#like yeah i may keep shit from 8 years ago but its not like i have closets full of things

[selfryed]

i hate being a person who has to keep EVERYTHING bc its either "memorabilia" or "ill need this later" like no pookie youll never use this again and you barely remember things anyway so what memory is it gonna be 😭😭😭

[eyeheartboobiez]

-> 𝗃𝖺𝗌𝗈𝗇 𝗍𝗈𝖽𝖽 𝗑 𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀𝖾𝗋!𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋

-> 𝗌𝗈𝖼𝗂𝖺𝗅 𝗆𝖾𝖽𝗂𝖺 𝖺𝗎!

-> 𝖺/𝗇: 𝗈𝗄𝖺𝗒 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗂𝗌 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖫𝖠𝖲𝖳 𝗍𝗂𝗆𝖾 𝗂𝗆𝗆𝖺 𝗎𝗌𝖾 𝗏𝗂𝗇𝗇𝗂𝖾 𝗁𝖺𝖼𝗄𝖾𝗋 𝖺𝗌 𝖺 𝗃𝖺𝗌𝗈𝗇 𝖿𝖺𝖼𝖾 𝖼𝗅𝖺𝗂𝗆 𝗂 𝗌𝗐𝖾𝖺𝗋😭

Jason Todd and ex girlfriend, Artemis Grace, spotted outside a club together just hours ago! May this old flame be finding its spark again? (8/20/2022 3:14 AM PT)

For months now, people have been buzzing after Gotham elite Jason Todd and singer Y/N Y/LN hinted at being in a relationship. Ever since this past March when they were initially spotted together, fans have done nothing short of obsessing over the two.

Artemis Grace, former girlfriend of Jason, had gotten into some hot water recently when insiders claimed that the singer had something to do with leaking Y/N’s unreleased track, Fantasize.

As mentioned in former articles, TMZ investigators came to the conclusion that Artemis was involved in publishing the song as a way of “getting her lick back”. Time logs show that the dubbed “rival” singer entered the same studio as Y/N not too long after she left for the night.

Many people online have been more than vocal about their love for the song, despite the fact that it was released without the artist’s consent.

While Artemis has yet issue a statement regarding the accusations, she seems to have plenty of time to be out partying with her ex.

Fast forward to last night, when just hours ago, Jason and Artemis were seen leaving a nightclub together and looking very close for comfort. Onlookers were not only shocked, but absolutely gagged when they saw the two hugging each other goodbye.

With their late night rendezvous breaking headlines, some fans are starting to question if Jason may have also played a part in helping Artemis, or if they ever really broke up at all!

The exes, who were romantically involved for almost two years, have a long history of being toxic towards each other. Their on-again-off-again relationship was notorious for its dysfunctionality, making it hard to keep up most of the time.

It wasn't until late last year when both Jason and Artemis officially called it quits by posting an announcement on their respective Instagram accounts (although many were skeptical to believe it).

Despite the initial shock of the situation, it begs the question: Where does Y/N stand in all of this?

Fans of the singer songwriter were quick to come to her support, majority of whom expressing their clear disappointment in Jason.

“I was really betting on these two,” says Twitter user @y/n’scoochiehairs. “I feel like a child of divorce…”. The fan account, while only just a few months old, grew exponentially due to their constant posts about the alleged couple.

Many sentiments like this have been circulating the internet once the pictures from last night began to surface. Y/N is notorious for putting her emotions into her songs, so at least we know she’ll be releasing new music soon, right?

— replies —

user1: oh she really aint playing...

user2: COOK HIM GOOD SIS!!

user3: girl this is a whole bar put this energy into a song or sumn😭

user4: sooo what im hearing is that ur single🤔

⤷ user5: ntm on my wife now..

user6: this next album bouta be BIBLICAL

user7: genuinely hope youre doing okay🥺🫶

user8: ily queen🩷

people you may know!

liked by b_zarro and 613,189 others

@artemisofmighdall: last night was a dream✨

View all 25,846 comments

user1: first you mess with her music then you mess with her man.. if bold was a person…

user2: the hell is she smiling so damn big for?? ain’t shit funny😐

user3: girl you betta PRAY i don’t catch you in these streets…

user4: “last night was a dream” yeah and you in for a rude awakening cuz wth💀

user5: these comments killing me😭

user6: you already going to hell for being a ginger now you just making it worse for yourself🤦‍♀️

— creator has turned off comments—

end notes: is jason involved or is he just being framed👀 lmk what you think!!

[rah-nee-yah]

my thoughts on act 2:

im being so deadass i think ep6 is my fave in all of the show. its just nice seeing vi and jinx being sisters. istg if one of them dies…i really hope their dynamic will be like the one in those league comic thingies.

also CAITVI NATION IS SO BACK. love love loved seeing them together again. i do wish vi was colder to caitlyn when meeting her instead of calling her cupcake. but hey its been like three years since weve last seen vi call her cupcake so a win is a win. theyre definitely gonna bang next act, i think ep 8.

WTF JAYCE. EVERYTHING WAS GOING SO WELL. what did he see in there?? ik everyone is gonna hate him but im excited to see where hes gonna go from here.

and isha. just thinking about her makes me tear up😭😭 im gonna keep this brief so i dont start sobbing AGAIN but i miss her already. then again…we didnt actually see her die so maybe…(im delusional pls help)

AND THE FACT THEY GOT VANDER BACK FOR LIEK FIVE MINUTES. IT WAS ALL ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY DUDE.

anyways viktor is totes coming back and i think he may be involved in getting mel out of the black rose. also i think she’s pregnant. maybe. just a little

in terms of criticism i really would have loved to see vi actually pit fighting. i think the main problem was that we already saw the pit fighting scene like two months ago so it didnt hit as hard because that scene really did emphasize what vi was going through so seeing it again just didnt hit as hard. thats just me tho.

in terms of pacing, i honestly have no complaints. i liked it. it felt similar to season one but that could just be me. i like fast paced things sooo yeah. i also love how all the characters converged in ep 6 which kind of tidied some stuff up. still would have preferred longer episodes but animation is expensive and takes a shit ton of time so i understand.

but my main complaint is WHERE IS EKKO⁉️⁉️ THAT MAN HAS NOT BEEN SEEN SINCE THE MIDDLE AGES. since s1e7 was ekko’s, i think ep 7 is gonna be centered around him returning to zaun and meeting all the other characters again…with timebomb sprinkled in. cuz jinx needs some support. i also think ep7 may be a party episode sooo yeah.

anyways i loved this act. it might be my favorite from the entire series but we’ll see.

[fismoll7secinv]

15 questions, 15 people:

I was tagged by dear @a-very-fond-farewell 💚I hope you get your lobster sanctuary! 💚

-

1. are you named after anyone?

nope

2. when was the last time you cried?

I don't know, I don't really cry

3. do you have kids?

never

4. do you use sarcasm a lot?

yeah, quite casually in everyday life, but I try to tone it down

5. what’s the first thing you notice about people?

I'm bad with faces, I might not recognise someone who's new to me after interacting with them every day for 2 weeks (based on a true story) xdd so what I notice at first is the overall vibe they present, which is a combination of their posture and body language, clothes and accessories, facial expressions etc. This doesn't tell absolutely accurately who they are, but it shows how they want to be perceived mixed with some unconscious elements they might not notice themselves, which is interesting to me

6. what’s your eye color?

eh idk, people say they're blue when I'm in a blue pool, green when I'm among greenery, grey when it's a bit dark. I guess they're a subtle mixture that looks like nothing until there's something external that brings out one of the colors. it's a bit annoying tbh, so I usually just say grey

7. scary movies or happy endings?

i love horror, very high on my list of fav genres, but I also love happy endings, just not necessarily in horrors. In media other than horror I need HE or I feel down. So i'd say: both

8. any special talents?

I've had a music talent since I was little, couldn't understand how other kids didn't know how to play the flute or keep the rhythm. I've also heard various ppl say that I somehow know how to arrange things to be aesthetically pleasing, but I could never explain how to do it, it just looks better a certain way. A bit for drawing, considering how fast I improved compared to some other people, but I haven't pursued it farther than sketching. Sport comes pretty smoothly to me and my body, I've always been "the athletic girl"

I may sound like i'm bragging but i try to be objective for my own self. After all "talent" means nothing and is just bitterly wasted if you're not practising, so for me it can be more of a shameful thing that I let rot rather than something to be proud of. It's also so useless when teaching others, because you don't know how to explain shit when you do it intuitively, which tripped me a lot of times while trying to teach someone. Very annoying and sometimes isolating in a sense that you just vibe with yourself instead of sharing the experience with others

9. where are you born?

in a hospital

10. what are your hobbies?

reading, writing, taking care of plants, pen & paper rpgs, collecting weird trinkets and paintings, drawing, horror movies, detective stories, listening to podcasts

11. do you have any pets?

we have a dog but I moved out of my family home recently and the doggo stayed there, I still visit often and walk him, but it doesn't feel like he's really mine anymore :(

12. what sports do you/have you played?

I did gymnastics and horse-riding for a few years as a kid, used to jog in middle/high school, I also go on a trip to the mountains at least once a year to hike bc I'm obsessed with it. Recently I like to do yoga and fitness to bring my body to its limit and stretch all the pains that keep accumulating. I almost didn't move from my desk for over a year some time ago because i was too busy with uni, work and a few other big things, and it ended up in a neck injury that escalated to a few months of rehab. Now I move a lot so those nightmarish pain and several contusions don't repeat

13. how tall are you?

taller than most women and many guys

14. favourite subject in school?

all languages, math, biology

15. dream job?

neuroscientist, astronaut or pilot of small planes

-

I have no idea who did this already, feel free to ignore as always. Tagging @prommethium @miyakuli @still-gathering-roses @carmine-sunlight @wikipedie

[cyanocoraxx]

I have a question!! What made you like centipedes and want to keep them? (Or just bugs in general?)

honestly this all started around 8 years ago when i read something that said "we fear what we don't understand"

i realized that i was scared of spiders because i didn't understand them. i was scared of snakes because i didn't understand them. etc etc etc. it's easy to be nervous about something when you think you can't read its behaviour and don't know if it will hurt you. the unknown is terrifying for sure. but here's two examples - that big ass house spider isn't chasing you - it can only see light and dark, it just wants to find a shadow to hide in. that snake likely doesn't want to bite you, but it will if you don't read its defensive signals and back off. when you start to learn things like this, you realize that these animals just want to survive like you, and there's no need to be afraid if you spend a little time researching their body language, how they use their senses, etc etc. they're just lil guys ur honour!

started with some docile tarantula species and over time worked up to where i am now with medically significant wandering spiders, old world tarantulas and obvs a lot of others. it's not always easy and yeah i shit myself when they bolt at mach 5 in my direction sometimes but who wouldn't lmao. that's what a catch cup is for <3 i also jumped in with my first snake, my brazilian rainbow boa, which is known for being defensive and bitey in its baby stage. scared of being bitten? let's try EXPOSURE THERAPY. turns out it's not that scary actually. inti you just look silly and also ur like 1ft long. pls. and here's the thing with all that- they only bite because they're scared and unsure of YOU. you have to show THEM that you're not a threat. so we did some mutual Understanding of each other (him latching on to my hand and me just sitting there quietly) until we both found out that actually, we're not scary. i think that's something special.

so........... centipedes are the latest animal that i realized i still felt nervous about, and guess what - it's only because i didn't feel like i understood them. i heard all these things about how they're all aggressive, nasty, ill-tempered things that just want to bite you. i was a little scared of them, so i just got one at an invert show after speaking to a breeder about their care and started to learn. learned that they're very deserving of respect - especially those with medically significant venom like the dehaani. those guys are a little insane (love u eos but ur a freak)

centipedes are still a bit of a mystery to humans, i think - we don't fully know how far their intelligence goes as not many people are researching their cognitive abilities. but centipedes can be socialized with us to tolerate our touch, some even seeming to "enjoy" being petted as it may make them feel like they're hiding under something warm and dark. some keepers swear their centipedes can remember them. some say they can be classically conditioned to associate a stimulus with something else (i.e. a tap on the enclosure means food is coming). each pede has its own temperament, some are bolty and bitey and some are laid back. i think this is all fascinating. are these worms made of knives smarter than most think? yeah, undoubtedly. we just don't know HOW intelligent yet. how many other animals do we underestimate and overlook?

here's something to bear in mind when interacting with inverts: you're HUGE. you make a lot of loud noises and heavy vibrations when you move. you're unpredictable. you give off heat and smell like salty sweat but you're not food. sometimes you might smell like fruit if you use a body spray. you reach down from above like an aerial hunter. so what are you? an invert with limited senses has all of this to figure out in just a few seconds.. it's no wonder they react so viscerally to us sometimes.

tldr; the thing probably doesn't want to bite you <3

[thefallenangelsgang]

FALLOUT 4 HEADCANON MASTERPOST

two and a half years ago (👀) I posted a list of headcanons right around when I started playing around with the ideas in my fallout WIP

I've decided they ( 1 + 2 ) need to be updated and added to especially after Death Shroud gave me so many great ideas/things I want to steal. Added break to save you dash my loves <3

I will keep adding to this lmao

SECTIONS:

Post #1 Revisions

Post #2 Revisions

Death Shroud Stuff I'm Kidnapping

Misc Stuff From Asks, Mods, and My Brain (AKA THE LONGEST SECTION)

From #1 (Link Here)

We are keeping chair bound Murphy

I may or may not be recanting my gangly tall 'n thin Hancock HC. I oscillate wildly between wanting him to be Eldritch God™ tall and "gimme uppies! :3" short. He may end up being both. His height will be whatever is funniest for the bit.

oh yeah Sarah Lyons got merc-ed B)

We are still kicking with Kellogg in Nicky's skull but with the added angsty-ness brought in by Death Shroud. Oh the plot! Oh how it hurts so good! Kellogg wanting to find someway to punish the SoleSu(s) and Nick for picking through his memories? Ugh! Give me it all.

We are cutting Billy and the Fridge. I don't want to deal with the nightmare plot holes it will bring up and Quincy will already have enough BS. Plus the more I think about it the less I like the whole quest and its placement. Fuck! Maybe he'll be referenced in Publick Occurrences? I don't care! We're loosey goosey bay-be!

- 10. can stay. I have no issues with them and nothing funny to add

From #2 (Link Here)

Now I can bring up my beloved Vault-Tec Rep. Him in the Death Shroud? Perfect. Beautiful. Stunning. I no longer have to call him Paul Eiding as a very direct nod to his VO. Our Beloved David Dwecker is married to Sheffield and they have a house in Sanctuary filled with Nuka-Cola memorabilia (for Sheffield) and collectable plates (the kind grandmothers display for our lovely Rep). They have a little sitting area set up in the carport where they hangout, smoke, and dance together to Diamond City Radio. I need this for my mental health okay?

Shaun being Autistic is something I really want to explore. I truly forget who I first saw say this but it is not an original idea by any means. I also think the poor thing would have some level of trauma from everything so exploring that is gonna be fun! (no it will not oh my god I'm going to dredge up all my childhood issues.)

OHHHH CHRISTMAS. YULETIDE. FEAST OF ST. NICHOLAS. I find the "Seth Patrick" bit SO funny in Death Shroud so that is staying but also I feel like the feast of St. Nicholas got jokingly flipped into a celebration of Nick Valentine (Same with Valentine's Day) and people are beginning to forget the correct version. Nick tolerates it with an eye roll and a wry joke about people needing to read their history books but secretly finds the whole thing funny. Ellie has a santa suit for Nick to don during "his" holiday. Also the school children in Diamond City send Nick "Valentines" on valentines day and he displays them on his corkboard.

Music. My god the Johnny Guitar bit had me by the throat during Death Shroud. Expand those music libraries! Before you know it I'm gonna give Travis a rolling ladder attached to bookcases upon bookcases of records and holotapes. I want to hear people complain about how many Andrews Sisters records survived and God why won't Travis stop playing them!

The Flavor of Goodneighbor needs to be so complex. Like a good pasta sauce. I better be so overcome by the layers and smells and textures. Better Goodneighbor and Better Third Rail are really good starts but I'm expanding the shit out of both of them I think. I want to feel like Goodneighbor truly is dangerous to be in. Being able to cross most of the town in one sprint burst isn't cutting it Bethany Esda! Make it truly baffling how Hancock knows so much about the happenings in his town.

- 8. are about the BoS and I stand by them. You will get to meet my Lone Wanderer and learn about the hierarchies a little better. I redesigned the Orders and added one I think? I have to re-sort those notes lmao. Also the piloting thing is like MAJORLY important to me because the frequency of vertibird crashes in game pissed me off to no end.

From Death Shroud (@chadfallout76podcast THANK YOU)

Danse is just... Like That now. I can't wait to explore his character before and after Blind Betrayal especially because he will not be leaving the Brotherhood and he will still be Like That. [spoiler warning ;) for my story lol] I can't wait for the beautiful moments that will be born of it.

I actually kind of love some of the plot points in Death Shroud like the Mob Family wars? Staying 100%. Same with Ma and Boss Lombardo and some of the other families.

As is Charlie but I refuse to let him die. I got very attached to Charlie and his death was so perfect but this time he gets to stay alive dammit.

Magnolia sending Magnolia flowers with her letters? Genius

Vault-Tec Rep (David my beloved) being the saddest, wettest cat of a man imaginable when he's in Goodneighbor? Also fucking genius.

"Fish-lips" Malone being part of the same family as Skinny has me so excited for more mob family bullshit.

Ruffino's and the Black Rose is being transplanted somewhere and maybe might be near the Combat Zone. New den of sin anyone?

Obviously I'm not going to attempt to pull apart the fabric of reality in-canon but my god Death Shroud was fun <3

Some new Misc HCs

Diamond City is bigger and more populated, kind of in the same vein as the Goodneighbor HC. I haven't found a mod layout I like so I might end up redesigning it (Please kill me)

This is an old one from an ask! Hancock will help work the bar at the Third Rail occasionally. He's a notorious show off and his cocktails are mainly just straight liquor but he entertains the hell out of people when he dives over the bar to take orders and bother Whitechapel Charlie. There are major losses on nights he bartends due to the fact he forgets (sometimes purposefully) to take payment. Regulars know to put the cash in the tip jar so Whitechapel can collect it at the end of the night.

Another thing I'm keeping from an ancient ask, Danse wants kids. Badly. And the crushing blow of being sterile really fucks with him for a while. but he eventually comes to terms with it. He's also still touchy (as in he's always touching his partner) per that ask because I think that's cute.

I'm just going through old asks now lmao. Nick and Ellie dance together like the true father-daughter pair they are

I forgot who drew this but I once saw someone pair Sturges and Ellie together and that is the cutest damn thing so it stays.

MacReady got the Lone Wanderer's Grognak magazine as a gift for letting them into Little Lamplight and it's one of his prized possessions.

Macready and the Lone Wanderer's reunion is very cute my dudes.

More general slice of life stuff like fishing on the mainland and boats, more things to do in general, transportation, cool amputees, and other shit listed in this post I reblogged YEARS ago

OH Travis and Scarlett get married <3

Danny Sullivan skips town after taking the fun way down from the mayor's office and travels with some cross country caravans before coming back to work in Diamond City. YES HE LIVES!

Holy fuck i forgot I had this mod but the Institute projects the sky up on their ugly concrete dome because this mod fucks hard

Just the general vibe of raiders employing children and stringing more dead mutilated bodies about. There are mods for that and let me tell you they make the raider camps horrifying. No I will not be linking them. But they are available on Nexus should you want them.

Okay I'm changing the layout of everything apparently: Including but not limited to the Railroad HQ, The Prydwen, Vault 111, etc. Fuck game design I guess lmao. I like XFreakish's Railroad Redone and NordKitten's A Sensible Prydwen Overhaul for in game and basically plan to build off of them.

The asks: Hancock bartending, Danse wanting kids and being into physical affection, Nick and Ellie Dancing + MacReady and the LW's Grognak (same ask)

[starlightshore]

explain Danny phantom to someone who’s never seen it before?

uhhhhh so i can only talk about it as the most insane kinda fandom person because

i was obsessed with this show when it first aired when I was 8 years old. it was my first fandom. i read fanfic for it before i even knew what fanfic was. its HEAVILY tied to my nostalgia and I've been engaging with the fandom on/off for literally 19 years. at this point DP is in my DNA.

while it's not my main hyperfixation (thats undertale) its the one tag i visit regularly and the one fandom I'll jump to every few months and binge fics for. i don't even read UT fics anymore but the DP fandom is always doing something. its very active!

under the cut I talk about my thoughts on the show, the fandom and explain the premise. It's a wild ride.

TLDR; i have a lot of THOUGHTS on this show and i do not actually recommend it. MAYBE if you're curious explore the fandom and some fics but be careful about it, it's a bit gratuitous with its angst.

If you want a basic premise: local 14 year old accidentally lets loose hell but also has become part ghost. This kid can fit SO much trauma in him.

first off: I fucking love Danny Phantom.

And I'm going to spend the next two segments complaining about it. Feel free to skip if you're already aware of this /or don't wanna linger on it.

Second off: This show fucking sucks*

* Ok fine yes sometimes it can be good, but it will always have an asterisk next to it.

it has NOT aged well. it was created by an asshole who's got a long shitlist of things he's done and still does that's all terrible. i am not one to hate someone publicly unless its for something like this. Feel free to google what Bitch Fartman has done if you're curious but I'll warn you: he is a horrible person and he disgusts me. I only acknowlege him when its to mention how awful he is and how I do not want to support him.

This is not like with FNAF where supporting that franchise supports Scott. Danny Phantom first aired 19 years ago. The show was written, directed, and sure as hell animated by a team of professionals. It is not his sole creation. Studio Animation is not the sole work of an individual. I respect (most) animators and the hard work they've done and do. IIRC Shitfartman doesn't even have the rights to the IP anymore. I assume he gets residuals though. That said the only canonical piece of media we've gotten is a graphic novel that was released last month. Up until then, supporting DP was just not literally a thing you could do!

Its not just the creator who sucks. There's a lot of BS in the show too.

the show is very early 2000s (and even then thats no excuse) and it has a bingo card worth of shit in it. racism, bigotry, ableism! you name it. I do not condone and i do NOT recommend this show because of this! its horrible with what they did with this show and its shocking it was acceptable enough to put on TV. you literally can't do shit like that anymore.

I'm not going to go list every detail of every horrible, fucked up thing the show has done. The list is too long and I haven't watched the actual show in a few years now. by god, I know there is a list out there though.

Anyway outside of my obligatory "fuck this show actually" rant aside

i do love this show because it DOES have a lot of good and cool stuff outside that. but also. its so much wasted potential.

the core premise is:

Hey what if a pair of paranormal obsessed mad scientist parents punched a hole into the after life hell dimension- and what if their son was basically spiderman-ed about it?

And here's the core part of the premise: Danny only keeps his identity a secret to the humans. Ghosts learn like, pretty much straight away that he's a Halfa (half human, half ghost). He's if spiderman's worst fear wasn't the villains but if like. Aunt May was going to rip him apart.

Oh yeah that's. a thing. Danny's parents literally want to rip his ghost identity apart from, and I quote, "molecule to molecule."

For a an comedy-action show its WEIRDLY morbid and dark at times but then has the tonal whiplash to make you question what the fuck did they just do. How'd they do that and then not care they just wrote that in. Seriously. It'll just lore drop or hint to dark things and then brush it aside because it's main focus is comedy.

Anyway back to explaing what the show even is about. the show likes to say Danny got his DNA merged with ectoplasm but that's stupid af i'd rather say he died but only stayed half dead. He can transform between the two states: living and dead. But he's not just two halves that make a whole -the two sides blend together. He can use his ghost powers as a human -and early on he couldn't control them so he'd just. go intangible or invisible at the worst moments.

The show just. jumps right in. You don't get to see the accident outside the intro (at least until season 2 when they retcon some stuff) you just have it thrown into your lap. He has powers now. He sucks at it. Deal with it.

I think it's important to acknowledge that this show was written before Netflix did streaming. Before Plot heavy cartoons were a thing. (Not to say they didn't have reoccuring plot, it justw asn't the same thing as it is now.) You had to write the show with the limits of:

Comedy being a major focus

You have to write it with the expectation that anyone could jump in and (reasonably) understand most things going on. While there's some continuity and plot progression, the status quo is god.

because streaming wasn't a thing yet, you could only watch the show by jumping into whatever the fuck episode was playing. I doubt it played in order all the time. You just couldn't make a cartoon that had weeks upon weeks of plot developments and expect people to keep up.

The show is, in fact, meant for kids. While it does dive into some darker stuff (being ya know, a ghost show) its still going to be overly silly.

So while YEAH i'll complain about the very very shitty things the show did but I can't soley blame Fuckhateshitman for all of it. It's the restrictions it was made under + likely a lot more circumstances I don't understand. I am a hobbiest animator. I have no real world experience in the animation industry. I can critique the final product but I can never understand what shaped the cartoon. If shitheadmcgee wasn't involved and the studio gave the show more room + had you know, more POC and women on team + animation (even for kids) was respected more then who KNOWS what the show could of been! But like. its a 2000s show. It is what it is. I think the show has its good and bad and i'll harp a lot on the bad rn because I think its important to acknowledge especially to new people, but I do want to frame it by saying it really is the product of its time.

I want it to be better and I hope if it gets rebooted its better. We expect a lot more from cartoons now then we did then. (I know this was a long tangent + kinda over simplifying things but whatever, moving on.)

The (Ph)Fandom

19 years later and here we are. Enter the Phandom (called that before that phill and whoever used the term, idc i'm still going to use the term.) We, the fandom, almost completely just retconned the show's finale. (obviously SOME people still like it but its like. an incredibly small percentage) Like. we straight up pretend it didn't happen. i don't even want to get into it rn. It was SO BAD that the graphic novel that just released literally (spoilers) retconned everything about it aside from a ship pairing.

Anyway the Phandom- personally I think it goes a little TOO harsh in its angst. LIke, maybe a bit too much. But it DOES add nuance and explores the themes and lore that the show just flat out refused to engage with at all. It really digs into the premise of "hey wtf this 14 year is half dead. hello? hello??? thats fucked up.... lets explore that." and i'm here for it.

As long as its not like, masochistic and gratuitous for no real reason. 😬That is my biggest complaint with the fandom is that sometimes it goes over board.

But yeah outside of that, it can also be VERY silly so expect tonal whiplash here too! We got memes. We got fandom holidays and events. Whacky stuff.

OH AND OCs. We have fandom OCs like Wes. The best nonexistant character ever. Love that lil weirdo <3. His whole schtick was "What if Danny had another human villain? What if this random background classmate knew his secret and was trying to expose it?" and its spiraled from there. No one ever believes Wes and he's tortured by it. Some make him out to be a conspiracy nut while others make him more of a threat. (or a joke, as I do) Considering this show has a ghost-version of the Men in Black (Guys in White) conspiracy actually lines up accurately for what Wes does. And, you know. The Fenton's have a portal to the afterlife in their basement. Honestly pretty reasonable.

so like the fandom just kinda... picks and chooses the canon. It does have an edge of "we can do better" but in fairness, as I just discussed, there's an awareness that the version we make is not restricted by the environment the show was made under. I would hope most of the fandom understands this and doesn't say it in the sense of like "oh yeah I know better than professional writers and artists fuck the show 1000%" instead of acknowledging Yes He Fucking Sucks but its also more complicated. I don't want to foster an environment of superiority and disrespect to any media/creators (with exceptions ofc) cause. Jesus christ we live on the internet in 2023 you have to know why I feel this way by now.

Anyway with that in mind, I do think it's a positive thing! I mean, fuck, the show had no new content for almost 20 years I think its obvious by now we'd just make our own doll house out of it by now.

So yeah the Phandom is like this:

We're oddly consistent with the phandom lore we've built around from the canon's lore. We expand it, we make it more queer, we do our own thing. And I really enjoy it! I partake in it! It's pretty cool.

So while there's some merit to the OG show I would not recommend it on account of the amount of BS I mentioned at the start of the post. But I would recommend the fandom! As long as you got a strong black list with trigger warnings in place. Again, I think the fandom is a lil too gratuitous. But oh my god I love so much of what the fandom does. There's so many fics that just stick with me and (ha) haunt me. There's a reason I still come back after all these years. there are SO many good fics.

also the fandom got adopted by the DC fandom a year or two ago. personally i have to have like 80 tags blocked so i can even navigate the tag. Its not my thing but i'm happy people are having fun!!

[evorathesylvurr]

barks and bites and i need to share the hyperspecific lyrics in the angelacore playlist feel free to ignore

angelacore, which is a made up word i use a lot here, is my catchall word for anything that makes me think of Angela from Lobotomy Corporation/Library of Ruina.

do not expect in depth lyrical analysis on why a specific lyric makes me think of angela. this is me dropping a bunch of lyrics from 8 or 9 different songs and saying "see how this is the blue haired robot lady"

There are spoilers for both Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina.

for context: the angelacore playlist was something i started after listening to Language of the Lost by RIProducer which has the following lyrics

I don't need forgiveness I just wanna talk and for you to listen

I thought that I was safe, now I'll never be the same Tossed aside for making a scene Do I know who I pretend to be? Of whom am I a copy? Yes it made me who I am, but I'll never understand Why it had to happen to me

and heres a mix of chorus lines

On my knees, I try to crawl Fire breaking in the walls Calling out for somebody, knowing I'll get no reply

If I'm a robot or a doll Am I anything at all? Maybe a thing like me doesn't yet deserve to know

and the final chorus

Not robot nor a doll I'm not anything at all I'm just an entity finding out the way to go But these fingers and these palms Full of love despite the scars They show indisputably I have so much more to grow Oh, I can change, I can evolve I can get up when I fall I'll live contentedly, I don't need a reason why Standing tall and standing strong I have found where I belong In the arms of somebody, there is no more need to cry

the second song on the playlist is Pathological Facade by Ghost which. yeah. (cw for medicines and medical shit if you listen to it)

A year ago, I was told that I would be a miracle Something theoretical, I guess It's kinda like a psychedelic lie, and yet it tries to be A line between the villains and the rest Nostalgia from a wall of barricaded faded memories Impartial to the carnal scenery Apparently, guarantees are only found peripherally Drinking to a total mystery

Stars always watching from afar, turning who you are In the end, it left me delicately scarred beyond pathological facade Don't you find it odd? Secretarial speaking Go on, praise me like a god

(Stars always watching from afar, turning who you are is not really important to why its in the angelacore playlist but i included it because otherwise it felt weird)

Bye-bye-bye goes the time, turning on a dime Gone without a reason or a rhyme So flip a coin, let's rejoin our family in the mirror world Where everybody's crooked by design

A year ago, I was told that I would be a miracle Something theoretical, I guess It's kinda like a psychedelic lie, and yet it tries to be A line between the villains and the rest The Tower's gonna fall, and you'll silently rebuild it all Knowing someone else would be appalled You're crying as you call out Halt and move on without someone that you think a lot about

then we have fucking Hymn for a Scarecrow by Tally Hall which I have ALWAYS considered this song angelacore.

im gonna try not to post the entire fucking song but just trust me the entire song is angelacore, here is the bit that is MORE angelacore than the rest

You hang around for a living Somewhere between all the land and the sky Being by never forgiving Nobody knows you and neither do I Birds may believe at a distance You wear a grin and keep perfectly still Driven away with persistence I wonder if they have wondered or will ever wonder Ever wonder

Mother Earth's love whispered to me (and it wasn't her fault) Real is a feeling and feeling is real All of you are flowing through me But you wouldn't know how to fathom or feel When the wind blows The wind knows The wind knows Oh, scarecrow Maybe the wind knows Whether you wonder Who's calling your name Shame how nobody knows you Only who wonders if you are to blame

then we have the uncanny x deathbody mashup (gore art tw).

Attuned inside, alluded, denied I feel my breath pressed into contact Undo the seal, the vague and unreal I shouldn't pry, a child sighs and hides away

hold my hand even if i cry i need to feel like i'm human through you hold on tight till the tears run dry the things i see are a dread to undo

All this time, I've waited My death was recreated So this would last forever Accepting agony Cruel indifference, lonely sufferance Returning to a time when I was still alive

and yeah while more of this falls into uncanny i feel like deathbody fits any character who falls into the "i am a robot and yet i do not wish to be" trope (for me, deathbody is a five pebbles song)

talked about this one in the last post about the angelacore playlist but this specific lyrical cover of Satori Maiden ~ 3rd Eye

Stop— Every moment trapped in someone else’s hell: No love is unconditional where there is fear to be found. If that’s the case, then it may be just as well To hide it all away underground. Stop— Though I look away, I’ve seen it all before: Another ugly truth lies behind these cold, brittle locks. Dig even deeper; there must be something more: A last hope at the bottom of the box?

had to stop from posting the entire lyrics to this but GAH its so angelacore. why is angela and satori the same character (they are objectively NOT)

now we have hello world by Louie Zong, which is the shortest little song on the list, but its there.

Hello, world Programmed to work and not to feel Not even sure that this is real Hello, world

next there's JubyPhonic's cover of Dramaturgy

Knew it already fine, misery inside At myself, I would laugh, fallen down behind But I don't know a thing, love or losing, see? So I threw to the side any human in me If I live a lie of shallow words and empty replies "Then what am I?" Hitting the walls of a stage that I couldn’t break Then it stuck to my head, gotta run away Playing out like a scene, posing every lead Near the end of the show, waiting in the wing, see? Run to the front stage, you're all actors anyway No one to watch, you're all part of the play

There’s no one inside me There's no one that's hiding Always been me, empty, a body but nobody here to see

We were young, never bound by a single sin Til before we could see, we were monsters in skin But even if I had tried to move on why can't I leave my past? "Considering it's you, better give up soon" "Cause no matter what you do, you will always lose" And then I was alone way before I knew Blocking every little thought that I couldn't sit through All they want now is safety from what's around Waiting for help but never learning how

The world that I locked out is nowhere to find The people who mocked me are gone from my sight Emotions and feelings are useless to keep The tears that had fallen were not mine to mine weep The kindness and warmth, I can't feel them at all The hands that are offered, I'm scared that I’ll fall The hole dug inside me can't hold any love Instead, you can see me break down from above Hey, remember when you saw that they were nearing their end? And you looked like you were laughing at the pain they were in But what did you see? Oh, really what could it be Well, take a breath 'cause you'll need it, so c'mon, saying

overall the song is very angelacore (because of the whole concept of dramaturgical theory

then we have Dizzy Paranoia Girl by VocaloKAT.

Expectations high from the start I’ll just mess it up “Congratulations, you fell apart” Fuck, I messed it up! They tell me I just need to grow up But I know that they think that I’m not enough Pirouette your view and you’ll see There’s no cure for burnt out and naive

Spinning all around, I think I spun out My fault by default Thoughts racing up and down, oh what to do now? Follow protocol But I hate this, I don’t wanna play ball I just wanna end this once and for all

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Laugh through every day No matter what I do, nobody has a clue, life’s always been this way I hate hate hate hate this arbitrary game No matter what you heard, you’ll never hear the words nobody dares to say

Stab me with an IV But I know you won’t protect me And I can’t keep on ignoring When you make me wanna bleed Cynicism inbound Common sense nowhere to be found I’ll bottle up the thought that I'd be better off left underground

Think I’m at the end of a road traveled far too long And I keep screaming out the lyrics of this idiotic song Hate me just because I never wanna play along But I don’t wanna live a life where I live in the wrong

and finally, Left Behind Generation by VocaloKAT (s//cide tw according to vocaloid lyrics wiki)

Playing pretend, praying that one day this will end All of us already know the support’s for show, and they all let go Maybe one day, one day We won’t have to take our mistakes to the grave Give your heart and your soul, down to the bone, just to fight alone

So tell us How can we keep on living life? As every other person passes by We cross our hearts and hope to die another million times And if all of the effort was in vain If nothing was ever worth the pain We’ll try again Until the end

So tell me Why I should keep on living life While every other person passes by I’ll cross my heart and hope to die another million times And if all of the effort was in vain If nothing was ever worth the pain We'll sit and obey just to get thrown away

thats everything on the playlist right now. maybe one day I'll do a more in depth lyrical analysis on why these specific lyrics but. i am going to go insane if i do not post this soon.

[niredsw]

so uhhh im bored af and i feel like i should make people know about this not that i think anyone cares about my life but here ya go rin lore everyone!

TW: mention of abuse, rape, and a lot of religious trauma

i apologize for the spelling mistakes from the start, i wont care about them rn

so yeah, lets start with my parents

mom: she grew up in a toxic abusive religious household where my grandpa was rarely home, she was the middle child of 4 siblings (the smallest ones are twins) and was literally the 'only good child of the pack'. my big aunt cant even take care of herself and she has 2 chlidren, she recently divorced her husband and is on the way of becoming an alcoholic. my uncle was praised by my grandma his entire life because he is 'the only son' and is nothing but a spoiled brat whos children are also problematic af. my little aunt is the only one i love and she has a daughter (deniz, my fav cousin) and an adopted daughter from her husbands ex-marriage, shes sweet and i dont believe how she survived in that family.

grandma, shes the worst. one day mom and her sibling were all in my big aunts house and i was sitting with them, they talked about how grandma beat them up daily because of the smallest things, the clothes she hang up to dry didnt dry on time? she beat up one of her kids (not my uncle, if i may add) i was terrified when i heard that about her and im not seeing her the same anymore. mom got married at 21 just to escape from that house and she ended up being the only child thats living in the same city as grandma. grandma also manipulated me my whole childhood, telling me i should be a good muslim and get hijabed at 12 when i first got my period, teaching me things most muslim people didnt even know their whole life when i was only 7, telling me men are always right and i should just obey what they say yada yada ya, she still treats me like her personal servant and keeps telling thing like "you look like a whore in that shorts" and shit, idc anymore but growing up with it is not very helpful tbh

so, mom beating me up when shes angry is not because shes abusive, its the only way she learned and shes not strong enough to break the cycle, so dont get angry at her its not her fault

dad: tbh i dont know if dad had gone throught anything like mom but his family is full of relative marriages and his uncle (whos 64) has a child as my age, she went to a mental asylum because of her father and just got out a few days ago, if i may add, his uncles suck but my grandma is the only normal one (and the only, oldest girl) among 5 siblings so i think thats pretty lucky, but growing up in a neighbourhood full of those kind of people definitely affected him and it shows over the years

yea well now its my time i guess

i was a bad child. i did some bad things. i swear i did it all for fun and it meant nothing

OKAY sorry sorry this is not it im not jojo siwa in a disguise (or i am?)

so, i had a pretty good childhood, if you ignore all of these things;

my family went in a hella dept because of my uncle (i told you hes a piece of shit) and we were always very careful with money, my parents tried to make it up to me and my sis with a lot of things but it did affected us

i dont know how we ended up in that debt but we sold our house and coffe shop so we could pay it, i was 8 when it all happened and i dont really remember most of it

my voice thingy and all of those health problems, i lose my hearing from time to time, have a genetical heart disease thingy, yada yada ya i am not gonna list all of them, lets just say after i was 6 i knew everyone in that hospital i was going practically 3 times a week

also i was the top student in primary school, the first one to learn how to read in my class and was practically a gifted child before i burn out but i dont care about that shit anymore im already a pretty big failure

then, we moved to my current city

4th grade was shit, my teacher didnt even care about her students, it was so easy to eb the top of my class but that school was really shitty, a pedophile teacher, who tried to rape and would do if i didnt kick his balls, a psycho kid in my sis's class that was sent to kids jail in 2nd grade, basically, shithole.

then i won a scholarship from my current school and i've been there for 5 years now, gonna start my 2nd year of highschool in a few weeks

i dont talk about middle school because that shit was crazy but also pretty boring at the same time, so yeah i think thats the rin lore? idk? nobody needs to amswer or say anything i just wanted to share it here so i dont have to explain it every time something bad happens to me

[not-souleaterpost]

ENTP CRONA DUMP

Not going back on my word, just forgot to post a dump of "ENTP Crona" stuff I planed to just post all at once in a year, but after trying to stop doing stuff like that, I just thought I post what I had and be done with it.

, the thing even I don't really find funny, but I think I have to do it to get it out and book end it. A lot of it isn't really funny, some of it may sound a bit edgy or abrasive, but it's just in good fun, still putting it under the "keep reading thing" because of the amount and shittyness of the "content" Enjoy or yeah...sorry

ENTP Crona experiencing a soul rejection, screaming in agony because of not being able to deal with figuring out if "video games are art" or "video games aren't art" is the more contrarian oppinion at the moment

ENTP Crona reading shizophrenia symptoms on google "Wow, he is literally me"

ENTP Crona fleeing into the desert, going down a hole to cry

Ragnarok "Wait, the cow already killed Medusa a year ago, why we doing this bitch shit again?"

ENTP Crona "I posted a deliberately controversial and edgy meme into the group chat again, when they all see it, I wont be able to deal with how angry everyone will be..."

Soul: "You cant just nonstop spam shit on the internet, people will think you don't have a life"

ENTP Crona: "But I kinda don't..."

Soul: "Still writting on every single subject for 10 hours straight must be tiring and exhaustive, take a break"

ENTP Crona: "But I wrote everything in the last 5 minutes

Soul: "Heh, dont like partys either? Guess reading the room can be stressful even for somebody as cool as me sometimes-"

ENTP Crona "No, I can read it just fine, just then choose to say the thing that sets the roof on fire and regret it five seconds later.

ENTP Crona trying to figure out if Maka subscribes to the theory that Holden is a child abuser himself in "The Catcher in the Rye", only if yes, to arguee that not even the creep teacher was one and it is a misreading, and its actually about idk, read it in school so cant even come up with an explantion.

ENTP Crona trying to cheer up a crying Maka, after she got made fun of for liking bad music by Soul

"No, I like Speeding bullet 2 heaven too! Well except the Beavis and Butthead skits, even I am not that contrarian"

ENTP Crona curled up in the corner of the dark dungeon, not able to face the world, cause liking Ringo Star is to mainstream now but changing to hating him is just too painful...

ENTP Crona after everyone gets confronted with their lives just being fiction

"Well actually I prefere the anime ending"

But after mostly everyone agrees

"But, actually the manga works in a certain way afterall-"

ENTP Crona during the anime only scene where Maka and Crona talk about Maka's mom - its the same scene lol, remember those 4th wall breaking snide comments Crona barely managed to not blabber out loud lol

ENTP Crona "Marvel movies were allways bad"

Marie "Oh you aren't dumb and incompetent!"

ENTP Crona "Why did it took me 8 hours to put together the IKEA table?"

Marie "Oh dont be to hard on yourself, screwing in the table legs upside down could happen to anybody!"

Maka confronting Medusa: I'm here to save ENTP Crona and Mary!

Medusa: Nah, they both are still stuck in the maze going in circles

ENTP Crona after a tourist asks for directions in Death City: "I'll be honest, even though I am living here for years now, I myself cant deal finding my home without google maps"

ENTP Crona "I'm the Joker, baby! (Jared Leto version)"

ENTP Crona "-oh so a glorbo, or smol bean, cinamon bun is a charachter like Paulie from the Sopranos!"

ENTP Crona after trying to read "Finnegans Wake" "Damn, thats how high I still have to climb..."

ENTP Crona watching X:RA "Wow, I actually get 90 percent of the wordplay! This show is great!"

MGMT Patty : "Time to pretend..."

*ENTP Crona visualising all the different ways to take out and kill the people around*

Ragnarok "And I thought I was the psychopath! We aren't even eating souls anymore, whats guipi wrong with you?

ENTP "Grocery shopping is boring and I thought about the 3 different storys I'll never write down enough for one hour..."

ENTP Crona "-and that's why the metodology that is used to diagnose diseases by only relying on a checklist of data points that may have many different origin points is flawed

Stein "I am the doctor with 10 years experience, take your antibiotics prescription and get out!"

Stein, litting a cigarete after ENTP Crona goes out after apologising "Damn, the kid may be right, shit..."

ENTP Crona be like "Actually, I think Epstein is still alive"

ENTP Crona "Yeah Myerrs brigs and Horrorscopes are the same... Because they both actually are describing something and aren't completly wrong, if you know you know...

ENTP Crona actually getting a tatoo even though it is a stupid thing to do in general, because thats the only way to remember Maka's birthday. Cause aint nobody remembering more than 4 digits...

ENTP Crona using all experience and time to reflect, to start a dramatic uplifting speech that leads into Maka defeating the Kishin with a punch- Ah wait thats just what happened in the anime again lol

ENTP Crona: "I wore a dress for most of my life, yet that is not as embarassing as riding on an electric scooter"

ENTP Crona "Oh ofcourse I'm to scatterbrained and lazy to actually finish a webcomic, that's why I included an in universe callout by a charachter, so I will stay motivated out of spite and want of being better than those, proving the mean pixels wrong!"

ENTP Crona: -the setting being the aftermath of a nuclear testing site is a brilliant synedoche of our society pre and post world war 2, how the atomic age is nearly unrecognisable, being both so much more advanced that previous incarnations do not even look human in retrospect, while exagerating ourselfs into cartoon versions of ourselfs do to paranoia and stereotypes, shared faster and faster, that we soak up like Sponges, being the perfect worker and consumer in one - in a way thats Rock Bottom, the breakdown of communication, only restored by recognising the humanity of the other, even if they look at us with even more potent disgust than we already do.

Maka: Wait, I thought these iceberg videos were just supposed to list of fun facts and triva about Spongebob

ENTP Crona: What gave you that idea, Maka?

TERF Maka: I STILL hate J K Rowling

EC: "Borat is racist-"

M: "No the joke is that he exposes the prejudices of the common american person-"

EC "against Kazakhstanis"

M: "No no- wait... you are right..."

EC: "If MF Ghost was with the culture, it would have used Phonk instead of Eurobeat"

EC: "Where the fuck is Marioh Judah?"

*EC annoys excalibur into quitting*

EC :"Im like prince, everybody thinks In gay but actually im homophobic-"

EC: "Non-cellular phones actually had their purpose - like if somebody called them, you would either know nobody is home, or the person who answered could either inform you where the one you are calling is if you didnt reach the person or just find them - also the fact it was in the same spot ment nobody lost it and could allways find it when needed and it never ran out of battery, also-"

M: "If you don't like the phonecase I gifted you just say so...

R: "Dude, dont we still use mirrors for comunication"

EC "Think Im constrained by the limitations of canons?"

TRAD Tsubaki "Well they didn't make a sign of the cross in the church, so they kinda deserved being slayn by Ragnarok..."

M "Hey you are looking down, everything ok?

EC "Thanks for caring, but the thing is, to explain it all, all the connections and reasons and evidence would make me just look more weird and whiny, and this all, including the fact that I cant even say why I cant say without being whiny and long winged is part of it...

EC "I used trouble not descending into negative loops of self pity and disgust with myself and the world... But then I just developed a hyperfixation on not-having-hyperfixations"

???? Death: IDK

EC *reading the bible* "It even predicted people obssesing over lolcows with the whole golden calf story, damn...

EC: Rip Kissinger

EC: Slouching? No, I'm just posture-divergent

EC: I do love myself - one has to love even their biggest enemy...

EC in the future:

M: Are you really ready for children?

EC: I accidentally watched a trailer for despicable me 4, and after hearing all the pandering 80s song and repetitive family hinjix humor I just thought "Oh, how cozy would this be to watch with my Kids and Wife!"

So yeah, I CAN deal with it

[your-local-grubdog]

Together in the Storm Chapter 8: Flashback, The Gardens

Story Summary: Olimar is back home once again, ready to rest and recuperate from everything that had happened. Yet the universe keeps throwing unwanted surprises his way, making rest difficult. He just wants to make his (now rather large) family believe that he’ll be okay. Because he is, for he has to be.

Chapter Summary: Olimar's first date with Rose.

Read on Ao3 here or keep reading below!

======

Roughly 20 years ago...

As usual, Olimar felt like utter shit.

He plopped down on his futon, which was currently in bed mode. He barely had anything to his name in this little apartment, all of it of questionable quality. He got this futon from a yard sale, using it only after he had sufficiently soaked the damn thing in bed bug killer. He was still worried it may be a bit of a fire hazard as a result, but he couldn't do much. His dinky little TV was scrounged from a thrift store, costing less than a poko and barely working as a result, its antenna salvaged from his employer's scrap yard. Only the living room was furnished, his bedroom empty. All of his kitchen utensils were from the poko store and already falling apart...

He was alive, though. That was something.

He wasn't sure how thankful he was for that, though.

He was glad that he was given him a few months longer to stay home, to save up and get what little he did have. Maybe it was a sign that Taurus didn't completely hate him after all, at least not enough to happily leave him homeless... he didn't like calling Taurus by his first name like that. It felt wrong, rude even, but he wasn't sure what else to call him. The man certainly was no father.

Desperately wanting to think about anything other than work or that man, he reached for and grabbed his half-busted PDA (also salvaged from the scrap yard, its repairs hobbled together), turning it on. He didn't do too much online but there was one site he liked checking on every now and again. It let him see what precious few free events the city was hosting, providing him with some much needed time out of the apartment that wasn't work related.  After scrolling past countless posts he could care less about, he eventually saw something that caught his eye.

The community gardens have been set up at long last! Volunteers wanted to help us grow flowers, fruits, and vegetables for everyone to enjoy!

At the bottom was an address to where the gardens were, at the heart of a nearby community park.

Gardening... yeah, I can do that. Really, all of his knowledge was pure book knowledge. He had no actual experience in it yet. But hey, no time like the present, right? Sitting up and putting the PDA aside to charge, he decided to head out right away.

======

It turned out that the "volunteer" position was very lax and unofficial, not unless you needed community service hours for one reason or another. Olimar didn't, so he was pretty much free to come and go as he pleased. That was perfectly fine for him - preferable, actually, as he was still getting a feel for his new job and wasn't sure how much time or energy he'd usually have.

So after being handed some seeds and told where they were to be planted, he was more or less just let loose. He ended up spending more time than he expected there, coming back day after day to do many random tasks. There were days he missed, of course, but he was finding himself enjoying this far more than he expected. Which made him feel happier overall. It wasn't perfect - he still lived in that shitty and much too expensive apartment, eating whatever cheap junk he could afford and not burn to a crisp, all while cleaning offices and freight ships for ungrateful superiors for a living and trying to learn mechanics from a rather impatient man. But he didn't feel complete dread when waking up now, he had something to look forward too.

Most of the garden was still very much seeds and sprouts, nothing more. But there were a few full plants brought in, mostly flowers. So, one day, he decided to go ahead and prune the plants. Weirdly enough, he might enjoy this task the most. It was the most meditative, giving him brain space to let his mind wander as he hunted down wilted flowers. So meditative, in fact, that when someone beside him offered a quiet "hello", he flinched from surprise. "Huh? Oh, h-hi!"

The young woman was around his age, with curly reddish brown hair and fur slightly darker than his own. She wore a little bit of make up, just lipstick and eyeshadow from what Olimar could tell, and a pale blue sundress. "Ah, sorry. I just couldn't help but notice how often you came here, I just wanted to say hi. It has been a while, hm?"

"It-It's okay." Olimar stuttered out. After a slight pause so he could process what he was hearing, he rather awkwardly asked "W-what do you mean by "a while"?"

"Oh, I guess you wouldn't recognize me now." The woman laughed as she spoke. "We went to high school together, shared a few classes. We never got to talk too much - probably because I was so scary." That last part was said teasingly, though Olimar still wasn't sure who she was. He only realized who she was when she said her name. "I'm Rose. Rose Tailer-Atwood."

Images of an older teen in punk attire filled his mind, the girl who didn't take shit from anyone and was most certainly the second most terrifying person in that school (the first being some old math teacher infamous for being unnecessarily rude and short-fused with the students). The girl he ran from when she saved him because his dumb ass didn't know what else to do. She was now here, in the gardens, in a modest and very quiet attire suited for a visit to the temple.

"Oh - OH! S-Sorry I uh didn't - yeah, er... s-sorry for darting off after y-you helped me."

"No need to be sorry. I know I was rather intense back then, and that you were... or rather, still are rather timid." She chuckled again. "I'm just glad to see you again."

That made Olimar's brain short circuit. "T-T-To see... me?"

Rose nodded, now examining the work Olimar had done. "Always tried to talk to you, never was able to for one reason or another."

Olimar felt like time was moving differently. He couldn't tell if it was faster or slower or impossibly both, but he didn't quite feel... here, not fully. "Is - is that why you... helped me?"

Rose nodded. "Well, yes. But I would have regardless, you know. They could have seriously hurt you."

"Eh, t-they were just bullies..."

At that, Rose frowned and looked at him again. "Firstly, even that's still a big deal. I know they get downplayed a lot but bullies can mess you up. And secondly, they weren't "just bullies". They... could've done a lot worse."

At that, Olimar looked away. "R-Right, sorry..."

Rose sighed, now gently reaching out to touch his arm. "Hey, it's alright. You're okay now, yeah?"

Define "okay", Olimar thought bitterly, though he said nothing.

"And like I said, I am glad to finally get to talk to you. May I ask what you've been up to?"

"Oh, ah, just work." Olimar shrugged. "Uh, y-you?"

"Trying to find work." she sighed. "Turns out employees don't particularly like punks, only reason I'm wearing this dinky thing and not my jacket."

Oh, that made a lot of sense. Slowly and very awkwardly, Olimar offered a quiet "W-Well it... still looks nice. O-o-on you, I mean. Uh..." What are you doing what are you thinking what are you doing what are you DOING you are out of your league, what are you DOING?!

Rose didn't answer immediately, though she did smile softly. "That's sweet of you, thank you."

Olimar only managed to nod.

"May I see those?" Rose asked, looking at the clippers in Olimar's hands. He silently handed them over and watched as she continued the pruning task he had stopped in order to talk to her. "So, where do you work, hm?"

"H-Ho..." He stuttered, finding it difficult to talk. "Hoco - Hoco.. tate f-freight. I, uh, I-I clean. N-n-nothing great b-but..."

"It's important." Rose finished for him, though that wasn't what Olimar was going to say. "Very important, actually. I know you must hate it, but I think it's great that you're doing it."

"T-t-thanks."

Rose looked over to him with a soft, if worried smile. "Now, would you like to work together to prune these bushes?"

"Y-Yes, please."

======

The two of them stayed quiet for the most part as they worked, though Rose would occasionally ask questions or make comments that Olimar would struggle to reply to. Olimar's head felt foggy, anxiety eating away at his chest as he just... struggled to exist. Not in a way he was used to either, this felt different. He still felt compelled to keep trying despite the fact he desperately wished he'd just shut up for once and stop embarrassing himself. Though, Rose never seemed to mind. Her demeaner stayed calm, her voice sweet and gentle. At worst, she'd get a little worried about him. She was kind, and patient, and Olimar liked being around her. He just didn't like being himself.

Despite of and yet also because of this weird flurry of emotions, when Rose said that it was getting late and that she had to head home, he hastily offered to go with her.

"Go with me?"

"Y-Yeah, y'know... uh, walk... walk with you. M-Make sure you get home okay..."

Rose smiled softly at that. "Ah, I drove here. But you can walk with me to my car, if you wish."

Olimar nodded quickly and silently. He stayed by Rose's side as she walked back to her car, unsure of what the hell he was even doing. He felt so lost and confused and just...

"Hey, think you'll be back here at the gardens?"

"Huh?" Olimar was snapped out of his train of thought. "Oh, uh, yeah! I-I like to hang around here."

"So I'll see you again?"

Olimar felt himself flushing up, which for a Hocotation also included his fur fluffing up a bit. "I-I-I mean... If - If that's what you w-want."

Rose let out a chuff this time, only making poor Olimar fluff up even worse. "Of course. It was nice to finally get to talk to you, after all of this time. I'd love to keep it up."

"S-So I wasn't..." he bit his cheek. Don't say that, idiot. "T-Thank you. B-But there's uh -" he trailed off then, biting his cheeks down harder. WHAT are you doing?!

Rose tilted her head, frowning a bit. "But...?"

Well, fuck. There was no way out of this now. "B-But there's... there's better p-places to, uh, hang out. Than, you know, t-the gardens."

At that, Rose relaxed and smiled. "Oh, of course. Perhaps we can grab a bite to eat tomorrow for lunch."

"O-Oh! Uh, yeah - yeah, that... s-sounds good. M-Maybe at the c-café around the corner?" It wasn't super cheap, but he liked to treat himself when he could. This seemed like a fair reason to spend a little more then he probably should.

Rose giggled a bit at that. "Alright, it's a date then."

Olimar just nodded, not fully processing what was said. It was only after she had gotten in her car and drove away that it finally hit the young man.

"It's a what?!?"

======

Olimar felt like he had a huge pit in his stomach the next day as he stood in the mirror, getting dressed for his date.

He was so so so nervous, he felt sick. His stomach twisted and churned and he felt slightly light headed. He didn't know what the fuck he was doing. Looking around, he knew that this wasn't going to end well for him. If she ever saw this place, she'd know how pathetic he was. For a start, he lived on his own without a shred of inheritance - a great shame on Hocotate. A huge red flag to most as well, not caring for your family. Even if said family never gave you the option to... He was also dirt fucking poor, couldn't take care of her or any of her family, assuming she was the heir. And he was a slob, hardly having the energy to cook or clean after a day of work and being fucking miserable.

All of that is assuming you don't scare her off by how fucking annoying you are, Olimar. He felt even more sick; that voice didn't sound like his own. He knew he shouldn't give the guy any more thought, but... Taurus was right. You shouldn't go. Just stay home. Don't bother trying. What are you hoping to achieve? Why are you working so hard for a world that doesn't want you?

Why are you still alive?

An alarm sound from his PDA jolted him out of his spiral. He needed to walk out the door now if he wanted to be on time. Hastily, he finished tying his tie and slipped on some shoes.

He had nothing better to do, he supposed.

... And he awfully liked Rose's warm smile. As selfish as it was, he wanted to keep seeing it for as long as she'd tolerate him for.

======

Olimar's heart was practically threatening to burst from his chest as he made his way to the café. It was sparely populated, just a few people eating and drinking. Nervously, he found a comfy looking spot near a window. It was slightly warm here, which felt nice. A waiter came over to ask him if he wanted anything, and he declined "I-I'll order in a... A bit, I'm j-just waiting on someone."

He didn't know how much time had passed, to be frank. Everything felt like it was going much too fast yet much too slow at the same time. He looked up whenever he heard someone coming or going, growing nervous whenever it wasn't Rose.

Of course you got stood up, look at yourself. You'd just be a waste of her time, sitting there stuttering like an idiot. She's not coming. No one is coming. You're trapped in that hellish, rickety tower of an apartment complex. No one will wan-

"Olimar!" Someone called, jolting him out of his thoughts. He looked up, feeling relieved yet also more nervous to see it was Rose. She scurried over, taking a seat in front of him. "I'm so sorry, traffic was a little hectic on the way here. You didn't wait too long, did you?"

Olimar could only shake his head. He had no idea how long he's been sitting there, to be perfectly honest.

"Okay, okay good." She sighed, fiddling with her dress a bit. It was a bright, peppy yellow, though she did have a black leather jacket over top it. She was also wearing two small sun-shaped earrings.

She's really pretty, Olimar thought, flushing up slightly.

"This is a really cute little café you've picked out. I always drive by it, but I've never stopped by."

"It's - it's good. They make t-the best cookies."

At that Rose raised her eyebrows, her smile morphing into a slight smirk. "Ah, I see... I'll have to try them."

Olimar, once again, was only capable of nodding. Come on you idiot, you have to say SOMETHING. Thankfully, the waiter came to save him, asking what they wanted.

"Oh, t-the pita falafel sandwich, please. A-And a cup of mint tea." Olimar managed out.

Rose hummed as she looked over the menu in a slight rush. "I'll take the panini-pressed grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, with a cup of coffee." When the waiter nodded and left the two alone again, she whispered in a soft voice "So is that one any good? It was just the first item I saw."

"Oh - oh we could have waited to order if-"

She shook her head. "It's fine. I was late."

Olimar fiddled with his thumbs a bit. "O-Okay... Uh, yeah, I've always liked all their stuff, so... Y-yeah."

Rose nodded, smiling softly. "I take it you come here often?"

He nodded. "Y-Yeah, when I can. I-It's - it's a five m-minute wa..." He trailed off then, stomach twisting. No, no he couldn't just tell her that he lived in the city. Then she'd know he lived alone, with no inheritance. Only assholes ended up like that.

... And people like him, he presumed.

"Five minute... walk?" Rose asked, a brow raised.

Gods fucking dammit, he ran his mouth too much and now he was in a corner. He couldn't lie - she'd find out eventually, and the mere thought of it made his anxiety spike more. Clenching his hands a bit, he quietly admitted "A - A five minute walk f-from my apartment."

He couldn't read any reaction from her, which just made him more anxious. After a pause she smiled and nodded at him. "Must be convenient, hm?"

"... Y-yeah."

"I'm quite impressed that you manage out here, cost of living in the city is rather high from what I hear."

"It - It is..." She was impressed?! Olimar struggled to believe it, maybe she was just trying to be nice? "W-What about where y-you are?" That's a stupid fucking question. Of course it's much better there.

"Reasonable enough. I still live in Teno, where we went to school together."

Olimar was certain that he'd just die right then and there from how tight his chest felt. Thankfully, though, their food had arrived. Olimar could feel his stomach growl as the smell reached his nose - Oh, I forgot to eat breakfast again - and so after thanking the waiter he went ahead and took a quick bite. He then paused, hoping he didn't look like a slob or glutton, but Rose had begun to eat as well.

"Oh, this is good. Thank you." She smiled softly again.

Olimar nodded, trying to smile as well. "O-Of course." An awkward pause, then, "T-The best t-thing they have are... are the p-peanut butter chocolate cookies."

That seemed to gain her attention. "Oh?"

"Think - t-the simple peanut b-butter cookie recipe. Peanut butter, eggs, and s-sugar." He shuffled around awkwardly, though he tried his best to not seem so nervous. "Now a-add chocolate chips."

"Oh, that sounds so good. Simple, but sweet."

"I-I can get - get us some... W-When we're done with o-our lunch."

She nodded eagerly. "I may also have to try making some at home, I'm sure my little sister would adore them."

Olimar's ears wiggled. Should he ask about the cooking or her sister...? He really really didn't want to risk a transition into his own family troubles, so instead he asked "Do you - you like to c-cook?"

"I like it well enough." She shrugged. "It's something to be done - but it needs done, so I may as well try to enjoy it! Really, I mostly just like it when my sister gets excited when I cook." She then laughed a bit, the sound making Olimar flush up a bit.

"S-she sounds - sounds n-nice."

"Oh she's the sweetest little thing. When she wants to be." Rose laughed more then, and Olimar could feel a rather goofy grin spread across his face. "I adore her. Do you..." She then trailed off a bit, pausing. After a moment she asked "What do you like to do, then?"

She knew not to ask about his family. Olimar wasn't sure how he felt about it, equal parts relief and terror washing over him. "W-Well, gardening... For - for one." He said rather lamely, messing with his shirt sleeve. "Uh, I like - like biology. I've been - b-been trying to ID some n-native species."

Her ears wiggled at that. "Oh! That's really cool, actually. Not to put you on the spot, but..." She pointed out the window. "Do you know what that butterfly there is called?"

Olimar turned to it and immediately his eyes went wide. "Oh - oh! There's one in the city - I never thought -!" His oddly longish tail began to loudly thump against the wall, though he didn't seem to notice. "That's a Ruby Hocotation Monarch! They have these beautiful red shimmering wings - " he pointed at the resting insect "- in order to signal to predators that they're poisonous! The caterpillars are similarly poisonous, and also rather pointy. Lots of spikes on them. They're endangered, though, due to habitat loss. I never thought one could do so well in the city, I-" he then froze, panic gripping him. He nervously turned to Rose, his ears pinned back and his tail still again. "A-Ah - sorry, I-"

She reached across the small table to touch his arm, making him flush up again. "It's alright, there's no need to be sorry." She smiled wide, though something about her expression told Olimar she was worried. "You can keep going, it's really interesting."

Olimar felt his fur fluff up more as he blushed hard. "Y-You sure?"

She nodded, then, "Why couldn't they do well in the city?"

"T-Their poison isn't - isn't inherent to them." He began, shuffling slightly. "They need t-to make it as caterpillars. They do so by eating a very specific and evidently very fickle plant. It's also, uh, the only one they can eat. There's so many things about the city that makes it nearly impossible to grow, so the caterpillars have no food, and thus there are no butterflies." He turned back to it, only to find it had flown away. "Maybe that one is here by mistake. Or maybe it's a good sign?" He shrugged, smiling nervously. "Either way I'm - I'm glad I got to see it."

Rose had pulled back a bit now, though she still kept a few fingers on his arm. "Poor things... Guess they gotta make it out here one way or another, though. That one is certainly a little fighter, if nothing else."

Olimar paused for a long moment. He then nodded in agreement. "Yeah..."

They stayed quiet for a few moments longer, eating and staring out the window. It didn't feel awkward, though, just... Blissful, in a way. Olimar loved it; he never wanted it to end. Though eventually they finished their food, and Olimar offered to get them some dessert.

"Sure." Rose hummed. "I'll try those cookies you had mentioned."

It wasn't much longer until they had a small plate of them to share. Rose's eyes went wide in delight as she took a bite out of one. "Oh my good Go- this is amazing!"

Olimar nodded. "S-So much with so l-little..."

"Yeah, I'm absolutely making some. Lilly would go nuts over this."

"I-I'm glad you l-like them." He picked one up to take a bite out of as well. "They're - they're my favorite." He shuffled in place awkwardly again, though he tried to smile.

Rose smiled back, gently brushing over his hand now (which really caused the poor man to loose composure quickly). She then glanced up at the clock and sighed.

"I'm so sorry, my being late has really cut our date short. I'm afraid I'll have to get going now."

"O-Oh - okay." Olimar tried not to let his ears lean back too much. "L-Let me go and p-pay our bill then-"

"Oh you don't have to. We can split it."

Olimar shook his head. "N-No this... Is - is my treat. I picked - picked it out."

Rose paused then before sighing rather dramatically. "Fine. But next time is my treat, then."

Next time. Olimar was too tight chested to argue, simply nodding instead. The two of them stood up together, Olimar heading over to pay the bill. He then walked out with Rose, still nervous as all hell.

"S-So will I see you at the gardens, then?" Olimar asked.

Rose smiled a bit before chuckling. "Yeah. I'm usually there every weekend, though I won't be there tonight. Want to plan our next date when we meet up there again?"

Olimar nodded eagerly at that, immediately feeling silly for it. Rose simply smiled in response, though, even leaning in to gently kiss his cheek. "I'll see you then, okay?"

Olimar had frozen completely. He managed to let out a little "O-Okay." But as Rose turned to leave he was left standing there, his fur fluffed up as if he had just used a hair dryer. His tail had even began to wag again.

I'm going to get to see her again!

[riversidewings]

"Living Ghosts" #8: "Blessing from Distant Gods"

From my reparenting series "Living Ghosts." In which a trans lesbian combat doll, reunited with and reparenting her younger self, takes the girl to her home shrine, and talks about belonging, liberation, and finding her place in the world. Because she was a blessing from the start, the girl receives a nickname with a powerful meaning.

A story:

The girl looked up at the tall stone torii with its dimmed scars of long-ago wartime fires. In the shadow of the cryptomeria trees and the mighty weeping-cherry with its broad branches, her eyes were wide, mouth agape in stunned silence.

Beside her, the middle-aged cyborg she would become, smiled knowingly. "You feel it, don't you?"

The girl nodded. "What...what is it?"

"What you always knew was missing, all those years in church."

"It's just....here," the girl gasped, gesturing with a sweep of the hand. "It's here. It's now. I feel it. I didn't...I didn't have to force it!"

"It's a relief, isn't it?" the combat doll replied. "Like..."

"...coming home."

"Exactly. And it changed everything, when I came here the first time, all those years ago." She gestured up the hill, up the long, steep rise of stone steps. "C'mon, kiddo. Let's start heading up."

Under the weeping-cherry, over the bridge, they started up the ancient steps worn with weather and war and time. The cyborg slowed her stride. Here, and with her younger self, a slower pace was preferable.

"The...the grade of the hill, um...it makes me think of that time in the Sea of Marmara," the girl observed, gesturing up to the hill's apex. "You remember, right?"

The combat doll chuckled. "Oh yeah. The sudden donkeys. That and the smell."

"Oh, the smell that day..."

"Don't worry, though," the combat doll reassured the girl. "There aren't going to be any sudden donkeys this time. This isn't the ass end of nowhere on an island without paved roads."

Little by little, the city's sounds grew distant. In the trees that surrounded the stone steps, there came the chirr of crickets and the sounds of birdsong.

For awhile, they walked in silence. The moment, the steps, the sacred quiet. It was enough.

"Can you...can you tell me more about this place?"

"This is a shrine to the kami of battle," the combat doll gestured. "This is my home shrine, but it was at another shrine to her that...I found what I...we...were looking for. Well, one thing we were looking for."

"...she?" asked the girl, perking up.

"It's...complicated. But yes. To me, she's a mother figure. And a reminder that my gods are my neighbors. So if my gods are my neighbors, and the kami of battle exhorts me to get back up and keep caring for my community-- keep fighting for it-- then that means I need to be more mindful of my place in the world and how interconnected I am with everyone and everything else."

They paused to wash at the purification basin, just under the apex of the hill, in sight of the upper torii and the stone cat guardians that flanked the path.

"That's...good..." the girl offered, lips pursed in contemplation. "But it sounds like you feel as small as I do sometimes."

"I guess that's true, honey," the cyborg admitted, setting the freshly rinsed wooden ladle back in place. "But you know how that feeling, especially in church, always seems like you're a fuckup to the community *and* its god?"

The girl frowned a little. "Yeah?"

"That's less the case for me. I may be small in the grand scheme of things, but I have my place in it. I...we...have our place, and our gods share this world with us, they laugh and cry and drink and shit and fight and dream just like us. It's not lonely at all. It's like coming home. And then when I'm done here, I go back out into the world, and my faith is my own damn business and I don't have to put on a show of devotion for anyone." She paused, nodded slowly. "It's...a blessing."

"Wow..."

The cyborg contemplated the once invisible girl she'd been, now so much more confident in herself, standing in the sunshine filtering through the trees. The half-unzipped hoodie she wore surmounted a now well-worn tank top and skirt, chosen rather than imposed. All in all, the girl carried herself more proudly, more freely. It had been a strange journey, but a welcome one that had benefited them both.

"Hey, kiddo?"

"Yeah?"

"I asked awhile back, but...how're you feeling about a nickname?"

"I'm okay with it, coming from you," the girl blushed. "...did you have one in mind?"

"Well, this is Kameoka Hachiman Shrine-- "Turtle Hill" Hachiman-- and there's a very old phrase from the days of turtle shell divination that goes 'Toho Kami Emi Tame.' There isn't an agreed upon translation, because it's so old, but one of the common ones goes 'May the distant gods bless us.' You're a blessing and you always were, even if the people who should've understood that first, failed you so profoundly. So how would you feel about the nickname Emi-- "blessing"?"

"...whoa...isn't that the chant from Ghost in the Shell?"

"...kid, I'm trying to have a moment with you here," the cyborg laughed. "But yes, that's the same phrase."

The girl thought about it, glancing up the remaining steps to the shrine hall. "I like it. You...you sure make me /feel/ like a blessing, Mom."

The cyborg who after everything had become another mother to her younger self across the decades, nodded in approval. Her eyes were cloudy with tears.

"C'mon. Let's pay our respects to Hachiman-sama, and I can tell you all about this place."

//end//

[vampyc]

am i a little late ? yeah . but wrapped !! i go over it below :3

top artist being hozier makes a lot of sense , he was last year as well ( though last year we listened to him almost twice as much ) .

same goes for florence ; she's my girlfriend and i's go-to artist for in the car ( alongside hozier ) , which is a lot of my spotify usage .

have a nice life is literally just because of a quick one before the eternal worm devours connecticut . that is literally the only song by them i've ever heard .

fall out boy doesn't make any sense , but this is probably the fifth year in a row they've been on my wrapped . i think i've literally only listened to folie a deux this year .. ? maybe a few others came up on my liked playlist ( i have their discography from mania and back liked . 2018/19/20 were big fob years for us ) . i guess i'm just loyal idk

peter gundry is on our wrapped because of the vampire masquerade and a couple other songs of his that we've listened to a lot for reasons we will explain when going over our top songs .

top song : a quick one before the eternal worm devours connecticut . song after ? a quick one before the eternal worm devours appalachia ( different artist , btw ) . after that ? the vampire masquerade . do you wanna know why ?

reading playlist . we read over 1 million words this year ( we read at abt 750wpm , so well over 1300min/22hrs of reading ) , and almost all of those words were read while listening to our reading playlist . the playlist started out with just a quick one … connecticut , soon after we added a quick one … appalachia . those were the only two songs on there for almost half of the year . around may , we added the vampire masquerade . about a month ago , we caved and added a few more songs by peter gundry and a few classical pieces .

but for most of the year ? those two / three songs .

as of very recently , we have access to youtube premium ( hooray for middle class girlfriend who's parents got the family plan ) , and will keep our reading music strictly on there as to not " pollute " our wrapped . but regardless , it was super neat to see how our reading habits impacted this :DD

now on to tear you apart . i don't know what to say for this one . i'm some sort of faggot and also mentally ill . shocked that kiss wasn't on there tbh ( it made #7 ) , though ig we discovered that song later in the year .

angel of small death and the codeine scene is mostly coincidence , i think . it's only on our hozier discography playlist , so i guess it was favored by the shuffle gods . it's interesting that a song from the new album isn't in its place , since we looped that for a while when it came out .

as for the amount of minutes , i think it was on par with previous years , maybe a bit lower . as we exist in our Depression Era we listen to less music , oddly enough , and most of this summer ( i know it's almost winter but im not in school so it's summer . right ? i get to go back to high school , right ??? ) has been That . this year was great up until june 🫡 ( grad month )

i was slightly surprised not to find more goth shit on my wrapped , because this year was when we really started diving into the subculture , but i guess the social factors behind hozier and florence ( girlfriend ) and the reading playlist trump it in a way that makes sense . riboflavin and billie was a vampire made #8 and #9 , so that's a win .

if you read this i owe you one (1) kiss on the lips . or a hug or smth idk . if you listen to the songs i linked i'll probably have to marry you .

here's my full top 100 , if anyone's curious :3

[dmitri-smerdyakov]

Thoughts on Secrets of Dumbledore - SPOILERS

So basically I have a cold/sore throat from screaming at kids for four days straight so I’m not actually well and I was so close to not going on opening day in the UK today (well, technically it’s Saturday now so it’s yesterday but still) because I feel rotten. But I had to - as someone known for their Fantastic Beasts obsession, and having waited for nearly four years, I wasn’t about to miss out on this film on opening day.

There was a lot going on and I’m not well so I may have missed some things out or even missed bits in the film, so please bear with me, I’ve tried my best to remember as much as possible and I’m also happy to answer any DMs or asks if people have questions! Also, I’ve tried to keep it as in order as it happened as possible, but again, I’m ill and have probably gotten mixed up in places!

So, here’s my post about the film. There are SPOILERS below the cut so please don’t open the post and then send hate to me because I spoiled the film because not only is it marked and tagged, it’s also under a read more! You’ve been warned!

⚠️ SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT! SPOILERS FOR THE NEW FANTASTIC BEASTS ⚠️

Firstly, let me take a moment to say FUCK JK ROWLING 🖕🏻 ANYWAY, moving on:

First of all, I liked SoD a LOT more than CoG. Like a LOT more. It felt more like the first film mixed with a bit of Harry Potter, and even used a LOT of the same soundtrack from the first film

This film was funny in place but also REALLY dark in others??? Like holy shit???

I’m not sure how long after CoG the film is set quite frankly but I’m pretty sure at one point they said that it was a month ago??? Or Lally said that a year ago was when Jacob met Newt??? But then Bunty says she’s been working for Newt for 8 years and however many days… I don’t know, I thought it was the 30s???

Also it’s Autism Acceptance Month and the fact we’re getting Newt Scamander being his beautiful autistic self this month just makes sense ♾

So the film starts with Dumbledore and Grindelwald having tea which is kind of nice

Sorry to the Depp fans out there but Mads Mikkelsen should have been cast as Grindelwald from the start… I agree what WB did was appalling, but I loved Mads as Grindelwald, which I honestly wasn’t expecting

“Because I was in love with you” - HE FUCKING SAID IT. The gasp that went out in the audience was so fucking funny, like how do y’all NOT know by now???

NEWT IS MY AUTISTIC HERO 😭 I adore him, I almost wish the films were solely about him searching for magical beasts frankly

Newt helping the mummy Qilin give birth was so Newt, I love him, he was putting his head on its side and comforting her, I adore him

Grindelwald’s followers got the first baby Qilin but then the mother had twins 😭❤️

YES I CRIED AT MUMMY QILIN DYING WITH NEWT NEXT TO HER 😭

Newt cradling a baby Qilin is not the content I was expecting but I’m grateful for it

The Newt scenes remain my favourite in this film, and maybe I’m biased because he’s autistic and I’m autistic, but yeah

Pickett with his mini glasses 😭❤️

Teddy being in charge in the case was adorable like omg

Wooo Wyvern!!! I love seeing more beasts!

So apparently Qilins bow to those who are pure of heart and can also see the future or something?

Grindelwald kept touching Credence/his face in a way that made me VERY uncomfortable

NOT GRINDELWALD SLITTING THE BABY QILIN’S THROAT

Queenie is now a platinum blonde????

Theseus remains my hot husband 🤧😮‍💨💛 fucking adore that man and would jump him without second thought

PRAISE THE MAKE UP AND HAIR PEOPLE, THEY LET THESEUS HAVE A BIT OF CURL IN HIS HAIR ❤️👏🏻👀👌🏻

Theseus was hardcore judging Dumbledore for making that blood pact and I find that really funny??? He’s like “… why would you do that???”

I love love LOVE the Scamander brothers so much, I love their dynamic and them as individuals! The banter, the moments… love them!

I can relate to Theseus being the exasperated older sibling but also relate to Newt being the autistic one whose sibling is like “…????? The fuck???”

Queenie checking on Credence was nice, they have a couple of nice moments together, and I love that she told him that she doesn’t always tell Grindelwald what she hears Credence thinking

I don’t think I was supposed to be thinking “LESBIAN QUEENS” when Vinda and Queenie were in a shot together and yet that’s exactly where my brain went 😭

Jacob was still getting the biggest laughs out of the audience, I love him. He remains such a wonderful character even in the depth of a depression/funk

To be fair, there were quite a few laughs in the film and it wasn’t just me laughing, there were a lot of people of there and most of them were laughing

Noooo not Jacob’s bakery struggling because of the Great Depression (presumably)

LALLY IS A FUCKING QUEEN I LOVE HER

I love love LOVE the Jacob and Lally dynamic so much, it was one of my favourite things in the film

Bunty is the fucking thirstiest most desperate bitch. I don’t like the actress and I don’t like the character and every time she appeared and made a joke I had to roll my eyes. Her character is STILL very much “I’m in love with my boss who doesn’t love me back” and not a lot else

Shout out to the reviewer who said she was “one note” and another who said she was a “JK R*wling lookalike” lmfao 🤣

I love that Newt and Lally are already friends who have corresponded, it’s so sweet

Newt introducing Lally to everyone and forgetting his own brother 😂

I’m not sure but… are the films gonna make Theseus and Lally a thing??? There was a little moment where they met each other/were introducing themselves directly to each other, then they got paired up in Bhutan… idk, maybe just me?

BABY NIFFLERS GETTING BIG 😭

Also I think two of their names in the film are said to be “Alfie” and “Timothy”???

By the way, someone on Twitter that I was once friends with said a few weeks ago in the audio chat/space thing that Newt’s autism “disappeared” when he hugged Jacob (because that had been seen in trailers) and I would like to say NOPE. Not how it works, don’t care if it was a joke or if that person was autistic too, it made me super uncomfortable! And when I said that, she blocked me so… yep.

^Sorry but I don’t like jokes like that. Maybe I’m just sensitive but it made me, an autistic person who loves Newt and is so grateful for him being autistic, very upset and uncomfortable. Maybe some autistic people are fine with those jokes, and that’s fine! I’m just personally not, it makes me upset and makes me feel like they’re mocking Newt being autistic or saying he’s not really autistic so… sorry.

Knowing he’s autistic made me so happy and helped me accept the fact I was going for an autism diagnosis (and have since received the diagnosis that yes I’m autistic). Knowing this non-stereotypical character I loved and who’s played by one of my favourite actors is autistic helped me feel better during the process and made me feel like it would be okay, so yeah!

Tina being the head of the MACUSA AUROR OFFICE LIKE SHE FUCKING DESERVES, WE LOVE A GIRLBOSS

I love that Lally was praising the shit out of Tina and saying she was an incredible woman, we love to see it

Okay, on the topic of Tina… I wish there was more of her. I do. Writing that she’s too busy just seemed kind of lazy. She has like 2 minutes of screentime near the end of the film, first at MACUSA and then at the Jacob and Queenie wedding???

You can’t honestly and seriously tell me that Tina fuckin’ Goldstein would rather be head of the Aurors than try to help her sister or Credence???? Like yeah yeah yeah, she’s a career girl and all that, but also she was willing to lose her job and break the rules to save Credence before??? What the fuck???

Newt seemed super sad about Tina being busy and Lally jumping in to say how amazing she is… ??? I don’t know why but it felt like there was more to it than just her being busy??? Because I’m pretty sure there was a weird silence, and it sounded like they were trying to cover it up???

JACOB GOT A WAND 👏🏻🤧 it didn’t have a core but still?!? He deserves it

I love Teddy refusing to let go of Theseus’ red and golden tie 😂

NO BUT DID JACOB MAKE A WAND INNUENDO JOKE OR???? I couldn’t hear properly because my ears are blocked by my sister’s friend was sitting next to me and she started laughing??? Something about Theseus’ wand actually working???

I do appreciate Theseus just being the bemused and dry older brother, I know some of it is probably down to still being sad about his fiancée dying but still

There were quite a few mentions of Leta, by the way, which was interesting

I had some trouble hearing the dialogue at times, and I thought this might be just because I’ve got blocked ears from my cold - but then my sister and her friend (both of whom are not sick) also said that they struggled to hear it so… ???

NOT THEM CLEARING GRINDELWALD OF HIS CRIMES 😭😭😭 BE MORE FUCKED I DARE YOU-

Not Theseus getting himself fucking arrested 😭😭😭 my dumbass husband I love him

It’s the fact he got arrested going after the people he recognised from the rally where Leta was killed 😭

Newt was trying to go after Theseus as they dragged him away but was stopped because “not here, there’s nothing we can do”

Also Jacob starting to protest about Grindelwald’s name being cleared like “I WAS THERE, HE LITERALLY MURDERED PEOPLE” and the others having to shush him

NEWT KEEPING A PHOTO OF TINA IN HIS CASE AND HIS POCKET THOUGH 😭😭😭😭

I don’t think Newtina are together by this point but there’s no inclination they are or aren’t??? It’s like “where’s Tina” “she’s busy, she’s head of the Aurors” and then her conversation with newt is basically “did you do something with you hair?” “Just for the wedding” etc. There’s no kiss, no “she’s my girlfriend/fiancée/we’re together”, it’s very confusing for me

An instruction for Bunty’s eyes only… the fact she was given important jobs AND was the one to have the Qilin at the end… so cheesey. Sorry but I can’t stand her 😭 she’s the only character I dislike to this extent. JKR wanted her to be the main girl instead of Tina so bad and it failed

(I’m still at least somewhat convinced that Bunty got such a big role because Katherine called JKR out explicitly - more so than anyone else - for her bullshit, and it’s of course just a very interesting coincidence that Bunty - whose actress sucked up to JKR during one of the transphobic tirades - is suddenly given such a big part… 👀 … anyway)

Interesting to know that Wizarding world politics is just as corrupt and fucked as muggle politics

Dumbledore talking about what Ariana used to like and Aberforth like “I WAS there, you know”, such sibling behaviour

Aberforth calling the person at the door a sod and then apologizing because “sorry for calling you a sod, Minerva” 😂

The Albus and Credence fight was actually pretty cool, not gonna lie

I noticed in the scene with Grindelwald and Yusuf Kama, Leta’s theme could be heard in the soundtrack 🤧

Yusuf Kama being a triple agent was… interesting

Bunty continuing to be cringe by making jokes that it’s her husband’s case and he’s “so forgetful that sometimes he forgets he’s married to me”, followed by the most awkward 10-15 seconds of laughter I’ve ever had to sit and witness 🤦

I’m not saying she’s a pick me girl but she kind of is???

Nahhh but why were they suddenly swarming Grindelwald like he was a rockstar 😭😂

I do love Grindelwald just rocking up to this fancy ass dinner with his top buttons undone, bow tie undone, his followers flanking him

Vinda looked fine as fUCK in her suit, by the way 👌🏻 👀

Why the house elf conducting music??? 😭😭😭 stop putting house elf slavery in, I’m-

Jacob saying the Norwegian Minister of Magic looks like his uncle 😂

Not everyone thinking Jacob was attempting to assassinate Grindelwald 😭 he’s literally a muggle, how the fuck you think he gonna use a wand??? Use your brains???

Lally looked like a QUEEN in her dress by the way

I love Queenie low-key doing a little bit of magic to stop Jacob getting hurt even as she walked away with the rest of the acolytes

Newt snatching the photo of Tina away before the jail keeper at the Erkstag could take it 😭❤️

Not me crying at the jail keeper taking Pickett and Teddy away 😭 I was laughing at them both being in Newt’s coat and him being like “he’s a pet… he’s a pet too” but then crying two seconds later at them being taken and locked away

No but the laugh I let out at Newt doing the dance was literally inhuman, I canNOT-

Newt and Theseus doing the manticore dance was one of my favourite moments. In fact all of that sequence was amazing and I wish there were more sequences like that

“I am swivelling” “I don’t think you are” - GOLDEN

The big manticore was TERRIFYING by the way, it ate people and then spit them back out

Teddy and Pickett are not the duo I expected but they’re the duo we deserve and they stole the movie 😭❤️

I’m still crying with laughter thinking about Pickett falling with Newt’s wand and the Niffler jumping up, looking like he’s about to help Pickett… and then he soars past him to grab a shit ton of gold 😂👏🏻 beautiful scene right there, 11/10

NOT THESEUS STEPPING ON A BABY MANTICORE 😭🤧

The Erkstag place is actually terrifying as a whole because the prisoners are tied upside down and they have lanterns with these little firefly things next to them, and when the lanterns go out then the big manticore at the bottom eats them before spitting the remains back up for the baby ones to eat???

Newt and Theseus realising they’re still holding hands when they had Portkey-ed to safety and immediately letting each other’s hands go LMFAO JUST SIBLING THINGS

Jacob saying he got his wand for Christmas 😂

Not the Slytherins giving Jacob a bag of Cockroach Clusters 😭😂

Jacob calling Hogwarts students “pint sized wizards” LMFAO

Dumbledore giving points to a house that’s NOT Gryffindor?!? Unheard of! 🤣

I nearly died laughing at Aberforth giving them the worst looking food to eat and Theseus immediately tucking in like “after being in that dungeon, even this tastes good to me”

So Credence is in fact Aberforth’s son?!?! Jesus Christ??? I’m not sure how I feel about that like what the fuck (his mother was just “some girl from Godric’s Hollow”)

Also confirmation that Ariana was an Obscurial! I went “oh???” When that was revealed

This is probably just because I’m sick because I felt like this film was so long… not necessarily a bad thing but I’m not well so 😭

Grindelwald straight up nearly choking Credence for failing to realize there were TWO baby Qilins though

Theseus holding the baby Qilin 😭👌🏻❤️🤧 GOODBYE MY OVARIES I CANT-

EYYYY IT’S THE ROOM OF REQUIREMENT

There were 5 cases and they all chose a random one so no one knew which one was the real case and therefore none of Grindelwald’s side could know it either

So Grindelwald killed the first Qilin baby then resurrected it so that it would bow to him at the ceremony and put him in charge??? And Newt + the gang’s main plan is to get the alive Qilin to Bhutan so the election isn’t rigged???

I do love that they kept on reiterating how pure of heart and brave Jacob is 😭

Interesting that the decoy cases, from what I could tell, were filled with stuff seemingly related to the person who randomly picked it: Jacob’s had pastries, Lally’s had books, and Theseus’ had Quidditch stuff (perhaps hinting at him being a Quidditch player at school?)

Jacob and Queenie truly couldn’t have chosen a worse time or place to have their little romantic reunion 😭 like I’m happy for them but Jesus Christ it was so poorly timed???

They’re very sweet though, and him saying that his heart isn’t full because it’s always got room for her (or something to that effect) was so beautiful

Not that bitch (whose name I can’t remember, something Fisher?) taking the case Newt had and destroying it, and he thought it was his actual case I think??? 😭

I’m sorry, I can’t believe this is a whole ass film about a Wizarding Election?!? I don’t even like thinking about real politics, let alone fantasy politics

Also they went from talking about a democratic vote to deciding “hey, let’s let the magical creature bow and choose our leader” like, excuse me??? 😭

Not Grindelwald using Crucio on Jacob 😭

No but it’s the very first thing Grindelwald does upon getting elected, torturing Jacob, and people were STILL rooting for him, what the fuck-

Credence turning to the side of good seemed kind of out of left field, I won’t lie. Like I know Dumbledore said stuff to him after their fight and Grindelwald straight up choked him but also it just seemed a little… out of nowhere?

… of course Bunty was the one with the real case. Because of course she was 🙄

I wanted to cry at the alive-Qilin seeing her zombiefied-twin and trying to talk to her, and Newt telling her “she can’t hear you” and “maybe somewhere she can hear you” 😭

I do like that they showed the British MoM, the French one from the second film, MACUSA… it was a nice little callback if nothing else

NAHHH NOT ME CRYING WHEN IT SHOWED TINA AT MACUSA WATCHING NEWT WITH THE QILIN 😭😭😭 I KNOW THE BACK OF HER ANYWHERE, EVEN BEFORE THEY SHOWED HER FACE

Not the Qilin bowing to Dumbledore, meaning he’s pure of heart 🤨 but I did laugh when he was like “… oh no no no no no-” LMFAO

THE BLOOD PACT BROKE AND GRINDELDORE HAD A FIGHT BUT DIDNT KILL EACH OTHER

Grindelwald really fell backwards off the mountain and disappeared

Look I’ll admit it’s been a while since I watched the first two films but… sometimes during the film I was like “… what is happening”, and that’s how I felt about the blood pact breaking. Like sure “he shot to harm and I shot to protect” but…? What??? Maybe I’m just stupid 😭

I’m 90% sure Credence died off screen after Aberforth took him home. It’s made very clear he’s dying but they don’t show an actual death so who knows anymore???

NEWT WAS STIMMING NEAR THE END BY RUBBING HIS COAT POCKET I CANT 😭❤️ THANK YOU EDDIE FOR THE AUTISTIC NEWT CONTENT

No but I had to try very hard not to do some hand flapping at the sight of Newt stimming, it just makes me so happy 😭❤️

Bunty: *sees a photo of Tina in Newt’s case* // Me: LMFAO sucks to be you bitch

I hope she cries at the future newtina wedding 🙃

At least she seems to accept that Newt loves Tina I guess??? If I had to say one positive about her???

Jacob and Queenie have spent however long apart and suddenly they’re getting married??? Even though in the last one he made a big deal about it being against the law??? And it’s not like they’re in England by the way, they’re still in America and the law is still very much in place against No-Maj and magical mixing????

I love Queenie teasing Newt like “you’re nervous for another reason, aren’t you?” (Because he’s going to see Tina at the wedding)

Queenie’s dress and head piece was… a thing. She looked beautiful but it’s not something I’d personally wear myself

Newt being Jacob’s best man at the wedding and worrying over his best man speech was content I didn’t know I needed 😭 I kind of wish we could have heard the speech!

THE NEWTINA SCENE WAS THE FUCKING MOST AMAZING SCENE BY THE WAY

Tina is maid of honour 😭❤️

THE USE OF “Newt says goodbye to Tina” (aka THE Newtina theme), I was SOBBING

I’m still so bloody mad that Tina’s only scenes were 1) her just looking at the election broadcast at MACUSA (no lines) and 2) the wedding at the bakery. I mean yeah there’s the photo but still???

She looked fab as fuck, and I love her and Lally hugging but… yeah.

Small thing, my sister said Katherine looked extremely skinny in the film and I don’t know if that’s due to COVID or not, but… anyway.

Newt, Theseus and Jacob in their suits 👌🏻

I’m pretty sure Theseus made a comment to Newt before entering the bakery that just screamed: “… you’ve complimented how everyone looks BUT me” 😂 I can’t remember the exact comment but I’m pretty sure it happened

Cannot believe the approximately 15 people getting up and walking out before the credits even rolled 😤 like there were 30 seconds left and NOW you get up and leave?!?

Okay but who the fuck invited Bunty to the wedding when she barely fucking knows Jacob and Queenie??? And she turned up late???

The soundtrack had mostly pieces from the first film, a couple from the second, and then some Harry Potter soundtrack in there

My sister isn’t really a fan of the films but she has seen them and she didn’t like it 😭 she said it felt like it dragged and was super slow (and sometimes I admit that I felt that way a little bit too but whatever)

If nothing else, the film has made me want to jump back into writing newtina fics in a way that the first film did and the second film didn’t, so yay!!!

There’s a song (like a song with lyrics) that plays when Jacob is in the bakery thinking of Queenie and again at the wedding and then again over the end credits, and it’s called “Heaven” by Gregory Porter - it’s the official Jacob/Queenie song, let’s be honest!

So… to be honest, this felt very much like a final film. The blood pact thing is resolved, Credence knows who he is and is most likely dead (at the very least, he’s dying), Jacob and Queenie are married… I don’t know. It feels like it’s a final film but also enough there that there could be more films, if that makes sense. I feel like WB are planning to see what the box office/reception is before continuing forwards, to be honest, and I don’t know how to feel about it.

I really hope it’s not a final film because I would admittedly like to see more Tina, more Newt, more Newtina, and also that final duel between Grindelwald and Dumbledore. Despite how much I whine and complain, I’ll be very upset if this is where it comes to an end because this series does still mean a lot to me. It was definitely a HUGE improvement on the second film - in fact, this would probably be my favourite of the three if not for the severe lack of Tina.

I do want to watch it again, when I’m NOT sick and when I’m mentally ready again because mentally I’m all over the place at the moment, especially if this ends up being the last one. I wholeheartedly recommend the film though, I truly do, and I look forward to hearing what other fans say!

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

(Note: All of these asks are before episode 206 (Season 2 finale) so some may be dated.) 1. ok but I love Rachel spent the latter half of 2021 being like ooooh Kronos is coming back!! this is a big deal!! only to timeskip ten years and NOTHING happened. like wow even Kronos isn't a big deal when it comes to how totally not pathetic Persephone is as a 30+ year old doing no work and only being obsessed with a guy she knew for a month. literal masterclass in awful writing. It's almost impressive how bad it is.

2. Deadass I don't even get why RS is like oh yeh nymphs and other creatures should be second class citizens but they're also all "trash" and thus its good and even encouraged to abuse and mistreat them. like yeah that's what was missing, racism where the marginalized group are evil and "deserve" to be abused and mistreated by those with all the power over them. THAT's what mythology was so sorely missing.  jfc. I know a lot of the WT staff are white people and so is Rachel but wtf???

3. It's quite funny how a woman old enough to be my mother cannot draw or write worth shit and there are literal teenagers on this website who are a thousand times the artist and writer she could ever hope to be.

4. This isn’t me trying to be mean but like, why is everything from the book covers to the official merch so ,.. cheap looking? Like these are supposed professionals, not Rachel, doing it, yet they’re still so poorly designed and crafted. It doesn’t help the images Rachel gives time to work with are all in the rushed, ugly style now either 😪

5. I just find it funny that every time an LO fan or even WT promotes it its like ... they ONLY use art from the first 10-ish episodes at best. Like yall, that was over four years ago, why aren't you using current art to be more accurate? Like it's kinda telling on themselves they know the quality declined rapidly after the first few months but are like "just ignore that! look at this three good panels from 2018!"

6. I HATE those panels where RS tries to be anatomically correct to IRL humans and its like omg they look even worse (and are still wildly wrong anyway?? She cannot draw heads to save her life for real). Like lady just work within your stylization, there's a reason people picked up your work off what it used to be versus what it is now.

7. this isnt necessarily LO based but I do find it crazy how people like RS and her fans viewed the original hymn like ugh Demeter is such a bitch why wouldnt she be happy Hades married her daughter like .... you guys are aware ancient brides tended to be married at 14, right? maybe that's why Demeter was pissed and creeped out by him. They're so blinded by their fantasy of this "perfect Hades" that never existed over the truth of a mother defending her literal CHILD.

8. Zeus is objectively the only hot man on cast because he actually has a personality, fashion sense, and pretty hair meanwhile Hades just looks like a dusty old man with zero drip and a million and one red flags 🫣

9. "This style of story telling" what style? just lying and making everything up to where it matches nothing in mythology? my god, she's so concerned over looking like a clever writer who has everything planned out and knows more than anyone else (including actual greeks??? ma'am) over actually telling a decent story. ive never seen someone so self conscious about being perceived as a "real writer" before.

10. Why even use mythology when you won't keep any of the stories true to how they were, change all the relationships, and just make up whatever else instead? At that point just go "this was inspired by the greek myths" and use your own OCs, not claiming you're telling an accurate story with a ton of research put into it. Rachel really just wants to have her cake and eat it too, huh?

[racheloveyunho]

Till Death do us part - 1

Y/N grew up in a wealthy family, she always was seen as a beautiful and smart kid and was most likely to take her father’s place as the CEO of one of the most important companies in South Korea. However, after the death of her mother, Y/N’s family slowly started to break apart. Her father was always working to forget his uncalled pain while his kids were left alone at home.

She was 17 years old when her life took a sudden turn when she met him in a dark alley. He was a bloody mess, bruises everywhere but behind blood and dirt, she could see his beautiful features and his addictive gaze. Maybe she should have walked away, maybe she shouldn’t have helped him, but the moment his gaze locked with hers, she was already his.

Choi San was his name.

Genre: Mafia AU, angst, fluff, stranger to lovers

Words: 2486

 TW: Y/N is described as an OC. Please be aware that this story will contain a lot of triggering content such as smut, blood, death, murder, drug, kidnapping, etc. Do not read if you are under a legal age!

Chapter 1

 I still wonder what would have happened if I didn’t meet him during this gloomy night? We were young and I was way too brave for my own good. Maybe it was my faith or maybe it was a sheer coincidence but now, I know that I will love him till death do us part.

---------

 5 years ago.

 "Hey Y/N, wake up sleepyhead! It’s time to go to school and I will surely not wait for the princess to wake up" my brother yelled loudly from the first floor, waking me up in the process.

I groaned and shifted uncomfortably in my bed; it was too much noise at such an early time of the day. My long-browned hair was messy from the last night, as always. I was the type of girl to move a lot during my sleep and my morning head was always a funny one, swollen, with small eyes and with some of my lightly curled hair stuck in my mouth. After five minutes of rethinking my life decisions, I found enough motivation to get out of my bed and walked down the stairs.

"Why the hell did I agree to help other students during holidays, huh?” I asked my brother as I lazily rubbed my tummy.

“Maybe because you are too dumb to say no to your teachers?” he answered, his mouth full of food.

“Do you mind keeping your mouth shut while you are eating? It’s disgusting.” I shook my head disapprovingly.

I headed toward the kitchen to get a cup of fresh milk. Jin, my brother, childishly opened his mouth wide to show me the content of it. I let out a long “Ew!” before smashing his arm playfully.

“No, but seriously Y/N. There’s no use to be brilliant at school if that means you have to help your classmates with their studies during holidays” Jin said after taking a sip of his coffee.

“Yeah, but the teacher who asked me this favor told me that he will write a recommendation for me if I agreed to help him” I answered.

“You don’t even need a recommendation, we’re from a rich family” Jin mumbled to himself but it was loud enough for me to hear it.

 He wasn’t totally wrong and I knew it. We were born with a silver spoon in our mouth. We were “cake eater” as the other kids used to call us when we were younger, we never knew what it felt like to run out of money and everyone at school was jealous of me because of that.

But they didn’t know. No one knew how hard it actually was for me and my brother.

My mother passed away 2 years ago, and since then, my father didn’t stay at home with us longer than a week straight. He was always working, working, and working again, his job had literally become his life. He was one of the richest men in Korea and still, he was always eager for more and worked every day and night for it.

He wasn’t a good father for me and Jin. He never made any compliments to us, all he was able to do was to pressure us to be as perfect as possible or at least perfect enough to not ashamed him and his reputation. Unlike my brother, I wanted to hear my father say that he was proud of me, just for once. That’s why I was trying hard to be the perfect daughter, with good grades, good manners, and good appearance but even if I tried my best, it wasn’t enough for him.

 “Do you know why I’m working so hard, Jin?” I asked him, voice as soft as a whisper, almost not daring to tell the truth.

“Why?” Jin put a hand on the top of mine, a sign of comfort since he already knew my upcoming answer.

“I don’t want to follow his rules forever. I’m still a minor so I had to stick at them but when I’ll turn 20, I will leave this house and will never come back” I sadly stated, “I want to marry a man I’m in love with, I want to do a job I like and most of all, I don’t want our father to commend my life.”

 Jin tightened his grip on my hand. He understood me, he understood me too well. We were indeed rich but we were far from being happy. Jin was 6 years older than me which means he was already an adult. He wanted to leave this house as much as me but couldn’t bring himself to do so and leave me behind.

Unlike me, Jin has never been a good student, he always has been considered a failure to our father, and even if he finally was able to run away from here, he stayed there for me. I was really lucky to have a brother like him and I was well aware of that.

 I took my breakfast and came back to my room to take a quick shower and get ready for this day I knew would be exhausting.

My brother was already waiting in his car. Jin took me to school as often as he could. He was working on a supermarket he owned and even if he was pretty busy, he wanted to spend his mornings with his “sweet baby sister” as he liked to call me.

I am indeed lucky to have a brother like him.

 8 pm, it was already late when I heard the bell ring for the last time today. I was the last one to leave the class as I helped my teacher with the preparation of some material for the next day. It didn’t bother me too much, I wasn’t in a hurry to get home since I knew my dad was finally coming back home from his work.

In all honesty, I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t miss him at all, even after all this time. I wandered here and there even though the street was already pitch black.

 “Oh! It’s been a while since I last went to the haunted alley!” I happily exclaimed to myself.

I knew every nook and cranny of Seoul, I grew up there after all. My favorite place was the haunted alley. As its name suggests and according to some beliefs, that path would be haunted.

It was an old story I heard with my friends when I was less than 10 years old. A grandma from our neighborhood scolded us and told us not to stay there because there was a woman who had been murdered in the walkway and that since then, one could hear her cry every night.

A simple way to scare naïve kids you may think, and you are more than right. However, this story is known by everyone, not just by kids. That’s the reason why I love this place, thanks to all of these rumors, no one uses this path except me. It was like my secret place.

 I walked around the alley with heavy steps, thinking about my father and his upcoming lecture about how to be a good girl. My thoughts were suddenly stopped by the voice of two men who seemed to be fighting each other. I stayed still for a moment, trying to figure out where the noises were coming from.

“You piece of shit! And you claim yourself as the Boss” son?” One voice laughed.

I hid in the dark and saw what could have been mistaken with a scene from a horror movie. Between two old houses, a tall man was beating up a boy who seemed to be around my age.

I felt shivers down my spine but before I could even think straight, my body started to move with its own will.

“Hey! Let him go!” I shouted, my voice betraying me by showing how scared I really was.

 I moved closer to the two men, I could now see them more clearly.

The young boy was sitting on the ground, badly bleeding, whereas the tall man was standing in front of him, blood on his hand and his nose broken.

They were watching me. The silence was heavy, the only thing I could hear was the beating of my racing heart and the shake of my knees that were begging me to run away from this place. The silence was soon replaced by an ominous laugh.

“Wow. What a beauty! Is she your girlfriend? Huh?” The tall man laughed and hit the youngest on his stomach before coming closer to me.

He came closer, until he was in front of me. I had a better view of his poor state. He wasn’t less bleeding than the other man, his blood was actually covering his whole face.

I don’t know what had taken into me at this exact moment, the adrenaline was rushing in my veins and even though my feet were stuck on the ground, unable to move, my hand reached the pepper spray I always carried in my bag. Before the man could react, I used my weapon against him.

When the chemical product had reached his eyes, he screamed and placed his hands on his face, trying desperately to soothe the pain. I took advantage of the situation and kicked him as hard as I could on his crotch before he fell loudly on the ground.

I quickly grabbed the boy by his arm and helped him stand up. He was badly injured but followed me without any complaint.

 I was panting when I reached a lighted street. We stopped there, trying to catch our breath.  I turned around to face the man I was still holding and my breath hitched in my throat, not from the run I previously had but because of how beautiful this man looked.

“Are you okay? What is your name?” I asked him but he simply stayed silent, staring at me with his piercing eyes.

I took a better look at his features, he was really handsome with a well-defined face. He wasn't older than me but he hadn't the body of a teenager either. His broad shoulders and his arms muscles could be seen without any effort from him. His dark hair was harmonizing with the dark of his eyes and his dimples were visible as the border of his lips turned upright in an inviting smirk.

How can someone like him be involved in such a fight?

“The sight is at your taste?” he giggled, his smile spreading wider.

I finally took notice of my staring when I heard him laugh. I must say it was the most beautiful laugh I ever heard, slightly high-pitched but almost bewitching.

“I wasn’t staring!” I shouted from embarrassment. Fortunately, the darkness of the night was covering the redness on my cheeks.

“Sure, you weren’t” He added, amused by my reaction “I’m San. Choi San. I didn’t need your help earlier but thank you, I’m glad you rescued me”

He came closer to me and gave me a sincere smile, showing even more his dimples.

My heart was going crazy in my chest. This boy seemed small earlier compared to the other man but he was way taller than me, maybe 7 inches taller.

“You’re welcome”

I was a bit intimidated by him but I dared not to look away. He had something special, an aura that seemed as dangerous as comforting. His gaze was intense and deep, it was like he was looking through me, memorizing every detail of my face.

He didn’t move and didn’t talk for at least 2 minutes and even if I was feeling uncomfortable, I did my best not to let him know.

“Where is your house?” he finally asked after what felt like an eternity.

He startled me with his sudden question, I didn’t expect him to talk this soon. Why did he want to know where I lived? He probably wanted to walk me home and I would have gladly let this handsome guy walk me home if I hadn’t met him in an odd situation.

‘But he is really handsome…’  I thought, sighing softly, making San arch an eyebrow.

“It’s okay, I live near here, no need to walk me home. You can go ahead…” I said “Go ahead to…the hospital, your house or…go murdering someone…whichever comes first” I added, lowering my voice at the end of my sentence.

His face changed into a surprised expression “I wasn’t going to walk you home, don’t worry”

I sighed in relief even if I felt a bit disappointed, maybe he wasn't that bad after all.

“I want to stalk you” he stared at me with his beautiful smile as if it was the most natural thing to say.

‘What the fuck?’

“Sure, stalking me haha, it was obvious, silly me!” I gently hit my head and laughed awkwardly, taking a step back from him.

He laughed sweetly and took my chin between his thumb and his index to lift my face up. His mouth came closer to my ear and he whispered a small “Just joking” before turning his heels back and leaving me, alone, in the dark street.

  I was finally back home. Fortunately for me, my dad hadn’t noticed me since he was already sleeping on the couch.

I quickly went upstairs to my room and collapsed on my bed, my mind still processing what had happened earlier. It was scary to say the least but fascinating at the same time. I was still confused even after showering. This San had a deep effect on me, not only mentally but physically too.

“Choi San…” I muttered before closing my eyes and drifting into a deep sleep.

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This is my first story, it’s bad but I’ll try to improve myself!

This series will be uploaded slowly since I don't have a lot of time.

Thank you for reading!