#hence the preference for complete truth

[byanyan]

MUSE PREFERENCES

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Inspired by [X]

tagged by:ㅤ@cxpperhead ty again!! ♡

[randomfoggytiger]

I don't want to shame or be age-ist, but why did they bring in Mimi Rogers as Diana? She looks so much older than both Scully and Mulder. Was she hot and in the market in the 90s? I can see that her assertiveness and self-assuredness could be attractive, but she just didn't seem to "fit in". It's almost as if Mulder went for her because of mommy issues and looking for an older woman like Scully did with Daniel and her daddy issues.

I don't know anything about the actress. My issue is just with the casting and that she fit more in line with being an older character that came across, to me, more like a wicked step mother than a potential mate.

I don't think the question is ageist. :DDD It's a reality that she does look older than Mulder-- but that really works for canon.

Actually factually, they hired Mimi Rogers because DD acted with her before (The Rapture); and he likes to bring his friends forward into new projects. But her casting also enabled David and Mimi to take their characters' interactions in a slightly different direction than the script dictated.

I get you completely, Anon-- and I agree. That angle worked for me, however: it underlined Mulder's personal growth over the past five years (and showed how glaringly unimportant Diana had become.)

Diana Fowley: the Definition of Manipulative Comfort

(Credit to: @iddoitforfreebaabe)

In the script, CC wrote Diana as a knock-out who subtly wielded her sexual prowess to draw Mulder's attention away from "the truth" (and to make Scully jealous, ahem ahem.) There was a sneering, preening quality to her that isn't present with Mimi Rogers. And I like that difference; because five years and a thriving partnership have changed Mulder as a person-- not completely, but enough. Sneering, preening superficiality would repel, not attract, the person he's become.

Moreover, Mulder is a man so haunted by his past that he sees his sister in every little girl-- or, to the point, he sees the love and security he lost in childhood in every feminine, devoted, almost nurturing brunette. (He's drawn to women who promise love, companionship, and ease up front, only to be duped by their intentions and strung along with breadcrumbs of affection later.) I don't think he's looking for other sisters or other mothers in his selection process; just that their standard of beauty has been normalized since childhood. Importantly, we see his own distinct sexual preferences separate from his traumas: Mulder is attracted to intelligent, outspoken women, be it Pheobe Green or Diana Fowley or Dana Scully (or Bambi Berenbaum, etc.) This trait doesn't define his on-screen interactions with Tena Mulder-- a very passive, emotional woman when around him-- nor distinguish Samantha in his memories. They weren't idiots, certainly; but that's not how he selectively remembers them.

Back to Diana.

THE NATURE OF DIANA AND MULDER'S PAST RELATIONSHIP

Diana Fowley is the perfect archetype of a person who latches onto potential-- for intelligence and companionship-- and stays until she decides to leave (cutting loose ends cleanly, and purposefully parting friends.) Relationships are for advantage, positive or negative.

We know this because of her reappearance: in The End, Diana expects to waltz back in and turn Mulder's affections back to herself with the snap of her fingers; in The Beginning, she chastises Mulder for doubting her dedication and loyalty to the files (read: him); and in One Son, she foists a kiss on Mulder when he is at his lowest point.

She's not a mother figure but a dangerous second thing: a prey animal who locates the wounded boy in the man and weaponizes that to her advantage-- hence, her full name (Diana meaning 'goddess of the hunt'; Fowley, a spin on the word fowler or snare.) (It's not until The Blessing Way that Mulder began to question his own mother's involvement in the conspiracy, posts here and here; which provides ample proof of the lengths his ex would have been able to twist him about without his suspicion.) Diana knows how to mask her control through silky "Fox, I know better; and you know I know better" language that skirts his animosity and detection. While Phoebe is cruel and callous and careless-- getting caught-out both times she and Mulder engaged in a relationship of sorts-- Diana is circumspect and calculating and careful. Diana exploits his weak spot-- self-punishment and a desperate need for love-- by disguising her attentions behind loving, near-maternal guidance and protection... something she would have known he lacked after Mulder unveiled his backstory. While Phoebe is reliant on relationships and adoration and praise to feel superior-- unable to face or accept rejection-- Diana doesn't rely on anyone or anything except herself (hence why CSM came to depend on her, too.)

DIANA, THE (PURPOSEFULLY) NOT-SO RAVISHING

All that logic and canonical consistency aside, the beauty in Mimi Rogers's casting is that she isn't a ravishing beauty to Mulder.

Mulder isn't head-over-heels for her like he was Phoebe Green or Bambi Berenbaum or (later) Scully. In the magazines and tapes that aren't his, in his dreams, in his Kill Switch illusion, Mulder fantasizes about larger-than-life sexuality: the Jersey Devil, Phoebe, Bambi, the blonde bimbo nurses, Jade Afterglow, Scully in sci-fi gear, etc. The exaggeration in their presentation captures his imagination and attention. (We see hints of Diana as a wanton, sexually deviant temptress here and there: namely in Mulder's vision of her in Amor Fati-- post here-- where he is not surprised to see her in aggressive, sexy lingerie-- but is surprised to hear she suddenly wants to settle down and have children, post here. And, again, "settling down" is framed as "It's time to grow up, Fox"-- another maternally slanted manipulation.) In casting Mimi, their dynamic changed from Phoebe-Green-enraptured to old-wound-manipulation.

Mulder himself wasn't gutted over their breakup-- telling Diana, without a shadow in his eyes pointing to past hurts or wounds or pain he'd overcome, "I've done okay without you." It was Diana who walked and Diana who returned; but it's Mulder who didn't ask her to stay either time. She was his partner: not in the "wildly understood definition of that term", but a literal partner who discovered the X-Files alongside him, who spent five years of her life with him, and who left-- without regrets, from either side-- for greener pastures. It had been a comfortable, not passionate, relationship. Afterwards, Mulder was content to burrow down in the basement, alone; and resented any intruder into his sanctum after she left.

And when Diana returns, he's stiff, tense; and takes a while to warm up to her presence. Yes, because of his past with her, yes because he hadn't informed Scully of said past; but mostly because he knows Diana is there for a reason. And, profiler that he is, Mulder suspects he's the reason. And he's right.

DIANA FOWLEY V. DANIEL WATERSTON

How does Mulder's draw to Diana differ from Scully's draw to Daniel?

Well, firstly, we have to discuss the similarities. Both Diana and Daniel are older partners, and both put down the instincts of their lovers (or would-be lovers, in Scully's case) to assert their own interests and end goals. ...The similarities largely end there.

The differences, however, point to the nuance of their situations.

Mulder isn't drawn to Diana because she was "his mother"-- he was attracted to her because his inner porch bug is drawn to the promise of a light at the end of the tunnel; and always coaxes him into the dangerous dark and straight towards the beam of a bug zapper. In this case, he got caught in the window screen, peering into the glow of a house but unable to advance towards or retreat from it. Diana and he had good times, comfortable times that they could remember fondly later; but their reminiscing consists of her helping on the files, not the years of their relationship beforehand. In essence, they have "the work"-- in whatever current form that was-- between them and nothing more (in contrast to his bond with Scully, which transcends Mulder's search for "the truth.")

Scully is drawn to Daniel because he is "other fathers"-- a man who not only understands her expertise and passion but rewards it with devotion and pride. While Diana left Mulder and was, apparently, perfectly content to be single as she carried out the Syndicate's aims (or because she left her options open to exploit CSM's interest), Daniel mourned and pined after his loss, letting his cracked marriage dissolve completely and abandoning his daughter to-- hopefully, maybe-- run into Scully someday. Diana and Mulder coasted five years-- another sign their relationship didn't healthily benefit either person-- before they decidedly separated. Daniel and Scully had a stormy (near) love affair, and split after the tempestuous blowout.

(By the way, Mulder and Scully, carry out those patterns with their ensuing relationships: Scully moving fast and strong with Jack and Jerse before they separate; and Mulder coasting on from case-to-couch, phone to his ear when he gets lonely at nights. Their partnership ultimately breaks each other's pattern, posts here, here, and here.)

Diana does fall in love with Mulder, though: by One Son, we see she truly has lingering feelings for her ex-- that take a backseat to her Consortium calling (and lack of characterization)-- and by Amor Fati, her affection has grown enough to manifest guilt, shame, and change-- that results in her death. However: the series portrays this as new emotional growth, not a symptom of their past relationship. Mulder doesn't expect that depth of feeling from her in The End nor The Beginning; nor even Two Fathers and One Son (hence his consternation with Scully's "jealous" suspicions, post here.) Again, "I've done okay without you" speaks volumes-- especially with the twinkle Mulder sports to show Diana that, for the first time in his life, he's found a spark: that his current "relationship" isn't comfortable or stagnant or in the past. (Which is why she reads between the lines and plans to break apart the partnership as deftly as possible.)

CONCLUSION

Hopefully these thoughts helped in some way or form. :DDDDD But what do you think, Anon?

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

**Note**: Here's the interview mentioned in the tags.

[ordinaryschmuck]

Full Family AU Part 36

"...Excuse me?" Camila's annoyance was quick to return after such an insane request.

"I mean, your couch looks comfy," Eda said. "A bit lumpy, but preferable to that shack in the woods."

"Are you...homeless?" Manny asked next.

"Oh, heck no! I've got a home, just not in, er, your neighborhood. Where me and King came from is under a lot of stress at the moment so we're laying low, hiding out in your realm for the time being."

"Why would you need to lay low?"

"Well..." Eda then dug into her hair and pulled out a wanted poster of herself with her hand aflame. "I'm sort of...wanted. From the law."

"...Oh. Okay." Camila pointed to the door. "Get out."

"Here me out--"

"I am not letting some...some witch criminal live under my roof!"

"I didn't break any major laws!" Eda defended, putting the wanted poster back in her hair. "Just the dumb ones. I didn't join a coven when I graduated magic school, I own a stand without a permit, I have a hocus without a pocus--"

"I don't care how illegal your activities are!" Camila exclaimed. "They're still illegal and I don't want that anywhere near my kids!"

"Speaking of kids, hot dang those daughter of yours are heavy sleepers," Eda noted, looking at the miraculously sleeping Luz and Vee. Even King was surprisingly still asleep. "You've been raising your voice this whole time and they haven't so much as peeped an eye open."

"I know, right--Don't change the subject!" Camila snapped. "You're a criminal!"

"I prefer outlaw."

"That's not better!"

"It at least sounds cooler."

"YOU--!"

"Camila." Manny puts his hands on Camila's shoulders, trying to relax her with a little massage. "Can I speak with you for a second."

Camila growled at Eda once more before relenting to Manny, letting him walk her a few steps away from the wild witch. "You better not try and talk me into hearing her out," Camila whispered.

"I know it might be insane," Manny whispered back, "but it's at least worth considering."

"No, it isn't."

"As far as we know, she comes from the same world Vee does. She might have answers to so many questions that Vee's unable to give. It wouldn't hurt to make nice with someone like that."

"She's a criminal."

"Because she broke laws that don't seem too bad."

"Still a criminal."

"At least she's not dangerous."

"Dangerous or not, she's still a criminal."

"Excuse me," Eda said, interrupting Camila and Manny's little conversation. "Couldn't help but overhear, mainly because you're both some pretty loud whisperers, but is it at least worth considering that I came clean about being wanted? Because the way I see it, I had two options: I could either lie about who I am and cause ya to overreact when the truth somehow came out--'Cause it always does--or I could just put all the cards out on the table and explain myself."

"Well, you're not doing a good job at explaining yourself," Camila said with a scowl.

"Actually, I'd say I'm doing a perfect job. I already told you that the laws I broke weren't anything major. They were just little things that never actually hurt anybody. Well, aside from the coven guards, but trust me when I say that those chumps had it coming."

"So you assaulted your world's version of the authorities."

"Authorities that will either put you in a box that you don't want to be in or petrify you for refusing even that."

"Petrify?" Manny curiously asked.

"Turn you to stone," Eda briefly explained. "It's permanent and ain't exactly pretty."

"That's...awful," Manny voiced sympathetically, to which Eda shrugged.

"It's nothing that'll happen to me, I'll tell you that much. Not as long as I can avoid being caught. Hence me staying in the human realm for a bit and me asking if it's cool if I crash on the couch." Eda focussed on Camila again, who seemed to lessen her frustration a bit, but not enough to relent completely. "What say you, Tiny?"

"Call me that again, and you'll lose more than your head," Camila sternly replied.

"Got it. Sorry."

"And...I'd feel bad under any other circumstance, but something about having a known criminal, even if the laws she broke aren't too awful, is just...too much. For me."

"Oh, for--It's not forever," Eda said, her annoyance showing. "Just for the night. Maybe two. Honestly, I'm only here because my current security system for my house is out sick and needs to 'recooperate.' Don't bother asking me what that means, because I do not want to know. I've learned not to ask him things."

Camila and Manny shared a curious look with each other, not even sure how to tackle that.

"Okay, how about just for tonight, then?" Eda suggested. "Me and my boy just need one break from sleeping in that shack. Can you at least give us that? We'll be out of your hair by morning and you'll never have to see us again. I mean, would you really let that precious little guy out in the cold for that much longer...?"

Eda gestured over to King, still sleeping soundly. Camila narrowed her eyes at him, finally noticing something she was amazed not to have noticed earlier.

"Wait...That's the dog you brought in," she stated.

"Ah, right, you still want payment." Eda started digging in her hair again. "Hang on, let me just--"

"No--I mean, yes. I do want my money. But I want to know is how did you make him look...not like that in the vet?"

"Oh, that?" Eda then blew a raspberry as she waved her hand. "That's nothing more than a simple illusion spell. Any witch with a starter's knowledge of illusion magic could do the same thing."

"You can make fake things seem super real?"

"Up to a point. Can't really make anything tangible. Only real enough where you think you can touch it."

Camila then glanced over to Vee, snoring softly without a worry in the world. Camila looked back at Eda, an idea forming as her worries appeared to have an exit.

"...Do you think you know how to make something like that...permanent?"

[mindful-of-ideas]

Preference: Peaky Blinders

- Being the youngest Shelby sibling

Characters : Arthur, Thomas, John, Ada and Finn

A/N: Based on this request here, by anon. I'm sorry it took so long!!

Arthur:

When you were a baby, your mom always made a point that all the boys were to help take care of you. She understood that the age gap between you and them was big, but she wanted to make sure that you had a relationship with your brothers

So, every now and then, Arthur would help by babysitting you. He would tell everyone he hated doing it, but the truth was that he loved it. There was something about you that calmed him. Maybe it was how tiny you were, how fragile you looked, but every time he held you, he felt much more calmer. Even as you got older, that feeling stayed. Every time you would be alone together, he would be more calm and gentle. When he stayed overnight to look after you, you didn’t have to be scared of the monsters under your bed, because you would fall asleep in his arms before even getting to bed.

As you grew up, however, you started to notice how violent Arthur could be towards others, and that scared you. So you drifted away from him slowly. You knew he would never hurt you, but his strength was still enough to scare little ten-year-old you.

However, one day, you came back from school with a black eye. Some guy had been teasing you and you finally had enough. The thing was, when you punch people, they tend to punch you back, hence the black eye. Upon seeing your face, Arthur went completely mad, but you tried to calm him down.

“You should see his face, this is nothing,” you said pointing to your eye.

“Still…” he grumbled, “let me take care of him.”

And after that day, Arthur decided he was going to teach you how to fight. This was something you have secretly always wished for since on one hand you wanted to be like your brothers and train, and on the other, you wanted Arthur to teach you again. Again, yes, because when you were younger and he was still babysitting you, he had taken the time to teach you how to draw. Everyone kind of knew he used to draw when your mother was still alive, but we were almost certain you were the only one who knew he still did it. Now, you were no master painter, so you would usually take out a book or study while he would draw, trying to furtively glance at what he was doing.

Even if he wasn’t babysitting you per se, you kept this up until you were finished with your secretarial studies. He would sometimes stay overnight on Tommy’s request, to keep an eye over you. For a period of time, it was the only way you could see him. You had decided to keep up with your studies, as your mother (and Tommy) would’ve wanted. Secretary sounded like an easy way out of Birmingham and a life away from crime. But as you got more and more educated, Arthur became more and more distant. You never truly understood it. How did learning about shorthand and typing meant that you didn't need your older brother anymore? When you moved out to work in London, you almost lost all contact with him.

After a few months of being a secretary, you got bored, bored and exasperated. You couldn’t stand the weird creepy men that were constantly flirting with you and the endless paper job that always had to be done for the next day but was almost never even used or looked at then. If it was only up to you, you would revisit the way the whole company worked, but it wasn’t. So, one day, you made a show of yourself and finally snapped. You screamed at everyone and left, going back home, going back to Birmingham. News travelled fast, and since Tommy had been the one to recommend you to that company, everyone knew what had happened before you even set foot in town. Arthur, he was overjoyed. Why? Because you just proved that you COULD be a little like him. But his joy just made you feel worse. You wanted to cry. You had lost your only way out of crime. You locked yourself in your rooms for days before someone could finally reach out to you, and it was Arthur. He didn’t say much, mumbled some kind of apology. But he sat by your side and waited. He waited until you rested your head on his chest and wrapped your arms around him. Then, he hugged you, held you close, just like when you were younger.

Tommy:

Tommy never really showed interest in you when you were younger. The age gap was big enough that you understood why he didn’t really care. And, truth be told, you didn’t mind that much either. Just because he didn’t show any particular interest, it didn’t mean that he didn’t care. Because he did. He cared deeply. After your mom died, he made sure you were never missing anything. He’s the one who decided that you and Finn should be raised by Polly. And he meant it when he said raised. He trusted her to make you into the best version of yourself and to make sure you could, if you wanted, live a life away from crime. He loved you enough to know that he wasn’t the best person to raise you.

When you were younger, he never babysat you. However, Polly always made sure to ask your brothers first when she needed help with you and Finn. She would also ask them when she didn’t need help. If it was only up to her, you would’ve grown up in the same house as your brothers, or in a house where they would always be in and out of, the way it would’ve been if your mother was still alive. But she knew this was impossible. Still, Tommy would sometimes come over to dinner or watch over you for the evening. Sometimes Polly proved to be convincing and Tommy would babysit you all day or all night. These were your favourite times. Maybe it was because you didn’t see him much or maybe it was because he was the only one to never baby you. He talked to you almost as if you were an adult and was always real with you. He would also answer all of your questions, even the craziest ones.

“But how come the trains can manage the curves, the wheels look too straight to handle that?”

“How about I take you to see them someday?”

“You would?”

“Of course.”

When he stayed the night, you would do everything to stay up as late as possible. But as it got darker and darker, you would get more and more scared. You could hear weird noises coming from outside, or was it from under your bed? Tommy, however, knew you could be reasoned with. You didn’t have to be afraid of the monsters under the bed because he could convince you, even for just one night, that they weren’t real.

Growing up, you stayed close to him. As unpredictable as he could be you knew you could always rely on him. He would help you no matter what. When you landed your first job, he sent you flowers but never came to congratulate you face to face. He knew how hard you were trying to appear as strong, tough and independent and he didn’t want to mess that up for you. Whenever he was in London, he would make sure to have dinner with you, paying for everything, of course. And you never asked where the money came from. As much as he tried to keep those dinners casual, he would always end up asking you too many questions about your work, your ambitions, your future.

He wasn’t disappointed when you lost your job, saying however how amazed he was that you lasted so long. He took you out to dinner that night, to celebrate “standing up to assholes and staying true to yourself”. He didn’t ask if you needed help to find a new job but left a flyer for a job in a science lab at your flat that night. It also mentioned that there were opportunities to go up the ladder by taking classes that they would pay for. You had always been a quick learner and weren’t too bad at science and math at school.

You got the job and invited him to dinner straight away.

“Of course you did!”

“You know what’s funny?”

“Umh…”

“At my old job, they were always saying how I need to have more chemistry with my boss, guess that won’t be an issue now.”

He snorted and started laughing.

It was one of the few times you had managed to make him laugh.

John:

John was already a teenager when you were born and he just had no time to give to a baby. That’s when he told his friends anyway. And to the girls, once he figured out they found it cute, he would say he was taking care of you. In reality, he did take care of you. Unlike Arthur and Tommy, he was home most of the time and had to help around a bit so that your mother wasn’t overwhelmed. He would mostly run errands but much preferred to stay home and take care of you. Once your mother died, he stayed around. In his mind, there was no reason for him to stop being there for you. Even if Polly thought he was more foolish than his brothers, more prone to make mistakes, she knew she could trust him when it came to taking care of you. She had no problem leaving Finn and you with him for days if she needed some time to herself.

Being around John always made you feel happier. There was something to him that just lifted your spirit, and made you want to laugh even when you were sad. He couldn’t quite bear seeing you unhappy or scared either. If you were afraid of the monsters under your bed, he would hunt them down for you, creating magical weapons with anything he could find just to see you smile before you fell asleep.

If you ever had problems, or just needed someone to listen to you really, you would go to him first. He would never judge you, of course, but as you got older he would sometimes scold you. Maybe it came with having kids of his own, you weren’t quite sure.

“Polly told me about the boy.”

“What, how did she know. That’s what I came here to talk about!”

“Y/N, you can’t just go around punching people.”

“He tried to… do… stuff to me.”

“Alright, where’s the bastard then!”

“Arthur is already on the case.”

“You told him all that?”

“No, he just saw the bruises and asked for a name, I gave it to him.”

“You okay though?”

“Yeah… I’m okay…”

He knew that if you wanted to talk more about what happened you would be back. And you were. It took you some time but you eventually told him everything. There wasn’t much he could actually do, but he listened and that was enough.

To everyone's surprise, he was the one who helped you the most when you moved to London. You wanted so badly to prove to everyone that you could make it on your own, but the truth was that you knew nothing, nothing at all. It took weeks before your apartment started to resemble somewhat like home. You were surviving of canned food and still hadn’t figured out how to do your laundry.

“Y/N, you know you can buy something else than canned food, right?”

“I know…”

“You know but…”

“But how do I cook it… what do I do with it?”

He laughed.

“Come on, we’ll buy some stuff and I show you.”

“While you’re here, how do I know when my laundry is clean? How long do I have to let it soak? Do I really need to split the white and the colours?”

And he had the answer to all your questions. With his own experience as a father and all the times he helped your mother as a teenager, it felt like he knew everything.

To him, you were always going to be the best aunt to his children. It was maybe the one thing that stressed you out, him having such high expectations about something you couldn’t really control. One day, Katie told you she hated you out of pure 5-year-old rage. You left the house that day crying, thinking you had failed as the coolest aunt. When he learned about what happened, John laughed before comforting you. He explained to you how Katie didn’t really mean that and that she actually probably already forgot about the whole thing. As he said that, the little girl came waltzing into the room and, as she saw you, her face lit up and she rushed over to hug you.

Ada:

When you were younger, she was all over you. She would dress you up, put makeup on you, take you out to do all the girly things. She was maybe the only one of your siblings to not shy away from showing you love. She would hug you and cover you with kisses whenever she could. She also made sure that you felt empowered, which was really important for her. Never did you feel like you were less just because you were a girl. You never had to be afraid of the monsters under the bed because they were too scared to go after a strong little girl like you.

Things took a turn once you got accepted into the typing program. You couldn’t tell if it was jealousy or not but she abruptly stopped making time for you. She wasn’t particularly rude or anything, just less present. One day, she came by to talk to Polly but found you, sobbing, instead. To your surprise, she didn’t hesitate and rushed to your side, trying to comfort you as best as she could. It was like the last few months of coldness never happened.

“What happened? Talk to me Y/N, I’m listening”

“It’s that stupid Beatrice and her stupid mom!”

“Who?” she asked, knowing you wouldn’t answer.

“She keeps making trouble in class, messing with everyone,” you said between sobs, “and she blames everything on me!”

Ada brushed your hair away from your face.

“And her fucking mom is the teacher, so of course she never believes me! And they talked of kicking me out… and… and… oh Ada, I’ve missed you!” you said hugging her tightly

Once you stopped crying and explained everything properly, she told you how to deal with Beatrice, in true Shelby fashion.

“And if that bitch messes with you again, I’ll handle it myself,” she added smiling.

After that, you had a lot of catching up to do. She explained how at first she had been jealous of you for finding an easy way out of Birmingham, but in the end, realized that it wasn’t such an easy way out in reality and that she could never do what you were doing. She respected your choice and told you how she admired your strength. It made you feel weird yet weirdly happy to know that the person you had looked up to all your childhood as a strong empowered role model was now looking up to you.

Once you moved to London, things got better. Even if you were younger, she was your best friend. And her little boy loved you! You were still not the best with children but you would do anything for that boy, just like you would do anything for John’s kids. When you got your first job, she took you shopping just like when you were younger. She was so happy for you.

And once you lost your first job, she didn’t say anything or taunt you. She took you out shopping again, to keep your mind off of things and let you hang out at her apartment as much as you needed. She was the first person you told about your new job at the science lab and she was even more happy for you than before. Once the classes started, she even helped you study and she was quite good at it. She could remember more of the stuff than you could, often finding weird but effective mnemotechnic tricks. You told her that she should apply herself, pushed her to do so, but she kept refusing. You were scared that by pushing her you might anger her again. This time, however, you took the time to talk to her before things got worse. She told you how, even though she was good at remembering the stuff, she didn’t have any interest in it. Not like you did. She didn’t take offence at you trying to help her find a job outside of the family business but it just wasn’t for her. You respected her choice and since then have been the best of friends.

Finn:

He has always been your best friend. Yes, you were younger than him but it wasn’t by much and it never really mattered. Unlike your older siblings, you barely had any memories of your mother and, when you were young, you couldn’t really see why they hated your father so much since you almost never heard of him. This shared lack of memories made you bond with Finn. Maybe you couldn’t remember your mom teaching you the alphabet, but you could remember the tone of her voice when she sang to you at night. You remembered her sweet and flowery smell when you would hug her and the coldness of her hands every time she went to pick you up from the couch to put you in bed. These things seemed too abstract to share with anyone else but Finn. He was the only one who could understand. He had this sensitive side to him that he would only reveal to you. The way you could both just lay on the floor and reminisce at such futile things war always a comfort to you.

When Polly took you in, there was no going back. You became inseparable. You shared a bedroom, tucked away at the end of a dark hallway. You weren’t afraid of the dark or monsters under the bed, you were too old for that now, but the eeriness of that hallway always made you both jumpy and left you on edge. Finn and you would then come up with the funniest stories to try and calm yourselves before going to bed. It almost always involved killing the obviously not-real monsters, just in case. You didn’t have to be afraid of the monsters under the bed because you would team up and invent the most successful monster repellent.

School was always a bit hard for you. A girl, a Shelby girl, trying to stay quiet and just do what they were told looked weird, out of place. You would literally be quiet and stay out of everyone’s way but still get picked on. It was like people wanted to get a reaction out of you, just to then shove in your face the fact that you were indeed just another Shelby. You were grateful for Finn and his friends. As soon as he took notice that you were being picked on, he made sure that his friends and he would hang out close to you. You had a few friends yourself, but they tended to scatter when bullies approached while Finn and his friends would always step in. He was also close to a few girls from his class and if they found you just reading alone outside, they would sit around you, playing with your hair, not letting anyone get too close. You weren’t scared of the bullies, you truly believed you could punch them in the face and win, but you hated the attention. You just wanted to go to school, learn, have fun and be left alone.

As Finn got older, he started ditching school more and more often. That was why he wasn’t there when you had to defend yourself.

“You managed?” he asked.

“I did.”

“I knew you would.”

“Right…”

“I’ll be there next time, I promise. But come here. I bet everyone told you they would beat up the guy but no one took the time to look at your eye?”

He was one of the only one of your siblings to actually know how to handle cuts, and bruises, and burns. Even the flu stood no chance in front of Finn. You were glad he was skipping less and less classes just to make sure you were okay. Maybe he couldn’t do math to save himself but he had a natural talent in understanding the human body. And its mind. You truly believed that if he stopped sleeping in English classes, he would get something better than average. He had such a wild imagination and such a great empathy, an understanding of human nature.

“That’s actually decent,” he once said picking up one of your essays.

“Thanks, I learned from the best,” you said pointing at your copy of Hamlet.

“Ahh Shakespeare…”

“No, you! Idiot. It’s your copy, and there are notes all over it!”

He was a bit bumped when you moved to London, mostly because he felt like he was trapped in Birmingham. He thought it was too late for him to deviate from the Peaky way. He had doomed himself and had to live with the consequences of his own decisions. You didn’t believe that, obviously, and made sure to let him know that, whenever he would realize it too, your door was open.

And he came. He was knocking at your door before you even learned that Tommy had kicked him out. You helped him as best as you could, but money was tight and, if you wanted Tommy to keep giving you your allowance, you had to hide the fact that Finn was staying with you. You didn’t agree with Tommy’s decision. Family was family. Kicking him out of the business was one thing, leaving him to fend for himself after promising him everything was another. Tommy knew that Finn had nothing apart from the Peaky Blinders. What he did was unfair. You hoped that with time, Tommy would come around and change his mind. Meanwhile, you had to get this boy a job and he was in luck. Your friend at The Daily Herald had just told you they had been looking for young boys to help around with the printing presses.

[nat-seal-well]

1, 2 / 16, 17 for Nat x Marin, my beloveds for the couples ask, please! 🥰 (~agentnatesewell)

Hi, Mar!! Thank you so much for this ask! Honestly it means the world to me that you like them, hehe. Suri and Nate will always be one of my top favorite couples <333

(Questions from this post.)

1: What, specifically, was the catalyst for their physical attraction (if applicable) to the other character?

Marin first noticed how tall Nat was, haha, Which might seem silly, but they immediately latched onto her height! Especially with how much taller she is than the rest of UB, and how crowded they all were in Marin's tiny office. It was impossible for them to think about anything else. She loomed over all the others and then stepped in as smooth as butter, and it was all downhill from there. Even they weren't immune to her suave nature and her towering height.

As much as she knows her team pushed their buttons, Nat liked it when Marin snapped at Ava in the beginning, haha. They tried very hard for a long time to get along with UB before the truth was out, even though it was far from easy. Nat knows how hard it can be to work with her little family, especially when the true reason for them being there couldn't be divulged, and she tried her best to play peacekeeper. But she still liked getting to see Marin slip a little and bite back. It was fun watching them show something other than the pleasant personality they had to put on for their job.

2: Does this change over time? What things do they find "hot" about their partner after they'd been together for some time, and have had more time to, well, notice and appreciate?

This has changed for both of them! Marin still loves Nat's height, but now that they share a life together, there's a lot more they've come to notice. One of their favorite things in particular is watching her when she's lost in her research. They'll sit there right next to her for hours while she buries herself in her books, and they try really hard not to openly stare at the way she presses her pen against her bottom lip when she's reading. (Nat's completely aware of it the entire time, haha.) Marin also has a thing for Nat's fangs, as much as she hides them--sometimes, if they're lucky, Nat will forget herself in her reading, and they'll catch just a glimpse. Nat isn't aware of that part, though.

Nat still likes Marin's temper, as rare as it is for them to get truly angry and heated. But she also likes their body. Physically, the two of them are about as opposite as you can get, and she likes that about them. They're shorter than she is, and they're bigger, but most of the time it's hidden under baggy jeans and sweaters that are at least a size too large. Occasions where they wear anything that actually fits are rare... or at least, they used to be. Hence why she likes it so much when they start wearing their new Agency uniform more and more often--even if she hates that training is currently taking up so much of their time every day!

16: If they had the ability to just spend free time with their partner, what would they do? Would they go out, or stay inside?

In general, both of them like to stay inside. Marin likes the ocean, but that's something they enjoy when they're alone. On days when the weather is good and they both feel up to it, sometimes they'll walk into town together to go to lunch or visit the bookstore, but it's a rare occasion. Most of the time, they like to curl up together in the library. They're both so busy that their schedules rarely line up, even before Marin gave up their job as a detective, and they prefer to just make up for lost time whenever they get the chance. Usually it means they read together for a few hours <3

17: Under what circumstances would they want to be left alone by their partner?

The most common one is right after an argument, which probably isn't much of a surprise, haha. Marin always needs a little time to cool off, and Nat needs to be able to gather her thoughts and sort through her emotions. It never goes on for very long; Nat doesn't like things remaining unresolved, and Marin is quick to let go of their anger. The only exceptions are when Nat's overprotectiveness gets the better of her, or when Marin is too careless with their safety during a mission. Those fights always last longer, much to the displeasure of the rest of UB.

Sometimes they need to be alone even when they aren't fighting! After long days and tough jobs, sometimes they both just need to decompress. Especially if a mission involves several days spent away from home. It wears on them both. Marin likes to submerge themself in the bathtub for a while, and Nat will listen to her favorite classical music while she pages through an old, favorite book of hers. They both reconvene later on that night. Sometimes you just need a little solitude, even from the person you love most.

[lunar-antlion]

(tldr at the end)

just came out as trans to my therapist. This is the first time in my life i have actually ever spoken these words out loud. It's a truth i only recently fully accepted but have known basically my entire life.

I'm not gonna have a big coming out bc this is for me. My main goal is gonna be getting on hormones, I already contacted my local lgbtqia+ association for all necessary information on getting hrt in my country..

so that's a big fucking step wtf, love it though idk had to get completely baked after that therapy session and am still as of writing this so excuse the rambling.

my preferred pronouns are still they/them

anyways whatelse happened recently..

I was on vacation in berlin and it was so great. nobody knew me there so the freedom of being a complete stranger in such a queer city was eye opening - hence the "me accepting myself and starting to finally transition and stuff" thing afterwards.

Got a new haircut at LaBarBer✨ (queer barbershop in berlin)

Uni started and while i'm writing this "next semester" from ToP is playing wtf

anyways uni started and it's way less stressful as i expected and even though i have to redo the third semester, i'm only doing like six or seven classes this semester, because i did the others and the hospital hours for itlast year. idk if that makes sense btw.

tl:dr

Vacation in berlin:✨

Uni started: chill

me: 🏳️‍⚧️

[anamoon63]

Simblr New Years Resolution 2024

Thanks @serenasims for the tag! 🤗💗

What's your Resolution for your Simblr?

This is going to be a shock, even for me, but I want to focus more on my gameplay, keep it simple and leave the long and intricate stories for my normal writing, i.e. my non sims writing. I also want to enjoy the game more, play for the sake of playing, have fun with The Sims like I used to. It doesn't mean I won't continue the stories I've already started, but maybe I'll switch to a simpler, yet visually more appealing format. I'd like to find a balance between the visual and the written word, if that makes any sense at all. I'm talking about less words, but also less photos, to be less repetitive and hectic. I don't know, I'm still looking for that change, I hope to be able to achieve that this year.

What do you want from the Sims Franchise?

Ah, where do I start? Lol. Well, I'd like a whole new game as the Sims 4 hasn't quite finished convincing me, it's been out there for 20 years and I'm just starting to play it. Anyway, for Sims 4 in particular I would like the same as my dear friend @serenasims, you know, concerts, bands, cars…To be completely honest, I don't know if I want more stuff for S4 because my game is so in pieces now, those back-to-back updates break so many things every time they come. Doesn't mean I haven't had tons of fun with TS4! 💗 Now, if I had something to ask for it would be, open world, cars, bigger worlds with more houses, the ability to create lots and add them to the map like in Sims 3, be able to remove corrupted or ruined houses. Truth is, I would prefer if they did a whole new game, but if The Sims 5 is going to be this Project Rene thing, just please leave me out. Lastly, if I really wanted something from the franchise as a whole (because seriously, I don't expect anything from EA anymore), and if I were allowed to dream, I wish they would fix The Sims 3, remaster it, make it work for everyone (it works for me, but that takes a lot of dedication and upkeep). In short, I wish EA hadn't trashed The Sims 3 like they did, and actually fixed the bugs, if they had, now it would now be an even greater game than it already is. Ok, I didn't want this to turn into a rant, but, well, you know me. 😋

Any other New Years Resolutions?

If this question is in regard to real life, well, I'd like to start a site with my stories, non sims, the ones I've written throughout my life. But that's just a thought at this moment, I'm not really sure if I'll be able to pull it off. The resolution would be in any case, to take steps towards that, and to start writing my new novel already, cause at my age, one is more aware of the number of years one has left, it's as if a countdown has begun. I mean, I'm not that old, lol, but you never know, hence my other resolutions: take care of my health, keep exercising, eat healthy, drink more water, give up junk food, smile, have fun, be less worried about everything, etc. In other words: keep me alive and happy. I don't usually make resolutions, they are more like wishes or plans, projects that I don't know if I'll have the time or the energy to accomplish, but that I really want to pursue this year, or in the years to come. :)

I know, as usual, my post turned out quite long and incoherent, lol. Sorry, but I couldn't help myself.

Also, as almost always, my tag answers are a little late, so I'm tagging all my mutuals and followers who haven't done this one yet. 😊

[plaindangan]

Kaede has competition!

CROSSOVER~

How will Shuichi survive the night~?

Disclaimer: R18 material! If not to your liking then please do not view!

Spoiler alert: he fucking doesn't.

When Shuichi got the Book of the Dead, he was expecting a lot of things.

Being dragged into a labyrinth dressed in a bunnysuit was no one of them!!

"Shinigami...tell me, is this REALLY necessary? I feel so...exposed. especially...b-back there." Shuichi commented, swearing on his soul that the leggings of his suit were ripped in the back. Hence, him feeling a cold breeze on his likely bare butt cheeks.

"Of course it is!! This is how we dress ALL the time as we solve mysteries!!!" Shinigami said, lying without skipping a beat!! In truth, she just loved to mess with cute twinks that wound up getting her in their possession. In this case, dressing up as a slutty bunnygirl, with tits that just 'so happened' to keep popping out in front of her shy Master, was her preferred method today.

"Ugh....let's just get this over with quickly..." he remarked, only to yelp as Shinigami slapped his fat, wobbly, ass~

"That's the spirit Master!!! Get to moving with that pale peach...heck if you reaaaaaaaaaally do a good job~" Lowering her voice, Shiniigami groped her chest long and hard - giving Shuichi's a very long look at her tantalizing tits~ "I'll give a good 'job' to you, hm?~ Sounds nice, riiight?~"

Face red and completely flustered, Shuichi's eyes darted, reluctantly, away from the sight and he muttered. "W-w-well...I guess that works...wait. So my ass is exposed back there!!" That snapped him out of it, buuut, by now Shinigami was cackling and dragging him along further in.

"Bah, who cares!! By the time you're done, that outfit is completely getting boom-killed by yours truly!!! You won't need it!!"

"I beg to differ!!"

Quite the team-up these two were, huh?

[ricky-tiki-tah]

The Author & The Host (updated lore)

Brought to you by: me infodumping to @gottawriteanegoortwo

I forget how powerful Host is usually portrayed, since our Family Iplier Host/Author isn’t super powerful.

He’s pretty limited in what he’s able to do with his narrations, mostly just being able to see his immediate surroundings like a sort of echolocation.

He can also reality bend a little, but anything more than using it like the Force and he’s down for the count

That makes sense. I always imagined Host's powers to be based more in the present and the immediate future.

There’s also a bit of a difference between Author and Host’s powers. Author *has* to write in pen or it won’t stick, hence the sounds of crossing out and page turning in the DiF videos

The Author has the power of suggestion through written word, he has to write it then speak it for anything to happen. And even then it’s a tossup on how suggestible the person he’s writing about is. Meanwhile the Host(either since he’s older in the same verse, or because his powers work differently in the twin verse) only has to speak the words with power behind them for it to work for him

That's fascinating! So Host is a little stronger, in one way?

Technically the Host is stronger, though his power of suggestion isn’t quite as strong as Author’s is, which means his subjects wouldn’t be as compelled to follow his words. He doesn’t have the advantage of having it written down like Author does.

He could type it, he has a type writer for that very purpose, but he prefers to just speak his stories and record them on a tape recorder. In the Twin Verse, Author would sometimes transcribe a story here or there as needed.

Ooooh, I never even considered the power of suggestion. Is it the idea that it has been manifested in two places (written and spoken word) that fuels it?

Yeah! Both actually have the same power, but developed it differently.

If Author tried to only speak his works, his suggestions would be little more than a passing thought that’s easy to disregard since he never had a reason to develop that aspect of it due to taking to writing.

Host on the other hand (in twin verse) struggled with writing things even when he could see, so he worked on using spoken word and was able to strengthen that part.

In the same verse, his lack of eyes forced him to work on spoken word stories, or he would be effectively powerless. Which, he wasn’t able to use it for a bit because that part of his ability was so weak.

Having to write things down, does put a little bit of a damper on Author’s powers, since in its purest form, if he was able to fully harness the power, it would act a lot like Charmspeak, compelling people and objects to do as he asked.

That's *fascinating*, especially in the twin setting. It's so cool when two characters have the same ability but how it develops is purely based on the individual.

So for Author, I imagine him writing them and not speaking them would also give a weak result, if any?

Since the power is largely speaking based, yeah, it would have the same result, possibly even weaker, than if he spoke it.

Technically, he wouldn’t have to write it, if he believed that he didn’t have to. Since he realized it because of his writing, he believes that his power is through written word, which then formed how he strengthened his power, if that makes sense. It is the power of suggestion, so since the Author believes his powers work the way they do, that’s how they work.

*oooooooh*, so he technically doesn't understand the strength of his own ability?

yep! He can’t comprehend how powerful he could be, neither can, so they use the small amount they *believe* they have

*Dang*. So everyone should be incredibly grateful that both are oblivious to the truth? How much potential do they actually have?

I’d sayyyy a *lot*.

At full potential, they could probably rewrite anything they wanted to, break the fourth wall, be complete puppet masters. Their words would be reality. That would also come with a constant feeling of “is this real, am I just doing this because it’s my part in the story?” And more crisis’ like that

So it’s either wield only a fraction of the power they possess and not question their life or the part they play, or have full power and constantly wonder if they themselves are being manipulated

At full power he would *know* that he’s just a character as well. Know that he was created to tell a story. Take a more antagonistic approach to dealing with c!Mark Fischbach (Who does technically exist!! According to Markiplier TV. Wether Dark/Wilford think he is Actor in disguise or know he’s completely different I haven’t decided or noticed yet)

YOOOOO. Wait that's so cool! God-like powers where you could risk losing everything if you fly too close to the sun. Maybe we're lucky neither Author nor Host know the truth after all!! (I also do like the idea of c!Mark existing, as well as whether he's an innocent, unrelated or a disguised Actor. Adds to the fun of it all!)

They’re also lucky they don’t know the truth hehe.

I probably won’t ever write about them reaching full potential, but it’s good to know what *could* happen

Yeah yeah! It's definitely good to be prepared in that situation!

Do they behave when around the Egos, or are rules specifically in place so others can't be controlled?

since the others know about their powers, it would take a lot to get one to do something with them. So they tend not to use them like that, using them more to “see” in the Host’s case, or, since the Author will also write just normal stories with pencil or electronically, to grab something from the kitchen or a different room without moving from their library/bedroom

The powers are definitely used for pranks tho. Both of them love to pull harmless pranks on the others and in the twin verse, each other. Ranging from gradually moving every piece of furniture just slightly to the left, to bouncing something another is trying to grab all around the room/house

there’s also a small part that happened *while* writing the one story I have about them.

Basically, the Host and the Author are only what they’re called when using their powers. They’re almost like, channeling it? Or they’re kinda like vessels to the power I suppose. Basically they are “something else” when using the power and those “something else” are called The Author and The Host. Otherwise they tend to just call each other by name and most of they egos do so as well. Superhero names, sort of.

Oh yeah, forgot about the visions. Both have them, but they’re definitely worse for Host since he’s technically the “more powerful” one cuz of how he channels the power.

[stupidrant]

i'm gonna be honest here, i just want to let it out there that i don't think it's entirely fair to judge thrud so harshly for being a product of her enviroment or her mistakes :( i can also point fingers at atreus for his poor decision making and acting out, but that would be stupid to do because he is after all a 14 year old kid. thrud is approximately same age as atreus and angrboda.

and i just realized just like jotunheim was angrboda's whole life and not being able to meet people her age, that's how it was for thrud while growing up in a toxic asgardian home with weird & down right mean family members. like whatever bullshit she saw and heard, all of it was a norm to her. we might not care, but the truth is that asgard was her entire world. her dad, however broken and unstable, was her entire world and wanted him to be better. and i would have had a problem if both dealt with their problems the same way or they were the same characters who showed grace, i greatly prefer them being on different ends of the spectrums so there's more room to develop their traits and arcs.

from thrud and sif's ending dialogues when they were sitting by the fire - i am sure that this is a kid who is going to shake off the ideology and propaganda they were raised with. she has to. because asgard is gone and she has to face reality in the other realms. and i don't doubt that sif the diplomat is going to keep her in check too!

(i am very sorry for the walls of text in your askbox but i find these discussions so fascinating and healthy, anyways i hope you're having a good day and what song are you listening to these days 💙💙💙 me personally i am in love with cowboy carter these days UGH I LOVE THE SONG TYRANT)

Im sure you know this anon but to anyone who might think otherwise i dont hate thrud so pls dont think that and i dont intend to start anything 😭 i agree she isnt a product of her family and i dont really put anything against her as she's just a kid hence why i think the most likely path she'd go is a self-reflection one rather than a self-deprecating one. Having differences is how atreus became friends with her, angrboda and skjoldr so heres to hoping for her and angie to be atleast acquaintances!

some additional comments about this too: i think the responses to thrud's character isnt completely because of her per-say, but more so because of the "fandom" (outside of here) and how she has a lot of weirdos on her (which isnt her fault either, shes just a character at the end of the day and a lot of those people do too much and it comes off as very disingenuous) and i think as time goes on, more people are gonna see through this and be a little turned off on her which is unfortunate because it should never be that serious and im not gonna let those people override my liking for her, im just pointing out how i see things and how dudebros fuck everything up in their paths. (since the year started i've been listening to more slower tempo songs tbh and i dont have any current favorites atm so imma just say sade - kiss of life for now lol)

[writerswho]

Fanfiction

Title: Coffee, Games, and Midnight Truths.

Words: 2,346.

Ratings/Warnings: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply.

Relationships: Eri & Midoriya Izuku, Bakugou Katsuki & Iida Tenya & Shinsou Hitoshi.

Summary: When Iida got off his bed to give a piece of his mind to whoever was disturbing the curfew, he was not expecting to be fine with it afterwards.

Links: ao3. Tips: Ko-fi.

Commissions info here!

Contrary to popular belief, Iida Tenya is not a stuck-up or a goody-two-shoes incapable of ever breaking the rules or looking the other way when needed. Does he like rules? Yes. Rules exist for one reason, usually to make sure people don't die in stupid ways. Does he believe that every rule should be followed? Not since he met one Midoriya Izuku. If Yuuei resident Green Bean is good at one thing, it's unwittingly breaking the rules. It's not his fault, most of the time. Sometimes it feels like the universe is swirling around him, and he always ends up in the middle of everything that can and will go wrong. Anyway, Iida knows how to lose up and look the other way, he has learned it the hard way (like when he tried to commit a homicide). Still, it is past midnight on a school day and there is noise coming from the communal area. Tenya is not stupid, he is aware that not all of his classmates follow the curfew. Some have trouble falling asleep, and some have screwed up their sleeping habits. Some like to hang around the common area and enjoy the stillness of dawn. As the class representative, Iida is familiar with the ways of his colleagues. And he doesn't care [too much] if they miss the curfew for one hour or two, as long as they respect the ones that are locked away in their bedroom trying to study or sleep. Which they do, mostly. 

Hence, Iida's current irritation.

Someone is downstairs right now, not only ignoring the more lenient and unofficial curfew that Aizawa-sensei lets them have if they keep it quiet, but they are also being very rude about it. They are laughing. It's shrill and loud enough to get carried away to Iidaʼs quarters. Tenya cannot recognise whoever it is only with their laugh, but he has a slight suspicion that it's more than one. Which makes everything worse in his book.

On his nightstand, Tenyaʼs phone vibrates and the screen lights up, showing a new notification. It's a message. From Bakugou, of all people. 

Bakugou Katsuki: Make the fuckers making the noise shut the fuck up, or I will. 

Iida does not approve of his classmate's choice of words, but he would also like to see the ones causing the disturbance to stop. Preferably without causing any more turmoil.

Iida Tenya: Working on it. 

Bakugou Katsuki: Work faster, discount Sonic. 

Tenya pockets his phone. There is no need for an answer. He puts on his spectacles and checks the time on the digital clock on his desk. Forty-three minutes after midnight. On a school night. Iida is not happy. 

He walks down the corridor with steady but silent steps. Opting for the stairs instead of the lift, trying to minimise the noise. The dorm doesn't need yet another person making noise late at night. 

Two flights of stairs later, the loud cacophony became even louder.

“Iida.” 

Half hidden by the shadows cast by the light coming from the balcony penetrating through the window is Shinsou. He's sitting by the table with a mug that Tenya is sure is full of scorching coffee.

“Shinsou,” Iida acknowledged. “Did the noise wake you up, too?”

“Not really. Did it wake you?”

“It's really loud.”

“Yeah, it is.” The purple-haired boy doesn't seem bothered by the fuss. “Do you plan on making it stop?”

“But of course.” Tenya is scandalised by the question. “It's way past curfew. And whoever is making all this noise is showing a complete display of disrespect for the dorm's rules and our colleagues.” Even in a hushed tone, Iida is authoritative in his words. “As the class rep, I must put an end to it.”

“It is your duty.” He says solemnly. “But I don't think you can manage that.” 

“Are you doubting my abilities?” Iidaʼs voice is one notch too high for the late night hour. 

“Iida,” he puts down his cup and looks directly at his speedster classmate, “I want you to know that I respect you as a class representative and a fellow hero-in-training.” Shinsouʼs voice is steady, leaving no room for doubt. 

“Oh… Uhm…” It's the best Tenya can say back. 

“Now, with all that said, I would like to say that, yes. I am doubting your capacities. I truly believe you will not be able to put an end to this particular contravention.”

“And why do you think that?”

“Call it a hunch,” Shinsou takes a long sip of his coffee, like a cartoon character would do after saying something vague. 

Shinsou Hitoshi is a very cryptic person, Tenya realises. 

“Well, your hunch is wrong.” Iida nudges his glasses up his nose. On cue, a laugh a touch louder than the previous ones echoes through the dark, silent Heights Alliance. “If you excuse me, I will fulfil my duties as the class rep and put an end to this agitation.” Iida gives Shinsou a curtsy nod. He straightens his back and stalks into the living room.

Sitting on the floor, hidden from view, Tenya finds Midoriya and Eri. The green-haired boy has his back resting against the sofa, Eri is placed between his legs, and they're fighting over Midoriyaʼs phone. 

“It's my turn!” Midoriya speaks in a loud whisper. He's struggling to get the mobile phone out of the little girl's grasp.

“But you lost,” Eri counters. 

“I lost because you kept poking the screen to make me hit the obstacles.”

“It's not my fault that you cannot work under pressure.” Her tone is sweet and innocent. 

“I can work under pressure!” His voice is very squeaky. Midoriya clears his throat. “I mean, working under pressure is fine. Trying to play with you chanting ʽlose, lose, loseʼ on my ear and messing with the game is an entirely different thing.”

“If you say so,” she does not look convinced. “Anyway, you lost. My turn.”

Wrestling over who keeps the phone, neither notices that Iida is standing by the sofa, watching them fighting like two five-year-olds. Well, in Eri's case, she is five. Midoriya doesn't have such an excuse. 

Tenya takes a glimpse of the device screen and there is a cat dressed up as a superhero running in the middle of the traffic and punching raccoons. 

Iida cleans his throat, making enough noise to catch Midoriya's attention and giving Eri the chance to completely take over the phone. 

“Ha!” She cheers. 

“Not fair, Iida distracted me.” He pouts. 

“You really need to work in your sit-ution-al a-wa-r-ene-ss.”

“You mean situational awareness?” In the low light of the screen phone, Iida can see Midoriya smiling. 

“Yeah!” She sounds proud of herself. 

“It's a really big word, where did you hear it?”

“Dad was complaining about how you don't have it the other day,” Eri says without taking her eyes off the game. She then stops playing, looks directly at Midoriya and slaps her mouth shut. “I mean, Aizawa-san was saying it… but, uhm, but he didn't know I was hearing, so… I… ahm…” 

“Eri,” Midoriya says in a low voice. He takes her by the chin and gently turns her face so that she is looking at him. “It's okay. I wouldn't tell if you don't, okay?” 

“You promise?”

“I do.” He offers her his pinkie, which she accepts as a promise. “Now, I cannot say he would be thrilled with you hearing behind the door, but I am pretty sure he would love to hear you calling him Dad.”

“Do you think so?” Her voice is small and full of hope. 

“Absolute.” Midoriyaʽs voice is firm, yet, Eri doesn't truly believe in him. “I bet, he would even smile.”

“Smile? Really?” Her eyes are like shining stars. 

“Really.”

“But he is not my dad.” Her voice comes out as a broken whisper that squeezes the two boys' hearts.

“Eri-chan, do you know how families work?”

“Yeah. You have a dad and a mummy and a granddad and if you're really lucky, you can have a brother or a sister. Or both!”

“That's right. But do you know that there is more than one type of family?”

“What do you mean?”

“To start with, you have the biological family you were born into.”

“Like my mum and dad from before?”

“Exactly. They're your biological family.”

“So I don't have a bi-o-logi-cal family any more, right?” Eri breaks eye contact. Her shoulders are slumped and exhausted. She's too young to feel this way.

“No, you do not.” Midoriya wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her close. He kisses the top of her head in a brotherly gesture. “But do you know what you have? You have me and Mirio-senpai and Aizawa-sensei and Mic-sensei and Hitoshi, and we are your family now.”

“How?”

“Because, Eri, when you care for someone, you're free to include them in your family. We picked you, Eri, and we won't let you go unless you want to.” 

“I don't want to go.”

“Good, because I lied. I will never let you go and if you try to escape, I will put you in a vault.” Midoriya's tone has a false seriousness that makes the girl laugh.

“But vaults are for treasures.”

“And you are my treasure,” he means it. “I may be a hero, Eri, but I would burn down the world for you. And I'm sure Aizawa-sensei would do the same, and the others too. Do you know why?” She shakes her head. “We love you, Eri.”

“But I'm a monster.” She cries. 

“Eri,” Midoriya speaks in a soft voice. He settles the child on the floor so that she can face him. “Eri, I need you to understand something, alright? You are not a monster. You never were and never will be a monster. What you are, Eri, is the most precious little girl in the whole world. You're my little sister, Eri, and I will never let anything bad happen to you ever again, okay? Since the moment I saw you, I knew I would do anything in my power to keep you safe and ensure your happiness. Of all those people passing by that street, you bumped into me, Eri. You chose me that day, and I chose you back. I will be with you for the rest of my life, Eri, not even the gods can separate us now that we're together.”

Iida can see the tears streaming down her tiny face. Tenya feels a tightness in his chest and guilt for witnessing such an intimate moment but is afraid that if he makes any move, the two of them will remember his presence and their bubble will be destroyed.

“I love you, Izu-nii.” She launched herself into his arms, squeezing him as hard as her little body could and soaking his shirt with tears.

“I love you, too, Eri-chan.” Midoriya squeezes her back, resting his chin on the top of her head. “To Pluto and back.” 

Engulfed by the darkness, the two hug desperately as if they feared the possibility of the other being torn from their arms. The abandoned phone on the floor next to them with its screen long gone dark and Iida's presence, barely acknowledged in the first place, completely forgotten.

Tenya feels a tap on his shoulder. Shinsou stands next to him, a finger over his lips telling him to stay silent. The purple-haired boy guides him back to the dining table. 

Eriʼs sobs and the tick-tack of the analogue clock on the wall are the only sounds brave enough to disturb the stillness of the early morning hours. 

Iida finds a cup placed in front of him. He looks at Shinsou, who gives him a wordless nod and takes it in his hands. Tenya is pleased to discover that it is chamomile tea and not coffee.

Side by side, they remain silent sitting in the darkness and sipping their lukewarm drinks. 

Eventually, the sob stops. Hushed voices can be heard, and a sniff. Music appears in the background, repetitive and annoying, and the faintest light is coming out of the living room. More time passes before one can hear a giggle, small and broken, but there nevertheless. The giggle continues, growing louder and bolder until it evolves into a full belly laugh. 

That's the best sound Iida has ever heard in his life. 

In his pocket, Iida's phone starts buzzing. Another message, from Bakugou. 

Bakugou Katsuki: What the hell, Four-Eyes, didn't I tell you to stop the noise, or I would? 

Iida Tenya: I changed my mind. It is not bothering me any more. 

Bakugou Katsuki: Did you hit your fucking head? Whatever. Don't come after me when I beat the shit out of these fuckers. 

Iida Tenya: Suit yourself. But I bet you wouldn't do anything either. 

Tenya's phone vibrates aggressively with the stream of notifications, but he just puts it on silent and returns it to his pocket. 

A loud thud is heard from the upper floors, followed by the heavy footsteps of someone marching down the stairs. Bakugou appears on the threshold of the staircase, examining the dark man with his red eyes that shine like two beams. He looks in the direction of the two sitting at the table. Out of the corner of his eye, Tenya sees Shinsou pointing towards Midoriya and Eri. The blond man snorts and walks into the living room with heavy steps. Shinsou taps the table with his index finger, counting. Ten seconds later, Bakugou made his way in the opposite direction. Without saying a word, he served himself coffee and sat down.

Tenya and Shinsou shared a look. He could swear there was a thin smile on the purple-haired boy's lips. 

Later, when Aizawa arrives at the dorm after his night shift, he finds three of his students stretched out uncomfortably on the kitchen table, fast asleep, and his problem child lying on the living room floor with his adopted daughter in his arms asleep as if they were not the reason for his early grey hair. 

[stellerssong]

Hi again. I'm on some level here to ask for a complete explanation of every aspect of Hawaiian culture that is even tangentially related to your latest fic because I know absolutely nothing and there is the ever present concern that the terms run through cursory Google Translate and internet searching will lose nuance and implications. There were definitely some references to divinities and myths and such that went over my unenlightened head. The story you wove was rich and intricate enough to be held in the mind of someone who knows less than nothing and still have great meaning and truth, but I know that it will mean yet more if I can see the threads you used to make it. (On another level, I'm asking for the explanation because I am abruptly deeply interested in a topic I had previously not thought about very much, and you seem to be significantly more of an expert than the average internet search.)

first off! well first off i am blowing you so many kisses for this very kind ask, thank you so much for giving me an excuse to ramble at (great, great, great) length.

so second off! i would just like to stress that i am very much not an expert in hawaiian language, folklore, history, culture, etc. i am neither kānaka maoli (native hawaiian) nor kamaʻāina (born in hawaiʻi although not necessarily of hawaiian ancestry), and i have not studied these topics formally/in a setting that applies academic rigor. i am an enthusiastic amateur with a personal connection to hawaiian culture, the kind of brain that likes to fixate on areas of interest, and a willingness to scrounge around for reading material. i have, i think, a decent sense of what some of the baseline texts in the field are, and a fairly good bullshit detector (and the understanding/ability to dig into things when i can't rely on the bullshit detector), but ultimately i am a layman and an outsider with corresponding perspectives and biases. i also, i will admit frankly, have a pretty sharp knowledge cutoff corresponding to the time of first european contact, just because of my own personal interests and reading preferences.

read that whole disclaimer? let your eyes glaze over while you skimmed it? good! here's my real quick (lmao) rundown of Sum Things U Should Know If You Wanna Close-Read Kīpuka:

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi 101

Good grief when I put it like that I do NOT feel qualified to tell you any of this. Anyway. We can keep it basic just so you can get a sense of the mouthfeel of the words. And just fyi ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi is the proper name of the language; i'll be using "Hawaiian" as the adjective form, sans ʻokina, assuming an English-speaking readership.

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi as it is commonly rendered today has 13 letters: 5 vowels (A, E, I, O, and U) and 7 consonants (H, K, L, M, N, P, W), plus the ʻokina or glottal stop (that little apostrophe-lookin' dude at the beginning of the word ʻokina, also the source of most of my typesetting woes). Pronunciation-wise, there are no silent letters and no though/through/enough-type surprises: every letter is pronounced, and all of the vowel renderings are approximately equivalent to how you'd pronounce them in Spanish or Italian. Hence, the word kuahine = koo-ah-HEE-nay rather than, like, kyoo-ah-highn, which made me feel gross even just typing it out.

The ʻokina is pronounced, and bear with me here, like the dash in the english nuh-uh. or, if you're a try-hard vocalist—reattack the vowel after the ʻokina instead of eliding it to the vowel prior. So the place-name Kaʻū is pronounced ka-OO, as distinct from the word kau which is pronounced more like kow (which is a bit of an oversimplification of the latter word, but I'm trying to be efficient here).

That leads us neatly into the other diacritical marking used in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, the kahakō or macron which helpfully appears in its own name. No worries here; the kahakō just serves as a stress marker, so you'd say kahakō = ka-ha-KO instead of ka-HA-ko, or from the example above ka-OO rather than KA-oo.

There are a couple of other little pronunciation tricks here and there. The letter W is sometimes pronounced as a V, and unfortunately I can't really describe the rules for that shift; that is one I must admit I know mostly from vibes. For example, the correct pronunciation of Hawaiʻi itself is ha-VAI-ee, but I've never heard the place-name Waimea pronounced as anything but why-MEY-ah.

Occasionally you will encounter the letter K pronounced as a T, which I believe is an artifact of the morphological shift from older related languages such as Tahitian and Samoan which do preserve the letter T as a unique phoneme. To my knowledge, the Kauaʻi dialect (spoken today on Niʻihau) also preserves the T, but most spoken ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi heard elsewhere is based on the Big Island dialect, which lacks the T. One notable exception is the word tūtū (an affectionate/respectful term for a grandparent or elder), which you really don't hear pronounced as kūkū.

Really, though, listening to Hawaiian music is how I got the language in my ear and imo it's the best way to get it in yours. Can't go wrong with Israel Kamakawiwoʻole (of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" fame), but I have a personal soft spot for Kealiʻi Reichel, Weldon Kekauoha, Amy Hanaialiʻi, and the Cazimero Brothers.

The Place-y-ness of Hawaiian Literature

This is more of a sidenote than its own heading, but I'm the one driving the essay, and I think it's an interesting thing to point out, just because it helps establish a particular perspective I wanted to keep in mind while writing this fic.

Something you might notice as you start to look at Hawaiian oli, mele, and myth is the high level of specificity of place. Hawaiʻi is, let's be honest, not that enormous of a place when you consider it on a global scale—but the specificity of localities within Hawaiian literature is kind of astounding. Not only are there loads of place-names referenced in any given work, there are unique Hawaiian names for landmarks, cliffs, peaks, hills, streams, waterfalls—even rains and winds of specific locations merit their own names.

"kīpuka" is very specifically set on the windward side of Hawaiʻi island, so I made an effort to focus my references to place-names on that region—Hilo, ʻŌlaʻa, and Waiākea are all locations on the eastern side of the island, and the one reference to Kona on the leeward side reflects the coming of someone bearing grievances (in addition to eia aʻe ka makani Kona being an existing idiom warning the listener to watch out for an angry person, the windward and leeward sides of Hawaiʻi island have a long history of territorial warfare and jockeying for control of the island). I'd also considered having the bird discussed in the fic be a different species, the kākāwahie—but that species is/was endemic to Molokaʻi, and quite honestly my knowledge of the history and culture of Molokaʻi as a separate polity is not that great.

(This is partly due to sample bias—my introduction to Hawaiʻi was within a Big Island-based context. At the same time, another thing you may notice about the better-known source texts is that many of them center around Hawaiʻi island and, to a lesser extent, Maui, thanks to the political supremacy during the unification/post-contact era of Hawaiʻi island and Maui aliʻi. Ross Cordy wrote a whole ass book about the Oʻahu chiefdoms that is simply not to be had for love or money no matter how I search for it. I am THIS CLOSE to straight up cold emailing the man and being like I WILL VENMO YOU $75 USD DIRECTLY IF YOU WILL SIMPLY JUST SEND ME A COPY OF YOUR BOOK. PLEASE. SAVE ME ROSS CORDY.)

Girl (Gender Neutral), I Cannot Explain Hawaiian Mythology, Poetics, and Mythopoetics As a Subheading in One Post

Honestly. I can't do it. But some tidbits to assist your further research:

A great deal of Hawaiian literature and oral tradition hinges on kaona, roughly "allusion" or "metaphor." In a description that is useful to precisely no one but myself, it's not unlike the complex plays on words, puns, and deep well of references used in Heian Japanese epistolary poetry. Some of it is easy to grok for newbies: for example, the concept of one's lover as a lei adorning the body, or being splashed or sprinkled with water as a euphemism for sex. Some of it goes a lot deeper, relying on historical or folkloric place-name associations, puns, and ancient practices and superstitions.

The Hawaiian "pantheon" I place in scare quotes because ancient Hawaiian religious practices and superstition were highly syncretic, often extremely localized, and more contradictory the more you read into it. In a very, very, very, VERY rough and off-the-cuff sense, though, there were thought to be four major gods: Kāne (associated with dawn, the sun, the sky, running freshwater, and irrigation-based agriculture, among other things), Kanaloa (associated with the ocean, sea creatures, and sometimes death, as an opposing or complimentary force to Kāne), Lono (god of fertility, agriculture with something of an emphasis on dryland agriculture, rainfall, and peace as embodied in the Makahiki festival), and Kū (god of war, the deified kingship, fishermen, sorcery, and quite honestly a ton of other things in various manifestations).

There were also quite a large number of "lesser" gods, the word "lesser" used just in the sense that they weren't honored to the same extent as the four previously named in state-sanctioned religious practice. Probably the most well-known of these is Pele, the volcano goddess. (I reference another in the fic, Niolopua, god of sleep—but the jury's out on whether or not that refers to an actual god or is just metaphorical in the same way that most people think of "the Sandman" as a euphemism for sleep and not a literal guy who comes into your house and puts crusties in your eyes.)

The gods were thought to manifest in a variety of forms, called kino lau (literally "four hundred bodies"). You can think of this in the sense of "Lono takes on the shape of an albatross or a tropicbird to interact with mortals, while Kanaloa prefers to manifest as an octopus," and in stories kino lau are sometimes represented that way, but in practice it's less of a Greek myth-style practice of shapeshifting and more of an animistic religious belief. The kino lau in nature embody the god and in a metaphorical sense illustrate the interconnection between divine and earthly and the presence of the divine on earth.

(HUGE OVERSIMPLIFICATION. HUGE OVERSIMPLIFICATION. PLEASE DO MORE RESEARCH AND DO NOT TAKE ONE TUMBLR POST AT ITS WORD ON THIS.)

The Endless, in the fic, are very easy to loop into the concept of kino lau, because of their canonical universality. Danny appears as a shark (a symbol of chiefhood), a pueo, or Hawaiian owl (an 'aumakua, or ancestral guardian), a manu-o-Kū, or fairy tern (a bird associated with the god Kū, likely in his aspect as a god of fishermen, navigators, and wayfinders), a kalo plant (a staple crop of ancient Hawaiʻi, a kino lau of Kāne, and a symbol of duality and rebirth), and a snowcapped mountain (a sacred site considered kapu, or forbidden, to all but the highest chiefly individuals). Despair, meanwhile, appears as an ʻalae ʻula, or Hawaiian moorhen (another ʻaumakua, but also an animal whose cry was thought to foretell misfortune), a stingray (for her barbed tail), a hāpuʻu fern (in contrast to Dream's kalo, the hāpuʻu was considered a famine food), a lava flow and its first growths (acknowledging Pele as both a destroyer and a creator of land, just as Despair also embodies hope), and a number of other things meant to embody the devastation of Hawaiʻi (rats, feral pigs, and mosquitoes have decimated endemic birds and insects; the kiawe is an invasive plant species that forms dense, thorny, and difficult-to-destroy groves; light pollution affects behavior and migratory patterns of both avian and aquatic species).

All pretty simple, obviously!

Further Resources and Recs

Okay, so, obviously I'm not going to be able to explain every single reference in this fic in a single post, though I obviously tried my damnedest. In lieu of that, I'll offer some useful resources for further reading:

Stephen Trussel's Combined Hawaiian Dictionary is a fantastic resource for vocab that incorporates several major Hawaiian dictionaries in a straightforward (well, as straightforward as this gets) text-based web page. Ulukau also has a searchable interface, which is a little easier to interact with, but I like having the Trussel for reference.

Huapala is everyone's go-to for translations of Hawaiian lyrics. I've linked to it in the endnotes of the fic for readers interested in more on "Ka Ipo Lei Manu," but it's got nearly any ʻauana-style Hawaiian song you please, and if I recall correctly even a few traditional oli. Again, another slightly old-fashioned text-based site—but we all know how to use CMD + F in a page, do we not?

Native Books is awesome if you, like me, prefer reading things in print but would prefer not to feed your dollars into the maw of the Amazon beast. A lot of the lit on Hawaiʻi was printed either a long time ago or in very small releases and is now out-of-print and difficult to find even in libraries, so it rocks that there's an independent bookseller that specializes in getting those works to an audience in hard copy. @ NATIVE BOOKS PLEASE CONSIDER GETTING ROSS CORDY TO RE-PRINT THE RISE AND FALL OF THE OʻAHU KINGDOM THANK YOU SO MUCH. University of Hawaiʻi Press is also a good source for academic texts, although their website is...mm...difficult to navigate, and do be warned that they charge academic press prices.

In terms of who to read, you really can't go wrong with Mary Kawena Pukui, a Native Hawaiian scholar, author, composer, and educator whose work is the backbone of just, a fuckton of writing about Hawaiʻi, both academic and popular. Her book ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs and Poetical Sayings is worth at least a skim just to get the feel of the Hawaiian mindset; it also contains a healthy dose of myth, folklore, and history in the explanations of the sayings. Absolutely adorably, I've found two books she edited that I read the absolute FUCK out of as a child available as PDFs through Ulukau: The Water of Kāne and Other Legends of the Hawaiian Islands and Hawaiʻi Island Legends: Pīkoi, Pele, and Others. Definitely worth a quick read if you want more on the myth side of things.

As a non-specialist, I've really enjoyed Patrick Vinton Kirch's writing on precontact Hawaiʻi. For a field archaeologist, his writing is both highly engaging and very respectful of the peoples he studies, and trust me, I do get my back up easily when it comes to white people writing about Other Cultures TM, so I'd posit it means something that he passes my sniff test. A Shark Going Inland is My Chief is a great overview of the history of the Hawaiian chiefdoms from the first settlement of the islands to immediately precontact, and Kuaʻāina Kahiko offers a bit of a closer look at everyday life in a specific locality in the islands (in this case, Kahikinui, Maui).

Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekūhaupiʻo by Stephen Desha (trans. Frances N. Frazier) began its life as a serialized Hawaiian-language history of the rise of Kamehameha I. It's a dense read, and it WILL test your ability to remember who the hell all these people are to its limit—it mostly discusses the lives and times of the major players of the aliʻi class in the late precontact–early postcontact era, and when you remember that a) a hell of a lot of personal names in this tale begin with the letter K and b) the aliʻi class of Hawaiʻi practiced a mindboggling amount of political marriage, consanguineous marriage, and sanctioned adoption between blood relatives, the family trees get real complicated REAL fast. If you can hang on through all that, though, it's an intensely detailed and very vivid portrait of a culture at a tumultuous moment, it gives a great sense of how the Hawaiians viewed themselves and the world, and it's an interesting exercise in the mythologizing of the Kamehameha dynasty.

Okay, So...?

So...if you hung on through all that, god DAMN are you dedicated. Have what is quite possibly my favorite Hawaiian song for your trouble. It is, funnily enough, about a bird.

EDIT: I am retroactively making this post unrebloggable. I'm really, really glad folks have found it interesting and are looking into the resources I shared, but I absolutely do not want this getting passed around as Hawaiian Culture 101. If you want to learn more about Hawaiʻi, I must stress that you should look to a reputable source and not some schmuck on Tumblr rambling about her effortposting fanned fiction.

[randomfoggytiger]

Hi Tiger, I'm Anonymous who believes that Duchovny is not as introverted as he wants to appear. Thank you for your reply - I never imagined it would be so complete, I'm extremely grateful. I really admire your ability to manage a dialog without offending anyone, accepting opposing opinions.❤️😘 My opinion - a bit quick because I was anxious to answer you: I think he's quite happy and satisfied with his current life, perhaps he expected more from his career, but apart from that, he's in a good professional and personal moment. That's why I don't like this victimization - I think it's false and unnecessary. He doesn't need to justify anything or worry about looking like a distressed person. I'm just not convinced. I'd rather have an outspoken and vivacious Charlie Sheen, living his life as he sees fit, than Duchovny playing traumatized to escape criticism.😉

I thought the podcasts were great, I want him to continue. I prefer it when he focuses more on the guests than on himself and, frankly, I think we've had enough of talking about the parents' divorce. I'm a no vote, but I think the mother made a lot of mistakes too, the grief over the separation lasted a long time and that hurt the children. I had a relative who couldn't bear the pain of being left and raised her children in a climate of sadness, pain and whining - they felt obliged to be sad so as not to hurt their mother. A home without joy is very bad for children. I don't know if this was the case, but there are two sides to every story.

As for his private life - which I don't really care about, I don't think any crime has been committed - all the opinions have some truth in them - and a lot of speculation. Just as he's not Cosby or Gandhi, the girl is no Messalina, but she's no Joana d'Arc either. 😏 I promise I won't make any more comparisons, the last one: the relationship isn't a horror story, but it's also far from a fairy tale. It's not to be stoned, but it's not to be applauded either. In life there is a natural reciprocity: if I objectify someone, they also objectify me back. It's only fair. And we're the ones who face the consequences of our choices, so why dwell on other people's choices that don't affect us at all? A big hug to you, never stop writing - I want to come back here many times in 2025.🙏🙏

No problem! I'm willing to entertain ideas; and I try to remain as unruffled as possible. The inner tiger only comes out when I feel someone's not being given a fair and balanced shake. ;)))

Hm, maybe his podcast doesn't bother me because I see it as a purging. He's got a lot bottled up that he hasn't tackled, from what I'm hearing-- his mother's passing being No. 1. Right before (and after) his father's death, DD was still processing his childhood abandonment and the scars that came from those; and we heard a lot about the pain Amram inflicted via his absence. He and his father scrapped together some closure right before Amram's death... but it doesn't sound like he and his mom ever did-- hence, his lying to her at last about his thesis; then coming to the (logical) conclusion later that she never heard that "beautiful" lie, regardless. As a child, he was always melancholic and guilt-infested; and that, in my opinion, amplified towards the end of his mother's life: he couldn't "heal" her, he couldn't finish his thesis for her, he couldn't care for her dementia, etc. I and others could process and work through those emotions with varying degrees of "ease"... but, again, he's a broken person (per his own words) that keeps butting up against internal realities he can't quite settle. That, and DD fears that the current political climate doesn't acknowledge the importance of failure. Hence, he doubles down on, dwells in, and wants to work through it publicly (like learning guitar with his kids-- polishing up a philosophy or skill publicly, leading the way while bearing the torch, etc.)

Oh, I doubt Monique is a Joan of Arc. I doubt anyone's a Joan of Arc. Maybe that's my pessimistic side. ;))) But she has as much freedom as her heart could desire, a boyfriend who includes her in his and his kids' life (that we know of), and a safety net to fall back on should things dissolve. I'm rooting for them. But maybe that's my optimistic side. :DDD

I can't see Charlie Sheen sitting down and tearing up over not being enough for his mother-- nor Sean Penn or Alec Baldwin for that matter. XDDD But then again, I don't know Charlie Sheen or Sean Penn or Alec Baldwin (though I have heard the latter two talk and....) I just try to take people for what they are, look at the pattern of their actions instead of their words, and cast around for as much information as possible to make a clear-headed assessment.

And I respect your position, and any one else who either A. doesn't like this type of a relationship or B. doesn't care. (Just as long as we're all above board with our conclusions. Life's too short to dramatize, idolize, or lie. Duh. XDD)

Lastly, thank you for your compliments! I'm looking forward to what 2025 will bring. Thus far, it's been gentle and forgiving.

Oh, also! I don't think DD is satisfied with his career, yet. But is anyone, really? There's always something more to do, some other way to show our true selves, or some newer idea to better achieve nirvana, etc. etc. I think his concerts get him close to that feeling of "oneness" or "wholeness" that he's seeking professionally. But that's merely speculation, and not a solid one at that.

[studyinglogic]

Two Horror Movies, with sundry comments on Godzilla

I rarely watch movies, and in particular I almost never watch horror movies. I prefer to read the plots online: so many of the cheap thrills of horror movies come from mere effects (jumpscares, uncanny valleys) that they are uninteresting to watch. To paraphrase from The Unwritten, in a delicious piece of double meaning---what keeps bad writers going? Genre conventions.

And even reading the plots online are often a mixed bag: The Wicker Man has cleverness to it, while The Blair Witch Project reads like an incoherent dream.

The horror movies I find most interesting are those with religious themes. Religious horror, in other words. In fact, the only horror movie I've ever watched is 11-11-11, and I plan to read the plot for Heretic.

At least for me, horror in itself is uninteresting; I find horror is horrifying more for what it points to. I used to find reading Lovecraft very comforting, precisely because the specific horrors he describes are so implausible: no matter how bad the world is, there are no Great Old Ones who might awaken to destroy us. But it becomes horrifying when thinking about the worldview that underlies his stories.

(And similarly for Godzilla movies, which are either fun monster fights or cutting commentaries on society. My favourite of the second type is Shin Godzilla, for its commentary on bureaucracy.)

Two horror movies were released October 2024: Smile 2 and The Apprentice. Both have similar plotlines, as far as I can gather. The plot of Smile 2 is about a malevolent entity which is passed from person to person; the plot of The Apprentice is centred on Roy Cohn's influence on Donald Trump. The similarity is obvious: it is Cohnness which is passed on to Trump, his habitus, his way of being, his adversarial offensive style, his form of life, his disregard of the truth, his manipulation of language---all codified in three rules.

But, for what it's worth, I find The Apprentice more of a horror movie than Smile 2. The evil entity in Smile 2 can only be passed from one person to one person; Cohn's Cohnness is transmissible to many and affects many (the end of the movie promises that).

And the Smile movies are uninteresting to me insofar as humans can only be victims in that world; in The Apprentice, humans can be both evil entities and victims, and in fact the entity himself becomes a victim towards the movie's end. (Cohn's panel on the AIDS Memorial Quilt reads "Bully. Coward. Victim.")

A final horror in The Apprentice is that the entity does not know it has become the entity. I am reminded of the final scene of The Godfather Part II, where Michael Corleone is supreme but sits alone; his choices and circumstances have rendered him a completely different person from the friendly, optimistic man he was when we first met him. But in The Godfather, the corruption is known and calculated and chosen; in The Apprentice, it happens slowly and gradually. Similar to Smile, the death of the previous person the entity possesses marks its entrance into a new person; Cohn's death marks the absorption of Cohnness into Trump.

This theme of ignorance occurs in Lovecraft as well, if not more strongly, because ignorance is the only option. Explorers who encounter the horrors beyond comprehension are driven mad (and hence their knowledge of these horrors is contained and rendered incommunicable). People who do not encounter these horrors are live happy lives of ignorance.

My favored interpretation of Lovecraft comes from Alan Moore; as Ayres puts it in his Alan Moore: A Critical Guide (pp. 151--152):

The horror is not that Earth has been deformed into something Lovecraftian, but that Lovecraftian wickedness has always been there, in need of agents to activate it. ...Joshi notes that Lovecraft’s characters confront chthonic horror and end up mad or suicidal. When Lovecraft’s narrators seem to display acceptance, Joshi clarifies, Lovecraft is “indicating that his [the narrator’s] mind is changing, emphasising the horror” (Moore 2017a: n. pag.). Acceptance, in this schema, is actually the more unnerving response, for it means that horror itself is no longer recognizable as such.

The same message recurs at the end of The Apprentice.

[para-imperium]

Interstellar Warfare

The large-scale multi-ship battles seen occasionally in interplanetary warfare are almost unheard of when the combatants are located in entirely different star systems. The main reason is simply the orders of magnitude difference in travel time and cost. Starships using reaction drives require many cubic kilometers of reaction mass just to get up to the speeds where ramscoops are effective, while gravity and warp drives require unfathomable amounts of energy and matter just to build.

Therefore, would-be interstellar invaders tend to adopt one of two strategies: The WMD approach is usually only effective against technologically inferior opponents, but if they pull it off a single starship can conquer a star. A G-Drive ship can dance around a fleet of reaction ships, slicing them to ribbons without even taking a hit, while even the least r-drive starship is a colossus compared to system ships. The power of their drives, combined with the purpose-built weapons that civilizations capable of building starships can design, means that almost any starship can lay waste to a defenseless star system in a matter of weeks.

Of course, if the invaders want to capture the biosphere intact (which most do, as it tends to be the most valuable part of a star system), they can’t simply throw nukes and c-bombs everywhere. Which means that the ship’s crew has to negotiate the tricky task of persuading the local governments to surrender with minimal devastation. Even if they succeed in this task, the resulting political arrangements tend not to last long. The elites and masses of such worlds tend to resent “quisling” leaders and efforts to depose them are soon to follow.

As such, worlds conquered by WMD use tend to acquire a growing number of radioactive craters as their overlords periodically reassert their rule, assuming the natives don’t somehow get hold of the technology required to shoot them down. This is less of an issue for nomadic “pirate” lords who only care about collecting their tribute and moving on, but for would-be emperors this is a bit of a hassle.

Hence the second approach: Subversion. This can also be accomplished by a single ship, but they tend to be more subtle in their methods. Using (comparatively) stealthy craft, agents are delivered to the system’s habitats where they infiltrate the population. These agents then make contact with the local discontents (there always are some) and attempt to recruit them.

To assist in this mission, agents are trained in a variety of disciplines ranging from hand-to-hand combat to megastructure engineering and meme hacking. They also tend to be equipped with the best nanofabricators that can fit in their ships, which can be large enough to build other spaceships or warmechs, in order to supply their fifth column with weapons, armor, and augmentations. These “gifts”, naturally, come with backdoors the agent can use to retain control. Remote-triggered explosives, gene-locks, even integral AI controls hardwired to obey direct orders from the agents.

Once the “revolution” seizes control they establish a government that passes outwardly as independent, but is in truth a puppet of their new “allies” from another star system. Their taxes are disguised as “trade” or “investments”, even “foreign aid.” Eventually the populace of such states figures out they’ve been conquered, but by then a substantial fraction of said populace has decided that they prefer living under their overlord’s thumb and the usual result is a civil war rather than complete secession.

House Ronkall’s paladins are particularly insidious. Their blood-bourne assemblers construct bionic augmentations in the infectee’s body, including an AI controller in their own brain that compels them to use their augs to fight criminal activity in their home polity. Helping endear themselves to the population, until the order to take over comes out. A single paladin can arrive on a planet butt-naked and infect a critical mass within just a couple short years.

[fumiko-matsubara]

Describing Chiba's personality like he's a main character on a well-written wikia page

Because way too many people mischaracterized him for my liking and enough is ENOUGH!

Note: I am ignoring the anime adaptation because the changes they made completely ruined Chiba's character.

Chiba generally appears to be a calm and serious boy whose maturity and professionalism for his age was always noted by others during missions. He always gets the job done with little to no complaints, simply allowing his results to speak for his high skills. Along with his fellow sniper Hayami, Chiba tends to be compared to a working adult.

But outside of assassination, Chiba is surprisingly fairly social and bubbly, often seen wearing a wide smile on his face and is rarely alone. He seems to enjoy the company of others and is always present whenever his classmates gather to do an activity together. Because no one can see his expression with the way his hair covers his eyes, Chiba becomes frequently misunderstood by strangers, but his close classmates described him to be a very gentle and soft-hearted person.

Chiba is very tolerant and tends to be a little bit of a people pleaser, always putting other people’s feelings over his own even at the risk of possibly wearing himself out. The reason why he hides his eyes is to accommodate his peers when he was younger since his intense gaze made him appear to be always on guard. Similarly, he dislikes letting others down. It’s why he never complains when his classmates began putting their faith in his skills when he was assigned the most important role in the Island Assassination attempt. He fears that letting his concerns be known before the attempt was made might shake his classmates’ confidence and he doesn’t want that. Hence, he swallowed his feelings and continued on with the job. Later, Chiba outwardly admits that he felt so pressured by the amount of faith his classmates had in him that it inevitably affected his usually near-perfect performance. 

Chiba is notably keen on logic and prefers to only rely on solid facts when taking in information. He is a realist who lives in the present, using his five senses to quietly observe the world around him, thus noticing details that most people tend to miss. After the announcement of their final exam results when he noticed the dejected Karma despite the nonchalant front, he knew exactly what to do to cheer him up. Another example was when he decided to check on Kurahashi who was feeling down after Takaoka began taking over their PE classes, aware of her interest towards Karasuma.

His spatial awareness was what makes his sniping accuracy be of high level, easily being able to determine the distance between point A and point B while taking account of outside factors such as wind direction and trajectory of the bullet. In the Korosuu novel, he even shows his disinterest towards Hayami’s suggestion of using his “intuition” to shoot because it clashes with his extremely calculated sniping method.

Although he never brags about it, Chiba is rightfully proud of his skills and despises it when his abilities gets undermined and ridiculed to the point that he becomes very petty about it. When the Legendary Sniper called him a hindrance after giving him a warning shot in chapter 5 of the Korosuu novel, Chiba meticulously instructed Hayami to shoot back at the sniper out of pure spite.

His learned tendency to swallow his concerns when in the middle of a job makes other people mistake him for someone who always hides what he feels. But the surprising truth is that Chiba finds it easy to be completely transparent about his feelings, especially with how self-aware he actually was. Right after the Island assassination attempt was deemed a failure, Chiba wasted no time asking Ritsu to confirm what he had observed during the assassination attempt. He did not hesitate to express the pride and confidence he always has in his skills from how extremely well he typically does in rehearsals and practice sessions, as well as the growing pressure he felt from not wanting to let others down finally dawning on him the second he was about to pull the trigger.

By the time he returned to the hotel, Chiba was able to navigate through his feelings and let them out in the open for Ritsu and the others nearby to hear. Throughout the entire infiltration, Chiba did not once think back to his prior failure, more concerned with what is currently happening around him, like Korosensei entrusting him and Hayami to use real guns, which he finds to be an absurd thing for a teacher to do. Chiba’s method of instantly facing his feelings after the concerned matter is done with is what allows him to move forward without regrets.

Ever since the pep talk Korosensei gave to them, Chiba slowly began to voice out his concerns and share the details he had observed more often. It later turns out that he deeply respects Hazama because the ease she has to string her words together outloud with hardly any care about what others may think was something he couldn't replicate himself.

In Korotan B, Chiba noticed the direction of the conversation he and Puey were having and thus tried his luck to ask about the boy’s backstory while he was still being talkative. When the class became divided in whether they wanted to continue the assassination or not after learning the truth about Korosensei, Chiba volunteered to be the first to pick his side with no hesitation, which was the Kill Team. He expressed that he had long decided on what he wanted to do and will go through with it.

A rather hidden side of him was that he is an adrenaline junkie who gets very excited at the notion of doing something fear-inducing and borderline dangerous, like going to space or riding intense amusement park rides. He has a liking towards intense things in general, given his love for hardcore punk and metal bands.

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Chiba Ryuunosuke Masterlist

Differentiating Chiba and Hayami's sniping methods using MBTI

This panel of Chiba and Nakamura I found interesting