#ends up getting saved by their rival crush and throws an absolute fit over it

[lil-xiao-200bc]

the more i think about the similarities between bkdk and damianya the more i realize how bad i have it for tsundere + oblivious pairs with rivals to friends to lovers dynamics

i mean they’re both competing at the most prestigious school in their region… with one of them SOMEHOW making it into the school and getting under their skin for having the same goal of being the best (#1 hero/ imperial scholar)…… and unfortunately their moms get along to the tsunderes despair…. and the “oblivious” one has a secret power whose origin cannot be known to anyone…… like should i keep going?

[kaito-is-baby]

Shoto Todoroki x Reader

A little bit of help

Okay, hiii~ so... I really don't know what this is, I finished boku no hero and I started to read the manga ASAP and now I just want to give some love to my baby todoroki but this is more like... I was trying to set the ambient for my idea of a Midoriya x "useless" reader scenario but then my love for Shoto took over me and it ended up being about him so... I will write that one someday

Warnings: none, it takes place on season 1 and has no angst. Also gender neutral reader (I think...)

The first class with the great All Might had ended and you felt... stupid.

Every single one of your teammates had incredible abilities at fighting

And there you were, with a sweet gas making them fall asleep, but only if you touched them

It could have been good if they weren't much better, there was no way to touch them.

You couldn't even find the invisible girl

And everytime you tried to approach the half an half haired boy a wall of ice would appear between the two of you

No matter how fast you ran or how hard you tried you felt absolutely useless

Your teammate had to carry you all the fight and you were just a burden for your team, you knew it

You knew you were useless since the very beginning. You had been working with your grandma, recovery girl, in the school nursery this last year and you loved it, don't get me wrong

But seeing all those brave kids getting into fights to save the world, thinking about yourself saving people that way... yeah, grandma had told you lots of times that your quirk did also save people but you weren't her, your quirk wasn't really useful at healing either. Yes you could put on a sweet dream someone who was in pain and that same fluid that made them dream could heal them but it couldn't save a life, maybe an arm but not a life

You wanted to go to the battle and rescue the civilians, you wanted to calm them and cure them when they needed it the most

So you decided to take the joining exam for the UA

You still couldn't understand how you made it through, you wanted to believe that even if your gas did not affect the artificial villains your strength sure did but it was... quite difficult to believe

And your only answer was that your cute little grandma had convinced then to let you join

Of course she claims they let you in because how you threw yourself to heal every single one of the soon to be heroes on the field even altough they were your rivals

But what they wanted was for you to beat the villains not to have a great teamwork and a sweet heart oh baby you should listen to your grandma

You tried to shake that thought of your brain and enjoy your very first day as an student on the UA

You failed

"Let's use our quirks to make our phisical abilities greater" yeah, that didn't work out

Luckily for you that thing about expelling the worst calificated was a lie because you were sure that either Midoriya or you were going back home forever that day

'Things can go better tomorrow' you think but yet again you fail in your prediction

After the disastrous fight on All Might's class you had obviously stated to all of your classmates and teachers that you were, in fact, useless

But then again, you already knew you were useless and yet chose to try and become a hero

And your mind could have thought of something better, maybe ask Aizawa for some help or a nicer classmate

But your feet moved towards Todoroki

If you try to give it a rational explanation you can actually find it. He was, alongside with Bakugo, the strongest one of the class and, being honest, you were not brave enough to get even near that angry boy

So yeah... you could say you chose to speak to him because he was the best prepared but deep inside you, you knew well it was the 15 years old teenage that you, even if you deny to accept, actually were. A handsome tall boy who fitted quite well on your type, and to be honest, everyone's, had fight against you, being pretty close, trying to touch any part of his body, avoiding his attacks and trying to prevent what he was going to do... maybe it had made you develope a little crush, but it was for sure little!

So you took the opportunity when you had it right in front your eyes

He approached you just after your fight

"I hitted you with that last wall of ice right?"

Yes, yes he did, you weren't fast enought to avoid the hit but you were stubborn enough to be too close to him even although you knew he would make an ice panel

Maybe in a desperate intent, you tried to make him step back and don't throw his attack at you directly

That failed

And now you had a little hurting mark on your right leg and your right arm

But you weren't angry, you both did what you had to do to get good grades, this was a friendly competition after all

"Yes but-"

"I'm sorry I may have been too tough for a first class fight" you could tell by his face this wasn't the apologies of someone who is genuinely sorry but of someone who knows it's polite to apologise after it

"it's nothing, really, you were fighting for that 10 and so was I, it's cool"

He nodded and turned his back

"Wait! Todoroki... could I ask you... a favour? Please" your checks- No! Your whole face- was turning red now, you were not good at asking for help and even less to someone you barely knew

"Hm?" He nodded again, giving you permission to request that favour

"I'm so weak, I just can't fight, I can't fight like you or Bakugo or even Iida or Uraraka I just... I can't, I can't do anything but to heal and stay still watching how everyone loses" he kept looking straight to your eyes, truth be said, he hadn't took his eyes out of yours since you started talking but now he looked confused and even kinda angry at your statements

"And so what?" Did he took you for an idiot? He surely talked to you like if you were a 6 years old kid

"That I want to be a hero" his eyebrowns bent "and I need help, I... no one has ever really taught me how to fight, no one saw any potential for that on me and... maybe if you could... give me some basic knowledge? I could at least avoid getting hit"

Silent

Absolute silent

You only heard one thing, your heart bumping at an scarily fast race and your

Not only it was beating, your stomach ached, your skin burned and you felt stupid for asking for help so you opened your mouth to retract your words and admit that it was an stupid idea

"I don't train anyone, I have my reasons, I won't train you or teach anything"

And with that he left you, even more disappointed than before

Of course that night you could only think about leaving the heroes course

But after thinking about it you chose to keep fighting

And from that day on, you would train everyday, without any exception.

It didn't mattered that your classmates would though you were a weirdo, you kept imitating every single thing they did.

You stopped attending those classes that were not about fighting, you did not needed them as much as you needed free time on the special playground that the UA had, there you could train much better than on your small room

And one day, while your classmates were eating- something that you hadn't done since the day you started using every second on the UA for training- your body failed you, it needed a break and you wouldn't accept it so it just failed to get some rest.

You weren't able to keep your breathing and your legs weren't going to obey you anymore

So you just... felt

And without having any real strength to stand back you stood there, surrendering

You had been weeks working with no hesitation and yet you hadn't improved in the slightest

You were giving up when Todoroki tended you his hand to lift you up

"I did not want to train you because I really don't want you to get hurt by my training or to feel that I am pressing you too much" you weren't really following him "but if you are going to do that to yourself all alone then it will be better if I help you so you can, at least, improve"

Was he agreeing to train you?

"But first, go eat, second attend all your classes and then we will train"

"Yes!" You answered, ready to become a real hero

[lxngfxrgxtten]

                                   Final Face Off In The Midst Of War.

{一人で}➺ Six had wandered off after being helped by Bede. Towards the action, THE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF FIGHTING GOING ON. While she’d been asleep, it seemed a good number of the beasts had been cleared out, but still MORE CAME, more flowed through the air, and headed for chaos. The champion wasted no time having her entire team by her side, sending each one to TACKLE A BEAST OF THEIR OWN. These ones were not nearly as powerful as the MASSIVE ONE SHE’D TAKEN ON EARLIER, but they required attention nonetheless. Each member of her team TOOK DOWN MORE AND MORE OF THE BEASTS, LEAVING THEM SCATTERED AROUND. She advanced forward, instructing them to continue their work. Whatever lie ahead for her on this island, SHE WAS READY TO FACE IT.

{再び行った}➺ “Look what we have here! The Rareitan Champion, come to save the day. What a surprise.”

{一人で}➺ It didn’t take long for Six to SPIN AROUND ON HER HEELS, meeting with a woman she knew all too well face to face. She looked so different now. After she’d ESCAPED FROM RAREITA, no one knew where she’d gone. She even looked completely different. She was covered in SCARS AND BRUISES, FRESH BLOOD EVEN. Her clothes were torn, she didn’t even have any shoes. Purple hair now adorned her head, ONLY A SMALL AMOUNT OF PINK REMAINED. The champ went a bit on guard at the sight of her, SPITTING HER NEXT WORDS LIKE VENOM.

{再び行った}➺ “What tha hell are ya doin’ ‘ere Candle?! Now ain’t the time ta be holdin’ yer grudges, there’s lives at stake ‘ere! It’s not a game anymore!”

{一人で}➺ The deranged looking woman laughed in her face. LOOKED AT HER WITH A CRAZED EXPRESSION. It threw Six off, hard. The pink-adorned woman TOOK A STEP BACK as her rival’s laughter turned into nothing but pure cackling. What the hell happened to her? WHO HAD SHE BECOME? Candle was never someone Six even came close to liking, but EVEN NOW, SHE COULDN’T HELP BUT WONDER. Candle twirled a lock of hair round her finger before she began to speak again, her tone SOUNDING LIKE A SONG BIRD.

{再び行った}➺ “You really don’t get it do you? I HELPED CAUSE THIS! I wanted this to happen! I wanted everything to end! To make your world come crashing down on you just like mine did! I knew you’d come here... I knew you’d try to help... It was where I’d get my last chance.”

{一人で}➺ Candle was one of the bad guys? Six couldn’t even begin to FATHOM WHAT HAD BROUGHT HER TO THIS. The woman was always deranged in the sense that she was hungry for power, but now, standing before her as she was ABSOLUTELY BROKEN AND DESTROYED was something that made Six flinch wildly. Candle had been expecting her, HAD BEEN PREPARING SOMETHING TO BEST HER WITH, but a Pokemon battle in all this? It wasn’t right, something FELT OFF ABOUT EVERYTHING. Candle didn’t even have Pokemon anymore, unless she’d SOMEHOW ACQUIRED MORE. Her thinking is stopped short when the feral and deranged woman begins screaming, blindly running towards Six FULL FORCE, NOT STOPPING. She’s too fast, and Six can’t dodge her attack in time. 

{一人で}➺ Six is thrown to the ground THE PURPLE HAIRED WOMAN ON TOP OF HER, beginning to beat her down. Her punches were STRONG, knocked the wind out of her with ease, but Six wasn’t afraid to FIGHT BACK FULL FORCE. She kicks the woman off of her, and as the two get to their feet, THEY BECOME LOCKED IN BATTLE. No Pokemon were here to help, this was just two rivals answering to years long of fighting with their fists. Blows and DODGES BEING DEALT LEFT AND RIGHT. Six’s fist connects with Candle’s jaw, sending her STUMBLING BACK. Candle’s glasses almost fly off, it’s a shock they hadn’t COMPLETELY SHATTERED YET, but she doesn’t fix them. The woman simply launches another attack at the Champion who just struck her back, CONNECTING SEVERAL PUNCHES TO HER STOMACH. It was hard not to vomit as each blow connected. THEY WERE HARD, STRONG, STUNG LIKE BEES in her abdomen. Dazed, Six goes to duck away from a punch going at her face, but is INSTEAD MET WITH A KNEE TO HER CHIN. 

{一人で}➺ Six is knocked back down onto the ground, vision BLURRING AS HER HEAD SMACKS ITSELF AGAINST THE GROUND. She’s jarred, unprepared as the next volley comes along. Several swift kicks to her side, AND BEFORE SHE KNOWS IT, CANDLE PULLS HER TO HER FEET. Six looks her dead in the eyes, being, held up by her jacket. The woman was SO MUCH TALLER THAN HER, it gave her an advantage. With a burning desire in her eyes, SIX SPITS RIGHT IN CANDLE’S FACE, making the woman drop her. Candle SCREAMS AT HER, the sound loud and piercing, as if it was more of a screech. SHE LOOKS HER DEAD IN THE EYES WITH THE INTENT OF A MAD WOMAN. Candle had only been able to remember that red-haired woman spitting in her face as she passed out before her. The though FUELED HER RAGE, made her continue to scream as she DOVE INTO SIX, PINNING HER TO THE GROUND ONCE MORE. Candle’s Size hovering over her, it knocks the wind out of her once more, and before the champion can react, CANDLE WRAPS HER HANDS AROUND SIX’S THROAT. 

{再び行った}➺ “You ALWAYS GOT IN MY WAY SHINOZAKI! You always were there to take me down a peg whenever I showed up! Your ancestors shouldered Rareita when it should’ve been mine! I should’ve been Champion! 

                           RAREITA SHOULD’VE BEEN MINE!”

{一人で}➺ Candle presses her thumbs HARDER INTO SIX’S THROAT, squeezes tighter around her neck. Unable to BREAK FREE FROM THE HOLD, Six places her hands on the woman’s wrists, trying her best to pull them off. The grip is TOO STRONG, TOO TIGHT, she’s coughing and choking harder, the pain RUNS THROUGH HER LIKE A KNIFE SPLITTING HER IN TWO. It’s becoming harder to focus, harder to stay here and stare at the woman above her. THE SHEER MURDEROUS INTENT IN HER EYES MADE SIX’S BLOOD RUN COLD. She couldn’t hold onto the wrists of the other much longer, Six’s grip KEPT GETTING WEAKER, AND THE MORE IT DID, THE MORE A DEVILISH SMIRK APPEARED ON CANDLE’S LIPS.

{再び行った}➺ “I can’t wait to watch the life leave your eyes. Keep them open for me, Shinozaki. I want to watch you die. After I kill you, I’m gonna take out every single one of your precious Pokemon. Each one of them that defeated me. Especially that Charizard. I’ll make his death slow... painful... unforgiving... 

                                       Just like your precious Helios.”

{一人で}➺ It’s as if the words STOP TIME ITSELF. Everything slows to a grinding halt. Her Arcanine, HER BELOVED FRIEND, she spat his name into Six’s face. Despite the fact that she’s being strangled, for a moment, SHE STOPS FIGHTING CANDLE, stops everything. Helios had fallen ill. NO ONE KNEW WHY, but everything was just laid out before her. Candle had killed Helios. Candle was the one behind it all, ALL THESE YEARS, she’d been the one who took her out of this world. Time begins to FEEL LIKE IT’S MOVING AGAIN AS SIX GAZES INTO THE WOMAN’S FACE. The smile that stuck there as she revealed what she’d done made Six’s BLOOD BOIL, there was a fire in her eyes, in her heart, in her ENTIRE BODY. It sparked to life once she realized what Candle did. IT FELT LIKE THERE WAS MAGMA IN HER CHEST, READY TO SPILL ITSELF FROM HER THROAT. She felt herself getting warmer, hotter, heating up like a stove top. Candle seemed to FALTER FOR A SPLIT SECOND, AND WHEN SHE DID, SIX BEGAN TO SCREAM. She yelled as loud as she could with those hands crushing her throat. The sound was GUTTURAL, PRIMAL, it was one ready to attack.

                      {再び行った}➺ “You’re fucking dead Candle!”

{一人で}➺ That’s when it happened, something NEITHER OF THEM EXPECTED. Six’s hands, still tightly grasping Candle’s wrists, LIT ABLAZE IN ALL THEIR GLORY. It was as if she were a Pokemon, using Fire Punch. Candle RIPS HER HANDS OFF SIX, THROWING HERSELF BACK as the champion rises to her feet. HER HANDS WERE ON FIRE. She had just burnt Candle so bad, she’d sent her scrambling off of her. The DERANGED AND CRAZED WOMAN LOOKED BACK AT HER RIVAL, eyes full of worry, full of questioning and fear. Six didn’t even GET A CHANCE TO THINK ABOUT tHE FACT THAT SHE WAS SOME HOW CONTROLLING FIRE, the rage filling her body and throwing her towards Candle. The purple haired woman SCREAMS IN AGONY as Six plants her fire-fueled fists across the woman’s face. Each one leaving a burn worse than the last. CANDLE LOST ALL HOPE IN FIGHTING BACK, as Six plants one last blow across her check, and Candle’s eyes close, out cold.

{一人で}➺ She pants loudly as she SITS OVER HER RIVAL, beaten down and worn as her hands suddenly extinguish themselves. Her once ANGERED AND ENRAGED EXPRESSION NOW SOLEMN as she remembers her beloved Pokemon. This was the woman torn apart by a loss of power, and in a fit of UNBRIDLED RAGE, killed her Pokemon. SHE WANTED TO SET HER ON FIRE, TO BURN HER UNTIL SHE WAS NOTHING BUT ASH. But instead she simply gets up and walks away. She’d leave her to the beasts. LET THEM MAKE OF HER WHAT THEY WILL. She had a war to fight, after all. She could CRY FOR HER LOST FRIEND LATER. Right now, it was about protecting those she loved who still walked this earth. The champion TURNS AWAY FROM HER SO-CALLED-RIVAL...

                                                   AND NEVER LOOKS BACK.

[gigili-jiggly]

can you list your favorite klance fics ://

(i’m not sure how to respond to your ‘ :// ‘ emoji, but i’ll take any excuse to gush about fics lol)

I have so many favorite fics, so I’ll just list some oneshots for now so that this list doesn’t become too long 

(I might post a list of more oneshots and ongoing fics if anyone is interested!)

SFW Oneshots: 

you’re lucky that’s what i like by @zenstrike

Lance rescues a hamster from certain doom.

or, Lance has Keith wrapped around his little finger and doesn’t even realize it.

This is literally the cutest and softest klance series I’ve read in a long time!! It gives me lots of feelings and feeds my need for lovestruck Keith ladfajdifjdsklf

hey, mom, i met a boy by @mothpoem

“Sweetheart,” says Lance, his hair longer, his shoulders broader, the slope of his nose uneven now where it didn’t used to be, “you don’t know the half of it.”

LISTEN. This fic owns my ass, it’s so good. It has all my favorite tropes (marriage proposals, visions of the future, love realizations, etc.) and every moment between Lance and Keith is so sweet and full of love hnnngh. 

i know what you did last summer by seventies

Saving angry, mysterious damsels in distress multiple times weren’t in the job description of being a lifeguard. It would have been slightly bearable if only everyone would stop asking Lance if he remembered what he did last summer. What really happened, anyway? AU

Pining Keith? Oblivious Lance? A little bit of Memory Loss? Heck yeah!!! This fic also made me laugh a lot, so I always reread this when I need a pick-me-up

this, our town of halloween by @tobiologist

“Yeah, well, it’s written all over both of your faces,” Lance hisses. “It’s not a big deal.”

Pidge taps her chin. “Oh, you mean Keith, the local introvert and your ex-rival, creeping out of his cave to go to a huge Halloween celebration with you and your little niece and nephew? Of course that’s not a big deal. Silly me!”

Or: Lance invites Keith to Disneyland on Halloween and glimpses an entirely new side of the boy he has a stupidly massive crush on.

Lately, I’ve been loving tropes where people go on a ‘date’, insist that it’s not a date and then finally realize it’s a date. Also, pining Lance is good shit. 

Smell as Sweet by ultimateparadox

Coffee and love, Lance thinks, are the only universal constants.

Established relationship!!! Marriage proposals!!! Becoming a family!!! Everything here is amazing!!!

Bastion by Foxcote

In a healing universe, Keith and Lance await the arrival of their daughter.

I am a sucker for klance as parents, and one scene in particular between Keith and Krolia really captured my heart

In every reality, I reach for you by @enlacinglineswrites

Stories inspired the Klance AU month prompts.

I love drabble series and this one right here has so many interesting and wonderful aus! I read it time and time again like a morning newspaper lol. 

Somewhere a Clock is Ticking by @emphasis-all-mine

This is a story about time travel, lost memories, growing up broken, ukulele lessons, peanut butter banana sandwiches, and a stuffed hippo named Patches.

This is also the story of how James Griffin saved the world, but couldn’t stop his parents from falling in love.

Literally the fic that made me warm up to James! I’ve always loved time travel stories and the characterizations in this fic is so fun and enjoyable, I hold it very close to my heart! Also, klance family aldjofiadjfdf

5 + 1 times: lance and the search for keith’s boyfriend by @starwar 

Who could it be?!

Lance tried to convince himself it wasn’t jealousy… it was just friendly concern. He had to ensure that whoever Keith was with treated him well, not that Keith needed Lance to look after him, but still, Keith deserved the world and Lance wanted to make sure whoever he was with gave that to him.

Just buddy-buddy concerns.

or alternatively; 5 + 1 times lance doesn’t realise he’s keith’s boyfriend

Oblivious Lance who doesn’t know he’s Keith’s boyfriend? Bet your ass I’m gonna read that!!

chaser of fate by freshia

Where Lance thinks everyone else is really frickin’ weird, the others spend copious amounts of time trying to get him to just remember, and Keith just wants to (re?)live his life.

(Modern Reincarnation AU where the biggest threat to face, is the looming deadlines for essays.)

One of the first klance fics I’ve read and one that I absolutely consider a classic. I love me some reincarnation au’s, and I love how this one is nice and not too angsty! 

Save the Date by @thathopelessromantic 

They had gotten married in the middle of a war, on an alien spaceship, both boasting major injuries. It was rushed and short and the team was thrust into battle almost immediately after “I do.” But afterwards, after some insistent questioning from Keith, Lance admitted to things he had let himself imagine for their wedding, were they to have had one on Earth.

Cute established and married klance celebrating their anniversary, what more can a girl want? 

Speak for the Stars by @speakswords 

All Lance has ever wanted is to prove his worth. So, maybe it’s fitting that the Black Lion picked him right when Lotor betrayed them and Shiro’s clone went rogue. Right when the team was at its lowest and closest to failing.

The desire for glory that Lance grew up with—that drove him to join the Garrison and pursue fighter class, that drove him into his one-sided rivalry with Keith, that drove him after Keith in the Sonoran Desert and into Blue’s cockpit and into space and into the war in the first place—it’s a relic of the past for him now. All he wants these days is to keep his friends alive and the Coalition afloat, and he tries his best, despite the pervasive fear that he isn’t the right person for this monumental task. Despite the growing certainty that Black picked the wrong guy.

This fear will be put to the ultimate test when the mess that ensnares the team after the clone disaster turns out to be a labyrinth more winding than any of them were prepared for. Because Lance might just be the only person equipped to lead them through this maze and into the light.

I love those tropes where peeps get stuck in their own dreams and someone has to help them snap out of it. This fic does this wonderfully with Lance and I loved Keith’s dream in here, it was so sweet

in every reality, we meet by ULTIOcean

Small one-shots about our favorite team, taken from a prompt list on tumblr for the October Writting Challenge, in which i’ll write 31 short stories, unrelated to each other, each insipred by the prompt of the day.

i adore this drabble series, each chapter is such a unique take on the prompt! 

you’ve got a hand for the taking (i’m about to take it to the moon) by seabear

“I think,” Lance says, squinting, “he’s a vampire.”

one of my comfort fics to be honest. i really really like their interactions here and the confession scene makes me very happy

where & how we’ll land by @ephemelody 

The first time Keith meets Lance is also the first time they kiss. It all goes downhill for him from there.

looking for a childhood klance fic that is so so good? this one is a classic!!!

Complete Mature/Explicit Oneshots: 

assemble by groovystars

‘there was an idea- katie and hunk know about it- called the voltron initiative. the plan was-is, god, it is- to bring together a group of remarkable people, and see if together they could become something more. to fight the battles we never could. i wasn’t sure though. just knew that katie and hunk could do it, maybe lance if he wasn’t knee-deep in cover work. but now that cap’s used to the century and keith kogane turned up from the dead, and we have a literal god on our hands… now- now i think we can do that. i think we can believe in heroes.’

aka the marvel au that’s probably already been done

As a huge Marvel fan, this is an amazing superhero au!! It has klance and shatt, as well as lotor and allura in a thor and loki dynamic! 

i like me better when i’m with you by @reader115 

His mother’s advice when the war is over? That he should ask for what he wants.

Keith joins Lance and his family on their farm, and Lance wishes for a never ending visit.

i’ve read so many post-canon fics when vld ended and this one is one of my absolute favorites. It’s because of this fic that i started associating the song with klance, haha! I love the characterizations and the overall sweetness/lovey dovey feeling the fic has and aldoifjaidfd I just love reading this over and over again

there are worse things i could do by @peachgrdn 

His chest went tight when he recalled Keith’s face. What did it have to mean? They’d never been lovers; that much was clear.

When Lance goes out to buy himself a gift for his own pleasure, it comes with a little emotional baggage. Only just as he thinks he can manage it, Keith throws himself into the mix, and Lance realizes he must come to terms with buried feelings.

honestly, i consider lyssy the queen for fluffy and feely smut lol. I love her humor in this one as well as the many feels it gives me…just aldkjodfa i love this fic a lot okay?

kiss me (like it hurts) by mottainai

Purple light streamed through his kitchen window from the neon sign across the street, getting tangled in Keith’s hair and painted on the planes of his shoulders. He held his breath, afraid to disturb the moment. Keith’s eyes were on his, too soft to be coming from a dangerous man. Lance could see himself becoming caught in the gap in his teeth, pressed into the groves of his calloused hands, inked across his ribs. It should terrify him, the kind of terror of one looking into the belly of the beast.

But it didn’t.

Or: Keith and Lance, told through arguments and resolutions

i’m such a sucker for gangster keith stuff and this fic here has one of my favorite takes on it. perfect for rereading again and again! 

lure by chaeriee 

Becoming indebted to Keith Kogane was not a part of Lance’s future plans. Falling for him, even less so.

another gangster keith fic and it has almost all of my guilty pleasures in it uwu. i love those /person A needs to pay off a debt and works for person B while unknowingly becoming the most important one to them’ storylines haha! 

 Alpha Affairs by marizousbooty

Keith and Lance take a romantic vacation to the mountains for a snowy weekend getaway.

vampire lance and werewolf keith….doing it….good stuff

Heaven in hiding by i_write_shakespeare_not_disney

Keith finds something interesting in Lance’s drawer and it leads to one of the most amazing nights of his life.

insecure lance in lingerie and keith helping him become comfortable with it? sexy. 

Beast of Burden by melancholymango

“Keith, no, we can’t go again.” Lance pleads fall on deaf ears. Keith is honed in on him now like predator to prey. He’s fighting a losing battle and they both know it. He sees it in the way Keith is raking his eyes over him, sizing him up. “We’ll be so late getting to the bar.”

“Just one more.” Keith insists, herding Lance toward the counter with a stubbornness that is innately wolf. Lance pouts, but he doesn’t have anywhere else to go but backward.

“That’s what you said last time! And the time before that!”

–

The week leading up to a supermoon, as told by the world’s best werewolf boyfriend, Lance McClain. The good, the bad, and the horny.

I read this on Halloween and I’m not even ashamed of how much I enjoyed this. This fic made me very very biased towards werewolf keith lol. 

[casually-inlove]

Hi! I love your analysis and i want to know your opinion about he tian and jian yi jealous How did you think they gonna react if they see xixi and Mo with others o maybe if xixi and Mo have a good friendship, did you imagine he tian and jian yi watching them jealous?

UPDATED: added the Jian Yi bit I missed.

Gosh, you guys make me embarrassed lol. I honestly never expected these kinds of posts to get positive feedback. But I’m very excited that you enjoy reading it so thank you so much!

Back to your question. Firstly, as preamble, I’d like to state that I do not consider jealousy an entirely healthy sort of reaction nor do I endorse it in any way. A little jealousy is natural, but extreme jealous outbursts are truly unbecoming, nor do I want to romanticize them in any way.

(This is gonna be long, so better grab a chair).

Now when it comes to He Tian, I truly believe that feeling jealous will be a new and entirely unnerving experience to him. Looking back at his past experiences and childhood traumas, it’s quite obvious that he’s somewhat disconnected and detached from his own feelings. This is most evident in the emptiness that fills his life: he has no real passion (save for basketball maybe), no close relationships (until he meets MGS and co, and still he’s not open about himself yet), no deep ties to his family, and he practically stripped himself bare of any personal possessions. Hell, with all the money he has, his apartment is empty and all his stuff fits nicely in just a couple of cardboard boxes. So bottom line, He Tian isn’t used to getting attached to things or people, consciously or subconsciously he ends up avoiding it. That, of course, can be traced back to the puppy incident which basically splits itself into three points: 1) the puppy he came to love and care was gruesomely taken away from him 2) his brother, the person who He Tian trusted the most, betrayed him 3) He Tian was weak, so he had to entrust something he loved into another person’s care, and thus it ended up in a disaster, because he couldn’t protect the puppy himself.

Now that he is becoming more and more attached to MGS, I’m pretty sure that some of his deep-rooted fears will intensify, particularly the ones that relate to his past inability to protect something he cherished. On the other hand, He Tian clearly wishes Mo well. It’s evident from the way he went out of his way to find him a well-paying job at the photography studio, and even tried to compliment Mo on being industrious and finally looking like somebody. I do believe that He Tian is somewhat familiar with Mo’s reputation, at very least he probably heard the rumours and we know for sure that he had been checking the detention board. So he probably knows that in fact, MGS doesn’t have that many friendships outside his henchmen. With that said, I believe a part of He Tian would want to be supportive of Mo building healthy connections with other people.

And that’s where He Tian’s inner conflict will come into the light because he’ll be faced with his deep-running internalized fears that he may not rationally understand battling his desire to be supportive and selfless. Considering that He Tian’s upbringing probably caused him to shut off his own emotions, this is going to be very hard for him. The novelty of it, the inner turmoil of conflicting feelings, his inability to adequately process and express his emotions – all of it will likely put a strain on He Tian. While I don’t see him throwing a jealousy fit (he just doesn’t seem like the type, besides as I mentioned, he ultimately wants to be good for MGS even if he doesn’t always know how), I could see him getting crabby to the point Mo notices and wonders wtf is going on. Or, more likely, I could see him becoming extra-clingy, invading Mo’s personal space or y’know, going all “excuse me, let me borrow Little Mo for a sec”. What I do not see is He Tian being downright nasty about it and fending off anyone who comes into close vicinity of Mo. Absolutely not.

As for ZZX, I believe that as of right now he’s taking Jian Yi a little bit for granted, however, once Jian Yi gets kidnapped, his attitude will change. We know that ZZX is somewhat annoyed by Jian Yi’s antics. It just happens that our lovely airhead fits the bill of a boy who cried wolves. OX scattered these moments throughout the narrative, like when Jian Yi does that careless hide-and-seek thing making ZZX worry for nothing. So I expect that as the story goes on, ZZX will be taking him with a grain of salt.

Obviously, ZZX worries for him. And I think we’ve noticed something like distrust mixed with maybe some airs of disapproval when Brother Qiu gave Jian Yi a lift on his bike. The face that ZZX makes doesn’t look like one that endorsed Jian Yi being so careless around a stranger.

There’s also a strip from the earlier short comic series (it takes place after Jian Yi reappears), where a drunk older Jian Yi apparently ends up leaning against a very imposing stranger, to ZZX dismay at that. ZZX, who had previously pushed Jian Yi off, now quickly rectifies himself and tugs Jian Yi away from another dude. He’s silent but yeah, you can see it written all over his face: ZZX does not approve Jian Yi hanging around older men, haha.

Anyway, back to my original point. I think that post Jian Yi’s return, ZZX gonna treat him with greater care, precisely because he had lost him once. Those feelings of loss and inability to prevent it will probably cause ZZX to act low-key possessive like he did in that strip. Sure, he’s worried about his safety, but I cannot help but feel that ZZX feels a bit inadequate when he sees Jian Yi get close to someone older… and bigger? If we go waaaay back to the first kidnapping attempt, we see that in the aftermath ZZX feels down allegedly because he wants to grow up and become strong in order to protect Jian Yi. Perhaps that is why he appears slightly pissed when Jian Yi ends up close with someone ZZX can’t take on?

As for ZZX and Momo… well, I just don’t see them giving off couple vibes. They are probably gonna spend their time in rather comfortable silence. For Momo ZZX is someone who doesn’t annoy him with endless chitchat, and for ZZX Momo is someone who doesn’t indulge in silly ideas. So no, I don’t imagine them spending time next to each other would somehow bother Jian Yi or He Tian. It’s just not that type of bond.

EDIT

Apologies to the anon who asked the question. I seem to have misread it a bit. I usually answer these things when I’m back from work and by the end of the day, I’m thoroughly braindead and confusing 3’s for 8’s, lol. Again, my apologies.

So the question was actually about how would Jian Yi react to seeing ZZX with other people, not the other way around.

I do see Jian Yi as someone prone to jealousy. In fact, I think we can safely assume that Jian Yi displays some signs of anxious attachment style. Attachment styles are, by and large, the behavioural patterns that define our habits of building and maintaining long-term and short-term relationships. Anxious attachment forms in children when the parental figure vacillates between being there for them (caring, feeding, being emotionally supportive, etc) and being either distant/absent, or insensitive and otherwise not providing them with attention and care. The child thus undergoes greater levels of distress, because the parent is unpredictable, and the child doesn’t understand what to expect and whether they will be cared for or left on their own. As they grow up, they start displaying such behaviours as being clingy or smothering, since they subconsciously believe that the only way for them to survive is to cling close to their attachment figure, often both in the emotional and physical sense of it.

Now from what we know of Jian Yi, his father was absent from his life, while his mother seems to be frequently missing. We have seen tell ZZX that some auntie is picking him after kindergarten. Some flashbacks also show him being lonely and apparently alone at home. There’s also a scene where a young Jian Yi is weeping and coming up with an idea that “mother doesn’t want him anymore”, which are also quite telling.

From the narrative, we learn that it is ZZX who becomes a significant attachment figure to Jian Yi. Hell, during the kidnapping, Jian Yi isn’t thinking about seeing his mom again, he’s thinking about ZZX. Apart from clinginess, people with an anxious attachment style may indulge themselves in constantly testing whether their partner worries about them. Now I’m not saying that Jian Yi is manipulative in any way or that he plays games with ZZX, however, he does often want his attention/approval, like when he does that pounce thing or when he half-heartedly tries to play hide-and-seek in an inopportune moment. Also, quite clearly Jian Yi doesn’t like being separated from his boyfriend, lol.

Typically, jealousy in people with anxious attachment manifests itself from their own deep-running insecurities. Insecurity makes people become very critical about themselves, so they may often have these lines of thinking: “you are so desperate/needy/selfish, of course, he/she will be annoyed by you” and thus they may often feel unfulfilled because they tend to suppress their need for affection. These suppressed feelings, in turn, may result in short anger outbursts and some distrustful or controlling behaviour. We have seen bits of both when Jian Yi had to deal with a love-letter from a girl who had a crush on ZZX (what’s her name again?).

How Jian Yi would behave if he became jealous: likely he’ll become emotionally withdrawn due to deep-seated insecurities, might fluctuate between emotional outbursts and clinginess. Will he be nasty to the other person? No, not very likely. However, he did display the so-called behavioural jealousy (the set of defensive measures against the perceived threat of a romantic rival): he agreed to help the girl deliver the love-letter on condition that she’ll never approach ZZX again.

So yes, I do see him being inclined to some jealous behaviours, but again not towards Momo x ZZX. As I said, there isn’t anything remotely romantic about them spending time together.

[mediocre-riverdale]

Riverdale Can’t Develop Relationships Rant

Ok so this is going to be long, sorry for that.

Choni (Cheryl/Toni)

• Don’t get me wrong, I like Choni and I think it’s good that Cheryl has someone who loves her but this relationship lowkey came out of nowhere.

• Lets review: they have a few very short conversations (if you can even call them that) in which Cheryl says something rude, Toni says something along the lines of ‘I know you’re acting mean for a reason’ and Cheryl basically responds with ‘I’m popular, totally fine, and totally straight ha ha ha 👀’. Other than that they don’t really spend much time together until the Love Simon scene.

• The Love Simon scene: so, Cheryl is outside this theater and is going to see the movie when Toni shows up and offers to see it with her. Cheryl accepts, which is odd because up to that moment Cheryl had been pretty clear about how she felt about Toni and the serpents. There’s really no reason for Toni to want to spend time with Cheryl either, they didn’t know each other well and all their previous interactions were unfriendly.

• (Toni highkey just wanted to get into Cheryl’s pants, but that’s a story for another time).

• (Also was Cheryl planning to go see Love Simon alone?? she was going to sit there, in the back, completely alone and in the closet and return home from just crying in a theater by herself?? That was her frickin Saturday night plan)

• After the movie they go to Pop’s and Cheryl comes out to Toni which partly doesn’t make sense. I realize Cheryl was emotional that night and she didn’t have friends to come out to, but why would she come out to this random serpent of all people? Did she know Toni is bi, and if so, how? It seems very odd to me that Cheryl would out herself to a gang member she saw ONE movie with.

• Once Cheryl comes out, Toni calls Cheryl sensational. Remember how I said earlier that Toni wanted in Cheryl’s pants? Well, here’s an example of that. THEY HAVE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR LIKE LESS THAN A MONTH. There is no way Toni could know if Cheryl is sensational or not, though it was a nice thing to say.

• Also it was kind of a weird thing to say. Sensational?? To some random north side redhead that made ur gaydar ping? Really Toni?

• Anyways, they have some flirting moments which are actually pretty cute, Toni saves Cheryl from conversion therapy (damn Toni gets attached real quick) and they seem genuinely good for each other but the premise of how they get together is weird.

• They go from 0-100 in a very short period of time. Over the course of a few episodes (maybe a month or so in Riverdale time) they go from being lowkey rivals to sending heart eyes at each other and we haven’t seen a lot of screen time between them since the show deleted a lot of their scenes. Them deleting the scenes makes no sense because they could’ve easily fit them into the episodes and it would have made Choni seem a lot more developed, but nO.

• Cheryl becomes a serpent near the end of season 2 which I kind of understand more than SOME people in that gang (ahem, Archie) but still, Cheryl has hated the Serpents for most of her time on Riverdale and now she’s one of them. It makes little to no sense. She wouldn’t have joined if it weren’t for Toni and again, she’s only been dating Toni for maybe a month or so?

• Either way I guess the Cheryl Hating the Serpents storyline is dropped now, so thanks for the inconsistency Riverdale.

Bughead (Jughead/Betty)

• WHERE DO I EVEN START WITH THIS SHIP OH MY GOD THE WRITERS HAVE TURNED IT INTO A DUMPSTER FIRE!

• ok, let me rephrase

• So if u watch the show u definitely know bughead since it’s the most popular ship in the show. They’re also the Ship of Going to the Extremes.

• If I go in depth about this it’s going to be way too long so I’m just going to list how Bughead evolved over these two seasons: it starts with Jughead and Betty being cute, Jughead climbs in her room and calls her Juliet, wears this tux and smiles at her, and they do normal teenage first relationship stuff. Then shit gets crazy.

• Season one is relatively tame to be honest. They seem a little too into each other for a couple that had been dating for about a month or two, but whatever they’re 16 and I can understand getting overly invested in each other when you’re young like that.

• It’s a very rushed relationship. In the first and second episode Betty has a crush on Archie, cries about him, seems heartbroken when he says he only thinks of her as a friend. By like the seventh episode (there were only 12-13 episodes in the season, I’m sure, so Bughead happened within ten episodes) she has completely forgotten Archie (who she liked for years and had been previously been best friends with, though she barely hangs out with him in current episodes) and is kissing Jughead.

• As per usual, Riverdale takes Bughead from 0-100 in the blink of an eye and competely changes how they act.

• For the whole first season Jughead actively does not want to join the Serpents and is very clear about that. However, at the end of season 1 he gets a Serpent jacket and all that changes. While Jughead is off doing this, Betty is being the typical ‘girl next door’ and has that crush (but lmao, they ditched that storyline too sO). There’s one episode where this football player, Chuck Clayton, lies about Veronica giving him a Sticky Maple (some Riverdale sexual act, put the dots together yourself) and so to get revenge B & V decide to tie him up in a hot tub and burn him until he admits what really happened on the date, while filming. This gets weird very quick because Betty shows up in a black wig and lingerie and says that ‘Betty couldn’t make it’ (Taylor Swift is sueing), then once Chuck confesses she tries to drown him, pours maple syrup on him, calls him Jason, and tells him to apologize to Polly.

• so instead of Bughead staying the cute relationship it is in season one the show makes them bring out the worst in each other and act like they’ve been dating for years. They’re obsessed with each other. It’s kind of unhealthy, they literally make each other worse.

• Jughead becomes the Serpent King and Betty becomes his Serpent Queen, despite having little to nothing to do with the south side besides her connection with Jughead.

• yep, another Riverdale gf joining the Serpents for their significant other

• They’ve also only been dating for a short while and go from being two damaged, trying their hardest teenagers to two gang leaders (Jughead literally skins a woman) and it seems they just keep going further and further which each other, increasing all the dangerous crap they can do.

• How did they get to this point? No one knows. A couple kisses and some longing looks quickly turns into this crazy ass gang relationship where they both do terrible things and the other is completely okay with it.

• Betty does this Serpent initiation dance in front of a bunch of old men and her mom, it’s very sexual and she’s in her underwear on a pole. She also starts wearing her Dark Betty (black wig and lingerie outfit from when she tried to drown someone) to bed with Jughead and briefly becomes a cam girl.

• Season 1 Betty would never do this

• They totally change both of their season one personalities to help fit the plot and are suddenly ready to do absolutely anything for each other, despite the fact that Betty had a HUGE CRUSH on Archie about 3-5 months ago

• If Jughead kills someone, Betty will be there to cover it all up and wash the blood away, previous storylines and character development be damned

Varchie (Veronica/Archie)

• I honestly don’t have much to say about these two because while they’re underdeveloped, they aren’t the most underdeveloped couple on the show and actually have some good moments together

• But anyways, the show starts when Veronica comes to Riverdale. Archie sees her at Pop’s and immediately likes her (they end up kissing in a closet at a party early in season one) and every viewer can tell that they’re going to date because it’s just so obvious. He has heart eyes from the moment he sees her. Veronica seems to like him too but she holds off for like two seconds because of her best friend (? not really, B & V don’t interact ?) Betty.

• Most season 1 relationships are fairly wholesome tbh.

• Yes, they have their drama because it’s Riverdale but no one is doing anything too drastic yet

• Archie is a COMPLETE fuckboy for the first season. For a lot of the season he dates this teacher, Ms. Grundy, and they have these sex scenes that I guess are supposed to make us think a teacher/student relationship is cool? Which, no. She tells him to stay away, he won’t leave her alone, and eventually Ms. Grundy has to leave to go screw other students/get choked out. So Archie moves on. He dates Valerie (one of the forgotten Pussycats, don’t worry u don’t need to know her name since Riverdale will give her zero screen time) for a hot minute and I forget why they broke up but I remember she throws a drink in his face so that happens. He also kisses Cheryl one time but isn’t really into it. When Bughead starts dating he throws weird jealousy looks their way even though he said he only liked Betty as a friend, it’s clear this dude can’t make a decision.

• Surprise, surprise, in season 2 this all changes and Archie starts making decisions. Which isn’t exactly a bad thing, but he becomes very committed to Veronica (again, keep in mind he’s only known her for about 3-6 months)

• Suddenly he’s ready to become hubby material and meets her dad, who he has a weird relationship with. Veronica’s dad is in the mob or something and Archie kind of joins his business (he’s like an unpaid, crazy intern) and runs around doing whatever Mr. Lodge asks him to. He’s a total obedient puppy. He makes promises to risk his life protecting Veronica, runs after a robber who stole something from her (possibly a necklace, idk I haven’t watched that episode in a while) even though literally everyone tells him not to and that it’s dangerous, gets kidnapped by her old (boy)friend, and says I love you first.

• Not all of these are bad changes but they’re sudden, out of the blue changes. He goes from kissing like 4 (?) girls and being jealous over Bughead to being totally committed to Veronica over the course of a few weeks. Seriously, it’s like at the end of season 1 he’s kinda fuckboy Archie and then in season 2 he’s willing to throw himself in front of a truck to protect her.

• Throughout this Veronica lowkey joins the mob or something. The show isn’t very clear about what’s going on with her family, except that it’s bad and Veronica goes from not really wanting to be in it to wanting to run the business to just wanting to be a normal family again. It’s very on and off.

Other Relationships (do I really need to name them, they’re so in the background that I literally can not remember who’s with who outside of the core four and Choni)

• Kevin gets to kiss a couple guys in the show, one of them being Moose. What’s going on with Moose? I can’t remember if he’s out or not but since they’re kissing in the season 3 promo I guess something is happening with them. I don’t really know because throughout the whole show they’ve gotten like 1-4 min of screen time. I feel like the show is going to have them kiss randomly (no one really knows what’s going on with them so any kissing between them is already kind of underdeveloped) and not talk about it for the rest of the season

• ARE REGGIE AND JOSIE A THING OR NOT? They flirted (weird because they’ve never spoken to each other in the show before then) and a lot of people shipped/still do ship them but we haven’t seen much from them. What was the point of having them flirt if you’re not going to do anything with it, writers??

• BETTY AND CHERYL: they’re relatives and while sometimes they’re nice to each other, other times they’re just terrible with each other. They’ll go from smiling and being friendly to arguing and hating one another within seconds. Betty actually blackmails Cheryl with her brother’s murder video (more evidence of Bughead changing each other) in one episode but there’s been episodes before/after that where they seemed friendly together.

• BETTY AND VERONICA: take this romantic or platonic, which ever way u want, but they screwed over this pairing. The first 3 episodes they’re calling each other BFFs and saying how they need each other in their lives and then they just kind of... ditched each other. They barely interact and when they do they’re arguing, which is very different from how Season 1 was.

Conclusion:

• Riverdale DOES NOT know how to gradually change someone’s actions/personality or how they interact with friends/significant others. For a lot of the characters their season 1 selves are almost completely different people from their season 2 selves.

[jackednephi]

Hello! Apologies for sending in an ask so late. I just wanted to reach out because I'm not in such a great place right now. I was wondering, if you found out about your being queer at a fairly young age, how you managed to stay in the closet?? (And, you know, remaining alright, mentally) my parents are extremely homophobic, and it's tearing me apart, especially because I really care about them. Any advice would be great, even if it's not much. Best of luck in everything, and thank you so much ♥️

so tumblr doesn’t always let me know when i have messages >(

that said, i’ll do my best to respond but like it’s going to be long and convoluted so imma include a cut to save dash space. PLEASE KEEP IN MIND i am polyamorous, agender/trans, pansexual, and demiromantic. so like there are various facets of my queerness and they all played into my life differently

feel free to skip close to the end for like “how to stealth” if you don’t have the spoons for like a 20 page autobiography with annotated bibliography

so finding out about being queer is a question that has both a yes and a no answer. it’s more like i was experiencing queerness but didn’t have words for it, then repressed it, then dealt with it. so it’s less “i knew ever since i could form words to describe it” and more my journey was in no way linear

see when i was little, like really little yknow when you start getting your first crushes right around prek and stuff, i had all kinds of crushes. i had crushes on multiple people at once and this has continued straight into adulthood. so, like, sign one of being poly. my friends would have one person they would hardcore crush on whereas i was crushing on people around me, characters in fiction, just like so many people. i remember listing crushes in my journals every now and then and i’d have lists of upwards and over like 20. :/ so i am in no way surprised i’m poly

so far as my sexuality, i didn’t realize i was feeling for certain female friends what i was feeling for boys. partly because i’d be like “oh i want to hold his hand” and because i saw m/f couples holding hands all the time i was like ah! yes! obviously romantic! but i never saw any f/f relationships so i didn’t make the connection that the hand holding wasn’t a friend feeling. i had INTENSE crushes on girls too, just as intense as on boys. but i was used to the media portraying rival nonsense like hannah montana and whatnot so i was like “oh. this is my situation”

there was also a lot of repressing going on because i just didn’t see that reflected around me from media to adults. all i saw were m/f relationships. i knew gay people existed but i thought they were all gay men. when i was somewhere around like 10 or so, give or take, i realized i was crushing on my best friend at the time (a girl) and was like “no. absolutely not” shoved that as far back as possible and ignored it

my demiromanticism is more born of trauma than me being born that way and that’s ok. one of my close friends found out about one of my crushes in the second grade and i was RELENTLESSLY bullied for it. every time i got a crush on somebody, i would end up HARDCORE bullied or they would get weird and things would be awful. i also had boys shove their crushes onto me and not take no for an answer. like i’d have my bra snapped painfully, bugs shoved down my shirt, my stuff vandalized, hair pulled just because i wasn’t interested

like when i was 12, somebody started a rumor that i was pregnant :/ and that’s not even covering my abusive ex or the sexual assaults so like everything kind of came together for that

then there’s my gender. which is its own bucket of worms and kind of played in with my sexuality in certain ways

my parents are boomers, born in 50 and 58. “but vann,” you say, confused “you were born at the end of 94″ and you are correct! i inherited pcos from my mother so i’ll let you put 2 and 3 together as to why i was born in 94 and my brother in 96. i say that because, unlike their peers, they raised my brothers and i radically different from the accepted cultural norms

if i wanted to wear baggy shorts, that was cool. pretty dresses? whatever. same (kind of) went for my brothers. if they wanted to spend a lot of time on their appearance, that was fine and not shamed at all. in fact, it was encouraged because it made them feel good. i played with army men, barbie dolls, cars, a train set, tools, swords, sports stuff, had tea parties with stuffed animals, drew and crafted, etc etc. my younger brother played house with me (and often suggested it himself) and would play with my baby dolls. like had my younger brother wanted a doll, they would’ve gotten it for him. but i had them so he didn’t bother asking for one cause he could borrow mine

so like there was no gender segregation of toys or activities. and that sounds kind of like the bare minimum of parenting but you have to remember that both of my parents grew up in the rural south as boomers. gender roles were violently enforced for them. but they didn’t think about enforcing them for us so far as play and, to a certain extent, dress/grooming was concerned. this created a safe environment for us to be our true selves

so for a very long time, i was comfy saying i was a girl. i played basketball after school and then afterwards would find my prettiest dress and watch scooby doo. gender expression was fast and loose in my house

i contribute that a lot to the fact that my father was too disabled to work. even before then, he had been a nurse and a damn good one. my father has ALWAYS been the go to for when we were sick, injured, etc. my mother had this disconnect with how much concern to show. it was either too much or not enough and was pretty much never helpful. even after retiring, when my nephews came around he was the go to caretaker for them. even now at 70, he frequently goes back to where the children are during family gatherings and keeps watch. much like a mother hen

so he stayed home and did the cleaning and other “wifely” duties. not cooking though because his brain just cannot. my mother worked as a high school teacher so typical roles were entirely reversed. when i was tiny and wanted nothing more than to be a parent? you go, sweetie! when i was older and wanted to be a scientist? achieve your dreams, kiddo! like they were very supportive of my goals no matter what they were

so i just??? didn’t realize????? until i hit puberty somewhere around 9

talk about body dysphoria. i went from looking like my brother and every other kid my age to wow ok there’s hair now??? and my face is all weird???? and oh no why does my tummy feel funny?????????? (sexual arousal was a TRIP to discover as a third grader that i would not wish on any child ever) oh my god WHAT IS ON MY CHEST!? and grown men are hitting on me now??? oh no i’m in fourth grade and bleeding!?

it was not a fun time by a long shot. i started wearing the baggiest tshirts i could possibly find. anything to hide my freakish body, really. so many hoodies. i would swing wildly between hyper feminine expression with tight clothes and heels and hiding everything as much as possible. part of me was smug about being ahead of my peers, for adults to be treating me as more than a kid. but a LOT of me felt like a freak

maturing (mentally) into an adult was a wild experience. i was 13 and looked like i was 21 except for my face. i did everything possible to find comfort with myself from goth/emo expression ro masculine stuff people threw “dyke” at me for and then finally, weaponized femininity. tight tops, tight pants, shortest skirts i could get away with, eyeliner so sharp it could cut god, heels as often as i could including uniform days, perfect hair. i made myself look like a hot, unapproachable goddess

finally, people were too intimidated to approach me and comment on my appearance. i wore makeup like a mask and people who had known me for YEARS were surprised to find out just how big my chest really was. but i walked with murder in my eyes and i was finally treated the same was i was before puberty - completely unapproachable

ALL THAT IN MIND, here’s how i figured my shit out

i was on facebook seeing “gay, straight, black or white, marriage is a civil right” and being typically “it’s a sacred ordinance shyaddap” about it. i ended up on tumblr about idk 15 or so? note, i’d already discovered porn by this time so i was aware that lesbians existed. like just to throw that out there that i wasn’t like totally in the dark when i made my tumblr account. i did it for school to blog about shakespeare for an english assignment. and that’s when my world expanded

bisexual? wow ok! that was a thing! and oh. oh no

there were pretty girls

and pretty boys and pretty people whose gender i had no idea. cosplayers cosplaying as the opposite gender, trans people, and a whole rainbow of people i was suddenly finding attractive. and i had a HARDCORE identity crisis

i liked girls? but was it the same as boys? was i bisexual? that didn’t seem to fit. there was more than two genders right? and trans people existed? bi? was i bi? bi?

bi. probably

but it didn’t feel comfortable like at all. but i discovered a fanfic writer who talked about being pansexual and i looked it up and everything just clicked?? into place????

not to be overdramatic or anything but it was like the stars finally aligned. it felt SO good! so many genders! and it meant all and aliens are a thing, right? who was i to say no to the possibility? but, more than anything, it felt comfortable. like a hug from my grandma. like home

i wanted to scream from the rooftops that i’d figured it out! i found myself! pansexual! I WAS PANSEXUAL! THAT WAS ME! HOME!

and then the reality of living in our society crashed down on me. i continued to talk about the guys i liked around my family but never EVER the girls. i hid my relationship with the person who eventually became my wife. to be fair, i’d hidden all my relationships prior cause i was an IDIOT and had been dating before 16. so that wasn’t hard. but what was was the breakup

previously, i’d been like “you remember that guy i like? he’s a jerk” or some other excuse to cry to my mother. but i couldn’t about cake. so i cried to my bff/twin/sister like i had everything else and moved on. and i just kind of shut up about it to everybody except those closest to me

except that hurt. here i was knowing i was queer and happy about it but people were being homophobic. i don’t know how often i cried myself to sleep after hearing about “those dirty f*gs” cause of the marriage thing. i ended up quietly coming out to my favorite teacher and she dismissed it as trauma response to my then recent sexual assault. she had seemed safe but that was her reaction so i shut up about it

up until, ironically, coming out day october 2011 just before turning 17 that next month. my mother and i were at chilis, she was being homophobic, and i screamed for the whole restaurant to hear that i was queer and the whole base found out. hard to stay closeted after that

i was pretty much out until college when i started going to church in a new place. i just didn’t talk about my sexuality. ever. period. and it was “easy” because i was dating guys. and pretty sure i was a cis woman. so i was stealth passing. and that was ok with me because i was out on campus, vocally and unapologetically

in high school, i dated a trans guy. he introduced me like in a personal way to transness, to binding. i knew i wasn’t a man but it intrigued me. and in college where nobody knew me, nobody knew me as femme fatale black widow i had a chance to explore my gender. i discovered that loose tshirts made me feel really good. as did other comfy things like shorts and sweats. sometimes i wanted to look fancy or felt like wearing a dress. really, i kind of reverted back to who i was in childhood

i felt weird when i heard my birth name. i’d gone by a nickname for so long, i just chopped off the y (vanny) to vann so it sounded more adult. it felt good. so i identified, tentatively, as nonbinary. it was around this time the trans dude i dated and i fell out with each other because he thought me playing around with my gender was like mocking his transness. or something. idk dude was toxic trash

so i wasn’t male or female then? nah that didn’t feel right. i wasn’t some third androgynous gender. but sometimes binding and passing as a man felt good and sometimes passing as a woman felt good. genderfluid then? was i a man who liked to wear dresses? no. didn’t feel right. made me uncomfortable

eventually, things clicked for me with agender the way they had with pansexual the fall of my third year of undergrad. stars aligned, the universe smiled upon me, and i was THRILLED. like gender euphoria is REAL and never before had i felt so comfortable in my own skin. i remember literally weeping with joy. like i’d been going with they/them/their for a couple years at that point

i came out to my parents about that one pretty shortly after realizing it because i was OVERJOYED. they’d been working on calling me vann for awhile at that point and the pronouns. i’ve since learned that so long as soebody has my name, 90% of the time i legit do not care what pronouns somebody uses. im aware that people perceive me differently and it’s fine. i mean neutral pronouns fill me with euphoria but like it’s fine. so long as somebody doesn’t mistake me for cis

my parents are like so great about it now. they correct people who deadname me (except my grandma cause she’s like 85 and i gave her permission years ago) and my mother straight cut contact with family members who refuse to respect me. except my brothers but like she makes it clear whenever they’re going to be awful that she WILL NOT tolerate it. like they don’t dare trash me in front of our father. he’s old now but he will backhand one of my brothers for that and they know it. so they try it with our mom and she’s like “try it again and you won’t hear from me until you apologize for trashing your sister”

i realized i was poly when cake came back into my life. that was a serious mess involving their abusive ex girlfriend but we clicked and it ended up working so yknow. that was my easiest coming out actually. my parents were like “yknow, you always seemed to love people when you were a kid. and you had SO many crushes. makes sense” which was awesome. it was the most difficult emotionally but  the easiest because i’d already come out twice before so it was whatever

the demi thing was discovered in therapy. and like it doesn’t have much in the way of impact like the other things do. so i never really came out about that? there wasn’t really a point? like i talk about it when it comes up but it’s just whatever. i honestly have no idea if i ever told my family?????

WITH THAT NONSENSE IN MIND, HERE’S HOW TO STEALTH AND BE OK MENTALLY

you said homophobic so im gonna assume you’re not straight. no idea about gender and, honestly, so far as gender goes i’ve seen it’s safer to lean into masculinity than it is femininity. so if you’re amab, i don’t really have tips or tricks for that as i’m afab. with being afab, lean into the tomboy aesthetic so you seem acceptably (safely) your assigned gender. i recommend fun lipstick and nail polish colors. sparkly nails did wonders for me honestly

but for like not straightness. that’s a tightrope that is but a gossamer thread to balance. like there are ways to stealth gender expression and feel affirmed but queerness is a different animal or it was for me

so i had AT LEAST one space in my life where i was 100%, unapologetically, loudly out. like i’m here, i’m queer and flying my rainbow flag and not at all sorry about it OUT. for awhile, it was just my very closest friends in the whole world. then it was tumblr. then i made a facebook for people irl i could trust. 0 family and 0 people who couldn’t be chill about it

like having a carved space for you to just be the authentic you, whatever that is. for me, that’s all this queer mess, the polycule that is my family, my faith, my absolutely foul mouth, my mental illnesses, my love of good coffee or a glass of wine every now and then as a rare treat, the good and the bad the ugly and the uncategorizable all together. the struggle with the word of wisdom AND the love of my spouses. all of that

it’s affirming to have this space where you’re yourself and people accept you for who you are rather than what gets your engine revving. but you’ve also got to try and stealth that into wherever you can. you want a dyke spike? go for it and say it’s a pixie cut. plaids are in right now which is a lowkey signal to other queers you’re a queer too no matter your gender. just depends on what shoe you pair it with and other queers will take notice while non queers will just think you’re trendy

it was also fun for me to get that pan flag aesthetic wherever i could. like blue/pink galaxy type eyeshadow that wasn’t too peacock flashy so it looked Hot without being Obvious and a pink lipstick and yellow nails. like it was subtle but i knew what was going on and it felt good. i did the same with rainbows but i had more to work with there. like i’d have an inconspicuous notebook where i’d paint/paste a rainbow on the inside cover so that it was Normal from the outside and BAM! GAY! on the inside. did that with highlighting my notes too

i just kind of stuck it everywhere i could possibly get away with. people were excited to see me go from emo to bring colors becuase “oh wow! you’re finally not sad!” lol no i’m just stealth queer over here

i also wrote SO MUCH queer fanfiction. i didn’t publish any of it just in case but i have notebooks full of stuff. i also rped with people as a way to live vicariously through characters. i also READ a lot of queer fanfiction actually. i saved all kinds of fanart and photo manipulations of certain pairings together. like i couldn’t be out so i could have fiction where others were

i also poured myself into hobbies. i fenced, did karate, learned japanese, participated in drama club, played in a band, took piano lessons, taught myself to draw, journaled, learned to cook, read amazing books, played video games, learned to sing. like i’m sure there are other things i’m forgetting? basically, if it was EVER covered in a young women’s activity pretty much anywhere in the world, i learned at least those basic skills. like i can embroider now even

so like that’s how i stealthed and stayed sane. i was also in therapy where i was out to whatever therapist i was seeing at the time which ABSOLUTELY helped. i also made like queer playlists i would listen to. like same love, i kissed a girl, born this way, etc that i would listen to when i needed to just sink into it. music in general is super cathartic and i’ve gotta say green day, acdc, evanescence, bon jovi, etc got me through some tough shit

i also yelled at god. i yelled at god a LOT actually. like i know we get told “pray for comfort” but sometimes you need to bawl your eyes out and just SCREAM at the almighty. dude can take it. he’s god after all. he can handle our anger. it isn’t disrespectful. like if you ever do cross a line, he’ll let you know. like your thoughts will hard stop. you’ll know

but empty your lungs screaming in pain. let him know it isn’t fair, you’re not happy. beg for relief from the nightmares you’re living. demand to know if or when it’ll ever get better. burn yourself out yelling and crying and fall asleep drenched in tears. then wake up the next day and live your life and you know what?

you’ll feel better. maybe not a lot sometimes and maybe everything is cool for once in forever. but it definitely helped me a lot. like dude listens and you WILL feel better even if the things around you dont get better. you get some strength to get through and be ok and it’s super helpful

but that’s what i got. also bear in mind that i came out to thousands of people by yelling at my mother in a restaurant when all the ships were in because everybody in said restaurant texted everybody they knew and my texts were flooded in like an hour of “DON’T TELL ME YOU CAME OUT TO YOUR MOM LIKE THAT OMG” and “you’re queer!?” so like

i’m not the best when it comes to stealth queering so take my advice with a grain of salt

[imagine-stevenuniverse]

could we get the rubysquads reaction to all of them getting a crush on a human?? if thats too much, then maybe just navy or eyeball?? thank you!!

I should pace myself...but I also love these Rubies so much... So a Ruby squad you shall get!!

Doc is the one who’s confused over it all. Liking a human was not in her plans! She’s got a mission to do! And stuff!

...Still, any attempt she has to stay away for more than twenty minutes has her eventually giving up and trotting back to find you.

Lots of trying to impress you with her leadership skills. She was picked, you know! Out of so many Rubies, to lead this squad! Isn’t it amazing?

There’s also a bit of desperation in her voice, but she brightens up when you assure her, yes, it’s very cool.

Tries to get involved in your human activities with...mixed results.

You were pretty surprised at her prowess in baseball, though.

All of a sudden, that human kid was super useful. Doc proceeds to bother Steven more about human activities and what she should be learning to woo you better.

Perfection or nothing. Because of this, Pearl often joins in, as she understands the need for perfectionism. Steven tries to keep Doc in the know about having a fun time, too!

Eyeball is the one in full denial mode. A human?! No way!!! She’s not that kind of gem!!

But you’re also very nice to her. And despite how Eyeball would growl at you or tell you to go away, well... You always came back. You always had fun talking and laughing with the Crystal Gems and once, you gave Eyeball a hug when she was feeling bad and--

She’s so touch-starved in the romantic sense. Affection-starved. She didn’t stop thinking about that hug for weeks and had difficulty asking for more... In the end, she didn’t, Steven caught on, and told you himself.

It was- and still is- highly embarrassing, but you’ve been more touchy since and....

Ugh, she can’t even be a dutiful warrior like this. It’s frustrating.

It turns into this period where she can’t decide her emotions. Is she mad at you? Or is she being nicer? The mixed signals are dizzying.

Garnet ends up being the mediator for this, telling Eyeball she needs to relax and not confuse her crush so much.

Eyeball nearly slams her face into the ground for being so obvious, but... Allows the fusion to give her advice from then on out.

Except for the advice of “don’t tell war stories”. They’re scary and pretty horrifying on occasion, but... You gotta admit, they’re entrancing to listen to, regardless.

Eyeball picks up the new habit of- if you’re seated somewhere within reach- she’ll hop up and into your lap. Bold? ...Yes, but...she likes to sit there. So deal with it.

Can be angry when someone else teases her about you/her liking you. If you tease her, she’ll be embarrassed and huffy, but fine. Anyone else, she’ll explode to in a yelling fit. It’s a poke at her still-lingering insecurities of liking a human and slowly losing a lot of her “tough gem” attitude along with it.

Army is sorta like...a mystery. She’s as grumpy as ever, but is it because that’s just her way? Is something bothering her? Nobody really knows.

Though while you and Steven are watching her toss rocks, breaking them, and then looking back up at you two before repeating the process, Steven notes she’s been doing this since you’ve been around more.

Cause yeah, as easily worked up as she is and enjoying the little things (any physical activity), you have talked on occasion. In fact, it was fine for awhile!

Then she started getting huffy and not talking to you as much, preferring to show off.

She figured out her crush on you alright, but like a certain, puffy-haired teen... She’d rather say nothing and just show off in her “subtle” way until you eventually notice her. Properly.

Yeah, this is most likely going to continue until either you call her out for her feelings or Garnet finally has enough and steps in herself to do something else instead of throw rocks at the cliff. And nearly hit the house, on occasion.

Maybe a card or something? ...Eh, if they did that, Army would still barely have enough in her to give it to you. They’ll figure something out that involves less rock-throwing.

Even if the fusion’s gotta tote her over to you, set her down, and play guardian to make sure Army tells you. Whatever saves the house, yanno.

Navy realizes her crush, shrugs, and goes for it. No such thing as a shy gem with this one!

Goes for the classic, human romance tropes. Flowers? Of course! Perhaps a plush toy and some chocolates... (That she totally didn’t steal from the local corner store. They don’t have Earth money, you know.)

Is especially fond of kissing your hand as a greeting. She’d do it as a goodbye, too, but you gotta keep some things special, yes~?

Very passive-aggressive to anyone else she feels is hitting on you or getting too close. Like Eyeball, would sit in your lap, but she’s doing it to hog attention and show that she’s already got dibs on this human, thank you very much.

Stars forbid if she had a rival. She’d outdo them in nearly everything and give them dark grins when she’s better acknowledged.

Is the absolute worst, but sweetest at the same time. She really knows how to balance her gifts and flaws...

Expect to be pampered endlessly. You like the thing? Navy is gonna get you the thing. Favorite foods? Navy got you them somehow.

She’s the best...she knows~

....But is also the type to lose a bit of her grandeur when given affection or praise. It kinda jumbles up with her blush and little nervous, breathless giggles of elation. Perhaps a bit of stuttering, too.

Rubies crave that validation.

Leggy is the oblivious one all the way through.

Of course she misses you when you leave! You’re so nice and give her hugs (some of which she’s learned to ask for)! So it kinda sucks when you leave to go to sleep or you have other plans...

Loves contact with you. Nothing better than being picked up and toted around. Her excuse? You’re taller than her! She wants to know what the view is like! (She’s not that heavy anyways; about the weight of a kid, so it’s not the worst thing in the world to do.)

Learns humans like flowers. Proceeds to pick as much wildflowers as her single hand can hold, then rushes over to show you.

Has done this in the middle of the night before, and waited for you to come back eagerly to give them to you.

It’s honestly a bit hilarious trying to get her to understand that there’s a line for platonic stuff and having a crush...and she’s been there.

Steven: So, you want to hold their hand, right?Leggy: Yeah!Steven: And you miss them when they’re gone?Leggy: Mhm, lots.Steven: What about....liking to hang out with them the best?Leggy: Oh, yeah!! It’s lots of fun being with them.Steven: So that means you have a crush on them!!!Leggy: ........Crush?

Her obliviousness is practically a talent. But that’s why she has lots of friends to help her!!

[mst3kproject]

1105: The Beast of Hollow Mountain

I have a personal fucking grudge against this movie.  When I was… I dunno, maybe six or seven, I went to an event at the city zoo that featured a talk by paleontologist Robert Bakker (I still have the Ornithomimus he drew for me) and a screening of an absolutely, non-ironically fantastic movie about cowboys and dinosaurs in Mexico.  Since I was a child, I never bothered to remember the title of this film and so years later when I fondly remembered it, of course I couldn’t find it to watch it again. Until one day, flipping through banged-up VHS tapes at a flea market I happened across The Beast of Hollow Mountain… cowboys and dinosaurs in Mexico?  This had to be it!

I was wrong.  I was so, so wrong.  This movie has been on my Episodes that Never Were radar since the inception of this blog, and I was delighted that Season Eleven actually used it at the same time as being slightly annoyed that they used it first.  No matter.  It richly deserves everything Jonah and the bots threw at it.

There are these two guys, Jimmy and Felipe, who own a ranch. Jimmy keeps flirting with a woman named Sarita.  She’s supposed to be marrying this other guy called Enrique, who doesn’t like Jimmy and tries to undermine his ranching business so he’ll be forced to return to Texas, but of course Sarita secretly likes the smiling white guy better than the grumpy Latino. There’s also a comic relief drunk, Pancho, who might be funny if it weren’t for the fact that he’s a grieving widower raising a very young child, which kind of undercuts the joke.  We watch these people go about their lives for at least seventeen hours in which nothing much happens, and then suddenly holy shit motherfucking dinosaur out of nowhere.

The weird masked people in that one scene are chinelos dancers, which is interesting in that it gives us an exact location for this story: the little Mexican state of Morelos. This area is rather far south of the US-Mexico border and known more for its sugar cane than its cattle ranching, but it does appear to have mountains, so we’re on firmer geographical ground here than in Beginning of the End.  The masks and robes the dancers wear were originally designed to make fun of Europeans, so it’s kind of fitting that the whole display reduces Jonah, Kinga, and Max to terrified weeping.

If you only look at the first three quarters of the movie, The Beast of Hollow Mountain is an unremarkable, laid-back little western about an upstart rancher competing with the local cattle baron in both economics and love.  There are probably a lot of movies that have this as their only plot, and they do just fine for people who like westerns, I guess.  In this particular movie, however, it’s all just killing time. When I reviewed Avalanche a few weeks back I complained that all the effort getting us to invest in the characters is ultimately pointless because none of those stories will be resolved.  Beast of Hollow Mountain is slightly better, in that it does resolve the problems it has set up for the characters, but it does so via tyrannosaurus [r]ex machina.

The movie does make some attempt to hint at the existence of the dinosaur, but it’s pathetically ineffective.  There are superstitions that the mountain is haunted, and cattle are disappearing – but we see that Enrique is encouraging the rumors and possibly stealing the cows as he tries to force Jimmy to leave town.  Occam’s razor tells us that a jealous rival is a much more likely explanation than a dinosaur.  Actual evidence of the monster, such as footprints, cow bones in places cows could not possibly go, or never-believed eyewitness accounts from the local drunks, is completely lacking.

It’s pretty obvious that the reason the dinosaur never appears until the last few minutes of the film is because animation is expensive and that’s all they could afford.  That’s fine, but a lack of budget shouldn’t have gotten in the way of the foreshadowing!  You can make a respectable dinosaur footprint with a shovel and an eye for artistic detail.  Have a couple of prop guys drape a fake cow skeleton over a tree branch, and presto, instant mystery!  And if you need unlikely eyewitness accounts, you’ve already got a town drunk who could be laughed at for it, in the form of Pancho!   You could even do that stupid joke, as seen in god only knows how many other movies, where seeing the dinosaur makes him throw a bottle away and swear to never touch another drop!

It seems so obvious that a movie called The Beast of Hollow Mountain would want to include some clues to the nature of the titular beast before we actually see it, I can’t imagine why they didn’t.  Maybe they figured they were building suspense?  If so, all they actually accomplish is, as Jonah and the bots repeatedly note, making us doubt that there will be any beast in this movie at all.  By the time we get to its appearance, it seems completely wrong that there would suddenly be a dinosaur in what has so far been a story with no fantastical elements.

The other problem with only pulling the dinosaur out at the end of the movie is that, as I mentioned above, it’s a deus ex machina, an easy solution to the characters’ problems that doesn’t feel like part of the same world.  After we’ve watched the rivalry between Jimmy and Enrique for an hour, the satisfying way to end this story would be to have them resolve their differences, perhaps out of mutual love of Sarita and a desire to make her happy. You could even include the dinosaur in this, by having Enrique forgive Jimmy out of gratitude for saving his life. Instead, the dinosaur kills Enrique, leaving Jimmy free to do whatever he likes without having to address his own problems!  It’s as lazy as having him wake up at the end and discover that Enrique was only a bad dream.

When you refuse to foreshadow, you also leave the audience wondering why there is apparently one dinosaur wandering around in Mexico somewhere.  You can’t just pull one dinosaur out of the movie’s ass and not have some kind of explanation!  Eegah! had one caveman in the deserts outside Palm Springs but offered the backstory that he was the last of a clan whose lives had been greatly lengthened by the sulfur springs.  Other movies give us dinosaurs that come out of lost valleys or the centre of the earth or something.  Is that what ‘Hollow Mountain’ is supposed to be?  A portal to a lost land?  If so, I think that deserved at least a few seconds of screen time!

Outside of its lazy storytelling, I guess The Beast of Hollow Mountain really isn’t badly-made. The costumes, including those on the extras, are gorgeous, and between those and the chinelos dancers I suspect the film-makers just went to a town in Morelos and said, “who wants to be in a movie?”  The characters are all pretty one-note but the actors do their best. Mario Navarro as Panchito isn’t nearly as annoying as he was in The Black Scorpion, and Patricia Medina as Sarita does manage to seem like she’s struggling between her commitment to Enrique and her crush on Jimmy.  The worst performance in the movie is probably given by Jimmy himself, played by Guy Madison.  He does ‘smiling mellow cowpoke’ in every single scene, including those that really would have benefitted from some gravitas.

The dinosaur itself is… eh, it’s not that bad.  I feel like I’ve probably waited longer for worse dinosaurs (Lost Continent comes to mind).  I do like stop motion in general and I respect the effort that goes into creating it.  The problem in The Beast of Hollow Mountain isn’t so much the animation itself as what they chose to animate – why the emphasis on the dinosaur’s flailing tongue?  They also failed entirely to make it look as if the dinosaur is occupying the same space as the humans.  Either the puppet or the actors is always horribly out of focus, which might be an attempt to suggest depth.  If so, it doesn’t work.

Then for the closeups, they have dinosaur puppet arms and feet. These are simply terrible.  They don’t match the stop-motion creature in anatomy, movement, or implied size.

It’s pretty obvious what went wrong with this movie.  Somebody came up with a really cool idea for a popcorn flick – cowboys and dinosaurs, you guys!  Everybody else loved it, but as they tried to bring it to fruition, they realized it was also a really expensive idea, and tried to lower the cost by increasing the cowboy-to-dinosaur ratio.  By the time they got to something they could afford, there were only five minutes of dinosaur left.  As I observed in my review of Future War, sometimes movie-makers really need to just step back and say, “no, guys, this is just not gonna work.”

In this case, the ‘somebody’ with the great idea was stop motion pioneer Willis O’Brien, who wrote a script he called The Valley of Mists.  I’ve never read it but I know for a fact that The Beast of Hollow Mountain didn’t come anywhere near doing it justice – because thirteen years later, O’Brien’s protégé Ray Harryhausen did the animation for the remake, The Valley of Gwangi. You guessed it, that's the fucking awesome cowboys-and-dinosaurs movie I remembered from my youth!  If you were disappointed by The Beast of Hollow Mountain, I highly recommend giving The Valley of Gwangi a look.  It’s got action, adventure, romance, special effects so groundbreaking that the Jurassic Park franchise has actually paid homage to them more than once, and is the guaranteed cure for all your Beast-of-Hollow-Mountain-related blues!

[strydcr]

hellooo babes, i’m blair waldorf acacia (◠‿◠✿) nineteen, she/her, and the main admin here. lol sooo sorry you guys are all trapped in this rp with me. but wtver~ you guys will learn to adore my 3am messages comin’ up with plot that’ll hurt us and what not. also meet the beauty that is stryder estrellas. anyways, i’ll try to keep this as short as possible. since i always get lazy halfway thru writin’ intros. :~)) )) ) &&. of course this got way longer than expected so just find the ☪  at the end to read the summary // aim: alohacacia && skype: alohacacia

****psa you clicked on this so you’re obligated to plot with me srry but i don’t make the rules.

░   * . ╰ ✯ ›  ⊰ SELENA GOMEZ, CIS-FEMALE, TWENTY-THREE ⊱ is that STRYDER ESTRELLAS ? the BARISTA & FLORAL SHOP ASSISTANT MANAGER. they’re known to be INTELLIGENT & INDEPENDENT. but also BLUNT & CYNICAL. unknown to them, they are the reincarnation of PERSEPHONE.

BACKGROUND + TRIGGER WARNINGS: cheating 

well to kick things off, stryder is that one night stand baby. let’s call her biological dad “bio father/dad” and her mom’s husband “dad” then of course her mom is “mom”. sorry if this is confusing. but just think about how stryder is gonna feel once she finds out about this.

once upon a time her mom and her dad were happily in love. like they were the high school sweethearts who ended up getting married and blah blah blah. but before she was born, there was a point in time where the two broke up. probably once they were both about to start freshman year of college. that’s when her mom hooked up with stryder’s bio dad. she obviously ended up getting pregnant. but she ended up making up with stryder’s dad. SOOOOOOO…. he thinks he’s stryder’s father. but he ain’t. the one night stand hook up is.

stryder is completely unaware of the fact that he’s not her real father. her mom is still in contact with her biological dad. obviously, keeping that a secret from both her husband and stryder. but it’s only because her bio dad always sends her money to help provide for stryder. so basically this family is a mess. but only on the low. because on the outside this family is absolutely perfect. she grew up in a really nice household. suburban type of wealth in a town outside of los angeles, california. big house, nice cars, a vacation every now and then. but not rich enough to like be bill gates or something you get what i’m saying? just a nice upper middle class.

you might be wondering... how did they end up in seattle? one day her dad told the fam he had to move out to there because of work. (occupation: tbd) so they packed up everything they had and left. this was around the time stryder was starting her senior year of high school. stryder really isn’t the type to throw a fit over dumb shit. but you know this girl started bawling knowing she wasn’t going to graduate with her only two friends. ‘cause she had to start the loner life all over again.

now, stryder works at a small coffee shop as a barista and an assistant manager at a floral shop. (cause persephone, flowers, how cute.....) she does go to school at a community college about 30 minutes away from her house. probably studying to become a botanists. (a literal flowerchild yes.) and to her surprise she is actually enjoying living here. she doesn’t know why, but she feels drawn to the place.

PERSONALITY + RELATIONSHIPS + TRIGGER WARNINGS: anxiety 

PERSONALITY wise, she’s that tumblr post that’s like ——— me: i love myself i’m such a bitch // me: i hate myself i’m such a bitch. because one day she’ll be like “oh my god you’re my best friend!!!!!” then they’ll do her shady and she’ll be like “new phone who dis?” like do her dirty and she’ll get angry real quick. which is bad because it’ll trigger her anxiety. but yayayayayayayayyyyy. she’s the type to be sippin’ tea with her pinky finger up. she is the “is it bad that i secretly want to be hit by a car all the time” but also the “gotta better myself, my body, my skin and my bank account” type in one. she has a very clean exterior. although she outcast herself a lot. she does care about her appearance. (i.e. she has a sense of fashion.) she really likes to read and learn. so, you can always catch her doing something of the sort. talk to her about flowers or coffee and she gotchu. overall, stryder is pretty wishy washy. it all depends on her mood. she’s kind of a wallflower. isn’t exactly the most popular baby. but that’s by choice, not by force.

when it comes to FRIENDS stryder can always use some of 'em. she possess the qualities of a good friend loyal, honest, trustworthy. however, she can be quite obstinate. which might be a reason why she might not have as many friends as she would like. once her mind is set to think a certain way it’s hard to persuade her to believe otherwise. she’s the type of friend to listen to your problems, but be prepared to listen to her opinions – all of them. she’s also the type to put a friend in check when they need it. she thinks of it as trying to convince them to see the bigger picture. first impressions is something she might not be very good at. while she isn’t exactly the definition of rude, she tends to not filter then things she says. overall, i would say that she might just need a handful of friends and just a whole bunch of acquaintances.

i’m pretty sure stryder doesn’t think she has is ENEMIES. but, i could obviously understand why a girl like her would have any. she tends to be very outspoken and although she doesn’t mean to insult anyone or come off rude, she can’t help it. so, there’s always that. stryder is the type to hold grudges. (this is mostly because of her mother — trust issues man) she thinks once you fuck her over, then inevitably, you’re gonna do it again. basically, if you lose her trust everything you had, despite how far back your past goes, she isn’t going to trust you fully again. so if there was any type of fall out at all, stryder is gonna be pissed 5ever. but if in some point in time where she had to chose between her life and saving another’s, she’d save them before herself. stryder’s a good person guy’s. she has good morals. they’re just messed up in her black hole of thoughts. enemies? *grabby hands*

alright, so stryder and LOVERS. i have a feeling she’s dabbled in the dating world. she’s had a few boyfriends, dates, etc. but most likely nothing LONG TERM. possibly because she doesn’t see the point unless it’s for marriage. just like her mom and dad (lol troll.) she has the independent woman facade going on right now. which makes her seem like she doesn’t want anyone. but deep down she’s a hopeless romantic. this girl would love to be loved. and she truly needs it. most of the time she makes herself the outcast. this girl is completely oblivious to anyone having a crush on her. assuming friendship automatically. she’s probably read tons of books about love and fluffy shit like that. so she has high expectations when it comes to relationships. so someone rlly needs to come here and treat this girl right.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

FRIENDS

best friend — someone who will always be there for her. the person she feels most comfortable with. // m, f, or nb

partner in crime — they may not be the most reliable person like her best friend. but definitely someone she can get turnt tf up with. // m, f, or nb

childhood friend(s) — her first friend(s)! the one(s) she’s known since birth. she will never switch up on the real ones. (or so u think...) // m, f, or nb

ENEMIES

rivals — someone who hates her and some she hates too. maybe they just don’t get along yo. it happens // m, f, or nb

old bully — maybe somebody who bullied her or someone she might have bullied? bc honestly, if she bullied someone it would’ve been a joke. // m, f, or nb

old flame that didn’t end well — this is someone she used to date. maybe they wanted it to go further than just a date. but she ended up cutting ties with them. now it’s just made awk. // m, f, or nb

LOVERS

hate/love — just ‘cause these are my favorites. just little bickering. maybe they’re too much alike or just not a like at all. // m, f, or nb

old flame that ended well — the classic, exes that ended on good terms. they don’t hate each other at all. are actually still on really good terms. and possibly still have lingering feelings.  // m, f, or nb

currently dating — going on dates and what not. having a good time. who knows where this could go.  // m, f, or nb

MISCELLANEOUS

☪ overall, this bitch is flippy floppy. she’s loyal. quiet, but has a lot of opinions. intelligent, but sometimes stand-off-ish. she’s a bit of a feminist. trusts no bitch. but if you’re her friend, she’s chill AF. but really — she just doesn’t know how to process her good thoughts into words. she’s a barista and florist. she’s independent, hardworking, and determined. my muse for her is michelle (spider man homecoming) & margo roth spiegelman (paper towns). she’s a bit sketch when it comes to making new friends. since she’s a bit of a loner. and she’s super family oriented. despite her being absolutely oblivious to the fact that her mom cheated on her “dad” with her bio dad. anyways, give her girl scout cookies and she’ll love you til the end of time. overall, she’s not as lame as she portrays herself to be and is actually a pretty rad chick.

wEW this got waaaaaay longer than i expected it to be. anywho, if you actually read all this i love you and i cherish you hella. if you just skimmed, i would too. i would really love to plot with everyone. so just slide into my dms and we can get things started!! but okay, so, now imma go touch up my other intros. hope u don’t hate me after this long ass essay lmao. luv u *blows a kiss*