#having your body changed like that would probably end up producing a similar effect to mahito's human transformations

[yuesya]

if shiki sprouts an arm from sato could she beat sugu in an arm wrestling contest?

Depends on if there's a prize for winning. :)

[rogerswifesblog]

Never ending story

My Masterlist

Summary: After an accident something happened to you…and the accident was in 1913.

Warnings: accident, character death, brief alcohol drinking, smut, p in v sex, protected sex (i feel like it’s the first time I’m writing a smut with protection lord help me), brief handjob, light fingering, do I need to add anything more?

A/N: Jesus a one shot after such a long time omg I’m actually nervous. 😅 I recommend the movie „Age of Adaline”…it’s pretty much what happens in this oneshot too and it’s also a good movie:) the accident description is from the movie:) thank you @rogersbarber and @jamneuromain for proofreading

Steve and reader have an age gap here, with her being older but let's be honest considering he is like a 100 later on the 8 years difference don’t change a thing😂 besides I’ve probably messed up the ages and many things since it was hard to keep up😂

The story is not 100% accurate with the CA:FA movie.

Accidents often affect people’s life’s, not just from injuries but also because of the aftermath.

Yet you never expect your accident to change your life so dramatically.

In 1913, on your way to your parents house something highly unusual occurred, something almost magical... snow fell in Sonoma County, California.

Distracted from the road by the snow you lost control of your car, driving from the bridge right into a river.

The immersion in the frigid water caused your body to go into an anoxic reflex, instantly stopping your breathing and slowing your heartbeat. Within 2 minutes,

Your core temperature had dropped to 87 degrees... her heart stopped beating.

Then, a bolt of lightning struck the vehicle discharging half a billion volts of electricity producing 60,000 amperes of current.

Its effect was threefold.

First, the charge defibrillated your heart.

Second,

You were jolted out of yoir anoxic state causing you to draw your first breath in 2 minutes.

Third, based on Von Lehman's principle of electron compression in deoxyribonucleic acid, which will be discovered in the year two thousand thirty-five, y/n y/sn will henceforth be immune to the ravages of time...

At first you had never noticed it, but after over ten years you noticed something different-or rather nothing. Not a single wrinkle, not even a little change in your face nor body. Everyday was the same.

You were 36.

Yet you looked 25. Not a day older.

And people started to notice it, especially when you started to look very similar to your daughter. When she was 17, but both of you looked like sisters.

Even your husband noticed the lack of differences in your appearance. Luckily soon after he was drafted-of course it broke your heart to see him go, but considering your other problem, it was easier to think of a solution.

Moving. Running away.

So when the question started, you had to move, not expecting this would be your future from now on.

During the war it wasn’t hard to lay down, especially since everyone tried to do so, most people helped each other, while others just avoided most people.

A sigh escaped your lips as you walked around the World Exposition of Tomorrow, many people, not knowing you, nor your daughter. It was her birthday and you both decided to spend it somewhere special.

After getting some snacks you wanted to go to the front to watch the presentation of the new ‚flying car’. „I’ll go powder my nose, Y/N”, your daughter informed you. Y/N. She had stopped calling you ‘mom’ when she was 15. Sometimes, at home, but rarely. Especially now that you looked so close to the same age. You were 24 years older but…it didn’t look this way.

„Watch out-“, You called after a man that had hit your shoulder, making your purse drop, a couple of things falling out.

When you wanted to bend down someone was already holding up your purse.

His soft blue eyes looked you over once, before stopping to meet your gaze. „Ma’am, your purse”, said the gentleman, still holding the purse with a shaky hand. „Thank you, Sir”, you smiled at the young man.

He was slightly shorter, especially with the shoes you were wearing, giving you two or so inches more. His hair blond, looking soft but frail, like his frame. The jacket hanging rather loose around his shoulders, the pants held up by a belt tightly buckled around his slim hips, you could see there was an extra hole made for the belt to fit him.

„I’m…I’m Steve Rogers”, said the young man, holding out his hand. You shook it, introducing yourself to him, but just then your daughter walked back up to you.

When Steve’s friend walked up to you two, with two other dames who seemed to be rather interested in the friend himself than Steve, but that was the cue for you to go.

Besides, why were you even interested in spending time with this man? You were a married woman-and older. It might not look like that but you definitely were older than him by a couple of years.

Yet a bit of fantasizing wasn’t a crime, right? His blue eyes were probably the prettiest thing you’ve seen in a while.

During the expo you saw Steve a few more times, small smiles and gazes were exchanged before you had to leave, not expecting to ever see that man again.

Two years later you had to move again after the police accused you of having forged documents and a false ID.

But you were alone this time.

Your daughter had a husband, only married for a few months but she decided to stay with him-which you understood.

Nevertheless it didn’t break your heart any less. Especially since you knew your husband was also dead, after receiving the condolences letter.

That’s how you found yourself sitting at the small bar in Italy, a completely new country where nobody was looking for you. Briefly you’ve heard about the Captain America creation and other things, but you weren’t too interested in it, not with the heartbreak after being completely alone.

Heartbroken and alone.

Funny enough Steve felt the same way, walking into the bar, sulking and making his shoulders as small as possible, not wanting the attention of other people.

He really thought Peggy might like him-but he got it all wrong, she was seeing someone and just moments after this information he also found out Bucky's unit was missing.

Tomorrow he planned to look for them, waiting for Stark to arrange everything needed.

But tonight.

Tonight he was alone and heartbroken.

Steve wasn’t that type to flirt with random women or ‚hook up’, but tonight…he just wanted to be someone else, not the heartbroken little boy from Brooklyn, even though usually he’d be proud to be that.

But he felt like he let his friend down.

The woman he fell in love embarrassed him, which wouldn’t be the first time but it felt worse than ever before.

„Whisky”, he ordered, sitting next to you, making you lift your head at the slightly familiar voice. It’s like you’ve heard him before-but you shook it off for now.

Sipping on your cocktail, your gaze was glued to the many pictures at the wall, people smiling at the camera, while others looked away or at their friends.

The man next to you cleared his throat. „How…how is your evening ma’am?”, when you looked over at the man, your voice seemed to be stuck in your throat. He was handsome, yes, but it wasn’t what made your breath hitch. It’s his eyes. The blue eyes that you were never able to forget.

„Steve”, you said quietly, a sad smile creeping on your face as you looked at him over again. He furrowed his eyebrows a bit, before sighing. “Yeah, it’s me, Steve Rogers, the captain-“‘“wait, no Steve it’s…I mean, yeah, I’ve heard about it but I didn’t know it was you but-yeah, I can see the change”, you chuckled, placing your hand on his bicep and squeezing, before pulling away. That felt quite rude.

“We met years ago…At the…the world exposition of tomorrow-about the future flying car? You were-well, smaller-and with a friend, I was there with my da-“, you cleared your throat. “-dearest friend.”

It didn’t take long for him to remember the time you two met. After some catching up you ordered yourself another drink, Steve got another one too.

Minutes turned to hours…

“…I’m moving a bit around. I lost my husband-the war took him….”

“….Bucky was drafted…his unit…”

“….Buck always said I was stubborn and would either get enlisted or died trying, since I surely wouldn’t stop or…”

“….I wish we could just have a quiet life without wars…”

“..I remember when I was a kid…”

“…There was a time when I….”

The conversation kept going, skipping from one topping to the other, first the usual talk about what was going on, then sharing some memories and comforting words.

When the barkeeper informed you it was already time to close the place, you looked down at the drink you were still sipping. It was still the second one you had ordered, mostly untouched.

Steve helped you put on your jacket, you knew you didn’t want the evening to end.

Without saying a word you just wrapped your hand around his arm, walking with him along the streets, only a few minutes before entering your apartment building.

Steve followed. He wanted to be with you that night. He wanted to feel you close. He wanted to feel…needed….loved…cared after…

He wanted to forget about all the horrors around him.

So did you.

When entering the small apartment you took off your shoes and jacket, Steve hanging up his own and yours, before looking back at you, a nervous smile creeping on his lips.

“I don’t….usually do such things”, he started, making you take his hands. “Me neither Steve”, whispering you let your hands roam to his neck, slowly pulling him down as he placed his hands on your waist to pull you closer as you kissed.

Gentle, yet passionate. So full of…feelings. You couldn’t call it love but…but it was still close to it. It was shared pain.

And you knew the line between love and pain was so small it barely made a difference.

A quiet gasp escaped your lips when Steve wrapped his hands around the back of your thighs and lifted you onto his hips. “Where is the bedroom-“ “the couch is fine”, but Steve only clicked his tongue.

“I don’t…I don’t want it to…be rushed and meaningless”, he mumbled against your lips, making you smile a little. Not that you thought about it…you didn’t want to rush it yourself.

So you told him where to go, before being placed onto the bed, Steve carefully climbing over you, kissing your neck.

Slowly he undressed you, making sure to kiss every inch of your skin he uncovered. Your shoulders, your arms, hands…your stomach…before having you only in your underwear.

“You…you’re beautiful”, he whispered, before slowly taking the rest of your clothes off. A blush crept on your cheeks when you felt his eyes on your body, especially with him being still dressed. “Steve, come on let me help you with those…”, you chuckled, making him also smile a bit, as he sat back and started unbuttoning his shirt, revealing the white, tight undershirt beneath it.

A grin crept on your lips, sitting up, you let your hands roam over his chest and arm, before quickly grabbing the undershirt and pulling over his head. Your lips find its way to his neck, down to his pecks, making him moan quietly and letting you push him down onto the bed.

Now it was your turn to leave kisses along his body, lowering yourself till you were level with his zipper, opening it. Steve helped you push down his pants and underwear, his cock immediately slapping against his abdomen, hard and leaking.

Before you could get your mouth on him he pulled you up and once again on your back, his hands once again all over your body, spreading your legs apart, as he sat back on his heels and looked at you, especially your crotch. “You look so good…”, he mumbled, gently sliding his fingers through your wet folds.

A soft moan escaped your lips as Steve slowly pushed two of his fingers into your wet hole, wettly squelching as he pulled out again, watching his finger being covered in wetness.

You let your head drop into your neck, moaning quietly with every time he pushed his fingers back in. “Steve…I need you…”, you gasped.

It immediately made Steve’s heartbeat quicken to hear those words, hovering over you and reaching into his pants pocket, pulling out a metal condom tin and opening it, taking the condom out. “Already prepared?” “The captain has to be responsible”, Steve smirked teasingly.

You felt yourself blush at that, rolling your eyes with a grin on your lips.

Then, you watched as Steve slowly put the condom on, stroking his dick a few times, before letting it slide between your folds, brushing over your clit. You weren’t sure if he was purposefully teasing you or just doing it to…well, considering his grin he was doing it on purpose.

“Steve please-“, before you could finish, Steve leaned back down again, kissing you passionately, as he slowly pushed his cock into your pussy. A quiet and slightly surprised gasp escaped your lips, the stretch feeling more than expected.

You wrapped your arms tightly around his neck, one hand buried in his hair, while he was covering you with his wide frame-which didn’t feel intimidating in any way- it was rather comforting. Feeling his warmth and the weight of his body made you feel like you were in the right place.

The rest of the night was spent in a tight embrace, skin to skin, soft pleas and moans reaching your ears and the smell of sex lingered in the air.

When the sun started to rise you fell asleep in Steve’s arms, after having spent the best evening you could imagine together.

You woke up to a kiss on your temple and a soft whisper, “I hope we see each other soon.”

But you didn’t.

After saving Bucky and his unit Steve had many other missions following, which he had written about in a letter. One letter, with a lot of explaining and apologies and…an invitation for a date, after he’d be back.

But this also never came. You waited months. Years.

And then he flew the plane into the ocean, falling to his death.

Only then did one thing occur to you.

Were you able to die? Or specifically, from old age? If you’d ever meet a man, would you be able to spend your life with him? The idea of falling in love and watching your partner die broke your heart-you had already buried your husband, then Steve died and…oh god, you would watch your own child die.

Once again you got yourself a whisky, this time just at home not wanting to meet any new people, especially since that was how you had found Steve again. You swore you’d never get close to another person again, never get your feelings involved in something. There was a voice at the back of your head, it had been there for some time now, that always reminded you of Steve but now…you knew you needed to forget about him,

….definitely not expecting to ever see him ever again.

The years passed by, every ten years you moved, illegally bought a new passport, ID…a whole new life, whole new person. You wrote letters with your daughter, meeting up with her twice a year on your and her birthday.

You watched her age.

You watched her birth children.

You watched them grow up.

And you watched your daughter die.

At the age of 86 in 1998.

While you still haven’t changed since 1913.

Her funeral was beautiful. Many people were there-even though nobody knew you-or at least not as who you were. A family's friend. Her nurse. Kid from a friend…many different ways. But not as her mom. Her mom went missing in 1943, during the war, probably killed…yeah, that was the story people knew.

So you continued living, year after year.

Until 2012 arrived.

Two unexpected things happened.

An alien attacked you.

And you saw those beautiful blue eyes again.

Hi! Thank you for reading!!

Reblogs and feedback are highly appreciated. Support your content creators:)

Taglist: @rogersbarber @inlovewithchrisevans

Flood my inbox with HC, Drabble/OS ideas or questions! Just whatever you want to leave there! Anons welcome 😋

[vertanvertan]

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[freeinovtech]

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[duckprintspress]

Advice for Writing Trans Male Characters

Hi everyone, and welcome to our second guest post! We approached a trans man, and fellow writer, to put together a list of suggestions for cis people who want to write trans male characters! He has chosen to remain anonymous. Always remember, there is no one trans experience, and no one trans person’s knowledge will reflect the range of ways that trans people live. Our post author writes from his perspective, based on his knowledge and research, and much of this is relatively specific to the modern United States. Always use multiple sources when writing a character with an identity or identities that you don’t share!

*

So, you want to write a trans male character but you're not a trans man yourself. Good! We need more trans male characters out there in the world. There are a few things to consider, however. This is not a perfect list (I would never claim to be perfect), but here are some thoughts from a trans man about writing people like me.

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1. A trans man who has decided that all he needs to do is come out to be a man is still a man, with a man's body and male genitals, because he says he's a man. Even if he is not out, he is a man. He can be uncomfortable with his body, or with how others perceive his body, but it should not be described in terms of “womanly” aspects.

EX: David's breasts made him uncomfortable, reminding him that others looked at him differently than how he would have liked.

2. 72% of trans men do not ever want full gender reassignment surgery, and this doesn’t make them “less of a man.” The surgeries are expensive, invasive, and don’t always result in a fully functional genital apparatus. Also, there are a lot of them. A trans man, to have a full semi-working penis (one that will not be useful for sex but will at least be useful for urination), is looking at at least three surgeries: to remove the labia, to 'bulk up' the clitoris, and to move the urethra. There are also surgeries to remove the cervix and/or the uterus, to create a scrotum, and to add a pump inside the scrotum attached to a surgical implant in the penis to assist with arousal. Even if a man has all these surgeries, the penis he gets loses most of its sensitivity and won’t become physically aroused (as in, achieve erection) without medical intervention. He may also need electrolysis to remove pubic hair. Ultimately, many trans men opt not to deal with it. Many still want top surgery, or a hysterectomy, or both, and often testosterone is used to help deepen their voice and change their body shape (but, again, gendering a trans man's voice by suggesting it's “feminine” because he's not on testosterone or because his voice hasn't dropped yet is not a great idea). It depends on the type and amount of dysphoria a person experiences, versus their financial and mental ability to deal with the different choices. Some trans men are happy with no hormones and only top surgery. Others want or need everything. There is no “correct” way to be trans.

3. Unless your story revolves around their transition (which, as a cis person, maybe it's best you don't do, honestly), there’s no reason to go into detail about your trans male character's surgeries. If it’s not plot relevant, it's probably not necessary.

4. If you’re writing porn, make sure to always use male pronouns for him, even if he has chosen not to go through surgery. If he has gone through surgery, what he has will be indistinguishable from a cis male penis except that he may need viagra or a surgical pump.

5. Reactions to testosterone are different for every trans man. Some men never have their voices drop, never grow a beard, and/or never bulk up and get all muscle-y. Some men are on testosterone for two weeks and have a Gandalf beard with a voice low enough to sing bass. It just depends, mostly on genetics. If your character's father is a super hairy mountain man who sings bass in his lumberjack quartet, then your character is more likely to end up similar. If your character's father is basically an elf, then he's likely to be similar to that. Also, for a number of reasons, a trans man may choose not to or may be incapable of taking testosterone. Most doctors won’t prescribe it if the man wants to carry his own children in the future, for example.

6. Keep in mind that the order in which testosterone produces effects on a man’s body isn’t predictable, so don't worry too hard about 'getting it right.' Even trans men can't predict what they'll look like after being on testosterone for a while.

7. Also, a note: If your character is transmasculine and nonbinary, and taking testosterone, it's likely they will be on a lower dose than a trans man. That's not always true, but testosterone can be given at a few different doses, depending on how drastic a change a person wants and how quickly they want that change to occur. There’s still no guarantee: a trans man may never be able to grow a beard on a full dose, while a transmasculine nonbinary person might be on a very low dose and have a beard within the first month. But, generally, lower doses are meant to bring out smaller changes over a longer period of time, while higher doses are meant to bring out larger changes over a shorter period of time.

8. A non-fluid trans man is going to consider himself a man at all times, and always use he/him pronouns for himself, whether or not everyone else does. If you're writing a trans man point-of-view piece where he's not out or where he's not fully accepted, make sure he or the narrator always uses the right pronouns when others don't. That helps remind your audience that he's not the person other people think he is.

EX: Daniel was frustrated. His grandmother insisted on calling him “Sarah” no matter how many times he corrected her.

9. Menstruation is a difficult topic for a lot of trans men. Some men lose their ability to menstruate when they take testosterone, while others continue to menstruate. If they retain their uterus, however, the possibility of a menstrual cycle is always there. If/when menstruation happens for a trans man, it's often a time of major dysphoria. A trans man may have a lot of issues surrounding menstruation. Having a cervix also means yearly Pap smears, which can also be uncomfortable or dysphoria-inducing. Dysphoria can also happen during ovulation, when a person is most fertile. The body during this time is “getting ready for a baby” and the changes can be very triggering.

10. Testosterone may stop menstruation, but it doesn't necessarily stop pregnancy. Also, some trans men will go off their testosterone in order to carry their own child. During their pregnancy, it is important that they are still referred to as men. A trans man will generally prefer to be called “father” even if he carried the child, but some may prefer the term “mother.” If a cis person wishes to write a pregnant trans character, it would be better to err on the side of caution and use “father.” A trans man who has gone through top surgery will not likely be able to nurse his own children, but a man who has chosen to use a binder instead will be able to (probably - some people don’t/can’t lactate for other reasons). Whether or not he chooses to will be up to him.

11. Gender Dysphoria is the medical diagnosis given to trans people who want to do any form of medical transitioning. Being transgender is not in and of itself a diagnosis. A person can be transgender and choose never to transition medically. Dysphoria is generally most clearly understood as a form of discomfort in the body you possess. Sometimes a person experiencing dysphoria is uncomfortable with their body no matter what. He doesn't like his breasts, for example, unless they are bound, no matter what his setting is, who is looking at him, etc. His dysphoria takes the form of nausea at the mere sight of them. Alternatively, some people only experience dysphoria relating to how others see them. For example, a man may not mind his breasts when he's alone, and he doesn't usually bind, but on a specific day while he wasn't binding someone glance at his breasts before calling him 'ma'am' and now he can't uncross his arms in case someone else looks his way. For some people dysphoria comes and goes, and they have good days and bad days. Also, images can be dysphoria-inducing. For example, seeing a pregnant person might remind a man that he has a uterus, and make him extremely uncomfortable all day. Other people may go several days, or weeks or months, without experiencing dysphoria, but when it hits it affects them for a long time or very severely. Or a person might experience dysphoria every day, as kind of a low-level mental fog they can't shake.

12. Gender Euphoria is as valid as Gender Dysphoria. Gender Euphoria is the idea that a person might be content in the body given to them, but will never be truly happy unless they make a change. These people can live their whole lives as the gender assigned to them at birth without severe mental issues or physical problems, but it's like living a life without color. They can do it, but if there's a way to get color back, why wouldn't they?

13. Changing names is complicated and takes time. It also differs in every state/country, and may need to be re-done when a trans man moves. In some states, all they need to change their name legally is a court order. In other areas, a trans man needs to have lived using their new name for a period of time, or have doctor’s notes and authorizations. Once the character has changed their name legally through the courts, they need to change their driver's license, banking information, insurance, work papers, social security information, passport, birth certificate, and any other documentation bearing their name. It can take anywhere from a month to a year or more, and is expensive, sometimes prohibitively so. It's okay to have a trans male character who goes by “Mark” but whose parents or grandparents refer to as “Melissa.” The important thing is to make sure narratively you are confirming that those people are wrong.

EX: “Melissa! It's nice to see you come to visit!” Mark's mom said. Mark cringed, hating the sound of his deadname, but he hadn't yet been able to convince his mother to use the right one.

14. Do not portray a character binding for more than eight hours or with unsafe binders in a positive light. Just don’t. Binding, even with professional/high-end binders, is not safe. It's a stopgap - safer than not binding at all for some people whose dysphoria is really bad. It constricts the lungs and can break ribs if not done properly. It can permanently alter a person's chest cage if done for an extensive period of time. It's a necessary evil for people who are waiting to get their surgery done, in order to keep them alive to have that surgery. It's not a permanent cure-all. Binding also can cause dysphoria. A person who doesn't have dysphoria surrounding his chest can develop it after wearing a binder. So, have your character bind safely, or discuss the issues surrounding unsafe binding. (And yes, this applies even in a fantasy setting or world where the technology may be different. A story is a story, but the impact it could have on a real trans man is potentially dangerous, so write with consideration, and if you do introduce a magical or technological solution to this, maintain awareness of the reality.)

15. Transitioning without an in-person support group is one of the most common factors in transitioning regret. Give your character someone to go to the doctor with them, someone to hold their hand when they get scared, someone to talk them through moments when they're unsure. No one who goes under the knife is always completely 100% sure all the time. They need a community. Surgery and hormones are scary, even if a trans man knows he wants them, and trying to go it alone can spell disaster.

16. Given that a trans man will consider himself a man, it can be challenging to make it clear to a reader that he’s trans. If he's the main/POV character, you can write him dealing with some dysphoria. For example, if you decide your character binds, mention that his breasts are bothering him particularly badly one day. Have him adjust his binder. Describe putting a binder on. That kind of thing. If he's a minor character, it can be more challenging, but you can still have him do things like adjust a binder. You could also mention surgical scars, if a character takes off their shirt. Another thing you can do is just have the main character remember a time “before Mark went by Mark” (for example). Another way is to have the character mention some way in which they are fighting for trans rights, and acknowledge that the issue is personal to them. Try not to use the deadname unless he’s facing an actual microaggression by another character. The narrative or narrator character should never deadname the character.

17. FTM is not an accepted term anymore, as it implies that a person was one thing and changed. Generally speaking, if a trans man is not genderfluid, then he was never female or a woman. Likewise, the phrase “born in the wrong body” is not acceptable for use by cis people. The only real use it has is to explain dysphoria by transgender characters to cisgender characters who aren't inclined to listen or try to understand. The accepted term is AFAB, or Assigned Female At Birth. Keep in mind that terms and labels change with time, so do your research. For example, if you’re writing a historical piece, different terms may be more appropriate, and if you’re writing a modern current-day piece, understand that in ten or twenty years the terminology you use will likely have grown outdated.

18. The proper way to write the term is always “trans man” and never “transman”. Trans is an adjective describing a type of man, just like you might say an Asian man or a muscled man or a gay man. This comes back to the idea that a trans man is always a man, first and foremost.

19. An easy pitfall to avoid if your trans male character's setting is modern or modernesque is: Don't make the story all about their oppression. We are aware of the many ways in which the modern world is trying to oppress and harm the trans community, but trans men can still be happy and interesting people. They can have dysphoria without being depressed. They aren’t necessarily the “down in the dumps” character. Also, trans men have a long history of being activists, and are often erased in history, so don't be afraid to make your trans men an out-and-loud activist. Yes, terrible things have happened and continue to happen to trans men, and any trans man who has done any research into trans history will know about individuals like Brandon Teena. Trans men know the dangers they face. Knowing that bad things can and are happening doesn't mean a trans man can't find his own joy in life, despite things not being perfect.

20. Keep in mind when writing in historical settings that trans men have existed for as long as people have existed. Many trans men were able to go through life completely “undetected” until they died and those around them conducted culturally-common burial practices. It’s not unreasonable to have a trans man in Regency England, Yuan China, or Roman times. If you're writing about non-European-centric history, many cultures acknowledged those who didn’t present the way their AGAB (assigned gender at birth) would suggest, and do your research. Also, keep intersectionality in mind, and tread especially carefully when writing a trans man from a culture and period other than your own. This post is mostly applicable to trans men in the modern era, and especially in the United States. The trans male experience will be different in other places in the world, for people of different ages and of different religions and ethnicities and races, so the more traits your trans man has that are outside your own experience as a cis writer, the more you should consider if it’s wise for you write the story you have in mind, or if it might not be better to allow in-group members to tell those stories. And never forget - trans men can and are all things - all races, all religions, abled and disabled, etc. People have nuanced identities and multiple identifiers and trans is always only one of many.

21. In fantastical or science fiction settings, please always ask yourself if oppression of trans people or bigotry against them is even needed. Maybe a society doesn't assign gender at birth, but waits until a child is old enough to tell the society where they belong. Maybe a society reveres those who are under the transgender umbrella. Maybe children are considered genderless until they reach puberty. You have a million and one options; why limit yourself to what modern predominantly Western white Christian society says? If you do make a society that doesn't look anything like the modern world, for example they assign gender at age five, think about how that would affect society as a whole. What kind of pronouns would be used for children under five? Are young children genderless, or are they seen as genderfluid? What about people who age past five and are still genderless or genderfluid? What are the naming conventions for children?

22. There are mixed feelings regarding how a science fiction or fantasy setting should treat transitioning. Should it be an easy fix, with magic or advance science doing it instantly or nearly so? Or should it be difficult, reflecting the modern situation where the process often years before a person can feel “finished?” That's up to you. Trans people themselves are split on this, so there’s no pleasing everyone. Do your best, and whichever way you choose, make sure to tag it accurately or, for original fiction, be clear up front what approaches you’ve chosen, so people can choose not to read something that may make them uncomfortable at best or trigger them and profoundly harm them at worst.

Ultimately, your trans man is your character and you can do with him as you wish. Write responsibly, and do your research, and if you can, get a sensitivity reader or a beta who is a trans man.

So, go, diversify those stories, write the things, and present good representation! Happy writing!

[along-came-atsushi]

Parallels between 55 Minutes and Dead Apple

While reading 55 Minutes a while ago, I realized that its story and Dead Apple had some interesting parallels or shared the same ideas.

Looking at certain scenes in the Dead Apple novel, some parallels became even more apparent. Sometimes, even the same or similar words were used.

I don’t think there is a deeper meaning behind this honestly, but I find it interesting to point out nonetheless.

  [Side Note: 55 Minutes was released in 2016, while the novel for the Dead Apple movie was released in 2018. 55 Minutes was written by Asagiri Kafka, while he only collaborated with others for the story of Dead Apple. The novel itself was written by Hiro Iwahata.]

Beware: Major spoilers for 55 Minutes and Dead Apple!

  1.  Weapon or abilities described as red heat or red sphere

55 Minutes: The main threat is a weapon called “The Shell” that upon activating, covers Standard Island and Yokohama in a red heat wave, vaporizing all life:

The sky was dyed red. […] Red. Everything was red—the ocean, the island, even Yokohama at the other end of the horizon.

.

“That’s the Shell.” The terrorist briskly walked over to Atsushi. “The crimson celestial sphere of annihilation.”

.

The crimson dome burned like a small star that had fallen upon the earth with an extraordinary amount of heat locked inside. The fiery enclosure rapidly imploded. The heat rushing towards its core.

  Dead Apple: Abilities collected by Shibusawa are described as red crystals. Upon merging two abilities together by Dazai, they turn into a red apple/sphere:

The two lights melted into one and spun until they formed a single sphere. They had produced a single apple—a juicy, poisoned apple red as blood. […]

The apple swelled as it absorbed numerous crystals until the red light became hotter than the surface of hell.

.

A hellish red light radiated as a violent wind gusted from the giant sphere.

  -> After this Shibusawa gets “killed” by Fyodor, turns into a dragon and releases a red fog that is about to cover the whole earth and turn it into the so-called dead apple.

   2. Allusion to Odasaku and Ango

55 Minutes: It’s been revealed that the Colonel who wanted to activate The Shell was the former mentor of Gide, the leader of Mimic. By activating The Shell, he wanted to state an example and for the truth about Mimic to be revealed. He blames himself for not being able to stop his former subordinates back then. Dazai remembers the Mimic Incident and with it, of course, the painful memories of Odasaku and Ango:

“You won’t find anything,” Dazai suddenly said while turning his gaze out the window. “The Division made sure to completely cover it up. You won’t find any records of their [Mimic] deaths, nor will you even find a single photo accidentally taken of them […]. The Division is good at jobs like that, after all.” […]

But Dazai didn’t say a word as he stared at a point in the sky with an elbow resting on the table. It was as if his eyes weren’t focused on the scenery outside, but were watching vivid memories playing back in his mind.

“I feel bad for the colonel, but there’s no reason to dig up the past and disclose to the public what happened to them,” Dazai revealed in a flat voice. “They died satisfied. Now is their time to rest.”

  -> Even though Ango and Odasaku aren’t directly mentioned, it’s still clear from the context and Dazai’s reaction.

  Dead Apple: Dazai visits the Bar Lupin, the former usual meeting point of him and his two friends:

He was in his usual spot—the seat next to Odasaku’s—and he was talking to the empty space next to him as if Odasaku were still here.

“What’ll we toast to today?”

“You’re not gonna wait for Ango to get here?”

Dazai could practically hear his friend’s voice.

.

That used to be routine, but now it was all in the past—never to return.

“…Ango isn’t coming,” Dazai replied to Odasaku’s casual remark from years ago. So many things had changed since then. Odasaku was no longer by his side, and Ango didn’t come to this pub anymore. Dazai sat at the counter alone. He was waiting for no one.

  -> Apparently these memories are still so vivid to Dazai that he can play them like a movie in his head, as it is described in both scenes.

   3. Ability/Ability User that is able to absorb other abilities

55 Minutes: Verne’s ability “The Mysterious Island” is revealed to absorb every ability from all the people who have died there. After his own ability took over Verne and transformed into its own lifeform, Gab is still able to do the same:

It was an extremely rare skill. Its range extended across the island he claimed as his domain, and it absorbed all the skills of the people who died there.

.

Well’s skill wouldn’t allow the same person to return to the past more than once, but if Verne used his skill to keep stealing hers, he would always be using the skill for the first time.

  Dead Apple: Shibusawa collects user’s abilities, once they die in a fight against them, which is similar to absorbing abilities, even though the technique is a little bit different:

“Each one of these is a skill, huh?” Dazai muttered coldly as he looked at the wall. “That’s a huge collection you got yourself.”

.

The apple appeared in Dazai’s hand and gently rose to the ceiling before stopping. It birthed a skill—an extremely powerful one at that—the ability to absorb.

.

In other words, Shibusawa was finally able to obtain Dazai’s skill through killing him.

   4. Dazai gets stabbed from behind by the main antagonist

55 Minutes: Dazai gets stabbed by Gab:

Dazai froze as if the rest of his sentence had been plucked clean off. And the tip of a blade was now sticking out of his chest. […] Dazai tried to turn around, but whoever was behind him pushed the knife deeper inside him and twisted it. […] With his arm stuck out, he turned slightly to the side before folding and crumpling to the ground.

  Dead Apple: Dazai gets stabbed by Shibusawa:

Right as Dazai reached for the massive photosphere […] something struck him in the back. […] His eyes opened wide. He could feel a burning pin shoot through his chest. [...]

Standing behind him was Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, […] In his hand was a knife that glowed dully as it pierced Dazai’s back. […] Dazai then collapsed.

   5. Dazai as an obstacle for the main antagonist

55 Minutes: Gab needs to kill Dazai, so that he can’t nullify him with his skill:

Gab’s natural enemy—Dazai—worked at the detective agency. Dazai nullified all skills he touched. […] However, if Dazai was to touch flesh, he [Gab] would cease to exist. […]

For Gab, the threat of Dazai’s skill was equivalent to having a knife shoved into his throat. There was only one way to remove the threat—kill Dazai so that his skill wouldn’t activate.

  Dead Apple: Shibusawa kills Dazai not only to obtain his ability, but also because Dazai had been nullifying his fog:

“There is no next move. I already found the skill I was searching for.” Shibusawa lightly gestured to him with an open hand. “Yours.”

Shibusawa’s eyes gleefully lit up as he gazed down at Dazai on the floor. “From the very start. You were the only one I was after.”

.

Shibusawa’s fog had the power to separate skills from their owners. Up until now, Dazai’s skill had been nullifying its effect, but it stopped working the moment he died.

   6. Dazai sharing or revealing something about himself to Atsushi

55 Minutes: Dazai says why he wants to kill himself:

“Dazai,” Atsushi said from behind him, “why do you want to kill yourself?” Dazai turned around and looked at Atsushi. It was his usual smile − a cheerful smirk that made him impossible to read. Dazai slightly opened his eyes as if to say, “Oh yeah. I guess I haven’t told you yet.” He grinned and answered:

“Because I        .”

What did Dazai say that day? The more I try to remember, the further these distant memories sink into the glow of the evening sun.

  -> It’s unknown why Atsushi can’t remember Dazai’s answer. Maybe it was too shocking, maybe he simply just didn’t hear it properly. Maybe this whole conversation never happened and it was just a fever dream. For now, it is up to interpretation.

  Dead Apple: Dazai talks about Odasaku and admits he had killed during his mafia time:

“So…” Atsushi spoke up as Dazai idly daydreamed. “Was this someone you used to be in love with, or…?” […]

“…He was a friend of mine,” Dazai added quietly. […] “He’s the reason I quit the Port Mafia and joined the agency. I’d probably still be killing people for the mafia if it wasn’t for him.”

Atsushi was baffled. He had no idea whether that was true. What did Dazai mean by that? Curious, Atsushi turned around to face Dazai, but all he could see was his back.

  -> In both scenes it’s described as Atsushi standing behind Dazai or seeing his back, which could empathize that he can’t see through Dazai or be sure about his true feelings (and in addition every other character in-universe as well as the reader). Furthermore it could also symbolize that Dazai hides his true feelings. This is accompanied by an illustration in the novel. But there is also a scene in the manga where Atsushi thinks about the ADA members with Dazai’s back turned to him:

   7. Akutagawa as a guidance or motivator for Atsushi

55 Minutes: Atsushi and Akutagawa are both restrained by Gab’s ability and can’t move. Akutagawa already tried to break free, but his ability is physically too thin to cut through Gab’s.

Akutagawa then “kills” Atsushi in order to awaken his tiger power, since the latter doubts himself of being capable enough. Later he assists and assures Atsushi in defeating Gab:

“Tch. Akutagawa clicked his tongue. “Then it appears your fists are the only things that will work.”

He was right. Atsushi’s tiger fists would be big enough to land a blow. But as long as his arms were stuck… […] Atsushi used all the muscle he had to break free, but he still couldn’t pull his body out. He didn’t even budge.

.

“Do you understand that? There are things I can do that you cannot.” The wind howled. Akutagawa’s dark blade pierced Atsushi’s throat.

.

A tiger roared. Atsushi responded. […] His body went through an unworldly transformation. He had to move forward. If he didn’t understand, then he had to find out why. […]

“Good,” said a voice. “Now hurry. Do not waste my time, Man-Tiger.

.

But out of nowhere, a black fabric appeared underneath, stretching from the surface. It became a platform for him [Atsushi] to stand on and support his weight. Quietly looking up at Atsushi from the surface was Akutagawa. His gaze quietly said, “Finish it. Bring him peace.”

  Dead Apple: Akutagawa withholds information to Atsushi on purpose, about why he isn’t able to regain his ability despite having defeated it:

“You fool,” spewed Akutagawa. “Have you seriously not figured it out yet?!” […]

“Akutagawa!” Atsushi screamed in spite of himself. “What’s that supposed to mean?! Answer me!”

But Akutagawa didn’t look back. He simply disappeared into the fog as he headed toward the fortress.

Why…? Why…?! Why am I the only one who doesn’t get it?!

  -> Although it’s noteworthy that Kyouka does the same, with high probability for the same reasons (Atsushi having to figure it out by himself).

   8. Atsushi is forced to kill a dangerous, unnatural existence

This is very interesting in the way it’s been build up in both cases. First the antagonist is described as an existence that is not natural (1), then their motive gets explained (2), Atsushi shows up, saying why their actions are wrong or what he’s about to do (3), and then the deaths of the antagonists are described as some form of salvation (4):

55 Minutes:

(1) The island’s skill rid itself of Verne’s personality and robbed him of his flesh. That was when the living skill Gab was born.

.

(2) What made him different from Verne was his reason. The guardian of the island, Verne, wanted to save everyone. Gab, on the other hand, didn’t care whether people died.

.

(3) “But you can’t separate humans and their skills. The reason you want friends is nothing more than a reminder from when you once where human. […]”

.

(4) Right as his fist was about to connect…

------I owe ya one.

…he heard the young man’s [Verne] voice.

  -> The last stage (4) gets even more underlined with Akutagawa assuring Atsushi by saying “Bring him peace”, as cited above.

  Dead Apple:

(1) Tatsuhiko Shibusawa had been reborn as a skill-like life-form—a divine being that wielded the power of the dragon.

.

(2) But his wish was still the same. He wanted to drive Atsushi into a corner so he could experience even more pain and torture than he did six years ago. This was a natural conclusion for Shibusawa to reach, for he believed that life was at its strongest and most beautiful when it was being pushed over the edge.

.

(3) “Here to kill me again, Atsushi Nakajima?” asked Shibusawa. […]

“I’m just sending something back to where it belongs,” he replied.

.

(4) “…I understand everything now. I know why you’re here, why you appeared before me, and what his words truly meant. You are the angel who will save me…” 

  -> Even before turning into a dragon beast, Shibusawa was already an undead being, and thus an unnatural existence.

   9. Abilities are described as sentient beings or something that can turn against the user

55 Minutes: Gab separated himself from Verne and took over his body:

While traveling into the past, the skill got stronger, transformed, and eventually grew to have a will of its own.

.

However, Gab’s consciousness was less stable compared with humans.

  Dead Apple: Ability users have their abilities taken away and are forced to fight against them to get them back:

It was Kunikida’s skill, The Matchless Poet. […] He had a good idea how his skill was going to attack, seeing as it was part of him once. He also knew that, unlike his notebook, the phantom’s notebook had the word Compromise written on the cover. A copy of himself that didn’t follow ideals but made compromises was an abomination to Kunikida.

   Lastly, there is also the topic of Dazai set as a motivator for Atsushi and Akutagawa and their bickering about what is right or wrong in regards to him. But since that happens often between them, I didn’t include it here.

[vavuska]

Who changed Lola Bunny?

Malcolm D. Lee explained, “This is 2021. It’s important to reflect the authenticity of strong, capable female characters. … So we reworked a lot of things, not only her look, like making sure she had an appropriate length on her shorts and was feminine without being objectified, but gave her a real voice. For us, it was, ‘Let’s ground her athletic prowess, her leadership skills, and make her as full a character as the others.'”

(See the complete interview here: X)

So, gone are her curves, thigh-high drawstring shorts and midriff-baring crop top. Instead, Lola Bunny now takes on a sportier look wearing a more standard basketball vest and leggings under her track shorts.

But, let's see more deeply what determinated this choice:

1. Being mad at a fan art is sad, people.

Before, a sad 50 yo guy starts complaing about how "cancel culture" or "politically correct" ruined his life - Really? Changing a cartoon bunny from a movie you didn't see for a decade ruined your life? Wow. Someone should really review the list of their priorities -, let's see how really Lola looked in the 1996 original Space Jam.

Here we have original Lola Bunny:

(Here you can see all Lola's scenes in Space Jam: X)

Yes, Lola walked in a sexy way that show off her curves, or at least she seemed to have curves (a little breast, tight waist, long legs, bootie), but those are not big as in the fan art you are seeing around, and Lola's curves are not evidenced during the match or when she played. Is more her attitude and posture that made her look sexy. However, althought her curves clearly changes every time she is doing something different, from action to action, there are some scenes in which she is purposely made sexy, with saxophone music as soundtrack and male-gaze sections that ends in the same way, Lola surrounded by a bunch of horny and howling cartoon guys.

That's appropriate with Jessica Rabbit: she is purposely made and designed as a parody of the femme fatale from old hard boiler movies, in which attractive, mysterious women were portrayed as evil and manipulative gals who hide criminal intentions. Jessica, with her intentionally exaggerated body, subverted the misogyny of 40s and 30s detective movies: she is kind-hearted, truly loves her naive and goofy husband Roger and uses her powers (beauty and cunning) to protect him. Her body too is used for comic sketches, while this not happens for Lola, that's just a serious and indipendent basketball player. So, the male obsession for her body is out of place, expecially because she reacted with anger at being misconsidered only for being an attractive female bunny. “Don't call me doll” is her catch phrase. So, it seems strange she didn't react at all at the very sexualized presentation at the final basketball match: Lola simply shows her basketball skills, ignoring or accepting passively the reaction of the honey crowd of wolves around her. (Please, notice the association: Lola “admirers” are wolves, predators, while Lola, their object of desire, is a rabbit, a prey)

This is the cartoon version of cat calling: they are like a group of men who sit on their porches and whistle at girls everyday when they walk in from of them. A normal girl or woman would pass over this thing, even if they are bothered, unconfortable or embarassed, because they are more scared by a possible violent reaction of this whistling horny guys at their legitimate anger objections. But here, we are talking of Lola, a strong Looney Tunes bunny, and she could smash that damn basket ball on wolves' face, breaking all their teeth. That would be very a Looney reaction. But Lola doesn't react at all at this situation. Here, on my opinion, screenplayers missed an opportunity, but probably they thought to have already did too much with Lola's personality and “girl power”.

Remember also that Lola is the only young cartoon female character we see in the whole movie. So we can't do a proper comparison with other female relevant characters' rapresentation. (See here for a deeper analysis of Lola's origin and development: X)

However, compared with Bugs, Lola looks more fit, more humanized than Bugs. Lola has clearly a definited breast and booty, but it looks like is more her posture that makes them relevant. Lola has clearly shoulders back to show the rack. Bugs is anthropomorphic but remains an animal, has no shoulders or pectorals more like a human and looks a bit over-weight (fat belly). And his posture don't keep that stomach in, chin up, and march forward.

Lola, on the other hand, has a more human structure. That's why I say she has curves. An example are Mickey and Minnie who are two beans in the same way it is not that Mickey is a bean and Minnie has small tits, they are structurally alike.

Lola's body remembers highly No-Ribs-Jasmine from Aladdin (see the gif for reference). That unrealistic Barbie-like waist that was so popular in the 90s and 80s. (See here for references: X and X)

Now, we are changed a lot from the past 24 years. Barbies didn't have that impossible, unrealistic waist-line anymore, Disney princess concept has changed (see Merida and Moana).

Lola concept is changed in 2012: her design for the new cartoons is totally different and her personality too. She wear a blue or violet dress, almost flat-chested and she was made annoying and silly, just to make a contrast with Bugs smarter. Just like Daffy Duck is dumb as hell and his new girlfriend, Tina Russo (no more dear old Melissa Duck), is way smarter than him. Tina is tough, street-smart, rebellious and feisty. But we will see this thing in the next point.

2. People on the upper floors hated Lola personality.

Lola Bunny had only few lines in Space Jam, but she definitely passed the first impression that she was draw only for make male characters fall in love. Lola was a good basketball player and show it off, in front of a skeptical and then astonish bunch of cartoon guys and also Michael Jordan. She also had a strong personality and said it clear to Bugs she didn't like being called "doll". Lola was beauty and curvy, but not a cheerleader. Lola was a basketball player. Remember this part, because we will talk about basketball in the next point.

If at the box office Space Jam was a success, at Warner Bros there were those who turn up their noses, and they are important people, from the upper floors, who accused the film with Michael Jordan of having completely distorted the philosophy of the Looney Tunes. They blamed Lola Bunny more than everything else. Producers of Warner Bros said she was too perfect for the moody group of Warner cartoons: she was too sensual, provocative and independent, totally alien to that core of crazy characters that act as an exaggeration of the vices of 'man.

And fans hated her too. Chuck Jones, creator of the Merrie Melodies said: "Lola Bunny is a character with no future, she’s a totally worthless character with no personality."

So, Lola Bunny was deleted. Lola would make only some brief apparitions in some comics edited by DC Comics, in Baby Looney Tunes, in which she was a toddler with a very similar personality and resemblance to Space Jam adult version, and also as playable character in some unsuccessful videogames.

Years passed and projects for a sequel of Space Jam never become reality, so in 2003 Warner Bros relased Looney Tunes Back in Action. But Lola wasn't here, because the movie purposely want to make a deep cut with what we saw in Space Jam, according to what said it's director Joe Dante. This movie was a totally failure, but it gave back to Looney Tunes their craziness.

Years passed again, but this time is 2011, 10th of May on Cartoon Network was relased the second episode of The Looney Tunes Show. The series aimed to strongly relaunch the Looney Tunes, long gone from the glories of the past, updating the stories of Bugs Bunny and associates in a sitcom key, with the rabbit sharing a house with Daffy Duck in a suburb of Los Angeles. All interspersed with sketches by Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner done in CGI and the updated return of the Merrie Melodies. But the big news of the second episode is that LOLA BUNNY RETURNED.

And Lola was a character with some relevance within the series, even if something didn't seem right with her. Lola looked different, she was no longer the rabbit version of the femme fatale seen in Space Jam: she was naive, talkative, with her head in the clouds, crazy to the point of becoming Bugs Bunny's stalker. Bugs after having fallen in love with her at first glance understands on the first date that he absolutely can't stand Lola. She is no longer the Lola we used to know, even if the appearance is similar and the name is the same. Lola is effectively a Looney Tunes now. And the fans like her, the public like her, Warner Bros like her.

(See Lola in The Looney Tunes Show here: X)

But this is a big walk in behind from the indipent character we used to know in Space Jam. Lola was turned into the stereotype of the crazy girlfriend for a while. And this is not a surprise, if we remember that in 2012 were popular the "overly attached girlfriend" meme template. (See here for references: X)

However, in The Looney Toons Show Lola has some very funny moments, while in Space Jam she was more serious and a little out of space among the other characters. (See here for references: X)

3. What women wear when they play basketball?

Women's National Basketball Association was only created in 1996. So, women's basketball were not considered - and still is not considered - as important as men's basketball at the time Space Jam was filmed.

In Space Jam 2 there will be WNBA players with a significant role, for example Diana Taurasi and Nneka Ogwumike.

Professional female athletes aren't that curvy because curves are determined by body fat and they have a little.

As a busty volleyball player, I can say, dear people, breats could be very annoying during sport activities: it could be a pain, when you run or jump. That's because a lot of women wear sport bra to compress and support their breast. Sports bra may also include layered cups or a high neck to keep everything in place and protect from painful hits, so women can be safe and comfortable during workouts.

Female basketball players didn't wear crop-tops and tight shorts to play. They wear exactly what Lola wears in the picture above: long sleeveless tees, large shorts and maybe protective gears such as knee pads, sleeves or braces to reduce chronic pain caused by the immense burden put on the knees in basketball, to prevent bruises caused by collisions and hard fall and to provide support after a significant knee injury like an ACL tear. They could wear also compressive arms sleeves to help muscles that are sore or overworked to recover faster. The sleeve enables your blood flow to circulate quicker to the heart, which helps you heal and recover quicker.

Wow. WNBA wears Exactly what wear NBA players. So surprising.

4. This is only a promotional character sketch, not what Lola would look in the movie.

Space Jam 2 would be developed in CGI and there are a little preview frames going around, included one showing Lola jumping and you can see her breast shape. But she totally looks like a comic cartoon character. It's not humanized. It's not designed to be the sexy love interest. She doesn't look out of space among the others anymore, expecially because seems that there would be also Tweety's Granny and Melissa Duck or Tina Russo as players too.

5. Reality.

Really? You want a human anthropomorphic rabbit? Well, Lola as a rabbit would have something like six nipples, but no human-like breast. And, also, real life girls have ribs. No one in real life is that thin. Oh, well, if you don't considered Pixee Fox, a model who had surgically removed six ribs and wears daily a compressive bust corset (yes, like the one that made Elizabeth Swan faint in the first movie of Pirate of the Caribbean) to look like a cartoon fairy (Tinkerbell, you are the one to blame for this).

(See here for references: X)

In conclusion, we can say that all this controversy is based only on a porny fan art and that Lola “new” graphic isn't change too much from the original Space Jam movie. It's just a little more cartoonish.

We can also firmly remeber that Space Jam 2 is going to be developed for children, to relunch Looney Tunes among new generations of children, who are the largest buyers of merchandising (including Happy Meals surprises) and consumers of new cartoons that surely would be developed, if Space Jam 2 would be a success.

However, we should admit that those kids probably know better the 2011 version of Lola than her original version and that 2011 version was more appreciated by fans and producers. Lola's voice actress, Kristen Wiin won BTVA People's Choice Voice Acting Award in 2012 and was nominated for that prize also about three times in the following years. Also Rachel Ramras, Lola's voice actor was nominated for BTVA People's Choice Voice Acting Award in 2016 for her role in Looney Tunes: Rabbit Run.

We don't know anything about Lola's personality in Space Jam 2, so we can't do a proper comparison or a prevision, but, according to what Malcolm D. Lee said, we can assume that original personality of Lola would be preserved.

The controversy is relevant only for Lola's body and not for her personality, and that's is highly rappresentative of what impressed more this bunch of grow-up kids. They grow up to be like the horny wolves and they are howling because their prey is not available anymore.

And, to be honest, being so obsessed with the breast and the body of a cartoon character (that is clearly made up for kids) it's not sane at all. Sorry to say that, but sometimes people need to drink from a bottle of truth.

[slytherinsnekxvii]

let's talk about lily evans. she's an interesting character—or rather, the case surrounding her character is quite interesting.

i honestly don't know if i can say i dislike her. by all means, she should be a fan favourite, and she is... but for some rather intriguing reasons.

for one thing, due to the fact she's hardly expanded on in the series, certain parts of the fandom have been forced to either take the few qualities that she displays canonically and amplify them to the extreme (eg. immediate righteous anger at the slightest hint of injustice in fic) or create an entirely new personality (eg. no, i didn't actually disapprove of your pranks, it was just sexual tension). of course, the option of creating a new personality is much more tempting when you can just add amplified canon traits on the side.

for another, her relationship with james sometimes seems likes it's being weaponized against snape and his fans. i've seen arguments that go like "haha, snape just wanted to fuck lily, but james got her in the end anyway, sucks to be you", and not only does it entirely reduce her to an object, it feels like they don't even care about the relationship, the dynamics or the characters. she's basically a plot device.

and thirdly, half of her characterisation in fic is to be a peter stand-in. we don't like the rat man, so let's take the pretty girl and put her in place of the guy who was canonically a member of the marauders, even up until he was named secret keeper. suddenly, she's a prankster and an enabler.

but, snek, you may say, all of that is fanon lily, tho. you just explained that people seem to like her because they just put any personality they want into her as long as she's at least vaguely a good person. you would be right.

let's look at canon lily. she's described as the brightest witch of her age, most everyone speaks favourably of her. in fact, the only people we see actively disliking/being upset with her are petunia, out of jealousy and the invasion of privacy concerning her letter, severus, who lashed out and used a slur that also applied to him in a moment of serious distress and apologised after, and well, pureblood supremacists by virtue of her being muggleborn. interestingly enough, even this dislike manages to develop everyone's character more than it does her own.

as a teenage girl myself, let's look at her actions as a teenage girl. not necessarily in chronological order because I'm writing this at 2am and my memory is already mediocre at best.

1. she's done well enough in school to be considered trustworthy and responsible enough to be a prefect.

okay, i can respect that. a good few of the prefects at my school were really just appointed based on how much the teachers liked you, but at hogwarts, there's so few of them that they must put at least a little effort into it, so i'll move on.

2. she does not press for details when informed that her best friend's life needed to be saved by someone who has been publicly tormenting him for years

now, see, there's no reason why she needs to play therapist. it's not her job, she's just a girl, and we know that snape wasn't supposed to talk about the incident, so he would've been stuck if she had asked for an explanation. however, i also feel like she doesn't seem particularly concerned about his wellbeing, and when he brings up his concerns about lupin, rather than ask for proof, she dismisses it. which, fair enough, i would hate to listen to someone talk about the same thing over and over and over, but, i also feel like the fixation on a theory like that would be cause for concern.

3. she dismisses the actions of a group known to play tricks that harm people and have specifically been tormenting her best friend on the basis that they don't use dark magic

first, i'm going to establish what i usually assume dark magic refers to. aside from jinxes, hexes and curses, i also include anything that produces an effect similar to any of the unforgivables (takes away your life, your free will or your ability to feel safe in your own body, such as when you're in excruciating pain), and magic that would require a sacrifice of some sort.

when snape tries to point out the danger in what the marauders do, she insists that they don't use dark magic. and they don't... but they do use illegal magic. she then argues against the company that snape keeps, which, again, to be fair, is justified considering mulciber's done something to mary macdonald... it's also not a particularly realistic ask. snape probably shares a dorm with these guys, and he's a poor half-blood so he's already on the outs. as far as he knows, any dissent will be met with him getting hexed in his sleep. but, i digress.

given that the marauders have been shown to be doing extremely dangerous with little regards to anyone's safety, and actively tormenting her best friend, i disagree with her choice here. on the other hand, she's made her own friends in gryffindor and perhaps she sees a nicer side of them that we don't get to. she's justified in her actions, but i still disagree.

4. she intervenes when her best friend is hung upside down by a spell of his own invention at the wands of the people who have tormenting him for years

she does object to the marauders' treatment of him, and she does try to get them to let him down. if i were in her position, i would absolutely do the same. i respect the decision to stand up for her friend.

5. she does not seriously attempt to help him or punish the marauders

i do not respect how she handled it. at any point, she could have drawn her wand. but, snek, you say, perhaps she didn't want to get involved physically. she wanted to follow the rules. in that case, at any point, she could taken points, assigned detention, or sent someone to get a member of staff. she does none of those things and i viscerally disagree. if we were ever friends and someone tried to hurt you, i can assure you that i would try to at least see to it that they'd be punished, even if it wasn't immediate or by my own hand. lily, however, chooses to argue rather than take action.

6. she smiles when severus gets hung upside down

chances are, it was more than likely an involuntary reaction, like laughing when your friend has fallen over. however, the fact that it was intentionally written in seems like it's mean to be an indicator that the friendship was already falling apart.

7. she comments on her best friend's poverty and uses a name that's been used to make fun of him after he calls her a slur that also applies to him

she was 100% within her rights to be upset by being called a slur. it is never okay to use slurs. the only situation in which a slur could possibly ever be appropriate would be if you were an oppressed group attempting to reclaim said slur which is not at all what snape was doing here. he was experiencing cruelty, being humiliated, publicly, for no reason beyond existing and he was in distress, choking on soap and upside down. it was damaging to his pride, especially when james suggests that he needs lily to fight his battles for him (paraphrasing) which is an emasculating statement to make, especially to a teenage boy. so, snape lashes out with the most hurtful word he could think of, which happened to be a slur that also applies to him. lily was 100% justified in being upset about this, and she retaliated in kind. she was very much allowed to say what she said. i understand that she was hurt and angry and i respect that, especially as i can't guarantee that i would not have been just as upset in that situation.

8. even when the threat of sexual harassment is made, she still does nothing

i get it, at this point, she's hurt, she's mad, she wants him to suffer since she's a teenage girl and teenage girls hold grudges like it's nobody's business, but... i definitely couldn't just stand by and watch it happen. she basically just let them go through with it.

9. she does not accept her best friend's apology for calling her a slur that also applies to him, effectively burying the friendship

she is, by no means, obligated to continue being friends with him. however, if i were in that position, and the apology was sincere, i would take the friend back.

10. she goes on to date and eventually marry the guy who bullied her former best friend for his entire school life

no. i disagree. but, snek, you say, james changed. no. he didn't. we know, that at this point, james was still going after snape behind lily's back. you can say that she didn't know, but that means that she would have allowed james to lie to her and that doesn't sit right with me bc a relationship built on lies is a relationship that is going to fall apart, especially when your partner has been disappointed by your actions before. you can say that she did know, and that proves that she simply didn't take her responsibilities as head girl seriously enough to stop the head boy from harassing people when she explicitly told him not to. the point is, no. there is no way that this would have worked out as a long term relationship. james is too comfortable lying to her. i can't even say she was justified. there is no circumstance where i personally see this as okay for anybody involved.

alright, so, essentially teenage lily was justified in (most of) her actions, even if i find them questionable.

adult lily dies at 21, while saving her son, but her death also helps save the wizarding world. good job. she, as expected, did what any good mother would.

and that's canon lily.

my thoughts: she's a perfect example of why writing tips are so adamant on making sure people try to show and not tell. we were told that lily is meant to be good and pure and lovely, but the author never bothered to actually prove that, so what we're left with a dissonance between what we see and what we know.

as a result, i still don't know if i truly dislike her. her actions are justified, but they don't match with what we've been told, and we don't have any other information to go off of. at best, i can say for certain that i disagree with many of her choices, despite understanding why she would have made them (except for marrying james potter, uggghh, the only good thing to come out of that was harry and the saving of the wizarding world by extension, ig).

thanks for reading all that, btw! hope it made sense :)

[sugar-petals]

Bts voice analysis anon here! I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to respond ❤ it made complete sense why yoongi is the deepest I kinda feel bad for him everytime he wants to sounds cheerful or speak in a way so people can hear him he strains his voice

lot to talk about, i’d like to expand on this. especially what his voice being the deepest means for bts’ songs. plus, where his undiscovered vocal talents are, and in what manner his voice will not strain.

that he’s very introverted contributes to what you say, but yoongi is certainly the odd one out voice-wise, such low baritones hardly sound upbeat. similar to how taehyung being the odd one out in the vocal line whose head voices are literal superpowers. i really respect him for singing with jin and jimin who can climb one octave higher than him, up to C#5! and with jk who has the best technique and breaks into the 6th octave if he goes on like that.

it’s very much like yoongi who probably has to mix their tracks back and forth to fit his parts with hobi (who is a tenor as a rapper! — very uncommon) and namjoon who raps in several modes. very low, very high, very impactfully. he’s the most full-bodied baritone in the group even if he’s only the third-deepest. the tone is just so rich. both hoseok and RM are extreme vocal chameleons on top of that. in speaking and in their music you can hear the difference to yoongi all the time. they don’t suddenly drop in pitch and they’re vocal acrobats.

hobi in particular, this guy can do anything. the sheer agility my god, he connects his registers. he can go up and down, impersonate and do a million effects, adlibs, you know the drill. it’s him who actually owns the “cheerful/loud and clear” brand you mention. which is good if not fantastic for yoongi’s production endeavours, the group mood, and how bts cannot be ignored — but tough for yoongi’s voice and comparison thinking, and when he tries to make a point in interviews. maybe it’s not bad that bts have to slow down sometimes to let yoongi speak, but his tone is drowned out (not intentionally of course) in other occasions and he wakes up hoarse often as we saw. which might sound hot, but it’s not good for him as you say.

to be clear. i wouldn’t chalk down his more monotonous and silent tone as a weakness, it’s just outside of bts’ other vocal variety. he makes up for it with speed and good lungs anyway. we just have to listen more closely to him in talks/episodes/conferences but i think he shouldn’t worry about it either or try to sound more enthusiastic, the fans love his soothing speech for its pure sake. he does change it regardless to be more poignant and blend in. it has pros and cons but it wears him out.

yoongi’s voice is under that strain not just in conversation but also in the studio if he wants to bring connection to the rap line parts instead of having 3 songs in 1. which usually ends up happening anyway. that’s also why the cyphers (!) switch genres mid-song so often: their voices are all strong in different registers! yoongi the lowest, joon midrange, and hoseok up high. 

that’s why cypher pt2 is a HUGE stunt and production masterpiece: hoseok’s part is tuned differently, then other instrumentals start with namjoon. and you can literally hear, okay alright a deep voice is coming! from there it just gets deeper and deeper until yoongi is just rapping over a bass guitar (every baritone’s best friend lmao!). god, please give yoongi a big bassline for his every part. “ugh” is the exact opposite: yoongi has to start too high and namjoon also has problems with the key, only hoseok can fully take off after 1:50 with perfect vocal stability. guess which song is autotuned: it’s not cypher pt2! a 3 in 1 song fuels the rapline in a way where they are most comfortable. it’s crazy how far apart they are among each other vocally and it has to be considered.

it’s a dilemma but also why bts’ rap line can tackle any song with at least one member suiting it. they complement each other, every register (except the rare whistle register, aka what mariah/ariana do) is covered. i think that contributed to bts’ fame, it’s so important. however usually, the song caters to hoseok since tenors are preferred in kpop music, or it caters to RM as he’s the central songwriting entity even if mind you, he always thinks about all the members and works closely with yoongi.

but even with joon’s support, it doesn’t work if yoongi is caught in his wish to be a tenor. we’ve seen how much the guy talks about wanting his range to become wider and how he even tried singing quite high for his standards on d-2. he goes as far as collabing only with sopranos to help him achieve that pitch. yoongi is invested to pretty much change his entire vocal type 🙁because the environment simps for high notes so bad (which is fair, falsetto is related to releasing certain happy hormones and highlights parts in songs, but still).

... he actually can’t, unless he wants to damage his throat. that’s the last thing we want. a listener can get the serotonin from a very deep voice equally if they got good taste.

thing is. you cannot morph yourself into a different vocal type and shift your range to the opposite of your comfort zone unless you’re whitney houston. even one in a million tenors like baekhyun can’t make themselves a baritone. his lowest notes are less clear no matter how hard he practices, even if his chest voice is almost operatic and his technique excels. meanwhile, chanyeol (who’s a lyric baritone and exo’s deepest voice) effortlessly hits them without (!!) that kind of decade-long training. have baekhyun or jimin been called bad singers for not being able to cover the other end of the spectrum? nope. so: why would yoongi be a bad vocalist who needs autotune. with lessons, oh man, he could do a lot and many things he dreams of. he has a very unique timbre and enough musical knowledge to do so.

so, we see the magic of your natural supported range. it’s simply given to you. imagine that: if you know you’re not a tenor, you could sort of outsing jungkook — obviously not by technique, but projection— as long as the song is tailored to you and the notes are low enough. yep, jk’s lower register is not extremely forward. each note is perfectly sung because he’s jk, but his power vocals are settled much higher. joon/tae/yoongi would sound much fuller with huge oomph in those lines. that’s where yoongi would be much more clear-sounding to us. a lot of baritone rappers in kpop would be damn good singers. 

that’s why it’s good how a lot of rappers produce solos on their own so they can try it out. 

you just have to respect that your range usually (not always) goes in one direction. once yoongi rightfully decides to abandon his high note fantasy and goes lower just for fun, we are not safe anymore lmao! exception for range: female singers have an advantage there. trained mezzo-sopranos have great access to the head voice and lower registers since they’re in the perfect middle of the scale. but the guys, forget it, even the baritenors. yoongi’s fullest voice will always be coming from a chesty depth and we love him for it. guy just needs to realize.

that’s why his real challenge is rather somehow tweaking the rap parts so his voice finds good resonance like in “혼술” or even “ddaeng”. where his voice is strong, relaxed, and full and flowing. ddaeng — “boy with luv”, too— is ironically in a very high pitch and again caters to hobi’s tone the most, but: yoongi just scales down to his own octave and it still fits, so — great key choice and musicality! and adaptation. it’s not easy to do. you can tell he plays piano.

he either becomes less easy on the ear or has to autotune himself entirely if he works against his voice. or: goes on a track way outside his supported range (dynamite, WOW). it’s a shame. “daechwita” and “agust d” are such a case: both go into the head voice where your resonance should show the most aka the chorus. there are aggressive belts/snarls/shouts that make more sense for higher, trained voices. yoongi is most famous for raps that are literally designed to fuck up his vocal cords 😷that he’s so skilled as a rapper prevents him from that to a degree, but it’s still not healthy. he adapts a lot to bts’ overall delivery but he doesn’t have to, in fact: he could go in the other direction and it would work even better.

the reason for the title track issue: they are the most energetic. in k-pop, energetic means amping up the pitch. and that’s probably a logical choice and a natural human association. if you make a baritone kpop track with a lot of energy, it probably becomes pretty creepy, uneasy, film noir. but i think that’s exactly yoongi’s thing: to unsettle and critique and rage. i think it could work out. lil nas x is a baritone pulling it off. he achieves energetic title tracks, he honors his vocal type well imo. his live singing is cool af, i need this so hard in the rap landscape. so, it’s not impossible to do.

the trick is probably setting everything to minor key. surprise... yoongi’s challenging title tracks are all in major key. boy with luv: minor key, interesting. the former are extremely difficult for him to do so hats off. “shadow” is more suitable for his baritone as is “burn it”. it needs a very heavy, dark track. which is why it’s good that yoongi has that kind of public image. a baritone’s best genre is not super light and whimsical. that’s why all of our baritone faves are not main vocalists but main rappers. kai, taehyung, jaehyun: low voices in vocal lines are soldiers.

---

now a note on yoongi’s best method of singing since it reflects his voice type and brings out the fullness of it. as in, how does it crack and strain less? guess why “사람” is yoongi’s favorite d-2 song to sing. it’s ALL his comfortable range and the singing — very beautifully done —  is in mixed register (= head + chest)! which imo might be his secret weapon. it allows him to do what he longs to do successfuly without going extremely high. bingo.

because: even with baritones, the golden middle is still important. they’re not as deep as a bass, after all. that’s why their voices are so honey-laced in the mixed range and it sounds amazing. heaven, their timbre sounds so seductive. so, it’s wonderful when they find their middle and dare to sing. 

i wish yoongi gets/makes more tracks aimed at just that. in “outro tear” he has to go both too low and too high so it takes a lot of production effort to patch it together. the rapline is doing god’s work to make all their voices sound cohesive without being trained singers. it’s always a trade-off and risk, an immense balance act. “paldogangsan” is hard on yoongi’s voice but works as a whole plus it caters to namjoon to carry the song’s message. the cyphers are chopped up and not chart-friendly but each member is in their comfort zone. 

PS: i said bts’ rap line covers all registers except one. i think that jin is the one to complete bts’ entire spectrum coming from the vocal line. i’m no whistle note expert but dionysus went pretty high up there, i think he might be able to do it. it’s very impressive, even jungkook and jimin probably don’t have access to that register. so, another point for bts being a very ‘complete’ group.

[isoraqathedh]

Using notation to understand the world

This post was originally an article in my Gemini capsule. You can read it in its gemtext form here. Note that since Tumblr does not like Gemini links this actually goes to the HTTPS mirror.

Notation is the idea that an arbitrary object can be represented by some other abstract object. A specific type of notation, which is the one most people would understand in the conventional sense of the word “notation”, is when the object doing the representing is written. Commonly seen examples of notation include those that represent maths, music, electrical circuits and even lists of key-presses. In this article I discuss how notation has shaped my understanding of things, and also propose a notation-oriented way of understanding something.

How to understand something

There was an xkcd comic that goes something like this:

My hobby:

Sitting down with grad students and timing how long it takes them to figure out that I'm not actually an expert in their field.

In the end, the protagonist of the comic managed to find a field of study where he successfully made inroads into a community by producing words in the right order to pass for genuine knowledge.

This made me think about how someone would go about successfully fake knowledge of something. Eventually, I came up with this two-step process:

Understand the language, and how to recognise something as a correct statement.

Understand how to combine statements together to form a correct third statement.

I brought this up with someone, and he noted that by the time you have done both of these things, you aren’t faking knowledge of something, you now understand it.

In my opinion that isn’t strictly true, but it does come a lot closer than other processes. A studied reader might recognise this as reminiscent of a Chinese room, where someone can fake knowledge by reading in written text (i.e. a question) and responding according to a translation book.

While it may look like a Chinese room at first, a critical difference is that in a Chinese room, the translation book is something external to the operator, whereas the situation I came up with requires you to memorise it. While a rote memorisation would result in something almost entirely identical, a common occurrence with human minds is that it like to take shortcuts, and it is there where the situation becomes markedly different, as the shortcuts are now a form of understanding where you can now produce correct statements without memorising any translation book.

Additionally, a second form of understanding is to be able to generalise from the words you are given. A translation book can give you some rules, but when a human reads it the experience is that he will try to generalise from the existing rules and make up new ones in the vein of the ones he was given. This is expressed in a number of ways – notably some of them are quite distasteful – but the key here is that there is a point where a human would try to expand the rules that he was given and apply it to something unrelated just to see if it works. (Though, in some cases, “just to see if it works” is replaced with “and assume it works”, leading to all kinds of consequences that are beyond the scope of this article.)

Let’s now move away from dry theoretical explanations and show how this applied to me by way of example.

Making your own – the C. C. F. D. N.

The problem statement

When I was 17 I was very bad at Chinese. I am still fairly bad at Chinese, which we’ll get to later.

The main problem with writing Chinese is that sinograms – what the language is written in – are taught badly to me. I could not really understand any of the logic behind writing these unusual things, and what real information was given to me was not well-organised. What that means effectively is that I was stuck writing in a language where I have to reason about strokes from first principles, and just like trying to write a program in assembly language, it means that I missed out in understanding other parts of the language, particularly the things that are in the curriculum, which means that I failed many tests.

Then one day a friend of mine started learning Japanese, and then he had to deal with sinograms as well. But since I’m familiar with them already, I decided to help a little bit. This amounted to looking up the character in Wiktionary and then reporting on its pronunciation and its graphic etymology, both of which are helpful in understanding why a character is written and pronounced (some of the time) the way it is. However, looking up many of these characters realise that a lot of the information is repetitive and redundant. So I then built a little notation to condense it down into something that cuts away all of that.

The notation itself

The result is the Chinese Character Form Description Notation. The exact form of the notation is not needed to make my point, but we’ll discuss it as an aside here anyway. The notation describes the graphic etymology of the character by breaking it apart into its components. For instance, the character “to think” 思 is derived by combining a meaning-carrying component of “heart” 心 with a sound-carrying component of 囟, which was later simplified into the unrelated character 田. Putting that together, the notation would write the above sentence as:

思 = <心|囟→田>

Which summarises all of what I just wrote in an appealing string of symbols. Additionally, this separates it from an existing notation in Unicode called the ideographic description sequence, which instead describes how a character can be broken down in its current form.

Consider now another character, “small, narrow, fine”, which is 細. If I now provide its C. C. F. D. N., you would easily be able to figure out what its graphic etymology is, even without me spelling it out, if I mentioned that the meaning-carrying component 糸 means “fibre, rope, string”:

細 = <糸|囟→田>

But look now that 細 and 思 don’t look too alike, as their corresponding IDS would make explicit. I had not expected that the two are related quite like this – their pronunciations are also quite a bit different – and now that I have made that connection I realised that I had something in my hands that is valuable.

Ultimately, the notation I have invented for myself made everything click together in my head, and it cleared up almost everything that had been blocking me from being able to move away from focusing on what I write and instead focusing on what the writing means on a more abstract level. It wasn’t enough to eventually make me pass my exams, but I feared the language a lot less than I had before I built the notation.

(In a sense, while it was helpful it would never have come on time; reflecting on what I did in my secondary school years it was fairly clear to me that this was a thing that would have troubled me for as long as it did no matter how I did it, and I would have rejected this notation if it was handed onto me the same way that all those other explanations have.)

How the notation changed the way I think

The key to the notation’s success is, in my opinion, the following:

First, it is general. It can break apart a large number of characters and describe their etymologies in a succinct manner. There are very few sinograms where it cannot handle it at all, and in those cases it is typically because the character has an unknown graphic etymology and therefore can’t be described, though undoubtedly there is going to be a couple that would slip behind the cracks. I can’t take full credit for this one, as it is based on an existing method of classifying sinograms.

I will however say that the way I designed (?) this notation allows me to grasp the recursive nature of this classification and furthermore allow me to gain a foothold in scripts that use things that resemble sinograms but are not, such as Sawndip.

Second, it is manipulable. What you can change and in what ways are easily read out by looking at the notation. Whether or not it describes an actual character is another question, but you can basically always produce a valid formula for generating a character and hint at its meaning and pronunciation using the notation. This will prove invaluable if I were to build a script that has similar properties to Chinese characters, this is exactly how I would start approaching it.

Third, it is not clever. The key to a proper notation is that it represents the thing that it does straightforwardly, in such a way that allows one to verify that it is in fact representing what it claims to. This allows me to hook onto it and adapt myself into seeing the notation at the same time I am presented with the character.

Finally, it is flexible. Notice that in the above examples the sinograms are described in terms of other sinograms. There’s no particular reason why those sinograms are chosen. In fact, you can replace those characters with their descriptions, allowing a full drill-down of the character and describing how every little bit came to be in a simple manner. This property allows you to hide away details when such detail is not needed but still permit an exhaustive description if it is.

Reading an existing notation

In real life sometimes an existing notation is already available, and if it is it would probably be better than any notation that you would be able to make when studying it, as it is referencing the entire body of knowledge that it is built on rather than just what a student might learn as he builds it for himself. With that in mind, if one were to understand something by its notation it is prudent to understand an existing notation first before trying to make one’s own.

To this end, I would say that it is helpful to learn something by referencing its notation. Specifically, the question to ask is “how do you write this down, and why do you choose to write it this way?” This question can be asked in multiple contexts and expect multiple answers. What “this” in the question is differs depending on the exact thing you are studying, and the “why” could be surface-level “why this symbol over another” or a deeper “why arrange the symbols in this way”.

Once you learn the notation, the next step is, as hinted at earlier in this article, to learn how to combine two true statements written in that notation into a third one also written in that notation. In a sense, this task is much harder than the other two; if we apply it to, say, English, the first is “reading and spelling” and the second is the entirety of English grammar and literature. The key to this is not to complete the task, but instead to basically learn the subject “the normal way” but using the notation as a centrepiece to unify everything you learnt into it, so that you have a way to relate everything to everything else.

Consider how this can be applied to chords and music theory: you learn what notes correspond to which chords and how to write down changes to those chords, and then you can combine the chords together as simple letters on a page to form music. This is an iterative process: you learn what chords go together nicely based on existing theory, mirror it in the notation, and then generalise it in the notation before turning it back into notes and seeing if it appeals. Doing this correctly, you will both increase your understanding of music theory and also have a nice way of generating music.

Another example where the idea of learning by notation has been successfully applied (but not by me) is site-swap notation in juggling, where someone wrote down sequences of digits to describe how balls are thrown in. The inventor eventually discovered a new way of juggling (called “5551” in the notation) just by looking at the notation.

Shortcomings

It is only fair to discuss situations where notation-oriented learning is not the approach to take when learning something.

Sometimes there is no existing notation, whether because the experts have decided that writing bits of ink on a page is not sufficient for the field, or no one has thought of it, or even that all the existing ones have failed to gained currency because it doesn’t perform or there are too many competing ones. In most of these cases you can get around it by attempting to make your own. You can make this work if you know yourself well, and perhaps even present it to the community as as a way to understand the field itself.

Some people don’t take kindly to writing things down, especially in the more artistic field of study where notation might be perceived as constraining to a creative mind, and even knowledge of the existence of some notation is considered harmful because you’re always supposed to learn things “the hard way”, i.e. without any aid whatsoever, much less written ones. Whether one chooses to heed those warnings or proceed anyway is up to individual preference, but in a notation-averse community – for any reason – perhaps it would not be the best idea to show that community your new home-grown notation.

Summary

One of the ways that I have learnt something is to create a notation system for it. This involves figuring out how to write existing facts in that notation, and then how to create new things by altering the notation and seeing what the results in back in the original object that the notation depicts. I found this to be a greatly useful way to understand topics in general and a central point from which to handle unknown fields of knowledge from, while also acknowledging that there are some fields and probably some would-be learners that may not be suited to this way of learning.

[five-rivers]

Long Night in the Valley chapter 7

Oof, this chapter kept getting longer.

.

It was times like this that really drove home the fact that Eri had been raised by yakuza.  

Normally, it was easy to forget.  Eri was an angel, almost too well behaved at times, and Mirio loved spending time with her.  Being asked to look after her while her foster parents were away was a privilege, not a chore.

Right now, though?

Now, Eri was in the middle of total meltdown and screaming threats at the news anchor who had just… reported something totally unbelievable and, if he was being honest, incredibly aggravating, even for him.  

Mirio hoped Eri didn’t know the meanings of half the words she was shouting but, Chisaki Kai being the utter horror that he was, she’d probably seen at least some of them done to people in front of her.  

Once again, Mirio was filled with the totally reasonable, if unheroic, desire to punch Chisaki until his legs came off like his arms did. As this was not, in the moment, a helpful impulse, he pushed it aside.  

“I’m gonna kill you!” screamed Eri, throwing another marker at the TV screen, tears streaming down her face and horn sparking dangerously.

On one hand, it was great that Eri felt safe enough here at UA and around Mirio to have this outburst.  On the other, Mirio really, really did not want to get de-aged out of existence.  

It would be really great to have his quirk right now. Or Tamaki.  If only he and Hado hadn’t been at their internships today, maybe they could have solved this together.

He was currently alternating between trying to verbally calm Eri down and serially dialing every teacher involved in Eri’s care.  

Aizawa-sensei’s phone just rang and rang.  

Yamada-sensei’s went straight to a completely unhelpful voicemail.  

Kayama-sensei’s went to an even less helpful voicemail that also had the side-effect of making Mirio feel incredibly embarrassed.  

All Might-sensei was supposedly “kidnapped.”

Recovery Girl had her ‘medical emergency’ message on.  

This left a single, terrifying recourse.  

Nezu.  

With shaking hands, he pressed the call button and prepared to pray to the Rat God.

“Hi, Principal Nezu!” he said, loudly and brightly as soon as he heard the phone pick up.

“Hello, Togata-kun!  I take it that Eri-chan has seen the news?”

“I’m going to tear out your eyes and sew them to your a—”

Hoooo, boy.  

“Yeah,” said Mirio, “and she’s not taking it well.  I’m really sorry, but I need help.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for!” chirped Nezu.  “Knowing when to call for backup is something we try to instill in all our students.  I’ll be over right away.”

There was a beep as the line went dead.  Mirio put his phone back in his pocket and winced as Eri took a deep breath and let out another round of invective.  

“Eri,” he said, deciding to make one more attempt to calm her down before Nezu came, “don’t you think that’s a bit much?  She’s probably only saying what she’s been told.”

Eri whirled, incensed.  “But that’sa lie!  Deku isn’t a villain!”

“I know, but—”

“It’s the news!” she said, stomping her foot.  “They’re not supposed to say things that aren’t true! That’s what Yagi-san says!”

“She might not know it isn’t true,” said Mirio, smiling consolingly (he knew this particular smile was consoling, because he’d practiced extensively).  “Sometimes, people believe lies.  Even good people.”

This was something Eri knew well, so Mirio hoped this reasoning got through to her.  

It did not.  

“But,” said Eri, incredulously, “it’s Deku.”

Mirio agreed with that sentiment, he really did.  But the sheer level of fury currently concentrated into Eri’s tiny body was too much for him to handle.  

Still, she seemed to be thinking instead of yelling or crying, so that was good.  

“I’m going to bite them,” she said, dreadfully calm.  

“Who?” asked Mirio, dreading the answer and knowing the storm had only stopped momentarily.  

“The people who come to interrogate me,” said Eri, as if it were a given that she’d be interrogated.  He was impressed she knew the word, right up until how she must have known it hit him.

“Why are you going to bite them?”

“Deku said that if a stranger tried to make me go with them or do something I didn’t want I should bite them and scream.  And also…”  She proceeded to describe a series of actions that would probably have the average assailant lying on the ground in a fetal position, defeated.  “And you, and Amajiki-san, and Hado-san said I should…”  Mirio vaguely recalled being consulted for and contributing certain portions of this but combined with Midoriya’s contributions and Eri’s anger it became significantly more sinister.  “And ‘Zawa agreed and he told me I should…”  Ah.  That was worse.  Much worse. And knowing Aizawa, he’d probably taught her how to do at least some of it.

Mirio abruptly realized that, out of all the people Eri knew, he was most likely the second sanest.  He, as a person who saw no issue with appearing nude on national television multiple times, was not used to having such a position.  

If the commission were wise, they wouldn’t send any of their people anywhere near Eri.  They’d die.  

The door burst open.  “Am I a dog, a mouse, or a bear?  One thing’s for sure, I’m the principal!”

Mirio now understood why Tamaki spent so much time hiding in corners.

.

His students screamed alongside him as he fell.  He twisted, surprised and uncontrolled, in the air, flashes of skyscraper windows passing in and out of his vision.  Above him, the woman, Nana, stood on the air, looking down.  

Uraraka had reflexively stopped herself fairly quickly with her quirk, but she was now too far away to reach himself, Iida, or Todoroki. Todoroki was trying to copy one of his father’s moves and fly with the flames produced by his left side, but obviously trying to do something like that with no practice wasn’t going to work well.

Suzuki was there, too, but Aizawa’s first responsibility was to his kids, not the idiot that got them into this mess.  

He swung his capture weapon upwards, trying to reach Uraraka, but the tumbling threw his aim off.  

Green lightning flashed in the corner of his eye, and he found himself wrapped in black tentacles and moving sideways at great speed.  They crashed through one of the windows into an oddly blurry and muted office space.  

Midoriya released Aizawa and set down his classmates carefully. “Can you get Ochako down?  Blackwhip is still… difficult.”

Aizawa looked Midoriya over quickly.  He was wearing his hero costume.  It had the same tears in it as it did after the aerial battle with Chisaki Kai.  

There was a pattern here.  

He nodded and walked to the window.  Now that they were no longer falling, his aim was true, and Uraraka, who had been inching closer by deactivating then reactivating her quirk, caught the end of the capture weapon easily.  He reeled her in.  

“Izuku!” she said bouncing over to him and hugging him.  “You’re okay!”

“Haha,” said Midoriya, “yep.”

“You let Suzuki fall,” said Aizawa, who had been contemplating much the same thing.  

“I would have done something different,” said Midoriya, “but it wasn’t entirely up to me.  Nana would just drop him again.  It’s a dream, besides.  Worst that will happen is that he’ll wake up and then we can use that to wake you guys up.” He turned away.  “Come on, Six is this way.”

“Six, not seven?”

“Nana’s taking care of,” he waved his hand in the direction of the broken window, “that.”

Uraraka glanced that way.  “I wasn’t sure before, but that’s Skyrunner, isn’t it?  I didn’t think she was still alive.”

“She isn’t,” said Midoriya, shortly, before beginning to stride across the room.  “We really don’t have time to stand around.  Six will explain things better than me.”

“Who’s Skyrunner?” asked Todoroki.

Aizawa kept his eyes on Midoriya.  He seemed distracted, his movements were lower energy than usual, as if his mind was miles away.

“She was a hero ages ago.  She’d be in her eighties, I think, but that was her.  I found her when I was doing research on quirks similar to mine.”

“They aren’t really the same,” said Midoriya.  “Float is an at-will telekinetic type quirk with a personal range.  Yours is a five-point touch physical property alteration quirk.”

“Application-wise,” said Uraraka.  “But how can we be in her head if she’s dead?  You said before, we were in All Might’s head, so…”

“Wait, what?”  How the heck were they supposed to have gotten into Yagi’s head?  Was this something Midoriya’s dreaming subconscious came up with?  Or was there a massive problem about to smack him in the face as soon as he woke up?

More massive than the Hero Commission feeling justified in running a quirk-assisted interrogation on a minor.   A minor who was unconscious and may have been moved to another facility, away from any adults who might be on their side.  

Midoriya had stopped to lean against a doorway, pinching the bridge of his nose.  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m not completely here.  I can’t—I’m busy, it’s hard to process.”

“Busy doing what?” asked Todoroki.  

“Being awake,” said Midoriya.

“You’re awake?” repeated Aizawa.

“Halfway.  It’s just—Unexpected quirk interaction.  When I was shot—” He broke off and shuddered.  “Six will be able to explain it better.  I’m on the run, sensei, I’m sorry.”

“You’re awake and on the run from the Hero Commission.”

“Mhm,” said Midoriya.  “Six will explain.  Probably. I haven’t directly met Six yet.”

There were so many concerning things about that statement that Aizawa didn’t know where to start.  Midoriya pushed off the doorway and kept walking.  

“We need a contact point,” he said, “so we can cross over to Six.  I don’t know where they’d be for Nana and Six, though.”

As they walked, the building slowly changed from a generic office space to something that, at least to Aizawa, resembled a hero agency.  An old, dated hero agency.  

“Does this have something to do with ‘first contact?’”

“It doesn’t need to be first contact,” said Midoriya, waving over his shoulder.  “Just contact.  The rules are weird, apparently?  I think they’re different, normally.  I’m not sure where to go…”

“I’ll show you.”

Aizawa was incredibly tired of people showing up out of nowhere. And Nana really had shown up out of nowhere, suddenly materializing in the hallway, not even having the courtesy to step out of a doorway or from around a corner and pretend this world operated on anything approaching hard and fast rules.

“Hey, hey,” said Nana, “you guys are all really tense, aren’t you?”

“You did drop us from fifty stories up.”

“Haha, yeah, I did,” said Nana, grinning and ruffling Midoriya’s hair.  “I’m still dropping that jerkface back there.  Hopefully, he’ll decide to nope out before too long and we can get the rest of you out of here without the whole Journey to the West reenactment.”

Midoriya squinted up at her, listing slightly to one side. “Every time you use slang it’s so weird.”  

“Come on, kid, I’m not that old.”  She sighed.  “I’d give you Float now, but given present circumstances, you’ll probably want Six’s or Two’s.”

Midoriya straightened—And was it just Aizawa or did his outline become clearer?

“You can do that?” he asked.  He brought his hand up to his chin, index finger resting beneath his lower lip.  “It could be possible, depending on the mechanism,” he mumbled.  “But then would getting out be…?  No, it can’t be something like that, or it wouldn’t even be mentioned, and it didn’t work with Suzuki…  But it’s worth testing—Aizawa-sensei, can you use your quirk on Todoroki? Todoroki, think really hard about waking up while you do it.”

They tried this.  Nothing happened, other than Todoroki not being able to use his quirk. Aizawa had the sinking suspicion that this conversation was about Midoriya’s quirk gaining yet another, bizarre manifestation.  Did his quirk have something to do with split personalities?  Loading other peoples’ personalities and quirks into his head?

“It isn’t that, then,” said Midoriya.  “Saito’s quirk could still have a mechanism like that.”

“Or it could be the interaction between your quirk and hers,” said Nana.

Midoriya was silent for a moment.  “I guess,” he said finally.  “But we have to test—”

“We don’t want to overload you.  Like I said, I think you’ll want Six’s or Two’s more than mine.  Or even Four’s.”

Midoriya shook his head.  “No, considering what we’re up against, Float would be very useful.  Can we try?”

Nana nodded, put her hands on his shoulders, and bent at the waist to whisper something in Midoriya’s ear.  The room briefly flickered into sky, a sunset or sunrise throwing brilliant color from horizon to horizon.  The sound of wings presaged a flock of birds.  Aizawa braced for a fall.  Nana stood back up.  The room returned.  “Did you get it?”

Aizawa checked to make sure all of his (shaken) students were still there.

“I think so,” said Midoriya.   He took a deep breath.  “Yes.  I have it.” He looked back at Aizawa.  “I’m sorry, I really have to go, now.”

Aizawa was also getting really tired of people disappearing, he decided.

Nana sighed.  “Anyway, come on, we have to get going.”

They all looked to Aizawa before following.  Aizawa sighed.  They didn’t have any other leads on what to do, and if they didn’t, they might get dragged along anyway.  “Might as well,” he said.  “This had better be a great explanation.  And I’d like it before we get to this ‘Six.’”

“Yes,” said Todoroki.  “Does Midoriya have multiple personality disorder?”

“It’s Dissociative Identity Disorder, and no,” said Nana.  “Not as such.  For now…  We’re part of Nine’s—Izuku’s—quirk.”

“Funnily enough, I had put that together.  Why you?”

“I used to ask myself that, you know.  Six is the one who can answer.  In the meantime… consider this a quirk history field trip.  Here we are.”  They stepped into a conference room, a projector springing to life along with the faint murmur of phantom voices.  “I was just a sidekick back then,” she said.  “Not his, though.  It’s funny. Toshinori was mine, you know. Before his debut.  He didn’t even go by All Might back then.”  The room glitched.  

Aizawa managed to get the impression of a surreal, almost Lovecraftian, landscape, rubble, and the words ‘You’re next.’

Aizawa could have gone his entire life without knowing that All Might had cribbed his last words as a hero from his teacher.  

Nana laughed.  “To be fair,” she said, patting his arm (patting his arm), “he’s not the only one. Come on, I want you four worlds away from Suzuki.  Let’s get this show on the road.”

The lighting in the room shifted, and it filled with ghosts much like in Izuku’s school.  Another, younger, version of Nana sat among them, looking up at the projector.  

The underground hero Fidelity is here today to discuss a possible smuggling ring based out of Musutafu…

As the young man walked in, the whispers arrived… But there seemed to be fewer whisperers.

First contact.  

.

Izuku managed to levitate a centimeter off the ground before settling himself again.  Enough not to be noticed by anyone but Toshinori.  

Toshinori who was close to tears.  Izuku blinked back a few of his own.  

This was good.  With Float and the right planning, they could possibly break their trail even without the more complicated maze-path he and Toshinori had planned out. Some of the words in Trace’s file seemed to indicate her quirk only worked over solid objects, and she didn’t work with the Coast Guard, even though her quirk would, otherwise, be quite useful there.  The conclusion couldn’t be trusted, of course, but if he could manage to stay floating, and get Toshinori to float as well, it would be well worth it.  

He almost laughed at himself.  Mastering a quirk in so little time, worth it.

“If anyone could do it,” said Toshinori, “it would be you, my boy.”

Izuku’s heart filled with warmth as the others agreed. He could almost feel Nana ruffle his hair again.  

.

In theory, the plan to acquire the keys to the testing center’s off-limits areas was very simple.  

In practice…  It was also very simple, shockingly enough.  Maybe it was because the human explosive and the deceptively destructive sunshine child weren’t involved.  No, that couldn’t be it.  

Hitoshi walked up to a security guard, said excuse me, used his quirk, and asked for the keys.  Then he handed them to Yaoyorozu so she could make copies.  She gave the guard back the keys, and Hitoshi told the guard to forget him.  That order didn’t always work, but they weren’t having the guard move, and the whole operation had taken under five minutes.  There wasn’t much to remember in the first place.

“What now?” asked Hitoshi.  

“Now,” said Yaoyorozu, making more copies of keys.  “We get lost.”

.

The benefit to having a blunt and straightforward demeanor was that people rarely thought Tsuyu was lying.  

Well.  The UA uniform helped, too.  Even among heroes, UA was known to take only the best of the best.  The most trustworthy.

“Excuse me, kero,” Tsuyu said, sidling up to a young hero in civilian clothing.  “I was told to tell everyone to go into the back—They want us to spread out, for when the police arrive to question us?  The doors are already unlocked.”  She pointed.  “But our teachers have come to pick us up, and we’re going with them, so can you help?”

“Oh, of course.  That’s what heroes do, right?”  Bubble Girl shot her a pair of finger guns.  “Hey, you’re one of Deku-kun’s friends, right?  This is so weird.  Have you seen the news?”

“Yes, kero.”  

“Sorry, sorry, I know that’s probably not something you want to talk about.  I hope everything works out for him.”

So did Tsuyu.

.

The plan to flood the relatively empty back hallways with people and unleash a dance of chaos the Hero Commission, false warriors of light, could not hope to contain, went… Interestingly, in Fumikage’s opinion.  

There were several different entrances to the back that people were directed to, and, predictably, some of them were turned back, even though they had unlocked the doors.  There were commission people back there, albeit relatively few of them.  

The class slipped in among the others.  He led the way, as the sneakiest person after Hagakure.  Well.  Sort of.

It was hard to figure out who was in the lead with all these people everywhere.  

Plus, he got… Ahem.  

He was swept away on the tide of darkness, with no beacon to guide his way.  

Dark Shadow cackled in his ear.  “Just admit you’re lost, Fumi,” she said.  

“I am not!” he hissed back.

“Besides there are fire escape maps over there.”

Oh, that was helpful.

.

When Chiyo woke up this morning, she had not expected to face the fact that Toshinori had finally lost his mind, and the entirely baseless accusation that Midoriya of all people had kidnapped him (the reverse was much more likely, in her opinion).  And yet.

When Chiyo had been asked to organize and accompany the fleet of ambulances to pick up their unconscious students and staff members (something she had done many times) she had not expected to be point blank refused by the Hero Commission.  And yet.

When Hizashi and Nemuri had asked the fleet to pull around to the back of the testing center, near a loading dock ‘to make room for other traffic,’ she had not expected her coworkers and eleven students to slam up the rolling overhead door of the loading dock and run out at full tilt while carrying ten unconscious bodies.  

And yet.

Maybe, after everything, she should have.  

She grabbed the radio from the dash and started rolling down the window.  “Open the doors!”

The students knew what they were doing, at least with regards to casualty transport.  They should.  They’d passed the licensing test.  Hizashi and Nemuri had better hope this nonsense didn’t get any of those licenses stripped, or, oh, she’d have words with them.

“Hey!” shouted a hero with a prominent commission badge pinned to his costume.  He extended his arm and delicate rays of light shot forth.  He was aiming mostly at Hizashi and Nemuri.  Typical.  One of the rays of light hit Hizashi’s heel, and his shoe turned to stone, causing him to stumble.  

Chiyo calmly stuck the end of her syringe-shaped cane out the window and depressed the well-hidden trigger.  A small sedative filled dart his the hero in the neck, where he was not protected by his costume.  He dropped.

One or two of the students did a double take.  Chiyo rolled her eyes.  

Really.  She was a licensed Pro Hero.  Pros had to be able to act, regardless of how many of their expectations were being subverted.  

The students could stand to learn that.  

.

Large public TV screen at the intersection caught Izuku’s attention, despite how he was keeping his gaze on his feet, the better to monitor his use of Float.  

But, then, Izuku had practically trained himself to notice any screen with All Might on it.  That this one also had his picture on it was just frosting on the cake.  

They’re moving fast.  

Of course they are.  We’re a threat.  

We weren’t!

We’ve always been.  Do you remember—?

They aren’t putting quirk users into concentration camps.

No, just training camps.

Not the time.  We’ll have to deal with the Hawks problem later.

… We were hoping for more time.

“The Hawks problem?” asked Toshinori.

“I have no idea,” said Izuku.  “Come on, we have to keep going.”

.

Trace was very good at what she did, and Hawks was genuinely hoping that she would be the one to find Midoriya and All Might, not him.  He didn’t want to be responsible for what was going to happen to the kid, spy or no. He didn’t want to get on All Might’s bad side, either, retired or not.  

Really.  The commission should have taken the hint when All Might left of his own accord. Hawks didn’t know how he’d found out about the commission’s plan to psychically interrogate Midoriya, but obviously he did.  And he objected.  Strenuously.

It might have been better for him to go public, though, rather than spirit the kid away.  

On the other hand…  It had only been a couple hours at this point.  Maybe he hadn’t had the chance.  Getting the kid out of commission hands might have been his priority, depending on how much he heard.  

What Hawks had heard…  Yeah.  Not great. One guy in particular had seemed overly enthusiastic about Midoriya’s possible rehabilitation.  

He sighed and took off his goggles, so he had a better view of the city below him.  Hawks had lucked out in the color receptor department.  Like most birds, he had four, as opposed to the baseline human three. If anyone could pick out Midoriya’s green mop and All Might’s eye-watering blonde in these crowds, it would be him.  

And if they had changed their appearances?

Well.  Their heights were distinctive enough on their own, especially when paired.  

Hawks genuinely hoped Trace would find them first.  But he wasn’t counting on it.  

Well.  This was far from the worst thing the commission had asked him to do.  

.

Samson and Delilah were a relatively new duo. Samson had a gorilla mutation. Delilah had a ‘conditional status ailment’ quirk that doubled as a boost to herself.  Kind of annoying to activate, though, honestly.  Who else had a quirk that made them eat hair?

Anyway, this was their first assignment from the commission. All they had to do was pick up a potential witness.  

“Or colluder,” said Samson.  

“Come on, have you seen her face?”  Delilah gestured with the photo in her hand.  

“She’s his mother.  Mothers know everything.”

“Your mom, maybe,” said Delilah.  “I think this is it.”  She checked the door number.  Yep.  “You knock.”

Samson’s knock was loud and intimidating.  It got no response.  

“Again?” suggested Delilah.

But no matter how many times Samson knocked, he would get no answer.  Midoriya Inko was not home.  

.

Inko checked the piece of paper with Dr. Tsubasa’s current address on it again.  Hisashi had always told her that if anything happened, and he couldn’t be there, she should go to Dr. Tsubasa.  She never had.  The wound he had given her son when he was five had never completely faded, and she couldn’t help but hate him for that.  

But Hisashi wasn’t picking up his phone, and this, this was bigger than she could hope to deal with.  

Dr. Tsubasa had better be able to.  Or else.  

(Inko did not know if the ‘or else’ was for herself, Izuku, Hisashi, or Dr. Tsubasa himself, but it was most certainly there.)

(Incidentally, Hisashi was going to get a lot of ‘else’ from her regardless, for not picking up his phone.)

.

Once, when he was young and stupid, Tomura had thought of life as a single-player game.  First person. A shooter, maybe.  First person RPG.  

Before he’d turned twenty, though, he’d realized that to get anywhere, he’d need a party.  Obviously, he was still the only player, other than Sensei, and Sensei didn’t count.  Sensei was different.  Everyone else was NPCs.  Interesting ones, maybe.  But just look at Twice!  He could turn everyone into infinitely respawning mobs.  As things were meant to be.  

But the USJ, Hosu, and everything that happened that summer had taught him better.  This was a co-op, and when someone got a permanent game over, when they were logged off forever… It made something burn inside him because those were his party members.  

He’d found Magne annoying.  But when she declared herself everyone’s big sis…

Even so, he’d hung on to the notion that they were fighting the CPU.  No intelligence on the other side.  Just violence, power, and an assortment of unfair, programmed-in cheat codes.  

This, too, was a false impression of the world.  This revelation hadn’t come as quickly as the last. In fact, if he were to be honest with himself (a despicable practice) he’d have to admit the realization had been building, percolating, since the USJ.  It was something he’d acknowledged, even, although he hadn’t realized it at the time.  

This game had a Player 2.  And the noob had just finished the tutorial.  

He smiled wide enough to make his lips crack and sting in the dusty air of the current hideout.  The pinging news alerts on his phone faded into the background as he made his plans.  

Tomura was supposed to be following the main questline, gathering party members, and powering up, but what was multiplayer without griefing?  What was an open sandbox without distractions?

“Hey, guys,” said Tomura, lazily, not even looking over his shoulder.  “You up for a side quest?”

[bigskydreaming]

Hot take that all of the bats are theatre kids but on varying ends of the spectrum. Like Dick? 110% the legitimate performer. Jason? Just here cause he's weirdly obsessed with Shakespeare. Tim is the kid manning the stage effects. I haven't broken down the rest of them yet but I know in my bones that it works. Stephanie's probably a diva or always plays the fool

Yessssssss. Theater is absolutely the one thing that could unite them. Chaotically. Also potentially disastrously. Eh, semantics.

But Dick is of course a ham and I do believe he genuinely enjoys ‘taking a break from himself’ to immerse himself behind a cover identity.....but more than that, I honestly believe he’d love directing and putting his skills with coaxing potential out of people individually or in groups to use for something purely hobby-ish. 

Jason I also see as someone who potentially could love acting for a similar reason I see as behind his love of reading....its the vacation from the self or his own life, the trip in someone else’s shoes or story. Through books, and also acting, the ‘you can be anything you set your mind to’ thing has actual practicality. 

Tim I could see enjoying being the tech guy, but also I could see him liking the directing side of things too, or actually lots of different parts of the process, from script to stage.....like, I dislike when fandom focuses overly much on Tim as the tech guy because it tends to go hand in hand with acting like everyone else but Babs is clueless at such stuff, and also death to the instinctive correlation between smarts and tech like that’s the only possible place to showcase genius or the obvious go-to for how to show a smart person is smart, death to that I say, death and murder and also annihilation. But more than that its that IMO its not tech that Tim likes/focuses on in particular, its workshopping stuff. Taking something from idea to fruition, and being responsible for shepherding its progress every step of the way. 

Cass of course loves dancing and everything to do with it, but another headcanon I’ve always had is that Cass potentially could love choreographing dance. If dance appeals to Cass because its spoken in her first language, that of movement and the body, think about the potential that lies in not just the fact that dance innately is meant to put everyone else for once on the same page as her, watching the dancer for the story they’re telling with their movements.....but through choreographing others, Cass has the opportunity to tell stories of her own for other people to ‘hear’....again, in that same language so to speak. To communicate through others’ movements the way others’ movements normally just speak to her.

Damian I could see a case being made for him gravitating to literally any aspect of theater first out of his innate competitiveness....if his siblings have a skill, he wants to prove its perfectly within his own capabilities as well....but then discovering that oh no, he actually likes a lot of this, what trickery is this, he has been bamboozled, clearly Grayson is behind this, this....insidious attempt to....make him do things just because he “enjoys” them. What utter rot. And other such thoughts and inner rantings that all just further provide proof that this boy was BORN to monologue, and oh look, a stage for such monologues. Also, stage combat? Okay, having to pull his actual punches irks, but the applause for knocking a class rival to the ground instead of censure because he was directed to, look its literally in the script......that’s a plus. Because Damian’s unique form of middle-school Machiavellianism is such that he absolutely would audition for a role for no other reason than the role calls for doing something terrible to the character of someone he immensely dislikes (or just finds tedious, hey its a spectrum), and getting to spend a couple hours every week doing so is catharctic in a way the family isn’t entirely sure they want to encourage but hey, can’t argue with results.

Duke I also could see taking a lot of different routes, but I think he’s another one who would do really well in the director’s chair, coaxing potential classmates didn’t even know they had out of a performance. In the sense that yeah, I think he’s one of the closest to Dick personality wise so a lot of the reasons I see that being ideal for Dick are why I see it working for him as well, but also just like....the way it naturally calls back to the fact that part of his meta powers is he literally boosts the powers of other metas. He has a knack for bringing stuff out of people.

Stephanie is the understudy that’s just there to goof off and have fun, its a nice, relaxing A and that’s the only reason she’s in theater class or using drama club as an extracurricular that can afford her skipping a rehearsal or two or three.....but for all her big talk of “Pffft, nerds, I just came for the stage combat class and stayed because I forgot what else I was going to do’.....she just happens to know all the lines and mouths them along with the actors on stage and gets personally offended when they mess up because they’re doing it BADLY and ugh are they trying to suck this hard or are they just naturally gifted at that part, here, lemme show you how its done, and that’s how she accidentally rom-com scenarios her way into being the star of the show two hours before curtain call or else the plucky impromptu interim director when the real one quits in a fit of high school theater histrionics, or y’know, is made to quit when Stephanie incites a mutiny among the cast because that’s kinda plausible to tbh. Look, there are options here is all I’m saying.

And then Babs as well I see as being not so much in a particular single role at the exception of all others, but whatever puts her most in the driver’s seat of taking something from idea to opening night, like starting with a script maybe, hell even just the line producer or script supervisor, and then accidentallying her way into more and more creative responsibilities and control because the parts just start to come together more easily/readily when she’s rearranging the pieces into orders and in ways that make more sense to others and they find themselves gravitating to, because maybe this was just a local community thing people were doing for fun or to blow off steam but without even noticing a change it starts to take more and more shape as an actual thing as she finds her groove and sees how to improve on this scene here or tighten up things here or what happens when these two actors swap roles and then almost belatedly people are like oh wait, this doesn’t just HAVE to be fun hobby shenanigans this could also be something actually good too, weird thought, hey did anyone else know things could be both fun AND good? Is this a thing or are we in uncharted waters here.

[hyperfixationtimego]

Happy little hcs to atone for my sins

Taka and Hina are study buddies

Sometimes Aoi manages to get Taka off track because she’s just so enthusiastic and wants to hear about all of her friends’ hyperfixations and special interests

37.2 minutes later

Taka’s infodumping about how he despises moral philosophy but also thoroughly enjoys it bc that’s how moral philosophers are

Or he’s infodumping about political science and debate tactics and how speeches were effective or not for various reasons

Sakura and Mondo work out together

It started off as a coincidence when they were in the gym at the same time but it kept happening so they called it a schedule

They talk about their SOs and they’re smiling

Sakura teaches Mondo certain stretches and exercises to help relax different muscle groups for whenever he pulls a muscle or has a flare up from the thing with the bikes

Leon constantly asks Chihiro to turn alter ego into a vocaloid or at least program a bit of that tech into their system

Bc he would rather shave his head again than talk to Sayaka about producing music

He just has so many ideas

And it’s cool when there are kinda punk rock songs that are covered in an 8-bit or a vocaloid style

Byakuya and Celeste have a small series of bets with low stakes about what their inferiors classmates will do to lead up to them jingling away morosely like the fools they are

Sayaka shamelessly advertises her group’s mercy to her classmates and friends

Everyone gets their nails painted at some point

Nobody knows how Byakuya got roped into it but it worked

Makoto has rainbow loom

Atua forgives you

anyway YEAH LEGIT?

Hina has fully and thoroughly fallen in love with all of her friends and classmates’ expressions whenever they’re talking about something that excites them omg 🥺

she sees someone rambling and having a good time and hears the enthusiastic pitch of their voice as well as the general Vibe™️ that they’re giving off and she just???? [Y E A R N]

:)

and also just???? her and taka being study buddies is so valid oh my god??? they’re really close because of it!!! And Taka always loves hanging out with her because he knows she’ll let him just Talk??? and he adores that about her????? And she’ll be ENGAGED which!!!!!! oh my god!!!!?????

hi in this house we love and adore hina

And Sakura and Mondo???? absolutely?????

they have friendly competitions over who can lift the most weights/do the most reps/etc. (they do it sparingly, ofc! bc Sakura at least knows that they’ll both be subconsciously trying to beat the other as opposed to listening to what their bodies need in the moment. Sakura is the single braincell of class 78 no I won’t take it back because it’s true)

and they totally doooooo like they both get such cute loveydovey pining expressions whenever it’s Their Turn™️ to discuss the latest cute thing their partner(s) did. and listening to the other talking???? oh my god it’s literally the neatest thing????

Sakura looking at Mondo: I would die for this man

Mondo looking at Sakura: this woman is literally beauty and perfection in human form

THEY’RE SUCH GOOD FRIENDS OKAY???

also chihiro joins them for training sometimes!!!! She obviously isn’t able to do as much as the other two are, but both Sakura and Mondo are always so proud of her progress??? They’re like “you are so cool and strong do you know that??? you better know that”

and speaking of chihiro hdbdvdvdvdvdvdvdvd on GOD Leon will Not leave them alone abt it and they’re just like

“y....you do NOT have the attention span,.......you’re gonna get frustrated within like the first five minutes......and then I’ll have done all that work for nothing..............”

but Leon’s >:( no I won’t!!!! music is my Passion!!!!!!!!

so it’s like *sigh* okay

and anyway leon genuinely does rlly like it???? like he gets burned out very easily and can only compose things in short bursts, but he’s always so so so proud of the finished products??? (Even if nobody else likes it but shush 😌)

and it makes chihiro :D to know that something she made (even if it was done with reluctance) has brought one of her closest friends so much happiness????? she’s also like good for Leon but also if he ever bothers them about something like that again they are Literally Going to Snap but that’s another story for another day vwv

AND YEAH LIKE. HE DOESN’T MIND TALKING TO HER ABT MUSIC IN GENERAL BECAUSE IT’S AN INTEREST THEY SHARE (quite possibly one of the only times they will have a conversation without one constantly insulting the other ❤️) BUT. ADMITTING TO HER THAT HE NEEDS HELP WITH IT IS THE WORST HE HATES IT HE HATES IT HSBDBSBD

god okay so. his first impression of her when they had just come to hope’s peak and met for the first time was “oh my god!!! she’s a pop idol!!! so she must know a lot about music!!! maybe she’ll help me become a popular musician!!!” and her immediate reaction when she first heard him ask was to literally roll her eyes and he was like oh okay fuck her actually

and then slow burn enemies-to-friends 💛

WHEBDVSVS CELESTE AND BYAKUYA JUST BEING RICH ASSHOLES IS SO FUNNY??? LIKE THEY HAVE WEALTH SOLIDARITY AND THEY ACT ALMOST LIKE alright your status makes you worthy of my time, I suppose-

they’ve had bets on everything from how many times kirigiri will pass out from exhaustion by the end of the school day, to how long it’ll take before Kirumi finally Loses Her Shit, to how many people will be harmed by Komaeda’s luck while hanging out with him.

Mfs about to die smh

and dhdbwvwbsvwvwb yeah like??? sometimes a normal conversation with maizono will turn into her being like “yeah, and by the way, if you’re looking for a change of style and wardrobe, you should check out the newest shirt my band just released as part of our merch drop, and-”

Makoto is the one who gets baited into her merch ads most often sndbsbsbdbdbw

even mentioning the word “merch” around Leon or Kaz will earn her a lot of groaning and sighing, and occasionally a pillow or other soft object being hurled at her face 💛

oh my god they all have a manicure spa day,,,,,,,class bonding 🥺

hdbdvdvdv they got Jill to break into his dorm and kidnap him ngl like the specifics they gave her were something along the lines of “use as much force as you need to without killing him” and she was like “DONE”

and okay I’m not gonna talk abt everyone’s nails but now I’m thinking about it and like-

Sayaka gets like a lighter violet background with gold and white stars smattered around them, more concentrated in some areas than others, and it’s generally very pretty 🥺

chihiro’s are a different solid pastel color on each finger!!! it’s very kidcore and fun and they love it so muchhhh!!!

leon gets a little self-conscious when it’s his turn because his nails are highkey disgusting from all the time he spends playing baseball - there’s dirt trapped under them and everything so he’s just like hhhhhhh anxiety go brrrr but anyway he gets solid black because he’s edgy and cool like that 😎

I think Taka gets a French manicure with little dark red flowers pressed towards the tips because!!! simple yet pretty!!!

Celeste probably takes the longest because her request is sooooo complicated like it’s black and red and long ass acrylics with overlapping patterns and everyone else just kinda sits there feeling h o r r i b l e for that poor nail stylist

Toko gets a checkerboard pattern, with each nail having a different neon color in place of white!!! Because she knows that Jill will find it cool and pretty and colorful the next time she fronts (visual stimming jill?? 👀)

Togami just picks whatever will get him out of the chair quickest hdbsvdvdvdbdbdb

anyway Makoto????? rainbow loom????? absolutely

he has so many bracelets!!!!! so many so many so many and he knows how to create such a wide variety of styles it’s so cool!!!!!! he wears a bunch of them at any given time because they are so fun to fidget with!!!! and rubber texture hvvvvhvv!!!!

and he creates personalized ones for his friends, too, like he knows their favorite colors and sometimes picks up on whether they prefer a certain style or not from the way they react to the other ones he’s made and it’s!!! just so neat!!!!!

I’m thinking about it and!!! he has a bi pride fishtail, a trans pride arrow stitch, a black and neon green railroad, a pastel pink/blue/purple/yellow ladder, a jelly yellow and green dragon scale, a rainbow double cross, and a bunch more!!! he also has a bunch with charms and beads added into them!!!!

He also makes them for his friends even if he knows they won’t wear them!! Like Toko, for example, isn’t the biggest fan of jewelry because she doesn’t like the texture, but he creates one for her anyway and fills it with so much love (it looks like a daisy chain!!!! because at least she’ll be able to look at it and hold it and still be interested in it without it needing to be on her wrist!!!)

he makes a ton of bright colored ones for Mukuro (usually either single or inverted fishtail because he knows she wouldn’t enjoy wearing anything too heavy or overbearing) so that she has more mobile visual stims!!!

similar for Jill!! although most of hers tend to be black and bright neon rainbow in various bulkier styles!!!! Jill will also force him to let her look at his bracelet-covered arm whenever they hang out because. my god,,,,,,so many Colors™️

he’s found that togami prefers black and white simpler styles, and that Kyoko absolutely adores singles, fishtails, and double fishtails in any shade of purple, and that Mondo likes any of the larger styles in darker colors + blacks and grays!!! Chihiro loves anything with jelly and glitter bands!!!

Leon usually only wears one at a time, but he cycles through every single one that his boyfriend’s ever made for him because????? GOD they’re so cool and his boyfriend is so crafty and incredible and just,,,,,,,,,hvvvhvv every time he looks at the one he’s wearing he’s able to calm himself down and remember that Makoto loves him........it’s also very good for stim and fidgeting <3

anyways sorry yes Makoto with a rainbow loom is filling me with serotonin and it’s canon now

[lisinfleur]

When she’s around

The request:

Author’s Notes | I decided to write this one from Ubbe's POV cause I wanted to focus on the changes and the impact of her presence in Ivar's life and someone who's out of a relationship but was present since before the reader's arrival - and knows Ivar as much as an older brother could know - gives the perfect point of view I wanted to this fiction! I hope you like it!

Universe | Vikings

Pairing | Ivar x Reader, Ubbe’s POV

Info | Viking Age AU, requested by anon for 5CW7

Words | 1901

⁑ Warnings: Historical inaccuracy.

She came into his life out of nowhere. But she already arrived showing what she was able to do.

"To be honest, the Ragnarsson has spread some good pieces over this table..."

In a matter of moments, she solved a deadlock that was keeping us from determining a plan for our next battle against the Christians through the last three hours. And she did it by clarifying to all of us...

...That Ivar was right...

 "It's a matter of prediction. Foreseeing what your enemy will probably choose to do and set up a trap in each one of his options; prepare yourself for each one of his possible movements. This way, wherever the Christian prince decides to move, we'll catch him. Here, here, or there. He's locked."

 Her fingers sliding through the map, making us all able to see what my little brother's blessed mind had already seen before us, placing little details that would complete his plan and make it practically foolproof... They caught Ivar's eyes pretty more than our attention. They convinced Ivar's heart pretty more than Björn's suspicious mind.

And I didn't let it pass.

She was completing my brother's plan, but I also could see there was a part of her that was causing her lips to curl in a smile whenever he would come to complete her sentences; every time their ideas would sound unison as if they were made to work together.

 "Imma losing an advisor, ain't I?"

 More than that.

Harald lost pretty more than just his advisor or one of his best warriors that day.

He lost her attention. Completely. Because their plan was a huge success, but it was with us that she came to sit and celebrate.

Beside my little brother was where she shared the mead of a victory we didn't expect to see coming so easily. And the gods are witnesses: Sigurd wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for her sweet voice into my little brother's ears; her tender hands over his trembling and tense hands.

 "It doesn't worth the price, Ivar. You're just giving him what he wants. You're losing control and proving him right. A child would throw this ax. But you're not a child... A man wouldn't be affected by such vicious words. So, what are you, Ivar, the Boneless?"

 I saw my brother hearing her low voice more than he ever heard my screams. Her words caused his hand to stop shaking when my speeches were never that effective. Ivar sat down once again and his eyes went from Sigurd into her orbs.

 "I won't let a childish stupidity ruin the victory we conquered today. Nor my plans to take the men who want to fight with me. We'll spread our fingers through these lands and they'll know and fear my name. And then..." his eyes got back into Sigurd's, catching that surprised expression in our brother's face. "Then I'll show you that crawling like a baby I'm better man than you'll ever be with your perfect walking-legs, brother."

 The ax fated to my brother's chest was sunk on the table that evening. And that same night, Ivar called her to come with us.

 "I want you with me. I want your words and your mind by my side. Together we are invincible!"

 But even at that moment, even under his praises, she had humble words full of wisdom.

 "No man is invincible, my prince. No flesh shall live forever. But two similar minds are pretty harder to be beaten than one. And like you, I want to see how much of these lands we can cover with the mantle of your fame."

 They covered the whole place... Wherever my little brother's chariot rode, the lands would somehow become his. In a matter of months, the whole East Anglia was taken. And Ivar's army was now advancing over Mercia. Sigurd stepped back to care for Aelle's lands. I stepped back to care for East Anglia's settlement. Harald stepped back being left with York under his care.

But the two of them along with Hvitserk... They were insatiable.

I saw that woman convincing my little brother that there wouldn't be vengeance bigger over our mother's name than forcing Lagertha to a long and peaceful life...

I watched my little brother smile over Lagertha's funeral boat, watching on the wrinkled face of our mother's murderer the proof she would be nowhere to be found in the halls of the gods to where I saw Ivar carving his way.

But the time came for him to come back even for our homelands. With his claws established and our people spread all over the places he conquered, Ivar came back to take our homelands from the Rus' hands with his iron fist. With our reinforcements - Sigurd's, Harald's, and mine - Ivar came back to take the crown from the prince Rus who dared to attack our homelands and claim the life of our older brother who perished by their army right after being made king of all Norway.

A messenger of our kind invited me with the news of my little brother's marriage...

 "The people of Norway invites with pleasure and joy your highness, king Ubbe from East Anglia, to return to your homelands and celebrate the marriage between king Ivar, the Boneless and his soon to be queen Y/N, the Crow."

 Today my feet were once again touching Kattegat's docks after years away. With a small fleet of my men, along with Sigurd - who had also come to honor our little brother's marriage - and a small part of his men, I arrived my homelands to see the market twice as big than I could remember, cleaner, more full of people with all parts of our kind.

"A deal placed the fisherman in Vestfold and the clean products in our lands to ensure a clean bay. It made our market more attractive, our merchants richer, and increased the number of tents." I've heard Hvitserk's voice - kinda hoarser than I could remember - speaking beside me where he had stopped without my acknowledge. "He made us bigger, brother. He fulfilled his promises. Ivar is known everywhere from Mercia to the ends of Ringerike, where I just came from to celebrate with you." he smiled.

A crown in his head, smaller, possibly something under Ivar's. But something I could see Hvitserk wasn't ashamed of walking around with. We exchanged an embrace before my eyes could run over the place once again.

"Everything changed," I mumbled as Hvitserk was hugging Sigurd before he could look at me once again.

"Biting my own tongue about him, after all," Sigurd mumbled and Hvitserk giggled.

"You better hold your teeth, brother. You might need to have your tongue whole to be bitten when you meet our little brother once again." he boasted.

His words were not enough to prepare me for what I would find inside our great hall. The braces in his legs were completely different from the ones I remember seeing him dressing the first time Ivar stood on his feet in front of my eyes. My little brother's hair was longer, braided tight, well cared. And so were the beard in his face, shorter than mine, but there: something I thought I would never see.

A heavy crown in his head - a huge sign of his power - was something I was already waiting for. However, Y/N's dress held an even bigger surprise for us all. One that made Hvitserk smile cockily over the confirmation of the words he had just spat on Sigurd's face.

"I told you to wait before biting your tongue there, Sigurd... Now I think you have more reasons to swallow it whole, uh?" he mumbled, joking as we followed the gorgeous image of Ivar's queen - belly swollen with his child - approaching to receive us as our brother kept himself sitting on the throne that was once Björn's; our father's, before his.

"King Ubbe, King Sigurd, welcome to Kattegat," she smiled, respectfully saluting us both, ignoring Sigurd's jaw almost dropping down to the ground in front of him.

I, however, felt my lips curling in a proud smile when my eyes crossed with the icy blues looking at us from that higher spot. If someday I had expected to see my little brother in a good situation, those were all my dreams for his life becoming true.

He had the crown he pursued so far, the heir his nightmares told he would never be able to produce, the name many believed he would never build. Ivar's broken legs had taken him further than any of us had reached with our bodies whole and I was proud of what he had conquered. Of him.

But inside I knew behind all that strength, was the anger. I knew behind all that wisdom, was the little man I saw crying inside his room, punching his bed, cursing the gods for his painfully broken bones. Behind the whole curve of that cocky smile Ivar had conquered the right to wear in front of each one of us, was the mark of the tears and sweat I saw rolling down his face since the beginning.

And if someone had helped him to find the right way to where he was standing now, realized, this person was her.

 Y/N, from Vestfold...

 The woman my people had learned to call "The Crow" for, like Huginn and Muninn to Odin, she was the crow cawing in my little brother's ears, whispering wisdom to his troubled mind, teaching him where and how to drive his strength so he could become the huge man I was alive to see in front of my eyes.

She was everything Ivar ever needed by his side. And because of Y/N, I saw my little brother flying higher than my best dreams could plan for him. Ivar has built himself, forged in his own strength, bathed in his own talent. But she was the hammer and the fire; the forge and the hits that turned him into the man he had become.

I held her hand Y/N had offered me in salutation. And there was a tender smile in my eyes. Proud for Ivar. Full of gratitude for her.

"Thank you, Queen Y/N," I said, smiling at her figure with happiness when she landed her hand over the beautiful belly swollen with my nephew or niece to come. "It was never this good to return to my home."

It was never that good to stand in Kattegat's Great Hall and look around to see the whole effort I made when our father was absent had turned into something so majestic.

He wasn't my son, but I was proud as if it was a child of mine with that crown in his head.

He wasn't my doing. And I was happy to see my little brother walking by himself.

Somewhere in Valhalla, our father was toasting for him, lowering his head in shame and apologizing for ever have doubted his strength - such as our brother Sigurd was doing now, shocked by Ivar's ability to prove him wrong.

Somewhere in the halls of the gods, our mother was smiling down telling everyone something I would be happy to hear if I could...

 I know I shouldn't say I told you so... But I told you so.

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[megatontiddies]

Your fallout OC as a companion taken from @goovat ask meme except I'm using it as a writing prompt/ oc development? I guess? because I think it's cool and I'm bored and want to write it all anyways

Anywhompst this is for Alwine and since it's pretty long (like really long you've been warned) I'll throw 'er under the cut

What perk would they give the player?

Occam's Laser

While Alwine is an active companion the player gets +40% damage with laser weapons and +25% headshot accuracy in VATS with scoped laser weapons. One shot kills produce 2X the XP.

How do you recruit them? are there multiple methods?

After the player levels past level 10, or alternatively, upon finding Paladin Danses Recon team Alwine will be found as a new recruit for the BOS. Once the player does the first two repeat quests by Haylen and Rhys and The Lost Patrol quest begins she is available to assist the player in the mission. After the mission is complete she may offer to follow the player as a companion if the player has chosen the more diplomatic speech options with Brandis and Danse. If the player chose the more aggressive/ rude options while speaking with the two then it will require a small speech check in order to be a companion.

What raises and lowers their affinity?

Raises: Minutemen/ Helping Settlement quests, Stealing from wealthy NPCs, BOS quests up until BB, Helping Anyone, Honorable Actions, Amicable Dialogue Choices (for the most part)

Lowers: Murdering innocents, Stealing From Settlers/ Not Well Off NPCs, Unnecessarily Rude Dialogue Options

How do they react to certain things? what do they say? (eg. lockpicking, grabbing junk, killing?)

Lockpicking:

(nostalgic/ thinking to self out loud/ amused) " Really coulda used a trick like that when I got locked outta my house that one time..."

(humorous/ surprised) " And here I was ready to blow 'er open"

(thinking to self out loud/ amused) " Hell o' a lot quieter than kickn' er open"

Grabbing Junk:

(blanket statement/ flatly) "it's amazing what you can build outta junk"

(enthusiastic/ bubbly) "It might be radioactive but if ya render it down with a bit ah castor oil it makes a great paint for glow sights"

(humorous/ matter of factly) "I'd rather carry 40 pounds ah junk than fork up an arm and a leg to buy the same shit later from Crazy Myrna"

Player Overencumbered:

(genuine concern) "If ya keep pickin' shit up you'll slip a disc"

(teasing/ amused/ worried) "Jeeesus look at yah! You look like a pack brahmin!"

(teasing/ amused) "With yer pack so stuffed if ya fall on yer face you'll never get up again"

Murder:

[Alwine Hated That]

(angry/ surprised) "What the fuck is wrong with you!?"

(angry/ confrontationally) "You better spit out a good reason for that and fast"

(angry/ bewildered) "Are you for real?"

notes: Alwines reaction to murder is exclusive to people she genuinely feels are innocent. She's comfortable with deaths she deems necessary (or if the person made themselves known as a pretty awful person).

Cannibalism:

[Alwine Disliked That]

(disgusted/ shocked) "oh? OH. Great, like there wasn't enough nightmare fuel out here"

(disgusted/ worried) "In't there, like, a brainworm or sumn' you can get from doin that?"

(disgusted but still attempting to be light hearted/ humorous) "Like it blue eh? I prefer mine rare... a lil less peopley too..."

Stealing in general:

[Alwine Disliked That]

(irritated) "Hope that wasn't somethin important"

(irritated) "Should I be sleeping with one eye open round you?"

(irritated) "Like people don't have enough shit to worry 'bout out here..."

Stealing/Pick Pocketing (but from wealthy/etc NPCs):

[Alwine Liked That]

(approving) "Lord knows they have more than nuff' to share"

(approving) "Doubt they'll even notice it's missing"

(approving/ musing aloud) "The unyielding greed and ignorance of the wealthy was the catalyst of Armageddon"

Pick Pocketing:

[Alwine Disliked That]

(surprised/irritated) "Why don't you spit in his eye while you're at it"

(irritated/ humorous) "I feel like I should put a cat bell on ya"

(irritated) ~audible scoff~ The player is likely being glowered at

Enemies Found:

(Shocked/ Excitably) "Y' ello!"

(loudly/ warning) "On yer flank!"

(loudly/ shocked) [weirdish sound presumably before lashing out a punch of hit of some form] " GWEHHK!"

Enemies Lost:

(quietly/ nervous) " shit... where'd you go you bastard"

(quietly/ nervous) " Lost 'em"

(quietly/ to self/ nervous) " I swear to lord if ya jump out at me..."

Enemies Killed:

(satisfied/ calmly) "good riddance to bad rubbish"

(loudly/ excitable) "Bingo!"

(quietly/ almost a whisper/ to self) [only if player is sneaking] "...bingo bango bongo..."

Player stops talking mid conversation:

(sympathetic/ lighthearted) "Sometimes I loose track of my thoughts too"

(genuine worry) "Ya good? Take yer time."

(humorous/ teasing) "Not a thought between those eyes is there?"

Player removes all garb:

(shocked but also amused/ between light laughs) "oh?"

(mindless banter/ avoidance) " This would probably be a good stun tactic if y'aint fraid of gettin yer tidbits shot"

(humorous/ almost scolding) "Y'aint invisible... just so ya know"

Player loots a corpse:

(plainly) "Any ammo?"

(joking/ light hearted) "Guess they won't be needing that anymore"

(statement/ plainly) "Grim business but you can find some good stuff sometimes."

Player starts swimming:

(plainly/ matter o factly) "Ain't no way I'm going in there"

(humorous but fear is present in voice) "If a big fish decides you look like lunch I ain't gonna be able to help ya"

(almost nostalgic/ sarcastic) "Yeah me and the brick tied for the swimming contest back in 63... I'll just stay on the shore"

Player jumps from high place:

(genuine concern) "ouch! you good?"

(soft yell/ concerned/ as if watching player fall) "aaAAaaa!?"

(oblivious to the player falling) "Where'd ya go?"

Do they periodically give the player items? what kind of items?

Bowls of various soups if player interacts between 5 and 9 PM. Every other time she'll give the player Fusion Cells.

Would they be able to do specialized task? (eg. repairs, hacking)

Not necessarily a task but if the player was to put various junk/ weapons in her inventory then she will periodically/ randomly mod them.

Would they be romancable?

Yeah probably? I think? In my AU she romances Paladin Danse but that would probably not be something that could happen as an NPC in Fallout 4 so??

If it were something like Mass Effect it would probably be like a Garrus/ Tali situation where if the player never romanced either characters then they would form a romance.

Do they have a unique outfit or weapon?

Alwine wears a black BOS jumpsuit for the first half of the game up until BB. After that she'll wear military fatigues. She'll wear the same over armor (BOS heavy armor) for both but after BB the BOS symbols are sanded off. It would be a unique unremovable armor set.

What would be their personal quest, if they have one?

This one is a bit weird since the player would be taking the role of the Sole Survivor. That being said I've always found that one empty cryo-chamber at the end of the vault hall interesting. There probably is a reason for that (like it just wasn't occupied or the occupant died before vault scientists had their spit) but for the sake of this AU/ prompt we'll say that she had a similar entrance to the vault as the sosu, bringing her babe into the vault and getting frozen with Kellogg snatchin both their children (this is lazy writing I know but I don't know how to write this without fundamentally changing her character). The only difference is that somehow maybe Alwine was released/ thawed earlier and got a bit of a head start. Because Alwine is no longer the sosu she wouldn't of encountered Preston at Concord and Codsworth likely either wouldn't of recognized her or simply acted like it was prewar and spoke to her only as if that was the same narrative giving her no sense to what was happening or how much time has elapsed. Alwine would of wandered out on her own and then stumbled onto Paladin Danses recon team and eventually got inducted in hopes of finding her child.

For her personal quest it would likely be trying to find evidence on what happened to her child. The quest would start with the player character going into the institute, and since companions can't follow the player there (minus X6), she would request that they find out what happened. After some digging the player will discover that Alwines child was killed in experimentation over 60 years ago in trials to make experimentation safer for 'father'. The player can bring this information back and Alwine will be devastated but grateful for the player finding this out for her. Despite being fairly amicable with the player she insists she needs time to grieve and that following the player is a cold reminder of the pain. Regardless of what the player says she parts ways with the player and goes back to the Prydwen and will idle there until the Liberty Reprimed quest where she will disappear from the map. Alwine will remain missing from the map until Blind Betrayal where she will be standing outside the bunker blocking Elder Maxon, as well as arguing with him, from entering the building. The player's choices will affect how Alwine responds.

- If the player executed Paladin Danse within the bunker then Alwine will become immediately hostile to the player. She will be forced to be killed by either the player or Maxon.

- If the player spares Danse then chooses to execute him when confronted by Maxon then Alwine will make it clear that she will not hesitate to become hostile to defend her friend. With a red speech check the player can convince her to stand down but she will be remorseful and refuse to follow the player afterwards and disappear off the map. Her body surrounded by a myriad of dead raiders will then be a random encounter while wandering the commonwealth. If the speech check is failed she will become hostile forcing the player, or Maxon, to execute her.

- If the player spares Danse then convinces Maxon to spare him then Alwine will express gratitude and her perk will become available. Unfortunately for Alwine her disobedience and willingness to become hostile towards the elder causes him to kick her out of the brotherhood. She will remain at the bunker with Danse until the player completes the quest and then upon the player returning Danse will disclose that she has gone to the Castle in order to join the Minutemen where she can be reobtained as a companion.

What are their opinions on certain factions? (eg. brotherhood, NCR)

Minutemen:

Genuinely believes that they have the best interests for the Commonwealth. Worries that they lack the men and firepower to take on the Institute or any other large faction that could pose a threat. This Worry is dissuaded after The Nuclear Option and her affirmation towards them only increases. With time, resources, and good leadership, Alwine believes they could become a major player even outside of the Commonwealth.

BOS:

At first is amazed by their technological advancements and firepower especially compared to the rest of the Commonwealth. The comradery is nostalgic and comforting for Alwine as it reminds her of her days in the US Military as a Power Armor Mechanic. After some time she realizes that they're a bit lost for direction grasping at straws for purpose and that their idea of "freeing the Commonwealth" might be misinformed well intention fueled by fear and dogma. When she was new to the commonwealth and didn't understand much about anything really the fearmongering and racism towards ghouls and synths were more tolerable (but still uncomfortable) it eventually become almost intolerable the longer she stayed and the more informed she became about the natures of both.

Railroad:

At first is weary of them. Alwine is careful around people who keep secrets and after spending so much time in the Brotherhood interacting with the Railroad pushes her hackles up. She does like how they work to help the synths, especially after BB, despite being mostly associated with the BOS. She becomes more comfortable after becoming more educated about synths, between the Railroad themselves informing her and the data collected by the player at the Institute itself, and eventually embraces the Railroad as a necessity after BB.

Gunners:

Heavily dislikes them. To her they're essentially just militarized raiders.

Institute:

Has a hate towards them that just strengthens over time. Their ignorance and misuse of technology is both a tragedy and crime. For the most part she pities them but strongly believes that their destruction is absolutely necessary.

Nuka World:

They're raiders so Alwine is pretty hostile towards them. Despite this their organization and brutality makes Alwine careful about making them enemies. If possible she would work to keep them out of the Commonwealth as much as possible or at the very least work to create some kind of truce of sorts to prevent a major confrontation (which would likely be devastating to both sides).

Atom Cats:

They remind her a lot of her friends prewar with the way they talk and their fondness for power armor. She likes them.

Children of Atom:

Alwine believes in freedom of belief as long as said belief does not infringe on the beliefs and freedoms of others. As long as they are respectful of herself and others she will act the same. Alwine is also a bit curious about them she would likely ask a bunch of questions if they allowed it. Other than that she would keep her distance, mostly due to the rads.

General voice lines? (in reaction to companion wheel selections)

Talk:

(friendly/ bubbly) "What's crackalacin"

(friendly/ inquisitive) "You okay?"

(spacy/ broken out of thought) "Hmm?"

Trade:

(friendly/ bubbly) "What's mine is yours"

(joking/ teasing) "finally got tired of carrying that junk eh?"

(joking within a genuine question) "Hey maybe I can carry the big guns instead of the junk for once....no? maybe?"

Follow:

(plain/ firm statement) "Got it"

(bubbly) "Comin!"

(bubbly/ softly) "Oke Doke"

Wait:

(plainly) "alrighty"

(plainly/ softly) "I'll just sit tight"

(masking nervousness through humor) "Don't leave me here too long... might forget what I'm waitin' for and wander off"

Where would you find them in the world?

She would be located at the Cambridge Police Station. Then later at the Castle.

Which game would they be from?

Fallout 4

Miscellaneous facts?

If the player puts alcohol in her inventory and the player gets 'drunk' she will match the player for drinks and her basic dialogue will be slurred for a short time after

Alwine will loot the entirety of corpses, clothes and all, when asked to loot bodies.

Alwine will periodically build weapon and armor mods which can be taken out of her inventory by the player

Alwine refuses to go in water and a hit box specifically for her prevents her from entering. This results in a glitch that has Alwine swimming in the air several feet above the water while the player is swimming.

If the player uses console commands to force Alwine into the water she will sink to the bottom similar to if she were wearing power armor. Note: This does not affect her health she will just idle at the waterbed.

[artificialqueens]

These People in This Room (Don't Shine Like You) (Diamond Chaney) - Ortega

summary: Lawrence has just been crowned the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, and Ellie is right beside her. Just like she’s always been.

a/n: omg HIIIIII! here’s my entry to the fic challenge (will it be my only one? who can say). in a shocking turn of events this is not a drabble asdfghjk but would we have expected anything concise from me? this fic was inspired by Shine and Starstruck, both by Years and Years. they are very diamond chaney songs so pls do give them a little listen for full effect! standard procedure, she/her pronouns bc they’re in drag, u know the drill. this has taken me entirely too long to write but pls enjoy some diamond chaney from the night of the crowning! (pls also collectively pretend they had an actual dancefloor to celebrate on and not just a hotel room bc i had already started writing at the point Ellie posted her BTS. fic is just one big serving of pretend anyway xo)

***

It’s somewhere around midnight, the sun has set on Thursday and Friday has crept in, and Lawrence is sitting in a booth with the dancefloor flashing bright colours in front of her, only just daring to believe that this is her actual life.

There is not a single moment that seems real. Even being one of the top four took her essentially since filming stopped to come to terms with. But hearing her name being read out, hearing the other girls cheer for her and being able to do nothing but stare at the screen in disbelief with her hands over her mouth and sob like a baby…that’s not sunk in yet. Maybe it never will. She’s still feeling the after-effects from the way the shock and euphoria had kicked seven shades of shit out of her pulse, the way the serotonin had crashed over her like a wave and the absolute unbridled lack of control she’d had over any of her emotions.

When the cameras had been cut off and they’d been given the all-clear from the producers that they could hug each other, Lawrence had only managed to stand up from the chair, still in floods of tears as Bimini bundled their arms around her, Tayce had jostled them all with the way she’d jumped up and down and yelled in delight, and Ellie had looped her arms around her neck and murmured into her shoulder, words Lawrence couldn’t hear but felt the love from regardless.

It had to be Ellie, really, that crowned her. It was a full-circle moment. She still remembers the night they met for the first time; Dundee in 2016, some time in the early hours of the morning (she’d probably called it ‘bastard o’clock’ or something similar), coming out of the bar and being stopped by a boy in half-drag similar ages with her who spoke rapidly and excitedly and told her that he’d messaged her about starting drag and she’d replied to him. The way realisation had dawned on her and the way she’d been her usual loud and boisterous self to cover up the fact she’d actually been quite bashful about the fact they were meeting for the first time.

There was no alternative, not least because of everything they’ve been through together; the years leading up to this moment and the rollercoaster it’s all been. She’s glad that they’re on a high because they’ve seen each other at their lows (been the cause of each others’ too, sometimes) and pulled through only slightly scathed, but always stronger. The producer had asked Lawrence who she’d wanted and when she, still speechless, had pointed in Ellie’s direction, seeing the tears start to stream down her face had only made Lawrence’s start all over again. They’d hugged- just the two of them this time- and the way Ellie had immediately felt like a safe place in the crazy chaos of reality reminded Lawrence so much of when they had filmed. The way even just hearing Ellie’s voice would stop her feeling homesick, the way she was a living comfort blanket.

She’d never tell that to Ellie, of course, because she’d never hear the end of it if she did.

It’s been a couple of hours and Lawrence is expecting everything to suddenly sink in any minute now. Something will click like the last piece of a puzzle and she’ll finally accept that she’s won, that the whole thing isn’t a giant and premature April fools’ prank. She turns her phone over in her hand, wondering what all this nervous energy is doing to her body chemistry. She’s got messages from her family, her friends, Kiko, the girls she works with back home. Well…some of them. But apart from reading them and frantically replying, Lawrence hasn’t checked anything else; hasn’t opened Twitter or Instagram, where the notifications are piling up like pizza leaflets through a letterbox and are equally as unwanted. If she thinks about them she can feel her stomach twist, wrung out like a wet towel.

Forty thousand likes. The Team Bimini tweet had forty thousand likes. What did her own get? Eight thousand? Lawrence thinks about the sheer scale of forty thousand people, compares it to the population of towns in Scotland. Almost Airdrie. Just under Coatbridge. She imagines a whole town of people, angry and furious and disappointed, and all of them tweeting her to let her know exactly that. She remembers in high school when she thought the whole of Hermitage was against her. She wants to tell baby Lawrence that that was fucking small fry. A thousand kids? Try the sheer scale of Bimini’s fanbase. Her breath is shaky when she tries to breathe in, like her lungs have reduced in size. It reminds her of that time in school camp when they all had to jump from a pier for some unknown-fucking-reason, how freezing the water had been and how her chest felt tight as she gasped for air. Lawrence supposes it was character building in the sense that it prepared her exactly for how anxiety would make her feel later in life.

In for four. Hold for five. Out for six.

“There she is!”

An ever so slightly slurred and wobbly voice breaks Lawrence’s reverie, and when she looks up she sees Ellie approaching her, a little unsteady even in the flats she’s changed into with a glass of prosecco in each hand. It says a lot that even at the top of a helter-skelter of an anxiety spiral, Lawrence’s heart still gives a little swell when she sees her friend. Ellie has always been able to make her feel better. She feels an almost silly sense of relief that she’s here.

Lawrence takes one last little breath in before plastering a small smile to her face. “Awrite? Where’s Mumma Diamond?”

“In her room conked out. Just got back from putting her to bed, she couldn’t hack it. Letting down the family name, that one,” Ellie huffs, sliding into the booth and squashing up right beside Lawrence, even though there’s enough space for two metres distance even if they had still been under strict instructions from the BBC.

“Tayce?” Lawrence asks, gratefully accepting the prosecco glass and hurriedly downing a too-big gulp in an attempt to calm herself down.

“Facetiming A’whora. Of course.”

“Of course. Maybe a bottle and a half of prosecco is gonny be the love potion she never knew she needed.”

“Fuck, we can only hope,” Ellie grins, already laughing through her words. “If we’re gonna be touring with them I don’t wanna have to karate chop through five layers of sexual tension every time I have to walk past them.”

Lawrence chuckles, tired but humoured and unable to not make the so-obvious joke. “You couldny fight sleep.”

“Shut the fuck up, I’ll fight you in a minute!” Ellie nudges her with her shoulder and spills both of their prosecco from the glasses in their hands. The gesture is affectionate and out of place with the impending threat. “Where’s Bims? Thought they were with you.”

Lawrence shrugs. “Went out for a smoke with one of the runners about twenty minutes ago and never returned.”

“Good for them. Always thought there’s something inherently sexy about a winch in a back alley.”

“Well, you would know.”

“Eh, so would you!” Ellie cries, nothing short of incredulously offended. Her expression makes her look even more like a cartoon character than usual, and it’s entirely too endearing.

“Yeah, forgot that popular phrase. It takes two to winch in a back alley,” Lawrence jokes, but her heart isn’t in it. It’s too heavy and her ribcage feels like someone laced her into a corset and pulled it too tight. She’s hoping Ellie is too drunk to notice.

Ellie sips her prosecco with her eyes on her, then scrutinises her as she swallows it. She frowns, her nose wrinkling up as she prods Lawrence with an acrylic-nail finger. “What’s up?”

Fuck.

“The sky,” Lawrence says without conviction, and the raised eyebrow Ellie gives her in return is enough to unlock her. She deflates like a balloon and brings her phone up so Ellie can see it, turning it over in her hands. “Just…as happy as I am, and as much as this is all a dream come true…I keep psyching myself up to open any social media, and I can’t, because this one fucking brain cell of anxiety keeps telling me that everyone out there hates me and hates the fact I’ve won.”

Ellie’s face falls into a frown. She gently pries the phone out of her hands and places it on the table, takes one of Lawrence’s free hands in hers and rubs her thumb over her knuckles. “But all your other brain cells know that’s wrong.”

Lawrence sighs. “So why’s that one louder than all the rest?”

Ellie presses her lips together in a badly-suppressed smile. She’s giggling as she speaks. “Because you’ve only got two brain cells.”

Lawrence splutters a laugh, shoving Ellie with her free hand. The other is still laced together with hers. As the laughter dies down and the momentary serotonin wears off, Lawrence can feel her brow furrowing involuntarily. “Forty thousand people wanted Bimini to win, Ellie. Forty thousand. You know that’s like a whole town? That’s like the population of Coatbridge?”

“ Fuck Coatbridge!” Ellie exclaims, affronted, and her shock and insistence makes Lawrence snort all over again. “Okay, forty thousand people is a town but really, what’s that to the rest of the world? Think how tiny that is in the grand scheme of things, Lawrence! Honestly, give a fuck about what any bastard who wants to send you anything vile thinks of you! You’re so amazing! You won! Fuck everyone else!”

Lawrence wants to feel cheered up. The prosecco Ellie’s drunk is making her all the more animated and lively, giving her words a determination and a passion that her speech so rarely possesses most of the time. Ellie is calm, and she doesn’t get wound up easily. There’s something about the fact she’s growing this animated over getting Lawrence to believe in herself that warms her heart a little.

Then again…

“It’s not just that, though. There’s girls from home that haven’t even said well done. Girls I’ve always supported and couldn’t do enough for, and it’s like…really? You can’t be happy for me when I’ve actually managed to do the one thing I’ve wanted to do for years?”

“Well maybe they have said well done, and you’ve just not seen it because you’ve been hiding,” Ellie gestures matter-of-factly at her phone. It doesn’t convince her.

“They won’t have. You’ll know who I’m talking about, Ellie.”

Ellie sighs a little, clearly conceding that Lawrence is right. Her grip on her hand tightens a little, and when Lawrence looks up at her in response her blue eyes hold a glint of assurance.

“Well, even if they haven’t…fuck ‘em. Onwards and upwards, chick. You’ve got ten new sisters out of this who’re always going to know what it’s like, they’re gonna be here for you no matter what,” Ellie says comfortingly. Lawrence knows why she’s said ten and not eleven, but Ellie affirms this with another squeeze and a slightly shy smile. “And you’ve always got me. You’ve always had me.”

This is true. She’s always had Ellie. Before the show, doing gigs with her and hanging out with her and going to DragCon with her. On the show, always there to reassure her or pull her out of a negative spiral or just lean against her shoulder and squeeze her hand. And after the show. Whatever that might look like. Whatever that might be.

She supposes that neither of them know yet.

“C’mon,” Ellie says decisively, holding out a hand for her as the song changes. It’s some sort of Paolo Nutini dirge, and Lawrence has to laugh at how obviously whoever is in charge of the music has rushed to attempt to find something Scottish. Lawrence can only blink at Ellie’s outstretched hand.

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Come on! ” Ellie laughs. Lawrence doesn’t know if she’s blushing or if it’s just the lights.

But she does know that she can’t leave Ellie hanging when she’s looking at her like that.

So Lawrence lets herself be dragged out to the dancefloor and pulled into a hug as Ellie sways them left to right ever-so-slightly out of time with the song, tipsy and full of affection given the way her arms are locked around Lawrence’s waist. It should feel stranger than it does. In reality, being held by Ellie feels as simple as just existing.

Or perhaps simpler than that, given the fact that Lawrence’s existence feels entirely surreal right now.

“You have to be in drag for half past se-ven,” Ellie sing-songs, bringing one of her arms out from around Lawrence’s waist and tapping her on the nose. Lawrence immediately misses it, so it’s a relief that it’s not gone for long.

“Because I wo-on,” Lawrence imitates back to her, and the way Ellie squeezes her waist in response and affirmation causes a smile and a blush to bloom on her face without her even being to control it. She rests her head against Ellie’s chest so she can’t have the satisfaction (ammunition) of seeing how she makes her feel.

It’s little moments like that that she needs right now. Anchors to keep her down on earth, to let her know that this isn’t just some really prolonged lucid dream and it’s all actually happening because currently reality is so absurdly ridiculous; she’s just won Drag Race and she’s slow-dancing with Ellie to the song that’s blasting through the speakers in the background, a parody of some American high school prom where she’s just been crowned the queen.

Moments like these- where Ellie’s holding her close as if she’s literally trying to protect her from the world- remind her that not everybody is against her. Not everybody hates her. Not everybody is wishing her a slow and painful death because Bimini didn’t win, least of all them. She knows that Ellie was never able to share what team she was on even though she hadn’t had a chance at the crown, but she didn’t have to. Not really. They’ve always been on each others’ team.

Ellie jolts Lawrence out of her daydream with the way her chest is shuddering, and Lawrence momentarily thinks she’s crying again before her soft giggle becomes audible over the music.

“What?” Lawrence tilts her head up, meeting Ellie’s scheming, smirking face.

“Can’t believe RuPaul Charles asked if you wanted to move to London, city of dreams, city of a thousand opportunities…” Ellie begins, Lawrence already laughing as she knows what the conclusion to her sentence will be. “…and you said, ‘yer awrite pal, am fine in Glesga wi the jakes an’ the Blue Lagoon chippy an’ the guy that stands on Buchanan Street and yells at everyone that they’re going to hell!’ ”

Lawrence would normally roll her eyes at Ellie’s impersonation of her accent, but she’s laughing too much at the joke that’s forming in her head to commit to it. “RuPaul asked if I wanted to move to London, and I said…”

The pair of them are almost giggling too much to get the punchline out, Ellie clocking on to how it’s going to end. In sync, the pair of them splutter out a “… NNNNAAW! ”

Giddy and happy, Lawrence rests her cheek against Ellie’s chest again. “London’s got junkies too, anyway.”

“This is gonna sound really selfish, but…don’t actually move to London,” Ellie’s voice murmurs from above her, and there’s something plaintive to it that makes Lawrence refrain from replying with a joke or a barb like she normally would. The way Ellie follows it up cements that fact. “It would probably be so good for you, but like…Glasgow would be lost without you, genuinely. And so would I.”

Lawrence can’t cry again tonight, even if it’s only because she thinks it’s physically impossible, so she just squeezes Ellie tight until she worries about her ability to breathe. “I’m not going anywhere, hen.”

Lawrence doesn’t even really know what they are, her and Ellie. They both still have Grindr and they talk about their hookups and raised hopes and broken hearts with each other like friends. But they’re not really just that. They’re affectionate, and they open up to each other with the same shared unspoken understanding of something Lawrence doesn’t understand. They hug for too long and cuddle up to each other when they’re together, and Lawrence can’t count the amount of times during filming that she’d find strength in the way Ellie would squeeze her hand without a word. They’ve woken up together too many times (why she’d felt the need to remind Ellie of that while the cameras were rolling, she’ll never know) and kissed each other more than that. Every time they say I love you they mean it, but they also mean a little bit more. There’s no butterflies or fast pulses or fluttering hearts- they’re past that stage. Everything is just natural and normal and easy.

She wonders if they’ll ever put a label on what they have. There’s a part of her that doesn’t ever want to.

“If we’re both still single by the time we’re forty,” Lawrence begins, leaning back to look at Ellie through her glazed, half-drunk half-tired eyes. “…we should just say ‘fuck it’ and get married.”

(She doesn’t even know if it’s a joke or not.)

Ellie laughs as if it is and nods as if it isn’t. “Drag wedding. We’d need to upstage Tayce and A’whora, though.”

Lawrence realises something. “I’ll turn forty two years before you.”

There’s a pause as the song starts to fade out, and it makes Ellie’s murmur seem louder than it is. “That’s okay. We don’t need to wait for me.”

The jolt her words give Lawrence’s heart and the way Ellie’s talking as if it’s an actual plan makes her think maybe it wasn’t really ever a joke after all. It’s ridiculous though, and it’s all theoretical, and it’s a totally hypothetical scenario, and they’re both drunk , for Christ’s sake. So Lawrence pulls out of Ellie’s arms and takes her hands in her own, the song that’s started playing more upbeat and the opening chords inciting some sort of hope and optimism in her heart for the future that’s unfolding for the pair of them.

“One more song then bed?” she suggests. Ellie raises her eyebrows as she looks down at her.

“Whose bed?”

“Shut the fuck up, Dirty Diamond,” Lawrence shoots back without missing a beat, and as the first lines of the song fill the room she leans back and begins to spin the pair of them in a circle, both of them laughing as if everything is as simple as just that room, and the music blaring out from the speakers, and the lights flashing above them drenching them in purple and pink.