressed, and since he was the one who found out about them first, he was usually the person you ran to. 

“Do you wanna sleep in here?” He asked softly. Everyone tuned in could hear everything, but your brother barely remembered that he was even recording as he fussed over you. You nodded, already drifting off on his shoulder. He smiled down at you before turning back to the camera. He read the many comments of everyone cooing over you. “Yeah, she’s alright. I’ll tell her to tell you guys herself tomorrow. Anyways..” 

✦✧✦✧

Of course, there were incidents that were more serious. 

The sun was setting, which made the perfect picture for the shoot you guys were about to do. The rooftop everyone was on was beautiful and stone, the kind of background you saw in movies. The sun seemed to glitter, and the wind made everything sway until the lake’s seemingly glittering waves caught your eye. “Whoa,” you gasped, moving closer to get a look.

“Y/N-”

You waved off Taehyung’s warning. “I’ll be careful! I just want to get a closer look!” You walked back over to the edge, admiring the way the sun sparkled on the water. You subconsciously leaned closer, moving your body a little too far against the thin railing, but before you could topple over, a hand grabbed the back of your jacket with a tight grip, yanking you back until you were a good distance away from the railing. 

Your back hit someone else’s and you recognized Taehyung as you turned to see him. He stared down at you. “I said be careful!” 

“I’m sorry,” you said a little shakily. Taehyung sighed before pulling you back into a hug. “Having a little sister is so hard, you’re not leaving my sight for the rest of the day.”

✦✧✦✧

Another moment fans loved to talk about actually happened at a fansign. You smiled brightly as the next fan came up to you, following the line. “Hello!” you greeted happily. 

Something about this girl threw you off though, and the look in her eyes had you unintentionally leaning away from her. You couldn’t decipher it, but when nothing happened, you told yourself you were just overthinking it. She was probably just excited to meet what could have been her favorite artist group, right? 

You stood by Hoseok as the fansign ended, moving to follow him out of then venue. He chuckled as he looked at you. “You have that look.”

You wrinkled your nose. “What look?” 

“The one that says you’re hungry,” he teased, poking you in the stomach, making you whine. “Well, maybe-”

“Y/N!” You turned around, cutting yourself off mid sentence, to see the fan from earlier. “I found you.” Her smile was a little too bright as she reached for you, only for Hoseok to push you behind him as you stuttered out, “I’m sorry, we really have to go.” 

You moved to attempt to leave after that, but her demeanor quickly changed. Her face changed from too happy and delighted, to dark and angry. Her eyes narrowed, and she reached for you more aggressively this time. “Don’t be son ungrateful,” she squeezed your wrist painfully and you cried out as security finally made their way over. 

Hoseok immediately pulled you to him, looking at the rapidly forming bruise on your wrist. Even though at the moment, it was just a large red mark, his face still tightened. “This never should have happened,” he cursed when he noticed tears in your eyes. 

He pulled you into a hug as he waited for the rest of your brothers to show up. “It won’t happen again,” he promised you. 

✦✧✦✧

The moment that was probably the most talked about, was when a talk show host felt the need to ask you how it felt. Namjoon shared a glance with you. 

“Excuse me?” you asked timidly, straightening up. 

The interviewer turned to you. “Oh, you speak English! I was just asking how it felt to be so similar to a child all the time.” The man’s tone of voice didn’t even change, but the idea that he had expected Namjoon to translate this to you, and now casually asked you as if there was nothing wrong with the question. “You know, they’re always taking care of you, it makes it seem like you can’t do anything by yourself. Does it ever irritate you?”

You tried laughing it off, the chuckle leaving your lips as you ticked a strand of hair behind your ear awkwardly. “Not really. They’re not doing anything to be condescending, and I know that.”

“Do you feel like that is because you need their help?”

“That’s enough,” Namjoon cut in, his jaw clenched as he slid forward a little in his seat as if to help get his point across. “Y/N is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. We pitch in to check on her because we love and care about her, and she does the same for us. She is not a child but a grown woman who we love and care about enough to make sure she’s okay and gets the nice treatment she deserves. With all due respect, if you insult our sister again, we will be forced to cut this short.”

You looked over to him, offering a silent thank you as the interviewer coughed, trying to recover. The bad news was that this interview was live, so he really couldn’t do anything but sit there and realized he had just embarrassed himself. 

Honestly, what else is there to say? You loved and cared about your brothers, and they loved and cherished you. 

[stomp-that-ho-regard]

Needed to get this campaign wrap-up rant off my chest...

This is the specific part that irked me:

MATT: "While he never voiced this in game, Caleb's feelings for Jester have been an important part of his journey. Did he ever come close to confessing? How was playing such a long lasting, one-sided love after our last campaign's bittersweet ending for a Vax and Kiki?"

LIAM: I was never going to do romance of any kind, one-sided or otherwise in this campaign, because I felt like we really explored that pretty heavily campaign one. I think you'll remember Jester drove Caleb nuts at the beginning of the campaign, and so it was nothing that I ever expected at all. And then when they were in, was it Rexxentrum wherever the dance hall was. And I alluded to this earlier, dancing was never anything that I imagined for Caleb, but it was just like, and you were asking him to dance, Jester was asking him to dance. I was like, "Oh, this could be an interesting way to like sort of seed my story, that we're not really around yet." And there was something about, not the dancing, but the way that Jester treated him kindly after the fact like his response was to be like, "I'm going to go fucking vomit in a street, and just be by myself," and she wouldn't let it happen. And that was just like this first little moment where someone was like-- Everyone in the Nein-- I want to answer another question while I'm answering this. I wonder if we had gone that different direction that we talked about earlier where we didn't go crime, and we had gone into Rexxentrum earlier, and if Caleb had started interfacing with his past earlier, I think he would have had a gnarlier, more severe trajectory in this campaign. If he had touched his past sooner, it would have changed what he was, but he spent way too much with the Nein, for when we finally did catch up to them, it was too late, that he'd already been healed enough by the Nein, it didn't matter. And everyone in the Nein had an effect on Caleb, they all had their love like in different ways; Yasha, he could relate to. Caduceus was like a guru that confused but inspired. Fjord, who Caleb thought was real hot at the beginning of the campaign, was a great leader and, like, just I don't know, I feel like he was his closest friend, outside of Nott, early in the campaign. Beau brought tough love. Veth was this ultimate support no matter what happened. But what started to happen with Jester was that she was treating Caleb like the person-- She was treating him as if he was the person he should have been. Like none of it had happened. And he became like-- It just got in him, but he would have never wanted to saddle her with all his shit. And the difference, like-- There was also a point in the campaign where I could see, in Yasha's absence, Beauregard warming up to her, and I already quietly been thinking and going like, "Well, I'll just have this little thing that maybe fans will see," and some did early on, like it was silent. It was all silent. And then I was like, "Well, Travis is never going to do it." Oh, Travis just came online, so the entire side of the table quietly like, "Oh," at Jester for a while. But Caleb knew that Beau and Fjord would've been far better for her, because they would have put aside anything for Jester and made her their number one. And Caleb knew that, as much as she like changed him and helped him in a very specific way, and and he quietly fell in love with her and like a Jane Austen, I'm never going to say it. That he would never have set aside the things that he was trying to do. He would never have set aside trying to either get back to his parents and fix that. He would never set aside trying to undo the Cerberus Assembly if he were strong enough, so, like, that was too all-consuming, and so he would never wanted to saddle her with it, so it was always going to stay inside. And there were multiple times in the campaign where Jester teasingly needled Caleb, and I was terrified that you would say the word "Insight check," multiple times.

LAURA: I think I did it once.

LIAM: Well, you must have rolled really low when you did because I did my best to like pull faces at you, and poo poo it, and do something silly to dodge out of those situations.

LAURA: Are you secretly in love with me?

LIAM: And yeah, you said that, and I went like (blows raspberries) that's fucking ridiculous with my face, and we moved on. (laughter)

LAURA: It's so funny when you joke about the whole table being in love with Jester because Jester had, like, no concept of it at all. Her whole upbringing was everybody being in love with her mother, and her whole, and she knew she's so different from Marion, in her appearance, and the way she presents herself that-- To her, that is what people want, that's what everybody would be in love with. And so there was never-- She would never have thought in a million years that Beau would have been interested, or that Caleb would have been interested, or that Fjord would have been interested. She tried to be Marion and when she was coming on to him in the early campaign, and obviously, it did not work. So she was like, "Okay, then-- Nobody's-- That's not going to happen for me." So it just like turned off in her brain, like nobody will.

TRAVIS: There was a moment where that stopped, too, because like you doing the thing that you thought your mom did and that worked, you know, Fjord's like, "I've never been flirted with before, I don't know what this is. Stop doing it." All that behavior stopped, and you like let the happy Jester fall away. Like, I think it was on the sea, right, like with the jellyfish scene. And then it all happened.

MARISHA: That's when you started crying. There was a few times where there was these moments of Jester smiling, but tears were streaming down her face.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

MARISHA: Trying to be the happiest person in the room. And then, yeah. I don't know. Jester always had this, but I think why Jester is so enigmatic, and so easy fall in love with is because she is the purest person in the room, so that it invites this kind of--

LIAM: Which doesn't even mean innocent, it just means the purest person--

MARISHA: Pure, yeah. It's just very endearing and it got in the way-- and this is almost going to sound condescending-- but almost in the way that a child is where if a little girl runs up to you, and they're like, "Look at this card, I think I want to cover the whole thing in glitter." You kind of have no choice, but to be like, "Yeah, that's a great idea."

LAURA: Yeah.

MARISHA: Cover the whole thing, and like, even if it's bad. She felt like almost like the perfect exercise for "Yes, and-ing." Like, the concept of "Yes, and-ing," because half of them were terrible ideas, but you were like, "Yeah, brilliant."

LAURA: Also, I feel that people are drawn to somebody who sees the best in them, right? You're drawn to somebody that loves you, and she just has an unconditional love for like everybody--

LIAM: She changes everyone she meets, including a hag in a hut.

MARISHA: Yeah.

TRAVIS: Yes.

Laura’s answer here is, for the most part, true. Jester was always pretty oblivious to people being into her. That was a pretty clear character trait. However, that still doesn't explain her roleplaying choices after Beau’s confession. And I wish someone was able to ask her about that and get a direct answer. Why was there a behavior shift? Was it just Laura trolling and teasing Marisha about it, or was Laura actually trying to force Beau to confess directly?

There was a pretty condescending post about this that I found in the discourse tag that said: I know it won't happen cause people never cared about what she says anyway, but Laura confirming again that Jester never knew about Caleb and Beau's feelings for her should be enough to stop the dumb takes like "bj was happening before the hiatus but then they decided to change it" or "Jester was falling in love with Caleb and she changed it" or whatever.

‘Laura confirming again’ Again? What other time has she said this?

‘Jester never knew about Caleb and Beau’s feelings’ Laura said that ‘She would never have thought in a million years that they would be interested’ and included Fjord in that section too, so whatever point this person’s trying to make is moot.

Countering that, I want to say, that nothing in Laura’s answer seemed to give the impression that Jester would have turned down Beau (or, hate to say it, even Caleb) had they actually confessed to her. There’s nothing in her answer to imply that Jester could not have reciprocated those feelings had she known. Nowhere did I get the implication that Jester was only ever interested in men and that Fjord was the only viable choice. (Laura still has not addressed Jester’s sexuality. FJ shippers love to ignore that, and still swear up and down that she’s straight.)

Now when Marisha piped in, she didn’t even focus on Beau’s feelings, and the depth of what she was feeling at the time. Instead, she’s wrote them off. Again. Intentionally minimizing and essentially doubling down on what was said in ep108. That it’s just so easy for anyone to fall for Jester, even going as far as calling her ‘pure’. Basically infantilizing her, by comparing her behavior to that of a child which yes, Marisha, does sound condescending. (You can add that to the list of ‘sparkles’ ‘confetti’ and ‘shiny’.) And that’s it. That’s the extent to which she talks about it.

Also, the fact that the Beaujester stuff was only brought up (very briefly and casually), as a sort of ‘b’ topic to WJ. Liam got to go off on this whole extremely long-winded reminiscing answer because he got a direct question about it. It’s like, “And none for Beaujester!” Once again, Caleb’s feelings being given more weight than Beau’s ever were. 

So, another kick in the teeth. Not so much from Laura. But from Marisha. The person who MADE THE CHOICE to inject Beau developing feelings for Jester into the canon narrative. The way Marisha talks about it now, it’s just a complete mind fuck as to why she made the decision to have Beau confess at all. Why even open that door? Even if she felt, at the time, that Beau would feel this way, she could’ve just kept it to herself. And not made waves about it. And not doubled down on it the following week. And not had continued for at least THREE MONTHS after that to roleplay Beau STILL having obvious feelings for Jester. I mean, come the fuck on.

Look at ep93 with the Hag. When Jester was telling the group that she gave the Hag something she had never given anyone before. Beau frowned and said, “Did you kiss her?” Beau had it so bad she got jealous of the Hag. Jealous of a fucking monster. Then ep94. Beau wanted to climb a tree to get a better look at their surroundings. Out of the blue, Jester smacked Beau’s ass to give her Guidance. She shot up the tree like a rocket and Jester was impressed. Marisha had to make it a point to say, “She thinks it’s the Traveler. It’s just ‘cause Jester smacked my ass though. I’m just very invigorated by THAT.” And of course ep99, with the sunburn compliment.

Marisha was definitely keeping this thing going, all the way up until the hiatus.

So why the weird answers? Why the vagueness? Why does she seem so insistent on driving home to the viewers that Beau’s feelings were/are no big deal. Does she think that talking about Beau’s feelings to the fullest and reminiscing (like Liam did) on a few of their moments would be some sort of insult to BY?

I will never stop being baffled.

[devinescribe]

Together

Chapter 4 to 100 Promises

Chapter 3 | Chapter 5

It's going to start off where chapter... 2? Left off. I think it was chapter 2 anyways.

Warnings: swearing, weapons, and I think that's it. This chapter isn't that bad.

You feel down to the floor, staring out to the person standing on the balcony. 'Why did I have fucking glass see through doors? Oh fuck my taste in aesthetics!' You thought, looking around a bit panicked, looking for any type of solutions. You quickly crawled besides the bed, hoping they didn't see you. They did. It was to dark out without any lights, so you couldn't see any specific features, other than they were tall, and had some sort of weapon. "Please be locked please be locked please be locked," you muttered, grabbing the dagger you had from the game. The person turned the doorknob from the outside, opening the door. "Oh, fuck me!" You shouted standing up, pointing the dagger at them. "Try me bitch, see what happens! I am not afraid to stab you!"

"Woah there. Didn't think you'd hate me that much," they said, laughing. You recognized that voice. That laugh. You'd know it from anywhere, although it sounded a bit more... confident.

"Niragi?" You asked, hopeful in his answer. "That's me," he said, finally stepping into the part of your room that had enough light from the moon to see. You dropped the dagger, your eyes widening. "You're not? You're not dead," you whispered, walking over to him. "Dead? Why would I be-" he started, before you hugged him tightly. He could feel the shaky breaths you were taking, and decided now wasn't the time. "You stupid fuck, I thought you were dead!" You suddenly shouted, pushing him away. "Yeah? Well, I thought you were safe back home you dumb bitch!" He shouted back. You two looked at each other with a straight face for a few seconds before bursting into laughter.(that's how you know you're best friends UwU)

"I'm so glad I found you! Well... you found me? I don't know, I don't care. How did you find me?" You asked, watching as he walked around your old room. "An educated guess," he said. You laughed watching as he walked around. "I'm guessing all your stuff is at our apartment?" He guessed. You nodded. "Not like I would need it. Also, what's with the gun? And how did you find out I was even here?" You asked, it suddenly dawning on you there was no possible way he could've known. "To your first question, I'll answer in a bit.  To your second question, a... Cheshire cat of sort, I guess you could say," he answered with a smirk. "Cheshire cat? The only person who I've even talked to is- wait... that little! Does he have really blonde, almost white hair and a very condescending look all the time? Pretty short?" You asked, getting a bit angry at the thought that someone had lied to you, and you hadn't caught on. "Uh.. yeah? Wait, do you know him?" It was Niragi's turn to be confused. "That little bitch! He told me- hmph! I'm going to kick his ass off a roof next time I see him!" You yelled in anger. Niragi knew when you got angry to let you rant. You were scary when you were angry. He learned that pretty early on, and learned to stay out of your way when you want to deal with someone. "Yeah, he has that effect on people. He pisses me off. Chishiya... he's well, Chishiya. Thinks he's better than everyone sometimes, I swear," Niragi said. You stopped your rant with a sigh. "Sorry. This is kind of a new situation. Don't know how to deal with it," you muttered sitting on the edge of your bed. Another thing Niragi noticed early on was that you didn't do exceptional with change. "It's human nature to adapt to new things. Just takes you a bit longer. And from what I heard, you did great for your first game," Niragi said as he sat next to you. "Who- oh... Chishiya... Where have you been staying since the games started?" You asked, looking at him curiously. "That's actually what I came here to talk about. Basically, it's a 'safe haven' called the Beach. Players go there, we all play the games when assigned, collect the cards, and give them to Hatter, the leader. Basically communism," he explained. "The fuck?" Were your only words. He laughed. "The more games you play, the more cards you collect, or the more useful you are to the Beach, the higher you wristband number. Right now, we think that if we collect a complete deck of cards, a person can leave. The number 1 leaves first, then we all go up a number," he kept explaining, showing you his wrist band. "4? What did you do to get up that high?" You asked, amazed at his high ranking. "Played the games. Oh, and I guess I'm part of the milital sect, so there's that," he said. He found it cute how you were so excited about something so... irrelevant to him. He had always found it interesting how your emotions could go like the flip of a switch. You could be a total badass one second and the next be curled up under blankets acting cute.

"You're so mean to me!" You pouted, crossing your arms over your chest. He could only laugh in response. "Jerk! I'll lock you out!" You shouted, stomping your foot. He knew you were lying, and you wouldn't. Or, at least he thought so.

"(Y/N), it's been 3 hours, come on I'm sorry," he apologized for what seemed to be the hundredth time to him. You really had locked him out on the balcony. You sat in front of the glass doors, sticking your tongue out at him. "(Y/N), you're 17, not 5 for God's sake, let me in already! You're being really annoying right now!" He shouted, getting angry at you now. Not something that happened very often. You tilted your head to the side, and frowned. You unlocked the door and opened it. He came into the room, and you went and sat on your bed. "Fucking finally..." he whispered to himself. He heard you say something under your breath.

"What was that?" He asked, looking at you. " 'M sorry... don't be mad. I didn't mean to be annoying," you whispered loud enough for him to hear. He suddenly regretted his choice of words from earlier. Being childish sometimes was how you expressed your feelings. You didn't get to be or act like a child when you were younger, so with him, you felt like you could be. He realized that you trusted him enough to do that, and he had been rude about it. "I'm not mad at you. I shouldn't have used those words, I know it's just you being you," he said, sitting down besides you. "I'm sorry I locked you out..." you muttered an apology as you hugged him. "Apology accepted. And I'm sorry for what I did for you to lock me out, and for what I said," he apologized, hugging you back. "You just... it scared me, I thought you had actually... actually done that," you whispered. "I'm thought you'd left me..."

He had remembered that day more than most because it showed how much he actually mattered to you. Back then, when he thought he was worthless and how no one would miss him if her were gone, you did. You had always cared, since the first day he met you. It was one thing he liked about you. The way you cared about people, even if they didn't deserve to be cared about. Sure, you had trouble accepting apologies from people who had hurt you, but it didn't stop you from being nice when needed.

"Yumi? Are you alright?" You asked, seeing one of your bullies crying. "G-get away from me freaks," she had stuttered, wiping away the tears. Niragi tried to pull you away. He knew what this girl had said to you. She was always making fun of you, how you looked, your weight.(I mean, I didn't make the reader plus sized(I'll keep it as neutral as possible), but the more I write, the more I want to. Niragi gives me vibes of the skinny guys who love chubby/plus size women. Aka, the best kind of guy) Anything to make you feel bad about yourself. "Let's just go..." he whispered, trying to pull you away. You shook his hand off, walking over to her. "Yumi-San, what's wrong?" You asked, reaching in your bag, finding a tissue and handing it to her. She blew her nose into it. "M-my boyfriend broke up with me. But it's none of your concern, freak," she sniffled. You both knew who her boyfriend was. One of the guys who was in your main group of tormentors. "Oh honey... a pretty girl like you shouldn't cry over trash like him. You are a solid 11/10, he doesn't deserve the tears," you said, taking another tissue, and drying her tears. Even though she was always so rude to you, you had to admit she was a beautiful girl. She had short back hair that was just above her shoulders, and beautiful brown eyes. She didn't like makeup, so she never wore it, so it made her beauty natural. She wasn't curvy, and made a lot of girls look up to her, as she was actually pretty flat chested. She was incredibly smart as well. All in all, she was simply a teenage girl that was attractive to most guys. And a part of you liked that she wasn't the normal beauty standard, because it was just so badass to you. She hadn't used her looks to get ahead either. She was just mean. You had always thought she was pretty, even if she was mean. "If he can't see how pretty you are, then he's not the one for you," you said. "W-why are you being so nice to me? I- I'm always so mean to you," she stuttered. You stopped to think for a second, and looked back at Niragi. He walked over to you, and stood besides you. "Ok... mm... 'M being nice to you 'cause... I wanna be. No one deserves to feel unwanted. And besides, my karma stays clean," you smiled. She laughed. Not a mocking laugh, not a rude laugh, not a fake laugh. You  told her some joke to make her feel better, and she started laughing even harder. Her real laugh, not the fake preppy laugh she always did. She snorted, and covered her mouth in embarrassment. "You should laugh like that more often. Your real laugh is so nice," you complemented. Yumi had always hated her laugh, as it wasn't the cute laugh that was described in books. But, then again, neither was yours. "Bye bye Yumi! Hope you feel better soon!" You shouted, waving back at her as you and Niragi left. She smiled to herself, waving back at you.

"I want to take a nap," you muttered as you got closer to your house. "You are something else, you know?"

"If... if I go with you right now, I don't think I'd be that helpful. I've only played in one game after all," you stated. Niragi thought for a moment. He'd talked about you, Chishiya would most certainly talk about you seeing as he would never bring someone from a game up unless they were interesting, and once you showed how you could play, he was sure you'd get a high rank. "I've got my ways. You coming with me, or not?" He asked, getting up.

"Yeah. I don't want to be alone again. Or at least without you again. That's 6 months of my life I didn't have my best friend you asshat."

"That wasn't my fault, I had no say in it!"

"Fuck you."

"This is a personal attack on my hp, you're lowering my health bar with your mean comments."

"Nerd."

"Bitch."

You two basically walked back to the beach like that. Most of the way, anyways. You two knew you meant none of the words, it was just your way of talking to each other. In a playful way.

He had taken you up to a room that had a table with chairs around. In there had been 5 people. One with long ish hair, sunglasses, and a colorful robe, another with tattoos covering his body, a woman with a white, sleeveless button up shirt with black shorts, a man dressed in a black tank top and what you would call 'drill Sargeant pants', and well, you knew the last one. "You little bastard!" You shouted, seeing his smirk. "Everyone, this is (L/N) (Y/N), the girl I told you about,'' Chishiya introduced you, ignoring your words. Niragi held your arm to keep you back from hurting Chishiya. He wanted to see it, but he also didn't want you to die. "Ah, lovely! We've heard about you. All good things, all good things," the man in the robe exclaimed. You smiled a bit, seeing as he seemed to be a person who was a fan of the theatrics. He seemed fun. "That's Hatter. The leader, as I told you earlier," Niragi whispered to you. You nodded. "That's the dissection freak, or Ann," he whispered again, nodding his head over to the woman with black hair."That's Aguni. He's the leader of the milital sect. So, basically, my boss," Niragi whispered again, pointing at him. "And that's Last Boss. We're sort of friends?" He whispered making a gesture to the man with tattoos.  "Ah... ok. So, these are all members of the militals?" You asked him quietly. "No, Ann and Chishiya are part of the executives. Aguni is leader of the militals. If you want to work with weapons, that's who you have to impress," Niragi explained. Chishiya had walked over in the time you'd been talking, and only got your attention by tapping your shoulder. You glared down at him. He looked you up and down. "Are you wearing heels, or are you just that tall?" He questioned. You stared down at him. "I'm just this tall?" You said confused. He hummed walking away. Niragi tried to keep his laughter in, and you immediately noticed. You flipped him off, and he acted offended. "So are you two... together?" Hatter asked, noticing you two were standing closely, you went knocked out or trying to kill Niragi. "Together? Like... a relationship? No. Friends? Yes," you said, grabbing his arm. 'Mhm... friends for now.' Ann thought. "We've heard from both Chishiya and Niragi that you're good with weapons?" Ann asked, keeping everyone on track. You nodded. "Which ones?" She asked

You took a big breath, beginning your list, "Knives, swords, bow and arrow, mace, guns I could go into which type if you would like, daggers, throwing knives, crossbow, and many many more but I don't want to bore you."

The room went quiet. "Well... um... that's quite the list. What games have you played in?" Hatter questioned. "Just one... the game with Chishiya," you said, looking down, playing with your- well, technically it was Niragi's, but you thought he was dead, so in your defense, you thought you would never feel the comfort of your best friend's hugs. "Ah, the five of spades, correct?" Hatter asked, more towards Chishiya than you. You both nodded. "Well, before anything, you must know the rules of the Beach. 1, you must wear a swimsuit," he started. "Woah, Woah woah, sorry to interrupt you, but um... why? And uh... he's not wearing one," you stated, pointing at Niragi. "Oi, don't throw me under the bus you dumb whore," he insulted with a smile. You know he didn't mean it in a rude way. Again, you two were best friends. "Sir, I have more blackmail on you than you can think of don't go there with me. For instance I caught you m-" you started, before Niragi put a hand over your mouth. "And that's enough from you. You were saying?" He said, directing his attention back to Hatter. "Uh... what was I saying? Oh yes, he's a milital and carries that gun around so he can't hide weapons. He has access to them, 2 all the cards you collect get handed into me, and 3 Death to the traitors," he finished. You licked Niragi's hand which was still over your mouth. He immediately took his hand off. "Ew! Disgusting!" He shouted, wiping his hand off. You laughed, and everyone else in the room smiled. Especially Hatter. He liked you already. Not in a creepy way, but he enjoyed that you weren't scared. "Anywho, alright. Swimsuit,cards to you, death to the traitors," you repeated. "Good girl," Chishiya said, a teasing tone obvious in his voice. "Tomorrow, you'll be going to a game with Aguni and An. They will decide your skills so we know where to put you. For know, I'm sure that Niragi wouldn't mind showing you to an empty room, and getting you changed into our 'uniform'," Hatter said. "By empty room, you mean she's staying with me until she gets her number, right?" Niragi asked. That's what he wanted, for you to stay with him. You two had almost 6 months of talking to catch up on. "Oki! Come on bubs, lead the way!" You shouted, grabbing his hand. He rolled his eyes, leading you out.

"I bet you guys anything they'll get together," Hatter stated after you two left. "Oh thank the gods I wasn't the only one who thought so," Ann breathed. You two had quite the overwhelming personalities. "I'm sure. She's a smart girl though. From what I saw, she's a potentially strong player for diamonds and hearts," Chishiya stated, watching the spot you had just stood at. "Oh, I think so too. Aguni, what do you think?" Hatter asked, turning his attention to his stoic friend. "We'll have to wait and see for tomorrow," he responded.

Anyways, this is on Wattpad and AO3 as well, I hope you're all having a lovely day/evening