#however because the season was all about beans romance it really made it seem like that was

[thelaughingmerman]

I have so many conflicted feelings about disenchantm3nt finale...

[antiloreolympus]

14 Anti LO Asks

1. To the one anon: good question - how is it that the mortals dont know who Persephone is / assume she is a minor goddess and therefore its okay to mess with her but the gods (or Olympians / underworld denizens) know exactly everything about her (despite her being there only every so often and only being 20ish) - enough to say shes "wearing her signature white color" during a murder trial.

Also the reason why Persephone is wearing white is because

A). RS wanted persephone to always be "dressed as a bride" (and have Hades dressed as a groom respectively) to show that their matching / is supposed to be a visual cue that their eventually gonna be together.

B). I believe this is RS way of saying that Persephone (despite murdering some mortals) is innocent because in purity culture White = innocence, virginity, youth etc. (Even though RS explicity ssid she wanted to go against purity culture morals shes very much leaning into them). 

2. why are Psyche’s eyes yellow even in her human form? Is she sick??

3. honestly? LO is just gossisp girl at this point, espect even GG (at least in the first season) bothered to saturze the rich and was calling out how wealth and power makes them corrupt assholes. meanwhile LO is just GG season 2 and on of being like no no, the poor people are the evil people and the rich people are the oppressed ones! all while also fawning over their  wealth and status and being way into grown men wanting to bang barely legal teens and claiming to be "feminist" somehow.

4. Tumblr is well-known for broken tag system. Check the post' tags before complaining that it's op's fault. How about you guys not tag greek mythology when posting about LO? LO is not one-shot or short fancomic. It's also definitely not considered actual greek mythology. LO is years long webcomic with huge fans. LO has its own tag. Tell your fellow fans to stop using the greek mythology tag.

5. I would argue nyx is the only woman with a unique in design in LO but thats only because she looks like a deformed chicken woman. why was my night mom disrespected this much 😭

6. So now that LO is back from break and I can finally read chapter 170 - Why oh Why do ALL the female characters Have to be defined by their male love interests??? (Or really just love interests in general).

I understand LO qualifies as the "romance" genre and there are certain stipulations or I guess themes or what have you that make it romance but for f*cks sake.

Psyche being worried about Eros loving the "fake" her I kinda get, but really? Thats your most pressing concern?? Hera is defined by her garbage marriage to Zeus - King of the gods (of which is why she is Queen of the gods). Hestia + Athena are now defined solely by their relationship to each other (not the TGOEM or their respective traits of being a goddess of the hearth + goddess of war, strategy etc etc).

Aphrodite is defined by giving Persephone "relationship" advice (e.g: telling her to curb stomp Minthe because "nymphs dont take things from gods" - doubly implying that people are things to own) And by her jealousy of Persephone in the first place because Hades made a comment about how he thought Persephone was prettier than her. And also because of her "house of debauchery" (Artemis'  words) - and relationship with Ares.

Persephone is defined both by Apollo raping her and by her fated future status as Queen of the underworld (so her relationship with Hades). Hell, even the minor characters such as nymphs are defined by this relationship status / standard. Minthe is defined by her mean spirited personality yes, but Also because of her abusive relationship with Hades prior to the introduction of Persephone. Psyche is defined by her relationship woes with Eros. Daphne is defined by her relationship with Thanatos (and because shes a flower nymph) but also mostly because she looks like Persephone.

Rhea is defined by her marriage / relationship to Kronos (lets ignore the whole "fertility goddess power" plot for a second). Even Aetna is defined by Haphestus creating her! Is there not a single character (especially female) is isnt defined by their romantic love interest???Sorry. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but thats definitely how ot comes off as of late, in regard to the latest chapters.

Okay, same anon as earlier - I take it back somewhat - we have Artemis and Hecate that are not defined by their romantic relationships - but rather their lack of one.

However the way they are shown - it still comes off as a standard - "Artemis is stingy / a stick in the mud" because shes not romantically involved and is "barbaric" (according to Hera). And Hecate is still somewhat defined by her being Hades' employee (and cheerleader for him and Persephone to be together).

So technically yes, we have at least 2 characters that are not defined by their romantic interests / relationships, but they are still held to the standard of their "un-ladylike / undesirable" because their not romantically involved.

(I guess I should count Demeter, but only because shes more defined by just being "Persephone's overbearing mom" )

7. i think whats also kinda weird about this trial is like?? persephone is obvs framed as not liking the attention (bc duh) but she didnt like the previous press either, she wanted to be private, but wouldnt being with hades force her to be in the spotlight that makes her uncomfortable? also the citizens of the underworld already dislike hades, why would they want a uncontrollable felon as their queen, even if she found innocent? idk the whole thing just makes the endgame less plausible, tbh.

8. love that rachel was able to find a random deity name to name her random nymph the greek word for "beans" meanwhile apparently cant google actual greek names for even one off characters? like andrew, ellen, george, alexis, damian, luke, phoebe, sophia, and so any other english names are also greek, but she cant even bother with that? what exactly is her "research" if she cant even bother to spend 30 seconds googling greek names? at this point LO seems determined to be as un-Greek as possible.

9. wait so everyone in LO went from having no idea who persephone was, to her only showing up on ONE magazine cover, to now being the most well known person with a signature color? all in the span of two weeks with no genuine public outings? how does that make sense? also white isnt even her signature color if 90%+ the female cast and even a lot of the men ((including ZEUS) all wear it too.

10. the fact the courthouse WASNT the areopagus, aka the place in greece where they say the first ever trial ever happened and where the court system was invented, is just another point of rachel talking out her ass about being "respectful" or "researched" on greece and their mythology. its literally one of the most famous mythology spots ever with some fantastic stories to it and she's just like "nah! boring rectangle will do!" like why even both with mythology then if its this devoid of it?

11. Anons are saying Hades in the FS chapter is leaning down and talking to Persy like a child. Say it aint true.

(I wanna see. I thought RS was finally giving Persy adult proportions). 😨

12. So wait, hold up. I kinda get where RS is coming from with the law school in the underworld (because Hades is supposed to be a kinda Judge, jury, executioner situation in the afterlife when it comes to mortals and their "punishments" and whatnot). However, is RS stating that the ONLY law school / courthouse exists in the underworld? If so, why? Why wouldn't Athena be there then. She's a goddess of strategy and justice (among other things).

Also is RS really implying that Hades owns not only the banks and underworld but the law too? She really wants Hades to be a Gary Sue along side her Mary Sue - Hades controls everything that matters and since its his realm and blah blah blah rules, Zeus, king of the gods cant do anything about it.

(Which is dumb. Because you would think that because Persephone committed the crime in the mortal realm / on, or near Olympus that therefore she would be brought back there to dole out justice under Zeus jurisdiction because she committed the crime in His Realm). 

13. FP Spoiler ahead:

Why on earth couldn't the reporters have Greek names? There is so much wrong and bad with this story, yet this irks me so much. It is Brenda all over again.

14. i dont really get the point of the trial plotline, tbh. even persephone says she should be punished and held accountable, but hades is framed in the right for trying to go against that and weasel her out of it. so?? plus zeus has legit reason to punish them? persephone is a danger to others, demeter and hermes both committed treason to cover it up, and hades was harboring a fugitive of the law and is now trying to force the system to let her go. how is zeus in the wrong for this?

[secondhand-trash]

aka gripping onto summer by its tail by reminiscing all the flavours that represent summer

(as inspired by all the food and drinks that screams summer, which I didn’t get to have in the past months)

A/N: I mean, you can argue that it’s starting to head into autumn now that August is half way through but summer will not end for me in at least two more months so no one can stop me from writing summer related things uwu

Word count: 3672

Characters: Akaashi Keiji, Tsukishima Kei, Hinata Shoyo, Miya Osamu, Kageyama Tobio, Kuroo Tetsurou

-

Akaashi Keiji - honey peach

With his position as an editor, your lover would occasionally bring home gift boxes of sorts from the publishing house or writers he worked for as a showcase of gratitude whenever there were any special occasions or festivals. It was a nice gesture, and he had definitely received things that you would otherwise never had the luxury to enjoy with your office worker salary but as time passed, you had grown to realise that it was near impossible for a household of two to finish up all these fruits and cakes that came in dozens. Especially if it was something that neither of you actually liked, then eating up everything was near torture.

However, you nearly squealed in delight when you came home one day to see him carefully unpacking the box of honey peaches in the living room table.

“Udai sensei got this from his trip to Wakayama for scenery references,” Akaashi said as he carefully too each pink fruit out from the styrofoam nets they came in, "apparently the local peaches are in season so he bought a lot of it and handed it out to all the editors.”

Akaashi was nothing short of skeptical when he was handed the heavy box, wondering if this was an early compensation for any delays that was about to happen but knowing how much you liked white peaches, he took it with a light bow.

As he had expected, you sat next to him with your legs crossed, eyes glimmering with interest as he placed the peaches onto the table. They came in a beautiful colour, a soft pink that seemed like it was glowing from it’s smooth and rounded surface. The plumpness of the fruit already filling your imagination of how juicy it must be.

He chuckled at the way you took one in your hand and rolled it around, looking like you could barely even wait until he unpacked all of it. “Should we have one right now?”

You did not need him to say it twice, standing up in one swift movement before bending down to take the two biggest ones off the table and hopped your way to the kitchen sink. As the stream water ran down from the faucet to your hand, your finger rubbed past the fuzzy skin of the fruit that looked even more tempting with the bead of water rolling down.

“Thank you.” Akaashi took the one you handed him and picked up the small knife that you put down. 

You were eager to get to the sweet flesh inside but your attention was immediately diverted away with how skillful he was with the knife. One slice down the curve of the peach and with a press of him nimble finger, the pink skin of the peach was shed to the side and revealing the white gem underneath. You felt a sudden dryness in your throat at the droplet of stickily sweet juice rolled down his palm and trailing down his wrist.

His eyes met yours when he crouched down to lick off the juice that was about to drip off his forearm, his lips much like the fruit he was holding in hand when it was still puckered after he pulled back.

“Do you want me to peel it for you?”

“Sure,” you quickly replied, letting out a relieved sigh at how he had mistaken why you were staring at him.

Your face felt like the afternoon sun was shining right on you when he put down the peach he had in hand, but not without sucking off the stickiness left on his finger tips.

Tsukishima Kei - ichigo daifuku

If Tsukishima didn’t show up at home after the usual time when he would arrive, then he probably went off the fastest route from the museum back home to search for the hidden dessert shops in the district. You often complained that it wasn’t fair how he could stay like a pole when he eats so many sweets every day and he often retaliated that maybe that means you should stop eating the desserts he brought home, but he would still buy two portions of the same item every single time.

You tapped your finger impatiently against the table, staring at the numbers on the waiting screen of your phone. He hadn’t come home this late in a long time, having already tried out most patisseries in the area. Had there been any new releases lately? Or limited-time only products? You sighed. If that was the case, then you wouldn’t see him for at least another half an hour. There weren’t much that Tsukishima Kei was stupidly stubborn about, but he would never leave a line no matter how much longer he had to wait after he queued up. 

You snapped around when you heard the sound of keys rattling outside the door.

“Took you long enough,” you said, leaning on the back of the chair as your lover appeared from the doorway.

“Does that mean you don’t want this?” he replied with a knowing smirk, waving the small, white box he was holding in hand, “because I don’t mind having all of these to myself-”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Yes, yes...” he gave a mocking sigh, laughing a little when you rolled your eyes at him.

“So, what is it that got you staying out so late?” you said, eyeing the logo on the box that you had never seen before as he placed it in front of you and pulled out the chair opposite to yours.

“The queue was scary long,” he said nonchalantly as he unhooked the flaps on each side, “let’s just hope it’s as good as people claim it is.”

You peaked inside curiously when he opened the box, letting out a delighted “ohhhhh” when you saw what it was. The white dough of the daifuku looked so cute with the powered that dusted on top, tempting you to poke it and watch it dent. It was cut apart in the middle where the large strawberry sat on top of thinly layered red bean paste like it was a king sitting on its throne. Some daifuku put it sliced strawberries or hide it up with the glutinous skin, but there was something that brings much glee to your heart at the round fruit that was on display.

Tsukishima made a side remark on how much you looked like a child as you held the paper lining it came in but you ignored him, closing your eyes in satisfaction after taking a big bite right into the center. You could still feel the power on your tongue from the daifuku but the juice of the strawberry quickly taken over your taste buds. It was a refreshing taste, sweet and sour, making you sit up just a little straighter. The pure sugary taste of the red bean paste and the sourness of the fruit was a perfect balance, giving just enough satisfaction to any sweet tooth but not too overbearing that you would feel like it made our throat itch.

The side section of the daifuku was very satisfying to look at when you pulled back, the white, the vibrant red and the brown all existing in a portion that was just right.

You looked up when your boyfriend laughed, “You really do eat like a child.”

You were about to say something smart in retaliation when he got up, leaning closer and closer to you before brushing the tip of his finger against your lips.

“You got powder on your face...” he muttered, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose as his gaze fixed on you.

He looked so damn cocky when he pulled away, licking off the power on his finger while watching your dazed expression.

In some sense, you were kind of like an ichigo daifuku too. Tsukishima snorted to himself as he took a bite into his own dessert, eyeing your flustered expression from the corner of his eyes.

Hinata Shoyo - ramune soda

The peak of high school romance was walking home with your boyfriend under the sinking sun as he pushed his bike instead of riding it just to spend more time with you on the way.

"And then the ball came like ‘bam!’ but he hit it back with a ‘thump!’-” Hinata’s hand was flailing around as he desperately tried to explain to you what just happened during practice which even if you were well-versed in the art of volleyball, you were just mindlessly nodding along his excited rambling with a smile on your face from how cute he was whenever he got hyped.

Nothing felt more like summer than the sound of cicadas chirping on the trees, the chain of the bike’s peddle clicking as it went, the sun being the perfect warmth on your skin and the chattering of a young couple.

“Oh?” Hinata suddenly stopped in the middle of the road and you eyed him in confusion when he let out a gasp like he figured something out in the middle of his speech. His eyes were shining when he spotted Sakanoshida Mart out of the corner of his eye and got a brilliant idea.

He placed your hand on the handle of his bike before dashing inside with a grin, “Hold this for me, I want to go get something.”

You leaned on the rail of the bike as you waited for him, standing back up when he left the store again with two glass bottles on his hand.

“Here!” he beamed as he handed one of the glassy blue bottles to you, “my treat!”

You felt the beads of water that condensed on the surface on your skin when you took it from him. The bottle narrowed down from the top and then widened again after reaching a particularly flattened space in the middle, with a plastic cap that was sealed on top.

“It’s been so long since I’ve had one of these...” you said, twisting the bottle in your hand as Hinata eagerly ripped off the seal to take the cap in hand.

“Careful,” he placed the bottle on the seat of his bike and you held it steady for him as he flipped the cap to put it at the opening of the bottle before pushing it down. You two both let out a gasp of victory when you heard a loud pop, watching the marble that closed off the soda fell into the middle as bubbles rose to the top. 

You thanked him as he handed the opened soda to you and took the one you were holding onto. Taking a large gulp, the fizz was tingling at the back of your throat as you slowly grew numb under the chill, the sweetness and taste unique to ramune spreading in your mouth as you released the rim of the bottle with a pop.

“This is so good,” you said with a satisfied sigh.

“Right? Summer is not complete without soda,” he said, slamming the cap down with a grin and tilted the bottle up against his lips. His eyes curled into two thin curves as he pulled away with a deep exhale, “so good!”

You chuckled as he kicked up the stand of his bike, taking small sips of your drink.

“Ah, where was I?”

Nothing felt more like summer than the golden glow of the sun wrapping you up, the sound of footsteps and tires against the concrete road and laughing with someone you love with a bottle of ramune in hand.

Miya Osamu - hiyashi chyuuka (”cold Chinese style noodles” that is 100% oriented from Japan and has nothing to do with Chinese food)

“Ah... so... ho- hot...”

When you walked into the living room to see your boyfriend facing the fan with his mouth opened and slumping down like he was about to melt into a puddle onto the floor, you knew it was one of those rare days when he was far too affected by the heat to even bring out the strength to eat let alone go into the kitchen.

On days like this, you would take up the rare task of cooking and make the one dish you knew would revive the melting pile of fox that was whining outside.

You were far too spoiled by Osamu’s godly cooking. You sighed to yourself as you looked at the fridge that was technically also your and felt utterly clueless as to where to start. It seemed... very different to when you last cooked which was a very long time ago. It took quite a while for you to find everything you need but staring at all the ingredient for the toppings that were lined up in front of you, you rolled your sleeves up and got to work.

This was so you could get your boyfriend back on his feet and you could just leech off of his cooking, you thought to yourself as you rummaged through the utensil holder at the side.

You could add most anything to cold noodles, in all honesty, but you were sticking to the most common combination this time. You chopped up the cucumber, carrot, and ham into thin strands and push them to the side before cracking an egg into the bowl. You felt incredibly rusty with the pan as you carefully poured the egg in as thin as you could, wondering how something as simple as making egg roll wrappers got so complicated.

You felt a sudden weight crashing down on your shoulders when you were cooking the noodles that was swirling in the boiled water.

“Samu.”

“I feel so tired...” your boyfriend muttered into your neck as he slumped down on you, “I don’t even want to eat, am I dying?”

“No, it’s just the summer heat,” you pat his head, struggling to move under his grip, “Samu, you are like a furnace, can you let go?”

“No.” 

“But I’m making chyuuka...” you felt a slight shake behind you and he looked up from your shoulder. His eyes flicker between the pot you were stirring and you like he was calculating if this was worth it before slowly loosening up his arms around your waist.

You took a breath when you felt the pressure being lifted off your back but the heat still hung on by your shoulder as his arm lazily draped over you.

“Samu, what are you doing?”

“Inspecting you.”

Your shirt was soaked in sweat by the time you put down the two plates on the table. The sauce that the noodles and colourful toppings were drenched in was refreshingly sour, perfect for days when you felt like you had rocks weighting you down in your core without eating anything. He was already slurping it up after a few small bites initially, physically getting back into his usual self as he let out a satisfied hum at the sauce that expended in his mouth.

You grinned as you watch him eat, feeling like your own appetite had grown as well.

Kageyama Tobio - soft serve

The sun was burning hot above your heads but your hand that was grasped tightly in your boyfriend’s felt like it was even hotter.

Your boyfriend didn’t seem to mind the heat for even just a bit, or the sweat on the palm of your hands, or that you were starting to sweat from between your fingers as well. He just seemed unbothered as he walked ahead, still holding onto your very clammy hand as you wandered past 

Summer was not a good time for skinship as much as you love physical contact, it really wasn’t.

Then you spotted a little kiosk out from the corner of your eyes.

“Tobio?”

“Hm?” he said, his fingers that was intertwined with yours tightening just a little out of reflex.

“Do you want ice cream?”

You could feel the chill that was left on the paper cone from the aircon of the kiosk when you took the two soft serves from the employee, feeling very relieved by the cold touch to the tip of your fingers and the chilled air that was floating your way from the icy treat.

“Here.”

Seating on a park bench, you gave a few small licks to the chocolaty ice cream that melted on your tongue while paying Kageyama who was next to you a few glances. He would have argued against it so hard with a flushing face if you brought it up to him, but watching his facial features slowly softened up as he poked his tongue out to lap at the ice cream really reminded you of little kids who could be win over with sweet treats too. He looked almost concentrated as he stared at the milky soft serve he was holding, much like how he was when he had his inner debates about what drinks to get.

Looking at your boyfriend’s near child-likely pure expression, the thought of teasing him a little suddenly rose in your head.

“Tobio,” you said, “can I have a bite of yours?”

“Sure,” he very naturally turned the cone to the side where he hadn’t got to yet but before he could hold it out to you, you gripped his wrist and leaned down to lick right where he took his last bite.

You two had definitely done more than sharing one ice cream cone, but there was still something about going out of your way to create these moments that made the whole thing a lot more flirtatious than how the act actually was.

You grinned as you licked your lips, tasting the last bit of vanilla that was left as he froze in place, the tip of his ears growing redder and redder as what you just did slowly settled in his head.

“Hm,” you chuckled to yourself, “so sweet.”

Kuroo Tetsurou - honey lemon

“Hey Kuroo! (y/n) is here!”

You had barely stepped foot into the gymnasium before Bokuto loudly announced your arrival to, well, everyone. You wanted to disappear in the spot when everyone turned around to where you were, eyeing the person who dropped by out if interest.

You had wanted to make a low profile appearance and left before you would be exposed to his friends’ friendly teasing, but now the entire gym and likely everyone in the ones neighbouring it knew you were here to visit your boyfriend when he was away on camp.

It did not help that Kuroo jogged to where you were with the largest grin on his face, bending down so his face would be right in front of yours as if it didn’t matter that everyone was looking at you two at all.

“Hello,” he said with a very sweet tone, like he was glad to show everyone that he was so utterly whipped for you and that unlike the others, he actually had someone who would go all the way to another campus just to see him.

“Hey,” you replied with a whisper, feeling rather embarrassed at the situation you were in.

He was still grinning ear to ear when he stood up straight, throwing one arm around your shoulder to shield you from everyone’s curious stare as he turned around. “I’ll be right back.”

“Remember to actually come back.”

“Don’t be alone for too long!”

“Be responsible.”

“God, I’m so going to fight Bokuto for this...” you sighed when you were finally left alone with Kuroo.

“Don’t, you’ll increase Akaashi’s workload,” he snickered and you couldn’t help but laugh along. “So,” he stopped midway, turning around to pull you closer to him after looking around to see that there was no one but the two of you, “someone misses me, huh?"

He tilted his head, a small smirk dancing on his handsome features like he was baiting for you to say yes. But the truth was that he was right, you did miss him. You had expected that you wouldn’t get to spend as much time with him as you wanted to because of his club activities but it didn’t stop you from feeling extra lonely in these days when you couldn’t even see him at school. 

As if sensing that was something you were upset about, he did not wait for you to reply and pressed you close to his chest. “Well, I miss you a lot.”

You sinked into the feeling of being surrounded by his warmth, feeling the reassurance washing away your previous emptiness. He pulled away with a smile, seeing that you were a lot more at ease than before.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” you dipped into the bag you were carrying and pulled out a rectangular tupperware, “here.”

“Hm?” he took the box with interest, immediately feeling how cold it was. Holding it up, he looked at it from the bottom to see the pieces of lemon sitting in the golden liquid, the light reflecting off of it like it was glistening.

“Is that...”

“It feels weird if I just come here and leave without doing anything so,” you gave a light shrug to brush off the amount of research you had put in to look for things that might be good for people who had to lose hydration constantly from sweat in the summer, “here you go.”

“Awwwww,” you winced at the tone he used as he leaned forward and forced you to look at him, “did you make this for me?”

“I make this for you and everyone else on your team,” you corrected him but he ignored it as he continued to coo at you. “don’t hoard it.”

“Of course, of course, whatever,” he replied quick but didn’t hide the shit-eating grin on his face, “but you made something for me, I’m so touched...”

“I’m starting to regret it.”

“Don’t,” he said, holding you to his side, “I’m going to survive the rest of this week just from the serotonin I got from this.”

“I’m regretting-”

“Alright, alright,” he let out a laugh, pressing a quick kiss to your temple as he stopped with the teasing. 

He got punched by the rest of the team that night. Apparently, the grin he had on ever since you left ticked everyone off. 

[lizacstuff]

SCK episode 46 asks!

Hi folks, below the read more you'll find a smattering of asks about this week's episode as well as a few spoilers for 47.

Good asks this week:

(under the cut)

Anonymous asked: this may be superficial of me, but why are they dressing Serkan in such ugly tops? they finally brought Eda's hair back but now this

BWAH! You're not wrong. You know what I'm wondering, if they've put him in some of those outfits because they are showing his suburban dad side? It's kind of a subtle nod to him embracing father hood and a different way of life? He's now all about running around the yard after his daughter and not about what he looks like when he's being SERKAN BOLAT, FAMOUS BUSINESS MAN and WORLD'S BEST ARCHITECT.

Also, Eda's hair, thank goodness they let that go once the flashbacks were over and we didn't need something to distinguish between then and now! Those curly bangs were not it.

Anonymous asked: They built up the Edser chemistry soooooo well throughout the episode... for that ending? Who decided to cut it there?! The scene was BEAUTIFUL I’m actually upset lol. are not we going to see any more? I’m not asking for a sex scene, I wanted to see THE moment they decided to get back together (the tattoo line doesn’t do it for me) - a few words, tears as they embrace, him walking through the door as she closes it, one passionate kiss, something! But it doesn’t feel like a cliffhanger that continues next week. I’ll be so underwhelmed when they cut to the morning after and we have to infer that they got back together overnight *sigh* if they were allowed 1 kiss only, id rather it have been here instead of ep 2

We do deserve to see how they reconcile, that should be one of the biggest moments of the season after 7 episodes of build up to it.

90% of final scenes in this show have continued uninterrupted the next week. To me there's no reason to think the next episode won't pick up right where this one left off. Crossing fingers!

Anonymous asked: It just hit me that Serkan is the “Kiraz” for Kemal - but Kemal actually missed his child’s whole 35 years 😬 this is an interesting turn of events. Also that line Serkan said about how fathers should love their child’s mother and how he didn’t have that with his own parents....but his real dad does love Aydan, more than she deserves haha.

Oh so true! Kemal really does love his mother more than she deserves! How he puts up with her, I don't know.

The parallel between Serkan/Kemal and Kiraz/Serkan is strong and I hope it gives Serkan some perspective when he starts grappling with this knowledge. I'm sure it's going to be very disconcerting for him, because while he expected to never see his father again, Alptekin is still his father. He's still the man who raised him and formed him into the man he is. Serkan still runs the company he founded and bears his name.

I don't expect any of that to change, but hopefully he can forge a separate relationship with Kemal that might fill some emotional holes that he has and bring him some peace.

None of that even contemplates how Kemal will feel, thankfully Aydan didn't willfully hide the truth from him. How awful to realize you lost 35 years.

We aren't there yet, but I wonder at what age with Kiraz learn the truth, that her dad is not an astronaut, that her parents went through hell with with cancer and plane crashes, and that her father didn't know of her existence until right before they met?

Just something to think about.

Anonymous asked: i'm so happy for hanker, don't get me wrong, and i'm also so happy we get "together" edser for so many episodes until the end, but i'm already tired of the constant "hanker improvising" comments i know i will be seeing. not that they don't improvise in some scenes, but i just know that every romantic edser scene is gonna be analyzed to hell bc ppl want to look for hanker in them. like there's no possible way that ayse, the writer ppl hate the most, could write any romantic scenes.. nope no way!

Yes, this is one of my pet peeves, I can't stand the "Edser left the chat" and all the "that's Hanker, not Edser" type conversation. it's so invasive and most of all disrespectful to not only the writers, but Hande and Kerem and all the work they pour into bringing Eda and Serkan to life.

One of the things in fandom that sets my teeth on edge is when folks take some interpretation of the character by the actor and then decide because it wasn't "scripted" (pro tip the vast majority of physical movements the actors make are "unscripted") that it must just be the actors themselves and have nothing to do with the characters. What an embarrassing and naïve assertion. Actors literal job is to take what's on the page and then translate that. So, no, OF COURSE, every look and touch is not scripted. The actors interpret how their characters would think and feel, and what they would do in given moments and then do those things.

Eda is not touching Serkan's arm just because Hande can't hold herself back from touching Kerem. Puh-lease, they are professionals. Grow up.

However, having said all that, I do think there was one scene that seemed to be very improvised this episode. The bean scene in the grocery store did feel like them just eFFing around. LOL.

andhewonherheart asked: @andhewonherheart: SCK promo department is best and worst all at the same time, cause giving away the last (cliffhanger) scene in fragman is just cruel. But based on the next week’s fragman thing happens that we we think happens *wink*

Hee! So true. The thing I'm grateful for is that in season 2 not one fragman has made me dread the episode, I think there was at least one fragman an episode from 29-37 that was hella upsetting.

As far as I'm concerned these fragmans are doing there job, making me want to watch.

I am really excited for Serkan planning how he's going to ask Eda to marry him, I wonder what Kiraz's reaction is going to be. So far she's been their very own cupid!

Anonymous asked: I didn't find it surprising that Serkan removed his tattoo as soon as Eda left. His logic is always out of sight out of mind though it doesn't work. He did the same when he broke up with her when he found out about the death of her parents. He removed all of her belongings. But their memories are too strong and enough for him to continue to remember her.

Truth! Will he ever learn that it's never going to work? He'll never be able to erase Eda, she has left an indelible mark on his soul. Let's hope he's never faced with that situation again! From here on out, he and Eda are together, a unit, and will live a long life together and in love.

Anyone have any guesses where Eda's tattoo is? Will we find out or will it remain between the characters.

Anonymous asked: I've seen some people say that Edser are getting married now way too fast and to that I just have to laugh lol. First there were complaints we don't have happy Edser and now when we do, of course there's something else. These two have had a rollercoaster of a year when they first met and a five year separation.. they've been through the dating phase, the engaged phase.. of course they'll head straight to the altar! It's not like Eda's plane proposal and that first wedding wasn't rushed either!

I'm on team head straight to the alter! No more waiting. They've had terrible luck, so they just need to tie the knot and make sure there are no easy outs.

As for people who think it's too fast, they don't even know the storyline yet, I swear there are folks who complain just because that's their personality and they're never satisfied.

Anonymous asked: From some of the spoilers of BTS pics, and the fragman we got, I was just reflecting on this season and Turk romcom dizis in general and I just wanted to say how LUCKY we are to see Edser married (again, from spoilers) and with a kid on screen for more than just 10 minute at the end of the finale. Like, it is really rare and as much as people have nitpicked on this season in general, I feel like watching these last episodes have been such a breeze after the last arc of S1.

Oh agreed, I think these episodes have been very enjoyable. The writers are giving me exactly what I want from this show. Comedy, UST, romance with a little light angst thrown in now and again. I would rewatch this season a dozen times before even thinking about watching anything from the 30s.

We are very lucky that we've got to see them as parents, and actually forming their family. We've gotten so much domestic goodness so far and we still have a ways to go. I'm very appreciative of this season and that Ayse came back, got rid of the constant ridiculous melodrama for melodrama's-sake and is telling a very human story about family and love persevering.

Anonymous asked: the last scene gave me chills for some reason. you could actually see eda fighting her head and her heart and deciding to take the step (metaphorically and physically!) towards him for good. i wanna SUE whoever decided to end it the ep there though.. it was actually cruel. also looking at the next frag.. it makes my heart soft that in the flashbacks we see serkan pushing off their wedding bc of his fears and now he can't propose and get married fast enough.. can't believe we're really getting it

I know, it's almost surreal at this point. Since we're near the end we know it's for real and won't be ruined by psychos or awful family members or terminal illness. I just hope that they give us an emotional scene when they get married, whether its just them or the whole cast is there as guests, after everything they've (we've) been through we need to see them both feeling that moment and reveling in it.

FYI - I'm out of town next weekend, so I may be slower than usual in replying to asks and in posting gifs of 47, but I'll get to it all eventually!

[littlemisssquiggles]

I'm just absolutely sick to death of how the main character couple always seems to get together at literally the last minute in everything, and I'm so worried that's how it's going to be in RWBY with rosegarden. I just wanna see my adorable cinnamon rolls be an awesome battle couple One Time, is that really too much to ask???

…Hmmm…I don’t know about that anon-chan. While I’ve always favoured and been a firm advocate for the possibility of a Rosegarden romance given the focus and development that the pair received over the volumes, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Rosegarden will be endgame and Oscar will ultimately grow to become Ruby’s partner in love.

I don’t even know what the final payoff of Rosegarden is going to be anymore. Outside of a potential romance, I initially pegged that the main reason why Rosegarden was pushed so much over the last few seasons was because I expected at some point for Oscar to be captured and taken prisoner by Salem with Ruby being the one to lead the charge to rescue him---mirroring Dorothy Gale who led a rescue party to save Princess Ozma after she was kidnapped in the Lost Princess of Oz.

I thought this was what the showrunners were building up to with Ruby and Oscar but as we saw of this season---while we got Oscar being Salem’s prisoner, Ruby was left out completely from that storyline (despite her connection to Oscar and her own connection and history with Salem who formerly targeted her because of her silver eyes in the past).

Instead we got Jaune Arc being the one to lead the charge to save Oscar…despite the fact that prior to V8, Jaune was never really the one to look out for Oscar before. At least not until V7 following Argus in V6. Up until that point, it was mostly Ruby always looking out for Oscar’s well-being and that aspect of their friendship remained consistent even up till this season. But as of this season, Ruby was omitted from Oscar’s side of the story with Salem which I felt was completely off.

Even episodes in, it still bugs me to no end how Ruby was kept away from the Salem side of the PLOT on Monstra for V8. This was done despite her being a target of Salem back in V4; despite her connection to the wicked witch regarding her mother’s death and despite what we know about the Hound in respect to what Salem did to Silver Eyed Warriors including Summer Rose.

Here I was banking on the showrunners using Ruby’s bond with Oscar to give her another incentive to pursue Salem and finally confront her face to face in the flesh. But no. Salem was in Atlas and instead of Salem targeting Ruby too---she only targeted Oscar and…Penny???

Instead of watching Ruby confront Salem over Summer, we got Yang encountering Salem and being the one to call her out for Summer’s death…despite the fact that up until this point, Yang has not spoken of Summer since V2????

Heck, the last time Yang spoke of Summer Rose in V5, she addressed her as “Ruby’s mom” instead of her mom too. This is why I find myself becoming increasingly frustrated with the writing of RWBY. The inconsistencies in some of its most important character and plotline details are so maddeningly bothersome at this point.

But going back to the Rosegarden dynamic----yeah I was expecting Oscar to be made into a martyr to force Ruby to come to Salem. However; as I’ll reiterate, Ruby was completely left out of any subplot for this season involving meeting Salem.

So if all the development between Ruby and Oscar from the previous seasons wasn’t leading into a confrontation between Salem and Ruby for Oscar’s salvation then…the question I ask now is what was even the point of pushing the Rosegarden dynamic in the first place for all of those seasons, huh?

As this volume stands, I genuinely don’t know what the showrunners are doing in respect to the Rosegardening pair anymore. I don’t know what the payoff of the Rosegarden bond is going to be anymore. While I still would love a love story to blossom between our two smaller, more honest souls (since I’d imagine it’d be no different than their budding friendship---wholesome , unique in a meaningful way and absolutely precious with every bit of teenaged innocence as one would expect from these two as they are the youngest members of the team with the most weight on their shoulders in spite of their young age), I’ve been trying my best not to bank too much on that possibility given how the showrunners developed the BlackSun friendship for five consecutive seasons before dropping it in favour of Bumblebee without giving that pair even an ounce of the proper fleshing out that they did for BlackSun.

At this point, it doesn’t even matter to me anymore if Rosegarden becomes a couple in the canon or not. As I mentioned in a previous post, I don’t just like Rosegarden ONLY for the shipping side of it. My admiration for the bond between these two beans stemmed from how much I adore Ruby and Oscar both individually as characters since they are my favourites in RWBY. Thus I’ve been excited to see what the final payoff of their budding bond would be since they met back in V5 as I’ve been observing the show highlighting it over the seasons especially in relation to Oscar’s side of the story.

Now I’m just confused. 

I don’t want the showrunners to play games with Rosegarden like how they treated BlackSun. That would honestly hurt me as a fan of both the characters and their dynamic. The Rosegarden hug interruption still bothers me even after the episode long passed.

Some fellow Rosegardening Pineheads and Rosegardeners have urged me to remain optimistic since they’re anticipating Ruby and Oscar’s actual hug moment to come from a very important “meaningful moment” for them to clock off Oscar’s arc for this season---y’know a moment like Oscar unlocking his semblance to save Ruby or something like that.

And as much as I’d love to see that…I dunno. So far V8 hasn’t hit any of the Rosegarden story beats I was expecting. I was expecting Oscar to become Salem’s prisoner and be saved by Ruby since she has always protected him over the seasons AND has her own beef with Salem. That didn’t happen. Instead Ruby spent the majority of the season cooped up at Schnee Manor and was totally left out of this subplot despite all the opportunities that it had for her story and character and that hurt me a lot.

I was expecting Ruby and Oscar to at least share ONE nice heartfelt reunion hug. That’s all I wanted. Just ONE hug between these two beans ESPECIALLY after Oscar returned from being tortured for hours on Monstra and…that didn’t happen either. Instead the showrunners felt it best to have that reunion be the one and only hug to be interrupted and they even framed it nice and pretty to make sure that we the audience got that that hug moment was interrupted. And that bit hurt me a lot too.

I don’t think my poor fragile shipping heart could take another disappointment with RG. Outside of his conflicting feelings regarding not being ready for the merge with Ozpin, the only other thing to look out for with Oscar is him possibly unlocking his semblance for the finale. If Oscar doesn’t unlock his semblance because of Ruby …even though she’s been the character pushed to be of importance to him for several seasons and was the one he even discussed unlocking his semblance with back in V7…

If THAT is not done then…I don’t know what else to say anon. I want so much to remain optimistic for the continued growth of my favourite pair; whatever it may be---friendship, romance, something else or between---I dunno. I want to remain hopeful like I always have but these showrunners are playing games with my beans for this seasons and this squiggly Rosegardening Pinehead just…isn’t having fun anymore =( I’m sorry.

~ LittleMissSquiggles (2021)

[yinyanchan]

I'm gonna be that thirsty person and ask; what are the skeleton boys like during their heat?

This is going for the Housemates boys. It’s going under the cut for slight NSFW

Sans: It’s going to be his first. He’s going to go full predator and not much he can do about that. After he gets used to his cycles he will be a more calm and tender lover but there will be a sense of urgency and need. Still will be able to function but will get lost in his thoughts especially for the one that made him go through his heat to begin with. The fact that he is able to function and go about his day suggests he’s very strong in his will power and good at controlling his magic. He just hopes that nothing happens to make him forget that he is the Dean at the school.

Red: Very aggressive during mid cycle. At first he seems cuddly and sweet which is really a reverse from his normal disposition. He’s still quite lewd. Once his heat goes into it’s peak he will resort to anything, even pleading, to get relief. He’s all about comfort and while he is surrounded by the sofest of pillows and blankets... without a partner his heat will make him insatiable that it hurts. If it’s with someone he cares about the aftercare will be amazing. He knows heat isn’t easy for both him and his partner having to endure it. Love bites and soreness will prevail, he’s very dominant. Total teddy bear when it starts to die down.

Blue: Isn’t proud that he retreats to his room to look up mature images of Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts... He was corrupted by the adult fandom after watching the anime... Total innocent bean until that happened... would he do it again?... yes. However he now has a new interest. Normally holing himself away and loving to edge himself to fantastic fanart and animation. Has mastered quiet masturbation and honestly likes the hurt of the heat as it goes with his delight for edging himself. Now there is a new interest of his. He may or may not have been learning somethings for having a partner... and finding out he wants to be the one in control which will only have him be aggressively dominant in his heat... with a few tender loving moments in between.

Berry: Insecure, Confused, Dominant, Angry whirlwind... do not approach. It’s his first heat. After he’s used to his cycles... you would never know he has begun. Save for the one he’s interested in. He actively avoids them during the week leading up to it and is downright rude to them so that they leave him alone. His first heat wasn’t pretty and he doesn’t like how out of control he was during it. He’s good at hiding it and will try to perform his daily duties while the heat is ravaging his body. If he gets lost in thought finds himself scenting and inadverdantly tailing his current interest. His interest must go to him and confront him because he will not relieve himself. Careful he’s a biter and a loud lover and once he slips his partner will end up dealing with all the pent up frustration at not relieving himself at all. After said and done without a partner he will spend a day to work off his backed up magic productively. With a partner he will spend the next few days apologizing to a very satisfied partner and take care of them

Axe: Heat doesn’t ravage his bones the same way as the others. It’s developed into adrenaline rush as flight or fight response. However, now that he’s no longer starving and in a relaxed environment, He feels a little of the burn and a bit of the tingle. It’s only become something other than a self preservation now that he has his socket on someone. He keeps everything relaxed. It’s nothing urgent and he will take his time. It’s not about him but his partners comfort so no rush as he isn’t feeling the sweltering burn and ache in his bones. Yet he will be physically affectionate with nuzzles and little love nips.

Edge: Was a little like Berry during his first. Being a seasoned monster he still holds himself with a calm stoic dignity... nevermind that he’s sweating... don’t question it and he won’t blow up at you. If however you are his love interest... he’s a bit more affectionate. He will attempt to hold hands but play it off casually. Sweet touches and whispers in hopes of luring them in for the rest of his heat. Even when tormented by his heat he is tender but passionate lover and will take care of his partners needs. He won’t lose himself to his heat.

Orange: A very suave individual when he wants to be is a very laid back lover. Will not venture from his room willingly and prefers a partner than being alone. Normally his plans to have his heat satiated is thought of in advanced with back up measures. Is a bit of a grump when he can’t get the relief his bones desire. A relaxed lover in the the bedroom and will be either top or bottom, no preference. His heat makes him a little more on edge and seeking relief faster. Not big on after care unless his partner is someone he is interested in beyond a torrid heat affair. Not that he gets too forceful but he is known for his stamina in bed and loving a steady yet almost tortuously slow pace.

Russ: is touch starved but doesn’t trust it. His previous exploits are going to dives and soliciting sex as long as they agree to not touch him he fucks them without mercy. He just wants that relief and his heat makes him forgo his sanity and boundaries. When he has that someone he can trust with every fiber of his being however. It’s honest love making. He wants to touch everything and wants his partner to do the same. He is a sucker for romance and loves the tender touches, forehead touching, sweet loving words as his partner worships his body and he theirs. In heat with his special someone is all those things because it is what he desires most. He wants to feel loved and he will happily do the same for that special someone. He’s a snuggly cuddle bug of affection when not having sex. His version of aftercare will make his partner eager for another romp with how meticulous and sensual he is at caring for them.

Nook: Like Axe doesn’t feel the burn and only had used his cycle as a self preservation mode. Fight or Flight. Now that he has someone he’s interested in... He thinks he understands why his heat feels... different. He wants a little more attention from them and will feel a bit... angry? when that attention goes to others and not him. The heat and tingle in his bones feels pleasant when he is around them and will find he enjoys cuddling more and more until he finally wants those hugs to be a bit more intimate. Those gentle kisses become a bit more demanding and eager. His partner will know bliss in his arms as he unknowingly caves in to his bodies version of heat. The blessed tingling sensation will only become more excessive until he releases his pent up magic. Not very experienced he is a good listener and learner and will work hard for his partners satisfaction.

Papyrus: Well with Pap * YinYanChan Disappears suddenly and Papyrus enters* H-HELLO EVERYONE. MY, THIS WAS SUCH A LOVELY TIME GETTING TO KNOW OUR MORE INTIMATE OF SIDES. I HOPE YOU HAVE ENOYED THE SHOW BUT I REALLY MUST BE OFF. READER SHOULD BE IN NEED OF ME SOON AND I MUSTN’T EVER BE LATE. *Papyrus starts to leave with a swift Nyeh Heh and a suspicious squirming sack over his shoulder.

[ordinaryschmuck]

Top 20 BEST Animated Series of the 2010s-16th Place

All aboard the hate train! Because I’m about to say a show people would put in their top tens where it hasn't even made my top fifteen!

CHOO-CHOO!

#16-Regular Show (2010-2017)

The Plot: Two twenty-something slackers named Mordecai and Rigby are working in a local park named...The Park (Yeah, it’s a pretty lazy title when you think about it). When they’re not doing work, they’re usually slacking off by playing video games and hanging out as best bros should. However, amongst their sacred duty to avoid work at all costs, these two friends learn the ordinary isn’t as regular as one would think. Can they survive whatever life throws at them without getting fired? Judging by the number of seasons this show got...probably.

One thing I should mention right away is that this series was the perfect show for teenagers...and the occasional stoned college student. But teenagers, most of all! Or at the very least, teenagers in late middle school and early high school. And when I say that, I don’t mean that Regular Show panders to teens by using slang or sexy women (most of the time), but it at least knows how to talk to them. And it all has to do with the situations Mordecai and Rigby find themselves in.

Aside from when Mordecai and Rigby are forced to fight demons and monsters, any teen can relate to what Mordecai and Rigby go through in Regular Show. Most teens wish to escape responsibilities to play video games or to just goof off. And the lengths that Mordecai and Rigby go through to make that happen helps the target audience root for them. Teens can also relate to the personal issues Mordo and Rigs face. Rigby often struggles with growing up and trying to become a better person. He often comes across as annoying at times, but his attempts to change are both admirable and even relatable. Then there’s Mordecai, who faces something more dangerous than any monster these guys have met: Relationship issues (and also self-doubt, but it’s the relationship issues that the show focuses more on).

Now I know that I’ve complained about romantic subplots in the past and that for some fans, the romance was what dragged this series down as well, but I personally think the romantic subplots are one of the best things about the show. Mordecai’s struggles to have/keep a girlfriend is something that most guys (and maybe even some girls) can relate to. And while I would rather have the show focus more on his self-doubt rather than relationship drama, there is still the essence of self-doubt as seen through how he struggles with making the first move with a girl. The best example of this is in the episode “It’s Time," where Mordecai keeps chickening out to ask out Margret and ends up paying the consequences for it. The self-doubt is still there, but it’s just hidden under romantic drama. However, there is a love triangle, but it lasts no more than just a season-long and is completely tame compared to Star V.S. the Forces of Evil.

And while Regular Show primarily focuses on Mordecai’s love life, there are still other relationships in the show that manage to also be pretty entertaining. I legitimately love the fact that Muscle Man and Starla is the perfect couple, even though it’s revolting to see them be romantic with each other. Not only is it hilarious, but it even comes across as sweet at times. Speaking of sweet (kinda spoilers ahead), both Rigby and Eileen are adorable in later seasons. Rigby is far from perfect, but he honestly tries to be better and more understanding of Eileen. The best part is that Eileen doesn’t encourage him to do this. She likes Rigby for Rigby. Faults and all. Not only is that something most romantic partners should try to aim for, but it’s really adorable to see. (kinda spoilers over). And while not romantic in the slightest, the friendship between Mordecai and Rigby is honestly the best. They both have a great dynamic, and the interactions they have with each other legitimately feel like I’m watching real best friends having fun. I’m not kidding when I say there are actual moments where I forget that these are just characters voiced by people in a booth. Because they come across as THAT authentic.

Speaking of characters, I'm amazed by how there isn’t one in this series that I hate. Or at the very least, not a single character that I’ve learned to deal with. As for characters I love, Benson is on the top of that list. Not only are his frustrations with Mordecai and Rigby hilarious at times, but his struggles to have a life with meaning is something all of us can relate to. Then there's Skips, who is this stoic badass who actually has more layers to him than one might realize. Both Pops and Muscle Man also have great depth to them, one more than the other, while also managing to be the funniest characters. The only characters I really have slight problems with are Margaret, Thomas, and High Five Ghost (Yes, that’s actually his name). Margaret has little to no development until season seven, and even then, there’s really not much done with her. As for Thomas, he was forced into the story, and I felt nothing when he eventually got written out. Then there’s Fives, who doesn’t really have any personality other than being Muscle Man’s bro. While I’ve grown to live with these characters being in the show, they still have problems that I can’t really ignore.

And while we’re on the topic of problems, there is one main issue that I should mention first, and that’s the fact that this show is so weird. That stoned college student jab wasn’t just a joke because it honestly feels like you have to be high to understand the logic of this show's production. Just from looking at the main cast alone, I struggle to wonder how J.G. Quintel came up with these ideas. Not only that but the situations these characters find themselves in can range from bizarre to holy-crap-someone-had-to-be-high-while-making-this. And somehow-SOMEHOW-it gets weirder with each passing season. Sometimes I’m okay with shows embracing the weirdness, but even I have a limit for this series.

Another problem I should mention is Regular Show’s animation. The animation in this series is not all that great. Usually, that isn’t a problem because it relies on dialogue and bizarre imagery to entertain viewers. However, there are occasions when Regular Show utilizes action scenes, and that is when the poor animation really drags the series down. There’s neither weight nor choreography for any of the fights. And rarely can you feel the punches that the characters exchange with each other. Because of this, the action feels both slow and kind of boring at times. A problem that wouldn’t exist if the series had just slightly better animation.

However, what really drags this series down is its seasonal rot. By season five (six if I’m feeling generous), the show starts to lose its magic. The first thing to leave is its maturity. I don’t know if it’s child censors catching up with the writers or if the target audience just got younger, but it is painful to see this show become more kid-friendly. It used to not be afraid of having the characters be in the middle of a shootout (with real guns and rocket launchers, by the way), but by season seven, the series resulted in using lasers and bean bag guns. What also eaves is the show’s sense of humor. At first, the jokes were pretty funny. But after a while, they start to lose their mojo and can be awkward at times. But none of this compares to what happens in Regular Show’s final season. Without giving too much away, the eighth season puts the characters in an environment that doesn’t really fit the show. There are times where even the characters don’t feel like themselves, and it gets to the point where it seems like I’m no longer watching Regular Show anymore. I don’t know how other fans felt about that season, but that’s how I felt throughout most of it (It’s also been four years since the finale, and I still don’t understand how the last two minutes are even possible).

Regular Show is not meant for everyone. Hell, at a point, it no longer became the perfect show for its original target audience. However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to enjoy. It’s funny, has great characters, and while it gets pretty weird at times, most fans loved that weirdness for six years. It’s nowhere near the best show in the 2010s, but it was still a good show. A jolly good show indeed.

(That last line makes more sense if you seen the series)

[chocafe]

the rhythms of summer — lee eunsang

summary: eunsang isn’t like the other spirits. one touch of the human skin will cause him to obliterate into the summer haze, and that’s enough to frighten you and your love for him. genre: romance, angst, fantasy, friends to lovers word count: 4.3k a/n: inspired by the animation movie, hotarubi no mori e.

Eunsang is everything the world admires. He is the bittersweet aroma of coffee beans. He is the warmth that summer possess. He is the hope that everyone longs for. He is simply everything. However, he is not human.

“Eunsang, are you out there?” You call out into the empty forest, gliding your bare hands against the rusty tree trunks.

“I’m here!” Eunsang says with excitement as he magically pops up in front of your eyes.

“Oh my gosh! You scared the living out of me!” No matter how many times you meet Eunsang, you will never get used to him popping in and out whenever he pleases to. Sometimes, you wished that he could walk normal like others, but then you remembered, he isn’t normal ─ Eunsang isn’t even a proper human being. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that little quirk of yours.”

His lips stretch into a smile and you’re sure it was the prettiest thing you have ever seen. “That’s what happens when you’re friends with a spirit like me.”

“I’m friends with a spirit that I can only see in the summer.” You notice how Eunsang’s smile quickly disappears by your comment. “B-But you’re the best friend anyone could ever ask for! Seeing you in the summer is the highlight of my year!” In between each word, your voice trembles as you try your best to bring up Eunsang’s confidence and liveliness.

“You really think so?”

“I know for sure.” You take your hand to wipe the sweat off of your forehead. It sure is hot in the summer. “It’s wonderful that this forest is right next to my grandparents house, but is hours away from my actual house in the city. Maybe when I get older, I can get a job over in this area, just so I can see you whenever I want to.”

“I would really like that.”

Actually, Eunsang would love that.

Your and Eunsang’s happiness was measured in the amount of laughters you two shared and the amount of days spent in the hazy summer season.

There’s something about Eunsang that soothes your heart. You don’t know how he does it and what it is about him. What you do know is that he’s purely the epitome of comfort.

Ever since you shared how you’ve been encountering endless numbers of sleepless nights, Eunsang begins to sing you a serene lullaby, causing you to fall asleep within the open meadow field. Despite always being eager to see you, Eunsang doesn’t mind the fact that you’re sleeping when you should be spending time with him. He cares for your overall well-being and if sleep is what seems the best for you, then he’ll choose that over swimming laps in the river.

Within the time being, Eunsang manages to braid the stems of flowers together to form a handmade floral bracelet. “All done!” He shouts in excitement, only to immediately close his mouth right after as he remembers that you’re sleeping peacefully beside him. Rather than continuing his conversation with himself, he chooses to smile instead because he’s extremely excited to show you the bracelet he had made for you.

He takes a quick moment to look at you and ends up staring at your face for a whole minute. Were humans always this pretty when they were sleeping? Were you always this pretty when you were sleeping? His heart skips a beat and he wants to remember this image of you forever.

Oh, how Eunsang wishes he had the ability to see you every single season, every day, every minute and every second; But the two of you were only limited to seeing one another in the summer.

Eunsang wants to watch you underneath the spring cherry blossom trees. He wants to jump on dried leaves and drink seasonal pumpkin spice lattes with you. He wants to play out in the angelic snow and perhaps, kiss you underneath the mistletoe.

“What are you thinking?” Eunsang questions as he lightly slaps himself in the face, trying his best to stop all of the upcoming thoughts of passionately kissing you. Nevertheless, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t stop imagining as his cheeks flush into a peachy shade of embarrassment.

Once more, he gazes right back at you and then at your lips.

“Y/N is sleeping, so they won’t know.” Eunsang thinks as he hovers his face above yours.

The urge to kiss you takes over Eunsang’s body as there was only a five centimeter gap in between your lips and his very own lips. He was so close, yet so far.

He pulls himself back to his original sitting position. “I can’t.” There was a certain heaviness in his heart, but a marked lightness in his soft tone of voice.

Eunsang can’t kiss you.

He can’t even lay a single finger on you.

One touch of the human skin and Eunsang will obliterate into the dying hot sun.

It’s not funny, but Eunsang awkwardly laughs and it rings through his bones like an unwanted phone call. “Why would you even try, you idiot.” He takes a big deep breath before sighing.

As he proceeds to drown himself in daydreams, he soon hears the sounds of you whimpering in your sleep. Sweat is dripping down your skin, your breathing pattern becomes peculiar, and Eunsang is terrified at the sight. You must be having a nightmare.

“Y/N.” Eunsang constantly calls out your name. “Y/N, wake up!”

No matter how loud he screams out, it wouldn’t be loud enough for you to wake up. In a rush, Eunsang speedily grabs a piece of wood and hits your open forehead. It was his last resort and the only thing he could potentially think of in a nervous state like his.

Your dream cuts to an end without receiving a proper ending roll credit and you wake up in pain. You were dazed, confused, head throbbing and the first thing you wanted to do was to yell at Eunsang in pure furiousness. “What is your problem? Why would you hit me with a stick while I’m sleeping?”

“Y-You” His voice began to shake since he wasn’t used to you yelling at him. “You were shaking in your sleep. It seemed like you were having a nightmare, so I thought it would be better to wake you up instead of letting you suffer.”

“You could’ve just called out my name instead, you know.”

“I did. I tried, multiple times.”

You couldn’t help, but to compare Eunsang to your mother. On the mornings where you’re too tired to wake up, your mother would barge into your room and profusely shake your arm until you were wide awake. Eunsang isn’t like your mother because your mother is human and Eunsang is a spirit who could not touch a single soul.

He’s different and you’re sorry.

It takes you a moment to realize that he couldn’t physically touch you to wake you up. “I’m sorry for getting angry when you were merely trying to help me.” The tone of your voice suddenly changes as you become apologetic in the snap of a finger.

“Hey, it’s okay!” Eunsang isn’t the type to hold grudges. “Do you remember what you were dreaming of?”

“Yeah, I do.” You scratch the back of your neck due to feeling uncomfortable because of the so-called dream that felt way too real.

“What was it? Was it a nightmare? Actually, you don’t need to tell me about it if it’s a little traumatizing.”

Moments before, you had dreamt of Eunsang disappearing into the void. It’s a constant nightmare of yours that remains to shake you to the core.

You don’t have the heart to genuinely tell Eunsang your biggest fear, so you tell him a white lie. “It was the worst nightmare. I dreamt that I was back at school and there was suddenly a test I didn’t study for!”

Eunsang tilts his head and raises an eyebrow that says really? Either you’re lying or you seriously hate school, and Eunsang chooses to believe the second option.

“Oh! Since you’re up─” He grabs a hold of the flower bracelet he made while you were asleep. “Look at what I made for you!”

Naturally, you brought your wrist to Eunsang as he began to place the bracelet on you, avoiding any skin contact with a bright smile on his face.

In a generation like yours, many people seem to adore materialistic gifts instead of gifts that truly come from the heart. You, on the other hand, would take the beautiful mother nature gifts Eunsang surprises you with than anything else in the world.

“It’s really pretty!” You comment.

You’re prettier, Eunsang thinks to himself, but giggles as a vocal response.

“I love these type of gifts from you, I really do.” You raise your wrist into the sky, so you can look at the beautiful bracelet and the bouncy white clouds, together, as one. “This just reminded me how you always used to pick out four leaf clovers for me in the past. We could be running down the hill, but once you see a clover, you would stop and place it behind my ear.” The nostalgic memories you shared with him began to play in your head like a movie.

“Ah, I forgot!” Eunsang swiftly stands up on his two feet. “Throughout the seasons, I’ve been collecting all of the four leaf clovers I’ve been coming across, precisely so I can give them to you once you visit!”

He runs off into the forest, telling you that it won’t take him too long to retrieve them all. You don’t mind waiting in the meadow because you’re too busy admiring the bracelet and the four leaf clover you had stuck behind your clear phone case.

Not even a minute passes by and you hear rustling noises behind the green bushes. “Eunsang, you’re back!” You say, only to turn around and lay eyes upon a slender cat-eye like man. “Wooseok?”

His facial expression was serious and the atmosphere he gave off was mysterious, but once you stated his name, he broke character like a shattered glass. “Wait, you know who I am?”

“Of course! Eunsang loves talking about you all and he mentioned a few times that you were very good looking, so I can only guess that you’re Wooseok out of everyone.” Rather than being afraid that you were meeting a spirit, you were more than happy to know that you were having a conversation with a friend of Eunsang’s.

“He isn’t wrong, I am pretty good looking.” Wooseok brushes his delicate fingers through his hair, but abruptly stops himself as he recollects as to why he originally wants to speak to you. “Listen, I need to speak to you, but it’s pretty hard to find you without Eunsang by your side.”

Wooseok makes his way towards you and grabs you by the chin, something full spirits were capable of doing. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on Eunsang. He isn’t like the rest of us and if you’re the reason he disappears then─”

Before Wooseok could continue on, you cut him off by slowly pulling his hand off of you. “I know everything, so don’t worry about it.”

Indeed. You knew everything about Eunsang and maybe that’s why the two of you were the greatest friends you both could ever wish for.

Eunsang wasn’t like the other spirits that roamed around the forest. He isn’t a monster, but he sure isn’t human anymore. Eunsang was merely a human child who was abandoned in the forest. He was destined to die, but every forest spirit took sympathy for him and used all of their magic to keep him alive. A body like Eunsang’s is weak as he solely depends on magic to keep himself alive. With one touch of the human skin, he will vanish as he’s just as fragile as the winter snow.

“So, you know everything?” Wooseok’s voice lowers down due to his surprise for your knowledge.

“Yes, I know everything. Despite you threatening me, I know that you and the others are all to kind to even harm a human being like me.” Wooseok was ethereally pretty, but his personality said otherwise. “I know you all think of him as a little brother, and to me, he’s my friend. We all don’t want to lose him, so trust me, I’m going to make sure Eunsang won’t be gone anytime soon.”

Wooseok opens his mouth and then immediately shuts it close as he hears the distant sounds of Eunsang running through the forest. At a time like this, he’s incapable of saying anything more because if Eunsang found out that Wooseok tried to scare you, then Eunsang would finally blow up and might even ignore Wooseok for the rest of eternity. Wooseok decides to vanish into the air because the thought of Eunsang hating him sends shivers down his spine.

Eunsang comes running back, out of breath, with a basket filled with tiny four leaf clovers. The sight of Eunsang is enough for your lips to creep into a smile and he does the very same right back at you.

Four leaf clovers are lucky, unlike Eunsang.

However, Eunsang is lucky enough to have met you and you’re just as lucky enough to have met him too.

“Hey, Y/N.” Eunsang clears his throat and stares off into the radius, refusing to make eye contact with you. “Hold onto this stick.”

“The same stick you hit me with earlier?” You look up at Eunsang and notice that he was flushed with a scarlet shade appearing all throughout his face.

Oh? Is this embarrassment? Nervousness? Shyness? Every single emotion combined?

Not only did you notice the fact that Eunsang was blushing, but you acknowledge that this is his way of asking to hold your hand. Without saying anything more, you grab onto the other end of the stick as the two of you walked besides one another.

Even though you were happy, you still felt a sharp pain inside of your heart. This had reminded you that you and Eunsang will never be able to be together. You will never get to be held in his embrace. You will never get to see him outside of summer. You will never get to properly experience love with Eunsang.

The river is lukewarm, but that doesn’t stop you and Eunsang from dipping your toes in the water. The sun is being eaten up by the sky and once more, you’re reminded that summer and your time with Eunsang is coming to an end.

“Have you ever been in love?” You randomly blurt out, kicking your feet as small specks of water splash onto your face.

“Excuse me?” Eunsang chokes up because he was never ready for a question like this. “Why do you want to know?”

“Is it my fault that I want to know whether or not my friend has fallen in love before? Come on, tell me about it!”

He hesitates before responding back. “I can’t tell you.”

Eunsang can’t tell you the true answer to your question because he fell in love with you and is still in love.

“Don’t want to tell me? Then I’ll tell you the story of how I fell in love.” It might take Eunsang years to gather up the courage to tell you about his love life, but it only took you a mere second for you to want to tell him about yours.

“Huh? You’ve been in love before? You’ve never mentioned it before.” Eunsang’s eyes widens as he’s almost frozen with shock, modestly hurt that you’ve fallen in love with someone who surely isn’t him.

“I met him in the summer heat five years ago. At first, I thought of it as a small crush since I was so young and naive at that time, but as I grew older, my feelings became even stronger than before.” You looked off into the sunset with a slight grin. “I realized that I’ve been in love since the very start and I still am in love with this person.”

He laughs softly, but thinks somewhere inside of him must be the sound of his heart breaking. “That person sure is lucky to be loved by you.”

“Yup, you sure are lucky.”

Eunsang quickly turns his head towards you and it takes him a second to process what you had just said. He’s in disbelief, and yet, he doesn’t need you to say it twice because he heard you clearly the first time.

“I’m sorry.” Are the only words that roll off his tongue.

What are you saying? You’re absolutely in love with Y/N, Eunsang thinks, but somehow doesn’t say it.

“It’s okay.” From the very start, you were prepared for Eunsang to reject you. The two of you were never meant to be with each other to begin with. “You don’t need to love me back.”

But I do love you back, He doesn’t say anything.

“Y/N, I’m so sorry.” He repeats himself. “I’m sorry that I can’t properly love you like other humans.”

What does he mean?

You’re still not sure how he feels about you.

Nevertheless, the two of you sit there in silence, feet in the water, staring at the sunset like it’s the rising tide.

The countryside differs so much from the city life you’re used to. Unlike the city, the countryside is dark with not much people in sight once the moon emerges into the night sky.

Maybe it was Eunsang’s urge to protect you or maybe it was his need to spend as much time as he possibly could with you; But after every time the two of you hang out, Eunsang would walk with you all the way to the end of the forest, so you could walk back to your grandparent’s house in peace. Ever since you met Eunsang, you’re not an ounce afraid of the lightless forest. However, you still allow Eunsang to walk with you, each and every time, because you love having him by your side.

It’s quiet.

Too quiet.

The only sounds you hear are the footsteps of yours and Eunsangs, and the four leaf clovers shifting around in the basket you were holding.

As you continued to walk through the forest, there was a sudden tug at the bottom of your shirt. You turn around, only to find Eunsang holding on while he stared directly at the ground. “Eunsang, what’s wrong?”

“I’m so sorry. It brings me so much pain.” He grips even tighter onto your shirt, wishing he was holding you instead.

“What are you talking about?”

“I want to experience being in love so badly, but I only want to if I’m with you.”

He wants to be real ─ For you.

Eunsang takes one step closer and that’s enough for you to snag your shirt away and take five steps away from him. “What is wrong with you? Remember, we need to keep a distance between us.” Your heart is rapidly beating, not because you’re in love, but because you’re frightened at the fact that Eunsang is putting his life at the line. “Don’t be irrational!”

“That’s exactly it.” He brings his head up and there’s tears flooding the whites of his eyes. “I’m sick and tired of this distance between us. Don’t you know how badly I want to be with you?”

You could see how desperate Eunsang was and you’ve never seen him in a state like this before. Seeing tears fall down from his eyes caused you to freeze up and become speechless at the moment.

“Y/N, I love you.”

Eunsang doesn’t need to think twice.

He is certain that he is in love with you.

There are times where Eunsang would long for you in the autumn, winter and spring. There are times where he wants to spend time with you and do nothing, but run into a field and pick out every flower that he deems as beautiful as you. There are times where you tell him stories of your city life, because you know how bored he could get in this lonely forest. There are times where Eunsang wishes it was only you and him on Earth. Each of these moments were when Eunsang strongly feels his love for you, and he loves realizing it every time. Falling in love with you makes him feel more like a human than he will ever be.

“You know, I love you too.” You remind Eunsang once more and it falls out of your mouth as easy as reciting the alphabet.

“Then, may I kiss you?” He takes a few steps closer to you, breaking the forbidden gap.

“You shouldn’t.” You say with quivering lips.

“But I want to.”

The basket of four leaf clovers crash onto the ground.

In a matter of seconds, Eunsang presses his soft lips against yours and finally has the power to wrap his arms around you, holding you tightly in his embrace. He doesn’t want this kiss to end and he never wants to stop holding you, but everything has an expiration date, including him.

You were completely unprepared for the kiss, but that didn’t stop you from passionately kissing him back. You would think that after all the summers you’ve spent with Eunsang ─ watching him talk, laugh, smile ─ that you would know all there is about him and his lips. With him being a spirit, you’ve never imagined his lips being this warm pressed against your very own.

The kiss ends as soon as the two of you feel your tears combine into one.

“Are you out of your mind?” You scream out loud, but not loud enough as your tears were powerful enough to fill you up.

“Are you out of your mind? For falling in love with a spirit like me?” Eunsang places his hand onto the side of your face, bringing both of your foreheads together, so they can touch and lean against one another. “How silly must I be for also loving you?”

Is this what it feels like to experience love? Eunsang is glad he can finally let you live through this, but despite being glad, he begins to think how much he’s going to miss your warmth.

Eunsang detects that it’s too difficult for you to speak with tears spilling down your cheeks. He takes a long, deep breath, as his fingers and voice trembles all at once. “I’ve always loved being with you. Every single time, I felt like I was alive. Y/N, you make me feel alive and I want to thank you so much for that.”

Parts of Eunsang begins to fade away into the air and within a minute, he’ll be nothing but a figment of imagination. As your arms were wrapped around Eunsang’s waist, you can feel him become lighter and you were never prepared to say your final goodbyes to Eunsang. He was supposed to be your summer delight, not your nightmare in disguise.

“Y/N, please tell me you love me once more.”

“I love you.” You beam your eyes towards Eunsang, never wanting to forget his face. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you!”

“I love you just as much.” Eunsang manages to muster up his famous soft smile, amidst the tears that were continuously streaming down his cheeks.

It would be amazing if time finally stopped, but time doesn’t care for anyone.

“Once I’m gone, falling in love with me will feel like a dream to you.” He leaves a soft peck on your forehead and continues to wipe the tears off of your face, despite being in the same frightful state as you. “I hope that this dream has been a happy pleasant one.”

Everything hurts and you’ve never knew love could bring this much pain to the two of you.

“Eunsang, don’t say that.” In return, you kiss his lips once more. “I will never forget you and I want you to know that I was more than happy in every moment that we shared together. You’re the one who makes me happy. I─” Your tears choke you up. “I just wish we had more time. Why would you do this?”

“Because I love you.” His voice is still comforting and it will forever play in your head. “I’m so delighted to hear that you were happy in every moment we shared, even if our time together was limited to one season of the year.”

Before you could say your last goodbye to Eunsang, you feel the cold breeze hit you and you were holding nothing, but the air.

“Eunsang?” You quickly turn your body around, trying to detect your lost boy in the hidden forest. “Eunsang!”

Eunsang isn’t hiding.

He’s long gone now.

Your weak legs give up and you fall onto the ground, burying your face into the dirt. “Why does it feel like I’m suffocating?”

Spilled four leaf clovers are scattered out everywhere.

You heavily cry out loud as tears drip down from your chin. There was no Eunsang to bring you back to comfort and he wasn’t coming back anytime soon, not even at all. “Eunsang, please come back!”

There’s something mystical in your pocket and you’re unsure as to what it is. You could feel it’s light stem and when you pull it out, you lay eyes upon a four leaf clover. It was as if it was Eunsang’s last wish to give you the last four leaf clover he had picked out for you that following day.

Summer will never be the same without Eunsang.

[chaoticoconut]

BARBARA GORDON HEADCANONS THAT MAKE ME SWOON!!

(and so can you!! alfkvoekfndnej does anyone get that reference anyhoo)

I couldn't NOT post these idk I was showering and then I was hit with a mf tornado of hcs about my favorite gal and I figured I'd share :))))

Barbara and Tim are actually the most potty mouthed members of the batfam, excluding Kate. Jason is close, but only when he's upset (which probably seems trivial bc he's yk always upset but I hc him a pretty chill if not bitter and snarky guy). Tim cusses more when he's tired, but he consciously tries to bite his tongue. Barbara has no remorse and cusses very casually and openly, because she sees no point in abstaining. It releases endorphins guys. Duh. She uses those ridiculous "holy heck Batman!" lines as Batgirl unless she's genuinely thrown off her game. She limits her cussing a lot as Oracle bc she's not one to offend people, and you never know. It's most definitely a civilian thing for her, and anyone who knows Babs knows she's a fucking sailor.

Her favorite food of all time is pizza. Her dream house has a brick pizza oven. She has a food blog with every pizzeria in the greater Gotham area ranked from best to worst. Her favorite of all time is the Gotham Pizza Garden, which is located in Old Gotham near the police station. Technically it's the second best pizza in Gotham, second to Gargoyle Pie Company, which is renowned for being the epitome of Gotham-style pizza and is always busy. She has a lot of memories of GPG though, and loves both pies. GPG also has an incredible Chicago style pizza, which is her second favorite type of pizza. She does however believe Gotham style is superior and thinks less of Dick for disagreeing (@blanddcheadcanons tie-in heyo!!) Very few things make Babs as happy as gourmet pizza.

She grew up watching Teenage Mutant Turtles, Powerpuff Girls, and Star Trek. They all hold a very special place in her heart. There is totally a connection between her love of pizza and TMNT and turtles and mixed martial arts. She once got the boys to go as the turtles for Halloween, with her crushing it as April.

Speaking of turtles, she's had a pet turtle named after icon Nichelle Nichols since high school. Yes, she does call her Shelly. Yes it's cliche. No she does not care. She also has a calico cat named Cornflake that Dick gave her as a birthday present. She doesn't have pet dogs until she and Dick finally settle down. She never had them growing up because her father is allergic and her mother was a devout cat lady. She's not really sure why she never got any on her own, she's just more familiar with cats. After her mom passed away, she did get a bunch of bunnies whom she and JJ named after their favorite horror movie monsters and serial killers.

She loves slasher flicks. It's a family thing. JJ was creepy about it, Jim loves the thrill, Babs loves the mythos, and her mom was never really afraid of anything and found them funny.

She inherited her mother's love for baking. She left her her cookbook, which contains an amazing mixed berry pie recipe. Her pie baking abilities rival Alfred's. She even begins to branch out with her recipes and experiment with all sorts of fillings and even cake-pies (fanfic au tie-in heyo). Everybody loves a Barbara baked good. She knows everyone's faves and literally crushes holiday season. Dick is all about the og mixed berry pie, whereas Jay, who loves lemon everything (hc I saw awhile ago that I just love) prefers either a lemon meringue or a raspberry lemon. Tim is all about strawberry open face while Steph prefers cherry cheesecake or pecan pie. Cass and Bruce both love her cinnamon apple pie. Duke loves just about anything she bakes, but especially her more adventurous, contest winning pies like kiwi-blueberry-black cherry and other originals. Kate will die for Babs' cherry pie. Damian prefers blackberry or mixed like Dick. Alfred is a sweet potato pie kind of guy himself. There's a farmer's market in Blüdhaven her mother went with her to when she was a kid that Barbara still goes to get get all the fresh fruit.

Even better than Barbara or Alfred baking alone is them baking together. Roy Harper is also a pretty good baker. They all trade recipes with Martha Kent. M'gann brings wine to the manor and assembles them all for fun days of baking.

She's also totally the type of gal who made a shit ton of cupcakes when she ran for class prez and stayed I from Batgirl duties to finish them. Just saying.

She picks baking back up as Oracle but several hero emergencies lead her to burn perfectly good desserts.

She and Roy will always have puppy-love crushes on one another and be totally oblivious. They both did ballet as kids, love baking, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, shameless empty flirting, and tech. They're completely platonic and really great lifelong friends. They met at a Wayne gala as kids.

As if she wasn't already talented enough, she's completely ambidextrous. I'm jealous. Dick and Wally are left handed. Bruce is similarly ambi. Selina's a leftie. Maybe Alfred too.

She likes to enter contests and win for fun. She's a monster. Everything from baking to video games to weight lifting, she loves showing people up.

Dick, Babs, and Tim all snore atrociously loud. The batfam hates it. She's the quietest out of them all, but she's also a blanket hog. And a major cuddler.

Her favorite colors are grey and green. Purple does deserve an honorable mention however. Her apartment is a fair mix of green and grey decor and covered in books.

She was a total ballerina growing up, just like her mom wanted. That was until she discovered how kick ass martial arts were, and she got a little too jacked to continue with ballet as a formidable career option. Her next best option is becoming a cop at this point, but her father believes that not only would it be far too dangerous but a waste of her skills (like ballet cough cough). This upsets her so much she goes off and invents Batgirl, complete with a stole grappling gun from evidence.

In college she works as a barista and excels at it. Her dream is to open up a cafe/bakery/flower shop with Dinah some day. She wants to call her half Bean Me Up Scotty! (another hc I saw and fell in love with)

Babs is also a pretty good cook being that she became the family chef at a young age (Jim can barbeque and make spaghetti. That's literally it. Maybe some breakfast). Cooking lessons from Alfred certainly helped.

Her personality is so versatile. She can get along with pretty much anyone due to her wide range of interests and skills which is what makes Oracle so bad ass. She's also a Libra so she adapts fairly easily to any group without seeming fake.

She has a podcast where she rants about tech and feminism and politics and plays video games

She SO took Latin in high school and dominated competitions. She loves classical studies and is a dork for Greek and Roman mythology as well as linguistics. She has a pretty good grasp on all of the romance languages, and learns languages fairly quickly.

She always smells like mint and books. She has killer mint shampoo and conditioner, which is a Kean family thing (they just love the scent). She always smells refreshing.

She likes coffee but prefers tea always. She's like Ramona Flowers with tea

Her music taste is total 90s nostalgia (grunge, boybands, air pop, ska, hip hop) meets far too indie 4 u. Yes she's pretentious. Yes she loves chick rock and *NSYNC and Britney and Kurt Cobain and Biggie and deal with it. She also loves shit you've never even heard of. Was totally into the Gotham punk scene as a teen.

She collects vinyl and books and horror flicks ugh hipster queen

She loves spicy food and Dick cannot stand it. They both like sour candy though

If your Barbara Gordon didn't graduate high school at 16 she doesn't have rights

She was all of the Robin's first crush. Duh. Tim will always think she's the gold standard of women. He likes that she usually sticks up for him. He doesn't mind being seen as her male equivalent lmao

At some point Jay and Babs are roommates and it's literally the best I'll talk abt that later

Her type is guys with dark hair or blonde gals.

[restlessmaknae]

flavour to my fantasy

Kim Seokjin is an aspiring food vlogger, loved by thousands on all social media platforms. While he marvels around Seoul one day, he enters a burger place where he meets Jang Nara and a whole new culinary experience begins.

♦ Pairing: food vlogger!Jin x vegan restaurant owner!OC (Jang Nara)

♦ Genre: fluff, comedy, romance

♦ Words: 5k

Kim Seokjin was wandering around the downtown area of Seoul, searching for a hidden place that hadn’t yet caught his eyes. He was constantly looking for new places with new foods and new drinks to try. Considering that his job required him to always evolve, to always come up with new ideas and new recipes, he liked getting inspiration from random visits at Seoul’s food places, let them be popular ones or hidden gems.

This was also a district he wasn’t familiar with, and he decided to go with his gut feeling, and chose a random, cosy-looking place called ‘Burger & Land’ and stepped inside. He was immediately welcomed by the scent of mediterranean herbs and freshly cut veggies, lovely little plants all over the place from the ones on the tables to the ones on the counter and by the windows, the variety ranging from cactuses to tulips in all colours of the rainbow.

The place was rather small, only a few tables with wooden chairs, but considering that it wasn’t a franchise, it couldn’t have been any larger. There was tranquil music being played in the background, not too quiet to go unnoticed, not too loud to disturb any customer. The atmosphere was friendly and homey, not like the nosy burger place he had expected but he was genuinely surprised in a good way, he had to admit.

As he sat down at an unoccupied table, he was immediately welcomed by a pretty waitress with the widest smile he had ever seen who handed her a menu. The options were both in Korean and English, and the range of burgers, side dishes, sauces and other meals such as seasonal soups and cream soups and desserts made his mouth water. He hadn’t expected such a variety, especially after seeing that everything was fresh and made on the spot. He had indeed come to the right place, there was only one thing he didn’t catch sight of.

“Good afternoon! What can I get for you?” The pretty waitress came back with that trademark smile of hers after leaving a few minutes for him to decide on his order, making Seokjin smile in return. He didn’t want to sound rude or inappropriate, so he flashed his best charming smile as he leaned forward, almost as if he had wanted to know a secret.

“Perhaps, do you have something with meat? As I can see, you only have tofu, seitan, mushroom and veggie-based burgers,” he inquired curiously, putting his elbows down on the table.

Something akin to amusement flashed across the woman’s face, but she didn’t show any signs of confusion, she answered patiently.

“It’s because we are a vegan place. You can also see on the menu that our burgers are 100% plant-based.” She pointed at the little line on the bottom of the menu.

“Oh really?” Seokjin chuckled a bit nervously, ashamed that he had made such an amateur mistake. Though when the meaning of her words actually kicked in, he shrieked as if he had seen a ghost. “OH REALLY?” he repeated, totally bewildered, and his sudden loud exclaim made the girl jump a bit.

“Well, yes.”

There was a moment of silence before Seokjin could pull himself back together, and start anew. He couldn’t believe that vegan food had never crossed his mind even though he was very well aware that it was a rising trend on the food market, and it had become common that vloggers like him were eating plant-based meals. How could he not think about it before?

He cleared his throat, averting his eyes from the menu to the girl, starting his explanation with a wide smile.

“You may not know me but I’m Kim Seokjin, I’m a food vlogger and I’ve been looking for inspiration for new recipes but I couldn’t find anything that piqued my curiosity,” he shared with her his latest mishap. Being a food vlogger, it was usually fun and challenging, he had a lot of ideas, he was brave enough to try all kinds of foods, plus he was so enthusiastic that he didn’t seem to run out of meals he had wanted to make. However, after almost two years of uploading videos twice a week, countless recipe tastings and restaurant visits,  he felt like he got a bit stuck lately.

“But why have I never thought about vegan food before? I think I found my call!” He continued joyfully, almost ready to bolt up from the table to celebrate his victory, but he decided to stay still in the end. He didn’t want to make a fool out of himself, there were some people at the nearby tables, so he didn’t want to embarrass neither himself, nor the pretty waitress.

“That’s great! I’m really happy to hear that,” she cheered him on equally beamingly, and there was just something about her zealous behaviour that made his smile grow even wider. With her little buns atop of her head (those were the so-called space buns, right?), that broccoli-patterned apron on her and her petite figure, she looked like a fairy, a fairy who was sent by mother nature. She was indeed cute.

“Do you think you could show me how you make your burgers? Or suggest some vegan recipes?” Jin asked immediately, his enthusiastic reaction making her giggle.

“I’d love to, actually, but maybe you should taste our burgers first. You know, there’s always a slim chance that you wouldn’t like it,” she remarked almost playfully, yet he wasn’t one to get mad hearing her words. 

In fact, it was such a nice start to a whole new culinary experience, and the waitress was right, it could also happen that he didn’t like vegan food. Not that he usually didn’t new foods, but he was rather interested this time.

“Yeah, sure, you’re right.” He agreed with a slightly aggraveted laughter and looked down at the menu yet again. He was such a fool really, but he tried his best not to show what kind of emotions were going through him, because that would have made the situation even more awkward. “I’ll take the Broccoli Dream burger then with sweet potato fries and guacamole on the side and as for drinks… one medium strawberry lemonade,” he decided a minute later, and so the pretty waitress disappeared with his order jotted down in her notebook and a smile that lasted until she came back again.

The burger arrived a bit more than half an hour later but it was understandable since the meals were made on the spot with fresh ingredients, thus they couldn’t just put it in front of him like they did at burger franchise places.

However, based on the smell of the freshly made burgers, the fries and even the guacamole, he knew that he was up for a good feast and the nice exterior probably hid a delicious interior.

“I can film here, right?” he asked just in case before he could have dug into his food and record the whole thing.

“Yes, sure,” the waitress responded with a pretty smile and walked back to her usual place behind the counter.

Seokjin turned back to his burger, brought out his camera from his bag, adjusted the angles and the lightning, made a few pictures to test out the waters and then he could finally start the recording.

“Hello, everyone!” He greeted the imaginary viewers on the other side of the camera with a wave of his hands and a wide smile. “I’m Jin, you’re watching Eat Jin, and today I stumbled upon this lovely place called Burger & Land. This is a vegan place, and it’s also my first time trying vegan food, let alone a vegan burger, but I’m curious. Let’s dig into it, shall we?” he introduced the video’s theme enthusiastically, and spoke a bit about the ingredients of the burger he had chosen before showing his order to the camera. He made sure to zoom on the colourful veggies and sauces well, so that the viewers could have the best point of view.

Then, he put down his camera again and took the first bite into the burger, humming satisfyingly when the flavours kicked in.

“Oh my gosh, this is so good! The flavours are so intense, and this sauce resembles mayonnaise so much that it’s almost scary!” He commented zealously between two huge bites of the burger, then reached for the fries as well and digged them into the guacamole sauce. He enjoyed having all sorts of foods at the same time, thus it was no surprise that he decided to eat the burger, the fries and the sauce all at once. “The veggies are really fresh and crispy, they complement each other so well. I especially love the bean sprouts because we don’t use them often but they always give an extra flavour to a meal,” he mused out loud after digging in more, and the more he ate, the more content he was.

He continued his mukbang, talking about the different flavours and how they mingled in so well; that he had never thought a broccoli-based patty could be this good and also the fact that he was genuinely surprised that he didn’t miss the taste of meat. For once, that was for sure, because he couldn’t have assumed the rest. Yet, one thing was for sure, he really enjoyed his feast and didn’t even leave a single fry behind, he ate everything.

Tummy full and content, camera turned off, he wasn’t ready to leave, not yet. After telling the pretty waitress just how much he had enjoyed the meal and asking if he could come by next time and learn a few recipes, it turned out the waitress was actually the owner of the place, the one who had came up with the recipe herself, and she also liked to help out in the kitchen when she wasn’t helping customers.

“I would be really glad if you could show me some basic vegan meals I could make, they don’t have to be burgers. Of course, we can also talk about sponsorship as well,” Jin cut to the chaste after he had been enlightened about the person behind the whole concept of Burger & Land.

She smiled that wide smile of hers that seemed so endearing, almost like the sunshine peeking out from behind the clouds on a rainy day. He couldn’t help but smile back at her, the reaction seeming so natural and easy. No matter how pumped up, confused or overly excited he was, she could handle it well for the time being. He hoped that it would stay the same.

“Yes, sure. Let’s decide on the time then,” she suggested beamingly, and a few minutes later, Jin left the place with a full stomach, a sweet aftertaste in his mouth and a (strictly business-related) encounter for Friday after working hours.

No matter how many places Jin had already visited and no matter how many chefs he had already met, he was always looking forward to another encounter. This time was no different, he was definitely looking forward to meeting Jang Nara again, the petite, fairy-like waitress and the owner of Burger & Land with the widest smile he had ever seen. There was something enchanting about her, her whole persona was radiating warmth and kindness, so how could he not be excited for Friday?

When he arrived at the place at 9pm, it was closed as expected, but she had told him beforehand that he should come by from the backdoor, and so he did, gently knocking on the door before he would have come off as a sudden intruder.

When he opened the door and stepped inside, the girl was already in the middle of rushing to the door but stopped halfway when she caught sight of him and bowed politely.

“Hey!” Nara waved a bit, her smile stretching from one ear to the other. “I still need to do a bit of cleaning, but it won’t take longer than five minutes, so make yourself comfortable in the kitchen,” she suggested zealously and disappeared (probably) into the restaurant part of the place, leaving the boy alone.

He did as he was told, getting rid of his coat, pulling his fluffy, beige sweater’s sleeves up to his elbows and fishing out his little recipe notebook that he always had on himself in case he needed to jot down some recipes or ideas while he was commuting. Then, he looked around a bit in the cozy kitchen with neat, organized cutleries and kitchen essentials on multiple shelves. Cute little cactus pots occupied some empty places, painting the otherwise white and black scenery with a little bit of green. The aroma of some kind of scented candle (maybe vanilla and cinnamon?) lingered in the air, soothing the boy’s nerves with its sweet and warm fragrance.

He didn’t even have a lot of time to look around before Nara came back and put a cactus-patterned apron around her waist. She was so quick that Jin didn’t even have the time to suggest helping her, she was already finished by the time he could have opened his mouth.

“I’ve thought that we could make pad thai with crispy tofu and my favourite peanut butter-based sauce,” she suggested with a wide smile as she started putting the ingredients onto the counter. She was so organized and focused, he was already baffled by her professionalism even before she could actually show him anything.

“Sounds really good,” Jin exclaimed with an impressed whistle. “Can I help you with something?”

“I’m going to bring together all of the ingredients, so I don’t think you can help with it, but maybe you can put on an apron,” she explained and pointed at some aprons on a hanger by the door between the kitchen and the restaurant part of the place. “Though I’m not sure they will be to your liking because they are all for girls,” she added cheekily, and it was so fun to see this side of her.

Though Jin wasn’t one to be intimidated by pink aprons with hearts painted all over the material. In fact, he was actually pretty glad to wear something like that.

“Don’t worry for a second. Pink is my second name,” he joked around and flashed a confident grin. She immediately burst into laughter.

“Alright, Pink Jin. I’ll keep that in mind.” She winked at him before turning to a random cupboard and reaching for a chopping board.

Jin walked to the hanger with a smile plastered into his face, not quite believing what he had just witnessed. He wasn’t sure that she would be so free around him, especially not after his slightly awkward first question that should have probably not been asked at a vegan restaurant. Plus, somehow he always imagined owners of such places to be serious and no fun, he had actually met quite a few of them, but Jung Nara wasn’t one of them. Maybe it was because she seemed fairly young and she had such an authentic, homey place with not too much hype around it that she could let herself loose while still taking everything seriously. Or maybe she was always like this, he couldn’t tell for the time being.

“Are you ready?” Nara clapped her hands when Jin walked back to her and the ingredients were all placed on the counter.

“Yes, I’m ready.” He nodded and clapped his hands just like she did, earning a little giggle from her.

“Okay, so we are going to start by making the tofu because we are going to put them in the oven and bake them for around 30 minutes or until golden-brown,” she introduced zealously, bringing the chopping board, the tofu on a plate and a knife closer to them.

“I’ve never thought about baking tofu in the oven,” he admitted with a little laugh. He already liked this girl, it seemed that she liked extraordinary methods.

“Spicing them and then baking them will make the texture crispier,” Nara explained patiently, exchanging a glance with Jin before letting him chop up the tofu into bite-sized pieces while she was working on the tofu’s coating.

They worked together so well, and Jin really enjoyed that he also had something to do, she didn’t want to make everything on her own. It was much more fun this way. She was also a patient and enthusiastic chef with clear instructions and such hacks that he had never even encountered before. He was in awe more than he would have liked to admit, not just because of the cooking process and the recipe itself but also because of Nara’s personality that was like a ray of sunshine through the cloudy sky. 

She was like a delicate flower growing in a blossoming field but she had her own thorns as well, the responsibility of someone who owned such a place after her grandmother had died. Her mother was never interested in cooking, thus she would have abandoned the tteokbokki place, yet cooking was Nara’s everything and it was because of her grandmother that she had learned how to make her own dishes, so she couldn’t let it just go to waste. Even though no one in her family had their own business apart from her grandmother, she tried her best to make things work, and she learned from her own mistakes during the years. 

It wasn’t always easy, her vegan place was not even the most popular one in Seoul, but she was glad to have motivated and joyful employees and even the regular customers from nearby work places who had lunch at hers almost every day. She even told Jin that the name of the place was one of her friends’ idea: burger standing for the fact that she sold burgers and land for the other plant-based dishes she offered.

After finishing with the meal, they enjoyed a warm and delicious dinner by the scented candle’s light, sharing with each other the hardships of constantly evolving businesses and coming up with new recipes. Nara told him that it was difficult to have a daily lunch offer because she didn’t want to be too repetitive but at the same time it was sometimes bothersome to get every ingredient she wanted for certain dishes, so she had to be very clever with her choices. Plus, local and seasonal ingredients were a must, and she changed most of the burger options seasonally as well which was also challenging. 

He shared with her how many times he usually made something before he would call it a recipe and how he had to give his leftovers to his friends and relatives because wasting food was a big no-no, yet there were days when he made dishes all day and ended up with 16 servings of food all to himself. Plus, sponsors and financing were a tricky thing when he was his own boss and his content wasn’t something that people could directly pay for, so he had to find ways to earn money for his work, but he seemed to be balancing it out well.

Through their hardships and angst stories, they could actually get to know each other a lot better, and by the time they finished with their dinner, they had already agreed on cooking together next Tuesday as well. They even walked to the nearby metro station together after Nara had closed the shop, but they went different ways from there.

“See you on Tuesday then,” Nara bid her goodbye with one of her trademark smiles, waving in the man’s direction.

“If anything comes up, you know my number.” Jin winked playfully and waved back, watching as she hopped on the metro, looked out of its window with an equally wide smile he looked back at her.

There was just something about her than made him feel like he was enchanted, but oh how much he enjoyed it!

The more time they spent together, the more Jin liked spending time with Nara, and no matter what they cooked, what they talked about or how long of a silence fell upon the two of them, everything seemed so right. 

Those nights spent cooking together were always fun despite him sometimes being too weary and cranky after shooting videos for long hours or not being able to come up with the perfect recipe. If she could, she liked to help him out, thus the idea of shooting an actual cooking video with her came to his mind. 

At first, she objected fervently, saying that being on camera was really not her cup of tea, but after some little nudges and the ultimatum that if she didn’t like the final outcome, Jin wouldn’t upload the video, she gave in.

That’s how they found themselves in the Burger & Land kitchen, fully equipped and ready to kick off the shooting.

However, Jin noticed that the petite female played with the hem of her apron as if she had been a bit overwhelmed, so he asked playfully:

“Are you nervous?” he inquired with one of his trademark smiles, hoping that his attitude could melt the girl’s anxiety away.

“Yes.” She nodded almost immediately and let out a bit of a laughter. He had never really seen her in such a state and it surprised him. Though he really tended to forget that some people were not as used to cameras as he was, and that he didn’t feel intimidated anymore while shooting, but a lot of people had never really been filmed like this.

“But why?” he inquired further while busying himself looking around, making sure that they really had everything they needed on hand.

Nara giggled a bit hearing his question. She looked particularly fairy-like that day with her messy bun atop of her head and her long, colourful, heart-shaped earrings framing her beautiful face. Even if she would have been frustrated, she would have looked adorable, and one couldn’t change Jin’s mind about that.

“Because you are filming, obviously.” She huffed almost comically but he had the perfect response.

“Not because I’m too handsome?” He wiggled his eyebrows seductively, earning a whole-hearted, genuine laughter from the girl.

“Might as well be because of that,” she joked, her little giggle reminding him of the heartwarming twingles of Christmas bells. Gosh, when did he become so weak for her? He couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact moment, maybe it was already during their first encounter, maybe not. No matter what, one thing was for sure and that was the fact that her whole persona was charming and he couldn’t get enough of it.

“Are you ready?” Jin threw the same question at her as she had done when they first met, and he saw the realization flashing across her face. She flashed a little smile as she recalled the memory of their very first encounter.

“I’m ready.” She nodded confidently, letting out a long sigh before looking up at him again. He couldn’t help but smile seeing her nervousness, it was rather cute, but at the same time he felt a bit guilty for putting her in such a situation.

That’s why he didn’t even think when he put his hands on her shoulders and patted them.

“You’re going to be amazing! I know it!” He said as he gave her a thumbs-up. She smiled that sweet smile of hers, tucking a loose strand behind her ear.

He didn’t know if she believed her but she had done great nevertheless, talking casually and naturally finding a way to look between the camera and Jin’s face. They had made the same pad thai recipe she had showed him during their first encounter but as the food vlogger he was, he needed to add some extra ingredients like lemon zest into the sauce and sesame seeds and kale as additional toppings.

They worked together just as well as they always did, and even when they said something that was slightly embarrassing or unprofessional, they merely laughed it off and moved on. He had a feeling that Nara even forgot about the camera by the end because she stayed the same even when they had finished and he turned off the camera.

“How did you enjoy the recording?” Jin grinned at her, hoping for the best possible answer.

“It was actually pretty fun. At least more fun than I would have expected,” she admitted beamingly, getting rid of her apron and folding it in two, then putting it back onto the rack by the door.

Then, just as she walked back to the counter and stopped beside Seokjin, the food vlogger turned to face her and seriously spoke up.

“You did really well,” he whispered gently and smoothly leaned closer to her, pressing a chaste, soft kiss on her left cheek that turned into scarlet red the moment he backed away. The roses that were painted on her pale skin by his simple action were even more beautiful, almost mesmerizing. He didn’t regret his little kiss in the least, not when a blushful smile stretched across her lips, not when she looked away so coyly.

She didn’t reject him and she didn’t oppose, that’s what mattered the most.

Weeks passed by and after Jin had uploaded the edited video and it had received a massive amount of positive feedback, he decided to make the cooking session with Nara into a series - of course with her own consent. 

They had tried to make a lot of different dishes, not just main meals but desserts and snacks as well with easily accessible, seasonal ingredients, they had even made a video about student dorm-friendly, budget-friendly lunches. With time and practice, Nara got less and less nervous in front of the camera, and Jin’s chest swelled with pride whenever he looked at her while shooting a video together. Her features were much more relaxed and her smile was much more genuine and radiant on-camera than before, and he wanted to believe that he had also contributed to that outcome.

Of course Jin knew very well that he couldn’t make only vegan videos forever because his focus wasn’t just plant-based foods and also because Nara was busier than ever with Christmas getting closer and closer. So they decided to put an end to their collaboration for the time being, but it didn’t mean that he didn’t come back anymore. 

In fact, he had tried to come up with some plant-based recipes on his own and he loved when he could surprise her with his creations after an exhausting work day. Sometimes she finished by the time he arrived, but sometimes he decided to help her with the cleaning or washing the dishes because she could definitely use a helping hand, and he didn’t mind assisting her a bit.

It was after another time when he was helping her out and after Nara calling it a day with a clap of her hands, Jin let out a long sigh and turned to the girl.

“So I was thinking, would you like to go on a date with me?” he inquired out of the blue, the previous topic of favourite scented candles’ fragrances long forgotten.

Nara was apparently taken aback by his question, her eyebrows were delicately elevated after hearing his words. She blinked a few more times, her lips slowly yet surely being lifted up into a smile. The silence was seriously dancing on his nerves, but at the same time he was already weak for her, and he could have just looked at her for hours without getting mad or bored.

“Yes, I would love that,” she admitted with a wide, childish smile and took off her apron to put it on the reck. “Are we going to a restaurant?” she asked as she turned back to him, curiosity filling her beautiful, star-filled eyes.

“No.” He shook his head confidently and took a step closer to her. “I’m cooking for you. In my territory. All vegan, don’t worry,” he concluded his plan with a wide smile that grew even wider when she let out an airy giggle.

“I’d love that.” She nodded zealously, taking a step closer to the young man. 

Then, she looked up at him, the smile never leaving her lips, not even when he planted a kiss onto her rubin-coloured ones, their first kiss as sweet as the aftertaste of the vegan bounty cake they had previously shared.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

I saw someone recently accuse Peter of being immoral, of being selfish and ‘gaslighting’ of his friends and family in withholding his secret from them. 

My kneejerk reaction to that is to defend the character, but I sat down and really tried to inquire about the question.

My conclusion is twofold:

It depends upon the context and

He wasn’t being very nice in deceiving them...but it was far from immoral or anything else for him to do so.

I really hate cynical hot takes on the character like that so let’s talk about it.

For a microcosm I’m going to be using Peter’s more iconic supporting cast members circa the Silver Age when he was at ESU, specifically up until issue #122.

Why? 

Well to examine Peter in high school is rather redundant. However much slack you could arguably cut college era Peter for his youthfulness, you go further for High school Peter. Also he didn’t have many friends in the first place. Finally the college era simply contains the most iconic iterations of Peter’s supporting cast and social group.

I’m also not looking at every supporting cast member because who cares that he didn’t confide in Josh (do you even remember him) or Jameson (obvious).

  Before I begin to look at any of these characters we should properly contextualize things.

Peter’s secret is no laughing matter.

It’s more than just his sense of privacy and anonymity being violated.

It’s more even than his ability to have a freer hand in fighting crime and thus work faster and more efficiently, saving more people.

If people find out who he is then between the law, Jameson, criminals and super villains, it’s open season for everyone Peter cares about or is too closely connected to him, not to mention Peter himself.

Peter’s experiences with Norman Osborn learning his secret in ASM #39 alone were a major example of what he risks, of how dangerous and violent, his life could become if even one bad person learnt his secret.

And the fact is the more people who know his secret, the more likely it is that it will become compromised. Even telling just one person, if they are the wrong person, could have devastating results.

Whomever Peter potentially trusts must be able to keep a secret, keep a secret under pressure, not give anything away, be able to deal with that massive burden day in and day out and above all else be loyal to him and stand a good chance of remaining loyal to him.

A great example of what it could mean to trust someone too hastily is provided in MIles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man. The young Miles reveals his identity to his girlfriend Kate Bishop and in turn she reveals it to her parents who are in fact HYDRA agents.

Whilst this is an extreme example it nevertheless illustrates the extreme risk of trusting the wrong person with something like this.

We must keep this in mind going forward.

One final thing to keep in mind is the timeline. We’re bouncing around a bit here but we’re essentially looking at broadly Peter’s start of college to Gwen’s death (ASM #31-ASM #121). We don’t have a pinned down timeframe for that. But we do know Peter’s college years lasted about 4 years, which is standard. 2 of those years elapsed between Gwen’s death and the 1970s Clone Saga. We then got 30+ issues until Peter graduated.

Those 30+ issues combined with ASM #31-121 must therefore account for another 2 years and given how the latter is a larger span of issues than the former ASM #31-121 can logically be presumed to transpire across over a year.

For the purposes of this essay, we are presuming 18 months.

Let’s tackle these guys one by one.

  Aunt May: Beyond a doubt from Peter’s point of view absolutely not could he reveal his secret to Aunt May.

  Nowdays we might argue it was corny, possibly sexist, possibly just dumb and convenient writing to have May be so frail that learning his secret would kill her. 

Nevertheless though, that was genuinely what he believed.

Now for sure Peter didn’t tell May his secret before this...but in fairness to him he was young, dumb and she did mention more than once how she didn’t approve or like Spider-Man. Coupled with his teenage concern that she’d hate him for his role in Ben’s death it’s entirely sympathetic that Peter would keep her in the dark, not to mention he knew how much she already worried about him. 

Furthermore whilst the idea of a big shock being fatal to her wasn’t brought up before ASM #39, you could very easily argue that Peter in observing her age, trips to the hospital and frailty made a perfectly sound decision to not put her through any huge shocks or massive concerns for him.

Going forward Peter maintaining the secret can be viewed as a force of habit and to be frank even in Len Wein’s run May in the mid-late 1970s May was keeling over from too much stress and stimulation. Before that in ASM #144 she already went to the hospital upon laying eyes on a seemingly resurrected Gwen Stacy. Learning her nephew was Spider-Man? The idea that very well could’ve killed her was an entirely reasonable presumption for Peter to hold going forward.

  Thus not telling her is not selfish on his part, it’s literally saving May’s life.

  By extension it also adds fuel for him to maintain his secret in general. It isn’t even that villains could target Aunt May, it’s that merely finding out could kill her as far as Peter knows.

 Flash Thompson: This one is also rather easy.

Peter and Flash were rivals in high school. They were rivals still in college but began to mellow. It took Gwen dying and Peter losing his home for the two to truly start to connect and that bad blood was still cropping up from time to time thereafter.

In the silver age though they were simply not nearly close enough for Peter to entrust something as dangerous as his secret to someone who’d shown so little trust and loyalty to him as Peter Parker. Flash may even in Peter’s mind resented learning his hero was the guy who had such a bad history with. It didn’t help that even though they mellowed somewhat in college Flash’s trips in the military meant he and Peter spent less time together TO get to know one another.

Mary Jane Watson: Of course with hindsight we know that MJ was aware of who Peter was and was totally trustworthy.

But Peter didn’t.

He was fooled by the scatterbrained party girl facade, the woman who seemed zany enough to be impressed by a big hole in a wall.

From his perspective MJ also didn’t seem all that loyal. As a friend they were not that close, merely going out a few times, bumping into one another at Anna or May’s, and hanging out as part of the larger group.

Yes MJ was seemingly interested in him due to her flirtations but from Peter’s POV at best this was her having some fun and at worst it was her just being like that with most people.

Also from Peter’s POV MJ crossed the line at times in her flirtations with him given her relationship with his friend Harry. If she was not particularly serious or loyal with him as a girlfriend there was little reason for her to trust her as a friend with a life or death secret.

If anything from Peter’s POV MJ was the most likely to spill the beans inadvertantly. It was a concern he held even up to the 1980s when she did reveal she knew the truth.

Harry Osborn: From a certain point of view, Harry seems like the best candidate for Peter to confide in.

He was Peter’s best friend and roommate after all.

The thing is...people do tend to exaggerate that. For sure they were friends, probably one another’s best friends even. But the term ‘best friends’ denotes images of staying up late to play video games, hitting the clubs, making a routine of catching movies together or regularly shooting the breeze.

This wasn’t the nature of Peter and Harry’s relationship. They hung out together of course, but their studies coupled with Peter’s relationship, work and Spidey troubles meant that they didn’t spend much on panel quality time together, at least not outside the main group. 

It happened, but not as much as you’d think.

They cared about each other, but not to the extent the films and TV shows might play up.

In a sense Harry was Peter’s best friend almost by default. As in he was relatively speaking the person who outside of romance or family, was closest to him.

Harry though was also initially a bully towards Peter. He was initially jealous and resentful over Peter and Gwen’s relationship and at times showed similar frustrations regarding MJ’s attraction to Peter. And all that is before you talk about his major drug problem, how many pills would Harry take to cope with the burden of being Spider-Man’s BFF?

All these factors combined made Harry probably too unreliable a candidate for Peter to confide in. 

But the single biggest problem...was his Dad.

Harry had major issues with his Dad and was damaged over losing his mother. Peter didn’t know just how deep those scars went but he could tell there were problems even early into their relationship.

 Now Harry’s issues alone should realistically have made Peter think twice about confiding in him.

But the fact that his Dad was also one of his villains, the one villain who’d know who he was if not for a case of inconsistent amnesia?

It was a non-starter.

If Peter told Harry, Harry (frequently vulnerable and ever keen to please his father) would be extremely likely to let something slip to Norman. Or worse simply confide in Norman.

If Norman rediscovered his identity it vastly increased the possibility of him regaining his memories of being the Green Goblin and then game over.

In fact given Norman’s sometimes ruthless businessman life (even before he go his powers) along with his connections to J. Jonah Jameson and another senior gentleman we will be discussing below, Norman learning the truth was a huge risk even if he didn’t remember he was the Goblin.

Not to mention to ask Harry to keep this a secret from his own father whom he valued so highly would’ve been a humongous ask of Peter’s. Harry may simply have refused to do it, more than likely believing his father could also be trusted.

Gwen Stacy: Perhaps the most obvious candidate was Peter’s girlfriend.

Gwen as a confidant was a non-starter early in their relationship when she was a bully. And the same goes for later on when she blames Spidey for her Dad’s death. She was so hung up on it from Peter’s POV convincing her otherwise wasn’t really an option (this was confirmed by Gwen’s clone’s reaction to learning his secret in Spec Annual #8); also Peter’s decision made particularly more sense in light of an issue discussed below.

But later on when they had grown closer and were making no secret of how much they loved one another?

Shouldn’t Peter have told her?

Shouldn’t he have been fair to her in letting her in on the big secret?

Well actually...he did....and she took it terribly!

In ASM #87 a sickly and dazed Peter revealed his identity to Gwen, MJ, Harry and Captain Stacy.

Gwen broke down in tears, arguably becoming borderline hysterical. She didn’t want Peter’s news to be true.

Her dialogue and reaction pretty much indicate when confronted with the truth her instinct was to believe the worst of Peter.

To believe not that the stories of how horrible Spider-Man was were in fact lies because she knew Peter, but rather her loving boyfriend was in fact a pretense in truth being the menace Spider-Man.

Now this issue alone would have both confirmed Peter’s worst fears of compromising his identity on simply a social level (he would be rejected) and also persuaded him that it’s best NOT to confide in any of the people in that room, all of whom were his closest friends.

But was he being unreasonable in lying to Gwen even before this issue?

Not really no.

Gwen’s character had come to show itself as a woman who broke down in tears very easily, someone who needed her Daddy’s shoulder to support her, someone who couldn’t look after herself all that well and just...not all that strong of a person.

Asking someone like that to shoulder the huge burden of a life or death secret, over someone they are in love with no less, is practically cruel.

From Peter’s POV, Gwen wasn’t made of strong enough stuff to shoulder that burden; arguably the same went for Harry.

Even if she just couldn’t handle the stress of being Spider-Man’s girlfriend and they broke up and she left NYC, she’d still wander through life having to keep in a secret that could get Peter, Aunt May, her, and her friends murdered.

A horrible fate for the type of person Gwen seemed to be, but more importantly from Peter’s POV...she didn’t even seem that capable of handling it. Nevermind she’d suffer if she kept the secret, she simply didn’t come across as though she’d ever be able to.

This was the woman after all who, if memory serves, was concerned over Peter merely taking pictures of Spider-Man. How was she going to cope over him being Spider-Man?

Well there was one way she could cope. The same way she coped with alot of things.

Turning to her father for support.

And that...was yet another major reason NOT to tell her!

Captain Stacy: We know now George Stacy knew Peter was Spider-Man and protected that secret.

But Peter didn’t. 

Captain Stacy seemed like a nice, honorable man though. An upstanding citizen through and through. And he liked Peter a lot.

So, why shouldn’t Peter confide in him?

...Because he had major police connections.

Spider-Man’s relationship with the police was testy at best. They’d been after him more than once.

Peter liked George Stacy but he had no reason at all to believe George would be a good secret keeper, especially when the secret he was keeping was in essence being an accomplice to vigilantism. Peter couldn’t be 100% sure that George wouldn’t value the law over Peter’s own brand of justice. Or that he wouldn’t trust the authorities to keep him, Gwen, Peter and Peter’s friends and family safe, which would involve even more people knowing. Possibly even Peter going public.

On top of all this, telling George would mean either telling Gwen or else asking George to lie to his own daughter which wasn’t going to happen. In fact Peter asking GWEN to lie to her own father wasn’t going to happen either. Gwen and her Dad were simply too close, with Gwen arguably caring more for her father than for Peter. Asking either of them to choose between Peter and their closest family would be cruel and just a non-starter.

So with the Stacys, Peter’s dilemma wasn’t that he’d have to trust one of them, but both. One who seemed like he could keep a secret but had close connections to people who could ruin his life, the other someone who didn’t seem like she could keep a secret at all.

Remember what I said, the more people who know the more likely it is for a secret to get out.

Mathematically either Stacy was a bad bet.

It didn’t help that George, Jameson and Norman all knew one other and that George more specifically had connections to someone else...

Joe Robertson: Robbie is another guy we know with hindsight was totally trustworthy, but at the time, he just didn’t seem that way.

He seemed like a nice guy of course, but how well did Peter actually know him?

How close was he to him?

A lot LESS close than Robbie seemed to be with Jameson.

Jameson, he of the Spider-Man smear campaign infamy. He of the Spider Slayers and Scorpion creation business.

Robbie wasn’t just close to Jameson on a social level, he literally worked in the same building with him, interacting with him regularly.

And, similar to George, Robbie seemed a man of integrity to the point where him lying to the public about who Peter was would be a questionable bet to place on him.

Compounding everything we’ve looked at is two key factors.

The first is that Peter grew up lonely and bullied. He didn’t have any peers to really trust and so when he got them, trusting them with his most valuable secret, the thing that could destroy him, Aunt May, them, everything in his life, would likely have been something he’d have found hard to do.We might also argue that in finding friendship and a social group for the first time in his life Peter might’ve been inclined to do what he could to not push them away, which he (not unreasonably) believed revealing his identity would do.

The second more important point is...he hadn’t known any of these people for that long.

For sure, you can forge a deep connection with someone in a short space of time for various reasons.

But given how Peter wasn’t spending most of his time with these people, and what time he was was hardly intimate quality time in most cases...would he have a truly ‘deep’ connection with any of these people?

No...they are just people he’s known for less than 2 years, probably around 18 months tops. He wasn’t even friendly with all of them for all that time either.

So all in all...Peter wasn’t nice in deceiving his friends.

But...it was also an entirely reasonable course of action to take.

[illegiblewords]

I posted about this in the past, but 1) can’t find it 2) got new followers since, so going to try again in case there’s interest.

Since the FFXIV month of writing prompts has wrapped up, I figure now might not be a bad time to let writers know about the kink meme.

For folks who don’t know--despite its name, kink memes are not necessarily raunchy. The basic premise is, on the kink meme you can anonymously (or not) request a story within a fandom. Can be a romance, can be gen, can be erotic, whatever. If there’s something you want to read but don’t feel like writing yourself, you’re basically putting that idea (or prompt) up for adoption. Writers who watch the kink meme pick up the concepts that spark their interest. The prompt giver gets a free story that they wanted to see. The prompt’s writer (or filler) gets a high likelihood of making someone happy and knowing their work stands a solid chance of getting seen.

The biggest rule for the kink meme is no shaming. On the one hand this is because raunchy stuff is allowed. On the other it’s because the nature of the beast is, by necessity, for people to feel comfortable asking for and providing stories. For that reason there needs to be a no-harassment policy in place.

Even if a prompt makes you uncomfortable (heaven knows there have been times stuff seemed icky to me), when it comes to kink meme you just gotta scroll past it. Make a prompt that you prefer instead!

The format for kink memes (in many fandoms) goes sort of like this:

FOR PAIRINGS

TITLE LINE: Character A/Character B, Roughly 1-4 Words On Premise, Content Warnings (If Applicable), State if Alternate Universe/AU

PROMPT: Description of what you want to see. Can be elaborate or simple, long or short, really whatever. Just be clear and keep in mind you’re trying to appeal on some level to writers.

FOR GEN/NON-ROMANTIC

TITLE LINE: Character A + Character B (or just Character A if applicable), Roughly 1-4 Words On Premise, Content Warnings (If Applicable), State if Alternate Universe/AU

PROMPT: Description of what you want to see. Can be elaborate or simple, long or short, really whatever. Just be clear and keep in mind you’re trying to appeal on some level to writers.

Some examples so people can see how formats work:

WoD/G'raha Tia, Embarrassing Jokes

Saying the Crystal Exarch’s real name is a good way to get him weepy, but lewd comments from the Warrior of Darkness about his “Crystal Tower” gets a similarly dramatic (if different) reaction.

F!WoL/Emet-Selch, Post-Canon Happy Ending

Without going against what happened in the game as much as possible, I just want to see a story where Emet-Selch survives and romance with the Warrior of Light happens. Female is preferred and I’d like her to be Midlander if possible, but if the writer has a different idea in mind that’s okay! I’d just like a happy ending. I don’t mind if there’s angst, comedy, fluff, horror, or sex. Anything would be great!

Yotsuyuu/Yugiri, Witch and Spy

Alternate canon, Yugiri infiltrates Yotsuyuu’s inner circle as a spy and feeds information to her allies so they can overthrow the Garlean occupation. However, while fulfilling her mission Yugiri catches sight of a softer side to the Witch of Doma. Despite everything, the maiden from Sui-no-Sato finds herself entering a romance with the tyrant.

No noncon or dubcon. (Noncon = Non-consent/Rape, Dubcon = Dubious consent)

Can end happily or tragically but court intrigue would be great!

Gen or Emet-Selch/Reincarnated!WoL, Ascians win

The Warrior becomes a Lightwarden. The First falls and is rejoined to the Source. In the end, Elidibus and Emet-Selch are able to complete the Rejoining and perform the exchange needed to get their brethren back. The Terminus Event doesn’t resume and the Ancients who gave themselves to Zodiark are not corrupted or otherwise worse for the wear. It’s the best-case scenario for the Ascians.

Except Lahabrea is dead while Elidibus and Emet-Selch have been so wrecked by solitude, hardship, and the horrors they themselves committed that they can no longer relate to the world they’ve returned to. They are celebrated as heroes by a populace with no idea what it cost or how long it took.

Maybe the Warrior is reincarnated and maybe not, but if they are I actually think things become more interesting if 1) they remember pieces of their past lives 2) the Ascians opt against vilifying the Warrior, or even saying what they did. There’s no point. It’s over. The world is whole again. The sacrifice has been made.

Tataru/Wedge, High School Sweethearts, Cannibalism, Modern AU/Darkfic

Tataru is the most popular girl at Eorzea High, and shy Wedge has been working up the courage to ask her out with encouragement from his friend Biggs. He doesn’t care that the other students seem to have a deep and abiding fear of her, his lalafell heart belongs to her and no other. However, things take a turn for the dark when it comes out that the reason Tataru is single to begin with is because she’s enjoyed all her past lovers with some fava beans and a glass of chianti if you know what I mean.

Bonus Points if Wedge, upon realizing Tataru’s taste for human flesh, offers to be the Mrs. Lovett to her Sweeney Todd and helps supply her with deliciously seasoned corpses instead.

Extra Bonus Points if Nero knows and is desperately trying to tell people but no one believes him.

...

But yeah haha, it’s pretty fast and loose.

Other common tendencies in kink memes include stuff like if you see a prompt you like but it wasn’t yours and you don’t want to write it yourself, it’s good to reply to the prompt with “Seconded”, “Thirded”/“Also Seconded”, etc. because that lets writers know if something is in-demand and could get a bigger audience.

The last really important thing, when a writer begins to fill usually at least one version will be shown in replies to the initial prompt. It’s okay to link to Ao3 or somewhere else at the end if that version is more polished, but you want the prompters to see what you did!

If anyone is interested but has questions feel free to let me know. ^^

[strange-destinations]

Dear Yuletide Writer 2019

(As usual, please ignore this if you don’t know what this is about!)

Hello, and thank you so much for writing something for me!! I adore seeing what people come up with for Yuletide and I am super excited for what you end up producing. I want this to be a good and enjoyable experience for you as a writer, so don’t try to second-guess yourself too much - just have fun making whatever it is!

Squicks/DNWS - no sex, please! (And it also follows that I’d rather like to avoid any noncon, kinky stuff even if it’s nonsexual, any other sort of sexual content, etc - that’s just not my sort of thing, really.) Romance is all right, if that’s the way that you want to take things, but I much prefer close friendships and family dynamics. However!! I am pretty much completely fine with body horror/violence, hurt/comfort, etc. 

I love good dialogue, character interaction, twist endings, and imaginative plots - and worldbuilding! Happy endings are preferred but not necessary if it just isn’t working for you.

In general - if you’re thinking about making something gay/trans/queer/ace in any way, you should probably absolutely go for it, because I’m wild for that sort of thing.

AUs are… fine and good, as far as I can think of! (Obv no A/B/O or sex-related stuff please, but) canon divergence, fantasy, high school, etc seem all good to me! Especially if there’s a whole lot of clever nods to original canon in there. 

In addition, I'm always welcome to receiving stuff in interesting and unusual mediums/styles. This includes stuff like Interactive Fiction (additional info here) and multimedia stuff.

Anyway, fandom time. Let's do this, y'all!

->

Fandom: Ruby Redfort series - Lauren Child

Available:  I managed to acquire a copy of the full series online via my local library - and the physical copies were at my local library too. I don’t have a link to them, I’m afraid.

Tvtropes page: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/RubyRedfort

Characters: *** Any from *** Ruby Redfort, Hitch, Blacker, Clancy Crew 

About the fandom: I just love it a lot.  I dragged its fandom out of the depths of Tumblr singlehandedly a few years ago and have been doggedly creating content for it ever since. There's just something really compelling about 'bright young kid gets accidentally adopted by spy agency' (yes i know that's not EXACLY what happens but I can dream, right?)

Prompts/suggestions:

Like I said above, I really like the idea of Ruby being essentially adopted by the whole Spectrum team.

I’d love to see some casefic! Blacker and Ruby working together to solve a puzzle or problem - either serious or mundane - or Hitch and Ruby on a stakeout of some sort. Or both!

Some general stuff I like - heists, murder mysteries, rescue missions, characters playing games (e.g. Travelling Lemon, word games, throwing increasingly ridiculous hypotheticals at each other) because they're bored or similar,

Spectrum office shenanigans - stuff that happens between books, when Ruby and everybody else aren’t in mortal danger and that LB will most likely glare disapprovingly at.

On the angstier side of things, if you want to stick Ruby in even more mortal danger than usual I am ALL RIGHT WITH THAT. Rescue missions hell yeah.

AUs??? AUs!!! Modern!AU with Ruby doing extreme sports vlogs and occasionally failing to hide the fact that she's part of a secret spy agency. Is Blacker a hacker? Or a fantasy/medieval AU? Or Ruby Redfort, in space!

I feel like I’ll be delighted with whatever you create, tbh. I can’t think of many ways you could go wrong with it.

->

Fandom: Bernice Summerfield (Big Finish Audio)

Available:  Via the Big Finish website, and all of the boxsets from Epoch to New Frontiers are available for free on Spotify! Just look up Bernice Summerfield there.

Tvtropes page: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Franchise/BerniceSummerfield

Characters: *** Any from *** Bernice Summerfield, Third Doctor (Warner)

About the fandom: It’s like if Indiana Jones was shorter, actually did his job, and was a kickass woman who was also the Doctor’s companion at one point! Several points. And also she has a considerably larger family than Indiana Jones. Her spinoff kind of transcends a lot of forms of media - she’s in comics, print, animations, audio dramas, and one really hilariously terrible sort-of-fanfilm made by Lisa Bowerman and Sylvester McCoy when they were on some kind of cruise together. And it more or less transcends genre too. There’s been musical episodes right alongside the episode where someone very dear to her manipulates someone else very dear to her into killing (you guessed it) someone who is also very dear to her. It’s a wild ride. Anyway.

Prompts/suggestions:

The Warner!Doctor and Benny era of this series particularly delights me, because Benny and the Doctor just have such a lovely dynamic. There's a bit in the writer's guide for this era that mentions that the Warner!Doctor 'seems to be a grouch' but is actually 'a playful spirit who loves to have fun', and... I just love that? And there is literally no fic with them! Which is an absolute travesty.

I particularly like: heists, murder mysteries, rescue missions, adventures, playing around with genre and style.

It's Doctor Who/Bernice Summerfield!! Which means there's an infinite wealth of planets and times and worlds to explore, if you choose to set it in the regular universe. If, on the other hand, you choose to place it in the Unbound universe, slowly collapsing in on itself, there's probably a lot you can do with this too

The found family dynamic between them!! It's clear that, despite all the snarking and sniping, they really do adore each other quite a bit. If you'd lean into that, I'd be forever grateful.

Apologies for no real specific suggestions - mostly, I just would really like to see these two having fun together and being buds. But also? The angst is good too. Make me laugh/smile or make me hurt, I don't care which.

 ->

Fandom: Beanworld - Larry Marder

Available:  ...I have literally no idea where you can pick this up. I first read it at my local library. I think you can get copies at various book retailers?

Tvtropes page: Non-existent. I should rectify that.

Characters: *** Any from *** Professor Garbanzo, Mr Spook, Beanish, Heyoka (but honestly please throw in everybody in there. I love them all so much)

About the fandom: It's a weird, brilliant, complete unique experience of a comic book set in a world where the rules are very different to ours!

Prompts/suggestions:

I know that pretty much the entire point of Beanworld is that the characters are not human in the least, But I can't help but wonder what a human AU would be like!! Beanish as a struggling art student, the Hoi'Polloi as the local street gang with an unfortunate gambling habit, Heyoka as the weird chaotic neutral genderqueer acrobat who babysits occasionally and is always standing on their head. Or any other direction you want to take it in!! I adore seeing familiar characters in settings that they couldn't possibly find themselves in, in canon.

Bean shenanigans!! What sort of things do they get up to on their Goof-Off Days that we don't see on-screen?

Explore some of the friendships/relationships between the characters! I love some of those good good Bean interactions. For example (but not at all limited to):

Professor Garbanzo and Mr Spook - the ultimate BroTP. I particularly love how well they get along even when you wouldn’t expect them too - how Mr Spook isn’t really a scientific sort of guy but is really encouraging and helpful to her endeavors. It’s good and soft.

Mr Spook and the Chow Sol’jers! A dedicated fighting team that work together and protect each other every day. I’m now wondering what the Chow Sol’jer in-jokes are. They’ve gotta have some, right?

Beanish and Dreamishness - the greatest love story ever told! (If you do end up including this relationship in particular, I’d prefer it if it wasn’t the focus.) Additionally, I’d really love it if you could play around with the idea of love in the Big•Big•Picture being different to how we see it/perceive it in our world! I know it’s kind of vague, and it’s definitely not necessary, but I figured I might as well put it out there.

Heyoka and... everyone. Literally everyone. I love how she interacts with the Beans - how they’re kind of confused as to how she works, but accept her as one of them anyway - and how she interacts with people outside of the Beanworld. The sequence when she’s falling upwards and through the Inspiration Constellation, and how the Constellation is so pleasantly amused by and encouraging of her - it’s really nice. And her as the teacher to the Pod’ll’pool babies!! She’s such a cool character.

Other AUs or canon divergences! Can't think of anything specific off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's some stuff out there.

Literally anything that takes stuff from canon and extends upon it! Especially if you’re playing into the amazingly bizarre and extensive world of the Big•Big•Picture. Because the rules there are definitely not at all the same as they are for our world, and that delights me to no end. I have so many questions about it that I’m nearly certain aren’t going to be answered anytime soon. Like, where does the Thin Lake/Four Realities/Hoi-Polloi zone end?? There’s gotta be an end to it somewhere. Are there other islands like the Beanworld? 

->

Fandom: Rainbow Magic series - Daisy Meadows

Available: on your younger sister's bookshelf or at pretty much any library, bookstore or garage sale you'd care to visit.

Tvtropes page: 

Characters: *** Any from *** Rachel Walker, Kirsty Tate, Titania, Oberon (but feel free to throw in any of the million-plus other fairies that exist at your discretion)

About the fandom: Oh, jeez. What to say about this? It's such a bizarre interest of mine. The series has suffered from intense seasonal rot, with literally every book following the same formula. And there are hundreds of books. But it's such a large part of my childhood that it's hard to not feel some sort of affection for it. Plus, there's so many interesting things to explore!

Prompts/suggestions:

Feel free to throw some Kirsty/Rachel shipping in there, because we all know those two were lesbian as all hell. I'd prefer it not to be the focus, though!

Any exploration of the fact that the girls have been doing this for far longer than is strictly reasonable with no complaints, questions, or problems. They've been through like ten Christmas specials and don't appear to have aged a day since the beginning of the series. What's up with that, huh?

To that end - there's plenty of myths and legends about the rules that fae traditionally have. What about applying some of these to the RM fairies? Are Titania and Oberon the leaders of the Seelie Court, with Jack Frost as the Unseelie leader? Do they do the whole Changeling thing? Are Kirsty and Rachel Changelings?

(And bear with me for a second while I point you at a specific line from the very first book, because I think it's very good inspiration for the whole 'giving a fairy your name' thing:)

Kirsty wanted to ask the fairy so many things. But she didn't know where to start.

"Tell me your names, quickly," said the fairy. She fluttered up into the air again. "There's so much to be done, and we must get started right away."

Rachel wondered what the fairy meant. "I'm Rachel," she said.

"And I'm Kirsty," said Kirsty. "But who are you?"

"I'm the Red Rainbow Fairy - but you can call me Ruby," the fairy replied.

Very suspicious.

A Discord server I'm on has been throwing around the idea of the fairies (yes. All of them.) ending up as humans in the human world abruptly, and having to adjust to living life without magic - and dealing with the fact that somehow, their magical domains are functioning perfectly without them. Which is a very compelling idea. How do Rachel and Kirsty deal with their now-possibly-permanent, no-longer-magical neighbours? How are Titania and Oberon coping, now that they no longer have to rule a whole kingdom? What sort of the things do the fairies get up to? Where do they stay?

Aged-up Kirsty and Rachel get called upon to deal with new adult problems that are blooming in the fairy world. (Tiara The Tax Evasion Fairy, anyone?)

...or anything else.

->

Again, thank you for writing for me, and I hope you get something awesome in return from your own writer! Good luck!

[dukeofriven]

[Note: this post originally appeared in this thread. Owning to Tumblr’s inability to update reblogs with edits because it is a hellsite programmed by a secretive cell of former Stasi operatives to avenge the fall of East Germany, it has thus been re-edited and reformatted here for your reading pleasure.] JK Rowling’s wizards are the most useless, lazy, incapable dumbfucks in the history of fiction. The average Muggle? You take away their technology and they would be able to complete the basic tasks of feeding and clothing themselves without shitting on the floor. If a wizard ever lost their magic in Harry Potter, though, they would die. They’d be dead in three days. They’re garbage and I hate that I’ve come to hate Harry Potter - a series I once loved - because an author inexplicably hailed for her world-building is daily revealed to be appallingly bad at it. I realize this is a really dumb thing to be this angry about but I’ve been told for years what a great world-builder J.K. Rowling is, and that was not even true when the books were coming out. The Time Turner ruined all of Harry Potter forever, not because it offers easy time travel you can hold in your hand (although it does), not because you ask ‘why don’t they just use the time turner’ with every subsequent scenario forever (although you do), but because it was an enormous, flashing red light warning everyone that the series was going to attempt to make the transition from Fairy Tale Logic to Serious Fiction logic and fail. Badly. Really, really badly. I still think Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone is an almost perfect book: a distillation of decades of boarding school genre fiction combined with magic, friendship, and wonder. It is a book that owes as much to Enid Blyton and L.M. Boston as it does to C.S. Lewis or T.H. White and other authors with two first initials. Its sense of place is magisterial, from the frumpy, soul-crushing suburban sadness of Privet Drive to the ephemeral curio-shop wonderland of Diagon Alley to Hogwarts itself, a bastion of astonishment, homeliness, and delight. What it isn’t is the sort of framework on which you can support the horror that is the torture and murder of Charity Burbage in front of her colleague Severus Snape, who could not rescue her because he could not break his deep cover as a spy against Wizard Hitler 2. Long-running series can experience changes of tone and complexity. This is neither something laudable nor worth reviling; it’s a neutral phenomenon. Sometimes series do it well: Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld are both series that by-and-large end with books focused on far more complex issues than their earlier entries. TV series do this too: contrast the early episodes of Steven Universe or Adventure Time with episodes from later seasons. With Adventure Time, for example, trying jumping from the pilot to Remember You and see how hard you get tonal whiplash) Lois McMaster Bujold sublime space opera The Vorkosigan Saga doesn’t just change tones but also genre: space adventure, murder mystery, political thriller, goofy regency romance, comedy of errors, heist movie, schizoid identity crisis - on and on. The latest entry in the series has almost no plot to speak of, but is instead a musing on age, gender roles, grieving the loss of a lover, and the hope of new life. Some series, however, manage the transition poorly, largely because the initial tone cannot be harmonized with the later tone (Mass Effect jumps immediately to mind). But Harry Potter has more than just a problem of its tone getting darker: its trying to have darker events fit in the same world in which people can walk around with names like ‘Mundungus,’ the Hogwarts school song can be a nonsense poem, and the Philosopher’s Stone was defended with a series of video game puzzles. In a world in which the villain openly tortures somebody to death, the Philosopher’s Stone shouldn’t have any whimisical bullshit about its magical defences: it should have trip mines in the floor and an enchanted statue with a gun, because Voldermort isn’t a guy you confound with drinking potions and flying keys. You should just kill him. The charming fairy world of wonder of HP & The Philosopher’s Stone has room for a love potion. The later books, in which it is revealed that Voldemort was essentially born from rape, is not place where Ron Weasley can hand-out a book to Harry called Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches without seeming like a predator in the making. The cradle that is The Philosopher’s Stone cannot hold a beastly baby like Deathly Hallows any more than Grindlewald pontificating about the superiority of wizards can sit comfortably in a universe in which wizards took until the 18th century to accept the outhouse! Not that fascist ravings are inherently logical; but even non-fascists in Harry Potter never act like wizards are anything other than 100% better than muggles at all times. They can’t, because if the series were ever to do that it would have to acknowledge that the two worlds are different: neither better, just different. Instead - well, as Ron once bitched, magic makes coffee perfect every time, so it’s not clear how muggles stand being alive and don’t just roll-over and die from the hellacious half-life that is living with imperfect coffee. This has nothing to do with irony, a suggestion that ‘oh Grindewald talks a big game about wizardly superiority but wizards didn’t use toilets and cal themselves goofy names like Flumpus MacFludgeon: Rowling is using dramatic ironic to lampshade how wizard supremacy lacks self-awareness. No: this is about a world that is silly being asked to host a genocidal dictator and his crimes. It’s like those tedious ‘grimdark’ AUs that always show up in bad fanfiction by authors attempting to be serious: what if the Sesame Street gang had to deal with ICE, what if Po started haemoraging while hanging-out with Laa-Laa, what if Peppa Pig learned that she was adopted and her real parents were brutally murdered as part of gang war because they were heroin dealers and so on. (The best skewering of this edgelord comedy is still probably either Andrew Hussie’s Muppet Babies/Saw comic or any encounters the Shortpacked staff ever had with the Transformers: Buckets of Blood guy.) In Harry Potter, Rowling built a wonderful little fantasy world that ran happily on the logic of fairy tales and fairy stories, and then decided she was never going to be taken seriously as an author unless she introduced Hitler to the equation. And it never works for her. It’s not like it couldn’t have worked. The Lord of the Rings is famously a very different book from The Hobbit. It did, in fact, introduce Hitler into a little fantasy world but Tolkien made it work by abandoning huge portions of the Hobbit’s tone, style, and structure: he wrote a completely different book.  Frodo isn’t scarfing-down Bertie Bott’s Every Flavoured Beans on the slopes of  Mount Doom. The moment, say, Cedric Diggory lay dead in Harry’s arms, we needed to never meet Mundungus Fletcher ever again, or Weasley’s Gooftacular Prank Nonsense, or Ron getting Harry a book about love spells. All the very least that needed to go away, at least until the very end, because Rowling is not an author with the skill to keep the silly and the sublime on the same page. That’s fine in and of itself: all artistic people have strengths and weakness, nobody is skilled at every element of creation. J.M. Barrie was very good at writing a book about an eternal child, but a bit crap at writing a biography about his mother. Arthur Sullivan spent his life quietly seething no one wanted to listen to Ivanhoe instead of The Mikado. There’s a reason Jerry Lewis never released The Day the Clown Cried.  Virginia Wolfe is a great writer, but that doesn’t mean she would have written a great run on She-Hulk. [Although now that I’ve said it I can’t think of anything I want to read more.] There’s a great bit in the Lord of Rings after the Shire has been scoured of Saruman where the Hobbits essentially open-up their larders and allow people to have fun again; there’s also a nice bit slightly earlier where Great King Aragorn puts on his old Strider clothes just so he can be his D&D character again: when series change tone, unless you’re really good at walking on a knife’s edge, the quieter, gentler, lighter world isn’t gone forever, but it does have to go away for a while: which means its time to tamp-down on the people with silly names and personalities - like Slughorn, who slips into book six like the second-coming of the vain and silly Lockhart, even though that’s the book where Dumbledore dies.

Rowling keeps trying to makes her old tone fit with her new world without having to pull a Tolkien and actually write differently, which produces moment after moment of tonal whiplash in which the latest Potter-related movie literally involves referencing the holocaust but she also drops some fun trivia about wizards shitting on the floor like animals. (You could describe the entirety of the first Fantastic Beasts film as Tonal Whiplash: The Motion Picture. I’d say that’s an essay for another day but I do not want to have to watch that movie again.)

It needs to be said that a primary reason these tone shifts ‘don’t work’ for Harry Potter is that the logic of a fairy tale is different than the logic of a mundane story. The logic of a fairy tale tends to be self contained: it doesn’t have a smart ass running around asking questions like ‘why’ because there is no why; a thing is the way it is because it is the way it is. Fairies steal babies on the third Sunday of every month, and nobody in the story asks ‘well what about in countries that use different calendars, and what about the shift from Julian to the Gregorian calendar that skipped eleven days?’ because such a pedantic question has no substance in a fairy-tale world. The Clever Child might question what the fairies need with babies, but she’s not about to break-down the week-to-week investment metrics on the Fairyland Infant Exchange. It’s not that one cannot critique or bring critical thinking to fairy stories; it’s that in a fairy story you don’t ask how the sewer system works because it’s not pertinent to what the story is trying to convey. It’s being the guy at the book club who is mad nobody wants to discuss his theories on the music of Rush: its not that the theories are bad, it’s that in this time and place they are of limited relevance. Harry Potter, however, does not belong to to the world of fairy stories, but to the legacy of Tolkienesque fantasy - the world of

  In The Hobbit nobody would ever ask if Hobbiton had sewers - it’s not important, and if you ask those kind of questions expecting there to be a serious answer of grave import you’re being a twit. Lord of the Rings, though? Not only is it a valid question, but Tolkien probably wrote a paper explaining the etymology of the Westron word for ‘sewer’ and how sewers were first invented by Shítlívær the Noldor as a way of helping the Blessed Isles cope with all the crap that tumbled out of Fëanor’s mouth.

The world of The Hobbit is one you could enter and expect to quickly find yourself on an adventure. The world of The Lord of The Rings is one you could enter, walk-about, and study without anyone ever exepecting you to solve some sort of regionally-disturbing social problem: in short, it wants you to be invested in the existence of its world in a different way than The Hobbit. Even then, although The Lord of the Rings is more grounded than The Hobbit, it is not so grounded that it doesn’t leave room for mystery, and questions that refute Wittgenstein’s assertion that all questions must be answerable. Tolkien loved to create complex worlds, but there was stuff he knew wasn’t worth elaborating on. It’s really his fans and authorial heirs who developed the somewhat worrying belief that a good worldbuilder has to have an answer to literally every question or else didn’t think their world through. (This has killed more potentially good books than bad cover art ever has.)

The Lord of the Rings leaves room for The Undiscovered Country. Harry Potter wants too… but can’t. Firstly, Rowling obviously understands the need for what we might call poetic mystery - like the gateway in the somewhat unsubtly name Department of Mysteries - but she also wants you to know how wizards pooped three hundred years ago. You get the feeling she knows exactly how and why that gate works, and what it is, but she withheld the knowledge because she likes mystery’s aesthetic more than she ascribes to any idea that an author might have lacunæ in the knowledge of their own work. That is, she would never put something into her work that she didn’t have an answer for - for her there is no undiscovered country that exists beyond the knowledge of even the author; she is an omniscient deity. Not for her is C.S. Lewis’ insistence that for her characters: All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. Rowling knows exactly what happens to every one of them from the moment they were born to the moment the rot in the ground and the day-to-day schedules of their lives in heaven. Secondly - and far more of an issue - is that Harry Potter becomes a world that invites you to pick up each part of its structure and think about it, because the author has - with loving care - built that entire world for you to interact with. A place for everything, and everything its place. Except JK Rowling is a lazy thinker who never, ever considers the consequences of anything she says. Nagini is actually an Asian woman cursed to live as a snake, wizards used to magically disappear their shit from wherever they just stood and shat it out, Hermione Granger can have a time travel device to attended a bunch of classes but Harry can’t grab one off a nearby shelf and go back fifteen minutes and save his godfather, and nor a few years later can the Minister for Magic’s protection detail keep them on hand to go back half an hour and tell their past selves ‘Hey Voldemort is about to walk in here and kill y’all thought you ought to know.’ No author can work-out every aspect of every element in their works - that’s impossible, and why ARGs are solved by the internet hivemind in half a day even though they took a far smaller group of minds months to devise. But Rowling is intellectually lazy - she adds the holocaust to her Magic Fun Land without sparing a single moment to think that idea through. She then gets defensive when confronted by the suggestion that her worldbuilding might have been shallow. Hey your American wizard houses seem a bit racist also America doesn’t really use the house system in its schools - and her response was to lash out and not listen.  Rowling tried to move Potter from a fairy logic world with its own rules into our world with our rules and our history but she doesn’t know our history very well, or even our rules, so she tells us wizards shat on the floor until the 18th century while the rest of us sit around going ‘but humans have never done that as social groups - even in horrible slums and facility-free prison cells humans create a designated place for taking a shit even if it’s just ‘that corner over there.’ We don’t just drop pants and go whenever!” This is because, as a worldbuilder, J.K. Rowling is actually kind of rubbish.

[almaasi]

reaction post typed while watching SPN 14x13 “Lebanon” (300th episode)

in which i compare this episode to pumpkin soup, because I’m craving more Cas

03:30pm

all righty, thing is still downloading, and there’s a 720p version queued up so that’ll be downloaded by the time i’ve watched half. i have snacks, i’m gonna half close my blinds so i can see, but I DON’T HAVE HEADPHONES AGAIN which is the worst. why do headphones break so easily, that’s what i want to know. (just gotta pray there’s a good sound quality i guess. my laptop speakers suck)

...2 minutes left on the download c’moooooon

-

03:35

OKAY DONE!!!!

-

03:36

“dad’s on a hunting trip and he hasn’t been home in a few days”

i don’t know if it’s dean’s little baby voice (HE’S MY AGE CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?? I CAN’T) or the laptop speakers or the video sound quality, but dean sounds like a kid in a 1980s disney cartoon, with that vintage prickle in my ears and i love it

-

03:38

okay look it’s super hot 'cause it’s summer, and my fan is on, and there’s cicadas... i think i gotta shut the window and turn the fan off aND SLOWLY ROAST IN HERE BECAUSE I CAN’T HEAR THIS PROPERLY

i’m 9 seconds into the recap u_u

it’s gonna be one of those days i guess

-

03:41

is that the monkey again?

yeah it’s the monkey again

-

03:45

dead black guy already????????????????????

really?????

-

03:46

are those kids meant to look like the kids from stranger things? because they kind of do. and the movie theatre as well

-

03:47

cas is in this episode, right??

if he isn’t i’m gonna scream

misha had a tv guide cover so maybe

-

03:39

every single one of these kids is cute and i’m offended

“weird sidekick with the trenchcoat” i am further offended, but also smiling

-

03:50

SHE GAY

SHE VERY GAY

-

the plaid though. she’s a dean mirror 100%

edit: i did doubt this for a second but nope, i was completely right

i mean, she drives the car as well

-

03:52

tHE IMPALA JUST SCOOTED OFF THE SCREEN AND I ALMOST CHOKED OH MY GOD that was hilarious

-

03:54

dean doing the puppy eyes is 

a) cute

b) FUCKING TERRIFYING BECAUSE THIS POOR WOMAN’S TRYING TO PROTECT AN UNDERAGE GIRL AND IT SHOULD NOT BE THAT EASY

-

03:57

the hand that popped out of the smoky cigar box

SUPER COOL AND SUPER CREEPY EW

-

03:59

dean: “this is like the best/worst thing that’s ever happened to you. ‘cause you love serial killers but you hate clowns”

ahahhahaha

-

04:02

sam: “are you sure you don’t wanna call mom, or wait for cas”

YES PLEASE DO BOTH OF THOSE THINGS ;A;

-

“michael out of my head”

HAVE YOU NEVER PAID ATTENTION TO ALL THE WISHES THAT GO WRONG??? YOU GOTTA BE MORE SPECIFIC DUDE. TAKING MICHAEL OUT YOUR HEAD JUST TAKES HIM OUT, YOU GOTTA KILL HIM TOO DAMMIT

-

04:05

john: “now you live in a secret bunker with an angel and lucifer’s kid”

he took that surprisingly well

 a little too well

probably part of dean’s wish that he takes it well

-

04:08

OH BOY

the face he made when he saw mary sdjgfd

-

04:09

ahahah dean and sam awkwardly leaving while their parents make out

dean kinda looked like he was gonna stay, lil bean

-

04:11

the fact dean was so adamant that he said he wanted michael out of his head, but then is now defending the fact he wished for his dad back instead

says a lot about what dean says he wants =/= what dean actually wants

-

04:13

john is much sweeter and more understanding than anyone remembers him (at least than i remember him, or could infer from all the stories about him)

i really do think dean brought him back nicer

-

04:15

i love seeing sam have emotions, it’s so refreshing

-

sam kinda looked like he panicked when john touched him aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

-

04:17

there’s a sign for “castle storage” in the background and i think about that sometimes. hill of a forty dogs or something??? i forget, it was so long ago

-

ALSO WHERE’S CAS

also switching to 720p now

never mind switching back, the sound was better on the lower quality video u_u

-

04:22

oh no, nobody knows them

IS CAS NOT GONNA KNOW THEM

OH NO

-

04:23

this universe-sam: *kinda smug* “god bless kale, am i right?”

I CRINGED SO HARD

-

04:25

OH BOY IT’S HAPPENING

(well SOMETHING IS HAPPENING)

-

04:26

zachariah: “c’mon, constantine”

cas: “i don’t understand that reference”

zach: “you wouldn’t”

i kinda missed this cas though. like. i’m not even mad

ONE PROBLEM: HE’S PROBABLY NOT HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE WITH DEAN

-

04:28

life goal of mine: have a sign like that in my house as decor

-

04:29

THE BACKWARDS TIE

-

04:35

okay first off i got so involved watching cas beat dean up (again) and dean being unable to stop him (D: D: D:) (kind of expected dean to croak “i love you” but um no....... that didn’t happen)

and then mary’s egg timer went off 

and it reminded me i’m hungry again so brb

well actually i’m not hungry..... but my body is shutting down because i need fat and magnesium to function which means i need to eat or else i can’t see, but same difference

-

04:43pm

okay i’m back

-

04:45

DEAN FINALLY HEARING HIS DADDY SAY HE’S PROUD OF HIM

-

04:46

john: “i thought you’d get yourself a normal life, a peaceful life, a family”

dean: “i have a family”

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

]]]]]] I REALLY FUCKING WANT JOHN TO MEET CAS [[[[[[[

-

04:48

THERE’S SALAD ON THE PLATES HALLELUJAH

-

04:49

sam: “did you see them, at dinner, the way they looked at each other, they seemed happy”

and then there’s the way max looked at the girl she was crushing on

AND THEN THERE’S THE WAY DEAN LOOKS AT CAS LET’S GET SOME OF THAT IN HERE PLEEEEEASE

-

04:51

it stresses me out when people wash dishes but only rinse using the dirty water not fresh tap water

-

04:53

they’re about to send john back, he’s holding mary’s hand

all the rainbows behind dean’s head

betcha he’s thinkin about cas

-

04:56

john: “i love you both, so much”

dean...................

-

“i love you too”

OH MY HEART

he says it ......he never used to say it to anyone

-

04:59

YEEEEE

BUT ALSO THIS ONLY LASTED 0.5 SECONDS WHY

but also???????

TALL GUY = SAM

PLAID GIRL = DEAN

COAT GIRL = CAS

IS ANYONE ELSE GETTING THIS

WHY DIDN’T THIS SHOT LAST LONGER SO PEOPLE WOULD BE ABLE TO SEE WITHOUT PAUSING

CURSE YOU EDITORS

-

05:02

so....... that end scene where john’s like “i’m on my way back, i’ll see you soon”

was that meant to be in the past, 2003 era? the flip phone would say so, but his visible age kind of confuses matters

i mean i get that it’s hard to make someone look 16 years younger

but still

unsure about that

-

05:04

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm it’s over

i dunno

that was definitely a special and important episode, and i appreciated seeing this side of john, this is gonna make it way easier to write fanfic of him without the story ending up as a trauma survival fic

but

i was kind of underwhelmed

things i rEALLY REALLY WANTED that didn’t happen:

john actually reacting to dean saying they made friends with an angel (and a werewolf, a vampire, demons, etc etc)

john meeting cas

cas being part of that family meal (i get that the point was he was 2003!cas and not there, but still)

jack being in this even a little bit??

and as the story went on and reached the end, what it really lacked, for me, was a comparison where we can then see how john/mary & max/her crush = dean/cas...........and that just didn’t happen

i think it just ended too soon, really

and there was a lot more they could’ve done with the altered timeline, could’ve brought a whooooooooole lot back from past seasons and just made it a smorgasbord of nostalgia

i get that it was focused solely on john, which gave it an emotional core, so there’s not actually a problem there, i loved that

but it felt kind of dull and slow and....... soupy..........?

(i just mean. the emotional feeling in my brain as i think about it. feels like soup. specifically pumpkin soup. warm and spicy and goopy and nutritious but ultimately not very filling)

then again, if the pacing had been sped up, i would’ve complained it was too rushed. so there’s no winning, it was probably fine ?

i think my favourite part was the kids. i loved the kids. i love the lil gay romance going there. i loved the fact it was a destiel/team free will parallel (even if that part of it was OVER SO DAMN QUICKLY MOST PEOPLE MISSED IT). i loved the kid in the hat, he reminded me a lot of the actor thomas brodie-sangster, and also johnathan byers from “stranger things”

also enjoyed sam vs. the serial killer clown, and that whole aspect of hunting that we haven’t seen in a while, felt very nostalgic

also enjoyed 2003!cas, but was both distressed and frustrated by him fighting dean and then NOT GETTING ANY CLOSURE ON THAT WHATSOEVER. the point was to make dean and sam realise they really needed to send john back, so essentially, in some respect, they did choose cas being their friend over john being around, but that part of the overall problem was never mentioned at all, cas wasn’t mentioned at all after the fight

i’m just looking forward to coda fics that start where this episode leaves off, and dean talks to cas, because i am craving that SO FUCKING BADLY i can’t even express. like. it’s becoming maddening. i just. want. them. to have. a conversation

and the black guy dying at the start?? and the other black kid running away from the ghost and never being seen again? and besides the unnamed diner guy offering info on skip day, being the ONLY PEOPLE OF COLOUR IN THE ENTIRE STORY??? NOT COOL, not a fan >:{ (still better than it used to be, but soooooooooo many white people. so many. so. many)

anyway. um

so that wasn’t my favourite episode, but not because it was bad, but because it didn’t live up to expectations. i tried not to have any expectations (i really tried) but there were just... basic things this episode needed that i felt it was lacking (*cough* cas *cough*), and i can’t really shake that feeling

HOWEVER, having seen 2003!cas be the thoughtless drone that he was, i can appreciate just HOW MUCH character development has happened while he’s been around, which.... i suppose, is a sort of nod to his entire existence ???

anyway, 9/10, and a big ol shrug

but yeah. seeing john be kind and understanding was amazing (and completely changes how i’m gonna write him in my fics in the future, since he’s probably gonna be in the fic instead of just mentioned) and having him say he’s proud of dean and he loves him was just a super nice treat c:

sam being emotional is the best, too. sam confronting his feelings 10/10

i just. i want aaaaaall of this. but with cas. i really want that. so goddamn much. ;~;

[madegeeky]

Giftening 2020: Obligatory Vote for These Post (spoiler version)

Want the non-spoilery version? Seriously, though, super spoilery for main plot points for a lot of these. Skip the ones you don’t want to know about.

Ones with * are my nominations, so you know where my biases lie. :P Ones in bold are my top pick for the categories. I did not include things that don’t need the boost (like Utena).

ANIME 

Aggretsuko - A tv show about an unassuming shy red panda woman who works in an office building and deals with the stress of it by going to karaoke and screaming out death metal. The show largely deals with her making friends with two women who she admires and a dude who likes her. The dude who likes her is actually a geniunely interesting storyline because at the end of the first season (which I’ve not seen beyond), he basically admits that he’s built this image of her in his head that isn’t real and he wants to know the real her. (Which, fuck yeah.)

Fushigi Yuugi* - This is a story about two teens who used to be friends fighting over a man which is literally the antithesis of everything Jet is. And yet, Jet watched the whole damn thing. Watch her squirm as she has to deal with that in a liveblog format. You can get a preview of some of that in Doc’s liveblog of it that she did for Jet.

NON-ANIME ANIMATED

Archer* - This is an animated parody of James Bond made for adults. It's offensive as fuck because Archer, the titular character, is a James Bond stand-in and that character can also be offensive as fuck. In fact, one thing to appreciate about this show is that all the characters are shitty, awful people and the show never attempts to excuse their shitty, awful behavior. Plus, it's one of the few shows where half the main characters are women. I am a tiny bit hesitant to rec this for a liveblog due to the offensivness however, as far as I can tell it's not popular on tumblr, and those are generally the ones that cause the most trouble so... 

Daria - The story of a misanthropic teenager, her family, and her best friend. The characters are specifically meant to appear to be tropes before slowly being unveiled as three dimensional people. It's got a dry sense of humor that I think Jet will enjoy. I actually didn't know until years after I watched this that it was a spin-off of Beavis and Butthead (which I hated) so don't let that dissuade you. 

LIVE ACTION

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - I haven't seen past a certain point because it starts going super deep into exploring depression and that is one of my main triggers for a depressive episode, so I cannot speak of later eps. However, this show starts out funny and silly and evolves into a show exploring how toxic the main character actually is and how unhealthy her coping mechanisms are. It's amazing to see a character type whose actions are usually excused or written off as funny instead be specifically called out as being awful and toxic. (It was a Shit Show is still one of the best songs I've ever heard and Mr. Geeky and I sing it to each other whenever shit hits the fan.) 

Hannibal* - If you know of Hannibal, you know the basics premise is that of a man who eats people and is chased by the FBI. The writing in this is some of the best writing I've ever had the pleasure of seeing in a piece of media: it's subtle, smart, and trust its audience to follow along without having their hand held. However, what's really great about the TV show is that it's not afraid to do its own thing. It constantly fucks with your expectations and deconstructs and explores tropes in ways I've never seen before. I haven't seen the ending yet but I highly doubt it's going to end in a place where Silence of the Lambs will happen. The acting is fucking great and even though Anthony Hopkins gives an amazing performance as Hannibal Lector, after seeing Mads Mikkelsen play him there's no going back to Hopkins. In general, if you're looking for something original (which is ironic considering it's based on a book and there are several movies) and smart, I cannot recommend this enough. 

Russian Doll* - (Doc, please skip this one, as in 5 years when you're done with Two Storms, this is one of the things I'm considering nominating should I ever win a liveblog again.) I don't really know how to explain this show because it's so fucking weird and is so focused on character and ideas that the plot is both super simple and extremely complicated. It's a story about a woman who starts to relive the same day over and over again except, instead of the typical thing where it starts over when she falls asleep, it's only until she dies (so sometimes she lasts for hours, other times for a couple days). However, almost immediately there are signs that something else is going on, that something outside of the main character's repeating day, something has gone horribly wrong. (Count the fish.) It's a very thoughtful, character-driven show, more about exploring ideas than plot which I, personally, didn't mind at all. Another one I highly recommend overall with much less blood and gore than Hannibal.

Xena - IT'S FUCKING XENA PEOPLE! Okay, but just in case you don't know what the show is about is through cultural osmosis, Xena is a show about a woman who used to be a truly horrible murderous bitch and her continual attempts to make up for the wrongs she has done. The main relationship in the show is between Xena and her (girl)friend, Gabriel, and although the show can be ridiculously silly (time is made up and history doesn’t matter!), it also explores deep, dark issues. One of the best things this show explores is the idea of redemption and forgiveness and that perhaps nothing Xena does will ever get her those things.

LIVESTREAM

Crank* - Jason Statham plays a man who has been given a poison that slowly cuts off his adrenaline, meaning that eventually he'll die. He has to do increasingly ludicrous things to get his adrenaline pumping overtime to make up for it slowly being cut off. It's one of the most fucking bananas thing you'll ever watch but is just a bunch of fucking fun. (CW: Public sexual assault. I only mentioned because it’s a scene that last for a bit. It's a complicated scene so I won't get into it here but send an ask if you want more details.)

Dale and Tucker vs Evil* - Dale and Tucker, two hillbilly best friends, are going into the woods to fix up their vacation home when they stumble across some college kids. Random circumstances make the college kids think D&T have kidnapped their friend and so they decide they need to attack D&T to get her back. Hijinx ensue. I don't want to say much more because there's a moment that is, to this day, still one of the funniest fucking things I've ever seen, largely because I did not see it coming.

GAMES

Doki Doki Lit Club - This is a game about games. You play a guy in a dating sim. Your first playthrough everything seems normal enough. You join the literature club, meet and talk to girls, and then one of the girls commits suicide. And then game restarts and the girl who committed suicide just... doesn't exist anymore. Your replay the exact same days but it's as though she never existed. Things only get weirder from there. This game does a great job of turning dating sim tropes on their head, as well as exploring games in general. (Content warning for a lot of things. Let me know if you want more details.)

Slime Rancher (stream) - There's really not much to spoil here. You play a woman who is in charge of a ranch full of slimes. There's some messages you'll find, left by the old owner, telling story about their romance. There also some messages between you character and a deliberately gender-ambiguous significant other. And that's about the closest to story you get. Otherwise it's just catching and ranching slimes.

Subnautica* - Fucking fuck I love this game. When this game first starts it appears to be your typical survival game with no real direction other than what you want to explore. But then you find an alien structure. And you realize that your spaceship didn't randomly crash. And you find out that there's no way get off this planet except to explore deeper and deeper and find out what the aliens were doing on this planet. A genuinely beautiful story, told mostly through entries in data pads and voice messages left behind, this ending is one of the most moving ends I've ever experienced and I never ever would have expected to be able to say that about a survival game.

We Happy Few* - In this alternate universe, the Germans invaded Britain during WW2 (although, through exploring the world, you learn that the differences started well before that). When the story starts up, the Germans have left Britain behind and Britain, for unknown reasons, appears to be cut off and/or abandoned by the rest of the world. The majority of the country is constantly hopped up on a drug called Joy, which is specifically used to help them forget something horrible that happened in the past. (I have theories.) The story starts when your character goes off his Joy and gets kicked out of society. There's a general sense of unease about everything and the more you learn the more that unease grows. The art style is great and the world building fascinating.

MISC (there’s nothing spoilery here but it feels weird to not have it)

Interactive Horror Story Livestream - Doc has talked a bit about this in at least one of her Xmas streams and it sounds amazing. Not only is Jet hilarious with horror stuff but knowing Doc’s writing skill, it will be something that we’d never want to miss.

Bean Boozle When Failing a Hard Game* - I am a sadistic bitch, I admit to this, and I love watching people eat Bean Boozle, the jelly bean of horrible flavors. One of my favorite videos content creators has done is playing an incredibly difficult game and then being forced to eat a random one every time they fail.