#obviously it's not kids. and clearly it's not adults who grew up watching and liking scooby doo

[thecoolertails]

honestly im not even surprised considering it's made by one of the SNL writers. like of course. of course.

[ladyluscinia]

There are obviously some people not taking Edward's S2 arc very well. Or - more often - twisting it to fit into absolutely wild takes and then pretending they are taking it well while everyone else is wrong and problematic for beliefs like "S2 clearly establishes Edward was harming his entire crew in his depressive spiral and he's still in the process of making that right." One of them wrote this section from a post that I found absolutely fascinating (if also wildly off base) in the way it buys into Edward's clearly faulty POV without hesitation...

...and I really want to talk about Knife Parade now.

Because I don't think that's what's going on here, obviously.

Edward has internalized some very fucked up shit in his piracy career, a lot of it probably going back to his time with Calico Jack (and others? Fang was with him for 20 years, and Izzy "all his fucking life"?) under Captain Hornigold, aka the man who killed Felix the cabin boy by feeding him a live crab. Edward didn't really emulate Hornigold until Kraken Era because he hated the man, but we can see from how he and Jack act in 1x08 that he still developed a very skewed understanding of violence and social bonding.

And, as unpleasant as it makes him, the Edward of the past was absolutely the kind of guy to "fuck with his crew like that for shits and giggles."

Like - hold the defensiveness because this is not a one-to-one comparison - Edward describing chasing Fang around screaming and terrified as just a fun game sounds like how someone's childhood bullies would describe tormenting them. Bullies often feel like they were just joking around or just playing a game, even when the other party was clearly not having a good time. The show even invokes this with Nigel and Stede in the first episode.

And the reason bullies typically feel this way is because the social environment that they are in treats their behavior as acceptable (or fails to treat it as unacceptable because adults/other children are consciously or subconsciously designating the bullied kids as fair targets).

Edward thought chasing after Fang with a knife and shouting "come here you little fucker" was okay because he grew into adulthood in a culture where that and way worse was normal. Maybe he even got the idea watching an adult do it to someone (for likely non-playful reasons). He was probably older and/or higher ranked than Fang, in a culture where rank entirely out-ranks obligations to give a shit about someone else's feelings.

Just think about how he describes being Captain:

"Oh fuck no. Apologizing? Nah. Didn't apologize for jack shit."

The idea Edward didn't want to hurt Fang is not even on the table, because he didn't pay enough mind to the people below him to register hurting them was even a thing his "fun" actions could do. He's entirely rewritten the events in his mind.

And, again, this is a funny joke and a very understandable mindset to develop that literally no one has ever pushed back on until this moment, so good for Edward thinking back and going "oh fuck I guess Knife Parade was less Yardies and more Torturing Felix" and then immediately acknowledging that Fang has justifiable basis for beef with him. That's pretty big of him. Growth.

But "didn't care about Fang being terrified to the point he legit forgot because peer-accepted behavior" is still not quite the same thing as "genuinely didn't realize Fang was terrified" lol

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Am I (33, f) the asshole for bringing up a childhood story that made my cousin (36, f) uncomfortable in front of others?

Obviously based on the title alone, I'm an asshole, but I think I might be justified and would like a second opinion.... thanks!

So a little back story for context....I love my cousin. I truly do. We all grew up together so all of us are more like sisters than cousins. my cousin is beautiful, loud, and boisterous. She's loves to get attention and will try to get it anywhere she can. She posts on FB multiple times a day about her job, kids, or relationship. She's the golden child and she tries her hardest to live up to that reputation. She's the type of person who will get out of her car after a good song dancing and singing at the top of her lungs, especially if there are other people around to watch her, much to her kids dismay lol. She just knows how to have a good time and I honestly love that about her. I tend to be more reserved and relaxed, so I get a kick out of our differences.

But with that, she tends to be.... disingenuous... when someone steals the spot light from her, even when it's unintentional (which is the majority of the time, like they will just be sharing a story from work or something). She will act unbothered by it, but then her attitude will totally change. she will be fake nice and then bring up something that will make the person either embarrassed or want to retreat... then go right back to being content when the attention is back on her again. She does it so often, I kind of expect it to happen every time we hang out.

So here's the part where I may be the asshole... we're at a playzone for one of our other cousins kids' birthday and we're in a good handful sized group of adults chit chatting. A few people I've never met before but she knows them and we were all getting along just fine.

People tend to naturally be drawn to me because I try to be open and get along with most people, so I've been on the receiving end of my cousin's attitude a handful of times and this was one of those times lol. I'm typically not bothered by it because I'm a pretty confident person for the most part and I know my cousin well enough not to take it personally, but this time annoyed me because this is now the 5th time she's bringing this story up. It was like she didn't get the reaction out of me that she wanted the first 4 times, so now she really needed to land it this time. So I gave her a reaction....

A few minutes before I was sharing a story that the others were impressed by, I guess, but we moved on from it and I didn't think any more of it. Then while we were all talking, I believe I excused myself because I let out a small burp. So she goes, loudly so the group can hear, "do you remember when you were 6 and you were crying to your dad because your butt was itchy and you wanted him to scratch it? I don't know why, but your burp reminded me of that". So I'm like "ok? So?" Kids cry for stupid shit all the time and I was a stupid kid lmao. So I brushed it off but she decided to keep pushing it! And was like "yeah you were crying because you didn't want to scratch your ass and you sat there crying until it went away"

I was and still am unbothered by the story she brought up but I was more than a bit annoyed that she wouldnt let it go, so without much thinking I said "no I don't remember that as clearly as you do.... But I do remember my sister slapping the fuck out of you for saying something racist (we're half Asian) and out of pocket. Then you cried to your mama then she told your mom that you were lucky that all you got was a slap to the face... do you remember that?" She went ghost white, looked around the group and said "family is funny like that, huh?"

So am I the asshole for bringing up a story that made my cousin uncomfortable?

What are these acronyms?

[evilvillainapologist]

All right, so, the game console. 

Obviously, Tao Ran did way more than hand over that game console to Fei Du. He was there for Fei Du for years, had him over during the holidays, made sure he got fed after his mother's death, and probably provided a lot of stable home atmosphere for a teen who had grown up with a suicidal mother and a sadistic psychopath for a father. So we can all agree that Tao Ran is an angel and his only flaw is being straight. 

And yet. 

That game console is important for a couple of reasons: 

1. Play. 

Fei Du's dad does not strike me as the person who approves of play. Fei Du probably grew up with very little unstructured time to simply be a child. 

The game console has no ulterior motive. It's just there for fun. In a world where Fei Du was never allowed to be a child, the console for the first gives him permission to just be a teenager, a boy of fourteen who does not have to prove anything or be anything other than a child. 

Luo Wenzhou understood that. He grew up a rather chaotic kid, so yes, he understands how important it is for children to be just that - children. 

2. Escapism. 

There is a reason why we play games to distract ourselves from bad shit happening in our lives. Games are a great way for some escapism, and done in moderation this is something everybody needs. Since the console is handheld, Fei Du can take it with him, too. It's no coincidence that he plays it when he feels stressed; when one of his friends gets accused of murder or when he is triggered about his mom's suicide. 

3. Somebody cared for him. 

In its quintessence, the console was a gift with no strings attached. Even more so when he learns that the person who bought it for him did everything to ensure Fei Du would not find out it was him. A little kid who just got abandoned by his mother and who gets regularly abused by his father, isolated from the world. And then somebody comes and gives him something to play with just like that. That is not something you forget anytime soon. 

Fei Du's attitude towards the game console even seven years later when he is an adult and has other means of entertainment and no fatherly shackles anymore shows how important it is to him. And then he learns that it wasn't Tao Ran who gave it to him. This probably did nothing to change his opinion on Tao Ran. 

But Luo Wenzhou? The guy who never seemed to approve of him? 

And then we learn more about Luo Wenzhou's role in Fei Du's youth. At first it might seem that he was responsible for following up on his mother's suicide and then seven years later they started running into each other again, but clearly it was way more than that. We learn from Fei Du's dream that Luo Wenzhou was probably around a lot when Fei Du went to meet Tao Ran. He does care about Fei Du during those times, in his own surly way. 

We also have a memory of Luo Wenzhou's, about a time they hung out in Tao Ran's apartment and somebody broke a brick in his wall. 

Even on that new year's day when Fei Du receives the game console, considering that he saw Luo Wenzhou's bike outside of Tao Ran's apartment, we can assume that they spent that New Year together. Luo Wenzhou probably watched Tao Ran hand over the game console to Fei Du. 

And all of a sudden Fei Du realises that Tao Ran was not the only one thinking of him. Or being concerned for him, or wanting him to have a happier childhood. The guy who was always there, who provided entertainment for free, breaking into trash cans, yelling at old people and chasing muggers, actually thought about him enough to do something nice for him. 

And now it's seven years later and that same guy is actually not all that bad. He can even be nice, or at least, his grating personality can be fun to be around. 

Fei Du keeps parading around with that game console like a preening peacock, only to realise that maybe the guy who gave him a hang-up all those years ago is available (and not straight) after all. 

[ashdreams2023]

so remember those fics with severus snape and his little gn brother reader that was the teacher for the defense against the dark arts? :) (great fics btw !)

would it be okay if i would request after getting injured reader comes back into the position the next school year and snape is just like “wtf, why are you back?” and it turns into a little fight between the two siblings but that fight becomes a lot more physical (they start using magic.) it ends up being a close fight but before a victor could be decided the sibling’s little fight was broken up by another person in the staff. During that fight many words were exchanged that both snape and reader wish could be taken back. It was a very quiet year between the two siblings reader was going to apologize to severus but he unexpectedly passed away so he couldn’t.

First off, bestie who hurt you? And second, damn time for angst I guess

Severus snape x sibling reader

Warning: angst

Too late

After last year’s fiasco and almost getting killed because obviously that position is cursed, but it still didn’t stop you from agreeing to go for another year.

Of course you didn’t dare tell severus, you knew he would be more dramatic than his usual self, and kept it to yourself until the very last second.

Maybe not the wisest decision because the second you walked into that great hall blazing black eyes shot at you, you might as well died right there and then from the way your brother clearly wanted to strangle you, but you’re magical so that was so barbaric in a way.

Severus stood up immediately from his chair at the teacher’s table then strode straight your way, it reminded you of when you got yourselves into trouble during your school days and he would need to hand you a new one to get you straight.

"What in Merlin’s name are you doing here?!" You had told him that you found a teaching job at a primary school for magical children somewhere in the north.

"Hi! Surprise! I missed working with you-"

"You’re not staying another minute in this establishment if I have a day in it!" You swallowed, this was expected from him, you weren’t a child and you were not home.

"You’re being dramatic severus, I’m an adult and can make my own decisions without you telling me what to do!" Now you were getting heated, your brother’s face sharpened.

"Do you have a fucking death wish? Because that’s what it seems to me!"

"Maybe I do! Maybe I’m tired of you treating me like a little kid and-" you froze when a muting charm hit you, curse severus and his personal spells.

"I’ve heard enough of you! You wanted to be treated like an adult then be my fucking guest because Merlin knows I’ll get you fired out of this place before Halloween even comes by" the great hall that had just a few students when you walked in was now full of curious eyes and professors watching intensely.

You pointed your wand to your mouth and thought of the counter spell for this one, it was by pure luck that you came across this charm a few years ago while going through his stuff.

The tip of your wand pointed at him "I’ll like to see you try! I’m not as weak as you think to be you annoying git"

Severus growled "you’re acting like mother, always selfish and only thinking about her own fucking self" you swallowed, a pit in your stomach grew.

"And you’re like father, too drowned in your own miserable life and hurt EVERYONE AROUND YOU" that was an awful thing to say but you couldn’t hold back anymore "I WISH WERE NEVER RELATED"

Severus’s eyes widened then narrowed quickly "you think I want you around? You’re nothing but another burden mother THREW AT ME!  You owe me from keeping you alive all those years and this is how you repay me? You selfish little prat"

Your hand tightened around your wand "I rather death than owe you anything" you gritted your teeth and before you could throw a spell on him McGonagle stepped in the middle of you two.

With a swift disarming charm both your wands fell to the ground "YOU TWO ARE ACTING LIKE CHILDREN!"

You glared at each other then you left the great hall through the huge groups of students, you didn’t want to see or hear from that bastard of a brother.

Severus true to his word though tried to get you off the position but it was easier said than done, you kept a clean record and was responsible he couldn’t do anything to stop you from doing this job.

Although as the year went on, you could feel the bitterness of your words, the unfairness of how you acted, severus was just doing what he always did and it was to protect you but it just had to turn into something ugly.

Severus himself felt suffocated with each passing day, you’re his family, the only real family he’s ever cared for and now you can’t stand the sight of him and for good reason, he knew he could’ve approached it differently but anger took over.

The year was quiet, the opposite of last year, last year you would bother him in his office about literally anything, asking for his suggestions for your classes, teasing him about how you were the cool sibling and not him.

By late may severus decided that enough was enough and ye was going to apologize before he regrets this for the rest of his life….but sadly he would too late.

On may 30th your lifeless body was found in the forbidden forest by Hagrid.

No signs of struggle or nerve damage, it just appeared like your heart suddenly shut down.

Severus fell to his knees when he saw your cold body in the hospital wing waiting to be transferred to st mungo's hospital.

"What have I done…" he could only grab your hand tightly and weep, you were gone and not coming back, he lost you, all of you and you died hating him…he was to live in misery of what could have been.

His baby sibling, he won’t hear your voice anymore, you won’t be coming with him back to spinner’s end anymore, you will be a new resident of the ground along with others.

"I’m sorry, please forgive me, yell at him or scream anything but please don’t die thinking I didn’t care about you"

There was a funeral held outside the hogwarts grounds before summer break, all students attended, some were even crying, professors tried to comfort him but he was too drained out.

You were buried next to an old tree in the old town you lived your whole life in, the same tree that you used to climb on when you were a child with severus.

For severus wanted you to be near a happy memory, a memory where neither of you cared about a war or dying from dark wizards, where life was simple and hiding from your drunk father was your biggest issue.



[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

anyway for the Fucked Up Fire Nation Royal Family Analysis

i think it’s important to note that this is the last time in her life azula would have supportive adult guidance that wasn’t just flat out abusive, and it’s really sad to see, because she’s… a kid. a fairly normal kid. a mean one, but the reason is equally as sad to see- she idolises her father. she adores him, and kids at that age do imitate the behaviour of adults around them! azula's behaviour is an imitation of her father- she's so young it's almost certainly imitation of someone- and that behaviour is concerning.

she’s violent, callous, and you can already see a burgeoning manipulative streak within her (as much as it’s possible at her age- it’s transparently obvious bc she’s like. five or six years old she’s not really old enough to do it well). but she’s not the monster we‘ll see later on. most obviously, she seems to genuinely love her brother on some really messed up level. she drags him into her “games” (even if they’re basically just bullying) she drags him into her eavesdropping and she does genuinely warn him about the risk to his life- albeit in a cruel way. she wants to be around zuko! she doesn’t have a solid grasp on how to express that at all- since the person she admires and looks up to doesn’t even see her as a person but an extension of his own will- but she does care.

but by the time of the series, we'll see her actively just completely fine with killing her brother. even when she was eleven, she was happy to see his abuse. and the reason why, i think, is probably pretty obvious but also sad as shit and that’s the fact that the prior abuse zuko went through (and therefore, azula experienced by proxy- abusing one child in front of another is threat of harm and therefore abusive in turn) most likely started, or at least intensified, after the flashback seen in this episode.

which also means what we're seeing? the fucking sad scenes of baby zuko? yeah, they’re probably the happiest memories the poor kid had.

but yeah, anyway. while the children's mother was around, they at least had someone looking out for them- someone who would be able to do something to protect them and cares enough to do so. i absolutely think he was abusive before then- the fact azula, who idolises him enough to earnestly hope for him to become the fire lord, mimics abusive behaviour, is sign enough of that. for kids that young, bullying is in fact often an expression of a bad home life, because young children mimic what they were taught. but it had to be subtler, it had to be something that their mother couldn’t pick up on.

but once she was gone? once ozai was the fire lord, and not just a second son, a spare for if the heir were to perish? anyone who cared enough to stop it couldn’t. ozai had enough strength both martial and political it’d be essentially suicide. even iroh couldn’t do anything when zuko at thirteen was mutilated in front of him.

and from what we can gather, it seems a very clear scapegoat- golden child dynamic emerged. zuko was the primary victim of direct abuse, made to feel useless and humiliated for not living up to his sister, while azula grew up being made to watch this, internalising that she was superior to her brother and therefore had to be perfect else she’d meet the same abuse he did. and just. ughhh. poor kids. i mean this absolutely does not excuse either of them especially azula who's pretty clearly abusive towards her polycule but like. they were prisoners inside a gilded cage of a castle and treated like living extensions of a sadistic war criminals will. no wonder they became shitty people (and zuko is trying he's just mentally fucked from the abuse and believes he's the one in the wrong and therefore obsessively clings onto the excuse his father gave for abusing him and tirelessly works to change that into something his father would love because he sees approval and love from his father as a sign he’s doing good because he is sixteen. the latter part about approval applies to azula too but she’s also pretty clearly entirely uncaring about the morality side even if she does admire and love her father)

[wherevenusholdssomeofficespace]

When thinking about young Milo, I've gotten in the habit of thinking about Murphy's Law in opposition to the capacity to handle Murphy's Law.

So as long as the capacity to handle it is greater than the law, you're golden. The problem comes in when the law is greater than the capacity to handle it (see Orgaluth's Law with no one helping). Obviously both can vary, Murphy's Law is shown to be lighter and heavier at times and clearly people can get worn out. But it got me wondering about the kinds of situations that could have arose before Milo was old enough to take care of himself.

Generally as kids grow up they become capable of looking after themselves. But Murphy's law would definitely make that progression more complicated since even most adults aren't shown to be capable of dealing with it. Just because you trust someone to babysit a 6 year old doesn't mean you trust them with a more needy newborn so its not like Murphy's Law adds a novel concept to childcare of more capable children need less capable caretakers, but it still makes me wonder about logistics of raising kids with Murphy's Law before they are capable of handling their own condition.

We see it a little bit with Veronica, who is very capable of handling Murphy's Law, but doesn't have it. But baby Milo probably wasn't capable of handling Murphy's Law. So he depended on people taking care of it for him until he grew old enough to take care of himself.

But we also know that Murphy's law tends to get more intense with more Murphy's around. I wonder about how much Martin took care of baby Milo by himself, could he handle double dose Murphy's Law on his own? I mean I wouldn't doubt it, but maybe it depended on the circumstances. All babies are a lot even without Murphy's Law and breaks are important. I'm sure that was even more important for Milo. Was it worse for Martin looking after Milo solo because he also had EHML and it was a lot of Murphy's Law to be handling by himself, or did he handle it better than Brigette because he was used to it even if it was more intense? We know baby Milo's Murphy's Law was at least strong enough to cause walls to randomly collapse. I say this because as of the time of the show there are no dependent Murphy's, they're all capable of handling EHML mostly on their own so we never see them having to handle double doses of it on their own so to speak. We know Veronica babysat, but that probably wasn't until Milo was at least a few months old so did the other Murphy's help out when Milo was a newborn?

But then where did baby Sara fall in this spectrum. We already see 3 or 4 year old Sara being helpful with Murphy's Law stuff when Milo was born. To what extent growing up was Sara more a help or a hindrance. Obviously Sara and Milo would have family on there moms side who was less used to Murphy's Law. Did Milo ever spend time with family on that side without his parents. Was it a matter of "oh Grandma can watch Milo, Sara's with him" or "Grandma can watch Milo, since Sara's coming with us".

It's suggested that Milo never went to preschool or kindergarten (probably for obvious reasons), and he had his backpack by the time he did (so around the time Veronica stopped babysitting for him). So I think its fair to say 1st grade was probably around the time when Milo started being able to take care of his Murphy's Law on his own (though in First Impressions they still got a bit of help from Cavendish and Dakota, that doesn't mean too much since Milo still gets help from people at times and always will. Everyone needs help sometimes).

Obviously Milo learning to handle Murphy's Law was a gradual process, so there would be a period of time in which Milo couldn't handle Murphy's Law quite on his own yet but he could with some help. We did see him starting to help Veronica out as he got older in his flashback Secrets and Pie's.

Obviously handling Murphy's law is a lot, but being around Murphy's Law you learn to handle it better. And like it is a physically intensive condition to deal with. Have to develop a fair degree of endurance and strength to deal with it (comments are made on Milo's backpacks weight and we see the kids do a lot of running and hanging on for dear life). Obviously as a Murphy boy grows up they learn to handle it. But that doesn't mean they are the only ones. In now I am a Murphy we have Grandma Murphy who is shown to be extremely capable of handling disasters. Which makes sense for someone who has two sons and a husband with EHML. And we see in athledecamathalon that all of Milo's classmates, by proximity to him, are pretty used to dealing with disasters and are pretty tough all things considered.

Actually what this all boils down to is me asking what is Sara capable of as someone who has spent her life getting used to Murphy's Law but isn't held back by it.

I mean obviously the answer is the patience to make cosplay and store merch in a house with her father and brother but honestly that is so funny to me. Also the girl has two moods "this mortal peril is barely an inconvenience" and "the idea of this relatively inconsequential thing going wrong is the worst possible thing I can imagine and I'm going to put 1000% of my energy into freaking out trying to prevent/fix this". And of then usually she has them at the same time.

I think that dichotomy would be pretty funny from an outside perspective as like a college student who does not have the context of Murphy's Law. What do you mean she had a backup hazmat suit why does she have one to begin with, and how did she finish a paper on her phone while sheltering from extreme weather while loud sirens went off while complaining about the page count. Some idiot lit the microwave on fire in the commons and she put it out without even glancing up from her tv show and was screaming in excitement about the twist. She spent 3 hours freaking out searching across town when she couldn't find the glue she needed to finish her costume and almost got into an accident with a semi but managed to avoid getting hit and then moved on without even hesitating.

Also can you IMAGINE the trouble the Murphy cousins must have gotten into when Milo was small. With or without Milo. I bet Sara and Nate have some stories. Their own Llama incidents if you will. I can see someone asking Sara about her favorite Murphy's law story and it turns out to be a story that not even Milo knows. Sara and Nate floating in the ocean on driftwood surrounded by orcas after a family get together by the ocean went wrong. Sara and Nate with a toddler Milo covered in ice cream and bees and running away from a giant ball of mud that fell from the sky while they were trying to play at the park. Just the idea of three Murphy's hanging out when they are all all children and two of them have Murphy's Law, and between the three of them they can barely handle the two doses of Murphy's Law but their getting there.

[designernishiki]

not sure why i was thinking about this but. here’s a long ass ramble about kazama

it’s interesting how kazama, despite being extremely influential on kiryu’s development and being highly revered or despised by so many characters in-game, has so little screentime that it’s very up to interpretation what he was like in non-crucial situations, what all his motivations and ideals were, how close he really was to kiryu (and nishiki), etc. most of what we have to go off of is hearsay and circumstantial evidence– ie, mostly what people say he was like and stories about/the effects of the things he’s done. he’s incredibly morally grey and though you can definitely pretty securely say something like “well at least he’s not shimano,” it’s hard to say anything more definitive.

yeah, he showed remorse after a number of years in the yakuza and actively tried to save the lives of some of his family’s enemies against direct orders– but the number of people he’s saved is far outweighed by the number of people he’s killed or had some part in killing, which is pretty literally countless given we don’t know how many people he killed during his time as a hitman, or in any other situations once he was dojima’s lieutenant and so on.

hell, the guy killed so many people that a whole orphanage was built specifically to house their children. the concept gets romanticized in game to some degree (understandably, because we’re usually looking at everything through the eyes of kiryu, who vehemently wants to idolize and honor him) but the more you think about it the more morbid it sort of becomes– especially if you consider how he then becomes the father figure to a handful of those children. He didn’t have mercy on all these kids’ parents, then he takes their role and watches the kids grow up the way they never could because of him.

On the other hand you can look at it as him feeling responsible for making sure these kids grow up housed and fed, because he orphaned them in the first place. but if that were the case with no caveats, then none of those children should’ve ever been allowed to drop out of school and join the yakuza, even if they protested and reaaalllly wanted to. they’re kids, they’re naive, it was his responsibility as an adult, as the one with all the power in that situation, and as the man who killed their birth parents and subsequently felt obligated to make sure they grew up alright, to not allow it by any means. moreover, just beating the shit out of them (which is problematic in its own right) and warning them that it’s dangerous isn’t affective at all because it’s impersonal and provides no alternatives to “be a yakuza (cool)” or “be a dead eyed salaryman (not cool)”.

It really makes me think he never took the liberty to ask about/encourage/take pride in their interests and passions growing up, because if he had, I’d imagine they’d have found individual likes and dislikes and aspirations, or at least would be more aware that there are more options, things to try, ways to live, etc, than just the bland view of “civilian” I think they must’ve had as teenagers.

TLDR: kazama is a morally grey person on whatever level but did not have the skills nor position in life to take on a parental role. to me, kiryu proves this later on with the contrast in how he runs his own orphanage; he becomes a civilian first, distances himself as far as possible from yakuza ordeals and doesn’t split his time between them and caregiving unless forced by extreme circumstances, he encourages the kids’ unique interests so they don’t resort to blindly wanting to follow in his footsteps, etc. obviously he’s not perfect either, but considering he had no singular decent models from his own childhood to follow, he did well, and clearly was doing it because he wanted to, not just out of guilt, pity, or obligation.

I could go into the dicey dynamic differences between kazama and kiryu versus kazama and nishiki, or the details of how kazama influenced kiryu’s personality and behavior as an adult, or a lot of other things, but I’ll save all that for another post (or two. or three.)

[castlebyersafterdark]

Do you think how one perceived the characters in relation to you plays a role in whether you have cuteness aggression toward will or not and just what you think of byler in general? Just in terms of whether you saw The Party and Will specifically as peers to journey WITH or as someone way younger than you to protect and WATCH grow up. The latter seems to instinctively activate that maternal (or paternal) instinct that the first doesn’t necessarily offer. I never saw him as a “baby.”

I’m not sure if this makes sense. Like personally I’m a few years older than finn and noah, so I’m not in the same exact age bracket as the Party. But I’m def in the same overall generation as the actors. So for me, when I was watching ST in real time for the first time, idk if I ever developed the “cuteness aggression” or anything like that. And I wonder if it’s because I perceived the characters as being my peers rather than being way younger than me, just based on where I was in my self-concept.

Which is not the case for everyone in my age bracket- I know lots of people related more to the older teens, and obviously those way older than me probably related more to Winona and David H! But that’s just how I experienced the show. Now that I revisit the early seasons, yeah it’s obvious how young and innocent and smol Will was, and it puts everything into a new perspective. I don’t know if I feel the cuteness aggression you describe, but I do understand the concept more.

It does create a weird disconnect tho when you see how grown up and hot Finn and Noah are now, in contrast with their “baby roots,” even as they’re still playing characters who haven’t aged much. What are your thoughts?

I think I understand what you're getting at. When I watched the show the first season I was just starting college, but I connected with the party immediately because they reminded me of myself and kids I grew up with when I was their age? So more so than the teens or adults in the show, clearly the heart of the show did hit for me. Childhood innocence. So no, not peers, but they reminded me personally of peers from a certain time in my life that I very much tend to romanticize (and even wish might have gone differently, but that's another story). I'm not saying media HAS to be relatable to everyone, but your take-away does influence how you view and interpret things. So others may have taken away something similar or it could be something else entirely. I can only speak to how I felt.

While I'm not really like Will much - I did connect to his character immediately in season 1 and 2 just as this kid who gets taken into this terrible scenario. You put yourself in his shoes. You want him to be saved and come out on the other side of the situation loved and alright, the darling of his mother and adored by his friends. He was just so small and sweet in contrast to the horrors. And more in season 2 it really popped off, it had already clicked for me that he was this young gay kid going through a really hard time and that just made it even more apparent? And then once he fell into the love interest role in a pairing I decided I was into, I think that early relatability and viewpoint is just how me, and many others it seems, are talking about him and characterizing him. Sweet Will!! Cute angel Will!! That's just so him to me.

And in regarding the actors, I can look at a photo online and say some guy is hot but it's not like I'm ever going to meet them so, sure!! What's the harm haha. It's who they are now so that's what I'm going to look at and focus on as time moves forward. Everyone was a child at one point, and hopefully grows up. The progression of lives for both character and actor alike...

[doberbutts]

Hypothetical white passing child of two mixed race Mexican parents

And, here's the thing. Colorist exists. Racism exists. Xenophobia exists. No where in this post did I say they don't, or that mixed race people don't frequently have a really complicated relationship with the various races that make up their identities.

A white-passing mixed race person certainly would be spared the brunt of overt, in-your-face, day-to-day racism that someone who is visibly of-color would face, true. A white-passing mixed race person who grew up mostly assimilating into whiteness may be overall divorced from the rest of their culture, also true.

(Also I would say that like all passing privilege, this is a highly conditional and contextual phenomenon and really, really depends. Being perceived as white means never once mentioning any amount of anything that challenges whiteness- speaking a different language too well, eating non-European dishes, not adhering to European beauty standards, having different cultural behaviors, all of these out you as non-white and that privilege is revoked. A friend of mine is Jewish and self-IDs as white, and has told me about how people zero in on her last name and her textured hair and her big nose and revoke whiteness instantly, let alone if she brings up eating Jewish food or asks off for a Jewish holiday or is caught wearing a Star of David necklace. It's a tightrope with no good options- she's experienced when her perceived whiteness has given her a boost and also has experienced what happens if she slips.)

But I also have watched quite a lot of Markiplier, and he is German and Korean, and he's talked about how much it hurt him that even though his Korean mom thought she was sparing him the racism she faced as a first generation immigrant to this country by having him live divorced from his Korean roots and solely as a white person, he was frequently bullied and even physically attacked at school for being Asian. So instead of having one or the other, a choice that was made for him by his parents, he had no one. I also think it's wild that he had to "come out" as Korean and a lot of his fans were shocked by that and reacted with disbelief, as if he and his brother are not very blatantly obviously visibly wasian. I don't really consider him white passing because he is very much not to me, but clearly to several millions of people who were surprised by this reveal years ago he is.

I think of my [other] sister's kids, who are very young and I will not be posting their photos on the internet thank you, who have an afronative and white mom, and a white dad, now living in a blended family with their very much so black step-dad and his very much so black kids. Her kids look white, it's true. But they're going to still grow up black despite this, and at some point they're going to have to reconcile their white-passing status with their blackness. They're a bit young for that right now, but it'll come probably by the time they're teens.

I'm pretty divorced from my Native roots despite having known in person many of the Natives in my family, on both sides. Similar to Markiplier, it was decided for me that it would be too difficult to be both Native and black, and I was not really allowed to engage with that part of my culture. Now, as an adult, I am having to reconcile the knowledge that I am more or less completely cut off from my Nation while also dealing with the antiblackness of the entire situation dating all the way back to slavery.

So when people say things like "well they're not raised in the culture" or "well they have it easier" it's 1: not always true and 2: whose fault is that??? No child has any control over the way their family chooses to raise them, and no child chooses their parents in the first place. I know a woman that's 100% Chinese that was adopted as a baby and raised by Italian Americans- are we debating *her* ability to feel sinophobia or discussing her inability to connect with Chinese culture like she's the one that chose to disconnect herself from it? The culture she feels the most connected to, surprise, is Italian and has nothing to do with China- is that not allowed because technically her blood percentage of Itanian is 0?

Anyway this is why I keep saying that people refuse to be normal about the idea of mixed race people and interracial relationships and communities happening and creating children.

I am black and black only until it is convenient to call me white. And it doesn't matter that I'm also native because I'm too black to be native anyway. I've talked about being multi-racial and having even further racial mixing in my extended family since I made this blog in 2014 but that doesn't matter if any of my racial mix can be used as a weapon against me.

Y'all complain about the stereotype of the tragic mulatto without understanding why that stereotype exists in the first place.

[secretswiftymarvelfan]

How about a Steve x reader: They had clicked from the first moment they met! He had realized that he had a crush on her for some time, but there is only one thing keeping him from telling her... She always referred him as her "second favorite guy", so he assumed that she was already taken. What he was unaware of is that she is a single mom, so obviously her boy is her "main man"! So out of the blue when she asks him to join her for dinner, he hesitates... But wanted to see who his rival was..

aww this is so cute!!!

Her Second Favourite Guy - Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: Steve can't help but be a little disappointed that he's not your favourite, that is until he meets your favourite guy

Word Count: 1.7k

Warnings: Fluff! Mention of Post Endgame world!

Dividers by @firefly-graphics​

Masterlist

Following the final battle with Thanos when the Avengers finally won and brought everyone back Steve finally retired. After losing too many close friends he’d lost his fight, he was tired and just couldn’t bring himself to Captain America anymore. So once he put the stones back he passed the shield over to Sam and decided to fade back into the shadows. The world had enough heroes now, it didn’t need him.

So he decided to finally move back to Brooklyn, he found a nice apartment that wasn’t too far from the street he grew up on. Finding comfort in the familiarity of his surroundings, even if the world was very different to the one he grew up in.

To keep himself busy he got a job at the local art museum, working and curating the exhibit on war time and early 20th century art. He also ran art classes in the evenings for kids who wanted to get into art or adults trying to find a new hobby. It was at one of these classes that he met you.

He remembered the moment he met you like it was yesterday. It was the beginning of a new term of art classes and he was 10 minutes into the introduction when you came bursting into the room. The look on your face was one so apologetic and flustered as you quickly sat down and apologised for being late. Steve was usually one for punctuality but he couldn’t help the smile that formed on his lips as he looked at you, unable to bring himself to be mad at you.

“it’s not a problem you haven’t missed much, what’s you name?” he asks with a kind smile on his face.

“Y/N” you provide him with a smile.

Steve nodded gently, his smile growing when he heard you name. Instantly deciding that it was his favourite name he’s ever heard “it’s nice to meet you Y/N” he smiles before going back to what he was saying before you arrived.

As he taught the class he found himself glancing over in your direction whenever he could, watching you as you worked before he reminded himself he needed to focus on the student he was currently helping. He couldn’t help it though so when he finally worked his way round the class to your station he couldn’t be happier that you seemed just as happy to see him as he was to see you.

He got to know you better over the next few weeks and it didn’t take a genius to know he had the biggest and most hopeless crush on you. it was his favourite part of the week when you’d walk into the class, usually a few minutes late. But you’d always make up for it by staying behind a couple minutes to help him clean up.

There was only one problem. You were clearly taken, and it was made painfully obvious whenever you’d refer to him as your ‘second favourite guy’. Steve couldn’t help but feel disheartened but he wasn’t surprised. Of course someone as funny, gorgeous, intelligent and kind as you would be snapped up in an instant. Any guy in the universe would be lucky to have you, Steve just wished he was the lucky guy.

The thing was, you barely talked about your favourite guy. In all the weeks Steve had known you and talked to you after class the only thing he knew was that his name was Thomas and that you called him Tommy and that you spent a lot of your time together and the class was some time to yourself.

What made it worse is that the current run of classes were coming to an end. Tonight’s being the very last class and Steve was repeatedly rehearsing his speech to try and convince you to sign up for the intermediate classes. He knew you’d probably say no, saying that you wouldn’t be good enough but he knew you could do it, and he just wanted to see more of you.

Once the last class finished Steve gathered his nerves and walked over to where you were packing up your stuff, ringing his hands together nervously.

“did you enjoy your last class?” he asks clearing his throat.

You look up from your bag a wide smile on your face ��yeah it was fun but that could just be because it was my second favourite guy teaching” you smirk making Steve chuckle nervously.

“yeah well I was thinking you could sign up for the intermediate classes if you want, you definitely have the skill to” Steve offers gesturing down to your sketch book.

“oh I don’t know” you say shaking your head slightly as you glanced down.

“you’ll be great, I promise” Steve reassures you sensing your modesty getting the better of you.

“when are the classes?” you ask looking back up at him.

“same time as this one but on Wednesdays” Steve answers, feeling optimistic until your shoulders dropped.

“oh, I’m busy with Tommy on Wednesdays” you sigh in disappointment.

Steve sighs gently dropping his head as he nodded “that’s fine, but um if you ever want any extra tuition you know where I am” he says scratching the back of his neck.

“hey um what are you doing this Saturday evening?” you then asked taking Steve by surprise.

“oh, um nothing, why?” Steve answered.

“how about you join me and Tommy for dinner? You can give me some art pointers then” you say with a playful smirk as you nudge him.

His jaw drops slightly in confusion and surprise. Were you asking him out to dinner with your boyfriend so that he could give you art pointers? He was seriously struggling to wrap his head around it. He should turn it down, he didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes but he did seriously want to know who his competition was and why he was so demanding of your time.

“um yeah sure sounds good, just text me a time and place” Steve nods smiling when a wide grin broke out on your face.

“perfect I’ll see you Saturday” you smile.

The days leading up to Saturday Steve went back and forth between whether having dinner with you and your boyfriend was actually a good idea or not. Going as far as nearly cancelling, having the text written out before just deleting it.

Even as he made his way to the restaurant the only thing keeping him for bailing was the fact that it would be incredibly rude to cancel so late. What really didn’t help was the fact that you were late leaving Steve to sit alone with only his thoughts. His leg bouncing nervously as he sat at the table.

He decided to occupy himself by grabbing one of the paper napkins and drawing on it to take him mind off of you. It worked so well that he hadn’t even heard you approach until a small child appeared besides him, the little boy giving him an excited toothy grin.

“oh my god you’re really Captain America!” the boy exclaimed.

“Tommy remember your manners” You chided gently, Steve’s jaw dropping when you said the boys name.

This was Tommy, Tommy was a kid. Tommy was certainly not your boyfriend. Your favourite guy wasn’t a boyfriend.

“Tommy, this is Steve, Steve this is my son Tommy” You smile resting your hands on Tommy’s shoulders as you introduced them.

Steve picked his jaw up off the floor and held his hand out to Tommy, a kind smile on his face “Nice to finally meet you Tommy, your mom has told me so much about you” he grins shaking Tommy’s hand.

“Really?” Tommy asks excitedly, glancing over his shoulder at you.

“of course! You’re her favourite guy after all” Steve grins poking Tommy gently in the stomach making him giggle.

“She told me that you’re her second favourite!” Tommy giggles up at you before looking back at Steve.

“well, I’m very happy to be second to you” Steve smiles glancing up at you to see a warm smile on you face.

Throughout dinner you and Steve were barely able to say a word to each other, Tommy constantly asking questions and telling Steve stories. Steve didn’t mind though, he loved glancing over to see the warm smile on your face as you watched the two of them.

The two of you only got a chance to talk as Steve walked you back to your apartment. Steve giving a very tired and worn out Tommy a piggy back.

“so, you have a kid” Steve says with a lopsided grin.

“yeah” you say with a nervous wince “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything but usually when guys find out you have a kid they run for the hills” you sigh.

“it’s fine, I get it” Steve smiles over at you “and don’t worry I’m not running anywhere” he adds coming to a stop and turning to face you.

“Really?” you ask, doubt clear on your face.

“Really, the only reason I hadn’t asked you out was because I thought Tommy was your boyfriend” Steve admits making you chuckle.

“Sorry, I can see how misleading it all was” you apologise shaking your head.

“Stop apologising, its fine and now that I know that you are single… how about we get coffee or something sometime and I can give you some of those art tips” Steve smirks.

A grin grows on your lips “private lessons?” you suggest with a smirk.

“Yeah, but I can’t promise that a lot of teaching will happen” Steve grins.

“that’s fine by me” you chuckle taking a step closer to Steve.

“Can I kiss you?” Steve asks as the distance between you continues to close.

“You don’t have to ask me Steve” you smirk making Steve chuckle.

“okay… Tommy can I kiss your mom?” Steve jokes glancing over his shoulder at the sleeping Tommy.

“I think you can take that as a yes” you laugh cupping Steve’s cheek, reaching up until your lips were only centimetres away.

“good” Steve mutters as he closes the gap, capturing yours lips with his.

He feels you smile into the kiss, your thumb gently brushing over his cheek. And Steve couldn’t be happier to be your second favourite guy.

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Masterlist

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[wenellyb]

Is Sambucky Canon or Not?

TL;DR: Yes, it is

I've seen some people saying that they only see friendship between Sam and Bucky, and I can understand that. Because depending on your education, the environment you grew up and the kind of media you’re usually exposed to, you will have a different interpretation of different situations, in real life or in TV. Just let me insert a short story before I dive into the Sambucky topic:

My best friend's uncle is in his fifties and has been living with his roommate (a man) for more than 10 years. They lived together, went on holidays together but officially were just roommates. My best friend wondered if they were a couple, but never talked about it to her parents because it wasn't her business. Two years ago, they decided to come out and get married. My best friend's parents and his parents were genuinely surprised, they were not expecting that, at all, not even a little bit. Let me tell you that it didn’t even cross their mind that it was a possibility, at all. For them, it had always just been two men who had decided to live together because they were single. And preferred to have a roommate rather than living alone.

What I want to say with this story is that people will see what they want to see, or what they're used to see, or what they were raised to see. It’s human.

What I mean is that you will have different perception of a same event, depending on your own circumstances. And I think the writers of TFATWS were counting on that a little bit when it came to Sam and Bucky’s relationship. They obviously didn't want to make some big announcement or big love declaration.

And yes, of course, I have my own circumstances as well, influencing the way I see things. I have shipped SamBucky since Civil War, when they were supposedly enemies. I never expected anything to happen between them on screen. But then they got a show together and I was so so happy about it but I didn't expect anything other than friendship between them.

I was perfectly fine with that because a show was already more than enough: my man Sam Wilson was becoming Captain America, the show was great, the characters were great, their interactions were great, and this wasn't a love story anyway but a superhero show. I thought that here was no way the showrunners would ever go there. I changed my mind after episode 5. I tried to stay objective, but it was clear to me that the writers were hinting at a relationship that went beyond friendship between Sam and Bucky. In some of my previous posts, I explained that there are some scenes and writing choices that make absolutely no sense if you read them as a scene between two friends. I can link them if anyone’s interested.

Side note: I would like to know if one person on this website can tell me what was up with Bucky's behavior with Torres (in episode 5)? What other explanation is there, if not jealousy? It's a scene they chose to keep, so it was probably written this way, there must be a reason. Please I’m begging someone explain it to me. I'm genuinely asking, because otherwise that scene alone is canon Sambucky.

After episode 5, I was convinced they would make Sambucky canon, one way or the other and I started speculating about the ways they could do it. What I said was that if they did make Sambucky canon, they would do it in a very subtle way, in order not to make it too obvious because that’s generally how Marvel movies deal with love stories. And also because they wouldn’t want to scare away their homophobic audience ( I guess Disney needs their money...who knows)

So here are the scenes of how I imagined SamBucky becoming canon and the comparison with reality:

1.

- What I thought we could get : AJ and Cass calling Bucky "Uncle Bucky" - What we got: AJ and Cass running up to Bucky and playing with him. This point is interesting because it’s also related to the point I made about how the environment you grew up in influences your perception of things. I grew up in a big family and I know that, at least in my family, kids don't run up to an adult like that just because it's their uncle’s friend or just because he's nice... There's a real bond there. They haven't seen Bucky just that one time when he slept on the couch. They're obviously close. But some people might just see this as kids being kids. Also, if you watch at how the kids were fake punching him, they were really coordinated with Bucky. They have done this plenty of times. 2.

What I thought we could see: A non-explicit scene where we were supposed to draw our own conclusions. I thought they could show us Bucky staying over for the night, and the last scene would be an empty couch, meaning we would have to understand that Bucky slept in Sam's room this time.

-What we got: Bucky arriving in Sam's car ( A few people on Tumblr pointed out that it was the car Sam was driving in episode 1) So here again we have a scene that a lot of people will not notice. But they still chose to put it there. 3.

What I thought could happen: Sam asking Bucky to stay in Delacroix

What we got: Bucky wrapping things up in New York, as if he was leaving the city for good and coming to Sam's party as if he already knew everyone there. You can read my take on this here. 4. What I thought could happen: The scene in the trailer where we see them looking in the same direction and then we get a shot from very far away where they're holding hands but it’s not so obvious because they are being filmed from a disctance. -What we got: The scene in trailer and then a blurry shot of Sam holding Bucky and then fondling with his neck to find the best spot to rest his hand on. So none of the scenes I was imagining happened exactly like I had imagined, but it felt like all of them happened but in a different versions, which is still crazy to me. If it had been only one scene. I could probably understand the people who see them as just friends. Actually, I still do understand the people who see them as just friends, because everyone has their own interpretation. What I am saying is that they are NOT being portrayed as just friends. There are TOO many scenes in the 6 episodes for it to be a coincidence. One or 2 would be ok but friendship doesn’t explain everything:

The therapy scene (not the therapy scene itself since it was improvised) but the therapist saying she had heard a lot about Sam and wanting them to do a couples’ therapy

Bucky following Sam no matter what

Sam saying ok as soon as Bucky says "do it for me"

Sam asking "what about Bucky?"

Bucky starting to touch Sam whenever he has the chance

Bucky being the one to bringing the suit for Sam

The boat repairing montage

Bucky wanting to stay at Sam's place, when a hotel room would have been more comfortable than a couch

The second day of boat repair in closed quarters with an intense staring scene.

And there are so many other scenes, soft touches, looks,...

These writing choices are not a coincidence, it’s not involuntary, and it’s not fan service ( Fan service is the roll in the flower field scene, or the therapy session). This is them telling a story.

Let’s not even talk about the scenes in Endgame:

Sam comforting bucky at Tony’s funeral

Sam looking up to Bucky for approval before accepting the shield from Steve.

So yes, Sam and Bucky are canon in the sense that Peter and Gamora were canon in the first movie, or Wanda and Vision were canon in Captain Civil War. Meaning that there was no big moment, kiss or anything, but the show is consistently throwing elements clearly showing Sam and Bucky as a romantic item and hinting at a lot more than friendship between them.

It is normal that some people have a different opinion. Because it is extremely rare, in big productions like this to have two male leads with romantic feelings towards each other, so not a lot people who see it will interpret it as such (I don't think it ever happened). You’ll see what you’re used to seeing.

I guess it also depends on what you expect from a love story. For me, the storyline between the characters, their scenes, their chemistry, the way their feelings towards each other are described, are the most important. The kiss scene is just there as a bonus, but I don't need it when the love story is told perfectly. If you’re used to seeing love stories with many kissing scenes, that’s what you will be expecting to see in most love stories.

If you're only used to seeing male friendships in superhero or action movies. The 1000th time you see men interacting in that type of movie or show, you are more likely to assume it is a friendship and nothing more, no matter how many codes and tropes usually associated with romantic movies, the writers and show makers are using.

Add to that the conviction that Disney would never approve Sambucky in a million years, and there you go, I can understand the people who see only friendship.

But, just think about it, if we had the same show, same scenes, same dialogues, but minus the action scenes and the project was being marketed as an Indie movie, would you think they were just friends or a blossoming couple?

If you read Sambucky’s relationship like a friendship: some scenes don't make sense. If you read it like a developing romantic relationship: it all makes sense. "When you hear hoofs, think horse, not zebra" If a writer or a film director chooses a last scene with a romantic setting and the two leads are staring at a sunset, smiling repeatedly at each other and then walking away together with one of them touching the other's neck, with a love song in the background, maybe friendship isn't the first thought they had in mind.

Some people may say “I see them as just friends” and other people may say “ I see them as lovers” and both are fine, because people have different perceptions, and that’s ok.

What I am saying is this post is that the show and the writers are portraying them as more than just friends, they’re portraying them as two characters who are romantically involved.

Perceive what you want but that’s how they are being presented in the show.

Bucky’s therapist said that the exercise she gave them was for couples who want to figure out what kind of life they want to build together. Then, the show ends with Sam and Bucky, staring at a sunset together, looking in the same direction.

“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. “  - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

What else do you need???

This show had more romance than half of the Marvel projects out there. Not every love story needs a kiss (for now...)

We'll see in their next projects which direction the writers want to go with this. But since it was said that the writer on the movie is the same as the writer from episode 5, there's no doubt in my mind that we'll keep seeing this dynamic. I don't think they would have made the same choices if this had been a movie. But I won't complain that we got this. I hope they keep this going even if it stays subtle like in the show. Just hope they will add one explicit scene where one of the characters acknowledges their relationship. But even if we only ever get this show, it’s already a great love story. Let me know what you guys think and sorry for the typos and grammar mistakes, I was tired when I wrote the last part. I hope it still makes sense!

If you think they're only being portrayed as friends let me know why! I would also like to know about the way you see this!

[bemylord]

↠ toji with a virgin s/o ↞

pairing: toji fushiguro x fem!reader.

warnings: nsfw, aged up, size kink [?], oral [fem!receiving], virgin reader, first time, lost of virginity, praising, toji calls himself daddy, grammar errors.

word counter: 3.2k

rq: I would like to request a oneshot? a hc would be appreciated too though. Toji with a virgin gf who can’t even make herself cum? Just how he would like to destroy her :)

butler's remark: (◕‿◕) hello lord, i'm back with an oneshot with toji being tremendously tender with his lover for the first time. in addition, reader is a citizen. sorry, i did it soft, bc i think toji will super-extra-super soft for the first time with his s/o, only for the first. i hope you'll like that, thanks for the request ;)

disclaimer: everything you read is purely my opinion - any detail, sketch, or event is a figment of my imagination.

you've been an ordinary citizen and had never planned to date a sorcerer or someone close to this specialty. you ain't cowardly, merely as you were thinking you'll marry a simple man and will have kids with him, and die in one day like lovebirds.

you had never considered yourself being stuck in a relationship with a sorcerer killer.

you were overworked, virtually sleeping as were walking in the empty street, dreaming to get home as soon as possible, to feel the silk sheets against your back. the area where your office was located had little street lighting, although, you hadn't felt the anxiety of being robbed or something worse. the day went lingeringly and horrible due to the boss who declared you as a temporary deputy, piled you up with a stack of papers.

but, this is life, anything might happen. all of a sudden, you overheard something behind you but as you looked back - there was nobody, as soon as you turn your head to the starting position, you saw a young, skinny man who is holding a knife in his hand.

'hmm~ look who's here, a young, gorgeous lady..' he said with his disgusting, lewd voice, coming closer to you. 'would you mind playing with me? don't be shy or els-'

you have a perky personality, no doubt, but because of how hard the day was, you had one option - run for the hills. before you could do any movements as if hit the man or run away, something prompt hit him, like a swift meteorite that you couldn't see. a cloud of dust grew around you and the man, so you hide your face in the elbow curve, covering your mouth with another hand.

as soon as the dust had settled, in front of you opened up on the view of an adult man. he was high, had an athletic, broad-shouldered, pretty impressive figure. your savior held the blade in one hand, flopped on his back.

'he ran away like a coward. don't worry, girl, you saved, thanks to me' he laughed, he stroked himself on the shoulder, as were about to leave the dead body.

'no i'm not! i'd have protected myself on my own'

you refuted his smugness, watching as he slowly moves his torso in your way, flaunting his outlining muscles through the fabric of the black t-shirt. his complacent eyes and the sharp scar over the right side of the mouth on the edge of his lips. you took a deep breath, continuing on your path as he isn't standing there, not hadn't protected you.

'you're too weak to beat even him, if not me, you'd be-'

'i am stronger as i may look'

he giggled, in a flash stood in front of you, bending over to your face, by finger tugs your face up to look at him directly in eyes, smirked.

'are you sure, girl?'

those green, almost emerald, but cold eyes looked directly into yours as two faces were as closed as you could kiss his lips.

'i'll walk you home'

'i don't want to, and anyway, maybe you're his partner in crime, leave me alon-'

previous to you had finished your phrase, he threw your tiny body on his shoulder, leisurely walking, better say, carrying you home. you beat his back, softly reminiscent of a parody of the word 'let me go, moron, i can walk by myself'

'tch, fine, idiot,' he deliberately shrugged his shoulder to close your mouth as heard the name you had given him. 'by the way, what's your name or you prefer the name idiot?' you said sarcastically.

'for you it's toji'

well.

as a result of your crawl and also being talkative when clearly you shouldn't be, you ended up being in a relationship with a man, who'd obviously fuck you on the first date, as it may count as a 'date', anywhere-anytime, by the way.

although you wouldn't ever say he isn't hot or sexy, conversely, you willingly allow him to breed, precisely you'd beg toji to breed you on the straightaway on the cervix, but for one thing.

you're a virgin.

hilariously - it's true. nothing bad to be in your age a virgin, but if you weren't dating toji it'd fine: his dirty jokes and lustful eyes which are maddening you insane, also his fucking athletic body which is outlining through the t-shirt or white cotton shirt [he wear it once] you thought he did it purposely: he knew your secret, undoubtedly could sniff your chaste nature as if you can emit fragrance.

on the second date, it had been nine days since you got acquainted with him, as you moved in with him. toji was exceedingly obsessed with every step of yours - he followed you from the work, in the mall or market, for your security and control every guy who'd be close to you.

although, you couldn't hide your addiction - he's a drug you should be careful with or you might be addicted as if you ain't. he isn't wearing pants in home, walking in front of you solely in underwear. he could walk from the shower in a terry towel wrapped around his torso as he buries his hands in his dark hair mess it up.

'what are you looking at, girl?'

you couldn't take your eyes off his bulging..

'you. just you. i'm gonna cook dinner, something.. special?'

'eggs, baby'

fushiguro put hands above the door frame, exhale and tensed every muscle, narrowing predatory eyes as you were the extraction he was target for. you're laying on his king size bed [lol i'm sorry i'm out], wondering is everything he has gotten measured in king size as he interupted your reflection by putting the knee on the edge of the bed.

'mine. in your pussy'

as if you're bewitched - you couldn't talk, just contemplate as he leisurely moves towards you. you couldn't contravene as he tugs your face to ogle in your absentminded eyes as you're avoiding his gaze, looking at the ceiling or door or even window. not. at. his. bulge.

your heart had stuck in your throat when toji ran his hand under his shirt, certainly, he has a kink of dominion, when he suddenly stopped. despite of your uncertainty and timid of subsequent play, you looked at his emerald eyes as he licks his lips with a tongue.

'are you sure, baby girl? i mean, it's your first time after all'

you quell your forthcoming question staring deeply into lascivious eyes, put hands on his massive shoulders. as you anticipated, his cock twitched as toji letting out a low groan in your ear, kissing your temple. you're absentmindedly running finger pads on his back, not knowing the proximity of bodies that are readiness wanted to intertwine together. not knowing how much it turns him on.

'stop me if i go crazy over your body, okay?'

as if. as if you dare would rip out his tongue off your crotch as he makes you his woman. toji left on your red cheeks quick kisses, took off the towel. you shut your eyes tight, still holding his shoulders barely squeeze them, letting out a hushed moan.

after you quelled your moan, toji touched your lips against his one, running fingers on your lower stomach to the cup of the breast without touching the hard nipple. light movements mixed with his muted groans. his pads deftly touched one areola as you emitted a sharp purr, arching your back a little as a dulcet sign for toji.

you dug your fingers into toji's back, as he put a finger on your hard nipple, holding himself as to grab your tits and clench it in his large hand.

you gasp for the air as if there was a catastrophic shortage of it due to the pressed body of toji. you responded at his deep kiss, wrapping hands around his neck, apparently begging for something more.

he pulled away from the kiss just to take off the shirt he has given you, baring your untouched by no one but him tits, leading palms onto breasts, skipping nipples between the gaps through fingers. he reached down to your lips to give a bit of warning kiss as he slightly bit your lip, kissing all the way down to your collarbone, finally leaving there manifestations of hickeys.

for how long toji has been stopped from leaving on your stunning skin his marks? it seems it has been absolutely not many days but toji, as you may see, clearly has to leave labels on your neck.

he dug his teeth into your neck, frantically wants your area to be dotted by him as a token for everyone meaning: she's taken, dude, don't mess up with her.

for how long toji has been stopped from touching your sensitive area as having been feel warmth and tenderness is emitted from your body?

toji squeezes your nipple imponderable, to make you feel some kind of power over you becoming submitted by toji fushiguro, a sorcerer killer, a man who owned you, spinning the pea between pads, making you let out whimpers.

'you drive me insane, little one,' he approached his face close to the breasts, touched your pea with his tongue cautiously, as not to frighten you away. 'i'm gonna make your pussy drool beneath me, completely own you as my little girl'

you feel yourself gush beneath him, burying hands in his messy hair as your breath has stuck in the throat as toji snuggles his lips on your tits, sucking your hard and probably swollen from teasing. fushiguro has made you became wet in your panties as he's moistening your breast, hearing your precipitous whimpers.

'toj-toji, i don't know-'

'tch, little girl, relax your body and let daddy do the rest'

as he pronounced, he moves down, leaving the trace of wet kisses on your stomach, massaging your hips, stopping his action to look at your red face. your chest heaves heavily every time you feel toji's silky lips on your belly as his finger pads caressing your thighs. as if something weighty is resting on your chest you take deep breathes, breathlessly exhaling.

'spread your legs'

you obediently did what he said, hesitating a bit as the only fabric holding him back to bury his mouth against your pussy, assembling all juices, tasting your cum as if it's his meal. he rested kisses on the fabric of panties, couldn't sate with tender kisses he spreads on your body.

deliberately run tongue on your labia through the thin fabric as you were about to push his hand from your crotch as toji grab you by the hips, pulling you closer. he slackens his teasing actions by kissing your inner thighs. as your cunt was lack of attention from toji, you let out a pliant whimper, approximately woefully have purred.

toji's self-restraint thinning as you're silently begging with your eyes and your hands immeasurably are burying in his dark hair. the tip of his tongue deftly sideline panties, flicked it, as he discovered a divine view on your drooling hole.

'stop me now, because i won't be able to hold back later'

teasufully kissing your labia and area around the place he should be playing with as anticipating for some pliant whimpers of you, deliberately showing you he'll lick that swollen clit, pressing a soft kiss on the skin instead. fushi's shattering your hopes of being eating every time he kissed literally everything and lick everywhere besides your hole and clit. he acts like an inexperienced teenager, notwithstanding, you know that toji'd ruin or demolish your holes like a monster.

't-toji..'

'yes, my little girl' he pressed the tip of his tongue on your clit, hearing those moans he's willing to listen for the rest of his life, then take away as you were about to press his mouth back again, digging his tongue deep inside you, although he obviously couldn't reach to your cervix, barely permeate in your hole.

'you want me to eat your little pussy?'

as if you can't talk, you nodded. scarcely reached up to take off the last thing, leisurely pulling down the panties, staring at you as a predator. toji is standing on his knee on the bed, threw your ankles on his shoulders, smooching ankles watching as to how your cheeks are becoming pinky, as you try not to look at his dick. still, you're a timid one, despite your words.

he reached to your face to give you a voluptuous kiss, returning to the starting position.

'look at your pretty pussy'

he kissed your clit in a flash replace into the tongue, making a circles on swollen and needy spot, decisively giving you what've been begging for. running the tip of the tongue on your virgin hole, leaving it for the dessert, returning to your clit.

you'd swear to god you can see stars in the ceiling as toji squeezing your nipples while moistening you. the proximity of his face in your pussy is driving you insane, for the days of cohabitation you understood he isn't a tender one, vice versa, he'd fuck you whenever his dick gets erect. maybe it's a rush of tenderness, maybe it's the fear of hurting his girl. nevertheless, you not scared to give toji full control of your body and bring you to your first orgasm by ripping the hymen. if that's i may call the way he's licking you, it'd be make-out with your pussy, due to his relentless movements by flicking his tongue on the clit.

'baby,' he pulled away from it, as you squeeze a sheet, making your knuckles become whiten as you spread legs wider, watching his mocking grin appeared on the face. 'i'll be gentle' he pressed his lips on your forehead, taking from the bedside table lubrication to low the friction. although, the thought of his dick ripped the hymen, putting all his tenderness in your first time, make your knees get shaken.

he put a soft kiss on your lips, smearing lubrication on his dick, substitute cock on the entrance. abrupt and penetrating pain wavily covered your body as you feel soft lips covered your mouth, blunting the pain with one hand being dug in your hip, painting illegible traces. another hand he put on your cheek, drawing circles with his thumb, waiting till getting used to the pain.

toji will find lots of red stripes from your nails on his back, smirked, as reminiscing about that special night when he made you his woman. his broad back was made merely for you to leave thousand and thousand fingernail impressions every night. toji had let a low groan as he feels as you move fingertips to the neck, exhaling in his chest.

he entered all his dick inside you feeling as your walls compressing the base, getting used to being full with his thick cock. you're indulging at the new, mind-blowing feeling, give him sheepish kisses as you're scared to be rejected. he moves his palm from the cheek to the ear, running fingers through your tangled but soft to the touch. you nudged your hips up, intermittently letting your breath out.

'tch, if you're not feeling well, i can come-'

'more, toji, more'

without breaking up kiss, he pulled out cock to the tip as pulling it again slowly, stretching your walls, touching with the tip your cervix as his balls touching your ass, groaning in the kiss, softly caress your thigh. you moved your palms to the shoulder, touching the musculature, going down to the biceps wrapping his arm as another hand attempting to draw patterns on the back as if it a canvas for you.

you can feel every vein, curve, and the way his tip is expanding gummy walls, as toji diligently coming in, adjusting inside you then pulling out. you're focusing on how full you're with his cock inside, your clarity gradually getting mushed as the sharp pain turning into a pleasurable and delightful feeling. sating to the new feeling might get addiction, but you're far beyond to accept that, surrendering to your lover as he gets addicted to it. you grasp for his shoulders, as he nudged in you, leaving whimpers from your mouth.

'like that, huh?' he pulled his cock out to contemplate as your facial expression have changed: you furrowed eyebrows as felt your hole being empty without thick toji's cock, practically purring like a march cat. 'beg me for it, baby'

what an insatiable man you've got. he licked his lips, looking down on it. your hymen has left blood, as he glanced at you to see his future wife your reaction.

'i-i toji, it's..'

he hummed, returning to your lips, slowly giving back the missing part.

'you okay?' you nodded as a response; he's perceiving fullness as wants to fill you up, but desperately be tempered himself, blaming he didn't wear a condom to do it. a dozen of half-moons will be littering your hips as toji's digging nails, scrambled your mind with squelches pushes in your hole. 'relax, baby girl, i'm here' he thrusts inside the spongy spot, ripping another moan out of you, voluptuous to his ears. 'baby~ you tease me with those moans of yours'

his cock was aimed at a place inside your vagina, with a slow but deep thrust skillfully reaching your cervix, massaging with the tip of his cock that spot. toji's staring at your pleased, satisfied face as he found that needy place of yours.

holding on to the headboard in the bed as support, clutching the sheet with his other hand like the composure he was rapidly losing with each thrust into your hole, formerly virgin cunt, letting out a heavy sigh, tilting his head back.

wiggling the pelvis backward and forwards as heard beneath his body your whimpers, feeling replenishment on his skin to his previous strips, losing remains self-control as your walls have been clenching his cock, as your body gets shaking as his, preparing the body for the coming ecstasy.

'toji, mh~' you tilted the head back on the pillow, wrapping legs around his pelvis, quelling moans while arching back against his chest. you're milked [? correct if i'm wrong] his cock, shuddering. you felt his lips on your cheeks, as he's covering your wet face in kisses, pulling cock out.

'damn, baby, probably-' he stroke his hard cock a couple of times before releasing his cum onto your belly. fushiguro ran fingers from the hairline, wiping beads of sweat from the hairline through hair. 'are you good?'

as you're still catching your breath you rested on your face a slight smile, closing eyes. he giggled, getting out of bed.

'almost made a baby' it took him a second or two, to lift you up in my arms, leading into the bathroom. 'i'm gonna clean you up, my baby. but you could fall asleep in my arms, you did such a good job by taking my cock' he kissed your forehead, wiping your drops of sweat.

'i love you, toji'

he put you on the washing machine, turning away from you to fill the tub. what went unnoticed was his relaxed smile after your phrase.

'i love you more, little one'

(◕‿◕)

↳ back to the main master list.

i feel i made lots of mistakes, like, idk. correct me if smth i did wrong.

i remember my promise to do one more work with toji, so lately i'll write hdc + drabble with him.

[princepondincherry]

Personally I actually really like most of the dialogue in the prequels. I was listening to some music from Attack of the Clones on Saturday and thinking about how, yes, I even like the romantic dialogue. To be fair, this is probably because I grew up watching AotC--it was "my" Star Wars--and it was also one of the only romances I watched or read for basically my entire childhood. It's really not a genre I paid attention to much. Reading essays about it as I'm older has given me a better understanding of the romantic dialogue as a sign of how unhealthy and creepy the relationship is, but I still think the dialogue works.

Side note: I tried watching Attack of the Clones with my friends once. Never again. They wouldn't shut up about the memes. As much as I love the memes, I actually think the "it's course, rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere" line works in context. It's some of the most natural dialogue in the whole romantic part, especially compared to the overwrought love declarations and stuff, and I honestly do not see why people hate it.

On the other hand, one of my biggest points of contention with some other pro-Jedi people is about whether "be mindful of your feelings" "obviously" meant that the Jedi council wanted little Ani to be honest with himself about what he was feeling. I didn't hear about "mindfulness" in the sense of "analyzing your thoughts and feelings and being honest with yourself" until college. When I was a kid watching the movie, I thought we were obviously supposed to emphasize with Anakin while the intimidating Jedi Council scolded him for being afraid, and his "I'm not scared" seemed more like the obvious response the adults wanted him to give, and not a disappointing lie.

Now that I know the actual context of the scene, I think it's a good example of how Anakin was raised with a different set of assumptions than someone who was given to the Jedi as an infant, since he seems to be making the same assumptions I did, instead of what the Jedi actually meant (be honest with yourself and us about your feelings). But it annoys the heck out of me when pro-Jedi people argue that it was obvious that the Council wasn't bullying him. Clearly not, if the majority of the fandom seems to agree with me.

Anyway, I think that scene could have used a moment of Obi-Wan or Qui-Gon explaining to Anakin what the Council meant afterwards, or something like that, to let the audience know what exactly was going on.

@theneutralmime

I guess that depends on what you mean by weird or difficult to understand.

I think the dialogue is sometimes pretty clunky, I think it's aged really badly in some places, I think sometimes Lucas didn't explain things as well as maybe needed to for a primarily Western audience. But I don't think it's IMPOSSIBLE to understand, either. It's made for children to be able to understand the story and I think he managed that perfectly fine. I think by and large that the intended audience of the Prequel films understood what the story was. They know that the Jedi are the good guys and Anakin's the bad guy even if he seems nicer at the start. It's mostly adults who pick apart the Prequels and find it too clunky to be understood.

I think that Lucas's writing strength is not necessarily in his dialogue, but I also think he WAS intentional with what dialogue he chose and that there's reasons for why characters speak the way they do or say the things they do. Anakin is bad at flirting and awkward because he wanted Anakin to come off as a whiny teenager. This was entirely intentional. You can discuss whether making Anakin a whiny teenager was a good choice or not, but I think he succeeds at making Anakin feel like a whiny, bratty nineteen year old with like little to no ability to be suave.

I think it's possible that popular fandom interpretations of the Prequels have made it difficult to view them the way Lucas intended. It became SO widely accepted that the Prequels were about the Jedi being corrupt that it was nearly impossible to understand them any other way, and it DID take reading several essays on the dialogue and the different interviews Lucas had where he explained some of it for me to change my perspective on it. But that might be less of a problem of the film and its dialogue being weird on its own and more of a problem of fandom interpretations becoming so popular that they manage to overwrite my own understanding of the films. Also, if you're a more casual fan of the films, like I was before a couple of years ago, you're not necessarily looking up interviews where Lucas discusses these things or watching the films with his audio commentary on to hear him talk about certain scenes, so if a certain fandom interpretation is accepted as the truth and starts to spread, you might end up more familiar with THAT than you are with the things Lucas has said that counteract it.

One of the things I needed essays to help me with was attachment, because I DO think that Lucas failed to make sure that his definition of it was made clear to an audience that would've had a very different association with the word already. That being said, I think he DOES make the THEME clear within the story, about selfishness and greed and an inability to let go and how burning the world for the people you love is bad and how you can always choose to be bad but you can always choose to be good again too. I don't think the themes that Lucas was going for in his films are honestly that weird or different from what we OFTEN see in films in Hollywood. The concept of "letting go" is literally everywhere. It crops up in SO MANY films, especially in films aimed at the same demographic, but even films aimed at a more adult audience, too. It's an incredibly basic and popular theme and it's not hard to pick up in his films.

But I think people heard the word "attachment" and it flipped them out because the word attachment is basically equivalent to "relationship" or "love" most of the time in more Western media (see literally any Jane Austen film, they use the word a lot in there) and so they came to the conclusion that the Jedi forbid relationships and love entirely and then it led them to the conclusion that the Jedi were corrupt and THAT'S why Anakin fell to the dark side. That one word being tossed into the dialogue without adequate clarification on how Lucas was defining it had a cascade effect on people's ability to understand the story within the Prequels.

For example, there IS a parallel between Anakin's fall and the corruption of an institution in the Prequels, so people are picking up on something that DOES EXIST in the films, they're just applying it to the wrong institution. It's not the Jedi Order that parallels Anakin's corruption, it's the SENATE. But because people applied the corruption thing to the Jedi, they ended up dismissing the Senate as just already evil because it became the Empire later and it just becomes yet another way to blame the Jedi for things because they were working for an inherently evil organization and either didn't care or were too blind to realize it. So you can see how a misunderstanding of one word in one line of dialogue in one film ended up changing the entire understanding of the films.

But to a kid watching the movies, the word attachment might not yet be something they're familiar enough with to misunderstand. They might just gloss over that line of dialogue the way they would anything that involved a word they didn't totally understand and just rely on the visuals and music and other dialogue to lead them to the correct conclusions. Kids watching these films are capable of picking up that OF COURSE the Jedi are the good guys the whole time, of course they're not corrupt monsters, everything in the films made it very clear that they're the good guys. And it's a lot easier to pick up on the real themes of the story and the way the films are telling it when you start from that conclusion.

So, for me, when I was first reading those essays about what attachment meant in Star Wars and what Lucas had said about it, it didn't feel like I was getting a whole new understanding of the story so much as things were FINALLY slotting into place with what I'd understood as a child. My feelings about the Prequels and the story I'd gotten from them had never really aligned with what everyone else seemed convinced was true, but I'd never met anyone else who saw them positively before, so I'd just assumed if I liked them then it was because I'd watched them incorrectly, that I only liked them because I'd been shown the Prequels first when I was really young whereas everyone else had watched the Original Trilogy first. For me, reading these different interpretations of the Prequels that showcased a very different story than the one most people knew about wasn't NEW (not precisely anyway), it was just VALIDATING. There was a REASON I'd liked them before, a reason I still DID like them as an adult, even though everyone around me seemed to hate them and believe unequivocally that they were terrible films.

So is some of the dialogue weird? Sure, it's clunky sometimes, and there are things that aren't made clear enough, but I don't think Lucas was RELYING on his dialogue to get his story across. He's said before that in some ways he views Star Wars as silent films and the dialogue that's in it is more like music. The story isn't told through the dialogue for him, it's told through the visuals and the dialogue itself is secondary. And this works out fine when you're a kid who's used to dialogue sometimes not being understandable anyway and so you're more reliant on visuals and music to help you figure out the story, but the adults who were watching it were more used to relying on the dialogue to tell them everything they needed to know and so these films fell short. So while I do think the dialogue was flawed, I don't think it really hinders understanding of the story Lucas was trying to tell, but popular fandom interpretations of the films becoming the ONLY interpretation of the films DOES hinder understanding of that story.

[juletheghoul]

Oblivius Chapter 5

I have so many feelings about these two, Spills & Francis may be two idiot babies but they're my idiot babies and I LOVE them. Lots of yearning in this chapter, and maybe a different side to Claudia.👀

Likes & reblogs are appreciated

Frankie Morales x F!Reader

Pairing: Frankie x F!Reader

Word Count: 3K

Warnings: Angst, yearning, 18+ language, mentions of alcohol / being drunk (Please let me know if I forget anything)

Masterlist Series Masterlist Part 4 Part 6 Playlist

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Age 18:

His truck was full.

He was driving, you were shotgun - like always - and there were three more friends in the back. The trunk held boogie boards and towels, sunscreen and a cooler full of food and drinks.

You got there early enough that you found a good spot and within half an hour you were completely set up. There were three big beach blankets spread out with two big umbrellas to hide under when the sun got too hot.

“Spills, can you get my back?” He was handing you the sunscreen as he pulled his shirt up.

You were momentarily taken aback, you’d known him for so long, this wasn’t your first beach trip but he looked… good.

You spent a little longer than you should have making sure every inch of the golden skin of his back and shoulders was covered in sunscreen. Making sure to dip your hands just under the band of his swim trunks. When he turned he had a big smile and you had to ignore the way your stomach flipped.

Get a grip, it’s just Francis.

You couldn’t get a grip though, not with the way butterflies swarmed in your stomach whenever you paid attention to him. His hair was growing out a bit, curling slightly at the edges. You’d never thought about him this way and you had to keep reminding yourself to look away.

Later on in the day when you were in the water you played the same games you’d played since you were kids and when you jumped on his back he didn’t push you away; his skin warm from the sun. Instead he let you wrap your legs around him and everything felt right.

“You okay back there?” He laughed as he held onto the back of your knees.

“Peachy.” You smiled as you held on.

-------------------------------

**Present Day**

“Hola Mijo, you better go in there and calm her down.” His mom greeted him at the door when he walked in, her eyebrows raised at him.

“Hola mami, what happened?” He kissed her on the cheek like he always did before making his way further into the house. She couldn’t say - just that Claudia was upset. He was walking towards her, but his mind was still back with Spills. He could still smell her hair as he made his way into the den.

It’s the same shampoo, she still uses the same shampoo. Focus Francisco.

Claudia was almost shouting into her cellphone.

“Well I need it here sooner than that. My wedding is in three weeks and I need everything to be perfect - so I don’t give a shit what you have to do to get my dress here in time but you better find a way to do it!” She was looking daggers at him and he let her finish the phone call before he spoke.

“What’s going on babe?” He put his hands on her arms and started trying to calm her but she shrugged out of his grasp.

“What’s wrong Francisco, is that I told you this would be difficult.” She wasn’t yelling but her tone was icy. “How am I supposed to get married without a wedding dress. Would have been fine if we were back home.”

Not this again.

“Claudia, I told you when we got engaged that I wanted to get married here and you agreed. I explained to you very clearly that I’ve been away from my home, my life, my family - my friends for years and I wanted to get married here. Now tell me what the problem is.” He wanted his feelings to be clear. He loved Claudia, he really did. She was sweet and beautiful and she treated him well. She could be a little spoiled though and if he didn’t put his foot down now, he’d never have a choice about anything ever again.

He would not live his life that way.

“Yes I know I agreed, and for the most part I’m okay with it. I know your whole life is here, but it would have been so easy to get married there.” She pouted and it didn’t invoke the feeling it should have. It didn’t spur him to try to please her, it annoyed him.

He momentarily thought about when Spills pouted up at him, it never annoyed him. He pushed the thought away.

“Maybe, but we’re not getting married there. We’re getting married here, now what can we do? Let's look for a solution.” He softened up at her a little bit, after all he wanted her to be happy.

She sighed loudly and put her arms around his neck, her voice got a little higher as she tried to appeal to him.

“Frankie, baby- I just want everything to be perfect.”

That doesn’t work on me.

“Let’s just try to have everything go smoothly. It’ll be our day regardless, right?” He put his hands on her waist to bring her close, trying to get her out of her head.

“How long do we have to stay here Francisco?” She leaned back to look up into his face and he sighed.

“We have to talk about that, after the wedding we’re going back to stay with your family for a little while but then we have to talk about where we’re going to live.” He held her, but she pulled away.

“I don’t want to live here after Francisco. I appreciate that you grew up here and everything and we can visit but I do not want to live here.” She crossed her arms petulantly, and he took a deep breath to steady himself. They’d spoken about this before and she had agreed to give it an honest try, but they’d been in town less than a week and already she was telling him she hated it.

“You can’t know that in three days babe.” He sat on the couch.

When they agreed to get married - he’d been scared of this, he’d been scared that she’d do this. He knew she loved him, and he loved her - as much as he could - but the look on her face when he’d put his foot down about spending this time at home should have told him everything.

She didn’t say anything, she sat with him and reluctantly agreed.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. I just miss home. I’ll give it another shot.” She sounded genuine and he wanted to believe that. “How was your night with Spills? Is she feeling better?” She smiled at him, putting her hand on his thigh and he placed his over hers. A silent truce.

“She’s doing much better, we ate dinner and watched a movie.” He held her hand as he spoke and she smiled at him.

“I’m glad to hear that - hopefully she doesn’t get that drunk at the wedding.” She laughed lightly.

He knew she didn’t mean it in a nasty way, but he bristled at her words.

“She was just nervous about meeting all of you, and even if she did it would be fine. Everyone gets drunk at weddings.” He tried not to sound defensive but she raised her eyebrows at him. “I just don’t want you to think that she’s a mess. She’s like a-” He couldn’t say sister, he’s never thought of her as a sister. She was so much more. “She’s just really important to me.”

“I know babe. I didn’t mean it like that, she seems sweet.” She smiled at him. She was still trying to get back in his good graces, taking his defensiveness as residual anger. Thankfully.

“We should plan something for all of us to do together. It could give us more time to bond.” He thought about it momentarily then agreed, he knew exactly what to plan.

------------

There was something playing on the TV, you caught vague flashes - people talking but you weren’t taking anything in. Your sweatshirt smelled like Frankie and all you wanted was to cuddle up to him. He had been so sturdy beside you, so strong and comfortable.

What the fuck is a wedding emergency?

The mature - adult part of your brain said she was a nice person and if Frankie was with her it was for a reason. Obviously he was happy with her or he wouldn’t be marrying her. Frankie had never been the kind of person to settle.

The other part of your brain, the jealous possessive part told you she was a bitch. She was ruining the life you’d planned out with Frankie. If he’d never met her you’d be together now, laughing and planning the rest of your lives together. He’d be in your bed, or you’d be in his.

[Francis]: Hey Spills, we’re planning a get together for the wedding party - day after tomorrow - beach day. I’ll be there to pick you up at 7am.

It was like the universe was testing you. How many memories could he taint with Claudia?

[you]: sounds good, Claudia, you, me and who else in rustbucket?

[Francis]: Just you and I, and don’t call her that. Claudia’s family is coming so she’s going to ride to the beach with them. I’ll grab coffee on the way. =)

[you]: Hope you have a new tape in there, if I have to listen to queen I’ll jump out of the car

[Francis]: lol a ride is a ride Spills, see you then

[Francis]: was really nice hanging out with you today btw, goodnight

[you]: I had a great time with you - like always, thanks again for all the food, goodnight Francis!

--------

It was easy to ignore everything when you were getting work done, you had taken off a few days when you knew Francis would be home and you were taking advantage of it. The day before your beach trip was used to do all those little tasks you tended to put off.

Your laundry was done, the kitchen was clean, even the fridge had gotten a bit of elbow grease. Everything was ready and packed for the trip.

You tried not to think about the ride to the beach with Francis, you tried not to think back to your previous trips to the beach with him. Those memories were so precious and thinking about how your next memory would be with him, and his new in-laws was tearing you up inside.

Please let this go well, please don’t let me make a fool of myself.

You hoped someone was listening.

The anxiety didn’t let you sleep and you watched the clock crawl closer to morning; it seemed pointless to lay there.

Might as well get ready.

-----

He wasn’t nervous, but he wasn’t excited.

He made his way over to her house, stopping to grab coffee on the way. He thought about his conversation with Claudia, about the possibility of leaving this place. He really didn’t want to. He wanted to be close to his mom, he wanted to be close to his friends and his home.

I want to be close to Spills, I want to see her everyday.

He scolded himself, he was going to marry someone else. He kept trying to remind himself, but when he saw her walking towards his car it all went out the window.

God Spills, you’re killing me.

She put her beach bag and a small cooler in the backseat and got into his truck with a big smile, pushing all other thoughts out of his mind. He handed her the coffee he bought and she took it gratefully, brushing against his fingers, even now - she affected him so much.

Snap out of it Francisco, you aren’t a teenager anymore. This is your friend.

“Hazelnut?” She asked as she smelled the steam floating around her pretty face.

“Of course.” He pulled away from her place, making his way towards the highway. It would be an hour or so until they got to the beach.

“Open up.” The buttery bagel half she put into his mouth as he drove tasted better than he remembered.

------

The drive was over much too soon.

If only it had lasted all day - catching him up on all the gossip he’d missed out on while away. Watching his excitement when he talked about flying, you could have listened to him talk forever.

“Finally!” Cheers rang out when the two of you arrived. The boys had set up a bunch of blankets and umbrellas and you suddenly remembered the state you’d been in the last time they saw you and you felt the blush creeping up.

Benny smiled big when he saw you, tapping the place beside him after you’d all said your hellos. You had no reason to deny him so you sat, setting up all your stuff within the space he made for you.

Blessedly, Claudia hadn’t arrived yet and you cherished this time without her, maybe it was mean - maybe it was selfish but you couldn't help it.

“Hey - Thanks for the other night, for getting me home and making sure I was okay.” Pope set up his stuff on the other side of you.

“No problem, glad to see you feeling better.” He was talking to you but you noticed him give Benny a curious look. Benny ignored it. You watched as Will and Frankie set up a volleyball net, you studied both men and there was no denying that Will was gorgeous; but your eyes were drawn to Frankie. You couldn’t help it, your eyes raked over him greedily.

He was so broad, stronger than he had been in his teen years and his belly had gotten a little softer with age but it suited him. He was gorgeous, he had always been gorgeous. He felt your eyes on him then and he smiled at you, walking over to you with the sunscreen in his hands like he always did. His smile faltered slightly when his gaze landed behind your place in the sand.

“Hey babe, how was the drive?” Claudia and her family had arrived and they were setting up just behind you.

Do you have some sort of alarm? How are you always ruining every single goddamn moment?

“It was hectic! Left a little later than I meant to but we survived.” She was breathless as she came to greet him. You busied yourself with something, anything in your bag to avoid watching them kiss. When you looked back she was squeezing sunscreen onto his back, rubbing the lotion much the same way you used to whenever you’d come to the beach together.

He didn’t meet your eyes when she did it, and you were thankful. You didn’t think you could handle seeing him enjoying her touch so much. Instead you focused on the people around you. You focused on Benny and Will and Pope, trying your best to ingratiate yourself to them. Hopefully erase the memory of you as a belligerent mess.

---

As the day went on you found that you liked these guys, not just as an extension of Francis - but because they were fun. They made you laugh, they spoke to you like they’d known you your whole life. They almost distracted you enough. You also noticed that Claudia was only here to lounge in the sun. She had absolutely no interest in getting in the water, no matter how many times she was asked by Frankie to join him.

He played it off like it didn’t bother him but you knew it did, and that in turn hurt you but your heart leapt when he turned to you.

“Spills, wanna come in the water with me?” He smiled and held out his hand and you gladly accepted. Following him in like you always had.

“Not much of a swimmer?” You couldn’t help but ask when the two of you were in the water.

“Not really, it’s a shame - the water's perfect today.” He floated, making sure to splash you and you waited until he was perfectly relaxed to splash him back. “God I love it here.” he spoke as he floated closer and closer.

“Me too. I want to live near the ocean one day.” You spoke absentmindedly, trying to feel for little shells or rocks as you walked further and further from the shore. He followed you.

You felt him splashing you from behind and you tackled him. The two of you turned into children in the water and it ended with you wrapped around his back like always. His hands on the back of your knees as you held on. You both watched the shore in silence, everyone too focused on whatever they were doing to notice your closeness and you were thankful for it. It made you hold on tighter, trying to get closer and he wrapped your legs around his tummy.

Maybe it was inappropriate, maybe if Claudia had been watching she would have had some words for him, or you, or both of you - but it didn’t stop you.

“Let’s just stay out here Spills. Let’s stay in the water forever.” He stroked the skin of your shins under the water and it was so hard not to cry right then and there. “Just you and me, living in the water.” He laughed but it came out sad.

“I’m game.” You rested your chin on his shoulder briefly and he bumped your head with his. This one little moment made the whole day worth it, and when he pulled away as you knew he would, your heart broke just a little bit more.

You were both wrong in your assumptions however. The moment you had thought was private, that you thought you’d stolen without anyone knowing had been seen and catalogued by someone on the shore. Pope had seen the whole thing, and he had some words for Francis.

--------------

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[guardianspirits13]

I wanna talk about Natsuo Todoroki for a second here.

tw// mentions of abuse, self harm, and suicide

Natsuo visibly has the most emotional trauma out of anyone else in his family (Touya not included), and I really wanna talk about why that is.

For starters, we haven't seen him really smile since he was introduced in chapter 187. He's introduced as having a friendly, easygoing persona and it's easy to imagine this is how most people outside of his family know him. However, every time we see him appear since then, another layer of his trauma is revealed and expanded upon, and it cuts DEEP.

I think the main reason that Natsuo still seems so vulnerable compared to the rest of his family is different than what you'd assume. Fuyumi and Shouto both spend a lot of time around Endeavor, and have been in close proximity to his (relatively recent) decision to atone. They have seen his growth firsthand and come to terms with it. Rei has obviously taken a very different path to healing- not entirely voluntarily- but she has been working with doctors and therapists for years to change and recover and reconnect with herself and her children. Natsuo is off at college, and takes every opportunity he can to avoid Endeavor. He (understandably) wants nothing to do with him, and shows stagnant resistance to his attempts to atone.

The reason why Natsuo can't move on from the past is because his trauma didn't come from Endeavor. It came from Touya.

Now initially we were led to believe that it was simply Touya's untimely death that still bothers Natsuo, and it makes sense seeing how Endeavor drove him to the edge. Losing his best friend and brother as a young kid without parents to support him or any therapist to speak of can absolutely been the source of persistent emotional damage, but the more and more we learn about Touya's situation, the more evident it becomes that Natsuo's trauma is much much deeper than even grief.

Touya, as we know, was driven by an ambition instilled in him by his father and experienced extreme rejection sensitivity when those ambitions were no longer realistic. Touya's relationship with his parents could be described as insecure attachment, a psychological term primarily regarding how kids react and respond to their parents and other close relationships. As he was raised, Touya learned to equate his potential to be a hero with his personal worth and similarly confounded attention with love. The difference being, of course, that love is unconditional, but even attention was being continually directed away from him as a punishment for continuing to train and burn himself so he could once again become worthy in his fathers' eyes.

This is where Natsuo comes in. At first it was assumed that all of the Todoroki children were born out of Endeavor's strong-willed desire to have a child that could surpass All Might, but we learned that this isn't exactly the case. I'd argue that it was narratively poetic on Horikoshi's part once this was expanded upon. Fuyumi was born to support and encourage her brother, and that is the exact role she plays 23 years later, keeping her family together.

Natsuo's case is even more intersting.

It was bad enough if Natsuo was only born for the potential of his quirk, but it's even more sinister that the sole intent behind his birth was to discourage Touya from his ambitions. I'd say it was to replace him, but it was more to promote the idea that Touya was expendable than to raise aonther kid with the same ideals but the potential to actually achieve it, although that was definitely a secondary motivation.

The parallelism in this is how much Natsuo's life revolves around Touya. He was born because of Touya, he looked up to and took care of Touya as a kid, and the absence of Touya in the present continues to drive him and his decisions in life (but more on that later).

I continue to pray that we will eventually get more solid backstory on Natsuo and Touya's relationship as kids and where it cut off, wether on a bad note or not, but there are a few things we know for certain. One, Touya was mentally ill. Yes, he was rejected by his parents but he seems to have been particularly vulnerable to this compared to any of his siblings since he was the first of them and thus relied only on his parents for validation in his early years. He shows early signs of a variety of different mental disorders, particularly BPD, which I have previously written a whole analysis for on its own. Touya is shown self-harming both by the very nature of his quirk and even by very directly ripping his hair out. He was incredibly self-destructive.

This is why it is so much more concerning to me that Natsuo, who was AT LEAST four years younger than him, was his primary source of comfort. Natsuo was too young to have known anything more than 'my big brother is sad that daddy won't train him anymore' and he obviously wasn't equipped in any way to handle Touya's severe mental illness. Touya most definitely needed professional treaatment as his forms of coping were abnormal even for the neglect and rejection that he experienced. Natsuo comforted Touya through breakdown after breakdown, and more than that Touya relied on him and came to him voluntarily for support. Natsuo was the best option he had, and he took full advantage of that. The main source of Natsuo's trauma was Touya's reliance on him.

Not to say at all that this was in any way Touya's fault- he was mentally ill and desperately in need of some form of comfort to keep him sane; it was almost a survival method at this point since neither of his parents really acknowleged him at all anymore. Touya's instability hurt Natsuo more than parental neglect ever did, but it was the neglect that enabled it and striped Touya of the supportive atmosphere he would have needed at this point not only to prevent but to heal from the mental damage he had already suffered.

Natsuo dealt with this for years and you can see how much it hurt him to see Touya in so much pain, not only from Endeavor's rejection but from his own self harm as well. For Natuso to know that his brotherly love would never be the same as having loving parents; would neve be enough- but at least it was something so he continued to love and care about his brother for little in return- is indicative of the kind of character he is.

(Edit: After the events of chapter 302 we know that Natsuo's relationship with Touya wasn't perfect. I will elaborate more on this in a different post, but I just wanted to clarify that although we were shown a very high-tension scene between them, it is implied that this was a regular occurrence that Natsuo was usually more receptive too but tired out of, in addition to Touya's spiraling mental health. It fit with the natrative to show the tension Touya was feeling with his family from all directions, but Natsu and Touya clearly had a stronger relationship up to and before this point, evidenced by their sharing a room and playing together regularly.)

He is incredibly selfless, and it's interesting to note how many of his positive qualities as an adult stem from negative experiences as a kid. He never really felt love from his parents, so he relied on Touya (and likely also Fuyumi) for that as well. If he grew up learning he had to give love in order to recieve it back, it absolutely influenced who he became in the future, a solid example of this being the responsibility he feels to reach out and have a relationship with Shouto and further regrets that he wasn't able to help his abuse in the past either. Another aspect of his character that intruigues me is how gentle he is. Personality-wise he seems about as opposite as he could be from the awkward, stoic, emotionally-stunted person that is Endeavor.

There are a couple of reasons for this, beyond what I've already discussed.

One, he had little to no contact with elements of toxic masculinity growing up, especially not from Endeavor.

Two, most of the influence he did have growing up was from Fuyumi, who is established to have endlessly cared for him since he was a literal baby.

Three, he grew up in a household where almost everyone around him was in much more literal, immediate pain than he was so he developed a very strong sense of empathy that might also have been tied to early survivor's guilt.

Now I have one important distinction to make, and that's the temptation to label him as a 'softboy' or something of the like after seeing him caring for his family and more pointedly, watching him break down in tears during chapter 252. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with men being soft or vulnerable (on the contrary it's actually so so important and relevant that Hori is writing characters like this in a mainstream shounen manga but that's an essay for another time), it is unfair to label him as such based on a moment when his trauma is being exposed.

Because his truama stems from such a young age, there is a blurry line between just being born with more emotional intelligence and the situation he was in fostering those traits. You know, the classic nature/nurture thing. My point being, it's important to tread carefully when discussing the nature of his personality to avoid invalidating his trauma; I have no doubt that he is very strong for having survived these things, and the moments we see of him onscreen are definitely among his most vulnerable.

Another thing that people less familiar with Natsuo's character might assume is that he is hot-headed and argumentative. I thought that at first too- after all, he doesn't seem to shy away from yelling at Endeavor when given the opportunity. However, this doesn't seem to be the case at all.

The first real scene we see him in with Endeavor, the man walks into the room and Natsuo decides he can't handle it and goes to leave. However, Endeavor happens to be blocking the doorway. Endeavor physically stops him and provokes him to his face, asking him to say whatever is on him mind. While Natsuo is notably not confrontational, Endeavor is. I think it's fair to say that he felt at least uneasy at this gesture. Natsuo is very honest with his feelings, and it's obvious that he's pissed at the audacity of Endeavor to be so oblivious to his own son. This is presumably one of the first real interactions they've ever really had, and at this point Natsuo has been dealing with trauma (caused by Endeavor!) on his own for years, and Endeavor seems completely oblivious to his pain and dismmisive to the rest of the family's as well.

Again during the internship arc Natsuo tries to get along with Endeavor and this time he actually gives it a fleeting chance. Tensions are high, however, and the conversation very quickly becomes uncomfortable, at which point he leaves. It is continually implied that Natsuo is uncomfortable being around Endeavor because his very presence brings up painful thoughts and memories of a time when sharing the same space as him was a warning to run and hide. This is later directly confirmed by Natsuo as he says that every time he looks at Endeavor's face he remembers Touya and the pain he was in.

I feel like an important side note is that we have never seen Natsuo outside the context of his family, which is understandable, as the role he plays in the story directly relates to them. However, if you take a look at Shouto, even though his experiences have shaped him to become who he is, he definitely acts differently when Endeavor's not in the vicinity.

Back to Touya's death, it would be very rare that someone would mourn a death for an entire decade without finding closure unless there are other factors preventing it, and uncomfortably this seems to be the same thing for both Natsuo and Endeavor: guilt.

This is getting incredibly long already, but it's important to note that Natsuo probably felt an incredible responsibility to take care of Touya and protect him because of his empathetic nature. His love was never going to be the same as having loving parents. His encouragement was never going to be the same as having support from Endeavor. Even further than then neglect and abandonement, it was not being able to save Touya that really made Natsuo feel worthless.

He seems to try and remedy this inability to save Touya and diminish his guilt by doing everything he can to be better. He reaches out to Shouto to be a better brother, he consistently pushes his limits to entertain Fuyumi's notion of a happy family, and he's working hard towards a degree rhat will allow him to help people like Touya (and Rei) because he failed to do so in the past.

His bio mildly implies that he didn't have much of a direction he was heading in after high school, but Fuyumi's encouragement led him to seek out his current college career. This goes back to Natsuo's 'purpose' in a sense revolving arount Touya, from his birth to his relationship with him to his death, after which he lost his direction. They were always rather inseperable, so naturally their seperation hit Natsuo hard. He lost his direction in life so when Fuyumi encouraged him to rediscover it, he thought of helping people, because that's ultimately what he was born to do.

Thank you so, so much for reading this if you made it to the end! I clearly have a lot of thoughts on this. Let me know what you think about it as well, and hopefully we'll get more info on this soon in the manga :)