#like i was making progress before but i feel like ive been able to truly start healing this year

[bionic-penis]

Erm !! Lil rant in da tags bc !! Erm !!

[psiionic]

i have been non stop thinking about schizophrenic latula again. of course i could always repeat the same things i always say, latuda is a mood stablizer and it doesn't make sense that a pyrope would become anxious out of nowhere because their family line never implies that pyropes ever have a "shy" phase and are entirely more likely to fall down the line of obsession and depression and spiralling over minor things. but i was talking to my friend about the alternian economic system and we came to the realization that alternia is likely a much more scripted planet than we initially assumed, since it's essentially a planet that focuses on pumping out child soldiers i believe that their economic system is almost completely falsified by the HIC and higher powers, each caste is set up with a projected job, a certain amount of money, a specific living situation and lusus to groom them into the perfect position they'll take as an adult once exiled from the planet and gaining their title. ive already spoken about how i believe that the beforan trolls are all essentially encouraged to pick a persona to "brand" themselves as in a show of personal expression that is expected of them by the government, but it got me thinking about how these two things interact with eachother. flarping is such a popular game on alternia specifically because all the kids are, essentially, larping as their projected adult counterparts until they leave planet. thats why there doesn't seem to be any ACTUAL job structure, the janitors are all kids pretending to be janitors until they leave planet, and highbloods commission people with their government allotted money, which funds the economy as well. there are mentions that if you don't "play your role right" you'll be culled and its because they figured out a system to learn who is willing to play the right role and who isnt BEFORE they have the power to actually harm the empire, which is NOT ON THE PLANET. drones kill anyone who steps out of line and its called culling because theyre still little kids. its like taking out the "bad actors" in a play, they arent needed, itll stall the progress of the machine. all of the characters essentially have a pre-determined role and persona they can fall into, and if they refuse to play along or start to look at the fact that theyre in a roleplaying game for too long they'll be culled.

anyways. this leads me to believe that because beforus is a planet without the exiling system, that means it's likely a system where no one ever stops playing "pretend." due to there being no expansion, the only thing that matters is appearance. It doesn't exactly matter how good you are at something, culling doesn't need to mean killing, it just means you lose your right on how to present yourself. You were clearly unable to play your part because you were too dumb or too pitiable and need someone else to ensure youre able to be presentable as the persona they choose for you.

this leads me back to latula. i believe that as a knight of mind, latula likely was able to see right through the pretend games that they were all playing extremely fast, but due to a knights innate questioning of themselves and their own thoughts, she was likely easily convinced that the problem was not the system but HER actually, for scrutinizing the system. calling people fake or invalid or implying they aren't what they actually are i'd imagine is a very strong offense in a society exclusively centered around always wearing masks. i also feel like this is exactly why all of the dancestors show that they are deeply disconnected from who they truly are, with mituna being the only one who couldn't keep up appearance and therefor had to have his autonomy stripped not just by beforus but by the narrative itself, disconnecting him from who he used to be by force. latula likely takes medication not for social anxiety but because she quite literally ruminates too much, i can see her being anxious in a paranoid and pointed way specifically at forces that be, especially considering how mind players act, but i cannot for the life of me ever see latula being the shy socially anxious fluttershy type i constantly see (or at least SAW) her be portrayed as. while this doesn't specifically point to schizophrenia, due to what latuda actually treats, it's my favorite headcanon to apply to her.

[wh3nturtlesfly]

heyyy, so i know that u just continued the this story not that long ago but can maayybe make another part to the story abt villain kidnapping hero while their bleeding out in the rain, no pressure ofc!

Of course, thank you so much for the ask! :)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4

They were weak. Whatever flowed through their veins had reduced Hero’s mind to pudding. They couldn’t think like this, much less move under the solution’s influence. Villain savored it, seeing them so helpless, the Hero was sure of it.

Through half-lidded eyes they watched Villain step through the doors of their room; their cell to be more accurate. The plush bed and soft covers did nothing to change that they were still trapped. The IV had been running on a constant ever since Hero had tried to fight back. It left their limbs nothing more than useless skin and bone, heavy against the weight of the medicine- if it could even be called that. Poison served a more accurate comparison.

It was late that evening, much too late for Villain to be visiting. Villain only ever came twice a day, first with new bandages and ointments, and second with a meal of some kind. Hero had tried to refuse the food. Better to starve than live through such a mess, though the more persistent they proved to be, the harsher Villain shoved the metal spoon down their throat.

Now they carried something different altogether in their hands. It shone under the lights and trailed behind Villain in translucent whisps. What was gathered in their arms had been folded into a neat bundle to which Villain set on the foot of the bed before strolling up to Hero with a devious smile. A touch of victory chimed in Hero’s mind as they observed the red mark that coiled around Villain’s neck. They caught Villain laying a hand upon it gently, rubbing away the pain Hero had caused- their sliver of revenge.

“You’re looking much better my dear,” Hero’s eyes could only drift lazily to where Villain laid a finger upon their cheek. Their touch was numb, the medicine had made sure that Hero wouldn’t feel it, though they still wished to pull away. “Your coloring has returned indeed. You’re no longer the pale apparition I found in the alley.”

“And you want me to thank you for it?” Hero struggled to get the words out. They were strung together in a slurred mess, but it was considered progress. Villain must have reduced their dosage if they were able to speak clearly.

“I would appreciate it if you were a little more understanding,” Villain’s grip became harsh and the cold prick of their fingers dug into Hero’s skin. “After all, I have a surprise for you.”

“My freedom?” The mere suggestion was a joke itself, but that didn’t stop Hero from asking.

Villain smiled sweetly. Somehow it couldn’t distract from the greedy look in their eyes. “Better than that,” they said, and retrieved a slim remote from their pocket. As they clicked one of the buttons Hero felt the pressure lessen on their arm. Already their mind had cleared some of its fog.

It was as if a weight had lifted, though the Villain would never be so kind without reason. Hero caught onto their yearning gaze, eager as it trailed over Hero’s form. “Now that you are well enough, I can truly display you.”

The garment at the edge of the bed made sense then. Villain’s hands found the silk-like fabric and ran over it with an eager grace. “You’ll make quite the conversation piece, and you know how I do love our talks.”

“You don’t own me,” Hero pulled their gaze away from the outfit. Despite its revealing nature, it was incredibly well made. Clearly hours upon hours had been dedicated to its manufacturing, from the embroidery that shimmered to the stitching that drew attention to just the right places. Wearing such a thing -much less with the Villain- would be a humiliation like no other. “I won’t go with you.”

Villain frowned, “And would you rather be a slug, left in this bed to rot with no one left to love you?” They held the remote tightly in their fingers, “You’re mine whether or not you deny it. It was not your precious agency that pulled you bleeding, dying from that alley. I saved you.”

Hero flinched as Villain’s hand gripped their wrist tightly. They still didn’t have the strength yet to squirm away. “I didn’t ask you to.”

“Your screams were plea enough.” Something shifted in the Villain’s expression. Their eyes softened, movements slowed as they leaned closer to the Hero, “So desperate, you would have given anything to live.”

Their hand found Hero’s bandages to which they carefully unwrapped. The gash across their chest met the cold air and a gasp escaped Hero’s lips. Without the IV, things were much more sudden. They could feel the dull sting arising from the wound with each passing second, accentuated as Villain traced a finger around the edges.

They grinned as Hero winced, “Without me, no one will help you. Like it or not, you have fallen into my hands and now it is time for the rest of the world to see.” Villain’s eyes trailed over Hero’s form dangerously, “Either that, or I have other ways of making you listen.” Their finger hovered over the button that controlled the IV. One push, and the Hero would be helpless again, unable to move, much less think of an escape.

Hero sighed, and the pressure made their ribs ache. From its place on the bed, the garment sparkled. At least at an event they could be away from the solution's influence. Villain’s touch was sickening, though not enough to leave them subdued.

“I cannot stand well on my own. I’ll need assistance until the drug has left my system.” The words were clipped as they fell from Hero’s mouth. They didn’t look, they were well aware the Villain was smiling.

“Such a smart choice darling,” Villain stood, and lingered at the door frame. They left the IV untouched, a sliver of freedom as the liquid poison already began its leave from Hero’s veins “My servants will dress you. Behave for them.” Then, just before they slipped away, Villain offered a devilish grin, “Don’t be late.”

Hero started planning their escape the moment the door clicked shut.

[osarina]

carinaaa the new chapter omg 😭😭 i stayed up just to read it and you keep outdoing yourself each time!!! petition for reader to “dispose of” mori and run the pm herself 😊 readers backstory hit extra hard because i can really relate to still remaining with people who caused me harm because i thought that i owed them or had to please them but have now made a lot of progress into a healthier mindset and am rooting for reader to be able to do that herself. i truly love this whole series, pm setting is the most interesting imo and you’ve executed it beautifully! the way everything progressed with them felt very natural and it was really enjoyable to read. loved the little tidbits of lore you dropped on their past shenanigans as well. possessive characters are my favorite and i loved the portrayal of it with dazai in this fic!! on that topic, i wonder how chuuya feels about all this and how it looks from his pov if he’s really been going around with unrequited feelings for years, that brings a whole new angle of angst into the story 😭 anyways my thoughts aren’t coherent rn but i just wanted to leave a comment to express how much i love your writing and this series 🫶🏻

NONNIEEEEEE I HOPE YOU DIDNT STAY UP TOO LATE, IM SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO POST 😔😔

you have me blushing i’m weeping thank you so much 🥹 honestly i’m really excited to get more into pmreader & mori’s background, because it’s rllyyyyy complex & runs pretty deep. i’m gonna do a character sheet w her ability & a few fun facts that are gonna get into it a little but i have one fic planned that’s rlly gonna get deep into it that i’m excited for. BUT it makes me sad to hear that you relate to that part of her😔 whoever it was that made you feel that way did not deserve u precious nonnie, i’m glad you’ve gotten yourself into a healthier mindset, it makes me happy to hear 🫂

IM GLAD YOU ENJOY THE SETTING, i’m having so much fun going back and forth between fics set in the present canon verse & back to pre defection, ive left so many little tidbits in them that we’re gonna see full fics about in the future and it makes me giggle and YESSSS we love possessive characters in this house - dazai is SO ridiculously possessive over her too, was before he defected, is even more now after 💀

chuuya and reader have a rlly complex relationship actually. fun fact: they were each other’s first kiss & first time, but it was not like … romantic in anyway. i suppose ill touch on it now because my next pm reader fic is gonna get deep into it, but as we’ve seen implied in canon w kyouka and dazai, it’s pretty clear that the younger members of the pm are taught to use their bodies as means to an end for strategic purposes. pmreader was mentored by the woman that mentored kouyou for 2 years & chuuya was obviously mentored by kouyou, so kouyou figured reader’s mentor trained her in the same way kouyou was trained (she was) and directed chuuya & reader to each other, advising them to learn with each other before bringing anything to the field, so they did. THIS is when chuuya started developing a crush on her but it faded after a few months, despite what dazai thinks, but obviously reader & chuuya both care very deeply for each other.

[rigelmejo]

In unrelated language stuff. Japanese really is... a mountain. Its a language I try a lot of studying experiments with, for one because its going to be many more years of study so I'm having fun, but also 2 because it has so many hurdles i personally have difficulty with so I am always hopeful some experiment will help things I study click better.

Like. Conjugation was hard to me in french, and there were english cognates to lean on, it is a fairly regular language conjugation wise (japanese has more exceptions i tend to forget how to conjugate). Then in japanese, everything being a very different word order combined with the information dense conjugation makes me even more confused.

A few things worked quite well for me in japanese study. One was nukemarines LLJ memrise decks, which after 2 years of studying other things, i crammed in 6 months and went from 300 words known from Genki and maybe 100 hanzi from Heisig RTK (yes i really didnt learn much in 2 years) to 1000-2000 words recognized and basic grammar and able to read Yatsubo and play Kingdom Hearts 2 in japanese (granted i know the game very well in english). Ever since then, ive been able to read manga and look words up to learn, or follow roughly a lets play of a game i know. I can never focus on anki long, but i recognize its use, especially when i was using the LLJ deck which had hanzi, common words in sentenced, and grammar. Since then, i havent used as organized of a resource. So i squander a lot more time, trying to figure out what to study.

Then I did Clozemaster sincerely for a couple months once in japanese. I think i only got through like 1000 cards. But it FINALLY helped me understand stuff like される られる word endings. Tragically, i forgot what they mean. But forca solid 6 months after my rime with Clozemaster cramming, i finally understood a lot of the grammar that had been confusing me. I desperately need to refresh that knowledge (if anyone has any good quock grammar explanation notes theyve seen). I only remember teimasu is like "ing" doing verb ending in english.

And I did japaneseaudiolessons, and the old glossika cd lessons, on and off. And each time i use audio for a while, i do make good progress. I seem to learn very well from audio. In particular, hearing so much japanese FINALLY got me used to the word order. So i struggle much less to follow sentences. Whereas before the massive listening practice, i would often lose the object or subject by the time i heard the verb. So i could not figure sentences out before, unless they were written, since id forget so much while trying to keep track of which word was which function. Lots of listening to audio lessons really helps me get into this rythm of intuitively knowing the order of the words and remembering the grammar through the whole sentence. Thats partly why i keep trying to study with more audio: its rhe biggest leap in terms of being able to understand japanese more instantly, to comprehend AS i hear or AS i read later (after audio study). I just cannot find another way to get my brain to internalize the word order, except LOTS of listening. The audio lessons have helped my reading skills SO much, all of my japanese listening skills so much, because now when i see eords i know i can comprehend what theyre doing in the sentence without thinking about it. And if i hear unknown words i can tell immediately if theyre subject object adjective verb time or a helper word like very/suddenly. I do plan to switch to reading study next, once I feel my vocabulary is solidly more than 2000 words (ideally 3000-5000 but lol im not sure ill find audio lessons that truly teach that much).

So yeah. Im studying japanese and chinese, on and off, as usual. And its always funny and frustrating when it hits just how much more I understand chinese. I took a 6 month ish break from studying ANY language. So ive been listening to audio lessons to review things i knew before, in Chinese and Japanese right now.

In chinese, i listened to maybe 4 hours of audio lessons review, and 2 hours of SCI mystery audiobook (i did not follow too much but hearing so many words helped jog my memory). Its been a week since starting review. Now? Well first of all, if i look at a chinese webnovel the READING skill comes back within 1 chapter and comes back before i eben did any purposeful reviews this past week. My reading skills in all languages seem to break down/be forgotten/get rusty the least. Second: now that I've reviewed for a week, I can understand almost all words in The Untamed (and the eordw i dont know i have been quickly google translatkng just to realize ITS WORDS I KNEW I JUST FORGOT THEM. Like 鬼 i cant believe i forgot gui its one of the first words i learned! Its in a lot of stuff i read and watch lol! Or 放手 i really forgot fangshou existed, i swear my brain just held onto hanzi as images fine but when i just HEAR a word i dont recognize it until i review it again... hence why SO much listening stuff im doing right now). I listened to 默读 audio drama last night and for the first 20 minutes i followed everything. I would guess i know at least 90% of the words (if i havent forgotten some - as with 镇魂 i knew over 95% of the words 8n most chapters right before i took my 6 month study break, and i also could read modu extensively at that point and get the main idea... since i knew thw english translation to guess bits). To be fair? With the audio drama, i did have the aid of knowing the plot already. But ive known modus plot a LONG time, and in the past i struggled to follow the audiodrama anyway, because compared to the audiobook it had less details forcme to use as a crutch to figure out what scene i was hearing. So me listening to rhe audio Drama yesterday, and following so much? Great. Ive also been listening to the mdzs audiobook, which has been brain frying as i started a week ago before realizing i needed to review the sounds of words lol. But also brain frying because the opening monologue words confuse me In Text form, so in audio form it took me 4 listens to realize they were saying the jiang jin nie lan clans fought wei wuxian etc etc. I heard meng and just completely forgot it meant clan, so my brain kept doing things like "is Xmeng a word i know?" It took me 2 listens to realize the next part was Wei Wuxian in mo manor, and 4 listens to realize mojia was MO FAMILY because id been going "mojia sounds familiar, do i know that word?" The last few listens lol. I also forgot fuchou! How! Anyway. Its an accomplishment. I have never had as much success listening to a BRAND NEW audiobook in chinese of something i havent read before, and been able to understand this much. Its not a lot, im just grasping a lot of phrases and the main scene ideas. And i do have my knowledge of The Untamed plot to help me guess. But its going better than listening to audiobooks used to go. And i see a Huge improvement in dialogue. When people talk now (except the guy who tells exposition stories), i find those words are easiest to recognize and quickly remember again. I think part of it is just: dialogue tends to be more direct communication of ideas, whereas descriptive narration can get creatively phrased and meander and discuss details in phrases i havent heard as much as ive heard conversational phrases. Like when i listened to SCI audiobook last weekend, i could follow some of the dialogue portions great, like at crime scenes, arguing, with their boss, it was the descriptions in between where id get lost for a while.

Its just sort of frustrating and sad how much stusying japanese is like hitting a brick wall and learning tiny chip by tiny chip as it wears gradually, and also grateful my mind clicked with chinese because im so over the moon i did NOT have to struggle as much with chinese. For chinese i thankfully could pretty much do exactly what i did when learning to read french, and i improved on that old study plan, and as a result chinese improvement went by faster than when i initially studied french and floundered for a while. I was reading priest novels by the end of year 1 of study (with a click translator like Pleco). The study plan was simple, worked fine. The confusing parts of grammar clicked with enough reading (after maybe 100 chapters of things), and now (likecwith french) my main grammar issues with chinese are learning to produce them right in speaking and writing. But in reading it just clicks and i know what it means immediately. I dream of the day ill finally get whats going on with japanese verbs and grammar ;-;

[prickly-pores]

mid2023

this app is such a time capsule for me. so many bad memories, so many good, so much growth has occured since i went on here daily for escape, inspiration, community, looking for meaning and solace. damn. my emotions are gratittude and pride rn. love to see it. 

life update wise time, this year, my little sister, newly18, moved in. I spent many weeks planning for, shopping for, and building her dream bedroom, full of bookshelves, fairylights, art, her first double bed, and even a window seat that I handmade using my growing tool collection, and i feel really good and warm about that. While i didn’t move out of home myself until i was sure she’d be safe, I was still worried for her. So its just good to be able to watch over her and keep guiding her through life n healing from the the scars of our childhood. I’m very grateful that my partner and I can provide her with a safe loving home environment to live out the rest of her teens. Especially given the housing and rental market these days. Having a the level of housing security we have is also just something i’ll truly never take for granted. 

I guess thats another thing I’m proud of this year. I’ve put so much blood, sweat and tears into making this house a home, I’ve taught myself so many skills from plumbing, tiling, plastering, carpentry, landscaping and how to use countless power tools. I’ve taken sledge hammers to walls, I’ve pulled up flooring and replaced it, I’ve trimmed out doors, I’ve hung doors, I’ve built cabinets and cabinet doors even benchtops from scratch, I’ve built so many bookshelves and painted so many walls, I’ve reupholstered, I’ve made and hung curtains, I’ve just taught myself so many skills and shown so much determination and pluck in the face of adveristy. I’ve pulled mutiple 80hr work weeks to finish projects I thought would be a simple weekend job. I’ve truly put my heart into this house and I am just so impressed with myself. True, I look around me now and see 101 unfinished projects, but I’ve progressed things so far, and for the first time ever in my life i’ve let myself really see my adhd as something to work with not against and the results have been astounding.... 

Relationship wise. no doubt about it. i am in deep. I used to think that deep love like this wasnt real or sustainable. or that it meant a type of unhealthy enmeshment. but i think ive realised, as scary as it is, u do just gotta be vulnerable, you’ve got to let them guards down to let someone in, to let yourself be cared for, to care for another, and i’ve never felt love like this before. every year that passes i feel closer to him than ever before. i dont believe in one off soul mates, yet our connection does feel like whatever people are getting at when they use that word. wild times. 

Overall checkin wise, I’m starting to feel more like my old self, or should i say my young self, that young girl who used to be full of energy, love and cheek. And that’s something I never would’ve imagined was possible. It really does get better... when you put the work in and find good people to surround yourself with, when u work thru your trauma with a therapist, when u have a partner whos willing to learn and grow with you, who serves as a corrective experience, as a model of secure attachment, age old wounds can begin to heal... 

anyway, its nippy outside rn and i just feel the biggest urge to go for a walk in a wide open field, climb to the peak, and yell into the wind. so imma go do that. 

[my-lunaberg]

Okay, this confrontation/chase has been going on for too long, Im not sure if Im capable of actual analysis rn so Im just jotting all my thoughts so far down bullet point style

I find it very telling that Dream just got out of prison, where he was almost completely isolated and rarely visited and starved and also actively tortured for about half of his almost year-long time there, and instead of going to his base or finding shelter or resting or anything like that, he seemingly went straight to Logstedshire after getting the gear from Punz. Idk if hes there bc he suspected that Tommy would try and get the axe of peace or bc he wanted to remisce but either way, very interesting

Im too lazy to dig up my old posts where I try to predict the effects that the prison will have on Dreams psyche and I dont really remember what I even said, but I do know that I said the prison would make him a lot more unhinged so I'll take that as a win for me

That being said, Im not entirely satisfied with the way Dream is acting so unaffected by like, the physical torture especially. Yeah sure, it does seem like being trapped in jail for a while was part of Dreams game plan all along somehow, but I dont think Quackitys torture was, judging by how surprised he seemed when he showed up. And even if it was, while I do think of Dream as a pretty deluded character, no amount of delusion is gonna make the Literal Fucking Torture hes endured for months on end not feel like Literal Fucking Torture

When the confrontation started my first thought was "oh, his manipulation tactics are a lot sloppier and a lot more obvious, I feel like Tommy wouldnt fall for that even if he didnt already know that Dream was bad news" but then I thought again and I realized that hes talking in a very similar way to when Tommys exile started, where he just kinda says stuff to try and bring him down because hes so confident in his manipulation tactics that he thinks he can just make Tommy forget all about how he compared him to an annoying bug right before he started saying he was his friend. Now, he got progressively more unhinged over the course of the confrontation, so his attempts at manipulation land even worse but still

Basically, I think hes trying to do exactly what he did at the start of exile which is to say, break him down and make him "his" in some weird way, only that with the exile the goal was to get him on his side and become Dreams protegee of sorts, while this time its mostly just to beat him down and break him like a toy

Idk Ive made a lot of analyses of Dream and one the things i keep coming back to is the fact that he wants absolute control over everything everyone and he cannot handle the loss of that control, but deep down he still desires Challenge and Tommy gave him that. His relationship with Tommy is fascinating because its essentially Dream attempting to reconcile those two fundamentally uncompatible parts of his psyche. However, I dont think he wants Challenge anymore. Even if the stay at the prison was planned, it nevertheless showed him what its like to experience loss of control, to truly eperience being challenged and its clear to me that he doesnt want it anymore and that he just wants to break Tommy down until he listens

This is another complaint that sorta ties into Dream being so unaffected by the torture and a suggestion to 'fix' it. I realize that theyre working with Minecraft mechanics and everything so it doesnt matter that much, but Dream should definitely be having issues with food after being starved and only given raw potatoes for that long and I also dont think he should be able to sprint. I feel like they couldve done something really neat and have Dream be like "no Im not hungry" when Punz gives him those baked potatoes and then later when hes chasing Tommy around maybe he starts out sprinting but after a short while hes just kinda jumping around and you realize that hes starving but hes szill not eating and just keeps following Tommy with his pearls and maybe a trident if he has one rn. Idk just something that couldve been cool

I realize that Tommy is obviously there too and I feel like I shouldve written more about him but honestly, I dont have any thoughts abt him rn, maybe I'll have some later down the line. Idk man, I like c!Tommy a lot but hes not really a character that I like to write analysis posts about (i love reading others analyses though!! I think hes interesting, I just dont have a lot of interesting thoughts about him beyond that sry), while c!Dream very much is lol. I see a lot of myself in and thats definitely part of the reason I enjoy him so much and why I symphatize with him so strongly and why analysing him is so fascinating, its kinda cathartic for me. I know a lot of people in the fandom tend to really dehumanize him, both bc he doesnt have his own POV which makes it easier and bc they seemingly just dehumanize any Bad People in fiction, but its honestly a struggle for me to try and do that too, simply because I am human and I know hes human because we have done similar things for similar reasons (only that hes obviously worse bc its fiction and things get exgerated yknow)

Idk thats about it for now, I just spent like two hours writing this when I probably shouldve just kept watching the video lol

[sirfrogsworth]

Good news, everyone!

Man, it has been rare that I get to say that lately.

But I do actually have some good news.

My mom is home from the hospital and she feels better than she has in months.

They cut out all the infected bits, blasted her with IV antibiotics, and checked her down to the bone to make sure they got everything. She'll need some oral antibiotics for a few weeks yet, but her leg infection seems to be mostly cleared up. She'll have to take good care of the wounds, but she is working with a specialist to make sure we get those healed properly.

She's been living with this infection for MONTHS. Two doctors just wrote it off as a symptom of psoriatic arthritis and told her there was nothing she could do. In fairness, wounds like these are common and usually a bitch to try and get healed. But they didn't even consider an infection on top of that issue.

We could have resolved this a long time ago if they had just suggested she get it looked at by a specialist. That's a little frustrating.

All the signs of infection were there when we have the benefit of hindsight. Mild fevers. Severe brain fog. Dizziness. And, of course, the immense pain.

The moral of the story... it is always super important to advocate for yourself when dealing with doctors. They do not always have enough time to properly assess things like this. If they had lived with my mom and saw the day to day things, I'm sure they would have caught this early. But 20 minute visits are just not suitable for tricky diagnoses. Especially when you have one thing acting like another thing that is more common with her condition.

So it's important to listen to your body. Keep track of every symptom. And when the doctor writes you off and takes an easy out... keep pushing. Keep telling them something more is wrong. And, if necessary, ask to be referred to a specialist for another opinion.

To be clear, these aren't bad doctors. Both of them have come through for my mom on many occasions. It's just that doctors are not infallible and sometimes they screw up. I wish doctors were able to reduce their patient loads and spend more time thinking about each patient. But that just isn't how things work in our current system.

My mom is walking much better already. Her head is so much clearer with no more confusion. She's already talking about coming downstairs to work on laundry.

She still has some healing to do and I am careful not to count my chickens and whatnot, but I truly think we finally have some good news.

Now we just need to get my dad home in his chair.

He did a progress test yesterday and he was able to stand up and sit down from a wheelchair 5 times. He could only do it once a few weeks ago. I'm not sure how many times he needs to do it before he comes home, but this is his last major obstacle he needs to conquer. He needs to be able to stand on his own and do it consistently without dizziness or balance issues. I'd say he's suuuuper close to being there.

That's all the news from The Frog Household.

Have a good Saturday.

[hoodhookage]

Congrats on 200+!!!! Ive only just seen your page and i am instantly in love with your writing 😢😢🙏 feel free to ignore this but could you do a scenario about xiao giving is super shy fem s/o oral for the first time. Just some fluffy reassurance is all that we need. If you dont feel comfortable tho i completely understand. Hope you have a fantastic rest of your day 🤗🤗

thank you so much💗 I COULD NEVER PASS UP THIS SORT OF OPPORTUNITY! i’m so grateful you wanted me to even attempt to try this out for you<3 i hope it’s not too long & that i met your expectations!! here’s xiao eating out his so for the first time

xiao let’s his fingers run through your hair, gentle eyes focused on you as you lay beside him fidgeting with the strings of his hoodie. you close your eyes when he lifts his hand now to your jaw, stroking your cheek. his touch is soft, instinctively allowing yourself to melt into his caress. xiao is many things; he’s everything you want him to be. he’s willing to make you happy and comfortable, going far lengths to achieve it.

he’s understanding and caring, in the sense that he’s always keeping an eye on you to make sure you’re never in any sort of discomfort. xiao is loving. physical or not, you always feel so appreciated by him. he does little things to make you happy, you remember how he likes to squeeze your thumb with his when you hold his hand. you both have come so far with one another, growing with every passing day.

xiao loves you in every way imaginable, getting frustrated with himself when he can’t truly show you what you mean to him when his words alone fail him. he wants you to be happy, to tell you he values your company, just being able to be with you. he appreciates you and wants to be able to take care of you the way you do for him, feeling as if he’s entirely at your mercy for the way you’ve patched that sense of longing he once felt on his own. all of that now washed away completely when you’ve brought yourself into the picture.

his presence alone makes you feel so jittery, no matter how serene or still the atmosphere may be. he’s gentle, and warm…so warm you sometimes feel as if you’re burning up at his touch, no matter how light it is. you find yourself drawn quiet even while with xiao next to you, letting your mind entertain frivolous possibilities revolving the both of you. what he makes you feel is a mix of apprehensiveness and exhilaration, just with his face leaning in to your forehead close to place a kiss.

the faint breeze from the window lingers inside and you welcome it with a deep inhale, letting it bring you back to your place between xiao and his bed. your exhale quickly allows itself to take over you, shuddering in reaction to the coolness continuously hitting your skin all over. xiao rests his lips against your forehead, another small and delicate show of affection. “you’re getting cold” responding with a sigh to how he acknowledges your change in body temperature before turning over to face him and let your chest rest against his.

even the air xiao expires so softly across you from the closeness of the both of you is warm. his chest is warm, the arms that keep you close are warm, he’s already letting you get lost in this feeling of heat he provides you with. “xiao” your face is in his shoulder when you call him, snuggling closer. he whispers your name back and begins to hold you closer “what is it?”

you try to conceal the small shake in your voice. “you make me feel really, really, warm when we’re like this”

you mumble, already wanting to hide the show of emotions he makes you feel inside so unexpectedly just from the call of your name. you breathe in, smelling xiao and his clothes as one together. “are you saying that like it’s a good thing?” he rubs delicate circles on your back, holding you with care. you nod and push your face closer into his chest almost like a final attempt to breathe him in again, he overwhelms your physical senses this way.

he pulls you back, a stern look on his face as you look up at him. “you’re nearly freezing” xiao rolls his eyes, a small smile forming on his lips as he brings his hand to your jaw to give you a small kiss. he breaks it but stays just inches away from your lips, giving you a teasing remark when you just stare at his mouth. xiao does a lot of things to you…and right now, whatever it is he’s doing to you to make you feel like this, it has you hot all over again:

this burning sensation reaching all the way into your chest and stomach, impossible to avoid. he takes you close and into another kiss as you pout, this time longer than the first. you close your eyes and let him take charge, your cheeks beginning to feel that same sensation that spread through your body when he slowly slides his tongue inside. you cup his face, gasping when he gives you a playful bite to your bottom lip before tugging on it.

“i can’t stand it when you lie to me, here” he begins to remove his arms from the sleeves and slides his hoodie off from above, his shirt getting caught with it momentarily. it’s hard to look away when you can see the bare skin of his abdomen, making you grow a little desperate for his touch. xiao motions for you to lift your arms up and you do as he asks, putting your head through to now properly wear it.

you turn your head to the side and look down at your hands, “thanks” all of these different kinds of warmths feel good when they’re from xiao. you start to wonder if he’s ever experienced this same kind of feeling. you both have that look in your eyes that tells the other you want more, stuck as if there’s no possible way to convey it aloud. all those thoughts leave your mind as soon as he pulls you in for another kiss.

you tremble into his mouth when his hand rests at your hip, giving an experimental grab as you pant and try to kiss him back just as needfully. “xiao, i think what i meant to say, from before. it was just-“ you interrupt the silence but he shushes you. “you’re alright,” he gives you a tiny kiss at your bottom lip. you think you understand now, “…you want me to take care of you, i can do that for you” stopping between sentences to give you more, this time across your face and jaw. “-but will you let me?”

he does experience that same feeling, your heart is beating twice as fast. “please”

xiao treats you with the same amount of gentleness as always, starting by taking a pillow from under his head and propping it beneath your lower back. he looks at you, “i want to try something for you- and i as well” his hand moving to lace yours. “i’ll always ask this of you, do you trust me?” you nod and let out a shaky yes. he begins after hearing your approval “alright, show me exactly where you want me the most”

you feel your body quiver as he trails his hand across your stomach, your fingers guiding his palm. you feel embarrassed when you have to stop, recollecting yourself as he looks at you. “you pleaded for me to take good care of you. i promise i want nothing more than to be able to” he reassures you. you continue until you reach your abdomen, xiao’s hand slides down a little further on his own now. “good” he sighs, getting worked up himself.

“ remove this for me” he murmurs referring to your clothes, tone still sweet when speaking with you. you start with the bottoms, pulling them down off your legs. you keep your panties on, knowing xiao will be happy to do the honours of stripping those off you himself. you hold onto the hoodie “xiao, i want to keep this on” you whisper. he would never deny you anything, but hearing you ask to keep something of his on during a moment like this has his chest swell with pride.

xiao’s hand rests at the hem of your panties, letting his middle and ring finger stretch out just a little further onto the material that starts to dampen the farther you reach. “to think you would want to let me leave you in this state” he almost whispers to himself. he lets his hand dip into your underwear, his fingers immediately met with how wet you’ve become. “your body knows exactly who it’s with right now and i can already tell” he marvels in the little to no friction his finger tips experience as he slides hands over your cunt.

“close your eyes, just let me” he strokes your hair again as he lets his finger trail around your entrance. you gasp at the feeling but it’s slow, allowing you to await and prepare for the feeling of when he enters. the push is perfect, your soaking cunt pulls his finger in with no resistance. he praises you again for how you take it, letting you relax under his touch once more. xiao pulls his finger out back to your entrance, rubbing at your clit with two of them. the contact making you squirm as he lifts his hand.

he brings his finger up to both of you before opening his mouth to clean it off. he can’t help himself when it comes to you, always wanting a little more. you feel yourself pool even harder between your legs at his action. he holds his finger out to you, “would you want to try yourself?” opening your mouth to meet him. you can still taste yourself on that finger, it’s tarte even after xiao had licked most of it off.

“do you still want to follow through with what i had in mind this time for us” he rasps. he’s only ever fingered you, and the thought of letting him try whatever it is he wanted to right now makes you feel weak. your knees instinctively press together as he waits for your answer, “you want to go…further?” your voice is unsure but still with excitement in your tone. he wants to go as far as you’ll let him, indulge you in whatever it is you want from him right now. but he has to start slow, somewhere. it’s progress.

he wants to ask again to reassure you but you’re past that, kissing him as you’re caught in a tiny adrenaline run he’s been unaware he was fuelling this whole time. all this time he’s been feeding into the fire, but this was a tiny bit of gasoline, and it’s beginning to spread. you know it’ll wear down once he begins again but you want to ride it out as long as possible.

he’s always happy when you are, but now was your turn to embarrass xiao, catching him off guard. “can we?” you try to sit up but he keeps you in place, laying you down. “as long as you want this as much as i do” he gets up from beside you, knees against yours as he holds your thighs. his hands look so much bigger from where he’s moved now, you give him another nod and he holds your panties to finally remove them.

you’re back in your original place; being naked from the bottom down right infront of xiao makes you feel unnerved. you let him slowly spread your legs as he continues to hold eye contact with you to keep you calm. he looks more enamoured by your cunt now than ever, situating himself so that his face is right above your clit, arms weighted on your thighs.

his hands come to lock yours on your sides as his you feel his hot breath, making you clench on the air. “relax, close your eyes if you need to, but i’m right here…exactly where you need me” you let your eyes close before your lips part at the feeling of xiao’s tongue swipe across you. it makes you shiver, his tongue feels long and warm, almost a bit pointy. wet like the rest of his mouth, you’re already gasping again at the feeling.

you bring your head up to look at him, xiao has his tongue running along your folds ever so slowly, eyes never leaving yours. you let the back of your head hit the pillows again as you let out a cry, his tongue is hot when it circles around your entrance. you pull the hoodie up on you in an attempt to hold your thoughts together, only to breathe in and be reminded of who’s conquering every piece of your mind, xiao. you grip his hands a little tighter while you buck into his mouth.

allowing yourself to succumb to him has you thrashing when he sucks on your clit. how he prods his tongue towards your hole to make you squirm. xiao is slowly beginning to devour you; lapping, licking, sucking, darting his tongue onto you. he lets go of one of your hands and lets a finger slide in, “i know what your body can handle, and right now it’s beginning to ask for more. i promise to only give what i know you can take” focusing his concentration and movements back on your clit.

cries and whimpers of his name fill and go beyond his room, letting yourself continue to get lost in the pleasure xiao is bringing you so intensely. the curling of his finger now turning into pumping, his mouth never leaving your messy cunt. “good, it’s really good xiao” you whine, gripping his hair as he moans into you. “i cant-“ you thrash at the feeling of him pull at your clit. “you’re perfect like this right now, finally experiencing the sort of pleasure you always bring me” he leans back down, rocking you against his mouth.

every single shock he manages to send through you has you enjoying it more than the last. it feels good, how he constantly lets you know he’ll give you what’s good for you within your limits. you feel your body course with the kind of build up that has you struggling to stay still, the kind xiao knows how to give you regularly just in other ways. this one is far more intense than the last.

you let out a broken moan of his name, trying to find the words to tell him. you properly call out his name and he looks up at you, both his hair and mouth messy from how you held onto him. “i’m going to cum” you squeak, feeling his fingers rub your gspot. your body cant hang on any longer, as if you’re on the edge. “cum for me, right here against me. i’ve got you” you shake your head furiously.

your back arches off the bed and against xiao, whos still giving you every kind of sensation imaginable and all at once. he feels you squeeze his fingers, convulsing against his mouth.

your back hits the bed as your legs still shake around his head, in complete shock at what he was able to bring you. he can feel you still pulse against his mouth and he slowly pulls off. you both stay still as he lets you calm down. he stares at you in awe, panting from his actions.

he moves back to his side on the bed and embraces you, feeling your body go limp against his. his chin rests on the top of your head as he pulls you into the covers properly. you let his forehead lean onto yours as you move away and cup his cheek, catching xiao shyly turn his gaze away.

you’re right. xiao loves you in every way imaginable, willing to go far lengths to prove it.

frustrated when even he himself has trouble to explain how he feels in just words.

a feeling that he can only describe as gentle and warm…warm enough to feel as if he’s burning up at your touch. no matter how light.

just like he does to you.

[solomonish]

say my name like it’s a bad word (solomon x reader)

sometimes, when Solomon hears others speak his name, it feels more like they're spewing curses than addressing him.

ao3 link: here!

I. Anger

He could see the peak rising above the horizon much sooner than he could the day before. That pleased him - though he wouldn’t let those graciously lending him their powers know.

As he walked into his unfinished temple, he had to dodge a few of his flying demons who passive-aggressively swooped too close to his head. He enjoyed the noise the solid ground made beneath his feet, opposed to the soft earth outside the entrance. With a purposely blank expression, Solomon strode over to a corner of the temple, where one of his more outspoken pacts stomped down clay.

Asmodeus looked up at him as he approached, his brows furrowing. If he wasn’t already out of breath from the strenuous work Solomon had ordered him to do, he probably would have groaned loud enough to halt the progress around him. His hair, stuck to his brow with sweat, still managed to look perfect and keep its style. Keeping his voice level, Solomon said as much.

“Oh, thank you!” Asmodeus chirped, wiping away his frustration for a moment to flash a faux grin. “Honestly, for someone like me, it’s hardly a feat to maintain such exquisite looks, but I certainly appreciate you noticing!”

“Someone like you…..” Solomon responded, trailing off as he held his chin in thought. Asmodeus, bound by the command of his pact, kept stomping the clay beneath him, but his upper half seemed completely at ease. There was a sudden fluidity to his movements, one that always warned Solomon to up his guard and covertly cast some safeguards against Asmo’s charms.

“Yes, someone like me! The most bewitching creature in all the realms - but surely, you don’t need a reminder of that,” Adding a purr beneath his words, Asmo leaned forward. Something glinted in his eyes as they slowly bled into a fuchsia hue, and Solomon felt a faint tug at the spell he just cast. “You know, I wouldn’t mind reminding you in other ways. Surely, this has been a test to show how much energy I truly have?”

Solomon perked up, and he could see Asmodeus rejoice, certain his plan had worked. “Really? After all of this, you still have energy?”

“Of course!”

With a hum, Solomon let his hand fall from his chin and smiled sweetly at the demon before him. The pact mark on his hip tingled lightly, a side-effect of the new method of command he was testing out. “Very well. I’ll double your quota and, naturally, expect you to exceed my expectations in a day’s time.”

“What-” His eyes widened and jaw dropped for just a second, wondering both how his plan had been foiled so quickly and how Solomon managed to command him with zero authority in his voice. Against his will, Asmodeus’ stomping quickened, forcing him to lose his theatrics and focus his entire being on his task. “Solomon!” He shouted indignantly, the only word he could get out before his pact holder turned and walked away.

II. Formality

“Solomon,” the voice said, a stiffness around its edges. Stopping in his tracks, Solomon had to squint in the shadows to even see the sorcerer he was meeting. In his opinion, hiding in the shadows beside the comically large bookshelf was a bit overkill for their meeting. While technically a forbidden one, Solomon was confident that, if caught, he would be able to leave unscathed.

"Irin," Solomon returned, hoping his own casual tone would ease away that stifling formality in his acquaintence's voice. "You said you needed to meet with me?"

Tentatively, like a distrusting stray cat, Irin stepped out from the shadows while peering down both ends of the hallway. They were ever the cautious soul, though it stung to see that hesitancy aimed at himself. "Keep your voice down. We don't want to get caught."

Solomon raised an eyebrow. "Why could we not have met elsewhere, then?"

"I only just found it. I wanted to make sure I could hand it to you in person before I found out why you were banished."

The glare Irin leveled him in had his heart sinking. Perhaps hoping that word of his fallout had yet to spread - or that he would not be held in contempt for accusations he could never address or recover from - was too big an ambition, even for Solomon. But the shadowed leaders of the Sorcerer's Society were prone to gossip. That was,after all, part of what demanded such secrecy in this rendezvous.

Glancing down, Solomon saw Irin handing his wand over to him, his lips grimly pressed together in a thin line. Ah, so that's why I couldn’t find it. The drama of the past few weeks had been enough to scramble his mind, and in the chaos of his banishment, Solomon must have dropped his wand as he was forced out. That, or it was stolen and he was never meant to have it back in his possession. Ah, well. Why bother with the semantics of rules he was no longer bound by?

Without a word, Solomon took the wand and tucked it in his waistband,, hidden behind his cloak. To see such solemnity in the exchange of such a ridiculous thing would have been a humorous sight if the atmosphere were lighter. But the air around them hung heavy, heavy enough to have Solomon itching just beneath his skin and craving an exit. As much as the thought hurt when it struck, he realized that there was no call for niceties or a proper goodbye. The icy glare he was leveled in wouldn’t be remedied with an amicable goodbye.

As Solomon made his way down the hall, a second pair of footsteps that were far too light to be Irin’s approached from behind him. He didn’t bother to cast a glance behind him to see who it might be - whoever it was didn’t want to see him, and Solomon was quickly losing interest in the affairs of the society in their entirety.

III. Distrust

“But is that really a good idea?”

“Do you not agree?”

Two voices floated down the corridor as Solomon approached, one like a softly tinkling bell and the other deep and soothing. It seemed that his two companions had started the conversation without him. Either that, or he was hearing part of a conversation that was never meant for his ears.

“It isn’t that, it’s more…” The lighter voice trailed off for a moment. “Are we sure it’s best to throw a newborn lamb in with lions who know far more than they do? Even ignoring how they’d be your only true subject of this exchange program, wouldn’t they have more luck bonding with someone as familiar with this world as they were?”

“Two humans who have no idea what is going on wandering the Devildom? That isn’t the best idea I’ve heard,” Solomon interrupted as he rounded the corner. He had no interest in eavesdropping on a conversation for information he was owed, anyway. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Diavolo reassured, uncrossing his legs and leaning back in his chair. He gestured towards the assortment of small pastries and tea on the table between the three of them while Simeon picked up his own cup, if only to have something to focus on.

“Nice to see you, Solomon,” Simeon answered cheerily, masterfully hiding the suspicion Solomon knew should be biting at the greeting. Biting the inside of his cheek, Solomon held back any questions he had of Simeon trying to butt him out of the Diavolo’s project. Instead, he nodded in a silent ’nice to see you, too,’ and made himself comfortable on the unoccupied chair in the room.

“Now,” Diavolo started, ignoring the chill hovering in the air, “How are we feeling about this exchange program?”

IV. Annoyance

An indignant shriek filled the dorm as a menacing cloud of violet smoke rose from the pot. Luke watched it in horror, jumping back as the sparks started to fly out of the pan.

“What did you just do?” He yelled. Solomon merely watched in awe, impressed at the show he had created and completely shutting out Luke’s exasperated yapping. Perhaps such marvelling should have waited, because he couldn’t hear the panicked shouts as some of the sparks fell on the ends of his cloak. It took the brunt of Luke’s bodyweight as he pushed Solomon out of the line of literal fire and ran to get the fire extinguisher to snap him out of his daze.

Glancing at the bottom of his cloak, Solomon sighed and snapped his fingers, putting out the fire immediately. Begrudgingly removing the cloak of his shoulders, he lifted the hem to eye level and mourned his loss silently. Moments later, Luke came barreling in the room, letting loose with the fire extinguisher without even looking to see if there was still a flame.

When he was convinced that the fire was out, Luke held Solomon in his best attempt at an upset glare. He ended up looking more like a slightly upset puppy, but Solomon knew when to hold his tongue around the young angel. “Solomon, I told you to stay out of the kitchen! What part of that translated to you as ‘come add ingredients to the pot’?”

Before Solomon could make things worse in his attempt at a defense, Simeon walked in the room, looking like the most graceful being in the world. With his current company, though, it wasn’t such an accomplishment. “Now, now. I’m sure Solomon just wanted to help, right Luke?”

Luke didn’t look convinced, but the practiced smile on Simeon was a clear indication that he should agree. “Yeah, I guess.”

Gently guiding Luke out of the room, Simeon gave that same smile to Solomon. “And he will help by cleaning up this mess while we grab some more ingredients for dinner, right?”

“Yes.”

“Great!”

With that, Simeon ushered Luke out of the room. When they stopped to grab their jackets, Solomon heard Luke whisper, “I thought you were watching him, Simeon.”

Unlike his roommates, Solomon had the wisdom to wait until he heard the door shut to sigh in displeasure.

V. Contempt

At this point, Solomon wasn’t sure whether his repeated showdowns with Lucifer were proving his tenacity and value or deepening the hatred that seemed to run between them.

Still, it was unusual for Lucifer to summon for Solomon in the middle of class, only to stare at him in silence as Solomon fought the instinctive urge to shift where he stood before him. The student council room was empty, save for the spread out papers on the table in front of Lucifer and the two of them. It wasn’t often that Solomon felt unnerved, and certainly not by Lucifer after he heard your tales of how he behaved at home, but that was the closest word he could think of to describe how he felt.

“I needn’t remind you of the perils the Devildom has to offer?” Lucifer asked, his voice cold as ice. “I am not pleased with the state in which you brought MC back the other day.”

What, in once piece? Solomon had to bite his tongue. Lucifer really thought he could lecture his way out of everything, didn’t he? “I apologize,” He lied. Then, more truthfully, “If I could have brought them back with no injuries, I would have.”

Lucifer narrowed his eyes, weaving his fingers together in thought and resting his elbows on the table. “If you are to be so irresponsible, perhaps I should put a stop to these outings?”

The indignation burning in Solomon’s gut made him grimace; he hated feeling like a child, but Lucifer had a way of belittling everyone that way. His protests all sounded like an upset teen arguing with their parents - They were only scrapes and bruises! It was an accident! You can’t dictate everything MC does with their time. You can’t dictate anything I do with mine! - but he held them all back. “I will make sure MC does not get hurt next time they are in my care.”

Lucifer’s eyes flashed red, and Solomon suddenly understood why the horror movies of his realm used that as an indication of evil. “Of course you will. But a little incentive wouldn’t hurt.”

With that, Lucifer stood from his seat, towering over Solomon by at least a foot. He wasn’t in his demon form - RAD rules to accommodate the exchange students - but he didn’t need to. Solomon could feel the threatening aura around him, promises of the harm that would come to him if he went against Lucifer’s wishes surrounding the two like the wind in a firestorm.

This was where Lucifer always lost Solomon’s interest. He wasn’t able to be threatened by promises Lucifer was always too busy to fulfill.

“You may not have much of a life to gamble, Solomon,” Lucifer hissed, and the only indication Solomon gave of his flinch was one quick blink, “but MC is not yours to toy with. Remember that.”

Unwilling to back down in their staring match, Solomon kept his mouth wired shut for a few moments. Lucifer, living up to his sin, also refused to back down, and Solomon realized it was a losing battle.

“I have to get back to class,” Solomon lied again, and they both knew it. But there were no more words to share between them, so Solomon left it at that.

VI. Affection

Hearing his name come from your mouth like that gave him the same sensation of watching someone put a piece of a cactus in their mouth.

You hadn’t even entered his room yet. The moment you entered the dorm, you called out his name, stretching out the last syllable in a sing-song voice. He could hear the rustle of plastic bags, the ingredients for his latest cooking lesson tucked inside. When you knocked on the doorframe to his room, he didn’t answer, and you peeked inside to see him staring directly at you with a dumbstruck expression on his face.

“Are...you okay?” You asked, not truly concerned. It was enough to quickly snap him back to reality, and he tried to play off his surprise with a smile. You stopped him from speaking before he even had a chance to tell you he was fine. “Don’t give me any crap. What was that look for?”

How could he express what he was thinking without sounding entirely unbecoming? “It’s...just weird to hear my name said like that.”

“What, to the tune of the Devildom’s next hit of the summer?” Your cheeky grin did nothing to hide your arrogance. Solomon only hummed, standing from his desk and stretching his arms above his head.

Realizing he wasn’t going to explain himself any further, you led him to the kitchen and explained the dinner you had planned. He listened halfheartedly, rummaging through the bag to eye the ingredients suspiciously. It all looked so...predictable. Boring. He was already connecting ideas to add his own pizzazz to the dish.

“Are you going to yell at me when I mess it up?” He asked in an attempt at jest. Something in his tone was off, though, and it sounded much more like a genuine question. Uncomfortably clearing his throat, Solomon avoided your confused gaze. “I mean-”

“Have Simeon and Luke been on your case about your cooking again?” You asked. He could practically hear your exasperation at their antics, and almost jumped to their defense. They were angels. Confronting people directly about their shortcomings wasn’t their strong suit. “I promise, I will not yell at you. Seriously. I will, however, whip you into shape with this spoon.”

To prove your point, you picked up a wooden spoon and hit him on the arm. Your own strength surprised you, however, and the sharp snap that sounded through the room made you freeze in your spot. “Oh my goodness, I am so sorry-”

With a grin that could only be described as shit-eating, Solomon burst into theatrics, bemoaning his injured arm and worrying over how dark the bruise would definitely be. In between your apologizes and insistences that you didn’t hit him that hard, you tried to place a gentle kiss where you hit him. He made sure to pull away, swearing he could never trust you again after you’ve hurt him so severely.

He decided then that hearing his name interrupted with your laugh was the best way to hear it.

[justalitlecreacher]

Anakin Skywalker Deserved Better

Ive made this post before but it was really rough and i meant to edit it later and its later now but its been so long that i don’t feel like finding the og post so here we are. If it’s not obvious i care more than a normal amount about Anakin Skywalker.

Tl;Dr: I firmly believe that there are so many points in the prequel series, the clone wars, and even the comics that some level of intervention could have steered Anakin away from falling in Revenge of the Sith.

The Phantom Menace 

This is our first encounter with Anakin, and it does a decent job at introducing us to him. This movie sets up his tragic backstory™️ and gives us a good look at his personality; Anakin appears selfless and eager to help complete strangers in return for nothin when he first brings Qui-Gon and crew to his home to give them shelter, and then risks his life in the podrace to help them afford the part they need to fix their ship. Aside from introducing and developing Anakin not much else happens until Qui-Gon brings Anakin before the Jedi Council where they decide he is too old and there is already too much anger in him to be trained as a Jedi. Qui-Gon disagress, but we move on to Naboo where 9-year old Anakin blows up a very large ship all; by himslef w/ autopilot ( they grow up so fast), Qui-Gon dies, and we get our first look at Palpatine being creepy in hindsight, “And you, young Skywalker, we will watch your career with great interest.” not all that weird out of context but uncomfy when you remember who Palpatine is.

Before we move on i actually want to flashback to Anakin’s first encounter with the Jedi Council. For a group of people who constantly take in and raise children, the Jedi seem to do a poor job interacting with them. A kind of infuriating thing about this scene is that the Jedi seem to shame Anakin for being afraid (no matter how much Anakin himself denies that fear). This scene does a really good job at setting up how the Jedi consistently fail to take into account that Anakin is fundamentally incapable of being a “normal” Jedi. Anakin has had a fundamentally different childhood than any other Jedi and absolutely needed more help and support than the average Padawan from the very beginning. Granted it is possible that the Jedi tried to get him the help and support he needed, but if they did we can infer they failed from Dooku’s line in Revenge of the Sith, “I sense great fear in you, Skywalker. You have hate, you have anger, but you don’t use them.”

Obi-Wan And Anakin Comic

The Obi-Wan and Anakin comics take place sometime between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. The story focuses on Anakin and Obi-Wan investigating a distress signal on a planet that has been destroyed by war. The comic also flashes back to reveal that Anakin is thinking of leaving the Jedi Order after Palpatine shows him the dark side of Coruscant, and tells him that neither the Jedi nor the Senate will be able to do anything about it. We get more creepy (not just in hindsight this time) moments out of Palpatine here. The first one is when he uses his position as Chancellor to gain access to Anakin under the guise of “helping” him.  “Why young Skywalker is a Jedi, is he not? The Jedi are under the Senate’s jurisdiction. And as I am the Chancellor of the Senate...”. Palpatine proceeds to take Anakin to a club of some kind where they see a corrupt senator gambling; Palpatine also mentions how “Lives are bought and sold here everyday” he then makes a show of apologizing for bringing it up considering Anakin’s past.Without context this would seem harmless enough, but with the context of Palpatine’s true identity it is more likely a ploy to subelty remind Anakin of how the Jedi and Senate are unable or unwilling to intervene on Tatooine or the rest of the Outer Rim. Palpatine reminding Anakin of the Senate and Jedi’s inability to help everyone seems to be a running theme in their meeting as the series continues. 

Aside from Palpatine being a creep; we see that Anakin is still just as willing and eager to help as he was in The Phantom Menace. His skills in mechanics result in him being briefly kidnapped so that he can fix weapons that will help one side to win the war that has destroyed the planet. Seriously Anakin is just so ernest in these comics that i shed tears because i know how his story ends. 

One character that Obi-Wan and Anakin team up with to reach the distress signal first mistakes Anakin for Obi-Wan’s son, and then tells Obi-Wan, “He [Anakin] doesn’t think so. Kid idolizes you. You can see it” when Obi-Wan admits that he’s not sure he is the best suited to teach Anakin, and fears he has failed him in some way. As the story progresses, it is revealed in a flashback that after Anakin told Obi-Wan he wanted to leave the Order, Yoda sent the two of them on the mission they are currently on to give Anakin a chance to reconsider his decision, and Obi-Wan tells Yoda that if Anakin returned from the mission still wanting to leave the Order, Obi-Wan would leave with him to continue his training and keep his promise to Qui-Gon. 

Attack of the Clones

Back to the movies. Attack of the Clones reunites Obi-Wan and Anakin with Padmé Amidala when they are assigned to protect her from an assassin. One of ( if not the) most important elements to this movie are Anakin’s dreams/visions of his mother. Towards the beginning of the movie Anakin doesn’t explicitly say what the dreams are about, but it can be assumed that the dreams are unpleasant as he says, “I don't sleep well anymore.” in response to Obi-Wan commenting on him looking tired; going on to claim that he cannot sleep because of his dreams. Anakin later admits to Padmé that he worries about his mother. This is one of the key moments in Anakin’s life that set him up to fall in Revenge of the Sith. There is no reason i can think of that Anakin should not have been allowed to check on his mother if he was having dreams about her that prevented him from sleeping properly and made him worry for her safety. As Anakin says, “Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi's life, so you might say we're encouraged to love.”. If compassion truly is central to a Jedi’s life, then surely they could at the very least send one of their 10,000 Jedi to check on Anakin’s mother if he could not? Is it compassion to deny someone the help they need? I find it hard to believe that Anakin would not have told Obi-Wan that he was worried about his mother going off of how close they appear to be in the previous comic. Especially after Anakin responds to Obi-Wan joking about Anakin being the death of him one day with, “Don't say that Master... You're the closest thing I have to a father... I love you. I don't want to cause you pain.” 

Anakin and Padmé arrive too late to save Shmi, and she dies in Anakin’s arms. This is a crucial moment leading up to Anakin’s fall as it shows Anakin that his dreams have a very real potential of coming true and likely results in him blaming himself at least partially for not insisting on checking on his mother or getting there sooner or doing anything different that may have allowed her to survive; it’s also the first time we see Anakin really lose control. There have been instances of him lashing out in anger before (turning a pair of padawans’ lightsabers against them when he hears them making fun of him behind his back), but nothing like what happens in the wake of Shmi’s death. Anakin wipes out the entire village of Tusken Raiders; children included. And while Anakin does express genuine remorse for his actions, he never faces consequences for them. It’s not even clear if anyone but Padmé ever finds out; Yoda claims to feel Anakin’s pain in the wake of his mother’s death, but does not appear to see Anakin’s actions, and is not shown to discuss what happened on Tatooine with Anakin at all.

Some light googling on my part revealed that in the novelization of Attack of the Clone, while Anakin did tell Obi-Wan about his mother’s death it was Padmé who told Obi-Wan how she had died, but Obi-Wan is unaware of what happened afterwards. “Anakin had told him of Shmi’s death; that was why he and Padmé had gone to Tatooine, he said. Obi-Wan had talked to Padmé later, and she had explained that Shmi had been kidnapped and killed by Tusken Raiders. Neither of them had been willing to go into much detail, and from what Obi-Wan knew of the Tusken Raiders, he didn’t blame them. It was no wonder Anakin seemed shaken, if his mother had been tortured and killed. One day, perhaps, Anakin would be willing to tell him the whole story.” Obi-Wan appears to know that there is more to the story than he has been told, but it content to wait until Anakin is ready to talk about it. I wonder if they ever had that conversation.

Anakin’s inability to save his mother even after the warnings he receives in his dreams likely leads to his desperation to save Padmé form the danger he believes her to be in later in Revenge of the Sith. He has been shown once before that his dreams can easily come true, and he is desperate to prevent this dream from coming true no matter what the cost may be. 

The Clone Wars

This is gonna be a long one; it’s gonna have to cover the most relevant episodes of The Clone Wars and oh boy that’s not a small amount. Im gonna try to go chronologically but bear with me (if you actually read this far you know what you got yourself into)

Assassin s3ep7

In this episode Ahsoka begins having visions of Padmé being assassinated similarly to how Anakin dreamed of his mother’s and later Padmé’s deaths. The difference with Ahsoka is that she is able to prevent the visions from becoming reality.  What i want to focus on in this episode is the reaction Ahsoka gets when she tells Yoda about her dreams. Yoda explains to her that her dream may be telling her something and provides her with the means to act on her visions to prevent them from becoming true.

When Anakin approaches Yoda about his dreams in Revenge of the Sith, Yoda simply tells him that death is natural and he must train himself to let go of everything he fears to lose. We could chalk this up to just a writing inconsistency, but i dont think i will. I would instead like to wonder why Yoda treats Ahsoka’s visions like they are something that can be changed but then treats Anakin’s like they are set in stone. Anakin has already proven himself capable of having true visions, and is more force sensitive than any other living Jedi. It makes no sense to dismiss Anakin’s feelings like this. All this to say looking into and helping Anakin to examine his dreams instead of telling him to let go when he has proven over and over to be incapable of doing so would likely have been significantly more helpful in the long run.

The Mortis Arc S3 Ep15-17

Honestly i dont have a lot to say on this arc aside how much psychic damage it dealt to see Anakin briefly turn to the dark side because he was so desperate o avoid the future The Son had shown him ( really hope everyone had the common sense not to bring that up to Anakin after the fact though).

 The Deception Arc S4 Ep15+18

In this arc Obi-Wan fakes his death in order to go undercover as the bounty hunter Rako Hardeen and uncover a plot to kidnap the Chancellor. This wouldn’t be a problem if they had brought Anakin in on the plan; instead they use Anakin’s reaction to Obi-Wan’s “death” to better sell the illusion. Obi-Wan even says, “Keeping Anakin on the outside was critical. Everyone knows how close we are. It was his reaction that sold the sniper. I'm sure of it.” Obi-Wan and the Council are fully aware of how much Obi-Wan means to Anakin, yet they all decide to use those feelings to their own advantage with little regard for the consequences.

On top of betraying Anakin’s trust; this move leads Anakin to doubt the Jedi Council and wonder what else they may be keeping from him if they  were willing to let him believe that Obi-Wan was dead as long as it suited their interests. “How many other lies have I been told by the Council? And how do you know that you even have the whole truth?”. 

I just cannot imagine why they thought they even had to use Obi-Wan for this plan. In the Obi-Wan and Anakin comic, Obi-Wan claims that there are 10,000 Jedi; surely there is someone less connected or with less attention on them who would be more suited to go undercover without the element of faking their death. Or if faking their death was necessary, surely they could have picked a Jedi who was not closely attached to arguably the most emotionally unstable Jedi in the Order. Anyone else would have been better. I don’t doubt that Anakin was telling the truth when he said, “If it was up to me I would kill you right here! But lucky for you, the man you murdered would rather see you rot in jail.”.

The Deception Arc just really grinds my gears because it really is almost like the Council wants Anakin to fall. There really is no excuse for how they use his bond with Obi-Wan against him for their own gain. The Council and Obi-Wan know full well how much Anakin loves Obi-Wan (see Anakin referring to Obi-Wan as the closest thing he has to a father in Attack of the Clones), and chose to use this vulnerability against Anakin in the worst way possible. 

This arc really sets Anakin to later doubt Obi-Wan and the Council in Revenge of the Sith, and make it easier for Palpatine to convince Anakin that no Jedi would understand him and that they would likely kick him out of the order and not help him. ( heck he even has a recent memory of the Jedi expelling a 14 year old from the Order for the sake of not looking bad in the eyes of the Senate. “I understand your sentiment, Obi-Wan, but if the Council does as you suggest, it could be seen as an act of opposition to the Senate. I'm afraid we have little choice.” i might go more in depth on this one later but this doesn’t feel like the right place as this is a post about Anakin and i don’t want to make and Ahsoka centric arc all about him).  

That wraps up the Clone Wars! Finally!

Revenge of the Sith

Ok big finale. Revenge of the Sith; so close to being my favorite Star Wars movie, but it almost made me cry in the library so its my second favorite (Attack of the Clones is my favorite). 

I’ve already touched on the dreams Anakin has of Padmé’s death in the Clone Wars segment, but it bears repeating and i have more to touch on. Im not 100% if im misremembering or not but i cannot recall Anakin ever explicitly telling Palpatine about his dreams, but Palpatine knows that Anakin fears for Padmé’s life anyway. It’s possible that Anakin just told him off screen but a fic i read recently ( It’s called give me one more night by Spongyllama on AO3 and it is so worth the read) introduced me to the theory that it had been Palpatine sending Anakin the dreams to begin with.

This theory has a good amount of legs to stand on honestly. As mentioned previously, Anakin never tells Palpatine about his dreams, but Palpatine still knows exactly what to tell Anakin to best manipulate him. Furthermore; Anakin’s dreams very likely would never have come true if Anakin hadn’t fallen; Padmé reportedly dies of heartbreak, something that could not have happened had Anakin not fallen. All signs point to Palpatine being behind the dreams (and we know that Anakin and Palpatine are close by the time Attack of the Clones occurs so it’s not out of question that Anakin may have told Palpatine about the dreams about his mother, giving Palpatine the idea to use those dreams against him later)

Conclusion

Honestly the biggest thing i think the Jedi could have improved on was just trying to understand Anakin better. The average age for entering the order is 2 to 3 compared to Anakin’s 9. Anakin entered the order years after any other Jedi, and because of that was able to remember his mother and had formed attachments (or attachment but i digress) before he had even reached the order. It should have been obvious from the start that if Anakin were to ever become a successful Jedi he would need significantly more help than the usual padawan.

We frequently see Anakin scolded for forming attachments or being too emotional (see Clone Wars s1e6-7 where R2-D2 goes missing and Anakin suggests taking a squad out to look for him “Anakin, it's only a droid. You know attachment is not acceptable for a Jedi.”(Obi-Wan) “Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”(Yoda). etc etc)  But, to the best of my knowledge, we never really see anyone showing Anakin how to let go. Anakin lacks the tools he needs to properly deal with his emotions, so the best he can do is shove them down and pretend they don’t exist because to him that’s what a proper Jedi does. No one has ever told him otherwise. The explosion was inevitable.

Anakin Skywalker was a traumatized child who was most likely never taken to therapy or told how to deal with/ healthily show his emotions in any way other than to ignore them or push them aside on top of being manipulated by Sith Lord from a young age. With all these factors is it really a surprise that Palpatine was able to turn him?

ok im done; see yall next time ig

[xae-in-a-coat]

Organization XIII doodles(Part 1)

Also, I was challenged by my younger sibling to give Number III a female love interest:

As seen above, I’ve managed to provide the drawings of our first three Organization XIII members, but I find that the whereabouts of their origins are far more enticing than the drawings in question themselves: The scheme initially came to me when I absentmindedly doodled Xigbar in a fairly theatrical pose, all based off of an X(courtesy of my boredom-drunk-artist’s-hand, & yes, by ‘X’ I do seriously mean an X. Slightly curved with imperfections, but nonetheless still an obvious representation of the letter X). The idea struck my fancy & I thought it quite ingenious. Honestly, It’s not everyday an artist as mediocre & unadventurous as yours truly decides to sculpt a multitude of stylized exaggerations, each of which depicting versions of the human body, out nothing more than a handful of strategically ruined X’s, correct? So I set to it almost immediately, adding the finishing touches to our Freeshooter before turning my attention to the Superior himself(who was, surprisingly enough, drawn second after his own Number II). Then came our Whirlwind Lancer, & followed inevitably by, my art block. With all previously collected inspirations lost to cruel mental exhaustion, I couldn’t do much other than wait out the drawl, scrounge the very edges of our world in hopes of finding even the slightest hint of inventiveness, & doodle occasionally when it mercifully swayed me. I was left stranded on a desolate island surrounded by ideas that once were but no longer showed to unviable eyes. Stuck with nothing more than the blank torsos of Numbers IV, V, & VI. Though without a doubt, I desperately look forward to further extending my progress in this self assigned challenge & sharing it with you all once I eventually get my troubled self sorted out in the near future. As for the time being, take these new quotes & a death scene originally meant to assist me in letting out some portion of my despair:

“Indeed, we lack the ability to feel in any proper manner, but why feel when grief, anguish, & sorrow is all that there is to it? You see light dweller, emotions are nothing more than pain.”

-𝚇𝚊𝚓𝚎(I unknowingly based this one off of Xemnas’ final words in KH3, so if you find that there’s a certain resemblance between the two, this is why. Apologies for my absentmindedness, I should’ve known that the phrase I had elicited seemed far too familiar for a reason)

“Hate, one of the more powerful words within my expansive arsenal. Any being well versed enough in the English language, such as myself, would only ever dare to use it during the most perilous of verbal enragement. & you must know by now that there is nothing I hate more than insensitive, selfish, & overwhelmingly dimwitted light dwellers such as yourself.”

-𝚇𝚊𝚓𝚎

“Indeed, I loathe this world to the deepest extent imaginable, but that is only because I loathe myself even more so deeply… Hatred can be the most detrimental of sicknesses, incredibly so if it is hatred aimed at oneself.”

-𝚇𝚊𝚓𝚎

“I’m not mean!- I’m just… Not used to being nice… Especially not after spending all of that time devoid of any true emotion…”

-𝙹𝚊𝚎

Protagonist: H-Hey, it’s gonna be okay-

Xaje: OF COURSE YOU’D THINK THAT! WHAT WOULD A NEAR PERFECT LIGHT DWELLER LIKE YOURSELF KNOW ABOUT THE PAIN WE NOBODIES HAVE BEEN DEALT! THE PAIN I’VE BEEN DEALT!

Protagonist: I-

Xaje: YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE USELESS, TO FEEL LIKE NOTHING YOU DO WILL EVER BE GOOD ENOUGH, TO BE WRONG IN EVERY SINGLE WAY POSSIBLE! BECAUSE UNLIKE ME, YOU WERE BORN RIGHT! INSIDE & OUT YOU WERE MADE PERFECT! YOU NEVER NEEDED TO CHANGE A THING! YET THAT FOOLISHLY DETERMINED HEART OF YOURS JUST NEVER SEEMED TO GIVE OUT! NEVER, NOT EVEN IN THE FACE OF SUPREME DARKNESS ITSELF! YOU WERE EVEN STUPIDLY NAIVE ENOUGH TO BE CHOSEN BY A KEYBLADE!-

Protagonist: …

Xaje: Heh… Stupidly naive enough to be loved… To have friends… To know the warmth of acceptance… To have a heart…

Protagonist: Xaje…

Xaje: Tch, spare me your worthless sentiments P/N… It’s not like I’ll be able to hear them anyway once I’ve finished fading… Wha- Let go of me this instant fool- I’d greatly prefer to spend my last moments free of your filthy human contact-

Protagonist: First of all, Rude- & Second of all, It’s called a hug, jerk.

Xaje: Ah yes, the peculiar act you sappy light dwellers use to signify physical affection during which two or more beings successfully partake in the spreading of their many infectious diseases whilst attempting to show some mystical form of true heartfelt emotion, correct?

Protagonist: Ew no- Okay kind of- but try looking at it this way instead, our hearts are connecting. I’m letting you know that I care & that you aren’t alone, because I’m here for you, because I accept you… Because we’re friends.

Xaje: What heart? The last time I checked, us Nobodies aren’t able to exhibit the trait of mushy pink blobs containing romanticized magic within our dark forms, nor do we fancy the idea of befriending those who once turned their backs on us in the face of adversity-

Protagonist: Would you shut up with all the textbook definitions? I’m just trying to help you understand the concept of being human a little more.

Xaje: Who are you to teach me, a Nobody, when you yourself have failed to understand our dynamics countless times before? Get off, your light ridden touch is causing my eyes to water uncontrollably-

Protagonist: Hey!- What is there left for me to understand?!

Xaje: It appears my story has alas reached it’s final chapter, for the time being at least…However, promise be made, I’ll explain it all to you in full detail at a better time, in a better place, perhaps in the next life. Farewell, P/N…

Protagonist: Later I guess… Geez, what is it with these complicated jerks & their last minute redemption arcs? It’s almost as if they’re purposely trying to make me tear up-

-𝙵𝚒𝚗

Progress shots:

[anakinthetrashking]

BnHA One-Shot Fic Recs (pt1)

Making some fic-rec posts has been on my to-do list for a while and I’m finally doing it, yay! Currently I have 6 word doc pages full of just BnHA recs. So I’m splitting them up by length and completion, so first up is (part one of) one-shots! Let’s go!!!

Lets start with some classic Izuku and DadMight!

Pictures, Posters and Tender Beauty by ProPinkist (tumblr: @dazais-guardian-angel ) Rating: G    Category: Gen   ~4,400 words Summary: Izuku has virtually every All Might-themed item out there, and prides himself on all of it, as Toshinori is well aware. However, somehow, the boy still decided that there was something vital missing. This is fluffy and very cute. No one truly appreciates All Might as much as Izuku does, but 1A comes close. All Might deserves all the love, and this fic truly provides!!!

Dear Mr. All Might by QuizzicalCrow (tumblr: @quizzicalcrow​ ) Rating: G   Category: Gen   ~5,000 words Summary: As the #1 hero for decades, All Might has collected a lot of fan mail over the years. Toshinori tracks down a series of letters that only now, years later, does he appreciate for their significance.  I always love the thought of All Might looking through his fan mail, even if he can’t get to all of it. This was a wonderful glimpse into that AND it was made to be so, so personal and sweet. Go have some heart-healing fluff.

Growing Pains by LordofLies (tumblr: @theangelofchildren ) Rating: G   Category: Gen    ~5,900 words Summary: Izuku finds himself changed by his encounter with the Hero Killer, but changes of a more physical kind are in store for him as he begins to truly accept One for All as his own. Once, he would have been thrilled to look more like All Might, but now those connections are as much a source of anxiety as they are of pride.Or, Izuku wakes up one morning and sees the world through different eyes. Izuku having anxiety and Toshi being there to help him through it and calm him down? Sign me UP. Its also a pretty cool take on how One for All is able to change things about it’s holder. Could this happen in cannon? Who knows.... Regardless, it was a great read!

I’ll Carry You Home by Renesvetta Rating: G   Category: Gen   ~2,700 words Summary: While training with All Might, it wasn’t uncommon for Izuku to be so exhausted at the end of the day that he unwittingly fell asleep without regard for where he was. It consequently became part of All Might’s routine to help his young protégé home. During that time, Izuku may have let loose more than one sleepy confession towards his mentor.  Yes, it is as adorable as it sounds. Its tagged with “self indulgent Dad Might fluff” which is both accurate and appreciated. In other words: Superb you funky little writer!

Simple Gifts by QuizzicalCrow Rating: G    Category: Gen   ~6,700 words Summary: One year ago, Izuku received the greatest gift he could ever imagine. Now he’s determined to return the favor for the one responsible for it all with a gift of his own.  First off, I love the idea of Izuku and Toshi quietly celebrating the anniversary of passing on OfA from All Might to Izuku. Even just taking the day to hang out with each other. It’s a really precious idea. But there’s not just fluff! Izuku finds himself in a fight, again. (cool villain quirk, too!) I love all of the small details that are in this fic (and in Crow’s other works, too!) anyway its exciting AND very heartwarming, so go read it!!!

Affectionate by Sevi007 (tumblr: @sevi007 ) Rating: G   Category: Gen   ~2,600 words Summary: Toshinori starts to show affection very easily around his students. The  reactions he gets for that are not quite the ones he had anticipated - well, not all of them, at least.  Toshi is LOVED, APPRECIATED, and 1A feels like HOME. how many times can i say “cute” and “heartwarming” on this post?? bc these are some amazing writers, whom I adore, and their writing makes my heart WARM. AND. FUZZY. i mean, even just the first few paragraphs of this one just, really sets the scene of what i like to believe the 1A dorm is (on a good day, lol). its a really nice read, so go treat yo’ self by reading it.

paint me in trust by dinomight Rating: G   Category: Gen   ~6,400 words Summary: The first mark Izuku gets is a slight brush of green across his temple. It’s the soft touch of a mother holding her son for the first time. Inko has one to match, the same shade of green staining the tips of her fingers. Hers is more noticeable; Izuku’s tends to blend into his hairline. He loves it anyways. He has to. It’s the only soulmate mark he has. (Or: how Izuku goes from just green to a rainbow, UA-style.)  Ok, so this fic sort of plays off the idea of soulmates, and does not fit in with soulmates in the usual form of the trope. First off its completely platonic. Its categorized as Gen and sticks to that. Also it doesn’t seem to be as obligatory and permanent as you would think it would be. It seems to be more of the universe telling you who has the possibility of being important in your life. I really really loved this, it was so adorable and gives you that sweet, sweet Izuku angst, before healing your heart with the power of friendship and found family!!!

The Die Has Been Cast by ChiwiTheKiwi (tumblr: @chiwithekiwi​ ) Rating: G   Category: Gen   ~5,400 words Summary: “There’s something about that kid you aren’t telling me, isn’t there?”When no answer meets him, Shouta tries again.“You know something about Midoriya’s quirk that you haven’t shared with me. Is that right?”(Or: A canon "What If" surrounding the latest manga events and focusing on Aizawa finally making a connection.) First off, this fic has spoilers for the manga, so dont read unless you’re past chp212! I loooooooove OfA reveal fics, especially when it’s Aizawa that finds out. He deserves to know!!! its kind of important!!!! This fic chooses a great moment to work off of, and does a great job with Aizawa’s character. I really enjoyed it and couldn’t keep myself from going back and reading it just now LOL

These last two are actually two-shots, but it makes it an even 10! also Izuku and dadmight, so we can continue the theme here...

Some Unspoken Thing by LittleKy Rating: G   Category: Gen   ~7,900 words (2chps) Green, Toshinori has always thought, is the color of life anew.(Or: It's time for Yagi Toshinori to finally accept that he has a son, now, in all but blood. It's time for Midoriya Hisashi to accept that as well.) YES ALL MIGHT! ADMIT THAT IZUKU IS YOUR SON! great portrayal of the characters and really hits the nail on the head for DadMight. and Izuku in this story is just the smallest green floof that you wish to give a hug. NEVER MIND ALL MIGHT, YOU TOOK TOO LONG SO IZUKU IS MY SON NOW AND IM NOT GIVING HIM BACK ( no but seriously i want to hug this fic its so cute TTuTT )

LAST BUT NOT LEAST! I See You by BirdAntlers (tumblr: @aarymk )

Rating: G   Category: Gen   ~15,400 words (2chps) Midoriya Izuku is a quirkless child, blind from birth. Yagi Toshinori is the most powerful man in the world, loved by millions. They could not be more different, and yet their loneliness is the same.   (From a pair of AU posts on Tumblr that got way out of hand; I wanted to put it here because it turned into more of a fic than a "what-if." Basically a vessel for me to vomit as much Dadmight as I can.) Hey, you! Yeah! You! Do you want to cry? Do you want to start sobbing in a public space?? Do you just want to be destroyed with words and be left there kneeling at the feet of a writer who has torn out your heart and stomped on it before they gently wipe the tears from your face? Yeah?? y oU Wan NA D IE??? READ THIS AND GET REKT.  you’ll thank me later

(under the cut is just me rambling, i kept all the important stuff up here, ur welcome)

Now that the actual recs are over I can rant here- look i really tried to slim my recs down, but i have almost 300 bnha fics bookmarked,some of them are “to read” or theyre in progress, etc but i managed to get this list sorta slimmed down? a little?(to only 58!!!) but as i was gathering this post together it felt like i dont have very many Dadmight recs on that list??? but i havent rechecked all the other fics i was just going through the oneshots. i... kinda read a lot more fics with AIzawa in it instead. it be that way. DadMight content is SO GOOD. but my fav is aizawa im sorryyyyy anyway i have another SEVENteeN oneshots to put in rec posts and that does NOT include the mulitchapter and friikin series and stuff... and like i said this is aaaaaaallllllllllllllll BnHA. batfam fic posts will come after, and then star wars, and then maybe star trek? we’ll see. i have a very specific taste in ST fics and that is Tarsus IV whump. which. i have not read in a while. when they say “that trope came from ST” for sooooooo many tropes, you WISH other fandoms had tarsus as a trope, holy crap it is TOP TIER angst fodder. if you love to write/read whump, angst, and h/c i would HIGHLY recommend that you take a bit of time and explore the content and stories there. heck maybe i will make a ficrec post for just tarsus angst. ok.

my INTENTION is to edit these posts later with little links to the other fic rec lists so that itll be easier to find. but., its me, so itll either happen in painful detail or not at all

asdjkdgh its 2:30am and i need to sleep and not be rambling incoherently again I WILL SAVE THIS AS A DRAFT. 

[choccos-aaart]

Close enough to 10 mintues of “Ms Axel is a Goon”

Screw it. I'm posting it here, too. *NOTE: This is 100% fictitious and not going to happen*

Final Assignment Script Writing, Winter School 2021 ONE-PAGE PITCH

TITLE: Ms Axel is a Goon

GENRE: Action, comedy, sci-fi, family

LOGLINE: In the humid city of Dasmus, Mei Axel is a former goon who's just escaped captivity. Since her escape, she's been trying to better her life with her new found passion for music, but she quickly learns that the entire country wants to trade her name and face for a price.

FORMAT: Full-length animated film

MAJOR AND RECURRING CHARACTERS: Mei Axel – A wanted fugitive. Mid 20s. Despite her physical competence, she's mostly a foolish, plucky girl who steals a guitar one day.

Alicia Vonarb – CEO of a liquor company. Late 30s. The last boss to hire Axel to do her sneaky business work. Confident and vain, but does everything in spite of her mother. Wants to capture Axel because she doesn't want to get ratted out.

Kannie Orma – An old gadgeteer friend of Axel’s. Mid 50s. Also a “lame uncle” sort of figure to Axel. Their friendship must remain secret because his work is also involved with Vonarb.

O. Miho - Axel’s former coworker from when she was working for Vonarb. Early 30s. His current assignment is to capture Axel. Smug and thinks he's funny.

K. Claymont – Axel’s other former coworker. Late 20s. Works together with Miho. A kind man, but only most of the time.

SYNOPSIS: Mei Axel. She's a goon that's been caught and jailed. Eventually enough, she makes a successful escape and ventures outside. Not much happens afterwards other than stealing a guitar, and once discovering that she's got a passion for music, now she aims to live up that dream. But while attempting to live her new life, her face still reads as an incompetent menace to her former friends and foes, as well as to the majority of the country – they all seem to want to trade in her face for a cash reward. Now, aside from escaping the hands of everyone that wants to hand her over to the government, it is now up to Ms Axel to figure out how she is going to be able to pursue her new life goal that heavily conflicts with her current place among her people. This first follows the story of a wanted fugitive who sets off on a quest for redemption which, unfortunately, never works out. The story ends when Axel eventually escapes the country. She finally acknowledges that she can never truly change the way she's perceived, as well as never fully experience the life that she wants. However, she still performs under a low profile, happily living a drifter's lifestyle.

RATIONALE: This is a story about someone whose wrongdoings and nurture had shaped the way that others view them. Our protagonist is Mei Axel who had been built up to become a significantly infamous member of society, but once discovering a part of herself that showed her potential in a more respected position, being a musician, she starts wanting to better herself. A problem with this scenario is that her past actions prevent her from fully achieving that dream. She can relate to audiences who want to change aspects of their past, particularly their mistakes or the wrong ways they've been brought up, but can't.

MARKET: Children ranging from 11-16, particularly those that are interested in scenes that involve action-packed chases and fighting between individuals. The [film] will present itself through retro-futuristic aesthetics in its city setting. Rock is also a prevalent music genre for the soundtrack, which may interest audiences who particularly like the genre.

The Script

EXT. BUILDINGTOP – NIGHT

Axel checks out the guitar from every angle with a grin, having a feel of its neck, strings and body. She sits it on her lap as if to play it.

AXEL

Oh... I hope those lessons never went to waste...

She wobbly plays a C major scale while slightly wincing through every second. She runs over the same scale again, but this time it flows a bit more smoothly. She smiles a little.

MONTAGE OF AXEL PRACTISING GUITAR

- Axel goes over the same scale a couple of times and with every run, her playing gets smoother.

- She then moves on to a different key and practises that scale

- She then moves on to another key and practises that scale

- She plays some chords now, beginning with the I IV V I progression

MONTAGE END

Axel continues strumming. A light turns on from a nearby building.

DWELLER

Who is playing that garbage?!

Axel stops strumming. Silence.

AXEL

(Breathes in)

I'll get the hang of it.

She slings the guitar over her back and runs into the shadows. Eventually, she disappears into the dark.

EXT. MARKETPLACE – DAY

A view of a cranny on a roof between two walls. Axel sleeps there resting her guitar on her lap. Waking up, she yawns and then lazily sits up.

CUT TO:

A view of the market grounds. Axel smugly and excitedly, yet discreetly scurries out of an alley between a bakery and a liquor store, with a paper doughnut bag in one hand and a small bottle of liquor in the other.

She sits by a cafe playing some instrumental reggae rock music through a speaker. Axel hums along to the melody of the soundtrack while tipsily bouncing her finger to the beat. She then quickly strums a few chords for a brief moment, all which clash with the song's key signature, until right on the chorus, where she strums a chord that matches the root note of the song.

AXEL

Ooh, it's a G song. God, why do they always gotta be G songs? (Giggles)

She strums along with the music, landing every chord. Her smile grows and she gradually plays more confidently. She whistles the melody, then proceeds to hum. A TEENAGE BOY chucks a coin in front of her. Axel looks up and grins. She finger guns at him as he skids away to his friends, laughing. Axel stands up and plays more purposefully. The background starts dimming down.

DAYDREAM

Soon the marketplace around her blends into a stage. An abstractly drawn audience watches her perform and cheer her on. The chorus section of the song finishes.

AXEL

(Laughs)

I'm going to be known! I'll make myself the talk of the town! Everybody's gonna love me!

Axel starts strumming along to the background music again. Suddenly, a MAN with a large, muscular build grabs onto her shoulder.

END DAYDREAM

The stage fades back into the marketplace. Axel is still strumming.

MAN

You got that last part wrong.

AXEL

And who are you?

The man bats Axel with a club.

OVER BLACK.

SFX: Walking footsteps.

EXT. DESOLATE CITY AREA – DAY

In an alleyway, the man carries a bag containing Axel's body, also with Axel's guitar strapped around his back. After some time, Axel can be seen moving inside of the bag.

MAN

Huh? Hey. You keep still down there, would you?

Axel still moves inside of the bag.

MAN (CONT'D)

Look, this is goin'a be a long walk. That means you better cooperate with me, you hear that, Girlie? (Pause) You don't want to make me hurt you, now--

Axel falls out of a hole the bag with a shank in one hand and one of her boots on the other.

MAN

What the?!

The man looks behind himself while Axel stands up in front of him, holding her boot in both hands. She sends a finishing blow at the back of man's head and he falls to the floor. Axel cautiously looks at the man for a brief moment.

The man lies motionlessly on the ground. Axel drops her boot and fixes her shank back inside her pocket, then dusts off her hands before then squatting down next to him.

AXEL

Gosh, they really never hired me for nothing, huh... But I ain't into that stuff anymore. Say, can I have my guitar back?

The man does not respond. Axel lifts one of the man's eyelids and learns that he's out cold. Axel sighs with a slight chuckle. She lifts up the man and, with a struggle, unstraps the guitar from his body, before eventually slinging it over her own. Once fitting her boot back on, she then stands up and slowly walks over to the edge of the alley, whistling a chipper tune – the same melody she was playing earlier - on her way there. At the edge of the alleyway, her eyes look up. Then they widen.

INSERT – ELECTRONIC POSTER

containing Axel's mugshot and in large writing, "WANTED". Below is a list of details including Axel's height, approximate age, gender, race and the time and location of where she was last seen, “18:50, Southwest of Dasmus City”. There is also a cash prize.

INSERT – ELECTRONIC POSTER

containing the same contents as the previous poster, except the location which reads, “Southern markets of Dasmus City at 15:47, drunkenly playing a red Phenver brand guitar”.

A view of Axel between the alley's walls. All around are copies of the same two posters, both in electronic and printed forms. A mildly shocked expression crosses her face.

INT. TOILETS – DAY

A view of a row of toilet stalls. None of the stalls' doors are closed, except for the one in the centre. Axel's guitar leans on a nearby wall. Her feet can be seen in the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. Axel kicks the wall.

AXEL

Damn it! I'm such an idiot! What was I thinking?! Me? A musician? That's just one way to draw attention!

VONARB (O.S)

Axel? Is that you?

AXEL (CONT'D)

I can't b-- (Pause) Ms Vonarb?

Axel immediately opens her stall's door and looks in the direction of ALICIA VONARB'S voice. Vonarb walks towards Axel.

VONARB

And to think I'd meet you here of all places?

AXEL

I never expected to see you here, either.

VONARB

Well, isn't this quite the reunion?

AXEL

Eh. Not really.

VONARB

I'm surprised you got clever enough to get yourself out of prison.

Axel exits her stall.

AXEL

So, is that to say you're impressed with me?

VONARB

Nope. How'd you think I found you here so easily?

AXEL

Easily? That was easy?

VONARB

Anyway... Don't think I came trying to find you for no reason, now.

AXEL

Oh yeah! Coincidentally, I'm a bit short on cash. You don't happen to want to hire me again, don't you?

VONARB

(Laughs)

What? After getting yourself thrown in jail?

AXEL

Oh... (Pause) What are you even here for, anyway?

VONARB

Well. First of all... (Clears throat) Whatever you do, please don't take this the wrong way.

AXEL

Huh?

Silence. The two stare at each other. Axel tilts her head in confusion. Eventually, O MIHO and K CLAYMONT enter the room. Miho holds a taser while Claymont holds a bag.

CLAYMONT

Now, I don't mean to spread any panic or alarm--

AXEL

(Gasps)

You gotta be kidding me!

VONARB

I just said to not take it the wrong way--

AXEL

I knew it! You are as easy to see through as a window! It's 'cause of my “WANTED” sign, isn't it, Vonarb?

VONARB

Wrong!

AXEL

Huh?

VONARB

You see, we're here to keep you away from those authorities. And knowing you, you're probably so incompetent that you'd just wind up stuck in prison again! So, since you're with us, you're going nowhere.

AXEL

What? Why?

VONARB

You're pretty infamous now. And I've got my business to worry about, too. So, if it didn't all add up in that brain of yours, let's just say, I don't want to risk you ratting me out.

AXEL

Yeah, I'm not doing that!

Grabbing her guitar, Axel jumps on the sinks and runs along them. Miho runs to tase her. Axel whacks him with her guitar and then heads right out the door. Claymont follows.

CLAYMONT (O.S)

I got it!

EXT. CITY STREETS – DAY

A view of the front of a pub. There is people scattered everywhere. Suddenly, the door swings right open and Axel sprints outside with her guitar now strapped over her back. She continues along the street. Claymont chases right after.

[vs-redemption]

Crime is Common. Logic is Rare. (Ch.23)

Chapter Twenty-Three: Commence Procedure (HawksxGN!Reader)

From Cindy: This chapter is almost twice the length of the others and I apologize for that. I also apologize for the lack of Hawks. I’m planning on focusing the entire next chapter on him and the reader though, so look forward to that!

Plot summary: You thought your hands were full as a regular quirk geneticist, but then you meet Hawks and things get even more exciting!

Warnings:  

⚠️This story contains spoilers from the manga.

⚠️Some events and plot points have been altered from the original manga

⚠️ This chapter mentions medical stuff like needles and seizures

Tag List: @gayforkeigo @marshmallow-witch @redflannel @toyo-shiro @elsasshole @astronomyturtle @iambashfulperson @omiwashere

Next Chapter : Chapter Guide

“Today is the big day!” Dr. Garaki announces the next time you’re in the lab. Thankfully, Shigaraki hadn’t made a move to kill you when you arrived, so you assumed the meeting with the Hero Commission had been a success and that nobody knew you had divulged so much sensitive information about the doctor’s plan to them. “Shigaraki, are you excited?”

“Let’s just get started already,” the villain groans impatiently. “I’ll be excited once this is all over and all the heroes are dead.”

“Actually, I’m a little concerned about something,” you speak up before things could progress any further. The doctor hadn’t given you any prior warning that Shigaraki’s procedure would begin that day, but you weren’t surprised. He’d probably kept the exact date from you on purpose as a safety precaution.

“Oh?” Garaki eyes you curiously, “What is it?”

“I’d rather talk to you about it in private,” you admit while glancing warily over at Shigaraki, who predictably began to throw a fit. His red eyes, which were filled with suspicion, bore into you as if he believed intimidation alone would be enough to get you to confess to plotting something behind his back. Luckily for him though, your business with the doctor had nothing to do with schemes to do him any harm.

“It’ll only take a minute,” you add the promise just to try and put the villain at ease.

“All right,” The doctor nods. “I have to check on the high-ends anyway, so you can come with me and tell me once we’re in there.” Shigaraki lets out a sigh of annoyance, but the situation couldn’t have gone any better for you. If the doctor was allowing you to accompany him into the second lab, it would give you the chance to get another look at the nomus. You knew that any information you could pass along about the high-ends would be appreciated by the Hero Commission.

You and the doctor made some small talk as you walk through the dimly lit tunnel, taking care not to trip or step on any of the tangled up tubes and wires lining the floor, walls, and ceiling. The place used to creep you out a bit, but nothing really compared to the unease of working under the watchful eyes of Shigaraki. Once you arrive in the second lab and the door is securely shut behind you, Dr. Garaki finally turns the conversation to business.

“I wanted to let you know that the Hero Commission finally gave me permission to see the high-end from the Kyushu incident,” you tell him even though he should already know. Hawks had been present for the conversation for the very purpose of having the villains listen in. Of course, you hadn’t really gone to the Commission’s lab that day, but the president had still begrudgingly released the information they’d gathered on the nomu so that you’d be able to make the story more believable when talking to the doctor.

“Really?” The doctor pretends to be surprised. He looks at you curiously before beginning the walk through the giant liquid filled glass chambers where the high-ends sat dormant. You weighed the pros and cons of activating your quirk to record as many details of the room as you could in your mind for the Hero Commission. The doctor knew the exact length of time you could use your quirk though, so if he asked you to use it today and you were missing a minute or two he would certainly start asking questions.

“That high-end was killed by Endeavor’s flames,” you say. “Its body was burnt to a crisp from the inside out, but didn’t that nomu have a regenerative quirk?”

“That’s right,” The doctor nods before setting to work running some diagnostics from his computer. When the screen lights up with valuable information about each nomu, you know you have to risk using your quirk. You had no idea what small tidbit might mean the difference between a hero living or dying.

“I’m just a little worried,” you admit. “If that high-end wasn’t able to heal fast enough to keep up with the damage it sustained from Endeavor’s flames, there’s no way to be sure that Shigaraki won’t have the same problem.” The doctor glances over his shoulder at you to show you’d caught his interest, so you continue.

“Sure,” you shrug while trying not to make it obvious you were looking at his computer. “All for one’s quirk might be stronger overall because we’re using a living host with DNA fused much more completely than the nomus, but that still doesn’t mean Shigaraki can’t get overwhelmed.” You take the chance to glance around at the high-ends. Even knowing the build of their bodies could give insight to what they were capable of.

“We don’t even know if Shigaraki’s DNA samples ever stopped needing to regenerate either,” you continue your speech. “We just know that the rate of regeneration reached an equilibrium. If Shigaraki’s DNA isn’t truly fused, and it’s just in a constant state of regeneration, his whole body might start to break down the moment he’s in any kind of physical distress.”

Dr. Garaki turns to give you his complete attention after that. “Are you trying to get me to delay Shigaraki’s procedure?”

“No,” you give your answer confidently because it was the truth. “It’s been made quite clear that we don’t have the luxury of having more time for testing. I just didn’t want to jump head first into this thing without all possible outcomes being laid out on the table. This procedure is meant to give Shigaraki more power, but it could very well backfire and make him completely defenseless.”

“I didn’t know you cared that much about Shigaraki,” the smile on the doctor’s face looked a bit more manic than you were used to. Surely he didn’t think you were actually starting to sympathize with the villain’s cause?

“I don’t,” you tell him bluntly. “Not really. At least, I don’t care about him any more or less than I would anyone else. I just want both of you to have a fair warning. You are more reasonable than he is though, which is why I’m telling you first.”

“Shigaraki can be rather melodramatic at times,” The doctor concedes. “You don’t have to worry about him though. Even if his body won’t hold up well in a fight, it’ll still be an advantage for him to have All For One’s quirk at his disposal.” The ominous smile on Dr. Garaki’s face intensifies. “Besides, Shigaraki will never be defenseless. He has plenty of resources to rely on for protection, the high-ends just being one of them.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” You say while finally deactivating your quirk. You were reaching your limit even after the boost you’d gained from eating a handful of almonds with your breakfast that morning. “That makes me feel a little better I guess.”

Of course, you didn’t really feel better. You knew the resources the doctor was referring to. Shigaraki had more than just the high-end nomus and the massive army of civilian soldiers that had rallied behind him. He also had a fiercely loyal follower with some sort of monster quirk that the Hero Commission still had no real specific information about. All they knew was that this guy was huge and strong. Hawks had actually seen him a few times during the time he spent working with the villains. The rumor was that the giant man could sleep for ridiculous amounts of time, and only ever acted on direct orders from Shigaraki. He sounded terrifying and you really hoped the heroes could find a way to take down the league without ever needing to get into a confrontation with the giant villain.

“Let’s keep your concerns about the procedure to ourselves though,” Dr. Garaki shuts down his computer and gestures for you to follow him back to the main lab. “There’s no reason to get Shigaraki more nervous than he already is. We’ll be able to monitor his condition once the procedure commences, and we can make alterations as needed.”

“All right,” you agree to his decision while heading back to where Shigaraki was waiting for both of you to return.

“That was much longer than a minute,” the leader of the villains snaps once you emerge from behind the secret panel that hid the tunnel.

“I apologize,” The doctor tells him with his normal smile back in place. “You won’t need to wait a moment more though. Let’s get you set up and comfortable so we can get begin the procedure.”

Shigaraki made a stink for a moment about wanting to know what you’d needed to talk about behind his back, but the doctor managed to placate him with some random excuses. After Shigaraki calmed down, you led him over to the hospital bed that had been brought down for him. You managed to get him to lay down and set up with IVs while Dr. Garaki prepared the serum.

“Are you ready for the anesthesia?” you ask Shigaraki while holding up the vial. “Once this is administered, you’re going to fall asleep really fast and we won’t be able to wake you up again until the procedure is finished.”

“Yes, I’m ready.” There was a slight hesitation in his voice, making him appear more human in your eyes for a moment. Even though you were meant be staying neutral, it still upset you to be doing such a dangerous experiment on a living person. There was a chance Shigaraki would never wake up, and even though he was already responsible for so much death and destruction, you couldn’t help but feel bad about whatever life he’d lived in the past that had brought him to this point.

“Okay,” you hand the anesthesia to the doctor since he had the proper training to handle that and you prepare yourself mentally for injecting the serum. You watch Shigaraki’s face relax and after a few seconds his eyes drift closed. Your eyes dart to the machine monitoring his vitals and everything looked normal.

“That was the easy part,” Dr. Garaki tells you before gesturing at the syringe in your hand.

“Yeah,” you let out a sigh to release some of your own tension, then shake your head before reaching out to take Shigaraki’s arm and inserting the needle. After the serum is injected, both you and the doctor wait silently for a moment to see what would happen. Things seemed okay for a moment, but then Shigaraki’s entire body started to convulse, setting off an alarm on the device monitoring his vitals.

“That’s not good,” You turn to the doctor who looked extremely concerned that things were going this poorly already.

“Get him on his side,” Dr. Garaki orders and you quickly jump into action. You put your hands under Shigaraki and roll him over as gently as possible, trying not to restrict his movement too much. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much you could do for him except wait for the episode to pass. Once the shaking stops, Shigaraki’s vitals go back to normal and you roll him back over so he’s lying flat again.

“That was a stronger reaction than we anticipated,” your eyes scan over Shigaraki’s unconscious form, suddenly wishing you had more of a medical background.

“I’d like to run a few brain scans to see if there’s anything noteworthy going on in his head that might have contributed to the seizure,” Garaki scratches at his mustache, still on edge from what happened. “Can you take a blood sample and check how the DNA merging process is going?”

“Sure,” you go to gather the supplies you need. When you get the blood sample under the microscope, you’re frustrated to see that most of the chromosomes aren’t attempting to fuse at all. The few that do move and bind together look more like that of a nomu than a person. You report the findings to the doctor right before Shigaraki’s body starts to have another violent reaction.

“At this rate, we’ll have to keep him under twenty-four hour surveillance,” The doctor had a light sheen of sweat on his forehead now. Things were not going well at all. “I still want to do those head scans though.”

“Yeah, okay,” You nod your head. “I’ll stay as long as I can.”

“I appreciate that,” Dr. Garaki says, even though you got the feeling he wouldn’t have let you leave anyway with Shigaraki in such an unstable state. Hopefully, you’d find a way to get the villain under control soon though since there was a limit on the amount of time you could keep the information from your quirk inside your mind. You had to play your role diligently though, even if it meant helping keep Shigaraki alive at the risk of losing every scrap of information you’d gathered for the Hero Commission.

It was well into the early hours of morning before Dr. Garaki finally allowed you to go home and rest. The sun had long past set and was already on the rise again as you rode the train back to your apartment. Shigaraki was still having random fits, but they seemed to be coming less often and with less intensity as before. The doctor would be able to manage without you for a little while. All you wanted to do when you finally got home was sleep, but everything you’d seen in the second lab would be gone just as soon as you closed your eyes for too long. You put on a pot of coffee, grabbed a notebook, and began to scribble down everything as fast as you could before the exhaustion inevitably took over.

[peachcitt]

peach's top songs to project adrien agreste onto: waterparks edition

(disclaimer: the title is not to say that there will ever be other editions, but i did want to specify that this list is entirely comprised of songs made by the band waterparks. thank you)

ive been experiencing adrien agreste brain worms in relation specifically to waterparks, which is one of my favorite bands, and since ive been going insane over the adrien-specific feelings these songs have been giving me, i decided to make a master list of exactly how i project adrien onto these songs. this is going to be a long one

structure:

Intro

Airplane Conversations

Black Light

Cluster

Double Dare

Entertainment

Fandom

Greatest Hits

Conclusion

1. intro

it should be mentioned that i originally started hardcore projecting adrien onto waterparks songs after i started making my mlb radio rebel au in which adrien is a pop singer for his dad/in a band for fun with his best friends. i was trying to figure out what adrien's music might sound like, or what vibe his music would give off, and my mind immediately went to waterparks because they're one of my favorite bands and also because im insane.

in my head, for the au specifically, waterparks' earlier garage-band sounds from their EPs (airplane conversations, black light, cluster) would've matched up to adrien's band for fun in the au, and their later more pop-leaning songs from later albums (mostly fandom but also double dare and entertainment) would've matched up to the pop songs he released under his father's label. so that's how it started, which is, like, the most absurd origin story ever, but such is how it goes.

it should also be mentioned that i don't project adrien onto EVERY song, and the songs i do project him on aren't like. the most perfect fit, but there are always certain lines that scream adrien, and if it's like that, then i will include the song on the list.

with that explained, let's actually talk about the songs i project adrien onto and why:

2. airplane conversations

like i mentioned earlier, waterparks has a couple of garage-band sounding EPs, and this is for sure one of them. airplane conversations is the first EP they released, and the main themes are: feeling stuck, recognizing the fact that you are Growing Up, and being in love

5/5 songs on this EP can be considered adrien songs

silver

the song starts with:

"i’ll be the silver lining around your fence used to protect yourself from all the world and its sharp teeth 'cause my open hand and heart think you belong with me"

which is very ladynoir-esque. the beginning line of wanting to be "the silver lining" around the other person's protective fence against the rest of the world reminds me so strongly of chat's place as ladybug's partner; she wanted so badly to guard herself against the rest of the world after she became the guardian, and chat saw that and wanted to be her bright side to all the stress of being the guardian/a superhero. he stayed beside her and joked around because he loved her but also because he recognized that he needed something bright - a silver lining - to balance out all her stress. and "my open hand and heart think you belong with me" is pretty self explanatory, but chat's heart is always open for ladybug - as a partner, as a friend, as a potential lover. he supports her, in any and every way she might need.

in the second verse, we get:

"I was the one who kept myself standing tall You were the light at the end of the hall"

which relates to adrien enduring his dismal home life. his father and the work his father imposes on him isn't easy, but adrien was and still is able to stand tall beneath it all - partly because of what he wants for himself (he ran away to public school entirely on his own, after all), but also because ladybug is there to mark and signify the freedom and love he feels with her as chat noir.

bones of '92

so bones of '92 isn't. like a super adrien song, mostly because it's very much about the struggles waterparks was having as a new band, however the outro is. well. it's:

"i won’t let you down just promise that you won’t forget about me can’t stop the future from settling but i can change the way it feels just promise that you won’t forget about me"

this feels like adrien is speaking to his father in the first couple of lines ("i won't let you down / just promise you won't forget about me") because of how much of a strict and absent father gabriel is. i think adrien, at least in part, believes that the only way he is able to gain affection from his father is by doing exactly as he says and going along with what his father wants.

the next couple of lines ("can't stop the future from settling / but i can change the way it feels") is adrien's hopeful call to the future. he's stuck right now with his father, and he maybe even thinks that he'll always be stuck doing what his father wants, but he can change how he feels by being chat noir. by being chat noir, adrien is taking hold of his own future and his own feelings, shining a positive light on the future that he may not have had before.

the last line, a repetition of "just promise that you won't forget about me" could again be talking to his father, another plea after expressing his own desire, like he thinks that his father won't approve of him wanting his own things. or it could be adrien talking to ladybug or even the city itself; adrien loves being chat noir, but he's not really as popular as ladybug, and he also fears his relationship with ladybug. he needs frequent reminders from her that he's valuable and important to her, and so this fear of being forgotten - by her or Paris - tracks well with his character.

i was hiding under your porch because i love you

also not a huge adrien song BUT the line "it's just you and me / through all these inconsistencies" screams ladynoir

they all float

again, not a huge adrien song but my powers of projecting are unmatched and the line "this time i'll do things the way you wanted / it's not right, but it's just the way you wanted / lay it all on me, 'cause i'm all ears" is another adrien to gabriel line.

fantastic

i did not really consider this an adrien song until i looked up the lyrics and realized it was. im right. we have the chorus:

"i can't imagine fast enough to settle on a dream but i've spent this winter wondering when they're gonna settle on me and there's some things i've just gotta know but one thing's for sure"

which is another inscription of adrien's hopelessness in regards to his position with his father; he's never been given the opportunity to truly figure out what he wants for himself, and so he doesn't even really know where to start. the "one thing" that's for sure can be interpreted as the controlling hand gabriel has on his life, or it can take a more hopeful tone, considering that we have seen adrien take those first steps to move out of gabriel's control - by going to public school and by becoming chat noir. the "one thing" for sure could be gabriel, but it can also be that, for sure, adrien will always find ways to escape gabriel.

in the post chorus, we get:

"and i can't wait to go outside and spend my summers contemplating what I'm gonna do with my life"

which lends hope to adrien's "one thing" being him able to escape because of the excited tone of the lines. he "can't wait to go outside" as chat noir, outside of the mansion, and take time to contemplate what he wants from his own life, for himself.

3. black light

black light is the second EP waterparks released, and it's another garage-band sounding EP. the main themes of this EP are: being frustrated with your situation and the people in it, and wanting to carve out a better future for yourself

4/6 songs on this EP can be considered adrien songs

christmas

this is!!!!such an adrien song!!!!!! this is one of the songs that i picture adrien's band playing in my au i mentioned earlier. we start the song with:

"i fell asleep last winter woke up and it was august not much has changed, yeah, i still feel the same but i’m slowly making progress"

which fits into the themes of adrien's character i talked about during airplane conversations of adrien going through the motions of what his father tells him to, but slowly trying to break out of that control and make progress for his own goals.

in the chorus we get:

"i’m just waiting and i’m just saying maybe the end is near but all that means is a new beginning"

this isn't like. super adrien related but i still think it deserves mentioning because of how it progresses through the song (which i will mention in a second), but i think it relates well to the "growing up/fearing the future" stuff we've talked about.

we get a featured singer sing this part (which in my au nino sings, it doesn't matter):

"i’m just waiting for my chance to put a picture of me, put a picture of me in the dream scenes of dream scenes of dream scenes of dream scenes of my ideal future"

which, again, relates to adrien wanting to be able to call his future his own, outside of his father.

and in the outro, we get the lyrics from the chorus changed up a little, so that we get:

"i was waiting and i was saying the end wasn’t ours to fear and all it meant was a new beginning"

in my head, because of the way the tenses change from present to past, this would be adrien's perspective after the events of his childhood and teenage years. but because his youth is also so tied up with being chat noir and defeating hawkmoth (who is his father) i think this is such. this is such an emotional and hopeful line, looking at this from adrien's point of view. after defeating hawkmoth, despite how truly grueling that might be for him, he becomes free from gabriel's control. growing up, defeating hawkmoth, facing the end of childhood means adrien can have a new beginning. he can have his ideal future.

american history

american history isn't fully adriencore but the line "the action's a fraction of how much this hurts" is very much "we're teenage superheroes fighting supervillains every day and somehow the action of the fights is not the worst thing that's happening in my life"

new wave

i actually named my au after this song because it's such a bright, upbeat song against adults who try to tell you the way the things you do isn't right. it fits right in with the theme of the au, and it can also be applied to ladybug and chat noir's fight against hawkmoth.

in the first verse we get:

"call it new wave say it like you should because a call to arms is a calling card and i’m calling soon hoping i can get through to you"

which is like. hawkmoth is "calling to arms" his akumas, which in turn acts as a calling card for ladybug and chat noir. the "i'm calling soon / hoping i can get through to you" is chat noir specific because of the fact that hawkmoth is his father; instead of just defeating him, adrien will probably feel some empathy towards his father and want to get through to him.

in the pre-chorus, we get:

"every single time you throw your white flag down and surrender like every single second's just another second spent to lose but this is something i can’t lose"

which translates to hawkmoth akumatizing a new person nearly every day but still pulling back and "surrendering" after the akuma is defeated. he's playing the long game; he's confident that, eventually, he'll defeat ladybug and chat, and so he doesn't really care if he loses another day. but for ladybug and chat noir, this is life or death. they can't afford to lose to an akuma even once or else they lose the miraculous, maybe their lives, and definitely paris. they can't lose.

the outro is a variation on the intro and it's:

"call it new wave until it's all washed up because we'll be crashing soon but before we do i hope i get through through to you"

which refers to ladybug, chat noir, and hawkmoth "crashing" together in their final battle, but, before they do, adrien hopes to get through to his father, connect with him. and maybe that might make the "crashing into each other" less severe.

night maps

night maps is another song that fit into my au; it starts with:

"i couldn’t keep up with watering myself down and so all that grew was the high tide until i drowned the oxygen had all run out and now i’m left dried up and standing here"

which translates to adrien being drained and watered down to be the image his father wants him to be. the rest of the song, however, is about finding a place for yourself and beginning the process of being yourself again, which, for adrien means being chat noir.

4. cluster

cluster rounds out the early garage-band EPs as the third and final EP. the main themes of this EP are: being separated from someone you love and feeling frustrated about your situation.

4/5 songs on this EP can be considered adrien songs

crave

this is a very bittersweet song about being in love, which makes it, for my intents and purposes, a very bittersweet song about being in love with ladybug. at the beginning of the song, we get:

"i wish i could forget you but it's out of hand i wish i was aggressive and had a plan"

in canon, adrien dated kagami, but still obviously had feelings for ladybug. he did, however, like kagami a lot, and so he might've wished that he could forget his feelings for ladybug, especially knowing she can't reciprocate and he had an amazing girl right in front of him. he wants a plan to get out of feeling for her and for feeling for kagami.

in the chorus, we get:

"i'm cravin', a getaway from the smooth talk, that's keeping me grounded to the, carpet in my room my quiet blue tomb of you"

as chat, adrien can't resist flirting with ladybug because that's the friendship they've established with themselves, and ladybug is always smoothly replying back to him with jokes of her own. her banter, as much as he loves it and values it, keeps him thinking about her when he's alone in his room instead of thinking about kagami. his love for ladybug shouldn't be - she can't love him back and he is in a relationship with someone else - and so his bedroom where his innermost desires come to light becomes a guilty sort of place.

territory

territory is so ladynoir it hurts. in the intro we get the lines:

"i wear my game face in your headspace where it's storming at least most days we are both like that we are both the same"

which translates to ladybug and chat meeting, at most points in time, in order to fight akumas - hence, they always have to have their "game faces" on. ladybug's headspace is "storming" most days because of her stress with being the guardian and fighting akumas - and they find solace in each other's company because they're both teenagers burdened with way more than they should be.

the bridge gives us:

"i'm gonna hunt you down cause i'm a handful i'm gonna freak you out but it's all substantial so bring me bad news anything you have to just to keep me on my toes"

which is how chat views the way he tells his feelings to ladybug; he knows she'll probably "bring him bad news" by rejecting him, but he wants to continue being around her in her territory - he wants to be her friend, and he also wants to keep loving her.

pink

pink can also be a song about adrien loving ladybug, especially with the chorus lyric of "you're one of my favorite few" which is just. SO sweet and romantic but anyway. in the pre-chorus we get the lines:

"i'll watch you from my telescope; my eyes stuck to my favorite show i barely get more than a glimpse but it's better than nothing, yeah, i know"

which is like. adrien doesn't really get to see ladybug often, at least not in a relaxed setting like he really wants to. he feels far away from her, but when he does get the chance to be near her, he tries to absorb as much from the interaction as he can, throwing out dumb puns, flirting, and generally trying to get to know her in between akuma fights. it's not the ideal way he'd choose to spend time with her, but it's better than nothing.

no capes

no capes is another song about adrien wanting to be different that what he should be (with lines like "the anything slash everything that i should be / but i don't want to be like that") but this one takes a more somber and scared tone, which could relate to the fears he feels as chat noir.

the pre-chorus is literally just the line "no one will ever love us the way that i do." for adrien, being chat noir is so important to him, considering his home life, and he knows ladybug likes him, but she doesn't love him. he loves their partnership, he loves her - he fears he'll be in a position where he's wanting this (being a superhero, being friends) more than she does.

in the bridge, we get the lines:

"i hope you watch me through the letdown 'cause no one will be here, be here forever"

which could translate to any anxieties he feels about what happens after they achieve their goal of defeating hawkmoth. adrien has a lot of issues - issues about adults in his life disappearing/dying or emotionally leaving him behind - and he doesn't want ladybug to be another person to leave him behind after everything is over. he wants to still be able to be friends with her, maybe even learn her true name. but he fears that won't happen.

5. double dare

with double dare, we've breached album territory: double dare was waterparks' first official album, and it started branching into more polished, pop-leaning songs. the main themes of this album are: being tired and frustrated with something that you should like and loving someone who may not love you back

5/13 songs on this album can be considered adrien songs

stupid for you

stupid for you is ladynoir. it's ladynoir so hard. i mean, we have lines like:

"you're yellow, i'm natural blue let's get together and be green like my insides"

which. okay i know adrien is generally seen as the yellow golden boy and he is! but like, looking at him in comparison to marinette/ladybug and actual color theory, he's more of a natural blue. he's more likely to fall victim to negative thoughts than marinette is; she's generally more positive, more 'yellow.' (also, when you consider that their character design colors are each other's colors when inversed, this also makes sense - adrien is 'blue' beneath his appearance and marinette is 'yellow') and the "let's get together and be green like my insides" relates because green is a chat noir color. he wants them, in their 'yellow' and 'blue' contrasting moods to get together and be green, like chat noir, who is generally silly and joking around. he wants them to be able to be silly together.

in the chorus, we get:

"hey, tell me what you want me to say you know i'm stupid for you hey, can you come and come out and play? you know i'm stupid for you"

which is like how he is after he's been rejected; he doesn't know what to say after she tries to get him to stop flirting. he wants her to give him blueprints of how to act so that she'll like him (i.e. what color rose he gives her), but he still wants to be around her and and joke around with her.

in the bridge, we get:

"Just double dare me And I promise now that I'll stay It's not like you're married but I still got carried away"

which further develops his insecurities in regards on how to interact with her - he knows she didn't like when he confessed to her, that it made her feel guilty and a little upset because she couldn't return her feelings, and he got carried away with his over-the-top methods. but if she were to ask him to stay with her, in any sense of the word, he would do it in a heartbeat.

in the second chorus, we get:

"you're playing ring around my head i wear you like a halo you're a symphony, i'm just a sour note i'll take what i can get the best is hard to grip when everybody wants you and everybody wants you"

which conveys how ladybug is always on his mind ("you're playing ring around my head") but he likes this fact - or at the very least he doesn't mind it ("i wear you like a halo"). he sees her as someone who is so good and so out of reach for him ("you're a symphony, i'm just a sour note") but he still wants to be around her as much as he can. he'll take what he can get in terms of her time and attention, because he knows how the entire city is vying for her attention - she's the face of paris and she's the guardian and she has her own life to attend to - he thinks that maybe to her, he's just another person in her life who wants her.

royal

royal is only kind of an adrien song with lines like "i'm two faced from your double exposure" about his conflicting personas between what his father wants from him and what he himself wants to be, and this is especially poignant because of the "double exposure" metaphor, like the cameras adrien is behind for his modelling jobs are what make him "two faced"

royal is also about working so hard but not knowing if the pay off is worth it, which also relates to adrien's job with his father.

take her to the moon

take her to the moon is a "adrien loving ladybug song" with lines such as:

"i wanna make my way into your kiss i wanna live inside your mind next to your favorite songs i won't slow my pace until your walkway i wanna lose my mood inside a late night phone call with you"

which such a sweet lovesick yearning idea that adrien has 100% thought about ladybug before. i rest my case

powerless

powerless is a ladynoir song. in the first verse we get:

"you know i'd make the time i'm just waiting on your green light yeah, i'll be at your porch by this time tomorrow 'cause i'm almost not fine, but i'd never let you know"

which is like. adrien is SO down to be anything ladybug needs - he has almost no time at all what with his father's schedule, but he will always make time for ladybug. he's literally just waiting for her to call, and he'll be there. but in terms of actually letting her know how important she is to him in his life, as both a friend and as someone he loves romantically, he can never tell her because he doesn't really want to worry her.

in the chorus we get:

"you're the only one that makes me powerless tonight all i am is losing track of time tell me why oh, oh you never really missed me back"

which leads us into the bridge:

"i want you to need me like i need you i need you to see me when I'm see-through it's sad but it's true: no one's waiting for you but i was thinking we could get away sometime yeah, let's call it a date and you can devastate my personal space i never liked it anyway"

and that tells us how strong his feelings are for her; they're so powerful that he's effectively powerless against her. but he feels as though he's the only one that feels that way - she never seems to miss him back. but he wants her to want him in the same way he wants her - he wants her to be able to see him, in all his details, and still like him. and he wants her to go on a date with him and actually get close to him - get up his personal space because with her, he doesn't actually want personal space.

i'll always be around

i'll always be around is guess what!!! another ladynoir song!!! the chorus gives us:

"you know i'll always be around i'd never never never leave you hanging out to dry because the world's gonna pass me by but if you wanted, i'd never never never leave your leave your side i'd never never never leave you out to dry i'd never never never get you off my mind"

which is so!!! relates to the previously mentioned ideas of adrien being willing to drop everything to do what ladybug asked. he's devoted and loyal to her - he always wants to be someone that she can rely on as both a friend and a partner, and, potentially, as a lover.

we also get the line:

"you stopped me in my tracks you caught me in a gaze"

which relates to the moment he fell in love with her when she stood up to hawkmoth in front of all of paris: in that single moment she'd caught him up into having feelings for her, even if she didn't know it.

and in the bridge we get:

"if there ever came a dark day (if there ever came a dark day) that crushed us out and took you away i'd chase you to the end i'd chase you to the end of the world"

which is so. so ladynoir. their relationship and friendship is constantly haunted by the threat of hawkmoth, and so this consideration of the terrible "what ifs" and the insistence that no matter what, he'd find a way to get back to her is like. yeah that's ladynoir.

6. entertainment

entertainment is the second album, and it continues leaning into the pop-alternative sound while still somehow sticking to the punk sound. the main themes of this album are: loving someone, loving someone who hurts you and isn't good for you, and feeling trapped in your circumstances

4/10 songs on this album can be considered adrien songs

11:11

this song is so!!!! adrien loving marinette core!!!!!! i actually wrote a fic that had one of the lyrics of this song as a title (my favorite set of stairs is the one up to your room)

the pre-chorus actually gives us this line here:

"my favorite set of stairs is the one up to your room and my heavy set of cares evaporates all around you evil comes in pairs and we like what we do you've got me feeling like a walking love song"

which just makes me think of the way adrien will be after the identity reveal happens. he already wants marinette to be ladybug (based off the sheer amount of times he's referred to her as 'the everyday ladybug' + every time he's gotten so close to discovering ladybug's identity and his brain has always gone, without fail, to marinette), and so when he realizes that she is ladybug, she'll quickly become the person he most wants to be around and the person he feels most comfortable around. because of how dismal his home life is, he'll probably spend a lot of time at her house, and he'll come to associate the stairs of her room with walking into love and comfort. he'll be absolutely smitten with her.

in the chorus, we get:

"i must've caught you from 11:11 the lucky number seven i try to hide with my words but you just find me clever i found a million places you'd be worth the chases to go-oh-oh"

which again just inscribes how strongly he would feel for marinette - and it's also kind of a pun because of how "lucky" he would be to have her. like. get it. lucky charm. anyway, his "hiding with his words" would refer to the way he disguises his feelings with humor, but she would be able to see past that - they would know each other so well. and, just like how i've said adrien is with ladybug, he would totally be willing to go anywhere and everywhere for marinette. this song is post-reveal adrinettecore.

lucky people

guess what fellas we have another song about adrien loving ladybug/marinette. after looking closely, it seems like we might have a post-reveal relationship sort of vibe here, but it doesn't really matter because bare bones? this song is about adrien loving ladybug who is also marinette.

we start with the verse:

"light us up until we pop i wanna burn bright 'til we're not let's keep each other safe from the world i'll be your optimistic black hole full of love i can't control let's keep each other safe from the world from the world"

which falls into the previously-discussed themes of adrien wanting to be around ladybug as much as he possibly can before they defeat hawkmoth and inevitable Something Different happens, and he also wants the both of them to stick together. the "i'll be your optimistic black hole / full of love i can't control" also relates to previously-discussed adrien themes where we know adrien is actually someone who is prone to negative thoughts, but he comes off as someone who is really optimistic, and also that he loves ladybug something fierce - it's a love that he knows has already scared her, but it's also a love that he feel like he can't help but feel.

in the chorus, we get:

"i know you said to mind my business but cupid sent me on a mission that's got me sitting, wishing, waiting for your call"

which plays into adrien's romantic nature conflicting with ladybug wanting to keep their feelings out of superhero work. regardless, because of his romantic nature, he will always be sitting and waiting for her to call him so that they can be together, even if it's just to fight akumas.

we also have the line:

"you've got me more than clumsy but you're my yellow, lovely"

which (SEASON 4 SPOILERS) after mr. pigeon 72 is like. adrien literally was so busy looking at marinette that he bumped his head against a car door. but he won't even mind!! because marinette/ladybug is a spot of brightness in his world that he absolutely adores.

rare

i am once again telling you that this song is about adrien loving ladybug. hear me out. i'm right. in the chorus we get:

"i just hope it's nicer where you are 'cause i only want to lift you up i guess i never really said enough for you to hear me where you are 'cause i only want to lift you up i guess i never really said enough so let me tell you now"

this is adrien hoping that, wherever and whoever ladybug is, she's living happily - at least more happily than him. he only wants to lift her up and support her, not only because he loves her, but also because he values her as a friend. but he feels like she doesn't know how much she truly cares about him - he feels like she brushes off when he tells her he loves her, so he wants to say it loud enough for her to truly understand.

and in the other half of the chorus, we get:

"my tired thoughts don't take vacations, oh no you float up in conversations, oh no you're my final destination, i know you're probably fine there just know i think you're rare"

which is where he tells her how he truly feels; he's always thinking about her, and when she comes up in conversation (which she does, she's ladybug after all), he feels some stress because he has all these feelings for her that his civilian self isn't supposed to have. and yet he feels like she's it for him - he loves her so much and can't imagine loving anyone else. she's his "final destination." and he thinks that she is so good and powerful and beautiful that she's rare in comparison to the rest of the world - which tells her how happy he is to have found her. (and, thinking about this line as if he's speaking to ladybug, it's funny for him to say that he thinks she's rare but refer to marinette as "the everyday ladybug." which really just tells you how highly he thinks of marinette)

sleep alone

we're rounding out this album with, you guessed it, another song about adrien loving ladybug. like. "i feel dead and a half but you're making me laugh" ?? which relates to adrien being overworked by his father but meeting ladybug in his spare time and managing to feel truly light hearted around her??

in the chorus we get:

"my face feels hot and blue my hands still count on you to let me down articulate and lonely enough for the two of us but if you want, if you want, if you want to you can call me on my phone, i'll run to you you won't ever have to sleep alone you can call me on my phone, i'll come to you you won't ever have to sleep, sleep, sleep alone"

which hints at how adrien knows that ladybug will continue to turn him down, but he can't deny his feelings for her ("my hands still count on you to let me down"). and he's lonely - isolated by his father - which he feels like he has enough to loneliness to cover the both of them, which is why he proposes that they stay together; he'll take on her loneliness, too. and, just like in all the adrien-loves-ladybug songs, we see that he is only a single call away from doing anything ladybug asks him too.

we also get the line "but if you want it you can have it, you can have me in full" which tells us that he respects her wishes to keep their identities a secret, and he understands that she doesn't have romantic feelings for him, but if she ever changed her mind - about either thing - all she would have to do is ask, and she would have him, entirely.

7. fandom

fandom is the third album, and it leans into not only pop-alternative sounds, but also rap and almost r&b alternative sounds. the main themes of this album are: wanting to be able to express yourself in the way you want, feeling separated from someone you love, and getting out of a bad relationship

7/15 songs on this album can be considered adrien songs

cherry red

starting off strong with the album's opener (which also starts with the ending music of the last song on the album which is- okay. this album's art. continuing on) which is - i'm thinking you're sensing the pattern - at least partly about adrien loving ladybug. cherry red is super short, and the only line that really applies is:

"cherry red you know i'd die for you"

which. cherry red refers to ladybug because of, you know, cherry red suit, etc. and the "you know i'd die for you" is. well. adrien has made it very clear that he will go out of his way during akuma fights to protect ladybug. it's not exactly dying, but it's close enough.

dream boy

dream boy is!!!!!!!! dream boy is THE adrien song!!!!! dream boy was the song that made me mold au adrien's band after waterparks, dream boy is the song that semi-inspired this post, dream boy is the reason i project adrien onto so much of waterparks' discography.

dream boy sounds a lot like a love song. but dream boy is, at it's core, a commentary on the way that media and fanbases treat conventionally attractive boys in the spotlight, and it's a commentary in the form of a bright, bubbly pop song. it's brilliant. it's adrien

the chorus, which is also the intro gives us:

"am i the boy you dreamed of? oh living in your subconscious, oh do you believe in love? oh and is it because of me?"

which is like. from the very start of this song, we get the idea that adrien (since we're supplementing the speaker as adrien, you get it) exists only as a the dream of a boy his fans have of the perfect boy. they believe in love because they love him, but they don't love the real him, they love the 'adrien' that they've constructed in their minds

in the verse, we get:

"build your expectations saturated and inflated 'cause i was born to be your favorite make me complicated i'm modern and i'm dated because i was born to be your favorite"

which builds on the manufactured feeling of adrien agreste. his public persona as a model was built by gabriel to make money - he was literally constructed as a teenage heartthrob "born to be your favorite" so that his father could profit.

and in the pre-chorus, we get:

"build-a-boy, pick my pieces overjoyed‚ never leave your heart destroyed, i'm your boy custom-made your beloved getaway i'm your favorite holiday you'll never be alone with me"

which is like. adrien is constantly rebuilding himself to fit the ideals other people want from him, and other people are constantly rebuilding him in their minds to fit the ideals they have for him. he isn't his own person - he's always belonged to other people, custom-made, depending on their preferences, to be the most likable he could possibly be.

high definition

high definition falls into the category of "songs about adrien loving ladybug while trying to be in a relationship with kagami." in my mind, i hear adrien in this song talking to two separate 'you's - both kagami and ladybug.

when the song starts, giving us the chorus we get:

"i'd love to be in love with you enough to write a love song, mmh i need to feel needed and i need it more than i let on"

which is adrien speaking to kagami. he wants to love her because he knows she deserves it and she's an amazing girl, but he can't. but he still needs that affection she gives him because he's lacking it in other parts of his life.

in the second half of the chorus, we get:

"i'll be home just thinking about it, maybe call like i used to but i'll just stay alone because alone is safer than with you"

which, in my head, is where he transitions to talking to ladybug. he still thinks about her and he wants to be with her, but he recognizes that those wants aren't responsible while in a relationship with someone else.

in a verse, we get:

"i know i'm not around enough to make me worth the wait it's like who wants to be close with someone who always goes away? and even when they're here it's like where's your fucking head at? why's it take so long to text back? you're so bad at loving people back"

which is where we see his relationship with kagami devolve. (SEASON 4 SPOILERS) i mean, this is almost literally why kagami breaks up with him; he's always running off for seemingly no reason, and even when he was around, he was emotionally distant because of his feelings for ladybug.

telephone

telephone is a HUGE ladynoir song. this is a song about how much chat wants to be able to get to know ladybug, which gives us lines like:

"i'd like to know your middle name let's talk about your parents and your future dreams i'm interested but distant to a fault and i'd never want to complicate your heart"

which is just like!! he wants to know all the little information about her like her middle name and her parents, but he also wants to talk about her and her dreams. he wants to know her, outside of the mask, but he knows that's not something she wants, so he tries to keep these wants tamped down.

the second verse gives us:

"i talk a lot, but we could fill your frames with pictures of our faces 'til we share a name i'm living on a target and you shot it with an arrow now i lost my self-control, i can't stop thinking and i'm thinking that i lost it all these aisles feel like miles where you go, i'll follow"

which, again, expresses his desire to be with her in her civilian life, even fantasies about marrying her. he is so stupidly in love with her - and, as i've talked about before, he is absolutely devoted to her. wherever she goes, he'll follow.

never bloom again

never bloom again is a little too sad for my to comfortably label it a ladynoir song but this line:

"now all the girls in los angeles look like you from a distance i tried to give you space until i stepped away from your brain and now i just miss it"

is very adrien-loving-ladybug-esque. replace 'los angeles' with 'paris' and you get adrien trying to find ladybug's features in every girl he meets while still trying to give ladybug space on their secret identities.

[reboot]

[reboot] isn't a really an adrien song, but it does reference dream boy, which is worth mentioning. in the chorus, we get the line:

"i never promised you your dream boy i'm better as your chew toy"

which could be like adrien's actual thoughts on his placement as paris' and his father's manufactured dream boy persona. he's not actually everyone's dream boy, he's just a toy for them to use a destroy.

zone out

zone out is a huge adrien song because it is literally just dream boy. zone out acts as a break before the last song in the album, and it is the lyrics to dream boy set to a softer, more lullaby-esque tempo and instrumental sound. it's a lot sadder than the normal dream boy, and you can really feel the fact here that dream boy is not a love song.

with zone out, we have adrien's actual quiet, sad feelings about dream boy. he wants to fill the dream boy role for his father, but he can't, really, because he can never live up to that level of perfection. he will always fall short.

8. greatest hits

and with that we have reached the most recent waterparks album. this album plays with experimental genre sounds even more so than the previous two, but is still unmistakably the "waterparks" sound. the themes of this album are: strange dreams and nightmares, struggling with being in the spotlight, and wanting to feel loved

7/17 songs on this album can be considered adrien songs

lowkey as hell

lowkey as hell isn't overtly an adrien song but the chorus plays on the common themes we've seen before:

"if you need me now i'll be there somehow i'll pick you up, we can ride i'll fly away like i bought my own airline i'll take you with me, we can ride"

which is basically that adrien will always be around to do anything ladybug needs - if she ever has the need to call to him, he'll always find a way to be there for her.

violet!

i won't go too in depth about it, but violet! is about a stalker and their victim, who is the speaker, and you cannot tell me adrien does not have any stalkers at all with the way the show portrays his fame. he's probably had to deal with his fair share of crazy fans, so i thought i'd mention violet! here.

snow globe

also not an overtly adrien song, but we get these lines in one of the verses:

"’cause all i hear is 'i love you so much' but it starts to mean nothing when my heart is shut from you my heart is shut from you my little tiny world is in your hands so shake it like a snow globe fuck my plans"

which talks about how the love adrien experiences as a famous model isn't the kind of love he wants - he wants feel loved by his father. but gabriel just uses him for the company - he holds adrien's tiny world in his hands, and uses that grasp to shake up adrien's world and disrupt the relationships adrien has with the outside world.

the secret life of me

this song is about fantasizing about running away to a new life, or to a secret life away from responsibilities, so like. adrien about how he's chat noir.

in the chorus, we get:

"sunbathe looking like a sunday wishing for a someday i could run away like that now i think i need a life or maybe 9 'cause i feel like i’m running out of time, yea

which plays on the ideas of running away. it's really fitting, i think, because of the reference to wanting 9 lives, which is definitely a pun adrien would make as chat noir

american graffiti

this is another song about struggling with being in the spotlight, which relates to adrien. in the chorus, we get:

"yeah, you've been reading all about me and you're loving what you found i'm like american graffiti you want some glitter, drink it down yeah, you've been seeing all about me taking notes, yeah, write it down i'm like american graffiti if you need me, i'm here now if you need me, i'm here now"

which relates to the themes brought up during dream boy: we have this circumstance of people finding adrien, learning all there is to possibly know about him, and deciding that they love this version of him they see in the media. the "if you need me, i'm here now" also refers to the dream boy theme because of how this version of adrien that exists in most people's heads will always be there to comfort them and "love" them in a parasocial relationship.

fruit roll ups

fruit roll ups is yet another adrien-loving-ladybug song in which he talks about wanting to invite her over so they can watch movies together and also how much he feels for her.

in the first verse, we get the lines:

"when you talk it's in cursive to me and it's nicer than anything i'd believe about me it's like that shit was written in gel pen and i love those"

which is not. super important but it's cute! also the line "and it's nicer than anything i'd believe about me" also might refer to the way ladybug reassures him of his placement as a hero and a friend in her life, which are things he continually finds hard to believe. so it's also sad!

crying over it all

speaking of sad this last song is another adrien-loving-ladybug song and it is. sad.

the pre-chorus is:

"so practice your passion on me give me your 100 degrees i'll die off whenever you need an afternoon just to breathe soon everyone will be gone they'll forget my albums, i hope you'll be here when it's done and i'm crying over it all, yeah"

first of all. i go insane every time i hear the line "so practice your passion on me." now that we've gotten that out of the way let's continue on. we have the line "I'll die off whenever you need" which refers to chat's tendency to sacrifice himself for ladybug during akuma fights, and these lines also express that familiar desire he has of wanting ladybug to stay beside him after the events of whatever will happen next actually happen.

and in the chorus, we have:

"and all i think about is where you might be and when i'm swallowed down i'd say it's for you, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, oh i'd say it's for you, yeah, yeah, yeah"

which refers to how adrien wonders about ladybug when they're apart - he wants to know about her and how she spends her free time, but he can't know these things, not yet. and the line "and when i'm swallowed down / i'd say it's for you" would refer metaphorically (maybe sometimes literally) to the things he does during akuma fights for her to make sure they succeed.

and in another verse, we get:

"cherry red's your touch a touch i'm failing to feel, or feel enough to love you safely “who?”, “what?”, “when?”, and “why?” all drive me crazy please make me sane for you"

again using the phrase "cherry red" to refer to ladybug, her touch something that adrien can't feel enough of because their relationship is strictly platonic, but he wants more. he wants to know the 'who, what, when, where, and why's of her life, but he can't, and it drives him a little crazy. in contrast to being "stupid for her" back in double dare, he wants to be "made sane for her" so that he can have some feeling of peace in their relationship after getting rejected.

9. conclusion

the biggest conclusion we have here is that im insane. the second biggest conclusion we have here is that i have the amazing ability to project adrien onto a very large portion of waterparks' discography, and i'm right in doing so. an equally important takeaway is that adrien needs a hug and also that he loves ladybug. thank you for your time