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madman479r · 1 year ago

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Jaune knew he messed up when he received a 'D' on his latest Grimm studies test, but could you blame him?! Port just droned on about his glory days and Jaune had been more focused on bettering his combat abilities, he didn't mean for his Grimm studies grade to slip.

But Glynda wasn't having any of it, when she called him to her office he knew what was coming. "Mr. Arc, you are a bright student, you have no reason to be receiving grades as low as a 'D'," Glynda lectured as she pushed up her glasses. Since it was just the two of them Glynda could refer to him as Jaune but when he was in trouble it was 'Mr. Arc'.

"Sorry Glynda," Jaune apologized. "Professor Port's lectures are so boring." He tried to excuse himself but her narrowed eyes told him where he went wrong. "I- I mean! I apologise, Professor Goodwitch. I-it won't happen again!" He even sat more rigid in his chair.

Glynda held her stern gaze for a moment before she sighed and pushed her glasses back up. She had heard this excuse before, but that didn't make it any more valid. (And secretly she couldn't fault them about Port. The man just loved to hear himself talk!)

"Mr. Arc, you may not be our best student but you show the most progress and in such a short time. You show you can become an exceptional student and huntsman with the right guidance and training, but that does not excuse you from your shortcomings." Glynda lectured.

She then took a softer tone, also lowering her voice a bit, as if not wanting to risk anyone outside her office from hearing what she was about to say next.

"And despite our relationship, I will not hesitate to fail you if you allow your grades to slip. You need to work on your studies just as much as your combat if you want to become a Huntsman, Jaune." Glynda said.

Jaune and Glynda had been secretly dating for a while now. She honestly didn't expect to ever do such a thing as have a romantic relationship with one of her students yet Jaune just did things to her, made her feel things she couldn't be without. She had originally been against it but eventually relented when he made it clear that he did in fact love her and that he would never betray her trust by telling anyone of their relationship. He wasn't trying to gain an advantage or brag about being with her, he just wanted to be with her because he liked her. And she found it hard to resist such a heartfelt confession.

Now they were dating in secret, which meant Glynda had to take certain precautions to avoid suspicions from other faculty or students. Which was why she had him come to her office when they met. It wasn't the most comfortable of settings but it was the safest.

"I understand, Glynda." Jaune said, relaxing a smidge, he knew he wasn't out of the woods but hearing her use his first name meant a good sign... right?

Glynda gave him a stern look, but her eyes softened ever so slightly. "Good." She then stood up and walked over to the window, looking out as if contemplating what to say next. "But..."

Jaune tensed up at the single word, but he waited for her to continue.

"Drspite... us, I must discipline you." Glynda said as she turned her gaze back to him. Her eyes bore into his, making sure he didn't try to squirm away from her words. "You need to realize how serious your grades are."

Jaune gulped, not liking where this was going. He did like it when Glynda took charge of things, but not when she used her position on him. "Yes, Glynda."

Glynda stood from her desk and headed for the door that went deeper into her office. "Follow me if you would, Mr. Arc." She instructed.

Jaune reluctantly stood from his chair and followed Glynda. The two went through the second door to what looked like a living space. The Professors of Beacon would sleep in Beacon grounds and so had a living room with a bedroom, bathroom and small kitchen. Jaune had been here before, he had come over many occasions and not just for sex, but to watch a movie or snuggle up with Glynda. He enjoyed those times but he wasn't sure where this was going to take him.

Glynda guided Jaune to her bathroom and told him to stay inside while she fetched something and closed the door, leaving Jaune in the bathroom by himself.

Jaune didn't really have any idea what Glynda was planning, but he figured it had something to do with his punishment.

A few moments later Glynda opened the door and came inside carrying a small box and two... energy drink cans?

"Glynda? What are those?" Jaune asked.

Glynda placed the box down on the sink counter and opened one of the cans. "A special drink. It's quite popular among students." She said before offering him the can.

Jaune eyed the can before looking back at Glynda. "And these are to help me study?"

Glynda smirked at his skepticism. "Just drink it." She ordered. "both of them, drink every single drop."

Jaune took both cans from her and took a swig with each, downing both with some effort. He could taste the fruity flavoring, one of them tasted of mango, but something else was in there, something different. "What's in these?"

"Don't worry about it, just keep drinking." Glynda said as she pushed him to drink more.

Jaune shrugged, if she said it was safe... he did finish the rest of the cans, though he found them difficult to swallow, he felt the contents sliding down his throat and into his stomach.

"Good. Now since it's Sunday you won't have any classes today and I've informed your team that you're in detention so you won't have to worry about them. I will leave the room and once I have, you will open the box and then read the text on the drinks. Then I will text you your instructions." Glynda said as she took the cans from his hands and set them in the box before taking it with her as she left the bathroom.

Jaune waited until he heard Glynda's scroll unlocking the bedroom door, before he turned his attention to the two cans. He picked one up and examined it. It was a plain black can, the only thing that stood out was the label that said 'BUST' with a subtitle that said 'Energy Drink'. One can was a faint red with 'original flavour' while the other was Orangey-yellow with 'Mango flavour.' He didn't know what the drink did, but he figured Glynda wouldn't give him anything dangerous... right? He took the can of original and began to read the contents of the red can.

Jaune read the text once, twice and three times before his mind clocked on to what it was saying. It increased stamina and libido? What the hell? Jaune already had incredible stamina and libido should how would this affect him? Would it increase it or just not do anything?

Wait, why would Glynda give him a drink like this in the first place?! Jaune quickly began to read the rest of the text on the back or the drink where it said 'Potential Side Effects'

CAFFINE RUSH Drinker may enter a horny frenzy, causing them to lose control or their actions.

'PRE-HEATED OVEN' Drinker experiences heightened fertility or virility, emitting strong pheromones that may attract nearby individuals.

'SENSORY OVERLOAD' The body becomes sensitive to the touch, causing the drinker to cum on a hair trigger.

What the fuck?! Jaune reached for the Mango can and read it.

BACKED UP Excessive production causes testicles to become engorged, often to the point of hindered movement.

IDLE LEAKAGE causes frequent drainage and ejaculation even when not stimulated

HEAVY CREAM Causes the drinker's semen to become extremely thick, increasing the chance or back-up.

Jaune's eyes bulged out of his head as he read what the effects of the drink were. That's why she had him drink both! One increased his libido and the other increased his size and how much he could cum! Jaune then looked into the box to see a bottle of lube and a pocket pussy with a hole on both ends, meaning his cock would poke out through it.

Oh god, how much planning did she put into this?! He didn't have to wait long for her answer. His scroll pinged, indicating he received a text message. He opened it up to see the message was from Glynda.

'Open the box and use the contents to pleasure yourself. I want you to masturbate until you cum and cum as much as you can, fill the bath with as much as you can.'

Jaune was shocked by Glynda's instructions but he couldn't deny they sent a shiver down his spine and straight to his cock which made him notice how it started to feel weird, a good weird. He looked down and saw it was growing hard. It wasn't his first boner, but it felt... bigger. His erection strained against his pants and it almost seemed like it was swelling up. He then noticed how his balls were starting to swell up too. His balls were getting bigger, swelling up like his cock, the bulge in his pants looked like it was growing outwards and upwards. Jaune felt himself grow hot under his skin, his heart raced and breathing increased. It was getting hot, too hot for clothes. Jaune practically tore off his clothes as his cock burst from his pants like a wild animal from a cage. He couldn't resist anymore, he needed to touch himself.

But before he could, he received another text from Glynda.

'I figured you won't need it, but some... encouragement may help.~' her text read and was followed by a picture that made Jaune nearly cum at the image alone.

Jaune was so distracted by the picture that he didn't notice his body grow hotter and his cock growing even bigger. He could feel it throb in his hand, demanding him to stroke it.

Jaune had no more restraint left.

0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0

Glynda made her way back to her personal quarters, feeling a small pit of excitement in her stomach, feeling like a child on the night before Christmas, as she wondered how Jaune was doing. It had been three hours since she left him to his punishment.

Glynda had secretly always wanted to try something like this. Ever since she had come across the images and videos of girls being covered in cum, she wanted to try it but for how much cum she wanted to be doused in, that would have to involve more than one man and Glynda was no such woman.

She had resigned herself to never experiencing such a thing, that was until she slept with Jaune. Jaune had an impressive cock, one that would rival pornstars and his was completely natural! And his cum shots, oh! They would cover Glynda just how she envisioned. But she wanted more, just being stained and covered with it wasn't enough now. She wanted to lay in it, be surrounded in it, have a bath tub filled with cum!

And it seems her prayers were answered by Bust energy drink. Like she said, Jaune already had a massive set of balls with lots of cum stored in them but with the added effects of the drink then she'd finally live out her fantasy.

The thought alone made her wet, but she didn't want to ruin her underwear or her dress so she resisted touching herself.

The blonde professor made her way back to her living quarters, she could hear Jaune through the walls, moaning and groaning. It sounded like he was in pain but she knew better, his body was getting used to the effects of the drink so he was feeling sensitive to the touch. Glynda felt her pussy moisten as she thought of Jaune's hands, his lips, his tongue... and his cock! Oh, she was going to ride him to exhaustion.

But first she needed to make sure he was still doing as she instructed. So she unlocked the door and made her way inside her personal quarters, immediately heading towards the bathroom. She opened the door and her nose was immediately assaulted by the pure smell of cum and sweat. The musky scent filling her lungs. Her eyes were wide as they looked at the scene before her.

Jaune was standing hunched over the tub as he mindlessly stoked his rock hard erection. His balls hung heavy between his legs, swollen and bloated with all the cum they contained. The bath was full to the brim with cum, nearly overflowing with the white substance. Jaune's dick was also covered with the viscous fluid, his hand pumping furiously as he tried to milk himself dry, even though it was clear there was plenty more to shoot out.

"Mmmph! C-Cumming!" Jaune grunted before his cock erupted with more semen, shooting more thick ropes of cum into the bath tub, adding to the large volume that was already inside.

Glynda's eyes were glued to Jaune's cock as she watched it erupt again and again, each time sending more and more cum into the tub. His balls twitched and spasmed, churning and producing more of the hot sticky seed. Glynda couldn't help but lick her lips at the sight, the musk of cum filling her nose. It was just like she imagined and more.

"Huff... huff..." Jaune panted as his orgasm subsided, his cock still hard and ready to go, but even he could tell he was starting to feel sore from the excessive amount of masturbation he had been doing.

"It looks like you're finally done, Mr. Arc." Glynda said with a smile.

Jaune's eyes snapped open and his head whipped around to see Glynda standing in the doorway. "G-Glynda!"

"Yes, it's me. Did you- mmph!" Glynda was cut off by Jaune as he pulled his girlfriend towards him, her body flush against his as he smashed his lips against hers, their tongues immediately intertwined in a passionate kiss.

Glynda moaned into the kiss, wrapping her arms around Jaune's neck and pulling him in closer as their lips danced with each other. She could feel his hard erection poking against her stomach and she rubbed herself against it, grinding against his shaft as it leaked precum onto her dress.

Jaune was completely lost in the heat of the moment, his mind hazy with lust as he kissed Glynda, his hands roaming her body. They made their way up her back, down to her butt, squeezing her soft cheeks, eliciting a moan from her, and then moving to her front, groping her breasts through her dress. He pulled away enough for his cock to drop to Glynda's crotch and pushed it forward. Due to Glynda still wearing her clothes he couldn't slip into her drenched velvet pussy, instead the hard cock managed to hike up her skirt and rubbed itself between the smook creamy skin of her thighs.

Glynda gasped in pleasure as Jaune thrust his hips back and forth, grinding himself against her. The feeling of his cock sliding against her fabric covered entrance was driving her wild with desire. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, holding onto him as he humped her. "Mmm! That's a good boy." Glynda cooed into Jaune's ear.

Jaune sped up his pace, his hands massaging her breasts, pulling her top down and freeing them from her dress so he could play with her nipples. He pinched and squeezed her rock hard nubs, causing her to gasp out in pleasure, her back arching forward.

Glynda's body tensed up as Jaune played with her tits. She could feel his cock throbbing between her legs, the thick rod pulsing with each beat of his heart. The sensation of having his shaft rubbing against her slit was almost too much for her to bear.

"Glynda!" Jaune cried out and the head of his cock shot out another thick load like a bullet from a gun, the sound of the jizz splashing into the already full tub reminded Glynda of what she wanted to try out in the first place.

And it seems Jaune was ready to fall into a coma. He could normally last for many rounds but the constant cumming drained the energy from him. "G-Glynda... I'm... I'm sorry, i-i can't..." Jaune began.

Glynda gently held Jaune's cheek and gave him a soft, loving kiss on the lips. "It's okay, my love. You've done exactly what I wanted. Go rest on my bed, while I take a dip." Glynda looked at the cum bath and bit her lip, an electrical shiver ran up her spine.

Jaune was thankful his girlfriend was feeling merciful and made his way to Glynda's bed, his legs feeling like jelly. He felt like he had run a marathon and then some. It was a struggle just to make it to the bed, his cock still hard and leaking precum.

Glynda watched Jaune stumble over to her bed before she turned her attention back to the full tub. She smiled to herself, a wicked little grin on her face. She quickly removed her clothes, tossing them into the pile with Jaune's own garments, until she was completely naked. Though Glynda wrapped her hair up in a towel to keep it from getting messy, after all it was a hassle to clean cum from hair.

She stepped up to the edge of the tub and looked down at the swirling white pool of semen.

"Oh, Jaune. You've really outdone yourself." Glynda said as she dipped her finger into the hot sticky seed. She brought it to her lips and tasted it, her eyes rolled back into her head as she savored the flavor. "Mmm... delicious." Glynda moaned as she licked her lips, tasting Jaune's cum. She knew she would have to thank him later for this.

Glynda stepped into the tub and slowly lowered herself into the white sea of sperm. The hot, sticky liquid engulfed her body as she sunk down into it. It was almost like being submerged in a warm, gooey, jello-like substance. Her skin tingled as it made contact with the thick fluid. The feeling of Jaune's cum surrounding her made Glynda's body tingle all over.

She took a deep breath and submerged herself beneath the surface until it reached her collar bone. Letting the sticky seed wash over her, covering every inch of her body in the hot sticky substance.

"Ohh! This feels so good." Glynda moaned as she lay back, laying in the pool of cum. She rubbed her hands all over her body, her skin tingling from the sensation. She massaged her breasts, playing with her nipples and pinching them between her fingers as she let out soft moans of pleasure. She slid her hand down her stomach, running it down her smooth, flat stomach until it reached her pussy.

She traced her finger along her slit before slipping it inside her folds, pumping it in and out of her tight cunt. She could feel the cum clinging to her fingers, making the act of fingering herself easier, it felt like she was pushing the cum into her depths. She pumped her finger in and out of herself, adding another as she pleasured herself, her other hand continued to play with her breast, squeezing and groping her soft mound of flesh.

Glynda moaned loudly, her voice echoing off the walls of the bathroom. She couldn't believe how good it felt to be covered in Jaune's cum, surrounded by it as she laid in the hot sticky liquid. It made her feel so dirty, like a dirty, filthy slut.

Glynda continued to finger herself, pumping her fingers in and out of her pussy as she played with her tits. She moaned and groaned as she pleasured herself, her body tingling all over from the feeling of being covered in Jaune's cum.

"Oh, Jaune. This is soooo good!" Glynda moaned out as she arched her back, pressing her hand against her tit. Her fingers worked faster, thrusting in and out of her pussy with greater fervor as she rubbed her clit with her thumb. Her orgasm was approaching fast, the feeling of Jaune's cum all over her body heightening the sensations she was feeling.

She could feel her body tensing up, her muscles starting to tighten as her orgasm neared. She bit her lip as her body writhed and bucked. Her hips thrust upwards as her thighs squeezed together, trapping her hand between her legs.

"Aaaahhh!" Glynda cried out as she came, her body trembling as waves of pleasure washed over her. Her mind went blank and her vision became blurry as she orgasmed.

She gasped for air, her chest heaving as she panted. She looked down at herself and saw her skin covered in Jaune's cum. The sight of it caused her to shudder, sending shivers down her spine.

"Ahhh... that was amazing." Glynda sighed as she laid back in the tub, letting the warm liquid envelop her, she brought her hand out of the liquid, seeing it slick with both her fluids and Jaune's and licked it clean.

"Delicious." Glynda smiled.

She'd need to clean herself with a good shower when she was done, and it would be an issue to get rid of the thick cum and clean the tub but that was an issue for the future, for now she could relax.

#rwby #jaune arc #glynda goodwitch #jaune #glynda #jaune x glynda #jaune arc x glynda goodwitch #arcwitch #rwby arcwitch #rwby arcwitch (jaune arc x glynda goodwitch)#rwby arcwitch (jaune x glynda)#sorceress knight #not sfw #non sfw #nsft

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ravenya003 · 2 months ago

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Prophecy Girl, S01E12

It has taken me SO LONG to get to this episode, so my bad. Maybe on some level I just didn’t want to finish season one, as there’s a unique vibe about it that disappears once we hit season two, and never really returns. Maybe it’s the grainy quality of the film, or the tinkling piano music, or the dodgy special effects, or the cute little baby-ness of the cast...

In any case, “Prophecy Girl” serves as a great finale for the seasonal arc, and would have made for a decent conclusion to the show in its entirety, had it not been renewed for a second season (which many thought might be the case at the time). It’s terrifying to think that these days, the show probably wouldn’t have advanced beyond this season before getting cancelled.

After the “previously on,” which namedrops the Master and the Codex and so on, we open with Xander trying to ask someone out. This is fitting considering his role in the episode (I’d argue it’s just as much his coming-of-age story as it is Buffy’s) and the reveal that he’s just practicing on Willow.

This also neatly sets up Willow’s arc across the episode. Although she’s given less to do than the other two members of this particular love triangle, her development from sappily pretending that Xander is talking to her, to turning down his invitation to go to the dance with him after Buffy rejects him, is an important stepping stone for her.

It’s also incredibly insensitive that Xander is using Willow in this way, as “The Pack” revealed that he’s not completely oblivious to her feelings for him, but hey – they have to start him in an immature place so he can man-up later. Heroism always shines brighter when it comes from someone you know is capable of being a lot worse.

Buffy is out slaying (at this point they’re still calling it “hunting” instead of “patrolling” which is amusing) and a little perturbed by the number of vampires that are out and about. Nearby, Cordelia and her latest toyboy Kevin are trying to make out in a parked car, but she can hear noises outside.

I’m not entirely sure what the point of this scene was, especially since nothing is done with the clichéd “hey, did you hear something?”/“it's nothing, baby” set-up (you’d expect this show to have the male character getting anxious and the female character getting out of the car to take a look around) but hey... Cordelia is here.

Back at Sunnydale High, Giles is studying the Pergamum Codex in the library. There I was, appreciating the moody piano music and the slow panning shot and the reading montage and thinking about how shows back then were confident enough to take their time setting the scene – and then I realized the emphasis on the skylight was to establish it as an important location that the Master will eventually be thrown through.

But that’s not until later; right now Giles is reading the relevant passages and not liking what they’re telling him. “The Master shall rise, and the Slayer shall...” We don’t hear what comes next, as this is the moment that an earthquake hits.

I recall earthquakes being used at least one more time (in season four?) as a harbinger of the end times, but this is really the only apocalypse in the show's whole duration that gets all the ominous signs and portents. I suppose after this, the end of the world became a little ho-hum given the gang were dealing with one in every season finale (and sometimes in the mid-season finale).

We get a montage of everyone reacting: Giles in the library, Buffy in the park, Cordelia and Kevin in their car, Willow and Xander amidst panicking patrons at the Bronze. Random note, but I love montages of character reactions to big events across a large area. Remember in the first episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, when people all over the world were reacting to the signs of Aang’s return? That was cool.

The best response comes from the Master, who is ranting and raving about his coming glory... and then asks the Anointed One: “what do you think, a 5.1?”

HAHAHA. I honestly think that’s one of my favourite gags in the entire show, and definitely a quintessential Master line. I know he’s considered one of the least interesting Big Bads, but I’ll always love that excitable droll humour.

That said, an earthquake that causes cracks and fissures to appear in the library walls would have been much bigger than a 5.1. Take it from a Christchurch girl.

Buffy arrives at the library the following morning and Giles reacts oddly to her appearance. Yup, whatever he read in that Codex was pretty bad. It’s kinda crazy to consider they were all worried about an invisible girl just last week.

Later that day the trio emerge from class and Xander makes his move, instructing Willow to leave. She really is a saint for putting up with all this nonsense.

His invitation to the dance ends about as well as you’d expect: Buffy lets him down as gently as possible, but it’s obvious (and has been from the inception of their relationship) that he’s just not her type. It hurts, but for my money, he handles the rejection reasonably well... until the subject of Angel comes up. DUDE. That is none of your business. The “I can wait” comment doesn’t go down too well with me either.

Now look, I’m not going to defend Xander for his behaviour here, but I do think what we see is a. the realistic reaction of a teenage boy, and b. an interaction that was not as bad as it could have been. He’s honest and straightforward with his intentions. Buffy makes herself clear, and he accepts it. Not very gracefully, but he does.

I’ve said before that I think Joss Whedon doomed Xander when he revealed that he considered this character to be the one most based on himself, which means that a lot of the later revelations about Whedon were retrospectively projected onto Xander. But Xander Harris is a much better human being than Joss Whedon, and it’s important on a narrative level that he feels the sting of rejection and responds with a level of petulance and entitlement. It serves as a contrast to his later behaviour when he seeks out Angel for assistance AFTER Buffy has refused him, without expecting anything in return.

In any case, I feel bad for him in this scene, and I think he avoids the worst of the Nice Guy tendencies that are often attributed to him. If it weren’t for him bringing up Angel, I wouldn’t have had a huge problem with anything he does in the scene.

Giles is on the phone, and as we later find out he’s talking to Angel, I think it’s amusing that he identifies him as “Giles” and then clarifies “Rupert Giles.” Are we meant to infer that Angel knows more than one Giles? It’s also of interest to me that Giles knows how to contact Angel. Did they swap phone numbers at some point?

Jenny Calendar (yay!) listens in on the conversation, and rattles off a list of weird occurrences that she’s noticed on the internet: a cat giving birth to a litter of snakes, a family that were swimming in a lake when it started to boil, and a child born with his eyes in back-to-front. And again – what’s with all these crazy portents? Does shit like this happen every apocalypse? Because we never really hear about stuff like this again, even though that’s a LOT for a relatively self-contained averted-apocalypse that ultimately doesn’t even disturb the dance going on a few blocks away. For most of Sunnydale, it would have just been an ordinary night.

Another iconic line: “I’d say the end is most seriously nigh.” Classic Jenny.

She goes on to say that she’s receiving emails from a monk called Brother Luca, who is sending out prophecies concerning someone called the Anointed One (this is presumably the prophecy from the “Never Kill a Boy On The First Date” episode, about how “the Slayer will not know him, will not stop him, and he will lead her into Hell.”) Giles asks her to contact Luca for more information.

If you’ve been reading these reviews of mine, you’ll know that sometimes I fixate on minutia, and in this case: who is this Brother Luca? What did he know about the Anointed One? Why did he disappear? It’s kind of a shame the writers didn’t keep him in their back pocket, as it would have made for a cool bit of continuity if they’d ever needed an Exposition Guy.

We get a seemingly pointless scene in which Cordelia and Kevin act all cutesy-poo about the upcoming dance, followed by Cordelia spotting Willow and asking her to hook up the sound system at the Bronze, but it does set up a lot of plot-points: that Cordelia and Willow are on speaking terms (which makes her saving of Willow and Jenny less random), that Cordelia has got a good thing going with Kevin (which makes his death all the more tragic), that the AV room is a place that exists (where the massacre happens), and that Cordy is expecting to see Kevin at the Bronze that night (she won’t though).

So much is packed into a brief transitory scene – I mean, that’s actually kind of impressive.

Willow spots Xander in an empty classroom, throwing a ball against the wall. He’s stroppy, she’s mildly sympathetic, but when he pivots and asks her to the dance instead, she refuses him. No way is she going to spend the evening watching him wish that he was with Buffy. Good for her! And Xander, stop taking her for granted!

For some reason, the next scene takes place after dark. I say “for some reason” because the school day is over and yet a handful of students seem to be just leaving, including Buffy, who ducks into the bathroom and turns on the facet to find the sink filling with blood instead of water.

She heads into the library to tell Giles, only to discover him and Angel in a heated conversation. She catches the tail-end of the argument, which is that Buffy is prophesied to meet the Master, and to die at his hands.

Before we get to Buffy’s reaction, there’s a nice line from Giles in which he says: “some prophecies are dodgy; mutable – Buffy herself has thwarted them time and time again.” It’s clever because he’s presumably referring to the prophecy of the Anointed One and the fact that they all THINK she avoided it when she killed Andrew Borba... even though we the audience know that the Anointed One was never Borba at all, but Collin, and he’s still very much alive.

So for us at least, thwarting a prophecy is off the table. It has never actually happened.

This leads to a great scene from Sarah Michelle Gellar, probably the one that made everyone sit up and think – “damn, She Really Can Act.” She goes through hysteria, numbness, anger, tears, defiance. She rejects the call, throws books at Giles, and yanks off the crucifix from around her neck. It’s really beautifully done, and I think my favourite part is her quiet little: “do you think it’ll hurt?” That one hits really hard.

(Quick note: she dramatically throws away the crucifix in this scene, and yet I totally missed her retrieving it again, even though I noticed she was wearing it when she goes to face the Master. I’m assuming she picks it up from the floor when she clocks Giles?)

Her solution to the problem is simple: she quits. Screw the world, she’s saving her own skin. I can’t say I blame her.

A quick scene depicts the Master sending the Anointed One out of the buried church to fulfil his destiny (not that this destiny amounts to much, and it’s a bit premature since another day passes before Collin makes his move. What was he doing for those twenty-four hours?)*

Elsewhere, Willow tries to check in with Xander, but he’s not answering his phone – too busy wallowing in self-pity and listening to country music. Buffy goes home and starts thumbing through a photo album, and hey – remember these things? How each page had sticky lines across them which were covered in a clear film, and it was an absolute nightmare to line up the photos and then smooth down the film without crinkling them?

These things were THE WORST.

Joyce comes in and Buffy pitches a weekend getaway with just the two of them, only for her mum to open the wardrobe and reveal a surprise white prom dress. It’s all very virgin sacrifice, but Joyce encourages her to go to the dance stag.

(Another quick note: Sarah Michelle Gellar can still fit into this thing!)

In another good line, in which Joyce manages to unconsciously tap into the theme of the episode, she responds to Buffy’s insistence she can’t go to the dance with: “says who? Is it written somewhere? You can do what you want.” Then she shares a story about how she went to a dance by herself during college and ended up meeting Buffy’s dad. It’s all very sweet, and a reminder that things at least started out good between Joyce and Hank.

The following morning Cordelia is complaining to Willow about how Kevin never turned up at the Bronze last night to help her with the decorations for the dance, but is uncharacteristically okay about it. They reach the AV room and look though the window in the door to see a group of boys watching cartoons – but on unlocking the door, the reality of the situation is gruesomely revealed: everyone inside, including Kevin, is dead.

Willow steps inside as Cordelia screams, her eyes on a bloody handprint smeared across the television screen, upon which animated piglets are dancing around. That shot strikes me as very Whedon.

So, we need to talk about Kevin. The episode had only a very short amount of time to establish him as a murder victim whose death we would be sadder about than usual, and... well, it doesn’t really work. It’s mostly attained through Cordelia being considerably warmer and softer toward him than she has been toward her other boytoys (her biggest concern about Mitch being hit in the face by a baseball bat last episode was that he’d look terrible in the prom photos) but after Kevin's body is discovered she never mentions him again!

It's a wonder they didn’t just use Mitch, though I suppose he’d already been characterized as a douche and no one would really care if he’d been the one who was killed.

Buffy is trying on her dress when Joyce bursts in, saying: “there’s something on the news – Willow.” I know she’s frantic, but this some weird phrasing: it makes it sound like Willow herself was on the news, even though think the idea is that Joyce has seen the massacre on the television and Willow has just called up on the phone in relation to it.

We get nothing of the news coverage, nothing on the parents of the deceased, nothing from Snyder... yeah, I know the episode has got to hurry along, but sometimes you need to sit with these horrors for a while, or at least get a better grasp of their ramifications.

In this case, we only get to see Willow’s shock and grief, though Alyson Hannigan also plays it really beautifully. If nothing else, you do get a sense that this atrocity is different somehow: "I'm not okay. I can't imagine what it's like to be okay. I knew those guys. I go to that room every day. And when I walked in there, it was... It wasn't our world anymore. They made it theirs. And they had fun."

With that, Buffy’s sense of duty and responsibility comes surging back, and I like that Willow was the impetus for it. Until Dawn came along, I think Willow was the person most emblematic of the people that Buffy was protecting, and as she doesn’t get much else to do this episode, I like that she provides this push for Buffy to step up – and she’s not so distracted that she doesn’t hear the sense of finality in Buffy’s final words: “take care.”

*(Another aside: okay, so I watched the episode last night, but have been writing out this post while referring to the shooting script as well as my own notes. And as it turns out, THIS is the point where the Master sends out the Anointed One on his semi-pointless mission to lead the Slayer into Hell, which does account for his whereabouts on the night of the Master’s escape, eliminating the question of where he disappears to for those extra twenty-four hours.

In the final cut of the episode, he doesn’t leave a day early, though in the shooting script, he spends that time visiting Angel at his apartment, warning him not to interfere with the Master’s plans, and suitably cowling Angel into submission. This explains why he’s just loafing around his apartment when Xander goes to rope him in on the rescue mission, and it’s a shame that scene was cut. It helps explain a lot).

Back at the library, Jenny neatly sums up the stakes, but Brother Luca has apparently disappeared, leaving only a Bible verse as his final missive: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”

Giles makes the HUGE leap that this is referring to the Anointed One, and that he wasn’t Andrew Borba after all, but a little child. I mean, he’s right, but that’s quite a conclusion to draw on the basis of a vague Biblical verse from a monk he’s never met before. During all this, Giles has been gathering weapons, now determined to go and face the Master by himself.

But that’s Buffy’s cue to arrive, and we get yet another banger of a line. After she punches Giles in the face and knocks him unconscious, she tells Jenny: “When he wakes up, tell him... I don't know. Think of something cool, tell him I said it.” HAH! (Though it does make we wonder if Jenny did come up with something cool to tell Giles when he regained consciousness).

Jenny reminds her that if she faces the Master, she’ll die, and Buffy responds that perhaps at least she’ll get the chance to take him down with her.

Outside, the Anointed One is waiting with a pitiful little “help me,” but Buffy overheard enough of Jenny and Giles’s conversation to know that it’s a scam. She’s not fooled, and takes his hand to be led away.

And there are still so many unanswered questions about this kid. What if they’d never figured out who he really was and he actually had to trick Buffy into following him? How would that have worked? It could have been quite interesting if her compassion had led her into a trap.

Was this kid even a vampire in the end? If so, why doesn’t she stake him? There’s simply not enough time for a satisfying conclusion here.

Unsurprisingly, Willow noticed there was something odd about Buffy’s demeanour, and Xander is called in. They reach the library and not only find out about the prophecy, but that Buffy has gone off by herself to face the Master. As Giles testily states: “as the soon-to-be purple area on my jaw will indicate, I did not LET her go.”

As Xander rushes out with an idea to assist Buffy, Jenny reminds Giles and Willow that the Hellmouth is due to open with the Master’s release. (Why? Unclear. It’s just end of the world stuff, I guess).

On my initial watch of this episode, I was surprised to discover that Angel is just lounging around his apartment instead of keeping tabs on Buffy. Then (as mentioned above) I discovered that in a deleted scene, the Anointed One visits him and warns him off getting involved. With that explanation gone, I suppose it tracks that the last Angel saw of Buffy was her heading for the hills, so perhaps he just assumed she was safe and chose to wait for the end of the world in the comfort of his own place.

But Xander is here to relieve him of that luxury, demanding that he take him to the Master’s hideout. Angel is initially bemused by Xander’s determination to try and help... and perhaps a little humbled by it as well. This human kid is prepared to go after Buffy, so why isn’t he?

And we get the whole: “you’re in love with her”/”aren’t you?” exchange. As a teenage girl, that was a Big Deal, and we’re witness to the first of the show’s many, many unlikely alliances. They’re doing this for Buffy.

(Still, doesn’t Angel’s ability to reach the underground church negate the role of the Anointed One a little? “He will lead her into Hell,” or through the sewers to a subterranean cave, whatever).

Throughout all this, there’ve been scenes of Buffy following Collin through the expansive sewer system beneath Sunnydale. She’s wearing that white dress/black jacket combo which... look, I know it’s iconic, but it’s also so damn impractical. And she’s armed with nothing but a flimsy little crossbow? Takes some stakes, girl!

Topside, Jenny is asking the sensible questions: like where is the Hellmouth meant to open exactly? And it’s funny because I had totally forgotten that this was a reveal!! Part of me assumed that everyone always knew it was under the library, and that it ended up being a surprise twist was rather mind-boggling.

I like how it’s handled though: after Jenny points out that it has to open somewhere, they come up with the not-unreasonable conclusion that it’s under the Bronze. That’s where the vampires went to gather victims for the Harvest, after all. It’s a wrong but logical conclusion to draw, and as a result, Jenny and Willow head out to warn people attending the Spring Fling.

Meanwhile, Buffy and the Master come face-to-face. After some cat-and-mousing, “feeble banter,” and Buffy trying to get in a good shot, the Master reveals he’s got some hypnosis abilities (er, okay?) and gets her in his grasp.

I love a good old Prophecy Twist/Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, and this is a two-for-one! As the Master says himself: “Prophecies are tricky creatures, they don’t always tell you everything.” Before he drinks Buffy’s blood, he gleefully points out that if Buffy hadn’t come to stop him from leaving, he wouldn’t have been given access to her Slayer blood, which grants him enough power to break through the magical barrier that contains him. (How’d the Master know this though? Did he have a copy of the Codex lying around?)

But more importantly, the Master (and the prophecy) was not counting on the fact that Buffy doesn’t work alone. After the Master has taken his fill of her blood and drops her into a nearby pool of water, he leaves for the surface world... just before Angel and Xander arrive.

Buffy is certifiably dead. Somewhere out there, Kendra is called.

Ascertaining that she’s gone, but also that the cause of death is drowning, Angel announces he can’t give Buffy CPR – he has no breath in his lungs. So that’s Xander’s cue to step up.

Now, a couple of things. As people have consistently pointed out since this episode first aired, Angel does in fact breathe. It’s required in order to speak. Furthermore, there’s no reason why being undead can’t prevent a person from inhaling and exhaling, even if it’s not necessary for them to do so (as established in “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” when Angel was able to enter the gas-filled boiler room without harm).

This has led some to presume that Angel simply didn’t know how to perform CPR. To which I say no – no, no, no. That explanation is to entirely miss the point of this scene, which is that only a living person can save Buffy’s life. More to the point, only her recently rejected friend can do so, over the superpowered vampire love interest.

This is like, the very crux of the show in its entirety. Friendship is what saves Buffy’s life, not romantic love. She is a special Slayer, who lives as long as she does, because she surrounds herself with worthy friends that care about her. In this case, Xander is a good enough person to rush to her aid after she’s rejected him (I mean, of course he is. He wouldn’t be a worthwhile character if he wasn’t).

And so, I am completely open to a bit of lore that prohibits Angel from performing CPR because he is undead, and therefore his breath has no mystical vitality or life-giving qualities to it. He could have hypothetically blown air into Buffy’s lungs, but it would not have brought her back. The only person who could have done this was Xander; her friend and not her love interest. That was the whole point.

(The whole thing also provides a very neat bookend with the very last episode of Angel, in which his vampirism is the only thing that allows him to get the upper hand over Marcus Hamilton after he drinks the man’s blood and imbibes himself with its power).

While all this is going down, Willow and Jenny have tried to reach the latter’s car, only for them to release that the Bronze is not the target this time around – it’s the school. They’re soon surrounded by vampires, though luckily it’s Cordelia to the rescue! She drives up in her car and they all pile in.

Another favourite trope of mine is when a bunch of characters scream at the same time – which is what Willow, Cordelia and Jenny do when a vampire lands on the roof of the car. Cordelia floors it and drives straight through the school entrance to the library, where they’re soon trying to bar the door against the onslaught of vampires.

Giles joins them (“what’s happening?” “GUESS!”) and they’re all so busy trying to fend the vampires off that they miss the tentacle sliding across the floor...

Above them, the Master steps out onto the school rooftop and looks out over lights of Sunnydale, his new kingdom.

Just when it seems hopeless, Buffy opens her eyes. What happened while she was “away”? Did she have an afterlife experience? I only ask because as she gets up, she states that: “I feel strong, I feel different.” It's interesting line, but not one that’s ever explained in any subsequent episode. Much like Obi Wan Kenobi’s “if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine,” it’s never given any meaningful context.

(My pet theory is that like the snowfall in “Amends,” Buffy’s newfound strength and ability to sense the location of the Master is something of a gift from the Powers That Be, a little extra oomph that she needs to save the day. If nothing else, it explains why she’s not caught by the Master’s hypnotism a second time, whilst Kendra eventually falls to a similar trick at Drusilla’s hands. From this point on, Buffy is a special Slayer and not just because she’s surrounded by a support team).

There’s a great cut between Cordelia screaming “somebody help!” to Buffy marching towards the school, flanked by Angel and Xander, to the sound of her very own theme music – the first and only time this particular music plays during the course of an actual episode.

Things go from bad to worse when one of the tentacles of the Hellmouth demon wraps itself around Willow’s leg, the monster itself emerging seconds later. Three heads! Rows of teeth! Loads more tentacles!

Things wrap up pretty quickly after this, and I don’t want it to come across as anticlimactic, but... Buffy confronts the Master on the roof, defies his next attempt at hypnosis, notices that a table leg is sticking up from the library floor where the Hellmouth beast has shattered it, and hefts the Master over her head, through the skylight, and down to his death below, impaling him on the conveniently-situated table leg.

The Hell-beast is sucked back from whence it came, the vampires disperse, and our heroes slowly convene on the floor of the library, looking down at the (unseen to the audience) remains of the Master. There’s a nice Buffy/Giles moment, when the latter acknowledges his Slayer’s tenacity, and Jenny is again the only one talking sense, asking what they should do about the Master.

Buffy looks very shaken and tearful, which is only to be expected, and we’ll see a great deal more of the aftermath of this experience next season. But then Xander reminds them there’s a party going on nearby, and they all opt for some cathartic downtime amongst the living.

They file out, chattering among themselves, and the camera slowly pans back to the Master... now just a picked-clean skeleton on the floor of the library.

Finis.

That was that: the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s a solid run of episodes, one that alternated between the “high school is hell” metaphor and the overarching story of the Master and his attempts at breaking free of his metaphysical prison. We were introduced to our five leads, as well as a supporting cast that will stick around for years to come: Angel, Harmony, Snyder, Jenny Calendar, Joyce Summers...

In the grand tradition of final episodes, the story has our heroes break up into groups and then all converge on a single location to fight off the baddies. With that, the seasonal Big Bad is defeated, everyone gets some decent character development (Xander pushes through rejection to do the right thing, Willow is less of a doormat, Cordelia helps out the Scoobies, Angel finds his courage) and the set is trashed.

Out of all the characters, Willow maybe fared the worst in what her character actually did in this episode. Alyson Hannigan got that great “I’m not okay” scene, but after that she just calls up Xander and gets damselled when the Hellmouth creature grabs a hold of her. Angel wasn’t that useful either, his contribution simply being to lead Xander where he needs to go.

But everyone else does great: Giles letting his paternal instincts show, Cordelia’s big rescue with her car, Jenny making important suggestions, and of course Xander’s crowning moment: saving Buffy’s life. Even Joyce gets a really sweet scene, though she remains oblivious as to what’s really going on.

There is an old-school charm to season one; I know a lot of people think it’s one of the lesser seasons, and yet for me, those first three years of Buffy when the show was set at high school was the show at its quintessence. Am I using that word correctly? You should know what I mean. The later seasons had their ups and downs, but those high school years were something special.

Miscellaneous Observations:

The show never again delves into the concept of fate and prophecy after this episode (as stated, none of the other apocalypses come with anything like this amount of omens and portents, let alone any prophecies) but it’s always interesting to see how any given story will handle the subject of “as it is written” destiny.

It’s essentially a golden rule of storytelling that prophecies must be immutable. You can find twists or loopholes in the wording (as they did here) but the basics of the prediction have to be accurate, otherwise what’s the point of even including it in the first place? If a prophecy states: “you will meet your destiny in London” and then the subject of that prophecy never goes to London during the course of the story, it had no narrative purpose whatsoever.

You have a prophecy so you can engage with said prophecy.

Even the Anointed One, which the gang thought Buffy had successfully dealt with back in “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date” ended up playing out exactly as the prophecy stated; perhaps as foreshadowing that this one was also unavoidable. And it was. Buffy died.

(Interestingly, she also dies at the Master’s hands in “The Wish,” which means that the prophecy was going to be fulfilled no matter what timeline Buffy was in).

But what the prophecy didn’t count on was that the Slayer would have a friend that followed her into danger and resuscitated her. And to me, this is the beating heart of the show in its entirety. It is the central theme and core subject of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In any other supernaturally-themed, fairy tale-tinged story such as this, it would have been the broody and tortured love interest that gets to administer True Love’s Kiss to awaken the sleeping princess in a white gown. But here, it’s subverted. It’s the friend who the princess rejected earlier in the episode who wakes her up, and it’s not a kiss that saves her, but CPR.

(There’s also a sort of poetry in the fact that Xander “kisses” Buffy in this episode - the proverbial kiss of life - but it’s entirely chaste and platonic. It reminds me of how Han Solo was the only one to never see Leia in the slave-girl bikini, because he was blind the whole time).

Somehow, this specific example of playing around with the familiar tropes and expectations of how a scenario like this usually plays out is the essence of what Buffy the Vampire Slayer is as a story.

Prophecy wins, because it always wins, and yet it doesn’t win, because Buffy does things differently and surrounds herself with friends that help her.

On that note, Buffy is also spurred to take action by Willow’s personal grief over the massacre and her mother (unknowingly) telling her: “where is that written? You should do what you want.” Again, it is Buffy’s human connections that push her into action.

But while we’re on the subject of prophecy, I’m left wondering (as I always am when it comes to prophecies) about who wrote them. Who was behind the Pergamum Codex? That Aurelius guy? Giles says it contains: “the most complete prophecies about the Slayer in the final years,” so... does it mention anything about Angelus or Acathla or the Mayor’s Ascension? Or did it just stop because it wrongly assumed the world ended with Buffy’s death?

Giles also states: “there is nothing in it that does not come to pass.” Like what? I would have appreciated a couple of examples! Does it talk about other Slayers in the past? And what happens to it afterwards? Look, I know that it’s just a plot-point, but I’m powerfully curious about this sort of thing!

As stated, this was a very self-contained apocalypse, to the point where nobody outside the Scooby Gang even realized it was happening. All those creepy portents, and for what?

Speaking of, I wonder how that boy who was born with his eyeballs in backwards is doing? I think about these things.

I know the Hellmouth monster makes a reappearance in season three, but I was always kind of disappointed that the activated Potentials didn’t fight it in “Chosen.” Tell me that would not have been cool, especially if it had grown exponentially bigger by that point. And yes, I realize it was probably a budgetary thing.

This is not the first or the last time that the subject of a Slayer’s blood and its innate power comes up, so I’m going to have to keep my eye on how it’s used regarding the creation of Dawn and the activating of the Hellmouth seal in later seasons. I’m pretty sure it’s mentioned again, but don’t think they ever delve into it all that deeply, which is a shame.

I liked that the hide-and-seek hunt that Buffy has with the Master in his lair was reminiscent of her dream in “Nightmares.”

So, what exactly was the plan when the vampires attacked the school? They were clearly heading for the Hellmouth... but for what purpose?

Xander confronting Angel in his apartment and brandishing the crucifix would have been a great place for a Jesse reference. Just saying.

I noticed that Cordelia namedrops Aura – she was the popular girl who discovered the dead guy stuffed into her locker in the pilot episode.

Xander tells Buffy: “I want to dance with you.” Be careful what you wish for, dude.

As mentioned, the shooting script had some interesting tidbits that were cut, most notably the Anointed One going to visit Angel’s apartment to warn him against interfering. There also would have been a rain of pebbles directly after Xander’s thwarted attempt to ask out Buffy, more details concerning Jenny Calendar’s litany of portents (notably, that the snake-birthing cat ate its owner, two people were killed in the boiling lake, and that they all happened within three miles of Sunnydale) and the Anointed One watching the Master die from a distance, and then head off into the darkness by himself. I wonder if any of this was shot, or if it was cut early on.

In a season where the tagline might as well have been “high school is hell,” the Master wasn’t really a metaphor for anything; just a Nosferatu-type vampire king who's big and scary and rather impersonal. Technically his greatest contribution to the show was triggering Buffy’s PTSD, which we don’t get into until next season.

Still, I thought Mark Metcalf nailed both the physical threat and the droll humour of the character, and for a Starter Villain, he was exactly what the story required. I’m always chuffed when he pops up in flashbacks later on in the show.

Probably the biggest letdown in the episode is the Anointed One, whose grand destiny (“he will lead her into Hell”) amounts to escorting Buffy down through the sewers. Heck, Angel could have done that. An entire episode was given over to the twist that the Anointed One was actually a child, indicating that he was going to be a big deal, and then... he wasn’t.

Also, the way in which Giles realizes they killed the wrong vampire was very weaksauce. A Bible passage emailed out by a random monk leads him to the conclusion that the Anointed One was a child? Really? They don’t even connect the dots with the bus accident and say: “yes, there was a child called Collin on that bus whose body is unaccounted for.”

If they’d played it differently, it could have been milked for maximum drama – like, say if Angel had figured it out during his little subplot in “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” and broken the news to Giles after he reads the Codex prophecy about Buffy’s death, confirming that prophecies are in fact, immutable.

(Except that the Anointed One prophecy said that: “the Slayer will not know him.” But she DID recognize him when he appeared to her as a lost little boy. Perhaps it was referring to the mix-up with Andrew Borba).

I loved the vibe between Angel and Giles. Even though Giles LOOKS older, Angel has a few hundred years on him, and they talk as equals and peers as a result. I really missed this dynamic when Angel headed off into his own spin-off.

In many ways, this episode belonged to Buffy and Xander. It opens with him trying to ask her out, and ends with him accepting that it’s not going to happen. His feelings for Buffy make him a jerk in the first half of the episode, and those very same feelings turn him into a hero for the second half.

Buffy and Willow are the most important people in his life, and this is an important stepping stone in regards to his relationship with each of them: the former has made her feelings clear, and the latter has decided to stop being a doormat around him.

That’s important for Willow too. At the start of this season she probably would have gone with him to the dance as his second choice – now Buffy (ironically, her love rival) has shown her that she’s worth more.

As for Buffy, I love the fact that even though she summoned her courage and did what was right, she’s not rewarded with moral certitude or a sense of “I did what was right” accomplishment. Instead, the next season takes the opportunity to demonstrate how badly shaken she was by the events of this episode, and the detrimental effect that has on her friends.

Best Line: SO MANY. I suppose I have to go with “tell him... I don’t know, think of something cool and tell him I said it.” A quintessential Buffy quote, though sometimes I wonder whether Jenny DID come up with something cool and passed it onto Giles when he woke up.

Best Scene: Again, so many. I think I covered most of them in the recap.

Best Subversion: Well, I’ve already been over it. When the “fairy tale” ambiance of Buffy’s death is flipped on its head, and it’s not the romantic dark prince but the dorky rejected friend that saves her life – not with true love’s kiss, but good old CPR.

Biggest Disappointment: That the Anointed One didn't really amount to much.

Death Toll: One on-screen vampire, Kevin and the other students (five in total) in the AV room, and finally the Master himself.

Grand Total: Twenty civilians, seventeen villains, one ally.

#buffy the vampire slayer #buffy rewatch #rav's watching log

7 notes · View notes

zukkaoru · 10 months ago

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Do u have any kunidazai or kunichudazai fic recs at all? Seeing ur posts I wanna dip my toe in but would love to read any faves u have also!!

YES YES YES most of these will be oneshots bc that's mostly what i read + rated t or g unless stated otherwise. the rest are under the cut bc this got (expectedly) long lol

kunidazai:

let Hope die by degradedpsychotic

Dazai smirks at him, in the process of filling the rice cooker. "Need help?" Kunikida exhales, and it takes the form of a bitter laugh. "That's all I ever need anymore."

4.3k words, post-decay of angels arc. dazai and kunikida are learning to navigate the world with injuries that they will never fully recover from (dazai w chronic leg pain + kunikida w chronic hand pain)

the tragic (pony)tail of dazai’s downfall by sarcoline_sails

five times Kunikida has his hair down, and one time Dazai ensures it stays that way.

6.6k words. exactly what it says on the tin

Piled Up by KhaoticEnby

Kunikida gets sick in the midst of a busy time at the ADA. Dazai, just back from his mission, tries his best to help him

3.4k words, established relationship

sure it's a calming notion (perpetual in motion) by saffroncassis

the one where Dazai digs himself a hole, and then just keeps digging deeper.

5.3k words. instead of admitting he likes kunikida, dazai says he just wants to have sex with him. because when has dazai ever been honest about his feelings? (there's no smut, but there are references to and jokes about sex)

but in that uncertainty, i found you. by warsfeil

In which everyone gets injured and two inept individuals wonder about the meaning of partnership.

3.4k words. dazai gets injured and kunikida worries; then kunikida gets injured and dazai worries

kunichuuzai:

thin ice over a monstrous depth by luminariums

Chuuya and Dazai are fifteen years old when Kouyou insists they learn the art of dancing. It shapes the way Chuuya views his relationships - until Kunikida comes along and flips his whole world upside down.

8k words, chuuya-centric, part-character/relationship study and part-getting (back) together. this fic focuses mostly on the kunichuu and skk dynamics since it's chuuya-centric but ohhhh it is. SO good

all brutal mirrors cracked by intimatopia

The one in which Dazai and Kunikida are swapped into each other's bodies by a mirror, and then their day gets worse.

12.4k words, dazai pov with established skk. THIS FIC. oh my god this fic i read it through like 3-4 times within the first week i found it. it's such a fascinating take on the body swap trope with good angst and a happy ending. i can get really picky with dazai angst but this. this fic. this fic does it RIGHT.

Listen to Your Heart by 4_the_tainted_sorrow_21

Kunikida gets used as a pillow for his boyfriends, but he finds he doesn't mind it very much.

1k words, kunikida pov, established kunichuuzai. very short and very sweet. they just get to cuddle <3

Cover Me In Chamomile by ChaoticQuill

Kunikida has a bad day, and his boyfriends take care of his portion of the chores.

6.7k words, kunikida pov. getting together/developing relationship + domestic kunichuuzai

A Trick of the Tongue by AbsoluteNegation

“Just because I lie all the time doesn’t necessarily mean it’s my fault I was cursed to tell the truth,” Dazai said indignantly and automatically. They both sat there while that statement unfurled its full glory before them.

47.5k words, 9 chapters, dazai pov. part character study, part getting (back) together. dazai is cursed to tell the truth, which he takes exactly as well as you would expect. but everything works out in the end <3 warning: this fic is rated e with smut in chapter 8 (i believe it's just that one scene with implied/referenced sex in the epilogue/ch9 but the smut can definitely be skipped)

and idk if you've read them or not but here are my fics as well:

warm leftovers

after the threesome, kunikida and dazai take chuuya home

2.1k words, chuuya pov, established kunidazai + pre-kunichuuzai. personally one of my favorite bsd fics i've written i think

desperate prayers of a cursed man

dazai can't remember the last time he slept through the night. if anyone were to ask, he'd say it's not a problem. but when the rest of the world is asleep, humanity is a hard thing to come by.

4k words, mostly a dazai character study with background established kunichuuzai tbh

though i burn, how could i fall?

kunikida assumes the position of agency president. somewhere between shaking hands, pastry boxes, and dazai leaving the door open, he learns leadership also means knowing when to take a step back and trust others will help you shoulder your burdens.

8.8k words, kunikida-centric. spawned a series that currently has two other fics but since this is the first, it can easily be read as a stand alone. features kunikida with hand tremors and dazai with chronic leg pain + crutches

if you look back and you hate my past

dazai contemplates his (lack of) humanity while kunikida tends to his wounds

3.3k words, dazai character study, pre-kunidazai with nods towards past skk. i wrote this after i finished reading dazai's entrance exam light novel and had a breakdown

the sound of love

kenji gets sick. luckily, he has a lot of people who are looking out for him.

4.5k words, kenji-centric with established kunichuuzai mostly in the background but there are soft and sweet moments with them so i'm adding it too

i'm probably forgetting other fics i've read and enjoyed but this is long enough as is so i'll just leave it here skgfhgjhk hopefully you can find some stuff in here that looks interesting 🫶

#i'm actually not kidding when i say i think about all brutal mirrors cracked All The Time #i think that fic permanently altered my brain chemistry #everything on this list is good obviously but there is just Something about that fic that makes me go crazyyyyyyy #anyway! i hope you enjoy anon #asks #anon asks #fic rec #kunichuuzai #kunidazai #bsd #TUMBLR STOP MESSING UP FORMATTING WHEN I POST CHALLENGE

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yabashiri · 7 months ago

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I'm back with a bang. Project Fiction - an Irumatsu and Irujnko fic will be finally published in its entirety! First arc is up, at about 50k words and 7 chapters. Read more to see if it's your cup of tea.

Do you hate some things about DR canon? Do you wish the talent system in Hope's Peak was more explored? Then read no further! I'll copy some bullet points from PF's description on AO3 and explain them in more details.

This work has: - Heavy OOC for Iruma and Kaede

PF!Iruma is not lewd, but she's a hothead, a reserve course student, and she also likes basketball. Weird, right? She also has nothing to do with inventions, her true talent is more of an abstract concept in line with your usual 'hope' and 'despair' gimmicks. It allows me to create a story with no killing games, but filled with tension similar to how Death Note is considered a 'shounen' even though it's a detective mystery.

As for Kaede, be warned that she only appears in chapter 8 for the first time. Remember her pre!game line in v3? "I don't have faith in humanity". What if I based her entire character on that and pitted against this Iruma? You can't imagine how heated it gets. - In-depth exploration of how Hope's Peak works, what's a 'talent' and how it impacts the chosen students

Do you know how talents are assigned? How scouts do their work? How exactly Kamukura Izuru was made and what studying on the reserve course is like? I know, and I'll show you in great detail.

- Nods to the canon, while turning the plot of DR1 upside-down.

Junko's game plan stays the same: kill the council, rebel the reserve course, fill the world with despair. With Iruma, however... not all goes as planned. It's not a story about people stuck together until almost all of them die. We go from Hope's Peak to an open world, and you'll see famously neon Tokyo in all its glory.

- Heated gay arguments, a weird online game, absurd talents beyond your average human standards.

While the story goes beyond ships and their dynamics, it has that in spades. I also present to you a certain game by Team DANGAN, and it's not about a pun-making bear torturing students. Imagine Genshin Impact's combat but more tactical, focused on PvP. That -- and much more.

- An abundance of author notes. This one has a lot to say.

I'll be straight with you, I put a shit ton of details into my works. Chekhov's Armoury is a trope I came up with before I realized it existed. I'll give you fanarts, songs, memes. Basically I've never had a lot of readers so I had to get used to creating fan content by myself.

- Typos I am translating this work into English, and while I'm pretty confident in my abilities, I am not perfect. It's kinda hard to know how real people talk when you're not exposed to the language on a daily basis. If anyone wants to be my beta, I'll be honored.

Translating this thing is ungodly hard. Writing it took me 4 years and was even harder. This story means a lot to me, I put my heart and soul into it, and I truly hope someone will enjoy it as much as I do. I also hope someone makes a TV Tropes page for it one day :D This is my only dream as a creator.

Give it a shot -- you won't regret it.

I hope.

#danganronpa #New Danganronpa V3 #fanfiction #miu iruma #kaede akamatsu #ndrv3 #junko enoshima #Project Fiction #irumatsu

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pinktie · 2 months ago

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What do you think of the Suzuki family? Sonoko's proud of her family but is quite down to earth otherwise. Her aneki/older sister Ayako doesn't seem to care and just wants to study films and marry Tomizawa Yuuzou her boyfriend and fiance. Tomoko is a very cool matriarch who likes teasing people and Shirou is the chairman and CEO of the Suzuki Financial Corporation who is a martial arts fan, I love how she calls them Mama and Papa. Jiroukichi is old enough to be her grandfather but she calls him uncle and her niece because he is her father's cousin, he's semi-retired from his advisor position and just wants to continue winning challenges and earning fame - he's in his prime and these are his glory days, how inspirational. Lupin is his guard dog and best friend who is cared for by maids but he always goes on adventures with him, poor Getou Zengo was usurped as a bodyguard (lucky him Lupin's stubborn but too friendly to be a watchdog, growling at dangerous people isn't safe either!).

Yeah, I like the Suzukis family as well.

I have a funny feeling that the reason why Gosho makes them so nice is because, in Detective Conan's world, you can get killed for being a jerk 1 time. So, by making her entire family upstanding people, he wouldn't have to kill them. Thus, Sonoko doesn't have to go through an arc or anything. (Which is good or bad, depending on your preference)

#answering asks

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wangxianficfinder · 2 years ago

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Interesting / Good Worldbuilding pt. 1 (Canon Era only)

~*~

🧡 Stunted, Starving Juvenility by TomatenMark (E, 508k, WangXian, WIP, Fix-it of sorts, Talisman master WWX, Not JFM Friendly, Study Arc, Getting together, Fluff and Angst, Engagement)

🧡 Song of Suibian and Bichen: Or, the Greatest (And Only) Furby Master of Demonic Cultivation by moonwaif (T, 64k, WangXian, Fix-It of Sorts, canon adjacent, The spiritual weapons are furbies, Angst with a Happy Ending, The parent trap but make it WangXian with furbies, Mutual Pining, Taking my favorite parts of every adaptation and smashing them together)

Twelve Moons and a Fortnight by stiltonbasket (M, 290k, WangXian, Humor, Slow Burn, Post-Canon Fix-It, Long-Distance Relationship, Epistolary, Love Letters, Family Feels, a-qing lives, teenage romance, Adoption, Romantic Comedy, Happy Ending, Weddings, Case Fic, Parenthood, Politics)

Serrated by InkSplatterM and MrMissMrsRandom (E, 194k, WangXianYu, Canon Divergence, MXY Lives, Dom MXY, Sub LWJ, Slow burn)

The Same Cloth by x_los (T, 8k, wangxian, LXC & LWJ, Madam Lan/QHJ, post-canon, established relationship, case fic aftermath, family feels, family drama, wolrdbuilfing, government, married life, parent-child relationship, character study)

❤️ To be of use by Erisette (Not Rated, 53k, LSZ & LWJ, Found Family, Accidental Baby Acquisition, (kinda), Father-Son Relationship, Missing Scene, Good Teacher LWJ, Sizhui is an angel, Jingyi is the best of brats, Seclusion Lite™, Everyone under 20 at Cloud Recesses worships Hanguang-jun, Fluff, Hanguang-jun is the coolest, Worldbuilding, this is not sad tho even though it’s set in the time jump, the fluff-to-sads ratio is v high)

Unawakened by nirejseki (G, 5k, JGY/NMJ, canon divergence, fix-it, worldbuilding)

Tedious Joys by nirejseki (T, 27k, LQR & sect leader Nie, queerplatonic relationships, nie sect cultivation, qi deviation, autistic LQR, asexual LQR, unhealthy relationships, child abuse, domestic violence, mental instability, altered mental stages)

Life series by scifigeek14 (T, 65k, wangxian, canon divergence, fix it, mojo’s post)

splendor in the heart and glory in love by LunaChi_KuroShihone (G, 10k, wangxian, canon divergence, gods & goddesses, hurt/comfort, protecitve LWJ, sect god LWJ, YLLZ WWX, immortality, prayer, friendship, love, humor)

wide enough and wild by impossibletruths (E, 64k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Getting Together, Canonical Accidental Baby Acquisition, Families of Choice, Happy Ending, Noping Out Of Society With Your Boyfriend And Your 50 Wen Refugees: The Novel, Overzealous Use Of Imagery, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fix-It of Sorts)

💖 Echo, Murmur, Dream, Here by bluerainmist (M, 51k, wangxian, canon divergence, WWX survives, sect leader WWX, yiling wei sect au, slow burn, angst w/ happy ending, getting together, pining, love confessions, reunions, mind all the tags)

Quartet series by WithBroomBefore (T, 69k, Platonic Soulbond, Hurt/comfort, Canon Divergence, No golden core transfer, JC&JZX stay in Xuanwu cave, Fix-it, Temporary character death)

like the setting sun series by silversshadow (T, 59k, wangxian, major character death, ghost wens, canon divergence)

the first sky is inside you, open at either end of day by millepertuis (G, 7k, wangxian, canon divergence, magical realism, detachable hearts)

To Sizhui by countingcr0ws (E, 21k, WangXian, Librarian LWJ, Mistaken Identity, Requited Love, Mental Link, Soul Bond, Genius WWX, Romance, Fluff, Banter, Epistolary, Love Poems, Footnotes, Smut, Laughter During Sex, Cultivation Sect Politics, Canon Divergence, Love Letters)

100 Ways to Impress a Boy by ArgentInferno (T, 79k, WIP, WangXian, NHS & WWX, Canon Divergence, Falling In Love, Fluff, Growing Up, Teenagers being awkward teenagers, gender feels, Trans LWJ, Trans Male Character, Nonbinary NHS, Cloud Recesses Study Arc, Experimental talismans cause trouble, Accidental Teleportation, Coming Out, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining)

The Scarlet Lotus by rainbowninja167 (M, 137k, WangXian, Marriage of Convenience, Secret Identity, Fix-It, Angst with a Happy Ending, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Canon-Typical Violence, canon-typical war crimes, Yunmeng Bros, the mortifying ordeal of getting seduced by your own husband, nonlinear chronology we die like cql, just kidding nobody dies in this fic, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Miscommunication)

~*~

#Wangxian Fic Rec #The Untamed #wangxian #MDZS #wangxianficfinder compilation post #long post #interesting world building #good world building

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azrithart · 1 year ago

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love your art sm! may i ask for mooore sarith lore

Thank you so much!

And certainly 🍄🍄🍄 There are so many things to say about this boi!

Sarith has been a guest character across multiple friends’ campaigns, and is a much loved NPC! Our OOTA campaign has been on hiatus, but there will be more one day!

(Light content warning for mentions of military/religious indoctrination, character trauma, and some character spoilers)

Sarith lore (from our OOTA):

Since there isn’t much on Sarith in the module, our GM yoinked some of Drizzt’s family lore as a starting base. Then inverted the arc 🗡

Sarith is the second son of a lesser noble house from Menzoberranzan.

He has three sisters and one older brother.

His older brother studied as a wizard in Sorcere.

House Kzekarit did not have any particular power or prestige. It dwelled in the shadow of larger Houses in Menzoberranzan.

It is allies with House Faen T’labbar, from the Ruling Council.

Matron Kzekarit is still alive and looking for her “traitorous” son! House Faen T’labbar recently got involved.

Sarith trained as a warrior in Melee-Magthere.

He went through the standard Drow warrior academy experience:

Train rigorously for ten years

Compete in a Battle Royale contest at the end of every year

Fight monsters in far caverns to learn team tactics

Test his blade in surface raids against the Elves (yikes), For Lolth™

Sarith seems to prefer ranged weapons in our campaign 🏹

His fighting style favors stealth and subterfuge over direct combat.

Though an average warrior, Sarith is quite perceptive and good with scouting/tracking! He navigated for the party through much of the Underdark.

Sarith never cared about glory or standing out; his main goal has been to lay low and survive for as long as possible. He’s never been in a position of power.

Soldier background: Sarith served under Ilvara Mizzrym as a raider and scout.

While not confirmed, I suspect that Sarith, Ilvara, Jorlan, Shoor, and Asha went through schooling around the same time in Menzoberranzan.

House Mizzrym is part of Menzo’s Ruling Council. In our campaign, Ilvara returned to Menzo in a fit of rage, conquered her house, and ascended to Matron. (One fear). She’s…pretty mad about the prison break.

Sarith has traveled to the surface multiple times on raids—he doesn’t understand why the party wants to return there. He expressed fear of going blind or burning alive under the sun.

When Sarith’s unit captured our favorite Myconid, Stool, Sarith was infected (with a certain spoiler) in Neverlight Grove. In tandem with memory loss, the infection altered some things in his brain.

Sarith feared he was cursed by a Lolth cleric or losing his mind. He killed a fellow soldier in a bout of madness, but wasn’t sure what happened.

Both Stool and Sarith are alive and with us! Sarith has been cured.

Complex alignment: Trauma vs. Illness. (Content warning applies here)

Like most people from Menzoberranzan, Sarith constantly watches his back. It wasn’t the infection from Neverlight that made him paranoid :( Even after his cure, Sarith remains hyper-vigilant, sullen, and defensive. He has lived through nearly 2 centuries of military and fanatical religious indoctrination.

Sarith is a soldier through and through. Yet he doesn’t seem to know what he believes.

Sarith admitted discomfort with Lolth’s doctrine. He’s always been helpful to the party out of obligation and survival. He knows he isn’t the most powerful person in the room.

Sarith claimed to never hold attachment anywhere in his life—no companions, no allies, no achievements.

He hasn’t even had space to figure out hobbies or interests.

(When the campaign resumes, a goal is to find out what his interests could be besides “I like having my head attached to my body”.)

Art and magic aren’t one of them.

Acts of kindness have surprised him every time. In Menzo!Drow language, the word for “friend” (abbil) is used as an ironic joke. This has made communication difficult at points. He expects he must give something back.

However, those moments Sarith has opened up, he has a very sweet smile ;U;

The infection actually made Sarith act more selfless and help defend the party out of more than obligation. Sarith had hoped to find a haven in Neverlight Grove.

Once cured of his infection, Sarith became more self-focused and superior in attitude D: He was cynical before. But now the snark has doubled!

Beneath the attitude, he seems terrified. Sarith claimed he didn’t believe there is a place for him anywhere—surface or Underdark. Perhaps that is one desire he’s scared to let himself consider.

Is he really Lawful Evil, or raised that way? There’s a lot going on there.

“Friendship? Love? Disgusting. (Give me more)”

By some chance, my spore druid Amarth bonded with Sarith.

They’re both grouchy, cynical, and jaded—somehow, they warmed up to each other after becoming allies. They probably would have slain each other under other circumstances.

Sarith is a noble and soldier who fears questioning his place. Amarth is a vengeance-driven mage that seeks to destroy Menzoberranzan and help nature reclaim the Underdark.

They accidentally introduced each other to the power of friendship. Now they’re both stumped.

They bicker often. They spent an early portion of the campaign gossiping in Drow silent code and debating plans. Later, Amarth just kept bugging Sarith, taking watches with him, and getting to know him.

Cue Gratuitous wound tending, hand holding, and promises of protection. The attention still seems to surprise Sarith. Perhaps some part of him dares to hope for a better future.

Feelings developed, but Amarth assumed his own were one-sided.

Until he bargained his soul for a Greater Restoration spell (and more power) to cure Sarith. Sarith was pissed. They had a pretty bad fight. (Great way to find out someone likes your dumb ass back, eh Amarth?)

Now Cured!Sarith seems flattered someone sacrificed their soul for him.

The GM mentioned once no one had cared for Sarith before, and Sarith cared for no one. This is the first time that’s changed.

After the cure, Sarith has only limited memories of recent experiences with the party. However, he’s still sticking with us. He doesn’t wish to go anywhere near Neverlight Grove. That’s…going to be a problem. Stool still wants to go home!

More fun facts:

Sarith doesn’t speak Common!

He seems to prefer the use of Sign over speech sometimes. Even in instances he didn’t need to stealth or be secretive :)

He likes tea!

He and Amarth each have a fucked up ring. Sarith’s is a fire resistance ring given in trust. Aaaaand Amarth’s is a spell storing ring from his soul deal pact….that’s grafted on.

Notable Sarith quotes:

“You don’t fuck with wizards.”

The frequent use of Drow sign language is something I loved so much from our campaign. I want to learn ASL one day :)

Sarith AU - from a Curse of Strahd campaign:

One of our friends and OOTA players GM’ed a Curse of Strahd campaign! He guest-featured the Abyss crew in the Amber Temple.

In the AU, things went wrong in OOTA. His PC, an Eladrin necromancer, became a lich to save everyone ;-; PC’s and NPC’s alike.

This resulted in everyone’s ah…reanimation. Half the party kept their memories, and the other half kept their physical fighting abilities.

Sarith chose to keep his mind. His body suffered as a result.

I guest-played toward the end of the campaign as undead!Amarth. He had only some of his memories intact, but knew he needed to find his way back to the others.

They were all reunited! All except the two paladin PC’s, whose souls moved on and resisted reanimation.

Sarith got married! We had a zombie wedding and everything officiated by another friend’s Strand PC! (Who is the besets of bois)

This started as a joke. I was going to have Amarth cast the Ceremony spell to buff himself and Sarith with a +1 AC for a week.

Amarth and Sarith had a small, sweet Elven-style wedding.

At the end of the campaign, their lives were restored and sent back to the material plane to hunt the demon possessing Amarth’s soul.

Sarith has also appeared in another one of our friend’s Ravnica campaign, my homebrew campaign Elysion, and more!

[1] if you like the art of him, there’s plenty more Sarith in my webcomic, Sporeblood!

Sarith and Amarth’s dynamic in our OOTA campaign hit exactly the kind of enemies-to-friends-to-lovers I love in fiction. Sporeblood is a separate world, universe, and story. Though has nothing to do with Faerun or OOTA, the dynamic is there! And plenty of Elves, magic, and spookiness galore. I made the joke back in 2019 that while I shipped it, “at least I’m not planning some epic Drow romance comic.” 4 years later, I am eating those words.

Thanks again! If you have any more q's or are curious about details, I'm happy to answer 🍄 -Az

#sarith kzekarit #dnd character #dnd #drow #dark elf #drow elf #drow culture #azrithart #azrith rambles #azrith answers #asks

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cantstayawaycani · 2 years ago

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Can’t Stay Away’s Fic Rec Friday Posts

My ao3 Bookmarks (if it’s bookmarked, it’s usually a completed fic)

Can’t Stay Away’s Fic Rec Friday #1 (04.14.23)

Can’t Stay Away’s Fic Rec Friday #2 (04.28.23)

Can’t Stay Away’s Fic Rec Friday #3 (06.30.23)

Hello! Because of my love for Wakanda Forever in all of its GLORY, I have been sucked back into the world of fanfiction!

Formerly known as @krockafella, I actually came back to Tumblr after I left all social media over a year ago, because I am truly hyper-fixated on Tenoch Huerta after his turn as Namor in BPWF. Also the performances that Letitia Wright and Angela Bassett gave in this film deserved all of the awards! Those women, along with Danai Gurira and Lupita Nyong’o are the backbone AND the meat of the film, no question. This film, more than even the first, has me thinking about it and consuming content/media about it almost obsessively now days. Y'all know how it goes.

So now, during this phase of hyper-fixation, I am interested in exploring these characters and reading the ways in which others interpret their motivations and arcs in their writing.

Fic writers in this fandom have been FEEDING me, with such amazing content! Every day I am amazed at the creativity and skill people are demonstrating with the fruitful motivation the film provided.

So! Because I’ve been reading and enjoying so many of these gems, I decided that I would do this Fic Rec Friday post every other Friday (that’s what I can commit to right now) where I post the fics that I have read, that I’m currently reading, or re-reading with a brief comment on why I love it.

These will Include, but not limited to:

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Fic

Namor x Shuri

Namor x Reader (preferably Black/of color/Indigenous)*

Namor x OFC (preferably Black/of color/Indigenous)

Namor x Shuri x Attuma

Namor x Ramonda (generally platonic character study, but I’m open to read anything good)

Okoye x Attuma

Okoye x Namor

Okoye x Attuma x Namor

Shuri x Riri Williams

Shuri x Fem!Reader (preferably Black/of color)*

Shuri x OFC (preferably Black/of color)

Aneka x Ayo

Aneka x Ayo x Namora

Namora x Fem!Reader (preferably Black/of color/Indigenous)*

Namora x OFC (preferably Black/of color/Indigenous)

M’Baku x Reader (preferably Black/of color)*

M’Baku x OFC (preferably Black/of color)

Tenoch Huerta Character Fic

Rafa Caro Quintero x Reader (preferably Black/Latina)*

Rafa Caro Quintero x OFC (preferably Black/Latina)

I will read other things, but this is what I am mainly interested in right now, and it’s already a lot.

*If I specify that Reader fic characters be coded as Black or a Character of Color, it's because a lot of Reader fic tends to be coded white. If the reader fic is written in such a way as to truly be devoid of indicators to race/ethnicity, I will read it.

A few things to know:

I ship both Nashuri and Attoye (among other pairings, some of them are rare pairs). I DO NOT engage in fandom wars or discourse. I do not argue with strangers on the internet at my big age. If either of these pairs doesn’t make sense to you, or weirds you out or makes you uncomfortable or upsets you, it’s OK, but we don’t need to argue about it. If you are an author and your fic is on this list, but you do not wish for it to be included because you don’t want it on a list with the other pairing, just let me know (cordially please, without attitude) and I will remove your fic from the list. No harm, no foul.

That said, if there is anything on the list that you feel is beyond simply nonsensical, but problematic, genuinely offensive, discriminatory, et al, please let me know. I do my best not to read or recommend things that fall on that spectrum, but if you have a genuine concern I of course want to know if there's something I overlooked or didn't consider.

These recs will be posted with the link to the fic on ao3 and if the author has a Tumblr, their @handle. If the author has no Tumblr, but is on some other social platform, I will post that instead.

If the fic is posted on Tumblr, I will ❤️ it first, and then it will be queued to reblog on Fridays. I will usually comment on it, but my comments can mostly be found in the tags. If that is unacceptable to you, I’m sorry, that’s the way I like to run my blog. I like to do a rapid scroll, like, and then go through my likes some time later (days maybe weeks depending on how busy I am) and queue them up for reblogs. If you’d rather I’d reblog as soon as you post your fic or not at all, let me know (cordially please, without attitude) and I will do my best. I have a full time job, and sometimes all I have time for is to scroll and like quickly. Then on the weekends, I sit my old ass down, go through my likes and queue them up. I’m saying this multiple times so that there is no misunderstanding.

If the author has more than one work, not all of them will be listed in one post. I may not have read the others yet, and spreading them out will help keep the list fresh.

I will only recommend what I have read. I can’t recommend something I haven’t read myself, for obvious reasons. If you want me to read something, please ask. However, if it doesn’t end up on this list, please understand. I am open to giving feedback, but I probably won’t recommend something I don’t like.

This is mostly for me to organize the fics I like in a way that’s easy to find for anyone who is interested that may stumble across this blog. It’s useful, but it’s not that serious. If you want to interact with me about it, please do! (be nice tho)

Just to reiterate, SO THERE IS NO MISUNDERSTANDING: if I haven't reblogged or commented on your fic it's for one of these reasons:

I legit haven't seen it.

I haven't had the chance to read/formulate an opinion on it.

I gave it a ❤️ because I'm bookmarking it for later.

And now I have decided the "later" will be Fic Rec Friday.

It may not be what I'm interested in. I hope you understand.

Here are my current fic sources on Tumblr that I personally follow:

@attoye (fics) <- a treasure trove of Attoye "juice"

@tvreadsandsleep (fics) <- one of the most prolific attoye fic writers in the fandom

@namorslutfanfiction (fics) <- Namor and Tenoch goodness abound, take a swim, get wet

I haven’t read everything on these blogs yet. If I’m missing a fic source and you think it should be included here, please let me know.

These posts will be tagged with their respective fandom pairing tags so people can find the fics. As I said before, I am a multi-shipper and I do not engage in negative fandom discourse or ship wars. Please don’t interact with these posts with any of that. Thank you.

Tags: #ficrecfriday #csaficrecfriday #fiction reccommendation #fic rec friday #fic rec #can't stay away's fic rec friday

I will also tag the date I make the posts so you can find it that way as well.

Enjoy!

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canayams-art · 8 months ago

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it's meee, the qianqing anon✨ it certainly been a while since ive been in your asks jsjdjdjd the uni has been crazy and the finals were approaching so i had to force my focus on studying instead of screaming about my faves to anyone who was willing to listen :") but now that that's out of the way for a while now because the second semester has already started, im free to go back to my deranged brainrots sjejejejjeke

OH I ALMOST FORGOT very very late merry christmas (if you celebrated) and happy new years!! 🎉🎉

im rewatching the second season of tgcf at the moment and im going crazy over the small lqq moments i missed in my first watch wjejejek he's just such an amazing character and soo 😍 i love/hate that im now restarting the angst 😭😭

SOMEHOW I ALSO MISSED THE BRIEF BLURRY SHI WUDU CAMEO AND I WAS SCREAMING ABOUT IT FOR HALF AN HOUR TO MY FRIEND!! I CANT WAIT TO SEE HIM IN HIS FULL CORRUPTED GLORY IF WE EVER GET GHE BLACK WATER ARC ANIMATED!! he actually might be in my top three favorite characters from tgcf even if i don't talk about him nearly as much as i talk about mq

anyways. LQQ!! i know i already watched everything and i know that i know what's going to happen but man i am not prepared to go through that again! while i am EXTREMELY glad that we got to see him boil qr alive AND slice him in half, THE PAIN THE ANGUISH THE CONFLICT JWJWIEKEKKEJJE

i don't think i will be getting him out of my head anytime soon :")) im even more salty that he doesn't get a more important scenes later in the series :((

unfortunately ive been a bit brain-dead because of the most boring subjects in the world ughhh so i don't have any new lqq and mq thoughts :(( if you do pls share with me, im dying for every crumb of creativity available skkekekeke

also idk if i mentioned this in my last ask, but it makes me so happy that both you and your followers like these little lqq/mq rants 🥹 it makes me excited to share whatever new idea pops into my brain and know that there are somewhere ppl who get just as excited about them as i do

anyways, i hope you're doing well!! 😽😽

Welcome back qianqing anon!!!

I hope finals went well for you and that you’ve been able to catch your breath again. I also hope you enjoyed the holiday season!

Every time I see or think about donghua lqq I feel so grateful to the production team for depicting the way lqq feels and expresses himself so intensely. I know we all know this by now but his arc really is my favorite within the entire story,,, 🥹 It’s a shame we really only see him in the early chapters and the final ones— I genuinely think his story could easily be its own novel/extra.

Also where does shi wudu show up???! If it’s later in s2 then I haven’t spotted him yet cos I,,,,, still haven’t gotten around to finishing s2 (life got in the way of quality time in lqq land 😭). I feel you though— I find shi wudu interesting in such a way where I love his character but I also feel he 100% got what was coming to him LMAO. Blackwater arc is gonna be so wild to see.

But!! Back to qianqing lol. I was thinking earlier about the fact that lqq answers any personal communication array regardless of who is contacting him. Meanwhile mq haunts the public communication array but gives this vibe that not a lot of people have access to his personal array,,,, made me think about how mq seems like the type who always reaches out to lqq privately, knowing that lqq will always answer, but refuses to give his password in return. Lqq probably asked him once and mq probably told him something like “It’s pointless when I know you’ll answer me no matter what.” (Bonus: maybe mq finally decides to hand his password over when lqq ends up going down to the mortal realm to seek his revenge— like it’s mq’s way of telling lqq that he’s concerned but without flat out saying he’s concerned for lqq LOL)

Anyway! Please always feel free to slide into the inbox. I may be slow to reply to these but they really do make my day. The qianqing brainrot never sleeps 😂

#yams uncans #qianqing #on god I will draw these two together one of these days

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multifandomxdanganronpa1356 · 7 months ago

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Good luck handling stalkers Lucifer

Where's the stalkers? Let me take care of them..

#ask #obey me shall we date #obey me nightbringer #lucifer obey me #obey me lucifer #Study Days In It’s Glory arc

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sunnydaleherald · 1 year ago

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The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Tuesday, October 24, Part II

[Fandom Discussions]

How do you think a 6th seasons of Angel would have looked like? by speashasha

Episodes that SHOULD have been a bottle episode? by Glass-Volume-558

Did Willow save Buffy's live in season six by magically removing the bullet? by SafiraAshai

Buffy Comics by BrandalfTehGay

The Character Arc of Xander Harris: A Study Of Masculinity/Femininity by Prometheus321

Where did Dru ever turn a bus into a buffet? by thrasherpix

What happened to Darla? by SvenVersluis2001

Angel's soul by TheTrainer32

Was Faith an identified Potential? by UnquantifiableLife

The curse of Spin-offs in the Buffyverse by primal_slayer

Faith's change of heart by not_firewood_yet

AtS equivalent to ‘Lie to Me’? by saxen021

What was your thoughts when you first saw these guys? by Brief-Cryptographer2

Buffy and Faith by Dry-Sport-9231

I adore Willow. Appreciation for my favourite redhead by Sweet-Siren

Lindsay from Angel is a very attractive villain by Sweet-Siren

Buffy and Riley had some hot scenes by Sweet-Siren

Season 6 and the giant Giles hole by davect01

Character growth in two pictures (Spoilers for S3 Graduation Day Part 2) by Hamblerger

Why was buffy so drastically different in "The Wish"? by Tsole96

Can anyone clear up why buffy is so addicted to Spike? by Ashaixia

Season 7 is a totally different vibe compared to Seasons 5-6. by NorsacceBerlusconi

Once more with feeling S6E7 by EarNo4207

Just rewatched Witch by DifficultRice7075

Why was the cast of Angel so underused compared to Buffy's? by BlueFlameWar

Did Buffy miss the boat on sexuality? by PotentialDavis

Who was your favourite “monster of the week” monster by duvet-cover

Buffy’s Alternate Birthday Is Today by Femfilmrogue

What was a concept or sub plot you wanted to see more of? by duvet-cover

Glory lipstick by prajituracuafine

Buffy’s Friends Love Her by jredgiant1

Can't believe they showed that! by Dry-Sport-9231

Which core 4 scooby had the best frenemy interactions by The810kid

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Wasted a Character’s Potential by Fridging Her by 410Writer

TIL Buffy is actually a show about a sexy young woman learning to cope with her sexiness as an adult by TSllama

Favourite part of the Buffyverse Franchise? by GarthTDdraig

First time you ever watched, did this moment have you fooled? by GreyStagg

Where is Glory's home? by VeterinarianFinal751

Buffy: The Animated Series by blaqueheart

Watching Helpless... it's heartbreaking by UnquantifiableLife

So um, how come no one ever seems to bleed or bruise? by moussetang

As a non-American viewer, I've always wondered: what kind of a name is "Buffy"? by RafRide

this is an appreciation post for faith's ever-present, flawlessly applied lipgloss by meltmyheadaches

BUFFY SEASON 6!!! by bi-zo-zo

Spuffy and the 7x20 house… by winterlovesong1

Cordy and Connor by pandamanda04

Update on my first time watching by craig536

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

Join the editor team :)

#btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #angel the series #fan art #fan fiction #meta

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datmoongamer · 8 months ago

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All the lore is coming together holy shit

Benshu Gorionson is a human paladin, presumably gets married to Aerie (haven't finished playing bg1, let alone 2 yet), has a kid.

Kid's name is Benshu II, half-elf. Gets big into magic and studies to become a wizard. Callidia Wiresmith, a dwarven fighter, gets assigned to him on a protection detail, and they end up falling in love. He takes her last name and has a kid with her. She retires from her adventuring life. They start a smithy in Baldur's Gate.

Benshu I dies when Benshu II is in his teens or twenties, so Benshu II develops a grudge against adventuring and adventurers in general.

Benshu Wiresmith III, technically a dwelf but functionally a half-elf, 'cept for his glorious beard, which he inherited from his mother, paladin. Callidia tells him stories about adventuring. He grows up obsessed with his grandfather and frequently ditches his magic lessons with his father to spar with the Flaming Fists at the docks.

Arc, Benshu III's closest friend and burgeoning benevolent pirate, says he's moving with the rest of the Lindors to Luskan. Benshu III packs his bags and says he's going to sail with Arc. Benshu II goes ballistic, "you're going to end up dead like your grandfather," etc, Benshu III tells him to fuck off and leaves.

Benshu III does alright for a few years, sails the whole world, but pirates are inherently violent and selfish. His moral upbringing leads to more and more clashes with the rest of the Lindors and resentment grows. One day, he receives word that Benshu II was killed. It's a real wake-up call for him. His last words with his father were unpleasant and he'd become everything his father wanted him not to be: a glory-chasing hound. He bids adieu to the Lindors, swears to never sway from the light again and takes up the Oath of Devotion, and travels up and down the Sword Coast, slaying bad guys and helping the meek.

Then a certain Nautiloid picks him up, and the rest is history.

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xtruss · 1 year ago

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Image: Naeblys/Shutterstock

The Sneaky Force Behind Our Sun’s Violent Outbursts! A Strange Discovery From Flying Close To The Sun.

— By Paul M. Sutter | September 23, 2023 | Nautilus

Many of the mysteries of our sun are not buried at its core, as we might expect. They are dancing ferociously on its surface. Plasma leaps out, arcing millions of miles into space before plunging back to return to its fiery home. Massive solar flares shoot deadly X-ray radiation into the solar system. And coronal mass ejections loft chunks of the sun’s own body into space, creating storms of energy that can wreak havoc on the planets in our solar system.

For millennia, astronomers marveled at the displays, puzzling over what might be causing them. But marvel was about all they could do. The shows of force could usually only be glimpsed, briefly, during a total solar eclipse, when the moon blocked the body of the sun and the sun’s corona—its outermost atmosphere—and wild prominences became visible.

Now, however, scientists have sealed the wax on their proverbial wings and are flying ever-so-close to the sun, able to witness its atmosphere and study it directly in all its fiery glory.

The Parker Solar Probe Had To Take An Icarian Risk.

After launching in 2018, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has been flinging itself around Venus, using the planet as a sink of gravitational energy to draw the probe closer and closer and closer to the sun’s chaos. Joined by the ESA’s Solar Orbiter, which launched in 2020, the bold pair have been beaming back astonishing evidence about what is driving the sun’s high-energy fury. The results suggest that it is not plumes of combusting fire or the violent strikes of meteors, as earlier astronomers had once suggested, but more likely a humble, unassuming, usually ignored force in the universe: magnetic fields.

As an astrophysicist, I have a soft spot for magnetic fields. They never truly get the attention they deserve. My own research has investigated the subtle role they play on the largest of cosmic scales. And I’ve learned over the years that when there is some process in the universe that you don’t fully understand, it’s worth taking a looking at magnetic fields. Because even though they’re weak, they’re often sneaky.

Magnetic fields are everywhere in the universe. Any time you take a collection of charged particles and accelerate them, the resulting electrical current generates the formation of an attendant magnetic field. Earth has charged particles whipping around in its molten core, and so magnetic fields wrap around our planet in a protective embrace. Clouds of forming stars have turbulent flows of charged particles, and along with them tangled, knotty magnetic fields. Even entire clusters of galaxies, the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe, are home to magnetic fields stretching millions of light-years on a side.

Invisible Threads: New data from extreme solar missions are finding that typically weak magnetic forces might bundle together to drive the massive jets of plasma that leap from our sun’s surface. Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA.

And yet for all this magnetic abundance in the universe, the fields themselves are one of the weakest phenomena in the natural world, so feeble they can almost always be ignored in any consideration of physics. They rarely play a starring role in astrophysical processes; they simply seem to exist as a happenstance.

On Earth, it takes the combined might of the entire molten core to generate a magnetic field strong enough to gently nudge a compass needle around. For any living creatures on Earth, with the exception of migratory birds and a handful other species, if we were to lose our magnetic field, we wouldn’t really notice it in the day-to-day. The same holds true for the vast majority of astrophysical cases: The magnetic fields are there, winding throughout the universe, but are relegated to the role of non-speaking background actors, not one of the main cast.

Our sun, being a giant ball of plasma, naturally has a magnetic field of its own. It’s not particularly strong, however, only roughly twice as strong as Earth’s, and less than a quarter the strength of Jupiter’s. And, honestly, even though magnetic fields are approximately everywhere in the universe, they don’t seem, usually, to do much of anything.

But for decades, some bold astrophysicists, like the pioneering Eugene Parker, for whom the Parker Solar Probe was named, suspected that magnetic fields might play an outsized role in the radical dynamics of the sun. And so, the Probe, along with the Solar Orbiter, were launched with instruments specifically designed to measure the strength and scope of the sun’s ever-changing magnetic fields. Combined with more traditional instruments, like heat-resistant telescope optics and particle detectors, the teams behind the missions hoped that the probes might alight on some strange, intricate connection between the sun’s magnetic fields and its awesome displays of raw power.

Magnetic Fields Can Twist And Bundle Themselves Together, Transforming From Weak Threads To Powerful Cables.

To accomplish this, the Parker Solar Probe had to take an Icarian risk. In April 2021, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe became the first instrument ever devised by human hands to “touch the sun,” sailing into its inferno of a corona, where temperatures soar to 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (200 times hotter than the surface of the sun itself). Whipping around our home star at a speed of more than 90 miles per second—also setting a record for the fastest spacecraft in history—Parker approached within about 6.5 million miles of the solar surface. Spending only a short time at that close distance on that pass, the Probe collected as much data as possible: mapping the solar surface, measuring the stream of high-energy particles traveling through the corona, and measuring the magnetic fields as they twist and wrap throughout the sun’s environment.

From this extreme front line, Parker has been beaming floods of data back to Earth, where scientists are still processing and analyzing them. What is becoming clear is that the sun’s magnetic fields are operating with an unusual superpower—one that enables them to leap from the background to become a major player on the stage of the sun. To speak and have strong opinions of their own. To transform and shape the worlds around them.

We are learning that when it comes to the surface and atmosphere of the sun, magnetic fields are usually quiet. But when they speak their minds, we can’t ignore them.

The superpower is this: Magnetic fields, though typically humble on their own, under the right conditions can twist and bundle themselves together, transforming from weak threads to powerful cables. These knotted, self-wrapped twines snake in and out of the solar surface, threading deep into the plasma heart of the sun and far out into the corona. Once in place, they become far stronger than average, no longer responding to the motions of the plasma around them, but instead directly their own flows.

Into The Fire 🔥: A new paper describes the Parker Solar Probe’s safe passage through a coronal mass ejection event—captured here in a burst of plasma from below. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Lab.

We see this most clearly during the eruptions of solar prominences. When we observe the great arches of plasma reaching out and back into the sun, we are witnessing the flow of superheated electrically charged plasma forced to follow the bundles of magnetic field lines.

The tangled mass of twisting magnetic field lines can, however, reach a critical breaking point. If the fields become too tightly woven, too constricted, then plasma piles up at either end. This drives the magnetic fields even tighter together, and eventually, if the pressure becomes too great, they snap. This snapping of the magnetic field releases an enormous amount of pent-up energy. First in the form of X-ray radiation—the solar flares. And if the magnetic bundles go deep enough into the bulk of the sun, it can lead to the launching of material along the broken lines of magnetism in the form of a coronal mass ejection, like the one Parker flew through last fall, described in a new paper.

With the Parker and Solar Orbiter, scientists have been able to watch these processes play out in real time. The collection of magnetic fields, the bundling together into thick ropes, the channeling of plasma, the storing of energy, and the ultimate release of the sun’s magnetic fury. Scientists have now been able to watch—close up—as kinks in the magnetic field lines zip up and down, in and out, transporting energy from the surface of the sun to the corona, heating it up. As the interior of the corona heats, the outer layers energize and detach completely, becoming the solar wind.

Space Weather Forecasts Are Essential to Protecting Our Satellite 🛰️ Infrastructure And Electricity Grids.

These aren’t just abstract explorations of some distant astronomical target. This is our sun—the source of all light and warmth here on Earth, as well as a source of potential danger. When solar flares erupt, the resulting X-rays bombard our planet. When coronal mass ejections race outward, they can fly in our direction.

Understanding the dynamics of the sun, especially the critical role that tangled magnetic fields play, can help us make better space weather forecasts. These forecasts are essential to protecting our satellite infrastructure—and even our Earth-based electricity grids and radio communications, whose weaknesses were evident during the especially strong solar storm in 1989. Right now, solar storm forecasts rely on constant observations of the sun’s activity, waiting for a burst to happen and sending out an alert. But often, we only know a storm is approaching after it’s already been launched from the sun, giving us just several minutes’ lead time. Understanding the role of magnetic fields can help us spot the precursors to a storm as it’s building, leading to longer warning times and a better sense of a particular storm’s anticipated severity.

But even with this newly emerging picture of the sun’s temperamental and powerful magnetic forces—and our increasing vulnerability to their whims—there is much more work to be done.

The Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter will continue their dangerous missions for the next few years, observing carefully with each new eruption, each new storm, for the delicate lines of magnetic fields to conspire. As the Solar Orbiter continues to circle the sun from a comparably cool 26 million miles’ distance, the Parker will keep hurling itself around Venus to get closer and closer to the sun, with its next dip into the corona scheduled for next week, on September 27. By the time it sails its final pass, anticipated in December 2025, it is expected to travel within 4 million miles of the sun’s surface before running out of fuel. From all of these flybys, data will be mounting for scientists to sift through and make sense of over years—and likely decades—to come.

Next year, the ESA hopes to launch Proba-3, an experimental mission to test a new kind of multi-satellite formation that could deliver even more details about the sun’s tumultuous outer layers. Combined with dedicated ground-based observatories, astronomers hope to continuously monitor the sun in as many ways as possible, to further elucidate the complex and ever-changing relationship between magnetic fields and the solar plasma that births them and can then be controlled by them.

Far from any mechanical forces envisioned by early astronomers, the driving forces of the sun’s powerful displays are typically so quiet that they eluded suspicion for centuries. And hopefully, with even more daring missions in the future, humanity will continue to unravel more mysteries of the unseen power of magnetism in our universe.

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