#im only kind of joking

[cardsweetheart]

Leona who offhandledly jokes about the idea of chasing his meals instead of being cooked for. Who watches the way your eyes dart to the side and you shift on your feet. You hope he doesn't notice, but how could he not?

Leona who in the coming days, finds himself staring. Typically from across the room, sometimes from the other side of the commons. Focused on the way you walk, even the small sprints when you spot your dormmates. His gaze dart to you so easily now, even if he doesn't understand why.

Leona who starts to get amused when you catch him out of the corner of your eye. How you shrink and try to hide how you squirm in your seat. Nervously playing with your hands, or overly laughing at the soonest joke. Just how small you make yourself when you realize he's looking.

Leona who finds you in his dorm's kitchen. Wordlessly observing. Seeing how long it takes for you to notice he's standing in the doorway. How easy it would be to take you off guard. He wonders what the fear would look like when you realize you've been caught. His tail flicking against his will, a telltale sign of his stupid instincts taking over his brain.

You who's startled when you turn and see him in the corner, simply staring, unblinking. Calling out to him and berating him for being a creep. Trying to deny the adrenaline building in your stomach as he steps closer, his posture shifting slightly. You understanding immediately what's happening, looking at how he's standing between you and the exit. Quickly trying to mentally map out an escape plan, bartering for a head start.

Leona who gives no answer, but a growl as his mind starts to cloud just a little. Your scent drowning his senses. Barely hearing the words you're throwing at him, only comprehending that his prey is trying to create distance. Reveling in the anxious energy filling the room. Waiting for the shoe to drop and the time to let things really begin.

You who makes a single motion his brain deems as too quick. All tension snapping as his head tilts, and you break into a sprint. Darting around the kitchen, barely keeping enough space to breathe. Eventually managing to get a hand on the door. Making it out to a long, straight shot stretch of hallway. Genuinely believing for a moment that you might stand a chance.

You who gets about 3 or 4 steps before feeling the weight on your back. The force of the impact causing the pair of you to roll. Feeling the sting of his grip on you. Landing on your back and looking up at Leona looming above you.

"You really like that huh?"

"I mean, a warning would be nice-"

"I can smell you."

"I'm less than a foot away from you and sweating."

"I can smell you herbivore."

"Oh."

"This was fun. But..." Leona who lowers to whisper in your ear, soft and the ghost of the animalistic growl still sitting in his throat, "Let me know when you're ready for the real thing."

Leona who then stands, leaving you laying there to stare at the ceiling. To ruminate over what the hell just happened. How you managed to get into this position. How desperately you want to take him up on his offer as quickly as possible. If he meant it. What the real thing would look like, how it would end. What kind of shoes you'd need.

You who wonders if he would be free on Saturday.

[mauvemischief]

I’m well aware Neil is already in a lot of pain all the time but I am going to repeatedly and continuously add to it AND make Andrew take care of him afterward 👍 hope this clears things up.

[pastel-the-ghost]

why isnt a kin awakening called an awakinning

[boyprincesspawpads]

guh i am in a Mood . freak mode activated

[cometapollo]

Why do I imagine if Derek actually wore a mask it would be a hyena or leopard mask.

Nah nahh, bro would make a scorpion one out of cardboard and cpnstruction paper

and it would look like ass too

[justablah56]

I just remembered my original Hermie design . the urge to delete that post is strong but my refusal to delete art is stronger .

[thedeathwitchescats]

To whatever bitch is writing my story, hand over the pen you suck at it

[heshmmity]

f4f (fag4fag)

[trickinabucket]

Im gonna go to a drag show and be a drag king, but its just literally me dressed as shaggy 2 dope in dreads

[fairieswithspirits]

Me, looking at the salt and also all the dust and debris that’s accumulated in my window well: what— um. what.. happens if I vacuum up a ward?

[thatscrazyrandom]

What does a bitch have to do to get a hug around here

[weirdglassthing]

LOA Shiptober Day 4: How They Met

October content month was ambitious..

This one took me. Shockingly long. Whoops! I’ll probably end up jumping around the prompt list and it might extend into November 😋

I’ll try to do day 31 on the actual date of Halloween though 🫡

[s0fter-sin]

soap's whole deal being sniper and demolitions gets me going bc on the surface they sound so different but when you get into it, you realise it's bc soap's smart

sniping is all math; calculating distances and wind interference and bullet drop. something i think people overlook is he was listed as a sniper first so it can be implied that he's better at it than demolitions. he does more sniping in both campaigns than demolitions work; in capture or kill, ghost specifically calls on him to take down the aq snipers

and demolitions is math with a hit of chemistry; knowing what mixes with what, knowing how much to use, recognising environmental factors and adjusting accordingly. it's not just about the boom; so much work goes into contained/ planned explosions. especially when having enough power for a breacher charge and not bringing down the whole building is the difference between mission success and failure

the chemical bombs he makes in alone can't just be any old cleaners, they have to have the correct reaction to each other; he just knew off the top of his head what would mix with what to create what reaction. he would also potentially have to recognise them by sight/smell bc they would’ve been written in spanish

soap would also have to know architecture; recognising structural integrity and weak points so he knows exactly where to plant a charge to bring it down and how it'll come down

he has an incredible soldier's mind people just forget that bc he's sociable which itself is a skill

we know he tends to buck against orders he doesn't agree with like when he pushes back against ghost in capture or kill and shepherd when he tells them to release hassan

he gets closer to people and sees if he can trust them and that's when he follows them without question. really think about how he talks to alejandro and rudy; he asks about their home and alejandro's family and rudy's relationship with him. those aren't questions you ask a stranger after a few hours of knowing them. that's not even touching on his relationship with ghost

he also deliberately brings people of higher ranks down to his level; talking informally with ghost and giving him a shoulder punch, addressing alejandro (a colonel!!) by his first name and rudy by his nickname despite literally just meeting them. he personalises all of them and it’s in direct opposition to the reason most characters do that; it’s not due to insubordination or lack of respect, the more he respects and trusts someone, the more casual he is with them

he digs into people; he wants to know what makes them tick and that determines if he can one, trust them and two, follow their orders. once he decides that, he's the ultimate soldier; he bleeds loyalty which makes him vicious when that loyalty is taken for granted

he isn't naive or bubbly or insecure; he's an incredibly smart and aware soldier. he's aggressive and bloodthirsty and loyal and intuitive and i love him so much

[stromblessed]

Mizu's spectacles, and the levels of her disguise

In drafting some more Blue Eye Samurai meta posts, I find myself writing out the comparisons between what Mizu can and cannot hide about herself, and how that affects how she moves through the world.

Like, I get the jokes about Mizu's glasses, if only color contacts had existed back then, etc. etc., and I think (hope) that most viewers don't take the glasses jokes seriously, as in "I don't care about the suspension of disbelief because BES is a cartoon." But I wanted to write these thoughts out anyway without burying them in a text post about something else.

I think the points I'm going to lay out here are viewed very differently by different people, so please feel free to add to this post, reply, or put your thoughts in the tags!

Not only do Mizu's glasses not actually help her that much, there's surely more to Mizu's mixed race appearance than just the color of her eyes.

In my view, this was pointed out in episode 1:

I'm willing to bet most of us were expecting young Taigen to say "blue eyes," not "ROUND eyes."

Obviously this is still about Mizu's eyes, but not even spectacles can hide their shape.

I don't think the show is obligated to point out everything about Mizu's face that isn't quite as Japanese as the people around her expect. Though the creators have said that they specifically designed Mizu - and her clothes - to read both as "white" and as "Japanese," as well as both male and female. I think there's more about Mizu's features that read as "white" than just her eyes.

This is where my own headcanons start entering the picture, but it's my impression that people can just tell that Mizu looks different, whether or not they can put a finger on exactly how.

There's the little girl who looks at Mizu and then hides on the way into Kyoto:

When there's more to your face you'd like to cover up than just your eyes, big hats are a big help!

By the way, most of these examples have to come from the first half of the season, since by the second half, either Mizu is too preoccupied with fighting henchmen, or everyone Mizu is facing knows who she is already, and she therefore has no reason to hide her mixed race identity.

It's worth mentioning that the mere fact that Mizu has to hide multiple aspects of her identity - her mixed race and her sex - results in her having to choose clothes that really, really cover her up, which doesn't win her any favors either:

(Zatoichi reference, anyone?)

If it were as easy as, for example, tying her glasses to her head and wa-lah, nobody would ever know she was half-white - then (1) Mizu would've just done that long ago, and (2) Mizu wouldn't be so on guard and on tenterhooks 100% of the time the way she's depicted in the show, even when her glasses are on.

Her spectacles sure don't help her in the brothel, which is full of observant women who are trying to seduce her, meaning they get good long looks at her:

Mizu never takes her glasses off, but they still send a woman to her who has light eyes, thinking that must be what will interest a blue-eyed man:

No wonder Mizu gets mad after this, lol

So Mizu never takes her spectacles off in the brothel, it's dimly lit inside, and the women can still tell that she has blue eyes. I'm getting the sense that Mizu putting on her spectacles isn't a guarantee that people suddenly can't tell that she looks different.

And yet no one spots that she's female.

Mizu can hide her breasts, can wear her hair in the right style, can hide what's between her legs, can walk and talk and behave like a man - and she's been doing it for almost her entire life, to the point that not only is she very good at it, but the threat of being found out as female is deadly, but isn't presented in the show as omnipresent.

Let me explain.

She threatens Ringo for nearly saying the word "girl" out loud, because while she's constantly ostracized for being mixed race, being a woman traveling without a chaperone, carrying a sword, and disguised as a man will get her killed or flogged or arrested or some combination of these things.

But in addition, it's been drilled into her since she was a child that if she is discovered as female, the combination of her being mixed race and female will identify her as someone extremely specific, someone known to some bad people, and she will be killed:

I think of it as Mizu thinking to herself, "Being found out as mixed race means I'm treated badly. Being found out as mixed race and a woman means I'm dead."

Mizu's hair is cut as a child. But she isn't made to wear a big hat, or cover her eyes somehow, or anything like that. Because hiding her sex is a more successful endeavor than hiding her race.

Ringo finds out she's female by accident, but once Mizu accepts the fact that he won't rat her out, she relaxes pretty early on in the season. Because the threat of being found out as female is mitigated pretty much 99.9%, since Mizu has gotten so good at being a man. And also, because most of the time, people see what they want to see. Even if Mizu's face makes her stand out as "not 100% Japanese," no one in the world of BES looks at Mizu's clothes, her bearing, her sword, hears her voice, and will ever in a million years conclude that she is a woman, because expectations around gender roles in the Edo period were so rigid and so widely enforced.

One detail that proved this to me is after the Four Fangs fight:

Ringo takes off Mizu's clothes so he can stitch her up, then leaves her clothes off even after he's done. He doesn't even throw her cloak over her as a blanket or anything. There's a little a straw (pallet?) as a divider there on the left, but anyone could just peek around it and see Mizu and her chest bindings. (I think it's mostly there as a windbreaker.)

And Taigen is right there, but he doesn't give a shit:

Opinions probably vary hugely on this, but my impression is that because the show doesn't make any kind of deal about Taigen being in the room with Mizu here, my guess is that Mizu isn't in any danger of Taigen thinking she's female. Even when I watched the show for the first time, I assumed that Taigen had seen Mizu out of her clothes here, and that he thought nothing of it.

Eat your heart out, Li Shang (Mulan 1998). I actually do think that this scene is a direct and purposeful side-eye to that movie, lol

There's obviously some nuance to how "severe" being mixed race is compared to how "severe" being a woman is for Mizu:

After all, Swordfather can't bear to listen to Mizu confess to being a woman.

So a Japanese man can go wherever he wants, whenever he wants in BES. A Japanese woman has limited options: marriage, religion, or a brothel. A mixed-race man is an eyesore in this story. A mixed-race woman is a death sentence.

May as well eliminate the female aspect, and do what you can about the mixed-race aspect. Because that's just realistic.

Meaning Mizu can avoid the strictures Edo society places on women. But she can't avoid the repercussions that come with being mixed race. And I truly don't think that it's just because "there's no brown contacts yet."

[pixlatedvampire]

Someone come help me kill my ghoul and skeleton so I can have Ragnvaldr and Cahara in my party

[cometapollo]

Work vent / rant. My boss was being a dick today and I'm already upset cus of school

How is my putting effort into restocking instead of just Throw Sauce In Box And gonna affect when my coworker with a completely DIFFERENT assignment IN ANOTHER ROOM ENTIRELY gets to clock out, Miss Bitch. Explain this to me. How is enjoying my job for once detrimental.

Oh, "I'm moving too slow"? "Organizing it like a puzzle isn't gonna help anyone?" Ok lady.

1; I'm actually moving faster than everyone else because I'm enjoying it.

2; Organizing it like a puzzle both helps me destress after my shift and fits more sauce in the box! So we dont have to restock it as often! SO SHIT DOESNT FUCKING FALL OUT BECAUSE OF THE GAPS. I'm not making it look pretty, I'm being more efficient than just throwing it in the box and hoping none of it spills! LIKE THE GENERAL MANAGER, YOUR BOSS, FUCKING SHOWED ME ON MY FIRST DAY.

3; "I'm moving too slow" Maybe dont give me a box you super glued shut and make me pry it open with my weak noodle arms. At least give me the damn box cutter, I know you have it, I'm not that stupid.