#growth scenarios

[hatsukeii]

fragrance: lazy sunday morning, replica / college!kageyama tobio x reader

notes: lily of the valley (top), iris (heart), white musks (base)

description: fresh laundry pulled from the wash, lazing around in the embrace of linen sheets.

disclaimer(s): faint sillage, poor longevity

wc: 3224

warning(s): mentions of panic attacks, but other than that nothing!!! gn reader too!!!

The first Sunday morning you spend together is at 6am in a residential laundromat. The two of you have occupied the lonely space, watching clothes spin as soap bubbled and sloshed against fabric. You kneel in front of the opening of the washing machine, basket in hand as you lazily yank dripping clothes and soaking sheets out. Kageyama leans on the edge of another washing machine, hip pressed against the side of it with his phone in one hand and the other propping him upright as he waits for his own bedsheets to finish .

You go home with a basket of double sized bed sheets, ones that hang much too loose on your twin bed, despite your many attempts to tuck them beneath your mattress. Kageyama goes home with a basket of twin sized sheets, ones that stubbornly snap off the corners of his double bed as he desperately tries to pull them across.

————————————————————————

The second Sunday morning you spend together is at the same laundromat, at 6am again. A week of sleeping without bed sheets has rendered both of you impatient, itching to reunite with your own. Both of you assume that the other would be at the laundromat again the next week, and both of you are correct in thinking so. This time, you arrive with a duffel bag, alongside a basket of unwashed clothes, and Kageyama enters the laundromat with two baskets, one stuffed with bedsheets, the other with his own dirty laundry.

“Sorry, grabbed them by mistake last week, didn’t even fit on my bed properly.”

“All good, I also slept without bedsheets for the week.”

Bedsheets are exchanged, stuffed into baskets and bags, and the two of you continue your laundry in silence, shoving dirty clothes and towels into separate washing machines. You glance at Kageyama, a D1 volleyball jersey peeking from his basket.

“You the new first year on men’s D1 volleyball?”

He hums in confirmation, tugging the jersey from his laundry as he shoves it into the machine.

“I watched you guys play last Friday, it was good.”

“Thanks. I’m pretty sure you’re in my lecture hall tomorrow too.”

Your eyebrows rise, surprised. You swear you have never seen him in your lectures, only ever on the court. You aren’t even too sure of his name yet. Standing up, you slam the washing machine door shut, pressing lazily at the buttons until a droning beep sounds, and soapy water begins to trickle into your laundry.

“Really? Never seen you there before.”

“I sit behind you most the time. y/n, right?”

You scratch at your frizzy bed head, too dazed to register his question. You hear the beep of a second machine, and the sloshing of clothes and water.

“Yeah. Sorry, what was your name again?”

“Tobio. Kageyama Tobio.”

————————————————————————

The twelfth Sunday morning you spend together, unlike the first, or the second, or the third, or any previous ones so far, is on campus instead, at 8am. Somehow, the both of you have managed to do your laundry during the week, perhaps for the reason of making it to the college’s open day on time. You rub your arms against a school emblem hoodie, and a staff lanyard, whilst Kageyama is clad in full volleyball attire, kneepads and jersey proudly representing the school’s men’s volleyball team as the two of you make your way from the residential quarters to the main campus.

“Don’t you look extra cool today, Mr. D1 athlete?”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, TA nerd.”

You grin, slinging an arm around Kageyama’s neck haphazardly and yanking him down. He yelps as his arm shoots up to your own, wrestling you off. Clicking your tongue, you kick the back of his knee and watch him catch himself halfway into his leg buckling beneath him, snickering vengefully. Ducking down swiftly and picking you up by the legs, he slings you onto his shoulder, arm wrapping around your waist as he continues walking. Kicking and flailing, your fists rain down on his rigid back, a vain attempt at forcing him to release you. His steps come to a stop, just to tighten his grip on your body.

“Let go of me! Or I’ll take your bedsheets again, asshole!”

“Yeah, if you can make it down, that is.”

Offended (not really), you stretch your arm as far as it can go, poking at his side. Kageyama squirms and writhes, the shit eating smirk once plastered on his face contorting into a pained laugh. His arm finally loosens around your waist, and you take the chance to wriggle out of his grip, landing on the ground in front of him.

“D1 athlete, but can’t keep someone half your height and weight on your shoulder, get good.”

Kageyama rolls his eyes. He is good. Great, even. He does, however, wish he could have revelled in the feeling of his arm around your waist for just a little longer.

————————————————————————

The twenty-fifth Sunday morning spent together is, once again, as always, at the laundromat. However, with the months of friendship the two of you have accumulated, a new step to your laundry routine has been introduced. No more are the days of staring at bubbling clothes and spinning sheets through the veil of chatter and gossip amongst the two of you, instead replaced by morning coffees, walks, even the occasional jog. Today, the two of you have decided on a coffee walk, the steaming cups residing within your numbingly cold fingers, their heat emanating into frosty winter air.

You blow at the opening of the lid, wisps of steam puffing from the liquid as you take a sip of the latte (ordered with only half a shot and extra milk with sugar). Still too bitter, you wince, smacking your tongue to wash the caffeine down. Kageyama huffs out a chuckle, before gulping down his own (also ordered with only half a shot and extra milk with sugar), and grabbing yours from your hand, devouring it too. Then, he tilts his head, looking at your surprised expression with furrowed brows and nibbling his lip in confusion.

“You don’t actually like coffee, do you?”

“Well it’s the only thing they have at this cafe. Plus, you like this place, so I keep coming anyway.”

Kageyama stares, baffled. Him? Liking coffee? Where did you get that from?

“I thought you liked it, considering you started these coffee runs? I’m pretty indifferent to be honest.”

You let out a breathy laugh, pointing at him instead.

“I thought I could try to like it, but I only started because I thought you’d be into coffee? Isn’t that what brooding guys like you enjoy drinking on Sunday mornings, while their laundry is running?”

Kageyama hates coffee. He has to order it with a 1:7 ratio of espresso to milk. Yet the hums of satisfaction (or so he thought) that seem to escape your throat at every first sip of hot coffee on chilly Sunday mornings makes every disgustingly bitter swallow of caffeine just this much more enjoyable. You also hate coffee, albeit not needing as extreme of an espresso to milk ratio (1:6 to be exact), yet Kageyama’s fluttering grin makes it clear what you have to do- suck it up and swallow your scathing, sickeningly tart (half) espresso shot, so you can keep, whatever this is, going.

“Yes, brooding guys like black coffees in the morning. But no, I don’t like coffee at all. Wanna go somewhere else from now on, my treat?”

From that Sunday morning onwards, the two of you skip the usual coffee stop, and head around the block for a cafe that serves chocolate instead. Kageyama’s grin would stretch into a satiated smile from the corner of your eyes, and your small, fleeting hums would turn into droning ones of actual satisfaction, much to the delight of Kageyama’s ears.

He wants to keep this going, through winter, then spring, then summer, and autumn too. You want to take the longer walks to the new cafe with him, for hot chocolate, maybe even iced coffee one day, if either of you suddenly develops the palate for it.

“So, you stuck around the cafe only because you thought I liked it? That’s sweet, Mr. D1.”

“What, like you didn’t suggest it because you thought I liked it in the first place? How nice of you, TA.”

————————————————————————

The thirty-fourth Sunday morning spent together, the two of you are perched on the edge of Kageyama’s couch, eyes trained to his laptop as a grey circle spins, and spins, and spins. On the coffee table ahead sits two cups of hot chocolate, stale and lukewarm.

“What if I’m not in?”

“Don’t be an idiot, look at you. You’re so in.”

The circle goes on for an unsettling period of time, and you swear you can hear the veins popping in Kageyama’s head. They can’t possibly reject him, they won’t. And if they do, you’ll be there to make sure the decision is fixed hastily. You’ve seen him play countless games by now, taking sessions of TA work off for the sake of watching a ball hit the ground over, and over, and over. Even for someone who doesn’t know the slightest thing about playing volleyball, you could tell that he deserved this. He was perfect, through and through.

The circle disappears, and the webpage goes blank. Then, twelve portraits pop onto the screen. The two of you inch forward, noses almost touching the laptop as you scan for one particular name.

"No.9: Kageyama Tobio, position: setter”

You barely have time to register his name in the national team roster before strong arms engulf your entire body in a tight embrace. Kageyama’s weight knocks you into his couch, his head buried in the crook of your neck as he finally exhales from relief. He’s close, closer than he ever has been before, and you catch a hint of white lilies and cotton on his pulse. Smiling, a pang of pride surges through your head and heart, and you let your arms wrap around Kageyama, pulling him close. You feel a trail of water trickle down the side of your neck, followed by a flurry of badly hidden sniffles and sobs, and one of your hands moves to stroke the back of his head.

“I made it…I actually made it.”

“I knew you would, Tobio.”

————————————————————————

The forty-fifth Sunday you spend together doesn’t start as a Sunday at all. Instead, it starts as a gloomy, rainy Saturday night, red numbers glaring from Kageyama’s bedside clock while he holds himself close, quivering breaths wheezing from his chest. The bed is damp beneath his sweating figure, hair sticking to his face and neck in his unmoving, curled up position.

The door to his dorm unlocks with a click, and you tuck the spare key back beneath the pot of the houseplant outside, nudging it in until it disappears, before stepping inside. The room is pitch black, spare of the buzzing streetlights seeping through his blinds, dissipating in hospital white threads. Your heart drops at Kageyama’s erratic breathing, his body curled into a little ball and sinking into his linen bed sheets.

“Hey, you called?”

He doesn’t respond, so you shut the door behind you, and shuffle towards his bed. Your hand presses into the mattress, the fabric damp beneath your fingers, and you sit beside him, your thigh pushed up against his back. His back remains turned away from you, yet you can feel the tension loosen ever so slightly. Your thigh nudges into his spine, and your hand taps at him to get up. 

“Your bedsheets, they’re sweaty. Go take a rinse, I’ll change them for you, okay?”

Kageyama obeys, getting up for the first time in the past three hours and dragging himself into the bathroom. Pulling open every single drawer in his room, you search for his bedsheets, before finally finding the same set that you accidentally took home once. Water splashes and taps from the bathroom as you peel the old, sweaty sheets off the mattress, tucking in the new ones instead, and giving his blanket a fluff. His room is a mess, a volleyball sitting beneath his bed, scattered papers across his desk, knee pads slung carelessly over his chair. The national team jersey, however, hangs proudly at his door, as if to remind him who he is now. He is no longer just Kageyama Tobio, college student, health major, D1 college athlete. He is so much bigger than that now, reaching so high that his feet might just leave the ground forever. 

Yet pain fills your chest as you stare at his new jersey from his bed, the school’s D1 shirt now tucked away into some unceremonious drawer. Is this really worth it? Is this worth hours of panic attacks? Or mornings consumed by training entirely, leaving your Sunday habits behind? You can’t remember the last Sunday you saw him at the laundromat, or grabbed that hot chocolate together, each week a cycle of training, class, training, then sleep. Like the unending spinning of wet laundry in a washing machine.

The bathroom door creaks, and Kageyama finally steps out of the bathroom to see a fresh set of bedsheets on his mattress, cool and dry beneath his body as he crawls in. This time, he doesn’t turn his back to you. 

“Thank you, y/n. I’m sorry.”

“Just game nerves, I get it. I’m sorry I can’t be there tomorrow, Tobio.”

A knowing pout creeps onto his face, before it dissipates into a sad smile. He knows you’ve never missed a single one of his games, and that the only reason you won’t make it tomorrow is because of a TA promotion initiative. Of all games to miss though, why did it have to be his first nationals match? 

“It’s okay, you deserve that promotion. You have to get it.”

You reach over to grab his broad shoulders, shaking them a bit as you stare him down. 

“You are, quite literally, the best player I’ve seen in my life. You’re gonna be amazing tomorrow. Don’t worry.”

Getting up, you grab your phone from the floor, rolling over to leave the bed, when Kageyama’s arm shoots out to grab your wrist. If he can’t have you tomorrow, he’ll need to have you now.

“Can you stay the night?”

Your face flushes. Never have you ever been offered to stay the night before by a partner, let alone a friend. Yet he looks like a lost puppy, eyes searching desperately for some semblance of calm within the harrowing match that looms dreadfully in the near future. Somewhere in there, is a thick cup of hot chocolate, puffing steam from the opening of the lid on a frosty Sunday morning, a basket of clean bedsheets, freshly dried and warmed from the laundromat as the sun rises above the horizon, and the stupid TA lanyard that he searches amongst crowds and lecture halls for, day in and day out.

“Of course.”

The bedsheets shuffle as you crawl back in, making sure to inch away from Kageyama’s body just enough to give him space. You look at him, face pressed into his pillow and eyes threatening to snap shut at any moment, and smile gently. The mask of lilies diffuses into something even softer, like morning dew sitting on iris petals, and pollen wafting into spring air, so delicate that it threatens to drift away at each breath. His fingers shift around the bed to find your own, hooking his pinky with yours as he drifts off to sleep, finally, after two hours of sweating, and crying, and failing breathing exercises. 

Your phone buzzes, text messages from your professor popping up to cancel your meeting for sick leave.

The clock by his bed ticks into 00:00. Sunday morning has come.

————————————————————————

Kageyama wakes up before you do on the forty-fifth Sunday morning, national team jersey stretched across his body and a duffel bag hanging from his shoulder. He watches your nose twitch a little, adapting to the warm, now empty spot on his bed. He decides to watch you a little longer, so he can remember your finger wrapped around his beneath his blankets, and the stripe of light on your face as the morning sun shines through the blinds. He swears it will make him better, as long as he knows every detail of your knee touching his own under the covers, and can hear the small, hitched breaths you take in your sleep in his head, and he steps out the door.

You find yourself sprinting out of a taxi towards Kamei arena at 1pm, finally having read the messages from your professor. Wet hair from your morning shower leaves lines of water in the fabric of your sweater, barely having had the time to take it in the first place. The arena is expansive, every corner turned leading you to the wrong sports hall, until roaring cheers erupt from one of them, and you finally burst in through the right door. 

Kageyama stands at the serving line, bouncing the volleyball against the ground. If they take this set off this serve, they might just have a shot at qualifying. Warm fingers, hot chocolate, knees touching, fresh laundry, hitched breaths, lanyard. He has to remember it all. Feel it all. He scans the crowd, and a lone figure stands at the door. 

“You got this.” He can roughly make out from your lips, now realising that he doesn’t need to remember, or feel, or envision it at all. 

He takes aim, jumps, slams his hand into the ball with as much precision and power as his arms can conjure up. The serve hits right on the line, too close for anyone to think to save it, yet in bounds nevertheless.

The referee calls the match point, and the team hasn’t even had the chance to approach him in celebration, before Kageyama sprints off the court, and towards you. He runs into you, knocking you back a few steps as his entire body engulfs your own in an embrace. He doesn’t spare a second, before grabbing your face, and pulling it towards him, planting a firm kiss onto your lips. You hesitate, confused, before your arms find his neck, looping around to hold him as your eyes flutter shut, and you breathe in the notes of lilies, and musk, and irises, mixed with his sweat and adrenaline. The smell of Sunday mornings. The crowd screams. His teammates also scream. His hands pull your face away from his, so he can properly stare at you, irises darting between your eyes. Fuck a trophy, or a medal, or a national title. He would happily pretend to like coffee, just so you could take him to every single coffee shop in the world if you so desired. He would be satisfied with your knees touching beneath his blankets on lazy Sunday mornings, maybe his arms around your waist too, and your legs tangled up in each other, instead of just his finger wrapped around yours. He would willingly do laundry every single morning for the rest of his life, if it meant getting to pull bedsheets out of washing machines with you. 

“I thought you couldn’t make it?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Tobio.”

author's note:

this was ok! i wanted to experiment with vignettes but it's hard to find a balance... but! im 4/7 done with finals, and i finally have the weekend to rest, so i decided to get it over with and finish off this piece!! im so stupid i like accidentally posted it way too early while checking my blog at like 6am so i was very confused when this draft went missing ummmm

anyways! hope you enjoy!! don't let the word count get to you!! please!! i poured a lot of effort into this because 3k words is more than i have written in like weeks!!

tag time!!

@starlysama @chuuya-brainrot @bailey-reeds @fiannee @afyrian @iiwaijime

ok love u guys see u soon bye bye

[krackenwl]

3 GT stories ideas

I want a story about a teenager is forced to take care of their younger siblings and something happens and they start slowly turning into a giant and it to be a metaphore for how it feels like they are growing up to quickly from stepping up to do more adult jobs for their siblings and the bigger they got the more they feel they're losing the possibity of a normal childhood.

I want a story of two friends who one keeps slowly growing and the other slowly shrinking and they have to race against time to find a cure before they either get to big or to small which results in them having to help eachother out with new task from their changing sizes

I want a story where giant adopts a human and the human doesnt find their parent odd till they explore more of the world and realize that their parents size is unually to humans (bonus points if the human is still a kid when they hear about how humans feel about giants)

[technovillain]

"he would not fucking say that" but it's "they would not fucking start dating/ catch feelings that easily". i have such a thing about like. thinking about how much *work* would have to go on with certain characters before they would even consider entering a relationship in media. yes i have ships that i enjoy but only under like a very specific set of conditional noncanon scenarios yknow.

[someobscurereference]

Insane over the awakening trio again. We fought a war together, saved each other multiple times, and I know for a fact I can trust you with my life. We have never learned to socialize normally so we can't interact in a normal environment for five seconds without dunking on each other. I would follow you through time and space and abandon everything with you. You are the living reminder of every awful thing that have ever happened to me. Our traumas make us hurt each other at every turn. We're the only ones who know what lead to each other becoming Like That. Our jobs are barely in the same area and we don't even hang out that much outside of necessities. You are all I have left. I cannot fucking understand you. I am the only one in this entire world who has the ability to even try to.

x

[razberrypuck]

thinking about how if gillion hadn't drawn a second card from the deck and instead was present for the feywild stuff it STILL would've fucked him up. just in a slightly different way. because thinking about it that shit was made to get to him on such a personal level.

pretzel, the closest thing to a service animal the undersea has ever seen, being turned into a plushie? almost like the frogtopus plushie he had as a child? a tiny classroom setting with a strict teacher who states that you have one chance and the punishment for cheating and/or failing the test is DEATH? sounds kinda similar to the "if you don't get this right on your first try, the world is gonna fucking end and it'll be your fault" mentality his tutors had with him. the room that was filled with blades and weapons hanging from the ceiling in which the key to moving forward was filling a vial with blood? there's that self-sacrificial behavior he was taught. running and fighting for your life in a totally unfamiliar place with strange creatures you're convinced are trying to kill you? those training simulations weren't for nothing!

a creature made to be a weapon asking only "do I have free will?"

the answer being them allowing another to cut their chains and free them.

even the escape room with the family is almost mocking him. because growing up, that's all he wanted, isn't it? his family. people around that cared about him. that wanted him around as family, rather than the chosen one. I bet escaping without being able to save the family, even with how artificial they are, would have super gotten under his skin. his time in the luxbris pearl still REALLY got to him but. I wonder if he would've finally opened up to chip and jay, at least a little bit, if he hadn't drawn that card.

[dandylovesturtles]

What would happen if any of the other got turn invisible instead of leo in “I May Be Invisible, But I Still Look Good”?

This is such a fun question... I actually got asked this awhile back in the comments on the fic itself and I gave a quick answer there but I kinda want to answer it more in dept this time. A lot of it depends both on which boy is invisible and which boys are left. Let's game it out.

I TALKED A LOT SO HERE'S A CUT LOL

If Mikey gets cursed, I think that's when you see the biggest implosion of the remaining brothers - think the fight in chapter 2 but so, so much worse. I mean, that's their little brother - nothing is supposed to happen to the little brother! Everyone's self blame would be at an all-time high; Raph because he's the oldest and he's supposed to protect everyone, Leo because he's the leader and he's supposed to protect everyone, and Donnie because I think based on their movie dynamic, when Raph and Leo's relationship started to tank Donnie really took it on himself to care for Mikey even more than he already did, and even though this is post-movie and Raph and Leo are doing better, I think he really internalized that. So everyone is like "I was supposed to protect Mikey and I didn't" and then they would turn that anger external and things would get hot really quick. And Splinter would likely be even less help because he'd be devastated if something happened to any of them but when it's the baby it hits different. Not to mention, Mikey is the main moderating emotional force of the family, and he obviously wouldn't be able to do anything (at first).

Meanwhile Mikey himself would be pretty upset watching all this go down and not being able to do anything about it, and would be desperately trying to reach them. I think Mikey would actually have an easier time of this than Leo though because he's both better at mystic stuff and better at emotions, so assuming the curse is the same one I made for IMBI then he'd probably start breaking it much more quickly, hopefully in time to save his brothers from saying anything they can't take back haha... Not saying that Mikey wouldn't have a bad time of course, he still would, but he might be able to get out of it a bit more quickly.

If I had to pick in the Mikey scenario, I think I would have him break through to Donnie first with sight, then Leo with touch, and Raph with sound, and probably focus a bit on the conflict where Raph and Mikey grew apart as they got older because Raph was too overprotective... I keep giving Raph sound to force him into Conversations lol.

If Raph got cursed, I feel like he would handle it even less well than Leo does, because Raph would not be able to handle the isolation for long. He'd maybe manage to not go entirely Savage Raph just because he's still around his family, but it would definitely take a heavy mental toll on him. Meanwhile, the younger bro trio is still obviously devastated but I feel like of all the available options they're the most stable... since I went the medic Leo route he definitely wouldn't let Donnie get away with hiding the EEG results from him for long (and would probably suspect Raph is braindead pretty quickly anyway), and while they might fight over what to do about it I think they would manage not to come to blows over it, or at least if they did Mikey would help manage it like he does in IMBI.

I do think this scenario is probably the most interesting of the alternate ones because you could focus on Raph's deteriorating mental state and how he has to reach out to his brothers for help with his ninpo as his isolation gets worse, thus putting him in a vulnerable state he's never really had to be in before. And on the flip side you have the three younger brothers having to take charge to save their big brother, which, as soon as they realized what was going on, they would of course do. Big bro really needs them and they're determined to be there for him!

I'm kind of going back and forth on who I think should get what. I think Mikey breaking the curse first still makes the most sense so maybe Mikey with sight, Donnie with sound, Leo with touch would be good. But I also feel like whoever gets touch would be a double edged sword, because Raph really needs that grounding but as his mental state deteriorates he could also become unintentionally aggressive, and be scared that he may accidentally hurt whoever has touch, and then deny himself, thus making things worse. So I'm kind of divided on whether it would be more fun to give that to Leo or Mikey... heh heh.

Cursed Donnie is an interesting remix because without Donnie we don't get the "he's braindead" drama; no one else knows he made the EEG, and even though Leo would have his suspicions I think he wouldn't be as quick to actually call it as Donnie, especially because he can't run any real tests. At best he can just say "yeah his glasgow coma score is real bad" lol. I do think without that tension though we don't get the explosive fights that happen in other scenarios, just everyone trying to do whatever they can for Donnie and begging him to wake up.

Meanwhile ghost Donnie though? He's doing the absolute worst at breaking the curse. He's determined to fix this himself because there has to be a way to fix it, right? Right? RIGHT??? And I think he would spend really just too much time trying to leave the lair to find a solution and trying to fight the force keeping him tied to his body because there's a lot of emotions happening in the lair and he doesn't want to process any of them and trying to leave and find a solution is better than staying here so HE'S GOING LOOK AT HIM GO no wait stop fading shoot shoot shoot-

He'd break through eventually but I think it would take longer than the ~10 days Leo took lol so maybe give him a bit more time to break the curse before he's like this permanently...

I think it would be really funny if he broke touch first because he would hate that so so much but it would also probably make things difficult narratively so let's say he breaks it like Leo with sound, Raph with sight, Mikey with touch. I don't have great reasons this time it just Feels Right.

Thanks for the ask, sorry for all the rambling!

[coffehbeans]

I'm curious so I want to make a g/t community pool! Out of these tropes I'll list below, which is your absolute favorite?

Mine is an unpopular one: when a normal human (or when they're human-sized) becomes a giant. Idk there's smth about it that makes it so angsty and tugs at my heartstrings. The fact that person still feels the same inside but everyone treats them differently and with fear, and that person feels a stranger in their own body, losing touch with their humanity and feeling isolated from others. All these feelings make my heart go crazy aushsh

What about you guys?

[sicklyseraphnsuch]

Listen, I've done higher ed and let me tell you, academia is full of nothing but constant criticism and challenges - and not all in good faith

I mean, you have to defend a thesis during your PhD and youre not defending because everyone only has compliments for you - and given Simon's subject of study? I bet his thesis defense was rough

So to me, I find it perfectly in character that Simon finally starts turning his life around when he gets the first bit of constructive criticism. (actual good faith criticism thats not "you were better before")

I feel like a lot of Simon's Ooo life (again 12 years!!! thats half of some of your lives to put in perspective) - all that time was because no one could give Simon the guidance he desperately needed. Finn with his "vault" never faces his grief. And Marceline who could've - Simon never talks to.

Remember when Marcy got a wake up call about how dumb she's acting when Glass Boy started singing about his princess - And Marcy realizes (no spoonfeeding necessary!) that she sounds so immature for pulling that on PB

Simon needed something like that. He's the kind of guy who would see a criticism in good faith and apply it where sensible. I don't think it's out of character for him to use that as a way to move forward - because for once people are telling him how!

here's a hard lesson I learned recently: pointing out where you did something wrong is not automatically you being blamed for that wrong thing happening - i think the key difference is when people blame you, they want you to feel bad - its a punishment, but when theyre pointing it out to help you, then they want you to feel better

and theres really no avoiding making mistakes - sometimes its the only way someone can learn

It's been more than a decade for Simon, we are past "I'm sorry for your loss", we are past giving him space, this man needed an intervention and you know what! interventions are rough! sometimes the greatest kindness that can be done is not letting people be comfortae in their own sorrow! which means helping them will be uncomfortable!! maybe even for all parties involved

[outcasting101]

[cybrstalkrdotgov]

Day 12: No scenarios before bed

[krackenwl]

Gradual Growing/shrinking

I very much love rapid growing/shrinking moments alot but we dont appericate the concept of gradual as much as we should.

I love the fear of rapid growing/shrinking and the shock and confusing of having to adjust but with rapid the person knows offically when its stopped (at least for the time)

with Gradual its less shocking but there's more uncertainty because if they keep waking up very day with more/less inches/feet at first itll be unnoticable and a bit weird but after they figure it out theres this dread of never knowing when its going to stop.

Will they shrink to the size of an ant or grow to the size of a building or worse? will it ever even stop at all?!

[myladycheshire]

First 2 pages of the 6-page growth sequence made for last month's MasCookie and Cookie Plate rewards at my Patreon, starring half-incubus Matthew ♥ Check the whole thing at https://patreon.com/MyLadyCheshire

[thelaughingmerman]

Franklin's "You won't say it outright but you seem genuinely keen to perform together and I want to perform with you but I have debilitating stage fright so either way I'm going to disappoint you and I don't know how to tell you that" vs Eugene's "pretending to be fairly put off by everything we've seen on the surface today because you're already rather intrigued and im a little afraid if you like it enough you'll leave me." 🫠

[cartcop]

I love all the spec about the lightning storm but here’s the thing—

I really doubt they’d go full throttle into buddie right off the bat given how little they were focused on in 6a. I think it’d be jarring to head straight to revelations or veiled confessions after 9 episodes where they barely interact (and Buck hasn’t been in same room onscreen as Chris since 6x01). To me that doesn’t negate the possibility of phenomenal reactions from Eddie at Buck getting hurt, I just don’t think it would be the central storyline in the hurt!Buck arc right from the get go. Laying groundwork, sure, but my expectations for the first few episodes aren’t high for heavily romantically coded buddie content.

That being said, if there is a SINGLE domestic buddie scene in 6x10 before the injury I am getting in my clown car and driving it to clowntown.

[nebulouscoffee]

bashir garak or ezri

Oooh great picks! I shall answer for all three😊

Julian

one aspect about them i love

That whole backstory with Kukalaka is SO endearing honestly; it really just gets to the heart of who he is, even by itself- but when paired with the whole 'Jules' reveal, it takes on a whole new poignancy

one aspect i wish more people understood about them

I've seen Julian described as naive a lot, usually because he "assumes the best of people"- and I'm not saying that isn't a valid read, but it just feels very incomplete to me! Yes he's childish sometimes, but he's not a baby lol- he's just strongly, strongly driven by the belief that people can always become better. We see him get VERY angry and snarky and (fearlessly) combative with people he believes are in the wrong; people who don't show any flexibility in their perspectives. But the moment a person shows any sort of inclination towards growth or evolution? He puts everything aside and believes in them. To me, this is not naivety- this is courage; even if (especially if!) he may get it wrong sometimes. DS9 (like the real world) is full of people who'll insist that wrongdoers will never change and only deserve to be punished for their mistakes- and imo, Julian makes a fascinating, refreshing, and essential foil to this. (On a more specific note- he does NOT hang out with Garak because he doesn't fully understand the atrocities Garak committed!! Not beyond 'The Wire', anyway. He literally heard (and at the time, fully believed) multiple stories involving Garak being 1. a Gul during the Occupation, 2. a mass murderer (with victims both Cardassian and Bajoran), and 3. an interrogator of literal children. If not the exact details, he certainly knows the magnitude of Garak's crimes- he just chooses to go to great lengths to save his life anyway. This says something way more interesting about him, I think- about his inclination to believe in anyone he thinks would grow better if given the chance, and his willingness to be the one giving them that chance. Which, incidentally, is also why I struggle to see him cutting off his parents, though I do understand why people find value in reading & writing stories like that)

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character

He is a polyglot, but this is one skill he very much keeps to himself. The reasons why are complicated, and linked with how his ideas of home and family and lineage and history and Earth and connection and talking and talkative-ness and "skill" are all somewhat tainted by the discovery of what his parents did to him

one character i love seeing them interact with

SO many options, but let's talk about Jadzia- I love how they moved past the initial awkwardness of Julian's crush on her into this deep, supportive, fun (!!!) and extremely loving bond. There's a lot they have in common (Extreme Imposter Syndrome Buddies :D) which means they always know when the other needs a good pep talk, and it's adorable. I love how they have no boundaries sometimes (Jadzia buying him porn will always be funny), I love that they're in cahoots, I love that they make each other laugh- they care about each other so much!! I honestly think it was one of the best-written friendship arcs between a male and female character on Trek, which is why I'm always so *sighs deeply* about Julian's feelings for Jadzia being dredged up again in- ///cuts myself off because you've heard this rant before from everyone and their moogie haven't you///

one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more

Fascinating conversations Julian Bashir and Kira Nerys could've had (my beloved): long-term health issues in Bajoran mining victims & Resistance fighters; nature vs nurture and their "dangerous" Augment/Mirror selves; Sisko as Commanding Officer vs Sisko as Emissary; nerding out over Bajoran music; why must Jadzia Dax be so beautiful; complicated connections with cultural roots; Kirayoshi & postnatal care; the concept of "forgiveness"; revisiting that "frontier medicine" scene to highlight how much they've both changed; Kira offering a kinder approach to "Jules Bashir died in that hospital" through the concept of a pagh

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character

He never, ever let the whole Jem'Hadar thing go. In fact, he actually set up this secret rehabilitation centre in Goran'Agar's name after the war, which now provides intensive care for all the Jem'Hadar and Vorta left behind in the AQ. He told me himself :)

Garak

one aspect about them i love

It's been years since my first watch, but I'll never forget how excited I got every single time I saw "Special Guest Star Andrew Robinson" in the credits lol. You just know you're in for a great one; he's such a fantastic and scene-stealing character!

one aspect i wish more people understood about them

I just feel like, for a character whose most famous line is "They're all true, [especially the lies]", there is WAYYY too much discourse about him that approaches him from extremes? And it always misses the point imo. Garak was a spy, assassin, interrogator and torturer for the Cardassian government, who participated in (or at the very least, aided) a colonial and genocidal occupation, and expresses supremacist, xenophobic and fascist beliefs for the majority of the series. Erasing any of this is would be erasing not just who he was, but who he is. But the lack of imagination re how to move forward with him if we are engaging with such themes is equally, if not more, frustrating to me. Sure, a lot of the cutesy art and fanfics can have him behaving overly sincere and out of character- but the counter response is always "how dare you woobify this racist war criminal he's violent and dangerous and bigoted and therefore he would NOT do or say or feel any of that!!!", and- okay, so is the idea of him designing and sewing dresses out of character, then...? Is the image of him debating books over lunch with a bib tucked in too woobified? Is the notion of him trying to set up a fellow (Bajoran!!) business owner on a date too fanfic-ey? Because guess what- that's literally how he behaves on the show! Garak is a self-aware self-woobifier, that's literally the whole point, he's "just a plain simple tailor" wink, wink- and without at least some element of that comical mundanity, that sort of absurdist domesticity, the character just isn't recognisable imo. Garak is the con artist who fell for his own con; he's spent so long playing various roles that he now over-performs everything and has no idea where the performance ends and the genuine begins, literally what makes his character work is that you're looking at this war criminal just doing benign stuff like sampling drinks or watching a tennis match or gifting his friend chocolates and wondering just WHAT is going on inside his head- and, "he did horrible things and therefore must be incapable of any form of sincerity or affection or regret and the perception of any of those things is woobification" is such a reductive (and boring!) approach to him imo. I don't mean any of this as apologia; there are many, many ways in which a person can be bigoted and cruel, and Garak is those things- I just feel like people often misrepresent the manner in which he is those things (usually by making him unfunny and weirdly macho, which I just cannot understand at all😂)

TL;DR- Garak the poor sad misunderstood baby who never enjoyed any of the bad things he did and only thinks about Julian Bashir 24/7 is out of character, sure- but Garak the violent emotionless villain who treats all Bajorans abusively 24/7 and will never ever grow or change is... just as divorced from canon imo (imo!! Emphasis on "o"!!)

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character

Garak himself doesn't always fully remember the details of his past; he has this very Cardassian ability to specifically delete anything he wants to from his memory, and he's better at it than most (though, still not always successful). Only thing Garak regularly tops is the List Of People Garak Lies To basically

one character i love seeing them interact with

Well, apart from the obvious- I think every scene between him and Odo in IC/TDIC is incredibly immersive and top tier! The actors are SO good together, and the only reason Odo isn't in the next category is I actually think it's perfectly in character for both of them to just never bring up the whole torture thing ever again

one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more

KIRAAAAA but tbh, I'm more interested in their post-canon dynamic than anything, so instead I'll go with Sisko! Every time these two are on screen together, amazing. The effortless back and forth. The intellectual battling. The subtly flirty line deliveries(!!!) The palpable shifts in the power dynamic. The oddly respectful snarking. Again, the way these two actors are SO GOOD

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character

Some may claim that Garak hates the more outlandish civilian outfits that Jake and Julian wear. I say he made them

Ezri

one aspect about them i love

The sheer impact of actually getting to spend a whole season with the next Dax (after years of only hearing about Curzon) just cannot be overstated imo. Like, we the audience got to experience firsthand what it was like for Benjamin to first see Jadzia walk out of that shuttle; for Jadzia to wake up one day and find herself the newest link in a long-revered chain- we actually saw the new host struggling to adjust, reconciling all those lifetimes of memories all over again, rekindling and redefining Dax's old relationships (the relationship with the audience very much included!)- and then on top of that, the new host wasn't even trained to take on the symbiont?? What an incredible character premise! I was obsessed from the moment she said "Hello Benjamin it's me Dax"

one aspect i wish more people understood about them

Ezri is Jadzia's successor; not Jadzia's replacement. She cannot replace Jadzia- that's literally the entire point of her arc, that she should stop trying! She's a fascinating character in her own right, and also extremely interesting to think about and discuss independent of whom she will end up/should've ended up with

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character

Ezri Tigan was not "anxious" in a rambly nervous way like Ezri Dax, but more hyper-competent and "I'm always unhappy because everything I do HAS to be perfect so I'm never satisfied and I hate myself" (which was definitely how she was trained to think by her mother). For this reason, joining with Dax actually ends up being good for her in the long run! Nothing drives an oppressive voice out of your head quite like suddenly having eight other voices in there lol

one character i love seeing them interact with

I know some people don't like her and Worf mistakenly thinking they're in love and hooking up and then realising they work better as friends, but I actually think it's very understandable for both of them, and the friendship they form afterwards is so wholesome. That scene where he asks for her advice and she just calls out corruption in the Klingon empire is one of my favourite Ezri scenes ever :D

one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more

It is my firm belief that Sisko and Ezri's S7 arcs should have revolved around each other. Ben's journey at this point is so tied up in his ever-growing disconnect from linear time and corporeality, and imo nothing grounds this better than his three-lifetime bond with Dax! He should have talked about the Prophets and Benny Russell and the whole concept of destiny with his favourite old worm. It also would've been revelatory for Ezri, who herself is trying to adjust to the non-linearity (300 years of memories she can't easily get in order) and non-corporeality (whose body IS this anyway???) of being Dax

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character

I know we all have our theories as to why and how and when exactly she and Julian break up, and while I do enjoy the drama sometimes, I still fundamentally feel like it would be short and amicable and they'd remain close friends for life. Or maybe I'm just a big sap hehe

[ironwhumper359]

The Tenets of Growth: Part 2

Service to the Order

Prev: The Path of Cultivation || Next: Flowering

CW: Imprisonment, allusions to torture, religious themes, religion used to justify torture.

Word count: 1300~

---

Not for the first time in the last week, the thief cursed himself for getting distracted on the job. If he’d just stuck with the haul he already had, he would have been out of the house by the time that lousy merchant’s wife had come home and seen him trying to lever that stupid painting out the window. 

But no, his eyes had been too big for his stomach, and now he was paying the price for it a hundred times over. 

Because he hadn’t just been caught, no no, that would have been too simple, he’d been caught after nine other burglaries with the same signature had been pulled off in the last two months. It didn’t matter that only three of the ten total had actually been him; the others had been run by his crew, but the guards were happy to pin the entire spree on his shoulders alone. There was a chance that the judge would have let him off a little easier if he gave up the hiding places of his associates, but he wasn’t an idiot. Snitching on his team was a surefire way to make sure he didn’t have a team anymore after he was released from prison. No one wanted to work with a rat. 

Though at this point, it looked like there wasn’t going to be a release from prison. 

“Hey, you! Housebreaker!” a voice called, and the thief looked up to see one of the prisoners in a cell across from him, a big burly man with a gruff voice leaning his hands through the bars of his cell. “How long did the old man give you?” the man asked, and the thief grimaced. 

“That long, eh?” asked the man in the cell to his left. “S’pose it makes sense, them putin’ you on the hook for all them robberies and all.” 

“No,” the thief said with a frown. “That is, no, it’s not a long prison sentence.” 

“Then what are you grimacing about?” asked the burly man. “What’d you get?”

“Do we have to talk about this?” the thief protested, and the burly man shrugged. 

“Not much else to do in here but chat.”

“And not much else to chat about ‘sides what we’re in for and how long we’re in,” the second man added, and the thief sighed. 

“You are hereby sentenced to enter the Service of the Holy Order of Perivyta.” 

The judge’s voice echoed in his head, bringing a swirl of unwelcome memories and emotions with it. The sunlit room filled with rows of plants, his mother’s pale face surrounded by dark earth, the priest in the black robe squeezing his shoulder.

“You must rejoice in this time of Pruning, my boy. Trust in Perivyta’s will; it’s what your mother would want.” 

Surely it was his imagination, the way the voices of the judge and the priest sounded the same in his mind? 

“They said I’m going to be entered in the Service of the Order,” he said aloud, shaking his head to clear it. He expected to hear the same raucous commiserating that the other prisoners usually displayed, but to his surprise, an uncomfortable silence fell over the room. 

“Wait, you said you’d only been caught the one time before,” the man to his left said, and he sounded…scared? “You wasn’t lyin’, was ya?” 

“No,” the thief said, frowning. “Why?”

“It’s like you said though, Dixon,” the burly man cut in. “They put him on the hook for all those burglaries. Maybe they figure that ought to count for two.” 

“Or maybe they’re makin’ an example of him,” Dixon mused. 

“What are you two talking about?” the thief asked. “Why does it matter that I was caught once before?”

“How long did you say you was in the city for?” Dixon asked, and the thief grit his teeth. 

“Five years,” he said. “Though I don’t see what that has to do with-”

“Five years here, and you don’t know about getting sent into the Order?” the burly man asked. “I thought you said you were running with a crew?”

“I mean, for this job I was,” the thief admitted. “But I usually work alone. This job was supposed to get me connections.” 

The burly man let out a low whistle.

“That’s a rough break then, son. Things shouldn’t have turned out this way for you.” 

“Will you please explain what you’re on about?” the thief asked. “You’re not making any sense.” 

“The first time you’re convicted of a crime, they let you off relatively easy,” said a quiet voice, and the thief turned. 

In the cell to his right, a thin man was sitting in the corner, one leg stretched out in front of him and his head tucked against his chest. 

“They throw you in a cell for a few months or years, whatever they think is fit for the crime you committed. The second time you’re convicted, they’re not too pleased that they let you out into the world and you went right back to your previous ways.” 

“Second sentencin’ is worse,” Dixon agreed. “You get fed way less, and the guards are even rougher with ya’.” 

“It goes beyond rough,” the burly man said. “My old partner, he got convicted twice. Said he was beaten within an inch of his life. He left the city when they finally let him out. Said he didn’t want to risk being in their hands ever again.” 

“The third time,” the thin man continued quietly, “you’ve proven to them that you’ll never be anything but a criminal. And that is when they send you to the Order.” 

“Tough break you got, gettin’ sent on your second go,” Dixon said, and he sounded genuinely sorry. “You seem a decent enough fella.” 

The thief frowned. He had no love for the Order these days, not by a long shot, but the way these men spoke about it didn’t match at all with the hazy memories of carved oak doors, hearty vegetable soup, and his mother’s warm smile. 

“What…what happens when you’re sent to the Order?” he asked, and Dixon and the burly man exchanged looks. 

“Nobody knows,” Dixon said eventually. “They say that it’s ‘rehabilitation.’ But no one who gets sent there ever gets seen again.” 

“Never?”

“Not ever,” the burly man agreed. “Some folks say they get killed…used as sacrifices in rituals and the like.”

“Yeah, but my old crew boss says if that was true, they’d just take the fellas that get sentenced to death for shit like murder n’ treason and the like,” Dixon argued. “No point in hidin’ it when they’re already choppin’ people’s heads off. He figures that they keep ‘em alive for some reason or another.” 

“Maybe they sell people off to slavers,” the burly man offered up. “It would explain why no one’s ever seen on the streets afterwards.”

“It…it could actually be rehabilitation,” the thief suggested lamely. “The Order is supposed to be about…you know, light and growth and stuff. Not hurting and killing. What if people are just-” 

“My sister is a devout woman,” the thin man interrupted. “And she’s given birth eight times in her thirty years. Her sixth child, she had entered into the Order when he turned thirteen. Given to the Goddess as tribute.”

The man shook his head.

“Didn’t see hide nor hair of that boy for nearly five years; they didn’t even tell us where he was sent to work. I’ve only seen the kid once since, while I was still in my traveling days. Lad spoke to me like we had no history; acted totally out of character. I’d have thought he was a stranger if it weren’t for the fact he had my sister’s freckles scattered across his face and her same blue eyes.”

The man lifted his head, and looked the thief directly in the eyes.

“I don't know what happens in those Nurseries of theirs, but mark my words, boy. It's nothing good.”

---

Prev: The Path of Cultivation || Next: Flowering

Tenets of Growth Masterlist

Author's Note: Everyone, give a hearty welcome to our Whumpee Number 2! What's his name? We'll get to that, don't worry. First we have to hurt him some more ;) Aster will be returning next chapter, then we have one more with just whumpee no.2 before our fated pair finally meet...and then the real fun begins! Let me know if you'd like to be tagged in this story, I'd be happy to do so!