#just having fun with some elements of the show and possibilities of the writing

[porraaharkness]

Could the scene of then flying be a reference to the fact that witches used brooms as a ritual to freedom, fertility, womanhood and sexually?

The use of hallucinogenic plants for shamanic purposes goes back to prehistory. In medieval Europe there were a number of hallucinogenic plants in fairly easy supply. First among these was the rye mold containing ergot fungi. With effects on humans similar to LSD, ergot was a powerful hallucinogen, and others readily accessible hallucinogenic plants like henbane, deadly nightshade or mandrake.

One of the ways to ingest a hallucinogenic drug besides swallowing it is through the mucous membranes, for women, through the mucous membranes of their vaginas. The witches confessed, that on certain days or nights they anoint a staff and ride on it to the appointed place or anoint themselves under the arms and in other hairy places. Once this had been done, the effects of the “flying ointment” would begin to take effect.

And then we have these moments that they look like having some peace, freedom, pleasure, yearning and desire.

And why the fixation on the broomstick and not another object? The herbs used in such a preparation would have been kept in small broom-like bundles know as whisks, which may have been boiled whole in oil, both releasing the active ingredients from the whisk and thus soaking the handle with the concoction.

From the viewpoint of our modern times, such drug use and self pleasure are not such shocking acts, but are in fact liberating, but at the time a woman choosing to do what she wished with her own body or mind was so unthinkable as to be synonymous with the devil himself. Many women were tortured and killed because they dared to explore such personal liberties.

Remembering that we have some scenes in the show of Lilia talking about how the witches were perceived and how much the suffered, it would be interesting the possibility of the show bringing those elements to the history.

Credits for the gifs @/sassymajesty @/trynot @x/mndvx @/carricfisher

[monzabee]

déjà vu (beyoncé’s version) – ln4

masterlist

Summary: The one where a bad prank leads to you and Lando exploring an option you thought was not an option.

Pairing: lando norris x bestfriend!reader (nicknamed Tink)

Word Count: 5.2k

Warnings: smut elements but no actual smut, cursing, pining and of course fluff!

Request: “Haiiii. I love your style of writing Lando and feel like you would 100% do a request justice to scratch the itch in my brain Reader and him have been childhood friends, mutual pining with some sexual tension but never crossed lines other than a new years kiss with friends etc. So reader ends up training and qualifying as a physio/masseuse and travelling with Lando bc fun besties on tour together yay! Thinking she ends up getting to know his body really well from that and has to massage some intimate area- tension builds blah. They have a cosy night in together after front row quali to prep for the race, face masks cuddles bc really physically comfortable together and then some confessions happen. After this going out to celebrate home race (not jinxing tomorrow!!) and reader ends up dancing with another driver, Lando gets jealous fully opens up and they go home together (as much detail on that as you feel comfortable with) No probs if it’s something you don’t feel inspired to write! Pls continue writing whatever you love because I love to read your stuff!!”

Author’s Note: hi, hey, hello!! am i back after a literal month of no fics?? i hope so!! thank you so much for being patient with me you guysi i appreciate it, and i just want to say that this was the first time i wrote for lando (and you can definitely thank @userlando and her lando brainrot posts for that) and i’m kind of obsessed!! so as always, thank you to the anon for the request, and i hope you guys enjoy! good morning, noon or night wherever you are, xoxobee

Please also note that all of my works are protected under copyright, and not available for reposting on other platforms. 

Being friends with Lando has resulted in both of you getting in trouble way too many times, you realise. The most recent case? The both of you ended up in a supply closet nearby the Aston Martin hospitality, hiding from a very, very, angry Spaniard. The close proximity and the limited space wouldn’t have been a big issue, for if Lando wasn’t looking at you with that look in his eyes. Under normal other circumstances, your reaction would’ve been much more different to the one you give him now – which is a glare that shows him you are not happy with the situation the both of you are in.

You’re about to scold him, but the words on your tongue quickly die as he presses his index finger to your lips. “I know you’re about to yell at me,” he whispers as he tries to keep his voice as low as possible, “but I really don’t want to be found right now.”

“Then maybe you should’ve thought about that before, you bloody idiot.” You hiss while slapping his hand away, which wins you a mock pout in return. “Why would you play that song every time he walked into a room?”

“It’s his name,” Lando tries to reason, “I thought he’d be used to it by now!”

Here’s the sitch. Lando, being the absolute prankster he is, decided to play ‘Fernando’ every time his former teammate entered into a room that morning – which resulted in the Spaniard becoming more and more annoyed with him until he snapped and Lando had to find himself a hiding place. How did you get roped into this, you may ask? You have absolutely no idea, other than your best friend dragging you into a nearby storage closet as you were walking back to the McLaren hospitality after meeting up with some of your friends for a cup of coffee. And now? The two of you are stuck inside a closet which is obviously too small for you both, and Lando has to bend his neck in an uncomfortable position.

“Lando,” you whisper in an attempt to keep your voice down, “don’t bend your head like that, you’ll strain something.”

“Well it’s not exactly comfortable, Tink.” He grimaces as one of the shelves hit his neck, which causes him to let out a low groan.

Ignoring the nickname he’s used for years, you motion him to move lower. “Just– let me see, okay?”

He begrudgingly nods as he bends his body towards you to accommodate you. You let your fingers run across his skin to find any knots along his shoulders. He lets out another low groan, but this one is more appreciative as you work some of the knots your fingers end up finding.

You watch as Lando’s expression changes from painful discomfort to relief as your fingers work their magic on his tense muscles. For a brief moment, it's just the two of you in the confined space, and you almost get lost in the comfortable silence. “Feels good,” Lando murmurs, his voice barely above a whisper, “I swear you have magic hands or something.”

You let out a breathy chuckle, “I just know your body, Lando.” After realising the words that come out of your mouth, your face flushes with embarrassment at the unintended implication of your words and you scramble to add, “Not like that, I didn’t mean–”

He smirks playfully, his eyes sparkling mischievously. “Oh, really? My body, huh? You think about my body often?” he teases, his hands squeezing your waist – and being lost in the moment, you don’t even know how they ended up there.

Your cheeks grow even hotter, and you feel your heart rate quicken. “No, that's not what I meant,” you stammer, trying to regain your composure, “and you know it’s basically my job to think about, you know?”

The mischievous glint in his eyes shine brightly as he decides to play dumb, “To think about what, baby?”

Your heart skips a beat at his teasing, and you can't help but let out a small laugh, trying to hide your embarrassment. “Don't be ridiculous, Lando,” you retort, trying to act cool despite the butterflies in your stomach. “I meant knowing your body like an expert, considering the fact that you pull a muscle every time you decide to do a physical activity.”

He chuckles, and his hands, still resting on your waist, give you a playful squeeze. "Sure, sure, Tink," he replies, a hint of playfulness in his voice. "But let's be honest, it's not just my body you know well. You practically read my mind too."

You roll your eyes, trying to playfully push him away. "Oh, please. You're not that hard to figure out."

Lando leans in a little closer, his grin still evident. "Is that so? Then tell me, oh expert of Lando Norris, what am I thinking right now?"

You raise an eyebrow, not falling for his trick. "You're probably thinking that you got away with the Fernando prank and now you owe me big time, your brain is empty most of the time."

He smirks, impressed by your response. "You're good, Tink. But you're right, I do owe you one. What can I do to make it up to you?"

You pause, the closeness between the two of you making it difficult to think clearly. "Well, for starters, maybe you can stop dragging me into your pranks and getting us into trouble," you suggest with a hint of a smile. “And I don’t know, maybe take pole for me, you know?”

As the playful banter continues, you both seem to forget about the predicament you're in. The confined space of the closet no longer feels suffocating; instead, it becomes a haven for shared laughter and camaraderie.

Just as the two of you are lost in the moment, the closet door suddenly opens, and you both freeze. The angry Spaniard stands before you once again, but this time, his expression has softened, seeing you and Lando in a surprisingly intimate moment.

"Am I interrupting something?" Fernando asks, his tone amused.

Your face turns beet red, and Lando lets out a nervous chuckle. "Oh, hey there. Just having a chat, you know."

But Fernando raises an eyebrow, still looking amused. "In a supply closet?"

You and Lando exchange a sheepish glance, realizing how the situation must appear to Fernando. "Well, we kind of got caught up in the moment," you admit, hoping he doesn't read too much into it.

Fernando chuckles, and there's a warm glint in his eyes. "I see. Well, it's none of my business, but you might want to find a less cramped place to chat next time."

You nod in agreement, grateful that Fernando seems to be taking the situation lightly. "You're right. We'll keep that in mind," you say, trying to sound casual.

Lando adds with a grin, "Yeah, and we promise not to play 'Fernando' every time you enter a room from now on." But he’s quick to correct himself when you give him a glare, “I promise not to play 'Fernando' every time you enter a room from now on."

Fernando chuckles again, seemingly amused by the whole ordeal. "I'd appreciate that. Anyway, carry on. I won't keep you two any longer."

As he walks away, you let out a sigh of relief. "That could have been a lot worse," you say, feeling a mix of embarrassment and amusement.

"Yeah, we got lucky," Lando agrees, giving you a playful nudge. "But you know what they say, Tink, nothing like a bit of closet bonding to strengthen a friendship."

You roll your eyes at his playful banter, but there's a fondness in your heart as you look at him. "You're incorrigible, Lando Norris."

He grins, "You love it, though."

You can't help but smile, knowing he's right. “Come on,” you say, “you have a quali to attend.”

The tension from the qualifying session had left you on edge, your heart pounding with every lap, and your nerves had gotten the better of you, leading to some slightly bloody nails from biting them in anticipation. But all that anxiety melts away when you see Lando step out of the car, grinning ear to ear. As soon as he catches sight of you, he opens his arms, and you don't hesitate for a moment. You rush into his embrace, holding him tightly, relieved that he's safe and thrilled that he performed so well.

"You were amazing out there!" you exclaim, unable to hide the pride in your voice. "P2, front row! That's incredible!"

Lando chuckles, his arms still wrapped around you. "I don’t know how we did it!"

You pull back slightly to look into his eyes, your heart swelling with admiration for your best friend. "I never doubted you for a second," you say earnestly.

His grin widens, and he playfully ruffles your hair. "I know you didn't. Seems like you’re my lucky charm, hm?"

“You know what that means?” You ask him return, a playful smirk on your lips.

His answer comes quickly, and his look seems to reflect your own, “Pizza and a movie?”

Your reply is just as enthusiastic as you throw your arms around him and give him a big smile, “Pizza and a movie, baby!”

Eventually, you manage to escape the whole hustle and bustle of the circuit, and you and Lando find yourselves back at the hotel, with you on the couch trying to find something to watch and him deciding to take a quick shower after the stressful day of qualifying. After a few minutes, you hear the sound of the shower running in the bathroom. You smile to yourself, glad that Lando is taking some time to relax after such a demanding day. As you wait for him to finish, you finally settle on a movie to watch with a small grin on your face, clearly pleased with your choice. Just as you're about to start the movie, you hear the bathroom door open, and Lando emerges, looking refreshed and relaxed.

After he gets the pizza box out of the oven, he walks over to the couch, wearing sweatpants instead of his jeans, and flops down next to you. "That shower was exactly what I needed," he says with a contented sigh.

You chuckle, glancing at him, while also trying to actively ignore the fact that he’s wearing grey sweatpants. "Feeling better now?"

"Definitely," he replies, flashing you a grin. "So, what are we watching?"

“Mamma Mia,” you scoff, “of course.”

“A classic, nice.” He nods in understanding, extending the pizza box to you for you to take a slice. “It’s still warm.”

You wordlessly grab a slice and pass the box back to Lando as you settle in your seat, ready to focus on your choice of movie. The comfortable silence between you feels familiar, like the unspoken language of best friends who have shared countless memories and moments together. Throughout the movie, you can't help but notice Lando's occasional stolen glances at you, and you find yourself stealing glances right back. He even winks at you with that boyish grin every time he catches you staring at him, making you giggle as you quickly turn your attention back onto the screen. You somehow find yourself sprawled out on the couch once the pizza box is emptied and discarded, and it’s harder for you to keep your eyes open. With your head on Lando’s lap, he plays with the ends of your hair as the two of you try to keep your attention on the screen.

‘Try,’ being the operative word here, since Lando realises that you end up falling asleep in the middle of the movie where Sophie realises all of the men she invited to the wedding thinks they are her father, and though he finds some kind of comfort in the chaos knowing that it will get resolved eventually, he can’t help but take his role as a makeshift human pillow very seriously. As the movie continues playing, Lando tries his best not to disturb your peaceful slumber. He leans back against the couch, adjusting his position so you can rest more comfortably on his lap while also trying so hard to not wake you up. He can't help but smile to himself as he plays with your hair, finding himself mesmerized by the gentle rise and fall of your chest as you breathe.

With a sudden realisation that maybe it is not the best thing to stare at you while you sleep, he tries to occupy himself with something on his phone while also trying to keep still so that you don’t wake up. However, the text thread between him and Max quickly makes him realise that the thoughts that he tries so hard to keep away. He never gave himself the opportunity to think about the two of you that way, he supposes. Not that it would be weird or anything, but in his mind, he’d seen, and been in, far too many relationships form and de-form to know that not all is permanent when it comes to relationships and it’s also not something he’d want to risk when it comes to you. Although the unwarranted thoughts of the two of you together, as a couple, have been haunting him for the past couple of months, he did a great job of sending them away and finding something else to focus on – up until now, that is. And now that he’s pictured the two of you together, holding hands in the streets of Monaco, going on dates, doing more than what ‘best friends’ are meant to do, it doesn’t seem that daunting to give it a try.   

He carefully shifts you onto his lap with gentle movements, surprised that you don’t wake up and also trying to figure out the best way to wake you up without startling you. As he gently brushes your cheek, your eyes flutter open, and you look up at him with a sleepy smile. "Did I miss the end of the movie?" you ask, your voice still heavy with sleep.

Lando chuckles, shaking his head, but not stilling the movement of his hand. “No, we just finished. You fell asleep somewhere in the middle.”

You sit up slightly, rubbing your eyes with a small yawn. “I'm sorry,” you say, sounding apologetic.

“No need to apologise,” he assures you, his thumb caressing your cheek. “You looked adorable sleeping, Tink.”

Your cheeks flush slightly, and you give him a playful nudge. “Stop teasing me.”

Lando grins, but there's a tenderness in his eyes as he looks at you. “I'm not teasing, Tink. I mean it. You always look adorable, no matter what you're doing.”

You feel your heart skip a beat at his sincere compliment, and you can't help but smile back. “Thank you,” you say softly, feeling a warmth spreading through you, “I, uh, I should probably go to my room and let you sleep.”

“What? No, you don’t have to go.” Lando’s eyebrows furrow on their own, “I mean, you could stay over, it’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

You give him an unsure look, “I don’t know, Lando, you have a race tomorrow.”

“And we’ll sleep,” he shrugs, “the name ‘sleepover’ implies that, baby.”

You end up giving in and nodding, albeit a little hesitant. "Alright, I'll stay over."

Lando's face lights up with a bright smile, clearly pleased with your decision. "Great! It'll be fun, just like old times."

You chuckle softly. "Yeah, just like old times."

And you’d expect it to feel like the old times, because the two of you said it would be like the old times – the times where you’d spend the night over at his house because his mother picked you up and you didn’t want the playtime to be over. But instead of the excitement of a prolonged play date with your best friend, you find yourself anxious in the hotel bathroom over the fact that it’s him out there, and there is no way that he is not aware of the way you feel about him. You take a moment to compose yourself, splashing some cold water on your face to calm your nerves. This situation is new territory for both of you, and you don't want anything to ruin the friendship the two of you have. When you eventually make your way out of the bathroom, you desperately want to go back in, feeling undoubtedly exposed under Lando’s burning gaze.

“What?” You ask, your voice coming off weaker than you hoped, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

It takes a minute for him to answer you, mainly because of the fact that poor Lando is having a brain malfunction at the sight of you in his shirt – which he gave it to you because it was the only logical option for sleepwear, you know? Suddenly regretting his possessive streak, he attempts to clear his throat, “Nothing, you look good in my clothes.”

Your eyebrows shoot up, and you try not to let yourself become reduced to a blubbering mess, “Oh, well thank you. It’s yours,” after a brief moment of realisation you quickly add, “but you already knew that.”

“Tink,” he calls out, snapping you out of whatever embarrassed state you’re in, and your eyes quickly snap to his. “Come here,” he pleads as he extends one of his towards you, he’s quick to draw you into his arms – and just like that, you find yourself straddling your best friend.

“This is crazy,” you whisper as Lando grabs you by the waist to still your movements as you try to find a comfortable position while not realising just how uncomfortable it becomes for him.

“It doesn’t have to be,” his whisper is just as soft as yours as he looks up to you, “we don’t have to make it weird.”

A compromise, you’ll take it. “Are you going to kiss me?”

“Do you want me to kiss you?” As much as you hate it when he replies to your questions with his own, you nod your head with a sheepish look on your face, though it doesn’t satisfy Lando as a valid answer. “I need you to say it, baby.”

You answer comes of in an instant. “I do, please.”

“Such good manners,” he mumbles while giving you that boyish grin you love oh so much. When he catches biting the corner of your lip, you’re broken out of your daydream by his thumb pulling your lip free. “Don’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself,” his thumb caresses the side of your lip, “that’s my job, anyway.”

Your cheeks flush at his playful comment, and you can't help but smile at his words. "Your job, huh?" you tease, feeling the tension in the air starting to dissipate.

Lando chuckles, his fingers gently tracing patterns on your waist. "Among other things," he replies with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

Before you give yourself the opportunity to overthink, you lean in and press a soft kiss to Lando’s lips – it’s only a peck, a hesitant one at that, but not completely uncharted territory when you think about it. The two of you have shared kisses before, at Christmas or New Year’s at midnight, but somehow this simple peck feels different than any of those other occasions. Lando doesn’t rush you. He’s a patient man after all, and he knows that the feelings he has for you are reciprocated by the feelings you have for him. So when you look him with widened eyes, he gives you a soft smile and it does wonders to calm your nerves. It doesn’t take you long to press your lips against his once again, but this time the kiss is deeper, more passionate, and filled with the unspoken words that have lingered between you for too long.

It starts off with another peck, but this time you take the initiative to deepen the kiss, and the appreciative groan that leaves Lando’s lips makes you feel butterflies in your stomach. His hands move from your waist to the small of your back, pulling you closer to him, while yours tangle in his hair, revelling in the softness of his curls – and the fact that all of this feels almost familiar in some kind of a way. He’s not shy as he lets his tongue explore your mouth, in fact, he encourages you to do the same. It’s a messy kiss filled with colliding tongues and mixed breaths, and the hands that were on your waist one moment are now on your hips, encouraging their slow movement against his groin. It’s not a subtle build-up for any of you, either. It a matter of seconds, you find yourself dry-humping your childhood best friend in his hotel room, and in a couple more, both of you are whimpering into the kiss.

You’re both out of breath and breathing deeply as you rest your forehead against Lando’s. Thankfully, his hands continue to guide your hips as their movement get more and more erratic, and you him groan out, “Slow down, baby.”

You let out an objective whimper in return, whispering out a weak, “No.”

“No?” Lando repeats, his breath hitting your exposed neck in a light chuckle, “Do you want to come?”

“Uh-huh,” you mumble, letting your hands grab handfuls of his hair, “but you can’t fuck me.”

The whine that comes from your lips can only be described as bratty when Lando forces your hips to cease their movements, raising an eyebrow at you as he grumbles, “Excuse me?”

“You can’t fuck me, Lando.” You mumble, trying to move your hips again, but his hold is too powerful against your attempts. “At least not tonight.”

“And why is that, Tink?” He takes in your wide eyes and shuddering breath in, thinking he’d done something wrong, something you didn’t like. “You want to come, no?” He thinks at that moment, as you give him a nod with that dreamy and almost innocent look on your face, he could die and he’d be happy with where his life has led him, but he gives you a confused look, “Then what is the problem?”

“Um, you have a race tomorrow,” you explain as your fingers gently slide down to meet at the nape of his neck, “I don’t want to jinx anything.”

As a respond to your words, Lando gives you a look of disbelief, “You don’t want to jinx me having a good race,” he mumbles.

You give him another nod, “Are you mad at me?”

 “Am I mad at you?” Lando repeats the question, and he flips the two of you over in a smooth motion so that you're lying on the bed with him hovering above you, his eyes locked onto yours. “Answer the question for me, will you?”

You take a moment to catch your breath, your heart racing as you meet his intense gaze. “No,” you reply softly, your fingers tracing the outline of his jaw. “Why would you be mad at me?”

Lando's lips curve into a playful smile as he leans in, his breath warm against your skin. “See?” he murmurs, his lips brushing against yours, “Good girl.” As he moves down your body, you let out a protesting sound, but he quickly shushes you as he positions himself between your legs. “I’m going to make you come, and you’re not talking to Micheal Italiano ever again.” He taps the side of your hips to signal you to raise them up as he carefully takes off your underwear and then murmurs to himself, “Pretty girl, too.”

With a blush which is quickly spreading onto your cheeks and neck, you raise yourself onto your elbows as you watch him give you the do-over. “Lando,” you plead.

“Oh baby, you're wet,” he teases, “don’t worry, though, I’ll help you with that.” He also gives you a look while grabbing both of your thighs, “And the shirt fucking stays on.”

After the events of the previous night with Lando working wonders between your legs for the remainder of the night, he honestly didn’t expect to start the morning with you returning the favour. Alas there you were, between his legs, with sleepy eyes and an innocent smile as if you hadn’t just given him the best blowjob of his life. And as the two of you make your way along the paddock, he wishes he was back in his hotel room with you in his arms. You try your best to distract him from overthinking everything and costing himself the race, and Lando is aware of what you’re trying to do – though that doesn’t mean you succeed completely.

You can tell by the small frown of eyebrows that he is lost inside his head, probably double guessing every aspect of the strategy his team debriefed him about this morning. With a deep inhale, you give his hand a small squeeze, halting your movements to stop him alongside you. “Hey,” you call out gently, “you’re going to be amazing out there, okay? You have nothing to worry about.”

“I know, it’s just the pressure is getting to me.” You watch him sigh, closing his eyes for a moment to regroup his thoughts, “I’ll be fine before I go in the car, I promise.”

You nod, giving him an encouraging smile, “I know you will. After all, you feel the–”

“Need for speed.” He completes the sentence without thinking, which makes the two of share a short laughter. “Thanks, Tink.”

“You’re welcome,” lifting yourself up on your tiptoes, you give him a soft peck on his lips, “I’ll watch the race with your dad, okay?” You chuckle at his reaction when he lets out a prolonged groan, “What?”

“He’s going to make fun of us, big time.” He says, rolling his eyes.

“Go,” you say in between laughter, “don’t be late and for the love of God, be careful!”

Lando chuckles at your playful warning, giving you a mock salute. “Yes, ma'am!”

It doesn’t take long for you to find Adam, who gives you a knowing look, in the sea of spectators in the McLaren garage. And as the race begins, you and Adam stand side by side, your eyes fixed on the track where the race is unfolding. The first four laps as the Lando leads the race makes your heart beat so hard, you can practically feel the excitement coursing through your veins. Each turn and straightaway that Lando navigates flawlessly adds to the anticipation building in the air. Even when he returns to his original position, you’re on the edge, praying to whatever deity up there for him to finish this race without and incident. You’ve told him million times before that you don’t get F1 at all, you’ve always thought the adrenaline linked with the sport to be a negative feeling – too heavy, too much and definitely not something you want to feel every weekend. But in the moment that Lando passes the finishing line P2, you realise why people are so obsessed with this sport. Because when Lando crosses the finish line, you find yourself cheering as loudly as anyone else. The rush of emotions, once alien to you, now feels like a shared celebration of human achievement and dedication.

Lando is all smiles when he finally finds his way back to you, and he’s giving you a kiss the moment he has you back in his arms; celebrating with the team in the paddock was a whirlwind of emotions. As he wraps his arms around you and pulls you close, his big smile is infectious.

So you’re honestly confused when he starts dragging you through the hallways of the club you went to for his celebrations with the rest of the team. The beat of the music playing back in the dancefloor echoes in the hallway as he leads you down the hall. The lights, the laughter, and the energy of the celebrations in the main area of the club are still audible, but you can only hear the muffled sounds of the celebration being held for him. “Lando,” in hopes of finally getting some answers, you say his name for the umpteenth time, but he just looks at you with furrowed eyebrows, “what’s wrong?”

He's silent as he wraps his arms around your waist and before you can repeat your question he buries his head in the crook of your neck. While you’re thinking about what could’ve caused his sudden need to be alone with you, he’s very glad that you’ve opted to wear sneakers tonight instead of heels.

“Baby,” you murmur, your fingers running through his curls in an attempt to bribe him, “tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong.” His voice is muffled by your skin and you can feel the breath he exhales on your shoulder.

You purse your lips and give him a few moments for him to break on his own, but when he doesn’t, you sigh softly. “Something is wrong.”

He raises his head momentarily to give you an unamused look, then bury his head back into your neck, “I saw you and Oscar.”

“Yeah, we were talking about the race.” Your confirmation leaves you confused as he lets out a scoff, and you find yourself warily asking, “Is there something wrong with that?”

You hear him scoff again and then, “Well I didn’t particularly like it.”

You gently push him off of you as you try to look past his confused expression and pouted lips, “You didn’t like me talking to your teammate… about your race.”

“Well when you put it like that–”

“Lando he is two years younger than us, and he has a girlfriend you do realise that, don’t you?” Your hands rest on either side of your body on your hips as you give him a small grin, “You were jealous, weren’t you?”

His eyes widen as he nods, “Well yeah, Tink, I think that one was very much obvious when I dragged you here.”

“I mean,” you drawl, “it was kind of cute, you know?”

As his eyes narrow, Lando walks you backwards until you’re pressed up against the wall. “Well I am a cute person.”

“Oh yeah,” you let out a giggle, “the cutest.” Your fingers toy with the buttons of his shirt while you look up at him to meet his eyes, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That we should probably get back to the party?” He mumbles, his eyes drifting as he looks around the hall.

You fist the collar of his shirt as you raise yourself up on your tiptoes, your voice lowering down for only him to hear even if it’s a deserted hallway, “You don’t have a race tomorrow.”

His eyes come back down to meet yours, “Well yes, it’s Mond– oh,” it takes a moment for him to realise what you’ve meant, and you’re thrown over his shoulder in an instant.

“Wha– Lando put me down!” You shriek, “What are you doing?”

His voice is playful as he starts walking towards the back door of the club, “We are not leaving that hotel room for a few days.”  

It doesn’t take long for you to start laughing, “You’re an idiot.”

“Maybe,” he shrugs the opposite shoulder, “but I’m your idiot.”

The sincerity in his words catches you off guard, but you can’t help the small smile forming on your lips as you murmur, “Yeah, yeah you are.”

[monimccoythings]

The Beast Within

Sooo I was trying to write a feral!Logan but this oneshot crossed my mind and I just went along with it. I'll write the feral!logan I want to write when I finish the Wolverine's 1988 run. I think I remember mentioning back in my Retired!Logan headcanons that shall danger come for his family he would be ready and waiting. I wanted to dwell on that.

Summary: You awake only to find yourself and your daughters tied up by some unknown men that wnat to roleplay their wildest and scariest fantasies. Your only hope to survive lies on your husband; a man that gang would soon know they shouldn't have messed with.

Word count: 3087

tags: slight feral!logan, a bit of horror, gn!reader, happy ending, Logan loves his family and will kill for them. A bit ooc Wolverine.

tw: blood, death, attempted rape, non-con elements, kidnapping, swear words.

It had all happened so quickly. One moment you were entering your home with your daughters in tow, and the next, you were being knocked out by some masked men.

When you opened your eyes, you found yourself unable to move, having been tied to a chair, the cords against your wrists and ankles cutting into your blood flow. Yet you didn't fear for your life.

Desperately you looked around for Laura and your youngest child. Silently praying those assholes hadn't reached them. You nearly bursted into tears when you saw Laura tied to the couch, still knocked out like a light, but fine nevertheless; but that relief was short lived when you saw one of the men holding your youngest in his arms.

"Well, look who's finally up! I'm so glad you could join us."

You mentally counted them, There were about five burly men. All masked, to conceal their identities. A shiver ran down your spine when you saw they were all armed.

"Why are you doing this? What do you want?" Your mind went overdrive with the amount of possibilities. Where they from an anti mutant group? Have you been found out?? Logan had made sure your tracks were covered so nobody would know who and what he and the children were. Where they robbers, then?

"Hmm why would people do what they do?" The supposed leader of the group dramatically pondered. "Us humans always worry about norms, etiquette, social behavior, we repress ourselves..." you let the man rant about how our real animal natures were suppressed by society, you didn't care too much for that, too busy finding different ways to free yourself and save your kids.

"So, to answer your question. We do this for fun. Because we can. Because we aren't afraid to show who we really are." You felt the blood in your veins freeze when you felt the disgusting hand come near your crotch. These people were insane. If they were just robbers, you could just let them take whatever they wanted and wait until they left. Material things could be replaced, but his words implied something much much worse for you.

"Please, just take what you want and leave!" You knew you had to do something, anything just to keep those men away from your babies, just buy enough time for Logan to-

Logan! Yes, he would sense something was wrong, and come for you all! You just-

The man licked a long streak from your collarbone to your cheek, his hungry depraved eyes mirroring those of his accomplices.

"Oh, we are going to take it indeed." He licked his lips in anticipation, his fingers lazily undoing the buttons of your shirt. You felt the cold air in your exposed skin.

"Listen. My husband will come soon. You need to leave now that you can-"

He forcefully grabbed your chin, forcing you to look into his empty cold eyes. You didn't find any source of empathy or humanity there. His free hand started to unbutton your jeans.

"Then, he can watch."

The lights went out after that, startling the man and his crew. Some let out a few curses.

"Shut the fuck up! It's just the fucking lights!" The man bellowed towards the rest of the group. He signaled with his head towards the most dimwitted looking member. "Beta! Go check the fuse box!"

The man obediently complied with his orders. The fact that you could barely see, didn't do well for your nerves. They could strike any moment.

Minutes passed and the dude nicknamed 'Beta' hadn't returned. Which was weird, because the fusebox was in a small broom closet at the other end of the cabin, and the cabin wasn't really Charles Xavier's Mansion. You could tell that the man giving the orders was already starting to lose his patience.

"Dumb fuck, can't do shit by himself..." He mumbled. "Gamma! Go tell that stupid bitch to hurry the fuck up!" He turned towards you a terrifying smile on his face "I just can't wait to see the look in your eyes when we break you and the kids."

That was enough for you to lunge towards him, parental instincts activating like crazy. Unfortunately there was little you could do with your limited mobility. He grabbed a fistful of your hair and pulled painfully, you felt tears burning at the corner of your eyes but you refused to give him the pleasure of watching you cry.

"Listen here you little slut. Only I get to bite, only I get to kick, and when I'm done with you l, you'll be-"

"Alpha, he ain't here!" 'Gamma''s voice could be heard from the hall. That only fueled 'Alpha's' impatience.

"I ask him a simple task and he fucking gets lost! Look better or none of you are having a piece of this whore!!"

His eyes turned back to yours. A hungry, wicked look crossed them. His mouth went towards your neck, as much as you tried to resist you couldn't pull away from his strong hold in your hair. You let out a scream when he bit you, praying that he hadn't bitten hard enough to draw blood, but that only seemed to encourage him, just as his tongues was lapping at the bruising bitemark you heard someone scream from the end of the hall.

"OH FUCKING SHIT!!"

*bang*

*bang*

And then nothing. That seemed to alert the group, the leader, Alpha, immediately pulling away and releasing you from his vice grip.

"The fuck was that!?" He commanded "Beta! Gamma! Answer now!"

No answer.

With your heart in your throat you quickly took deep breaths, trying to recover a sense of calmness and normalcy that you knew was long lost. But you had to. Your kids were still unconscious you needed to protect them.

"Sigma. Get out and secure the perimeter."

'Sigma' didn't look very convinced but as long as he released your little baby girl everything would be fine. You could practically feel the hesitation in him as he lowered your daughter onto the nearest armchair and quietly exited the living room, gun in hand.

"Whatever the fuck is trying to screw with us, is going to learn this 'pack' doesn't go down easily."

Minutes passed of eery silence, each minute felt like agonizing hours. You thought it would never end until you heard a blood curling scream followed by the sound of glass breaking and something splattering against the walls.

That's when you heard it. An animalistic snarl. It was faint, but it was definitely there and filled your heart with hope like no other. This time you were surely going to cry from joy.

He had arrived.

You were saved.

Tears fell freely down your cheeks, you couldn't help the broad smile that formed in your features.

"Oh God he's here. He's here..." You repeated over and over like a mantra, as if you couldn't quite believe it.

"The fuck is this bitch talking about??" He backhanded you so roughly that you thought you saw stars, the sharp pain in your cheek was nothing compared to the huge relief you were feeling.

'Alpha' turned towards the last remaining member of his 'pack'. "What are you waiting for, dumbass?? Lock the fucking doors!"

The other guy didn't move for a few seconds, obviously scared at this dramatic turn of events. The tension between him and the leader was so thick you could cut it with a knife. You were sure he was wondering why he should risk his life for a plan that was going awry with each passing second. Maybe he was also considering shooting down 'Alpha' and be done with it.

Before he has time to live up that fantasy, he found himself looking straight at the end of 'Alpha's' Magnum. This was no longer a fun game for them. It had stopped being a game when 'Beta' hadn't returned.

"Lock. The fucking. Doors." 'Alpha's' voice was unusually quiet and full of promises of a world of pain if he disobeyed his orders. There was no other choice but to follow his lead, as always.

With trembling hands, the poor guy put the safety lock as best as he could. Once done, he breathed a sigh of relief, believing him safe.

Until a massive arm, broke through the glass of the door and grabbed him by the neck, lifting him a couple of inches off the ground. The man kicked and struggled, trying in vain to reach for his gun. When the hand released him, he hurriedly went for it before he was grabbed again but was stopped by three metal claws piercing through his skull, killing him instantly. The man fell to the ground like a ragdoll.

"Shit." 'Alpha' whispered, feeling for the first time that night true fear. "Shitshitshitshitshit!" His panic grew as he saw the killer of his 'packmate' kick the doors open as if it was nothing.

You couldn't see him, but you knew he was pissed like he had never been before.

*BANG*

*BANG*

*BANG*

'Alpha' fired bullet after bullet towards him. A single shot would have taken down a grown man. But this wasn't a normal man. Oh no, they had just gone after the family of one of the most dangerous men to ever live.

Logan slowly stepped into the moonlight and your breath caught in your throat. From his beard, to his clothes, blood was dripping, but not from the gunshotwounds, those were already healed. His sharp teeth, bared in a feral snarl were stained with blood, having used them to tear through flesh and bone. The icing on the cake were his eyes, those eyes that looked at you with so much tenderness and lust, that crinkled with happiness when they saw his little ones run towards him; they were just empty, void of any rational thought.

You shuddered at his primal display.

The man known just as 'Alpha' took a step back. For all his talk about how he didn't repress from his animal urges and how he was an alpha male, he found himself small and insignificant in the presence of a real animal. Every adamantium coated bone in Logan's body exuded dominance, power, strength; it was overwhelming. 'Alpha' knew if he didn't play his cards well he would end up like the rest of his 'pack' or worse.

Cold sweat formed on your forehead when the gun pointed towards you.

"One more step, and I'll shoot." His voice was deadly quiet, but you could hear the fear hidden behind all that bravado.

Logan stopped, a low growl building up in his throat. His eyes quickly darted towards yours and returned towards his enemy. You knew you had little time, as long as the 'Alpha' kept his eyes locked on Logan's; he wouldn't dare shoot you unless he wanted to have the slowest and most painful death there was, he just needed to think for a better plan of action, which gave you a wonderful opportunity to ponder about how you were going to get out safely, you had to act fast enough to give Logan some margin.

As quiet as you could muster, you started balancing yourself from side to side. Each second that passed increased your chances of ending up with a hole in your chest. A couple of swings more and-

"AAAAAAAAARRRGGGGHHH"

'Alpha' roared in pain when Laura out of nowhere, sunk her teeth and bone claws on his leg. Unfortunately, as a reflex, he accidentally pressed the trigger.

You would never be sure about how you got so lucky that night, as you fell sideways with the chair, the bullet barely grazed your shoulder. You had evaded death miraculously and there was a new hole in the wall.

Logan didn't waste his opportunity. Before 'Alpha' had the chance to kick Laura off his leg, he freed his claws and with a swift motion slashed his yugular vein with two clean cuts.

The blood splattered on his chest and face like a fountain. Alpha's body went limp and fell lifeless to the side. You let out a sigh in relief, as tears ran again freely down your cheeks.

The nightmare was over.

But not for Logan.

For a couple of seconds, he just stood there, breathing heavily, and coated in blood. Laura stood at his feet, looking at him apprehensively, as if sensing there was something wrong.

"Logan." You called for him reassuringly, but he didn't even look at you. You doubted he had heard you. His fists were clenching and unclenching, his knuckles were turning white. The veins in his arms bulged against the swollen muscles. His breaths came out in short puffs of air. Whatever he was feeling right now, you needed to pull him out of it.

His head turned sharply when he heard your youngest stirring. He looked at his bloodied hands and finally looked at you with a mixture of panic and dread. He didn't know what to do.

"Laura. Laura, sweetheart, untie me." She snapped out from her stupor and quickly tore through the cords, freeing you at last. You massaged your wrists, hoping to return your bloodflow back to normal. As much as you'd have loved to rest there was no time to lose.

You understood Logan's fear. It was already painful enough for him to have Laura watching him when he was like that, he didn't want the other one to go through the same trauma.

You quickly rushed towads him and he flinched back, still in shock. "It is okay, Logan. We're safe. You saved us. I'm going to take the girls to her room okay? He barely nodded, his eyes unfocused. You would deal with him later, now the kids were a top priority.

You would heal together, later.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

He had scrubbed the floors clean until he thought he was going to pass out from the chemicals. He had hidden the bodies or whatever remained of them in a place where he knew nobody would ever look for them. Not that they'd be missed, he supposed.

It scared him how good he was at this. He should have gotten used to it by now, after all, he was the best at what he did, and what he did wasn't very nice.

It had been to good to be true. A sweet dream before waking up and facing reality. He had gotten sloppy and his family had paid the price. He didn't even know what those had wanted, nor did he care. One single look through the window and all sense of rationality had left his brain leaving only the animal that deep down he knew he was.

What would you think of him now? Did you regret marrying him? Knowing what he did was one thing, but actually witnessing it was another. What had transpired tonight would surely define your relationship for the rest of your lives

And Laura? He had worked so hard to erase the violence and trauma of her earlier years, to give her a normal childhood with a family. And he had just pulled her back.

He buried his face in his hands, grabbing chunks of his hair. He was a monster, an animal, a mindless-

He jumped and turned around with a snarl on his face and his claws ready when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Logan's tense muscles visibly relaxed when he saw it was just you, but he was still restless.

"Logan, it's okay. It's just me" You knew exactly was was crossing his mind. After years of knowing each other, you knew that the legendary Wolverine, the man that would take his secrets to his grave, could be easily read like an open book if you got close enough.

"Honey, this is not your fault. You came and saved us. We're here because of you." You couldn't bear the thought of him punishing himself over something that wasn't even his fault to begin with.

"I should have been there with you. I should have arrived sooner, then you wouldn't have to go through-" His gruff voice sounded so broken, so terrified, there was nothing you wanted more than to cradle him in your arms. "I'm a monster." He quietly whispered.

"You are not a monster. You. Are. Not. Not a monster, neither an animal." You cupped his face in your hands, looking into his eyes sternly.

"I-I lost control. I saw you there tied up and I lost it. Laura saw it, and our little-"

"Shhhh... They are alright. They are okay in their bedroom. Laura knew you were protecting us, she has always known." You ran your fingers through his wild hair, marvelling at how his tufts stayed up no matter the situation.

You gently guide him back into the house. You don't look at the toppled chair, or the hole in the wall, or the mountain of cleaning products. Neither of you wanted to think about that. When you reached the bedroom, you undressed each other, taking your time, memorizing every string of clothing. Your discarded attires formed a dirty and bloody pile in the corner.

Tenderly, like treating a very vulnerable creature, you cleaned his face, chest and hands with a towel. You could feel the raw power stored in that massive torso and hands, you knew what he could do with those. But you also knew how careful and soft he was around you and the girls.

You put on your comfiest pijamas and got ready for bed, leaving the mess of that night for the next day. Before he climbed in with you, Logan stopped and takes a step back.

"What's wrong?" You asked.

"Wait here." He hurriedly exited your bedroom, leaving you alone, baffled at his behavior. The last thing you wanted was to be left alone after that night.

Your initial confusion gave way to tenderness when you saw him return holding a daugther on each of his thick arms. Laura blinked groggily at you, annoyed at having been woken up from her slumber. You quickly craddled her in your arms, kissing her forehead.

Holding your youngest baby girl to his chest he got in bed, his free arm pulling you and Laura closer, trapping you in an embrace. He kissed your head, his soft breaths along with those of your daughters were enough to lull you to sleep.

You were safe.

Nobody was going to get you.

He would make sure of that.

[mjbarrosart]

My Dragon Prince Boards season 6, episode 608

Hello, everyone!

Finally I have some time to write this! You can not imagine how demanding is to work making television shows, everything is for yesterday, haha!

Complains about work aside, it is time to talk about my last episode of season 6, episode 8. This one was... special.

I can say without a doubt that this was one of the most emotional episodes I have ever worked on. I cried every time I watched the animatic, and I cried again watching the final episode a few days ago.

I think is a lot of things together: a lot of important things happens, characters die, Katolis is destroyed, one of the quasars is fake! Aaravos!!! ... but also because I witnessed my team bring together their A game, telling this story in such a beautiful way.

I learned a lot from this episode, specially from my Unit Director, Mike Jones, who was in charge of boarding the "Hearts of Cinder" spell sequence; what a masterclass of emotion, storytelling and cinematography! I love Jason Simpson's performance during the show, but in particular in that sequence, and I think the boards took everything to a new level.

Now, let's go back to my sequences.

My first one was Soren going down to Viren to ask him to perform the spell. It was good to have this last interaction between both of them after all the work I did with the characters in 605.

There is a lot of subtle staging in this one. The way the light is hitting over their heads, how present in the screen the staff is; Viren's hesitance is something that I remember was important for me to portrait properly.

One of the things we talked a lot during this sequence was in how to use the light as narrative element. I was not interested in the classical reading of going into the light as "good" and shadows as "bad".

But light as hope, options, forgiveness, etc.

Viren walks away from the light when he gets offered the staff not because he is going "bad" but because he doesn't feel capable to do what he is being asked to do.

Soren is coming directly to him, removing his chains, giving him back his staff, asking him for help. But Viren hesitates.

And I think that that was a genius think for the script to call. Viren is not a man looking for the first chance to "redeem" himself. I am not even sure that he believes that he deserves that possibility.

But they are running out of time. The situation is dire, and as the light get blocked by the falling debris, the options are becoming clearer. Hope is dim, but there is something to do: Hearts of Cinder.

Viren, still full of doubts, explains to Soren why the spell is so hard to perform: the price is a human heart. A price that the Viren of the past would have pay with not second thought, but not the current one, no the one who understands the weight of dark magic.

But Soren has no doubts: "Take mine" I still have chills listening to the delivery of that line. And I think here is the moment Viren decided to sacrifice himself. While he is being consumed by doubt and fear, his son will is clear, Soren will do the right thing, even if that cost him his life.

And that is what Viren never had before. The willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good. He looked at his reflection in Soren's golden heart and saw and answer, saw love, hope.

I just think is beautiful that Soren's conviction gave him the chance to do the right thing for once. Soren taught him the ultimate lesson.

I love this two so much.

My next sequence is a simple one, Terry and Claudia arriving to Katolis. I liked to draw Claudia's new hair. I wish I had more sequences with her in this season.

After this is Moon nexus time!

After all the drama with Viren and Soren the massage sequences felt a little silly, hahaha. but was fun to make.

I added the little detail of Rayla having issues landing, while Callum is just so good at it, haha. Fun to have their roles reversed for one, and Rayla being the clumsy one.

I like the moment when Lujanne ask them if they are a couple again and they exchange this nice look. I know that Rayllum is a huge thing in the fandom, and while they are not my type of ship (I am into the sapphics, you know) I think that they are pretty cute together, and Is always fun to make moments between them.

I just wanted to share with you this silly face, lol. Sometimes you draw things in boards that don't translate that well into the final show, but It is fun anyway, you want to inspire the animators to push the performance as much as they can.

Back to serious business. I love the shift when our heroes realized that there is only 2 quasars and 3 coins. Callums turn into Raylla knowing that this will destroy her. I really enjoy how the use of the lens to blur Lujanne in the Background creates this efect of hyperfocus on Callum and Rayla.

She is facing a terrible decision, who to save. So we move the camera to focus only on them. Is an intimate moment.

I like this framing, Rayla is in pain, crying, Callum is listening, but by the framing we can se that he is holding her. Callum is there for her, always.

And that is how I finished my last sequences of season 6, with Rayla crying.

Working on this season was one of the honors of my life. And I can wait to share with you how was making season 7, because was... A LOT, for sure! hahahaha.

Hope you like this! And feel free to ask if you have questions about the storyboard process!

And thanks for all the notes, comments and support! It is truly appreciated!

A little bonus:

Look a the cool crew jacket that Bardel gave us when we wrapped seasons 4 to 7! (Finally I can show it without making it an spoiler of the name of season 7!!)

[ironunderstands]

I’m having some Aventio thoughts.. :3

Possessive Aventurine urghhh Aventurine who won’t let Ratio out of his sight for more than 10 minutes when they are out together out of fear, Aventurine who is terrified he will lose someone else he loves and will hold Ratio’s hand at any opportunity he gets, Aventurine who mildly and vaguely threatens anyone who so much as looks at Ratio badly…. AAAAAAAAA

Like usually I don’t enjoy the “you’re mine” kinda trope/mindset, but Aventurine has lost practically everything and everyone close to him so I can see him being extremely, well, possessive, of Ratio. However he would still obviously respect the others boundaries (especially due to his trauma), it’s just I can see him keeping Ratio as close as he possibly can.

I think that’s why I like writing fics where Aventurine is rescuing/saving/protecting/etc Ratio because he needs the ability to care for someone like that just as much as Ratio needs the ability to just let go and be vulnerable

Like Ratio already spends all his time trying to help others so having someone else do it for him is a welcome change, and Aventurine constantly has all eyes on him, so not having to be the center of attention for once is freeing..

..which is also why I probably prefer dom aven/sub ratio when it comes to nsfw/suggestive content of them. It’s more interesting than the alternatives to me because it’s a dynamic that would benefit both of them and help work out their issues in canon. Not saying it’s some magic fix it or something but yeah I think Ratio needs to give up his control sometimes and Aventurine needs to gain some. I feel like people downplay how sex can be used to explore character dynamics and I know this is kinda off course for what I usually write/talk about but I just haven’t seen anyone discuss it so I thought it was worth mentioning.

Moving onwards, I really love writing Ratio when he’s not in a normal state of mind. Drunk, injured, sleepy, a fucking owl (IM WORKING ON THE FIC THANK YOU @aurae-rori FOR HELPING ME BETA ITS AT 6.3/~10k WORDS IM GONNA TRY AND FINISH IT SOON I PROMISE), etc.

Whatever one of these you decide to inflict upon Ratio allows for some really interesting characterization to be enabled, because well, the man’s a tsundere, and it’s kinda hard for him to keep that up when he doesn’t have the capacity to. Honestly I view his tsundere-ness as being half voluntary/a choice and half just the way he is because he’s not very good at expressing his emotions or dealing with other people’s emotions.

However if I were to say, make him drunk, a good portion of that barrier breaks and Ratio’s true self gets exposed, and he nor Aventurine nor anyone really know how to deal with that. It’s so much fun to just put a character out of their element and see what they do next, and I think messing with Ratio’s mental state is the epitome of that, because now he has to confront the fact that he IS hiding parts of himself, and that’s scary (in a good way).

I also think Aventurine dealing with the fact that someone just genuinely lives him but is too afraid to really show it would be compelling. Would he blame himself? Would he dig into it and accidentally cross Ratio’s boundaries, then feel horrible about it? Would he doubt that it’s really real until it becomes transparently clear that Ratio does love him? Oh the possibilities..

Would he see Ratio being kind to someone in a similar way that Ratio is to him and get jealous? Would he worry that maybe he isn’t special to him and is just selfishly imagining everything?

They make me insane.

[achilles-rage]

SFW Alphabet

word count: 3.1k

A/N: i'm so sorry his took a while to write, i got really into bridgeton and binged the whole thing so my mind was on that. also, i felt like lady whistledown while finishing this LOL. anyway, enjoy<3

warnings: none, no use of y/n, fem!reader, plus size!reader, race inclusive!reader

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

He likes some PDA, but will tone it down most of the time, opting to have his arm around you or steal quick kisses when attention isn't on you. At home, however, he is ON YOU, as touch is the easiest way for him to show affection. He wants to have you as close to him as possible, with his hands all over you. I think words of affirmation are also important for him to receive, so he loves hearing you tell him how much you love and appreciate him.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

He can become friends with anyone at any time. He is a yapper. And with all his random facts in the back of his brain I think he can find common ground with just about anyone. If on the odd chance he doesn't, he's more than happy to listen and learn. As a friend, there is nothing he wouldn't do to keep you safe and happy. He would make sure to check in all the time and would be happy to do favours, anytime you need. I think in a best friend he needs someone to have serious conversations with, but also have fun with. He loves to have a friend he can truly open up to about his childhood or anything he's feeling, and of course will listen to you in return.

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

CUDDLER ALERT!!! BIG MAN BABY ALERT!!!!! He loves physical touch, so cuddling is one of his favourite ways of showing affection. He would cuddle with you in any place and any position but there's something about being little spoon that hits so hard, especially after a long day at work. He also loves laying on his back with your head on his chest and vice versa so he can lay on your tits<3

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

This man owns a fucking APRON!! He is in his element in a domestic little scenario. He wants nothing more than to start a loving family and create a safe place with his partner. He definitely likes cooking more than cleaning, but he's fair, and will divide cooking and household chores pretty evenly.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

He's been to therapy, and we've all seen how his other relationships have ended. He now knows the importance of communication, so I think there would be a lead up to a break up. He wants nothing more than to work it out with you, trying to talk out the issues, but if there was no plausible solution, he would sit you down and have an honest, but respectful conversation about it.

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

He wants to be married so bad!!! He can't wait to find the right person to settle down with. He loves seeing all the happy couples he works with, and he can't wait to add someone to the 118 fam. I think the timeline could go two ways, he's pretty impulsive, so I could definitely see him proposing within a year of dating (if everything is going exceptionally smoothly). The other way it could go is him waiting like, a weirdly long time. He's a bit nervous about you saying no, so he holds off (even though he imagines you with a ring on your finger very often), but one day just kinda blurts it out. Maybe you're laying in bed, talking and giggling and he's just filled with an uncontrollable joy, and he just has to speak his mind. After he says it he kinda freezes, looking at you nervously before you of course say yes and he's basically jumping for joy, hugging you and kissing all over your face and pulling the ring out of his closet that he bought but was too nervous to present to you in the traditional way lol.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

He's pretty gentle overall, both physically and emotionally. He's seen how he who shall not be named has affected Maddie and would never do anything to make someone afraid of him in that way (either a partner or a friend). He loves giving you soft touches, loving how you shiver as his fingers trail down your arms, your chest, your soft stomach, your plush thighs. He's also a man who has been to therapy, so he might be a little impulsive, but he has a lot of emotional intelligence, and always tries to ground himself and be as gentle as possible in any situation when it comes to people he cares about.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

King of hugs, truly. He LOVES them. It's a nice way for him to show how much he cares, and how much he loves you, so expect them often. If you're not one for physical touch, he understands, but sometimes he just can't help himself. Sometimes he needs a good hug to calm him down, or during the odd time that he has no words, he tries to put all his emotions into a hug. He's a bear hugger, he loves feeling your arms around him, your chest and soft belly pressing against him. He wraps his arms around your shoulders, pulling you in as close as you can possibly get, resting his cheek on the top of your head. When he's really happy, his arms are going around your waist, lifting you up off the ground as you protest, fighting out a "put me down" through giggles, but still hugging him back. He will hear none of your protests, of course. Have you seen his arms? He works out. "Of course I can lift you, pretty girl"

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

I think he waits a while to say it. He's been in his fair share of relationships and is a little weary of people leaving, so I think saying I love you could be something that he's a little hesitant to say early. Once he does, however, it's coming out of his mouth about 30 more times before the day ends. Before he says it, there's plenty of other ways he says it without actually saying the words. "Text me when you get home." "Did you eat today?" "Here, let me help you with that." That sort of thing. To him, words of affirmation are important, he likes to hear how things are going, so him saying I love you is just his way of ensuring that he's in it all the way.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

Ok, I know what you're going to say, "but what about 7x04???" I know, but I think those were slightly different circumstances. I think before he gets into a relationship, and he knows that you only want him, he can get very jealous. If he sees someone getting a little too close to you, it takes everything in him not to physically get in between you and the person you're talking to (even though he sometimes will discreetly, brushing it off as him wanting to tell you something or show you something). He's scared that you'll choose someone else instead and leave him. He'll hang out with you more, asking more and more about this new person in your life, making sure that they don't have a better chance to get with you than he does.

If you are dating, however, I think he really tones it down on the jealousy. Instead of worrying about other people, he shows you how much he cares about you. If he really feels jealous, I think he may bring it up to you, as he's learned the importance of communication, and will try to come up with a fair way to solve this problem. He doesn't expect you to not talk to this person anymore, he more just needs to hear that you want him, not the other person, and that you are happy in your relationship.

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

I could actually write 100,000 words about this I think, but I'll keep it short(ish). This man THRIVES on kisses, if you think he loves hugging, good lord you're in for it. He puts so much emotion into his kisses, if it's not just a peck, and you're not expecting it, it'll leave your head spinning. He'll give you quick pecks all the time, but sometimes he can't help but wrap his arms around you and give you a long passionate kiss. Once he pulls away he'll kiss your face all over, loving how you laugh softly. He also loves giving you kisses on the top of your head when he hugs you, just letting you know that he's there and he loves you. His favourite, however, are neck and jaw kisses, both giving and receiving. He loves how you tilt your head back, sighing softly as he kisses you, melting against his touch. He also loves feeling your lips on him, squeezing your waist tighter as you kiss him, feeling so loved and cared for in that moment. Be warned though, if you kiss that man's jaw, he has no choice but to jump on you.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

Dear god he loves kids so much, we've all seen how he is with Jee, the baby from episode one, and that little girl stuck in the claw machine. He's full of energy anyway, so he loves running around with them, colouring with them, watching their silly little shows and singing with them. I also believe this man is a girl dad, and you WILL catch him wearing a tutu and a little princess crown on his head, looking comically large with a little teacup in his hand (with freshly painted bright pink nails, his pinky out, obviously) and sitting uncomfortably at his daughters teeny little table.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

If neither of you work, you take the opportunity to spend some extra time in bed, slowly waking up together as Buck has practically wrapped himself around you. When you finally drag yourselves out of bed, you go downstairs to make some coffee. If you're feeling fancy you'll make some waffles with strawberries and blueberries, but most of the time it's eggs or frozen waffles lol. You spend the morning quietly, just enjoying each other's company before getting on with your day, using it as a time of relaxing and being close to each other.

On days where one or both of you works, you'll still stay in bed for a few minutes, happily pressed against each other before you finally have to get ready for the day. You'll mostly spend your time separately as you get ready, whoever has more time that morning will brew the coffee and bring up that and something quick for breakfast to the other, with a soft kiss as a thank you. While you spend your mornings doing your own things to get ready, they're still full of touching and kissing as either of you pass each other, still wanting to spend some time together before you leave for the day.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Buck loves cooking, so on nights where you both are home he'll cook a nice meal for you, sometimes letting you help. After dinner you'll both get into your comfy clothes, ready to spend the night winding down. We all know Buck loves learning new things, and has an unending amount of fun facts up his sleeve, so he loves to curl up on the couch with you and watch shows about his current hyper fixation.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

I think he'll reveal things slowly to you. He's not necessarily hiding it, he just brings it up as it comes up naturally in conversation. I think he also tends to reveal the more traumatic things about himself randomly, leaving you looking at him with your jaw dropped, unsure of what to say. He looks at you sheepishly, shrugging softly as you regain your composure, pulling him in for a hug/kiss before you let him explain, if he wishes to.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

I think with you he has a lot of patience, but it also depends on what exactly it's about. If it's about your wellbeing he would definitely get upset quickly if you were brushing off your wellbeing in favour of work/other people/etc, but I think a lot of the time he tries not to get too worked up. Communication is very important to him, so rather than getting upset over small things, he chooses to have an in depth conversation about anything you may disagree about.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

He remembers a lot about you. It's like memorizing the silly topics he researches. He wants to know everything there is to know about you. He remembers a lot of little things, like your favourite flowers, or how you hate when people chew with their mouth open. He also knows you though, so a lot of the time, if he can't really remember something, he knows you well enough to take a guess and be mostly right. Your favourite snack slips his mind when he's getting groceries? He knows if you usually reach for sweet or salty, and he knows generally what you like, so if he had to guess, it would be one of your favourite snacks, at least.

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

His favourite memory is the first time you spent the night at his place. When you woke up in his arms you looked so happy, eyes still full of sleep and hair a bit of a mess, but he thought you looked so pretty. You stayed in bed for a while, content in just being close to each other, exchanging soft kisses and giggles, before you got up. He wanted to show off his cooking skills, so he made your favourite breakfast, and you looked so happy at his kitchen table, like you belonged. He also noticed how you were a little bit surprised by his actions, not used to this treatment from other men from your past, and he vowed that he was gonna treat you so well that you would forget all about the way you've been treated by your exes.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

He is extremely protective of everyone in his life. If he had to choose to put himself into a dangerous situation versus you, he would choose himself in a heartbeat. I think in situations that are less life or death, he'd still be very protective, not wanting anything to happen to you. I don't think he'd be protective in an overbearing way, but he would want to make sure that you weren't in any kind of danger that he could've prevented.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

He puts in SO MUCH EFFORT!!! I don't think he puts in a ton of effort for every single date, sometimes just opting for a nice night in or something more lowkey, but if he wants to, he will do anything to make you feel special. I think he puts in a lot of effort into most aspects of a relationship: gift giving, communication, etc.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

Sometimes, when he's trying to get one of Bobby's recipes right, and he's feeling a little frustrated about it, he'll flop down on the couch instead of cleaning up the kitchen. You walk into the house, eyes falling on the dishes and food all over the counters, looking over at Buck, who smiles innocently. He comes over to you, wrapping his arms around you as he kisses you softly, which works in trying to get your mind off of it. He knows the disastrous kitchen drives you crazy, and he will get to it eventually, but sometimes he doesn't wanna get to it right away.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

He puts in a fair amount of effort. He clearly works out, and enjoys being in as good a shape as he can be, but he also takes the time to look put together when he's in public. At home he cares less about looking perfect, but he still cares.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

This man YEARNS for a partner that he can experience life with. I think when he meets the right person he will definitely feel like a weight is lifted off his shoulders, realizing how good sharing a life with you is. While he does think it's important for you two to have lives outside of the relationship (your own friends and hobbies), he loves to have someone to come home to at the end of the day and know that he has someone rooting for him and vice versa. While he doesn’t necessarily feel incomplete without a relationship, he definitely thinks you bring out a side of him that he likes.

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

HEAR ME OUT!

This man LOVES to be pampered!!! If you ever wanna have a little spa night with him, he is agreeing so fast. He'll let you wash his hair while you take a shower, he'll sit there while you put a face mask on him, and then he'll lay there while you massage his back, and he'll of course return the favour. He eats up all the attention you give him, and he loves how refreshed he feels after your little spa night. He'll feel so relaxed and would have the best sleep of his life with you wrapped in his arms after.

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

I feel like he hates it when people are late. The odd time, fine. He can’t blame you if you lose track of time or run into traffic. But if someone is consistently late, he can’t help but get that feeling that it’s because they don’t wanna be there, or that they don’t care about him. In his words, he is always the one that watches others leave, and being late makes him feel a little bit like someone leaving him.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?)

We all know this man SNORES, which you were surprised about at first. How can this peaceful looking little guy be so goddamn loud?? It takes a while to get used to, but after a while, it becomes a little comforting. On nights that he's not sleeping beside you, it feels a little too quiet. He's also a big cuddle bug, he loves feeling you pressed up against him when he goes to sleep, knowing you're so close to him. If he woke up in the middle of the night and had somehow gotten out of his grip he'd be moving over beside you, draping an arm over your soft tummy before passing back out again.

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[dragonlands]

I wondered why Our flag means death felt so weirdly familiar from the start, and now I think I realized it. It reminds me of - and I mean this in the best possible way - the 2010s m/m fanfics that I used to read. We as a society have started using the term "like fanfiction" for bad writing and sexual y/n reminescent romances, but here I mean it differently. I mean those fanfics where we took a heteronormative or queerbaity, often dark and gritty, series, and just made it so over the top queer. The two male leads? Obviously in love. The beloved side characters? Queer, of course. The random side characters? Let's make them queer too for fun. Random polyamory happening, as a completely normal thing. Dropping fandom inside jokes in one sentence, and having some gut wrenching angst in the next.

One of the things I loved most about fanfiction was that it's genre bending. It's a bit of adventure, a bit of angst, a bit of comedy, a bit of erotica. It just brings me so much joy seeing someone take all those elements and making an absolutely brilliant show with them. This is what fanfic was always about to me, and seeing it seep into mainstream makes my little queer heart happy.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Do you have any advice for writing with adhd? I can craft these elaborate storyline in my head, but the minute I try to write any of them down I get bored. (Or is that just regular writer block?) It's really discouraging, because I feel like my mind is moving faster then my head, and any time I try to bring any of my ideas to life it just disipates.

Writing with ADHD: 5 Game Changers for Me

Here are some things that have been game changers for me as a writer with ADHD: [Edit: everyone's ADHD is different. This is just what works for me. It may not work for you...]

Planning: It's different for everyone with ADHD, but for me it's essential to spend time planning my story before I start writing. I like to flesh out as much as possible concerning plot, timeline, setting, world, characters and arcs, subplots, and themes.

Summary, Outline, and Scene List: Three items that are critical for me to have in hand before I sit down to write are a beginning to end summary of the story detailing all plot events as far as I know, an outline loosely based on the story structure template/s that feel right for the story (for example, I may use elements of Save the Cat! and some elements of of the Six-Stage Plot Structure), which helps me navigate my plot and hit the relevant plot points. And finally, I need a detailed scene list/timeline combo which lists chapter, scene, date/time, POV character, location, and a one to two sentence summary of what happens in the scene, including the character's goal in the scene, the scene's conflict, and the scene's resolution or how it carries into a later scene.

Gamifying: When I'm struggling with a particular time period or project, it can help me to gamify things. You can do this using a game board strategy, the Yahtzee Method, making a list of bench marks that serve as "levels," race against yourself by trying to bet the previous day's goal, etc. The key to gamifying is to set reasonable benchmarks and give yourself periodic rewards. Rewards can be anything from buying yourself a boba, watching a favorite TV show episode, an hour of playing your favorite game, or going to a movie. Some people like to go to the dollar store and buy a lot of small fun things and use those as rewards. Whatever works for you! Sometimes, turning it into a game with tangible progress and rewards can keep you motivated.

Setting Up a Routine: Although I have my general daily routine, I am without a doubt more productive when I can stick to a more specific routine that includes writing time. For me that works out to writing early in the day before other distractions start ramping up. When I put on my music, sit down with some coffee and a snack, and pull up my manuscript, my brain knows it's time to get to work. That doesn't always mean the work happens, but it's much more likely I'll get something done.

Minimizing Distractions: Anything that can be a distraction when I write is problematic. For that reason, I only listen to music without words and advertising. I turn off my phone or leave it in the other room. If possible, I try to use placeholders for things I need to look up. If I absolutely have to look something up and I get distracted by headlines, interesting articles or videos, or other things, I bookmark them in a special folder and immediately close the window. That way, I know I can go back to them later (I almost never do...) And, for me, as much as I love Scrivener and the ability to organize by chapter, have quick access to character profiles and photos, toggle between scene cards and my story... it's just too distracting for me. I'll sit down to write a chapter, then decide I need to re-do my scene cards, or cast characters, or do mood boards for every location in my story.

For that reason, writing in Word works best [for me] It's simple and there's nothing to distract me. Any story references I might need while writing, such as character profiles and photos, mood boards and aesthetics, setting inspiration photos, etc. are all organized in a special folder, categorized into sub-folders, so I can go straight to the required reference.

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[toskarin]

As someone knowledgeable about MMOs, and given the topic of SAO just came up. If you were to write a .Hack/SAO/Log Horizon style story, what kind of things would you focus on? I personally feel like there are a lot of different elements of MMO culture anyone writing about them could really delve into. So I'm curious what Tumblr user Toskarin would choose.

condensed

back when I played Perfect World, it had some empty spaces. this wasn't uncommon for mmos, and if you can name one older than 15 or so years, you can bet there were vast empty spaces on the world map that existed to pad it

but they were important! sure, they added nothing of obvious value and could cynically be read as existing just to pad travel time, but they also made the worlds feel bigger than you what you were doing in them. and more mysterious.

some friends in my guild and I got a message one day that one member was going to roll a new character and wanted help levelling. a complication: their starting zone was across the sea.

a few friends and I volunteered to swim across the sea to their zone. there were definitely easier ways to go about it, but setting out to do something just to see if it was possible seemed fun

now, they may have changed this since then, but the sea in Perfect World felt strange in a way I haven't seen any game really emulate since. the sky was a dull, and as was the fashion, everything was a bit muted. the sea itself was opaque, and when you swam under it, there was a significant amount of grey-blue terrain that seemed to stretch on forever into the fog

and of course, there was fuck all in it. nothing alive. no monsters until you got close to a shore. just vast empty sea that you swam through, only your friends' characters to break up the odd stillness of it. you probably turned the music off at this point, too, so there was only ambient sound and splashing

this is because you were supposed to fly over it, if you crossed it at all. and because there wasn't really a good centralised source of knowledge on these things, it wasn't really clear if it was entirely empty

the trip there was fine, if a bit boring and lonely. during the trip back, I accidentally clicked on something in the middle of the ocean

now, there weren't supposed to be things there. I had my friends, but I clicked on a monster, and when I swam down to look at it, I saw that it was actually an enormous sea monster

so I pinged one of the guildmates swimming with me and they thought I was lying, so I showed them, and then we repeated this several times until everyone in the group had seen this weird thing that felt like it came from a schoolyard rumour

Ancient Sea Dragon. 99,999,999 health points and none of us could find anything on it posted online. it was pretty common for players to run into it and be shocked, but we didn't know that

so we naturally let the rest of the guild know, got a hunting party together, and spent the better part of a day just whittling its health down

with the benefit of hindsight and documentation of this thing existing now, I can spoil this and tell you it didn't drop anything, but this long down the line, I still think about how deeply surreal it felt to stumble on an enormous sea monster in the middle of what my brain had come to understand as a liminal space. the sea was supposed to be mostly empty, and here was this thing

which is a very long way to introduce what I think is lacking here: we need more of those enormous empty spaces that leave characters with nothing to do but talk and feel completely isolated. sometimes you get to a sprawling castle city and it's completely empty because the players moved on. sometimes the devs threw an enormous monster in the middle of nowhere just to fuck with you, and that was kind of cool even if it sucked

[canmom]

How do you live?

I (finally!) saw Miyazaki's new film 君たちはどう生きるか (How Do You Live?/The Boy and the Heron)! It's been out in the States for a while, and in Japan considerably longer, but it took a while to make its way over here.

I remember at the time it came out, people were having fun riffing on the incredibly cryptic marketing campaign, which consisted only of this rather abstract poster...

In the spirit of this, I resolutely avoided watching any trailers or knowing anything at all about the plot of the film. I picked up a thing or two here and there - I knew to expect some amazing Shinya Ohira animation for example, and you couldn't really avoid seeing the bird with teeth! - but overall, I had no idea.

There's plenty of great writing about this film in English already, such as kvin's fantastic sakugablog piece which discusses the physicality of Ghibli's animation, its weight and springiness, as a throughline. The stuff that kvin talks about really stood out to me as I watched this film. You can likewise read detailed interviews with Toshiyuki Inoue (fantastic interview for sakubutas) and Akihiko Yamashita on fufuro.

First up, the credits of this film are pretty much a who's who of the greatest jp animators of the last 30 years, and they've had some 7 years to cook it, so naturally this film looks fucking amazing. This is absolutely the kind of film that only Miyazaki could direct - its design language feels so familiar and yet it's iterating in all kinds of visually imaginative directions that show that yeah, the old bastard's still got it.

And like, god, man. This film's animation is really something special. Its real-world scenes in particular are full of shots that require an unbelievably strong sense of space, of both subtle and broad acting, the classic Ghibli attention to detail on mechanical objects and everyday tasks. It's full of bouncing and squishing and squeezing and oozing things. It loves to draw crowds and swarms of people and animals. It's the kind of film where any given shot would be the absolute star-of-the-show sakuga moment in just about any other anime film. If you wanted a complete statement of the Ghibli school of animation, it would be hard to do better.

And yet, for all that Miyazaki's known for his tight control over animation and heavy corrections to animators, in this film he had to step back from that kind of role and hand over the sousakkan reins to Takeshi Honda, who steps up admirably - as kvin writes above, bringing in more realist elements to the bouncy Miyazaki style to create a really effective unity that grounds all the big fantastical elements of the film and fills the first act with tension.

Alongside all that excellent key animation, the film's colour and photography departments evidently understand that well-chosen colours and good highlight shapes beat all the digital gradients and overlays you can imagine - the drawings get plenty of form from the strength of the animation, and the flat shading really pops. The backgrounds are as delicious as ever, skyscapes and vegetation and opulent interiors with the just-slightly desaturated and harmonious colours that just kind of remind you that oh yeah, it is still possible to do it this way.

Basically it's a Ghibli film lol. You know how it is.

But what of the story...? What's all this technical magic in service of?

The film's story has something of the feel of a serial story, perhaps reflecting Miyazaki's (in)famous process of working out the film gradually as he draws the storyboards. Certain ideas, like the parakeet empire, arrive in the film rather suddenly and then become fairly central to the plot. There's a clear emotional throughline, but this is not a film that is in a hurry to explain itself more than it absolutely has to. It wants to keep its magical elements numinous and mysterious. I would say, though, it's generally more satisfying in this approach than some of Miyazaki's other later films like Howl's Moving Castle, and resolves a lot more clearly.

So what is it like, About? Well, Miyazaki has been pretty open about channeling a lot of his personal relationships into the film, and a lot of it seems to reflect more or less obliquely on him. It's what they call a 'personal film'. The protagonist's position as the son of an aeroplane factory owner during WWII is straight-up from life. What about the old sorcerer, haphazardly stacking blocks to keep a world alive, and looking for someone to succeed him? The reading's kinda obvious, even if Miya himself says this guy is based on his memory of Takahata. Well, he can be both...

To say more I'm gonna have to delve into the spoiler zone. See you below the cut.

OK so! Let's try and get some thoughts in order.

first, a plot summary type of thing

Our first act introduces us to Mahito at roughly the moment his mother Hisako dies in a hospital fire. This is midway through the war, which is present mostly in the background - now and then we see soldiers marching around, and of course Mahito's dad runs a factory producing warplane parts, not entirely unlike Miyazaki's own father although seemingly a bit higher up the ladder.

We jump forward a little and Mahito's father remarries - to his deceased wife's sister, no less, and she's already pregnant. This is Natsuko, who does her best to play the role of mother, but Mahito still has big traumas and he is understandably not entirely on board with the idea of welcoming a mum 2 who looks almost exactly like mum 1. He moves with Natsuko into a huge old house complex, a mix of older Japanese architecture with a more recent Western wing where the family currently sleeps - and staffed by a small army of colourful old ladies who are eager for any canned meat or cigarettes they can get their hands on.

Also there's this freaky heron that keeps bothering Mahito. It seems to have something to do with a mysterious tower which turns out to have been built by his great-uncle. Mahito visits the tower, but can't make his way inside. Natsuko tells him not to go into the tower.

Mahito goes to school, but naturally they don't much take to the new rich kid on the block, and so after being attacked by his classmates on his way home he injures himself with a rock. (His dumbass dad is like, who did this to you son, I'll fuck 'em up.) For the rest of the movie, he has half his head shaved to accomodate a bandage, which is the sort of attention to detail this movie loves.

The heron has started growing teeth and talking to Mahito, telling him to come to the tower. Mahito is convinced it's a trap, and after a maybe-dream sequence in which Natsuko shoots an arrow to drive off the heron, he steals cigarettes from Natsuko in order to get one of the servants to sharpen his knife, and then constructs a bow and arrow out of bamboo - using a couple of the heron's feathers. Constructing the bow and arrow is shown in immense, loving detail.

In the process, he witnesses Natsuko walk into the forest, and also stumbles on a book: How Do You Live? by Genzaburō Yoshino, which contains a handwritten message from his mother. He looks at this book briefly... and this is about the extent of the connection of the film to the book, beyond thematic parallels.

The maids notice that Natsuko is missing. Mahito tells one of the maids, Kiriko, that he saw her go into the forest, and they follow, finding an old road that gives another approach to the tower. They're greated by the heron man, who is increasingly emerging from the heron's beak to reveal a big warty nose. He's some kind of like... heron selkie or something, a gnome in a heron skin. There's some wonderfully grotesque animation around this guy.

Heron dude taunts Mahito with an illusion of his mother Hisako. Mahito threatens him with the bow - the heron guy is like, do your worst, not realising it's a maaagic arrow. The arrow chases him around the room and pierces his beak, fucking up his magic. At this point, the tower master shows up and orders the heron to guide Mahito. Heron guy sends everyone through the floor into a fantastical world...

Mahito arrives in front of a huge, sinister tomb. He approaches the gate, and a swarm of pelicans walk up behind, crawling all over him and pressing him through the gate. This causes a storm to start brewing, since opening the gate seems to piss off the stones or something...

A fisher woman resembling a much younger Kiriko runs up and chases the pelicans away. She takes Mahito under her wing, explaining that this world is inhabited mostly by dead people, but there are also these little round guys called the wareware, who gain the ability to fly when they eat a fish's guts.

Kiriko, uniquely in this world, has the ability to kill, so she catches fish to sell to the other inhabitants and feed to the wareware; she and Mahito butcher a huge fish. Mahito fairly quickly figures out that she is somehow the same Kiriko that entered with him. She has tiny charms representing the other maids, which serve an apotropaic function.

That night, staying on Kiriko's huge derelict ship of a home, they watch the wareware rise into the sky to be born as humans in Mahito's world. They're attacked by the pelicans, but a fire-wielding magic user called Hisa (hmmmmmmmmmm) drives the pelicans away. Mahito shouts at her not to harm the wareware, but Kiriko assures him that more of the wareware will survive thanks to Hisa's intervention.

Later, a singed and dying pelican explains the pelicans' predicament to Mahito in a scene that calls to mind the animals in Mononoke-hime. The pelicans are foreigners in this world, they don't have anything to eat, so they take it as their role to eat the wareware. The heron man arrives on the scene too, offering to help Mahito find Natsuko as Mahito - coming in to his own as a protagonist more - buries the pelican. Mahito distrusts him but eventually Kiriko persuades them to give working together a try.

Mahito and the heron set out. As they pass through a forest, the heron reveals that thanks to Mahito's arrow, he can't fly and do heron shit anymore - and by magic law, only Mahito can fix the hole. Mahito applies his new woodworking skills to fashion a bung for the hole. The heron tries to stage a top 10 anime betrayal, but then the bung needs more work, so Mahito fixes it, and from that point on, the heron joins the party and he and Mahito are fast friends.

(You might wonder why I just call him 'the heron' and not by a name. He never gets named! He's just the heron man.)

Mahito and the heron arrive at the house of a blacksmith who's supposed to help them find Natsuko, only to find it guarded by big buff parakeet men. The parakeets are splendidly goofy round guys - they remind me of the heedra in Nausicaa. The heron draws the parakeets away, and Mahito enters the house, only to find, uh oh! More parakeets. The parakeets prepare to eat Mahito, who is not carrying a child and therefore fair game unlike Natsuko, but Hisa shows up and burns them with fire magic. She looks just like a young version of Mahito's mum! Funny that. Hisa helps Mahito escape into her house through the fire, and then takes him to infiltrate the parakeets' empire.

In the human world, the maids explain the backstory of the tower to Mahito's dad. It's a weird meteorite that came from space, it turns out, and Mahito's great-uncle built the tower on top of it before eventually disappearing inside. Mahito's dad overprepares in an elaborate getup complete with katana, and goes to try to rescue everyone.

Hisa leads Mahito to a corridor full of doors which open into all the different worlds, including his own world. Mahito briefly glimpses his dad coming to try and rescue him - the two see each other briefly, but the parakeets catch wind of the whole thing and attack, and so Mahito and Hisa have to flee back into the magical world. We see that the parakeet guys turn into regular parakeets when they come into the human world. Mahito's dad becomes convinced he turned into a parakeet.

Mahito and Hisa make their way to the delivery room where Natsuko is resting, waiting to give birth. On their way, lightning starts emerging from the stone - Hisa explains that the stone is sentient and pissed with them. Mahito insists on approaching Natsuko despite this being a huge taboo. They have a heart to heart - Natsuko's mask breaks and she tells Mahito she hates him, while he finally starts calling her mother, as he's assaulted by paper charms that tear at him violently. They part, with Hisa burning the charms to free Mahito, but it's too much and they both pass out.

Mahito dreams of meeting the sorcerer, who stacks irregularly shaped wooden blocks, and explains that stacking the blocks is necessary to maintain the world, buying a few days at a time. The sorcerer reveals the huge flying rock that is the source of his power; he also shows Mahito some blocks, but Mahito somehow divines that these blocks are 'stone for building tombs' and stained with malice. The sorcerer approvingly says this is a good sign for Mahito's ability to succeed him.

While they were asleep, the parakeets have captured Hisa and Mahito. One of them is preparing to eat Mahito, but the heron arrives just in time to save him. They Metal Gear Solid their way through the kingdom while the Parakeet King - a big swaggering guy very like the colonel in Castle in the Sky - goes to press a claim on the wizard, using Hisa and Mahitos' taboo act of entering the delivery room as a bargaining chip. There's some very funny scenes where the parakeets cheer for their king.

Mahito pursues the parakeet king, but the king destroys the staircase behind him, and talks to the sorcerer. The sorcerer is inclined to wave away the transgression, because he wants to let Mahito succeed him, but the parakeet king seems to be bringing him around. I kind of forget how this part went, but the parakeet king goes away from the sorcerer for a bit while Hisa is freed from her prison thing.

Mahito climbs back up with the heron man's help, arriving in the sorcerer's little subplane. The parakeet king quietly follows him, after telling his aides to inform his subjects he was a good king. Mahito approaches the sorcerer, who reveals he has found a new set of blocks, unstained by malice, and again invites Mahito to succeed him. Mahito says that his self-injury is proof of his malice, making him unfit for the job.

At this point, the parakeet king intervenes. Angry at all this sorcerous malarky, he desperately attempts to stack the stones himself, but when they don't stack, he flies into a rage and slices them with his sword. This naturally causes the world to start collapsing, and everyone runs to the doors to escape into the human world.

Mahito has by this point figured out that Hisa is his mum, and he asks if she really wants to go back to their world, knowing that she will very definitely die in a fire not much later. But she is naturally on board with this. Young!Kiriko goes with her, suggesting that she and Hisako entered the magical world at the same time. Meanwhile, Mahito returns to his own time, with Natsuko and the heron. All the various parakeets and pelicans come out through this door too. Old!Kiriko is restored from her apatropaic charm.

As everyone celebrates their safe return (and the appearance of a fuckton of birds), the heron tells Mahito that he ought to forget what happened in the magic world. We skip forward again, with Mahito - now with a baby sibling - setting off to Tokyo. Roll credits!

now let's comment on it

This is not a film that necessarily prioritises an internal logic playing out - new elements enter unexpectedly even quite late in the film. The sorcerer's motivation is murky until late on; the parakeets become major antagonists despite entering only halfway through the film.

There is a certain temptation, knowing how autobiographical this film is, to take it is a roman à clef. Mahito is of course a young Miyazaki; the old sorcerer's concern about finding a successor might be about Miyazaki wondering who should take over Ghibli or if it should just be allowed to die. Under this schema, the parakeets might be Ghibli's legion of fans, or the merchandising empire that prints their designs on every possible product. kvin's article develops this kind of reading, finding some angles I wouldn't have even considered, such as how the idea of weight communicated by the animation factors in to such an allegaroy. It's also something suggested in Miyazaki's own comments about the film, where the sorcerer is Takahata, the heron man is producer Toshio Suzuki...

It definitely helps to know a bit about Miyazaki's background when approaching this film. However, I think it would be reductive to go too far with this kind of reading, and take everything as an allegory for something in Miyazaki's life. The film still has to stand on its own feet!

'Coming of age' is the spin put on it by some outlets, like the BBC. And this is accurate to an extent. The arc of this film is similar to Spirited Away: Mahito starts out sullen and traumatised, but like Chihiro he transitions over the course of his journey in the magical world into the kind of determined Miyazaki protagonist we're used to. On this coming of age angle... well, also like with Chihiro, I don't find the Mahito of the first part of the film especially unsympathetic, his alienation is extremely natural given his situation. Mahito's dad kinda sucks! Living in wartime Japan also really kinda sucks, even if you're the son of a rich dude. But definitely over the course of the film Mahito has a change of heart towards Natsuko, and forms friendships that motivate him to try to protect them. His character arc definitely sees him become 'more prosocial'.

However, there's another angle that's pretty important - the idea of the weight of 'malice', the cursed existences of the pelicans and the like, and the fantasy of building a utopian world that is free of these things. This returns to a theme of Nausicaa, the manga in particular, where Nausicaa discovers that the world she knows - the toxic forest in particular - is actually an elaborate artificial system for cleansing the world of pollutants, that the clean world on the other side will be uninhabitable to her and her people, and that the architects of this system wait in stasis to replace them in this utopian future world. Nausicaa destroys them, commiting instead to an uncertain future.

In Mononoke-hime likewise, we encounter the lepers and former sex workers of Irontown clinging on to the 'cursed' world. Their extractivist project proves incredibly destructive, but the film still regards them sympathetically, and the resolution sees them perhaps finding a new way to live - and San, the feral girl, reconciling herself to the idea of humans.

Here, although the parakeet king forces the decision, Mahito has already declared that he doesn't believe he's fit to oversee a utopia, but instead that his place is in the awful, violent human world.

The film, and the book it's vaguely based on, are titled How do you live? In Japanese, that's a plural 'you' (君たち). There's a lot of ways you could read it, depending on who you take as 'you' - a child asking an adult how to live, or equally a future question of how will you live. This is a lot more explicit in the novel - which I have not read, but here is a summary courtesy of wiki:

Junichi Honda is a fifteen-year-old junior high school student, known by his nickname Koperu, after the astronomer Nicholas Copernicus. He is athletic and academically gifted, and popular at school. Koperu's father, a bank executive, passed away when he was young and he lives with his mother. His uncle (on his mother's side) lives nearby and visits frequently. Koperu and his uncle are very close. Koperu shares about his life and his uncle gives him support and advice. His uncle also documents and comments on these interactions in a diary, with the intent to eventually give the diary to Koperu. The diary writing, which is interspersed with the narrative, provides insight into the ethical and emotional trials that Koperu shared with his uncle. The diary entries, which cover themes such as "view of things", "structure of society", "relation", etc. are in the style of a note written to Koperu.[8]

Thinking like Copernicus that our Earth is a celestial body moving within the vastness of space, or thinking that our Earth is fixed at the center of the universe, are two ways of thinking that, in reality, are not only related to astronomy. Even when we think about things like the world around us or our own lives, the truth is that we are still revolving around them after all.

In the end, Koperu writes a decision on his future way of living as a reply to his uncle, and the novel ends with the narrator asking the question "how do you live?" to the reader.

The author of the novel was a socialist, who had been imprisoned by the nationalist government, and wrote the book intending to impart lessons on ethics. The version of his book published after the war was heavily edited to strip the book of political content. But it's also, perhaps paradoxically, a book that centres on very wealthy characters, aimed narrowly at educated boys, though it became a widely read classic.

Studio Ghibli's films, from both Miyazaki and Takahata, have a habit of being framed as imparting something to the younger generation - something the pair seem to have seen as a mission all the way back in the days of Panda Kopanda. For example, while Grave of the Fireflies is seen as the classic tragic war movie, for Takahata it was also aimed at criticising what he saw as the careless, consumerist generation of the 80s; the stubborn arrogance of the protagonist supposed to reflect on this. It's an attitude that also emerges in their comments about Chihiro. And, indeed, one of the first things we heard about How Do You Live? was that it was aimed towards Miyazaki's grandson - and more broadly towards that generation.

So what does this film have to say to the younger generations? Let's have a look at it from Mahito's POV.

For Mahito, the adults in his life are all pretty complicated. His father is enthusiastic and well-meaning but incredibly oblivious to what his son is going through (we might recall some of what Miyazaki wrote about his father in Starting Point, describing him as basically a grifter). Natsuko is masking pretty hard, trying to play the role of Good New Mum and connect to her newly acquired son, but there's an intrinsic distance. It is understandable that Mahito would want to reject them.

Mahito is... not entirely a passive character, he goes to some efforts to for example fashion the bow and arrow and repair the heron man's beak, but mostly he is pulled around by the plot into a strange world he doesn't understand. At first, his instinct is to retreat, even to the point of self-injury. Once he arrives in the magical world, he has acquired something of a purpose (finding Natsuko), but he gets pushed into near-disaster situations (the pelicans piling up to push him through the gate at the tomb) or stumbles into circumstances where something is expected of him (hey kid, gut this fish!). Gradually though his exposure to this world pulls him out of his shell. He runs into conflicts and injustices that seem intractable - the wareware and the pelicans - and has little power to intervene except to bury the bodies.

Eventually, he gets to carry out his main objective - finding Natsuko - but despite finally deciding to accept Natsuko as his new mother, he finds himself rejected, not just by her but also by the earth. Perhaps feeling responsible for getting her into trouble, his new objective becomes rescuing freshly-damsel'd Hisa. But now new adults want things of him - his great-uncle has decided he'd make a fine successor. Mahito has to make a decision here about what relationships he wants to commit to, what sort of life he wants to build - and he chooses the world he found so alienating at the outset of the film, the one which hurt him by taking his mother, not to the secondary-world fantasy.

It could be a 'this world is all we have' sort of statement, perhaps. But also the last act of the film feels like it gets a bit caught up in Castle in the Sky-style adventure-story beats.

I do feel like some aspects of the film ended up a little underbaked - which is an odd thing to say because it's not a short film and there is so much in it already. But Hisa for example - she's got badass powers and all, but I feel we barely get a chance to get a sense of what motivates her. Why did she enter the fantasy world? She acts at first like she doesn't know Mahito is her future son, but rapidly becomes incredibly devoted to him (in a way that reads a little romancey lmao). So much of her screen time is dedicated to having her convey the secrets of the world that it's hard to get a bead on her as a person.

Likewise, Natsuko - why did she enter this world to have her baby in this special ritual delivery chamber? She clearly knows more than most of the characters, but she gets kind of sidelined after Mahito confronts her, with wizard shit becoming more central. The animation does such a fantastic job of selling her feelings in the first part of the film that it feels like a shame that she drifts away at the end.

The progression of the film feels rather like a dream, where everything is arranged by symbolic significance to Mahito. It makes sense... on a magical level, where the secondary world is shaped primarily by parallels in the real one. So the tiny apatropaic statues of the old ladies protect him because they represent the role the real old ladies have in his life. Hisa has fire magic because Hisako died in a fire. Once Mahito has come to his personal resolutions about returning to the world, the magical one is no longer needed, and it collapses.

This is not such an uncommon role for magic in a story. In Miyazaki's own works, we have Totoro and Spirited Away, where a magical world provides direction or relief to a child's real struggles. Or take for example Okiura's film A Letter To Momo, in which the three yōkai recognise taking care of the grieving Momo as their explicit purpose as spirits. This magical world comes to Mahito to help him come to terms with losing his mother, and reorient himself towards living in a painful world.

Meanwhile, the sorcerer, whether he be Miyazaki or Takahata, is quite a distant figure. He may maintain the magical world by stacking his blocks, may be the authority which factions within it must plead to, but he also rules from afar in a vast empty palace full of long halls and open air spaces. His main company seems to be a big fucking rock, with which he made a 'contract'. He's generally handling it a bit better than, say, Ushiromiya Kinzo - he receives the parakeet king with good humour - but he's a pretty flawed god of his little world. So much of this world seems to pre-exist him, it's not something he constructed. Still, when he shows up, you pretty much have to do what he says.

If this is about Miyazaki's relation to Takahata, it seems like quite a sad portrayal. But 'unapproachable patriarch' does sorta describe their role in the studio from what I understand (c.f. Oshii's infamous article comparing them to the Kremlin).

When it comes to the question of who should succeed Miyazaki, we should probably consider the matter of Yoshifumi Kondō, who was being set up as the next big Ghibli director until his untimely death - which allegedly Takahata was willing to accept the blame for. The mythology built up around Miyazaki and Takahata is double-edged.

Here are some rather startling comments from Toshiyuki Inoue's interview. Inoue is one of the most impressive animators who ever lived in my book, the other star of the realist line besides Okiura. Just have a look at his booru page: iconic scenes from GitS, Akira, Millenium Actress; even in more recent films, he pretty much carried Maquia, and steals the show with his scenes in Miss Hokusai.

And yet even he was intimidated to be working alongside Miyazaki when he first came on board for Kiki's Delivery Service, fresh off Akira:

I believe you’ve always been a fan of Miyazaki’s, why were you scared to work with him? Toshiyuki Inoue: I had heard quite a few scary stories. A lot of acquaintances had worked on Nausicaä, Laputa and Totoro before that, so I knew how scary he could be when he got angry – I had heard stories of people being fired mid-production, things like that. How was it actually? Toshiyuki Inoue: Not as scary as I had imagined. He’d only rarely scream in the studio. But he did get angry. I’d sometimes be called to some separate room and lectured alongside Kōji Morimoto and Masaaki Endō. It felt like being in school all over again.

'Only rarely'. Honestly. Inoue describes how difficult it was for him to adapt his logical, analytical style to Ghibli's stretchy, bouncy characters - and how Miyazaki would disparage him if he, for example, drew a ship inaccurately.

For Inoue, coming back to How Do You Live was something like a 'return match'. He talks about how an older Miyazaki was no longer able to strictly correct the animation, and in general age was limiting him, but he still feels that Miyazaki is fundamentally superior:

Toshiyuki Inoue: I’ve always wished for a return match or a way to redeem myself. But even if I say that, I know I can’t even pretend to rival Miyazaki. I just can’t win. He’s extremely smart and learned, and on top of that, as an animator he always transcends common sense: he’s so talented that I know very well there’s nothing I can do against it. The more I learn about him, the more I realize I’ll never be on that level.

Miyazaki's genius is undeniable, but man... it's not a good mindset to cultivate if you want to find a successor lmao. If even Inoue doesn't feel he can measure up, who the hell could?

Mind you, it does rather seem that Miyazaki had mellowed out by the point of How Do You Live?. Here's Yamashita:

Akihiko Yamashita: As I said, the core of an animator’s job is to follow what the director asks, so whenever I had trouble with that, I’d go see Miyazaki to show him my roughs. He’d advise me on the things that were missing and reassure me about those that were good. He really helped me to gain more confidence in myself.

Reading these interviews underlines pretty hard that we shouldn't get too caught up in the mythology of Miyazaki the mighty auteur. While the story may be all on Miyazaki, and most of the character designs (with the notable exception of Natsuko)... so much of the details of the animation, the stuff that really makes this film land, is primarily shaped by everyone else - Honda in particular, but also the individual key animators who interpreted his scenes. I really need to get my hands on a copy of that Industrial History of Studio Ghibli book to get a less Miyazaki-centric perspective on the studio's history.

I do not feel, having come out of this film, any closer to knowing the answer to that eternally pressing question of how do you live - I guess I'm still working out my answer to that one, and I will be until I die. And maybe that's rather the point. I think this film still carries some of the flaws of Miyazaki's later films - despite having so many iconic scenes, it doesn't quite seem to know where it's going. But I am so glad to have seen this in the theatre (I saw it at the Prince Charles theatre in Soho with friends, the theatre was completely packed!), and glad Miyazaki managed to get this one out before he goes. Whatever happens to Ghibli without its sorcerer, it's been a hell of a thing to witness.

[gffa]

Hiiii :D I was just wondering, do you have any good Marvel fic reccomendations? Your massive list of star wars fics is like the no.1 thing I go to when im in a star wars mood, and all of them have been amazing, so thanks so much for that!! I'm just curious if you have any good Marvel fic recs?? If not that's fine lol, thank you for your service 🙏

Hi! Lol, I had to sit with this post for a few days because "Marvel fic" is such a wide range of possibilities, like are we talking the comics or the live action shows? The Avengers movies? The X-Men movies? Which section of those fandoms? Avengers as a team? Captain America? Thor? Iron Man? Daredevil? X-Men: First Class? Just... anything? I don't actually have a lot of comics fic recommendations (mostly because it's too hard to wade through all the movie stuff because so many people cross-tag into the comics tags despite it not being comic fic that those tags are now useless), but my go-to for Marvel comics are always: ✦ Betrayal + Paradox Law + The Game of Empires by Valerie J It's hard to describe this series, other than that about ~15 years ago, it was an ambitious attempt at taking various elements of the X-Men comics and weaving them into a coherent whole, focusing on giving Remy an epic backstory to explain his origins and his powers. It probably wouldn't really fit with more recent comics, but if you're a fan of late '90s/early '00s X-Men comics, this was a hell of a ride with cool powers, surprising family twists, time travel, fun relationships, and incredible ramp ups to tense situations that explode in the best way. ✦ The Gestalt Arc by Lori McDonald Another old school fic centered around the Remy/Rogue relationship and taking them on an epic journey, in an alternate version of what happened after their kiss in X-Men #41. The ups and downs of how they work out their issues, the lives they try to lead with each other, finding their path forward together, it's still one of my favorites for the era. ✦ Anything by Traincat for the Young Avengers My favorite is grab a blanket, brother, but they're an author that I'd write a blanket rec for, if any of the summaries sound relevant to your interests! They also write Peter Parker/Johnny Storm, which isn't my area of comics, but I'd trust them with it! But primarily I'd route you to them for their super fun Young Avengers stories, the Teddy/Billy and Eli/Kate ones especially. ✦ Anything by silverspidertm2, X-parrot, takadainmate, or Mythtaken Identity for Journey into Mystery and Loki: Agent of Asgard-era fic. This is when I was in my prime era of reading Thor comic-centric fic, around Journey into Mystery and Loki: Agent of Asgard, when he was Kid Loki and then Teen Loki. There was a lot really fun worldbuilding or road trips or just feelings explosions fic from this era. Beyond that, my bookmarks are a bit of a mess, but you can scroll through them to see what you're looking for. My primary fandoms were: ✦ Daredevil TV, where I went in hard on Matt/Foggy (and some Matt/Foggy/Karen and Frank/Karen and a little Matt/Elektra), where I read voraciously for about a year before MCU burnout hit. Some faves are Double Blind by smilebackwards and Something Dumb to Do by poisonivory and jump, check parachute augustbird.

✦ Thor (MCU), which is actually the heart of who I was as an MCU fan, I spent a long time there reading a lot of fic and this will take you to my bookmarks with the pairings filtered out. I was a big fan of Thor & Loki's relationship so that's most of what's in there, and I always suggest starting with these three fics: ✦ Bargaining by proantagonist, thor & loki & odin & frigga & cast, time travel, 108.9k Faced with an eternity without his brother, Loki strikes a bargain to change the past. Post TDW. ✦ No Such Liberty by Xparrot, thor & loki & cast, 147.3k The first thing Loki said, after he had swiped his tongue over his lips to wet them, was, "You shouldn't trust me." ~ Following the attack on New York, Thor takes Loki back to Asgard in chains; but this does not mean that the god of mischief's schemes are ended, or that Thor has or ever will give up on his brother. But when Thanos threatens the realm to claim his lost prizes, on which side will Loki fall? [post-Avengers fix it] ✦ The Lullaby Singer by TheOtherOdinson, thor & loki & odin & frigga, 85k wip Odin hasn't left Asgard in over a thousand years. When he finds out Loki is still alive and preparing to launch an attack on Midgard, he could send Thor to stop him. Or Odin could go himself. As a bonus, I have a few more Thor genfic recs here.

✦ Captain America (MCU), where sure I liked some gen fic but lbr I was there for the Stucky. I mostly read during the height of the post-TWS fervor and then tapered off a lot after that (given how hard they swerved away from their relationship) and I haven't read almost anything in the fandom since Endgame, but if you want some fun TWS-era fic, I put together this list recently. (To be fair, I also liked a lot of Steve &/ Natasha, Bucky &/ Natasha and Sam/Natasha, so you can find that in there, too.)

✦ Iron Man (MCU), where I liked a mix of some fun gen pieces and some Tony/Pepper which put me in the minority, but I don't care because there were some banger authors for both. If you're interested in them, I always liked pretty much anything I read by roboticonography. icarus_chained wrote a wider variety of stuff, but I've always liked anything I've read from them as well.

✦ Avengers (MCU), where I read a lot of fic, but it's kind of all mixed in together, even some sprinkled in Black Panther fic, some Spideypool that was super fun for a hot minute, some Guardians of the Galaxy characters showing up, etc. Step carefully if you're not interested in pairings (I read a fair amount of Tony/Loki and Steve/Loki in amongst the other stuff), but honestly by the end I was probably reading more gen than anything.

✦ X-Men: First Class-verse, which is my exception to not reading much for the live action versions of the X-Men, because I am a long time Pietro Maximoff fan and while Peter wasn't my Pietro, I did love him and there was some absolute banger fic for the Dadneto trope, which was where my heart was at. Come Together by blarfkey is absolutely the first place to start!

Hopefully this is what you were looking for, but if you have further refinements on what you're interested in, let me know and I'll try to give some pointers! I've been out of reading Marvel for awhile, but I have a huge backlog from when I was in it, at least. 😂

[tossawary]

The new "Scott Pilgrim" animated television show is going to reignite my burning desire to write a Scott Pilgrim AU for SVSSS, I know it. I don't have time, but I still WANT to write a Modern AU about these losers fucking around Toronto, and "getting out of the city to clear my head" only to reveal that they went to fucking Mississauga or something, and, idk, getting stuck on the 401 for some reason.

I don't like matching characters up perfectly to other characters in AUs, or forcing them along the exact plots of the media being used as an AU, because I like letting Fusion AUs unfold as naturally as possible. It makes things more surprising and it keeps the characterization strong.

But Shen Yuan is Scott, obviously, who desperately needs to level up his emotional maturity. Luo Binghe is probably a combo of Knives and Ramona, and it's HIS "exes" of some kind that Shen Yuan needs to fight (the final "ex" is revealed to be Shen Jiu or something, probably). Airplane Bro is Shen Yuan's roommate (it's Shen Yuan's apartment) and it STUNS Shen Yuan to realize that his stallion-novel-writing older roommate is gay. I don't really know what Mobei-Jun is doing in this AU, but his most important "superpower" is probably that he's the only one who actually owns a car AND has his full G license.

The truly exciting thing would be bringing in Shen Yuan's sister (the one who apparently reads gay non-con bondage erotica and accidentally scared Shen Yuan with it) in as Stacey Pilgrim. It would be fun to explore Shen Yuan's family dynamics for once.

Also, you can totally keep demons and the System and potentially even transmigration in as background elements, because that's just what "Scott Pilgrim" is like. Yeah, yeah, the Secret P.A.T.H. on Spadina Avenue that you can take to the Cultivation Realm so that you can level up your fighting skills over the summer break, we've all heard about it. You can also get there on a Go Train from Union Station, but it's only running at like 7 AM for some reason.

"Once upon a time, in the far off land of Toronto, Canada... Shen Yuan is dating a high-schooler..."

"HE'S IN UNIVERSITY! AND WE'RE NOT DATING! I'M JUST TUTORING HIM."

"Lol, okay, bro."

[thearchercore]

As a film major undergrad and then entertainment business major post grad. The artistic elements of the F1 movie drive me insane AND THEN THE FINANCIAL AND MARKETING ASPECTS TOO!!

Apple is pretty notorious for just blowing huge amounts of money on shows and films that no one watches. So, it’s not even the $300 million budget that surprises me . It’s how little anyone seems to understand what this film is about or who it’s even for!! AND I CANT EVEN TELL WHERE THE MONEY FOR THIS FILM HAS GONE EXCEPT ON BRAD PITTS PAYCHECK BECAUSE THE TRAILERS COLOUR GRADING IS SO BAD IT CANT POSSIBLY BE ON POST

Maybe it was just a terrible trailer but the reason films like Rush and Le Mans 66 (Ford v Ferrari in some countries) is that they had something for both racing and non racing fans. 

Both based on true stories, with a compelling emotional core, recognisable actors (appeals to non racing fans mainly). Beautiful cinematic shots of cars going fast appeal to racing fans because those are views that you don’t usually get watching an actual race. 

the fixed cam shots of the drivers in the cars do nothing!! Because non racing fans will find them boring and racing fans would just rather watch a real race. Not Brad Pitt fucking about in an F2 car (which racing fans on Twitter have picked up on already!) The jet shots in top gun maverick (same director) worked because, hey people don’t usually see that sort of stuff, especially not from a pilots POV,  but we see fixed cam POV shots from car races all the time!! AND HOW ARE YOU DOING AUDIO FOR THAT??? is just going to be Brad Pitt breathing heavily the entire time??  

The exaggerated noises and car movements are fun to watch because F1 cars don’t move like that anymore! We don’t get to hear that classic WHOOOSHHH. hell even Michael manns terrible Ferrari movie was FUN because the story was interesting and the shots of the cars driving very fast around very scenic parts of Europe is entertaining. 

F1 (2025) is not based on a true story and the trailer was way more focused on the cringe “car for combat” line rather than what might actually make for an emotionally compelling story. An old racer thrown aside by the sport being dragged back to help an up and coming racer because that’s the only way he’s able to get back in a car. For the first time in his career He’s now the number 2 driver.

But it seems like we will get none of that and if we do the writing will be…uh bad!

ALSO THE TWITTER MARKETING!!! Who is that for!!! The only people who are interacting with that are already your target audience (F1 fans) they know the movie exists, they’ve already made up their minds about whether they are going to see it or not. And if non f1 fans see it they’d just be confused about it being a real f1 team and likely just ignore it. If this is your early marketing what on earth are you going to do next!! You can’t get Brad Pitt to do stunt drives for promotions cause he’ll probably die!! You are relying on name recognition to get non f1 fans to go the theatre and sign up to Apple TV for this and you didn’t even say FROM THE DIRECTOR OF TOP GUN MAVERICK in your trailer when that was the second highest grossing film of 2022 and had pretty much universal critical acclaim!!!! 

Brad Pitts old ass was also a terrible choice for this movie. Micheal Fassbender was right there!!! He’s literally done Le Mans, had an entire Porsche YouTube doc about his training and hypercar race attempts. And at 47, is a very believable age to play “retired driver but still young enough to come back” and he’d likely have been able to a lot of drives/stunts himself. 

I also dread to think how the real drivers are being included in this. I get wanting authenticity but these boys may look like models and actors but they are not!!! If anything I feel like it’d just ruin the emersion of the film because how jarring it’ll be to see real drivers, with their real names in a fictional movie!! 

This movie makes me crazy, it’s only been 1 trailed and some BTS info and I’m already like this. Watching the actual film ( which I do encourage people to pirate btw don’t give Brad Pitt money) is going to kill me 

i will be very surprised if they do pull it off because every move they've done so far was just objectively bad. naming it f1? awful. the ip will get lost in search engine tools because Real F1 will overshadow it. the trailer? no plot. brother is building a car for combat as if the FIA would allow anything like that. the closest we got was mclaren putting spikes on their car this year.

the trailer showed us zero plot, introduced zero stakes in the story. okay you're building a car, why? why do you want to win? what is the driving force of the story? the emotional core? why do i want to root for brad pitt's character if my driver is an actual character in the story??

so far the only people excited for it are real f1 fans that are going to see it to see max verstappen walk in the background in IMAX for 4 seconds. and those people take it as a joke, a hatewatch even.

they all know the f1 drivers can't act... like this whole thing seems so insane to me i cant believe how its an actual thing that's being filmed lol

and dont get me started on how the filming is taking two years (also bc of the strikes last year). two teams have completely different name. cars look different. suits look different...... like if they're fixing all in post god bless that team bc they'll be using more VFX than marvel

[whateverisbeautiful]

♥️ Ranking Richonne

#30: This Is It (S7E12)

Their smiles in this 7.12 scene will forever warm my heart. 🥹 And after seeing the palpable yearning Rick and Michonne have for each other in each of these TOWL trailers, you just know that it’s moments like the one on this rooftop that they both long to return to. (Side note: when they said TOWL would be an epic love story they were not playing around 🔥 every teaser and trailer is showing why this is the most epic husband and wife and this is some crazy love for real. 😍)

Now y'all know Richonne's honeymoon episode 'Say Yes' is gonna make multiple appearances on this Top 30 list. Starting with this lovely moment right here where our power couple is so visibly enamored with each other...

(And y’all, at first I really thought I was gonna make these posts a lil paragraph each, but then I saw a post that said, “I’m my target audience on Tumblr,” and I was like - you know what that person is right lol. And I love me some detailed Richonne insights, both to nestle in and read and to write, so instead of short and sweet, these posts are about to be my signature-length and sweet. Cuz truly I can’t help but go all out when it comes to reveling in Richonne)

Lemme start by saying we are so fortunate to have Andy and Danai as the captains of this ship and that this extraordinary TV relationship is in the hands of two extraordinary actors. The way they give their all to these characters and always speak so beautifully about Rick and Michonne’s relationship is just a blessing. 🙌🏾

I remember Andy saying that he likes to think “I love you” is communicated every time Rick looks at Michonne, and it really really is. And this moment in 'Say Yes' is a prime example. The way they look at each other throughout this scene was a loud and clear “I love you” from them both, and I absolutely love to see it. 

Ok so refresher - because the universe was like Richonne deserves to keep winning on this honeymoon, they climb on that roof and find a boatload of guns at a carnival. And I love that they let Rick and Michonne’s run take place at such a date-like environment.

And I am smiling uncontrollably seeing the two of them smile when they realize this is it. They’re so beautiful and their joy brings me joy. It’s great seeing that they’re in such a good mood after being so down in 7A, and I adore every glance and synchronized smile they share. 

I love Rick saying, “I think this is it” and Michonne smiling as she agrees. This line is pretty accurate to their relationship too. This relationship is it. This is the one for them. I mean, Andy said it himself - Rick found the greatest love story of his life in finding Michonne.

Rick asks, “Think we can?” which is also cute cuz he def knows they can. As was shown in the 7.10 ep 'New Best Friends,' Rick thoroughly enjoys the fact that he and his woman are such a power couple and there’s nothing they can’t do. (and the CRM finna learn there's nothing this husband and wife can't do together real soon 💁🏽‍♀️)

When Rick asks if she thinks they can, Michonne is like let me find the coolest way possible to say 'yes we can' when she gets a determined look on her face and shoots those cans from a far distance. It’s nice cuz when she went out practicing her shot in 7.04 it was a very frustrating experience for her, but now with her man by her side and fighting the fight with him, she’s having a far more fun and successful time. And this would be how two of the baddest in the land have a carnival date. 😋

I love how happy Rick seems to be here to see Michonne in her element. He knew she had been practicing out there alone, and now he gets to see that of course his boss of a wife has got good at it. And their smiles and laughs. Food for the soul.  

You can just feel Rick taking in every moment he has with her and cherishing it. His adoration for this woman is so visible. And as we know, at this point, Rick had come to terms with the fact that he may not make it out of this Saviors war and that they’d lose people. So seeing him be so present in this moment with Michonne like they were the only two in the world, is all the more heartfelt cuz he’s trying to enjoy this moment like it’s his last. Cuz realistically, it could be.

And if his days really are numbered, then spending quality time enwrapped in Michonne's love and smiles is a major part of how Rick wants to enjoy what valuable life he has left.

Michonne is so glowy and happy in this scene too. 🥰  This is the face of a woman whose heart is being cared for by a good man who will be by her side through anything. Her adoration and fulfillment with her man are so fully on display, and she's so deserving of this kind of love and happiness. Also it’s sweet how Rick has this impressed look at her as she knocks down those cans.

And truly what makes this a top 30 scene for me is their reactions after she says that. Because Michonne gives Rick the most sincere sweet smile that is just so clear she loves him. And then the lingering way Rick looks at her 😍…based on that look it just feels like my man Rick was a bit overcome with his love for her. 🥹

It was most definitely a moment of Rick thinking, 'How’d I get so lucky finding you?' And I love that Rick can never hide his feelings for her. This is a man who is so deeply in love with his wife. And how he quietly soaks up this happy moment with her melts my entire heart. You can genuinely see that this moment in time with his true love is one Rick treasures and wants to hold onto for as long as he can.

And I just so respect that with his character so aware that life can be cut short, he’s really presently basking in each moment with her. Time with Michonne and their family is what Rick most wants. And it's refreshing to see them both be so fully present in their Richonne bubble and enjoying what they've always wanted in this scene.

The scene ends with them falling through the roof, but then after a moment of silence, you hear them laughing yet again. I love it. Nothing was bursting that Richonne bubble.

Andy and Danai understand the assignment every time when it comes to depicting Richonne’s relationship. And I love that they knew in an ep where they get to just have all this alone time, they would be so smiley and on cloud nine. And this was one of the moments that beautifully portrayed that. 

Joy wasn't often depicted on this show, but whenever Rick and Michonne got alone time together it was joy’s time to shine. They know they can get through anything together so they’re able to just take a moment and enjoy each other and laugh and smile and that is a rare and wonderful thing only the two of them could give each other in this way.

So if you were to ask me what true love is, I’d show you Richonne scenes like these and just have three words - This. Is. It. 😌

[mlbigbang2024]

Big Bang Etiquette: Tips for Writers & Artists Working Together

Sometimes it feels daunting to start talking to someone you don’t know on the other side of the world, particularly if you’re a little shy. Here are some tips to make your Big Bang experience fun and productive!

After all, it’s in everyone’s best interest to finish the fic and artwork. So we have tried to come with a handy guide. Hope this helps you!

For Writers:

1. Be Clear with Your Vision: Share your story ideas early. Let your artist know about key scenes or vibes that inspire your work.

REFERENCES, REFERENCES, REFERENCES: These are key to make sure that the artist understands what you are envisioning.

Pinterest boards can also be your friend.

Share your outline and your chapters as soon as possible so that the artist can start planning!

2. Respect Artistic Freedom: Trust your artist’s interpretation. Their unique perspective adds depth to your story.

Be Open to Surprises: Your artist may come up with ideas or visual elements you hadn't considered. Embrace their creativity as it often leads to a richer final product.

Constructive Criticism: If you’re unsatisfied with a piece, don’t be scared to speak up, but do so respectfully. Frame your feedback in a way that’s encouraging and helpful, like suggesting adjustments instead of outright rejections. 

3. Deadlines Matter: Stick to agreed timelines. Your artist is working around them too!

Plan Ahead: Keep track of all deadlines and set internal checkpoints to ensure progress is on track. If you anticipate delays, communicate early to find a solution together.

Be Reliable: Consistent and timely updates build trust and show your commitment to the partnership. If you meet your deadlines, your artist is more likely to do the same.

For Artists:

1. Ask Questions: Don’t hesitate to seek clarification on characters, settings, or moods. A little detail can spark the perfect illustration.

Dig Deep: Ask about character motivations, the tone of scenes, or any specific visual details the writer envisions. Even small things like the color of a character’s eyes or the style of clothing can make a big difference.

2. Share Progress: Show sketches or drafts early on. Feedback from the writer can steer your work in the right direction.

Step-by-Step Updates: Share your progress in stages—initial sketches, line art, color blocking, etc. This allows the writer to give feedback at each step, preventing major overhauls later on.

Encourage Input: Invite the writer to share their thoughts openly. Remind them that it’s easier to make changes during the sketch phase than in the final stages.

3. Be Flexible: Sometimes the story evolves. Adapt if needed and stay open to adjustments.

Offer Solutions: If a requested change seems challenging, suggest alternatives that stay true to the writer’s vision but might be easier or more effective artistically.

4. Respect the Story: Your art enhances the writing. Keep the narrative in mind and aim to complement the writer’s vision.

Stay True: Your art should reflect the mood and style of the story. Whether it’s lighthearted, dark, whimsical, or intense, align your artistic choices with the writer’s narrative goals.

For Both:

Communicate Regularly: Check in often, even if it’s just to say everything's on track.

Be Considerate: Life happens. If something’s going off course, let your partner know ASAP.

Celebrate Each Other: Acknowledge each other’s efforts. This project is a team effort—cheers to collaboration!

Ways To Get Conversation Flowing:

1. Artist

Ask the writer what inspired the story or how they come up with ideas

Tell the author your favourite scenes. The creation process takes a long time, and some writers miss getting the in-flow of kudos and comments from Ao3 for motivation. During this phase, you are their source of motivation!

2. Writers:

Ask why the artist why they liked your idea.

Tell them about yourself, anything from the Timezone you are in to help with communication or to what inspires you.

If you have something big coming up, like a holiday or an exam, let your artist know. Who knows you might find out you have similar interests!

3. Both: 

Talk about anything and everything! Compare head canons, your favorite episodes, maybe even your favorite fics!

Provide regular updates! Ask for feedback. It doesn’t have to be a complete work. You’re just providing each other reassurances that there’s progress!

Remember this is more than an event, this is FANDOM! And we are here to have fun and make new friends! 

[nardos-primetime]

I got the Donnie 'tism and the Leo 'DHD.

Asks are always open (I love asks they're so silly)

Requests are currently closed. (Just be aware I might not always finish them </3)

Call me Rain/Rainy, LED, Leon/Leo/Nardo or Don/Donnie/Tello.

I go by He/Him/His/Himself.

I may or may not be a kinnie of both Leonardo and Donatello. (Mainly Leo though.)

Mainly makes horror and angst aus, but I happily dabble in sillier things as well, there's some lighter things even within my dark aus normally.

(These can contain GORE AND INJURY (MENTAL AND PHYSICAL), PLEASE be warned and take care of yourself first and foremost!)

I normally don't do a ton of romance with the turtles unless it's for lore reasons within a story or something (other than leosagi, possibly donsagi and jasonnie). I do ship some of the adults on occasion for fun Mainly Barsonjitsu? (I Think thats the name I forgot) I absolutely don't do nsfw with the turtles. I might make something like a dick/sex joke here and there or a reference to sex within a story but nothing greater than that.

Feel free to message/ask me about shit, I need to get better with being social and love hearing shit about things I like/make! Just don't be a weirdo, y'know?

(Aka tc*st dni)

Tags:

#nardo's primetime.txt - Thoughts and Rambles mostly

#nardo's asks.txt - asks answered

#Writings - More concise rambles. Like minifics or mini fic ideas of some kind. Or story stuff in general. Normally not full works.

#practice makes perfect! - Specifically my adventures practicing drawing turtles

#writers wips - Clips and stuff from my fics what aren't done or whatever

#rottmnt fanart - most of my art is under this :]

#not turtles - other fandom stuff (mainly Gregory Horror Show rn)

#rainposting - IMAGES AND VIDEOS AND GIFS OF RAIN I FUCKING LOVE RAIN GOD FUCK YES RAIINNNN

#Scary Turtles - Physicalogical or Direct horror

Au Tags: (I don't have them all here but maybe one day I'll make a masterpost)

#Natural Disasters AU - WIP WIP WIP the turtles are all natural disasters/elements and such

#League of Single Fathers AU - Leo is raised by Hypno, Mikey is raised by Meatsweats, Raph is raised by Ghostbear, and Donnie is raised by Repo Mantis. Shit happens.

#Villain Mikey AU/#Broke a Million Dollar Box AU - Wow this bitch has FAMILY ISSUES surely he deals with it in a HEALTHY WAY and does NOT kill people and go crazy!

#Villain Donnie AU/#Viral Donnie AU - Local boy causes apocalypse and then runs the apocalypse more at 10

#Four More Villains AU - Tied in w Villain Mikey & Villain Donnie, shared with @midwesternvibes

#Identical Identities AU - Who am I Anymore?

#Nonsense Apocalypse AU - A Rise au focusing on a robot turtle and zombie turtle trying to find their brothers in a weird apocalypse, and vice-versa.

#Draxum's Side of The Family AU - AU that focuses on Clones of the turtles that have a lot of problems. Don't worry, the original turtles have more problems too! Equal opportunity angst! [Semi hiatus]

#Teenage Mutant Magical Boys AU - Local mutants are used to save the world and are idols on the side. Aware that they're related. All struggling soso hard.