#projection? don't know her

[cloudycaffeinatedcryptid]

What do you think the comfort activities would be for each counselor? Like if they had a really long or bad day and they just want to decompress at the end of it?

ooooh thank you so much for this <3 this is the perfect break between writing binges & i love this question!! prepare for a lot of headcanons, i had to think about this a lot

Abi - i think she draws, that's pretty canon, it calms her down. i also think she paints when she really wants to zone out & not think (she loves watercolor but she's been experimenting with acrylics lately) & she does a lot of landscape paintings. the only color that usually sits untouched is red. the smears on her fingers bring up bad memories. she also burns relaxing incense & listens to soothing instrumental tracks

Ryan - he listens to his podcast usually, but i think his sister plays piano (she's very good) & she often gets him to sit down so she can teach him scales or beginner songs & it relaxes him. otherwise i can see him settling down in the comfortable chair wedged in the corner of his room with his drawing tablet, lights dim, & just working on some art. occasionally his sis barges in to play her DS on his bed while he does & then they both just exist together in silence

Nick - they give us so little about Nick that i honestly could just say anything about this freak. but i think he gets stoned & watches terrible movies when he needs to decompress. he's seen Llamageddon eight times. i can also see him going for short walks or half-listening to nature documentaries while he cooks

Emma - when she needs to wind down, she love taking hot baths. she has a ton of bath bombs & oils & products, so she lights some scented candles, turns off the lights, puts on some relaxing tunes, & soaks. i also think she learned to sew so she could mend her own expensive clothes, but then she ended up enjoying it, so she sew/embroiders sometimes on the side to relax. she prolly does yoga too

Kaitlyn - she goes for runs, for sure. it's good exercise, builds her stamina, & helps keep her mind off... everything. she likes the early morning runs when it's just chilly enough to barely see her breath & she has a killer playlist for them. her guilty pleasure is rupaul's drag race & so every season you can catch her, fresh out of the shower, in her sweats, mug of coffee in hands & a bottle of wine on the table, pore strips on, enraptured & getting way too intense about the show

Dylan - this mans pops three edibles & opens the NASA website so he can watch space in real time. if he can manage it, he'll lay for hours on the floor with his cat purring on his chest. sometimes he'll watch cartoons or sci-fi shows to zone out, or he'll put on his headphones & try to forget the world. no i'm not projecting

Jacob - he strikes me as the kind of person who considers working out to be relaxing, so he spends a lot of his free time doing that. otherwise i see him being into cheesy rom-coms (altho he'd never admit it) so some nights he makes himself some popcorn, mixes in m&ms, & settles in to watch The Notebook for the tenth time

Laura - she's def one of those ppl who can't go too long without doing something so her "relaxing" time is usually cleaning, animal care - possibly a gamer. she likes staying busy. whenever she actually settles down to relax, it's usually with & bc of Max. they play checkers together & watch movies they can make fun of. they binge criminal minds together. she's not great in the kitchen but she helps Max bake sometimes & she's an expert on the grill. i think she would enjoy taking up gardening if they get their own property

Max - he loves his relaxation time. he bakes, he naps, he definitely would enjoy gardening, but he always relaxes easier when he's with Laura <3 he prolly plays idle video games like animal crossing, he was for sure heavy into pokemon, & he loves cartoons. the most relaxing time of the day for him is 3pm, when he can eat cereal on the couch & watch scooby-doo, & he doesn't need a blanket bc the blinds are open & the sun keeps him warm :)

[justiceforplutoo]

I feel like steddies are always going for bi steve/gay eddie but consider: comphet gay steve/bi eddie. I'm so sure someone's said this before but...consider with me, ok?

consider a young child steve whose father still works in hawkins but is never with the family, leaving steve with his mother and his mother's girl-friends. they talk all about their husbands and their families and one day steve, all innocent, asks his mom, "when will I get a husband?"

his mother clutches her chest and says, "oh no, stephen, that isn't how that works."

steve who confusedly nods along and goes with it.

steve who chastises himself every time he catches himself staring in the locker room, or in gym, or at swim meets.

steve who finds himself, years later, confused as to why he can't find himself feeling for the girls he dates the way they do for him.

steve who convinces himself that he'll find the right girl one day.

consider steve sitting on the floor of the starcourt bathrooms with robin, covered head to toe in vomit and blood. and this is it, right? this is the part where he gets the girl. and something in him cringes at the thought. something in him says, no, you don't want her.

he brushes it off as king steve telling him who he should and shouldn't date.

and then robin starts panicking and talking about tammy thompson (oh.) and suddenly they're singing muppets and steve has this paradigm shift because he doesn't have to get the girl.

it takes him a couple months and one "don't ya, big boy?" to make him realize that he doesn't have to get the girl.

and it's funny - honestly, it is - because robin comes out and so does will and eddie is...himself, but steve thinks to himself, well, that's good for them, but it could never be me.

and he keeps saying that it could never be him until the split second before he realizes it is him.

it could never be him, he thinks, but rocky horror picture show is playing in the background and eddie leans into his space and talks all about how sexy rocky's body is and somehow that leads to jocks and somehow that leads to, "so what do you like, steve?"

and somehow that leads to a strained and breathless, "I think I like you, eddie."

and then they're kissing, and steve is desperately pawing at eddie's collar, unsure where to put his hands. it's a blur, and all steve really registers is that they're kissing, and then-

and then steve starts crying. silently, at first, and in the heat of the moment, unnoticeable, except then steve is pushing eddie away and eddie looks hurt.

"I read that wrong, didn't I?" says eddie.

steve gulps in air, face red, and barely manages out a "no".

"...no?"

"I don't think I like girls, eddie. but I like you."

"you know you can like both, right? I mean, I do."

steve nods, then shakes his head. "I think I just like boys, eddie."

"oh, okay."

eddie leans in for another kiss.

[kat-aa]

[beargregor]

wait i'm curious, what makes you say that gregor doesn't like everyone else (if i read that post right)? just curious since i've never seen anyone else say that

i don't necessarily think gregor dislikes everyone else at lcb but i do think that gregor is an incredibly petty person that isn't nearly as close to the rest of the sinners and even outright dislikes some of them cough cough rodya cough cough which a lot of people just Refuse to see because he's as much of a doormat as he is. there's several examples i could get into to try and prove my point however i'll just focus on what i personally think to be the biggest ones.

additionally, this is going to be kind of long, so i'm adding a read more. read more! read it. sorry for being so wordy. i have several diseases.

Pt1. gregor is the type to try and get along at least decently with everyone, especially if he gets a good first impression from them.

this is less a point in favor of gregor's distance w/ the rest of the sinners and more just a contributing factor to it. once again there's several examples i could point to here but i think the most in your face one happened in canto I with yuri, as several people have pointed out. even before gregor comes clean about growing attached to her as quickly as he did because she reminds him of his sister, we get this interaction.

i'll go ahead and make the disclaimer now that i don't necessarily think gregor is the most reliable of narrators, especially when it comes to his feelings and interactions with most people, but from the way he acts when the topic of yuri comes up (and the way we still see him act even all the way up to c7, nearly a whole year after yuri's death) i don't see reason to question his sentiment here. gregor immediately got that aya and yuri were close, potentially even taking note of their traded belts, and went out of his way to get something nice for yuri despite hardly knowing her.

i feel like a lot of people have forgotten as much, especially since it's been so long since c1, but gregor actually spent a good bit of season 1 doing the exact same thing with the other sinners! gregor reads a connection between him and ishmael pretty quickly despite getting off to a rocky start

mostly because gregor can tell that ishmael is pretty sardonic in a very similar way to him. there's been multiple instances where ishmael and gregor have essentially expressed the same sentiment at different moments, most notably gregor's little argument after ishmael got shot with a decay ampule in c4

and ishmael's response to pilot talking about self-sacrifice in c5

i could go ahead and pull up more examples, but in general pm has gone out of their way to show us that gregor and ishmael are pretty similar, so it makes sense for gregor to assume that they're friends, right?

this will be pushpin 1. keep note of this for Later.

ishmael's only the first sinner we see gregor trying to do this with in s1, we also see him try it out with heathcliff, sinclair, and ryoushuu

he's tried to get along with charon, being one of very few sinners that we've seen actually try to establish a connection with her at all

even rodya, despite my insistence that gregor doesn't like her nearly as much as the fandom thinks he does

all of these seem pretty fine and dandy, right? sure it frequently leans towards self-degradation, micromanaging, and commiseration, but gregor can at least be pretty chummy with most of the sinners, can't he?

Pt2. hell's chicken was more than just comic relief guys please

i'm fully aware that this is quite the hot take, but i think hell's chicken deserves a lot more credit for character writing than the fandom gives it. hell's chicken gave us foreshadowing for several events, such as the donqui bloodfiend reveal

heathcliff's distortion in c6 (as well as hong lu's highly speculated distortion at some point in the future)

and ryoushuu and sinclair's continued connection by making him the odd one out on her team

which, hey! that implies something about gregor's odd one out, don quixote, too, doesn't it? yes. yes it does. that's pushpin 2. keep note of that for later.

speaking of pushpins, hey! that's pushpin 1!

splitting into teams is one of the major events in hell's chicken, and most of the sinner's choices are either motivated by very little, backhanded, or motivated primarily by not wanting to be on the opposite leader's side. i didn't include all of the picks, just because i feel like including most of them already gets this across, but i think gregor took one major thing from this: most of the sinners, when push comes to shove, will only side with gregor when they refuse to or can't take his opponent's side.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm fully aware that this is primarily intended to be comedic relief, but when gregor is being described as having his trust broken by ishmael or nearly crying because no one on his team properly sided with him for him, i feel like it's pretty fair to read into this.

something that i think is pretty important to remember in conjunction with this is that we know that gregor is the type to hold a grudge, both from his general attitude towards the G corp soldiers in c1 as well as his continued distaste for vergilius

even beyond the splitting into teams of hell's chicken, the sinners have given gregor plenty of reasons to feel bitter. i feel like this is something people have noticed but haven't really put a finger on, but it's kind of wild just how often the rest of the sinners make gregor the butt of the joke

and sure, we could argue that a fair few of these aren't really made with any ill intent. quite a bit of it could have been meant as harmless teasing, but with gregor being more sensitive than most, it coming from nearly all sides, and as often as it does? yeah, i think he's prone to taking it a bit personally.

Pt3. yes i do still think gregor was the third most important character in canto VII you guys gotta hear me out okay

of course, all of this leads up to the bit of the story i highlighted, doesn't it? c7? i totally get why people haven't really picked up on all the gregor things i did in it, seeing as they were mostly not *directly* said about him or by him.

personally, i think that gregor's distaste for talking about himself on any serious level and thus leading to him getting sort of "sidelined" narratively (which i take issue with that claim, but still. it's effective for getting what i mean across atm) is supposed to lead players to take a deeper look at the times gregor gets held up to other characters and compare and contrast what's being said about them by the matchup. as i showed earlier with his immediate latching onto ishmael, i think this is something gregor himself is at least partially aware of too.

so, that begs the question, who was gregor compared to in canto VII that makes me think it's one of the most critical pieces in understanding his character?

really, i'd like to avoid getting too lost in the analysis of this canto specifically, since i'd like to do a proper post about this later, but i figure i can bury the lede a little before doing it properly.

c7 features several characters being made to perform in sansón's play, acting out the relevant backstory for this segment of the plot. a lot of these characters have rather direct, degrading reasons for playing the roles they do.

outis, a character with an inflated ego who wants her journey to have a purpose, is made to play an aimlessly wandering villager with a single line.

hong lu and ryoushuu, two characters for whom families and the expectations placed upon them are likely going to play a major role, are made to play bloodfiends.

rodya, a character who resents her lot in life and is constantly shown to be eager to leave her destitution behind her and become someone special, is made to play a helpless villager that's too poor to even offer any money to the hero that saves her.

heathcliff, a character that has spent most of his life getting dehumanized by comparing him to beastly animals, is made to play a literal bear whose sole purpose in the plot is to get beat up and then quickly left by the wayside.

sinclair, a character that has two opposed parties essentially treating him as a macguffin to procure for their side, is made to play the character who was arguably the catalyst for this entire canto, not to mention playing a decently major role in ruina.

our star don quixote is made to play her father, the first kindred, but there's someone by their side the entire time, isn't there? don quixote's dear, steadfastly loyal companion. a character which don quixote has tasked themself with getting to come out of their shell?

hello again, pushpin 2.

gregor has been made to play our unreachable star, sancho. someone had to, of course. you can't really tell a story without it's main character, now can you?

now, i should once again give a disclaimer. i am not trying to say that i think adapting what happens to donqui/sancho in c7 to gregor is the road pm is going to take here, not only would that toe a bit past the line of foreshadowing, but it'd also just amount to rehashing that plotline again, which i don't think would make for a particularly exciting story.

what i DO think is that we can take a lot of the things that are said to either directly be the case for sancho and use them to inform how we see gregor.

and god, does playing sancho have some fucking implications for our favorite ossan archetype.

starting off, the earliest moment we get to see of sancho is quite literally her just waiting for death to take her in a pile of ashes.

which, i should remind everyone, is actually pretty damn close to what happens to gregor's literary counterpart at the end of the metamorphosis. gregor samsa experiences one final breaking point that pushes him over the edge and makes him decide to just wait for starvation to take him.

gregor and sancho both consider themselves to no longer be human, something which sancho goes out of her way to highlight repeatedly throughout the canto and gregor is quick to get defensive on her behalf for when outis starts really tearing into her

sancho spends quite a lot of this story denying herself the joys of community and friendship, despite knowing that, even with the rest of the sinners frequently making jokes at her expense and outright insulting her, they were things that she desperately craved.

and, while this is getting into my "outis is a red herring meant to distract us from gregor's eventual betrayal" theorizing, i also think it's worth noting for this discussion that sancho's fellow kindreds, her family, all seem to be under the impression that she dislikes them and ultimately her departure was an act of betrayal

and that, despite gregor being one of LCB's resident mood makers and attempted conflict de-escalators, one of the sinners that's most prone to making appeals to the bonds they've all forged together, only him and faust remained silent during everyone's speech

so yeah, i think there's quite a lot of little details and hints building up to the reveal that gregor's not quite as fond of everyone as he presents himself to be. i do think a lot of this ultimately comes down to gregor getting in the way of his own happiness, similarly to donqui, particularly because he's been frequently portrayed as something of a self fulfilling prophecy, especially by giving him as many christ allegories as they have by way of priest and garden of thorns. gregor is convinced that the rest of the sinners don't like him because he's not convinced anyone could like him, so he convinces himself that he hates them because why should he care if someone that he hates hates him too?

a lot of this ultimately ties back to my personal interpretation of what happens in the metamorphosis as well as my own theories regarding all the times gregor has made weird callbacks and references to lobcorp and ruina, but yeah. i think about this guy and his deeper characterization a fairly normal amount, i think.

to end this off i'll highlight one of my favorite little "gregor is fucking seething and trying so hard to keep it cool" moments, in the credits CG for c7 we see rodya teasing him by drawing a little horse on his window and actively pointing and laughing at it, which gregor really doesn't seem all too pleased about.

i personally think this ties into the other cruel part of sansón forcing gregor to play rocinante, which is the more literal "he's actually just straight up playing rocinante" side of things. gregor was quite literally made to play something less than human, less than even animal really, as he was reduced to nothing more than the shoes don quixote wore as she got to play the leading role. sansón directly makes jokes about gregor being nothing more than shoes in the play twice, which adds to this reading, i think.

this, imo, really plays into the adaptation of the metamorphosis! i've seen a lot of readings for the book that posit that, despite being the protagonist, gregor samsa can't really be considered the main character due to nearly everything he experiences in it being used to further his family's character development at his expense, which i think fits nicely with limbus gregor seemingly having the most said about him through indirect means by holding him up to other characters. also it's rodya carelessly making fun of His Big Major Insecurities™ again like she did in c1 which i always find fun. rodya i love you but god you're the worst.

[screwpinecaprice]

Sometimes I see old doodles and I forgot the context. Pretty sure this was a human AU but I forgot if Spinel was adopted, a cousin, or a half sister. And what 'it' were they talking about????

[cometblaster2070]

so i'm going to go fucking insane because for a while this aspect of malenia's character design has been bothering me and making me think I'm seeing things and going fucking crazy.

the aspect in question is malenia's left arm:

when i first saw malenia's arm my first thought was oh okay they're probably just bandages or some sort of wraps.

but then you look a bit closer and like

idk about you (because i might be losing it) but it seems like the mesh of whatever the fuck that is very clearly melded with her skin in a way/it looks like it's going into and then emerging out of her skin (which is HORRIFYING to think of I won't lie).

and once again i thought i was going crazy and seeing things because surely these were just meant to be wraps or bandages like the ones we see in the scene of her fighting radahn right?

and then the thought of the needle came to my mind. along with something malenia says in her cutscene before we fight her.

"my flesh was dull gold"

huh. now isn't that interesting.

this would imply that in order to stall the rot from consuming his sister, miquella made a plan to sew unalloyed gold into malenia's skin using his needle in a last-ditch attempt to save her arm.

(granted it's funnier to imagine he just sticks it in her arm and goes okay great all done! and that's probably the canon way it went but)

the thought of the sheer pain malenia must've gone through during this process, to be honest, and the thought of the guilt miquella must've felt at having to force his sister to endure even more agony just to help her is just sad.

and all of it is done just in an attempt to salvage what they can of her and hope that more can't be taken.

edit: btw when looking at malenia pre-bloom and pre-losing her needle it looks like there's a proper layer/cover/whatever it is around her arm up till her knuckles making it seem like an actual covering or layer on top of her skin and what not, but when we fight her post-bloom and post-losing needle it appears like some of the layers have either flaked or fallen away and that reveals that it's actually meshed with/into her skin.

[sxtystrs]

then... how much pink will eventually mask the blue?

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

jon val jon or something

[attleboy]

not tadc art BUT i just realized you guys have never seen the giant ceramic lps i made in senior year of high school and i need to show her off like look at her... my darling girl... posing with the original i based her off of for size comparison

she is very obviously made by human hands [lumpy] but that is part of her charm and you cannot convince me otherwise

and since her head and body are separate, she can turn her head in all directions just like the real deal!!

okay that is all. you have seen her now back to your normal programming

[da-janela-lateral]

*look at Mezato's parents* Did they Know.

[but-i-want-to-live-with-you]

A lot of the discussion I've seen over Helena Eagan either frames her as "an evil liar who pretended to be her innie and stalked mark to manipulate them and gather information for lumon" or "a poor precious baby who's trapped and wanted to be her innie so bad she tried to become her and fell in love/became obsessed with mark"

and to be honest I think both arguments are pretty shallow. I think it's something more complicated and I don't want anyone to forget the ways helena's showed innocence OR the ways she's been an antagonistic force.

like, she obviously did look down on the innies, didn't have respect for their autonomy, and went along with her father's will and she should be held accountable for all that. and yes, she's also a victim trapped in a cult, but that doesn't make her a baby. We need to take her seriously because for all we know she could have done much worse. I don't think we have to water down characters or come to premature conclusions in order to love/appreciate them. It's okay to say we don't completely understand a character and still be able analyze them. The nuance is what makes helena so compelling!

I have a lot of things to say and I WILL make a full post breaking down all of helena's appearances if people will hear me out lol

[neverpathia]

so, tumblr, here's a little cheated x thorn thing I wrote. (I say 'little' as if I didn't spend three whole days on it. It's pretty long. Take heed.)

i don't exactly know if it's one of my best works? and it feels a little like multiple ficlets condensed into one, but hey, productivity is productivity.

just know that cheated and thorn are wholesome, flawed, adorable, bumbling little guys, who hurt and yet heal.

“Must it be so fucking cold?” The Cheated jerked his hand aside sharply, flinging some snow off the back of his palm—and nearly tossing that hand away with it. He narrowly caught the appendage in mid-air, muttering curses as he haphazardly jammed it back onto the bloody stump. 

The Thorn chuckled, her scarred fingertips playing with a barren tree-branch. “There’s trees and grass around. I could weave a coat for you.”

His face flushed—no, he wasn’t flustered or anything, pah, must’ve been the damned weather—and he quickly turned away. “There’s no need. Really.”

She twirled around to face him, tangled hair drifting with the winter winds. “Come on, then. We’re almost there.”

They crossed a couple of meanders, punctuated by someone’s constant grumbling and the amusement of another. 

The Thorn got bored of the journey at some point, and before he knew it, Cheated’s complaints were cut short by a snowball smack in the face. His grimace turned to a grin as he pelted one back at her. She retaliated in turn. He tried to strike, but she ducked in time. She got him as he was packing snow into another ball. It went on like that. 

Her smile was playful, catlike. He’d stared at that smile for too long, and his heart raced, and something hitched in his throat—until a fresh hefty dose of snowball interrupted his simpering.

And they chased each other about the Endless Woods, until Cheated was breathless and his legs were both on the verge of falling apart again, red flesh sloshing against flesh. 

Thorn propped him against a rock, fixing his limbs back in place. “I’m sorry. That…wasn’t what I took you here to do.”

He leaned back, trying (and failing) to wink at her. “It’s all good. No worries, I swear.”

She giggled. “That wink was nasty. Did Opportunist teach you?”

“Should’ve known better than to trust that smarmy shit-load.” He shrugged—

—or tried to, but she held his arm in place. “Ah, no. Not yet.”

Cheated rolled his eyes. “How much longer?” 

“When you finally decide to stop complaining and let yourself rest.”

He cracked a smile. “Bloody hell, we’ll be at this rock for ages.”

She laughed. “Hey, at least you won’t have to see that ‘smarmy shit-load’. Trust me on this one.”

But it took a little less time than ‘ages’ before the Thorn took his hand in hers, scratches and scabs brushing past each other, and led him across the snow again. His strides were brash and wide; her silent footfalls never strayed far. 

Eventually, the snow gave way to grass. He toed a close-set cluster of grass-blades, a dent left in the clumps of snow that flanked it. “Huh. What’s this doing here? Are the woods changing again or something?”

“There.” She pointed. 

He squinted into the distance, before he fully registered the sight and gaped in dismay. “No fucking way. A path in the woods.”

Her smile was subtle, but sneaky all the same. “Where it ended, no…where we began, again.”

His gaze followed the path. It snaked uphill, and he could barely make out scattered red blossoms, further at the end…

He nearly choked. “This one? The exact same place?”

She sidled closer to him, giving his hand a squeeze. “I told you, I did have something to show you.”

The Thorn had to yank him back pretty hard before he could recklessly scramble up the hill. 

“No-no-no-no-no—” He nearly fell flat on his face, but Thorn’s grip on him never faltered— “how? This isn’t—the woods are endless, endless, there’s a crap ton of cabins just lying around—how did you find this one?” 

She ascended the path, at times in unsteady stumbles, at times with easy grace. “I’ve been wandering for a while.”

She tripped, but Cheated held her steady—except he teetered and went off-balance himself, and the two of them soon went careening into the dirt. Lesson learned: floundering around does not prevent you or your companion from getting a mouth full of hill. 

She leant over him, a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Peeling his face from off the floor, he spat out a glob of something unidentifiable. “Are you okay?”

She shook some mud off her face, off faded burns and pink-white wounds. “I didn’t expect the climb to be this...tough.”

“Nor did I,” he admitted. “Hell, I didn’t pay much mind to the climb myself the first time.” 

As she got up, her smile was wan. “You weren’t this cut-up the first time, were you?”

“Damn getting cut-up. I survived it better.”

Her tail gave a little flick, curious. “What do you mean?”

“This one was way worse. I was a lot more worried about, I don’t know, the fact that I’d just gotten stabbed—”

As soon as the words left his mouth he knew, he knew that he’d fucked up. 

Of course. 

Of course she’d know that he got stabbed, she’d been the one who stabbed him, they’d built that trust here so precariously, so in spite of all that had happened between them…and he’d remind her of that, here, now?

But Thorn only gave a tinkling little laugh. “Well, I do know, and I can’t blame you. I was a little preoccupied with getting stabbed myself.”

Oh. Well, he did stab her too, sort of…but she didn’t seem too mad about it. Cheated felt himself exhale. “That wasn’t my fault, by the way.”

She shrank back and covered her mouth in mock-surprise. “Oh, I definitely never knew that. It’s totally not like you’ve said that before, perhaps just once—”

He groaned. “Hey, now...” 

“—oh, maybe you said it twice, no, a thousand times already—”

“Come on, it can’t have been—”

She leant forward and placed a single, dainty finger on his lips. “You grouchy little thing. Of course I know. But we’re over that, aren’t we?”

He had forgotten how to breathe. Or move, or speak. Or keep the blood from rushing to his cheeks again, too warm, too fast; or to keep his face from betraying just how much he felt, and could never help but feel—

The Thorn skittered ahead. “Follow me. You do want to see this, don’t you?”

“H— Now, how dare—” He finally remembered words again. “How-dare-you-do-something-like-that-not-fair-what-the-hell-you-little-not-fair—”

She winked at him. 

And he had to admit that it was a lot better than his shoddy attempt from earlier.

They trudged on. 

They fell against the soil and stones, again, again. She got up. He flailed about. She picked him up by the back of his collar and nearly considered carrying him the entire way uphill, but he protested so hard that she mentioned something about tossing him back down instead. Oh, she couldn’t have meant it (surely?), but it shut him up nonetheless.

They reached the top together. Red poppies in full bloom lined the path, in rich clumps and heavy clusters. Thorn bent down, pawing at the flowers. 

“Huh. I knew there were poppies.” Cheated paused. “But I never really asked why.”

She gingerly reached for a single blossom, handling it by the stem. “I don’t know either.”

“No?” He lowered himself to the ground, sitting cross-legged beside her. “I guess I always thought you were behind them somehow.”

“Maybe I was.” She gently tilted the poppy, angling it, red petals tinting light in the diffusing dusk. “Subconsciously, perhaps. I never actually saw them, not until I…until we left.”

The Cheated shifted in his seat, closer to her. “I saw them when I came, I think.”

He paused.

“I just didn’t know what they meant.” Cheated gazed at the flower she was handling. The petals were the same colour as her wounds, and his own. “If they really did mean jack-shit.”

Wordlessly, Thorn snapped the poppy from its stem. “Maybe they didn’t.”

“Ah.” He had no idea how to respond. “Well, fuck that then—”

“Shh.” She lifted the flower between her thumb and forefinger, tender as a lover’s embrace. With her other hand, she probed the side of his head; his choppy matted locks, the slashed wings he had in place of ears. 

“What are you doing?” he asked, but he never drew away.

She raised the poppy-flower to his temples. “I trust you now,” she said simply.

 The Thorn slipped it into the Cheated’s hair, placed it snug above a wing, and fixed it with a few deft motions; an eternity softer than the hues of sunset before them…before, at long last, she pulled away. 

“Maybe the flowers don’t mean anything.” Their eyes met, her green against his gold. “Not by themselves. But they can be so much more, to us.”

“What…” He felt the side of his forehead, where the flower was. The petals were soft beneath his coarse, calloused fingers. “You…You—That was…”

He let it linger for a few beats. 

She retreated a few steps, eyeing him. “It does suit you.”

“I—” He shot to his feet. Air hitched in his throat, and if he hadn’t blushed enough earlier, he certainly did now. A lot. “That was—you devious little—! That—the flower—you—it…”

“That flower.” Thorn rose with both hands clasped behind her back, smirking just subtly. “Me.”

“Bah.” He let his hand fall from the flower. “You know, Thorn?”

“What is it?” Her scars, her burns, those delicate features, those eyes crafty and cautious; they caught the fading sunlight and played with it, danced with it and bathed in it. Just like the flower she had picked, soothing soft, better somehow.

His eyes fell away from hers. “I don’t know why I find you so damn pretty. But I do. And you are.”

She stepped closer to him, came before him, next to him. “It’s a little hard.” Her hand slipped into his, fingers intertwining. 

“What is?”

She turned, and her stare fixed steely. “To say ‘I love you.’”

The ruins were still there. 

“Um…” Cheated followed her gaze. He shot her a quick glance before looking back, hesitant. “Fuck, I don’t know if it feels right here. Should we enter?”

The wood was just as charred and broken as he remembered, the brambles and thistles that overran it just as wild. But it never deteriorated: there were no new splinters, no unfamiliar growths. Only the same encroaching vines, creeping in place, ever-threatening to devour something that once was whole. Something that had given up. Something surrendered to nature.

And yet it remained frozen in this little enclosure of flowers and grass.

She reached out, eyes closed. She took a deep breath, and another, until her arm flinched back and uncertainty flickered over her face. 

His grip on her hand tightened. “Something’s wrong, right?”

“Not really…” She took a wary step forward. “No, we should go.”

Cheated raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, but all the signals I’m getting right now are telling me that we should, in fact, not go. Look, I know a good wager when I see it—”

“Do you?” Thorn was already walking, leading him along. 

He scowled. “Maybe not, but this is…Thorn, this is where you were bound. I remember it, and I remember it well, but just now—I’m sorry. This isn’t just where we met again for the last time. This is…this is a fucking place of pain.”

Her face fell. “I know.”

“Then we don’t have to go.” Gently, he tugged her hand back.

She shook her head. “The wilds speak to me. They were more welcoming last time—they bent to my will.”

“And now they don’t?”

She didn’t meet his eyes. Fuck. 

“Thorn.” He swivelled around to face her and gripped her shoulders. “I know you probably brought me here to show me this place, but I’m not trusting this place, you know how it tried to hurt us—”

“We go.” A resolute growl lay beneath her tone. 

“You can’t be serious.”

She was silent for a long while, and then she sighed. “I really am sorry. I don’t want to hurt you. But maybe it’s wrong because it’s supposed to be. Maybe we need it, the closure it brings us, whatever it is.”

Cheated winced. “Well, I sure as heck don’t like the feel of this place. But, alright, if you insist.”

Thorn didn’t smile.

They slipped past the empty door-frame and descended in near-silence. The only sounds Cheated could hear were their breathing—hers slow and measured, his erratic as ever—their footsteps, and the faint rustling of the prickly roots that now writhed and shifted. 

“Is this your doing?” he asked about the wilds’ movements, after nearly tripping over an unwelcome bramble. 

She never looked up. “I can’t tell anymore.”

One step. Another step. Hand in hand. Wordless. Another step, another step. Cheated really didn’t like how grim it all felt, how dreadful. Like a bad hand played before you send your deck to shit.

They reached a narrow clearing. Flanked by vines, tangled and knotted into shape, leaving behind some hollow mimicry of a basement. More thorns crept over the ground, blanketed it fully. A few lay limp and lifeless, some thick and some thinner, all severed and scabbed over where the Cheated had cut through and set the Thorn free.

Thorn knelt and pressed both palms over her former prison. She shut her eyes.

“Careful,” warned Cheated. “The thorns are, well, thorny.”

Despite everything, she gave him the slightest smile. “Of course I’d know.”

He wanted to kick himself. Of course she would, these very thorns bled her. 

She frowned, opening her eyes, and jerked a hand back as if it had been stung.

“Woah, hey.” He leant down, though he wasn’t sure how he could help at all. “Are you sure you’re okay? Really—”

“Yes,” she snapped. “Wait, no. No. Something’s wrong.”

“Tell me,” he urged. “We can leave, we can always leave, you don’t have to deal with this, not now and not ever—”

“This is where you cut me free.” She stood. “This is where we embraced. You released me. We healed.”

“And it’s also where you were hurt!” Cheated couldn’t understand. What was this? What was going on at all, what was he supposed to do, what the fuck would the right move be in this situation? “It’s also where…I hurt you. You hurt me. Let’s just get all of this over with.”

“I hurt you,” she echoed. “The roots are lonely, yearning. They retain where we forget. I read them, and they show me pain…” 

She sighed.

“But you trust me. You do trust me.”

“Yes!” Could anything be truer? “No shit, now, if you told me to jump off a cliff, you bet your life I’d jump off that fucking cliff—”

“Would you?” Her tone was wary. “Is it still the same?”

He didn’t know. What could she mean? “I don’t know, nothing’s changed, I just—it’s gotta be the same, dammit, what else—” It couldn’t be like this, everything they built couldn’t be this fragile, it couldn’t be like this, so sudden…He slumped. “Do you trust me? Have you ever?”

She didn’t speak. 

He didn't know how to read that expression, and it—it troubled him. 

And why did he fucking ask that? Why, just why? Why didn't he just let it slide, why didn’t he just grumble a little and move on, why didn’t he ever think before he fucking spoke, god-damned loser, why…

The Thorn's voice came out in a single whispered breath. “I want to.”

Why was it like every sentence he spoke was the wrong choice? “Good. Now let’s just—”

Cheated was abruptly cut off when something knocked him back into the ground, his mangled body tumbling down, hands closing around his throat, claws digging into rough skin, of scars closed and re-bled. Her eyes were wide, suspicious, faltering, keen—

“You trust me!” She yelled, straddling him, her maimed chest rising and falling with every rapid breath. “Don’t you—you don’t and you never have, but you do, you do—”

“I—” he gasped, even as he could feel every rough scar on her hands digging deeper into the skin of his neck. “—what are you—Thorn, it’s me—don’t…”

“And how long will it take before I return to my nature?” Her voice trembled even in...no, this wasn’t anger, this couldn’t be anger, it couldn’t. “How long before I need to save you from myself?”

He couldn’t speak. But this couldn’t be it. This couldn’t…no…not again, they couldn’t return to the hurt, the lying and hatred and schemes…

“I’ll make you trust me for as long as you live.” She whispered, leaning down, her lips almost brushing his. “I’ll make sure you never think about betraying me ever, ever, ever again, never in your life. And…and I won’t do it again. I can’t hurt you, not if I never get the chance. This is kind.” 

She strangled him, harder, tighter. 

“I’m being kind. I have to be.”

Gold eyes searching, pleading, beseeching into green. 

“I can’t…hurt you again. Don’t struggle…don’t hurt—”

And suddenly, everything let go all at once. He gasped, he could gasp. Something horrible, weighted, heavy had cleared away. Her hands fell back. The claws retracted with a soft click. She stood and knelt again, bending listless over him, like a poppy-flower close to withering away. 

He rolled over and retched and coughed, chest roiling and heaving as the air rushed in, deep and all too welcome. 

Only tension remained. A breath. Then the Thorn shifted, veering aside, wrapping her tail around herself. 

“I can’t be sorry enough,” she said. She gazed at him, something between loving and remorseful, so remorseful. “Cheated…”

It trailed off into the quiet. 

He sighed and pulled himself up. He dusted himself off. Sure, his limbs were still falling off every which way, but at least he didn’t get decapitated. But everything felt loose, about to rip apart. 

That wasn’t the point. 

He walked over to the Thorn and offered her a hand. “You coming?”

She only looked up at him with those mournful, cautious eyes. “You don’t understand. I—”

“Oh, I do know that getting strangled fucking sucks!” He snapped. “I hated it, what the fuck? I’m done with this damn load of bullshit, I’m fucking done, who the hell—Fuck this, fuck all, and fuck you, and why would you even think of going here, and what the fuck told you that strangling someone was a fucking good idea, and—and…”

She only looked down at her hands, still as stone. 

He cursed himself. Whatever the right move was, this certainly wasn’t it.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I guess—you didn’t mean to do that. I…yeah, I think I understand. I didn’t mean to lose my shit with you either. Really. I didn’t mean that.”

There was no response. 

“Sorry,” he tried again—

“No,” said Thorn. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

This wasn’t going anywhere.

“How long will it take before I return to my nature?” Cheated slid onto the unfurling vines, coming to a seat beside Thorn. “It’s not like I’m all sunshine and rainbows myself, you know.”

She buried her face inside her palms, littered with pink scratches. “It’s…you’re different.”

“How? It’s just as you said. You hurt me, I hurt you.”

“Yes.” She brought her knees close to her chest, huddling into herself. “But you stopped it. You gave me a chance.”

He scoffed. “We started it, and you were only protecting yourself. It wasn’t fair, not for you.”

“Such a righteous heart.” Her smile was wry, but it flickered false. “I guess we really are the same.”

There was another quiet moment, one of careful hesitation; a tentative dance over a bed of thorns.

“Do you think I wouldn’t forgive you?” Cheated finally said.

Thorn looked away. 

“Okay. I forgive you.” Blunt, stupid, but there. It was out. “Not that it felt very nice, but I—you said it yourself, you were trying to save me in some twisted way. I’ve got to respect that.”

“But you were hurt—”

“So? We all play a bad hand from time to time. Does that mean you straight-up lose the whole game?”

She pursed her cracked lips. “I might. And when I lose…what I stand to lose now, it terrifies me.”

“Alright.” He drew himself closer. “Look at me, Thorn.”

She didn’t budge, not at first. 

“Look. At. Me. You have eyes.” 

It was slow, but at last she turned. Shameful, tense, wavering in her uncertainty. 

She saw him, drank in the sight of him: all sliced-up flesh, grisly scars, a tattered suit smeared with grime. He wasn’t a pretty thing.

And still the poppy bloomed snug in his hair. Red as roses, red as blood, red as a love borne and bathed in pain.

“Damn you,” he spat, “if you think I need saving from you. I know bloody well what it means to trust and lose, thank you very much. And damn you if you think I’d stop caring about you, damn you if I’m not sitting through it and waiting, waiting, even if you cut me and bled me and slashed me up and skewered me a billion times—well, damn the pain, I’ll still be here…but you never would. ‘Cause you’re too good for that.”

She fidgeted with a single tendril from her hair. “I wouldn’t be so confident about that. Especially not…”

She paused. 

“I don’t ever want to go back,” said the Thorn. “Not to the lying and the hatred and the schemes.”

“You’ve changed.” His gaze hardened. “The old you would never take anyone out because she was scared of what she’d do to him. She’d lure him off and leave him to rot.”

“Mm.” A genuine smile, finally, played across her gaunt face. “I would. But dead is dead.”

“And gone is gone. Like the Witch, who’s now the Thorn, and if she’s the same little monster, I’m wrapping myself up and heading straight to Razor’s door.”

That made her chuckle. “So you really think I’ve changed.”

“No shit. I…” And there, there were the words that were never easy for him to say. “I love that. And I love you.”

“Oh?” It was gradual, almost imperceptible, but something lightened within her poise. “Then I must say…I do. Love you too, I mean.”

“Let’s go.” Cheated couldn’t help himself from grinning like a total idiot as he stood. Thorn laughed, and he swatted at her in jest. What ensued was a disgruntled Cheated and a smirking Thorn both scrambling to reattach his elbow.   

Hands clasped, the two of them left the thorns behind and stepped out into the ebbing day.

[critter-wizard]

ep 43 had me tearing up in a fucking shopping centre ‼️‼️

b+w alt version that I truly couldn't decide if I liked it more . Also I included a lot of thoughts in the tags but they're somewhat incoherent<3

[hellohellowelcome]

ik it's just homophobia at work, but something that's always puzzled + bugged me is when fans can't apply the real-life complexities of romance, sexuality, and identity to fictional romance. I'll see a well-thought out analysis of how Ochako or Izuku are great examples of comphet, for example, and all of a sudden here comes a pack of dudebros shouting "MHA fans don't know how to read OCHAKO CANONICALLY LIKES MEN! IZUKU BLUSHES AROUND GIRLS! THEY ARE STRAIGHT!" from the rooftops....like.....okay? Should we clap? It's the same spirit that drives antis to rush to social media to say "bkdk and togachako are dead I prayed for times like these" instead of just enjoying their own ship 💀

It's "sexuality can be fluid and sometimes your understanding of the attraction you experience (or don't) changes over time and that's okay!" Unless, of course, you're talking about [insert character here who must be straight because it kinda seemed like it in these three panels from four years ago~] Like oh brother, give it a rest.

Again, there's nothing wrong w/ disagreeing with headcanons like these!! You might think, "well, I actually think Ochako's crush on Izuku is genuine and that they would make a cute couple!" That's great, love! Ship to your heart's content! My issue is when people act like any interpretations aside from heterosexuality are insane and the product of some inability to understand the source material. Especially when it doesn't affect your individual hcs or enjoyment of the series at all? And especially when most of these headcanons often come from actual queer fans seeing their experiences in these characters' journeys.

[chillinglikeashilling]

Lord forgive me for paying attention to the YT comments section but I really want people who claim Annie was treated as a less 'desired love interest' than Mary to remind me which of them was told she didn't have any business being near them by both Micheal A and Michael B Jordan.

"Oh but Mary is shown to be the focus of desire and Annie isn't"

Are we forgetting that the first thing Stack tells Mary to do is kick rocks? That one of the first things we learned about their past relationship is that he left her in the middle of the night without any communication at all?

Yes Smoke also left Annie but that to me is representative of the fact that both twins always chose each other over either of their respective lovers, or anyone else in their lives. At the very least we know from the fact that he married her that Smoke considered Annie someone in his life, who was not Stack, that he could build a life with. She made him a mojo bag so it's not like Smoke left in the middle of the night.

And it's not like either twin is best friends with the other's lover but Annie clearly gets so much more consideration and respect from Stack than Mary does from Smoke. Smoke would clearly rather Stack and Mary never even have been together in the first place but even from (what was supposed to be) the opening night of the Juke we see Stack and Annie working together to manage Smoke and the business. Annie is being paid to cook there sure, but to me it's clear that she was always supposed to have a huge role in the business.

I'm not saying the movie is perfect or that people can't have their own opinions but even if we're appealing to the respectability argument- Annie is the only person in the main cast apart from Sammie with very little 'sin' on her record. For one thing she's the only woman of the three love interests who isn't cheating on her husband for whatever that's worth to folks in a movie called Sinners.

And even the comparison of the love scenes feels disingenuous to me. I've seen some people say Mary is the one shown to be desired between her and Stack while Smoke is shown to be desired by Annie and I want to remind everyone that again Mary is the person chasing Stack. He saw her that morning and said go back to your white husband. Annie and Smoke are reuniting as a couple that went through a horrible loss that can rip modern couples apart, without the additional stresses of being sharecroppers on top of that.

Additionally I don't think it's a coincidence that the love scene between Smoke and Annie happens before the sun goes down and the one between Stack and Mary - which I remind everyone leads to Stack dying!!- happens after nightfall and after Mary has already been turned by Rennick. Sammie and Stack both talk about that day before the sun went down being one of the best days of their life. Given the connection and parallels between the twins I would assume that the same would probably be true for Smoke.

So one of the best days of his life involved getting to reconnect with his wife. Getting to fold her into a business he and his brother were building not just for their own financial freedom and independence but also as a safe space for their community. A community Annie was a central part of.

One of those love scenes happened between a couple that had a real chance of reconciling if Rennick hadn't shown up and it's not the one featuring Mary.

[quibbs126]

So I have more designs for the AU; Elita as I showed a couple days ago, and then Jazz and Bumblebee, whom I’ve already designed before, just with a few tweaks, mainly color wise

Visor squad, as it seems

I think after Elita I was going to draw more of her and her past, but then today I felt bad that I hadn’t done much with Jazz or Bumblebee, so I drew them again

I think they all look pretty good in all honesty, but the annoyance today more comes from myself, and the fact that as I drew Jazz and Bee, I realized back then I was trying to branch out more with the designs. Like Bumblebee’s head is a circle instead of a rectangle, and Jazz's body was more of an oval (well they're all ovals, but he was longer)

I'm like damn, what happened. I used to be better at these designs

But anyways, Jazz I didn't change much other than some color things. Bee meanwhile, I redesigned his chassis, it's supposed to look closer to his TF One design, changed up the hues of some colors, and gave him door wings. I only realized afterwards that Jazz also usually has those, but oh well, not sure if they'd work on his design anyways

Also I have a smaller Elita design, with the idea of this being before it was known her powers were so unstable. The head cones are supposed to be like indicators of her danger level power wise, like they'd flash red when she's in the danger zone or something

I don't really have more on any of these guys plot wise either. I've probably covered Elita's lore somewhere else, and Jazz I don't have much else for either. Bee's the closest because I've been debating the idea he was raised by Beastformers while not being one himself. But I don't know how the Beastformers work yet or how they differ, so it's just an idea on the dart board

Anyways yeah, not much else to say I think