#i say to absolutely no one's surprise

[goodlucktai]

could you write a kid sanji fic like you did with luffy?? like sanji gets whammied with a devil fruit n gets turned back tk his germa years or something??

x

Sanji wakes up in the infirmary. He lies there for a moment, blinking up at the ceiling. The room is cool and comfortable, a fan blowing gently in the corner and a door wedged open to let in a breeze rich with the salty, briny tang of the sea. 

Something about it seems strange. He knows that this is the infirmary, recognizes it somehow, even though it doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to. The last time he was sent to the ship’s medical room, it was barely more than an out-of-the-way broom closet, manned by a grizzly old bear who made it clear he didn’t have time for clumsy trainees and their second-degree burns. There certainly wasn’t room for a proper bed, and if there was, Sanji wouldn’t have been tucked into it so carefully. 

Was the wood in The Orbit always this color? he wonders, eyes drifting to stare at the wall nearest his bed. Rich, almost red, each finished plank as smooth as glass. 

“Oh,” a voice says, “you’re awake!” 

Sanji is very used to strangers. The Orbit is a cruise ship, ferrying hundreds of different customers across the Blues every day. But he’s never seen a person like this before. 

It’s a little reindeer, in a pink and blue hat and a fluffy white hoodie with a sheep printed on the front. They hop down from their chair and cross the room to him in an enthusiastic clatter of hooves. Sanji is a runt, according to most of the crewmen on The Orbit and all of his former siblings, but this reindeer is even smaller than him, by almost a foot.

Did they hire a new doctor?

“How are you feeling?” they ask earnestly. “All your labs came back okay and your vitals are strong, but I’m worried you might be coming down with a fever. And I think you were having some bad dreams.” 

Sanji blinks, still half-asleep, and decides to humor the little creature. “I feel okay.”

“Good! Let me get you some water and take your temperature again. Then I’ll let the captain in to see you.”

“The captain? Why does he want to see me?” It occurs to him, belatedly, that he might be in trouble. Sanji sits up fast, ignoring the way it makes his head spin, and cries out, “I didn’t mean to!”

The reindeer turns with an insulated water bottle in their tiny hands, brow furrowed beneath their fur. “Didn’t mean to what?”

“I don’t—whatever I did. It was an accident. I can still work.” Don’t send me back. Don’t make me go. He’s frozen with a familiar terror, one he has done his best to outrun but will never outgrow. 

He knows it’s silly. He boarded the ship on Cozia and told everyone who asked that he was an orphan. If they decided to go through all the trouble of bringing him home, instead of just kicking him off at the next port, then that would still be leagues away from where Germa Kingdom usually resides in North Blue. They can’t send him back because they don’t know where he’s actually from. No one will ever, ever know. Sanji will never tell. 

But he’s afraid anyway. 

“You’re not doing anything until I say so,” the reindeer says firmly. “Doctor’s orders! Luffy only wants to see you because he’s worried about you! He’ll say it’s ‘cause he misses your food, but that’s not true. Well, it is true, but it’s not the only thing he misses.” 

Sanji isn’t sure he followed all of that, but the reindeer seems pretty certain that the captain isn’t going to storm in here and shout at Sanji or fire him. It’s enough that Sanji is able to release his death-grip on the blanket and accept the water bottle that gets shoved insistently towards him. 

Luffy? he wants to ask. The captain of The Orbit is called Chas. And Sanji is only a trainee in the kitchens, hardly allowed to do more than shadow the seasoned chefs. When he does cook, it's for himself, and maybe sometimes the mice that live in the underbelly of the ship. He can’t think of any reason why the captain—or anybody, really—would miss Sanji’s food. 

Luffy. The name settles inside of him like the first swallow of warm soup on a blustery winter day. He doesn’t understand it, but he presses his hands to his chest and tries to hold onto it. 

When the reindeer is satisfied that Sanji’s sufficiently hydrated and his temperature is normal, they say, “Okay, you wait right here while I go get him. Is there anything you need? Are you hungry?”

Still a little nervous, Sanji shakes his head quickly.

The reindeer makes a dubious “hmmmm” noise like they’re not convinced but they don’t want to argue. They pull the door open the rest of the way and disappear out of it, calling for someone at the top of their lungs.

There’s a lot of noise out there. Sanji tilts his head, trying to listen. He can hear music and laughter. Then he hears the thunder of feet approaching the infirmary at a breakneck pace, and he barely has any time to get scared before a beaming face appears in the doorway. 

Oh, that’s Luffy. Sanji knows it’s him right away. He doesn’t know how he knows. It’s the warm soup feeling again. 

“SANJI!” the familiar stranger exclaims, bursting inside with wild enthusiasm, like there’s something very wonderful waiting in the medbay somewhere. Sanji is sure there isn’t—it’s just him in here. 

But Luffy bounces right onto the bed, sitting cross-legged on top of the soft blankets so that he and Sanji are eye-to-eye. 

“Chopper said you woke up! You’ve been asleep for ages. How do you feel?”

“Okay,” Sanji says carefully. Luffy definitely isn’t Captain Chas. So this definitely isn’t the infirmary on The Orbit after all. He must be somewhere else. But how did he get here? And how do they know his name?

“You look okay,” the older boy agrees, leaning in like he’ll be able to tell it’s true just by getting a good look at Sanji’s face. “But there’s no way you’re not hungry! You missed dinner and breakfast and lunch!”

Twisting the blanket in his lap, Sanji says, “I’m really okay.” Judge used to send him away without dinner all the time, for any little thing. It was a punishment Sanji actually preferred, because it was the only one that didn’t leave him bruised or bleeding. Hunger pains are like an old friend to him. 

“Nope,” Luffy says suddenly, and leans forward and scoops Sanji right out of the bed. “There’s not a ton of rules on my ship, but the ones we do have are super important. And this rule even belongs to you—no skipping meals, shitheads!” 

He adopts a low, slightly husky drawl for that last part, like he’s imitating someone. Sanji is too preoccupied with being picked up, clutching at Luffy’s shoulder and the front of his shirt, to wonder much about that.

“Put me down, please,” he blurts, barely clinging to the manners that were sometimes his only saving grace in Vinsmoke Castle, even though he really wants to flail and shout and kick until he’s dropped or tossed away. Bigger people make him nervous. Bigger people grabbing him makes him nearly black out with fear. 

But Luffy just laughs, and it’s a warm, ringing sound. He doesn’t seem like he’s going to listen. And it’s actually not that frightening, after all, being held up by him.  

“Can’t,” he declares. “Chopper said you weren’t allowed to get up, which means I have to carry you.” 

“The reindeer said you were the captain,” Sanji says suspiciously.

“I am the captain. That means I’m not the doctor, or the shipwright, or the navigator, or the cook. I can’t do any of those things that my nakama can do, that’s why they’re so important. That’s why what Chopper says goes!” 

He tosses Sanji up playfully and catches him, the way Sanji has seen guests do with their children sometimes. Luffy’s not big and burly like the deckhands on The Orbit are, but he’s strong. His slim arms feel safe. 

Outside, Sanji has to squint through the late afternoon sunlight, lifting a hand to shade his eyes. They’re on the second story of a grand ship deck, coming down the stairs at a brisk clip.

From their seat on a rope swing, the reindeer themself wails, “Luffy! I said he had to stay in bed!” 

“Huh? I didn’t hear that part,” Luffy calls back blithely, everything he just told Sanji about listening to his crewmates tossed out on its ear. “We need food! Nami, the fridge!” 

“Yes, yes,” a tangerine-haired woman says, sounding put-upon. She folds the paper she’s reading and sets it aside. When her eyes fall on Sanji, she smiles in a way that transforms her whole face. “Hi, there. Iva said you’d be a little confused until the hormones wore off. Do you know me?”

Sanji doesn’t know Iva and he doesn’t know what hormones she’s talking about, but he likes her smile. Everyone on the deck is smiling at him, like they’re happy to see him. He doesn’t understand. No one has been happy to see him since his mom died. 

Behind the tangerine-haired woman, there’s a skeleton in a feather boa, strumming absently on a guitar. The bare skull where his face should be is wearing a rictus grin and heart-shaped sunglasses. 

It should be a frightening thing to see. Instead, it simply makes everything else make perfect sense. 

Oh, Sanji realizes, the worry and confusion in his heart finally settling. This is a dream. 

“Guess not,” the woman is saying to a man with a long nose and lots of curly dark hair piled up in a bun, since Sanji never answered her. 

“It’s only temporary,” the man replies earnestly, though he sounds a little anxious himself. “We’ll have him back to normal before you know it!”

“We’d better,” a green-haired man says dryly. “If Franky cooks for us again, I may throw myself overboard.”

“Oy! I make boats, not fancy five-course dinners!” 

“I can,” Sanji starts to say, forgetting himself. He stops abruptly, covering his mouth with one hand, but it’s too late. Everyone’s already looking at him again. But if it’s a dream, and they’re all dream people, then they won’t mind if he talks out of turn. Testing the waters, he continues carefully, “I can make dinner.”

“You can?” Chopper, the reindeer, asks like it’s some amazing feat. “But you’re so little! You already knew how to cook when you were this little?”

“I’m almost nine,” Sanji says importantly. “That’s practically almost a teenager. That’s almost grown-up.”

“Almost, almost, almost,” a tall woman with a curtain of shimmery black hair murmurs, her voice rich with laughter and openly affectionate. 

“Naaamiii,” Luffy whines, unlike Judge or Chas or any other authority figure Sanji has ever met. “Fridge!”

“Well, get a move on then!” she says, turning him by the shoulders and propelling him forward to one of the doors by the stairs. A bunch of the others start to follow, but a sharp look from the green-haired man causes them to stay behind and glare mulishly at him instead. 

Even Nami doesn’t linger after unlocking the fridge. She swipes a snack from inside, something in a delicate little crystal dessert cup, then tousles Luffy’s hair playfully, then touches Sanji’s cheek like she’d like to tell him something, but doesn’t know how to make him understand. Then she goes, the galley door swinging shut behind her. 

Luffy sits Sanji down on the counter and stands back with his hands on his hips. 

“I may not be a cook, but my brothers and I grew up by ourselves most of the time and we didn���t always have someone around to make meals for us,” he declares. “Before Ace went away, he made sure I wouldn’t starve. There’s like three whole things I know how to make really well! So Sanji can tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. What should we cook?”

The name Ace causes a tender pang in Sanji’s chest that he doesn’t understand. It makes him want to check on Luffy and make sure he’s okay, even though he’s standing right in front of Sanji, beaming ear to ear. 

He kicks his dangling feet back and forth, glancing around the big kitchen, with its spotless counters and hand-stitched dish towels and the pink apron hanging from one of the cabinet handles. It’s a kitchen that belongs in a home. 

He looks back up at Luffy. 

“What was your favorite thing to cook with your brothers?”

Barbecued alligator isn’t a viable option for half a dozen reasons, but there’s dark meat chicken in the fridge that will make a neat substitution. Luffy is hapless but enthusiastic. Sanji doesn’t actually trust him with an open flame so once the chicken is seasoned it goes in a big dish to bake in the commercial-sized oven. 

The entire kitchen is messy somehow even though they didn’t even use the whole thing. Sanji’s face hurts from smiling. 

“I hope you like it,” he says, twisting the dial on a funny tomato-shaped timer. “But you don’t have to eat it if it’s bad.”

Luffy boosts himself up to sit on the counter beside Sanji. Lifting a big bowl of fresh fruits into his lap, he picks out a lychee and begins peeling it with deft fingers.

“Sanji is amazing,” he says plainly. “He’s the best cook in all the Blues and the whole Grand Line. He made a cake so yummy that it stopped a crazy rampage once. I’m really glad he’s mine.”

Reaching over, he takes Sanji’s hand. It’s small and fragile in Luffy’s grasp, and covered in scars, but the young captain doesn’t say anything about any of that.

He puts the peeled lychee in Sanji’s palm, a perfect shining little moon. 

“Sanji can’t make anything bad,” Luffy says, utterly certain. “His hands are good.”

It has to be a dream. Most people only get one big miracle in their lives, if they’re lucky, and Sanji had his already—the chance to run to freedom, granted to him by his sister in an uncharacteristic act of kindness he still doesn’t understand.

There’s no way a place like this could really exist, full of people who smile warmly at Sanji and touch him without hurting him, who worry about him when he’s sick and miss him while he’s gone. 

Sanji hopes he remembers all of it when he wakes up. 

For now he mumbles shyly, “Can we cook together some more?” 

‘Together’ ends up meaning together-with-everybody as the rest of the crew refuses to be left out for much longer. Even the green-haired man slinks inside the dining hall eventually. He doesn’t help at all with the tricky lemon blueberry icebox cake that Usopp stubbornly insisted on, but he gamely tastes whatever gets pushed his way. The kitchen becomes even more of a mess than it was before, and there’s flour everywhere and sticky blueberry sauce all over Sanji’s hands, but he hasn’t laughed this much since he was little. Since he could still run off to mom’s room and climb into her big soft bed and curl up with her arms around him, while she told him stories that made the world seem like a smaller, kinder place. 

These people don’t make the world seem smaller. They make it seem huge. And Sanji isn’t afraid of it. He doesn’t want to hide. He wants to see the whole thing. 

He wants them to be there when he finds All Blue. He thinks maybe he can really, actually find it, if all of them come with him. 

(Two nights later, Sanji wakes up overheated and extremely cramped in a bunk not built for two grown men. He bites back a groan at what feels like the remains of a bad hangover and cranes his neck to see who is sprawled out over him like an inconvenient blanket. 

Of course it’s his captain, the overgrown kid snoring away with his arms tucked around Sanji’s middle. 

Little shit, he thinks, beginning the careful process of extracting himself. He manages to slip out of bed without waking the younger boy up, scowling without real ire at the shameless way Luffy stretches out in his sleep to fully commandeer the whole bunk. Did he have a bad dream? Sanji wonders a second later. 

He untangles the blanket and covers his captain with it properly. Lighting a cigarette, a brief flicker of fire in the dark quarters, Sanji lingers just long enough to push a hand through Luffy’s hair. 

Whatever happened, it’s nothing a good meal won’t fix.)

[c-kiddo]

i love when jester does a sending spell so bad she surprises herself and i also love when caduceus says a sentence so jumbled and weird he surprises himself . genuinely very charming

[citroncynique]

bad dreams in the night

[statementlou]

Tbh i am not surprised that a person who openly talked about having drinking problems since 1d days, because of how crazy 1d worked has been agressive. What surprises me is people being surprised (they never seriously saw drunk person?). But i am also confused about this whole book. Apparently Maya said that that book is not fully bout Liam but compilation about her exes and some of the worst parts are not about him. But recently she said that the book is “ofc about him” so what is true then? Or did she meant it that ofc some parts are about him or that whole book is about him?

Sorry, just confused

I also am not surprised- we've learned so much more about the real stories of things and about the guys' actual lives over the last years, and the story that has unfolded around Liam has been totally consistent throughout if you've been following it, and so the information Maya is telling us is shocking and upsetting but not difficult to believe. I got an anon yesterday saying they were worried about getting similar revelations about the other boys, like "if Liam could be doing this we just don't know, any of them could", and while in a way that's always true I guess, anyone could be doing anything in private like... that doesn't really concern me. Because none of these Liam revelations are coming out of nowhere, there have been many MANY steps along the way leading us here if you've been watching, and he has talked openly about both his mental health struggles and his addiction issues. So to answer that anon... to find out something similar about Louis would in contrast contradict everything we know about him and no I'm not worried about it. Is he probably very irritating, absolutely, but an abuser or a loose cannon, well that news would shock me. But anyway as for the book I don't find it strange that she was nervous when it came out and treading lightly and later decided, fuck it. In the absolutely on point tiktok she dropped today (YES👏GIRL👏FUCKING TELL THEM👏) she even mentions attempts to keep her from publishing the book, presumably by Liam's team, that I am riveted by and cannot WAIT to hear more details about actually- like I said I don't find it at all strange that she was nervous and downplayed it a bit then. But if she says now that it's just about Liam, well, I would say it's been clear from the beginning that the book is their story. Maya herself brought up the parallel of songs being written about stuff and I think it's the same thing; it's true (she was in an abusive relationship that involved certain kinds of events) but maybe not 100% literal (I'm sure details were changed to make the story work, it's not like a word for word timeline of their interactions or whatever).

[creativity-deficient]

Why are people always so shocked when South Park handles a topic well?? I’ll see so many articles that are like “wow even SOUTH PARK is calling you guys out” tf you mean? They’ve BEEN doing this??

[shouts-into-the-void]

The more I think about it, the more I really want to know how Tetsuji managed to keep the fact that the Ravens are a cult under wraps, considering that even Neil was having trouble functioning normally after only 2 weeks.

Like, it isn't even the physical abuse that causes the biggest problem. It's the 16 hour days, inability to do anything other than exy, social isolation, and the dictated nutrition and choices. They learn none of the skills that a typical young adult learns in college- cooking, cleaning, time management, money management, networking, etc. Not all of the Ravens can be rich enough that that sort of thing just doesn't matter. They basically get dropped into the world after college with no idea how to get a place to live, feed themselves, pay bills, or anything required of an adult and with no support network to help.

And including the physical abuse, all of these athletes suddenly have to have a miriade of health problems due to over-exercise, lack of sleep, violent playing styles, and I'm assuming physical abuse from Tetsuji and/or Riko.

All of these athletes are apparently signing with pro teams and there can't be that many that they only have one or two athletes a piece. We know from Lucas that the drastic change to their personalities is very noticiable to anyone who did know them and they're mentally unstable enough to off themselves after being forced to leave the campus, so how has no one noticed that all of the players that get signed from this one college team are barely functional, incredibly mentally unhealthy, and insanely violent?

[itsnobodysproblem]

Most Sherlock Holmes adaptations I've seen tend to place their Final Problem towards the mid point of the series (or even a bit earlier) - it's also in my opinion the best way of going about it, so you have time enough for the characters to adjust after the reunion but they know each other well enough for the events of Fina to be devastating.

Sherlock & Co is done with 20 of the adventures. How many are there? Fifty-something? Almost sixty? Let's say we'll be entering mid-point territory after the 25th story.

So let's pretend for a moment that we have 5 more stories until The Final Problem. Ok.

Estimating an adventure at 3 episodes each, that would mean little over 3 months - maybe 3 and a half? Starting, of course, from the end of Sign of Four, which will be somewhere in December.

So let's say 3, maybe 4 months into 2025. That would be, what? Late march, early april?

Early april?

John having to tell the listeners that Sherlock is dead, in early april?

Quick calendar search reveals what I was praying it would - the 1st of april will be on a Tuesday next year.

So what I'm saying

What I'm saying is Sherlock &Co has the opportunity to do the funniest fucking thing

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Sometimes I try to write down thoughts about this campaign but I admittedly have not been paying enough attention to feel confident in my character analysis so I write an incoherent text post and then delete it because I don't know if I'm actually making the correct judgments.

[afterlife-2004]

[marshmallowgoop]

Otakon's AMV contest allowed VHS submissions, and I knew I just had to submit the collab I edited with @astravis this way.

I hope it's clear why!

(It uses a lot of actual VHS footage.)

And I loved putting AMVs on tape so much that I quickly ordered a bunch of blank tapes online to compile all of my anime music videos this way.

(Short reel of a few of them.)

And, like, it's definitely far from perfect. My computer doesn't have an HDMI port, so I have to use a converter for that, and it's horrible quality. While that does add to the VHS aesthetic, it also makes some of the subtitles nigh impossible to read (as especially evident in the "First Time" video above). My digitization process also isn't exactly ideal, either.

But popping in a VHS tape of my videos and seeing that on the TV? Absolutely amazing. There is no other way I want to physically compile my AMVs. 10/10. MarshmallowGoop/MarshmallowGoop.

Would like to improve my process someday, but if anyone else is curious about how to make VHS tapes out of videos on your computer, I mostly followed this guide here!

[celtrist]

Why does Vassago already have merch, we haven't even met him yet

[jess-total-mess]

TommyInnit is

A) for all intents and purposes, straight

B) legally married to his best friend, who is gay

B.2) said best friend was unaware of the wedding until it happened

C) has an actual girlfriend, like, a real one

D) not only wrote RPF of him and said best friend who he’s married to kissing

E) but posted it to Wattpad of all places

What the fuck

[anxiously-sidequesting]

Not to keep beating dead horses like I so much love to do but I am still completely Flabbergasted and Astonished at how you (Merle Ambrose) could discover the most terrifying fact that a child that is essentially under your care has been indoctrinated into a cult (which, by the way, a process that has taken over the course of years) ((by an agent that has been stationed in a direct position to make it easier to access and manipulate children, that has easily escaped your notice for such a long time)) that worships a nihilistic entity whose ultimate goal is the absolute and total destruction of Everything and Everyone around you, and your one, single, simple-sentenced response to that is to say "Oh, that's a shame. He (Duncan) always was pretty terrible. Hope he gets better someday." And then to move on from those extremely worrying and dangerous bundle of issues permanently without taking any sort of action to protect the vulnerable and make sure nothing like this ever happens again

[dont-offend-the-bees]

Fuck I hate being an adult. I need a more adult adult to help with the volatile emotional situation.

[zzoupz]

Are you a proshipper?

what if the world was made of pudding

[sforzesco]

clodius and crassus, around the time of the bona dea scandal.

it's about the. well. it's about something, for sure. debts, bribes, alliances, subtext, themes. all the stuff that makes the wheels of politics spin.

The Defeat of Rome: Crassus, Carrhae and the Invasion of the East, Gareth C. Sampson

Gendering Clodius, E. W. Leach

The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher, W. Jeffrey Tatum

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