#i have not yet decided who will fall into which category

[gloomysoup]

okay i know i have so many other wips rn but the brain worms are worming SO

[help-itrappedmyself]

Summoning Game Show Part 5

Masterpost

I just spent an unnecessarily long time making A Quiz so I would have questions and answers ready to go, only to not put any of them in. And spend a ridiculously long time doing math because I had to redo it like three times. Numbers are not my strong suit. In any case I now have a fully functional Jeopardy game and the next part.

~~~~~

It’s a close race. They were equal on the mountain track and neither really got sidetracked by Skulker on such a straightforward route. They made it to Zone Two almost even, but Jason almost immediately falls behind as Skulker hits him with a paintball. Being shot at shocked him more than anything, but realizing it was paint, he stopped trying to avoid it and just kept going, letting his armor deal with most of it. Skulker got bored and quickly went after Johnny instead, who got irritated and started a shouting match with Skulker as he drove. The different terrains meant they had to keep slowing down and speeding up, and Skulker got bored with the paintballs and started throwing water balloons instead. This was more annoying for the drivers because the water made the sand and mud trickier to drive on. Both Johnny and Jason both got their bikes temporarily stuck in mud and had to drag them back out while Skulker cackled above them. 

Zone three allowed Jason to catch back up to Johnny. This was what he was used to and he was able to go faster with more confidence. Johnny and Jason separated after Skulker shot a net at them both. And they found each other again on a straightaway leading to the finish line. It was close at the end, but Jason managed to pull out ahead. 

They shook hands at the finish line, walking back into the main room together. They separated when Johnny left to go back to the stands, followed closely by Skulker. 

“Wonderful race, very intense, great driving all around.” Danny says, very entertained. “Well earned win, Jason. I’ll remind you this is what you have currently.”

“What letter would you like to guess?”

“I’ll take I.”

“Another vowel, very good.” Danny waves his hand again. “There are two I’s!

“The next challenge is trivia, which will be played by Red Robin as he is the only one who has yet to participate in a challenge.”

A new podium appears on stage as Danny’s podium rotates so the two are facing each other. Red Robin walks up to the new podium.

“ The theme is SPACE!” Danny is so excited he is practically bouncing. A jeopardy-looking game board appears on the screen. “ You have 6 categories, all space themed, they are:  Earth, Other Planets, Space Numbers, Stars, Other Space Entities, and Spacecrafts! There are 9,000 possible points, you need to get at least 7,500 in order to win! The game can stop as soon as we’ve reached that number.”

Red, being Red, decides to do all the hardest questions first. He starts at the bottom left corner, gets the first question right. Tim thinks since he got the hardest one he could probably finish out the Earth category pretty easily, so he goes down the list and gets them all correct. 

With 1,500 points he decides to start the next category with the hardest question as well. This is his first wrong answer. He starts going up the list, and gets the 400 incorrect for this category as well. Danny is disappointed. The rest of the boys are infinitely relieved that Tim is the one doing the trivia part. They probably would have lost already. 

Tim does get the rest of the ‘Other Planets’ category correct and moves on with 2,100 points and 6,000 points left on the board. He decides to start ‘Space Numbers’ with the 100 point question and keeps going, acing the whole category. He now has 3,600 points. With 4,500 points left on the board he needs 3,900 more points. This means he can only lose 600 more points. He aces the ‘Stars” category, then moves on to ‘Other Space Entities’. He misses the last question, leaving him with 6,100 points and 1,500 left on the board. Tim can only afford to miss the 100 point question, so he decides to start at 500 and get it over with.

He continues until he reaches the 200 point question. If Tim answers this one he will win, and he does so correctly the screen changes to shoots of confetti.

[meanbossart]

What is your take on Astarion's relationship with his siblings?

I have put unreasonable amounts of time into thinking about what the dynamics were like during Cazador's reign in that house. I mean, imagine sharing the same tasks, bedrooms, and general experiences of abuse and duress with the same people FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS. That's absolute madness. If any of you have had experiences with co-living with family under stress for any extensive amount of time, you know very well the levels of emotional 4D chess-ing that tend to take place as a result. You end up distributing so much frustration and anger around and often onto the very same people you will ultimately seek comfort from - this is that situation but blown up to impossible proportions.

So, "strained" doesn't really do justice as a descriptor here. I believe the family had a dynamic, ever-evolving hierarchy within itself, years-worthy of time where the spawn shifted alliances and made "cliques" within themselves - rebels would evolve into pushovers and trusted friends would turn into snitches. You had endless amounts of drama within the group and flies on the walls would witness them cut each other's heads off one day and sob into one another's laps the next.

Naturally I think all of them were resistant to the concept of being a "family" at first, but it's pretty much impossible to not develop family-like ties throughout that long of a period. Following Cazador's death, I believe there would be further splintering within as some want to maintain said ties and others are eager to cut them - seeing both their siblings and the relationships themselves as yet another painful reminder of what Cazador imposed upon them.

I think Astarion falls into the latter category. If he had his way, he would never see, speak, or think of his brothers and sisters again. And while the sibling nomenclature is a deeply-rooted habit, he doesn't think it holds any legitimacy whatsoever (whether or not that's the case in his heart is another matter).

Dalyria (the moon-elf physician, whom I have come up with a story, personality, background and motivations during several long showers that might not necessarily line up with yours, so, if anything of what I'm about to say seems pulled out of a hat, it's because it was) is the opposite. She has grown attached to the constant presence of her siblings and taken a mother-goose role upon herself. With the Exception of Leonard and Violet (more on that later) she has decided they are her responsibility and wishes the group would stick together.

I like to think that there's a lot of history between those two in particular. Obviously, the interactions between Astarion and his siblings are very brief, but It's enough to run with. Dalyria shows a lot of concern and understanding towards him and even pleads when he threatens Petras' life - again, I think she did a lot of trying to pragmatically keep the peace among them and genuinely grew attached to a few - Astarion being the main one of said few. You even get the smallest hint of a on-and-off intimate relationship with the way he derisively calls her by her nickname.

Also, Astarion very occasionally showcases enough emotional maturity that I could see him latching onto the one other person around who seems to have her wits about her, but he's still flawed enough that Dalyria can think of him as a younger sibling that needs her care. Not to mention that, to me, she demonstrates a penchant for moral superiority and a dash of a machiavellian outlook, based on her diary and her completely unapologetic initiative to kill a child on the small chance it would lead her to a cure - not any child either, but Leonard's child. I can totally see Astarion sympathizing and gravitating towards someone like that.

Which brings us to the rest of the siblings - I would wager that, at least by the end of it all, Leonard and Violet were the odd-ones out. As it tends to happen within any tight-knit group, when one succeeds by stepping over the others (even if the reasons for it are justifiable) that brews a lot of resentment and eventual exclusion. Leonard not only did that, but he apparently still held onto hope of future and family outside the Szarr house; wheter or not everybody wanted out, I think a us-versus-them mentality is unavoidable under those circumstances, and Leonard was looked down upon by the others in their respective ways for what he was trying to do.

Violet just seems like she had gone a little cuckoo to me. We get very little about her, but when I think of an adult woman playing childish pranks on her roomates while you are all stuck in what's essentially a human trafficking ring... I think of a person who's either just a very silly breed of evil or who has lost touch with reality, and the latter is more interesting, imo. I think no one liked her, not only because she was a nuisance but also because she became completely emotionally untouchable. I think both Violet and Leonard are spawn who did not survive long after they were all freed.

I'll stop here before I ramble on for another 8 paragraphs about Aurelia, Yousen and Petras (Oh Petras, my beloved), but, yes, suffice to say that I believe it was kind of complicated LOL

EDIT: Not me calling Leon "Leonard" this whole post. Sorry buddy, you look like a Leonard.

[citruslullabies]

Ghoul x reader x Lucy, Cooper and Lucy find reader as they're traveling and take her in, Lucy falling HARD first and coop not being able to resist either!! Reader is like their cute lil partner, they do their best to share (or throuple!! Though I feel like no matter what they'd fight a bit over reader teehee)

Coming up!! Please be patient with me, I haven't written for these two before

Trigger warnings: none

Romantic/platonic?: romantic✨

Requested by: anonymous

Category: fluff

Ship (romantic or platonic): Cooper Howard x reader x Lucy

Word count: 726

Cowboy Competition

The wastelands were violent, ruthless to kill anything on land from dehydration or starvation. Or even being killed to become nutrition for someone else.

But coming across someone alive and worthy enough of life was rare, and that's who you were. You were on the brink of death when they found you. The ghoul wanted to leave you for dead but the vault dweller stopped and tried to save you, even with the risk of being left behind but by some miracle the man decided he'd wait on her. Now you were part of their journey to find Lucy’s father for answers in which you had no questions, but understood that they did.

Lucy walked beside you, her big brown eyes watching your every step as you were cleaning Cooper’s gun. Cooper only allowed you to come along if you had made yourself useful, which you had tried to. She spoke up after a few moments, giving you a soft smile as she held her hands behind her back. “You know you don't have to clean his guns, right? He can do that himself. You don't have to worry about it.”

You looked over at her, but before you could answer the ghoul walking ahead of you two answered for you. He didn't turn around to look at you two but he still spoke up. “Now sweetheart, if she wants to clean my guns I have no objections. So don't go putting your nose where it don't belong.” he said while clicking his teeth together, looking down at Dogmeat as he trotted beside him. You gave a small bat of the eyes before smiling reassuringly at Lucy, freeing up one of your calloused hands to rest on her shoulder. The fabric of her jumpsuit felt so foreign to your hands, but you didn't mind.

“It's alright, I really don't mind. Don't really know how else I could make myself useful.” You hummed before continuing to walk and clean as you go.

Time had passed and you had come to the realization that their journey was a long one, but it was a bit too late for you to turn back now. Especially with growing affections from both of your new friends, Lucy being the first to show. She was extra sweet, helping you carry things and allowing you to rest against her shoulder when you made camp at night and she'd rub circles into your cheek with her thumb as you dozed off, which she just found to be the sweetest thing. But to Lucy’s dismay a certain cowboy started to take a liking to you too.

As things were settling for the night and it was time to rest, you were getting ready to lean against Lucy for warmth like you had been doing but a southern drawl caught your attention.

“How about you come over here and sleep in my arms darlin, I imagine I'm a whole lot warmer than Vaultie over there.” He drew out, sitting down with Dogmeat cuddled into his side. Cooper patted the canine on the head and gave you his signature smirk. “You can even snuggle with the dog, lord knows he won't leave my side.” He added to sweeten the pot, earning a scowl from Lucy before she gently took your hand in hers.

She squeezed your hand in both of hers, looking into your eyes warmly and lovingly as she tried to get you to look at her and only her. “I'm probably a lot more comfortable to lean up against, so why don't you just.. stay here? With me?” She offered softly, which led to bickering and you just laying down and trying to fall asleep alone to ignore them. Coop was in his 200’s and Lucy in her 20’s, yet they both behaved like children. You sighed and snuggled your shoulders into the sand, popping one eye open when you suddenly felt gloved hands scoop you up and hold you close, before a softer body laid beside the both of you and tried to hold you as well. It felt like getting tangled up in wires, but it was people. You tilt your head up to see Cooper laying back with his hat over his face, and Lucy with her forehead against your cheek with shut eyes.

For once maybe, they wouldn't be so competitive.

Thanks for requesting!

[1arkspur-aconitum]

THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND (s.r.)

IN WHICH: Spencer shows up late to work wearing glasses for the first time…

PAIRING: Season 3!Spencer Reid/Fem!BAU!OC

CATEGORY: fluff

CONTENT: pining, oblivious idiots in love, swearing, Emily being a little meddler

WORD COUNT: 3.7 (this was meant to be only 1k…whoops…)

PUBLISHED: 03/10/24

‘OH MY GOD.’

It’s the best I can do. It is the only thing I can think as Spencer Reid steps through the glass doors into the bullpen.

It’s one of those rare days where Spencer arrives later than me—later than the rest of the team, in fact—and I’m already sitting at my desk when he walks in. A cup of coffee from the Paper Cup (arguably the best coffee in Virginia, bite me Derek Morgan) steams away beside a half-eaten blueberry muffin, the crumbs of which litter the crossword before me. It’s partially completed, but I have yet to finish this specific paper’s puzzle without the genius’ help—I swear it’s almost as if they designed it for him. I’ve even marked little stars next to the ones I’m intending to ask Spencer.

Or, at least, the questions I was intending to ask Spencer. I may not ever get the opportunity to because I think he has decided to kill me this morning.

Spencer Reid steps into the bullpen dressed in brown slacks (as usual) and a striped shirt tucked into said slacks (also normal), but that’s where the familiarity ends.

He’s not wearing a tie which is very bizarre. In fact, the top buttons of his shirt are undone as if he’s rushed out of the door. From this distance I can see the contours of his throat.

We once had a surprisingly in-depth conversation about why ties are more commonly associated with men (due to the inherent power and authority we attach to them) and Spencer said that he tried to always wear one because it made people take him more seriously. I distinctly remember it because it made me kind of sad. The idea that people didn’t take him seriously bothered me more than I’d care to admit.

It’s not the tardiness, nor the lack of a tie, that wipes every thought from my brain, though. It’s not even the way he has pushed his hair away from his face like he’s some kind of Disney prince—though that on any other day would have done something similar to hitting the delete key on a computer.

No, it’s the damn glasses.

Spencer Reid has the audacity to be wearing a pair of horn rimmed glasses.

They’re perched on his nose as if they belong there, which—judging by the way they make his face distort when he turns to greet Derek—they do. I don’t know what it is specifically, but seeing him in glasses makes my stomach drop out of my feet, through several floors of the Quantico building, and deep into the ground.

Obviously Spencer is smart. Anyone who has the luxury of meeting him can tell you as such. It’s not as if he hides it, mister three PhDs and counting. But…but the glasses just do something extra, highlight that aspect of him, and I’ve always been a sucker for intelligence.

I genuinely didn’t think he could get prettier.

‘Shut your mouth, you’ll start drooling.’ Emily sidles up to my desk, thankfully keeping her voice low. I jump embarrassingly and manage to drag my eyes away from where Spencer is deep in discussion with Derek about something Derek doesn’t appear to want to talk about. Astrophysics? The flight path of bumblebees? If I was in Derek’s place, I would be hanging off of Spencer’s every word. ‘Honestly, could you be any more transparent?’

‘I…I’m not transparent!’ I say, but it does take me a second to work out what she’s saying. I take a distracting sip of my coffee, trying to ignore how the light slicks off of the frames as Spencer nods vigorously. A small strand of hair falls into his face and he brushes it away carelessly. ‘Maybe—maybe I was just…admiring the make, or something.’

‘I’m not stupid.’ Emily scoffs, knocking me with the back of her hand. She seems as if she is enjoying this way too much. There’s a sardonic gleam in her eye as she raises an eyebrow. I glower up at her over the rim of my coffee, imagining how it would feel to toss it in her face—anything to get that smug look off of it. ‘You can barely form a sentence.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I turn my nose up at her haughtily. I feel very much the petulant child denying having broken into the biscuit jar even when their mouth is covered in crumbs. ‘See? A perfect sentence.’

‘You’re not fooling anyone.’ Emily feels the need to tell me, eyes flickering between me and Spencer. I make a conscious effort not to look at him. It’s harder than I thought it would be. I wedge my foot underneath one of the spokes of my chair, forcing it to stay directed towards Emily. She grins as if she can sense my inner discord. ‘Y’know, for a profiler, you’re not very good at being discreet.’

‘I’m always discreet.’ The lie tastes bitter in my mouth and I follow it up with a sip of coffee. I don’t know where to look, what to do with myself, so I decide to focus on Emily. She’s wearing a new pair of trousers that have an embellishment up the side, a few beads shining in the sunlight streaming into the office. I wonder if she’ll let me borrow them…

‘I beg to differ.’ Emily perches herself on Spencer’s desk, crossing her legs. The tiny beads glitter like a mirrorball. This is fun for her. She likes making me squirm, and my respect for Emily is declining with every moment she holds me under this particular microscope. Part of me wonders if Emily truly is a sadist. ‘Come on, just admit it.’

‘I refer you to my previous statement,’ I swing my chair around even more to face her, firmly putting my back to where I assume Spencer and Derek are still talking. God, please don’t overhear this. What would I even say if he did? ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Sure.’ She laughs brightly, not believing me for a second—to be fair to her, I don’t even believe myself. I really should get better at lying to my coworkers. It’s frustrating that, to be a profiler, you have to be inherently astute. I’ve always been a relatively open book, which makes this whole situation worse. I have no doubt that my every thought is plastered there for her to dissect. ‘I can’t blame you, you know. I mean, it is very…different. If you’re into that kinda thing, which I think you are—’

‘Please stop.’ I say. My fingers tangle into my hair as I lean forwards, the points of my elbows bruising the soft flesh above my knee.

I hate this feeling. Being so exposed, so vulnerable, being seen like this has never been something I’ve enjoyed. Maybe it is something to do with my childhood, but I never like to think about that too hard. What it comes down to is that I can tease people incessantly, but when the tables have flipped? I hate it. I wonder what that says about me..

‘Just ask him out.’ Emily’s voice is softer now, less ribbed with merciless humour. I look up at her with a disgusted expression–as if that would ever happen. Spencer is my colleague, my friend. There’s no way I’m putting myself out there like that, and she should know that already. She sighs. ‘Seriously. What’s the worst that could happen?’

Uh, everything? He could say no. I could seriously embarrass myself–a habit I have a tendency to do. I could vomit on his new shoes. In fact, Spencer probably doesn’t even like me in that way–thinking about it, I have no idea if Spencer’s even attracted to anyone. He’s never spoken about dates like Derek does, nor mentioned exes. When we talk about our first kisses, he stays silent. Whenever the topic deviates towards something unsuitable for work, Spencer noticeably stays out of it. Maybe he’s just not into anything like that.

That thought hollows out the pit of my stomach for a second.

‘If I answer that, then you’ll just think that I know what you’re talking about.’ I sense her words for the trap that they are. What a sneaky bitch. I narrow my eyes at her and Emily’s eyebrow twitches imperceptibly. A tell. Ever since we met, Emily has had a thing about trying to trick me into confessing my secrets at any opportunity she can get. I think she thinks it’s more fun if she doesn’t ask the question straight up. ‘So no. I’m not going to deign that with a response.’

‘You’re impossible.’ Emily groans. She tries to kick my chair with a free foot, but misses by a mile. Sucker. Like the child I am, I stick my tongue out at her. ‘Come on, you have no idea how painful it is to watch you pining–’

‘You think watching me pine is painful?’ I retort, propping my chin up on my elbow. It’s only when the words are out of my mouth that I realise I may have given a little bit too much away. Emily’s eyes light up with a familiar glee. My cheeks heat and I scowl. ‘Besides, I was merely observing.’

‘Whatever helps you sleep at night, honey.’ Emily practically purrs, a mischievous glint in her eye that I decidedly do not like. She pushes off of Spencer’s desk, her fingers trailing along the edge as she meanders to her own. As she does so, her lips curve into a knowing smirk. She mutters something under her breath that is just loud enough for me to catch the hint of amusement.

‘Care to share?’ The words are out of my mouth before I realise that I probably won’t want to hear what she has to say. Yet another one of Emily’s verbal pitfalls—I can’t be expected to spot all of them after-all. Sometimes I think talking to Emily is like navigating a field of bear traps.

‘Oh, nothing—just that you two are more similar than you realise.’ Her voice drips with feigned innocence. She chuckles as she sits herself down, opening a stack of files on her desk with a flourish, effectively ending the conversation and leaving me in a whirlwind of my own thoughts.

More similar than I realise? What on Earth does she mean by that? I know we’re both considered smart—we’re both doctors, we work in the same field, we’re around the same age. Admittedly, I’m not as smart as he is, but everyone can say that. There’s always been something different about Spencer.. He has always been a cut above the rest, a standard no one else can possibly hope to achieve. How could I ever compare myself to that?

I turn my seat around and allow myself a brief glance over to where Spencer and Derek are still standing. Spencer is still talking animatedly, hands gesturing in the space between them. Don’t even get me started on his hands because we could be here for literal hours. A doctoral thesis is 60,000–80,000 words. I reckon I could write that much purely on his hands.

Derek is currently looking at him with a fond, if slightly exasperated expression, having succumbed to his fate of listening to whatever it is Spencer is rambling about. They’re a strange pair but there’s no doubting the love they share between them. It’s honestly so endearing.

My gaze drifts from the pair of them to Spencer. With the glasses, it’s different somehow. The lenses magnify his eyes, making them larger, more expressive. I can see the rapid movement as he processes whatever Derek is saying in response to his rambling, I can watch the slight furrow of his brow as he formulates a response. The more I inspect him, the harder it is for me to work out why I like them so much. Perhaps it’s because he seems…softer, somehow. Less intimidating and more approachable.

More human.

Then it hits me.

The glasses are a vulnerability. They’re an admission that the perfect Spencer Reid is anything but, that, as much as his mind is as sharp as a blade, his eyesight is not. For some reason, that makes him even more attractive to me. Though, to be fair, there’s not much that would make him less attractive to me.

I tear my eyes away, a familiar heat rippling up the back of my neck. I can’t believe I’m having thoughts like this about my coworker. It’s unprofessional, impolite, and definitely dangerous. But I can’t seem to stop myself.

Every time I see him in those glasses, the more I think about what it would be like to kiss him with them on. Would he take them off, or would I? Or, maybe, he leaves them on as I wrap my hands around the back of his neck, pulling him down towards me. They wouldn’t get in the way if we were careful…

For God’s sake.

I try to focus on my crossword but the words swim before my eyes. All I can see is Spencer’s face with those damn glasses, and the annoyingly infuriating way that they make his eyes sparkle. Perhaps Emily is right–perhaps I am as transparent as a window. This whole thing is stupid. I shouldn’t be having these thoughts, but it’s not like I can defenestrate them very easily.

Just as I am contemplating burying myself under several feet of damp earth, effectively giving up on the day entirely, Spencer and Derek seem as if they finish their conversation. Derek claps Spencer on the shoulder as the pair of them start to make their way towards us. I do my best to look busy, scribbling down a word on my puzzle that I am 99% sure isn’t correct. My heart hammers in my chest.

Jesus Christ, get your shit together, girl. It’s just an awkward, tall, lanky man. He’s not Hugh Grant. Or James Marsters. He’s just Spencer.

I don’t know if that sentiment makes it better or worse.

‘Morning, June.’ Spencer’s gentle, warm voice drags me out of my shame spiral. When I look up, he’s standing next to his desk, hands clasped in front of him as he peers down at me through those fucking glasses.

I plaster as much of a genuine smile on my face as possible. ‘Morning, Spencer. You’re looking very dashing today.’

Dashing? What the hell was that? Who says that? If I could make a time machine and return back to a few seconds earlier, I would. But, alas, I simply have to wait and see how Spencer responds.

His lips quirk upwards in a shy smile. ‘Really? Thank you. You, uh, you look rather…rather lovely yourself.’

‘Oh, uh, thanks, Spence.’ I mentally kick myself for sounding so flustered, looking anywhere but directly at him. I don’t think I look ‘rather lovely’ today–I’m wearing brown denim flares and a shirt, nothing too fancy. I try to regain some composure. This is so unlike me that it scares me. ‘So, new glasses?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ he says, pushing them up the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand. My eyes trace a vein that vanishes under the cuff. ‘I ran out of contacts and didn’t have time to go to the opticians. I don’t really like them, though, they kind of get in the way.’

‘Really?’ I try not to sound too surprised and/or offended, but I don’t think it worked very well. The next words I say are pumped with honesty. ‘I think they look good on you. Actually, they really suit you.’

‘Do you genuinely think so?’ He sounds as if he doesn’t believe me, but the corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiles. I nod, mouth suddenly very dry. Spencer sits on the edge of his desk where Emily had been moments before, crossing his long legs at the ankle. The odd socks (pink on the left, neon green on the right) make me smile. ‘I always think they make me look…well, nerdy. Derek agrees.’

I can’t not laugh a little at that, taking a sip of my coffee as I work out how to say what I want to without seriously offending him.

‘Spencer, sweetheart, I’m sorry to tell you this, but you are the epitome of nerdy without the glasses. And–and that’s not a bad thing in the slightest. It’s part of what I like about you.’

‘Oh.’ Spencer turns a furious shade of red, eyes dropping like a stone to stare intently at the floor. I immediately regret the words, but have to play it off as if I don’t. Sweetheart is a new term of endearment and one I didn’t intend to use, but it slipped out. I lean back in my seat, angle my head…do I backtrack? Do I apologise? I’m about to do as such when I see it. A tiny smile. Spencer’s next words are just loud enough for me to hear. ‘Well, thank you.’

‘That’s okay.’ I grin, crossing my arms over my chest and trying to put on a picture of nonchalance. If Emily is to be believed, he can see right through it, but it makes me feel better. I need to say something–anything–else before the silence gets too loud. ‘I actually didn’t know you wore contacts, let alone glasses.’

‘Yeah, I just find contacts easier–did you know that Leonardo da Vinci was the one who was first credited with coming up with the idea of contact lenses in 1508? It wasn’t created in his time, of course, but he was the one who first posited the idea of altering corneal power.’ Spencer’s hands gesture in the space between us as he endearingly rambles on about the creation of contact lenses. It’s sweet, and I let him talk for a while, using this opportunity to watch him. He’s just so pretty that it’s hard to focus. ‘And modern day lenses, the silicone ones, weren’t made until 1998.’

‘Wow, that’s kinda cool.’ I hum, taking a sip of my now almost-cold coffee. ‘I don’t know, I had you pegged as the kind of guy who doesn’t like putting his finger in his eye.’

‘What?’ Spencer chuckles, raising an eyebrow. He pushes his glasses up again and my heart stammers. ‘How could you possibly know that about someone?’

‘Spencer, you’re a known germaphobe. You don’t even shake hands.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t want someone else to put my lenses in,’ Spencer physically shudders at this idea. ‘But if I do it, it’s just my germs.’

‘I suppose that makes sense. If you had a twin, though, would you let them do it? Or someone with super clean hands? What about if you broke your hands and your glasses, and needed someone else to put them in for you?’ I rattle off question after question, knowing I really should stop talking, but it’s as if there’s a torrent of words I cannot control. ‘I mean, there are plenty of, of situations where you may need someone to…to put your contacts in…’

What the fuck am I on about? Oh God, this isn’t happening to me…I never thought I would be so swayed by a pretty face.

‘You’re a strange one.’ Spencer says, after a beat, and his voice is playful. He leans backwards and braces himself on the desk. ‘I don’t know, it depends. I mean, I wouldn’t let Derek do it, but…’

‘I wouldn’t let Derek do it for me, and I don’t even wear contacts.’ I laugh, tilting my head to the side and giving him a cheeky grin. He returns it, and for a moment, we just look at each other. The world narrows, as it always does, to just me and him. There’s a familiar warmth in my stomach that has always been intoxicating.

‘I’d let you put my contacts in.’ Spencer says the words as if they had been building up behind his lips. Pink stains the tops of his cheekbones. It might be a trick of the light, but I’m pretty sure that his gaze flickers down to my mouth for a fraction of a second before returning back to my eyes. My breath hitches and I have to look away.

‘Really? I don’t know if I should be flattered or kind of grossed out.’ Another sentence I regret saying, but what does one say to something like that?

Spencer laughs, but it sounds kind of forced. ‘Well, let us hope that it will never come to that. But, if it does, don’t let any of the others do it. Lord knows where their hands have been.’

I laugh too, but before I can say anything more, Hotch’s voice booms across the bullpen. He’s calling Spencer to his office, and the tranquil spell between us is shattered.

Spencer jumps, startled, and clears his throat. He pushes his glasses further up his nose and stands up. He offers me a muttered ‘sorry’ as he walks away, speeding out of the bullpen of desks and heading towards Hotch. I watch him go reluctantly, only looking away when he vanishes inside and the door closes behind him.

The groan I let out is loud enough to make Derek look up, but I bury my head in my hands before any of them can jump on me whilst I’m vulnerable. What the fuck was that? I’m not usually one to get flustered when faced with a pretty man, and usually I’m pretty confident around Spencer. Evidently there’s something about the glasses that turns me into a blathering school girl. It’s so stupid that I have no choice but to get a grip.

When I look up from my hands, determined to not let Spencer’s new eyewear affect me, Emily is watching me with a bemused expression. She must have heard the entire interaction.

‘Smooth, June. Real smooth.’ She says from over her coffee mug, the steam coiling around her like she’s some demon. The devious grin on her face doesn’t help that mental image.

I simply flip her off and return to my crossword.

Nosy bitch.

THANK YOU FOR READING! I CAN’T DECIDE IF I LIKE THIS OR NOT BUT FIGURED WHY NOT? MORE SPENCER REID FICS ON THE WAY!

[enaelyork]

Howdy!

I just discovered your blog and I am excited to read your Cooper Howard stuff.

I have a (18+) request for Cooper Howard as The Ghoul. Could I have him, the reader, and Lucy, traveling to New Vegas together and the reader and Cooper can't get a moment alone togther. Like Lucy accidently keeps interrupting or won't take the hint to leave, so Cooper at one point just says to her to leave so he can fuck the reader. Lucy feels so bad and leaves, and then the reader and Cooper go at it lol.

No worries if you can't do the request, I just want to say your an awesome writer!

Thanks❤️

Hey Anon ! Thx you so much for this request !

I reeeaaaaalllllly like this awkward plot. Here we go ! You u enjoy it.

Pls be cool, english is not my first langage.

+ 18 DNI / Cooper Howard/ The Ghoul x Reader / P in V/ Fingering/ Piece of violence/ Unprotect sex.

Banners by @saradika

Word : +/-2.6 k

My ask for Cooper Howard is Open

You wanted him.

There was nothing consistent with this need. Firstly because your first altercation wasn't anything like a love affair (unless hand-to-hand combat fell into that category), then because...Damn, he's more irradiated than a hundred power plants nuclear weapons combined.

But it was eating you up.

Eating away at every bit of your mind and reason. Every movement he made, every word that escaped his mouth made your stomach twist. It seduced you in all its horror, in all its brutality and you loved to consume yourself in this deep obsession.

And him too.

Oh yes. Him too.

You didn’t immediately notice what was happening until that evening. At the end of a grueling journey through the wastelands, you decided to take a break to spend the night in a less dangerous place. And through the flames of the pyre lit in the center of the small makeshift camp, you had seen his eyes. The look he gave you struck you to the core. You had not given in to his gaze, to the devouring glow that it contained in the shadow of his hat. He abused you psychologically, so much so that his mere presence next to you tortured you. The fascination that he skillfully distilled in your veins was no longer enough to contain the attraction you felt for him, and he played on it. As for who would be trapped first in these torments, you had no intention of giving up ground easily.

- There's a reserve there. You say, pointing to the cabin on the top of the hill. I'm going to look for something to burn.

No one had refuted the idea, not even Lucy who sat on a stone cuddling Dogmeat without even seeing what was happening before her eyes. This child was so innocent that she did not recognize a predator when he cohabited with her, much less the issues that were taking place under her nose. The shelter had provided a rare moment of peace during which you allowed yourself to breathe. On the table you were facing was a pile of old paper and some dry wooden rulers, enough to burn. It was a bargain to grab and you quickly put the whole thing together in your hands.

-I want to hear it.

The cold of his breath caressed your neck and made what you were carrying fall at arm's length. Without turning around, your eyes rolled towards the shadow that towered over you in all its height. He was so close to you that one movement would have been enough for him to grab you by the hip and flip you onto the table and, damn, that idea was more interesting than it should be.

Him. There. Behind you. Probably way too close.

-Hear what ?

- What you want. I want to hear you beg me to do it.

The laughter that left your mouth spread throughout the room, surprising even you with its brutality. It was the smartest thing to do, the healthiest reaction, and probably the best option you had left to not give in to him. Without a word, you turned around to lock your eyes with his, your hands firmly anchored in the old wood of this crumbling table to keep them at a safe distance from what they coveted.

-I never do that. To beg. Yet your eyes screamed otherwise and you sincerely hoped he was too blinded by his pride to understand it. Your irises lowered to scan it up and down as if it were an impregnable vestige.

-You can use your guns, a rope, or even your teeth. You will never hear me do such a thing, especially to you. I know how much pleasure it gives you.

- Oh, believe me, there are a lot of things that would give me pleasure right now.

There was nothing worse than this precise moment, suspended in the storm that has been brewing above you for too long. The storm swirled with your every glance, every moment his body was near yours, but nothing had yet managed to trigger the lightning.

Leave.

Your instincts proclaimed. Leave before you die in his arms. And probably that was what you wanted most in the world.

- Only in fairy tales do monsters and princesses love each other. And this world is not one.

However, your arms were already too close to his neck, his radiating your hips and pulling you to him without you putting up the slightest resistance.

It wasn't a fairy tale.

His burning scent consumed your nostrils and your heart was about to give in for good.

- In this world, monsters like to destroy pretty things.

A nervous laugh escaped your lips which you tried to keep away from his, but your butt was already hitting the wood of the table behind you when, suddenly, a noise made you jump.

- You are there ?

-Holy shit! He cursed, leaping away from you before propelling himself towards the door, a bloodthirsty impulse waving his hands as he opened the door to reveal your traveling companion.

Lucy.

Her eyes were full of innocence from long years in a shelter. Her smile and the sigh of relief she heaved when she discovered you in the shed made you want to laugh. She had no idea what had just happened.

- Oh damn! I was terribly afraid of never finding you again.

She exclaimed, putting an end to any possible attempt at approach. While Cooper nervously contained his desire to strangle her, you advanced towards him, a perfidious smile on your lips.

- I never liked spectators…

This is how the little game began.

-------------------

There are worse things than fear. Worse than impatience There is frustration. The one that itches, that annoys, the one that deflates the ardor that takes hold of you as the days pass. A frustration answering to the sweet name of Lucy. It is difficult for you to express to your friend the desire to see her leave. Not forever. Just a few moments, the space that would allow you to put an end to this duel between him and you.

To the looks. To provocations.

And his growing rage for your teammate. You were angry with him, with the way he spoke to her, his resentment which constantly burned his lips whenever he spoke to her. Lucy had taken the team's instructions literally without giving anyone a break.

She had only followed an order that came from him. But in a sense, this charade amused you, allowed you to understand that you were not the only one to be a slave to your impulses. He wasn't so scary after all. So weak in his humanity, at least in what remained of it. In a way, this fact reassured you that you were attracted, and it was pure madness. Then came this famous day. The route had taken an unexpected turn. An ambush set up in a ruined housing estate had seriously delayed you. Worse, while trying to hide, you had fallen into a hole, scraping your neck and abs against an iron rod.

- Are you injured? Oh, god, you're hurt !

Lucy had torn a section of her suit to quickly wrap the bleeding wound on her neck before arriving to safety. Once away from the danger zone and inside a building whose structure had reasonably withstood the disaster, she invited you to sit down as if you were about to die.

- I'm fine, I assure you.

- I really have to check.

Cooper hadn't said a word. It was a silence heavier than the chaos itself. A heavy silence, from which one could expect to see the worst horrors ensue. He had taken the chair away from the one you were sitting in and hadn't even laid eyes on you. An unpleasant tingling was felt in your neck when Lucy applied a treatment there, then tied the fabric again at the height of the wound. Tearing you away from the strange worry that was emerging within you. - You need to take off your top.

He was there. He had done nothing, not even for a moment had he tried to watch over you.

But that’s what a team does, right? Cannon fodder and fuck fodder, that's all you meant to him. And now that he had to slow down, that he had to take care of you, he seemed immersed in deep thought, probably looking for a way to get rid of you.

- There is nothing. I assure you.

- Do not joke. Do what I tell you. The space between those few seconds seemed eternal.

Not with him. Not when he's in this room.

This is what you should have answered, instead you saw yourself witnessing disaster. Your hands tugging at your t-shirt before taking it off, letting it fall to the floor, eyes focused on him.

Free fall.

A few seconds, his eyes on yours, his gaze wandering over your bare skin, the tingling of the scratch on your stomach blending into something else entirely. And a shot fired into the void, startling Lucy.

- Do you see that gun, Mclane? Lucy nodded, lips quivering.

- If you don't leave this room immediately, the next bul' that comes out of his barrel will end up in your skull.

- But…but…I didn’t… She paused for a moment, glancing over at you before turning back to Cooper, horrified.

- Don't worry about that, I'll take care of it.

- Oh my God. Oh my God, I,.. I,…

- Come out now, Lucy, please hurry up.

There was no need to give the blush time to flood her cheeks. She was too pure, too carefree to witness this. Because war was declared now, and nothing would stop it.

A second later, his hand closed around your aching neck, pushing you against the table.

- Say it.

- Bastard.

His burning hands ran over your skin, incandescent, they transformed your blood into magma. It was pure madness, but nothing was delicious than the violence with which he held you in this position, his hips firmly fitted to your ass.

- Oh, stop, someone had to tell her, right?

- I almost died.

-And whoever tried to do that ended up with their skull exploded. This is how it works and if you want to know… You could feel his breath on his neck, his hand searching for the opening of your pants. You could have easily pushed him away, but it was just to contradict him. Because you wanted him, almost as much as he did and for far too long.

- I wouldn't have hesitated to shoot her, too, if she had continued to bother us.

- Liar.

Your words died in a hot breath, his fingers already making their way through your panties, sliding along your warm pussy. You guessed the smile that distorted his mouth as you discovered the extent of what he provoked in you.

- I need to fuck you. He whispers in a harsh, trembling voice into the crook of your neck. I only think about this. Only you and it messes up my priorities.

- Do it, then.

- Before, I want you to be at my mercy.

You giggled. It was out of the question to give him anything, yet his fingers caressing you made you less certain of your convictions. Your hips rocked to his rhythm and he was heavily satisfied with what he felt.

- So wet. So impatient. How long has it been, huh? How many times have you been touched while waiting for this moment.

- Too much.

Your hands moved to your back, reaching for the buckle of his belt, stroking the obvious erection in the seat of his pants. He wasn't going to bring you to your knees, at his mercy, without paying the consequences. You needed it, anyway.

Need to feel him inside you. Need it to make you forget the horror of the world in which you were moving. Because you didn't like reality, it was unbearable for you to think about the future that this disgusting world had in store for you. The waves his fingers sent through your body were so violent that you looked for support to stay upright. But he didn't see it that way: you had no right to stop petting him without asking his opinion. So, holding you firmly with one hand, he grabbed the second to invite you to continue.

-You can't just collapse like that, sugar. Not now, not after what you promise me.

The orgasm he provoked in you tore your soul apart. There was no way Lucy could have missed the sound of your voice, no matter where she had taken refuge to escape it. She heard it and it would probably haunt her for the rest of her life.

For a brief moment, he pulled away from you to turn you around to face him, taking off your pants, probably tearing a few sections of them in the process. Then, lifting you up to allow you to wrap your feverish legs around his waist, he pinned you firmly against the table.

His mouth crashed onto yours, devouring all of the air that tried to escape your lips. You bit him almost to blood, desperately, greedily. It was like your life depended on his mouth and what he was going to do to you. He devours you without respite, crushing my lips in a destructive kiss, then kissing your face, your neck, your jaw and your closed eyelids. His erect penis tickled the entrance to your vagina and this sensation made you lose the little reason you had left.

- Please. Please…

- Please what? He slowly rocked his hips to let his cock slide down the length of your sex.

-Please fuck me.

He laughed nervously. He had managed to get what he wanted. Like always. He had you and all your passion. You had never had to beg anyone in your life, but the world had changed and you had met Cooper Howard, two parameters which alone had transformed you greatly.

- I won't be delicate.

- Go ahead, I won't be the one begging you to spare me.

You felt dizzy because your body was calling for it. His hand came to rest against your throat as he stood up in front of you, dominant and impatient. You knew this was going to be exactly how you both wanted it to be, like animals, in a dingy old shed while some poor girl waited for you outside. Your bodies finally collided with rare violence, extracting a grunt of satisfaction and pain from you. His hips pounded against yours like his life depended on it, his fingers still firmly placed on your clit.

It was too much, too much.

Him, his gaze which never stopped contemplating your pleasure.

What he provoked in you. The expression he wore. You could no longer contain the slightest sound emanating from your mouth, so as if to save what was left of you, you brought a fist to your lips, muffling every cry that tried to escape you. But that wasn't how he saw things. Still pounding into you, he removed his fingers to grab your wrist, pulling it away from your mouth to pin it firmly to the table.

- Let it be heard. I want her to understand that she must never interfere between us again, understand?

You no longer had enough strength to speak, but your head was bobbing up and down frantically. You didn't care anymore if she heard anything, at this point in the situation the desire that was swelling throughout was so depraved that you were ready for him to fuck you in front of his eyes.

He was close, you could feel it in the way his hips met yours. It was painful and delicious at the same time, but there was no way you were going to cum without him. Not without seeing the orgasm distort the features of his face. And he didn't resist much longer, exploding in a deep, throaty pleasure, propelling you with him away from all this mess.

Then silence.

A moment of floating in which you slowly let yourself be drawn into. He had gotten what he wanted.

You too.

He stepped aside, giving you the chance to stand up before adjusting his hat on his head again. You glance at each other before guessing the satisfied smile that appears on his lips, the situation made you want to laugh.

Nothing was less certain than the fact that Lucy was still able to look you in the eyes now.

[cringecompanionapologist]

Why Turlough Is Rarely Written Well

Classic companions have a habit of falling into Susan/Ian/Barbara archetypes. You have Men (strong, attractive, brave, good at the physical stunts the often older Doctors can't do), you have Women (okay there's actually some variety with this one since they're the most common. There are the sensible women who have none of the Doctor's shit or the plucky girls who love assisting the Doctor but are often written as stupid for plot reasons.), and you have Children (usually girls, but Adric also fits perfectly into the archetype. They're young and vulnerable but usually made abnormally smart to make up for it, with the exception of Dodo because the writers didn't know what to do with her).

Sometimes things can mix. Leela and Ace basically functions as all three categories at once. It's why they get so much EU material. They can fill basically any companion role depending on what you need. Some are sort of vague in their roles. Victoria switches between Woman and Child, not as a combination, but as if the writers didn't always agree on which one she was. Nyssa probably isn't a child, at least not by Season 20, but she generally plays the Child companion role. And, as I said, the Woman companion role is all over the place.

But, generally, Man doesn't have to be male if you're willing to let a girl fight and Child doesn't have to be a child if they still come across as innocent and/or unfamiliar with the world around them.

Throughout the 60s and 70s, Woman evolved (compare Barbara's role in the show to Jo's. This isn't bashing Jo. The character were just handled very differently) and Child was sort of phased out due to not fitting the UNIT setting. Man was also phased out once the Doctor learned space martial arts. You could also say that UNIT collectively was Man. This led the show to slowly transition from three companion teams (Man/Woman/Child) to two companion teams (Man/Woman or Man/Child depending on the team) to the single Woman companion you see throughout most of the 70s. Harry Sullivan was a brief revival of Man but you once again had a Doctor who could do the action stuff himself, so the writer's weren't sure where to go with him and he was written out after one season. The show stopped having male companions (unless you count K9, but I'd put him the secret fourth category of Robot).

The the 80s happened at the decided to have male companions again, but Tom Baker was still Tom Baker, and Peter Davison was the youngest, most physically capable Doctor yet. So, they took the Child archetype that had previously been exclusively female (Susan, Vicki, Dodo, Victoria sometimes, Zoe) and gender flipped it. Adric is basically a gender flip of Zoe, a teenage mathematical genius that stows away in the TARDIS and basically forces the Doctor to adopt them.

But then Adric blew up, but they still wanted a male companion around, and we got Turlough. And Turlough doesn't really fit any of the archetypes. He's not the brave, physically strong Man and he's too generally familiar with the world to be a Child. He's an alien, an outsider to what the audience thinks of as normal, like Leela and Nyssa, but he's lived on Earth for a while and is familiar with it enough to hate it. He doesn't carry that same sense of innocence.

That leaves Woman and though female companions had covered Man before, they'd never really reversed it. The sort of did at times with Steven, since he was sort of a merge of Ian and Barbara, but that was because the writers were used to having Barbara around and weren't sure how to make the show work without that role.

Turlough doesn't really fit the Woman archetype either. The Sensible Woman variant has to have a certain moral high ground and Turlough's morally ambiguous. The Plucky Girl variant needs to either be enthusiastic about travel, or be either very brave or borderline oblivious to danger. Turlough is very much aware of danger and is not a fan of it.

So Turlough doesn't really fit anywhere. Writers struggled to figure out what to do with him. Too much of the traditional companion role, especially for Men, was defined by courage and selflessness. Turlough had to learn to be that way as a character arc. There had been companions that struggled with being brave before. Susan and Victoria come to mind. But Susan was kind of all over the place and Victoria started off being pretty brave before being in constant peril made her a nervous wreck and she chose to leave the TARDIS to save her sanity.

So, you end up with a companion that didn't really fit any archetype and the previous companions he could most easily be compared to were Susan and Victoria.

So, when writing Turlough, writers end up with two choices: to lean in or back out. They could write Turlough in a way similar to Susan and Victoria, intelligent enough to be reasonable competent, but physically and emotionally fragile. Or, they could try to make the character a bit more like earlier male companions, except he's complaining about it the entire time.

Writers prefer backing out to leaning in. That's because there's a bit of a double standard when it comes to gender stereotypes. You give a woman traits more associated with men, it's usually received positively. Leela stabs people, Ace beats up a Dalek with a baseball bat, everyone loves it. And they should. It's great. But when it's the other way around, giving a man traits more associated with women, it's usually based in negative traits and not received well.

It isn't always that straightforward. A female character who's assertive and tries to take charge but doesn't usually stab or beat people up will be classified as a "bitch". Strangely, a male character who's cowardly might also be called the same word. "Bitch" is apparently an insult specifically connected to gender nonconformity. Women who are too bold and men who aren't bold enough.

I've written before about how this affects fandom (and a good number writers) attitude towards Tegan. She's assertive, but not in a beat-up-daleks-with-a-baseball-bat sort of way.

This makes the TARDIS team of Tegan and Turlough interesting. They both play gender in a way that's usually seen as negative. Writers, if they want the characters to be likable, have to tone it down. Or, they play it as annoying and something for the audience to make fun of. They can't just accept it. Which would be the most interesting thing to do.

In my previous Tegan rant, I said there should be a story where the Doctor has to overcome his pride and listen to Tegan in order to save the day. She might not be a STEM genius, but she can be right about something. I also have another vague idea, a conflict between Tegan and Turlough, that would focus on Turlough saving the day by being non-confrontational.

The premise is that Tegan and Turlough get captured and locked up in a prison. Tegan fights with the guards and tries to escape, while Turlough tells her not to bother because the Doctor will show up and rescue them. Time goes by, the Doctor gets stuck in another plotline, and Tegan and Turlough are at risk of being executed. They can't just wait this out. Tegan gets more frantic in her escape attempts and more annoyed with Turlough, who is intimidated by the guards and doesn't really seem to be trying.

Then, there's a brief period where Tegan and Turlough are outside their cells, quite close to the keys to their cell. The guards are keeping a close eye on Tegan in case she tries anything, but they're not watching Turlough as closely. They don't think he's going to try anything. He basically uses Tegan's usual quarrel with the guards as a diversion so he can grab the key. Tegan catches on to the plan.

They're returned to their cell but Turlough doesn't actually have the key. Tegan gets pissed that he wimped out and this was all for nothing, only for Turlough to reveal that the cell is unlocked. He didn't take the key. There were keys to multiple cells around and he swapped their cell's key with another key, so the guards used the wrong key on their cell, leaving it unlocked. No one expected anything of him and there wasn't a missing key to attract attention. He found a way out to get around the guards without confronting them.

Then, to avoid making Tegan look bad for being defiant, she frees the other prisoners and rallies them to overpower the guards and escape, because sometimes the direct approach works too. Then they both have to rescue the Doctor.

I should probably just write this fanfic, but I don't have enough specific details yet.

Anyway, writers who try to make Turlough more "masculine" are cowards and boring.

[polliwoggers]

been struggling to draw lately so i went through some older stuff of mine and found this, only to realize i never posted it. i don't imagine anybody's still doing stuff for this weird social media-clan au thingy anymore, now that the meme of it has died down, but anybody's free to these names for whatever uses they want, if they want them :)

bonus lore to get it out of my head:

Yarrow-whisker was the previous medic before Quarrypaw, who has yet to gain their full status as a medicine cat in their absence

Geckopaw and Prairiepaw are siblings. Yewtail is only a so-so mentor at the best of times, so Foxfire effectively mentors them both. However, Prairiepaw has swooped in to support Yewtail when they decide to do something stupid and unsustainable on multiple occasions. they really shouldn't have been granted an apprentice tbh. i recently re-read Fire and Ice in the original warriors series so the parallels to Graystripe being a poor mentor to Brackenpaw are intentional

Skypelt came out of retirement to mentor Duskpaw, since they serve such similar real-life purposes. Skypelt doesn't understand everything their apprentice says or does but is generally supportive of such a similar application

Marsh-singer, Whitestep, and Thymeface are all siblings, and are collectively the youngest of the warriors (not accurate to the actual ages of the applications, but eh). to say they are all total gossips would be an understatement. they're also really interchangeable and forgettable. like the Runningwinds of apps.

depending on how positively you want to view the whole "reincarnation" trope some of the canon warriors books have, you could say that Tickpaw is a reincarnation of Musiclight. Otherwise, they just look really similar.

all of the "Cats Outside of Clans" cats are kittypets, with the notable exception of Furzebark, who is a banished rogue with a concerning amount of influence on the Clan(s?). maybe there's a whole band of rogues who are based on insidiously/surprisingly influential applications or online entities! various appstore/playsotre applications could fall under this category, as well as like. roblox, apparently. which is beyond weird to me since that's a game and not a wider application, but it got scarily profitable during lockdown, so...

Redpaw was Yewtail's sibling, but died during their apprenticeship. Probably to the same thing that killed Gravelpounce, but i have no idea what that would be

Flaxflower is generally considered WAY too old to still be alive (since the real internet explorer died a bit ago by now), but since he'd "find a way to be late to his own funeral", he has yet to kick the bucket.

the whole twittypet drama is EASILY the juiciest gossip the clan has had in ages, ESPECIALLY the half-clan checkmark-kits. in-universe, im interpreting the poor management of twitter that's been driving it into the ground irl as a negligent cat owner unintentionally driving their pet to spend more time outdoors with other cats (namely, dashclaw) to get away from them, which resulted in kittens. drummed-up anti-kittypet sentiment aside, many clan cats looking in on the situation just feel bad for her.

Vinewatcher is the most consistently "present" of the StarClan spirits, but is also the most consistently unhelpful. numerous potential prophecies later turned out to just be inside jokes of theirs they decided to continue rehashing into the afterlife. Quarrypaw, having not gotten much experience identifying what makes a legitimate prophecy yet, finds this exceptionally annoying behavior, and would like them to stop. They do not.

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

so happy for you about the qpr!! that’s just wonderful news! wishing u all the best <3

Thankyou! I truly appreciate your sweet words. 

I want to use this as an opportunity to talk about how this non-traditional relationship came to be - mostly because I love talking about him, but also because I feel queerplatonic relationships need to be talked about more! 

So, what is a queerplatonic relationship? It isn’t really one specific type of relationship with a strictly defined set of rules or boundaries. It is an umbrella term for “non-romantic significant-other relationships”… so, emotionally intimate relationships that fall neither into the category of a “typical romantic relationship” nor into the category of a “typical platonic friendship”. This is not so much about behavior but about the feelings of the people involved. The way one queerplatonic relationship looks like  (activities, language, touch, future planning etc.) can be completely different from the next, it’s all about what works for you! 

The term “queerplatonic relationship” (or qpr) originated in the aromantic community, but you don’t need to be aromantic to be in one. 

I am not aromantic, Alex (name changed for privacy) is. When we met, I didn’t know that yet. We met online. Not on a dating app, we just found each other over shared interests, so romance wasn’t on my mind. We became online friends and found out we actually live close to each other. As time went on, I felt like there was a lot of chemistry and some mutual attempts of awkward flirting, so I decided to ask him on a date. And he said yes! 

We grew closer, my feelings for him grew and quite honestly, in the deep corners of my heart it was already a fact that we would become a couple. We didn’t call each other boyfriend yet but it was only a matter of making it official. Really just a matter of asking… and so it hit me like a brick when I scrolled through social media and saw him coming out as aromantic. 

I’ll admit that I didn’t handle it well. I felt blindsided by him not telling me directly and carried this feeling into our conversation about it which led to it not going well. I should’ve given him time to explain and given us space to figure out together what this means for us. If I did, I would’ve learned that it was a new realization for him as well and that he himself was not sure yet what it meant - but I didn’t. I jumped to assumptions and felt bitter about them. 

After fruitless discussions turned into a fight, we made the hard decision to stop talking. We were both heartbroken about it but it just seemed like a situation with no solution. He didn’t want a traditional romantic relationship, I didn’t want a traditional friendship. We did briefly talk about a queerplatonic relationship but we both couldn’t imagine how that’d work. Would that essentially just be a traditional relationship/friendship by a different name? 

For two weeks, I cried into my ice cream. Kept checking his social media secretly even though we mutually agreed to unfollow each other before the split. Went back on dating apps and went out on a virtual date with the first poor guy who said yes and hated every second of it. Texted Alex about it in some shitty attempt to make him jealous. Cried some more. Until I found a list in my notes that I had made months earlier, with all the things I like about him. 

This list made me think I can’t lose him like this - I’d rather have him as a friend than not have him in my life at all. I sent him the list and was relieved to learn that he missed me just as much. After some (much more mature) discussion, we agreed to just be platonic friends. 

One of the first “normal ” conversations we had after our split - normal meaning a topic that wasn’t related to attraction or identity or relationship status - was just us talking about a tv show he used to watch as a kid. This has become a fond memory of a realization that is hard to put in words: I’ve always been someone who wants clear definitions and labels. But there’s beauty in things being undefined as well. In that moment, we weren’t a specific label. We were just us. And us, our unique dynamic, is what I fell in love with - regardless of how we name it. 

So, we named it friends and that worked great. But one thing kept bothering me: With a friend, even a best friend, it’d be silently assumed that you may pursue other people romantically. You can have a best friend and a boyfriend, you’re not taken by your best friend. This wasn’t a matter of jealousy - Alex wasn’t interested in pursuing other people romantically anyway and I don’t mind that he has other close friends. This was about me, not him. I didn’t want this to be a situation where I’m assumed to potentially pursue others. I want to be taken because that’s how I feel. I’m not open to dating someone else, Alex is my significant other even when it’s not a traditional romantic relationship. 

I reached out to other aromantic people online and talked to them about these feelings. They encouraged me to talk to him about this and suggest an individually defined relationship to him - one that isn’t based in romance but has the level of commitment I feel. Communication is key, they said, you two can set your own rules. 

And that’s exactly what we did! I wrote him a letter and put these feelings to paper, and asked him if he wants to have an individually defined relationship with me, be my friend I’m in love with and am committed to, and he said yes! 

(We don’t usually use the term queerplatonic in our everyday conversations, I just use it as a practical umbrella term here - we like to keep it a undefined unique relationship status) 

[merakiui]

meraaa !! consider this : 

it's late at night, and you're leaving a party; all your friends are drunk, so none can give you a ride home. you call an uber, and [insert yandere twst character] is your driver. all is going well during the drive; you're engaging in cordial conversation with him until you notice he's not following the directions on the map. you question him –

"don't worry, i'm just taking a shortcut,"

suddenly, everything feels off. his smile didn't look as kind as before, and his attempts at reviving the conversation were fruitless. whether to fill the uncomfortable silence or because he's confident he'll get away with what he'll do next, he reveals the truth. he's been stalking you for the last four months; in those four months, he's learned everything about you. innocent things like your pet peeves, favorite foods, and friend group to not-so-innocent things like the size underwear and bra you wear, how many hook-ups and partners you've had, how many times your heart beats a minute (*cough cough* rook), etc.

you sit there in mortified silence, mind racing to think of a plan to escape, call for help, hijack the car, anything. he watches you through the mirror, observing your countenance, awaiting your response. the doors have a child lock on them, your phone is dead, and you figure he probably has a weapon in the compartment next to him in case you attempt to seize control of the vehicle. even if you manage to, you’ll likely both be killed in an accident.

amidst your anxiety, the car stops. you look out the front window to see woods ahead of you. is he going to kill you here?

he turns back to face you, flashing you an eerie smile.

“don’t forget to give me a five-star rating.”

you hear the doors unlock. 

you quickly open the door and decide to make a run for it.

anddd.. the rest is up to you ! i based this on a horror short on yt. i think this concept would fit characters like rook, jade, trey, and maybe even jamil.  

also, can i be 👁️‍🗨️anon?

AAAAAA this concept is made for characters like Rook and Jade, but then I also agree that it can fit Trey and Jamil. The latter two fall into the unsuspecting types category, in which they just seem so friendly or so average and normal that they couldn't ever do something so horrible. They don't have to try very hard to catch you either. You're intoxicated and it's dark; you'll stumble and possibly injure yourself if you aren't careful, or you'll run yourself lost and they'll easily catch up to you. The night ends with you captured and packed neatly away in their car, where they'll drive you to your new home. It may be difficult at first, having to get accustomed to shackles and a mattress and a cold, eerie basement, but you'll learn to find comfort in him and your surroundings.

And the "don't forget to give a five-star rating" part... please, that's so Jade. T_T he's about to hunt you down, and yet he still wants that rating... he's so troublesome! Although it's not much of a hunt if he's just casually trailing behind you while you stumble blindly through the woods. ^^;;; depending on who kidnaps you, I think the situation will be slightly different. Trey and Jamil are definitely the better out of the four because they won't do anything rash, whereas Rook and Jade just like to walk the line of danger when they're able to. The rush is what invigorates them. But Trey and Jamil are determined to keep you captive, so they won't risk losing you just for temporary excitement.

It's all varying types of logic with the four of them. >_< but we can agree that the worst of them all are Jade and Rook. They're just a different level of crazy and dangerous. ;;;;;;

[aliciavance4228]

Before starting to talk about this subject I want to make one thing clear: Hephaestus is one of my favourite Greek Gods (either in Top 5 or Top 10), so I'm not writing this post because I dislike him, but because I cannot stand superficial/surfface-level depictions of greek gods' personalities, nor the simplification of them and the erasure of their nuances (either through romanticization or demonization).

I do appreciate the fact that a lot of people start to realize that the relationship between Aphrodite and Hephaestus was a disfunctional one and that both of them are happier with different people (Ares and Aglaea, respectively). However, the fact that many people are usually focusing only on Aphrodite's actions and ignore Hephaestus' abusiveness rubs me in a wrong way.

Now, referring to Hephaestus as an Incel or choosing to villainize him for that is not the best solution either. He wasn't the only god asking Zeus for a wife, nor the only one who presents a more or less misogynistic attitude towards women. We're talking here about Ancient Greece, so expecting the deities to act how we would expect them to act based on nowdays' principles and standards is unrealistic and juvenile. I would also like to point out the fact that Hephaestus is, according to Hesiod's Theogony, happily married with Aglaea, who is also described as his first and only wife. They also have four daughters according to Orphic Rhapsodies Frag. And yet he is the exact same deity that you guys claim to be an Incel, which is a contraditiction to the original meaning of the term. The word was ment to reffer to a category of men who blame their appearance for not being able to have sex (when in truth the reason why women don't want them is rather due to their personality and beliefs; and by beliefs I mean their tendency of objectifying women and having ridiculously high standards for their future wives while simultaneously getting offended when a woman has her own standards too). I can see Apollo and Hades falling into more Incel Stereotypes than him, considering the fact that one of them cursed many women for refusing to sleep with him, whereas the other literally had to kidnap a woman in order to have a wife. And yet nobody dares to call them Incels, just because they two aren’t described as being disabled nor falsely considered unattractive, unlike Hephaestus.

That being said, negating his wrongs and turning him into a woobie who did nothing wrong just because you cannot stand Aphrodite isn't a good way of perceiving their relationship either. While Aphrodite was indeed manipulative towards Hephaestus and her sleeping with his own brother in his bed was hardly admirable, I would also like to point out the fact that Hephaestus was pretty much toxic and revengeful towards her too.

Now, there are a lot of versions on how they got married as well as a lot of lost fragments, which leads to speculations rather than something 100% certain. So I won't talk about it purely because I want to avoid misinterpretiation and misinformation, and discuss directly about what intetests me the most.

Wheter or not Aphrodite willingly married him or loved him, what do we know for sure is that she preffered Ares more and had an affair with him all this time. Being cheated on is a form a betrayal from a partner, so Hephaestus being angry on her is understandable. However, instead of divorcing her directly, he decided to humiliate her in one of the worst ways possible before separating from her:

Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 14. 40 ff (trans. Way) (Greek epic C4th A.D.) :

"With cheek shame-crimsoned, like the Queen of Love, what time the Heaven-abiders saw her clasped in Ares' arms, shaming in sight of all the marriage-bed, trapped in the myriad-meshed toils of Hephaistos : tangled there she lay in agony of shame, while thronged around the Blessed, and there stood Hephaistos' self: for fearful it is for wives to be beheld by husbands' eyes doing the deed of shame."

On top of that, Hephaestus directed his wrath towards one of Aphrodite and Ares' daughters (Harmonia) and her descendants as well, despite the fact it wasn't technically her fault that she was fathered by his brother:

Statius, Thebaid 2. 265 ff (trans. Mozley) (Roman epic C1st A.D.) :

"The dread necklace of Harmonia . . . The Lemnian [Hephaistos], so they of old believed, long time distressed at Mars' [Ares'] deceit and seeing that no punishment gave hindrance to the disclosed armour, and the avenging chains removed not the offence [of his affair with Hephaistos' then wife Aphrodite], wrought this [a cursed necklace] for Harmonia on her bridal day to be the glory of her dower [description of the necklace follows] . . .

The work first proved its worth, when Harmonia's complaints turned to dreadful hissing, and she bore company to grovelling Cadmus, and with long trailing breast drew furrows in the Illyrian fields [the pair were turned into serpents in Illyria]. Next, scarce had shameless Semele [their daughter] put the hurtful gift about her neck, when lying Juno [Hera] crossed her threshold. Thou too, unhappy Jocasta, didst, as they say, possess the beauteous, baleful thing, and didst deck thy countenance with its praise - on what a couch, alas! to find favour; and many more beside. Last Argia shines in the splendour of the gift, and in pride of ornament and accursed gold surpassed her sister's mean attiring. The wife of the doomed prophet [Eriphyle wife of Amphiaraus] beheld it, and at every shrine and banquet in secret cherished fierce jealousy, if only it might be granted her to possess the terrible jewel, nought profited, alas!"

Furthermore, I would also like to emphasize the fact that Hephaestus had a considerable amount of lovers. And while timeline is another uncertain aspect and he might have slept with those women before he married Aphrodite and/or between the moment when he divorced her and the one when he remarried, the possibility of him cheating on Aphrodite isn't an impossible one. In this case, that could be taken as a Double Standard, and his reaction when he found out that Aphrodite was cheating on him would be completely hypocritical.

As I said, Aphrodite was abusive and toxic towards him as well. But deciding to solely demonize her instead of acknowledging that both of them were abusive and toxic towards each other -I don't like to use this term but I can't find another one for the moment- is purely slut-shaming. Some of you guys are complaining about how "Hera has no agency" and were praising Kaos for portraying her as cheating on Zeus despite the fact that this is out of her character because "He finally got a taste of his own medicine", yet when Aphrodite cheats on her possible unfaithful husband she's suddenly a whore. You guys want a goddess who can be sexually active without any sort of inhibitions, yet when Aphrodite is brought into discussion there's at least one person who won't hesitate to call her all slurs for that, whereas Demeter is turned into a prude on top of being a Helicopter Parent in many fanfictions and retellings (because apparently when a woman becomes a mother she cannot care about anything else).

So instead of choosing one extreme or another where a) Aphrodite is a brainless slut and Hephaestus a poor woobie or b) Aphrodite is a helpless victim and Hephaestus an Incel who deserved to be cheated on, perhaps it would be a better idea to treat them as humane, realistic figures, instead of some sort of cartoonish caricatures who can easily fit into whatever labels and tropes you want them to fit in.

[momentsbeforemass]

The “ests”

We live in a society that exalts the “ests.”

The biggest, the fastest, the tallest, the richest. Whatever the benchmark is, we want nothing but the best.

It’s a fixation that causes a lot of problems for us.

Not because there’s anything wrong with being able to spot the best. Knowing the difference between a ripe apple (the best) and one that’s gone bad is kind of important.

The problem comes when our fixation with “ests” crosses categories. When we decide that apples are better than oranges.

Comparing apples to oranges is so obviously faulty that it’s a cliché. In at least 20 different languages.

Yet, you and I do it all the time. Not with apples and oranges. But we do it to ourselves and to others – when it comes to roles and worth.

We value the CEO over the janitor, the doctor over the nurse. You and I decide which person is best, based on the importance we attach to what they do. Confusing their role for their worth as a person.

It sounds awful when you say it that way. But it’s so engrained in us that we do it anyway. Usually without thinking.

When we do it to others, it’s corrosive. We see people as things – and we make them into idols to worship or into non-persons we can abuse or ignore.

When we do it to ourselves, it’s corrosive as well. It puts us on a never-ending treadmill of not good enough. Because no matter who we are or what we’re doing, there’s always more. There’s always better. There’s always an “est” that’s just out of reach.

No matter who you and I do it to, it’s a toxic way to live.

And it couldn’t be farther from the truth, from how God sees things.

Think about it for a minute, you and I know from experience that a person’s role and person’s worth have no connection at all.

One of the wealthiest persons I have ever known (CEO, director on several corporate boards, etc.) is also one of the worst human beings I have ever met.

One of the kindest persons I have ever known lived in a cinder block house with a dirt floor (in Alexander County, Illinois).

In today’s first reading, St. Paul spells it out. There’s a list of roles that reads like the organizational chart for a church: “first, Apostles; second, prophets; third, …” making it easy to fall into our habit of comparing the wrong things.

But the context that he gives for that list? That draws us right back to the truth, back to the way that God sees things.

“As the body is one though it has many parts, an all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also in Christ.”

Translation – God’s love isn’t just for the “ests.”

Whether you’re looking at someone else or yourself, never confuse role with worth. God doesn’t.

Today’s Readings

[captainsophiestark]

The Reunion Scene

Westley x Reader

Masterlist - Join My Taglist!

Written for Fictober 2023!

Fandom: The Princess Bride

Day 10 Prompt: "It's alright, I'm here now."

Summary: Westley and his love reunite after she shoves him off a cliff, before realizing who he was of course.

Word Count: 1,070

Category: Fluff

A/N: I'm reading the Princess Bride novel and apparently "The Reunion Scene" in the book between Westley and Buttercup is a bit of a running gag (the wikipedia article can give a quick walk through for anyone curious), so I decided to write it! In the book, it's described as a three page scene, which is about the length of this. For anyone unaware of the wild lore behind the novel, I highly recommend a Wikipedia deep dive, it's very entertaining

Tagging @auroracalisto as my fellow Princess Bride fan :) Hope you're having an amazing first semester teaching!!

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

I planted both hands against the chest of the man before me and shoved with all my strength, sending him careening over the cliff's edge. He'd killed my dearest love, and now returned to mock me, to dare imply I hadn't loved Westley. Whatever happened to me, I couldn't stand this man a minute longer. I shoved him of the cliff, listening to whatever he screamed as he tumbled to the ground below.

"As... you... wish..."

My heart stopped in my chest at the words of my love coming from the mouth of the Dread Pirate Roberts, tumbling down from the cliff I'd just shoved him off of. My Westley, alive, and falling. It couldn't be possible, but it was.

"Westley!" I cried, immediately rushing to follow him down the cliff. I tried to keep my feet under me, and I made it some of the way before gravity caught up to me and sent me tumbling, head over heels. I landed at the bottom, right next to Westley, who still wore his mask. Our eyes locked, and despite the lingering pain from my fall, I surged forward and ripped the mask from his face.

Staring back at me, by some miracle, was Westley. My farm boy. He looked different, older, stronger, and a little of the soft innocence had gone, but he was here. Not dead, like I'd thought him to be for the last three years. Alive, and now, with me.

"Oh, Westley!" My heart sang as I flung my arms around his neck. Without a second's hesitation, he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me to him. I moved to kiss him, but to my surprise, he pulled back.

"Won't your betrothed take issue with you kissing another man?"

"Humperdinck? Westley, I've already told you, I don't love him-"

"And yet you agreed to marry him. There was not a moment these past years I didn't think of you. But you agreed to give up on me, on love."

Now it was my turn to pull back a little. My brow furrowed, but Westley's expression didn't soften as his piercing blue-gray eyes surveyed me.

"Westley, I thought you dead," I said plainly, still a little shocked at his reaction. "Not a day has gone by that I didn't think of you, to mourn you. My heart was ripped out of my chest the day news came of your death, and I've had to live every day since dealing with the loss of my love.

"And besides that, Westley, I didn't seek the prince out. He found me, and proposed, since he was looking for a wife and found me beautiful. He knows and accepts that there's no love in our union, and he made it very clear that refusing a request from the crown prince would result in death. Death I would gladly accept, if I had ever thought there was any chance of you returning to me from the dead."

A cold fire lit behind Westley's eyes at my words, and when he spoke again, his voice was dangerously low and quiet.

"He's forcing you to marry him?"

I shrugged. "There are worse fates than being Queen, Westley. But none of that matters, not now that I know you live. Nothing matters at all anymore, Westley, so long as we are together."

He sighed, pulling me to him again, resting his forehead against mine. I brought my hand up to his chest, resting it there so I could feel his heartbeat and reassure myself that this was real. Westley was truly here.

"It's alright, I'm here now," he said, reading my mind as his hand came up to gently stroke my cheek. "My ship waits for us not far from here. It's not going to be easy for us... we'll have to go through the fire swamp..."

"We'll make it through," I said, running my hand through the hair at the base of his neck now. I smiled at him, all the love in my heart glowing through. "We'll make it through anything together."

"Then we haven't any time to waste. We must move quickly."

"Wait!"

Westley froze, halfway up from our position on the hill, but he sank back down at my outburst. His eyes never left mine once. His eyebrow quirked slightly in silent question, and I didn't wait to give him his answer.

I rushed forward, kissing Westley hard, like I'd wished for a chance to do every day for the past three years. He immediately returned the kiss, pulling me into his arms and holding me so close to his chest I could feel our hearts beating in sync.

There have been five kisses in the history of the world deemed so passionate, so perfect and full of love, above and beyond anything else that's ever happened. I was no expert on it, but in that moment, I knew this one blew every other kiss before it away.

Neither one of us wanted to pull away, but finally, Westley did. He kept staring into my eyes, gravity trying to pull us back to each other, but with a grimace of regret he leaned further back.

"We really need to keep moving. If we're to stay ahead of your pig fiancé, we have no time to waste."

"Just promise me a million more moments like this, for the rest of our lives."

Westley smiled. "As you wish."

I beamed as Westley pulled me to my feet, and the two of us began heading through the ravine we'd tumbled into and towards the Fire Swamp, hand in hand.

No doubt, the challenges ahead would be dire and terrible beyond imagining. But I knew confidently that we would survive them. My Westley was still in the world, and even better, he was with me. There was no other ending but for the two of us to be happily together.

****************

Everything Taglist: @rosecentury

[siflshonen]

Todoroki: The Mountain, the Hawk, and the Haunted House Part 1

Link to the Todoroki family presentation: Part 1 | Part 2

Link to the Bakugo presentation 2.0: Part 1 | Part 2 | 1.0: Part 1 | Part 2

Link to the Kirishima presentation 1.0 | 2.0

Link to the Todoroki presentation

Link to the Deku presentation

Link to the Uraraka-Bakugo-Toga presentation

Link to the Shigaraki-All for One presentation

Link to the Spinner-Shigaraki-Bakugo-Deku presentation

Link to the BNHA presentations masterpost

In the online fandom system, domestic abuse offenses are considered especially heinous. In the My Hero Academia fandom, the dedicated fans who create the discourse around these fictitious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the So (you think these) Victims (are the most special characters) Unit, or SVU.

These aren’t their stories.

Whenever a work from one culture or language is brought to another (or even if the work stays in the same culture but transitions from page to screen), the translators, localizers, and creative team handling it can only do so much to help the new audience understand what the original work communicates through subtext or cultural associations by deciding how much of the work to leave out or change. In other words, the team must choose how to fail.

In the case of the Todoroki family, I feel there is much lost in translation. Or, at least, there is much lost if the reader doesn’t share the work’s original cultural background. I’m going to try to make my point with a poem.

Four children are mine

And I love my four children:

An arrow to ward away the darkness

aimed for the light of the dawn;

The winter, who brings the night again, beautiful and longer;

Next the summer,

who returns the sun at its zenith;

And small is the leader with clear sky and dusk rain in his eyes.

Four children are mine

And with four comes death

The arrow flies too high from the bow

The arrow flies but falls to darkness

From a shrine in the mountain, he aims for me.

My son haunts the mountain near the peak

I fear the mountain I cannot climb

I fear the arrow meant for me.

Winter settles quietly

Summer turns away from me

The leader makes a mirror of my heart

I tell my son I love him

And I look in the mirror yet I cannot face it but to watch it crack

My son is my spitting image

I tell my son I love him

I tell my son

Without looking into his eyes,

I tell my son I love him

As the arrow flies.

This poem is about Enji Todoroki and his children - the four he actually fathered and the one for whom he unknowingly acted as a surrogate. The poem vaguely alludes to the meanings of the children’s names with one notable change - for Shoto Todoroki, instead of calling him “charred frozen” - which is basically how his first name is written - I called him “leader”.

When written with different characters in Japanese, “Sho” can mean “leader.” So, while “leader” isn’t the true meaning of Shoto’s name, I decided that it was thematically fitting to use since he’s also the “hero of his family” and leads the way for them to continue into the future. In changing the meaning of Shoto’s name, I chose how to fail. Yes, it’s imperfect, but by putting in the work, I can at least show you how I arrived at the destination to help you better understand what you are reading. Much of what I’m about to write about falls into this category - it’s not exactly the perfect explanation or whole, unaltered, canon truth, but is supplementary information to help you come to your own conclusions.

Anyway, now that I’ve told you the poem is about Enji and his children, it probably comes off a little differently, huh? That’s the power of writing allegories and using recurring motifs. If you have not figured it out already, you’ll learn soon enough what words symbolize each child.

Now, let’s break down this already broken family. There are so many damn Todorokis that I’m going to do something very, very rude and call them each by their first name for the sake of clarity (and also because, frankly, it’s a more honest representation of how I actually feel about these characters.)

What is the Todoroki Family?

The challenges facing the Todoroki family - such as the pressures Enji feels, the disappointment and internal crisis Toya inherits, the social and marital prison in which Rei finds herself trapped, the nature of the public’s feelings of betrayal at the reveal of Enji’s family dysfunction, the social snafus and ugly family dynamics in which Natsuo and Fuyumi are often caught - are distinctly shaped by the series’ Japanese society. There’s a special je ne sais quoi quality to their family drama that feels authentic even to me, and I’m a foreigner to these cultural tropes. It’s a little disturbing.

But, besides a fictional family, what are the Todorokis? What purpose do they serve in the story? What is their purpose within the narrative, and what is the purpose of the narrative in which they exist?

Well, on the one hand, the Todoroki household can function as an allegory for traditional Japanese families, society, and power structures (we could use the word “patriarchy”) crumbling under the pressures of modernity and a changing world, which is similar to how the Shimura household functions in Shigaraki’s backstory, or even the story of All Might’s retirement. On the other hand, they are a case study of a deeply flawed family that, if the magic-powers quirk element was not present, could exist in the real world.

They make for good drama. But every member of the household serves a purpose in the narrative, in the family, and in the meta. Usually, these three things work together for a greater purpose.

What is Enji Todoroki?

I didn’t say, “Who is Enji Todoroki?”. I said, “What is Enji Todoroki?”

If you said, “an asshole and shit father,” well, yeah, you’re sure on to something! But it’s not helpful to disengage with a major character in a work if you want to understand what the hell they’re doing in the narrative. I’m not telling anyone to like Enji, or any Todoroki, but I am asking that you entertain the concepts behind them with an open mind, if not an open heart.

What is Enji Todoroki? Much of this should be obvious in any language, but I’m still going to break it down.

The manga tells us pretty blatantly that he is a man from an older generation struggling to remain relevant in a new and changing world. He is ambitious, prideful, hardworking, hypocritical, and wholly dedicated to his job. He’s the patriarch in a household structure that is no longer relevant and coming apart at the seams. But most of all, Enji is afraid that nothing he does will ever be enough.

What is Enji Todoroki? Enji is someone who tries his hardest at anything he does even when it sends him to ruin.

Enji and Effort; Enji and Enjo

In my Bakugo and Deku presentations, I mention that the concept of talent as a fixed quality is predominantly accepted in the west while a common eastern perspective posits that talent is something developed over time. The distinctly Japanese Enji and his personal conflict over the existence of the “natural born”, western-coded All Might thrusts these implied concepts of talent from subtext (not that they were particularly hard to identify throughout the manga) into blatant text. And I’m not just talking about the moment where Enji thinks to himself, “I have always envied natural-born superheroes.”

The written characters for Enji’s given name means effort. The name also sounds like another word for “fuckin’ honkin’ bigass fire”, Enjo, but for our discussion, Enji means effort. Endeavor, his self-chosen hero name, also implies the application of effort.

Everything about this man is defined by his efforts, even when they are in vain. Everything.

He pours his effort into becoming Japan’s greatest Hero. He pours his efforts into escaping the fate of his father. He pours his efforts into making the most terrible domestic choices possible to try to be enough for his family. He pours his efforts into atoning for his transgressions against his family, and then again for those against society. And it is not enough. He knows it is not enough, it never will be enough. Not one thing he has ever done in his life has been enough for him, enough for his family, enough for society. It is never enough. This is his burden. 

You don’t have to feel bad for him about it, mind you. I’m just telling you that it is, functionally, his core struggle.

Enji poured every bit of himself into looking away from his son Toya and into running away from him. It’s going to take every bit of effort within himself to stand his ground and face his son again, and even then, he is still going to need help. Perhaps that’s pathetic, but even Enji knew he was only going to be a professional Hero, never a superhero.

Enji is a man who believes, who is basically required to believe, who likely cannot continue to exist if he does not believe, that his value and justification for being is defined by his ability to pull himself up by his bootstraps, or to just keep struggling in the endeavor. 

He pours his effort into everything he does and curses his own weaknesses. Even struggling takes effort.

Japan's Burning Soul: Notes on National Pride and Flame Quirks

In my Kirishima presentation, I talk extensively about kouha and their manly aesthetic as it applies to symbols of Japan. What the presentation doesn’t talk about are flame motifs.

In Japan, flames are seen as purifying. They are also seen as manly, and not just in the way Kirishima defines it. There’s several phrases in Japan that talk about stuff like “a burning soul” or even “Japan’s burning soul” or the “blazing spirit” of a Japanese youth. Well, I think these are just about as tacky as they sound but in the same kind of boyish, tacky-cool way most shonen anime can be.

I’m talking about the flame motif on festival jackets. I’m talking about every time Galo from Promare talks about his “flaming firefighter soul”. To some extent, I’m talking about the flames on the Hokage jacket in Naruto (Minato’s and Naruto’s jackets get the flames as a nod to their shared mentor Jiraiya, who is a whole-ass conversation about masculinity in culture, theater, and mythology in and of himself.) These examples are indicative of each of these characters’ pride in their masculinity and in their nationality. Enji’s flame quirk and his constant use of flames as a brand are no exception to this trend.

Some minor characters, and later Dabi, allude to the fact that flame-based quirks are somewhat common in MHA. I’m not completely certain if the prevalence of flame quirks is also meant to indicate that these quirk holders share the same sort of “flaming spirit”, background, national pride, or even miscellaneous political views, but somehow I get the feeling that it does.

These people are, on some level, connected in that they possess the flaming soul of (masculine, old, patriarchal) Japan. The existence of Pro Hero Endeavor is a representation of the traditional, conservative Japan’s soul. All Might may wear red, white, and blue (and yellow like a yellow-haired westerner) to represent a certain set of foreign ideals, but Enji wears the red and the blue with distinctly Japanese pride.

The Colors of a Nation

Red and white, the colors of the Japanese flag, have strong cultural connotations through Japanese architecture, festivals, and shinto practices. (Please keep in mind that colors can mean a lot of things in every culture depending on context, and in Japan, different shades of the same colors can also hold distinct meanings. For example, certain shades of blue are often worn by villains in theater, but blue is not always “evil” or “villainous” by default.) But the color that I personally associate with Japan is blue - specifically, anything dyed with the aizome technique.

Aizome clothing, or clothing dyed with indigo, transitioned from being a nobility-only thing to one of the few colors that commoners could wear starting in the early 1600s - because by then, bright colors were exclusive to the nobility. The indigo dye is also popular for its antibacterial, insect repellent, and flame retardant properties. Firefighters wore it. Samurai wore it under their armor. So it’s not surprising to me that Endeavor’s Hero costume, and that of his son, would use fabric in a particular hue of dark blue.

Also? If you wanted to know? Aizome is used to dye Japanese blue jeans today. Hey, Best Jeanist!

Anyway, Enji is dressed in the color of the common Japanese man, the firefighter, the samurai, the noble laborer or honorable servant - but definitely not of high nobility.

We don’t know a ton about Enji’s background in detail, we know he wasn’t born ungodly rich. We know his father died. We know he went to UA. He made money from his Hero career, and married into a pedigree. Yes, he chose Rei because she had an ice quirk, but got the bonus of clout and old world connections.

So, uh, yes, the marriage of Enji and Rei was one of new money and big ambition married to old nobility and traditional values, and that’s true even when taking the kids out of the equation. But more on Rei and the marriage later.

Unpacking Enji's Envy of All Might

The majority of Japan’s political scene is conservative. (Look at the ideology column in that table, NOT just the name of the party. If you’re a westerner, I realize that identifying which ones are conservative is going to be particularly difficult to do given their translated names.) The Jiminto, or Liberal Democratic Party (again, look at the ideology column, NOT JUST THE NAME OF THE PARTY. Remember that “liberal” and “democratic” can hold different connotations in different countries!) was founded in 1955 and, despite having a nebulous identity beyond being “kinda to the right”, continues to hold a significant majority. Over the years, the party has commonly been seen as reliable, stable, and able to get the job done. Well, except for during those periods of time when the scandals came out.

This is not unlike how the public of MHA saw Endeavor. Well, until the scandals came out.

Now, I do not think it is correct to say that Enji = the Jiminto and leave it at that. (I would, however, call him a personification of Japan’s modern patriarchy, or at least something pretty damn close.) His dogged, openly vocalized grudge against All Might is more extreme than what the majority of the Jiminto might openly express, especially considering their consensus of policy regarding the US. I only want to give some context to the longer-standing political scene of Japan as it affects the modern day.

See, while Japan and the US have had an enduring relationship and are, uh, well, allies now, the older generations of Japan, particularly in rural areas, still hold deep grudges against the States and are bitterly, bitterly angry at the cultural imperialism and the military takeover and the government policy changes and the economic changes and the, well, the everything. Actually, the mutual cycle of envy between the Japanese and US citizens detailed in that Times article is important to remember from both perspectives. There’s old bias against each country lingering in both directions, and, while not a direct reference to how it remains in the Japanese population, understanding how it affected the creation of Japanese internment camps in the US is very illuminating in understanding the public US sentiment about the Japanese before WWII then after it.

When Enji, (or Endeavor), discusses his inferiority complex, he gives away the game and makes the subtext of the rampant western envy present in many of the characters in the work burst out into just plain text.

While Toshinori Yagi is a Japanese man, the power he inherited, or what Enji (and the world) wrongly believed was “natural-born talent” (a western concept), blatantly signals “western power” through his costume and art style (US comics!) and he represents the “band-aid” of temporary western military and socio-political power imposed upon Japan.

The US is considered a superpower, after all.

That said, I do feel that giving the western-appearance clout (and magic quirk) to the Japanese Yagi aptly communicates that there is nothing naturally special about the US or its citizens, or really anyone who has power. All of that misunderstood “special glow” or “flawless perfection” or “incontestable strength” are just appearances, presentation, circumstances, and luck - nothing more and nothing less. Yagi (who is, again, Japanese, so this is a Japanese man displaying the incredible aptitude for superheroism, to Enji’s surprise and probable chagrin) may have had a knack for using the quirk and therefore was the greatest at winning and saving, but he also destroyed himself trying to be the perfectly westernized superhero.

Also, by comparing the obviously westernized Katsuki Bakugo and pridefully Japanese Enji Todoroki, Horikoshi makes his point that a shithead is a shithead regardless of nationality, background, or philosophy. 

At the same time, both characters have the ability to change.

Speaking as someone from the US, I’m conflicted, humbled, creeped out, and very emotional over the fact that Horikoshi has chosen to have a complicated, sometimes critical (early Bakugo’s westernisms are not flattering, and the westernized persona of All Might is an unsustainable, unrealistic, unfair thing that destroyed the man maintaining it), but overall kind, laudable, and compassionate portrayal of characters that stand in for the west.

I’ve heard Horikoshi has been criticized as a “freeaboo” for the open admiration of the west inherent in My Hero Academia. I’ll admit, I think he might be a little bit of one, but I’d be the cat calling the monkey a long-tailed bastard if I didn’t also admit that I’m a bit of a weeaboo. We can be mutually embarrassed about how much we like each other despite everything, I guess.

But back to Enji and Yagi. Enji bitching about All Might and expressing disgust over his “American” presentation and perceived advantage is, um. Well, I could call it an example of him making excuses because Yagi is actually Japanese, but it is true Yagi gained experiences and some training advantages in the US that Enji did not have. And, like, Yagi also got a magic quirk (from another Japanese person.) That’s something.

But I digress. The irony and realities of Enji’s envy and self-deprecation could be debated all day, but it doesn’t lessen the stink of hostility and western envy wafting off of it.

The Significance of Mountains in Japan

You know about Fuji-san, or Mt. Fuji, the largest and most iconic mountain of Japan? Awesome, because it’s Japan’s most famous cultural site and a great case study for how the Japanese view mountains as sacred. People hike Mt. Fuji and other sacred mountains for secular reasons, too, sure, but many do so as a spiritual pilgrimage. It’s a mixed bag, sort of like how, in the west, everyone is impacted by and understands Christmas despite how it’s primarily only modern Christians that have religious traditions regarding it.

Sekoto Peak, the in-story location where Enji sometimes trains and Toya burns himself, doesn’t actually exist and therefore has no real-life associated myths, but Enji’s choice to train on it indicates much about his discipline. It also provides a quiet association between honing his abilities to their pinnacle and his connecting to the understood sacred power of the mountain. There’s a mystical element to it. 

Most, if not all, Japanese mountains are considered sacred in some sense no matter how tall or pretty they are. This is just understood. Many mountains are the sites of one or more Buddhist or Shinto temples.

Ah, and since many mountains are volcanoes, it shouldn’t be terribly surprising to think of them as residences for fire elementals or other kami and spirit figures. Or even demons.

Enji’s view of All Might as standing on the peak of an even higher mountain, or even perhaps BEING a mountain himself that Enji is unable to climb or conquer, is analogous to him realizing he is one insignificant human man in the face of a force of nature. All Might is not unlike a kami (god - though please remember there is a difference in attitude between those that worship and honor a god versus those that worship capital-G God) to Enji in this sense, but it is perhaps more correct to say that Enji sees All Might as someone who was able to make the pilgrimage to the highest peak and reach enlightenment, thereby becoming divine, while Enji himself is incapable (and therefore unworthy. Because he’s not working hard enough, obviously! Or at least, that’s what Enji thinks.)

If you’re a reader in the Christian-based-background west, you’re likely thinking this is like saying Enji sees himself as a filthy, nasty sinner who is going to hell forever. This isn’t NOT sorta kinda partially in the neighborhood, but that would be a much more punitive, permanent, and fixed view than a Buddhist or east Asian perspective. It’s also missing the point. Readers can want whatever they want, but they shouldn’t necessarily expect this story to absolutely intend to make Enji burn in hell forever through outside forces (because he definitely is doing it to himself, at least currently in this lifetime. Burn, asshole.)

Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths

Rather than a Judeo-Christian sensibility, Enji’s story (and Deku’s, and Bakugo’s, and Rei’s, and Shoto’s, and Uraraka’s, and Toga’s, and Shigaraki’s, and…) more closely resembles Buddhist philosophy and the journey of someone coming to understand the four noble truths - and it ties into Enji’s own discovery and understanding of these truths, which is a journey basically every damn character in this series is going through - if not for their own sakes, then for the sake of learning it on behalf of someone else. That link has a detailed writeup, but here’s the brief:

The First Noble Truth (dukkha) - everyone suffers, and suffering is part of the world. Enji knows this one intimately.

The Second Noble Truth (samudaya) - something causes suffering to happen. In Buddhism, most things that cause suffering are related to having desires for material things or status. Enji learns that he and his desires are the major source for his own suffering and for that of his family.

The Third Noble Truth (nirodha) - knowing that suffering can end. Like, in the abstract. This is acknowledging there is a way it can happen even if one doesn’t know what it is yet.

The Fourth Noble Truth (magga) - knowing there is a way to end suffering. This one is about an action plan. Enji’s action plan is to give his family a new home to live in that does not include him. Later, he realizes he must apologize to the public and continue to do the only damn thing he can to contribute meaningfully towards ending their suffering: keep being a pro Hero even if he can’t be a superhero.

Does knowing or doing any of this purify him? Well, sort of, through the fire ‘n flame of the grueling ordeal of fighting All for One notwithstanding whether or not the public and (some of) his kids still hate him afterwards, but nah, not really.

In some ways, this is a nice quality that My Hero Academia has - that characters still want things, are allowed to want things, and their desires are treated as natural. Sometimes heroic, even! The characters’ ensuing suffering is also a natural and realistic consequence, but that’s a-ok - everyone will still plug along and do their best to try and reach a collective enlightenment. A constant state of enlightened perfection is not attainable nor sustainable for the mortal, which is why the concept of enlightenment through an ongoing cycle of rebirth exists rather than in the form of an immediate reward, but that doesn’t mean we should stop in the endeavor of striving for it.

So that’s what Enji Todoroki is: an illustration of how action through atonement is always better than sending someone or pushing someone to send themselves to hell forever, thereby never allowing them the opportunity to escape the wheel of life.

What is Rei Todoroki?

Rei is a daughter of prestige and her family’s last hope to stay relevant. She’s a woman raised in and trapped by the obligations, power, money, and structure of an old society that is doing everything it can to keep from crumbling.

But she’s also complicit in helping to uphold it. Rei is definitely a victim, but she’s also definitely a perpetrator. ‘Cause that’s how it works - people under the thumb of one kind of authority or abuse often perpetuate it and continue the cycle.

Rei’s given name means, as written, cold. It’s simple, but fitting. She is often emotionally unavailable and unable to connect with Enji and her children (especially Toya, but that’s a two-way street.). It’s one of the contributing factors to why she didn’t “see” her son.

Yuki-Onna and Yamato Nadeshiko

A yuki-onna, or snow woman, is a figure from folklore. They are described as beautiful women who appear on cold and snowy nights. The Wikipedia page I linked gives a good picture of the wide variety of yuki-onna stories out there and of the nature of this figure for your reference. But Rei, while a more human character, definitely suggests a yuki-onna. I think the stories that associate the yuki-onna with children, specifically the one where she asks strangers to hold a child (and survive holding it, in which case she generously awards the holder) or associate her with mountains, are the most interesting for this discussion considering the other mythological and cultural associations present in the Todoroki family.

Rei is also a sort of yamato nadeshiko figure, or an idealized Japanese woman. TVtropes did my work for me on this one:

“Being a yamato nadeshiko revolved around the Confucian concepts of Feudal Loyalty and Filial Piety, which…meant acting for the benefit of one's family and obeying and assisting authority figures…Virtues include(d) loyalty, domestic ability, wisdom, maturity, and humility.”

A nadeshiko is, in English, a dianthus. I know it by the colloquial name Sweet William.

The white-edged flowers kinda looks like Fuyumi’s hair, no?

However, Rei is a yamato nadeshiko with a twist! Rei’s character starts out as a doormat, totally broke and unable to handle life in the Todoroki house, and then later finds the resolve and underlying “iron will” to face Enji, the family, and her mistakes again. Women aren’t naturally “perfect” in any sense of the word, ever, and they definitely don’t naturally (or even unnaturally, even through dogged effort) fit the mold of the yamato nadeshiko (at least, not every waking second of their lives.) But they can grow stronger over time, just like everyone else can. Rei becomes more like a “true” yamato nadeshiko after she stops trying so hard to be one for the sake of upholding her marriage and socially-acceptable appearances and instead approaches the situation from a place of collected, experienced resolve.

Yamato, as all these sources’ll tell ya, is an old term for Japan. “Yamato” is the name of the clan that set up the first (and only) Japanese dynasty as well as the name for the actual seat of government they created (and yeah, the Yamato seat was located on a mountain.)  Today, “Yamato” is also the ethnic majority of modern Japan. Wikipedia has the most succinct brief on how Japan, despite its efforts to brand itself as one homogenized and harmonious Yamato people, definitely ain’t one. 

Likewise, the yamato nadeshiko was a propaganda tool to encourage women to behave “correctly” and paint the picture of a desirable Japanese woman. The unreasonable expectation of women to reach the standard of the idealized yamato nadeshiko was, and is, total bullshit.

Miai and Traditional Marriages

It’s old-fashioned, but not scandalous or inherently skeezy that Enji and Rei had an arranged marriage. Miai, or matchmaking meetings, are still a thing today in the real world and would likely continue to be a thing in the analogous-to-the-real-world’s-present future setting MHA presents, especially for someone like pro Hero Enji. He didn’t have the time or interest to date around, and he needed a marriage of business and mutual interest rather than love (and I don’t just mean “marriage of business” for the purpose of producing designer kids, though that is absolutely what he did and everyone involved even knew it.) Rei’s family are also exactly the kind of family that would desire miai to arrange the most mutually beneficial marriage possible - regardless of Enji’s involvement.

In the grand scheme of history, marriages for love being the accepted norm is exceptionally modern, and while love marriages are increasingly common in many places including Japan, they certainly are not “traditional”. Here’s a blog about Japanese marriages written in 2002 that may contain some interesting tidbits bridging the new and old traditions. Here’s a brief history of marriage in Japan.

Also, Enji and Rei were married young. Overall, the Japanese, especially women, are expected to marry young, though the mean age for women at their time of marriage has increased as time has passed. There still exists, especially for Japanese women, an expectation to marry younger, or at least marry while “in their prime”. If you watch anime, you likely already know what a “Christmas cake” is in modern slang. (That article does a fantastic job of illustrating western envy and postwar Japanese cultural shifts using the adoption of the Christmas cake as a case study.) If you don’t know, a Christmas cake is a slang term for an unmarried woman over 25. Because apparently, a day over 25 means she is past her prime for marriage and has  “expired”.

Marriage fulfills certain social obligations even among middle- and lower-class Japanese citizens, but while Rei would not be alone in feeling the pressure to get married for the sake of her family, she would feel it the most acutely because of her status.

Appearances and Divorce in Japanese Society

Rei could divorce Enji, it’s true, if she had his agreement to do so or if she had sufficient evidence to prove it in a Japanese court. Which, good luck. Because while we know Enji was brutal and abusive in training, which parent actually burned Shoto and left a lasting scar? That’s right. Rei did.

So Rei’s divorce likely would have totally fucked her and the children over. For one, she’d be stripped of the Todoroki family name and likely any Todoroki assets, and since she’d be breaking the deal made between Enji and her family, her own family likely would not take her back! 

Divorces are becoming more common in modern Japan, but it’s important to remember that the stinging double-standard of “divorce is okay, except if it’s ONE OF US” that the upper classes (or just the exceptionally proud or wealthy) impose on themselves is brutal. If the public knew Rei had divorced and were given no context - which they wouldn’t get because shaming one’s (ex-)husband and family by sharing those details publicly would be considered crass and unthinkable - the public would likely rip her and the children apart even if they ripped Enji apart, too. 

Remember: keeping up appearances is everything in Japanese society.

Rei living outside the house in a facility for her mental health is already shameful and potentially scandalous enough, and it wouldn’t do her any favors in court regarding custody of the children, anyway. Instead, she chooses the limbo of remaining married, but separated.

The Rindo Flower

Yes, I have read meta about Rei’s favorite flower being a rindo flower. I’ve seen it in this post from @foundouthatdabiistouyatodoroki and on Reddit, as well as just, like, around the fandom. I agree that the flower’s presence is often a stand-in for Toya, but I also think it stands in for the ghost of Enji’s, well, not exactly love, but his affection and promise to Rei made via their marriage.

Remembering that Rei likes a flower and showing that he remembers is kind of, like, the bare minimum, but it’s somethin’, I guess.

The rindo, most likely the Japanese gentian in English, is, well, a gentian.

 The flower’s color suggests the indigo of the aizome dye, a traditional Japanese color, and its meanings include compassion for sorrow, justice, and… victory. When held upside down like Rei presents it during the hospital scene, it implies loss. (The gladiolus, which the article mentions as another flower of victory, is named because the leaves and shape so resemble a sword. Well, to the Romans, the word for “sword”, and was also a euphemism for a dick. Gladiators, or “sword-ers”, were talked about in terms of their masculinity, victories, and how many other things they penetrated with their “swords”. Real classy. Source? All my history classes.)

Considering Rei’s status as a sort of “blue blood”, I think it’s interesting to note that gentians are the flowers that appear on the Minamoto crest (though the crest most likely uses the less-specific-than-the-rindo balloon flower from the same genus.) I don’t know if associating Rei (and her kids) directly with one of Japan’s major noble clans (and the same one that the Tale of Genji centers around) was Horikoshi’s primary intention, but I think the connection is still worth talking about.

As that Wikipedia article can tell you, the Minamoto name was once given to imperial family members who could not inherit the throne through the family line. It’s fitting for Toya, considering how his father decided he couldn’t be a Hero that surpasses All Might despite being the firstborn son who was created for that explicit purpose.

Let’s talk about that, actually.

What is Toya Todoroki | Dabi?

What is Toya? He’s the first son of a wealthy family with noble blood in him who was utterly crushed by the thought of failing to uphold the social obligations into which he was born.

Personally, I consider Toya to be the most fragile major character in the entire series, contested for the spot only by his own father, Shigaraki, and possibly early series Bakugo. 

Toya, or more precisely Dabi, is Enji (and Rei) Todoroki’s very own monster. Instead of a “perfect creation” like intended, he became, well, whatever you want to call Dabi. 

But let’s talk about Toya first.

The Role of Firstborn Sons in Japan

Firstborn sons are fucking important in Japan and in many other eastern cultures. Generally, they are obligated to inherit just about damn near everything and, in return, are tasked with basically all the responsibilities of honoring their parents. A Japanese family isn’t just a series of blood ties, but an institution. This system, called ie, has its own legal rules. Under the ie system, the firstborn son and his wife (who is likely doing most of the caretaking) live with the parents to continue the household. The other kids are expected to marry out or go start their own families.

Of course, not every single family follows these rules, but the social norms and pressures to uphold them exist. This academic paper written in 2007 analyzes why certain children in the birth order may live with (or near) their parents and explores several factors that impact this decision within families (usually related to whether or not the parents are providing childcare for the grandchildren.) Here’s a fun quote from page 3:

“...the first-born child generally lives with or closer to his/her parents than the second-born child, a result which is consistent with both our theoretical model and Japanese social norms. Second, there is one exception. If a first-born child is a female and she has at least one younger brother, then she locates farther away from her parents than her younger brother even though she is a first-born child.”

More on that “second” part in regards to Fuyumi later.

But, like with most cultures, the more traditional (and established and wealthy) a family is, the heavier the predetermined responsibilities of each household member weighs on them. And Enji Todoroki’s family is high-profile. So, you can imagine that the pressure placed on Toya is immense.

The pressure placed on firstborn son Tensei Iida was immense, too, but their family dynamic was totally different. The Iida family was, like, healthy and functional. Wild.

Moving on. So Toya was not only youthfully excited to impress his father and support his family as the firstborn son, but he was also, in a certain sense, socially conditioned to want to do so. 

To me, this is where things get interesting. Toya’s struggle is not against his parents for crushing his dreams of a life beyond what they and their society’s established roles provide him. Instead, it is the opposite. Toya’s parents are ready to shake up the established family formula and free Toya from many of the obligations of firstborn son duties. Toya is not ready for any of that newfangled modern sensibilities nonsense. According to tradition, Toya’s role and life should be set and secure.

When Rei asks Toya if he even wants to be a Hero, she inadvertently makes him grapple with the possibility that carrying on the family business (or at least carrying on the to-be tradition of becoming the Flame Hero and surpassing All Might per his father’s wishes) is not a given. Other choices exist. Rei’s question, while well-meaning, creates a fissure in Toya’s faith in the patriarchal system from which he developed his entire identity.

If Toya, the first son, can’t use his flames, isn’t a Hero, doesn’t inherit, and won’t continue to live with the family, who is he? If he doesn’t fulfill that role and those obligations, is he worth anything to anyone, even himself?

Conventional wisdom says no. He would be a disgrace and a failure even without Enji’s dumbass “create a genetically ideal child to use the ultimate flame quirk to surpass All Might” scheme in the mix. For Toya, it was never about surpassing All Might, not really. It was about fulfilling his household role and showing his father that he was worthy of being in the family.

When Shoto was born, Toya saw that door slam shut. After that, his inability to embrace another way of life leads to his undoing. But he is also, you know. 13.

Toya, through no fault of his own, cannot handle his father’s flames - not his flames of sheer power, not of mindless effort, not of personal fear, not of burning western envy, not of national pride, not of anything. But Enji burdened Toya with them anyway.

Arrows, Hamaya, and All Might

The characters in Toya’s given name mean “lamp (or, like, a light)” and “arrow”. @skyflyinginaction and their mutuals have an early discussion about his name and its possible meanings as well as a discussion about symbolism here that’s fun to read, and I’m always happy to not have to do any more work - er, happy to give credit where it is due for research and thoughts. But I do have more to add.

Arrows and archery have particular connotations in Japan. The ones I most commonly think about are hamaya, or evil-warding arrows, used ceremonially. Hamaya can be purchased at temples to be displayed in the home as luck-bringing or evil-warding items. Of course, the bow is also a significant evil-warding symbol, and the bow and arrow are often meant to appear together as a set of evil-warding objects, but yanno. Whatever works.

Anyway, around the New Year, archery contests and traditions abound as a way to predict the coming year’s fortune or ward off evil. This blog entry details one day of tradition in Ibaraki as well as the associations with masculinity and, erm, promoting fertility.

There’s one more tradition I learned orally, so I can’t source it, though the purpose for it was different than the one I just linked. In the one I was told, the head priest opens the yabusame (horseback archery) ceremony by firing an arrow through the temple gates and off the side of the mountain to slay an invisible demon. The firing coincides with the sun’s placement and becomes, much like Toya’s name suggests, an arrow of light.

In any case, arrows are associated with luck, sons, and warding off evil. I get the sense that the “arrow” in Toya’s name brings all of these cultural associations into play. More specifically, I get the sense that Toya was meant to be the “arrow of leading light” meant to slay the “evil” of the west, All Might, and purify that uppermost and unreachable peak where All Might stands in Enji’s mind. Don’t quote that, though.

‘Course, the “guiding light” or “purifying light” implied by Toya’s name eventually becomes perverted from its original purpose.

Toya’s Cremation

According to the manchild himself, Toya died not when he burned the shit out of himself on Sekoto Peak, but when he thought his family had replaced him. That’s when he says Dabi was born.

The word Dabi means cremation. Heh. The enthusiastic @foundoutthatdabiistouyatodoroki posted about why and how it may be written as something indirect instead of something more direct for the sake of Japanese sensibilities.

I’d also like to point out that Toya’s body was not properly, ritually buried or cremated in any sense or tradition. This is important, since the failure to do so often prevents the spirit from passing on to the afterlife!

Arguably, Toya cremated himself, but not all the way and not in the way that aligns with the intentions and purpose of a kotsuage, or funerary cremation ritual. Also, his family did not pick out his bones - the authorities did when they found a piece of his jaw. That linked article talks more about the significance of the tradition, but put simply: the family didn’t properly mourn Toya, and in doing so, they did not free themselves emotionally of his specter. They also didn’t free Toya from his attachments to them.

This life-to-death stuff is a two-way street, and Toya’s soul was left hanging onto a burned, rotting corpse by the thread of his own grudge. He’s a modern horror story.

Dabi’s Horror Inspirations

That’s right, Dabi fans! It’s time to talk about the well-known Frankenstein allusions present in the character - though I’m pretty sure Horikoshi pulled from the 1931 film and not the book. Whatever. 

As Toya, Enji’s creation was an ice quirk + a fire quirk instead of a (cold) corpse + a reintroduced (hot) spark of life (and later, half of his “father” Victor Frankenstein’s own brain) like Frankenstein’s monster. Frankenstein’s monster’s weakness, at least in the movie, is fire. In the book, fire is still present and double-edged. 

As Dabi, Enji’s creation is a reanimated corpse (wow!) + a twisted sense of self created from Enji’s own will (wow!) who seeks revenge on his creator and family for his loneliness and creation. His weakness is, uh, yeah, it’s still fire.

While Enji is not the one who recreated and revived Toya as Dabi, it is Toya’s grudge (and desire to see and be seen by his father) that keeps him alive. In fact, Dabi is a really cool twist on a yurei or perhaps an ikiryo since he is technically still alive. Still, Dabi most closely seems to follow the patterns of an onryo, which is a more specific form of yurei. These spirits, and the story of one in particular, are the inspiration behind the Japanese Ju-on: The Grudge movies (and then their US-made counterpart.) Here’s a bit from the onryo entry from yokai.com not ‘cause it’s the most academic, but the most succinct:

“Their motive is always the same—vengeance. Onryō are easily powerful enough to kill anyone. However, they prefer letting the object of their hatred live a long life of torment and suffering, watching loved ones die in their stead. Onryō inflict a terrible curse on the people or places that they haunt. This curse can be transmitted to others like a contagious disease, creating a circle of death and destruction far more devastating than any ordinary ghost.”

You may decide that the entry for the gyoro or another yurei suits Dabi better, but surely you see the point that he’s playing the role of some kind of ghost. His eerie blue flame suggests onibi, or resentful spirits taking the form of blue flame. Wikipedia also does me a big favor by mentioning the overlap between onibi and European will o’ wisps, which usually lead people astray towards goals they can’t reach!

It really would have been better for everyone if Toya hadn’t pursued the incredibly hot blue flame, huh? Instead, he just burned out fast. Kinda dissappointing and anticlimactic - like a dragon’s head on a snake’s body.

Yeah, that’s right - Dabi seems to have renamed himself “dissappointment”. Heh. Tweens and teens really are the funniest people on the planet.

The First Son Passed Over for a Second Time

But perhaps the funniest and most horrible detail of the whole manga is the implication that All for One and the doctor took one look at Dabi’s shambling corpse escaping from the nursery and went, “Yeah, let that one go. He’s a little too pathetic to be the next vessel or organ for infinite hatred to fuel our big schemes.” Like, absolutely nobody (except the very family he thought replaced him, and boy, are they a shitshow), not even the villains that seek out pathetic people in order to use them, wanted Dabi.

Dabi is, in many ways, Doctor Garaki’s “First Son” vessel experiment for All for One, and he was passed over in favor of Shigaraki in much the way Toya’s father passed him over for Shoto due to how unsuitable a vessel he is.

When Dabi faces Geten, the ice-quirk user whom ReDestro treats almost like his own successor, who believes that a powerful quirk (and strong sense of individuality with a need to express it) is the only thing that makes someone worthy of living, who exists as his weird mirror with a more weaponized and powerful form of Rei’s ice quirk, I wonder if he thought god was laughing at him. I know his face and skin began splitting apart as if to show his true identity (a dead kid upset at his family) and show a waver in his resolve to stay alive to accomplish his goal, but I’d love to know if he has any ideology outside of his grudge towards his father and family.

If Hawks told Dabi to his stapled face his real reasons for helping Endeavor, what would Dabi say? Heh heh heh. Dabi learned not to trust Rei, Fuyumi, or his own brother Natsuo, so I’m not terribly surprised he never trusted Keigo in the first place.

Keigo, who never thought to watch Dabi. Keigo, who had to ask who Dabi is. Keigo, who also didn’t see him.

Keigo, who wants to take Toya’s place.

But let’s talk about Toya’s other siblings... in part 2!

[rizzyu]

▵▿— First Snow Above City Lights

Pairing: Dazai Osamu, x gn! reader

Category: Flufffffufufufufffff

Warning: none

Summary: As Christmas strived closer and close by the day, the Armed Detective Agency hosted a Christmas party at the office to celebrate. And fate decided to bring you and your best friend Dazai closer together once again.

A/N: honestly didn’t expect it to be this long…

▿▵— 8:37pm

Extreme. Chaos.

You stood outside of the office door, staring at the doorknob as you heard maniacal screams and laugher from the other side. They sure are a lively bunch… You thought to yourself, before opening the door.

“I’m here!” You called out as you held a bag of all the gifts you bought from your colleagues.

“Y/N-saaaaaaaaaan!” Your best friend, Dazai, came rushing to you with a blissful smile on his face. “Took you long enough! You’re lucky you didn’t arrive later, Ranpo already ate half of the snacks!” Dazai gently yet firmly grabbed your wrist and dragged you over to where everyone else was.

The agency office was adorned with excessive Christmas decorations. Flashing string lights around the ceilings made the room much more colourful. But seeing all the agency members gathering and having fun is what made this time of the year lively.

“We finished making the next batch of cookies!” Atsushi and Kyouka stepped out of the kitchen as they held plates of piping-hot cookies. Almost immediately Ranpo came out of nowhere to grab a few. “Y/N open wide~!” You turn your head to see Dazai holding a cookie at your face. When you tried to take a bite of the cookie, the brunet pulls his hand back, making you bite on air. “Hey, Dazai—!”

You quickly held his bandaged wrist in place before biting down on the cookie on his hand. Dazai couldn’t help but laugh at your reaction. “Hmph. That was mischievous of you.” You pouted and turned your head away in a huff.

“We’ve found the speaker.” It was then Kunikida called out to everyone, holding a radio in his hands. “We weren’t able to play music earlier since the speaker went missing. Everyone please wait for a moment, I need to change the batteries.”

A while later, music started blasting from the speaker. Without another word, Dazai pulled you close to him, one hand by your waist, while the other intertwined with your hand. “Shall we dance?” In response you placed your unoccupied hand on his shoulder and smirked. “God, why do you have to be so flirty all the time? Fine since you’re soo desperate.”

The next thing you knew, Dazai was guiding you with his graceful movements around the office floors. His chestnut-coloured eyes were on you as he spined you around to the music playing in the background. The way his hair swayed as he spined you once more before dipping you. The arm around your waist firmly held you in place, preventing you from falling. “Are you having fun?” Dazai flashed you a beaming smile as his thumb tenderly drew circles on the clothed skin of your waist.

“Dazai-san, Y/N-san, look above you!”

“Hmm?” While still in that dipping position, you and Dazai looked up to see a plant dangling from right above you by a red ribbon.

A mistletoe.

 “Oh are they about to kiss?” Ranpo spoke between bites of snacks. “Good for them I guess. I mean, everyone could tell they have been crushing on ea—”

“RANPO!”

Everyone turned to shush Ranpo before he could spill this secret in which only you and Dazai were unaware of. As everyone was distracted, Dazai gently helped you stand back up. His hand found refuge on your cheek as he brushed a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “Who would have thought we would be dancing right below a mistletoe?” His voice in a teasing tone as a wide grin hung on his face. “Are you ready, belladonna?”

You felt your cheeks heat up. How did it end up like this? It was meant to just a simple, fun Christmas party. But here you are, about to kiss your best friend. You weren’t complaining though. It all seemed like fate was on your side today. Your heart pounded against your ribcage as you looked away from Dazai, a small smile tugged at your face as you gave him a little nod.

You were pretty certain you had ascended into heaven the moment his lips connected with yours so tenderly.  Butterflies were officially going haywires inside the pit of your stomach. God, the way his hand was still gently cradling your face, his bandages tickling your cheek, his arm on your waist keeping you close to him.

The way his soft gaze was on you as you pulled away for air. The way your stomach still churns even after the kiss. The way you didn’t even notice all the other agency members’ gazes on you as your sole focus was Dazai.

Yep, you were definitely in heaven.

▿▵— 9:05pm

You had never had such a lively Christmas since you joined the Armed Detective Agency. It had practically become a home for you.

As everyone else are playing games in the agency office, you decided to take a break from all the chaos and watch the city lights from the rooftop of the building. You watch as spots of light illuminate Yokohama, as people below on the streets engage in the festive environment. As your hair swayed in the breeze you couldn’t help but feel a sense of tranquillity.

“You’re here again?” A familiar voice caught your attention. You turned around to see Dazai walking towards you. “You always know that I’m always here.” “Of course, after all this was the place we always hung out when we first became friends.” A comforting silence engulfed you both as you looked out to the distance.

“Yknow how I’m always flirty with everyone?” Dazai suddenly spoke up. “In truth, I had always had my eyes on you alone.”

“Huh?” You looked at him with a curious face.

“That’s right, you, my belladonna.”

You chuckled lightly, “I was about to say pretty much the same thing.” The next moment all went by in a blur as Dazai locked lips with you the second time today. His hand was intertwined with yours in a firm yet gentle way. He was so gentle with you, as if you’re a piece of delicate glassware that could break easily.

You pulled away as a single snowflake fell on Dazai’s head. Chuckles left your lips, “It’s snowing.” “Beautiful isn’t it?”

Dazai’s hair swayed in the wind as he looked at you with a soft gaze.

“Merry Christmas, my belladonna.”

[sugar-coated-prat-dragon]

Title: The Mage Stone was once an ordinary object until it was enchanted with powerful magic.

Bonus: Merlin has now been killed twice by the magic of a Sidhe staff (proving immortality).

Episode: To Kill the King

Questions by @tansyuduri

Tagging: @miyriu

Question: The Mage Stone woke Merlin because of its powerful magic. Why do some magic artifacts do it and not others?

It implies it was not just whenever it was in, and as we saw before it was not when magic was activly running through it.

So does it have a sort of conciousness? Does it decide? Am I overthinking this?

My answer: The Complete Guide, states that the Mage Stone was once an ordinary item that was enchanted and given great power. So that would make it similar in design to the Cup of Life (which Merlin can also sense).

The book makes of saying that magical individuals can be drawn to magical beings or objects. Only to then point out separately… “ And then there is Merlin ...”

So Merlin falls under that category in some ways, and yet we all know he’s also not mortal, since he’s the incarnation of magic. 🪄 Therefore he might react differently to magic items than normal sorcerers.

Book description:

Magical powers: Very rarely, humans are born with magical abilities. These magical individuals may be drawn to other magical beings or objects. And then there is Merlin ...

Question: I find it intersting that the stone is strong enough to absorb a sidhe blast and then just reflect it! WHO MADE THIS THING IN THE MERLIN WORLD?

My answer: The only thing we know for sure is that the Mage Stone was once an ordinary object before being enchanted with great magic. And that it was created by “the Ancients” over a thousand years ago.

Magical Objects: An ordinary item may be enchanted and given great powers. Legends tell of fantastic objects, such as the Mage Stone, which gives its bearer the power of transformation, and swords that can slay the dead.

Book description: The Mage Stone is a wonder of the Ancients; a powerful magical item. It can be used to deflect spells but it is most prized for its gift of transformation: the bearer of the Mage Stone can turn lead into gold. Its power can be detected by those sensitive to magic, such as Merlin. The stone was lost for over a thousand years, but eventually came into Tauren's possession.

Question/thought: Merlin was killed when the Mage Stone reflected his staff blast back at him?

My answer: Correct. The blue crystal on a Sidhe’s staff shoots deadly energy bolts that kill instantly.

Merlin was not only struck by one in “The Gates of Avalon” episode, but the Mage Stone deflected the full power of that deadly bolt back at him in this one and yet he was able to survive. So that’s two times now that Merlin absorbed a lethal attack and woke up with no injuries.

Book description: Merlin attacked Tauren with Sophia Tirmawr's Sidhe staff, but Tauren repelled its deadly blast with the Mage Stone.

Both Aulfric and Sophia bear powerful magical staffs each topped with a blue crystal.

An energy bolt from this crystal can kill.

On Aulfric's staff the words ‘To hold life and death in your hands' is carved in the ancient script Ogham.

Question: Its intersting to me what wakes Merlin and what doesn't. Also Magical artifacts, but not all magical artifacts. (Hell Sigan's heart doesnt even do it)

My answer: The book, “The Sorcerers Curse”, mentioned that Merlin hadn’t been able to sleep the night of Sigan’s tomb being discovered, because of the racket being made to unearth the castles vault.

So unlike Morgana, who had fallen asleep, he didn’t exactly have the opportunity to wake up from a prophetic dream.

However, once the tomb was open (and the excavation crew were no longer working), Merlin awoke with a start to the sound of a raven cawing in his nightmares.

So Merlin did have a slight prophetic dream about Sigan’s arrival. He just needed the opportunity to fall asleep without a racket or Arthur barking orders at him in order to experience it.

Book description: “The Sorcerers Curse”

This night, though, Merlin hadn't been able to sleep anyway. The crashing and banging from the castle vaults hadn't stopped even for a minute.

The gem fell to the floor, colourless and empty.

Many storeys above, in his room, Merlin woke with a start. He thought he'd heard the caw of a raven ....

Merlin was convinced something terrible had happened. He could feel it. Normally he'd have thought twice about sharing such feelings, but he knew Camelot was in danger and so he had to act.