#the interviewer has legit giving me nothing to work with she asked me like 3 questions and then was like uhhh okay i guess were good

[moonymoonbeam]

I had such a meh interview today but cue a chorus line i hope i get it because please god i need this job

[streep-mulgrew-anderson]

💫 2022 💫

Going into to 2022, there were still many things from 2021 I was waiting for… those pre Emmy pics on the stairs and for Gillian to actually acknowledge Ninapharm. 

For me, I had nothing but hope and optimism at the start of the year. Surely it can’t get any worse… right??

So all of this is written in the moment. Well, it should be interesting to see if some vibes actually came to be. Here we go…

January 

January started off painfully slow. I believe Gillian was filming in Pennsylvania maybe?? Maybe not. Anyway. 6 days into January and what like 2 -3 weeks since we had seen her, Gillian was spotted eating scones and drinking tea and posed for a picture sending everyone into relief that she was in fact still alive. And then on the 8th she finally posted something; Nelson. But it wouldn’t be until the 26th that she would finally post a selfie… saving the world. January ended with two new videos. One of Gillian interviewing FLEE director Jonas Poher Rasmussen. Love how she started the interview completely American and then the next minute she’s full on Brit! And the other, Gillian wearing silk Pjs, giving a look to die for. So after January starting incredibly slowly, it ended with Gillian being back in her active on social media era. 

February 

February started with Gillian working with yet another beauty company, only, she’s promoting it this time. And of course, Stella joined in the fun. Then Gillian decided she was going to be more active in one day on Twitter than she has been in weeks, and legit asked to play Sarah Paulsen’s wife. Robin robin was nominated for an Oscar. She then did a sit down Q and A thing that was amazing. Gillian also seems to have gotten an Apple Watch for Christmas which surprise surprise has Stella as the background. Gillian also entered her podcast era which has not been as exciting as I thought it would be. She really only talks for the first and last 5 minutes. I’m sure she puts in a lot of time researching which story to use but I was a little disappointed (And it’s actually mostly written by her social media manager...but I didn’t tell you that) Feb ended with G’s appearance at Whodunnit 2’ at Park Theatre.

March

March started with a fresh pfp and header… which I had first on my Twitter so she clearly stole my idea. We got to see some behind the scenes shots of Gillian recording her podcast. Gillian went to LA…. Honestly didn’t see that one coming with a commitment in Cannes days after. As soon as I saw Robin Robin scored an Oscar nom, I thought… I so can see her going to the Oscars. Gillian did some First Lady press. I didn’t think press would start soon so but I’m not complaining. And I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed for gillovny content. Of course though, none of that happened, we just got Stella playing ball in a London park. Gillian signed a deal with Netflix to produce some new tv shows and holy shit I’m so proud. And you know me, I’m a sucker for a good theory so in my humble opinion that certain contract with a certain someone really paid off, I just wish it didn’t have to play out like that. Her production company has actually been a thing for a really long time. 

April

April started off with Gillian being awarded the icon award at Cannes series. I found it odd though that nothing was posted to her socials of her getting ready beforehand because pretty much every event she goes to, she does. (? change in SM manager?) Though the next day before her Q&A she did post some before hand stuff and then did post stuff from the day before. Honestly am loving this phase she is going through. Though, it was at about this time that a fear crept into my mind. A fear that I thought was left behind in 2020… 

The first lady press that was filmed back in Match started airing. It definitely doesn’t seem like a strong Emmy campaign which I find strange too. Gillian also realised more stuff with windsor London, not that she promoted it. Gillian did end up going to LA again and attended Jimmy Kimmel in person which has always been a great interview. In a quick recap, she ran into a door and talked about eating her penis cake. Gillian also decided to start wearing earrings in her seconds again. And as someone who has their seconds pierced, I’m loving this and can’t wait to see if she continues to do it to get some inspiration. 

Gillian attended the First Lady premiere and omg I actually loved the bright pink pantsuit. I obviously only started following Gillian during lockdown so it’s actually so cool to see her back out again on red carpets. And then Gillian just casually dropped that Sex Ed has been pushed back again and won’t start filming till the end of summer through till march. Like are you kidding me. I don’t think I can wait that long. It better be fucking good. So within like 48 hours, Gillian jetted out of LA with a video reel on her Instagram which was adorable. I’m loving this era of Gillian. And also they re pierced her ears apparently for Jimmy Kimmel only because it was gone by the next day.

The First Lady started to air. The first episode left me a little on the fence. I think because the Obama and Ford eras are more recent than the Rossavelts, that’s why maybe it’s not exactly hitting the mark straight away. I’m actually okay with the timeline being all over the place. Gillian is obviously acing it but it is unfortunately that story line that so far is what is letting the show down. Gillian of course posted some behind the scenes shots to mark the show starting. The 18th of April passed with unfortunately no selfie update. Gillian also did a photo shoot for L’Officiel which is surprisingly her first one of the year and again was perfect. 

May

How are we in May already! May started with me holding on to a really slim hope that Gillian would attend the Met gala. I know she mostly hated it last year but there a few subtle clues indicating that she might attend. But then I realised that she already had an event booked for that day 😫 and then it turns out she didn’t even go to either event. Gillian, still in her Instagram reel era posted one of her time on set of the First Lady. Honestly though, she actually seems like so much fun to work with. Connie posted the absolute most gorgeous photo of Gillian and piper which of course Gillian shared. Gillian, still in her influencer era was spotted filming so ads in London. We had our first Gillovny moment of the year. Connie posted a pic of them and Gillian tagged David and added it to her stories. David let the team down and never publicly acknowledged it but we all know he slid into her DMs… well…. He was probably already there. 

So then this video of From Jimmy Kimmel came out and Gillian AND David were in it and next to each other (not really though)

The First Lady continued to air and holy shit seeing Gillian kiss a woman multiple times changed my life and made me rethink the last year of Gillian content. 

Gillian recorded a reading for Women's Prize for Fiction: Virtual Shortlist Festival 2022 which was completely toaster quality. 

As the First Lady continues to air, I’m surprisingly falling more in love with it. And then May ended with actually footage of Gillian and her most likely re heated soggy chips. If you know what I mean by this then don’t talk to me about it because I am holding onto a thin string trying not to do the same. I wish that toaster would just disappear. I’m not surprised just disappointed. And for people who hate the judgement, 1I’ve never dated someone that all my friends have liked. It’s basically the blue print of being a friend. As long as she’s happy that’s all that really does matter. We all know she could do so much better but at the same time we all know a fraction of the truth, which is all we should know anyway. Connie tried to save the day though. 

June

That ad G filmed in May was realised and like damn! Connie fed us again. She honestly needs to release a book. AND THEN gillian posted the same photo tagging David. David left us hanging again… publicly anyway. Like he's got a book to promote so you think he’d be all over her posts. But on said book promotion he actually sort of threw her under the bus. Someone needs to send these two some gillovny videos to remind them how perfect they are and to get over their egos but then yet again, we know nothing about the truth and I’m just gonna shut up. 

Gillian modelled for Chloe. 

The First Lady finished and I never thought I would become so attached to that show. It definitely missed the mark and I think that was because it wasn’t really all that linear in it’s story. I think having the 3 story lines was a bit much. But otherwise, Eleanor and Hick spin off?? It’s been ages too since I watched a show that you can just binge watch all at once so it made my Sunday’s just that more enjoyable. She then did an interview with gold derby and damn her nails! Glad she also confirmed that she hasn’t worked since February because I was starting to get worried and that she will be filming sex ed in September. Gillian went to paramount plus uk launch and holy shit I forgot how to breath. It’s the tan and the bleached hair that ended me. Disappointed she ditched her black nails for her usual colour but when considering the rest of the fit was perfect, how can you complain. The trailer for white bird a wonder story finally came out. G loved it up in Glastonbury. 

July 

July started off slow. Gillian did an amazing podcast about mental health which I loved. We are half way through this year and it’s been slow. I mean like she has said that she hasn’t been working a lot which is obvious. She only filmed one thing this year with possible 3 things coming out all up. And at this point nothing new has been announced. Not even from her Netflix deal. I’m a little worried maybe. More worried about what she’s planning… any way it definitely doesn’t seem that she is going full on campaign mode like she did for the Emmy’s last year which is a shame. Sex education has finally started filming which is making me nervous because I swear to god if they ruin one of my favourite comfort characters arc even more i will scream. Emmy noms came out and wtf. I thought for sure she would get one. The First Lady got completely snubbed which I get because it wasn’t amazing but I thought it would get at least something in the major categories. And then The Great leads all got nominated but that was it. So disappointing. At least Gillian really loved those characters but it is a major snub considering her clean sweep last year. I think the team behind the first lady just really really missed the mark. They had three amazing lead actresses who at least one of them could have got nominated but it didn’t happen. And July ended slow. 

August

Ah August. Got my clown costume ready to go! I’m glad the last few weeks have been quite because at this point in time I had a really bad work crush and was basically picking up as many overtime shifts as I could and was a very nice welcomed distraction. Anyway. 

The First Lady got cancelled which I’m disappointed with but not surprised. I’m mean at least it doesn’t effect Gillian because she wouldn’t be in the next season. I think they got it all completely wrong. Everything about it was just messy. 

Gillian entered her unhinged era on twitter. I mean, she practically always been there but clearly has stepped it up a bit. One thing she is in though is her unemployment era. 

David’s birthday came…. And David’s birthday passed. We all know they definitely spoke privately but yeah. I would like to think they are on a nice holiday together or something. At least G probably is before she starts filming sex Ed next month. I mean they both were unusually quite for this time of the year. But we love a last minute goofy selfie and some cute thank you replies. Thanks to David for a poorly timed tweet about a recent book he read. I’m not buying it. Maybe public birthday messages will be once every 2 years from now on. At least we got some tbt tags this year on Gillian’s behalf. 

The roller coaster that is sex education promotion started. 

And then we saw the second confirmation for the year about what should not be named. Look, we don’t know the ins and outs of her private life and all that matters is that she’s happy but I just don’t see it. And listen, for everyone who’s like I don’t understand people complaining about it, from my perspective, when you care about someone, your critical of them including their choice in partner. I’ve heard that much rumours that I don’t know what to think anymore. But also, until she confirms it and the words ( or photo) come out of her mouth, im taking it with a grain salt… unfortunately maybe a large grain of salt. They could actually be ex’s that are friends. But at the end of the day if it makes her happy that’s all that matters. 

August ended with ? Gillian in her swiftie era. But let’s be real, in 2016 she’s never heard of bad blood so….

September 

Ah September, you’ve been so anticipated. G finally started filming sex education. And just a reminder she basically hasn’t worked since February and has nothing else booked and this year has been painful slow with stuff relating to Gillian, at least compared to last year. She clealry must be working on something big considering she is not good at taking breaks. 

She now owns 4 chickens apparently too. 

Ninapharm continued to release pictures from that photo shoot campaign that Gillian has weirdly chosen to ignore. 

Gillian, once again for the how many time this year, returned from the dead to go to the Burberry show in London. Forgot we were still in that era. She was seated next to ANNA WINTOUR (also across from Kanye)…. So….. what's coming next. I don’t know, I find it all maybe slightly bizarre. Loving it, don’t get me wrong but just… interesting. I mean she has launched clothing before, maybe all this fashion stuff she is suddenly doing is research for something bigger?? She has been to fashion shows in the past but not as much as she is doing now. 

October 

… and Gillian enters the month still basically unemployed. I might be a bit nervous. White bird was suppose to come out this month, the pale blue eyes in December and sex education is probably half way through filming and then… nothing. I mean surely she’s working on something but still. 

But as my life pretty much feel apart, it’s good to see Gillian’s is not as she changed her twitter pfp to sponge bob. Yep, you read that right. All I would like to say is who gave her her twitter password back this year?? I thought she would only have it like that briefly but it stayed for like a week. A whole week. And the like 2 times she tweeted during that week, no one was taking her seriously. 

White bird a wonder story was supposed to come out this month but disappeared off the face of the earth. I never watch the first one but this movie seemed really good on paper. I know Gillian said they wanted to aim it for festivals but then the release date got pushed from September to October but when the trailer got released it got a really bad reception. I’m not totally sure why. Isn’t it a book? From what I understand people were shocked about some of its context but surely that’s the same as the book right? Anyway I was really looking forward to having more Gillian content because it’s been a hot minute but I guess the wait shall continue. 

So she now does adds for Netflix too. That producer deal is really being put to good work. For someone who had such a successful previous year, I don’t understand this one. I guess we are getting employed through doing ads now. I might keep that in mind. 

Photos and a trailer were released for pale blue eyes. Finally something!!

Stella dressed up as little bo peep for Halloween and Gillian continued to aid fuel to the fire that she has reclaimed back her twitter password… I mean… do you really think that’s it’s someone else tweeting things like that on a Saturday evening at midnight? Because wouldn’t something like that have to be approved because it’s written under her name. That’s why I think it’s actually her. 

And, I just have to add this because it hit me right in the feels, Piper wore one of Gillian’s dresses for Halloween and omg 

November 

November started off with a Gillovny moment! Winning! So Gillian re posted a fans remake of an iconic Gillovny photo shot for a Halloween. I absolutely love how much she has posted gillovny throw backs this year. David’s left us hanging every time though. But I’m is anyone else noticing how much she is reposting fans stuff lately?????? And surprise surprise, David left us hanging yet again. But not to worry, Connie continued posting Gillovny throw backs. 

Gillian went to the crown season 5 premiere which you don’t want to hear my opinion on. Hasn’t she been to enough of them?? Fair enough the last one didn’t happen ( side not… she was the only former cast member there) and she won all the awards but pleaseeeeeeee I don’t want to hear about it. But I mean… if it makes her happy and look I would be doing the same thing if my anxiety and overthinking didn’t always get in the way. …. Maybe he is the British version of Pete Davison?????

David also deleted his twitter. Mourning all the gillovny that gos with that. Gillian…. Don’t you dare. Really grieving all those twitter interactions. 

You know what else really annoys me, how critical people are of what she wears and how she does her hair. 

Twitter continues to live so Gillian continues to post penises but still RIP David. Either new social media girl is totally unhinged or Gillian has that password back. 

Gillian left the house again and went to a screening of pale blue eyes. 

December 

And so we have reached the final month… and Gillian is still unemployed. So hoping she is working on something big. That Netflix deal looking like a flop right about now?? Almost a year out of the two signed for done. 

So it turns out Gillian started a beverage company, G-spot in march… so that’s what she’s been doing?? And other production company… something bigs coming right?? But at the same time, she had it for how long and done nothing with it. The website was also created in July and barely touched. I just want to really know what someone who doesn’t understand the word relax has been doing for 12 months. But like at the same time, she started Fiddleheads something like 20 year ago and it only ever was reported once so I’m not that hopefully about all these. Just like how her novels were going to be turned in a series…

Gillian started doing press for The Pale Blue Eye… again, a role that is probably going to be less than 10 minutes is getting more press from her than the last season of Sex Education. And she annoucemed her unemployment era is ending in January and from the way shes talking, 2023 sounds booked and busy. At least we don’t have to wait long. I’m surprised she only said… “i have a thing I’m starting i Jaunary that hasn’t been aoounced”. Usually she would be all like I’m doing this thing with… about… but i can’t talk about it. And it actually sounded like she said she had two things coming up…. Dr Who maybe? And maybe she kows White Bird A Wonder Storys new realise date as well because she mentioned that was coming up soon. 

And to finish it all, she wished everyone a Merry Clitmas Christmas which took me wayyy to long to pick up. 

So, hey! We made it! This year for me has been on pair with last year.. actually probably worse. I’ve lost a damn lot this year and been through things that I didn’t see coming. But maybe that’s what happens when you stop being silent and putting up with crap?? Safe to say all I did this year was survive. 

Any way, davidduchovny on twitter I miss you. Gillian… I love you… but what is going on. 

Next year is one I’m definitely excited for. I’m spending 4 weeks in Vancouver which co insides with the x files 30th anniversary and then the following 2 in London. I’m nervous but excited. And I’m so hopping I get to meet Gillian. I’m apprehensive about booking too much of the trip because I am definitely the person who will drop anything to be where she is during the 6 weeks… just as long as it doesn’t fall on the day of the wedding I’m going too. I’m also planning on maybe resigning from my job when I get home from the trip which scares the shit out of me that I'm ready to walk away from my dream job😬 the 6 weeks is also going to be me seeing if maybe I could maybe take the plunge and move over to London… all I care about is that my cat can come too. But there is a part of me that wants to stay just to prove a point 

So here’s to 2023; more Gillovny, a brand new chapter and finally hopefully positive vibes and progress. 

Oh, and Gillian, no more penis posts please!

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 325: Deku VS the Outside of U.A. ~Conclusion~

Previously on BnHA: Ochako was all “dear bloodthirsty mob, this kid you see standing before you has fought harder than anyone and put his life on the line to protect you all, so please chill the fuck out, jesus christ. like, putting aside that he’s humanity’s best hope and so it’s very much in your best interests to let him rest and recover someplace safe so that he can keep fighting for us, are y’all seriously going to turn away an injured and exhausted child in front of his sobbing mother?? seriously?? come on now.” I’m paraphrasing here but that’s basically how it went down. Anyway so then the mob was all, “...” and Deku collapsed to his knees in tears, and Gigantic Fox Lady and Kouta ran over to give him a hug but then the chapter ended.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “FINE, YOU CAN HUG HIM”, which, was that so hard?? The U.A. Clown Mob is all “come to think of it, we’ve kind of been taking the heroes for granted this entire time, maybe we should be less passive in the future. anyway so Deku if it’s not too much to ask, can you please save everyone and fix everything.” Deku is all “I sure can, and by the way I forgive you for swarming around all menacingly two minutes ago and trying to deny me basic shelter and stuff.” Ectoplasm is all, “hey Todogang get a load of this. [walks in a circle].” Hawks is all, “that’s literally the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” Rat Principal is all, “anyway so that’s what your students did today, hope you’re enjoying your new *~*ROBOT LEG*~*, Aizawa.” Aizawa is all “[lots of exposition about Kurogiri and for some reason, Toga, while being all brooding and sexy].” All Might is all “[standing here right outside of U.A. doing absolutely nothing and being foreboding AF]” and that immediately sucked away all of the warm fuzzy feelings from the hugs, goddammit.

each new week has become a waiting game of “when will Deku finally get to take a bath so people will actually be willing to go near him and give him the hugs he deserves.” the stakes have never been so compelling. I’ve almost forgotten about AFO entirely

lmaoooooo

me: for the love of god will someone please give Deku a hug before I die of old age

Mineta: YOU GOT IT!! --

Iida: [SWIFTLY CUTS HIM OFF] NOT YOU

fucking losing it at Mineta’s crying face. he really wanted to hug him. I legit feel bad but this is also the funniest thing I have seen all week, omg

somehow Kouta, who last week was only a hand’s breadth away from touching Deku’s head, is now twenty miles away from him in this new chapter

can I make a Loki reference here. is this recap a good place to insert a joke about someone using a TVA time-rewinding device to fuck with my poor boy Kouta over here. well anyway there it is

AND NOW HE’S BACK ALL OF A SUDDEN OMG

(ETA: since when is he “niichan” omg?? can’t handle this cuteness.)

BUT THEY’RE STILL NOT HUGGING HIM FFFFKFFFFF. WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO. WHO DO I HAVE TO BRIBE AND/OR BLACKMAIL

OH NO KOUTA IS CRYING THAT’S IT I’M DONE FOR

“when I heard that lady I knew that I had to go, but then stop again within inches of actually touching you because you smell like week-old rotten onions.” listen Kouta, I’m not saying I don’t get it, but you all can’t keep doing this to me. it’s the way you guys keep teasing it. like, if you’re gonna hug him, hug him. don’t just stand there with your arms held rigidly out in front of you like a molded action figure

OH MY GOSH BUT HE SAID THE THING

KOUTA SWOOPING IN AT THE LAST MINUTE TO TAKE ALL THE CREDIT FOR FIXING DEKU LIKE THAT ONE KID IN THE GROUP PROJECT WHO DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT STILL TAGS HIS NAME ONTO THE REPORT ANYWAY, WHAT A KNAVE

GASP

(  ´͈ ᗨ `͈ )

SHE PICKED HIM UP LIKE A LITTLE BABY OMG?? she just leaned right over and lifted this child like he was a small animal. like a lil baby futon that she was about to hang up to dry. oh my god

-- HEY WHAT

(: well that’s extremely fucked up. though sadly not too surprising given what we just saw these past couple chapters

incidentally, I hope that anyone who was legitimately defending the civilians’ perspective earlier takes note here of how quickly that line of thinking -- “we’re just trying to keep our families safe” and all that-- can lead to straight up bigotry. if you’re willing to deny a child shelter and protection simply because he’s not YOUR child, and because you’ve decided based on Internet rumors (no real-world parallels there, I’m sure) that he might present a threat, it’s really not that much further of a leap to discriminating against entire groups of people simply because you perceive those groups as being dangerous. I’m sure the people who turned Gigantic Fox Lady away also told themselves afterwards that they did it to protect their families. “better safe than sorry.” “she’ll be fine, someone will take her in, but as for us, we can’t afford to take that risk.” people can come up with all kinds of justifications for treating other people as less than human, and the really scary thing about it is how fucking easy it is

one last quick side note, which is that Horikoshi does a great job here of showing how scapegoating works, given that AFO is the one who’s really to blame and who presents the actual threat, and yet Deku is the one who ultimately winds up being the target of the mob’s fear and outrage despite him being as much of a victim as they are. gotta love that irony, which unfortunately plays out far too often in the real world as well.

anyway I’ll get off my soapbox now, sorry about that. let us continue

YES, FINALLY OH MY GOD!!!!

AND THAT’S THE STORY OF HOW GIGANTIC FOX LADY BECAME THE GREATEST HERO. PACK IT ALL UP, WE’RE DONE HERE KIDS

holy shit. the real MVP right there. thanks for getting it done champ

jesus christ I have had it up to here with these people

literally the bar is set so low at this point that I’ll go ahead and take it. helping him because it offers them a tactical advantage is at least one step up from not helping him at all

“WHY NOT SHIKETSU” MOTHERFUCKER I SWEAR TO GOD

-- thank you!!

okay this one guy with the antennae hair is having himself a character development speedrun here

-- okay, but this part?? fucking this part, right here??

can we repeat that again?? the part where this guy acknowledges that the problems of hero society were caused not just by said heroes, but also by said society?? the part where he acknowledges that they treated the heroes like celebrities who were putting on a show for them?? the part where he acknowledges that when push came to shove, the vast majority of those heroes, when faced with a situation that offered no reward, were nonetheless willing to put their lives on the line to protect the very same people who then turned around and blamed them rather than thanking them?? are the civilians of BnHA even allowed to have actual deep thoughts about this stuff. holy shit

bro!!

ANTENNAE HAIR GUY SHOVING KOUTA AND GIGANTIC FOX LADY OUT OF THE WAY TO SLAP HIS NAME ONTO THE END CREDITS AS EXECUTIVE PRODUCER. CONGRATULATIONS SON YOU FIGURED OUT THE CORE PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION AT THE VERY HEART OF THE MANGA. WAY TO GO BUD

meanwhile, on today’s episode of “one more chapter to go till the big volume cliffhanger, how else can I drag things out let’s see”

it’s a panel. of people’s feet. just a bunch of normal feet. with sneakers and shit

this All Might shirt guy is getting more screentime in this arc than 90% of the class 1-A kids

I guess I’m supposed to feel sorry for this dude now that he’s all “if we let you stay here do you promise to somehow magically fix every single problem that we are now currently facing?” those are some ridiculously exacting standards my dude. come on now

KACCHAN SIGHTING

thank fuck I’m not the only one who’s thoroughly unimpressed by absolutely all of this lol. I feel better now. meanwhile Iida and Kouda and Kiri are ready to run over there and hug them all. you guys are way too forgiving. damn you and your pure hearts

anyway so Deku’s like “yeah, definitely”

(ETA: almost forgot to comment on the “I’m no longer alone” part – he basically corrects the guy and says “sorry, but you’ll need to direct that question towards all of us, not just me, because moving forward we’re a team.” good stuff.)

you know what though, all joking aside... fuck yeah. because perfect victory, right. the strongest guys don’t settle for anything less. so I guess Deku has pretty exacting standards himself

also can you all just take a look at this fucking kid who’s got so much light in his eyes now that I’m gonna need eclipse goggles. hot damn. “you’re welcome” says All Might Shirt Guy as he is frantically interviewed by several local news networks asking him how he daringly managed to save Deku all by himself. “well I guess I’ve just never been the kind of guy who can sit back and let a bunch of rabble-rousers blame a little kid for all of humanity’s problems. someone had to step in and take action, you know?”

oH MY GOD THE SCENE IS FINALLY ENDING

don’t let the door hit you on your way out All Might Shirt Guy

but meanwhile, sudden Tododrama action??

oh shit

there are honestly so many ways in which Ochako’s very moving speech could have wildly backfired that I genuinely have no clue where this is headed lol. how exciting!!

so now Horikoshi is once again stalling for time with random filler panels, but this one is 10x better than the shoes lol omg

(1) was Ectoplasm’s jacket always this oversized. (2) did you guys know that if you go back to chapter 319 you can see that Horikoshi gave us a sneak peak at Enji’s Sad Detective disguise and I in fact made a joke about it in the 319 recap not realizing it was actually the stone cold truth. (3) did Shouto deliberately speed up out of impatience because Hawks was walking so fucking slow and he couldn’t take it any longer. (4) and what, I ask you, is up with these dramatic speedlines. so many mysteries here. what a masterpiece

everyone is acting all shocked about something ahh what’s going on

wait what

what the heck. did they just loop around behind everyone. what was the point of that lol. “anyway, so this is what they look like from the back” well okay, thanks for that Ectoplasm

(ETA: so it seems like they were actually hanging out someplace else away from the crowd this whole time, I guess? here I thought they had more faith in Enji’s disguise. I guess Shouto and Hawks don’t particularly want to attract this crowd’s attention themselves right now either, though.)

I am so fucking confused lmao

speaking of All Might WHERE THE FUCK IS HE lol. but yes, good, OFA brings everyone together, and Hawks is very deeply moved about this out of the blue all of a sudden. you know how it is

aw heck yeah now this is another filler panel I can get behind

Mineta really wants that hug, good lord. I genuinely love this actually. Mineta if you could just stay little and cute and keep crying about how much you love your classmates in a non-gross way for the rest of the series I would be so appreciative. you’re doing great

IIDA IS HOLDING DEKU’S HAND THIS IS NOT A DRILL. ONE TIME WASN’T ENOUGH FOR MY MAN HE’S ADDICTED NOW

what did I tell you. Kiri wants to get all of the mob’s autographs now. Kiri you’re a peach

Shouji having a conversation with another mutant type is a very nice touch! we really need to get to his backstory soon. I feel like that casual remark from GFL earlier was kind of hinting at more to come

is this the first time we’ve ever seen the Yaoyorictionary in action?? never forget that Viz tried to call it the “Yaoyorozu Reference Book” because they hate fun

last but not least, KAMIBAKU IS BACK ON THE MENU, FUCK YEAH. Kaminari trying to spice things up and introduce a little bit of controversy by smacking Kacchan on the back of the head for god knows what. I will be deeply disappointed after this if I can’t find at least one person unironically declaring that KamiBaku is now toxic and abusive

lfkdlWLWK TODODRAMA??

oh my god. Shouto’s face. Enji’s face. the back to “oyaji” again. the blunt, not-taking-no-for-an-answer, “I don’t know how much louder the universe can scream at you that doing things alone is not it, so hopefully you got the point” directness of it. fffdlkslj I’m so ready for this Horikoshi please don’t fuck it up my expectations are so high

HOLY FUCK

I SCROLLED DOWN AND HE WAS ALL “( ❛‿❛)” AND I JUST WASN’T FUCKING EXPECTING THAT OKAY. JESUS CHRIST. GIVE ME A SEC

lol okay moment over and now Enji’s pulling his hat down all dramatically like a world-weary Cowboy

OH MY GOD WERE YOU FACETIMING??

AHHHHHHHHH

(ETA: not to put Iida down or anything, but it’s kind of strange that Aizawa is all “the class rep sure did great” when Ochako is the one that was giving that whole big speech for like twenty minutes just now lol.)

(ETA 2: “thank god Iida stepped in just in the nick of time to keep Mineta from hugging Deku.” sorry Mineta I really do like you lately but it’s still low-hanging fruit lol.)

HE LOOKS SO SAD??! HE LOOKS LIKE HEARTBREAK ITSELF??! I AM BESOUGHT WITH THE URGE TO REACH INTO MY SCREEN AND PULL HIM INTO THE SAFETY OF MY ARMS??? MY GOD, AND I THOUGHT DEKU NEEDED HUGS

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH okay I was gonna just hold down the letter H for a full minute and count it out loud but within about ten seconds I realized I needed to chill lol

-- but then again NO, I DON’T NEED TO CHILL, I HAVE ZERO CHILL, ACTUALLY, BECAUSE IT’S AIZAWA WITH A ROBOT LEG AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

COMPLETE WITH ROBOT TOES FOR THAT EXTRA TOUCH OF AUTHENTICITY!! I LIKE HOW HORIKOSHI PUT ALL THIS EXTRA “!!!” EMPHASIS AROUND IT IN CASE WE COULD SOMEHOW POSSIBLY FAIL TO TAKE NOTICE. “REMEMBER, EVERYONE?” SAYS HORIKOSHI HELPFULLY. “REMEMBER THAT TIME AIZAWA CHOPPED OFF HIS OWN LEG?” oh wow now that you mention it we somehow forgot all about that. like who do you take us for

OH NO NOT THE SAD BOYFRIEND ANGST THAT I WAS SECRETLY LOOKING FORWARD TO WITH GLEE

well at least he’s not M.I.A. or back with the villains again like I thought he might be. still, that’s gotta be brutal to know your friend is in there somewhere, but to not be able to reach him again no matter how hard you try. that’s the kind of angst that pays off in final battles just when you most expect it. such is my hope, at any rate

what’s this now??

trying to decide if this is Horikoshi’s way of saying don’t worry about that, or his way of saying definitely worry about that lol

anyway so Aizawa is out here being all irresponsibly handsome once again. when is someone going to do something about him

here for Sexy Robot Leg Eyepatch Aizawa clenching his fists and making speeches about revenge. pretty sure we’re all here for that

WELL, WELL, WELL

IT’S ABOUT FUCKING TIME

I’M VERY GLAD YOU’RE ALIVE AND SEEMINGLY WELL, THOUGH!

BUT WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK THOUGH, ALL MIGHT

ffff. bracing myself for that cliffhanger next week. you’d better not touch one hair on this man’s head Horikoshi. I’m watching you 

[zhuhongs]

Hello everyone. omnibus update. oh my god am i tired but i legit dont even have a bed bc my cousin is.. not v helpful at all. soooo where do i start. lol.

Okay i got outta quarantine at 11 and took a taxi to my dorm. BUTTT my dorm building is located on a street that has a very busy street market. so i was dropped off a little bit further down and the driver told me it was down there and i thought i knew where it was do i confidently walked down a busy busy street with two monster luggages and got lost and almost hit with a scooter until a VERY NICE uncle helped me find the place. Then i checked in. which was ... interesting bc i came at the same time as a dude from shanghai. and the dorm leader was very... laid back and took her sweet time to check ne in. thus was fine but i was like... nervous lol. anyways, afterwards i talked to her and told her yk. why im here, that i speak chinese a bit. she was v nice and friendly. she told me all my roommates are out but theyre all japanese. which is funny bc like... i practice chinese SO MUCH to be like.. here are ur roommates. speak in jpn which. i can do. but LOL. so i go in, i fought with the door. so fucking much. omg that door beat my ASS. LIKE NO OTHER. no one was there. i barely got my things set up and wrote a note and left on the door bc i had orientation right after. and i thought like. oh okay just go pay my fees. get my schedule and leave. NOPE. i go in, I'm immediately doing a verbal interview to gauge my language abilities even tho i already took a placement test. and theyre like. cool, the class for ur level is going on. Right Now so uh. go to class. girl i was do hungry. so i go, sit in class for 3 hrs (not bad im just tired). My teacher is soooooo nice and very animated. i really like her. class is... a little higher than my level tbh. there was a lot i didnt know and it moves v fast... i feel so winded. But ik I'll be able to do it just fine. Oh yea i took the bus by myself and hhhh oh my god. the bus alone was so much. i sit down. wait for my bus. i thought i had the wrong one bc i saw a bus with my number on the opposite side and swore i was gonna miss the bus but i didnt. also i tried to give this old lady my seat and she scolded me by saying that she stands so much to keep herself healthy and then told me that i need to close my legs and sit up straight bc I'll look prettier. lmaooooo. and she told me not to be on my phone like the girl beside me. then the girl beside me asked me if i was a student and we had a conversation. she was very nice. helped me a lot she was japanese so it helped that i speak japanese a bit. there are. so many japanese students here. the guy i sit next to in class is japanese. i asked him his name but from his accent i knew he was japanese so i said "もしかして日本人ですか?" and he was like "はい! あなたも?!??" and i was like... nooo ofc not. and i explained i just studied it as a teenager bc i was a weeb. we talked abt anime. he likes bp which yk... unfortunate now but i doubt this random guy knows that whole deal. but yea, had many good pleasant conversations. tho nothing like deep connection but i didn't really expect that anyways. But yea, after i got out i was supposed to meet my cousins old roommate to get her mattress and fucking.. oh my god. nothing went right so my cousin was like... uh can u stay on campus till i get outta work and im like. uhhh thatd be 3 hrs and i rlly just wanna go back and lie down. and she didnt respond so i came back, met my roommates. which was... nice but kinda strange. there was a point they were kinda just all surrounding me and i was in a corner (like actually physically) trying to speak in half chinese half japanese. which was hard bc im just very disoriented. its been a long day and its only 7pm. but my cousin just got back to me abt the mattress. I'm meeting someone else at the dorms hopefully soon to get a mattress and then i can Finally SLEEP.... today gas been so much but in a very good way!!

[redxblueihateloveyou]

Hiiii!!! 💫💕🌸🥳

Can I bother with a question... I was (re)watching that zhang qiling edit (not today) - 'cause it's so cool, btw- and I wondered if Reboot Xiaoge’s your favourite one...? And if you're up to answering, what do you think about the other adaptations? Especially (our small bean) xiao yuliang's interpretation of xiaoge?

🤗🌺💐🐰💕

Hey, my precious patootie hehe ILY it always makes me very happy knowing that you rewatch my vids <3

lol dang it, I was kinda hoping to avoid this question, just because I feel like I'd find it hella hard to explain some things, but I'll try my best and hopefully it'll make some sense xD

I'll start from afar bc I wanna try to explain my reasonings, since I don't want to go without arguments into such highly debated question lolz. I talked about this a bit in my previous asks somewhere, but not broadly as to why that one guy hit all the right spots.

So throughout the books Wu Xie always does this wonderful thing, where he very tangibly describes the feeling he gets when Xiaoge is near, I mean like the aura around him. And he always somehow does it so colorful, that this mix of safety, assurance, calmness, composure and some things I can't quite put into one noun, that he brings to him, I think everyone who've read the books can recognize as this almost magical "Xiaoge feeling". It's not just the way he acts in some dangerous situations or smth like that. It's just everything. You either have it or you don't. And here goes my first argument... to me none of them, except for Huang Junjie and Yuliang have it.

I mean it's not even the obvious stuff, it's like the way they move during the action scenes, the way they even stand and hold themselves, the way they touch Wu Xie, the tone of their voices (both of which are like soothing as fuck), little things you'd think wouldn't matter, but when you watch it and all the puzzle pieces are together, you're like... fuck yeah, thats him.

Also not really that weighty of a point, but to me there's always a joy to see that the actor who plays the character not only gets what's he's playing, but also loves it, bc it's always seen on screen. Usually when some asked about the character they play and what they have in common for example they answer with obvious things like if some character is introverted they're like "well I also don't talk very much" or smth like that, you know what I mean. When I was watching interviews of Yuliang and Huang Junjie I was just smiling so much, bc they've said such things that made me go "yeah, Qiling is safe in their hands".

In Reboot case working in such close proximity with the author definitely also played a huge role here. Bc it kinda gets complicated in some aspects since the books are written from Wu Xie's point of view and you can't only base your picture on his perspective, just bc it's coming from a person who after being basically told "you're my whole world" goes "I'm just a person he randomly passes by in his long life" in his thoughts. Not only he's utterly clueless and dumb when it comes to all this, that he wouldn't notice the way Qiling looks at him and other things, its also not that kind of book, that would go "I suddenly caught poker face looking at me like I'm his whole existence" (and I honestly don't want it to be that book lmao). So you have to take into the account here stuff like what author says to get the whole picture, bc if you look at that from the point of Qiling's view for example, this shit takes a whole wild turn. So I really loved that in UN and Reboot ways of showing Qiling's feelings were well thought out and fit the timeline.

Bc it also works both ways, when it comes to other adaptations. Like Qiling is very and I mean ETREMELY hard to win over. We all know that it was a very long process of gaining his trust and even longer for him to fall for Wu Xie to the point of him being his everything. So what I want in those interpretations is for them to get at which point of their relationships what Xiaoge's behavior makes sense. I do not need any fanservice if it ruins the character, I'll just hate it. The thing that their feelings didn't come out of nowhere is what I LOVE about this ship, bc I'm not the kind of person who believes in "we love for nothing" thing and love at first sight thing (only "got hots for each other" at first sight), bc thats bull. Wu Xie became his everything after a long LONG process of getting to know each other. At the beginning tho he was the same stranger to him as everyone else. So what Reboot Qiling feels for Wu Xie is not what UN's Qiling feels for Wu Xie yet and what UN's Qiling feels for Wu Xie is not what Lost Tomb's Qiling feels for Wu Xie (which at that point was nothing). And I feel like not everyone gets the fact that you can totally wreck the character if you make him behave not the way he behaved in that particular time. Like for example, if someone would make a MDZS adaptation where at the very beginning of their relationships LZ treats WWX the way he treated him after the reincarnation just because "who cares, it's still LZ", that would be dumb af, see what I mean. So Xiaoge having a weakness for Wu Xie in part one is automatically not a Xiaoge to me, bc a huge part of his character and the thing NPSS speaks a lot about is just how IMPOSSIBLE it is for someone to catch his attention and how long it took Wu Xie to get there. So let's just say to me UN and Reboot Qilings for the first time didn't feel like some mashup or character summary/parody, they were Qilings the way they are supposed to be in that part of the story, bc it was the only times someone actually bothered to coordinate it.

Now as to why I prefer one to another. Xiaoge has this thing... the way he holds himself with other people, that is sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally suppressing.

Like everyone knows that if you're a passerby, Qiling genuinely doesn't fucking care and would in fact be pretty harsh about it in terms of treating people like they do not deserve their attention. He won't be like "please, don't bother me", he simply ignored them like an empty space. He is also like that with acquaintances who in his opinion do not deserve his respect like that girl who went hysterical, bc she was upset that he was the only one who wasn't drooling on her like all other men on the crew, Chen Wenjin, Wu Xie's uncles and etc. He's not openly disrespectful unless they trigger him in some way (usually by trying to act superior or later on for not treating Wu Xie right), but if they do, he will in fact remind them their place in sometimes a very rude way, at times humiliating them in front of ppl bc he looks younger than them and talking starts.

He's always doing things on his own terms and hates being told what to do. Like he legit scared Chen Wenjin just with a look and the tone of his voice when he said "let go", when she tried to command him on the mission and grabbed him trying to lecture him about what he should or shouldn't do. That's why Wu Erbai didn't even try anything like this and let him do whatever he needed to do and equally lead the mission in Reboot. And why the scene where Wu Xie 'commands' "Xiaoge, come back" and he immediately listens holds another special place in my heart. Bc he NEVER and I mean NEVER allows such things to ANYONE.

So here I came to a point of why despite loving them both dearly, my favorite Xiaoge is Huang Junjie.

I have this dissonance with Yuliang's version when to me in many scenes it felt like he and Wu Xie are the same age. Like if he was Xiaoge, but in his 20s. In his interactions with Chen Wenjin the dynamics was turned upside down, with him being okay with her telling him what to do and just in general the way she behaved with him. Same as like I didn't always quite believe him to be on par with older generation or even Pangzi, it just felt like he was truly younger than them. Some scenes that I do find extremely cute just don't fit book Xiaoge at all, I'm talking about some moments like his face when Wu Xie gave him food, or him pouting and many things he's done, when you were going "uwu he's a baby". He just never gives me this feeling in the books ever, not just bc he's 100 years old, but sad fact here.. bc he's simply unable to behave that way. Like in the books you'll desperately want to shower him with love, but he's just... I can't quite explain, it's very sad.

I guess it's just you know these characters, who are like hundreds years old, but look like they're 18? I think you have to be very careful with how you write those, so you could deliver that. And in UN because of some changed dynamics and scenes I straight up forgot about it, until Wu Xie threw some joke like "he's an old man" in front of a restaurant.

In Reboot Xiaoge could make Wu Erbai stutter with one move, put Yuliang's version in the same scene, I just don't think it would've worked. Like I'm trying to imagine him telling UN's Wu Erbai what to do and having troubles already haha. Same as I don't think he's capable to be genuinely mad at Wu Xie, and HJJ nailed it esp in one of my fav when Wu Xie was laughing at Pangzi's joke about him catching cold. The look he gave him and how ZYL just retreated was priceless xD. And boy could Qiling get angry with him in the books!

Otherwise I didn't have any drastic fall outs there, like with Joseph's Wu Xie and Ah Ning's death, because that was just too much of a difference, but there were still moments where it was once again this the same scene completely different emotion thing. He was more tolerable to ppl in general here, more pliable. And 50% of the time he gave me the cute lost kitten type, which I just cannot connect with the feeling he gave me in the books. His personality is a cat type 100%, but like seriously "cute baby" is the last word combination I would ever apply to book Xiaoge, but with Yuliang's version it's easily applied. So small bean he is indeed. With Joseph and in UN it works incredibly perfect to me, but the way he is in UN is at times too gentle. And there are lots of scenes where Joseph himself looked at him in a way "you're too cute, let me pinch your cheeks" kind of way, or the way he like sat down next to him on the coast, he was a bit babying him at times. I can't imagine book pingxie doing that. It's just a whole different vibe, the way he takes care of him, the way he lets him take care of him... it's...uuuuuuuuu another vibe (see, I'm so good at explaining lmao).

It's also kinda funny to me, bc HJJ who's the smallest and who irl truly a kitten never once gave me that feeling on screen for some reason. The one babied and loved by every crew and old ppl, who was cutely hiding behind ZYL's back on set, who won't sue an ex who almost ruined his career bc of how stupid she is, bc he "didn't want to hurt her", who according to staff can't even step on a fly, whom CMH was petting for several minutes after he had to hit him with a prop brick bc he didn't wanna do it lmao. I was just like.. ok, this is hilarious, bc I in fact didn't expect him to be a small bean, so watching all the bts made me go LOOOOL. Probably ZYL acting like a 3 year old helped him transform and the age difference problem got lost lmao

As for other adaptations. You know I can't watch seriously "Lost Tomb", I think some ppl probably have some nostalgic feeling about it, but I'm sorry, to me it's fucking hilarious. Like I've already said it looks like some type of twilight parody thing or smth. Soft damselle Wu Xie esp killed me, bc 1st when he ever was that, 2nd in the first book he's salty af, I don't even know this dude in this interpretation, I was like who's this. YangYang I know him from other things, I really don't think it's his role. I know the script and everything is bad. I know the costume and hair are horrendously funny, but it's just I was watching him in those action scenes and was like no... just I'm sorry but I'm not feeling it. I simply just don't know what to say about the whole thing seriously, bc I don't even know where to start. 10 episodes of some salad finished with one mutilated scene from book 6 for no reason the fact that characters are weird themselves also I can't quite tell, did they really just meet or they imply smth else lmao.. I'm sorry, but I do not get it.

I've given LT2 another try after finishing all the books and I've dropped it half way through, Cheng Yi wasn't even close to how I pictured Xiaoge in any aspect. He in fact didn't do anything OOC or off the book or anything, I just was like "not my Qiling". Happens sometimes.

Explore with the note you already know how I feel about this lol let's just forget.

P.S. To be fair here also maybe we should take into account the fact that some got luckier than other with "at which point" Xiaoge they're playing. Like for example, "Wrath of the Sea" and "Qingling Tree" books which is LT2 is not exactly you can say much about Qiling there, he trolls them there in the beginning (in a brilliant way that was totally lost in the adaptation) and he is there in "Wrath of Sea", but it's not the part that can make his character shine in any way, there's not much things happening there that would make you fall for him or get to know him; Yuliang grabbed the fattest piece bc it's middle several books, when they're always together and his character shines the most in terms of clues about past, opening up to Wu Xie and Pangzi, and there are many many events where you can get the picture of what kind of man he is; Huang Junjie grabbed my fav piece of utter devotion, where he's already fully and wholeheartedly belongs to Wu Xie, that I'm just weak for. So like... there's also that I guess xD.

[clumsyclifford]

ok hello i absolutely love all ur fics, you’ve just got a certain quality in ur writing that is just… mmm. yeah so anyway, do you have any advice on how to improve or just how to write?? (especially fic cause personally i struggle with that more than original stuff??)

hello!! that is very kind of you to say thank you <3

advice on how to write. oh boy. oh man. well i can try. i will do my best. i will also try to be brief but we all know how that song goes

update from having finished answering this: alright. okay. this is not only long, but decidedly english teacher-y. i’m sorry that i am the way that i am. this is what you get for asking a leo for writing advice. am i joking? maybe. maybe not. anyway. this post got away from me in a big way so here’s a read more. warning: LONG post under the cut.

1. study your characters. for RPF like the band stuff i write, that literally means watching interviews, watching them perform, seeing how they interact with each other, picking up on their mannerisms (behavior) - what they do with their hands, if they repeat themselves or stutter when they talk, the quality of their voice when they're talking about different things, and so on. also keep track of things they mention a lot in interviews especially about each other - for example jack has mentioned before that alex has an annoying habit of twirling his hair when he zones out. that kind of thing. IMPORTANT NOTE!: you don’t have to use all of this information. just like studying for anything, you collect all the information you can and then you parse through it and use whatever you think will contribute or be relevant to your story.

2. remember that characters are people. or at least they’re representing people, which is an important distinction (see #3). still, considering that your characters are people can be a helpful way to get out of your head. see, characters are supposed to be archetypical, and fulfill a role, and say certain things in certain ways and never really deviate from that. but people are highly unpredictable and behave in random ways for random reasons and have thought processes that are unfathomable. people will just do fuckin’ whatever. if you’re worried that your characters aren’t behaving in a believable way, keep in mind that you’re trying to make your characters represent people, and people’s behavior is justifiable any number of ways. people just do shit.

3. remember that characters are not people. sike! no but seriously, this is just as important to remember. unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, characters are never going to be people. that’s a good thing for stories, though. characters can pick up on nuance in senses that people can’t - they can distinguish between different facial expressions, different smells, different sounds - BUT ONLY INSOFAR AS IT MOVES THE STORY ALONG. in other ways, characters are ridiculously oblivious. you can use this to your advantage. in fact, a lot of the time, you have to. if your character notices right away that someone is flirting with him, then you can’t write a 30k slow burn, for example. characters don’t do that thing humans do where they go “what?” but then halfway through the re-explanation they register what’s been said. pretty much everything characters say has meaning. (by this i don’t mean semantic meaning, i mean significance - characters don’t really just say “what?” because they didn’t hear what someone said, they say “what?” because they can’t believe it or they don’t understand it or they refuse to understand it. characters never seem to run into the didn’t-hear-them problem. must be nice.)

characters can do whatever you want or need them to do, because you’re in charge of them. (sometimes this doesn’t feel true - mine do all kinds of shit and i just have go “well alright then” - but it is true.) they are gears in a story. you decide when and how they turn.

4. dialogue is your friend. i am super super biased here, because i looove writing dialogue. if you talk to sam about this i’m sure she would say that description and narration are the ways to go. but you came to me, so i get to say that dialogue is god. i don’t want to say that dialogue is the only method of communication (i know nonverbal communication is real), but dialogue is the fastest and most effective method of communication, and by extension, the most effective way to advance relationships between characters. now. obviously there are exceptions. if characters are kissing, they’re probably not doing a lot of talking. if they’re trying to be undercover or discreet, they’re more likely to rely on gestures and facial expressions than speaking. if you’re writing a very peaceful scene, you might not want to undercut it by adding a lot of chit-chat. but i maintain that dialogue is the best way to move a story along, for a few reasons. 

first, at least for me, too much description is just tiring. depending on how skillful the writer is (sam), i can read a fair amount before i hit my limit, but unlike in mean girls, the limit DOES exist. you don’t want to over-describe the world (see #5). second, i find that dialogue is a really really good indicator of a person’s character. this is especially true and relevant in fanfiction, which is a lot more character-driven than original fiction in many ways. also, in a sec i’m gonna talk about showing [not/and] telling, which is every english teacher’s bitch, but dialogue is a really good way of showing who a person is and also a good way to establish facts about the universe. you could just narrate and be like “Jack hated waking up early,” and that works and in many cases it’s perfectly legit. but you could also do something like this:

“What the fuck,” Jack mumbled, still half asleep. “You better have a really fucking good reason to be waking me up this early. Like someone better have fucking died.”

and sometimes that’s just a more fun way to say it. (for the record you can also show AND tell here! there’s no reason why you can’t have this line of dialogue and then a line in the narration confirming how very much jack is not a morning person!)

the last reason why i am particularly fond of dialogue is because i am also particularly fond of communication, which is a preference thing. let’s face it, guys: characters aren’t gonna communicate if they’re not literally actually talking to each other. dialogue means talking to each other. talking to each other means solving problems, fixing (or creating) conflicts, understanding each other better. i love communication, ergo, i love dialogue. And You Should Too. 

5. describe the world, but don’t over-describe. i opened this fic earlier and it was like “jack was excited to wake up to go to his first class at the university of baltimore” and i just. i was like is this really relevant. do i really need to know this. and i never found out because i closed the fic but in my defense it was on wattpad and i had only opened it out of curiosity. look. there are three ways to use details in fic. (a) introduce them right away (b) introduce them when they become relevant or (c) don’t introduce them at all. let me give you some examples. 

(a) say your character A (i’m using jack because i’m used to him) wakes up. he’s in his room in his house off-campus. character B (rian) walks into the room. this might be a good time to explain that rian is his housemate. to that point: “show not tell” is a good rule, but sometimes “show and tell” is just as good. e.g.: 

Rian walks in, holding Jack’s Green Day shirt and looking irritated. That’s really nothing new; Rian looks irritated at Jack roughly once a day. Being housemates for a year will do that to a friendship.

boom, now you’ve let everyone know they live together without throwing it in their face, and you’ve also told everyone that these two guys are friends and have been friends for at least a year but probably longer. you showed it by having rian walking in holding jack’s shirt - usual housemate behavior - but you also told it in a subtle way that established the relationship and some kind of history between these two. well done.

(b) sometimes you want a certain detail to make an impact. this is the kind of thing you hold onto and don���t specify, and in certain cases you leave the reader wondering, “well what about x?” and then when you finally explain x they go ohhhhhhhhhh. yknow. the italicized oh. consider the following:

(A)

“Alex is in my bio class,” Rian says, referring to Jack’s ex-boyfriend of last year.

Jack frowns. “So? Why should I care?”

“He’s my lab partner,” Rian says. “I have to spend a lot of time with him.”

“I don’t care what you and Alex do,” Jack says. “But you should know he sucks at bio.”

Rian gives Jack a look. “First of all, that’s not true, he’s incredibly smart. And second, I’m telling you as a courtesy, because I thought you might not want your ex-boyfriend hanging around our house after he broke your fucking heart.”

(B)

“Alex is in my bio class,” Rian says.

Jack frowns. “So? Why should I care?”

“He’s my lab partner,” Rian says. “I have to spend a lot of time with him.”

“I don’t care what you and Alex do,” Jack says. “But you should know he sucks at bio.”

Rian gives Jack a look. “First of all, that’s not true, he’s incredibly smart. And second, I’m telling you as a courtesy, because I thought you might not want your ex-boyfriend hanging around our house after he broke your fucking heart.”

the only difference between these two excerpts (which i just wrote lol they’re not from anything real) is that the second one doesn’t explain who alex is right away. that makes it way more interesting when rian reveals who alex is a few lines later. magic.

(c) take this college au that we’ve established here. where does it take place, you ask? easy answer: it doesn’t matter. you don’t need to say what school they’re at. this will make your job easier, because then no one can fact check you, and it also means you don’t have to decide what school they’re at. but even if you do decide, it’s not usually necessary to say. believe me, you can go thousands of words without ever needing to specify what school they’re at. you know why? because it doesn’t matter. and no one cares. and as soon as you specify in canon that they’re at a particular school, you are bound to be accurate to everything that school does, and that makes your job way more difficult than it needs to be. as hazel once said, work smarter, not harder. 

6. adverbs are also your friend. (yknow, words that describe verbs, typically ending in -ly, like “loudly” or “angrily” or “smoothly”.) ESPECIALLY when it comes to dialogue tags. (dialogue tags are the things you add to dialogue to say who’s talking and how they’re talking - like “he said” or “he whispered” or “he earnestly explained” or whatever). a lot of the writing advice you’ll see nowadays will usually guide you away from overusing dialogue tags other than the classic “says/said” and i STRONGLY concur with that advice. things like yelled, cried, mumbled, snapped - these are very good in moderation, when you’re really trying to emphasize the way a person is speaking. the more you use them, the less impact they have. in most cases, a simple “he said [adverb]” will do. instead of “he snapped” consider “he said curtly/sharply/coldly.” instead of “he mumbled” consider “he said quietly/clumsily/softly.” I WANT TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THESE ARE NOT DIRECT SYNONYMS. every word has a nuanced and slightly different meaning and that is the BEAUTY of the english language!!!! all i’m saying is that in many cases, a verb can be replaced with an adverb to achieve roughly the same effect, without making the reader feel like they’re scanning a thesaurus.

and speaking of a thesaurus: it’s not cheating to use outside resources like thesaurus.com to help you come up with words. i fuckin love thesaurus.com. i use that shit all the time for everything. i use it when i’m writing emails. i used it just now to write that last paragraph. thesaurus.com is your BEST friend.

7. grammar. (and spelling but that’s really a given.) unfortunately if i tried to teach you all of the essential rules of grammar this post would exceed tumblr’s previously-nonexistent word count limit. so i’m not gonna teach you any of them. this is just a general point to suggest that if/when you’re writing, have someone you trust, with a good grasp of grammar, look over it. of course it doesn’t have to be perfect or AP style or anything like that. readers will overlook a certain amount of grammar mistakes and every reader has a different threshold. but in general, as a grammar geek and former journalism editor-in-chief, i have a duty to my grammurai code to preach the importance of grammar in writing. good grammar does not necessarily mean good writing and vice versa, bad grammar does not necessarily mean bad writing, but bad grammar makes good writing a lot harder to read, and in some cases will even obscure your actual meaning. so please, have someone read it. for the record this is me offering up my services. i am very good at fixing grammar. i have lots of weaknesses in writing but grammar is one of my strengths. please prioritize grammar. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

***

okay so now that i’ve said all of this shit and pretended to be an expert and embodied everyone’s tenth grade english teacher, let me add one very important disclaimer:

none of this is always relevant.* writing is an art, not a science. you are never going to be following all of the rules, all of the time. you shouldn’t. it’s good to know the basics of constructing a plot, establishing a character, showing and/not telling, moving the story along. but a lot of this advice is really subjective and heavily influenced by my writing experience and habits and tendencies and preferences, and those are simply not generalizable to the world. i am a sample size of one and science dictates that that means my results cannot be statistically significant. i am just some guy. earlier i said you don’t want to over-describe the world. but maybe you do! maybe you’re really into worldbuilding and you want people to know what they’re getting into. maybe you’re like sam, and you just don’t feel as confident in your dialogue skills but you love painting word pictures. i said that adverbs are your friend, but maybe you just prefer to use verbs. maybe you don’t want ANY dialogue tags and you want the reader to interpret the dialogue based on context and content. i said that characters aren’t people and they won’t behave like people, but maybe you’re trying to write hyper-realistic characters. maybe you’re just going for believability over narrative. WHATEVER. the point is, rules are made to be broken. no one is going to have The Answer for How To Write Good because there isn’t just one answer. every single writing rule has exceptions and you can be that exception as many times as you want.

*except grammar. grammar is fucking always relevant.

i hope any of this advice was helpful to you, even though i english teacher-ed the fuck out of it. and for what it’s worth, i approached this as if you were a relatively novice writer, but i know absolutely jack shit about your writing prowess and experience and habits. so maybe you already know all of this and none of what i’ve said is helpful at all. if you have a more specific problem, i would be happy to try and help. if you’re hoping for more specific feedback, i’d have to read something of yours first - but again, happy to try and help. i don’t know if you can tell but i loooove writing and english and grammar and all of this shit and it would be my honor. i have now spoken so long that james madison himself is begging me to shut up so i’ll stop here but thank you for coming by and giving me the opportunity to expatiate a shit ton. and GOOD LUCK i forgot the most important advice of writing which is HAVE FUN LOVE WHAT YOU WRITE AND WRITE WHAT YOU LOVE OKAY BYE

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

(sees another fandom that I can ask you about and cheers) Orphan Black! Thoughts? I don't know Dr Who but Tatiana is one of my favorite actors period.

Anon you are so sweet! I'm always happy to chat about fandoms and characters and whatnot, and I will never not appreciate the majesty of Tatiana's acting. That is one of the greatest parts of the show hands down.

Orphan Black, to me, is a show that had incredible potential, but didn't really live up to the excitement it created. (Loooong post ahead.)

The thing is, Orphan Black builds a chilling mystery and background, the world it gradually creates as it goes for about the first two seasons, got be very invested and made me wonder a lot about where it was going to go and what the answers were. The setup is brilliant, right from the start with that iconic cold open of Beth's suicide. The unknown is what really helped this show get as thrilling as it was, because the actual answers behind the unknown were kind of hit and miss, and it seemed like far too often, the show just wasn't interested in telling it's story. Hijinks where the clones impersonate each other in slice of life events? That's fun at first and it really works well as they're still getting to know each other. But after a while, it gets tedious, and it seems like the show would rather fuck around and have dance parties (seriously, that scene was such a #BigLippedAlligatorMoment) than focus on the story and the threat that the sisters are facing. Virtually all of Allison's plotlines are like this, they feel like they belong in a different show, and for some reason the writers insisted on giving her one of these storylines like, every season. After Allison passively murders her own friend out of suspecting that she's spying on her, I just don't feel like an arc about her running for some PTA office position even matters. It doesn't feel right.

Speaking of that, here's another example: Donnie. Why did the end of the first season suggest that he was this secret mastermind working for Leekie? The whole idea just deflates in Season 2 and doesn't really go anywhere. He just goes back to being the bumbling sweetheart he was before. Why even have him be the spy? Maybe it should have been Ainsley. Do you want to know the exact moment that I think Orphan Black went wrong? Like, the specific scene? When Leekie was killed off. The character who had thus far been the Big Bad, gets taken out in the stupidest possible way, a literal accident on Donnie's part, and it's even played for laughs. After that point, the show really struggled to regain it's footing, though I don't think it completely went off the rails until about Season 4, and it was still generally hit or miss. Like, some stuff was really good. The introduction of the Castor clones, the development of Rachel's character (I'll get to her, trust me.) and the reveal of Kendall Malone. But it seemed like so much else was just forgotten or otherwise not resolved. Whatever happened to Cal? Sure, the show wanted to focus on the sisters...but Kira deserves to know her father if she wants to. That's just one example. It's a crying shame because this show is sometimes incredible. The metaphor that I always use for situations like this, is a card game. The show has all the right cards in its hand, they're just not being played.

The two strongest characters, at least to me, were Rachel and Helena. One of these characters was superbly written and went through a devastating arc. The other was Helena. We need to talk about her. In Season 1, she really cemented herself as a memorable presence with her trademark accent, her scars, her whole damn personality (again, hats off to Tatiana) and of course, that iconic screechy theme music that accompanied her. Which at first made us jump, but eventually made us cheer. I adored Helena, and I loved the development of her relationship with Sarah. Who went from shooting her in Season 1, to being deadset on rescuring her in Season 3, being furious with Siobhan for betraying her. (This is unrelated but Siobhan has the same " twist villain fakeout" at the end of Season 1 that Donnie does, and it's quite frustrating.) And yet, I swear, the writers just didn't know what to do with Helena half the time. They put her on a bus for long stretches, including one point where she just up and leaves Allison's house in Season 4, for no given reason. And the characters just kind of...don't care. The same thing happens when she gets arrested. No one cares to try and find Helena, even though she's unstable and often a danger to those around her. Even though she's by herself with no real ability to function in society. Even though she's pregnant. There is no excuse for this, and no Sarah, that "I'm sorry, I avoided you" scene in Season 5 is not going to cut it. It's such an afterthought.

I'm being rather critical, but I hope you can tell that this is from a point of passion. I genuinely enjoyed this show and getting to watch it. Just that sometimes it didn't feel like the show cared that I was watching. However, this was not true whenever Rachel was onscreen. Look, I'm a Merula Snyde stan, so you can probably already guess how I feel about Rachel. Despite her crimes, despite her constant slipping back the dark side, I felt so bad for Rachel at the end of it all. That scene with Kira really sums it up. "Who hurt you?" "All of them." And no scene is more intense than when she stabs out the eye cam. Like, I'm sorry, I pitied Rachel pretty much from Season 2 on. Her parents were horrible to her, and I'm supposed to think Ethan is the good guy here? He kills himself in front of his own daughter, telling her that she doesn't deserve him. And then Sarah shoots a pencil through her eye, causing brain damage and requiring a long recovery. I'm not saying that Sarah was wrong to do what she did, just that if I were in her shoes, I'd still feel a degree of guilt for Rachel's condition. In the end, I'm devastated that she was barred from Clone Club, when she made the right decision at the point it mattered. But there's just too much history there, and Sarah won't ever forgive her. (Though again, I do feel as though there's blame to share.) Rachel is my favorite character and I never expected her to be. But she's just so complex. Side note: "Enjoy your oophorectomy" is so damn quotable. I don't know why but I love that line.

So, Rachel's my favorite. Who's my least favorite? It might surprise you. It's Delphine. I'm sorry, but I just...I couldn't get on board with C*phine. Not after Season 3. I was waiting for the point that the show would push to finally redeem Delphine for her turncoat role, for all of the hell that she put Cosima through. By Season 5 though? I realized that as far as the writers were concerned? She already was redeemed. Even though she did nothing to earn it, except be presumed dead by Cosima. The way she treats Cosima in Season 3 is actually disgusting. Her reasoning for breaking up with Cosima is circular. She has to love "all the clones" in order to be with Cosima, and the way to do that is to take over Rachel's job, which means they can't date anymore? I'm not the only one who thought that didn't make sense, right? Oh and let's talk about how she stalks Cosima's date, breaks into her house, and threatens her life. Red. Flags. Cosima even says the line, "If you're not going to be with me, just let me go." I'm sorry, that should not be something she has to beg for. Delphine's behavior made me want her to stay far, far away from Cosima. Who is, incidentally, a sweetie and I absolutely adore her. I legit have trouble remembering that Tatiana's playing her because she just looks and acts so different. That said, even though I immensely disliked Delphine, I am so very glad that they made one of the clones gay. Just like I'm glad that they made one of them trans. (Though...Tony wasn't handled especially well.)

In general, I do think the earlier seasons were stronger. The Brightborn arc, while interesting, didn't really contribute much to the overarching narrative. We got the backstory on Beth's suicide and finally learned the truth about her, I suppose. Still, even though Beth is one of my favorite of the clones, and I never expected her to be either...I feel like the actual reason given for why she took her own life was rather illogical. She apparently did it because the investigation was putting the clones in danger of another Helsinki. Okay, but just because Evie Cho says you should off yourself, doesn't mean you have to. You could just, like...stop investigating. And if you die under mysterious circumstances without explaining anything to the sisters, they're not going to be put off from the investigation. They're going to look into this even more, because they don't know why they're not supposed to. The reveal that she and Art fell in love toward the end adds an extra gut punch, but it also doesn't make sense because wouldn't Art have referenced it during the period that he thought Sarah was Beth? On the other hand, Season 4 also introduced MK. And I have such a soft spot for her. I adore that sheep-masked sweetie. Everyone always asks "Which clone would you date" (because fandoms can think of nothing else I guess) and I never see anyone give any love to MK. Her death absolutely tore me apart. I am glad Siobhan avenged her even if she went down at the same time. Side note, her last word being the affectionate "Chickens..." Broke me.

Season 5 was a strange beast. In general, it seemed like we were finally getting some answers to the questions that were hanging over us. Exploring the deep mythos. But then they kind of turned it around and made it just be a Wizard of Oz style fraud twist. Westmoreland isn't really inhumanly old, he's a charlatan. I don't know why that was necessary in a science fictional show. I've seen the interviews and I get what they were going for, it just feels like it would have been cooler and far creepier if he was actually that old. The puppet master pulling the strings the whole time. We also finally get some answers for Kira's superhuman healing abilities (though we never learn how she's telepathically connected to the clones) and I'm loving it, but the trouble is, it's inconsistent. Ethan "Why is this guy so popular, he's an asshole" Duncan told Rachel specifically that Sarah being able to have children was a fluke, that the clones were "barren by design." I don't know, the whole concept of Revival and of the "magical island" was really foreboding and tied in with the earlier references to The Island of Doctor Moreau. Especially that song about "Revival's Children" just...the shudders, man. But just having it be a regular old scam is...a letdown. I know it may be more realistic, but I don't always need realism in my scifi. The finale is interesting, in that it's mostly an epilogue. I'm glad the clones (sans Rachel) got to live happily ever after, but there are two gut punches right at the end that are total nitpicks but they bother me. Helena naming her kids after Art and Donnie? And writing a memoir that she names "Orphan Black?" Those two tropes can go die in a hole. They can enjoy an oophorectomy, because I'm so sick of them.

The potential of Orphan Black was practically infinite. The results of Orphan Black fell frustratingly short.

[fyeah-anya-corazon]

Ranking every potential love interest for Anya

Happy Valentine's day!

To celebrate the occasion let's look at every single character she has had as potential romantic partners. I'm including here every iteration of Anya so far.

For a teen character with more than 15 years of existence, it's amazing she hasn't had any sort of stable partner. As far as comics go, her main version has only had one romantic partner so far, but calling it a "relationship" is kind of a stretch. MSM did what the comics (embarrassingly) haven't and give her a romantic partner that I think we were all happy for, and even though it's not my favorite, it's probably the most high profile partner she'll have in a while.

Anyway, let's start the countdown!

Peter Parker

NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. Sorry shippers from MSM, but this is a big nope from me due to their student/teacher relationship from the comics and that she's still a minor in them.

Possibilities of becoming canon: I mean.... I don't doubt that at some point some hack writer might pull a Bruce/Barbara with them for some au. Probably one of the blessings of her not being as relevant as Batgirl.

Score: -110000/10 HELLSHIP HELLSHIP

Paul Townsend

Her original potential love interest in comics, he disappeared after Amazing Fantasy. He was still important enough that he even appears in the cover of AF #6 as part of Anya's civilian life.

Possibilities of becoming canon: Zero. It's clear we'll never see him again.

Score: -10/10 dude was very clearly into some shady stuff.

Rocky Flint

Her new best friend (?) they even lived together for a while. Introduced during the Spider-Girl relaunch, she is nice friend, but Rikki was the one who took the spotlight during this period.

Score: 1/10 prefer them as friends.

Black Tarantula

From the MC2 universe, I guess it works within it's "What if?" premise. A series that gives a antagonistic-but-not-too-much role to Anya in it's "what if she stayed longer with the Spider Society?" it does kinda feel natural that two characters with characters with similar origin to be attracted. (Let's not even mention how comfortable she feels with Fabian pursuing Mayday to join their harem).

Possibilities of becoming canon: canon in a reality, doubt in main reality this would happen. It would be interesting if 616 Fabian resurfaces as a enemy to Anya.

Score: 2/10 kinda works in it's reality, but I can't forgive DeFalco for thinking it was a good idea to pair a character who lost her family to narcos with a narco.

Lynn Sakura

Oh, the panel that started it all....

Anya's BFF, is a shame she was dropped after the original Araña series. There's is potential in there, but now it all rests on anyone remembering Heart of the Spider.

Possibilities of becoming canon: I mean, it cooould happen. To say there's no subtext in there would be a understatement....

Score: 4/10 just as Rocky I prefer them as friends.

Reptil

So far her only romantic partner she's had. It didn't start the best way, and ended... we actually have no idea how this ended. Next thing we know Berto was pursuing other relationships with Finnesse and White Tiger. It seemed that only Paul Tobin wanted it to happen.

Possibilities of becoming canon: He is kinda dead. He reappeared for a panel thanks to Bendis not caring about continuity, but God knows if anyone is gonna pick that up. Overall, I think there's a bigger chance for Reptil to pursue any of the previous relationships than going back to Anya.

Score: 5/10 good guy, but who thought it was a good idea making Anya's first kiss against her will?

Julie Taregon

Anya's hockey captain from very early, interviews from the time indicated that she was originally meant to have a much bigger role in Heart of the Spider. Just like Paul she was dropped by the main series, but nothing takes away from the distinction of being the one who activated Anya's powers for the first time after she asked her out.

Possibilities of becoming canon: As much possibilities as Paul or Lynn. Assuming a new Anya solo is greenlighted she would make a interesting addition to the supporting cast.

Score: 7/10 I dig it but wish she would appear more.

Mayday Parker

The newest addition to her potential partners, I've actually been shiping them from before Spider-Girls, the fact that in short 3 issues they generated enough interest that this is probably the second most popular ship at this point (came first in a twitter poll I made). There's a story with them just waiting to be written, they need to be together in a series again!

Possibilities of becoming canon: Um... I think that at this point both have the same level of relevance that if someone pitches a story were they become a couple it wouldn't hold much objection.

Score: 1000000/10 currently my fav ship.

Miles Morales

Marvel comics should be embarrassed that a cartoon made this pairing happen, as meanwhile in the comics they haven't even talked to each other. As you may notice, this list is dominated by women, if there's one guy I would smile from ear to ear if it becomes a thing it would be with Miles. They both have so much in common, it's a match made in heaven.

Possibilities of becoming canon: I actually think this has a good chance of happening. They will probably not be endgame, but I see them having a relationship along the lines of Tim and Steph.

Score: 9/10 If only Miles were a woman 😔

Gwen Stacy

Just like Miles, the cartoon did what the comics haven't and developed them into a lovely friendship (with something more...?). Arguably, the most popular ship involving Anya; on ao3 is the one with the most fics, and there's probably more fan art of this pairing than from anyone else. The main limitation with this is how in the comics writers tend to underwrite Anya while putting the spotlight on Gwen, and never developing their partnership into something more. Hopefully the upcoming Order of the Web series they've been teasing they'll finally have some heartfelt interactions.

Possibilities of becoming canon: you know what, I legit think this has a actual chance. As I said, this is a rather popular ship, at least even Seanan Maguire is aware of it and is fair to say other people at Marvel are aware of the fan art and the like. Gwen in the comics so far has ambiguous sexuality, it wouldn't be too far fetched if someone makes it canon. Just as Miles, I can't see this as endgame, but it can become a recurring relationship like Gambit and Rogue.

Score: 10/10 Marvel don't be cowards challenge.

Rikki Barnes

The og. The one that turned subtext into text. Completely unintentional, yet their relationship did eventually had ramifications on at least one of them. At this point, if anyone wants to reveal Anya as a wlw, they just need to point this relationship to justify it. Anya and Rikki were probably the closest between them than any other superhero they ever interacted with.

Possibilities of becoming canon: Uhm.... Just when I thought that Rikki wouldn't be back, she comes back AND confirmed as bi. The problem? Rikki currently has a girlfriend. Breaking up Julie and Rikki seems very mean spirited, specially for Julie. Hypothetically, if for any reason their relationship ends, Rikki and Anya would definitely become canon at some point.

Score: 1100000/10 @Marvel you owe Anya a girlfriend.

[bedlamsbard]

Part 10 of the other side AU concept!  Next up will be the epilogue scenes.  As a reminder from Part 1, the current state of the New Republic here takes more from the EU than it does from the new canon (though has some nods in that direction), because I’m more familiar with the EU and like it more.

Previous: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

About 6.5K below the break.

***

Only General Airen Cracken, the head of Rebel Intelligence, and Leia Organa were present when Hera did her post-mission debrief.  She suspected that this op was going to be the kind whose reports were mysteriously lost – that if they ever existed at all – but as it was she gave Cracken and Leia the truth as best she could.

When she had finished, Cracken and Leia glanced at each other.  The small office was quiet for a long time, broken only by the hum of the air filters on the big warship and the sound of steps in the corridor beyond the closed door.

Cracken turned the data card with the Cluster-Prism files over in his fingers, frowning to himself. He was a human male with graying fair hair, his mild expression belying the sharpness in his eyes.  After a few moments, he said, “I would say that none of what you just told us leaves this room, but I assume under the circumstances you’ll be informing members of your old crew the details.”

“I could hardly not,” Hera said, forbearing to point out that most of them had been there when she had returned.  Luke and Ahsoka had taken Kanan off to talk to him privately; since Hera hadn’t heard any alarm klaxons yet, either they had all killed each other quietly or it was going as well as it could under the circumstances.  Luke and Ahsoka didn’t get along at the best of times and this wasn’t those.

Cracken tapped the edge of the data card on his desk, then shrugged and said, “This should get us a step ahead of Warlord Zsinj – several steps ahead, with any luck.  Will you be transferring back to the Lodestar?  You’re due some leave that I assume you’ll want to take under the circumstances.”

“Airen, you know as well as I do that a general never really gets to go on leave,” Hera said dryly, which made the corner of his mouth quirk up in a grin.

“I do that.”  He pulled open a desk drawer, removed something, and tossed it to her. “By the way, the Council vote was four days ago. Alliance commissions are automatically transferred to the New Republic, but if you did want a new assignment, this would be the time to ask.”

Hera caught the neat circle of embroidered fabric and inspected it; the new insignia was the Rebel Alliance starbird surrounded by fifteen starbursts.  She turned the patch over in her fingers, thinking.

“Hera?” Cracken said, when she had been silent too long for comfort.

Hera put the patch down on the desk in front of her, smoothing her fingers over the starbird, and looked up at Cracken. “I’m going to resign my commission.”

His sandy eyebrows shot up. “Why?”

“There’s something I’ve needed to do for a long time,” Hera said slowly, “and I’ve put it aside for far too long.  I can’t do that anymore.”

“You’re talking about Ezra Bridger,” Leia said.

Hera glanced at her. “Yes.”

Cracken rubbed a hand over his chin. “I’ve read those files.  Vanished off into the Unknown Regions with Grand Admiral Thrawn and what was left of the Seventh Fleet.”

Hera nodded.

“I met Thrawn, back in the old days,” Cracken remarked.  “If he ever returned, we could be in for a bigger fight than Zsinj and Isard and the rest of that lot have been giving us.  Do you have any reason to think they’re out there? Bridger, Thrawn, the Chimaera, any of the other ships from the Seventh?”

“No more reason than to think they’re not,” Hera said. “I won’t be alone.”

“Mmm.”  Cracken tapped his fingers on the table.  “Not being from Starfighter Command or representing High Command in this case, I can’t accept your resignation, General Syndulla. I will say that since the Council vote, we’ve already had a rash of personnel resigning, officers and enlisted alike.  Some of them aren’t interested in going legit, others believe that the Council vote means the war is over.”  He shook his head.  “As long as there’s even one Imperial Remnant ship or base out there, the war will never be over.  You’d be surprised at how many people don’t believe that, though.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

He snorted.  “No, you wouldn’t.  You’re like the rest of us old-timers.  We saw too much.  Kills our credibility as far as the kids who joined up after Yavin or even Endor think, let alone the ones who lived through Cinder.”  He leaned back in his chair, sharp eyes considering.  “You’re too good an officer to lose, Hera.”

She stiffened, but he held up a finger to silence her before she could protest.

“Let me finish before you tell me to go to hell and flounce off with that resurrected boyfriend of yours.”

“I never flounce, Airen. And it’s fiancé.”

His eyebrows went up. “Congratulations are in order, I suppose.”  Then he frowned. “Is this for the damn pension?  Because as I recall, technically Jarrus was never an Alliance officer –”

Leia stirred and said, “It’s in the Articles that members of informal rebel cells have the right to apply for retroactive status if they couldn’t formally join the Alliance due to captivity, distance, or other reasons –”

“Such as being dead?” Cracken said.

Hera met his gaze. “Prove it.”

He massaged his forehead. “Oh, for love of the Force.”

“The last formal rank he held was commander,” Hera said.

“In the Grand Army of the Republic, I assume.”

“There’s precedent. Rex –”

Cracken waved a hand. “I’ll sign the datawork if that’s what you want.  If it’s just for the pension rather than actually finding him a command –” He tapped a finger on the data card. “This does count for something, but we’re a bit short of commands at the moment.”

“What, even with officers resigning left and right?” Hera asked.

“That’s not the problem. The Governing Council wants to reduce the size of the military, despite the fact that nothing actually changed after they had the vote and we’ve still got Zsinj and Gideon and half a dozen other warlords out there.”

Her voice very dry, Leia said, “There’s a faction in the Council that believes that once we have an established government again with a senate and maybe a chancellor or a president or whatever we decide to call it that most of the Remnant holdouts and the independents will fall in line.”

Hera rolled her eyes. “Has Borsk Fey’lya actually talked to any of the independents?”

“You can tell me if you think your father would pick up his calls.”

Hera snorted softly. Ryloth had refused the offer to formally join the Rebel Alliance until certain conditions were met, which the Alliance Council had been refusing to grant for the past year.  With the Curia in disarray after almost twenty years of the Empire doing its best to delegitimize it, Cham Syndulla had managed to get the bulk of political power on Ryloth in his own hands, for better or worse.  “Not the last time I spoke to him, which was only two weeks ago.  We’re getting off-topic, Airen.  And yes, the pension would be useful; just use the carbonite forms and leave the being dead part out of it; it isn’t like it’s never happened before.  But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Starfighter Command won’t accept your resignation without a good reason, and maybe not even then,” Cracken said, with a wince at the words “carbonite forms.”  They hadn’t been used often, but they were a datawork nightmare for everyone involved.

“Why not?  I’m a decent combat commander, but there are plenty of others who are just as good or better, and you can’t tell me that some of the people thinking about retiring wouldn’t be just as happy training pilots, so I’m not exactly necessary there.”

He ticked off reasons on his fingers.  “You’re young, you’re pretty, you’re a woman, you’re not human, you’re a general – for that matter, you’re from one of the independent worlds in the Outer Rim and in high society back on Ryloth, even if most Core Worlders see that as the back of beyond – because most Core Worlders see that as the back of beyond –”

Hera frowned. “What does any of that have to do with it?”

“Apparently Ackbar had this conversation with Wedge Antilles while you were gone over some hot new project Antilles has in mind – nothing to do with you, but Antilles pointed out that most of the best-known officers in the Alliance – excuse me, the New Republic – are human, and mostly male.  Except for you,” he added to Leia, who grimaced.  “You, General Hera Syndulla,” Cracken went on, pointing at her, “are a PR officer’s dream.  I guarantee that whenever you get back to the Lodestar there will be a message waiting for you with orders to report for a HoloNet interview and probably a photoshoot.  All very reserved but sexy, to make it clear that the New Republic is open to everyone and that we’re not the Empire; even a Twi’lek woman can rise high.”

Hera fought down the memory of the younger Hera’s anguished voice saying, Most humans just think certain things about Twi’lek women. I’m sure even your Rebel Alliance is like that.  “If you’re trying to convince me not to resign, it’s not working.”

“It won’t matter, because Starfighter Command won’t accept your resignation, and Ackbar won’t for the same reason if you try to go over their heads to him.  He doesn’t look good on the front of a holomag unless you happen to be another Mon Cala.”

Hera rubbed a hand over her face.  “Please just stop talking or I won’t even bother with resigning and just desert.”

“Yes, please do,” Leia said dryly.  To Hera she added, “You’re not the only one, but I don’t work as well for it because I’m human and a princess of Alderaan.  And married, but a really good reporter could spin that if they wanted to.”

“I’m trying to get married,” Hera pointed out. “Get to the point, Airen.”

“You were seconded to Intelligence for this operation,” Cracken said. “I can’t accept your resignation, but I could give you a new assignment.  And right now no one’s going to notice if you’re transferred here permanently, with all the datawork chaos from the transition.”  He held up a hand to still her protest.  “You may need a New Republic general’s authority if you’re out in the Unknown Regions searching for a missing Imperial fleet.  We’ve had rumors about Thrawn for years; he’s been the bogeyman beneath the Alliance’s bed since well before Endor.  Since Jakku, more than a few Imperials have vanished, claiming they’re off to find him.  If he’s out there, then we need to find him before they do, and they have a head start.”

Hera leaned back in her chair, frowning.  “Starfighter Command is not going to like you poaching me anymore than they’ll like me resigning.”

Cracken and Leia exchanged a glance. “I can handle the fallout,” Leia said. “There’s enough else going on right now that no one is going to notice for a while, since you’re seconded already.”

Hera turned her frown on Cracken. “What do you get out of this?”

“We get someone out in the Unknown Regions looking for Thrawn,” Cracken said, raising an eyebrow. “Which I’ve been asking for since Endor, but we’ve never had the resources to send anyone out there.  We still don’t, but if you’re going anyway –”  He tilted his head.

Hera suspected there was a trap in here somewhere, but as it went Intelligence didn’t have so many generals in it that anyone but Cracken could give her orders.  “I agree with conditions,” she said.

“What are those?”

“I don’t answer to anyone but you – or Ackbar,” she had to concede, since as the commander-in-chief of the New Republic military he had precedence even over divisional commands, “– and my crew draws a salary.”

Cracken closed his eyes briefly, clearly annoyed, but just said, “Agreed.  We’ll discuss the specifics later.”

Hera and Leia left a few minutes after that, letting the door slide shut behind them as they stepped out into the corridor.

“I have something for you that I didn’t want to give you in front of General Cracken,” Hera told her quietly, drawing her aside into an empty room.  She withdrew the box Bail Organa had given her from the bag slung over her shoulder, holding it out to Leia.

For a long moment Leia just looked at it.  Eventually, she reached out, her fingers hovering just above the silver insignia inlaid in the fine wood of the lid, then she snatched her hand back as though she couldn’t bear to touch it.  Hera didn’t protest, just waited patiently as Leia stared at it.

She hadn’t left her meeting with Bail Organa out of her report, though she hadn’t conveyed the exact content of their conversation either, not having a Jedi’s near-eidetic memory.

Finally, Leia reached out with shaking hands and took the box from her.  She didn’t open it, just drew it in against herself, cradling it against her chest.  Her voice a little shaky, she said, “He was…well?”

“Yes,” Hera said.  She started to reach out, then hesitated, not certain if Leia wanted the comfort or not.

Leia didn’t seem to see her. She whispered, “They’ll live. They’ll all live.  Somewhere else, even if not…here.  They’ll live.”  She bit her lip, then looked up, her eyes brimming with tears.  “I’d like to be alone now.”

Hera nodded.  She touched Leia’s shoulder briefly and found that the younger woman was trembling; Hera squeezed her shoulder and then left her alone, letting the door slide closed behind her.

*

She was on her way back to the Ghost, docked in one of the massive warship’s several bays, when she ran into Ahsoka.  Hera stopped at the other woman’s gesture, stepping aside into a mostly empty wardroom.  The only two officers already there cleared out when they saw Hera’s general’s insignia, saluting her briefly before they left.

Hera eyed Ahsoka a bit warily.  While they had been friendly in the old days with Phoenix Squadron, Hera had never been able to feel anything other than resentful of Ahsoka’s return from Malachor, nor had she been able to shake the suspicion that the other woman was keeping something from her.  Something had changed there, something more drastic than the circumstances had suggested. Hera was vaguely aware that that was more than a little unfair, given what those circumstances had been, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.  It helped that since her return Ahsoka had avoided her and most of the other members of the Rebel Alliance, preferring to go off on her own rather than take any formal role.

“Before you ask,” Ahsoka said, “it was my decision to bring Jacen here.  Sabine went to get him from Ryloth.  I spoke to General Syndulla before she arrived.”

Hera felt the muscle in her jaw twitch.  Political reasons meant her father couldn’t set foot on a New Republic ship and thus couldn’t have come with Jacen; Ahsoka must have been very convincing to get him to agree to this.  “I hope you have a good explanation for why you thought my five-year-old son ought to be on a warship.”

Ahsoka tucked her hands behind her back, frowning. “Believe me, Hera, if I hadn’t thought it was necessary I never would have brought him here.  Rex didn’t find me until after you had already left.”

“That still doesn’t explain why my son is here,” Hera said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Because I didn’t think we would be able to get you back without him,” Ahsoka said. “And we nearly didn’t even with him here.”

Hera frowned at her. “Explain.”

Ahsoka sighed and looked around, then dropped into the nearest armchair and folded her legs in front of her.  Hera sat too, a little stiffly; the chairs and couches in the room were all mismatched and hard-worn, but comfortable enough compared to the inside of a cockpit.

“When Luke sent you away – sent you over there – he had to have a – for lack of a better word, an anchor, a target.  That was why they had to use you and not someone else.”  She rubbed briefly at her forehead, suddenly looking every day of her thirty-odd years.

Hera nodded warily. “No one else with a high enough clearance for this op could be relatively certain of being able to access the same place they probably were before Scarif. We weren’t even sure just using the Ghost would work, except it did.”

“She – the Hera Syndulla from that universe, I mean – was there when you arrived?” Ahsoka inquired, looking briefly curious.

“Not in the room.  She said she was just outside the ship – the Ghost was docked in a hangar on Naboo.”

“Hmm.”  Ahsoka smoothed the side of her thumb over the armor plate resting across her crossed legs, her expression academically curious for an instant before she drew herself back to the subject at hand. “Having her there, in the Ghost, in a specific time span, gave Luke something to aim for.  It could have been any number of other universes, too, other – other possibilities.”

Hera nodded.  “Kanan – the other Kanan – said that the reason Luke had to use those constraints because he wasn’t aiming for anything very, very specific.  He had to have a range, but not one which was too wide.”

Ahsoka frowned in thought. “I suppose.  I didn’t think about it like that, but the dialect on the artifact is very archaic. My grasp on it is better than Luke’s, but I came to the same conclusion he did.”  She looked up, her brows drawing together.  “The…other Kanan.  He didn’t use an artifact or a focus of any kind?”

Hera shook her head. “He said he didn’t need to.  He said that Jedi didn’t use artifacts like that for anything they couldn’t do naturally, those just made it easier, but he also didn’t think he would be able to manage it if he didn’t know who he was looking for or if I wasn’t there, because otherwise he would have to – to sort through all the options, and he didn’t think he could do that.”

The other woman nodded slowly, her frown deepening.  For a moment she looked like she was considering commenting on that, then she shook her head and said, “Anyway, that’s going there.  Coming back is harder, especially since you’re not a Force-user and can’t direct yourself.  Going there, the other Hera Syndulla could act as an anchor for you, to – to pull you into that universe.  But to come back to this universe – well, you’re not here.  You’re already gone.  One of the holocrons Luke found talked about people getting lost in the transition.”  She flattened her palms on her knees.  “We didn’t find the reference until after you had left.”

“What does Jacen have to with any of that?” Hera asked, deciding to worry about that later.

“Jacen is your son,” Ahsoka said. “Blood of your blood, bone of your bone, to be old-fashioned about it. Your father probably would have worked just as well, but –”

“But he can’t set foot on an Alliance – a New Republic ship unless Ryloth joins the New Republic,” Hera said, rubbing a hand over her face.  “You could have taken the Ghost to Ryloth instead of bringing Jacen here.”

Ahsoka shook her head. “The same reason but the other way around.  And General Cracken wouldn’t allow it, since this was an Intelligence operation.  I did ask.”

Hera ground her teeth and bit back her first few responses to that.  When she didn’t say anything, Ahsoka went on, “We thought that Jacen would be able to serve as an anchor for you in this universe, especially because he’s Force-sensitive.  We weren’t counting on –”

“Kanan?” Hera filled in for her when she hesitated, and Ahsoka winced.

“No.  He…probably helped you along, but it’s hard to tell. It’s not like any of this has been done in living memory.”  She glanced aside, clearly uncomfortable.

“Jacen is Kanan’s son too,” Hera pointed out.

“Yes,” Ahsoka admitted, looking even more uncomfortable. “I’m sure that helped.  I don’t know what would have happened if your father had been here instead of Jacen.”  She added with the ghost of a smile, “You should probably comm your father when you have a chance.”

“I’ll do that,” Hera said dryly. “He’d probably like to know that Kanan’s back and we’re getting married, too.”

Ahsoka sat up so abruptly that Hera heard her back pop. “What?”

“We’re getting married,” Hera repeated, raising an eyebrow.

Ahsoka pushed to her feet and paced the room, as if she suddenly couldn’t bear being seated any longer. Hera turned her head to watch her, frowning. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, of course not,” Ahsoka said, her voice strained and the words seemingly automatic; almost in the same breath she finished, “Yes.”

Hera felt the muscle in her jaw jump. “You and Kanan used to be friends.”  You and I used to be friends, she thought, but held back the words.  They weren’t enemies, but it had been a long time since they had been friends. Some of that was due to Hera’s inability to look at any Force-user without thinking, it should have been Kanan, but Ahsoka had pulled away from everyone except Rex after she had come back from Malachor.

Ahsoka stopped pacing. She was still facing away from Hera, but Hera could tell that she had her arms crossed over her chest, her shoulders hunched in.  “We were. We are.”

Hera rubbed a hand over her face.  She wanted to go back to the Ghost, reassure herself of Kanan’s presence, hug her son, and comm her father, but apparently she had to deal with this first. “Do you have something against my son?”

“Jacen’s a very nice boy,” Ahsoka said without turning around.  She was quiet for a long moment, then she said, “Do you know who Luke’s father is?”

“A Jedi Knight who was killed during the Purge,” Hera said.  She and Luke had talked about it a little when they had been stationed on Hoth together; he had sought her out after someone had told him about Kanan and Ezra.

“Anakin Skywalker,” Ahsoka said, a wealth of pain in her voice. “He was my master.  And he didn’t die during the Purge.”  She took a deep breath, then turned around to face Hera. “You might know him better as Darth Vader.”

Hera blinked rapidly.

“I don’t think – I know Kanan.  I knew Kanan. The situation isn’t the same.  I just –” Ahsoka bit her lower lip.

“You had better not be saying what it sounds like you’re saying,” Hera said quietly.

Ahsoka closed her eyes briefly. “After – Malachor – I did some digging.  During the Clone War I’d made assumptions – well, we all had. It’s not as though Jedi never had affairs, though we weren’t permitted commitments outside the Order.  And Padmé – Luke’s mother – had been a friend of mine. We all knew they were having an affair. Except it wasn’t an affair.  They had been married in secret just after the war started.”  There was agony on her face as she looked at Hera.  “Anakin broke his vows, and because of it the Order died.  They all died.”

Hera got to her feet. “Kanan isn’t him.”

“I know that!” Ahsoka snapped.  She took a deep breath, putting one hand on the back of the chair nearest her.

“And the Jedi Order is a generation in its grave.  There’s no one left but you and Kanan.”

“I know that too,” Ahsoka said.  She was clutching the back of the chair so tightly that Hera heard the suede of her gauntlets creak.

Hera crossed her arms over her chest. “Does Luke know you knew his father?”

Ahsoka shook her head. “Knowing wouldn’t serve any purpose.  The Anakin Skywalker I knew…”  She let the words trail off, then shook her head again.  “I can’t look at him and think of anything but what Anakin did, and I won’t burden him with that more than he is already.  That’s not a ghost he needs to carry with him.”

“Is it one that you need to?” Hera asked her quietly.

“If I could set it aside I would,” Ahsoka said.  She sounded unspeakably weary. “But everyone I know died.  That isn’t an exaggeration.  Everyone I know – except Rex – died because of him, because he decided to break his vows and we all loved him so much we let him.”  She rubbed a hand over her face, briefly dislodging her headband.  “Hera, it’s nothing against Kanan, truly, or you, or Jacen.  But Anakin was a good person too, and so was Padmé.  And – and everyone died.  All of them.  Padmé, Obi-Wan, the Order, the clones, the Republic – they all died because of Anakin. The Emperor as well, but – Anakin sided with that.  And I’ll never know why, not really.  I did what I could to find out, but – but everyone is dead.  There’s no one left who knows.  They’re all dead.  And Anakin did that.”

She looked up at Hera. “That’s what I see every time I look at Luke.  I won’t give him that burden, but I can’t set it aside either.”

“Is that what you think about Kanan and me?” Hera asked her. “That we’re on the knife’s edge of everyone dying?”

“No,” Ahsoka said. “No.  But when you said it –”  She hesitated, then went on, “– when you said it, it was the only thing I could think of. And I know you and I knew Kanan, but I knew Anakin too.”  She looked at the chair she was gripping, then sighed and moved around to drop into it. “I knew you and Kanan were involved before, but I didn’t – I didn’t have to know it, if that makes sense.  And I didn’t know about Anakin then.  When I came back, I did know, and – and you had Jacen.  And Luke was there too, and I couldn’t…I couldn’t bear it. I know it’s not fair,” she added defensively as Hera glared at her.

“No, it’s not.”  She tried to bite back the sarcasm in her voice, but suspected she didn’t succeed.  She stood there, looking at Ahsoka’s slumped form in the armchair, and said the first thing that came to mind, “Did you tell Kanan you were worried about him snapping and murdering us all?”

Ahsoka looked badly startled. “No, of course not.  We had other things to discuss.”  She grimaced, then added, “And Luke was there, and some of what I have to say to Kanan I won’t say in front of him.”

Oh, this should be good, Hera thought.  She had always thought of Ahsoka as fairly even-tempered, but the handful of occasions where she hadn’t managed to avoid Luke had been memorable for everyone with the misfortune to be in the vicinity. “Then if you’re not going to say it to me, I need to go comm my father.”

She was almost at the door when Ahsoka said slowly, “Hera –”

 She turned back. “What?”

Ahsoka bit her lower lip. She was quiet for a long moment, then she said, “Ezra could have brought Kanan back six years ago, when he brought me back, and I stopped him.”

Hera froze.

Ahsoka looked back at her, her gaze weary. “There was a reason –”

“I don’t care,” Hera said. Her mind felt as though it had gone blank with either shock or rage; she wasn’t sure which at this point.  She balled up her fists at her sides, not certain either whether she just needed something to do with her hands or if she was trying not to hit Ahsoka.  “I don’t care,” she said again, and was surprised to find that it was the truth. She took a shuddering breath, because Kanan was here now and it really didn’t matter as long as Ahsoka didn’t try to remedy what she clearly thought of as a mistake.  Then her mind caught up with the rest of what Ahsoka had said and she snapped, “Do you know where Ezra is?”

“No,” Ahsoka said. She had sat up straight, but not risen. “This was before he went missing – from what Sabine’s told me, from when he went inside the Jedi Temple on Lothal.”

Less than a day after Kanan had died.

Hera stared at her, trying to think of something to say.  She only realized she had put her hand over her stomach when she felt the edge of her belt buckle pressing into the side of her hand.  She had been pregnant then and only just beginning to realize it; she wouldn’t be certain for another few weeks.

Hera still had nightmares about that day.

“I told Ezra I would find him,” Ahsoka said.

“Don’t bother,” Hera said. “We’ll do that.”

She turned and left.

She felt as if she was having an out of body experience, her hands still shaking, the ordinary ship sounds around her strangely muted, even the recycled air moving across her face every time she passed a vent seemingly alien.  Whatever expression was on her face seemed to warn anyone off; passing crew members or pilots veered around her.

Slowly – painfully slowly – reality reasserted itself, and by the time she had reached the hangar bay where the Ghost was docked she was breathing normally again, the sound of her footsteps on the durasteel floor familiar instead of muffled.  When she tapped her code into the Ghost’s locking mechanism and waited for the ramp to lower she almost didn’t feel like screaming anymore.

Once inside she raised the ramp again, then just stood with her forehead tipped against the ladder leading up to the cockpit, aware of the sound of voices from up above.  Kanan’s was one of them, though several layers of deck and closed doors made it impossible for her to make out the words. She let the cool metal of the ladder leech out her remaining anger until she finally felt calm enough to climb up and follow the voices into the common room.

She stopped in the doorway, fighting back her instinct to burst into immediate tears.  Kanan was sitting on the floor with Jacen, his expression somewhere between stunned and awed.  Jacen had brought out the box of toys Hera kept on the Ghost, as well as some that he must have brought with him from Ryloth, and was gravely showing them to Kanan.  He did this by putting each one into Kanan’s left hand, then guiding Kanan’s right hand over the toy – at the moment it was a large stuffed anooba plush that Numa had made him several years earlier.  Sabine and Zeb were sitting at the holotable, watching them and looking like they weren’t terribly far from tears either.  Chopper was watching too, and somehow managed to look as emotional as it was possible for an astromech droid to get, though at Hera’s approach he chortled a greeting.

“Mama!” Jacen said gleefully, abandoning the anooba in Kanan’s hands, and scrambled up to run to her.

Hera hugged him, kissing his hair. “Hi, baby.  Are you and your father and Auntie Sabine and Uncle Zeb having fun?”

Jacen nodded enthusiastically and tugged her towards Kanan and the pile of toys. “Look what Grandpapa gave me!”

Hera sat down next to Kanan and leaned over to kiss him, then turned her attention to the delicately carved nunas-and-gutkurrs set Jacen showed her.  After he was certain she had seen it, he took each small animal out of the case to hand to Kanan, who inspected it solemnly with his fingers before passing it back and accepting the next one.  Hera had had a similar set when she was a child, but had lost most of the pieces by the time she was ten.

“So are you heading back to Starfighter Command now?” Zeb said eventually, his voice elaborately casual. Chopper echoed the question, curious.

“No,” Hera said. “I’m transferring permanently to Intelligence, and there’s something I need to talk to all of you about.”

Sabine, who had been slouching and picking at some peeling paint on her knuckle plates, sat up straight. “We’re going after Ezra?”

Hera stared at her. “I didn’t even say anything!”

Sabine waved a hand. “It’s the only thing it could be, now that Kanan’s back.”  She grinned happily at him.  “Unless you wanted to stay and help Luke with his mission to restore the Jedi.”

Kanan grimaced. “He seems like a nice kid, but I just spent three hours in the middle of a doctrinal dispute and I didn’t even think I still had standards for heresy.”

They all stared at him.

“…what,” Zeb said eventually.

He winced. “Don’t ask. I was afraid to because I’m pretty sure I disagree with both of them, but pointing that out just now seemed like it was asking for trouble.”

“Amateurs,” Sabine sniffed. “No one’s dead yet.  By Mandalorian standards that’s barely even a spirited debate.”

“To be fair, two of us were dead,” Kanan pointed out dryly. “We just happened to get better.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t die from the doctrinal debate, so it doesn’t count.”

“That’s because every time the Jedi have a doctrinal debate that results in someone dying it also results in a galactic civil war that lasts for years and kills hundreds of thousands of other people,” Kanan said. “So we try to avoid getting to that point.”

Sabine shrugged. “Maybe if you had those more often you’d have smaller civil wars.”

Zeb frowned at her. “Isn’t that why all you Mandalorians hate each other in the first place?”

“Not as much as we hate anyone who tries to interfere in our civil wars.”

Zeb gave Hera a pained expression.

“Don’t look at me,” Hera said, gathering Jacen into her lap. “Ryloth was still having blood feuds between clans three generations ago, and even now you shouldn’t try to get a Fenn and a Kru in the same room together if you don’t want trouble.”

Sabine pointed at her. “See, someone who understands me.”

“I don’t think anyone understands you,” Zeb muttered. “Back on Lasan – and Lira San – we all just sued each other.”

“Well, that sounds boring.”

“And dueling, but that’s been illegal for a century – two on Lira San.  And that’s only for extreme cases anyway.”

“Now we’re talking,” Sabine said, sounding more satisfied as Chopper chuckled agreement. “I was starting to get worried for a moment there.”

“About what?” Kanan wondered out loud. “It’s not like there aren’t lawyers on Mandalore.”

“Well, not anymore,” Sabine said.

Kanan raised an eyebrow at her, then visibly decided not to pursue that line of questioning any further and went on, “And I’m pretty sure under the circumstances trying to kill either Luke or Ahsoka would have been a bad idea.”

Hera felt the muscle in her jaw twitch again. Jacen turned his face up to her, feeling her sudden tension, and Hera hugged him.  Kanan picked up one of Jacen’s discarded toys, a small stuffed Loth-wolf, and balanced it briefly on the palm of his hand.  Then he turned his hand sideways, the Loth-wolf remaining suspended in mid-air, and sent the Loth-wolf galloping towards Jacen.  He bounced with glee, making Hera let out a soft oof, and caught it.

“I can do that too!” He narrowed his eyes in concentration, then sent the Loth-wolf back to Kanan.  It wobbled a little in mid-air, but Kanan caught it easily, grinning.  He picked up the anooba Jacen had shown him earlier.

Jacen put his hands out gleefully, not waiting for Kanan to send it to him. It sailed through the air to him and he hugged it, then he caught the Loth-wolf that Kanan sent after it.

“Hold that for a few minutes, love, we need to talk,” Hera told him.  She settled him more comfortably in her lap – he was heavier than she remembered him being, but then again she hadn’t seen him in person for several months – and looked at the rest of her crew.

Her crew.

She, Zeb, Sabine, and Chopper had only been in the same place a handful of times over the past six years, and Kanan hadn’t been there at all.  Hera had served with a number of people whom she had gotten along with, many of whom she had liked, but none of them were the three beings and one droid in the room with her now – in the Ghost with her now.  She had thought that she would go to her grave without ever having this again.

Hera swallowed past the lump in her throat.  “There have been rumors about Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Seventh Fleet for years,” she said.  Zeb knew some of this, but she didn’t think Sabine did and Kanan certainly didn’t. “Rebel Intelligence has never been able to confirm that they’re still out there or that Thrawn was in touch with the Emperor – or anyone from the Remnant, for that matter.  Because we’ve been busy dealing with the warlords since Endor, General Cracken – that’s the head of Intelligence,” she added for Kanan’s benefit, “– hasn’t been able to send anyone out into the Unknown Regions to investigate the rumors.”

“What happened to General Draven?” Kanan asked, startled; the previous head of Rebel Intelligence had been on Yavin while they had been there.

“He died,” Hera said. “Five years ago.”

Kanan winced.

“So since we’re going to be out there anyway, we might as well do it with Alliance – Republic – authority?” Sabine said.  She cocked an eyebrow at Hera. “That is what you said to Cracken?”

“More or less,” Hera said. “Doing it with Republic authority was his idea.  I was just going to resign.”  She hesitated, then added, “I can’t order you – any of you – to come. But I’ve let this go long enough and I won’t wait any longer.”  She couldn’t help but look at Kanan as she went on, “Ezra is family, and we’ve all lost enough family to the Empire.”

“I’m in,” Sabine said.

“Me too,” Zeb said. Chopper chortled agreement.

Kanan just leaned over and kissed her.

Hera let out her breath, relief making her shoulders slump. “All right,” she said. “Make your arrangements. We have to take Jacen back to Ryloth.” She smiled at Kanan. “And we’re getting married.”

That got them a round of back-slapping and congratulations and promising not to actually do it until both Sabine and Zeb could be there.  By the time they were all settled down again, Hera was flushed with happiness, leaning against Kanan’s shoulder with her other arm around her son.

We’re all right, she thought, looking around at her crew – at her family.  We’re all going to be all right.

[a-bang-for-your-bucky]

Welcome Home Part 3

*not my gif*

WARNINGS: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE, seriously I use the ‘F’ word a lot. 

Pairings: Cody Rhodes x OFC (Sister), Brandi Rhodes x OFC (sister), Dustin Rhodes x OFC (Sister), past Seth Rollins x OFC, future Kenny Omega x OFC 

Summary: Peyton gets an offer that will change her entire career, while she tries to deal with the rising feelings for her best friend. 

A/N: Here is part 3. I hope y’all like it. 

The next few days following the aquarium, Kenny and I were more inseparable than usual. Everywhere we went, we were together. When Dynamite rolled around, the entire locker room was whispering about us. 

I was on my way to the EVP room, when I was stopped by Kris Statlander. “Hey girlie.” She greeted, booping my nose. It twitched at the contact. “I didn’t hear from you much this week, and then I saw the pics of you and Kenny. Spill.” She smiled, with a raised eyebrow. 

I laughed nervously, “There’s nothing to tell. We’re just friends.” She shook her head. I knew what people were saying. “I’m serious, Kris. Just friends who went to the aquarium together.” I defended, moving my hands in a definitive motion. 

“Girl! His eyes were on you, not the damn fish.” She rolled her eyes, “How are you both so clueless?!” She threw her hands up, flabbergasted. She quickly whipped her phone out and pulled up the shark tank picture again and showed it to me, zoomed in on Kenny’s face. “Those are heart eyes, girl. He is in love.” 

There was no way Kenny was in love with me. “Kris, he is literally married to wrestling. No time for relationships.” I pointed out. 

“But he always makes time for you.” She said before walking away to film a bit for BTE. Kenny did always seem to make time for me. I tried to shake her words as I continued my way to the EVP room. Cody had sent me a text earlier in the day saying that creative had a storyline they wanted to pitch to me. 

I opened the door and Cody was there with The Bucks, a writer, and Tony Khan. “Hey, sorry, I rushed here as fast as I could.” I apologized for my tardiness and grabbed a seat next to Cody. 

“Peyton, we want you to have a with Penelope for the number one contender slot for the AEW Women’s Championship.” Tony started to explain. A huge smile crossed my face. Then Nick added, “We want you to face Shida at ‘Winter is coming’”. I shook my head. 

“No fuck--” Cody gave me a stern look, telling me to watch my language, “I mean, no friggin’ way?!?” I couldn’t hide my excitement. Tony handed me the contract for the match at ‘Winter Is Coming’. I looked down at the papers in my hand. “This is legit? Are you sure there isn’t anyone else who deserves this before me?” I questioned, looking up from the packet that held my future. 

“We have pulled all the stats, plus we took in account fan base and Dark comments. You beat Penelope, and you’ll be number one contender.” Matt laid it all out, and I just needed to take it. All it took was one smooth signature and it was booked. 

“Well good evening, folks. It’s Wednesday night, and you know what that means! Thanks for joining us here on Dynamite. Boy do we have a lined up show for you.” I listened to JR announce as I paced back and forth in front of the gorilla monitors. The announce team of JR, Tony, and Excalibur went on to discuss the card for the night. 

To say I was nervous was an understatement. Sure, I had been in the title picture before, but this was completely different. This would be my first title shot in AEW, plus Penelope and I were kicking off the show. That was something that didn’t happen often. Cody was waiting by the curtain, like he always did before my matches, to wish me luck. He immediately could tell that something was wrong. “What’s up, Pey?”

“I’m worried about Kip. It has me thrown off. He’s a wild card.” I mumbled anxiously as I bit at my nails. Cody nodded, giving me a knowing look. He pulled me in by my shoulder.

“You’ll be just fine, kid.” He smiled. I wanted to ask what he meant, but Kenny’s voice filled my ears before I could. 

“Hey, Princess!”  I could tell my face lit up at the sight of him. “I just wanted to say good luck. And ask if you wanted to grab dinner after?” Cody looked at the both of us and sighed. I knew he wanted the heat to die down from the Aquarium photo, for my sake. He had told me many times. I didn’t care though and neither did Kenny. 

“Of course, Omega. Thank you.” I replied quickly, throwing my arms around him for a tight hug. Cody grabbed my attention, letting me know it was my time. I released Kenny, but he grabbed my hand, giving it a light ‘you got this’ squeeze, before letting go. 

“The following contest, with a twenty minute time limit, is scheduled for one fall, introducing first from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, being accompanied to the ring by Kip Sabian, Penelope Ford.” I watched as they made their way into the ring and gave a disgusting show of PDA. 

I fiddled with my jacket, waiting for my music to hit. I instantly regretted letting Brandi talk me into wearing a choker. It suddenly felt too tight. I didn’t have a chance to remove it before I heard the familiar start of “My songs know what you did in the dark”. I composed myself and fixed my hair. I walked out the “Heel” tunnel and onto the ramp.

“And her opponent, from Atlanta, Georgia, well they call her the “Dream Killer”, Peyton Rhodes.” Justin announced my name and the crowd still cheered, which made my heart happy. I quickly made my way into the squared circle, so the bell could ring.  

The match started with a few back and forth blows. Penelope got me into a side headlock, before quickly doing an arm drag. I shot back up to my feet. Again, we locked up, before I drove a knee up into her stomach. I had quickly gained the upper hand in the match. I was getting ready to drop her with a DDT, when I saw Kip pacing outside of the ring. I flipped him a bird and slammed Penelope’s head into the mat. As expected, Kip got involved. He slid into the ring, getting in my face. “Get out of the ring, Kip!” I yelled and he stepped a bit closer. I thought he was going to push me back away from him. 

Suddenly, the crowd erupted in cheers as a figure jumped the barricade and slid into the ring. It was Mox. He pushed Kip back and into the ropes, making him fall through. This distracted Penelope and I took that chance to hit the “dream killer”, my finisher. I got the three count and the bell rang. Aubrey raised my hand and Justin announced me as the winner. 

Jon was still standing at the tunnels when I climbed through the ropes and walked up the stairs. I extended a hand to show respect, which he gladly took and pulled me in for a hug. The fans went wild. “What a reunion it was tonight for Peyton Rhodes and Jon Moxley. Now that Rhodes has defeated Ford, she will go on to face AEW Women’s champion Hikaru Shida for the title at “Winter Is Coming’ on December 2nd.” Tony announced for the viewers at home. 

Cody again was waiting by the curtain for me. “Great match, sis. Jon, thanks for having her back.” He said, like it was all planned. I needed to know what the hell Jon was thinking.

“Dude! You guys are trending!” Matt yelled as he walked up, shoving his phone in my face. It was like I was in a daze. I had no idea why Jon, of all people, got involved in my match. Now, we were trending on social media. Before I could reply, I was being pulled by an assistant to do an interview with Dasha. 

“I’m backstage with Peyton Rhodes. Peyton, what was that?” She asked. I quickly got into character. I flipped my hair over my shoulder, attitude immediately crossing my face. 

“What was that? You’re asking the hard-hitting questions, Dasha.” I mocked her, before continuing. “ Let me tell you what that was. That was me rising to the top of this division, just like I said I would.” I stepped closer to her mic, “That was me letting Shida know that her days as champion are numbered.” I turned to the camera. “Hold onto that title tight, Shida. Because it will be mine very, very soon.” 

Dasha nodded, looking annoyed with how bitchy I was being, “But everyone wants to know what Jon Moxley was doing?” She inquired, pushing the mic back in my face. 

I scoffed, “No comment.” I quickly walked away to find out what the hell just happened. Why did Jon come help me? I tried to find him, but no one had seen where he went. So I settled for finding my brother. I went to his trailer, and banged on the door. 

“Open up, Rhodes.” I shouted, and Brandi came to the door. I looked at her, fuming. “Where is my brother?” I snapped. She just moved to the side, letting me in. Cody was sitting on the couch, like he was waiting for me. What surprised me, was to see Kenny sitting there, too. 

“Glad you could join us, sis. Take a seat.” Cody motioned for me to sit next to Kenny. I cocked a brow, confused, but took the seat anyway. I looked at Kenny about to say something before Cody cut me off. “Since you two are wanting to be the talk of AEW, and have no intentions to listen to me or my advice, Khan wants you to work together.” My mouth dropped. 

“What the hell does that mean?” I growled. Kenny looked at me, shocked, that I was angry that we got to work together. I saw his smile drop instantly. “I mean, Don’t get me wrong, Ken, I would love to work a story with you. But I can’t do the whole ‘escort/manager’ thing again.” I objected, not going down that road again.

Kenny nodded in understanding, “I know. And you know I would never do that to you, Princess.” He ensured me, placing a gentle hand on my knee. 

“I would also never do that to you, Peyton. Trust me, this will be amazing.” Cody predicted, “We have a lot to talk about.” He smirked, taking a seat across from us. “After you left the meeting last week, Tony pulled me aside.” Cody started to explain. 

My mind was racing. What did Tony have in store for me? For Kenny? How in a matter of two weeks did I become number one contender and get to work with my best friend? I looked over at Kenny, who’s blue eyes were focused on what my brother was saying. He looked so happy. I wondered if it was because we got to do a storyline together or because he was getting his shot at the AEW world title? 

“Tony wants you to turn on Moxley.” Those seven words drew me from my thoughts. My whole body went rigid. Did he just say what I think he said? I looked over at Kenny who was smiling like a cat who caught the canary. 

“He wants me to do what?” I asked, wanting Cody to clarify what the fuck he just said to me.

[handonhaven]

So um there is certain group that in this fandom(I'm not gonna name which one but I think it'll be pretty easy to figure out) that have taken to editing articles online to make it seem like their ship is happening and pretty much everything else they wish would happen on the show. Granted the edit to the articles don't last very long before they get changed back. But still I feel like that just a whole new level of sad. To go through all that trouble and they're just feeding into their own "I feel like I been lied to" thing. That's why if it's not one of those websites where Brett and other cast members do their interviews(the website that can't be edit) then I don't pay no mind or believe anything it says

Okay I know I'm really late with this one(and sorry if you answered something like this already) but Lizzie and Josie just made me mad to no end in 3x16. First let me start by saying I get them being upset that Hope ditched them and stole their car. That's understandable. But the fact that they didn't care where Hope was or where she went or if she was okay etc. That made me so mad, and then the only thing Lizzie cared about was making sure Hope would be in a relationship with someone other than Landon(don't even get me started on the comment she made about them and sex 😡😡). Because why shouldn't Hope be with the one person who loves her truly just the way she is. And does whatever he can to make sure she's okay and does whatever he can to help her unlike everyone else at that school, as well as a million other things I could add. And then at the end of the episode when Hope was back at the school both Lizzie and Josie go talk to her and try to act all high and mighty in a way. Asking Hope of it meant nothing to her what happened between them in 3x15. Clearly it meant nothing to Lizzie and Josie because they spent all of 3x16 not giving a crap about Hope. I mean they say they want to be there for Hope and help her and so on but then turn around and do the exact opposite. I honestly can't.

I think I can honestly say after this season. I would sacrifice anyone if it meant that Hope and Landon could be happy. I would throw anyone and everyone under the bus if I had to. Heck I would throw someone to malivore if I had. Just so they could be happy. Because all the trauma they went through these past 3 seasons plus all the trauma they went through before hand. They're done, like let them be done going through trauma. Just let them be happy of once, I don't care who has to pay what price let someone else go through something. I know it would suck for another character to go through pain I do. But Hope and Landon has had 3 seasons of nonstop trauma. That's way more than enough. Just give them a break and let someone else go through something. I don't care who they would throw under the bus to make that happen. Just make it happen, so that way Handon can deal with and possess all the trauma they've been through and move past it and just be happy. I know it's wrong to say let another character through pain so they can be happy, I do. But after three seasons of only them going through some much this is how I feel now. Yes I know other characters went through stuff too, but it was never to the extent to what Hope and Landon have been going through. And they even got a break from it and got to deal with. Hope and Landon have never gotten that.

So my friend came up with this theory that 4x04 is going to be a parallel to 3x04. Because at the end of 3x04 we had to watch as Hope watched Landon melt right in front of her. Which was heart breaking enough by the way. Then the end of 4x04 will be Landon watching Hope die right in front of his eyes. Just thinking about something like that happening just breaks my heart 💔💔💔💔. It was bad enough having to see that once. But they have see that twice.... I think my heart will jump out of my chest and fall into the ocean somewhere never to be seen again. There's no way I could take seeing something like that twice.

Okay so I know everyone has there own thoughts on this one, but I would love to hear yours. So if Klaus was alive and met Landon what do you think he would think of him? I honestly think he would love Landon(even though he wouldn't come out right and say that). For the person he is despite everything he's been through in his life, and how he's always trying to better himself. For how good he is to Hope and how happy he makes her. And for how he's trys to help Hope with everything, and does what he can to help keep her safe. And so on.

Seriously?? Wow. So that’s how they’re spending the hiatus? That’s definitely sad and absurd, the kind of stuff they do continues to reach new levels. I just don’t get what the point is of trying to temporarily deceive people by doing that... so that they can feel like they’ve won for a little while? They must be pretty desperate. And they really are just lying to themselves at this point, and are going to great lengths to lie to other people too. Idk what sites even allow them to do that, at least the articles get changed back though. But yeah, I’m gonna stick to only looking at legit articles and websites, and official info from people who actually work on the show. That’s just incredibly stupid, honestly.

I actually did talk about that a bit in a response to an ask here x. But yeah, same. I understand them being upset about Hope ditching them too, but Hope clearly did it to keep them out of what she was doing because there could’ve been danger. That’s nothing new for Hope, and since they’re supposed to be her best friends, shouldn’t they know that? And even though they were upset, they still should’ve been more concerned about Hope’s safety, which they weren’t. And yes, exactly. Yes to all you said. It was all so frustrating to watch and made me mad too. And so true about Hope and Landon, Hope should be able to be with him, he’s all those things you said and more. So there was no good reason for Lizzie to try to find Hope someone else when she still loves Landon and wasn’t interested in moving on. And I agree about the end of the episode as well. Once again, their concern was the fact that Hope had ditched them, not if she was okay. Exactly, it doesn’t seem like 3x15 meant anything to them since they were so quick to give up on Hope. Just one thing went wrong, which was really more of an inconvenience for them, and they didn’t even try to be there for Hope. They got offended and did nothing. So it makes me worried for when Hope has to deal with Malivore and whether or not they’ll really be there for her.

Yeah, I mean, hopefully no one would have to be sacrificed for them to be happy. But it’s really sad that it’s gotten to the point where it feels like it would take something that extreme to make it happen. It’s truly insane the kind of trauma they’ve gone through and how they can never get a real break and be happy. I agree, if anyone deserves to be happy at this point, it’s them. And I wouldn’t want someone else to have to suffer either, but if the writers are so insistent on having someone suffer, they need to have it not be Hope and Landon for once! They need a better balance of what goes on with all the characters instead of just putting Hope and Landon through everything all the time. Exactly, they seriously have gone through nonstop trauma, they can’t go through anymore at this point, it’s too much. I agree, they need to be able to recover and heal after all they’ve been through so that they can be okay and be happy. I honestly don’t know how either of them have even been able to keep going after all they’ve experienced, it’s so horrible. And yeah, it’s not that the other characters haven’t gone through stuff too, it’s just not at all like what Hope and Landon have dealt with. And like you say, with no breaks, no time to heal. I just think it’s ironic how they wanted this show to be lighter, yet they still put these characters through terrible things, Hope and Landon most of all. They have them constantly dealing with trauma and pain and death, they just lighten up the tone and throw in some comedy amidst all of the tragedy to make it seem lighter when it’s really not. Not for Hope and Landon anyway. I wish they’d make their actual lives and experiences lighter overall, and let them live and be happy for a bit, it’s what they deserve.

Oh my gosh! So I’ve also wondered if Hope is gonna die in 4x04, but I didn’t even think about how that would be a parallel to 3x04! 😭 It will be so painful if it happens, I’m not sure I can take it either! Although, if Landon is there if it happens that could also make for an amazing scene. Like seeing Landon crying over her, or his reaction to it triggering his Phoenix powers again, or maybe even getting healing tears? I’d lose it. It would definitely be heartbreaking, but as long as they wouldn’t get separated again like in 3x04 and they could still be together after, hopefully we would survive seeing something like that again!

When it comes to Klaus and Landon, I have so many thoughts about that, I could make a whole other post about it. But I completely agree with what you said. Every time I see people say Klaus would hate Landon, that he would’ve killed him, etc. like... it makes me mad but I also wanna laugh. Because there’s just no way that Klaus would feel that way about Landon, and whoever thinks he would either didn’t actually watch The Originals, or at least didn’t pay attention to it or understand it. I don’t know how anyone can watch that show and come away from it thinking Landon isn’t the kind of person Klaus, Hayley, and the rest of Hope’s family would want for Hope. And we already saw Klaus’s reaction to Landon dancing with Hope. He was smiling and happy to see Hope with him. He’s already basically approved of Landon. But I really do think he would love Landon too. He wanted Hope to be happy, and Landon is the one who makes Hope happy. So I think that alone would be reason enough for Klaus to like Landon and want him in Hope’s life. But also the other things you said as well, I think he would really admire Landon and the kind of person he is after all that he’s been through. I’ve always thought it was interesting how, in some ways, Landon went through similar things in his childhood like Klaus and Hayley did. He was abused, and Klaus was also abused, and was in foster care with no real family, like Hayley was. And I think for Klaus to see the way Landon has handled that and didn’t let those things change who he is as a person, and still chose to be a good and kind person even after being treated so horribly, I’m sure that would mean a lot to Klaus. To see the way that Landon has been able to overcome darkness in his life, and that’s what Hope needs as well. Klaus and the rest of the Mikaelsons always wanted Hope to be better than how they had been, and Landon helps Hope to be better and helps brings out the best parts of her. And of course with the way that Landon treats Hope, and how much he loves her, how loyal he is, and the way he fights for her and is willing to do whatever it takes to keep her safe, I’m sure Klaus would be so grateful to Landon. Like, just imagine Klaus’s reaction to what Landon did for Hope in 2x11, along with everything else he’s done. How could Klaus not love someone who loves his daughter that much and is that devoted to her? I could go on about this, but this has gotten ridiculously long so I’ll stop. But yeah, I definitely think Klaus would love Landon and be so glad that Hope has him.

[mcrmadness]

Madness draws: my dä fanart from when I had my (arts) comeback in 2018

For years I didn’t draw anything because of a personal (art crisis) and because I simply was studying and working so much I just had no energy left for arts.

In 2018 I was done with schools and studying and dropped out of the school I was in at that moment, and also the horse stable I was working at (school related stuff) was sold and closed its doors so also my work ended. For the first time in almost 5 years I was actually free. The longest holidays I had has was 3 weeks summer holiday in 2016, I think. I had another in 2017 but of that I actually was having health issues (nothing serious) for 2 weeks and then had to be in school for the 3rd one, after which I even got the flu.

So I was SO excited when I finally was free the first day of November in 2018. After I had got enough sleep and rest, I started to find my creativity again. And I started to “daydream” before falling asleep every night, I started to write fanfictions in my head and I started to draw, too. Partially it was also because for the first time in years I had an online friend I enjoyed talking with and we had similar interests, aka dä and Bela/Farin, and that inspired me a lot to draw even more - but unfortunately that friendship did not work out in the end and we’re no longer friends.

Anyway, most of these drawings are very much Bela/Farin related again because I talked about that a lot with this person and I often asked what they’d want to see and then drew it if the idea was something I could carry out.

This is not the first one I drew but maybe the 4th or so. I’m just putting this here first because it’s the most “innocent” aka not too much shippy stuff rubbed into the faces of my followers who don’t care about that. There’s 5 different drawings + 1 comic behind the read more link. All of these, apart from the comic, where drawn into my old sketchbook.

About the drawing above - I didn’t use pencil for these first ones at all yet, I just drew them with the fineliners as I was still a bit rusty as the last time I REALLY drew anything was in 2013 aka over 5 years ago from 2018, so I had to actually look at my old comics and drawings to even figure out how to draw these characters anymore. And I think the last actual time I drew in this style was in 2011 even. And that is very visible from the first 2018′s drawing I did! ↓↓↓

This is the one - and wait, I have an explanation!

So with this person I mentioned, we just constantly had this playful debate over whether Bela is “bottom” or not - and honestly I couldn’t care less about that because I no longer read any fanfics. I do write fanfics - or a fanfic - but only for myself and as an asexual I have never been interested in writing about certain themes so I never need to think about the whole top/bottom stuff anyway. I used to read smut before until I one day just realized it’s SO BORING and uninteresting to read, started skipping all smut scenes and wanted to read fluff but all the fluff was so quickly and badly written because everyone wanted to write smut only, that I was left with absolutely nothing to read. So it was the old story again: I started writing/drawing the stuff I wanted to read and see.

However, back to the top/bottom topic, I always base my opinions with everything over how things are in real life and with these guys, if you look at how they are in interviews and on stage, the dynamics are not just plain black&white. I’ve never seen there anything that would indicate that just one is “top” or “bottom” whatsoever which is why I kept saying imo they’re more like just switching if you listen to their jokes. Remember: I don’t read any fanfiction and don’t give a fuck about smut (lol at the pun) and honestly, even tho I understand those jokes they do and say on stage, I wish not to have any visuals about any of that “activity” in my head.

So, to support my “they switch!” opinion, I drew this, just for fun. And it is the official first drawing I did in 2018. I just needed to fire back bigger than I could do with simple text messages :D

***

Moving on. The person in question was very fascinated by the idea that Farin would be a vampire and not Bela (to support their top/bottom views...) which is why I drew this:

Also a very quick one, without sketching anything before drawing with fineliners. This and the first image of this post both are very small in real life actually, the signature is about the same size in every drawing so you can see from that that they are actually pretty small.

Talking of the signature: The funniest thing to me about this IS the signature. Because I was so rusty I didn’t even know how to write it anymore :DDD You can compare it to the signature in the other drawings because in them it’s better. Why it’s so funny to me is because it should say “Aada” but it looks more like “Hella” which means “stove” in Finnish.

***

Next one was something I saw in my head and wanted to draw - I think this one was also done without sketching it at first:

Kinda simple, right? :D I just wanted to draw something with heavy shadows and they’re meant to be watching TV at night. I guess it came out pretty okay.

***

The next two I drew based on one of my old fanfics I wrote years and years ago. I’m a bit annoyed that I decied to draw these into my SKETCHBOOK when I could have used just paper I use for drawing but I guess I didn’t know yet where I was going to end up with these and drew them into the sketchbook because of that. I thought I didn’t sketch these at first but I have found photos of these with sketched with pencil so that means I started sketching my drawings at this point.

So, back to the fanfic, it’s one of the longer ones I wrote (but still not that long even) and set to happen in the late 80s. There was some drama in the story because of Bela’s drug use and Farin was very harsh and Bela left altogether. For some time they had no idea where each of them were but then one very rainy night they both were on a walk at the same time and happened to stumble upon each other for the first time in weeks or so. I can still see those scenes so vividly in my head and here’s my artistic view over those scenes:

Yes. I love drawing stuff like BRICKS.

I have used my Promarkers with the second image, the paper was not the best for them which is why the black looks awful.

What comes to the image... it really annoys me to look at that because how the FUCK that is something I have drawn? And it’s legit based on something I have written. ME??? Like wtf. My aroace ass just can’t handle me writing/drawing fluff like this. I have days when I need to see fluff more than anything and then have to produce the content because can’t find it from anywhere else and my brain is simultaneously like “flufffff 8))))” and “boohoo whyyyyy how staaaaaph D:” because I am so afraid of being connected to what I draw. Like. If I draw or write fluff, it doesn’t mean I would be a romantic person nor allosexual nor alloromantic, right? Because I can also draw a comic or write a story about a murderer and it doesn’t make me a psychopath either. It’s the exact same thing.

And in fact: I had a comic book character who was called Micro the Insane Murderer because that’s what he was. Also I once wrote a story about a serial killer but she was also insane. But for whatever reason it’s much harder to show people fluff I have written or drawn than my fictional serial killer stuff... I guess people just easier assume that you’re an allo, thanks to anormativity, but usually don’t think you’re a psychopath just because your OC is :D

***

The last one is the comic that has a Halloween theme as it was around Halloween and the person I talked with still wanted to see/read something where Farin is the vampire instead. So here’s something that was my first B/F comic in 7 years. I didn’t remember how to do pretty much anything anymore and the coloring is a bit off, and I was really still just trying to figure out how to do all this again :D

At that point I think my head was still filled with fanfiction stuff so the comic also is full of (hurt/comfort) drama - and a long-ass “backstory”. You can see that from this on I have moved to more humorous stories. Sometimes I draw occassional fluffy comics when I’m really on that weird mood (usually 1-2 days/month thanks to the uterus and hormones), but my main focus is on the humour and I wish to make people laugh.

But that’s about it. I think I have now posted everything here, the newer ones I have posted here after drawing them since 2019 but this post is the “missing link” between those old old comics and the newer stuff :D Then I of course have all the other traditional art like potraits and such I did in 2009-2012 which I have never shown here. Maybe I should post those too?

[shaonsim]

I love Prabhamitra already. Tell me more. Tell me everything.

Thank you so much for your interest!!! Prabha is the newest addition to my list of favourite OCs (there are a lot of them who don't even have a name, but I have distinct headcanons for them 🤦🏿‍♀️), so I loved the chance to talk about her!!

Prabha is a news reporter, that much I have told you. You also know how she is looking for a huge scoop to establish herself as a star reporter. What you don't know is that her kind of big news is a little different, as in, she loves controversial topics. Nothing serious like politics and such, page 3 celebrities and business tycoons are more her thing. 

Our girl lives for DRAMA. 

She comes into this fic with the idea of interviewing the guy with a falling business and asks him how it feels to be on the brink of bankruptcy from their previous social standing, and stays relevant to the story because she agrees to spy on a rich business tycoon and his newly wedded wife because someone gives her the tip that the guy is going to murder his wife. (And in another AU, she comes in trying to uncover the mysteries surrounding the death of the wife of said business tycoon, fully believing that he had a hand in the accident) - if that doesn't say a lot about her…then I don't know what will. 

She also has a history of asking uncomfortable questions. She legit asked an actress whether her coveted role going to another actress was a product of nepotism (and nearly got banned from the celebrity circle, but her article led to good publicity of the film and they got decent buzz out of the whole thing so she got away with an assignment on the black marketing of expensive, imported cosmetics). 

Prabha is also very serious about her job and will spend hours in front of the laptop (equipped with her zero power anti-glare glasses and a notebook filled with hasty scribbles that no other soul will be able to decipher) and read up on the drama playing out in different social media sites. Agni (her boyfriend, and later on, husband) joins her sometimes, because he too, has a penchant for drama, but he gets bored after a while, and she does not let him laugh at the stupidity, so that's another reason why his interest dwindles after some time. Then he would try to distract her because he needs all of that intensity she displays in online drama. Of course he does. 

Our girl is also very much into pretty dresses and chunky bracelets. And of course, rarely do people see her without her Bindi (unless she is undercover, but then too, she carries a small portion of her bracelet collection on her right arm. The left arm is relatively empty, with just a  simple watch). Prabha loves to dress up because it makes her feel good and she would listen to no logical explanation as to why her numerous accessories might do more harm than good, even when she nearly got caught that one time because her bangles made too much noise. 

Prabha is also the nosiest among the three friends (Tara does have a 'savior complex' but she is fighting it nice and hard, and Chandni can't be bothered about drama between other people). She gets one whiff of DRAMA and she will be on to it like nobody's business. Often, she tries to restrain her limitless curiosity, but it doesn't always work. There is this voice in her head that needs to know EVERYTHING. 

(( This is all I have for now, because she is a relatively new character, but I will definitely come up with new things, and when I do, I will share them with you ♥️♥️♥️)) 

[floralseokjin]

I'm not tryna start anything but I saw that ask on my dash and just wanted to share what I felt. If anyone (the anon or not) feels offended by what I'm about to say, I apologize but also these are my viewpoints and you don't need to adopt them. I've been listening to BTS and kpop (multi) for quite a while now and I absolutely love this side of the music world. I love the boys and although senior year hasn't been kind enough for me to invest that kind of time into them anymore, I love (1/?)

more parts & reply under read more

them as artists, as musicians and best of all as humble, loving, caring, deserving of all things good, lovely human beings. So being into the kpop scene a lot, I kinda stopped listening to other music cuz again time being a huge factor limited my music largely to kpop. After Boy With Luv was released, I’ll admit I was pretty skeptical about Halsey being legit and the song in itself. The fact that they incorporated Halsey into this didn’t sit well with me for some reason? And tbh I honestly (2/?

thought she was piggybacking on their success train. And this was like right at the beginning when they released the song. A while passes and a Halsey song comes up randomly on shuffle and despite my prior dislike for her, I fell in love with it. I didn’t like the fact that I liked her songs? Anyway, I go on and somehow my dislike for her slowly melts away with every song, mv, short snippet, interview, etc. Now I’ll tell you WHY I took time out of my day at 12 am to reply to this. (3/?)

I replied cuz over the course of the past few months, I fell in love with that woman. Not exclusively for her music but for her morals, beliefs, her desire to pour out her emotions into her music, her “I don’t give a fuck about what they’ll say but I’m gonna say whatever I want” attitude, the way she doesn’t just sing when she performs, she makes Art in it’s rawest form. In her most recent lives of graveyard? She LITERALLY makes art on stage. That’s why I love her. For her it’s not just (4/?)

a performance but performing is like breathing to her. She puts her bare soul on the stage when she performs and its honestly so damn beautiful. Her fan base is huge as is and she loves us to death. She protects us like we’re her children regardless of age, she makes sure EVERYONE has a chance to be a part of her community. To the anon, you said that BTS went through a lot to get where they are and I cannot agree with you more. All of their hard work is paying off because (5/?)

they like her puts they’re heart and soul into performing and loves each and every one of us, their fans like family. But so did she. And what even is this comparison tbh. Both parties make music that transcends language and other barriers for people to listen to and come together as a family. Their music is a lot of different things for a lot of people. To some, it’s the reason they literally live and doesn’t end it all and for others, it’s a coping mechanism. But it all boils down to (6/?).

them doing what they do best, music to help other people and perhaps make the world a better place. Halsey is such a beautiful person inside out and I’m sorry but I cannot stand by and read about some (pardon my language) bullshit about her leeching off of BTS’ success and not do anything. She loves them and they love her and yeah they’re grown enough to know who’s a fake and not so I’d appreciate if you chose your words wisely next time you decide to unnecessarily shade some other (7/?)

hardworking artist/person without solid facts. I love the boys and I love Halsey. I’m not going into comparison, but both of their music helps me through my darkest days and I’ll always love them and their music to bits. And I hope both sides just get a lot of love and support from everywhere and continue to make music and inspire others like me. Good day to you dear anonnie and to you Jordan (Ps I’m a silent spectator of your blog udiue don’t mind me) and I hope you guys have a fantastic week

Aw this is really sweet to read. I think it shows that humans can be quick to judge when we know nothing about a certain person/situation. The original anon actually sent an ask in last night apologising but I thought I’d post this anyway because you deserve a reply after all the effort of expressing your thoughts ~ Thank you! Anyway, have a great week ahead! 

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2010s: 15 - 11

15. Ieva Zasimauskaitė - “When we’re old” Lithuania 2018

[2018 Review here]

~wen wir owld HOOOOOOOOOOOO~

So close to the endgame it’s time to open all of the emotional registers. Much like Hovi, I did not expect to love Ieva as much as I do, however unlike Hovi I had already fully embraced Ieva and “When we’re old” long before rehearsals started.

And for good reason because Ieva fucking disarms me every time without fail. She herself is of course a hilarious, relatably weirdo indie girl, this time in the guise of a Born Again Hindu who ~FELT A COSMIC PRESENCE~ on the stage with her. 😍 Telling the true story of how she overcame depression by falling in love with her hubby. Flanked by holograms that project Ieva’s life dream: to be happy and grow old with the love of her life. All my hopeless romantic triggers are activated by this song. ALL OF THEM.

People are generally divided on Ieva’s voice, but um hello welcome to BorisBubbles. I ranked Nina Kralic and Jana Burcheska hellow-high. I LOVE Ieva’s husky, nasal, ovine, falsetto whine of a voice. It makes “When we’re old” for me. Ieva injects so much vulnerability and authenticity into a song that whenever she performs it, all I can do is sit in silence, tears welling up in my eyes, bleating along with the WHAOHHHHHs. Time truly stands still during “When we’re old” and I’m speechless.

________________________________________________________________

14. Conchita Wurst - “Rise like a phoenix” Austria 2014

You can be damn’ sure the highest ranked powerballad on this list is “Rise like a phoenix”. It isn’t as much as a song as it is an INSTITUTION. 

Which is why, symbollically, “Phoenix” is a very important winner. It’s a plight for overcoming hate, for overcoming bullying, from being yourself in the face and of adversity and rising from the ashes reborn, reinvented, reinvigorated. Its presentation is provocative, yet secondary, putting vocals and song on the foreground. It is rooted in the political zeitgeist of its winners, like most modern winners, obviously, 

however, ask yourself this:

Would “Phoenix” have won if it hadn’t been a great performance of a great song? 

I don’t think it would have. Take away the powerful composition and leave just the politically correct message, and you get Bilal Hassani. Take away the beard and you have, well, a really good song bond theme by a talented vocalist, that probably would’ve finished top ten, if not top five in most years. 

It’s easy to get distracted by Tom’s stick because a “Bearded drag queen” provides a lot of cognitive dissonance, which I personally love because it forces me to think, keeping my mind sharp. The use of a gimmick does NOT cheapen the talent on display here, however. Tom’s delivery of the song is flawless, hitting every note, delivering both ‘feminine’ nuturing comfort and ‘masculine’ strength to his glorious song. He even throws in some small nuggets of fierceness, providing levity, reminding us of Conchita’s drag queen roots

The act is cut from the same professional cloth; it is maybe a tad provocative, but at it’s core it remains dignified and classy, maintaining a moral high ground that instantly sheds a bad light on any hater. You may pull her down, but she’s gonna FLYYYYY.

Conchita Wurst is the best winner of this decade, period. No winning performance is as ironclad, vocally, musically or stagingwise as hers. No other winner has shown as much raw performance talent as she has. No winner has been able to make such a statement while at their core maintaining a high-quality musical standard. No winner has been such a champion of those whose voices are trampled for being different. To use Conchita’s own words after she won: “WE ARE UNITY. AND *WE* ARE UNSTOPPABLE.” 

________________________________________________________________

13. Zlata Ognevich - “Gravity” Ukraine 2013

This is the last female fronted act from 2013, you know what that means: EPIC ENTRANCE TIME 😍

What a beautiful dreamscape. I felt bad ranking Elina Nechayeva in a fairly low 39th place, but honestly, “Gravity” vibes very similarly and does the same things a lot better: Breathtakingly regal woman, a mirage of near-divine grace, stunning visual effects... SIGN ME UP ALREADY. At the core we of course find Zlata, the winner of the Best Human Award in 2013. Zlata’s backstage bits were rife with personality facts that instantly endeared her to me. A praraphrased selection from her infinitely quotable interview gold: ”I PRACTICE BIG VOICE BY HOLDING BREATH UNDERWATER”; “I COME FROM PLACE IT’S CALLED CRIMEA, IS LARGE ::reads from online dictionary:: PEN...EEN...SYOO..LA(?) WITH BIG MOUNTAIN AND LARGE SEA ^_^”; “I LOVE UNICORN IS FAVOURITE ANIMAL”. GODDESS. 😍

Fortunately her overpoweringly loud, yet disarmingly weird personality is also omnipresent during her big screen performance. “Gravity” is a mirage of Disney mojo and Zlata absolutely fucking hits it like A SHTRIKE OF DUNDAR

I don’t think I’ve ever listened to a song that is legit quotable at every interval? There is not a single line in “Gravity” that doesn’t bring out the bedroom karaoke: “IMMA LIIIKA BADDERFLYYYYY.” “NOTHING COMES FROM PRIDE, -*HAYLALE*” “NOW I FEEL NO FEEEEE-AAAAAAR.“

And I’m not even done because Gravity ALSO features an excellent backing choir (the male backing vocalist is incredible). It’s just a perfect example of world music, conjuring three minutes of pure, unicorn-endorsed magic. IMMA LIIIKE A BADDERFLYYYYY. 🦋

________________________________________________________________

12. Juliana Pasha - “It’s all about you” Albania 2010

YUARDAWAN 😀 YUGIMMEDATSAMTINANEED 😀 ITZMI 😀 ENDAMFOLIN 😀

We are at #12, which means we’re at that Olympian milestone where every entity ranked is a fucking supernatural force. In Juliana’s case a forced of pure, unfiltered, streechy harpism. 😍 It is so weird to think that she was the first of Albania’s now iconic ‘Shrieking Boss Hag” archetype because it feels like a alliance older than time, sealed and styled in cuneiform onto a shard of Sumerian pottery, blessed by the Annunaki and then embedded into the muddy banks of the Euphrates. 

Anyway, Juliana earned my HEART once she greeted us with her uncanny-valleyesque diction and cheshire-catesque leering, all YUARDAWAN! and proceeded to throw everything, both vocally and facialexpressionly, into the mix, in ascending degrees of deafening loudness. 😍

With a criminally addictive electronic schlager song too boot! One which, like Zlata features an INCREDIBLE supporting cast in a bangin’ gospel choir, as well as a very generous dollop of ❤ ELECTRONIC VIOLA REALNESS ❤

One of the fave musicians of NaziPope, btw. “It’s all about you” is such a Triumpf of the Shrill. 😍

Anyway, this high quality list of ingredients make for a very replayable ride that never spoils or grows stale, no matter how often I listen to it. Which is actually a lot. I’ve looped “It’s all about you” at countless occasions since 2010, making it perhaps the song on this list that I have to the MOST often. (Or second most because there IS a song I still have to rank that may challenge Juliana for that title.) If that ain’t a hallmark for quality, I don’t know what is. 

________________________________________________________________

11. Koza Mostra ft. Agathonas Iakovidis - “Alcohol is free” Greece 2013

Has life been letting you down? Have you been struck by a financial crisis? Do you no longer know how to continue living. Fear not, because :cracks knuckles: we are about to embark on a MASTERCLASS of unabashed drunken REVELRY:

Um a small disclaimer though. This song has a really really, really, REALLY irresponsible title. DO NOT at any circumstance use alcohol as a coping mechanism, engage in drunk driving or other activities under influence that you may life to regret later, if you live to regret it later. Also don’t drink if you’re underage. Also also, alcohol can cause obesity and cardio-vascular arrest. and cancer, possibly. Drink, but do so RESPONSIBLY. 

HOWEVER, what if this song is... a PSA???😈 An Anti-Crisis PSA that is, lol. A group of folk hipsters literally PARTYING AWAY the misery of the financial crisis in a delightfully self-deprecating fashion is just the pinacle of fun for me and Koza Mostra fucking ROLL with it. Watching them dart out in all wind directions, interacting with each other gives me LIFE.

It’s exactly that sort of industriousness which sets “Alcohol is free” apart from other party songs. There is a LOT of randomness going on in the background and it gives you ZERO time to process all of it, making every rewatch an easter egg hunt.

This approach to staging usually doesn’t work, but here it is actually very intelligent and I’ll explain why: The act places a lot of focus on Agathonas (which it should because he’s the lead singer despite his featured status), but by the same token offers constant distraction by all the Koza Mostra shenanigans in the background...  In other words, it’s an act that forces your attention away from the main event by confusing your senses, requesting all of you concentration keep up with everything that’s going on... which is actually a brilliantly accurate simulation of how 'being drunk’ works.

(btw if you listen closely you can hear the sound of Agathonas tapping his skull lol <3)

So the next time you listen to this song, pour yourself a drink (ONE drink!) sit back and embark on a Waldo-esque hunt to see how many beautiful nuggets you can find hidden in that splendid act, as the upbeat sirtaki madness fills your head with cloudy thoughts. As far as I’m concerned, Koza Mostra have WON the Eurovision Fun Contest. 

EVERYONE RISE AND APPLAUD THE  10 BEST ENTRIES IN THIS DECADE:

From now on, I’ll only include maximum 2 songs per update :o

And in this update we finally say goodbye to Greece, Albania, Ukraine, Austria and Lithuania. Read my thoughts on them, below:

LITHUANIA

Lithuania was hands down the worst country in the 00s and look at their chart now. They are slowly getting their shit together and it shows. Keep on going, darlings!!

AUSTRIA

God Austria are so boring. At least they occasionally provide us with a great entry here or there, but they’re so inconsistent in their entertainment. 2 great - 6 okay - 1 terrible is NOT a great ratio by any means. 

UKRAINE

ALBANIA

Albania are very hit-or-miss, but I really like their presence in Eurovision actually. Like Georgia they entries are so left-field that they are always *interesting* even when they’re not good. Except “Fairytale”. Fuck “Fairytale”.

GREECE

Fuck this decade was ROUGH for Greece. They are a shattered nation and if you think this chart is bad, let me remind you that their best result in the past five contests is 19th place. Same in fact, as San Marino’s highest and lower than the highest placements of Albania, Montenegro, Slovenia, UK, Ireland, North Macedonia,...

[swannsjack]

Oh my god, can you people stop making things up and distorting facts about the Johnny Depp vs Amber thing just so that you can keep defending her??

(I’m pretty sure this will not reach anyone who actually needs it, but I’m still doing this) 

People are so allergic to admitting they’re wrong, or at least giving someone the benefit of the doubt, that y’all making up absolute bs. Calling Depp racist, misoginistic, homo/bi-phobic, and worst of all a p*dophile.

There’s literally zero evidence backing up any of it and if you fell for that, I feel sorry for you. This is all bs made up by Heard stans to make him look bad in front of people who know nothing about him. And for some people literally all it takes is when someone says something and they’re like “really?” “YES, i have no evidence to support this except for my nonsense hate and me being an awful human for making sh*t up, but IT’S TOTALLY TRUE”. and people just believe it. it’s ridiculous.

I’m not saying he’s perfect, but he’s never been any of the aforementioned things. I’m not even going to touch much on the p*dophile thing because that was made up by a Trump stan and JD hates Trump and they’re so pressed about it they have to make disgusting things like that up, and now people who were shocked by his evidence proving they were slandering him for no reason, repeat it just so that they don’t have to admit they were wrong.

No woman, except for Heard and her hoax-assisting friends, have ever said a bad word about Depp. Quite the opposite, everyone’s who met him say he’s a gentleman, kind, caring. Saying things like “there’s no one else like him” and claiming “he doesn’t belong in show business, he belongs somewhere better” -  by Sarah Jessica Parker. His first wife is not only still in contact with him, but even spoke against Heard and said Johnny never even raised a voice at her. Vanessa Paradis wrote a hand-written note defending him. So many women spoke in defense of him. 

Some people are even lying and saying he has been accused by his previous gf of abuse. HE HAS NOT. No one had ever accused him of that and no one came out during the last three years saying “oh yeah he abused me, too” they DEFENDED HIM. Please, if you someone tried to convince you that he had been accused, do not believe it, do your own research, you’ll see it that it’s not true and people are just making up rumours to support their “Heard is a victim” story.

Or her stans saying he abused her because she’s bisexual is like?? There is literally nothing to back it up. He’s never said a bad word about other sexualities. He made a decision that Jack Sparrow is bisexual. His very own daughter is not straight and have you seen how proud he is of her? He supports her and adores her with every ounce of his being. Stop turning him into something he’s not.

"If there's any message to my work, it is ultimately that it's okay to be different, that it's good to be different, that we should question ourselves before we pass judgement on someone who looks different, behaves different, talks different, is a different color."  - Johnny Depp, y’all

But guess who was arrested for abusing her FEMALE partner? Amber Heard.

Guess who accused the gay FEMALE cop that arrested her of being misoginistic? Amber Heard.

And guess who accused the same GAY female cop that arrested her of being homophobic? Amber Heard.

And guess who made a racist tweet? AMBER HEARD.

Isn’t it funny how Heard stans are accusing Depp of everything that can be said of and proven Amber Heard is??

Now for the distorting of facts:

I’ve seen a few posts/tweets being like “ya’ll jumped at some UNsourced info” blah blah. IT IS NOT UNSOURCED. They’re legit lawsuit with clerk stamps on them. And Johnny and his lawyer have referenced them!! Johnny literally said “which is why I’m suing...” and there’s been a recent statement reacting to people’s support how he’s determined more than ever to fight for justice and he WANTS his day in court to prove all that he’s saying is true. And his lawyer has been giving statements to the press for almost a year now. All of this is legit info from legit court documents. Just because you’re too lazy to look for the actual link for the whole document, that doesn’t make them false. It’s like you people think a Depp fan wrote two fake 40 page lawsuits, are you really that pathetic to suggest something like that? Waldman, his lawyer, has confirmed what the lawsuit says, it’s not just screenshot from some “unsourced” lawsuit, he repeated what the lawsuit says: 87 surveillance videos, litany of neutral witnesses, including the police, photographic evidence, audio, and sworn testimonies, as well as Heard’s admission.

And furthermore, people saying just because the lawsuit claims she confessed, doesn’t mean it’s true. Well, okay. However, she has not denied the claims. Read through her statements reacting to the lawsuits, she or her lawyer/publicist or whatever, have responded several times. But never with “I deny this”. It’s always something to make Johnny look bad. “that’s mental abuse” “he’s hell-bent on self-destruction” “ms heard won’t be silenced” “frivolous lawsuit” “just read his latest interview to see he’s delusional” blah blah blah. 

None of that includes any denial whatsoever. And some people are saying “well, so she was just defending herself!!” yeah? so why hasn’t she said that either?? Instead of accusing Depp of mental abuse, she could just say “I confessed to ‘attacks’ that were pure self-defense.” That’s literally all she’d have to say. She hasn’t. The first “she admitted” claims came out several months ago last year (y’all just noticed only this week for some reason). And in all those months, she has not denied anything. Whereas Johnny has ALWAYS maintained he didn’t abuse her, he’s always denied it. Why hasn’t she?

My second point is people saying he’s still an asshole even if he was a victim, because *references some out of context bs* blah blah, I’ve been over a part of this at the beginning. Yes, he was arrested in the past, for trashing a hotel room (no violence on people) with his then gf Kate Moss, and for chasing away paparazzi after politely asking them to leave him and his family alone. They didn’t, so he PROTECTED his family. Trying to distort that to make him sound abusive is gross. And lastly, stop using the “he punched a guy on a movie set” allegation. First of all, the guy literally ditched court, I wonder why. Secondly, multiple people have come out saying Johnny was neither drunk, nor did he punch the guy. A script supervisor even said they have time-stamped photos to prove he didn’t. However, I would not blame him if he did because HE WAS DEFENDING A HOMELESS AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN. That’s right, the accuser was being RACIST. And according to witnesses:

Danoff says they were shooting outside and Brooks (the accuser) berated an African-American homeless woman with "racial and derogatory slurs" because she was in his way. Depp was sitting next to her about 25 feet away when it happened.

"He immediately stood up from our shared seat on the edge of a planter bench and went over to Brooks to stand up for the woman," Danoff says. "Mr. Depp said to Mr. Brooks, 'You can’t talk to her like that. You think she is something less than you? Who do you think you are? How dare you?'"

What an as*hole Depp is, right?

And stop using his addiction struggles to say that proves he’s abusive or that it means he deserved the abuse. Addiction is an illness and it’s disgusting to use it against him, when he’s been so opened and honest about it his entire life /but guess who’s pretending to be perfect even though she’s in fact known to be a drug addict but she pretends she’s not, at least JD’s open about it. He’s always been an honest guy. He is not a liar/. I beg you, watch this video “I was trying to calm the brain. I was trying to feel better.” and tell me, how can you use it against him?? And note, that this was two months before Heard’s accusation, a year into their marriage, look at his appearance. He was being abused. 

He was also abused as kid, by the way. If you didn’t know.

And what’s also annoying is “none of that proves his innocence, they were both abusive then” GO AWAY WITH THIS NONSENSE. She’s been openly mocking him for almost three years now.

1) Guess who starred in a pirate film. 2) Guess who played the Mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland? Oh yeah, that would be her former “abusive” husband. 3) And the last photo is literally so disgusting. Johnny changed the tattoo with her nickname that he had on his fingers (and he wears a lot of rings on his fingers) and this human garbage posted a picture of herself with fist punching, fingers full of rings and the caption #NoInkNeeded. She is a garbage, openly mocking her victim. 

And she RECENTLY posted several photos of herself that were taken while she was with Depp (x, x - both taken years ago by Johnny’s friend Greg Williams) One on the roof of the building they lived in together where she was allegedly being violently abused. Oh the nostalgia, am I right? Her friend literally commented they miss it. WTF? They miss the place their friend was “abused” in? Oh and guess who demanded the three of their formerly shared condos in that building? Our perfect angel “abuse victim” miss Heard. I’m sure it’s very normal for an abuse victim to want to keep the place in which they were abused. Johnny Depp is the weird one for selling it and wanting no memories of it.

Stop the mental gymnastics to defend Heard and paint Depp as the worst human ever.