#is only incidentally here but he’s getting tagged anyway

[beecreeper]

I thought of this as a joke but then decided I actually unironically like the idea of Briar’s makeup being made of spores to help her connect to her druid magic. She refreshes it every morning to keep that symbiotic entity fed.

[gravehags]

at the altar of venus

Pairing: Cardinal Copia x f!Reader (Curator!Reader)

Rating: EXPLICIT, MDNI

Tags: body worship babyyyy, self-consciousness, body issues, handjobs, fingering, crying, possessiveness, two fools in love and lust, two fools being gross and making each other laugh

Words: 4,251

Summary: When you watch your beloved turn and turn in front of that mirror, you know something is off. Lucky for him, you have much to say on the matter.

a/n: I JUST THINK HANDSOME OLD MAN APPRECIATION TIME with yknow. a side of total filth and desperate desire.

~~~

What a day.

You wiggle your nude body in Copia’s soft sheets, nuzzle into your pillow and look across the room. Your lover is standing before the full-length mirror next to the dresser - also nude - turning his body to consider himself at different angles in the low lamplight. You watch him for a moment, watch the way his fingers card through his graying hair, loose from the grip of the day’s pomade. He runs his hand down his chest thoughtfully and comes to rest at the slight paunch of his belly. He cups the skin and his lips tug downwards into a frown.

“Amore?” he asks quietly, “do you think I’m eh, nice looking? Handsome?”

Any other time you’d laugh out loud at such an absurd question but you can tell from his slumped posture that he’s feeling downtrodden and that simply won’t do.

“The most handsome man I’ve ever seen. And that is not hyperbole. You’re the only man to ever turn my head.”

He sighs heavily through his nose and looks back at his reflection.

“You don’t think I’m…too old for you?”

Now it’s your turn to frown.

“My love…come here.”

He turns to look at you again and you crook your finger and throw back the covers. Fidgeting awkwardly he ambles over and slides into bed and you waste no time in pressing soft kisses to his jaw.

“Shall I tell you how handsome I find you? In great detail - from tip to toe?”

He scoffs and moves to pull the covers up over his chest but you gently rest your hand on his to stop him.

“You eh…you would do that?”

Now you do laugh.

“With pleasure,” you murmur, “let me just–” you pull yourself up and swing your leg over to straddle him, “--there we go. Let’s start here.” You rake your fingernails through his soft, wavy hair and smile when he shivers.

“I love your beautiful, full head of gorgeous thick hair and I love the bits of silver threaded through it most of all. I’ve told you before I’ve always had an, ah, thing for older men and well…what sort of older gentleman aficionado would I be if I didn’t love graying hair? I love the way the light catches on the silver and how it feels between my fingers when you’re uh…busy between my legs.”

He laughs softly through his nose, which is incidentally where your journey takes you next.

“And speaking of when you’re between my legs,” you say, waggling your brows as you drag your fingertip down the slope of his nose, “when this beautiful, stately, elegant thing nudges at my clit…oh. Copia I’ve always loved your nose since day one but what this thing is capable of…”

Your eyes unfocus for a moment as you lean in to kiss it absentmindedly.

“You’re getting distracted, amore mio,” Copia murmurs, eyes glittering. Eyes. Those pretty, mismatched eyes and those long brown lashes…

“As always, you are too kind to me,” he chortles, reaching a hand up to stroke your hair. Sathanas, you didn’t even realize you had said that out loud. “I used to hate my eyes when I was a kid, you know? Always a reminder of the bloodline I was a part of but never really a part of…not according to Nihil anyway. Where others thought the white eye was ‘commanding’ on Secondo or ‘alluring’ on Terzo, it was always eh, ‘unsettling’ on me.”

“Hmm,” you say thoughtfully, “I certainly don’t think you need them but did you ever consider contact lenses?”

“Oh, sì, sì,” he nods, “tried them once too in my twenties but eh…something was just…off. Personally I thought I looked creepier with two green eyes.”

You lean back a little and raise a hand to cover his white eye, and then the green while tilting your head.

“Shoulda got a white contact for the green eye instead so you could go around looking like some sexy demonic husky.”

Copia bursts out in laughter, his chest shaking beneath your palms.

“I thought this was supposed to make me feel better?”

“It is! I made you laugh, didn’t I?” you say with a grin, leaning down to place a slow, soft kiss on his lips that has his hands settling on your hips.

“Love these too,” you breathe when you finally separate, “love how soft and plump they are and I especially love the little freckle right here–” you place the pad of your thumb on his full lower lip, “--God you have no idea how it drove me mad day in and day out whenever we’d work together. Driving me to distraction. All I’d ever want to do when you got close to me is…” You lean forward once more and catch his lip gently between your teeth, sucking on it until you feel his cock twitch against you.

“Mmm,” you pull off him with a wet noise that has him panting into the dimly lit room, “is someone starting to buy into the truth that he’s the most handsome man in the abbey? Perhaps even the world?”

“Don’t push your luck, dolcezza, I’m just eh, excited to have a beautiful, soft, young thing on top of me. One who is very good with her mouth, I might add.”

“Oh, that’s too bad you still don’t believe me when I say you’re beautiful. Try harder and maybe I’ll give you a little treat, hmm?”

He chuckles and tilts his head back.

“I’ll do my best. Done with the face, then?”

“And skip your glorious little mustache and impeccably crafted sideburns? Cardinal, you know I’m a woman who pays attention to the details. To say nothing of the freckles that are scattered over your face and down–” you trail a finger down his throat and tap on his clavicle, “--over your chest and shoulders? I’d kiss every single one if I thought I’d live to accomplish that.” You amuse yourself for a moment by playing connect the dots with the marks until your fingertip slides over and traces the lines of his tattoo.

“You never did tell me the story with this.”

He smiles, thumbs brushing soft circles on your thighs.

“Terzo did it. I had just entered the priesthood and he came to my quarters and got me drunk and convinced–”

“Wait, when you say ‘Terzo did it’ you mean Terzo gave you the tattoo?”

“Sì,” he nods, “He knew how much I loved the Omen movies and always complained that I never did anything wild so…”

You lean forward and inspect the ink.

“That looks…a lot better than anything I would have expected from Terzo.”

Copia snickers.

“His lines were surprisingly steady, but his hand not nearly strong enough. I had a professional touch it up later but that stays between us, sì?”

You give him a salute and lean back, raking your fingernails down his chest.

“Back to the topic at hand,” you murmur, “unholy fuck I love your body hair. It’s so thick and soft and I love the way it scratches just right at my nipples when you’re fucking me into the mattress.”

He sucks in a breath so fast he nearly chokes.

“You’re really not holding back, are you cara mia?”

“Nope,” you confirm, watching the way the tip of his tongue slides out to wet his lips as he eyes your breasts. Briefly, your hands abandon his torso to come up and cup them, thumbing across your hardened nipples. You pull away and grab his hands, placing them where yours once were. Greedily, he palms the flesh as your hips make little circles.

“These,” you breathe, your hands covering his, “these gorgeous, big, strong hands with these thick fingers…I can’t even count how many times I brought myself off to the thought of them.”

“O-oh?” he pants, removing one hand and bringing it up to cup your face, “with the gloves a-and everything?”

You lean into his touch.

“Especially with the gloves. Copia, the way I’d fantasize about being able to feel every stitch and groove of those things when I’d picture them inside of me…” You turn your head to place a kiss to the scar tissue at the center of his palm and his thumb strokes your cheekbone. “Mmm, you got me distracted again. Where was I?”

You look down and remember, scooting backwards down his body to settle in between his thighs. He whines now that you’re only touchable if he sits up, too tired to make an effort. Not, however, too tired for other things, you think as you look down at his hardened cock resting heavy against his belly, smearing pre on the hairs there.

“We’ll address this,” you say, gesturing to his erection, “in a bit. But for now…this.”

Your word is punctuated by the way you run your hands over his slight paunch, grinning as you knead the flesh. Copia’s shoulders twitch as if he’d like nothing more than to fold in on himself, eyes trained up somewhere over your shoulder.

“Your soft tummy is so sweet and perfect and–” you make a noise like a big cat growling, “--I just want to eat it up.”

“Clearly from its appearance I’ve eh, done enough eating for the both of us.”

You frown deeply.

“Copia,” you say, your tone deadly serious, “since when do you have problems with a belly? I hope you don’t have problems with my belly and mine is a lot bigger than yours—“

“Amore, never!” he gasps, horrified, “You…you are perfection. You are soft and plush and-and a goddess. This–” he says, gesturing lamely to his paunch, “--is the result of old age. Old age and too much spaghetti.”

“Yeah, and that’s exactly why it’s hot,” you say, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “My love, this little belly shows that not only have you enjoyed life, reveled in it the way Sathanas intended, but that you’ve survived. Endured. I love this belly the way I love every single line on your face. You wouldn’t be my Copia without them. I didn’t fall in love with some guy in his twenties with a waxed six-pack. Quite frankly…ew. Respectfully, beloved, I fell for the kind, smart, handsome, distinguished gentleman in his almost-fifties. Who is sort of goofy and really good with his tongue. I mean…really good.”

He laughs softly through his nose, regarding you with watery eyes. His lips form the words to thank you but no voice comes out. That’s alright, though. You’re not telling him these truths for your benefit.

“Shall I continue?” you ask gently, smiling when he nods.

Your hands slide down to his thighs, where you massage the flesh.

“You know I hadn’t even seen these - like, really seen them - until our first official date? When you wore those tight, tight pants? Lord have mercy these things are thick. I’d be content to gnaw on them like a dog with a bone if you’d let me.”

“Who says I wouldn’t?” he murmurs, cocking an eyebrow at you.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” you say with a wink, “I’d compliment your juicy ass too if I could get to it so just remind me to give it a healthy smack next time you’re standing, huh? The first time I saw you in profile in your cassock I almost passed out. Goddamn.”

He laughs and tilts his head at you.

“Ti adoro follemente,” he says, “thank you for making this old man love himself, even if it’s just a tiny bit.”

“I’ll take a tiny bit for now, we’ll work on the positive reinforcement.”

“Oh? And what kind of positive reinforcement did you have in mind?”

You ghost your fingers along his half hard cock, wrapping them around the shaft and leaning forward to spit thickly, your saliva landing on the head. The act has Copia moaning and shifting his hips up into your touch as you stroke him back to full hardness.

“Ah, dolcezza,” he sighs, half-lidded eyes watching your hand slide along the shaft, “if only you had known what I fantasized about with your hands.”

“Well go on, bello mio,” you purr, swiping your thumb along the slit to gather the pre leaking from the head. “Tell me.”

He grunts and ruts up into your touch.

“W-we’d be in your office…working on some…some administrative thing. And I’d watch the way those clever little fingers would fly across your keyboard–ah, fuck–and I’d imagine you leaving your desk a-and settling on your knees between my legs. Lifting my cassock up and palming me through m-my trousers. S-sometimes you’d use your mouth too but…always your hands. Always those s-soft fingers wrapped around me j-just like this. I–oh, cazzo–”

His voice cuts off with a moan as you spit on him once again, the wet slide of your pumping hand and his harsh breathing the only sound in the room. With your other hand you reach down to cup his balls, gently caressing them as you continue to stroke the length of him.

“I-I’m not going to last, amore,” he rasps out, thrusting into your grip, “just like that bellezza mia.”

“You’re beautiful,” you murmur, “you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, and I love you just as you are.”

You know the last handful of words will send him over the edge and send him they do, until he’s coming in spurts over your knuckles and gasping your name. You continue to stroke him until he has nothing left to give and when he’s spent, you raise your hand to your face and fastidiously lick every drop of his spend from your fingers as he watches with his mouth hung open. When your tongue passes over your middle finger for the final time he grabs at you, eagerly hauling you up his body and slotting his lips over your mouth in a slow, decadent kiss. When you finally pull away, it’s with a smile and you nudge his nose with yours. Gently, you roll off of him and nuzzle into his side, lazily kissing his shoulder. When he rolls onto his side to face you, you move to do the same but he presses you back down into the mattress.

“Copia, your stamina is impressive but you literally just came I don’t expect–”

He chuckles, gently dragging the bedsheets down to expose your body.

“Your turn, dolcezza.”

“My turn–oh.”

The realization hits you as the fingers of his right hand tease at the underside of your breasts and against your belly, dipping further down to cup at the wet heat of you, driving a gasp from your lips. He leans towards you to inhale deep along your neck, lips ghosting over your hair.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start in praising you, bellezza mia. Sweet - in both disposition and taste, tender in body and heart, beautiful in all ways. Tongue and mind as sharp as a tack and ridiculously amusing. Perfetto–” two of his fingers dip down into your labia majora and you see him smile out of the corner of your eye at how slick you are for him. “My perfect girl. Kind. Perhaps too kind and indulgent to this old man but…” his fingertips circle your clit and your hips spasm, “he will show you just how thankful he is nonetheless, sì?”

You whimper as his fingers tease at your entrance before sliding inside you knuckle deep, palm pressed flush against your clit. An echo of how you would touch yourself to the thought of him not that long ago.

“I’m not wearing my gloves but eh, I hope this will suffice for now?”

Your laugh comes out breathy as he begins to fuck into you at a decadent, leisurely pace, pressing open mouthed kisses to your shoulder.

“I never dreamed at my age I’d find someone like you,” he confesses, “Like you were–like we were made for each other. Every morning and every night I thank Sathanas for bringing you to me, thank you for allowing me to worship you. Anima mia, I adore you so much I wish to devour you. To join our bodies and minds and souls together for eternity and further. I told you before that I love you so much I fear driving you off but…I think we are equally matched in our passions, sì?”

You let out a delighted sigh, spreading your legs further to better accommodate him. It’s nice like this - lazy, unhurried - and he smiles as you clench around him.

“Perfectly matched,” you breathe, meeting the languid thrust of his fingers with the tight circling of your hips, “Copia I am yours in every way - yours to use and fuck and–ah���consume as you please. All yours. Always yours–oh fuck.”

The fervor of your words makes his breathing and his fingers quicken, pumping in and out of you with greater force.

“I would have you all night if you let me,” he growls, his breath hot in your ear, “Say you’ll let me, per favore. Please give me this gift. On my fingers, tongue, cock, it doesn’t matter I need you amore, need to watch you come undone and help mend you back together. Please, I–”

He’s crooked his fingers inside you, pressing against that sweet little spot that makes you whine and cant your hips eagerly. You can feel the tears prick the corners of your eyes and you’re breathless as you nod.

“Copia, please, please, please, need you, need all of you–oh, fuck baby that’s it, don’t stop, don’t–ah!”

Your moan is pitchy and borderline desperate as he continues to fuck you through your orgasm. 

“Mine,” he growls, “Solo mio come sono tuo. La mia bellissima ragazza perfetta. Il mio cuore e la mia anima. Il mio riflesso. La mia luce e il mio buio. Per sempre. Mia scellerata benedizione, non ti merito. I love you more than anything. Anything.”

Panting, you blindly reach down to still his hand between your legs and he sobs into your shoulder. Gently, you extricate his fingers from you and bring his hand up to your face, tongue darting out to taste yourself. Tears slide down his cheeks as he watches, entranced, as you suck each finger into your mouth before dragging the muscle up the center of his palm. His eyes are wet and bright, pupils blown as you lean up and place a soft kiss to his lips. When you pull apart, you thumb away the tears remaining on his cheeks and smile softly at him.

“I-I’m sorry,” he stutters, sniffling, “I don’t know what got into me, amore, I–”

“This was a lot,” you murmur, reaching up to push the loose strands of hair off his forehead, “but I hope you know how loved you are by me - everything about you, all of it - and that there is no one more beautiful on this planet to me than the man I see before me right now. And I’ll remind you of this again and again and again until the end of days and even further. You are so special to me, Copia. I hope that even for a little bit tonight you got to see yourself through my eyes.”

When he leans forward to place a kiss to your forehead, he’s trembling.

“C’mere,” you say, drawing him into your arms as he drapes his body over you, arm around your waist. The weight of him is solid and comforting as you press kisses to his hair, enveloping yourself in the orange blossom scent of what little remains of his pomade. 

“I promised to ravish you all night,” Copia murmurs, his voice comically muffled by his lips squished against your breast. You snort inelegantly.

“We’ve got many nights ahead of us for that, my love,” you say with a smile, hand stroking along his freckled shoulders, “I’m not going anywhere and neither are you. But more importantly - are you alright?”

He pulls away slightly to rest his chin on you.

“I don’t think I have been for a long time,” he says quietly, “Not really, anyway. But ever since you arrived…columba mia, it’s like I have a purpose again.”

Now it’s your turn for your eyes to get watery.

“I know exactly what you mean. Exactly. I…I really need to thank Sister Imperator someday for bringing me here, in the end. I mean yeah she had nefarious intentions but…in a roundabout way she kinda helped save my life.”

“Amore, I don’t mean to sound like some kind of eh, Christian but…Sathanas has a plan for us. And it doesn’t involve any of that child bearing bullshit that was being spewed at you…no. He brought us together for a reason and for that I am thankful every day. Thankful every day you did not run screaming from Imperator’s office the day of your interview. Thankful you saw this…peculiar, awkward, old Cardinal…and saw not only a friend but a-a soulmate. I thank Sathanas but like I said earlier - I thank you more. I would forsake my Unholy Father in a heartbeat for you, amore. You are my true religion now. Know that.”

The noise that comes out of you is wet and embarrassing as you cup Copia’s cheek and rest your forehead against his. After a moment of shared breath, you pull away.

“My love, I’m so sorry to ruin the moment but I desperately need to blow my nose.”

He laughs - one of his weird little “ehehe” numbers - and the sound makes your heart swell in your chest.

“Anything for the woman I love,” he announces grandly, leaning over you to grab the box of tissues on the nightstand and present them to you. You pluck one out and hold it to your face while Copia watches fondly from a very close distance.

“Uh, hon?”

“Mmhmm?”

“You might want to back up a little? I don’t trust the integrity of these things and you do not want to be in the splash zone.”

Copia rolls off you making the most revolted noise as you laugh and struggle to breathe through your congested nose. Sitting up, you blow into the tissue while he watches looking supremely disgusted.

“‘Splash zone’,” he grumbles, shaking his head, “Amore, you are not well.”

“Yeah, I think that’s been established in our year of knowing one another. And, I’m sorry I didn’t realize I was speaking to the pinnacle of mental health over here.”

He pinches the meat of your thigh mid-blow and it makes you choke. In retaliation, you throw one of your crumpled, used tissues at him and it bounces off his chest.

“Augh, it’s wet!”

“Duh, that’s my snot,” you chirp pleasantly. “What you don’t like it? What was all that before about how I’m ‘your beautiful, perfect girl’, and ‘your reflection’, and ‘your heart and soul’ and–”

“...You understood all of that?”

You smile.

“Not all of it, but most. I’ve got a pretty impressive Duolingo streak going from all those nights you have confession duty, you know.”

He props himself up on his side and stares at you with a goofy smile.

“Amore mio, I take back my disgust. You could use me as a tissue and I would say thank you.”

That makes a horrible noise come out of you.

“Copia, I’d call you a simp but I think there would be some pot calling the kettle black action going on there so I’ll refrain. Ugh, what a fucking day.”

You gather up your used tissues with the intent of heading to the bathroom with them but Copia turns to you with his hands cupped expectantly. Gently, you smile before depositing them and watching him get up and pad over to the garbage in the other room. When he comes back after washing his hands and climbs into bed, making his delightful old man noises, you grin.

“Thank you for indulging me tonight,” you murmur as you nestle into his side.

“Indulging you? As if I wasn’t the one getting showered with compliments by a beautiful, nude, young woman?”

“You know what I mean,” you say, trying your best to stifle a yawn. “For hearing me out, for letting me show you how perfect you are to me…all of it. And thank you for the very kind things you said about me in turn. I…will not easily forget that.”

“I certainly hope not but like you, I am prepared to remind you over and over and over of how precious and perfect you are.”

“With fingers, tongue, and cock?” you ask innocently, parroting Copia’s earlier promise. He snorts.

“Dolcezza mia, however you want it.”

“Mmm,” your eyelids are getting heavy as you listen to Copia’s steady breathing, “I’ll hold you to that.”

“I would expect nothing less from such a demanding mistress.”

“Oh you haven’t even seen my demanding mistress side yet, beloved.”

He’s got his eyes closed but makes the dirtiest, most intrigued noise you’ve ever heard and it makes butterflies ricochet around in your stomach. His hand trails teasingly up your arm, causing a shiver to roll through you.

“Well, Padrona,” he murmurs, low and enticing, “I’m not entirely sure I’m ready for bed just yet.”

You’re already sitting up with a sigh and straddling his hips for the second time that evening as you say: “Insatiable as always, Your Eminence. Hmm, do I get to wear your grucifix and biretta? Perhaps I’ll get that pretty red rope out too?”

“Oh amore…I insist.”

[maniculum]

Bestiaryposting Results: Mlekragg

Unsurprisingly, multiple people read the entry and immediately clocked what this was. (Thank you for not actually making a guess in text, so that people who don't recognize it are able to work without that preconception.) I didn't want to leave it out, because the mythological ones are fun, but unlike some of the others, the modern conception of this beast is pretty much exactly what the bestiary says.

Anyway, as always, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can find an explanation for this whole thing at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting. If you want to join in, the new entry for each week is tagged with "maniculum bestiaryposting" so it should be findable. This week's entry can be reviewed here:

Below the cut you will find the drawings responding to it, in roughly chronological order:

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) decided to branch out in an unusual direction with this one, in order to avoid drawing the creature they'd identified from the entry and also have some fun with it. I just think this is some quality creature design. Love the mask-thing, love the springy tail, and that's a really good rendering of a cuttlefish face IMHO. There's a really interesting explanation for all of these features, what inspired them and how it all works together, in the linked post, which you should go read.

@moonygryffin (link to post here) took a more direct approach, with the twist that the creature here is modeled on American fauna rather than ones the medieval Europeans would have been aware of. The body is a mountain lion, and the man-like head is a golden-headed lion tamarin, which of course comes with its own mane. I enjoy the choice to not use a lion lion, but rather two animals with "lion" in their name; also I've always thought lion tamarins were very cool-looking. For more details -- and an example of an attempt by MoonyGryffin to draw the same creature several years ago -- see the linked post. (Also thank you for providing alt text.)

@sweetlyfez (link to post here) has made an attempt to take the entry literally without drawing the creature she has recognized, which is a challenge considering how specific the description is. I think the decision to give it flea legs to help with that exceptional jumping is clever. SweetlyFez describes the result as an "awful creature" and... honestly I can't argue, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near one of these. In fact I think I'm going to wrap up this commentary and scroll down so I don't keep making eye contact with it.

@pomrania has also decided to go the route of "let's get weird with it", and avoided the literal interpretation by re-analyzing the word "has". This is similar to that style of joke one hears now and then -- you know, "he has the heart of a poet... he keeps it in a jar at home." (Incidentally, props to Mary Shelley for being perhaps the only person who could make that claim and not be kidding.) So this creature has the face of a man and the body of a lion, not in the sense that it was born with them, but in the sense that it keeps them as possessions. Very clever, and the underlying creature design is also fantastically creepy in my opinion.

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) mentions that she didn't recognize the description, and has given us this really cool-looking, rather menacing creature in their excellent medieval style. (This is why I insist on not naming the beasts even when it seems clear what it is -- this amazing piece of art might have looked entirely different if someone posted a spoiler.) I'm really struck by how it simultaneously looks like a patchwork sort of creature (different front & back legs, etc.) but all flows together into a cohesive whole. Just really well done, I think. (Also, thank you for including alt text.)

@cheapsweets (link to post here) has drawn the creature mid-leap, showing off its jumping prowess by shooting straight up into the air. I think this drawing does a very good job at combining human and lion anatomy to make something unsettling -- and the inclusion of the skull diagram up in the top left points to the amount of thought that went into this. As always, please check out the linked post for a detailed discussion of the design. (Also, thank you for including alt text.)

@strixcattus (link to post here) has drawn one that's oddly cute, and looks a bit worried. However, according to the description they've written in the linked post, this reaction on my part is probably going to get me killed, because apparently they're still quite vicious. I like it, though -- and, as always, I urge you to go read the linked post for this one.

On to the Aberdeen Bestiary... oh, we can't, actually. This is another missing page. So here's the illustration from the Ashmole Bestiary instead:

So, first of all, this is indeed the manticore, and I'm sure most if not all of the people who said they had guessed it got that correct.

Second, we can also note that all the artists who said something along the lines of "well we know about the issues of drawing medieval scorpions, so the scorpion-tail description doesn't need to be literal" were also correct there. Apparently this time a scorpion tail is just spiky all over, which I have to admit does look kinda cool.

Now let's address the elephant in the room. WHAT is that thing on its HEAD? My best guess is that it's meant to be a crown -- medieval art often sticks hats on nonhuman creatures with human faces, almost as if the artist wants to make sure you know it looks like a human head on purpose. I don't see crowns that often, though; usually it's just a cloth hat. (The one in Bodley MS 764, where I got the text for this entry, is clearly wearing a Phrygian cap.) I find myself unable to see it as anything but a daring hairstyle that is absolutely not working for it, though.

Anyway. The manticore is an odd one in its continuity here -- a lot of the mythical creatures in the bestiary have been changed, reinterpreted, or forgotten in the intervening centuries. I think maybe the manticore happens to have hit that sweet spot where it's popular enough that people remember it, but not so popular that it gets excessively telephoned through widespread transmission. I think a couple people noted that the Standard Fantasy manticore is more or less spot on to this description, and indeed, I can only think of one change:

(Art from the Magic: the Gathering card "Crimson Manticore", artist Daniel Gelon)

At some point, those bastards got wings. It's not universal at this time, but if you do an image search for "manticore", the majority of the modern ones are winged. I'm not really sure where that came from.

(Side note: I tested this by doing a Google image search, and one of the top results was a particularly odd-looking image, so I clicked on it out of curiosity. It was at the top of an... article? on a webpage I'd never heard of, and the opening of said article included the sentence, "In medieval bestiaries and art, the manticore was depicted with unique features such as paws, teeth, and fur." You don't say there, bud.)

Interestingly, the D&D manticore is slightly different from the description in an additional way.

Instead of a scorpion tail, it has a tail covered in spines. This has apparently been part of the D&D manticore since the beginning -- the above image is from 2e, but the 1e version had the same tail. (I just didn't use it because it's not as clear in the picture.)

Now, scroll back up to that Ashmole Bestiary image. The one where the tail doesn't really look anything like a scorpion's. Looks... similar to this in broad concept.

I doubt that Gygax or Arneson or whoever designed that aspect of their manticore after one bestiary image, so I popped over to bestiary.ca to see what else was out there. Out of the 38 medieval manticore images collected on that website, there are only two with a tail covered in spikes: the Ashmole manticore and one other that's clearly just a less-skilled artist working from the same image (it also has the same hat). Looking at the text sources, though:

"...it has a tail like a land scorpion, in which there is a sting; it darts forth the spines with which it is covered instead of hair..." -- Aristotle, De animalibus

"To the end of its tail is attached the sting of a scorpion, and this might be over a cubit in length; and the tail has stings at intervals on either side." -- Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals

Okay, that's the D&D version, mystery solved. New question: is it a coincidence that the Ashmole illustration fits Aelianus's description? Remember, the page is missing from the Aberdeen bestiary and the Ashmole bestiary isn't translated. The text comes from Bodley MS 764, which does not have a spiky-tailed manticore. My Latin is terrible and I'm untrained in palaeography, so I can't tell whether the entry there preserves the spiky description.

If any palaeographers out there want to solve this one for me, it's Bodleian MS Ashmole 1511, f.22v-23r, available digitally here. (I'll put some screenshots below, but I expect it's easier to zoom properly on the library's digitized manuscript.)

Okay, that's all I've got. Enjoy your week everyone.

[poplarste]

uhhhhhh that tiktok (thanks @peter-pantomime, hope you don’t mind the tag) that points out that Eddie coulda zipped up his leather jacket and tac vest combo and maybe not been eaten by bats, but it’s Eddie saying “Steve? [significant pause] Make him pay” and Steve taking a step forward to zip up his jacket and saying something cheesy

...upon reflection i didn’t think i was actually going to sit here and write this all in one go but lo and behold i’m supposed to be working on an article shhhh

further update: this is now on ao3 Something crosses Steve’s face when Eddie points out that he and Dustin are nooooooot heroes, but Eddie ignores it in favor of indulging himself, just for a second, watching the set of the three heroes’ shoulders as they move toward Creel House.

“Hey, Steve?” It’s out of his mouth before he can stop himself, some unchained impulse to at least let Steve know Eddie respects the fuck out of him now, just in case they both die.

The real heroes turn back, waiting.

“Make him pay.”

Steve retreads those last few steps, back over to Eddie and Dustin, claps a hand to Eddie’s leather-clad shoulder, the sound of it drowned out by sickening red thunder. He leaves his hand there, too, and Eddie’s confusion is only silenced by the thudding of his heart when Steve’s free hand comes up to his chest.

He tugs at the teeth of Eddie’s War Zone vest, real live actual tactical armor to replace the battle vest that Steve’s still got over his fresh War Zone shirt and under his fresh War Zone jacket, for reasons Eddie doesn’t have the brain power to contemplate. It doesn’t seem at all like him -- they’ve been all tense and snarky at each other (and Eddie supposes he gets why) since he’d pinned Steve to that boathouse wall and held glass to his throat. That felt like a lifetime ago, though. They’d been different people then, or at least, Eddie thought maybe he had been.

“You should zip up,” he tells Eddie, like he’s actually saying something else. “You’ll catch your death.”

Eddie does not catch his death, though the blood under Dustin’s fingernails from keeping pressure on his neck loudly proclaims just how close they came. He knows it’s just luck that he didn’t bleed out anyway -- a couple inches toward his chin and he’d be just as mangled as the poor, brave vest Robin had insisted on confiscating for cremation later -- but now that the anesthetic has worn off and the fever has gone and the fresh stitches in his face and neck start to itch like a lot, actually, it occurs to him that if Steve Harrington hadn’t taken that one moment of absolute character-breaking insanity, Eddie’d have been ripped apart. Bled out, there on the rocky ground of the Upside Down, probably all over Dustin since the little shit had come after him anyway.

Fucking kid. Eddie loves him so goddamn much.

But back to Steve, and his incomprehensibly tender moment in the middle of the apocalypse.

Once they were all patched up and cleared and definitely not rabid, thank you Robin, they’d been released. Free to go. Nary an NDA in sight, just a withering look from Agent Stinson and an edict to just “please, for the love of God lay low until we sort this out.”

Cool, as far as Eddie’s concerned. He’s too busy not scratching at his stitches and reeling over Steve inadvertently saving his life. Eventually, he can’t resist the urge. The line rings and he fidgets with the cord.

“Robin,” says the voice after the ringing ends, no greeting at all. “For the last time, I’m not rabid, none of the blood tests showed any scary Upside Down shit, everything is --”

“Steve.”

Steve stops on the other end. Which is fair, really, since Eddie’s literally never called him on anything that’s not a walkie talkie before, and that was mostly incidental. “Eddie. What’s going on, man?”

The edge in his voice is subtle, enough to dismiss and make the question either casual or an alarm bell, but Eddie doesn’t miss it. He just gets to the point, and Steve-on-the-other-end can do with it what he will. Eddie’s not his mom. But Wayne raised him right even if the rest of Hawkins doesn’t think so, so he’s gotta say something. “You know you saved my life, right? The jacket thing. Down in... Before we split the party.”

“What?”

“You told me to zip up my jacket, and the vest,” Eddie insists. “I’d have been chewed up like a cheap dog bone if you hadn’t. I just. Thanks, man.”

Steve’s quiet on his end of the line. At first, Eddie thinks maybe he’s just stunned that The Freak has any manners, but as the silence stretches on, he begins to wonder if actually the line’s been cut or something.

“Steve? Buddy? Steeeeeeeve,” he croons into the phone. “You OD on pain meds over there or something?” Steve, having been significantly more chewed up and run around on it far longer than Eddie, had been stuck in the hospital for several days with a high-grade fever, after all was said and done and Vecna was burnt up to a crisp. None of it had seemed particularly Upside-Down-y, just regular exhaustion, dehydration, and good old rampant infection, but once he’d been released, Eddie had it on good authority that he was a champ about taking antibiotics and an absolute nightmare about taking the pain pills they’d given him for all of the…everything on his back, arms, and sides.

There’s a strangled noise from down the phone line, and Eddie wonders if the phone actually is fucked. Before he can ask, though –

“Guess I did, huh?” Steve’s voice is soft. “Don’t mention it.”

Eddie scoffs a little, playful but casual. “Don’t worry, I don’t want to think about it much, either.” Steve actually does let out a chuckle at that, and Eddie grins, since there’s no chance of anyone seeing and calling him on it. What, then, is the harm? It’s just a little hero crush. “Hey, I’ll let you go, man. See you around, when Buckley lets you rejoin society.”

Steve groans just a little at that. “Yeah. Robin.”

“Robin,” Eddie agrees. “Later, Steve.”

And then Steve’s voice is all soft again, like it was when Eddie thanked him, like it was when he told Eddie to zip up his vest, and now – “Yeah. Later, Eddie.” There’s a lingering silence on the line, like Steve’s waiting in case Eddie has more to say.

Eddie hangs up first, and resolutely doesn’t think about it.

Who doesn’t get crushes on heroes, anyway.

[fcntasmas]

i have, at one point or another, been tagged in some form of "wip game" iteration by @mellaithwen, @renecdote, @nymika-arts, @capseycartwright, @littlespoonevan, @househusbandbuck & probably more people that my mentions simply do not go all the way back to rip

because it's neither wednesday, nor thursday, nor friday, nor sunday, nor any other day that's usually reserved for the writing progress, i'm gonna go ahead and call this "catch-all thursday," as in, idk, take your pick of weekday and consider yourself tagged in a wip game fajsklfj

here's a sneak at what i'm working on currently (which is, incidentally, not the longfic i was supposed to work on during my week off, lmao. inspiration amirite):

“One time thing,” he promises, and Buck’s exhale, though shaky, is filled with relief. “It was probably just the adrenaline, anyway.”

Buck’s hands slide off his face, and he nods resolutely, like he wants desperately to believe what Eddie’s saying. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, that was — and,” he licks his lips, looking a little nervous. “I don’t — have a lot of friends my age,” he admits, sounding embarrassed, despite clearly doing his best not to. Still, he meets Eddie’s gaze, and it’s so fucking earnest Eddie almost pulls him into a hug, out of pure sympathy. “Sex would complicate things, anyway.”

Eddie doesn’t say he wouldn’t know, as to not freak Buck out. Instead, he reaches out to squeeze Buck’s shoulder, offers him a teasing smile. “Are you calling me your friend, Buckley?”

Buck rolls his eyes, weakly slaps Eddie’s hand away. “Shut up.”

“I’m your friend,” Eddie insists, and Buck snorts with laughter when Eddie shoves him sideways with his hips. “To think, this morning you were plotting where you’d bury me—”

“I wouldn’t bury you, I’d cremate you—”

“To think, this morning you were plotting where you’d spread my remains, and now you’ve not only let me touch your dick—”

Buck’s laughter is coming in uncontrollably. “Eddie—”

“—but you’re calling me your friend,” he winks exaggeratedly at Buck, grin as cocky as he can muster. “All in a day’s work.”

Once Buck’s laughter subsides, he nods toward the door before looking back at Eddie. “We should probably get back,” he suggests, then pauses, hesitating only for a second. “And for the record,” he adds, pushing himself off the wall and walking to the door. He pauses with his hand over the knob, looks over his shoulder, and offers Eddie a shit-eating grin. “I would’ve let you touch my dick either way.”

i will tag, again, everyone i just tagged above, plus: @tripleaxeldiaz, @tawaifeddiediaz, @usercowboy, @enchantedbuckley, @homerforsure, @sibylsleaves, + anyone else who may be writing something and wants to share! MWAH

[pretty-rage-machine]

fic author self recs

incredibly touched by @meikuree tagging me! I'm struggling to think of mutuals that I know write fic, haha. I'm a tumblr hermit. Uhh... tagging @misfitmccoward​, @applesofthemoon​, @yeoldesouthpole​, @lostboywriting​, @kitkat-bar​, @transversely, and @mme-yersinia​!

Five of my own fics I’d rec.

🐻🌠👋🗻FRIENDS🍦💎🔪🏄LEND💞🦆🕵️😲A👊👌🤟🙌HAND🤝🧙🔎💖- Gravity Falls, Mabel & Multi-Bear & Hand Witch and a smidgen of Ducktective... sorta.

This fic was a stretch for me but to this day I’m pretty proud of it!  There’s a few rough spots I might massage out if I went back to it, but this story marked the first thing I’ve ever written for Gravity Falls.  It’s a comedy story and the jokes seem to have landed well with people.  It’s also a casefic!  It does a lot of things!  I feel like this story has good energy.  Gravity Falls compels me as a canon because even when it gets dark, there’s always a joke around the corner, and I was trying to go for those vibes here (though this is not what I’d call a dark fic).  I think it holds together and I’m still just really proud of it.

Chimera - Gemini (archive-locked), Heather/Sierra.

As always, on the reread I can see spots I’d smooth out or adjust.  Still, I think this does what I set it out to do: it’s a creepy sexy horror story, written for an exchange and on a deadline, for a fandom I’d never touched before (kudos to the requestee for their incredible prompts tho).  I had a lot of fun writing this story where the MC having killed her stalker only compounds her problems... readers seemed to really get what I was going for with the ending of this too.  How else can you really know your thing has landed?

Incidental Violations of Kel Fraternization Code - Machineries of Empire (archive-locked), Cheris/Jedao.

Someone in the reviews described this fic as ruthless.  Someone else said service top Jedao was living rent-free in their bread after reading this.  Someone else on another website wanted to discuss the fic!  I’m always the moon when someone likes a thing I wrote, but someone wanting to discuss what I wrote?  My heart...!  There is meat on those bones, there is.  There is some staying power in there.

Anyway it’s a Cheris/Jedao missing scene set during the siege in Ninefox Gambit, and it felt like a risk to write and still retrospectively does tbh.  My favorite smut fics also function as character studies, and character relationship studies, and by that benchmark this one feels successful.  I think I wrote this over the period of a few days?  As someone whose writing pace has slowed to a crawl in the past few years, I long to return to the groove.

A Season Under the Kandrona - Animorphs, Aldrea & Alloran & Seerow & Garoff. 

This is set while Andalites were living on the Yeerk homeworld, a really underexplored time period in canon... I’m kind of obsessed with Seerow now tbh?  I love him.  He’s my almost complete nonentity background character blorbo.  I also love Aldrea, with all her vicious, terrible flaws... the Animorphs holiday exchange landed me with a challenge to write a story solely focusing on the aliens.  Yeerk/Andalite politics have always fascinated me.  Aldrea is really young in this story, but I’ve always loved a tale where you know more than the narrator does, and can connect the dots independent of what they think or feel.  Youth and naivete makes for its own type of unreliable narrator.  It was a pleasure to dig back in a canon time period that remains mostly unwritten.

long still sea - Blade of the Immortal, Rin & Anotsu & Hyakurin & Magatsu & Manji, but mostly about Rin and Anotsu.

Written for Yuletide in the space of an afternoon.  How DID I do it?  This was written at a time when I was maximally embittered at the BotI ending, and this is my fix-it, which I still think is a pretty interesting story and an ending I wouldn’t have minded seeing - “more adventures await” is always an implication that, when it appears at the end of a beloved story, heartens me... These days I feel a bit differently about Rin’s final choice in the manga, but at this time I wanted to explore alternative options, and how whatever choices she made, she was going to lose something.  Making the merciful choice - if it even was merciful - was never going to be easy, or unpainful.  I still regard this as a really cohesive piece.

[tomeandflickcorner]

Episode Review- The Real Ghostbusters: The Boogeyman is Back

Well, this is quite the landmark episode.  Not only do we have the return of an old advisory, but it’s also the first appearance of new recurring characters.  Although, that second part is probably not something to be pleased about.

We open with the Ghostbusters battling a ghost atop the Twin Towers.  (Because, in case you’ve forgotten, this show aired long before 9/11.) I do give the episode some credit because the ghost they’re fighting does have an interesting design.  Anyway, this particular ghost ends up putting up a pretty good fight, countering the Ghostbusters’ attempts to trap them by firing off laser beams from their eye.  In a shocking turn of events, one of the ghost’s attacks knocks Egon off the side of the building, and for a brief moment, the episode actually makes us think that Egon seemingly fell to his death.  Of course, the show isn’t about to go THAT dark.  Conveniently, Winston happened to be piloting the Ecto-2 and managed to catch Egon as he fell.  Before much longer, the Ghostbusters are able to successfully trap the ghost they’re fighting.  With the job done, Winston, Peter and Ray (as well as Slimer, who tagged along on this case), all express their relief that Egon is okay.  Egon, on the other hand, insists he wasn’t the least bit shaken by his near-death experience.  Though I can’t help but notice that his voice seemed a bit more wooden than usual.

Later on, the Ghostbusters are back at the Firehouse, getting ready to go to bed.  Once again, the Ghostbusters start bringing up the fact that Egon nearly died that evening, and remarking how brave he was about the whole ordeal.  Which seemed a bit insensitive to me.  Did they consider the possibility that Egon might not want to be reminded about what nearly happened?  Either way, Egon once again insists that he wasn’t the least bit shaken after his almost fatal fall.  However, as the others fall asleep, we get our first real indication that Egon isn’t as stoic about things as he was pretending to be.  In fact, he’s having difficulty falling asleep, with his mind constantly going back to what nearly happened to him.  To try and calm his nerves, Egon decides to head downstairs to make himself a mug of hot chocolate and watch a movie.  Unfortunately, the movie he selects ends up being a particularly grim movie about vampires, which obviously doesn’t help matters. (Incidentally, I found myself relating to Egon here.  I remember this one time I woke up from a nightmare.  I turned on the TV to try and calm down and was immediately greeted by the image of the Blue Man Group.  Not exactly the sort of image you want to see when you’re trying to get back to sleep after a bad dream.)  

Still, Egon manages to make it to the end of the movie.  Though he’s seemingly even more shaken up than before.  Regardless, he forces himself to go back to bed, telling himself he’s not scared and that he’s brave, like the others said.  (Someone should really tell him that bravery isn’t the absence of fear.)  Despite Egon’s attempts at giving himself a pep talk, it’s clear that he actually is scared.  It then cuts to that other dimension, where the Boogieman has been trapped since Egon’s Ghost Bomb sealed him away, way back in The Boogieman Cometh.  But it seems that the intensity of Egon’s fear is enough to break through the seal that’s kept the Boogieman trapped.  Which grants the Boogieman the chance to escape once again, emerging through the closet portal that opened up within the Firehouse.

Yeah, I have questions about this.  You’re telling me that nobody else has felt intense fear during that span of time since we last saw the Boogieman?  We’re really supposed to believe that the fear Egon is feeling right now is more intense and potent than anybody else on Earth has experienced?  Seems a bit much to swallow, but for the sake of the plot, we just have to accept it.

Anyway, when the Ghostbusters see that the Boogieman is roaming free again, they’re quick to grab their Proton Packs and open fire.  The Boogieman jumps out of the window, and the Ghostbusters all run outside to pursue him.  But despite their best efforts, the Boogieman manages to elude them by taking advantage of the lingering fear Egon is still feeling.  The Ghostbusters announce that they have to find the Boogieman quickly, because as long as he’s loose in the city, the children are all in danger. Especially, as Winston states, the Junior Ghostbusters.

Oh, who are the Junior Ghostbusters?  That’s a good question, because this is the very first time they’re referenced in the show, despite the Ghostbusters acting like they’ve known them for a while. From what I can gather from this episode, the Junior Ghostbusters are three kids, Donald, Jason and Catherine, who are the sole members of some Ghostbusters fanclub.  Only they’re in close enough contact with the actual Ghostbusters to have their phone number, and Jason was even given his own PKE Meter from Egon.

At the current time, the three kids are apparently having a sleepover at Jason’s house, with Donald in the middle of telling the other two a scary story involving a monster going after a boy.  Donald’s thrilling story is cut off when Catherine and Jason beg him to stop. They insist they’re not scared, but that it’s getting late, and Jason’s mother had said that she wouldn’t allow them to have any more sleepovers if they didn’t get a full night’s sleep.  At that moment, the bedside table lamp starts to flicker and dies, and the PKE Meter that Jason got from Egon activates.   This is because the Boogieman is coming closer.  Which is driven home when we see the Boogieman frightening a little puppy that was sitting atop the roof of a high-rise somewhere.  Which begs the question as to what horrible pet owner put that puppy out onto the roof in the first place.  And no, I refuse to accept the explanation that it’s the same as putting the dog outside in the backyard for the night.  What if the puppy got too close to the edge?  Please explain to me how this doesn’t count as animal neglect.

Anyway, Jason determines that the PKE Meter is displaying negative readings, and he decides to call up Egon to ask him about it.  Jason’s phone call comes right as Egon was admitting to his teammates how it was his fault the Boogieman was loose, and reminding them that the Boogieman wasn’t actually a ghost, so their equipment will not have much effect on him. When Jason tells Egon that his PKE Meter was showing a valance reading of minus nine, Egon realizes that it means the Boogieman is very close to them.  He instructs the kids to get out of the house and wait outside for them to arrive.  Of course, the Junior Ghostbusters don’t get the chance to do anything, because the Boogieman bursts through the bedroom door like the Kool-Aid Man, blocking their escape.  (And I’m wondering why Jason’s mother didn’t seem to respond to the sound of the door breaking open, because we never see her make an appearance.)

Thankfully, the Ghostbusters arrive at Jason’s apartment before the Boogieman can actually do anything to the kids.  But the Boogieman gets away again by roaring at them before once again jumping out of the window.  After checking up on the kids, the Ghostbusters decide to head back to the Firehouse to come up with a plan.  And then they just leave the Junior Ghostbusters behind, not bothering to think about what might happen if the Boogieman came back after they left. Remember how, in the last episode with the Boogieman, Winston volunteered to stand guard over Megan and Kenny Carter while Peter, Egon and Ray worked on solving the problem?  Yeah, apparently they’re not bothering to do that this time.  Sure, Donald, Jason and Catherine appear to be a bit older then Megan and Kenny were. But the point still stands.

Meanwhile, the Boogieman has found his way to a closed amusement park called the Big Apple Amusement Park, which he magically transforms into a nightmarish amusement park, announcing that it’s the ‘perfect place for fear to grow and thrive.’  Of course, the Big Apple Amusement Park doesn’t actually exist.  Which begs the question as to why the show writers didn’t just have the Boogieman lay claim to Coney Island. Seriously, why go through the trouble of making up a fictional amusement park for your story when there’s a very famous amusement park right there in one of New York City’s neighborhoods?  Were the show writers worried about getting a copyright strike or something?

Back at the Firehouse, Egon has managed to modify one of the Proton Throwers into an Atomic Destabilizer, which can convert solid matter into its ethereal counterpart.  (Strangely, Peter, Winston and Janine seem to be clueless on what this means until Ray comments on the matter, though I didn’t think Egon’s explanation was hard to understand.  Maybe the show writers felt they needed to spell it out for the youngest viewers.)  Armed with the Atomic Destabilizer, the Ghostbusters head back out to track down the Boogieman, with Slimer once again tagging along (after a strange moment where Slimer briefly pretends to box with an unseen opponent until Slimer’s shadow inexplicitly gains sentience and punches Slimer.  Seriously, what was that?)

The Ghostbusters eventually track down the Boogieman to the amusement part he’d laid claim to.  But just when they locate the Boogieman, he uses his powers to transform a nearby rollercoaster train into this flying dragonlike creature, which quickly snatches up the Ghostbusters and drags them through a gateway in the shape of a face, after two clown mannequins strip them of their Proton Packs.  As a result, the Ghostbusters are effectivly captured, with no way to fight back.  This leaves Slimer alone to freak out and essentially run off.  However, it’s here that Slimer’s presence does serve a bit of a purpose, as he’s able to go and get help.  Although, he doesn’t go to Janine, who we have seen is fully capable of coming to the Ghostbusters’ rescue.  (See Janine Melnitz, Ghostbuster.)  Instead, he goes right to the Junior Ghostbusters. Because having the kid characters come to the rescue of the adults doesn’t send a problematic message at all.

Regardless, Slimer leads the Junior Ghostbusters to the Boogieman’s amusement park, where they find the discarded Proton Packs.  Donald, Catherine and Jason are easily able to pick three of them up, with Slimer taking the fourth one, (aren’t the Proton Packs supposed to be heavy?) and manage to carry them through the same face-shaped gateway the Ghostbusters were dragged through. One has to ask why the Boogieman left the gateway open in the first place, but I suppose it could be argued that he didn’t expect the Ghostbusters to have any sort of backup. Either way, they manage to locate the Ghostbusters just as they’re being cornered by the Boogieman and his minions.  (Because the Boogieman has minions now.)  Upon seeing the kids, the Boogieman turns his attention onto them.  But as the Boogieman approaches them menacingly, Egon manages to overcome his fears and breaks out of the ropes that had been wrapped around him, charging forward to come to the aid of the kids.  Jason slides Egon the Proton Pack that had the Atomic Destabilizer attached to it (which was a pretty lucky chance when you think about it, since the Junior Ghostbusters hadn’t been present when Egon was discussing what it did), which enables Egon to effectivly trap the Boogieman and his minions in the Ghost Traps the Junior Ghostbusters tossed out.  With the Boogieman captured, the other Ghostbusters are also freed from their binds.  And the episode ends with Catherine asking Egon if he was scared, and Egon announcing that he was, and that he’s okay with admitting it this time.

Well, I admit the episode had potential with the return of the Boogieman.  And I suppose it was somewhat fitting that Egon was the reason why the Boogieman got loose again, considering their personal history that went back to when Egon was a little boy.  Even though I still raise an eyebrow at the implication that only Egon’s fear was intense enough to break through the seal that was keeping the Boogieman trapped inside his realm.  However, maybe this episode was trying to send a subtle moral about how dangerous it could be to not admit it when you’re scared.  Though if that’s what they were going for, I have to say that the Teen Titans episode Fear Itself managed to present that moral far more effectivly.  (If you haven’t watched that particular episode, you really should.)  As for the introduction of the Junior Ghostbusters? As I’ve already said, I find it questionable how the episode had these kid characters being the ones to come to the Ghostbusters’ rescue, as it does send a potentially problematic message about putting kids into dangerous situations.  It’s also a bit strange how the show introduced Donald, Catherine and Jason in the way they did, with them already knowing and being on such familiar terms with the actual Ghostbusters.  Of course, I am aware that the inclusion of the Junior Ghostbusters was one of the additions that the consultant team Q5 deemed necessary when the network started to interfere with the show.  Because they seemed to think that kids needed to see kid characters in their shows. But even so, one has to ask why they didn’t just bring back some of the kid characters they’d already introduced in past episodes.  For instance, Kenny Fenderman from the episode Masquerade.  If the network and Q5 wanted to introduce a team of Junior Ghostbusters, why didn’t they bring Kenny and his friends back?  After all, that previous episode had Peter humoring Kenny by naming him a member of the Ghostbusters Auxiliary.  Not to mention how it had already been established that Kenny was a huge Ghostbusters fanboy, to the point where he even made his own cosplay jumpsuit.  So not having Kenny included among the Junior Ghostbusters is a huge missed opportunity.  

(Click here for more Ghostbusters reviews)

[gigglemugger]

Transformations.

Fandom: Sundown: The Vampire In Retreat.

Pairing: Robert Van Helsing/Sandy White.

Synopsis:

In which Sandy tells how she became a vampire in the first place. Sandy character study babey!

Part of a larger fanfic I got bits and pieces written for, in which I make this pairing sad :(

The original name was Apollon Emos: The Ballad of Robert and Sandy (like Daytripper, my other fanfic for a different fandom, I'm keeping a theme here) so when I post the entire work, if ever, I'll incorporate this into that OR change this into that. Not sure yet.

Word Count: 1,208 (v short).

AO3 Tags: Domestic Fluff, Character Study, Fluff and Angst. Nothing major, nothing explicit, they are in bed but they're about to go to sleep. No coffins cause people got curtains.

CW: Death. Stalking.

AO3 link.

Notes:

Ok, so, it’s already a habit of the writer to get silly little movies or worlds and write something extensively TOO DEEP for the source material, whatever you take for deep, etc. In this case, I took these characters and boy did I RUN with them. Like, can you even say they’re OOC if they have at most like 10 min of screen time? I don't think so. Anyway, yeah. The thing about this is that the plan was to do a whole character study of these two called Apollon Emos, in which I make this movie sad! It never materialized, but I have bits written, and I might still turn this into that (and make alterations). I'll decide it later. This is, in any case, a short excerpt of it. I'm on tumblr @gigglemugger. Tell me if you read this cause my God. It's the most obscure Fandom since the Evil Clergyman.

Robert asked Sandy about where she died. Sandy said it was a place far away from Purgatory, a church where she had gone to light a candle for herself.

She had been walking the halls of the little wooden place, incidentally the same as where she had been baptized, and she had been crying, because she felt it was the only place where crying was acceptable. At home, she was chipper. Here, she accepted that it felt like defeat to come back. He listened to her story patiently.

It happened right before the war was over, when having Veronica Lake hair was still fashionable. Sometime around nineteen forty… Three? Either way, she had the same sort of makeup that she wears everyday—Victory red lipstick, a little bit of eyeshadow for effect—but the clothes were a bit different. Looking back now, she knew that the church was a place where she wouldn't be looked down upon for it, as long as there weren't any faithful servants praying on the benches. To them, she'd probably look like a whore.

She remembered there was no wind, or overhead lights, or even a priest that she could talk to, but there was a row of candles.

"I looked at the saints and the figures for a while," she continued, thinking about it for the first time in a long while."I wanted to ask them why they didn't make me into an actress. I wanted to be one so bad, but Los Angeles was just horrible, and I just didn’t have what it took to live out there. I overworked, I auditioned. I did go to Paramount to try out for a small part as an extra, but I got beat and I think that was the last straw."

“Anyway, the saints didn’t answer, so I lit a candle and walked out. I was really religious back then, which is something I came back and forth on afterwards I guess… (here, she hugged her knees) Anyway, I looked around and the streets were empty, so the plan was to walk home to my parents. My mom was cooking dinner. I was a bit underdressed, so it was cold; I remember that for some reason; and there was this guy who was stalking me." Robert perked up, the yellow light of the lamp on their nightstand illuminating her blonde hair and his naked torso, the white satin sheets rippling around him.

"Stalking you?" Sandy nodded.

"Yeah, he had been doing that since I arrived. It wasn't the first time that I had been stalked," she admitted, and his jaw clenched almost imperceptibly to anyone else but Sandy, who was becoming really good at telling these things about Robert. She laughed it off, "It was 30 years ago, hardly anything to write home about now, but it worried me. I mean I was right to be worried, he turned me into a vampire. I don't think he meant to, though."

“Anyway, I kept walking, looking for a police officer, but there weren’t any, because my town was really small. Bigger than Purgatory, but definitely much smaller than L.A. I walked faster, but you know it was no use. He got me a little bit before I got home. When he was over, he left me on the sidewalk. I woke up in the morgue. I think everyone thought I was dead, so they called the police, which then zipped me up. No autopsy, so I knew it was just a few hours later because some of the films I auditioned for included noir crime movies and the scripts were always more brutal than the finished products. I remember I was terrified and hungry. I got up and I had to contend with the fact that not only was I not dead, I was also naked,” she laughed a sort of hysterical little laugh. “It was bad.”

“I got out discreetly, realized I could do that, you know, be sneaky in an inhuman way, which was shocking, and when I came home my mom screamed. It was awful. Not only that, I was religious because of them, so you can imagine the sort of names they called me, both of my parents. Demon was the nicest. And they smelled great too…” Sandy had a morbid sense of humor, but even she couldn’t deliver this joke well enough, so it fell limp between them. Robert just stated, so she continued. “I made it to my room, took my stuff and left. That was the last time I saw my parents, or that town.”

They were silent. She had almost forgotten where she was—in her bed, in her house, with her, for all intents and purposes, boyfriend of two weeks, far away from nineteen forty three?—when he spoke again.

"Do you ever fear he might turn up in Purgatory?"

"Oh, I don't have to fear that," she said, bubbly again. He glanced at her, enquiring with his eyes. "Don't worry, he's dead."

"How do you know?” She smiled a little humble smile, pointing at herself with both hands.

"I got him quick enough," she clarified when he looked confused. "I killed a few people… You know that already. I killed a lot of people.” He nodded. That made sense, of course, but she knew it wasn’t easy for him to completely accept it. He would never have to kill for food, after all. That sort of thing was in the past. “Anyway, this guy wasn't very good at hiding. He knew the police around where I was from was incompetent, and he kept killing there. I think he was the only vampire I killed up until… You know. When he saw I was alive, he even smiled a little, said it was nice I found my way back to him, like a pretty little prize. I think he said he followed me all the way from L.A., but I don’t remember, I was so mad I just killed him. It felt good. I didn’t wanna be a vampire. I didn’t think of myself as a demon, like my parents, or even Mardulak seemed to, but I definitely thought of myself as a monster. I tried to hold myself back from drinking blood for as long as I could, then I fell on eating criminals… What most of our kind does when they are sentimental, I suppose.”

"Yeah," Robert said and laid back down. There were a few things that he didn't yet understand about Sandy, but he was starting to get there. More than that, he knew that these things only made him like her more. Even through the killing? The bloodsucking? He thought, but said something else out loud, "Wasn't he older? Stronger?" She shrugged.

"He wasn’t that much older, maybe months? Also, I was a woman. He had his guard down." Robert nodded, and then smiled, cocky.

"Well, too bad,” he said, now moving up to put his arms around her, who laid her head on his chest gladly. “I'd love to have gotten him myself.”

"I'm sure," she answered with a smile, looking up at his face, observing it without the glasses. "Don't worry, though, I got it."

[v2xe]

i got too carried away and ended up hitting the tag limit 🫠 hope it's alright if i just put this here instead

#SDJFGSDFNM asgsdfasd AGSDF GURGLES LIKE IM CHOKING ON MOUTHWASH FINALLY SOME GOOD FUCKING FOOD#I CANT BELOIEVE IM ONLY SEEING THIS FIVE DAYS AFTER IT WAS POSTED good lird#see i understand why there would be a split in the fandom abt this bc there is also a split in tumblr user v2xe#when i first played my reading was that sarah and jack's relationship was INTENDED to be portrayed as romantic#only the writers kind of expected them sharing some friendly lines + jack being the protag and sarah#being the princess would be enough for the audience to go “ah yes. romance”#and that the tragic and borderline romantic subtext jack has w astos was just incidental in the way it happens when writers#accidentally end up developing male characters and their relationships more than female ones#esp since se's games' track record w this is…….not great#(<-she is haunted by secondhand accounts from the tranches of ff16's writing)#and tbh i was ready to just assume this was my own little interpretation where it isn't that deep but it could be. and i could just build#myself a fun little sandbox in the hole i dug where the story could have expanded certain themes further but didn't#but after reading that one interview where the writers were like "maybe sarah was in love with him maybe she was just infatuated with what

#he represented" i turned into one of those shitty gore stick figures because what the fuck!! the writing agrees??#which meshes perfectly w her being sheltered which!! while i thought abt it i never really went into it like this and it makes!! sense!!#& a the same time yeah!! sarah IS a symbol. which having played ff1 i think was a cool way to go about expanding her role from that gam#oh so she's a symbol? she's a reward? the motivator that pulls you along to start your journey? ok fine then. i'll give you a Symbol#and if you asked me i think jack genuinely cared/s(?) about her (just not in a romantic sense)#and unlike other things i say here i can say w 100% confidence that the writers wanted us to notice he cares#like it always fascinated me how in the jp version jack's speech patterns change DRASTICALLY whenever he's speaking to sarah#idk much japanese but the formal/respectful way he spoke stood out massively compared to his usual form of speech#i get that this could be harder to portray in english without seeming unnatural but i'm sad they didn't include this tbh#bc we don't see him talk to ANYONE like this in the game i believe- not the king or queen not astos not anyone#they WANTED you to notice. they put a big neon sign pointing at jack and sarah there's SOMETHING important here#(tangent for some reason the spanish version got this backwards and it's ash and jed who address sarah formally while jack speaks in the same blunt manner...but that#version was so rushed it still has placeholder text in the script so i woulnt put too much faith in it having like…authorial intent lmao)

#& in general there are some very slight differences between the eng and jp ver that imo carry v different implications?#like how in eng jack just kinda sounds annoyed at sarah's request and his “of course” comes across as exasperated and sarcastic rather than#genuinely polite- which makes the scene of him tapping his foot seem like an intentional gesture of “stfu already” rather than “desperately#trying to contain the wave pure compulsive rage that drives me for 2 minutes so i can be polite to this girl" yknow? #anyway what i mean is that its interesting how his affection for sarah was also "weaponized" for the plan like the one he has for his friends #and yet sarah's role is more as a symbol than an emotional catalyst? to me at least-& i keep wondering WHY it's diff for her in particular #&it's not bc she was WRITTEN poorly i feel-if the writers did fall for that kind of trap we wouldn't have sophia or neon imo #it almost feels like theres all these conspicuous arrow signs pointing at something but i cant fucking see what it is??

#but after reading this i can see how that was kinda the point i think #at the end of the day this is jack's story. and us experiencing everything from his pov at all times is a big part of why the story works so well #it makes sense he wouldn't care for anyone's emotions or inner thoughts until it's too late- therefore the game doesn't show them #& sadly that includes sarah and what's going through her head #bc i kind of wish we couldve seen more of it- what was she thinking as she died? what did she feel? was it clean and straightfoward? #hope? despair? sadness? nothing at all? too many things at once? did she feel betrayed as she remembered? did she feel resentment for the #one man who could change her world by watching her die? how was she any different from the organic reconoissance unit Iving dead in a floati #-ng island somewhere surrounded by dead bats and FUCK I haven't even talked about astos yet #it's a tragedy that despite them having canonically interacted multiple times we never get to hear any of it :(( #tho i have to put a big * on all this because i know that this could very much be me critiquing the game on what i WISH it did #rather than on how it archieved what it was actually trying to do #imo sarah has the markings of god's little lamb(symbol of hope) most likely to be slaughtered #dare i say final fantasy's very own anthy himemiya #there's something about a character whose purpose is to essentially be a symbol #and who is also a sheltered young woman whose hopefulness is not a flaw but who is perhaps too idealistic for her own good that really intrigues me!! #and from that view i like how you can see her unwavering idealism as sheltered naivety or as something good and celebrated(? in the narrative #anyway sarah both as a character and how she fits into jack's story leave so so much room for fun stuff and i really appreciate that #in a better world i think they would have a lovely friendship

#ok running out of power now so ill stop and hope this doesnt read like gibberish or realize i missed sth if i reread it in the morning #i am so so sorry for the wall of tags none of this has much of a throughline this is just thought vomit bc this post made me Think #by which i mean this post is rearranging my brain and activating neural pathways i didn't even know i had rn #& in all seriousness im so so so glad i saw this!! even if i wish i had done it sooner!! its great to read someone's thoughts like this <33

"You Never Forget Your First Love."

The other day, a mutual (hi! you know who you are I think probably hello hi! thank you for the Posting Impetus!) said something that made me curious (for, like, the 80th time, actually; lol. I Have Thoughts) about something: what's the split on people who subscribe to the "Stranger of Paradise probably intended for us to believe that Jack & Sarah were in love" mindset, vs. not? In general, but ESPECIALLY around these parts.

I genuinely didn't read it that way myself (& I do NOT normally give media (general) this much credit, but the writing in this game is sublime; I had no choice but to fully engage Scholar Mode on it), + I think it's interesting that SPECIFICALLY any of my fellow tumblr people / AO3-heads / Gay People Online / etc. seem to have. (I expect nothing from people who haven't been basting themselves in the same online sub-subcultures as me for over a decade. They're allowed to write wrong things on wikis, and have done so already; it's whatever.)

I wanna metapost badly again, so let's go. Join me. No poll. If you have an opinion on this, I'm looking directly into your eyes and beckoning you towards your own keyboard + also the reblog button / comment section, like a weird ghost. What did you think when you first played the game?? What do you think right now? What are you about to think after you have read a bunch of my words. Tell Me. I Need To Know This.

Spoilers for, idk, everything? Today we will use everything we've got to talk about Princess Sarah.

1. As a Narrative Element

This game makes a point of referring to Sarah as things like "a symbol of hope and peace" as often as possible, & when it isn't doing that she's usually in the role of An Object Or Device Of Some Kind, anyway. She's important because she's capable of holding light and dark in balance & SOMEONE'S gotta hold onto this dark crystal for safekeeping, and also we're gonna need to upset that balance on purpose later. There's that conversation in the Wicked Arbor about whether the Strangers would "choose" her (as opposed to "treasure") as the "reward" for succeeding in their mission[1], & there's the one in the Sunken Shrine where Jed asks Jack what he thinks of her and Jack says that he doesn't care about her as a person[2] BUT that protecting her is mission-critical (lol), too.

Sarah's death is metaphorically charged. It's the point of no return: the dark crystal breaks, the balance of light & dark gets extremely ruined, & Literally All The Darkness In Cornelia converges in one place (Fool's Missive XXVII). That's the payoff for the "symbol of hope and peace" motif, and communicating this idea that "the metaphorical light of hope just For Real Died, Like Catastrophically Imploded, No Take-Backs" feels to me like it was the highest priority here. Second-highest goes to "Jack had way more humanity before, but he set it aside on purpose and is actively in the middle of losing the rest of it." "Sort of." "I'm not getting into what counts as humanity or doesn't because if I did we would be here forever."

Basically, I'm saying that the tidiest read on the situation is "Jack despairs because Sarah dying means in a very literary and final way that everything is ruined forever, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with, like, Love (romantic)." I don't think the text of the game is particularly signaling that Love (romantic) is involved, and I think that if it meant to, it would be more obvious about it. You could bundle "an romance" into the "humanity" thing if you wanted to, but I'm not inclined to, based on some additional list items that you can read below this one.

[1] The fact that Neon ALSO says she feels bad for her for being thought of in this way only reinforces my conviction that the game is pointing at Sarah & yelling "REMEMBER THAT SHE IS MOSTLY A SYMBOL!", tbh. Who wants to go point out how freaky the mechanics of Being An Royalty are w/ me and the boys??

[2] I will give the Wiki WrongPosters this: I can totally see this as some kind of irony thing, given that he's still missing like a fucktillion of his memories when he says it. However! As mentioned above, I have other reasons not to read it as evidence that he was ever, like, romantically interested in her.

2. As a Sheltered Youth™

We don't have a TON of information to work with RE: Sarah as, like, a person, but here are a couple of hard facts to start with: she's 19 (per the data book, but she'd have to be somewhere in the 18-to-early-20's age range regardless or her whole deal wouldn't really make much sense, imo. She's a baby...!), and she's royalty. I think this ties into her utility as a walking metaphor, among other things; she's archetypically young, fresh, & idealistic. I'd call her naïve but the game obviously isn't interested in portraying it as a weakness, so positive words only; why not.

You could argue that people look to her as a symbol of hope because she hasn't directly experienced enough strife to exhibit hopelessness or fear in response to bad news in the abstract. I find it interesting that before Jack, like, knocks the wind out of her & tells Sophia to take her outside so she can see for herself how bad things have gotten at the end of the game, she says that her duty is to die with her people if she has to, & it doesn't even seem to occur to her that she could lead at least some of them away to safety...? When she changes her mind, she still talks about herself as a symbol before she ever uses the word "leader". She sees HERSELF in terms of symbols and metaphors, and takes action based on her designated role As One Of Those. Not very practical.

There's also the dialogue you can have with the queen the first time you're allowed to run around in the throne room at the beginning of the game, where she asks Jack to smile in front of her daughters (NOT just Mia; daughters, plural). Even if she only means "dude can you be polite please," the fact that this is The thing she has to say to Jack is telling. Is it going to upset your 19-year-old daughter to see that the Guy Whose Job It Is To Kill Monsters looks serious? Why do you think this? Does your 19-year-old daughter understand how serious the situation is, generally speaking? Do you not WANT her to for some reason? Boats don't work anymore unless a weird elf messes with them first. Not thinking very hard about the implications of this is something a sheltered person does.

Residual time loop un-memories aside, a young woman in this situation is so obviously going to have a huge crush on Jack Garland no matter what. He Is So Cool, first of all, & he's also Different from the adult men she gets to see on an everyday basis (family, guards, rando townspeople[3]...). It's not like the political social scene could POSSIBLY be thriving in this world, either; it all seems to be one kingdom we're dealing with and they're kind of busy with the external threat of being Under Fucking Attack By Monsters. Does she even get fun treats like "handsome visiting dignitaries" & what-have-you? The game doesn't present us with any potential options, here. Jack is mysterious, he has special-boy Warrior of Light status, his one job & apparent life's purpose is protecting the kingdom she loves, he's pretty nice to her (even in later cycles he at least goes out of his way to be polite!), & additionally, he's shredded. THIS makes sense to me.

There's a Q&A in the data book that has something to say about JACK as a symbol & what that has to do with this whole thing but we'll get there. We'll get there.

[3] Tangent: what's up with how Cornelia's entire adult male population appears to consist of aging queens. Why did they only make models that look Like That for the NPCs? It's awesome but I have 1 quastion

3. JACK JUMPSCARE !

I'm not about to say that he's just humoring her, or anything, but please humor ME for one second & put yourself in Jack's shoes. Not the default shoes; we can have more fun than that. Maybe the Banded Boots. Blurple ones? Shaped like a cartoon would wear them? Big spikes on the back for no reason? I love those things. Anyway, you're Jack. You're working for literally the king, & the work means Everything to you for reasons you can't even necessarily explain except to say that it JUST does. The king's eldest daughter (very young adult; Never Been Outdoors; a little overly-sociable but nice enough & what do you expect from a princess, anyway) has imprinted on you like a duckling for whatever reason. You would be nice to this person, yes? You'd be patient with her while you're in town. You have Brutal Murders to be doing, but not until, like, 2 days from now, or whatever; you're sharing space with her in some capacity in the meantime & it's in your best interests to keep her happy. (You probably even enjoy doing this, if you're Jack of a Way Earlier Cycle; I'm in no way ruling that out. Sharing your music collection with an enthusiastic Baby Adult? That's fun. I think he was probably having fun. Okay, you can step out of the fun purple shoes if you want; the Humoring Me Minute has concluded; thanks.)

Also, @2000sanimeop and I think that if Jack felt that way about her Astos would have been a little More Something about how much it was gonna suck for him when she died. In Fool's Missive XXVII he uses the word "painful," but that's about it. He doesn't even bring it up in XXV, which is the one where he says he's curious about whether she'd survive being turned into a fiend (side note: Astos fucking rocks. Why did he write that down?? I love him). & Hey SPEAKING OF ASTOS,

4. I wouldn't put Jackstos on a wiki, either.

The writing in Stranger of Paradise, SERIOUSLY, WITHOUT EXAGGERATION, is some of the best I've seen in literally anything ever. It suits not just its medium but also its sort of Place in History Relative to Other Video Games & the things it chose to DO with that medium & that niche INSANELY well. It is CUSTOMIZED. It's SO INTENTIONAL. I can't get too far into this or we'll be here all day, but the essence of what I want to say here is: there are relatively few facts presented to us by this game, compared to the implications we can go about drawing from those facts & other, external sources of context.

Sarah calls Jack her first love; that's a fact. No facts are presented to us that REALLY say much one way or the other[4] about what Jack thinks of this, himself; "fucktillion memories missing" Jack says he doesn't care, but he's missing a fucktillion of his memories, and DLC2 Jack has a set of dialogue options (hi Anne the Malboro I love you Anne the Malboro) that can point either way depending on what the player chooses, which is kind of nothing, on balance. As the audience, we can (should!) draw whatever conclusion we want about it, but none of those conclusions are text.

[4] I WILL GET TO THE DATA BOOK IN ONE SECOND. HOLD ON.

And, okay, please let me level with you. Let's be on the same page. Jack & Astos had some kind of thing going on, imo, OBVIOUSLY, but I want to be CLEAR and I want to get CREDIT for the things I'M bringing to the table to help generate this conviction. I drew that conclusion & I read that reading based on subtext, context, personal history, personal preference, & sheer gay zest for life. It is also, emphatically, NOT TEXT.

Astos refers to Jack with the ol' "...friend" in Fool's Missive XXI. He calls him "my Jack" in Fool's Missive XXXI. Canonically, textually, he has some big fucking COMPLICATED fucking feelings about this man. These are facts. If you're playing this game as Some Guy, I can see how you could potentially absorb these facts & still pay them much less regard[5] than I did & continue to. My argument here is that god I wish I lived in a world where Some Guy could extend the same courtesy to me and not treat Sarah's textual affection for Jack as something that necessarily indicates Some Kind Of Reciprocal Romantic Whatever, Definitely, Obviously, Of Course.

[5] Longer Tangent: I have been informed that the Some Guys of the world are currently pretty good at Recognizing a character that behaves in a way that's Pretty Gay, but tend to stop there, possibly for the combined reasons that A. they're not very familiar with a lot of the the ways gay relationships often work (you know, soul resonance. mutual recognition. sharing a brain etc.) and B. the Object Of Affection is usually the player character and they subconsciously shy away from thinking of a Guy They're Supposed To Identify With as gay. This is practically a lead-in to an entire separate post I could make, so I'll leave it at that, lol.

The writing is too good for that kind of assumption! I'M SERIOUS!! It's mind-blowingly subtle & endlessly fascinating to hold up to the light & view from every possible angle, and "Jack & Sarah were in love" + "Jack & Astos were in love" are BOTH ANGLES. I'm personally very very interested in giving the text credit for that. I think it's impressive. I think it's really, really cool, and I think it was on purpose. Speaking of which,

5. Word of God agrees with me, btw

This is from the Q&A section on page 156 of the Confidential File. The translations below are my own (I think they're straightforward enough, but lmk if you know more than me & I'm actually being stupid in there somewhere. Alt text has the JPN, if you want to copypaste it or something). Someone asked:

Why is it that you established Garland as someone Sarah has a romantic interest in?

The answer is from Daisuke Inoue (director, one of 3; the other 2 are from Team Ninja; he's from Square Enix):

That was because, from a narrative standpoint, we wanted Sarah to be the kind of person who holds onto hope. You can imagine that she saw the "hope" to save the world in Jack, a potential Warrior of Light. Sarah is seen by her people as a symbol of a bright future, but if there were nobody to give her hope, that might destabilize her emotionally. As for whether she felt genuine love for Jack, or just mistook her feelings of admiration towards him for "first love," we'll leave that to your interpretation.

The first time I read this, I thought the question was implying the aforementioned Reciprocal Something, but on closer inspection that doesn't even seem to be true! "思い人" seems to indicate a directional relationship; as in, the question assumes that Jack is an object of affection to Sarah, but assumes nothing about what Jack thinks.

Also, the answer uses the word "初恋" (hatsukoi), which is a very established Concept as far as "first love" goes, but in that one cutscene, Sarah says "初めての恋" (hajimete no koi), which is. Different, but I couldn't tell you how, lol. It's Not The Exact Same Phrase, but I'm not sure whether it's meaningfully different in this context. If I had to guess, I'd say that IF ANYTHING it could be a way of saying "first love" without invoking the cultural CONSTRUCT of First Love (as much)? But it's whatever. The localization holds up. All sources show that Sarah had Feelings about Jack, and all sources CONSPICUOUSLY neglect to mention Jack's feelings about her.

It was on purpose. This is my license to be as annoying as I want for one second here. I am right. All the other writing in this game is notably subtle, efficient, intentional, and skilled, AND ALSO, WHEN do you ever see anyone write such a richly beautiful, mostly-subtextual relationship between two men, which can easily be read as a romantic thing, and NOT explicitly canonize a very possible romantic relationship between at least one of those men and a woman, like not even in an interview or anything. What the fuck, man.

I'm putting away the Respectable Scholar Hat now. This is so funny. The person asking this question didn't EVEN go as far as assuming Jack & Sarah had any kind of Actual Romance going on, & the answer STILL dials it back to "she might have been conflating her feelings about Jack AS A SYMBOL with actual affection, also. We'll let you decide : ) ". This game is everything ever.

[handelplayssims]

Right. Back at the Wallace’s after having Candy go over and pick up things of Yuki’s and sell off things from what was once her home. Man. But not that that concerns the Wallace family. They had no clue about Yuki and no reason to be sad. Only I am the one who suffers.

Right, Ashlynn awoke with a sore back thanks to this low-quality bed. Might think about putting in a new one. And the all important thing while at it, figuring out what furniture style they like. I decided to pick up the Crosshatch Delight from Seasons, and with it, the Mid Century furniture as their particular favorites, though I also add Farmhouse, another décor style the specific bed is tagged for, for Ashlynn.

Anyway, it’s Neighborhood Brawl day, a randomized holiday that can pop up on occasion. Incidentally, Zayne can’t participate in it as a child. Santiago and Kiara don’t care but Ashlynn loves this holiday. Sounds about right, you hot-head you. Ohp, and there she goes. Off to work on a Saturday. Crime stops for no one!

Zayne. Just a thought. Maybe you eat your food not near the father you are currently grudging with, yeah? Anyway, I’m having Santiago fix up the better with firmness controls so that the mattress gives nice moodlets upon sleep. I’m turning Santiago’s shared sadness upon his wife’s discomfort into action! And then I’ll go upgrade those bathroom appliances like I was going to do. Once I’m done with that, I hear we have an alert for more mail meaning more celebuserum potions, which’ll combo nicely off of Santiago needing skill gain increase to get that promotion! I drink a confident one and set him to work writing up a self-help book. To combo off of his confident moodlet from doing good repair work. Oh and of course he drinks it in his son’s proximity, giving him that ultra tense moodlet again. Zayne, by the by, is doing homework, nerd he is.

So with that tense moodlet, what to do? ...I’d say he needs a break from this household. There is a neighborhood play area out and about. Let’s head on over and play space explorer! Santiago finished his book so let’s write another! Zayne’s still tense so a dip in the family pool should help. Aye! Kiara’s finally awake! And two hours before her daycare shift. Also at long last are we actually cooking for the family again. And it’s more grilled salmon. -shrugs- I mean it’s either this or fish tacos and I’d rather go for the one that’s salmon only. Though it ended up in awful quality. -shrugs- I blame routing making Ashlynn automatically go “Ooooh, son! I want to chat with my son!” Annnd tense moodlet on Zayne as father eats food near him again. Welp. I would have him run off elsewhere but I want to have Ashlynn actually fight people. I’m going to call up his closest friend to vent. Jace Cruz. Kid I made myself who’s also a genius.

And now I finally having Ashlynn fight a random dude off the street, my favorite way to celebrate this holiday. Guy named Brad Mayer, a file clerk. We punch his lights out and then we head home to snooze.

Welp it’s time. TIME FOR BEAR! Just before Zayne heads to bed even. Welp, lets head to bed then. Annd we got monsters under Zayne’s bed. Good thing Kiara is here to help! I would have her ask about the bear thing but she doesn’t seem to care as a teen. Zayne’s heading back to bed and Kiara’s going to have a bit of fun with the cat Scotch. She did and now it’s time for food for her. I was thinking of having her have some salmon but I think she could probably tell it wasn’t great. Besides which, inspired moodlet! Perfect for cooking and making a salad. And now both of her whims pull towards painting. And so we paint! Decided to paint the night sky. Do so like stars and that stuff. And then we had our kitty cat begging for attention.

Hmm. Painting didn’t turn out so well. Kinda just blue with some light dots around it. Ah well. Anyway, it’s 5AM so it’s well past time for-!

Neighborhood Watch!

Mt. Komorebi: The Kobayashi household recently moved in.

Evergreen Harbor: The Ferhat household recently moved in.

Elaine Thorne in the Thorne household has started a job as a Bean Blender in the Barista career.

Lucia Arellano in the Arellano household has died. Lucia was victim to a vicious chicken attack.

[elvensorceress]

wip Wednesday

tagged by my darlings,  @loveyourownsmiilee @rogerzsteven @spotsandsocks @imsupposedtobewritting

tagging! @ashavahishta @jacksadventuresinwriting @demieddie @gayeddiaz @hmslusitania @fleurdebeton @messyhairdiaz @ekstasisandangst @prettyboyandthekid @eddiediazisascorpio @buddiemidnights and anyone else if they’d like to share 💕

here’s your little dose of Love Spell for the week 🤗💕

There’s a blanket around Eddie’s shoulders even though the air in the house is warm. The night outside is warm as well. But his skin is cold. His muscles are stinging, stiff, solid with the ice crystals dripping through to his bones.

She can’t fix it. Not completely. But a brief touch in passing should no longer cause strangers pain. 

“I slowed it down. The volatile raging of your curse upon yourself,” she says as she picks through an assortment of dried leaves, herbs, flowers, fruits, and places them in a tea infuser. “Incidental or accidental contact shouldn’t strike at another person’s soul any longer. But anything with purpose will likely cause pain.” 

He shivers and pulls the thick, knitted blanket tighter around his body. So. He can’t actually touch anyone. Anymore. Ever. He can’t hug his mother. He can’t braid Sofia’s hair. He can’t cuddle with Adriana. Abuela’s touch is more ice through his body and soul. “Why?” His voice is so small. Brittle. “Why did this happen?”

Abuela whispers incantations that sound like quiet rivers as she pours scorching hot water through the infuser so the herbs she chose can steep. “Did you meet someone?” She turns to look at him and Eddie just wants to look away. “Someone you might’ve had feelings for?”

Eddie quickly shakes his head but it only feels like more shivering. “No. No, he—”

She raises an eyebrow as she watches. He knows without looking. And she knows more than anyone else. 

He sighs heavily and too much breath escapes him. “It wasn’t anything. He wants to sleep around. He didn’t really…” He didn’t want Eddie for more than sex. But Eddie doesn’t want to say anything like that to his grandmother. “He wouldn’t have loved me. I didn’t want what he wanted. It wasn’t… Why would this happen? Why would my spell do this?”

There was not even a hint of love there. There wasn’t even attraction exactly. But maybe it’s his curse? How can he ever tell the difference between lack of interest and mystical enforcement of his spell? 

Abuela only looks at him with quiet sympathy. She brings him the mug of tea and sits next to him at the kitchen table. “It’s possible you might’ve felt differently without the existence of this curse.”

“You mean, I might’ve fallen for him anyway even though he didn’t actually want or care about me?” God, that sounds horrific. Pining away for someone who only wants cheap and meaningless from him. Would Eddie have followed him around and begged for scraps of attention? Would he have let Jesse have sex with him even though he’d only be discarded afterward?

She nudges the mug toward him again. “Drink, Eddito. It’s possible that without your curse, the outcome of your meeting this boy would have been different.”

“In that case, I’m glad I’m cursed.” The cup grows colder when he touches it, and by the time he lifts it to his mouth, it’s barely hot anymore. But it does flood something warm and soft through his body. He doesn’t ache so much. 

Abuela gives him a pinched frown. “I would warn you against praising such carelessness, but I think we are long past that.”

Whatever residual heat is in the mug and his tea, it dissipates quickly. He holds it close to his body regardless, folded in both hands to protect it. There’s not much else he can do. He made his choice. Even if it’s the only one he ever gets to make. When he drinks again, the tea fades the sensation of shards stabbing through his muscles, but he knows the ice is there. One more way that he’s cut off, permanently changed, nothing but fear, anguish, despair, rejection. 

“Someday,” she says like prophecy and punishment. “You will meet a man who would love you exactly as you want and need.”

Eddie clenches his jaw and tries not to let the sharp, desolate cold surge through him any more than it already has. “And he’d love me so much, he’d die for me? I don’t want anyone to die for me. I don’t want to do that to anyone. Whoever he is or might be, I want him to live.”

[lorenzobane]

Omg @illusion2me your tags on my other post about Julian's Augmentation were perfect. I almost responded directly on that post but my thoughts ended up meandering Out of Scope. Because you’re right! It literally isn't true that all Julian cares about is tennis and medicine. The fact that he's extremely opinionated about art and culture is one of the FIRST things established about him. UGH.

One of my favorite things about Julian, which really only exists in early seasons (though they bring it up from time to time later) is that he actively enjoys consuming large amounts of cultural content. Julian is one of the only trek characters that we get cultural opinions and comparisons from. I only know that Tor Jolan is the greatest Bajoran composer and that his work is "slightly derivative" of older composers because he tells me. I only know that current media being produced on Earth is repurposing other planets' stories because he tells me. And both of those things tell me so much about the cultures! Like the fact that humans would take other stories and try to fit them into a human narrative makes so much sense, we do that all the time with other cultures right now.

And it's great most Trek characters don't offer comparative analysis! We get descriptions of art or literature or whatever, but no comparison so you can't really locate it. It adds a lot to both the character and the world and it really is too bad that they didn't lean more into it when they did the augment stuff. Now we know he can read and consume at inhuman rates but we never get a scene, for example, of him discussing different Klingon operas.

It's honestly too bad that they basically write this characterization completely out by Season 4-ish. We get hints of it here and there like when he's describing a biography of Davy Goddamn Crocket (do Not get me started) and describing it to Miles or the fact that he and Ezri are bonding over books. (An aside- I always think its cute that Miles is like you're exchanging books?? Must be serious! Because he knows how much Julian likes to read- incidentally also making his relationship with Garak more text than subtext but I digress). But both the book Ezri recommends and the book he describes to Miles are both Earth books and it's too bad. I really really loved how much Julian enjoyed learning about other cultures.

Anyway- I know they decided to make his character, in general, more "serious" in later seasons, and that's fine I guess- but I wish they had kept that sense of curiosity and cultural passion.

[an0nfr0mth3d3n]

I read this one in my era of reading every single bbh fic, and this one NEARLY flew under my radar because of SBI which I found a few hundred fics in usually becomes the central characters and Bad gets mentioned once and that’s it, but I saw the freaky tags and decided to try it out.

On one hand, the plot was incredibly intriguing and dark, the characters were pretty decent, and yeah. I did notice it was in the era of “Bad getting characterized as helpless smol pretty bean” era but this time it kinda made sense because fight flight fawn freeze he picked fawn basically and also if I was kidnapped by a sadistic murder family I’d probably be fuckin scared out of my wits too.

Schlatt’s dialogue seemed pretty decently in character though and I liked that, also whenever I read unfinished fics I make sketch plots for how they end so here is mine!!

tw for gore mentions of gross sa (never happens, Wil implies it once or twice) lots of death fantasy drug making probably incorrect medical stuff and police stuff and technology stuff and it’s probably not what the author was going for also it’s like, 20 paragraphs I’m NOT FUCKING KIDDING. Turns more actiony than dark so I messed that up too but it’s a skeleton framework anyways sorry I totally story dumped in a reblog

Ok so I’m shaky on characters (I just skimmed it right now) bUT Bad communicates with Tubbo and Schlatt and figures they don’t have much time left before their kidnappers eventually snap (what triggers this? How about…Tommy nearly kills Tubbo who freaks out, and causes Wil to have a little freak out where he stalks through the house looking for his “toys” when Phil and Tech are not in the house. The 3 hide, incidentally near the {was the attic where Skeppy was being kept?} attic and when Wil leaves the house one of them starts to silently cry {dammit I’ll make it Bad to keep the ‘pure bean’ trope consistent whatever} and Skeppy hears it and calls out and they all shush him and make the plan, *insert Skephalo reuniting scene separated by a door*)

The plan is to turn the family on itself. Bad starts cozying up to Techno and purposefully does a “no I shan’t say” “I’m so traumatized” “if only someone could save me I’m afraid of dying and leaving you behind” to Tech about the 3 days he had with Philza, basically trying to feed into Tech’s violent nature and make him think about how the family would be run if HE was in charge.

Meanwhile Tubbo gets to tinker with Bad’s phone every night, and work on sending a message to an anonymous hotline, not to the police department directly (which they think is too risky, also because dream is evil I think) but to Quackity, who skeppy says is trustworthy. They have a close call with Tommy waking up at midnight to get a drink of water, but Phil woke up to his loud…footsteps? And thinks it’s an escape attempt and nearly stabs his own son. Tubbo managed to fake sleep and hide the phone under a loose floorboard he put the “tips to staying alive” book, and the incident helps them. Tubbo pretends to wake up when Tommy comes back and listens to him rant and offers “support” by giving a fake story about how everyone looked down on him for being so young but when he found out his dad was throwing away his company’s money on some shady business thing he exposed him and the company (uhhhh make some make up here) gave him accolades and a promise to let him work there as soon as he came of age. This story resonated with Tommy who (if I remembered correctly) was upset at being 17? Or something? Dawg idk I skimmed it. Anyways it ALSO makes his loyalty and trust in Philza waver a bit.

And for Wilbur… turns out Schlatt, using the hacked phone, found a DIY recipe for schizophrenia treatment drugs (BITCH IDK) and he manages to secure the ingredients (with a few awkward substitutions) in a chapter full of ingredient smuggling! He manages to mix up a small batch and grind it into powder, and Bad treats the family by making pancakes! (With the intent to use piwdered “sugar” on Wil’s and normal sugar on everyone else’s.

And HERE’s where shit GOES. DOWN.

The plan was to get Wil on these new meds until he’s somewhat normal, as he is too much of a wildcard, but they didn’t account for the meds he was ALREADY ON. One of the substituted ingredients fucks with the meds and he starts having a physical break, choking, puffing up, stuff like that. It’s too early for this, it’s all going WRONG. Phil, thinking that Bad poisoned Wil, grabs a knife and makes a slice at Bad, shearing a long cut down his arm. Techno sees red, literally.

The pets thought they needed to work on their masters more, but as it turns out, Tech wasn’t JUST getting turned against Phil, he was taking Bad’s fed information TWO DIFFERENT ways, and was poisoned against Wil, not only that, but he had FOUND THE PHONE, (the message history to Quackity had been wiped out) and thought the pets were trying to get Wil his proper medication, so he stayed silent, and also got a kick out of Bad’s “fall from purity”. Techno LUNGES across the table and tackles Phil, and while the older man has a knife and experience, and CALLS TO TOMMY TO HELP HIM, because of Tubbo’s quick thinking of poisoning him too against his dad, Tommy freezes, not knowing which way to turn. Help Wil? Help Techno? Help Phil? He picks NEITHER because he is a SHREWD BUSINESSMAN and can do this ON HIS OWN!

Tommy kicks out the chair from under Wil, who is gagging and choking, and bleeding from his nails digging into his skin, and joins the fight between Phil and Techno, punching, kicking, and biting wherever he can.

Bad takes this time to grab a knife and run upstairs, breaking Skeppy free of his bindings, *insert Skephalo reunion 2*

Tubbo runs to Tommy’s room and sends an SOS to Quackity who, upon some internal searches managed to lock up the dteam and other corrupted officers, starts out to his location signal on the phone with the fucking SWAT team.

Meanwhile in the fight, all people have sustained horrible injuries, but it looks like Phil, despite everything, will come out as the winner. Schlatt dashes to Tubbo , using a shattered chair for support on his injured leg, and yells at him to run for the woods. Schlatt then sprints upstairs and runs to Bad, breaking the hugging roommates up and telling them to get the fuck out (also sorry not doing a jealousy scene let’s be realistic they are escaping a murder house romance comes AFTER the knife wielding lunatics).

Ad they do so, the scuffle in the lower floors suddenly stops, and a creaking step and a heavy, labored breathing starts getting closer, up the stairs, their only way out…

Well…not the ONLY way…

Schlatt does a cool, “we need to jump” at the attic window and Bad’s all like “No! You’re hurt!” And Skeppys like “It’s our only shot I agree! I’ll go first I’m least injured!” (He didn’t get tortured right? If he did, well, fuck.)

Skeppy makes a running start and the two others back up, then they all crash through the window just as the door opens.

Skeppy manages to land decently, and catches (fuck…whooo…uhhhhhhh…..ummm….sch..no…Bad? Ok bad) Bad. Schlatt stumbles at the edge and looks like he might land awkwardly and get seriously injured, but Tubbo shows up and manages to catch him, although rolling his ankle a bit.

They aren’t out of hot water yet, as a ragged howl comes from the house. (Also fuck it I forgor, bad accidentally knocked over the oil in the kitchen and left the stove on and the whole house is on fire now, I’m sick and writing as fast as I can just PRETEND there was smoke coughing and fire descriptions and stuff like that. Retconning stuff THE WHOLE FUCKING HOUSE IS ON FIRE, OKAY? OKAY.)

A dark figure crashes through the window too, and the pets sprint to the woods as fast as they can go, limping and bleeding.

It’s like, kinda night time (they were having breakfast for dinner fuck you) and it’s foggy and there’s a cool description of them hiding and whimpering in foggy woods as one of the family hunts them with a knife and they stumble over a pet graveyard and someone screams because they tripped on Scott’s half-buried arm (FUCKING DAMMIT SCOTT) and the family member appears…

It’s Wil, bloodied, horribly burnt from the fire, holding a charred knife, and giggling brokenly, having psychotic snaps and stuff (he is NOT in his right mind rn, as someone who’s been through drug mixes they can be bad and I’d hate to imagine how bad they can get).

He lunges forwards and his knife sinks into Schlatt’s side, who had shoved aside Tubbo.

Schlatt goes down, and Bad screams, and Will gets all fucking creepy with Bad and acts super gross and gets close and stuff like half giggling “now my fucking father can’t get in the way of us” and Skeppy whacks him with a tree branch while Tubbo tries to press down on Schlatt’s wound, but Wil growls and yanks the tree branch out, absolutely clobbering Skeppy with it till he’s passed out at the bottom of a tree.

Will catches sight of Tubbo and lunges for the kill, but Bad tackles him from behind, screaming and stabbing him with a blunt rock. Wil hadn’t seen it coming (the whole household was so invested in Bad’s purity during the story I had to give him a badass moment) and Tubbo manages to send the location to Quackity, who was at the house. Wil flips over and starts slashing blindly, only catching Bad over the eye once, and Bad manages to lunge for the knife and they both struggle for it. Bad’s vision is getting bloody (fun fact head wounds bleed a LOT) and a bit spotty, but if he goes down then Tubbo and everyone else is MUFFINED.

But he loses focus when Wil giggles and lunges upwards, licking the bloody stripe across Bad’s face and eye, and uses the momentary stun to kick him in the gut. Wil stands up, does a ramble speech about how he’ll make him perfect, cut off his limbs, do gross things, kill everyone, then boom.

There’s a red dot on Wils chest.

He stood, and reached for the dot.

BANG

A bloody hole where the dot used to be.

More dots, 1,2,5,8

He snaps his head forwards.

BANG BANG BANG

The forest rings with the sound of reports, and Wil slumps to the ground.

Quackity comes out from behind a tree, along with like 10 other SWAT snipers, and Quackity whistles and medics come running.

Bad and Tubbo are wearing those shock blankets they give traumatized people, and as they walk to the parked police cars, they turn and watch as the burning house crumbles, their own hell burning up with it.

Schlatt and Skeppy are going to be ok, and they will heal. Together.

(I am so fucking sorry etoilesbienne I totally story dumped in your post oh gosh darn it I’m sorry this was supposed to be a paragraph fuck meeee)

(anyways sorry if this ruined the beauty of that fic, I tried ;-;)

do you guys ever read a fanfic and like objectively it is Not good but the machinations at play here are just so fascinating you're invested by it

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 325: Deku VS the Outside of U.A. ~Conclusion~

Previously on BnHA: Ochako was all “dear bloodthirsty mob, this kid you see standing before you has fought harder than anyone and put his life on the line to protect you all, so please chill the fuck out, jesus christ. like, putting aside that he’s humanity’s best hope and so it’s very much in your best interests to let him rest and recover someplace safe so that he can keep fighting for us, are y’all seriously going to turn away an injured and exhausted child in front of his sobbing mother?? seriously?? come on now.” I’m paraphrasing here but that’s basically how it went down. Anyway so then the mob was all, “...” and Deku collapsed to his knees in tears, and Gigantic Fox Lady and Kouta ran over to give him a hug but then the chapter ended.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “FINE, YOU CAN HUG HIM”, which, was that so hard?? The U.A. Clown Mob is all “come to think of it, we’ve kind of been taking the heroes for granted this entire time, maybe we should be less passive in the future. anyway so Deku if it’s not too much to ask, can you please save everyone and fix everything.” Deku is all “I sure can, and by the way I forgive you for swarming around all menacingly two minutes ago and trying to deny me basic shelter and stuff.” Ectoplasm is all, “hey Todogang get a load of this. [walks in a circle].” Hawks is all, “that’s literally the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” Rat Principal is all, “anyway so that’s what your students did today, hope you’re enjoying your new *~*ROBOT LEG*~*, Aizawa.” Aizawa is all “[lots of exposition about Kurogiri and for some reason, Toga, while being all brooding and sexy].” All Might is all “[standing here right outside of U.A. doing absolutely nothing and being foreboding AF]” and that immediately sucked away all of the warm fuzzy feelings from the hugs, goddammit.

each new week has become a waiting game of “when will Deku finally get to take a bath so people will actually be willing to go near him and give him the hugs he deserves.” the stakes have never been so compelling. I’ve almost forgotten about AFO entirely

lmaoooooo

me: for the love of god will someone please give Deku a hug before I die of old age

Mineta: YOU GOT IT!! --

Iida: [SWIFTLY CUTS HIM OFF] NOT YOU

fucking losing it at Mineta’s crying face. he really wanted to hug him. I legit feel bad but this is also the funniest thing I have seen all week, omg

somehow Kouta, who last week was only a hand’s breadth away from touching Deku’s head, is now twenty miles away from him in this new chapter

can I make a Loki reference here. is this recap a good place to insert a joke about someone using a TVA time-rewinding device to fuck with my poor boy Kouta over here. well anyway there it is

AND NOW HE’S BACK ALL OF A SUDDEN OMG

(ETA: since when is he “niichan” omg?? can’t handle this cuteness.)

BUT THEY’RE STILL NOT HUGGING HIM FFFFKFFFFF. WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO. WHO DO I HAVE TO BRIBE AND/OR BLACKMAIL

OH NO KOUTA IS CRYING THAT’S IT I’M DONE FOR

“when I heard that lady I knew that I had to go, but then stop again within inches of actually touching you because you smell like week-old rotten onions.” listen Kouta, I’m not saying I don’t get it, but you all can’t keep doing this to me. it’s the way you guys keep teasing it. like, if you’re gonna hug him, hug him. don’t just stand there with your arms held rigidly out in front of you like a molded action figure

OH MY GOSH BUT HE SAID THE THING

KOUTA SWOOPING IN AT THE LAST MINUTE TO TAKE ALL THE CREDIT FOR FIXING DEKU LIKE THAT ONE KID IN THE GROUP PROJECT WHO DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT STILL TAGS HIS NAME ONTO THE REPORT ANYWAY, WHAT A KNAVE

GASP

(  ´͈ ᗨ `͈ )

SHE PICKED HIM UP LIKE A LITTLE BABY OMG?? she just leaned right over and lifted this child like he was a small animal. like a lil baby futon that she was about to hang up to dry. oh my god

-- HEY WHAT

(: well that’s extremely fucked up. though sadly not too surprising given what we just saw these past couple chapters

incidentally, I hope that anyone who was legitimately defending the civilians’ perspective earlier takes note here of how quickly that line of thinking -- “we’re just trying to keep our families safe” and all that-- can lead to straight up bigotry. if you’re willing to deny a child shelter and protection simply because he’s not YOUR child, and because you’ve decided based on Internet rumors (no real-world parallels there, I’m sure) that he might present a threat, it’s really not that much further of a leap to discriminating against entire groups of people simply because you perceive those groups as being dangerous. I’m sure the people who turned Gigantic Fox Lady away also told themselves afterwards that they did it to protect their families. “better safe than sorry.” “she’ll be fine, someone will take her in, but as for us, we can’t afford to take that risk.” people can come up with all kinds of justifications for treating other people as less than human, and the really scary thing about it is how fucking easy it is

one last quick side note, which is that Horikoshi does a great job here of showing how scapegoating works, given that AFO is the one who’s really to blame and who presents the actual threat, and yet Deku is the one who ultimately winds up being the target of the mob’s fear and outrage despite him being as much of a victim as they are. gotta love that irony, which unfortunately plays out far too often in the real world as well.

anyway I’ll get off my soapbox now, sorry about that. let us continue

YES, FINALLY OH MY GOD!!!!

AND THAT’S THE STORY OF HOW GIGANTIC FOX LADY BECAME THE GREATEST HERO. PACK IT ALL UP, WE’RE DONE HERE KIDS

holy shit. the real MVP right there. thanks for getting it done champ

jesus christ I have had it up to here with these people

literally the bar is set so low at this point that I’ll go ahead and take it. helping him because it offers them a tactical advantage is at least one step up from not helping him at all

“WHY NOT SHIKETSU” MOTHERFUCKER I SWEAR TO GOD

-- thank you!!

okay this one guy with the antennae hair is having himself a character development speedrun here

-- okay, but this part?? fucking this part, right here??

can we repeat that again?? the part where this guy acknowledges that the problems of hero society were caused not just by said heroes, but also by said society?? the part where he acknowledges that they treated the heroes like celebrities who were putting on a show for them?? the part where he acknowledges that when push came to shove, the vast majority of those heroes, when faced with a situation that offered no reward, were nonetheless willing to put their lives on the line to protect the very same people who then turned around and blamed them rather than thanking them?? are the civilians of BnHA even allowed to have actual deep thoughts about this stuff. holy shit

bro!!

ANTENNAE HAIR GUY SHOVING KOUTA AND GIGANTIC FOX LADY OUT OF THE WAY TO SLAP HIS NAME ONTO THE END CREDITS AS EXECUTIVE PRODUCER. CONGRATULATIONS SON YOU FIGURED OUT THE CORE PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION AT THE VERY HEART OF THE MANGA. WAY TO GO BUD

meanwhile, on today’s episode of “one more chapter to go till the big volume cliffhanger, how else can I drag things out let’s see”

it’s a panel. of people’s feet. just a bunch of normal feet. with sneakers and shit

this All Might shirt guy is getting more screentime in this arc than 90% of the class 1-A kids

I guess I’m supposed to feel sorry for this dude now that he’s all “if we let you stay here do you promise to somehow magically fix every single problem that we are now currently facing?” those are some ridiculously exacting standards my dude. come on now

KACCHAN SIGHTING

thank fuck I’m not the only one who’s thoroughly unimpressed by absolutely all of this lol. I feel better now. meanwhile Iida and Kouda and Kiri are ready to run over there and hug them all. you guys are way too forgiving. damn you and your pure hearts

anyway so Deku’s like “yeah, definitely”

(ETA: almost forgot to comment on the “I’m no longer alone” part – he basically corrects the guy and says “sorry, but you’ll need to direct that question towards all of us, not just me, because moving forward we’re a team.” good stuff.)

you know what though, all joking aside... fuck yeah. because perfect victory, right. the strongest guys don’t settle for anything less. so I guess Deku has pretty exacting standards himself

also can you all just take a look at this fucking kid who’s got so much light in his eyes now that I’m gonna need eclipse goggles. hot damn. “you’re welcome” says All Might Shirt Guy as he is frantically interviewed by several local news networks asking him how he daringly managed to save Deku all by himself. “well I guess I’ve just never been the kind of guy who can sit back and let a bunch of rabble-rousers blame a little kid for all of humanity’s problems. someone had to step in and take action, you know?”

oH MY GOD THE SCENE IS FINALLY ENDING

don’t let the door hit you on your way out All Might Shirt Guy

but meanwhile, sudden Tododrama action??

oh shit

there are honestly so many ways in which Ochako’s very moving speech could have wildly backfired that I genuinely have no clue where this is headed lol. how exciting!!

so now Horikoshi is once again stalling for time with random filler panels, but this one is 10x better than the shoes lol omg

(1) was Ectoplasm’s jacket always this oversized. (2) did you guys know that if you go back to chapter 319 you can see that Horikoshi gave us a sneak peak at Enji’s Sad Detective disguise and I in fact made a joke about it in the 319 recap not realizing it was actually the stone cold truth. (3) did Shouto deliberately speed up out of impatience because Hawks was walking so fucking slow and he couldn’t take it any longer. (4) and what, I ask you, is up with these dramatic speedlines. so many mysteries here. what a masterpiece

everyone is acting all shocked about something ahh what’s going on

wait what

what the heck. did they just loop around behind everyone. what was the point of that lol. “anyway, so this is what they look like from the back” well okay, thanks for that Ectoplasm

(ETA: so it seems like they were actually hanging out someplace else away from the crowd this whole time, I guess? here I thought they had more faith in Enji’s disguise. I guess Shouto and Hawks don’t particularly want to attract this crowd’s attention themselves right now either, though.)

I am so fucking confused lmao

speaking of All Might WHERE THE FUCK IS HE lol. but yes, good, OFA brings everyone together, and Hawks is very deeply moved about this out of the blue all of a sudden. you know how it is

aw heck yeah now this is another filler panel I can get behind

Mineta really wants that hug, good lord. I genuinely love this actually. Mineta if you could just stay little and cute and keep crying about how much you love your classmates in a non-gross way for the rest of the series I would be so appreciative. you’re doing great

IIDA IS HOLDING DEKU’S HAND THIS IS NOT A DRILL. ONE TIME WASN’T ENOUGH FOR MY MAN HE’S ADDICTED NOW

what did I tell you. Kiri wants to get all of the mob’s autographs now. Kiri you’re a peach

Shouji having a conversation with another mutant type is a very nice touch! we really need to get to his backstory soon. I feel like that casual remark from GFL earlier was kind of hinting at more to come

is this the first time we’ve ever seen the Yaoyorictionary in action?? never forget that Viz tried to call it the “Yaoyorozu Reference Book” because they hate fun

last but not least, KAMIBAKU IS BACK ON THE MENU, FUCK YEAH. Kaminari trying to spice things up and introduce a little bit of controversy by smacking Kacchan on the back of the head for god knows what. I will be deeply disappointed after this if I can’t find at least one person unironically declaring that KamiBaku is now toxic and abusive

lfkdlWLWK TODODRAMA??

oh my god. Shouto’s face. Enji’s face. the back to “oyaji” again. the blunt, not-taking-no-for-an-answer, “I don’t know how much louder the universe can scream at you that doing things alone is not it, so hopefully you got the point” directness of it. fffdlkslj I’m so ready for this Horikoshi please don’t fuck it up my expectations are so high

HOLY FUCK

I SCROLLED DOWN AND HE WAS ALL “( ❛‿❛)” AND I JUST WASN’T FUCKING EXPECTING THAT OKAY. JESUS CHRIST. GIVE ME A SEC

lol okay moment over and now Enji’s pulling his hat down all dramatically like a world-weary Cowboy

OH MY GOD WERE YOU FACETIMING??

AHHHHHHHHH

(ETA: not to put Iida down or anything, but it’s kind of strange that Aizawa is all “the class rep sure did great” when Ochako is the one that was giving that whole big speech for like twenty minutes just now lol.)

(ETA 2: “thank god Iida stepped in just in the nick of time to keep Mineta from hugging Deku.” sorry Mineta I really do like you lately but it’s still low-hanging fruit lol.)

HE LOOKS SO SAD??! HE LOOKS LIKE HEARTBREAK ITSELF??! I AM BESOUGHT WITH THE URGE TO REACH INTO MY SCREEN AND PULL HIM INTO THE SAFETY OF MY ARMS??? MY GOD, AND I THOUGHT DEKU NEEDED HUGS

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH okay I was gonna just hold down the letter H for a full minute and count it out loud but within about ten seconds I realized I needed to chill lol

-- but then again NO, I DON’T NEED TO CHILL, I HAVE ZERO CHILL, ACTUALLY, BECAUSE IT’S AIZAWA WITH A ROBOT LEG AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

COMPLETE WITH ROBOT TOES FOR THAT EXTRA TOUCH OF AUTHENTICITY!! I LIKE HOW HORIKOSHI PUT ALL THIS EXTRA “!!!” EMPHASIS AROUND IT IN CASE WE COULD SOMEHOW POSSIBLY FAIL TO TAKE NOTICE. “REMEMBER, EVERYONE?” SAYS HORIKOSHI HELPFULLY. “REMEMBER THAT TIME AIZAWA CHOPPED OFF HIS OWN LEG?” oh wow now that you mention it we somehow forgot all about that. like who do you take us for

OH NO NOT THE SAD BOYFRIEND ANGST THAT I WAS SECRETLY LOOKING FORWARD TO WITH GLEE

well at least he’s not M.I.A. or back with the villains again like I thought he might be. still, that’s gotta be brutal to know your friend is in there somewhere, but to not be able to reach him again no matter how hard you try. that’s the kind of angst that pays off in final battles just when you most expect it. such is my hope, at any rate

what’s this now??

trying to decide if this is Horikoshi’s way of saying don’t worry about that, or his way of saying definitely worry about that lol

anyway so Aizawa is out here being all irresponsibly handsome once again. when is someone going to do something about him

here for Sexy Robot Leg Eyepatch Aizawa clenching his fists and making speeches about revenge. pretty sure we’re all here for that

WELL, WELL, WELL

IT’S ABOUT FUCKING TIME

I’M VERY GLAD YOU’RE ALIVE AND SEEMINGLY WELL, THOUGH!

BUT WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK THOUGH, ALL MIGHT

ffff. bracing myself for that cliffhanger next week. you’d better not touch one hair on this man’s head Horikoshi. I’m watching you 

[bubblyhoney]

win for me

warnings: lAnGuAgE, alcohol consumption (both reader and all other characters are of age to drink), marijuana use, Making Out™️, a miniscule Flowers from 1970 reference. PSA: WHEN UR INTOXICATED AND/OR AT A PARTY, TELL UR FRIENDS WHO YOU WILL BE WITH AND WHERE YOU WILL BE AT ALL TIMES. DRINK AND PARTY SAFELY!

tags: sapnap x fem!reader

summary: a collection of moments throughout the beginning of your relationship

words: 5000

A/N: even though this isn’t my most organized or perfect fic this was so incredibly fun to write. and it’s a college!au!! one of my favs. hope you guys like!! let's pretend the pandemic doesn't exist for this one too (please wear ur masks btw)

-

Sophomore Year:

Smells like shit in here is your first thought upon entering the laundromat.

It does, in all honesty. What would you expect a place where college students wash three months of dirty clothes and comforters with vomit to smell like? Urine and just a hint of marijuana, incidentally. The door closes noisily behind you and a guy in a black baseball hat turns his head at the noise. Half of his face is hidden underneath the shadow of his scruff and he says nothing, but you still offer an obligatory polite-stranger smile. The place is pretty deserted, what for it being nearly 4 in the morning. And you’re a rare kind of customer; only a few things to wash and you brought your own detergent.

There’s an empty washer next to an old woman in an acid-trip of a parka, and you sweep past the few other patrons with your mesh bag close. The man in the hat nods at you as you pass, looking up from his phone.

Okay. Dark load in one and delicates in the other, you remind yourself. The quarters get pushed through the slot (not without dropping three and having to scramble to pick them up before they disappear between the machines) and you fill the dispensers with a flowery laundry detergent your roommates hates. Oh, and the clothes go in. Done. You relax into a cracked plastic booth around the corner of the machine, pulling a book of crosswords from your bag.

Somebody yelps halfway through filling out a five letter word (“a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep”) and you jump. Baseball Cap rips open the dryer, fumbling around and supplying a pair of gray sweatpants. You can’t help but watch. He digs through both front pockets, pulling out a wad of dollar bills. He sighs, shoves the pants back into the dryer, and starts it with a hard push.

“Gut feeling?” You ask. He looks around for a second and settles his gaze upon you. Nice eyebrows, you think.

“Yeah,” he laughs, slightly nervous. “Yeah. I wore them yesterday and just remembered I put some tip money in my pocket.” Leaning back onto the shelf behind him, he shoves his phone into his pocket and folds his arms tight to his chest.

“I feel you,” you empathize, and set down your pencil. “I washed a parking ticket with my underwear last week.”

He stutters out a laugh, nodding.

“That must’ve sucked,” he adds.

“Yeah.” You shrug. “I wasn’t going to pay it anyways, but would’ve been nice to keep it for memory’s sake.” Rubbing at your knee offhandedly, you just watch him. He’s cute. And easy to make conversation with.

“Hey, um,” he mutters and clears his throat. “Do you by chance know some guy named Karl? Tall, messy brown hair and a horrible laugh?”

You open your mouth, then close it.

“Actually—,” you start but huff out a laugh. “Yeah, he’s uh, he’s dating my roommate. Why’d you ask?”

Reaching a hand to rub at his neck, his face twists into something sheepish.

“I’ve seen you at some parties this semester. I didn’t mean to sound creepy like that— I just—yeah.” His cheeks flush pink and he looks down to the ground.

“No worries,” you say, barely even thinking. “I think I’ve seen you too. You’re in Delta Tau Delta, right?”

“Nah, nah,” he laughs. “Just got some friends in there.”

“Ah.” You nod.

The conversation falls into silence, but not uncomfortable silence. He pulls out his phone again, and you look back to the crossword in front of you. The old woman between you leaves with a humongous load of blankets and a small family leaves with a cart full of bags; now it’s just you two.

When the washer with your delicates ding you nearly jump two feet in the air. Exhaling, you set your work down and open the door.

“Shit,” you curse as two bras fall onto the tile. You reach down to get a hand on a black lace bra and hide it quickly under your elbow. A sneaker squeaks loud in the almost-empty room and you see Baseball Cap’s shoulders.

“Here.” He’s kneeling as he hands you your pink bra and you accept it, biting your lower lip.

“Thanks,” you mumbles, slightly embarrassed, and step back to shove those bras and a couple pairs of your underwear into your bag. He offers you a small smile and backs off to his own machines, humming an off-key version of Unchained Melody to himself. Your other load of laundry gets shoved right on top of your delicates.

It’s when you’re nearly out the door, bell jingling, that you think to look back.

“Hey,” you start, almost stuttering for no reason. “What’s your name?”

He turns, dark eyebrows raised.

“My—uh… My friends call me Sapnap. You can call me that too.” Rosy cheeks once again; you seem to be making him awfully nervous.

“Sapnap.” You try it in your mouth, pursing your lips. “Okay. I’ll see you around Sapnap.”

He nods, affirming your statement.

“See you around Y/N.”

It doesn’t hit you until you’re buckling your seatbelt and starting your car that you realize you didn’t tell him your name.

Perhaps he knew more about you than you thought.

Yeah, you laugh to yourself. Karl’s got a big mouth.

Junior Year:

It takes you a collective twelve minutes to go talk to him.

It’s quiet in the library, students that happen to come here to study or procrastinate few and far between the scattered tables. Your poison today is a 4 page history paper on Normandy that you’d been staring at the instructions for for days. You’d already written a bunch of, frankly, horseshit for the body, but the introduction and conclusion were throwing you for a loop.

The vibes in Ridgeback Hall were also certainly off, today more than any other day; the main help-desk was empty and everybody had to do the tedious task of locating niche textbooks themselves.

Lifting your head from the wood of the table, you squint and focus your vision on the guy in the white tee and denim jacket that had been the focus of your thoughts for minutes. He chews at the end of his pencil, mouth screwed up into a ball, and shoots daggers at the empty notebook in front of him. You’re surprised it hasn’t caught on fire yet just from his gaze.

“Sapnap!” You whisper-shout, stretching your arms across the table as if it would make him any closer. A person with purple hair jumps at your voice but turns back to their laptop. “Sapnap!” you try again, tapping two fingers on the table. His head jerks up, eyebrows furrowed and an angry expression on his face, but softens at the sight of you.

“Y/N,” he counters, equally as loud but with a smile on his face.

“What’re you doing?”

“Calculus.” He sticks his tongue out, making an awfully tortured face. You laugh and wave your fingers at him, gesturing for him to come closer. He just huffs out a sigh, stacks all his papers in one pile, and gets up. The trek over to your table is short but he takes it so slowly you wonder if he always walks like that. Like a varsity basketball player who just got off a horse.

“You’re so slow.”

“Shut up,” he grumbles and settles into a chair across from you. “It’s 2 pm, give me a break. I need a Redbull.”

“Those are bad for you, you know,” you say matter-of-factly and drop your chin onto your hand. He’s even cuter from this angle, you think briefly. He just rolls his eyes.

“Whatever, Miss I’d-like-some-coffee-with-my-sugar-and-cream,” he teases, pointing to your venti iced coffee. It’s about as pale as the color of a band-aid. You just sigh and close your eyes. “You tired?” He flips his pencil in his hand and leans back into the seat, sighing.

“Yeah,” you mumble. “I haven’t slept yet today.”

“Wow, you’re dumb.” He looks scandalized. You just shrug.

“Perhaps. I don’t really know why I did it actually— just for funzies!” You raise an arm but let it drop back down. “I stayed up playing Sims.”

“Feel that. I play Minecraft with my buddies until like 2 am every night too. It’s nice,” he decides and folds his arms across his chest. Your eyes flit over to his strong arms, admiring the way his denim shirt looks around them. Thick.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“What?” He says too loudly and it warrants a ‘shush’ from another student. He reddens, but looks back down to you. “I—why do you ask?” You shrug, eyebrows raised.

“Just wondering. You’re too cute to not have one.”

“Right,” he huffs, but his cheeks stay pink. You two fall into easy silence, his eyes trained on the notebook in front of him and yours closed peacefully. “Are you dating anyone?”

They snap open not-so-peacefully.

“Nope. You wanna submit a boyfriend application?” A smile cracks your lips and he grins back.

“Maybe,” he replies and stares at your mouth. “I have to say—,” He stretches into a yawn. “I think I’m qualified.”

“Oh, yeah?” Your eyebrow quirks. “And why are you so qualified?”

“Well, first of all, I work at Ace Hardware. That’s where cool people work.” He presses one finger into his palm. Then two. “And I have a bunch of free time because said job at Ace Hardware only likes scheduling me in the mornings. Plus, I’m hot.” He shrugs.

You nod faux-seriously, considering his list.

“Those are very good qualities, sir. I’ll have to get back to you on that.” You pause. “Okay, I’ll schedule an interview. How’s 7 pm at the Chili’s on Main? Chili’s is the designated interview place.” You wiggle your eyebrows. He just smiles at you, shaking his head in disbelief.

“That was smooth.”

“Yeah, I know.” You carefully study your nails. “I’m pretty impressive.”

“Clearly,” he mutters and chuckles. “But I do like their salsa. And margaritas. We got a deal?” He holds out a large hand. You take it, squeezing tightly.

“Hell yes.”

When you see the man called Sapnap a week later, you are very obviously in a different state of mind.

Same state, same college town, but very different blood alcohol contents.

“Sappy!” You shout, raising your arms above your head with a stupid grin on your face. He turns, that familiar look of surprise evident in his expression.

“Y/N,” he laughs and approaches your group of friends in the kitchen. It’s Greek Wedding night at Delta Tau Delta, and you assume Sapnap came to support Delta’s “groom” Alex. You’d gotten uncharacteristically drunk, trading air for sangria, and you were now in the incredible stage where everyone was both your friend and your favorite person.

Throwing an arm around his shoulders, you mash your face into his bicep and giggle.

“Missed you so much,” you try to manage out of your mouth, but it comes out slurred and stuttered. “So much.” You’d gone to Chili’s two days before and promised another ‘interview’ in the next few days, but it felt like two months away from your beloved. Beloved friend, that is. Only one date.

“Yeah?” He places a hesitant hand on your back and nudges you into a standing position. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Oh, shhhh,” you mumble and close your eyes. “Only— a lot.” Blinking them back open, you zero your gaze in on a bottle of Ciroc half-empty and looking very tempting on the kitchen island across from where you’re leaned up against the kitchen sink. He catches your gaze and steps in front of you, pleasant face filling your vision. You gasp.

“You are so cute.” Sliding your palms up onto his face, you hold his scruffy cheeks in your hands and smile all dopey at him.

“Is that your brain or the alcohol telling you that?”

“Uh,” you swallow. “Both. And my heart.”

He just shakes his head and his chest moves with a heavy laugh.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Are you having fun?” You ask, all concerned and furrowed eyebrows. You look like you’re genuinely interested and worried about if he’s having a good time or not, and it makes his expression melt.

“I’m having lots of fun,” he passes over his shoulder as he flips on the tap and fills a red solo cup with water. “In fact, I’m gonna have a nice, cold glass of water right now.” He shakes it like an owner offering their dog a treat.

You eye the cup in his hand, having half a thought that this might be some sort of backwards psychology move. The other half wins.

“That sounds so good right now— can I drink some?” Your eyebrows pull together and your bottom lip drops into a pout. It makes him blink for a second. He remembers the little game you’re playing and just hands it over, smug. You gulp it down quickly and crush the empty plastic into your palm with an exaggerated exhale. “Hit the spot,” you sigh, and pat your stomach fondly.

“You hungry?” Sapnap asks you as he steadies you with two hands on your shoulders. Something pops into your head at his words: a set of two McChickens and an Oreo milkshake.

“Oh my God,” you gasp, and mirror him by placing your hands on his shoulders. “Can we go to McDonald’s?”

He just shakes his head, grin wide on his lips, and shrugs. Perfect teeth, you think.

“I haven’t drank anything, so I’m good to drive.” He pulls his keys from his pocket. “I know you’re smashed right now so—do you feel safe with me?” The question falls from his mouth and you truly consider it, pulling your lip between your teeth.

“Yeah. I’ll take this just in case,” you say, and take a large dinner fork from the counter next to you. It has some red liquid on it that you brush off onto the fabric of your jeans.

“That’s actually gross.”

“Yeah.” You grip it tighter in your head. “But it’ll do the job if you try any shit. I’ll put this in your eyeball.” Brandishing it, a smile stretches onto your mouth. He just shakes his head and heads for the back door, jerking a hand in your direction to get you to follow him.

The cool night air explodes on your face when you step onto the porch and it makes you blink rapidly. Sapnap is right at your side, offering a forearm as you slowly make your way down the two back porch steps. A tall blonde smoking half of a blunt makes a grunt noise as you two pass and your knight-in-shining armor looks up.

“Gonna go get some food. Want anything?” Sapnap stops on the rocky path to the sidewalk, tilted up to hear the blonde’s response. The other guy shakes his head but nods to you in passing.

“I’ll tell her friends where she went,” says the blonde, and disappears through the sliding glass doors.

Your hand falls from his forearm to his hand and grasps it tightly, swinging back and forth as you stumble to his car. You flash him a grin that he just chuckles at.

“Watch your step,” he warns as you yank on the handle of the passenger door and nearly fall off of the curb.

“I’m fine,” you huff, and scramble to get yourself upright into the seat and buckled. He closes your door and jogs to the driver’s seat, climbing in and starting the engine quicker than your head comprehends.

The small space fills with the sound of Letters to Cleo as he’s maneuvering out of his parking spot and he slaps a hand at the stereo button almost immediately. His cheeks redden as he glances at you once.

“I love Letters to Cleo,” you admit, and switch it back on. Ah, Co-Pilot. A classic. “Be my co-pilot!” You sing, loud and sharp. He shakes his head but huffs out a reluctant laugh.

“My older sister loved them. Bit old for my taste, but—you know. Can’t deny that I love a little bit of 90’s angst.”

“Absolutely,” you nod vigorously and pick at your nail. “Oh!” The fork magically reappears at your side and you grab at it. “For my McChickens.”

“And for me,” he adds.

“Yup. You too.” But you drop it onto the seat and lean forward, fumbling with the volume dial until you feel the lead singer’s voice thumping into your heart. “I love this lady!” You shout and rock your head to the beat.

Shaking his head, his shoulders move in an easy laugh. The drive-thru line is kind of busy for 2 am, he notes, pulling in right behind a navy BMW sedan. But it moves quickly, especially when you’re moving in your seat, scream-singing the lyrics to I Want You To Want Me.

“Yeah,” he says, loud into the mic. “Two.”

“Alright.” The voice reports from the speaker, a background clicking joining their bored tone. “Two McChickens, a double cheeseburger—ketchup and pickle only— , a medium fry, and an Oreo McFlurry. Anything else, sir?”

Sapnap chews on his lip, and glances at you. You just give an encouraging thumbs up.

“That’ll be all,” he reports.

“Second window, and your total is $9.67.”

He barely has time to call a “thank you so much!” before the line ends with a click. Rude.

“Jesus Christ,” you moan the second you sink your teeth into your first sandwich.

“Agreed,” he mumbles and pushes as much cheeseburger he can fit into his mouth.

“This,” you start, swallowing. “is the sexiest thing I’ve encountered in all of my years. I thank all higher powers when I consume McChickens…” Trailing off for dramatic effect, you stare down the sandwich before mimicking a dinosaur war cry and practically shoving it down your throat. He just nods in agreement.

“It’s so nice out tonight,” Sapnap comments, swinging a look out his rolled-down window. He parked right in front of the Campus Quad, large bubbling fountain the show to your dinner. And some geese fighting each other for half a rotting hot dog.

“Mhm.” You crumple up your wrapper trash and toss it into the empty paper bag. “Could totally go for a swim.”

He turns and gives you a look. You look right back.

“Should we?” It’s barely a question.

“Um, hell yes,” is all it takes for you to say before you’re clambering out of the car and starting for the fountain. He follows closely after, jogging to catch up with your borderline track-star sprints.

“Wait up!” He calls as you reach the border of the fountain.

“Ugh,” you sigh, impatient. “Hurry up.”

“Mouthy,” he grumbles before kicking off his shoes and bending to fold his pants up over his knees. You just climb straight in and brave the cold.

Squealing, you hop from one foot to the other, shoulders tight as you get used to the freezing water. He laughs and climbs in right beside you.

“Shit,” he curses, and shivers. “This sucks.”

“You suck,” you quip right back and splash around. He stares, disgusted, at the water soaking up your jeans all the way up to your knees.

“You’re gross for wearing jeans in a fountain. That’s worse than wet socks.” He starts to move around as feeling comes back into his toes.

“What, would you prefer me taking my pants off?” A sassy look paints your face and he rolls his eyes.

“No, but you could’ve folded them up like a normal person.”

“I think you forget,” you start, and splash a palmful of water his way. “I’m quirky.”

He gasps, face twisting as the water hits his thighs.

“You’re dead.”

If campus police were patrolling the Quad right now, they’d see two college juniors wading around in a fountain, water up to their knees, having a competition to see who can inflict the most damage. He won, it seems, because your shirt is drenched all the way up to your ribs.

“Okay!” You shout, hands spread to brace yourself. The water in his palm falls. “I’m cold and I want my other McChicken.”

“Fine,” he sighs, and with some difficulty manages to get out of the fountain and back into his shoes. You just make your way back over to his car barefoot, braving the mulch and poorly-sanded concrete.

You both finish your food quickly, discussing menial things like how fast food restaurants always skimp on the pickles and how it’s truly a disservice to the world that so many people don’t know it’s Biggie singing the song Kat dances on the table to in the 1999 classic 10 Things I Hate About You.

When Sapnap pulls up to your house, he shifts the car into park and lets loose a heavy sigh. You whip around, hand on your buckle, and sport a very confused look on your face.

“I’m tired,” is all he says. Head falling onto the seat, he rolls over to give you a half-lidded look. You nod empathetically and climb very carefully out of his passenger seat. Your drunk muscles haven't caught up to your mainly sober brain, which is impairing your ability to look like a functioning human being.

“Thank you for tonight,” you chirp, smiling in at him with your arms folded on the open window sill. The half-drank Oreo McFlurry is lukewarm in your hand. He stares at your flushed lips.

“Anytime you want a drunk McChicken let me know.” He winks. “I have a gift card.”

“You spoil me,” you coo, and step up onto the sidewalk. “I’ll see you sometime soon, yeah?”

He nods, pursed lips fighting a grin.

Cute, you both think at the same time.

Sometime soon, somehow, means the very next day.

It’s breezy yet uncharacteristically hot out, and certainly way too bright for a hungover Y/N.

You’re sat on the porch swing, nursing a hot decaf coffee with lots of sugar and cream. Sunglasses sit comfortably on your nose, but you still have to squint. The pills you took have yet to kick in, so all you have to do is wait and try not to vomit into your mug. Suddenly, your phone lights up and buzzes to life. You press the green button and lift to your ear.

“What do you want?” Your voice is awfully froggy, you realize, and clear your throat.

“Good morning to you too.” Sapnap’s voice rings clear yet husky into your ear. The corners of your lips twitch up into a smile. God, you’re whipped just for the sound of his voice.

“It is definitely not a good morning,” you grumble and switch him into speaker phone. You drop the phone into your lap and stretch out further on the swing.

“Good morning for me,” he chirps cheerfully. “Take anything for the headache?”

“Yes,” you report, sounding like a pouting child and rubbing two fingers into your temple. “Some idiot fed me ice cream last night so this morning I woke up having to both shit and throw up.”

“Aww,” he sympathizes, sounding way too entertained. “That sounds like a you problem.” You stuck out your tongue, but upon realizing he can’t see it, make a ‘hmph’ noise into the mic. “Anyways. I called to see if you wanted to go get breakfast with me. Waffle House, specifically.” You make a face but lift yourself up off the swing, wincing.

“I saw a rat eat an entire piece of french toast there once. But—sure. I’ll pay.” He starts to whine, but you scoff. “Let me love you, bitch. You pay for my McDonald’s and I pay for your pancakes. Easy trade.”

“Whatever. See you in five.” He hangs up right as you twist the front door open and drop your phone onto the couch.

“Who’re you talking to?” comes from the kitchen and you jump, pressing a hand to your chest. A shirtless Karl enters the living room with a bowl of fruit loops in his hand.

“Jesus Christ,” you breathe, and duck into the hall closet for your pair of dirty tennis shoes. “I was talking to Sapnap.”

“Oh,” he says around his mouthful of cereal with a grin. “You guys dating yet?”

You pass him a weird look, bending to tie your shoes.

“Gimme like two weeks. I’ll have him at my beck and call,” you laugh and collapse back into the couch.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” He quirks an eyebrow and exits stage left into your roommate’s room.

The few minutes it takes for Sapnap to come to your house are short but filled with contemplation. Do you really want to date him? He’s certainly cute enough. Nice enough. And smart enough. He seems to like you too—

A honk interrupts your thoughts. Always having to be obnoxious, huh?

“You’re annoying,” you mumble as you buckle your seatbelt. He just shrugs, tiny smile tugging his lips, and shifts into drive. The short trip to Waffle House proves more quiet than lively. He seems awake, actually, so you attribute the silence to your tumultuous thoughts. The music is nice, though. Bikini Kill is perfect for 10 am.

After you two order (three chocolate chip pancakes for him and two regular waffles with a side of hashbrowns for you), he finally breaks the silence.

“Hey, are we dating?”

You pause with your lip on the rim of your orange juice. Your gaze falls from his lips to his fingers wrapped around the coffee mug. Two silver rings adorn both his middle fingers and they glint underneath the fluorescent lights.

“Do you wanna?” You squint back up at him. The tips of his ears flush pink.

“I-uh… Yeah. Yes,” he says simply. You try to hide a smile, but realize there’s no point.

“Okay.” You take a long drink of your orange juice. “I really like you. A lot. A surprising amount, actually; I haven’t really dated seriously since highschool.”

He nods, shuffling his feet on the tile. What else does he have to be nervous about? you wonder.

“I’ve… kindasortamaybelikedyousincesophmoreyear,” he mumbles and you swallow.

“Huh?” Leaning forward, you set your glass down.

“Um,” he starts but doesn’t finish.

“Did you say you’ve liked me since sophomore year?”

“...Maybe.” His coffee becomes the most interesting thing in the world, apparently. “Do you remember that one time during the Summer Carnival where Karl lost his phone?”

“Uh—yes! Yeah, actually. I do remember that. He found it in the porta-potty. What about it?” The waitress sets down both your plates in front of you and you offer her a smile in thanks before she trundles off to the drink station. You pick up your fork and wait for him to continue.

“I left two hours early because you invited Michael from your computer science class.” You pause around your mouthful of potato and he just stares back, trying not to grin. “Yeah. I thought you were hot and left early because you brought another guy.”

“Michael is gay,” you say slowly.

“Yup.” He nods and shoves a forkful of pancake into his mouth. “Isn’t that so stupid?”

“So stupid,” you tease but your cheeks blush pink.

“Anyways. Now I’m dating you, so. Win for me.”

“Ditto,” you murmur, and manage to fit half of your first waffle into your mouth. “This is the easiest it’s ever been to start dating someone.”

“It’s ‘cause we’re cool, I’m pretty sure,” comes from a mouthful of pancake.

“That’s facts.”

The rest of Pancake House is bustling, a few families with young kids and some other hungover college students scarfing down similar breakfast foods and confections. You two barely give any other customers the time of day, too wrapped up in conversation and each other. The waitress gets a heavy tip after an hour and a half of struggling to swallow dough soaked in syrup and chocolate.

Sapnap walks you to your door after breakfast, hand on your waist and pressed to your side. It feels good. Right.

“I’ll see you Wednesday right?” You ask, turning to him with hopeful eyes. How could he resist?

“Definitely. Wouldn’t miss Game Night for the world— I can’t wait to beat your ass at Uno.”

“You’re insufferable, you know that?” You murmur but you’re already slinging an arm around his shoulder and bringing his mouth down to yours.

You taste like sugar, he thinks. His hands find the small of your back easily, pressing you further forward into him. You hum at that, tracking a hand up the back of his neck and into his hair to grip it between your fingers.

He smells both musky and sweet and cool at the same time: heaven. One of his hands slides up to grip at your neck, thumb rubbing at your jaw, and you make a pleased noise into his mouth. There it is.

“Y/N!” Shrieks from inside your house and you jump, pulling away from Sapnap with a smack.

“What?” You yell back, irritated, and he just laughs as he dips to press a kiss to your cheek.

“Stop tonguing your boyfriend and come help me with my photography project.”

“God damn it,” you sigh and drop your hands. His slide down to just rest on your hips, comfortable. “I have to go.” You're annoyed, that’s for sure, and he prays you aren’t too mean to your roommate.

“Alright.” He dips for a quick kiss one last time. Okay, two more times. Maybe three. But he pulls away, grinning. “I’ll see you Wednesday.”

And then he’s stepping off your porch, walking to his car with his hands in his pockets. You watch his back fondly.

God, boyfriend. He’s your boyfriend. Boynap. Sapfriend. You can’t decide on a name, but all sounds perfect.

Perfectly him.

-

A/N: ask or send me some stuff!! requests, rants, anything. :D comments = welcome!

[starknightgirl]

MCC25 Lime Llamas Skins!

Cutting this a bit close I would say, given MCC is less than 24 hours from now. But they’re done so yay! I can’t wait to see this team in action.

If this is the first post you’re seeing of mine, hi! I have made a lot of CaptainSparklez’ team’s skins, ever since MCC14 (links: MCC15, MCC16, MCC17, MCC18, MCC19, MCC21, MCC22, MCC23, MCC24). On occasion I’ve also made skins for other teams, such as the Red Rabbits of MCC Rising. Feel free to share this, just tag this post so that it links back to me. Thank you! Ok, more below the cut.

I’m using my reddit username as the signature, don’t worry I’m not stealing from anyone. 

Three players on this team have some kind of connection to slimes, so the theme of this was pretty obvious in my mind. In case you’re wondering, I don’t think AntVenom has any connection to slimes. PeteZahHutt’s skin is literally a slime. CaptainSparklez had Jerry of course. And I think Solidarity had some connection to slime during Empire SMP Season 1? Ergo, slime scientists. 

There is a llama on the back, of course. It was real tricky to get right though. Yetis are still the worst overall but this would be up there if I had to rank difficulty. This time, I scaled back the amount of Technoblade references. Call it a failure of imagination maybe, but I couldn’t think of any which would also fit the theme. I did use the sarcoma ribbon though.

No shading, I didn’t have time. I did play around with transparency though, which was fun. I think it looks pretty good and it’s certainly something cool to use sometimes. Anyways, time for the individual breakdowns.

Starting with AntVenom again! I didn’t take tons of cues from his usual skin, but there are a few small ones. He has his necklace. The pattern on the gloves is taken from those points around his regular skin. I also gave him gloves. Finally, he has safety glasses, which I think turned out real nice.

Next up, it’s Solidarity. I liked how the safety glasses worked on AntVenom so much I gave him them as well. He also has a scarf which is a reference to his sheriff outfit from Empires SMP Season 2. Look, his regular skin doesn’t have tons of details for me to copy over. Though I did give him rumpled pants just like his regular skin.

PeteZahHutt was harder to work with because I wanted to give him a suit just like his regular skin wears. I think I managed to pull it off? He is incidentally the only one to have dark sleeves because of this. I also had to tint his skin lighter because originally it was too close to the ‘slime’ on the labcoats. Oh and I made his hat lime colored of course. Though to be honest it’s more green.

And finally, CaptainSparklez. Just like the coat of his skin, his labcoat is a but askew. I also gave him the pants stripe like his regular skin. And of course I had to make his glasses lime. Though, just like PeteZahHutt I’d say it’s more green than lime. Oh and it’s one color again. Apparently the last time I did that was MCC21, huh.

Here’s all the skins in case you want them yourself.