#is that it does not matter if you know either

[suugarbabe]

Ok bet

Can I request a fic where Matteo comes home at the end of the day kind of exhausted and done with the world but finds his sweets like humming in the kitchen as she makes dinner? Just softness personified and he’s just 🫠

mmmmm yes yes yes yes yes my lovely darling girl; personally i would love to be that softness personified for matty boy but we all know i'm a lil rough around the edges

matty x gn!reader ; not proof read, sozz. but i still think its cute...

December was always busy. And honestly, it was always a little bit hard for Mattheo. With both Christmas and his birthday within a week or so of each other, not to mention the fact that he was basically estranged from his family, this time of year he always felt just a little bit...heavy.

Waking up most mornings led to him yearning for the moment he was able to lay back down and move on to the next. Getting day after day over with was always his goal until his keys hit the lock and he opened his door to you.

Today was no different. That same heavy feeling making him feel sluggish, making the day drag on until finally he was able to go home once more.

Hearing keys turn in the door did nothing to deter you from your current task. You bounced around the kitchen checking on different variants for the dinner you were preparing for the two of you.

To Mattheo you seemed to float around the kitchen with minimal effort, checking the oven and stirring things on the stovetop before moving to the counter to finish chopping things for what looked like a salad.

You were humming to yourself, a tune that's been stuck in your head the last two days if Mattheo's recognizing it correctly. Even with a knife in your hand you look gentle to him and he can't help the grin the graces his features as he hangs up his jacket.

He toes off his trainers before walking over to you, making gentle steps on the tile to not disturb the soft bubble that seemed to surround you.

At his approach to the island you peek a glance from your chopping and smile, "Hi, handsome. How was your day?" He can't help the blush that dusts his cheeks at the affectionate nickname, no matter that you use it on him every day.

"Was long, exhausting really. Happy to be home."

You nod, indicating you received what he said as you lightly hum again while placing all the vegetables you just chopped in the salad, adding dressing and tossing.

You turn slightly, now facing your favorite boy who's rounding the island to stand beside you, "I'm happy you're home to. I think you'll like what I'm making."

Matty wraps his hands around your waist, yours finding solace around his neck. His grin is infectious and you fall victim so easily, "I always like what you make for us, sweets." His kiss on your lips is soft, just as he sees you. Nothing too deep or passionate, just a show of pure love and adoration for his favorite person.

His compliment settles in your brain and you're smiling as he pulls away. The kitchen timer rings, pulling you from him slightly; but not without a pout from Mattheo. "Set the cooling racks out for me, will you lovie?"

Matty pretends to grumble, but does as asked nonetheless. No sooner is he finished are you placing a tray of his favorite meal atop them.

"You made pasties?" The grin on his face was that of childlike excitement and the sight made your heart soar. Gnawing your lip slightly you gave a shy nod, "Wanted to try out a recipe I saw to see if you liked it. Then I could make it for your birthday when we had everyone over."

He reaches to grab one, earning a quick slap on the top of his hand, "Is there hot air under those pretty curls, boy? You just saw me pull those from the oven." Mattheo pulls his hand back, holding it to his chest, "But I wanna try one."

Rolling your eyes you hook your fingers in his front belt loops, pulling him closer to you, "You can try as many as you want, pretty boy...in fifteen minutes." He smiles at your mini-dominance display, settling his hands on either side behind you on the counter, "Guess you'll have to distract me for a moment then."

[rowie264]

For me it's easier to sympathize zaunite characters rather than piltovan ones simply because they have self-awareness

Silco knows he flooded Zaun with drugs, he knows what this shit does to people. He does it anyway to achieve his main goal - Nation of Zaun.

Jinx is aware she is crazy. She basically spells it out in s1 ep9. She knows that she killing ppl is bad. She just doesn't care

Sevika is Silco's right hand man. She does dirty job for him and and understands perfectly well how his methods affect Zaun. She doesn't even question it because his methods work, and as long as they work, she will work with him.

Singed is just the same. He'll do anything for his daughter no matter how horrific his actions are. He doesn't justify it, simply states it was "for love".

And what we have with piltovan characters? You see because s2 is trying to pretend that oppression wasn't such big thing all piltovan characters looks even worse.

Caitlyn gasses people (and not only barons and their goons, gas spreads), using her priveledge as a Sheriff and Councilor's daughter. She never adresses that and never spells out what had she'd done. Like, yeah, she says "we can't erase our mistakes" (s2 ep8) probably not meaning just Jinx's but also her own but that's so… shallow. Like writers couldn't let her really say aloud what she'd done and face consequences bc it would makes bad things too real.

Heimerdinger was one of the founders of Piltover and councilor. He either didn't know, either didn't care to figure out what happens in Undercity for decades. Like, he goes to Zaun after he gets kicked out from Council and finally realises how badly ppl live there but… he just closes his eyes on it? Again?

Jayce killed that kid in s1 and regretted it but once his mother tries to revenge him? Builds weapons immidiately as countermeasure and moves on. He kills dozens of zaunites in Viktor's commune by killing Viktor and doesn't show even a hint of remorse. Like yeah, they were gonna become creepy robots but you know they were still humans when he killed Viktor. Also he (with approval of the Council for sure) places that Hexgates' big core (dont remember how that shit was called) underground and if that thing would blow up Zaun would be left without water and fresh air. Spelled out by Ekko and immediately forgotten.

In the end by removing characters' awareness of their actions and lack of reflection makes piltovan characters either hypocrites, either stupid, either both. And no, i don't want all these characters to be punished for what they did (all chars - except Ekko maybe - would end up in jail lol) I just want characters to realize what they did. I want impact of their actions/inactions. I want real consequences. I want them to face these consequences, not just brush it aside. And then i want them to act according to their personalities, even if i personally wouldn't like what they'd do.

[thatbitchery]

Things no one told you so I will for no reson other than I'm bored

You can NOT unwant something. Desires are inborn. You are born wanting and until you either get it or exhaust all options, It will not go away. Acting like you don't want it will not take away the fact that you do and its little bitch behavior tbh. Meeting your needs will do you a LOT more favors than trying to superimpose others that you deem more achievable or acceptable (Again, little bitch behavior). It is a solid sign of Unthatbitchism to choose not to get what you want for whatever reason but especially because it?is?not?socially?acceptable??? all the women that came before you cry in their graves. All the feminists that fought for your right to exist freely, you spit on their sacrifice. in 2025?

Spirituality, but not manifesting and rocks and yoga and love and light. Never RELIGION I'm begging you never religion. What even is that. Spirituality, the other kind. The blood moon kind. The Penial gland kind, the one that used to have people burned alive. That, that spirituality.

Submission is a masculine trait. Not feminine. Again. nothing wrong with being masculine and mostly you have to be both but. Submission is a masculine trait.

Energy >> substance. Matter of fact is energy over substance. Its not embodying it's becoming. I can't explain this without going into voodoo witch area but listen- its something you become. Not embody. Not project. Not fake till you make it, no, its energy, mode of being. Seduction. Power. Beauty. Wealth. etc- its not substance. Its not something you become. It's something you ARE and it's not tied to substance. You know when you see a super attractive person but you are not attracted to them? They have substance but not energy. Or someone in a position of power that's constantly getting finessed by their juniors? All substance no energy. Its a state of being, like a point in an energy plane?and it is as simple as a decision & practise. If y'all were witch level of cool we'd learn so much but cowards. ALL of you.

Boundaries are also inborn. Given a boundary is a definition of person you are born with your person? A boundary is how- if you take all things in existence as one, you define yourself as part of it. Like your pocket is a part of your cloth but it's still a pocket and it has its own definition- That's a boundary. You don't create them you REMEMBER them and GO BACK to them. You don't superimpose and choose them they were there, but socialization faded them. Joy= boundary respected frustration/ anger/pain = boundary violated. Disassociation is the most ACCURATE indication your boundary has been violated, and it's a matter of tracing what happened and finding it.

Social skills = survival skills. Introvert does not mean doesn't like people that's called a coping mechanism introvert means prefers own company. Social creatures, people. Tribal animals. Herd animals, you get it? The people with the most social skills have the easiest lives. Its like fish that can swim. The most natural thing EVER. The winning code is actually just called social skills. Will outperform a PHD and social status and money every.single.time.

Femininity = Creation. Masculinity= sustenance & that's it that's all. Women have both men can ONLY have one.

You chose into this life. You did in fact choose to be born in that family to those people with those conditions. I'll stop there. This is, by the way, the epitome of empowerment. Once you understand this THEN you are empowered.

You have more than one soulmate I have never understood the idea of *the One*? Matter of fact if we are considering universal oneness everyone is your soulmate? But okay. he's not not your soulmate because you broke up btw. You get more than one. Much more.

Compatibility> chemistry. Wait till you get to therapy and learn all cool and fun things about chemistry haha. Choose compatibility every single time.

No one can save you no one is coming to no one even could? Even if they wanted to? This is not a Wattpad novel honey this is real life. No one can save you but you. You are both the sculptor and sculpture.

Listen to me. Listen carefully. You do not escape the Matrix you dominate it. Okay? Take the red pill live like the blue pill.

You can not be a *failure* as long as you are alive. Human conditioning is literally just to live and survive as long as you are not dead you're good. And no it is not to reproduce if it was natural miscarriages wouldn't be a thing don't you think? Then your body would prioritize your offspring over you? You're alive, you are experiencing life (why we have consciousness btw), you are fulfilling your purpose. You're fine chill. That's it that's your purpose. Survive and experience life. Which is to say staying in your room all day is, in fact, a failure but that's also an experience just a shitty one and why would you choose that.

[raguonmynieceandnephew]

The Hell of Wait

Imagine this: You are the Queen of Ithaca. You gave birth at most like 5 months ago and your husband is gone to fight a war. You are now to raise this kid by yourself. The war itself takes ten years. You get the news he won, and the other kings are back in their homes, but yours is still there. He probably died. Now you have to entertain suitors who believe he and all the 600 men he took to war died and they turn out to be the a gang of assholes that pester you and your son. You wait.

You and your mother in law still believe he will come but he takes so fucking long she dies of a broken heart. You keep waiting.

You are forced to keep serving the suitors, forced to spend stupid amounts of money everyday on food and wine, throw banquets, parties, allow your home to be desecrated and is forced to house the freeloaders, no matter how much unsufferable they are, because of divine law. And you can't even complain because said divine law is the only thing that protects you from them aswell, at least for now, but you know it's only for a while. They are dangerous power hungry monsters, led by a fucking sociopath who bullies your teenage son and jokingly threatens to SA you on a daily basis, and he is so bold he does it to your son's face. Still you wait, no matter how much it hurts, you wait.

Yes, you know Zeus will punish them if they do anything, but the punishment means the crime has already been committed, so you are fucked either way. The safest thing to do would give in, but you refuse. Instead you risk your life and plot a whole scheme to fool those men and buy time for his arrival, if he's still even alive. Night after night you unthread that shroud, knowing that if any of them see you do it you are done for (ayyy). But you do it because you have faith, and you prefer to suffer the consequences that forsake the man you love. You choose to wait some more

The day you feared the most finally arrives, you have to pick and there's no running from it anymore, but you still find a way to buy more time, even if it's a few more days: The Challenge. String a bow, shoot an arrow through some axes and voilá. Perfect plan, doable enough so they can't question it but hard enough so they won't be able to do it. It works, but now the suitors are pissed and are about to raid the castle. It's over. But still, you remain waiting. if that's the last day of your life, you will spend it steadfast, unbroken, unwaivering. Waiting.

I love this part, not only because it's beatiful, but because we see that she is fucking pissed. She is very fucking angry at all she's been through these goddamn 20 years. Miraculously your husband arrives just in time, and deals with the situation, the wait has paid off, You can finally see the man you love after 20 years, you can finally RELAX and the first thing he does is fix his lips to question your love? Shit, i'd be fucking pissed too!

And i love how Ody gets angry at the bed thing but instantly recognizes her feelings when she claps back and he just pipes down and shuts up. He recognizes that he might be just a man, but she is just a woman too. She was fighting monsters and storms of her own, and she knows that if he went through half of what she's been through (and she can see he's been through A LOT) and fought as hard as she did for their love, then it doesn't matter what horrible things he has done, cause if she was in his shoes, she'd do 10x worse.

I fucking love this damn musical.

[damthosefandoms]

The clock is ticking in the kitchen. Ponyboy is out past curfew. With Dally. The door creaks open, and Darry stands up so fast he nearly falls over. Sodapop walks in, and if he wasn’t freaking out so badly about Pony, maybe Darry would’ve caught the look on his brother’s face.

“Oh, it’s just you.”

“Just me?” Soda says. His eyes are red and puffy. “Why’re you makin’ that face?”

“Pony ain’t back yet,” Darry mutters. “Close the door, you’ll let in bugs.”

Soda does, slowly. He walks over, kinda keeping his head down. Looking anywhere but at Darry.

“Normally I’d be worried too, but actually that kind of works out, ‘cause I have to tell you something I don’t want him to know about yet. I mean…”

He kicks at the throw rug with his foot. “I told him a little last night, but he prolly thinks I was just daydreamin’ and that’s for the best.”

Darry watches him carefully. Oh, so now he’s paying attention. 

“What’s goin’ on? You went out with Steve and the girls tonight, didn’t you? Did something happen?”

“I asked Sandy to marry me tonight.”

Darry laughs, a quick, sharp thing. It stings. He doesn’t get it. Ponyboy didn’t either, but he’s fourteen, only been fourteen for a month. He didn’t need to yet.

“You’re dreamin’ Sodapop. You might’ve dropped outta school this year, but you two are way too young for—”

“She’s pregnant.”

They stare at each other for a solid minute, the only sound the clock ticking in the background and the crickets outside. Just the two of them standing there processing the information.

Darry starts to raise a hand, to hold up a finger in a “wait a minute” kind of gesture, and he moves his mouth like he’s going to say something, but nothing comes out. Soda’s heart hurts in his chest and he tries not to start bawling right there in front of his big brother.

“Well, it don’t matter, anyway. Sandy doesn’t know if it’s mine or not. And if it is it still don’t matter ‘cause her folks are livid. They’re makin’ her move to Florida to live with her grandmother or somethin’, and she dumped me so I’ll never get to see her again, or the baby at all, and she’s leavin’ tomorrow afternoon, and if you could not lose your mind at me I’d really ‘preciate it ‘cause I feel like worse than garbage already.”

He really fights not to let the tears spill over, and granted he does a good job of not breaking down, but some do fall. Darry looks like he will blow any second now, but he just breathes in, breathes out, closes his eyes, and says in a very calculated and careful voice:

“Ponyboy went out with Dally and the gang tonight and he is not back yet. We will talk about this later when I know he is not dead.”

They do not get a chance to talk about it later, and they do not find out for a week if their baby brother is or isn’t dead.

[girl4music]

“So why does She-Ra’s power of love ending work? The simplest way to put it is that She-Ra is a show about love (among other things), so rather than seeming forced and incongruous, making love the heart of the show’s climax makes perfect sense.”

Simply put. As you said.

Because the entire show as an emotional resonance for the audience that is watching is a complex love story.

“Is Power of Love stronger than the Love of Power?”

Nailed it!

And yes. The fact that it is a queer love story between 2 lead female characters adds on to the Power of Love theme because there is more challenges in queer love.

It’s not as easy as straight love and it should be depicted that way. She-Ra pulls no punches on it.

The ending in the theme of Power of Love hits and lands because they really make it something to work towards as a victory by employing how hard and scary it is to love and be loved as a queer person throughout the entirety of the TV show. It’s a real triumph as a culmination of so much difficultly and hardship both lead characters have dealt with - and kids show or not - are honest with. Indy knew this was the RIGHT ending.

The Power of Love is a theme or trope that’s exploited in TV so much that I always just groan and roll my eyes whenever I see it used as a “conclusion” because in essence, it’s just not used in the RIGHT way in that it’s not taken seriously as the very complex theme that it is and it’s why I can’t stand watching pure romance TV shows/films or just romance storytelling in general. The stakes are never high enough so it all just falls very flat.

She-Ra takes the Power of Love theme and trope as a serious conclusion and it resonates so very strongly and powerfully emotionally, narratively, thematically, sonically… Characteristically…

It just works because the show itself is all about love and the power that it can have on an individual life.

It’s the right ending for She-Ra - for the lead characters especially - because it concludes their individual arcs.

Adora learns that she can have love and she doesn’t have to throw away her destiny or duty to have it. That it doesn’t have to be either one or the other. It can be both and that she deserves to have both as a person.

Catra learns that love has always been at the forefront of what she wanted, most desired, she just needed to be brave enough to reach out for it and grab it and hold it and it will be what replaces that dark empty unsafe void that abuse and trauma and hardship has put there.

What they’re saying isn’t just that love wins (that’s obvious), but love heals too. Love is what heals pain.

Whether it be romantic love, maternal love, familial love,… it doesn’t matter. The Power of Love is the point.

The fact a kids show can do that and so many adult shows struggle like hell really just goes to show that people do really believe that love is weak and finite.

I pity those people so much. I know why I’m not like that and it’s because of another TV show where the Power of Love - redemptive love in particular - is present and done so well that I am grounded in its lessons and it will always be what I believe in most.

And She-Ra very much reminds me of that TV show. A children’s animated version of ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’.

@boopblep

@sevenlascaras

@itsaboringname

This is the final post of my not-quite-thesis on why Catradora is the greatest love story in the history of kids TV and arguably the greatest love story in TV history, period. In the first installment, I covered how Catra and Adora’s character arcs compliment each other and how they come apart and together over the course of the series. In the second, I covered how the ambiguities and conflicts of their relationship deepen their story and, by making their relationship conflict the central conflict in the story, make the relationship itself the center of the story. In the third I talked about how important Catra and Adora’s (intense) desire for each other is both in the show’s plot and in its themes. If you want to read these, I’ve linked them below. To tie these together and wrap everything up, I’m going to talk about what these elements add up to on the screen: She-Ra is the rare show that actually pulls off a Power of Love ending. More than pulling it off, She-Ra makes the power of love one of the most inspiring and stirring and exciting themes I could imagine. And I hate power of love endings. So how did they do it?

First, let’s talk about the power of love as a trope in the conclusion of action/adventure fantasy or sci-fi stories. So to clarify, when I say ‘the Power of Love’ I mean the use of love as an explicitly or implicitly magical source of power (or, in more realistic stories, inspiration) that allows a hero to overcome their final challenge and triumph. It’s common, perhaps particularly common in kids media. I suspect one plus it offers to writers is that it gives a romance sideplot more narrative significance, thus tying it into the main plot, plus it’s inspiring and warm and fuzzy and optimistic. But it’s deployed so often that it’s essentially a cliche, and if we look at how it’s used I think we can see why. Here are several ways in which The Power of Love doesn’t work. Most of these involve it not fitting with the rest of the story, or seeming contrived, IE a Deus Ex Machina, but the different reasons for this are important:

Most mundanely, the Power of Love couldn’t have any place in the story’s world. Introducing love as a powerful force at the conclusion of your story when you haven’t mentioned it beforehand can feel like a worldbuilding Deus Ex machina as you change the rules to suit narrative convenience.

More deeply, sometimes The Power of Love doesn’t fit thematically or tonally with the rest of the story. If a story is emotionally realistic and fraught, with lots of shades of gray, pain, and even atrocities, and doesn’t include notes of hope or humanism, throwing in ‘and then he was saved by the power of love’ at the end is practically a Deus Ex Machina, thematically. If you’ve created a cynical world, a gushingly optimistic ending is jarring. It may outright contradict a lot of the show’s other themes. A milder example are shows that are optimistic but not particularly concerned with love, thematically, and how these may do a disservice to their other themes by placing so much emphasis on love (particularly romantic love) in their conclusion. Ideally, a story’s ending should wrap up the themes its concerned itself with - it should provide the audience something to take away. This doesn’t have to be a decisive or triumphant conclusion, it could be an open question or even something that is quite disturbing, but the ending of a story should be -about- the same things that the story was about, generally speaking.

On a similar note, sometimes The Power of Love doesn’t fit narratively. If a romance plot is a fairly minor part of a work of fiction, having the final battle hinge on the power of love derived from that romance plot feels like a -narrative- nonsequitur. If a TV show has spent most of its run time on political plots, training montages and action sequences and three episodes on a romantic arc and then it’s the romantic arc that turns out to be the most decisive in the end, there’s a disconnect between the emphasis that the narrative itself puts on the various threads of the plot, versus what the ending is -saying- their importance is. 

Relatedly, On a character level, if most of the story has been about a character’s growth as an individual and if that has no connection to their romantic relationship then a power of love ending is irrelevant to that development, and might even subvert it (as might be the case if a straight, female protagonist whose been presented as independent is saved by the power of her love for a minor male character). Digging deeper, if characters aren’t motivated by love, if it isn’t want drives them through the story, then making love the narrative hinge of the story’s climax doesn’t fit with what the characters want and thus who they are.

Finally, and more philosophically, generally speaking these kinds of endings just feel kind of glib and false. Not only optimistic, they feel naive or even dishonest in telling us that the power of love can save us. Because nothing is ever that simple in our lives, is it? Love isn’t simple. It is often painful, fraught, and difficult. Stories that ignore this and simply celebrate love’s power aren’t true to our experience. Put another way, stories can fail to land a power of love ending when they don’t understand what love even is.

Now all of these reasons are closely related. A story that doesn’t provide much narrative emphasis on love probably doesn’t have love as a major theme. And a story that hasn’t explored love in any kind of depth will naturally feel kind of false and glib when it concludes that The Power of Love WIll Save Us. Really, this applies to any thematic conclusion, not just this one - whenever a story’s ending doesn’t reflect what the story itself is about and whenever it doesn’t show thought and depth in how it delivers it, it feels false and hollow. Looking back at how much I’ve enjoyed, or not enjoyed, various endings, I think that this explains a lot of my reactions.

To use an example, Steven Universe was a great, complex, emotionally nuanced and often very dark show with a lot of fascinating themes and insights into human psychology and relationships that ended its Diamond Age arc on a simple message about accepting yourself, and I feel like that’s one of several reasons the Diamond’s ‘redemption’ (such as it is) rings hollow (there’s more wrong with that than this, though). None of that complexity or nuance or darkness or depth was addressed, let alone incorporated into the actual ending of the original TV run (I won’t get into Future and the Movie). At least, I didn’t see it (then again, this is very much tied in with my larger feelings about SU, which is my frustration that it didn’t double down on and follow through with my favorite elements and characters, which I loved so much, and instead began to emphasize simpler and more easily digested themes and easier answers).

So why does She-Ra’s power of love ending work? The simplest way to put it is that She-Ra is a show about love (among other things), so rather than seeming forced and incongruous, making love the heart of the show’s climax makes perfect sense. But this is me, so let’s dive into the details of this - how is She-Ra about love, and how does Catra and Adora’s relationhip’s culmination in the kiss tie that up?

The first key is that She-Ra is -narratively- and structurally a love story, not simply an adventure story with a romance plot. As I mentioned in the first essay of this series, Catra and Adora’s arcs are interwoven as they diverge and then converge over the show’s run. More than that, their arcs are compliments to each other, and at the end of them Adora and Catra have grown into more compatible people. Seen through the lens of their relationship, both Catra and Adora’s development is about them growing into women who are capable of loving each other (as well as growing into their own women, and these two are linked). 

In addition, from the very outset the show has established how central Adora and Catra are to each other, and has also shown just how big a hole they leave in each other’s lives, and how only their reconciliation can fill that hole. Put another way, the converse of Adora’s statement in The Promise that ‘Nothing bad can happen as long as we have each other’ is proven in the worst way possible when Adora and Catra both nearly self-destruct when they are apart from each other, because they are missing the person who understands them well enough to help them when they need it most. That, and Adora and Catra -want- each other so much (see the third part of this series), and its established so clearly that to be loved and wanted is central for both of them. Catra doesn’t think she deserves it, and Adora doesn’t think she can even -ask- for it (or even fully think about it) without betraying her destiny or her duty. It’s only at the heart that this central question is answered with their kiss. By making both the depth of their affection and the strength of their desire for each other clear throughout the show, Noelle and the showrunners sell us on how much this relationship and that kiss mean to these characters.

Moreover, because the conflict between Catra and Adora drives the central conflict of the story (as I mentioned in my second essay), the final and decisive resolution of this conflict (indeed, it’s transformation into love) in the kiss is the perfect culmination to the show’s central arc. Rather than a final fight, Season 5 of She-Ra shows Catra and Adora working through the root causes of their conflict now that they’ve grown as people - it is a dramatization of a couple working out their relationship problems, and somehow it is actually riveting TV as opposed to feeling like a John Gottman book in narrative form.

Just as She-Ra is narratively a love story, thematically it is also a Show About Love, or perhaps more precisely, about relationships and how people can relate to each other in healthy and unhealthy ways. So much of what all the characters struggle with are relational questions - questions of how they can be a good friend, how they can be loyal yet true to themselves and their ideals, how they can honor other people's autonomy while also looking out for them, etc. Not just Catra and Adora but all the characters have learned more about being there for each other, about respecting themselves, and about admitting when they’re wrong and making it right. More mundanely, the power of love (as an inspiration and also a source of magical power) has been present since the first season.

While a lot of this exploration has been about friendship, the show has also explored the power of desire as well as the things that keep us from naming and acting on our desires. Catra and Adora’s love for each other, while appropriate for a Y-7 show, is not desexualized or abstracted, and this also gives it a realism and a poignancy, as well as a power. Among other things, it very much feels like a real relationship between two early 20-somethings.  

Moreover, She-Ra has not pulled its punches about how messy all of this is, and I think this is key. Like I said earlier, She-Ra understands that love isn’t always a good thing. It understands the power of love, good and bad - “for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.” The show has explored obsession, jealousy, control, incompatible values and the psychological hang ups and traumas that keep us from being vulnerable, as well as the havoc that can wreck. Instead of showing all the relationships in the show as uniformly good and supportive, its explored dynamics that are unhealthy or even disturbing, and in Catra’s case, we’ve seen just how twisted love can become, and how closely linked it is with hate. But then the show has shown how people can choose to grow and change and heal. The show, and its characters, have confronted the dark side of human relationships head on and triumphed. So instead of feeling glib, naive and possibly insincere, the ending of She-Ra feels hard-earned and triumphant as well as genuinely moving and insightful.

Another way of looking at this is to say that She-Ra has been deploying the Power of Love all along - seemingly naively in season 1, but with the disintegration of Catra and Adora’s relationship serving as a kind of tragic, sinister counterpoint to all the Princess Alliance’s celebrations of togetherness and friendship. Then it complicates the Power of Love in season 2, especially showing how it fails (or perhaps betrays) Catra when she lets what I think is her lingering love for Shadow Weaver make her vulnerable to manipulation. Ironically, so much of Catra’s schemes in the first parts of the show only work as well as they do because she’s similarly exploiting Adora’s feelings for her, though unlike Shadow Weaver I don’t think she fully understands that’s what she’s doing (but Catra has very much adopted Shadow Weaver’s view that Love is a Weakness). And the Power of Love isn’t enough to keep Adora and Catra together in the portal - indeed that ends with Adora decking Catra, Angella sacrificing herself and Adora sending Catra off with a death glare. Season 4 is very much about the -failure- of the power of love, perhaps because both Glimmer and Catra choose power over trust and connection. This is shown most brutally in ‘Boys Night Out’, which plays like a dark parody of the sometimes too-pat, too-simple conclusions of Season 1 episodes, and leads right into Fractures. So after 13 episodes celebrating the power of love (with those weird undertones from Catradora’s...complexity), the show spends 26 episodes subverting the original optimistic set up and pointing out that it’s much more complicated than that, and sometimes people who love each other hurt each other, and somtimes love isn’t enough to fix it (which to be fair, is very much present in Season 1 in Promise, which is hindsight sets up the tone of the show much more than the cheery end of The Battle of Brightmoon). But Season 4 ends with DT’s speech making the subtext of Season 4 text - that Catra’s domineering and posturing are there mostly to cloak her underlying need. Season 5, then, is all about repairing the rifts of the past 4 seasons (starting with the wreckage Glimmer leaves at the end of S4) and making something better. 

Indeed, the question ‘Will Love Win?’ and ‘Is Power of Love Stronger than the Love of Power’? Is central to the show. As I mentioned above, this is spelled out most explicitly by Shadow Weaver, but it is an idea held by Hoard Prime as Well: both believe that Love is a Weakness, an irrational prejudice or a passion to exploit. Both Catra and Adora have internalized this, in different ways - Catra perhaps has better internalized the idea that love is an exploitable weakness, while Adora has internalized the idea that it is an irrational distraction from What Must be Done. Throughout the entire series, we see characters destroy themselves by following the logic of Shadow Weaver and Prime, and finding redemption and grace when they embrace love and vulnerability instead. There is so much more to say about Shadow Weaver and her importance, here, and more about Prime, but this is a Catradora essay, so let’s just say that Catra and Adora’s narrative arc is a refutation of both Prime and Shadow Weaver’s worldview. They are at their lowest when they reject  their love for each other, and at their strongest when they embrace it (and each other). So when Catra and Adora kiss, they’re not just answering the great question that the narrative has been setting up in our minds (when are these two just going to make out already!?) but answering the question the show’s been posing all along. Love wins.

Last but not least, it’s important that the ending of She-Ra is queer as all hell. This isn’t a story about the power of straight love, and that’s important. Not only is the power of heterosexual love is a cliche; when used to reinforce the primacy of monogamous heterosexual marriage and normative family structures (and their implied gender roles), it can be downright oppressive.* By contrast, celebrating the power of queer love is inherently a rebellious, defiant act of joy. This is especially true when queer love has been shown in its warts-and-all, messy, passionate fullness. Because that reflects our own love when it isn’t neat or tidy or perfectly well-adjusted. It reflects us when we’re not well-adjusted or self-aware or ‘together’. And it affirms that there is still so much power in our love, in us. Maybe the power to save the world.

And it’s so fucking hokey, and so fucking sincere, and yet so thoughtful, and that’s why I love this show. So much media for adults is one step away from being some James Incandenza film from Infinite Jest - a meaningless stylistic exercise or homage to some other, more sincere, more meaningful work of art (Quentin Tarantino, I am looking at you. Yes you.) She-Ra has the fucking guts to be about something, even something as mushy as The Power of Love, and to mean something. It goes for it, and it sticks the landing. And in times like these, that’s what I fucking need, and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Well Noelle, you Magnificent Bastard, you pulled it off. I’m still kind of blown away.

*Yes, you could do a non-terrible story about the power of heterosexual love - in many ways a lot of the novels of Ursula K LeGuin and the films of Jane Campion are about this, and I fucking love both as you may have noticed. But celebrating queer love will have another element that makes it more interesting. Queer love stories are operating on an additional level.

Previous essays in this series:

[doberbutts]

So I'm going to ask an honest question here and ask you please explain in layman's terms. Every trans person I know irl has no concept of the transandrophobia discourse but every time I see more of it online I'm...unsettled, and it takes a lot to power through all the terminology.

I initially was really receptive to transandrophobia because the rationale behind being against it sounded stupid and akin to label discourse in the queer community. I saw "being a man is not an axis of oppression therefore you don't get your Own Word" and thought that was pedantic nonsense, that language doesn't need to adhere to that rule, and that it's helpful to have a term designated towards transmasculine experiences so people can find those experiences easier. Not that trans women's experiences aren't also beneficial! But that, well, obviously no matter how similar the experience birds of a feather and that sense of comfort of sharing identity still matters. This is true for other issues of identity too, I find, weather that's a good thing or a bad thing idk, but it is human.

The thing is I follow a lot of transwomen and have been seeing some alarms being raised about the community being formed around this word. You blocked one of the most egregious offenders so I trust you (which is why I'm asking sorry) I've seen a lot of misogyny and essentialism from people using the term "transandrophobia" and more egregiously "transmisandry." Idk your opinion on the latter term (I haven't scrolled down far enough on your blog, sorry if you talked about this before) but to me it's unconscionable. I was taught that transandrophobia existed as a term specifically NOT to use that term, that elevating misandry to a legitimate issue was dangerous for obvious reasons and it was one of the reasons why I was so supportive of transandrophobia. To me, it seemed like an awareness that misogyny was the prevailing issue behind all issues of gender oppression, but when I actually look at the tag I...get uncomfortable.

Blogs I follow have repeatedly been upset at misogyny from this community, and have been using the term "transandrobro" to describe behavior they find akin to cis MRAs. I've truly seen horrible things with hundreds, sometimes thousands of notes to it that do, unfortunately, feel like women are being blamed for the plight of trans men. I've seen cis people say they were originally on MRA reddits and then came to tumblr to "confront the misandry directly" only to wholeheartedly adopt transandrophobia into their worldview. It's hard because I KNOW I shouldn't judge a community based on a few crazies but it truly does feel sometimes like "transandrophobia" gives misogynists a venue to air their woman-hating to an eager audience, kinda like how "Karen" has been co-opted beyond the og meaning of being for racist white woman to any woman being mildly rude.

So like, here it is: can transandrophobia exist without being co-opted by misogynists? Is there a threshold of proliferation for misogynists destroying this word until a new one needs to be made? Or will every word trying to identify the transmasculine experience be inevitably co-opted by misogynists because misogynists are just that powerful, so people should double down harder on the word and work to push misogynists out?

(Also am I going crazy, or did this word a year ago used to have a WAY better community than the one I see nowadays. Back then I could find your blog and really compassionate people easily, and now it's just...bad.)

It is a little hard to understand some of this post but I will do my best to answer what I think is being asked.

To put simply, I think the reason why it was better a year or two ago is because the majority of the people who were actually trying to further the conversation and not just circle jerk in the echo chamber got chased off. Transandrophobia, anti-transmasculinity, transandromisia, transmascphobia... the guys who coined these are largely either not posting at all anymore or post far far less than they used to. They were harassed and the constant exposure to transphobia made them shut down their blogs for their own mental health. Not all of them, but a lot of the so-called "big names" had this happen.

Even I stopped posting for a while and shuttered the doors for a bit outside of a long queue of dog photos because of how much it was affecting my mental health.

In their place remain people who are not committed to the same conversation. Perhaps they are younger, or less familiar with the building blocks of theory that really should be required reading, or are still stuck in their "everything sucks and it's YOUR fault" phase. Maybe they do come from different places, like 4chan or reddit, which are less prone to this sort of discussion. A lot of the original crowd had been on tumblr long enough to remember when we could still edit posts, and I keep seeing people who would have been in elementary school at that time posting to the tag nowadays.

I was discussing this problem on discord with a small group of friends and one of them- a trans fem- called it second wave transandrophobia discourse as a bitter joke. I think she is more right than wrong, regardless.

I'm not sure who you believe I've blocked- in general I don't air out who I block on this blog because at nearly 12k followers there are too many people who would love to dogpile someone for the sin of disagreeing with me and I do my best to prevent that. I don't want anyone to be harassed, after all. There's a lot of assumptions that have been made about my block and follow behavior that vary from "hilarious but untrue" to "outright offensive slander".

People are people, and some people are shitheads. Trans mascs and people who want to support trans mascs are not exempt from that. I say this all the time- Kayne West is objectively a shitty person but his existence doesn't prove the concept of antiblackness to be a myth. Caitlyn Jenner is objectively a shitty person but her existence doesn't prove the concept of transmisogyny to be a myth. So why do shitty trans mascs prove our own theory to be dangerous or nonexistent? Why hold us to a higher standard than any other marginalized group?

I could ask you the same question- there are posts on here with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of notes made by trans fems and cis women who blame their problems with transmisogyny on trans mascs. There are people coming from reddit, Twitter, 4chan who are being actively transphobic and misogynistic and claiming they're doing it for the good of transfeminism. There are posts filled with misogyny and bioessentialism and gender essentialism and even interphobia and racism and transphobia being left completely unchecked. Do you think it would be acceptable for me to ask if that means transmisogyny theory should be abandoned or if we should just accept that it will draw people with bad intentions?

Or do you think the better answer is to focus instead on finding those with a good head on their shoulders, and making sure it's them who has their voice heard? Do you think we should maybe not judge entire demographics because there exists some shitty people who claim the same identity?

[lewistoferrari]

study hall [3]

uni student kyle who’s late for his session with you in study hall.

“she’s gonna kill me,” he mutters to himself as he pushes through the double doors, a groan slipping past his lips when he catches your eye.

if looks could kill he’d be dead.

fuck, i’m really in for it now, kyle thinks to himself as the urge to flee increases with each step he takes towards the table you’re occupying.

you really scared the shit out of him sometimes.

one look from you has kyle realizing how much trouble he’s in. you don’t even greet him like you usually do. he quietly dumps his backpack onto the table, while eyeing you warily when you kick his chair away from the table with more force than is necessary.

once he’s seated, kyle has a silent debate with himself. he’s wondering if he should explain his tardiness. but with the way you’re staring at him, he’s not even sure if it matters.

“45 minutes, garrick.”

that’s how late kyle is.

you almost let out a snort when he starts in on his apology right away. “i’m sorry, love. i was—”

but you’re not having any of it.

“save it,” you tell him, your patience finally worn thin. “your communication skills are sorely lacking if you can’t even be bothered to pick up a phone and let me know that you’re running late.”

kyle scowls at your little dig. “look smartass, can we just get this session over with.”

“gladly.” you’ll stop being mad at kyle when he’s no longer in his presence.

you spend the next hour watching kyle talk animatedly while he helps you with your coursework. you have an exam coming up and the class has been kicking your ass lately.

and you’ll never say it out loud—you have no desire to feed his ego—but the more kyle talks, you notice how intelligent he truly is.

no wonder his head is so damn big.

usually when kyle opens his mouth, it’s to utter something that’ll piss you off. he’s the only one who can get under your skin and stay there. you think you might hate professor price for pairing you with kyle, because now you feel like you’re noticing things about him against your will.

you’ve never seen kyle so laser focused, with his nose practically buried in his textbook. you notice the way he talks with his hands whenever he becomes passionate about a certain topic. you do everything you can to ignore the way his brows furrow, and the way he bites his lip when he’s trying to make sense of something.

you close your textbook immediately when you start staring at kyle’s fingers, and the way they grip his textbook. there’s a moment when you think about those same fingers gripping your ass. and you definitely shouldn’t be thinking about kyle’s fingers being anywhere near your pussy either, but you do. you have enough sense to suppress a groan. you shouldn’t be thinking about kyle or his hands. you’re supposed to be hating his ass.

shit.

this is bad.

and to make your situation worse, when you look up, pretty brown doe eyes are staring at you in confusion.

“why are you lookin’ at me like that? is something wrong?” kyle asks.

everything.

“nothing!” you blurt out quickly in a high pitched tone. you try your best to ignore kyle, who’s now looking at you suspiciously, while you shove your belongings into your bag. “i just remembered i have to—”

the shrill tone of your phone ringing interrupts your lie, which is a problem in itself when you see the name on the your screen.

it’s johnny.

not now, you think as you snatch the phone off the table to answer the call. you’re barely paying attention to johnny’s yapping though. you’re too busy staring at kyle, whose demeanor is slowly changing the longer you stay on your phone. your try to wrap the call up as quickly as possible by promising johnny that you’ll be available to help him over the weekend.

“why is soap calling you?” kyle demands as soon as the call ends.

he looks like he wants to throttle someone, but you don’t care.

“wouldn’t you like to know.”

kyle is way too calm for your liking when he asks you if you’re fucking soap.

excuse me?

“i’m not fucking anyone,” you hiss at him, while gathering the rest of your things. “and even if i was, how is that your business? i’m not yours.”

kyle eyes you up and down, “no?”

instead of responding, you walk off. you have every intention on putting as much distance between you and kyle as possible.

he doesn’t let you get far though. there is no warning when he sneaks up on you. with a grip on the back of your neck, kyle steers you to an empty room.

“garrick, what the hell do you think you’re d—”

a pair of soft lips crashing against yours shuts you up immediately.

-

a/n: it took me a minute to get here, but i’m back (i think)

kyle’s masterlist | uni-verse masterlist | main masterlist

[togglesbloggle]

Insofar as I have a principled position on the matter- and I don’t, not really- it’s this: art does have the ability to alter our values and our way of interpreting the world. It’s absolutely a live grenade, and should be taken seriously as such.

Like, of course it does! Probably you can point to some book, some film, some story somewhere that touched you not just deeply but irrevocably. There are moments of aesthetic experience which give a before and after to our lives, just as surely as moments of extraordinary suffering or extraordinary joy can.

I’m lucky enough to have more than a few I can list off, personally. Profoundly transformative ones like Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited or the music of John Cage, sure. But maybe even more interesting (tractable?) to me were small moments of grace like the one I found in the Dragonlance novels by Weis and Hickman: the dark wizard Raistlin Majere wove back and forth across the line between ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ in exactly such a way that, after reading his books at a young age, I immediately and quite distinctly overcame my fear of the dark.

What a wonderful thing for a book to do! I’d be hard-pressed to explain exactly how, if only because I’m such a different person now than I was then. Perhaps your own intuition will bridge the gap a bit. It was all tied up with this distinction between good and evil, you see, and with the ability to stare in to the face of evil things without flinching, to understand that they have contingency and history just like good things do, and to be in some sense in community with them.

That was a long, long time ago, and I don’t think my model of the world even has evil in it any more, not in the sense that I believed in it then. But my fear of the dark never came back, either.

I don’t believe for a minute that Weis and Hickman had any idea that they were giving me that gift in particular, nor did they have any sensible means to achieve such a goal even if they somehow wanted to. It wasn’t a transformation mediated by intent, you know? It didn’t reduce to an argument that I believed or disbelieved in some intellectual way, or to some specific controlled experience that the authors had planned for me.

Art is transformative, but not in the way that effective polemic is transformative. It doesn't (principally) reason with us or persuade us. Rather, I think art is dangerous for the same reasons that travel to a foreign country is dangerous, or a friendship with somebody new is dangerous. It threatens us by expanding our conscious history to include new categories of experience, that is, by changing the context in which we go about the business of living.

It's wrong to think of art mostly as a tug-of-war dragging hapless consumers from one ideology to another, with the victory going to whichever faction can fill the algorithm with mass-produced and doctrinally compliant stories clamoring endlessly for their views. Normalization has its power, don't get me wrong, but there will always be far greater power in a single glimpse over the horizon.

Think about Whoopi Goldberg's account of seeing Nichelle Nichol's Uhura on television:

“Well, when I was nine years old Star Trek came on. I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, ‘Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!’ I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.”

Once. It took one time, and the walls fell away, and everything was possible. The fashions and approved styles may come and go with the seasons, but the outer perimeter of our experiences, and the sense of what the world could be, can only ever grow, and sometimes it grows by leaps and bounds in an instant.

I guess this is why I tend to think of censorship and control over media as basically quixotic. Sure, with enough energy you can control what's normal and what's public, but controlling what's possible is an exercise in futility on a grand scale. You can never win that fight, only lose it fast or slow.

We all have this remarkably unpredictable collection of soft places and hard places: some things in us that deform to match the shape of their environment, and other things that break us before they can bend. And we all try to find a way to make these strange shapes work within the limits of our own experience and the world as we understand it. Some of us thrive in communities and cultures where others die gasping, and some of us spend our entire lives trying to smash through excruciating barriers that others can't even detect.

Art is one of the things that expands those limits, gives the strange creature inside us a little bit of room to stretch and grow and find a space for the hard bits to arrange themselves as they need to be. But it can't do that without changing the soft parts as well, because the soft parts need external force to maintain their shape. Socialization and ideology can only weakly bind us, because they rely on deliberate and conscious pressures to conform; ignorance is stronger, because it denies us the choice altogether. Without art, you'll never really be able to learn what kind of animal you are, as opposed to the kind of person your world has told you to be. But art will change you, too, as discovery always will.

The life you have now has real value- great beauty, and great meaning. For all that you are defined in part by the walls of your cage, knowledge and new experiences are not something to accept lightly, and they can never be undone. All I can say, really, is that I've never once regretted it.

[myalgicpierrot]

Plain text: They run away from moose like girls. they think a sheet of glass is adequate protection from being shot in the face by gang bangers and their recipes include fresh urine. What the hell is up with New Jersey's finest punk metallers? roars: Cardinal Doran. Snapping fingers: Brother Naki. "The Spanish Inquisition: You ask, they squirm" My Chemical Romance.

Why are you guys soooooo cool?? - Thomas, via email

Gerard: "We can answer this question. (Massive pause.) Er, shit. Let me answer this with a question, "Why is Brody Dalle from The Distillers so hot?" (Another massive pause.) I guess we're cool because we're just like Thomas. Unless he's a serial killer or something. We're just the kids who didn't fit in at school and that's how we found each other. We were always on the outside looking in and it depends on whether you think that's cool or not." Hammer: Off stage though and outside of music, who is the coolest, the most goddamn suave when chatting to the ladies? All bar Mikey in unison: "Mikey." Hammer: Is it your uncanny Jarvis Cocker impersonation? Mikey: "Yeah dude, it gets them every time. No it's Bob; the ladies are suckers for his beard." Hammer: They suck his beard? He must have some good lines.

Gerard, have you any plans to do any more artwork for future albums and how much would it cost to get you to play in my front room? - Name taken, via Hammer message board

Gerard: "Yes and 20 bucks." Hammer: I suppose there may be people who don't know that you do all the artwork. Gerard: "I did the art for both of the records. The first one - '1 Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love' - because I didn't want photographic artwork, so we got the picture, photocopied it, put some Ajax on it and put some cellophane on that. It's not actually a digital image like most people think. Then the second album - 'Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge was all done in watercolours and paint. And, yes, I want to do all of our album covers. I don't get chance to do half as much artwork as I'd like." Hammer: Talking of front rooms, what's the smallest gig you've ever played since you've been releasing records? Ray: "We played a basement in Philly in front of five people, a major record label rep and a homeless person." Frank: "The homeless guy had a tape recorder tied on a string round his neck; he bootlegged the gig and then tried to sell it back to us afterwards. It was very enterprising of him."

Have you ever thought of doing a cover? - The Drifter, via Hammer message board

Gerard: "Well we did. We played 'Jack The Ripper', a Morrissey b-side, at the same time the first record was out because we just didn't have enough songs. We did that for years cos we only had five songs and our sets would have been over too quickly." Hammer: We tend to hate it when bands do either exact copies of songs or when they do really obvious songs; what rules do you think apply to cover versions? Ray: "The band you cover have got to be over and done with or at least on their 10th album or whatever." Frank: "Yeah, so like it doesn't matter if it's Aerosmith - not that you should try to do an Aerosmith cover anyway - but how are you going to improve that?" Mikey: "Johnny And Mary' by Placebo (originally by now deceased suave ladies man, Robert Palmer - OAP Ed) is an interesting cover." Ray: "Just don't do anything obvious. Not covering a hit should be another rule. Placebo also covered 'Where Is My Mind' by The Pixies (American rock heroes that influenced Nirvana) and you can't do that. How many bands do that song? Too many."

Gerard, how do you feel about the comment that you look like Drew Barrymore in ET? - Ant, Birmingham

Gerard: "Where does this come from?" Hammer: I think it was originally from a Hammer live review ages ago. Gerard: "I always get compared to some Hollywood starlet or other. Especially Christina Ricci." Hammer: I'm never going to be able to watch the bit where she does that really sexy tap dance, wearing that amazingly short skirt in Buffalo 66 ever again.

What do you feel about the claim that you are goths? - Ali, from Reading

Gerard (who is dressed entirely in black, has long black hair and loads of make up on to appear like he has the three day dead eyes of a ghoul): "It doesn't really bother us. I think it comes from our song 'Vampires Will Never Hurt You'. I mean, I always dress in black; the whole of the band always dress in black but that isn't really goth to me. Bauhaus were goth; the Sisters of Mercy are goth. I think it has more to do with the sound of the music and our sound is more punk rock. All that goth music is good stuff though; I just don't think we sound like that."

Why not play a show in Iceland? It's not a bad idea. - Icelandic name, Iceland

Gerard: "I would love to." Frank: "I've heard it's fucking beautiful." Gerard: "We're always up for doing stuff like that in different countries and what I always say is 'If you can find a promoter who is willing to bring us over then we'll do it."

Hey guys, sorry to ask the obvious but what happened to Matt (the band's dour and slightly older ex-drummer)? - Alexandra Rose, via Hammer message board

Gerard: "We'd rather not talk about this because we're not a shit-talking band." Frank: "It's just not anyone's business. We don't feel we need to talk about stuff like this." Hammer: Well, I'll turn the question around: Can you tell us about the background of your new member Bob, who's replaced him? (The entire band turn round to Bob, who is dozing in the corner with his hoody pulled up, and laugh.) All: "Bob, what's your background!" Bob (groggily): "I started playing drums when I was three and then after school, I worked my way into the music business, working in music stores and record shops. I started doing drum tech stuff and I always ended up hanging around with My Chemical Romance whenever I worked with them.”

(splash quote) "I just rolled the window up. I couldn't think of anything else to do. 'Phew. I'm safe from the .375 gun now that I've rolled the fucking window up.’”

What are MCR's favourite sandwich fillings? - Your biggest fan, Northern Ireland

Rae: "Turkey and Gruyere." Frank: "Eggplant (Aubergine – American Ed) and parmesan." Mikey: "Grilled cheese and tomato." Hammer: Ah, poor man's pizza. Bob: "Tuna mayonnaise." Hammer: While we're on the subject, who is the best cook in the band? Ray: "Well, I know that Bob can actually cook. Bob, how do you cook them steaks?" Bob: "I get some steak and some vinegar and some other shit. I could tell you but I'd have to kill you. Shit, I don't know, I can cook really good if I've got a book in front of me." Gerard: "Next time I'm over I'm going to cook all of Metal Hammer's readers a chick pea curry, It tastes really good." Frank: "If you are making a chicken Caesar salad you should put powdered onions into the dressing and it tastes really nice. Hammer: Onions? In powder form? Really? What kind of insanity is that? Frank: "You guys don't have powdered onions? You are so BC. Hammer: Goddamnit. You can't speak to a member of Her Majesty's Metal Press like that. But let me know where we can get this shit, we're thinking of launching a sister title Metal And Modern Cookery Hammer All: "Awesome!

To the guy with the big hair (Ray), do you actually Iron Maiden or are you just being cool? - Insane Angel, via Hammer message board Ray:… Gerard: "Woah!" Bob: "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ray:… (starts shaking) Frank: "Oh my God!" Ray:… (smoke starts pouring from his ears) Mikey: "What a fucking question" Ray (with barely controlled anger, through gritted teeth): "No. I hate them. They're fucking shit. That's a fucked up question you shit head!" Gerard: "To be fair it's a valid question. You do see a lot of young chicks wearing Maiden t-shirts who are just doing it because it is a fashion thing to do." Hammer: So we can safely assume you are all Maiden fans? All: "Dude! Of course!" Hammer: In that case can you all give me a surprising Bruce Dickinson fact? Mikey: "He was an Olympic fencer." Ray: "He wrote books on how to get on in the music biz." Gerard: "He is a trained pilot dude!" Frank: "Do you know how in the 70s Bowie started thinking he was Ziggy Stardust? Well, I think Bruce Dickinson is the same with Lord Iffy Boot Race (Main character from Dicko's comedy novels)."

How do you feel about the criticism you receive from the metal community? - Chris, via email

Gerard: "I'm not sure what he's talking about. If he means about the people who remember us from being in a hardcore band who call us faggots on the internet then we're not really bothered. We get called faggots a lot but, you know, so what? Generally we tend not to read about ourselves. Live reviews are handy because you can learn stuff from them but generally not."

(splash quote) "There were five people and a homeless guy at the gig. The homeless guy bootlegged the gig and tried to sell it to us afterwards." (close-up photo captioned "Gerard knows the Way. To wear makeup.")

Do you consider yourselves a metal band? - Grace, London Gerard: "Metal is a big influence. If you think about the power, the screaming, the guitars etc then it is quite metal but it sounds like punk to me." Mikey: "We're also metal in the sense that we've a lot of metal on our instruments and I have quite a lot on my belt buckle as well." Gerard: "If we're metal then we're very traditionally metal. Iron Maiden are an influence as are Helloween, don't ever forget Helloween!" Hammer: In that case, is your song 'Thank You For The Venom' an ABBA style tribute to the large haired black metal poodle rockers from Newcastle, England? Gerard: "Eh?" Hammer: It doesn't matter. Gerard: "That song is a sarcastic statement, a bit like saying 'Thanks for ruining my life'. It was something I had written on my t-shirt the first ever gig we played."

What would you do if you ever encountered a moose? Would you run like a girl or stand and face it like a man? - Goldfinger, via Hammer message board Frank: "Has Goldfinger ever seen any mooses?" Mikey: "That isn't the plural of moose. It's moosi." Gerard: "Fuck off, it's meese." Frank: "Has Goldfinger ever seen a flock of meese advancing on him? It's a terrifying sight. They aren't small creatures. You would just run off like a girl or a boy. What does running like a girl mean anyway?" Mikey: "I've seen one. I'd run like a girl for sure. They're massive. If you run over one you're fucked. They come in through your windscreen kicking." Bob: "People think that moose are really gentle and goofy but they aren't; they're fucking animals." Hammer: What is the most exotic piece of wildlife you've ever encountered on tour? Gerard: "I saw some grizzly bears in Canada." Ray: "I saw a coyote." Bob: "Ray saw this girl in Chicago. She was fucking exotic." Ray: "Oh shit. She pelted me with chicken-flavoured crackers. Do you remember the homeless lady as well? She was this really old lady with this faint voice that I found when I was getting on the tour bus one night. She said, 'Can I sleep here tonight?' and I was like, 'No way lady, get the hell off the bus.' And then I realised that she had wrenched the window off the side of the bus to get in." Hammer: You have more stories about homeless people than any other band that we've met. Gerard: "That's because they are our core audience." Mikey: "We're very attractive to them because we dress like homeless people." Hammer: I saw a moose once. It was bearing down on me with a semi-on and a heart full of hatred. Gerard: "You're making this up aren't you?" Hammer: Er, yes.

Do you like the French? - Paul, Kingston Upon Thames Gerard: "Oh. That is such a loaded question." Frank: "Well, I'm going to say no because when we've toured there they've never been anything but mean to us." Hammer: Well, you're in good company. I know Andrew Eldritch, from the Sisters Of Mercy, said if he had one wish he would make France sink into the sea except for all of the pretty girls aged between 18 and 26, who he would levitate to safety." All, cracking up: "Awesome!" Hammer: Yeah, they are an easy target. Wasn't it Donald Rumsfeld who said that going to war in Iraq without the French was like going hunting without an accordion? Frank: "Brilliant."

Can you clear this up for us once and for all; which one of the Village People was actually gay? - Iron Monkey, via Hammer message board Gerard (without pause): "The Construction Worker."

You guys rule live. What British band would you like to play with in the future? - Hollow Man, via Hammer message board Frank: "Muse." Mikey: "Muse." Ray: "Funeral For A Friend." Gerard: "Yeah, Funeral For A Friend again."

Have any of you ever been shot and/or stabbed? - Andy, Bristol Ray: "We nearly got shot recently. We were stuck in a traffic jam and our manager got into this argument with these Puerto Rican guys and told them to go fuck themselves. They pulled up next to us and got a gun out. Our manager was trying to grab the gun. I thought we were fucked for sure." Bob: "I just rolled the window up. I couldn't think of anything else to do. 'Phew. I'm safe from the .375 gun now that I've rolled the fucking window up.'" Hammer: Were you scared? Bob: "Nah, I'm full of piss and vinegar." Hammer: Ah ha! So that's what's in your secret steak marinade! Bob: "Shit yeah! I piss on my steak. Now I'm gonna have to kill you."

Rock journalists suck big dogs' cocks. And they smell. Really bad. Like burning ammonia. Take over by asking the questions that matter to you. See www.metalhammer.co.uk/spanish for who the Inquisition are gonna be quizzing in the coming months and how to ask your questions. Arriverderch.

MCR for Metal Hammer, Issue 133, December 2004 🩸 #Revenge20

📸 via Naki

[sagegreenconverse73946]

Analysis of Would You Fall In Love With Me Again

No no because you don't understand . . . .

There's like 3 ways I look at Penelope and Odysseus's reunion in Would You Fall in Love with Me Again

One:

Odysseus is pleading with her, begging her to understand that he is not the same man she married. He's done horrendous things, he is void of mercy and compassion. He. Is. Not. Odysseus. And that's why he's asking her if she would fall in love with him after knowing all the things he's done. He thinks she will have to fall in love with a different person. And hearing this instead of Penelope going like, " I don't care about what you've done; you're home now. That's all that matters." She instead asks him "What have you done?" she knows that he just has to get it out there, and once he does, once he thinks he's cemented to her that he's not Odysseus, Penelope's response is that "If that's true, if your not my husband, if your nothing more than a monster and not Odysseus, than do me a favor to bring me some peace and move our wedding bed away from here." And we've established that the wedding bed, the olive tree, is a symbol of their love, so Penelope's really asking, "If that's true and you're not my husband anymore, then destroy our love and cast it away." AND WHEN ODYSSEUS GOES, "How could you say this? Do you realize what you have asked me? The only way to move it is to cut it from ITS ROOTS!" which translates to "How could you say this? Do you realize you have asked me to destroy our marriage? The only way to move it is to KILL OUR LOVE!!"

AND ITS SO IMPACTFUL BECAUSE PENELOPE IS PROVING TO HIM THAT EVEN IF HE HAS CHANGED, HE IS STILL HER HUSBAND BECAUSE HER HUSBAND WOULDN'T DARE TO DESTROY THEIR LOVE AND CUT ITS ROOTS, AND THE MAN IN FRONT OF HER DOESN'T DARE EITHER, IN FACT HE'S ENRAGED THAT SHE'D ASK HIM TO FORSAKE THEIR LOVE, TO DO THE IMPOSSIBLE. BECAUSE IF HE TRULY WASN'T ODYSSEUS ANYMORE HE WOULDN'T HOLD THAT LEVEL OF LOVE FOR PENELOPE ANYMORE. AND THAT'S WHY SHE SAYS

"Only my husband knew that, so I guess that makes him YOU!!"

Penelope dismantled his whole argument. He asked if she would fall in love with him again, the new monstrous man that holds Odysseus's face. Penelope proved she didn't have to fall in love with him again, since he is still the man she knew, because if he wasn't the man she fell in love with, than that monster would have been able to destroy their wedding bed, and cut the roots of their love. But he is, because the man she married can't destroy their love, ODYSSEUS can't destroy their love,

their love is such a vital essence of his being that no matter what, if he still holds love for Penelope he is still Odysseus.

AND PENELOPE STILL SAYS SHE WILL FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM OVER AND OVER AGAIN

Two:

More Odyssey-accurate, I think. (I haven't read it through yet so I might need to eat my words)

Penelope asks, "Is that really you?" and it could be that she thinks its a trick at first, someone's disguised themselves as Odysseus mortal or god so she tests him. She asks him to do something only Odysseus and her knew was impossible, because for one man to cut down an Olive tree embedded into a palace alone is, quite literally, IMPOSSIBLE. If he had agreed and failed, mortal disguised as Odysseus. Succeeded? God.

Flabbergasted that she'd ask that of him? Odysseus.

Three:

EPIC Odysseus is the #1 Wife Guy, so when his wife asked him to do something that he physically COULDN'T, he broke down because GODS, NO, I'M A HORRIBLE HUSBAND BECAUSE I CAN'T FULFILL MY WIFE'S WISHES AND BRING HER SOME PEACE BUT PENELOPE WTF HOW COULD YOU ASK THAT OF ME AND EXPECT ME TO ACHIEVE IT?!?!?!

But yep, how I interpret those lines, honestly, I think its a mixture of all three MAINLY of perspective 1, a little bit of perspective 2, but l think despite Penelope's brain being like "We have to make sure." every essence of her being already knew it was him, and a slight hint of perspective 3 because it's funny.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk!!!

(pls discuss this with me if you want in the comments, guys I'm going insane)

[thewistlingbadger]

When it comes to raising Jinx and giving her advice, Silco uses his own life experiences as a guide to approach her life. This is clearly highlighted in the baptism scene. Prior to this point Silco and the audience have seen how Jinx is struggling to confront and handle her past. Silco gives her the advice to let it go so that way she won't feel the burden of it anymore and she can just focus on who she is in the present, and her future. He tells her that who she is in the current moment is perfect and acceptable and that embracing who she is will be the only way for her pain to ease. Silco says all of this because that's what worked for him. When he was able to let go of his past with Vander and focus on who he was post betrayal and focus on the nation of zaun, he became stronger. This seems to have worked for Silco, but it doesn't work for Jinx no matter how hard she tries and I think I just realized why.

Silco seemingly has no idea why Vander betrayed him. Living with that big of an unknown is a terrible thing to live with. The brain likes to have answers and it'll easily go mad without them. And this seems to be what happened to Silco. Silco has this very weird perception about his identity. It feels very rigid and unnatural and it's because it's more armor than it is authenticity. Silco doesn't know why Vander treated him like a monster that day, but if it's a monster he wants it's a monster he'll get. Living with uncertainty is extremely difficult but in a way it can sometimes be easier to accept than the truth. This is why Silco seems so well adjusted in his new identity. He can either be bothered by what he doesn't know or he can just let it go, and he chose to let it go in order to focus on what really mattered to him.

Jinx tries and fails to fully construct a new identity throughout arcane. She does use the "jinx persona" as armor, just how silco uses the "eye of zaun persona" armor, but she cracks in her resolve frequently. She wants to leave the last behind like how Silco does, but she can't. This is because of a very clear distinction between her and Silco. Although these two have a similar trauma, Jinx actually knows why she was abandoned, versus silco does not.

"Why did you leave me?"

"Because you're a Jinx!"

Jinx knows exactly why she was abandoned. She was given a direct answer. And the truth is brutal. The idea that Jinx is a curse upon everyone is something that is cemented in her brain. It is something she can't get rid of no matter how much she wants to. It would be easier to let it go if she didn't know but she does know. Jinx struggles to form a solid sense of self because this idea of her being a "jinx" is something that's always going to be a factor of any identity she forms. In every version of her, she ends up being a jinx in some way.

[threadbearsweater]

megumi fushiguro x f!reader. aged-up megumi (early 20's) established relationship, nsfw.

Sex with Megumi is always good. He's attentive, in tune with your body language. You know he'll always make sure you're satisfied, no matter what that might mean in the moment.

He also knows when you're not necessarily feeling it, and when you're perhaps performing for his benefit because you think it's what he wants.

And it isn't that you don't want to make love to him, with him. It feels nice to grind in his lap while he nuzzles his face into your tits. His hands settled on either side of your hips guide you in the rhythm he knows you like without being overbearing. Kissing him feels molten; transcendental, even.

But tonight, you just can't focus. Your body feels puppet-like, and a novice pulls the strings. Your mind is far off somewhere else, not here on the couch where your boyfriend moves inside you while you grab fistfuls of his hair and arch your back a little too far and moan a little too loud for Megumi to believe.

His hands press a little harder into your hips, and he stills you, those jade eyes searching your face while your own eyes remain screwed shut- like you're willing yourself to enjoy this intimacy.

"Hey," he says. It's hoarse and a little breathless. You pout and press harder into his lap, but he holds you firm. "Open your eyes."

You open one eye and stick out your tongue.

"Look at me." God, he's so fucking earnest.

You sigh and open your eyes fully. He's so beautiful- flushed and panting, some of his hair sticking to the sheen of sweat on his forehead. You admire the view, avoiding the inevitable.

"Where are you?" he asks.

You shrug and slide your arms around his neck. "Right here. With you."

He rakes a hand through his hair. "Are you- do you, I mean- fuck." He huffs a sigh. "Are you even enjoying this?"

He's still buried between your thighs, but neither of you has moved a muscle. You're a bird in a cage. He won't release you until you're honest.

"I just. I dunno, it feels good, but I'm not - I guess I'm not like, into it tonight, you know?"

"Why didn't you say something before?" he asks. He's not offended because he thinks you don't want him.

"I thought maybe if we just...did it, then maybe I'd get there." Your thighs are sticky against his, the lack of movement making your skin feel cold. "Sometimes that happens. I'm not in the mood, then I can kinda get there if we fool around enough."

Megumi frowns. "Does it happen a lot?"

You're emphatic with your denial of his question- eyes widen, arms locked around his neck and shoulders. "No, I swear! I always want you! Just sometimes...not as much. As other times." Oh, your laugh is knee-jerk response to your insecurity.

"Just tell me then," he says. He slips his arms around your waist. He's not nearly as hard as he was a few minutes ago, but you really don't mind. In fact, it's a relief to know that you don't have to pretend anymore. "It's not a big deal."

To know Megumi is to love him. To be known and loved by him is a gift in itself. You're grateful for a partner who sees you, even if it's hard to be perceived.

"I love you," you say with tears in your eyes. You shift so that he's able to cradle you in his lap, chin resting atop your head. He pulls a blanket over the two of you and turns on the TV.

"Love you, too," he echoes. What a relief to know he means it.

[estcaligo]

Some thoughts about room temperature at NRC Dorms (Diasomnia specifically)

First things first - yes, there's magic and fairies who control the temperature of NRC (as mentioned during the Fairy Gala event). But still, I want to talk about the Diasomnia rooms, because they look cold.

Let's start with Sebek's room (who else's)

His room makes me particularly worried, especially since we know he's sensitive to cold.

The walls are cold stone, and the floor seems to be either stone or tile - definitely not warm and cozy.

The carpet looks rather thin, and the space between the wardrobe and the bed is bare. I really hope Sebek wears slippers!!

There doesn't seem to be a carpet under the desk, but since it's located close to the larger carpet, maybe Sebek keeps his feet on that? or I still hope he wears slippers....

The headboard of the bed? I hope it's not leather - it's far from the warmest material for a bed.

The ceiling is quite high, which is not ideal for keeping warmth in the room.

I also hope the window glass isn't thin, otherwise it would let in cold drafts (if there are any in Diasomnia dorm realm??)

And about the training bench in his room? Sure, it's there because Sebek trains a lot, but maybe it's also a way to warm up in such a cold room....

At least one thing warms his heart - Waka-sama's portrait.

Now, Silver's room

The same cold stone walls and floor. Silver doesn't seem to mind the cold as much though - due to his training, of course.

The carpet in his room is small and thin and there's no carpet under the desk. But does he even mind? How much time does he actually spend at the desk studying anyway?...

The wardrobe is farther from the bed compared to Sebek's room. And I can imagine Silver walking to it barefoot, absolutely unfazed (I need to know more about Silver's dressing routine, how often does he fall asleep while getting dressed, etc...)

His bed is placed right against the wall with no extra layers for insulation. Which is cold!!!

And of course, there's the open window. I was already concerned about Sebek's glass thickness, but Silver's window is just wide open omg.

Clearly, Silver is very resilient to the cold. Good for him?... They also say you sleep better in a cool room, so it only adds to his sleepiness?...

Now to Lilia's room

Same walls, same floor. The carpet here feels purely decorative - it's so small and there's no carpet under the desk. However, I imagine Lilia's legs rarely touch the floor anyway (that's how I picture him sitting while on his PC )

The wardrobe is the farthest from the bed in this room, but again, he probably just floats to reach it.

The window is closed here. I was going to comment on how inconvenient it is to have sunlight hitting your face while using a computer/any gadget with screen, but let's be real, there are probably no sunny days in the Diasomnia realm, so it doesn't matter.

There's is also chandelier in Lilia's room (though I assume all 3rd years' rooms are the same?). The chandelier has lots of candles, but they likely emit light through magic rather than heat.

Another detail - Lilia's pillow is quite small. He probably rarely uses it, sleeping in the most bizarre positions (like hanging upside down bat-style).

And to Malleus' room

It has the same cold walls and flooring as the others but feels much more empty and lonely. Most likely, of course, it was intentional to reflect Malleus' character, but still.

The nightstand is empty - not even a book or a personal item.

On the desk, there are only two items: a figurine (which is a nod to Sleeping Beauty) and a three-candle candlestick. The number three might be symbolic, but it also just looks good, so who knows.

Like Lilia's room, Malleus' room also has a chandelier. Is it significant to fae culture? But most likely just for the Maleficent aesthetic.

The only "warm" elements in the room are the tapestry/flags - cherished gifts from a certain important person in his life.

It feels unnecessary to comment on the space between his wardrobe or the lack of a carpet under his desk since Malleus likely doesn't bother with changing clothes manually or sitting at his desk to study anyway.

His bed has two big pillows and one small - likely the one Malleus mentioned using to support his horns while sleeping. (No spoilers, but the 2024 Halloween event gave us some info about how Malleus sleeps lol)

Also, they are obviously provided with the bedsheets by the dorm, but I assume it's allowed to bring your own. We see Lilia getting creative, Malleus clearly has some royal-quality sheets, and Sebek's are the cutest - baby green, but quite plain (so nothing can distract him from being the perfect guard for Waka-sama). And I assume Silver doesn't care at all, and just uses the basic dorm sheets. Feel free to add your thoughts.

[cognitiveoverload]

Craving (Aaron Hotchner x reader? Does it count?)

summary: Hotch shows up in your hotel room after the events of 2x19.

note: Kinda pathetic!Hotch if you ask me. Wants to be with reader despite still being married, but she says no.

After emotionally draining cases you’re usually a heavy sleeper, so no wonder you only wake up when the mattress dips in the hotel room you’re staying in. You jolt awake, eyes snapping open to see who got in the bed on the empty side next to you, and you’re shocked to see the man who wraps an arm around you as if it was the most natural thing, resting his head on your shoulder.

“Hotch, what are you doing here?” you ask, fighting the urge to bury your fingers into his hair to soothe him.

Because he’s clearly under the weather, and his warm breath smells like whisky as he rests his chin on your collar bone to look at you. “I don’t want to be alone,” he mutters.

There has always been tension between you, but he’s married, there was no way you would ever even think of giving into that feeling. Having him here, though, makes you wonder just how deep are his feelings for you. He’s not blackout drunk, he probably only drank like two glasses, but thanks to the vulnerable state of mind he was in earlier, it’s no surprise that it got the best of him.

“How did you even get in?” 

He lets out a sigh, then a small smile appears on his lips. “I have my methods,” he replies.

This sentence is followed by a soft sigh, but he remains silent for a minute or two, as if he’s contemplating how to say what’s on his mind. His thumb is rubbing circles into your arm, and while your brain knows you should stop him, you simply can’t get yourself to send him away. He doesn’t want to be alone, and there’s something he wants to talk about.

So, you wait. Rushing him wouldn’t help, and he’s stubborn enough to take his time opening up. Sometimes you wonder if he ever tells Haley about work stuff, or if he keeps it to himself since she has a lot on her plate already because of Jack. Either way, what happened earlier today definitely hit him where it hurt the most.

“It’s my fault,” he finally speaks up, his voice unusually quiet. You tilt your head to the side, urging him to explain. “I should have known, I should have gone there to see if I could help, now there’s a kid without a father and—”

You shook your head without thinking, a hand moving up to push his hair back. “It’s not your fault. You’re not a mind reader, Hotch, you couldn’t have known what he was planning,” you try.

“Aaron.” You let out a questioning hum, but he doesn’t answer, instead he moves a little to place a featherlight kiss on your exposed skin, followed by another, and another at an agonizingly slow pace. “Call me Aaron. I hate it that you call me Hotch too,” he mumbles against your skin.

“You’re my boss, I’m not calling you Aaron,” you point out.

“But we could be so much more than that. You mean so much more to me.” 

Before you can say anything, he moves just enough to be able to kiss you—a gentle, soft kiss that feels so good, but also forbidden. You cup his face, pushing him away just enough to look into his eyes. There’s a mixture of sadness and lust in there, but you know you can’t give in, you can’t let him win this one. 

Deciding that this is your best chance to set boundaries, you move past him as you sit up, watching the way he turns on his back with a groan. “For one, you’re my boss. And second, you’re married. Keep that in mind,” you warn him.

He loosens his tie and props on his elbows. “Yeah, right, a marriage that’s falling apart,” he notes bitterly. When you give him a questioning look, he goes on. “It seems like no matter how hard I try, I can’t be the husband she wants. This job is demanding, sure, but… I don’t know.”

“You need to sleep,” you tell him kindly, not having the heart to be harsh after what he just told you. 

This confession explains the phone calls that always left him grim, but you don’t feel like prying for more details. You know that he loves his family, what he just told you must have come from the desperation caused by the trouble at home and this recent case you just closed. It can’t be more than that.

Hotch opens his mouth, but he doesn’t say anything for now, he just watches you with an unreadable expression. “I’ll have to return to give the letter to Abby’s son. That’s the least I can do,” he suddenly says, lying back down, but he faces you. “Come with me.”

You take a deep breath as you watch him, but then you pick up your phone from the nightstand and put on the robe you left on the foot of the bed. “I’ll beg JJ to let me sleep in her room. Or I’ll take yours since you’re clearly planning to stay here,” you tell him. “I’ll wake you up in the morning.”

“Okay, fine,” he mumbles, his face already buried into the pillow your head rested on a few minutes ago.

[reverie-starlight]

skincare with keigo bc I'm never not soft for him and want to take care of him forever. happy birthday !!!!!!!!

gn!reader, no physical descriptions, lots and lots and lots of fluff. he is my baby. also I don't have a real skincare routine, so I'm apologizing in advance for how lackluster it may seem. this is in the pre-moving in together stage of your relationship, but not too early on either, if it matters to you!

keigo watches you curiously through the doorway that leads to the master bathroom as he sits on your bed cross-legged. he doesn't want to disrupt whatever it is you're doing (you seem very focused), but he's extremely interested in what you're putting on your face.

he thinks you look stunning with the fluffy animal headband on and some shorts paired with one of his old shirts. he thinks he could look at you like this forever, actually.

he watches you smile slightly and lean over the counter to get closer to the mirror. "I can feel you staring at me, you know."

his heart flutters and he tries to ignore how hot his face feels.

you stand up straight again and turn your face towards him, beckoning him over with a wave of your hand. as if he's been waiting for you to do just that, he gets up and saunters into the bathroom.

"so... what exactly is all this?" he asks, settling behind you with his arms around your waist, inspecting the different bottles and containers.

"they're skincare products. see?" you hold up one of the tubes for him to read, going back to spreading the cream over your skin.

"hydrating... morning and night use... huh."

you pick up on the curiosity in his voice and look at him through the mirror. “do you want to try my skincare routine for yourself, keigo?”

he hesitates and you give him a moment to decide, though you have a feeling you know what he’s going to say. eventually keigo does nod and you peck him on the cheek. “I’ll get you a headband, just a second.”

moments later you're sitting on the counter, shoving a white headband with panda ears over his head. he stares at himself in the mirror, watching you adjust it so his hair is pushed back from his forehead.

"you're so cute," you murmur, smiling at him and resisting the urge to press kisses all over his face. "okay, brush your teeth before we start. I've heard doing it after messes things up."

"really?" he sound skeptical.

you shrug. "I dunno if there's any merit to it but I've seen enough people mention it, so I just do it this way now."

he nods and reaches behind you to grab the red toothbrush you keep for him whenever he sleeps over. you sneak a kiss against the corner of his mouth when he's close enough and it makes him grin.

once he's done brushing his teeth, he steps away to spit into the sink and wipe his mouth before returning between your legs. "alright, what's first?"

you grab a tall tube and present it to him the same way he's seen people online do it in those viral review videos. "face wash. it helps get all the dirt and grime out, and it's good for sensitive skin."

you wet your hands in the sink and raise them to his face to dampen it. "this one suggests using it on slightly wet skin for better results."

he lets you pat him until you're satisfied, and he watches as you put some of the gel on your hands. "close your eyes."

you don't need to tell him twice.

keigo happily lets you massage the product into his face and you giggle a bit when he leans into it. "does it feel nice?"

he nods a bit. "so nice."

"alright, it's foamy now, you can wash it off."

he blinks, returning to reality, and does what you say. once all the face wash is gone, you tap a towel against him, careful not to rub. "okay, would you say your skin feels dry, oily or a combination of both most of the time?"

he thinks about how his skin can get a bit itchy and wind burnt from all the flying he does while on patrol. "very dry."

you nod and grab the tin he was looking at earlier. "this helps with that."

you scoop a bit onto your index finger and smooth it over his cheeks, forehead and temples. "there," you smile softly and cup his face in your palms. "now you'll be even softer, which I honestly didn't think was possible, but here we are." he's certain his pupils are heart-shaped at this point. your entire aura is tinted pink and red and there's cartoon hearts bubbling up around you. he wonders if you have a secret second quirk he doesn't know about or if the mind really is as powerful as they say.

he doesn't know how exactly to filter the intense emotions running through him as you continue to dote on him, so they just well up inside of him until he can't stop the quick and sap-filled "I love you so much," from bubbling out of his mouth.

you pause a little at how... thankful he sounds. you know that he isn't used to being pampered- not that he's ever explicitly stated that, you just kind of put two and two together based on his career and what he's told you of his past- but you hadn't realized how much it would affect him.

so you smile at him and tilt his face down to kiss his head, careful not to get any product on your lips. you return the sentiment, happy to be of service to him for once, and ignore the way your insides are turning to goop at his expression.

you'll have to dote on him more often. not only because you want to see him like this more often, but because you want- no, need to make up for all those years he must have felt discarded and used and overworked... he handles it well. he's accepted his duty and thrives in his field. you know he does, otherwise he would have snapped long before he met you, but... it hurts to realize that something as simple as skincare is enough to toss him into unknown territory.

once you're done with the moisturizer, you slip the panda headband off of him and blink away the tears threatening to fall. he's still wearing that appreciative expression, heart eyes and all, so you pull him close and wrap your arms around his shoulders.

"I love you more than you will ever know, keigo," you mumble into his neck. "don't ever doubt that, okay?"

his arms find their way around your waist and you feel him nod against your head. you reveal your face to him and press your forehead against his, gently nudging noses.

comfortable silence lingers for a bit before he whispers "you smell good."

you snort and pull back. "it's the moisturizer, it's pear scented. do you want to head to bed now? the counter is cold."

he nods again and picks you up, encouraging you to wrap your legs around him despite the fact that the distance from the washroom to your bed is only less than twenty steps.

as soon as you're both under the covers and he expels one of his feathers to turn the light off, you beckon him over to lay on your chest.

you tangle your fingers in his hair, gently massaging his scalp and tailing down to scratch the nape of his neck. he lets out a content sigh and he presses soft, sleepy kisses to any bare skin he can find without moving too much. you almost laugh at how quickly you're able to get him relaxed.

you know you'll miss his weight on your body by time you wake up- he'll be long gone for an early morning patrol. even so, at least you'll be comforted with the knowledge that he was able to get a good night's sleep.

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I love him :(