#i feel like my boyfriend would do this

[cashmoneyyysstuff]

as long as he leads the way . .

katsuki's childhood habits remain the same

katsuki still apologizes to you the same way he used to when you were kids.

he always makes a face whenever he knows he’s gone too far or when he’s done something he knows he shouldn’t have, his eyebrows are furrowed and his little chubby face contorts into a sad little pout. he tries to look tough but he can already feel guilty tears in his eyes so he looks away from you, little hands balled into fists at his sides and his head hangs low so you can’t see his red face through his bangs.

usually, he tries making it up to you by showing you something he thinks you’ll like or something he finds cool, and sometimes he’ll even let you hold his precious all might card, but only when he knows he really messed up. he’ll stiffly pet your head as an apology for pulling at your hair a little too hard earlier and if you ask him to he’ll kiss the pain away from when you scrapped your knee because he accidentally shoved you a little harder than he meant to when he was chasing you around.

but when you’re mad at him because he’s been really mean, in ways he knows his shiny holographic all might card won’t fix, he opts to simply sit next to you. with a little pout on his face and with his cheeks turning red, he’ll shove his head into your shoulder. he holds onto you tightly so he’s sure you won’t be able to escape him or his apology. you squirm around a little bit but he doesn’t let you go. you stop moving around but you still huff at him, calling him a big meanie. all he does in response is shoving his head against your shoulder and he mutters out a little "m’sorry." against it.

he hears you shuffle to look at him and he looks up at you, his eyebrows are still furrowed and his cheeks are so red because he’s really not used to apologizing and he doesn’t like to, but he does for you. and even at the tender age of seven, you really can’t stay mad at him when he looks like that, so you forgive him and you’ve already forgotten what you were even mad about when he grins at you boyishly, already back to his usual self as he drags you off to your next adventure who knows where, but even at the tender age of seven, you knew you’d follow him to the ends of the earth as long as he led the way.

he’s changed so much and not at all at the same time. he hates it whenever you get mad at him and he still does everything and anything to get your attention when you are. and just like before, whenever he hurts you in ways he knows his actions can’t fix, he opts to come up behind you and wrap his arms around your middle loosely, giving you the option to break out of his hold if you wanted to. his hold on you slowly tightens when you make no move to, his head is shoved into the crook of your neck and his chest is pressed flush against your back,“ i’m sorry.” he whispers.

it wouldn’t mean much if it came from anyone else but this is katsuki. you’ve known him for as long as you can remember, you know how he is : he’s unruly, headstrong and so stubborn it drives you crazy sometimes. but he casts all of that—all of him aside for you.

“i’m sorry.” he says again, his voice is low and a little shaky.“ shouldn’t have said all that to you. that wasn’t…cool” he fumbles around for the right words to say and you have to hold back a laugh as he does so, but you can tell he’s trying.“never wanna make ya mad at me..” he finishes quietly. he’s fiddling around with the ends of your shirt waiting for your response. then he hears you shuffle around to peek at him and he looks up at you.

he really hasn’t changed. he’s still got the same little frown, the same little crease between his brows and the same rosy cheeks. sure his features are less rounded, his cheeks are definitely less chubby, he’s gotten taller but he’s still your same katsuki who’s a little rough and a big meanie sometimes, but who also always makes sure to apologize to you when he knows he’s hurt you because that’s the last thing he wants.

you grant him a tiny smile. his eyes light up and he stands a little straighter and after a second he’s on you, pressing kisses all over your cheek, grinning boyishly at you and you still want to follow him to the ends of the world as long as he’s leading the way.

[obsessedwithstarwars]

Question for the DP fandom:

Do you think Danny’s hair turns white when it falls out? It’s technically dead cells anyway but when it naturally falls off his head, do you think it turns white? Because I think it would be hilarious if his hairbrush just has white hair, no black strands whatsoever, and his significant other thought the worst until they know his secret.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

it doesnt need to be said but its genuinely so funny how at-the-hip charles and erik are in krakoa like they really had the green light- the OBLIGATION- to be as obnoxiously close to each other as possible and abused that right to the fullest extent

[bingsucks]

I think it would be really funny if Abed becomes a (mediocre) famous filmmaker and he gets cancelled on twitter for "queerbaiting" and he's like "queerbaiting? this movie is about me and Troy, and we're just friends." then he looks at the callout posts and they're just pointing out behaviors that actually exist in Troy and Abed's friendship that Abed perceived as platonic (but lets be honest here) and being like "see??? that's clearly meant to trick us into thinking they're gay."

anyway that leads to Abed having a queer awakening and makes him even more yearny

[inthewychelm]

ive been thinking about hard of hearing steve, who started losing his hearing after starcourt, the scoops troops are the first to find out because of how attached they are, robin erica and dustin all insist on steve learning to sign but he's insecure about learning a new language so they slowly learn and start teaching him

after vecna, eddie gets adopted to their little group and starts picking up on the signs and learning on his own, still struggles to hold a conversation, esp with the likes of robin or dustin, but he atleast knows simple words and phrases enough to communicate, eddie also gets into the habit of signing ILY to steve before he leaves, except steve rarely studies asl on his own most of what he remembers is from robin/erica/dustin, who never thought to teach him that specific sign, so steve just thinks eddie is just being a metalhead throwing up a 'rock on' gesture, hes still absolutely endeared by eddie doing this but he doesn't realize that eddie saying he loves him everyday, what follows is a ridiculous amount of pining where only steve doesn't know because everyone else know what that sign means, he only finds out because after gossiping with robin(who has tried to tell steve that its reciprocated) about eddie, erica interupts their convo by telling steve that eddie tells him he loves steve everyday (that clown is so obviously in love with you, how are you still pining? you're supposed to be a expert, steve?)

(edit 07/23: this fic is now on ao3)

[theoldkyokodied]

And here it is, my macdennis brainworms compressed into a playlist, for anyone who wants to ingest them <3

[oceanwithouthermoon]

i posted abt this on my tiktok story but i need to rant more so im putting it here 😭😭 the way a lot of mikosai shippers (on tiktok, pinterest, reddit, etc) are is such a big reminder to me of why i hate the strictly romantic soulmates trope with every fiber of my being 😭😭😭 people who interpret soulmates as "that means theyre canonically together" regardless of how the characters actually feel about each other and if they ACTUALLY get together is so fucking gross to me oh my god its so fucking gross i hate forced romance so bad 😭😭 someone cant just say "hey, we're soulmates so you HAVE to date me and its literally weird and impossible for you to like anyone else because i said so!!" and also aiura WOULDNT do that anyway ???? HELLOOO???

you have no idea how many people ive seen call all saiki ships with anyone other than aiura "problematic ships" just because "theyre soulmates"

[serpentface]

What’s the Janeys/Brakul death scenario?

So like upon review I mostly just was going to kill them off for Couya + Faiza + Hibrides’ character development (#FEMINIST WIN!!!!!!!).

The background situation of their death scenario is something that will happen either way:

Throughout the story, the pilgrimage requests tribute from the towns it passes through (mainly food and other supplies). This is a common practice for pilgrimages and the travels of royalty, and Imperial Wardi civilians are used to the concept (just not so much during a famine). Some people give fully willingly (a lot of people believe in the pilgrimage's goals/and or the necessity to keep its high status participants fed), most are at least partly coerced (usually not via direct threats, but the pilgrimage contains a couple hundred soldiers, the Usoma, and Odonii leadership. The threat is implied), some are Fully coerced via threats.

In the latter third of the story things are not going well. There’s been a lot of internal struggles among the soldiers and dissatisfaction with pilgrimage leadership (mostly Stavis), men are starting to defect and a large body are getting outright mutinous. The group has also lost much of their food supplies and things are getting desperate (they've been starting to eat their own pack khait and oxen)

With this going on, the pilgrimage sends three soldiers to exact tribute from a farming village in the province Lobera. They meet a group of men acting as representatives for the village, who flat out refuse to give tribute. Things escalate into an outright fight, the soldiers are better armed but few in number and are killed.

One of the village elders finds out that this happens and panics, knowing that the men who killed three of the Usoma’s soldiers (one of which is her son) have signed their own death sentences, and possibly that of others. She attempts to persuade the families to preemptively flee, and then takes the village's one remaining skinny old plow ox to carry the bodies of the dead soldiers back to where the pilgrimage is camped. She supplicates herself before Stavis Amanti and begs for mercy, saying they don't even have enough food stored to feed themselves, much less to give, and that the men thus considered the killings righteous self defense. She shows that she’s returned the bodies for rites as an act of goodwill, and offers the ox in tribute, the most valuable thing she can provide. She begs that the Usoma accepts this as tribute and spares the men's lives, and that the pilgrimage moves on without taking anything else.

Stavis bids her safe passage away from the camp (without confirming or denying that he's accepted her plea), and the heads of pilgrimage confer on what to do. The killing of the soldiers is a violation punishable by death, but this would be like, a notably bad PR move. Meanwhile a contingent of soldiers (including some major side characters I haven’t introduced) break off and lead a raid on the village to avenge their fallen brothers and loot supplies. Others get drawn into the fighting, and it devolves into a full on massacre.

A couple families had fled at the elder’s suggestion, but most refused to leave their homes. Some of the villagers believed they would be left unharmed if the killers were given up, others had been preparing for a reprisal and armed themselves with everything available. But they have few actual weapons and none are trained combatants. All of the remaining men and adolescent boys get killed, one woman manages to take out a soldier using a shovel but is killed, most of the other women and girls are spared murder but several are assaulted. The village is looted for supplies and kindling for funeral pyres.

Stavis Amanti has no fucking idea what to do. The soldiers defied orders and killed Imperial Wardi civilians, but the current climate amid the pilgrimage would make it EXTREMELY Bad for him if he demanded their punishment (but also potentially very bad if he didn't- not all the soldiers participated in the massacre and many were horrified). Faiza encourages him to exert authority in a measured response by having the ringleader of the mutineers killed but sparing the rest, and offers to publicly back him in hopes of avoiding full on mutiny.

The raid reveals that the villagers had been hiding more grain than they claimed they had (as in like, enough to feed their people on starvation level rations for a few weeks). Stavis takes this as an opportunity to justify not punishing the mutineers (as the villagers DID technically have something to give, and execution IS technically the punishment for refusing the order of tribute (though not execution of the entire community)), but insists that their Galenii bless the village dead and their men build pyres for the civilians as is honorable conduct. (This attempt to make amends is not particularly appreciated by the survivors.)

The pilgrimage holds a funeral for their own dead soldiers. The village ox that was given in tribute is killed and butchered for the funerary feast.

----

In the Bury Your Gays route, Brakul is one of the three that gets killed during the tribute extraction. Janeys loses his fucking mind when his body is brought back, and tries to slit his own throat on the spot. Couya stops him by wrestling him to the ground while Janeys screams threats at her and the old woman in a very pathetic public spectacle. He is deprived of all sharp objects.

While the pilgrimage leaders are conferring, he hovers miserably around Hibrides (who is also not feeling so great about all this). He's suddenly very interested in her pregnancy for the first time ever, asks to feel the baby (which has been just starting to kick). She's like "fuck off", but he strongly implies he's planning to commit suicide asap and she concedes and then is like Okay I Let You Feel The Goddamn Baby Now Leave Me Alone Holy FUCK.

Janeys turns his attention to fucking murdering anyone tangentially involved in this happening. He’s among the initial raid party, plays a major hand in it turning from its ostensible 'find and execute the ones responsible, subdue the rest, steal their food' directive to a full massacre by directing his men to immediately attack the first man he sees. He and his group capture three young men as prisoners and demand that they be slain at the soldier's funerals as is wartime custom (this isn't wartime). Janeys additionally demands that he should get to do it, as the only kin of any of the dead men. Once that's done he immediately cuts his own throat and bleeds out. They wind up getting cremated at the same time so things work out how Janeys wanted it.

At one point I realized that this is kind of just The Iliad?

----

So like obviously whether they die here or not has little impact on THESE events, but a lot of the endgame revolves around Couya Faiza and Hibrides and these deaths would be very significant to THEM in varying capacities. It affects the trajectory of the final stretch of their arcs and adds a lot of layers to the ultimate Couya/Faiza conflict. I also liked their deaths being kind of random and shitty and meaningless because that in of itself is kinda ~thematically resonant~ with the story. (A lot of tension between the lack of intrinsic meaning to events and the profound levels of meaning ascribed to them).

I'm almost definitely not going with this version of events though. Janeys and Brakul don't have much active involvement in the endgame and don't Really need to be alive for it as it stands, but I think the version where every main character (except Faiza she's doomed) survives to see What Has Been Wrought and living to experience the fallout ultimately works better.

[plutonianplaything2]

bye i relate to penelope featherington in an awful way bc i also am the unnoticed hopeless romantic chubby girl and episode four of season three has me crying

[dimsilver]

:)

[camellcat]

I'm in the middle of a btvs s5 rewatch and idk what the fuck is going on but xander is NOT riley's number one fan. in fact he is dogging on riley quite consistently. he is holding a grudge, even. what happened to make him switch so hard that he's calling riley her "one in a life-time" ????

[possamble]

Going back to work after this but

[thearcadeattendant]

Henry Emily time because hot damn the FNAF mood is strong.

[naamahdarling]

Augh

[myokk]

In honor of waking up to see that my two favorite fanfics updated (what are the odds when they update like once every few months🥹🙏) I had to draw my favorite snake🐍

This is How You Lose the Time War - fleabagshair

Blood and Gold - @obsidianpen

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The whole discourse about the privacy/secrecy/support thing has been sitting with me for a few days (I mean other than it always does to a certain degree) thanks to all the excellent discussion happening and I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times before, but I think what we're seeing and what we're going to learn (e.g. from TTPD) is that it wasn't just the support issue, but how it was shown/handled.

We've all gone out of our way to show that introversion =/= lack of support. Someone can be shy, reserved, etc. and still show up for their partner, whether in public or at home. To chalk any of the differences up to the clash between introversion and extroversion is unfair to folks who count themselves among either tbh.

@thisisctrying said something the other day that hit the nail on the head about how if that support had been offered in private, there very well may not have been a Joever to begin with, or at least not at this point in time. (Sorry for loosely paraphrasing, and for namedropping you! Long time listener, first time poster.)

If this were a case where the "shy" partner said, "I am really uncomfortable with the spotlight personally and do not want to court it, but I will support you in your ambitions and offer you whatever you need to make them happen and make the glare bearable," I suspect that would have gone a long way to making Taylor feel seen and comfortable in pursuing her goals in the way that she now has. Again, that might have been more akin to the balance that seemed to have been struck around 2019 from what we can see, but even speaking in a general sense, there are lots of couples out there, celebrity or not, that have similar approaches where there are highly driven people and busy careers involved.

(A famous example being Dolly Parton's marriage. Tbh I know next to nothing about her and Carl, but she's always heralded as an example in this regard, because her husband is famously uncomfortable with the spotlight and hasn't accompanied her to public events in decades, but she's said that she never minded that because that was always work to her, and what was important was that he supported her in pursuing all her career goals and basically ensured she had a place to call home to return to at the end of the day.)

We're kind of in a brave new world with her current relationship because it felt like, at least at the start, we were maybe watching her figure out her boundaries in real time as to what she was comfortable with or not and adjust accordingly. Like so many have said, I fully believe the extreme privacy thing was initially driven by herself and her experiences in 2016, and she needed that quiet time to recover from all of the things and figure out how to exist in the world again.

Stating the obvious, it seemed like eventually privacy was equated with secrecy, turning the relationship and the celebrity into the elephant in the room and something to never be spoken of to the outside world. People are free to choose whatever works best for themselves and their relationships, and for some the separate public lives might work, but the “kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” theme is all over her work and it’s clear that it’s a sore spot for her, because she’s been made to feel shame just for the life she leads so many times in the past.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty obvious something Not Great was happening behind the scenes, which didn’t just amount to “she wanted to be a public celebrity and he wanted to be a private hermit.” (Also, in case anyone forgot, this is a person who also chose a public-facing career who also has to engage in press for it, but I digress.) As her career reached new heights post-folklore, if she had the support at home to do all the things without judgment and with encouragement, and in turn offer the same support to her partner, she may have very well lived just fine with that, not unlike Dolly Parton’s case.

By reading between the lines in all the press since, as well as comments on tour and general ~vibes~ with TTPD teasers, it seems like one of the issues was that that was likely not the case. There was all the stuff that we saw — the reticence to acknowledge each other in the media (particularly on one side), the lack of public support even at events at which they were both in attendance for their respective jobs, the great lengths they went to not to be photographed together at events they attended yet no problem taking pictures with other friends and coworkers, the jobs that separated them, the withdrawing from the public even for work accomplishments, etc. Which could all be manageable if a couple chooses to do so together and are not inherently a sign of trouble in themselves.

But what we’re seeing now I think is a reflection of the things we weren’t seeing then, and it seems to indicate some very deep hurt. (I know, call me Captain Obvious.) And like so many have been saying, it feels likely that that part of that hurt is rooted in that very lack of private support where a person would expect it from their partner. Obviously as a Taylor fan blog I’m going to be more inclined to understand her side of a story, but tbh, it’s also because… this is sooooooo common, and something I’ve experienced in my friend group. (@taylortruther is right when she says most breakups are the same one way or another lol.)

One partner is resentful of the other’s success, or resentful that the other’s priorities begin to evolve as new experiences unlock new goals, or feels the other’s ambitions are not worthy of pursuit, and coupled with perhaps their own struggles in the same domain, it’s easy to see where that can chip away at the other partner’s morale and faith in the relationship. I know I’m just speculating here, but I also don’t think it’s totally unfounded. (Again, because a) I’m picking up what she’s putting down and b) it happens to sooooooo many women even among us dull normals.)

With all the pointed mentions about how much Taylor feels supported in her current relationship and how she in turn loves to offer the same show of support to not only her partner but other loved ones, how she’s stepped out more in the last year to a whole host of events, how she’s mentioned feeling like she locked herself away for years and she’s just proud of her partner and happy she can show up for him even if the chaos around it is unsettling, it paints a picture of what perhaps was happening before last year.

To feel like you’re all alone in carrying the weight of the relationship (or burden of it), of twisting yourself into knots to accommodate the other person’s boundaries (or insecurities) but not feeling reciprocity for your own has to be so painful. (The idea that it may have been even darker and to have a partner not only be unreceptive to your own needs but even perhaps resentful/dismissive/belittling of them is even more painful to think of. I guess we’ll find out when TTPD comes out if that was the case, too.)

At a certain point, that lack of acknowledgement will force your hand to be able to reclaim yourself. And it feels like the further removed Taylor in particular is from it, the more she moves from being sad about the life she felt she gave up by leaving, to angry at the life she felt she was giving up by staying. Especially being in a relationship now where it seems like everything comes much easier, where she can be open about the person she’s with and show up for them, all the stuff that seemed as challenging as climbing Mount Everest in her past is nothing more than a molehill at best in her current life.

TL;DR: I don’t think it’s privacy that inherently spells doom for a celebrity relationship like this; it’s the mutual support and respect that does. If Taylor had felt that in the later years of her previous relationship, I think we could be seeing a different, though not necessarily unfulfilled, person right now in 2024, who’d be happy on tour but whose personal life would look a little different. But it seems like by losing that support she lost parts of herself, and we’ve seen her reclaim that in spades in the last year, and perhaps to degrees she didn’t even realize she could from before all the Bad Stuff started happening in her young adulthood.

I know this was extremely long-winded and unnecessary, especially about total strangers we only know through scraps fed through the media, but I just always bristle at this idea that issues like these boil down to “personality differences,” as though one person wants to live in a city and the other on a remote island, or some shit like that. The whole support (and gender tbh) issue is one that’s just very close to my heart because again, I have seen it play out with so many of my friends in long term relationships and marriages and I just think people in relationships (and women in particular in some circles) deserve better than to feel like they’re being, well, tolerated.