#stage four meme
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so I know I talk a lot about 'mathematician Gojo' but has anyone considered how fucking HILARIOUS 'mathematician Suguru' would actually be
ID under cut:
in the Project Runway 'Blood Orange' meme format:
Panel 1: screenshot from the show Jujutsu Kaisen, in which character Gojo Satoru says, "I get what you call a negative natural number"
Panels 2-4: Geto Suguru, reacting as if in a confessional, "'Negative natural number', he's so pretentious. Shut up, it's a fucking integer. 'Negative natural number'."
#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#gojo satoru#geto suguru#mathematics#meme science#I'd say this is a......#stage four meme#for my meme tagging system#anyways this has been haunting me for like. two weeks.#au in which suguru is a mathematician he becomes a curse user after like a year bc#(a) mathematicians are Like That#(b) if you really wanted to give him the same motivation he could have run the statistics for shaman life expectancy#but (c) he had to put up with Gojo's Very Incorrect Teenage Math for a full year and then just. snapped.
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Didn't I post this on my tumblr????
It's level four of emotion. I posted it on Twitter, but I can't remember if I posted it on my tumblr. I hope it will help you when you draw a character's expression.
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just wait til he brings out the cello😌🎶🎻
#lmao this meme prompt SCREAMED fyolai to me💀#pls tell me it’s made its way here idk if anyone will know the ref/trend pic from twitter#need tickets to this concert👹 I’d be crawling onto the stage on all fours#fyodor#fyodor dostoevsky#fyodor fanart#bsd#bsd fanart#bungou stray dogs#bungou stray dogs fanart#bungo stray dogs#bungo stray dogs fanart#fanart#artists on tumblr#artists of tumblr#digital art#nikolai gogol#bsd nikolai#nikolai gogol fanart#fyolai#fyolai fanart#memes#meme redraw#twitter trends#anime#manga#bsd manga#meme prompt#drawing prompt#idol
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The four stages of hackfraudery
#youtube#redlettermedia#red letter media#rich evans#jay bauman#gorilla interrupted#half in the bag#mike stoklasa#best of the worst#jack packard#four stages#the four stages#meme#memes#lol#laugh#david lynch#joan collins#video game#trippy#yoda#urban outfitters#thumbs up#army of darkness#quentintarantino#rpg#video games#games#collage#cool
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ah, a homosexual!
original photo:
#bfdi#bfb#bfdia#tpot#art#my art#not my oc#bfb four#bfb 4#xfhov#xfhov 4#xfhov 2#two tpot#2 tpot#xfhov four#xfhov two#Pjsk#meme#Tsukasa tenma#Rui kamishiro#hatsune miku colorful stage#colorful stage
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Happy wholesome sonic and tails Wednesday have some more baby tails!
#sonic the hedgehog#sonic au#wholesome sonic and tails wednesday#tails the fox#tails miles prower#sonic genesis#cat memes#artists on tumblr#feral baby tails is such a delight to draw#he grew out of the feral stage when he turned about four#but he still has urges to just chew on things and pounce on others#boy plays with toy airplanes bounce through fields and create nuclear cores
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“ Fake “
#that one four words meme aside#their interaction has a lot of potential#pjsekai#project sekai#proseka#colorful stage#akito shinonome#mafuyu asahina#vbs#nightcord at 25:00#ibispaintx#no reposting#digital art#fan art#pain#hatsune miku colorful stage#artist on tumblr
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Conversation
unconnected marketeers stage 4 be like
Misumaru: You idiots are going the wrong way and if you keep going you will literally die from oxygen deprivation, you dipshits
Reimu and Marisa: Then we'll just explore this place quickly to find what we're looking for BEFORE that happens!
Sanae: Oxygen deprivation? Is there toxic gas in this place too?
Sakuya: What's oxygen again?
Misumaru:
Reimu:
Marisa:
Sanae:
Misumaru: Anyway, if you won't get out on your own, I'm going to throw these balls at you.
Reimu: How is that supposed to help?
Misumaru: A concussion works wonders in convincing people to leave.
*one fight later*
Misumaru: Wow, you beat me! Not bad.
Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya, and Sanae, all suffering from concussions AND oxygen deprivation: huh what
#touhou#i'm late to make this meme but i just thought of it and yeah#woman beats four other women to death with her balls: more at 11#misumaru dragging reimu and friends out of the cave: now i hope you learned a valuable lesson about oxygen today#i like to imagine she just deposits them outside of the cave after stage 4#just dumps their asses outside like ''alright go on now. git. oxygen-dependent losers''
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DPxDC Demon Children Are Multiplying
This idea is still stuck in my head, and I might even end up writing something out of it, but for now, I just thought of something equally really, really stupid and really, really funny.
What if I combine that idea with Al Ghul Twins. I don't know how. Maybe Talia was cautious about Ra's not wanting to keep two kids for a position of Heir, or maybe she staged Danny's death, or maybe something else entirely happened. But anyway, Danny is Damian's twin.
Then, Dani is the same age as Danny in this AU. And Dan is de-aged to be the same age as both of them.
Now behold an absolute train wreck of a situation where Bruce attends a Gala hosted by Vladimir Masters. Together with Damian, of course, and maybe other batkids are there too. They all part their ways to make their rounds or whatnot. And they all keep seeing Damian wherever they go. Just everywhere.
Dick is talking to someone, and Damian walks past him, not paying him any attention. Which is not surprising, but a little rude, and, wait, wasn't he wearing a red tie? When did he change it to green one?
Tim is just going on the top floor to greet a lady he recognizes from some other event, and Damian all but storms in the opposite direction, only letting Tim catch a glimpse of his face. But when Tim turns around, he is really confused: the person running down the stairs is clearly a girl, albeit she is wearing a suit. Her long hair is up in a complicated braid. Why did he even mistake her for Damian?
But the ultimate confusion happens when Bruce is talking to Vladimir Masters, and a very familiar voice calls, "Father". Because both he and Vladimir turn to face the boy and ask, "Yes?" at the same time.
Damian is standing there, looking between Bruce and Vlad. He looks a little off somehow, but before Bruce can figure out why, the boy blinks and focuses on Vlad.
"We've been looking for you," he tells the man, and, wait, when was Damian looking for Masters? Furthermore, who is we?
But then another child comes closer. And-
That's Damian.
That's two Damians.
Wait, no, none of them are Damians.
"What is it?" Vladimir raises an eyebrow, not paying too much attention to Bruce's blanched expression.
A third child comes towards them, and this one also looks like Damian, only this one is a girl.
"Template's duplicate is here," she says, and Vlad frowns, turning to the Damian lookalike in the middle.
"Have you had another incident that I don't know of?"
Whatever answer the boy wanted to give is cut off by a n o t h e r child who looks like- no, this is real Damian, thank God, Bruce had started to wonder if the champagne was spiked with hallucinogens.
"Father-" he stops in his tracks as the three other children turn to him, and the four of them just stare at each other for a long moment. Then the one in the middle takes a sharp breath in and stage-whispers:
"Quick, do the meme!"
And all three not-Damians start pointing at each other.
Bruce is going to have an aneurysm. Judging by Vladimir's face, he is also not far from one.
Just my ramblings under the cut
I think you all know what meme I'm talking about, but I'm still gonna add it
This is so fucking hilarious to me, I'm sorry, I just can't
Danny is not missing this opportunity of a lifetime, even though Vlad specifically asked all three of them not to cause a scene. And yes, they all call Vlad "father" just for the spite of it or for shits and giggles. I'm going with Bad Fentons idea here, although I'm not sure to which degree they are bad, but anyway, Vlad is their legal guardian, and he is redeemed.
Yes, Dick took a picture. Yes, it's already in the group chat. Yes, other batkids are going wild.
Damian is greatly confused because, first, he thought there was a clone of him at the gala, but apparently, there were three of them, and second, why are they pointing at each other? Should he join them? He is under the assumption his brother is dead (he's not exactly wrong on that account), or he doesn't even know he existed.
This is as far as I got now, feel free to add anything!
#danny phantom#dc x dp#dpxdc#batfam#batman#damian wayne#bruce wayne#danyal al ghul#al ghul twins#vlad masters#gala#dani phantom#dan phantom#there are four identical children#they end up pranking e v e r y o n e#vlad can tell them apart#but only because he can feel their ectosignatures#cork prompts#cork writes
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Hello!! Do you think you could do "a date with death" headcannons?? Like just general romantic headcannons!
GENERAL DATING HEADCANONS
Thank you so much for your request!! Apologies for the long wait :( I was quite busy recently.
I love him so much I might even do a part two if I can come up with more after I finish all of my requests...
I listened to the adwd soundtracks as I wrote this lol. Idk and idc if someone cares or not, but my Casper plush arrives soon and I'm sooo excited ^^!! Anyway, enjoy!!
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- He looks like someone who adores kisses but wouldn't initiate them at first, so you'd have to make the first move
- But don't worry, if you stop giving him kisses and tease him enough he'll be the one to initiate them
- He gets especially weak in the knees when you kiss him on the neck
- Do you guys know that meme "Ah, yes. My girlfriend and her 500 dollar four foot tall mareep."? That's Casper with his Azrael plush and I will die on that hill
- He will laugh at you if you get jealous of his plush
- How can you be jealous of a plushy...? Mortals sure are weird...
- In the beginning stages of your relationship, he would be very shy and uncertain when it comes to initiating physical touch, but when you initiate it? He would never say no
- He loves to tease you but will explode when you tease him back
- No matter how often he denies it, it's obvious that he loves your teasing and adores the little back and forth you guys have
- You don't know how makeup works? Don't worry, because your personal makeup assistant is here!
- He would LOVE to do your makeup whenever you please, may it be every day or just on special occasions it doesn't matter to him. He also loves to have you this close to him and cups your cheek when he does your eyeliner
- Don't get me wrong, I bet he's a great cook, but I don't think he knows a lot of recipes and will make the same things over and over again
- If you want to eat something different, feel free to join him. I think cooking would be one of his favourite activities with you
- If you're a picky eater, he will make sure to only add the things you like
- His baking is shit though, no matter how precisely he follows the recipe, he somehow always fucks it up
- Even though he gets easily flustered, I think you two moved on quite fast in the relationship
- He would love to include you in his nightly routine
- Your skin's going to look glamorous!
- Even if you don't want to use his products for whatever reason, he'd still enjoy having you next to him doing your stuff as he gets ready for bed
- Even with Azrael in his arms, he still wouldn't be able to fall asleep without you. So when you get home late expect a grumpy reaper waiting for you on your bed
- He'll immediately forgive you when you give him cuddles
- I think one of his love languages is physical touch
- He isn't too keen on PDA, but he'll still hold your hand and give you small kisses in public
- In private he's a big cuddle bug though
- I think he would enjoy being the little spoon and big spoon, you can take your pick. He would also enjoy every cuddle position where he can hold your hand and look at your face
- One of his other love languages is definitely words of affirmation
- He enjoys receiving it as much as giving it
- I don't think that gift-giving is his love language, but he'll still give you gifts from time to time to surprise you
- Okay, I think I should stop talking about his love languages, but let me drop one more.
- I definitely think that one of his love languages is quality time
- Be it going outside for a walk or just staying at home cuddling while watching one of your silly series, he will always want to spend his time with you
- He seems like a morning person to me, but he also enjoys staying in bed with you cuddling
- He's a GREAT listener
- No matter the subject, he will always engage in it and ask questions about it
- He loves listening to you info dump
- He'll even check the things you like out so he can engage in the conversation more
- I like to think that he enjoys playing coop games with you... especially Cult of the Lamb :)
- He's quite tidy and keeps his things organised, but he still wouldn't want to clean after you
- So if you leave your dirty laundry on the floor, be prepared for a big lecture
- When it comes to arguments, I think his reaction depends on what kind of argument it is
- Are you arguing about something silly? He will act stubborn and be a little know-it-all, even if he knows he's in the wrong
- If it's a more serious argument he will raise his voice, but won't scream
- It'll take him a day to cool off, and it will be a bit hard for him to apologise first but he still manages
- He will feel a bit awkward at first when everything's sorted out
- Just tell him that everything's fine now and give him a little smooch and he will be back on track
- Tbh I don't think that he's a jealous type, he trusts you a lot
- He does get jealous though when you somehow manage to spend more time with someone other than him
- I think he would immediately seek you out and talk to you, embarrassingly admitting that he's jealous
- If you have any hobbies and/or a fan of certain things, be prepared to suddenly have tons of merch and/or stuff of it on your bed waiting for you
- He'd look at you with a smug smile waiting to be praised and praises he will receive
- If you have any trauma and are mentally ill, he will do his best to support your every need
- If you have sudden outbursts and want to be left alone, he wouldn't mind going to a different room and wait for you to calm down. He'll still feel bad for leaving you
- He needs a lot of reassurance when it comes to your mental health and what exactly you need him to do
- The same goes for when you're chronically ill
- He won't bother to look the information up, he knows that not every method applies to the same person and will just straight up ask you what you need
- When he's sad, all he wants is for you to hold him and tell him that everything's going to be alright
- If you're stressed due to work or an entirely different reason, be prepared to get spoiled by him. Of course, he would lecture first that you need to take better care of yourself, but he will immediately massage your head after
- He will tear up if you give him a gift and bake/buy him a cake on his birthday
- If you have a hobby that he can somehow participate in be ready to have a player two, because he will join you
- He likes it when you call him baby girl. Even when it confused him at first
- He loves it when you give him serious and silly pet names, he isn't picky
- He knows that marriage is a big thing for most mortals, so he would love to marry you. It doesn't matter if it's official or not
#a date with death casper x reader#adwd casper#adwd grim#a date with death x reader#adwd casper x reader#casper x reader#a date with death
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Am I the asshole for not letting my husband have a say for the guest list of our baby shower?
I (21 f) and my husband (25 m) moved very quickly in our relationship, much to the judgement of my sister. We moved in with each other after a month of dating and she basically told me it was a stupid idea. We also got eloped with no family or friends there four months after that. When I texted my sister we got married (yes, I texted everyone instead of called) she asked if it was a joke and when I said yes then sent a picture of marriage license as proof, she didn’t respond for days. She called me later which I sent to voicemail, which was basically her crying saying she always imagined she’d be at my wedding and was hurt. I was upset because no one was invited or even told about the engagement; that was the point of eloping. The rest of my family was pretty happy for us though and I focused on that.
We didn’t talk for months because I wanted an apology, or at least a congratulations on getting married. She texted me a few times about nothing important (she sent a few memes). An apology never happened, but I started to text her again because I found out I was pregnant and wanted her to know about it. I called her about it eventually and she was supportive.
Before the Not Talking stage happened, her and my husband didn’t get along. She has made multiple passive aggressive comments about our relationship in the past. There was one time she visited us that made my husband upset because she showed up with little notice and also insisted on visiting again when our cat gave birth to her litter of kittens. She talked about helping and I didn’t really think anything of it. My husband later said he was upset she acted like she knew our cat better than us based off a couple of other comments she made and didn’t like how she invited herself over. I don’t think she meant anything negative about it, but it was annoying she insisted on one specific cat thing we told her we had under control and didn’t stop pestering until my mom called the vet to ask for advise and the vet agreed with my husband and I about how we handled the cat situation. I’m not sure if I explained that well but I honestly don’t know how to describe it without going into too much detail. This is just background info.
My husband and I wanted to do a gender reveal for the baby. We agreed on the theme and had a general date in mind. I invited my immediate family, best friend, and his immediate family that he talked to (which only consisted of three people). He said he didn’t want my sister at the gender reveal and this caused a huge fight. He said if she was there then he wouldn’t show up and I could tell him the babies gender on the phone. I cancelled the gender reveal because I didn’t want to uninvite my sister when she hasn’t made any bad comments in months and also wasn’t about to have my husband not be there. In my mind, there’s zero point in having one if both parents aren’t there. We found out gender by having our doctor write it down on a paper and we opened it later by ourselves. We told everyone over the phone what we are having.
Now, I am pretty far along in my pregnancy and my family wanted to set up a baby shower for me. I let them and we set up a date for it. My husband and I talked about the baby shower multiple times and looked forward to it. I Facebook invited the same people I invited to the gender reveal to the baby shower and he wasn’t happy when he saw my sister was again on that list. Him and my sister has only seen each other one time during these months, which was at a funeral. My sister initiated a handshake which he accepted and asked how he was. He answered fine and that was the end of it.
The baby shower argument was the same for gender reveal. He didn’t want her there and he didn’t want to come if she was there. He said I shouldn’t want someone who has done nothing but disrespect both of us in the past year to be at this event and should get a say in who comes and who doesn’t. There’s no excuse for the things my sister has done and said but it felt wrong to exclude her. If she wasn’t going to be invited to the baby shower, then what was his opinion on our son’s birthdays and other events? We couldn’t do this forever. She hasn’t been rude in months but we never got an apology. I’m also a little bitter about it but I’m trying to not be harsh. At this point, I didn’t say much when my husband said she couldn’t be there. This is because we just got done with a different argument about something completely different and he said he was done about certain things. I said ‘like what?’ and he told me he didn’t want my sister at the baby shower.
He said he wouldn’t have invited anyone that has disrespected me and I shouldn’t either. It sounds fair but it also sounds very black and white. I get along with the family he talks to outside of family events. I don’t get along with a couple of extended family members but he doesn’t get a say in who was invited to those events and never talks to them outside of those family events even before we were together. I didn’t really say anything for my argument because I knew he wouldn’t agree with it anyway. This sounds calm but he was very angry and I was crying pretty hard. He asked over and over again if she was coming to the baby shower and I refused to respond. If I say she’s not coming then I’ll have to follow my word and uninvite her, probably causing arguments within my family. If I say she is then he won’t come. (I’m not sure if this is relevant but my husband and I are both autistic and have been known to shut down and stim when we’re upset). He said he’s tired of being disrespected when I refused to answer for 30+ minutes and wanted a divorce. He crumbled up our marriage license and took my wedding ring off my finger.
He didn’t say anything about the baby shower and started asking questions about the divorce. ‘How much do you want in child support? When do you want to do visitation? Etc.’ I refused to answer for a while but he kept asking and I mostly gave vague answers like ‘whatever you want’ all while still crying. I didn’t say much except to say he was staying and we weren’t getting a divorce.
I don’t remember what happened next and what I said, but he eventually said that I had one more chance to choose him because he’s always chosen me. This is true because he has put me first. He works a lot while I’m not working this pregnancy and always makes sure I eat and everything. I’m not sure what’s going on with baby shower. I think he said that she can come if I put up boundaries about being nice otherwise she can’t come. I think this will start an unnecessary fight because she hasn’t done anything in many months so it seems insulting. I didn’t say anything though. We fell asleep and cuddled and he apologized the next morning before he left for work. He said he was more mad that I refused to talk. I, personally, was more upset about the marriage license he crumpled up. I still didn’t say anything but ok. He still hates my sister and expects me to tell her to be respectful.
I don’t know what to think really. I sound like a jerk for not letting him have a say for baby shower. It is his kid too. I also don’t want to divide my family by not inviting my sister, but he’s also my family. I know he acted like a jerk for the argument but that doesn’t necessarily means he’s wrong about the guest list and having a say. So would I be TA?
What are these acronyms?
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What's the worst thing about fandom in the last 20 years, and what's the worst thing about fandom that's always been true of it?
The worst thing about fandom in the last 20 years has been the incentivizing of fandom-as-conflict: not merely as a field in broader culture wars but as the field for endless intra-group battles.
This manifests in many ways: as seven hour videos complaining about The Last Jedi, as Twitter backlash campaigns, but also as stans defending their faves from any and all criticism real or imagined, as the endless boom-and-backlash cycle to any fandom meme or joke you see on Reddit, and as the drive for people to look for evidence other people discussing a thing they like are hysterical illiterate dolts, before anything else.
Or, in other words: a lot of fandoms are full of assholes these days, whose main interaction with fandom is using it as a reason to be an asshole, and to defend being an asshole. The actual “fandom” part of fandom no longer really exists for them. The discourse more or less is their fandom; someone whose main fandom activity is sharing videos about how Steven Universe is a fascist (?) isn’t in the Steven Universe fandom, they’re in the videos about how Steven Universe is a fascist (?) fandom. I mean, the chief fandom for many people is their side in the fandom war. What type of fanfic you write is secondary to what your affiliations are vis-a-vis battles over fanfiction
(One trend I've noticed is people who aren't at the stage where they only talk about what they hate and not what they love, but are at the stage where they can only talk about what they love in relation to what they hate. "I love this movie...and it proves this other movie is bullshit made by a hack". No ability to say just "I love this movie", period, end of sentence. This is how like two-thirds of Film Twitter talks about film, the remainder are all the grindhouse people going "man you've GOT to see Wrong Turn 5")
Another one, that I think is related, is that fandom’s become...more transitory, maybe? There’s Big Fandoms that are inescapable and then everything else feels like it’s here for a weekend and then it’s gone. And we’ve always had fandoms that endure and fandoms that vanish quickly, when the show runs short or turns out to be bad/boring, but we did use to have a lot of enduring if small fandoms for Okay shows most people hadn’t heard of and now you don’t really. Or they burn themselves out fast.
So we’ve reached this stage where fandoms are either so big they have seven hour long discourse videos, or they’re a smattering of fanart over the course of two weeks last August. But that isn’t really the fault of fans so much as modern media release schedules.
A lot of fandom activities of old are just...impossible now, with many shows? The slow build of speculation and fan works and in-jokes and theorizing and analysis simply can’t exist in a world where the premiere comes out the same day as the finale, and you can’t talk about the finale because you have no way of knowing if the person you’re talking to binged it all in one weekend or is still on episode four. That was the kind of thing that sustained the fandom of something that wasn’t a big hit, or even something that was. My fave fandom experience ever was watching the online Lost fandom wildly theorizing for all six years of Lost, and we’d never get “and what if the Smoke Monster is a dinosaur but only the head?” under a Netflix release model. Now at a base level, we either have shows nobody can discuss because nobody’s sure who’s seen or what, or shows where everyone just discusses the finale right away, and where you get One Week of Show and then a massive hiatus, which either kills all momentum or...drives fandom in the direction of hyper-analyzing everything and fighting because, well, what else is there to do? And that plus the outrage cycles of social media plus the fact that “man who yells at Star Wars” is now a viable career choice result in, well. *gestures upwards* All that
(Really, shout out to Cartoon Network for engineering the Steven Universe fandom to Be Like That through their inscrutable strategy of dropping episodes during one random week every five months or whatever)
As for something that's always been with it...cliques and a certain fannish elitism, like, that sees engaging with media in a fandom sense as more creative or analytical or intelligent than your average person. You see it now in the form of, like, people holding up fanfic above published fiction as more representative or authentic (I’ve seen more than one post on here strongly implying queer rep doesn’t exist in mainstream non-fic storytelling???), or going “well, we think about shows, unlike those normies watching sports”. But that was probably way more pronounced a thing in the past, in the 40-50s sci-fi fans were calling non-fans "mundanes" and calling themselves "slans" as an in-group signifier (a reference to a book with superintelligent psychic mutants known as slans). Like at the very least we should be happy no one’s calling non-fans “muggles” anymore. In the evolution from “mundane” to “muggle” to “normie” normie’s probably the least bad one
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Wild Life Episode 5 Thoughts
(Except I'm insane about Martyn's ep)
LIFE SERIES TRIVIA is DIABOLICAL! The watchers literally being like "how well do you guys know your pain and suffering?" (also sorry only winners remember theory truthers)
The way Grian and Scar are such bitter ex-soulmates that Mumbo has to point it out is hilarious. (also them getting even and saying "Just like Third Life" hurt my heart)
Grian not remembering iconic moments from his own series is so funny. What do you mean he only knows Martyn beheaded Ren with an axe from fanart? Grian gaining possession of the Red Winter Axe was a whole plot point.
MUMBO FIRST OUT! IN SESSION 5! The canary curse is broken for real now guys but at what cost.
Grian standing on the ruins of the tower by himself going through the five stages of grief over Mumbo's death as the sun rises in the background is a gorgeous piece of fanart waiting to happen
Martyn you didn't need to start the episode by talking about how Ren is providing for you, you're asking for the shipping at this point 🤣
MARTYN YOU DO THE LORE OFC JIMMY AND TANGO WERE OUT FIRST. Also REN YOU WERE LITERALLY IN DOUBLE LIFE. RIP Ren/BigB we know where his true loyalties lie
THE TWO NICKLES MEME BREAKING CONTAINMENT I CAN'T
Ren inviting BigB to join the RenWood Mound alliance WITHOUT REMEMBERING DOUBLE LIFE is so insane I don't even know what to say.
OF COURSE SCAR REMEMBERS THE DESERT DUO FLOWERS I'M GOING TO BE SICK
Martyn and Ren saying they're going to be boat bros. This has been coming since last session but I NEED Joel and Etho to call them out on it
"We're boat boys," MARTYN INTHELITTLEWOOD WHEN I CATCH YOU-
Etho yelling for Bdubs to hit him so they could test if the wildcard affected damage and then Tango going "smack me harder~" in the background was diabolical. Suuuure you guys are all PG.
Etho sitting in a boat for Joel to jump over him feels like some boat boys relationship symbolism I'm not smart enough to explain
So Etho is currently living with team BET, but allied with the Four Gs, and in the family with Gem and Joel. Wildcard Etho is so back!
Of course Impulse immediately remembered the clock question.
Joel boasting about how he immediately knows all the questions is peak Joel form and I would expect nothing less. It is kind of warranted though because everybody else is waffling on the simple ones.
Joel is now two for two on unquestioningly trusting Etho only to have something bad happen to him and not even being mad about it what is wrong with this man 😭
Does Joel have the censor bleep on his keyboard or did he just straight up start swearing at Tango and know they would both have to censor it in post to get the effect that he was also making the noise?
Scott's gone from a creaking fanboy to a body horror situation and I'm living for it (also considering he's agreed to "go wild" this session--am I sensing a Scott corruption arc?)
Scott cutting directly from saying he and Jimmy were never married even though they called each other husbands to a scene WITH Jimmy was kind of an insane choice
Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss Girldad has been confirmed by Scott as the actual reason for the 4Gs. I still think Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss ImpulseSV is funnier but good to have an official ruling
Scott giving up his life for Pearl and them being good natured about it and calling it therapy! I love them so much!
Lizzie being the only person who's not exicted when a trivia bot spawns is so funny. Even the other players who weren't in all the seasons don't seem to be as miffed by them as she is.
Lizzie's flaming snail arising out of that hole while smiling is potentially the funniest thing I've seen all day. Why did it look like that 🤣
#mine#wild life smp#wild life smp spoilers#grian#martyn inthelittlewood#ethoslab#scott smajor#joel smallishbeans#lizzie ldshadowlady#mumbo jumbo#treebark#renchanting#desert duo#what's scott and pearl's duo name. them
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🎸 out of my mind ! 💿 track three: something about a beat
guitarist!ino x drummer!reader
summary: it's the annual battle of the bands at the fix, your college campus's iconic live music bar, and this year you're taking the stage as the drummer for indie rock group cursed technique. you know the competition is strong, but no part of you is ready for lead singer and guitarist takuma ino. you lock eyes at the edge of the stage, and something starts—something that might make you feel alive even more than the beat of the drums.
warnings: language, hopeless stupid pining, alcohol, mentions of deceased parent, maki is Fed Up, anxiety, unbearably cute dogs. || sfw. 9k words.
“OKAY, IT’S UP,” Nobara says, grinning at you over her laptop. You’re sprawled across the living room at Takuma’s place, surrounded by a random combination of your band and his while others are in classes. After spending last night mixing the single, Takuma helped Nobara set up an artist profile for the band, and now your music is available on streaming services. Just like that.
“That’s so weird,” you say, grinning as you pull up Spotify on your phone. Next Fix by Cursed Technique. Strange to see your face on there, a photo taken of all of you by some freshman when you last performed at The Fix. Nobara sends the link in your group chat, and Toge responds within seconds.
freak no. 1: FAME freak no. 1: FORTUNE freak no. 1: wait it’s not opening freak no. 1: nvm i’m just stupid
“Does he ever pay attention in class?” Nobara mutters. Maki snorts.
Yuta is also in class, but that means he’s locked in, all his devices on Do Not Disturb. You don’t think Toge’s turned DND on a single time in his life.
“I’m going to Kinji’s!” Kirara shouts from the front entryway, and Yuji leaps to his feet and disappears down the hall, barreling back out of his room seconds later.
“Wait! Can you give this to Panda while you’re there?” He hands her a drive, and Kirara rolls her eyes and takes it.
“You need to slow down every once in a while,” she says, ruffling Yuji’s hair. “Okay, bye. I’ll be back in a few hours.” The dogs follow her to the door and return the living room when she’s gone, curling up on either side of Megumi, who’s busy writing some paper in the corner.
“What was that?” Nobara asks.
“Demo drive for the radio station,” Takuma says. “Panda plays our stuff sometimes. I bet he’d play yours, too.”
“That’d be sick,” Nobara says approvingly. She turns to bother Megumi, poking at him until he takes his headphones off and talks to her, and Yuji strolls into the room and flops down directly on the floor.
“Comfy?” you ask, poking him with a socked foot.
“Mm. Yeah.”
“Ah, look what you did, Kugisaki,” Megumi says, and you look up to see Shiro trotting toward you with her tail wagging, having abandoned her post at her owner’s side.
“That was not my fault! You’re the one who moved.”
“Because you kept poking me!”
You immediately slide off the couch onto the floor, letting Shiro sit in your lap. “Um, excuse me,” Takuma says, offended. You crane your neck to look up at him behind you on the couch. His face is lit up by his computer as he works on a string of code he tried (and failed) to explain to you, and there’s laughter in his eyes despite the affronted tone of his voice.
“Favorite,” you inform him with a wide, cheeky smile. He very maturely sticks his tongue out at you.
“Toge message,” Nobara informs you all, reading off her phone. “He says omg we have four listeners do you think they’re writing slutty fanfiction about us already.” She glances at you. “Petition to remove him from the chat—oh, look, he started sending the wolf memes again.”
Hanging out like this has become natural so quickly you almost forget you haven’t been friends with Shibuya Incident for ages. You feel almost as much at home in the tapestry-covered living room here as you do in the plant-filled kitchen of your own house down the street.
Maki checks her watch, sighing. “We should get going soon. The guys will be back in half an hour.” Then you have rehearsal, even though you’re not one of the three bands performing tomorrow night. When you do take the stage next week, you want to be ready.
Nobara is trying to read Megumi’s texts over his shoulder, which isn’t working out well for her, and he tells Maki, “Yes, please, take your invasive little gremlin home.” He puts his hand right on Nobara’s face and pushes her away, and she screeches and tries to tackle him, but he’s already sitting in a beanbag chair in the corner, so it doesn’t really do much except make Kuro jump on top of them both.
You glance up at Takuma again, still stroking Shiro’s fur while the others start to stand, ready to head home. “You rehearsing today too?”
“I’d hope so,” he shrugs.
“Yes, dipshit, in two hours. If you ever read the group chat,” Megumi says.
Takuma doesn’t seem fazed by Megumi’s irritation and just shrugs. “We have a new song for tomorrow.”
“You didn’t tell me!” You poke at his knee in retribution for his secrecy. “I wanna hear it!”
“You will,” he says. “Tomorrow.”
“Skipper, help, I don’t wanna walk our gremlin home by myself,” Maki calls from the door, and you reluctantly pat Shiro on the head and stand. She follows you to the entryway and sniffs at you while you cram your feet into your sneakers.
“Maki Zenin.” Nobara turns up her nose and crosses her arms over her chest. “If you hated me so much, why didn’t you just say so?”
“Bye!” Yuji shouts from the living room, and you all call out varying goodbyes and noncommittal sounds before making your way out the door and down the block, the afternoon air chilly against your cheeks.
Nobara waits all of ten seconds before spinning around and walking backward, grinning at you mischievously. “I bet Ino wrote a song about you.”
“Oh my god. Shut up,” you laugh. “He didn’t.” You can’t imagine you’ve given him all that much to work with. What would he write, that you like coffee and drums and Megumi’s dogs?
“Why else wouldn��t he show you? Don’t you guys text each other song lyrics like the little romantic fucks you are?” Your face is flaming, and you’re suddenly very grateful for the cool of the wind against your skin. The idea of him writing a song about you plants something weird in your gut—not something bad, just something unexpected and warm and blooming.
You try not to show it and your friends see right through you, Nobara turning back to skip up the drive with a satisfied grin and Maki rolling her eyes at the both of you.
“I’m gonna write a song, too,” Nobara declares, unlocking the door and pushing her way inside. “Skipper and Ino, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S—”
This time, you and Maki speak in tandem. “Shut up!”
—
“There’s a joke here,” Gojo says, tapping both of his index fingers together while he thinks. “About being a drummer and a journalist. Something about a beat.”
You laugh, jotting another note on the lined paper of your small spiral notebook. “I hate to tell you, but I’ve heard that one before.”
You’re not sure features qualifies as a specific beat, more of a broad category, but your staff isn’t nearly large enough to assign people to smaller specialties. Plus, it’s a college publication, designed for experimentation and growth. Nobody wants to be boxed in yet. That’ll come later, out in the monotony of the real world, and you’ll be confined to some hyperspecific beat like neighborhood crime or high school basketball.
“No!” Gojo cries, dragging his hands down his face like it’s the end of the world. “I can’t believe somebody plagiarized me before I even said it.”
“That’s not how that works,” Utahime cuts in dryly, sliding three shots across the counter to the waiting group of sophomores and then effortlessly throwing together another cocktail.
Gojo leans toward you, shadowing out your notes, and stage-whispers, “You see what I have to put up with?”
You do, actually, see what Utahime has to put up with. She long ago put down a line of blue painter’s tape to divide her side of the bar from Gojo’s, and she preaches frequently that there will be dire consequences if he crosses it.
Of course, he crosses it at every opportunity, and here he is, still.
It’s also just how the two bartenders split up the work, the customers, and you write that down too, that it’s an effective division of labor. “Don’t read my notes,” you tell Gojo as he squints at your writing upside down. “It’ll wreck the journalistic integrity.” He sticks out his bottom lip in a pout that reminds you violently of Toge, who’s taking photos of Utahime as she works.
You glance over to the stage, where Angel is performing the last number of her set, a bouncy, belty song that you recognize from a video she posted earlier this week. The crowd loves it, dancing around and singing along, but still, you think she’ll have a tougher time making it through as the only solo artist remaining in the competition.
You whoop and cheer as she hits her last note, holding it for an ungodly amount of time, and Gojo eventually has to abandon his teasing to do his job. When Toge thinks he’s got enough photos, the two of you slip back into the crowd, Panda commentating on the change of artist as you catch up to your friends.
“And now, here’s your alt rock duo, your boys, the Kamos,” he says as you come to a stop beside Yuta. “Give it up!”
Nobara very loudly gives it up.
“Hi.” Yuta nudges you. “How’s the reporting going?”
“Good.” Noritoshi and Choso settle in on stage, tuning their guitar and bass and making girls swoon in the front row but somehow remaining entirely oblivious to it. “You’re not going home tomorrow, right?”
Yuta shakes his head. This weekend is fall break, which just means that there were no classes today. You spent the first day of your three-day weekend cramming for midterms.
Toge’s heading out after this and Nobara will leave early in the morning, but Maki and Yuta will be here for the weekend. You wonder about Takuma and his band, but you can’t ask right now—they’re all backstage, waiting to go on after the Kamos.
The boys in question, when they’re not doing covers, have incredibly nonsensical song names that have little to nothing to do with their lyrics. The first track of theirs you ever heard was called Song About the Time My Dog Got Lost for Three Hours.
“Okay,” Choso says after their cover of a song by The Smiths. “This one’s called Please Don’t Tell Your Mom I Was At Your House Past Curfew.”
He and Noritoshi then proceed to play the most upbeat, energizing alt rock shit you’ve ever heard. You love these guys, and the crowd does too, the way they don’t take themselves too seriously but they’re genuinely talented. But it’s making you nervous for Takuma and his band, because only one group goes on tonight. Only one.
No, you think, shrugging it off. They got this.
When Shibuya Incident finally walks on stage, the ensuing roar of applause before they even do anything eases whatever worries you might have had. They were slotted at the end of tonight’s set for a reason. Everyone loves them.
Without prelude, they launch into a song you recognize from their EP, a fast-paced track with a pretty simple chord progression that gets entirely flipped on its head in the bridge. You let Yuta spin you around as you dance with the rest of the crowd, the lights and sound washing over you. Yuji’s in his element, Kirara is fucking killing it, and Megumi—as always—is the rock the band stands on, unerring tempo and steady presence keeping everyone on track.
After the song finishes with a crazy riff from Kirara, and the crowd takes a minute to freak out and then slowly wind down, Takuma grabs the mic to address the audience.
“Hi again,” he says, scanning the clusters of people from his place on the low stage. His gaze lands on you and your friends, and he smiles a little wider. “That was Godspeed. We’re gonna slow it down a bit for our next song. It’s a new one. We’re calling it Curious.”
Nobara practically launches herself over Toge to get to you and shake you by the shoulders. “What did I say?” she hisses.
“Oh my god,” you say, shoving her off. “They haven’t even started yet.” But you look back at Takuma to find he hasn’t stopped looking at you.
To your surprise, the instrumentals don’t start first. Most of Shibuya Incident’s music opens with a riff or a fill or at least four bars of introduction. But this time, Takuma leans into the mic and starts singing, just a low “ooooh,” and the rest of the band comes in one by one—Megumi, then Kirara, then Yuji. Kirara’s harmonizing on a higher note, and the effect is a slow, dissonant build that makes you lock in, all anticipation.
Then Takuma tugs the mic from the stand and sings,“I see your eyes, curious, curious, you wanna know why the sky’s so goddamn blue. I hear your voice, curious, curious, you’re asking me if I’d ever fall for you.”
And as you listen, Nobara’s smile just gets wider and wider, and Takuma keeps making fleeting eye contact with you, and you realize abruptly that she was right.
This song is about you.
Takuma’s said it to you before, in passing, how he likes the way you look at the world—through a journalist’s lens, curious about how everything works, always searching for unseen answers.
“Wish I could see my life like you do,” he and Kirara sing in unison. “Wish I could walk the streets each night… wonderin’ if the full moon sees you, but I just keep lookin’, lookin’ down at the time.”
You’re transfixed, just like the first night you saw Takuma perform live, and you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the stage if you tried. Someone should write a story about him, you think. This man could be on the cover of Rolling Stone and you wouldn’t question it.
God, you’re so far gone, aren’t you?
When the set is over, the last song finishing with a long, drawn-out chord, Takuma thanks the crowd and hands the mic off to Panda to take over. As the band disappears one by one into the backstage area, he lays out the voting process.
“The voting period will last ten minutes, assuming no technical difficulties,” he says. “QR codes, as usual, are posted around the bar. If you’re a competitor, you can’t vote. Make sure you’re logged into your .edu accounts or you won’t be able to access the form…”
Your fingers are tapping nervously at your thighs, the crowd around you already glued to their phone screens. The band isn’t back out on the floor yet—Panda will call all three artists up at the end of the voting period and announce the finalist live.
Sweat is starting to pool in the palms of your clammy hands, and you wipe it on your jeans, anxious. To you, there’s no question. But it’s not up to you.
“Relax,” Yuta says, putting a reassuring hand on your shoulder. “It won’t even be close, Skip.”
After the longest ten minutes of your life, Hana Kurusu, the Kamos, and Shibuya Incident join Panda back on stage, a dramatic spotlight bouncing between each artist as Panda draws out the announcement. “And the artist from tonight moving on to the finals in two weeks is…”
“Just say it,” Maki huffs beside you, and Yuta chuckles and nudges her with a shoulder. She tries to hide the slight upturn of her lips, but that’s not going to slide past you.
You’ll tease her later. For now—
“Shibuya Incident!”
The reaction is explosive, both on the floor and the stage. Yuji practically leaps onto Kirara’s back, and Takuma’s face goes slack in surprise before a shy smile works its way across his spotlit features, Megumi being his nonchalant, unaffected self in the midst of it all. Nobara is screaming, and you’re yelling at the top of your lungs, Toge whooping and snapping photos as the Kamos and Hana crowd the band, congratulating them on the victory.
Takuma looks out into the crowd again and you wave, smiling unabashedly, so fucking proud and excited and thinking maybe, maybe, if you make it too, you’ll be facing off against each other, and wouldn’t that be something?
Maybe you shouldn’t be so thrilled. He’s the competition, after all.
But if he wins for going up there and singing curious, curious with his eyes locked on yours, you suppose it wouldn’t be all that bad.
—
Most of Saturday passes in a barrage of classwork and inconsistent, snacky meals in between, the diet of a harried college student, ramen and chips and whatever actual food Yuta leaves for you in the fridge. He’s back from work by three, and Maki wraps up her own work around the same time you do, late afternoon creeping into evening. The three of you are curled up in the living room, the TV on while Yuta and Maki try to pretend they’re not looking at each other.
You need to get them alone.
you: are you busy takuma: not at all takuma: what’s up? you: mind if i crash your house?
You glance up and swear Yuta has somehow, in the last two seconds, moved closer to Maki on the couch.
you: i think yuta and maki need some ~ALONE TIME~ takuma: TEA takuma: sorry kirara told me to stop saying that in response to everything that happens ever takuma: it’s fun tho
“I’m going to Takuma’s,” you announce, and Maki raises a brow at you.
“Again?”
“Sue me for having friends.”
Yuta’s brows crease a bit at the word friends, but he doesn’t comment. With a furtive glance back, you grab your shoes and slip out the door, successfully leaving Maki and Yuta alone in the house for an indeterminate amount of time.
Please, you think. One of them has to make a fucking move soon.
Takuma answers the door before you can knock. “Hey.”
“No pups today?” you ask as you step past him into the entryway, kicking off your shoes.
“Sadly,” Takuma says. “Fushiguro took ‘em with him, wherever he went. Ah, man. Did you only come over for them?” His tone is teasing as he closes the front door behind you, trading the October cold for the warmth of the house. “Afraid I’m a letdown.”
“Takuma,” you scold at his self-deprecation. “You’re basically an excited puppy yourself, so—”
“Hey!” he squawks, and then thinks about it and tilts his head, conceding. “Fine. Maybe. Yeah, okay.”
“What have you been up to?” you ask as the two of you make your way to the living room.
“Procrastination. Guitar instead of homework, mostly. You?”
“Same,” you sigh. “Well, not the guitar part. But I should have been way further ahead on my homework by now.” You shrug. You’ll get it done; you always do.
You settle in easily on the couch, and the two of you boot up the Wii and play a few rounds of Mario Kart because someone left the disc in. And when you’ve both beaten each other enough times to lose count, Takuma mentions something about your single and you realize you haven’t checked the stats.
“You can see more on a computer,” he says, and you follow him up to his room, where he cedes control of the device to you. You pull up the artist profile and grin at the steady upward climb of listeners. It’s not a ton, but this only went up on Thursday.
“We haven’t even done anything to promote this,” you admit, spinning in Takuma’s desk chair to face him. “I don’t even know how people are finding it.”
He immediately looks down, which means he knows something. You nudge him with your foot. “What? What does that face mean? Takuma.”
“I maybe gave Panda a drive of the mix,” he shrugs, talking fast like the meaning of the words might elude you if he mumbles enough. “And he maybe played it at the radio station earlier today. Several times.”
A wave of affection crashes into you so fast that you jump up and throw your arms around him without thinking, laughing into his shoulder. “You didn’t have to do that!” You pull back, grinning. “That was really sweet. Thank you. Seriously.”
“Ah, it was nothin’.” He reaches up to scratch at the back of his neck, a gesture you’ve come to recognize as self-conscious.
“Not nothing,” you say softly. He smiles.
After a moment, he glances at the window and seems to come to a decision. “Hey,” he says.
“Hey yourself.”
“Wanna go out on the roof?”
You blink, processing the words, instinctively looking to his window. You’ve never really realized it before, but it opens out onto a flat expanse of shingles, a perfect lookout right outside Takuma’s bedroom.
Your grin is answer enough, and he unlatches the window and pulls it open. He glances back at you, up and down, and you feel yourself blush before you realize he’s taking in what you’re wearing. He grabs a thick jacket from the closet and tosses it to you, then shrugs one on himself and leads the way, gripping the window frame with one hand and pulling himself outside. After a moment of consideration, he reaches back in and grabs his acoustic guitar by the neck from its place against the wall, pulling it out with him.
When the window shuts behind you, you’re immediately grateful for the protection of the extra layer. Even with your hands balled in the sleeves of your hoodie, it’s chilly out here.
You’re surprised by how much of the campus you can see spread out in the distance. It’s early evening, but the days are getting shorter, the sun a misleading blaze of heat in the otherwise cold hour.
“This,” you say, “is fucking awesome.”
“Right? I called dibs on the room as soon as we toured. For this.” He grins, leaning back on his palms, legs spread out in front of him. You lie back on the roof, letting the cool surface seep through your hood, staring up at the sky.
“So Maki and Yuta,” he says, shaking his head fondly. “Are they finally a thing?”
“I don’t know, but if they’re gonna do anything about it, it’s not gonna be while anyone else is home.” You shrug, or at least do whatever approximation of shrugging you can when you’re bundled in a bulky hoodie and jacket and lying on a roof.
Honestly, Yuta and Maki are some of your favorite people on this planet, and you can’t imagine anyone else who really deserves them. They’re the de facto mom and dad of your group—as in, Yuta is the band mom and Maki’s the gruff father who won’t admit his affection for the pet he didn’t want to get but ended up loving anyway.
“Man, I’m glad I wasn’t around when Kirara and Hakari were in their pining phase,” Takuma chuckles. He pulls his legs in, sitting cross-legged, and picks up the guitar, idly tuning it as he speaks. “Then there’s Itadori, probably picks up girls everywhere he goes and has never once realized it.”
“What about Megumi?” You let your head loll to the side, looking at Takuma with the guitar settled in his lap.
“Fushiguro? I don’t know, man, he doesn’t tell us anything. He has like, resting yearning face. I’ve got no idea. I don’t even know where he is right now, just that he’s supposed to be back really late.”
“That means the dogs will be back?” you say hopefully.
Takuma shakes his head, strumming another chord, and another, fingers moving deftly across the frets. “I’m not enough for you, huh?”
“I said no such thing.”
He plucks out a happy little melody on the guitar, looking at you. “Wanna learn?”
You sit up, your hood falling back off your head in the process. “Really?”
In answer, he hands you the guitar, scooting closer to you to show you where to place your fingers. You’ve been around your bandmates enough to know the basics, but you let him teach you anyway, giggling a little when he guides you through a three-chord progression and says, “Damn, you’re a natural.”
He leans back and stares at the sky, listening to you play. Eventually you add a few other basic chords into the mix, varying your strumming patterns, already feeling the strain in your fingertips from the unfamiliar press of the strings.
“So,” you say, still idly messing around on a G chord. Takuma props himself up on his elbows, looking over at you. “What was the incident in Shibuya? Have you been to Shibuya?”
He snorts. “Nope. Honestly, it was more to make people ask the question. You know in the Marvel movies, how Hawkeye and Black Widow are always talking about Budapest?”
“And nobody knows what the hell happened there,” you say, laughing. “Ah. I see.”
“I’ve never even been to Japan,” Takuma admits. “Fushiguro has, though. Maybe he had an incident in Shibuya. Who knows?”
G, C, D. D, C, G. You play the chords over and over, strumming softly, slowly, letting your finger catch on each of the strings, then five of them, then four.
“This is a really nice guitar.”
“Yeah.” There’s a beat of silence that makes you glance up, weighted differently than the usual pauses in conversation. Takuma is sitting up now, knees pulled loosely to his chest. “Was my dad’s.”
“He taught you to play,” you remember aloud, recalling your conversation in the coffee shop. But now you’re hung up on that word: was. Part of you doesn’t want to ask, but part of you feels like his words are a sort of quiet invitation, like he wants to tell you, but doesn’t want to force it. “I… is he…?”
“He died when I was twelve,” Takuma admits, eyes fixed on the sky. “Uh, car accident. It was stupid, some issue with the other guy’s car. Couldn’t stop it.” You’ve never heard his voice like this before, taut, oddly thin. Carefully, gently, you set the guitar on the roof beside you, watching him.
“Were you…”
“In the car?” Takuma sniffs. “Ah. Yeah.”
“Oh,” you breathe, and that’s what it is, more of a breath than a word. “I—Takuma…”
When he laughs, there’s no humor in it. It’s a hollow kind of chuckle, one that says everything he can’t. “It’s why I learned to skate, actually,” he says quietly, not meeting your eyes. “I’d get everywhere that way. I didn’t—want to drive, I guess. Got my license late and everything. I think people thought I was just a slacker.”
Whatever words you might scrounge up feel inadequate for a grief this large. You don’t want to pity him, and you don’t want to dismiss him, and that’s always the problem with hard conversations, isn’t it? What a line to walk.
“You’re not a slacker,” you say eventually, and he raises a brow at you. “I mean, maybe you procrastinate coding projects to a worrying extent, but you always get it done.” You smile thinly. “You don’t give up in any way that matters, Takuma. I like that about you.”
He chuckles. “Nanami said something like that, once.” His eyes go far-away again, just for a second. “He’s kind of the closest thing… like… I don’t know. I’ve known Nanami for a really long time. He was my dad’s friend. And I guess he sort of became a father figure, after…”
He shrugs. “It’s probably a big part of why I decided to go here. That, and it’s not too far from my mom’s. I don’t know that she’d have been thrilled if I went somewhere farther.”
“You’re not home,” you say carefully, a question but not question. “For break?”
“She’s on a business trip,” he says. “So not much point. But I’ll see her at Christmas, at least.”
For a while the silence stretches out comfortably between you, like a weighted blanket. You can’t ignore it, but it isn’t unwelcome. At some point you scooted closer to him, and now you sit side by side, only the layers of your jackets separating you.
“Thank you for telling me,” you say eventually, soft, unwilling to break the quiet. He nods.
“You didn’t go home either,” he points out, an unspoken question in the spaces between words. “Is it just ‘cause you’re from so far away, or…”
“Yeah. A Friday off didn’t feel like enough of a break to warrant a flight back.” But that’s not all of it. His silence tells you he knows it, too. He’s been so candid with you all night. You can share this part of yourself, you decide.
There’s something about Takuma, anyway, that makes you want to tell him things. You want to know him, and you want him to know you—you now, here, at school, but also you there, home, in the past.
“I haven’t been home since July,” you admit, hugging your knees to your chest, mirroring him. “My town is… small. I liked it when I was little. But the older I got the more I started to feel, just—I don’t know, stifled?”
Your hometown used to feel huge, like you could explore it forever on your Razor scooter and never find all its secrets. But you grew, and the town didn’t grow with you, and suddenly you were standing outside your high school realizing you knew every corner of the self-proclaimed suburban city, every street and coffee shop and alley. You’ve always been curious. And at some point, there wasn’t anything left in that place for you to be curious about.
“I love my home. I love my parents. It’s just… I needed to get out. I don’t think they ever really understood that.”
It’s easier to admit things when you’re looking straight ahead like this, out over the lines and curves of buildings, picking out street lamps, watching a few stray cars make their way around slow corners.
“Is it what you wanted it to be?” he asks quietly. “Here, I mean.” He nods out to the vast stretch of campus, spread across the city. So many corners you’ve been here years and haven’t found them all.
Campus is weird on break, you muse, looking out over the darkness. A whole parallel world for you to explore, the shadowed version of the place. A video game map on single-player, a dead server. Hardly any lights on in the windows, no kids out on the street. Like a ghost town. But it still doesn’t feel empty to you. There’s so much promise in it.
“Yeah,” you answer after a moment, soft. “Yeah, I think it is.”
A ghost town that isn’t lonely, somehow. You could write a song about it, you think. Friends with all the dead in my ghost town. The phrase plays itself out in your head, and it sounds like something moodier than your band usually goes for. It sounds like Shibuya Incident.
You wonder if this is what it means to be in a relationship—not a romantic one, necessarily, but a friendship, or any kind of bond between two creative people. If it’s this, the sharing of intellectual property with another person to the extent that their voice and yours start to blend.
It’s in the way Nobara can finish your sentences when you’re throwing out potential verses, scrambling for rhymes. How Toge and Yuta can anticipate each other’s movements, match chord progressions without talking about them. How Maki slips into your tempo seamlessly, every single time.
And now your lyrics sound like something his band would play. Maybe Takuma’s songwriting will start sounding like yours, too.
You don’t think you’d mind.
“Can I tell you something?” Takuma murmurs after a moment, sounding hesitant.
You rest a cheek on your knees, hands clasped together in front of your shins, facing him. “Mhm.”
“That song last night,” he whispers, and he’s not looking at you, just staring out at the rapidly darkening campus. “It was about you. And how you—I don’t know, the way you look at things. Like they’re always so full of potential. I wish I could do that. You just see things and want to know more. I like… watching you, being curious.” He pauses for a beat and then quickly adds, “Not in like, a creepy way! Just—I don’t know.”
A chuckle slips through your lips against your will, the darkness hopefully hiding the color in your cheeks. Maybe you can blame it on the cold. “Watching?” you ask, teasing. “I can’t imagine I’m all that intriguing. There’s a lot of cool people around here, y’know.”
“Skip,” he murmurs, and now his eyes are locked on yours. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you.”
Every nerve in your body is hyperaware of his proximity, and his hand reaches up to cup your jaw, the touch ghosting over you, barely there, hesitant. A nonverbal question. Is this okay?
You lean into the warmth, letting his breath wash over you, mingling with your own in the space between your lips, smaller and smaller and smaller.
He’s watching you, closely, giving you a chance to pull away. So many words exchanged tonight, but you don’t need any for this.
You don’t pull away.
It’s slow at first, and soft, and hesitant. The shingles dig into the heel of your hand as you lean forward on one arm, a grainy feeling on your fingertips, in the grooved imprints left by the guitar strings. You find your free hand moving up to his shoulder, pushing, guiding him down until his back is pressed against the roof and you’re over him, lips locked with his. You look at him, and he’s so full of potential. You want to know everything about him, you want to know how he works, you want to ask questions. And you do, with your tongue along the seam of his lips, and your hand tangled in his hair, and his breath mixing with yours in the air. It’s near full dark now, feeling later than it really is, evening in autumn.
You’re not cold anymore.
He deepens the kiss, body coming up to meet yours, and you feel like maybe this roof is the top of the whole world, because how could you ever feel higher than this?
“Takuma,” you murmur, and you kiss him again, and you don’t think you’ve ever felt this way before, but you’ll do maybe anything in the world to feel this way again.
And then a sharp, deep sound makes you jump, scrambling to sit up on the shingles, breathing heavy from the kiss and the noise. Did that come from inside or out?
“What—”
“Oh, crap,” Takuma groans, pulling open the window. “Someone’s home.” He looks back at you, cheeks flushed from the cold or the kiss or both, looking a little helpless, a little apologetic, and you can’t help the small laugh that bursts from you at the absurdity of the situation. You feel like a teenager getting caught by your parents.
“We should…” He nods toward the window. You hand him the guitar, then crawl back over to the window and slip inside after him, the warmth a stark relief from the temperature you’ve gotten so used to. Your heart is a jackhammer, rapidly pecking away at the once-stable structure of yourself.
You kissed him.
You kissed Takuma.
Your phone buzzes in your pocket, and you pull it out with still-cold hands.
utah: [1 Image Attachment] utah: dinner?
Admittedly, the pasta does look amazing, and your stomach grumbles as if on cue.
“I should go,” you say awkwardly, holding up the phone for Takuma to see.
“Uh, yeah, uh—for sure, no problem, I should go see what’s up down there anyway,” he says after a beat of hesitation. “I’ll see you, uh…?”
“Around?” you finish, laughing slightly.
“Yeah,” he echoes with an amused half-smile as you make your way down the stairs. “Around.”
—
You’re freaking out.
It’s 4:31 on Monday afternoon, you’ve been listening to the same song on repeat for an hour, and you’re freaking the fuck out.
After Saturday night, you didn’t talk about it. You kissed him on the roof and your heart turned into a hummingbird and you were warm all over, and then the front door slammed and you nearly jumped out of your skin, and Megumi was back early and Takuma had no idea why, and you pet the dogs and then slipped out, wanting to give them their space.
And you haven’t talked about it. You haven’t had time. Sunday was a mess of cramming for midterms and your housemates returning from break and you threw yourself into your studies and tried not to remember, but now…
The stupid fucking switch in the back of your brain has flipped itself on and you can’t turn it off, all worry and criticism and hypothetical worst-case scenarios and you’re giving too much too fast, Skipper, you know better than this!
How many people in your tiny town fell in love young and grew to resent each other? How many of your high school friends grew up with divorced parents? How many breakups have you seen in your two and a half years at this university, how many tears and shouting matches in public halls, how many friend groups falling apart because two people fell in and out of love?
The thing is, you know you’re panicking about nothing. Takuma hasn’t asked anything of you. It was just a kiss. He is not your boyfriend. This is not a contract.
But if you talk about it, it could be, and you don’t understand why that scares you so much. Do you have commitment issues? What the fuck is your problem?
You probably wouldn’t have a problem at all, if you’d just had the time Saturday night to figure out what the kiss meant. But now that a whole day has passed and you haven’t seen him and you don’t know for sure, your mind keeps wandering down paths it should have stayed away from.
What if it’s a friends with benefits situation and you’ve just read too much into it? Maybe this is all he wants, making out, spending late nights together getting physical. Maybe that’s all. A heated makeout session on a roof doesn’t mean he feels the way you do. And do you even know how you feel? Fucking hell.
It’s the anxiety talking, the more logical part of you says, the part that sounds an awful lot like Maki. Your friends aren’t around to tell you how stupid you’re being, so the only texts you and Takuma have sent since Saturday night are playlists and song lyrics skirting around whatever truths you’re trying and failing to articulate.
Do I Wanna Know floats from the speaker on your desk, your phone next to your head on the bed, facedown and dormant. Do I wanna know if this feeling goes both ways?
Your door slams open and you jump up, whirling around to find Maki with her arms crossed, leaning on the frame. “Alright,” she says. “That’s the tenth time I’ve heard that godforsaken song. What the fuck is up with you?”
When you don’t respond, she steps inside and closes the door behind her, pauses the music, and then makes herself comfortable on the edge of your bed. “Talk to me,” she says. “You’re driving yourself crazy.” The words stall in your throat, useless, stagnant things as you avoid her knowing stare, instead staring at the popcorn ceiling until it blurs.
Maki sighs and shifts entirely onto the bed, turning herself to face you.
“I didn’t know you were home,” you say lamely.
“You’re driving me crazy, Skip,” she tries, and she knows you so fucking well, because the guilt trip is exactly what dislodges all those words built up in the back of your mouth—she breaks the dam and you spill your soul onto the quilted comforter, rambling, a rush of truths and things you thought you’d hidden from yourself but you can’t anymore. And she just listens, not looking away once.
You tell her everything: that you know you catch feelings fast, too fast. That despite your bleeding heart, you haven’t really been in a long-term relationship since high school. That you think of the future, of all the places you want to go, all the things you want to do, and there’s no guy in those dreams, and the thought of restructuring the life you’ve planned out for yourself around a boy who might be temporary is too much to even fathom. That—
“I kissed him,” you say breathlessly, bordering on hysterical, and you feel so stupid, this worked up over something so small, something that should be good. “I kissed him and now it feels real and now I’m freaking out.”
“I can see that,” Maki says calmly. “Let me ask you something. What is the worst thing that could happen, if you date him and it doesn’t last?”
“I…” You chew on your bottom lip, mind spinning through every bad outcome. “He could end up hating me, Maki. I could get some crazy job and have to leave, or he would come with me and leave his whole life behind and then he’d grow to resent me and we’d just be in some kind of hellish limbo until one of us snapped. Or he could—he could leave me, or we could try long distance and he could fall in love with somebody else, or I could, or—or—”
You flounder for a second, realizing your biggest worry is the one most immediate, the one most central to your life as it exists right now.
You’ve been sitting here thinking about big-picture things that are so far out, trying to make the feeling curdling in your gut feel like a valid reaction to a major life event. But that’s not what this is.
You’re just really, stupidly, pathetically scared that Takuma kissed you and didn’t mean it.
“Or—I guess that’s not the issue. Not really,” you admit quietly, not looking at Maki. She probably already knows. She has a way of knowing exactly what’s bothering you and just asking the right questions, getting you to talk yourself out of whatever hole your anxious mind has dug.
“I—it was just a kiss. What if he doesn’t want something serious right now, and I like him this way and he just wants something casual? I can’t do casual, Maki,” you say, raking a hand through your hair. “And it could fuck up this thing we have going. Yuji and Toge get along so well, and Nobara and the boys and Kirara, and Megumi’s your cousin, and I don’t wanna cause some weird, awkward rift, you know what I mean?”
Because it’s been so good, getting to know them. You don’t want to fuck up the dynamic just because you caught feelings too fast.
Maki leans back against your wall, humming as she thinks this over. “Okay. First of all, take a step back. Do you actually think you and Ino dating or not dating or whatever would mean I stop talking to my cousin? Or Nobara to the guys?” She raises a brow at you, unimpressed. “Seriously. I love you, Skipper, but you do not have that much power. These relationships existed before you knew Ino. Yuji is incapable of having conflict with anybody. And Toge doesn’t give a fuck about awkward relationship drama, he just wants to play Smash.”
As she speaks, you can feel your heart settling back into its home in your chest. Maki always knows what to say. Always.
“Second: Let me put it this way.” She levels you with a serious look. “You are so worked up about all these incredibly hypothetical situations. If you shut this down now, if you don’t act on what happened on Saturday, you’re still going to be worked up about hypotheticals. They’ll just be different ones. I know you, Skipper, you’re gonna drown yourself in what ifs. So you have to pick the lesser evil. There’s an unknown factor either way. Which one is gonna be worse?”
You groan, faceplanting into your bedspread. In the process, your forehead must hit play on your phone, because all of a sudden Arctic Monkeys blasts through the JBL again and Maki is grabbing your phone and saying, “Absolutely not. Nope. We are done with that.”
You look up at her helplessly. “Do I wanna know?” you choke out, half-laughing. “Because if I’m taking this out of proportion, if he doesn’t feel this way and I’m just another girl he kissed—”
“You’re not,” she says firmly. “Are you kidding me? Skip. That boy kisses the ground you walk on.” She shakes her head, some mix of fondness of exasperation flashing across her face. “You already know. The question isn’t if he likes you, or if you like him. It’s whether you’re gonna let it play out or shut it down before it has a chance to.”
Your door slams open, and Nobara strolls in and puts her hands on her hips. She glares at Maki and then at you.
“Please tell me I’m wrong,” she says, and you know you’re in for it, “but I believe you both had significant relationship developments this weekend and didn’t immediately call me? What the fuck? Spill.”
Abruptly, you feel like the worst friend in the world. Not necessarily because you haven’t filled Nobara in—she hasn’t been home—but because Maki is flushing pink, and you left her alone with Yuta on purpose, and it’s Monday, and you haven’t even asked what happened.
You look at Nobara. “Close the door.”
She does, but she doesn’t sit down, choosing instead to pace the room as she speaks. “Exhibit A: the plants have name tags and the handwriting is not Yuta’s. Exhibit B: I just came from down the street and Ino is acting weird as fuck.”
You sit straight up, suddenly on high alert. “Weird how? Did he say anything?”
“No. Like, the entire time. That’s the weird as fuck part.”
You turn to Maki, trying to read her. “Okay, what happened with Yuta? Was it when I left? Because if I wasn’t obvious enough—“
“You were very obvious, thank you,” Maki says, her blush deepening. “Uh, we made dinner. As you know.”
“It was good.”
Maki is pointedly looking everywhere but at you and Nobara, gaze darting from the ceiling to the bedspread to the door, as if she might escape the conversation. You hadn’t even noticed the plant name tags. That’s maybe the most sappy gesture that’s ever come from Maki Zenin.
“Mm. Yeah. Uh,” she says, eloquently. “We might have kissed. We might be… together.”
“Maki!” you and Nobara both scream, which results in Toge nearly breaking down your bedroom door five seconds later.
“What?” he demands. He clocks Maki’s bright red face and grins widely. “Aha! Yes. Good.”
“Wh—”
“Yuta won’t look me in the eyes, so I figured. You wanted to tell us all at once?”
Maki nods sheepishly.
“Too late!” Toge says cheerfully. “And he’s not home. So we can take this quality girls’ time to—”
“You are a man.”
“That’s the first time you’ve ever said that to me,” Toge tells Nobara, hand over his heart.
She swats at him in response and flops onto your floor, and Toge drops down beside her, you and Maki leaning over the edge of your bed to see them both.
"I ate your love pasta," you tell Maki, and she groans.
"This is why I don't tell you people things."
After the appropriate appoint of freaking out about Maki and Yuta (of course I knew, I always know, Nobara says), they make you go through the whole of Saturday night in detail.
You leave out the part about Takuma’s dad. That doesn’t feel like your story to tell.
When you get to I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you, Nobara blinks at you, and the innocent expression on her face means whatever she’s about to say is anything but. “So he told you you’re not like other girls?”
“Oh my god,” you groan, dragging your hands down your face.
“Oh, shit, Skipper!” Toge nearly shouts from the floor. “We have to go, like, two minutes ago.”
“Shit!” You scramble off the bed, shoving your laptop into your bag and weaving around Nobara, who has made no move to get off the floor. You and Toge have your usual Monday night class time to do field reporting, and you’re meeting up with Geto and Utahime.
The front door clicks open and closed, and you grin at Maki, who goes red. Yuta’s home. God, you wish you could stay for this.
“Hi, Yuta! Bye, Yuta!” you call on the way out the door, patting him on the head, and Toge follows suit with a much more aggressive motion that messes up Yuta’s hair.
“Oh, hi! Um. Bye?” Yuta’s startled laugh follows you out the door, and then you’re on your way.
You’re always on your way back to The Fix, eventually.
—
Utahime, notably a happier person in general when Gojo’s not around, lets Toge into the back to get some photos of the storeroom. That leaves you alone with Geto, back on the same stool as last time, phone on the counter as you watch him work, talking as he goes.
“Finished inventory,” he says, typing something rapidly on his laptop, “and now it’s budgeting. And yeah, that’s about what it looks like on the day to day. What else did you want to know?”
Geto is remarkably easy to talk to. He’s soft-spoken and articulate, a good listener, and you find yourself forgetting it’s an interview after a while, lost in conversation. You learn that he studied business in school, so opening an establishment like this wasn’t much of a stretch. He handles the finances and hiring, and he’s the one working with Panda on the Battle of the Bands. Gojo and Utahime bartend, Nanami is security, and Shoko handles everything else. It’s a small team, he says, but they work.
“I wanted to be able to be home for the girls when they were growing up, and this wound up being a great way to do that, schedule-wise,” he tells you. “And now they’re here, which is great. I wouldn’t say I ever saw myself opening a bar, back in college, but now that I’m here and Shoko and I have been running the place for a while, I’m not sure where else I ever could’ve ended up, y’know?”
You nod, head propped in your hand with your elbow on the counter. “So is this the dream? The endgame?” you ask. “Think you’ll stay a while?”
“Well,” he says, closing the laptop, “I think it comes down to doing something because you love it, not because other people love that you do it. Though right now, both of those things are true, which is fortunate for me." He leans on the bar counter, head tilted as he considers his words.
"If the work makes you happy, if the people there make you feel the same way, I think that’s worth hanging on to," he says. "If I ever stop loving the work, I suppose I’ll move on. I don’t see that happening, really, but if it does, I’ll roll with it. Whatever comes after.”
“That makes sense.” You sigh, leaning back in your chair. “Man, I wish the career thing was that clear-cut now. I know I have time, but it’s weird to think about.”
“Would you ever go further than this with the band, you think?” he asks, seeming genuinely curious. “Or is the journalism thing pretty much what your heart’s set on?”
You’ve thought about it. Drumming makes you feel alive like very few other things do, but you love writing, reporting, meeting people and telling their stories. You want to go for editor-in-chief next year when Tsumiki graduates, but the reality is that you won’t have so much time for the band if you get the job. And you love your band.
Not that it’ll be the same, anyway, without Maki and Yuta. That’s something you don’t love to think about.
“I don’t know,” you confess, sheepishly realizing you’re still recording, that you’re supposed to be the one asking the questions. “I don’t think… that the band is ever necessarily going to be a professional thing. Maki and Yuta have all these big career plans. And it’s like, how much do I invest in that now, knowing it’s not… forever? When the journalism thing, the career, might be? I don’t know.”
“You know, I don’t think it matters all that much whether it’s forever,” Geto shrugs. “If it gave you what you needed at the time, wouldn’t it be worth it?”
He glances up at you, taking in the lines of your face, the tapping of your fingers against your other arm. You kind of feel like he sees something you don’t.
“Here’s some unsolicited advice, kid. On the record. Maybe life is short, maybe not. But regardless, your heart is not a finite thing.” His eyes are soft but not sad, serious but with a sort of levity that’s wise and not regretful. You think, idly, that you would find it very hard not to trust him. “If you’ve got something, love it while you have it.”
Something tells you he’s not talking about the band anymore. Or maybe that’s just you, looking for answers where there aren’t any.
“Thanks, Geto,” you say, turning off the recording. “This has been really helpful.”
Your heart is not a finite thing. And you think you’ve made up your mind.
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jjk taglist open: just send me a message!
@shutuppeter @mikikkoo @reactwithjan @theclassbookworm @lilactaro @bisforbuse @risararelywrites @idkidk32 @gojodickbig @stargazing-with-choso @anonymity-222
a/n: what is this? setup for the megumi spinoff i'm writing after this? oo (sorry he was a cockblock it was for the plot, this one AND his, hehe)
#jjk#jujutsu kaisen#takuma ino x reader#jjk ino#ino takuma#takuma ino#ino x reader#megumi fushiguro#yuji itadori#yuta okkotsu#nobara kugisaki#kento nanami#toge inumaki#scry writes#jjk au#college au#band au#kirara hoshi#suguru geto#satoru gojo#ieiri shoko#choso kamo#noritoshi kamo#maki zenin#kasumi miwa#aoi todo#yutamaki#iori utahime#megumi's shikigami#gojo satoru
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Self-Aware! BSD. Just one meme. And a short
Imagine:
You thought, that after Wan got into the real world, you won't have more arrivals (exept, for the new characters).
You were surprised, when BSD Stage cast appeared on your front yard. And, unfortunately, Stage! Goncharov was still furious about what Stage! Fyodor did. Unfortunately, his fury was now detected on all Fyodors.
But even Wan! Fyodor will fight for his life.
The shouting and scandal were close to the boiling point and could easily ended in a brawl.
Until Original! Pushkin dragged you in the middle of the yard.
Pushkin: *yelling as loud as he can* FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH!
Original! Fyodor, BEAST! Fyodor, Wan! Fyodor, Stage! Fyodor: *stop arguing with Stage! Goncharov, looking at Pushkin*
Pushkin: *pointing at you* Look, [Y/N]. And it's been a whole day since someone played with their hair.
You: *whispering* And how do you know that detail? *already knew, what is coming, so, you choose to accept it.*
Original! Fyodor, BEAST! Fyodor, Wan! Fyodor, Stage! Fyodor: *silent for a moment. Moved towards you*
You: *swarmed by four Fyodors, all of them are playing with your hair.*
The crisis was... delayed. At least, there is time to calm Stage! Goncharov down.
And to find you, after you were carried away by Fyodors to have a "hair day".
--------
Bonus:
An alternative:
Pushkin: *pointing at you* Look, [Y/N]. And it's been a whole day since someone played with their hair.
You: *whispering* And how do you know that detail? *already knew, what is coming, so, you choose to accept it.*
Original! Fyodor, BEAST! Fyodor, Wan! Fyodor, Stage! Fyodor: *silent for a moment. Moved towards you*
Suddenly, a familiar fog coated the aria, where Fyodors were walking.*
Shibusawa: Sorry, [Y/N]! My ability already was on, before you were pushed here.
You: *gulping*
Fog dissapeared. Now, there are eight Fyodors.
Original! Fyodor, Original! Crime and Punishment, BEAST! Fyodor, BEAST! Crime and Punishment, WAN! Fyodor, WAN! Crime and Punishment, Stage! Fyodor, Stage! Crime and Punishment: *looked at each other in shock. Immediately accepted the situation and continue walking towards you*
You: *swarmed by four Fyodors snd four CaPs, all of them are playing with your hair.*
The crisis was... delayed. At least, there is time to calm Stage! Goncharov down.
And to find you, after you were carried away by Fyodors and CaPs to have a "hair day".
#self-awarebsd#self-awareau#fyodor dostoyevsky x reader#bsd fyodor dostoevsky#bsd fyodor#fyodor dostoyevsky bsd#bungou stray dogs fyodor
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