#i have given up on syntax

[glitter-stained]

A confession to make: I favour brown eyed Jason Todd

Wait! Wait!

Before you stone me, hear me out: brown eyes...are pretty. Like, so so so pretty. Do you see the vision?

Bonus: brown eyes // deer in headlights<=> Jason's wide eyes saying "whoops" in the headlights of the batmobile <=> Jason's wide eyes looking at Sheila pointing the gun at him <=> Jason's wide eyes looking at the bomb :cf that lovely shot in the utrh movie where you see his eyes widen and then the warehouse explode, imagine if those had been big brown eyes and instead of just the explosion we had a close up on his face where the firey blaze of the explosion reflected into them? And then parallel to that same expression in the UTH conclusion?

But mostly

MOSTLY

Brown eyes are so fucking pretty dude

[ereh-emanresu-tresni]

.

[sachermorte]

so the thing about english is that people think it's so divorced from other germanic languages based on like. words. I've even heard people try to insist that english is a romance language. because of that whole messy business in 1066 with out-of-wedlock willy and his band of naughty normans. and now a good chunk of the vocabulary is french or whatever and they're prestigious so not using them makes you sound like a rube and this and that and the other

and yes william the conqueror will never be safe from me. I will have my revenge on him. he fucked up a perfectly good germanic language is what he did. this will be me in hell

but the thing is that most words in, say, german do have a one to one english equivalent. not all hope is lost, for those who still dare to see it. it's just that you 1066pilled normancels aren't looking in the right place

dog (en) ≠ der Hund (de) but der Hund (de) -> hound (en)

look with your special eyes. that one was easier. not all of them are this intuitive because of semantic narrowing and broadening and waltzing and hokey-pokeying and whatever else. I'll give you a few more

animal (en) ≠ das Tier (de)

aha! you think. I've got him on the ropes now.

but then

das Tier (de) -> deer (en)

nooooo!! you whine and cry in gay baby jail. the consonants are different!!! listen to me. listen, I say, putting both my hands on your shoulder. /t/and /d/ are the same sound. you just put your voice behind one of them.

nooooooooo!! you wail. deer are animals but not all animals are deer!!! listen to me. LISTEN. they used to be. animals used to be deer. that's just what we called them. it was a long time ago. it was a weird time in all our lives. it's okay.

let's try for a verb this time

to die (en) ≠ sterben (de) but sterben (de) -> to starve

same principle with the consonants, we're just changing a stop (where we completely stop the airflow and then let it through) for a fricative (where we still let some air go through. idk where it's going. maybe to its job or something.)

to starve used to mean generally to die, not just to die of malnourishment. we do that a lot. we take one word for a lot of things and make it mean one thing. or take one word for one thing and make it mean a lot of things. this is common and normal.

"okay but roland," you say, suddenly coming up with an argument. "what about tree? trees are super common. I don't think we'd fuck around too much with that. the german word is baum! what about THAT?"

"when did you learn german?" I ask, but then decide it isn't relevant right at this very moment. but fine.

tree (en) ≠ der Baum (de) but der Baum (de) -> beam (en)

beam??? you ask incredulously. beam???? BEAM?????? you continue with the same tone and cadence of captain holt from brooklyn 99.

yes. beam. like the evil beams from my eye I'm going to hit you with if you don't stop shouting.

but the vowels!!! you howl.

listen. listen to me. the vowels mean nothing. absolutely nothing. they're fluid like water. it got raised in english.

"WHAT DOES RAISED MEAN"

it doesn't matter right now. they were raised better than you, at least. stop shouting. open your eyes and see what god has given you. they're the same word.

"they're NOT the same word. they mean different things!"

we've been over this. they didn't used to. a beam was (and is) a long solid piece of wood. much like the long solid piece of wood I showed your mother last night.

FAQ:

Q: could english be some kind of germanic-romance hybrid?

A: do you become a sexy thing from the black lagoon just because you dressed up as one for halloween? english may have gotten a lot of vocabulary from norman french, but its history and syntax are distinctly germanic. that's what we base these things on.

Q: okay but what does it matter? this doesn't actually affect my day to day life

A: you come into my house? you come into my house, the house of an autistic man living in vienna austria and studying english linguistics and you ask me what does it matter? sit back down. I was going to let you go but now I have powerpoints to show you

Q: you're stupid and wrong and gay and a bad person

A: I know it's you, Willy

[evegwood]

Nosferatu’s Contracts: A Linguistic Deepdive

(This is one half of a blogpost I put on my website! Read the full thing for a full list of sources and even MORE information on the contract from the 1922 film).

So I saw the new Nosferatu film the other day and while I didn't think it was all that fantastic (I loved the first half okay, calm down) the one thing that did stick out to me was the absolutely gorgeous scripts used for the contract that Thomas has to sign. Thank you to this Reddit post for sharing a picture of the entire thing:

The BEAUTIFUL red calligraphy is called Vyaz, a form of decorative Cyrillic calligraphy. In Vyaz script, letters are all joined and interwoven together to create a beautiful, ornamental typographical piece. The Wikipedia page about it is fucking pathetic but it does feature this example of text with a coloured breakdown of the individual words that comprise the piece:

Obviously this itched my language brain like crazy. The best resource I have found since to learn more about Vyaz is this full, free guide written by Viktor Pushkarev. He has also released a 254 page PDF for 25 euros called the Modern Slavic Vyaz Calligraphy Workbook and I think I'm going to have to buy it. His examples look stunning and I would love to learn more about this style of calligraphy. Thank you, Nosferatu.

The Vyaz calligraphy is only one style of writing used in that contract. The other is a completely different style of writing and, surprisingly (or not, maybe?) the best place to look for answers turned out to once again be Reddit. This commenter suggests it's another form of Cyrillic:

Here's some Glagolitic, to compare:

In a different thread, this commenter claims to have cracked it:

This commenter replies with an addition:

So that's cool! In that same thread, this commenter says that the contract looks like a Romanian hrisov, or medieval chancellery charter, and recommends this video explaining how they were written. As you can see from the example below that the commenter shared, these traditional contracts look pretty damn similar to Orlok's contract! So let's talk about them real quick, because it's interesting!

The video is by Adrian Gheorghe, a historian whose speciality is the editing and translation of all documents regarding Vlad the Impaler. He talks about how unlike letters, which would be written in Latin, these charters were written in Slavonic, a liturgical and "literary language, based on Slavic dialects of the Balkans, developed by monks in the 9th century" (X). Viktor Pushkarev suggests a book called Grammar of the Church Slavonic Language if you want to learn more about the grammar and syntax. Slavonic was often written in Glagolitic and hey, we've seen that before!

These charters also had explicit and strict structures that they adhered to. This strict standard served to not only prove the legitimacy of a document, but that "the document was drawn up with all due solemnity" (X). Interestingly, each charter would invoke God in the opening lines or would simply have a cross at the beginning, and according to the translations given above Count Orlok's contract does not seem to include this. I recommend checking out the video in its entirety to hear more about this cool bit of history.

But of course... that's not all that's written on the contract, is it? Thomas signs it, and he signs it in Kurrent script, an old traditional form of German cursive. If you'd like to learn how to write in Kurrent, there's a free guide by Margarete Mücke right here! Here's a screenshot I took of the scene along with a Kurrent alphabet for comparison:

Kurrent has a really interesting history. It evolved from gothic cursive at the beginning of the 16th century, which saw a lot of use in the medieval ages. Compared to the vast variety of gothic cursive writing styles, Kurrent was "beautiful, fast to write and comparatively legible" (X). It soon moved out of use solely in chancelleries and into everyday use, becoming more and more standardised.

This script saw a bit of a rollercoaster of popularity; in the early 1900s it was established and taught in all German schools, then steadily became seen as "antiquated and ugly", then the Nazis declared other writing scripts "Un-German" and promoted gothic typography until 1941 when Hitler declared Kurrent and its sister writing style Fraktur "to be of 'Jewish origin' and therefore taboo". More information about this can be found on this page about the history of Old German Script (another name for Kurrent).

So that's that! Count Orlok's contract is based on traditional charters of the region with set structures to highlight their legitimacy and importance as documents, using traditional scripts and handwriting of the time, and is also a style of document that is directly tied to Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Dracula and ultimately Nosferatu. Extremely cool and also totally makes sense considering Robert Eggers interest in authentic linguistic detail (like I didn't even mention the language that Orlok speaks throughout the film, which is Dacian, an extinct ancestor of Romanian). Lots of really tasty stuff to look at and I had a blast putting it all together.

Except.......... it's not the end. There's a whole second saga to be told about the contract from the 1922 film, and if you wanna read that (I get deep into talking occult symbols and angel languages) you're gonna have to read the original post on my site!

[mindfulstudyquest]

❥﹒♡﹒☕﹒ 𝗯𝗲 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿 ( 𝗮𝗰𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 !! )

𝟭. improve your writing skills ( ✒️ )

i feel that not everyone has the perception of how important it is to know how to write. you don't have to be a poet, nor the new emily brontë, but fluid, conscious, rich writing makes the difference. really. you could write a page without saying anything at all, but if that damn page is written good and smoothly, then you can be sure that you will get extra points. take the time to improve your writing skills, the best advice i have for doing so is reading. read as much as you can. read novels (non-fiction in this case doesn't help because the content is preferred rather than the form), read contemporary authors – you don't necessarily have to read sophocles' tragedies, but read quality stuff. expand your vocabulary, your knowledge of syntax, learn to use punctuation! and then write, tell stories, write love letters, write reviews of films, books, cultural festivals, open a blog on tumblr and write to practice, reread what you write ad nauseam, until it is perfect, until the form of your essay is pulitzer prize worthy.

bonus some of my favourite authors (tell me in the comments about yours!): ian mcewan, banana yoshimoto, haruki murakami, george orwell, josé saramago, albert camus, khaled hosseini, hanya yanagihara

𝟮. develop critical thinking ( 💭 )

if you have always studied passively by absorbing information and vomiting it onto a test sheet then you have wasted your time. taking on information is not enough, you need to know how to rework it and develop your own idea about it. especially in the arts and literature one may disagree with certain information provided by a textbook. developing critical thinking is not easy, especially due to the school system that teaches us to standardize thinking. always consult all available sources on a given topic, compare them, analyze contradictions. it might be difficult and tiring – our brain spends more energy processing two conflicting pieces of information than processing two pieces of information that agree – but it will be worth it. by practicing critical thinking and improving your argumentation skills, you will not only be able to improve in your studies, becoming able to present complex topics and make interdisciplinary connections, but also in daily life, you will become much less influenced and manipulated by external information.

𝟯. find yourself an interest ( 🌷 )

it could be anything, but find an interest that excites you and you enjoy and do research about it. watch videos, documentaries, read articles. it doesn't have to be school-related, it must be an external topic that you are passionate about and that allows you to rediscover the joy of studying and learning every time school seems to suffocate it. sometimes i'm not in the mood to study for exams, so i dedicate myself to my personal research and finally find my spark, my seek for knowledge. for example, my interest is true crime, it has always fascinated me since i was little, but yours could be wild animals, makeup, comics, ships, planes, ocean flora, literally anything. there is no constraint.

𝟰. analyze your mistakes and recognize your wrongs ( 🫒 )

there is no shame in making mistakes. everyone makes mistakes, we are human, but the real sin is getting bogged down in mistakes, refusing to acknowledge them, and continuing to make them again and again. we should be continually growing, continually discovering ourselves, both intellectually and emotionally. how many of you were the "gifted kid" when you were little and then grew up into burned out high school / uni students desperately seeking academic validation? there comes a time when talent isn't enough, you have to put in the effort, and this doesn't make you less intelligent or gifted, in fact, quite the opposite. dedicating time and attention to your personal and intellectual growth also means having to ruminate on your mistakes. it's scary, but it's the most effective way if you really want to improve. take a notebook and at the end of the day reflect on the highlights and the wrongs, what you could have done better, where you would like to push forward tomorrow, what you achieved today. did you make a mistake? first ask yourself why and then look for a way to solve the problem, make every bad moment a lesson, a brick on which to build the version of you you wanto to become tomorrow.

𝟱. don't be afraid of doing researches ( 🧃 )

the amount of fake news and misinformation online is appalling. opening any app like tiktok or instagram we are inundated with information that is often (not always, but not so rarely) inaccurate. don't be afraid to conduct your own research, if you have time to mindlessly scroll through tiktok you will also have five minutes to read an article regarding that information provided. don't know the meaning of a word? look it up before using it. not sure about a piece of information? check it before using it in your argumentation. in the age of immediate access to data we have no excuse to be superficial.

𝟲. master communication ( ♟️ )

mastering communication is essential in both personal and professional realms. it's the cornerstone of building meaningful relationships, whether it's conveying ideas effectively in academia or fostering connections in the workplace. developing strong communication skills not only enhances your ability to articulate thoughts but also empowers you to listen actively, empathize with others, and resolve conflicts constructively. ultimately, honing these skills cultivates confidence, credibility, and success in all aspects of life.

𝟳. push yourself out of your comfort zone ( 🧸 )

build your confidence. confidence is uncomfortable. don't be afraid of it. you are young, this is the right time to experiment, take risks, discover who you really are. this is the best time for you to do those things that you would otherwise never do, you don't want to regret later in life that you didn't accept that scholarship, that trip abroad, that job opportunity, because you didn't feel comfortable enough. do things that take you out of your comfort zone until everything becomes your comfort zone. go on solo dates, be a social butterfly, tell the girl at the bookstore you love her t-shirt, go to the theater alone, eat at a restaurant alone, take that trip. if it goes badly, you'll only have one funny story to tell.

𝟴. stay informed about the news (but not too much!) ( 🌍 )

this might be controversial, but: stay informed about the news, just don't overdo it. personally, i am an easily influenced person and i realized that being constantly exposed to the bad things happening in the world had drained me and made me terribly depressed. don't get me wrong, you need to be informed about what's happening in the world and in your country, just being constantly surrounded by horrible news repeated ad nauseam on TV programs is of no use. be aware.

[beatingtheouijaboardallegations]

forever tired of our voices being turned into commodity.

forever tired of thorough medaocrity in the AAC business. how that is rewarded. How it fails us as users. how not robust and only robust by small small amount communication systems always chosen by speech therapists and funded by insurance.

forever tired of profit over people.

forever tired of how companies collect data on every word we’ve ever said and sell to people.

forever tired of paying to communicate. of how uninsured disabled people just don’t get a voice many of the time. or have to rely on how AAC is brought into classrooms — which usually is managed to do in every possible wrong way.

forever tired of the branding and rebranding of how we communicate. Of this being amazing revealation over and over that nonspeakers are “in there” and should be able to say things. of how every single time this revelation comes with pre condition of leaving the rest behind, who can’t spell or type their way out of the cage of ableist oppression. or are not given chance & resources to. Of the branding being seen as revolution so many times and of these companies & practitioners making money off this “revolution.” of immersion weeks and CRP trainings that are thousands of dollars and wildly overpriced letterboards, and of that one nightmare Facebook group g-d damm it. How this all is put in language of communication freedom. 26 letters is infinite possibilities they say - but only for the richest of families and disabled people. The rest of us will have to live with fewer possibilities.

forever tired of engineer dads of AAC users who think they can revolutionize whole field of AAC with new terrible designed apps that you can’t say anything with them. of minimally useful AI features that invade every AAC app to cash in on the new moment and not as tool that if used ethically could actually help us, but as way of fixing our grammar our language our cultural syntax we built up to sound “proper” to sound normal. for a machine, a large language model to model a small language for us, turn our inhuman voices human enough.

forever tired of how that brand and marketing is never for us, never for the people who actually use it to communicate. it is always for everyone around us, our parents and teachers paras and SLPs and BCBAs and practitioners and doctors and everyone except the person who ends up stuck stuck with a bad organized bad implemented bad taught profit motivated way to talk. of it being called behavior problems low ability incompetence noncompliance when we don’t use these systems.

you all need to do better. We need to democritize our communication, put it in our own hands. (My friend & communication partner who was in Occupy Wall Street suggested phrase “Occupy AAC” and think that is perfect.) And not talking about badly made non-robust open source apps either. Yes a robust system needs money and recources to make it well. One person or community alone cannot turn a robotic voice into a human one. But our human voice should not be in hands of companies at all.

(this is about the Tobii Dynavox subscription thing. But also exploitive and capitalism practices and just lazy practices in AAC world overall. Both in high tech “ mainstream “ AAC and methods that are like ones I use in sense that are both super stigmatized and also super branded and marketed, Like RPM and S2C and spellers method. )

[as-if-and-only-if]

Rust’s never type is wild to me.

So, if you’re not familiar with type theory, the empty type, which we’ll denote ∅ here (which Rust calls never, but more on that later) is the type with no elements.

But…how do you actually say that the type “has no elements” within the type theory?

You can’t say something like ¬∃x, x : ∅, in part because inside most type theories, this statement doesn’t even make sense: we need to know the type of x when bound, and more importantly, typing judgments like x : ∅ are not statements you can make within the theory itself.

Actually, you often don’t even want to use ¬ at all: we want to define ¬P in terms of ∅ as P → ∅ ! This is because having an element of the empty type would (if all goes well) be a contradiction, so if you can construct such a contradiction out of P (i.e. ->), then P must be false. ∅ is near the foundations, so we don’t have much to work with when setting up its meaning.

What we can do is encode the principle of explosion, i.e. that given an element of the empty type (a contradiction!) we can derive anything.

That is, we have an axiom explode : ∀(A : Type), ∅ → A. For any type A, give me an element x of ∅, and I will hand you an element of that type (namely explode A x : A).

(If you’re familiar, ignore universe polymorphism/Type vs. Prop and the fact that A isn’t a type family.)

This is what makes the empty type the empty type. If we didn’t include this axiom, the empty type would have no real emptiness behavior besides “gee, I can’t quite figure out how to make an element of this type”. You wouldn’t know it’s empty, since there would be no consequences to finding out that something has type ∅.

(Aside: this axiom fits into a very general pattern of what it means to define a type inductively, and lets us do “induction on the empty type”. It’s not ad-hoc!)

———

So it should be clear that if you ever do find an element of ∅, your theory is inconsistent, as you can prove anything you want.

Which is why Rust’s empty type, called never, is pretty neat. To me, someone who does not know Rust, and who literally opened the docs as soon as I installed them, scrolled down, and said “ooh, what’s never?”

See, Rust expressions can have type never. (I’m calling them expressions; I don’t know if this is what rustaceans call them)

But, how?! Surely that breaks everything! Well…yes. Which is why the only way to maintain consistency is to have these expressions break everything.

Let me explain: the things with type never never return a value (hence the name). They diverge: they’re things like exit or break or infinite loops.

And thanks to the explode axiom, these expressions can be coerced to any type. For example, you can say x: u32 = { exit() }, and Rust will say “makes sense to me”. (Apologies for any bad Rust syntax.)

This is—surprisingly!—fine.

exit() : never, just like any element of the empty type, really is a contradiction in the type system, but being able to write it in Rust code doesn’t actually make the type system inconsistent—since we leave the type system as soon as it’s encountered. (Or, in the case of an infinite loop, we never manage to actually finish constructing a value of never.)

So, while the syntax of Rust can contain “contradictions”, they never get the chance to behave as contradictions in the model of Rust’s type system formed by the values it constructs at runtime. I.e. running a real program never invalidates the type system. We’re saved from the runtime nonsense that would be created by explode A x by having the system actually explode instead.

There’s something to be said for this, but it is weird. Saying “x : u32” in Rust is apparently scoped in a certain way: it says “as long as the value we call x exists, it has type u32.” It doesn’t guarantee the existence of something with type u32.

This means that you don’t actually have to break the whole type system to use never; you just have to break the context in which x exists. E.g., if you’re inside a function, then let x: bool { return 500 }, where the return returns to the outer function, is fine. x never finishes being constructed, so the guarantee provided by its type annotation is (vacuously) satisfied.

I wonder if this is linked to the notion of lifetimes in Rust, and how that’s reflected in the theory behind the type system. And I’m not a type theorist (or someone who knows Rust), but I am also curious how type theorists talk about diverging terms; in Lean, for example, a top-level term of type Empty is verboten. You create diverging terms by using the partial keyword, and then you’re prohibited from proving anything about their behavior (but they still have types as usual).

This isn’t the first time people have talked about this, by far, I’m sure; happy to hear any takes (or corrections). Much to learn! :)

[itsabouttimex2]

(I think I’m gonna drop this and see how it does cause I’ve been thinking on it for a while, and since I’m not exactly satisfied with my wording I’ll probably delete it, but for a day or two I’m gonna let it settle cause my feelings are split on this perspective and I don’t know if I’m blowing these things out of proportion…)

In general I just don’t really think MK is as good of a hero as the series wants him to be, not in that he’s a “bad person” so much as in that the show is so desperate to gas him up as a “true hero” that it actually warps from reasonable praise that fits in line with his actions to a level of shilling that his actual behavior doesn’t match up with at all.

(In short, if you don’t want to read the whole thing: MK is genuinely a good person, and he’s a functional hero, but when the series outright deprecates Wukong to hype MK up and has his villains remark on what a good hero he is, it really feels shallow on account of MK’s actions rarely going above “we fight people who threaten us”)

And for as much as Lego Monkie Kid does hype up MK (and sometimes his friends but especially MK) as “true heroes”, it’s never really willing to engage with him as being a hero outside of a very shallow “we fight whatever guys are trying to kill us”, -which leads to a very strange situation where his “heroism” usually goes only as far as batting a monster out of the city without any insurance to prevent it from coming back and doing more harm later on, or hell, maybe even just ditching Megapolis and going to attack some other city without a hero to protect.

(It’s especially wild given that MK was ENTIRELY willing to smash (and thereby implicitly reseal) DBK beneath a mountain in his first fight against demon and then entirely gives up on ever being proactive with the preventation of harm ever again because what the fuck kid you were literally on track the very first fight you ever had in your life?? Why’d you go and lose the plot when it made you look so much better???)

MK isn’t the person whose home is getting laser-nuked to ashes by Demon Bull King (there were miles of those in his first attack), and he’s not someone whose been stolen by the Spider Queen to serve as a slave (like Syntax), and he doesn’t get a calamitous fire fused with him after Macaque forces a world-threatening ritual to be performed under threat of his death (Mei), so HE can throw “second chances” out like candy, but that’s only because the narrative is never willing to engage with victims of these villains outside of their impacts on either him or the landscape, the second of which is almost always instantly glossed over or outright played for laughs, even for FLOWER FRUIT MOUNTAIN itself, and if it does have an impact on someone else then it’s only to have them be upset for a few seconds/a minute or two before outright pretending they never had experienced negative interactions begin with.

And giving out “redemptions” to the villains without actually really engaging with their victims (even within the main cast!) really feels less like a hero magnanimously giving someone a second chance and more like watching the hero keep doing what he’s been doing from almost the very start- letting dangerous jerks off the hook, even though they keep coming back to hurt people, but this time, after their fourth mass assault charge, they wander off into the sunset and this time instead of leading another assault they decide to become good people.

(With introspection and actual growth occurring offscreen, of course, because it’s not like the actual ARC of redemption arcs is the fun part/s. On, and all those victims they built up, all the damage they caused, the fear they inspired and the trauma they very likely left innocent souls with?? Never addressed, of course! Only MK’s traumas are important to the story, and they’re so important that most of his key character development involves getting punched with more and more of that angst without ever stopping to address that other characters have been suffering right alongside him, at least never for more than a few seconds/a single minute to explore a brief moment of insecurity or anger before that “flaw” gets packed up to be repurposed, ex: Mei is insecure about her heritage? Solved in an episode! But now she’s at Ao Guang’s place and she’s insecure about her heritage again! Oh, wait- solved in one episode- again!)

It’s especially jarring that the story sets up Azure Lion as a false hero for, essentially, being too proactive in his desire to fight evil and protect the mortal realm that he adores, where MK and his crew are “true heroes” for… waiting for threats to personally inconvenience them before dealing with those threats.

The leonine demon wants to go to the root of what he sees as a tree long rotten and rip it out to supplant it with what he believes is a better core (whether himself or Sun Wukong), while MK and his friends are content to ignore threats and let them fester as long as they aren’t currently fighting or being endangered by said threats. There’s never an actual clash between these perspectives and actions- it’s just “Azure is bad now and can’t control himself, so it’s ethical to beat him around,” which especially is absolutely fucking bonkers when it’s revealed Azure, despite being a soldier of the Jade Emperor, didn’t even know about the whole “this guy is holding the world together with his own power” thing and probably wouldn’t have iced the guy if he had known what would happen.

And on the topic of heroes, I’m also going to come in and say that Azure’s “delusional hero” characterization would be FAR more poignant and fitting if he had learned all that business and still went through with his plan with a “fuck it, I can ball” attitude based on his absolute assurance of his abilities and status as a hero… only to utterly spiral out of control anyways, instead of being hazily warned about dubious consequences by the Jade Emperor and Nezha instead of just being outright told that the world is almost guaranteed to end if he goes forward with this.

Along with Azure’s general character, the ecocide scene centered around knocking himself off of the “hero” pedestal he’s on is really just there to reassure MK (and the audience) about the kid’s status as a hero. It’s a nasty, unforeshadowed cop-out so the series can say “MK, don’t feel bad about fighting him! He’s actually not that good of a guy at all! Don’t feel bad about fighting Azure cause he’s done bad stuff and isn’t really a good guy! MK you’re a perfectly justified moral little boy! Azure doesn’t hold a candle to you!” and dashes his supposed ideals as a shallow veneer instead of having the characters engage with them to support the in-universe viewpoint that MK and his friends are just the very most bestest heroes ever.

(Not to mention that this reveal is literally delivered to the audience by Macaque, who just ass-pulls the knowledge of where to take MK and what to tell him about the big guy to change the kid’s mind in spite of never previously sharing so much as a single word or interaction with Azure to connect the two. Every day I believe a little more in my Macaque Replacement Theory)

So basically, the writers ended up tanking that complexity to give MK an easy moral victory when it could’ve been so cool to do something other than that, like MK acknowledging that hey, Azure is trying to prevent tragedy from occurring in the first place and was outright willing to take part in a siege on the heavens to ostensibly use the Jade Emperor’s powers for good where MK happily sits around until the threatening forces present in the world come to him and his home, and how neither of those paths is inherently “correct”, but any potential complexity is torpedoed with “Actually he’s delusional and needs to go down. Also his plan was inherently flawed and realm-threatening. And he committed ecocide. Also he’s toxic and projects onto the people around him. And his actions personally kill him to keep MK’s hands mostly clean.”

So essentially the narrative says:

“Azure, you should’ve known better than to play god by interfering with cosmic forces of the universe to do what you thought was best for it. This is objectively bad of you given information that existed outside of your knowledge and was inherently flawed and led to tragedy! Why couldn’t you just let things be?!”

While also saying:

“Anyways Season 5!MK, you can play god! You interfering with the cosmic forces of the universe to do what you think is best for it will be portrayed as heroic, dramatic, and sympathetic while also turning out to be the objectively correct and morally right decision! It’s good that you didn’t just let things be!”

And the “consequences” of the difference here are that: while MK and Azure Lion both have the chance to either stand complacently by in the face of what they consider a fixable injustice in the world, and all it takes is denying the cosmic authority that stands above them, and for denying it Azure dies, while MK successfully breaks an unfair and harsh cycle, gives the world cool superpowers, and gets to live on with his friends in a now eternal world.

And this wouldn’t be such a big deal to me if the story was willing to explore what the writers consider “true” heroism outside of… ??? What do they consider “true” heroism? When the good you’ve performed far outweighs the bad? When you… succeed? Is Azure castigated by the narrative for not succeeding? Clearly not, because he’s portrayed negatively in terms of his actions even before the consequences of killing the Jade Emperor set in. Is he only a bad guy for using deceit and subterfuge to get what he wants, because that also happens before he murders the Jade Emperor. I mean, the heroes aren’t above scheming and fucking around themselves-

Like breaking into the Celestial Realm, running roughshod, stealing, and then leaving without returning anything or explaining to anyone about what’s going on afterwards!

Is he a bad guy for wanting to upset the status quo? At some point it feels less like the narrative considers MK a “true hero” because they have a definition for what actually counts as that and more because he’s the protagonist and, well, they want to hype him up.

Basically and for the TLDR, the narrative is custom-built to morally reward MK for essentially all of his heroic actions, even if they fall sharply in line with what the “bad guys” were doing just a season earlier or are outright as shallow as giving attempted mass murderers a dozen second chances to try and kill more innocent people, also without ever truly addressing or applying in-universe consequences for the run-off of his actions such as bringing the trigram furnace to earth and leaving it there, concealing his meeting with the Lady Bone Demon, releasing the Ink Curse by fucking around with the scroll for more than a few seconds or a quick remand before moving past it.

And, can we stop right here and think about a role swap for a moment?

If Sun Wukong had done ANY of that, we all fucking know that the story would’ve stopped sharp to rip him a new asshole and have at least one person would stop to shriek at him about what an irresponsible person he was, about how bad of a mentor he is, about how stupid it was for him not to clean up loose ends. But MK receives a bare minimum throwaway scolding from one of his friends + Ink Curse for releasing it, which doesn’t impact how they or the fandom view him at all.

This is especially egregious for the fact that Wukong is treated like a knuckle-dragging lobotomite by the story (and fandom) whose feats are far surpassed by MK when the Monkey King actually managed to crush his foes in varying ways (destroying their kingdoms, imprisoning them, killing them, etc) that ushered in an era of peace that allowed for rapid technological advancement… but now they’re back and he’s getting beaten over the head for everything, which unintentionally makes it clear that showing mercy in Monkie Kid is just a really, really stupid thing to do unless you’re the super special central protagonist and the writers want to hype you up as the very goodest little boy in the whole wide world over who has full moral authority to allow his city and friends and world to be threatened again and again and again… as long as he’s being “nice” about it.

[annafayeink]

All I Ever Wanted

Summary: After weeks of late nights and playful banter, Lu and his project partner find themselves drinking a little too much on Valentine’s Day and spilling some unfiltered truths.

Warnings & tags: Friends to Lovers, Fluff, College AU, Mutual Pining, Drunken Confessions, Truth or Dare Gone Wrong (or Right?), STEM Nerds in Love, One-Sided Pining (but not really)

Wordcount: 11217 (it's a long one for me...)

Read on AO3

The hum of the computer lab had become their second heartbeat through weeks of late-night debugging sessions, endless energy drinks and heated debates over syntax errors.

Lu leaned back in his chair. The flickering glow of monitors cast a tired haze over his face as he stretched his arms over his head with a groan. “I swear, if I have to debug one more line of code, I’m gonna start throwing things,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes.

Across the table, his project partner smirked, barely glancing up from her screen. “That’s funny. I was just thinking about how much fun it would be to fix your broken code for the third time today.”

Lu scoffed, spinning in his chair to face her. “Excuse me, but my code is art."

She snorted. "Your code could be catching flames in a paper bag on someone’s porch, and you know it."

He laughed out loud, but exhaustion weighed on both of them. The project was nearly done, but the stress of perfecting it had left them both frayed at the edges.

“Alright, I think… I think that should do it,” she muttered, sitting back and running a hand down her face. Her hair was slightly disheveled, and the oversized hoodie she wore had slipped off one shoulder, revealing the strap of her tank top. “Run the test again.”

“You say that every time. You’re like an optimist with Stockholm Syndrome.”

She threw a crumpled candy wrapper at him. “Just do it.”

He smirked and hit the compile button. The two of them leaned in, watching the lines of code execute. A pause—then the program ran cleanly. No errors. No warnings. Just success.

For a moment, they just stared at the screen, the weight of weeks of sleep deprivation, stress, and too much caffeine finally culminating in this single, victorious moment.

Lu grinned. “Holy shit, we did it.”

“We did it!” she echoed, and then to his surprise, she flung herself at him, arms wrapping around his neck in an exuberant hug.

He caught her easily, laughing as he steadied them both. She smelled like vanilla and old books, and for a second, Lu had the ridiculous urge to close his eyes and just breathe her in. Instead, he let his hands settle briefly at her waist before she pulled back.

Then he shook his head, still grinning as he looked at her—really looked at her. The spark in her eyes, the way her nose scrunched slightly when she smiled too hard, the pure, unfiltered joy radiating from her. He felt something settle in his chest, warm and steady, and almost too easy to ignore—if he were the kind of guy who ignored things like this.

“This wouldn’t be possible without you, Pip.”

Her smile softened at the nickname, one he’d given her ages ago when she’d admitted, in passing, that she’d always loved Great Expectations as a kid. Something about underdogs, she’d said. Something about wanting to prove people wrong.

Now, she rolled her eyes but didn’t try to hide the way her lips twitched at the edges. “That’s a lie and you know it.”

“It’s not,” he said, nudging her shoulder with his. “You’re kind of a genius, you know that?”

She scoffed. “Oh, so now you think that? Not when I was sleep-deprived and rambling about recursive functions at 3 AM last week?”

“I mean, that was terrifying, but still impressive.”

“We deserve a break,” she declared, gathering her things. “And since it’s technically still Valentine’s Day…” She checked her phone. “Yeah, not midnight yet. We should celebrate.”

Lu arched a brow. “You wanna celebrate Valentine’s Day?”

“No, dummy.” She shoved her laptop into her bag. “I want to celebrate not wanting to throw myself off a bridge because of this project. Come on, let’s go get drinks. First round’s on me.”

He chuckled, shaking his head, but there was no way he was saying no to spending more time with her. Not when she was already pulling him to his feet, eyes bright with excitement.

“Alright, alright,” he said, letting himself be dragged toward the door. “But if you end up drunk and sobbing about your ex, I’m leaving you at the bar.”

She laughed. “Joke’s on you—I don’t have an ex to sob about.”

Lu paused, watching her for half a second longer than he should have.

Interesting.

They walked side by side through the nearly empty campus streets, the occasional couple passing them, hand in hand, lost in their own little Valentine’s Day world. Pip made a show of gagging at a particularly sappy-looking pair sharing a scarf, and Lu nudged her.

“What, jealous?”

Of that?” Pip made a face. “Please. That’s a level of codependency I aspire to avoid.”

Lu smirked. “Says the girl who texted me at 2 AM last week because she couldn’t decide if an array or a hash table was the better choice for our sorting algorithm.”

“That was important,” she said, pointing a gloved finger at him. “And you were awake, don’t even pretend you weren’t.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, because I knew you’d overthink it until sunrise otherwise.

She sighed dramatically. “See? This is why I keep you around. You know how to manage my spirals.”

Lu smiled fondly at her back as they turned the corner onto the main street where their favorite little bar was tucked between a bookstore and a laundromat. The neon Open sign glowed warmly against the dark, and the window was fogged up from the heat inside.

The bar was just off-campus, a warm little hole-in-the-wall that smelled like whiskey and old wood. It was quieter than usual, probably because everyone with actual Valentine’s Day plans had gone somewhere fancier.

They slid into a booth near the back, ordering beers to start. Then Pip tucked her hands into the pockets of her hoodie, shrugging with a sort of distant look in her eyes. “I just think some people get way too into Valentine’s Day. Like, it’s all manufactured romance, you know? What, you need an official day to be romantic? Either you love someone or you don’t.”

Lu arched a brow. “So what, if you ever fall in love, you’re gonna refuse to celebrate Valentine’s Day out of sheer principle?”

“Obviously.” She shot him a pointed look. “If my hypothetical future partner ever tries to do some over-the-top grand gesture on February fourteenth, I’ll just break up with them out of spite.”

Lu let out a low whistle. “Harsh.”

“Necessary,” she corrected. Then, after a pause, she added, “Though, I guess, if someone really knew me, they’d probably just take me for drinks and let me rant about AI ethics or something.”

Lu laughed. “Ah, yes, the way to your heart—alcohol and an existential crisis.”

“See? You get it.” She grinned at him. “Maybe you should be my Valentine.”

Lu gave a laugh, deciding against analysing why that idea just felt right.

“Okay, but for real,” she said, after their drinks arrived. “If you had a partner, what would you do?”

Lu glanced at her over his beer. “You mean for Valentine’s Day?”

Pip nodded. “Yeah. Say you actually had someone. What’s your move?”

He thought for a second, fidgeting with a peeling corner of the label on his bottle. “I don’t know. I feel like grand gestures are overrated. I’d want to do something that actually means something to them.”

“Like what?”

Lu shrugged. “Depends on the person. Maybe cook for them, or take them somewhere they’ve always wanted to go but never had the time. Or just… spend the day doing nothing together, but in a way that still feels like everything.”

Pip was quiet for a beat, then let out a laugh. “God, that’s disgustingly sweet.”

“You asked,” he pointed out with a shrug.

She took a sip of her beer, and suddenly her eyes lit up with an idea. “Okay, Lu, truth or dare?”

He huffed a laugh. “What are we, twelve?”

“Come on, it’s a classic. And since we don’t have exes to sob about, we might as well make the night interesting.”

He tilted his head, considering. “Fine. Truth."

Pip leaned back, swirling her drink as she considered her options. Then, with a small, mischievous smile, she asked, “What’s something you’ve never told anyone?”

Lu arched a brow, taking a slow sip of his beer. “Damn. You’re going straight for the deep cuts, huh?”

She shrugged. “We’ve been in the trenches together for months now. I think we’re past the what’s your favorite color phase.”

He tapped his fingers against his bottle, thinking. There were plenty of things he didn’t talk about—most of them too boring or too complicated for a casual drinking game. But then, without really meaning to, he found himself saying, “I almost dropped out last year.”

Pip’s brows lifted, her expression shifting from playful to surprised. “Wait. What?”

Lu exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah. I mean, I didn’t tell anyone, obviously. But I was seriously thinking about it. Everything felt like too much, you know? The pressure, the expectations, all the shit I thought I was supposed to be able to do but couldn’t. I started wondering if maybe I was just—” He made a vague gesture. “—burning time on something I’d never actually be good enough at.”

Pip didn’t say anything right away. She just watched him, her head tilted slightly, like she was seeing something new in him. Then she said, “What changed your mind?”

He let out a quiet chuckle, taking another sip of his beer. “You, actually.”

Pip’s eyes widened. “Me?”

“Yeah. You remember that night we pulled an all-nighter working on that neural net assignment? I was this close to just walking away from it all. But then you—” He shook his head, grinning at the memory. “You showed up with, like, three energy drinks, a bag of gummy bears, and a completely unhinged rant about how we were not going to let a buggy dataset ruin our futures.”

Pip laughed. “God, I barely remember that. I was so sleep-deprived I think I started speaking in binary at one point.”

“You did. And you know what? It was weirdly inspiring.” Lu smirked. “Somewhere between you threatening to ‘personally fight every faulty training model’ and the moment you fell asleep face-first on your laptop, I figured—yeah. Maybe I should stick around.”

She was quiet for a second, then softened. “I had no idea.”

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged, suddenly feeling a little exposed. “Not exactly my usual small talk.”

Her expression softened, something unreadable flickering behind her eyes. She took another sip of her drink, then pointed at him. “Well, now I feel like my question was too deep. I should’ve just asked what your go-to shower song is or something.”

“Oh, that’s easy. Careless Whisper by George Michael.”

She nearly choked on her beer. “What?”

He shrugged. “I like a little drama in my life.”

Pip burst out laughing, shaking her head. Then, after a beat, she nudged his foot under the table. “Hey, Lu?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really glad you stuck around.”

Something about the way she said it made his chest feel too small for his ribs. He swallowed, forcing himself to keep his tone light. “Yeah, yeah. You just didn’t want to do all the work yourself.”

“Obviously.” Pip rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.

“Alright, your turn. Truth or dare?”

Pip tapped her nails softly against the neck of her bottle, considering. Then she lifted her chin, a lazy smirk curling at the edges of her lips. “Truth.”

Lu took a sip of his drink, thinking. There were plenty of things he could ask—light, teasing things. But the way she’d looked at him when he admitted almost dropping out was still sitting heavy in his chest. He wanted to ask something real.

So he set his glass down and asked, “What’s something you regret not doing?”

Pip hesitated. For the first time that night, she didn’t immediately have a comeback. Instead, she bit her lip, looking down at the condensation sliding down the side of her bottle.

Lu tilted his head. “Too deep?”

She let out a short laugh. “No, it’s just…” She exhaled, swirling her drink. “I think I regret not being braver about the things I want.”

Lu’s brows lifted slightly. “Like what?”

Pip’s fingers curled around her beer, but when she looked up at him, her gaze held something just out of his reach. “Like saying things when I should.”

Something in his chest tightened. He could feel it—the edge of something unspoken between them, something that had been there longer than either of them had probably wanted to admit.

But then, just as quickly, Pip rolled her shoulders back, shaking it off. She raised her drink in his direction. “But hey, that’s what alcohol is for, right? Liquid courage.”

Lu chuckled, but the moment wasn’t entirely gone. He could still feel it, humming beneath the surface.

“Your turn,” she said like she was in a hurry to change the subject.

He studied her for a second longer than he should have, trying to read the things she wasn’t saying. Then, deciding not to push—not yet, at least—he leaned back with a smirk. “Dare.”

Pip exhaled, looking relieved at the shift in topic. But then a slow grin took over her face, and she leaned in, eyes dancing with mischief. “Alright, Lu. I dare you to go up to the bartender and ask for a Valentine’s Special—without knowing what’s in it.”

Lu chuckled. “That’s the best you’ve got?”

“Oh, you’ll regret saying that,” she teased. “Now go. Let’s see if you can handle whatever monstrosity they serve you.”

He shook his head, pushing himself up from the booth. “If I end up drinking something pink and covered in whipped cream, I might throw up on you.”

She just grinned, watching him go. But as he crossed the room, she caught herself staring at his back a little too long, her fingers still absently tracing an abstract pattern on the condensation on the bottle.

God. She was in trouble.

They kept drinking, falling back into their usual rhythm—trading stories, daring each other to say ridiculous things to the bartender, laughing too loudly. The bar started to blur at the edges, warm and hazy. Pip’s laugh got looser, her touches lingered longer—fingers brushing against his wrist, knees touching under the table.

Pip wasn’t completely gone, but tipsy enough that she was a little too loose, a little too open. And she had a habit of getting sentimental when she drank—something Lu found stupidly endearing.

“Go on,” Lu said. “Which one?”

She hummed, tilting her head like she was having trouble making a decision. Then she flashed him a lazy grin. “Dare. But make it like… Something that would make future-you cringe when you think about it.”

He let out a low chuckle, swirling the last of his drink. “Alright. I dare you to tell me a secret.”

Pip narrowed her eyes. “That’s too easy.”

“Oh, I’m not done.” Lu leaned forward, his smirk turning sharper. “I dare you to tell me a secret… about me.”

Pip faltered.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, rolling her lips together like she was physically stopping words from spilling out.

Lu watched her, pulse ticking up just slightly. He hadn’t planned this to be a trap, but suddenly, it felt like one.

Pip let out a slow breath, tapping her nails against the rim of her glass. Then, carefully, she said, “You’re a lot more important to me than I let on.”

Lu didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

Pip gave him a small, almost hesitant smile. “That count as a secret?”

He should laugh. Tease her. Turn this into something easy and light, the way they always did.

But he couldn’t.

Not when her words were still hanging in the air between them, too big, too real.

He swallowed. “Pip…”

“Wait.” She lifted a hand. “There’s a second part.”

Pip swirled her glass around as if she was trying to find the answer on the bottom. “Dare.”

“I dare you to tell me something you’d only say if you weren’t worried about what happens next.”

Pip blinked with heavy eyelids. This was a dangerous dare. But wasn’t it exactly what she was hoping for? 

Her fingers tightened slightly around her empty, and for a moment, she didn’t speak. The bar noise seemed to quiet around them, everything narrowing down to just her and him, the warm glow of the lights reflecting in her eyes.

Pip let out a soft laugh, shaking her head. Then she reacher for his drink and took a long sip, trying to gather her thoughts and get some of that much needed liquid courage.

“Alright,” she said, set the glass down in front of him again. Her voice was quieter now, almost thoughtful. “I think about you. More than I should.”

Lu stilled, as if the tiniest movement could shatter the moment.

Pip traced the rim of her coaster with her fingertip, not looking at him. “Like, when something good happens, you’re the first person I want to tell. And when something bad happens, I wonder if you’d make me laugh about it. And when I see something stupid—like a weird-looking pigeon or a meme so dumb it makes me lose brain cells—I think, Lu would get this.” She let out a quiet chuckle, finally meeting his gaze. “And I don’t know what that means, but it’s been happening for a while.”

Lu’s throat was dry. His fingers curled into fists beneath the table.

It took everything in him to keep his voice steady when he said, “That’s a pretty good answer.”

Pip smiled, just barely. “Yeah?”

He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping lower. “Yeah.”

Her breath hitched. Just a little.

And then, before he could think too hard about it, before he could do something reckless, Pip abruptly stood up.

“I need another drink.”

Lu blinked. “Pip—”

But she was already heading to the bar.

Lu let out a long breath, dragging a hand down his face. His heart was pounding, and not from the alcohol.

When she came back, Pip took a very long sip of her drink even before she sat down. Then she asked him something else in a lighthearted tone. 

But her eyes weren’t quite meeting his anymore.

Lu could see it—how she was trying to brush past what she’d just said, how she was treating it like some offhand joke. But her fingers were tapping against her glass, and her lips were pressed together like she was thinking too hard.

Pip had gone quiet. Not her usual, thinking-through-a-bug kind of quiet, but something else. Something heavier. She was staring at her drink like it held the answers to the universe, absentmindedly tracing patterns with her fingertip. Lu watched her, feeling the weight of whatever was about to happen settle in his chest.

He let it sit for a moment, waiting to see if she’d say something else.

She didn't. 

She just exhaled and kept playing, making sure the truths and dares turned playful for a while, like an entirely different conversation.

Somewhere between another round of drinks, another round of questions—some deep, some ridiculous, some only half-answered through laughter—Pip started leaning into him more. At first, it was casual. Her shoulder brushing against his when she laughed too hard. Her fingers catching his arm when she emphasized a point. But then her head dipped onto his shoulder, and instead of pulling away, she stayed there.

Lu went still.

He should move. He should say something.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he turned slightly, just enough to glance down at her. Pip, eyes half-lidded, hair falling over her cheek, looking content and maybe just a little drunk.

“You good, Pip?” he asked, his voice quieter now.

She hummed. “Mhm.”

“You wanna call it a night?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

Her fingers played absently with the hem of her sleeve, and for a moment, she was silent.

“You wanna stop playing?”

“No, no, we haven't embarrassed ourselves enough,” she slurred slightly, with a smirk. “Truth or dare?”

Lu, also feeling warm from the alcohol, smirked. “Truth.”

She squinted at him like she was trying to focus. “Would you ever—” She cut herself off, frowning. Then shook her head. “No. Wait. I don’t wanna ask that.”

Lu arched a brow. “You can’t start a question and not finish it.”

Pip groaned, dropping her head onto the table. “Ugh, I don’t know. My brain-to-mouth filter is completely broken right now.”

Lu chuckled, watching Pip war with herself, her forehead still pressed against the table. She let out a dramatic sigh, then lifted her head, squinting at him through slightly unfocused eyes.

“Okay, fine,” she mumbled, waving a hand in his general direction. “Would you ever… I mean, have you ever thought about…”

Lu leaned in slightly, resting his chin on his hand. “Thought about what?”

She let out a frustrated groan, scrunching up her face like she was trying to will the words out of her mouth. Then, suddenly, she blurted, “Would you ever date me?”

Suddenly it felt like there was not enough oxygen in the room. Lu took a deep breath, but it was shaky and didn't quite fill his lungs.

Pip immediately sucked in a breath, eyes widening. “Nope. Nope, that wasn’t—I mean, not that it’s a bad question, it’s just—”

Lu tilted his head, watching her completely spiral.

“Would I ever date you?” he repeated, pretending to consider it.

She groaned, covering her face with her hands. Then she peeked at him through her fingers, scowling.

Lu exhaled, leaning back against the booth. He swallowed, throat feeling like sandpaper. “You want an answer or not?”

Pip hesitated, then nodded once, slowly.

His smirk faded just slightly, and when he spoke, his voice was quieter. More certain. “Yeah. I’d date you.”

Pip blinked. She seemed to short-circuit for a second. Then she narrowed her eyes, suspicious. “Are you just saying that to mess with me?”

Lu shrugged. “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

Pip just stared at him. Her mouth opened slightly, then shut again. Then—she grabbed her drink and downed about half of it.

Lu raised a brow. “Something you wanna say?”

She set the glass down a little harder than necessary. “No. I just—” She exhaled, shaking her head. “You can’t just say things like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because!”

“That’s not an answer.”

Pip scowled at him—kinda. Her eyes were hazy, but searching. “Okay, but like—why?”

Lu frowned slightly. “Why what?”

“Why would you… you know.” She gestured vaguely between them. “Date me.”

Lu considered her for a moment. Then he leaned forward, resting his arms on the table, and said, “Because you’re you.”

Pip inhaled sharply.

Lu shrugged, playing it off like his heart wasn’t suddenly racing. “You’re smart. You’re funny. And you make me feel like I actually know what the hell I’m doing—even when I don’t.” He met her gaze, steady and unflinching. “So, yeah. I’d date you.”

Pip was completely silent.

For a long, stretching moment, she just stared at him, her lips slightly parted, as if she’d forgotten how to speak. Lu couldn’t tell if she was about to laugh, call him a liar, or throw her drink in his face.

“…That’s not fair,” she finally muttered.

Lu smirked. “What’s not fair?”

She exhaled, shaking her head, staring at the table like it held the answers. “You. Saying stuff like that. Being like that.”

“Like what?”

Pip let out a short, breathy laugh, rubbing a hand over her face. Then, before she could stop herself, she said, “Like someone I can’t imagine my life without.”

Lu blinked.

Pip groaned, shaking her head. “God, I should not be drinking right now.”

Lu leaned in, curiosity sparking, his heart thrumming like it wanted to escape his chest. “What does that mean?”

Pip hesitated, her fingers tracing the rim of her glass. “It means—” She sighed, then looked up at him with a kind of tired fondness. “It means I like you, okay? I like… how you always act like nothing gets to you, but you care so much it’s ridiculous. I like that you always notice when I’m stressed before I even say anything. I like that you walk me home when we stay late at the lab and pretend it’s just because ‘you needed air.��”

Lu exhaled slowly, dizzy, heart hammering in his throat and ears and just everywhere.

But Pip wasn’t done.

“I like that you’re secretly the biggest softie,” she went on, her words getting a little looser, a little warmer, like the dam had finally broken. “Like when you always give the stray cat outside the library part of your sandwich, even though you pretend you don’t like cats.”

Lu huffed a laugh, shaking his head. “It’s not my fault, he just looks at me like that.”

Pip chuckled, looking down at her drink. “I like how you talk with your hands when you’re explaining something. And when you’re focusing really hard, you do a little pouty thing with your lips, it’s adorable.”

Lu just stared. He didn’t know if he was breathing.

Pip leaned forward slightly, propping her elbows on the table. “You remember last semester, when my laptop crashed the night before that huge deadline?”

He snorted. “Yeah. You were ready to fight God.”

She pointed at him. “Exactly. I was losing my mind. But you just—” She shook her head. “You showed up with your old laptop, somehow got my files recovered, and then you stayed up with me the whole night just to make sure I finished everything.”

Lu shrugged like it was nothing. “Well, yeah. What was I gonna do, not help?”

“That’s the thing,” Pip said softly. “You don’t even think about it. You just do things like that.”

Lu exhaled, breath ragged like he just ran a marathon, and shifted slightly in his seat. “I mean, you do the same for me.”

Pip sighed. “Yeah, I would do it for you. But you do it for anyone who needs it. You don't mind staying up all night helping people study or finish their projects. You bring them snacks and drinks. You never let anyone sit alone in the lab when they look stressed. ”

Lu was speechless, just staring at her with his mouth slightly opened in surprise.

“Or—” she gestured vaguely, her voice softer now, “—how you knew I was about to crash last semester and left a stupid energy drink in my locker with a note that just said ‘Don’t die, Pip.’”

His mind scrambled for a response but words failed him. He didn’t even remember doing that. Lu opened his mouth, then closed it, caught completely off guard.

Pip kept going, oblivious to the fact that she was absolutely wrecking him.

“Do you even know how stupidly likable you are? You’re just— You walk into a room and people like you. And..” She hesitated for a heartbeat. “And I like that you’re way too competitive about stupid things. Like Mario Kart. Or rock-paper-scissors.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle, both at what she said and as a nervous reaction to her entire speech. “That’s called having integrity, Pip.”

She rolled her eyes but kept going. “I like the way you say my full name when you’re being serious.” She swallowed. “I like the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”

His eyes widened at the revelation. Pip let the words sink in for a moment. Then she picked up her metaphorical shovel and kept digging the hole.

“Yeah, I really like your eyes. Which is annoying because when you look at me a certain way, my brain just turns into the blue screen of death, and—” She broke off, shaking her head. Then she let out a small, slightly tipsy laugh. “Also I really like your hands.”

Lu’s brain felt like a completely fried motherboard. He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply, buying himself a second to think.

Pip smiled, just slightly. Like she wasn’t just putting all of this out there, months—maybe years—of pent up feelings she had hidden from him.

“You have, like, objectively nice hands,” she continued, frowning slightly like this was important information. “They’re big but not, like, weirdly big, and you do this thing where you crack your knuckles when you’re thinking and—”

“Pip,” Lu interrupted, his voice slightly strained.

She blinked up at him, like she hadn’t noticed she was rambling. “What?”

Lu exhaled, scrubbing a hand down his face. “You can’t just say all that.”

“Why not?”

“Because—” He hesitated, shaking his head. “Because it means something.”

Pip stared at him. Then, very softly, she whispered, “It does.”

Lu’s chest tightened.

Pip suddenly looked like she wanted to shrink into the floor. “I should shut up now.”

Lu huffed a breath, shaking his head. She was drunk. Really drunk. She probably didn’t even know what she was saying. “You should.”

But she didn’t. Instead, she let out a breath, barely above a whisper.

“You’re kind of the best person I know,” she murmured.

Lu blinked. “What?”

Pip glanced up at him, eyes a little too bright, a little too earnest. Vulnerable. “You’re a really good person, Lu.” And then, after a pause. “…You’re all I ever wanted." She looked down and shook her head. "I’m sorry I can’t say it sober.”

Silence.

The bar noise felt distant, like it wasn’t even real anymore. Just the sound of her breathing, unsteady, and little too fast.

Lu gripped his drink like it was the only thing keeping him grounded.

She wasn’t laughing anymore.

She wasn’t playing anymore.

The words hung in the air between them, delicate and irreversible.

Then, as if realizing what she’d just said, Pip sucked in a sharp breath, eyes going wide, glassy and slightly unfocused. “Oh, shit,” she whispered.

Lu just stared at her.

Pip covered her mouth with both hands, looking absolutely horrified. “I should not have said that.”

Lu blinked, dazed, still processing the fact that she had said that.

Pip groaned, dropping her head onto the table. “Lu, forget what I said”

“Yeah, that’s not happening.”

Pip let out a pained noise.

Lu exhaled, scrubbing a hand down his face. His chest felt too tight, his mind spinning too fast. He should say something, acknowledge it, tell her—

No.

He couldn’t let himself answer. Not here. Not now. Not while she was like this.

He needed to think. He needed to get those drinks away from her and get her home.

Lu stood abruptly, tossing some cash onto the table. “Come on, drunkie. Let’s get you back before you start reciting poetry or something.”

Pip groaned, still face-down on the table.”I regret all my choices.”

Lu smirked, despite the storm raging in his chest. He bent down and grabbed her hand, tugging her up. “Come on, you need to get some rest.”

She groaned again but didn’t resist when he pulled her to her feet, steadying her with an arm around her shoulders.

And as they stepped out into the cold Valentine’s night, biting and sobering, Lu kept hearing it over and over again.

You’re all I ever wanted.

And fuck if that didn’t ruin him.

Pip shivered, wobbling only slightly before leaning into Lu’s side without thinking. He tightened his grip around her shoulders, steadying her as they made their way down the quiet street.

The city had started to wind down—most people already home, tucked away with their dates, their lovers, their Valentine’s plans.

Lu exhaled, his breath curling white in the air. His mind kept looping back to her words.

She probably wouldn’t even remember saying it. And maybe that was a good thing. Maybe he should pretend he didn’t hear it. But fuck, it was hard when she was right here, pressed against him, trusting him enough to lean her weight into him like he was something solid, something safe.

She let out a soft sigh, tilting her head against his shoulder. 

“You’re warm,” she murmured, burrowing against him. “Like a space heater.”

Lu huffed a quiet laugh. “From project partner to household appliance. Quite a step up!”

“Totally.” Her fingers curled into the fabric of his jacket, her cheek resting against his shoulder. 

Lu swallowed hard, forcing himself to keep his focus on the sidewalk ahead, on getting her home. Not on the way she felt pressed against him, or the way her voice had wrapped around those words in the bar—You’re all I ever wanted.

It wasn’t far to her dorm, but every step felt like both too much time to think and not nearly enough. Pip was quiet, her usual sharp wit dulled by the alcohol, but she was awake enough to hum under her breath as they walked, something soft and aimless, the way she sometimes did when she thought no one was paying attention.

But Lu always noticed.

When they reached her building, she fumbled in her bag for her keys, her movements slow and uncoordinated. Lu reached over, steadying her hand before she could drop them into the snow.

“Here,” he murmured, plucking them from her fingers. “I got it.”

She hummed in agreement, watching him through half-lidded eyes as he unlocked the door. “Such a gentleman.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He nudged her inside, following her up the stairs to her dorm.

Once inside, Pip immediately beelined for her bed, flopping onto it face-first with a dramatic groan.

Lu chuckled, closing the door behind him. “I see subtlety is dead.”

“Mmhmm,” she mumbled into the pillow.

Lu crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe. “So this is how you treat your personal chauffeur, huh? No thank you, no you’re my hero, Lu?”

She lifted a hand lazily and gave him a thumbs-up without lifting her head. “You’re my hero, Lu.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”

He glanced around the small dorm. It was cluttered but in a way that felt lived-in—books stacked on her desk, a blanket draped haphazardly over her chair, half-finished notes scribbled on sticky pads. It smelled like her.

He sighed, crouching beside the bed to untie her boots. 

Pip let out a breathy chuckle. “Wow, I’m getting the royal treatment.”

Lu shook his head, pulling off one boot, then the other. “Don’t get used to it.”

“You always take care of me, Lu.”

His chest ached.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Always.”

She didn’t reply.

“C’mon, Pip, at least get under the covers.”

She let out a grumbling noise but didn’t protest when he pulled the blanket over her.

When he started to move away, she reached out blindly, catching his wrist. “Stay.”

Lu froze.

Pip’s fingers were warm, loose from the alcohol but still firm enough that he knew she meant it.

He swallowed. “Pip—”

“Just… stay,” she murmured. “For a little bit.”

Her gaze flickered over his face, lingering on his lips for a split second too long.

For one agonizing moment, he thought—maybe. But he couldn’t. He was kinda drunk. She was very drunk. Kissing, confessing hidden feelings, cuddling until morning pretending they were just cold—none of it was an option.

Lu exhaled through his nose, running a hand through his hair. He shouldn’t even stay. He should go. He should definitely go.

Instead, he let out a quiet sigh, picked up a spare pillow from her bed and settled onto the floor beside her bed, leaning against the frame.

Her fingers slid from his wrist to his hand, her grip easy and unthinking. Lu glanced down, watching their hands, her palm against his, their fingers brushing.

He should let go.

But he didn’t.

He let his thumb trace over her knuckles absently, grounding himself in the quiet darkness.

And as the room settled into soft breathing and silence, as Pip's fingers curled around his just slightly in sleep, Lu let his head tip back against the bed frame.

Just for tonight.

He could pretend.

 

Pip stirred with a soft groan, burying her face deeper into her pillow. The room was too bright, the warmth of sleep fading into the slow, creeping realization that her head felt too heavy.

Right. Drinking.

She exhaled, blinking blearily at her dorm ceiling, willing herself to piece together the night before. There had been drinks, laughter, Lu teasing her—

Her fingers twitched, brushing against something solid.

She frowned. Turned her head.

Lu was on the floor beside her bed, slumped against the frame, his breathing slow and even, his hand still loosely tangled with hers.

Pip’s heart stopped.

The pieces of the night were blurry, but this—this was new. Unexpected.

She stared at their joined hands, at the easy way their fingers fit together, like they’d done this a hundred times. A small thrill curled through her chest before panic squashed it.

What the hell happened last night?

Her brain scrambled, reaching for memories that felt just out of focus. The bar. The walk home. Him helping her inside.

She swallowed hard.

Suddenly everything sharpened. The warmth of his hand. The quiet in the room. The way Lu’s breathing shifted just slightly, like he was surfacing from sleep.

And then—his eyes fluttered open.

Pip stiffened.

Lu blinked, slow and groggy, squinting against the morning haze, before turning his head slightly. For a second he just looked at her, his gaze still heavy with sleep.

Then his lips curled, soft and lazy. “Morning, Pip.”

Her stomach flipped. 

She cleared her throat, shifting to sit up, head still a bit heavy. “Uh. Morning.”

Slowly, like he didn’t really want to do it, Lu released her hand. Then he stretched, wincing slightly as he rolled his shoulders. “Damn. I think my spine is permanently shaped like your bed frame now.”

Pip let out a breathy laugh, but it was weak. “What… uh. What are you doing here?”

He gave her a look. “You really don’t remember?”

Pip hesitated. “I remember drinking.”

Lu huffed a quiet laugh. “Yeah, no kidding.”

She rubbed her temples. “Did I… did I say anything stupid?”

For half a second, Lu didn’t answer. Then he smirked, tilting his head. “Define stupid.”

Pip groaned again, finally dropping her hands to look at Lu. There was something almost hesitant in the way she studied him. Like something was off.

“…Did I?” she asked, quieter this time.

Lu hesitated.

Because he could tell her. He could say yeah, Pip, you told me you loved me and wrecked my entire existence in three seconds flat.

Or—

“Nah,” he said instead, stretching his arms over his head, stomping all over the memories like he wanted to grind them into dust. “Just your usual brand of nonsense.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying.”

“Am I?”

“You do this thing with your face when you’re lying.”

His heart was starting to speed up. “Pip, I’m literally just existing.”

She groaned, rubbing at her temple again. “Whatever. I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

“That truck was three vodka sodas and a bunch of other bad decisions.”

She let out a quiet laugh, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Lu noticed, but didn’t mention it.

Pip yawned, pulling the blanket over one shoulder. “You didn’t have to stay, you know.”

“Yeah, well. Didn’t trust you not to roll off the bed and die.” He shrugged, trying to keep his voice light. “Plus, you asked me to.”

She blinked at him, something flickering across her face. “I did?”

“Yeah.” He smirked. “Clung to me like a baby koala, too.”

She groaned. “Great. Love that for me.”

Lu chuckled, but it sounded hollow even to his ears.

Pip didn’t remember. And she had no idea she was breaking his heart.

He exhaled slowly, still blinking sleep away from his eyes. His head was clearer now, last night’s haze dulled to a manageable ache, but his chest still felt tight, weighted by the words that kept replaying in his mind.

You’re all I ever wanted.

She had said it like it was the simplest thing in the world. No hesitation, no doubt. And now she didn’t even know she’d said it. 

Lu swallowed it all down. “You should eat something.” His voice was steady, but he was already pushing himself to his feet, removing himself from the situation before she could ask anything else. “I’ll grab you some water.”

And just like that, the moment passed.

But while Lu moved toward the tiny dorm kitchen, Pip frowned slightly, like she was trying to piece something together. Like some part of her knew something had happened, even if she didn’t remember it yet.

Pip sat on the bed, fingers idly rubbing against her palm, as if chasing the phantom feeling of Lu’s hand in hers.

He returned a moment later, setting a glass of water on her nightstand with a pointed look. “Drink slowly. If you throw up all over the place I am not cleaning it up.”  

She rolled her eyes but obeyed, taking small, careful sips. The cold water helped clear the fuzziness in her head, but the feeling in her chest—the vague, off sensation, like she was forgetting something important—remained.  

For a moment, she just watched Lu move around her room like he’d done this a hundred times before. Something about it felt too easy—like they had always existed in this quiet rhythm, like it wasn’t strange for him to be here, like the warmth still lingering in her hand wasn’t something she should be questioning.

But she was questioning it. Because something was definitely off.

She tried to focus, tried to sort through the messy blur of last night. Bits and pieces surfaced—laughing over drinks, teasing, a conversation about some girl Lu liked.

Her stomach twisted.

Right. That.

She barely noticed Lu setting an energy bar on the nightstand. “Love that you don’t seem to have any real food around here,” he said, casually, before going back to the kitchen.

Pip swallowed hard, watching him move around like nothing changed. Like he wasn’t acting different. Like he wasn’t avoiding looking at her for too long.

He was bracing himself for something. And that—more than anything—confirmed it. She had said something huge. And he heard it, remembered it, and was probably thinking about it.

Pip opened her mouth, then closed it again, her throat too tight. Then she set the water down. “Hey, Lu?”  

He looked at her with an unreadable expression. “Yeah?”  

She bit her lip. “I did say something stupid last night, didn’t I?”  

Lu stilled. It was subtle—so subtle. But Pip knew him well enough to see it. The slight pause. The careful, almost imperceptible shift in his expression.  

Pip’s stomach dipped.  

Then he exhaled, rolling his shoulders like he was brushing something off, before walking back to her.

“…Define stupid,” he said, echoing his words from earlier.

Pip narrowed her eyes. “You’re so full of shit.”

He had that infuriating smirk on his face again, like he was perfectly fine. Like nothing was wrong when she knew that wasn’t true. “You think I’m just gonna hand over blackmail material that easily?" He scoffed. "Please.”

Pip stared at him, searching his expression for something. A crack, a tell—anything. Because she knew there was something to find.

Lu didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. But he was still keeping his distance. And very deliberately avoiding a straight answer to her question. 

“I feel like… I forgot something important.” She forced a small, shaky breath, tilting her head, testing the waters. 

Lu let out an exaggerated sigh, dragging a hand through his hair. “Pip—”

“Lu,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt as she got up from the bed. “Tell me what I said last night. I’m serious.”.

Something flickered in his expression—hesitation, uncertainty. But then he forced a smile, leaning back against the wall next to her bed. “Well, let’s see. You said I’m warm, which is accurate—”

Pip narrowed her eyes. “And?”

“And you threatened to fight a snowman.”  

Pip snorted. “Okay, that tracks.”  

But she knew that wasn’t the whole truth.  

“Oh, and you confessed your undying love for me.” He crossed his arms and smiled at her, like none of this was a big deal. 

But Pip just froze.

Lu said it so casually, so playfully, like it was just another one of their jokes. She couldn’t quite tell if he was telling the truth or not.

Her heart stuttered. He’s joking, right? Instinct took over because deflecting was easier, and she let out a half-laugh, shaking her head. “I did not.”

His smile widened. “Oh no, you definitely did. Got down on one knee, proposed right there in the snow. Very dramatic.”  

She let out a breathy laugh, shoving his arm. “Shut up.”  

Lu grinned, but there was something careful behind his eyes. Something guarded. He let the moment stretch, like he was waiting for something.

Then he shrugged. “Nah, I’m messing with you.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, testing her reaction. “But you did ramble about how I have nice hands, which, honestly? The most unnecessarily intimate thing anyone has ever told me.”

Pip blinked. “I what?”  

“Oh yeah. Full monologue. Went on for a while.” He glanced at them like he was genuinely contemplating their appeal. “Not gonna lie, I was flattered.”  

Pip groaned, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes. “I hate myself.”  

Lu chuckled. “I thought it was sweet.”  

She peeked at him through her fingers. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”  

“Immensely.”  

Pip groaned again, but her mind was racing. Because she knew Lu. She could tell he was doing this on purpose, avoiding the real thing she had said.  

She saw it now. Lu wasn’t acknowledging it because he was protecting her—like he always did. He was giving her an out. Letting her brush it off so she wouldn’t have to deal with it.  

For a long moment, there was just silence—thick and heavy, wrapping around them like neither of them knew how to break it.  

Then there was more—hazy, warm, something heavier curling in her chest. Flashes of cold air, of Lu’s arm around her, steadying her as they walked. Of his voice, softer than usual, saying You can’t just say all that.

Of her saying—

Pip sucked in a breath.

You’re all I ever wanted.

The words crashed over her like a wave, and suddenly, she was too aware of everything—the way her heart was hammering, the way Lu had hesitated when she asked if she’d said anything dumb, the way her fingers could still feel his wrapped around them.

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

Pip didn’t move. Because suddenly, she knew.

Suddenly, she wasn’t just remembering saying it. She was remembering how it felt. And the way he had held her.

The way he had not said it back.

And that was enough to realize that she had said something really very real that changed everything. Something she had never let herself say out loud, even when it was clawing at the edges of her thoughts.

Whatever this was—whatever was sitting heavy between them, waiting to be named—wasn’t something she could brush off.

It had always been there. And for the first time, she wasn’t sure if she could pretend otherwise. It wasn’t something she could take back.

She swallowed hard, fingers twisting in the blanket on her lap. No. Maybe... she could let this slide. She could laugh it off. She could let him keep pretending, keep protecting her from words she’d already said.

Or—

Pip inhaled sharply. “Lu.”

His smirk faltered, just slightly. “Yeah?”

She looked at him, really holding his gaze. Her heart was a hammer in her chest, but she forced the words out. “I meant it.”

Lu’s breath hitched. For the first time since she woke up, he looked thrown. His lips parted slightly, but no words came out.

She inhaled deeply, gathering the courage that felt like a live wire beneath her skin, and just kept going because if she stopped now she’d never say it.

“I remember,” she admitted, voice quiet but firm. “I remember saying that, and I—” She exhaled, gripping the fabric in her lap. “I meant it, Lu.”

For a second, he just stared at her, like he couldn’t believe she had actually said that out loud.  

Lu flexed his fingers slightly like he was trying not to react, but she could see it. She knew that movement. It meant he was thinking too hard, feeling too hard.  

She bit her lip, her chest tightening. “You didn’t say anything back.”

His gaze flickered to the floor. 

Pip swallowed. “Was it because I was drunk?” She hesitated. “Or… because I’m not the girl you were talking about last night?”

Lu let out a breath—sharp, unsteady. His fingers twitched, his jaw tensed. He was still trying to hold something back.

Then, finally, finally, he ran a hand through his hair, looking away for half a second before muttering, “God, Pip.”

She waited.

Something broke in his expression—something raw, something wrecked.

“It was you.” His voice was rough, unsteady. “It’s always been you.” 

It felt like the floor was escaping from under her feet.

“I didn’t say anything back because you were drunk and I didn’t think you meant it,” he admitted, voice lower now, rougher, like the words were dragging out of him. “And because… I didn’t think I could handle it if I let myself believe it.”

Pip’s breath caught.

Lu shook his head, exhaling sharply, and looked at her like she was the only thing in the world. “I’m in love with you, Pip. I have been for—God, I don’t even know how long. But I never said anything because I genuinely didn’t think you’d feel the same way.” He hesitated. “I thought if I told you, I’d just lose you.”  

Pip felt something break open in her chest. Her pulse thundered like mad in her ears. “Why?”

He let out a small, breathy laugh, shaking his head. “Because of the way you talk about love and relationships. Like it’s something that happens to other people. Like it’s something you don’t care about.”

He paused, and Pip could see the way his chest rose and fell too quickly for someone who was just standing still.

“Because I’ve watched you go on a date with someone, get bored, and never text them back. I just… I figured if you wanted something like this, you would’ve already—”

Pip’s breath hitched. “Lu.”

He exhaled. “Yeah?”

She swallowed. “I didn’t want something like this with anyone else.” Pip let out a nervous laugh, running a shaky hand through her hair. “I mean, look at me. I am horrifically bad at feelings. And I avoided dating because no one ever felt right. And I told myself I wasn’t that kind of person, that I didn’t care about romance, but—” She exhaled. “Maybe I was just lying to myself. Because it wasn’t until you that I started wanting something real.”

Lu inhaled sharply, like he’d forgotten how to breathe properly. His expression had shifted entirely, something new burning behind his eyes.

Pip felt breathless. “And now I’m saying all of this, and I don’t know how to shut up, so if you’re—”

Lu surged forward and kissed her.

Pip gasped against his mouth, barely processing before she was kissing him back, her fingers gripping his shirt, dragging him closer, tilting her head to let him deepen it.

And Lu just melted into it.

His hands found her waist instantly, his lips parting against hers like he had been waiting for this—like he had spent a lifetime holding it back, not letting himself have this, not letting himself want this.  

But now she was right there. And she meant it.  

And Lu—Lu was so in love with her, he didn’t really know how to breathe anymore.  

It was slow and warm and perfect. Like every touch they had ever shared had led to this.

When they finally pulled back, neither of them moved for a second. Their breathing was uneven, their foreheads pressed together, hands still fisted in each other’s clothes. The moment stretched between them, enveloping them, shielding them from the world.

“I love you, Philippa,” he said, barely a whisper.

Her heart skipped a beat.

Lu exhaled, brushing his nose against hers. “And I am so fucking mad at myself for not telling you sooner.”

“Yeah,” she murmured, “you’re a real idiot.” Pip let out a breathless laugh, pressing a soft, almost disbelieving kiss to the corner of his mouth. And then, whispering right against his lips, “I love you too, Luigi.” 

Lu chuckled, tilting her chin up to kiss her again, slow and deep, fingers threading into her hair.

And this time—

There was no reason for them to hold anything back.

---

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@straw8erry @belncaldern @starlightslvtt @number1yearner @fancyyanci

[sunshine-zenith]

Okay but like. AU where Mary doesn’t actually learn Cas is an Angel until waaaaay later

Her first introduction to Cas involves Dean frantically getting her to lower her gun, Cas tearfully throwing himself at Dean like a widower reunited with their believed-dead spouse, Dean hugging Cas back just as tightly, and her giving them that Oh They Gay side eye. When Dean says Cas is an Angel, let’s be real given the context she has it probably sounds Super Married. Cas agreeing that he’s an Angel, not a hunter, could come off as “yeah I put up with so much shit for this guy,” especially when paired with his exasperated “no I don’t have a harp” — it just screams “we’ve been married so long that this isn’t even an inside joke it’s a double act and I’m a reluctant but committed participant.”

Also seriously, I know she was literally just resurrected by god’s sister, but “he’s an Angel —wings, harp, you know” sounds like spousely teasing, not a proper or coherent introduction to an entire species that until that moment you didn’t know where actually real or something you could tangibly interact with

When Sam and Dean are missing and Cas attempts to locate them and takes up hunting, Mary would chalk up his lack of success to the fact that he’s not a hunter — he’s a hunter’s husband. Mary herself has personal experience with this exact thing, given that John wasn’t raised a hunter either. As such, she’s either a little softer on her assumed son-in-law, or she projects hard onto him

Cas preferring to fight with a magic blade and not firearms? Not wise in their life, but again, he’s not actually a hunter. She tentatively brings up her concerns with Dean and he says he’s working on getting Cas to use a gun, but Cas is a stubborn asshole (he says with fondness), plus he’s damn good with that blade, so he’s fine in the meantime. She raises her eyebrow but leaves it for the time being

That time Cas kills Death for her and her sons? That’s just devoted husband/in-law behavior, especially given how emotional he gets after — look closely, Cas absolutely had very human tears in his eyes as he monologues about how important and special they are to him

That time Cas almost dies horribly and is saved by a demon? Everyone just doesn’t say “it’s specifically because he’s an Angel” here, at least not when she’s in ear shot, and if Crowley still calls him “choir boy” and such, well he’s a sarcastic demon, why should she worry about his weird quips, there are more important things to deal with. For all she knows, this is just a horrible curse that any of them could’ve gotten if they were stabbed with that blade

One time she tentatively asks Sam about Cas and Dean, specifically asking how long they’ve been together. Sam just laughs in Long Suffering Little Brother

Otherwise, Mary doesn’t really ask, not really wanting to push and frankly not doing so great with the whole My Babies Are Now Older Than Me And Everyone Else I Know Is Dead thing. If Cas is weird about technology or uses strange syntax or usually lets Dean finish his meals for him, she has very little to compare it to and very little brain space to spend on it anyway. She’s still processing that her son is old enough to be married in the first place, who cares if the guy he’s grossly in love with is a little strange. He seems nice enough, and she’s content leave it at that

As a result of her keeping her distance, with a pinch of contrived convenience here, she just straight up misses all the times Cas uses his Grace or references heaven or anything like that

Yes she still knows about the whole Lucifer-Kelly-Nephilim thing, but she could just mentally categorize Lucifer with Powerful Demon — given that she was killed by a powerful demon, she doesn’t really need a theology lesson to know that Satan having a baby is probably bad. Yes she still works with the MOL, but they’ve got her on such an information diet that no one pulls her aside to say “btw you know that non-human celestial being that hangs around with your barbarian sons is a non-human celestial being, right?”

She’s a hunter from a long line of hunters, and even if she makes questionable choices she’s smart and experienced. She just has a massive blind spot where Cas is because she assumes that he’s just her sweet if strange son-in-law that her son is obviously and painfully in love with, and nobody corrects her because they assume she already knows

She finds out by complete accident in the most mundane way possible — Cas lifting the Impala so Dean can do mechanic stuff underneath it, Cas using his Grace to heal someone’s papercut, Cas accidentally cutting himself with a kitchen knife and not reaching to the injury which disappears in 2.8 seconds anyway

She shoots him on the spot. He’s fine, of course, but everyone else collectively loses their shit

At no point is it actually clarified that Dean and Cas aren’t actually together. Instead Mary walks away mildly embarrassed that she had no idea her son-in-law wasn’t human

[lullabyes22-blog]

In FnF, Silco spent a long time with Sevika and Nandi. You've mentioned he used to visit the Equinox Bazaar and haggle with the vendors. Does Silco speak Vekauran? How many languages besides Va-Nox can he speak? Also I'd love to know how you picked out the languages each character uses!

<3

I based all the languages in FnF on RL equivalents (as does League to an extent - Va-Nox is literally described as "German spoken through a mouthful of mashed potatoes" lmao).

In FnF, the most common language spoken in Zaun is the Piltovan dialect.

i.e Standard,

i e. English.

It is the common language of both cities, and used widely for trade overseas as a commercial lingua franca. Zaun, meanwhile, has its own unique patois in League lore, so I built upon that to create a sort of a fluid vernacular that borrows from different languages/dialects/slangs/syntax in FnF. (A little modern netizen jabber, a little Victorian slang, a little Mancunian, a little Roaring 20s etc)

With that in mind, I decided to base Vekauran on Hindi (given it's the home of champions like Akshan, who is pretty Bollywood-inspired in his look). Nandi and Sevika both grew up speaking Vekauran at home. But they don't have the same amount of exposure to the language; Nandi is described as having an accent when she speaks in Standard (I headcanon her as sounding similar to the actress Ashwarya Rai in this interview). After she lost her hearing, she still retained those speech patterns, having been so enmeshed in that community (folks can still have an accent even if they're hearing-impaired because they'll focus on vocal patterns and mouth movements of others around them and can retain the accent as a result).

Sevika, on the other hand, speaks fluent Standard with zero accent, but is deeply rusty at Vekauran, having run in completely different circles. Her grammar's a bit off. She struggles with the pronunciation of certain words. She can curse up a storm, but she can't do formal greetings, honorifics or small talk to save her life. Poor woman understands more than she can speak.

(Very much a third gen immigrant vibe - and it causes her no small amount of distress because her sister was the Priestess, a storyteller, poetess, and a master of the old tongue, so she feels she has to measure up to the legacy.)

Silco grew up speaking Standard, Va-Nox and Ur-Nox. His mother was from a Noxus-colonized settlement in Ionia, so she spoke that tongue at home, and could barely read or write in Standard. Also they lived in an area full of other Va-Nox-speaking families (Vander's mom was also from a nearby region, so the boys literally shared a common language and bonded over that) and it was a pretty insular community.

Silco's father was of old Oshra va'Zaun stock and spoke Ur-Nox (the ancient precursor to Va-Nox, so similar to Middle German in FnF). He was a Riverman by trade, but well-educated as his family had been part of the intelligentsia and the merchant elite before the Cataclysm. He was the one who taught Silco his letters and made sure he knew his history. After Silco entered the orphanage, he was exposed to a wide array of dialects, so picked up a smattering of everything along the way. In Holle Correctional Facility, his warden, Jonah Lascelles, spoke East Demacian (French in FnF) as well as sign language, so Silco, for three years, was immersed in that dialect, learning both at the same time. He was a fast mimic with a near-uncanny ear for accents. After moving Topside for his stint in the Academy, he picked up the Piltovan manner of speaking (and learnt to mask his working-class accent).

By the time he was a grown man, he was a code-switching chameleon who could pass as a businessman in the streets or a thug in the sheets.

However.

He can't, for the life of him, master Vekauran. Those 'R's roll too much. The consonants pop like bubble wrap. The 'D's are weird. He's got no ear for it, and that frustrates the shit out of him because Nandi could get very expressive and animated (especially in bed), and he had no idea what she was saying half the time.

("Is she cursing? Is she sighing sweet nothings? Is she singing me a nursery rhyme? What?")

("Hush," Nandi says, seeing his confusion and peppering his face with kisses. "I'll teach you.")

(It never happens, alas.)

By this stage in FnF, he can hold a basic conversation with Sevika, and his understanding is passable. His speech patterns are hella stiff, his gramma's off, and the pronunciation is your equivalent of the typical Brit with a very, very posh accent ordering a chicken curry at a Leicester Tipu Sultan.

(Sevika thinks he sounds like a complete twat. But it's kinda cute how hard he tries, so she tolerates it. For a while. )

He does have a favorite Vekauran curseword tho.

"Bhenchod" - lit. "Sister-fucker" in Hindi.

First time he heard Sevika use it, he nearly choked on his whiskey.

On the whole, he speaks Standard as a native, in addition to Va-Nox and Ur-Nox (but his diction is nowhere near as sublime as, say, Mel's), fluent East Demacian, passable Vekauran, and very rapidfire sign language. He's conversant in basic Drekkenian (Czech), a bit of old Shuriman (Classical Latin), South Shuriman (Egyptian Arabic/Masri) and knows a handful of Vastayan phrases (it's just eldritch hisses and growls). The core Ionian languages (Sintic IRL) all sound the same to him.

He can't tell the difference between any of them, so he doesn't bother. That's what Ran and Maven (his translators) are for.

Disclaimer: I speak none of the aforementioned languages besides German and sign language, so I apologise if anything's off.

Share your own language headcanons in the comments. I'd love to read them.

<333

[py-dreamer]

So... I know I'm late...

But yea! I said I was coming back with some stickers and I kept my word! I would've hoped that I could've completed the sheet in like a day but as you can see...that didn't work out

I know I've been a bit MIA lately but burnout sucks. I do have a lot of WIPS I really want to work on but again, it seems that the ProcrastiNation hath struck my feeble mortal brain again.

But anyways:

I headcanon Aroace Mei, just a personal headcanon (disagree if you like) I also like lesbian Mei but thought I'd give some aroace appreciation

Silktea was only given 1 episode but OH BOY did it fuel our wild shipping habits. And I jumped on the bandwagon. It's a reference to that scene in She-Ra where Scorpia tells Catra she 'didn't want to do this' then wraps kitty up in the blankey and cradles her like a wee baby. And Sandy would do that for any friend, I will die on this hill

Saw a fanart where Mk had a pig nose themed pacifier and I just yoinked that idea. The pig hoodie and the pacifier seems like something Tang would do for Pigsy (also to get away with free noodles cause who can say no to that face?~)

Mac showing Wukong the lantern. What can I say, mans' fascinated by them pretty lights. Though our little performer's eyes seem to be straying from the show (^u ')

I know many people have issues with shipping with Nezha and such and I know the two had a rough history but y'know what fans do; they love to make the people who kill each other soulmates (platonic, romantic or otherwise) Even if it wasn't romantic, I still love the idea of them being buddies and just chilling, the danger noodle prince and the angy prince snuggle and watch a movie (mainly from Nezha 2019 but I also saw New Gods and can I just say, I want those two twinks to bicker then kiss awkwardly and I want Yun Xiang to BEAT. HIS. ASS) but in case anyone asks, I do perceive Nezha to be a consenting adult in general outside shipping drama and if the two are adults, it does make my heart squeal when I see these two hold hands and whatnot

HOW COULD I EVER FORGET MY SPICYBOIS, inspired by that one Ponyo kiss scene. I was actually gonna make a bigger piece but then I saw someone do it already in a much better fashion than I ever could and I just gave up on the idea but Ig here, its just like the two cakes mentality and I gave it a go. Hope I could do the concept justice

Have spider queen or scorpion queen ever interacted before? No. But they are both queens and I believe Spider Queen's confidence could rub off on Scorpion Queen and she'd appreciate the company of Spider Queen's children henchmen. Also she give yummy food so lesbian venomqueens for the win

Redraw of that moment with Peng and Azure. I normally detest that bird but these two do get some gears grinding and whatever anyone says. Neither of those two are straight. I'll tell ya that.

Toxicinsanity is another rarepair that had like 1 sec screen time. I don't think they'd ever work out in canon and had virtually no chemistry. I still love all the fluffy ship content I can find of them though and if it ever were to happen. I think the mayor would scare the sh!t out of Syntax

Let's get at least one hetero couple here, Chang'e and Hou'Yi are a couple of favorites ngl, I took most of their outfits from Over the moon cause both of them looked stunning, Chang'e especially. I've seen people ship mah girl with other people and while I do agree it's healthy to move on, in my heart she will always long for Hou'Yi

Also irl, on valentines, my mum took us out for lunch, she treated us to bubble tea and donuts. We walked home so I waited to drink mah drink in my room while I drew and I accidentally finished it all... I'm so sorry mum

f*ck I forgot ironbull. Uhh....I'll draw something later, rn I need to go to bed before I get yelled at...

click pic for less sh!ty quality!

[mantacid]

Just came up with a programming language lol.

It’s object oriented (I think. I’ve never done this before), and supports a lot of features that lisp has, including

I call it RunOn, because

The Syntax kinda looks like actual sentences, and

because the period character terminates the whole program.

Now you have Syntax that kinda reads like a run-on sentence:

*define the class DOG as being an instance of a MAMMAL with an attribute called fur_type*

ASSUME (A DOG) IS (A MAMMAL WITH (A SLOT NAMED fur_type INITIALLY “brown”);

*create an instance of a DOG named Fido.*

ASSUME fido IS (A DOG);

*Fido has Spotted fur now.*

SET (THE VALUE OF (THE SLOT OF fido NAMED fur_type)) TO “spotted”;

*pretty-print the object tied to the name fido to STDOUT (me).*

DESCRIBE (THE DOG NAMED fido) TO me.

* ——> “fido is a ‘dog’ with ‘spotted’ fur_type.”*

Also, each keyword (purple, blue, and green) takes only one argument, but expects a certain number of other keywords whose definitions change based on the context of the operators before it as well as the values given to those keywords. I did this for a couple of reasons:

Because it does a good enough job at forcing an English-like syntax,

It allows for methods specializing on all kinds of aspects of the data to be implemented, but more importantly

Because if I didn’t give myself that kind of restriction, I would’ve ended up having reinvented lisp for the third fucking time.

I have no idea how to make this thing a reality, so if someone out there knows how to make esolangs and wants to give this a shot, hit me up and I’ll send the documentation I have so far.

[maaarine]

How accurate is the new Napoleon film? Sorting fact from fiction (Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Times, Nov 19 2023)

"Sir Ridley Scott’s long-awaited movie Napoleon will have a great effect on how the French emperor is viewed in the popular imagination.

So it was with some trepidation that I watched it.

Would it reproduce the old Anglo-American historical stereotype of a jumped-up Corsican tyrant, or might it recognise that in fact Napoleon created the Enlightenment’s institutions, many of which last to this day?

For here was an opportunity to change the tired conventional view of Napoleon put forward by so many postwar Anglophone historians that Napoleon was essentially merely a prototype for Adolf Hitler.

Sadly and somewhat predictably for an 85-year-old whose mindset was formed by the Second World War, Scott has gone for the intellectually discredited stereotype of a dictator who goes mad with hubris. (…)

Scott has remarked before that “f***ing historians” don’t know what happened in Napoleonic times because “they weren’t there”.

But in fact there is a plethora of believable first-hand accounts from people who were indeed there, used by historians to discover what happened.

What these first-hand accounts tell us is that Napoleon was a witty, highly intellectual and attractive personality, whose reforms changed first France and then Europe for the better.

Whenever his armies entered European cities they liberated the Jews from their ghettos, giving them civil and religious liberties.

He was therefore precisely the opposite of the malignant, humourless, Jew-hating Führer. (…)

So firm is the assumption that Napoleon’s psyche had “run wild” that he is given the line to Joséphine: “I must begin my march to Moscow.”

Yet the whole point of the 1812 campaign was that Napoleon had no intention of going more than 50 miles inside Russia, in what was intended to be a three-week campaign.

As he crossed the river Niemen, there was no “march to Moscow”.

There are plenty of people in history who have a Napoleon complex, but Napoleon himself was not one of them, despite what Scott and Kirby might say.

This show also assumes Napoleon lost in Russia solely because the weather got cold in winter, as if the highly intelligent and well-read emperor did not know it would.

No mention is made of the typhus that killed 100,000 men, which Napoleon could not have foreseen.

At one point in the movie, Joséphine forces Napoleon to say: “I am just a brute that is nothing without you.”

Quite apart from the appalling syntax, the line, like so many in this visually stunning but historically tone-deaf film, fails to ring true.

Yet it is not from thousand-page biographies that the mass of people take their history today, but from movies like this.

Henceforth, therefore, Napoleon Bonaparte — the great world force of the Enlightenment who ended the French Revolution and dragged country after country out of ancien-regime torpor and into the vibrant 19th century — will merely be a brute who was nothing without his Joséphine."

[dj-paintpony]

LEGO MONKIE KID OC TIME!

Yes, I do in fact have a lot of them, all decided by a random generator for their parents, friends, main enemy, and crush. (I’m a sucker for cute romance.)

I tried to make the characters have a decent amount of diversity.💖the art is from before my paralysis.🥹

this is Huā the daughter to Tang and The Scorpion Queen. Her best friend is Macaque, her enemy is Jin (and Yin, they’re a package deal) and her crush is Red Son. I love drawing her, as she was my first little lmk oc💖 she is very soft and introverted. She’s incredibly gentle compared to red son, and stays inside a lot. She’s also very self conscious of her fangs and poor eyesight.

these are all the other drawings of her (including a more recent picture)

Nǚwáng, (queen) daughter of Spider Queen and Macaque, best friend to Tang, her Enemy is Lady Bone demon, and her crush is Syntax. She’s the more regal, fabulous girl. She likes to flaunt, despite her short stature. She is very teasing, flirty and generous, despite her upbringing. She can’t stand seeing injustice. (Or what she views as injustice.)

All art of my queen. (Including more recent)

Húdié, (butterfly) daughter to Lady bone demon and mr tang apparently, was created with the same method as Huā, and Nǚwáng. Her best friend is Pigsy, her enemy is Ne (they’re exes), and her crush is…MK, Apparently. She’s a gentle girl, fragile, as her bones are strangely brittle. She gets flustered easily, as she wasn’t given much love growing up, being alone most of the time.

My sweet butterfly.🥹

Lín (forest, jungle, wood) son to Macaque and Chang’e, best friend to Ne Zha, Enemy to Sun Wukong, and crushing-on Mei, the Dragon girl, he’s far from ordinary and definitely isn’t afraid to showcase it. he’s very protective, and can’t stand seeing his loved ones in danger, risking everything to save them, even to his detriment. He doesn’t like MK, frustrated between understanding his words and feelings, and the fact that his mentor is the one who killed his father…

all art of my poor bean…(I didn’t draw him much..)

Yánshí, (rock) son to Ne Zha and Chang’e, finds that life isn’t much worth trudging through. Seemingly always given the worst of luck, from clear skies, to sudden thunderstorms without an umbrella while outside, to never having seen his mother even once, even on his birthdays. he has a poor look on life from being neglected and feeling unloved for the longest time… Mei is his light in the dark, the one who made him feel like he meant something…like he should live…

Unfortunately, he’s suicidal, and and has attempted before…💔

all art of this poor man…

Bǎihé (Lily), is the adored daughter of Sandy and The Spider queen. They both love their daughter with their entire hearts, and try their best to help her with her disability. My sweet baby…she’s been through bullying and mistreatment…but she was raised with love and compassion, giving her a bright outlook on life, she’s rather introverted, but MK brings the chatterbox out of her.

my darling lily… she’s been through has two cats named chocolate chip (MK’s head) and caramel mocha (Bǎihé’s lap).

Èyùn, (doom) is the loveless, cruel, and cold child of The lackey of Lady Bone demon. Her other family, friends, or loved ones are unknown to anyone, and possibly even her self. She was raised to only know how to help Lady bone demon with her plan, and help her father. not much is know, but the only person she seems to care about, is her father, striving for his approval despite his neglect of properly raising her during her childhood…

here’s the little monster…

Meet Xuànfēng (whirlwind)! He’s the son of Chang’e and Sandy, and his best friends are Yin and Jin. (Package deal, again. 🤣) pigsy is his enemy, because he doesn’t like the fact Xuànfēng can get so excited and loud. And his crush is Ne Zha, the third lotus prince! My sweet baby boy. 🥹 he’s the fluffy boy. I love drawing my sweet baby. He’s sweet and sunshiney as well as hyper (ADHD), he loves to swim, and roller skate.

[jesterjaxx]

Halloween AU lore dump!!!

❗️WARNING❗️

so much infodumping world buidling and headcannons

DJ- Robot

Originally built to be a robo cop type deal. But when given free will refused to hurt anyone and got scrapped

Was found and repurposed by "Momma" to be a son

Really fuckin loves animals. Nature in general but mostly animals.

They get spooked by him a lot though

Hes kinda sad about this but gets it.

Momma is a scraper/engineer and outfitted him with everything a "good human boy" would need, like touch receptors and an ability to taste

Nothing to be done about majorly changing how he looks tho

The ability to feel is a bit too much sometimes

Sometimes all he can feel is cold

Goes to Duncan to see if he can do something about helping communicate to animals that he is a friend. Ala magic.

Machinery and Magic don't mix well typically, you gotta be crazy specific, which isn't really Duncan's styel

Duncan likes DJ tho, and proceeds to steal some of Harolds spellbooks

Side plot of them being wayyyy to hard for him to read, in both way too high level and shitty handwritten chickenscratch that fucks with his dyslexia, so he has to ask Harold for help

Maybe they learn to better understand eachother idk

Maybe they kill eachother

Harold and Duncan team up 6 dead 9 injured every single person is fucking baffled

Anyways DJ is like iron giant up in this bitch

His Momma is kinda worried that one day he'll learn enough mechanics to fix himself up and wont need her anymore

Tyler - Harpy

Ok the chicken fear makes sense now

He gets the uncanny valley feeling looking at chickens

I would too

He would fly into a window

Can he fly?

Hes like a turkey

Or a seagull

Wait im an idiot hes a chicken

Duh

Eva - Gargoyle

Her carver loved buff women thank god almighty for that

Punches like a brick wall

Living Stone

lion paws for feet

Did you guys know sound resonates the best through solids??

Her music listening experience is legit i just know it

Noah - The Blob/ slime monster

Oh god that poor guy

Hes gonna get slime all over his books

Harold - Witch

He's the type of witch to have seperate waters for different kinds of spells

A pretty dorky Witch, even by witch standards

Wears proper witch PPE (robes and hat)

Has his sheldon Big Bang Theory style shirts on underneath tho

Uses incantations and written spells in magical languages mainly

Uses the starlight, paper, ink, historical artifacts and an assortment of magical ingredients as fuels

Has a large collection of quality spellbooks for references

Not those shitty amazon spellbooks that are just a list of pre written spells, these ones were written by some old hag 80 years ago and through flowery rambleing language tell you how write spells yourself. They go into spell syntax.

Harolds books for writing incantations and spells are spiral notebooks

If he uses smbols will typically craft a custom sygil for it

Uses alot of number magic and latin

Uses his confidence in his skills with writing spells to harness magic

Is better at doing spells for other people, when doing spells for himself he tends to overcomplicate things

Actually went to magic camps and magic summer schools

"I was trained for this!" and it's Mostly true

Can make the most specific fucking spell work for him

I cannot stress he is good at this type of casting.

Duncan's way of doing magic pisses him off. Both are convinced their way is better

Harold to Duncan ->"What the fuck do you mean you increased your strength with a posca marker, bare knuckles and a dream. How are you not dead yet >:[ "

He has a lot of respect for magic itself, Duncan's almost disrespectful way of using magic makes him mad.

Whats worse is that it works.

How Harold casts a spell

Writes down a goal -> outlines different methods to achieve it (incantations, scrolls, potions) -> writes out the spelleork with alot of detail accounting for almost every outcome -> it takes very long -> outwardly or inwardly recites writes spell to activate it -> profit

Alejandro - Siren

(I give up with organization here no more bullet points)

Mermaids and Sirens are almost identical, with few overt physical differences

Sirens will typically have colored iris', 2 finned gills, longer tounges, boned ears and uniformly sharp teeth

Mermaids have colored scalera, 3 smooth gills, finned ears and sharp canines

This isn't a rule, and in modern times there are few families of sirens or mermaids that havent mixed with other monsters at some point

Both species have shape-shifting abilities.

Mermaids have two forms, and can switch between them at will, though the process takes hours and the mermaid will have to stay in either aquatic or land form for a couple weeks before changing again. though this wait time can be speed up with tailsmen, it's can cause health problems.

Siren can shift their features at will, including shifting from aquatic to non aquatic with no wait time, some families of Siren encourage "good breeding" and fostering shifting abilities to the point of shifting bone structure, hair, colors and gender at will. This level of shifting controll is a very desirable trait, and cannot be learned.

Alejandro is one of these few families who try to stay purely Siren

Hes a 100% Siren, but unlike his brothers he lacks any shape-shifting abilities, a flaw that has brought him great shame (this is just a genetic fluke, it's like a birth defect)

but he has both a very powerful ability to enchant his words and natural charisma. Dangerous combo.

Because of the well known knowledge that Sirens can manipulate people with ease, Alejandro semi pretends that he is a Mermaid, using his long hair to obscure his gills

He more just lets people assume hes a Mermaid and does not correct them rather than actually lying

He lies about many things but outright lying about species is a bit much

Siren Speech doesn't work as good if someone's also using magic at the same time or knows what's up about it

It doesn't work that great on Heather, Duncan or Harold point blank, or Lindsay, Beth Trent and Justin if they're shifting or shifted

Good thing hes manipulative on his own!

Beth - Mermaid

Yeah sure why not

I don't know enough about Beth yet i need a moot whose obsessed with her

Ezekiel - Ghost

Lmao hes invisible

Poor dude probably gets looked over all the time

Hes just clothes and a transparent person

Justin - Werewolf

The twilight girls would go crazy over him i know it

Cody - Puppet

Oh poor dude

Itll look cool tho

Hed make knock on wood jokes all the time

Trent - Werecat

The trustin girls would go crazy over this i know it

But real like hes chillin

Would use claws as a pick

Geoff - Frankenstein

A man of the people

Literally

Looses limbs easily

Wakes up after a party like "wheres my leg lmao"

Heather - Zombie

Oh this is good

Shes vegan

Would insult people like "i can tell you have a brain why the hell don't you use it"

Very concerned over phsyical appearance

Uses so so many products

Pretty alive looking for a zombie cuz of it

It's kinda creepy

Her eyes got no eyeshine tho

Like a shark.

Gwen - Skeleton/Ghost

Ok this was an accidental double Gwen got both Skeleton and ghost

Since Ezekiel is already a ghost i'm Gonna lean into the Skeleton bit more but throw a transparent silhouette over all of her for the ghost bit

Ghost vs Zombie rivalry

She'd do all sorts of cool drawings and markings on her bones

Gwen, drawing a bat on her femur with sharpie: tattoo moment

Her eyeliner is also sharpie

Who the fuck cares about skincare when you don't have skin

Lindsay: you shouldn't put permanent marker on your face! It can hurt you 🥺

Gwen, floating bones:

LeShawna - Chimera

YES I LOVE MONSTER COMBOS

LIKE COMBINATIONS OF MULTIPLE ANIMALS

lets do classic chimera but with one head

Lean into the Lioness bit cuz Leshawna is a boss bitch and Lionesses are so fucking cool

I might give her a scorpion tail

Duncan - Witch

Another double whoops lol

He's a "fuck it we ball" typa witch

lmao he and Harold are beefing like crazy i know it Harold has 12 spellbooks hes memorized with their specific ways of casting and Duncan is writing runes on his knuckles with sharpie

Duncan to Harold ->"Why are you using 2 pages of latin for a fire spell??"

"Because i need only this bit of wood to light on fire a little bit and nothing else and if i dont i could loose control of it or blow it up or it might not even start"

*stares in did finger guns at a branch and cremated it for fun*

Harold to Duncan ->"Why are you writing runes on your nailpolish??"

"i'm tired of being the only scary bitch here without claws"

*stares in once accidentally rubbed spell notes off of his spellbook and onto his face while passed out on his desk and gave himself acid burns for 3 weeks"

They go crazy they go stupid

Hes self taught

The Duncan and Harold bullying arc turned Street smart vs actually Smart but make it witches

Mostly just picking shit up as he goes

"Stole" (it was free) a pamphlet on different types of magical symbols and has managed to make the symbols illustrated in it work for almost every spell he wants

Fueled by raw unrelenting audacity

Real lore tho- magic is created with belief and harnessed with confidence, you can either go the intellectual route and control every variable and have trust in your control of those variables to harness the magic like Harold, or like Duncan, have enough semi-unearned confidence in yourself to harness magic with little need for more than a few variables.

Basically as a general rule, it has as much meaning as you truthfully believe it does

Doesn't explain what hes casting or how hes doing it

"Where'd you learn how to do that?"

"what are you a cop?"

(learned from illustrations, word of mouth, and other witches on the street)

Has a couple stick n poke magical symbols, several other scribbled on symbols that are temporary

Biggest one is a glyph for fire on his hand, he doens most of his spells using it

Has burns around his glyph tattoos from spells backfiring cuz he got distracted

Uses sharpies, spraypaint, eyeliner and the insides of firecrackers for drawing symbols

If he needs a magical material he'll typically substitute whatever he has on him, belief goes a long way.

"Pure Holy Silver?... this earring looks silver enough

This doesn't work for potions cuz potions are only a little left to normal chemistry.

Has alot of talisman he wears

Carries extra ingredients on him ala accessories cuz fuck it it looks cool

Mains his spells with symbols, uses potions or material fuels if he cant make a good connection between what he wants and one of 10 symbols he remembers at any given time

Uses moonlight, bones, rocks, and personal artifacts as fuels

How duncan casts a spell

Draws glyph -> creates a mental connection between what the glyph means and what he wants to do (this is mostly subconscious with Duncan he doenst know what hes doing he just knows he does it well)-> activates glyph physically (ie hitting, tapping, lighting, punching, tracing with finger)

Example: draws fire glyph on Chris's camper -> wants to set it on fire but not the surrounding grass and trees -> smacks the side of the camper that has the glyph on it -> profit

Duncan, to Harold: You make magic math, i make magic my bitch

Bridgette - Alien

Aww she could be so cute

Surfer girl from planet nine

Owen - Plant Monster

This could visually look really cool

Big carnivorous plant

Izzy - Angel

kaleidoscope = biblically accurate form, cuz she "Looks like a kaleidoscope! Duh!"

Lindsay - Selkie

If you steal her coat ill fucking kill you

Sadie - Vampire

Ough thats cute

I'm Gonna make her pigtails batwings

Katie - Zombie

undead girlfriends

Sadie thinks Katie is so pretty it doesn't matter her eye just fell out

Courtney - Demon

Oh this bitch looooves contracts

Is also upset about Duncan but she just doesn't like witches in general

Whats the point of making deals with humans for magical powers of some humans give themselves magical powers

Demon of what?? Pride maybe?? Or envy??

Shes a sweetheart tho