#more ppl need to watch this I’m surprised it doesn’t have the same following as singles inferno

[ayoyoungg]

Watching ep. 11 of Pink Lie rn even though I’m supposed to be asleep (early flight tomorrow). Thoughts in the tags

[lesbian-deadpool]

Hi, hm... idk if you've already talked about it bu, how would Nat announce her pregnancy to R ? Before that, how would she react when she , herselfe, found out she's pregnant ?

Okay, but like, this is like one of (if not the only thing) that makes me kinda sad ab wlw relationships (that doesn't involve hate from ppl), is the fact that you can't really surprise your partner with pregnancy. Bc like, that shit's cute af.

So, just for this hc, and well my own self indulgence on this, let's just imagine that Natasha gets pregnant somehow, to both the readers and her own surprise, without her being a cheater bc I see enough of that anyway lol

Natasha finding out:

She thought she was getting sick. That was the only thing that came to her mind. Natasha was coming down with something.

Not that she was pregnant.

It started one morning when she woke up and just instantaneously felt exhausted, which is unusual for the red-headed spy. Considering how much energy she normally has. But not that day, all she wanted to do was stay in bed and sleep for a week, at least. But alas, she had things she still had to do.

It was a fluke. Natasha assumed. Just a one off day, she just needed more sleep. Deciding that she would get to bed earlier that night, and everything would be back to normal the following morning.

It did not go back to normal.

It happened every day for weeks before Natasha concluded that is wasn't normal.

The next thing that seemed strange to her, was her total distaste for coffee now. When she used to love her morning cup, surrounded by her bickering team family, or relaxing in bed with you while you both blinked sleepily, still waking up from the night prior.

But now? Everytime she took a mouthful of the rich, bitter substance, she would like nothing less than to spit it right back out. Her nose wrinkling with newfound disgust for the drink.

It was so unusual that Tony couldn't help but comment on the fact, only causing Clint to gasp, insulted by Natasha's sudden shun of coffee.

Then it was her sore breasts.

Natasha couldn't wear half of her bras because of how much they would hurt her. They were sensitive to the touch, and on a few occasions they would even tingle.

One of the tings that grew to annoy her the most over those couple of weeks, where everything to seemed to be changing with her body and tastes, was how often she had to use the bathroom.

In Natasha's oppinion she felt like she was peeing more than she was breathing. You said that she was (obviously) being over-dramatic, and that she probably just had a water infection.

The final straw was when the nausea got to the week mark.

She felt sick from morning to night.

So much so that her apatite now fluctuated. One minute she couldn't eat a thing. And the next she was starving and only wanted to eat a nice big meal.

And yet. With how smart the spy is, she still didn't come to the realisation of, "Hey, I might be pregnant!"

It was only when she was watching a tv program with you, watching as a newly pregnant woman went through the symptoms. And you made the off handed comment of, "Everything is a pregnancy symptom, really."

That's when it dawned on Natasha. As you were listing off things- "Got a cough? Pregnant. Feeling sick? Pregnant. No period? Pregnant. Cat's rubbing up against your stomach? Pregnant. Sore tits? Ope, you're pregnant. Grandma made you some cookies? Pregnant." -that she was late on her period.

Fuck.

She bought a test that following day.

Well, in actuality, she bought five.

All different brands. All different prices.

And she was shitting herself.

She didn't tell you, she didn't want to freak you out or anything if she really wasn't pregnant.

Now she was just sitting with the nerves rattling inside her, as she waited for her phones timer to go off, so she could see the results.

And when it did, and she turned over each and every one of the tests, one after another, she was met with positive results.

Every one of them said that Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, was pregnant.

She didn't know how to react.

She just stood there for minutes, her mouth open slightly as the realisation poured into her.

She was pregnant.

And that scared the shit out of her.

In both good and bad ways.

But most of all, even though she knew that it would be best if she confirmed it with a Doctor, she couldn't wait to be a mother. It was something she had always secretly dreamed of.

And she couldn't help but crack a smile at that.

You finding out:

It had been almost a week since Natasha had taken those tests, and she went to the doctors that very same day for conformation.

And it was true.

Natasha really was pregnant.

Now, she just had to tell you.

And that scared her to her core. Even if she would rather fight a rampant rhino, than admit to that.

You two had been together for a little over two years, but you had never once talked about having kids and starting a family. Hell, you never even talked about wanting kids. For some reason it just never came up in your conversations.

And here she was, about to spring this onto you.

If Natasha knew if you wanted kids, she would probably have done this differently. More of a happy surprise, than this almost confession she had planned.

It was all set up. The pregnancy tests and doctors confirmation all lined out on the table, along with a glass and a bottle of whisky, ready for celebration or, what Natasha expect to be most likely, to dull the shocked pain.

Now all she had to do was wait until you got home.

And she didn't have to wait long. Because as soon as she placed the bottle of brown liquid onto the table, the door opened behind her, and in walked you.

"Hey, baby- What's wrong?" you were happy and chipper when you greeted her, but then you felt the anxiety rolling off of her tense frame in waves.

"I have to tell you something."

"You're not breaking up with me are you?" It was meant as a joke, but the scared honestly could be heard in it from miles away.

Natasha laughed lightly, "Of course not." And then she thought, 'but you might break up with me after I tell you this, though'.

"Then what's up?"

"Come over her." She waked you over to where she stood at the table.

Once you made it and saw what resided on the wooden surface, you realised what was happening right away.

But still, Natasha voiced, "I'm pregnant."

You were silent with shock for the first few minutes, which only increased Natasha's worry more and more.

"Is this a joke?" you had initially asked, "Because if it is, it's a well forged one." You gestured to the doctors letter before you. "And not funny."

"It's not a joke," she told you, "And I get it if you don't want this, but I'm keeping the baby. And if that means you don't want to be with me anymore and want nothing to do with the baby, I understand-"

"Woah, woah, woah," you stopped her from continuing with her rambling, "Who said I didn't want this?"

"Well, we never talked about this stuff," Natasha reasoned, "And with what you said-"

"I didn't want it to be a joke because I didn't want to get my hopes up."

"What?" she asked breathlessly.

"We're really having a baby?"

Natasha nodded slowly.

A squeal poured from her lips when you lifted her up and span her around where you stood, being mindful not to bump into anything.

"We're having a baby!"

"We're having a baby," Natasha nodded along with you, beyond happy that she was wrong in her expectations, all the while happy tears started to well up in her eyes as she watched your extatic self be almost giddy at the aspect of having a baby with the love of your life.

(You want more? Ask me how the team finds out lol)

[whomst-art-thou-whomst-whomst]

Texts from The Lost Tomb, part 3

I didn’t mean for this to stray into angst but like the lack of updates with Li Cu in LTR?? I had to do it to em.

Wushanju Crew Chat, 11:05pm

Li Cu: what’s up losers I’m outside

Li Cu: someone come on and open the damn door

Wang Meng: Language:(

Li Cu: fine, someone come on and open the damn door please

Snake Eyes Chat, 7:00am

Wu Xie: hey are you awake? Sorry I missed you coming in:) was finishing up some work. How was the end of your first semester? Did that geology paper go well? Did the food budget work out or do you need some extra money next semester?

Li Cu: yeah about your work

Li Cu: heard a little rumor

Li Cu: about you going through some stuff during ur recent trip

Li Cu: some stuff you maybe forgot to mention

Li Cu: and you told me we gotta check in with stuff, so this is me checking in, okay

Wu Xie: oh? What stuff?

Li Cu: idk just like

Li Cu: THE STUFF WITH YOU ALMOST FUCKING DYING FOR FUCKING MONTHS AND THE WAREHOUSE SHIT AND ERJING AND PEOPLE HURT YOU AND WHAT THE FUCK IS A THUNDER CITY AND NOONE FUCKING CALLED ME ABT THOSE PARTS ONCE

Wu Xie: oh. That stuff.

Li Cu: yeah asshat I’m in the kitchen whenever you’re ready to explain your fucking bullshit. Also you’re out of milk wtf how am I supposed to make breakfast here

Main Chat, 11:14am

Wu Xie: okay so it’s possible I fucked up a little bit.

Wang Pangzi: THERES JUST SO MUCH YOU COULD BE REFERRING TO I DONT KNOW WHERE TO START

Zhang Qiling: What’s wrong?

Honorary Wu Chat, 11:30am

Wang Pangzi: KID IM SO SORRY THAT PUNK IS A TRAINWRECK BUT YOU KNEW THAT

Wang Meng: Welcome home, Li Cu <3 not much has changed, ultimately.

Wang Pangzi: IT DIDNT EVEN OCCUR TO ME THAT HE WOULDNT TELL YOU EVERYTHING ABOUT IT ONCE THE REST OF US FIGURED IT OUT

WAIT HOW DID YOU FIND OUT

Li Cu: it’s okay. not your fault, uncle. Doesn’t matter how I found out. Wait wait hold on what do you mean “the rest of us figured it out” who figured it out

Wang Pangzi: SAY HELLO LIU SANG

Liu Sang: …hello.

Wang Pangzi: SAY MORE THAN THAT.

Liu Sang: uh…so you’re Wu Xie’s protégé, huh?

Li Cu: oh well howdy there homewrecker

Liu Sang: Excuse me??

Zhang Qiling: I think someone on the roof is calling me and I should go find out.

Wang Meng: I would also very much like to be removed from this conversation.

Wang Pangzi: AHAHAHAHA KIDDO IVE MISSED YOU

Li Cu: all I’m saying is aren’t you the little creep who’s obsessed with Xiao Ge

Liu Sang: ???

Zhang Qiling: Li Cu is referring to a brief period of irrational thought on Wu Xie’s part, where he mistakenly believed you to be a threat to our relationship.

Liu Sang: what do you mean a threat??

Wang Pangzi: WHAT DO YOU MEAN TIANZHEN HAD “A BRIEF PERIOD OF IRRATIONAL THOUGHT”

YOUVE MET YOUR HUSBAND RIGHT

Wang Meng: can you please take me off this chat.

Liu Sang: Wait, so Wu Xie told you about me, but…reading between the lines, he didn’t mention the cancer or anything bad that happened? Oh yikes.

Li Cu: don’t change the subject “Liu Sang”

if that is your real name

Like yeah you’re right abt it but still

just saying

heard you got good ears but I’ve got snake powers

kinda

so like no more funny business okay you superhearing harlot

Wang Meng: LANGUAGE, LI CU. IN THIS HOUSE WE SHOW GOOD MANNERS.

Wang Pangzi: LMAO OH DO WE NOW

Zhang Qiling: Li Cu, this is all unnecessary and childish. Please apologize.

Li Cu: you say that now bruh but apparently you weren’t complaining when he was all “idol this” and “idol that”

oh and hey Wang Meng while we’re here can I show you my business class grade report later bc Wu Xie is all “what matters is that you learned and enjoyed the experience” blah blah all eat pray love you know how he gets and I want to actually discuss areas to improve so that when I take over this joint I do better than Wu Xie? Tho that shouldnt be hard lol

Wang Meng: hurtful but accurate. I’ll bring my best red pen:)

Liu Sang: oh my god. I’m too jetlagged to keep up with any of this.

Wang Pangzi: BEST. DAY. EVER. IM SCREENSHOTTING THIS FOR HEI XIAZI.

Not A Homewrecker Chat, 11:52am

Liu Sang: Okay, we started off on the wrong foot.

Li Cu: I agree let’s start over

Start with how your little prank game almost got ppl killed

Liu Sang: And I seriously regret that. But we moved past that.

Wow, he seriously skipped over so much bullshit but didn’t skimp on mine, huh.

Li Cu: AHA so you ADMIT IT

Liu Sang: I’d like to think I’ve grown since then. That I’ve come to see Xiao Ge as a person and mentor, rather than an idol. I count Pangzi and Wu Xie as my close friends. I’m going to be staying here with them right now, I hope you can be okay with that.

Li Cu: see in my head you were going to be a lot less mature about it and I had a bunch of great follow-up insults planned

Liu Sang: I figured. I’d like us to be friends, though. Or at least not enemies.

Li Cu: okay but only bc you don’t know me yet so you won’t judge too much for this and I need to get this out to somebody I’ve been thinking about it for hours and my friends are still in finals and I’m stressing a little bit maybe

Liu Sang: ?

Li Cu: I yelled at dad

*Wu Xie sorry autocorrect

Liu Sang: …uh huh.

Li Cu: I yelled at him earlier. for keeping all that stuff from me. He started crying

Liu Sang: Wu Xie has been pretty emotional since we got back. Not necessarily your fault.

Li Cu: I made him cry right there at the kitchen sink and it felt like maybe the worst thing I’ve ever done

Snake venom and stabbings, no tears

Me saying I wouldn’t have gone to his funeral, all tears

Which I know was shitty to say but I was really mad

Liu Sang: If it’s any consolation, I think Wu Xie can understand the concept of being led by his emotions to make bad decisions…better than most people.

Li Cu: Xiao Ge came in then and looked weird

Like weirder than usual

Like he didn’t know which of us to be more mad at

Liu Sang: A common problem for the iron triangle, I understand.

Li Cu: I just ran out I didn’t have words right then and I feel stupid

but whenever they come back from their walk I’m gonna say sorry and stuff bc i could’ve come home to his funeral and I’m mad about it but also like. I could have come home to his funeral. I can get mean when I’m in a freakout mood. It’s not like I was scared or anything at all I don’t get scared really anymore ever but just like. Freaked out.

Liu Sang: He’s probably going to say sorry, too.

Li Cu: sorry I called you a homewrecker. Didn’t mean to slut-shame either

Liu Sang: I admit that after the initial shock, it was pretty funny. Super hearing harlot, it should be on my business card;)

Li Cu: this situation with Wu Xie is weird but kinda good ya know. And I have these freakouts sometimes that something maybe bad could happen to this situation. So consider this a shovel talk. But like, also not a shovel talk at the same time.

also I appreciate you saving his life and whatnot

Liu Sang: Noted. Now. Coffee?

Li Cu: sounds sick.

Be in the kitchen in 10. You can pick out what we watch for the household tv show tonight. no way is Wu Xie choosing some dry documentary about gravestone rubbings again. Pangzi just watches real housewives reruns and Xiao Ge won’t watch tv after he caught the last half hour of A Walk To Remember. Also i need my phone now to send some $ to Hei Xiazi since I owe him for…providing some intel

Liu Sang: Not even surprised.

[tiktaalic]

since you're the ceo of gay dean, do you have any fic recs? i have trouble finding anything good besides yours, ao3 user saltyfeathers and wtf gay little jack :(

ceo of gay dean??? oh boy the gay dean economy must be in shambles if that’s me. and i don’t have any specific recs, sorry! idk if you’ve already checked the gay dean tag on ao3? i sorted by kudos and excluded That pairing but oof these pickings look slim... i personally dont read aus (and havent read any of the fics that i’m about to link so i can’t vouch) but here r some canonverse works in the gay dean tag. cut for length

dean winchester really needs to make some gay friends - “Like, I’m trying to think if I’ve had, I don’t know, crushes. If I ever had a gay thing before you came along and just didn’t notice,” Dean said.Cas suddenly looked down, and away from Dean. If Dean didn’t know better, he would swear Cas looked guilty.“What is it, Cas?”“You have had several… gay things before.” Cas still wouldn’t look at him.“What? When? How come you know this better than I do?

something on your mind? -  Sam and Dean are cursed to have personifications of their minds following them around. That's shouldn't be too bad of a problem. Just another day for the Winchesters. Except for the part where their minds speak every single thought Sam and Dean have.

the other sides of the story -  Sam and Dean go check out portals popping up in their world to make sure no more monsters cross over. They meet alternate versions of people they know and there seems to be one common thread-Dean and Cas are together.

doing life with me - He remembers the rules. The same rules set by the most beautiful drag queen in all of Alabama, spoken to him while he hid his tear-stained face, cowering on the grimy floor of a rest station bathroom: don’t talk; don’t ask for money, because most of the time, they won’t pay him anyway; don’t cry; don’t let them kiss him; and most importantly, don’t get attached. For the first time in two decades, Dean breaks the cardinal rule—and opens his mouth. “I’m too old for this.”

how many more times -  After a hunt that forces Castiel to admit his feelings for Dean, more than one truth comes out. Desperate to right the wrong he allowed to happen 26 years ago, he travels back in time and stops Azazel from murdering Mary Winchester. John never becomes a hunter, and Dean grows up a normal kid while Castiel deals with the aftermath of his decision in Heaven. When the war dies down, he comes back to Earth to fulfill a promise - a promise he made to come back for Dean one day. They fall in love all over again, but just when Castiel is finally happy, they're thrown back in time once more. How many times will Cass and Dean need to find each other before they figure out who’s screwing with them, and more importantly, how to stop them?

psalm 40:2 - “How the fuck do you know my name?” Dean hisses. The man doesn’t look scared. He is watching Dean like there is nothing else worth watching, lips a little parted, eyes a little soft. And blue. Real blue, like the ocean on a postcard. The ice spreading down Dean’s spine makes him shiver. “I suppose you could say I’m your guardian angel,” the man murmurs. His breath fogs pale between them. All of him is unnaturally warm, like Dean’s touching somebody with the sun sewn up beneath their skin. “I have known you, Dean Winchester, for a very long time.” * Dean meets an angel who says he's from the future. It all gets a lot more complicated from there.

just trying to shake off the shame - “What, you don’t think this warrants any kind of discussion?" Or: Sam is nosy, Dean is uncooperative.

tell me i’m an angel kick me like a stray -  Pain is the first emotion Castiel, angel of the lord, feels. If only it had ended at pain. Castiel documents every new emotion that nestles its way into his stolen heart. As time passes, he realises how truly fucked he is, how human he has become.

best of both worlds -  Dean is very jealous, Cas is finally getting the love he deserves, AU Dean is a badass little bitch, Sam is done with y'all's shit.

through mine, you were looking in yours -  A missing scene from "The End". In which Dean realises things, another Dean struggles, and Cas is being just a bit of an asshole

when angels fall -  On a hunting accident gone wrong, Dean accidentally shoots a creature instead of a fleeing monster. The creature in question turns out to be Castiel, an angel assigned to the Winchester's, tasked with watching over them. The bullet, engraved and imbued with magical properties, clips Castiel’s wings and leaves him grievously injured and unable to return to heaven. As such, Dean takes him in and cares for him.

the savior, our wedding, & a pizza surprise -  As Castiel Winchester slept with his head resting in Dean’s lap in the Man of Letters bunker, Dean looked lovingly at two framed photographs proudly displayed on a nearby table and wistfully remembered how Dean had begged Jack to rescue Cas from the Empty, how elated he had been to have Cas back, how their relationship quickly escalated as if they were trying to make up for years of lost time, and what a spectacularly fun adventure their wedding and honeymoon had been. A kiss from Cas brought Dean back into the present, and is followed by a pizza surprise in a way which Sam hopes to never see photographic evidence of, although it sparked Eileen’s interest in receiving helpful tips from the infamous pizza man.

what is the truth -  Dean and Sam, after knowing about Huntercop and their other self from an another universe, were willing to help them to find a place in which they can stay. But suddenly, Castiel cames and met them too, and this other Dean can't stop to flirt with him. Our Dean is not so happy about it

again, i haven’t actually read any of these, just skimmed the summaries as i copy and pasted em. my taste is pretty specific and out of step w other ppl’s, but the ones i put in my marked for later list were something on your mind, the other sides of the story, doing life with me, psalm 40:2, just trying to shake off the shame, through mine, you were looking in yours, and when angels fall. 

[goldentsum]

━ jealousy

REQUESTS: (seperately) bokuto, hinata, and akaashi x jealous s/o. say that she isn’t a very jealous person to begin with but there’s another girl who seemed to have taken a liking to the boys and she doesn’t like it. add some angst if you will :) hopefully ends with some fluff. 

🎕 asked by: nonnie 🎕

CHARACTERS: bokuto koutarou, hinata shouyou, and akaashi keiji

GENRE: angst, fluff

AUTHOR’S NOTE: i don’t know if i did it right but D: i’m rlly active rn cus im excited idk why-- also hinata has a lot of dialogue in this one

━ bokuto ♡

bokuto is a jealous baby owl and you know it,, know it too well... he gets pouty if your attention is elsewhere even for a minute!

you, on the other hand, is as cool as a cucumber. well, that what it looks like anyway. 

you get jealous quite a lot, to be honest, but your pride won’t live if you show it so you just try to shrug it off every time

but when kou gets a little too much attention it pisses you the fuck off 

you get snappy and your mood is down for the day but kou is always on his way to make it better~ 

the baby owl may be oblivious but when the topic is about you, he pays attention to your every movement and to what makes you tick

so when someone!! a person you hate because of their flirty attitude and rude remarks gets a little too close to your baby--

oh, it's about to go down!

you’re in the cafeteria sitting on one of the free tables, waiting for your hyperactive baby owl, when you see a certain someone clinging to Bokuto and pressing their chest against his arm

aND WHAT PISSES YOU OFF MORE IS THE OBLIVIOUS SMILE ON BOKUTO’S FACE

you turned around and looked at the juice box you bought for bokuto and grabbed it roughly, stabbing the straw to drink it yourself

you knew how popular bokuto was and how ‘plain’ you were but it still hurt when people never respecting bo’s personal space and your relationship as you two were publicly open with your relationship

akaashi, who was lagging behind bokuto, saw this and quickly rescued the dense captain making a certain someone whines about it but akaashi paid no mind and dragged bo away and towards your table

“hey, babe!” 

you looked at him and rolled your eyes, scoffing a little with the straw still on your mouth as you proceed to ignore him

bokuto’s eyes widen at that and sat closer to you, leaning closer and putting his head on your shoulder, nuzzling at you. 

this usually makes you break but nope, your pride said nope and you ate lunch with bo pouting and whining to you. akaashi who watched the whole scene sighed.

the next time you saw bokuto was at dismissal with him racing to your classroom the moment the bell rang. he went inside when your teacher dismissed you and waited on the side for you even though you were ignoring him. but what slightly shocked you was the serious face he has on. 

when everyone else was gone and you were about to go to, bokuto grabbed your hand and made you stay

“what’s wrong? please talk to me...” He whispered, hugging you close to his body. 

you pouted at that, the gesture cracking your cold demeanor quickly. you sighed and hugged back the sweet boy.

“i’m sorry for ignoring you, kou...” 

you felt his smile on your skin making you smile too

“It’s okay but please explain...” 

his innocent words and eyes made you shy. maybe you overreacted a little bit but your ego is too big sometimes

you averted your eyes and looked at your shoes, bokuto’s arms still around you. 

“cus... you let (h/n) touch you and you were smiling too!” 

you whined a bit, looking up at him. his surprised expression then turned into relief and he started laughing

“who knew you were the jealous type too, (Y/n)!” 

you pouted and hid your face on his chest, 

“shut up... i’m human too, ya know... and you’re not one to talk, you’re the one who always gets jealous..”

“That’s cus my girlfriend is too pretty and too many guys have their eyes on you!”

you scoffed playfully at that, not having the energy to remind bokuto that those guys were just asking for some notes or something to you, knowing well that it would brew into bokuto pulling up his ‘facts’ and arguments on you again that those guys were unto something...

“shut up, you owl”  

“your owl~” 

━ hinata ♡

this small bean is also one of the easily jealous type and he creates a safe and danger distance around you in his mind

there’s only a certain distance a guy can come close to you and if that line gets crossed, he goes pROTECTIVE MODE

tanaka and noya are proud of their pupil as they watch him circle around you like a rabid dog or crow?

he is always with you! ALWAYS! And he always buys you some cold drink or if you don’t bring lunch, he lets you share his bento with the courtesy of his mother as he asks her to make a bigger lunch for him when he knew that you don’t really bring your own lunch.

so when it was lunchtime and hinata was nowhere in sight, that worries you a LOT

you run to the courtyard where you two usually hangs out with kageyama but was surprised to only see Kageyama and his milk box

jogging up to the tall male and you asked him about shoyou and you heard an answer you were not expecting to hear

“some fancy pink letter asked him to go to the rooftop, it said that they wanted to say something to that tangerine” 

(y/n).exe has stopped working

kageyama looked at you with a quirked brow, still sipping on the milk box, he poked you with a curious look

“why did you let him go, you idiot!” you said, surprising kageyama who pouted and glared at you

“why the hell are you yelling? he’s just meeting someone!” 

“you dense blueberry!” you shouted and hit kageyama on the shoulder with a light scowl

kageyama was about to retort when a familiar childish growling caught his attention as you both looked at the side and saw a glaring hinata racing towards you two at a fast rate

“why you kageyama--! don’t get too close to my girlfriends!”

hinata slotted himself between you two and started bickering with the tol blueberry

you sighed at the scene in front of you and a light pink object caught your attention. there it was, a pink chocolate bar in hinata’s hand as he waved it around, trying to punch kageyama. 

you frowned at it and started walking away, leaving kageyama and hinata at the courtyard. hiding from hinata, you ate lunch in the bathroom stall as icky feelings start to grow.

after lunch, you quickly run to your classroom wanting to avoid seeing hinata at the moment 

but luck wasn’t at your side when Hinata dragged you off and got inside the janitor’s closet with you. 

“hinata, what are you doing! lunch is already finished, i’m gonna be late for class!” 

you tried to leave the small room but hinata closed the door when you tried to open it

“no! you left me with kageyama all lunch break!”

“i-i had a stomach ache and went to the nurse’s office--”

“i went there too, you weren’t in there” 

an awkward silence filled the small room while you looked at hinata with surprise

“i-it doesn’t matter--”

“It does matter! If you feel the need to lie to me then it’s a big matter!” hinata said, frowning at you 

you sighed and let hinata hold your hand

“please tell me what’s wrong” 

“i heard you got confessed to”

hinata blew a fuse at that and started waving his hands furiously, “h-how’d you know?! i didn’t accept it, i promise--!” 

“you didn’t?” 

hinata stopped for a moment and looked at you, eyebrows furrowing

“yeah, i got myself the best girlfriend... why would i wanna change that?” 

you went closer to Hinata, letting your body hit his and hugged him

“i-i’m sorry... it’s just that, i thought you would find someone better and leave me...” 

“I WOULD NEVER! You’re the best girlfriend in the whole wide world, (Y/n)!”

“You’re the best boyfriend too, little tangerine” 

━━ akaashi ♡

let’s be real here, you’re definitely the jealous one in the relationship. I mean having a boyfriend who’s too pretty to comprehend and easily attracts a lot of attention can make you like that. but you hide it pretty well, well most of the time anyway...

akaashi always ALWAYS pays attention to you and knows everything that can trigger you to become sad, angry, jealous, and happy

he always makes sure that you’re always fine and happy, that you’re comfortable and content

we stan the perfect boyfie 🥺

bUT he can be quite dense sometimes when it’s not about you or volleyball.. fUKURODANI PPL ARE DENSE 

girls would always flock his classroom before you can get there, snacks and treats in their hands to give it to akaashi and being the petty little gremlin that you are, you were pouty

akaashi sighed because it’s always either you were pouty or bokuto is and sometimes the worst-case scenario happened where both of you are pouty at the sAME TIME! 

akaashi= Mom Daddy

you reached our final form of pouty when you saw a certain someone a bitch dragged akaashi to talk to him or whatever and being the curious thing you are, you followed them and hid behind the vending machine, listening to their convo

“you know, your girlfriend is cheating on you, right?” 

wHY THAT BITCH! She just lied like it’s her common language wtf! 

you prayed that your baby boo won’t believe her cus YOU ARE NOT CHEATING ON HIM! why tf would you cheat on him when you hit the jackpot? tf

“and you must know that spreading rumors and lies about a person can take you off the first string in the track team right?” 

oOF--! YOUR BOYFIE REALLY POPPED OFF HUH

you snickered behind your hands, listening to the lying snake stutter a complain but akaashi cut her off 

“if this is all then I’m going now but if i hear any rumor circling around (y/n), i won’t hesitate to take action myself.” 

the snake scoffed at that and walked away, stomping 

there was silence for a moment but then keiji called out, surprising you

“i know you’re here, (y/n)” 

you stiffened at that and moved away from your hiding spot while coming up with excuses

“i-i wasn’t doing anything! she just dragged you off so i followed--!” 

akaashi smiled softly at you, walking closer and patted your head gently making you feel flustered.

“i know, let’s go? you must be hungry” 

“you won’t leave me for her, right, keiji?” 

akaashi shook his head at your question, a small smile on his face and looked at you, letting his hand fall and held your smaller hand in his

“it’s not like you’ll let me leave”

“HEY! you make it seem like i’m holding you as a hostage or something!”

“hmm”

[thedeadflag]

I’m so confused! I know it’s not your responsibility to educate me but in your post bringing awareness to the negative aspects of g!p fanfic you say

“Why do these g!p characters rarely if ever involve experiences reflective of trans/intersex women? Why are they so utterly cis and perisex-washed? Why do nearly all writers have zero idea that tucking is a thing? “

Doesn’t that answer your original question? The reason they don’t reflect those groups of ppl is bc g!p isn’t trying to represent those groups of people or else it WOULD be transphobic to limit them to one specific fetish right? it just refers to a canonically female character with the addition of a penis (I don’t argue the name “g!p” should be changed bc that’s a no brainer why that could be offensive). But the fanfic in general, how could it be harmful? I’ve noticed in my time reading it as a non binary person it’s given me great gender euphoria reading a reader insert where reader has a penis while being a femme representing person just bc that’s a reflection of my personal experience. I don’t see anywhere where g!p fanfic ever references or tries to emulate the experiences of trans or intersex people so how could it be offensive?

Sorry this is way too long I’m just very confused

I'm going to try and lay this out as politely as I can. It's after 3:30 in the morning here, so this could be a bit disjointed and rambling. More under the cut:

In real life, ~99.999999% of women with penises are trans women. Which puts us in a tricky situation of (A) being the only women with penises around for media involving women with penises to reflect back on, and (B) being in the lovely position of precious few people actually having had meaningful real life exposure to trans women, meaning (C.) all those stigmas and all that misinformation are going to purely affect us and it’s going to be uncritically gobbled up by the masses, since they don’t have any meaningful information to fill in the blanks with instead.

When we peer into the depths of femslash fandoms and see all these folks who aren't trans women writing about women with penises, and using cis women’s bodies as platforms for these penises, it’s the simplest thing.

I mean, some of those folks might actually be struggling and confused about why they’re into it, what the real appeal is, why they get off on it, why they might have some feelings about wanting a penis of their own…

…but from our vantage point, it’s really easy to gauge 99.99% of the time. We can generally see valid, legitimate yearning to have a penis pretty damn easily in a piece of art/writing, and we can also see when people who create this media are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization.

And 99.9% of the time, the creators are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization, and see trans women’s bodies as a perfect vehicle to tap into that, generally due to deeply held cissexist views that link us and our bodies and genitals directly to cis men, to maleness. As if penises are rooted in maleness and masculinity (which is absolutely not true).

And I have sympathy for NB folks (certainly TME ones who have reached out to me in the past about this) who might be struggling with that, but just because they’re non-binary, it doesn’t mean they get to appropriate our bodies and reproduce transmisogyny and trans fetishization in their attempts at feeling better. Shit doesn't work like that.

Because again, the only women with penises in this world, essentially, are trans women. Meaning any woman with a penis in media is a trans woman, implicitly or explicitly. Meaning that when people who aren’t us want to write us, intent doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if it’s just the writer’s fantasy, it’s still going to attach a variety of messages directly onto us.

And more often than not, due to cissexism, those messages are linking us to maleness, to toxic masculinity, etc..

While I do want to believe they're a fairly small minority, a lot of NB folks in fandom spaces like g!p characters in part because they see penises as male and the rest of the body as female and think that duality is interesting and would be comfortable, and is a nice balance of “both worlds” or a nice position “between male and female”, but that’s a wholly cissexist, transmisogynistic view to have, and it’s one that absolutely cannot be supported without directing sexual violence against trans women and invalidating our entire existence. Certainly not all NB folks into g!p like it for that reason, but holy shit a fair bit of them do and it’s weird and wrong and fetishistic.

g!p emerged from the idea that women can't have penises, and drew on the transmisogyny and cissexism of tr*nny porn to structure that frame of desire and the core patterns and trends within these works. It's always been trans women's bodies being used as a vehicle, whether or not the writers of these fics are explicitly aware of it, because the trope itself still holds true to its original patterns and cissexism. It's not the name that's the problem, it's the content; changing the name would be a surface level change that wouldn't affect anything.

g!p objectifies women with penises (trans women). A woman with a penis is more than just a woman with a penis, but the use of the term and trope is literally to (A) remind people that women don't have penises, otherwise the g!p term wouldn't be needed if people actually accepted women with penises as women, and that (B) this is a story centered on a scenario where there's a woman with a penis, with key focus on that genitalia specifically. it's the drawing point, it's the lure, it's what everything is centered on. It is a means for folks to write lesbian sex while also writing about penis in vagina and getting off to it. It's also no surprise that the penises so clearly emulate cis men's penises in these works, that is by design.

As I’ve said many times before, if you’re only writing trans women’s bodies to showcase cis men’s penises, you’re not respecting the womanhood of trans women, and this ultimately has nothing inherent to do with penis-owning women, it has to do with (cis) men and their penises, because trans women are just being used as a vehicle to emulate them. When NB folks do the same thing, and imagining themselves as those g!p characters, they are ultimately embodying cis men, their maleness, and often toxic masculinity, in a way that feels safe and distanced enough for them, a shell that they often code as cisnormative due to their own unprocessed cissexism.

And trans women don’t deserve that.

You seem caught in the idea that if something doesn't directly perfectly reflect trans women, that it can't be linked to us., which ignores the long long history of media being used to misrepresent marginalized peoples and cast us in insulting, dehumanizing lights. You show a lack of understanding of the g!p trope and the long history of its usage across a few other names, even if the content and patterns remained the same. It shows a lack of understanding of tr*nny porn and transmisogynistic stigmas, which the trope draws heavily from.

I think we can all recognize that most 'lesbian' prn that's made does not represent actual lesbians, it's overwhelmingly catered to the male gaze. We can also recognize that this category of porn has led to a lot of harassment towards lesbians from cis men who at the very least want to believe lesbians are just like they are in the porn he watches, that lesbians just need the right man. Lesbians are being used as a vehicle for a fantasy that was created externally to them, and doesn't represent their realities.

It's the same kind of situation here. The way g!p fics play out overwhelmingly doesn't reflect trans women's realities, but they are inherently linked to us regardless, as we're the vehicles for those fantasies, as unrealistic and harmful as they may be.

g!p characters are built in our fetishized image that’s based on a deeply cissexist misunderstanding of us, of the gender binary, and of bodies in general.

I mean, when 99% of cis folks don’t understand how trans women tend to be sexually intimate… when they don’t understand what dysphoria is and how it works and how it can affect us physically and emotionally…when they don’t understand almost any of our lived experiences…then they’re not going to be able to accurately portray us even if they wanted to.

And I’ve read enough g!p fics where authors wrote those as a means of trying to add trans rep, but because they didn’t understand us at all, it wasn’t remotely representative, and it was ultimately fetishistic, even if there was an undercurrent of sympathy and a lack of following certain common g!p patterns there that differentiated it from the norm.

If g!p fics were at all about reducing dysphoria or finding euphoria, then it wouldn’t be explicitly tied up in the performance of very specific sex acts, very specific forms of misogyny and toxic masculinity, very specific forms of sexual violence and exertion of sexual power, etc.

But it is.

So the notion that creating g!p fics helps NB folks? Nope. It CAN certainly prevent/delay those folks from facing a whole boatload of shit they’ve internalized, and coddle them at the expense of trans women.

Because if it was really about bodies and dysphoria/euphoria, there would be a considerable push (allying with out own) to end our fetishization and to represent us in and out of sexual contexts with accuracy, respect, and care. Because they wouldn’t care what sex acts were performed and what smut beats were hit, they’d just want to see someone with a body like their ideal being loved, being sexual, connecting, being authentic, etc. Which very much is not the case in the overwhelming majority of g!p fics. That's what we want, and it's not what g!p writers want, it's nothing they give a shit about.

Like, a ways back I started doing random pulls of g!p fics from various fandoms and assessing them for certain elements to provide some quantitative clarity. I started on The 100 here, and did OuaT here. Never finished the 100 one since the results leveled out and stayed pretty consistent as the sample size grew, so I didn't really see the point in continuing any further after about 140 fics when the data wasn't really changing much at all.

Lastly, media influences people. I've read countless posts and comments from people who use fanfiction as a sex ed guide, in essence. Which is ridiculous, but I also know sex ed curricula often isn't very accurate or extensive in a lot of areas, so people take what they can get. Representation in media can be powerful, and when it overwhelmingly misrepresents people, that's also powerful. Just because fandom is a bit smaller than televised media, it doesn't make that impact any lesser, certainly not for those whose primary media intake is within fandom.

Virtually all trans representation in f/f fanfiction is misrepresentative of us. That has a cost in how people understand us, how people react to us, and how people treat us. Not just online, but in physical spaces, and in intimate settings.

I invite you to read that post you referenced again, or perhaps this longer one which is a response to a trans guy who seemed to feel something similar to you with this trope.

All I can do is lay it out there and try to explain this. It's up to you how you handle this. All I know is whenever there's a big surge in g!p in a fandom, trans women generally leave it en masse, because it's a very clear and consistent message that we're not valued, respected, and that people value getting off on us over finding community with us.

[palmett-hoes]

per your post "every single one of the monsters is autistic and/or adhd" will you elaborate on that?, if you do i will love you forever (not that i wont if you dont do it)

oh boy i would love to!!! unironically nothing brings me more joy than writing long, convoluted character analysis posts

---

okay so i’ve written several posts before about why andrew is autistic. his moral code, the roundabout way he communicates, his body language, his stimulation-seeking behavior, his strict adherence to transactional deals, the emphasis on honesty, and a dozen other details. at this point i just take andrew being autistic as fact, not just an interpretation

h o w e v e r  i also hc that andrew is dyslexic, which is also a neurodiverse condition

- - -

similarly, i’ve seen more than one person interpret kevin as autistic, and i absolutely agree that it fits. not just the hyperfocus on exy but mostly the way he communicates. he’s very indirect, especially in his affection but very direct with his opinions. he tries to be helpful in a material way to the people he cares about, even if he comes off as negative. he wants the people he cares about to be safe and successful so he pushes them to work hard and reminds them in measurable ways how to stay healthy. he doesn’t factor in a lot of room for emotions, so instead he focuses on quantifiable things that he can improve. i personally act very similarly. approaching someone emotionally is hard for me, so when the people i care about have problems all i can think to do is try offering solutions, check up on their well-being, etc. practicality instead of conventional sentiment is extremely common with asd

- - -

so now let’s talk about neil. i had to think on this one for a WHILE but ultimately came to the conclusion that neil is adhd, probably hyperactive type. 

like obviously neil is high energy. i would say he probably does the most exercise of anyone on the team. morning run, morning practice, afternoon practice, night practice with kevin and andrew, plus he doesn’t have a car so he runs to class (on a BIG ass campus), and goes for an extra run when he feels stressed. that’s... insane, honestly.

neil reminds me SO MUCH of this post that goes:

“Was just informed by my mom that I do in fact have ADHD and the reason I thought I didn’t was because ever since I was seven whenever I got super energetic my mom would have me go chop wood so now when I’m feeling The ADHD I go chop wood”

(phenomenal post) and that’s neil to a t. tell me this isn’t exactly how neil handles his problems and also exactly what mary would have had to do to keep her unmedicated and very energetic son focused on the task of staying alive

neil also definitely has that ADHD on/off switch with his interest. the obvious being exy which is like the definition of a hyperfixation, but you can see it in other things: the way he runs totally hot or totally cold with people, his complete disinterest in his schoolwork, the way he can’t seem to sit still long enough to follow movies. but then there’s also the hyperfocus. doing the same drill for hours on end. watching exy game after exy game. staring at andrew until time falls away

what’s more, neil on many occasions shows racing thoughts, both in an anxiety way (and anxiety often goes hand-and-hand with adhd) but also as a way to quickly and accurately take in details about people to build a character profile of them. this is what allows him to connect with the foxes, how he manages to get through andrew’s puzzles, and even how he knows what to say in order to knock riko down a peg. his brain just works so fast and it takes in a lot of very specific details and disparate information to make connections.

but also like,, neil has a HUGE problem with time blindness. like the instant he didn’t have his mother around to manage and direct him anymore he lost all sense of time. he stayed in Millport for a YEAR. and what did he keep telling himself during that time? basically “i really need to move on, but not just yet.” for a YEAR! then he gets to palmetto and he’s like “i’ll cut and run in a month or two” then he doesn’t “i’ll be gone by halloween” wrong again “i’ll leave by the raven’s game” nope. like,, the boy just has NO sense of time and he can’t seem to make himself DO anything outside of an externally enforced schedule. and even then,,, HE HAD 48 FUCKING DAYS TO FIGURE OUT SOMETHING TO DO TO NOT GET MURDERED! 48 WHOLE DAYS. he didn’t make a plan, he didn’t write down any letters with goodbyes, he didn’t GO TO THE FBI LIKE HE’D INTENDED TO THE WHOLE TIME! nah he just made out with andrew and when he finally got to zero he was just like “ah shit, that was fast. oh well guess i’ll die” and that’s time blindness, babey!

---

let’s move on to nicky. 

now i think it would be really easy to say nicky is just adhd because he’s high energy and forgetful but tbh,, i don’t think that’s all of it. like if you really look at nicky’s character and especially at his problems, he has asd problems just as much as he has adhd problems.

so nicky is dual diagnosis asd and adhd. also nicky reminds me a lot of a girl i used to know who was autistic/adhd

so, adhd:

very generally speaking, ppl with adhd will struggle with sitting still, listening to and following instructions, planning/organization, following a schedule, and some social boundaries like “appropriate” times and topics of conversation

i would say you see hints of this with nicky. he’s definitely a rambunctious personality, constantly on the move, constantly stimulation seeking. he’s very tactile. he likes to dance, he likes to party, he complains about it but he’s an elite-level athlete. he’s also decidedly very chatty, and doesn’t seem to really pay attention to what he’s saying. he distracts himself and the people around him have to keep him on track. he has some trouble with boundaries. he’s a little all over the place. he’s almost a bit of an adhd stereotype

also one thing i find interesting is that when neil sees him in the library doing work neil is surprised to see he’s capable of that, especially bc when we see the upperclassmen doing work they generally do it in their dorms or on the bus and/or with other people around. that hyper-social nicky would be alone in a quiet place is weird. but this is like the most common tip for dealing with adhd. don’t do it in a familiar space. have a designated space and time to do work. limit distractions. just a lil detail

so now, asd:

in all honesty, most of nicky’s actual problems in the narrative could be viewed as stemming from asd symptoms. his number one issue being that he has a lot of trouble with nonverbal cues (and tbh, verbal ones too). the twins are mostly quiet. andrew especially (when he’s sober) communicates primarily nonverbally, and nicky seems to have a lot of trouble with this. despite knowing them for the longest on the team, nicky honestly seems to have the least insight into the way either of the twins actually thinks or processes things. he loves them, and he’s very forgiving of them, but he fundamentally doesn’t understand them. 

the twins, andrew especially, put up a LOT of nonverbal boundaries, and nicky sort of inadvertently keeps trampling all over them. he’s touchy in a way they don’t like. he talks a lot about their personal lives to other people. he treats them like they’re joking when they’re serious. etc. and like,,, you kind of get the sense that the upperclassmen feel similarly about him. beyond the homophobia, beyond the fact that he’s loyal to andrew, the upperclassmen still treat him with this sense of,, bafflement, i suppose? it’s clear that they don’t really understand him and he doesn’t really understand them. although, nicky IS curious about the upperclassmen, while the upperclassmen are pretty dismissive of him. it reminds me of when my sweet, floppy dog tries to play with my cat. their body language is different; they’re each receiving different signals than they believe they’re sending out

only,, nicky loves people!! he likes being around them, he likes talking to them. he’s interested in their lives and stories, but it’s very clear that he can’t read between the lines on people. he has an incredibly hard time with people who expect their actions to speak for them, which is most people, but is especially his cousins.

actually this is very much also an issue that i have: things need to be spelled out for me. the way i deal with it is i ask a lot of questions. ‘how do you want me to react to this potential situation?’ ‘what are specific things that make you most comfortable?’ ‘please explain to me exactly how you feel and what has prompted those feelings?’ and i’m always communicating vice versa like that with other people. a lot of specifics in both questions and answers

and the interesting thing is, when i was skimming through the books reviewing dialogue styles for another ask, i noticed that, actually, nicky DOES do this. with neil and the upperclassmen, nicky asks a LOT of quick, clarifying questions. things that ask after tone, that ask after intent. it’s kinda sad that he does this for communicating with acquaintances, but with the twins, the people he’s closest to, he makes a lot more assumptions. and i’m really proud of nicky for having this coping skill, because i can’t imagine it’s something he grew up doing. there’s no way he was raised in an environment that fostered this kind of open communication so it must have been something he learned about much later, probably in germany with the kloses, which would also explain why he’s a lil imperfect about it

---

now last but not least, aaron

this is another one i had to think through for a long time before it felt like it fit

much like how i felt that it would be easy to read nicky as simply adhd rather than also asd, i think it would be easy to say aaron is autistic simply because he is quieter, less rambunctious. however, i actually think he’s adhd, likely primarily inattentive type

in all honesty, aaron’s #1 character trait for the first two books is basically that he’s disconnected. detached. separated both from his family and his team. not in the same forcefully apathetic way that andrew is, more,, spaced out. he’s just kind,, there. not really paying attention to what’s going on, tuning in every once in a while only if something really catches his eye/ear then tuning right back out again. just sits in his corner and plays on his phone. and the thing is, from the moments when he does tune in, you can tell that he actually does care. he backs nicky when seth insults him in tfc, and we know he cares deeply about andrew even if he’s become disillusioned with their fraught relationship. he even hangs with his family, doesn’t seem to really try and slip away to other friends besides katelyn, he’s fine spending his leisure time with the monsters. so it’s not totally apathy, he’s just,,, tuned out most of the time

and, yea, that sounds like adhd. it’s not the type that most people are familiar with, and for a lot of people this causes it to slip under the radar. it can make it hard to get help or a dx because it doesn’t fit with how adhd “should” look or how someone “should” act, but difficulty focusing your thoughts and staying in tune with the current moment is absolutely part of adhd

addiction is also a huge problem for people with adhd. a lot of stimulants affect people with adhd very differently than neurotypicals, especially in small doses, and an adhd kid who’s struggled their whole lives with the disorder might try speed or god-forbid meth or fuck even coffee and suddenly find that things are a lot easier for them. they start to self-medicate, they don’t actually know what they’re doing, and then they’re addicted, and everything spirals out of control. we don’t know too many details about aaron’s addiction other than that his mother enabled him, but wouldn’t this fit? it’s also an explanation for aaron still taking drugs at eden’s, given that cracker dust seems to be a mild amphetamine. (aaron talk to betsy about the neurocog and get an actual prescription please)

(total throw away but aaron plays videogames and videogames are like,, adhd culture)

[burglarbagginsbag]

Alright so I have this fic idea which I’m probably not going to write out bc I’m not fluent in English BUT my idea that i had for a bamf!Bilbo bagginshield fic:

Everyones already seen it and probably read it but Bilbo is a bamf (AU)

Important background information: Bilbo is like half dwarf (regarding strength, life expectancy, etc) but still has the appearance of a hobbit which is why (even though he has been out on adventures already) he was able to settle down in the shire and blend in with the mass without any problems

So when Gandalf goes to bag end to recrute Bilbo as a burglar Bilbo recognizes him immediately bc they’ve been on adventures together before (and yes bilbo is happy to see gandalf bc im a sucker for bilbo and gandalf being friends)

And Gandalf is like “ok you see theres this dwarf king and his 12 ppl who need to reclaim their homeland and i dont want them to get themselves killed by accident so could you go with them?”

and bilbo is like “i actually have enough gold i dont rly need a new job but it sounds kinda fun, bring them over for dinner and then tell me more”

So Gandalf is satisfied and tells thorin and his company that they are expected for dinner

When Bilbo prepares for the evening he watches out that some of his curls cover his eyes and a part of his face and puts on baggy clothes so his stature isnt revealed bc no one outside the shire really knows what bilbo looks like - they only heard stories about him and bilbo wants to keep it this way

Dwalin arrives and is like “at your service” and Bilbo is actually polite and everything, shows him the dining room and welcomes dwalin and dwalin is like “??? isnt this a hobbit shouldnt he be kinda freaked out? ok guess gandalf was right when he said that this dud is chill”

and so bilbo welcomes all the dwarfes (except thorin of course bc this dwarf lost his way twice) and they are all a bit surprised by the hospitality but dont complain

So movie verse they eat and throw food and all and even though bilbo is not pleased he doesnt say anything but observes his guests, cocks an eyebrow at gandalf from time to time while gandalf shoots him half amused half apologetical smiles

And then thorin knocks, everyones going silent again and gandalf says “he’s here”

And Bilbo opens the door by himself looks at the dwarf while thorin just enters not even looking at bilbo but greeting gandalf and you see in gandalf’s face that he is half panicking about what bilbo will say but bilbo just snorts amused and goes back to the dining room

gandalf follows him so the rest of the company follows gandalf and bilbo just shoots a look at the wizard like “are you serious you said dwarfs are coming here not unpolite and ungracefull beings without manners”

Gandalf tries to cough the awkwardness away “ALRIGHT, now that we’re all here we shall discuss the plan!!”

And Thorin just doesn’t get it, he doesnt get why gandalf seems so nervous around the hobbit whose name he doesnt even know (he leans into Balin and asks for the hobbits name out of pure interest but balin just shrugs realizing that the hobbit hasnt given away his name to anyone)

So now they entered the hobbit hole, ate bilbos food and dont even know what he completely looks like or what his name is

Gandalf repeats the plan mostly for bilbo so he knows whats going on and after the wizard is done bilbo hears a “thats what we need a burglar for!”

And gandalf looks so done bc he looks at bilbo and bilbo just snorts and smirks because all his life and after all he has done he has never been called a simple “burglar”

Bilbos occupation is the following: his mother was still belladonna and a took and his father was like mentioned above a dwarf, so while both of them died they still taught him a lot. His father showed him how to fight in general and with a sicklesword and how to throw knives. Training was never a problem for bilbo because (half dwarf) he has a lot of potential strength. His mother taught him about stealth and plants especially poisonous ones so soon bilbo was not only able to fight but to make mixtures of poisons and still being as quiet as only a hobbit can be

Bilbo’s father was a warrior and had to go on a mission but he knew that the enemy had information and that by just “kiling them off” the information would be lost. Having trained his son for many years and knowing that bilbo can be completely silent and probably deadly if desired he decides to take bilbo with him, bilbos mission is to knock someone out with a throwing knife to the shoulder which is covered in narcotics

Bilbo does an excellent job and his father is impressed and is like “i know you’ve never seen anything like this, youve never killed we only trained but i think you would be ready to fight by my side after we got our information out of this dude”

And Bilbo is both really good at fighting and at getting information out of the dude (I imagine him using some non toxic but pain bringing mixtures)

Bilbo and his father return home safely and Bilbo finds himself both guilty and thrilled bc he just killed like A TON of people with his father but at the same time it was exciting and he has this itch in his fingertips to do it again

After some years both of his parents die and not being able to stay in the Shire due to the memories bilbo travels through middle earth, hides his identity and then he hears someone in a pub talking about “killing someone for the better and how he would give a ton of gold to the person who could take out his target” and bilbo is like “oh” and goes out, satisfies the itch in his fingers, kills the person and demands his gold

The news spread like fire and everytime rumors come up about someone that should be killed for a good purpose bilbo will investigate, see if the person should really be killed, and if so will take the person out and demand his gold

Back to present events Thorin is like “do you think this is funny, hobbit? do you think the legacy of my kin is something you are allowed to laugh about? what do we need a hobbit for anyway?”

And Bilbo just pats his shoulder takes the contract that Gandalf held in his hands without saying anything and starts reading it

after he is done everyone looks at him not sure if they should be impressed or unnerved by this hobbit who seems to think so highly of himself that he can disrespect the king

but before anyone could say anything bilbo has signed the contract while looking at thorin from under the curls that covers his eyes giving him a smug smile and you just see that thorin is “this” close to snapping

Bilbo asks when they depart and gandalf says that they will leave by break of day

Thorin considers leaving earlier so they dont have to take the hobbit with them but doesnt say anything

Next day the dwarfs expect bilbo to have a ton of bags with him and that he would be in disadvantageous robes for traveling and they could laugh about him

But the sight they are greeted with is just? (I actually have some concepts in my head for Bilbos outfit but i dont rly know if anyone wants to see them BUT)

Bilbo is wearing of course no shoes but he is wearing long trousers with leather armor around his shins and knees, flexible but still protecting him; he wears a thin chainmail and over that a normal shirt, his arms are protected by thin leather which still looks resilient; a dark cloak which is secured with a clip around his neck; starting by his collar bones down to his navel in a “v” shape are all in all 12 throwing knives attatched in holsters and a sickle sword hangs at each of his sides; his hair which reaches his shoulders is tied up in a simple bun and in front of his face there is a short veil so that only his lips are visible; sewn onto his belt he has like 20 little bottles with different mixtures and poisons and he carries one simple backpack

and the dwarfs are like??? armor??? which looks??? high quality??? weapons??? on this hobbit??????

and they turn to gandalf and gandalf just tries to suppress a laugh at the surprised faces bc he just knew that out of sulkiness bilbo would not even try to hide any of his weapons but present them to the dwarfs

and like this basically the movie verse story would be retold

and it would be a bagginshield fic - oh my god it would be a bagginshield fic

[thewebcomicsreview]

Homestuck 2 has updated! Christmas is ruined!

Previously, on Homestuck 2: Literally nothing happened, and a non-trivial portion of the patreon supporters gave up and quit. Can this update pull a Christmas miracle and right the sinking ship of Homestuck 2? Probably not, but let’s find out! 

We’re back in Candyland, having completely skipped over Karkat and John talking about Dave’s apparent death, because this comic is only interested in long conversations when they’re boring and not about anything at all. That’s alright, I got the gist of it.

When Karkat is finally gone, John still doesn’t move. It isn’t as though he has nowhere else to go, since there are quite a few places he might attempt to make himself useful, for better or for worse.

So, it appears to be morning now, meaning that John’s son has been missing in a war zone for almost 24 hours and I guess John literally forgot Harry existed?

Prediction: This conversation is going to end in some variant of “Where is our son?” “Oh shit!”

ROXY: hey john can u do me a quick solid

ROXY: actly idk how quick itll be but its definitely solid

ROXY: harry anderson says i just missed u being here but could u skip back on over?

What.

So, I went back and checked, and apparently nowhere is it explicitly said that Harry Anderson was also looking for the Vriskas, so I guess he....stayed home? Which makes sense, I suppose, but maybe a “Stay here I’ll go look for them” would’ve helped. I wasn’t the only one who thought Harry was out looking for Vriska too. 

ROXY: sup

ROXY: follow me

ROXY: well were just going to my room so i guess technically u know the way

JOHN: haha ok.

John follows, trying to shake the ominous feeling he got from what she’d just said. He’d been in and out of this house a lot in the past few days. Why should this be any different?

Is Roxy....horny? Is the solid she’s looking for John’s dick? I mean, that’d make her saying Harry wasn’t available kind of weird, but I think this framing is a fake-out.

...

What the fuck is that lamp, Jesus Christ it’s awful. Just a cat’s asshole, facing the door.

ROXY: r u kiddin me rn egbert

JOHN: i’m not? unless you were, in which case yeah lets say i was also kidding.

JOHN: oh my god, i’m sorry, i don’t know why this making me freak out.

ROXY: i remember our past boot knockin with fondness but that is a situation im not interested in revisiting

Oh hey, it was a fakeout. Good job, Homestuck 2. You successfully implied something just through the art. Art which, by the way, looks a lot better than the last chapter. There are backgrounds and everything. I wonder if Chapter 15 was rushed out due to Hiveswap and that’s why it was so weak?

He’s almost embarrassed by how relieved he feels. So what if his ex wife wanted to hook up? Shouldn’t that be a situation he could navigate? Don’t people like to find solace in human physical connection during dire times? Why did the idea of it make his mind white out in panic more than, say, any number of the traumas he just experienced?

I’m not the biggest fan of the way the narration is going JOHN IS AFRAID OF SEX WITH ROXY LIKE HE’S A TEENAGE VIRGIN AGAIN (LIKE IN HS1!) AND IT DOESN’T REALLY MAKE SENSE PLEASE REMEMBER THIS IT’LL BE IMPORTANT LATER, but okay, noted.

ROXY: u said ur house is gone??

JOHN: yep.

JOHN: completely.

ROXY: jeez

Heh. I like Roxy, still. 

JOHN: so i just sat there, watching, trying to figure out why watching my house burn down felt like i was being released from prison.

If this comic actually uses the phrase “home” and “stuck” in the same sentence I’m turning this blog around and we’ll go right back to Winnipeg.

ROXY: aight then no wind bending just use your mangrit

Roxy flexes, the corner of her mouth pulled up into a familiar grin. John feels his guts, so recently calmed, twist up into knots again. Her eyebrows shoot up and the smile loosens. He must have shown something on his face.

ROXY: ok or just like push when i push

ROXY: we both got sick muscles

ROXY: no other adjectives necessary

I feel unqualified to talk about how hard Roxy is pushing the June Egbert thing.

....Is that the fucking portal from Hiveswap under a tarp? Also hi Candy Callie, appearing in HS2 for the first time. One of the Calliope’s is nonbinary, I think, but I honestly can’t remember and I think it’s Meat Calliope? 

JOHN: do i get to know what that big thing under the sheet is?

ROXY: hmmmmmm no

JOHN: oh ok.

JOHN: are you sure? i mean, it seems like a pretty prominent feature of the room.

JOHN: space.

JOHN: wherever we are.

ROXY: and a totally mysterious n COMPLETELY inconspicuous feature it will have to remain for now

ROXY: we r kinda in a hurry here fyi

ROXY: and by that i mean

ROXY: we are in precisely the amount of hurry that means im excused from having to a that specific q rn

JOHN: right, sorry.

JOHN: i will pay no attention to the object behind the curtain.

ROXY: u catch on fast egbert

Oh thing HS2 has not been great at is that it has a lot of plot mysteries that are supposed to keep us enticed but they don’t really get implanted into the audience’s head (Remember Vrissy mysteriously collapsing that one time? Probably not, she did it off screen and the boys kind of laughed it off). This one’s hard to miss.

JOHN: so... this is all downstairs?

JOHN: it seems like you had a lot of work done.

ROXY: well no not x actly

ROXY: were in the old meteor

It’s kind of weird how this meteor keeps popping up like this. 

CALLIOPE: besides, hUman divorces are even more fascinating than i had ever imagined, and being able to witness yoUrs in motion was an honoUr.

This is an unexpected but not unwelcome direction for Callie to have gone.

CALLIOPE: ah right, right. yoU're probably a little cUrioUs as to where the dickens we are.

CALLIOPE: how much do yoU know aboUt black holes?

Oh, wow, we’re going right there, then. This does seem like a bit of a reaction to complaints HS2 wasn’t shmoovin’ enough, but maybe I’m reading too much into it.

CALLIOPE: no, i mean, what if oUr whole WORLD was inside a black hole.

JOHN: ok.

A’ight, that got a laugh out of me

JOHN: ugh, i fucking KNEW it!

JOHN: i'm so sorry.

JOHN: i'm so sorry that i put the earth inside a black hole everyone. ):

I like this conversation a lot. 

ROXY: iirc at least part of y u got so weepy was the fact that u couldnt believe a version of earth existed where ppl got 2 watch more mcconaughey films than you

JOHN: listen.

JOHN: i simply don't think you all appreciated the gift you were given.

Quite a bit, in fact.

ROXY: ur not gonna enter a weird time vortex and change the trajectory of a little girls life with the power of love

JOHN: aw.

Roxy and John have a good dynamic. 

CALLIOPE: bUt Upon her departUre, the rift closed for good. as far as i can see, there's simply no way for Us to commUnicate with the world oUtside the black hole.

CALLIOPE: i woUld certainly be very sUrprised to find oUt that anyone had managed sUch a thing!

JOHN: ...right.

John’s phone has very good coverage, since he was able to talk to Terezi in the epilogues, as we’re being subtly reminded of here with that ... before the “right”. I wonder if it still works after alt-Calliope left.

CALLIOPE: oUr exclUsion from the overarching coUrse of events which governs all reality means that oUr existence here is liable to dramatic and violent Upheaval.

CALLIOPE: to pUt it another way, becaUse nothing in here "matters", we are likely to be sUbjected to things which are a bit bats in the belfry, for no reason other than it's totally insignificant to the wider canon of reality.

CALLIOPE: and mUch thoUgh i am personally titillated by some of the conseqUences of this predicament, it is a degrading way for Us to live. u_u

Okay, so we are now being explicitly told that living in the black hole is fucking with the characters and is part of the reason they make such baffling decisions, like Rose not telling Kanaya about Yiffy, or naming her daughter “Yiffy” in the first place.

CALLIOPE: we need yoU to free vriska from the clUtches of oUr misgUided friend jane, and bring her here, to the singUlarity.

ROXY: weve been calling it the plot point

CALLIOPE: yes, the plot point is a key part of oUr plan

CALLIOPE: as far as we have been able to sUrmise, the only remaining method for escaping oUr grim confinement depends on leveraging the UniqUe properties of this location to create an event of sUch catalcysmic proportions that it simply cannot be contained within the black hole any more.

CALLIOPE: something SO dramatic, so hyper-relevant, that it becomes ontologically impossible for anyone to ignore it.

CALLIOPE: for that, we need an individUal of sUfficient narrative cloUt, so to speak.

CALLIOPE: and to liberate her, who better than the embodiment of the aspect of freedom itself?

So, the plan is literally for Vriska to be such a Huge 8itch that the black hole itself gets sick of her and yeets Earth C out of its own event horizon to freedom.

This is actually a great plan. 

And that’s Hamsteak. This definitely feels like a bit of a reaction to complaints about HS2, but hey, I dig it, I guess? Definite improvement over the last chapter.

[normal-thoughts-official]

Do you think the polycule has any holiday traditions?

POLYCULE ASK! POLYCULE ASK! POLYCULE ASK! YESSSSSSSSSS

that's actually a pretty interesting question because the polycule is very culturally diverse. like of course we have simon who's jewish, but the rest is kind of in a weird place. i'm pretty sure shadowhunters don't have holidays at all, and since clary was raised by a shadowhunter and a former shadowhunter, i'm pretty sure she would have been raised without any either? like maybe she'd celebrate the gregorian new year because you know, they have to pretend to be mundane after all, but i think that and birthdays were probably pretty much it for her. oh and halloween i guess which is also not religious-affiliated, are there any other holidays in the states? i guess there's the 4th of july and thanksgiving but both celebrate imperialism/colonialism and i don't want to write about that so i'm gonna pretend there aren't. plus i doubt shadowhunters celebrated those either

so ok we have izzy and clary with no holidays, we don't know whether or not maia is culturally christian and i don't wanna just say "yes" by default... and then there's meliorn whose holidays and traditions will be typical to seelie culture, which are gonna be... unique to them obviously. we don't know how they are celebrated, how long they last, what is the milestone, how or even IF they count time - like maybe they go by when a specific flower blooms and that only happens every 10 gregorian years or some shit. so that's a question mark i guess

and there's also the fact that the seelie realm is very politically closed which. i like to think changes once they get rid of the old queen! but it's still a slow process to just allow other people there. then again izzy was a shadowhunter and she used to hop by so it's probably not a huge deal for meliorn to bring their partners and metamours to seelie celebrations? or at least to the ones that aren't Super Sacred or anything. so like parties and dances and stuff like that? yeah. which i guess brings me back to the other "meta" i wrote about seelie dances (link) and what it would be like for the rest of the polycule to participate in those and shit

then... well obviously there's the gregorian new year which we have obviously just gone through (well, we had when i started answering this ask. it's march now so rip. update it's april now. i'm so sorry anon) so like! i think it was always kind of hell for both raphael and maia, autistic icons, because of all the explosion sounds that just made them feel really upset and feel really stupid for it. with raphael i think it was more bearable when he had rosa because she would spend the day with him and hug him and let him squeeze the stress out you know dauhdasuihda also she was always the one he felt the most comfortable stimming in front of. and then after he lost her it only got worse because on top of the fireworks there was the clear absence of rosa that he just FELT everywhere. you know?

and with maia there's the added trouble of her being AMAB and what with being raised to "black men" standarts of masculinity (to be clear, as in: due to racism black men are expected to be even more macho than white men, ESPECIALLY by nonblack ppl; not as in wow black ppl are so backwards or whatever. white ppl invented gender norms anyway so lmao), she was definitely shamed a lot for being so distressed by the fireworks when she was little methinks. we love that combination of transphobia, racism and ableism! so it was just hard and filled with bad memories. and then once she ran away from home it got marginally better without the constant telling her to "man up" and shit like that, but it still came with the added memories you know

and also with them (plus simon) being vampires/werewolves the hearing gets even more sensitive so that's... fun. meliorn realizes it stresses them out and makes up a special kind of spell that muffles their hearing of background noise, so they can feel more comfortable and for the first time there is not that added stress that comes with the new years and it feels so nice?? they even try watching the fireworks but it's kinda like eh, not that great, especially because even looking at them brings out memories you know doahdsaoh so instead meliorn shows them some magic and it's so much prettier with all the glowing lights and stuff, you know?

maybe after that the polycule starts spending the new years in the seelie realm instead, that'd be cute, just like. enjoying that pretty place with all the lights and shit. i think they would all prepare some kind of light show some way or another like using magic and witchlights and whatnot. that'd be cute

as for other holidays! i think their holiday traditions would start with simon's first yom kippur after he was able to eat solid foods again (shut up a potion WILL be created and i don't accept any other option). before that, with simon being unable to eat, he was also obviously unable to fast. he wouldn't feed during yom kippur but it's not like vampires need to drink blood every day so it's not really the same thing. and it felt particularly lonely that, besides being away from his family and community, he also couldn't fast

i mean obviously simon isn't the only jewish vampire in the world, or jewish downworlder for that matter, so i'm sure he makes jewish friends he would at least get together and pray with for yom kippur, and that's what matters the most, really, but being unable to fast when he wants to and also not being able to participate in the break-fast meal just. sucks djdnudhsus

and then he's able to eat and he can do all that again! but it's also kind of emotionally charged for all of the vampires to fast for the first time when for so long they associated not eating with feeling unhuman, you feel? so like it kind of hits all of them hard

so the polycule decides to make him a little surprise and cooks the break-fast meal for them. clary probably knows what simon and his family used to eat after yom kippur so they try to recreate that for him? and maia and raphael are lowkey nervous about it because they had never made stuff like noodle kugel before and while they could at least try it (yay potion!) they have no idea if it's tasting like it should, ya know what i mean? and it's kind of sweet that they are so worried about making this the best possible experience for simon and the closest to home it can get. and simon is super emotional about getting to eat that stuff for the first time, as well as the other vampires, so you know. it's very emotional all around. but in a good way? and i think after that it kind of becomes a tradition that they make him the break-fast meal after yom kippur too

and then the next years they lowkey fuss over him for the last meal before the fast too, which i'm not sure is something simon would do with other people so they would go ham, dude, particularly raphael because he is a worrier first and foremost. so catch his ass all lovingly planning a meal he can make with zero (0) salt whatsoever so simon doesn't get too thirsty during the fast for MONTHS, planning so he gets the most amount of sustenance, lots of fiber, etc., and simon is like "you know i don't even have to eat, right?" but rapha is just all "you know food still matters" and simon doesn't say anything because it does. it matters a lot

and raphael is all sweetly nervous because like... it is a simple meal, that is the point, but he still wants simon to enjoy it and simon can't stop smiling through the whole thing. raphael and the others also eat it with him too in solidarity before simon goes to the synagogue with his community and it's like a sweet send off you know?

also this is not exactly a celebration or a tradition for that matter but since YK is the day of forgiveness i like to think that eventually simon asks for raphael's forgiveness on YK for the whole rosa thing, and although that isn't religious for raphael, raphael asking for his forgiveness for how everything went down, too. and it's just a sweet moment where they leave this whole story behind and look for a better future - i imagine this happening before they get together, so again, it doesn't really count as an answer to your question, but i just thought i'd include it because i find it sweet

then after that there is sukkot and i just really loove the idea of them helping him build the sukkah (for those who don't know, the sukkah is a hut covered with vegetation under the open sky, where jewish ppl live in for the duration of the sukkot). i know that they could just buy a certified one but where is the fun in that when we could have shenanigans? also i think that that would have been part of simon's personal/family traditions because i bet him and becca loved to build the sukkah for their family. so like on that spirit it is a little sad that they can't help each other with that anymore since simon can't be seen by the rest of his family, but of course as soon as he mentions it and how fun it used to be the whole polycule is Immediately On Board. let's help simon build his sukkah!

first of all other than simon none of them have ever built a sukkah before and simon usually followed becca's lead tbh, also he's just not great to Lead And Control people in general, and the polycule is already messy as all fuck. so it's a disaster, especially with raphael and simon's superspeed and strength thrown into the mix, and meliorn's almost impossible to hold back mischievous nature. izzy is lowkey responsible for keeping them in check and okay now that i think about it clary might have helped simon's family build it before, especially when she was a kid because kids just love that shit, but i don't know if she would remember the steps tbh (read: she wouldn't remember the steps) so yeah all in all the sukkah falls down more often than not and they might have to replace a few materials when simon and raphael accidentally snap their bamboo poles in half. rip

meliorn is probably all like "you are all weak and pathetic, i am a seelie, i can literally control living things. simon needs a vegetable covering? watch me get all the nearby trees to form a beautiful roof" and simon is like "actually the sechach cannot be alive" and meliorn slowly dies because they have no power over dead nature. also simon forbids magic usage in general because this needs to be an authentic building experience for him, so meliorn is left as the most useless one since they only have experience building these things using magic and the help of the trees or whatever

also i bet they would love to go EXTREMELY hard on the lights and decorations. i know that hassidic and to my understanding general orthodox jewish communities don't decorate the sukkah but i don't hc simon as part of those communities so i think he would want to decorate the sukkah. like even if it isn't fully covered in decorations, he would want what few he has to be well done, you know what i mean? like he would want to make the holiday posters himself (i dont know if it would be appropriate for clary to help make these but if it would, she totally would and i like the idea of simon giving her a very specific prompt to make the posters and clary doing it for him, you know? and maybe them all helping paint it with colorful themes), making decorations, and okay, at the very least fairy lightning? please? come on. it's another whole ass dramatic experience to get electricity in there so that's fun for sure, but i think meliorn and maia in particular would be all over the idea of making a pretty lightning system, and simon is definitely not gonna complain because he loves pretty things and the idea sounds rad. raphael smiles fondly through it all and basically saves the day by being the only one with organizational skills who is actually able to help them make a working plan for the sukkah

(catch these idiots making a blueprint. TRY and tell me they wouldn't)

(every year they make a new blueprint and the sukkah has different designs and proportions - always following the requirements like having four at least 32 inches tall walls, of course - and they start completely anew. the sechach must always be new but not the general structure, but they redo the structure anyway because again, it's fun)

and then of course they have meals together in the sukkah for the duration of sukkot and just idk i really dig the idea of the lot of them holding trays of food wearing oven mitts as they get inside and turn on the lights and it feels really nice and sweet you know? and then of course promptly turns kind of messy because it's their way but that's what they want. also, at least once a year they manage to sneak becca in for a meal with simon in the sukkah and they are just both so happy and aaaaa :')

and that's how "kidnapping" becca so she can see simon and his sukkah becomes another tradition lmao. they do it in the most dramatic full of flair way they possibly can while still not being found out and then promptly tell simon all about it in the most dramatic and exaggerated retelling during the meal, which always makes both simon and becca laugh (reality: becca just told her parents she would be off for a few hours to do some school thing or something and then they picked her up and she got a superspeed piggyback ride so she and simon wouldn't miss a minute. their story: "it all began with a carefully planted lie,")

there's also pesach which many (reform) jewish friends of mine have told me they like to do with goyim because the whole point of that holiday is to welcome strangers and share jewish history, so i think simon would like to do that as well. so yeah i think simon would enjoy having them with him during the Pesach Seder - again i think simon would want to be with his other jewish friends but it would be fun because they all could bring their pet goyim that they know would be respectful and nice to have around, run the Seder, and celebrate with them. also for their first one i think simon would have gotten excited about explaining the order/15 steps to them, so like cue lots of fond looks as simon tells them everything about it, how this is the first time he'll be able to have the feast, the four cups of wine, and how he's excited even to have the bitter herbs again. and then over the years they all become pretty much used to the 15 steps, they come naturally, they know what to expect, they already know the story of the Exodus after retelling it every year, and it's nice both when it's new and he gets to share and when it starts to be something in their element because it became their tradition and they want to be there with simon for the holidays, you know what i mean?

then there's purim!!!!!!!! god they would sure have so much fun on purim it gets me really excited to think about. purim might be the one that they get to participate the most in from what i've seen, and i have lots of thoughts about it, like:

first of all, making hamantaschen!! they each make a batch with a different stuffing and it's lowkey a competition and lowkey a surprise and as always with cooking together it is very fun and homey. and also kind of silly as they usually are, but purim is a holiday that is kind of supposed to be silly and for ppl to let go so it matches that mood, you know what i mean? like they're all covered in flour and "stop trying to LOOK at what i'm making!" and blind testing and stuff

then, food gifts! so from what i've seen it is preferable that the food gifts jewish ppl send each other on purim are sent by a third party, which is usually a kid, but they don't know many kids and i really like the idea of the polycule serving as simon's messengers for the day lmao. going everywhere round the shadow world and beyond ("hey mel since you can portal i have this friend in argentina-") and then bringing him the other gifts people send simon in return :)

dressing up in costumes! there is absolutely no way simon doesn't dress up for purim and the whole polycule is absolutely dragged into it, including an absolutely reluctant raphael. it quickly becomes a tradition tho that they change costumes every year and try to make them funnier and more outrageous (as you do) as time goes by. trust the polycule to turn pretty much everything into a competition. and simon always laughs with so much glee and joy when he gets to see what everyone dresses up as so really, how could they say no?

(maia "wins", like, every year. she is totally huge on costumes and her and simon are very attuned in that sense, so, you know. catch her dressing up as memes and just generally making the most creative costumes. she may or may not think them months and months ahead of time)

maybe they hold purim meals with particularly themed costumes every once in a while when they want to spice it up, but i think generally it's more of a freestyle thing

simon also loves reading the purim torah tbh, it's just fun. and then of course there's the megillah and booing when haman's name is mentioned. they are all banned from using graggers because half of them have superstrength and the other half doesn't technically have superstrength but is still super strong and they destroyed the poor thing on accident after the first ten seconds when they tried

food yay! and the very long meal. they usually get pretty drunk, tbh, at least the ones that can. and just generally i think it's one of their favorite celebrations to do together and more often than not ends in them all curled up together in the couch so u know, that's sweet uwu

and then of course rosh hashanah, which is the holiest joyous day in jewish tradition, so of course it's a huge deal for them all. and i just think they would all be super excited about making the evening (especially the meal ofc) the most incredible for simon it could possibly be. again i think simon would want to spend it with his downworlder jewish friends and community, and they probably have their own synagogue they go to together and everything, so obviously they are all involved in making preparations for rosh hashanah, but i like to think the polcyule and simon's friends' pet goyim would help with what they can as well (provided it's not something that should be done by a jewish person like baking the challah; but if not with cooking, they would at least want to help with stuff like decorations and the like. honestly i imagine all of simon's partners sitting together very seriously with a paper in front of them writing down all the stuff they can do to help with rosh hashanah preparations and everything. especially once they learn that like being happy/joyous is a mitzvah so they're just like "we want to make u as happy as possible then :)" and it's sweet and simon may or may not tear up a little)

and then we have other holidays that aren't associated with religion like halloween, which was kind of implied to be the official downworld holiday, so i'm pretty sure they go big on that too. not dressing up because again, one day where they can all afford to be themselves, but definitely meeting up at the hunter's moon, getting spectacularly drunk, roasting the mundane's costumes, and then once they get back to whichever of them's homes, watching some shitty movies and throwing stuff at the screen together

i'm on the fence about día de muertos. i know it's not exactly a sad holiday but i feel like it is for raphael because it kind of represents everything he's lost - his culture and his family, and he can't even go to the parade during the day, you know, although i'm not sure that would have been his thing, but i do think he would have loved to watch the arrival of the monarchs when he was a kid but he'd have to be in méxico for that. and particularly after he lost rosa i just feel like it would have been so emotionally charged for him, you know? he would definitely make her an altar every year and it would be just... big and well thought-out and something really emotional and important for him, welcoming his little sister back the best he can. and i feel like that's something he'd want to do alone because my boy loves to punish himself

but there are little things i think they would have wanted to do with him, and that they might push a little to be able to, like being with him while he eats by the altar and hearing him tell stories about rosita. and i think they would help him "undo" (?) the altar once día de muertos is over, which is always extra emotional for him and aaa. and then the next day they kind of just get to be with him and cuddle a little bit as he recovers emotionally, you know?

also it has just occured to me that raphael is christian shit fuck fart bitch cock. so okay i guess that puts xmas and easter somewhat on the map? again mostly for food. us latinos celebrate xmas on the eve, not on xmas day, and raphael is totally the insufferable xmas meal obsessed bitch who's on the kitchen all day and refuses to let anyone help (he can't pull that particular stunt for the meals they have for simon's holidays obviously but he can on xmas soo). but it's worth it because it is always a great one. and he also gives a lot of thought into getting everyone presents so that is sweet and it earns him lots of kisses on the cheek and stuff. and that's pretty much it for latino xmas, we don't really do stuff i'm still not convinced gringos haven't made up like the socks and the eggnog and xmas music (????) so it's more lowkey. and i think raphael would keep the more religious aspects of it to the stuff he does at church (again, there are downworlder religious communities idk what to tell u) and for the nursery home. which is not to say that like... oh wow xmas is totally not a xtian holiday! or whatever, just that the version the polycule does is more lowkey on the religious aspects and the things they do together on that day are more about being together with raphael on a day that matters to him, you know, especially since again, he is the only xtian and that's gonna be a sensitive thing for simon especially

and i think for easter it is mostly something they do to shower maia in sweets lmao. again she misses chocolate and i'm sure they spend a lot of their time trying to figure out how to get around that, either be by like trying to make special chocolate that doesn't make her sick or sweets that really really resemble chocolate or that are so good she doesn't even mind that she can't eat chocolate anymore. so that's their tradition for easter (and raphael goes to church ofc)

oh yeah and i forgot valentine's day! i have this funny little idea just for the shits where they have this little thing where they setup one-on-one dates for all the parts that are actually together and each of them lasts, like, 10 minutes (poor maia who dates everyone is just running around town) and it's more about the fun of running around from one day to the other like this is a bad romcom where some bastard is trying to juggle having two (monog) girlfriends at once. but then they actually get all together at the end of the day and trade presents and funny cards both among their dates and metamours ("roses are red, violets are blue, you're my girlfriend's girlfriend, and i love you platonically"). usually ending up with them drunk and debating how exactly they got to this overly complicated arrangement and trying to figure out the best way to explain this to an outsider and trying to make, like, fluxograms that explain all of their different relationships visually and they all look so messy it just leaves them more confused lmao. so yeah it's fun

and i think that's all i've got? i say, as if this answer isn't longer than anyone will have the time to read and took me over 4 months to write. but anyway

a special thanks to "a group where non-jews can ask questions about judaism and jews can answer" on facebook and all my jewish friends for helping me write about the jewish holidays and customs. i also used the following sources: Rosh Hashanah (link), how to build the sukkah (link), more on the sukkah (link), how to celebrate purim (link), more on purim (link), how to celebrate passover (link), what is a passover seder like (link), laws of yom tov (link), yom kippur (link), what to eat before and after yom kippur (link), a classic yom kippur breakfast menu (link), menus for the pre yom kippur meal (link). if there's anything inaccurate or disrespectful, however, please let me know, and feel free to add more ideas as well if you're jewish :)

[theyaskedmeto]

what i think each og new direction member's social media presence would be like

basically i’ve been doing nothing all day and i’m way too addicted to social media and i started thinking about this so here we are. also i’m just gonna pretend social media was a big thing when they were at school (it obviously wasn’t but lets pretend this is set in like 2016 or smth)

rachel berry

lets be honest rachel would be so damn annoying on social media (not like that’s a surprise tho she’s annoying anyway)

she’d definitely use instagram the most

she’d post photos of her and finn holding hands and caption it like ‘My world, I love this boy 🔐❤️🌏✨’ and then deletes them all when they break up

EXCESSIVE use of emojis 

posts selfies and quote song lyrics in the caption

posts what she’s listening to on her stories (usually boradway) and feels very entitled because of it

posts singing videos 

santana and brit probably bully her in the comments of her posts lbr

honestly i can’t see her having any other forms of social media tbh, she just always uses instagram

auto caps stay ON at all times bc it’s ‘against the rules of basic grammar’

tries to talk in the nd groupchat but no one likes her or listens. like ‘What song should I do for a solo this week’ and then it starts a massive argument

finn hudson

one of those boys who just takes photos of The Scenery™ and no photos of him

maybe posts some photos of him and rachel when they’re together though

actually he probably does the same thing as rachel like ‘Can’t believe this girl is mine 😍💗’ and commenting ‘Love You ❤️’ on her posts but it just seems v high school

probably not very active but uses instagram the most

does a lot of those ask thingys on instagram like ‘send me an emoji and i’ll say what i think about you’ LMAO

i feel like he’s not very involved with it because he prefers video games more lol

uses ‘😂’ unironically

auto caps on and doesn’t even know having them off is a thing

noah puckerman

USES SNAPCHAT. nothing else. but he does have insta

has sent streaks to everyone he’s friends with on sc and will continue to until he’s like 25 

posts way too many mirror selfies with the flash on without his shirt off (ew) 

literally never talks in the nd groupchat

auto caps on - actually he probably Types Like This All The Time

has A Rule that if he’s talking to a girl he has to not reply for at least 2 hours but if it’s a guy then he has to reply asap (bros before hoes type vibe)

blaine anderson

i really don’t think he’d use it that much??? i feel like he’d get too overwhelmed ahdkjhdjs

WAIT APART FROM TUMBLR

he’s probably very involved with tumblr and is part of the star wars fandom/marvel fandom

his ao3 history is between him and his computer only

ppl wanna be his friend on tumblr because he’s just nice and kind 🥺

he’s probably quite popular on there - has a lot of followers

but he doesn’t really use any others - has an instagram but there’s no posts on there

maybe he tries to spread awareness on his insta stories???

hates snapchat with a passion 

uses :) :( <3 ;_; way too much (he’s on tumblr)

has auto caps off. like he’s a fanboy okay he’s on TUMBLR fgs. 

occasionally talks in the nd groupchat but is normally a bit intimidated by all the arguments it causes 

v open about his sexuality on his insta (has a 🌈in his bio🥺)

brittany pierce

she uses all of the main ones (insta and snapchat)

posts loads of photos of lord tubbington on there and adds loads of gifs on her stories

such!! a wholesome!!! insta page!!!!!

lots of mirror selfies with the flash on

bad spelling 😔

tries to do those story bingo things but gives up when she gets confused

also has another insta account to build her fondue for 2 channel 

auto caps OFF

uses all the pretty emojis way too much like ‘went to the park 🏞 it was so ✨💗 fun!!! 🌸🌈☀️ we had a good time 😍’

is the QUEEN of the nd groupchat along with santana. tbh her and santana would just use it as their place to talk about everything rather than private messages

santanna lopez

her whole instagram is just selfies

uses snapchat quite a lot but when she gets older she stops completely and deletes it ‘snapchat is for straight ppl’

cyberbullies rachel ajhfdsjhd

does ops on her story and is just brutally honest to everyone who asks 

auto caps stay on but sometimes she forces her keyboard to type all lowercase

NEVER uses emojis. not even :( or :) she just never uses them ever

has a tiktok addiction for when she gets sad about britt (especially s2 when britt isn’t with her)

kurt hummel

uses instagram to show off his outfits 

especially when he gets older and lives in ny!! 

there’d be such cute lil videos of him and blaine on his story like taking videos of his ootd and then blaine photobombing and then he zooms in on him and laughs ok i’ve thought about this too much

compliments all his besties on their photos like ‘So gorgeous 😍’

auto caps stay religiously ON but uses a lot of abbreviations like ‘btw and ily’ etc

in the early days of him and blaine being together, he’d be quite private about it but around the time just before he leaves for ny they get more public

only uses emojis for reactionary purposes eg. to compliment friends

posts photos of anything. honestly i want to see his insta it’d be so cute

has a private instagram for his close friends where he shitposts his whole life like ‘Dad’s taking us to get mcdonalds!!!!’ with blaine

sam evans

posts shirtless pics and all the girls thirst over him ajdhksjdk

uses insta more than snapchat but always sends streaks (maybe when he’s younger tho like around season 4 i don’t think he would be anymore)

also v wholesome though??? like i think he’d post pics of what flowers he got his mum for mothers day 

posts pics of mercedes on his story when they’re together 🥺

posts his favourite songs on his story

auto caps ON bc he doesn’t know having them off is a thing lol

uses 😂 unironically

mercedes jones

doesn’t post much on any social media platforms but is always liking everyone elses posts and complimenting her friends

posts more on her story than anything else

when she gets more confident in herself tho, she posts more (especially when she moves to new york)

occasional photos of sam when they’re dating with a lil love heart emoji on her story

lots of emojis but she uses them when necessary

auto caps on!!!

tina cohen-chang

THE SAME AS RACHEL WITH MIKE but like 10 times less annoying and people actually care

literally the cutest couple on instagram with the new directions group

uses the nd groupchat quite regularly bc people actually LISTEN to her there

has a cute lil gc with sam and blaine with some weird ass name

switches to auto caps off after she goes through her goth phase 

uses :) and :( and also a few pretty emojis eg. 💗☀️✨🌟💐🍬 to make her captions looks pretty

v quick replier

quinn fabray

this bitch has too many emotions for social media ok?

just watches tiktok to cheer herself up but it makes her more sad

has an instagram but never posts on there

if you wanna message her just text because she’ll never reply otherwise

disappears off the face of the earth during her skank phase. deletes her instagram and everything

auto caps on but it doesn’t even matter because she never even needs to use her keyboard 

(we’re talking s3 tho. in like s1 she’d have been into it to keep up her persona lol. her insta would’ve defo had over 1k followers)

mike chang

uses insta more than sc and posts photos of him and tina on his story 

fast replier - loyal king

fully ignores the nd groupchat because he avoids drama 😌✨

non caps because it ‘looks friendlier and not like you’re shouting’

will help you with your homework if you have any questions 

like ‘hey have you done this english homework?? i can’t find any good quotes that’ll help with the question’ and he’ll reply fast with a whole list bc he’s an academic KING

would love to post some dancing videos but gets too scared :(

artie abrams

has no social media and is rlly annoying bc its so hard to contact him

auto caps on. i mean like how would u know having them off was a thing if you don’t have any socials

fully punctuates every text

[themangolorian]

the book

Pairing: Javier Peña x Reader (Narcos TV show)

Tiny ficlet. One shot. Javi’s POV. Inspired by this post.

Summary: When Javi finds an old book in an empty office, he cannot get his mind off the woman who poured her heart into the spaces between the words. The only problem is he has no idea who she is.

Javi had found the book in an empty office. He’d gone in to clear his head. To get away from the ruckus and noise of the space he had to share with everyone else. The office had been blessedly quiet. He’d been sitting with his head between his hands, and when he’d finally lifted his gaze, it had been there. Haphazardly laying on the corner of the desk as if waiting for him. Brown leather bound. The corners were worn, the pages yellowed with use and time. 

Warily and needing something to clear his mind, he’d reached over casually to flip it open, unaware that action would unforeseeably change his life. Cien años de soledad. Not out of the ordinary, though its casing was. Javi had read it once, before moving to Colombia. He shuffled through the pages. It was a good book, but he had so little time left in his life for fiction. 

Just as he was about to shut the cover of the book, something handwritten within the pages caught his eye. But he’d lost the page. He began leafing through the pages to see what someone had thought important enough to write in a book. Javi had never understood the point of doing something like that when one’s thoughts while reading could easily be kept in one’s head. But he was curious anyway. 

As he thumbed through the pages, he realized there were handwritten notes in several places throughout the book. In a cramped but neat script. He had to squint to read them.

this is not how I would react to a ghost - next to what he supposed was a crude drawing of a smiling apparition. The corner of his mouth turned up. He flipped the page almost carefully now.

well...i dream of peace. everywhere in colombia. but mostly on this mess of a base. Javi smiled fully now.

Flipping through the pages, he found various personal and funny tidbits, commentaries on the story. So many phrases in the book were underlined. And drawings. Yellow butterflies. A calf-like beast. Flowers. So many flowers, some described within the book, some clearly made up in someone’s imagination. He began to wonder who on base could possibly be funny enough to talk like this. Based on the handwriting itself, and a few of the more telling comments, he knew it was a woman. But he scoured the pages between each flap of the book and could not find a name. Every thought imaginable seemed caught in the neat handwriting. Everything but her name. 

Javi sighed and let the cover fall shut. He contemplated. Looked around the office. Noted the dust on every surface. He stood and tucked the book under his arm before thinking too hard about it.

In the weeks that followed, Javi began to find solace in the worn, obviously well-loved pages of the novel. Whoever had written these words was obviously snarky, maybe sassy, but she loved the story all the same. It was clear in her notes. Javi never actually re-read the book itself. Only the passages that would help him understand the noteleaver’s quips.

“What’re you reading there?” Steve called his way from the bunk as Javi traced the words of another note he’d only just found. He’d been sure he’d read them all, but this one was new to him, hidden between the many pages of the novel. 

this is why we shouldn’t let tourists in

He’d been pleasantly surprised to find a note he’d not yet read and had accidentally chuckled out loud. But he closed the book with an air of having been caught when Steve spoke.

“Nothing,” he had to clear his throat, voice hoarse from disuse. The ambassador had forbade them from leaving the grounds, and they were growing listless in their boredom.

Steve glanced over. “Doesn’t look like nothing.” But he went back to cleaning his gun all the same, leaving Javi to wonder.

Javi stared at the book. He wondered who it had belonged to and why it had been abandoned in the middle of a dusty office. Briefly he wondered if its owner had died, and the thought panged his heart, though he could not say why. He shook his head at himself and tucked the book under his bunk so he could nap.

Because there was so little to do for the time being, Javi began carrying the book around. Both to read it...well, its previous owner’s notes. And to, if he was being honest with himself, maybe run into the person it belonged to. Though, at this point, he thought he’d be loath to part with it.

But...he’d begun to start thinking too hard about the writer of the handwritten notes which, by now, he’d come to memorize. He didn’t know what it was about her words that seemed to captivate him so. She was funny. Thoughtful. Romantic, at least in the sense of the book. Maybe practical. He felt like he’d gotten to know someone deeply, someone he couldn’t put a face to. And for Javi, that was endlessly frustrating.

As he sat in the mess next to Steve to eat lunch, he placed the book on the table just across from them. Steve had finally stopped asking about the book when Javier had shown him the first page, clearly stating its title. 

“Can’t get your nose out of that,” he’d noted in his plainly straightforward way. But he hadn’t brought it up again, though sometimes Javi saw the way Steve’s brow would arch his way when he’d open it yet again.

Now, Javi perused the surrounding tables and the others milling about, wondering if any of them might be the person he was looking for. There weren’t many women on base other than the ambassador. There was her secretary, an older prudish type. He didn’t think it could be her considering she seemed to have no sense of humor. There were a handful of others and though Javi’s eyes lingered on them, he didn’t think it could be any one of them either. For one wild moment, he wondered if it could be the ambassador’s. But he shook his head at the thought, smiling.

“What?” Steve wondered through a mouthful of lechona.

But before Javi could respond, a hand was reaching out and picking up the book. Javi had to stop himself from reaching over automatically to stop-

Her. Javi had forgotten all about her.

“Here it is,” she was saying, sounding breathless with relief.

Her eyelashes were lowered against her cheeks in a lovely way as she gazed at the book with clear affection. She still had not seemed to have noticed Javi and Steve sitting there.

She was a researcher the ambassador had hired to help the DEA in their years-long mission to capture Escobar. Javi hadn’t realized she’d been staying on base. He’d only ever seen her once here. And that had been before everything had gone to shit. He’d never spoken to her long enough to get to know her, but she was pretty. Beautiful, really. And he remembered her laugh. He’d done something silly, accidentally tripped or something, and her laugh had been infectious. Had anyone else laughed, Steve maybe, Javi might have gotten irritated. But her laugh had brought a smile to his face.

“Con cuidado” she’d lilted at him before going the opposite way, her eyes still laughing.

“I’ve been looking for this,” she finally caught Javi’s eyes. She must’ve been wondering why he’d been staring at her. Smiling. How did she do that with her eyes? Always smiling.

When Javi didn’t respond, the corners of her mouth turned up now into an uncertain smile without diminishing the bright one remaining in her eyes. Maybe she thought they thought she’d interrupted them. “Well, enjoy your lunch.” She turned to walk towards the food counter, tucking her long lost, now found, book under her arm.

Javi only hesitated for a second, his mind racing, before he stood up and followed after her, rushing to find the right words to express that he’d read every single note she’d left in a decade-old novel he’d found in an empty office, and now he was sure he was in love with her.

Steve’s eyes narrowed as he watched his partner’s retreating back. “What in Sam Hill was that about?” He drawled before reaching over and picking the lone buñeulo off Javi’s tray.

A/N: For the record, I’m one of those people who writes in their books and underlines incessantly. I know some ppl consider that sacrilege but it’s how I show my love! 🥰

Forever Tag List (please let me know if you’d like to be removed!): @lesqui​ @murdermewithbooks​ @beskars @rosetophighlander @dyn-djarin @keeper0fthestars @mrsparknuts @hiscyarika @watsonwise @lavenderl3mons @scarlettwitcher @adlerorzel-blog​ @tiffdawg​

masterlist

[firelxdykatara]

Hi, heavensweetheart in an ask mentioned you’ve written meta on adults writing about teen sex and told me I should ask you about it. I was wondering if you could give your thoughts on this in the context of ATLA, in fanfic and the Suki and Sokka tent scene. Some teens are having a meltdown over that scene saying it’s immoral for 16 y/o to have sex and imply that and I’m so confused. When did teens suddenly become allergic to sex? It wasn’t like that when I was one not long ago?

I’ll probably have follow up questions, but I’ll save those for now. Unless you say you don’t wanna talk on that anymore, which I totally respect. I’m just so confused as to why teens now are rioting against the Sokka and Suki scene, and even the *slight* implication that Zuko and Mai had sex too. They sound like church moms rather than teens and that’s jarring shift in culture in just a few years

I COMPLETELY understand teens wanting to avoid sex and stuff in their own lives or the media they choose to consume on personal levels but don’t know why they’re waging war against it

they’re complaining about that scene now too???? idk why i’m so surprised, considering everything else i’ve seen ppl getting up in arms about in the fandom it was only a matter of time, but jfc

listen, here’s an inconvenient factoid that fans--adult and minor alike--need to bear in mind before they go off half-cocked: underage teens have sex. it’s not like there’s some magical switch that gets flipped the instant someone turns 18 that unlocks their Raging Hormones where before they were Completely Sexless Beings. that’s not how it works. (i’m not bringing asexuality into this because ace ppl can have sex and even decent sex drives, libido and sexuality are not the same thing, and sexual awakenings can happen at just about any age post-puberty.) furthermore, coming-of-age tales (which often involve blossoming sexuality, as that is frequently a part of such narratives) are always going to be published and written by adults.

adults are, by and large, the ones with the resources and time to create finished and polished pieces of fiction and pitch them and get them into publishing houses and sold. teenagers who manage this are the exception to the rule, and the only one i can think of off the top of my head (christopher paolini, who started writing eragon when he was fifteen) was still an adult (at 19) by the time he actually managed to get published. adults are also, sorry to say, going to have a better understanding and perspective on what it was like to be a teenager--because they not only lived through it, but they have distance and a better ability to look at it objectively than someone still in the throes of massive hormonal changes and struggling through high school.

this doesn’t always work to our advantage--’adults forgot what it was like to be kids’ is a major theme in a lot of media for a reason--and sometimes it’s depressingly obvious just when any given author actually experienced being a teenager, because regardless of the setting their characters and plot points and tropes are incredibly dated--but it does typically mean that when an adult author is writing about teenagers having sex, or experiencing a sexual awakening, having a first love and everything that comes with that as a teenager, they aren’t acting like some voyeur watching teens gettin’ it on from the outside, but rather drawing on their own lived and remembered experiences and using those to inform their writing. (or experiences they wish they could have hand, like many queer authors who weren’t able to safely come out as teens and so get to experience being a kid and being able to be queer through their own writing in a way that was denied them in their own lives.)

i’ve done ‘first kiss’ and ‘first time’ type stories, now, as i am, as an adult, and i was never thinking about it as some outside observer perving on teenage characters--i was remembering what it was like when i was that age, and channeling that into my writing. no one is obligated to read or enjoy the things i write, of course, but trying to tell me that i’m not allowed to write about the things i felt as a teenager, just because i’m an adult now? that’s a quick way to get told in no uncertain terms to fuck off.

now, that being said, it’s absolutely flat ridiculous to me that people are complaining about the idea that suki and sokka were having sex, when they were child soldiers in a goddamn war. why is it more acceptable that they were preparing to fight and possibly die in a fierce battle, but gods fucking forbid they be implied to have a sexual relationship with each other before-hand? why is it more acceptable that children fight and die and kill (and yes, the gaang had a bodycount to their names, even aang), but the idea that mid- and older teens having sex is so taboo? nothing was even shown! it was all but spelled out, but in that scene we didn’t even see them kiss, it just immediately cut away after sokka called suki back to his tent!

what this tells me is that people are having a meltdown over the mere suggestion that these fifteen and sixteen-year-olds were sexually active, and considering that by the time i graduated high school (over a decade ago) i knew five girls personally who’d gotten pregnant and either dropped out or been homeschooled for a few months to have their kids before coming back to finish out their classes, i’m having trouble with this idea that even thinking of the fact that teenagers have sex should be so virulently anathema.

teens have sex with each other. sometimes teens get pregnant. sometimes these things find their way into YA fiction, and that is a genre that is almost 100% written by adults. (i’m sure some started writing as teens and maybe even got their early fiction reworked and polished, but the vast vast majority are at least adults, if not totally out of their teens, by the time they are officially published.) sometimes these things find their way even into narratives aimed at a younger audience, because there are always going to be elements that children won’t understand but the adults watching will get a kick out of--think of all the jokes in Shrek that you didn’t understand if you saw it for the first time as a kid, which seem even more hilarious once you’re an adult and have context for them.

no seven-year-old kid is gonna look at the scene of zuko walking in on sokka and the latter inhaling a rose he was holding between his lips as he waited for suki and think ‘OMG HE WAS EXPECTING HIS GIRLFRIEND AND THEY WERE GONNA HAVE SEX’--not unless something else was going on in that household, and at that point its not the show’s fault by any metric. but adults or even older teens are probably gonna get a chuckle, understanding the wink and the nudge that younger kids won’t get cause they don’t have context for that kind of romantic/sexual coding. and that’s ok!!!! the fact that people won’t get it unless they already have context for that sort of behavior is exactly why it works as a subtle joke!

and, again, the fact that a kid was killed on-screen and the fact that the main characters are all effectively child soldiers in a war, and these are somehow not topics that are too mature for the audience at which the show is aimed, but implications (which the target audience won’t understand, but older people who enjoy the show will) that teenagers are having sex is somehow beyond the pale???? (sure sokka might die tomorrow, but at least he wasn’t having -gasp- SEX before he did!!!!! that’s how they sound and it’s fucking ridiculous)

i genuinely do not understand that attitude, and i don’t think i ever will.

[peaches-writes]

sun shower

description: you happen to be spending your training year in adjacent villages with a certain kim seungmin  member: seungmin genre: fluff, witch/wizard au (kiki’s delivery service, a little snow fairy sugar-inspired) word count: 4k note: ‘magical people’ just doesn’t sound awesome enough to be the official gender-neutral term i therefore declare that both the words witch & wizard are gender-neutral choose ur fighter ppl

Seungmin has always had a fascination with the heavens since he was a young boy. His mother specialized in potions but his father was an astronomer, inviting him to stargaze after potion lessons until he had to leave for his training as an independent wizard some 6 months ago. He never vocally said it to his parents but when they received a letter from him in the mail informing them that he has chosen to train in the quaint countrysides of Italy a month into his training, they correctly inferred that he wanted to be specialize in astrology. 

For this reason, he finds it bothersome, for a lack of a better word, whenever you, a neighboring witch, would conjure up clouds of rain until the early hours of the night. In your defense, it always happens unconsciously, most often when you’re frustrated because you couldn’t conjure up enough clouds when the sun is still out or when you untimely create clouds right as a storm passes over the countryside.

“Excuse me!” He called to you from the skies on his fifth night in the neighboring town. This was when you first met. You look up at him curiously, surprised at finding a fellow magical person. “Are you causing this?”

He gestures over the thin veils of clouds looming over the full moon. He could tell you were a witch by the runes you read to your root crops.

“Yes, why?”

“I study astrology, you see.” He shows you a familiar book, the standard guide to astrology—you knew because your own mother was an astrologer. “And I can’t really study if it’s too cloudy.”

“O-Oh, sorry.” You stand up from squatting next to your green sprouts, scratching the back of your neck. “It takes me a long time to make them disappear, you see. I swear I’m also working on them!”

“Well, it’s already late and I still have business to attend to later on so it’d be really helpful if you get your clouds out of the way quickly.” He points out, intimidating you a bit. 

Because of his dry and rather stern tone, you managed to clear out the sky faster than you’ve ever done at the time. Suffice to say, Seungmin was impressed.

“Thanks! I’m Seungmin, by the way.” “Y/N, nice to meet you and sorry again!” 

Now at present, you only have a month left until your training ends yet somehow you can’t seem to master the art of controlling the rain for sun showers, which frustrates Seungmin as much as it frustrates you. 

“Maybe you’re overthinking it. Have you tried relaxing?” In the few months you’ve spent being sort of neighbors, you know that Seungmin never means anything malicious, he simply has a sarcastic tone by default. 

“I am relaxed.” You insist, puffing out air that resembles smoke in the cold weather. It’s nearing the end of November and you can already feel the snow coming, signalling your impending departure. You try again, concentrating and thinking about how Seungmin’s watching you, “Oh hey, look, I did it!” 

To compromise over your clashing work schedules, on the 2nd month of Seungmin’s stay, the two of you came to an agreement that you alternate between your towns, so that Seungmin can monitor you practicing with the weather and make sure that he gets to see the night sky when you’re done. Undeniably, you’ve grown closer from helping each other out (and maybe you’ve even developed a small crush on the side, but you wouldn’t tell him that).

He sits behind you on your rooftop on this particular Sunday, reading a thick book on the movement of constellations, while you levitate over your vegetable garden, eyes trained to the cloudy sky that slowly clears. 

“Is this the last thing you need to accomplish?” He asks after a while, having decided after a while to halt reading and observe the sky. You’re halfway through clearing the sky, some hints of sunlight starting to peek through from the remaining clouds. Though he doesn’t show it, he’s proud (and a bit jealous) that you’re almost done with your training.  

Without sparing him a glance, you shake your head no. “I still need to perfect my own song to conjure up a sun showers.” You correct as a frown settles on your face. 

You control the weather with music. You use a flute for snow and sleet, a harp for the rain, a triangle for thunder and winds, and your own voice to call for the sun and clear skies. The problem with creating a sun shower is that you can’t come up with your own last verse—the one that is supposedly unique to every conjurer, according to your aunt who gave you the sheet music. 

“Maybe you need another instrument.” Seungmin suggests but you both know that if there was another instrument for sun showers, your aunt would tell you as a witch who controls the weather herself. “Or the music sheet’s wrong.” 

“If it’s wrong, then I would’ve conjured up something else entirely the last time I tried it.” You point out. The last time meaning just a few weeks ago when you tried out your latest revision and conjured up enough clouds but too much rain. “I’m just missing a few measures but my brain’s already too fried to come up with any!” 

“Can I see?” 

You impatiently hum in approval, finally turning around to briefly look at him and gesture over to your rucksack. “It’s in my bag, knock yourself out.” 

You have an idea of Seungmin’s musical ability. He tends to hum to himself while he’s busy with work, you’ve heard in the events you’ve stayed in his place longer to help him see the stars better, and he plays the piano well, especially when he was asked to in his town’s festival. You’ve wondered yourself before why he chose studying astrology over taking control of the weather until he mentioned his home life before going off on his own. 

“It does sound hard to complete, especially with what you already have.” He agrees with you after a while. At this point, you’ve managed to clear the skies of heavy rain clouds so you levitate towards him, sitting across from him after penetrating the shield he’s made for himself from the rain that’s passed. “But I think you’re getting there.” 

He hums the main melody under his breath, occasionally stopping to brainstorm ideas on what could possibly be missing on your sheet music. To his right, you lay down tiredly on your back, rucksack serving as a makeshift pillow, and turn your body to face him, listening intently to the little notes and comments he makes under his breath. “I just need a balance with the sun and the rain.” You sigh. “The sun is already enough, the rain’s just a little too much.” 

“Hm, sounds strangely poetic.” He points out with the same dry tone you’ve grown accustomed to, making you chuckle. “You going through something or what?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it that.” You then turn your body up towards the sky. Now that your clouds were gone, you then realize that the sky’s started turning pink and orange in sunset. “It’s just that, there are some things and people I’m unsure of, I guess.”

He wanted to ask you what, or rather, who exactly you were unsure of. You’re not exactly known for being a social butterfly but you’re not anti-social, either, but if bothered you so much, whatever or whoever you’re referring to must be someone incredibly special to you. 

“Hey, can I keep a copy of this?” He opts to ask instead, gaining your attention again. 

You nod. “You can take the music sheets, I have it memorized by heart already, anyway.” 

“If I can come up with something, I’ll let you know.” He carefully tucks your music sheet between the pages of his book. “You don’t have some kind of deadline, do you?” 

“No, it’s okay.” You smile before turning back to the incoming sunset. “Anyway, I’ve had enough of thinking about it for today, let’s just enjoy the sunset before you go back to studying! Ah, what a day.” 

Seungmin is evidently surprised, often you mind each other’s businesses and only talk when one needs help or when one is about to leave, but you missed such a rare expression across his face “Okay.” You only hear him say as he closes his book and lays down next to you, using his own messenger bag as a pillow. 

Later that night, Seungmin decides to study on your rooftop later than usual, and you hear him singing until you fell asleep.

In the following days, Seungmin kept on humming the final measures of your song along with experimental measures to try and fill in the missing gap. He sings it while gathering (or stealing, depends on who you ask) herbs from your garden, cleaning the room he rents above a dusty bookstore, and even while writing a cohesive prediction for someone in his side business. 

It would drive you crazy if only his voice isn’t that great. 

“You know, when your training ends, you should also try picking up at least one skill related to music.” You suggest to him a week later while pacing around in his room. You’re supposed to be outside but complained because of the intense heat you can’t seem to tone down. “I highly recommend singing for sunshine.” 

“But you do it better.” He’s making you a reading on this particular day since business is slow recently. “You sing and play well.”

Internally, the butterflies already present in your stomach multiply greatly. “So? Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t too?” You manage to counter while trying to recover. “I bet wherever you’re going after your training, they’ll have extraordinarily warmer sun.” 

He chuckles nervously. He’s more than halfway through his training already but he doesn’t want to think about that just yet (mostly because he finds it weird thinking about a new place without you in it, but he wouldn’t tell you that). “Really? You think so?” 

You nod. “Yeah, I feel—well, I believe you will.”  Placing a hand outside a nearby open window, the sun still feels scorching hot on your skin. You didn’t like bringing umbrellas or wearing hats while practicing, it distracts you too much. “Aish, it’s still too hot out!”

“If I do pick up music, I might turn out even better than you.” He teases, stealing a glance over to you and softening up by following with, “But who knows, maybe we’ll bump into each other a few years from now, you’ll probably already settled with somewhere and I’m still looking for a place to call home, then you can teach me.”

Seungmin can’t actually imagine you permanently staying in one place, with your adventurous streak and passion for the outdoors, much less finding someone who makes you stay in one place forever but he forces himself to consider for the sake of theory. 

Whoever will catch their eye would truly be exceptional. 

You, on the other hand, show evident confusion in your expression while you retract your hand back from the window. “I wouldn’t count myself on the settling down part but sure, I guess, I can teach you a few years from now.” 

“Why?” Seungmin looks up at you again and even stops humming, showing you genuine curiosity. It suddenly felt strangely serious.

At this, you simply shrug. “I don’t know, I guess I don’t think it’s a priority for me. I want to see the world! Can you picture me staying in one place forever?” 

“No?” He chuckles. “What if you fall in love?” 

“If I do, whoever I fall in love with should probably start practicing flying well then.” 

When the two of you go out to the farmland behind Seungmin’s lodging later on, you conjure up an almost-perfect sun shower with only a handful of extra clouds left that needs to disappear.

“Seungmin, you’re going to catch a cold, come over here!” When you turn around to show Seungmin your work,  you see him flying circles over the empty farmlands instead. 

Drenched in light rain, he grows self-conscious of how you think of his flying skilles—all the while debating on whether he should give the last measure of your song to you now, when he’s definitely sure that he enjoys your company, or during Christmas, when it’s the cruelest holiday to leave. 

Seungmin eventually gives in after 2 weeks, not that you’d notice anyway since you didn’t know that he wanted to keep you around longer. The sky is already getting cloudy, reminding the two of you of snow, making it harder to practice during the day—Seungmin had to give in while you can still manage to clear the sky before practicing.

“This is it, Seungmin.” You breathe out dramatically through the chilly December breeze. It’s early morning, just a little after the break of dawn, because you were so excited practicing the song with Seungmin last night. “If this last measure makes my perfect sun shower, my last week here would be the best! I’d be the happiest, I swear.”

There was also the fact that you planned on leaving right after the first snow. Sometimes you’re just too cruel, Seungmin thinks.

“I’m sure this is it, I decoded it.” He says as coolly and as confidently as he can.

You say nothing more, proceeding to sing and play the harp according to your sheet music. The song is only 2 minutes long, barely providing any room to feel nervous as you slowly approached the final verse which is supposed to be different for every witch / wizard, hence why it was hard to decode.

As you play, Seungmin watches the clouds form over the pale yellow sunrise, a small smile unconsciously forming on his face that then grows into a wide grin when they stop at just the right amount and started drizzling the vast expanse of houses ahead in light rain. “Y/N, you did it! You did it!”

You didn’t even realize that you’ve had your eyes closed the entire time you sang and played, opening them only when you felt Seungmin spinning around next to you to feel the rain just as the droplets of rain started to dampen your own hair. “I—I did it!”

“You did!” Seungmin turns to you, not even hiding his happiness this time as he then instinctively pulls you into a warm hug. “I’m so proud of you!”

You hug him back tighter, his coat cold and damp against yours. “Thank you, Seungmin.” You catch your breath as you rest your chin against his shoulder. “Thank you so much.”

Seungmin only hums, speechless in being so close to you. This was the first time you hugged.

Without his face in your view, you miss the way he momentarily frowns at the thought that you’re now certain and confident to leave—a thought he expertly hides when he pulls away later on and says, “So, will you still practice or do you just leave it at that until you leave?”

You frown at him in annoyance, you really were irked he brought it up, especially since several days have passed since you’ve avoided mentioning it. “Why are you thinking of me leaving already? I have to practice a couple more times before I go, of course!”

“I’m just making sure so in case you stay outside overtime again.” He defends himself, suddenly feeling colder that you’re far away again. “Okay, now try making it stop, it’s getting really cold!”

“Alright, alright!” You roll your eyes, making the clouds disappear. You manage to dry yourselves even with a gush of warmer winds to compensate the two of you getting wet with rain. “Jeez, Seungmin, I thought we were having a moment there!”

Though you said it in a joking manner, of course he didn’t miss the way you showed the slightest hint of being hurt. Seungmin feels his heart drop to his stomach at the thought.

You continue practicing in the days that follow, both early in the mornings and late in the afternoons. Though you keep it cool in front of Seungmin, you notice how quiet he’s suddenly become, how he would hum your song less and literally cover his face with his book whenever you glance over at him for small talk.

“Are you mad?” “No.” “Do you feel awkward too?” “...A bit, yeah.” Would always be your conversation-ender. You know he meant it sincerely because he didn’t use his default dry tone on you but somehow it felt awkward.

What changed?

On your last day, you invited him to dinner.

“I told the landlord you can take this house if you want to.” You mention as the two of you ate strawberry cake. Earlier that day, some of the villagers surprised you with a going-away party since you leave at midnight—the cake was from one of the farmers you helped grow crops faster. “I still have some root crops in the garden, that should last you for a month.”

“It’s fine.” He reassures you for the 2nd time since you started eating. “I want the vegetables, though.”

For a while, it seemed like the awkwardness was gone and you laugh. “If you’re not taking the house, then you might have to have a talk with Mrs. Ross over the vegetables.”

“Then I’ll swipe them later when you go.” And then the awkwardness was back.

“Won’t you see me off later?” You ask, nervously playing with your food as you steal a glance at him.

Across the table, the lone strawberry on Seungmin’s plate suddenly seems interesting even when your gaze pokes on his newly dyed blonde hair. “I’m...I’m helping a villager’s sick child, it might take a while.” He bluffs, a heavy feeling looming over him.

“Oh...” He doesn’t see the frown before you muster up a smile. “That’s alright, I guess.”

“Where do you plan on going?” He finally gathers the courage to look up at you, searching for any sign in your eyes that you’d suddenly stay.

You ponder over the question longer than you usually would, your eyes trailing to the window behind Seungmin as you do so. “It’s snowing.” You mutter absentmindedly.

When Seungmin turns around, your windowsill already has a thin layer of snow.

“It is.” He agrees, eyes suddenly stinging. Am I crying? “It’s the first snow.”

You swore you saw faint hints of tears on Seungmin’s face when you escorted him out later that night but you chose to ignore it, diverting your attention instead to the sky—and for the first time you understood why Seungmin hated night skies wherein the stars aren’t visible.

“A bit dull, I get it now.” You comment as you walk him with him to the main road. When he gives you a questioning gaze, the dry trails of tears shining under the faint street lights, you gesture to the sky. “The starless sky, I mean.”

He follows you, frowning at the lack of stars. The sky seems to radiate off of the two of you. “Yeah, it’s so vague, you could barely read anything.”

Seungmin wakes up the following morning to a sun shower. There’s a thick layer of snow outside his window, even more when he steps out of his lodging later on, yes, but it’s the lone droplet of rain that falls on his cheek as he closes the door behind him on his way out that catches his utmost attention, casting his eyes up to the sky as it begins to drizzle.

At that moment, it fully dawns on him that you never told him exactly where you were going. 

Still, he flies to your house, in hopes of any clue somehow. Only, when he arrived, he only saw the landlady, Mrs. Ross there, tending to your garden.

“Oh, Seungmin!” She greets the evidently distressed wizard. “Do you want to take some of the vegetables?”

“N-No, I just thought that—nevermind.”

“If you’re looking for Y/N, they already left last night.” Mrs. Ross says sympathethically to Seungmin. “They didn’t say where they were going.”

Seungmin walks home afterwards, dejected.

It felt wrong, spending an entire day without you afterwards, especially when the sun was out later in the afternoon yet it felt horrifyingly cold.

The week passes by too slowly for Seungmin, even when he decides on devoting half of his day to resuming correspondence with his parents and some friends—away in their own towns. He rarely leaves the house, wandering only as far as the bookstore downstairs, utilizing the never-ending snow as an excuse to his landlord. Your landlady. Mrs. Ross, is probably the only person from outside his building that he sees whenever she drops by to hand him the produce from your garden.

His textbooks have started to blur in front of him whenever he studies and the weather has started feeling dull and repetitive for him.

And so it felt years have already passed when a knock comes to his door beyond the usual time Mrs. Ross would come by. It’s already afternoon, just as Seungmin is about to take a nap.

“Who is it?” He asks as loudly as he can in his drowsy state, almost stumbling over an umbrella stand in the process, but the knock continues, annoyingly chirpy at that.

When he opens the door, you give him no time to prepare himself as you tackle him in a hug. “Kim Seungmin!” You exclaim, throwing your arms to his shoulder.

There’s a slight delay on his part, partly because the sun is shining too warmly and too bright outside but mostly because he instantly recognizes your warmth as you squeeze him tighter. “Wha—? How—?” He stutters, eyes wide and mouth hanging open in shock. Nevertheless, he wraps his arms around your waist, quickly gathering his thoughts together to coherently ask, “Where have you been?!”

“Oh, here and there. I went home to my parents then wandered off aimlessly to some beaches in the South since it’s really cold up here.” You explain as you try and pull away from him but Seungmin uncharacteristically keeps you in place, making you laugh. “Hey, you missed me.”

At this, he buries his face on your shoulder, mumbling a muffled, “Of course I did.” that almost completely melted your heart if it weren’t for him following it with, “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Well, I needed time to think.” When you pull away, he lets you this time, allowing you to step inside his place. It looked the same since you were last here, you notice.

“Of what?”

“Of how I feel for you.” You make sure to say it in the sincerest way you know, feeling light-headed afterwards.

Oh, Seungmin thinks, cheeks flushed, so it’s me?

Seungmin stands there gaping, completely dazed at your short confession until your face is completely red from the heat that you immediately speak again. “Seungmin, say something.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t know if you liked me or not.”

“Wasn’t it obvious?”

You knit your eyebrows in confusion. “No? If you were, I would’ve actually stayed longer.”

“R-Really?” Now, Seungmin just feels dumb for not being more clear with his feelings.

You nod with a hum, continuing, “I kept dropping hints as best as I can but you just keep mentioning me leaving whenever you can.”

In front of you, you can clearly see Seungmin’s frustration with himself. “I’m sorry, I should’ve still been considerate of how you felt about me mentioning your leave then and I definitely should’ve asked you to stay even when your training did end.” He frowns, more to himself than to you. “B-because I...I really like you too but I also thought that you’d want to go and explore the moment you’re allowed to leave—I didn’t want to keep you waiting if you like me too.”

You shake your head no, a small smile now forming on your lips. “It’s not like the world outside’s going to change.” You take a brave step closer to Seungmin now, cupping his cheeks in your warm hands. “So, what’s—how many months do you have left? Four?—what’s 4 months more of waiting?” 

[arsnovacadenza]

Jean d’Arc Route Summary and Translation Chp.4

Disclaimer: This is an unofficial translation based on my somewhat serviceable Japanese skills with the aid of various kanji dictionaries (and some Google Translate). As I’m doing this mostly for practice, progress will be relatively slow and there might be changes to formatting in the future. Thank you for your patience and understanding

The italicized words in brackets are the comments I made throughout my playthrough.

 As promised, here’s my summary and translation of Jean D’Arc’s route in Ikemen Vampire. Obviously, there will be SPOILERS.

Before we jump right into Chp. 4, let me give little bit of context from chapter 3 since I didn't think to translate Jean's route from the very beginning:

Comte called a meeting with other vampires in the mansion to explain their entire situation to MC. So far, they've told her about their vampiric nature and their diet. Aside from Arthur, nobody else drank blood directly from humans. Even so, Napoleon told her to at least have some caution (although he can promise that nobody was going to bite her in the future).

MC asked where Jean was since he wasn't present in the dining room where they held the meeting. Mozart asked her to come along with him to Jean's quarters on the second floor (surprise, surprise, he didn't live in some ominous tower detached from the building).

Mozart point-blank confronted MC about her bite mark, which he guessed was Jean's doing. In case you haven't read up on Chp. 1 spoilers, Jean bit MC on the first night she arrived as a mansion, afterward telling her that she should've been more alert because she WAS living among stronger creatures that COULD potentially prey on her..

(Our boy sure loves to emphasize the monstrous side of vampirism and how it changed him into a predatory creature far detached from his previous human self. There's just so much to talk about here).

MC, of course, is overwhelmed by the whole situation, including Jean's reasoning for biting her. So, she asked Mozart about Jean's possible logic for doing it since they seemed to be close friends.

And that brings us to the beginning of Chapter 4.

MC, of course, was overwhelmed by the whole situation, including Jean's reasoning for biting her. So, she asked Mozart about Jean's possible logic for doing it since they seemed to be close friends.

And that brings us to the beginning of Chapter 4. 

Mozart retorted, "To think that I can talk about his feelings on his behalf just because we're friends is a ridiculous assumption."

MC is taken aback by his sharp words, but admitted that he's right anyway.

He continued "In other words, go talk to him yourself and use your head."

And just like that, he opened a door and pushed MC into a room, sending her barreling on the floor. He then closed the door and called out to her from outside, basically saying. "Your misunderstanding of our relationship is wack. Come back after you talk to the guy himself."

She thought about the absurdity of the situation as the sound of Mozart's footsteps grew distant. Suddenly, a shadow fell upon her, and she followed to where it led.

In front of her was a figure gazing at her with empty eyes.

It's Jeanne. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

She stood up and apologized for suddenly barging into his room while averting her eyes from Jean's. Then she continued.

"As I'm going to burden myself upon everyone in this mansion for a month, I thought about paying my respects again." To which Jean only answered. "Is that so."

MC tried to give him an excuse as to why she wanted to go to such lengths just to greet him, which Jean didn't seem to care about. (Boy, he's rude let me tell you.)  All the while, she kept thinking about how she'd soon be saying goodbye to everyone in the mansion without coming to terms with this one guy.

As MC fidgeted under his unwavering stare, she suddenly remembered her earlier talk with Mozart. She needed to confront Jean about the biting incident and understand his side of the story. 

Piecing together the information she obtained from the morning meeting with everyone else, especially about their mealtimes and regarding Blanc and Rouge, she concluded that he didn't bite her out of starvation.

And she also looked back to Jean's words on that fateful night.

"If you want to return to the safety of your world, you better have a sense of danger."

"Think about how you should act to protect yourself."

(So basically Jean's telling her "If you ain't strong enough you ain't gonna last long, bitch")

But MC decided to press him more, anyway. "Why, on that night, did you bite me? Can you tell me?"

Jean answered, "If I told you the reason why what are you going to do with it?"

(Jean, that is not how you talk to ppl)

An awkward atmosphere hung between them, but Jean continued. "You weren't aware that we're vampires."

"Your wandering aimlessly around the mansion is an eyesore—"

"If you think I'm an eyesore, won't it be better if you're free of my presence?"

"Even if you said I was just an eyesore," she fired at Jean. "You didn't exactly see me as prey, do you?"

And Jean basically just answered, “Quite the carefree woman, aren’t you?”

My arms were pulled, and fingers encased in a white glove tilted up my chin.*

"Regarding that night, it doesn't matter to me however you interpret it,"  he murmured. "If you think of it as me being kind to you [for giving you a warning about the true nature of this mansion's residents], so be it."

"Don't approach me anymore outside of this, and get out of here this instant."

After Jean gave her the boot, MC broke down and thought about the entire confrontation, her heart racing. However, she managed to collect herself and left Jean’s door. Unbeknownst to her, Mozart had been watching the entire scene from afar. "Alas, it's no use, is it?" he sighed.

“Indeed. It is an impossible feat to unlock Monsieur Jean’s heart, especially for a newcomer like MC”

That surprised Mozart pushed MC into Monsieur Jeanne’s room.

The butler asked Mozart if he was worried about Jean. From the time they first met, Jean had been “rejecting various things, and at the same time absolutely gives up on everything.”

"The reason for that, I don’t know….. That's Jean's way of life. He can do as he pleases."

"But as his friend....it does concern me a little."

“A friendship between beautiful people, how precious!”

(That’s not what you should be focusing on, you idiot).

“Herr Mozart, if you give up, then that’s when everything is truly over.” Sebastian beamed. “Please leave it to me as this mansion’s butler, for I have something in mind.”

Mozart shrugged his shoulders as he gazed at the eccentric butler’s smile.

(This part is more dialogue and screenshot-heavy as I want to avoid misinterpretation as much as possible)

A quiet night descends upon a moonlit church at the foot of a forest, far away from the mansion. Inside, a lone man walks under the moonlight, reflected on the stained glass patterns. He narrowed his orbs*, whose left and right colors are different.

“Master, do forgive me for not paying my respects as of late.” He greeted another man.

“Ah, Will. Have there been any changes lately?”

Will proceeded to tell ??? about a young woman stumbling through the door from another world and into the mansion. He also notified Vlad that the Comte has allowed her to impose on them for a month.

The white-haired man smiled amusedly. “Ah, the most intriguing things do occur, don’t they?”

“But what I can’t comprehend,” Shakespeare frowned. “This woman is seemingly an ordinary human of no virtue.”

“As if an impurity has mixed in with the brilliance of the great men.”

Shakespeare hoped that she wouldn’t be a hindrance to his plans, and I quote:   “A creature that only invites tragedies instead of comedies. And I have no use of such mediocre tragedies.”

After some exchange, ??? said,  “A creature that only invites tragedies instead of comedies. And I have no use of such mediocre tragedies.”

"Indeed," Shakespeare concurred. "I strive for the finest tragedy with the most exquisite cast."

"The great men who are set to dance on the stage you've set up," His master smirked. "They make the finest marionettes, don't they?"

"That is why, Master, I've decided to join hands with you."

"With you, who carries the same power as the Count....."

"What is it you desire, Will?"

"Can you lend me your power and arrange for a livelier cast?"

"The greater the obstacle they face, the more exceptional the tragedy that ensues."

"I'll think about it," his master replied. 

Smiling elegantly, the red-eyed man looked up at the moon. Behind his eyes shone a glint of a power that can move the entire world.

(In KennieJD’s words: “You both deserve each other cause y’all crazy as hell”).

*1: I nearly fell off my chair translating this part

*2: The original kanji says “双降”, which doesn’t come up if you search on any kanji dictionary. I asked Asha about this, and she said it’s a typo on Cybird’s part. It’s supposed to be 双眸, which means ‘a  pair of eyes’

I didn't intend this to be this lengthy and dialogue-focused, but I realized that I really enjoy writing lines for bitchy characters. Jean and Vlad's were especially a delight to work with! I couldn’t do much for Shakespeare’s lines tho. I haven't been an English Literature student for two years.

Tagging @hokkaido-fox​ for now. Let me know if you want to be tagged in upcoming summaries and mini-translations!

Credits to @ashavazesa​ for her tremendous help with some of the kanji. 

[dawsonscreekwasalwaysbad]

season 6 thoughts

hey quick question why the FUCK did you start with that

like on the one hand i’m glad that now i know what happened right after the end of “that’s too much man!”. on the other hand… ow

the mountain bojack climbs is called “metaphor mountain” God bless Lisa Hanawalt

i LOVE the way the episodes are framed… like you get one flashback to bojack drinking and you think that was the first time then it’s like NOPE he was even younger

CINDY CRAWFISH AKSHDJDSF

AND BABY BOJACK SNUGGLING UP TO HIS MOTHER… TRYING TO FEEL AN EMBRACE SHE WOULD NEVER GIVE… CATCH ME CRYING IN THE CLUB

WHO THE FUCK CAME UP WITH THIS NEW INTRO

AND THE WAY IT HAS ALL THOSE FLASHBACK SCENES BUT IT STILL ENDS WITH HIM FALLING INTO THE POOL AND DIANE AND PEANUTBUTTER CHECKING TO SEE IF HES OK AND THEN HES JSUT LOUNGING IN HIS APPLE SHORTS;;; it’s just,, he’s going back home in the end, going back to the place where he started, as if everything will go back to the way it was before and he’ll find himself stuck in the same cycles he tried so hard to escape… all im saying is, i dont think this season is gonna end well

and how it dwells on his past, everything he did wrong, all the most heartwrenching moments, and there aren’t any changes to the intro (as far as i could tell) until episode 8… nothing changes if all you do is look back.

I am LOVING the Mr. Peanutbutter we’re getting this season. I was never really attached to him before; it’s not that I hated him, just that I liked all the other main characters better. and now that they’ve had him do something really bad and reckon with that,, he’s plumbing new depths, exploring those dark places, questioning if he’s truly as happy as he says he is

and bonding with bojack??? who would have guessed

bojack keeps giving advice that is, at best, the kind he doesn’t follow himself, and at worst, bringing others down into the well of self-pity that he’s been stuck in the whole series

Someone give Princess Carolyn a break…

SHE NAMED HER DAUGHTER RUTHIE IM CRYING

Guy seems like a cool guy but I feel like they’re setting him up to seem nice so that it’s more surprising when it’s revealed he’s not. I’m probably being too suspicious, but also we don’t know much of the details about his divorce, do we? Lakeith Stanfield's great tho

EPISODE 4 WAS COMEDY GOLD

The return of Queefburglar69

I WANNA WRAP PICKLES UP IN A BLANKET LIKE A BURRITO AND TELL HER EVERYTHINGS OKAY

Oh man Pickles talking about how her subscribers will always be there for her… like… it’s not one person, it’s a cloud of people, the contents and shape of which changes, might even be completely different and unrecognizable from one year to the next, but they’re all still there as this nebulous support system. and it reminded me of what bojack said to young sarah lynn about how her fans are the only things she can count on

Todd is babey.

Also him wearing the ace colors under his hoodie!!

I knew Diane’s rationale for going to chicago was bullshit. she said it makes her feel good, but “it doesn’t matter where you are, it’s who you are,” and she still dwells on her bad feelings and hates herself just as much in chicago as she did in LA. moving somewhere else isn’t necessarily gonna change those tendencies, she has to work on it herself.

OH MAN AND WHEN BOJACK GETS DR CHAMP DRUNK AGAIN… THROWING THE BOTTLE OUT THE WINDOW WAS A WAY TO AVOID RUINING ANOTHER LIFE AND HE ENDS UP DOING THE EXACT THING HE HOPED HE WOULD NEVER DO AGAIN

was honestly kinda hoping that Dr Champ was just pretending he got drunk to show how bad bojack could get if he relapsed but at the end when he was like “stay…” that’s how i knew that shit was real.

todd is so fucking stupid i love him

ngl am kinda disappointed that todd’s confirmed white, cause i’ve kinda been picturing him as latino for a long time and i know rbw said he doesn’t want to alienate latino viewers who relate to todd. but it makes a  lot of sense, cause he always gets away with stupid shit and gets to the top of things without even having to try just because he knows a guy. and maybe the reason he’s so positive all the time is because it’s so easy for him to be, he never has to worry about shit bc of the privilege his whiteness affords him. also I love that we got to learn more about his backstory

THE CONTRAST BTWN “all the shitty things I did that I can barely even remember because I was high or drunk or it was thirty years ago” and “I remember everything. I’m sober now.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!

sharona sounds like a cross btwn princess carolyn and margo martindale

I have… mixed feelings about the haircut

Oh man Mr. Peanutbutter had a moment… he finally got that crossover episode… I was kinda hoping for a joke that went “Mr. Peanutbutter and BoJack Horseman in the same room? What is this, Philbert?” or “What is this, a short-lived show on a streaming network that got canceled because the star got addicted to painkillers and strangled his costar in a drugged haze?” but this is SO MUCH BETTER. I've never seen him cry before and the way he reacts to himself crying suggests that maybe he’s never cried before at all, and that’s why he just keeps laughing, almost like it’s forced, cause this is supposed to be his happiest moment and it’s not supposed to make him so sad. fucking,, character development

and the cold open of ep 8… you can forgive yourself and move on from your past wrongs but it doesn’t erase the things you did, the effects they have on people, and the trauma they’ve suffered. and then like, how can you forgive yourself if they never forgive you? how do you maintain that balance? why should you move forward if they can’t?

its weird to have an episode consisting entirely of guest stars but it also illustrates the extensive world they’ve built and i applaud that… also where the fuck is ana spanakopita

GINA RETURNS!!! HELL YEAH

her quote about not wanting to be defined by what bojack did to her has always stuck with me, and i feel like now, that quote has sort of come true. like, her saying that made us avoid reducing her to what happened to her, and thats why i wanted to see her come back this season, hopefully moving past it. but she can’t. it traumatized her. and everyone can see the effects of it but she feels like she can’t come forward, cause if she does she’ll be punished. shit like that changes you.

and it’s another instance on the show where someone chooses to advance their career & preserve their reputation over doing the right thing (like what bojack does with herb & sharona), but bojack does it out of self-interest, and gina does it so she doesn’t have to relive her trauma every time she gets interviewed or recognized by a fan. but even when she keeps quiet about it she’s still reliving her trauma

noah fence but what a waste of the once-per-season fuck word. youre really gonna use it in an episode IN WHICH BOJACK DOES NOT EVEN APPEAR, and not only that, but RECYCLE AN OLD SENTENCE FROM A PREVIOUS EPISODE

netflix places no limits on a show’s use of the fuck word (i think), so… fingers crossed for something better in the second part?

OH MY GOD PETE REPEAT INTRODUCED HIMSELF AS PETER ITS ALMOST LIKE HES TRYING TO FORGET THAT TIME & THAT PERSON HE WAS (im probably reading into it too much, I’m sure it’s mostly so we wouldn’t figure out who it was immediately. maybe im just like the kid with the coffee cup.)

and just… ppl describe this show as “family guy or the simpsons except the protagonist faces consequences for his actions” but bojack has gotten away with everything.

you ever just like… you ever watch a scene and feel the cliffhanger vibes creeping up and you just know it’s gonna end there and leave you unsatisfied and begging for more but at the same time that’s what makes it such a good place to end it. that was me with this. (and also the ending of undone)

the thing about this show is, it illustrates what it’s like to be a toxic person. and sure, he has it hard, but the show never asserts that he has it any worse than his victims, even if bojack himself does so. and he only does it so he can feel better about himself. he deserves a reckoning, he needs to pay for his bad deeds. but then, when you know what made him this way and what goes on inside his mind and that he wants to get better, it makes you feel for him, and forces you to ask if he deserves to get better and forgive himself and move forward. but even if he does, it doesn’t change the things he did. it doesn’t fix the lives he’s ruined.

anyway sound off if you think bojack’s gonna die at the end. hopefully not by suicide