#isn’t it wild how the child of a literal celebrity is somehow the one with the most ‘normal’ childhood out of the three of them

[demigod-shenanigans]

Part of me wants to say Jason would be very concerned about Leo saying that at one point he slept under a bridge for a month. Another part of me remembers that Jason was partially raised by wolves and has probably slept outside a lot. So I can also see him nodding along going “sometimes when I feel anxious I go curl up in a bush”

And then Piper sends them both to therapy

[nejibaby]

Afterglow

Pairing: Portgas D. Ace x Y/N

Summary: Without Ace, your nights are back to being long, dark, and empty. But when you finally reunite, Ace refuses to just be your Daylight.

Daylight - Part 1 | Afterglow - Part 2

Word Count: 4.3k (my hands slipped, I’m so sorry)

Loosely based on: Taylor Swift’s Lover album (but mostly about the songs Daylight and Afterglow)

A/N: I really think Whitebeard is a great father, yk? So I see him as someone who you can always seek and rely on. He looks tough (and he’s actually tough), but he’s soft too! And Ace too, in that respect is similar to WB. I really believe he’ll be such a good boyfriend 🥺 Anyway, I really enjoyed writing this so much! Thank you to everyone who read this, I love yall 🥰

<Teach doesn’t exist to me, I hate him, so I guess this is noncanon? Also, there’s this tiny spoiler, just a warning.>

Sailing by yourself in a boat for one reminds you how vast the sea actually is. With the rowdy Whitebeard pirates, sometimes the sea, no, the world, seems a lot smaller, a lot more manageable, but alone, it feels so massive it’s almost frightening.

It’s easy to get lost, except there’s no such concept like that for someone like you who doesn’t have a destination to go to in mind. Quite simply, you’re wandering, but not lost.

You drift from one island to another. Your initial intention is to get as far away as possible from the crew. Now that that’s achieved, you’re unsure of what to do next.

You allow yourself to observe and to experience some sort of normalcy at the islands you dock at. It’s a good thing that you don’t really stand out so no one suspects you’re a wanted pirate.

Walking down the streets of random towns, you’re reminded of how lonely being a Celestial Dragon was. No one wants to interact with a World Noble, afraid of the consequences if they’re angered. Things changed drastically when you became a pirate though. People don’t shy away that much with pirates in certain places. They interact with you, albeit hesitantly sometimes. Nevertheless, you felt so free and happy.

Now, you’re still a pirate, as marked by Whitebeard’s infamous tattoo. But with the unsuspecting townspeople and the lack of the presence of a crew, you don’t feel like one. Somehow it makes you feel empty.

The void is immeasurable. Despite it being unbounded, you’re sure that a single person can fill that emptiness: Portgas D. Ace.

But there are oceans separating you from Ace— a distance that you put. With the space between you, there’s silence in your voyage, however, it’s quite mystifying how every island you reach seems to scream his name.

There’s an island where you’ve docked at that’s snowing all year long. It brought back memories of when you were fairly new to the Whitebeard Pirates and had landed on a similar island. Back then you’ve worn a coat as you disembarked Moby Dick, however, the cold continued to seep through your layers of clothing. You couldn’t handle extreme temperatures that well but you didn’t want to make a big deal out of it so you continued to walk alongside the crew to scout the area. The thing was you may have been terrible at hiding it because Ace noticed the way your body was shivering and your teeth chattering. You were only acquaintances back then but he went to your side and striked a conversation with you. You didn’t understand why you became comfortable when he approached you all of a sudden, but then later that night you realized that he used his devil fruit abilities to warm you up.

At one island with a bustling town, there’s this restaurant that serves a variety of meat. You’re reminded of Ace and his bottomless pit of a stomach, and of his narcoleptic episodes while eating. He has a tendency of eating and then running, and the first few times he did it with you had you reeling. When you’ve finally realized that he’s never going to change, you start to keep a pouch of gold coins with you, reserved for paying for the food he eats. You leave it on the table just as Ace pulls you to run, and he has no idea about it. Owners or servers at the restaurants would still follow you out, but not to berate the both of you for not paying but to return the extra gold coins because you pay too much. Like usual though, Ace pretends not to hear them and they never got to catch up with you and Ace.

On another island, there’s a huge wild boar thrice the size of a human. It reminded you of the time you got so excited to explore an island that you speedily ran towards the forest alone, only to be met by a wild boar. The size of the boar stunned you and its glare kept you frozen in fear. A loud scream escaped your lips when it lunged at you, except the impact never came. When you’ve gathered your bearings, the wild boar was dead and… cooked, courtesy of Ace’s devil fruit abilities. He saved you, but he played it off as if he had his eyes on the wild boar since the beginning “to hunt it down.”

The current island you’re at is in famine. As soon as you docked at their port, a group of men has drawn their swords at you. For a moment, you thought they were bounty hunters so you grabbed your daggers and took a defensive stance. However, from the way they keep looking back and forth to you and your boat, and from hearing the faint sound of their stomach grumbling, you can tell they aren’t. Behind some trees, you can see the heads of some children peeking with worried yet hopeful looks on their faces.

Slowly, you raise your hands up in surrender, dropping your daggers in the process. You can’t turn your back on them — figuratively and literally — so you walk backwards towards your boat. The men look at you curiously but they don’t ever lower their swords.

In a quick motion, you grab a bag containing all of your food supply and throw it at them. One of the men catches it. “You can have them. It isn’t much, but that’s all I have.”

The man who was able to catch the bag carefully opens it and sees food. He almost cries at the sight of it. The rest of the men lowers the sword after you offer no sign of aggression. They start calling the other citizens of the area afterwards.

The children are the first to come running towards the men — all of them conveying excitement. You couldn’t tell how long they haven’t eaten but judging from how thin they are, it has got to be quite some time.

A small girl stumbles and falls near you and you quickly come to her aid. There isn’t much damage, just a scraped knee so you carefully patched her up.

“Thank you,” she gives you a toothy smile and then starts heading to the men who are distributing the food.

She comes back a moment later, arms outstretched to hand an apple to you. “For you,” she says.

Something blossoms in your heart because of her sweetness. “Thank you, but it’s fine, you can have it,”

She doesn’t object but then she hugs you tightly. “Thank you so much.”

Surprisingly, even on an island like this, you’re reminded of Ace. You remember his story about coming to Wano and meeting a child named “Tama” who seemed to be as charming as the child you helped and is under the same fortune.

Now that your mind has drifted to thoughts of Ace, you didn’t want to think of anything else. Even as the people gather around you to offer their thanks, and even as they usher you to a bonfire to celebrate for the food to eat, the thoughts of him linger in your head.

And just like in all the previous islands you came to, you wish he’s here with you too.

There’s longing in your heart, but there’s also something else— something pleasant that you can’t quite describe— and you attribute it to the gratitude of the people.

The mother of the child you helped, Sito, offers their spare room for you to take and you graciously accept. Soft snores almost immediately fill your ears after a few minutes of them bidding you good night.

The longer you stay awake, however, the pleasant feeling you felt a while ago starts to leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

You’ve always criticized yourself for not being able to do more when you were still a Celestial Dragon but now that you did something good, you start to feel selfish for doing it because it makes you feel better about yourself.

It’s at times like this that you seek Pops. There’s a sudden urge to hear his voice and his thoughts. So you grab your Den Den Mushi, but you hesitate.

You’ve lost track of the days since you left Moby Dick. And in that time frame, you never once called Pops. Although you didn’t really promise to call, maybe he was expecting you to, especially since you know he wouldn’t do it first.

You sigh. Maybe this call is long overdue after all.

You step outside the house and start to contact Pops using the Den Den Mushi. It only rings once and then it’s answered, almost as if Pops was waiting by the Den Den Mushi. The thought brings a smile to your face. “Pops—”

“Why on earth are you only calling now?!” His angry tone welcomes you.

“I’m so—”

“Is that Y/N?!” Marco interrupts. Ah, how could you have forgotten? It’s at this time that Marco reports to Pops. “We’re so worried about you -yoi!”

You can hear sounds of struggling on the line and then there’s a loud smack followed by an even louder crash. There’s a moment of silence which makes you wonder what’s going on in the ship.

“Why didn’t you call earlier?!” Pops’ voice booms. “If you’re going to leave a Den Den Mushi, I’m going to expect your reports but I received none of that.”

“I’m sorry Pops. I have no excuse,” you sheepishly say.

“Everyone’s worried about you,” he pauses but then his voice rings louder once again, “Some are even outside my room trying to listen in on our conversation. But if they know better, they should leave us alone.” The sound of rushing footsteps could be heard in the background as Pops finishes his sentence.

You chuckle, imagining the crew eavesdropping. “How are you Pops?”

“I’m doing fine.”

“How’s everyone? How’s… uhm… Ace?”

“Everyone’s just missing you. You didn’t say goodbye after all,” he says. “I put Ace on a mission because he won’t stop pestering me about you. He won’t come back in a couple of days.”

“Oh.”

“He misses you a lot,” he sighs. “He strides to me everyday to demand your whereabouts. Each time I wouldn’t tell him but he never learns. Vista says he’s on his 56th attempt the other day.”

The brief image of Ace that your mind comes up with brings a small smile to your face.

“When are you coming back?” Whitebeard breaks your reverie.

“Ah, I’m not sure yet… It might take a while.”

He hums. “So how are you? Have you been eating well?”

“I’m doing fine, Pops. No one’s been coming after me yet so everything’s going well,” you respond. “But… Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“There’s this island with people who haven’t eaten in so long so I gave them everything I have.” There’s a loud growl coming from Pops so you immediately continue your speech before he could scold you for doing such a thing. “I feel really good about what I did as they thanked me. But then the longer I thought about it, I started feeling ashamed because... wasn’t it selfish since I did it to make me feel better about myself? Then I started to wonder if it was wrong to do good things just because I wanted to be absolved of my parents’ sins. Was I wrong in doing this, Pops?”

“No, you did the right thing.”

“Really?”

“Yes, you’re not an inherently bad person for getting paid in gratitude.”

“But…”

“Making yourself happy by making other people happy is how it’s meant to work. If one of your key motives to doing good things is to feel good, then you’re still doing something good and there’s nothing shameful about that.”

Hearing his words puts you at ease. You’re glad you called him. “Thank you, Pops. I’m sorry for worrying everyone there and for disrupting Marco’s report. I promise I’ll call more often from now on.”

“It’s fine. Just don’t forget to take care of yourself too. Where will you be headed next?”

“I’m not sure. I’m just going where the sea leads me.”

“Be careful.”

“You too, Pops,” and with that, you bid your goodbye and hang up.

By morning, you start preparing your things to leave. You didn’t want to stay for too long because you didn’t want to consume even a portion of the small amount of food they have.

Sito offers you to stay another night, worried that it would be uncomfortable to sleep on a boat. “You can stay one more day. There’s still enough food for us to share.”

“Oh no, I don’t want to impose,” you decline. “But do you mind if I ask what happened here?”

There’s sadness in her eyes, it was easy to tell the memory pained her, but she tells you everything anyway. “This island is one of the few lawless areas in the world, hence, it’s a place where pirates would dock at. A group of men once docked here and kidnapped the leaders of our town. They were sold off to be slaves, because apparently the Nobles like to enslave people of power…” Her words start to fade on you upon the mention of the World Nobles.

Anger flares up in your system immediately. How low can the Celestial Dragons go? It’s sickening to think that you share the same blood as them. It’s because of this revelation that something becomes clear in your mind.

Ever since leaving Moby Dick, you’re just wandering aimlessly. But after hearing Sito talk about this island, you’re finally sure of what your destination should be.

Sabaody Archipelago.

Specifically, the Human Auctioning House.

From the sudden fury that overwhelms you, not even the fear of being within arm’s reach of the Marines, and possibly dying, could stop you from going there.

It’s reckless and foolish, but isn’t this the reason you left Moby Dick that night— to face your nightmares instead of running away from them?

You listen politely as Sito explains everything else but her words enter and leave your ears without you having to comprehend them. Fortunately, she doesn’t notice your inattentiveness, probably because she wants to pour her frustrations out to a stranger.

You offer your sympathies to her and promise her you’d come back with your crew and help them some more. It’s a simple promise yet for someone who hasn’t been offered help for so long, it means a lot, enough to even bring tears to her eyes. And just like that, you leave.

There are two more islands to stop at before you reach Sabaody Archipelago. You gather provisions on one island and buy explosives on the other.

The only thing you’re sure you can actually do alone is to blow up the Human Auctioning House. Facing the World Nobles is for another time, unfortunately. As for the Marines, well… You’d worry about that if they indeed come. You know you’d be able to handle them as long as they don’t send an Admiral after you.

The thing that worries you the most, however, is Pops’ reaction once you let him know of your plan. While you can always just not tell him, it feels wrong, and you promised you’d report to him, after all. And it’s hard for you to admit, but you secretly want to be saved in case your plan goes askew. That, and well, you still want to make up with Ace, may it be just strictly as friends, but preferably as lovers.

You decide to call once you’re about to set sail towards Sabaody Archipelago. You’re sitting in the middle of your boat, still anchored at the port when you told Pops your plan. And as expected, he’s mad.

He demands you to go back to the crew immediately. “Captain’s orders,” he says. But after a few moments, he retracts his words and says, “Your father’s orders.” You feel the weight of his words when he said that and you almost concede. But the faces of the slaves your family had flashes into your mind and it solidifies your decision.

Interestingly, despite the weeks you have spent away from the crew, their ship is nearer to you than anticipated. As confirmed by Pops himself when he angrily said, “Enough! I’m sending Ace to get you! Two or three days is enough for him to catch up with you.”

But quite frankly, that’s also enough time to execute your plan. And if the odds are in your favor, then Ace might just come in time for your escape.

Arriving at Sabaody Archipelago, you keep your face hidden underneath the hood of your cloak. It’s normal for pirates to walk around the place without having to hide their identities, but it’s a luxury you can’t afford. If someone catches wind that you’re here and reports it, the Cipher Pol just might come and capture you before you can even execute your plan. That just won’t do. So on the first day of your arrival, you only scout the area of the Human Auctioning House and retreat back to the inn you stay at.

You carry out your plan on the next day. You place a bomb where the side of the stage is supposed to be. It’s a distraction so people inside would leave the premises. The plan is to find the keys and free the slaves while the people are panicking from the explosion. Then eliminate the head of the place, Mr. Disco, and finally blow the place apart. It sounds simple but with you having to do all the work, you know it isn’t.

Now that you’re here, your nerves are spiking up. Arriving at the entrance of the building, you take a deep breath, your hand automatically reaching for the bracelet that Ace made you. It instantly calms you down.

It baffles you how fate works because on the very day you decide to free the slaves that are being sold off at the Human Auctioning House, Ace’s brother, Luffy — along with his crew — is at the same place to rescue their friend who was kidnapped.

Somehow even on a dangerous mission like this, there’s still something or someone who’d remind you of Ace. It makes you wonder: has he really embedded himself too deep into your life that there’s no escaping the thoughts of him? Not that you mind; the thoughts of him bring you peace, after all. But still, it’s fascinating that even in both mundane and dangerous settings, he makes himself known to you.

Upon entering the Human Auctioning House, everything happens so fast and unexpected. And quite frankly, a lot happened that wasn’t part of the plan.

Aside from finding the Straw Hat Pirates, you got yourself injured when you used your body to shield their fish man friend, Hatchi, from Saint Charlos’ gunshot. Then you confronted Saint Shalria personally despite you not planning to get involved with the Celestial Dragons. As for the slaves, it was the Dark King, Silvers Rayleigh, who actually freed them. The only things that you personally executed from your plan were Mr. Disco’s elimination and the bombing of the Human Auctioning House.

Escape is easy once the building starts to explode because the Marines would have to lessen the forces who're chasing after the pirates in order for them to successfully put out the fire. Without any Admiral on the scene yet, it’s not hard to slip away from them and/or fight them.

Even with the gunshot wound on your arm, you’re able to take down each and every one of the Marines who are chasing you. But halfway through your journey back to the grove where you left your boat at, you lose your adrenaline.

You start to feel the sharp and stinging sensation on your arm once again, yet, you couldn’t help but smile. You have gotten out alive. The slaves have been freed. With both Mr. Disco and the building gone, the Human Auctioning House will no longer be operational, or at least not yet until someone steps up. But that won’t be after a long time.

It’s a wonderful day.

You look up at the afterglow of the sunset with a serene smile. You have a feeling your nights are going to feel shorter now and less frightening than they were before.

Your peaceful moment is cut off by someone rather abruptly. You jump in surprise as someone wraps their arms around you from behind all of a sudden. “I finally caught up with you.”

Your breath hitches at the sound of the voice. “Ace? What are you doing here?”

He doesn’t answer your question, but he mumbles, “I’m sorry if I only came now. Pops wouldn’t tell me where you were, but I came as soon as I could.” Then he tightens his hug. “I was so scared, I thought I’d lose you…”

“Ace, I’m sorry about—”

“Hey, it’s on me, okay?” He interrupts. “I blew things out of proportion, and now you’re blue.”

You pull away from his hug to face him.

“Y-your arm! You’re bl-bleeding,” he stutters after seeing your injury.

But you pay no mind to that. “Ace… I’m really sorry about us—”

“Ssshhh, baby…” he rubs his hand on your back.

He looks at your figure carefully, focused on looking for any more bruises or wounds. When he doesn’t find anything more, he gently holds you by your waist. “Don’t blame yourself, I’m the one who burned us down, but… it’s not what I meant.

“It was all in my head, okay? It’s just that the Celestial Dragons are all grouped in my head as scums and that they’re inexcusable because… my brother was killed by a Celestial Dragon.”

A wave of guilt flows through your body, enough to weaken your knees. Before you could fall, however, Ace catches you and brings you to his chest. But this doesn’t stop you from sobbing on his chest. “I didn’t know, Ace. I’m so sorry.”

“No, that’s the thing, baby. It isn’t your fault. It wasn’t you who pulled the trigger. And… I have to admit I failed to see that at first,” he says as he hugs you tighter. “I shouldn’t have stood there frozen after you told me your story. I’m supposed to be the one who understands you...

“I’m not trying to make excuses and I’m not trying to make this about me but it’s just that… for so long I thought that I inherited the bad blood of my father, and I spent my lifetime failing to see that his sins aren’t my sins,” his voice cracks as he cries. “So when I found out about you… My mind automatically held you liable for the sins of the Nobles…

“But I talked to Pops and he straightened me up. I understand now. Our parents’ sins aren’t ours. It never was ours to begin with. So I’m sorry for blaming you for something you didn’t do…”

Ace stares at your crying form. He cups your face and sincerely says, “It’s so excruciating to see you low,” as he wipes the tears on your eyes. “I’m sorry if I hurt you…”

“It’s fine Ace, I forgive you. But…” You look directly into his eyes. “I’m at fault too,” you confess. “I was the one who left... I was so used to living like an island and isolating myself that it didn’t occur to me that I was punishing you with silence… I should’ve waited patiently for you but I ran away…”

Ace rubs your back gently and presses his forehead against yours, “I forgive you too.”

You smile in relief.

After a couple of minutes in silence, Ace tilts his head. “Y/N?”

“Hm?”

“Remember when you said that you saw daylight after sleeping in a long, dark night?”

You give him a curious look but nodded anyway.

“Beside wishing that I was there for you sooner, it had me thinking...”

“What?”

“Uhm… The world is terrible and cruel, and no one can ever really stop the dark nights from coming.”

You frown. You don’t really understand what Ace is trying to say.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is,” he rubs his neck while his cheeks starts to blush, “if you ever have to go through those dark nights, I wouldn’t want you to wait for daylight.

“I want to be there with you on those nights until they’re over. I don’t want to leave you when things get rough and only show up when you’re better. I know you see me as your daylight but I don’t want to be just that.”

His words warm your heart, and makes it skip a beat. “You know, Ace, there are remnants of light that linger in the sky even when the sun has long gone down and the night starts. It’s the afterglow,” you mumble.

“Yeah, but that goes away too after a while,” he frowns.

“Well, lucky for you the moon reflects the sun’s light during the night, huh?”

He grins. “Yeah, yeah. I like that. I want to be your source of light, may it be the daylight, moonlight, or the afterglow.”

A moment of silence engulfs the both of you. Under the soft afterglow of the sunset with your arms wrapped around each other, you feel at peace.

Once upon a time, you used to believe love is black and white— that it’s straightforward. It was either you love Ace or you don’t, there were no gray areas. No matter what he feels, says, or does, your love for him never ceases.

But then some other days you believed that love is burning red— that it’s full of passion, lust, and romance, much like the nights you spent entangled in the sheets with Ace.

However, right now in Ace’s arms, all you could ever think about is that love is golden. It was warmth and comfort, like what daylight brings. It was contentment and serenity too, much like the feeling of lightness one gets when seeing the afterglow of the sunset. Either way, it’s Ace who makes you feel those.

No matter what color love actually is though, for you it’s always embodied by Ace.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Now I want the story where NMJ is half war god and NHS is half fox spirit, thank you so much xD

based on this tumblr post and Lao Nie’s decision to refer to WRH as A-Han in this one ficlet

on ao3

Nie Zonghui had long ago suspected that his Sect Leader was a madman, but he didn’t really know it for certain until the first time he lost the man while on a bodyguarding mission – his first, and a great honor. 

Supposedly.

“It’s all right,” his father said, looking long-suffering, when he reported back in distress. “He’s an adult, our sect leader, and this is a small city with no major threats in the middle of some idiosyncratic festival celebration for some goddess or another. How much damage can he really do before he sobers up?”

Nie Zonghui stared at his father, then turned to his mother, who was also staring at her husband with an expression of sincere incredulity.

“Lots,” she supplied. “Lots and lots and lots, and that’s assuming he doesn’t get himself killed in the meantime. Why would you even say that?”

“He’s our sect leader, have some respect.”

“I respect the boss bull of the herd, too, but it doesn’t mean I let it go wandering around the fields wherever it pleases!” She shook her head, snorting in a manner not entirely unlike a bull herself. “Well, if we’re very lucky, maybe our cousin will knock up a cow while he’s out and about rather than just breaking things. We could use a direct heir already; he’s not getting any younger.”

“We could use him being properly married is what we could use. I don’t understand why he’s so resistant – ah, Zonghui, you’re still here? Go gather some cultivators and go look for him, but don’t kick up any fuss, and worry too much if you can’t find him at once. He’ll be back to business soon enough.”

He was, if by “soon enough” one meant “after nearly ten days” and by “back to business” one meant “still drunk off his ass and waxing rhapsodic about some girl he met and possibly married”.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure the sun shines out of her ass,” Nie Zonghui’s father said, his face stormy. “You still could’ve told us where you went. Look what you did to poor Zonghui, he’s been wearing down his heels pacing in worry over you!”

“Oh, heels, yes, did I mention that my gorgeous goddess had amazing legs, too?” their sect leader asked with a soppy smile and stars in his eyes, totally uninterested in any of their petty complaints. “She could kill a man with them – oh, but I would die a happy man between those thighs…!”

“Zonghui, go guard the outside door,” his mother told him. “Also, tell his younger sister that she might need to be sect leader sooner than she’d hoped, because I’m going to murder this fucking –”

-

Nie Zonghui was there, too, when ten months later his new little baby cousin was (metaphorically) ditched on their doorstep.

The entire thing was entirely too dramatic for his taste, and yes, he was aware that as a person who chose to dual wield sabers he had very little room to criticize others for being overly dramatic, however correct he might be.

They had been fighting bandits – barely disguised mercenaries, really, probably paid off by the Wen sect to harass them – in what had turned into a particularly bad situation. Three separate regiments had joined together to take advantage of a terrible thunderstorm and ambush them at all once and them with their backs against a raging river, swollen with rain to the precipice of flooding, with no way to retreat except by fleeing on their sabers, abandoning the common people they were protecting and losing all face. 

The sect leader had been raging on the battlefield, saber in hand, but even he had seen that they would need to shortly choose between death and dishonor; Nie Zonghui, close by his side, had seen how his face was split with a terrible scowl as he wracked his brain for more options.

Then there had been a terrible roar of thunder, and then a flash of light that had blinded them all.

Nie Zonghui had immediately noted the anomality of it, thunder first and lightning second, and wondered it if it was some sort of array working against them, especially when the light had not faded away but grown brighter, causing searing pain in his eyes that made him fall and clutch at his face. But he was a good soldier, loyal and true, and he forced his eyes open to squint into the night, looking to see he did not know what.

Through his sun-blindness, he vaguely thought he could see a silhouette not unlike that of a woman, ten feet tall and radiant as the sun, wearing a dress of nine colors and carrying a guandao in her hand that seemed to reach the clouds, but when he blinked again he saw nothing at all.

Or, well, he did see something: all of their enemies were headless, no matter where on the battlefield they were, their bodies dropping like a loosened string of coins where they had been standing and splattering anyone they were fighting with blood as they gawped at the sudden corpses.

Also, the sect leader was suddenly holding something in his arms when he hadn’t been before.

“What’s that?” Nie Zonghui asked, and the sect leader turned towards him. Nie Zonghui squinted, and suddenly wondered if this entire battle had been a very bad dream. “…is that a baby?”

“Yes,” the sect leader said, grinning broadly. “He’s my son!”

“He’s your what,” Nie Zonghui said.

“My son! I didn’t know about him, of course – apparently he came as something of a surprise to her as well – but anyway she thought that it would be more appropriate for me to raise him, all things considered. A baby doesn’t quite fit her lifestyle. What do you think of ‘Mingjue’ as a courtesy name? Good, yes?”

Nie Zonghui suddenly understood why his parents were always cursing all the time.

-

“I don’t see why I need another wife,” the sect leader said. “I already have a son.”

“Don’t you want to give said son a mother?” Nie Zonghui’s mother asked, her arms crossed. “One that isn’t the Dark Lady of the Nine Heavens, the war goddess you somehow managed to knock up without getting killed?”

“She never specified that she was –”

“Someone needs to be Nie-furen,” the sect leader’s younger sister interrupted, “because I am sick and tired of doing the job, and it’s a little difficult to ask a goddess to do it. So you are going to find yourself another one that’s a little closer to the ground this time, you understand me?”

The sect leader nodded and agreed, which was universally agreed upon to be the only appropriate reaction when his beloved meimei said something in that particular tone of voice.

(He did, after a suitable period of time, state that he wanted to make clear that there was no actual evidence that he had knocked up Jiutian Xuannü and that it was quite plausible that the mother of his heir was nothing more than a rogue cultivator of particular strength and possibility even immortality. If Baosan Sanren had managed it, why not someone else?)

At any rate, they brought him several pictures of women that might fit the bill and who would not be too offended at being asked to be a secondary wife – their sect leader swore up and down that he had performed bows with the mother of his first son, rendering him legitimate, and anyway no one was in the mood to see if the maybe-a-goddess would take offense to someone calling her child a bastard – but none seemed to catch their sect leader’s interest.

“Consider visiting a few brothels,” Nie Zonghui’s great-uncle suggested. “Anything to get you back in the habit of thinking about women of a less divine nature – though of course we’d prefer that she be literate.”

The sect leader scowled and stalked off to go night-hunting instead.

“I don’t like brothels,” he said to Nie Zonghui as they made their way through an especially deserted mountain valley in search of something that had murdered all the local mensfolk in the surrounding villages with especial viciousness. “Surely there’s an option in between.”

Nie Zonghui preferred his sabers to either men or women, but he obediently wracked his brain to think of where people in stories and famous songs found their wives. “Innkeeper’s daughters?” he finally suggested.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the sect leader scoffed, but the very next day, he decided to break his usual habit of staying out in the wild no matter the weather in favor of taking shelter from the encroaching storm in a small inn right at the base of an especially lonesome and nasty-looking cliff.

“We’re always happy to have guests,” the innkeeper said with a somewhat sinister smile – he was pale as a ghost in the guttering candlelight, and his lips looked very red. “My daughter will show you to your rooms.”

The daughter in question was inhumanly beautiful: small and graceful, with a fox’s face and dark hair that fell to her knees.

“Wow,” the sect leader said, staring at her. “You know, I think you could kill me with those nails of yours.”

Nie Zonghui took a look and agreed with the sentiment, seeing that her nails were as long as claws and looked just as sharp, but apparently he and the sect leader had somewhat different interpretations of this sequence of events and plans on how to address it.

Namely, Nie Zonghui pointed out that the lady was obviously some sort of yao or maybe a gui and that she was probably the one seducing the local mensfolk, draining their yang energy and then slaughtering them, and therefore that it was undoubtedly their duty as cultivators – and cultivators of the Nie sect in particular – to put an end to her vile deeds through the swift application of their sabers. Furthermore, he explained, they should take care never to allow themselves to be alone with her in the process, lest she seek to entrance them with her seductive magics and lure them to their undoubtedly violent deaths.

The sect leader’s rebuttal to this line of logic was limited to “I’m the sect leader and if I want to bang the probably-a-ghost, I’m going to bang the ghost and there’s nothing you can do to stop me”.

Amazingly enough, the sect leader did not end up dead the next day – the innkeeper looked just as surprised as Nie Zonghui felt – and instead announced, very happily, that he was planning on marrying her.

“You what,” the innkeeper said, staring at his very smug-looking ‘daughter’. In light of dawn, she was wearing a dress of many colors with a foxfur ruff, and her beauty was almost painful to behold.

“You why,” Nie Zonghui moaned.

“You shut up,” the sect leader told him. “I’ll have you know that my lady here is very clever, literate and well-learned, and she doesn’t at all mind being the second wife. Weren’t you one of the ones on my case about getting a Nie-furen to help managing things back home?”

“I didn’t think we needed to specify that the person in question didn’t murder a lot of people!”

“Isn’t his first wife supposedly a war goddess?” the lady inquired, her clever eyes dancing in amusement.

“Well…yes…”

“Also, all those men deserved it,” she said. After a brief pause, she added, “In my opinion as a totally unrelated observer, of course.”

“See?” the sect leader said, putting his arm around her waist. “No problem. Anyway, she’ll stick to killing bad people from now on, it’s fine.”

The lady smiled. There were many teeth in that smile, and they were very sharp.

“If she doesn’t, I’ll have my first wife discipline her,” the sect leader added and her smile abruptly disappeared.

Nie Zonghui coughed into his hand, but reluctantly admitted that maybe this wouldn’t turn out to be as bad as all that.

-

“Huaisang is a lovely name,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said, being the best of them at diplomacy when she put her mind to it, although admittedly it was something she did only very rarely. “I think we were just expecting something a little different, that’s all.”

“Possibly something a little more fox related,” Nie Zonghui’s father said.

“Please,” the sect leader’s second wife said. “That would be gauche.”

They looked at her.

“…all of my suggestions along those lines got rejected,” she admitted, and glared at the small shrine in the corner as if it had personally wronged her. In this context, it very well might have.

“Is there anything we should keep an eye out for?” Nie Zonghui said, watching his little cousin carry around his even littler cousin under his arm as if he were a sack of potatoes and not a baby that hadn’t yet had its first month celebration. He would have interfered but for the fact that little Nie Huaisang seemed to be notably more in control of his various limbs than the usual infant. “A tail, for instance?”

“Oh, no,” the second lady said. “Nothing like that.”

“Great,” Nie Zonghui said. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“It’s very rare for fox children to achieve a grand plot worthy of a tail in their first lifetime.” A pause. “From what I understand, that is.”

“Great,” Nie Zonghui said. “…great.”

“You’ll take good care of him when I’m gone, won’t you?” she asked, and when they all looked at her, smiled. “Not for another year or two, don’t worry, but I really can’t stay here that long. Sometimes, a girl’s got urges she has to take care of.”

“The sort of urges where we’d need to hunt down a mysteriously appearing fox yao for having murdered a lot of people?”

“I already promised to stop killing people,” she said sulkily. “Although I do think I made some plausible arguments in favor of a little bit of entirely justified murder in connection with the Jin sect and maybe the Lan sect and, oh, the Jiang sect –”

“Please don’t.”

“It’s not my fault your Great Sects are all headed by men who wrong women.”

“You’re not wrong,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said, and Nie Zonghui’s father looked alarmed. “But still, don’t.”

“You’re such spoilsports. But no, as it happens, it’s getting to that time when I need to return home for a while to pay my respects to the older generation.”

“How often does that happen?” Nie Zonghui’s father asked. “Once a century?”

“A gentleman shouldn’t ask a lady her age,” she sniffed. “At any rate, my family home is rather far away and they’re fairly insular, so I’ll probably be gone for at least a decade or so. I’d take the baby with me, but, well, you know, long travel and all. He’s better off sticking with his father.”

“All right,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said. “We understand, and we’ll help take care of him as best we can.”

“I’m glad.”

“We have only one thing to ask of you in return.”

Their second lady arched her delicate eyebrows.

Nie Zonghui’s mother smiled. “You be the one to tell your sister-in-law that you’re leaving your post.”

“…you know, on second thought, maybe I can push my departure out a few more years…”

-

“Before you say anything, I want to be clear right now that I don’t need a third wife,” their sect leader said. “I’m fine.”

“Sect Leader,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said, not unaffectionately. “You’re not allowed a third wife.”

“And therefore – wait, really?” he asked, a little skeptically. “You’re not concerned about me?”

“Oh, we’re very concerned about you,” Nie Zonghui’s father said. “But not in that specific respect. Some celibacy would probably be good for you, at least in terms of increasing your life expectancy.”

“…my sister is lying in wait with a cleaver to make sure she doesn’t have to take on the duties of Nie-furen again, isn’t she.”

“I’m not discounting that possibility, but don’t worry about it, it’s fine, we’ll talk to her. The Lan sect haven’t had a proper hostess in years either, we can just say we’re following their example.”

The sect leader eyed his cousins beadily. “They haven’t had a proper sect leader in years, either.”

“No, you don’t say,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said dryly. “What a coincidence -”

“You have two fine sons,” Nie Zonghui’s father said hastily. “That seems like enough, really.”

“You don’t think they need a mother…?”

“Sect Leader,” Nie Zonghui interjected politely. “While we admit that it may be within your capabilities to be able to find a mother willing to deal with one step-son who has been waiving around a saber taller than he is since he learned to walk and has a penchant for the unyielding, unmerciful and very violent application of the norms of divine justice –”

Nie Mingjue’s presence bolstered the spirit of good men, while his gaze seemed to make evildoers itch. He was the most earnestly good person Nie Zonghui had ever met, and also one of the most stiff and unbending in respect to what he believed should and should not be done.

Unfortunate that his standards didn’t seem to match up to the needs of either human law or diplomacy…

“– as well as another who can scheme circles around anyone and persuade them of anything as long as he puts his mind to it and only doesn’t because he’s too busy lazing around in the sun to bother –”

Nie Huaisang liked to file his nails down to something that looked quite normal, but they grew sharp quickly enough if he wasn’t paying attention, and he had a penchant for pranks. There was nothing quite as unnerving as running into a sudden and unexpected ambush and then suddenly hearing the shrill peal of a fox’s laughter, hidden behind a scholarly fan.

“– but all things considered, we’d really rather you - didn’t.”

His mother and father nodded fervently.

“Good,” the sect leader said, though he still looked suspiciously at them as if he thought they were hiding something. “Good. As long as we’re agreed.”

-

Nie Zonghui walked in on his sect leader pinning the Wen sect leader to a wall, murmuring something in a low voice with a very particular smile on his face, and then he turned around and walked right back out again.

The sect leader of the Wen sect might appear beautiful and young, but he was at least a generation older than the Nie sect leader. Not that that had stopped the latter from relying on their respective positions to refer to him in startlingly intimate terms – my dear A-Han, the sect leader would say with a touch of wickedness that reminded one of his second son and the tiger gall bravery of his first – and while at first the Wen sect leader had taken it as a challenge to his authority, an act of brash insolence, it appeared that they had progressed beyond that.

That the Wen sect leader already had three wives and two concubines apparently didn’t present any obstacles either – except perhaps in what those poor women might have to endure from their husband when he returned from the wretched teasing he was enduring. Nie Zonghui felt a bit of pity for them.

Shortly thereafter, he felt a bit of pity for himself. The Wen sect had long dreamed of dominating the cultivation world and sought to increase their influence with the other sects through underhanded means, with the Nie sect opposing them at every turn. Even if war was not on the immediate horizon, the wise could smell its distant approach in the air - the best estimates said that it would take another decade or two to arrive, unless the Nie sect leader took an especially hard stance.

It appeared, however, that the Nie sect leader had chosen to take a different sort of…hard stance.

Ugh.

Maybe Nie Zonghui could conspire to throw his sect leader into a cage with a live tiger in heat next time he felt in the mood. It’d probably be less dangerous.

Nie Zonghui had assumed that the first person to talk to him about what he had seen would be his sect leader, even if it was only to remind him of the general rule that the sect leader had ultimate power and therefore could exercise his own bad judgment in deciding to fuck whoever he wished, but instead it was the Wen sect leader that found him later that afternoon.

A flush had yet to fully fade from his cheeks, and Nie Zonghui raised his eyes to the ceiling to avoid looking directly at the man in front of him. 

He did not want to know. Others might, given that no one had ever complained about the looks of either party, but he himself had realized long ago that he had no interest in matters of the flesh under any circumstances; he was very content with that conclusion.

“Is there some service this one can provide to Sect Leader Wen?” he asked politely, and it was only when the sect leader flushed again that he realized belatedly that his words could be misconstrued. After all, his own sect leader had probably already made a similar offer regarding the provision of services…

“Your sect leader has a sister, doesn’t he?” the other man asked, his voice tight and his hands in even tighter fists. “I’m not misremembering that?”

“He does,” Nie Zonghui responded honestly, and not without sympathy for the Wen sect leader’s position. He was given to understand that making certain belated discoveries regarding one’s own preferences could be highly disconcerting, particularly later in life. “But she’s rather different in kind than what you may be thinking, so it won’t work out that way. It wouldn’t work even if she wasn’t already married, which she is.”

After a moment of thought, he added, “Also, consider your predecessors.”

The Wen sect leader’s eyes narrowed.

-

Really, it was the sect leader’s own damn fault that he got himself murdered.

[iamdorka]

„Could I please request a 'Dating ______ would include:' bullet point headcanon for Colson, Dom and Pete respectively? I love your writing; thank you 🖤”

So here I thought about 5 random scenarios (while dating of course) and how each of them would react/behave in that case, so basically I put my own spin on this request. Hope you will like it. But I have to add that your request made me think about this type of writing, so maybe in the future I will bring you some extra writing too.

- taking couple selfies

Colson: Colson would be the type who says that he hates taking photos, but actually he loves it, especially the couple selfies, because he adores you and when you are taking a selfie of both of you and the picture turns out great, your smile is the cutest thing on Earth, he says. Of course usually it doesn’t turn out great for the first couple of times and after the 500th attempt he gets bored and starts to make fun of you, but you are always quite determined so you keep going and when there is a great photo he actually gets more in love with you, every fucking time.

Dom: Dom would love taking pictures with you. Yeah, you are an addict but he is your partner in crime in that too. Like his mind is just as crazy as yours and if something involves the two of you, that’s 100% sure that there will be photo evidence of that, probably posing like the most idiot, badass couple in the town. Your camera roll may have a few(!!!) selfies of yourself, but maybe there are even more couple selfies.

Pete: Okay… but Pete would be the absolute worst in this scenario. Like when you would take out your phone, he would be actually scared because he hates seeing himself on photos and first you didn’t really understand this and for you it was hard to accept it, as you are a photo addict, but after some time you got it. So when he was willing to join in your craziness, it was something special, you knew that and you really appreciated that. One of the cutest thing was when he returned to Instagram, after a quite long period, the first pic he posted was one of your couple selfies.

- taking care of him when he is sick

Colson: He is the worst sick person ever, like you know that if boys are sick they tend to overdramatize it but oh boy… what he usually does in the case is next level. Your friends get to used to the hangover Colson (which is also some extreme shit) but the sick Colson is even worst. Yeah… that could happen. You thank God that his immune system is quite strong, even after all those shit that he has consumed, but when he somehow gets sick you try your best the cure him because you have your limits too and sick Colson can get you closer to them very easily.

Dom: Doesn’t matter how old he is, he usually acts like a child, like in the sweetest way, especially when he is around you. So it isn’t a surprise after all that when he is sick… he turns into a child even more. He doesn’t really understand that you have to keep your distance even if you are the one taking care of him, because his neediness becomes quite strong and he is able to throw tantrums if he doesn’t get you near him. About getting the medicines in him… you wouldn’t even want to start talking, because that’s always an interesting challenge.

Pete: Pete is a quite sick, like is he has some aching parts he doesn’t even tell you about it, you usually figure it out on your own because you see something slightly has changed in his usual behavior. Of course you immediately begin to act like his nurse because you don’t like knowing that he is suffering and he does exactly everything what you ask him to do. He is the best patient ever, if you can say so, also he likes this special attention but he would never admit this to you.

- celebrating your birthday with him for the first time

Colson: Getting together with him was a quite a wild ride, and being with him pushed you out of your comfort zone in so many scenarios, so when your birthday finally arrived you weren’t even surprised that the little party which he threw you turned into the biggest house party he threw in a while and this is a big thing, because when they throw a party it’s big… but this was 10 times bigger. And everybody got the chance to get to know you, like he is the king of the gang… and that day you became his forever queen. Everybody knew, even before, that they can’s mess with you, but after this it was obvious that you are his ride and die. His girl.

Dom: The thing is he was probably even more excited about your birthday than you were, which is a pretty big thing because damn you love your birthday, it’s your own national holiday and it was quite weird for you to share this excitement with somebody else but the enthusiasm of his was so adorable. He planned a whole music festival themed birthday party for you in his garden because he knew how much you live for those events. He even spoke to some of your favorite artists and with them he made a special birthday video just for you which when appeared on the big screen made you cry like never before. He just couldn’t understand how lucky a girl you are with him by your side.

Pete: Pete likes to stay in, smoke and just eating junk food and usually you are his partner in that, but for your birthday you just wanted to do something that you don’t usually do and that’s when Pete told you that he has everything in control, you just have to follow his instructions. That’s how he took you out for a fancy sushi restaurant which was actually the best thing because damn you ate everything up there and he was so happy that he could make you this happy. And the fact that he decided to took you out, and he enjoyed it too, he who prefers to stay in 24/7 was your biggest birthday present ever, like you knew this, between you two was something really special.

- getting up to catch an early flight to the other side of the country

Colson: Even after being with him for months you still couldn’t understand how he can function with that little sleep hours he got, so when he knew that he has to be up really early he decided not even go to bed, which for him was normal, but you just didn’t want to do as him and tried to convince him to go to bed with you, sleep a bit because sleeping on a plane is never the best option but he was quite stubborn…. but you had your ways and after some time you won. That’s why after like 3 hours sleeping waking up was the cruelest thing to do but you suffered together… as always. Of course you would never admitted that those 3 hour sleep just worsened the situation and without it everything would have been better but that’s just your stubbornness which he loved.

Dom: If he sleeps 6 hours, he has way more energy than necessary, if he sleeps 8 hours or more… he has even more energy, this guy is like he is always on some kind of drug without taking it actually, so when you had to be up at 4am he somehow woke up before you and when your alarm went off you woke up for a big cup of coffee and a cute breakfast. You couldn’t even open your eyes properly but he was almost out of your apartment already.

Pete: Coming off from some mushrooms when you had to leave for the airport wasn’t your best timing ever to be honest. But at least you didn’t suffer as much as you would have otherwise. Pete has some unique ideas to soften the situations and getting high almost everytime was involved in those solutions but this time you couldn’t really decide if you regretted it or not. When time is literally an illusion for you getting somewhere in time was a quite big challenge so when you woke up on the plane, on the right plane, on your chest of your boyfriend you were quite proud of yourself.

- him cheering you up when you had a fucked up day

Colson: He knew that when you are pissed off, tired there are two options: he needs to keep his distance and give you some time to cool off first alone or be by your side and doesn’t leave your side, not for a minute. These options usually ended up in some angry making out sessions, with heavy touching, not saying a word but there were times when he just mixed everything together… he knew you well. He knew exactly when he shouldn’t even open his mouth because he just could worsen the situation… that’s when usually he turned to music. Without even saying a word, just mumbleing to his live piano playing, letting to fill the house with his ryhtm you tried to reach you… and it worked even when it didn’t.

Dom: When you needed a good laugh… you could count on your boyfriend because sure he is some funny guy, so when you hava a long day and all you wanna do is just… not to exist you are really grateful that you go home to a place where he is there. Some light hearted comedy or stand up, letting him order some food and watching him impersonating the comedians was the highlight of those days. He knows that he is funny and to be able to make your messed up day just a little bit better he would be willing to do anything, literally and figuratevly…. because when his other half is in pain, he is in too.

Pete: Staying at home, like an old couple was your go to date option, like always. But when you arrive home saying that you will never ever not even consider leaving the house because you hate everything and everybody and you stay with that idea for quite sometime he starts to worry. And when you just can’t do anything right because you break everything, everything slips out of your hand he just carefully goes to you, hugs you and takes control over everything, even your body. He leads you to the nearest bar chair in the kitchen, sits you down and makes you a sandwich and cup of your favorite tea… and doesn’t say a word, he waits until you want to talk about it. These little things are the ones what make you love him more and more everyday. Nothing big, nothing special, just simple things.

Tag list (write me if you wanna be on it❤)

@echelonwonderland @no-shxt-sherl @kissedbystrangerswaterbottle @bakerkells @backoftheroomandnotbelonging @mgk-rooklover1997 @just-a-normal-fangirl18 @southernmgkpunk @thegunnerkelly @findingmyths @painkillerash @rosesinmars @rosegoldrichie @pinksocktingz @itjustkindahappenedreally @cclynn88 @bluehairedtracii @rumoured-whispers @estxxbritt

[plutoswrath]

i’m jealous of your big heart when it comes to animals lmao. i’m arachnophobic and it can be so annoying to have sometimes. i haven’t been able to tie it back to astrology, as much as i would like to. i asked because i was wondering if there was a clear indicator based off certain placements like how 6th house rules animals, 6th is ruled by mercury so i jumbled them even though i probs shouldn’t have lol. and with venus it ties to personal taste so i wondered if it could indicate a liking towards a certain animal. i have sag and sag venus in 6th and embarrassingly enough, i was obsessed with horses. like i came out of the womb adoring them. as soon as i learned to talk i was a walking horse encyclopedia. my obsession died down. i’m not a horse girl, i swear on my life.

i agree with you about the cancer loving animals. animals are babies and momma cancer loves to nurture the babies. i feel like cancers are the most likely to hate the “are you a dog or cat person” question. they’d get offended because how dare someone assume their heart isn’t big enough for both. more than both, really. throw a turtle in there. a rabbit even. cancer asc peeps usually have a shit ton of animals. it’s probably the sag/abundance in the 6th. or they either own a horse or Great Dane. but this is off topic because i forgot i had a follow up question.

if you could tie an animal or a couple animals to each sign that you think best represents that sign? or just seems like one they’d like? some are so easy and others just leave me blank. my arachnophobia thinks scorpio’s deserve better than scorpions but my terror blinds me. but i was looking up the symbolism behind animals and tying them to signs. so far, i’ve concluded that while horses should go with sag, their highly intuitive and empathetic animals. their behavior is like a mirror so if you’re nervous, they are too. so pisces or cancer actually seems to be a better fit. and to stay on topic of cancer with animals, i always tie wolves and dogs in general to cancer. the wolves are tied to the moon and familial dynamics and also i think they’re a great symbolic opposition to leo and how leos tend to resemble cats. sun and moon, dog and cat, night and day, that sort of thing. i realized i’ve rambled but i’m looking forward to your opinion because i’m so lost on what other signs would have. it’s been a year old question in my brain and it’s time for help from the master.

I'm sorry to hear that, I'm had a friend once who was arachnophobic and having phobias like these is really no fun, I can't imagine what it feels like really having them. And omg don't feel bad for liking horses when you were a child, literally so many children, especially young girls, like horses simply because people decided horses where a 'teenage girls only' thing somehow?? (and I will have to dig deeper into this at a point because here where I come from the horse girl thing is soooo painfully real and I want to understand the phenomena). And if I'm not mistake, arachnophobia (like most types of phobias), stem from some kind of trauma right? I absolutely don't try to get to personal but if we look at phobias in that way, maybe it's good to also include looking at planets/asteroids that point to trauma or aspects that can represent/indicate traumatic experiences in that sense! And I agree wholeheartedly to the 'dog or cat' question, I don't get offended by it but I hate this question in general because every animal deserves my love and empathy adfghj and yes, mother feelings definitely play into this haha! I think cancers enjoy (to an extent) having that occasional (or constant) outlet for their nurturing side and the bound you have to animals is also very intuitive and requires a lot of patience and getting educated as well as being observant and reading between the lines somehow and all that dedication paired with emotional knowledge just really speaks to water signs in general (and animals don't judge openly with words, just your energy asdfgh) Uhh, I like the question regarding the animals and I agree with your takes on it so far!! I think one animal can not represent all the core traits of a sign alltogether, but I'll try my best here! and psdfghj no need to call me master because I'm literally so far from anything close to that but thank you so much still, I feel honored really!!

The Signs as Animals:

Disclaimer: some of them are inspired by my ‘the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit’ tarot deck.

Aries: House cat. I know, I always thought cats actually link pretty well to Aries! Cats are just the perfect mixture of intelligen and curious, reserved, stubborn, aggressive, senstive as well as playful/impulsive! They are quick to learn and not afraid to face off against any other, bigger animals, but also can live pretty well together with other pets in the house, as long as they don‘t bother them too much. Especially when it comes to intimacy/pda they are very picky, but forceful when demand it. Seem flexible and unbothered at first but actually have the firmest boundaries when it comes to their personal freedom. Will let you believe they need you but give it a few weeks and the neighbor has better treats than you and gone they are asdfgh, but it's actually a harmful stereotype to believe that cats don't need you because they can become extremely fond of you and grow very attached.

Taurus: Elk. Based on the interpretation of my tarot deck. The elk represents earth energy, it is grounded, is established in itself and knows their core values and acts according to them. They show consistency, coherence and care. Dedicated to who they love and what they care for. Can become narrow minded due to knowing what's best, based on their perception of what's right and necessary, which can effect their ego negatively. Very Taurus for me. Gemini: Dragonfly. I refer to the interpretation of the Dragonfly based on my tarot deck. The dragonfly represents the mind: everchanging, quick, fascinating, a reflection of the world inside us and aroudn us. As the dragonfly is very quick (refering to Mercury's fast and nervous energy) the dragonfly also calles for paying attention to what quality our mind has and to become mindful, because on first glance things always appear different tahn on first glance (Mercury floats between detail-oriented and paying attenetion and being too fast, impatient). The dragonfly is joy and magic, as well as impatience, restlessness and being unable to concentrate. Cancer: Killer Whales (but also whales in general)! I thought especially about Killer Whales, because I once watched a documentary on them and they went in depth about how they have different cultures and different languages even (if I remember correctly) in their familys. Cancer often gets associated with the home life, but I think I wanted to look at it from another perspective, as in how does family 'become' family and how do those family roots develope, what do they consist of, how do we define family and what holds it together (and especially: how do our roots shape our own emotional patterns and nature in life?). I think the mystery of the Killer Whales but the whole complexity that lies behind the fascination of how these animals function and also how deeply affected Killer Whales are by their emotions/when they are absent from their kin, just opens up another big question of family dynamics and how we relate to one another and how principles we always condoned to human beings now apply to animals too. I think the whole part about the Killer Whales relation to emotions and their family's cultures just really made me link them to Cancer. Leo: Otter. I refer o the meaning of teh Otter based on my tarot deck. The Otter resembles the energy of the inner child: it's pure bliss, playfulness, they love to live and live for life itself, and out of this eagerness to enjoy life comes also a contentment and completeness towards life itself. To reconnect with otter energy, it is advised to step into settings of celebration, or total creative self expression and from the outside looking 'unproductive/selfish' indulgence. But actually, this energy is what makes life so enjoyable in the first place.

Virgo: Octopus. Highly intelligent beings that can quickly adapt and take the initiative. Self sufficient by nature, they aren't aggressive unless provoked, they like to mind their business unless they get curious (then they cling heavy onto you because you are their new object of interest). They can change color if it's needed (Virgo is a mutuable sign and can blend in perfectly in social occasions/new situations) and tbh the inking part about octopus just reminds me of the fact that most Virgos have a really quirky side to them you only get to see when you annoy them long enough (aka you are a long term friend). Libra: Gazelle. I refer to the meaning of ten Gazelle based on my tarot deck. The gazelle combines the creation of beauty and harmony, creativity and hyper awareness of it's surroundings, very affected of the imbalances in it's environment, but in it's try to remain this beauty around them, they tend to forget their achievments and stay in the present with their thoughts, as they constantly wheigh out the 'what if's'. A very perceptive animal in the tarot deck and this attribute is equally it's strong suit and downfall. Scorpio: Tiger. I refer here to the meaning of the Tiger based on my tarot deck. Waits in stillness and darkness to reconnect to their own inner power. Healing in isolation with the help of the lunar forces, waiting to regenerate. The Tiger energy shows itself in being passionate, sensual and stepping into ones own power, recognizing ones strength. For me, this is very Scorpio (Moon) for me. When the Tiger in unbalanced, it becomes overstimulated and acts according to this hyperawareness. Sagittarius: Zebra. I refer here to the meaning of the Zebra based on my tarot deck. The Zebra stands for an open mind, visionary and eccentric, new thinking, as well as being young at heart and expansion. I personally connect horses with passion and drive, because they are truly powerhouses. Based on the meaning of my tarit deck, the Zebra also is sociable, at least people find themselves drawn to the energy of the Zebra because it triggers their desire to learn, and I think this is something very beautiful Sagittarius symbolizes when they come into your life: be prepared to broaden your horizon for more. 

Capricorn: Camel. I refer to the meaning of the Camel based on my tarot deck. Camels here represent absolute dependence on self and being able to find the answer to problems in oneself. This self reliance and capability reminds me of capricorns, the camel is finding the 'cool' aka water inside of them and Capricorn is traditionally also symbolized as the sea-goat (which I seriously think should really be considered when anaylzing this archetype) and Capricorns have (imo at least) a rich emotional life, but it's just deeply locked within. The Camel represents showing responsibility for their own actions, regulating the self and circumstances around them as best as they can, which makes sense for Capricorns, ruled by Saturn they usually are confronted with task in their life. If the Camel energy is out of balance, it shows a lack of vitality, with Capricorn representing the senior age in life makes sense, especially since Capricorns can tend to feel very old (exhausted)- Aquarius: Platypus- and no, I’m not using the Platypus because ‚wow all Aquarius are so weird like straight up aliens 🤪🤪’ I think the platypus is a good representation because it makes us question what we’ve known so far about animals and Aquarius too is a sign that introduces us to new ideas and perspectives all in the favor of progress and considering alternatives, leaving the status quo. Pisces:  Raven/Crow. I name these two in particular because as far as I know it’s only the ravens that have been documented intimating people’s voices and tones, but crows are definitely more known for their bright mind. For me people often forget Pisces mutable nature and how quick witted they actually are. These birds are hyper intelligent and their observational skills are truly amazing. In my Wild Uknown Animal Spirit deck, the crow is an animal carrying 3rd eye energy. Here, the view is clear, the crow is moving through different dimensions and sees what other’s cant. For and the emotional depth (void) Pisces is conencted to it just seem to make sense. 

[thefandomlesbian]

Ship Questions!

Hotch/Reid

Domestic 🥰

(Also, I’m a huge fan of all your writings! Thanks for sharing 💜)

Thank you! ❤️

Sorry, this got pretty long!

1.) If they get married, who proposes?

Aaron does. Spencer is very comfortable not being married ever, and it's Aaron's drive to ensure Jack is in good hands in the event of his death that pushes him toward marriage. Spencer doesn't exactly want a wedding, but he knows Aaron is traditional and it's important to him, so he goes along with it.

2.) What's the wedding like? Who attends?

This could go one of two ways. 1.) They elope to Las Vegas so Diana can attend and invite literally no one else.

Or, more likely, 2.) They throw a BAU wedding in DC. JJ is the maid of honor and Derek is the best man. Rossi walks Spencer down the aisle and Gideon officiates. Rossi cries. Jack is the ring bearer and Henry is the flower girl.

A mostly unfamiliar face shows up, strolling up during the reception after the ceremony while Spencer is talking to Rossi and Derek. Spencer recognizes him first. "I don't want you here."

William is holding a brochure, pointing to where Rossi's name is listed as the father of the groom. "I would've come if you had called."

"I didn't want you to."

"You could've called," he insists. "You didn't have to write me off like this."

Derek goes to intercede, but Rossi catches him by the arm. "Hey, Reid," he says, looking quite mild. "There's one fatherly lesson I haven't taught you yet."

"What's that?" Spencer is confused at this assertion.

"How to throw a right hook."

William is on the floor, Aaron is covering Jack's eyes, Emily is cheering, JJ is trying to drag Spencer away, Gideon is getting Rossi some ice for his hands, and Strauss is pressing the bridge of her nose trying to decide if they can somehow make this a lawsuit for the bureau or if this is going to create more paperwork for her somehow.

Aaron invites a handful of old lawyer friends and Sean, who does reluctantly show up. Spencer invites his professors and teachers and Ethan. Several of them greet him with, "Oh, I haven't seen you in so long! You've gotten so tall!" which yields the question who was that person, and the answer is always, "A professor from my first doctorate."

3.) How many kids do they have?

In most timelines, only Jack. Spencer doesn't have any desire to spread his genes with his sketchy health history, and while Aaron wanted a bigger family with Haley, he knows it wouldn't be fair to do this to another child, the inconsistent hours, the lack of presence, and besides, Jessica wouldn't agree to free childcare for another kid. Spencer is okay with not being a father in the traditional way, and he's still someone who is very important to Jack, not to mention Henry and Hank and (insert baby name because I reject JJ naming her second child Michael).

But there is another timeline where they've discussed it. Spencer wants to be a father, and he tells Aaron that, and they aren't really sure how to proceed—with their line of work and histories, they aren't eligible for adoption. They look into surrogacy, but Spencer again doesn't really care to pass on his genetic material, and Aaron is having a very hard time shaking off his Catholic upbringing that makes him feel super duper icky and weird about something of his growing inside a woman he doesn't actually know that well and then that child being his and not part of her. They're at an impasse when, on a case, there's a break when a woman is found disemboweled in the dumpster while her newborn infant is wrapped in a plastic bag. There is no family after identification. Social services comes to take the baby, and they both feel like maybe this is some sign from the universe and they're missing out. Later that night when neither of them can sleep, Aaron rolls out of bed and calls the social services contact, and the baby is still floating around the office, not having yet found a foster family. So they take her.

It's several years of paperwork as they transition from foster parents to adopted guardians of Haley Diana Hotchner-Reid. Spencer steps down from the BAU to become a research professor full-time, and he finds cures for antibiotic-resistant bacterial illnesses. He invents a vaccine for tuberculosis. He has a routine schedule, so he's available for the kids all the time, and Aaron doesn't have to leave his job to have the family he wants.

4.) Do they have any pets?

Usually, no. Aaron is afraid of dogs. Animals don't like Spencer. Aaron grew up in rural Virginia, so he likes the idea of having horses like he did when he was young, but they don't have anywhere to put a horse or farm animals, and while Spencer fantasizes about having a farm, he thinks horses and cattle up close are terrifying. But occasionally they wind up with a cat, or even two cats if they're adventurous, and Spencer does a lot of research to start appropriate fish husbandry with a giant, well-kept aquarium where he teaches Jack all about how to properly care for fish (ie, goldfish and betas don't go in bowls, no fish go in bowls).

5.) Who's the stricter parent?

Neither of them are all that stern. Aaron doesn't know how to appropriately discipline a child. He knows what not to do, but he isn't sure about alternatives, and whenever Jack acts out of turn, he feels like it's his fault for letting Jack down and letting him experience so much trauma that twisted his ability to process his emotions in a healthy way. Aaron doesn't know how to provide structure and support in a positive way, and he tries, but it's hard.

Spencer also didn't exactly have any good parental role models. He does have the ability to learn everything there is to know about a child's interests through reading, and he does that to make connections. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't and Jack has still graffitied the side of the school building and Aaron is having to pay out damages and is trying very hard not to raise his voice and Spencer is like, "Is this what Ash Ketchum would do?" and Jack responds, "I'm thirteen, I haven't watched Pokemon in five years, grow up." Then they enlist a family counselor.

6.) Who kills the bugs?

Neither have bug fear. Spencer will squish roaches and pest bugs as he finds them. However, he thinks unique bugs are quite interesting, and he doesn't kill ants or spiders or crickets. Instead, he studies them. Spiders he always captures and takes outside. Once, Spencer has a piece of paper and a cup and is working very hard on entrapping a beautiful black widow, and Aaron sees it without realizing what he's doing and mushes it. "Why would you do that? Why would you kill an arachnid? She was protecting our home." After that, Aaron lets Spencer handle all the bugs and doesn't interfere since he never knows which ones deserve to live and which ones don't.

7.) How do they celebrate the holidays?

If someone is hosting a Christmas party, they'll attend, but otherwise, they'll stay inside and decorate the tree as a family. Sean is invited to Christmas dinner; he rarely comes. Jessica and her family go to her parents', and Aaron doesn't want to make Spencer uncomfortable by taking him there, so they avoid such gatherings. They make it special with just the three of them, unless another member or two of the BAU wants to squeeze in. Aaron likes to go to midnight mass, and he usually manages to convince Spencer to sit through it one night of the year.

On Halloween, they all go trick-or-treating together.

Easter is the other day of the year Aaron insists they go to church because, "I am nothing if not a Chreaster Catholic." Aaron takes Jack alone while Spencer stays home and sets up a wild egg hunt somewhere in the city, and when church ends, Aaron brings Jack to look for the eggs. Sometimes the rest of the BAU's kids join in.

For Memorial Day and Fourth of July, Aaron grills. Spencer tries once and they spend Memorial Day in the ER and Aaron has to buy a new grill. Likewise, they agree Spencer should not come within three feet of any firework materials, including benign sparklers and the like.

8.) Who's more likely to convince the other to come back to sleep in the morning?

Aaron likes to get up early to brew Spencer's coffee the way he likes it, warm the house up, and start breakfast. Spencer never asks him to come back because he enjoys having the house warm and breakfast ready when he rolls out of bed. But if Aaron isn't feeling well and Spencer gets out of bed to do those things, it only takes a couple petulant grumbles on Aaron's part to convince Spencer to slide back under the covers.

9.) Who's the better cook?

Aaron is a much better cook. Spencer, to his credit, tries sometimes. But Aaron has a better understanding of how palates work and also how not to set things on fire. Spencer knows cooking is technically just a science, but it's a science that baffles him, he'll admit, like paranormal science or theology.

[aion-rsa]

How Malignant’s Monster Calls Back to Stephen King

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This Malignant article contains spoilers.

Malignant has a twist so wild you need to see it to believe it. Seriously, stop reading right now if you have even the faintest interest in watching James Wan‘s latest horror offering. You really don’t want to spoil this for yourself. Sure, you’ll either really love or absolutely hate the movie’s batshit third act, but the experience of watching the twist for the first time is worth the price of admission.

If you have watched the movie, maybe you left as astonished as I did. After all, the first two thirds of the movie play like a standard giallo-inspired slasher film before things go completely off the rails. You might say that some of the clues were there all along — indeed they are, maybe you saw this coming from a mile away — but when you thought you’d put it all together, did you really expect Wan to go through with something so ridiculous? I certainly said, “No, that can’t be it” to myself midway through the movie when the clues started adding up. It’s a new direction for Wan to be sure…

But Wan’s first trip into a new sub-genre of horror isn’t necessarily without outside influence. There’s a bit of David Cronenberg mixed with hints of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but for the most obvious inspiration you have to look to the King of Horror himself.

Before we talk about Stephen King, you might be wondering what the hell was going on with Gabriel in the first place.

Gabriel Origin Explained

Safari Riot’s cover of the classic Pixies song “Where Is My Mind” seems so out of place when it first blasts through a scene in the movie, an over-the-top accompaniment to what seems like your standard slasher flick, but it’s actually incredibly appropriate — not just for the massive tone shift but the plot itself. (“Where Is My Mind” is also the iconic tune that accompanies the final scene of Fight Club, another tale of split personalities.) Madison’s (Annabelle Wallis) mind has been playing tricks on her (and the audience) the entire time. She thinks her creepy childhood imaginary friend Gabriel has somehow taken corporeal form and started murdering everyone who had a hand in “separating” him from her. But little does Madison know that the separation was much more literal than her simply forgetting a figment of her imagination when her baby sister Syndey (Maddie Hasson) was born.

It’s Sydney who discovers the truth when she goes back to the institution where Madison spent her early childhood before being adopted by their mother Jeanne (Susanna Thompson). In the basement of the abandoned Simion Research Hospital, Sydney finds the harrowing tapes that reveal Madison’s past with her “imaginary friend.”

Madison was born Emily May to a 15-year-old girl named Serena (Jean Louise Kelly as an adult, Madison Wolfe as a teen) who is forced to give her away to the institution by her mother due to Emily’s…medical condition. In a stunningly gruesome sequence of body horror, we learn that Emily was born with a parasitic twin attached to her head and spinal cord, which allows it to control her movements and thoughts. The doctors at Simion at first diagnose Gabriel as a “massive teratoma,” a malignant tumor that can grow with fully developed organs and tissue, but as we see in the movie’s opening sequence, they soon learn that this is something much worse and decide to cut him out off of Emily for good.

But they can’t get rid of Gabriel completely. Because the siblings attached at the brain, the doctors are forced to remove as much of Gabriel as they can, hiding what’s left inside her skull. Of course that means that Gabriel never truly goes away. He continues to speak to Emily, now Madison, from inside her head, at one point almost convincing her to kill Jeanne while pregnant with Sydney.

While Madison eventually forgets her “imaginary friend” as an adult, Gabriel returns after Madison’s piece of shit husband Derek (Jake Abel) brutally slams her head against a wall during an altercation. (Let’s just say I’m glad he’s dead.) The injury reawakens what’s left of Gabriel, who can reemerge through her head wound to control and contort Madison’s body and go on his killing spree. Madison experiences these murders as visions, as she watches her sibling slash his way through all the doctors that tried to destroy him as well as the mother who gave him away in the first place. Madison’s only able to stop him after he’s already massacred a police station full of cops and prisoners and made his way to the hospital to kill Sydney and Serena. Using the mental link she has with Gabriel, Madison manages to lock her sibling away, promising that next time he reemerges, she’ll “be ready for him,” setting up an inevitable sequel and a new horror franchise for Wan.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Gabriel and the Dark Half

Constant Readers will undoubtedly spend the weekend pointing out that Gabriel’s plot to control his sister in order to go on a murder spree is very reminiscent of one of Stephen King’s most famous books and movies, The Dark Half. The book and the movie directed by the late, great George A. Romero tells the story of Thad Beaumont (played by Timothy Hutton in the film), a writer of literary fiction in a bit of a slump by day. But he has a far more successful career by night as the author of dark crime novels under the pen name “George Stark.” Yet, the success of his Stark books feels like a curse to Thad, who is driven to heavy drinking and other vices when “the spell” of Stark’s prose. Now, a recovering alcoholic, Thad wishes to leave Stark behind and just write the literary fiction his agent and editor deem “boring.”

When the truth about Thad’s pen name comes out, the writer sees the perfect way to bury his career as George Stark once and for all — by throwing his pseudonym an actual funeral at the local cemetery. But Mr. Stark doesn’t like that very much. Thad’s pen name inexplicably “rises from the grave” to kill everyone he blames for his death — Thad’s editor, agent, and more.

You’re probably thinking it was Thad all along, but this is more than just another case of split personalities. Like in Wan’s latest, Stark was once actually very real, the sibling Thad absorbed in utero…except for a couple of teeth and an eye living inside of Thad’s brain. The “tumor” is removed from Thad’s head as a child, but he’s somehow unknowingly kept the spirit of his sibling alive through the books he writers, undoubtedly under Stark’s dark influence. It’s the kind of gory, supernatural twist King is best known for, and Wan sets out to celebrate the book with style. Mind you, this obviously isn’t a direct adaptation of King’s work but more like a spiritual successor to the book that pushes the plot much further into the ridiculous than even the writer did in 1989. Leave it to Wan to dream up an action sequence where a backwards (literally), contorting serial killer stabs his way through a building full of people to the sound of shredding guitars.

Even if you think Malignant‘s third act twist is an absolute mess, I’d argue it’s at least an interesting mess, a daring experiment in a corner of the horror genre we’ve not seen enough of in the past few years. Will this experiment lead to a new movement in body horror movies just as Saw for better or worse inspired years of “torture porn” movies and The Conjuring brought us the horror expanded universe? That remains to be seen. At the very least, Malignant is the kind of movie you’ll want to debate about with your friends as you exit the theater, even if it’s just to say you absolutely hated the twist. Aren’t you at least glad you saw it for yourself? The twist just isn’t as good on paper.

Malignant is out now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.

The post How Malignant’s Monster Calls Back to Stephen King appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3twQgAE

[secret-engima]

*yeets Byakuran reborn as Ravus, Yuni as Luna, Tsuna as Noctis, Hibari as Crowe* *runs like hell*

*chases after you with armiger because HOW DARE*

-Byakuran totally doesn’t panic when he is reborn. Not really, he ACTUALLY DOESN’T.

-Mostly because he doesn’t Remember until he’s four and Luna is born and he can FEEL her soul down to his bones and everything in him goes “Yuki” and suddenly he remembers.

-Byakuran wakes up a week later to a very worried mom and a royal staff that are convinced poor Byakuran is a very rare instance of a male who can use Oracle magic, just as a Seer variant (which, in this verse, has happened before, it’s the only way male Nox Fleuret get to use magic).

-Yuni Remembers the moment her eyes are developed enough to see Byakuran in proper detail and that’s when the little lightbulb comes on in Byakuran’s head. They have to see another reincarnation in order to Remember.

-Well. After Dear Tsunayoshi had fixed his head, Byakuran always did consider Yuni a little sister anyway. Nice to see some things carrying over.

-They wonder for a while if they are the only two, keep it to themselves and watch closely for any signs of anyone else Remembering. Mostly though, they live their new lives as Luna and Ravus. They like being Luna and Ravus, sure, it’s odd to be in a world without Flames, but the magic in their veins is remarkably like them, and whatever oddity usually keeps male Nox Fleuret from using magic doesn’t effect Ravus in the slightest (though he keeps that a secret too). Their mother is a wonderful woman and the servants are kind (if exasperated by the eldest child’s obsession with marshmallows and other candies and his tendency to prank). This is good new life to life, one without Mafia and cursed rings and Vindice.

-They learn of the Prophecy and- well- they’ve seen this kind of thing before. They know how this story is supposed to end.

-They start plotting instead.

...

-Crowe has always been ... off. Wrong. The other children at the Orphanage all know that, and so do the Matrons, but Crowe doesn’t care. She is feral and wild and FURIOUS at the world, a burning-eyed child who hates because something deep inside hurts, like something is tearing her soul apart from the loss of it and nothing will fix it, and the pain drives her into a constant frenzy of patrolling and biting and hitting. She keeps the Orphanage safe even though it isn’t home (it is not her Territory it is not right not right not right) and defends the Herbivores other children even though they don’t like her (aren't Pack never Pack where is her Pack where is HER SKY-).

-Galahd begins to burn and Crowe fights. She tears the units apart with the ferocity of pain that has been in her blood all her life and then limps away when the battle is done (not won, she is too WEAK like this). She meets Nyx and Libertus and Selena and at first she hates them too. Bites and snarls when they try to drag her away from the battlefield. But they do not leave, or recoil from her. They stay and they insist on staying and something in her chest eases ever so slightly (Territory, her Territory. Not her old Pack, but New Pack, and it helps just a bit). She dubs them Reckless Carnivore (Nyx), Fussy Omnivore (Libertus), and Baby Carnivore (Selena). Somehow they, unlike anyone else in her this life, knows that these titles are important and special. Not insults or insanity. She promises to protect them always.

-Then Galahd falls, too fast and hard to save and they run for the boats rather than fight and Crowe SCREAMS as she tears apart the soulless metal husks that pretend to be soldiers as they try to murder her Pack and Territory. She rips them asunder with her bare hands, unnatural strength in her bones as overhead the sky screams with the Storm Father’s wrath. Crowe covers Selena with her own body and hears Nyx and Libertus scream as the bullets tear open her skin.

-(Somewhere far away, a tiny Princeling SCREAMS like his soul has just been ripped out, screams and leaks magic in desperation as he reaches for something he was not know he had until he was at risk of losing it).

-From the storm clouds above, Ramuh hears the plea of the Chosen, reaches down a hand and heals Crowe’s wounds, fills her with the biting sharp energy of the storm and Crowe gets up, magic and blood on her skin and her eyes a bright lightning purple.

-All four make it to the boats. Just this once Crowe lets them crowd close to cry all over her as they watch their homeland (but not home, not to her) fade away.

-(Far away a little prince collapses in exhaustion, leaving his family and caretakers frantic in confusion over what just happened and why, he wakes up with no answer for his panic or the tears of relief streaming down his face).

-They make it to Insomnia. Libertus and Nyx are just 17, Crowe is 14, Selena is the youngest at 12. The eldest two join the Kingsglaive and Crowe seethes over it, over them receiving power and money and shelter in exchange for being CHAINED by a foreigner herbivore (They try to explain it doesn’t feel like chains at all, but Crowe cannot comprehend it and so just snarls).

-The ache in her chest is so much worse now. She picks fights with anything, bloody and vicious and uncontrolled. They have to pull her away from fights more than once before she can outright kill something. She tries to explain that her soul hurts, that something is GONE and someone has TAKEN IT but she can’t. That feeling has been with her all her life and she still cannot explain what it is.

-Then one day she sits in the ratty apartment they all share for convenience sake (she hates crowding, but this is a city of strangers and she would rather her Territory be safe than her own personal bubble be maintained at risk of their wellbeing) and watches the television with Selena, watching the royal parade that celebrate’s the birthday of the foreigner herbivore king’s welp and-

-The boy appears on the screen. Shy and blue-eyed and smiling at the cameras from where he gets to watch the parade and Crowe-

-Falls.

-She is a Carnivore and always has been. The first female Hibari heir in a century not from choice but happenstance and none will take the right from her. She is Namimori’s protector and Fluffy Carnivore’s Cloud and Tricker Carnivore’s mate and she is- she is-

-Living-dying-breathing-fighting-Clouds-and-Skies-and-freedom-and-mine-mine-mineminedon’tgodon’tLEAVECOMEBACKTOME

-Selena calls Nyx and Lib in a panic even though they are on duty as extra security, sobbing about Crowe SCREAMING and using the magic Storm Father gave her and then passing out with a fever on the floor. By the time they get off shift (they can’t leave early, they are on security detail for the prince himself) and run home, Selena has worked herself into hysterics because Crowe won’t WAKE UP.

-They worry for three days. They would take her to get help, but they are new to the city and how they work. Galahd didn’t have hospitals save in the port towns, and Libertus and Nyx don’t know what to do beyond call a medicine woman, except Insomnia does not have those and the one in Little Galahd cannot determine what is wrong.

-Three days after the parade, Libertus peers into the bedroom (there was only one, the boys slept in the living room while the girls shared the cramped bedroom) and nearly has a heart attack because Crowe is GONE.

-He has no time to worry about that, because an emergency alert comes through his and Nyx’s phone. Code Cerulean. Someone has broken into the Citadel and is NOT STOPPING and all hands are needed to find and stop the threat. They run to the Citadel, cursing the entire way and hoping Crowe is alright.

-They start to get a dreadful sneaking suspicion when they meet the Captain, who is seething as he gives orders from a chair because his legs have been broken by the intruder when he engaged them. Nyx sees what look like very nasty, vicious bite marks under the bandages on Captain’s wrist, like someone bit and then shook and refused to let go until the last second and feels his stomach drop. It can’t be.

-Literally half of the Crownsguard, ten glaives, a pyre-cursed amount of sabotage, bite marks, fractured marble walls and floors, and one very thoroughly winded and staticky Cor the Immortal later and Nyx and Lib can no longer deny what’s going on. Crowe is here in the Citadel and seems to be on the warpath to murder something. They rush to be the first to find her, because maybe they can talk her down and smuggle her out before their Pack sister get’s executed for wreaking this much havoc and assault in the Citadel.

-They finally find her in the Crown Prince’s quarters, having followed the blood trail of one particularly stubborn but unlucky Crownsguard to the living floors and extrapolating from there. They both burst in, more than half convinced they are about to have to kill their own friend for murdering the little prince-.

-Said prince is shamelessly bawling on Crowe’s shoulder, clutching at her clothes like she’ll disappear if he lets go, heedless of the blood on her clothes and hands and hunting knives while the prince’s poor young advisor stands stiffly in the corner, afraid to move lest he get attacked by the feral teenager that just broke in.

-Crowe looks up at their entrance and smiles, teeth bloody but not from her blood, purple-tinted eyes ALIGHT with a joy that takes their breath away (because Crowe is never happy, NEVER, she is content sometimes, but happiness has always been out of reach when something inside her is always so angry and hurting for reasons even she never knew).

-She calls their nicknames and gently runs one bloody hand through the Prince’s hair, possessiveness in every line as she coos at them to “Come meet her Fluffy Sky Carnivore.”

-Of course, before Libertus and Nyx can reboot their brains, the King storms in, his Shield and the recovered Marshal on either side, magic bristling protectively like heavy thunder in the air.

-Crowe snarls at the king, face twisting into a feral expression as she pulls the Crown Prince closer to her and Nyx is SURE that this is it, he’s either going to witness Crowe’s death or the king’s, when the Crown Prince sniffles and pats Crowe’s cheek, “It’s okay, Kyo. He’s a good dad. He loves me. He’s mine.”

-And Crowe grumbles as she relaxes, pulls the Crown Prince more firmly into her lap and hisses defiantly when the Marshal stiffens at the motion. Crown Prince Noctis pats her again, and the king must feel something from the gesture because he groans, “Noctis- Noctis NO. She broke into the Citadel, she’s injured half of our Crownsguard. She’s DANGEROUS.”

-And the Crown Prince just settles more firmly against Crowe while Crowe SMIRKS like she’s just been complemented, and blue eyes burn bright amber as the Crown Prince announces calmly, “She’s MINE.”

-And Nyx realizes he can feel the little prince’s magic pounding a second heartbeat in Crowe’s chest like it had always belonged there.

...

-Noctis remembers being Tsunayoshi, in a dreamy, vague way that can only be his Vongola Intuition come back to haunt, but he doesn’t Remember until Hibari Kyoka (now called Crowe Altius) breaks into the Citadel and wreaks total havoc in her efforts to get upstairs to him. She breaks into his room and he has only a moment to be scared of the bloody intruder while Ignis dives at her in a vain attempt to defend Noctis when he meets her eyes and-

-Everything in his mind unfurls.

-He doesn’t pass out, but that’s probably only because of how long his dreams have been haunted by his past life. Tsunayoshi blinks twice and then resettles back into the skin of Noctis before leaping up with Kyoka’s old name on his lips. In an instant Ignis is pushed aside (not harmed, because he bears Noctis’s magic, and that marks him as Territory too). Kyoka snatches Noctis into her arms and he can FEEL the gaping whole in her soul where their bond should be and he sobs on both of their behalves as he pours his magic into the gap, clings to her and sobs harder when she LETS HIM (and doesn’t that tell just how desperate she was, how lonely and lost and angry that she lets him crowd without hesitation).

-Two Glaives burst in a few moments later and Noctis tries to compose himself as Kyoka smiles warmly at them (Territory, they are her Territory so he must protect them-) and invites them closer. His father, Clarus, and Cor all burst in moments after that and Kyoka SNARLS ready to fight, because Tsunayoshi’s father had been a terrible man and she has no reference for this one. Noctis soothes her, then looks his father dead in the eye and names this woman HIS.

-His father can feel the magic Noctis has given her. They both know it is too late to change Noctis’s mind.

-Crowe sticks around. Disappearing from sight only to reappear the moment anyone acting poorly around Noctis. Noctis knew his father (and wasn’t it novel to have a loving father this time) was worried at the fanaticism in Crowe’s gaze, but Crowe had been blessed by Ramuh (how had THAT HAPPENED hieeeee) and he eventually concludes that loyalty to Noctis was Ramuh’s price for the Blessing. Noctis doesn’t bother to correct him.

-Nyx and Libertus and Selena are all very nice people. He’s glad Crowe was not alone all these years.

-Noctis narrowly avoids death by marilith when he senses it coming on the way back to Insomnia and screams desperately for the driver to turn around. They stop to see what is wrong with him and Crowe launches herself out of the back seat to fight the thing in time to keep it from reaching the car. Noctis had taken one look at his Cloud in mortal peril from a giant nightmare monster and lit the night with magical fire that burned amber and white from the heat. 

-Crowe hates Gladiolus within their first meeting, probably because Gladiolus thinks Noctis is spoiled and wimpy. She refrains from killing him only because Noctis says so, but seethes whenever Noctis comes back from yet another training session spent meekly following Gladiolus’s orders and getting sneered at for it.

-It doesn’t occur to Noctis to change his behavior or to tell his father about Gladiolus’s attitude. Because Noctis is Tsunayoshi and no matter how many years he was a respected and fear mafia boss, some part of him will always quietly wait for the other shoe to drop and the abuse to start. So the sneering and too-long spars as Gladiolus tries to make Noctis a swordsman when he hates fighting with anything but his hands is nothing new, and nothing compared to Reborn’s training. So he lets it go.

-Until one day Gladiolus gets past his guard and accidentally hits far too hard. Noctis feels something give and it hurts to breathe. He knows he should call the match right there.

-He doesn’t, because there’s a voice in his head going “a mafia boss doesn’t quit, Dame-Tsuna” and Gladiolus is looking at him with those eyes again. So Noctis gets up and keeps going past the pain that gets worse the more he moves.

-He can barely pretend to be normal as he walks back to his suite, settles on the couch with a wheeze that tastes like newly minted coins. Crowe is at his side in an instant (she was never allowed to watch the training for fear of what she’d do to Gladio) and a moment later she’s yelling for Ignis. Who then calls the doctors and the next thing Noctis knows he’s in the medical wing being treated for a broken rib and a nicked lung.

-His father is there, worried and angry both and demands to know why Noctis didn’t SAY ANYTHING. He could have DIED. How had this happened?

-Noctis doesn’t want to get Gladiolus in trouble, because he knows the boy didn’t mean to, but his dad is looking at him with too serious eyes and Noctis can do nothing else but tell what happened.

-Gladiolus goes pale when he hears the story. He gets even paler when, upon being asked yet again why he didn’t STOP, Noctis whispers, “I didn’t want to be a wimpy brat...”

-Crowe snarls, thick and dark and feral, a terrifying, unnatural sound, and Noctis winces at the look on Crowe’s face as Gladiolus is led away for a punishment and nasty lecture from Clarus. Noctis knows it will take years, if ever, for Crowe to forgive Gladio.

-Crowe brings him Prompto two weeks later as a comfort gift. Yes. Brings. Crowe, on her patrol, spotted the cute boy talking to himself, apparently trying to work up the nerve to talk to Noctis, and decided he would make a good addition. She then proceeded to pick him up and carry him all the way to the Citadel, depositing the wide-eyed boy at Noctis’s side on the couch in his room before sauntering away in satisfaction. Surprisingly, despite this horrible first impression, Prompto agreed to be Noctis’s friend anyway. Noctis was glad to have someone else on his side who understood how terrifying Crowe could be and how awesome Ignis was.

...

-The four reincarnated souls do not all reunite until years later. A formal visit from Queen Sylva of Tenebrae and her two children. Noctis, 14 years old and wise beyond his years, takes one look at the absentminded look in Luna’s eyes, like she’s seeing everything and nothing, and Ravus cheerfully tossing a marshmallow in his mouth when no one else is looking and Knows. He smiles back at them, pleased to see another old friend, then groans when Crowe grabs her tonfa and lunges.

-It was only Ravus’s delighted laughter that kept the Tenebrae delegation from assuming this was an assassination attack. It also helped that Byakuran had always been adept at bribing his wife, and clearly still kept the habit of carrying around her favorite flavor of sweet. Ravus offered her the candy in his pocket in exchange for Crowe to stop fighting him (for now) and Crowe snatched it with a contented, “I will bite you later Trickster Carnivore,” before sauntering back to Noctis’s side while he groaned into his hands and the adults all sputtered at her choice of wording.

-What a wonderful first impression, Crowe. Thank you. Really.

[gleam-and-darken]

Zelda AU #2: The Triplets

The sketch is rough at best, but Zelda is supposed to look like she does pre-calamity, Tetra looks like the girl from the BotW 2 trailer (because it is her, I might explain that later if anyone’s interested), and Sheik has his design from Smash Ultimate. This is really just my take on the twins AU which was originally created by someone else (rockingthegraveyard, I believe).

https://triforce-princess.tumblr.com/post/627266504652668928/this-is-awesome-your-brain-is-so-good

Anyways, I was thinking of what this might actually look like as a fleshed-out story, and I decided that Zelda’s twin could be named Tetra. And then I thought, “hey, we can’t leave Sheik out!” And so here we are. Basically, thanks to her siblings, Zelda is able to stop the calamity and (almost) everyone lives happily ever after. I don’t actually plan on writing this into a formal story so this is a long post where I just dump a lot of my ideas concerning the trio. I will not be writing this into a story, because I’ve never played BotW and I fear I would get everything wrong, but you’re welcome to! If someone ends up writing something based on this, I’d love to know so I can read it. I also have lots more ideas about this, so if you want more content (aside from this ridiculously long post), just ask!

Zelda is technically the oldest, although it hardly matters since they’re triplets. Thanks to this, she is arbitrarily the one who had all of the responsibilities heaped upon her. She’s pretty similar to how she appears in BotW, except Link isn’t even a potential love interest for her. He’s just her knight whom she’s gradually grown close to - as a friend.

Tetra is the middle child, and by far the most troublesome. She is outgoing, adventurous, brash, and basically everything you don’t want in a princess. King Rhoam tried to raise her to be proper, constantly reminding her that it was the hero’s (Link’s) duty to be the courageous one, not the princess. This often resulted in her running away and threatening to join the gerudo. She and Revali got along like a house on fire, often bonding over how overrated Link is. She absolutely hates Link, because to her, he represents not her failures, but the failures of her country and family. Why can’t a princess with no triforce be the hero as well? She makes no attempt to hide her distaste for him, although she might have changed her perspective a little if she realized that Link actually greatly admired her. It’s too bad that he was too scared of her to tell her himself. Speaking of being too scared to admit things, the one thing Tetra can’t bring herself to say aloud is that she has a huge crush on Princess Mipha.

Sheik is the little brother, known as the quiet one. Unlike his eldest sister, he knows how to fight, but hates doing so. He would much rather prefer to be exploring the lonely areas of the wild, or researching ancient tech with Zelda. He’s trans, and while his sisters support him and his father respects that, King Rhoam also saw that as an excuse to ignore him. After all, the legends never told of princes doing anything noteworthy. Thus, the king, and by extension almost everyone in Hyrule, more or less forgot about their quiet prince. The champions knew about him and were varying degrees of nice to him, especially Lady Urbosa, which was more than almost everyone he met could say. He didn’t mind it too much, and didn’t even realize that it was wrong until after his father was dead.

Link had a varied relationship with the triplets. Originally, both Zelda and Tetra despised him, because he reminded them of everything wrong in Hyrule - Zelda’s own self doubt, and Tetra’s failed attempts to become her own hero. Since his two sisters were always talking about how much they hated having this royal knight follow Zelda around, Sheik grew to dislike him as well, despite having never met in person. However, there was a time in the castle when Tetra practically kidnapped Zelda and whisked her away to an unknown location in Hyrule, sending everything into chaos. Sheik was pretty sure that they were both in on it and were simply trying to prove how well they could manage without Link, but they hadn’t informed him of their plan before they left, so he really had no idea. What he did know was that they left Link behind, and now the royal knight was panicking because he thought the king would blame him for letting his daughters vanish, and feared he’d be at the very least jailed.

Link, to his surprise, was not punished - the king was too busy cursing his own tomboyish daughter - but was sent to go find them alongside a team of Hyrulean soldiers. Not wanting to look useless, Sheik joined the quest. In their travels, Sheik discovered that Link was actually a lot like himself, just in completely different circumstances (and much more reckless, unfortunately), and the knight found that the prince was one of the few people who didn’t meet him with impossibly high expectations, for which he was thankful. They became fast friends, although since they both said an average of ten words a week combined, their friendship often looked more like them being present in the same room.

Much later, after both princesses had returned to the castle (“of our own accord,” Tetra had reminded everyone within earshot), the king doubled down on Zelda discovering her powers. She and her knight were rarely seen around the castle, always visiting springs and whatnot, while Zelda’s siblings were left at the castle doing... basically nothing. They were both training constantly for a battle that they were beginning to believe would never come.

Their seventeenth birthday started like any other day. They were at the castle while Zelda and her knight were off at another spring to pray, along with the champions. Then all hell broke loose. (Literally.) Something monstrous decided to rear its ugly head from under Hyrule Castle, and it took over the guardians to boot. Of course, both Tetra and Sheik became extremely concerned for their older sister, since she probably couldn’t fight a bokoblin, much less corrupted ancient technology. This, combined with the fact that the castle was probably the worst place to be right then, prompted the two to bolt into the field and find their sister. They had to fight guardians the entire way, and Sheik recieved a nasty injury, but kept denying how bad it really was.

Despite the storm, she wasn’t that hard to find, thanks to that explosion of what they guessed was her divine magic that had finally decided to say hello. They found her as opposed to the sheikah, but arrived on the scene a bit to late for the hero. He wasn’t dead (or was he?), or at the very least he could be saved/brought back, but he was clearly not about to help them fight. (Still, Sheik absolutely lost his mind when he saw the state Link was in, to the shock of his sisters. Neither of them knew he was close friends with the knight.)

Zelda quickly explained her plan to her siblings, where she would return the sword to the forest and face Ganon herself, to which Tetra said “hell no.” The Master Sword was right there! Hyrule needs saving, and the princess found herself to be a perfectly competent hero. The sword could be fixed. Somehow.

This part is where I’m a little on the fence about what happens. The sword’s health and power does seem to be tied to Link’s, as evidence by how it heals with him over 100 years and can only shoot sword beams when he’s at full health (I think), but since Tetra actually was worthy of wielding the sword, Fi could have been restored when she accepted the blade. Alternatively, Tetra and Sheik could have been the sages of earth and wind without realizing it, and we’re able to restore the sword on the fly. You get to decide how the sword repaired itself.

So now Tetra has roped herself into fighting Ganon with the Master Sword, Zelda by her side, while Sheik is losing his mind over what is basically the corpse of his closest friend. It’s at this time that Zelda realizes just how injured her brother is. She knows that he can’t fight the calamity like that, so she tasks him with taking Link to the Shrine of Resurrection, like Fi said. Initially, he refuses, but he soon decides that it’s all he can do and agrees.

The triplets go their separate ways. Somehow, the sisters are able to get to the castle very quickly, and start to challenge the Calamity. Zelda uses her new sealing powers to force him into a mortal form, while Tetra beats him up with her new weapon of choice. Ganon originally shrugs them off, more or less, but as they start to win he activates Panic Mode and summons all of his blights back to the sanctum to fight the sisters. Luckily, the blights were snatched right out of their battles with the champions, who were beaten and shaken but still alive.

However, thanks to his new allies, Ganon starts to win. Just when the princesses think they’re about to die, the divine beasts - which are under the control of the champions after the blights left - strike, finishing off the Calamity. Naturally Ganon has a few tricks up his sleeve and transforms into Dark Beast Ganon, moving to Hyrule Field. By Hylia’s (late) divine grace, Tetra and Zelda are teleported to the field as well, alongside Sheik, surprisingly. He’d just set Link up in the shrine before getting pulled here. Zelda is able to summon the Bow of Light, which becomes his weapon.

Together, the three of them are able to take out the dark beast. Zelda creates weak points, while Tetra and Sheik shoot them with Master Sword beams and light arrows, respectively. (Maybe Tetra DID die, but her health was restored by a fairy, or she’s at full health for some other reason.) So now Ganon is dead. Castle town is in shambles, and multiple people are dead, including the king. But don’t worry - Urbosa quickly makes herself the new parental figure of the triplets.

Hyrule is rebuilt. The people celebrate the defeat of the calamity, and the guardians are restored to their former abilities. Tetra becomes the new Champion of Hyrule Castle, wielding the Master Sword and the Sheikah Slate. For an extra happy ending, maybe she and Mipha formally become a couple. Sheik pioneers work on improving ancient and modern technology, showing a special interest in ways to reverse aging. After many years, Queen Zelda’s son, Daphnes Link Hyrule, becomes the ruler after her reign ends.

And so, the people of Hyrule live happily ever after.

... and 100 years later, Link wakes up.

[hsiao-kang]

Fiona Shaw by David Yeo for The Telegraph, ‘Killing Eve's secret weapon Fiona Shaw on finding new fame, and falling in love at almost 60’ by Jessamy Calkin (full article under the cut)

Fiona Shaw has found a new audience thanks to her scene-stealing turns in Killing Eve  and Fleabag. The Shakespearean actor turned small-screen sensation talks spies, celebrity, tragedy, and getting married later in life.

You look great, I tell Fiona Shaw. Must be the pig’s placenta. Shaw, 60, pretty and angular in a soft grey shirt, smiles enigmatically from the sofa of her north London home. Pig’s placenta is her MI6 officer Carolyn Martens’ beauty secret in the second series of Killing Eve, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s dark, wildly successful thriller about a psychopathic female assassin called Villanelle and Eve Polastri, the agent hunting her down.

But pig’s placenta aside, Shaw puts her youthful appearance down to ‘not being in the theatre every single night’. Which is where she’s been for pretty much the past 30 years. Formerly known for a huge body of iconic stage roles, including Hedda Gabler, Medea, Electra and Richard II, as well as for playing Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter films, Shaw’s fame is now more attributable to her transition to television.

In Killing Eve, Waller-Bridge has taken a genre that’s a little worn out – the international-assassin thriller – and given it a completely different slant. The show won five awards at the Baftas earlier this month – including Outstanding Drama Series and Best Supporting Actress for Shaw, who in her acceptance speech referred to the ‘glass-shattering genius’ of Waller-Bridge.

Carolyn Martens, head of Russia at MI6, is a perfect example of Waller-Bridge’s wayward approach. Carolyn is very still. Arch, deadpan, erudite, severe. But she has a tipsy flirtatious side, and a hidden messy streak. She’s oblique – and the viewer doesn’t know how much she knows, or whether or not to trust her. Nor does Eve (played superbly by Sandra Oh). ‘I once saw a rat drink from a can of Coke there,’ Carolyn says earnestly to a bemused Eve when they’re in a rubbish-strewn alley. ‘Both hands. Extraordinary…’

‘Carolyn’s a joy to write,’ says Emerald Fennell – best known as an actor for Call the Midwife, and The Crown’s new Camilla – who took over from Waller-Bridge as lead writer on the second series (Waller-Bridge remains an executive producer). ‘Her blood runs very cool. She’s like a freediver who has trained herself to hold her breath and slow down her heartbeat – she’s done it for so long it’s now a permanent state. Her ability to steer an awkward conversation into blithely surreal territory is unparalleled and somehow seems very British.’

The character is entirely dependent on Shaw, adds Fennell. ‘She is unbelievably brilliant, funny, and scarily clever. In one of the episodes, another character mentions [11th-century saint] Anselm’s ontological argument [for the existence of God], and during the read-through it transpired that Fiona had written a literal thesis on it. Quite embarrassing for those of us who only had the most passing Wikipedia acquaintance with Anselm (me). Fiona’s cleverness and wit are built into the fabric of who Carolyn is.’

Shaw compares playing the part to keeping a secret at the same time as delivering a line. ‘It’s not easy to do. I have to say I do lose sleep over it – I’m playing somebody very different to what I normally play. Normally I have to expose the truth. When I’m in the theatre, where I would be swimming with the tide, it’s my job to lasso the audience and to make sure they understand the moral dilemma of the piece – that’s what leading players do. You are sort of the MC for the night…

In Killing Eve, most of my work is about knowing more than everybody else in the scene and hiding it. And it’s a terribly lonely thing to do. It feels all wrong – like rubbing my tummy and patting my head at the same time. I want to smile, I want to make jokes – but you are left with an ambiguity. You don’t know whether I know I’ve made a joke or not. It’s very good exercise for me.’

Even though they are friends, stepping into Waller-Bridge’s shoes must have been tricky for Fennell. ‘I think of Killing Eve as a beautiful, haunted doll’s house that Phoebe built,’ she says. ‘She’s already made this incredible world full of insanely compelling people, so the pleasure of writing it is to get to play in there, to put in a few of your own trapdoors and secret passageways, to move those characters around and occasionally push some of them down the stairs.’

Earlier this year, Shaw appeared in the second series of Waller-Bridge’s other seminal television show, Fleabag. Initially she had to turn it down because she was directing Cendrillon at Glyndebourne (directing opera is another of her talents). Then Fleabag overran, and she was able to join in after all.

Waller-Bridge is the definitive young auteur of our times, and it seems she can do no wrong. The stage production of Fleabag – coming to the West End in August – sold out in an hour. ‘I feel she’s nearest to Oscar Wilde,’ says Shaw now, ‘which is to say she’s greater than the sum of her parts.’ Comedy, in some ways, is quite a conservative thing, Shaw thinks, although it may not seem that way. ‘But it always has a frame; it stays within that frame but it kicks against it, like a child in a playpen.

‘Phoebe develops people so they turn into bigger people, and bigger people, and I think that’s 
a confidence that’s come with her previous work. She’s mastered one form, and she’s been able to take the gate off and let the characters run out into the field – and yet they’re still intact, and the audience follow them. It’s superb.’

For actors, she says, that approach couldn’t be better, which is why so many of them, including herself, Andrew Scott and Kristin Scott Thomas, are desperate to work with Waller-Bridge.

‘I could have played the boss of MI6 and pretty well come up with the same “ker-chings” every week,’ says Shaw, who also played an MI6 officer in BBC One’s recent Mrs Wilson, ‘but that isn’t what happens in Killing Eve.’

Waller-Bridge was always on set during the making of the first series, constructing and reconstructing her work like a Rubik’s Cube. When Sandra Oh pointed out that the actor Sean Delaney, who plays Kenny Stowton (a young ex-hacker recruited by MI6), looked like Shaw, Waller-Bridge decided to make his character her son in the story, and wrote it in, just like that.

Killing Eve, though it seems so British, is a BBC America production, having been initially overlooked here, according to executive producer Sally Woodward Gentle (this was before Fleabag became a TV hit). Woodward Gentle had read the Codename Villanelle novellas by Luke Jennings, on which Killing Eve is based, and approached Waller-Bridge. She had seen her one-woman play in Edinburgh, and thought she would bring a different energy to the show.

Shaw is taken aback by its popularity, and 
particularly by the wide demographic to which 
it appeals. ‘Fathers and sons watch it, mothers 
 and daughters, husbands and wives. I don’t think it bears much analysis. I suppose it has no politics, it’s fantasy really and that’s why I think the violence is nearly allowable – it’s cartoonish.’

It’s also stylish – the music is great; the costumes are superb; the graphics are slick – and clearly a high-budget project, shot in London, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam. Shaw is often recognised for playing Carolyn. She was amazed when, on a New York street recently, someone reacted so wildly on seeing her that she appeared to be having a fit.

Fiona Shaw grew up in Montenotte, Cork, with three brothers. Her father was an ophthalmic surgeon and her mother was a physicist. She always wanted to be a tennis player, she says, but instead studied philosophy at University College Cork and then went to Rada in London. She still remembers the audition: the teacher told her later that she smelled of libraries.

That’s because it was as if she was born into the 19th century, she says now, compared to the other applicants. She was not cool. Everyone was instructed to wear a black dress. Shaw had made her own and it was a bit wonky. She was terrified. ‘I remember some American guys at the audition were doing press-ups, and people were talking about the Royal Shakespeare Company – and I thought, I haven’t a hope in hell.’

Hearing she’d got in was, she says, ‘one of the nicest moments in my life’. She is still an advisor at Rada. She worked hard and went straight into the cast of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play The Rivals at the National Theatre, alongside Michael Hordern and Tim Curry (‘I couldn’t have been in better company’). Her father had his reservations, ‘but I think he thought I would come to my senses’. A year later she joined the RSC. Her parents would come and watch her, and her obvious success calmed her father’s fears. ‘He got much more interested when he could read about me in the paper – in the end he was incredibly supportive but I had to go through the firewall of his disapproval for a while.’

Then her brother Peter was killed in a car crash. Shaw was 28 at the time. ‘That was such a blow to my family. Neither of my parents could really function for about a year after that. It was very hard for them.’

Two years after her brother died, she was offered the role of Electra (for which she won the first of two Olivier Awards), and in some strange way found herself channelling her grief. ‘I loved comedy – but then I was asked to do Electra. Deborah Warner was directing and I thought, oh well, I’ll give it a go. But I didn’t see the point of a tragedy and I couldn’t do it at all. And slowly I realised that it’s much more about yourself. And I discovered a new world through tragedy.

‘Electra has a brother who she thinks is dead – and I knew something about having a brother who was dead. I wouldn’t say in any way that I was mainlining my brother, but I suddenly realised that plays are about life, and domestic tragedies are heightened in the theatre – but they are the same as all our tragedies – and that is what the theatre is for. I don’t know why I hadn’t worked that out before.’

It was the first of many collaborations with Warner (with whom Shaw also had a relationship), which went on to include Hedda Gabler, a controversial Richard II at the National in 1995, and Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children.

Shaw’s first major film role was in My Left Foot with Daniel Day-Lewis (1989). Soon after came Three Men and a Little Lady (1990), and later the Harry Potter series. It is the former, she says, for which she is most recognised by the public. She has just finished filming Ammonite, an historical drama directed by Francis Lee, in which she plays Elizabeth Philpot, a palaeontologist, opposite Saoirse Ronan, and Kate Winslet as fossil hunter Mary Anning.

Was there a moment when she felt she had made it on her own terms? ‘I think I was very lucky. I didn’t do film on my own terms – you’re either a film star or you are not – because I was so obsessed with the theatre when I was young. Probably I would have had to go and sit in Hollywood – but I wouldn’t do that.

‘But I have done a lot of things on my terms, just being allowed to do those shows: Electra, Hedda Gabler – and Richard II, which seemed quite nerve-racking at the time, but that was part of the thrill of it. So I’ve always tried to do things which are hard to do – maybe even to a fault.’ She has never, she says, been trapped in a long run of a West End show she didn’t want to do. ‘There always had to be an element of experiment.’

And she loves taking theatrical risks. Like her rendition of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which premiered at Epidaurus in Greece in 2012, then went to the Old Vic Tunnels in London in 2013, and on to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Or (with Warner) the dramatisation of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land she performed in locations including an old disco in Brussels and a former munitions factory in Dublin. Last month she revisited it in New York, reciting it against the backdrop of a sculpture exhibition in Madison Square Park – it wasn’t advertised but word spread and people came in their hundreds. ‘It was a huge pleasure, it happened almost by accident – “Will you turn this water into wine?” And I did. It was lovely.’

Shaw’s father, Denis, died in 2011, but her mother, Mary, is 93 and still lives in the house that Shaw grew up in. She drives, plays tennis. When Shaw goes back home she sleeps in her old bedroom. ‘Well, I try not to – it’s awful to sleep in the bedroom you had when you were 14. Some things are still exactly the same, the wardrobe and the poster of Narcissus – do you remember those terrible posters?’

Shaw lives between the house in north London and New York, where her wife Sonali Deraniyagala, a Sri Lankan economist, teaches at Columbia University. In 2004, Deraniyagala was on holiday in Sri Lanka with her family when they were caught in the tsunami. Her husband, parents and two young sons died. For years, Deraniyagala lived in a haze of madness and grief. In 2013, she wrote an extraordinary memoir, Wave, which won several awards and had some remarkable reviews.

Shaw was in New York performing in Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary when somebody gave her Deraniyagala’s book. She read it in her dressing room. ‘I thought it was the best thing I’d read for a long time, on any level.’ She mentioned this in an interview. Then things came together in a felicitous way: Shaw was supposed to return home straight after the play closed, but she had a serious ear infection (due to having to disappear for several minutes in a plunge pool every night on stage), and was unable to fly. She stayed in New York and went to a Laurie Anderson concert, where she was invited to Anderson’s book club – they were reading Wave – to meet the writer.

‘I was so surprised that she was that person – not the person in the book. We spent half an hour chatting. When I left I thought, I have just met life.’

She pauses. ‘The play had been exhausting and so much about death, and I was feeling so miserable, and I thought, that person is life – even though she has had more death than you would wish on your worst enemy, there’s a force in her that is just life.’

When Deraniyagala came to London they met up again. ‘Very quickly I thought, I just want to live with this person, and it’s been one of the most marvellous things to happen – but it was also highly unlikely. But in my profound self, at my core, I thought, I want to live with this person. It was deeper than anything. And thankfully, she thought the same – it’s been a beautiful thing to happen at this stage of my life.’

They got married in Islington town hall in January of last year, and then had their wedding party on the day of the royal wedding. ‘It was fantastic. Half of Sri Lanka came and it was a very beautiful wedding – everyone was wearing saris and looking gorgeous. My mother played the piano and sang, which was quite hilarious, and we had a band and dancing, a very late party.’

Her mother sounds very enlightened, being 93 and coming from a small town in Ireland. Were there no raised eyebrows at the fact that Shaw was marrying a woman? (As well as Warner, she previously had a relationship with the actor Saffron Burrows.)

‘More than raised. But it’s fine – the world is changing fast. My mother was very good about it and also very impressed by who Sonali is.’

So she’s not religious? ‘Oh she is, but she’s also terribly funny about it. And she’s a sort of nouveau old person. I think being old is quite a shock for her – and a lot of friends are dead, and some of them have lost their minds. But she’s very well – and very happy for me.’

Deraniyagala and Shaw have been to Sri Lanka several times to visit Deraniyagala’s aunt, and love it there. Given what happened to Deraniyagala, recent events – the bombings at Easter – must have been completely destabilising. ‘Sri Lanka has been very much at peace for the last 10 years since the war, but the scale of what happened with those 250 people dead – it’s as big as 9/11 for them, because it’s such a small island. They were innocent people, and it’s the most depressing thing – and terribly hard for Sonali – because the mass funerals are very near to the mass funerals of her family; it’s terribly hard for her to revisit that time. It feels a bit like a natural disaster because it has no rhyme or reason. It’s a black hole of destruction.’

Shaw is about to start work on a film called Corvidae, a thriller co-written and directed by young film-maker Joe Marcantonio. Then Killing Eve series three is on the cards for next year. If she had to choose only one discipline to work in for the rest of her life – theatre, film, opera or television – which would she choose?

‘That’s a cruel question. I would find it very difficult, but I would probably say television because I’ve done 30 years of the theatre. I’ve worked morning, noon and night, sometimes rehearsing all day and performing every night for decades. That’s a lot. I don’t have any great need to do that again.

‘And I’m very interested in television now because one of the new pleasures it’s given me is the scope of the audience. We used to be thrilled when we had 500 people, or 1,000. Now we have millions and you think, oh God, this is so obvious. Especially when the material is of such great quality and so uncynical. A few years ago they were just churning television out, but they aren’t now – it has some of the best minds working in it. So I feel in a way like I’m in the same profession, it’s just the shape of the stage which has changed.’

In the end, she says, in any medium, it all comes down to the same things she has always aspired to, and which she is so excited about – that sense of infinite possibility in a role, and the thrill of making the heartbeat of the audience quicken.

Killing Eve returns to BBC One and iPlayer in June

[draconida]

BKDK Fic Recs

I've a lot of bookmarks in my AO3 profile and I needed to make a list with all those wonderful stories! 

[This list will have other parts]

1- Mechanical Bull by warschach [Explicit]

Katsuki has a track record of bad choices, it's a condition, but Izuku might be the one choice that's right.

2- Dull by choimarie

“What? Never have seen a hot dude before?”

3- Caught Looking by EAter [Explicit]

He hadn’t meant to look, but once he did, he couldn’t stop. Izuku always knew Katsuki was attractive, in a sort of removed, passive way. He’s obnoxiously fit- with good posture and clear skin and those sharp, dangerous eyes.

Really, it’s a wonder Izuku hadn’t stopped to stare sooner.

4- Sour Silk by BrightEyesEren [Explicit]

Midoriya Izuku starts to receive random gifts at his door. Chaos ensues when he realises he has a sugar daddy.

5- Drinking Watermelon by warschach [Explicit]

For whatever reason, maybe divine fate, Izuku turned and looked over his shoulder and waved to them.

Katsuki’s heart full on stopped right then, and his fingers forgot their duty on the rails, and his body neglected its job to keep Katsuki balanced.

Izuku’s summer sweet smile fell into concern as Katsuki went airborne and cracked his skull on the porch.

Or Katsuki works as a camp counselor, and Izuku is a boy made of summer heat and sunlight.

6- Sucker Punch by warschach [Explicit]

But, whatever, Disney Boy over there was—

Prettying up real damn good that Katsuki got kind of distracted—totally understandable, like god those CGI pine eyes—and didn’t see the straight path he made for the metal trash bin in the center of the area until he was tipping forward and waist deep in discarded bottles, plates, balled up tissues sticky with he prayed was chocolate ice cream and nacho cheese.

Mina howled behind the gate. “Look, Katsuki returned to his home.”

(Or Katsuki works security at Six Flags and moonlights as a derby dude and continuously looks uncool around Izuku)

7- K-9 by warschach [Explicit]

Izuku takes in a stray on one rainy night, except it's not a dog, it's a dog shifter who goes by the name, Katsuki. After the initial wave of panic and embarrassment, Izuku thinks his new pet/roommate is pretty cute.

8- Misfire by deplore

Life's difficult when you're a teenager and your hormones make you lose control of your quirk. Alternately: A PG-13 version of "Sex Sent Me To The ER."

The pleasant sensation that comes from kissing Bakugou – the knowledge that it’s because he’s touching Bakugou so intimately that’s got Bakugou making such vulnerable noises – it tingles satisfyingly underneath his skin in a way that almost feels like when he activates One for All.

– and then there’s the sickening sound of something snapping just as Midoriya realizes, half a second too late, that the feeling is actually exactly like when he activates One for All.

9- Sugar Stardust by milkcandie

Between baking pretty macarons and sculpting wedding cakes, Katsuki slowly falls in love with a certain green-haired coworker who has effervescent stars in his eyes. Maybe working as a pastry chef in Nowhere, Japan isn't so bad after all, especially when he’s in such close proximity to a boy who manages to beautify every little thing in his presence.

A pâtisserie AU where Katsuki and Izuku are really the perfect ingredient for each other.

10- Gravity by warschach [Explicit & Omegaverse]

Izuku is back in his hometown and plenty hasn't changed much from the 8 years he was gone. Except, Katsuki Bakugou, the alpha king of their small town. He's hotter- because that's fair, right, God? -, stronger, a now-famous pro fighter, and noticeably nicer this round.

Not that he cares, pfft.

Ha, Izuku Midoriya caring about Katsuki Bakugou, thinking he's pretty cute and not half bad once you get past the asshole persona; though that gargantuan ego of his could take a dive off a very tall cliff.

(Fine, he cares.)

11- In Which Bakugou Finds His One Tru Luv by Erina

Welcome to the Explodo-kill agency! We can destroy your buildings, crash your cars, and help you solve one of the seven mysteries in life: who is Bakugou Katsuki's mysterious boyfriend?!

The Misadventures of Explodo-kill Agency It is a really fun series! Super recommended ❤

12- Cherish Me by Justaperson1718

“What?”

Izuku looked back down at his menu and flipped the page, a small smile on his face. “Nothing.”

Katsuki glared at Izuku from across the table. “If it was nothing then you wouldn’t be staring at me.”

“It’s just a little funny watching you try to look your best for our date when you always look great anyway,” Izuku explained. He wouldn’t look up from his menu while he spoke, but his words remained ingrained with confidence nevertheless. He considered what he was saying to be fact, and nothing else. “Even when you’re not trying in front of the cameras, it’s still hard to take my eyes off of you.”

13- Chewed Up by warschach [Explicit]

Zombie apocalypse, more than a third of the population currently dead or in the state of undead, and Katsuki still somehow managed to get his shit stolen by two chicks and Freckle boy.

Fuck this new generation.

14- Manage Me by Justaperson1718

Izuku caught himself moving forward, his head tilted somewhat to the side, and his eyes shot wide open. His gaze met Katsuki’s half-lidded eyes now that he was no longer in a dreamlike state, and seeing the way Katsuki was looking at him—waiting for him—made him realize Katsuki would’ve let him do it. He might have even wanted him to do it.

“You’re both doing fabulous!” the photographer called out to them, packing his camera into his bag and getting ready to leave. “I just got word that what we have now should be good, so we’ll stop there. Thank you for your time! Lock the door on your way out after you change.”

The pair stayed frozen in place, with Izuku’s arms around Katsuki’s neck and Katsuki’s hands resting on Izuku’s waist, while the photographer and his supervisor left.

“Kacchan,” Izuku cooed once they were gone. “Did you want to…?”

15- I'll Hold You In My Heart by InkspillsNotebook

"Someday, everything you own, everything you love... will be mine."

When a threat from the past comes to light, the budding romance between Prince Katsuki Bakugou and Prince Izuku Midoriya is put on hold as Katsuki struggles to save the love of his life, and Izuku puts up with being turned into a swan.

The Swan Princess (1994) AU

16- King Tide by warschach

Izuku meets a sea prince.

17- Play It Cool by warschach

Izuku accidentally becomes Katsuki's secret cuddle buddy.

(or that time Izuku and Katsuki snuggle on real pretenses then false ones, each finding a way to poorly miscommunicate their emotions cause what do these boys do aside of making carters in infrastructures and in each other, make the whole class of 1-A weep for them, and manage a romance to bring Ryan Gosling to the brink of tears.)

18- Boom, Badoom, Boom by warschach

Izuku's working the kissing booth at the school fair, it just so happens Katsuki has been crushing on him since the first grade.

“Did you—“ Izuku parted his mouth with no sound leaving it, “Did you pay?”

“Yea.”

“For a kiss?”

19- Bad Dog by Morpheel [Explicit, Omegaverse & Hybrids]

Katsuki Bakugou is a Wolf-Dog hybrid who has been returned more times than he can count.

His natural aggression and anger is excessive, even for an Alpha. Every time he's been purchased he's wound up blowing it one way or another. Yet when another chance comes around to prove his worth, he'll do whatever it takes to stay-

That is, until he runs into a minor roadbump. He isn't the only pet in the Asai household. When said pet is also an Omega, currently in the throes of his season, how the hell is he supposed to not blow it? (Literally).

20- Cafe Mocha by HG_Wells

Everyone has a timer on their wrist that appears when they turn thirteen, they can never remove it until the moment the timer reaches zero and you find your Soulmate. Izuku Midoriya works at a cafe in downtown Tokyo and he finds his Soulmate in the worst way possible.

21- Heartbreak Aftermath by HG_Wells [Explicit & Omegaverse]

After a harsh breakup with his ex-boyfriend, Todoroki Shouto, his friends decide to take him out to get his mind off things. A few drinks with a stranger turns into something more and he gets more than what he bargained for.

22- It's Better Than Drinking Alone by osakakitty [Explicit]

On the fourteenth of July, Izuku Midoriya's girlfriend called him to her place, and dumped him. And now, on the morning of the fifteenth of July, he woke up with a gruesome hangover and no one to celebrate the day with.

Or not.

Modern-day AU where Midoriya and Bakugo are strangers who meet in a bar, and then have wild and crazy sex later that night. The morning after, it's Midoriya's birthday, but he can't quite remember everything that happened. Bakugo is still willing to give him a present.

23- The Morning After 'The Morning After' by VRios

Izuku gets his keys back. Short epilogue to "It's Better Than Drinking Alone".

24- Fishy by warschach for DriftingGlass [Explicit]

Izuku’s convinced his hot co-worker/neighbor, Katsuki, is a mermaid-or merman- you gotta consider genders even with mythical creatures- and plans to prove it.

(or this is kinda like the show ‘Monster Quest’, except Izuku actually finds said monster, falls in love, and have sexy times.)

25- Piggyback by deanvspanties

I found this prompt and I wanted to do it for Bakugou's birthday but I'm a bit late:

Person 1 complaining about how long the walk to wherever is, and Person 2 constantly telling them to shut up and that they’re almost there. After Person 1 doesn’t stop complaining, Person 2 picks Person 1 up like a child and tells them that’s what they get for complaining like a child, and carries them all the way there.

“If you’re going to act like a fussy goddamned brat, I’m going to treat you like one.”

Really I just wanted to write adult Izuku getting a piggyback ride from Kacchan.

26- The last dragon-blood king by claimedbydaryl [Explicit & Omegaverse]

Katsuki Bakugou was the alpha heir to a forgotten throne, reigning lord and warden of the Fyre Isles, a famed warrior of vicious repute in the Western Seas, and he would be wed to Izuku Midoriya by the day’s end. 

27- Storge by Mellosweet [Omegaverse]

“Hold on,” Aizawa said, his voice harsh as if he couldn’t believe what he was just told “let me see if I heard it right. You went to Midoriya’s house with Eri and Kouta, because they wanted to see him, but Midoriya is in heat. Then he called the kids his ‘pups’, took them to his bedroom, and now Bakugou won’t let you near the house?” “Yes” Togata looked up to the building behind him “What should I do?” Aizawa sighs “I am not paid enough for this.”

28- Where's the Fire? by InfiniteTeal

Uraraka is on a mission, a mission to find out whether or not Bakugou and Midoriya are actually together. The evidence stacks up to prove that they are, even everyone else she brings with her sees it, but there's nothing she can do when the couple denies the evidence.

29- Curse the Way to Heaven by InfiniteTeal

Midoriya actually knows how to swear, and Bakugou gets turned on at the simplest moments.

30- Head Game Strong by InfiniteTeal [Explicit]

Some of the students from class 1-A decide to go out to dinner together for the evening. Midoriya hadn't planned to joined them, but it's no surprise that he's under the table fooling around with Bakugou. It sounded like a good idea at first, but Bakugou has a hard time keeping it together when Midoriya gives him a secret blowjob while everyone else is sitting around him.

31- Kacchan's Piercing by InfiniteTeal [Explicit]

Bakugou is bombarded by his classmates about his not-so-secret piercing. He finds out about what the other classmates did to Midoriya, and decides that he wants to feel Midoriya's tongue piercing for himself.

32- Memorized by SchrodingersCat_DoA [Explicit & Fem!Izuku]

Stupid. It was stupid.

Bakugou leaned down and grabbed her scarred wrist to pull her to her feet. He made his way to the dance floor, dragging Deku behind him. He could hear her sputtering behind him, trying to find words to say, but failing.

As he reached the edge of the dancing mass, he turned to face Deku and pulled her into him. Her hands met his chest and fisted in his shirt, pinching some skin, but he didn’t wince. “There, now you have someone to dance with.”

33- Blonde Haired Bunnies by Morpheel [Explicit, Omegaverse & Hybrids]

In an attempt to create a new genetic pattern in the Rabbit-Hybrid Gene, Izuku Midorya is paired with a very strange (and almost unorthodox) stud. The end goal is blonde haired, red eyed rabbits- though only one Alpha truly fits that bill.

Surely a wolf and a rabbit can't breed?

34- Never Skip Leg Day by SecretKiwi [Explicit]

Deku loves leg day, and so does Katsuki- just in a different way.

35- F.U. by warschach [Explicit]

Izuku smiled; Katsuki understood why people warned that the devil wore a Sunday hat and fine clothes because deception worked better if no one expected it.

Not anymore. He knew Izuku’s evil ways, and his ass might be a 20 on the hotness meter but Katsuki held grudges.

“Izuku,” he sneered; he too could be evil right back.

(Or Katsuki's a football player; Izuku's a cheerleader; they have a rivalry until it isn't one)

36- A Rare Exchange by aideyn [Explicit]

"Oi Deku! Heard you're looking for some "Rare Might"~?"

37- How To Fall In Love With Your Enemy by Insomnia_Productions

When you find the soul that is perfectly matched to your own, any mark that appears on their skin will appear on yours, as well. Everyone knows that.

Midoriya knows it... but, somehow, he's never imagined it happening to him.

Bakugou knows it, too... but he doesn't have time for stupid things like that.

And, although both of them know that Fate is never wrong... there have got to be exceptions. After all, this match cannot possibly be anything but a mistake. Right?

38- One Exception by GreyLiliy

If you’d have told Katsuki when he was in middle school that every day after his shift he’d come home to Deku waiting with a soft smile and dinner, he’d have laughed and set off an explosion in your face. But Deku is stubborn, Katsuki was weak, and now they share a home.

Routine is broken, however, when a Villain makes himself known by taking the lives of Pro Heroes with no trace of motive. With the entire Hero community on edge, Katsuki can only be grateful that Deku has given up on his childish Hero dreams and is safe at home instead of in the line of fire.

39- Swipe Right by Cellaira [Explicit]

Kirishima had another stupid idea, and Katsuki had nothing to lose. Then, he discovered a witty, freckled, attractive stranger, and he had everything to gain.

(Like some damn good sex.)

In other words, the Grindr AU no one asked for but everyone secretly needed.

40- Matchmakers by Trashreciptical

When Katsuki agreed to be Jirou's wingman at a school dance for his students he expected to be bored out of his mind, he expected to laugh at his students suffering trying to communicate with the opposite sex, and he expected being subjected to shitty pop music all night.

What he wasn't expecting was the gorgeous teacher from the other school with forests in his eyes and stars on his cheeks....fuck he has it bad.

In which Katsuki is a chemistry teacher that is one explosion away from being fired and Izuku is the adorable english teacher from a different school, who sweeps Katsuki off of his feet and he doesn't know what to do.

41- Between ink and thorns by soulstring

There are a lot of things people are amazed at when it comes to Bakugou Katsuki. The thing that stands out the most – especially since it comes from a man with so little patience and an explosive temperament – is his unsuspecting love for botany. In an ideal world he would look after his flower shop and get paid for it without having to deal with an annoying element attached to his work; namely bother, namely aggravation, namely humans.

And that day, the worst of them is about to enter his flower shop and his life.

42- Daisies bunches and heather branches by halcyonwhispers 

Izuku falls in love with the foul-mouthed tattoo artist next door.

43- Unknown Number: I Love You by Lillabelle

Opposites attract right? Well that's what Midoriya's friend, Uraraka, thinks. Her friend from another school talked about another guy, Bakugou Katsuki, and the two girls decided the two were perfect for each other. Now Midoriya is left with the number of a guy he didn't even know.

How bad could it be?

44- How IKEA Sells All Their Beds by thankyouforexisting

The next day, Kacchan turns on the cold water while Izuku is showering, resulting in a screaming match that the whole floor gets involved in, and soap bars starts flying everywhere, while Mineta throws his purple balls so that people can grab onto them and not slip on the wet floor, earning a “You’re not that bad, dude,” from Kirishima (It's a lie. Literally everybody hates him). Aizawa punishes them all by making them run laps for an hour the next morning.

Two days later, Izuku retaliates by lowering the thermostat until Kacchan can’t summon fire to burn his clothes, and Iida appears in the doorway holding a flag and shouting, “JUSTICE FOR CLOTHES! NO MORE DESTRUCTION OF FABRIC! WE MUST FIGHT THIS STRIKE AGAINST THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY, COMRADES!”

Kacchan rips the thermostat from the wall with his fire cannons and burns the flag, half of Izuku’s wardrobe, and his bed.//Deku and Kacchan are roommates, and everyone fears for their safety.

45- Yes, They're All Safe by teaandtumblr

Villains have entered UA grounds and are disposed of just as quickly, but that doesn't mean a headcount of the students doesn't need to be done. Toshinori would admit, he wasn't quite prepared for what he found in Bakugou Katsuki's room.

46- I’ll share this with you, so leave it behind by yabakuboi [Single Dad!Izuku]

For the sake of the story, All Might is never in need of a successor, and, when Izuku saves Katsuki from the sludge monster, encourages young Midoriya down a different path. Thus, Katsuki and Izuku part ways after junior high, as Katsuki enters U.A. and the Midoriyas move overseas. It’s later that Katsuki realizes that there’s something missing, that he drove that something away.

Years after, Katsuki finds him in the last place he looks, in the cereal aisle at the local grocery store of their childhood neighborhood.

47- Catharsis by dollcewrites [Explicit]

It's been six years since Izuku graduated.

It's been six years since he confessed to his childhood friend; his classmate and his inspiration.

It's been six years since he deleted Bakugou's number, asked his friends not to mention the name, spent every last effort of his heart turning off the TV and averting his eyes from the newspapers.

It's been six, long, long years since he gave up on Katsuki Bakugou ever loving him back.

48- Stopping All Stations by glamour_weeb [Explicit & Rape Fantasy]

Izuku begs Katsuki to roleplay as a pervert that feels him up on the train. Katsuki only agrees if Izuku wears a slutty school girl uniform. They both get a little bit too into it.

49- Go the Fuck to Sleep by glamour_weeb [Omegaverse]

Izuku can't sleep and Katsuki takes care of him aka Izuku is needy and Katsuki is whipped.

Takes place during the training camp.

50- Serpents by glamour_weeb [Explicit & Omegaverse]

Izuku goes into heat and leaves a trail of scent across Katsuki’s territory. When the Alpha catches his scent, he tracks Izuku down and mates with him.

51- Let's Get Closer Still by bionic_heehaw (nmhotel21) [Explicit, Fem!Izuku & Incest]

Izuku has a week to find out if her brother wants her the way she's desired him since middle school. After their parents come back from holiday, she probably won't have a chance like this again.

52- What’s up danger by The_Crafty_Cracker [Omegaverse]

Because apparently,The fic where Deku punches a bigoted entailed asshole Alpha in the face wasn’t an appropriate title.

Poor Katsuki has his handful with his mate nearly getting arrested, again!

53- Devil in Me by glamour_weeb [Explicit & Omegaverse]

Katsuki's usually the one getting into fights over Deku when they go to the club, but this time, his Omega's the one that starts a fight over him, but he doesn't stop there. Deku's determined to mark his territory.

54- You've Got Mail! by glamour_weeb [Explicit, Omegaverse & In process]

Izuku is a Quirkless Omega and Katsuki is an Alpha pro hero. Their paths might have never crossed if they hadn’t started using the anonymous mail service where Alphas and Omegas can buy and sell their clothes as heat/rut aids.

Izuku wonders if it's possible to fall in love with an Alpha's scent and Katsuki wonders if he'll ever meet the Omega that smells like his True Mate.

A very horny love story in three parts.

55- Pets take after their Owners by San121 [Explicit, Omegaverse & Hybrids]

Shouto and Eijirou are a loving couple, Shouto recently got a rabbit Pet and Eijirou wants his Katsuki to like his boyfriend's Pet. Katsuki does more than like.

56- Way more than a handful by Morpheel [Explicit, Hybrids & Trans!Izuku]

Izuku wasn’t quite sure what to expect in bringing a rescue to his home.

While most owners would pride themselves in adopting a mixed breed of dog, or perhaps a stray cat; Midoriya had completely bypassed the beginners circle and brought home a fiery wolfdog hybrid with a bad temper.

It... has up and downs.

57- Dii Consentes by Souzoshiyou [Explicit, Fem!Izuku, Torture, Gore and Blood & Slight TodoBakuDeku]

The two ran along the secret passage with Izuku running ahead, dragging Katsuki by the hand with giggles. The blonde looked at their joined hands before looking the heiress' back. God, he loves her so much. He'd do practically anything for her, even become her plaything if she wants. He had never met anyone that reflected and complemented him so much. He'll chase after her everywhere even to the pits of hell.

58- Wild Thing (You Make My Heart Sing) by Gezelligheid [Fem!Izuku]

A series of mostly unrelated one shots revolving around genderbent Izuku, mostly involving her relationship with our favorite hothead.

59- Earned It by Morpheel [Explicit & Omegaverse]

Because within the illumination of lantern light stood a brothel’s worth of Omegas, all in various states of disarray, giggling and washing themselves without a care in the world to the army in their path.

Bakugou’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. Bakugou Katsuki wasn't expecting any interruptions in his conquest of the Capital. Let alone for that interruption to backfire.

60- When the sunset shifts by ser_problematique [Explicit & Werewolves]

Katsuki has a problem; Izuku is there to help him through it. Smutty fantasy au with werewolf porn.

61- ¡NO CULPES AL ALCOHOL! by GABY_NEKO [Fem!Izuku]

"Oh my god, did I steal Kacchan's virginity?!"

62- Maid You Mine by glamour_weeb [Explicit, Omegaverse & Hybrids]

“Welcome to Yuuei, Master!” A squeaky voice greets Katsuki when he pushes through the door of the Omega maid cafe, the little bell on the inside jingling, announcing his arrival. “Oh, hi, Kacchan!”

“Deku,” Katsuki growls back, his own fluffy golden tail flicking behind him irritably.

A hybrid AU where wolf Katsuki begrudgingly puts up with his obnoxiously cheerful coworker, bunny Izuku, until the day Katsuki comes into work and goes into heat.

63- The Piano Knows Something I Don't Know by oyasumi_yue [Fem!Izuku]

‘Intrigued’ is an understatement for the Bakusquad as they notice Bakugo Katsuki, a guy who has a tongue that could rival Satan himself, is refusing to eat spicy food.

64- Do You Know What I'm Seeing? by oyasumi_yue [Fem!Izuku]

Katsuki Bakugo prides himself with a headstrong attitude, his only goal is to be the best Hero, 'distraction' is not part of his majorly curse-composed vocabulary. But then, it all wavered when that purple perverted bastard made a comment about Deku's prominent body features.

Alternative Title: When Did Deku Become So Hot?

65- Little Bad Girl by SchrodingersCat_DoA [Explicit & Fem!Izuku]

Bakugou tossed the All Might sleep pants back on the shelf but held onto the oversized t-shirt. He let it fall open and brought it to eye level to study it. It was two sizes too big for Deku – at least in the terms of length. It was a simple grey t-shirt and soft – it was also a men’s shirt. As he was studying the shirt, the tag caught his eye. Bakugou adjusted his grip and brought the shirt closer to his face. He grabbed the tag and sneered.

On it was written T.S. Of course that Half’n’Half bastard would write his initials in his clothing.

Bakugou’s smirk fell from his face as it finally clicked in his head that Deku had a shirt that belonged to Half’n’Half. His blonde eyebrows pulled into the center of his face until they met and could go no further. The smirk continued to fall until it was twisted into an ugly grimace. The t-shirt in his hands started to singe as his Quirk fired off.

This wouldn’t do. No, this would not do at all.

66- Reflections by Kreativekilljoy

Where hero Bakugou Katsuki keeps having impromptu encounters with officer Midoriya Izuku.

67- Changeling by Souzoshiyou [Fem!Izuku & Attempted Rape]

'He's not an angel, nor a demon. I guess I can call him a ghost... But I prefer to call him a soul in need.'

In one whole month, how did they affect each other? Did Izuku help Katsuki? Did Katsuki help Izuku? We'll never know, but one thing's for sure; they changed each other.

68- Izuku and the Stag by Sarcastic_Metaphor

Katsuki is a god, a patron of war and a conqueror of nations. Trying to court a puny, green-haired mortal shouldn’t be giving him as much trouble as it is.

Meanwhile, Izuku lives in the forest and studies magic. All he wants to do is continue his work, but he finds himself continuously running into a strange, angry boy in the woods.

69- Please Scent Me by fleurown [Omegaverse]

In which Deku needs a quick favor at a party and Katsuki can't deny such a cute face.

70- Mamma Is Here by KurageMonsta [Explicit, Omegaverse, Non-Con & Incest]

Midoriya Izuku really really loves his son.

71-  Thrill of the Hunt by DrProblematic [Explicit & Omegaverse]

It began the way it always did — Izuku running, and Katsuki chasing after him. Despite both knowing where it would inevitably lead, they persisted for the sake of the journey: for the thrill of the hunt, of being hunted.

72- Drabbles and drabbles by kacchansass [Incomplete]

A collection of writing prompts sent to me on my tumblr! Typically gonna be BakuDeku prompts, but other pairings may pop up as well. Not all will be canon compliant either!

73- I'm So Glad I Found My Mate Today by kittiegirl1616 [Explicit & Omegaverse]

Pro-Hero Ground Zero has captured a villain when he senses his mate is nearby.

74- Nesting - The Omega Superstore! by Swifty_Heart [Omegaverse]

Imagine a store that wall to wall full of the softest blankets, pillows, and gourmet food! A superstore where Omegas go for all their nesting needs!

75- His Reflection by CarCarWong545 [Omegaverse]

Forced into a life that doesn't feel like his own, what shall Izuku do when he meets a not too pleasant alpha?

76- Eternity by PeppermintLeo [Explicit & Omegaverse]

Izuku was Kacchan’s partner, in every sense of the word. He ruled right next to Kacchan’s side, an alpha and an omega, leading Kacchan’s tribe against all sorts of odds. As well as his romantic partner, steady and solid by his side but giving when emotions called for it.

Izuku has adapted to the ways of the barbarian tribe with the help of Katsuki Bakugou, the barbarian king. From the beginning, he knew their connection would be special, but he never expected the man to ask him to spend forever, and after, with him.

77- If you can't find the morning light, i'm here tonight by yabakuboi [Omegaverse]

“You’re still you.” Katsuki can’t look at him as he says it. “You’re still Deku, but you’re not useless. You got dealt a shit hand, but you didn’t give up. You’re strong as hell, and you always have been. I didn’t see it as a kid, but I do now.”

Katsuki swallows. There’s a sharp smell to the air, blossoming up from where Izuku sits across from him at the little breakfast table, and it smells like grief, but like relief. And when he meets Izuku’s teary eyes, he feels his heart thud heavily in his chest. Slowly, cautiously, he slides his hands across the table and takes Izuku’s into his own.

Katsuki was never sure what happened to his childhood friend, quirkless Izuku who had presented as an omega and was whisked away to a traditional matchmaking house. Katsuki never saw him again after that, and tried to convince himself it was for the best. Many lonely years pass before he finds Izuku in the last place he ever wanted to, in the middle of a battlefield with a child clutching to his shirt.

78- Katsuki and the Hare by GreyLiliy [Hybrids & In process]

While hiking in the forest, Katsuki finds a wild hybrid caught and injured in a hunting trap. He performs his due diligence to call for help, not expecting to see the hybrid again.

However, on future hiking trips in those same woods, he spots hints of green in his peripheral and before he knows it, Katsuki finds himself with a curious tagalong that becomes a part of his life in a way he could have never predicted.

79- Dogged Love by GreyLiliy [Hybrids]

While helping out his friend Uraraka with her work, Izuku notices the client’s pet locked in a kennel wearing a muzzle. Izuku’s chest ached with the desire to help and before he knew it, he’d gathered the money and bought the dog from the other man, becoming a pet owner for the first time in his life.

Katsuki, however, wonders how he went from having a bad owner to one that needed a master of his own to keep himself out of trouble.

As time goes by, though, Katsuki and Izuku find out they’re both exactly what the other has always needed.

80- A Burrow for You and I by GreyLiliy [Explicit & Hybrids]

Katsuki and Izuku grew up together as neighbors, a human and a hybrid that most would call the best of friends. But after an unexpected step forward in their relationship, Izuku backed away and put distance between them—too much distance.

When Izuku arrives back home after a year of absence, he makes sure Katsuki is the first to see the fruits of his labor.

81- Izuku's Home for Wayward Pets by glamour_weeb [Explicit, Omegaverse, Hybrids & In process]

Izuku works at the Bureau of Companion Protection as a rehabilitator for abused and abandoned Companions, animal-human hybrids. He’s seen his fair share of cruelty cases and even fostered a few Companions, but he’s never had a Companion of his own, until now. After rescuing Katsuki from a life in an illegal, underground Companion fighting ring, Izuku must take in the wolfdog that no one else can handle.

Eventually, Katsuki comes to love his new home, as well as his new Master.

82- Does your mother know? by setitoff

It's hard for anyone to impress katsuki bakugou, much less catch his eyes, really. so when izuku midoriya, their new english professor shows up, katsuki is more than a little interested.

83- My ex-man brought his new boyfriend by setitoff [In process]

izuku's desperate to get a date after being persuaded (forced, more like) to go for a family reunion back in his hometown, in which he will most definitely see his ex, todoroki shouto, with a date of his own.

in a last attempt to find someone, izuku asks for help and ends up getting bakugou katsuki.

84- Payphone by flowercafe [In process]

Izuku’s in trouble — like, SOS trouble. Lucky for him, he’s one phone call away from salvation. Hopefully his trembling fingers dial the right number, because it would really suck if he accidentally called a stranger right now.

Or

The “I was walking home alone in the middle of the night and someone started following me so I ran into this phone booth with a lock on the door to call for help, but my hands were shaking so badly I accidentally dialed the wrong number and I don’t even know who you are but please help me" au — ft. a Quirkless Izuku whose misdial connects him to the personal cell line of pro hero Ground Zero.

85- For whatever we lose by kindaopps [Dubious Consent]

He locks the pelt up in a chest, and keeps the key hanging from his neck.

The boy's face was devastated, but Katsuki found even that quite beautiful.

86- Plucking the Heartstrings by K1NGKYO

Izuku never expected to become attracted to a customer in the cafe, but sure enough, Katsuki 'Boom Boy' Bakugou catches his attention. As he pursues a friendship with Bakugou, Izuku discovers he is secretly a popular horror writer, but what's most surprising is Bakugou's musical prowess.

Music without words can say many things and Izuku discovers how.

87- In A Sky Of A Million Stars (Who Cares If One More Light Goes Out?) by Stringlish [Suicide Attempt, Depression, PTSD & In process]

He could never forgive himself.

It was his fault.

He’d planted the idea like a seed he’d never known would grow.

(Or: What if Izuku jumped?) (OR: The one where Izuku jumps and lives and Katsuki visits him every day and Class 1-A not-so-secretly finds it adorable that their designated angry pomeranian brings flowers to his comatose childhood friend.)

88- Printer Daddy by deanvspanties [Explicit]

Izuku knows the only way to fix a broken printer is to buy a new one, but printer repairman Bakugou is here to exceed all of his expectations.

And there's nothing hotter than a guy who knows his way around a printer.

89-  How to Train Your Shitty Omega by deanvspanties [Explicit]

Izuku will have Bakugou's knot. He's Izuku's alpha after all.

90- The Tale of an Extra by Anzul

In which Katsuki channels true holiday spirit by inviting himself to his former middle school classmate's party and then sitting in a corner glued to his phone. Psh, like his secret-not-so-secret boyfriend is having a better Christmas anyway.

(Someone please save his former classmate.)

91- You Ready For This? by sabasama

“You’re saying you wanna fuck?” “Oh my god, don’t say it like that!” “What? It’s the same thing.” “No, it’s not!” Izuku wailed; he couldn’t be alone on this subscription of thought.

92- warm hands by flowercafe

"Your hands are so soft," he blurts.

Katsuki gives his fingers a threatening squeeze. "What the hell, Deku? Are you sayin' there's a problem with having soft hands, hah?"

Izuku never thought that Bakugou Katsuki, of all people, would willingly give him a hand massage. But here they are, sitting knee to knee, with his fingers lying innocently in those explosive palms.

Or

a 5+1 featuring copious amounts of massaging, a dollop of mutual pining, many ridiculous competitions, Izuku’s achy joints, and one very tactile Katsuki.

93- After Hours by Morpheel [Explicit & Trans!Midoriya]

Who would have thought school locker rooms were a bad place to get it on at?

Midoriya and Bakugou decide to wind down together after training past hours within U.A. Little do they know they weren't the only ones with the idea of staying after class. This could get pretty messy, pretty fast, if Bakugo can't brush off the fact he had Midoriya pinned to the shower stall.

94- Eat Your Damn Dinner by glamour_weeb [Omegaverse]

"Katsuki's been with Deku long enough to know the signs of when his Omega is about to go into heat. Hell, he’s more in tune with Deku’s cycle than the fucking nerd is with his own body. No surprise there, Deku’s always been absolute shit at taking care of himself. That’s why Katsuki's going to take care of him, like always."

Katsuki Bakugou is not whipped. He just likes taking care of his Omega.

95- As Fate Would Have It by ScientificallySinful (VampireGaaraCheesepuffs) [Explicit & Omegaverse]

Katsuki Bakugo had plenty of reasons why he wasn't mated yet, not that he was going to explain why to just anyone. But now, Ground Zero was running out of time. If he didn't find someone soon, he'd lose his position as a Pro-Hero and he'd never get to be #1. So, when he finds out there's a male Omega recently arrested for prostitution that's headed to prison if he too doesn't get a mate…well it must be fate.

Izuku Midoriya doesn't know if he should laugh or cry when his childhood bully shows up in front of his jail cell asking him to be his mate. He also didn't know if it was good or bad that Kacchan didn't seem to recognize him, but fate hasn't been kind to him before so why should it start now?

96- since some liar brought the thunder, the land is now deserted by baby345 [Omegaverse]

"17 years ago 5 omegas was each taught the act of espionage, when they graduated they were given careful instructions to follow their mission and regroup when the time came." the old man revealed casually. "omegas were often sought after by outside agencies especially as little kids because they were so much easier to mold and teach. they were perfect for undercover missions simply because they had the talent of being able to flawlessly work a room, nobody ever suspected the little omega in the corner of being a assassin until they were standing over them with a blade in hand."

"two of the omegas who excelled brilliantly in their training were code named flicker and cottontail or as you know them: Izuku Bakugou and Denki Shinso." He revealed.

Katsuki and Hitoshi whole world is flipped upside down when their mates are accused of being sleeper agents and are missing, trusting nobody but each other and the clues left behind they have no choice but to wonder what's the truth and whats a lie.

97- You Wonderful Motherfuckers by BeyondPhantomhive [Explicit]

In which the Bakusquad unwittingly get Bakugou and Midoriya together through a series of pranks.

98- torn fur, blunt teeth by SageMasterofSass [Past Non-Con]

After eight months of being collared, Izuku is finally free. But a dark, stormy city is no place for a lonely shapeshifter on the run.

99- Get on my Level by Mikacrispy

Bakugou Katsuki is a Pro Hero whose boss demands him to take an intern. Midoriya Izuku is a UA student who needs an internship. When the two of them are put together, they learn about what it truly means to be a Hero and what it means to be in love.

100- Just Like The Comics by brichibi

If this were anything like the comics, Izuku Midoriya being quirkless would be the norm while heroes would be treated as a rarity. As it stands, everyone’s got a super power, except for Izuku, of course. No worries, though, because he’s over it (nope) and has moved on to bigger and better things (again, nope) like working at a tiny comic book shop and indulging in stories where being able to lift a bus with your bare hands was deemed impossible until proven otherwise.

Oh, and running into your heroic ex-boyfriend? Also unlikely. But Izuku’s life isn’t like a comic book (maybe?) and Katsuki Bakugou is standing right in front of him: still perfect, still handsome, and still putting his combat booted foot in his mouth.

[Or: AU where Izuku works at a comic book shop because that’s as close to a hero as he’s gonna get, and Katsuki plays the part of heroic ex-boyfriend who is good at everything except winning Izuku back... maybe]

[peace-coast-island]

Diary of a Junebug

A view from the office window

This week I’m in Bristletown to visit Miki - who I haven’t seen in forever - and we’re going to the grand opening of Emmanuelle and Mikayla’s spiritual/psychic consultation office called Out of This World! Other friends who will be there include Miki’s brother Satoshi, Emmanuelle’s partner in crime Battler, troublemaker Hutch, literal angel Demeter, and fashion disaster Scotch. 

This is no ordinary gang. In fact they’re all psychics who see ghosts and have various powers. I’ve known Miki and Satoshi since we were kids as our parents are friends. Then as we got older we kind of lost touch until I met Mikayla through Jamie’s entourage, who happens to be Satoshi’s roommate/secretary. How the three of them got together is a really long story - one that Miki only received the tail end of.

Then there’s Emmanuelle and Battler (yes that’s his real name, he says to thank/blame his parents for naming him after a character from a visual novel), who are not from this world, to put it simply. Emmanuelle’s technically not a psychic - she’s actually a witch - and they kinda have their own thing. They’re also friends of Jamie through a different circle (she’s like a network I swear and that’s one of the things I love about her!).

Lastly there’s Hutch, Demeter, and Scotch, who I don’t know too well but they’re nice. Hutch has a tendency to tick people off just for the hell of it so it’s best not to hang around him too long. He does keep his word and is loyal to his friends and it has his connections that made this event possible. Also from what I’ve heard he had a rough upbringing so he gets kinda off guard when people show more than just basic decency - which is kinda funny but sad when you think about it. Once he tackled me into a hug when I insisted on giving him a ride home in the middle of a storm, then immediately apologize for losing his cool. 

I said this already, but Demeter is a literal angel (though Satoshi comes in second). She’s just so pure and adorable! She literally walks in glitter - that’s her power. And she can talk to plants and animals, which she loves as she always wanted to be a Disney princess. I love her little happy jump and how she beams and glows because her happiness is so contagious! But when she’s mad - watch out! Hurt any of her friends and she will go all out with her powers. Then she’ll probably apologize afterward when you realize your mistake.

Scotch is very loud and flamboyant, a bit off putting at first but then he’ll grow on you. He really is a fashion disaster though and his influence has rubbed off on Hutch and Satoshi, much to Miki’s dismay. He’s the kind of guy who will go all out for his friends, which is super sweet. Like Hutch, Scotch keeps things interesting but in a less in your face, annoying kind of way. You can pretty much spot him a mile away.

Mikayla’s an interesting person. She’s currently in grad school at Peace Coast Island, which is how Jamie met her. Before that she lived in some small town and got involved in some mess involving evil light creatures. She survived (barely) thanks to Satoshi - who literally rose from the grave and returned to the world of the living. Then the two moved in together in Spectrum Falls and Mikayla joined the entourage.

Miki, unlike the others, is the last to awaken her powers. While the others had their powers since birth, hers didn’t actually kick in until she was around thirteen when she was injured in a bus accident. Also she possess this power what everyone refers to as future vision - as in she can see many possible futures. Apparently it’s an extremely rare power, so rare that everyone thought it was a myth at first. We’ve been in contact on and off for the past several years as we both were busy with our lives. She’s been a lot happier now, which is great!

It’s kind of a long and sort of convoluted story about what happened to Miki and Satoshi - and to be honest I still don’t quite understand it myself. Basically, several years ago - Miki was fifteen and Satoshi sixteen, so roughly a decade - an incident happened and Satoshi was killed while exorcising a powerful spirit. The gang - minus Emmanuelle, Battler, and Mikayla, plus a few others - fell apart after that. The sole adult of the group who served as a mentor/mom friend Rei Sayaka shut down her consultation office and lived as a hermit for a few years before going off to a clinic in a remote place to treat villagers suffering from a mysterious disease and doing research before succumbing to the illness herself.

Fast forward some time later and Sayaka ends up in some haunted house where numerous spirits lived. In comes Mikayla, dissatisfied with life after college so she turns to the supernatural. The two ran a business together where Mikayla posed as a real estate agent while Sayaka made things interesting. Things were going well until the light monsters attacked, which somehow resulted in Satoshi coming in just as the monsters were about to obliterate Mikayla and Sayaka. Apparently when he was killed, he wound up in some sort of limbo and able to break free at that moment. Now he can change between a physical form and a ghostly form, which is pretty cool. 

After the battle was over, the mentor and student reunited. Sayaka was able to cross over now that her friend was safe and somehow alive as the guilt over his death was what prevented her from crossing over. After a period of readjustment and existential crises for Mikayla and Satoshi they decided to start over in Spectrum Falls. 

Meanwhile Miki’s life was falling apart after her brother’s death. Despite being the youngest, she was considered the golden child. Miki was the ideal daughter - captain of the tennis team, class president, concertmaster, straight A student - she excelled in everything. In a way for her it was to make up for the inferiority she felt towards her brother as he had powers but he didn’t. Their sibling relationship is a bit of a complicated love-hate thing, at least from her end. On his, it’s nothing but admiration for his younger sister.

Things got a little better when Miki’s powers awakened and they met Scotch, Demeter, and Hutch. And then it fell apart when Satoshi was killed. Miki buried herself in school and rarely came home because she couldn’t stand it as her parents become overbearing. In college she moved to the other side of the country and eventually bought her own apartment. About two months after the light monster attacks, she got an email from a Mikayla Nazari who claimed to be a psychic and was seeking professional advice. It took a while for Miki to respond as she did not want to deal with spirits or supernatural powers but curiosity got the better of her and she agreed to a meet up. The rollercoaster of emotions she experienced when reuniting with her brother caused her powers to run wild, resulting in a blackout in the neighborhood.

To avoid another disastrous psychic related incident, they decided to hold off on informing Demeter, Scotch, and Hutch the news until they can figure out a better way to break it. Unfortunately that was inevitable and honestly, I can’t blame them. 

Then about a year ago they met Emmanuelle and Battler and that’s how Out of This World came to be. Mikayla and Emmanuelle are in charge, Miki runs the business/financial side, Satoshi does the paperwork/clerical stuff, and Demeter, Battler, and Scotch are extra help. Hutch is mainly there to show his support and spread the word. Miki says it was a bit ambitious but in the end it seemed to work out. In fact, they’re already booked for next week!

To celebrate the event, Hutch threw a party to surprise Emmanuelle and Mikayla. The story behind planning the party is pretty funny according to Miki. Hutch made the mistake of having Satoshi as his right hand man - only because he’s kind of intimidated by Miki and that she’ll be getting on his case about everything. Miki is very organized and punctual so she gets things done but it has to be exact. Having a mother who’s a wedding planner can do that to you. Meanwhile Hutch is the kind of guy who does whatever he wants. He figured that Satoshi would be easier to work with since he’s not as confrontational and outspoken as Miki and would be a bit more lax when it comes to planning. Well, he was wrong. While Satoshi isn’t all up in your face and demanding like his sister, he’s a bit of a micromanager.

Let’s just say that Hutch and Satoshi should not work together next time. Hutch was more of Miki’s friend - or acquaintance to be accurate - anyway. Satoshi’s a super sweet guy who wants to get along with everyone but even he has his limits. And Hutch likes to mess with people, partly because it’s his own way of showing that he cares. Of course there’s a lot of miscommunication between the two so things get messy. Eventually Satoshi got tired of Hutch’s antics so he began making passive aggressive comments like pointing out his mistakes and such. It’s actually kind of funny to see. Nothing mean though, it’s more like a silly thing between the two that’ll blow over soon as neither one are known for holding grudges.

The party was a blast and I wish them all success on this endeavor!

junebug|previous|ao3|next 

[czeriahshiptank]

Zelink Month 2nd - Photograph

disclaimer : I don’t own Legend of zelda etcetc...  This is my second time writing in this fandom ! English isn’t my first language so sorry about any mistake i could have missed !

The first time Zelda used the Sheikah Slate photograph rune, it has been a complete surprise. The device had been working for literally less than a couple of hours when her finger ended up pressing the mysterious sign by mistake.

At first, she didn’t really understand what she had been seeing, has the slate became transparent? She tried turning it around, but the other side was still the Sheikah eye.

Going back to the screen she took some time reading all the small informations and, again totally by mistake ended up pressing the button to switch the focus of the camera.

She looked at herself on the screen for a long time, not understanding how this could work, when Purah had come out of the lab and found her looking at herself in the slate.

“Zelda! You found the Snap Rune!”

“The Snap Rune?”

“Yes, I call it that because of the noise, here, let me.”

The scientist grabbed the device before the princess could do anything else and Zelda let herself being grabbed by the tall scientist. Pressed uncomfortably against the exuberant Sheikah woman, the young girl could only watch as she brought the slate at face level and pressed with dexterity the tiny round bouton that was on the side of the screen. the device emitted a clear ‘snap’ sound.

“Here, now you go back to the main screen and tap right there.”

Zelda watched the scientist pulling out the ‘photograph’ as she called it. She could see her own face taking half the screen while Purah was next to her, the side of their faces smash together and the woman red glasses half askew.

No need to say that Zelda spent the rest of the afternoon running around and taking pictures to fill the slate compendium.

**

The second time the princess used the slate’s Snap Rune has been the first time she met the boy who would later became her appointed knight.

The afternoon was well started, and she was just finishing her after-lunch devotion to the Goddess.

She had taken seat in one of the small gardens in one of the cloisters of the castle, setting around her the book she was planning on studying, some pens, and her journal.

She was taking a small break, snapping picture of the maid and stewarts she could see working, when a blond head of hair caught her attention.

The boy wasn’t tall by any means, and the imposing size of her father next to him was making him look even smaller. His hair seems to have a slightly darker shade than hers, but as he approached, she could see the cerulean blue of his iris shining through his eyelashes. He was wearing a green tunic who seems to have seen better day and on his back was strapped what looked like a tall sword.

She snapped a picture.

What was this boy doing here with her father? And why did he still have this very large blade? She was pretty sure commoners were not supposed to enter the castle, even less heavily armed like that?

She brought the slate back up and used the zoom to see the face of the stranger better. He looked so young...maybe a year more of less than her? What did his father want with him?

She snapped another picture.

He was quite cute, if shy. He hadn’t said a word since the two men entered the garden, she could hear the rumbling voice of her father, not distinct because of the distance, but unless the boy was talking very softly, she didn’t think he has uttered a single word yet.

She looked at her picture, maybe a messenger? He had to have some importance if her father was personally taking care of him. were they looking for her? And why a messenger would carry such a big blade? Monsters were getting larger in number in the wild but was the situation that bad?

The more she looked at the picture, the more the boy looked strangely familiar. As if she had seen him once in a dream, or ...

“Zelda, here you are. I called you, didn’t you hear?”

The princess pressed haltingly the off button of the device before looking up at her father who was now next to her.

How hadn’t she heard him? He was looking down at her, waiting for her to raise and greet him and this strange boy. She quickly got up and curtseyed.

“Hello Father, I’m sorry I didn’t hear you, I just arrived from the goddess temple…”

“No need for explanation, child. I want you to meet Link. From now on, he will be at your side at all time. I want him to be your new appointed knight. He drew the sword in the Korok forest and is therefore the designated champion of the country.”

**

For a while, she didn’t understand why she always wanted to take pictures of him. It’s not like she liked him after all, he was incredibly annoying.

First, he didn’t talk. How could she understand something that didn’t talk to her? Even flowers and rocks, and the Sheikah technology had some sort of language that she could comprehend, if not really explain, but goddesses almighty, Link was just so quiet!

But somehow, each night, she ended up with hundreds of pictures of him, some of them she didn’t even remember snapping.

And each night, she spent a couple of hours watching them, sometime blushing, sometime fuming with annoyance before deleting all of it one by one.

Well, maybe not all of it.

**

The last time she used the slate snapping rune, was the day before her seventeenth birthday.

The final ceremony for the champions introduction was finishing. The next day, Zelda was to make her way to the final spring, in mount Lanayru, for a final chance to unlock her power.

The sixth of them were taking some time in the garden to make some plan for the next day. Urbosa has insisted that they would all go with her to the spring.

“I wouldn’t want my little Bird to spend her birthday alone.” she had said. “And who knows, it might just help.”

It was Mipha who had insisted for the picture. Zelda had been too worried to think of anything else but the day to come. She could feel the worried glance Link was giving her. They had talked earlier that day, again trying to make her believe in herself more. He was adamant that her powers were just here, that some things proved it and that she just had to believe in herself.

He was trying to be so supportive. Their relationship had started to improve since the Yiga attack, and she could easily say ow that it had evolved in a powerful friendship.

Well. That was what she would tell people anyway.

She was painfully in love with him. Sometimes, she could even believe that he, too, was caring deeply for her. But how could she say anything with the situation being what it was?

Link’s hand on her biceps took her out of her own thoughts.

“Zelda, come here, Mipha wants us to take a picture with all of us together, to celebrate.”

The both made their way toward their friends all turned around, their attention to the slate’s screen. His arm still around her shoulder, her cheeks a little red from the proximity.

They parted way before anyone could see them.

Note : I've searched everywhere to find when exactly was the group photo taken, and the answer is that either nobody cares about it or nobody knows xD it's not really said in game so I decided that it would be just before Zelda's birthday for plot sake.

edit : Yes, i know it’s from the inaugural ceremony, but it is not said WHEN this ceremony takes place. Is it at the same time that Link is appointed as Zelda’s knight ? Is it before they all leave for mount Lanaryu ? Is it at a totaly other moment ? 

[loroparque-orcas]

Morgan The Captive Orca – A Real Handmaid’s Tale

If she wore a red dress and a white hat would the world have more empathy for a captive, pregnant killer whale?

Unlike Offred, an imaginary female trapped in an imaginary city, enslaved to an abusive household and cheered on to escape by viewers the world over, Morgan is a very real captive killer whale held in a very real tank, within an animal entertainment themed park. Her very existence epitomises ‘‘The Handmaids Tale,’ she is likely silently screaming to her audience— “ME TOO!”

When watching the hugely popular Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwoods’ book, we are disturbed by the scenes of subservience and ritualised rape and are empathetic to Offred’s plight in the show. But in the real world, our anthropocentric society commits similar abuses against captive marine mammals and we, the audience, sit in the stadiums with our children and cheer the spectacle on.

Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

The Handmaid’s Tale is set in a dystopian society where fertile women, ‘Handmaids,’ are forced into child-bearing servitude. Quoting Laura Hudson, in her review – A Beginners Guide to The Handmaids Tale Universe: “Women are considered the property of men and are not permitted to vote, possess money of their own or read…all the women we encounter in The Handmaid’s Tale — including Offred—grew up in an America like our own, and thus have to be brutally indoctrinated into their new status as possessions, servants and walking baby incubators.”

In the real world, killer whales (or orca) like Morgan are captured for display. They too are then considered ‘property,’ and in captivity can no longer live a free and natural life. They can no longer swim great distances, dive to any real depth, hunt or feed of their own accord and they certainly can’t choose with whom they will live or breed. Their entire existence is managed by trainers in accordance with their owners’ business requirements. They become an object, a commodity, and literally die a social death.

Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some.

Morgan lived in the world she knew—the ocean—free and with her family. She somehow became separated, was ‘rescued,’ and then opportunistically indoctrinated into her new status of possession; servant to the captivity industry and its patrons, and just like Offred, she too now exists as a (swimming) performing baby incubator.

Morgan – A Stolen Life In the real world, the deliberate capture of wild born killer whales is increasingly considered an unacceptable practice, and the breeding of this species is being phased out by some in the theme park industry who are listening to the public. However, when a young female orca was found alone and unwell, but well enough to keep alive for breeding purposes, Morgan became the most valuable find; a gene pool ‘bonanza’ for the captive entertainment industry.

In 2010 Morgan was taken from the wild in Netherland waters. Although underweight, Morgan was still free-swimming and she never stranded. The Dutch Government had previously issued a cetacean-wide ‘rescue, rehabilitation and release’ permit to Dolfinarium Harderwijk, which allowed the theme park to take Morgan from her ocean home.

From that moment, Morgan’s life was no longer her own; she was never rehabilitated nor released—instead she was kept in a pen that was barely large enough for her to swim, forced into training and taught how to behave in order to accommodate her keepers’ demands. She was conditioned to perform undignified tricks, providing customers more ‘bang for their buck’ when encouraged to pay for the novelty of seeing a wild killer whale up-close in a tank.

The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you’ve been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much  evil.

In a travesty of justice resulting from a tangled web of governmental and regulatory loopholes along with theme park industry subterfuge, Morgan, some 18 months later, was shipped out of the Netherlands with the help of SeaWorld (a USA based company), into the hands of Loro Parque, an amusement park in Tenerife, Spain.

At Loro Parque, Morgan was put in another tank and forced to integrate with 5 captive-born SeaWorld-owned orca who were completely foreign to her. For over four years now Morgan has suffered an unnatural life; she has been made to perform demeaning behaviours in never ending theatrical shows, fed frozen fish and endured sexual pressure and continuous bullying from the male orca in the theme park pens.

A New Baby for Morgan… Praise Be! The public who patronise Loro Parque seem, for the most part, oblivious to Morgan’s suffering, her barren tank, her unnatural existence, her clown like performances—her real purpose. Families crave a day’s entertainment, promoted by an industry that presents its animals as just that. To see a killer whale up close is a bucket list item that we should all tick; families don’t see the torture. Perhaps the public is not dissimilar to the brainwashed citizens of the imaginary Gilead. They seem convinced by ‘the authority’, the industry, that these handmaids, these orca, are ‘happy’ to be used, happy to be bred. These ‘ambassadors’ will somehow help to conserve their species in the wild. Yet strangely, the public absorbing this information doesn’t ever seem to question …why then are these animals never released?

The handmaid’s purpose, Morgans purpose, despite her torture in order to achieve it, is to perform when required and to bear fruit. Morgan, in her Handmaid’s Tale has now been successfully inseminated. She is pregnant and due to give birth at any time. Some say the birth should be celebrated; her keepers say reproduction is a right of each animal, “it’s a natural behaviour,” and on the face of it this may appear true. But what of Morgan’s right to choose, what of her right to Freedom?

There is more than one kind of freedom, freedom to and freedom from.

Loro Parque admits to not knowing which of the two male orca at the park impregnated  Morgan, yet it is known that one of them is aggressive towards humans and the other is a documented killer. What this will mean for Morgan’s calf will become evident in time, but one certainty is, it will be a hybrid and so despite the conservation claims, her offspring can never be released into the wild. Morgan’s baby too will have no right to be free.

A Handmaid’s Fruit – What of Morgan’s Calf? In captivity, orca pregnancies are rare and even when births do occur, calves often die; the result of Morgan’s pregnancy is yet to be seen. Like Offred, Morgan’s subservient, and sometimes comatose existence, combined with her constant public display presents an abnormal situation, an unnatural environment within which she must bond with her first baby; she may even reject her own calf if it does survive. Her calf will be a commodity too, a new attraction to be exploited, and if female—a future handmaid in turn. Morgan, now proven to be fertile, will likely be bred again—the ultimate money-spinner for an industry driven by the business of bottom lines.

Morgan’s calf might remain with her, or her keepers may well take her away, assign her to a new ‘household,’ a new facility, another breeding program, or of course her baby may simply die. In Morgan’s captive, amusement park world, where the illusion of ‘happy families’ is key, there will be no time for her to grieve should her calf not survive, her baby will be taken from her immediately — the show must go on regardless of grief.

Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

Empathy Lost In A Killer Whale Show Our ability as humans to empathise with these animals does exist and was overwhelmingly demonstrated recently when a wild killer whale refused to let go of her dead baby for 17 torturous days. Undeniably going through a grieving process, Tahlequah’s anguish captured the attention of the world. We recognised her grief; we empathised with this orca, and our outpouring of sympathy to her plight was unprecedented

Yet inexplicably we seem to detach when we put these sentient animals in tanks, when we use them for our entertainment, when we make them breed to ensure the longevity of the industry, when their captive bred babies die or we remove their children from them, our empathy, our sympathy, seems to vanish along with the money we leave at the theme park gates.

We enjoy and even celebrate what we see as abhorrent-a perversion, an injustice against humans. Yet for incarcerated sentient animals, we accept this same behaviour as entertainment. We somehow disconnect from the fact that these ‘handmaids with tails’ like Morgan, don’t sign up for this ‘role,’ they’re forcefully conscripted to act as our entertainment, our ‘educational, conservational, inspirational,’ breeding tools.

Despite industry assertions that orca ‘enjoy’ performing and people believing what they are told is the truth, the reality is that these animals are not willingly working to entertain us; they are conditioned with rewards such as food to perform. Their bodies are not their own; they are made to breed and their babies will never be theirs. Their lives, their entire existence, will always be controlled by the industry, their ‘authority,’ their very real ‘Gilead’.

This is Gilead. No one gets out – Moira

#FreeMorgan

Further Information and References

Further information about Morgan’s story and ways to help please visitFree Morgan Foundation Further information about orca in captivity please visit Sea World Fact Check Further reading about Marine Mammals in Captivity Further information about Human Behaviour Change

References: All block quotes contained in this opinion piece unless otherwise noted are from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, sourced  from Good Reads, The Handmaids Tale Quotes. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1119185-the-handmaid-s-tale?page=1 Laura Hudson, A Beginner’s Guide to The Handmaid’s Tale Universe http://www.vulture.com/2017/04/the-handmaids-tale-beginners-guide.html Telegraph UK   https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/loro-parque-ends-killer-whale-orca-breeding/ The Handmaids Tale – Hulu https://www.hulu.com/press/show/the-handmaids-tale/ The Handmaids Tale – Margaret Atwood https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38447.The_Handmaid_s_Tale Free Morgan Foundation, Morgans Story http://www.freemorgan.org/morgan-2/ Keto: Frustrated and Dangerous https://whalesanctuaryproject.org/whales/keto-frustrated-dangerous/ The Trials Of Tekoa https://timzimmermann.com/2011/09/26/the-trials-of-tekoa/ Centre For Whale Research – J35 https://www.whaleresearch.com/j35

[bizarre-dollhouse]

My Top 10 Favourite Anime (And Why You Should Watch Them)

This is normally something I would put on my main blog, but I wanted to celebrate a follower milestone and also I know this will reach a significantly wider audience on this blog.

Consider this both a list of recommendations and a *get to know me* thing, I guess.

Honourable Mentions:

Bakemonogatari: A really stylized show about a semi vampire helping people with their supernatural afflictions born from emotional issues. The subsequent seasons get a little questionable, but this is definitely a standalone story with great dialogue and visuals. (15 eps)

Shiki: Creepy story about a small town infested with vampires. Really brutal and sick, but it has fascinating themes. The pacing is a bit slow and it has a kind of bad scene towards the end, but the show is 100% worth it. (24 eps)

Cardcaptor Sakura: Because this is mostly aimed at younger viewers, I would only really recommend this show for either magical girl fans, or people who watched the extremely altered dub as a kid. That being said, its a cute, fun show about magic with a likeable cast and surprisingly creative and original ideas, especially towards the latter half. (70 eps)

Jojos Bizarre Adventure 4: Diamond is Unbreakable: Full disclosure, I have not seen the first 3 jojo series, but its not necessary to enjoy this show. This is a super creative and really fun series about superpowered badasses in a strange city fighting each other and trying to solve a murder mystery in the background. Weird, but in the best way. (39 eps)

Kuroshitsuji: Book of Circus: This should be higher on the list, but in truth I would recommend the manga way over the show. But, if you want to watch a supernatural horror/comedy without reading a 138+ chapter manga, OR you were a fan of the original Black Butler seasons and want to see something way better, give this a watch. (10 eps)

*drumroll*

10. Trigun

So Trigun takes place is this old west, yet mysterious science fiction-y world where, through a bunch of complicated scenarios, a pacifist is the most wanted criminal known to man. Due to his status as a “natural disaster,” two insurance workers are tasked with reining him in to save their business. It’s an incredibly charming series, and the protagonist is really likeable. It’s extremely creative, funny, and emotional near the end. I do have some problems with the ending because it almost seems like the final conflict just...solves itself, but that’s a nitpick. The first episode is basically a short film, so give that a watch and see how you feel. (26 eps)

9. Paranoia Agent

This was directed by the late and great Satoshi Kon and has his usual themes about the blurring between fiction, dreams, and reality. It’s about a string of mysterious assaults committed by a kid with a baseball bat, and how these assaults seem to solve the problems of the victims. It’s very arthouse and has a twist that makes me ball my eyes out even though it’s not sad it’s just...odd and overwhelming. It drags a bit near the middle, but if you like kind of surreal stuff that’s also just really good, you have to watch this show. (13 eps)

8. Baby Steps

The amazing thing about this show is that its premise is specifically designed to make me hate it. It’s about a nerdy teenager who starts to play a sport for the sole sake of getting fit and having a more well rounded life style, and also he has a crush on this really popular girl. That sounds fucking awful, but the main character is actually really likeable (he reminds me a lot of Deku from BNHA) and I swear to fucking god every time I thought this show was going to do something awful and cliched with its romantic comedy plot, it doesn’t. The beauty and the geek trope is still there, but all of the bullshit that comes with it is omitted in a way I feel was kind of self-aware. The sports aspect is really good too: it’s well paced and there’s lots of tension even though the show as a whole is really upbeat and pleasant. I had a blast watching it, and if you can make it past the fact that is has god awful animation, give it a watch.

7. Higurashi: When They Cry

Yet another great show with absolute garbage animation. Anyways, this show is about a group of teenagers in a small town who are unknowingly trapped in a time loop. In each loop there’s a bunch of new mysteries, as well as some extremely brutal murders and tortures experienced my the main cast. I’ve seen a number of Western shows (Orphan Black, BBC Sherlock, Lost, Supernatural, etc.) fall apart because the writers want a really clever and intricate mystery to play out, but they don’t want to actually put the time into crafting one, so it’s just a bunch of cliffhangers with no answers or pay off. THIS SHOW SUCCEEDS AT WHAT ALL OF THOSE OTHER SHOWS FAIL AT. While not all of the answers are great (the second season isn’t as good) the original author somehow made the world’s most ludicrously complicated mystery story work, with a lot of it relying on the audience to put all of the pieces together even when the characters can’t. Its very clever in doing that: it makes its audience feel smart. It also has themes that don’t really show up in other horror stories, even though they’re incredibly relevant to fear and violence. Great show, go watch it. (50 eps)

6. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

Everyone knows about this show, everyone says it’s great, and everyone’s right. If you’ve been living under a rock for ten years: the show is about two brothers who break an alchemy taboo, which destroys their bodies, They’re on the hunt for something to restore them to normal and along the way they meet like 8990354578579 characters with interesting stories. It’s tightly written and really gripping. It’s fun, but also really dramatic and emotional when it needs to be. My only problems with it are that the ending is reaaaallllly convoluted, and there’s a minor plot point earlier on that gets weirdly dropped, but everyone kinda forgets about those things because the show’s so good. Also the brotherly bond makes me cry. (64 eps)

5. FLCL

I honestly don’t even know where to start with this show because it has the unique property of being the only show I have ever seen that I have literally no problems with. Not even nitpicks. There is nothing wrong with this show; it’s perfect. The only reason it’s not number 1 is because some other shows have more ideas or more fleshed out characters. So this arthouse spastic comedy is about a boy who is disappointed with all of the adults in his life, then some chick hits him in the face with a guitar and giant robots from a secret facility start coming out of his head. It’s fucking wild and has like 30 different aesthetics and I love all of them. It’s the best looking show I’ve ever seen and one of the best directed. It feels like someone read a really weird poem and turned it into a 6 episode show. It’s funny, it’s emotional, it’s cartoony, it’s beautiful, it’s raunchy, it’s poetic, it’s silly, it’s creative, and it’s got strong themes. The wtf visuals, the nonsensical plot, and the amazing soundtrack make an aesthetic experience more than anything. (6 eps)

4. Princess Tutu

I already made a post about this show and why it’s good, which you can check out here, but the gist is it’s a meta fairytale about a duck that turns into a girl to help a storybook prince find his emotions. I used to love stories that were “twists on fairytales” or whatever, but after watching this show I realized that the genre is pretty derivative. This show is so amazing it honestly made me reevaluate an entire genre and come to the conclusion that this is the only member of that genre worth watching. It’s truly creative and well crafted with fantastic characters. (26 eps)

3. Hunter x Hunter (2011)

This show is basically a bunch of creative ideas, unique set pieces, and interesting characters stacked on top of each other in a trench coat disguised as a narrative. It’s about a perky shonen protagonist and a child assassin becoming friends while also trying to become hunters (a position involving vast wealth and adventure). It’s in a modern fantasy setting so literally anything can happen. In one arc they have to play life-or-death dodgeball against robots, and another is an insanely epic tale about the intense evil that people are capable of (feat. a 25 episode climax). I can’t even talk about all of the themes or ideas because there are just too many. Because of it’s wild, sprawling story, it has a lot of ass pulls and retcons, but in the grand scheme of things they don’t really matter. It’s long, but super easy to watch in huge chunks. (148 eps)

2. Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End of Evangelion

The most efficient way to describe this show is to say that it’s the most interesting show ever made. It’s about an apocalyptic future in which emotionally disturbed teenagers must pilot giant bio-machines to fight monsters which are referred to as angels. It’s got deep characters, a creative story, and is probably the most well directed show I’ve ever seen. The ending infamously fell apart due to production problems, so there’s a movie called The End of Evangelion to conclude the story. It’s a very disturbing arthouse movie, so watch out for that, but the show as a whole is moooosssstly more straightforward and fascinating, This is an absolute must watch. (26 eps and 1 movie)

1. Baccano!

Baccano! takes place in 1930s New York, and is about thieves, gangsters, criminals, terrorists, alchemists, and immortals interacting in this nonlinear comedy/action thrill ride. I felt like I was on a rollercoaster while watching this show. It’s the perfect blend of action, comedy, romance, drama, horror, and creative storytelling. It’s fantastic to rewatch since the first episodes barely make any sense without context (but are still an absolute joy to watch). It’s got great characters and it’s a great story. Go watch it. And then watch it again. (13 eps and 3 OVAs)

That’s it for this list! Check out my MAL page for more recommendations if you’re interested and have a great night! 

[meeratakkar]

I thought I saw (PRIYANKA CHOPRA) in New Orleans, but it was just (MEERA TAKKAR). (SHE) is a (THIRTY THREE) year old (WEREWOLF). I heard that they were (CHALLENGING) but also (DIFFICULT). I believe they are marrying (CHYLER LEIGH, BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD, KRISTEN BELL/ASK PLAYER). 

hello folks !! my name’s bee. 21 residing in the eastern timezone yeet yeet. this here’s my presh werewolf child, meera. it took me a lil bit to get her backstory straight but here y’all go ~

* grew up in india. her parents were the best damn parents in the world, in her opinion. even if they were a bit nomadic and secluded. they loved the hell out of her and her two younger siblings (brother and sister). so it hit her twice as hard when they passed away in a tragic accident when she was 15.  * unfortunately, the only other family she and the police believed she had was her father’s brother, issam. he was probably the cruelest person she had ever met. being her siblings’ protector, she took most of his abuse. not that she had to try. after finding out she had been spending too much time with a girl in school, he connected the dots and figured out meera was gay. his exact words were ‘i’m beating the evil out of you.’  * it was a month before her 18th birthday when she was out for once celebrating early. her friends had convinced her to go to a club. sneak in, have a drink or two, go home before any damage is done. during that night, she had gone out to the alley to call and check on her siblings. make sure they were okay. one of her drunk guy ‘friends’ came out to see what she was up to, proceeded to try and get lucky. she shoved him off but he was insistent. to the point, she knocked him out hard. and something in her just snapped. she had had enough of someone thinking they owned her. she kicked and kicked until she couldn’t recognize him anymore. and then she came to, checked his pulse - which was absent, and ran.  * all meera could feel was guilt. she knew she shouldn’t have gone out. she should have been home watching out for her brother and sister. and now there was the possibility of her getting caught and sent to prison for murder. weeks passed and nothing happened. they ruled it a bar fight gone wrong. said the suspect had to have been male. * the night before her 18th birthday, issam was on a roll. it was also the night of the first full moon she would experience as a triggered werewolf. not that she’d realize. the last straw had been when issam shoved her siblings into the basement, locking the metal door behind him. she fought him to open it but doubled over moments later. gone was the scared and vulnerable child she had been, and in her place was what meera refers to as ‘the beast.’  * the next thing she remembered was waking up in the morning and feeling cold, and wet. covered in red, and somehow outside. confused, she traveled back home carefully and opened the door to a gruesome sight. the body of her uncle, or what was left of him she should say. and everything in the home pretty much wrecked. freaked out, it took her a minute to realize he had last locked her siblings in the basement. when she found the keys and opened the door, they were cowered in the corner and afraid. not of him, but of her. she had to soothe them first before hearing the truth of the strange night. how they had peeked through the cracks, watched as she turned into a big bear-like wolf monster, had destroyed issam and scratched on the door to get to them too. but had given up, and ran off when there was a few howls in the distance.  * funnily enough, it was the one good thing issam had ever done for them. but now that they were free of him, what was in store? her life kept changing overnight. first, they told the police a wild wolf had come in and done the deed. it was believable due to the paw prints and the wounds. meera was about to raise hell to take guardianship of her brother and sister when the police informed her of another, much distant family member they had discovered. her mother’s sister, who happened to live in america.  * needless to say, meera could choose to do it all on her own. but she didn’t know what she was, and how to raise her siblings safely just yet. so meera said they’d all go to america, if only to wait until she figured things out better. when police told their aunt, someone referred to as anushka, she was all too willing to take them in. she hadn’t known about them in the first place, and would have saved them from issam if she had. the woman was much like her mother in the same strange way, but different of course. and it didn’t take long to find out why.  * aunt anushka was a werewolf. and she was apart of a pack. in fact, the pack was actually her family’s by right, and each alpha had been her own bloodline. its current alpha was another cousin named rahul. anushka had figured meera was the wolf in her uncle’s attack. she forgave the girl easily. told her it was a crime to let a man like that live. also gave her insight on why her parents had run off together. her father was never welcome by the pack. they left to start anew, no doubt choosing to raise their kids hopefully without the ‘curse’ and its disadvantages. and so, never telling anushka. nor the rest of their werewolf family.  * meera and her siblings stayed with aunt anushka for a year, and she even joined the pack to learn more. but they were primal in their ways. encouraged the beast, rather than tamed it. and for awhile, she was every bit the monster she had tried to steer away from. especially when war started to break out between supernaturals. scared she would become someone her brother and sister couldn’t recognize, she saved up quick to move out with them. and that’s what she did. the pack was not too happy, but they relinquished their grip on the takkar children at last. * from there on out, it was a series of moving around. at one point, they stayed long enough for meera to attend college. she went for social work, landing two degrees to work with children. to save them from a past like hers. her brother and sister did their own thing, but they all stuck together. when word got out that aunt anushka had died, they went back to new york to show their respects. the pack was broken and uncertain at the time. rahul had been killed in battle, and they were going to have a stage of fights to determine the new alpha. meera knew this was her calling and fought until she landed up top. she prides herself as alpha, even if the role was considered a male one. she’ll fight anyone who says so to her face.  * hearing the marriage idea put into play in new orleans, she’s expected to go and secure their future. she’s just arrived, but she’s not a fan of it - probably because that kind of love has always been the furthest thing from her mind. 

important deets:

* she is the alpha in her pack. they are thriving, and a large pack. the pack was a bloodline hierarchy, save for her coming into power. they respect her, but it is hard to transition completely. a lot of members still stick to their primal ways.  * she is gay af. women are her thang. men are chicken wangs. * degrees in social work. works in child protection services and as a child therapist/psychologist. she is super into helping children, and wants to protect each and every one of them. she’d literally adopt all the kids if she wasn’t so busy rn. she is also very against people who harm kids. she’s probably killed an abuser or two. killing isn’t necessarily a no for her, but she does it for good? mostly. * does not like talking about her past. probs a supernatural thing, cause no one seems to like to she’s found. but if you bring it up, she’ll inch around it. if you try again and she’s not having it, she’ll be pissed. * huge competitive video game junkie. she denies this ofc. but she loves old school shit like pacman and mario kart and spyro. literally. if you wanna see her turn into a puppy, play some games with her. * didn’t cry on the notebook, but if you put on fried green tomatoes, she’s going to have to excuse herself from the room. * is an actual whiz with technology. could have been a hacker if she didn’t love kids more. * actually likes cats. go figure. they just don’t like her much?

wanted connecs: 

* brother and sister: they are younger than her. preferably in the range of 22-28. they could have triggered their gene, or not.  * pack members: there’s like two that have come along with her. they’re her closest confidants. people she trusts entirely. * friends from her travels: she and her siblings have lived literally everywhere.  * coworkers: works in child services. she just transferred to the department for a temporary stay. * drinking buddies: they always end up at the bar together. talk about how shitty life is. * old flings: although she’s not fond of love, she’s had a few bed partners. they could have ended on good terms or not. women only.  * old flame: someone she might have? sorta? fallen for in the past. a little. and then she realized what she was doing and bounced. it would be hard for her to see them. especially if they’re both about to marry other people. angst. women only. * enemies: she’s gonna have some. she can piss people off. in the war, she was merciless. could be one of her uncle’s friends that came for her. could be the old alpha’s friends. could be old lovers. could be rival packs. you name it. * saving grace: in the war, either she ended up saving another supernatural or a supernatural saved her. why? we can plot it out. but they owe each other their life, and it’d be great to see after the war’s concluded that they’re alive. to finally say ‘hey, ya could’ve killed me. but you didn’t. thanks for not letting me die.’  * anY THING. all the connections. if you have an idea, shoot it via IM. i’m nice and friendly, i swear.