#it probably already impact their life all the time outside of school let them have some education in peace

[lil-gingerbread-queen]

Secularism: No religions in school, because children deserve an education free from religion and its influence.

Religious: But what about my religion?

Secularism: Euh... The same.

Religious: That's discrimination!

Secularism: What do you don't understand in "no religions"?

[physalian]

7 Misused Tropes (And How to Improve Them)

Tropes in isolation aren’t inherently bad, but a lot of them are prone to poor execution. Each one of these probably could have a whole post by themselves. A few of these used to be good but have since fallen by the wayside as their original meaning has been lost.

7. Dramatic Miscommunication

You know the ones. I think it’s worse when the story is otherwise good, the writers just could not come up with a better way to get X alone or send Y off on the necessary side quest than the lowest of low hanging fruit.

Two essential ingredients for fixing this trope: Precedent and consequences

Precedent–have the character doing the missassuming already be prone to jumping to conclusions, already suspicious or insecure, or misled by a third party so this looks inevitable, instead of pulled out of your ass.

Consequences–usually these are big blow up fights that fizzle out without any impact on the plot once they fulfill their purpose, but if it’s a nasty enough fight, characters shouldn’t just forgive and forget. While they might not completely ruin relationships, it should have characters taking a step back and either second guessing where they stand, or using this blowup to fix an underlying issue in said relationship.

6. Love Triangles

Good Love Triangle for the first 3 seasons: Elena/Stefan/Damon (TVD).

Bad Love Triangle for the entire series: Bella/Edward/Jacob (Twilight).

The difference between them (besides time to flesh out both candidates) is that both brothers brought valid pros and cons to Elena’s life, both got the chance to be with her, and Elena’s whole arc wasn’t solely focused on the agonizing choice of which brother she should pick. Regardless of which camp you’re in, Stefan brought stability, that classic cliché high school romance, mostly all good vibes. He never challenged her or talked down to her or got aggressive with her. Damon did the opposite, for better or for worse, and we know which direction the show went.

On the other hand, Jacob never for one second stood a chance with Bella and the narrative wasn’t kidding anyone. They never so much as went on one date (unless you count the motorcycle ride) and it seemed like Bella was only letting him hang on for pity’s sake. Theoretically he brought pros to the table that Edward couldn’t (like, idk, being alive), but the narrative never explored what could be done with him. He just ended up being the Nice Guy friend who then decided it’d be hot to lust after an infant.

5. Agency-less Chosen Ones

These tend to be wish fulfillment characters that bring nothing to the story and have no discernible skills, yet are constantly in the middle of the action, have all the love interests fawning over them, and are Important and Critical to saving the world… because the narrative said so. They don’t make a single choice the entire plot except to move forward or stagnate, chosen by the gods or a prophecy or fate and destiny.

The problem: These characters walk with the crutch of “I’m the chosen one thus I don’t need a reason to exist in the story” and that’s just not a satisfying narrative shortcut. So? Give them agency. Even if they’re chosen by some ancient prophecy, you still have to convince the reader why the Universe wasn’t just talking out of its ass.

Good example: Emmet from Lego Movie literally says he’s useless and has no skills and cannot think outside the Lego box. He’s supposed to be as generic as painfully possible and when he does have creative ideas, they’re supposed to be asinine and stupid. And yet. He might be physically dragged around by the other characters, but he has plenty of choices, plenty of opposition to what’s happening, plenty to say about the state of his world, and his ideas do matter and his intimate knowledge of the instructions and playing by the rules is how they win.

4. Bad Boy Love Interests

These guys were supposed to be counter-culture icons, standing up to The Man for the little guy because he knows the system is broken and rigged. He’s an affront to the stereotypical nuclear lifestyle, he resents a robotic and soulless office job and wants to create art or music or in some way benefit his world and isn’t going to play nice just to get his way. He exists in contrast to the nuclear female protagonist: Conservative, demure, rule-following caged bird who falls in love with him because he shows her that life isn’t meant to be lived in The Man’s cage. He respects the authority that deserves respect, the teachers who actually give a shit, the janitors, the librarians, but probably not the principal or the police or the local politicians, because he knows they don’t respect him and respect is a two-way street. He’s probably a mama’s boy or at the very least loves his parents (if they’re alive) and while he might engage in a little property damage like graffiti, it’s for a good cause.

This dude is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE: Abusive, controlling, aggressive, or condescending to his love interest. He’s not supposed to be an overprotective stalker or plagued by insecure jealousy over any other man in his love interest’s life. He’s not rude to his friends or arrogant about his own smarts and doesn’t think he knows best about every little thing in the world. He’s not sexist or racist just to make himself feel better and he doesn’t pressure his love interest into sex because she owes him or whatever.

Ahem.

Please bring back classic bad boys. That is all.

3. Major Character Death (for shock value)

I remember the implosion of the Walking Dead fandom after they killed Carl, one of the very few characters who was supposed to make it to the end, for… various sketchy reasons and I could never figure out what was true. Some theorized that his actor was aging out of the ‘child actor’ payscale and they didn’t want to pay him as an adult and while I have no proof, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Carl died after getting bit in just one of those hectic moments where he got unlucky, while doing something noble and stupid. In isolation, it fits the nature of the “anyone can die” show but man did it just come across in poor taste.

Obviously “for shock value” shouldn’t be the reason you do anything in your story but there is still a way to pull it off without it causing a riot: Make sure they get killed in a non-contrived way. If you plan on killing off one of your heroes suddenly, either make it bitterly ironic, or make it a situation that this character would absolutely get themselves into. The more it “fits” the less likely audiences will see the hand of the author coming in just to break the character’s fictional contract.

2. The Power Inside You All Along

This trope is usually disappointing because it tends to melt a character’s whole arc down into something pointless—this whole adventure was apparently useless if they didn’t actually need to grow or change or challenge their conceptions of the world. They could have got up off the couch as joe shmoe and beat the villain day one.

While that’s probably not what their creator intends, ‘it was inside you all along *wink*’ tends to feel that way, as it discourages internal conflict. Usually, their creator is likely trying to convey the message that one need not change, that it’s what’s inside them already that makes them special.

I present to you once again Kung Fu Panda’s “there is no secret ingredient” i.e. “the power inside you”. The difference is. Po still has plenty of internal conflict: his own self-confidence. He begins the movie eager but inexperienced and a bit oblivious, fanboying it up around his heroes. He and Shifu both insult his weight and his lacking kung fu skills, and his arc is learning self-confidence, learning how to use his weight and the body he has to fight in a way that the villain isn’t prepared for, to where Po can shit-talk him to his face during the final fight.

Most failures of this trope don’t bother exercising their protagonist. They’re pissy and resistant for the entire story and only win when the narrative agrees they were right all along. Therefore, no change, no conflict, no resolution.

1. Strong Female Characters

So many of these read like "slapped boops on a male character". They don’t work for many reasons (usually being very preachy with their agendas), but they especially don’t work when by trying to be pro-feminist, they’re still reinforcing masculine standards. A lot of people, when Captain Marvel came out, said “you didn’t have any issues with Tony Stark being an asshole but now you do when he’s a woman” which. No.

Tony was an asshole, but being an asshole was the whole point of his character, and he got humbled right quick by getting blown up and held hostage. “Proof that Tony Stark Has a Heart” and all that.

Carol was an asshole with nothing to substantiate it, and never got a reality check. She had amnesia so we didn’t get insight into who she was before to understand this transition into dickishness and was so OP, she wasn’t ever physically or emotionally challenged like Tony was.

But the other thing is this: Slapping boobs on a male character with a slew of toxic masculine traits also says that to be a successful woman, you must behave like a man. It swings so far from the femme fatale sexy leg lamp that it comes around and eats its own tail. These characters are just mean and insecure and build themselves up by tearing down the men around them.

So. Calhoun from Wreck it Ralph is this exact trope done extremely well. She’s aggressive, arrogant, loud, rude, and cynical. For about 10% of her arc. The movie immediately throws her into a situation where her strengths are basically useless—she’s stuck in Candy Land and has to rely on someone who is the antithesis of her game and character to make it out. The movie also shows you why she’s cynical via her tragic backstory.

Not only that, she’s more than just a heap of toxic masculinity in a pixie cut. She laughs, she cries, she admits when she’s wrong, she has a soft side, a gentle side, a caring side, and remains a badass through and through.

Or, once again rolling out Tigress from Kung Fu Panda: Proud, aggressive, the snubbed chosen one, cynical, mean, and overconfident in her abilities. Tigress nearly gets her entire team killed in her arrogance. She’s allowed to be wrong, very wrong. She also has her soft moments and, like Calhoun, has a very valid reason for being jaded, and is still shown to be capable of softness and nurturing during the evacuation.

Third example to hammer home that I don’t hate badass women: Andromache. Jaded, overconfident, short-tempered, aggressive, and a little mean-spirited. Tragic explanatory backstory? Check. She is also caring and loyal to her team, allowed to get emotional, allowed to be wrong and fail and lose, and kind of the surrogate mom of the team, who can also laugh and joke around and have light-hearted moments.

Whether the character is a man or a woman, being an arrogant asshole who takes zero accountability and refuses to admit when they’re wrong and never loses, audiences aren’t going to like them.

[baileypie-writes]

I'm sorry for all the asks for family requests but can you please do some of Velvet and Veneer protecting their preteen sister? Maybe from a bully?

A/N ~ Sure! And don’t worry, I don’t mind the requests:) Hope you enjoy!

And remember: if you’re being bullied, please tell someone. I promise you, somebody cares. In fact, I’m one of those somebodys.

~You’re Safe Now~

Velvet and Veneer + Preteen!Sister!Reader

Fandom: Trolls 3: Band Together

Relationship: Familial

Synopsis: You’re being bullied, but thankfully, this time your sibling save you.

Warnings: Reader getting bullied(verbal and mentions of it being physical), minor violence, swearing, Reader crying.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You let out a sigh of relief when you finally heard the school bell ring. Grabbing your backpack, you rushed out of the classroom. Your eyes darted around the halls as you made your way towards the front doors of the school.

When you were outside, you booked it to the side of the building. After confirming that you were alone, you finally let yourself calm down.

You can’t remember the last time you were able to peacefully make it through a school day. Each time, this group of boys would come and harass you. The’d say every insult under the sun, making fun of you for the smallest things. Things that you couldn’t control, like your looks.

You thought that telling your teacher would make it stop. You were unfortunately very wrong. After they got punished, that’s when the beatings started. You no longer felt safe at school, and you’re worried that they’ll follow you home one day.

Thankfully though, your siblings, Velvet and Veneer, were picking you up today. You haven’t seen them in a while, so they were going to take you out to eat and have fun. You were so excited, that you’d forgotten about your bullies. But all the memories came back once you saw them turn the corner.

Oh shit.

“There you are. We’ve been looking all over for you!” The leader, Jackson, called to you. His four other friends trailed behind him. You swear you’d rather have the devil himself appear in front of you than having to deal with these son of a bitches.

“What do you want?” You asked, trying to hide the fear in your voice. You failed miserably.

“Watch your tone, bitch.” Jackson pushed you, making you fall onto your back. You hit your head on the hard concrete, and you felt tears start to well up in your eyes. But you sucked them back in.

“My siblings will be here any second, so you better leave!” You yelled back at them. You were hoping that that’d scare them off, but that thought was shattered when you heard the boys snicker.

“Please, if they’re anything like you, we can beat both their asses no problem.” He grabbed you by your shirt, lifting your upper body off the ground. “Speaking of which…”

Jackson raised his fist, and you braced yourself for impact. You were already thinking of excuses to tell your parents. Maybe you should tell them you fell again. Or maybe that you got hit with a ball at P.E.

A loud honk snapped you out of your thoughts. You opened your eyes that were previously squeezed shut. All the boys’s attention were focused on a car that had just turned the corner towards the school. It was Velvet and Veneer’s car. If you weren’t being held, you’d probably jump for joy. You never thought you’d be so happy to see them in your life.

The car screeched to a stop, and your siblings hopped out of it. You’d never seen them so mad.

“Whoa. You guys are, like, those famous pop stars right?” One of the boys asked.

They didn’t respond. Their focus was solely on Jackson.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing to our sister?” Velvet asked. More like demanded.

Jackson let go of your shirt, making you fall back onto the concrete, and hit your head again. You let out a yelp of pain. The moment it fell from your lips, Veneer rushed over to you, leaving the yelling to Velvet.

“Are you okay?” He asked, looking more concerned than you’ve ever seen before.

“Yeah.” You said, barely audible. You looked back over to Velvet. She had her phone out, and a flash came from it.

“I just took your picture. If you ever do anything to (name) again, I’m posting this on all my social media accounts. Your asses will be finished.” She had the boys backed up against the wall. All of them looked ready to piss themselves. The moment she stepped back, they bolted away so fast, you swore you saw a cloud of dust form behind them.

Velvet scoffed, and looked over to you. You could tell she was trying to hide her concern, but she wasn’t doing a very good job. Veneer helped you to your feet.

“What was that? Are they bullies?” He asked. You just nodded. “How long has this been going on?”

You didn’t respond. You were so overwhelmed, that you began to uncontrollably sob. Your siblings were surprised by your sudden burst of emotion, but after a moment, Veneer gave you a gentle hug. Velvet, not knowing how to comfort people, just placed a hand on your back. They both let you cry it out.

~~~~

After the whole event, Velvet and Veneer took you out to eat at your favorite restaurant.

You ate your food slowly, being tired from all the stress and crying. Across the table, Veneer was trying to gather enough courage to bring up the whole bullying thing. Velvet, tired of waiting, spoke up for him.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” She sounded really upset.

“I tried telling people already. That just made them start hurting me.” You said, avoiding eye contact.

Veneer decided to speak as well, now that the subject was brought up. “But we’re your family. We can help you!”

“Look, I’m sorry okay? I was just so scared at what they would do next!” You raised your voice, making them jump a little.

“How bad was it?” Veneer asked after a moment of silence. You looked so traumatized, he almost didn’t want to know.

“They… beat me up a lot. And they make fun of me. I don’t feel safe at school.” Veneer felt his heart break for you. That’s when the anger caught up to him.

He turned to Velvet. “I want you to post those pictures.” His tone genuinely scared you.

“Oh, I already did.” She said, expression unchanging. Veneer gave her an almost menacing smile, and turned back to you. He placed a hand on your shoulder.

“Don’t worry sis, you’re safe now.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~baileypie-writes

[mana-jjk]

we have so little about toges history, I’m wondering what your thoughts are about his life before joining the school?

so sorry for the delay, i just finished finals and almost passed away from the stress ! now walk with me anon, hold my hand and walk with me into the sunset where we can gaze lovingly at the amount of nonsense i will be releasing into this unsuspecting world. please understand i have to preface this by saying that 85% of what will be said here is absolutely based on my own interpretation and headcanons.

trigger warnings: referenced suicide, child abuse, self-mutilation (character deafens themself but not explicitly described), neglect, suicidal tendencies, and basically canon typical violence

that makes it sound a lot worse than it is i promise lol

so first ! let’s establish everything we know canonically that may have some indicator to his childhood

• his first name means “thorn”

• he’s only been speaking in onigiri ingredients since before he could remember.

• the inumaki clan canonically would communicate with their hearts, but supposedly toge disrupted a streak of trying to rid the technique from their clan

• according to the light novel, the inumaki clan is well-known and vaunted, enough where toge is easy to track down and prepare against.

• he was the only one within the first years to be sent on missions alone, is considered the second best student behind yuuta (at the time, maki probably passed him by now), has extremely high athletic ability, and his cursed speech eventually tears his throat apart

• kamo noritoshi is the first to bring up protecting yourself from cursed speech and honestly brought up toge a lot during the school games, i thought toge needed more dynamics with other characters so um yes

• he unintentionally cursed others in his youth, and was adamant that nobara avoid killing

with that being said, likely the from the moment of his birth, toge was already cursing the people around him.

• while cursed speech focuses on words and intentions, i headcanon that sounds and reactions can have a less controlled impact. so when he cries for the first time, the fear and distress in his voice forced his mother into a trance of holding and rocking him until, hours later it stops. it scares his parents, his family, only heightened by the sight of the snake and fangs adorning his face.

• he’s too young to know what he’s doing, every time he cries it’s like a direct command to his mother. every time she snaps out of the trance, she’s afraid and she’s angry and she resents him. his father, not wanting to take the blame of a cursed child, refuses his existence. the members of his clan whisper in the hallways, their eyes hateful and full of blame. after all, it had been so long since a cursed child was born, the jujutsu society had nearly accepted them again in their placid role of acting as windows. his very existence threatened decades of groveling and submissive behavior, he was a threat, like a thorn that burrows until you bleed.

• that’s how his aunt found his mother, deafening herself over his crying form. she inadvertently found his weakness, disabling herself forever just so she wouldn’t fall victim to his curse again. some of the clan would say it was too late, being brainwashed over and over again had left it’s toll. she wanders like a ghost in the hallway. somehow it was always his fault, even when he didn’t have a voice to he heard. later, when they find her unmoving in her room, he’s blamed for that too. he believes them, muffles his cries because even to the people who beat him, he fears cursing them.

• it was always standard practice for the cursed members of his family to speak in safe words. it used to be done so with care, with intention to protect, a willingness to find a language of mutual understanding and respect. but his clan didn’t want him to learn a single syllable, afraid of what he would do, afraid of what he would learn to say. he was never allowed outside unless under direct supervision. never saw a child his age, never allowed to watch anything, never allowed to ask questions.

• in the end, it’s a family servant that takes the responsibility. indifferent to his existence, but making a joke out of it nonetheless. it started because the servant thought it would be funny if he was limited only to muttering “mentaiko,” when he was upset and snowballed from there. long before he ever knew the word for mother or father, he was slurring onigiri ingredients with a raspy, underdeveloped voice with servants who laughed, his clan looked on in disdain, and he never could catch his mother or father’s eye.

• it isn’t long before a member of the clan comes forward to the higher ups, ratting out his existence as if it were a dirty secret to share. a symbol of their loyalty to showcase the cursed child, eagerly awaiting their demands for execution. it wasn’t as if anyone would object.

• against their expectations, the higher ups did not call for his head, instead they called for his voice. as if he were a dangerous weapon laying in wait, they confiscated him from his family who gave him up with utmost eagerness.

• the higher ups, unlike his family, were sorcerers of a somewhat high caliber who knew how to protect themselves against him. even so, they insisted on a binding vow that had become a staple mark of the cursed users in his family. for every command he used, the stronger it was, the stronger the backlash would be. and then, only then, did they teach him to use his cursed speech. he learned the taste of blood as intimately as he knew to fear his own voice. over and over again, he tore his voice apart under their command. he hurts the people he’s against, always falling short of control and resenting himself for it. he accidentally kills one who attacks him without mercy, he afraid, so afraid, and he can’t control it. when it’s over, he hates and burns and bleeds and cries. he’s a child and he hates his voice, he’s a child and all he knows is that he brings nothing but suffering to the people around him. he’s a cursed child, and no one has ever let him forget it.

• it comes to a head when the kamo clan head meets with the higher ups, and leaves the heir to wait. kamo noritoshi has been taken from his mother, and has already spent day after day absorbing what they say in the hopes that he’ll see her again. inumaki toge is a not so subtle secret among the clan heads, and they poison him against the other. whispers of his existence as an outlaw, a danger to them, kept only until his usefulness bleeds out in a future mission.

• kamo sees him hiding in the garden and the rage of losing his mother, the desperation to please his clan, the inability to understand his own emotions lashes out in his tongue. he says his own father’s words, nothing organic yet with all the misplaced rage. he pushes and when there is no response, he wants to hurt him and calls for his own technique. it’s a split second, before he hears the others voice for the first time, disuse and cracked like a corner animal, he cries, ‘stay back!’

• kamo is sent flying, his head hits a tree, and everything is dark.

• the backlash is immense, the kamo clan calls for his head. the higher ups are furious, even as he grips his own bloodied throat. they wanted a weapon, but a weapon that only obeyed the movement of its master. he huddles in a dark room, despite the lack of schooling, he knows what an execution is. he knows what it means for him far better than the schooling other children would receive.

• the interaction frightens kamo, who has never experienced the effects of cursed speech. already in contact with megumi and gojo (as mentioned in the fun facts), he requests that gojo teach him how to protect himself from it.

• surprisingly, that’s what changes everything for toge. the fear of the kamo heir brings forth the wrath of gojo, though not in the way anyone expected. he saves him, much like the way he saved the sorcerers before him. much to toge’s clan displeasure, gojo returns him with a promise to visit every week. it’s a promise as much as a threat to his family.

• they place him in a separate building and reluctantly, under the pressure of gojo do they employ a tutor. he’s behind, but he catches up quickly, thriving in his newfound freedom. he learns to take care of himself, and quickly takes a liking to cooking. on the colder nights, especially when the halls feel too empty, he cooks himself a meal and stares outside, trying to pretend like the silence is a friend instead of a suffocating reminder. he’s a ghost in his clan, resented and ignored, but gojo’s protection is a security blanket.

• he’s too dangerous to ever be in normal school, something even gojo can’t change. but he finds ways to give him peers nonetheless. the kamo heir refuses to be near him again, but he meets megumi a few times in his youth. strangely enough, it is his deadpan, uncaring attitude that brings out the nurturing nature he never knew he had. in his adolescent years, they expose him to panda, who against everyone’s expectation, encourages a mischievous side. gojo was no help in that aspect, who took too much pride in making him smile for the first time with

• he meets maki the summer before their expected first year when she walks out of her family, a spitfire who hides behind iron clad walls and insists she needs no one. but he knows what it feels like to be entirely alone, and something told him that this was her first time truly by herself. they stay in the dorms, despite months to go. panda may have had yaga, but they had no where else to go.

• he can tell quickly she never lived on her own, she eats junk food and stays awake at odd hours, restless in her sleep. he makes extra food initially as a peace offering, and offers her a plate. she turns it down every time but he never stops trying.

• it’s only after he’s sent on a mission that almost went wrong. the higher ups never liked that he escaped, so the moment he became a student, he was sent on missions that left him battered and bleeding. he almost dies but he forgets to be afraid, it’s muted acceptance only undertaken by waking up under shoko’s care. there’s a plate of onigiri on his bedside, and he remembers how the servants used to mock him. maki is half waiting at the door, she sits at his bedside and eats her misshapen work alongside him and it’s enough.

• they’re inseparable after that, and when panda joins them, it feels like everything he ever wanted as a child. quiet nights are disrupted by panda stumbling into his room to watch youtube, lonely mornings broken by maki dragging him onto the field, meals shared between friends who look at him as if he’s worth more than the blood soaked on his hands. the missions don’t stop, his throat is a scarred and jumbled mess. but he has a home now, and that’s enough.

• then yuuta walks through the door, and it’s like seeing the scared little boy toge once was. except, yuuta is afraid of him. just like his family, just like the kamo heir, just like the people he never even met in their society. he doesn’t want to scare him, but he also doesn’t want to leave him alone. part of him wonders if that’s his true curse, to always chase others away, to always upset the balance with his mere existence.

• the first time yuuta calls him kind, an odd feeling of distress suffocates, makes him feel like a liar. but the fear has finally the left the others eyes, not looking at him like a monster or a weapon or an enemy, but someone to admire. he craves it so much it scares him and when their hands linger on a high-five, he realizes how much he doesn’t want to let go.

• when gojo asks him to die for yuuta, the idea of curses and hierarchy never even cross his mind. he was born to die, a binding vow wrapped like a snake around his throat. he’s waited his entire life for it, but dying for yuuta? it ignites a passion he never thought he’d have. so when he sends getou flying, not unlike how the kamo heir did that day years ago, he doesn’t feel self-hatred or fear. instead, there is satisfaction. not just for yuuta, but for maki, for panda. he’d die for them, again and again, because it’s only because of them that he’s still alive.

• he bites back tears when yuuta has to leave, they’re alike in so many ways except for one. when yuuta loves, it’s with bloody nails dragging on the ground in his refusal to leave, gritted teeth and desperation. but when toge loves, it’s at distance, always waiting for it to slip away, always too afraid to chase anything that didn’t end in him bleeding. but he craves, and he wants, and everyday he has to fight not to give chase. he bites his tongue and let’s him go, trying not to let him know how much it burns. but yuuta knows, somehow he always knows despite the few months they’ve had each other.

• he learns to sign for him, sheepish movements still unpracticed but with so much care behind a sheepish grin. he signs every word he says, every word he reads, even along to the videos they watch. he loves yuuta and it scares him, it reminds him of the little boy muffling his cries as his throat shreds to pieces. it scares him because even in his self-hatred, he doesn’t doubt that yuuta would take him blood-soaked and all. that he would somehow see the bloodshed as necessary, the pain that came with his existence as a worthy price instead of an inherent flaw.

• but none of it matters when yuuta board the plane. he knows unspoken words, the only kind he’s ever had. but somehow yuuta hears all of them. they don’t say what they mean, unspoken promises left for the day he comes back. so toge does what he’s done since the day the snake and fangs forever tainted his existence. he stands back and he watches from the window, waiting. but this time, there isn’t silence, there is home.

anyway, i always ramble so much about them, half of it probably doesn’t make sense but. thank you for the ask !! i have so many feelings, if gege won’t give him a backstory, i will. please feel free to send me more questions !! it shouldn’t take so long but jc can i talk a lot 🧍‍♀️

[ave1dragon]

Ok, I got the Guide to the Dragon World and I'm gonna talk about it in full now.

Spoilers if you haven't read the book.

I feel about it the guide the same way everyone else does. Either I or the advertisements and delays hyped up the book too much, and I was expecting more in depth stuff, but the guide in itself is a 10/10.

I like the prolong, as it talks about how dragons lump the tribes into stereotypes and this book is a way to stop that, with stories from all the other tribes. I do wish the annotations from the other dragonets of destiny were more frequent.

The scorching story was fine, but would have been more impactful it we didn't already know the more detailed story.

Pyrrhia:

The maps are cool, very detailed, kind of wish it labeled the old Seawing Island palace, considering it labeled the old Nightwing palace.

Mudwings:

The Mudwing chapter is the most well done, with a story of the stereotypes of the Mudwings and then a note of the true life of the Mudwings, followed by two stories about things we heard about in the books, like the Mudwing Succsession crisis and how they found out about the blood red eggs being fireproof.

The Mudwing Succession story also tells us some extra things about mudwing life: Most Mudwing villages have a school and they have a naming ceremony to name themselves after they are old enough to know about Mudwing life.

Sepia's scroll does show one thing: we actually know a fair bit about Mudwing life, about as much as the Skywings or Sandwings, the problem is we don't spend any time with the Mudwings or their kingdom. Like we didn't know how they named themselves, but we also don't know about the Sandwing full moon festival or Skywing schooling, things that probably wouldn't come up outside of a guide like this.

Seawings:

Queen Coral still sucks. We do find out that Coral allied with Blister because Blister gave the Seawings treasure and battle plans and, most importantly, read and memorized all of Queen Coral's scrolls and said she loved them. Apperently Queen Coral is trying to tell everyone that the Seawings had a big hand in ending the war and were a part of the dragonet's plan.

Moray tells Queen Coral that Starflight might want some Seawing history written by someone other then Coral. I like how in this and Talons of Power, Moray doesn't just worship the grown Coral walks on, but actually disagrees with her sometimes and tries to tell her no.

Queen Coral tells us about some of her scrolls. Some we heard of, some we haven't, they were cool.

We also get some letters between Albatross and Queen Lagoon, they don't really tell us much we didn't know about.

We then get a scroll about learning the beginnings of Aquatic. It was alright, I don't really care about the Seawings all that much, but it was cool.

Turtle was assigned to write about Seawing customs, but he turned it in too late and had to send in a letter from his brother instead. That was rather annoying to me, "oh no we can't learn the full details about Seawing culture for some reason, lets just learn about hatching day events."

Anemone tells Tamarin about how she misses her and the Seawings main weakness is not being able to communicate with other dragons as well. Also we have blind scrolls now!

I don't really care about the Seawings that much, they're probably my least favorite Pyrrhian tribe.

Rainwings:

The Rainwing chapter starts with a story from Kinkajou about Silver, Glory's pet sloth, and how Silver met Glory and helped her. Silver is clearly a stand in for Kinkajou, it also has parentheses around notations of her talking to Moon about how to write a story, and isn't technically very well written. I really like the story. I'm not really someone who wants a new story with Kinkajou in the lead, but it was fun.

We then read the "Dangers of the Rainforest" scroll, with a few annotations from Glory about how the Rainforest isn't so dangerous and the Rainwings can be dangerous if they wanted to. I like how the scroll is one mentioned in the series, specifically The Hidden Kingdom, and is accurate to the description, it barely mentioned the Rainwings themselves.

Handsome tells Glory about the story of the Royal Rainwing Challenges and how they started. The Rainwings used to fight for the throne in the death matches that every other Pyrrhian tribe did, and then they went through eight queens in a month, and the ninth queen said we should stop the death fights, as if we kill all the strongest, smartest Rainwings, we won't have any smart, strong Rainwings left, so they devised different, non deadly challenges. We learn about a few more: The storytelling challenge, the cooking challenge, and the sloth taming challenge.

Jambu then tells us about different colors on Rainwings and what they mean. It also notes the usefulness of this, as if you are in trouble or if you feel bad, your friends will know and can help.

We then learn about how the Rainwings didn't know how to read and write for a while, but they did tell oral stories, either about history or just new, made up stories, and how Starflight realized how creative and deep the Rainwings could be.

However, in the past, the Rainwings could read and interacted with other dragons and got into wars, and then we read the letter about what happened to the Rainwings.

The letter is Python, the great-aunt of the current Rainwing queen, Queen Jacaranda, the granddaughter of Queen Anaconda, the Rainwing queen in Darkstalker's time. Python is upset that Jacaranda is abiding by the peace treaties and dismantling the army and saying that venom can no longer be used on other dragons. The Skywings took a lot of rainforest and killed about half the Rainwings, although Python says that they Anaconda would have fought even if she was the last Rainwing left. This does explain why the Rainwings are pacifists, but doesn't explain why they stopped reading or interacting with other tribes, I guess that was the fault of the queens Grandeur let on the throne, but everyone talks like the Rainwings fell apart a long time ago.

I do like how the Rainwings are written in this book compared to the Hidden Kingdom. The Hidden Kingdom has a problem of saying the Rainwings are bad for things that aren't bad at all, like not having a Rainwing palace, or Suntime, or not eating meat. Hidden Kingdom may have been trying to say at the end that the Rainwings are fine, they just need to still fight if nessesary, but I did not find it very clear.

The guide book tells us that the Rainwing traditions make sense actually, and even thought they can't read, they can still tell stories.

It also seems like the story of how the Rainwings changed was a bit retconned. In the third book, Grandeur said that they used to keep track of the royal eggs, but her daughters were useless, so they opened the throne to everyone, but then the only ones who signed up were bad queens. Earlier Grandeur said that in her day, the Rainwings used camoflauge to hid from tribes who wanted to take their rainforest and she wouldn't mind using her venom on the Nightwings, so I think the original plan was that the Rainwings fell apart with Grandeur, but then it was changed to show how the Rainwings aren't bad, just different.

Nightwings:

I enjoyed Tales of the Nightwings, but it is different from how the novels describe it. We didn't know much about it to be fair; it was Starflight's favorite scroll, it mentioned some stuff about Nightwing schools, and we found out it was all untrue after finding out Nightwings couldn't really read minds or see the future, at the time. This made it sound like it was a scroll about the fake life of the Nightwings, but instead it was a story about a Nightwing who didn't have any powers, got bullied, and then had a vision that saved everyone. This would be fine, but then the comment about none of it being true doesn't make sense. I get that they were talking about the powers in general, but its not written as a true story. I would have liked it more if it was a bunch of supposedly true stories about Nightwing life.

Moon tells Starflight how Nightwing powers work, we know all of it so I'm not gonna go over it.

Glory and Deathbringer talk to Mastermind about why Nightwings think the way they do.

Apparently some of the Rainwings are ready to forgive the Nightwings immediately, I hope these are the ones who weren't imprisoned because otherwise, why. At least he knows he did bad. Mastermind is kind of like Darkstalker in my eyes, a dragon who is bad and did bad things, but because he has a character outside of evil, some people don't think he's bad.

Nightwings are taught from birth that they are the best dragons genetically and because of their powers. Mastermind also seem surprised that the other tribes don't think that way about their tribes, at least not to that extent.

They didn't just ask the Rainwings for help because they knew almost nothing about them, and when they found out about Rainwing venom, they assumed the Rainwings were dangerous and were also afraid to show weakness, since they talked about how strong they were. It's interesting that in both this and Prisoners, most Nightwing take the Rainwings seriously, which makes me think that the Nightwings told everyone Rainwings were lazy to keep everyone away from the Rainwings.

The good of the Nightwings is their love of learning, and how they were the first tribe to develop a written language, and take medicine seriously, and they used to help the other tribes with their visions.

We then get a note from Fierceteeth about the new Nightwing colony, Renewal, for the purposes of starting their own tribe with their own queen instead of merging with the Rainwings.

Fierceteeth seems to try to make herself tougher then she is, talking about how hard it is to live here instead of the Rainforest, as if bragging, and how she says she doesn't care about Nightwing history, but the island was cool. The Nightwings have also become nocternal, waking up late in the day and hunting through the night and then goingg to sleep shortly after sunrise.

Fierceteeth is also interested in the theater, as no one on the island was ever taught anything artistic, just "science, superiority, and survival," which is interesting, the Nightwings are trying to put on a play, and Fierceteeth says she'll send Starflight some tickets if it works.

Also Fierceteeth has eggs, and she says Starflight is invited since he's the only family Fierceteeth has left. She seems excited about said eggs, which is not something I expected of her character. I think it cute and she seems to care about her brother more then she lets on. Also we learn the Skywings have big hatching day parties, probably courtecy of Queen Scarlet.

We then get a scroll from Renewal about Queen Vigilance's glass jubilee. Vigilance brought back the Full moon festival and has musicians play during it. The festival celebrates the gifts of the tribe. Each seer offers a future vision, and the mind readers share the thoughts of adoration to the queen. Queen Vigilance also made an island temple to the first nightwing librarians, and hopes to have the glass jubilee continue.

We can see that in the past, the Nightwings still though of themselves as the superior tribe, both in arts and science. I also like the inclusion of the island temple, no one seems to talk about the Nightwing temple in the discussion of religion. Also I like how this is clearly propaganda, I bet Vigilance's children are bad at playing and no one was thinking of her.

Sandwings:

Yeah, I'm with everyone else on the Sandwing chapter, it's the worst out of the book. It doesn't tell us anything about Sandwing life and culture.

We get a flyer asking if anyone knows about the missing treasure, the Desert Tiara, the Twilight necklace, the Sandwing Septer, and some assorted gold coins with Queen Oasis's face on them.

Then we see a letter from Sunny about Burn's creepy hall, the hall contained the white dragon with no wings that was said to be a Icewing Sandwing hybrid, but Sunny doesn't think so. She doesn't think their a Silkwing, because they only have two wingbuds, so either they're from a non heard of tribe, or an animus enchanted dragon. This is interesting, because I thought the white dragon was a Silkwing until graphic novel 5, when they just looked like a Icewing with no wings.

She also has a dragon bite viper skin, a fish tank full of odd looking fish, a blood red Mudwing egg she planed on destroying on the brightest night, but it never hatched, a Silkwing wing, and the Stuffed Nightwing, who bragged about having an animus object, the dreamvisitor, and wouldn't give it to Burn, so she had him killed, but she could never find the dreamvisitor because they swallowed it.

We did learn about some new treasure and more about the "hybrid" and the wing and how the Nightwing got here and about some more stuff in Burns collection, so there's that.

We then get Smolder's diary, from the first week after the death of Queen Oasis and how he raised Flower. This is my main problem with the chapter, the big story doesn't tell us anything new about the Sandwings. The Mudwing sucession scroll told us about Mudwing schools and how they get their names and royal life. The Skywing scroll of Queen Scarlet's husband told use about Skywing families and Queen Firestorm, but we don't get anything in Smolder's story we didn't already know. If we did, I would be more lenient to this chapter, but it doesn't

Tell us about the Full Moon festival, or the Sandwing animus gifts, or how Jerboa III met Queen Glacier or something. Burn's weirdling tower was a cool idea, but it's not enough.

[laysdimplesareillegal]

Character Development: Chapter 6

Some Days in the Life

Pairing: Monsta X Changkyun x Reader

Word Count: 

Warnings: yandere themes, kidnapping, general delusion, angst

Character Development Masterlist

Everyday Changkyun and I found a new topic to fight about.

Day 2 with Changkyun

I was sat down on the couch flipping through TV channels. Changkyun messed around in the kitchen before coming to stand behind the couch, hands resting on the back. I continued browsing the channels. We fought over the remote when I landed on the news because, “this is boring and depressing, let's watch a drama!”

But I needed something to connect me to the outside world. Changkyun wandered around behind me opening and closing cabinets in the kitchen, probably looking for a snack. And then I saw it—my picture was blown up to fill the TV screen. It shrank down as the newscaster broke down the story of a young woman—me— “proclaimed missing three days ago.”

If I was standing, I would have been knocked off my feet. A fire re-ignited within me; I wanted to turn around and lunge at Changkyun. The police have probably already given up hope looking for me. What was everyone thinking right now—never mind, I knew. At this point, people are thinking I’m buried in some shallow grave. I could envision people crying, and people who barely knew me reminiscing about “that time.” Sure, I’d thought about this before, but I was also so wrapped up in the fact that, at first, I was more or less safe.

“That’s a nice picture of you,” Changkyun muses, “when is that from?” He was sick and callous.

“Did you know this was on the news?” I screamed at him. I didn’t wait for his answer. “This is you! You’re a criminal and this is your crime do you know that? People think I’m dead and you stand here casually asking when I took this picture! You’re soulless!” I felt angry and sad and cursed, and I wanted to run all the way home Surprise, my accounts got hacked or I went camping or some excuse that could cover up being off the grid for 10 days so I wouldn’t have to ever think of Changkyun again, let alone relay the story to someone. Changkyun stood there, arms crossed. Are you done yet was visible on the tip of his tongue while he waited for me to finish.

Day Three with Changkyun: Family

“Just let me tell them I’m still alive!” I begged. “A text or a letter.”

“No.” I imagined Changkyun wearing a cloak and flourishing it while he walked away, I imagine he would be that melodramatic given the chance.

Soon he got sick of me pestering him on this, opting to blow up at me. “Why do you care about them so much? If they really loved you, they would have found you already! I had to search everywhere for you when you left school!” after pointing this bullshit, he stopped yelling. “Besides, no one just runs away for a couple weeks. We’ll go see them once you’re settled here.”

“You mean once you've finished brainwashing me?”

“You’re just scared of change.”

I threw my hands up in frustration, “Stop acting like you know what I’m feeling. I’m scared–” I growled “–of you!”

Promptly, Changkyun delivered a hard slap to my face. “I’m protecting you" I looked at him. “You’re absurd, what was that then?” I held my cheek

“There’s a lot more than that waiting out there for you.”

“Are you threatening me? You make no sense” I yelled. Again, he held up his hand prompting me to shut my mouth.

“I did it to show you what it feels like when you say such mean things to me.” Changkyun had big sad eyes as he soothingly rubbed the hand he hit me with, still red from the impact.

Day Four with Changkyun: Going Outside

“I want to go outside.” I stood in front of him while he lounged on the couch.

“No.” His favorite word.

“Just in the backyard. I’ll stay on the patio.” He ignored me.

Trailing behind him all day, begging, whining–even crying, all amounted to nothing. I felt like a toddler.

“I want to go outside!” I slammed my hand on his desk, not missing a beat, Changkyun grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me down. Losing my balance, I dropped hard onto the desk while he pulled my arm taught to his side. “My niece understands no better than you do.”

It crossed my mind that he’d never mentioned having siblings, nonetheless nieces or nephews, but his family tree wasn’t my first priority at the moment.

“You never even asked if I’d go with you.” I open my mouth, but he cut me off, “I won’t. Maybe if you were good, sweet, obedient for more than an hour I’d reward you and we would go outside. Together.” I debated if this trade-off was worth it. Obedience or House Arrest? He watched me weigh the two in my mind. “We’re a long ways away from going outside. That’s more of a…” he guided my hand back between us “final reward for you.” I jerked my hand back and stood up fully. “Now, stop asking.”

Day Five with Changkyun: Sleeping Arrangements 

“I hate waking up next to you.” I threw out while eating breakfast. He was not impressed, and knew where I was going with this conversation.

“You’re not staying in one of the other rooms.”

“Why?”

“Because we love each other, and when people loved each other, they share a space.”

“I don’t–” Changkyun’s glare cut me off. “I don’t want to live with someone before we’re married.” I deterred.

Changkyun scoffed. “Come on, I know you.”

After that, we ate quietly. It was surprising Changkyun hadn’t exploded already. On cue,

“Why does nothing satisfy you!?” He hit the table. Silverware rattled “I could give you the world and you’d still ask for more.” I cringed, was I really that selfish? “Can’t you let me have one thing?”

“I’m right here.” I murmured sarcastically to myself. He’s asking a lot from a prisoner. He wasn’t meant to hear me.

“And I’m asking you to see me and understand that everything I do is for you. Please stop antagonizing me.”

Then stop being an antagonist I huffed. Maybe I could stand to complain a little less, then maybe I could get one of those rewards he’s always holding over my head.

Day Six with Changkyun: Activities

“I’m bored.”

Changkyun looked up at me from his phone. We sat together on the couch, my legs across his lap as his CD played. He claimed he was responding to work emails, but that couldn’t be all he was doing on his phone. My fingers itched, I craved it like comfort food, like a breath of air after drowning. Of course, he noticed my eyeing his phone. Smoothly, he turned it off and slid it into his sweatshirt pocket.

He rubbed my leg “I can think of a few things to do.” he wore an indecorous smile.

“No.” I pulled my legs in, he playfully tugged them back, yet not moving to do anything else. “What do you even have do here?” I tried to change the subject.

“Well, when I’m not learning about you,” ah yes of course “I work, make music, I work out.”

And I could tell.

While Changkyun typically wore sweatshirts and large baggy hoodies, he also wore his fair share of compression shirts that stretched tight over his chest and arms. Not to mention how they accentuated his small waist. Changkyun saw my eyes trailing to where the zipper of his hood stood, exposing his collarbone but little else.

“Should I take it off, Changkyun challenged.

“Shut up. You never even leave to go to the gym.” I don't want to admit I’d even spared a glance at him.

“Why would I when I have one here?” He l took his phone back out.

“What? Where?” I wasn’t convinced.

“Through the kitchen.”

“The garage?”

“I just wrote that so you wouldn’t try to go in there.”

[yurimultiship]

Fateful Encounter

For this Femslash February, I'd like to talk about ships I like through the lense of particular ship tropes.

But I'm already starting with something that's a bit up to interpretation for the ship I chose, with the notion of "fateful encounter".

When we think of that, there's an aspect of "destiny" to be taken into account. But when looking at it from more of a meta level, we could also perhaps be talking about the big encounter between the two main characters of a story that starts everything and is the basis/center of what the plot will be about.

So today the ship is Ai/Sarasa from Kageki Shoujo!!

Their meeting happens in the first chapter/episode, in front of a beautiful cherry tree. The two characters are about to see whether they'll be admitted to the Kouka academy, a school dedicated to the art of theater and the first step towards joining the Kouka all-female troupe, which references the real life Takarazuka Revue.

What they don't know is that there is a rumored curse about the Kouka cherry tree: anyone who stands in front of it before being admitted will never be a top star!

The scene starts off with Ai (ex-idol with a traumatic past, wants to join Kouka mostly to get away from the presence of men) being attracted by the sight of this lonely, beautiful tree. Someone calls out to her, talking about taking a picture and startling Ai who accidentally let go of her application paper, blown by the wind into the tree.

Ai describes the girl she sees in front of her as having long arms and legs like a graceful gazelle, sparkling eyes full of stars and more importantly being terrifyingly tall!

Enters Sarasa (otaku, wants to join the Kouka revue to play Lady Oscar from Rose of Versailles) who effortlessly picks up the paper stuck in a high tree branch with a beautiful and impressive jump, before turning back to Ai and asking her to take photos of her under the cherry tree so she can send them to her grandpa later. This leaves Ai quite baffled (since she probably feared someone was wanting to take her photo, as a former idol), especially with Sarasa being very, very energetic and taking poses for way more than one picture.

Of course, they are then admitted to the school. And of course, they end up being roomates at the Kouka dormitory! It's like fate is pushing them together or something, to Ai's horror because she is looking for peace of mind and can't really deal with Sarasa's bombastic personality at this point.

So it will take a little bit of time for Ai to warm up to Sarasa and for Sarasa to get past the barriers Ai has between her and other people. But despite being initially annoyed by Sarasa's antics, it's clear that Ai is also fascinated by her from the get-go. An attraction that will lead her to find new purposes in life.

While Sarasa does have a bit of a complicated boyfriend relationship with a secondary character, her and Ai are still very shippable. Sarasa references some yuri-flavored work that makes it feel like she could be into girls too and Ai especially is so easy to interpret as having feelings for Sarasa.

Outside of the cherry tree curse, there might not really be any in-story association of their encounter with "fate" but it still has such a great vibe of a life-changing meeting and makes for a beautiful and impactful first encounter, "romantic" in its aesthetic but also with a side of comedy that will stay present in their relationship. And the development of it that comes after that is as enjoyable, some of the content in the manga going past what the anime adapted even shaking things up between them in interesting ways!! From that very first meeting on, they are full of surprises.

[dimonds456-art]

vent art below the cut, as well as an explanation for it. it's a mess on purpose. read the tags.

Starting off positive, here's how I draw myself now :) Style improvement! And my mustache hairs are growing in and one of them is over a centimeter long and it's my pride and joy.

okay now onto everything else. fucking help me. /ns

Gonna start with the butterfly imagery, since it's a reoccurring theme when I talk about my disabilities. The butterfly is because of my Graves Disease, which is a subgenre of hyperthyroidism. What's that? Uh basically there's a gland in your throat called the "thyroid" that's shaped like a butterfly, and it's responsible for your ENTIRE METABOLISM, and mine decided to do cocaine one day and never stopped. This results in increased heartrate, shaky hands, dizziness, and an eye disease where your eyes swell and can make you go blind if not treated.

(and no mine is not currently being treated so. :) )

I've had Graves since middle school, and I will for life. For reference of how bad it got before I got treated after 6 months of suffering, if I ran around outside for 5 minutes my heart rate could get up to 220 BPM. Which can kill you. Somehow I only ever saw stars once.

The next imagery I wanna point out is the layers on me. I show some things as brighter, and there's two layers like that- a bright one and a much dimmer one, which is why I kept this a sketch. The bright one is the surface-level disabilities, such as joint weakness, my eye disease, and my swollen thyroid. The dimmer one is my brain and skeleton. I have never actually broken my bones, but for some reason these days, joint weakness has me and they'll just fucking stop working sometimes for no goddamn reason.

The diamonds on my shirt is obviously a reference to my name, "Dimonds456." The design was actually made by my abuser, and so I actually am starting to have some second thoughts about using this particular design despite how much I love it, thus the shattered idea. Plus, diamonds don't break- they shatter. I'm about to shatter, too, so it's just like me fr.

After that, the text all around me. There are three layers. Let's talk about the black ones first. Those are all my disabilities. That's it. To make it easier to read, they're:

Autism

Anxiety

PTSD

Mental regression (probably because of all the other mental shit I'm dealing with)

Depression

ADHD

Weakness in joints

Inhaler as needed

Tires easily

Abuse

Graves Disease

On meds for life (methimazole literally keeps me alive)

Eye disease

Prone to falling

Eating disorder: ARFID ?????

Asthma

Audio processing disorder

Trauma

:,)

Then, the blue layer. The blue and red layers and kinda having a conversation with each other, with blue being my inner monologue and the red ones being still that, but more intrusive and hopeless. The blue thoughts range from "I can't do this" to "I want to," to "Wait, this is too much" to "STOP" to "THIS IS TOO MUCH" and various stuff like that.

The red texts are much, much more negative. "Running out of time." Never safe. I will never feel safe." "My own body wants me DEAD." "NEVER SAFE." "WHAT IS SAFETY?!" these are my intrusive thoughts, and... yeah. My anxiety and trauma already make me feel like I can never be safe in the spaces I'm in, so when I do actually feel safe with the people or location I'm in, my body's there to remind me that no, I'm not. Because I could literally just die at any goddamn moment.

Which brings me to the scythe. The Reaper. He's close. I'm running out of time. To do what? I don't know, live? Impact people? Fucking exist?

The clock shows that, too.

Finally, the dialogue bubbles. The straw that broke the camel's back in terms of me making this art. My recent doctor visit. I'm trans. I'm a demiboy who just wants to figure out what my fucking gender is. I know I want top surgery, but the dr says I HAVE to start HRT in order to get the surgery I want, which is enbyphobic. I've talked about it with other trans people, and we all agree what the dr told me was fucked.

The other bubbles are other things people have said to me. Particularly, I wanna talk about the "are you ACTUALLY disabled?" one because so so so so so many people have fucking asked me that and I want to scream. Like gee, I dunno, maybe it's all in my head. Maybe I'm normal. Maybe my graves disease was all a FUCKING DREAM. The eating disorder I'm getting now that not even the doctors are sure what the fuck it is wasn't real, I'm just a picky eater and I am just a fucking attention-seeking masochist. SURE. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME.

Shut the fuck up.

The butterfly is actively choking me. I'm loosing weight. I've felt more anxious recently than I ever have in my fucking life. I have a goddamn eating disorder where I physically CANNOT EAT. It sounds like ARFID but it's also not quite that, I'm in a weird grey area.

i'm 20 years old.

Ever since I got diagnosed with Graves in middle school, I've felt like my existence was defying something. Like I was supposed to die. I also had intense depression at the time, so that definitely added to it, but yeah. Then more happened. I had my first fall. I got put on the wrong dosage and nearly got killed. Struggled to breathe. My eyes tear up more often due to the disease, and I have an aversion to light I didn't have before. The eating disorder. Not to mention my bad knee, weakness in joints, pain in hips, ect.

It just keeps piling up. More, and more, and more, and more disabilities appear and try to catch me by surprise. I got deathly ill last winter. I quit college this year because of the trauma of being outside while on my wrong dosage from last summer. But this time, I'm fucking freezing when I'm anywhere except in the sun, which still makes me feel viscerally uncomfortable, because of whatever the fuck is happening with my eating disorder.

I'm so fucking tired. I don't know how much farther I can go. I'm running out of time. I can't handle another disability. I just can't. If I wind up getting appendicitis or something I'm running back home to my parents and staying there because at least they make me feel SAFE.

I'm not safe. I will never be safe inside this body. I will never feel safe because of my anxiety and trauma. I'm reaching a boiling point where it's starting to spill over onto those around me and I hate it. I am aware that this post is not helping that at all. But... I just don't wanna suffer in silence anymore. I'm tired. I want to be a good memory, but I fear my time is coming and I don't have much more "memory" to make.

I want to be wrong. Please, stars, let me be wrong. Let this all be in my head. Let this all be one big misunderstanding on my part. Please. Please let me wake up and realize that this was all a fucking nightmare.

I can't look at this screen anymore. My eyes hurt and my wrists are starting to give out.

[featherlesswings]

I turned 39 today, and I’m feeling like I should share some wisdom.

Be silly. Don’t let the brain worms win: you are allowed to be silly and enjoy yourself. Probably nobody will laugh maliciously, if you’re not still in school, but if they do - that’s on them. They are jealous that you are free.

Wear what makes you happy (as long as it’s weather appropriate and covers what’s necessary for the venue.) Don’t let yourself get stuck in a “same outfit every day because if I change my style, someone will NOTICE and they will SAY SO,” loop. Also don’t let the old rules about these bodies being allowed to wear this kind of clothes and those bodies under no circumstances being allowed to wear that kind of clothes rule your life. Wear. What. You. Like. The worst that can happen is someone will be rude (and that just means they’re not worthy of your awesomeness,) and the best thing that can happen is someone who IS stuck in the old rules will see you looking amazing in the body you have, and think, “oh, I can do that too!”

Likewise with hair. If you’re not in some situation that restricts what your hair looks like, like a religion or a branch of military or some fancy office job where they have super strict dress codes : don’t be afraid to try something daring with your hair. Dye it the color you’ve always dreamed of. Grow it long, if you want. Cut it short, and discover your real face. If you wear your hair in a ponytail all day every day because you don’t like it to be down, but you’re afraid it won’t look good short : just get it cut! You can ask a stylist what they think would look good on you. It grows back, and it’s just hair! Hair is like fingernails. It’s not that big a deal.

Jump in puddles! Preferably with rain boots on, because I’m terrified of nematodes, but barefoot every once in a while is okay too. Doesn’t matter your age. Especially if you have kids, jump in puddles with them! I made one of the best friends I’ve ever had because she saw me jumping in puddles with my babies.

Trust your own instincts. Even if your whole life, you’ve been told not to believe what you see, not to trust your own mind. If something feels wrong, act accordingly. Don’t let the rules of polite society keep you from protecting yourself or pulling out of an uncomfortable situation. Trust yourself.

If you can, if it’s available to you, take care of your mental health. Whether it be therapy, meds, reading texts about similar experiences, meditation, whatever. Praying doesn’t count, I’m sorry.

Ask for help. If you have social anxiety or feel yourself getting overstimulated or know your own limits - tell a friend, ask them to help. I’m terrified of restaurants with overhead menu boards. My husband knows what I like, so when it’s too much, I have him order something he thinks I would enjoy. Don’t be ashamed to look up specifics online before you go somewhere you’re unfamiliar with, so you can have a plan.

Before making a decision that makes a big impact on your future, think about the long term. Don’t get a pet or conceive a child on a whim.

Tell your friends you love them, often. Show them, in whatever way is your way.

You will lose friends, over the years. It’s going to be okay. Some people are only meant to share a part of your life, not see it to the end.

If it’s available to you, get out in nature from time to time. Unplugged. This one is hard for me, because I’ve got to have headphones stimulating my brain all the time, but it’s important to let your mind loose from time to time, and being outside and being quiet can help with that.

Eat before you go shopping. Sounds simple, but it will save you money and frustration. Trust me. Honestly, eat before you leave home whenever possible, unless you’re going out to eat.

I know most Gen Z and Alpha folks already have this worked out, but you do not owe the world your immediate assimilation into the 1950s cardboard cutout life. My young women & AFABs : you do not have to get married and start having kids to be taken seriously as an adult. Those of you raised evangelical will know exactly what I mean. Take your time exploring who you are, who you want to be, and what you want out of life, before tying yourself to someone who might ask you to make yourself smaller and put aside your dreams to make room for theirs.

Do art! Even if it’s bad! Especially if it’s bad! Draw on envelopes & napkins! Get cheap paints and go wild! Water color sets & watercolor paper are not expensive. Doesn’t matter if it’s dollar store stuff, or even thrift store craft supplies. Make something with glitter. It doesn’t have to be something someone would buy. Art for the fun of making art, in my opinion, is just as important as moving your body every day if you can.

I will end with my favorite quote from Space Mom, may she rest in moonlight.

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do and eventually the confidence will follow.”

- Carrie Fisher

[medicdepressive]

Some thoughts

Feeling embittered by my psychiatrists concerted effort to understand and treat my manic episodes even though this is literally the treatment for my bipolar disorder that I have been betting my bottom dollar on. Also, simultaneously being so fascinated by the logistics of my treatment that I explicitly detail what a typical manic episode looks like for me so she can explain the processes of coming to her prescriptive suggestion.

I am mostly grappling again with the notion that my most effective treatment essentially involves my agreement and compliance with letting something I have learned to love (hypomania, for the .. most part) go. My priority is not being so sad, and logically, I've known for a while that this was ultimately an internal negotiation I would come into.

However, as I explained the correlation between my symptoms and my creative expression, my psychiatrist suggested that she could understand why some people with bipolar disorder would really hold that part of their brain close to them. She suggested that ideally, a lowdose of the Latuda would not have any impact on this - though it is hard to say about this sort of thing, the effects of anti-psychotic medication on creativity. I feel like it would be difficult to measure because individuals have such complicated relationships with their creativity, and it might be hard to really effectively isolate the independent.

We did get to kiki about how Thorazine mostly contributed to the decline in funding for state psychiatric hospitals into outpatient practices. It was the first anti-psychotic and was released in 1951. Its huge impact on the treatment of those with what we now refer to as schizophrenia spectrum disorders convinced a majority that these patients could reintegrate into society and live a manageable life. I am also going back onto Latuda, which was the anti-psychotic that I was on the longest and high school, and starting at a lower dose ingested at a different time frame. I combed through my medical records to try to remember what symptoms led to me stopping that tx. I found that I had been on the maximum dose and felt very numbed out and struggled with excessive sleepiness (which I already struggle with chronically now, so who is to say if it is the chicken or the egg?). I was also not eating well at the time and was supposed to be ingesting with a fatty 350kcal for the dose to work most effectively, but all is to say that we are dosing before bed (working with the symptom) and starting low, which does not require me to pay such attention to meal type when taking.

Anyway, I'm back into 100gecs‼️

They feel like the musical representation of my mental illness and fuel me to get work done in a similar BPM‼️

This is supposedly a study blog, but I do feel like my experience in my own tx is some really cool learning material to think critically about. I also learned that a theory often leaned on in schitzophrenia spectrum disorders is that if paliperidone (Invega) works for somebody, haloperidol (Haldol) will also probably work really good for them, too. And vice versa. The implication of this is that you might be able to treat patients on halodol or invega with one 1 month, 3 months, or even 6 moth depo injection of Invega!

Serenity be with you,

Eden

PS: I ALSO STRAIGHT UP ASKED HER IF SHE EVER USED CHEM IN HER CAREER AND SHE SAID JUST REALLY WHEN CONVERTING BETWEEN KG AND AND GRAMS SO LIKE....

She also said if I don't get into an American medical school to just get the hell out of here and go to the Caribbean or something because attending med school outside of the US has no weight on where I go for my residency which like. Duh. But thanks sm queen that snapped me out of it u r so good at ur job! 💅

[diary-of-my-devil]

October 3rd, 2015

I was a few weeks shy of 14 and I’d had a hell of a year. My aunt’s death had been a wave of ice cold water on my system and my feelings were still frozen when I got the news that my grandpa had died. I didn’t cry when my dad came into my room to tell me the news. I just said “oh, okay” and continued on with whatever I was doing. 

I think it was a Sunday night when it happened. If it was, it was on the 20th of September. I always mix the date up, though. My reason for believing it was that day, specifically a Sunday, was because I remember going to school and telling my friends “yeah, we have Friday off of school, but I’ll be spending it at a funeral”. I was in that ICU waiting room eating Burger King onion rings hours before.

I think my mom was thinking heavily about going to a grief camp after my aunt, who you should know was not technically my aunt, but a close family friend, had died. My sisters were at the Detroit Zoo with my grandma when that had happened, my mom calling her to tell her the news and beg her to not tell them. My grandma is a bit of a loud mouth, in all honesty.

My grandpa’s death was sort of the defining factor for it, the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. After he had passed, after the funeral and the absolutely awful experience of that, she had brought up to me and my sisters that she wanted to help us, and that the zoo in my city was holding one for all ages and that she would like for us all to go.

I didn’t want to go. I really didn’t want to go. I was dealing with crippling anxiety that was not yet diagnosed, let alone treated, and insurmountable grief. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about it with a ton of strangers. I don’t know how I would’ve spent the time if I hadn’t gone, but I would’ve had more fun with that.

Mom threw out information about this grief camp for days leading up to it. How we would probably get free things (god, I’m a sucker for free shit), how they would provide food, how it would only be for a few hours. I didn’t agree to go until that morning. Ultimately, I wanted to make my mom happy.

It did make her happy, by the way.

By the way, I regret going.

It was October 3rd in the middle of Michigan. Apparently kids and parents from around the state had all come along to attend this event. It was held outside, under tents and while it was windy I think they had space heaters in the tents with us. We were split into age categories. I was allowed in the 14-17 group despite still being 13, because I was close enough. I was basically already 14, it just wasn’t official for another couple weeks, you know?

That’s when and where I met him.

There was nothing remarkable about him and his appearance. He looked like any other teenage boy in Michigan during that time. He had dirty blonde hair in what looked like a slightly grown out buzzcut, wore a hoodie and dark blue jeans with sneakers. He really wasn’t remarkable. I went to school with countless other guys that matched his style.

Apparently I was remarkable, though. To him at least.

It was weeks before I was able to cut all my hair off. I had to keep my long hair until after my aunt’s wedding, because it was long and beautiful and she had already hired someone to do our hair and had the consultation. I instead had it hidden in a bun underneath a beanie, grown out side bangs from my wannabe scene-kid haircut sticking out of the FBI hat I had gotten in DC months before.

I was wearing a leather jacket, I don’t recall what was underneath it though. For bottoms I was either wearing leggings or skinny jeans with slightly heeled boots. I don’t remember much about what I wore.

While he wasn’t remarkable, I knew something was going to happen. I don’t believe in love at first sight, but I believe you know when someone is going to have a large impact on your life from the first look. Whether or not it’s going to be good or bad was revealed in time.

We stuck by each other for a majority of the time, along with another girl in our age group. When I saw my mom later in the day she had looked relieved, that I had made some friends. We had exchanged numbers at the end of the event and all went our separate ways, I went home while they had gone to the cities they had come from.

Hours later, while I was out shopping with my grandma, I had gotten a call from a number that wasn’t saved in my phone. At the time, I didn’t have experiences that brought me dread at a mysterious phone number, so I answered. It was him.

I’m not naming him yet, simply because I don’t know if I want to. If I want to put his name out there and be at risk of legal action if someone puts the pieces together and identifies him, or use the nickname I’d used for him online when I’ve talked about these experiences.

We had small talk, most of which I can’t remember. I remember my grandma wondering who I was talking to. I recall him boldly asking me out, over the phone when we had only met just hours before. I remember telling him I didn’t know who or what I was into. That I didn’t know if I liked boys or girls or both.

He said that made me sexier. 

Like I had said previously, I was a doormat. Still kind of am, to be honest. I didn’t know how to say no anymore, considering I had already had my first experience with saying no and it being completely ignored. So, I did what any normal confused, sad teenager would do, and I said yes.

He wasn’t my first boyfriend, and not my last, but fuck he’s one of the more memorable ones for all of the wrong reasons. But we’ll get to that later. 

My first boyfriend was a friend I had since preschool. His family owned a bowling alley in a nearby town and he was a bit spoiled, if not certainly more wealthy than I was. He had a trampoline AND a pool! It was an easy relationship, despite my mental struggles during that time.

I had later found out he only asked me out because he was too nervous to ask out my friend, but we lasted about a year. I don’t regret the relationship and the times I spent at his house, with his family and our friends playing video games or fucking around on Omegle. I cringe, yes, but it’s not something I regret.

There was a boy I dated for a couple weeks not long after my breakup from my first boyfriend. A friend of mine, although not nearly as long as I had been with the first. He’s the one that didn’t know what the word “no” meant, but this is not about him. Yes, I do regret it.

So I had some experience with dating before him. Not much, not as much as many of my peers did, but this wasn’t my first time dating someone. This was different, yes, but not entirely new. While my two previous boyfriends had each lived a walking distance away, he was in a completely different town.

We were two young high schoolers who couldn’t drive, so it was going to be a semi-long distance relationship. Did I have feelings for him? No, not really, we had met and become friends just hours ago, but why not give it a shot? It couldn’t hurt, right?

Right?

So October 3rd of 2015 was when this whole shitshow of a relationship began. I regret this day more than any other. I wish I had stayed home, rotting in my bed with the lights off. I wish I was comfortable with letting him down gently. I wish I had never met him.

[apompkwrites]

Hi! I absolutely love your reader impact series! It's all so cute and fluffy! Thank you for starting this series and I hope your weeks go well-- considering school starts for you soon, goodluck!

If it isn't too much to ask for, and if you haven't done this yet, what would the characters reactions be once they find out that they could put you in their teapot? What would their teapot setup look like with you in it? :D

Childe, Kaeya, Albedo, Xiao & Diluc for this! (You could just do Childe, Kaeya and Xiao if it's too much :D)

reader impact || teapot designs

series masterlist characters: albedo, childe, diluc, kaeya, xiao genre: fluff contains: teapot designs :D, i'm not good at designing things so i have no idea what i'm doing summary: let's take a dive into our streamers' teapots, shall we? notes: i wish i knew how to design things :((

albedo -

albedo's teapot would be very artistic, obviously.

since he's an artist, he takes great care in how his teapot looks.

i'm talking very aesthetic-based and organized.

you know those teapots that are somehow perfect? like they're the ones who you go to for advice on how to decorate your teapot?

that's him.

he'll often have streams just reorganizing his teapot because he goes through different phases.

he, surprisingly, does not lose interest in it.

he'll just keep changing the inside and figure out new ways to glitch different landscapes into each other to make something beautiful.

but then a new update comes!

and he can put people in it!!!!

AND HE CAN PUT YOU IN IT!!!!!!

he will immediately change his teapot to fit you.

you'll get your own room in the mansion, your own workspace, your own... well, everything!

he wants his teapot to look perfect for when he moves you in.

you'll probably be put in your workspace, just like how he imagines you would be.

before his streams, he'd actually go in and change your position in the lab.

and when he turns on the stream, he'll act like you moved in between the time he turned off the game :))

"oh, look chat. i wonder what they're working on today."

childe -

god help his chat.

they hate his teapot with a passion.

at first, he made the outside a fighting ring type of deal.

which was fine! his chat completely expected that from him!

but inside...

is just literal chaos.

he'll put traps everywhere.

like you know that vid of childe being put in the shack and them calling it the "golden house"?

that's his teapot but they're everywhere.

everyone is trapped.

no one is safe.

except for you, of course!

the new mechanic of being able to put you into his teapot is the only reason he makes it look nice.

he'll still keep all of his traps for characters, don't get me wrong.

but then the interior of his mansion is immaculate.

everything is perfect and catered to you.

all of your favorite sets are there and he'll make his own sets that he thinks you'd enjoy.

you are the only reason his chat is able to stand his teapot design.

diluc -

just like albedo, he takes care of his teapot.

he's not going to constantly redecorate it, though.

he just likes a nice, neat design.

he'll try to make at least one room bar-inspired considering his real life job as a bartender.

even before you come out, he's unconsciously creating a winery inspired by the one you own in-game.

any blueprint that he thinks would be at your winery is in his teapot.

but other than that, it's a relatively nice teapot.

not one that would inspire any tutorials, but it's nice enough to where some people wish they had that kind of eye for designs.

when you're released in a new update to be able to be in the teapot, he'd probably reorganize a bit.

change the interior to fit more of your taste since he claims, "this is their mansion."

you read that right.

he will literally give you ownership of the mansion.

this is no longer diluc's teapot.

this is yours.

he'll try and design it the way he thinks you'll like it :)

kaeya -

he's a bit of a mix between childe and diluc.

controlled chaos.

that's the best way to explain his teapot.

for people who don't know him or haven't watched him long, they'd probably think he just tossed a bunch of stuff around to fill the room.

but long time fans know that he had a strategy.

and what is that strategy?

honestly they don't know.

most of them think it's just to mess with them.

like, there's a very vague theme that he stuck to for each room.

and then there's just?? like?? a bed??? surrounded by chairs???

sir, what are you doing?

but he's smug and confident so they just stop questioning it.

when he learns he can put people into the teapot, it's even worse.

except for you <3

just like childe, he'd make traps for everyone else.

especially if you have a playable character that you dislike.

they get the worse prison he can make.

but you're treated like royalty <3

only the best for his sweet cavalry captain :D

xiao -

xiao's teapot is... surprisingly comfy.

most people would think he'd try to make his teapot as edgy as possible.

but no!

far from reality, actually.

he definitely craves a more comforting atmosphere.

he's very much influenced by liyue's design.

he'd probably use the liyue furnishings exclusively.

but him and his chat love how soft the teapot makes them feel!

almost like home.

anyway, when the update that allows him to put you in the teapot comes, he couldn't be more excited.

he actually asks his chat whether or not he should change the way his teapot looks to fit your style.

but, since his chat has already seen what you have to offer in the teapot, tells him to do whatever he wants.

and he actually leaves most of it alone!

he wants you to feel as comfortable as he does :)

"they deserve it."

like albedo, he'd probably move you around the teapot.

sometimes you'll be inside.

sometimes you're outside.

bonus: out of everyone, he's the one to utilize the garden system just for aesthetics.

he likes to think you'd enjoy a small garden outside of your home :)

[makeste]

BnHA 326: What’s up Kids, It’s Me, Your Old Pal Stain

Previously on BnHA: Ochako shamed the U.A. Clown Mob into letting Deku go back inside his own fucking school by giving them an hour-long speech about how not to be humongous dickheads. Kouta and Gigantic Fox Lady saved the manga by being the only ones brave enough to give Deku a hug. Shouto was all “man, all this togetherness sure does remind me of that promise you made that we would handle Touya together which you immediately bailed on, doesn’t it, Dad.” Aizawa was all, “for the one and a half people out there who thought that my losing an eye and a leg might actually make me less sexy, I’m very happy to prove you wrong.” All Might was all, “[standing outside the U.A. fortress alone in the rain talking to someone or something??].” Like seriously, what was up with that though.

Today on BnHA: All Might is all “here I am in Kamino having a belated mid-life crisis because Deku abandoned me and I’m a terrible mentor and everything sucks and I hate myself.” Stain is all, “don’t make me come over there and give you a ten page speech about why you’re still the goat while menacingly holding you at swordpoint the entire time” because idk if you knew this guys, but Stain is pretty crazy actually. Anyway so he does that, and then All Might gets all emotional, and then the lady from chapter 92 shows up and gives All Might’s statue an encouraging pep talk, and then Horikoshi is all “and it even stopped raining lol can you believe this shit I’m not even a little bit subtle,” and he really isn’t. But I still got emotional anyway, because seeing people reassure All Might that everything he’s struggled for his entire life hasn’t been in vain just got to me okay. Horikoshi knows I am weak to the All Might feels and he just goes for the jugular every time, that bastard.

lmao. “in the neverending downpour, All Might is...” yeah, thank you, glad we’re getting right to that then

“All Might is driving 95 mph in his busted ass car in the pouring rain, is what he’s doing.” huh

so basically a day or two after his adopted child refused to accept the handmade bento that he packed with love, my man is out here acting like he’s got nothing to live for anymore. this sure bodes well for certain prophecies on which the clock is still ominously ticking down

his fucking face though omg. is it weird that I’m kind of hoping more people ambush him just because I think it’d be funny to see them get their asses kicked like the last bunch

(ETA: or maybe he will just stand there openly not giving a fuck and basically daring them to stab him!! get it together please All Might.)

side note, “anti-hero supporters” is such a strange way of saying “people who hate heroes”, which I’m assuming is what they actually wanted to say?? this makes it sound like it’s a group that really loves antiheroes. “these Hannibal stans have been a real menace lately. time to go deal with them”

ha ha ha, fucking ouch

are you really gonna do it Horikoshi you bastard. are you really going to let that be the final encounter between the two characters whose relationship you once described as the vertical axis of the entire fucking story. are you really gonna?? huh??

huh

you’re telling me you were driving 112 mph and you still didn’t get there in time. you’re losing your touch old man. lol Todo’s ice is almost fully melted already, how late were you

(ETA: so apparently this is taking place after the end of chapter 325, meaning he went to U.A., hung out for a bit, saw the kids come back with his bedraggled half-dead protégé in tow, watched as they shamed the civilians into some long-overdue character development, and then was all “welp, time to go argue with the hero-hating faction or something because I’m feeling useless.” and Edge just let him go, just like that. though to be fair I have to imagine it’s pretty hard to say no to All Fucking Might.)

also belated lol at the fact that the kids were all “yeahhhhhhh we are definitely not gonna touch that thing, let’s just leave it here, he doesn’t need it anyway.” probably the right call to make since they couldn’t get a hazmat team on such short notice

fuck. ha ha ha fucking ouch part two

All Might please put that thing down before you get gangrene. also yeah, you dropped the ball, good for you to acknowledge it. nobody’s perfect and you did your best. but yeah you could have handled a lot of things completely differently. but I still love you

is Horikoshi really putting this flashback here. are you serious. what kind of fucking sadist

look, I swear I’m not one of those people that runs up and down the street shouting “DEATH FLAG!!” at every third panel lol. but this shit screamed Death Flag when we originally got it, and it’s screaming DEATH FLAG!!! even more now. like with the capital letters and exclamation marks and all. and that’s just a fact. I don’t like it but that’s how it is

ffkdjslk

“DID YOU READ THE SIGN??!” Horikoshi asks while zooming in maniacally because he thinks we’re blind or something. lol what

-- though actually, it only just occurred to me that this sign is actually written in English. I never really paid attention up until now and had been assuming it was written in Japanese and translated by the scanlators, but the writing here is clearly part of the original image. anyway so maybe that’s why he’s zooming in?? just to make sure everybody pays attention lol

okay fuck this

see, this is the whole problem right here. once again All Might is all on his own. Deku’s self-destructive angst spiral was fortunately brought to a grinding halt because he actually has support from his friends and family and teachers and classmates. but All Might never had that same kind of support, and it’s made all the difference between the two of them, and not in a good way. Katsuki wasn’t wrong when he said All Might and Deku were both cut from the same cloth. but now when it’s All Might’s turn to go all “I WALK A LONELY ROAD~~” once again, there’s nobody in sight

just, after forty plus years of him carrying this torch, I just wish someone would finally come along to let him know he doesn’t have to. all those things that he wanted to say to Deku are also things that he needs and deserves to hear himself. Aizawa was making a little progress there, but now he’s got his sad zombie cloud boyfriend situation to deal with, and we can’t expect him and his perfect hair to solve all our problems. someone else has gotta step up

oh my god

“you rang?” never mind I take it all back sob

omg why am I laughing. shit

this man truly has the best PR game in the series. we were truly convinced he was gonna suddenly become a good guy and defend All Might against the other villains or some nonsense. as if this wasn’t the same man who decided on a whim that Iida Tensei deserved to be paralyzed, and that his fifteen-year-old brother deserved to die for daring to be upset about it

lol even All Might is all “I genuinely never saw this coming” lmao

just want to say, for the record, I have always harbored a very sensible hatred toward Stain. feeling very vindicated right now. good job Past Me

adsfklwkfsdwgkj

ffffwefjslkg. ghsdlkg. dsfkkkslkjldwkjrg

STAIN: heard you talking shit old man

ME: smh that’s what I thought you’d say you dumb fucking Stain

STAIN: how dare you talk about All Might that way

ME: gljfljgk

(ETA: in hindsight I have no idea how I didn’t clue in sooner that he didn’t recognize him -- or, well, ~didn’t recognize~ him, to be more accurate lol. I think it was the whole “is that a slight against the heroes?” thing that threw me. Viz’s translation makes it much clearer that he’s offended on behalf of All Might specifically, not heroes in general. anyways.)

sob. so All Might is all “yeah I don’t blame you for not recognizing me in this sweet leather jacket”

good thing he still knows how to do this party trick

A+ reflexes on Stain’s part presumably pulling the sword back a few inches to keep this dumbass from impaling himself with his whole pufferfish routine. can you imagine if that was the gruesome death Nighteye foresaw. and he was just too embarrassed to say anything

lol anyways guess I was wrong about Stain everyone

way to fucking go, Past Me. you really biffed this one

oh wait

Stain sure is one wacky rollercoaster ride

oh fuck me lol I forgot how much I did not miss this

(ETA: “this here is the sacred ground where All Might gave up the last of his power and turned into a shriveled old man!! please ignore the part where I admit to knowing all about that, and yet pretend not to recognize said man when he’s standing two feet in front of me.”)

Past Me, I know we’ve had our ups and downs these past ninety seconds, but I’m really starting to think you were on to something. this dude has always been kind of insufferable. always acting like his high horse is a fucking giraffe when it’s actually a Shetland pony

dammit now he’s got All Might going off on a depressed monologue

oh my god my heart

shit

why the fuck does that hit so hard. he became a hero because he couldn’t bear to just sit back and let bad things happen to people who didn’t deserve it. I mean that’s basically the same as every hero ever, right? so why does it still hit so fucking hard every single time though. what is it about seeing someone so determined to stand up for other people and fight on their behalf. it just never loses its impact no matter how many times I see that determination mirrored in so many of my favorite characters

“I wanted to make the world a better place.” omg. but you did, though. like seriously, I feel like people are always dogging on him for not being 100% perfect, and fandom really doesn’t give him enough credit for everything he still managed to accomplish. this man came of age at a time when Japan was by all accounts a total shitshow, and singlehandedly managed to bring about an era of peace that lasted for four fucking decades. can you imagine having peace for that long?? that’s longer than I’ve been alive. shit

and he gave people hope. he inspired them and protected them and made them feel safe. and no, he couldn’t save everyone, because he’s only one fucking dude (and also because the whole time AFO was also out there desperately working to undermine him so that he could keep preaching his narrative of “heroes are bad actually”). but you know what he did do, is inspire multiple new generations of heroes who, if they can all manage to work together, will finally be able to accomplish everything he never could

so yeah. forty years of peace, and inspired the “that’s how we all became the greatest heroes” generation -- that’s a fucking win in my book. talk about having a net positive impact on the world. lol anyways now I’m all fired up and ready to fight anyone who tries to talk any shit about you, All Might

“but what if I talk shit about myself” okay listen up All Might I’m gonna need you to try just a little bit harder to work with me here okay. please calm down and stop blaming yourself for every single bad thing that’s ever happened in the world. do you remember that time Bakugou was blaming himself for Kamino, and you gave him a hug and told him it wasn’t his fault, and that he was only a boy, and that even though he was strong, even strong people can struggle with the burdens they place on themselves, and that you were sorry for not seeing that earlier? do you remember all of that? that’s what I want someone to tell you too, dammit. anyway please stop breaking my heart please and thanks

wtf

are you dead All Might

um

I don’t even have the slightest idea what’s happening lol

oh snap did he grab him so they could hide??

hold the fucking phone. don’t tell me this person in the background with the umbrella is here to actually do something decent??

oh my godddd

and here come the feels. oh boy. okay don’t mind me, I’m just gonna sit here sobbing over this fictional lady and her simple act of kindness in this weekly shounen manga that I care about way too much

FUCKING DAMMIT AND HERE’S A SECOND HELPING

DON’T MIND ME, I’M JUST GETTING DISPROPORTIONATELY EMOTIONAL OVER THIS WOMAN’S DETERMINATION TO HONOR A MAN WHO SACRIFICED EVERYTHING TO SAVE HER AND COUNTLESS OTHERS. I’M JUST HAVING SOME FEELS OVER HERE ABOUT HER HEARTFELT, DOESN’T-EVEN-KNOW-ANYONE-ELSE-IS-WATCHING FEELINGS OF GRATITUDE THAT COMPELLED HER TO COME OUT HERE AND MAKE THIS SMALL BUT POWERFUL GESTURE. I’M JUST OUT HERE GETTING ALL PROFOUNDLY WORKED UP ABOUT STATUE MAINTENANCE AND THE HUMAN RACE. NEVER MIND. JUST IGNORE ME AND CARRY ON

holy shit. I was not even remotely prepared. you can’t just do that to me. you can’t just leave all these death flags on my lawn and then suddenly shift gears to show me the best of humanity in a chapter where I was expecting the worst. that fucks a person up lol

OH ARE WE STILL GOING

my heart. you see that, All Might. your legacy is so much more powerful and meaningful than you think

...has. has Stain actually been giving All Might a pep talk this entire time

I give up lol. this dude is a fucking enigma

YAYYY

it may just be a metaphor panel, but I’ll take it lol. I missed them. nice to see the traffic light trio front and off-center. I know the whole “this is the story of how we all became the greatest heroes” thing had left some questioning whether certain characters would continue to play a central role in the narrative, and hopefully this will help to ease those concerns just a bit

anyway, so idk if it’s getting a bit chilly down there in hell, but damned if Stain didn’t just give an actual decent fucking speech

I have to say, earlier when I was whining about All Might not having a support squad, I really was not expecting Stain to be the one to come over and pat his head and reassure him that he made the world a better place

-- okay LISTEN

YOU CAN’T JUST COME INTO MY HOUSE AND HIT ME WITH THOSE ALL MIGHT TEARS AGAIN GODDAMMIT THIS ISN’T FAIR. my god. first 317 and now this

holy fucking shit

“I’m just gonna pretend like I haven’t been stalking him for two days and didn’t see the entire Deku bentogate thing go down, and then I’ll give him the whole big speech that I rehearsed, and then I’ll turn around and be all ‘BUT IF YOU’RE A TRUE HERO’, and then I’ll toss him the super-secret AFO wifi password that I stole from Tartarus. god I’m such a badass. fucking give myself chills”

so basically what you’re telling me is that this whole time my “what’s up kids” characterization of Stain from this shitpost has actually been 100% accurate. just want to make sure I’m understanding this right. okay then

“and then I’ll dramatically spin around and be all NOW COME KILL ME BITCH”

it must be so much fun to write Stain. drawing this coked-out maniac who talks like a chatbot that was trained to speak by reading Alan Moore monologues. that must be a trip

anyway so All Might is still crying, the awesome lady from chapter 92 is admiring her handiwork totally oblivious to the batshit insanity going on fifty meters to her right, and it’s finally stopped raining lol

“THE RAIN WAS A METAPHOR YOU SEE” yes, yes, we got it lol. thanks for that Horikoshi. don’t think we needed any help putting the pieces together on that one but I appreciate the effort

so that’s the end! and as I mentioned in another post, I had the count off by one chapter, but next week should be cliffhanger week! so break out your U.A. Traitor bingo cards, friends and fiends. either that or something else happens that I’m completely not expecting at all. which, based on my success rate with Stain predictions, I’d say is more than likely lol

mmm but anyway, so now that the Hug Deku 2021 campaign has finally come to an end, what’s it gonna take to get a hug for my struggling bento-preparing jacket-rocking world-weary death-flag-waving husband who is the worthiest man to ever live and deserves the fucking world, goddammit

[twjournals]

The Right Place

This is the third and final part of the trilogy. I can not thank you enough for the endless support. I did not expect to even turn this into a three-parter, but you asked and you shall receive. You guys are amazing!

So Wrong It's Right

What's Wrong is Right

Warning: dark!Peter Parker x reader, dub-con, all characters are of age, pregnancy, abuse, mild non-con touching, violence

Word Count: 5.4k

Summary: You're an old troubled friend of May's. Your life consists of being a workaholic, a party animal, and bringing home the shittest of guys for a one-hit-wonder. Just when you get your life in order, you're knocked right back into your old habits. Peter has watched you suffer long enough. He can make it all better.

Taglist: @discoverwhattheworldhastooffer

Your world was in shambles and any move you made to try and fix it only seemed to make what was left crumble. You did not speak with anyone since you had found out you were pregnant, not even May. You did not know what you could even say to her or how you could explain what was going on. You knew she would find out sooner or later, but you had planned on later. You could not even stomach the thought of telling her. It would not be easy and you knew you would probably lose her friendship in the process.

You avoided Peter as much as you could. He always messaged to check up on you, but you would never reply. You were disappointed in yourself. If you had just been the biggest person and moved on, if you had not have gotten drunk, you would not be in this situation right now.

Peter never gave up on you. He had hoped you would come around. That you would understand why your life was going in the direction it was. You needed to get away from the toxicity you surrounded with, especially Chris. You were meant for bigger and better things. You were meant to be more than a housewife. You were to be a mother, a lover, a soulmate. You deserved the world and he wanted so bad to give you it plus more.

You continued to shut him out though. You did not answer his phone calls or his text messages no matter how many times he tried. He sat outside on your fire escape many nights, listening to you crying yourself to sleep. It broke his heart to see you in this situation, but he wishes you would look on the bright side of things. Maybe it was not the greatest timing to have a baby, but it didn't mean your lives were ruined. Sometimes what we want is not always what we need. Sometimes change is required for what we need in our life and you weren't necessarily open to it.

He honestly had tried to give you your space. He stuck to the rooftop above you where you could not see him when you would finally leave the house for work. You always looked so beautiful to him, even if he knew you had been crying all night. If you would just answer his messages, he would not have to go this far.

Peter watched you many mornings on your way to work. He followed your bus all the way to the place he prayed you would never go. He kneeled on top of the building, watching as you stared sadly at the front doors of the clinic. He wished you would turn around. To save him from having to web you down before you got in the building. You were picking at your sweater. No matter the number of times you found yourself standing outside the clinic, you never could bring yourself to even reach for the door.

You were at war with yourself. Peter could tell you fought against the changes, but your heart could not bring you to stop them from happening despite how unhappy you were. It always ended with a sigh and with you proceeding to walk the rest of the way to work. Peter seemed to hold his breath until you walked away.

Work was always a drag now. You had nothing to look forward to anymore but everything in the world to worry about. You stared at your phone as it lay against the computer screen. You rubbed your face tiredly.

You knew it was time to let go of your past. You sighed deeply, taking your phone in your hands and clicking on Chris's old messages. You began typing.

Are you able to come by later?

You noticed he read your message right away. You sat your phone down, still staring at the screen when he responded back.

Of course. Just tell me when, and I’ll be there.

You told him you would message him once you got home. You were sure what time you would get off when it came to your job. You wrote a company and spent the hours necessary to do what you needed to do.

By the time your workday had finally ended, you were having mixed feelings about inviting him over. Being pregnant did not help your feelings from being all over the place. Your thumbs hovered over the keypad on your screen. You were hesitant. Even if he had said he respected whatever you decided, you knew he could not entirely mean that. You quickly typed out that you were home and hit send before you could give yourself time to think almost about it. Maybe you should have thought about it a little longer.

Peter was stuck at school for one of his night classes. He dreaded his night classes now more than ever considering your condition. He had already skipping enough classes due to worrying so much about you. He could not afford to flunk out of school now after all the time and effort he had dedicated already. As much as he wanted to keep an eye on you, he tried to give you room to breathe, to think, and process.

You pushed his bags in the living room by the door, straightening your sweater to keep it off of your stomach. You were not big to others, but to you, you worried if people can tell. You did not want to chance it and certainly not with Chris. You wanted this to go as smoothly as possible.

Your heart almost leaped from your chest at the knock on your door. You slid the chain from the lock and pulled the door open to see his face light up as soon as he saw you.

"Hey there, beautiful."

"Hi." You leaned against the door slightly as you moved out of the way for him to enter.

"I'm so glad you're giving this a second-" He stepped into the apartment, noticing bags of his belongings to the side of him and he grew quiet. "You're not giving me a second chance." He pointed out and you frowned slightly, still standing by the door.

"I think it is what's best for the both of us." Your voice was quiet and calm, but in your mind, it was the hardest thing possible for you to say.

"Is it?" His voice seemed bitter and you looked down at your feet, nodding slowly. Even without looking at him, you could still feel his eyes on you. He turned to face you fully and you hesitated to make eye contact with him.

"It is. I still want the best for you."

"Do you not believe I can change? I don't understand. What can I do to change your mind?" He pressed.

"Please don't think I haven't given this a lot of thought. It consumes my mind to no end. I just need to focus on myself right now."

"Imagine that." It was silent in the room and you glanced at him, only to find him shaking his head with a snicker. "It's not what's best for the both of us. Not for me. This is what's best for you. Can't imagine how I even thought you could be anything but selfish."

"Chris, I just want to keep this civil."

"Good for you." He pulls the door from your grasp and slamming it shut, startling you. "That's all you've ever been, hm? You're gonna have to lose that mindset if you plan on marrying me."

"I don't-"

"You will." He corrected, moving so close you could feel his breath across your face. "I put too much time into this for you to walk away from me."

You swallowed hard. The man who stared back at you was far from familiar. You tried to step around him but he only pushed you back into your place between him and the wall.

"Goddamn it, just get your stuff and go!" You raised your voice and he slapped his hand hard across your cheek. It was strong enough to make you see stars in your eyes. You yelped at the impact and held your cheek as it stung in pain.

"You watch your fucking tone." He stared down at you. He had never hit you before in the years you had been together. He never raised a hand to you, but then again, he never raised one for you either.

You could not imagine how much worse this would get. You left sick to your stomach when he grabbed your chin, tilting your head upright to look at him, stroking his fingers across your stinging cheek as his eyes flickered over your face in thought.

"Truth to be told, I think it's you who needs to change. I put up with so much from you. You had me in the beginning. Thought I was getting this wild, sex-crazed wife, oh, the fun we use to have. The drunken nights." He stiffed a laugh as he let his free hand grab the end of your sweater. "You really had me fooled, didn't you sweetheart?"

You were scared to move. Scared that one wrong move and he would hit you again, maybe worse. You closed your eyes, hoping Peter would answer your prayers. You regretted how much you ever took advantage of his kindness. How long you acted like you never noticed. You had always noticed. You felt his hand push underneath your shirt, and his gaze grazed over your stomach.

You noticed the way his hand froze against the small curve of your rounded stomach and he instantly lifted your shirt to see the problem. Your vision was blurred from your tears as he stared at your stomach with wide eyes. You could tell he was getting pissed.

"Really looks like you've been focusing on yourself." He lets your sweater fall back down over your stomach. His grip was still firm on your jaw, giving you no choice but to look at him. "You have some nerve to leave me. I could bet money it's Parker's. It is, isn't it?"

You could not bring yourself to admit it, but you did not have to.

He shoved your face from his hand, causing you to hit your head hard against the wall as he let you go. "You fucking make me sick."

You tried to keep your sobs quiet, listening to his footsteps moving away from you, listening to him jerking his bags up. "Better it's his problem and not mine." He muttered before slamming the door shut behind him.

You pulled your knees to your chest as you sat up against the wall with a sob. You didn't realize how much you needed Peter until now. You were sure he would have been successful if Peter had not have stopped. You hugged your knees as you tried to catch your breath in an attempt to calm yourself down.

After a moment, you took a deep breath as you pushed yourself to your feet. You let out a whimper quiet, feeling mild cramps in your lower stomach. You frowned as you turned the lock to the door, pressing your forehead against it as you held your stomach from the pain. It only seemed to worsen the longer you stood there. You weren't sure what was going on, but you had a feeling whatever it was, it was not good. You stood like that hoping the cramps would ease, but they never did.

It was close to the end of class when Peter's phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out of his phone slightly to see who it was. He glanced up at the professor who had still proceeded with his lecture and Peter lowered his head to answer. He knew something had to be wrong if you were calling him after all this time of avoiding him.

"Y/n? Is everything okay?"

"I think something is wrong." You whimpered quietly and he raises an eyebrow slightly.

"What do you mean "wrong"? Is the baby okay?" He looked up at the teacher who was making eye contact with him now as he talked.

"I don't know." You answered honestly.

That was all it took to get Peter moving. He grabbed his books off of his desk and tossed them in his bag while he scrambled from the classroom.

"It hurts." You rubbed your lower stomach like you always did when you had cramps before. Cramps were normal, but with being pregnant, you could never be too sure what they really meant.

"I know, love. I'm so sorry. Hang tight. I'm on my way." He reassured you as he sprinted out of the building.

---

You lay back on the hospital bed, sighing as Peter ran his hand over your bump in gentle circles. For once, you let him. Your cramps had surprisingly lessened since Peter had shown up, but he did not want to take any chances. It was better to be safe than sorry. He was so worried about you and the baby.

Nurses had been in and out of the room, doing blood work, swabbing, anything necessary to get to the bottom of this. Peter was quiet as he sat on the side of the hospital bed, focused on the massage he was giving your stomach. This was the first time he had touched you since the night you found out you were pregnant.

You could not help back to smile slightly to yourself as his long gentle fingers worked over your skin. He must have sensed your stare because it was not long before his eyes glancing up to meet your stare.

He raised an eyebrow curiously. "Is this okay? I'm not making it worse, am I?"

You shook your head. "It's fine. I'm just watching."

He smiled at you while he continued his massage to your tummy. His eyes looked toward the door when a nurse came in, rolling some equipment over to the bedside.

"Miss. Y/l/n, your lab work should not be much longer. If you do not mind, I would like to do an ultrasound to check on the baby. Is that okay with you?"

You nodded and Peter took his hands back to let her work. She rolled over a chair, taking some gel and squirting some across your lower stomach. The nurse rolled the transducer over the gel and smearing it in as she applied some pleasure in search of a heartbeat. You watched her roam your stomach, biting your bottom lip. Your eyes widened slightly when the sound of the baby's beating heart filled the room. Once the nurse got a clear view, she turned the screen to show you and Peter what she was seeing.

You looked over at the monitor, your heart fluttered slightly at the first sight of your baby. That was your baby, even if it was only a little bean now. You could not stop the smile from forming on your lips. This little bean was life was growing inside of you. This brought a whole new light to your pregnancy. It was like a light had switched on. You did not know how to explain the overwhelming feeling. It felt more real after seeing him or her.

Peter was just as taken back as you. His grin never faded at the sight of your baby. It only made him 10x more eager to be a dad.

"Look at that. Already looks like me." Peter teased and you giggled, considering he or she was not much more than a heartbeat at the moment.

"I can definitely see it." You grinned as Peter rest his hand over yours, sliding his fingers between yours. He brought your hand to his lips before pressing a kiss to the back of it. You watched him kiss your hand and shivered slightly. You did not know what to think of everything at this point.

The nurse checked the baby's heartbeat before turning to the computer behind her and check your lab results with a quiet hum as she scrolled through your charts.

"Well, it seems like everything is just fine. Your baby is certainly healthy and has one of the strongest heartbeats I have ever heard." You looked over at Peter and he only grinned. You could thank Peter for that and all of his spidey senses.

"Your blood pressure was pretty high though and considering your history, your blood pressure has always been perfect. Have you been stressed out lately?" She looked back at you and you nodded slightly.

You were ashamed at how stressed you had let yourself get. "Well, I won't ask for details but if it is anything I can help you with, I would be happy to help. If not, I would stay to keep the stress to a minimum. Your baby does feel anything you feel, so some things can be too much and really take a toll on them." She explained. "Think of this as your baby reminding you to breathe."

You smiled, feeling Peter giving your hand a warm squeeze.

"If your blood pressure does continue to be high, we will see if we can do something to help." You nodded again as she made out some prints of your ultrasound and handing them to you. "If you don't have any questions, I'll let one of the other nurses know and they can keep your paperwork ready for you to go home." She took a paper towel and wiped your stomach clean before tossing it.

With that, she gathered up her equipment before rolling it out of the room with her. You pulled your sweater back down over your stomach.

"Hear that. Now do me a favor and leave all of the worrying up to me." He looked up at you as your eyes stayed glued to your ultrasound prints. His eyes flickered over your face, landing on the bruising mark on your cheek. He reached up, moving a piece of hair back of your face to get a better look. You flinched at the contact. Peter seemed taken back by your flinch.

"What happened? How'd you get that?" You kept your head down with a small frown.

"I invited Chris over to get his stuff. He thought I was taking him back. He didn't take it well." You explained and his eyes widened.

"He hit you?!" You reached Peter's hand as he started to jump up from the bed. "I'll kill him. I swear to you-"

"Peter, please. It's over with now." You assured him, tugging his hand to pull him back to the bed to sit down again. "He's not worth it."

Peter frowned, letting out a deep sigh before leaning in and pressing a gentle kiss to your cheek. He did not want to stress you any more than you had already been. "I'm sorry he did that to you. I wish I could have been there."

"Honestly, I needed this. It made letting go of him a lot easier."

"Was that all he did?"

You grew quiet.

"Did he..."

"No, he didn't." You shook your head after he could finish his sentence. "He saw that I was pregnant and left."

Peter tried to keep his composure as his fist clenches out of your sight. He could not imagine how someone could lay a single finger on you with intentions to hurt you. He was quiet. He was trying to hold it together for your sake.

"He didn't say anything?"

You stayed quiet for a moment, rubbing your thumb across the print. "Just that he was glad it was your problem and not his." You shrugged your shoulders slightly. "Even though it's not a problem, I am glad it's you and not him. I can't imagine what it would be like to have a baby with someone that selfish."

His clenched fist loosened at your words and his eyes softened. He could not believe his ears. Were you really saying this?

His cheeks blushed a deep shade of red. "You mean that?"

You smiled at him with a nod. "I do. You're so selfless and care so much about what you can do for others. Even though I've been selfish, you still stuck by my side. I honestly couldn't ask for a better father for my baby."

His smile widened as he looked at you, resting his hand on your small bump. "Our baby."

You rested your hand on top of his with a smile, nodding your head. "Our baby." You agreed.

---

It was not long after that the nurse gave you the okay to leave. Peter had stopped to get you something to eat before he took you home. He wanted to make sure you had been fed. All of the little things like this had slowly pulled you closer Peter. You were not used to how observant and patient he was. As much as you knew how wrong your whole situation was, you could not help but to give in to it. Despite your age, Peter had treated you better than any other guy you had been with. Even better than the one you had been with for years. Peter was the blessing you never knew you needed. He was the blessing in disguise.

He held onto your hand, walking up the steps to your apartment and using the keys to unlock the door for you. He didn't expect you to let him stay. All he wanted was to make sure you were okay before he left you alone.

"Thank you for everything." You looked up at him as you both stood in front of your door.

He smiled down at you. "You don't have to thank me."

"You know I owe you."

He rolled his eyes playfully. "You don't owe me anything. You're having our baby. I consider that payment enough." He teases, his hands resting on your waist. He could not help but touch you. In every possible, he would if he could. Your cheeks blushed at his response, looking down but Peter let his finger hook underneath your chin to tilt your head back up. Your lips were barely an inch apart when the moment was quickly ruined.

"What the fuck is going on here?!" A familiar voice pulled you from your moment, making your heart sink to the pit of your stomach when the realization hit. You did not even have to look over to know it was May. Her face was red in anger when your eyes met hers. "You ignore me for weeks and when I come to check on you, you're smacking lips with my nephew?! What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Your lips parted to say something, but no words came out. You did not where to begin with explaining yourself to her. You knew this was all wrong, but it was all too late.

"I thought you were hurt, but obviously, you're perfectly fine." She was fuming.

You never wanted her to find out this way. You wished you had more time to think about it and figure out a better way, but this was it. This was the moment of truth and you were terrified to lose your best friend. You felt tears forming in your eyes and Peter frowned.

"Aunt May, stop."

"Stop?! I'm not going to stop! You're not going to use my nephew so you can get over your worthless ex-boyfriend."

"Aunt May!"

You fought to hold back your tears until you could not anymore. You felt the tears running down your face. As much of a low blow that was, you felt you deserved to hear it. "Peter, i-it's okay." You struggled to form your words. You were hurt, embarrassed, ashamed.

"No, it's not." He shook his head, pointing a finger at May as she stood only a few feet distance from the two of you by her car. "You've gone too far."

"I don't understand how you think this is okay, Y/n." She shook her head, ashamed at you.

"I didn't expect for it to be like this. I didn't mean for any of this to happen." You confessed.

"Just like you never meant for all those one-night stands to happen huh? I trusted you!" She yelled, making you flinch. You hung your head in defeat, glancing at Peter with sad eyes before going inside. You could not stomach the rest of the conversation without sobbing. You tried to calm yourself once you were inside.

"That's enough!" Peter yelled suddenly. "I am capable of making my own decisions. I don't need you to decide what is best for me, Aunt May. I'm not here against my will and neither is she."

"She's supposed to be my friend." She didn't know what to make of this.

"You're supposed to be my Aunt! You knew how hard I crushed over her. For years you knew."

"I thought it was just a crush."

He moved closer to her in the parking lot. It was never just a crush. He was head over heels for you. "I love her. I've always loved her. You're can either respect it or accept it, because it's either way, she's pregnant and nothing is going to change that." He stood by her car.

Her mouth fell open in shock. She did not know what to think. Never in a million years would have thought this would happen, but then again never would have you.

"Pregnant?" Her voice was quiet.

He nodded. "I'm gonna be a dad, Aunt May." He pulled his copy of the prints out of his wallet and showing them to her.

She was at a loss for words. He was right. There was nothing she could do about that. May stared at the prints for a moment, trying to process everything in the short time it had all happened.

"Peter... I don't understand..."

"She almost had a miscarriage today because she's been stressing herself out over Chris. You're not going to take this away from me." He looks down at her, taking the prints back from her." He looked down at her as she stared back with a small frown. "Go home, Aunt May before we both do something we'll regret. You can come back when you're ready to apologize for this." He held the car door open for her and she hesitated before slowly getting in the car.

She knew she was in the wrong for how she had handled things, but Peter did not give her the chance to even risk making things worse. Peter felt deep in his heart despite everything she would come around. She would realize how happy you made him and she would accept it, but for now, she needed to leave.

Peter walked back to your front door, knocking on the door with a sigh. After a few moments, you moved from your spot on the couch to answer the door. You opened it slightly to see Peter and you glanced behind him at May's car pulling out of the parking lot.

"How are you?" He frowned when he saw your red watery eyes.

"I feel awful."

He sighed when you finally let go of the door and he stepped inside of the apartment. He let the door close behind him. His arms wrapped around your body instantly, pulling you against mine as he hugged you, resting his head against yours and kissing the top of it. "I'm so sorry. I know it's hard to believe now, but she'll come around. Just give her some time."

"She was going to find out sooner or later. I expected that reaction. I just wasn't prepared for it right now." You pointed out as your head rested against his chest, letting him hold onto you.

You closed your eyes, listening to his heartbeat. You relaxed in his arms. Your eyes were burning from all the tears shed. Peter scooped your body up in his arms bridal style, carrying you down the hall to the bedroom. He laid you down on the bed, sliding into the bed with you as his arms naturally found their way around your waist. Your head fell to his chest as you got lost in your thoughts for a moment.

"I'm starting to think I can never make the right choices." You admitted, laughing slightly to yourself and Peter tilted your head up to look at him.

His lips pressed a kiss to your nose. "Sometimes, the wrong choices bring us to the right places." He assured you before leaning in to close the space between your lips and kissing your lips.

He was true to word. No matter how much you held yourself back, every wrong choice you had ever made in your life brought you to this moment with Peter. This opportunity with Peter to finally get your life right. It was your chance to allow yourself the happiness you knew you both deserved.

End Credits Scene

He was not sure how long he had been sitting with his wrists and ankles restrained to a chair in the middle of a dark room. Maybe hours. It even could have been days. He was not sure. His eyes blinked rapidly to adjust to the light that poured into the room when he finally heard a heavy door open.

"Oh good, you're awake." He was covered in sweat from fear and the heat of the closed-off room. He could make out bits of a red and blue suit. His eyes must have been playing tricks on him. When his eyes finally adjusted to the light, his eyes widened at the sight of Spiderman in front of him. He did not understand what was going on. Spiderman is supposed to save people.

His mouth was covered with solid webbing so he could not speak.

"I'm sure you're wondering why you're here." Peter moved closer to him as he spoke. He leaned down, ripping the webbing from Chris' mouth and making him cry out in pain from the grip it had on his skin. "You see Chris if there's one thing I hate, it's people who hurt the people I care about."

"W-What are you talking about? I haven't done anything."

"Don't play dumb." Peter gritted his teeth underneath his mask, backhanding Chris across the face before gripping his jaw. "You know exactly what you did, but that's okay because it won't happen again. You'll never touch Y/n again. I'll make sure of that."

Blood dripped from Chris's mouth from how hard Peter hit him. "I should fucking kill you for putting your hands on her." He smirked to himself when Chris starts squirming under his grip. "But I won't."

"I won't. I won't touch her again. I swear-"

"Oh, I know you won't." Peter let go of his jaw before backing up towards the door again.

"W-Where are you going? Aren't you going to let me go?" Chris started to panic as Peter pulled his mask off for Chris to see his face. He wanted this to be the last thing he saw if he died and the thing he would definitely remember if he lived.

"I didn't say I was going to let you go. I said I wasn't going to kill you." He smiled and Chris's mouth fell open slightly at the sight of Peter Parker standing before him. "I was thinking we could make a game out of this. I hear you like games. Let's see just how important you really are. I'm gonna leave you here and we're gonna see if your friends succeed with their search party if they even send one out. I can't imagine what they would care about scum like you for, but I guess we'll see. I give you about 48 hours before your body finishes you off itself. That should give you more than enough time to think about what I've said. That's if you do make it and I don't really have faith that's gonna happen, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I expect you to get the hell out of New York. I promise to you if ever see you again, I'll kill you."

Chris swallowed hard as Peter stood in the doorway once more, the sun outlining his figure at the door. He was scared of the possibility of not being found. He was furious that a guy like Peter was capable of putting him in a situation like this.

"They'll find me and when they do, you're a dead man, Peter Parker." He pulled at the restraints on his arms with all of his might but he did not stand a chance against the webbing. Peter made it look so easy.

Peter grinned at Chris's promise. He loved the challenge. The possibility that even if someone did find him, he would have the pleasure of killing him himself. It amused Peter that Chris could even have the nerve to threaten him in the position he was in.

"Well, let the game begin." He gave a wave as he started to pull the door closed. Chris yelled to the top of his lungs until the heavy metal door ceased his screams.

[liesoverthec]

OG 911 Character Details from Canon Pt 2

Hi y’all I’m back! I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who reblogged the last details post - I sort of just thought people would like it and it would die, so to see it travel and hopefully reach more writers was so great so thank you again!

Details under the cut since I went a little crazy 😅 and if this is your first time seeing this, the first part, and any future parts, can be found under this tag here!

Quick note before I get to the details - always, ALWAYS take details from dialogue or plot over details from the set or props if they contradict each other. The writers have the ultimate say over what happens on the show/for the characters, so whatever they say goes, even if it goes against something props has already laid down (eg, Chim’s birthday, sorry Libra crew. He’s an Aries or a Pisces). So keep that in mind for the future in case some of these details I have which are from props/set are changed in the future, or if you’ve noticed something yourself!

Also if you have questions, I am MORE than happy to answer them, although if you leave them in the tags on this post I’m probably gonna lose them, so if it’s something you’d genuinely like an answer to, drop it in my inbox! Besides my standard “ask” tags, I’m also tagging asks about canon details with this tag here. Every time I make a big post like this, I’m going to link all the asks I’ve gotten since the last post, but if you’re looking for more info in the mean time, that’s the other spot to look!

Buck has a grill on his patio.

Eddie doesn’t hang Christopher’s art on the fridge - instead it is either hung on the corkboard in Chris’ room to the left of the door, or Eddie puts it in an actual frame and hangs it using a hammer/nails in Christopher’s room. All the Diaz family has on their fridge is a bunch of bendy people magnets. (I absolutely ADORE him putting all this effort into treating Christopher’s art like it’s something you’d buy from a professional artist).

Info on everyone’s ages can be found here. (Little more discussion of Chim’s situation here).

Albert has a bachelor’s degree! I don’t know in what though, except that it’s some field for which is a Master’s is useful.

Athena was in a sorority in college, Delta Sigma Theta. Their website describes them as “ ...a sisterhood comprised primarily of Black, college-educated women ... [that] considers the issues impacting the Black community and boldly confronts the challenges of African Americans and, hence, all Americans ”, which I love for Athena, and feel is very in-character for her at that time in her life!

Chim is an aviators dude. When he wears sunglasses, they’re always aviators.

Athena also wears nothing but aviators.

Bobby wears square aviators.

Eddie, on the other hand, always wears Wayfarers.

Buck either doesn’t really like sunglasses or he constantly forgets he owns them, since we’ve only seen him wear them once in 60 eps, in a move I’m pretty sure was ONLY for dramatic effect.

Hen’s sunglasses change style over the seasons like her regular glasses do, but she tends to like browline sunglasses.

Info on Christopher’s school can be found here!

There are two colors of dispatch polo, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhythm or reason for who wears what. Maroon - Maddie and Linda. Blue - Josh and May. Jamal has actually worn both maroon and blue, so it doesn’t seem to be TOTALLY set in stone although I’ve never seen anyone else switch. Sue is too badass to wear a dispatch shirt.

Both Bobby and Eddie drive 4 door pickups. Bobby’s is navy. Eddie specifically has a black, 2020 GMC Denali 1500 pickup truck (in case you want to specifically look up what the inside of it looks like or what features it has 😂)

Info on the 118’s medical certifications can be found here.

Correction to Eddie’s living situation from last post: no next door neighbors, but instead UPSTAIRS neighbors. (Pointed out by Abigail in this ask). Also since someone else was wondering the notes of the last post - no, there is absolutely no discussion on the show of whether or not Eddie rents the apartment or owns it. But based on the fact that it’s 1) LA and 2) an apartment, my guess would be he rents it.

When Maddie isn’t feeling like herself, she tends to straighten her hair rather than curl it. It seems to be more when she’s uncertain about her place in her own and other people’s lives, rather than just when she’s simply worried - eg it’s straight in 2B, when she’s uncertain if she wants to continue working as a dispatcher/is unsure about her relationship with Chim.

For work, Chim, Eddie and Buck all use black duffel bags with a LAFD patch on the top. Hen uses several different cute bags, and Bobby seems to have a plain black duffel bag.

Watches - Bobby, Athena, Chim, Hen and Buck all wear their watch on their left wrist (but Athena ONLY wears hers for work, she takes it off at home.) Eddie wears his on his right wrist, and Maddie doesn’t wear one.

Chim (and Maddie by default) literally still have the exact same couch as in the pilot. (Which means that Chim has cuddled Tatiana on that couch, AND Albert has had sex on it. TIME TO GET A NEW ONE, BUCKLEY-HANS 😂)

The 118 has five different rigs - the engine (E118), the ladder truck (T118), two ambulances and the captain’s truck. 95% of the time, when the team is chilling in the cab of a rig and chatting (eg the ‘stuck under a live telephone pole’ scene in Jinx), they’re in the engine, not the truck. (Which I personally learned recently are NOT interchangeable terms!)

Athena and Michael got married when Athena was 37.

If you’d like to give Maddie a full name beyond “Maddie”, you should use Madeline. (I know, I know, in 4x04 she says Maddie is the name on her birth certificate, and that you should never use props details if they contradict script details, but I always thought that was a super weird exchange in 4x04 which could be explained by Maddie getting a nickname since she was born when Margaret and Phillip, you know, actually loved their kids and showed it, so of course Buck doesn’t get one, and in 4x04, Maddie was trying to avoid the entire issue of why she got one and Buck didn’t. But! Do what you want, and use Madeline as the full version of Maddie if you’d like, since that’s what’s on the BOLO in 2x13 😂)

Athena’s call sign is 727 L30, but she doesn’t have a specific squad car - the number changes throughout the series.

Chim really likes chewing gum, but he’s the only one out of the entire family!

The station has an Xbox One S, and it’s white.

In the real LAFD, there are stations 1 through 114. To avoid confusion while filming on the streets (I’m assuming), our fictional LAFD never uses the number of a real station. So if you want another station for a fic, and you want something that would be real in OUR universe, use the numbers 115 and above. They’ve gone as high as 221 in our universe.

Battalions - station 118 is in Battalion 7, which is also not a battalion in real Los Angeles. The 118 has interacted w/ Battalion 1, which is a real battalion, but other ‘non-real which makes them more likely for our universe’ battalions include numbers: 3, 8, 13, 16, 19 and above.

S1 Buck knew the term Jedi, but based on context, didn’t understand AT ALL the context provided by Star Wars, so there’s another edge of his pop culture limits for you.

Chim is the most tech-savvy out of everyone, hands down.

Athena has a VERY active Twitter account.

Abuela’s house number is 8902. I don’t have a street name for you unfortunately though. :/

Athena’s favorite flowers are white roses. None of the other women are really flower people.

Michael likes to wear purple.

When they’re at a call, Buck does pretty much all of the stuff with the hammer and the saw. Eddie does all the work needed with the drill.

Harry goes to Meadowbrook Elementary.

Buck lives on the fourth floor of his apartment building, across the hall from Apt. 416. The lovely @lovelessmotel found this listing for what is more or less the apartment. What happened was: the set crew rented this apartment for the one episode at the end of s2 when Buck moved in, and then over the summer before s3 built their own set of it, and changed some things - eg giving him an island, and moving the sink to a second counter against the far wall, you can see the changes here in this amazing gif set by the awesome Austen, but the listing should let you click around a little more upstairs and figure out dimensions better than what the show provides!

When Athena and Hen go out to eat together, it’s always fast food burgers and fries.

Waffles are Athena’s favorite food, and tiramisu is her favorite dessert.

Every takeout we’ve seen Buck eat has always been in a Chinese food takeout container, and we know he likes Thai food the best. EXCEPT! The one time we see him eat takeout with Eddie and Christopher, they have pizza. So take from that what you will......

Eddie has a cell phone and a landline.

Chim is a shameless multiple texter.

Chim and Bobby sleep closest to the door in their respective bedrooms (both right side of the bed if you are standing at the foot, facing the headboard), and Athena and Maddie sleep furthest away from the door (left side).

Some canon last names for other firefighters at the station in case you wanna add more people to a fic - Mitchell, Sanchez, Serrano (woman), Porter, Meyers (woman), Maxwell, Voyta

Hen and Karen really love decorating their house with dark/red wood.

Karen is Mommy and Hen is Mama.

Bobby has a brother, and a grandmother, and that’s literally ALL we know about his family outside of Marcy and the kids.

Evidence points to Eddie being the oldest child in his family.

Karen has multiple brothers (no sisters), but no idea how many - just that one of them is named Trey, and one of them lives in LA and has kids. They might be the same brother and they might not be.

Both Hen and Athena are only children.

Athena has been on the police force for 30 years.

Christopher and Denny are the same age (born in 2011), and Harry is two years older than them.

Michael lives in apartment 308.

The bank in this universe is CalAm.

Hen and Karen have a picture of Denny, May and Harry on their fireplace mantel.

Eddie having a black thumb + a lot of plants in his living room = him buying fake plants bc he likes the aesthetic ™ or someone (cough Carla cough) is taking care of them for him.

The COVID timeline in OG’s universe is fucked up compared to the real world’s, so it shouldn’t be used as a way to measure time! They just throw it in wherever it makes sense for the story they want to tell (eg the vaccines in s4 ep 8), since s3 was both done before COVID hit but also airing while it was happening. It makes absolutely no sense for May to graduate in March nor for Chris to be going to what is specifically labeled summer camp, and the vaccine plotline was INCREDIBLY early, even for real life, so don’t use anything from that as a measure of time. I’ve found except in specific examples, eg the two tsunami episodes, it’s very safe to say every episode covers a week - fall holidays on the show line up with their real life counterparts, indicating about the same amount of time is passing for us and them.

On that note - Jee-Yun was born in late January, early February 2021. (Conceived in Pinned, which was end of March/beginning of April, meaning Maddie was around a month along at May’s graduation in May ➡ 42 weeks + 3 days from then = late Jan/early Feb. Which unfortunately means we most likely won’t see her birthday celebrated on screen. If we assume she was conceived on the date Pinned aired, aka the very sexy hotel scene, then January 21st or 22nd would be Jee’s birthday, depending on if she was born after midnight or not.

Buck has had at least one other Jeep between the one Maddie gave him, and the one he has now, which means that when he needs a new car, he is purposefully choosing Jeeps.

I hope this was all as interesting/enjoyable to you as it was to me! And just to repeat - I love answering questions so pls let me know if you have any at all ❤

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

Tagging: @buckbuckley

[telomeke-bbs]

BAD BUDDY EPISODE 5 – PRAN, PRAN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? MILLIONS OF SOULS ARE (STILL) STRANDED IN SHARDS ON A RANDOM BANGKOK ROOFTOP BECAUSE OF YOU

One question that always bothered me after Ep.5’s Epic Rooftop Kiss was – why did Pran break away sobbing and distance himself so drastically? After all, Pat was returning his feelings, and Pran reciprocated with a passionate kiss. So if both had already made their feelings known, the next logical step would have been couplehood, and wasn’t that what Pran wanted?

Upon re-watching, there are some clues that help explain Pran’s behaviour. We know that he grew up in a very protected, loving environment, behind defensive walls both physical and figurative. But when Pran’s mom found out he and Pat had been collaborating on the Christmas song contest in high school (Ep.2 [4/4] 7.25), she transferred him away to boarding school, ejecting him abruptly from the tranquillity of home.

That transfer had a significant impact on Pran. The Christmas songwriting process, friendly and without tension, had seen him opening up innocently to Pat (Ep.5 [3I4] 0.27).

Letting his guard down, Pran took the opportunity to express his secret feelings in the lyrics of the song (Ep.5 [3I4] 1.41). But when he was sent away, the lesson he learnt was to associate Pat’s proximity with heartbreak and anguish – this is why he states (twice): “Things don’t end well whenever I’m close to you” (at Ep.1 [4/4] 3.28 and Ep.2 [3I4] 9.03).

Having also learnt from his home life to mount defenses against dangers outside – Pran went on to erect even more barriers of his own. His way of dealing with emotions was to deny them externally and cloister himself within a seemingly perfect life, polished by his perfectionist tendencies. Within his walls, Pran only hinted at his feelings to the outside world, flagging his thoughts, emotions and states of mind using signs and symbols, like his smiley/frowny doorhanger (Ep.1 [4/4] 12.55) and sticky notes (Ep.1 [4/4] 11.37).

And just as he never let his emotions out – he never let anyone in, even though Pat’s kiss on the rooftop was clearly a knock on his door, begging for access.

Perhaps one of the strongest reasons for Pran’s refusal to accept Pat’s rooftop entreaty at face value was Pat’s self-declared romantic interest in Ink. Before realizing his love for Pran, Pat himself confessed that he liked Ink at Ep.4 [4/4] 14.48. And this was further reinforced by Pran directly witnessing Ink and Pat together, one-on-one, so many times (e.g., Ep.4 [3I4] 2.51, Ep.4 [3I4] 5.09, Ep.5 [1I4] 8.56, Ep.5 [2/4] 9.46).

Most importantly, the lesson Pran learnt from the Christmas song heartbreak – that he gets his feelings crushed whenever he gets close to Pat – was repeated in two other incidents, both involving Ink and Pat (and iced milk tea).

The first was in high school, when – giving in to his blossoming romantic feelings – Pran bought Pat iced milk tea (his favorite drink, confirmed at Ep.12 [4/4] 14.12) hoping to break the ice even more.

But his hopes were dashed when he saw Pat and Ink flirting affectionately instead at Ep.4 [2/4] 1.09, before he could even pass him the gift.

The second was the scene beginning at Ep.4 [1I4] 15.44 – touched by the loan of Pat’s own earphones, Pran sent him a little text message. Ostensibly a reminder, it was really more like a casual hello that you send to open up further communication. Pran was once again tentatively reaching out – but then Pat suddenly rushed out (having probably seen a message Ink had sent).

When Pran went to look for him – he saw Ink buying Pat’s favorite beverage for him at a café (Ep.4 [1I4] 16.56). As if that weren’t enough, Pat then twisted the dagger by quipping that his day, like his tea, was still sweet (despite Ink getting him the low-sugar option) – as though both had been sweetened by Ink’s presence.

The Christmas song lesson, hammered home twice, heavily imprinted on Pran that he would have no chance of coming between Ink and Pat – both times that he opened up to Pat, he got slapped with the message of their pairing, as clear a sign as any that getting closer to Pat would only end in heartbreak. And we KNOW how much store Pran sets by signs and symbols. 😢

Pran then goes on to acknowledge he understood this lesson in the clearest way possible. We know this because it came directly from his innermost self, expressed in authentic Pran-speak – in a sketch that he drew.

One of the ways Pran processes his thoughts and feelings is to sketch out representations of them and caption them. We see him doodling an angry face at Ep.3 [1I4] 1.12, expressing his frustration (probably from his bickering with Pat at Ep.2 [4/4] 12.54 😂). And in response to Pat’s gift of dumplings (at Ep.2 [1I4] 12.58, defined as an act of courtship at Ep.2 [2/4] 0.18) – Pran had sketched out and captioned at Ep.5 [1I4] 4.43: “I don’t know how to flirt. Can I give you dumplings instead?”. (This has significance for events later in Ep.6 – but more on that in another post. 😊)

So the next time we see Pran sketching out his feelings, we know we must believe him – and he does this in the scene beginning at Ep.5 [2/4] 8.41. After bunking over, having forgotten his keys yet AGAIN (perhaps in response to subconscious impulses), Pat had noticed that the condensed milk Pran is fond of squeezing on his morning toast (Ep.5 [1I4] 1.36) had run out. (It is condensed milk – confirmed by Nanon behind the scenes in the DVD Boxset. 😊) So he leaves Pran a little smiley-faced sticky note (just the sort of signalized communication that speaks to Pran’s heart) promising to get him a new tube – which he does, at Ep.5 [4/4] 5.56. Pat’s thoughtfulness moves Pran so much he is compelled to sketch the squeeze tube and Pat’s note with an oversized smiley (Ep.5 [4/4] 9.41), hopeful perhaps that this little gesture could be Pat telling him, in a way that speaks to him intimately, how all the affectionate playfulness of the previous days and weeks might be heading towards an actual romance.

And then Pran informs us in no uncertain terms that he sees this as impossible, wishful thinking, when he vehemently crosses out his sketch at Ep.5 [4/4] 9.58, after recalling how he saw Ink and Pat sharing a private (and apparently romantic) moment at the dessert café earlier (Ep.5 [2/4] 9.46).

But if Pat had kissed Pran so passionately on the rooftop, wasn’t that a clear enough indication that he had chosen Pran over Ink? Well, not from Pran’s POV, because unfortunately Pat had not always been consistent in his messaging. Pran is an expert reader of signs and symbols, and he could tell that Pat’s affectionate behaviour towards him was quite possibly a sign of romantic feelings, even while Pat himself – never self-aware, needing younger sister Pa as his emotional compass (Ep.5 [2/4] 1.34) – still thought the butterflies he sensed (Ep.5 [2/4] 0.31) were caused by Ink and was actively pursuing her instead. This mixed messaging, so confusing for neat and proper Pran, was also something Pat had done in several other instances.

Although there are many examples of Pat being kind, selfless and caring (one of the first was Pat creating a guitar pick in high school for Pran at Ep.3 [1I4] 3.24, the others are too many to list), there are also examples of Pat proffering friendship and intimacy, and then subverting the situation with some kind of backtrack or flipped re-framing of the narrative, sometimes even by issuing an in-your-face challenge (the latter probably from being conditioned by his dad not to show vulnerability). These include: returning Pran’s watch, then saying “…don’t talk to me in front of people” (Ep.1 [4/4] 10.21); laying himself quite bare (literally and figuratively – going shirtless at one point, then engaging in heartfelt conversation) when bunking over at Ep.4 [4/4] 10.43, before crushing Pran’s heart with a “chob” to confirm he liked Ink; applying medication to Pran’s injured shoulder at Ep.4 [3I4] 7.07, only to suggest he wanted Pran to recover so that they could compete directly in rugby; and returning Pran’s guitar (that he had saved), then saying “I just like to see your face… when you lose” (Ep.3 [4/4] 10.35). The last one causes Pran to smile ruefully at his watch at Ep.3 [4/4] 11.01 (the same watch Pat had salvaged and returned to him when they were kids), as though reminding himself to expect no more and no less from Pat. 🤷‍♂️

Pat even does this during the Christmas contest songwriting process (beginning Ep.5 [3I4] 0.53). When Pran says “Nothing happens at the beginning but without realizing it, their feelings…”, Pat jumps in eagerly with “Their feelings have changed”, raising Pran’s hopes at Ep.5 [3I4] 1.27, before reversing the direction with “And they become rivals” (!). Pran goes “Huh?” at Ep.5 [3I4] 1.31, but you can almost hear his rooftop “Shia, Pat!” (Ep.5 [4/4] 8.57) in his head. 🤣

So no wonder Pran said: “Pat, you’ve got to stop doing this to me. We are not a thing” at Ep.5 [4/4] 8.58. Exhausted by the push-and-pull, Pran had no faith in Pat’s constant, clueless signalling of romantic intentions, especially in the light of his clear-as-day messaging about Ink. When Pat – the big, bad puppywolf baying at the gate of his fortress – broke through Pran’s emotional walls and landed that first kiss, for Pran the moment was clouded by Pat having proven time and again that he was also capable of recanting any demonstration of affection. And when Pran, despite himself, gave in to the groundswell of his long pent-up emotions and returned Pat’s kiss, all of these jangling, jagged thoughts must have been crashing about in his head as well. So of course he pulled away – for in the end, that epic kiss was also an act of intimacy portending surefire heartbreak, most likely in the form of Pat leaving him for Ink (“Things don’t end well whenever I’m close to you”)…

[Afterpost Edit: For a closer look at Pran's state of mind – if he was pulling back from Pat and that kiss, where was he retreating TO really? – do check out the analysis and explanation here. And for the significance of Pran's dumpling sketch, you can read more here.😉]