#hes a flawed character and i LOVE that about him but i tend to look at characters im fixated on with rose colored glasses

[franken-loser]

I wish my brain had the capacity to actually analyze frankenstein characters cause they're sooooo interesting and i adore them and i would LOVE to write an analysis on some of them

but most of what goes on in my brain all day is literally just victor and henry kissing, i wish i was joking

[shadykazama]

Sun Wukong/The destined one (mostly relationship) headcanons!

The people have spoken and the people crave monkey business. So let's get down to it!

❤

Post journey Wukong is a wiser, stronger monkey, but don't let him fool you he's still a trickster at heart.

When you first meet, he has you refer to him as 'Great Sage'.

Earning the right to say his given name isn't so much a big moment as it is just him beginning to care for you. You slip up, whether it be because you were sick or injured or just not thinking, and he doesn't correct you. In fact he kind of likes it.

He doesn't make a big deal out of it, but if you watch closely you can see his tail twitch and his eyes lost in thought.

One character flaw you'll have to deal with, even when you're just friends, is Wukong thinks he knows what's best. He's old and wisened and POWERFUL; if he thinks he knows something will be best for you, he'll do it without so much as telling you.

Credit to Hanibalistic! Their one shot about Wukong and stealing an immortal peach for a mortal reader was perfect and exactly how I think he'd act! That impulsive, "I care about this person and will do what I think is best for them regardless of the consequences or their opinion" is very... him.

Hey, we all have our flaws. (Just don't tell him that.)

On the positive side, he wouldn't let a scratch befall you. At some point you'll stop instinctually defending yourself because of how safe you feel with him. Which is heavily ironic considering how often he himself will put you in dangerous situations just to pull a prank.

But besides your poor heart from getting scared so often, you have nothing to worry about. Wukong won't leave room for even one mistake to slip by him.

Expect him to never call you by your name, almost ever. He chronically tends to call people by titles or nicknames. From calling the tang monk, master, or how he'd call Bajie 'idiot' for most of the book- just expect something. He'd only refer to you by name if he were really serious.

Something I personally find really funny that isn't represented in many medias with him is that he's OLD. He's old as hell and he knows it. In the book he'll often refer to basically everyone as 'nephew' or 'little brother' which is oddly endearing and also really funny.

I feel as though most people don't utilize how heavy he is- even in movies and stuff. His staff is like thousands of pounds! You aren't moving him unless he wants you to. God forbid you end up cuddling. Even while resting I never think he'd put his full weight on you, but you'd definitely be stuck.

Will never refuse to help you, but will tease you endlessly for needing it. "Helpless little thing aren't you?"

His love language is gift giving and acts of service.

He's impulsive with words, but look at how he treats you and you'll see how he cares.

Considering his connections, expect to have the world at your fingertips. He'll never leave you wanting, you'll always be satisfied. There is no gift beyond his reach. Just be careful what you ask for, because he WILL get it one way or another.

He is a king, a leader- it's basically second nature to be serviced, and that's why it's so important how he acts toward you. For you, he stays vigilant, ready to catch you if you fall or feed you when you're hungry. For you, he'll carry you in his arms if you're tired. For you he'd put himself in servitude.

Monkeys also show affection to one another by grabbing at each other for attention, and grooming one another's hair.

I don't think he'd have any trouble getting your attention, he's very vocal! So he'd focus more on your hair. Don't be surprised if he randomly starts combing through with his fingers or just playing with it. It's calming for him, and another form of affection.

You've changed him for the better... And for the worse. He happier, more content and occupied (which is good for everyone). BUT, should you ever disappear or get stolen from him he would surely devastate heaven and earth to get you back. The last thing anyone needs is another, more wrathful, Wukong rampage.

Expect to get shown off at every convenience! You're his king/queen and he'll make sure everyone knows it.

You have the BIGGEST wedding. And I think the best part would've been the Chuangmen, which is a wedding game tradition, usually meant for the groom to prove his loyalty, devotion, and desire to marry the bride by completing tests made by her bridesmaids. There are a ton of really interesting Chinese wedding traditions that I would recommend reading about, but with the sheer power of Wukong, these challenges in particular could've been absolutely ridiculous!

Wukong isn't jealous, no that would be ridiculous, he has nothing to fear. That by no means doesn't mean that he doesn't get offended on your behalf. He's gotten upset at not being greeted properly, there's no way in HELL he doesn't get pissed if someone were to flirt with you. They're lucky if all he does is kill them.

Feel free to make fun of him for not being able to swim. He'll absolutely make you regret it, but do it anyway it'll be funny.

Am I the only one that thinks he'd be great with kids? 🤚

Like COME ON- the dude probably helps take care of the baby monkeys on his mountain. He tells them cool stories to get them riled up. Will lay down and let them play with his hair while you read or sing to him.

Give this man kids I dare you.

That's a topic for a different post 😌

Likes kissing you on the top of the head, will also lay his forehead against yours just to be close to you.

These two designs I really like for him! Y'all let me know in the comments which version is your favorite <3

💙

The destined one may look like Wukong, but they're certainly different in... most areas.

Being selectively mute makes things a good share more difficult to communicate with him than Wukong, but it has it's charms.

You'd just been... tagging along with him. He didn't mind, unlike the wolves and undead he'd been beating through, you proved no threat to him.

He figured you would just leave on your own- or die. But by some miracle even he didn't understand, you stuck by him through rain and dust storms alike. By the time you made it to the New West he felt obligated to keep you around.

For the first time since you started following him, you were actually in danger. And to both of your surprises, he dropped what he was doing to protect you.

Don't bother asking him why. Whether you do, or simply tell him thank you, he'll just wave you off. But you notice him walking closer to you than normal after that. No longer were you left to catch up with him while he sprinted off; he'd keep stride with you now, glancing at you every now and then.

He CAN talk, and he probably surprises you the first time he does. It's not even for something important. It's just one fateful night where you happen to decide to mess with his hair. You'd pull away after a moment and he'd rumble out a little, "Don't stop."

Now that you KNOW he can talk, it's even more annoying when he refuses to answer you.

He finds it amusing when you get frustrated with him about it. He can't help it. The whole time you're grumbling or ranting at him, he's just staring at you with his stoic face... thinking about how cute you are.

Feel free to give him a name. Not like he'll argue with whatever you pick-

But really, please call him something other than "the destined one". He'd never really needed a name before, but he'd treasure whatever you decide to call him.

He probably has a nickname for you too, he just only says it in his head...

Will click his tongue at you to get your attention. (Absolutely does the 'tsk tsk tsk' thing people do to call their cats)

Speaking of getting your attention- ^ remember how monkeys show affection by just kind of grabbing each other and squeezing and pressing their head against each other?

Yeeeeah. He's a touchy monkey. He won't ask for affection, so he kind of just does it himself. Will rub his head on you, not unlike how cats or rabbits do to mark things they like. Except he's just doing it to be affectionate.

Gets cuteness aggression and WILL just grab you.

If it wasn't obvious, his love languages are physical touch and quality time.

Doesn't need help putting armor on, but if you want to help he won't stop you. (The closeness makes his heart beat fast)

If you were ever both in a bad spot- being threatened and not in a place to put up a good fight, he'd cover your body with his and bare his fangs at whatever was trying to hurt you guys to intimidate it. (It probably wouldn't work- but it's an instinctual response.)

If your feet got cold in the snow in the New West he'd pick you up and let you rest on his back for awhile.

Likes when you rely on him like that, it makes him feel stronger. And besides it just "being his destiny", knowing you'll get hurt if he loses helps him focus during fights.

Terribly jealous individual.

The glare he would give someone is straight up deadly. Watch out for how his tail flicks around when he's irritated too 🤭.

Absolutely adores the sound of your voice, it could bring him out of a coma fr.

Doesn't mind being little or big spoon, he just likes cuddling. Wraps his tail around you when you do.

Always always makes sure you eat before he does, even though he's the one doing all the fighting.

Will let you win play fights (most of the time).

Hearing him laugh is the cutest thing ever I swear- It probably took you off guard the first time you manage it.

Doesn't know how to take compliments.

Probably short circuited the first time you complimented his appearance.

Very gentle, slow kisser. Likes having you in his lap, but will grab cheeky kisses every now and then too. Will tilt your chin up when you kiss, every time.

Art by @marcu-bug

[kaleldobrev]

Aren’t You Forgetting Something?

Pairing: Soldier Boy/Ben x F. Reader

Feat. Character(s): Reader, Soldier Boy/Ben, Hughie Campbell, MM & Nan (Reader’s Grandmother)

Original Prompt: Requested by anon | I gotta tell you that not only I love your writing but I love your series writing, specifically. When something new drops I’m always happy to read it before going to bed because I somehow feel connected to the characters, like I know them! I love to keep up with them and I love Ben’s and Y/N relationship so much. I’m in the mood for some angst between them tho, maybe Ben forgetting her birthday and receiving a silence treatment? I don’t know, but I trust you.

Summary: Ben forgets one of the most important days in yours and his relationship — your one year anniversary

Word Count: 4.6k

Warnings: Cursing (40x), Forgetful!Ben, Ben making fun of Hughie for the umpteenth time, Implied violence, Lots of angst, Fluff, Vulnerable!Ben & Implied Smut at the end

Authors Note: Takes place in the Hughie’s Best Friend is Dating Soldier Boy Universe | I changed it from birthday to anniversary, so I hope that's okay my anon friend! | Takes place after After Everything | I had a lot of fun looking up 1950s fashion for this | There will not be a second part to this but I will still be adding to this universe | This came out a lot longer than I expected it to, but I had a lot of fun with this | If you liked this, don’t forget to like & reblog. I really appreciate it! Feedback is always welcome ♡

⋆ Hughe's Best Friend is Dating Soldier Boy Masterlist ⋆

You never thought that this day would ever come, but it was finally here: yours and Ben's one year anniversary. It was a milestone that you never thought would come, as the relationship between the two of you wasn't always easy. It was rocky, and sometimes very, very messy. But despite all of the messiness, you loved him unconditionally, and he loved you just the same, but showed it in his own unique ways.

Ben wasn't the kind of person to verbally say, "I love you," as his love language tended to be that of a physical nature. He would do chores around the house that you hated to do — despite him having it too. He would bring things back from missions that reminded him of you — often those objects being covered in someone else's blood; and he would kiss and smack your ass every time you were in his path, no matter what either one of you was doing.

Although you love those physical actions, you hoped that maybe one day you would be able to hear him utter those three little words you had been yearning to hear — and maybe, just maybe, today was that day.

Since Ben was away on a secret mission that you weren’t apart of since you were sick at the beginning, you took this whole week that he was away in order to plan what you were going to do for him the day of. Initially, the two of you agreed that you really weren't going to do anything special to celebrate, but the more you thought about it, the more you realized how important this milestone truly was; not only for your relationship, but for the two of you individually.

Although it was only a year, your relationship with Ben was the longest you've ever been in. Not that you've had many previous relationships, but every single one you had previously never really lasted long (you were lucky if it lasted two months), as they either did not understand the whole vigilante justice objective of The Boys, Butcher somehow scared them off, or they were (funnily) threatened by Hughie.

But Ben was different in this way compared to your other relationships. He understood the vigilante justice, he understood your hatred for Vought, and he wasn't threatened by Hughie in the slightest (Hughie was actually threatened by him). Despite all of his flaws, he was perfect in his own way.

When it came to the Ben side of things, you were not his longest relationship by a long shot, but you were the first and only person to have genuine feelings for him. Those genuine feelings being something that no one had seen coming — not even you. But he was someone that gradually turned into becoming the person you had wanted to spend the rest of your life with, despite how strange that sounded to most people.

Your plan for the big day was simple, but felt like it would be special enough to really honor and celebrate the relationship. You had planned to make his favorite dinner: steak and mashed potatoes. For dessert, favorite pie: pecan. And dress in the style of a 1950s housewife, as that was a style he had never once seen you in before.

Even though you have made his favorite dinner and dessert hundreds of times before, dressing up as a housewife was something that was definitely beyond your comfort zone and expertise, so you went to the one person that knew could help you best: your Nan.

Despite the style of the housewife fashion basically being obsolete, it was a look that she adored, and dawned on even years after the style had become out of fashion. Her hair was always neat and never out of place, her lipstick always the deepest shade of red, and her dresses always the brightest of hues. You remembered seeing pictures of her back when she was your age and she was a knockout (Ben agreeing), so when you told her that you wanted to dress in the housewife style, she beamed and quickly went to her closest to pull out the nicest shade of red that perfectly matched your skin tone.

“Just don’t do anything sexual in this dress. I’ll never be able to get the stains out,” she told you with a wink. Her comment causing you to roll your eyes.

“You’re just as bad as Ben,” you told her.

Ben was eager to get back home to you, as this mission was taking a lot longer than he had anticipated. It was supposed to be a quick and easy assassination (something he had done alone hundreds of times before), but one thing after another kept going wrong, and he couldn’t help but blame “his team.” He felt himself getting more and more agitated by the second, and there was nothing he could do about it, especially because you weren’t here to help him take the edge off.

Even though rough sex with you right now would be the highlight of the mission, he wished that you were here to at least talk to him, because you were one of the only people he knew that he could have an actual conversation with that wouldn't end up with him being annoyed.

He paced back and forth, with shield in hand; the only sounds between him and the rest of the group were the occasional snicker and his heavy boots. “You’re making me nervous walking around like that,” MM said, behind his binoculars.

Ben rolled his eyes, stopping a few feet away from him. “Then what would you suggest I’d be doing right now? We’re just sitting around doing nothing.”

“Is there somewhere else you need to be? Cause we’re here to do a job,” MM replied, removing the binoculars from his eyes and turning in Ben’s direction. “And we’re going to be here as long as it takes to do this job.”

“I’d rather be in Y/N’s pussy or ass right now, but because you guys are all somehow getting worse at your jobs, I can’t fucking do that right now,” Ben said, grinning an annoyed grin.

His comment caused mixed reactions from the group; but mainly disgusted looks from MM and Hughie. Butcher and Frenchie on the other hand, looked indifferent about his comment. “I really wish you’d stop mentioning how much you like fucking my best friend. It’s getting…weird,” Hughie commented.

“Fucking pussy,” Ben mumbled to himself.

With the pie cooling on the counter, and with dinner almost ready, you felt your heart beating faster than normal. Was it normal to get this nervous about anniversaries? To you, it felt like another day with Ben, but that’s not the way your heart and stomach was making you feel.

As you looked at yourself in the mirror, you almost didn’t recognize yourself as you dawned red lipstick, and a matching shirtwaist dress you had borrowed from your Nan. But you couldn’t help but wonder what his reaction was going to be as this was something he’d never seen you in before. Yes, he’d seen you dress up a handful of times, but it was in a modern style of dress — sweetheart and plunging necklines with a slit riding up the thigh; not this style which was something he hadn’t seen in decades.

You smiled though, thrilled with your appearance despite the nerves you were feeling. Your hair perfectly styled similar to that of Rosie the Riveter and deep red lipstick that was in a similar shade to your dress. The last thing to complete the look were pearls — your mothers specifically.

Finally covered in a thin layer of blood, sweat, and ash, the mission was finally over, and a huge sigh of relief washed over Ben. In just a few short hours, he would finally be home to his girl. “Fucking finally,” he said, mainly to himself, as he placed his gun back into his holster.

He looked over to his left, and Hughie was standing there with ripped clothes, he too covered in a thin layer of sweat, blood, and ash, holding a gun with his usual slightly constipated look on his face.

As Ben was about to walk away, as he didn’t really want to wait up for Hughie, he sighed, knowing that you’d want him to ask how he was doing in this moment, although he couldn’t give two fucks. “Hey,” he said, and Hughie looked over at him. “You good?” He asked.

The look on Hughie’s face changed; it was no longer the look of constipation, but slight annoyance. “Am I good?” He asked, his hands falling to his sides; the gun slightly hitting him in the leg. “What part of — yeah. I’m fine. Just, just peachy.” His tone radiating sarcasm.

“Awesome,” Ben grinned, giving him a thumbs up as he started walking away; being careful not to trip over any debris. “You comin’ or what?” He called out, as soon as he left the room. “I ain’t gonna be late because of you.”

Hughie’s face changed again to that of a puzzled one. “Late for what?” He asked, but quickly shook his head. “Actually, don’t fucking answer that because you’ll probably say something disgusting.” A loud, booming laugh from Ben could be heard down the hall in response.

As you sat on the couch watching tv, your nerves were starting to get the best of you again, and you were beginning to second guess your decision in wearing this outfit. You thought that it would be a special surprise for him to see you dressed like this, since it was something you usually didn't wear, but at the same time, maybe he wouldn't even notice or care. You weren't entirely sure if it was because he was a guy, or because he's been around such a long time, that he'd seen and done everything, and there was nothing that remotely fazed him at this point in his life.

Staring at the door, you got startled suddenly from the sound of your phone ringing. There was a small part of you that hoped it was Ben, but it was your Nan. Taking a deep breath to collect yourself, you answered the phone. "Hi Nan, how are you?"

"Hi Sweetheart. Has Ben seen you yet? How'd he like the pie?" She asked, her voice sweet.

"Ben's not home yet, but he should be home soon," you told her.

"Okay dear. Well, can you tell him hi and give him a big kiss for me? I always thought he was so handsome back in the day. He still very much is. Aged like a fine wine," she chuckled to herself. "But don't tell your grandfather," she chuckled again.

"Yes, I'll tell him hi and kiss him for you," you said, quietly laughing to yourself. "You know he's always happy to hear from you," which was the truth. He was always happy to humor her and reminisce about the good old days, even if he had heard some of her stories numerous times before.

As you heard the door unlock, you smiled widely. "Nan, I have to go. Ben just walked in," you said.

"Okay Sweetheart. Happy Anniversary!" She said happily. "Don't do anything I wouldn't," she chuckled again, before the two of you hung up the phone. There's not a lot of things Ben wouldn’t do, you thought.

"Fuck it's good to be home," Ben said, walking into the house and placing his shield next to the door. "I swear, your friends are getting worse at their jobs somehow, cause I probably would have been home fucking sooner if — Fuck, look at you." He finally looked up now, and you were standing there in an outfit that he had never once seen on you. It was something that he hadn't seen in decades in fact; and the biggest grin appeared on his face.

You didn’t move a muscle toward him, but he heard your heart beating like a jackrabbit. The sounds of his heavy boots walked across the floor toward you. “Do you like?” You asked, and you gave him a small spin; the dress slightly flowing as you did so. “Thought I’d do something special. Different.” You smiled, practically beaming with excitement. He wondered what the occasion was.

“Haven’t seen one of these in fucking decades,” he said, slightly reminiscing with a grin. He looked you over, eyeing you up and down, one of his fingers hooking into the belt loop of the dress. “What’s the occasion?” Your once beaming smile slowly faded into a frown. “What?”

“You seriously don’t know?” You asked, your voice slightly irritated sounding. He hadn’t had the foggiest idea what made today so special, other than you dressing differently than you normally did.

He looked at your face, trying to obtain some kind of hint, but he had no clue. But your heart was racing faster now. You were pissed — and he didn’t fucking understand why. “No, I really fucking don’t,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me? I’m not a fucking mind reader Princess.”

You let out a huge huff, rolling your eyes at him. As much as he thought you were cute when you were pissed, he didn't like it when you pissed at him. "Un-fucking-believable," you said, pulling away from him.

"What?" He asked, still in utter disbelief.

"Your favorite fucking dinner is on the fucking table along with your favorite fucking pie. I'm going to bed," you said, your voice angry as you stormed off into the bedroom, slamming the door. Two seconds later, the door opened again. "You're sleeping on the couch tonight," you told him, and slammed the door again, promptly locking it behind you.

You knew the lock wouldn't be able to keep Ben out, as he'd be able to bust open the door with barely any effort; but you knew he wouldn't remotely try to come into the room, as he knew not to come in when you locked it — thankfully, he was starting to understand boundaries.

You couldn’t help but be angry, upset, and frustrated. But at the same time, you weren’t remotely surprised that he didn’t remember. It was something that neither one of you initially wanted to make a big deal about, but between this being your longest relationship, and the last person he celebrated an anniversary with gave him up to the Russians, you figured why not make this day special after all?

It took everything you could to hold back the tears as you started to remove your makeup; feeling like it was an utter waste of time. It didn't take you that long to do this, but you went through some effort looking up tutorials online to try and be as 1950s authentic as possible, even asking your Nan for tips on how she used to do her own.

The mascara started running down your face, as you tried your best to scrub it off. But it was barely getting removed, which only frustrated you more. You pounded the dresser, and let out a muffled sounding scream.

A small knock came at the door a few seconds later. "Sweetheart, you okay?" Ben asked, and you scoffed.

"Fuck you," was the only response you could muster up in the moment.

"Ouch," you heard him mumble. "Can we...talk?" His voice hesitant.

"No. Just leave me alone Ben," you said, and you could hear sadness in your voice.

You heard him let out a frustrated sigh. "Alright," and the sound of his heavy boots walked away from the door. He sounded frustrated too.

As Ben ate his dinner that you had made for him (his favorite no less), he tried to figure out why you were so unbelievably pissed at him to the point that you refused to talk to him. Yes, he’d seen you pissed numerous times (either at him or about something else), but you’d never been so pissed to the point that you’d completely shut him out — and that terrified him.

Like usual, he started going down the list of things that he knew pissed you off: not taking his boots off in the house, tracking mud into the kitchen, getting blood on the furniture, doing coke on the kitchen table, crushing Bennie’s on the marble bathroom counter. Maybe it was the boot thing? Yeah, it had to be, he thought.

As you lied in bed staring up at the ceiling, you sighed heavily, wanting more than anything to unlock the door and invite Ben to come in and cuddle with you. It had been almost a week since you’d last saw him, and you just wanted to feel his skin against yours. But you didn’t want to give in — you earned the right to be pissed, even if it wasn’t particularly fair to be, since you agreed not to make it a big deal. Then again, he did forget your anniversary.

You heard a knock at the door again, and you sighed an annoyed sigh. “Go away,” you said.

“I think I know why you’re pissed at me,” Ben said. Your eyes lit up, and you sat up straight in bed, eager for him to say Happy Anniversary. A smile formed on lips, waiting. “I forgot to take my boots off when I came into the house,” and then your smile faded.

“Fucking Christ,” you mumbled, falling into the bed again to stare up at the ceiling.

“Is that a no?” Ben questioned.

“That’s a no,” you responded, annoyed.

“Son of a Fuck,” you heard him mumble, as he walked away from the door again.

As Ben sat on the couch flipping through channels, he continued to think about what you could possibly be this pissed about if it wasn’t the boot thing. Women are so fucking complicated, he thought. Weren’t this fucking complicated back in my day.

He stared at the couch, sighing in annoyance as he didn’t want to be sleeping here tonight. He wanted to sleep in bed with you; something he had been looking forward to the entire week he had been away from you. He looked forward to holding you close, and making you feel safe, tracing patterns on your bare back like you did to him. He honestly didn’t know what he was going to do if he didn’t figure out why you were mad; because he loathed when you were mad at him. It was a time that made him feel the most unease and insecure, and he was rarely insecure and uneasy.

Ben hadn’t known you for long, but you had managed to somehow worm your way quickly into his heart. You were someone he felt a strange connection to the moment he laid his eyes on you; and you were the one person that made him feel safe and loved. You were the only one that he felt he could be his true self around.

He thought of ways in which maybe you could forgive him, and started working on those; one of them being washing the dishes from his dinner even though he preferred you to do it. But he hoped that maybe this small gesture would help in his favor. Maybe I can go down on you? He thought. You always forgive me after that. Then again, I don’t let you come until you do…

As he made his way back into the kitchen, he stopped dead in his tracks, as he noticed something on the calendar that for some reason, he hadn’t noticed previously. Today’s date was circled with a single sentence written in your handwriting: 1 Year Anniversary.

“Fuck,” he said to himself. “I forgot our fucking anniversary.”

Ben stared at the circled date on the calendar, mentally cursing himself because he had forgotten it by accident. It was a day that he meant to remember, and even repeated over and over again while they were heading to the mission. But because it had taken so long to complete, it left his mind, because it had become entirely mission focused.

You’re never going to fucking forgive me, he thought. This was how he was going to lose you. Panic started to set in for him, realizing that he might have to live the rest of his miserable existence without you; and that was something he couldn’t bear the thought of. Ben didn’t need a lot of things, but he knew that he needed you.

Tossing and turning, you were having a hard time trying to fall asleep. You wanted Ben to be lying next to you right now, caressing your hair, and feeling his rapid heartbeat. It was simple moments like those that you enjoyed most with him; because sometimes you would forget all the awful and horrible things both of you had done in order to meet and to get to this point. If Grace hadn’t recruited you, you would have never met the love of your life.

The love of your life: now that was a sentence you never thought you’d ever equate to Soldier Boy. He was someone you grew up having a crush on since you and your father had watched his movies on repeat to the point you had to buy another VHS tape because you’d worn it out. He was someone you wished you could have met because he was always your favorite (partially because he was also your dad’s favorite).

But he was a Supe, and you had told yourself that you’d never end up with one after what had happened to your uncle, but here you were, dreaming of spending the rest of your life with one.

You sighed heavily, and ended up on your back again. A knock came at the door again, and you turned to face it. “I forgot our anniversary, and I’m sorry,” Ben said, and you cocked a brow. His words seemed genuine, and hurt at the same time. “I tried to remember; I really did but…the mission took full focus.” You heard him sigh, and you knew how hard this was for him, as apologizing was something he wasn’t particularly good at, since Vought basically taught him to never apologize for anything. “I don’t want to lose you over this. I….fuck,” he mumbled. “Can you please open the door so I can look at you?”

He heard you getting up out of the bed, slightly sighing. He could hear your heartbeat, and it was music to his ears despite the rapidness of it. He heard you unlocking it, his nerves starting to show as he tapped the wall next to the door.

You opened it up gently and stared at him through the crack of it. Your eyes slightly puffy from crying. He felt his heart drop, hating that he was the one that had made you cry — he never wanted to be the one responsible for that. “Sweetheart,” he began. “I know I fucked up.”

“Did you actually remember, or did you look at the calendar?” You asked him, your voice barely audible even to him.

“I looked at the calendar,” he admitted. “But to be fair, I really did try and fucking remember. You can ask your friend. I was saying the date on repeat, and then the mission got in the way 'cause they weren’t doing their fucking jobs properly.”

“Hughie can back that up?” You asked, and he nodded. He hoped that you wouldn’t ask him, because he wasn’t sure if he would actually corroborate his story or just fuck him over.

“He fucking hates me, I know he wouldn’t back me up,” Ben added. “I make fun of him too much. But it’s hard not to, I mean look at him.”

“I’m not going to break up with you if that’s what you’re worried about,” you said, hopefully reassuring him. Because even though he gave off the attitude that he didn’t need anyone or anything, you knew you were the only person he needed. You were the one person Ben could rely on no matter what; and you couldn’t bear the thought of what would happen if something bad had happened to you, or if your relationship ever ended.

“I don’t like it when you hate me,” he whispered. “You’re the one person I couldn’t bear to have hate me.”

“I don’t hate you Ben,” you said, reassuring him again. “I could never hate you.”

“Even if I killed Hughie?” He asked, slight teasing in his voice. But you gave him the look, and his teasing smile quickly faded. “Right. He’s off limits.” His hands finally went up in the air, as if he was surrendering. “I’d never kill him, don’t worry. I don’t actually mean it.”

“I wanted to do something special for you, even though we agreed not to make it a big deal because I figured this was a milestone for the both of us. You’re the longest relationship I’ve ever had, and the last person you celebrated an anniversary with gave you to the Russians.”

“I gave her a fucking diamond necklace too,” he mumbled.

“Ben,” you began.

“Sorry, sorry. Look, I want to make it up to you,” he said. “Let me start by —”

“Going down on me?” You questioned, cocking a brow.

“Well…yeah…I mean, don’t you like when I go down on you?” He asked.

“Yeah of course, but I was kind of hoping for something else than the usual way,” you confessed.

“Like what? Me saying I love you or something?” He asked.

“Don’t say it just because you think that’s what I want to hear. I want you to say it because you actually mean it.” It was three little words you had longed to hear for a while. And even though he had said it, he said it in a way of a question, because he thought it was words that would make this situation all better; almost like putting a band-aid on a huge gash.

“You know how I feel about you. I thought it was obvious when I first saw you,” he said. “When I first saw you, I thought you were a fucking knockout. I mean, I pictured you sucking and bouncing on my cock so many times before you actually did.”

“If that was supposed to sound romantic, it failed,” you said; barely humoring him in the moment.

He sighed, slightly rolling his eyes. “What I’m trying to say is, I may not be perfect, but there are five things that I know. Numbers one to three, I love your boobs, ass, and pussy. Number four, you’re the only person I ever fucking need in my life, and five, I love you. And I’m not just fucking saying that. I really fucking do. And you know how fucking hard that is for me to say cause the last person I said I love you to was a fucking bitch.”

Ben looked at your face, trying to find any hint of what you may be thinking. But he didn’t have the foggiest idea. All you did was stare at him with those big eyes of yours, looking at him like a lost puppy. “You said it,” you whispered, almost in disbelief. “You actually fucking said it…Ben…”

That’s when you wrapped his arms around him, finally feeling your small embrace. A grin formed on his face as he wrapped his arms around you in response. It felt nice to say it to you and say it to someone that he knew actually appreciated him. He let you see another side of him, a side that he would never let anyone besides you see. “Can I go down on you now?” He asked, speaking into your hair. You let out a small laugh, and felt you nod into his chest.

Without a second going by, he picked you up and slung you over his shoulder, happily bringing you into the bedroom.

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[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

To add onto that Malleus popularity speculation, I think another major reason why that you never mentioned is the simple fact that characters of Malleus' archetype are just more popular in general in the west amongst working age women.

There are plenty of adult novel containing male supernatural love interests. Fae and vampire romance novels are still extremely popular amongst adult readers. A Court of Thorns and Roses is technically an ADULT novel, NOT YA. Even m|m supernatural stories even fall into this category with Stolas/Blitz from Helluva Boss being an extremely popular over here. That pairing is from an adult animated show. Stolas shares a lot of similarities with Malleus.

Hell, even if you step into western contemporary romance novels, the male love interest tends to be more brooding and angsty with flawed leads. Everything from classic literature like Jane Eyre to modern shit like anything Colleen Hoover writes. (Don't get it twisted. I'm NOT saying that Malleus is anything like those leads. Just using those very popular example of brooding bad boy love interests in adult contemporary fiction in the west.)

Meanwhile in East Asia, those sorts of leads tend to be geared towards teenagers. Working age women want a more stable, realistic love interest that would take care of them like Trey.

Westerners seem to prefer more complex, intense romantic relationships, where the stakes feel higher and the emotional payoff is more significant. They will naturally write Trey off as a "big brother" character instead of seeing him as a romantic lead material thanks to being more used to seeing characters like Malleus as the love interest in stories.

I could be way off base, since I'm not Asian and far from being an expert on Japanese culture, but that's my two cents based on my observations. This is also based on broad generalizations. Neither culture is a monolith.

[Referencing this post and (more specifically!) my speculation here!]

Oh, for sure 💀 I made a post a while ago talking about how Malleus (especially from the yumejoshi/self-shipping perspective) reminds me a lot of the new "Shadow Daddy" archetype that has emerged in the romantasy genre. I mean, just look at how many of the Shadow Daddy traits Malleus ticks off:

is a nonhuman being (usually fae)

500 yrs old (or at least several hundred years old or a significant age gap between the Shadow Daddy love interest and typically female main character)

looks young and hot/conventionally attractive despite the age

is OP (usually with shadow/night/darkness related magic)

is royalty or in some kind of position of power

dark hair and/or skin (sometimes both)

“morally grey” and/or has issues (you can fix him)

brooding

looks or is rumored to be intimidating but is actually lonely and misunderstood, with a heart of gold

animalistic in some manner (usually with bat/raven/dragon-like wings)

has a tattoo or some kind of bodily markings (Malleus has the scales under his hair; you could also count the OB facial markings I guess)

Outside of romantasy novels geared towards older teens (18-19) and adults, the west seems to really love brooding bad boys as love interests in a lot of its media. Something else I noticed is that the "good guys" or the "boy next door" types like Trey tend to be "the other man" in heterosexual love triangles, which miiight also explain why he gets looked over in the western fandom. (I discussed some of my own observations, which are similar to the points mentioned here, in the posts linked above.)

I wouldn’texactly phrase it like westerners preferring "more complex, intense romantic relationships [... with higher stakes and more significant emotional payoff]", as that unintentionally implies that there has to be brooding or angst in order for the story or character arc to be "good". I feel a lot of it actually depends on the execution rather than the tropes present. For example, I've seen many "Shadow Daddies" that exist purely for wish fulfillment rather than emotional or story/character complexity (which, to be clear, there's nothing wrong with if this is the kind of thing you enjoy!). Wholesome or "normal" romances also have the capacity to be complex, intense, high-stakes, and emotionally significant too! Again, it all depends on the quality of writing and what one's personal preferences are. You'll find outliers regardless of culture as well--as the asker has stated, no culture is a monolith!

[dimmadoome]

Listening to Zevlor's voice lines all the way through is so interesting....and enlightening. Because this is a proud man whose confidence in himself is shattered, but he's still proud none the less.

Zevlor threatens you if you punch him. Just straight out says, I WILL kill you if you do that again. He punches Aradin if he spews slurs. He asks you to kill khaga, he asks you to kill the goblin leaders. No hesitation on any of that. Just ..hey buddy you wanna do a couple of murders since I am currently incapable of doing those murders. But he also fights if you ask him to, defends his people through everything. And he won't beg you to do any of that yourself if you reject him. If you don't say yes, he respects it and respects your decision...though he does get snippy as hell about it. If you do turn on him, he'll call you a coward, but he will not beg because once again. Zevlor is proud.

Zevlor is also possessive. You can hear it in the way he says MY people. Sure that could just be the way he speaks because they elected him leader, but he was a commander before that. He was a man who spent his life fighting to have that position of power and respect. Plus he almost sells his soul to the absolute to keep them, both the people and the power. As he says....those people are HIS. His to look after, his to care for his to protect. There's gotta be something in there, deep inside of him that clutches at these people like a dragon does their gold. They are his after all. They're all he has left of the life he once lived. He would rather die than give them up to anyone. Even when the absolute pushes into his mind, it offers him power to keep them safe, plays at his devotion to his oath and his people....and his pride which.....as we've established...is not an insignificant part of him.

He is also protective and caring. That obviously comes with the territory of becoming a paladin of helm, a hellrider and taking the oath of devotion. From what he does for his people to what he's done with his life ...well.....nothing more really needs to be said about that. Its his most prevalent trait and his most commendable.

Zevlor also curses a lot. He is very quick to anger, though he tries to keep himself from flying off the handle and can be reeled back in. He still throws punches and threatens lives with very little prodding. Which, once again, harkens back to his pride. Its quite entertaining to hear every other line be a curse or a shout or some growling threat. Sweetheart where? That man is FERAL.

Another thing is that Zevlor definitely respects you if you are a selfless Tav/Durge/Origin. I think he tries so hard to be selfless as well. Sees it as a good trait to have, but he isn't. Not really. Not where he thinks it counts. Its probably what he percieves as a fatal flaw, which I would guess comes from living in holier than thou Elturel where you basically sign your life away to "protect" the city. I personally don't think total selflessness is a fantastic trait to have, but I could see where Zevlor could pick that up as the Ideal trait for a paladin to have.

Throughout the game, you see this man crack under insurmountable pressure. You see the chips in the facade that he puts up but if you look, you can see the good and the bad trapped underneath those chips. It tends to be frustrating that people only see the cracks and not what's underneath of them and I think thats what annoys me the most. He's a fun character. He's a strong, powerful man who has shattered like iron under pressure but at the end of it all he IS a good man and a menace and a half with such an interesting mindset and backstory that I can't help but wonder if anyone who sees the character, sees him at all.

In summation.

I love him, Your Honor. 10/10 would let him go feral and smite my ass for talking back to him.

[nyoomerr]

Maybe some Omega Bingge for the drabble requests if you'd like? The ficlet you did of him making the nest lives rent free in my head

i'm glad you enjoyed it! i'd honestly love to do a longer omega!bingge thing some time, i love him so much... for now, here's something that's.. kind of the opposite of the one i wrote last time.

cw for omegaverse and Gender Stuff and mentions of female genitalia on a male character!

---

Proud Immortal Demon Way had many flaws, but top of the list had been that it had been an omegaverse - one of the few tropes in literature literally made for bad porn. It was a sellout’s last resort, and a reader’s most shameful pleasure, and -

“If you hate it so much, why are you still reading it?” Shen Yuan’s sister had asked him years ago, back when Shen Yuan had still bothered to complain to her about it.

Frustratingly, Shen Yuan hadn’t had much to say in response. He had reasons, but they were - not shameful, exactly, but the thought of speaking them aloud made Shen Yuan’s gut roil.

Luo Binghe was the picture perfect image of a stallion protagonist. Women fell to his feet with hardly a breath of effort, and his stamina in bed was unheard of, and he was naturally the best looking character Shen Yuan had ever laid eyes on. 

He was also, shockingly, an omega. 

An omega, someone born with instincts that would thematically tend towards feminine behavior, someone born with the bits meant for being bred, someone - someone altogether unfit to be a stallion protagonist, really. It was a massive subversion of the genres. 

Of course, Airplane never wrote it in such an interesting way. There were some interesting character arcs back in the disciple era chapters, but once Luo Binghe fell to the Abyss, they all fell apart. 

The very mention of secondary genders all but vanished. Sex scenes were as rampant as they were vague, enforcing the idea that Luo Binghe was a perfect stallion protagonist - always on top! - without giving any details about how the hell that worked. 

Useless! A waste of a perfectly fascinating subversion of genre and gender alike! Why bother even establishing an omegaverse world if you weren’t going to use the protagonist’s secondary gender at all?!

…Or so Shen Yuan had thought, until Luo Binghe himself had fallen straight into his bedroom out of a crack in reality. Because in person, Luo Binghe as an omega is - 

Shen Yuan swallows thickly, staring up at Luo Binghe with wide eyes. Luo Binghe meets his gaze evenly, his eyes half shut with a lazy sort of pride. His body is pressed close to Shen Yuan’s but not touching, and the mere inch between the lines of their bodies somehow feels more intimate than if Luo Binghe had outright plastered himself against Shen Yuan.

Shen Yuan can’t back up; his back is already against a wall. He can’t escape from the sides, either, because Luo Binghe’s arms are bracketing Shen Yuan in an honest-to-fuck kabedon, and - 

“Yuan-er,” Luo Binghe croons, jolting Shen Yuan’s attention back to him. “This Lord found your… notes.”

Shen Yuan’s mouth goes dry. “Ah… my… college notes?” He tries.

“Your notes about me,” Luo Binghe purrs. 

“O-oh,” Shen Yuan says, helplessly. He wrote… a truly horrifying number of things about Luo Binghe, before he ever thought he might meet him.

“It seems,” Luo Binghe says, leaning in so that Shen Yuan can feel his breath against his lips, “like Yuan-er has some questions.”

“Um,” Shen Yuan says, very intelligently. “Questions, uh, yeah, sure, right, like - uh, like I was wondering how you escaped the Crystal Bloodmoon Cave in chapter 347, because it just faded to black and -”

“Yuan-er doesn’t want to know how I might use an omega’s clit to fuck someone else?” Luo Binghe asks, voice low and dangerous. 

Shen Yuan’s mouth falls slack. What - what do you even say in response to that, ah!! Shen Yuan doesn’t swing that way!!

…Or, if Luo Binghe is an omega, that’s - it’s a bit different from just being a man, right? So maybe -

“I’d show you,” Luo Binghe whispers into the shell of Shen Yuan’s ear. “Anything Yuan-er wants to know about me, I’ll show you.”

Luo Binghe pulls back slightly, just enough to meet Shen Yuan’s eyes again. His expression is dark and intense and hungry.

“I’ll show you,” he says again, licking his lips, “so don’t you dare look away from me.”

Shen Yuan shudders, an electric shock running up his spine. Luo Binghe shifts, one of his arms moving away from the wall to curl around Shen Yuan’s shoulders, the claws of  his hand scratching lightly against the nape of Shen Yuan’s neck.

The touch is enough to shock some sense back into Shen Yuan.

“I’m not - I don’t have a scent gland, there!” Shen Yuan yelps, jolting away.

He doesn’t get very far. Luo Binghe’s feather-light touch turns sharp, a forceful grip on the back of Shen Yuan’s neck that keeps him in place. Luo Binghe’s other hand comes up to take Shen Yuan’s chin between his fingers, tilting it up to force eye contact.

“You don’t,” Luo Binghe agrees, his eyes glinting red. “But as Yuan-er has… so thoroughly written about, I’m an omega. I shouldn’t be scruffing anyone to begin with, regardless of what sort of scent gland they have. What difference does it make, if there’s no scent gland at all?”

Shen Yuan’s pulse is loud in his ears. He knows Luo Binghe must feel it under his hands, jumping like a startled rabbit.

“I - um, I don’t mean to imply you shouldn’t do what you want!” Shen Yuan cries. “I mean, uh - My Lord! My Lord, I - of course this lowly one wouldn’t know anything about what my Lord should be doing, so -”

“Shh,” Luo Binghe coos. “Yuan-er is right. I shouldn’t be doing this, and yet I am anyway. I always am.”

“Right,” Shen Yuan says nervously. He can feel the way his shirt is sticking to his back, wet with sweat. 

“But Yuan-er has questions,” Luo Binghe continues, his grip loosening on Shen Yuan’s neck but curling so that his claws are once more pressed into the skin there. “And I have answers. Isn’t it good of me to offer to show you?”

“Right,” Shen Yuan says again, barely thinking. Then Luo Binghe’s mouth splits into a feral grin, and his words process with Shen Yuan, and - “Wait, wait -!”

“No take backs,” Luo Binghe says, vicious and pleased, and proceeds to show Shen Yuan quite thoroughly what it means to be a stallion protagonist omega.

---

Later, staring up at his ceiling and feeling unfairly winded, Shen Yuan figures he doesn’t really have much left to lose.

“Do you want to be an alpha?” He asks the ceiling. “Er - did you? This whole time?”

Luo Binghe’s attention on Shen Yuan is as heavy and intense as if it were a physical touch; Shen Yuan knows without looking that Luo Binghe has not taken his eyes off Shen Yuan once since - 

Ahem. Since… finishing. What they had been doing.

Now, Luo Binghe reaches out to twirl a finger in Shen Yuan’s hair, round and round and round the short locks, tugging at it hard enough it’s nearly painful. 

“Being an omega was a very dangerous thing, in all three realms,” Luo Binghe hums. “It wouldn’t have been an advantage to me to act like one.”

Shen Yuan sits upright, quite suddenly feeling a bit panicked. “I - you didn’t have to - if you didn’t want to, just now -!”

Luo Binghe grabs more of Shen Yuan’s hair and pulls, tugging Shen Yuan back down into a prone position. 

“So earnest, little Yuan-er,” Luo Binghe croons, and Shen Yuan feels his face go blotchy and red. “You have no need to worry; if it’s Yuan-er, I’ll do whatever you’d like.”

“But if you want something different -”

“Then I’ll demand it,” Luo Binghe says quite simply. “I’ll do whatever you’d like, and you’ll do whatever I’d like; that’s what I deserve.”

Shen Yuan splutters a bit but ultimately fails to protest this in any meaningful way. Luo Binghe plays with Shen Yuan’s hair for another long moment.

Finally, he says: “If it’s you, I wouldn’t mind trying it the way it’s supposed to be, I think.”

Shen Yuan turns to bury his face in his pillow. What a terrible thing to say to him! What is he supposed to say in response! It’s too much, too much - Shen Yuan really can’t possibly be expected to know what the right reply is!!

“...Don’t force yourself,” he mumbles into the pillow. “It’s - like I said, I don’t have scent glands, or a secondary gender at all. There is no ‘way it’s supposed to be,’ if it’s with me.”

Luo Binghe hums. He leans onto Shen Yuan, digging his chin into Shen Yuan’s shoulder painfully. Shen Yuan doesn’t bother to push him off. 

“Good,” Luo Binghe says. “Then: whatever I want, and whatever Yuan-er wants, and nothing more.”

[fivelasanctum]

Everything is real

S03 ep.07 and S04 ep.06 parallel: Been doing my rewatch of the series and noticed this gem inside Lila's psyche when she was talking to Allison being reminiscent of her yelling that her and five's life in the alternate timelines wasn't real. A blatant contradiction to what she mentioned here. "This isn't real Five! None of this is real!" -Lila S04 ep.05 Events when time travelling are real and still impact you, just can happen quickly and feel like a whirlwind. She also goes to mention to have something or someone to focus on to essentially keep you sane and grounded.

Five comes in right after they have this conversation, zooming in on him as he came to fetch them for the plan. Hmmmm...xD When Five and her get lost in the subway time travelling system, her focus point is her kids. Just as Lila became Five's purpose for surviving. To protect her and try to get her back home to them. Five also became her focus point. Just secondary to their shared goal. Being together, relying on the other for survival (initially), comfort and affection. Eventually falling for each other since they can sit down and have time to see how they are mirrors of each other in many ways. Lila has shown she has mental barriers both around her heart and mind. Self preservation. Much like Five with his own control over his emotions and keeping others at a distance from all his years alone and serving as an assassin. Lila has the same trauma... with being brought up by the handler and living in the same life. She lied about Stanley to Diego as a way to test him if he would be a good father because she was scared and didn't want to be rejected. Possibly lying about being with many people to make him jealous. Mind games that she probably was taught by the Handler.

In the above images you can see that lila is a very human character with inexplicable flaws. Seeing herself far too broken to have a family and cowardly. She tends to go for the jugular to hurt when she has been harmed or upset emotionally. She goes into denial and tries to run away from her problems to a certain extent. Whereas Five has always cut to the quick with his brutal honesty. Telling her Diego loves her but also the cold truth of how her mother never did. Making her almost cry so she lashed out by diminishing his experience by calling Dolores out for what she actually was. Something to note from their argument in season 4 leading up to their return to their present timeline. He confronted her about what they shared in all those years and that the marriage was broken. Lila lies to herself sometimes and wanted to run away from having to think about anything outside of seeing her kids.

I strongly feel she said those words to Five about it being all about survival and it not being real because she felt betrayed with his lies. Even though his words weren't wrong. She couldn't say anything to his reasoning for doing it. "You know why." Still - it's true to her character. When she saw the hurt on her lovers face...think that's when most of the anger faded from her. Replaced with a sense of powerlessness, sadness and resignment. Yearning to stay there in their happiness bubble (it was still their Anniversary when all this went down) but needing to have her kids back. She appeared as though she was ready to cry because in her heart she didn't want anything to change regarding the two of them. Just trying to push him away yet can't stand hurting him. Perhaps it's difficult for her to hold herself back from that defense mechanism.

This is the look of someone eager to get back to her old married life with the kids right? Again, ready to cry with the situation weighing heavy on her heart. Think why she had tunnel vision to focus on just seeing her kids again was because she didn't want to ponder what happens next with her relationship with Five, talking to Diego...figuring everything out. Damn. This was suppose to be a short post but turned into a mini essay. In short...she was lying about what they have not being real. Just tried to push it away due to in the moment anger with the reveal.

[saintsenara]

Thoughts on Ron and Hermione as a ship?

thank you very much for the ask, @thesilverstarling!

i’ll state my position straight away: book ron and hermione are the best of the canon couples.

they will have a long and extremely happy marriage made rich by great and stalwart love, lust, fun, and faithfulness, rather than held together by duty and couples’ therapy like so many readers and authors (including jkr, who seems to have decided to spend the years since the conclusion of the series failing to understand anything about her own characters) tend to think.

i will state another position straight away: lest i seem like i’m just a fan with blinkers on, i think this even though hermione is, by far, my least favourite member of the trio. if she were real i would detest her, and i dislike how she is treated by the narrative as always justified in her negative characteristics. i like fanon hermione - perfect and preternaturally good - even less.

as a result, i think that it’s ridiculous that jkr has said that she thought ron needed to ‘become worthy’ of hermione. they belong together as equals - which is what they’re set up in the narrative as being from the off - and i hate seeing that undermined.

because ronald weasley? he’s an icon. and he doesn’t get anywhere near the respect he deserves in fandom.

there are multiple reasons for this - ron’s narrative purpose is to be the everyman sidekick, and so he is able to be less special than harry or hermione (the helper-figure); the amount of aristocracy wank in this fandom means that the weasleys’ ordinariness is less appealing to writers than making harry have twenty different lordships and call himself hadrian; the narrative interrogates ron’s flaws - especially his capacity for jealousy - much more intensively than it interrogates either hermione’s (cruel, inflexible, meddling) or harry’s (reckless, self-absorbed, judgemental) - but one i feel is particularly significant is that ron is such a british character that many of his traits are not understood as intended by non-british readers.

in particular - as is outlined in this excellent meta by @whinlatter - ron’s sense of humour isn’t indicative of immaturity or a lack of seriousness, but is, in fact, evidence that he’s the most emotionally aware of the trio.

ron is shown throughout the series to understand how both harry and hermione need to have their emotions approached - and i think there is no piece of writing which says this better than crocodile heart by @floreatcastellumposts:

That was what she liked most about Ron, she thought vaguely. He was very good at being suitably outraged on your behalf. For Harry, for her, for Neville. That sort of thing mattered, when you were hurt or embarrassed or wronged in some way. You needed to have someone else on your side, to be as emotional as you felt, maybe even more so, so that you might feel a bit more normal. It was very decent of him, and she was not sure he realised he did it.

ron’s inherent emotional awareness is an enormous source of comfort to other people. he does the work which isn’t flashy or special - he makes tea and tells jokes and is just there - but which is needed in healthy human relationships far more frequently than a willingness to fight to the death for the other person.

[as an aside, this normality - even though i think it is assumed rather than justified by the text - is also what ginny provides for harry. if you believe that hinny are a good couple but romione aren’t… i can’t help you.]

but let’s look at some specific reasons why ron and hermione belong together:

their communication styles mesh perfectly. ron is the only person hermione knows who feeds her love of being challenged and debated, and who is able to engage in this way of communicating without becoming irate when she refuses to back down. ron is good at picking his battles, but he’s also good at recognising that hermione’s tendency to argue isn’t intended to be confrontational a lot of the time - it’s just the way she works through feelings and problems. he’s far more easy-going about her tendency to nag, interrupt, try to provoke arguments, or speak condescendingly than he’s given credit for - and hermione evidently respects this, since when he does tell her not to push a situation (above all, when she’s trying to needle harry into talking about sirius), she listens to him.

that ron and hermione’s tendency to bicker is taken by fans to be a bad thing is because it’s something harry - from whose perspective the narrative is written - doesn’t understand. harry is extremely conflict-avoidant - he tends to take being pushed on views and opinions he has to be insulting; and he has a tendency to assume that he is right which is just as profound as hermione’s. he and ginny communicate not by debating, but by ginny having no time for his rigidity and refusing to indulge it - but ron and hermione bickering about everything is not a negative thing within their specific emotional dynamic.

[as another aside, this glaring chasm in communication styles is why harry and hermione would be a disaster as a couple.]

they each provide validation the other needs. it’s clear - reading between the lines - that hermione is a tremendously lonely person. the friendlessness of her initial few weeks at hogwarts seems to be a continuation of her experience as a child, and - outside of ron and harry - that friendlessness endures through her schooldays. i’m always struck, for example, by the fact that, when she falls out with ron in prisoner of azkaban, she has no-one else to spend time with, and that this is only avoided in half-blood prince because harry decides not to freeze her out. i don’t think her friendship with ginny is anywhere near as close as fanon seems to imply (ginny has no interest in being nagged either), nor do i think that she’s anywhere near as close to neville (not least because she is so condescending to him) as she’s often written to be.

and this loneliness seems to stretch beyond hogwarts. the absence of hermione’s parents’ from the narrative is - in a doylist sense - clearly just a device to maximise time with the trio all together, but the watsonian reading is that she doesn’t have a particularly good relationship with them. hermione’s obviously upper-middle-class background - the name! the skiing! the holidays in the south of france! - can be presumed, i think, to come with a series of expectations from her parents which she feels constantly that she’s not entirely meeting, particularly expectations attached to academic success.

[for example, the grangers - were she a muggle child - would undoubtedly have ambitions for her to attend an elite university and then go into a prestigious career. tertiary education of the type that they’re familiar with doesn’t seem to exist in the wizarding world - most careers seem to be taught by apprenticeship - and this, alongside all the other divides between the magical and muggle worlds which contribute to the distance between them, would be one very obvious area in which she felt the need to prove herself to them.]

ron, too, has quite a difficult relationship with his position in the family - voldemort’s locket is not wrong to point out that he seems to receive considerably less of his mother’s emotional attention than ginny or the rest of his brothers - and he too is constrained by expectations which he doesn’t know how to explain he has no interest in - above all, molly’s desire for her sons to achieve top grades and go into the ministry.

he also suffers while at hogwarts from being ‘harry potter’s best friend’, something which harry never appreciates. but hermione does. she recognises ron’s jealousy and never allows harry to minimise it (and she and ron are very much aligned on having no respect for harry’s saviour and martyr complexes). she appreciates ron’s strengths - above all his kindness and his sense of humour - and makes him feel as though he’s achieved things with them. and ron does the same for her; he is hugely observant when it comes to her, and he challenges and defends her.

the two of them clearly spend a lot of time together one-on-one while harry’s involved in his various shenanigans (including outside of school - hermione has often arrived at the burrow days or even weeks before harry, and they seem to write to each other frequently when apart). they do this within a relationship which is fundamentally equal. one issue with hinny is that, post-war, harry is going to have to get used to seeing ginny as a peer, rather than as someone he has to protect. but ron and hermione never have that issue - equality is baked into their relationship from the off.

because, to be quite frank, fandom overstates the role that jealousy plays in their relationship. it’s true that ron certainly doesn’t acquit himself brilliantly when it comes to hermione’s relationship with viktor krum (it’s because he’s bi and doesn’t know it yet), and a tendency to externalise his insecurity into trying to make others also feel insecure is one of his primary negative traits (hermione does this too, via her patented lofty voice when she’s trying to condescend to people). but this is often taken as the initial red flag for how the relationship would crash and burn, and ron’s toxic jealousy is often used in fan-fiction as the trigger for emotional and physical violence towards hermione which, frequently, seems to drive her into the arms of either draco malfoy or severus snape… who are, of course, the first people we think of when we hear the words ‘not prone to jealousy’...

but i think it’s important to point out several things in defence of ron’s jealousy over krum. firstly, hermione evidently regards his jealousy as ridiculous - she’s upset by it, yes, but her upset must be understood as being caused by the fact that she wanted him to ask her out. she doesn’t think he’s being possessive, she thinks he’s being stupid. secondly, hermione is equally as jealous over ron’s crush on fleur delacour and relationship with lavender brown. she behaves just as cruelly when it comes to lavender as ron does when it comes to krum - and the narrative only treats her actions as more sympathetic or justified both because harry dislikes lavender too, and because, by that point in the series, jkr has dispensed with any inclination to ever criticise her.

but, outside of this teenage pettiness, ron is never jealous of hermione over things which matter. he is never jealous of her intelligence or competence or ambition or success (indeed, he defends her constantly from attacks designed to undermine her in these areas). for someone who struggles with being overshadowed by harry, he is never upset at being overshadowed by her. he is clearly going to be happy to support her in any of the career ambitions she can be written as having post-war.

and, on this point, i think it’s worth interrogating why so many readers still seem to feel uncomfortable with the idea of ron and hermione having a dynamic where she is the more ‘powerful’ one. [it’s always a bit trite to say ‘but what if the genders were reversed?’, but actually that’s not irrelevant here]. if hermione ends up taking the ministry by storm and ron becomes a stay-at-home father or has a job which is just to pay the bills, what, precisely, is wrong with that? why, precisely, should hermione regard ron making that choice for himself as a negative thing? hermione so often seems to leave ron in fan-fiction because of a lack of ambition - something which seems to be particularly common in dramione - but, in canon, she is shown to not particularly care if ron and harry do the bare minimum when it comes to studying etc. she nags them to do their work so they don’t get in trouble. she doesn’t nag them to do it to the same standard that she would.

and, actually, i think that ron being less ambitious than hermione is something which is key to how well they work. because ron provides not only emotional support, but emotional clarity.

hermione is shown throughout canon to - just as harry does - have a tendency to become obsessive to the detriment of her own health. she is also often - as harry is - emotionally or intellectually inflexible, and finds it hard to move on when what she feels or believes is proven to be wrong. both she and harry are micro-thinkers, who lean towards knee-jerk assumptions and stubborn convictions (and, indeed, hermione has a remarkably hagrid-ish tendency towards blind loyalty).

ron is none of these things. ron is a big-picture thinker (it’s why he’s so good at chess). he’s a pragmatist. he’s the least righteous of the three. he understands that faith and loyalty are choices, and that sometimes these choices will lead to outcomes which are bad or hard. he is the one of the three most willing to own up to having made mistakes. he is the one least likely to act on gut instinct (and, therefore, the hardest to fool - i think it’s worth emphasising that he clocks that tom riddle is tricking harry immediately, the only one of the trio to do so). he understands that things are a marathon, not a sprint. he is the least obsessive.

and these traits contribute to aspects of his character which are underappreciated. ron worries about hermione making herself ill during exams, or when she is using the time-turner, and makes an effort to get her to set healthy boundaries and redirect her anxiety. ron stands on a broken leg in front of sirius or goes into the forest to fight aragog not out of righteousness, but out of choice. ron takes over the burden of preparing buckbeak’s defence when it is clear that hermione is approaching burnout. ron is completely right that harry hasn’t done any long-term planning for the horcrux hunt, and his anger does force harry to tighten up after he leaves the trio. ron has a clear head in the middle of battle. ron makes harry and hermione laugh. ron is unafraid of human emotion. ron arrests harry’s tendency to brood over the little things by looking at the bigger picture. ron will always come back.

ron is bringing his politician wife regular cups of tea and making sure she doesn’t work all night. he is helping his lawyer wife to feel less upset over losing one case by reminding her that she’s won ten others. he is noticing stress creeping in and whirling her off for a dirty weekend, or even just a takeaway on the sofa. he is teaching his daughter to be proud of her ambition and his son to treat women as equals and both of his children that all you can do when you fuck up is apologise and try to do better. he is making hermione smile on the worst days of her life. he is helping her strategise her long-term goals when she gets stuck on the short-term ones. he is telling her straight when she needs to get it together. he is seeing a misogynistic head of department call hermione a ‘silly little girl’ and choosing to tell him exactly what he thinks of that.

ron is the ultimate wife guy. hermione is a very, very lucky lady.

[the-cookie-of-doom]

dipping my toe in to add, re: my last reblog. The characters in KinnPorsche are so fascinating to me because they're all so flawed. Chay is a grubby little gremlin teenage boy. Khun is overdramatic, self-absorbed, and crazy. Kinn has a temper but he's also just a fucking dork that doesn't always understand social cues. Kim is the same. Vegas is being pulled in so many directions he doesn't even know how to be a genuine human. Porsche is just generally a mess.

But a sad trend I've noticed in this fandom, is that these beautifully flawed characters get stripped down to plain caricatures that lose so much of what gives them depth.

Fuck it, I'm going to make this a KimChay rant bc we all know that's what I really care about on this blog.

Chay becomes the perfect voice of morality and responsibility that can do no wrong, he's the one teaching Kim how to be a person and whipping the mafia into shape and can do everything perfectly always. Ignoring the fact that no, he's a literal high school student. He's messy and grubby and immature, and a little self-centered, and that's fine.

Meanwhile Kim gets demonized to high hell, he's the worst person ever, he betrayed Chay and ruined his life and and and. When in reality, Kim was looking out for his brother, he didn't ever encourage Chay or """seduce him""" for the sake of spying, and got so caught up in his own complicated feelings that he ran from them. He's also a college student. Man is like. 22 at the oldest.

I tend to meet media where it's at, and accept what it's trying to tell me. And KinnPorsche is fulfilling some very obvious tropes. KinnPorsche themselves are the protagonist action couple, with some bodyguard flavored boss/employee spice. VegasPete is for the dark romance girlies that like BDSM and dubcon. But KimChay? For the love of god, they are the wholesome high school/college romance. With a side of first heartbreak, yes, but I see no indication from canon that either of them really see this has some huge life-ending betrayal. Chay is literally just a heartbroken teenager getting over his first situationship.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with exploring other dynamics between other characters, that's the whole point of fic! But it's so disheartening to see the amount of meta where people have convinced themselves that Kim is literally worse than Vegas, that Chay is a perfect saint that can do no wrong, and that Kim deserves to be used and abused as repentance, always groveling for Chay's forgiveness.

They really are both just. Guys. Just two little guys. Yes they both made mistakes, yes they both got heartbroken, and yes it might feel like the end of the world. But it's just a breakup. And I think given a little time and distance, Chay would have no problem gaining some perspective and just. Having a civil conversation with Kim, and moving on, whether they get back together or not.

[emin-folly]

(@ftl-faster-than-life HI THIS TOOK A HOT MINUTE WEH Also thanks Tumblr for eating my asks again smh) oH BOY, WHERE DO I START Oh Barry, Barry, Barry, my sweet babygirl, how you've been so incredibly villainized by this fandom I'm going to take this opportunity to address and debunk as many misconceptions about Barry's character that I can remember, in the case if someone who doesn't really know Barry all that well is reading this or to hopefully change some people's minds~

* "Barry is boring": Well, yes but actually no. That's the beauty of Barry--he is designed to be your average, unassuming everyday kind of guy. Problem is, a lot of people think that's all there is to him, but that's really only just the surface.

He has flaws. He's prone to making decisions without consulting his family if he thinks it's for the greater good. You need to explicitly tell this man if you wanna be his lover because he absolutely can NOT read romantic cues to save his own life, he's a guilt sponge, he's weird, he LOVES science and comics and is a huge nerd!! He gets jealous!

Guys-Guys?? He's aN ELDRITCH HORROR??? HELLO????? He is CONSTANTLY living in sheer and utter denial and is desperately grasping his extremely thin veneer of being human, and yet, because of this, he actually puts his family in more jeopardy. Do you even realize how fascinating that is

Barry is a character who also deeply craves companionship/people. He struggles with depression and suicidal tendencies ever since being resurrected. He tries so hard to be what everyone else wants him to be and meet their expectations while failing to take care of himself in the process. He's so much more complex than just "Wally's nice father figure who died in Crisis". People also tend to equate "boring" with "being good/kind" which, you know...I very much disagree with but that's just my opinion * "Barry is racist!" LOL This one is just so wildly incorrect. The origin of this misconception comes from an out-of-context panel Justice League of America #173) of Barry being angry about Black Lightning joining the JL. If you read the whole page the panel comes from, you'd see that in actuality Barry is NOT angry about a black man joining the League but rather, he's angry that that seems to be the only reason Oliver wants him and Barry is (rightfully) calling Oliver out on that. There has been no other time where Barry has a problem with people of color

* "Barry is a Republican" I don't even know where this fanon came from. I think this may have originated from Wally's run where Wally was a conservative and he just assumed?? Barry was the same??? Which is SO laughably wrong (Wally bby, stop projecting on your uncle challenge) For the major part of Barry's original run (and honestly, the majority of the Flash runs after that), he remained largely apolitical . People see a white guy from the 60s and automatically assume he's right leaning /shrug * "Barry's a cop!" Yeahhh, not quite actually. He's a CSI, a forensic scientist, not a blue collar badge sporting cop. He's the behind-the-scenes guy, the one who studies the crime scene and tries to piece together the evidence and bring the culprit to justice. There IS a difference. But people don't really care about the technicalities, tho, they just want to hate Barry and him being "basically" a cop is a fast and easy excuse to do so. And DC certainly isn't helping matters with them constantly pushing the cop agenda for him (thanks a lot DC) * "Barry is sexually-repressed": This is a headcanon I seen a fair amount of and--okay, I get it. Barry is shy and reserved and blushes up a mad storm when someone compliments him. I can see how that might lead people to interpret that as him being sexually repressed/being a prude. But like....Buddy. Homie. Amigo.

This man had more canon sex than Hal Jordan. He and Iris were getting it on FREQUENTLY in the Silver Age and that's not me exaggerating. Just look at Flash #197 where it was Barry's birthday and he and Iris made out and stayed in bed practically the whole day together. Maybe you could say they just did that in the morning and they did other things later buuuut I don't believe that for a minute lol. Or! In Flash #195 where Barry was late to a ceremony of a submarine departure because (you guessed it!) he was too busy exploring his wife's mouth. Just because Barry doesn't make sexually-charged remarks or cop a feel from Iris constantly doesn't mean he's opposed to sex. I see it more as him just being way more private and reserved about it, but he IS very much down to fuck as she is (or Hal! Whichever your ship may be~)

While we're kinda on the subject, I'm really not a fan of the whole Barry being "shojo-fied/uwu-fied" thing, if I'm being honest?? Like, yes, if you give him any kind of compliment, he will blush furiously and stutter. But that's different from him being totally ignorant on what sex is/being a weak, delicate little flower who needs a "Big, Strong man" like Hal to save him (also, like...can we stop treating Barry as the "girl" of the ship just because he's skinnier and smaller than Hal pls and thank you). He is an mid-20-30 year old adult man. And a forensic scientist who probably seen a lot of sex-related crimes in his line of work. I'm pretty sure he knows what sex is, guys (in fact, he would be the guy who actually hosts Sex Ed classes bc the misinformation out there is staggering lol)

"Barry is weak/one of the weaker superheroes": Ok, I've never seen anyone say this persay, but it is very evident in how people portray him a lot of the time. They see his smaller frame and the fact that he runs fast to mean he's a glass cannon (Honestly they do this to a lot of the other speedsters as well) which hi! Wrong again! Speedsters are actually INSANELY durable little dudes. He could tank a punch from Darkseid. He can drag MASSIVE SHIPS behind him!! Wally once punched Eobard with the equivalent force of a dwarf star. Yeah. Now I get whump, I personally love it, I do, but I also enjoy seeing Barry being the absolute powerhouse he is. He can vibrate through solid matter, he can manipulate frequencies, and he's incredibly smart with how to use his powers, always thinking up on the spot improv strategies and techniques! Please stop nerfing him, guys, speedsters get too much of that from the writers OTL * "He's conservative because of his buzzcut!" Ok this one actually had like, a whole article?? On it?? And it truly is so wild lmao. When the only thing people can find to hate a character on is his haircut, you know they have no basis for their argument lol * "Barry is abusive!" Nope. Not even close. People love to pull this as a "gotcha" to Barry fans, regarding the panels of "Barry" beating up Wally and verbally abusing him (The Return of Barry Allen). Except....that wasn't Barry, that was Eobard disguised as him. You know...if you read the full run, you would know that lol You literally couldn't find a more least abusive person than Barry lol. Which actually leads me into the next one... * "Barry was an example of toxic masculinity!" AH yes, of course, with how he's so openly kind and compassionate, how he loves kids and animals, how he openly cries and shows emotion, how he's super respectful of people regardless, how he chugs Respect Women juice all day everyday, how he's contributing to fundraisers to help impoverished people and further medical progress, how he's so concerned about the state of the environment and is firmly against consumption of fossil fuels, how he constantly tells his son nephew he's so proud of him and that he's his hero, how he runs home after work bc he's genuinely so excited to see his wife, how he loves her SO much and smothers her with kisses every chance he gets UGH. How does Iris stand him /s And since we're talking about Barry and how the fandom treats him, I can't not talk about the elephant in the room--Flashpoint To start off, lemme preface this real quick:

FLASHPOINT WAS NOT BARRY'S FAULT

He DID NOT intend to trade the lives of his family for his mom He DID NOT run back in time because he was jealous of Wally (uhh lmao what???? Yeah, I can't even begin to explain how wack that is) He DID NOT run back in time because he was "selfish" and "wanted his mommy back" (unfriendly reminder that Nora is a separate character and shouldn't be treated as just an appendage of a male character <333) Some actual context for non-comic readers: Eobard killing his mom is actually an aberration of the true timeline. It was PERFECTLY REASONABLE to assume that it would restore itself to its original version!! Barry had also traveled in time before in the comics without any repercussions or ill effects, so there was NO CONCEIVABLE REASON FOR HIM TO THINK ANYTHING OF THE SCALE OF FLASHPOINT WOULD EVEN HAPPEN If people had read the issues preceding Flashpoint, they'd see Barry did all of that for Nora!! Because he despised the fact that she had to pay with her life because of a villain of his!! That it wasn't right for her to die for his sake!!

"But Eobard said Flashpoint was Barry's fault-!" EOBARD is A BITCH ASS LIAR who purposely twists the truth to hurt Barry as much as he can!! Of COURSE he would say that!! What ACTUALLY happened is that Eobard is the one who somehow made Nora's death such a critical and important fixture in time to the point of just tempering with that can cause a catastrophic domino effect. Flashpoint is EOBARD'S FAULT and HIS ALONE (and Idk, Doctor Manhattan's too ig if you wanna include him)

Barry loves his family and cares so, so, SO EXTREMELY MUCH. He could literally not be any prouder of Wally if he actually tried!! Everything he does is for his family, even sacrificing his own mental health and happiness for them and it makes me SO sad to see everyone cling to this butchered version of him in their minds (though it's not entirely their fault, DC is also definitely to blame)

[haven-of-dusk]

I really do feel like it says something about how a lot of people look at the world that they watched a duo who fundamentally succeed because they balance each other out -- one who trusts in people and wants to see the good in everyone and one who is always suspicious of everyone and tends to see everyone's flaws and shortcomings (though to Stiles' credit, just because he sees them doesn't mean he uses them or resents them for it, at least not all of the time) -- and came to the conclusion that actually the trusting one who sees the good in people was wrong to be that way and should've just adopted Stiles' approach of suspicion and distrust.

Not only does that just fundamentally ignore all of the show's themes (which are not subtle for the record, they say the word "balance" a lot). It also just seems like a really sad philosophy to live by? Which is also why Stiles doesn't hold to it 24/7 and takes on more of the trust and hope that's central to Scott's character?

I'm just saying (still, I've said it before, so still saying), if you truly believe Scott should've listened to Stiles and all of his suspicions and distrust 100% of the time, then you're advocating for a cast a quarter of its current size, everyone being miserable and distrustful of each other, and the story being radically different because it would rob Scott of the traits that make him a good Alpha. And also almost none of the Stiles ships people love would exist. So there's that too.

[lanawinterscigarettes]

Obsessed (Joe Goldberg x gn reader)

Summary: Joe discovers your obsession with him

Warnings: obsessive behavior from the reader, mentioned threats/violence, stalking, breaking and entering, the reader has massive yandere vibes, the reader is a creep/pervert, interrupted masturbation session, Joe is pretty complacent to this once he finds out, implied smut at the end

A/N: the original idea for this came from this post by the amazing @samcvrpenters that I decided to expand on a little. thank you so much for giving me the permission to turn your idea into a full fic <33

Joe was perfect. He was, really. He was charming, attractive, had a good sense of humor: all of which were traits that led him to be the perfect guy. In your opinion, anyway.

You wouldn't say you were obsessed with him. That was an awfully strong word. Though you did tend to care about him more than anyone else in your life, and you thought about him every second of every day, and there was the teensy tiny shrine you had dedicated to him tucked away in your closet where no one would see-

Okay, yeah, maybe you were a little obsessed. But who could blame you, really? Guys in general sucked at best and deserved jail time at worst, and that was putting it lightly. But Joe? He was perfect.

Okay, maybe not one hundred percent perfect. He did have a few small character flaws, but they were minor things that you were able to look over pretty easily.

Such as leaving the door to his apartment unlocked sometimes when he left out. I mean, seriously, he lived in New York of all places. If anyone was going to try to rob a person, it would be there.

You forgave him, though. You were aware he probably had other things on his mind, what with having to manage a bookstore entirely by himself (you didn't count Ethan) and making sure Paco was okay.

There was also the girl he'd been talking to that had ghosted him, but that wasn't nearly as important as anything else (you threatened her with a slit throat if she didn't back off). What? You were just looking out for him. He was yours, even if he didn't realize it yet. You knew it, and that was enough for the both of you. It was one of the reasons why you were so determined to not let anybody tear you apart.

No one could love him the same way you could, you were quite certain. No one could appreciate him like you did. Which is obviously why you trailed after him wherever he went like a lost puppy, though you of course didn't make him aware that he had his very own living shadow.

You didn't want to freak him out. After all, you were well aware of what it would look like if he found out you were stalking him. (Though you hated using that word to refer to your situation. Stalking made it sound so bad, so dirty. You were simply looking out for him, is all).

Just like you were looking out for him whenever you snuck into his place. Although sneaking might not be the best word because, again, he had a tendency to leave the door unlocked.

So what if you went in there when he was gone on occasion and took a few things? It's not like he'd notice a missing shirt or pair of boxers. Or three.

Hey, at least you washed them before returning them. You hoped the smell of the laundry detergent you used would remind him of you just enough without giving away it was you that had washed his clothes.

For the most part, you were pretty clever, always making sure you knew where Joe was before heading over to his apartment to poke around at stuff and making sure to wear a hat and discreet jacket whenever you tailed after him. One way you were not clever, though, was when it came to your feelings. That was how he ended up finding you out.

He'd left early that morning just like usual for Mooney's, which gave you the chance to enter his apartment once he was gone. Technically you really didn't need to break in since you had a key (you were his best friend, after all) but it was hard to imagine that he'd be thrilled upon finding you in his apartment when he was gone, snooping around for no reason.

Everything seemed pretty ordinary, and you were just about to leave when you saw a pair of boxers laying on the floor next to the bed. His boxers.

You quickly glanced around despite no one being there and debated on whether or not you'd have the time to take them over to your place for a quick private session before bringing them back. Nah, you couldn't do that, it was far too risky, you decided even while picking them up, your hands practically trembling with excitement. God, you were such a mess when it came to him and his clothing.

Flopping down on the bed, you held the boxers up to your face and inhaled deeply. They smelled just like you'd imagined that he would. Still clutching the boxers with one hand, you moved the other down your body to the front of your pants. Maybe if you were quick, you could rub one out and be gone before anyone even realized it.

Of course it was at that same moment when Joe himself was walking back up the stairs to his apartment building, having left behind a book that needed to be restored back at his place. All he needed to do was grab it and then he could leave, no problem.

Except it was a problem, because you were already in there, about to masturbate with his underwear.

He paused just outside his apartment, noticing immediately the door was cracked. Had he left it like that? No, there's no way. He locked up before he left, he made sure of it.

A low moan was pulled from you as you rubbed and touched yourself, which just so happened to be the very first thing he heard when he walked in. "Joe..." You whimpered out his name in complete and utter bliss, your head tilted back against the pillows as you shut your eyes, though they quickly shot open again when you heard someone clearing their throat.

"What are you doing?" He asked while averting his gaze, feeling flustered and confused (and a little aroused, if we're being completely honest here). "And are those my boxers?"

This isn't what it looks like, is what you so desperately wanted to say, but you knew he'd never believe that. You needed something that could save this, so what did you do? You admitted your feelings to him.

"I love you," is what you blurted out instead, quickly pulling your hand out from your pants as you moved to hide the boxers behind your back. "I was- I just came over to check on things, and I saw you'd left some dirty clothes on the floor, and I was about to pick them up for you."

That excuse was so unbelievably stupid, you knew he'd never go for it. Luckily for you, he only seemed to catch one part of what you'd said.

"You... You love me?" He questioned in quiet disbelief, his big doe eyes gazing at you with a mixture of affection and longing. He was so pitiful looking, it was cute.

Swallowing thickly, you stood, discreetly dropping the boxers on the floor behind you and kicking them away as you spoke. "Of course I love you, Joe. You're my best friend in the entire world, and you mean everything to me."

He knew it was wrong, that he should panic, scream, kick you out and say he never wanted to see you again- but he couldn't. Because the truth was, he loved you, too.

Before you could respond, he pulled you in for a passionate and loving kiss, one that seemed to reassure you that he wasn't weirded out or offended or mad. You could feel yourself instantly melting into his touch, your hands cupping his face as your lips moved against one another in perfect harmony. If you could kiss him forever, you would.

Eventually you were forced to pull away for air, both of you panting heavily as you rested your forehead against his. "Are you the one who's been stealing all my clothes?" He asked suddenly, something that made you let out a snort of laughter in response.

"Maybe. I always washed them before returning them, though, so don't worry," you playfully replied as your arms moved to wrap around his neck.

"Well, that's good at least." He kissed you again before adding, "Care to enlighten me on just what you were doing before I came in?"

"Oh, I think you know the answer to that already," you purred in a sultry voice, a squeal of delight escaping from you when he suddenly picked you up and carried you over to the bed.

"Maybe you can show me then," he muttered in response, his voice low and seductive. Had you realized things would turn out this well, you would've admitted your love for him ages ago.

It was crazy how this all happened because of your more unsavory habits being revealed before the one person you were trying to keep them from. Him immediately accepting your love with open arms rather than feeling violated or being creeped out only proved to you one thing: that he needed you as much as you did him.

And once this had been confirmed for you in the flesh, there was no way he'd ever be left alone or let out of your sight ever again. You needed to have your eyes on him at all times, if only for your personal peace.

Besides, who could really blame you for wanting to keep him all to yourself? He was perfect, and you were obsessed after all, far more than you'd ever admit.

End notes: I really hope this was worth the wait 🫶

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[starry-bi-sky]

Just so you know, I've reread your answer to my ask about how you'd rewrite "Double Cross My Heart" in your Danyal Al Ghul au several times over. And I'll just say, your whole breakdown and revision of that trainwreck of a Sam centered episode is the very reason why when it comes to the phandom, both alone and in dpxdc crossovers I tend to lean more towards fanon Sam instead of canon.

Because the people that like her yet acknowledge her glaring flaws do a far better job of bringing her to task when she's being unreasonable or hypocritical in a way that's fair than the supposedly professional storyboard writers.

Anyway, you mentioned that you don't like amethyst ocean and prefer gray ghost. Same here. (though I also like pink astronaut) Since then, I can't stop imagining Danyal/Danny with the "Damian experiencing his first crush" headcanon applied to him. The idea of him treating Valerie with suspicion under the assumption she somehow poisoned or hit him with some kind of hidden anti ghost tech that affects both his human and ghost side, when in reality it's simply him developing feelings for her is just absolute hilarity. To me if no one else.

FIRST OFF YOU ARE SO SWEET <33 the fact that you've read my post about Double Cross My Heart SEVERAL TIMES means I'm now morally obligated to die for you. I'll admit! I was a bit harsh on Sam a little in my original response, because I was irritated by some depictions of her in fanon painting her as someone who could do no wrong and had the only braincell in the group. So I was kinda picking on her a little bit. Would I change a thing? No, I love her character, I just love dissecting her flaws even more.

AND ALSO YOU'RE SO RIGHT ABOUT THE DANYAL THING. That's so cute and so funny, effective immediately it is now canon🧑‍⚖️ . He fought Red Huntress earlier that day and she got a lucky good hit on him, and it's literally that one Marina reaction image where the first panel she looks shocked, the next she looks into it. At least part of it. That's literally what happened, and the next time Danny runs into Valerie at school his heart flutters.

Danny puts up this whole conspiracy board because Valerie smiled at him and his heart went all flippy-floppy and what is this FEELING. He shows it to Sam and Tucker and they both are doing that hands folded prayer-style pressed against their mouths in concern thing, and they don't know whether they should laugh or cry.

Because on one hand: oh my GOD, Danny. But on the OTHER: on my god, Danny. He's never gonna live this one down but that's because if they don't tease him about it, they're gonna get all mopey and sad about it. Just another reminder of their best friend's tragic, mysterious background.

aaa. There are some headcanons I wanna go over (like how when they go on a date, Danny and Valerie have this cute heart to heart where Danny admits that he's not used to being open with people, but he wants to try to be with Valerie because she makes him really happy. He's so shy and almost flustered, and Valerie is so charmed by this side of Danyal Fenton that she's not used to.) but I REALLY wanna think about this in terms of episodic because it was super fun doing it last time, and I really enjoyed it.

If you remember (and you prolly do since you mentioned you read the last ask you sent me several times) I said in the Gregory post that I deleted a (frankly good chunk) of writing that included how i would change the Valerie episodes leading up to the Gregory one, but I deleted it because it was kinda irrelevant to the ask, and admittedly I was getting myself all twisted in knots about it.

But I kinda wanna do that now.

So. If you don't mind I am. Gonna do that. And luckily for me! I found the website I can do. that for free, and have it pulled up! It's the same one I used for the last post to chart out the gregory episode.

So, Shades of Gray! I lowkey want this episode to be like, subtly hinting at the idea that Valerie might develop a crush on Danny first. But ultimately it gets the two of them properly introduced and established with each other, and Red Huntress going.

The episode starts out with Danny being chased by Dash because he got a bad grade in a spelling, obviously if he tried that with Danyal he's gonna get his shit wiped. So! Change! It's Danny heading to his next class, he's texting Sam and Tucker, expertly maneuvering around people in a combination of teen-texting-habit and assassin training awareness. Kinda aware of what's around him, but also not and just trusting instinct.

We meet Valerie when she's showing off a (frankly unflattering) purple polo shirt that costs, AND I QUOTE: "$579, and worth every one of my dad's pennies." to Paulina and Kwan. Girl, this shirt is a few shades off from that NEON "error, image not found" magenta. It looks incredibly unflattering on her considering it's neon-y-ness and the orange skirt and headband she's wearing. Sweetheart, get your damn money back, or at least pick a different pair of pants.

I'm telling you this because I can't resist changing the design. So instead of. that.

She is INSTEAD wearing like, this cute, ruffled, soft pastel purple crop top and some cute jean shorts. Her hair is in like, passion twist braids with little gold cuffs in them. She looks SO cute guys, so cute.

Of course maybe they made it look ugly on purpose because in the show she gets coffee dumped on her 30 seconds later from Danny crashing into Paulina while running from Dash.

I've thought of three different ways this could go, and can't pick which so I'm just gonna write them out and see which one I'm drawn to more.

Kwan, Paulina, and Valerie are standing in the hallway. Not next to a corner but close to one. Danny turns the corner, does not run into them. He briefly looks up from his phone when he hears, they kinda stare at each other, and Danny idly, disinterestedly looks at Valeria, then compliments her with a single; "Nice shirt." Pretty anticlimatic ngl, but it startles the trio a little bit because Danny doesn't often talk to other people outside his circle unless he's in some kind of group project or has to. So for him to compliment Valerie unprompted is startling. This could or could not end with one of them snarkily saying "thanks its worth more than your entire wardrobe" which Danny would take offense to because, lets not kid ourselves, Danyal and Damian Al Ghul were raised as pseudo-princes in the League. Without missing a beat he shoots back: "at least i have a personality beyond being rich." and then disappears down the hallway.

The trio begin walking down the hallway, crash into Danny. HE gets coffee splattered all over him and he immediately reels back, instinctively reverting back to his mother tongue and hissing out arabian curses as coffee drips down the front of his red hoodie and shirt. It's even in his hair. Thankfully the coffee is not as hot as it started out, but it's still uncomfortably warm. He wipes the drink from his eyes, flicks it onto the ground, and hisses out; "watch where you're going!". The trio? Kinda unsure of how to react at first; Danny is unpopular, but not unpopular enough to be worth bullying -- besides, everyone knows he wouldn't tolerate it. But then I think Paulina finds her tongue and says "what did you say?". Danny turns to her and says; "I said; watch where you're going. Need me to say it in Spanish? Mira por donde vas!" He flicks off his hoodie, grumbling in arabic about how he's going to smell like coffee all day, and stalks off. I'm pretty partial to this idea.

Valerie still gets coffee dumped on her. But instead of sic'ing Kwan on him (because she knows that won't work), she just says a few choice words to Danny and stalks off with Paulina and Kwan to go find somewhere to clean off the coffee. Danny approaches her later and gives her a list of cleaning stuff that can get coffee stains out of her shirt. And when she tells him it's made of like, this super specific fabric that needs this really specific stuff to clean, Danny raises his eyebrow at her and says that he knows, and it is a list of stuff that can clean out the stain without damaging the shirt. He says he's not an idiot, and he knows how to recognize X-Fabric when he sees it. Just because I'm fond of pseudo-prince Al Ghul here being a bit of a snob and has an extensive care and hygiene routine. He uses this moisturizer or cologne that makes him smell faintly like sandalwood and vanilla because that is my favorite scent. Tucker jokingly handed him a 13-in-1 once while they were doing a quick supply run with Sam, and Danny literally dropped it like it burned him.

I'm really partial to two and three. So i'm going to get a second opinion. [...] Second one wins! Thank you, Naviii~ <3.

Danny could just intangible the stuff off him, but that would raise questions and also I want him to go the rest of the day stained with coffee. So it stays, and he's in a sour mood for a good chunk of the day. He runs into Cujo when he disappears down an empty hallway, and gets even more irritated when his ghost sense goes off - but hey! If it's Skulker, he can at least pulverize the dude and let off some steam. But nope! It's a puppy!

And Danyal Al Ghul, local ex-member of the world's most deadliest "we speak for the trees, the trees say fuck you" group of environmentalists ever, immediately feels his troubles melt away, and he croons at Cujo. "Oh hello, habibi. Who do you belong to?" And drops down to the ground to let Cujo sniff his hand. Cujo does so, and then starts vying for his attention, and Danny is grinning very wide and very genuinely and is more than happy to give it. "You are a much better surprise than that wretched poacher. Do you have a name, pretty thing?"

Cujo has a collar on, so Danny touches it, lifts the tag, and sees the Axion labs "A" symbol on it. He hums, narrows his eyes, and murmurs "Where have I seen this before?" But before he can flip it around, Cujo then turns monstrous. We cut to the title screen!

I want to say, the next scene is in Axion labs. The way that Damon (Val's dad), Valerie, those two guards, and his boss reacts, it heavily implies that the existence of ghosts have not reached the whole of Amity Park, and that the city itself is still largely unaware of their existence. Considering that Damon's security system doesn't allocate for ghosts, and when Danny crashes at their feet, Valerie literally asks him; "What are you!?" and she seems surprised when tucker later tells her its ghosts, and is even unaware that Danny's parents are ghost hunters.

When Valerie gets coated in dog ecto-slobber, Danny does grin a little under his little half-face balaclava. Because yes, karma! He is petty, and he can't help but flip to his feet and snarkily, smugly say; "I know what I'm not," and as he says this, he leans forward and plucks some of it out of her hair, "Covered in dog slobber." and then he flicks it away.

Before Valerie can retort, Cujo breaks into the lab, and Danyal mutters curses and bounds after him. The lab gets destroyed as per canon, and Damon gets fired.

The garage sale scene happens pretty normally, when Valerie says her little "oh great, word has already oozed down to the bottom of the social grapevine." Danny's response is snarkier than in canon.

"And here Tucker was just offering some simple help to you, you looked like you needed it." He says icily, and Tucker pipes up and says "we all just want to help!" because I don't fully see Danyal being that generous especially to someone being rude to his friends.

Sam dryly says "I don't." and Danny just stays silent, neither confirming nor denying anything. He just raises an eyebrow and turns his eyes to Tucker, who is laughing nervously.

"Well, Danny hasn't said no. So most of us want to help! That's two thirds." And he gestures awkwardly to Danny, who is wearing a red muscle tee hoodie, showing that he's rather lean. "And Danny's the strongest between the three of us, so he could be a big help! There could get a lot more work done."

Valerie is not convinced, as in canon. Although for my Gray Ghost heart she does check out Danny a little bit -- but quickly shakes it off because she's still very deeply entrenched in the status quo. "Thanks, but I'll pass."

Before Danny's ghost sense goes off, I do want him to wander around the yard sale for a moment just to see what's to offer -- collector of trinkets and pretty things, he is. Projecting, I am. Slightly GNC Danny ftw, it is. There's a table of jewelry up for sale that he's drawn over to -- and almost immediately disappointed by. It's pretty, and extravagant and very obviously expensive, that's for sure, but that's not the problem. Valerie sees him looking and marches over to him, still upset that he and his friends are still there.

"Put that down, that stuff is worth more than your own wardrobe." She snaps at him, and tries to snatch an expensive, luxury sapphire necklace from his hands, and is immediately met with an icy glare from Danny as he yanks it away from her fingers.

"Who says I can't afford it?" He says -- and he can't, not really, not with the allowance he gets from the Fentons and not with their funds. However, despite their limited contact, Danny still does meet with his beloved mother. One word from him to her, and she'd ensure he got a hundred of the very same necklace. "You? You can't either, Gray. Not anymore."

Valerie looks embarrassed and furious, but Danny continues, and tosses the necklace to her. She fumbles, but manages to catch it. "I don't want this junk anyways. It's gaudy and too western. I look better in gold."

Now his ghost sense goes off, and he turns away from Valerie. He doesn't run off immediately, lingers long enough to see who the ghost is and what the danger is. And when the ground begins to shake, he grabs onto the table and reaches out on protective instinct to hold onto Valerie before she can fall over.

As you can tell, this is for my gray ghost heart. Although valerie's clothes do still get destroyed by the street water, unfortunately. And Cujo shrinks down to size by the time Valerie makes it over to her dresser to try and grab it.

Danny audibly mutters, "Its that dog again." and hurries over to scruff the thing before it can wander off. Cujo is wagging his tail and immediately, enthusiastically licks his face once he's got him up to eye level. Danny cracks a little smile, "Hello habibi, you're a little troublemaker, aren't you?"

"you know this dog?" Valerie demands, and stomps over as Danny gets Cujo settled into his arms. Sam and Tucker hurry over as well, looking mildly frazzled.

Danny scoffs at her; "Don't be ridiculous. I met him a few days ago-- wait;" and he pauses to check to see if Cujo is a boy, "--ah, yep. Him. -- I met him a few days ago in the hallway after Sanchez dumped her coffee all over me. He was rather friendly, but he ran off before I could see who he belonged to."

Sam leans over to look at Cujo, and wiggles her finger at him; "He's kinda cute, and he likes you."

Dannny has a moment where he wants to boast, of course he does, I'm fantastic with animals. But instead he keeps mum. His smile just kinda softens proudly, and he hoists Cujo into his arms a little better.

The moment is shattered by Valerie, who points accusingly at Cujo. "Whatever it is, get it out of here before it ruins anymore of my stuff!"

Annnd before Danny can do just that, Cujo begins wiggling to get out of his arms and run around. He manages to, with his ghostly strength drag Danny across the lawn before yanking himself out of his arms and knocking them both onto the sidewalk -- scraping Danny's arm in the process -- and running around.

Rather than his leg, Cujo bites Danny's arm -- and has a strong enough grip on it that he unintentionally pierces flesh and causes him to start bleeding -- and begins dragging him. But before they can reach the moving van, Danny gets his fingers wrapped around Cujo's collar, finds some purchase -- even if it means his bare arm is being dragged against the sidewalk, and yanks hard on Cujo's collar with a harsh; "HEEL."

Cujo immediately stops, and sits. Danny honestly wasn't expecting that to work immediately, but it does! And with Cujo still, he keeps one firm hand on the collar and uses his other arm -- which is now painfully road rash'd and bleeding -- to help sit up.

Sam and tucker and Valerie rush over to help. "Oh my god, Danny, are you okay?" only for Danny to hold his bad arm up to stop them from getting closer, and whirling on Cujo to scold him. He's upset enough that he reverts back to Arabic, but Cujo seems to get the point across and wilts.

Danny feels bad, but can't show Cujo any affection unless he wants to accidentally reinforce the behavior. He points to his side, and Cujo obediently goes to sit but his feet. Now he turns to the other three.

"To answer your question." He looks down to his arm and very gently brushes his fingers against the road rash, brushing out the little pebbles stuck in his skin. it stings like a bitch, and he faintly grimaces. Then he inspects the dog bite on his wrist "I'll be fine."

Even Valerie looks worried; "That looks really bad, Fenton. I think you should go to the hospital--"

"No." Danny immediately cuts her off, "No hospital. Mr. and Mrs. Fenton keep a first aid kit at home, I'll just use that."

"And what about the dog?"

"I'll figure something out."

And then they scoot off.

Cafeteria scene goes as canon, nothing much to change there other than the fact that when Valerie sees Danny, his arm is all bandaged up and he's wearing a batman merch t-shirt rather than a muscle tee, she feels a little guilty. A small part of her kinda wants to ask how he is, but the larger part that's still big on the status quo and is still humiliated by being shunned by her friends, just wants to go eat in peace. So she doesn't say anything.

(although i am thinking that if she runs into him again later after the cafeteria scene, she asks him what he did with the ghost dog, and he lies and says Phantom swooped in and took Cujo from him.)

The park scene goes relatively the same as well, at least in the beginning. But instead of Sam and Phantom being all "he's an untrained dog" they're instead all "let's see what training he does have. Maybe it can be refined."

"You're good with animals Danny, and you're the only ghost in the area. You handle it." and then she tosses the dog obedience book at him and wanders off.

Danny doesn't need the dog obedience book, so he tucks it into a pocket dimension in his cape and whistles for Cujo. There's that whole tumble down the hill, that whole chase scene happens.

I do wanna say, I actually really like how inexperienced Valerie is here. Idk maybe it's because I haven't watched a tv show in a long while, but it's nice to see that she's not immediately good at it. She wobbles on the hoverboard, two out of the three disks she threw at Danny missed, and the third only hit him by chance. She's amateurish, and I really appreciate that.

"Let me guess, first day on the job, isn't it?" and he still gets cut by the third disk like in canon. He's not impressed or convinced when she says she's going to take him down -- it's one quick once over that tells him enough.

Wobbly feet, unsteady balance on the board. -- Her first time using it, she's unconfident and doesn't trust her own tech, as if she didn't even make it herself. She's unused to the board.

Improper trigger discipline, and shaky hands on her gun. She's holding it with one hand and far away from her like she's afraid of it going off, despite the fact that she's the one on the other end of it.

Tense all the way up to her shoulders, her voice is full of false bravado. She has no idea what she's doing. Danny's thoroughly unimpressed. At least the Drs. Fenton and Walker (maddie got her doctorate with her maiden name) trust their tech wholeheartedly and treat them as an extension of themself, just as Danny does with his blades. Just as this new ghost hunter does not.

And, of course, the way she goes flying off her board the moment she fires her bazooka. Although Cujo does still come to the rescue, although like in canon, he grabs Danny by the foot. Danny manages to recollect himself though and hoist himself over Cujo's back like he's riding a horse.

This is the biggest scene change and possibly my favorite change. The fakeout makeout scene. Now, let me preface this by saying that I love the fakeout makeout concept. I think it's hilarious, and I think it's even funnier if Danny is actually rather down with the concept because the assassin-undercover part of his brain thinks it's a simple-in-a-clever way in order to brush off suspicion. I think Sam and Tucker both are very down to kiss their very attractive best friend, and whenever it comes up there have been arguments over whose turn it is to kiss Danny.

BUT. I have an image in mind for this scene, so I want Danny to be alone for this. So Cujo takes him to a cluster of trees and bushes where Sam isn't at, and Danny sends him off with a ball as per canon, but rather than get tackled by Sam, he dives up into a tree and transforms back to Al Ghul before Valerie can reach him.

He is reading the Dog Obedience book, and scares the absolute shit out of Valerie. And it's never a bad day to hurt Danny, so little miss firstie over here fires into the trees, and juuuust about skims Danny's arm. The same one that has the road rash and dog bite on it, that he's forcibly prevented himself from rapidly healing because that would arouse suspicion.

"ماذا بحق الجحيم كان ذلك!؟" ("What the hell was that!?")

Valerie knows that voice, and instantly turns ashen. "Oh no." She flies up the tree and finds Danyal sitting snug amongst the larger limbs, the dog obedience book in his lap, and he's hunched slightly and holding onto his burned arm tightly.

"Oh my god, I-- I am so sorry--" she doesn't have the time to be upset (or snarky or mean) about why he's there, considering she just shot him. Danny snaps his head up and glowers furiously at her.

"Wh- why did you do that!?" He stammers over himself, trying to find his english. Part of it is an act, part of it is genuine anger because she could've killed him with that thing. He loathes incompetence, and she has it in buckets. "Watch where you're aiming that, Trigger Finger, you could've killed me!"

Valerie is all flustered and mortified, can't even find it to get angry back. "i- I am so sorry, Fenton. I thought you were something else--"

"Something else!?" Danny yells, "So you blindly shoot?! What is wrong with you!? Don't you know any trigger discipline!?"

Iiit's. a mess? Valerie offers him a lift to the hospital, or at least out of the tree, and Danny snarls at her not to touch him, and that he's not going anywhere with her on that hunk of sheet metal. He tosses the book at her and says to make herself useful and hold that while he gets down. Valerie feels really guilty -- too guilty to protest or be mad about how angry he is with her.

When he gets down from the tree he takes the book back from her, and then asks her how she even knows his name anyways. They've never met before. "Actually, now that I think about it," he narrows his eyes at her, "you sound like someone I know."

And then he reaches for her mask.

Valerie flies back, stammering over herself and briefly forgets to feel guilty in order to feel panicked and indignant, and then just goes "What are you doing!? You're crazy, we've never met before!" And then flies off.

And, before I continue, I will say right now. Danny, as himself, forever and always from then on refers to Red Huntress (or Scarlett Hunt, as I'm thinking of as an alternative) as "Trigger" or "Trigger Finger" respectively. Whenever they run into each other as Scarlett and Danny, he always calls her Trigger and asks if she's killed anyone yet. Valerie feels really bad from then on about hitting him, because where she hit him ends up scarring.

When she's gone, Danny mutters to himself that that sounded like Valerie, and goes ghost to go find Sam and tell her what happened.

Hallway scene stays the same, and -- actually, I was gonna make fun of the fact that Valerie didn't know the Fentons were ghost hunters when it's the whole reason the family is ostracized. But you know what? I can believe it. Kids will follow the crowds' lead. Witch hunts and all that.

"So, Tucker tells me your parents are ghost hunters!"

"Yeah? What else has he told you?"

Before Cujo shows up, they do actually manage to hold some kind of conversation. However, Danny uses the time to go: "Look, if you're planning on getting into ghost hunting, try not being like the hack I met yesterday."

Valerie laughs nervously, "Ah-hah, no of course not! But uh, hack?"

Danny scowls, and twists towards her with his arms crossed -- he's wearing a red hoodie today, and a band tee. -- "Yeah! I met some chick yesterday while at the park, and Little Miss Trigger Finger shot me." He says, "Your weapon should be like an extension of yourself, not something you just use! Trigger Finger was flailing that gun in her hands like it was a ribbon, and incompetence like that will get someone killed. Your weapon -- whether it be a blade or a firearm or a blunt object -- should be as easy to move as curling your fingers, and just as easy to trust. It should not be a stranger, but a part of you. A weapon must know how to use itself if it wants to be of any use to anyone else."

Sam cuts him off with a high pitched, nervous giggle, and wraps her fingers lightly around his shoulders and tugs him back, sliding her arms around the front of his chest like an anchor. "Danny." she hisses at him quietly, and Danny snaps his jaw shut and looks away.

Tucker also laughs uneasily, "Sorry," he says, leaning around Valerie to get her attention, "Dan here uh, gets really passionate about improper weapon handling. It's one of his quirks."

Danny looks away and mutters something under his breath in arabic.

(You know this already, but Sam and Tucker still don't know about Danny's past. But they've heard him talk about weapon mishandling enough times -- and have seen him fight -- to know that the way he talks is more than just theory. He has personal experience with weapons, and has unintentionally before referred to himself as one. But whenever they ask about it, he clams up and denies any sort of involvement.)

Valerie doesn't really know what to say to that, but Danny seems to know a lot about proper weapon discipline. So she might try her chances with getting to know more about it from him later, if she can catch him. She also silently makes note to get herself acquainted to her own tools like Danny was implying.

And then Cujo shows up, and things happen as canon. Oh but wait Tucker lands on Valerie while she's trying to figure out how to open the thermos, and I want to say that she hears him say "I can help you. valerie!" before he lands on her. So her confronting him after she gets out of the basketball hoop, and practically beegs him not to tell Danny about being the same girl who shot him. She really does think his help could be valuable in the long run because of his knowledge on ghosts and weapons.

Lovestruck Tuck of course, agrees. Not without some tentative hemming and going; "I don't know Val, Danny's really clever. He'll figure it out eventually if you don't do something to hide your voice, it's pretty recognizable."

For this episode, her voice stays the same but in the future she'll be working on a voice mod, and until then refuses to speak around Danny if she knows he's present. If she has to talk, then she forcibly tries deepening it.

Anyways things proceed as canon, Danny overhears the boss with Damon say "I know we should've never gotten rid of those guard dogs."

He mutters to himself "Guard dogs? Wait..." and he holds up Cujo, peering at his collar, and finally realizing where he recognizes the symbol on the tag. Immediately his expression darkens, "Oh fuck no, they did not."

Things go as canon, although Danny sneaks in not only to find what Cujo is looking for, but to hack in and get records of their guard dogs to confirm his theory and to steal them -- plus confirmation of termination of said dogs. So he can blackmail the shit out of Axion Labs later. He stays invisible and uses his league training to sneak around, and actually gets the guard dog records and confirmation before he runs into Valerie and they fight. Danny purposely keeps his distance and focuses more on dodging.

"you're a pretty lousy shot" Valerie says when he blasts above her a metal support beam above her.

Danny retorts sharply, "I could say the same." And although she can't see it, he bares his fangs at her. "Or have you forgotten about what you did to the ghost hunters' boy a few days ago?"

(He can be VERY petty)

Which, of course, infuriates and embarrasses Val. Things remain as is, Danny finds the squeaky toy, he tells Valerie he doesn't own the dog -- although he also says that he belongs to the very same Lab that fired her dad -- she refuses his apology, Tucker pretends to get caught by the Axion security lab. Etc etc.

Danny later reveals that he also stole the records about the guard dogs and how Axion Lab wrongfully euthanized all of them in favor of a security system they didn't even end up using, and was planning on anonymously releasing it online so that Axion could face the consequences for their abuse. Tucker has to beg him not to, because then that would reveal that someone else had gotten into the lab that night and would put Valerie's dad in hot water again.

Danny... reluctantly agrees. For now. But he'll be holding onto it, and keeping his eye on Axion Labs. This sort of cruelty will not go unpunished forever, he'll make sure of it.

ending goes as ending does. They go to the dumpty humpty concert, they speculate where Valerie got her suit. Etc etc. At the lunch table I think Valerie stops by Tucker and co's table to talk to Tucker -- they seemed to end on a good note that night -- and she asks Danny how his arm is.

Danny eyes her quietly, and turns his head away. "It'll heal, so long as Trigger Finger stays away from me." and he does see Valerie wilt a little, and kinda feels bad. But also, she fucking shot him. He's lowkey less angry about that tho and more angry about her total weapon incompetence

-------

When its just Tucker -- and ykw, Sam too, who Valerie would know knows she's Red since she was yk, right there next to Tucker when he fell on Valerie -- and Valerie, he tries to reassure her about Danny's apparently grudge against Scarlett Hunt.

"Aw, chin up Val, I'm sure Danny will come around to your alter ego eventually! He just.. needs some time to heal! Literally, because you... shot him."

and when Valerie realizes Sam knows too, Sam points her pen at her and goes: "The only reason I haven't told Danny is because Tucker is also my best friend," she leans into Valerie's space; "But so help me Moses, if you shoot Danny again, I will not hesitate to tell him. And i will, in a heartbeat."

She leans back, crossing her arms; "So you better learn to control your finger, Trigger."

-

Danny having beef with Red Huntress in his civilian form was not actually in the original cards for this episode, but it came to me as I was writing and I could not pass it up. I think it'd be hilarious and also like, a real point of idk conflict for Valerie. Just one more reason she wants to be abetter ghost hunter because otherwise she'll hurt people -- shooting Danny left a mark on her, and she feels really really guilty about it. Especially after finding out it scarred.

And also it's like, objectively hilarious? It's like the Love Square from MLB but its more like a Hate Square instead. Granted Val and Danny don't hate each other but my point still stands! It's there if you squint.

Every single time Danny runs into Scarlett he calls her Trigger and asks her how her aim is, and whether she knows how to use that weapon of hers. Valerie is both very frustrated by his unwillingness to forgive her and very ashamed by the fact that she's frustrated by it. He has every right to be mad at her, she could've seriously hurt him -- and she did -- but still, his animosity is grating sometimes.

Danny does eventually get over her shooting him in his civilian form -- considering she shoots him all the time as a ghost. But what he refuses to get over is the fact that it happened at all and her lack of proper discipline before she decided to jump into the fray.

No no no, that he is still burning furious about. Tucker wasn't kidding when he said that Danny was passionate about proper weapon handling. The fact that Valerie didn't even acquaint herself with her weapons and learn how to use them properly before deciding to hunt down Cujo and Phantom is the thing that keeps his burning "hatred" against Scarlett as Fenton going.

Idk if it's ever actually confirmed that Valerie and Tucker are dating, its kinda implied that they started. But I'm gonna say that they were only in a talking stage (one that Valerie only initiated for her own needs) and after this episode it doesn't go anywhere, but they remain kinda friends. That way, Valerie can show up a few more times prior to Flirting With Disaster and lowkey hang with the gang without Tucker and Valerie actually dating.

So i was actually going to share a few more headcanons too with Gray Ghost, and delve into the "Flirting with Disaster" episode, but this got... really long, and took me all evening to write (curse adhd) so I am. not going to go into that jadlfh. Plus I have to think more about them and come up with more cute headcanons.

Like how Danny calls her affectionate petnames when they're dating/sorta-dating the moment he settles into the relationship and becomes comfortable with it. One morning when he walked into a class that they shared, he smiled at her all warm and fondly said "Good morning, beloved."

And normally that might sound too strong in the fledgling beginning of a relationship, but Danny somehow manages to make it sound super natural and not at all too-much-too-soon.

Literally everyone's jaw dropped in that room. They've never seen Danny act that way, and Valerie somehow manages to invent a new shade of maroon on her dark skin. She does this cute little giggle-snort and waves her hand at him bashfully. Danny looks very endeared.

Paulina turns to Dash and angrily demands to know why he doesn't call her any cute petnames that aren't babe.

Oh and before I forget: As Phantom, Danny calls Scarlett Hunt either "Scar" or "Little Red Riding Hood" (or some variant). It pisses her off, which he does really like doing. Also, compared to how he fights ghosts, he goes remarkably easy on her. He doesn't even unsheathe his sword for her -- which she does eventually notice and gets angry about. She thinks he's doing it to look down on her.

When it's not. She is Squishy Fragile Living Human In A Meat Shell. He is Immortal Ghost With Powers. And A Sword. And A Decade Of Assassin Training. He could kill her a dozen different ways if he didn't hold back like he is, and he doesn't want her dead.

okay okay that's all I've got for now BUT, as a bonus, while I was making those three different scenes for the coffee splash scene, I stopped midway because I got art bunnies for danny for the first time in forever, and went ahead and drew him. So!! Things in Threes Danyal doodle be Upon Ye!

[lyxthen]

I want to write an essay on how the Book of Bill expertly subverts the "villain with a tragic backstory/antisocial protagonist" narrative by portraying its main character as evil, trying really hard to look cool, and failing pathetically. The book is making fun of him, and that is actually kind of revolutionary, because most stories with evil, pathetic main characters tend to take themselves, and by extension, their protagonist, way too seriously, with way too much dignity, which leads to people misinterpreting them as heroes or idealize them in some way, and then replicating these harmful attitudes. They follow life coaches that will teach them how to be "alpha males."

Bill presents himself as one of these "life coaches," he will teach you the secrets of the universe, he will help you to game the system in your favor, to manipulate people to get what you want, he will free you from the shackles of society and reality itself-- but he is lying. The success rate of Bill's evil schemes is laughably small. He's a manipulator, to be sure, an incompetent one. His dimension rejected him, his friends don't actually like him, throughout the ages humans have found him insufferable, and to top it all off he ruins the relationship with the only being in the history of the universe he has ever truly felt understood by.

And instead of going "gee, maybe there *is* something wrong with me, after all" he doubles down on his harmful ideas. He doesn't have a problem, everyone else is the problem. Nobody gets his vision. They are all small-minded creatures of no value. His failures are always somebody else's fault. He didn't want to hurt anyone, he was forced to. It's not that bad, he's just being silly, he's having a laugh.

And we, as readers, we are horrified at all the bad things he does, but we also laugh. Not with him, but *at him.* He is being constantly ridiculed by himself, and the funniest part is that he doesn't even realize. He thinks he is absolutely acing this.

He isn't.

Eventually, it is revealed that Bill has no idea what he is talking about. That he has been defeated, rendered powerless, stuck forever in interdimensional therapy. The book tells us, "This is what happens to people like Bill if they don't change. They end up with nothing. No riches, no fame, no loved ones. They will be unhappy forever unless they realize there is something about them worth changing and decide to act on it."

This is in contrast to Stanford, someone who, just like Bill, was deeply hurt and rejected by society, struggled to feel understood, and took refuge in a narcissistic (bear with me-) view of the world. Diagnostic labels aside, Ford genuinely thinks he is better than everyone else for being smarter. He is a textbook Aspie Supremacist that swears by IQ tests because it's the only thing that has ever validated him. That's why he gets along with Bill, I think, they really *have* compatible mindsets. Ford really thought Rudolph should've killed the other reindeer. He constantly dismisses Fiddleford in what feels a very classist way (even if he grew up working class himself). Ford isn't manipulative and malicious in the same way Bill is, and I don't want anyone coming at me for saying Ford is evil. He isn't. He might be a bit of an ass, but he has a moral code, he knows that what Bill wants to do is A BAD THING and dedicates his life to trying to stop him. Stanford's biggest flaw is not appreciating the people around him more for their inherent value (not that he doesn't love them! he does!), but he learns, and he changes. He is more considerate of other people's needs and their perspectives.

And by the end, he is happy. He is free from Bill, he has his family, people who will support him unconditionally and will put up with his nonsense because they love him.

Stanford will never find someone who is as smart as him, who has been ostracized the same way he has. But that's okay. He has an inherent value as a person that has nothing to do with how smart he is in comparison to other people. He doesn't need other people's approval to be happy.

That is, I think, what the book wants you to take away. Don't be like Bill. Don't fall for the Alpha Male scam, or eugenics, some new age cult or multilevel marketing scheme, reject the ideas at the base. Talk to your family and friends, touch grass, find a group that shares your interests, but don't dwell endlessly on resentment, and don't follow people that tell you that the only way to be valuable is to be "superior" in some abstract metric, and that they can teach you how.

(As a kid, I almost fell down the alt-right pipeline-- and I am Mexican, transgender, and autistic. I fantasized about blowing up the school every day. I know what the fuck I am talking about when I tell you this.)

They are lying. You don't want to be like them.

You don't want to be like Bill.

[heretherebedork]

Watching Kohei and Taichi stumble around their feelings for each other and miss each other so, so much because they don't know where to step to figure out the romantic feeling floating between them is so raw and it aches. Taichi doesn't know how he feels and isn't used to these moments and tends to joke when things turn serious but he knows he can't do that with Kohei because all of this is serious with Kohei and he knows that but he doesn't know how to be.

And then we get to how important it is to Taichi to be important to Kohei and that listening to Maya instantly pushes him to back off because if Kohei doesn't need him, does Kohei love him? Taichi is a hurting, aching young man who put all that hurt and abandonment behind a smile and a laugh and taking up too much space so no one can forget him.

But Kohei needed him. Kohei looked at him and smiled at him. He made Kohei happy. Kohei relied on him. His friendship with Kohei wasn't just about how silly he could be and how goofy he could be but about how he could help someone and how someone could see his help as something important.

Taichi is an amazing young man but his character growth isn't over. He withdraws rather than face awkward moments once he starts to care too much. He doesn't recognize his own feelings. He's quick to believe anyone insulting his own worth and value. He is amazing and loving and beautiful and flawed because all the best people are.

Maya is a hurting young woman who is constantly living in a world that doesn't understand her and found one person who does. And when she sees Taichi defend other people, she sees it as insulting her own struggles rather than empathizing because she isn't there in her own journey yet. And so she is pushing Taichi away from Kohei because the way he understands is something she isn't ready for yet and that's okay.

It's going to hurt because Taichi is struggling with his own self-worth and his value and because Kohei trusts Maya with his weaknesses in a way he doesn't always with Taichi because she understands in a way he doesn't but also because he's in love with Taichi and trying to be strong for him, trying to keep his attention on him... but distracting the girls talking to Taichi is enough to make Taichi insecure.

I love this show (and the manga) so much for all of this because no one is perfect and everyone cares and it's just about caring differently, about learning different ways to care and different ways to love and to trust not just in yourself but in other people as well.

[diabolicalworldwriter]

Jesus, I just got to the point in Words of Radiance where Kal is in prison and Dalinar basically says "You're not going to end racism by being radical and acting upset about it. You can't just expect us to treat you like an equal because you're not one. Play nice and maybe the racists will grow to respect you"

I.

Buddy what the fuck

In general I think I've found that I'm... Not as fond of Dalinar as I used to be. Don't get me wrong, he does some great things and he's constantly trying to improve and I appreciate that. Flawed characters make stories interesting and I think Brandon does a fantastic job of writing him. However, he is overly strict and judgemental (Still not forgiving him for hating on Adolin for trying to express himself a bit more through style in ROW; let my boy dress up a bit if he wants), he struggles to accept other ways of doing things (we could look to Adolin again, being "too friendly" with those he commands and Dalinar going "noooo they might respect you less if they think you see them as an equal individual"), and while he talks about how he wants to change how everything works, if someone tries to defy convention in a way he doesn't approve of he shuts them down. (Kaladin pointing out very fair issues with how dark eyes are punished severely and light eyes get away with everything only to be talked down at until he shut up and fell in line, for example.) He wants change and has power to bring it about but won't do anything too radical for it, I guess, and that frustrates me. He tends to support systems as long as they work for his own goals, even if they're still exploitative and deeply unjust, while also complaining that everyone else is being exploitative and unjust. I dislike that he acts like he's doing Kaladin such a favor by treating him as almost an equal. "I'm sticking my neck out by treating you like a human, act civil and don't try to speak too loudly about the injustices yet, you might make the others uncomfortable." Dalinar isn't like other light eyes, he's so quirky and different and sometimes acts a bit less classist and racist!!! Aren't we lucky!! Idk maybe I'm stating my point a bit too strongly but damn. He's giving "yeah I'm a stubborn old man but really I'm quite progressive, I don't even go out of my way to hate crime people"

Words of Radiance, while I enjoy it, is rather difficult to get through because it's just so many main characters who I generally appreciate being awful to/supporting or ignoring awful behavior towards Kaladin and if he reacts they're like ":0000 how dare he attack first" (I appreciate Zahel chewing out Adolin for antagonizing and then fighting Kal in shardplate because goddamn Adolin I love you but that sucked.)

I'm finding Elhokar a lot more unlikeable on this reread as well. He's meant to be unlikeable of course, so good job on that, but Jesus he can be the worst. Honestly standing beside my past thoughts that what Moash did wrong was not in turning on the system that oppresses him and all the dark eyes, but just that he knowingly hurt Kaladin and other people who cared about him repeatedly and severely to do so.

I'm on board with killing horrible leaders (especially if it seems the only way to remove them and stop them from causing harm: people shouldn't have to suffer and die as part of a leader's learning curve and character growth, and going "they're working on it" when people are actively suffering is garbage. I'm still sad at Elhokar's death but I'm not sad that he's no longer king) but I draw the line at abusing and killing one's friends and I am just hoping he comes to terms with what he has done wrong and improves in book five.

Anyways that was long and scattered I'm sorry lmao you should have heard my rant to my poor cousin, I was rambling for like half an hour.