#just got his act 2 romance scene a couple hours ago and i think he cured my addiction to fucking evil men i’m ngl

[yourrockdog]

gggggggghhh

[kenyaru]

STILL HURTS | 01

SO THIS IS HEARTBREAK..

synopsis | maximilian goof has made one of the most goofy decisions ever: he forgave bradley uppercrust. he sat there, accepted his apologies after getting kicked out of the Gammas and actually became friends with him, trusting that he would have change and to not hold a grudge, just like his dad said. albeit against his best friends' wishes, he and uppercrust got closer, and eventually a somewhat-friendship turned into a romance. but, a year or so later, bradley did the unthinkable, leading to their breakup. was he wrong to trust? genre | angst, heartbreak, making up(?), oneshot pairing | max goofy x bradley uppercrust iii (maxley) warnings | implied internalized homophobia, mild cursing, angsty word count | 1.76k author's note | hii! i finally posted part 1 of this fic! this is heavily inspired by 'a seriously goofy romance' by pidge030 on ao3. this is my first time writing with these characters that already have some spitefulness, so i hope you enjoy it! lmk if you would like a part 2 :> ______________________________________________________________

One month. It’s been exactly one month since he and Bradley broke up. One month since their huge argument had caused him to walk out on the other and only a few weeks since Bradley had tried to contact him and soon stopped all together. Max hated to admit it, but he regretted how he acted, but how could he not react badly? Max sat up in bed, sighing as he ran a hand through his hair. He was just trying to relax after a long day of classes, but Bradley’s words clouded his mind. I can’t believe you- cheating on me..I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you, Goof. 

It was the audacity in Bradley’s mind to accuse Max for something like that, knowing that Max had liked, and had come to love, Bradley more than ever. He felt more for Bradley than he felt for anyone; the way he got butterflies when the others bought him flowers or would compliment him in his own sort-of rude way. He recalled Bradley mentioning him talking to some girl in a way that seemed flirtatious and he responded by saying that Bradely had his assumptions; that he used Max’s sexuality against him. 

Maybe Bobby and P.J. were right to be skeptical. When Bradely got kicked out of the Gammas and was trying to make amends, his best friends were the first people on the hate-train, not wanting to forgive the brunette. Max, still in his own feelings, reluctantly decided to let him in. Some advice his father gave him was to not hold a grudge and try to see past the mistake. At some point, Bradley had been interested in Max joining them, even if it was just to win.

One thing led to another and they went from close friends to a couple. Well, until now.

Max checked his clock, noticing it was nearly 6 and decided to go for a skate to calm himself before going to eat dinner. Bobby and P.J. were at the Bean Scene last he remembered, but that was over an hour ago, before he got into his funk over Bradely. He had blocked the brunette’s number after the first few messages, not wanting to hear his pitiful apologies.

Even though he seemed angry and not affected, he still cried some nights, he still felt the pain in his chest, he still looked at the photos he and Bradely took during their year of being together. He was a junior in college now, he shouldn’t be held up by some guy that graduated already. He fortunately unfortunately still got to see Bradely on campus as he was studying for his PhD and was working in the library sometimes for whatever reason he mentioned; Max must have been too angry to remember. 

Max physically shook his head, putting on his shoes and adjusted his sweatshirt, picking up his skateboard and walking out of his dorm room. He wasn’t going to think about Bradely anymore, fill his head with memories and feelings he wanted to forget. He headed for the skating area, skating past the empty roads on campus. Hm, maybe everyone was at the Bean Scene right now, which most likely meant Bradely too. 

Once he got there, Max went to the ramp and skated down, doing a trick and feeling the cool breeze on him as he moved quickly on the board. He missed this feeling, this carefreeness that he lacked in the past few weeks, few days even. He felt so congested, like his life was missing something. Skating was something he enjoyed before Bradely, so he thought it wouldn’t hurt as much, yet skating did remind him of how they met, how they got to dating in the first place, how they learned to work together and move past their previous disagreements that made them ‘enemies.’ 

Max continued to do tricks, flipping the board mid-air and landing, focused on what was ahead instead of the board itself, forcing himself to not get caught up in his thoughts and accidentally fall. He was doing good, so good, until he looked over, and caught a glimpse of brunette hair. Before he knew it, he was stumbling and before he could catch himself, he was on the ground in the middle of the skating rink.

He looked up, only to see a completely different person walking past the rink, looking over for just a moment before continuing their walk. He sighed, putting his head against the concrete. He panicked because he thought it was Bradely, because he thought it was the one person he didn’t- well, maybe he did, want to see. He was royally fucked up.

—------ 

Back in the dorms, Max laid back on his bed, phone in hand as he scrolled through his social media, going to Bradley’s profile on instinct and seeing that he hadn’t made any new posts since the breakup. Everything was still up; the pictures of them on their first date, the X-Games from that year and pictures of himself and the group. He closed the app, opening up the messaging app and seeing Bradely’s as a pin. Though he blocked him, he never removed him from his pins. He shouldn’t be reminiscing, looking back at these messages, possibly putting himself in a deeper funk. But he couldn’t stop himself, he wanted to, he missed him. 

He opened his messages with Bradely and finally saw the stream of texts that he had ignored when it was first sent. Angel? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to accuse you. Can we please talk? Please, let me explain. Call me back. Max, please. I love you, I feel terrible. I get it, you need space.

Max repeated the last message in his head, practically hearing Bradley's voice, the imagination making his heart break. Angel was what Bradely had begun calling him, stating the reason was that when he first saw him on a skateboard, he saw an Angel in Max. Max hated that he couldn’t be mad anymore, that even though it still hurt like hell to be accused like that, his feelings for the other had overridden that. Maybe it was time for him to step up, stop hiding and speak to him again. Clearly, Bradely still cares or he wouldn’t have spammed him for a week. 

He checked the time, noting it was a bit past 8:30 now. Had he really sat there for nearly half an hour staring at some messages? He sighed and unblocked the number, hesitating on how to start the message. Should he be apologetic or upfront? Should he even be doing this at all? His thoughts were interrupted when P.J. and Bobby entered the dorm, making him flinch and nearly drop his phone.

“You still in here all depressed, man?” Bobby asked, kicking off his sneakers and climbing onto the top bunk. 

“Ha, ha, very funny. I’m doing just fine, actually.” Max retaliated, sitting up and putting his phone to the side. 

“Really? ‘Cause your face tells a different story, like you were contemplating life or death just now or something.” P.J. adds, sitting down on the bottom bunk and taking off his own shoes. “If this is about Bradley, we told you to just talk to him about it. You know he would never hurt you intentionally. That dude loves you.”

Max sighed, taking in what was said by his friends. They were right; in the year or so that he had been dating Bradely, he had always been clinged onto him, praising him and striving to be the best versions of themselves together. Though they had a rough start, it was clear that Bradley’s attraction towards him was real. He ran a hand through his hair, considering it. “Alright, maybe I will..soon.” Max picked up his phone, looking at Bradley’s contact again, the picture of them staring back at him. Bradleys toothless small smile compared to his wide grin. “Nuh-uh, not soon, tomorrow. The more you hold off, the more you’re going to procrastinate and the cycle will start all over again.” Bobby urged, pointing down at Max assertively. “Whatever you’re about to do, do it. Let him know you’re still into him- you are still into him, right?”

Max nodded, returning the look at Bobby. “Of course I am..I can’t stop thinking about him.” “Okay, so put on your big boy pants and let him know!” Bobby exclaimed, encouraging the other. 

“Bobby’s right, if you want him back, and to get on good terms, you need to accept his calling.” P.J. added, already laying down as the conversation continued. Max opened up the chat again and started typing, letting his hands do the work as he typed out whatever came to his mind that he thought would be appropriate. 

Hey, you were right. I needed some space. I’m ready to talk if you’re ready to explain. Max let out a sigh of relief as he sent the message, putting his phone on the nightstand as he laid down, anxiously waiting for a reply. He looked back up to see what the others had to say, but he saw both Bobby and P.J. already asleep. They were out all night and didn’t really sign up to be his therapists on the situation, so they had no reason to really stay awake for this. 

Within a few minutes of staring at his ceiling, moments from falling asleep, his phone pinged. Max quickly took his phone and saw the incoming message from Bradley. Alright. Meet me at the Bean Scene, 6am tomorrow. It’s usually empty at that time, so we can talk then. 

Max felt his heart thump in his chest, both of worry and excitement. He would be seeing Bradely again, be in his presence and see him face to face for the first time in what felt like forever. He sent a thumbs up emoji before putting his phone on the charger and getting up. He nearly forgot he had on his outdoor clothes, unlike his friends. He chuckled softly to himself and quickly headed to the bathroom to change into some pajamas before returning.

Once back in bed, Max got comfortable in his covers and rested his head on the cool pillow. He closed his eyes, trying to relax and fall asleep. Tomorrow, he will be seeing his love again. Tomorrow they were going to talk it out and hopefully he would get the closure he would need. Was he even ready to forgive as much as he convinced himself he was? Fuck, he was so scared for tomorrow.

______________________________________________________________

[barbwillbrb]

Finally finished my full playthrough of BG3. Here be my thoughts:

For context, I had been sitting on my first playthrough for a month, as I had 4 huge fights left that I was putting off and little else left (Orin, Ansur, House of Hope, and the last battle). I did start a second playthrough in the interim, getting that character to the Gauntlet of Shar, then decided to go back to finish my OG character. I finally finished the game a couple days ago and have been collecting my thoughts. Here are some resolutions from my playthrough and thoughts on the game/characters:

1. First, here is my first Tav— Quil, a nonbinary tiefling Bard with very high charisma. I adore the character creator, but have one gripe— why can’t we yeet the titties in the vanilla creator (I know there are mods)? I want no titties please.

2. I did not get the Volo eye during my first run; Quil knew a bad idea when they saw one (my second Tav, Rackal, not so much). Quil also didn’t fuck with the Necromancy of Thay.

3. Scratch and owlbear cub made it all the way to the end!

4. Fucked up Auntie Ethel’s quest and got Mayrina killed.

5. Minthara was killed (I only recently fully learned how non-lethal attacks work).

6. It was really hard for me to pick a romance; I spent a good hour loading/reloading the tiefling party to go through my options (everyone but Gale and Wyll were interested, as I was specifically playing a character who wasn’t openly flirting with anyone; I wanted to see what characters came to me first. That said, I had to keep pushing Lae’zel back because girl wanted me within moments of meeting). Karlach ended up stealing my heart; I adore her.

7. I also had Halsin join us. I don’t see a lot of talk about KarlachxTavxHalsin on here, and it kinda bums me out; I was sold on the polycule when KarlachxHalsin started flirting with each other.

8. As a high-charisma character, Act 2 was my favorite, especially when it came to Yurgir. I did not know you could talk your way out of that fight completely; I think I was as shocked as Astarion when it worked. I’ve never seen a game where you could just… talk people to death. It was amazing.

9. Speaking of Act 2, Ketheric Thorm’s introduction is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. It was perfect at conveying the magnanimity of the situation.

10. I got everyone’s happy endings I think. Wyll, Karlach and I went to Avernus and are kicking ass, Gale is a professor/crown destroyed, and Astarion did not ascend/spawn were spared (the Gur letter at the epilogue is AMAZING). Shadowheart turned away from Shar, but her parents died so she could be free; she has the owlbear cub though, so I think she’ll be okay.

11. I don’t understand the whole “Wyll can’t make a decision” discourse. I get the issue with the pact scene (I can’t remember if I had the option to let him choose, but we worked with Mizora), but people make it out like he doesn’t make any decisions about his future at all in the game. I was able to leave the Blade of Avernus/Duke decision to him, and he chose the Blade. He had some cool dialog about the decision as well.

12. The goddamn Orpheus vs. Emperor choice is about the dumbest thing ever. I feel like if you maintained an overall positive relationship with the Emperor and managed to pull Lae’zel away from Vlaakith, I think there should be an opportunity to break Orpheus free and convince him to join you WITHOUT the Emperor turning tail to the Netherbrain. You should be able to free Orpheus and then have another high persuasion check to get him to stand down/join you. I feel that given the severity of the current situation, Orpheus would accept joining forces if it meant no additional mindflayers be made. Just the fact the Emperor goes by, Orpheus gets freed, and someone has to become a mindflayer is just…. Frustrating at best.

13. I think that regardless if romanced or not, a Lae’zel with high/exceptional approval who turned from Vlaakith is in love with Tav. The emotion in her goodbye at the docks is so powerful.

14. Similarly, I think the same can be said for Shadowheart (if turned away from Shar/had high approval).

15. The Dribbles quest sucked, but worth it just to make Lucretious happy/have her say nice things to me.

16. The character that grew on me the most was Astarion. I honestly didn’t like him too much, but his growth over Acts 2 and 3 really changed my mind. Plus, when I met Yenna, he actually gave approval towards any means of helping her— I was SHOOK.

17. I think the Orin kidnapping would be more impactful if your love interest was taken instead (the angst/race against the clock would be amazing). I also think that if one of the tadpole crew gets taken, the fact that Orin doesn’t have one should tell someone something’s up.

18. My favorite companion is tied between Karlach and Lae’zel. Karlach is so optimistic/stands true to herself despite the bullshit she goes through, and Lae’zel character growth is spectacular.

19. My least favorite companion is Shadowheart, although she’s beginning to grow on me. It’s just that some of her offhand comments are so off-putting in a real hypocritical way. For example, the “I didn’t expect to feel empathy towards refugees” thing is really hard to ignore.

20. My favorite NPCs are, in no particular order, Ketheric Thorm, Rolan, Yurgir, Omeluum, Blurg, Lucretious, Barcus Wroot, Auntie Ethel and Mol.

21. My least favorite NPCs are Gortash (I think he is a great villain, but he’s the kind of manipulative, opportunistic evil that makes my skin crawl), Wulburn Bongle and honestly most of the creche. Also that lady who’s mean to the dogs, but I nuked her with fireball and don’t see her as much if an NPC.

22. WHY CAN’T I ADOPT THE FUCKING CATS?

[mostlymovieswithmax]

Movies I watched in May

Sadly, I kind of skipped writing a post for April. It was a mad month with so much going on: lots of emails sent and lots of stress. I started a new job so I’m getting to grips with that... and even then, I still watched a bunch of movies. But this is about what I watched in May and, yeah… still a bunch. So if you’re looking to get into some other movies - possibly some you’ve thought about watching but didn’t know what they were like, or maybe like the look of something you’ve never heard of - then this may help! So here’s every film I watched from the 1st to the 31st of May 2021 Tenet (2020) - 8/10 This was my third time watching Christopher Nolan’s most Christopher Nolan movie ever and it makes no sense but I still love it. The spectacle of it all is truly like nothing I’ve ever seen. I had also watched it four days prior to this watch also, only this time I had enabled audio description for the visually impaired, thinking it would make it funny… It didn’t.

Nomadland (2020) - 6/10 Chloé Zhao’s new movie got a lot of awards attention. Everyone was hyped for this and when it got put out on Disney+ I was eager to see what all the fuss was about. Seeing these real nomads certainly gave the film an authenticity, along with McDormand’s ever-praisable acting. But generally I found it quite underwhelming and lacking a lot in its pacing. Nomadland surely has its moments of captivating cinematography and enticing commentary on the culture of these people, but it felt like it went on forever without any kind of forward direction or goal. The Prince of Egypt (1998) - 6/10 I reviewed this on my podcast, The Sunday Movie Marathon. For what it is, it’s pretty fun but nowhere near as good as some of the best DreamWorks movies.

Chinatown (1974) - 8/10 What a fantastic and wonderfully unpredictable mystery crime film! I regret to say I’ve not seen many Jack Nicholson performances but he steals the show. Despite Polanski’s infamy, it’d be a lie to claim this wasn’t truly masterful. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) - 8/10 Admittedly I was half asleep as I curled up on the sofa to watch this again on a whim. I watched this with someone who demanded the dubbed version over the subtitled version and while I objected heavily, I knew I’d seen the movie before so it didn’t matter too much. That person also fell asleep about 20 minutes in, so how pointless an argument it was. Howl’s Moving Castle boasts superb animation, the likes of which I’ve only come to expect of Miyazaki. The story is so unique and the colours are absolutely gorgeous. This may not be my favourite from the legendary director but there’s no denying its splendour.

Bāhubali: The Beginning (2015) - 3/10 The next morning I watched some absolute trash. This crazy, over the top Indian movie is hilarious and I could perhaps recommend it if it weren’t so long. That being said, Bāhubali was not a dumpster fire; it has a lot of good-looking visual effects and it’s easy to see the ambition for this epic story, it just doesn’t come together. There’s fun to be had with how the main character is basically the strongest man in the world and yet still comes across as just a lucky dumbass, along with all the dancing that makes no sense but is still entertaining to watch. Seven Samurai (1954) - 10/10 If it wasn’t obvious already, Seven Samurai is a masterpiece. I reviewed this on The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast, so more thoughts can be found there. Red Road (2006) - 6/10 Another recommendation on episode 30 of the podcast. Red Road really captures the authentic British working class experience. Before Sunrise (1995) - 10/10 One of the best romances put to film. The first in Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy is undoubtedly my favourite, despite its counterparts being almost equally as good. It tells the story of a young couple travelling through Europe, who happen to meet on a train and spend the day together. It is gloriously shot on location in Vienna and features some of the most interesting dialogue I’ve ever seen put to film. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

Tokyo Story (1953) - 9/10 This Japanese classic - along with being visually and sonically masterful - is a lot about appreciating the people in your life and taking the time to show them that you love them. It’s about knowing it’s never too late to rekindle old relationships if you truly want to, which is something I’ve been able to relate to in recent years. It broke my heart in two. Tokyo Story will make you want to call your mother. Before Sunset (2004) - 10/10 Almost a decade after Sunrise, Sunset carries a sombre yet relieving feeling. Again, the performances from Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke take me away, evoking nostalgic feelings as they stroll through the contemporary Parisian streets. There is no regret in me for buying the Criterion blu-ray boxset for this trilogy. Before Midnight (2013) - 10/10 Here, Linklater cements this trilogy as one of the best in film history. It’s certainly not the ending I expected, yet it’s an ending I appreciate endlessly. Because it doesn’t really end. Midnight shows the troubling times of a strained relationship; one that has endured so long and despite initially feeling almost dreamlike in how idealistically that first encounter was portrayed, the cracks appear as the film forces you to come to terms with the fact that fairy-tale romances just don’t exist. Relationships require effort and sacrifice and sometimes the ones that truly work are those that endure through all the rough patches to emerge stronger. The Holy Mountain (1973) - 10/10 Jodorowsky’s masterpiece is absolute insanity. I talked more about it on The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - 10/10 Another watch for Grand Budapest because I bought the Criterion blu-ray. As unalterably perfect as ever. Blue Jay (2016) - 6/10 Rather good up to a point. My co-hosts and I did not agree on how good this movie was, which is a discussion you can listen to on my podcast. Shadow and Bone: The Afterparty (2021) - 3/10 For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed the first season of Shadow and Bone, which is why I wanted to see what ‘The Afterparty’ was about. This could have been a lot better and much less annoying if all those terrible comedians weren’t hosting and telling bad jokes. I don’t want to see Fortune Feimster attempt to tell a joke about oiling her body as the cast of the show sit awkwardly in their homes over Zoom. If it had simply been a half hour, 45 minute chat with the cast and crew about how they made the show and their thoughts on it, a lot of embarrassment and time-wasting could have been spared. Wadjda (2012) - 6/10 Another recommendation discussed at length on The Sunday Movie Marathon. Wadjda was pretty interesting from a cultural perspective but largely familiar in terms of story structure.

Freddy Got Fingered (2001) - 2/10 A truly terrible movie with maybe one or two scenes that stop it from being a complete catastrophe. Tom Green tried to create something that almost holds a middle finger to everyone who watches it and to some that could be a fun experience, but to me it just came across as utterly irritating. It’s simply a bunch of scenes threaded together with an incredibly loose plot. He wears the skin of a dead deer, smacks a disabled woman over and over again on the legs to turn her on, and he swings a newborn baby around a hospital room by its umbilical cord (that part was actually pretty funny). I cannot believe I watched this again, although I think I repressed a lot of it since having seen it for the first time around five years ago. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 - (2011) I have to say, these movies seem to get better with each instalment. They’re still not very good though. That being said, I’m amazed at how many times I’ve watched each of the Twilight movies at this point. This time around, I watched Breaking Dawn - Part 1 with a YMS commentary track on YouTube and that made the experience a lot more entertaining. Otherwise, this film is super dumb but pretty entertaining. I would recommend watching these movies with friends. Solaris (1972) - 8/10 Andrei Tarkovsky’s grand sci-fi epic about the emotional crises of a crew on the space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris is much as strange and creepy as you might expect from the master Russian auter. I had wanted to watch this for a while so I bought the Criterion blu-ray and it’s just stunning. It’s clear to see the 2001: A Space Odyssey inspiration but Solaris is quite a different beast entirely. Jaws (1975) - 4/10 I really tried to get into this classic movie, but Jaws exhibits basically everything I don’t like about Steven Spielberg’s directing. For sure, the effects are crazily good but the story itself is poorly handled and largely uninteresting. It was just a massive slog to get through.

Darkman (1990) - 6/10 Sam Raimi’s superhero movie is so much fun, albeit massively stupid. Further discussion on Darkman can be found on episode 32 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast. Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1995) - 1/10 Abysmal. I forgot the movie as I watched it. This was part of a marathon my friends and I did for episode 32 of our podcast. Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996) - 1/10 Perhaps this trilogy is not so great after all. Only marginally better than Darkman II but still pretty terrible. More thoughts on episode 32 of my podcast. F For Fake (1973) - 8/10 Rewatching this proved to be a worthwhile decision. Albeit slightly boring, there’s no denying how crazy the story of this documentary about art forgers is. The standout however, is the director himself. Orson Welles makes a lot of this film about himself and how hot his girlfriend is and it is hilarious.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021) - 4/10 More style over substance, Sony’s new animated adventure wants so much to be in trend with the current internet culture but it simply doesn’t understand what it’s emulating. There’s a nyan cat reference, for crying out loud. For every joke that works, there are about ten more that do not and were it not for the wonderful animation, it simply wouldn’t be getting so much praise. Taxi Driver (1976) - 10/10 The first movie I’ve seen in a cinema since 2020 and damn it was good to be back! I’ve already reviewed Taxi Driver in my March wrap-up but seeing it in the cinema was a real treat. Irreversible (2002) - 8/10 One of the most viscerally horrendous experiences I’ve ever had while watching a movie. I cannot believe a friend of mine gave me the DVD to watch. More thoughts on episode 32 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast. Don’t watch it with the family. The Golden Compass (2007) - 1/10 I had no recollection of this being as bad as it is. The Golden Compass is the definition of a factory mandated movie. Nothing it does on its own is worth any kind of merit. I would say, if you wanted an experience like what this tries to communicate, a better option by far is the BBC series, His Dark Materials. More of my thoughts can be found in the review I wrote on Letterboxd.

Antichrist (2009) - 8/10 Lars von Trier is nothing if not provocative and I can understand why someone would not like Antichrist, but I enjoyed it quite a lot. After watching it, I wrote a slightly disjointed summary of my interpretations of this highly metaphorical movie in the group chat, so fair warning for a bit of spoilers and graphic descriptions: It's like, the patriarchy, man! Oppression! Men are the rational thinkers with big brains and the women just cry and be emotional. So she's seen as crazy when she's smashing his cock and driving a drill through his leg to keep him weighted down. Like, how does he like it, ya know? So then she mutilates herself like she did with him and now they're both wounded, but the animals crowd around her (and the crow that he couldn't kill because it's Mother nature, not Father nature, duh). Then he kills her, even though she could've killed him loads of times but didn't. So it's like "haha big win for the man who was subjected to such horrific torture. Victory!" And then all the women with no faces come out of the woods because it's like a constant cycle. Manchester By The Sea (2016) - 6/10 Great performances in this super sad movie. I can’t say I got too much out of it though. Roar (1981) - 9/10 Watching Roar again was still as terrifying an experience as the first time. If you want to watch something that’s loose on plot with poor acting but with real big cats getting in the way of production and physically attacking people, look no further. This is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen because it’s all basically real. Cannot recommend it enough. Eyes Without A Face (1960) - 8/10 I’m glad I checked this old French movie out again. There’s a lot to marvel at in so many aspects, what with the premise itself - a mad surgeon taking the faces from unsuspecting women and transplanting them onto another - being incredibly unique for the time. Short, sweet and entertaining!

Se7en (1995) - 10/10 The first in a David Fincher marathon we did for The Sunday Movie Marathon, episode 33. Zodiac (2007) - 10/10 Second in the marathon, as it was getting late, we decided to watch half that evening and the last half on the following evening. Zodiac is a brilliant movie and you can hear more of my thoughts on the podcast (though I apologise; my audio is not the best in this episode). Gone Girl (2014) - 10/10 My favourite Fincher movie. More insights into this masterpiece in episode 33 of the podcast. Friends: The Reunion (2021) - 6/10 It was heartwarming to see the old actors for this great show together again. I talked about the Friends reunion film at length in episode 33 of my podcast.

Wolfwalkers (2020) - 10/10 I reviewed this in an earlier post but would like to reiterate just how wonderful Wolfwalkers is. If you get the chance, please see it in the cinema. I couldn’t stop crying from how beautiful it was. Raya and The Last Dragon (2021) - 6/10 After watching Wolfwalkers, I decided I didn’t want to go home. So I had lunch in town and booked a ticket for Disney’s Raya and The Last Dragon. A child was coughing directly behind me the entire time. Again, I reviewed this in an earlier post but generally it was decent but I have so many problems with the execution. The Princess Bride (1987) - 9/10 Clearly I underrated this the last time I watched it. The Princess Bride is warm and hilarious with some delightfully memorable characters. A real classic!

The Invisible Kid (1988) - 1/10 About as good as you’d expect a movie with that name to be, The Invisible Kid was a pick for The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast, the discussion for which you can listen to in episode 34. Babel (2006) - 9/10 The same night that I watched The Invisible Kid, I watched a masterful and dour drama from the director of Birdman and The Revenant. Babel calls back to an earlier movie of Iñárritu’s, called Amores Perros and as I was informed while we watched this for the podcast, it turns out Babel is part of a trilogy alongside the aforementioned film. More thoughts in episode 34 of the podcast. Snake Eyes (1998) - 1/10 After feeling thoroughly emotionally wiped out after Babel, we immediately watched another recommendation for the podcast: Snake Eyes, starring Nicolas Cage. This was a truly underwhelming experience and for more of a breakdown into what makes this movie so bad, you can listen to us talk about it on the podcast.

[lady-literature]

for us to collide (part 4)

anyway who actually expected me to end this thing in 4 chapters lol

rip me ig

Read on Ao3 | part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 (final) | deleted scene

After the not-so-impromptu interrogation courtesy of her friends (because there was no way they hadn’t planned that, it was too coordinated) Robin doesn’t stop by for two weeks.

Which is… fine. Marinette is plenty busy anyways. The extra time she has free now that she isn’t entertaining a bratty vigilante, goes to more productive uses of her time. Like watching bad horror movies with her friends and jeering at the horrible acting and special effects.

(Red Hood stops by in the middle of watching Grizzly Rage and proceeds to rant for twenty minutes about ‘shitty, unrealistic blood splatters’. Marinette has long since passed the point of being worried about it.)

So, yeah. She doesn’t see Robin.

But Damian, oddly enough, seeks her out.

It’s early, and there isn’t anyone else in the studio right now which means Marinette has her music blasting and she’s humming along as she hand paints silk for Clara’s dress. It’s loud and she’s in her zone, so it’s only by Tikki warning her that she realizes someone entered her sanctuary.

Her eyebrows raise when she sees who it is.

“Uh, bonjour Damian," she greets confusedly, reaching over to lower the volume on her speakers. "I hadn’t expected to see you here. Is there something you need?”

He stops before her workstation, only slightly bigger than the ones the rest of her staff use due to the sheer amount of open commissions she normally has. She has an actual office on this floor, but Chloé uses it more than she does. Marinette likes the open space and being around her designers more than she likes the privacy.

His eyes catch on the two bouquets of flowers she’s yet to take home, neither of which have even begun to wilt—and likely won’t. (She’ll have to take them home soon before people start asking questions.)

“I was called here by Father, but he’s currently indisposed. I’ve been told to wait.”

She waits a moment for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she asks, “So you came to visit me?”

“Yours is the only tolerable presence to be found.” His lips purse, and he crosses his arms. “And that includes that imbecile Drake who is no doubt still in his office like the pitiful insomniac he is.”

Her tongue is already halfway around a joke about excuses—she didn’t befriend Felix for nothing, okay? She knows how people like Damian work—when she realizes what he just said.

“Wait. Tim’s been here all night?”

Damian snorts. “He certainly didn’t return to the manor.”

She’s out of her seat in an instant, frowning and muttering up a storm as she rummages through the storage cubes pushed up against the far wall. She has a blanket, pillow and plain cotton shirt in her hands before Damian registers that she even moved.

“I’m going to kill your brother,” she says simply. “Would you like to come with?”

She’s gotten closer to Tim since working in Wayne Tower. He’s a notorious recluse and rarely leaves his office when he’s in the building, but Marinette makes it a point to visit him during lunch and before she leaves for the night.

He isn’t one of her Waynes, but he is a Wayne and her Waynes love and care for him so there’s not much of a difference really. She does like to think they might be something close to friends at this point though. And if the way Tim comes down to visit whenever he ventures out of his office means something, she might even be right.

Another thing that should be noted, is that Marinette is very much a ‘ride or die’ kind of person when it comes to the people she cares about. She will ruthlessly bully her loved ones into taking better care of themselves on threat of death because she is the semi-hypocritical mom friend and damn proud of it.

Damian looks her up and down, eyes lingering on the items in her hands and the determined set to her jaw and says, “Of course.” Then he’s plucking her things from her hands, offering her his arm and saying, “Shall we?”

Marinette laughs as she loops her arm with his. “We shall.”

***

She spends ten minutes scolding Tim before wrangling him onto the couch in his office and wrapping him up in the blanket so tightly he’d need to be an escape artist to get out of it. He tries to struggle anyway, but Marinette has too much practice at this and he doesn’t stand a chance in hell.

Damian stands at her shoulder and smirks the entire time, eyes dancing with amusement as she forces the CEO of Wayne Enterprises to take a fucking nap. Then, she’s treated to the sound of his surprised laughter as she begins switching out all of Tim’s regular coffee for magic-decaf—not that Damian knows it’s magic.

(By the devilish smirk playing at his lips, she’s starting to think that maybe Damian really is just as sadistic as Duke and Jason say he is.)

***

Damian starts dropping by more often after that (read: starts dropping by at all). Not that Marinette minds. She quite likes his company, actually.

He normally stops by first thing in the morning when Marinette is the only one in the workshop, walking in like he owns the place. For the first couple days, he asks about Ladybug and the rest of Paris’ Court, claiming that he’s curious about them.

She answers them, but only as far as she’d answer them for any reporter and is careful not to give away any sensitive information not known to the public. He gets a bit frustrated at one point, complaining that she must know more, but she stays stubbornly silent about it and, sometimes, steers the conversation deftly to the Great Bat and his Flock instead.

He eventually stops asking about the Parisian superheroes and instead their morning conversations turn to a thousand random things. Complaints and anecdotes and a silly back and forth between the two.

Marinette’s never been much of a morning person but having Damian there to keep her company is… nice.

She almost finds herself looking forward to mornings now.

***

When her Waynes learn that she’s started a food kitchen and makes a habit of spending her weekend there, they immediately insist on joining her, despite her protests.

“You guys really don’t have to do this,” she says even though the three of them are already in their aprons and Cass is eyeing the boucher, Vivian, and her collection of knives with glittering interest.

Duke grins at her, “We know, M. But we want to.”

Jason finally turns back to her from where he’s been staring at the kitchen with something just shy of awe on his face. “You’re downright incredible, you know that?” he waves a hand out at the seating area, and then at the people in the kitchen assembling the healthiest and cost-efficient meals she and Felix could find after days spent researching. “I would’ve killed for something like this when I was on the streets.”

“It’s not just me who’s got this up and running-” she tries protesting but then Fiona, the woman Marinette actually put in charge of this place, is at her side and all but shoving the four of them into stations.

Marinette ends up by the pastries, like always, and she can see Jason making sandwiches. Duke's been roped into making eggs and bean casseroles and Cass, by some grace, actually ended up by Vivian and is having a blast cutting up all the meats as fast as she can.

They don’t stop until lunch, all four of them helping prepare meals for the upcoming week in bulk. After, they all go out for ice cream by the pier and Jason smears chocolate on her nose and Duke carries her around on his back when she complains about being tired.

Cass takes pictures of it all and later, Marinette gets them all printed out.

It ends up being a really good day.

***

The buzz from the charity gala and all the press regarding her and Damian’s non-existent relationship had calmed down weeks ago. There was still the odd article about Marinette being seen with her odd assortment of Waynes and the newspapers still called her ridiculous names when they got a picture, but it was about as close to normal as she gets.

The quiet lulled her into a false sense of security.

Ice Prince and Sweetheart Finally Seen on Date: Fairy Tale Romance or Publicity Stunt?

The ‘date’ in question was a coffee and lunch run for her designers and also Tim (because kwami knew he'd work through lunch if allowed).

Damian normally didn’t stay past Lilliane arriving in the morning (the poor dear was chronically late and always the last to arrive) but he hadn’t shown up until after she came that day and overcompensated by hours—which she hadn't minded. He kept to the fringes of her workspace and didn't distract her, instead focusing on his own thing. She wasn’t quite sure what he was up to, but she knew he was switching between his computer and sketchpad every so often.

(She's pretty sure he was hiding from Dick for some reason. He’s the only Wayne brother who doesn’t visit her at work, seeing as they have their bi-weekly gymnastic sessions; recently, with the addition of Mar’i, who still calls her ‘twin’ and whom Marinette still adores.)

And then lunch had rolled around, and it was Marinette’s turn to go out so she brought Damian with since he was still there.

They were out together for forty-five minutes. Tops.

“Why me?” she whines into the surface of her desk.

Damian, the asshole, just laughs at her and she can’t even be mad about it because he’s only just started laughing around her and not hiding behind so many of his walls. He laughs and Marinette knows it's precious so instead of shooting him the glower he deserves, she finds herself having to hide the smile slowly creeping on her face.

***

They’re splashed across the papers again less than a week later, only this time she has her Waynes there too.

Marinette's wearing her bright red sundress and she's somehow convinced Damian to wear a jacket with elaborate crowns and snowflakes embroidered up the sides. Because, as Chloé says: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

They see the camera this time and the photo splashed across the page the next day is of Marinette laughing with Jason’s arm slung across her shoulders as both he and Damian flip off the camera. Meanwhile, Duke and Cass stand just far enough in frame to capture their expressions of pain and amusement respectively.

(Marinette makes a mental note to order apology gift baskets for the PR department.)

There are a lot of headlines the next day about Marinette’s ‘harem of Waynes’ and how she’s a ‘horrible influence on such bright children’. She spends about ten minutes trying to decide whether she should be horrified or laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it and eventually decides on both.

Adrien, the little shit, sees the headline and immediately prints it out to hang in her kitchen.

It reappears every time she tries to take it down.

***

Gotham does not smile upon daytime heroes.

Not to say that Gotham really smiles on anyone, but it’s especially vicious to those that think they’re owed anything. She’s heard the way Gothamites talk about Superman and The Flash—it’s not exactly what one would call adoring.

But Ladybug's been a daytime hero her entire career and it is not difficult to see that there's something distinctly different about the way daytime heroes and Gotham’s vigilantes operate.

Something more vicious, maybe; something more restrained.

Without the light of day and without the people’s eyes watching them at every moment, the Gotham Bats have become something else entirely.

Signal, their Daytime Protector, is especially strange.

A bat who's meta, straddling the line between day and night. The Day Patrol, trained by the night.

Sometimes, when she and Signal talk about heroing, there is such an odd type of disconnect that it throws her. Nothing horrible or major, but little things she’s sure she wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t so intimately familiar with it all herself.

They don’t always talk about heroing though. After two months, Ladybug is proud to say she seems to be worming her way past his outer shell nicely. He tried so hard to keep his distance from her, but Ladybug’s always liked a challenge, and it isn’t long before she has him relaxing around her. 

Well, for a definition of relax anyway. He's still a bat after all.

But then, it’s pretty easy to get past Signal’s barriers when she’s already had practice breaking through the more stubborn bats like Robin and, to an extent, Hood. Not that Signal, or any of the bats, know that.

Which, speaking of the bats, isn’t it a bit weird she’s only met three spread across two of her alter egos? As Ladybug, she’d expect to be hounded by a few of them but the only one she’s met is Signal. She can’t decide if it’s because he’s the only one that operates in the daylight, or if they just don’t want to spook her into running or something.

Either way, they’re going to start giving her a complex. She’s heard so much about the rest of the Batfamily, and not one of them even wants to meet her? Either her?

(Maybe Marinette should ask Robin and Hood what’s up with that? The way they talk about how nosy Red Robin is, she’s surprised he didn’t drop by months ago and- is it weird that she’s offended by vigilantes not prying into her private life?

…Probably.)

***

Marinette blinks, stopping dead in her tracks.

Damian's on her fainting couch, sketchpad in his lap as he waits for her.

“Why are you wearing a beanie?” she blurts out instead of greeting him like a normal person. "You never wear beanies."

Luckily, Damian scowls at her question rather than at her. It’s a subtle but very important difference.

“Sorry,” she apologizes anyway, putting her bag down. “I haven't had coffee yet.”

He hums, then nods to her desk where she finds a steaming to-go mug. Her face lights up and she quickly snatches it, breathing deeply the lovely aroma. “You’re a godsend.”

That brings a quirk to his lips, closer to a smirk than a smile, but progress nonetheless.

After a moment, where she sips at her overly sugary monstrosity—just the way she likes it, when had Damian even noticed that?—and he continues sketching she asks again. “Okay but, I actually am kinda curious. What’s up with the hat?”

He sighs heavily, closing his pad. “It’s… better than the alternative.”

Marinette snorts. “Alternative to what? A top hat?” But instead of snapping back like she expects, he just continues to frown. Immediately, her lips turn down into a concerned frown. “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes,” he grounds out and Marinette puts her coffee down. She’s just about to open her mouth and say something else when he reaches up and rips the beanie off his head.

For the second time in less than five minutes, she stops dead.

Marinette opens her mouth. Closes it. Blinks, but the scene doesn't change.

His hair is still blue.

Damian Wayne's hair is blue.

Damian Wayne’s hair is vibrantly electric blue.

Her hand shoots up to cover her mouth as she tries to stifle her giggles.

Damian’s scowl deepens. He moves to shove his ridiculous beanie back on his head but her hand snaps out before he can.

“No! No, I’m sorry I just-” she giggles again. “You looked so upset by it and you took me by surprise. I like it!”

He glares up at her, still sat on the fainting couch so it’s her who has the height advantage for once.

“Don’t patronize me.”

She rolls her eyes, the hand that wasn’t settled on his arm reaching up to touch the bright strands. It's slow enough that he can stop her, but he, surprisingly, makes no move to.

His hair is a lot softer than she expects it to be. But she supposes he didn’t use that gel stuff today, planning on keeping his hair under a hat the whole time.

“It looks good on you,” she says softly.

He snorts disbelievingly and she smacks his shoulder lightly. “It’s true! I swear you could look good in any color.” She clicks her tongue longingly. “I wish I had your skin tone. I’m too pale to wear pastels like I want.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Pastels?”

“Oh you hush,” she quips, finally pulling her hand from his hair. “Anyway, if you don’t like it, why’d you dye it blue in the first place?”

“I… lost a wager with Todd.”

She laughs, starting to move around and get ready for the day. She doesn’t have any meetings scheduled, which means she gets the whole day to create. She’s pretty excited about it.

“I should’ve guessed it was Jason’s doing.”

Damian shrugs, settling back into the cushions. He drapes himself across them in a way that’s effortlessly elegant and like he’s ready to be photographed for a magazine cover or something. Must all her friends be so pretty? It’s playing hell on her self-esteem.

“But blue is your favorite color, right? So there’s that at least.”

Damian hums. “Todd had threatened to dye it pink or some other equally garish color.”

“Hey!” she exclaims in mock outrage. “What’s wrong with pink? I’ve been wanting to dye my hair pink for ages.”

“Nothing. It’s just simply not a color I appreciate.” He makes a face. “Like orange.”

Marinette huffs, but there’s a smile on her lips. It's quiet for a moment, for long enough that she thinks the conversation's been dropped. But then-

“Why don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Why haven’t you dyed your hair?” he repeats. “Your friends—Couffaine and… Kubdel? They both have colored hair.”

Marinette shrugs. “I dunno. Never got around to it I guess. I suppose I could do it now. Dye mine in solidarity,” she jokes. “Oh! We could match even! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“I thought you wanted pink?”

“Well, yeah. But blue is nice too. Besides,” she smiles wryly over her shoulder, “you just said pink was ‘garish’.”

Damian frowns slightly, shaking his head, “On me, perhaps. But I think you’d look very fetching in pink.”

“Oh,” Marinette pauses, feeling her face grow warm at the sudden compliment. “Well- Uh, pink it is, then.”

***

(Damian watches the blush rise on her cheeks as she turns away to try and hide it. Yes, he can’t help but think, fetching in pink, indeed.)

***

Luka insists on being the one to dye her hair, citing that he’s the one who had dibs all these years, but Alix and Jason both all but demand to be there too.

Her bathroom is not big enough for all four of them to sit in.

Not a single one of them cares.

Cass and Duke ask for progress pics along with Uncle Jay, and all her Parisian friends cycle through standing at the bathroom door to see how it's going.

The constant stream of people looking at her makes her feel not unlike an animal at a zoo. (When she wryly tells this to Alix, all she gets is her friend cackling on the ground.)

But, after all the bleaching and conditioning and waiting, she stares into the mirror with soft pink hair the color of bubblegum and thinks, yeah, it was worth it.

She thinks it again when Damian walks in the next day and almost trips over his own feet.

(She’s also wearing her Robin themed sundress, complete with hood, matching boots and personal touches not found on the mass-produced version—but Marinette doesn’t know why that would be relevant.)

Her favorite reaction to her new hair color though is, by far, Mar’i’s.

Marinette doesn’t see the young Grayson until a week later when she’s invited to the monthly family dinner Alfred insists all the Waynes attend—which includes her now, apparently (she tries not to show how pleased she is by that).

She arrived with Damian, who was kind enough to pick Tim and her up from work, and Mar’i takes one look at Damian and her standing next to one another before she starts babbling excitedly about Lilo and Stitch and Angel. A character who is—apparently—Stitch’s girlfriend and the complimentary pink to his blue.

Marinette is momentarily surprised, but Mar’i’s enthusiasm is contagious and it isn’t long before the rest of the Waynes are teasingly calling them Angel and Stitch. Marinette thinks it’s all very funny and adorable.

Damian, on the other hand, most certainly does not and threatens everyone who calls him that ‘ridiculous nickname’ with graphic depictions of bodily harm.

‘Angel’, oddly enough, sticks for Marinette. She finds she kind of likes it.

***

Later, Damian asks her about nicknames.

Well, he calls them ‘asinine titles’ and doesn’t so much ask as demand she explain why she allows anyone to call her by them seeing as she has a ‘perfectly serviceable name,’ in his opinion.

Ignoring the fact that she’s heard Dick call him multiple nicknames he hadn’t protested to, she says, “Well, I guess it’s that everyone uses Marinette. A nickname is something… special. A little more personal, I guess. And, I dunno. My parents named me Marinette, but it’s nice to share something between other people. And it shows they care.”

Damian looks confused after she’s done, but also thoughtful. He doesn’t say anything to that and Marinette doesn’t really expect anything to come of it.

She's proven wrong when, a week later, Damian calls her Starling instead of Marinette.

(And the transition from Dupain-Cheng to Marinette had been enough to make her beam—this is just ridiculous.)

***

When Robin disappears a second time, Marinette doesn’t get the chance to notice his absence on her own. He’s only stopped showing up four days ago—which is longer than normal, but not unheard of—when she hears unfamiliar voices on her balcony.

Looking out, she finds three semi-familiar individuals clustered around the plate of treats she leaves out for Robin and Hood.

Nightwing and Red Robin are both stuffing their faces full of the fruit tarts she had made while Spoiler glares at them and seems to be cursing the fact that her mask covers her mouth the same way Hood always does when she makes those raspberry scones he likes.

The scene is… odd. For many reasons but most pressingly that their arrival has come out of nowhere.

“Well,” Nightwing explains when she asks, “We wanted to visit ages ago, but baby bird threatened to stab us all if we tried.”

“He’s very… particular about you,” Red Robin tacks on while Spoiler nods sagely like she hasn’t crafted some strange straw monstrosity just so she can drink tea while still wearing her mask. Red Robin has one too, but his for the aesthetic rather than out of necessity.

Marinette stares at the three of them. “That… does not explain why you are here now.”

“Robin can’t stop us now, obviously,” Red Robin says casually, like he hasn't just kicked her heart into high gear with a few words.

“What? Why?” she demands, trying very hard not to sound panicked. “Is he okay? Was he hurt?”

Red Robin blinks, going quiet in that way Hood and Robin do when they’re judging her just a bit. She hates this family.

“No, he’s… fine.”

“B’s just benched him for the time being,” Nightwing helpfully supplies, amusement flickering at the edges of his lips. “He’s a little too… conspicuous at the moment.”

Marinette’s shoulders relax even as her brows furrow. Conspicuous? What in the world is that supposed to mean?

“Does that mean he won’t be coming around for a while?” she asks before she can think better of it.

The three vigilantes in front of her share a look before Spoiler says, “Probably. But the gremlin’s never been one to sit still so who knows?” she smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners as she leans toward Marinette conspiratorially. “But don’t worry. We can keep you company in the meantime!”

“We’re much better company than the demon anyway. Certainly less insulting.”

“Oh, he’s not that bad. He’s an ass, for sure, but you can tell when he means it and when he’s just stumbling over himself.” Marinette smiles fondly, “For someone so dignified, he trips over his tongue quite often.”

Now the vigilantes are really staring at her. She’s starting to feel pretty uncomfortable about it all when Nightwing beams at her, jumping up from his seat to sweep her into a hug. It startles her, but she doesn’t push him away, instead laughing at the sudden affection.

“Oh you really are perfect!” he exclaims, setting her down and still grinning like an absolute lunatic.

She’s smiling, because Nightwing’s joy is infectious, but she's even more confused than before. And then, before she can ask what he means, Red Robin’s wrist computer lights up—and damn, isn’t that cool? Marinette wonders if Tikki could do something like that for the Ladybug suit—and the three are moving to swing back out into the night.

She waves them off and they all promise to visit again.

Marinette shakes her head before going back inside with the empty pastry plate and four empty mugs.

***

Damian knows of Marinette’s friends of course. It'd take more effort not to when she talks about them every chance she gets and tells him all the wild stories about their escapades and misadventures.

(They also all came up in the background check he ran on her when they first met.)

Most of her friends are exceedingly normal oddly enough. Well, they’re all mildly famous and the leaders of their various fields, but they’re just civilians.

The only exceptions being, Bourgeois, Agreste, and Graham de Vanily.

Bourgeois is a former hero like Marinette, only she doesn't seem to still be in contact with the Parisian Court. All the articles he could find spoke about how Queen Bee was deemed unfit for her mantle and later replaced by the new bee hero, Ambrosia. Agreste was caught up in the scandal of his father being Hawkmoth, but he was found innocent and ignorant of his father's crimes (something Damian made sure to confirm). He now works at and is being groomed to own the bakery Marinette's parents run, seeing as their daughter has little interest to do it herself.

And finally, Graham de Vanily, Agreste's cousin, has a history of causing trouble wherever he goes. Nothing villainous, and rarely even malicious, but there's something about him that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not everything is as it seems with the Graham de Vanily heir.

Besides those three outliers, Marinette's friends seem to be untouched by the vigilante life. Which means he thinks they must be utterly boring.

Only, when her friends start coming around to visit and drag her out for lunch or some other random outing, Damian keeps finding himself baffled by each of them.

They act strangely and with a dangerous air none of them should possess, except for Tsurugi. The questions they ask him are strange and the jokes they make have no sense. He's been warned about how he better treat Marinette so many times, he's started to lose count. (Which is ridiculous. He treats her just fine and would never intentionally harm her. What are they trying to insinuate?)

But, by far, his most memorable encounter is with Lahiffe. A veritable wolf in sheep's clothing.

Marinette is excitedly babbling about her newest idea for her summer collection, pressed up against him on the chaise and practically shoving her sketches in his face as she demands his critique and thoughts.

Her hands are waving every which way and, on more than one occasion, he has to quickly lean back so she doesn't hit him in the face.

He’s focusing on what she’s saying so much—because she has a habit of forgetting things if she doesn’t write them down and needs someone to remind her of the ideas she had at a later time—that he doesn’t even realize Lahiffe is there until he clears his throat.

Marinette jumps, almost elbowing him in the stomach. “Nino!” she shouts, springing up and flinging herself at the other man who catches her like this is something she does often.

“Heya, Nettie.”

“Wait- what are you doing here? You’re not-” she jolts back to look at Lahiffe’s amused expression. “Oh kwami, is it time already? Shit. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m so sorry! I have to give this one thing to Publishing but then I promise we can go, okay? Like, just five minutes!”

She's already moving before she finishes speaking, sweeping up papers and rearranging files and putting things away with all the swiftness and agility of a speedster. Damian watches her go about her routine, occasionally handing her something she’s dropped or pointing out a thing she’s missed, weaving around her chaos with practiced ease.

Then she’s sweeping out of the office with a distracted “be right back!” and he’s alone with Lahiffe.

The second Marinette leaves, the man’s attention swings onto him with a strange weight. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything and Damian’s hackles raise with every passing second.

He doesn’t snap at him though, because he’s one of Marinette’s friends. Insulting him would only serve to make her upset and that’s something Damian's been trying to avoid causing as of late.

“Man,” Lahiffe says at last. “Alix wasn’t kidding about the whole besotted thing, huh?”

Damian rears back, straightening up to his full height. “I beg your pardon?”

Lahiffe laughs and waves his hand about like that’s supposed to mean something. “Ah, no need to be embarrassed about it, dude. You’re far from the first of us to fall for her charms.”

“What.”

“Yeah, we've all been there. I think over half of the Paris crew crushed on her at some point, including myself. None of us are into her like that anymore, so as long as you treat her right, you got nothing to worry about."

“I’m not- I'm not interested in Marinette,” Damian tries to protest but Lahiffe just calmly steamrolls over him.

“Nah. Everyone loves Nettie. It’s universal law or something. First, there was me and Adrien, then Luka—who she actually liked back for a while there but are now practically siblings. Chloé liked her in collége, but she hadn’t really come to terms with that at the time. Alix might’ve, but she’s pretty grey-ace and fluctuates on the romance points, so who knows.

“Oh! And Nath. He also snagged a date with her, but he was an Akuma at the time so I’m not technically sure that it counts. And he’s with Marc now anyway. Thinking of adopting a kid, last I heard. Anyway- my point was: everyone loves Nettie. And don’t bother trying to fight it, because it only makes her pull of gravity worse.”

Lahiffe then claps him on the shoulder like their talk amiable and not the most confusing speech Damian’s ever heard.

And then he doesn’t even get to say anything to that because Marinette is sprinting back through the door, grabbing her jacket and bag, telling him goodbye, and dragging Lahiffe out to who knows where.

Damian stands there longer than he cares to admit trying to make the world make sense again.

***

A week and a half after she learned Robin was benched, Damian catches her staring off into space as she doodles tiny robins in the margins of her sketchbook.

He gives her an odd look when she scrambles to hide them, blushing hotly and babbling about how she’s “Just fine! Nothing to worry about! I’m just, maybe, perhaps, a little worried for a friend even though I shouldn’t be, because his family says he’s just fine and-”

He looks contemplative when he leaves that day, but he didn’t ask about her outburst, so she extends the same courtesy to him.

***

That night, Robin returns.

“What,” she says around the laughter threatening to bubble out of her throat, “are you wearing?”

Robin scowls from behind the full cowl he has on that she’s pretty sure belongs to Red Robin. It makes him look a whole ten years older and she can’t get over how ridiculous he looks. If he keeps doing stupid things with his face while wearing that monstrosity, she is definitely going to laugh at him.

“What are you wearing?” he shoots back petulantly.

She blinks in confusion, then realizes she’s still wearing her Red Hood inspired jacket right now. Tan colored fake leather with fuzzy, red inner lining, done with all the same pockets, buttons, and zippers Red Hood has on his own jacket. It looks almost exactly like the jacket she fixed for him all that time ago, except she's also added a soft, crimson hood and his own personal bat symbol stitched across her shoulder blades.

As far as things she's designed goes, this is one of her simpler ones. It's nothing like the elaborate creations she makes for the Ambrosia or Ryuko themed items.

But Red Hood was a simple kind of person, and she likes that it’s reflected in her work.

Robin doesn't seem to agree if the poorly concealed disdain on his face means anything.

“What?” she asks teasingly, “You jealous?”

He scoffs and looks off to the side. “Of course not. I simply do not understand why you’d want anything to do with that simpleton. Especially not when I know you have clothing articles referencing far superior individuals.”

She snorts good-naturedly, "What 'individuals'? You mean you?"

The way he raises his nose self importantly is answer enough, and she can't stop herself from rolling his eyes. "Well, it's certainly a start. But I'm not the only one."

"Oh, yeah? And who else is marvelous enough to stand on the same level as you?"

"Multimouse."

Her mouth goes dry, and she can tell Robin is pointedly not looking at her.

“Come inside,” she blurts in lieu of all the things she really wants to say—which are mostly just embarrassing variations of I missed you. “I can, uh, make us tea. If you want.”

It's the first time she’s ever invited him inside and she can see the small bit of shock on his face—well, what she can see of it anyway—before he schools it.

“Yes,” he says in a tone of voice that implies it was his idea in the first place. “That sounds… good.”

She steps aside, allowing him to pass her by into the flat. Only instead of just walking past her, he stops halfway through the doorway and stares at her. She’s about to ask what’s wrong when he reaches out with his hand to gently grab a lock of her hair.

“Pink suits you, by the way.”

She quirks her lips, “Yeah? You don’t think it’s… too much?”

The corners of his mouth turn down, “Absolutely not. You look…” he trails off, mouth flattening into a line and dropping his hand.

She blinks at the odd behavior. “Nice?” she offers tentatively.

He nods, but it’s a little jerky and strange. But before she can ask about it, he’s already turning to enter her flat like he owns the place, remarking about her choices of tea and if she’s finally acquired an ‘adequate teapot’.

She shakes off the moment and goes in to follow him before he wrecks her kitchen in his careless search for tea supplies.

***

MinnieMouse: COME GET YALL JUICE

and by juice i mean me

I still do not have an american license

JaneAustenStanAccount: what do we get out of it?

MinnieMouse: ???

the pleasure of my company??

also youre literally the one that invited me to watch megamind

JaneAustenStanAccount: and??

daisyduke: shut up jay

we all know youre soft for M stop tryin to play tough

MinnieMouse: this is why duke is my favorite

he’s a living callout post

swanlake: :(

MinnieMouse: second favorite

im so sorry cass ily

swanlake: :)

daisyduke: i aint even mad

JaneAustenStanAccount: I AM

guys wtf

MinnieMouse: you brought this on yourself

maybe you should be nicer to me

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

daisyduke: ‘get fucked jason’ -marinette 2k20

btw im omw for you now

MinnieMouse: thnx ur the best

also im bringing scones as movie snack

daisyduke: noice

swanlake: !!!

JaneAustenStanAccount: FUCK YEAH!!!

MinnieMouse: you dont get any Jay

JaneAustenStanAccount: >:(

i hate it here

***

Marinette doesn’t know a lot about Robin’s past, which she assumes is by design. Secret identities don’t lead well to handing out details and concrete information about one’s personal life.

But, she thinks, one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not see that whatever facsimile of a childhood Robin had was about eight different levels of fucked up.

It’s in the vague allusions to ‘training’ and the scorn filled way he says the word ‘mother’. It’s in the not-quite-confusion—because whatever family he has is better now, at least—of Marinette telling him about her own parents. About the happy memories she’s shared with them, of learning to bake bread and croissants and macaroons under the loving guidance of her father and practicing delicate designs and frosting techniques with her mother.

So, yeah. She knows he’s kind of messed up and definitely checks off the childhood trauma box that’s apparently one of the requirements for being her friend.

So when Robin suddenly decides to go against everything she’s learned about him up until this point and actually share something about himself—and when that thing he shares just so happens to be a story from his childhood—well… Marinette wouldn’t say she’s prepared, but she’s not- prepared.

He’s in her kitchen, because Marinette has learned her lesson about bleeding vigilantes on her couch, and she’s pretty sure he could’ve gone back to the Cave for this, but he came here for whatever reason. (Was closer, he said. Marinette doesn’t know if she believes him.)

She’s cleaning the knife wound on his arm, and she has his cape laid out across her island. There’s a hole in it she plans on sewing back up after she finishes sewing the hole in her reckless vigilante back up.

“You need to be more careful,” she scolds. “You’re lucky this didn’t nick something important.”

“It's hardly the worst wound I’ve ever acquired,” he tells her in a tone of voice that he probably thinks is reasonable. “At seven years old I had to dig a bullet out of my side in the middle of a Himilayan snowstorm while still making it back to base with time to spare after having successfully assassinated a Russian ambassador.”

Marinette pauses where she’s smoothing the gauze onto his bicep. Her eyes flick up to his, and she sees the exact moment he seems to realize what he just told her. He’s gone utterly still beneath her hands, with terror or worry or the effort it takes not to bolt out the window immediately, she doesn’t know.

“That’s horrifying,” she tells him as she finishes securing the obnoxiously bright bandage, “Never tell me that story again.”

She then drops a kiss onto his bicep, subtly imbuing it with enough luck that it will keep off any infection—the wound was filthy when he came in, seriously, was he in a sewer?—and pats his cheek warmly before moving to clean up all her supplies.

She feels his eyes on her the rest of the night, but every time she turns to him, she can’t tell what he’s thinking. All she knows is that he seems… softer, in a way.

***

Three days after Marinette’s unexpected look into Robin’s past, she finds a box on her desk. It’s a jewelry box, and the only reason she doesn’t immediately freak out is the fact that it lacks any of the miracle box markings.

Still, she opens it hesitantly, and inside, she finds a necklace. A completely normal, non-magical necklace that’s simple and pretty and very much shaped like a tiny toy mouse.

There is no note.

***

(Lahiffe was right.

The Earth spins around the sun. The sky is blue.

Everyone loves Marinette.)

***

The necklace is obviously supposed to be a reference to her Multimouse days, but that doesn’t exactly narrow down who could have left it for her.

Or well, it does, but all the people it narrows down to don’t make any sense.

Multimouse is a badly kept secret, but it’s still a secret. Most people outside Paris don’t know about her and the people in Paris didn’t exactly recognize her off the street either.

Her Court knows, obviously, and so do the Waynes and the bats. But her Court wouldn’t leave her mouse themed gifts, they tend toward ladybugs or their own animal motif as a gift (the amount of cat and bee themed items she owns is ludicrous).

Which leaves the Waynes and the bats.

But her Waynes wouldn’t leave the gift on her desk, and they certainly wouldn’t forget to put a note, so Duke, Jason, and Cass are out.

She must stand there thinking about it too long, because then Jeremy's walking in, just as bright and early as ever.

He sees her holding the box and his face turns a strange mix of curious and outraged. “Is it your birthday? I swear, Boss if you didn't tell us it was your birthday-”

“No, Jeremy,” she says, amused despite her confusion. “That’s not for a while yet. I found this when I walked in,” she shakes the box slightly for emphasis, “but there wasn’t a note.”

“Oh.” A smile slowly spreads across Jeremy’s face. “Oh?” he purrs, waggling his eyebrows at her. “Does the boss have a secret admirer?”

Marinette blinks and- what?

“What? No. I can’t- That doesn’t-” she splutters but Jeremy just laughs and walks over to his station to start setting up for the day, leaving Marinette to her breakdown.

Because this can’t have been left by a secret admirer. That’s just crazy.

There are exactly two people who could’ve left this for her and neither of them would be an admirer of any kind. And she wouldn’t want them to be anyway because that would be stupid and ridiculous and weird.

She doesn’t like Robin or Damian like that…

Right?

***

(It’s impossible not to love her, he realizes, mostly by accident.

She loves, wholeheartedly and unafraid and so much more than Damian had ever thought one person could. She loves with a ferocity and passion no person deserves or can match.

And Damian, foolishly, loves and wishes to be loved by her anyway.)

***

There are roses on her desk the next day, potted and still healthy.

The day after that, there’s a box of expensive chocolates. Like, the kind only Adrien, Felix, and Chloé buy without a second thought. The gossip has spread far enough that all of her designers know about the gifts and probably-admirer.

On the fourth day, there is a box full of high-quality pencils and a new sketchbook, one with nice thick drafting paper, but small enough to fit in her favored bag. Her name is embossed across the front, along with her personal motif of delicate apple blossoms.

On the fifth day, she shows up to find there is only a drawing, which should point to it being Damian, but drawing-her is holding a robin in her cupped palms which cannot be a coincidence. Drawing-her also looks serene and beautiful with her mouth curved slightly and her eyes gentle and soft and Marinette is as touched by the image as she is frustrated by it.

There are hair sticks on the sixth, and delicate pins shaped like flowers on the seventh. Another stunning drawing of her on the eighth, a bottle of wine older than Master Fu on the ninth, the softest cashmere blanket on the tenth, a basket of sweet floral lotions, a glass statue of a bird in flight—she gets so many gifts, Marinette has to stop keeping count.

It’s somewhere around day six that her designers must’ve ratted on her to either Felix or Chloé because it’s not long after that, that all of her friends learn about the gifts and start being terrifically unhelpful about the whole situation.

They each try to give her advice, which would be sweet if it wasn’t all equally terrible and conflicting.

They’re also placing bets on who they think her admirer is, Damian or Robin. They’re trying to be discreet about it—which means they’re failing miserably.

Marinette, admittedly, never expected any different from them.

***

Marinette begins watching Damian in the mornings with a newfound interest.

The gifts are always there before she arrives, which means they're also there before Damian arrives, so she’s in a prime position to catch his reaction.

Or, she would be, if he ever reacted. He barely glances at them and never says anything unless the gift is particularly obnoxious, like the giant stuffed mouse she found sitting in her chair last week. (It was almost as big as she was. Adrien, Nino, and Alix had ended up on the floor from laughing so hard when they’d seen it.)

Damian almost never comments on the gift she received that day, but whenever she uses or wears something that her mysterious admirer had gotten for her, he makes sure to compliment her. Which would be  very suspicious except that Robin does the same thing.

It’s just- they’re both so frustratingly silent about it all! Marinette is this close to just grabbing one or both of them by the shoulders and just shaking until they tell the truth.

It’s driving her insane! Before the necklace appeared on her desk, she didn’t even know that she liked Robin and Damian.

And now she’s overanalyzing their nonreactions. She hates it.

It feels too much like she’s back in collège, trying to sort out her feelings for Adrien and Chat. (Who ended up being the same person—which was just very inconsiderate of him, really. The least he could do is let her angst have meaning dammit!)

And- ugh. What if she doesn't even like either of them? What if her mind is just making her think she does because the idea of them liking her was presented? What then? Or what about the fact that the two boys are also ridiculously similar when she thinks about it. What if she only likes one and is just projecting her feelings onto the other because her mind associates the two?

Oh, she doesn’t like that thought. That thought makes her feel upset and like she wants to cry into a tub of ice cream.

Nino happily indulges her and doesn't even complain when she eats her way through his stash of mint chip as she dramatically complains about stupidly confusing boys.

Honestly, she may as well be back in lycée.

***

(What Marinette does not realize in the midst of all her careful analysis of his reactions, is that it’s not the gifts he’s focused on.

When she wears the necklace and hair sticks, she misses the way his eyes linger on the slope of her neck. As she cares for her roses, she doesn’t notice the way he follows the easy nimbleness of her fingers. She uses her sketchbook and eats the expensive chocolates and doesn’t pay attention to the way he steals glances at her lips. She doesn't see the way his hands twitch when she ventures just near enough to touch.

(She exists next to him, in any form or light, and he is captivated by her very presence.)

Marinette looks, but it is in all the wrong places.)

***

Strangely enough, it’s Signal who helps her with her internal crisis—completely unintentionally and in a very roundabout way—but he helps all the same.

He’s taken an… interest, she supposes, in her magic. One that is entirely his own and has very little to do with that Bat from what she can tell.

His abilities and hers stem from different origins, but she would be lying if she said his weren’t oddly complementary to her own. His precognition abilities stemming from his photokinesis has been useful on more than one occasion regarding the experimental spell matrices she, Tikki, and Nooroo have been testing out.

The magic is normally invisible to people without a Miraculous, but Signal seems to have little trouble seeing what she’s doing, even if he can’t interact with it the way she can.

(There is also the fact that she seems… more when he is around. Days that he spends watching her do her work go by faster and smoother than when he is away. Her magic is easier, and her mind spins with ideas and creations faster.

It’s an odd phenomenon and Ladybug is looking into it.)

There has been more than one occasion where Signal had warned her of the matrix’s imminent collapse with enough time for her to prepare herself for its blowback.

The version she’s working on today is their fifth iteration. It’s supposed to pull the miasma out of the building, filter it through her and Tikki’s own magical energy, before flowing back into the brickwork. Marinette had thought of the idea while talking with Nooroo.

If she can get it to work, it will shift the misfortune into good luck and order and release it back into the environment. Then she’ll only need to cleanse strategic portions of the city in a lattice network, and the creative and destructive energies will mix from there, balancing themselves without much input from her at all.

Of course, that’s only if she can actually get it to work. It’s been almost a month and this is the fifth version and it’s already collapsed on her three times in the last hour. Signal must see the frustration on her face and has taken to trying to distract her with small talk.

She’s very thankful for it, actually. If he wasn’t doing that, she would probably start screaming right here and now, on this random rooftop in the residential district. Which would just be very startling and embarrassing for everyone involved, so. You know. Glad she doesn’t have to do that.

Eventually, she asks him, apropos of nothing, “You’re a detective right?”

He pauses, and blinks at her, likely trying to follow the train of thought that led her to that question. She assumes he did not find it because when he speaks, he still sounds confused.

“Yes? I guess that’s technically what I am.”

“So you’re good at figuring out who’s behind a crime?”

Signal only looks more confused. “Yeah? But Ladybug, what-”

“Great, so. Hypothetically, if you had two suspects for a—well it’s not a crime. A… thing? Situation. How would you figure out which one of them is actually behind the… situation?”

Signal’s lips quirk, just a bit despite his confusion. “I think I’m gonna need a little more to go on than just ‘a situation,’ LB.”

Ladybug purses her lips and stares down at the light weaving intricate patterns in the space between her palms. Slowly, carefully, she tells him, “There are items being left where a person can find them. But the identity of the person leaving them and their intentions are unknown.”

“Are the items dangerous?” he asks worriedly.

Ladybug shakes her head. “No. They're more like gifts.”

“Are the gifts unwanted or creepy? Unsettling? Threatening?”

Another head shake. “Just confusing and… thoughtful.”

“Someone is leaving you thoughtful gifts and you're worried about that… why?” Signal asks, slowly and disbelievingly. 

“It’s because I- wait! I’m not the person!” she panics, causing the magic to spark dangerously in her hands but she barely notices. “The person doesn’t even exist. It was a hypothetical question!”

Signal stares at her. She can’t see his eyes or the top half of his face, but she just knows he’s raising his eyebrow judgingly at her.

“Stop that!” she snaps. “Stop being perceptive! I have enough perceptive people in my life so knock it off!”

Signal laughs like the horrible person he is. “But don’t you need me to be perceptive? That’s like, a requirement to be a detective.”

“Stop it,” she says again, mulishly and very childish.

And isn’t that an odd thought to have? Ladybug being childish.

How novel. Ladybug has never once been childish. She can’t afford to be, because when she is behind the mask, she is all the most important parts of herself. She is the Grand Guardian, is the one who must be in control at all times because she has an entire team to keep safe and alive.

Behind the mask, she’s all of her greatest responsibilities.

But here, in Gotham and with Signal, she is none of those things to him. She is simply another hero, that is his age and very much like him in ways so few are. Ladybug, in the moments she spends with Signal, is probably the closest she has ever been to carefree while in the mask.

It’s as comforting a thought as it is terrifying.

Signal raises his hands in surrender, but his lips are still quirked in amusement. 

Ladybug regrets starting this conversation.

She regrets it even more when, five minutes later, Signal manages to pull the rest of the story from her… along with a name.

She realizes her mistake a second too late to stop herself, and then all she can do is watch.

She watches, with ever-growing horror, as Signal slowly puts the pieces together. She watches, as her whole secret identity starts unraveling around her for the first time ever. She watches, stricken, as Signal opens his mouth to speak.

And then she grabs both sides of his head and Orders him to sleep.

***

The second Marinette bespells him, she regrets it.

She was panicking, okay? And Marinette panicking is very different from Ladybug panicking and truly, she creates messes just by existing.

Nooroo flies out of his hiding place to make distressed noises at the now unconscious Signal with her, which is… actually kinda soothing, if not exactly helpful.

At least she knows she’s not the only one upset right now.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Nooroo frets, flitting around her head with agitated wings. Hers aren’t much better, if she’s being honest. “What are we going to do, Guardian? He knows who you are! This is bad.”

Marinette worries her thumb between her teeth, shifting her weight from foot to foot. With a thought, she's back in her civvies and Tikki is perched on her shoulder, blinking at the scene she’s suddenly a part of.

“Well,” Tikki says, sounding far too calm for the situation. “This isn’t ideal.”

The laugh that escapes Marinette is on the edge of hysterical. “You think?”

“It’s not ideal,” Tikki repeats firmly, “But neither is it a disaster.”

Nooroo lands on her other shoulder as she kneels down beside Signal to rearrange his limbs to not be so uncomfortable. “But he's unpredictable!” he argues, curling into the side of her neck like she will hide him from the world. “We don’t know what he’ll do with this information!”

Tikki hums thoughtfully. “Then we will have to ask. There are far worse people we could have been revealed to. We're lucky it was a friend rather than foe.”

“You think so?” Marinette asks softly, voice barely louder than a whisper.

She knows the Bat’s flock are good people. Many of them are her friends, or people she hopes to call friends soon.

But she doesn't know if these people Marinette calls friends could be Ladybug’s allies.

The bats hoard secrets like black holes, and perhaps they would keep hers just as well, but they could just as easily use it against her. Batman barely tolerates her presence, she can tell by the way Signal talks sometimes, and it is no small stretch of the imagination that he would use this to try and kick her out of Gotham.

Marinette cannot, as a Guardian, leave Gotham.

But more importantly, she doesn’t want to leave Gotham. It’s… her home now. Her friends are here. Her family is here. Robin and Hood and the other bats are here. Damian and all her Waynes are here.

Leaving Gotham would not only make her sick and jittery at the imbalance, but it would break her heart.

If, when Signal tells Batman, he reacts poorly, there is so much that Marinette is set up to lose. And that terrifies her.

Some of that thought process must show on her face—or perhaps Nooroo has just picked up on the turmoil in her chest—because the two Kwami are pressed on either side of her face, nuzzling and hugging as much of her as they can reach.

“We’ll make it through this, Marinette,” Tikki says firmly, no room for argument. “Don’t worry so much. Both of you. Everything will turn out just fine, you’ll see.”

***

@bluesimani @how-to-fuction-properly @chocolatecatstheron @mystery-5-5 @nickristus-dreamer @mochegato @thenillabean @animegirlweeb @novaloptr @darkdaysandfakesmiles @optimistically-pessimistic0524 @clumsy-owl-4178 @g-arya @undecisioned @smolplantmum @blackmagicforever @i-wanna-be-a-ninja @wannajointhecrabcult @paintedhope7 @redscarlet95 @roselynfey @ira-sairain @lozzybowe @tumbling-down-hills-and-stuff @2confused-2doanything @pepelachanel @too0bsessedformyowngood @miraculouspenta @itsmeevie01 @corabeth11 @jalaluvsu

[katygorl]

A little something I first started in my drafts a week ago, of a mini scene that was in my head. This being of two of my @thethreemages characters(as well as a mention of a canon one!), Winnie and Colden~ :3

This takes place when the two are a little older(like 1-2 years in the future), with Winnie getting ready for her first ever date. She’s a little nervous about it at first, and though she gets frustrated with her brother’s protective act upon him hearing about it, she knows he means well deep down and just has her happiness and wellbeing in mind.

I hope you enjoy reading~ ^w^

=============================================================

Settled into the southside of New Grayle City was the Igalls household, quiet as everyone was doing their own things. The father, Lucian, was out though, with his children staying at home. The eldest child, Colden, was laying down on the couch in the living room, absentmindedly scrolling through his phone as the tv played on a low volume. The youngest child, Winnie, was sitting on her bed in her room, trying not to freak out as she was in the middle of getting dressed.

“O-okay, breathe. You’ve got this.”

Her heart was beating fast, as her mind was racing with multiple scenarios of what could wrong. Her first ever date was in little over an hour, and she was trying her best to calm her nerves down. Unlike her friends she never had much experience with romance before, so all her newfound feelings and this date had been overwhelming for her to deal with. She knew she should not worry too much, as they were just going to the Starlit Shores boardwalk, a place she had been to before. Most of her worries came from her thinking of all the ways she could mess up, though she knew her date was a pretty patient person from their previous talks and hangouts.

“Everything will be fine, I’ll be fine! All I have to do is just be myself, and trust that he likes me...”

She raised her head, gazing at her reflection in her mirror before giving herself a soft smile. Getting up from her bed, she felt a rush of newfound confidence as she looked at the outfit ensemble that she had laid out, ready to start getting ready again.

“A-all right, let’s do this!”

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

As Colden was in the middle of watching a random movie that he had found playing while channel-surfing, he heard the soft creak of the stairs as his sister stepped her way down them. She came to stand in the small entryway, smoothing down her outfit. She was dressed up more than she normally was, wearing an orange knee-length dress, a short-sleeved cropped, white cardigan with matching flats, and her hair pulled back in a simple, but nice-looking fashion. She glanced around the living room, her brows furrowing slightly in worry as she addressed her brother. “Hey Col, is dad still out? I was hoping for a ride...”

Leaning his head back to look at her, he turned around completely as he saw her all dressed up, much different than she usually did. “Whoa, where are you going?”

Picking up on the slight tone of his words, Winnie let out a small sigh as she walked a little closer to where he was. “Come on, don’t be like that. Am I not allowed to go out anywhere?”

“I didn’t say that. I just meant... you never dress like this normally, you know, so I just wanted to make sure you’re going somewhere safe...”

“Oh,” her cheeks grew pink, averting eye contact as she fiddled with her sleeve. “W-well, to tell the truth... I am supposed to be going to Starlit Shores...”

“I’m sorry, what was that last part? I couldn’t hear you,” his expression and tone had softened, but his eyebrows still furrowed in concern.

Winnie’s blush grew more as she became embarrassed, but she did not feel like hiding the truth anymore. She took a couple seconds to compose herself, swallowing the lump of fear that had been building up in her throat. “F-for a date...”

“A date?? With who?” a protective edge returned to his words, Colden’s natural big brother instincts kicking in.

His sister’s cheeks were still warm, but she had calmed down more by that point to answer him, even if she wished he would lose the protective act and trust her more. “H-his name is Finn... We first met little over a year ago, but have only been talking and hanging out more as friends for the past several months. We were actually just hanging out again a couple of weeks ago, a-and that’s when I realized I had started liking him as something ‘more’...”

Colden had abandoned any leftover attention he was still retaining for the movie at this point, muting it as he sat up straighter on the couch to listen patiently to his sister’s story. “So... I am guessing you told him that?”

“Y-yeah... I was so nervous, but it felt right in the moment when I did... and, to my surprise he said he had started liking me as well! So after awkwardly talking about it for a bit, we decided to plan a little ‘date’ of sorts, at Starlit Shores since the view of the sunset from the boardwalk is so gorgeous there, a-and it was a favorite activity of ours to watch it so we decided to do a simple one there for our first one...”

“Hmm, I see...” Colden stood up from the couch, walking over to her. “Listen, I’m sorry if I sounded a little harsh just now, you know I just want the best for you and to make sure your safe,” he put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I really am happy for you, Winn. I don’t know much about this Finn guy, but he sounds like a good person and I hope you two enjoy your date together.”

Winnie could feel her eyes watering just a bit, sniffling a little as she leaned in to give her brother a hug, a full smile gracing her features. “Thank you, Col. That means so much to me...”

“You’re welcome,” he returned the hug, a small smile of his own forming. The two stood there quiet for a moment, before Colden pulled away slightly to face his sister. “Hey, do you still need a ride? Dad’s still out doing whatever, but I could give you one if you want.”

“O-oh! Yes! I almost forgot about that,” she pulled away too, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Shoot, I’m probably going to be late! Y-yeah, I’ll need a ride, please.”

Colden chuckled slightly, in higher spirits now as he turned off the tv and went to grab his keys and shoes. “Hey, it’s no problem! I know you could probably get there fast with your speed magic, but I’ll save you from getting all sweaty and stuff,” his shoes now on, he walked towards the door, opening it slightly before turning back to her. “I hope you’ve got spandex on or something though, since I only have my motorcycle to get you there. Is that okay?”

“Oh, um, that’s fine. And, I do, yeah,” she followed him outside to the garage, catching the helmet he threw to her as they got there. Putting it on, she made sure it was snug enough before she climbed on the bike behind him. Adjusting the small bag she brought and her outfit slightly so it would not get uncomfortable during the ride, she wrapped her arms around her brother’s waist to hold on. “Thank you again for this, Col, really.”

Adjusting his own position, Colden started up the motorcycle, revving the engine a little before takeoff. He looked back at his sister and smiled. “No problem.”

[felassan]

Gamers For Groceries 2 event

A Twitch stream event from a few days ago. It can currently be re-watched here (it was fun & interesting, so I do recommend to check it out direct). This post contains some notes on things of particular interest & relevant timestamps, in case this is useful to anyone (for example bc of accessibility reasons).

First up is the All About Animating panel, a series of mini-interviews with game devs (animators) asking what they do, how they got there, and advice for anyone interested in getting into the industry. Some or all of the devs that were interviewed are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and a lot about the craft of game dev animation in general. This segment runs from timestamp ~38 mins 40 secs to 1:07:50. Some notes:

[sounded like DA4] Right now the creature team are working on different creatures in a way which involves going through a lot of mocap data

At BioWare they have a pretty big technical animation team, to support their animators, so each tech animator has a different specialty. Tech anim involves animation support, character art support, and rigging the characters so that the animators can pose them

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] One of the featured animators’ area of specialty at the moment is faces and hair (building the control structure for face animations). First they had to decide how the face rig and its control structure would work. This involves a lot of performance capture of live actors for things like cinematics and gameplay animation, therefore the rigs for bodies and faces have to be able to accurately capture the full range of expressions and emotions that the actor is portraying. Right now the stage that this dev is working on most is setting up the heads that they’re getting through the pipeline from character art e.g. making adjustments based on feedback from the cinematics team. “Polish - just trying to get realism”

Hair tech has come quite a long way in the last few years [in the industry]

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] Hair is very complex to get right. “In the past most games have used card-based hair, which is basically like sheets of polygons with a texture on it that looks like hair, through layers of transparency. But real hair is strand-based, digital strands, so we’re starting to look into that kind of tech - try to get more realistic, more beautiful hair, but there’s always a performance cost to hair. Layers of transparent things are always an expense, they need to balance like, it looks good and moves well, but it doesn’t make your computer or console chug. [...] I guess we’re in the prototype stage but we’ve almost got a set pipeline. It’s always fun to experiment”

In Mass Effect 2 or 3, Miranda’s hair was as expensive as a whole character (!)

[on balancing hair costs/performance, general] It depends on things like character importance and how many characters are on-screen at the time. When you’re in gameplay fighting a bunch of monsters you’re not going to be giving full beautiful hair to all the characters and the monsters, as it will cost too much. (Having a helmet on is a convenient way to get rid of hair.) But if it’s a cinematic scene, with 2 characters talking to each other in a dramatic context, there’s a better budget for nice hair allocated

Some of the hair in Anthem was quite expensive in cinematics. They kept getting bugs from QA saying (for example) that a character’s hair was tripling the performance cost in the scene, so it would go back to character art so they could take away some of the hair cards. “Tough balance, quality versus cost”

“I wish all the characters could have beautiful strand hair”

For p-cap, a lot of the time they don’t want to be too prescriptive in terms of the direction that they’re giving the actors, as the actors know what they’re doing and have a lot of experience, so they give them vague instructions that they then riff off of

[sounded like DA4] They recently did a mocap shoot

[sounded like DA4] There’s a bit more productivity happening now in the pandemic situation; now that the animators are not all going to the capture lab in Vancouver in person for shoots, if it’s not their turn to direct a shot they can instead be working on something else on their computers (multi-tasking). ((Lead DA4 Producer Scylla Costa recently gave a talk at a games festival on the challenges of DA production during the pandemic. In part of this talk he talked about various benefits and drawbacks to the remote-working situation. He also talked about and showed some behind-the-scenes stuff for p-cap and mocap. Notes, images and link here))

[sounded like DA4] Special mocap suits were sent out that they can use with a laptop to go anywhere and shoot motion capture. It’s not as high fidelity as what comes out of the capture lab, but it’s really good for prototyping stuff. Before the pandemic they did some of this (going to a park and shooting some running around)

[sounded like DA4] In one of the shoots they had some actors who were really well-trained in dancing. They were trying to get them to do some combat stuff. This was a bit challenging in the pandemic situation as there’s only so much they can demonstrate/portray as an example to the actors from a distance on camera. “It’s hard to describe what a ‘dodge to attack’ is through the camera to somebody who has no idea what combat looks like in video games”

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] The pandemic has really affected performance capture for the face side of things badly, as in order to record, the actor gets dots painted on their face in specific locations by a makeup artist. They can’t do that right now because of social distancing/restrictions, so they haven’t been recording faces at the moment

The more detailed a face, the more joints it has, the more the cost to performance is

---

There was also the Writers’ Block panel, featuring DA writers Mary Kirby, Sheryl Chee and Patrick Weekes, and DA editor Karin Weekes. The timestamps for this segment are ~2:37:50 - 3:26:20. Some notes:

PW has never been weirder than when they were writing Cole on DAI

PW thinks that they accidentally wrote part of “Timber” by Kesha into Solas at one point and they were like “Well, okay, I have to stop listening to Kesha”

For Sheryl, after a while Blackwall’s VA always nailed doing his lines. She loved the quality of his voice and so after a while would always hear his voice while she was writing. This really worked out

^ Mary had this with Merrill. As soon as they cast Eve Myles she listened to several hours of her in Torchwood, and then just wrote to the way that she spoke as much as possible

^ PW had this with GDL as Solas and FPJ as Bull. As soon as they heard FPJ’s delivery, they were like “Oh, okay, I have to write some lines differently, because Bull is smarter than I realized”. With GDL they were like “Okay, he’s going to put poetry into anything I say, in the best way possible”. In early drafts of Solas lines there were parts where they [PW] wondered “Is this too melodramatic? Is this too tragically-angstful?” and then they would hear GDL and be like “Oh! [It’s fine] Game on!”

For localization, German words are often quite long so they often have to make sure that everything fits on the GUI

They think scenes like the romance scenes sound prettier in the Italian versions

Behind the curtain in creating the in-world languages: PW: “There are some awesome websites that have every elven word, like ‘Here are the translations and verb tenses and conjugations’ [etc], [...] and usually Mary and I get very sad slightly looking at those pages going like ‘Does that mean that we have to stick to that?’ [...] The rule is, if I’ve looked at the Wiki and the words, and I go ‘Here’s the correct grammatical way to do it’, and if that turns out to be too long or too many disconnected syllables and it just looks bad or sounds bad, then we shorten it to something simpler, because the key is we want to give the flavor of a foreign language, but we don’t have the world-building budget and capacity to make something that is going to be dictionary-real [in a way that] someone could go through and translate all the background things written on the old temple walls”. Part of the reason for this is the consideration for VAs, who already have to act while bearing lots of things in mind, like the cues in the script for each line

Mary: “For building a language, the first things that I started with for qunlat, elven and dwarven, was what words do we need to use the most? Greetings, farewells, words for friend and enemy, basic things that will come up easily in conversation. After that it’s ‘How difficult is this for other writers to use?’ Can they just pick it off the Wiki? Do they need just one word? Do they need to write whole sentences, and how does that work? Qunlat has almost no grammar to it because asking anyone to learn how to use Qunari grammar and conjugate verbs in a pretend language is impossible, and then once you’ve done that a human being has to be able to read it, while not knowing what any of it means”

PW: “One thing that I was really impressed with with Mary in particular doing, Mary was one of the big lore people across the entire DA series; I can look at a word and go like, ‘That has two A’s in a row, that’s definitely a Qunari word. That word is kind of long and maybe has some apostrophes and has a couple of flowy vowel sounds, that’s probably elven’, I think that’s what’s important. You want players to be able to look at a word, players want to feel smart, [like] ‘Oh I don’t know what that means but I totally know that’s a word from the Qunari people!’”. Mary: “Every language has its own set of phonemes, the sounds that they make, and the sort of word structure and spelling so that it gives a flavor to that language. Hopefully that is always chosen to be pronounceable, because again, very important that the words can be said by human beings :D”

Sheryl: “One of the fun things to do is to make up swear words in the fake languages [...] Recently Brianne wanted a word, I don’t know if she managed to find one”

The origin of bosh’tet in ME: it’s just saying “bastard” and slurring it

PW: “I feel like there are times when past writers kind of leave traps for future writers, where past writers will go ‘Okay, I’m going to write this detailed phrase in a codex entry but don’t worry, it doesn’t matter if it can never be said aloud, because it’ll never have to be voiced!’ and then, next game, guess what guys! Look what you have to make someone [a VA] say! And you’re like [facepalm], c’mon!”

Karin: “Now, four games in, we have pages and pages of all these examples, and I wanna say this, well that’s how we said something before, well that’s ridiculous, I don’t wanna say that, but now we’ve said it and it’s out there, so it’s like, how do we, y’know, how do we evolve, and sometimes we just go ‘Screw it! Languages are living languages! We’ll just say it like this now!’”

PW's favorite is the sarcastic Mythal’enaste, “Because it’s the sarcastic Mythal's blessing that basically means you’re getting screwed over somehow. I love it because Mythal nasty! Whoever wrote that clearly never thought that someone would have to say this out loud”

Sheryl wrote Bull’s joke icicles line. She also wrote Isabela’s big boats line - Jennifer took it out but then DG was like “No it has to come back”

They have a pun test, they get a few of them and have to allot them wisely so as not to oversaturate on the puns. “Is this good/bad enough to be one of the times that we pull the trigger? We did have one of those recently, I obviously can’t talk about it, but it was pronounced Okay to go ahead”

The ‘baby-est’ writer is Brianne, who’s been there 8 years

It makes PW sad that the players never get to see the writers’ temp-text [placeholder text when portions are a WIP]. “People have the best temp-text". Mary: “The number of conversations that I’ve temped in like ‘WELL. I hope nothing BAD happens HERE’”

Q. If you could bring in anybody from outside of gamedev, who would you like to work with and do a writer’s session with? PW: “I will say romance novelist Nora Roberts, she is really smart and also she knows how to write inside a genre, and do wonders within it. Her structure is so good. If you pick up one of her books, you know here’s when this is gonna happen, here’s when they’re gonna meet, here’s when this first moment will happen. We’re all experienced and I feel pretty good about that but I really like all of the things she does that way, and also I am a sucker for romance so I would love to bring a romance novelist in and just have them look at our scenes and go ‘Okay here, no, they should pull the tie so that the article of clothing comes open, we need a sense of how warm the skin is here’ - something like that. I’d wanna see what they could do with that”

“Luke writes the best worst lines”

“I’m always impressed with Mary getting away with lines. There are lines that I look at like, wow, you buried that one. [...] The only players who get that line, I feel like they earned it if they went that far into it. [...] And then Varric or Merrill says a ridiculous line in a one-time throwaway”

Karin: “The group dynamic, you’ll see conversations or snippets of a lunch chat or a thing we’ve been joking about and you’ll see it get pulled in, and how all of you [the writers] are able to take a normal kind of thing - as normal as we get as a group anyway - and then turn it into a moment, and use it to further the plot or use it to further a character. It’s just the cleverest thing and it happens in so many different ways. [...] The little snippet of life, then how you crafted it into this very cool thing”

Quartermaster Threnn was written by PW in half a day. “When I was writing Threnn, ‘Okay, this is a good-hearted [person], I was doing a little bit of Steel Magnolias, southern, no-nonsense, but like, blue collar Steel Magnolias’. This is someone accustomed to the ways of the world so she’s going to call a spade a spade. If you come up to her and you’re an elf she doesn’t recognize you and says ‘Buckets are over there’ because she thinks you’re there to clean, [but] ‘Anyone calls you a knife-ear you come to me I’ll take care of it’. It’s problematic but she’s trying - the good-hearted person rooted for the wrong group on every occasion. She was a proud Loghain supporter, she gets really exited if he comes to Skyhold.  That was a fun character for me to write because I had a viewpoint in my mind. I remember someone was like ‘Threnn is really important to me’. And you have to honor that, cause you’re like ‘Cool, it means so much to me that this connected with some part of you’”

---

Also of interest was the Mass Affection panel, in which BioWare devs looked back in over a decade of history to remaster a classic. It featured devs who worked on MELE. The��timestamps for this segment are ~3:36:09 - 4:24:37. Some notes:

When the pandemic hit the MELE team were in a relatively awkward spot. They were really entering into what they consider full production and were on-boarding a bunch of teams, as well as training and on-boarding third-party external partner specialized teams worldwide. When the pandemic hit, BioWare and EA were super on top of it. They were tracking it weeks beforehand, getting everyone their computers ready, and getting everything encrypted. When the middle of March 2020 hit they were home rightaway. EA were nothing but supportive throughout the entire thing. They got money every quarter for stuff. It functionally ‘hit’ at 4-6 different times for them as the pandemic occurred in different places throughout the world at different times depending on each country’s response plan (and their external partners were in different countries). “So it was one of those things where it was just like, every day we’d come in like can we still work with this company anymore? Do we need to find someone else? Do we need to pull people in off the other projects at BioWare to fill gaps here and there?”

There was a bug on Virmire at the part when you’re coming into the STG camp. If the Mako had its new boosters on and you came hurtling in really fast, it cut to the cutscene, but the Mako hit a jump and when Ash was like “What do we do now?” the Mako ended up literally flying around in the background sideways and then crashing into the camp

Another bug: when they were re-tuning the guns, the physics force on some of the guns with Hammerhead rounds was so high that when you were fighting some of the Thorian Creepers, you could ragdoll them so hard that you could basically embed them in the roof. They’d be moving so fast that they’d penetrate all the walls with their legs dangling out. It was so easy to do and you could do it to everybody. You could launch a geth halfway across an Uncharted World

Another bug: with Shepard’s casual appearance in ME3, if you didn’t have it set up perfectly correctly it would default to Grunt for some reason. You’d be walking around as Grunt, going on dates as Grunt, and your face would be all scrunched up because it was all mapped to human bones still, so it was just, like, Nightmare Fuel of Grunt

Another bug: in ME2 on Illium when trying to recruit Samara, the Asari enemies just would not stop screaming - regardless of whether they were hit or not, it was endless screaming. Later one of the devs got an audio file of the scream, endless and looped, and now one of the devs has it on their phone and uses it for their morning alarm tone

“Shepard would come up to characters and they’d just be screaming”

---

There was also the Programming Variables panel, talking about what hurdles game programmers face. Some [or all?] of the devs that were part of this panel are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and about the craft of game dev programming in general. The timestamps for this segment are ~ 4:24:46 - 5:06:02.

[source]

[insights/notes from Gamers For Groceries 1]

[☕ found this post or blog interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[its-chelisey-stuff]

My 2020 in dramaland pt 2/4

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it and happy holidays to everyone!! These are my favorite korean dramas of the year (I stand by these titles and I’m not ashamed of them lol). In chronological order:

My Holo Love: Say what? Who? First of all, I think this is a seriously underrated kdrama. I made a review on it here. Female lead had face blindness and Male Lead was a genius programmer. I know how this sounds but it all works for the plot, actually. Loved every moment of it (I watched it twice, and I rarely do that with dramas). A sort of sci-fi/fantasy romcom drama with a really unusual (and thus my favorite, EVER) love triangle and a nostalgic feel to it. While looking at my list of kdramas I knew I couldn’t treat Holo like all the others LOL it was special for me and still is.

OTP: They had sizzling chemistry! I honestly bought every cliche because of it. Including love at first sight.

Thing I enjoyed the most: The story was simple and had a lot of cliches but they kinda worked to the story’s advantage. This show is an example of why I fell for kdramas almost 10 years ago. Plus, the CGI wasn’t bad.  It’s ony 12 eps and they don’t really last an hour. A one day watch.

Do I recommend it? I LOVED it, but I recognize it’s not for everyone, but if you’re looking for something fun, cute and light to binge-watch that still has some drama and a lot of romance and a happy ending, this is for you.

Find me in Your Memory: Beautiful. Awesome chemistry. Very romantic. She’s an actress, he’s an anchorman. She forgets a lot of things, he literally can remember most things REALLY WELL. She falls for him first, he tries to put distance because of his terrible past in his dating life lol but she wins him over and by the end, he loves her more than anything and anyone. They overcome a lot of crazy shit, and being together it’s hard, but it’s worse being apart. I made a review.

OTP: Loved them both individually and together. And honestly, THAT chemistry was perfect.

Thing I enjoyed the most: The chemistry and the acting by the leads. I became a fan of both because of this.

Do I recommend it? You really haven’t seen it? Please do it. Hahahaha Well, do it if you want to see a good melo knowing what that involves (romance, sadness, lots of tears, some frustration, etc). A really sweet and happy ending that was very well deserved. My favorite melo of the year Sorry Brahms!.Also, fair warning, it has a stalkers’ sub-plot.

The King: Eternal Monarch: You all know what this is about. And I said everything I wanted in my posts (I was mostly fangirling like crazy). Here’s my last one about it. I loved the acting and the story a lot. But I think the drama should have been longer.  Also, I loved the energy of the actors behind the scenes, idk why, but it always warms my heart to see the actors get along on set. Sure, it could be a publicity stunt, but I just don’t think it was the case with this one. And I know not a lot of people liked the two lead characters and said they had no chemistry but imo they were great characters and the actors had LOTS of chemistry. It’s just that it wasn’t very well translated in the first eps, but it was fixed. This, I believe, was a more of a direction problem, rather than a script or acting one.

BTW if the drama was already about time travel and parallel worlds, I had NO problem believing in destiny and that the leads were meant to be. It was fantasy, you guys, not rocket science.

OTP: the main couple loved each other passionately and fiercely. He waited 20+ years to meet her and another 20+ years (practically) to see her again AND she was willing to risk getting stuck in a timeless void just to be by his side because otherwise he would be all alone. Now, that’s love! Personally, I loved their ending.

Thing I enjoyed the most: The King ahahaha I’m a shameless fan, what can I do? He was a good man and a gentleman but a ruthless king thirsty for justice and vengeance. I cheered when he killed his uncle lmao. Also, all the mutuals I “met” thanks to this drama. You guys made the experience even better with your posts and your theories!! *sends hugs*

Do I recommend it? Look the story is great in my eyes. I did understand it and the mechanics of the time travel and the parallel worlds. The King explained everything quite a few times. I say this because most people that didn’t like it say they couldn’t understand the story and/or it made no sense. To me, it did. But I can see why this wouldn’t be for all. That being said, I shamelessly recommend it lol.

More than Friends: The faces they’re doing in the poster, are the ones I did while watching the last 4 eps of this drama HAHAHA which made me real sad/angry because I LOVED the story from ep 1 to 12. So, this is on the list MERELY BECAUSE OF LEE SOO, the male lead, played by Ong SeongWu. I went crazy and wrote about almost every scene on the drama lol I was obsessed. You can read my review about the whole thing here.

OTP: Wonderful chemistry. The best either of the actors have had so far with any of their co-stars. Then again, SeongWu has only been in 2 dramas and 1 movie. And Shin YeEun hasn’t been in a lot but had really good chemistry with Park JinYoung in He’s Pyschometric. (btw that drama is superior, I highly recommend it!)

Thing I enjoyed the most: The magnificent character development that Lee Soo went through. He was a completely different person in ep 16 compared to the selfish jerk in eps 1-4 (SeongWu’s acting in this convinced me he is one of the best actors of his age, and one of the best idols turned actors at the moment). And I loved discussing this drama with the only other 10 people who were watching it hahaha Thanks y’all.

Do I recommend it?  They advertised it as a romcom, but it really isn’t. It’s more of a slice of life/melo drama. I believe this is better as a binge-watch, but do not expect mindblowing plot, since it’s a character driven drama. So, do check out my review about it and have a go at it, I guess hahaha If not, you could see my posts about the show here and still know everything, because I pretty much covered the entire drama HAHAHA.

Note: I kinda think this drama is sort of a “500 days of Summer” situation, people either sympathize with ML or FL and hate the other. Or both HAHAHA It’s all about perspective, I guess.

Tale of the Nine Tailed: Everything you could ask for in a fantasy drama. For me, it was perfect and it made me cry like a baby. I made a review on the finale. I actually liked that he got his powers back at the end. Also, the main couple was the most functional couple I saw this year in kdramas. Which is crazy if you take into acount that he wasn’t human and both had a lot of pain and traumas from their pasts. Which shows that communication and trust is key to every relationship.

OTP:  THEY LOVED EACH OTHER SO MUCH! AND WERE BOTH HOT. SO HOT FOR EACH OTHER. I kinda ship the actors now lol

Thing I enjoyed the most: Jiah, Yeon and Rang. The romance and the relationship between Rang and Yeon, which is what actually made me cry in the end. But we all knew it was coming.

Do I recommend it? Hell Yeah. Might not be for everyone, but if you like fantasy and romance, one heavily connected with the other, and the reincarnated lovers trope which I adore! then this is your drama.

Honorable Mentions:

You know, they almost made it. But something held me back. Still, it didn’t feel right to put them with the other dramas. So they got an honorable mention with my favorite ones.

Itaewon Class: This was, in general, a tragedy. But I loved it. Ooops. Dude was only stopping a classmate from bullying another and got his whole life ruined: got expelled, his dad was killed, he went to jail and had to start from the bottom and reached the top all thanks to one special and unique young girl. My eyes were full of tears when he finally got his happiness at the end and justice for his dad. Plus, it deals with a few topics that are still taboo in Korea. And the whole world tbh

OTP: SLOW BURN. Super slow lol For a moment there, I thought they weren’t going to be endgame, but they were and I WAS THE HAPPIEST.

Thing I enjoyed the most: Park Saeroyi and Yiseo. And the acting from the whole cast, actually. They did a really good job.

Do I recommend it? Yes. My brother hadn’t seen a kdrama in years and he saw this one. He enjoyed it greatly. I don’t know why I say this as if my brother were some kind of point of reference or expert in kdramas, but y’all need to trust me when I say this is impressive hahaha.

Into the Ring: This woman only wanted a job that could give her stability and a good pay check because her family was in huge debt. She ended up becoming a district representative that learned the real hard way a good person cannot live peacefully among politicians. She got the hell out of there in the end, thank God. Sera was a great heroine that really deserves to be called that. Loved her so much.

OTP: A super cute one that defied gender stereotypes in a delightful way. He was HER secretary at one point!

Thing I enjoyed the most: Listen, everything. It was really well done. I binged it in 2 weekends. I regret not doing a final review about it, but I just couldn’t find the time and if I do one now, it’s not gonna make the drama justice because I’m sure I’ll miss details. I did make 2 big posts about the sismance and romance.

Do I recommend it? YEP. Go see it now lol

Do you like Brahms?: Most people complained about the leads being way too depressed and miserable in the last third of the drama. I didn’t mind that, because you see, it’s what you’d expect from a melodrama lol What did leave this drama out of my favorites is the reason why they were so miserable in the first place and the 2 never actually had a long and meaningful conversation about their problems as individuals and about their relationship and it was SO needed. It was literally their thing at the start of the drama: the way they could be open with each other and communicate so damn well. But that was nowhere to be seen in the end. Still, they had a happy ending and after all that suffering, I appreciated that. I made posts about each ep. Here is the post about the last one.

OTP: Two introverts that kissed on a music room for the first time AND made out on a piano. ON THE PIANO, Y’ALL!! *fans self*

Thing I enjoyed the most: The leads. The only TWO decent people (and friends), everyone else was an awful person. Oh, and the team leader. Such a great lady!

Do I recommend it? OMG Yes? It’s hard to say it but I try to judge the drama overall and how in love I was for the most part rather than how much it frustrated me in the last few eps. If you want to watch a melo with classical music that instead of healing makes you sadder, a love hexagon that makes you want to kill secondary characters and an OTP that gets their HEA despite all that, this is your drama.

Live On: This is a last minute addition, but given the fact that it will air the last ep on the first week of 2021, it kinda technically counts as this year’s. And I do love it. A mini drama about high schoolers. Here’s my post about the first ep and about the most recent one (with spoilers) It’s just a really well done, romantic, cute and fun with touch of mystery, coming of age story. 

OTP: The most popular girl in high school and the smart president of the broadcasting club. Started as strangers, then went on to disliking each other, became friends and then liked each other. Also, ML is quite straightforward and flirtily honest lol

Thing I enjoyed the most: How short it is and the pace of the story. The main couple and the way the mystery was written, not a lot so it’d make the whole drama just about that, but enough to make an interesting backstory that sets FL on her journey and in the process, brings the six main characters together.TW: the whole mystery revolves around bullying.

Do I recommend it? If you like high school romances, YES. It’s only 8 eps long! You can binge it on a saturday or a sunday and I assure you it won’t be a waste of time. Kinda wish I could erase it all from my mind so that I could experience the whole story right away. I envy those who can binge it.

[lancearcherinrippedjeans]

Eternity

**********

I know some of you are probably like "What happened to ICBTE bro?" It's in the fanfic cemetery never to be spoken of again <3

But WELCOME to the new multi part fic Eternity where we follow OC's Veronica Rodriguez, Sawyer Holden and Nova Jay throughout their AEW career

**********

Starring - Tony Khan, Kenny Omega, WARHORSE and of course, the OCs (also a small appearance from Madi Wrenkowski )

Word Count - 2,385

Category - Fluff, friendship, mentions of past romance

Part 1/?

Summary - Sawyer, Veronica and Nova wanted nothing more than to "make it". When they have a chance to main event with TK and Kenny Omega sitting front row, how will it go?

other author's notes - keep in mind, me and @adriii-omega wrote this in a day. there might be spelling mistakes, it might not make sense, trust the process <3 and YES a good portion of this is the ACTUAL match.

**********

“Yes Bullet Club is for life, but we’re Eternity.”

“Nova, Veronica, Sawyer you’re on in 10!” The producer yelled, knocking on the door of the dressing room. Though it wasn’t a dressing room, more like a closet. “We’ll be there in a second, damn!” Yelled Sawyer, trying to get her gear on in the tiny corner.

“It would be nice if they gave us an actual dressing room like the guys or something.” Veronica mumbled, pulling on her gear pants. Nova and Sawyer agreed. There could be thousands of dressing rooms, but they always got stuck in a janitor’s closet. “Could you imagine all three of us in our own private dressing rooms?” Nova fantasized as she tied her left boot.

The group of three had always had dreams, as small as a dressing room, to as big as being on the greatest stage of them all. But for now, a janitor’s closet, a couple bucks a night, and a high school gym would satisfy them.

“I got extra tips at the diner today so we can go out to eat after the show this time.” Sawyer announced, smiling towards Veronica, who had just told Sawyer about her craving for a milkshake earlier that day. “Oh thank God, the family I babysat for today only paid nine bucks for FIVE hours.” Nova complained, touching up her makeup.

“Nine?!” “Yeah, spoiled little white kids, AGAIN.”

Veronica and Sawyer chuckled, walking out the janitor’s closet, Nova following close behind.

The three friends had so much in common, but were so different. Like Sawyer for example, the tallest of the three and by far the smartest. She wasn’t afraid to take a bump in front of 10 people or 10,000. She would do whatever it took to make sure she ended up as one of the best professional wrestlers of all time.

Veronica, one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet. Most people would call her a submission specialist, but making someone tap was just all in a day's work for her. She’ll do anything to put on the most entertaining match anyone in the crowd has ever seen, even if it’s acting like she almost died.

Nova however, was definitely a person who was ready to put on a show, taunts, hyping up the crowd and “OMG” moments were her specialty. She has gotten injured doing those special moves, many times, but she always got back up and showed out to put on the best performance.

All three of them had a purpose and decided they would stick together to reach it.

The whole roster was fond of how close they were. Others envied their success on the independent scene - except one of their closest friends, Warhorse. He was going to be on Dynamite tomorrow` to challenge Cody for his TNT Championship, but tonight, he was at the show, watching the trio wrestle.

They were walking closer to the “stage”, when he stopped them. “You will not believe who’s here!” Sawyer groaned, “Jake you know I hate guessing games so can you jus-”

“Tony Khan and Kenny Omega.” Their jaws dropped. “THE owner and EVP OF AEW?” Nova questioned. Veronica’s palms started to get sweaty. “Why are they here? I don’t even want to be here; there is no way the ACTUAL Kenny Omega and Tony Khan are sitting in a high school gym.” She wiped her hands on her pants and crossed them over her chest. “You don’t believe me? Well you guys will see in about an hour or so.” Warhorse smirked.

“We’re going out now, dipshit.” Sawyer insulted. Nova and Veronica laughed, but Warhorse had more to say, “Didn’t you hear? You guys have been bumped to the main event since the rich guys are out there.”

Suddenly calm, cool and collected Sawyer had her jaw to the floor. “Sawyer?” Nova whispered, shaking her friend's shoulder. “I can’t fly high and be energetic for the last 30 minutes of the show! I’ll break something or pass out!”

Veronica giggled at her friend’s nonsense, “You’ll be fine. C’mon, let's go watch the matches.”

Nova, Veronica and Sawyer sat by a monitor, watching the last few matches before their main event match. They were enjoying some of the two newer wrestlers face off when a hand slammed down on a table. They looked up and saw Madi Wrenkowski, fuming.

“They CUT my match so you guys could have your dumb main event.”

Sawyer held back laughter while Veronica spoke up, “Well it’s not our fault, we didn’t find out till five minutes ag-” “You think you’ll be big cause of a few matches? No way. Just stick to the janitor’s closet.” Madi scoffed, storming off.

“A few 5 star matches to be fair!” Nova called out, receiving a high five from her friends. It had been like this for a while, Madi going off on how she was “better”, but mean girls were SO high school.

They all took a deep breath, knowing it was their time to main event.

When the three reached the gorilla position. They saw Warhorse standing by the curtain waiting for them. Everyone was pretty happy that they got the opportunity to perform for someone like Kenny Omega, but deep down inside Veronica, Sawyer, and Nova knew that they deserved to be in the main event spot a long time ago.

“You three are going to kill it.” Warhorse smiled at his friends. He wondered how cool it would be to see them all in AEW at one time. “Thanks Jake.” Nova said. Sawyer was standing at the curtain, waiting for her cue.

“Say, bitch, I don’t wanna talk.”

Realer by Megan Thee Stallion blasted off the gym walls. The couple hundred of fans there jumped out of their seats to show their love for Sawyer, though she wasn’t supposed to be having such a loud reaction. She walked down the entrance way stopping at a young child who had their hand out for a high five. Sawyer went over to make it seem like she was about to, but smoothly pushed her hair back instead- flipping off the parents as well. As she got in the ring she took a quick scan to look for Kenny and Tony. She spotted them front and center in the front row she gave a sly smirk and went to one of the corners of the ring.

“TOOONIGHTTTTT-“

Nova shot out of the curtain while 24K Magic by Bruno Mars played in the gym. The crowd was also feeling the song as they got up and grooved. Even Tony Khan was bobbing his head along. Nova walked down to the ring, pep in her step. She gave people in the crowd high fives and hugs. She entered the ring and tried to get Sawyer to dance along, but backed away when Sawyer stood over her, glaring and clenching her fists. She walked over to her corner, climbing up to the second turnbuckle, waving at the whole crowd.

“I fly with the stars in the skies…”

Veronica pushed her black shades on as she smoothly walked through the curtain as “Moment 4 Life” by Nick Minaj came on the speakers. It was a perfect song to describe how she felt as she took the audience in at the top of the ramp. Her swagger was untouched but when she stepped in front of Kenny Omega, she felt his eyes never leave her which made her confidence blast through the roof. She used the stairs to get in and leaned on the ropes and waved to the other people that were there.

The three stared each other down, “this is awesome” chants from the crowd already starting. The ref asked all of them if they were ready, then called for the bell to ring. They all circled around the ring, the crowd wondering who was gonna hit first. Nova started taunting the two, planning to get the crowd on her side early in the match.

Sawyer had enough and tackled Nova to the ground, throwing punches, keeping away from the head. Veronica pulled Sawyer off, Sawyer widened her eyes, Veronica irish whipped Sawyer into the ropes, clotheslining her as soon as she came back. Veronica turned at the crowd, cheering along with them, not paying attention that Sawyer just did a kip-up behind her.

Veronica turned around just to be met with a kick to the face. Veronica turned around once, swaying side to side before falling to the ground, selling coming in clutch.

Nova came up from behind Sawyer, drop kicking her and making her fall to the mat. They planned to live to the phrase “fight forever”. Nova walked towards Veronica, dragging her up. Veronica started to gain her consciousness back, kicking Nova in the legs and Nova dodging as many as she could.

While they weren’t paying attention, Sawyer crawled towards the corner, climbing up the top rope, getting in position for a frog splash. It wasn’t till the crowd started screaming till Veronica and Nova looked towards the corner, Sawyer jumping off and crashing into both of them.

She stood up, hyping herself up, looking towards TK and Kenny, smirking.

*match skip*

Sawyer, Veronica, and Nova all struggled to get to their feet trying to use each other for balance. It had at least been 25 minutes of non stop action, and everyone was on the edge of their seat. Sawyer threw a punch in Veronica’s direction , but she attempted to counter it with an arm bar bringing her down to the mat. Nova saw the opportunity as she started to climb to one of the top turnbuckles. With Sawyer’s strength she manages to deliver a powerbomb to Veronica getting out of the arm bar. She crouched in the corner as Nova hit a devastating Macho Man like elbow drop.

1…

2…

But Sawyer broke up the pin by pulling Nova’s leg. Nova slapped Sawyer making Sawyer deliver a right hand back but harder, making her roll out the ring and on the apron. Veronica was slowly getting back up and Sawyer noticed as she charged towards her, making Veronica pull the top rope making her land on the outside. Veronica made her way to the apron where Nova was at; her back turned to Veronica not seeing her jump and wrap her legs around her neck for a reverse hurricanrana. With a loud thud, both of them rolled onto the floor in pain.

Sawyer crawled over , throwing Veronica in the ring and seeing Nova began to stir. Sawyer climbed to the top turnbuckle with her back turned to deliver a perfect moonsault, making the crowd gasp, and Tony and Kenny to stand up. Sawyer held her side, and rolled into the ring ready to finish the match. She stood in the ring, waiting for Veronica to get in position for her finishing move. Veronica stood and it was too late, and she tucked her chin ready for the impact of Sawyer’s devastating Canadian Destroyer.

1…

2…

3.

Sawyer stood up, referee raising her arm in the air. She tried to bite back her smile but simply couldn’t. She watched as Veronica and Nova started to walk backstage, exiting the ring, breaking out of character as soon as she was behind the curtain.

Veronica, Nova and Sawyer started talking about the match, complimenting each other. “Excuse me ladies?” They looked over, and saw Tony Khan and Kenny Omega walking towards them. Nova spun around and almost caused Sawyer and Veronica to fall over. “Really impressive match out there. You know I didn’t think you guys would have met my expectations but I was way wrong.” Kenny admitted, and Tony agreed. “Yea , we would really love for you guys to come over to our company for a bit. Not on Dynamite yet, but some Dark matches maybe?” Tony suggested. They were beyond excited. Sawyer started imagining all of the memories she could create at AEW, and seeing some people she hadn’t seen in a while - until a certain person popped into her head. “I would love to wrestle for you guys, but does Wardlow know? Or is he even okay with this- “ Veronica gave Sawyer the death stare and Nova let out a laugh. “Wardlow? He’s the one that brought you guys up. He said you were all really talented, and since we’re looking for more women wrestlers you were the right people. Is there something going on between…” “NO.” Sawyer interrupted Tony.

“It’s complicated. I just wanted to make sure he was okay with working with me again.” Nova couldn’t believe Sawyer’s actions and it was making it extremely hard not to burst out of laughter on the spot. Veronica stood in between her friends listening closely to what Khan was saying. She felt eyes on her so she looked up and was met with Kenny’s soft stare. He smiled and looked away making her do the same.

“Yea, so tomorrow I was thinking you guys could get to Jacksonville and see Dynamite, then wrestle after the show?” Tony said. “That works fine with us.” Nova said, smiling wide

“Great!” Kenny said, smiling at Veronica. “Sawyer, Veronica?”

Sawyer and Veronica looked at each other, they could tell what they both were thinking just by the looks on their face. Veronica nodded, Sawyer spoke up, “Let’s do this.” “That’s great, the flight leaves at 11 tonight, so get there as fast as you can,” Tony said, looking at his phone, “Oh and Sawyer?”

Sawyer looked up, “Don’t interrupt me again.”

Nova couldn’t keep in her laughter anymore, not even when Veronica punched her arm and told her to shush. Tony and Kenny left the building, leaving the friends beaming and damn near tears. “Veronica and Kenny sitting in a tree!” Nova and Sawyer started to sing, making Veronica roll her eyes, “Yeah I’ll remember that when we see Wardlow tomorrow.”

Sawyer huffed. “But remember we promised if things ever ended up like this, we would stay together no matter what happens between any of us.” Nova brought up, talking about the promise they all made years before.

“Friends, no matter what.” They all said in unison, knowing in the back of their heads they would be friends for eternity.

thank you for reading! part 2 coming soon!

[puppy-phum]

thank you once again @yibobibo​ for tagging me ♥ even if, like I said, this is pure torture. I have so many sons that I’ve given up on counting them sigh but here goes.

favourite male fictional characters.

I took it that this meant ten so am going with that (tho am not gonna try and put them into order). am also sticking to all the characters I loved this year. and gonna ramble and add gifs so cutting it here. 

1. Liu Sang

The Lost Tomb Reboot/Reunion: The Sound of The Providence

I have so much love for this boy it’s not even healthy. it’s a bit funny tho bc once I started tltr, I didn’t really like him and almost forgot about him as the first season ended. he just felt so annoying and bitter in what I saw him, even if I did get that he had a Tragic BackstoryTM (I felt for him but well. tltr really made him hard to like at first). but then they brought him back in the second season with his sad puppy eyes and inability to handle his thoughts on wu xie and being all touch-starved and pitiful and whatnot and baam, I had the adoption papers ready. he’s wonderful and so strong and so smart and amazing. and liu chang as his actor has been wonderful (and he’s so pretty my god, have you seen him??)

2. Shen Wei

Guardian

never did I expect to just. fall into this hole after a year? I remember what a mess I was when I first watched guardian over a year ago, right after finishing the untamed. I was in shambles even as I knew how it would end. and now I’ve done this all again while also reading the novel and. my love for shen wei, especially bc it’s zhu yilong acting as shen wei? astronomical. I want to write poetry about him and his stupid responsibilities that he chooses to carry silently and his devotion to zhao yunlan and his love for his ppl and his didi and. I hope that one day I manage to write weilan bc I have this one idea and you can come pry it from my cold, dead fingers if it doesn’t get out there (am also super happy about the edit I made bc my god does he deserve at least that)

3. Cloud Strife

Final Fantasy VII

ok so stepping into the video games territory now. I was waiting for the remake like crazy and it was everything to me once the quarantine hit during spring. the game is so beautiful and I felt like I looked at this gorgeous boy once and was ready to give him my heart (tbh am quite sure he owned my heart before I even learned to know him). he is tragic in so many ways (I’ve only scratched the surface of all of his pain I know) and I wish I could just. hug him a lot. he is kind and cares very deeply even if he hates to show it and I love it how remake showed him also just being a human disaster (some of his scenes are just. peak comedy). I would kill for his smile (I have already cried for it a dozen)

4. Geralt of Rivia

The Witcher (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt)

if there’s one grumpy, brickwall of a man I love, it’s geralt. I affectionately call him “papa wolf” while playing witcher 3 and his voice in it does things to me (I am just so fond of him ok, begone you dirty fuckers). I got introduced to him through the books and adored him in them bc he is so prickly and sarcastic and still so full of love even if he will never admit to it. he is the father figure I wish I could have in real life. (and yes, I’ve seen the tv series (or at least a couple of the first episodes) and it looks stunning but. this is my version of geralt and that’s the hill I will die on)

5. Xiaoge

Zhang Qiling, Daomu Biji (The Lost Tomb 2)

(wow finding a gif for him was a pain, apparently I gotta learn how to gif or?) ah, my dear boy who I’ve ended up just calling xiaoge bc he seems to prefer it over his real name/title/whatever zhang qiling really is. I got introduced to him through tltr where we really didn’t get to know that much about him bc he was just... there. huang junjie was absolutely stunning tho and his soft smiles made me super fond, but only in the lost tomb 2 did I really fall in love with xiaoge as a character. I was surprised tbh bc I didn’t expect it to be this drama? I had so many doubts about the cast in tlt2 but they all delivered! and I think cheng yi’s xiaoge is now my favorite bc he somehow captured that softness and the pain of him? (and we do not talk about that buxun storyline tyvm) tho now that ultimate note is on the way, I gotta say that xiao yuliang does a wonderful job as xiaoge too!

6. Wu Xie

Daomu Biji (Ultimate Note)

(sorry we have to go with a pingxie gif now but maybe it’s only fitting) tbh it’s hard to choose my favorite version of wu xie. I think all of the actors for him have done amazing job showing wu xie in different parts of his life (all of them are very distinct but still feel like the same person) but currently zheng shunxi takes the lead. I really wanted to put the reboot version of him here (bc I love that mature, relaxed and somehow very soft version of him and the angst is phenomenal and the thoughts he has about death... yeah) but I already have zhu yilong’s face here once so :’D wu xie is just one of those characters you cannot not like. he is so strong, so kind, so stubborn, so wonderfully stupid sometimes and in need of careful protection. I also adore it how smart he is and I could listen to him spew history facts for 10 hours straight (even if it was in a tomb full of blood zombies) ♥

7. Jiang Cheng

Jiang Wanyin, The Untamed

my darling boy! my beautiful angry grape! I love him beyond words. I love him in all of his raging, misunderstood, stupid, sassy, constipated, abused, tragic, bitter, big hearted glory. I could write novels about him (and I did and am still writing oh boy) and his love for ppl and his inability to show that love and his loneliness and his issues. I could also write another novel for all of his outfits etc. bc damn, what a fashion king. he is just so great. he owns my soul. he deserves happiness and in this essay I will

8. Isana Yashiro

Adolf K. Weismann, K Project

I rewatched k project this spring bc a) it’s one of my favorite animes ever (it just looks stunning with all the colors) and b) I love yashiro to bits. I remember falling in love with him when I first watched k project many years ago bc he was just so kind and bright. this time though, I ended up seeing another side of him and my god did I cry. he is... so sweet. he cares for others so deeply and is ready to sacrifice so much for them and his love for his two clansmen... yeah. I think I finally saw the tragedy of him too, all the pain and loneliness and insecurity he decides to hide behind his smile and obnoxious personality. he reminded me a lot of myself and watching him made my heart bleed in a good way

9. Qi Tiezui

Ba Ye, The Mystic Nine

(wow am going to riot for the lack of all the gifs hhh) yes, we’re continuing with the dmbj universe that sucked me in big time this year. the drama of the mystic nine wasn’t probably that earth shattering for me as it somehow got boring more than once but I did love ba ye to bits. he was just... so nice? I got it that he was somehow this “comedic relief” in the drama with all of his funny scenes and ridiculous mannerisms but I could see the brilliance of him. he is warm and smart and kind of a romantic too and he cares for all of his friends so deeply? it was also sweet how protective of him his two zhangs were (does that run in the family? the tendency to imprint into one smart but disastrous man and keep him safe? maybe) and I really hope I knew more about him bc he seemed to have a lot of knowledge and a lot of impact to ppl’s lives (I yelled when they mentioned him in ultimate note, I miss him ;;)

10. Dorian Pavus

Dragon Age Inquisition

(yes I’ve been replaying DA:I this year, this counts!) another darling boy! my lovely sass master son! I have so much love for him and his story in DA:I. he is my favorite companion (and his romance is my favorite too, probably obvious in the way am currently romancing him for the third time) and he has given me a lot of strength. the way he stands up against his father, how he’s ready to reform his homeland instead of walking away, how he’s so caring for those he sees struggling... it’s very warming and I feel like I’m safe with him. it feels a bit silly to say that but he really is that comfort character I will seek out when I just want to know am doing fine :’) (and I am so excited to see him again in DA4! probably?)

+ 11. Li Cu

Tomb of the Sea

yes I cheated a bit (with my own rules lol) to fit li cu here. I didn’t really expect to like him or tomb of the sea as much as I did once I started it? I’ve seen leo wu elsewhere before this (battle through the heavens, nirvana in fire) and his face always makes me think about a sad puppy so maybe I just grew fond over li cu instantly bc he was... so hurt? the first episode really slaps you in the face with all of it, showing him being abused, wounded, kidnapped, tortured, used and then just very, very scared and broken. he continues being that throughout the whole drama and I feel like tomb of the sea (or sand sea or sha hai idk) is the darkest and angstiest story in the dmbj universe. I know it deserves to be bc this is a dark time for wu xie but... my darling li cu. I wish him only happiness ;; he was so strong and smart and wonderful in this and it was just so amazing to watch him grow and find his own place in the world just bc he did something himself (even when he got dragged into all of this bc of wu xie) also I support the wu xie adopts li cu -agenda

Honorary mentions: 

Zhang Rishan, Xie Yuchen and Hei Xiazi from DMBJ universe. The Twin Jades of Gusu and Ouyang Zizhen from The Untamed. The Iron Bull and Fenris from Dragon Age games. Thane Krios, Kaidan Alenko and Jaal from Mass Effect games. The whole lot of Assassin’s Creed protagonists (especially Ezio Auditore and Shay Cormac). Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch from The Raven Cycle. Neil Josten from All For The Game. Eduon and March from The Smoke Thieves. Qiling from L.O.R.D. Critical World. Luo Fei from Detective L (played by Bai Yu). 

well, with this I can really see that I have a thing for those who are tragic :’D I have a thing for grumpy, prickly and antisocial guys or those who hide their pain behind a smile. maybe it’s bc I am somehow both, even if I can’t show my anger or be mean to others and even if I feel like my smile never sticks either. I just find kinship in all of the characters who are on this list. and I feel like I aspire to be as strong and as kind and as loving despite all the pain I’ve been put through.  

thank you, this was so much fun! and sorry I made this so long and so complicated ^^’ but well, there are just way too many male characters I love haha

at the end I want to tag @i-am-just-a-kiddo​ @ashenwren​ @kholran​ @tiesanjiao​ @lan-xichens​ @aheartfullofjolllly​ @manhasetardis​ and @lzswy​​ ♥ feel free to do this in your own way or not at all! and thank you if you managed to read through my rambling :’D

[breyito]

the sharp edges of a flower

TITLE: the sharp edges of a flower

AUTHOR/ARTIST: @breyito (read also on AO3)

PROMPT DAY : Day 3- Protection for @geraskierweek

SUMMARY: Three times Jaskier protected Geralt without him knowing it.

WORD COUNT: ~1.8 k

BOOKS/NETFLIX/2002 SHOW/VIDEO GAME: Netflix show

TRIGGERS/WARNINGS: Angst, but mostly not. Hurt/Comfort. Violence, a bit.  

RATING: Teen and up

ADDITIONAL NOTES: I wanted to do a 5+1, but it would never be finished, so I cut it here. I *might* write the rest, but I don’t make any promeses. Some fluff to balance the angst of yesterday lol. Tho the last one went away from me a bit and ended sad again.  Sorry ñ.ñ Btw, I do like Yennefer, I just think the relationship between her and Geralt makes no sense. I think she knows what she wants and she can be very selfish (no hate there, so can I) but she's not good for Geralt, so... Oh! The two firsts are in the early stages of their relationship, the third in between those last years. I intended to do a couple more in the middle (and might, maybe, perhaps) so that it would flow better but...

Enjoy!

1-

Jaskier is at the bar, flirting with a lovely lady in a break in his set, when something catches his attention. He overhears a drunkard happily proclaiming that one of the patrons of the tavern is going to poison the Witcher's drink; to see if they really are inmune to such things, as myth and rumours go.

Geralt is upstairs, still cleaning his armor (the bard had stayed until the man was clean, but the menial tasks of leather and sword mantainance were not something he cared for much); so he can't know what will happen when he comes down to have his earned supper.

Jaskier has learned by now that, unless this is a specialized poison Made by a mage, it won't kill the Witcher. It doesnt mean it won't hurt him, though. Humilliate him in front of the townspeople if he gets sick; which is no doubt one of the reasons why every one of the men in the table of this drunkard is laughing; and why the older barmaid is going along with it.

So, instead of causing a scene, he launches into another song; pulling all the barmaids to dance, spinning them around as he marches them to their tables.

He makes sure to spill a little bit of the poison he stashes in one of his rings in all the tankards going to that table (one of the cheapest ones, and a small enough dose that it shouldn't kill, just make them spend their coin in a healer instead of more beer) and distracts the old and bitter barmaid so that the poisoned drink ends in his hand. 

If he gets pushed and ends up spilling the liquid over the man eagerly watching the Witcher drink his ale...

Well, he makes sure to act surprised and scared when the man's skin starts to sizzle and burn.

(The Witcher from then on insists on sniffing all the drinks he orders, in case somebody tries to poison the bard again; which causes Jaskier to melt a little, as well as laugh a bit on the inside).

2-

He can see the way people are looking at the Witcher. 

And it's allright, perhaps his song about the noble White Wolf has not gotten to this nowhere-town in the middle of this nowhere-kindom yet. But they needed the coin and the people here need a monster slain; so they keep their hate quiet and throw their glares just at their backs, instead of at their faces. 

But Jaskier knows how to read a crowd; and he knows that if Geralt stops at the inn they are staying at before he goes to collect his payment they will be run out of town with hateful words and the promise of violence (that happened once, just once; because Jaskier promised himself that as long as he was by the Witcher's side it wouldn't happen again) and no payment. He knows that the people of this town believe themselves to be as important as the capital of their kingdom; despite the fact that Ard Carraigh was a few towns and villages away yet. And they had no problem following their King’s policies against non-humans; which was bad but not much different than in other places, like Cintra and the like. Usually though, those policies didn’ extend towards Witchers; but in this particular town they did. So Jaskier, while Geralt left on his own on a week long and dangerous hunt (not even taking Roach!), separated himself as much as possible from the Witcher, charming people left and right.

He plays people's favorites and requests: ballads about romance and heroic deeds, plays the joyful tunes that make patrons drink more and be more giving; and only mixes in a song about his muse per performance, when he has enough coin at his feet to at least pay for supper and a few other things. 

He buys cured meats and dried fruits and stores up on flat bread and hard cheeses, vegetables and fats; flirts on with the market people (pretty lads and shy girls; amused mature women and harsh old ladies) and gets wine, soaps and candies for a lower price, and not double or triple like they would have demanded of the Witcher. It makes him a little sick; to flirt and smile at people that would spit on his friend's face; but he thinks that while this time he won't be able to provide Geralt with a soft bed he will at least be able to give him these little luxuries, and that is worth it; so he keeps at it.

When he hears the firsts whispers of the Witcher on his way back; he packs all of their stuff and saddles Roach after bribing her with some stolen apples (the vendor had tried to get him into his bed while insulting Geralt, so he had apologized profusely, citing a previous appointmet, while he snuck the best fruits for the mare, a big fake smile plastered on his face) and marches her down to the Alderman's house. Geralt sees him there and stops, and before the Witcher can get mad at him for touching his horse he starts to babble about sleeping with the butcher's daughter and the butcher's wife and the need to flee the town before he is found and butchered in a goresome fashion. 

Geralt grumbles and curses him for the lack of a proper bath to get the filth of the hunt off him; but goes into the Aldermans house to get his coin anyways. He comes out, pouch in hand and mounts Roach and they leave.

He helps the witcher wash off in a stream later, under the warm sun; and it's paceful. He's gentle as he uses the sage soap he bought for the delicate nose of the man, and as he cleans then combs the silver hair with the same care he shows his previous lute. He insists the Witcher rests the rest of the day; to sleep. Then, when Geralt wakes up, Jaskier insists he uses the free time to clean his armor and blades, instead of packing up and setting camp again in a few hours. He uses the vegetables and some meat to make a sturdy stew as a treat; and snares and roasts two rabbits for dinner. If he lets Geralt believe he does all of this as a way to pay him back, well...that is his bussines and his bussines alone.

(The butcher had no daughter and had no wife. Because there was no butcher in this town.)

3-

He protects Geralt from Yennefer once, incredibly. The Witcher is on a hunt (a nest of kikimoras and a new queen, so the bard stayed behind but the horse went along) when the witch shows up at the one tavern the bard happens to be performing at, of all the taverns in the whole city. It has been only three months since the last time they encountered her (and Gerlat has barely started to let him touch him with gentleness when he’s not injured, has just begun relaxing his shoulders and giving that barely-there smile of his that is so endearing Jaskier could die of tenderness) so Jaskier ends his set, finishes his drink like a shot and sits in front of her, and bluntly asks her what does she want to leave before the Witcher comes back.

The mage is amused and surprised; so she plays his game. She tells him she wants the silver dagger that the Witcher gave him a few years ago, for protection. She knows the emotional value that it has, she has seen how the bard sharpens it and always has it on him. She also knows its one of the only gifts the Witcher ever gave the bard, and how the bard cherises it. 

He swallows but doesn’t hesitate to reach for the sheat and put the dagger on the table between them. Yennefer is surprised but smiles anyways, and starts to gently caress the blade; and mockingly asks how he will explain the loss of something so precious. Jaskier tells her that that’s not her problem, but if she wants to know; he will say he got attacked and defended himself, and the attacker left with the dagger still inside them. She laughs at his story, asks if he thinks the Witcher will buy it. Jaskier answers yes. 

The mage then asks why he would part with this gift, when he surely knows they will just meet in another few weeks or moths; because at this point they all agree that whatever the Witcher and the Witch have between them is inescapable. He says that Geralt is not healed yet, that he needs a little more time before he’s ready for her to empty and crash his heart again. She flinches at this assesment; and when she tries to say that she loves him; Jaskier responds that she loves him because she knows she can use him and discard him and he will still be there the next time. 

She waits a moment then asks, sickly sweet, that it’s the same way Geralt treats him, is it not? The bard laughs bitterly, but explains the difference: Yennefer knows Geralt will be there and does the things she does because of this; Geralt does it because he’s still testing him, because he doesn’t think Jaskier will still be there, believes he doesn’t deserve it. So how can the bard hold it against him; when it’s people like her that made him believe he’s unworthy of love and devotion?

The war of looks makes the place spark with tension, and even the most drunk of patrons is mostly quiet. Yennefer knows her eyes are swirling with chaos, yet the poet doesn’t back down, keeps looking and looking and looking at her. His eyes are determined, even as tears escape and his lashes shiver. He doesn’t look away. Eventually, she does. She grabs the dagger and stands up, leaving.

Jaskier is lucky Geralt is dizzy with blood loss and too many potions when he comes back; because even though he washed and changed clothes the man can still smell the fucking lilac; and it’s easier to spin a lie about the gorgeous perfume seller and the dagger that is still in the side of her brother when the Witcher’s senses are not at their best. It’s also easier to deal with the dissapoinment in the men’s eyes when the other is delirious and won’t smell his tears.

(The next time they meet the mage in a town she gives him a barely-there nod before she focuses all her attention on the Witcher. Jaskier still turns around and rents a room in the rundown inn at the other side of the town. He never sees his dagger again.)

[nad-zeta]

Hii! I’ve been meaning to ask for a mashup! Appearance wise, I’m look like a pretty basic white person (brown hair, eyes, and freckles), but I’m hella small and have a lot of curves (which looks shit when you’re small). I’m also way too pale a I don’t usually sunbathe. I love dancing, baking, reading (be it FF or literature) and I love sports of all kinds (except basketball... height tingz). Part 1 🍎

Part 2 🍎 I’m asexual, Aquarius and ENTP. I do not have a lot of sexual experience, as the boys I liked would turn a blind eye to my PDA dislike (and my asexuality). I’m a pretty outgoing person who tries to get a long with everyone (and I usually apologize immediately after I’ve done smth offending). Cuddles are a big yes if 1. The person is alright with it 2. It’s not in public. Loneliness is not smth I can cope with, and I am fine with quietly sitting beside someone of they are busy   Part 3 🍎 Due to my nonexistent love life, I can only refer to my 2D life lmao. I usually go for the arseholes with character development 😬 (Gaara from Naruto is prob the best instance). I’m very nurturing as i was always the oldest in my classes & friend groups. Age is also my biggest insecurity. Due to a lot of moving across the globe, I have lost quite a few yrs of education, 17 & in grade 8. I’m pretty smart tho (grade school teacher thought I’m gifted 🤡), but I can get arrogant real quick Part 4 🍎 coz I can’t summarize for life. My other fault is that I’m too honest & blunt. I mentioned that i wanna get along with everyone, but if their opinion opposes mine (& & they criticise me for it), then I’ll leave them be. Having relationships based on lies is not smth I want. So I usually like engaging in debates I don’t know which fandoms you make matchups of (do we even pick???). In case I have to choose, I’d go with Ikevamp. I’m hella sorry for all these parts & thank you 🙏

Hi hi, love ❤❤thank you so so much for the request! 🦋Hehe, I’m so sorry for taking too long with it! I hope you enjoy this love and I hope you have a wonderful day! ❤🦋🌻So I was thinking Theo/Motzart  for a while, but then I saw you were an ENTP, and I made up my mind!🌻🦋

So I match you with................ Isaac

The first time you meet Isaac was when all the residents were gathered in the dining room the morning after you arrived. Sabastian had come to fetch you for breakfast, and the second you walked through the dining room door, Comte strode to your side and introduced you to everyone. You were rather social, so of course, you chatted away with the residences.

Breakfast was going well, until out of the corner of your eye, you could see Arthur and Dazai bullying poor shy Isaac. They had placed an apple in front of him and teased him. Isaac shot them an irritated look all while going as red as an apple at the embarrassment. You didn’t know why but you couldn’t help but come up for the hedgehog, so you gave Arthur and Dazai a piece of your mind. 

Napoleon who had watched the whole scene unfold, smiled his brotherly smile and invited you to help him and Isaac at the makeshift school. The former emperor of France low key gave you no choice as before you knew it you were in a carriage on your way to the fountain where they gave the class.

Some children came up to you and asked you for help with some science problems they were having. You took one look at the problem, and you wanted to dig a hole and hide in it. Isaac made his way up to you and the children. and upon seeing the distress on your face, he decided to answer the question for you. You were feeling rather low after that, as education and your age has always been your biggest insecurity

You opted to play with the children instead of teaching, as you loved sports and physical activities. You seemed to have impressed the children with your athletic skills as soon they were fighting over who would have you in their teams. You spent the rest of the afternoon cheerfully playing with the children. As the sun began to set, one by one, the children made their ways back home; eventually, it was only you, Isaac and Napo left.

Napoleon smiled and told you that he was going to get a coach to take the three of you home. It was now only you and Isaac sitting on the fountain wall waiting for Napo to return. Surprisingly enough, Isaac broke the silence. Cherry eyes gazed at you, “Why did you look so distressed when the children asked you for help?” You had told him about how you travelled the world sacrificing your education, and that you often felt insecure about your age. To this he simply nodded, after a few more moments of silence Isaac spoke up again, this time sending you a meek smile, “What if I taught you, that way the month spent here won’t be wasted, and you won’t fall behind on your schoolwork?” You smiled at the kind offer and immediately accepted.

Now every evening after supper, you and Isaac would sit together in the library. Isaac would teach you a variety of subjects ranging from maths and science to English and history. You honestly didn’t feel so alone or insecure, as Isaac was a non-judgemental patient teacher. To be honest, he did such a good job teaching you, that even Jean decided to join the classes. 

After class, you would always make you and Isaac some tea and chat his ears off well into the night. Not that he minded. He didn’t know much about human behaviour or interactions, so just as he taught you, you taught him. As time passed, you and Isaac got to know each other better and better. You found that Isaac had started opening up more and more to you, and your opinion of him when you first met had completely changed.

And Isaac found himself falling more in love with you with each passing day. He loved that you were a fellow intellectual and reader. His favourite thing in the world to do is spend time with you as you both sit quietly in the room together each reading their own book. He loves the little debates the two of you often engage in, and he found himself growing more and more as a person every second he spent with you.

In your free time you and Isaac still help out at Napos school, and although thanks to Isaac, you definitely had the knowledge to teach the children, you always opt to play sports with them instead. At some point, Isaac saw you having so much fun he found himself joining in. Napoleon would always watch the two of you cuties with a found gaze knowing that his friend had finally found someone who could bring him out of his shell and grow into his full potential.

You quickly found out about Isaacs difficult transition from human and vampire and the consequences of that. You also knew that your friend would often go hours without eating as he would be so absorbed in his research. Naturally, the nurturing side of your personality started to show. You made it your personal mission to bake Isaac yummy snacks to make sure his vampire urges are well under control. Although Isaac has never said as much, he loves it when the sounds of your soft footsteps approach his room, and his senses are suddenly filled with the scent of freshly baked goods. He can’t help but softy smile as you gently knock the door and peek into his room. Isaac freaken LOVES you cooking and is always a very happy hedgehog whenever he is nibbling on the snacks you make for him.

Another thing Isaac absolutely loves is when you plonk yourself down in his room and read. He loves the company even though neither of you is talking, as he hates to admit it, but before you arrived, he always felt a sharp pain in his chest that he could never place. And after you arrived, he finally had the word for it, Loneliness. He can’t help but smile a little brighter and feel a little happier whenever you are around him.

One day Comte handed you an invitation to a ball that a friend of his was throwing. You were so excited you decided to run straight to Isaac’s room to ask him to be your date. You loved dancing, and you could imagine nothing better than to spend the evening dancing with Isaac. The second you told Isaac about the ball his face dropped into a frown as he softly confessed that he had never learned how to dance. “Then ill teach you,” you exclaimed brimming with excitement.

You spent many days teaching Isaac how to dance in the garden, and finally, the day of the ball had arrived. Isaac was determined to confess his feeling for you that night. He met you in the mansion foyer, and you honestly took his breath away. The two of you made your way to the ball and spent a large portion of the evening, happily chatting and dancing. 

Finally, Isaac worked up the courage to take your hand and lead you outside onto the balcony. Cherry eyes seemed to peer deep into your soul as he told you he loved you. Honestly, you were overjoyed. You too had long ago fallen in love with him but due to your lack of experience in the field of romance, thanks to boys who never respected your boundaries, you were rather clueless when it came down to it. Isaac smiled and nuzzled his nose against you as he said that the two of you could figure it out together.

Your relationship was very much based on honestly and open communication. 

Isaac honestly didn’t mind that you were asexual if anything he loved it cause this boy loves to cuddle. The two of you are almost always cuddling or snuggling each other. 

Although your title has changed from friend to girlfriend almost, nothing changed between the two of you. As to be honest, the pair of you were acting like a married couple before you even entered into a relationship. Of course, the biggest difference between then and now is, lots of cuddles and kisses.

Isaac loves nothing more in the whole world than to hold you in his arms, as the two of you read together. When you are not around him he feels lonely and empty, so he tries his best to spend as much time with you as possible

This boy will 100% shower you with endless amounts of affection every moment he can get. Whether it’s coming up behind you to hug and nuzzle your neck as you bake yummy goodies or whether you are just quietly reading. It is also not uncommon for the two of you to get into tickle fights especially if you beat Isaac in the sports you are playing together.

Other potential matches……………Theo

Hope you enjoyed this, dear! Sending ya lots of hugs! ❤🌻🌺

[naancypants]

@maddarc you inspired me with this headcanon idea!! I wasn’t sure how to write something like this using regular scenes, so I tried something a little different to help span the time gaps. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever written lol but I just kinda threw it together so it’s whatever, here's a thing ✌ (@nancydrew-onthecase)

Dear Diary,

Tomorrow is my 14th birthday. Since mom is getting me the new Playstation system that I asked for, she made me agree to keep a diary. She thinks it’ll be good for me to write stuff down. But honestly, I don’t even know what to write about. This is gonna be awkward.

Joe

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Dear Diary,

Okay... I did a terrible job at keeping a diary. Whenever mom asked if I was using it I told her yes, but I think she could tell that I wasn’t - she didn’t give me crap about it, though. I’m 15 now, and Frank & I are deep in training to become ATAC agents. That’s the company our dad owns - American Teens Against Crime. We’ve been solving petty mysteries since we were kids, so I guess this is a natural progression for us. An awesome one, too! We get to use so many cool gadgets and go on the best adventures! The secrecy is exciting, but according to Frank, I’ve never been the best at keeping my mouth shut. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Joe

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Dear Diary,

Frank and I finished off the BIGGEST case of our careers last week! We’d been called out to this small town called River Heights because there was a serial bank robber who’d been evading police for a couple of months - but the best part is we didn’t have to solve the case alone! We met this girl named Nancy; her dad is a business contact of our dad’s. She’s super smart. She figured stuff out even faster than Frank! And when I suggested we go to the ice cream shop to talk over the case - much to Frank’s dismay - she just laughed and said “sure!”. Take that, Frank. It was a lot of fun... she’s a lot of fun. And she’s pretty. ... Stop looking at me like that. Not that you’re looking, because you are a book. But you know what I mean. Or I guess you don’t, because you are a book. But anyway... I hope we get to work with her again, that’s all.

Joe

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Dear Diary,

We’ve gotten to work with Nancy a lot more than I thought, considering how far away we live. She’s cool because she never complains when I want to do something fun, unlike Frank. And I know I said this last time, but she’s reeeally smart. It’s honestly kind of amazing. For one case, we had to break into this abandoned house because Nancy had a hunch - as soon as Frank saw the “no trespassing” signs he was totally going to be a baby about it, but Nancy got him in line real quick. She took a pair of wire cutters and made a hole in the fence for us to crawl through, JUST LIKE IN THE MOVIES! And then she picked the lock of the back door with a bobby pin in like 5 seconds flat! My jaw was literally on the floor. They teach us how to lockpick in ATAC training, but we always have actual lockpicks to do it. I’m hoping Nancy can teach me her method one day.

And... okay, yeah, I guess you can look at me like that. Fine. You win this time, diary.

Joe

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Dear Diary,

It’s been almost 6 months since we first met Nancy and a lot has changed since then. For one, I recently learned that she’s been dating this guy named Ned for like a year & a half now, or something like that. Who’s keeping track? Two, Frank basically bullied me into admitting to him that I.. have a crush on Nancy. He’s not going to tell her though, not that I think he would anyway. He gets all weird and dorky when he tries to talk about feelings. It’s not a good look. Either way, there’s no chance in H-E-double hockey sticks that Nancy and Ned will ever break up, and I’m happy for them! He’s such a good guy it’s insane. Probably better than me, and that’s saying a lot.

Joking aside... I’m going to try to get over Nance. There’s no point in feeling this way about her if it’s never gonna happen!

Joe

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Dear Diary,

I swear to God Frank is acting weirder every time we see Nancy. He KNOWS that I had a crush on her but he KNOWS that I don’t anymore... or does he? I think he thinks that I still do, but I’ve done a good job at blocking it out. We’re 18 now, so it’s been a while. I normally don’t even think about it until Frank starts acting like a total loser around her and then I’m like...??? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? Anytime Nancy mentions Ned or their relationship or anything to do with love, he starts stuttering and blushing and acting all goofy. I’ve started having to fake-tease HIM about having a crush on her just to make it less awkward! I didn’t realize he was sooooo dense when it comes to romance. When I asked him about it, he said my former crush on Nancy was useless information that he wishes I hadn’t told him (NEWSFLASH: he made me tell him) and now he just doesn’t know what to do with it. Nancy seems to think it’s totally normal, but he looks like an idiot.

Joe

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Dear Diary,

It’s been a long time. I’m 24, Frank is 25. I think it’s funny how the only thing I ever really wrote about in here was Nancy Drew. It’s ironic, too, because that’s exactly who I’ve come to write about again.

She’s going through a lot right now and I wish I could be there for her more than I am. I do what I can, but it’s not easy when you live 4 hours away and are constantly being called away on cases. I also don’t want to overwhelm her, considering how long she and Ned were together. It feels... wrong, somehow, that they aren’t anymore. Frank of course has been telling me that I “finally have a shot” or whatever, but I’m not convinced. First of all, she’s only been single for 2 months. Second, she probably thinks Frank is the one with feelings for her, not me; especially with the way the media likes to focus on their relationship. But, as I always joke with Frank, it’s his own fault for making it weird!

Anyway. I feel like kind of a jerk for thinking about my feelings for Nancy when she’s literally going through the worst break-up of her life right now... but it’s weird how thing can pop back up again so suddenly, huh?

And as always, it’s not like I’m gonna do anything about it.

Joe

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Nancy Drew sits on the edge of her chair, sweeping her ponytail so that it drapes delicately across her shoulder. She sucks in a deep breath, fixing her anxious gaze on a random spot in the hardwood of Frank & Joe’s family home. It’s a conversation she’s been avoiding ever since her break-up with Ned 10 months ago. Crazy how time flies. “Frank...” she begins, noticing a distinct discomfort in the detective’s body language as she does so, “I - we’ve all seen the stories. The ones on the news, the speculation... about...?” Frank only stares at her, blankly, with eyes resembling those of a terrified deer. “About the two of us. Being together.” “Uhh, yeah,” Frank scratches at the back of his neck. “I’ve seen them. What about them?” Nancy sighs and allows her shoulders to make contact with the Hardys’ side chair. She crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m a detective, Frank. And I’ve known you & Joe since we were 15. I just want to clear the air about whatever is or is not going on. I guess, to be blunt, what I’m asking you is if there’s any truth to all those rumors.” “You did always have a way of being blunt when you need to be.” Nancy lifts an eyebrow at him, otherwise unmoving in her position. “I... ah, no, Nancy, there -” “It’s okay, Frank, really, if there is. You can tell me.” “It’s not that, Nancy. It isn’t me.” Ding-ding. Nancy hones in on his peculiar choice of words. “What do you mean, it isn’t you?” “I - listen. It doesn’t matter. I told you honestly. Are the rumors true for you?” His attempt to distract her is futile. “What did you mean by it isn’t you?” “Nancy, look. I made a promise that I wouldn’t talk about it.” “Talk about what?” Both Nancy and Frank turn their heads to see Joe Hardy drop his motorcycle keys onto the shelf next to the front door. What serendipitous timing, Frank thinks with a roll of his eyes.  “Nothing,” he says quickly, darting across the living room to the staircase with his hands out in front of him, “I’m letting the two of you talk this one out.” Joe glares after his brother, because despite not knowing what this was about, there’s no way he was going to like it. Nancy approaches him from behind. “All I did was ask Frank if he had feelings for me, like in all the media reports. Then he said it ‘wasn’t him’ and insisted that he wasn’t supposed to tell me about it. Do you know anything about that?” Joe swallows the lump in his throat as his heart rate picks up to about 580bpm. ...At least, that’s what it feels like. Joe’s first instinct is to stop & consider if there’s any way he can worm his way out of telling her at this moment; but at the same time, he thinks it may be better to just let things flow. “Uhh.” ...Okay never mind, decision has to be made. NOW. “Is it... you?” ...Oh, that’s right. She’s super smart. When Joe slowly turns around to face her, he can tell from the glassy look in her eyes that she’s already pieced together the whole thing. And for once, he doesn’t know what to say. So he doesn’t. Her breathing is heavy and uneven, to say nothing of his own. The only sound is the steady ticking of the mantle clock. Joe has no idea why but he has an irrepressible urge to apologize. He just wishes his voice doesn’t crack when he does. “Sorry, Nance.” Her immediate response is to tearfully shake her head and wrap her arms tightly around his waist. “Why are you apologizing?” Joe swallows again, hesitantly allowing his hands to fall onto her cardigan-clad back. “I- I don’t know.” and then after a beat, “Should I?” Nancy chuckles a bit as she pulls back, wiping at her eyes. “You should never have to apologize for how you feel, Joe.” That makes him feel a little better. But then, after an agonizing silence during which they have refused to make eye contact, he feels like sickening nerves start to take up residence in his stomach once again. “How do you feel?” Joe forces himself to ask, bracing for impact. Nancy exhales, placing a hand on her cheek. She has an odd sort of smile on her face that Joe doesn’t think he’s seen in the 9 years he’s known her. “I’ll be honest with you, Joe.” Oh, God. “It’s never occurred to me.” He swallows for the 758th time. Why didn’t he grab some water first? But then, to his surprise, Nancy giggles - like, she actually giggles. He’s never heard her giggle before. “But I think I like the idea.” “Wait what?” She gives him a meltingly genuine smile and steps a little closer. “You’ve always been there for me, Joe. You’ve made me laugh, brought soup when I was sick, gave me a call because I said I was lonely. And you’re always up for an adventure,” she causes his heart to go ballistic once again when she places her palms against either side of his waist, “And you know how much I love new adventures.” Now, at last, a smile cracks on Joe’s face - that goofy, wisecracker smile of his that somehow matches this moment entirely. He nods at her as elation finally makes its way in, and elation is the driving force behind their first kiss. There is a remarkable lack of uncertainty between Joe’s enthusiasm and Nancy’s natural reactions - it’s been a long time coming for one, and for the other, it’s an entirely new adventure.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

[stephic-writings]

Get Your Game On! -- FFXV x The Video Game Store

Oh hey, guess where I work at. Now guess what inspired me to write this headcanon. C: YEAH BUDDY. Have some headcanons about these awesome characters as some... Maybe just as awesome customers!

Noctis Lucis Caelum -- 

The silent browser.

If you greet him, and he’d awkwardly tell you that he’s just looking around.

Spends all of his time staring at the games in the Playstation section -- VITA included.

You don’t really know what he’s looking for, but he looks confused at everything.

Even when you think he’s lost and confused, he comes up with ten games.

Not sure if he’s getting these games because he’s going to play them all, or just for the sake of having them.

Maybe both, but you’re still confused when he comes back in next week for more games.

Plays a little bit of everything to know about anything.

But recommending games to him is a nightmare because he’s played everything.

He’s a good guy though, so you don’t mind him browsing for hours upon hours.

Prompto Argentum --

Way too excited to be shopping for video games.

But at least the energy makes it fun to work.

Likes to shout out questions from across the store as he’s looking at games, but never directly approaches because he’s looking still.

‘Have you played this one?!’ You have, and so has he. He was just wondering.

Stoked for anything and everything JRPG and anime.

Does the really loud and dramatic gasp that signals you that he’s probably going to buy something.

But usually whenever he opens his wallet, he cries inside because there goes his money.

And yet, he comes back next week and hollers about how good the game he got was.

Comes to all of the late-night launches for his favorite games and takes pictures to promote the store alot.

Has probably waited 12 long years for KH3.

Ignis Scientia -- 

The last real game he’s played was released, like, a million years ago.

Doesn’t play video games often, but he came in and upgraded his system when someone decided to add his console to their ‘collection.’

Settled with a Playstation because he’s curious about what the interest was.

You don’t see him for another month later after he bought his system, Detroit and Horizon Zero Dawn.

He had to 100% complete both of the games before he trades them in and finds another couple.

Did you know there’s DLC, Iggy? ‘There is?!’ He buys it and plays the crap out of that too.

He only ever gets a couple games at a time, but they’re lengthy guys.

Three months later, and he still hasn’t completed Skyrim. 

But then again, can you even really beat that game?

He’s the regular that makes it his mission to bring cookies as a gift for the holidays. For being such a helpful staff.

Gladiolus Amicitia -- 

Looks like a burly FPS bro, so it’s not surprising that he is one.

Gets all of the Call of Duty and Battlefield games when they come out, like it’s a designer trend.

Yes, they’re both the upgraded editions too.

Plays mostly Grade A titles that happen to be popular around the time, and brags about it alot.

He’s very direct about what he wants, and rarely ever browses for a new game.

Xbox for life. Doesn’t care that everyone else has Playstation because he just borrows Ignis’s system.

Comes in sometimes not for his own games, but simply to find a rare otome or harem anime game.

You squint a bit at Code Realize in your hands, but he says that its for his little sister.

But you caught him in the act when you made a passive comment about how Arsene was your favorite character.

Hey, he’s gotta play something in between the release of his CODs and Battlefields!

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret -- 

Doesn’t have time to be at home usually for an actual home console, so he’s quite happy with Nintendo Switch.

She gets all of the cute games on her system, and often uses it for little kids to help calm them when healing them.

Doesn’t know what games to get usually, so she has lengthy conversations about what would be a cute one.

Gets more obscure games usually, but that’s because the covers look the cutest.

An absolute fan of Cat Quest, because cats.

She’s always asking about what new games would be nice to keep an eye on, and preorders to make sure she gets them.

Free stuff? You bet your butt you’re giving it to her. The puppy face is too much.

She got Super Smash Bros for her Switch recently, thinking it’d be fun for the kids to play.

But she had to unlock all of the characters on her own, so she played for a week straight.

Don’t ever challenge her to Smash Bros now. She’ll destroy you with Zelda.

Ravus Nox Fleuret -- 

He’s that poor sucker that gets the older generation consoles from pretty much everyone.

Not that he minds. He’s okay with a casual game here and there.

Browses exclusively in the discount game bin, only to be disgruntled by the million copies of Madden in it.

All about that RPG life where he can be a knight in it.

But he comes back in shock as he tells you the story about that elf Zevran and how he accidentally witnessed an awkward romance scene.

Now he plays these glorified dating sims. For the story and for the handsome men.

He’ll often come to the store on weird occasions -- usually at night -- to ask you about all of his tech support and game walkthrough questions.

He’s technologically handicapped.

Tends to get all of the warranties and game protections on everything he buys.

He’s got nasty game rage and dogs, so he keeps everything protected.

Ardyn Izunia --

A fan of the classics and comes in often with the games he buys online through the web inventory.

Opens it all up to make sure if things are fakes or not, because collector’s gotta collect.

Gets on his high-horse alot about how he has an unsealed collector’s edition of The Witcher III, which you still don’t believe him on.

He comes in with the intent on preordering collector’s editions only for games, and drops so much money on all of it.

How rich is this guy?! It’s probably best that you don’t know.

All of his games are in steelbooks, so he asks often about if you can give him whatever steelbooks you have to keep his games in tact.

Tiny retro game systems? You bet your butt he wants to buy those.

Supposedly can speedrun Super Mario Bros in record time, but again: you still don’t believe him.

Probably the most eccentric person you deal with, and he’s actually really difficult with his insane collector’s demands.

But nevertheless, he definitely keeps things interesting, and gives you stellar reviews.

Cor Leonis -- 

He doesn’t really come in for the video games, to be honest, but is still a regular for some reason.

Bought Red Dead Redemption 2, and that’s been the only game he’s been playing.

You try to recommend other things, but nope. Only Red Dead.

And Monster Hunter World. He admittedly enjoyed that one too.

But you make most of your sales from him when he buys collectibles.

All about those Dragon Ball and anime statues.

Avoided the POP figures for a long time, but caved when he saw a Sailor Moon POP.

It was too cute. Don’t judge him.

He gets made fun of by the other regular, Loqi, that ‘conveniently’ happens to be shopping the same time as him.

But jokes on Loqi. His Madara statue is worth more than Loqi’s car.

[shiredwarf]

24 hours later: i'm still outraged as ever & i've found a couple of new things to be outraged about that i somehow just missed yesterday. which is understandable. hard to keep track of all the fuck ups!

what was the point of euron fighting jaime? also how did they even end up together? that was another case of characters just conveniently appearing at the right time at the right location (which is like euron’s mine character trait at this point: randomly showing up without any real reason just to fuck shit up in the most annoying way possible). Also: why didn't Jaime just go for this route the first time around?! he might have even made it in time. why is euron so obsessed with killing jaime? why is euron in general? what's his point? was he ever meant to be anything but a cheap plot device? everyone deserved better than this

the fact that the unsullied officers just left tyrion with jaime no questions asked is probably the dumbest moment of the entire episode. dany has often and loudly questions tyrion's loyalty but nothing suspicious about tyrion (THE HAND OF THE QUEEN) wanting to stand guard outside the tent and sending everyone else away. like what's he gonna do? free the person he clearly loves most in the world with a key that just magically appeared in his hand while davos somehow sneaks past the entire greyjoy fleet to leave a boat at the foot of the red keep? naaah (how did davos get back from there btw? did he tow another boat? was he not alone? why am i even trying to make sense of this we all know this plot was written on a piece of toilet paper)

and what's with dany never learning of jaime's escape?! someone must have checked on such a high profile prisoner in the morning? someone must have noticed and told dany who just hours ago threatened tyrion with death should he ever betray her. why did noone come up with the idea to use jaime as a hostage??? but guess everyone just forgot about him, just like the writers forgot about his arc :))))))))))))))))))

where did all the dothraki come from? why are there still so many unsullied left? it sure looked like 90% of them died in winterfell. then we see a significant number in episode five and in the trailer for episode 6 it looks like thousands??? do they just respawn? are we following video game logic now? (btw remember when soldiers had actual personalities? when was the last time an unsullied beside grey worm or a dothraki did anything to remind us they're more than npcs. what do they think about all of this? what did they think about the army of the dead? how are they coping? why was everyone suddenly ok with senseless violence against children even though dany has been saying for years she doesn't want that. yeah sure, she started the kings landing BBQ but she was in a completely different part of the city. there was no way for the foot soldier to know that she was indeed butchering civilians and not just wiping out the last remainders of the lannister forces that hadn't put down their weapons. i’m glad though that they all apparently learned to communicate with each other telepathically otherwise they would be as freaking lost as me rn

one thing the books and previous seasons have been really good at is small little world-building elements that pay off later. and they could have used that in season 8! there wasn't any need to introduce new stuff they could have just used what's already there. they did well on that account with lyanna, jorah and theon. Theon probably had the best arc this season tbh (not a tough competition but it's something) and died a stark and a greyjoy. His identity was the major theme of his journey and seeing it played out this way was satisfying! Lyanna and Jorah both embodied "Here We Stand" in their final moments (Jorah quite literally) and that was wonderful! Why couldn't we get something like this for the Lannisters? Why couldn't we get one final, brilliant scene with cersei trying to turn the tide (backup plan? never heard of it). Don't get me wrong, Lena's acting was fantastic but why couldn't we get a "Hear me roar" moment? Her arc was tide to house Lannister more than any other and yet we didn't get anything? Why didn't we get any rewarding rains of castamere parallels? if they're set on wiping house lannister off the map why not show the tragedy and irony of it. why not remind of us tywin's fantastic speech in season 2? they could have used any of those themes but they didn't???

i'm still not even ready to begin to vocalize my opinions regarding jaime. every time i think about it i can feel my life drain out of me. what a fucking waste you guys

what i can vocalize now however is how much i do hate cersei's end and how they treated lena. I cannot get over that. like i realize she is a villain and i realize she is not meant to be a sympathetic character and she never had a chance to get redemption or get out alive but the show treated her like dirt in the end and just like jaime she was eventually reduced to the incest plotline. she started this show out as someone completely at the mercy of the men in her life (her father, her husband) and while jaime was a big part of her arc her main objective was always throwing off that control and taking it herself. sure she overdid it massively and became power hungry but that power hunger is a direct result of the way she was brought up and everything she was forced into/everything she was denied. weirdly, her conflicts are very similar to brienne's. both women didn't want the roles their peers tried to force them into, both women wanted to escape and both women assumed to do so they would have to take on male traits. brienne did that by rejecting her womanhood completely for 7 seasons and aspiring to be a knight. cersei took a very different route. maybe because she had that option (brienne couldn't mould herself into a proper lady unlike her) or maybe because that was literally her only option (imagine tywin's reaction to cersei putting on armour...). in the years that follow cersei and brienne obviously take very different paths and they have very different personalities but just as brienne deserved her knighthood and the affections and acceptance of the man she loves, cersei would have deserved to be free of men trying to decide her fate for her. but she never was. first it was her father, then robert, then her father again, then the high sparrow and when she finally wiped them all out she had to let another man she despised into her bed to maintain power. brienne managed to escape the confines of male-dominated society forced on her, cersei never did. they could have either shown her finally free before her death, free of the men that tried to control her all her life, free of the power hunger, free of societies expectations or they could have had her face her ugly deeds. i doubt she would have ever regretted any of it but it would have been so much more satisfying to see her properly outsmarted, to see her face off either dany or sansa or jon (or even tyrion or jaime had his character arc not been ruined before that). she was a fantastic, complex villain until she basically just started to stare off into the distance. it would have been so satisfying to see her face reality before the end. Instead, we got rocks. but even that scene (as beautifully as it's acted) isn't satisfying. cersei, who has never been one to just weep helplessly, is first reduced to begging jaime for her life & to save their child (AGAIN WHAT WAS THE POINT! I WILL NEVER GET IT!) and then she keeps freaking out because she doesn't want to die at all and certainly not this way (very self-centred as always whereas jaime is much calmer and at peace with what's about to happen and ready to take care of her even though he’s worse off) . i don't know if this was intentional or just a happy accident but even in those final scenes it's very obvious that the love cersei has for jaime is not the same kind of love jaime has for her. i guess they both ended up wanting to die in each others arms seconds before it happened so there’s that. but it’s a cheap ending for the best actress in the show before they robbed her of all opportunities to shine

oh and lena's instagram combined with her body double’s yet unseen work on the show has now convinced me that we're incredibly likely to see cersei's and jaime's mutilated bodies/heads next week. can't wait to see their characters disrespected on a whole new level jfc i’m so tired

i can't even think about brienne these days. absolutely seething. at this point i would prefer it if the brienne/jaime romance had never happened in ep. 4. if they'd stuck to glances and meaningful gestures at least it would have made more sense. brienne would have been his "what if" when they erased jaime's character development and made him return to cersei (which i maintain could have made sense because no matter what jaime will always love his family no matter how much he also hates them IF ONLY THEY HAD PUT IN THE FUCKING WORK). but she's not a "what if" now is she. she is his "this happened and it was good and important" but we're just going to forget this. we're just going to forget that the last 8 seasons have been leading up to this point. we're gonna forget that for the entire first half of season 8 jaime didn't even flinch at the thought of cersei dying. four episodes of jaime glued to brienne's side and then we're just expected to believe he doesn't care after all. then we're just supposed to believe she is never mentioned again and no thought of her crosses his mind or anyone else's for that matter (looking at you tyrion). I genuinely don't get what the point of that romance was then. to keep jaime in winterfell for a bit longer so him getting captured would make more sense? i feel like there were like a million ways to get the same outcome without throwing brienne under the bus. brienne and her entire arc were used as a cheap plot device for jaime and it wasn't even worth it cause they then butchered jaime's arc. god i'm so angry.

remember the last time a tv show fucked up in the last episode? yeah, dexter!  i'm calling it now: got will end exactly like dexter in terms of plot and level of satisfaction. jon will kill dany (a family member/romantic interest) and then go north to spend his day in the wilderness (lumberjacking away miserably)

the more i think about it there is not a single thing about this episode that actually makes sense. this goes beyond plotholes, this is just a plain hole

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

I never read the Shadow Hunter books, and I all I knew from the series was from the movie, wich I saw and didn't like, and because of that pretty much forgot everything about the story. When I reluctantly started the series,out of pure curiosity and because it has supernatural elements,what I liked the most was the relationship between Alec and Jace.I noticed Alec's feelings from the first few episodes, and was actually hoping that they would end up together.When I figured out they wouldn't, ...

2/3 ...I was actually dissapointed, and honestly surprisedthat Alec would end up with Magnus, not only because I'm pretty sure there wasno Malec content in the movie (my only previous source), but also because I sawlittle to no chemistry between the actors from the series. I think Jalec wouldhave been much better (at least cting wise), and honestly, since they changedso much from the books, couldn't they have made that move? I know why theydidn't (business wise), but still, I think it would...

3/3 ...have been more interesting to watch. Itcould have been like an AU from the books (and from what I learned about thestory of the books, the show is pretty much an AU already). What do you thinkwould have been like if Jalec happened on the show? How do you think it wouldhave impacted other characters arcs (Clary's story would probably change a lotin my opinion, same as Magnus)? (Final)

I enjoy the books. I wouldn’t say they’re fantastic and whenI first read them a decade ago, I was completely in love with the series. 10years later, I can see the flaws the books have but for the most part, thoseflaws are really just a product of the time the books were written in and Istill enjoy the books for what they are. The YA genre was a different world tenyears ago.

The movie isn’t the greatest. But I don’t think it’sabsolutely terrible but I do think you have to have knowledge of the books inorder to properly enjoy it. For me, the movie started off good but the longerit went on, it just kept on losing traction. But I could find enjoyment in itbecause I knew what the movie was trying to set up for (because I’d read thebooks). In reality, the first book, City of Bones, is just a really bad book totry to adapt into a movie because so much of it is world-building and the maincharacter just running around trying to understand the world. So much of thatbook is set-up for later books and the movie tried to do the same thing butultimately it just turned into this really boring thing because reading aboutworld-building and having to watch world-building are two completely differentthings and the movie didn’t quite pull it off. Honestly, I’m not too terriblysurprised that the movie flopped. I wish they had continued with making themovies because I guarantee the next book, City of Ashes, would probably haveworked better. The movie didn’t have a whole lot of Malec content but I can confirmthat Malec is one of the main ships in the books. In the movie, it was onlyvery subtly hinted at mostly because it’s an adaptation of the first book whichadmittedly also doesn’t have a whole lot of Malec content. They kind of existmore in the background. Malec, gradually over time, gets more of a focus in thebooks and that’s more of a reflection on what the author was able to get awaywith when publishing under the YA genre over the years. As I said before, theYA genre was a very different beast ten years ago.

And it’s never really bothered me that the show made changesfrom the books, the show just had bad writing and there was definitely achemistry problem with the main ships. And it’s super weird that with all ofthe changes they made from the books, keeping the top 3 ships (Clace, Malec, Sizzy)is what they decided they absolutely couldn’t change? None of thoserelationships worked for me because the actors in those pairings had 0chemistry with each other (and the show was a little heavy-handed in telling uswho we needed to ship). In season one, I could forgive a lack of chemistry. Alot of these actors had never worked with each other before, they’re stillgetting to know each other, I can excuse that. But over the course of the nextcouple of seasons, you can tell that the actors are more familiar with eachother but they’re still lacking that relationship chemistry on-screen andunfortunately that happens sometimes. If you don’t have chemistry with someone,then you don’t have chemistry with someone. No amount of time you spend withthat person is going to make that chemistry suddenly appear. It’s why I’vementioned before that it’s glaringly obvious that no chemistry tests were donewith this cast prior to production beginning. If there were, the showrunnerswould probably have caught on and maybe made some adjustments to who they choseto cast.

But there was a showrunner change in season 2 and ideallyyou would think that as writers invested in the show they’re currently writingfor, they’d say, “you know what, we initially had this plan for Malec beingthis epic romance but they’re just not working on screen, maybe we shoulddiverge a little from the original plan.” But they didn’t. They just kept onchugging away at this couple who has no chemistry with each other and whereas Iwas willing to ignore it for a time, I eventually got to the point that Icouldn’t. It’s not like writers have never changed a relationship focus due tochemistry. That’s why Olicity became a thing in Arrow. Because the showrunnersfound that Stephen and Emily had chemistry they wanted to write a romance for.

I really wish Shadowhunters had decided to diverge from theTop 3 ships and just go off based on the chemistry they saw between theiractors on-screen. Every Jalec scene, despite me not always agreeing with thewriting decisions leading up to it, are just a joy to watch. When you watch aJalec scene, you want to look away because you feel like you’re intruding on aprivate moment. And I love when ships make me do that. I never really shippedJalec on the show because I knew they would never be a thing since the showseemed weirdly committed to keeping the top three relationships intact for somereason. But if I were the writers, I definitely would have shifted from Malecto Jalec. There are of course people who absolutely love the Malec chemistryand they’re free to do so but I’m not one of them. When Matt and Harry are in ascene together, they’re acting just becomes extremely wooden and theircharacters become pale imitations of what they once were. Everything is so forcedwhen they’re in a scene together. Harry and Matt try to make up for it byacting with their eyes and making “heart-eyes” at each other but for me, it’snot enough to overcompensate for their awkward body language around each other.And apart from them having chemistry that just doesn’t work for me, I just didn’tlike their relationship. I don’t understand whar it is about each other thatMalec likes. I have no idea why they’re choosing to stay together, they can’tsurvive a single conflict without their relationship crumbling to pieces.

But thinking about in an alternate universe if Jalec reallywas a thing is interesting, though. If you’ve been following me for a while,you know I love to think about “what if” situations. It obviously would changea lot with practically all of the characters because so much of this show isrelationship based. Like I’ve mentioned before, Shadowhunters is a trash showand only exists to give its audience shipping fodder. And I will say just as ageneral note here that this is completely different from what would happen inthe books. There’s actually a rule in the books that states you can’t fall inlove with your parabatai (bad things will happen and I’ll leave it at that).But just in show context because the show never went into the rules aboutparabatai, I like to imagine that before the show started, Alec and Jace werein this kind of “friends with benefits” type of relationship. It was purelysexual in nature, a way for them to relax after a hard day of hunting and theyjust needed a release. At least, it was like that for Jace. However, Aleccouldn’t quite shake it off. He couldn’t quite just write their relationshipoff as “just sex” and so he decided to end things with Jace because he couldn’tstand the idea of Jace not seeing him as anything more than a means ofrelieving stress. And here is when the show begins. Clary comes into the mixand obviously, if we’re shooting for a Jalec endgame there’s a lot of changesthat have to be made with Clary as she and Jace in both the books and show arethe characters the story centers on. I don’t really want to say that Jace getsinvolved with Clary only to figure out at the eleventh hour that Alec really ishis one true love, that feels a little too juvenile and easy for me, preference-wise,I hate stories that go in that direction, I hate “one true love” nonsense. Atfirst I caught myself thinking, okay, who is Clary’s endgame relationship goingto be if it’s not Jace? And then I realized, does she really need one? I mean,she just found out who she thought she was her entire life is not who sheactually is. When you’re going through something like that, should you reallybe involving yourself in a committed relationship? But I’m not opposed to herending up with someone like Simon or hey, maybe even Lydia (what ever happenedto Lydia by the way? Of all the dumb and pointless original characters the showcame up with, she was my favorite. We never found out if she ever got a happyending. Perhaps ending up with Clary could be her happy ending). We could stillhave a Malec relationship on the show but ultimately, they decide to end thingsas they feel like they can’t overcome the obstacles in their relationship, theystill care about each other deeply but sometimes in relationships, caring abouteach other isn’t enough to make it work. Alec is heartbroken that he had to endthings and he and Jace have a drunken night where they fall into bed again andinto their same old bad habits. But Alec makes it clear to Jace he’s notinterested in continuing what they used to have and because his relationshipwith Magnus made him more communicative in talking out his feelings, he comesclean to Jace about how he really feels about Jace. Jace doesn’t know how torespond so that drama gets milked for maybe half a season and let’s saysomething happens to Alec or Jace is separated from Alec for too long and Jacerealizes how much he does love Alec and the reason he couldn’t say it before isbecause he was afraid to be truly loved by someone. They confess and that’s theirendgame. As for Magnus, there was this original character named Raj that theshow just wrote off as xenophobic and an overall scumbag but when he was firstintroduced, I thought he was in the closet and was secretly crushing on Alec.

So for the purposes of this new narrative, let’s say he’s secretly crushing onMagnus and after some time of them being kind of aggressive towards one another,they realize they’re interested and a relationship blooms from that.But that’s the current mental picture of a “whatif” Jalec endgame that’s in my head right now. This would need way more time tothink on but as a story base, it’s not too bad. And actually, now I’m superinto the new Top 3 Ships being Jace/Alec, Magnus/Raj, Clary/Lydia.