#gonna create a new tag specifically for predictions

[tojiscrack]

is it weird that i wish y/n existed in the actual jjk verse. like her personality fits so well with almost every single character, and the chemistry between megumi and y/n is THE BEST ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝��

her personality is so real and unlike any other reader i’ve come across in other reader x [insert character] fics. the chemistry between her and other characters doesn’t feel forced, if you understand what i mean? i thoroughly enjoy reading EVERY scene because of that! (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)

you said to look out for foreshadowing which is what i have been trying to do but perhaps i’m being a little silly looking way too early, considering other chapters have not been released yet. but one thing i have noticed is that megumi only really has shown CLEAR signs of liking her more than just a friend when he is about to leave her (not the scene where he’s silently fighting over sitting next to her at yuji’s place because that could arguably be seen as platonic too despite me seeing it as him liking her) - for example; when he’s going on vacation without her. now i understand that this is only one example but i have a feeling that this may become a reoccurring theme - what was it, absence makes the heart grow fonder? i have a feeling he’ll only ever understand his feelings for her when he is away from her. and given the angst hashtag, it wouldn’t exactly be surprising if for any reason they moved away from each other, whether figuratively or physically.

i could be completely wrong though and if that’s the case, then this is embarrassing ( ᵒ̴̶̷᷄◡̶͂ᵒ̴̶̷᷅ )و

but regardless, i’m so happy i stumbled across this fic. seriously, the way u write is awesome and i can only wish to be as good as you when it comes to writing! the dialogue, the chemistry between the characters is so cute and feels like a coming of age sitcom. i love it i love it i love it and i love you!! (๑˃́ꇴ˂̀๑)

please keep up the good work, soldier. i salut you for your hard work keeping us all sane after gege shattered our souls (stay alive, don’t let him find you) ദ്ദി(˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧

liar, liar masterlist here

oh. my. GOSH. a long message? AJSJWKSJWJSJ STOPPP I’M SO EXCITED TO ANSWER THIS

it is not weird at ALL. i created this y/n with the sole thought that there should be a character as wild as her (i love goofy characters sm you have no idea). like my fav character from aot? connie. fav from jjk? gojo. fav from haikyuu? tanaka and hinata. fav from death note? L (don’t lie, that man was funny af).

read that entire sentence about her chemistry with megumi and the relationship she has with the other characters not being forced with a FAT smile on my face 🙂‍↕️ an author knows they’ve won once someone points this out using their own free will. thank you for that 😭💞

the second i saw the word ‘foreshadowing’ in ur message, JAISJWISJWJSJ. YES, YOU HAVE A PREDICTION? TELL ME MORE (i feel like a mastermind rn muahahahaha) 😋 you are nawt silly for looking for it earlier. i’ve dropped so many hints and no one’s picked it apart yet (surprisingly). some are more obvious than others, but let me tell you now, once you’ve noticed it, you’re gonna smack ur forehead and think ‘why didn’t i see this before?’.

i LOVE how you’re playing devil’s advocate for yourself (you’re so smart omg). like you’ve mentioned how the only in-your-face type of thing we’ve seen so far is the airport scene (i mean, if gojo pointing it out wasn’t so obvious, dk what is, really, lolol). and i also like how you’ve made it so that the arguing in yuji’s room can be easily seen as platonic despite what you might think (we need smart people like you so pls don’t die tyvm).

and OOH, IDK WHAT TO TELL YOU WITHOUT SPOILING IT. distance makes the heart grow fonder… yeah, can’t reveal whether this trope is for them or not. i can, however, confuse you a little and say that you’re half right. maybe, like, forty five percent right if i have to slap a number on it. yeah. but there is something that occurs later on (you guessed it, with the angst hashtag) that makes me want to say that you’re actually fifty five percent right. idk, you’ll see what i mean once the main story’s out 😭

this would NOT be embarrassing for you if you’re wrong, let me tell you that much. this fic’s been out since the end of december (beginning of january?) and no one’s come to a prediction as well thought out as yours. for that, i will NOT forget you when i write out the half-correct prediction of yours in the coming chapters.

i’m so happy you stumbled across my fic too! 😭 i’m having sm fun writing this out and laughing to myself (not at you babe, just as the evil mastermind that i am). i’ll be responsible for your complaints once the angst chapters get out (plural because there’s a LOT of them planned). tysm for ur kind message, i’m so flattered my writing pleases you 😭 dialogue is hard to write, trying to match it with the characters ofc, so i appreciate your support on that 💘

girl, gege will never find me. after what he did to my satoru, i will find him. don’t get it twisted.

on the contrary, i’m so upset you wrote all of this anonymously but i respect it, there might be a gazillion reasons why you’d like to remain anonymous. so if you ever send a message again, just lmk it’s you. call yourself the ‘big brain anon’ (😤) because you’re so smart and ily and don’t be humble about it, you are SO smart <3

[anticomedygarden]

adventures in illegal weapons production and distribution

Peter creates knives that are undetectable by metal detectors. Predictably, this causes some chaos.

Based on ch 7 of deniigiq's 'in technicolor.'

ao3 link

-

Peter never knew a partnership with the NYPD could be so lucrative. Really, he should present his discovery to Captain Rogers, just to see what he would say. Probably something along the lines of 'reasoning can't be based on his experience with one guy that DD trusts' or something about sample size, or, depending on the soldier's mood, "Absolutely not."

Whatever. All Peter knew was that illegal acquisition of resin had never been easier, and all he'd had to do was become Spider-man.

This was how he ended up holed up in his bedroom surrounded by beautiful, clear knives, the sweet satisfaction of a job well done putting him to sleep at a reasonable hour.

-

The resin knives were cool, but there were just two problems, one if he was willing to overlook the effects on the environment. The bigger problem was that the resin could still be detected by SI's metal detectors, a fact which he now knew intimately.

"Man, let me go," Peter whined, rattling the handcuffs attached to his right hand. He was very close to trying out DD's thumb dislocation trick since he couldn't use his super strength, but he didn't think Mr. Stark would appreciate him breaking shit outside of the lab, even if it was his own body. "It's just resin."

The security guard currently holding Peter hostage in his little office (Mr. Greevy, according to his name tag) gave him an unimpressed look. It made his mustache twitch. "They're weapons."

Peter rolled his eyes. No shit, sir. That's the point.

Not only could he not break out of the cuffs, he couldn't tell Mr. Greevy to call Mr. Stark for three reasons: 1, the guard definitely would not believe him; 2, Mr. Stark probably wouldn't pick up; and 3, Mr. Stark did not like for Peter to have resin and would take away his knives and possibly tell Detective Mahoney to find another bribe, and that was simply unacceptable. Peter needed his resin for future projects.

Turns out, he didn't need to worry about any of that because Mr. Stark was already walking into the guard's room and demanding the key for the cuffs, but not before Mr. Greevy showed his big boss his brand new small box full of resin knives.

Peter thought that behind the pursed lips and drawn brow, Mr. Stark was impressed. Good. Some of those designs were intricate as hell.

Finally, Mr. Stark gave a quiet huff, said, "C'mon, Pete," and grabbed the knife box from Mr. Greevy, and they started up to the lab.

"Do I even want to know?" Mr. Stark asked tiredly.

No, probably not, but definitely yes after his next project.

"Fine, just keep it from me. Plausible deniability."

Yes sir, that's the plan. Can I please have my knives back?

-

Logically, the next step was making them able to slip past metal detectors, specifically the hyper aware ones at SI, and it only took one tipoff to Detective Mahoney to procure the necessary resin. The rest of the materials he could get from Mr. Stark's lab, and what was life without a little explicit disobedience, anyway?

Once he surfaced from his own project, Mr. Stark took one look at Peter's work station and did a double take. "Whatcha doing, buddy?"

Ha. Peter's had this answer waiting since he got here. "Experimenting with different materials."

Mr. Stark pressed his lips together into a thin line. "And what materials are those?"

"You told me not to tell you about it."

Once again, Mr. Stark pursed his lips. "It's resin, isn't it?"

Peter grinned at him. "Can we skip the whole, 'That's illegal, you shouldn't have that,' thing? We both know I'm just gonna bring up the illegal stuff you were getting up to when you were my age. Really, this isn't that bad."

Except for the part where he was gonna distribute his illegal and dangerous weapons to his illegal and dangerous friends.

Mr. Stark was really looking particularly stricken today. Like a man who knew he was in the right and still lost. Now there was nothing he could do to stop this masterpiece.

-

Less than a few hours later, the masterpiece was complete. His knives were beautiful. Truly one of his babies, along with his web fluid, first set of resin knives (R.I.P. from the bottom of his sock drawer), and the original Spidey suit. Now it was just a matter of testing it.

Because SI was (understandably) more concerned with what people might be bringing into its facilities - what with all the supervillains and crazy geniuses and such - to truly test his knives against detection, he would have to bring them back into the building. This, of course, meant crawling out the window of the lab in the Spiderman suit, walking all the way down the tower, putting his person clothes on over the suit in a nearby alley, walking back into the tower under the guise of forgetting his backpack, and doing all of it with the knives very strategically placed under the suit. In addition to the metal detectors, the security guard on duty also had him step aside to undergo additional security checks now that the man knew him as 'the kid with the weird ass knives.' Fortunately, the new material passed without detection, or else the subsequent few hours would have been very uncomfortable for everyone.

The next step now was distribution. Getting them to Wade was easy enough since the merc would be more interested in their durability and appearance, but Peter wanted to do one more test before taking them to Matt. DD would not be happy if Peter brought him supposedly undetectable knives and then was acosted at the court house. No, he had to get them through more metal detectors.

Peter had no reason to be in the court house. He also did not want to be arrested if the knives did somehow set off an alarm. Obviously, the best work around to this little problem was to stick a knife in the work bag of a particular court house employee he'd heard Matt complain about in the past, namely for being an 'asswipe small brained bigot with a head too big to stick up his own ass.' Matt's words, not his.

Peter was almost disappointed when the man made it smoothly past the entrance.

After sneaking into the man's office to steal back his knife, Peter quickly swung home to collect the box on his desk, the one full of knives. Team Red was scheduled for a meetup on this fine Monday morning while DD and Wade were between jobs and Peter had no classes that he cared about.

It took only a few minutes to get to the roof of their building, but Matt and Wade were already there when Peter landed. They both turned and stared at him. Well, Wade did. Matt cocked his head.

"Whatcha got there bud?" Wade asked, clearly very interested.

Peter grinned and carefully disentangled his box from where it was strapped to his stomach with webs. "I have presents."

"Ooh," Wade said. "Is it spider eggs? Cause if it is, I'd keep that to yourself."

Before Peter could answer, Matt broke in. "It's rattling, and it smells like chemicals." He sniffed, evidently annoyed that he couldn't figure out immediately what Peter had based on his olfactory cortex's admittedly extensive database of smells. "Is it..." He frowned. "Some sort of resin?"

"Ding ding ding!" Peter said delightedly and opened the box. "They're knives."

He handed one up to both men who took them eagerly; they studied them for a minute, Wade less thoroughly than Matt, who went so far as to lick the flat side of the blade. He made a face. "What the fuck is that?"

"It's a resin based polymer," he informed them. "It can get past metal detectors and is thin and flexible enough to go through light pat downs." This he knew first hand.

Much to his satisfaction, both people in front of him looked absolutely thrilled with this information.

"You know what this means?" Wade said, gesturing dramatically with the knife still in his hand, "I can finally go back to the mall!"

Oh. Oh well. The knives were their property now. It wasn't Peter's job to keep track of what they did with them.

Matt continued to look pleased. "I can't wait to tell Foggy how much safer we're about to be at the court house."

Ha. Mr. Nelson would be so happy.

-

They disbanded not long after that, Matt to his office and Wade to whatever he had to do, but Peter stayed up in the air for a while longer. Now that he had the supplies, he wanted to learn how to use them; therefore, he pulled up a YouTube video on knife throwing for beginners and began to practice. By the time he decided to head back to school, he had gotten fairly proficient if he did say so himself.

Sadly, there was one person who did not share that opinion.

"Hey, Spiderman," Ms Black Widow said.

He definitely did not shriek or jump two feet in the air, and he definitely did not curse his Spidey Sense for not sensing her. (She was dangerous as fuck, how did it not pick up on that?)

Once over his totally silent and stationary calm moment, he said, "Hi, Ms Black Widow ma'am."

"I heard you're practicing your throwing skills."

What.

"You're not bad, but there's plenty of room for improvement."

The.

"I think we could help each other."

Fuck.

"I'll teach you to throw if you make me some of those knives."

Yes. Absolutely. You say jump, I say I'm already stuck to the bottom of this helicopter.

"Good. I'll meet you on the roof of your building at 9 tonight."

Oh god. Oh fuck. He could do this.

-

He could not do this. Ms Black Widow was not only incredibly talented at all things violent, but she was also an incredible hard ass. None of his throws were perfect. They were fine . They were all right. There was always room for improvement .

On the plus side, he was very, very good at making knives. Ms Black Widow required two knives as payment for each lesson. It had been two weeks with one lesson a day. That was 28 knives. He was running out of resin. At least he could make them at home now.

This was definitely handy, along with Detective Mahoney's most recent need for Spiderman's help, because now Matt and Wade were particularly attached to their knives and wanted more. This, he found out from Mr. Nelson, who, at first, was not all that happy with his partner's new toys. No, the thank you text Peter had received from him was overly formal at best, obviously sent out of propriety and a subtle request never to make Matt weapons ever again at worst. Then, a heavily armed burglar attacked the bank the two just so happened to be banking at, and suddenly Mr. Nelson couldn't be more pleased with the knives. Yes, his new thank you text implied, they are very cool and all together good to have around, and we would very much like some more please.

Peter continued to be pleased.

-

Tony Stark was not happy. In the last two days, his personal sponsored vigilante had unleashed hell in his building, and Tony wanted to find out who was responsible.

After some light interrogation, he found out the special little knives - the ones that absolutely should not have made it through security - were made of a resin polymer, one that was definitely going to be patented before any unsavories got wind of the undetectable nature of the weapons. That was the easy part. The hard part was finding out where the actual fuck the kid was getting all this damn resin.

"Peter," he started, bravely, "where-"

"Momma didn't raise no snitch, Mr. Stark." This was said very quickly from a concerningly guiltless face.

"Momma didn't raise you," Tony said, face an uncaring mirror of the boy's in front of him, despite the line not being in any way productive or nice. Pepper glared at him from where she was apologizing to a group of interns that Peter had scared the bejeezus out of when he'd killed the fly that had been bothering them all day with one of his not-resin knives.

A fly. The animal famous for speed and being easily startled. This was why he didn't let Peter have resin.

Fortunately, Peter didn't seem to be offended. Or sorry. "Aunt May didn't raise no snitch, Mr. Stark."

Tony sighed deeply. "Kid, this is illegal. Whoever is getting this to you is a criminal."

Peter continued to not look sorry. If anything, he looked confused. "Then why would I tell you who it is?"

Fuck the resin. Peter needed to stop hanging out with vigilantes. Especially lawyer vigilantes.

"Is it Daredevil? Deadpool? I know you gave them some of your knives. Did Ted get it online? Who taught you how to throw?"

Peter's eyes glittered, and he mimed zipping his lips. This conversation was going nowhere.

-

The knives, predictably, continued to be a problem, especially for Tony's poor doors and whatever person happened to be staying in the tower at the time being because Peter, in his mischief, had taken to using his knife throwing skills to wake people up. It didn't matter when or who; a tired, overworked intern was just as likely to be a target as an Avenger late for a meeting. Anybody was liable to have a resin adjacent knife fly past their head the second it hit their pillow (or forearms).

Again, there was also the problem of security. This time, it wasn't that his knives were going where they shouldn't be; Peter was going where he shouldn't be. The little menace had figured out that his knives were thin enough to fit in the cracks between doors. This meant that he could now throw his knives into the latches on door locks, splitting them and leaving doors permanently ajar, from a considerable distance. He could also, if he so chose, throw his knives into the actual key holes, making them impossible to open. Thankfully, this was less of a problem for Tony because JARVIS could pretty well control the doors himself, but he just knew Peter had reported his discoveries to his little vigilante friends who would no doubt use the knowledge to wreak havoc on New York City and its criminal underworld.

So no, it wasn't a major problem. Until Secretary Ross came to visit.

He wanted something. Something stupid, probably. Probably something to do with an 'Avengers level threat' or publicity or something else that Tony didn't particularly care about or really didn't want to deal with. He didn't know because he wasn't paying attention. At this point, he was really just watching the man's lips flap while he sipped coffee with not enough espresso shots and tried to wake up before 9. It was fine; JARVIS could give him the rundown later if he didn't have something better to do by then.

Then, very quickly, it wasn't fine. With his back to the door, Tony heard glass shatter, then the crinkling of it falling and hitting the floor. In his half asleep, bored stated, he didn't immediately react. Then he saw the clearish knife in the cabinet lock by Ross' head and the pieces clicked together. Peter had just thrown one of his very illegal knives through a glass door and past the US Secretary of State's head, presumably to lightly threaten the man, which, honestly, Tony couldn't blame him for. Hatred for Thaddeus Ross was probably the only thing that all of the adults (and the other kids) in Peter's life could agree on, not to mention the kid's own issues with the guy, namely that if up to Ross, Peter would be in the Raft. Honestly, Tony would not be surprised if Peter had already fucked off to one his various circles to brag about not only being close enough to Ross to kill him but also getting to threaten him with an illegal weapon of his own creation. Of course, the kid could've just been trying to lock the cabinet behind the man's head since it housed some illegal substances, including but not limited to, the materials that made his knives.

Ross seemed to be at a loss for words. "What...was that?"

Huh. Maybe he didn't notice the knife. Tony decided it was in everyone's best interest to keep it that way. "Probably just the heat. Why don't you send the rest of this to me in an email?" He ushered the stuttering man over the pile of broken glass and into the - thankfully - empty hallway, and began to rethink his stance on illicit resin.

No matter what he landed on ethics wise, Peter needed to be stopped. Or at the very least slowed down.

-

Aunt May may not have raised a snitch, but when it came to her nephew's adventures in illegal weapons production and distribution, she sure was one. One call from Colonel James Rhodes had her spilling the name of the supplier, and Tony could definitely say that he was shocked. Of all the people Peter was involved with, Tony did not expect Detective Brett Mahoney of the 15th precinct to be his resin dealer, and he really was not expecting the resin to be payment for intel and aerial support.

Now that Tony had seen the knives be used for good, he was sort of willing to let the illegal dealings slide. Rhodey would be taking his side, but, in his words, he had a real job with bosses to answer to, as well as property damage that Pepper would soon find out about, an event that Tony really should be more concerned for.

Thus, Colonel James Rhodes sat down to write a letter to Detective Mahoney.

Tony supposed it would be nice to be able to use his own doors again.

-

hey i'm looking to get into marvel comics, so if anyone can recommend a good starting point (for someone who's seen the whole mcu and some of the defenders shows plus itsv and deadpool) and also a website on which to read them that would be awesome

[natewriteslol]

And There You Stayed

Part 2 of Just You and Me

Summary: Malleus realizes that the dream of Y/N the human is becoming a reality. Will the memories that he created crumble and fade to black just like last time? Or will they follow through, and life will fall into place.

A/N: I know some of you guys were heartbroken so I wrote you a happy ending

Y/N uses they/them pronouns

Warnings: none

Genre: Fluff and just a little bit of angst

tag list: @coffeeleafdepression, @magicpumpkin3, @puddingqueen-writes  

Part 1 of the fic! (ahfkfaad pls read otherwise the fic will just seem weird) 

It was still a week and a couple of days after the dream and Malleus had such a tough time forgetting you. Your touch, scent, smile, they way you laughed. He couldn’t believe that you were a figment of reality, and the horned man just wasn’t the same. Lilia, Silver and Sebek noticed the change in their master’s mood, but they didn’t want to dig and make him uncomfortable. Malleus was sad and way more aloof than usual, it was hard to approach him let alone fix. So, they let their master have his space. 

An organized meeting for the dorm leaders was meant to commence soon, talking about formalities since the school year had just started after all. And despite his melancholy, Malleus knew he had to attend. The meeting was quite boring, no one really talked to him as his frightening demeanor was even more intense when he was in this state. So he had just sat and listened. 

And that was when everything changed, the magic mirror vibrated and lit up. With great blinding light someone flew out of the magic mirror with a scream. It was a cat? Another scream rang out, flying out the magic mirror in the same fashion, except the silhouette looked human.

The beast talked with great blue flames surrounding it’s ears and tail. 

“Who the hell are you?! Get off of me you stupid human!” The voice of the cat said, as the human had toppled over the cat, both laying on the cold dark marble of the floor. 

“A talking cat?!” The human shrieked. 

“Yeah do you have a problem with that, human?” The cat asked angrily, floating in the air. The human had emerged from the darkness. 

It was them, from his dream.  

Every imperfection, every beautiful quality, Malleus had memorized them all. And there they were, right in front of him. 

This had sent him into a state of shock, the fae had just stood there. While everyone had tended to the new resident. Everything he had already predicted was happening. Enrolled as one student with the cat named Grim, placed in the abandoned Ramshackle dorm, defeating the overblotted dorm leaders. 

And your name, Y/N L/N. Flowed perfectly off the tongue. 

The only thing Malleus had gotten wrong, was that you didn’t come on the first day, but rather a few days after. It was insane and Malleus grew afraid. What if everything would fizzle out again? Revealing that it was a fantasy and nothing more. 

Yet something was different about this time. It was that he was experiencing more, different adventures that weren’t revealed in his dream, new conversations that made his love for Y/N grow even more. 

Like the one time he was reading peacefully in the courtyard only to see Y/N and the gang running away from a Giantess Froganza (Giant mutant frog). 

“HI MALLEUS! BYE MALLEUS!” you yelled before starting to scream and run away from the beast. Y/N had still managed to notice him, even in moments of terror. Yet without magic you had saved the day. Like the great hero that you were. 

The dream was a vague prophecy of love given to him. Malleus was hurt yet grateful, to feel insane for days but then given the gift of this human. They were silly, completely out of whack, but they were still so in sync with Malleus. A perfect fit into NRC, like a puzzle piece. 

Lilia had noticed Malleus’ behavior being soothed yet still alert. 

“Malleus, what is going on?” Lilia asked, gazing into his eyes. And that is all it took for him to spill out his secret. He felt embarrassed, thinking that Lilia was going to look at him with two heads. All Malleus’ feelings were out in the open. 

Lilia gave him a smile, “Oh Malleus, but don’t you know?” 

“Know what exactly?” Malleus asked, wanting his guardian to go on. 

“Dear, when faes get older they can earn new powers. Some stay forever, some only stay for a short while like yours,” Lilia answered. 

“And while it wasn’t completely accurate, and didn’t show everything. You had a prophetic vision, they typically happen when there is something of great importance coming. And from what I can tell, Y/N is incredibly important to you,” The elder fae said teasingly, making Malleus a little flustered. Lilia wasn’t wrong but that didn’t mean that he had to say it. Y/N made the horned man nervous undeniably, his heart skipping and his breath hitch whenever they spoke to him. 

“But please, rest easy. There is nothing to fear Malleus,” Lilia said. 

~

Malleus and Y/N were looking at the sunset while sitting on the roof of an ancient building of NRC. He confessed about his prophetic visions, he didn’t want to feel like a fool when around him despite getting reassurance from Lilia. Malleus didn’t tell them about him professing his love to them, he wasn’t ready for that yet. 

“I know it sounds quite unbelievable but-” 

“Malleus, I got chased by a gigantic frog,” they started, taking his hand into theirs. “You are a great and all powerful sorcerer. One of the most powerful people I know! That isn’t unbelievable or weird.” 

“But if something is bothering you, then you can tell me. I’ve got my arms wide open for you.”

~

It was summer, one of the last days to close Y/N’s first year at Night Raven College. The human decided to take a walk with Malleus feeling anxious, but they weren’t really sure what they were feeling apprehensive about. More and more time without being home, the feeling of being done with a school year or wanting to tell Malleus about how they felt. 

Was it a combination of all three? Most likely.

The human had felt a connection with him for a long time, and they didn’t know how long they had to keep it hidden within. So they decided, you know what? I’m gonna confess to this guy! With such great confidence, yet it fizzled around him in seconds.  

His eyes, so bright and mysterious. Of course everyone’s eyes were pretty different from what they’ve seen in the human world, but Y/N could gaze into specifically his all day. His lips, speaking in that beautiful voice with such proper language. The human remembered that one time they poked fun at Malleus with Sebek around. 

“I’m quite a royal, yes I am. The most powerful sorcerer among these humans” they said flamboyantly, closing their eyes and placing a hand on their forehead. 

“Stop making fun of the young master, you ignorant human!” Sebek boomed with anger in his voice. 

“Sebek, my loyal servant, you bark like a dog,” the human said, opening an eye to look at the angry fae. 

“That’s it!-” 

But in the background there came a snicker which emerged into one that was just a little bit louder, yet still soft. 

It was Malleus. Laughing? Admittedly, Sebek was a little jealous of Y/N for being able to make the young master laugh, especially since it was at his expense. But it put happiness in his heart that someone was able to make him happy. Not as a servant, but as a friend. 

 However, the green haired fae was still prepared to strangle you. 

~

The pair sat down on the grass, seeing the lights of fireflies around them. The human took Malleus’ hand into theirs all while staring at the lake in front of them.  

“Child of man” Malleus started, making you turn your attention to him. “When we were on the roof and I talked about my vision, I was not being completely honest.” 

“What do you mean?” you asked. 

“Well, I had left out a minor detail,” 

“We were on the bridge, and I had confessed to you” Malleus finally got out. “When I had finished, you told me to wake up. Everything had gone black and I was woken up by Lilia.”

“I had been very anxious about sharing this moment with you, Child of Man. I’m frightened that everything will fizzle out to black and not be real.” It was silence until, 

“Malleus, I love you-”

“Y/N, I love you-”

They both chuckled from them speaking at the same time. 

“Please go first, Y/N.” 

“Malleus, I really love you, you know. I’ve been crushing on you for so long. And I promise that we’re in reality,” you paused to look at the fae in his eyes. 

“I know you told me that you’re anxious to take on the future, and I’m the same. I don’t know what’s in store or what I’m going to do, but let’s be there for each other,” they finished, placing their palm against his pale face, smiling as you did. 

Malleus put his hand on Y/N’s face as well, pulling them into a deep kiss. And while his vision wasn’t one hundred percent correct, the moment the fae and human had shared was incredibly magical. 

“I have wanted to do that for a long time, Child of Man,” Malleus said, smiling cheekily. And there the pair stayed, conversing under the stars until you had to run from employees who had spotted them both. 

Careless, young and free. But most importantly together. 

As they had both promised each other.

[singtotheskiies]

blood on the floor // five hargreeves x reader

summary: when you’re hurt in a fight at griddy’s, five finds out despite your attempts at keeping him in the dark.

request (by anon): Hi ♥ so I'm sorry but I have kind of a very specific request with Five. You know that scene after Klaus took a bath and Five saw his bloody footprints on the ground? Ever since I saw it, I imagined something like that with Five where he's in love with the reader and they get hurt in a fight or something, and since it was kind of Five's fault they decides not to tell him, but he finds out when he sees the footprints. Then idk, he feels guilty and hurries to them to apologize and they can comfort him

words: 2300

warnings: blood, slight swearing, slight sexual comment, tiny bit o’ angst, but then there’s fluff don’t worry (it’s my writing after all)

a/n: reader has telekinetic abilities in this one, and they and five are both in their late teens!! GOD this request is so goodddd; i hope you guys like it!! ib art is kicking my ass, so it was nice to create a lil love by writing this. happy holidays/winter time/other descriptor of the present!!! 💕💕

✖️✖️✖️

“Are you sure Dad won’t catch us?” you ask Five nervously. “Last time Klaus snuck out, we didn’t see him for a week after Dad found him.”

“That’s because he was piss-drunk,” Five retorts, rolling his eyes. “He was practically begging to get caught. Plus, we’re smarter.”

“True,” you concede, giggling. “But if all this goes sideways, don’t expect me to take the blame. You better get us back by lights out.”

“Whatever,” Five smirks, shaking his head. “I’m hungry. Let’s get going before you make me regret this.” “Lead the way,” you say, taking his offered arm. As soon as your fingers are wrapped firmly around him, he blinks the two of you out of the Academy and onto the sidewalk across the street from Griddy’s. Being outside of the pristine Academy walls instantly makes you feel freer, and you take a deep breath, smiling as you relish the feeling of liberty. As you let out a relieved sigh, you look over at Five, who’s watching you with amused eyes. There’s something in the way he blinks and the small curve of his lips that suggests quiet affection—something you rarely see from anyone, especially Five. He meets your eyes and your heart skips a beat when his soft smile deepens. The two of you have always been close, and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t excited to have some alone time away from your other adopted siblings and their prying eyes. “After you,” Five says, holding the door open and gesturing with his other hand. You nod in thanks and enter Griddy’s, breathing in the smell of fried treats with enthusiasm. “God, that smells heavenly,” you groan. “Dad would kill us if he knew we were eating stuff like this.” “Good thing he’s busy doing his important Dad stuff,” Five quips, adding air quotes around his last few words. The bakery’s pretty empty since it’s later in the evening: an older lady is packing up her things and getting ready to leave, and a group of four boys who seem to be a bit older than you and Five are laughing loudly among themselves. They eye the two of you as you sit down at the counter—likely because of the uniforms, you think. (You had wanted to change clothes, but Five said it would take extra time to change when the two of you got back and that Mom would get suspicious. You had sighed and conceded, but you were regretting it now—the boys were making you uncomfortable.) Five subconsciously moves closer to you, his arm brushing yours with the new proximity. You try to ignore the fluttering in your stomach as a sweet-looking older lady with a name tag declaring her as Agnes takes your order. Five predictably orders coffee, and you lightly scold him with a smack to the arm. “It’s seven p.m., Five! You’re gonna be up all night,” you admonish him. “Nonsense,” he says. “I’m a perfectly well-adjusted young man.” “Boy is more like it,” you mutter under your breath, and he shoots you a look. You giggle and look out of the window, pointing out interesting things you see. Five just listens to you talk, smiling as you chatter on. Being out of the clutches of your dad is freeing for you both, and you have a sneaking suspicion that he’s enjoying it more than he’s letting on. Your orders come a few minutes later, and you dig in happily. “You’re gonna choke,” Five deadpans, and you stick your tongue out at him in response. “Oh, live a little,” you say around a mouthful of donut. “Never know when you’ll get another chance.” To your dismay, however, the group of boys has left the table in the corner, making their way toward you and Five. They’ve all got stupid, self-righteous grins plastered on their faces, and you can’t say you like the sight of them very much. “So,” one says, his blond hair reeking with product. “You’re those kids from the Academy place, huh?” “Mhm,” you say, continuing to eat your donut. You’re not about to engage in any more conversation than strictly necessary, and you’re really, really hungry on top of that. Maybe they’ll get the hint and leave. After a few seconds, you turn back around. Nope. They’re still there. “Can we help you?” Five asks, annoyance creeping into his voice. “Or do we need to make you leave?” “Oh, we just wanna see you do a little something special,” a taller, brunette boy answers. “Are the stories about you true?” “We’re not circus freaks,” you put in. “Can you please just leave us alone?”

“Aww, c’mon,” a red-haired, thinner boy smirks. “A pretty little thing like you has to have something to show us. We wanna see some action,” he says, eyeing you in a way that very much makes you feel like you’re just a piece of meat. This seems to be the final straw for Five.

“Leave them alone!” he hisses through gritted teeth. His hands clench out of instinct.

“What are you gonna do about it?” the blond boy asks, grin widening in place.

“A hell of a lot,” Five growls, standing up and glaring at him belligerently.

“Five,” you warn, but he gestures dismissively at you behind his back, not breaking eye contact with the boys.

“Leave us alone,” he demands again. “Final warning.”

“Nah, man, I’m kinda liking this,” the fourth boy says. “I thi—“

Five cuts him off. “You wanted to see what we can do? Well, here you go.” His hands glow blue as he meets your eyes.

“Showtime,” you affirm, having had enough, and Five blinks away. The boys laugh among themselves, calling out to Five—who reappears right behind them and takes out two with a few well-aimed punches. A quick glance confirms to you that Agnes is nowhere in sight, and you hope she stays away for the next few minutes. This shouldn’t take long.

Reaching out with your mind, you zero in on a few napkin dispensers sitting on a table. You send them hurtling at the boys, hitting just hard enough to bruise their shins. The two still standing double over in pain, and Five smirks at you before blinking over and taking them down too.

Your eyes move to Five’s coffee cup, and an idea forms in your head. You bring the coffeepot sitting behind the counter to hover near you, planning to get your tormentors a little wet.

However, you don’t see the big blond boy standing back up, wiping at a bloody nose with a murderous look in his eyes—and neither does Five (he’s too busy looking at you and what you’re about to do with pride).

You hear Five cry out in surprise and pain as the boy twists his arm behind his back. The sound breaks your focus, and you accidentally loosen your mental hold on the coffeepot, causing it to fall and break on your feet. You manage to close your eyes, but you can feel hot liquid and fragments of glass cut through your cheeks and hands as they come up to shield your face. Worst of all, large shards of glass impale your sneakers, jabbing painfully when you try to move.

“Five!” you cry through the pain, and he looks up from where he’s got the boy pinned to the ground.

“I’m fine—“ he says, but trails off when he sees the blood on your face. “Oh, Christ, you okay?”

“Uh—I think so,” you lie, not wanting him to know that his exclamation was what broke your focus. “Can we go home now? I’ve had enough of these losers,” you say, indicating the groaning boys on the ground.

Five nods before bending down so that his face is inches from the blond boy’s. “Do not ever,” he hisses, “ever mess with me or them or anyone like us again. You’re not strong enough to take it.” The boy cringes in pain, and Five releases him, satisfied.

“Let’s get you home,” he says, eyeing your cuts. “Those probably need some taking care of.” He takes your hand and teleports the two of you back to your room in the Academy.

He lets go of your fingers, looking down at his own covered with your blood. “Oh, no,” he winces. “Let me help with th—“

“It’s okay, Five, really. It’s nothing. I—I’ll take care of it,” you reply hastily. “Besides, you’re a bit disheveled yourself—you should get cleaned up before anyone comes.”

“But you’re bleeding,” he protests. “I could—“

“Five, I’m fine,” you insist, a bit more quickly than you’d intended. “I can handle it.”

“Okay—as long as you’re sure,” he says, voice hesitant. When you nod, he looks at you with a mixture of pride and admiration and something else you can’t quite place that makes your cheeks heat up. “Nice job back there.” He smiles wide before blinking away to his own room. After you’re satisfied no one’s in the hallway, you quietly make your way to the bathroom. You lock the door behind you—if anyone sees you, you and Five will get in trouble for sure.

The first order of business is to get your soaked shoes off your feet so you can assess the damage. You wince as you slowly unlace them and slide your socks off—it isn’t pretty. You’re pretty sure a couple of cuts are going to need stitches, and the ones that aren’t as deep are still bleeding profusely. A few shards of glass have managed to slice through the soles of your feet, and the cuts start bleeding afresh as you carefully pull them out. You swab the wounds with disinfectant, hissing in pain as the liquid stings you.

After you’re satisfied you’ve done all you can do, you make your way across the room to the mirror to clean off your face. Thankfully, the damage is minimal—a couple shallow cuts on your cheeks and chin. Most importantly, no glass is still in your skin. You begin to dab at the wounds when you hear Five’s voice behind you.

“That doesn’t look so good,” he says quietly, pointing at the bloody footprints you’ve left on the bathroom floor. You curse—partially because he scared the shit out of you and partially because you didn’t mean for him to see you in pain.

“Christ, Five! Warn me next time! And, uh—it’s nothing, really,” you say, subconsciously hiding your bloody hands behind your back.

“Bloody footprints aren’t nothing,” he says, voice rising a bit in intensity but still remaining quiet—almost eerily so. “When did this happen?”

“Um, I just dropped something at Griddy’s when we were fighting those guys—no big deal.”

“You of all people losing your concentration during a fight is a big deal,” Five snaps. “Leaving literal blood behind when you walk is an even bigger deal! What the hell happened?”

You blink at him, once, and then avert your eyes. The last thing you want to do is tell him it was his outcry that broke your focus—he’ll just blame himself. He has enough on his plate already. Unfortunately, your silence incriminates you, and he curses through this teeth.

“It was when that guy snuck up on me, right?” he asks, with a finality that makes your reluctant nod superfluous. In response, he turns from you, shoulders heaving as his breathing starts to shudder. His fists clench and unclench, fingers rasping together in the silence.

“Five, I should have been able to focus, it’s not your f—“

“Yes, it is!” he shouts, whirling around to face you. You’re shocked to see tears building in his eyes. His chest heaves once, twice, and he says it again—“yes, it is. Don’t you understand?”

His voice is quieting now. “I can’t let anything happen to you, because if I do—it’s my fault.” A single tear slides down each cheek, dripping onto his shirt. Your heart shatters at the sight—Five is never this emotional. Not in front of anyone else, at least. On instinct, you reach a hand out to wipe away the tears, to comfort him, to do anything to convince him that what happened isn’t his fault. He catches your hand before it can reach him and looks down at the cuts across the back of your hand and fingers.

“If you get hurt, it’s my fault,” he whispers. “Because—because I care about you. A lot more than I ever thought I did—a lot more than I ever planned on.”

You stare at him in shock as he cradles your hands with agonizing care.

“Five, I—“ you trail off. What are you supposed to say in situations like this? Of course you care for him too, but how do you express that?

You do the only thing that matches the simultaneous swelling and dropping of your heart and wrap him in a hug. He stands still for a few moments before returning the gesture with equal fervor. His hand comes up to cup the back of your head as he tries to draw you impossibly closer to him. “We’re okay,” you whisper over and over. “We’re okay.”

After several long moments, you pull back just enough to see his still-brimming eyes. You smile softly at him, pouring everything in your head and heart into the small gesture, and place your forehead on his. He brings your hands up between the two of you and kisses each one softly, long lashes fluttering shut. Your heart burns with so much quiet feeling you feel as if you might burst—and yet you’ve never felt safer.

“Just be more careful next time,” he whispers against your wrist.

“Okay,” you answer, barely audible, and with a soft kiss to your forehead, he draws you back into him again.

[bao3bei4]

kpop music videos that gave their fans sexual brainworms

OR accidental fetish pop and its fringe fanbase: meditations on gendered desire 

large warning here: i am someone who has been into kpop for the past 10 years. however, i have always been an extremely casual fan. i do write fic, but not rpf. if any of that makes you not want to hear me talk about kpop rpf (or you don’t want to hear about it in general), please keep moving.

anyway, obviously pop is corporate, soulless, and manufactured. but sometimes some truly bizarre shit gets past the committees and destroys a generation. these are their stories.

the video that started this is all is got7’s just right, released july 10th, 2015.

yes that’s all 7 members of got7 (one is out of frame) shrunken down for your viewing pleasure. they live in your room and tell you you’re just right. 

this sheer fetish power of this video is nerfed only by how utterly sexless it is.

they’re styled like and dance like this. it’s a totally unironic sendup of the seminal work that preceded it by four years, “what makes you beautiful” by the white kpop group “one direction.” the chaste energy of the whole thing makes you legitimately wonder if the good people at jyp have just never heard of microphilia. (during a dramatic reading of this piece, here a friend interjected seriously, “i think it’s korean culture not to talk about things like this, fetishes in the workplace.”)

it’s for the best, honestly, though because the actress in the music video is lee ja in, who was 11 when the video was shot. considering that the members themselves ranged in age from 18-23 at the time, i think it’s actually very impressive that we only have to cancel one. 

you receive absolutely no prizes for guessing that it’s jackson wang we’re sending to social justice prison. why’d he do this? no one asked. 

at any rate, got7 fans, or “gans” (they actually call themselves igot7s which is too twee for me), have much to think about here: all 7 very small members of got7 sneaking into their room, possibly weird age play, and jackson wang eating a very large cake.

let’s see what they actually did. 

twitter was actually very tame. the most charged thing i found was (unsurprisingly) from a bts fan (“ban”). i don’t actually know what it means, but i think it means something.

so, of course, i turned to the internet’s last bastion of free speech, where you can say whatever the fuck you want and receive cheers, or as the kids say, “kudos.” that is, i read fanfiction. 

for those of you who don’t know your herstory, i started my journey at Asianfanfics.com, where, at the time of writing, there were 12,067 got7 stories. i want to start this by saying that i think feminism won, because someone was paying real human dollars to advertise their irene/wendy fanfiction on a banner ad, which is quite possibly a win for women for everywhere. 

anyway, Asianfanfics.com’s search engine sucks ass (i kept on finding stories about different combinations of bts members worrying about their weight and being reassured by another member that were entitled “just right”), so i decided to look through all got7 stories written between july 2015 and december 2015. 

but, alas, not a single got7 microphilia fic to be found. 

also, some genre commentary while i’m here: i think the stories i respect the most are the “[y/n] is a ordinary girl who’s assigned to be got7’s manager! can she make them into superstars? as sparks begin to fly, can she keep it professional?” like fuck yeah that sounds like a kickass dating sim. it almost definitely already is one. i salute all the teens around the world for buying into the fantasy of dating a boy band member that they themselves sell you. 

however, i don’t think i respect the “[member a] and [member b] are mafia/jocks and nerds/college students/high schoolers” concepts. in my opinion, the whole fantasy of boy band member is their personas, their hidden real personalities, their celebrity, and the show business setting. find a different intellectual property if you wanna write about school. i even respect the “yugyeom drank girl juice [not estrogen] and turned into a sexy girl” story more, because at least it knows exactly what it wants, and also because they’re all still boy band members. well, band members. shout out to yugyeom. 

so, anyway, i looked elsewhere. at the time of writing, archive of our own only had 11,645 got7 stories, but it does have a better search, so it effectively has more. as an aside, i think it’s so funny, and mildly disorienting at first, that archive of our own separates the “music & bands” section from the “celebrities & real people” section. boy band members aren’t real people. 

the first problem i encountered is that only 20 or so stories were written within a year of just right’s release. absolute cringe gans. don’t you care about your boys? there were zero stories tagged “vore” or “microphilia” either. stories containing the word “tiny” that were rated either “explicit” or “mature” were all normal (“normal”) size fetishization rather than, you know, just right. 

however, i learned my lesson from twitter. i realized that what had happened was that watching this video had created sleeper agents, just waiting for their activation phrase. that activation phrase? bangtan boys. and yeah, lo and behold, there was one! unfortunately (fortunately?) it had nothing to do with got7, let alone just right, so i’m not going to talk about it.  

basically what i learned is that this video may have actually been very normal, and my brain has just been destroyed by being too online at a young age. 

however, there are plenty more videos in this genre. i present to you exo wolf, a banger from may 30th, 2013. i say banger, because in a comedic inversion, it’s actually fucking terrible. 

this video is pretty self-explanatory in terms of why it might induce certain responses. 

let’s get the formalities out of the way. this video, the member who’s getting cancelled is kai. he has braids in this video :/

also skating on thin ice: xiumin and chen. guys what was up with the whole exo-m thing? like, we’re gonna have a cpop subgroup, but it’s going to be part chinese members and part korean members that we’ll give a chinese name? unsurprisingly, the three exo members who have departed from the group are all chinese. they weren’t able to stand the microaggressions probably. but xiumin and chen remain uncancelled as an official chinese apology for five thousand of years of on-and-off invasions of korea. sorry guys that was kinda fucked up. our bad! 

anyway, there are basically three avenues for exo fans to take: 1) humans with wolfish characters (usually wolf pack dynamics, which even wolves themselves don’t fucking use so i think all of you should shut up. the real omega here is your brain), 2) werewolves (duh), and 3) wolves with human characteristics (i.e. standard furry fare). 

exo themselves let all these possibilities exist at the same time, superimposing them over each other, which is very woke and egalitarian of them. let’s see what the people decided. awoo.

Asianfanfics dot com had many stories in this vein. i feel very validated that this time i was able to correctly predict a fetish. that said, briefly returning to my earlier comment regarding alternate universes: it’s intense psychic whiplash reading about these vampires and werewolves, and going okay okay luhan is a vampire this that whatever, and then seeing the actual real performance photos the author attaches at the bottom of each chapter. bro i forgot these were actual people.... it breaks immersion so bad... i’m sorry, i just can’t believe that any of these dancing boys are having weird vampire sex with wings or whatever. 

archive of our own also had many stories in this vein. and i think there are some important difference between the two sites worth talking about. 

first of all, i think the higher engagement rate of archive of our own really enables some of the authors to get super bold. it makes Asianfanfics.com seem a little quaint, actually. like the wordcounts are waaay longer, for one. it’s uncommon for a story hosted on Asianfanfics.com to be more than a few thousand words long (most of them could easily be published in the new yorker), whereas some of these archive of our own people have written full length novels about if the members of exo were werewolves. i guess it’s just intensely demoralizing for the aff.com crew to get, like, three comments per story. 

the second big difference is that i’m noticing more common themes between the ao3 crew’s writing. like stan intertextuality, or plagiarism, or whatever, but they seem to be implicitly engaging with each other’s characterizations, storylines, and tropes. i think it is because they probably all follow each other on twitter. (i have been active on twitter for three weeks now so i am an expert on fanfiction twitter.) 

anyway, like not that i am a particularly big gan (cannot even list all the members), but these people seem to have reached a very specific consensus on how jackson wang, for instance, would react in a variety of situations that really surprises me? if i were to sit down and write a got7 story, i think the fuckboitude, the douchebaggery is a big part of his charm. not to be nationalist or anything, but for god’s sake, he’s from hong kong. but these people have him as very sensitive, lots of protective instincts. not that i understood what anyone on aff.com was doing with his character either, but they did all seem to be doing different things. “kudos” to that, i guess.

but: exo. wolf. i searched the “wolves” tag. this filtered the list down from 33459 stories to 52 stories. and the “wolves” tag was very different from the aff.com “wolf” tag. for the most part, aff.com liked stories where a member was a wolf (usually shapeshifting), feral boy, lots of y/n, lots of y/n dating a feral boy who is secretly a wolf. 

ao3 really, really, really likes alpha/beta/omega stories. sorting by the most popular stories, only five on the first page weren’t a/b/o. and one of them was a cis f!baekhyun story, so i think the intended effect was communicated. anyway, let’s talk about some of the themes. 

first of all, i’m disappointed. today’s bonus cancellation is of ao3 “wolves” writers. why the fuck are you drawing so heavily from european wolves?? there are wolves in asia!! you don’t need to keep giving their packs and ranks weird latin names. i will kill you. i hate italy. korea literally has a native wolf. i hate all of you!!! if you want to write caucasian wolves go watch that dumbass cw show!!!! my god. 

the second theme (the first one was white supremacy) is that no one wants to be a wolf who fucks. i think that we need a sex positivity movement, or something, for omega rights. like, are all of you doing okay? you’re queering misogyny by inventing new genders to oppress. another level to “no one wants to be a wolf...” is the “who fucks” part. there are so many consent issues. and not even in like, a sexy intentional way? in a “i genuinely do not think this author understands how their writing comes off” way. unfortunately i am sensitive to untagged sexual coercion, and there was a lot of that.

at any rate, the aff.com wolves were at peace with being wolves, very self-actualized. the ao3 wolves know that every minute they spend alive on this bitch of an earth is suffering, and also sex.

the third theme is the evolution of y/n. y/n, who, in a startlingly woke move for aff.com, is almost always korean, is a girl main character stumbling into love, boy bands, and wolves (i think it’s because aff.com is oldschool kpop fandom, so therefore heavily asian itself in userbase). but y/n is not the main character in ao3 stories. she is the straight best friend. in what i think is a hilarious move, ao3 authors invert the gay best friend paradigm to give the gay main character a straight girl as best friend. she usually calls him “a gay,” she has lots of thoughts on boys, and she knows his sexuality better than he does and before he does. (sidebar: if all the men are gay, and all the women are straight...)

there’s a really fun twist to this, though, because the main character is always a self-insert in fanfiction. but where older fanfiction like aff.com was at peace with this and literalize it via y/n shenanigans, modern fic writers who haven’t finished distangling their complicated relationship with wanting to be a man who loves other men instead simply imbue their main character with their essence. a little voodoo doll sehun, with a lock of y/n hair. 

this creates a deeply ambivalent relationship with gender in these stories. the main character is usually an omega, but one who resents being an omega. their body and its parts is usually described, if at all, as ostensibly intersex (except more offensively), but in practice, these discourses inscribe a trans body. (nb: i think cis writers approach this in a really fucked up fetishizing way, but i hope by this point we know that that goes without saying) it’s incredibly straightforward to read this, and see the underlying desires and fears in a heady cocktail of unfiltered writing that’s deeply confessional. you know when freud had people say whatever the fuck they wanted and figured they’d eventually free associate into releasing their subconscious into reality? yeah. 

okay, and while we’re on the topic, let’s talk f(x) nu abo, released on may 4th, 2010. 

this is a blitzy, maximalist, amped up dance hit that even has its own applause and cheers built in. it’s so fucking annoying, and i love it. 

this song is on here because the second most popular kpop a/b/o story on ao3 is called “nu abo” except it’s about bts. that’s offensive enough in its own right. write something about f(x) (702 works). when will women win the right to have their own self-lubricating holes.

anyway, even though f(x) is probably innocent in all of this, i’m still cancelling amber liu. 

for queerbaiting. who told her to look like ruby rose but hot? and for what? i’m also cancelling her for racism, but that wasn’t in this video. 

moving on to a double feature: vixx voodoo doll and vixx chained up, released november 19, 2013 and november 9, 2015 respectively. this is because while voodoo doll is more formative, i think the fans who write fanfiction today got into kpop more recently, so we are casting a wide net.

anyway, voodoo doll is jam packed with weird pseudo-medical imagery, blood, vivisection, bondage, puppet shit, femdom, sharps, piercings, asphyxiation, dollification, stabbing/penetration metaphors, and a really sick and catchy dance. god that looks like the list of tags on the a/b/o wolf stories. 

for this song, we’re cancelling you, for being way too into this song when you were 13.

vixx voodoo doll made me goth i guess! insert that pic of the your music saved me sign, except it saved me from getting into emo or pop punk probably. 

chained up, comparatively, is much more tame. the only thing of note about it is that there are around 10 completely different chokers and choker looks the members wear in this music video. also they’re singing about being chained up, but that seemed a bit obvious. 

we could argue that voodoo doll is gay while chained up is gay (derogatory); that voodoo doll is queer while chained up is gay; that chained up is a sensitive masterpiece of omega4omega sexuality. but we’re not going to. 

we’re going to talk about what voodoo doll fanfiction was and was not. first, Aff.com had plenty of it. however, i was extremely disappointed to see that much of it did not hew to the spirit of vixx voodoo doll. my god, the voodoo doll becoming the one preying upon you disgusts me. the fantasy of the voodoo doll is that of absolute power. the idea that the doll itself has agency? instantly breaks the fantasy. i’m even not into voodoo dolls and i’m offended. 

i also don’t think it’s part of the voodoo doll fantasy to release the doll. the only story on there that involved Y/N kidnapping vixx members like in the music video was unavailable because the author deactivated their account. come back qxeen what did you see. 

i think this got off track, actually, in that i was mostly wondering why these people imprinted differently onto vixx voodoo doll than i did. like i don’t think you’re supposed to actually like straightforwardly absorb the morals and aesthetics of music videos like it’s propaganda. however, it’s more entertaining if you do. i hope ao3 doesn’t let me down. 

out of the then 5932 works in the vixx fandom (the least out of every group so far, excluding f(x) because they’re women), 59 of them included the word “voodoo” somewhere. that’s 1%. i legitimately can’t tell if that’s high or not. 

after some more cursory reading through the first page of popular results, my big takeaway is that people watched that video and wanted to be tortured and enslaved? but not, like, in a sexy way where the torturing is the point, the way where the point is to suffer bravely and beautifully, to endure the world’s harms like jesus on the cross, and then to fall into the arms of a beautiful boy who may or may not be the one hurting you in the first place. 

there’s a certain predictability to these fantasies. like it’s not even masochism, which would be fun at least, it’s literally just like the desire to be beautiful, even as you suffer. and i do find that a little boring. (but, i mean, you can’t help being a woman!)

sidebar: on chained up. what’s interesting about chained up, is that most of the then 38 “chained up” works (likely because the video has no storyline) are about the members fucking during chained up promotions. no one’s ever actually chained up, but whatever. it’s fine. it’s fine! 

anyway, here, more than ever, the nature of desire is stripped bare. i’ve written before [elsewhere in the unreleased tshirt cinematic universe] on how kpop boys are, through fandom, re-formed as white, or more strongly, i guess, blank slates. it’s really interesting to me how so much of this dynamic of projection is enabled by the fact that they’re asian men. they’re infantilized, feminized vessels; they’re seductive, but childlike, oblivious to their own charms, so nonthreatening; they have uncontrollable desires for sex, they’re scared of sex. and above all else, white women submit themselves to them, insert themselves into them. basically kpop fans tend to rework old school yellow peril and emasculation fantasies to reenact their own desires, often white, often cishet on them. 

what i am saying is that there’s another thesis about forced feminization and its racialized subtext in here. obviously gender is a racialized construct to begin with, but like it’s fascinating to argue that when white women remake asian men according to their own desires, that is, into themselves, they (hopefully) unintentionally echo these old fears about the sexual order.

it illuminates, it seems, the underlying dynamic in the denigration of asian men, which is of course the fear of miscegenation. now, my breathtaking ability to make everything about me aside, miscegenation is interesting because it presents a racial synthesis, beginning to collapse and trouble the artificial designations of purity. so we make asian men into white women, and end up with an unsettling hybrid. i’m sure this has deep implications for me personally.

but i think we already knew that quite a few of these people had yellow fever, so let’s talk about the gender dialectic at play. basically, the above dynamic, of making men into women (whether literally, in body; or subjectively, in mind; or even relationally, as they are objectified into passive vessels for your desire) coexists with the ostensibly converse dynamic, in which the straight women desires to be a gay man. these aren’t necessarily in conflict: it could easily be that these are different writers writing different stories, that both are ways of expressing discontent with existing in a raced, gendered body, or even that the end product of both is the same.

it’s been a while without a picture. all of you now have the legal right to hunt and kill me for making a d&g joke.

anyway, what i want to talk about is how these two fantasies can coexist. that by making a man into yourself, you can speak on your own desire in a passive way. my normal interest is analyzing forced masc fantasies (albeit in chinese opera lol), and they bear little to no resemblance to this kind of fantasy. this kind offers plausible deniability, of course, because wanting things is embarrassing. but also the fantasy isn’t about wanting to be a man, it’s about having no choice but to be a failed one. the gender pessimism running through these stories is palpable. basically andrea long chu wants what wolf fanfiction writers know: everyone is an omega, and everyone hates it.

at any rate, this racialized dynamic is one that i wasn’t sure how to bring up throughout this piece, mainly because there is no definitive way for me to tell the race of any individual writer, beyond just like the clear and present vibes that i receive. but i think it structures a lot of the fantasies contained in this essay. (i felt more comfortable bringing up the gendered dynamic, because it was fairly trivial to find out the current gender of the person writing each story i was reading.) 

obviously we should return to the specter haunting this conversation: the very much alive david eng. i think this sort of argument is familiar to readers of racial castration, especially his chapter on m. butterfly. btw sorry for mentioning that play 2 out of 3 posts on this blog. i have problems.

let’s talk about the parallel imagery between the depiction of gallimard’s final speech and the fanfiction i’ve described above. in it, gallimard makes himself into his own dream woman, dressing in yellowface and robes, the costume of puccini’s original madame butterfly. and he laments his lost love:

there is a vision of the orient that i have. of slender women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. who are born and raised to be the perfect women. who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally.

in that, i see the self insert, and i see the sufferer of vixx voodoo fic. the fantasy that gallimard has about asian women is repeated, this time about asian men and a helpless identification with them. and on some level, gallimard’s women do have something very compelling to identify with: they suggest that there’s a way to endure white male violence without sacrifice, and even more potently, to enjoy it on some level.

but onward to the titular racial castration. eng argues that gallimard’s wilful ignorance of song’s true gender is a psychic castration -- song’s masculinity is diminished so that his own can be enhanced within their relationship. this, eng believes, acts out “richard fung’s contention that in western imaginary ‘asian and anus are conflated.’” this process stabilizes the relationship between the asian man and the white woman: they occupy the same place within the sexual dyad. 

this is, i think, why some people are addicted to writing from the bottom’s perspective. again -- not implying that irl bottoms don’t exist or that bottoms are psychically castrated lol -- but rather that you can fantasize about this ideal asian man that you can come to embody. in kpop rpf, rather than it being between a white man and an asian man (unless someone’s started writing chad future fic), it’s between two asian men. so this transformation is performed. whiteness is always intruding and so i think eng is helpful here to making it visible again. 

this essay isn’t a callout or actual cancellation or anything like that, i do wanna be clear. i guess i just like talking about fantasies, even the embarrassing ones, and where they come from. i think oftentimes in fandom spaces, we write a lot of stories off as idfic, and i think virtually every single one of the stories i referenced to write this fairly uncontroversially fall into that category. but i think calling something an “id” something or the other naturalizes the satisfaction it gives as purely instinctual and unconscious, when i do think there are deeper narratives at play. while i didn’t ever actually reference the base here (sorry), i do think it’s worth talking about how real world power shapes & maintains the superstructure, and thereby our fantasies. 

anyway in conclusion, maybe i was the one with sexual brainworms the whole time.

[allykakamatsu]

Hypothetical P5A

Okay, gonna make this clear right up front, I wanted to make this post for a while but the main reason I decided to do it now is because the Atlus announcement thing is almost here, and also cause I saw a video on this topic by Thorgi’s Arcade (go watch it btw it’s good) and while I agree with a lot of what he said, there’s also some things I’d change, not just cause I disagree, but also cause I think it would be fun. Anyway enough beating around the bush, let’s do this

Gameplay

I’m a firm believer in the phrase, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and the Arena games are already really good so not much to change. That being said, I still wanna change some things. First off though, we are keeping this 1 vs 1, no tag team matches. The arena games already have a lot of Mechanics going on and trying to keep everything as well as some new stuff WHILE adding a tag team button, yeah no let’s not outside of maybe a bonus mode.

This means I can’t add Batton Pass in as a new mechanic to represent P5, but I have a solution, that being Technicals. Status ailments already exist in this game, so how about when you inflict one and do a specific combo you do more damage, also providing risk vs reward as the player with the status will have a better idea of what the opponent will do making them more predictable. Also as for Persona’s, mostly everyone’s will be fully evolved, minus Yu cause him getting a final boss persona normally is a tad to OP, meanwhile the P5 characters will have their starting Persona’s, but they will evolve for big moves, like awakened mode supers and instant kills

I’m also borrowing Thorgi’s Arcade idea of having supports giving a slight buff in battle, like if you pick Fuuka your meter can build faster for a bit, meanwhile if you pick Futaba you’ll get an attack and defence buff. It’s the fairest way to include them without having to make them playable. I know Rise is already playable but this roster is going to have to be small as it is, and being a support doesn’t mean you can’t be DLC later.

Also, we’re not bringing back the Shadow Characters, just, we are not dealing with the likes of Shadow Naoto again.

:readmore:

Story

I am about to cop out a bit here, but Thorgi’s Arcade video had a really good idea for the story so I’ll just link it here https://youtu.be/yyB5rEM9UVU

To summarise for people who don’t want to watch, Nyarlathotep, the main villain from the Persona 2 games, has been gaining strength from all the suffering humanity has gone through due to 3, 4 and 5, and has gained enough strength to create a new Joker to try finish what he started and destroy the world. Mitsuru might think the Phantom Thieves are behind it cause this is clearly persona related and the fact that the leader of the PT’s is also named Joker is public knowledge, Naoto gets largely the same idea, Katsuya and Maya decide to have their own investigation, meanwhile the Phantom Thieves are trying to prove their innocence and help save the world. Nice excuse to bring everyone together, but who will the everyone be?

Base Roster

Okay, I know the dream is getting everyone from Ultimax back plus the new P5 characters, but given Arc System’s standard for small base rosters, I’m not holding my breath. The ideal would be everyone plus who I’m about to say for P2 and P5, but I’m keeping it… somewhat realistic. Anyway onto the actual size, 16 seems fair enough. One more than the most recent Guilty Gear game for a series that had pretty big success so that sound fair enough. Let’s get the obvious out of the way though, all the base 8 Phantom Thieves besides Futaba are making the cut

Okay so that’s obvious but how will they play? Starting off with Ren/Joker, Smash Bros already laid a great foundation with him being very fast on the ground and in the air plus being great at combos, so I see no reason to change that. Also no need for him to be a Jack of all trades either cause spoilers, Yu is coming back and he already fills that role.

As for the others, Ryuji I can see being a slugger charge hybrid. Basically starting out he hits pretty hard but is a bit on the slow side to compensate, but just like any good athlete, give him a chance to warm up, ie do a charge input, and he becomes a lot faster and has better combo potential. Or we could make him a toned down version of Little Mac where he’s great on the ground but he’s in trouble the second aerial combat is involved. Then there’s Morgana who with his ability to turn into cars and the fact he introduces thief tools like smoke bombs, I can see him being a faster but frailer successor to Teddie.

Then there’s Ann who, no doubt, she’s a Zoner, and with her fire she’ll be Yukiko’s sort of successor. However instead of healing, I’d implement the fact that she learns concentrate and have it so the more she charges it up, the stronger her attacks get, but the Meter will gradually go down over the match. Yusuke, as tempting as it is to cop out and say ‘have him play like Vergil in Marvel vs Capcom’, I have a different idea. Namely, take advantage of the fact that Yusuke can learn counter by having him be the defensive specialist, set up ice traps to freeze the opponent, and if they get close, he can either counter or go for some combos.

Then there’s Makoto who would definitely be a grappler. I mean, she practices Aikido and is really strong, she can 100% pull it off. Finally Haru…… TANK! I mean come on, Haru wields an axe, has a grenade launcher, and Melady is literally a dancing tank in a pink dress, it just makes too much sense. I’d also give her a bit of armor cause if she’s slow she at least needs a chance to get her attacks in.

Okay so that’s 7 out of our 16 slots down, and given that one slot will have to be saved for the Evil Joker who would be the villain, we’re halfway done with 3 games to go, lord help me.

Okay, starting this off with P4, I’m gonna give them more than the others purely because they were the focus of the originals and there’s less realistic cuts I can make compared to 2 and 3. To make things simple, every returning character would play the same, and as for the ones I’d bring back for the base roster, we’ve got Yu, Yosuke, Chie and Naoto. Why them specifically? Well Yu is the main character, Naoto being a detective would basically mean she’d be the one getting everyone involved in the first place, Chie is currently training to be a cop as confirmed in P5 so her getting called in makes sense, and Yosuke is the best investigator after Yu and Naoto, he’s always up for a mystery and the second he learns Yu is involved he’s joining in. I just couldn’t cut him.

Now before the really painful cuts, Persona 2 is really easy. Out of Innocent Sin party members, by the end of the series Maya is the only one left with a Persona, and Katsuya is not only older brother of Innocent Sin’s protag Tatsuya, but he’s also pretty important and a detective so he’s definetly the one Maya’s dragging into this. As for how they play, they both use guns like Naoto, but how I’d mix them up is with Katsuya, I’d let him attack while moving (unlike Naoto who has so stay still to fire) at the cost of less combo potential, meanwhile Maya dual wields her guns so she’ll probably play like Noel Vermillion from BlazBlue where she’d more or less just use the guns to get longer reach melee attacks instead of shooting.

Now, for the hard part. There’s only 2 slots left, one of them basically has to go to Mitsuru (not that I’m complaining I’d probably add her anyway) meaning now I have to choose between the rest of the Shadow Operatives/SEES for the last slot. I narrowed it down to the 3 that were in the original Arena cause they’re the most plot relevant, but that still meant I had to choose between Akihiko and Aigis. I ended up deciding on Aigis though cause A, with Labrys not making the base roster someone has to represent the robots of the series, and B, with Akihiko currently pulling a Ryu by travelling to get stronger, it makes more sense that Aigis would be closer and easier for Mitsuru to call up. Honestly I was tempted to bump the roster up to 17 so I could have both of them on the base roster, but this is ArcSystems, 16 is already kinda pushing it.

DLC

Given that this is a modern fighting game, DLC is inevitable. However since this DLC will likely be like Ultimax where the story acts to wrap up loose ends and have a new story, it’s going yo be big, especially since there’s going to be a fight with Nyaraloptep, so go big or go home in this case. Okay so first order of business, anyone who was in the previous arena games who wasn’t in the base roster is getting added back in, it’s only fair. That out of the way, the new faces I’d add are Futaba actually being playable now and the big 4 P5 characters I skipped, Akechi, Yoshizawa, and Sophie. Before anyone asks though, Sophie was added into a Dragalia Lost collab with Koei Techmo not being credited so she’s likely Atlus’s copyright so she's safe to add.

With that out of the way, how would they play? Starting with Futaba, I’d think she’d be the resident puppet fighter, sitting on top of Necinomicon and only occasionally adding in some of her own attacks like a projectile. Also she'd also probably act as a bit of a grappler cause her Persona has tentacles (no hentai jokes please) which have long reach so that'll be perfect for it. Next up is Akechi who I can see as semi being two characters in one. My basic idea is that at first Akechi will be fighting with Robin Hood and he'll be a solid jack of all trades with a slight focus on rush down. However once he goes into his awakened mode he'll gain Loki, which will increase his speed and attack strength, at the cost of his defence, turning him into a glass cannon.

Next is Yoshizawa, or 'Sumi as I like to call her, and her thing will be she's the mobility focused fighter, namely constantly moving around the stage and poking at her opponent while doing it, at the cost of being frail. Finally there’s Sophie who would be a combo focused zoner, as in her standard projectiles (the yo-yo’s) wouldn’t hurt that much on their own, but she can string them together into the fancy yo-yo tricks to potentially do big damage. As for how much this DLC would cost, it’s going to be very big, so €25 to €30 sounds fair

I think that more or less covers my thoughts. I could keep going on about this for a while, but I think this is a good place to stop. Hope you like my idea!

[writeroutoftime]

bring her home - chapter two

not my gif

CATCH UP - CHAPTER ONE

pairing: harry potter x reader/ young!james potter x reader

summary: when a time traveling journey goes wrong you find yourself in a time that’s not your own. now you must find your way back home, that is if you truly wish to go back (based upon @neurobeing​‘s post) 

warnings: none

words: 1391

a/n: hello!! yes, literally a YEAR later, I have finally posted the second chapter to this story. it is kinda crazy to me that people have continued to message me, showing interest in the story. that makes me so happy, and I truly am sorry that it has taken be so long to finally get this posted. but, now that it is, I promise you won’t have to wait another year in between chapters. so, without further ado, please enjoy and have a fabulous day! 

oOoOo

When the spinning ceased, you found yourself on the floor of a busy corridor, with a person standing above you. Relief flooded through your veins when you looked up at the familiar face. “Harry!” 

“Are you alright?” 

The pounding in your head signaled you were not alright, and you rubbed the source of the headache, confused. “Harry, uh, what happened?” you asked. 

“Sorry, love, but I’m not Harry. I’m James, James Potter. Why have I never seen your face around here?” 

“J-James?” you stuttered in disbelief. “James Potter?”

“I believe that’s what I said, love.” he teased, throwing you a flirty smile. “Don’t I get to know yours?”

When you didn’t respond, James, instead, offered his hand to help you up, which you hesitantly took. Back on your feet, you brushed the dust off your robes and tried to curl into your body as much as possible. It was then you took the chance to intently stare at the boy in front of you to determine that he was, in fact, not your Harry. While the two could almost have been identical twins, it was the warm, but unfamiliar, hazel eyes that tipped you off.

“This has to be a dream.” you muttered to yourself, looking around to find anything familiar to you. While the corridors themselves seemed to be the ones you had known for the past six years, it was the unrecognizable faces that caused panic to stir within your stomach. “What’s today’s date?” you asked James, a near mad look in your eyes.

He looked at you to see that you were serious. “November 8.” he said, and carried on when you continued to nod, seemingly looking for the year as well. “1976.”

It felt as though your world began to spin again at his words. 1976. How could you have landed yourself twenty years in the past? “Uh, I have to go.” you suddenly blurted out and pushed past James and the other students who had formed a crowd around your unconscious form.

As you ran, all sorts of thoughts began to swirl in your head, almost causing you to miss the empty classroom on your left. Quickly, you ducked in and locked the door, pressing your back to the door for good measures. Forced, slow, deep breaths made their way through your body to try and calm yourself down and not panic over your current situation. A few minutes later, you felt calmer and you could sit down at an empty desk and begin to search for a logical explanation as to how this had happened.

The last thing you remembered was that you had turned in your Charms exam before entering an empty corridor to use your time turner. It wasn’t as though you had used the time turner wrong, it was kinda hard to mess that up. What had happened before hand? After a moment of thinking, you couldn’t come up with anything out of the ordinary, besides your argument with Harry. But, surely, that couldn’t have sent you two decades back in time.

All of the sudden it hit you – the odd sensation you had felt with the time turner during your exam! Whatever that had been, must be some clue as to how you had ended up in 1976 and, more importantly, how you could get home.

The fact of the matter eventually hit you that you couldn’t stay locked in the classroom all night, but you weren’t sure where to go next. There was only one thought that kept circling back to your mind, and as much as you were upset with him in your own time, you knew Professor Dumbledore was your best bet at getting home. Opening the door just a crack, you saw that corridor empty and figured most students and staff had retired for the night. Quickly and quietly, you hurried to find the bronze eagle statue you knew led towards the headmaster’s office.

“Um, lemon drops?” you tried, hoping that his password would be quite predictable. When that wasn’t the answer, you sighed and ran a hand down your face before another idea popped in your mind. “Bertie Bot’s Every Flavor Beans.” you said more confidently and watched in awe as stairs began to form to lead you to Dumbledore’s quarters.  

When you stepped off the stairs, you walked towards the closed, wooden door and knocked three times, each one increasing in volume. After a few moments you worried no one had heard you, but just as you were about to turn around for the night, the door creaked open.

“May I help you?” a familiar voice asked.

Before you stood a younger, though still old, Dumbledore. He looked identical to the Professor you knew, perhaps with fewer wrinkles. However, you could tell from the twinkle of his blue eyes behind his half moon spectacles that this is the man you needed to talk to. “Hello, sir. I’m sorry to wake you, but I need to talk to you.”

“Very well.” he answered and opened the door further to let you through.

Surprised, you stepped into Dumbledore’s office and looked around. While you had been in the room before, it was nice to know that his decorations wouldn’t change much twenty years from now.  As Dumbledore moved to take a seat behind his desk, you began to wring your hands together and felt your body begin to shake. If Dumbledore didn’t believe you, then your chances at getting back home would become much slimmer.  

“Professor Dumbledore, this is going to sound completely insane, but I don’t know who else to go to about this.” you began and continued when Dumbledore simply nodded. “Okay, well, um, I’m from the future. 1996, if we’re being specific.” you said and held your breath, waiting for him to laugh in your face.

“Well, that puts you in quite the predicament, Miss – “

“y/n y/l/n.” you rushed to fill in. “Wait, you’re not gonna brush me off or call me crazy?” you thought it would have been harder to convince Dumbledore of your true identity.

“Stranger things have happened within these walls, Miss. y/l/n.” he spoke. “Now, do you have any ideas as to how you came about this situation?”

What followed was you going over the events of your last day in 1996, making sure to note that besides that strange, but brief, sensation from your time turner, nothing out of the ordinary had happened. You weren’t sure how much you could reveal about the future without creating any alternate universes or rips in time, so you made sure to not use names, nor descriptive characteristics when talking about the people in your own time. At the end, Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, hands turning over the time turner you had showed him and nodded thoughtfully.

“I must admit, I have not come across a case of a time turner sending its user, unknowingly, back 20 years into the past. This matter will require further research, and I’m afraid it will have to, at least, wait until morning.” he said, handing you back the precious object.

His statement frightened you, and all you wished for in that moment was to be back at Hogwarts in your own time, surrounded by those you loved most. “What am I supposed to do until then?” you questioned, nails digging into your skin in uncertainty.

After a few thoughtful moments, Dumbledore responded. “I will have Professor McGonagall escort you to the Gryffindor girl’s dormitories, where we have an open bed. Until we can figure this out, I suggest you simply try to blend in as much as possible.”

Eventually, Professor McGonagall came to collect you from Dumbledore’s office, and while she squinted her eyes in disbelief at his explanation that you were a new, transfer student, she nevertheless escorted you to your new dormitory, with a comforting hand on your shoulder the whole way there. With a kind smile, she motioned towards the steps that lead to the girl’s dormitories and explained that the other girls would be expecting you when they woke. Thanking her, you walked upstairs, and without waking your new roommates, you slipped under the covers and stared at the top of your four-poster bed, wishing that when you opened your eyes again, this would all be a terrible dream and nothing more.

oOoOo

tagging: @eggingamazinglove​, @plutoneu, @silver-winter-wolf, @girllety, @house0f-fandoms​, @bisexualprinxexx, @byesexualsatant @raised-by-fandoms

[murdereraisuha]

Classpecting TWST: Octavinelle

Time to assign Homestuck classpects to the fish mafia!

Spoilers for chapter 3 and some of the trio’s personal stories. No knowledge of Homestuck required to read.

[Image description: A banner containing a picture of Azul, the symbol for the space aspect, and the words “Azul Ashengrotto: Thief of Space”]

For Azul, I think it’s easier to narrow down what his class is first.

To get back at his childhood bullies, Azul developed his unique magic “It’s a Deal,” which lets him make contracts with others. 

He uses clever loopholes and tricks to shift his contracts in his favor, letting him reap the magic and abilities of his victims. 

However, despite his power and skills, he still has self-image issues. 

In chapter 3, he overblots during a desperate magic stealing spree to make a more perfect him who isn’t a “stupid, clumsy octopus who can’t do anything by himself.”

What I get from this is that he steals from others, he worked hard to shape himself into a successful person, and he perceives fault in himself. Based on this, I think his class is either thief, the active theft class, or knight, the active exploitation class.

With that in mind, what exactly does he steal/exploit, and what do his insecurities relate to? Rather than concepts like luck, freedom, or the soul, Azul seems centered on concrete objects. In his childhood, he was tormented due to his physical appearance. In the present, he carefully controls his diet to maintain a slender physique. He also hoards things like coins and his contracts. 

Based on these things as well as the creativity he exhibits in his elaborate schemes (exam notes, beans day, investigating Scarabia, etc.), I think that Azul’s aspect is space, the aspect of physical attributes, creation, and patience.

So, thief of space or knight of space? After research into both, I think that thief fits the best. First of all, though Azul has amazing abilities on his own, he relies a lot on maintaining a hoard of contracts. Rather than working with what he has, he constantly seeks out more: more power, more profits, more restaurant locations. Similarly to how Azul’s downfall in chapter 3 stemmed from trying to steal too much (Yuu’s house & the photo), the 2 thieves in Homestuck also get into trouble for being too overconfident. Finally, while a knight generally protects and shelters those around them, Azul isn’t afraid to do stuff such as wring Floyd out like a towel to use his eel slime for developing a beauty product. Therefore, Azul is most likely a thief of space.

[Image description: A banner containing a picture of Jade Leech, the symbol for the light aspect, and the words “Jade Leech: Rogue of Light”] 

To figure out Jade’s aspect, let’s consider some facts about him. 

His unique magic, “Shock the Heart,” forces a person who looks him in the eye to truthfully answer a question he asks them. 

He dislikes predictable things, which is a reason why he loves his chaotic brother and enjoys growing unknown plants. 

He prefers to stay in the shadows while Azul/Floyd takes the spotlight.

Based on these factors, Jade seems well suited to either the void aspect, the aspect of secrets, confusion, and irrelevance, or its opposite the light aspect, the aspect of truth, awareness, and importance. Now, how does he interact with his aspect?

Though Jade, Azul, and Floyd are equals, Jade still usually acts in a supportive role to them. For example, in his ceremony robes story, Jade gives the list of the new students’ private Magicam accounts to Azul for him to use instead of using the list himself. Therefore, I think that Jade probably has a passive class.

Jade does not have a deficit of light/void and he does not have a destructive relationship with light/void, ruling out page and bard. He doesn’t truly embody either aspect, ruling out heir, and he doesn’t seem to do much creating/healing of light/void, ruling out sylph. That narrows it down to seer of light, seer of void, rogue of void, and rogue of light. 

Though I originally thought he was probably void and just kept the light option open just in case, Jade might actually be a rogue of light. A rogue, the passive theft class, invites theft of their aspect and through their aspect. Jade reveals knowledge (ex. contract violations & the Magicam accounts) and then leaves Azul and Floyd to do with it as they please. Also, Shock the Heart is activated using his eyes, and eyes are a symbol of the light aspect in Homestuck. 

Furthermore, the rogues of Homestuck often have trouble coping with having their aspect, correlating with Jade being uncomfortable with having people’s attention on him. He also has problems with giving information/the truth about himself. For example, his exaggerated fake tears after Idia doubts his wish during the Wish Upon a Star event strengthens Idia’s belief that Jade's wish is insincere, even though Jade might have really wanted to use his wish for Azul and Floyd’s benefit. Though Jade is pretty different from the typical descriptions of rogues of light I have read, I think he probably is a rogue of light.

[Image description: A banner containing a picture of Floyd, the symbol for the blood aspect, and the words “Floyd Leech: Bard of Blood”]

For Floyd, I have an aspect already in mind.

Breath represents freedom and flexibility. From his general refusal to wear his uniform properly or take on responsibilities to specific events like trying to play dodgeball during basketball club, Floyd certainly exhibits freedom. His unique magic, “Bind the Heart,” references the concept of freedom/captivity in its name. By deflecting any magic aimed at him, it basically ensures his freedom from injury and other harmful effects like Riddle’s” Off with Your Head!”

Just so we’re not narrowing our focus too much though, I’d like to point out that the rage aspect is also a possibility. Rage represents negative emotions, defiance, and persistence. For Floyd, he rebels against conformity and also exhibits some stubbornness in his teasing of Riddle. Floyd’s aspect might also be the opposite of breath or rage, blood or hope, since each aspect and its opposite are just 2 sides of the same coin as we saw with Floyd’s brother.

Anyway, on to class. First off, thief and rogue are out since he doesn’t do much theft. He doesn’t hide behind any masks or act very pessimistic, so knight, page, and prince are out, and he doesn’t seem to struggle with knowledge of things, so mage and seer are out. Of the remaining classpect combos, I was thinking witch of rage, bard of rage, heir of breath, or maid of breath. However, as I just said, the aspects blood or hope might also apply. After looking into god tiers of those aspects, one stuck out at me: bard of blood.

Bard is the passive destruction class, which invites destruction of their aspect or through their aspect. Bards and princes, the active destruction class, are notable in how they exhibit traits of the opposite aspect since they destroy their own aspect in themselves. In Floyd’s case, his abundance of freedom & spontaneousness can also be seen as an absence of commitments & responsibilities.

However, a bard doesn’t destroy all traces of their aspect, which is how I can find evidence that Floyd’s aspect is actually blood rather than breath. In Homestuck, those of the breath aspect tend to be rather emotionally detached or passive. For example, John handles shocking revelations with ease and Tavros uses sleep to escape sadness. On the other hand, blood players tend to be emotionally explosive and assertive. Karkat and Kankri are well known for being rather... cranky. Now, for Floyd,

I don’t think an emotionally passive person would have a murder mode face like this. There’s also the fact that Floyd specifically hates shackles, while a breath player would probably take their freedom more for granted. Anyway, going to how being a bard would interact with Floyd’s aspect, as a bard his actions lead to destruction of bonds/responsibilities. However, a bard’s aspect is still a part of them/an inevitability even if they try to act like it isn’t.

Let’s take the one big example of anguish within Floyd that we have: his school uniform story. While Floyd is having a blast riling Riddle up and trying to bait him into a game of tag, Riddle remarks that Jade doesn’t bother with this sort of mischief and he’s completely different from Floyd even though they’re twins. This causes Floyd’s mood to take a 180 and he abruptly leaves. Even though Floyd does stuff like steal Jade’s clothes or shove work on him—things that might suggest Floyd doesn’t care about Jade—Floyd actually doesn’t want their bond with each other to break. This also holds true for Azul: though Floyd explicitly says in chapter 4 that he and Jade will leave Azul if he becomes boring, that seems like a half-truth: with Azul being the person he is, how likely is it that he would ever become boring?

Floyd is a genius, talented in everything from academic subjects to music to sports. However, as noted by some other characters, his mood swings and flippantness prevent him from being the even more terrifyingly powerful person he could become. His personal challenge may very well be to find a middle ground between running from and depending on his bonds/responsibilities. Therefore, based on Floyd’s values, attitude, and faults, I can say that he is very likely a bard of blood.

-- Final notes --

Firstly, If you actually read through all this and enjoyed it, I recommend checking out mia-pon289’s Octavinelle theories and Dahniwitchoflight’s classpect stuff since this post drew a lot of inspiration from those. 

Secondly, I am going to flip my shit if Ace’s aspect turns out to be blood too once I get to analyzing Heartslabyul. Is basketball club just gonna become blood club?

Thirdly,

[Image description: A venn diagram with 2 circles. One circle is labeled “Animal with 8 legs” and contains “Vriska” in it. The other circle is labeled “Aquatic” and contains “Meenah”. The intersection between the circles contains “Azul”. The whole diagram is inside of a rectangle labeled “Thief”]

[notallthosewho-wanderarelost]

Since it’s Tuesday and we get Loki 1x05 tomorrow and then I’m seeing Black Widow the day after, and I guess I’m doing these now, some thoughts on Loki 1x04.

Hopefully this will be a shorter post due to me not knowing wtf is going on. This show is so chaotic and it’s perfect but that makes trying to predict it impossible. How VERY LOKI OF IT.

NOPE, NOPE THIS IS NOT A SHORTER POST, I have no idea what is going on plot wise but this episode gave me a lot of character stuff to talk about apparently.

Alright, let me get the big one out of the way. I’ve already said this in various places, mostly tags, but if I’m gonna make this post it’s gotta be here. I’m uncomfortable with Loki/Sylvie being romantic. Would prefer for Marvel to stay away from selfcest. PLEASE. I’m kind of hoping and wondering if it’s a fakeout for a reveal that Loki has finally learned to love or at least accept himself through his care of and admiration for Sylvie, which would be VERY Agent of Asgard-esque and I can see it being very probable.

I think giving Loki a love interest of any kind was always going to be difficult to pull off, but especially Loki as he is at the point in time when the show finds him- fresh off his attempted takeover of Earth and probably still deeply reeling from the revelation of his adoption and also likely mentally affected by any torture and/or mental manipulation Thanos might have done on him. Loki’s self-loathing is probably still close to an all-time high here and he’s questioning who he even is. I’m not saying that you have to love yourself before you can love someone else- I don’t think that at all; in fact I think loving someone else would probably encourage someone to value themselves more- but Loki as he is here I think would need to work through some of his own issues before he could get involved with anyone else. I think that Loki would need to learn to love himself first, to accept that he’s worthy of love, before he could genuinely fall in love with anyone else. (Remember this, I’ll come back to it.)

I got major sibling vibes from Loki and Sylvie on Lamentis. Like I said last post, they felt like alternate universe twins to me. They’re the same person from different universe, but also very much not the same- I feel like twins is the closest description? I can admittedly be pretty awful at picking up romantic vibes when I’m not expecting them, but I did not get romance vibes at all.

I also feel kind of annoyed that we would never be having this conversation or having this as a canonical ship option if Sylvie hadn’t been female. Loki is now officially canonically bi, (which means Sylvie is too btw) but in comics Loki is both bi and also genderfluid. Lady Loki is just Loki when Loki is identifying as female. So having Loki fall in love with a female version of himself feels both unnecessarily heteronormative and kind of...awkward in terms of 616!Loki’s genderfluidity, to put it lightly. (Note: I am not genderfluid, this is just my opinion, please prioritize actual genderfluid people’s opinions on the subject over mine.)

That said, after I finished the episode I was genuinely confused if they were actually going there and had to go look up interviews to see what the Loki team was saying about it. I found this interview with head writer Michael Waldron, also featuring quotes from director Kate Herron and from Tom Hiddleston. Relevant quotes below:

“That was one of the cruxes of my pitch [for the series], that there was going to be a love story,” head writer Michael Waldron explains to Marvel.com. “We went back and forth for a little bit about, like do we really want to have this guy fall in love with another version of himself? Is that too crazy? But in a series that, to me, is ultimately about self-love, self-reflection, and forgiving yourself, it just felt right that that would be Loki's first real love story.”

Loki reassures her that while they might lose, they don’t die — they survive. He goes on to call Sylvie “amazing” for how she almost took down the TVA on her own, and it’s clear from the look on his face that even though they’ve only been together a short while, Loki’s already come to admire and respect her. As the moon literally crumbles around them, Sylvie places a hand on Loki’s arm, and that’s when it happens: A branch on the Sacred Timeline. These two Lokis are having a moment they were never supposed to have, which as Mobius puts it, is “pure chaos.”

“The look that they share, that moment, [it started as] a blossoming friendship,” continues Waldron. “Then for the first time, they both feel that twinge of, ‘Oh, could this be something more? What is this I'm feeling?’ These are two beings of pure chaos that are the same person falling in love with one another. That's a straight-up and down branch, and exactly the sort of thing that would terrify the TVA.”

...

“Who’s a better match for Loki than himself?” director Kate Herron chimes in. “The whole show is about identity. It's about him, and he is on a very different path, and he is on a different journey. He sees things in Sylvie that he is like, ‘Oh, I've been there. I know what you feel.’ But she's like, ‘Well, I don't feel that way.’ And I think that was the kind of fun thing about it. She is him, but she's not him. They've had such different life experiences. So just from an identity perspective, it was interesting to dig into that.”

“When Loki meets Sylvie, he's inspired solely by curiosity,” reveals Hiddleston. “He wants to talk to her and understand her and try to discern what was similar about their experiences, and what was different. He keeps asking her questions because he wants to see if his experience was also her experience. I think he realizes, and she realizes, that while they're the same, they're not the same.”

Aside from the parts where Michael Waldron says “...have this guy fall in love with another version of himself...” and “the same person falling in with another version of one another,” everything they talk about in this article could be read as Loki and Sylvie caring for each other in a way that’s not necessarily romantic. Waldron even says that the series is specifically about self-love and forgiving yourself.

(Coming back to the thing from earlier about Loki needing to love himself now.) The way I’d read Loki and Sylvie’s relationship, especially from Loki’s side since we know more of his history, is that this is the first time that either of them actually cares about themselves. Because of their trust in and their love for each other, they’re each able to see themselves as a person worthy of love. I think that’s what the Nexus Event was. I think that’s why Loki and Sylvie’s moment of connection destabilized the timeline. Because Loki’s self-loathing is a deep root of his villainy, and the sacred timeline needs Loki to be a villain, two versions of Loki feeling self-worth, at the same time and place, created a HUGE nexus event. Loki even says it himself in the first episode: he doesn’t enjoy hurting people, he does it because (he feels) he has to, in a desperate play for control. He lashes out and hurts people because he thinks it’s the only way for him to have some control over things.

What Loki starts to speak to Sylvie at the end, he says, “This is new for me,” and references the nexus event on Lamentis. We never get to hear what it is that’s new for him. The episode sets it up to make us think that Loki’s about to tell Sylvie that he’s in love with her. But I think (or hope) that he was about to say something more along the lines of how the time he spent getting to know Sylvie on Lamentis helped him learn to care about himself and see his own self worth. That’s certainly a new feeling for him, since Loki seems to have always been an outsider and been looked down upon. And actually saying out loud that he’s starting to gain a sense of self worth would definitely be new for him. Loki knows that he and Sylvie will figure this out because he’s figured out the nexus event on Lamentis- that when they accept themselves and their own self worth, they can do pretty much anything.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that we never actually hear from Loki himself that he’s in love with Sylvie. We only hear it from Mobius, who’s feeling pretty betrayed by Loki and uses the entire concept to write Loki off as a huge narcissist. That way, he won’t feel as bad about Loki betraying him, or about sticking Loki in a time loop jail. Not that Loki would be the type to shout any romantic feelings to the world, especially in this situation, but the way he kept denying it didn’t seem like it was something he had to lie about.

This episode also called Loki a narcissist a lot; I assume to set up the “reveal” of his feelings for Sylvie and explain why he would fall in love with an alternate version of himself. But while Loki is many things and sure has a lot of issues, I do NOT think narcissism is one of them. When the time loops really start to get to him, he says to Sif: “I crave attention, because I’m a narcissist. And I suppose it’s because I’m scared of being alone.” But that second sentence completely contradicts the whole idea of narcissism! According to a quick google, the definition of “narcissist” is “a person who has an excessive interest in or admiration of themselves.” But Loki is the exact opposite. He has such a low opinion of himself that he acts out to get attention, because he’s so used to being overshadowed, overlooked and alone that he’s afraid that if he doesn’t do things for attention then nobody will give him any. He can be arrogant, yes, but even a lot of that stems from well-earned confidence. Loki is very talented magically and is used to being the smartest person in the room. He knows what he’s good at. But he sure isn’t attention-seeking just for its own sake. Any narcissism he’s displayed, he’s done since becoming a “villain” in Thor, and it’s actually been a mask to cover up his massive inferiority complex.

I also think it’s definitely worth mentioning that when Loki calls himself a narcissist, he’s repeating what Mobius said to him earlier. Loki clearly does care about Mobius and his opinion of him and feels bad about how things have fallen out with him. He’s also been through the time loop dozens of times now, and there’s a reason the TVA picked that memory. Because what Sif says to Loki really reflects his deepest fear. He doesn’t want to be alone, but he has such little love for himself that he might very well think he deserves to be. Loki’s emotionally exhausted at that point and just wants things to stop.

Okay. I think that covered most of my character analysis of the episode. I have some theories about Sylvie and the Time Keepers/TVA, etc, but they won’t be anywhere near as long as THAT^ was.

To start at the beginning of the episode: Sylvie’s backstory is SO SAD. I want to hug her. She spent almost her entire life on the run, growing up and living in apocalypses so the TVA wouldn’t catch her again. She didn’t deserve any of that and I’m so upset on her behalf.

Especially because as I said in another post, I think that the reason Sylvie got taken by the TVA was because she was never going to be a villain. Sylvie was kind and wanted to be heroic in the clip we see of her as a child, and she knew she was adopted. She was never going to be the Loki the TVA needed her to be for the Sacred Timeline because nothing would have ever pushed her to do what our Loki did.

The scene with Sylvie and B-15 was so good. Sylvie was kind to B-15, because her natural instinct is to be kind, and I have so many feelings about that. I love Sylvie. And then B-15 coming to the rescue to uncollar Sylvie and Loki and give Sylvie her sword was EPIC. She’s so cool.

Small aside, I got emotional seeing Asgard again in Sylvie’s flashback. I miss Asgard. :(

Also, if a kid can escape the TVA just by biting the agent holding her, the TVA have really got to step up their game. That’s kind of pathetic. Good for Sylvie though, that was very clever of her. The most juvenile yet effective tactic.

The Time Keepers being fake robots was an excellent twist, and one that I kind of saw coming as soon as they didn’t show Ravonna’s conversation with them earlier in the episode. It immediately made me feel like there were no Time Keepers at all. (And I was wondering if the no-robots rule from episode 1 would be plot relevant! I wonder if it has anything to do with the Time Keepers actually being robots?) It was also really clear that Ravonna was lying about what happened to C-20. As of now I think that Ravonna might actually be the real power behind the TVA. Or possibly a designated lieutenant to the real power behind the TVA:

When I was looking up interviews about Loki/Sylvie in this episode, I stumbled across an article about Ravonna’s comic counterpart and started kicking myself so hard for not recognizing her. In comics, Ravonna Renslayer is Kang the Conqueror’s wife. (Now, in my defense, my previous exposure to Ravonna was in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, in which she spends most of her screentime in a coma.) For anyone who doesn’t know, Kang the Conqueror is a time traveling classic Avengers villain. His whole thing is that he time travels, and wants to take over all of time. So it’s possible that Ravonna runs the TVA to benefit Kang somehow (maybe because Kang needs a certain sequence of events to assure a future victory over the Avengers?) or even does it on his orders. Kang the Conqueror is also set to be in Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania. (Aka Antman 3.)

(I don’t know if it’s relevant, but Kang the Conqueror also happens to be the reason the Young Avengers form. The very first member, Iron Lad aka Nate Richards, is a teenage Kang who meets his future self and decides he doesn’t want to be evil, so he travels back in time to get the help of Kang’s nemeses, the Avengers. However, he lands when the Avengers have disbanded and winds up putting together a team of Avengers-affiliated teenagers instead. The team gets bigger over time and a later version of it notably includes Kid Loki. I’m not going to go off on a Young Avengers tangent here but I LOVE the Young Avengers, please read Young Avengers volume 1 by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung and all of its associated tie-ins. It’s fantastic. Unfortunately Kid Loki is only in volume 2, which gets a very solid “no thank you” from me but ymmv. Imo if you want Loki, read Agent of Asgard instead; I keep bringing it up for a reason and that’s because it’s amazing. Kid Loki is also in Journey into Mystery prior to his appearance in Young Avengers, and I haven’t read that yet but it looks very good.)

I’m VERY curious as to what the deal is behind the TVA. This could go a lot of different ways but they all seem exciting.

This show is definitely gearing up for a finale in which the TVA no longer exists or at least no longer decides everyone’s fates, which is exactly what I predicted back in episode 1.

Final thoughts on the episode: I was just wondering after Mobius was pruned if maybe the pruning sticks are actually teleporters of some kind, instead of time tasers, and then we got THAT CREDITS SCENE. I am so confused but also VERY EXCITED. I almost screamed when I saw Kid Loki. MY CHILD. I just had this thought but oh, I would kill for a Thori reference. Best murder dog. Classic Loki’s costume looks so terrible, it’s absolutely on purpose, and I love it.

THIS SHOW HAD BETTER END WITH MOBIUS GETTING A JETSKI. AND BOTH SYLVIE AND LOKI HAPPY.

I’ve been wondering since the show was announced if this show would somehow end with a version of the comics Kid Loki + AoA Loki storyline, where this Loki gets reborn into the main MCU as Kid/Teen Loki so he can join the Young Avengers, and I still don’t know how I feel about that, but with how things are going I can still see it happening.

LET EVERYONE WE LOVE BE HAPPY AT THE END MARVEL.

[lyrebirdswrites]

If I post long con chapter 4 when the new episode drops is it gonna get that sweet sweet exposure or is it gonna get buried in the tag

It’s like 95% done finally! I was aiming to get it finished by this morning. Technically I achieved that, because, as of ten minutes ago, the whole thing is in one piece. No gaps, no unwritten scene transitions, it’s all there in one linear cohesive manuscript. I never thought I would see the day :’)

But bits and pieces of the last scene are still in unavoidable need of a rewrite. I’ve worked sooooo hard on this chapter and I don’t want to rush it at the last minute, so. Tomorrow. T minus 24 hours. That is a realistic estimate this time. The to do list is ‘fix this one thing in these specific spots’ not ‘write two and a half scenes from scratch and connect them to the rest of the chapter’ so I am quite confident that I can manage it in a day - tidying up stuff which already exists is a billion times easier and more predictable than creating something from nothing. Very very excited for people to see it, hopefully people actually do see it and it isn’t buried under a dozen gif sets lol

[2sunchild2]

Daminette au: When Karma bites back

Au created by the one and only Ozzie Osbourne @ozmav this is dedicated to you ♥️♥️♥️

Tags ûwû: @realrandomposts @slytherinsheashire @kelelamentia @justatempo-writes @maxdark158 @maribat-archive @mindfulmagics @chloe-bourgeois-is-big-gay @jaynintodd @miraculous-mangoes

===================================================

“Are you nervous?”

Marinette looked at her husband through the bathroom mirror. He was leaning against the doorframe of the hotel bathroom, looking at her with concerned eyes. She sighed and put her hairbrush down and turned around.

“About what? They already have their deluded opinions of me, I’m just going to see if they acquired any brain cells since high school.”

He said nothing. He simply chuckled and strolled towards her to embrace her in a comforting hug and tucked her head under his chin. They stayed like that for a good minute before he released her and cupped her face, “You’re a terrible liar, Angel.”

She pouted and pushed him away, “Shut up, I have to fix my hair, shoo.”

Damian smiled and walked out.

Marinette looked back at herself in the mirror and sighed.

“Tikki, would you mind helping me out?”

The kwami only let out a giggle.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

“We can always back out you know,” she looked at her husband, “You don’t have to see them again.”

“Yeah I know, but I want to. I’m gonna the bigger person here.”

They drove quietly to the school, though the silence was interrupted by Damian’s laughter. Marinette’s eyebrow twitched. He was mocking her. She hated being mocked. Keeping her eyes on the road, she calmly asked him, “And just what, is so funny darling?”

“How can you be the bigger person if you’re so short?”

Marinette scoffed and parked the car, “I can kick your ass.”

Damian stared back at her lovingly, “I know.”

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&

If you ever told eighteen year old Marinette she would come back to François-DuPont for a high school reunion, she’d laugh at you and would proceed to make fun of you.

As soon as she graduated from that hell hole, she attended Regal Academy to pursue her career as a designer, and she managed to find a tight knit group of friends. Felix joined her in designing, specifically men’s fashion, Allegra became a musician, Claude became a famous theatrical artist and Allen was a composer working with Allegra. She had other friends too, she was a social person after all. Luka, Chloe and Kagami. She cherished those idiots and loved them with all her heart. She and Chloe put their differences aside and turns out, they actually have quite a lot in common. During her last year of high school it felt like it was just her and Chloe against the world. And then Kagami and Luka came.

Her heart warmed at the thought of seeing Chloe again. She hadn’t seen her since the wedding five years ago. Yes, she was married. At twenty two she had accepted Damian Wayne’s proposal and they got married the next year. Sure, she married young, but when you and your fiancé are already doing very well in life you don’t need to worry about anything.

She felt Damian squeezing her hand for reassurance. She looked at him briefly before looking back at the gym doors.

Here goes nothing.

@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@

Lila was a lawyer, a very successful one at that. She was rich, she lived a lavish life and she had a rich husband. Being Lila Agreste was amazing. That didn’t stop her from spewing lies fro her lips.

Her old classmates, except a few who didn’t care for her anymore, hung onto every word she told.

“Why yes, I did meet MDC. We didn’t get along at first but we managed to put our differences aside.”

It was no secret MDC was Marinette Dupain-Cheng. But the raven haired girl was far more successful than she was and she wanted people to know she still has connections to famous personalities.

Alya lightly flinched at the name, “Didn’t you and Marinette used to hate each other? You told us she used to bully you.”

Lila knew this question would come up so she smartly replied, “yeah well, we’re adults now. She apologized and we made up. We’re like this.” She crossed her fingers.

A loud scoff was heard and she, along with a few others, turned to see Chloe of all people standing there. Kim let out a low whistle and Alix elbowed him. She stood there in a gold dress that hugged her figure beautifully and she was dripping in jewels a champagne glass in hand.

“What do you want Chloe?” Alya rolled her eyes and put a hand on her hip. “Shouldn’t you be crying to your daddy about someone getting dirt on your tote? Oh wait— daddy’s in jail now for being a fraud right?”

The blonde only glared at the other girl and gripped her glass tightly. She took a deep breath, “I’ll have you know I no longer that connections to that spineless coward. I moved to New York with my mom and studied to become a human rights activist. But you wouldn’t know that, would you Alya? And just what are you doing now? Filming more gossip for your tabloid?”

Alya got predictably angry and wasbkut to hell at her before being stopped by Nino. He merely shook his head, telling her it wasn’t worth it, when she tried to defend herself.

“Chloe? Is there a problem?”

The rather large group turned to see none other than Kagami Tsurugi walk up to them. Chloe simply smiled, “No darling, everything’s fine.”

“You... you guys... are a thing?” Alya managed to spit out after the shock.

“Yes, is there a problem?” Kagami glared at the other girl who flinched and looked away.

“Kagami, don’t you think that’s a little rude?”

That voice gave Alya and Lila a sense of relief. There he stood, looking as good as he did in high school, just a tad bit more mature. His blond hair was cut short and his green eyes seemed to pierce through everyone’s soul.

“Adrien! Darling!” Lila yelled and jumped to hug him.

Chloe stepped back, eyes widened when she caught sight of a ring she realized what happened between those two. He got married. He got married to that lying bitch no less. He got married and... and he didn’t even tell her. He didn’t even invite her.

“I was just telling everyone how I met up with Marinette. I did give her the inspiration for her latest fashion line, after all.”

Chloe and Kagami opened their mouths to tell her off, knowing that Marinette got her idea when one of her employees told her how hard it was to find nice clothes in her size.

“You know,” a cold voice called out, “ I would appreciate it if you didn’t talk about my wife as if you actually know her.”

All heads turned to see a brooding man with black hair and the scariest green eyes they’ve come to know. He wore a fitted designer suit and stood tall, with the aura only a business man could have. And by the looks of it, he seemed to be a pretty successful one at that.

And right there, holding his hand was Marinette Dupain-Cheng. She looked stunning in the dark red red she wore. It was a simple backless halter top and the skirt of the dress had two long slits on each side that showcased her legs. She held herself with pride and most importantly dignity.

She scanned the room, ignoring the many eyes looking at her before they stopped on one couple. Her eyes widened with excitement and she could’ve squealed like a school girl.

“Chlo! Mimi!”

She grabbed her husband’s arm and dragged him across the room while she sped to her two friends and engulfed them with a hug.

“Oh I’ve missed you guys so much! How’ve you two been? Are the preparations going as planned? Do you still want me to make your dresses?”

A million questions were asked and the girls couldn’t answer any of them with how quickly Marinette was going.

“Angel,” her husband called her, she stopped and looked back at him, “Let then breathe a little. They’re won’t be able to answer any of your questions if you’re going a hundred miles per hour.”

Marinette smiled sheepishly, “I guess you’re right.”

There was a cough and the raven haired girl turned to see none other than her former best friend, Alya Césaire. Or Lahiffe. She was not invited to the wedding, but she was requested to make the dress. She only agreed because she was getting paid. Thought Alya did throw a fit for pay because “girl we used to be friends!”

Funny.

“Aren’t you gonna say hi?”

Marinette looked at her, genuinely confused, “Now why would I do that?”

“Aren’t you friends with Lila? You could at least eat civil and say hi to the rest of us.”

Marinette slowly blinked. Realization dawned on her quickly. Lila lies about her. She told them they were friends. They were far from it. If anything, Marinette hated that girl with every fibre of her being.

“I don’t recall saying I was friends with Lila,” she turned to Chloe and Kagami, “Do you girls remember me saying that?”

They shook their heads.

“Honey,” her husband looked up from his phone, “Do you remember me saying I was friends with Lila?”

“What? No. You told me you hated her ever since she threatened you in the school bathroom.”

Now it was Lila’s turn to flinch.

Her husband seemed lost in thought for a moment before snapping his finger, “And I remember you telling me how she told you she’d alienate you from the class, when she lied about napkins somehow being dangerous? Knowing Prince Ali. I know the man, he doesn’t know of a Lila by the way. Saving Jagged Stone’s cat, which he never had and being Clara Nightingale’s emergency contact? Don’t those two treat you like family Angel?”

“Damian, sweetheart,” she put a hand on his shoulder to stop him, “that’s enough.”

Lila glared at the man, “Who do you think you are?!”

He gave her a bored look, “A Wayne.”

Conversation stopped. Now everyone looked at the couple in the middle of the room. A Wayne. A fucking Wayne.

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitfuck

“Hey now, let’s not argue about this,” there he was, trying to solve conflict like the fucking saviour he thought he was. Marinette scoffed and looked away.

“Mind your god damned business Agreste.”

“This is my business, Wayne. Especially if my wife is involved.”

Ah yes, another dress she was requested to make. She had charged extra for that dress because she was asked to make it a month before the wedding itself.

Damian simply glared at the blond boy, “You’re acting as if this doesn’t concern my wife either.”

“Damian, love, don’t bother. You’re better than this,” she put her hand of his chest and when he turned to look at her she smiled, “how about we get some champagne and sit at one of the tables yeah? Chloe? Kagami? Will you be joining us? “

“In a minute hun, we need to talk to them first,” Chloe replied dismissively and Marinette nodded.

“You have a lot of nerve trying to lie about her,” Kagami started, “ you know damn well she doesn’t want anything to do with you. And I’m sure you’ve made it clear you don’t like her, so why bother lying about it?”

Lila fidgeted. The classmates watched her expectantly. Fifteen seconds later Alix yelled out in frustration and dragged Max and Kim to the table to apologize.

“I... I.. um..” she started, not being able to form a proper sentence.

“You... you...” Chloe mocked. Adrien gave her a dark look but she didn’t flinch. She gave him a blank stare in return.

“You don’t actually know Jagged Stone, do you.”

“Was Spielberg a lie too?”

“Why’d you lie about everything?”

“Was it really all a lie?”

Lila, who couldn’t work this fast under pressure, walked away to the girls’ bathroom.

€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€

The couple watched the mess unfold and waited while several people came towards them with apologetic faces.

“Don’t you think that was a little harsh?”

“Angel, it was well deserved.”

They laughed together for what seemed like forever. She was happy where she was. She had accepted their apologies naturally because she was a kind person. The same couldn’t be said for Damian but it didn’t matter to the rest of the class.

Adrien watched her. She looked so happy. She smiled like that when they were younger. She smiled like that when they were running on rooftops on warm Parisian nights.

He traced the finger where his silver ring used to be. He missed those times. He missed being with her. Maybe if he stopped Lila when he could, things would have been different. Maybe he would’ve been on the receiving end of that smile. Maybe he would’ve been the one to embrace her like that. And maybe, just maybe, she would look at him the way he looked at her. But she didn’t. All because of his passive stupidity.

He caught her husband’s eyes, who immediately glared at him and sucked in a deep breath. He whispered something in her year and she looked back at him. And all he could do was look away. She didn’t spare him a second glance because she turned around and gave him a peck on the cheek.

££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££

the end? maybe I’ll continue? This was getting long anyways. Should I make a part 2?

🤷🏼‍♀️ yes or no

[big-urchin-energy]

About me tag

got tagged by @siarven,, thank you very much this has taken literal hours,, if i’ve been slow replying for a while, this is why skdfhskdjdkjfh

Name/Nickname: maisie

Gender: approximately genderfluid, with a side of ‘no’, ‘yes’, and ‘idk man i just work here’

Star sign: taurus

Height: 158 cm

Time: 10:15pm 1:55am

Birthday: 21 May

Favorite band/group: this is so hard! there are lots and they’re all very predictable! they might be giants and the fratellis have been long-time favourites of mine (and then of course there’s mother mother, the mechanisms, tally hall, etc. you get the idea, and thank god you didn’t ask for solo artists)

Song stuck in your head: dirty imbecile by the happy fits

Last movie: i genuinely do not remember. i watched jojo rabbit in the summer? but i think there’s probably been some more since then

Last show: wandavision

When did I create this blog: late 2013 i think

What do I post about? mostly tma, but usually just whatever takes my fancy. politics as well, or anything else i’m into

Other blogs: @aromichaelshelley (where i put the vast majority of my aro, ace and gender stuff but also posts that are specifically about michael shelley, the love of my life. might start putting fic updates on there as well idk)

Do I get asks: not very often, it’s usually just the chain ones which i’m too lazy to do half the time

Why I chose my url: my friend told me a couple of years ago that i had big street urchin energy which is true

Average hours of sleep: i am currently unemployed and un-studented so i go to sleep whenever and wake up between 8 and 11

Lucky number: i’m not sure if i have one but i like 4 and 0

Instrument: flute but i hardly play anymore,, i really want to but it’s been so long i sound dreadful

What am I wearing: cool skull tshirt over long-sleeved rainbow top, and pyjama pants

Dream job: i think i’d like to be an editor, although i would also love to be unemployed forever, i don’t dream of working fuck capitalism

Dream trip: i’ve never been super into traveling, but if i could afford it i’d love to visit new zealand. there and scotland,, i wanna go all over scotland. i was supposed to go last summer on a scout camp, that would’ve been fun

Favorite food: i feel like it’s kinda a weird one but ever since i was little my mum made pizza but instead of a tomato base it’s spinach and pesto? and it’s soooooooo good, just chopped spinach, pesto and mozzarella on pizza? god tier meal

Nationality: british

Favorite song: okay here we go, we’re getting one of each,,,, For No One is one of my favourite beatles songs and sadly i’m a huge beatles stan (revolver is maybe my favourite album of theirs), i’m not sure i can pick just one tmbg song but for sheer Makes-Me-Smile vibes, We Want a Rock bc i’m weak for audible smiles in songs, Blood and Whiskey by the mechs, because of course it is, i’m only human,, and i can’t for the life of me think of any more that wouldn’t lead me to just. picking 30 songs

Last book I read: Thirteen Storeys by jonny sims (i enjoyed the making fun of rich people)

Top three fictional worlds: i have suddenly forgotten every single piece of media i have ever seen or read oh no,, but i love the Inkworld in Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, the Diskworld comes to mind too, and, because i refuse to say harry potter, i’m gonna say Yonderland from the series Yonderland, because that always seemed like a pretty cool place to be and i feel like i cant just say ‘the world from this fic i read one time’

tagging @chikacupcake and like. whoever else wants to do it but no pressure, you don’t have to, but if you follow me then feel free, it’s fun :))

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Seldom All They Seem

Summary: It's time, the souling is descending. But things aren't going smoothly.

Tags: Spicyhoney, Brotherly Relationships, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Pregnancy, More Angst

Notes: All right, y’all asked for this. Careful what you wish for. 

How to warn for this?

There's some scary 'birth' related things, mentions of a possible past miscarriage, mentions of a possible traumatic past. I hesitate to say more because of spoilers, so I'll add more tags to the end in case anyone needs them. Scroll all the way down for spoilers!

~~*~~

What Will Be, Will Be

Something To Say, But Nothing Comes

Can’t Go On, Thinking Nothing’s Wrong

~~*~~

Read it on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

Despite making him a captain in the guard, Undyne still insisted that Edge train with her at least once a week. Partly it was because she was a bossy bitch, as she would gleefully tell anyone, but also a more private concern that both of them keep their skills honed to a razor point.

With a great deal of brutally hard work, Snowdin and Waterfall were slowly turning into places where a Monster could reasonably expect to survive to adulthood. XP Hunters that hid out in Snowdin wood were virtually wiped out once Edge started implementing his traps, as well as any LV-crazed Monsters who used to stalk anyone who took the paths.

Undyne began utilizing his traps in her territories, especially along the borders to New Home. That was still a festering hive of gangs and corruption and the air there always tasted of dust. Underfell would never be safe, not in the way Underswap or Undertale were, but Edge always knew he couldn’t save the world. Not yet, anyway. His focus was on his own corner of it.

A certain amount of safety also promoted a level of laziness, according to Undyne, and at her insistence, they both kept hard at work training. In that Edge believed she was correct; there was no point in creating a safe place if he wouldn’t be able to defend it and he always made sure to meet her challenges head on.

Except for today, when that very specific ringtone trilled a message from his cell.

“You actually have your fucking phone on right now,” Undyne asked with near manic glee. Edge was forced to dodge the vicious kick she aimed directly at his head. “Ain’t I keeping you busy enough, bossman?"

Undyne didn’t believe in pulling punches, not even during training, and Edge had the scars to prove it. Even her words, mockingly sweet, were chosen to sting, but Edge was no longer a stripling to be so easily distracted. He kept his shield of bones up even as he pulled out his phone, his eye lights skimming the brief words.

it’s time. come on down if you want a front row seat.

“I need to go,” Edge said, even as he sidestepped a blow that would have cracked bone if it landed.

That needle-sharp grin twisted into a frown, Undyne drawing up short as she glared at him. The top of the scar that ran beneath her eye patch drew down as her brows furrowed. “You’ll go when I say you can go, Captain.”

Edge was forced to dodge again, this time from a spear that manifested out of thin air. “I need to go, it’s an emergency.”

That gave her a pause, if a brief one. “Yeah? What kind of emergency? If it was your brother, we’d already be hearing alarm bells.” Undyne thrust the point of her spear into the ground, leaning against the shaft even as she gestured exaggeratedly for him to go on.

He hesitated. He trusted Undyne as much as he could trust anyone. She was the one who accepted him into the guard, even when he was obviously a street rat and still far too young. She was the one who trained him how to fight, past the dirty techniques Red ingrained in him from the moment he could summon a sharpened bone. She was his commander and his friend, and surely this wouldn’t be the only time he’d need to make a hasty trip to Underswap. He would need her support.

“It’s my…” Edge hesitated again, searching for a word and settled on a feeble, “significant other. Our souling is descending.”

It was the only time he’d ever legitimately seen Undyne falter in battle or otherwise. The spear propping her up wobbled, knocking her off balance and taking advantage of the opening was pure instinct. He had her on the ground in moments, his boot poised over her throat, but Undyne only stared at him, her visible eye filled with pure shock.

“A souling?” she whispered harshly, knocking his foot aside. “The fuck were you thinking? You can’t just say that kind of thing, you idiot, who knows who might be listening!”

Left unspoken was that Alphys was surely watching them, possibly with popcorn as she salivated over their sparring match. That was the reason Red never allowed him to visit Undyne without an audio disruptor, something she wouldn’t know. Video was allowed; according to Red, so long as she could watch the show, Alphys was unlikely to investigate the sound issue too much, but it was impossible to tell how effective a tool it was.

But he didn’t have much of a choice, they would need Undyne on their side.

“You’re my friend--” Edge tried. He held out a hand to help her to her feet and Undyne slapped it away, getting up on her own.

“No one is that good a friend, you fucking moron!” Undyne took hold of the front of his shirt, nearly hauling him off his feet despite the fact that he was considerably taller. “You don’t tell anyone else, you hear me? No one!”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Edge said, coolly, “I can protect my own.” The visible doubt on Undyne’s face made him stiffen and if time wasn’t ticking away, he would have called her on the insult. But then, she also couldn’t know that the child would be growing up safely a world away, with Rus. Edge could protect his own, better that he wouldn’t need to.

She sighed heavily, swiping a clawed hand over the fronds of the fins on her head. The ones not bound in a tie fluttered softly, “Get out of here. You’ll need to go double next week, shithead.”

Edge nodded and turned on his heel towards Snowdin.

Before he could take a step he heard, “Papyrus?”

Edge hesitated, turning back to Undyne warily. But she wasn’t poised for any sort of attack, her burly arms crossed over her chest and her gaze focused on the ground.

Her mouth twisted wryly as she asked, “Gonna let me meet the little crotchfruit when it’s here?”

Edge smiled faintly, “Its other parent keeps insisting that it should be called a skitten.”

“Ha!” Undyne slapped her knee and her sharp-toothed grin was a more familiar one, easy and wide, “That’s pretty good.”

“And yes,” Edge agreed, carefully. He didn’t have his brother or Rus’s affinity with promises, but he didn’t care to make ones he didn’t at least think he could keep. “If I can.”

She nodded. “Good enough. Go on, daddy, go watch the show.”

He gave her a short nod of his own and started back towards Snowdin. He wasn’t halfway there when his brisk walk became a run, dashing through the streets and ignoring the concerned looks of any that he passed. He didn’t bother to change out of his uniform, only went straight to the machine, punching in the coordinates and waiting impatiently for the portal to open.

Once through, he darted around the side of the house, for once grateful of the unlocked door and only then did he pause for a moment, to take off his boots. The first was peeled away and he was working on the second when he heard it.

From upstairs, through the closed door bedroom door came the sound of a muffled scream.

~~*~~

Next to the bed, Rus could distantly hear his brother moving around, the frantic burble of his words mostly unheard over his own cries and the creaking bed as Rus writhed with the next hot flare of pain.

“it hurts!” Rus sobbed. Undyne never said a fucking word about it hurting! His soul felt like it was being pulled apart, agony lancing through it. Rus curled in on himself, his knees tight to his chest as he choked out another cry.

That morning, Red’s prediction came true; he could feel the little souling, the simplest of joy nudging at his own soul while that little spark began wriggling almost uncomfortably, and that was when Rus knew it was time. He’d called his brother and sent Edge a text before going upstairs, eager for the descension

Only eagerness twisted into confusion as the pain increased. His comfortable room abruptly became too hot, nausea filling him, and Blue came home to find him retching miserably into a waste can, hauling him back into bed even as he moaned in complaint at the rising heat.

Rus stripped down to his shorts before Blue finally opened a window, allowing some chilly air into the room. That helped a little, but then the pain grew, swelling in his chest as the little souling struggled frantically within the cage of his ribs.

“ah, fuck,” Rus moaned, shuddering as the agony built again. Pain laced liberally with fear, was it supposed to hurt this much?

Distantly, he heard the door opening, slamming shut again. Gloved hands grabbed at him, trying to pull him into strong arms and Rus struggled free, slapping ineffectively until they let him go. He didn’t want to be touched, he wanted this to be over, it hurt so terribly.

The salt-sweet taste of tears was heavy on his tongue, making him gag and he fumbled for the trash can again, spitting it away before sagging back onto the sweat-damp sheets. It returned almost immediately; his sockets were streaming as he wept helplessly. He hadn’t ever wanted a baby before this little souling appeared and now he was gripped by terror that he was losing it, please, no.

Through the sound of his own soul throbbing in his skull came the pop of teleportation, followed by a loud, gruff voice, “what the fuck is going on?”

“Red!” That was his brother’s voice, shattered with an incongruous mixture of fear and relief. “Oh, thank heavens, you need to shortcut to Hotland, bring back Undyne--”

Red didn’t reply and the bed next to Rus shifted with the sudden addition of weight.

"hey, look at me.” A sharp finger tapped painfully at Rus’s skull and he cringed away from that tiny hurt added to the pain already racking him, curling up harder, “c’mon rus, look at me.” Barely, Rus managed to open his sockets, looking up blurrily at Red. He was rewarded with a hand cupping the side of his face, gloriously cool and Rus leaned into that careful touch, his eye lights locked on Red’s intent gaze. "i'm gonna get you through this, honey bun, okay?”

He managed a slight nod. Red was an asshole, but Rus believed him, clinging to the shreds of his hope.

"okay. now listen. i know it’s scary, but your soul will let go of the spark before it lets your hp drop to zero, yeah? so you ain't gonna dust from this."

"but the baby," Rus whispered, fresh tears welling. It wasn’t his death he was afraid for, hadn’t even occurred to him. Red’s bony hand soothed over his skull, stroking gently.

"your kidlet is fine, too. the spark can feel what you feel. you're scared, so it’s scared. i need you to breathe with me, okay? just breathe. in…and out…”

Rus did as Red told him, managing to match those long, slow breaths, easing back from panicked blurts. It still hurt, but the pain lessened as his panic faded. That pulling sensation was still there and Rus breathed through it this time. Somehow, now that pain actually felt right, almost a relief.

“that's it,” Red said, still breathing loudly, urging Rus to match it. Distantly, Rus thought he sounded strange, the Hotland accent that always clipped his words fading back. “let your body handle it, it knows what to do.”

He didn’t know how much time passed, Red murmuring soothingly, stroking his skull and jaw. Another hand hesitantly took his own and Rus gripped it automatically, holding on, following the arm up to Edge’s worried crimson gaze. His expression tightened when he saw Rus looking, mouth forming a word that Rus couldn’t hear over Red’s constant, soothing rapport, breathe.

“i am breathin’,” Rus mumbled. Maybe it was the grouchiness in those few words that made a faint smile quirk the corners of Edge’s mouth. He could see the tremble in his own hand as he reached out, fingertips grazing Edge’s cheekbone. “like it when you smile.”

Edge’s sockets widened, that smile faltering but before Rus could mourn the loss, he felt the last thread tying the souling to his own soul snap. He cried out, but the pain was already fading, gentle warmth drifting downward as the souling descended into his abdominal cavity.

There wasn’t time for him to even look before his magic flared uncontrollably, his midsection filled to bursting with the flood of it. It was over as quickly as it began and Rus lay back, panting, the taste of sweat and tears still heavy on his tongue.

A soft cloth appeared and Edge tried to wipe away the sweat on his brow bone. Rus pushed him away impatiently, struggling out a blearily. "baby?"

Red was sitting on the edge of the mattress, his still snow-damp boots leaving wet smears on the sheets. He offered Rus a sharp-toothed smile. "may as well get a good look, a few hours you won't be able to see anymore."

Shakily, Rus rose up on his elbows. In his midsection where usually there was only the slender column of his spine, his magic was encasing him in ectoflesh from his ribs to his pelvis. Through the translucent orange, he could see the glow of the souling, its light dimmed through his shimmering magic. Already the ghostly shape of bones was forming around it. As Red said, eventually the magic would lose its translucence and they'd have to wait until it was ready to see it again. Around the bed, the others crowded in, and as different as they looked, Blue and Edge were wearing matching expression of wondering awe. Or maybe not entirely matching, Edge's still seemed tainted with concern, but eh, couldn't blame him for worrying about his kid. Rus knew exactly how he felt.

Rus sank back down, managing to lift a trembling hand to curve around that soft swell. Not a souling any long but an actual baby, readying itself to be born. Another hand joined his, still wearing a stupid glove, entwining their fingers. Beneath their combined touch, the souling gave a happy wriggle and Rus groaned. Okay, great, the kiddo was fine, now he wanted to sleep for about a week.

As if he’d pulled the thought directly out of Rus’s skull, Red hopped to his feet and said briskly. "okay, he needs to get some rest and you two ain’t real good at holding still. go do laundry or some shit, you can goggle more at the…” Red grimaced. “at the skitten when rus wakes up.”

To Rus’s weary bemusement, Edge and Blue both reluctantly obeyed, falling to the will of the Older Brother. Before he stood, Edge leaned down and pressed a kiss to the curve of Rus’s belly, the way he always had to his sternum before. What he whispered to their little spark this time, Rus couldn’t hear. He was already halfway to drowsing when Edge tucked the soft blanket over him, but the feel of a mouth brushing his own woke him right the fuck up.

Rus barely had time to give Edge a wide-socketed look, he was already moving towards the door, crimson bright on his cheekbones in a match to Rus’s own flusterment.

Huh. They’d fucked more than a dozen times, why was it a chaste kiss that left Rus feeling flutters in his soul that had nothing to do with the recent eviction of the souling?

At the door, Edge hesitated, silhouetted in the light from the living room. His voice was thick as he said, "Brother. Thank you."

Red only snorted, tossing the socks that Rus peeled off earlier into the laundry hamper. "didn't do nothin’ but help calm him down. baby would've been fine either way."

The door closed softly and tired as he was, Rus lay there, watching Red bustling around the room, cleaning up scattered clothing, tying off the liner in the waste can so it could be discarded. It was like looking at a distorted mirror of his own brother.

“red?” Rus croaked out.

“you’re supposed to be sleepin’, honey bun.”

“thirsty.” That was an understatement. His tongue felt like it recently did a tango with some sandpaper. Red was gone and back in a flash of a shortcut, holding a glass filled to the brim with lovely water. He held it while Rus drank thirstily, only spilling a few drops before he sank back with a grateful sigh. “thank you.”

“not a problem.”

“no, i mean, thank you, for everything.” Beneath the blanket, Rus settled a hand on the curve of his belly again. There was only a flicker of movement this time, lil' skitten was probably as tired as he was.

Red blew out a sharp breath and set the empty glass on the side table with a thunk. “already toldja, didn’t do anything. you woulda been fine.”

Much as he wanted to believe that was true, Rus wasn’t convinced. He was so tired, the world seemed soft and blurry around him, but sleep was still elusive. With Blue and Edge gone, this hushed moment felt like one for secrets, and Rus found himself asking in a low mumble, “what happened to your baby?”

Red went very still. “gonna need to let that go, kid.”

It was gently said, probably great advice, but Rus’s mouth wasn’t finished. “i’ll share this baby, if you want.” He could do that, right? It already felt like he was going to be sharing with the whole of the Underground. Edge wouldn’t mind, he was sure of it. Pretty sure.

“heh.” Red shook his head, ruefully. With a grunt, he hopped back onto the bed and lightly, he stroked a hand over Rus’s skull. His tone was almost fond as he said, “you taleverse monsters always gotta be the hero, dontcha. you ain’t even gonna remember this, honey bun. go to sleep.”

He wanted to, so very much, but tears were thickening again in his sockets, surfacing with his imaginings of another little souling, one that was lost, “m’sorry. ‘bout your baby.”

He shouldn’t have said it, cringing a little, waiting for that petting to get rough with anger. Red only kept up that light, soothing touch, tracing his coronal sutures the way a concerned lover might or maybe a parent. Rus wouldn’t know. He’d never really had either.

“don’t be, ain’t nothin’ to be sorry about,” Red told him, very, very softly. “my baby grew up just fine. little stupid, sometimes. now go to sleep.”

Almost, Rus wanted to argue, what did that even mean? But he was so tired and the little soul in his formed belly was already giving off its own feeling of sleepiness, dragging him down.

Remember this, he told himself fiercely, but thought was already fading. He slept, dreamless and deep, and never heard when Red got up and left, closing the door silently behind him.

tbc

Read Next Chapter

Notes:

Okay, so spoilers below!

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It's heavily implied that Red was pregnant before and that he did end up giving birth, very likely as a teenage parent. Nothing else surrounding his possible pregnancy is explained yet or even implied, other than it happened. It is however, heavily implied that Edge is his child and not his brother.

End spoilers.

[lildevyl]

Nora Weird (Backstory, sorta)

@weirdmixofweirdness

Okay, so since this is going to be a bit of long post (you’ve been warned!) I’m gonna tag Weird! So, I read the  Rapunzel Post and how you think that might what it might have been liked for Nora Weird (an OC I created for Weird!). Well, it’s a Yes and No, for Nora.

When the Author was first created he was created not to feel emotions, except for the pleasure he got from his writing. The Author wanted to be that so badly, an actual published fully recognized author! But for some reason every time he wrote a book and his publisher said it was fantastic and it should sell, it never did! No, can figure out why, but for some odd reason none of his books would sell.  Romance, Fantasy, Adventure, even a few Children’s Books and Young Adult Books. Nothing! None of them would sell!

The Author was getting desperate! Pretty soon he would have take up Dark’s offer! What choice did he have? Nothing was selling, and he couldn’t get a job fast enough to pay all the bills that he needed it to pay! The Author went to Dark and said yes to his offer. Dark smiled, and the next thing the Author knew he was selling books left, right and center! They couldn’t keep them on the shelves fast enough! Horror, Thriller, Mystery, Psychological Horror/Thriller, it was everything the Author ever wanted, but at price. The Author became so consumed with his work that he didn’t realize what kind of a monster he was turning into.

Not caring about others, not caring who he hurts and what he does! Until his one friend, Edward Iplier became unknown victim! Edward went to check on the Author to make sure he was doing alright. Edward knew from the beginning when he came to the Manor (now known as Ego Inc) that something was off! He saw what was happening to his friend and tried desperately to help him! To let him get help and maybe find out what was causing all this! Or more specifically, who was causing it! It led to the Author using his gift on Edward and there was no way to reverse it!

When the Author saw what he did to Edward, he couldn’t believe it! His only friend! And he did that to him! The Author, stopped writing after that, he bring himself to do so! Taking a stroll through his woods, the Author came across something brand new. A small one bedroom, one bathroom cabin in the middle of the woods with a radio tower. The Author went to see who might be living there and to his surprise a young girl couldn’t be no more then a student was living there by herself!

The Author asked who she was, and told him, her name was Nora. Nora invited him into her house and told the Author everything. Nora was a fan made Ego, she made by the Community but the thing of it is, not a lot of the Community members know of her. She doesn’t how she came here, she just appeared one day. The Author explained everything to Nora, what and Ego is, where she is, what Egopocalpse is (the alternate universe where the Egos live in my universe). And how it is that an Ego can’t live outside of Egopocalpse for long, otherwise they fade and only a few people can cross the threshold of the Real World and Egopocalpse. Usually its the Creators and the people that their with that can cross. But the same rule applies to them as well. They can’t live in Egopocaplse for long, least they become a character themselves.

As time went on, the Author took Nora under his wing and along the way, discovered her talents as well! She was a natural at story telling and gifted author! The Author started to see her like a daughter and began teaching her all kinds of things. It was b/c of her that the Author and Edward were able to make up. They’re friendship was still strained but at least they were trying. Unfortunately, that was also when Dark had caught wind of Nora.

The Author refused to let Dark anywhere near Nora without him present! The Author might not be able to use his gift against Dark b/c Dark’s chaotic energy protects him. But the Author will be damned if anything happened to his daughter!

But unfortunately, things wouldn’t last long for the Author or Nora. The Egos needed both their Creator and the Community to remember them! Even if the Creator acknowledges the Ego, the Community is what keep them alive! If the Community doesn’t know about he Ego or doesn’t like the Ego enough then the Ego will fade. Unfortunately for the Author, Mark didn’t have enough subscribers back then. His chapter had came to close and that was when the Author became the Host!

The Host does remember his time a the Author but everyone sees him and the Author as two different people. The Host saw himself as Nora’s Uncle and took over trying to help her and protect her. But like the Author, the Host can’t use his narrations to predict what will happen with Dark or be able to use anything on Dark. Over the years, the Host realized that Nora had both her father’s gift and his as well.  She could write any scene with a character and that character automatically becomes part of the book.

If she starts to narrate the story, then it becomes “alive” but only to a certain degree. Nora could even bring something to life! But at a terrible price. She will loose energy and won’t be able to talk for hours.

Nora has her own radio show with her Uncle the Host. Reading books of new authors, writers (fanfiction is one of her favorites from the community), and even sometimes, reads some of her favorites that her father had written.

Then a new “Channel” that Mark and Ethan made called Unus Annus gained a lot of momentum. One of the episodes literally helped bring back her father, the Author. But at a terrible price. Dark set him up, and now it’s up to the Host and Nora to prove his innocents and to help save Jackieboy Man.

[jjonassevilla]

How to Build an Email List from Scratch (A Step-By-Step Guide)

We want to support you as much as we can during this uncertain time. Check out the COVID-19 Small Business Care Package for a roundup of useful resources—including tech discounts, government subsidies, and marketing tips to help lessen the impact on your business.

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Despite what you may have heard from some of the marketing Nostrdramuses over the years, “email is most definitely not dead.” (Seriously, an article like this one has popped up every year since 2007. It’s been over a decade—maybe we should all stop planning the funeral?) The truth is that email is still one of the best ways to reach customers online, especially if you’re a small business. And it delivers some of the best ROI out of all the marketing channels out there.

Source: The Emma 2018 Email Marketing Industry Report

Unlike SEO (which can be competitive and complex), social media (which can be wildly inconsistent), and online advertising (which can cost mucho money), email is practically made for marketers. It’s straightforward, predictable, affordable, and easy to use. And with email, you can build relationships that turn one-off customers into repeat business.

But first—you need to start building that email list. So let’s get started.

5 Steps to Build Your Email List from Scratch

Get an Email Marketing Tool

Create an Offer You Can Exchange for Email Addresses

Build a Landing Page, Popup, or Sticky Bar to Collect Emails

Advertise Your Email-Gated Offer

Start Sending Regular Emails to Your List

Step 1. Get an Email Marketing Tool

Before you start building your list, you’re going to want to sign up for an email marketing tool like ActiveCampaign, Campaign Monitor, or Mailchimp. These are some of the most popular pieces of software for not only building and sending emails to your customers, but also collecting and organizing your email list. (Because trust me… you’re not gonna want to keep track of all this on an Excel spreadsheet.) The initial costs for these tools are very low—and all of them offer free plans or trials that make it easy to get started.

Once you’ve chosen a tool, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with how it works. Each platform is slightly different, but some of the first steps you’ll want to take include…

Create Your First List(s) – You can organize the emails you collect into groups called “lists.” To start out, you may want to create a “Master” list where you can put all email addresses, a “Customers” list for people who have already bought from you, and a “Prospects” list for people who have shown interest but haven’t yet made a purchase.

Import Any Existing Contacts – If you already have some emails that you want to add to your new database, now would be the time to do so. You can set up your existing email contacts in a spreadsheet to import them all in one go. Remember, these are folks who need to have expressly agreed to receive emails from you per privacy laws.

Set Up Tags/Segments –  As email addresses come in, you’ll be able to tag leads based on how they entered your database, and send segmented emails to more specific groups of customers or prospects. To start out, you may want to create tags for segments like “Landing Page Leads,” “Newsletter Sign-up Leads,” and other entry points so you know who signed up where.

Create an Email Template – These email marketing tools aren’t just for organizing your list—they’re also for sending emails. Get familiar with the different templates, and try designing and sending out a test email from your business.

Bonus! Unbounce integrates seamlessly with ActiveCampaign, Campaign Monitor, and Mailchimp. That means you’ll be able to set up lead-generation landing pages, popups, and sticky bars that automatically route visitor contact info into your email marketing software.

Step 2. Create an Offer You Can Exchange for Email Addresses

Now that you have a tool to collect email addresses, the next step—and possibly the most important part of this entire process—is to figure out how the heck to convince prospective customers to actually give you their emails.

The traditional approach here is to put some sort of “Subscribe” button on your website’s homepage or blog and ask visitors to enter their email address. But have you ever actually filled one of those things out just… because? (No, thank you.) Most visitors skip over a form like that entirely because there’s no real compelling reason to give up your email address in the first place.

An email address is someone’s personal (and private) contact information. Most people aren’t just going to type it out onto any old website, all willy nilly like that. You’ve got to offer up something genuinely valuable in exchange.

That’s why it’s a good idea to take some time and brainstorm what your business can offer that’ll convince visitors to give up their email address first. Because getting the right strategy here will help you build an email list much faster later on.

If you’re wondering what most other marketers do, here are a few of the most common ways to get a visitor’s email address…

Offer a Coupon or Discount Code

MeUndies and other ecommerce brands often offer discounts in exchange for email addresses.

For ecommerce, one of the easiest ways to get a shopper to give you their email address is to offer them a coupon or discount in exchange. This is the most straightforward approach—but it’s also usually the most expensive. “Get $10 Off Your First Order” or “Get Free Shipping” can be powerfully persuasive for visitors… you just need to make sure you factor those expenses into your cost-per-email-acquisition.

Offer a Free Tool or Resource

SaaS companies like Later use free resources to collect email addresses.

The other common way to build an email list fast (especially if you’re in SaaS) is to create a free resource and gate it with a form. The key here is that it has to be something your audience would find useful that also aligns with your business expertise. So, for example, if you run an online pet store, you might create a free guide all about “How to Choose the Perfect Leash for Your Pet.” Or if you run a hair salon, you might create a “How to Cut Your Hair at Home” guide for customers staying at home during the pandemic.

Run a Sweepstakes, Giveaway, or Contest

This example of a giveaway run by Fat Stone Farm and Webistry helped bring in over 15,000 leads. Click here to see the full story.

People love free stuff. There’s something about sweepstakes, giveaways, and contests that just appeal to our lizard brains. (“Why yes, I do want a chance to win a lifetime supply of mayonnaise. Where do I sign up?”) You could even consider setting up ongoing sweepstakes like this one from Fat Stone Farm to collect customer emails on a weekly basis. 

Set Up an Email Newsletter

An example of a newsletter by Toast to help restaurants during COVID-19.

I know I said earlier that people never sign up for newsletters “just because,” but they will sign up if you give them a compelling reason to. You can offer a newsletter as a way for folks to hear about your latest products or curate content based on what might be important to them during COVID-19. (This strategy works particularly well in B2B, where you can use a newsletter to share stories of how your other customers are navigating the crisis.)

Ultimately, it’s up to you to choose the approach that makes the most sense for your business. You may even want to test a combination of these two approaches to build your list faster. For example, check out how this baby food brand brought in 14,000+ email subscribers in less than a year using both coupons and a free guidebook. (You may also want to look into other creative ways to generate leads, such as free webinars, templates, quizzes, and online tools.)

A word of caution—be careful with any emails you collect for purposes other than marketing (like when someone places an order on your website). With regulations like GDPR in place, you’ll want to obtain explicit consent from your visitors in order to send them promotional emails.

Step 3. Build a Landing Page, Popup, or Sticky Bar to Collect Emails

Next, you’ll need to create a landing page or popup (or both!) to start collecting emails for your list. These will be the spots where you display your offer and ask customers to enter their contact information. 

Landing pages are great if you have a juicy offer that needs some explanation (like a free resource).

Popups are perfect for short and to-the-point offers (like discounts or coupons).

Sticky bars are good for adding onto the top or bottom parts of your existing storefront or website for quick offers (again, think discounts, coupons, newsletters).

Creating a landing page or popup is pretty simple using Unbounce. (You don’t even have to get your hands dirty with HTML or CSS—which is super helpful if you’re not a developer like me.) Get started with one of our lead-generation templates and customize it using the drag-and-drop builder to match your brand and offer.

Some of the lead-generation templates you get with Unbounce for collecting email addresses. 

You’ll want to connect the form on your landing page or popup to your email marketing tool, and then test it out to make sure everything is hunky dory. Hit publish when it’s ready to go, and you’ll be ready to start building your list.

In Unbounce, it’s easy to set up your landing pages, popups, and sticky bars so all new leads get routed directly into your email marketing platform.

Step 4. Advertise Your Email-Gated Offer

Now, it’s just a matter of directing visitors towards your offer. There are a few different ways you can do this, depending on what type of offer you set up in the previous step…

Use Popups and Sticky Bars to Promote the Offer on Your Website

An example of a discount offer popup by the clothing store Chubbies.

If you already have a lot of visitors coming to your website, you can set up a popup or sticky bar to get people’s attention and promote your offer. With Unbounce, you can set these to show up (or slide down) on any high-traffic page of your website, including your homepage. Advanced targeting options let you time ‘em so they only appear when you want them to—like when a visitor is exiting the page without purchasing anything, for example.

Post to Your Blog or Social Media Channels

Hey #ecomm #marketers! DYK that #landingpages can convert browsers into buyers at TWICE the rate of a product page? Start convertin’ like the best of ’em w/ the Ultimate Ecommerce Landing Page Lookbook ft. @klientboost, @boxycharm, @twillory, & more https://t.co/bcbX6kOgqQ pic.twitter.com/yl8OPhJZx4

— unbounce (@unbounce) October 24, 2019

If you already have an online audience on social media (or via a blog), you can use these channels to organically get the word out about your offer. This is a great way to connect with your existing audience and turn social media followers into email subscribers so you can reach them more directly.

“But wait, why do I need the emails of people who already follow me on social media?” I hear you asking. The sad truth is you only reach a small portion of your audience with organic posts on most social media platforms. (For example, according to research done by Hootsuite, the average reach of a Facebook post is only 5.5%.) Getting directly into your prospect’s email (where open rates are typically above 20%) is far more valuable than relying on organic social impressions.

Set Up Paid Ads to Drive Traffic

An example of a paid ad on social media for a free resource by Shopify Plus.

If you don’t already have an online audience and you’re truly starting from scratch, you may want to try investing in some online ads. Lots of brands use social ads on Facebook and Instagram to promote their free resources or discounts that get customers in the door. Think of this as an investment—once you have a list of emails, you’ll be able to reach out to these customers directly (for free).

Step 5. Start Sending Regular Emails to Your List

An example of an automated welcome email from HubSpot.

Once the ball starts rolling, you should start seeing the email addresses come in from your offer. Don’t worry about waiting until you cross a certain threshold of subscribers before you start sending emails to your list. Instead, build a personal relationship with those initial subscribers and get feedback from them on what types of emails they would like to see from your brand. This will help you create an email strategy that resonates with your audience as it continues to grow.

It’s also a good idea to set up automatic email nurtures that go out to new subscribers and to begin scheduling promotional emails on a regular basis. If you’re consistent, your list is much more likely to be active and engaged.

Build Your Email List Faster with Unbounce

Once you have the email addresses for your customers (and prospective customers), you’ll be able to easily let ‘em know about your latest products for sale, landing page promos, and store updates. Use the drag-and-drop builder in Unbounce to quickly create high-converting pages and popups that collect emails much faster.

Get started today by checking out some of our lead-generation templates.

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/campaign-strategy/how-to-build-an-email-list/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[plush-anon]

you have seen 4 and half minutes of random low quality clips from a three hour movie. The Russo's are 3 for 3, and all test audiences have been raving about what they've seen from Endgame. You need to calm down until you actually see the film lol.

guess you missed that part huh friend

(also one of my tags literally read ‘plush rants’, that doesn’t necessarily mean calm and collected response. this is a post i made to vent about possible outcomes for Endgame based off of my own concerns and opinions about what came out in the Clips. literally a ‘Dead Dove Do Not Eat’ kind of post)

On the Russo’s being 3 for 3, I’m gonna have to disagree there friend just bc... lord knows there are a LOT of issues with poor writing, plot contrivances, and plot holes with both Civil War and Infinity War that came directly out of their creative choices and views on the characters they are responsible for portraying.

For example, in Civil War:

When Ross was grilling the Avengers over what happened with New York, how is it that no one mentioned that the government outright TRIED TO NUKE NEW YORK CITY? There was a portion of the movie with Tony Stark flying the nuclear missile sent to destroy everything and everyone in one fell swoop - literal millions of innocent civilians - into the alien wormhole. How is it that no one tries to argue this on Team Cap’s team?

Who the heck hired Crossbones in Civil War to fcuk up the shit in Lagos? Was he still working for some fragment of HYDRA? What was his purpose there, what was his plan? He wanted revenge on Cap, but what was his plan to achieve that? Did Zemo hire him?

How is it that the Winter Soldier found the one place on an abandoned road where there was a convenient security camera showing him killing Tony’s parents in a way that there was no doubt those were the two people he was killing in the 80s/90s? did HYDRA put it there to watch it like a sports game, and if so, how did they tell Bucky that so he knew where to pull over, and how did they know the Starks’ travel plans to the point they could predict exactly where to run them off the road to that specific camera?

What was the point about the Five Winter Soldiers subplot, except to get Steve, Tony, and Bucky in one room together to watch the video tape of the Starks’ brutal murder? If the whole point was to turn the Avengers on each other, why not first split them apart, frame Steve as protecting a man who blew up the UN (even if it wasn’t him, the gen public still thinks this), then publicly release/show the video verifying that yes, this is a dangerous criminal and Cap is protecting him?

Does Zemo have a Crystal Ball to tell him everything that’s happening, in order to predict how everything fell perfectly into place? He orchestrated the UN bombing to frame Bucky, but how on earth did he account for the Lagos incident with Scarlet Witch, or the Sokovia Accords’ creation, or Black Panther’s involvement? How did he perfectly predict the fall of the Avengers and the stressors needed to force a split, to where Tony, Steve, and Bucky would be in place for him to bring them to the Tape of Dismay?

What was the point of including Ant-Man apart from the fight scene? Scott Lang’s entry into the MCU focused entirely on him trying to prove that he’s not a criminal and wants to do the best possible by his family and the world around him... only to throw it all away to break the law, fight with Captain America, and immediately get thrown in jail for it.

Maybe he didn’t fully understand what he was getting into, but what about Hawkeye, who has a wife and three kids? At the end of AOU, he was hoping to retire and live a peaceful life with his family, which was the whole reason Quicksilver died. Now his kids have no dad bc... why, exactly? He got bored? He wasn’t involved in anything leading up to the Accords like the Lagos explosion, why would he come back now? He knew full well what he was getting into when he joined Steve, and got arrested for it.What was the point except to flatten out the roster?

Why did Howard Stark decide to transport the Super Soldier Serum without any form of bodyguards nearby, ESPECIALLY with his wife in the car? Was the plan to transport it as quietly as possible while a heavily armored decoy distracted whoever was after it? If so, 1.) what danger/risk was there that required this method? 2.) did no one think to put a tracker on the Starks’ personal car while they were doing this, to ensure no bumps or hiccups? 3.) if there was a suspected leak at SHIELD, why would Howard endanger his wife needlessly under the guise of a normal drive out? (short answer: he’s a dick, but I digress) 4.) Who the heck were they trying to fool by driving around on back roads in the middle of nowhere? Where was their destination? (This branch of questioning I do recognize as not having enough time to flesh out, but the whole scenario raises a shitton of questions in general).

During all of this, where was Maria Hill? She was a higher up with SHIELD, and she was still free and alive. Fury was still presumed dead at large, I’m assuming, but wouldn’t she have tried to speak up, or was she keeping her head down?

And now, for Infinity War:

Why is it that when Thanos showed up, Loki didn’t use the Tesseract to open up a Portal to help all of the Asgardian refugees escape directly to Midgard, or even a nearby planet? Thor and Loki used it to transport back to Asgard at the end of Avengers: Assemble, and Thanos used it to teleport between planets effortlessly; while it cannot open massive wormholes on its own, it could still be used to transport people in between space, which Loki is known to excel at.

Why is it that, as Thanos was leaving the ship with Thor still alive, that Loki decided to call out to him, calling attention back to himself when they could have reconvened and sought out the Avengers to make a plan, all to try to stab him with a tiny knife?

Why didn’t Hulk show up before when Thanos was destroying/slaughtering the entire ship of Asgardian Refugees until Thor was captured and Heimdall was killed - why did he wait?

How did Bruce know to warn about Thanos, when he’s never shown any sign of being able to recall knowledge he learned as Hulk or memories during his time as the Hulk before now?

What the heck happened to Nova when Thanos went to retrieve the Power Stone? Wouldn’t the Guardians have been alerted when Nova attacked, given both their experience with the Stone and Gamora’s past with Thanos? How about the fact that StarLord can actually wield the stone somewhat? Wouldn’t they be a strong contender to stop Thanos, based on power and knowledge of him?

How about Rhodey suddenly deciding to turn his back on everything he fought for in Civil War without any sort of precursor than ‘he looks annoyed at Ross’ when Cap walks in?

What the heck are the logistics of Red Skull being the Ghost of Infinity Stone Past protecting an Infinity Stone he never encountered? Did the Tesseract transport him there as a protector, and if so, why doesn’t Thanos use the Tesseract to travel instantly to where the other stones are located? Why did the Tesseract transport the spirit of Red Skull to protect/conveniently explain the terms & conditions of the Soul Stone to anyone who came looking for it?

What was the point of killing half of all life to “preserve resources” or bc there weren’t “enough resources” for the populations when you kill half of all plants and animals in the universe as well? Did none of this occur to him as he was making the plan?

Doctor Strange said in Thor 3 that he keeps a watchlist on potential threats to Earth, which is how he knows about Loki - so why doesn’t he know about the Mad Titan with massive armies seeking the Infinity Stones at the beginning of IW?

For that matter, why didn’t Doctor Strange trap Thanos in a time loop like he did with Dormammu? Without the Time Stone, Thanos couldn’t escape, so why didn’t that come into play?

Also, what about Doctor Strange’s portal creating sling rings? If he had an issue with Tony Stark or Peter Parker being on the space ship, why not sling them back to Earth (or do they only work on Earth)?

For that matter, why not cut off Thanos’ hand with the Gauntlet USING these portals once they have him pinned? Could Thanos control his hand even as it was severed from his body?

Where the fcuk did the whole Wanda/Vision relationship bloom from, when they were on very opposite sides in Civil War, and Vision contributed to keeping her under house arrest? Where did romance even pop up there?

The Infinity Stones are supposed to be indestructible, as outlined in both GOTG and Thor TDW - how is it then that Wanda can destroy one now? Was it weakened by Shuri’s removal process (which was never aimed at destroying the Stone, only separating it from Vision without killing him)?

Vision was willing to sacrifice himself to destroy the Stone in his head and keep Thanos from winning, yet Steve goes ‘We don’t trade lives’, even when that wouldn’t be his decision to make - it’s Vision’s and he’s willing. Then they go to Wakanda to have the stone removed, and potentially hundreds of soldiers die bc that’s where Thanos’ armies landed down. They all knew that Thanos could track Vision (given that Steve and Natasha come to rescue him from the Black Hand at that subway station), so why risk the lives of thousands in Wakanda on the chance that he survives having it removed, only to have to destroy him anyways AFTER gods know how many have already died?

How was the Black Hand powerful enough to kill/maim/capture a host of Asgardians (who have been proven to have much higher durablity in regards to injuries in general) along with Thor, Loki, Heimdall, Hulk, and presumably Valkyrie, all of whom (save Hulk), have literal CENTURIES of fighting experience under their belts - and yet struggle and lose to mildly superpowered humans with far less durability to injuries than Asgardians (who live on average for 5000 years at a time, and have accelerated healing, as seen in both Avengers Assemble and the Agents of SHIELD tv series, which does share a level of canon to the main MCU)?

How could Thor withstand the full blast of a DYING STAR and be up again by holding his axe summoning the Bifrost’s power to heal him (????), yet not be capable of breaking out of Ebony Maw’s iron bars holding him in place in the first ten minutes of the movie?

How did Thor know exactly where to beam in via his Bifrost-wielding axe to Wakanda? Did the axe come with a GPS on finding ‘big ass battles’ to join in, or can it track Infinity Stones? If he stopped somewhere else to find out where to go, where did he go to and who told him? The Avengers didn’t exactly publicize the Infinity Stones or Thanos’ arrival, or leave too many people behind that Thor could easily touch base with.

For that matter, Thor arrived on Midgard before Thanos - with his Bifrost-powered axe, why not go to Titan where the rest of the Guardians are? He’s already with Rocket and Groot, so being able to track them down should be relatively simple to do on their end - why not meet up with them again? Why go to Midgard when he could have gone to face off against Thanos BEFORE HE GOT ALL 6 STONES?!? In fact, wouldn’t it make MORE sense to meet up with the rest of the Guardians than Midgard? They know about Thanos, they planned AFTER MEETING THOR to retrieve the Reality Stone - why wouldn’t Thor go back to them on this one?

And that’s just off the top of my head. Go looking in any Infinity War Critical tag, and you will find a thousand more.

If you mean 3 for 3 in terms of profit, definitely. Their upcoming movie outright crashed ticket ordering webpages for hours on end, to the point that to order tickets online, you had to wait your turn. As far as strong writing though? I would argue against that, based off of everything listed above and then some.

Fans on all sides have issues with pretty much every character’s portrayals, actions, and reactions, along with how the plot ultimately progressed. Steve Stans, Tony Stans, Thor Stans, Loki Stans, T’Challa Stans, Scarlet Witch Stans, Guardian Stans, Spider-Stans, Strange Stans, Hulk Stans - a lot of people looked at this film and found it lacking for all of these characters and their arcs, portrayals, their inconsistent capabilities after literally 20 films showing us everything they can do.

So while the Russos have done well financially for the MCU (and admittedly, made Civil War much less of a mess than it ever was in the comics - which is saying something about how absolutely fucked up the comics were), in terms of delivering satisfying conclusions for these characters, they’ve been found lacking again and again. Their idea of groundbreaking character work is to destroy or take away everything they love in absolutes, or to kill off characters to fuel Emotional Pain.

Thor didn’t have to lose everything to have an arc - neither did the Guardians. And while death will inevitably be a part of any Infinity War story, it’s extremely telling that the only deaths that left an impact are two of three that were NOT a result of being dusted - the ones we Know can’t be reversed so easily: Gamora and Loki. Characters that have suffered endlessly and received no happy ending with the people they cherish, after having lost so much already. The only characters dusted that people feel viscerally upset about that I’ve seen was Groot and Shuri, and the latter was only revealed recently in the Twitter campaign posters (and is also complete bullshit to pull on the audience - "randomly” kill off half the world, my ass, you killed off how many people in Wakanda and then some?!? No).

No one else’s death has left as much an impact in a story where half the world dies - and when the primary ending of your tragedy, having been built up to over a goddamn decade of films, leaves mostly a ‘meh’ feeling? You have failed to make people care, and failed as storytellers.