#i tried to respect their space but me struggling with abandonment issues as i am started spiralling out of control

[mamamanguito]

it's crazy how not talking to someone you were really close to for like a month and a half can do to you

[malorisaurus]

This has easily been the worst holiday season of my life, and I have been struggling profoundly. That is why I disappeared, really. Family I am no-contact with suddenly became excessively aggressive in their pressure, and a lot of grief that I hadn't addressed surfaced (ultimately positive because it means I am acknowledging and mindfully addressing it and moving toward acceptance). My father expanded his boundary pushing and I decided it was best for me to respond to him for the first time 2.5 years to establish my clear boundary so that if he continued to cross it I could block him without guilt (I still have to jump through a lot of emotional hoops with myself). He respected my request and didn't respond to my messages and has stopped texting, so now I have the annoying problem of the panic that comes with that—what are his motives? Is this a tactic and then he will redouble his efforts when he goes back to being annoyed that this has continued for so long?

I am trying to let it go while being mindful of the fear and panic that arises whenever I hear from him while also trying to look at this from more positive angles. I want my father to acknowledge my autonomy and respect me; in this circumstance, the only way for him to do that is to not reach out to me in accordance with my request. It doesn't mean that I have to change my position on this relationship, but it can be an opportunity to feel better instead of allowing intrusive thoughts to run rampant. It is very difficult for me to regulate in this way, though.

But between him and his mother, this entire month has been filled with ulterior motives expressed under the guise of birthday and Christmas wishes; I have not had peace. It made me feel stupid for not blocking them earlier, but to do so felt like abandoning hope of reform, and I had to realize that it was a bad premise for me to hold the door open for them with that demand on the other side of it. I don't deal in denial of another's autonomy or ultimatums. I am not safe with them, and I am not in a place where I can be vulnerable with them without being retraumatized, or at the very least, without moving beyond my capacity/ability to regulate. And since unmasking, it has become very difficult for me to mask my Autistic meltdowns and behaviors while in distress. I am not safe doing that with them, so it is an impossibility for me to open lines of communication at this point. That is a good enough reason to block numbers to avoid dealing with the stressors while I continue to process through the CPTSD.

On top of that, today my mother sent me an audio recording of my mentally ill brother going through an episode of psychosis because she didn't know what to do.

I talked her through ways to help him and was an ear for her to process her feelings—it is heartbreaking and so grief inducing (how can you not despair when someone you love is in so much pain?) but it is also a bit crazy-making having blaring music and wailing and shouting. I understand being frayed when that is your constant reality. My mom has been doing a good job of managing her overwhelm as her own issue, so that is fortunate. But she struggles to know how to offer him touchstone spaces that are low on pressure and still engage with him on his level, and instead, she leaves him to his raving and tries to ignore it. To be fair, she is the primary breadwinner of their household as well and she is working from home. It is a lot.

I feel pretty helpless most of the time, and I did have to go and cry and process through a huge surge of anger when she sent that message to me. She is doing the best she can with what she has, but it is often just so inadequate. The lack of healthcare options for low-income people is so profoundly damaging, and I grieve for our lack over our lives. And truly my parents have given us so much trauma and grief. My father is a truly awful person as it stands now. And while I believe that people can change, and I do not believe in dehumanizing even people whom I hate (unfortunately, I love him but I also profoundly hate him), he shows no interest in acknowledging his behavior. My mother has made a lot of very damaging choices, and my siblings and I bore the brunt of the consequences of those decisions. Now, she is too invested in maintaining the status quo when it absolutely does not serve anyone, least of all my brother. I am truly so angry at all that my siblings and I have suffered at the hands of our parents, which is a lot, sadly.

My brother carries so much pain. I listen to him and I see a man who is trapped in a prison of all of our shared traumas, his own unique traumas, and then the mental illness that he has no help or real support with. He desperately wants things in his life and has no recourse to achieve them. And unmasking is such a hugely vulnerable act, and he trusts no one and with good reason. I want to be a safe person for him, but I can't convince him to trust me. So he is just so trapped. I hurt for him, but all I can do is continue to reach out and let him know that I am there—a thousand unanswered text messages and voicemails.

So yeah, a lot of weight all at once. A lot of grief. I don't know what the future will hold, but I am working hard to be the person that I want to be through putting in the work to heal, putting the work in toward accountability, and by being present and available to those that need me.

[misscammiedawn]

Permit me some self-indulgence to share my Favorite Character Bingo.

For this bingo I favored my fandom tags (17/24 spaces selected from my 25 listed fandom tags) and tried to round out with movies that I adore.

I wanted to diversify my range of franchises to include TV, animation, books, comics and video games and also pick characters that resonated most with each of us, though Camden's influence is felt the strongest. I won't state where the attachments lay but I'm sure those who know us can infer.

Descriptions and reasons under Read More.

Full spoilers for any character featured. Content warning for suicide discussion under cut.

1: Miles Edgeworth - Ace Attorney - Literally the last square filled in and we looked at the remaining 9 fandom tags and thought "which of these 9 have a character that we feel strongly about", it was either him or Alucard Castlevania and both for the same reason, daddy issues. I love the idea of a virtuous child of anime Atticus Finch being raised by a deliciously evil prosecutor to become everything his father would have hated. I love the conflict between two siblings raised in the house of Perfection. I love his dramatic ass (except when he pulls that "chooses death" bullshit. That was unforgivable). Plus I just adore his slowburn romance with Phoenicholas, how supportive he is of their daughter, Trucy, and how the sequel trilogy is sparing enough of him that we always miss him when he's not around. He is our favorite Ace Attorney character by a mile. Plus he's a the straight man (well, he's got his hidden eccentricities, but for comedic purposes he's the straight man) in a world of lunacy. The first game leaned heavy on that joke and it always made me smile.

2: Catra - She-Ra (2018) - Our tag for She-Ra is "Catra Did Nothing Wrong" and she is the character in all of fiction I would go up to bat for every time if I saw a debate start up on a Discord I frequent. I'll be straight. She's our (Camden's, anyway) BPD projection character. I adore watching characters with crucial personal failings get swallowed up by dramatic irony. There's something so powerful in being an audience member and knowing what a character wants, what they need, what they should do-- while understanding it's not in their nature to do it. I wanted her to stay with Scorpia in the desert where she was respected and comfortable but knew that it just couldn't be. I loved all the moments where her failings caught up with her. When Scorpia walked away from her, when Double Trouble gave her emergency therapy, the way she struggled with her hair and entire season to force herself to be something she couldn't sustain. I love Catra more than I can measure. I could write essays on how I would do exactly as she did in Season 2 and ruin EVERYTHING for just the chance of a parent proving that they loved her. To be consumed by self-doubts and paranoia and terror of abandonment. Catra is the character we are most like in all of fiction. For better and for worse. Much like her, we're trying to be better.

3: M'gann M'orzz/Miss Martian - Young Justice - Surprisingly I have two Greg Weisman shows on this bingo and no fandom tags for his work, I am using my generic DC tag here. I should change that at some point. M'gann gets so much character development over the 4 seasons of Young Justice. From a starting point of her blue and orange morality of being a Martian not understanding Earth customs causing her to break consent boundaries with her abilities and hurt people (including a fairly uncomfortable angle where she grooms Connor to be her fantasy boyfriend without him knowing what she's doing) to her learning in season 2 that a black and white morality is hardly any better (she mind crushes enemies, thinking that it's good to pacify evil until she does this to someone who turned out to be innocent) to her being a transgender allegory in season 4 (where she meshes the two cultures that she's part of and tries to gain cultural acceptance). There are elements of her story which are under baked, we know that she received a heavy amount of discrimination growing up due to her being a white martian and the arc of her embracing her heritage happens off screen between seasons 2 and 3. Her romance with Connor was well handled, though, particularly as she was not virtuous. In season 2 she was in the wrong (having tried to mind control Connor against his consent) and reacted very poorly to his rejection of her and used a rebound relationship to make him jealous (fortunately Lagoon Boy ended up in a healthy poly family and is doing great. Did I mention Young Justice has good relationship dynamics? Because it does). As with Catra I adore characters who have made mistakes and take a slow road to making up for those mistakes because it begins dialogues about their ethics and every season of Young Justice is about trust, communication, deceit and manipulation and Megan is easily the most complex character when it comes to those themes, particularly as her abilities allow her to blur those lines even in her personal relationships. She's an ethical trainwreck and I love her.

Every character in Young Justice brings something to the table and I think I should note how that deep vein of character driven story telling brings out the best in others. I had mentioned Megan groomed Connor. She was obsessed with an Earth sitcom when she was on Mars and decided to become the main character of it and then when presented with the newly born Superboy decided to start treating him as that Sitcom's love interest who was named Connor. It was a massive violation and Connor was hurt and confused when he learned and it was also in an episode where Megan lied about her racial heritage and Connor, who had been inside her mind, KNEW she was lying and told her outright that she shouldn't fear his judgment. The thing about Connor is that his arc is about finding personal identity when he is defined by everyone else's expectations and impressions. Cadmus and Lex literally programmed him, Superman put him in a box and kept distance from him, the Genomorphs have expectation of him, the team have expectation of him, even his girlfriend is trying to shape him and for much of the show he struggles with it but doesn't reject it. He finds comfort in being accepted in these windows of projection and expectation and I find that him learning who he really is and what he stands for to be one of the more compelling narrative threads throughout the 4 seasons. He and Megan are the main couple in a show about trust and communication after all and I think it should go that the character who typically displays the most raw honesty and vulnerability should be paired off with the most ethically complicated character because they bring the most out of one another while still wanting their relationship to succeed. I know much of the audience dislikes the pair and thinks Connor forgiving and eventually marrying Megan is a bridge too far but I really think they work for one another and even when they don't, from a storytelling perspective it's compelling as shit.

4: Briar Moss - The Circle of Magic - When I started this meme Daja (username relevant, yes) asked if I was going to pick Tris or Briar. They are both "Camden characters" with one being a child who has been kicked out of her biological family and the other being someone who grew up in extreme poverty adapting to moving up the caste system. I went with Briar purely because of the 4 siblings he is the one with the most interesting dynamics with his mentor and student. Evvy sticks around in the main cast while the other apprentices do not hang around and Dedicate Rosethorn is my favorite adult in the franchise easily. Briar is a streetwise kid who has to learn how to trust and rely on people and sadly in the third quartet (pending Tris' Lightsbridge book being written) he gets a painfully accurate depiction of PTSD. I wrote about my reaction to the ending of Will of the Empress a while ago and I stand by my comments. Briar building a safe place as the home he built with his siblings and staying there when he was tortured burned my heart. As did the sequence of him deciding that if Rosethorn was going to let herself die then he was going to follow her. As I'll allude later, I have experience there... and it certainly aided my fondness for Briar.

Much of the fun of the Circle of Magic series is seeing how the siblings adapt to their abundance of magical potential and I love the fact that for 3 of the 4 this is depicted via external means. For Daja Kitsubo and Sandry it is via their art, Daja bends and shapes metal, pouring her power into items where Sandry weaves it into fabric. Briar cultivates his via life. He grows plants and those plants are imbued with his magic. If I had picked Tris this would be where I note that her magic is entirely stored within her, bottled up (literally when she starts glasswork) and too much to contain. Magic is emotion, it is passion, it is a connection to life and the world and with Briar his is not giving shape to his creations, it is cultivating the growth of things that cannot be tamed, he communes with the wild of the world and aids it and heals it. Daja and Sandry give their power shape and form as art. Tris tames the raging storm inside and eventually scries the winds to connect with the world without letting it break her, Briar's power is in love and nurture (which I adores as he is the only member of the 4 with masculine pronouns- as with all Tammy's work, gender is not a box) and it's fitting that his connection to both mentor and student be the strongest due to this.

Also his tattoos are cool.

For a personal anecdote that happened while we were reading Briar's Book. Towards the end there's a sequence where Rosethorn and Briar had an argument in the afterlife and Rosethorn only chose to live again because Briar would have let himself die otherwise. That parent-child suicide gambit--- that's what I was alluding to before. I don't want to type more than is necessary about it. We have experience. It caused a switch and our girlfriend, Daja, is observant enough that she noted the shift in how we typed. Particularly in how we used the word "ain't" which apparently is something specific only to our male part, Craig. Daja was so lovely, kind and caring in accepting him, seeing him and not pressuring him when he was out that it helped us heal a part of our heart that we had pushed away. I'll always remember that whenever I read that book or think of Briar. It's a huge part of why we're fond of the character.

Incidentally if I picked from Tortall I'd have been paralyzed for choice with Numair, Daine, Kyprioth, Farmer, Kel and Alanna herself. Tamora Pierce writes amazing characters.

5: Jesse Faden - Control - Is Control an isekai? It starts with our main character talking about crawling through the hole behind a poster as if it were the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole.

Anyway, there's a fantastic character analysis I read once that spoke about the relationship between the director of the FBC and the service weapon with Northmoor trying to impose his will upon the Oldest House and the items within it and Trench being a turn-key manager who simply filled the power vacuum and spent his career trying to find a suitable replacement. These represent the two extremes of Jesse's potential leadership of the Federal Bureau of Control. She could either go all in and try to claim ownership of the Bureau and impose her will upon the forces that are too strong to control or she could reluctantly attempt to maintain the Bureau without considering herself actually in charge of it. What she actually does is she finds a path of humility. She is the janitor's assistant. Neither king nor steward of the bureau but the custodian of it. She does not seek control nor does she seek to pass on the responsibility. She merely manages the messes and does so as an assistant. Ahti is the most powerful entity in the game by far and by trusting in him and following his direction, Jesse becomes the perfect head of the bureau.

I was predisposed to love her because she has red hair, she was a lot like the tabletop character I took my name from, she's got a queer dynamic with the head of research and technically she's plural. She's wonderful.

Oh and she's an oddball. I love the little hints of just how weird Jesse is beneath her protagonist swagger. I should probably write more about her, particularly as much of her depth as a character is not obvious from a surface read of the material. Maybe I will some day, but I love her.

6: Chidi Anagonye - The Good Place - The Good Place is a sitcom adaptation of Jean-Paul Satre's play No Exit and involves 4 people sent to hell and are utilized to be one another's unwitting tormentors. The thing is that part of the message of the virtue ethics driven show is that in the modern world every action we do or do not do causes additional suffering in the world and the 4 "cockroaches" are not bad souls, they just made choices that made them bad people. For Chidi he is a good and loving person who is kind and heavily believes in virtue ethics. He belongs in hell because he's anxious and indecisive and makes people's lives harder by worrying so much about how to be a good person. I love Chidi because his growth is less about becoming a better person and more about being confident enough in his convictions to know he's a good person. In every reality he will inevitably help the other cockroaches and teach them to be better people because that's who he is. But he's also selfless to a literal fault. It's one of his damnable traits. After everyone makes it to heaven people can enjoy paradise until they're ready to move on and he decides to continue past the point of which he makes peace with moving on because he doesn't want to hurt Eleanor.

The final episode of Good Place made me gross sob so much and a big part of it is the sofa scene where Chidi explains his personal philosophy after countless lifetimes of discussing, teaching and learning philosophy he gives Eleanor one final lesson on their final night and then, on request, disappears while she's asleep. Heaven knows I understand making that request of someone you love.

He's the heart of the entire experience. Truthfully I love all 4 of the cockroaches and it comes down to how I reacted to their final episodes. Chidi's final moments were the most powerful of the show for me. I love him so much and admire him.

Plus he's a philosophy nerd and as a fellow philosophy nerd <3 I love love love him!

7: Allison "Ally" Carter - Sunstone - Every character in Sunstone deserves to be on this list but I went with Ally because (much like with Chidi) when I have difficulty picking between a stacked cast of great characters I go for the love interest of the protagonist because people really shine when the perspective character is in love with them.

Ally is a god damned dork and she's also an incredible domme. Sunstone is a romance about entering the world of kink circles and navigating the troubled waters that come with consensual risks, emotionally charged play and non-standard relationship dynamics. I love the way the story is presented so much that it is my strongest inspiration for Madison/Belladonna stories.

The thing I love most about Ally is that she's not just the amazing dominant that she plays during the spicy scenes. We get to see her freaking out with nervousness, scared about having to host and live up to expectation, we see her be an absolute nerd, we see her in her element while performing.

I've been Ally and the people I love most have been Ally. Being a Top is hard as heck and you can't help but love the dork as she lives up to expectation while trying to be an adult. Seeing her and Alan literally learning the ropes in the recent GNs has been a gosh darn treat!

8: Elliot Alderson/Mr.Robot (Alderson System) - Mr. Robot - What can I say about my dear Elliot that I haven't already said in my DID Representation in Mr. Robot essay? I love him. The whole system. Though I have an affinity for protectors and so Mr. Robot himself is my favorite. He is such a protector that he will attack his host (well, the show fucks up that aspect of DID enough that it's complicated to call the Elliot we see in the show a host) in order to save him from the evils of late-stage capitalism. When pre-show Elliot wants a way out of loneliness and the evils of modern society he fantasizes about taking it all down. The Elliot in the show just wants to make the evils of the world pay, Mr. Robot is perfectly okay killing entire buildings of collateral to achieve his goals. Not because he's evil but because he's laser focused on his mission. I respect the shit out of that, especially as later seasons show that he's not even remotely as capable as he thinks he is.

The scene during the "sitcom" episode where he takes a beating so Elliot doesn't have to was the moment he won me over and then in season 4 he has the speech where he begs Elliot to understand that he is not their father and that he will disappear if it will help him out of the dark hole he's in. Just the fact that, post memory retrieval, he starts by saying "hey, kiddo..." despite that being the reminder of who he is modeled after. Mr. Robot cannot help but be a manifestation of Edward Alderson, it's who he is, it's why he is. Elliot needed a version of his father who was not a monster. I love him deeply. I love the whole system. Even Magda for all her 7 minutes of screen time.

Plus, Elliot summed up the thesis of the show in the final episodes in saying that changing the world is about living and being visible and in not backing down, no matter what.

And then there's the monologue. Fuck I love this show and these dumb hacker boy.

9: "Badeline"/A Part Of You - Celeste - Well, we're on the topic of plurality so let's stay there. Badeline's a fairly subjective character. Celeste's narrative isn't very long and she doesn't even have an official name. Even the DLC chapter refers to her as "A Part of You". But whether she is a living symbol of Madeline's depression, the doubts and fears she holds towards climbing the mountain/transition or is a protective alter in a plural system, I love her. I always have. The fear she puts into thinking Madeline wants to just get rid of her, the fact that she pushes Madeline to move past grieving Granny faster than Maddy is ready for.

Watching the pair learn to loan one another strength and conquer the mountain was lovely and then seeing Baddy try to stop Maddy from hurting herself in the DLC chapter only to be pushed away was heartbreaking. I just want these two to play nice.

I love that the entire objective of Celeste 64 was for Maddy to reach Baddy and say she's going to go on another adventure and soothe Baddy's fears. Climbing mountains is tough (happy trans day of visibility everyone!) and these two are going to continue doing it, so long as it's together <3

10: Laura Palmer - Twin Peaks (Fire Walk With Me) - So first off, read this essay for better words than we have. We could have picked Dale but Twin Peaks is a show about Laura Palmer and the community that failed her. Laura was a victim of abuse from her father and was commodified by the town who all chose to only see parts of her that they could use for sex, charity, kindness, validation etc etc. There's a meme that goes around:

and I think that at face value it's silly, but it's important to know that everyone in Twin Peaks was complicit in her murder because they used her up for all she was worth and the story works best when you consider that she had no one protecting her, no one saving her. This is why, in Fire Walk With Me, she talks about the angels not coming for her and Donna tries so hard to convince her that they can and will, because Donna, of all the people in Twin Peaks including Dale Cooper, does not want anything from Laura but her trust and friendship.

If you watch Twin Peaks and view Laura as "the victim" then you're doing yourself a disservice. She's a nuanced character and a horrifying Lynchian portrait of those who are caught in webs of abuse. But she has agency. She just has no meaningful way of escaping, particularly when by the end of her life she views the whole world as a prison full of users and abusers and when she finds someone who tries to offer her kindness, she rejects them at first and when they refuse to leave or back off, she tries to drag her down with her. It's only when she realizes that she's so far gone that she'll bring Donna into her personal hell that she decides to become the angel for her and save her. The Pink Room sequence in the movie may well be my favorite part of all the Twin Peaks saga. Laura Palmer is such a compelling character. I love her.

11: Lady Bird/Christine McPherson - Lady Bird - Lady Bird is a phenomenal movie and one of my all-time favorites. I'll split this one up into character and then personal attachment.

For the film, Catherine/Lady Bird is a young woman raised in Sacramento in 2002. She goes to a catholic school because her parents are afraid of sending her to the local public school. Well, I say her parents but the movie is entirely about Lady Bird and her mother. In that regard it is a tough movie to watch because the pair clash so much. Lady Bird and her mom are both willful women and care a lot about what other people think about them. They see one another in the other and hate what they see while still loving one another.

The conflict between Marion and Lady Bird typically displays itself in Marion's refusal to refer to Lady Bird by the name she has chosen for herself. In the Opening Scene she says that "it's stupid and it's not your name" and continually talks down to her daughter, saying that she cannot get into a New York college because she couldn't pass her driver's test (which Lady Bird argues was because Marion refused to let her practice). These clashes continue throughout the movie and any time Lady Bird figures out a way to reframe a critique against her mom she just pivots away. Another example is the "Name a number" scene where after being told that she has no idea how much money it takes to raise her and Lady Bird responds by demanding a number so that she can pay her back; Marion just says "you'll never get a job that earns that much money".

All of this squabbling makes the most sense with the scene in Goodwill where Lady Bird confesses "I just wish that you liked me" to which Marion, dodging again, says "Of course I love you" and Lady Bird calls her on it with "But do you like me?"

Marion pauses and says "I just want you to be the best version of yourself you can be" and Lady Bird, hurt and knowing she won't make a connection says "What if this is the best version of me there is" and Marion gives an incredulous look before letting it sink in. The fact is she is trying to be the best mother she can be and is confronted with the vulnerability that maybe neither she nor her daughter is failing to be their best, maybe this is the best and she has to make peace with that.

That's why I love the movie so much. Two women who want the best for themselves and thus each other but are completely unable to understand one another or connect and speak different emotional languages. It's such a powerful and honest narrative about growing up and becoming your own person. I find the conclusion a little too forgiving on the mother's side, but I love Lady Bird. I love how willful she is, I love how cultured she wants to be. I love how she just wants to be part of the world she feels connected to while knowing she is on the outside of it. Legitimately one of my favorite film characters of all time.

For personal attachment. Camden Dawn is the name of one of my OCs, I first wrote her in 2001 but the version I consider "Camden Dawn" started off in tabletop games that began in 2010. Camden was a raised catholic by two parents who were obsessed with optics and how Camden's behavior reflected on her and their household and she successfully emancipated herself from them after managing to get them to fund her to go to college in Chicago. Over the 7 years I wrote that version of Camden she was always special to me. More than I think I could display to my tabletop group at the time. I considered her my "trainwrecksona" the fantasy version of what we would be like if we were allowed to express our anger, frustration and pain. Camden smoked, she had an alcohol problem, she made bad relationship decisions and was a mess. Watching Lady Bird was like seeing a film version of everything that I was trying to do be done by a masterful actor, director and screenwriter. There is no amount of language I can put into how powerful it is to pour so much of yourself into a fictional character you created, enough of yourself that you adopted her name as your own and to see someone take all the passion and soul that you tried to convey through fiction and do it better. It was awe, admiration and connection.

I'm not Camden (the character) and I'm certainly not Christine. But I understand what emotions go into writing a character like that. How can I not love her when she's the culmination of everything I love about my favorite original character?

12: Bill - It's Such A Beautiful Day - Three heavy movie characters in a row. Bill suffers from an unspecified psychological disorder that messes with his perception of reality and his memories. The movie is an outside view of his life and the narrator becomes so attached to him by the end that it cannot bear to let him go. "He lives and lives until all the lights go out." is such a powerful line to end the production with because that's it. That's all any of us get. The world may continue on without us but our capacity to perceive this beautiful trainwreck is only within us and there's no grander design than that. We live and then the lights go out. Even our memories may die before our ability to perceive. The movie talks about how we start looking forward, start looking back and in the end... all we can do is look around.

Which makes the bus ride so unspeakably poignant, long before the titular Beautiful Day. As the narrator says early on in the experience, life isn't the big memorable experiences, it's all of the tiny little things that happen in between. That bus ride, Bill looking at the raindrops and admiring the world. That's far more true than any moment in the film and what Hertzfeld wants the audience to pick up through the experience.

I became attached to him during the runtime. The mundane thoughts of a person who begins the story with the news that he's going to die and ends up finding the sentiment that gives the movie its title.

Hertzfeld does such an amazing job with Bill. The subtle gestures like how he wrings his hands together or the wrinkles under his eyes betraying his fear and worries. He's a stick figure in a world of stick figures and all he has to differentiate himself is his hat. We cannot even hear him speak because the movie is conveyed only by the narration and yet the animation gives him so much personality.

There are so many scenes which just connect so well, like when he meets his father despite both men being so incapable of understanding the relevance of what is happening.

Bill lives until he doesn't anymore and we share the journey of life with him. It's breathtakingly beautiful.

13: Susan Sto Helit - Discworld - Susan is really three characters. Soul Music Susan, Hogfather Susan (goth Mary Poppins) and Thief of Time Susan (goth Ms. Frizzle).

I love her. I love her more than I have words for. Especially Thief of Time Susan.

She's almost human. Part of her will always be a deity. She is the granddaughter of DEATH and much of her character in Hogfather and Thief of Time is attached to her wanting to embrace her human side. But it's in Thief of Time where she learns that what she's looking for is not to be accepted within humanity, but she wants to find someone who is like her. That's why I adore her connection to Lobsang. She puts up a ward of sensible Susan and tries to be practical and put together but she's a deeply emotional woman and she's lonely because no one else shares her experiences.

She loves her grandfather very much but she cannot abide by "the family business", she is kind to him but wants to be her own person and she ends up finding herself more attached to children because they haven't lost their curiosity yet, in many ways she finds they are more sensible than adults because they haven't decided how things are and closed their hearts and minds to ideas outside of what they think and expect.

Susan is important to me. I love her dearly.

14: Ben Reilly - Spider-Man - We're unapologetic in our love of the clone saga. The thing about Ben (and Kaine) is that he's a fantastic character study into the nature and nurture of Peter Parker and the writers had so many fun and cool ideas for how to handle a version of Peter who had 5 years to not be Spider-Man.

One of my alltime favorite moments in comics is when Aunt May died and Peter is embraced by MJ and Anna, he's surrounded by family. Ben is on the roof, alone. Ben's has no one because he's a clone and completely broken off from others. He slowly builds his own family over time and considers Peter (and Kaine) his brother(s) but it takes time.

The lost years are where he exemplified himself in my eyes. We get to see how he grows from finding out he's not Peter Parker until he returns to New York. How he tries to walk away from responsibility, how he tries to live a normal life. He's a tragic character because no matter how much he wants to be a different man, he still has Peter's memories and cannot help but have the drive that makes him Spider-Man.

15: "Sunshine" Joe Fixit (Banner System) - Hulk - So I did two whole essays on Banner's system with the second part entirely about Joe and Betty's relationship. Fact is Joe is what happens when a man is so repressed and ashamed of himself that he cannot act out. Joe is all of the things that Bruce wants, lusts for, desires but cannot allow himself to act out upon. He's capable of lying, cheating, stealing and killing in a way Bruce can never allow himself to believe he is capable of. The period of time that Peter David was writing Joe as the main front of the system gave us some incredible insights into the widening chasm between his morality and Bruce's as well as what Joe finds himself wanting. There was a period of time where changing into Banner was the greatest fear of Hulk(Fixit) and it worked remarkably well to see the two having their day and night battle for dominance.

But what really made me love him more was the Immortal series where he's in Banner's body and needs to keep the body safe the way that only he can. The latter half of the comic Bruce is not even in the system and it's just Joe and Savage against the world. Joe's a reluctant protector. He used to be a hedonist but over time his affection for the system

Look at this page (first panel especially) from a 4 page side-story where Joe is talking to their therapist and briefly remembers Brian Banner beating the shit out of him and how he would take the beating so Bruce didn't have to.

Joe's attachment to Mike was evident in Peter David's run and solidifying that Joe just wants a father figure is such amazing characterization. With both Mr. Robot and Hulk I love how these adults are driven by childhood notions of safety and comfort. I even hint on it a bit with Catra too with how she sold herself out to get a chance of Shadow Weaver's affection. Good trauma representation is showing how a character carries their past into their present and Joe is a manifestation of Bruce's repressed anger and childhood trauma just as much Hulk himself is. Joe just wants what we all want, to be loved and protected in a world where the person who owed him both those things failed to do either. In lieu of being loved himself, he's damned well going to love his inner family, especially the kid.

16: Kimberly Wexler - Better Call Saul - Kim is a phenomenal character in a character driven drama. Again, when surrounded by amazing characters I go for the protagonist's love interest. But here it's different. In the final season Kim is approached by Mike. Mike is the most level headed guy in the canon. He's the one who is objectively right about everyone and has a good eye to who people are. Enough that Season 4 of the show only makes sense if you consider they needed a season long plot arc for why he didn't execute Walter where he stood in during BrBa.

Mike approached Kim because he judged that she was the one who could be trusted with the information that he had about Lalo Salamanca, another incredible character in a show full of them. Kim is headstrong, crafty and hates being talked down to. She is attracted to Jimmy because they are equals and she typically acts up when Jimmy doesn't display the trust and respect that he owes her.

Throughout the show we get glimpses of her childhood and there are some gems with her mom. She refuses to be picked up from school when her mom shows up late and drunk and ends up walking home miles on her own. There's a scene where she steals from a store and her mom picks her up and acts up the punishment she would get only to laugh about the store manager after leaving the scene. Kim had a tough childhood and bad rolemodels and yet still clawed her way up to being a lawyer.

We get to see her realize that the system is inherently broken to its core and no amount of pro-bono work within the system will make a difference, she is reduced to constantly being hit with "did Jimmy put you up to this" levels of disrespect for her agency. Kim is fascinating because she was always the capable one and Mike and Jimmy are about the only people in the show who can see it and even Jimmy can't when his ego gets in the way.

Aren't you tired of being nice? Don't you want to go apeshit?

Kim is best girl and Rhea Seehorn should be given every Emmy forever.

17: Johnny Truant/Pelafina H. Lièvre/The Book Itself - House of Leaves - This one is a total cheat. The fact is I wanted to type "anyone who types in Courier or Dante fonts" but the book is a mind worm and the mere act of trying to communicate about it is a bottomless pit that will make you look like you're in front of a Pepe Silvia wall. The fact is nothing inside of the book House of Leaves can be said to have happened in any meaningful sense. It's a journal of a man reading an analysis of a film of events that likely didn't happen and the person at the top of that narrative pyramid (well, under The Editors, I suppose) is an admitted liar. Which means that I cannot say The Whalestone Letters are true or not. I can say that they are my favorite part of the book and judging from my interaction with the only fandom, this makes me a little unhinged. Johnny's panic attack at seeing purple ink, the back and forth on whether Pelafina attempted to strangle Johnny as a child or not, why her secret decoded message mentions Zampano, how her letters can refer to events after she died... as I said, it's a bottomless pit and the more you think about it the more insane you become. Fact is, Johnny is an interesting character and there's a lot to him and part of that IS the fact you cannot tell if he's lying and that means that if he forged his mother's letters they are his words and if he didn't she's equally compelling in her complexities. We have an unknowable psyche of someone who is both inviting us in to see the innards of his soul AND pushing us away so we can not know him, see him or judge him. It's brutally honest AND guarded. Deceptive while bearing everything. I tend to feel strongly for characters if they go through something I've been through because I get to see someone else deal with the thought processes I went through, I don't need to see myself reflected in that, just empathize with the fact they're dealing with it. A parent being put away in a mental care facility is fucking tough shit and as I saw Johnny's trauma unfold through his journals I cared more about him and wanted to understand him more.

Which brings us to the end of his portion of the narrative and his big "fuck you" to the reader. I'll admit it. Upon first reading I was hurt by Johnny's betrayal of the reader and then I realized, much in the same way HBomb's described during his analysis of Pathologic, that I knew the entire time I was reading a book and Johnny wasn't real, that by feeling betrayed and hurt by his lies it just showed I cared and that he had made me care. No character has ever violated the attachment I form with fictional characters in such a way that really made me understand how one-sided and false that connection was and it was a unique experience. Certainly one that makes me love the character, for all I know they are an unknowable wreck and I cannot ever truly understand them. House of Leaves is a mirror and it reflects everything you put into it and that's why I love it so much. The experience of reading that book is mine and mine alone. My relationship with the book and its characters is unique. It cannot be replicated. It can barely be described.

18: Puck/Owen Burnett - Gargoyles - Seems I posted without writing about Puck! Better edit it in. I LIKE FAE AND BUSINESS MAN OWEN AND I'LL EDIT THIS IN LATER I PROMISE!

5/4 edit: okay, I promised. So here's the thing about Greg Wiesman's writing. He sometimes is fixated on his internal consistency to the detriment of story. I love Gargoyles, I love Spectacular Spidey and I love Young Justice. But they are flawed works and their flaws are Greg shaped.

I love them, though, because in the 90s, only a few years after Twin Peaks brought long-form storytelling out of Soap Opera and into drama, Gargoyles had consequences and growth which at the time were not really things. Gargoyles was essentially Disney's version of the 80s TMNT cartoon and by all rights it should have been a pale imitation. With Turtles the archetypes were baked into the DNA and the growth typically came from new toys being added to the line. So my "too young to remember watching but young enough to imprint and rewatch a ton of times as an adult" mind was spellbound when Eliza is shot and takes months in universe to recover. Xanatos is imprisoned from corporate crimes and serves a 6 month sentence in show that opens the door to new plots. Brooklyn's or Lex's reaction to Demona's or Fox's betrayal inform how they treat people and situations throughout the show. Broadway's hatred of guns. Hudson's illiteracy slowly being worked on.

The show rewarded you for paying attention in a time when such things didn't exist.

So why is Owen my favorite?

Well, as stated above. We love Fae. Dawn considers herself to be Seelie and though the show is actually really bad with sourcing its folklore and mythology, famously placing the Norse pantheon under Shakespeare's interpretation of Fae lore (the lengths of "all worldwide culture is sourced to The Bard's depiction of Celtic/Gaelic folklore" is actually kind of Ancient Aliens levels of xenophobic to my adult mind), their depiction of Faerie was deeply enjoyable.

Owen is Puck. The same guy who rides on Kratos' belt in the latest God of War games. He's a trickster and a magician and the supreme master of Keyfabe. There are big damned twists that are introduced in shows that you wonder "when did they know?" And for this one I really do think it was from the start which is ambitious as heck. If not from Season 1's 13 episodes then from day one of Season 2's 50+. When Preston Vogel is introduced the similarities between Owen and Preston are apparent instantly. When Demona turns NYC into stone she binds Owen in iron and calls him "the tricky one."

It's a fair mystery in what may be the first ever kids cartoon to do long-form storytelling. It may not be easy to work out the specifics but it fits so perfectly. With most of these other characters my love comes from who they are, what they are allegories of or how I relate to them. I could have picked Demona and just had her be Proto-Catra. But Owen was the first time I was shown a character who had all the puzzle pieces for a big twist that made sense and was fair to an audience. It taught me how to tell stories and how to reward those I tell stories to. I owe him a lot for that. Plus I want to make out with him. Human or Fae form. He's hot.

Also, also, love the addition of his stone fist. The loyalty to plunge his hand into the cauldron and the continuity to just keep him with an unbreakable/unmoveable stone fist was just awesome.

19: JJ MacField - The Missing ((JJ Macfield and the Island of Missing Memories) - Beating this game made me come out the closet. I'd known I was trans for almost 20 years before playing it but when I beat it I told the support network in my life at the time that I couldn't stay in the closet any longer and began formally socially transitioning.

The Missing is about two girls going to an island. JJ and Emily. Emily tried to initiate intimacy and JJ pulled back and soured the mood, when she wakes up the next morning Emily is gone and JJ has to puzzle solve through themed areas of the island to find her. As you progress text messages fill you in on JJ's life.

So. Being honest? I thought it was a game about being a lesbian. I thought that it was about JJ coming to terms with her sexuality, even when her mother is controlling monster (literally in terms of the game) and sent her to conversion therapy. Nope. Turns out JJ is trans and I didn't see it. I didn't know.

I played the game on release day and just... didn't figure that out.

JJ is a cutie who loves donuts, she loves her stuffed plushie, she loves Emily, she loves flowing fashion. The game sadly is a nightmare from her trying to kill herself and being saved.

The thing is, though, the game's aftercare is so healing. After beating the game you have the opportunity to play the game without JJ's "idealized" dream form. You can play as socially transitioning JJ with her developmental voice, change her wig, let her experiment her look. Here's some gallery items showing the differences between first run and second run versions of JJ.

and I think it's beautiful to show her as being the same person no matter what she appears on the outside. Because she's JJ. Voice, wig, eye color and outfit do not change the fact she's a sleepy donut gremlin.

I could write more. Like how the themes of the game are the amount of pain one must endure to actualize as their true selves and how learning to live with that helps you pull yourself together and become endure more (not to fetishize suffering, but well, learning to endure pain can be virtuous if you cannot avoid it) or how the player becomes the final boss themselves and lashes out against Emily to show how her attempted suicide was a harmful act.

The thing I adore most though is that the final secret in the game, the reward for everything is photographs of JJ and Emily going clothes shopping and buying the outfit that JJ wears during the game.

Fuck that story makes me so happy. Especially from the perspective we were in when we were closeted.

As a sidenote, I own a F.K plushie and love it very much.

20: Korra - The Legend of Korra - Running low on steam but I'll be quick and say "Avatar is the story of a normal little boy finding out that he's the chosen one and having to learn how to save the world. Korra is the story of the chosen one who was raised to save the world learning to become a normal woman."

I find the latter so much more compelling than the first. Especially when season 4 spends so much time on her rehabilitation after Season 3 left her disabled. The depiction of both recovering from a severe injury and the PTSD was well handled.

Anyway. She's rad.

21: Hal "Otacon" Emmerich - Metal Gear Solid - He's the spiritual child of Dr. Strangelove and The Boss. Huey was a sperm donor and nothing more. Hal's an idiot. He's a geek. He's a hopeless romantic who makes dumb mistakes. He's also Snake's husband and Sunny's father and he saved the world. I love him.

But really the single 10 minute recording from Strangelove in MGSV where she outright explains that Hal is the true heir to The Boss' will is what elevates him. In a world of war, he is peace. Yes he's a dumb otaku who built a nuclear battle tank that could destroy the world but he truly and dearly believes in peace and spends his entire life being better and being kind and being compassionate. In time he turns from Snake's failwife to the savior of humanity.

Hal is a good father, a terrible heterosexual and a cute lil' guy.

22: Adonis "Donnie" Creed/Johnson - Creed - Gosh I wish I wrote about him when I had more in the tank but I'm 22 characters in, the end is in sight and I'm tired. The Rocky franchise is a special series of movies. We get to see the same man through 50 years and even in the first film they were talking about him being past his prime. I chose Donnie over Rocky though because Creed is my a contender for my favorite movie of all time. Ryan Coogler said about it

"[My father] used to play [the Rocky movies] before I had football games to pump me up, and he would get really emotional watching the movies. He used to watch Rocky II with his mom while she was sick and dying of cancer. She passed away when he was 18 years old. And so when he got sick he was losing his strength because he had a muscular condition. He was having trouble getting around, having trouble carrying stuff. I started thinking about this idea of my dad’s mortality. For me he was kind of like this mythical figure, my father, similar to what Rocky was for him. Going through it inspired me to make a film that told a story about his hero going through something similar to kind of motivate him and cheer him up. That’s how I came up with the idea for this movie."

"If I fight, you fight"

It's about a father being a hero, it's about being strong enough to live up to legacy, it's about passing down knowledge and inspiration from one generation to the next. Donnie is a conflicted character. On one hand he is the foster care kid who got into fights in juvie. On the other hand he is the son of world famous Apollo Creed and raised in a mansion. He is Adonis Creed and he is Donnie Johnson. Both of these are true and that conflict burns within Donnie because he burns for a father he never got to meet and connection to a world he's not part of anymore. In being rescued from his group home situation by Mary-Anne he left behind all he knew. We learn more about his childhood prior to juvie in Creed III. Point is, he's hurting to make a place for himself and prove he belongs. The armor piercing quote in the first movie is when he says "I gotta prove it - That I wasn't a mistake."

I cried when I first saw that scene and just loved him. Rocky movies are about underdogs putting their heart into what they do and overcoming the odds and winning the moral victory. Donnie isn't a perfect person. He's kind of an arrogant jerk at times, but I adore him.

The second and third movie are heavily about his growing relationship with his wife, Bianca, who is the star of her own movie that should exist too, about becoming a performing music artist while her hearing is fading. His daughter is born deaf and he has to adapt to her hearing loss. Watching Donnie learn ASL and just exist with his family is one of the highlights of the movies because though there's a brief scare in Creed II where Rocky asks if he's going to love his daughter if she's born deaf, the franchise never treats Bianca or Amara's disability as anything more than a part of who they are.

Creed movies are the best. I hope Michael B Jordan makes them as long as Stallone hung with the Rocky franchise.

23: Parker - Leverage - She was a side character who became the star of the show. Parker is brilliant. A foster kid who tangled with a brilliant gentleman thief and learned to be the best there ever was. She's autistic, she's brilliant and she's an oddball. Her relationship with Hardison was the emotional backbone of the show and throughout the entire show her need for a family is one of the threads that ties seasons together. Season 4 includes an episode where she needs to learn to dance from Hardison and he says "I've got you, I've always got you" and prepares an escape route for her at the end of the episode only for the finale to have a callback where she saves him on an elevator wire with the "I've got you". If you watch Leverage through the lens of her rising to become the new mastermind you have a 5 season show (and ongoing revival) about a girl who never fit in everywhere, prickly and defensive and unable to understand other people creating a family for herself, building a better world and being the best version of herself she can be.

Also she really hates it when people are mean to kids and I love that about her.

I love Parker. Häagen-Dazs!

24: Asuka Langley Sohru - Neon Genesis Evangelion - Why did I leave her until last? Asuka prides herself on being the best EVA pilot. She is not the best EVA pilot.

She wants Kaji, a grown man who will never be with her.

She wants her mother to have not succumb to mental illness and projected all her maternal affection onto an inanimate doll who she hung alongside herself, leaving Asuka alone in the world and so thoroughly rejected that when her mom killed herself she took the effigy of her daughter with her on the way out.

Asuka doesn't get what she wants.

Instead she gets Shinji. Someone who, while complaining the entire time about how much he hates and doesn't want to do it, is a better EVA pilot than she is. Who in End of EVA...

Well.

Y'know.

Asuka is a cautionary tale of what happens when you pin all of your personality, your reason for existing, your pride and passion onto a single thing that you do not control. It can be taken away from you and it will leave you with nothing.

Asuka needs to put others down to feel good about herself because the source of her self-esteem is in her ability to perform a task that may not always be there, that others may surpass her in. She needs to learn to create worth from within, not from external praise and validation. Shinji shares that flaw.

EVA is a show with a lot to say about isolation and connection. About drive and purpose. About the reason why we exist and what we do with our the time we're given. Hopefully through looking at the other 23 entries and seeing the themes, you'll see it's pretty clear she's just my type of character.

I love her.

BONUS

Because I didn't do all my tags, here's the remaining tags with my favorite characters:

POTO - Erik Castlevania - Alucard Umineko - Beatrice Sonic - Fleetway Super Sonic Persona - Aigis Sailor Moon - Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter Scott Pilgrim - Kim Pines Pathologic - Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky (the fact I do not have to justify this down here is a big reason he's not on the bingo)

[polyamzeal]

Meanwhile I am left wondering my worth and place in their life. Their words and actions are completely at odds. Idk, they know I struggle with abandonment and trust issues, but to see them just “drop” me so quickly hurts and they seem to only care about their time with the other partner. I’ve always tried to be respectful of their time, energy, and space. Going out of my way to make sure time with different partners was THEIR time (pt 3)

Do asks have a character limit? I have gotten way longer asks before, I don’t know why this one as split up like this is Twitter or something.

I am a little confused but I think basically you just need to flat-out ask them what you are to them and if they are trying to ghost you. Then be clear about how much time and attention you are looking to have in a relationship. If they can’t meet that then that is fine, they are not obligated to have to but then if they can’t then you need to break things off with them.

I think it can be hard to know when to “break-up” in polyamory because you don’t have the typical excuses of serial monogamy where you find someone better and since you have other partners you can rely on you don’t need to put so much pressure on someone to fulfill you in a relationship. But you still need to know what the bare minimum is that you want out of any relationship. And if it falls below that line you need to address. See if it can be fixed. And if it can’t then it is just healthier for everyone involved that to acknowledged that the relationship isn’t working and would be better broken off.

[pr1ncessm00n]

Update!!

Hi, everyone!! thank you so much for all the support and compassion. i'm sorry i've been kinda MIA for two days lol. that's kind of shitty of me to just not drop an update on Sunday and then disappear. but here's an in depth explanation as to wtf i've been doing and whats going to happen!! tw: heartbreak, depression, academic struggles

so obviously most of my chapter got deleted. i am actually almost done with rewriting it and i think it shaped out to be better than what i had previously written. i think by at least the end of the week it should be out, and it's VERY long just to make up for sunday's non update!! so i've been working a lot but thankfully my days off start tomorrow. i have a lot fo academic stress bc of some personal issues regarding my school quite literally fucking my schedule up and pushing my estimated graduation date back by oh... a few fucking months! great! literally hate that !! so ive been running around like a headless chicken trying to fix what wasn't my fault. sigh, i guess it should be resolved in a week or so, but as you can imagine i am so stressed about it. what makes me angrier is that it was not my own error. like to have to fix an issue that i did not cause?? i swear the staff at my school makes our experience harder not easier.

secondly, don't be fooled lol. i am writing this with tears down my face listening to harry styles and the aot season 3/4 theme song endings on repeat for almost 30 minutes because i had to end my 4 year relationship. that's a whole story for another day, but i don't think i will be okay mentally for a long time. he was my best friend and my first real love, so yeah. i might make our own love story into a fic or something just to cope but as for now thats another thing i have to deal with now!! my heart hurts a lot !! it's always the things you least expect. the worst part is it really isn't either of ours faults... or choice. i don't want to go into too much detail because even tho he's not on here and y'all don't know him, i want to respect his privacy. but the main reason is he has become very depressed, and even though i tried to help him as much as i could theres just some things you can't fix as a partner. i wish so much that i could take his pain away but i can't, i just can't.

sorry for that weird rant lol. it was a mutual decision, but it still hurts regardless lol. he was my bestfriend and lover in one, and i don't know how im going to continue my boring routine without him lol. but don't worry, i'll still be writing. if anything i'll probably write more. it distracts me, soothes me and is. great outlet. i don't plan on abandoning tumblr anytime soon lol.

thank you all so much for the support you guys are seriously the best group of people/fandom space i have witnessed in all my years as a fangirl. and i was around for 2014 tumblr so thats saying something. you guys have motivated me a lot to write more and improve, and i actually feel heard on this tiny blog (altho u have managed to make it not so tiny any more in the span of such a short few months?? im literally at 420 followers and i was at 300 a few weeks ago?? wow. im also about to hit 500 notes oh god.) you guys have literally given me so much inspiration and im so grateful for the friendships ive made already!! i have plenty of requests in my inbox to work on as well. im also creating a tag system so stay tuned!!

anyways, i feel so blessed to have such attentive followers and readers and you guys literally make me laugh everyday. its not just about notes or followers to me, but its so amazing how through tiny screens we can all share our love for some 2d characters and how for some reason my writing has struck a nerve with some of you. i love you all <3

emi

[remmushound]

Rise boys = Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello, and Michelangelo. Bay boys = Donnie, Raph, Mikey, and Leo.

This is a fic to lead into a Bayverse/Riseverse crossover! This is also an opening to make any requests for the bay/Rise interactions! I’m also accepting bay requests separate from the crossover! @brightlotusmoon

Link to second part: https://remmushound.tumblr.com/post/645470221504839680/brightlotusmoon-part-2-of-the-bayrise

The alarms sounded in the lair in the early morning, while Donnie was still in REM sleep and Mikey still wrapped himself snuggly in his blankets. When Raph still hugged the bear he always denied he owned and while even Leo still hadn’t woke to take advantage of the day. The only occupant of the lair that was awake was an old rat in the dojo, taking advantage of his son’s absence to meditate on current issues that worried his mind.

His ears jerked to attention as the nirvana of his mind was jarred with Donnie’s warning alarm. He was to his feet in an instant, and soon from their rooms came his sons one by one. Leo first, like always, closely followed by Donnie, and then Raph, and last Mikey.

“Dude, who turned on the screaming?”

“Talk to me Don.”

“Working on it!” Donnie was already at his desk, working a mile a minute to pull up the camera from where the alarm originated. “Got it— wait, that’s not right.”

“What is it?” As usually, Leo was hovering over Donnie’s shoulder and looking at the screen.

“Just looks like black to me.” Raph grunted from where he stood, a more respectable distance away.

“Yeah— it is— somethings up with the cameras.”

“What, they broke?”

“No, someone turned them off— and the only way they could do that is to hack into the camera’s systems—.”

“Which obviously didn't happen.” Leo said, “Could someone be covering the screen a different way?”

“Well, I mean, I guess, but—”

“Alright, then lets move out— try to get a better idea of what we’re dealing with here.”

“Don’t gotta tell me twice.”

Leo held out his arm to stop Raph from running off immediately. “Careful, Raph. This could just be a sewer worker in over his head.”

“Yeah. Or it could be the Shredder.” Raph growled.

“Exactly. So be ready, but quiet. No use exposing ourselves if we don’t need to.”

Leo made the motion and Raph took point and was the first down the slide that took them out of the lair. Mikey was after him quickly. “Don’t worry, I’m a professional!” Mikey waved jazz hands.

“So am I.” Leo shoved Mikey down the slide after Raph. “Don, you next.”

“Arlight, but Leo I really think—”

Leo shoved Donnie into the tube the moment he got within sliding distance, and then gave it a few seconds before jumping in after him. The slide was a steep one, more like a straight drop than anything else, and eventually curving into a slope and then a tunnel. For a moment during the decent, Leo felt his shell leave the wall, and he braced himself for the jostling that came when he hit the curve straight on. He could see all three brothers in front of him in varying stages of the slide, Mikey making every attempt to loop around the length of the tunnel as many times as possible, which kindled his speed enough that he was dangerously close to colliding with Raph. He did another loop, narrowly avoiding the older turtle as he took the lead

“SNOOZE YOU LOSE, RAPH!”

“Mikey! Stop breaking formation!”

“Woah—“

Raph had to put on a quick break as he almost ran into Mikey’s shell, and the momentum made him spin around and slow. Before he could right himself, Donnie started to panic and tried to avoid raph by sliding over the walls as Mikey had, but it wasn’t fast enough and collided into Raph’s plastron.

“WATCH IT DONNIE!”

“THIS WASN’T MY INTENTION!”

“OUT OF THE WAY!” Leo just barely escaped another collision by doing the same move as Mikey, dodging the backup of his brothers as he sped after Mikey.

It took another half a minute for Raph and Donnie to detangle from each other, still sliding all the while.

“Move your arm!”

“Ow, that’s my leg—“

“I don’t care what it is, I’m gonna break it!”

“I’m trying— oh, my glasses—“

“Get offa me Don!”

“I’m struggling just as much as you are!”

Finally, Donnie got himself separated and held his position by digging his staff into the stone to defy the rushing water. He waited until Raphael had turned the corner before he let himself go once more to rush after him.

~~~~~

“Get back here.” Leo growled and grabbed Mikey the moment he caught up, turning the smaller turtle to face him.

“Ah— mercy—!”

“What’s up with breaking formation?”

Raph arrived, flying out of the slide and into the lower section of sewer, landing hard behind them.

“I coulda crushed you!” Raph gave Mikey a harsh shove.

“Hey hey hey, chillax, my dudes!” Mikey tried, holding his hands up in defeat. “I didn't mean to!”

“That’s not an excuse!”

Leo heard Donnie fly out and breathed a sigh. That was all of them.

“Guys, Quit fighting!” Donnie tried to get between them and Mikey. “We’re not alone here, remember?”

“Right.” Leo huffed, and made a motion for the brothers to follow him. “Remember— stick to the shadows and if we do find something, wait for my command before you do anything. Think you can handle that, Mikey?”

“What? I could do that in my sleep, bruh! I’m a shadow! You’re think I’m over here— hwa ha!” He fliped around Leo waving his nunchaku, “—but I’m really—over here!”

Leo prodded the handle of his sword into Mikey’s stomach to quiet him before he took the lead in climbing up the tube that led to the higher section of sewer. The walls were slick and lined with a thick layer of sludge, so getting a grip was difficult, but not impossible. Every so often he’d look down to make sure his brothers were following after him— Mikey, Donnie, and Raph in that order. If they were to fall, each brother would be able to catch the ones on top of him— Mikey could hold Leo, but if he fell then Donnie could catch both Mikey and Leo, and if all three fell, then Raph was at the bottom as backup.

Leo stopped as he reached the surface, just barely peeking his nose up over the edge. All he saw was dark sewer, and after a minute of searching every shadow and potential hiding space, he felt a sharp prod.

“Ow!”

“Move it!” Mikey insisted impatiently, “I don’t wanna look at your butt all day!”

Leo growled and retaliated with a careful kick to Mikey’s shoulder before pulling himselfup finally through the tunnel. He took another look around before turning to give his brothers the signal to follow, but Mikey was already through and Donnie was halfway out.

Leo made a ‘really guys?” motion and sighed, just letting the misdemeanor pass as his three brothers joined him in the dark tunnel.

“See anything Don?”

Donnie hummed and pulled his goggles down over his face to get a better view in the dark.

“Hm. Not picking up any heat signatures besides ours, but there’s splash marks on the walls higher than the current should be able to reach.”

“Meaning?”

“Something’s been splashing around here recently— the amount of residue is too big to be a rat. It could be a dog maybe, but that wouldn’t explain the camera…”

“Dude, it’s like, totally an aligator.”

“No it’s not.” Raph nudged his baby brother.

“No, dude, it totally is! I read about it once!”

“There are no gators in the sewer Mike.”

“Actually, there’s reports of gators living in the tunnels as far back as the nineteen twenties. The story goes that people would buy baby gators when they were small and cute and abandon them when they got too big to be kept in an apartment. The fascinating part is that the city actually rescues up to a hundred alligators a year from exotic breeders or incompetant owners with no liscence.”

“Donnie—“

“Though theoretically they could survive in the sewers for a short time, long-term survival would be highly improbable given cold tempatures and the bacteria in human feces. The only reason we can survive down here is because—“

“DONNIE.” Leo said, this time louder, “The alarm?”

“Oh. Right.” Donnie cleared his throat, looking away sadly as his rant went unfinished. “I… am detecting trace amounts of mutagen, but that could just be cross-contamination from one of us or Splinter. I’m sure someone would have told us if Bebop or Rocksteady escaped.”

There came a noise. A loud, jarring noise like the snap of metal. Each brother had their weapons ready before the sound even stopped echoing, dropping into their respective defense stances as they stared down the side of the tunnel that the noise came from. Nothing happened. A minute passed. Nothing.

“Think they left—?” Mikey was shushed thrice.

Leo gave the motion for his team to follow him as he lead the way down the tunnel.

“It could be an ambush.” Donnie whispered to Leo as they approached.

“If it is, we’ll be prepared—“

Leo held out his hand to stop his brothers as the sound started up again. It took a second, but eventually Leo took notice that it wasn’t the same sound. This time it wasn’t metal snapping, it was more like groaning. Like someone had taken two metal pipes and twisted them together. And there were footsteps— heavy, slow footsteps in uneven intervals.

“What in the world…?”

Leo squinted when a figure made itself known. It looked amost like a spider, with a massive, spiked body and five and a half legs. It seemed to have two heads each moving separately of the other, and the noises it made sounded like something under great strain or in pain. It swayed unsteadly before them and tried to take a step forward.

“Stop right there!” Leo commanded to the beast, holding his katana in its direction.

The monster seemed to understand., and it stopped.

“Leo, that’s—“

Leo shushed Donnie.

“But it’s—“

The figure tried to move toward them again and Leo flashed his sword in another threat. “I said stay back!”

“LEO!” Donnie didn't give Leo the chance to say anything, pulling up his goggles and flicking a flashlight on the creature. “Look…”

The creature— or more like creatures— flinched at the light shined in their faces. Of the six legs Leo had thought he’d seen, only two of them proved to be real, and the one creature turned out to be two. The smaller one was on the bottom, supporting a second, larger creature on his back. Leo, Raph, and Mikey all gasped and withdrew in their shock, but Donnie held steadfast and kept the light trained on the enemy.

The smaller creature was a dark green with stripes of purple streaking across him, purple armor torn and some lost all together. He only had one kneepad and both of his sock peices were soaked dark and torn. His elbow pads remained mostly untouched, and his hands were bare. Technology littered his body— goggles on his head and a tablet on his arm and a belt and shoulder straps that supported a massive shield over his back— over his shell. From the armor came four metal arms, one of them broken and the rest straining to support the immense weight on top of him.

The larger was big enough to cover his carrier almost like a blanket, hiding a majority of the small turtle beneath his massive plastron and bulking arms. He might have been a lighter shade of green— it was hard to tell in the lighting, and even then it hardly mattered. The only evidence the great beast was still living was the fact that he was moving his head around, just slightly. Thick streams of crimson bubbled forth from a gaping wound in his carapace, bleeding out and covering him in streams of shiny red that dripped down his arms and side and onto his companion. He gave the slightest groan at the light shining on him and tried to open his eyes.

“What the fuuuuu…?” Leo gaped.

The purple-clad mutant looked weakly to the four with tired, terrified eyes. “Help…”

He collapsed into the sewage.

[sobdasha]

had a few more thoughts about the Honda family

and all the Souma parallels.

(and by “a few” I apparently meant “a lot”, I did not mean to write this many pages)

In the other post I’d made a comment about how Katsuya’s romance with Kyouko, severe age difference issues aside, is just plain pathetic, a point which I believe to be Upheld by canon. And I wanted to talk more about that, the implications of that, and how that further builds the Akito and Tohru parallel. And also, Why Tohru Can’t Love Her Mom And Kyou At The Same Time.

The ideal, in Fruits Basket, is that when you make a connection with one person who loves you and sees you, this will enable you to make further connections with the people around you. Tohru does a whole heck of a lot of this; for one example, see Yuki explaining this to Kisa in the liking-yourself speech. Yuki does some of this for bitty Haru and later for Machi. Kazuma does this for Kyou. And so on and so forth. The positive experiences are meant to have a ripple effect.

It’s important to be grateful for what you have (Yuki and Machi’s “just one person would be enough” scene), but it’s human to crave more than that (Kyouko telling Saki that it’s probably normal to want other people to accept you even if you already have a loving and supportive family). It is important to crave more than that.

This was, in fact, the entire point of the curse. God meets cat. Cat’s companionship allows god to form connections with other animals. Cat is dying and god decides that 13 friends is the perfect number of friends and starts the reincarnation cycle. Cat says, “god you never once left your house. I wanted to see you go down and make friends with the humans. I wanted to see you experience the world and laugh in the sunlight. God you made 13 new friends but you’re still lonely and closing yourself off to the world forever, this is wrong and I am sad.” The banquets were supposed to be the gateway drug of friendship and meaningful connections, not the place where 14 souls stagnated alone and isolated until it became a curse.

That same wrongness happens in Ren and Akira’s relationship, where finally making a connection with one person who loves you and sees you made their world smaller and smaller. It wasn’t healthy, probably because 1) they remained in a toxic environment, 2) Kureno implies that Ren has mental health issues and I assume those existed prior to Akira’s death and were exacerbated, rather than created by, her grief; also I can’t imagine she actually came from a non-toxic family herself, and 3) Akira’s “you’re going to die an early death and the only thing we need from you first is a successor” trauma. Akira never found anyone other than Ren who understood how upset he was. Ren never formed a relationship with anyone other than Akira, partly because she was now trapped in a toxic family that despised everything about her and she refused to Prove Them Right by leaving. They both viewed their child as an object rather than a person; Akira seeing proof that he and Ren were definitely OTP and the Souma could go shove it, and Ren seeing a Rival.

I have a memory that I said at some point—probably in a Talking About Shigure post—that Kyouko helps Katsuya connect with other people. But this, I think, is not really true. I was thinking of how Kyouko helps bridge the non-relationship between Katsuya and his father. But that’s just one person.

Really, Katsuya and Kyouko are more like Akira and Ren.

Marrying-someone-who-just-graduated-ninth-grade aside, the fact that Katsuya and Kyouko meet is genuinely a good thing. Katsuya finally connects with the humanity in another person. Kyouko is finally cared about as a person. Their misanthropic-jackass-and-abandoned-cat relationship improves both of them, probably. Their connection is definitely the reason Kyouko decides to go to high school and quit her gang. It’s harder to tell with Katsuya, but you could argue that seeing Kyouko struggling and fighting and screaming against the world, as honest about her joy as she is about her loneliness-channeled-into-rage, causes Katsuya to say screw it and pursue the career in pharmacy that he’s interested in, instead of fake-politely submitting to the world’s expectations and internally resenting and disdaining everyone around him.

Katsuya softens in his relationship with his father. Both Katsuya and Kyouko see their child as a person in her own right, Tohru, rather than an object. Katsuya, in fact, is adamant about that fact when Kyouko is terrified of her pregnancy—that they can treat their baby as her own person, and if they aren’t perfect parents and they hurt their child, they’ll apologize—because Tohru is a person and an equal—and admit that what they did was wrong and why it’s wrong. They’ll treat Tohru with the respect they should have gotten all along.

But I don’t think it ever goes any farther than that. Like god, the Honda family becomes more and more isolated.

Does Katsuya make any work friends? We don’t really get a complete view of their lives, because Takaya is one person who can only do so much and space is very precious, so we only see what’s crucial to the story. But I would be really surprised to find that Katsuya had made any close friends outside of Kyouko. I honestly doubt that he has anything more than casual work acquaintances. (In contrast, we repeatedly see Kyou together with the two guys who got names in the anime that I forgot in his class; his friendship with them doesn’t get explored much in the manga, presumably because it doesn’t do any heavy lifting for his character development, but Kyou clearly has casual friends who seek him out and whom he doesn’t mind being with. See also the way Saki and Arisa also interact with those guys as a part of the group, while Tohru really only interacts with Saki and Arisa or the Souma.)

And I don’t think Kyouko fares any better. Does she have any close friends, other than her husband and daughter? Does she make friends at work? I don’t know what kind of work Kyouko does, and if she would have the opportunity to take her breaks socializing with coworkers. But it appears she spends her work breaks in an abandoned area socializing with a first or second grader. Kyou is the only person, as far as we know, that mid-twenties Kyouko can start to open up to. She doesn’t get all the way there—Kyou doesn’t connect the dots until much later—but it’s the closest she comes to talking about how she hurt Tohru after Katsuya died.

Where are the family friends? It doesn’t strike me as weird that the Honda family doesn’t have them, because I have also grown up in a poorly socialized household, but even I am used to running into unfamiliar people in public who explain that they know my mom or dad. I’m pretty sure family friends are a normal thing, and that’s how you get aunts and uncles that aren’t related to you, much in the same way that I’m pretty sure it’s normal to be friends with your cousins (especially if they’re in a similar age range and live nearby) and it is very common for grandparents to bring grandchildren with them to the grocery store because the grandchildren are staying over and they’re having a relationship.

Where is anyone but the Honda family at at Kyouko’s funeral? Kyouko made friends with Arisa and Saki, but did she ever make friends with Saki’s parents? Where are Saki’s loving and supportive mother and father and grandmother when the Honda family is arguing about who has to take on the burden of Tohru? Where are they, if they knew of the bad blood between Kyouko and the Honda family (and the disinheritance between Kyouko and the Katsunuma family), to sweep over Tohru’s protestations and tell her that it will all be fine, they’ll make it work out (they packed up and moved house for Saki, after all), it’s not Tohru’s job to worry about being a burden, it’s the job of people who love her to take care of her?

It can be both “because of the necessity of the plot” and “because they didn’t know.”

Tohru inherits this small, isolated world. And because of the trauma of being abandoned by her grieving, depressed, absolutely-not-coping mother, Tohru picks up on that Souma curse mentality. Tohru’s dad left, and Tohru’s dad tried to take her mom with her, leaving her with no one but Grandpa (who is not intimately part of their world but is not fully outside it either). Tohru’s dad is now a Rival. Tohru’s dad is now an Outsider. Clearly, a bond with an Outsider weakens the True Bond that Tohru had with Kyouko. Clearly, Tohru’s dad is Not Needed (because the other alternative is that Tohru is Not Needed). Clearly, only one of them can have Kyouko.

And it’s going to be Tohru.

Tohru picks up Katsuya’s fake-polite speech, equally disingenuously but from the opposite direction (ie, Katsuya was fake-polite to be an asshole, and Tohru is genuinely polite but faking the words). Tohru is pretty sure this is a form of wicked manipulation (much like Yuki is convinced that “be kind unto others as you would have them be kind unto you” is a form of wicked manipulation). Tohru keeps up with it anyway. Kyouko, as Kyou suggests, was probably comforted by this; rather than going full Akira “you exist to prove that I lived and loved a woman”, seeing Katsuya’s mannerisms in Tohru reminds her that her husband did exist without having to erase Tohru as a person. Kyouko does a lot of growing on her own, but with no support system and no friends outside the family and being fresh-out-of-college age, it’s not surprising that she fails to talk with Tohru about this, and tell Tohru that she knows why Tohru’s doing this, she knows how she hurt Tohru and it was wrong, you don’t have to do this anymore. This is a hurt between them, a grief, that they never talk about, even though they both know it’s there and Kyouko tries to smother it with love and affection and Tohru tries to shut it up in a box of denial.

Tohru’s world is now just Tohru and Kyouko. Tohru doesn’t make any friends until middle school. We know she gets bullied and doesn’t fit in throughout her entire school life. She is a riceball in a fruits basket and probably just manages to scrape by in conformity culture. When she does make her first friends, Arisa and Saki don’t count as Outsiders who compromise Tohru’s bond with her mom because Arisa and Saki are also misfits on the fringe. They are outcasts Tohru can bring into the circle. They are all monsters together, like the cursed Soumas (the only reason no one refers to Akito as a monster to her face, the way they do the rest of the Zodiac, probably has less to do with the fact that Akito doesn’t transform and more to do with the fact that Akito being in a position of power is useful for their own ends, so best not to undermine the head of the family by pointing the whole monster thing out).

And then Tohru’s mom dies.

Tohru isn’t god and she can’t make an eternal banquet. Tohru doesn’t know how to process her grief and how not to fall to pieces. Tohru knows how to empathize with other people, but she doesn’t know how to be vulnerable. Did she remember Kyouko wanting to follow Katsuya, and think about doing the same? But Tohru also wants to keep living, somehow.

So she makes her mom not be gone. Her mom is dead, Tohru knows that, just like Akito knows that Akira’s soul isn’t in the box choosing her over Ren and showing her the way to happiness. But maybe. So she talks to the portrait of her mom. She tries to rescue her mom from suffocating inside a mudslide. She takes her mom on holiday to the onsen. Her mom gets kidnapped once by Hiro. Tohru’s mom is definitely not gone. Tohru and her mom definitely still have an eternal bond. Tohru’s mom will always be first in her heart, so that Tohru will always be first in her mother’s heart. Tohru will never abandon her. Tohru will never leave her behind.

(Tohru will never be left behind.)

Tohru’s world is just Tohru and her mom.

Tohru has two best friends, Arisa and Saki, but she won’t let them in. She won’t depend on them. She won’t tell that that her grief is crushing her and that she’s living in a tent because she’s terrified of being abandoned. Tohru makes a lot of new friends in the Souma family, and she’s very happy, but she won’t let them in either. Tohru can’t open up to any of them freely.

I don’t think I saved it anywhere the survived the computer death, but I saw at least one post in the fandom talking about the growing disappointment of the reboot anime, and they had a valid point, so I’ll bring that in now.

I really like the reboot, but I am losing my passion in the final season. Adapting a story from one media to another is hard, and at the beginning I thought they were doing a good job. Small things were being cut, scenes were being rearranged and stitched together, but there was a definite purpose behind it. Instead of literally following each chapter, each episode tried to be a self-contained theme in the same way a manga chapter would be. Because themes repeat again and again in Fruits Basket in a slow build, this was working well. But small things that didn’t quite fit got cut. Scenes I liked and was sad not to see, but that I accepted had to be left out to make the episodes stronger.

But they’ve been piling up and piling up. Small holes have accumulated into big plot holes that the third season is tripping over. I’m sad that we don’t see the small progressions of Yuki and Machi’s relationship, the quiet scenes that show Machi is trying to pay attention to Yuki the way he has paid attention to her, and also all the Mogetas. I’m sad Komaki is the new manga-only character. If we don’t get Kyouko’s full backstory, we lose a lot of the context that’s in this post. I could go on and on.

But most importantly, as that someone else pointed out, we missed out on the progression of Kyou and Tohru’s flirting. It’s too late to cram all of that into a montage episode, and so now we’ve been given episode after episode of Mom Tohru, and hardly any Tohru Struggling With Romance In Addition To Struggling With Grief before suddenly everyone is confessing their love and I’m not as into it in the anime as I am in the manga.

So many of the Souma love and accept Tohru, but Tohru remains an Outsider—not because of the curse, but because she hasn’t formed close friendships with them. Tohru has a lot of people among the Souma she likes who like her, but she’s always a Mom to them. Tohru shares some of her own pain with them, but it’s shared for their benefit, not for Tohru’s own catharsis. Tohru shares so she will be loved, not so that she will be accepted.

Except Kyou.

Kyou, who looks at Tohru and thinks, “I’m pretty sure she’s that lonely person even now, even while she’s smiling and genuinely enjoying every moment with us.” Kyou, who’s falling in love with Tohru. Kyou, whom Tohru’s falling in love with.

Kyou is the only one that Tohru takes a desperate risk with. Kyou is the only one Tohru ~disillusions~ and ~disappoints~ in the hope that he’ll accept her regardless.

Kyou is the only one Tohru tells, “I don’t talk about my dad because I kicked him out of the family. I know my dad loved us and I loved him back, but I pretend to talk like him so my mom will forget about him and love me instead. He came between me and my mom and now I pretend he doesn’t exist. And I know I’m an awful person for behaving like that, so I keep his picture and pretend I don’t, and I pretend he’s the Bad Guy who earned it.”

The idea that Tohru can’t love both her mom and Kyou is, in a way, true. (I think that same post I’ve been referencing also talked about how dropping the budding romance also dropped a lot of the clues that this is Tohru unable to process her grief? Which is also very true. But if Tohru has the Souma mindset, then actually she has a legit point about not being able to love two people at once despite being a very loving person. Both can be true. Multitudes.)

Kyou is an Outsider to the world of Tohru and her mom. And if Tohru chooses to love him, it will weaken her bond with her mom, which is predicated on loving her mom more than anyone else. If she expands her world to include him in it, she will be betraying her mom. Tohru will be the Bad Guy who left her mom behind and abandoned her. Tohru will be her own villain, condemned for the same crimes she pinned on her dad.

Kyou 100% gets where she’s coming from with this, because he turns this exact argument on her when she confesses to him and he panics (akin to when Tohru chases him down in his true form and he slashes her and, in the reboot, yeets her into the lake, so that she will be hurt so bad she’ll never pity/love him again). He asks her if her love for her mom—her bond—was just a lie.

Tohru making friends after Kyouko’s death has been a lot like Akito letting Yuki and Kyou out into the world, certain that it would drive them back to the bond. Yuki getting character development is a huge betrayal. Tohru wanting to be together with Kyou, when she should only want to be together with her mom, is a huge betrayal.

Tohru has no model for expanding her world. She’s good at loving people, but bad at letting them in (Kyouko was bad at that too—like Mom Tohru, she was very good at sharing anecdotes about her violent youth, but very bad about sharing how she’d failed Tohru as a mom). Like Akito, she only really knows the bond—the certainty that her mom would love her. She’s been so terrified of not being loved that she’s acted this entire time like her mom is still around. When Kyou’s love is a possibility, she can only conceptualize it as a betrayal of her relationship with her mother.

It always seemed a bit too abrupt that Tohru looked at Akito with the knife and went “oh shit we’re literally the same”, but now that I’ve thought this all out, it makes eloquent sense. The whole time Tohru’s been working against the curse, she’s been in denial about her own blessing-burden-curse. Now that she’s just admitted it and had it thrown back in her face, she can look at Akito and see another person in an insular little world, isolated and lonely and walled-off from the world. Of course Tohru desperately wants to make friends with knife-wielding Akito—she just decided to let go of her ties to her mother that were suffocating her, and take her first steps into the world, and got immediately dumped by the person she loves. Of course she wants to make friends with someone who knows exactly where Tohru’s coming from and how terrifying what Tohru just did is and how awful it is to be rejected even though she’s got other friends she loves out here in this world she’s decided to finally step into.

Tohru is so damn lonely, and Akito is there, also lonely and screaming and crying and undeniably human.

(Smile, Tohru tells herself in the hospital. Smile and tell Kyou you were happy to meet him and just let him go. Don’t be a curse. Smile and let him find his own happiness. Which is more or less the same struggle Akito is also going through. But maybe they’re going through it together. Maybe they used their words, together, when they couldn’t confide in anyone else. Although it feels a bit unlikely that Tohru let herself break down about Kyou in front of Akito, and Akito already had one pity-party in front of Momiji and may not have wanted to burden Tohru with a second.)

One thing I really love about Fruits Basket Another is that Hajime alludes to the fact that Kyou probably won’t inherit Kazuma’s dojo after all.

Kyou inheriting the dojo is something both Kyou and Kazuma have wanted, and it gives me many warm fuzzies. It is very narratively satisfying. The dojo, while Souma property, is not actually part of the main estate.

What I love is that Kyou probably won’t take over the dojo specifically because he and Tohru have made so many friends in their new town that they don’t want to pick up and leave. Kyou finally succeeds in freeing Tohru from that small, lonely world, much like he’s been freed from the fate of the Cat Room. Their relationship enriches them personally and also enables them to make so many new connections. Kyou has friends at the dojo! Tohru has friends at work maybe! Friends where they buy groceries, friends among the parents of their children’s classmates, friends outside of their extended Souma family! They’ve kept ties that don’t hold them back and made new ties that don’t weaken or steal away any of their old ties!

When they left Tokyo, Tohru was prepared to go anywhere as long as it was with Kyou. Now, she and Kyou both don’t want to leave because their world is so much larger than just their nuclear family and they’ve put down roots. They’ve seen each other not only lonely in the moonlight and worn thin by death and loss, but they’ve gotten up and gone down the mountain to where the people live and made friends among them, laughing in the sunlight. Just like the cat always uggghhhhh I’m not crying I’m just so damn happy for them I can’t

[cherryhanji]

tears and smudges

oneshot. bang chan x reader

genre: drama, angst, fluffy tones at the end

words: 4.3k

warning(s): foul language, super slight mentions of domestic abuse, mentions of degradation, themes of prostitution and sex, themes of violence, suggestive themes, mentions of drinking, lots of kissing at the end (lol)

alexa's note:

hello! this is my first time writing a scenario with those themes mentioned above. again, i'm not used with these kinds of themes but I tried my best to write this one. (But really, I can't write some scenes with explicit sex, graphic sexual content, as I've mentioned on my request guidelines)

If you're not comfortable with these kinds of stories, I do suggest to you that I have other works listed on my masterlist and most of them are fluffs (if it's your thing)

Sex work is the one that makes you stand on your own feet for almost five years. In this kind of living situation, you already met different kinds of people, and one of them is the person you really trust the most, the person that never judged you in all aspects. You met Chan at the bar you're currently working at, he is the kind of regular that never asks for sex unlike those grumpy old horny businessmen and horny college dudes in exchange of money.

Chan is a drunkard, tho. You'll never know about him if you didn't insist him to take you, a challenge you accepted from your coworkers who didn't charm their way into the man's heart. his looks are breathtaking, one thing that made your coworkers drool for him. But he didn't budge, saying that it's not his thing. This scenario continued until you gave up and decided to offer to be friends with him which he gladly accepted. That's when you knew he has respect for every woman, including you. That's why he always refuses to have sex either with you or your coworkers. That's when you knew he's the only guy you'll put your trusts into. And he never failed you. Always taking care of you after work. Listens to your rants about different clients you've encountered every work. He's the one who can bring out the inner you, the vulnerability that you always hide whenever you're at work. Showing him all the frustrations and judgments that you always, but despite that, he never, ever judged you. And you're beyond grateful for that.

"Hey, y/n. Is baby boy not coming tonight?" Your coworker asked when she didn't saw any traces of Chan on the bar stool.

"hey! Don't call him that! He has a name!" You said and chuckled.

"I think he's busy at work. It's not like he'll always spend the night here and drink until he becomes wasted as fuck." You said while putting on heavy makeup on your face. It's always been your routine before the clients went into the bar. Putting on those thick eyeliner and brick red lipstick that your regular clients like.

"Ladies! Listen up!" You're manager called all your attentions.

"This night is our biggest break! One of our biggest clients is here and you y/n" she pointed at you and you listened intently.

"You're the one he suggested tonight. Accept it, you'll have your big paycheck tomorrow after." She said and winked at you. You nod slowly as the thought sink in. Having a big paycheck means to you. But it also means that the client you're assigned tonight is quite tough, it's been five years since you started this kind of job but you still feel nervous about it. Shaking it off from your head, you prepare yourself as the bar finally opened its working hours now.

before you head out from the staff room, you checked first your phone if there are any messages on it, you smiled as you saw Chan's name on the notifications.

you chuckled as you read his message.

from: Chan

are there lots of people tonight? sorry I didn't go early. Work, you know.

to: Chan

yep. A lot, as usual, I got assigned to this biggest client of our bar. Good luck to me! Anyways, it's okay if u didn't come early tho, just focus on your work so you can have lots of money to spend on our booze.

your heart skips a beat as you read the familiar pet name he always calls you with, his princess. you shrugged and put back your phone inside your bag before starting to work.

from: Chan

I will princess, and I'll stop by later, I'll walk you home okay? Keep yourself from any harm. see you :>

_____

as usual, the bar is now stuffed with people who don't do anything but to have some fun, drink with friends, people who are brushing off their stress and frustrations away with the help of alcohol. You were used to these kinds of scenarios. And you once experienced them. Being an orphan made you lonely, in and out of foster homes to find your own kind of "home", you were once adopted by a couple who can't have their own child. You decided to leave the couple when your foster father always hit you whenever you do something that isn't to his likings. Growing up without someone guiding you made you face all the struggles that a person will always encounter without any knowledge on how to properly deal with it. That's why alcohol is your only escape. Brushing it off with alcohol that you always throw on your system. Temporarily forgetting all the problems that you will still face when you're sober.

You met someone who you thought will never leave you and betray you. But it turns out he just used you for his own sexual needs. Leaving you wasted and a crying mess for believing his shit. That's when you started having trust issues. Struggling to trust someone for not wanting to be abandoned again. But ever since Chan came to your life, you never once contemplated bringing back your trust to a person again. And you're glad that you did the right thing.

"Hey! Y/N!" Your coworker called you as soon as you went out of the staff room

"Oh, what is it?" You asked as you wander your eyes on the bar.

"Your client is now waiting for you." Your coworker said and pointed out the man who you assumed is in his late 20's. he looks so young for a millionaire, you thought.

"He's hot, isn't he? Go now! If I were you, I would love to have him as my client, lucky you, he picked you." She said and winked before she pushed you towards the client. You glared at her before fixing yourself and went to your client.

The man can't hide his desires as soon as you approached him on his seat.

"You're y/n if I'm not mistaken," the man said and you nodded confirming him.

"I've never made a mistake in choosing you. Come, join me here beautiful lady," he said and tapped the side of the couch signaling you to sit beside him which you accepted.

"Being your new client, I guess you know already who am I." He said. you gasped slightly, completely forgetting to ask your manager the name of your client. Stupid you.

The man chuckled at your sudden silence. "Oh I guess Ms. Jang didn't tell you, I'm Lee Minho, you can just call me Minho." He said and offered his hands to you asking for a handshake. You accepted it and smiled shyly at him.

"I, I'm sorry M-minho, I forgot to ask Ms. Jang about you." You said and smiled sheepishly.

"It's okay, dear. As long as you came here, I'm beyond okay with it. Want some drinks?" He offered you the glass containing expensive booze from your bar and gladly took it. Looks like with his oozing expensive looks and wealth, you think he can also buy the entire bar you're working at.

After a couple of drinks and talks with Minho, you can now sense that he is nearly intoxicated with the alcohol he's been drinking. You decided not to drink too much so you can still be aware of what was happening to your surroundings. While your eyes wander at the people who were having fun, a hand slowly nestled on your thighs, which made your breath hitched at the cold feeling. Looking at the owner of the hand, you saw Minho cocked his head at the side while smiling at you, a hint of desire in his eyes.

"Uh, Minho... Is there anything you need?" You're already used to these kinds of scenes so you just brush it off by asking him. You surely saw that his eyes darken for a second. His jaw clenched, hands now near at your inner thighs before he pulled it off and fixed his tie.

"Is there any room we can occupy?" He asked you. You stand up from your seat and ask him to wait for you while you asked your manager about it.

You went straight to the staff room and quickly check your phone first. You saw a message from Chan and you opened it.

you decided not to reply to him and went straight to your manager to ask what room did Minho purchase.

from: Chan

10 minutes more and I'll be there. I'll wait for you later, princess.

You went back to Minho who is calmly drinking while waiting for you. He immediately stands up as soon as you went near him. Grabbing your hand, he lets you guide him to where the room is.

As soon as you closed the door, Minho's hands wander to the different parts of your body, satisfying himself by touching your smooth skin.

"You're so fucking sexy, you know that?" Minho said as you just nodded at him.

"You don't know how much I want to wreck you now," Minho grunted, hands still exploring your lower part.

Minutes later, the touches were slowly getting rougher, one that made you winced because of the aggressive touches Minho giving you.

Hearing your whimpers that he thought came from the pleasure he gives you, he aggressively grabbed your chin with his big hands forcing you to look at him.

"I knew it. You love it when someone's being hard on you, huh? You like it, slut?" He said making your eyes widen and shook your head.

"No? Isn't this enough for you? You want it a harsh way? Okay. I'd love to do it then." He said and pulled you towards the bed, hands still on your chin. He pushed you harshly on the bed. Removing his top, he climbed on the bed giving himself space between your legs and harshly dive into your neck. You cried because of the harsh bites he gave you, with zero pleasure, pure pain. You try to wriggle out from his hard grip but it's no help.

Annoyed by your actions, he stopped what his assaults to you and slapped your face hard. Making you cry out because of the pain.

"What do you think you're doing, slut? Do you think you can deny me? I already bought you, remember? I paid a high amount to have you as my property now. You can't do anything but to obey me, because you're just a little slut, hungry for money." He said and put his hands on your throat with such force making tears slowly flow out from your eyes because of the lack of air. Did your manager just sell you out to this man?

He removed his hands from your throat making you choke, gasping for some air to breathe in, while he continues doing all his assaults to you. This is one of the things you really hate in this job, giving them the pleasure they want is okay not until they lay off their abusive hands to you. And because of this kind of abuse you mostly encounter because of your job, you learned how to properly defend yourself from it. Adrenaline rushed into you as you kick his crotch very hard making him fall to the side of the bed.

"Fuck you slut! What do you think you're doing?!" Minho blurted out while wincing from the pain on his crotch. You quickly get up from the bed and ran out of the room. Rushing to the staff room looking for your manager. You've had enough.

"Y/N?! W-what are you— where is Mr. Lee?" Your manager asked you as soon as you enter the staff room. Shaking with anger, you question your manager, "How could you—" you stopped trying not to cry out of anger. besides Chan, Ms. Jang is the second person you gave your trust into, taking care of you like a real mother. You just can't believe that she will sell you out in exchange for a big fucking amount of money.

Trying to ask you again, you interrupted her, "Did you just let that man bought me for a big amount of money? how could you do that to me, I thought you care for me?" You said, not wanting to cry in front of her. You stopped her when she tried to go near you.

"No, please don't go near me." You said

"I'm, I'm sorry, Y/N. I didn't plan to do that. It's just that he threatened me, he said that he will report our bar to the police if I didn't give him what he wants, he wants you, Y/N. I, I can't risk our business. That's--"

"So you decided to sacrifice me?" You nodded and continued. "I understand... Who am I to refuse, I'm just a wasted orphan you adopted, a new girl you added to your collection. You know what, Ms. Jang, thank you for taking care of me for the last five years, I felt the love that I thought was real. Thanks for letting me experience how to have a real mother. It's been a nice journey. But I've had enough, it's like I've ever wanted this kind of life anyway. Thank you, and please tell the others, I'm thankful for them, too. I need to go. I can't stand this place anymore." You said and grabbed all your things. Ms. Jang tried to stop you but you didn't budge, you want to get out of this life for so long, maybe now is the time. As soon as you stormed out of the room, you saw Chan peacefully sitting on the barstool, assuming that he's waiting for you. He smiled as soon as he saw you but quickly withdrew it as he saw your expression. He immediately went to you and held your arms gently, softly caressing it.

"Hey, what happened?" He asked, eyes glassed with worry. You faintly smiled at him and grabbed his hands in your arms and squeezed it.

"Let's get out of here?" You asked and he just nodded, still clueless with what was happening.

"Where do you want to go?" Chan asked you as soon as you went out of the bar. Because of the situation, you can't go straight to your home as it was also Ms. Jang's home.

"Can I stay at your place for a while?" You faced him. Examining your face first, he sensed that something's definitely wrong. So he just nodded and hailed for a cab.

_____

"Wait for me here, I'll just get some water." You just nodded and hummed in response. You just fiddled with your fingers as you recall the happenings a while ago. Your trust had shattered again, making you feel devastated. Ms. Jang sacrificed you? Maybe Minho was right, you're just a worthless slut. You were never loved by anyone because you're just one of those existing trash here on earth. No one dared to love you, words are just words. People who say that they love you were never real. They meant nothing. People loathed sluts like you. You are a failure, a total failure. Thinking those thoughts, you didn't notice the tears that are now falling from your eyes, eyeliner mixing with your tears making it smudged on your face.

"Y/N! Shit! Why are you crying?" Chan immediately placed the glasses of water to the coffee table and sit beside you. Feeling his presence beside you, you quickly grabbed the hem of his shirt asking him for a hug which he immediately gave you. Chan shushed you, swaying your bodies side to side as he let you cry your heart out. You felt him kissed the top of your head and caressed it after, making you calm.

"What happened back there at the bar?" Chan asked when you finally calmed down. Grabbing the tissue box and wiped your face gently, also removing the smudges of eyeliner on your eyes.

"Ms. Jang just sold me to our biggest client. I... I trusted her, Chan. I thought that she'll take care of me. I just can't believe she betrayed me for a big amount of money." You told him what happened at the bar. Chan stayed silent before attempted to speak.

"What are you going to do now?" Chan asked you. Tucking in stray hair at the back of your ear.

"I'll stop working there. I want to change, Chan. I can't be stuck there forever. I need to improve myself." You said, tears slowly falling to your cheeks again. Thinking how will you start to change your life for the better. You're afraid, you're afraid of the changes. But you wanted this. And you know Chan will always be there for you. Chan smiled at you dearly. Hearing it from you makes his heart clenched. He never judged you because of your way of living. But he's glad that you wanted to change your life for the better. And he's willing to help you and guide you.

"Sssh... Don't cry, princess. I'll stay with you. You know that, right? You know you can rely on me." He said and you nodded at him.

"Thank you, Chan. For not judging me, for always taking care of me, for everything that you did for me. Thank you for coming into my life. You're my angel, Chan." You said and smiled at him. Hearing those words from you, his happiness jolted up. He's also beyond thankful to you coming into his life. And he'll never stop taking care of you, never stop protecting you, and will never stop giving you the love that you deserved.

Chan held your cheeks, which you leaned in. He slowly lowered his head, and kissed you. Your eyes opened out of shock, but quickly melted in as soon you felt his soft lips on yours. Realizing what he was doing, he quickly breaks the kiss. You opened your eyes, looking at his face mirroring regret. Also realizing what happened, you stayed silent. You always have a soft spot for Chan. But after he kissed you, it's like there's a place inside your heart you didn't know you that had only for him.

"I-I'm sorry, Y/N. I didn't mean to kiss you. Fuck." Chan said and cursed himself making you chuckle. He looked at you confused as to why you're laughing.

"It's okay. You like me, do you?" You teased him making his eyes widen at you, like a deer caught in the headlights.

"H-how did you know?" He asked, confirming that he does likes you.

You shrugged and shift from your seat. "Dunno, I just guessed." You said. He just facepalmed. Completely cursing himself for being stupid.

"Yes, Honestly speaking, I've been in love with you ever since we met." He continued.

"You caught my eye, and that made worse when we grew close with each other. I just learned each day that you're so special to me. I, I love you, Y/N." Chan said making you shut in silence. Slowly sinking in all the words that he confessed. You're never used to these kinds of things. You don't know the feeling of being truly loved by someone, and hearing this from Chan, made you realize that you've been truly loved for a long time, you've been truly loved by Chan. The moment is too much for you making you cry again. Chan saw you making him baffled and held your face slowly.

"Hey, don't cry. It hurts me." Chan said, wiping your tears away.

"It's just that, I've never been so loved before. I've been a failure, Chan. No one ever loved me the way you do Hearing this all from you, it's too much, making me cry." You said trying to stop from crying.

"Don't say that. you're not a failure, y/n. You're the best thing that happened to me."

"But I don't know how to love again. I mean, I don't know how to start loving again." You said.

"You don't have to, princess, Just let the time. Just let me love you, okay?" Chan said and kissed you once again. The feelings, the atmosphere is too much for you to handle, making you burst out again into tears as you felt the love Chan is giving you. You don't know what did you do to deserve this. But you just let the moment pass by and relish all the love this man was giving you.

You were the one to break the kiss because of a lack of air. Chan leaned his forehead on yours and chuckled. You felt his thumb on the corner of your lips. You looked at his thumb that obtained red stains from your lipstick.

You also looked at his lips, chuckling as you saw the visible lipstick stains, courtesy of you.

"Your lipstick made a mess, princess." He said and chuckled.

"You look sexy, Chan." You blurted out, grabbing a tissue to wipe the smudge of lipstick on his lips.

"Don't say that, princess. I know I am." Chan said, combing your hair gently. You finally wiped the smudges on his lips and yours.

"Promise me you'll never cry again, princess, I just saw how much of a crybaby you are." He said and you just smacked his chest lightly.

"It's because you made me cry." You said and pouted.

"But not because I hurt you. And don't do that, please. It makes me want to kiss you again." Chan said and pointed out your pouty lips.

"Then do it." You teased him making him grunt.

"We all have the time in the world princess, so take a shower first so we can have our dinner and we can do all the kissings later." He said and chuckled making you blush at his playful banter. He just pinched your cheeks and stand up.

"Take a shower, I'll prepare your clothes for now." He said.

"Shower with me?" You asked making him gasped with your suggestion

"W-what? Hell no!" Chan completely refused to make you chuckle

"Why? We're already dating." You teased making him rolled his eyes dramatically.

"That doesn't mean I will accept your offer." He said and slowly pushed you towards the bathroom.

"Okay, okay. Fine." You laughed and stuck your tongue out before closing the door of the bathroom. You just love how to make him blush on the spot, looking so cute.

____

You and Chan's bodies were comfortably slumped on the sofa while watching some movies after you ate dinner. You snuggled on his broad chest, while his arms encircled around you making you warm and comfortable.

"Y/N..." Chan called you softly. You hummed and lift your gaze to him.

"Now that you left the bar, when will you gather your things from Ms. Jang's house? You know I can help you with it." He said and combed your hair.

"I'll gather my courage to face them first. I need to clear my mind. I don't think I can face them for now. And I need to think of a place to live now I already left the bar." You said

"Live here with me?" Chan suggested making you look back at him.

"I might be a burden-"

"No. You'll never be, princess. At least you'll only have to think about looking for a job. Living here with me can lessen your problems. Besides, I love you being here." Chan said and smiled at you. Chan never failed to make you smile even at the smallest things he did and said to you

"Fine. But let me contribute to it. Let me have a share in paying other bills. I am also now living here. And I am consuming the things that you consume." You said.

"You sound like my future wife." He chuckled and pinched your nose.

"Do you want me to be?" You asked and he nodded.

"I'd love to. Mrs. Bang." He said making you both laughed at the thought.

"You're tired, Chan. You need to rest." You said pushing his face against you.

"But I'm serious!" He whined and you just nodded.

"Yes, I know. But that's not our priority for now. I know that you love me, I'll just be here with you." You said and give him a peck on his lips. You were about to move back when he grabbed your face and made you stay still, catching your lips with his. You smiled against his lips and soon gave in with the kiss.

"You're too much of a kisser huh? Maybe you waited for this time to come, did you?" You asked, gasping again for air after the breathtaking kiss

"Maybe yes, maybe no. You guess." He said and hugged you.

"I love you, princess. I love you." Chan said. Wanting to say those words to him, you contemplate as you still not yet completely have the confidence and assurance of those words. You still need to find the real meaning before you finally tell him. Sensing your uneasiness, Chan sighed and cupped your cheeks.

"You don't have to say it now, princess. Just what I've told you a while ago, just let the time, don't worry about me. Just let me love you. I won't force you tell to me." Chan said and smiled. Maybe what he said isn't that hard to do. Because you can see how much he loves you, you'll soon learn how to love him back. You know how much he also deserves the love that he always gives you. You just need to let the time do its thing.

[natsukitakama]

Hi, i loved your general hcs about Kuroo 💞 Could you write for oikawa and kageyama too, please?

Author note : Hello there ♡ Thank you for your request and your kind work it means a lot for me !  it took me a long time I’m sorry about it.  I hope you’ll enjoy it those two dorks are my favorite (honestly I can’t dislike a character from Haikyu). Again I tried to be as impartial as possible. 

Warning : None just me daydreaming about them / Spoiler-free i base my G headcanon on the anime for now

i do not own those gifs credits to their owner (the Oikawa”s one comes from tenor) 

Masterlist 

General headcanon Oikawa edition aka pretty boi ... How am I supposed to be impartial ? 

A lot of people tends to think he is a lady boy which he is not. Sure the man is handsome, he is very nice and pretty funny but honestly he is married to Volley ball.  

Have you seen his reaction when his girlfriend dumped him ? He asked himself what did he do the wrong way. It doesn’t mean that he is blind, that he doesn’t care about you. But Volley ball is his passion. You need to understand that, he is breathing volley, he is eating volley, he dreams volley, he literally went as far as to hurt himself from training. You need to understand that he craves for Volley Ball 

It doesn’t mean he won’t take care of you, when this man let someone getting close to him it’s means the world. Have you seen him ? He is self-conscious, he has a low-opinion on himself even when he tried to be cocky it’s just a way to brush off his own insecurities. 

He thinks he is not a good setter, he is probably doubting his leadership even his own ability as an athlete (it probably started when he hurt his knee) 

I won’t be surprise if he got some trust issues too, despite being pretty popular he is only around the same people which include his best friends Iwa-chan (which he knew since he is child) and his friends from his team that he knew since 3 years. So I don’t think he was in relationship with a lot of people. 

Speaking of relationship, i think he will talk with Iwa-chan about his crush you know just to be sure he doesn’t misunderstanding things

He got a tone of buddies but don’t have much friends, it means a lot for him

I do think he is the kind of people to run into your house if you say you’re feeling down, probably because he’ll appreciate if you do the same for him 

I highly doubt he can take care of himself, I’m not saying that he can’t live on his own but he tends to forget a lot of things because of volley ball. I do think he’ll skip meal time to time especially night meal because he is too focused on analyzing a match but I also think he is smart enough to know how to stay healthy. 

Honestly he needs someone to domestic him, I’m sure he’ll crave for it 

He really loves his fans they’re nice with him but sometimes he wish he could be less popular. They put so much hope in him and he is… well him. How is he supposed to support them while he can support himself ? It melt his heart to see how cute they are but it puts much stress on himself 

I do think he struggles for sleep because of his anxiety especially when he is fighting a good team 

When he got hurt, he was afraid he might no be able to play anymore. He never thinks about what kind of job he would have if he can’t play volley ball. But I can see him being good into social science or something related to language. 

I don’t how I know that but I’m 100% sure he smells something sweet like vanilla don’t ask 

Despite having some childish attitude, I think he uses it to hide his resentment. Especially when he is with Kageyama, he knows the boy does nothing to hurt him. But the fact he is literally made to play volley ball while Oikawa has to work hard, even hurting his body, is pissing him off. He is jealous of him. 

Since he is very close to his nephew I think he is family guy and was probably heart broken when he has to leave his family. I’m sure he FaceTime them as much as he can. I think he bought them ticket so they can travel to see him when he can’t travel. 

Probably the kind of people of doing aesthetic things on his instagram, remember the time when he nephew took a picture of him ? We can see a selfie with Takeru, a picture of a Sunlight, a selfie and a tone of picture of his nephew. His instragram is tidy. 

He is hard-working, he isn’t afraid of what he takes to achieve his goal. It could be a quality or a fault. 

We knows that his previous girlfriend dumped him because he was too focused on Volley ball. It probably means that despite his Monday, he can’t afford much time to date someone. But that doesn’t mean he won’t care about his significant other, maybe sometimes he’ll need you to tell him that it’s okay to live for his passion but that you need to have some times alone together. 

He won’t mind quite contrary, he’ll feel so relieve knowing you miss him but at the same time he’ll blame himself for not being able to notice that you were a bit sad lately. 

Speaking of notice, don’t even think you can lie to him. The man is able to adjust to anyone he is playing with. That means he is pretty good with people and especially good at reading them. Within a couple of weeks he’ll be able to read your body, he’ll know what makes you feel happy, what bother you and when you lie to him. 

Don’t lie to him honestly. As I said before I’m pretty sure he suffered from lack of trust on himself and everyone, he got trust issues. So don’t hide something to him, don’t lie. Tell him when something is wrong. It might not be good, maybe you’ll argue but at least you told him the truth and in the end he’ll be back to you. 

Lying means you don’t trust him and if you don’t trust him why would he date you ? I can see him dumping someone because he knows they’re hiding something. Of course if he noticed you hide something because you wanted to buy him a gift he won’t be mad and he’ll act like he didn’t notice (he is a great actor you won’t know he knew) 

Despite not being able to date you as much as he wants, he’ll be sure to be around you. If you two went into the same high-school, he’ll have lunch with you, he’ll walk you home, probably text you a lot (morning and night text are the most, he can’t sleep if you do not send him a have good night text)

Like Kuroo, I think he won’t mind getting married earlier. He is part of people who knows when they met their soulmate you know ? 

He will never give up on his career though, that means you’ll have to move with him If you want to spend the rest of your life with him. 

It’s kinda selfish but volley is too important for him, you need to respect that 

I also think he wants children, I can see him being a good dad (he claims he wants only boy but he’ll love his daughter with his life) 

At this time, we all know he is fan of science fiction. He is probably interested on everything related to space. 

X-files is his favorite shows. 

Deep down I think he’ll study to become astronaut but he fells in love with volley ball 

He loves to show off about his knowledge on space (and if you praise him about it … damn he would never stop) 

I need to talk about Glass!Oikawa cause he is too handsome, since he used it to watch a match. I think he might be short-sighted and wears contacts when he plays otherwise he won’t see shit. 

Since his favorite meal is milk bread (can relate buddy don’t worry) if think he has a sweet tooth 

To conclude, Oikawa is really great character with an interesting development and he is not as « superficial » as people tends to think he is more deeper than that. 

General headcanon Kageyama edition 

Another volley ball’s addict 

You’re all pictured Tsukishima as a tsundere which is 100% true but do not forget this boy 

He is obsessed with volley ball and is own skill, he looks like Oikawa more than he would like to admit. Both of them are perfectionist, both of them are hard-working, both of them are passionate about volley ball to the point they might forget everything else.

Oikawa tends to not really taking care of himself while Kageyama struggle with relationship, we all see that he is not good with people. Not that he didn’t try. 

For now I know nothing about his past, but I think he used volley ball at some point to counterbalance something about his life. He worked harder to forget a situation who hurt him. Especially during his junior years. 

I do not think he is the nasty type, I think he is someone shy who struggle with relationship. All he needs is some help, he is completely aware of his lack of skills when it came to socialize, he tends to talk a lot with Sugawara because he is capable of talking with everyone. I won’t be surprised if they talk a lot you know to help him relax around his teammate. He even worked hard so he’ll be nice with Tsukishima 

I think we all know that the reason he hates being called « King » is because it reminds him times when everyone left him, when everyone decided they will be better without him. I think he got so abandonment issues which tends to stop him from making friends. 

After all why will he bothers making friends while he knows they will leave him eventually ? 

At the same times, he loves being surrounded by friends so that’s why he worked so hard on his social skill : cause he knows not everyone could be as easy-to-live as Hinata can be. Not everyone can’t see beyond his « king »’s behavior 

I think he loves animal especially dogs and the fact that he is afraid that animal might not like him prove it. Just picture him with a Shiba while going for a run ? 

I think he sees Hinata as a best friends or at least someone close, he helps him going through some of his fears, forces him to do better In order to be a good setter for his teammate. They are rivals but they are friends too. 

Deep down I think he would be a great friends with Tsukishima both of them haves some issues, but if they went through this they would be great friends

The CD-Drama confirm this, but he is very popular ; girls really like him probably because he is an athlete with dark hair and blue eyes (or it’s just me fangirling over him ?) 

Like Oikawa I don’t think this man he thought about an alternative job if he couldn’t be an athlete unlike Oikawa he is not good at school. So it was volley ball. 

Despite his inability to make friends, he can talk to people as we saw during his training on Tokyo with Atsumu he is pretty easy to talk as long as you’re talking about volley ball. 

I’m pretty sure people of his class tries to talk with him but since he only talks about volley ball they just stop. I wasn’t lying when I said he is obsessed with volley ball.  

Nonetheless, since he is pretty strict when it came to health ; I won’t be surprise if he studied so he could have a healthier way of live. I’m sure he knows a lot of things about food, what kind of food he needs to eat before running etc, I won’t be surprise if he would send some text to remind his teammate (especially Hinata) to eat properly … in his own way. 

Yeah he insults them but not in the mean way more like « you don’t know you need to eat banana after running ? How stupid are you » 

He would be a great nutritionist for athlete 

Despite everyone calling him special, he doesn’t see himself as a genius. That’s why he was so jealous about Hinata because to him he was the genius, cause he got so many potential while he barely has to work to be like this (Kageyama despite being awesome, worked hard to be how he is). 

The truth is he is too lazy for school which is a shame considering the memory he got and how dedicate he can be when is interested on something 

I also think he never date someone unlike his teammate he isn’t ashamed on that. He needs someone special, and he is too busy with volley ball to think about it. 

For what it worth I think he is into someone kind, not the mummy type but some who is into domestic things. I can picture him being overwhelmed every time he saw you cooking for him 

He is probably the type of guy who can break you if heard you talking shit about someone he cared about 

He isn’t very talkative especially about his feelings so he uses his action to show people he cares about them. For example the fact that he knows how to give you the ball so you could spike it’s his way of telling you that he consider you as someone close to him (don’t disappoint him) 

If he’ll stop yelling he would be a good teacher, he can analyze almost everything quite quickly so he can tell you what you’ve done the wrong way. 99% of the time he came with a solution. 

During his junior high, one of the reason of his behavior was the fact that he became a setter after Oikawa, we all know that he is still his biggest rival because Oikawa is everything Kageyama isn’t. He had to become setter for his team while they all know Oikawa, he probably felt like he had to so much better so he could beat Oikawa even if he left for high school. Kageyama was already a perfection before he met Oikawa and his obsession became stronger after Oikawa left. So yeah it could explain why he was such an asshole to his team and how he looked so shocked and kinda depressed when his team left him. 

Even if he actually beat Oikawa, Oikawa still win a match so there is a draw between them. However Oikawa is still a better setter at Kageyama’s sight, no matter how hard he will work it won’t be enough. And he knows that. 

But his insecurity is also his strength, it’s because he is insecure about his skill as a setter than he is working hard to be even better. While people would give up he stands up and work harder

I’m pretty sure he is addict to milk and yogurt because he believes it’ll help him getting bigger (also because he loves the taste of it and I couldn’t agree more)

I’m not seeing him being the type to get married or having a baby, but he’ll easily settle down with someone if he believes you’re made for each other 

I think he is dog type (probably into Shiba or Husky) 

Since his room is pretty empty judging by what we saw, I don’t think he is materialist. I think he tends to buy things if he really feels like he needs it. 

Apparently he run earlier in the morning and since he is very strict about his health I believe he doesn’t need a lot of hours of sleep. Probably something like 7 hours are enough for him maybe less. 

He valued punctuality a lot it probably bothers him when someone is late ; no matter what time it is he will be there, he isn’t afraid of waking up at 4am if it’s important for him. Besides we saw that he can sleep even on Saeko’s car so I guess he can sleep everywhere he just has to want it. 

[shy-magpie]

RQG 155

Wherein there are unexpected visitors. Live blog under the cut

Pre episode babbling:  there really wasn't any way quarantine was going to last as long as the dungeon crawl, and (for all I joked about it) I really am satisfied with what we got. That was a lot of backstory and character moments in a short amount of time. Now we have a kobold, a mysterious attack on the inn, and an episode title referencing dragons? Nice consolation for them almost certainly being forced out of the basement or having plot come to them. Please be Skraak? Please be Skraak either trying to rescue them or at least be here as an ally? Oh well time to hit play: Weird energy? That’s promising Inevitable locked in a Cel(l) joke Zolf needs to be nicer about the Kobolds Alex needs tell us if this is Skraak or not before Hamid gets the blame Skraak(?) Just unlocked the trap door Nice outfit Alex, is it our Skraak? It seems to be Zolf wants Skraak to join them in quarantine. Cel doesn't see why to bother when Skraak's been in contact with hundreds of Kobolds Skraak gestures for them to leave and Zolf is going to be force the issue. This will go over well. Beats his defense by 1 Hamid is trying to play peacemaker again. Really Zolf? Couldn't have calmly refused to leave and explained through the door? I know you are under stress but you are low charisma, not stupid. Love you Cel, Skraak has been speaking to varying degrees since "My Liege" Hamid tries to explain, Zolf speaks over him to say they didn't explain because they forgot. Hamid apologizes to Skraak. Skraak starts to leave. Azu backs Zolf in preventing him from leaving. Skraak is subdued by Zolf & Azu Skraak is locked in with Hamid? No Zolf has some limits thank goodness. He did call Skraak one of them.  Bound but not gagged as Hamid apologizes. Skraak points out that he just has to wait for the rest (of his team?) Skraak "monitor"ed them!?! Holy... I was merely comparing the situations, did he actually scry and see them held by a human in a small space underground beneath a trap door disguised by a table? If he thinks Wilde is their Shoin then how many pieces is he going to be in when Zolf gets out? Kobold lore please! Hierarchy is important and it was "considered a good idea to keep track of the saviors". Skraak is sarcastic in his tone when he uses the term and it sounds like at least Hamid & Azu object the instant they hear it, possibly others. Cel makes a pitch for quarantining the whole inn. Wilde is in the cupboard Zolf asks about the kobold numbers and makes some unnecessary remarks about the village & Jasper in particular being lost as he writes off Japan. Zolf is far too relatable for some who needs to stand the flame down before someone takes it personal. Deciding you've already doomed yourself along with everything you care about is a crappy way to avoid panic in the face of uncertainty. Cel tries to call him on it, he switches to "everyone else is infected and it will be our job to fight them". Scary thing is, while in the long term it would be a suicide mission, with their combined abilities they could make a serious dent in the numbers. Hope they are aware of the Hiroshima comparison if this is leading to calling for a air strike on Japan. They explain what little they know to Skraak who insists none of the Kobolds were sick but may not understand the symptoms. Possible kobold immunity? Gonna be annoyed if something Shoin did protected them. Skraak seems to be saying that no new people were exposed since his party of 7 followed the route of the party. Zolf wants to send them back under Skraak's guard to prevent any more coming for them. And they're back. Cel points out its better Skraak came since the kobolds didn't know to implement quarantine. They go upstairs. They form a phalanx and draw spear against the party when they don't see either Hamid or Skraak. Alex & Ben are doing the "these lines are already written we have but to speak them" routine while Bryn points out Alex doesn't get to sound like that when he's the one doing it. Very Hamid, if you know how this is going to play out and don't like it, just make another choice. Initiative and a lot of dice. Grapple rules. Not clear where Cel is/if they got grappled but it sounds like Zolf did and is throwing them off so he can check on the inn keeper. Hamid runs upstairs and every one of them kneels like Skraak did at their first meeting. Helen & Bryn both sound distressed. Should have cleaned up that unreadable little ficlet I made of Hamid going bad because he didn't know how to handle Kobold worship and accidentally took over Japan because he thought autonomy meant respecting their decision to look to him as their leader. The innkeeper is bound but fine. Zolf unties him and looks for Wilde. "Wilde is also bound and... Has a look best described as "the bleep? "" Zolf is a stress cooker and Barnes updates Hamid is flustered and embarrassed which buys him some small grace from Skraak who explains Hamid is "the biggest dragon here" Cel: Also you could introduce the concept of democracy. Eh skip em straight to anarcho communism if you ask me. Group decision meetings rather than just vote for the head dragon Hamid tries to side step a bit by suggesting they explain the situation and asks for their names. Hope Alex thought to name all seven before the cast does.  Siggif the kobold might be pushing it. "Hamid the polite tyrant"-Lydia Break Alex skips them to "a large dinner" cooked by Zolf who got a nat 20 on how good it is. Cel speaks draconic. Neither Zolf nor Azu can make out the difference in their names. Because Alex is like that: didn't want to come up with 7 names, did want to block anyone else naming them. Bryn however has all 6 names and is going to give Azu & Zolf their translations. They aren't interested in the rest of the party and "insist on maintaining a guard phalanx around Hamid at all times". Helen points out this is Bryn's fault. Yeah he's been playing with Alex long enough to know "King of the Kobolds" would come back to bite him. Hamid should be embarrassed. Hamid is sat at the head of the table by the Kobolds. Skraak: it'll pass eventually Zolf: good Aw Cel asks about traditional kobold food and Skraak has to struggle to remember. (Cel seems disappointed meal worm burgers would be poisonous to non kobolds) Zolf is a grumpy boy Long story short it seems to be a controlled risk: no contact off the island; no reason to believe the kobolds are infected Kobolds might be immune Oh screw Shoin (sent waves of Kobolds as dungeon monsters) Zolf doesn't think that the level of contact the Kobolds had with infected adventurers without being infected is proof since they don't know how the infection is passed or activated. Hamid says they shouldn't rely on it but its reason to hope. Zolf needs to remember that team moral is a thing and quit taking things from Hamid especially in a way that could piss off their new housemates. Thank you Azu! Hamid is not stupid! You can say there is reason for hope and still be careful Hamid calls him on jumping down his throat at the slightest provocation, reminds him they talked about this and that trying to stay positive is not a crime. God it's weird relating to both sides of this argument. My bias is towards Hamid as being right, but Zolf is so relatable. You have any idea how hard it can be not to snap at some of these kids they are setting themselves up for heart break when they talk about school in the fall or hug piles at cons? Thank you Cel Zolf is going to leave and sit on the coast behind the inn because he considers the quarantine broken not expanded. Backing out of an unproductive conversation, especially one were others have pointed out you are being harmful is valid, giving into "burn it all" moods is not. Hamid moves to stop him because he gets that the inn is now their cell Wilde calls him back and says he was building to them talking to the borb. So there is a reason he's the boss. Zolf declares he wants some time not thinking about this, which is what he should have done several paragraphs ago. Ffs this can not be the first time he's had it strike hot/destructive instead of cold/immobilizing; it sucks but you don't let yourself make any permanent decisions, stay away from the breakables and try not to talk to much, it passes. Cel suggests he go to one of the upstairs rooms instead, he accepts the redirect with ill grace but does accept it. Barnes has pointed out that locking everyone in a small box makes things worse not better before. Aw did Alex not like the fandom begging for the platonic version of the lock em in a closet until they sort out their feelings trope? Azu: I thought we could make friends Cel: he seems quite opposed to that Azu: I feel like he'd be a really good friend but not very friendly if you know what I mean Cel:we I know he hasn't been at all friendly Azu: you're friendly! Cel: well thank you, I do try Azu: I think you are my friend Cel: I am so honored! Thank you so much Azu! That's delightful Carter declares Cel the only friendly one because he is grumpy about Azu stepping on him, stopping him from breaking quarantine, and drank all the good stuff. Barnes suggests they start fresh in the morning. Skraak explains the kobolds are expecting Hamid to step into Shoin's role as tyrant just one they like. Skraak: even if they know you're not a tyrant, neither they nor me will be abandoning you because that's how Kobolds work. Good Hamid is taking this seriously Oh no pressure Skraak The most chill inn keeper in the world Skip to lunch time Zolf is still making himself scarce, which is not the worst way to handle it  dawning on you THAT YOU TRIED TO DESTROY A RELATIONSHIP YOU VALUE BECAUSE YOU WERE IN A MOOD Bryn makes the "he's secretly infected" joke. Bryn spotted the veins in discord avatar thing and Alex sounds so pleased Wilde is fine, stop asking Oh really we needed that insight in how Wilde thinks Brorb on the table Cel asks for a list of stuff to make into a Brorb access device. Between their bags of holding they have enough stuff for them to make do. Azu seeks out Zolf while Hamid & the Kobolds help Cel. No strike that she waits until someone needs to grab him for the Brorb interview. Alex! Ending on Azu finding Zolf staring out the window.

[eyesaremosaics]

Letting Go/Releasing Fear

Having a lot of realizations lately. Coming through a “burning time”, and having been resurrected—I am now able to face the world differently. The one thing I feared to lose the most... I now am not afraid of anymore. For the first time, I was able to stand up to the shadow of my father, and try to take back some power by reinforcing my boundaries. It was painful and hard, but very good for me.

“I can’t be with the man I love, I can’t breathe when he treats me rough.” I keep hearing this song in my head, and I realize the toxicity I was dealing with... in him.... in me... in the way we related to one another. I see now, all the ways in which I contributed to the unhealthiness in our connection, but I can’t deny, that interacting with him in his current state—drags me back into old behavior patterns that I thought were behind me. The truth is—I am no longer that girl. I am not a raging alcoholic, I have self worth, self respect and I am able to face the world free of drugs and alcohol for the first time. I want to live, I am patient, gentle and sweet. Though I still struggle with insecurity, I am LOADS better than I have ever been.

The issue we kept running into, was talking about past relationships. If there is one thing I’ve learned in all my years of failing at them—it’s not to bring them up. It’s okay to bring it up to explain why you have a certain issue, ex: “someone did this to me once, which made me feel this way, can you please not do this thing, because it triggers me to feel that again.” Totally acceptable. Talking in detail about your sex life with that person, or the nice things they did for you, even if you are complaining... it just shows you are not over it. You are still in another relationship, so how can you be present in the new one?

I admit, I was not ready for love when it came to me the first time. I have been abused and brutalized for much of my life, and like a wild stallion that has been fenced in... I kicked the back gate open in my panic and fled. “Stop trying to control me!” But they weren’t trying to control me, they were trying to love me. The unfortunate part is that they went about it the wrong way. Threatening with abandonment is negative reinforcement, and it will not motivate others to change their behavior, it will only motivate them to dodge and avoid your anger.

My drinking was always the main issue. Since I began to get sober, the fog in my bead cleared.. I stopped drinking after my 3 1/2 year relationship, because the stimulus that caused me stress and insecurity was no longer there. I am very clear now why I drank, but I am also clear that I should have stopped. It just felt inevitable, because the one thing I asked was me we acknowledged. It was emotional abuse, but I was abusive too. It was a toxic dynamic. I felt pushed to the brink of my sanity, driven mad with jealousy and insecurity. Then I would drink to purge my pent up emotions, or physically harm because I would be teased until my rage had no words.

However, this is the past. I truly have let go of that past. I know why I acted that way, I understand why he acted the way he did too. I made peace with all of it—finally. My intention was to build a friendship, and relate to each other in a different way. More compassionate, better communication, less pressure and stress. I tried to hold fast to these ideals, but everything became murky. He is deeply lost and broken, seeing him hurt so deeply over other women... reminds me of my own broken heart. A heart that was almost completely healed... but the wound keeps getting ripped open with intimate details of his relationships since me.

This brought my insecurities up, which made me anxious. I never knew where I stood. It didn’t feel right. I felt like a caretaker, or a band aid... a mother... but not a person of real consequence. I tried to hold the space for him, so he could release and share his processing, but after a few months, it began to wear on my self esteem. This is not his fault, I am responsible for how I respond to things, but the truth is—it does trigger me, and it does bring up all kinds of ugly sad emotions for me. I just want to be present with this person. He says, I need to talk about these things, insinuating that if I can’t talk to him about other women in his life that I’m not a real friend.

Given the tragic nature of our history, I felt it was inappropriate. Though I too shared details of my relationships in an attempt to relate better to him, I really have no anger or sadness towards any of my exes. The only one that causes me pain and confusion still—is him. Not because I am holding on to the past though... when we first began talking again, I felt we were patching holes. It was tremendously healing for me, an emotional veteran, but very exhausting for him. A lot of deep pain resurfaced for me, because I felt he needed to know just how affected I actually was. I needed him to acknowledge my pain for once, instead of dodging it because he couldn’t take any responsibility. Granted, I could have handled things better then, but in actuality—I couldn’t because I was an utterly defeated person who lost the will to live.

Fully aware, that the self sacrificing love I had for him was unhealthy, I wanted so much to transmute that energy into a positive healing force, for both myself and him. Forgiveness was fostered in me, and like a garden, it needed time and tending to. Still, I tend that garden. Gently cutting away the weeds in my thinking. I was steadfast and true, but everything felt... groundless. I never knew what was going on. Insecure attachment. Whenever I tried to talk to him to clear the air, he felt instantly overwhelmed, and withdrew further and further. Each time he did this, my heart grew more and more sad. Like sand spilling through the cracks in my fingers, I felt him going away from me.

Weeping gently, heartbroken and not knowing what I did or how to fix it. Abandonment issues, yet I see him suffering, and all I want to do is help. I see him limping and I want to put his arm around my shoulder and help hoist him up, help steady him. My sadness now, is knowing I can do nothing to help him with this. It is a journey he had to take alone, just as I did all those years ago. It took me three years to get stable as I am now, I can’t afford to lose that progress. I can’t keep sacrificing myself for those I love, compromising my own health and happiness to make sure they are okay. For once I had to protect myself, and reinforce the boundaries I set.

Though I wish I could be there to guide him, to comfort and care for him... I can’t. It hurts too much. To feel like a consolation prize, or a security blanket. My last relationship was one of love, trust, and devotion. It’s hard to go back to something that leaves me feeling worthless (no matter how unintentionally). Knowing myself now as I do, the time is ripe for me to find a life partner. I am careful, discerning, and have little tolerance for bullshit. I am ready to love and be loved, for the first time in my life. Sadly, Love is not enough. It was not enough with this person, or my last relationship either. You must work together, it’s a partnership.

Focusing on my career and my goals is my primary concern right now. I want to harvest and cultivate wealth and success in my experience now. Not just monetary (though that as well), but also wealth of experiences, relationships, self awareness, self confidence. Feeling really good about how I take care of myself on all levels.

Minimal drinking (limited to outings, once maybe twice a week max), no drugs, no smoking. Taking vitamins, exercising everyday... today I did Pilates for 30 mins, and ran for an hour and a half. Cleaned my room, cleaned out my closet, sold/donated clothes, meditating semi regularly, reading, writing, painting/drawing again. Rehearsing scenes to film on a reel. Filming a commercial, short play festival, booked solid for a whole month with photo shoots, repairing vintage clothes to sell in my Etsy shop. Prepared to hustle so I can take acting classes again. Trying to fill my life with art, love and creation. That way when someone comes along—I will have to make room in my life for them to come in, because my life is so full without anyone else.

Then I can blend my assets with this person, I have a decent inheritance coming to me, land to grow grapes on and start a boutique winery. I hope my life partner shows up soon, in the next year or two. I really want to be a mommy. I know I will be good at it, I want so much to have a baby of my own. I just need to focus, get clear eith the universe... take care of myself, and it will come. Be gentle with yourself, all is ultimately okay... even if it doesn’t feel like it. Trust. I must learn to trust myself, and the universe. Fear has eaten up so much of my time, I don’t have energy to put there any more.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Winter 2018 Anime Overview: Devilman Crybaby and The Ancient Magus Bride

(the weird symbols in place of punctuation will go away if you click on read more. sorry I cannot fix them).

It’s that time of the season! Time to look back on the anime I watched over the Winter 2018 season and give my thoughts on them. We’ve got at least five anime to get through here. l start out with the two that gave me the most conflicted feelings.

Devilman Crybaby

Devilman Crybaby is a 10-episode anime adaptation of Go Nagai’s 70s manga Devilman, revamped for a modern audience. It was released all at once on Netflix. The story follows a young man named Akira Fudo, a Nice Young Man (tm). His childhood friend Ryo gets him involved in hunting demons and he ends up merging with one! He becomes Devilman, a demon who retains his good human heart. With Ryo at his side, he vows to use his powers for justice and fight the bad demons.

I...watched this for some reason, and I pretty much already did a review  (beware spoilers) and covered my thoughts on it in my liveblog. I didn’t come out exactly a fan of the show overall, but it was an interesting experience at least. I had a fun time looking into the weird history of the franchise and with all the memes. Devilman Crybaby is based on a old, influential manga and there’s a good breakdown of some of the smart adaptation choices the series made here. Probably the thing that a lot of people in my circle talking about it the most is it’s EXTREMELY queer, and while the representation is a mixed bag to say the least, it makes an effort.

Overvall, there’s some cool concepts and arcs in this series, such as the the depictions of Satan and God.There’s also some neat animation and aesthetics, but plotwise it’s uneven with the first half being very weak in the pacing department and the characters were not explored as much as I’d like.

There’s also a lot of badly handled and salaciously framed sexual assault junk as well as gross, exploitative framing of women’s bodies while mens’ bodies are largely left alone. The tired way it deals with sexuality is really boring and standard when you get down to it, rather than “shocking” like it tries to be.

What i really got out of it was I will keep the doomed queer lady couple and carry them in my heart along with the other gay stuff and I will laugh at how Extra Ryo is forever, but in the long run, not much else is memorable and will stick with me.

The Ancient Magus Bride (Episodes 14-22)

Read my review of the first half of the Ancient Magus Bride here!

Hoo boy. There is a lot to unpack with this one. I am going to get pretty detailed with my analysis here, so major spoilers. The TLDR version is: good stuff with Chise’s mom, bad ending episode, read the manga.

Let’s start with the good. We see Chise grow a lot as a character during this second half of the series and there’s a really nice focus on her forming friendships with girls closer to her age. The series shows her building a life outside Elias for herself and she becomes more self-possessed. She and Elias have a lot to teach each other, and they have some refreshingly honest conversations.

The series also doesn’t shy away from depicting Chise’s trauma and shows her grappling with it a lot.. She still places a very low value on herself and feels guilty for relying on others, and Elias calls her out on that. She’s taking steps forward, slowly. Episode 22, probably the strongest episode of the series, deals with the issues she has with her mother and her backstory and there are a ton of cool things there

Chise’s mother attracted monsters in a way similar to Chise does, and when her husband abandoned her, she struggled to both support and protect herself and Chise. It was near impossible task considering all the things trying to kill them and her desperation eventually led to a complete breakdown, where she tried to strangle Chise and lessen her burden. When she snapped out of it, she was so horrified at what she’d done, she committed suicide.

Chise takes a deep dive into her memories and comes to the realization the “mother” that has haunted her all this time was a version of her mother she herself constructed in her head based on her mother’s worst moment, a mother who wants her dead. But her mother didn’t actually want that in the end, otherwise she wouldn’t have let go of Chise or hated herself for what she did. Her mother, like any human, was not just one emotion or one moment, she was a fragile and flawed person who really did care for Chise before she broke down. Chise recognizes that now.

But, and this is the key, and what really made this episode work for me: Chise explicitly does not forgive her mother. Her mother is complex and more than just that one act, but that doesn’t mean that one act can be overlooked, or is any less scarring for Chise. She crossed a line that cannot be uncrossed, and Chise doesn’t have to forgive that to move on. Her mother abandoned her and now she has a new life. She chooses not to let her mothers actions define her.

I really enjoyed that. It’s true the images we construct in our heads are different from the real people we interact with, who are more complex, and the way this episode explores that is cool. One important moment can define the version of that person we keep in our hearts. And this episodes message that you can recognize someone who abused you as a complex and even pitiful person and still not forgive them. The most important thing is to move forward. A lot of stories wouldn’t have handled this sequence that deftly. The narrative sympathizes with Chise’s mother, but it doesn’t excuse her and neither does Chise herself.

But hey, speaking of abuse and narratives glossing over it! Let’s talk about Elias.

So you know all those female friendships Chise’s having and how she’s like, getting a life outside Elias? Elias is not okay with that. In fact, he’s SO possessiv he threatens Chise’s life at one point- she has to threaten to hurt herself to get him to stop squeezing her. It’s pointed out that Elias is like a child, which is true enough- he’s very new to feelings and interacting with people. But the excuse “oh it’s because he’s like a child” is eerily reminiscent of how abusers are excused in real life- “he can’t control himself, he’s just throwing tantrums”. Abusers are often babied in this way.

The idea Chise is obligated to “mother” him and teach him basic morality and self control even at risk to herself is a dangerous one. Nobody should be expected to do that, much less a traumatized teen. Yet Chise instantly forgives Elias for nearly killing her, when she clearly needs to get out of this relationship before she is harmed more, because this behavior can only worsen.

And I actually don’t have a problem with this for most of the narrative- because it’s not romanticized  It is clearly a mistake that Chise indulges Elias’s behavior because, realistically, it escalates.

Chise’s days are numbered thanks to a curse and he promises Chise he’ll work with her to solve the problem. But he goes back on his word and tries to sacrifice another human to save Chise. He even goes so far as to make Chise faint to keep her from interfering, utterly denying her agency. And the kicker is he chooses to kill the a little girl Chise has befriended for this, explicitly because he’s jealous that Chise “looks at her” differently that she does him. He is literally so possessive he’s willing to kill children Chise dares pay any attention to.

it’s unbelievably fucked up, and the narrative treats it as such. It also make it clear this is the natural result of how toxic this relationship has gotten. Chise arrives in time to stop Elias and her sheer horror and rage is very powerfully done. For the first time, she sees him for how selfish and dangerous he is, how much he doesn’t respect her wishes and their relationship is broken. In a powerful (and satisfying) moment, she slugs him in the face.

Then she leaves him, stating “I can’t be with you as you are now.” Her rage and pain is the central focus here. And I have no problem with the narrative- it depicts an abusive relationship without endorsing it. It shows how these things can escalate, and it shows that Chise has very much outgrown Elias.

There’s a good scene shortly after where the fey tell Elias to take Chise back by force, as is their fairy way, and he says no, he needs to try to understand how humans work and change how he does things. That’s some really interesting stuff- the supernatural beings have their own entirely different way of approaching "love”, and Elias was entrenched in that. But now he has to learn how to love in a more honest, less possessive way, like a human is supposed to. That would be a really interesting journey to see- I love contrasting morality systems between various magical beings.

So,    It’s no longer a good idea for Chise and Elias to be near each other. Chise needs her space from him and Elias needs to seriously change and make amends.

I fully expected this to be how the anime ends. With Elias and Chise seperating and the promise that they will both be able to grow and change and learn to be without each other. And probably a hint that they’d reunite eventually, when Elias has truly changed (not just SAID he will). It seemed to be the natural arc of the narrative and honestly what these two characters NEEDED to really progress.

But the anime said “fuck character development, fuck healthy relationships, fuck pacing, fuck everything” and threw the arc it had been carefully building out the window.

In an extremely rushed and jarring final epsiode, Chise does a dangerous thing and asks for Elias’s help and he complies and...thus she instantly forgives him. Despite the whole thing being treated as a huge deal, suddenly this very real issue of their toxic relationship is forgotten, she goes back to him and their disagreement is treated as nothing more than a cute spat (with Elias claiming Chise is equally at fault because she acted on her own without waiting for him once, proving he has learned NOTHING  and does not understand the severity of what he did and how it is in no way equivalent to Chise simply being reckless), they even turn chibi.

THIS IS AN ARGUMENT OVER HOW ELIAS TRIED TO MURDER A CHILD CHISE LIKED OUT OF PETTY JEALOUSY. IT’S A BIG DEAL. DON’T TRY TO MAKE IT SOME CUTE AND SILLY THING WHEN YOU TREATED IT SERIOUSLY THREE EPISODES AGO.

Oh, but it gets worse. Elias and Chise resolve their argument offscreen and apparently it’s all solved by Elias saying he won’t do it again. Yep. That’s it. No demonstration he’s changed or even understands why his actions are wrong. It’s just “I won’t do things you don’t like”. Problem solved!

And the Chise does what any girl would do after a guy broke her heart and tried to murder her ten year old friend: get a wedding dress and make her vows to him!

No. i’m not joking. As much as I wish it was.

And this scene is not framed as creepy or dangerous. It is framed as sweet and romantic.

Let’s put aside the fact Chise is 16. Let’s put aside the huge power imbalance in their relationship and the fact Chise is in his care. Even putting those things, this makes no sense from a narrative and characterization perspective

Elias has done nothing to warrant Chise wanting the make this step! He literally just betrayed her! There was absolutely no buildup to this, no natural relationship progression! Elias and Chise are both in no way ready to be in a romantic relationship! Elias proved he isn’t emotionally equipped to function as FRIEND and reasonable being right now, much less a husband! Does he even know what a bride is? Last time we checked, he didn’t even understand the concept fully! He has no idea what he’s supposed to do as a husband. Why would Chise choose NOW of all times to make her move when he’s done nothing to show her he won’t pull shit like, i dunno, trying to murder her friends because he’s jealous, again?

This is so tonally jarring with the rest of the series and it comes out of nowhere. It seemed fundamentally opposed to how the relationship between Chise and her mom was handled, where moving away from abuse and letting go of your abuser was emphasized. Where not excusing horrible actions and taking time to fully deal with your hurt and pain was emphasized. Apparently none of that applies to Elias! No time apart, no time to process and heal and have him take responsibility for his actions!

It’s also just terrible from a narrative perspective- it’s ridiculously rushed, it’s a complete tone shift that treats what was presented as a big dramatic conflict that seemed like it would shake these characters at their foundation as a an easily resolved cute little spat, it fails to be satisfying as a conclusion. Compared to the rest of the show, it feels like it was written by an entirely different person.

And it was. I immediately went to check if this whole conclusion was anime original and yep. This is where it overtook the manga. This ep was the shitty, rushed conclusion they tacked on to a story line that really, really needed more time to breathe. I have no idea why they’d want to do this, why they couldn’t just wait for the manga to finish this arc and end the anime there, but here we are.

I hope the manga will have a more satisfying conclusion to this storyline, that it will give the resolution the room it needs. Ideally, I’d like Chise to live apart from Elias for at least a while. She’s grown a lot, and she needs space to grow further and learn how to function without him. They’ve gotten dangerously codependent and it’s stifling her. Meanwhile, Elias especially needs to learn how to not treat Chise so possessively and taking time apart from her and respecting her wishes to be left alone would help him learn to do that. He needs to work on himself so he isn’t a danger to her. If they stay together right now, things will only get worse.

The manga is about their relationship, so I have no doubt they’ll eventually reunite, but I want to see it happen only after Elias proves he’s changed significantly and after Chise is allowed to become more confident and independent. I hope the manga delivers on that and tells a satisfying story where the characters actually grow, that treats the issue of abuse and toxic relationships seriously, that gels with the stuff that came before.

Of course, there was other stuff going on in the midst of Chise and Elias’ emotional journeys. We learned the Cartaphilus backstory and it was actually pretty interesting stuff. it fully explored exactly how horrific it would be to wander the earth and never die- Cartaphilus was being punished for a crime that was so long ago he couldn’t even remember what it was. When he finds out it was “threw a rock at the Son of God” he’s like “wtf just for that? other people did way worse shit!” and you have to agree with him. It also offers the ishiness of using Cartaphilus as an antagonist a bit by making it clear he only started killing after fusing with a boy named Joseph. In fact, the Cartaphilus part of Joseph seems mostly benign as he was the one who tried to talk to Chise.

So it’s a compelling take on an old story. Lots of parallels are made between him and Chise, he’s a great antagonist thematically. The conclusion...well like everything in the last episode, it was rushed, weird, and I couldn’t really tell what was going on. Hopefully the manga's version will be better.

I enjoyed a lot of this anime- the rich fantasy world, the exploration of trauma, the complex characters- but the last episode was just so infuriatingly BAD that it damaged the narrative as whole. It undid and contradicted most of the positive things about the story. It just left me feeling skeeved out.

So in the end, I don’t recommend this anime. Because you’re better off reading the manga. I went through it, and it was better paced than the anime overall, has many details that strengthen the story and the emotional beats hit much harder. Watching the anime can be a confusing experience at times, but the manga is much easier to follow. I feel pretty confident based off this that however the manga wraps up the current arc, it will at the very least be slightly better paced and executed. So be kind to yourself, and go with the better version of the story if you’re interested in this. And cross your fingers for a good ending.

[thisisdavidwolf]

the clouds

My beloved Volkswagen is currently back at home getting repaired. Call me sentimental, but I actually miss her a little bit! The diesel smell, the noisy clatter when she's cold, the occasionally uneven boost and subsequent black smoke...

I have a lot of memories with that car. Good and bad. Perhaps that's why I miss it a little bit.

In the meantime, I'm lucky enough to be driving my dad's Audi. My brothers and I have spent a lot of time underneath that car too. We all spent quite a few nights lying on the garage floor, wrestling with the transmission (it's a heavy boi), getting frustrated with rusted bolts, and hunting down problems that we just couldn't seem to find. In the end, we know a lot about that car--and it's currently running pretty great, so I guess that means something. :)

I have a few memories with this car too. Good and bad. Perhaps that's why I respect it a little bit.

.....................

I kinda had a sucky weekend.

I felt it coming on Friday evening. Do you know the feeling I'm talking about? For me, it sometimes feels just like a wall of grey. Sometimes I know exactly why I'm feeling that way, and other times I have absolutely no clue. The later times are the fun ones. :)

In the past, I would normally push these moments down and away, hoping repression would be the door I could use to escape the feelings that were crowding the room I was in. Better yet, I would pour myself into the problems of others. I can more easily ignore my own issues when I'm focused on helping others. But I've come to discover that these coping methods can easily bring harm to myself and to others. I'm learning that sometimes it's better to just let myself feel.

I put on some music (the "Peace" album by Bethel if you're curious. 10/10 would recommend for "those" nights), turned down the lights, ate some cereal--and filled four pages of my journal.

Then I slept for almost fourteen hours.

Hey there, Sleep. I see you.

You're often my escape. But you're also a pretty good friend. :)

.........................

I didn't really want to get out of bed on Sabbath.

It was rainy. Cloudy. Really dreary, to be honest.

I skipped church. I was planning on watching something here in my room, but it didn't happen. I just wasn't up for it. I tried to bring myself to read my Bible and spend some time with God. It just wasn't working.

I know, I know. Perhaps some of your reactions sound just like the voices in my head.

A Theology student and a future pastor or chaplain who doesn't even go to church and sometimes struggles to connect with God? Are you serious? What's wrong with you? Why are you even feeling this way? You have so many things to be grateful for! Stop being dramatic and sensitive! Why are you even here at Southern? Perhaps God didn't even call you to...

Stop! In the name of Jesus, leave. Those voices are not welcome here.

Hey there, Shame. I see you.

You're often the loudest voice in my head. But you're also a pretty big liar. :)

..........

I pulled myself out of bed around 11:40 am by telling myself the Audi was sad too, and that we really needed to go for a drive. Hah! Whatever works, friend. Sometimes it's the silliest things that can get us up in the morning.

With the light drizzle coming down and Amanda Lindsey Cook's "House on a Hill" album playing in the background (10/10 another solid recommendation for rainy days), I found comfort in directing most of my mental energy to shifting through the gears. Sometimes we just need something external to pull us out of our own heads.

Clutch.

Shift.

Gas.

Brake.

Downshift.

Corner.

Eyes on the road.

Focus, David.

I drove all the way up to Raccoon Mountain. I don't know what I was expecting to see, but the overlook was completely covered in fog. I poked along the mountain road in first gear as several deer jumped across the road--seemingly frolicking in the coolness and mystery of the icky gray that was currently surrounding them. Is that possible? I kinda wish I was a deer.

I sat at the overlook for a while, just watching the rain fall, and the fog swirl around. It's funny, isn't it? Even mountains can be covered in clouds once in a while. In fact, these high places are often the first to be enshrouded in the gray. Yet, they can't and don't run from the fog or try to act like it isn't there. They patiently experience the swirling gray because they know that eventually, the sun will shine through again.

The overlook was still there.

It was just covered in a cloud that day.

........

I drove out to Booker T. Washington State Park later that evening. I parked near the lake and just watched the raindrops hit the water and the wind make little ripples. A park ranger drove by several times. I wonder what he thought I was doing. I tried to hold my book a little higher whenever he drove by. I figured the book would balance out the sketchy appearance of a college kid wearing a hoodie and a hat, sitting in an abandoned parking lot--in a black Audi.

The middle of the story you are in is the place where God is already meeting you, merging your life with his own, and establishing his kingdom of death-defying love.

Your present discomfort has to bond with Christ's past faithfulness to create future hope. Today, in tears or trouble or exhaustion, your presenting suffering can be the place where you experience Christ's faithful endurance of suffering. Even your hopelessness can be a prompt to trust the endless well of hope Christ has on your behalf. Your present pain can marry Christ's past faithfulness, reforming your memory into the contours of his love. A memory reshaped is a future reimagined.

-K.J. Ramsey, "This Too Shall Last" pg. 148

I got out and stood by the shore for a while. It was still drizzling, but I didn't really care. The breeze on my face and little drops of rain were reminders that I was here and alive. At least I was present and these little discomforts were gentle reminders of that fact. I was surprised that several fishermen were still out on the docks, wearing bright yellow and red rainjackets. I watched them for a while.

Perhaps faithfulness is less about always feeling good, and more about being faithful and honest to the season you're in. Perhaps it is less about always being able to show up, and more about being able to be faithful in engaging in honesty with yourself and others about where you are today.

Perhaps the only hurt Jesus isn't able to heal is the hurt I don't want to acknowledge.

Like the children of Israel in the Old Testament, maybe it's in the cloud that Jesus is able to draw nearer to us than ever before. Even though these spaces can feel like an insurmountable amount of distance and separation, maybe Jesus is closer here than in any other season. Maybe the cloud can just be what shields me from his direct glory so that he can stoop down, sit beside me, and I won't die from his touch.

............

It's Sunday morning now. I slept for another 12 hours last night. It's still a little rainy both outside and inside, but the clouds will lift soon. This I know. :)

I'm seeing now that the biggest lie the devil wants me to believe is that there are parts of my life that are too hard for God to love, seasons that are too low for Him to reach, and experiences that are too difficult for Him to journey alongside me. What. A. Lie.

Hello, Peace. I'm beginning to see you.

You're often the thing I chase after the most. But maybe you’ve always just wanted to meet me right where I am.

[moonheart1313]

“Put It Down” Review (Spoilers and this is a little long!)

So, I saw S21 E02.

For the past week, my stomach has been churning over what the outcome of this episode would be.

…and I was NOT disappointed.

Holy fucking shit. Let’s just…break this down.

-The introduction

Tweek going up and just BANGING his hands on the piano and screeching may be the biggest laugh I’ve gotten since Wendy described what Yaoi was back in season 19. Not only is it incredibly relatable to anyone suffering from major anxiety problems or stress, but it’s so Tweek.

Stan got a couple lines. I don’t know about y’all, but I am proud of him. In all seriousness, have we just…forgotten about Stan while making room for Randy. He’s one of those jokes that…I don’t know, he’s kinda depressing anymore. In “White People Renovating Houses”, Sharon’s blank expressions and his attitude towards Daryl…I didn’t really get why the joke was funny. I mean, I got the melodrama, but it didn’t get much of a laugh out of me. Why wasn’t Stan or Shelly included? It would have been way funnier to see their reactions to their father. We need to focus on the kids reacting to the madness around them. Not focusing on just the adults doing the madness.

In short—bring back Stan’s reactions and opinions! Oh, and Kyle and Kenny. Especially Kenny. I can’t remember the last time he got attention, either.

Craig calling Tweek “honey” and “babe” while no one was around. This is no longer fake dating. We don’t know if it started off as such, but this relationship has gone way past “for the town” shit. In fact, the only person who really talks about homosexuality is Tweek’s father, which is pretty much just a running joke (because Mr. Tweak is a terrible dad).

-Cartman’s suicide campaign.

Okay, so this is basically the B plot of the episode and…it shows. Normally, the Cartman’s storylines are the ones I prefer in South Park episodes, but not only did it feel kind of forced, but it wasn’t very funny. Honestly, watching a smart girl like Heidi being manipulated by this psycho is hard to sit through. As someone who has known people in these relationships and had a friend who threatened suicide if I was going to abandon them, this hits hard.

I’m not saying it is a bad idea to delve into this issue as it is becoming more public, especially online, but Matt and Trey could really piss off a lot of the fans if they take this too far. South Park has always been about pushing the limit, but they also know how much their show has helped countless individuals who struggle with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. The honesty of the show gives many people hope that the world isn’t just filled with passive morons or people who believe you need to be a certain type of person. If they attempt to harshly mock this spectrum, the show’s rating could potentially plummet to the point of them only being able to make the next two seasons that they signed on for after this one.

I do think if they show both sides, the people that are seriously suicidal and people like Cartman who desire attention as well as manipulating people, it could be successful. If they can phrase the moral correctly, I think this season could come out as one of the absolute best. If they only wanted it for this episode, I can see why they would choose to go onto a different storyline for the season since there is plenty of other issues to delve into. Still, if it’s a storyline they are going to tackle, I hope they know what they are getting into.

-Tweek’s cupcakes.

I finally lived to see Tweek covered in frosting and baking ingredients. Life—is good.

-Trump.

Now, as Matt and Trey explained, while they are still going to joke about Trump, they didn’t want it to be the focus of the season of even every episode. Here, the joke worked perfectly. It was less about Trump and more about Tweek being in a situation that he has no control over, no matter how hard he tries to fix it. (The joke about no one caring about Hillary made me snort so loud my nose hurt. Equal playing field. Thank God.)

-Fidget spinners.

Considering all the previews and screenshots were showing fidget spinners, most fans thought the small devices would be the focus of the episode. And, call me crazy, I’m kinda glad it was just a funny joke about how they don’t necessarily help people.

The devices are used for kids with ADHD (or if they have some sort of issues paying attention), who need to keep their hands moving if they’re in class or trying to focus on something. Using it as a calming device is a myth and the show accurately showed just how people rely on them a little too much.

-Children getting hit by cars.

I have to admit, the shot of that first kid getting hit was oddly chilling. Mostly because of how accurate it parodies commercials. What’s even better is that his death wasn’t a joke. It was something the whole school (not counting Cartman) banded together to pay their respects too. Later, the other deaths became more of a joke, but what’s incredible is how they manage to tie this B plot with the A plot. But more on that later.

(GODDAMN THEY KILLED A LOT OF KIDS THIS EPISODE WTF)

-Tweek in Craig’s room.

OKAY. This was FUCKING hilarious. Watching Tweek without any problem or pretense heading into Craig’s room only to scream out his fear was another huge laugh I got from this episode. The fact that besides being a little disgruntled (the poor kid just woke up), Craig is hardly surprised by the appearance and action, meaning this happens A LOT.

And Craig’s space stuff EVERYWHERE. Matt and Trey knew EXACTLY what they were doing.

-The creek date

The argument between Craig and Tweek was some of the best writing I’ve ever scene. Not only are they fighting like an actual couple would in this situation, but while watching it the first time, I understood Craig’s frustration and couldn’t see what Tweek wanted. However, once the true solution of what Tweek’s needs is explained, I finally understood.

When it comes to emotion vs. logic, the friction is unstoppable. Personally, I am usually a logical person. I take into account as many options and facts as I can find and then make my conclusions. However, when I have no information or things are out of my control, my emotional side takes over and I begin to panic. Once I understood this opposition was the problem, I realized what the episode was saying.

Tweek’s not being unreasonable and Craig isn’t being uncaring. They are both frustrated because Tweek doesn’t know how to make himself feel better and Craig doesn’t know how to help him. Which leads to my next point.

-The message.

When Heidi makes her statement about emotions, the writing is very good and allowing her to speak about the issue, but also having it relate to creek’s storyline without even addressing said storyline before the following scene. It works on both accounts. It’s once again sad to see Heidi following after Eric because, as most of us would agree, she deserves better (or at least revenge).

Moving on, Craig’s understanding of the situation doesn’t paint him as the bad guy who needs to apologize. Instead, he realizes what the best course of action is to take to help his boyfriend. And without hesitation, he does. It shows that Craig learned a lesson about compromise. That sometimes other people need to work through things in a different way than Craig might be used to working through them. That can be a hard concept for even some adults.

And may I just say, the fact that Tweek was using the (FOUR?!) fidget spinner idea to attempt to calm himself was so very sweet. Even though he probably knew it wouldn’t work, he still tried for Craig. Even after that huge fight. It expresses the stability of their relationship, even when things are painfully tense.

Craig helping to guide Tweek to his own epiphany was brilliant. He wasn’t treating Tweek like an idiot. That’s what Tweek needed. Someone can go up and tell you what you need. But that’s not the same as figuring it out for yourself. Once Tweek had a moment to let out his fear and talk it out (rather than people distracting him or just telling him to be quiet), his mind cleared up and the solution for what would make him feel better was his own idea. Craig didn’t need to be a fixer, he needed to be a supporter. And although he didn’t realize it before then, his heart was still in the right place.

Many people have said that Tweek and Craig may be the most accurate, stable homosexual couple ever (or at least for 2017) and I highly agree. Since they’re kids, it takes the physical aspect out. I never felt the need to see them kiss (maybe a hug would’ve been nice) because it was about their feelings, not their attraction to one another. They have a mutual respect of love for each other that was tested in this episode. Their fight wasn’t “petty” or “forced”. It was natural, like a disagreement any couple could face.

If this is the kind of amazing messages, character moments, and wonderful humor we are really in for, I am definitely looking forward to going down to South Park this season. Well done, Matt and Trey.

[septic84]

My Skin had to be thicker

Phil is always a good Caregiver when Dan's depression reappears, Phil reflects on what that means.

A03

Ghost version of myself (The series on A03) 

I look at him from across the room; he looks tired. His hair is a disheveled mess; a thin blue line lies underneath his eyes. I know that he is struggling, but I am afraid to pop the thin bubble layer that has been us pretending it isn’t bad again. It’s quarantine, I am sure of it. We didn’t go out that much as it was, but now knowing that we couldn’t (Well, it was more like we shouldn’t) took away some of the control he was still trying to cling to.

“Dan?” “Hm?” “Why don’t you go to bed?” “It’s 1:00 pm, Phil,” “You’re tired,” “News flash, depression.” “Right,” I stopped trying, at least for now. I have come to know when my words will only make things worse. “I am going to the office,” “Don’t need my permission,” I held back the exasperated sigh that was demanding to be released. I knew he was trying to get a reaction; it was something he did subconsciously, I think. He wanted to get the feelings out, but he would do so by aggression. He knew it was an issue, but he was still working on it. This is why I just walked away. I knew it was best not to engage with him when he was like this. I also knew that he was going to feel like shit about it later. I didn’t have anything to do in the office, but I wanted to create some space. Part of what I had learned reading various books and forums was to create some distance for myself. It took a while before the words stopped stinging, but now I could remove myself if I needed to. Dan never intended to hurt me, but I knew that depression came as part of the package, at least I did now. I knew that he wouldn’t always be kind, that his words wouldn’t always make me smile and that sometimes I just needed a break. When it dawned on me that this was the case, I was so mad at myself. I felt like I had abandoned him like I was leaving him alone in a dark, scary room with no way out. At least if I were there, he could see the exit and know it would get better. I spent the better part of two weeks degrading myself for my perceived lack of strength and will power I had to of left him. He told me to leave, well actually what he had said was, “I know I am a dick when I am like this, so you should just fucking leave me,” The hot white rush of panic made me assure him that I wouldn’t leave, that he wasn’t a dick and that it was fine. Which it was, for a while, but everyone has their limits.  Mine was when I asked if he wanted anything, and he told me to bugger off, except it came out as, “You are not my fucking dad, Phil. I don’t need you to change my fucking nappies,” I actually felt my face heat, and my eyes fill as I turned and walked away. I locked myself in the office for hours that day, fell asleep on the desk, and didn’t emerge until afternoon.  Dan seemed to be better the next day, as he approached me, “We need to talk,” “Yeah,” I had choked out, “We do,” That was the most challenging conversation we had; Dan was sincere, I was as honest as I could be, and we worked out somewhat of a plan. He had included his therapist, and we all decided that the best option for us was for me not to engage Dan, so that’s what we have been doing. It’s not easy; I still want to coddle him, hold him, and tell him that he is going to be okay. Tell him he is worthy of love and attention and praise, but that’s selfish, as well as extremely invalidating.  So, here I sit, looking up random things on Google. The problem that we are having is a timeframe, sometimes it’s an hour, sometimes it’s days, but we work through it. Dan had timidly approached me more times than I can count to apologize, I always made sure to be very understanding and forgiving. I knew he loved me, I knew he didn’t want to hurt me, and I knew that he was already upset enough with himself for the both of us. A little over an hour had passed when I went back downstairs; Dan was curled into the corner of the sofa, limbs awkwardly tucked away as if to make himself as small as possible.  “Hey, Dan,” I said, placing a hand on his back, “You should try to eat something,” lifting his head slightly, I saw the blue now combine with puffy red splotches. “Phil, I’m, you know,” “Yeah, love, I know. I forgive you; I love you; I am not leaving you.” “Okay,” “How about a bath, hm?” He shook his head; I always tried that first. I knew how good it made him feel, but I also know the extreme amount of effort it took to actually go through with, “Okay, food, then.” “I’m not hungry,’ “No, I’d imagine not, you still need to eat something.” “I can’t even think about food; I am going to projectile vomit everywhere.” “Soup, it is then, coffee?” “I guess,” “Okay, be right back,” I started the soup and reached for the decaffeinated coffee; I still don’t know if Dan knows that I juke him.; caffeine is not something that helps him, but the flavor is a comfort, and I want him to have it. A friend once asked me if I ever had gotten sick of taking care of him like a child, making sure he didn’t drink or eat things he shouldn’t, bathing, teeth brushing, I saw red. I know there wasn’t a malicious intent, but my shock could be seen on my face. How dare someone to assume what I am doing it a burden? How dare they presume to know something so private, so personal, so us? I stopped speaking to them for months. Looking back now, I think they were just concerned for me; being a caregiver can be really difficult. Was it always easy? No, of course not, but it was still always worth it. The love I feel for Dan is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. Of course, I would do this for him.  Did I get burned out? Yeah, maybe at first when Dan was undiagnosed and was entirely too far into denial to see that he needed help. It was a difficult time for us both, not just me. I took a break, then, going home for a week and came back. When I did, Dan already had an appointment. That’s the thing that most people either overlook or fail to recognize with depression; while you are in the darker places, you still are just as smart as you were. You are not dumb, nor native, and most of the time, you know what you are doing to yourself and probably even others, but you can’t really change it. At least without the proper tools. Dan is so clever, so witty, that I know when he is sucked into the black hole of nothingness, it destroys him when he can feel again.  Your personality, flaws, and quirks don’t all evaporate entirely; the just are put into a really hard to open container that is weighted down by massive amounts of whatever your particular flavor is misery is. “Soup, coffee,” “Thanks,” He looks a little better now; maybe a good cry is what he needed. His lips are swollen, and his eyes are still shiny, my heart clenches, but I don’t let him know. “Do you want to watch something?” “Don’t care,” I turned on a nature documentary about sloths; there was nothing but information and happiness in this particular one. (I should know, I had watched it three times.) I tried to focus more on the screen than Dan, just peeking at him every so often. He was watching the screen, sipping coffee, and taking small slurps off of his spoon. This was good; some days, it took me a lot of convincing to get him to eat.   When he snickered at a pun that was made halfway through, I felt as if a weight were lifted off of me; I felt so light I could float away.  This storm had been a short one, it would seem, but I wouldn’t know for sure until the following day, no matter how the night ended.  Despite knowing this and knowing how disappointing it was when the new day might not bring what I wanted, I smiled.  This was better, this was good, this was progress. “You look loopy tired,” he looked at me, and one corner of his mouth slightly showed sympathy.  I wasn’t something just anyone would catch; it was something someone who had studied for years would see. “Yeah, it’s getting late.” “Yeah,” “Would you like anything else to eat?” “No, ah, thanks,” “I’m glad you could eat the soup,” I said, standing, patting his leg, and taking his dishes. After putting all things back and shutting off the kitchen light, I refilled our bedside waters and set them down. I made sure the bed was easy to get into, leaving one of my hoodies on Dan’s pillow just in case the extra comfort would help him.  “Do you want to take a bath before sleeping?” He shook his head, “Are you okay with me, sleeping in the same bed tonight?” Sometimes when he was like this, he wanted to sleep alone, something else we had hatched out when we actually talked. I respected it; I never made him feel bad for it, I allowed him his space. “Yeah,” “Okay, up then,” Dan carefully stood up and stretched. He followed me into our bathroom and started to mirror my routine, washing our faces and brushing our teeth. After I was convinced Dan had done a proper job, we rinsed out mouths and headed to bed. I guess it was somewhat like I was taking care of a child if you were on the outside looking in, but with a child, I would have to tell them to do things because they didn’t know well enough, with Dan he knew, he just couldn’t force himself to do it. I never want Dan to feel like I am patronizing him or that I think he is an actual child because, of course, I don’t.  He hasn’t ever said anything like that, but sometimes I wonder and worry. “On or off?” My finger hovered over the switch for the nightlight I had bought, knowing sometimes Dan would need it. “Ah,” “I’ll just turn it on, and if it bothers us, we can turn it off, okay?” “Yeah, okay.” Carefully he climbed into bed as if he were in pain. Actually, he could be; I hear depression even physically hurts. “Do you need tablets?” “No, just want to sleep,” “Okay, love.” I crawled in next to him, laying on my back, my head resting on my arms. I had to keep my hands to myself until told otherwise, which was a difficult task.  All I wanted to do is hold Dan tightly to my chest and murmur soft words of love and comfort into his ear as he fell asleep.  I feel the bed shift, and Dan inch closer.  Slowly he lays with his head on my chest, and I can feel him hug me slightly. With consent granted, I wrapped my arms around him and pressed a kiss into his hair. “I know I probably don’t deserve this with how I acted earlier, so thank you.” “Dan, I wouldn’t do that to you. You know, that, right? I understand.” I felt him still, “I understand that you feel bad,” I continued, not wanting to offend him, “I understand that what happened made you sad. It’s okay. I’ve already forgiven you. We are working through this. YOU are working through this; you are brave, and I am always going to be here for you.” “You are too good to me, you know,” He says through a loud yawn. “Well, I am Amazing Phil,” I can hear his scoff softly into my chest. “My Amazing Phil,” “Always.”

[luoup]

hello @strawberry-void! i was your secret santa for the @voltronexchange!  i saw you liked hunk, pidge, and lance, and since i love garrison trio and am living in a very cold place this year, i decided to write our favorite troublemakers on a snow planet! 

it’s kind of in bits because i had no idea how to set this up, but i tried to include most of the categories.  i think i got friendship, adventure, some fluff, a bit of humor, one scene of emotional h/c, and holiday-specific... if you count winter as a holiday.  whoops. 

happy winter, and happy new year! 

The planet Lumrae finally came into sight, slowly filling the Blue Lion’s viewscreens with swirling white and traces of blue. 

“There it is,” Hunk said, pointing.  “Our new home for the next month.”

“Even from space, that looks cold,” Lance muttered. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be the Guardian of Water and Ice?” Pidge asked, and Lance elbowed them, pushing them away from his pilot’s chair – at least until they came back with an elbowing twice as hard into his own ribs. 

“Okay, you two, enough,” Hunk interfered before the others could descend into an all-out pushing war.  “We’re gonna be stuck here for a while, don’t start stuff now.”

“Of course.  I’ll just wait until his guard is down,” Pidge agreed with an ominous smile, and Lance squawked some kind of defense that had to be cut off as he navigated his Lion through the descent to the surface. 

Lumrae was beautiful, but Lance was right – it was cold.  The planet was situated just on the outer edge of the habitable range of its sun, and its seasons consisted of cold, colder, and really goddamn cold.  The seas were practically half made up of icebergs, only liquid because of their currents and tides, and every landmass was covered in thick white snow frosting every mountain and plain.  And the system’s sun was powerful, sending flares all the way to even Lumrae.  In addition, the planet had tremendous magnetic fields – fields so forceful that Voltron’s comms would struggle to get to and from the planet’s surface, especially combined with the solar flares.  It wasn’t cut off completely, but it did mean that communications would be few and far between for the next month or so, with pre-planned check-ins mostly scheduled between predicted flares. 

As the Blue Lion descended towards the planet’s surface, Lance broke the introspective silence. “I can’t believe we’re going to be here for a whole month.”

“Not necessarily a full month,” Hunk reminded him.  “We could finish early and be done sooner.”

“Yeah,” Pidge said, “between Hunk and me, this shouldn’t take long at all.  The hard part is figuring out how to detect the fleet’s signals and determine how to sort those out from everything else, plus decoding.  Building the satellite dishes themselves will be a piece of cake.”

“‘Two Geniuses Build Yet Another Never-Before-Seen Type of Detector,’” Lance said, a hint of acidity in his tone.  “What am I even here for?  I’m just the Lion taxi since Yellow and Green can’t handle cold like this.”

At that, Hunk hugged his friend as best as he could with the pilot chair in the way.  “We can’t do everything on our own, just two people,” he said.  “We need three, at least, and you’re the best choice for someone to come and help us.  You hang around with us all the time, you know how we work and how to help and not hinder.  We need you.”  

“Also, if Hunk and I were left on our own for a few weeks we’d probably get sucked into the work and forget to sleep or anything,” Pidge added.  But they put their hand on Lance’s shoulder, the gesture at odds with their sarcastic tone. 

It was going to be a weird (and cold) few weeks, but together these three could do it.  Garrison Trio, no matter what. 

*

The set of buildings the three were staying in used to be a research station for a group of aliens a number of years – or whatever passed for years out here – ago.  It was long abandoned, but still functional enough, especially with Blue helping to power the heat. 

The plan was to stay for three or four weeks, working to build a set of satellites that could detect and analyze signals from a new Galra fleet.  Rumor had alerted Team Voltron of its creation and warned that the new ships had cutting-edge technology and weapons that had the potential to cause tremendous damage if they got up and running, or worst became a common ship type in the Galra army. 

Hunk and Pidge were best-equipped to design and create the tracking system, but they needed the room and stability to work which meant they had to stay planetside somewhere they wouldn’t be noticed and work.  They couldn’t do it alone, so Lance was coming along to help.  Everyone was busy and had many responsibilities to Voltron and the Alliance, but this was taking priority for the moment.  Lumrae was lovely and secluded, and they had everything they needed there.  There were a few issues, though, as there always would be. 

“It is so.  Quiznacking.  Cold.” Lance muttered, rubbing his hands together. 

“Quit whining and help me with these boxes,” Pidge snapped, hauling a crate nearly as big as they were into a large room they would be using as a workspace. 

“How are you so comfortable?” Hunk asked, the sound of his teeth chattering audible from where he was standing as close to one of the heat vents as possible. 

Pidge rolled their eyes, shoving the crate into its place and returning for another.  “I’m from Finland, and we lived in Minnesota for a while before Dad transferred to the Garrison in Arizona.  I’m used to cold, I just hate being outside in general.  Besides, our armor is temp-regulated.  We’re not going to get frostbite or anything.”

“Okay, Your Wintery Majesty,” Lance said, “you may be from the world of snow, but I am Cuban and I am cold!  Arizona was fine, but this is the polar north and I am not made for this!”

“Seconded,” Hunk said.  “Hawaii is great, and Arizona’s bearable if a little dry, but this is kind of ridiculous.  There was ice on Blue just from landing here!”

“Kepler save me from tropical boys and their fear of a little frost,” Pidge muttered.  “Now hurry up.  The sooner we unpack, the sooner we can go inside and heat the buildings.  You’ll warm up faster if you move.”

*

The cold was unbelievable, but the three were nothing if not curious, so it was only a matter of time before they were venturing outside.  In the cases of Lance and Hunk there was much bundling up and debating beforehand, while Pidge just stood back and muttered to themselves.  They were uninterested in going outside not because it was cold but because they would rather stay in and work on the project or one of their own, but they had been coaxed and coerced into coming along.  Really, everyone seemed to mostly be convincing each other, but eventually they all got themselves together and it happened. 

The outpost was backed up on a forest of tall blue-gray trees that resembled the conifers of Earth’s boreal forests.  Every branch and needle was dusted with snow, and deep drifts covered the ground.  The rest of the building’s surroundings were fields, wide and open under the sky.  They could have been prairies in a warmer climate, but there was so much snow over everything that they might as well have been mud flats for all that could be distinguished beneath the thick blanket of white, spread as far as the eye could see. 

The sun was up, although it was a cold light that did nothing to warm the air.  The snow glittered like a field of diamonds, and even Hunk and Lance, warm-weather lovers to the core, were excited and energized.  Pidge seemed half-up half-down, their familiarity and comfort with snow and cold shadowed by memories of their family, scattered to the stars.  But they were nothing if not adaptive, and their friends’ energy was contagious. 

The group explored for a while, familiarizing themselves with the landscape around the station and digging their way through the snows.  It was exhausting work, but finally Hunk remembered that he’d seen some snowshoe-like things in one of the storage rooms and ran back to get them.  Movement issues solved (Pidge had been waist-deep or more in some areas, and even Hunk and Lance had struggled to move at any speed), they ventured further, forging paths into the forest and, once that turned out to be damp and cold and dark, turning and exploring the snow-meadows on the other side of the area. 

Despite the cold, there was enough humidity that the snow packed well, allowing for lower-effort walking and easy packing.  Between the three of them, the building was simple. 

They made the Blue Lion first.  Lance insisted, “She brought us here and keeps the place warm, the least we can do is honor her by building a statue in her name!  And made from her own element, too,” and so the Left Leg of Voltron got priority.  She also had to have her head rebuilt twice because they had underestimated how hard they needed to pack the snow to make the muzzle stay on, and then Hunk sneezed and the whole right half of the face fell off. 

Green was next.  She was easy because she was the smallest Lion and they already had Blue for scale.  Pidge spent an inordinate amount of time detailing the broad shield on her back while Lance and Hunk made snow angels and tried to regain feeling in fingertips, respectively. 

Yellow was the last and biggest snow Lion.  Getting her size right meant that Pidge or Lance had to work on her back armor while Hunk held them up to reach, and his perfectionism meant that they had to redo the design three times before the Yellow Paladin was satisfied.  But finally his snow Lion was deemed good enough to stand as a representation of his beloved Leg robot. 

They glittered brilliantly in the light of the setting sun – the Blue, Green, and Yellow Lions of Voltron.  Yellow was the biggest, solid and densely packed.  She was so strong and well-structured that they could climb on her with no damage to the statue.  Green was smaller, but every detail was sharp and accurate.  Pidge had also jammed a series of branches into the ground nearby in imitation of her vine cannon.  Blue looked perfect represented in snow, and Lance had hauled a few chunks of ice from the frozen creek near the forest and heaped them near her tail as if she’d just fired an ice blast. 

Eventually it was too dark and cold (well, cold

er

) to stay outside and the three returned indoors, talking alternately about plans to make a Black and Red snow lion tomorrow, and what to have for dinner. 

*

“Hunk and Pidge come see this right now!” 

There was a terrible crashing sound as the Left side of Voltron dropped everything they were holding and bolted from their workroom to the living space where Lance’s shout had come from.  Pidge had a blowtorch in their hands, holding it awkwardly like their brain had gotten stuck somewhere between planning to use it as a bat or a flamethrower.  Hunk had… a wrench.  Also a bruise on his forehead from where he’d banged it in surprise when Lance had called for them. 

They were expecting some kind of emergency, a disaster approaching or in process, something.  So they were both more than a little confused when they arrived and there was nothing there except a very excited-looking Lance. 

“Dude, we had better be under attack or something, I swear to stars,” Hunk said, bracing his hands on his knees and leaning over to catch his breath.  “You can’t do that to my heart.”

Pidge dropped the blowtorch.  “What in quiznak could be so important that you’d call us like Zarkon just appeared in the kitchen wearing Hunk’s frilly apron?” they snapped, adrenaline with nowhere to go leaving them staticky and irritable. 

Lance looked like Christmas, his birthday, and victory against the Galra had all just happened simultaneously.  He didn’t say anything at all in response to his friends’ words.  Instead, with an awestruck look on his face, he pointed out the window.  The other two approached cautiously, and what they saw outside took their breath away faster than any cold wind. 

The sky of Lumrae was illuminated with brilliant light.  Ripples of blue rolled like waves across the darkness, flaring up and down, flickering like candles, blooming like flowers.  Flashes of white faded in and out, and shards of ember-orange sparkled occasionally throughout the expanse, glittering like stars. 

It was beautiful. 

They all stared for a while, struck silent by the sheer power of the display.  Suddenly Pidge spun around and bolted for the door, startling the boys and nearly knocking Lance over on their way. 

“Pidge, where are you going?” Hunk called. 

Lance was already following.  “Wait for us!”

The two caught up to them in the small room that separated the research station interior from the harsh outdoors.  They were trying to get their snowsuit on, but were in such a rush that they’d mixed up the leg holes and were now stuck half-in, half-out of the thing.  Hunk helped untangle them while Lance got the other suits out, and once they were all bundled up the trio ventured outside. 

In the time it had taken them to get ready, the northern lights hadn’t dimmed in the slightest.  The snow reflected the light, shining blue as the sky flickered and flared above.  Between the ribbons of light, the stars could still be seen, shining as bright as ever but taking a backseat to the planet’s polar lightshow. 

Pidge didn’t slow at all.  They charged out straight into the fields surrounding the outpost, heedless of the cold, the heavy drifts of snow, or the darkness.  Lance followed close enough to keep from losing them, and Hunk came after the both of them, protesting sincerely as he hauled some flashlights and the snowshoes that would allow them to actually walk on top of all this snow, you know?  Like we want to?  Pidge?  Pidge, wait up! 

Despite the fact that the snow was almost as deep as they were tall in places, the Green Paladin didn’t slow down until they reached the middle of the field.  There, they flung herself to the ground, the snow almost absorbing their entire body in its vibrant green snowsuit.  The outpost and its floodlights were a good distance away, and the entire rest of the planet was uninhabited, leaving the lights in the sky unbelievably bright and big enough to swallow the mind. 

Lance and Hunk finally caught up – Lance almost stepped on Pidge’s head before Hunk grabbed him.  Lance opened his mouth to ask questions or tease or needle, but Hunk slapped his mittened hand over his mouth.  He made Significant Eyebrows at his friend, nodding carefully towards Pidge. 

The Green Paladin was lying flat on their back, staring at the sky.  They looked… drifting, almost half-conscious, like they were somewhere else in her mind.  It wasn’t clear whether it was a good or a bad place.  Quietly, Lance lay down on their right side, Hunk on their left.  Neither one said anything. 

Lumrae’s northern lights danced overhead.  The patterns were never the same, changing like waves, like leaves, like shifting sand.  At times the banners of blue flared so bright that the stars were almost blinded out, then the lights would fade and the constellations would return.  Blue, white, orange, with flickers of other colors like smoke, gone just when you looked at them. 

Finally, Pidge spoke.  “Matt and I used to watch the auroras, when we were little.  We lived in a few different places, but my mom’s sister lived near Inari way up north.  The northern lights are really strong up there.  Our parents would take us out from the town, we’d find somewhere big and open where we could see the north, and we’d look for the lights.  We stayed up so late past our bedtimes, those nights, but we were excitable kids who loved the sky, and both of our parents were astronomers.  None of us could resist it.  If I could see the auroras, I wouldn’t sleep until they’d faded. 

“The auroras are stronger here.  At home, they’re mostly green, sometimes white or pink or red or blue.  This… it’s familiar, but it’s not the same.  Earth’s lights – my lights – they’re different colors, they’re fainter, they don’t move the same.  I’m looking at the aurora borealis, but home is a million miles away and I don’t know where my family is.”

“It’s like watching ocean waves from the bottom of the sea,” Lance murmured.  “I’m not like you; I’ve never seen the aurora.  We only ever saw pictures.  These are really different, though.  Honestly, back home I almost didn’t believe they were real.  They look so… alien.  Earth’s northern lights looked impossible, supernatural, and now I’m looking at this and it’s even moreso.”

He took a deep breath.  “Every time we go to an ocean planet, one with lots of water and beautiful beaches, I can’t help but think of my family.  My mom would always say she suspected I was half-mermaid, ’cause I wouldn’t ever leave the water until the very last minute, and always got right back in as soon as I could.  I practically grew up on the beach, and being at the ocean without my family feels weird.  Dissonant.”

Hunk spoke next.  “Every time I’m in the kitchen, I’ll turn around and expect to see my grandmother there.  Or my sister, or my mom, or my brother.  We always cooked together, nobody was ever alone in the kitchen.  The castle’s kitchen couldn’t be more different from the one in our house, but it doesn’t matter.  It’s a kitchen, and my family isn’t in it.

“I miss them.  But at the same time, I still love cooking.  I’m learning how to use a ten-thousand-year-old Altean alien kitchen, for stars’ sake!  And I’m not trying to belittle your feelings – at least I know they’re all safe on Earth.  They’re still doing what they do, just… not with me.  But I can miss my family and the memories of cooking with them while still enjoying cooking now.  It’s not the same, but it can still be nice.” 

“Nobody is trying to replace the memories,” Lance said.  “I wish my parents and all my siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles would be at the beach with me every time we land on a water planet, but hey – I’m getting to explore alien planets!  I miss them, but I can still enjoy the oceans out here.  At least I’ll have some awesome stories to tell when we get back to Earth.”

Pidge released a shaky breath, letting it cloud their vision of the flickering auroras for a moment.  “Yeah.  It’s beautiful out here, no matter what happens or who’s here to see it.  And of course it’s not the same, we’re on an alien planet in a totally different galaxy!  These aren’t even technically the aurora borealis, since we aren’t on Earth,” they added, making the other two laugh. 

“But if aurora borealis is for the solar-activity-caused lights near the north pole like aurora australis is for the southern lights, couldn’t this technically still be called aurora borealis?” Hunk asked.  “Unless we’re actually at the south pole… wait, how do we even know which is which, or if alien planets even have a north and south?  I don’t know anything about this planet, I need more data to respond to that.”

Lance snorted at the science-babble while Pidge just sighed and patted vaguely at Hunk’s hip, the best part they could reach as they lay there in the snow.  “Who even knows.  This is space, and aliens are weird.  We can ask Coran, but we might just get a gibberish answer.  I can never tell if he actually knows all those things or if he has no idea whatsoever and is just bullshitting super super hard with the best poker face in the universe.”

The group settled back into quiet for a while.  There were shooting stars visible between the auroras – the sky was alight with movement.  A huge comet blazed past, bright enough to dim even the brightest flares of the lights for just a moment, and Pidge reached out to take the hands of their friends. 

They would be seeing the revontulet with their family soon.  And maybe before they all went home, they could take Matt and Dad here to Lumrae and show them the alien northern lights, too. 

*

The fire crackled gently, alien fuel causing it to burn a little redder than most Earth-based fires might, but warm nonetheless. 

The mission was almost over.  They had finished the detection system that would track the new Galra fleet.  The satellites to pick up the signals had been designed, prototyped, and tested, and were ready for proper production by a close ally of Voltron with advanced tech-building resources.  Hunk, Lance, and Pidge would be going home to the Castle of Lions soon. 

But not tonight.  They were still packing up, coordinating details and fine-tuning arrangements.  Also, there was a powerful solar flare going tonight, as well as what Lance and Hunk called a blizzard and Pidge said was just a little snow you big babies, so takeoff would be sometime in the next few days.  Blue was mostly ready to go, but was fortunately still heating the little research outpost.  That combined with the fire and a pile of blankets ensured that everyone was quite warm and comfortable. 

They were also all piled onto a couch-thing that was probably supposed to hold two people max, not that they cared.  Tangled with each other like kittens, with blankets heaped on top, the three talked and joked and told stories, lazily, half-asleep. 

Lance and Hunk still weren’t totally convinced about cold climates, but they did like it.  There was something about snow that islands and beaches just didn’t quite match, and it had been great fun to run around and explore in it, building snow castles and snow Lions and snow Alteans (Lance had found the weirdest bit of lichen for the moustache), tracking wildlife and each other through the fields and forests - and the snowball fights.  The many, many snowball fights. 

It hadn’t all been perfect, though.  The heat went out a few times in the station, leaving everything frosted and chilled until Hunk and Pidge could determine what was wrong with the system or Lance could figure out why Blue wasn’t connecting properly.  Hunk caught a cold for a week and a half, sneezing and snuffling nonstop and complaining about Lance and Pidge’s badly-prepared soups. 

Pidge themself fell through some ice into a frozen lake, but as it turned out they’d done that a lot back home and knew how to get themselves out – not that it didn’t give Hunk and Lance heart attacks and vow to never go near frozen lakes again, babying the Green Paladin for days after until they snapped and threatened to lock both of them outside unless they cut it out. 

Lance got chased by some… ice geese?  They were quite large and mostly transparent, and apparently very offended by the Blue Paladin’s discovery of their (tiny, fluffy, adorable, snowball-resembling) chicks.  But he escaped without injury (by hiding in a snowdrift until the geese gave up the hunt) and now knew to avoid little snowballs that squeak-quacked if you picked them up and cuddled them. 

So, a few misadventures, but fun nonetheless. 

In between all the winter wonderland adventures, though, they had been working very hard.  In a few days the three would be leaving Lumrae behind and heading in Blue for the warmth of the Castle of Lions.  Much remained to be done before then, but for now there was a lull in which they were taking full advantage. 

Eventually, the talking ran out and soon all three were fast asleep.  Lance shifted and shuffled and finally settled down, sprawled halfway across the others.  Hunk talked to himself in his sleep, mumbling about ice cream and snow cones and how it was really quite cold but of course he’d take another, alien desserts were such a fascinating research topic.  Pidge’s eyes moved rapidly beneath their eyelids, but judging by the tiny smile on their face, it was all were good dreams. 

It was quiet.  Outside, the snow fell silently on the wintery planet.  The only sounds were the snaps and pops of the fire, the soft sounds of humans sleeping, and Blue Lion’s purring as she crouched beside the station, warm and waiting. 

The snow fell on Lumrae, and above the clouds the lights danced.