#so have some completely and utterly self-indulgent stuff that only i care about

[esepoimipullula]

So, one of the (many, many) things I mean when I say I’m a Norse-obsessed nerd who gets way too excited whenever Norse mythology or Vikings are involved or even just mentioned in Disney Duckverse & Mouseverse comics or cartoons is that I love the DT2017 episode The Rumble for Ragnarok! to bits.

Asgard! Valhalla! Male and female dead heroes in Valhalla! Norse-inspired architecture! Impending Ragnarok! Vikings being crazy about wrestling, which is actually kind of weirdly fitting if you consider glima! Vikings having a sense of honor! Vikings hating overly greedy people! Beakley picking “the Shieldmaiden” as her stage name, and her costume having a winged helmet because it’s supposed to be over-the-top and kind of ridiculous and we clearly see nobody else in Valhalla wears anything like that! The person on the writing team who apparently has my same taste in mythical figures and, instead of whipping up Odin and Thor (whom I do love, too, but come on... you can’t always use them!) as usual, went, “Hey, guys, you know what would be cool? If Loki’s kids were loved and appreciated and had lots of admirers and weren’t cast away or tortured or killed!”...

Ahem.

Anyway, right after watching the episode, I already had my own headcanons about Jormungand and Hecka and Fenrir being siblings like in the myths. And about Fenrir really being the Biggest Wolf Ever but also able to transform into the Regular Wolf form we see in the episode and another, unseen Anthropomorphic Wolf form, yet preferring the Regular Wolf one during matches because the crowd loves the whole “good boy” schtick and it’s also useful to trick opponents into underestimating him. And about attitudes towards Ragnarok actually having shifted only fairly recently (for Norse standards) and Jormungand being really a pretty decent guy, just way too addicted to the crowds’ cheers and praise after millenia of being considered a monster and a harbinger of unspeakable doom, making him even more insecure and prone to get in over his head and lose control than Dewey and...

Ahem. So, anyway, some time after watching the episode, just for fun, I tried my hand at making my duck-ified versions of Loki, Angrboda, and Sigyn, to round out the family. Unfortunately I can’t draw, so I used the Ducktales: All Ducked Out game, which means my options in terms of body type, clothing, and everything else where pretty limited. So, basically, I just shrugged and went, “you know what? Since now Ragnarok is seen as a good thing but keeps getting thwarted, Loki has been freed and told to keep himself constantly available just in case the time for him to lead the Jotnar against the gods finally comes, though of course he’s still not welcome in Asgard. Which is fine for him, because he and Sigyn are running around Midgard looking for their sons, who have just been turned into regular, non-talking wolves and cast out in some area well-known for traditional wolf-hunting or something because this is Disney and also an embarrassingly self-indulgent AU. Angrboda helps them on their search, because I hate Sigyn vs Angrboda stuff and because I ship all three of them together, but generally she hangs out in Jotunheim and then she always watches her kids’ matches in Valhalla if she can make it, which means she’s the only one who still keeps to Norse style instead of adapting to Midgard fashions or mixing the two together.”

You know, normal things a normal person thinks about.

Anyway, here they are:

Loki:

He’s meant to be some kind of hawk as a call-back to him borrowing Freyja's and Frigg’s falcon-cloacks on at least two separate occasions... though I’m sure it doesn’t come across that well. I would have liked to go for longer hair, but there weren’t that many styles available and I liked the two different colors thing this one had going on. If you pretend the second color is less pinkish and more reddish, it gives a kind of fiery effect --- and yeah, I know the fire association is actually pretty thin and likely more of a later thing, but it’s a popular thing and personally, I like it.

No, he’s not “Norse Satan.” He’s more like an ambiguously moral trickster who causes as much trouble as he fixes, is responsibile for the gods having a lot of cool stuff, is (equally or almost equally ambiguously moral) Odin’s blood-brother and Thor’s friend but eventually fucks up both relationships, and at one point fucks everything up so very, very, very badly that it starts the chain of events leading to Ragnarok.

Sigyn:

A regular duck, to go with my long-standing headcanon that she’s a bit of a plain Jane but Loki and Angrboda love her because of her wit, passion, and unexpected chaos-loving side. I like to think her necklace was gifted to her by Loki when they were courting, and is the one flashy thing she’s always comfortable wearing no matter the occasion.

No, there is absolutely nothing in the myths about her being forced or tricked into marrying Loki or him abusing her. Sure, she is not happy with some of his actions and their consequences for both of them, but she voluntarily sticks with him and protects him from having acidic venom constantly poured all over him.

Angrboda:

A big, strong, tough jotun woman! I’ve already explained about her sticking to her Norse roots, so I’ll just say that I didn’t have any ideas about what kind of bird I should make her. I actually kinda wanted to make her a dognose or something to emphasize how WEIRD her offspring with Loki is, but... whatever, guess she’s a duck, lol.

No, she is never named as Loki’s first or second wife, and she’s never connected to Sigyn in any text so there’s nothing about the two being rivals or hating each other. So I’m completely free to imagine she’s both Loki’s and Sigyn’s girlfriend. :)

[itadorisgf]

— a fall from grace

aka break up headcanons

⤷ anonymous asked: hi! what if u wrote angst headcanons on how megumi or itadori would react to breaking up with y/n? like what do u think would make them break up in the first place😳. anyways i hope u have a good rest of ur day!!💗💗

note: oooo angst, i hope i did your suggestion justice and that this was angsty enough!! i hope you have a lovely day as well <33333

ft. fushiguro megumi, gojo satoru, itadori yuuji, nanami kento, nobara kugisaki

warning: angst

⤷ main page

FUSHIGURO MEGUMI

reason: bad at communicating

fushiguro has never been good at expressing his feelings.

he cares for you, he really does, but he’s always felt that it’s unneeded for him to show that.

you should just know that he does. if he didn’t love you then why would he be dating you?

if he didn’t want you then why would he bother to be in a relationship with you?

he doesn’t understand that it feels like he just doesn’t care about your relationship at times.

nor does he understand that sometimes you need reassurance that he does indeed care about you.

it’s hard when he’s not very affectionate and he tends to be short and dry when conversing.

and that’s just who fushiguro is. it’s a natural part of his personality to not exactly be open with his emotions and feelings.

so you break up with him. it’s not that you don’t love fushiguro, you do, but you can’t be in a relationship where you continuously question whether or not he actually wants to be with you.

fushiguro becomes more reserved and closed off following your break up.

his friends would playfully ask him why he’s being more emo than usual, but when fushiguro doesn’t respond at all, they understand that it’s serious.

he wonders if he was more expressive and open with how he felt about you, would you still be here?

GOJO SATORU

reason: too flippant

the fact that gojo’s deemed the most powerful shaman there is by others has made his ego grow exponentially.

he’s well aware of how many view him, as some sort of celebrity, and he revels in the praise and adoration that they shower him with.

gojo’s cheeky and will indulge those who admire him by playfully flirting back with them when they come onto him.

and when you bring up your concerns about how you’re not necessarily comfortable with how gojo interacts with his admirers, he brushes you off.

tells you that you’re the only one for him and that he doesn’t mean anything by flirting with them. it’s harmless.

and it may be true that they don’t matter to gojo, but the way he so easily sweeps your feelings to the side hurts.

you try one last time to explain how you feel to gojo, emphasizing that the way he disregards your worries upsets you.

and once again, gojo addresses the discussion in a very lighthearted and casual way that makes it feel like he’s downplaying how you feel.

when you break up with him, he thinks you’re joking. when you make it clear to gojo that you’re not joking and that you’re entirely serious, he just says okay and leaves.

he thinks you’re overreacting, and in need of some time to cool down. he assures himself that when he comes home later, you’ll be waiting for him.

but, you’re not. all your belongings are cleared from your shared apartment, and that’s when gojo realizes how much he’s utterly fucked up.

however, gojo is too prideful to admit that he’s messed up. he continues on like normal, flirting even more heavily with his fans, but he doesn’t care for any of them.

how could he when none of them are you?

ITADORI YUUJI

reason: too caring

itadori’s heart is simply too big.

you love that he’s so willing to help others and that he cares deeply for his friends, but you can’t stand the way that he holds little to no value for his own life.

he’s willing to throw himself head first into a fight in order to protect others.

itadori has a strong sense of duty as sukuna’s vessel. he knows that there are some things that only he can do as sukuna’s vessel that other sorcerers can’t, and who was he to turn his back on those in need when he could help them?

you try to convince him to care a little more about himself and itadori assures you he’ll be more cautious, but he continues to put himself in danger, often resulting in him getting injured.

and you love itadori too much to watch him throw his life away.

when you break up with him, itadori is confused. he thought things were going great between you two.

you tell him that you love him, but you can’t just sit and wonder if one day he isn’t going to come back from an exorcism.

you can’t stand seeing him bleeding and battered when he returns from missions.

you’ve already lost him once, you won’t be around to lose him again.

breaking up with itadori hurts both of you, but you have to do this. so you kiss him one last time, whispering an i love you against his lips and say goodbye.

itadori is heartbroken after you break up with him, but he tries to cover it up.

he’s still his regular cheery self, but it’s not as genuine.

fushiguro and nanami can tell that something’s off with him, but neither of them press itadori to tell them what’s wrong.

itadori is still in love you, but he has a duty to fulfill and he’ll see it through until the end.

NANAMI KENTO

reason: blunt

nanami doesn’t believe in sugar coating things or beating around the bush. he doesn’t see the point in it. he believes it’s important to be truthful and direct.

so he can be rather calloused and inconsiderate at times, even insensitive.

with his tone, he even sounds accusatory when you’ve done nothing wrong.

it’s humiliating. the way he lectures you as if you’re a child rather than an equal.

nanami’s tone is frightening, calm and even, but you can feel the anger radiating off of him. his words are cold as he berates you for needlessly putting your life at risk during a joint mission.

he goes so far as to say “you should have known that you were too weak to face that curse alone.”

and maybe it’s true, but you can’t stand the way that nanami talks down to you. it’s not the first time it’s happened either.

and you’ve had enough of it.

you break up with him and all nanami does is coolly reply that you’re acting irrationally and immaturely.

nanami’s frustrated that you’re unable to understand how he’s concerned for your well-being. you shouldn’t have attempted to face a cursed being of that level by yourself and you could’ve easily gotten yourself killed.

the aftermath of your breakup is messy.

you’re both sorcerers, but you avoid nanami to the best of your ability, partnering up with others for assigned missions.

on the outside, nanami seems to be completely unaffected by the breakup.

but behind his goggles, his eyes are more tired than usual and his patience with gojo has thinned even more so, causing him to easily snap at the man.

nanami doesn’t mind overtime as much as he once did.

he loathes how a quiet apartment is the only thing waiting for him when he gets off of work.

so he picks up more missions just to avoid the loneliness that awaits him.

NOBARA KUGISAKI

reason: impulsive

nobara often speaks without thinking beforehand.

she tends to say whatever comes to her mind, sometimes disregarding how others may feel.

you love the way that she speaks her mind, bold and totally unafraid of whoever she’s talking to. in fact, you even admire it.

but when you get into fights, nobara doesn’t hold back. she says anything and everything that comes to mind.

most of the stuff she says, she doesn’t mean. she just gets so frustrated and worked up that it just all comes spewing out in the heat of the moment.

but her thoughtlessness cuts deep and opens wounds you’ve worked hard to heal.

it’s during one of your fights that nobara lets it slip “god why am i even dating you?”

all the fight is drained out of you once you hear that. you don’t want to argue with her anymore so you tell her that she doesn’t need to worry about this relationship anymore because it’s over now, and walk out.

nobara’s reaction time is delayed, sputtering as she processes what you’ve said.

when she gathers her bearings and runs out the door, you’re already gone.

nobara would talk about your breakup with whoever’s around to listen. she neglects to mention that you’re the one to have broken up with her and rants about all of your flaws and why you weren’t a good s/o.

but when nobara’s alone, she misses you terribly and wishes that she could take back what she said.

as she lies in bed, she replays all of the things she spat at you in fits of anger.

she didn’t mean any of it.

she loved you, and still does.

[slutfor-fictionalmen]

hi hi! I hope this message isn’t too late or anything, since I only just seen the one you send me this morning! Also I accidentally deleted your messages while trying to reply 🤦‍♀️

But if it’s still alright, may I request an Armin Arlert x slightly thicker/chubby reader? just something soft and simple! maybe he’s noticed that the reader doesn’t eat very much anymore, and is skipping meals, and he confronts her about it, because he doesn’t want her getting sick or something happening. She obviously gets a little upset about it, and like, tells him she’s been having a hard week and has been super insecure lately. She just doesn’t like the way she looks, and Armin comforts her and stuff! All the love and cuddles! 🥰 I’m in need for this rn honestly 😭

I hope i did it right!! Things are more internalized due to my own self indulgence, i hope you like it!!

Tw: self harm(starving) 

Another day passed, and you hated being in the corps more and more, with the men objectifying you and the women with their fake smiles and judgemental looks, aside from Mikasa that is. You felt her hand on your shoulder, staring right back at them as you passed.

She was the only girl-friend you’ve ever had, which makes your bond with each other especially strong, she called you her therapy stuffed animal( in a good way) with how loving and kind you were when she came home to eren’s house. You were always there, you gave her her first jacket, you bear-hugged her when she was at her worst and missed her parents, you stood by her and never faltered. Even going as far as telling off Eren for being tactless to her feelings, poor boy has no social cues.

Eren loved you for how truly different you really are, despite being an only child, you were his sister, as much as a pain in the ass you are. But this called for you being apart of his and Mika’s friend group with no doubt. Being part of erens tight knit group of friends means you were automatically loved by eren, mika…. And armin.

You always had a fondness for the shy blonde, his all bark and no bite nature stole your heart. You met at a young age but only connected through Eren, he always tells you to thank him for that introduction despite your efforts to play off your crush being in vain. You loved how… pure he looked, how in a world full of death and violence, he could always bring light into your day with a smile or a story. No matter what you could count on his smile,you could count on him.

That’s why you hated today with a passion.

“We have extra food, which one of you dumbasses didn’t eat all your shit?” You sighed, walking away from the situation you caused. It wasn’t a good day, their comments bugged you today for some reason, and Armin wasn’t there to perk up the atmosphere of this gloomy day. Making it unreasonably difficult for you to focus on your own health today, this isn’t even the first time this has happened. It’s been a week of irregular meals, constant moving, and titan stress. It wasn’t like you were trying to starve, you just didn’t have the time.

And you didn’t notice till today.

“Lookin’ thinner, bunny… are you eating well?” You ignore eren’s concerned comment, pressing forward with the group in disturbed silence. This was the fifth comment today about your looks that you’ve gotten. You weren’t a small person, you had extra meat, and you had curves, paired with your adorable tiger stripes, but you know for a fact that starving this little would not affect your appearance that much. It irritated you, and you vowed to tell off the next person who said anything.

“Y/n can-“ “Oh my GOD, are you SERIOUS? I’ve been eating! I havent lost that much weight and i don’t want to hear your Perverted FUCKING Mouth say anything! It’s idiotic for you to continue to act like a jealous schoolgirl and make your ‘sly’ comments! So just Shut up!”

You finally open your eyes from your rant, regretful as your irises meet two bright blue eyes on a horrified face. “I was just going to ask if you can slow down and walk with me-“ Guilt floods your mind as you ear him squeak out his words. You lower your gaze and nod, moving to the back of the group with the boy. It didn’t matter how long this would be, you knew Levi would make you set up for camp soon.

“ ‘m sorry armin, you didn’t deserve that, I’m just-“ “Don’t apologize, you didn’t mean it to me but it was still valid. But never mind that, are you ok? Yes you haven’t been eating but you’ve been…. Cold lately..” You wanted to tell him, just say, ‘ I’m so in love with you that even a few days without your voice makes me angry as shit’ but you knew it wasn’t the right time…. And besides, would he even accept a girl like you?

“I’m fine, just stressed, tired, and overwhelmed…. It’s a lot you know?” Armin nods walking closer to you and letting your answer settle before your group sets up for camp and your pace continues to slow.

“You’re beautiful no matter what, I’ve read articles that said starving is actually terrible for your body, unintentional or not, it won’t end up good. If i have to,” He flushes, continuing to look ahead,” I’ll stay with you all day to make sure you’re eating and drinking water.” You freeze, feeling flushed as you watch him walk away and realize that he just offered to be around you all day just for you to be healthy.

You shake it off, keeping his words at the forefront of your mind before you get ready to retire for the night. You find a note on your blanket, asking you to meet armin at his tent with water and a blanket. Curious as to what it means you do as the note says, waiting at armin’s tent before he opens the zipper with a happy smile, welcoming you inside.

“You got the water?” You lift up the container, making him nod and turn away to a covered pile in his room. He takes the cover off, revealing the food he gathered for you two. “You didn’t eat again, so I didn’t either. And before you say anything, i got some of everything  so you have to eat SOMETHING! I told you all day didn’t I?” You look at him with teary eyes, your emotions of the week spilling out at his gesture.

Sobs wrack your body before he pulls you into his form, engulfing you in a warm hug. You feel him draw soothing circles on your back, rocking you and letting out slow shushes in attempts to calm your mind. You feel him kiss the top of your head and rubbing your back more before he pulls away and guides you to the setup of food.

He grabs you a plate of everything, making you sit and eat with him. You nibble at your food, uninterested in grossing out the guy you like by eating in front of him. But that only made him take your fork and feed you himself, he was determined for you to take care of yourself and love yourself as he loves you. You notice him watch you eat with admiration, happy to see you finally giving yourself some nourishment. You hear him sigh and hesitate, but you leave it untouched before he breaks the silence.

“You know…. I’ve loved you for years, ever since you punched out that kid who threatened me for speaking up, and how you always listened to me talk about the books I’ve read and things I’ve heard-“ “i know, i love you too armin.” “No not like that, I’m IN love with you, like i want to hold your hands, kiss you everywhere, curl into you at night, i want to love you.” You stop mid chew, maintaining eye contact as you swallow and stare at him.

“Are you serious?” “Yes.” “Like you’re not-“ “Y/n L/n I am completely and utterly in love with you.” You push the food aside, crawling between his legs and curling up onto his chest and wrapping your arms around his torso. “I love you so much it hurts armin. It hurt me so badly when you wouldn’t talk to me, i don’t know what i did but i was so mad that i pushed you away.”

Armin tilted your chin up, pressing a quick kiss to your lips before he grabbed onto your soft form with a passion. “I’ll never do that again, I’m so sorry beautiful.” You hold onto him tighter pressing your ear to his chest to hear his heartbeat. “You really think I’m beautiful?”

He pulls away, reaching over you to grab your blanket…. Man he really plans things out, before he wraps it around you both and presses a kiss to your temple. He lets his hands sink into your skin, loving how your soft skin feels on his fingertips. His lips pepper kisses on your neck, pulling slightly back to press a kiss onto your hairline. You loved how gentle he was with you, you already knew the answer to to your question before he even opened his mouth.

“More then you can ever know, my love.”

[dirtychocolatechai]

meet-cute | b.b.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader Warning(s): fluff, awkward Bucky, vet appointment stuff, Alpine Request: Babes if you're lowkey taking requests can I lowkey make one? 👉🏼👈🏼🥺💕 something flirty and cute and maybe a lil spicy with Bucky and vet!reader where something's going on with Alpine? Not self indulgent at all 😻💖 Notes: This was the first thing I’ve written in months and it felt damn good. Funny story, I actually almost went to school to be a vet tech + shadowed a vet for two weeks and got to see some wickedly cool things.

This was a bit self-indulgent on my part because I had a cat who passed away some years ago because of struvite stones and I wished he had a happier ending like Alpine so I thought why not 🤷‍♀️💖

Taglist is open

(gif from google)

There’s nothing Bucky hates more than the stringent smell of industrial cleaners and clinical white walls - too many associations and shades of memory long laid to rest - except for when something’s going on with Alpine. The Turkish Angora was fine up until a few days ago when he started to hide away and sleep all day.

That wasn’t too concerning at first...

But then came the pained little noises, the frantic running back and forth from the litter box, the excessive grooming. The pit that started forming low in his belly grew, his instincts screaming at him that something was wrong, very wrong, with his little buddy. 

Bucky wasn’t about to fuck around and set up an appointment with the first vet office he could find that had a same-day opening. And now he’s trying not to fall apart at the seams while he waits for the docs to do their magic and tell him what the hell’s going on with his cat and what he has to do to fix it.

The vet tech collected Alpine a bit ago and every minute stretches into years, the cat’s pitiful meow echoing in his ears and those betrayed eyes burned onto the backs of his eyelids.

I know, Bub, I’m sorry but they gotta figure out what’s going on. It’ll be okay, they’ll take care of you. 

His ass went numb from the plastic chair ages ago, his leg jiggling up and down at a rapid pace as he chews on his thumbnail and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

God, he knows these things take time but he’d rather be back at home, curled up on the couch with Alpine pigging out on breakfast food and watching space documentaries. 

How much longer-

“Alright, Mr. Barnes?”

The heavy door swings open with a click, a kind, professional voice preceding a pair of sensible shoes as the vet steps into the room with a clipboard cradled against her chest. His eyes snap up, skipping over her completely to look at the tech holding his cat who looks absolutely miserable. 

She introduces herself but he’s not paying attention. He’s not meaning to be rude but all his focus narrows in on that white little face, the knot in his chest unfurling at the little mew.

He smiles, his eyes crinkling around the edges as he breathes, “Hey there, Little Buddy.” 

The vet doesn’t push, in fact, she seems a little enamored with how much he melts at the sight of his pet. Her own lips quirk up into a soft smile while she stands off to the side patiently as Alpine’s set down on the metal table.

Bucky gets in a few good scritches under his chin, the beginnings of a purr just starting to vibrate his hand when the vet clears her throat delicately. 

He clears his throat, heat burrowing into the apples of his cheeks. “Shi - uh, ‘m sorry.” A hand scrubs over the back of his neck. “I’m just - uh - y’know...” 

Her laugh trickles down his spine like warm rain, the sound effectively drawing his attention away from the cat rubbing up against his side. He gets his first look at her and oh.

A bare face and a no-nonsense hairstyle greet him, her scrubs and white coat adding to the overall doctor vibe but she’s still breathtaking. The natural beauty in the curves of her face, the slant of her brows, the sparkle of her eyes.

He feels like he got sucker-punched in the chest, his heart giving a sudden throb that has him coughing like an idiot as he scrambles to not look like such a jackass.

“So,” he clears his throat, scratching at the stubble along his jaw, “What’s - what’s wrong with him?” 

Glancing down at Alpine’s chart, she hums and writes a note before glancing back up with a reassuring smile. “Nothing that can’t be managed with a special diet and watching his water intake.”

It’s like the weight of the world disappears from his shoulders, his broad frame practically heaving with his sigh of relief. “Oh thank fucking- ahem, ‘scuse me - thank god.” 

Her chuckle and sly smile have him blushing from the roots of his hair to the collar of his shirt, his stomach squirming in discomfort. Old habits are hard to break, especially ones his momma taught him with a box to the ear.

“You’re allowed to swear, Mr. Barnes,” she says, reaching down to run her fingers through snow-white fur. “We’re all adults here.” 

“No, no, I know...” 

“Hm, anyway, his blood work came back and everything looks fine which is a good thing.” 

And it’s back to business like that, any hint of personality hidden behind cool professionalism that Bucky thinks even Tasha would admire. Except for the playful gleam in her eyes as she sneaks peeks at him while going over everything they did and what they found. 

“Struvite crystals are quite common in cats at low levels, especially males because their tract is longer and narrower.” She pauses, flipping to a new page. “Depending on the severity, they can clump together in the urinary tract and actually form stones. That’s where the true problem lies because get one large enough, and it can cause a blockage.”

He’s listening with rapt attention, soaking in the knowledge she’s imparting to him all the while, petting Alpine who keeps nuzzling him and making little sounds. Honestly, he could listen to her talk for hours even if he didn’t understand a goddamn thing. 

She’s so animated when she speaks, holds eye contact and makes sure he understands everything without making him feel like an idiot. He’s had so many doctors who talked at him rather than with him, staring through him without seeing, more interested in the paycheck rather than their patients.

But not her, she cares.

Deeply.

He can see it all over her face and it’s utterly enchanting. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little enamored, charmed.

Turning the tablet towards him, she shifts closer and a waft of whatever perfume she’s wearing tickles his nose as she explains what the x-ray of Alpine’s abdomen found.

“These are the stones but thankfully they’re relatively small,” she points to several hazy white ovals starkly visible on the radiograph, “We caught them in time before they became a really big problem.” 

Shit, she smells so good...

 “Now, we’ll send you home with a special diet and see how he does. Also, make sure to up his fluid intake as much as you can. The food can take several months to start dissolving the crystals so we’ll have to do everything we can to help. Sound good?”

Bucky hasn’t pulled his eyes away from her face once this entire time, and how fucking creepy is that?

Quickly looking down at Alpine, embarrassment gnawing at his belly, he nods and wishes for the first time since he cut his hair that he hadn’t so he’d at least have a passing chance at hiding the blush burning its way across his face. 

“Yeah,” he says, picking up the ball of white fluff to hold against his chest, a makeshift shield. “Is there anything else I should do?” 

“No.” She smiles, writing another note and tapping away at the tablet next to her. “I do want to see him again in about a month for a check-up.”

Fuck, he doesn’t want to leave so soon.

The irony isn’t lost on him either.

How does he make this last longer? What can he do? If Sam was here right now, he’d be kicking him in the ass and bitching at him to ask for her number already, Ice Pick.

The clack of the chart being set down rings through the room, bouncing off the walls and sounding so fucking final that he starts to panic. 

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. 

She’s already halfway to the door when she asks, “Do you have any questions?”

The word vomit spring from him, unbidden and sudden without any thought, more forward than he’s been with a woman in years.

“Can I have your number?”

As soon as the question leaves his lips, he curses, cringes and wishes he could snatch the very words from the air itself.

Great, I just hit on my vet.

No amount of backpedaling can salvage this but goddamn it if Bucky doesn’t try, stuttering out some half-assed excuse about wanting it just in case he thinks of something later.

When he glances up, he wishes he hadn’t. The vet tech is in near tears in the corner, biting her lips so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if they started to bleed.

But it’s the absolute surprised bafflement on the woman he just inappropriately hit on that does him in, makes him about ready to burn all forms of identification and run for the hills. 

Her brows nearly reach her hairline, her mouth slack, eyes startled. She gets ahold of herself before he does, and he barely stops himself from slapping a hand over his face.

Right when he’s thinking there’s no way he’s going to be able to show his face in the office again, her expression softens with gentle amusement and her lips twitch. 

Struck dumb, he can only watch as she writes something down on a slip of paper before handing it over to him. He barely believes the string of numbers and the cheeky little call me anytime :).

The wink she sends his way is there and gone, so fast he almost believes he imagined it. 

“For emergencies only,” she says, slyly. “Of course.”

“Of course,” he agrees, almost tripping over the cat carrier as he hurries to stuff Alpine back in. “Of course, thank you. I...appreciate it.” 

“Anytime, Mr. Barnes.” 

Bucky leaves the room in a stupor, the world sharply shifted to the left as he heads to the front desk to make the follow-up appointment, but not before hearing the whispered, “Girl, you’re lucky. He’s fine!” and the “He is, isn’t he?”. 

[dangermousie]

CFC Chapter 54

“A crashing car?” Ahahahaha I see you, Meatbun. But it was indeed an utter pileup!

I know I commented on this passage in its various iterations eight billion times already but I still have more to say. And it’s that XQC taking so long to realize that even though HY is young, his emotions and feelings are as genuine and strong as those of anyone older is so realistic - people do tend to think that especially with regard to children - think of a reaction of an adult to a three year old crying over ice cream they dropped. It’s all amused even if not meanly so. Because to an adult with vastly more experience, this is not a big deal. But what that forgets is that whether it’s ridiculous to someone else or not, to the person at issue that is a real feeling, AND that of course a person can only feel through the lens of their experience - what else is there? Emotions aren’t any less valid because they are informed by lesser or different experience.

Honestly, to me so far this is one of the driving messages of the novel - everyone is in their own world of issues and pain and none of these characters can truly look through the lens of another person and it would be so much better if they did. To XQC, for so long, He Yu’s strong feelings (and we know so many of these feelings are awful - despair, and self-loathing, and loneliness) never quite felt real and therefore never quite felt fully valid. And by the time it wasn’t the case, it was too late.

But the same is true for He Yu - he is so concentrated on his own grievances and his own pain, he cannot perceive others’ different issues. In He Yu’s mind, he’s the winner and always champion of Misery Olympics and while he’s had a horrible time of it, that doesn’t mean other people didn’t either just in different ways. Whether because of his condition, his issues or just his age, HY is not empathetic in the least.

And think about it - XQC does not have a horrible illness. He does not have unfeeling parents. But he had to watch his beloved parents brutally murdered in front of his eyes at 13 (!!!!) and then had to raise a 5 year old by himself. Is it worse or better than HY’s trauma? That’s a matter of opinion but what there is no question about is that is a different type of trauma and a different type of scar. Or think about the patient in the asylum whose name I am too lazy to look up - her life is such a theater of horrors that to me, it makes the combined issues of HY and XQC seem small, though once again that’s subjective. Nobody wins when people start this sort of competition.

My heart breaks for XQC but also - I am sorry - if/when HY x XQC hook up again (how? I have no idea! But that is one of the joys of Meatbun - I both have no idea how/where it’s going and utterly trust her), please have He Yu read up and learn things because Good God. You should not be in major pain the morning after unless you are into pain and XQC clearly is not!

The other thing is the bit about XQC forcing himself to walk in his usual ramrod-straight manner is the moment I went utterly gone for him. I mean, I liked him and found him interesting before. But this is the thing that flipped that invisible switch for me and I went rabid and irrational and now I am Team XQC and I don’t care what he wants and does from now on, he should have it. It’s so small but so real. My mother and her mother were both big on straight posture. And one of the reasons they gave was when you walk with good posture - you look confident but also it makes you feel confident and stronger. And I’ve actually found it to be true - when you throw your shoulders back and straighten your neck and hold your head up, it does not just give others a signal, it gives a signal to your own brain. So to see XQC insist on doing it, despite being emotionally and physically shattered - because of his pride refusing to give up, because he’s so unbending, but also this being some sort of instinctive armor, just hits straight through the heart.

OK, I laughed at HY as a fucking machine. But also, this is another point in the whole “everyone has issues” narrative and HY’s life could be worse. HY, with all his other issues, can pay an insane amount, an amount that XQC could not pay in a million years, so easily. It’s not even a blip to him. Hell, the fact that he forgot to pay speaks to that - I can see forgetting to pay a friend a couple of bucks back right away because it’s not much money. HY forgets because it does not loom in his mind. And this rich lifestyle is instinctive, is ingrained in him. I think he’d find it hard to be poor.

THAT is what he’s thinking about? Priorities are...

The sole good thing that came out of this insanity is that XQC is getting in touch with his emotions, even if those emotions are (rightly) rage. He’s too closed off from them normally.

The fact that you slept with a man should be secondary to the fact that you drugged and raped him, but here we are...

To me, this sums up He Yu as a moral wasteland. To still, when sober and past his fit and not under influence of wine, to still feel excitement over his revenge and to somehow twist it that it’s XQC’s fault for being raped by He Yu is !!!!!!!!!

(I suppose if I were charitable, I’d assume that the disquiet is small stirrings of almost dead conscience and his “he deserved it” is an attempt to justify the unjustifiable to himself, but I honestly don’t want to think so because I am so angry at him. Not until I see some more evidence. I don’t feel like being indulgent with He Yu since he’s indulgent with himself enough for two.)

1. The fact that you can tell from the picture XQC got taken by a man (I am gonna defer to Meatbun’s expertise here) definitely points to the fact that the pictures are going to be used for something bad later - because if it’s just oh XQC had sex, so what, he’s single what’s the big deal. But like this it becomes a different matter. No idea if it will be used for HY or XQC or both, and by whom (money is on Duan and co, but after the way HY went off, I would never say HY himself won’t use it badly somehow) but knowing Meatbun, it will go for maximum damage.

2. Ruthless? Perhaps. Unfeeling? Hmmmm. I am not He Yu’s biggest fan atm but that’s a wonderfully misleading adjective here. He does still seem to be in shock. And fixating.

3. The whole “hahahaha XQC is a hypocrite when he was all ‘I am not interested in sex’“ is - I am not sure if HY is just short-circuiting (fine) or using a rapist justification/rolling in a sea of toxic toxicity (not fine) because I am sorry, that’s totally like “he/she had a reaction, can’t be rape” writ large. Yeah, sure he had a reaction - you poured drugs down his throat. That has nothing to do with his default preferences or his actual state. THE FUCK?!

Anyway, we end on the whole “u mad bro?” bit and you know what strikes me? HY was all “I am done, we are done, my revenge is complete I don’t care” but here he is, still desperately seeking and craving reaction and interaction from XQC.

I remain utterly puzzled as to how these two will ever be a couple except for a couple being defined as “two mutually homicidal people.” Leaving aside everything else, I am willing to accept HY is in the closet - clearly whatever his orientation is, it includes men. But I do not get that sense from XQC at all. When he’s not drugged, he’s barely interested in sex with anyone and I do not get the sense he’s in the closet either. Chances of anyone, let alone He Yu, who is both a man and someone who raped him to humiliate him, being able to entice him into sexual encounters voluntarily is about the chance of me going to visit Mars. Meatbun loves doing insane things so I can’t wait.

PS I know people use the term psychopath all the time casually but ummm, I think He Yu may actually be one? When he has his father (!!!) on speakerphone, calmly carrying a conversation with the man as he’s raping his father’s friend in the club as he talks (!!!!!) that is...in RL I’d be “team lock him up for life, there is something so basic broken in him that it can’t be fixed.” Like - the hell? The ability to put things on different shelves so much is not in the same country as sane (it makes me think of 2ha and TXJ banging CWN being the curtain while performing court business but TXJ was bona fide clinically insane and also this is worse because this is his actual freaking father omg.) Of course, only time will tell whether it’s evidence of him being irreparably incapable of normalcy in terms of living in the world/interacting with others or it was an extreme psychotic (in casual parlance not medical one) break because most people are capable of truly horrific stuff if certain levers are pushed and his default is saner. It’s the question, isn’t it? Whether He Yu’s factory default setting is the monster of the previous chapters or the kid who’d cut his wrists so as not to hurt others.

Anyway, this novel is a terrifying roller coaster ride and I love having strong emotions.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Prompt - Wen Ruohan insists that Jiang Yanli come to the Wen "lecture" as well...

ao3

Jiang Yanli tended to deal with stress in one of two ways: cooking and taking care of people. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, the Wen indoctrination camp provided many opportunities for both, although not with the people she might have expected.

Wei Wuxian spent most of his days being valiant and light-hearted, trying to give them strength and courage, and Jiang Cheng followed his lead the way he always did, brave and serious and thoughtful and – well. It’s not that she didn’t appreciate both of them, because she did, but it was only that her own anxiety was more easily dealt with when she could distance herself from her current situation and focus entirely on someone else.

She might have tried to take care of Jin Zixuan, but the Jin sect disciples closed ranks around him, glaring at her as if she were the one who broke off their engagement. Either way, she won’t go where she’s not wanted, and so she backed off and went elsewhere to look for someone that needed her.

Luckily for her, Nie Huaisang was very loud and very vocal and very, very needy.

They made for a surprisingly great fit.

Jiang Yanli had perhaps been forced to step into a maternal role a bit too early – Jiang Cheng had always been a soft child, and their father’s dislike of him had hurt him deeply where it had always seemed somewhat unimportant to Jiang Yanli, and Wei Wuxian was of course a big baby masquerading as a man. Her mother had always been disinterested in playing the mother, more fond of training and discipline, and so they’d turned to her when they were young, and still did today. Back at home, they would often descend to bickering and playing for her attention when she was around, knowing how much she liked it: Wei Wuxian demanding to be called A-Xian and fed spoonfuls like a toddler (albeit one capable of eating extremely spicy food), Jiang Cheng too proud to go that far but somehow managing to lose at least ten years of maturity, always looking at her hopefully to affirm that he did well and to sneak him treats behind everyone’s back.

That was the way she liked it, too. Possibly more than she really should, but it made her feel wanted and useful in a way that her weak cultivation never would.

Nie Huaisang, in contrast, had always been babied - by his father, by his over-protective older brother, by his long-suffering sect that nevertheless indulged him in everything. He’d suffered some things (his father’s death, first and foremost) when he was very young, and it sometimes seemed as he’d reacted to that by purposefully staying that age forever: useless and self-indulgent, spoiled and with a tendency to fuss, an unreasonable expectation that he could just turn his big eyes on anyone in his vicinity and they would immediately feel moved to cater to his every need.

Nie Huaisang, in other words, was just her type.

He was calling her ‘Jiang-jiejie’ within a shichen, putting his head on her shoulder a shichen after that, and kicking up such a dramatic fuss about everything that even Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng – who had come over with threats in their eyes about a strange man, even one of their friends, sticking himself so close to her – had ended up encouraging her to see what she could do to calm him down a little.

After they left, she looked down at his pathetic form and said, “You did that on purpose, you little brat.”

Nie Huaisang looked up at her with an impish grin that somehow still suited the tear stains on his face. “That’s true, but Jiang-jiejie won’t tell on me,” he said, as certain as any child. “Besides, this way we get to spend time together – and if we’re together, my guards will protect you as they do me, and your brothers won’t have to worry so much. Aren’t I smart?”

“Such a thoughtful child,” she praised, and he puffed himself up. “But you shouldn’t mislead your big brothers like that, you know. You could have just told them what you were thinking.”

“But where’d the fun in that be?” he said, and put his head on her shoulder again. “Jiang-jiejie will take care of me while I’m here.”

“Of course,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t punish you if you’re naughty, either.”

She did, too. She made him food out of the terrible provisions they received, she brushed his hair and let him teach her how to do his braids, she tucked him in at night before heading back to her tent, and even sat with him and helped him with his memorization and his chores – and when it was called for, she smacked him lightly on the backs of his hands that he held out to her for the specific purpose, scolded him and made him apologize.

She didn’t have any time to spare to worry about the Wen sect.

It was great.

“Uh, shijie,” Wei Wuxian said after a while. “Are you sure you’re okay with Nie Huaisang? He’s really…sticky.”

“He’s adorable,” Jiang Yanli said.

“He’s taking advantage of you,” Jiang Cheng grumbled. “Don’t think we haven’t noticed how he gets to sit with you in the shade instead of working with us.”

“He sits in the shade because the Nie sect disciples do his share of the work,” Jiang Yanli pointed out. “Just as you do for me.”

“Yeah, but…”

“He’s harmless,” Jiang Yanli said, even though she suspected that if he were pushed to it Nie Huaisang could escalate from brat past menace into actual threat. Hopefully it would never come that. “And it’s good to have company.”

“What do you even talk about?” Jiang Cheng asked. His cheeks were oddly flushed red, and he was averting his eyes – even more oddly, so was Wei Wuxian, who she previously would have said was too shameless to be embarrassed by anything.

“Art, mostly,” she said, puzzled, and even more puzzled when they both flinched. “Recently we were discussing famous landscape artists from the southern part of Gusu.”

“Oh, landscapes,” Wei Wuxian said, exhaling in relief. “That’s all right then. Glad you’re having a good time, shijie.”

“Have fun,” Jiang Cheng agreed, bobbing his head up and down like a fishing bird.

Later, Jiang Yanli narrated the conversation to Nie Huaisang and gave him a stern look when he started giggling. 

“Would you care to explain the joke to your Jiang-jiejie?” she asked, and he waved his hands for a moment of time to catch his breath before explaining to her that he had spent most of his time at the Cloud Recesses acting as a purveyor of a very different type of art.

Jiang Yanli rolled her eyes – fondly, of course, she was always very fond of her boys, even when they forgot that she was three years older than they were – and said, “All right, then, and when were you going to share some with me?”

“I was trying to figure out what types of things you liked first!” Nie Huaisang protested, and this was why she spent so much time with him even when her other boys were also here – he didn’t forget that she was the jiejie, the one who took care of him and made the decisions about what was appropriate, and he was the didi. He didn’t assume that being a man was more important than age, didn’t put aside their “games” of caring in favor of a valiant warlike demeanor; he remained, wonderfully, the same. “I’d gotten it down to three – here, you take this one; let me know what you think.” He winked. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye out to make sure no one comes by while you’re reading.”

“If it’s anything too filthy, you’ll be punished,” she told him, and he looked so delighted by the notion that she suspected she was going to be getting something very filthy indeed. “Little boys don’t need to be looking at such things.”

“Without supervision,” he clarified, and sat down next to her with bright eyes full of anticipation, somehow even more shameless than Wei Wuxian. “From a qualified adult. Like Jiang-jiejie!”

The artwork was utterly filthy, but it was, in fact, just the sort of thing she liked when she snuck into her mother’s rooms to sneak peeks at books filched from the high shelves – better, even, and Nie Huaisang seemed to have an endless supply of it even though he complained bitterly that he’d only brought the cheap stuff that he wouldn’t mind losing, and that the best of that had been mostly bartered away.

That was what it was for, she discovered. Nie Huaisang was selling pornography to bored Wen sect retainers in exchange for creature comforts – better food, a nicer resting place, leniency when he inevitably failed to complete some chore or another – and using the conversations to elicit information.

Not spying, per se, that was far too serious for someone as determinedly frivolous as Nie Huiasang, but it was nice to know when the Wen sect was planning a surprise inspection in the morning or if it was a good day to put on their worst clothing because they were going to be wading through mud.

“You could be quite dangerous if you wanted to be,” she commented to Nie Huaisang one evening while she was brushing his hair. He was very particular about his braids, but he let her do the brushing and oiling; the repetitive action calmed his anxiety, and seeing him calm down and relax into her care in turn calmed her own. “You’re very good at being underestimated.”

“I think I’m estimated at just about right, actually,” he joked. If it had been Jiang Cheng saying it, he would have been turning a dagger on himself with the words; if it had been Wei Wuxian, he would have been boasting; with Nie Huaisang, it was just a joke. He had the confidence to be openly useless – the surest sign of a supportive loving family, she thought wistfully. “What about you? How dangerous are you when you’re not thinking about how to take care of someone?”

“I’m always thinking of that,” she chided him, and tugged lightly on his braids in chastisement; he shivered and quailed very satisfactorily when she did that. Such a good boy for her, when he wanted to be; a very good little brat the rest of the time. “And you know I’m not much of a cultivator.”

“Neither am I,” he said. “I still think Jiang-jiejie could be very scary if she put her mind to it.”

It was nice that he thought so. Nobody else did – perhaps what was why she’d become so interested in caring for people, in making food that they liked and brushing their hair and taking care of their clothing, the sorts of feminine arts that puzzled her mother and weren’t even necessary for a sect leader’s daughter to know how to do. She did it because it was something she could do that, and after a while it became something she longed to do.

Jiang Yanli loved taking care of people.

And Nie Huaisang was so very good at being taken care of. 

Even better than her little A-Xian, if she would allow herself the traitorous little thought – Wei Wuxian liked to play the child for her sometimes, to be spoiled, but he would get bored soon enough, staying only long enough for a few bites of soup and then running off to bicker with Jiang Cheng or to be the brave and chivalrous da-shixiong of the Jiang sect.

Not so Nie Huaisang. He was her little brat all day long: whining and in need of comfort one moment, running too far ahead and in need of a scolding the next, always pushing his luck to see what he could get away with. He was soft, like her; bad at cultivating and good at things like painting and cooking and gossip, feminine things, domestic things, which meant that they had an endless supply of things to talk about that no one else cared about. He made mischief but was obedient, and he thrived under the structure she provided for him, coaxed into doing what he ought and directed away from doing what he shouldn’t.

He was adorable, in a way that she’d never felt about her actual brothers.

Her newest little didi, her A-Sang.

They were, perhaps, growing a little too close.

(But no, Jiang Yanli still maintained the boundaries of being a proper young lady, good obedient Jiang-guniang. Even if she had picked up a very specific pornography habit – but she was never going to tell anyone about that.)

Still, it came as a surprise when they were all in the dark, wretched cave, when the Wen sect threatened them and the corrupted Xuanwu lashed out against the walls to bring down rocks, when one of the Nie sect disciples pushed her behind a rock, shouting, “Take care of Nie-gongzi!” to her as if they really expected her to keep him safe.

“Your men trust me too much,” she said into Nie Huaisang’s hair – his arms were wrapped around her, his eyes watching the battlefield, flicking from side to side as he tracked the course of battle with far more expertise than her. “Don’t you think they meant for you to take care of me?”

“They want you to help keep me from being upset,” he said, and disengaged from her long enough to pick up a fallen sword and throw it with surprising accuracy into the fray – it pieced one of the Wen sect soldiers from behind, breaking their battle line, and the Nie sect disciples overwhelmed them. 

It was a masterful stroke, but Nie Huaisang recoiled from his own hand as if he’d been burned by it. His eyes were wide and white all around the edges, old fears rearing up to rend him into pieces from the inside - she knew the look of it.

“It’s all right,” she said, whispering in his ear. “You did well, didi.”

His shoulders relaxed.

Whatever had made Nie Huaisang so very afraid of shedding blood must had hurt him very deeply, Jiang Yanli thought, and the Nie sect knew it. It all made sense now: that was why they indulged him, why they spoiled him, why they allowed him to grow up as useless as he was, even as they feared him falling into danger. 

It wasn’t that he couldn’t be dangerous - but he wouldn’t be able to bear it.

(Jiang Yanli was very curious to meet the older brother he spoke so very much about. Nearly as much as she spoke of Wei Wuxian or Jiang Cheng, in fact, and didn’t that say everything she needed to know?)

“You should be careful, Jiang-jiejie,” Nie Huaisang murmured as they watched from their safe place as the battle raged on. Every once in a while, he intervened, each strike perfectly placed to cause maximum damage and showing that no matter how much he whined about training there was still muscle and deadly instincts beneath his skin; after each move, she would squeeze him tight and help him regulate his breathing, suppressing the panic attack he immediately fell into so that it could be postponed until a more convenient time. “I might grow to rely on you, and then where would we be? You’d have no choice but to come back to Qinghe and spend your life there with me.”

It was an offer, she thought in surprise, however gently phrased.

It seemed she wasn’t the only one getting a little too close. 

As it happened, Jiang Yanli didn’t have time to respond before the battle finally ended as abruptly as it had started, the Wen sect fleeing the Xuanwu and closing off the exit to the cave, trapping them inside with a ravenous Xuanwu – although one that couldn’t reach them in the corner where they cowered away from it.

The valorous men and women debated what ought to be done next.

The useless ones sat around and waited for their fates to be decided.

Oddly enough, this was the part that began to wear on her. The battle had passed almost without her noticing it, all her attention on caring for Nie Huaisang, but this aftermath - or preliminary, depending on how you looked at it - was utterly agonizing. Watching her brothers ignore her (useless in a fight), think nothing of her (they don’t need her to care for them), no one thought anything of her (what use is she if they don’t need her?) – and then watching them yell at each other and argue and fight without quarter, without mercy, and knowing that she couldn’t intervene, that she was pointless. Her own stress began rising rapidly, her heart beating hard, her breath starting to come short –

“Hey, Jiang-jiejie,” Nie Huaisang said.

She looked at him.

He smiled at her. “I’m hungry. You should make me some soup.”

“Brat,” Jiang Yanli said automatically, and her shoulders slowly came down, calm returning to her heart. He was obviously saying it to comfort her, she wasn’t stupid, but at the same time the request somehow suited her down to the ground and did the trick the way nothing else might have – after all, if her cowardly little brat had enough energy and attention to spare to be begging for food, things couldn’t be that bad. “What type of soup were you thinking?”

His smile widened as he watched the Xuanwu thrashing in the lake, dissatisfied that it could not capture them and rend their bones with its teeth. “Turtle soup.”

(They served it at their wedding.)

[skamamoroma]

I Promised You The Moon - Episode 1 Thoughts - aka did John Hughes direct this and not tell us?

Oh I had to wait so long today to see episode 1 as I was working but I am so very happy I waited till I was in bed and with a cup of tea... which I then cried into four times. So that’s where I’m at. This is going to be long, I’m not even sorry in the slightest!

For ITSAY, I made so many posts about this show and how moving and beautiful it was, how the symbolism and writing was exceptional, how the music was absolutely incredible and how much I adored BK and PP’s chemistry. P’Boss’ work is special and the feel of Part 1 was a delicious kind of awkward, indie movie full of metaphors, fraught pain and emotion and pretty breathtaking storytelling of love and growth. I fell absolutely in love with Teh and Oh and their story, obsessed with Teh as a character (as I see a lot of myself in him and I love when he spirals) and I just felt utterly moved by the whole show. So I never needed Part 2. Part 1, for me, is perfect. And I certainly didn’t expect to love Part 2 as much or feel as much emotion because I just thought it wouldn’t be possible especially with a change of director and city and storyline... but I genuinely think that was a good idea after seeing Episode 1.

I just finished it and I’m kinda tear stained and the first thing I couldn’t get out of my head was just how much it reminds me of the late dear John Hughes movies from the 80s. Those of you who are a little old like me born right at the beginning of the 90s, will have been brought up on those movies filled with 80s synth music, stories of growing up, artsy camera work and filled with colour and emotion. Those movies are some of my all time favourites and I absolutely felt their influence on Episode 1 and maybe the rest of the season, I don’t know! I really wonder if P’Meen used them or was aware, hahaha. Anyway...!

But first off, I cannot, and I mean CANNOT handle the music. Part 1 really did floor me with the use of the score and how it was such a huge part of the reason it was so beautiful. Phuket Dreams has me in tears about 3 notes in... so cue me crying at the remixes of the old score with 80s synth sounds and almost Dream Pop echoy sounds. That right there is my jam, my absolute favourite music and the way IPYTM is so clearly going to be full of it makes my heart very happy. Especially those last scenes with Oh, that sweeping 80s style music taking him from heartbroken pain to dancing to forget had John Hughes all over it and just felt so impactful. So I will bang on every week about the music I’m sure.

As for the beginning and the casual buying of condoms (yesssss god damn Nadao, thank you for safe sex lessons for LGBT+ youth and a nod to actual sexual expression, I’m mega proud) leading into the way Hoon and Suri were involved (they didn’t give me Tuty 😭) in transferring Teh, it felt like such a gorgeous transfer from ITSAY vibes to IPYTM... watching Teh’s mamma so proud, Hoon watching over him as always and then gently leading into the first moment that made me cry...

How dare they put a remix of the old score over Teh being told by his mamma that she accepts him as he is so casually and softly, in a way that not only lets Teh know he’s loved but welcomes Oh as someone she cares about deeply and is happy being someone her son loves. It was beautifully done and I couldn’t help but think of Teh’s teary face on the Cape at the end of Episode 5 and thinking how proud I am of him. The way Hoon stroked his hair - help.

Teh. Now I made no secret of the fact that I loved every moment of watching Teh go through it in Part 1, how his very physicality and struggle played out especially him writhing all over his rug! But we had to see him grow. He isn’t the same boy he was but he still feels like Teh, just a little more comfortable, a little more mature in some ways and just READY for life. He feels tentative but also prepared to grow more and I just adore him. Oh, on the other hand, the one who was much more secure in himself in terms of his self and sexuality in Part 1 is now absolutely thrown into the unknown and isn’t handling it well.

Oh was established so beautifully as a Phuket boy. His name is rooted in his home, he lives in shorts and by the sea, he’s shaped by that place and what it means to him... his signature scent is coconut! He literally embodies Phuket... so it doesn’t in any way surprise me that we are watching him flounder and feel lost. It feels so human and so many moments felt so moving. When he told Teh that the best part of his day was seeing him, when he imagined the waves on his mind, when he listened to his mamma talk about the coastal weather... it’s hardly surprising that he cried as he was asked to explain his name. That was the second moment that got me. I was a wreck. Watching him break down and fall to pieces infront of total strangers just because he was recounting the meaning of his name, the foundation of who he is, the thing he misses to very much... he doesn’t fit, he doesn’t feel at home and he didn’t feel himself. It was beautifully done, for me. I caught my breath the second he started crying because it was so utterly human and raw. I have felt the way he does and recognised every second on his face. PP has come so so far with his acting.

Then we get the mention of Yongjian. NOW SOMEONE TELL ME IS THAT TEH AS YONGJIAN IN THE TITLES? If so, how dare they spoil it?! I am going to weep uncontrollably if Teh gets his dream. But the way Teh spoke of their future, the way he tried to recreate their past with Yongjian’s speech. Their entire history as friends and boyfriends is rooted in that story, that character, the idea of being Male protagonists... and Teh is so sure of their future. Also, you cannot also avoid the meta of it all with BK and PP. That moment and their words felt so personal to them too and their own real lives!

Do not even start with how their first kiss in Phuket was underwater and arguably their first kiss in Bangkok is the same albeit in public. DO NOT LET ME THINK ABOUT THIS TOO MUCH.

The issue is that, Part 1 set out for us how they ended up where they are. Oh fell into acting, it was never his dream from the start. Then it all became a fight, a thing to win from his rival and in the end a thing to prove. We haven’t really ever see Oh show a passion for the stage and acting, not really. He worked so hard to get his place in Uni but there’s so much irony at play. Their entire story of rivalry has actually caused this current situation. Oh “won” the coveted Uni spot (helped in part by Teh) and Teh “lost” and was making do. But we see how that’s not how life goes. Oh never really felt he knew what he wanted and so he just ploughed on. He’s now in a situation where he has to start deciding, has to be his own person and he’s just... lost. I can’t wait to see him find it whatever it may be! The difference with Teh is that he may not have got his number 1 desire but his passion is ENOUGH. He loves what he’s doing and that moment where Khim (is that her name, I forget now, it’s so late, but Goy’s character) was explaining the lights was gorgeous. Teh’s passion was ignited, you could see that “oh wow” moment... and you can see the difference in how they’re going to progress, Teh didn’t need the top Uni because his passion can carry him and will help him succeed whereas Oh doesn’t know what his passion is and perhaps he’s where he is for the wrong reasons after all. The story telling is lovely to me, if completely heartbreaking.

The tears came again at “but I’ve already given so much of our time to other people”. Oh the tears. The boat scene from ITSAY is my favourite scene of the show and that line is one of the most beautiful bits of writing I’ve encountered for a long while... and to see Teh use it and remember it and effectively set out the issue they’re facing was heartbreaking. They made that promise on the boat and they’re breaking it. Oh-aew is trying to be what he thinks Teh needs and Teh is wide eyed and filled with this new world and getting to indulge his passions. They’re both so human and both trying the best way they know but they’re so young and so unsure and have so little life experience that they don’t know how to be adults or how to manage all of this stuff. They know they care and love and are each other’s person but they have such a lot to learn.

So the introduction of Q and the boys... and let me say they’re glorious... feels both beautiful and tragic because they look like they will be accepting and also potentially LGBT+ themselves or maybe Q (I see your gorgeous painted nails, sweetheart and the way you didn’t question Oh saying “partner” for a second)... but also they’re what Oh is using to fill the time he promised to Teh. It’s not Oh’s fault. He deserves friendship and a world of his own too but he was relying so much on the familiarity of Teh and Teh’s presence to keep him grounded and comfortable but he can’t do that all the time. He is trying so hard to be good and thoughtful and kind that he’s not telling Teh the truth. He’s doing what he said he wouldn’t do on the boat, but we can’t blame him in the slightest, he’s the sweetest boy.

I have so much to say but I guess that’ll do for now. I really loved the episode. Yes, it’s different but I think I realise now why it needed to be. In a way I’m kinda of happy about it because ITSAY stays sacred!!!! It stays as that beautifully fraught and emotional indie movie of my heart filled with metaphorical depth. It can’t be touched as far as I’m concerned but with IPYTM it feels just as moving, just as emotional, just as impactful but in a different way that reflects maturity. I don’t think it would have worked if it still felt fraught and characterised by ITSAY vibes. They’re not kids, they’re not insecure about who they are anymore in terms of their sexuality and they are moving into adulthood.

I know it’s going to break me. Episode 1 had me genuinely crying into my tea but I also know that it had the potential for its own special brand of symbolism and meaning. We can already see some special moments which seemed to be saying way more than the words themselves like the speech on light and how we see things and the way Oh even used it himself to see a different perspective at the end. That felt really very meaningful. They’re going to need to be able to see different view points as they navigate what will probably be a shit ton of pain! They will need to adjust to the light, to their circumstances to be able to survive and for their bond to be what is important without allowing other stuff to pass into their line of sight. Oh saw nothing. Empty stage, no Teh, not even himself... he opened his eyes too soon. He needs to learn to adjust and learn how to see the world and his place in it so that when he opens his eyes he sees what he desires and has worked for and made for himself rather than emptiness.

The last thing for me is the chemistry. What more can you say other than they’re perfect? They have the most natural, enigmatic, intense and sweet chemistry. They work so beautifully together. They sell even the smallest of moments and they absolutely destroy with emotion. I just feel every second of Teh and Oh’s emotion and that is such a damn skill. Their talent, man.

So I loved it. I am going to be dreaming tearstained in 80s synth music tonight! I can’t wait for the rest to emotionally destroy me a little more.

[thevindicativevordan]

You did one for Hulk (incredible btw). Got any thoughts on Spider-Man?

He used to be one of my favorites.

It's easy to see why Spidey took off as Marvel's premiere character, and competitor with Batman for the most popular superhero ever. If you'll indulge my DC bias, Spider-Man sits at the intersection between Superman and Batman. Like Superman, Spider-Man never knew his birth parents, and was instead adopted and raised by an elderly couple. Uncle Ben and Aunt May are the people Peter thinks of as his mom and dad, and it's their lives that help shape Peter. Both Superman and Spider-Man wear colorful red and blue costumes, both have iconic jobs working for newspapers with cantankerous bosses, and both have a lot of Jewish DNA in them because of their creators. Like Batman however, Spider-Man has a tragic parental figure's death to motivate him, he has a very poor reputation with the public, they both style themselves on animals, and both have strong roots in the cities they protect. That Peter's greatest foe, the Green Goblin, also stands at the intersection between Lex Luthor and the Joker makes for a great parallel. Add in that Spider-Man has the second best Rogues Gallery in comics, and it's clear Peter drew on the best attributes from his predecessors as a foundation.

What separates Peter from them though is that he was the first hero with real problems. Neither Superman or Batman had to worry about paying rent regularly like Peter did. Both stood apart from their peers by choice, while Peter wanted to make friends but wasn't able to do it. Krypton and the Waynes died through no fault of Supes or Bats, but Uncle Ben's death was something Peter was at fault for if indirectly. Then you had Gwen Stacy killed as a direct result of Peter's superhero career, introducing the idea of heroes who could fail. Spider-Man was pitched as the flawed hero, the human hero, the guy you could think of yourself as being if you got superpowers. You would screw up and make mistakes, but you'd try your best regardless. Of course the readers would be drawn to, and identify with him, and that's both the secret to his success and what keeps fucking him over. A lot of guys see Peter as their self-insert, so they keep trying to return to their youth through him which keeps derailing him as a character. My entry into Spider-Man fandom came during one of the brief lulls from Marvel trying to reset him to what they see as his "roots".

I remember seeing the Rami Spider-Man movies in the theater and being utterly entranced. I played the first Spider-Man movie tie-in game pretty religiously as a kid (fuck that level where you infiltrate OsCorp, those robots were insane), as well as other Spider-Man games such as Web of Shadows. Can still hear the theme song of the 90s animated Spider-Man show in my head, that show's versions of Green Goblin and Venom are still my favorite takes. All this is a rambling way of saying that "my" Spider-Man was formed during a period where Marvel seemed ok with Peter being more adult, something they've been trying to roll back ever since.

Peter was a college student in the 90s cartoon, the comics had him and MJ married (my first Spidey comic was vol. 1 of JMS' Amazing Spider-Man run, so Peter and MJ being married is the "default" for me), the video games were set in the Ramiverse so he was a college student there as well. It's such a weird era to look back on in retrospect given what's to come and what came before. Peter had problems and was flawed, but he was also so much more mature and thoughtful, intelligent in a way beyond just being a science whiz. He and MJ had a great dynamic as a couple under JMS. They were so clearly in love and also utterly unwilling to take each others shit that it was just a joy to read. That relationship really was something I dearly loved, and of course I took it poorly when Marvel broke the two of them up. Making it a plot where not!Satan comes down and takes their marriage away only rubbed salt in the wound.

Suddenly Peter was a lot more immature and stupid, and Marvel was insisting that this was "how he should be". Marvel was claiming that Spider-Man was all about youth, thus he needed to remain young and marriage free in order to work, which flew in the face of the character as I understood him. To me, Spidey was a character about the opposite, he was about growing up.

More than any other character in the MU, Peter was the guy who embodied character development. In his early years under Lee and Dikto, Peter was an asshole with a chip on his shoulder. Far from being the martyr figure everyone sees him as today, Peter initially just kept trying to make money with his powers. He was constantly moaning and bewailing his lot, because he was a fucking teenager! EVERY teenager treats ANY setback like it's the end of the world. Yet over a period of years, both in universe and out, Peter grew into the great hero everybody sees him as today. He became kinder, more charitable, and made friends with his peers. He acquired a steady stream of super hot girlfriends, ultimately marrying MJ. Peter married MJ before Clark Kent married Lois Lane, that's a huge freaking accomplishment! Totally makes sense that Peter would get married first because while Superman was more or less frozen in place like all DC heroes, Spider-Man was the one who embodied the Marvel trait of growth and change. The world kept throwing shit at him and Peter dealt with it as best he could, and that gave me hope because if he could overcome the forces arrayed against him to find some degree of happiness, so could I.

One More Day completely obliterated all of that. I didn't recognize this character anymore, I didn't care about the shallow relationships they teased him entering, relationships we all knew didn't matter. If Peter couldn't stay married to MJ, he wasn't going to last in a relationship with Carlie Cooper or any of the girls Slott set him up with. Peter being immature worked great when he was actually in high school and college, but Marvel wanted to write him as a high schooler without actually deaging him. The contrast between how he was characterized before and after OMD was just too jarring for me.

Ultimately I left for a while. I read Superior and Spider-Verse, but I was no longer religiously following Amazing Spider-Man any more. Checked out Ultimate Spider-Man which I had never read, and I enjoyed it, but I also held a grudge against it's success. Clearly this was the series that enshrined high school Spider-Man as the "ideal" status quo for a lot of people, and I couldn't help but blame the series for Quesada's successful torching of a more mature Peter Parker. I also read Spider-Girl which took place in an alternate continuity where Peter was still married and he had a daughter with MJ named Mayday. I loved that series a lot, and Mayday became my favorite Marvel superheroine. Eventually I came back to ASM with Spencer because a few of my fellows told me he reminded them of JMS, and I've enjoyed his characterization of Peter. Doubt the marriage will be coming back any time soon but it's nice to read a more adult Peter after how he was characterized under Slott.

Hard to say what the future holds for Peter. Tough to say for certain but with the end of high school Peter in the MCU approaching, it feels like we're on the edge of another shift in status quo for Spider-Man. May be that the creation of Miles is allowing Peter to finally start to mature again since Miles can be the corporate wet dream of an eternally young "diverse" Spidey. The insistence on putting Miles into more and more of Peter's stuff, with Peter mentoring him, makes me hope that Marvel is becoming more ok with Peter growing up. The Insomniac Spider-Man is a college graduate, he feels the closest in tone and character to the Spider-Man I grew up with under JMS and Rami. They even got to kill Aunt May off, something Marvel is still terrified to do in the comics, and the relationship between Peter and MJ is portrayed as crucial to both (as it should), even if MJ is a little too Lois Lane lite for my liking.

Hopefully Spider-Man can shake off Quesada's lingering influence and start being what he was created to be: the guy who moves forward rather than running in place.

[emersonfreepress]

okay so is there content that you had planned for the ROs and story in general but then scrapped cause there wasn’t a good place in the story to stick it in? and if so, can you share what it was? 👀 👀 👀

yes, definitely. *rubs hands together* oh man, you done asked THE question today xD I can't wait to get into this 😁

Academics. I almost decided to have classes and grades be a minor part of gameplay, but the more time I spent designing it the more I realized I wanted nothing to do with it 😂 I haven’t really enjoyed academic gameplay in other interactive fiction because I 1) hate having to choose between studying and interacting with awesome characters, 2) have terrible short term memory, and 3) hate school in general!! So instead I just opted to have the MC be really good at school, point blank period so I could focus on social drama and relationships instead! 😆

Physical skills. I spent literal months crafting the catering scene around setting up stats for stamina/endurance, dexterity, and strength instead of just magnetism, confidence, and persuasion. They had their own backstories with the MC’s parents being overly invested sports parents instead and I think the background choices were like... martial arts, gymnastics, and track? But yeah, I ended up scrapping it all because I was spending hours on research about those individual sports so I could integrate them into the MC’s narrative organically but like... when I tried to think of what use they would be in the actual story, I came up blank. Best decision yet, esp since it means a lot less coding!

Skin tone customization. For one, I noticed that a lot of my favorite IFs don’t offer that customization and it hasn’t impacted my experience at all. For two, I originally realized I might as well not implement it since I am striving real hard not to introduce any customization that won’t actually be mentioned in interesting or meaningful ways in-story. I don’t think it’s really all that common for real life friends (esp in high school?) to comment or compliment each other’s skin and like... when it comes from someone who doesn’t share a similar complexion or ethnic background, that type of commentary gets... d i c e y. So then I wanted to be sensitive to that but what’s the pay-off? An RO mentioning how they love your skin tone once? Awkward sentences with the MC referring to their own skin color? Idk, just wasn’t vibing with it. I’m open to revisiting it in beta or something but for now it’s scrapped.

Singing, Rapping, and Gaming as Hobbies/Talents. I feel bad about scrapping these, honestly 😂 They’re great and I really wanted to incorporate them but it just came down to already having a lot of stuff to code. Plus, I know I can write the Hobbies/Talents I stuck with far better. And for Book 2 purposes, as well!

Leo. as @sourandflightypeaches ​​ asked me about a long while ago, I had to scrap an entire RO 😢 His name is Leo, he was the nephew of wealthy west African diplomats residing in Emerson, and I love him dearly! His backstory was largely based on my mother’s childhood and the circumstances she lived through after immigrating to America. and... ok, i’m about to go on one hell of a tangent so buckle up and bear with me if you can 😅

my intention with this story, aside from writing things that I personally enjoy (graphic violence, spooky woods, social drama, romance, conspiracies 😚), is to explore greed, wealth, and how the ways people and families interact with those two things influence young people and who they grow up to be. here i go sounding pretentious af 😝 and here’s where I apply a cut for those who want to preserve a little mystery to the main characters!

With Gabe, we’ve got someone who grew up with very little stability or financial security but who has found unscrupulous methods to gain status and money, with both noble and selfish motivations.

Kile has some of that childhood experience in common with Gabe, having been in the foster care system since infancy, but they lucked out when they were adopted into massive wealth by a caring, loving couple—a couple that uses their wealth and privilege to be far more lenient and protective of Kile than is actually reasonable or responsible.

Jack comes from a prestigious wealthy family on his dad’s side who he loves dearly but there’s no getting around the fact that they love him back as much as they despise his working class mom.

Jessie is a spoiled sweet heiress (being the baby of her family and the only girl) and while she lives blissfully ignorant of the harmful source and impact of her father's income and career, she bears the weight of the expectation to fulfill very traditional gender roles, including her behavior and appearance, but also extending to her career and life plans.

Rain's wealth led to them growing up sheltered and isolated but also extremely accommodated, giving them maximum freedom and opportunity to discover and develop their personal talents and interests. However, they have almost no positive relationship with their parents who have essentially decided to give up on a kid that couldn't be exactly the accessory they tried to mold them to be—both in terms of their identity and personality.

Rupan/Rohan, at their very core, rejects everything about conformity, self-importance, and excessive luxury—which means they have never, ever truly fit in with their peers. Going full non-conformist, however, has resulted in them becoming alienated from much of their family, as well, despite them all loving each other very much. Their history with false friends and betrayals has led them to over-indulge in their vices and reckless behavior to compensate for that isolation. Sometimes, they just get in over their head and many times, they know better. Every time, it's just that the feeling of finally belonging is utterly intoxicating.

Vivian/Vincent has two extremely successful parents who didn't inherit but instead built up their wealth and they aspire to be just like them, to a degree that is well and truly unhealthy. Their mother specifically is an over-achiever and applies mountainous pressure for them to follow in her footsteps, especially academically. Vi is completely capable of achieving what their mom expects of them, but they were already an extremely sensitive perfectionist so this has made them intensely critical of themself. This is a large part of why they are such a rigid, no-nonsense person and that in turn has made them one of the most disliked people among their peers—which is a huge personal failure to them since their father is a very well-liked and socially successful person in town.

And the Emersons are peak privilege: inherent high social status, brains, looks, charisma, athleticism, and massive wealth. They could never have been anything less than extremely popular, just by virtue of their last name and the nature of the town's social dynamics and politics. And they do enjoy that privilege (esp Curt lol). However, it should go without saying that being so high profile, even (or maybe especially) just in the isolated scope of your hometown, isn't always a boon. Their family's and their own perceived failings are widely discussed and privately mocked and/or celebrated. Real friends are scarce while fake ones and snakes are plentiful. Plus their dad is a gigantic dickhead who sees his kids as extensions of his own status and reputation and not much else. Public shortcomings make for an unbearable time at home and the world outside the estate is at once overly accommodating, full of assumptions, and even subtly hostile at times—all unrelated to their own actions or character.

And with the MC, I think the narrative will make it clear there are several ways that story can go. You start off with irresponsible parents that have lost their wealth due to their own mismanagement and material ambitions—how that affects any individual MC should differ based on choices and consequences!

So why bring any of that up when I was supposed to be talking about my cut OC? 😂😂

Leo was going to be the unwelcome recent addition to his uncle’s household, the son of a brother his aunt hates for (petty af) Reasons, and she took that resentment out on him directly by restricting his access to nearly every aspect of the family's wealth. Especially material goods and living conditions. He was basically treated like the help, tasked with playing nanny for his many younger cousins and burdened with doing the homework and providing academic cover for his dumb as rocks cousin in the same grade as you all. To sum it up, he was basically a victim of trafficking at the hands of his own family with his uncle out of town enough to feign ignorance to how bad his wife was treating his nephew and his aunt going out of her way to keep him busy, at home, and isolated. This is sadly a super common form of trafficking in Francophone African cultures (although I don't think most people view it as trafficking. and I’m sure the same is true of other cultures but I don’t want to speak outside of my purview). And like I mentioned above, it’s how my own mom's (and idek how many cousins') child/teenhood went.

It’s a perspective on modern wealth, privilege and greed that I really, really wanted to tell. I am confident in saying it hasn't been explored in interactive fiction yet (though correct me—and direct me 👀—if I'm wrong) and out of all the wealth/greed explorations I came up with, it's the one I have the closest personal ties to and the strongest feelings about. The characters and plans I had for it were detailed and I'm proud of them but at the end of the day... I just couldn't find a place for Leo in the story at large.

Leo was, in fact, the last main character I came up with, when I had already designed and fleshed out the larger story and started crafting the timeline of major events. I think the worst thing I could have done for a story and perspective that I care about this much is shove it into a plot that didn't have room for it at the very base level, regardless of how well the character or his story is written. Shoe-horned characters always stick out. I didn’t want to disservice Leo by having him be the character that did nothing or could be removed from the main plot without affecting it at all, y’know? That’s so much worse than just forgoing the indulgence, imo :((

ugh.... Leooooo 😭 I'm so sorry bb, I failed youuu 😥

[yandere-daydreams]

Idk if you do villain deku but how would it work out if villain deku and tomura loved the same darling

You must be new around here. For context, assume Izuku was taken in be All For One around the time the series would’ve started, and was groomed with Shigaraki to carry on in the villain world.

TW: Dehumanization, Implied Physical Abuse and Mentions of Kidnapping.

~

Brothers were supposed to be good at sharing.

They weren’t technically brothers, not biologically, but they’d had more than enough time to learn how to act as if they were. They’d already been leading the League of Villains by the time you joined, Tomura as the mastermind and Izuku as the dramatic flair that balanced out his much more bleak companion, so for all intents and purposes, they should get along amicably. They should, and they could if they tried, hell, it almost seemed like they were friends most of the time, as far as you could tell. But, there were some things they couldn’t seem to agree on, regardless of how much time they’d had the opportunity to argue their way to a compromise.

Early on, you hadn’t known whether or not to be honored or disturbed that you were that point of contention, that one thing they couldn’t seem to split evenly. You’d fretted over it, at first, concerned that this might affect the League’s end-goal or cause even more friction among its more volatile members, but now that you ‘weren’t allowed’ to leave either of their personal rooms, your feelings on the subject were much less altruistic.

Even now, you had to grit your teeth to keep from voicing your frustration as Izuku made himself comfortable beside you, his head resting on your chest and his legs splayed across yours, the boy content to entangle himself with you whenever possible. It must’ve been relaxing for him, considering just how much time he spent slotted against whatever part of you he could reach, rambling away about anything and everything that came to mind. You’d tried participating, earlier, wondering aloud about your old friends were doing and probing him for information on the world outside of his bedroom's walls, but you didn’t, anymore. He’d get so quiet, and then so angry… It was better to let him bring it up naturally. Or, failing that, try with Tomura, if he was in one of his better moods.

“Right, (Y/n)?” He asked, his voice drawing you out of your thoughts. You hadn’t heard the question, but you nodded regardless, earning a smile and a squeeze to the arm he was clinging to. He continued unprompted, your silence not seeming to bother him. It never had before, so why would it now? “I just think the Nomus could be so much more useful if we put a little more effort into maintaining their human appearances. Just imagine it! You’re taking a crowded train to work and then, out of nowhere, bam! Something’s attacking and no Heroes will arrive until everyone’s already dead or so hopeless, they might as well be.” He laughed, light-heartedly, his grin broadening with every other word. His expression alone could’ve made you sick, and the contents of his lecture certainly weren’t helping. “But, he doesn’t think it fits with our message. Like attacking people on the street is any different from--”

The door swung open without warning, cold steel colliding harshly with the neighboring concrete wall. The clash echoed through the small room, reverberating off non-existent furniture and forcing Izuku to stop, pursing his lips as he went quiet. He pulled away from you, slightly, positioning himself to face the occupied entrance, but his smile fell as soon as he saw the intruder, something wicked taking its place. Not a frown, no, a frown would’ve been kind compared to the disappointment spreading across his features, manufactured but just as painfully disinterested as any natural reaction could’ve been. Something he’d practiced especially for those he thought felt above him, his current victim no exception.

Tomura hardly bothered looking up from the floor, his scowl permanently fixed on the path ahead of him. “Have you seen…” He trailed off, his gaze darting anxiously upwards, only searching for a moment before his eyes fixed on to you. A bolt of something frozen and sharp ran up your spine, involuntarily, Tomura’s presence enough to make you uneasy on its own. His tone didn’t make anything better, raspy and low but authoritative, at the same time. The tone of an older brother who wanted something his younger sibling had already laid claim to. “It’s not your day. You were supposed to leave them in my room until I came back.”

“Oh, it’s not?” If Izuku was attempting to be playful, you couldn’t tell, the words coming out flat, annoyed. As if he had a million better things to be doing than indulging Tomura. “Must’ve gotten the schedule mixed up. Besides, Shigaraki,” He paused, making a point of detaching himself from you completely, stretching casually, only to sink back into your side, his arms now around your waist. “Don’t you think it’s mean to leave my poor little sweetheart in the lonely room of yours, all alone with nobody to keep them company? I mean, I know you still aren’t used to the way we do this kind of stuff, but I figured that’d be common sense.”

You tried to sit up, pushing Izuku away gently. For the sake of self-preservation, if nothing else. “That’s uncalled for, Midoriya. It is his turn--”

“You’re one to talk, you maladjusted little brat.” There was a chance he hadn’t heard you, but you couldn’t be that hopeful. Instead, you were left pushed against the barred headboard as Izuku took a defensive posture, crossing his arms and pushing himself to his feet, making himself seem as intimidating as he could. Still, Tomura eclipsed him easily, a head taller than his opponent and twice as off-putting, his stance only growing more overwhelming as he took a step close to the two of you. “I’m sure they’d rather be alone than stuck with a creep who doesn’t know how to keep it in his pants.”

Izuku responded with a hum, this time, the soft noise accompanied by a tilt of his head. He was smiling again in the blink of an eye, but it didn’t seem as careless as it had before. ‘Baring his teeth’ might’ve been a better description. “Do you think someone’s jealous, angel?” You recognized the petname, but he wasn’t talking to you. His concentration was utterly dedicated to Tomura, now. “If our valiant leader was having that type of problem, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? I’d hate for you to be neglected when I’m not around.”

Tomura huffed, growled, his hands balling into fists at his sides, each finger curled until his knuckles were nearly translucent. It was all you could do to tear your attention away as he started towards Izuku, his arm outstretched and looking for something to choke, but his target was unfazed, never faltering. Still, you knew what would happen if they made contact. They’d fight and yell and scream, and when they were sick of dealing with each other, both would be left to take their frustration out on something soft and malleable and captive. Something that couldn’t choose not to lay there and take it.

You were scrambling forward before you could think, stumbling off the bed and putting yourself between Izuku and Tomura. “You’re both fucking awful,” You said, the statement falling off your tongue before you could think of something more pleasent to say. “All you do is argue and insult each other and make me miserable. If you cared about me, actually cared about me, you’d try to get along. That, or you’d let me go and just beat each other to death, already.”

As soon as you finished, the tension returned, stronger and more unignorable than ever. When neither responded immediately, hope swelled in your chest, but it was smothered just as quickly, Tomura grabbing your wrist and squeezing. You didn’t doubt that he would leave bruises, but suddenly, soreness and aches were the least of your concerns. “Who told the bitch to talk out of turn?” Tomura spat, watching you squirm with a cold glare. “This is what happens when you spoil your pets. They start acting out.”

“Don’t use that kind of language,” Izuku muttered, but he didn’t disagree. Instead, he shook his head, letting out a drawn-out, exasperated sigh. “But… we should do something. The disobedience will only get worse, if we let it go on.”

Tomura nodded, and that was all the confirmation they needed before you were being dragged out of the room, your resistance was useless as it was desperate. In all the bickering and forced affection, you’d almost forgotten the one thing they did agree on.

You’d forgotten just how eager they were to put you in your place.

[marigoldbaker]

was going through ripper au nonsense and realized that i never posted this, oh my gosh??? largely because it is SUPER plotless and self-indulgent. but. so is the entirety of the ripper au. anyway some stuff that hasn’t (yet) officially made it into the ripper au but is mentioned in this mini fic:

spike and drusilla are like ripper and jenny’s weird couple friends. jenny gave drusilla a soul to help center her and then spike wanted one too because he felt left out. ripper and jenny were friends with them before the soul thing, though.

ripper and jenny have a TERRIFYING number of children, because they both really wanted to make their family as big as possible. the scoobies are around literally all the time tho so it’s not like they’re struggling to keep an eye on the kids. (this one is still a variable bc i’m not sure how it works characterization-wise, but it makes my brain happy and my mom and i talked about it for a really long time on the phone a year ago, so it’s probably gonna stay.)

Spike and Dru came over for tea that Wednesday. The newest little Calendar-Giles, who hadn’t officially met either of them, was utterly fascinated by Dru’s vamp face, and while Dru entertained Ripper’s brood Spike ducked into the kitchen to speak to the man himself. Ripper, who was holding the second-newest Calendar-Giles, looked a little bit worn, and happy about it; it was, Spike supposed, what happened when you had a ridiculous number of kids and a baby on the way.

“Do you and Jenny ever intend on stopping?” he asked

Ripper considered. “No.”

“You should,” said the second-littlest Calendar-Giles. “There’s no more room in the house for a baby and I don’t want to share.”

“Audrey, you’re already sharing,” Ripper pointed out.

“I don’t want to share more!” objected—Audrey, Spike reminded himself. The only one whose name he reliably remembered at this point was Alexandra, and that was mostly because she was an absolute hellion who took after all the scary parts of her parents. “This house is too small! Great-Aunts Vin and Sophie have a big house, why can’t we?”

“Great-Aunts Vin and Sophie are obscenely rich, darling,” said Ripper patiently, shifting Audrey to his hip. “We are—”

“Still pretty rich,” said Spike, “considering you’re supporting—how many kids? Twenty?”

“Seven,” said Ripper. He hesitated. “Not counting the one due in March.”

“Christ, it’s like the Sound of Music,” said Spike.

Jennifer, who was washing dishes, snort-laughed. “Feels like it,” she said. “I’d make a great Liesel.”

“Did you want something, Spike?” said Ripper, giving him a small, amused grin. It looked weird with the glasses, Spike thought.

“Yeah,” said Spike awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot. “Uh. Maybe.”

Ripper sort of rolled his eyes a little, then said, “Jennifer, could you take Audrey out to your mum?”

“I can take me out to mama,” said Audrey loudly, twisting out of Ripper’s arms and half-tumbling to the floor. She hurried out of the room, and Jennifer (who was clearly old enough to take the hint) turned off the sink before following.

“Mate, I think you’re my best friend,” said Spike, blurting it out before he could lose his nerve. “Dru pointed out this morning—we’ve known you and Jenny for what, twenty years?”

“Twenty-something,” Ripper agreed gamely, smiling slightly. “Probably a bit less than that if we discount the years without the souls.”

“Yeah,” said Spike. “Yeah, and—you’re pretty much the only one I want to punch in the throat on a regular basis.”

He would have meant it as an insult, twenty-something years ago, but it came out sounding more like something vaguely friendly. Affectionate, even, which was bizarre in how natural it felt. Ripper was his best friend, Spike realized, in the weirdest fucking possible way.

“God,” said Ripper, grinning. “Why couldn’t we be like Jenny and Dru? Those two will just talk shit about us for hours and no one gets punched in the throat.”

Spike glanced out through the doorway, towards Ripper’s living room. Surrounded by what seemed like a thousand little kids, not counting Buffy and Faith on the sofa plus Willow and Xander in the foyer, Jenny and Dru were having one of their delightedly cheerful catch-up sessions. Their friendship had always been strong even when Dru hadn’t had a soul; Dru’s newfound conscience had made Jenny almost as sweetly determined to care for and protect her as Spike himself was. Which said a lot.

Spike was quite genuinely fond of Jenny, all things considered. But he didn’t think being friends with Ripper would be quite as fun if he and Ripper just sat around talking all the time. Still— “We could talk,” he suggested.

“Nah,” said Ripper, grinning. “Much more fun to kick you in the shins when you’re being an arse.”

“Fuck off,” said Spike, grinning back.

 ~~

As it happened, the baby wanted to be born a little early—late February instead of early March—and Ripper did a ridiculous Panicky Thing at the hospital where he fretted over Jenny and the kids until Jenny (very in labor) shouted at him to leave me alone and let me do this thing, asshole. Spike, who had seen this coming a mile off, led Ripper patiently out into the waiting room, where the no-longer-youngest Calendar-Giles was nestled snugly in Dru’s arms.

“Hold your kid,” said Spike, taking the baby from Dru and handing it unceremoniously to Ripper. Ripper stumbled, arms curling protectively around it, and Spike said, rolling his eyes, “Jen’s old hat at this, mate.”

“The baby’s early,” said Ripper, “and she’s not as young as she was when we had Jennifer—”

“Do not,” said Spike, “ever say that around your wife.”

Ripper huffed, indignation replacing fear. “I’m not a moron—”

“Oh,” said Spike, “is that why you’re having a complete and total meltdown over a pregnancy that’s two weeks early? It’s going to be fine.”

Dru gave Spike a reproving look, as though he was the one being an idiot right now. Standing up, she placed her hands over Ripper’s on the baby. “You know Jenny’s going to be fine,” she said very gently. “So do I, as a matter of fact. But I think she’d rather like you to be there when the baby comes—and I think you need to be a little calmer if she’s going to let you in the room again.”

Ripper looked to Spike, eyes wide and vulnerable.

It was a simple gesture, but it struck Spike: he was Ripper’s best friend. This was his moment to shine. Before the soul, he might have deliberately fucked it up, just because he thought it might be funny. Now—

“You love her a lot, yeah?” said Spike, in that gentle, careful voice he used on Dru’s off days. “It’s perfectly fine to be scared, long as you don’t scare her. Be scared all you want when the kid’s here and she’s resting. We can go out for drinks and you can cry some manly tears or something, just—not while she’s going through something like that. She needs you.”

Ripper’s face had changed, very slightly; it was clear Spike’s words had resonated with him. After a few more moments of consideration, he nodded, then left, the baby still in his arms.

“That wasn’t abysmal,” said Dru, giving Spike a small, sidelong smile. “I’ve seen you do worse.”

“Thanks ever so,” said Spike dryly, kissing her temple.

 ~~

It was nearing morning, so Spike and Dru had to reluctantly slip out of the hospital before the sun rose and they were burned to a crisp. Spike got the text from Ripper about an hour after they’d reached their basement-level apartment:

 thx mate. helped a lot. jenny and baby doing great.

 Just as Spike was typing a reply, the second message came from Ripper:

 we named him william.

 Any manly tears that were shed at the receiving of that message were strictly Spike’s business.

[bitletsanddrabbles]

PSA: Quarantine Shopping Break Guide

For the past several weeks we’ve been seeing a major uptick in people coming into our store who haven’t been out of the house in at least a month, possibly longer. They wouldn’t be out now except that they’re out of staple food stuffs and need to restock, because starvation sucks. What a lot of them are not fully prepared for, however, is that shopping has changed. Store policies have been updated to protect customers and workers and help stop the spread of the virus. On some level they’ve expected it, of course, but it’s still unfamiliar and therefore stressful territory. Therefore, I have some basic advice to prepare you if you’re going to go shopping for the first time in a month and a half. This will, of course, vary from store to store, and probably region to region, and more than likely is utterly useless outside of the US, so take it as a broad generalization.

Before we get going, I want to you to give yourself a pat on the back. You’ve done a great, socially responsible thing, working from home; not working at all; dealing with the roommate, SO, kids, pets, whoever none stop; trading in trips to see friends for face time conversations; courting cabin fever....and those of us in stores really do appreciate it! So - round of applause for you!

Now, on to shopping.

The first thing to know is that a lot of stores are requiring their staff to wear masks which means that communication will be carried out in a combination of pantomime and polite bellowing. No, seriously, you can not hear someone clearly if they are wearing a mask and speaking at a normal conversational level, especially not from the required six feet. If a cashier or other employee yells instructions at you, they are not trying to be rude or chastising you for not knowing the new rules. They are simply trying to make sure you hear the instructions rather than something that sounds like a grown up on Charlie Brown. There will also be a lot of pointing, vague hand gestures, etc. If you’re a regular shopper, you can guess at some of these things, but no one is going to think less of you if you just stand there looking politely confused and going “What?” as distinctly as possible through your own mask.

Incidentally, do try to have a mask or bandana or something on you. PPE is becoming increasingly mandatory for customers. Along with muffling voices, they mask facial expressions and negate lip reading. You are warned. 

I highly recommend answering basic ‘yes/no’ questions with standard nods and head shakes where possible.

Now, since wearing masks make beverage consumption tricky, therefore keeping the vocal cords lubricated is more difficult that usual, the employees will want to try and keep the yelling to a minimum. To this end most stores are putting up signs. Gobs of signs. More signs than you could ever imagine and in places you’d never think to look. Keep your eyes out! Some stores have made one way aisles. These function exactly the same as one way streets, so if you realize you forgot something, just go around the block. Many stores have signs politely requesting you ‘please wait here’ by the front registers. These signs tend to be on the floor where you will walk unknowingly over them if you don’t look down, so for the sake of minimal yelling, look down now and again.

You may think these signs sound vague, and you’d be right. Wait here. For how long? For what? Social distancing, obviously, as there are generally several of these signs roughly six feet apart, but the phrasing is still only slightly clearer than mud.  The answer is likewise subject to change. Some stores want you to wait until the conveyor belt is clear. Others want you to wait until the person in front of you has completed the transaction and is walking away, and still others want you to wait until the cashier signals you forward. The best part is that if management is not clear with the workers, you may get a variety of preferences in the same store! It’s safest to wait until you’re signaled forward, ether by word or gesture. If the person in front of you completes the transaction, walks away, and the cashier makes no sign, then it’s probably safe to go ahead and walk up. Unless the register is smoking or there are a bunch of managerial looking types clustered around in conference. Then there may be something wrong.

Another advantage of waiting until called is that if the register next to you opens up, you’ve not already put your purchase on the conveyor belt you’re at and you can hop lines.

A lot of places have gotten rid of dividers. This is because they only want one transaction on the belt at a time. If you walk up and start unloading your purchase before the previous transaction is finished, they may well get mixed up which will likely annoy both you and the person in front of you and will most definitely annoy the cashier. Don’t do it. If you do and someone tells you to stop, please remove your items from the belt while you wait. If you don’t, you really have only yourself to blame if things get muddled and chaos ensues.

Seriously, communication, while difficult, is absolutely key right now.

Plexiglass is in. It will likely be erected as a shield between you and any stationary worker you might deal with. It does not help with the hearing thing, but it is there to protect you. Please do not lean around it to get closer to the cashier, even if you can’t hear. It defeats the purpose.

Brace yourself for sticker shock. Most people have never bought a month or two months worth of groceries at a time, and they add up fast. Remember, you are not being extravagant. This is money you’d normally be spending spread out over several weeks and you’re just paying it in a lump sum. The store staff is not judging you for being excessive. Unless you’re there in the first fifteen minutes, you’re probably the fifth huge order they’ve seen today, because pretty much everyone is doing this right now. There are exceptions, of course - essential workers who have stopped in for a thing here and there because, hey, they’re already out; people who can’t afford to buy that much at once because they’re pay check to pay check; people who can’t store all that at once, they’re out there, definitely. But there are a lot of people doing the same thing you are and dropping a month’s mortgage on food and sundries all in one go. It’s okay. You’re doing the right thing and while it may look like the cashier views your order with utter despair.... okay, yeah, you’re probably reading the expression right, but they understand.

You aren’t going to get what you want. No matter how early you show up, things will be out. Shipments won’t have come in. Shipments will have come in, but things will have been cleared out before you get there. There will have been an unexpected run on something. Beyond that, though, there will likely be purchasing limits on things that there are national shortages on. Toilet paper probably pops immediately to mind, but also rice, flour, sugar, etc. Limits will vary from store to store and may possibly change over the course of the day within one store depending on how much they have. Signs will not always get up as they should, so you’ll run into things you didn’t know about at the register. News won’t make it around the store the way it should, so the floor staff won’t always have the most up to date info. Heck, the cashiers might be confused.

Don’t argue. Please. Don’t try to find a work around. Don’t insist that you need to exceed the limit because of your special circumstances. I promise you, your circumstances  aren’t that special. There are at least three other people in the store at any given time with the same issue. The limits exist to make sure that as many people as possible can get something, so while you might not be getting as much as you’d like, imagine if the item had sold out because there weren’t limits and you couldn’t get any.

And if the staff seem tired, stressed, or frustrated, there’s a simple reason for that. They are. Seriously, imagine spending all day trying to politely bellow clarification of the vague instructions at people, only to be told every fifth transaction “Well you don’t have to yell!” Imagine listening to people gripe for hours on end about how you’re out of everything. Imagine every fifth person insisting that they need more than one pack of toilet paper because they have a big family. Imagine having to check three times a day to see if the limit on flour has changed. Imagine people coming through with a heaping cart full of groceries and informing you that they’re getting it because they’re throwing a block party in the middle of a quarantine. Imagine wearing that mask that’s rubbing behind your ears for a full eight hours. Tired is not the word, most of the staff in any retail store you care to name is physically and mentally exhausted, but they’re still there because you need to eat. Be kind. If they come across as frustrated, be patient. Know that the problem isn’t you so much as it is everything. We are overwhelmed and can’t communicate and this is five days a week for most of us and it is all just so very much.

And finally, mental health is important. If you’re doing your two month grocery shopping and just happen to notice that there’s a nice sale on tvs and golly, wouldn’t that be nice since you’re stuck in the house? Go for it. A nice bottle of vodka? Please indulge responsibly. That amazing looking cake in the baked good section? Treat. Your. Self. You are not being irresponsible for buying something that will make this all more bearable. You do not need to feel guilty for picking up something that will keep the kids quiet and give you some peace. You are especially not a bad person for getting these things while you’re out on an essential shopping trip anyway. Don’t break the bank, of course, but beyond that - don’t stress it.

[aminmelall]

Nostalgia vs Instagram Culture

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately... Is Instagram. 

More specifically, the type of culture that seems to have bubbled up around it in the past few years. It is so very big. When I was younger, Maybelline Dream Matte Mousse and spidery eyelashes were the trend, but it was mainly concentrated to secondary schools in the UK, not the entire globe. And not with the same ferocity and consequence that Instagram trends now seem to have.

The Kardashians, “fierce” brows, harsh contouring, and lip injections are now commonplace. Showing off your organic avocado on toast brunch that cost you £15 (not including your iced latte). posing in expensive gym clothes, big fake acrylic nails, makeup tutorials that make you look completely and utterly transformed from your natural look. Phones that cost over two months’ rent. As much as I see the appeal of all these things, to me, they just feel too far removed from the organic and authentic self. The totally stripped down to the basics, self. It almost makes you forget that there is an organic form of you.

When I am nostalgic, I remember washing my face with a bar of soap and a flannel, not having an entire skin care routine with over five different steps. (I still have no idea what toner is for). I remember going outside to the park, and having to go to your friends house and ask if they were coming out, rather than messaging or even texting, back when I was 11 and didn’t even have a phone. When I was younger, there was no social media. I had no concept of fashion, the only things I knew about makeup came from watching my mum put hers on before she went to work and ultimately, the only people I was exposed to were the people i went to school with, not the majority of the population of the planet. If I wanted to impress anyone, it was the kids in my class at school, not literally the entire Instagram-using world. And they were the only people I had to compare myself to.

 I know that to most people, thinking about what life used to be like is something to be snorted at. “Thank God times have changed and I learned how to do my eyebrows!”.

And sure, the beauty and fashion industry has been around for hundreds of years. Obviously before Instagram there were movies, TV shows, TV advertisements and countless magazines that were along the same vein. “These people are desirable, and you should want to be like these people, because if you are, you’ll be desirable too, and that means you’ll be happy!” But that’s not what I’m talking about right now, and is a little outdated.

 It’s 2020, and now with one billion users worldwide, Instagram is the main platform of “This is what you should want. This is what you should be.”

So many people get carried away with Instagram to the point where they dedicate almost all aspects of their lives to fitting this image of perfection that has been dictated by the culture of social media. Your makeup, your body type, the food you eat and everything you do- if you are so constantly exposed to these trends, you’ll start to believe that this is what you need to be. Everyone else has the latest iPhone, so you need one too. People are pumping their faces full of silicone and crayoning on their eyebrows and gluing plastic spikes to their fingertips, so... that’s what you should be doing too, right? These people have thousands or millions of followers. Evidently, they are what is desirable. And everybody wants to be desirable, so what do we do? 

We follow suit, and take pictures along the way, and let the world know; “Me too!! Look, I have everything I need to be attractive and acceptable to the world! Look at me!!”

 And ultimately, does it make any of us any happier? Does it further our careers, contribute to our real-life friendships and relationships in any way? Our real life is all we have. Our family, our friends and every single day we get to be alive, where we are, the city we’re in and the job we work, all of that is happening to us right now. And there are so many people wasting so much time gormlessly staring at their phones, ogling profiles of people who have the lives they wish they had, but they would have never have even known about if they just put their phones down and really looked at everything around them and saw the beauty in the here and now.

As a disclaimer, I’m not shaming anybody for liking iPhones or dip brow pomade or acrylic nails. I am not angry with the people that use these things or engage in social media. 

My main criticism is not about people indulging in these things they may enjoy, but the total disregard and complete amnesia to what it is to be a well-rounded person without those things. The notion that it’s okay to not want all of that stuff. You don’t need them. You don’t need to be anything other than what you are.

You can be a functional, desirable, and hell, even just a happy person if you decide to not wear any makeup. If you don’t want to spend a thousand pounds on a phone. You’re allowed to not want to go to the gym, ever. It’s okay to completely despise avocado on toast. It’s okay to have had the same cracked phone for the past three years, and have no intention of buying a new one because hey, if it works, it works! It’s okay to be flat chested, or chubby, or fat. It’s okay to be ugly. It’s okay to be spotty or have spot scars or be happy in the job you have right now, and to enjoy doing nothing in your spare time. You don’t need to “constantly be striving to be a better you.” You can just be you. You are enough. 

 There is nothing wrong with you for being you, just the way you are. 

Without the makeup, without the fancy clothes, without a phone, or a gym membership, or pictures of fancy food. Without your perfectly sculpted eyebrows, without your acrylic nails, or without a “themed” Instagram profile. It’s alright to just be a person that washes their face with a bar of soap. 

I’ve come to the point where I’ve reassessed the things that bring me true joy, in the here and now. I like cooking, spending time with my loved ones, reading, having a hot water bottle. If I go to the pub, I make a point to not look at my phone, and instead enjoy my drink, or food, and enjoy the buzzing ambience around me. 

It is so much easier, eventually, to enjoy your life when you’re not constantly trying to prove how fantastic your life is to a billion strangers. When you’re not trying to find something aesthetic to post, or when you’re trawling through these perfectly curated profiles and wondering why you don’t have that life.  

Spoiler alert, barely anybody actually has that life. Your life is normal, and wonderful, and has all the possibility to be filled with joy and happiness, that has nothing to do with your social media presence. 

And I really really wish more people would take that to heart, because I’m worried about the world. I’m worried about people and about the decline in communities that look after one another, I’m worried about all the people out there who base their self worth purely on what other people think of them, whether all they can think about is posting the perfect selfie, or whether they’re being cyber-bullied and it’s affecting their whole lives.

 I’m worried about the people that are missing out on their family life, their relationships, because they’re busy scrolling on their phones. One day, there will come a day where I can’t quite remember what my mum’s laugh sounds like. One day, my grandparent’s will be gone. Something terrible could happen to any of my loved ones at any moment, and I don’t want myself or anybody else to have missed out on precious interactions with their family and friends because they are so obsessed with whatever is on their phones at that time, or just in some other way preoccupied with the culture of social media.

And while I am aware that social media can be a great platform to start your own business, meet your soulmate, make friends and discover new places to go, interests, food, and you name it, I can’t help but worry that the cons outweigh the pros, and the amount we would all have to gain if we weren’t so obsessed with social media. 

Thanks for reading x

[patricianandclerk]

Tell me your Excessively Detailed Headcanons about drumknott and/or vetinari! 8, 19, 28, 48?

Excessively detailed headcanon meme.

8. Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging

Drumknott’s indulgences:

reading poetry

buying stationery

visiting his sister, Wendy, and spending time with his nephew and nieces

going to the Library and reading in there for a while

very, very occasionally having a root beer float

Vetinari’s indulgences:

Drumknott

doing the crossword and the Jikan no Muda

sparring and having fun taking on the Assassins who try to kill him

time with dogs

tea with Sybil

19. What do they think about before falling asleep at night?

Drumknott absolutely is one of those weird, uncanny people who can, for the most part, lie down and just turn his brain off and go to sleep. This absolutely infuriates Vetinari, who really struggles to actually bed down and sleep once he lies down, on top of only sleep for like, two to, at the most, four hours a night. 

Drumknott occasionally thinks about his morning’s schedule, what appointments are coming up, or what he was most recently wearing, and then kind of drops off. Vetinari tends to think of literally everything he’s worried about, although I do think once Drumknott comes closer and lies on top of him or curls against him, his mental processes do slow down a bit and become more focused on him. 

28. Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?

I don’t think Drumknott really sees himself as having friends, necessarily. I think if you asked him if he had any friends, he would tell you no. With that said, the people he’s closest to are:

Vetinari (but he couldn’t call Vetinari his friend bc Vetinari is his employer and also far and away his social superior, even if they share a bed and love one another) 

Mustrum Ridcully and the Librarian (but he wouldn’t call them his friends bc Ridcully is his social superior, and he’s too close to the Librarian as a paternal figure to really call him a friend)

Dustin Lockheed, Halton Juniper, and others of the Dark Clerks (but he wouldn’t call them friends bc they are his coworkers)

other members of the Ankh-Morpork Stationery Appreciation Society (but he wouldn’t call them friends bc they’re idiots and have bad opinions about stationery, in his opinion, not that he’d say that, as the club secretary)

Once he starts on the railway, though, he’d probably call some of the other stokers friends, and they’d definitely call him a friend, whether he liked it or not (which he does).

Drumknott’s worst enemy is the ghost of his father, or the concept of disorganisation.

48. How do they express love?

So, I just want to note that I see Drumknott as having come from a very abusive background, and that even after his father died, the way that his mother and sister showed love and affection was also not great. Because he kind of came from this background where like, assurances of love and affection and compliments would normally be coming with the expectation that like, he’s going to be asked for something he doesn’t want to give. He lowkey associates assurances of love and affection with complete self-sacrifice, and while he’s tried his best to work past that, he’s not... great at it. 

So the ways that Drumknott displays love instead is just in like... showing attention to detail and quiet care, getting thoughtful gifts, spending time with people, being useful to people. 

When he does veer into compliments, he prefers to give physical compliments that are very much based in attraction, or he prefers to lend distance to them by diving into poetry and poetic stuff. He struggles to admit to feeling anything, like, big time. 

Especially with Vetinari, he expresses a lot of his affection with like... Basically just lingering in his presence, filing things, tidying things and settling around him, and leaning slightly into his physical bubble so that Vetinari will reach out and touch him rather than the other way around.

His expression of love is in terms of how utterly devoted he is, honestly.

For Vetinari, like... He came from a much less stunted background: he grew up with his father kissing and hugging him and picking him up a lot, and Madam is also very physical with him, albeit with specific rules? She can kiss him and hug him and touch his hair, but these have to be like, at specific moments where it’s Socially Okay, and without anyone seeing.

The real way that Vetinari and Madam really showed one another physical affection was in each other’s clothes, and that’s a holdover Vetinari takes on into his affection with friends, pseudo-sons, and lovers. He absolutely used to help button up or lace up Madam’s clothes, and vice versa: they’d fuss over creases in one another’s clothing, and reach out and adjust things in one another, or unbutton and rebutton something to set it back straight.

When they really want to touch one another, they just like, pretend there’s a crease or something and reach out to fix it.  

He’s much more confident saying stuff in words, and honestly, will just? Throw out compliments very easily - he can do poetry and poetical stuff, but I think he usually worries about sounding insincere if he does that stuff? But with Drumknott, he knows that Drumknott is uncomfortable with too many personal words, so he really does hold himself back a lot to keep from saying the stuff he wants to say, because he really does prioritise Drumknott’s comfort.

In general, the way he shows his love in a wider sense is just in... Making sure people have time to take care of themselves and relax, and to have things they love, etc. 

[trespeak]

What's your favorite house album?

Wow, that’s a toughie. Might just have to give you a list instead.

This ended up being pretty long so I’ve put all the big descriptions I wrote for each of ‘em under the cut, but here’s the gist:

Daft Punk, Discovery (2001)

Kaskade, Fire and Ice (2011)

deadmau5, For Lack of a Better Name (2009) and 4x4=12 (2010)

Phantoms, Phantoms (2017)

Justice, † (2007) 

Lazy Rich’s singles

Porter Robinson/Virtual Self – Spitfire (2011) and Virtual Self (2017)

I like a lot of deep house and electro house, so most of my picks here are within either or both of those subgenres (as well as progressive house, in deadmau5′s case).

For more of my thoughts (and there are many!), see below.

Daft Punk, Discovery (2001)

Accept no substitutes. For Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo and Thomas Bangalter, making quality tunes seems to just be second nature. Their second album replaces the underground, city-street feel of Homework with a shiny, discotheque-ready sound that stands on the shoulders of giants but does so as a means of updating and widening the reach of their own influences (with “Harder Better Faster Stronger”’s use of “Cola Bottle Baby” as a perfect example thereof). My favorite track on the record, “Digital Love,” perhaps only barely qualifies as house, but between the earnestness of the vocoded lyrics and the heart-stopper of a guitar solo, I don’t even mind – who cares about genre conventions when you’re a smitten robot? It’s utterly brilliant and its era exists as the gold standard for many DP fans, myself included among them.

Kaskade, Fire and Ice (2011)

Ryan Raddon’s seventh album and the one I hold the most nostalgia for. An ambitious effort on Kaskade’s part, Fire and Ice is a double album, with original tracks on one side and remixed, chilled-out versions of the same songs on the other (geddit?). The ICE mixes are something of a mixed bag, with some having more reason to exist than others, but the Fire side of the album earns it a place here on its own, with Skrillex and Raddon giving us their own brilliant take on a classic track from Guy Manuel de Homem Christo on “Lick It,” as well as the smooth vibes of Ryan’s collaboration with his band Late Night Alumni and Inpetto on “How Long.” Another standout track: “ICE,” a big, bumping jam Ryan made with Dan Black and Dada Life.

deadmau5, For Lack of a Better Name (2009) and 4x4=12 (2010)

Oh, Joel. These days he’s earned a controversial status as full-time internet troll alongside his career as a musician, but he’s still had a palpable impact on the industry at large (pop juggernaut Marshmello more or less owes his entire career to the allure of the man in the cute mask, and while Daft Punk did it first, Mello’s own interpretation is particularly and explicitly influenced by the way deadmau5 did it). These two albums dropped when I was twelve/thirteen and still opening my eyes to the wide world of electronica, and I think they’re particularly significant as the point where I went from being a casual fan of it to a devotee, sparking an investment in the Scene® that I still have to this day. The degree of control Joel flexes over his work at its peak was unprecedented for the time and still holds up now – “Strobe,” the album closer on For Lack Of, is particularly notable in how it makes ten minutes feel like no time at all in how it builds and shifts with just a few simple, powerful elements in play at a time. “Ghosts ‘n Stuff” earned Joel and vocalist Rob Swire a crossover hit, and “Raise Your Weapon” stands as an early illustration of what the North American take on dubstep would sound like in the years to come. 

Phantoms, Phantoms (2017)

Kyle Kaplan and Vinnie Pergola’s debut record is a clever mission statement for their work. Their deep house tunes are infused with pop sensibilities, placing them in company with contemporaries like Jamie xx and Disclosure as house DJs making an effort to bridge the gap between the radio airwaves and the dance floor. My favorites include “Just a Feeling” with Verite, a modody track called “Downtown,” and the utterly brilliant “Need You Closer,” a collab with Hayley Kiyoko that easily converted me into the Church of Lesbian Jesus. (Their recent work is also worth a nod as well – they’ve been building up singles to drum up interest in a new EP, including one of their best tracks to date, a driving progressive house tune called “Designs for You.”)

Justice, † (2007)

Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay’s debut record remains their best. There’s so many iconic tracks on this one: The slick vibes of “Genesis” and “Newjack,” the ever crowd-pleasing “D.A.N.C.E.,” the pumping “Phantom” and its sequel, the nu-disco sleaze of “DVNO”, and the ear-splitting delight of “Waters of Nazareth.” The record earned them a positive, if daunting, comparison to fellow French house pioneers Daft Punk, and while their work on it shares an obsession with taking diverse samples and reconfiguring them into their own image, Justice’s fascination with the macabre aesthetic of 70′s horror films and the rock ‘n roll ethos of T. Rex earned them a distinct spot in the pantheon of electronic acts with this record (as well as its followup, the different-but-still-great Audio, Video, Disco).

Feed Me - Feed Me’s Big Adventure (2011) and Calamari Tuesday (2013)

Jon Gooch was one of the earliest musicians to emerge under deadmau5′s mau5trap label, and still shines as one of its leading acts today (High Street Creeps, released earlier this year, has jams for days). While he started his career making drum ‘n bass tracks as Spor, the bulk of his work since 2009 has been under the Feed Me alias, where he’s dabbled in all manner of electronic but mostly hews close to the realm of electro house. Gooch’s experience in making complex tunes meant that Feed Me came out swinging, with tracks like “Grand Theft Ecstasy” and “Muscle Rollers” exhibiting a confidence and technical skill from the outset that most producers would kill for on their first record. By the time his first proper full length released two years later, he’d developed a consistent feel that made collaborations with indie bands (”Love Is All I Got,” with Crystal Fighters) and soulful singers (”Last Requests,” with Jenna G) feel as natural as hard-hitting bangers (”No Grip” and “Death by Robot”). Mix in a little bit of both and you get “Ophelia,” a anthemic ballad made with YADi – my favorite song from the record, and a earworm that still sticks with me six years on. Love, don’t let me drown…

and some honorable mentions!

Lazy Rich’s singles! Richard Billis is a Canadian DJ who retired from producing tunes in 2017, but for the decade or so he was releasing music, the electro house singles he released were nothing short of iconic. Songs like “Blast Off” (with Hirshee and Lizzie Curious) and “Flash” (with Hot Mouth) are energetic, breezy and danceable. There’s nothing quite like a good Lazy Rich drop; his beats hit the dance floor with the weight of a truck, and have a sonic diversity among them that would predict the electronic scene’s shift toward the dynamism of future bass. It makes me sad that we won’t get any more of them, but Billis left behind such an evergreen catalog of singles that it’s hard to be down for very long. (I used to use his remix of Zedd’s “Stars Come Out” as a theme song of sorts on an old website where you could be a DJ with your friends. The fond memories are strong with this one.)

Porter Robinson/Virtual Self – Spitfire (2011) and Virtual Self (2017) – Leave it to Porter Robinson to carve out a completely separate musical persona just to hearken back to his halcyon days as a young producer. My initial introduction to him was just after he’d emerged from the hands-up scene, while he had his eyes set on stardom through what he called “complextro,” and it was surprising to find that his work not only lived up to its genre classification but actively carved out a market for its sound, even before Porter had dropped an album. If the dubstep and house feel of Spitfire was a revelation, the DDR vibes of the Virtual Self EP are a revitalization; similar in ethos, but with an owned, Serial Experiments Lain-styled technological aesthetic. Porter does a lot of work to keep the two projects separate (even going as far as to delineate live shows between the aliases), but rather than fragmenting his work the distinction only ends up strengthening his catalog, in much the same way Jon Gooch’s work as Feed Me complements his earlier collection as Spor.

JOYRYDE’s singles and upcoming album - John Ford Jr. is an English DJ who knows what he likes: fast cars, bumping house beats, mean-muggin’ rap jams, and making tunes that blend all of the above in one way or another. His JOYRYDE project is only a few years old, emerging in 2016, but it’s very much the culmination of years of diggin’ in the crates and building a sound that blends the hip-hop influences of trap with the boogie-bounce sensibility of house. No sooner is this evident than the “parental discretion is advised” warning (and subsequent punchy opening bars) that welcomes you into “HOT DRUM,” though his other tracks (including “MAXIMUM KING” and the Rick Ross-assisted “WINDOWS”) share that kinetic energy. He’s one to watch!

Also worth your time:

Oliver’s Mechanical EP and their album Full Circle

Mord Fustang’s All Eyes On… compilations

Botnek’s singles from 2016 onward

Chris Lake’s releases with his label Black Book Records

Self Help by Walker and Royce

pretty much everything by Ellie Herring and Chrissy (Murderbot)

Fantasmas by Zavala

anything Wolfgang Gartner has made (particularly his early 2010s singles)

That’s all I got for now. If you made it this far, you’re an angel. Thanks for indulging me :)

[st33d]

I’m not bored of RPGs

I would prefer to take my own screenshots but Steam has given me a big update queue and getting shots off of the Switch is a different kind of chore. Instead I will be using appropriate pictures of cats I found on shutterstock.com.

Pillars of Eternity 2

Almost all isometric computer roleplaying games are broken into islands. There is a campaign map operating like a vast sea, and within that sea one visits small places with a clearly marked border. Instanced dungeons where a poor laptop can muster a fireworks display for your heroes.

How refreshing that Pillars 2 leans into that. Islands within islands. Thematically a voyage across the sea, replete with sea shanties. I applaud the structure of this game. It is a delight to discover remote islands that hold illustrated text adventures in addition to the meat and potatoes combat.

And the combat really is meat and potatoes. You get to choose two professions, allowing really dumb combinations like my paladin who had to choose between summoning bats or tanking the front line. The benefit of all this is that you can find ways to entertain yourself if you get bored of all the murdering. I avoided the ship to ship combat as it is a weird mini game that I don’t like. You can largely do without it, and if you make enough allies during the main quest you can get to the final battle free of cannon balls or uninspiring melee.

The main story suffers from trying to have a connection to the first game. I really would have preferred to tackle this adventure without that baggage. When I go off the beaten track the game is a lot of fun. Fortunately the open sea has little in the way of tracks. It is a game weighed down by hubris and experiment but still manages to tread water in a sea of similar titles.

Tangledeep

This is a mostly classic roguelike. I say mostly because it has some very linear boss fights you’re forced to repeat, and it offsets the lack of a hunger clock by just dumping more monsters into a level. By “dump” I mean they’re just new things there without any logic or tactical threat.

However, Tangledeep has a lot of nonsense you can get up to: You can summon plant monsters. Multiclass into a soul drinking summoner. Plant trees. Keep pets. Visit bonus dungeons. Make food (mostly curry). There’s other stuff too, I just kinda lost track.

I got invested enough to come up with a specific build. One that would summon lots of monsters and teleport around the map with a combination of skills I’d pick up from two of the fighting professions. Eventually I died and I couldn’t imagine playing a different style of character. The new classes I was unlocking weren’t offering new pets or movement skills so I haven’t played since.

I enjoyed my time with Tangledeep a lot. Mining the powers from all the classes was a fun project to play out during the delve. Had I survived I’m sure I would have engaged with all the other features the game has. I want to say you should play the game without permadeath, because the structure doesn’t reward it. I think one should play their first game with permadeath on to get to grips with using skills, then turn it on to start a new game. Picking classes in the right order and taking only the skills you need. The game kind of expects you to do this by offering a tougher dungeon on future play-throughs. Some solid fun to be had here when you figure out what settings you should turn on and off. The developer has been kind enough to offer a lot of them.

Devil May Cry 5

Okay, it’s not an RPG but it’s really good. A pure expression of joy in videogame form. It dares me into thinking it’s gone too stupid, but then yes, yes I really do need to cut down this boss with two motorcycles, it’s the best tactical option.

I’m too old and slow for these sort of games and yet DMC5 encouraged me instead of frustrating me. From fans of the series I’ve heard it does its forebears credit. One can only hope that its creators have more games like this to share in the future.

Final Fantasy X

I’ve stopped at the Blitzball tutorial, I do not want to play this mini game. I don’t like any of the characters in this game either. It took The Witcher 3 about eight hours to win me over, which is kind of acceptable in a huge RPG. But I’m not even meeting NPCs that I like.

I’ll have to come back to this one.

Final Fantasy XII

Constraints do interesting things to games. In FF12 we have what wants to be an open world MMO type of game and it thinks it’s running on a Playstation 2. So the whole world is broken into islands.

Sounds like an isometric CRPG to me. It even leans into that constraint, creating strange geometries to navigate with a pace to encounters that you don’t really see in modern sandbox games. In an open world there must be empty spaces. To create immersion and to allow monsters to chase you for a reasonable distance before giving up. You need boring bits. FF12 removes those boring bits, creating a world that feels like a traditional dungeon on a massive scale.

Then it puts those boring bits right back in. All the way in.

FF12 is a real-time game. You assign commands and your heroes act them out. You can also set your heroes on auto pilot. The game lets you buy more specific commands from shops, allowing you to create an undying death machine out of your party. This starts out really fun. You unlock abilities on your character’s skill-tree-board-thing and continue to tinker with the death ball. But even though you’ve unlocked an ability, you have to first find it in the dungeon world. And some of the ways you find them are bullshit. Be prepared to walk in and out of an area to dice roll a boss fight into appearing (not a bug - that’s what you have to do). Be prepared to navigate a dungeon that has a 42 minute explanation on youtube (and it’s been edited). Be prepared to find Dispelga on route to a boss and only find Dispel after you looked it up on a wiki (it’s in the corner of a really easy dungeon that I already cleared). Unlocking abilities this way sets expectations. I know I’m missing something and I’ve paid to unlock it - I’m committed. As I got further into the game’s list of status effects and party buffs my frustration grew.

The story has a cast of amiable characters struggling against occupation by the Empire. It’s alright. I remember all their names but couldn’t honestly tell you how I got to where I am or what started it. In a game which is largely about exploration it works pretty well as a backdrop.

It’s a very unique game. A hybrid of MMO and isometric RPG made from the JRPG mindset. The modern ports of the game feature fast-forward buttons that apologise for the self-indulgences taken in its original form. It is a decent thirty hours of fun and a further ten hours of not much fun. I certainly recommend it to roleplaying game enthusiasts, but with caveats for completionists.

World of Final Fantasy

I experienced Pokemon Red on my then-desktop-PC whilst listening to the album Gran Turismo by The Cardigans. I couldn’t stand the high pitched beeps of the menu so I preferred to listen to the latest CD I had. The song Explode is burned into my mind next to stamping on a monster’s head and stuffing it into a ball. It’s not something you need to know, but I thought I’d tell you about it.

The conceit of why you are stuffing classic monsters from Final Fantasy games into balls prisms does not need explaining. Nor does one need to know why the two main characters help form two stacks of three creatures. Who cares why these stacks combine the powers of those within to create a hybrid JRPG avatar.

World of Final Fantasy cares. Oh boy does it care. There’s not a single button on my gamepad this isn’t getting away without two minutes of banter between the characters to explain it. Cutscene after cutscene rolls by. They often come in pairs so I pause and skip ahead just in case. Even after you complete a cutscene the characters lock out the controls and have a jolly good chat about what they’ve just seen. In its defence it lets you skip being waterboarded with the story and run the game at what feels like 1.5x speed. But there’s still a lot of busy work when it comes to skipping cutscenes. There’s loads of them.

I really like the combat. That is, I really like it when I have a monster that does the right colour damage for capturing a new monster. It’s a refreshing take on Pokemon that is utterly wasted on the Final Fantasy franchise, but I guess it needed the brand for this weird game to even exist. If you like the combat you found in Pokemon and want something with more nuance and challenge then you should pick it up and skip those cutscenes. If you need some story to wash it down with and don’t like a shockingly linear campaign map, then perhaps put it off for a while.

7DBL (7 Day Broughlike) Challenge

I’ve often been accused of making a Broughlike. To make a game that reminds you of Michael Brough’s work: A small grid with a turn based avatar that can cast spells. I’ve often refuted this because I tend to avoid having spells in my games. There’s just never a nice way to do the UI. Us iPad owners are fine, phone owners less so, desktop users get lots of keys to press, and hooray for gamepads if they aren’t awful for any type of menu.

Those more patient than I have stepped up to the challenge. Echoing the 7 Day Roguelike Challenge (7DRL, of which I am a yearly participant) developers across the globe attempted to make a small grid with a turn based avatar that cast spells. In 7 days. They also scheduled this challenge right before the gaming event called E3. Much like the 7DRL always gets scheduled before the gaming event called GDC. We can’t have a game jam making niche games and let reporters have time to talk about it. That wouldn’t be the done thing.

The results are above average. I say this coming from the 7DRL which is generally average, equal parts good and bad. The games produced in this jam are mostly good. There’s a few which clearly aren’t finished, and yet they show a great deal of promise. Even Brough himself submitted a game, one which is quite accessible and fun. Highlights for me included controlling a rather awkward squid that had to shoot in order to turn and a one dimensional roguelike that adds depth by throwing your weapons.

I hope they do it again next year.

My RPGs

I released my roguelite runner Bump 2 for the small audience that appreciates it. It’s one of those games that really appeals to a handful of people, and not to others in the slightest. In homage to my own select tastes and to unjinx my collection of unfinished projects, I resolved to make Bump 2 into its best form before walking away from it. And so I did.

I’m currently working on Kobold Dungeon Tester. This is my 4th (5th if you count Roomba Quest) interactive text project. I twice tried to write a novel in my youth and this project feel like a penance for my failures. Normally I would move on, satisfied the base idea works, like a puzzle, or a high score. A few kind words have convinced me that this one is different - it’s a story, it needs an ending. I shall try to finish it as best as I can.