#two (two!) separate weird coincidences have happened today

[itsalmostavengers]

It is a crazy small world in which we live

[loki-who-remains]

Disclaimer: A rather lengthy ramble about quantum mechanics, Kangs and Loki meta which ends with how special Lokis are. Mostly for myself because I’m obsessed with real and fictional laws of time and space but struggle to understand some things

There’s Feynman’s sum-over-paths description of quantum mechanics. In normal Newtonian way you just calculate and take the shortest path from A to B, simple. But in Feynman’s you take into account ALL of the paths including the ones that occasionally bring you to your neighbours or Mars or even back in time. You add up all the paths, even the most crazy ones and then you have the probability of getting from A to B. It just so happens that the shortest path has the biggest probability. But it also means that all the crazy things can exist too, however low is their probability.

Basically, it’s hard to imagine there are only evil Kangs. There should be a couple of pure-of-heart ones as well as a small bunch of HWR-scientists who took their experiments too far. Although HWR mentioned that Sacred timeline is the only possible way for him to stop the Multiversal war (which actually mirrors Dr Strange’s prediction about Thanos which is unnecessarily dramatic and a bit weird to me because of sum-over-paths), there is a possibility he didn’t meet those variants of him who stopped their research or hid or changed names or temporal aura (if possible) or uploaded their minds into an android so they wouldn’t be extracted via Temporal Loom.

Back to Feynman’s logic. If it’s the whole universe that makes its path from A to B then there is ours which may or may not be the most probable, and others like ours or different or crazy. Combined, they are the Multiverse.

So could there be other TVAs? The TVA city (?) looks very much like Chronopolis from Quatumania. Give Kang enough time, he’ll build you an infinite folded city structure outside of time and space. Call today and get a discount! So there are already two separate empire-like establishments.

I think there’s one thing that I struggle with in regard of MCU: where is the line between timelines and multiverse? People who belong to the same universe but exist on different timelines are variants of the same person making a different choice at some point in time (Loki who went to Asgard and continued in Dark World and Loki who fled with the tesseract.) This actually coincides with how quantum probability would work in our universe if we could observe it. People who belong to entirely different universes are also variants, but they can make same choices and have similar experiences like Sylvie, Lokis is the void and Spider-peeps. And this is the quantum probability of how could Multiverse exist (still, if we could observe it)

I understand why TVA would prune the branches of universe 616, it’s the base for the Sacred timeline. But why would it bother with multiversal variants? Classic, Kid and President could be probable past and future Loki, but Sylvie, Boastful Loki and CrocoLoki are not the variants of the universe 616.

So, does it mean that somewhere out there, beyond universe 616, there might be a Kang who also isolated a timeline in his universe, and created another TVA?

Will tackling the mess in the TVA/its destruction actually solve the problem? Or make Loki and Co travel around multiverse and do the same thing again and again with all other existing TVAs?

Was Brad telling the truth about Lokis being the actual problem? Kinda contradicts his other statement, ‘you think you’re special, but you’re not’, because if Lokis bring so much chaos that all of them have to follow a straight path or be pruned, they are very special.

[master-jarrus]

So about the bikes separate from the poll just so that post doesn't become all jumbled with photos and I can make sure I am completely up front because I want to be genuine

So bikes are cheaper and cars keep being extremely problematic for my husband and I

We don't have kids and it's just the two of us so two motorcycles are actually a really convenient  and viable option for us

(They are also more eco friendly if you take care of them right but that's for another day)

So no matter what way the vote goes I am getting a bike

However, bikes are still more than a grand and while we can afford it, we can't afford it.

It's one of those weird spots of like yes we can. But everything else will be tight

That's where the vote idea came in from

I am unable to find jobs that are actually hiring

AND my career field of costuming, sewing, etc is dying. No one has these skills anymore unless they are really old or weird gremlins like me. So sewing shops that would hire me are impossible to find

So I thought hey I know how to cosplay and I'm professionally trained (it was actually a certificate I was pursuing they just refused to offer the last 2 classes) in it

Maybe other people would like to see me actually cosplay and watch and learn how to make good quality costumes and props from scratch/as scratch as possible

This happened to coincide with us looking at bikes and an tiny event on tiktok where I got yelled at by cosplayers for saying I wasn't a professional so I decided to ask if people would be interested in a cosplay that combines everything together

The vote isn't over yet but so far (I voted just to see the votes but it doesn't skew the results I promise) everyone seems in favor so unless a bunch of people suddenly vote no I am going to start setting stuff up

In the meantime here are the update bikes we are looking at

2008 Suzuki, owner already responded. They are active duty military and is on a training thing so when they come back we be looking at the bike

The silhouette is already pretty close to Lloyd's main thing I would need to do is paint. And then I would probably change the tires to handle touring (long distances). I may also make the mirrors bigger. This will make my ability to see better and also aids in the cartoonish look

Older bike that might make it harder to find parts if it ever needs a repair

Clean title

*my husband is also active duty and this may give us good negotiating leverage

2018 Suzuki, owner has not responded and some of the pictures appear to be stock photos which makes me a little wary because that's unusual for a non dealership seller

Same cosmetics as the above bike

Newer bike if it needs to repaired we can probably find the parts. But it may require more premium gas

Clean title

2005 Kawasaki Ninja, only recently found it. I will be showing it to my husband when he gets back from work. I haven't contacted the owner yet because my husband is not in the loop yet

Would just need paint, bigger mirrors and the touring tires

Older bike might make repairs difficult

No titled mentioned

Those are the 3 bikes, because the title isn't mentioned on the ninja it will likely get removed.

Unfortunately theft is common in my area and my husband and I have even had a vehicle stolen from us so anything that doesn't have a title is sketchy

Anyways I hope this was informative and not just me rambling and I will be working on that youtube video today if my internet likes me enough

[sohmariku]

A fishy smell

Earlier this week I suddenly started noticing a strong fishy smell in one particular part of my house. I didn't think much of it at first, must be the ventilation system picking up on something outside again. It happens. Alhough I could weirdly enough only smell it in the one part of my house not connected to the system... raising some question marks. After a while the smell disappeared, so I forgot about it.

Two days later I suddenly smelled it again, and I realised the fishy smell somehow seemed to coincide with the moment I ran my laundry. But for whatever reason the smell didn't linger anywhere near my laundry machine. Making me wonder whether it was just pure coincidence? Either way, I could not locate the source of the smell and it disappeared again after a while, so I let it rest.

But today, when I turned my laundry machine on, it appeared again! All right then, this is no mere coincidence! This must be related!

My husband's initial internet search only gave him results about smelly laundry machines, because that's just what happens when your only search terms are "laundry machine" and "fishy smell". So I decided to tell google my house started smelling fishy if I ran the laundry and the top search result all said something along the lines, "Don't ever ignore a fishy smell in your house! It could be a sign of serious electrical issues! Your outlet might be on the brink of catching fire!"

"Um, okay... electrical issues, huh? Outlets possibly catching fire. Very well... Then, let's be a bit weird and smell the sole electrical outlet in that one part of my house that smells really bad right now, but is like a floor away from my laundry machine. I seriously doubt that will... HOLY CRAP, THAT THING SMELLLS FISHY!!"

And thus I immediately turned my laundry machine off, and called my father in a panic to ask for advice on how to proceed, because my brain refused to think clearly. He very calmly advised me to turn off the electricity and check the situation behind the outlet.

"Yes, of course, that makes sense."

A quick check revealed two of the wires had basically melted together... and the whole electrical situation behind our outlet was in fact one that should not exist in the first place.

One trip to the hardware store and with some advice from the expert there my husband stocked up on everything we might need to fix this safely. It took us like an hour after that, but everything is reconnected again and in de much safer way, we are told. The outlet still smells somewhat fishy, but I can't feel a sizzling heat radiating from it anymore, so that's probably the smell baked into the insulation of the wires...? We will have to keep an eye on it for now. As long as the whole room doesn't start smelling fishy again I think we're good.

Aside from the fact that the whole wiring was a bit wonky, this probably happened, because my laundry machine was plugged into the wrong outlet. (So the wires were getting too hot on a regular basis?) I was pretty sure the outlet I used was a seperated one with it's own circuit breaker, but... guess not. So, to increase the changes this might not happen again, I now plugged the laundry machine into the outlet that is in fact separated from the rest of the floor(s).

Ugh, I'm so tired now. Its probably going to take me a at least week to recover from this...

[tonystarksfavoritedaughter]

ok but this as a request 👀 arvin & reader bumping into each other pretty often that the first time you talk, he demands to know why you’re following him and you swear it’s a coincidence but he’s paranoid and doesn’t seem to believe you 😩😭

A/N: So this is my first Arvin request and I’m very happy for it! So this is my first time writing for Arvin so I hope it’s really good! (My apologies Ashanti if it isn’t lmao)

Warnings: swearing

Coincidence

It had been hours since Arvin had had any proper amount of sleep. Most of it was spent in the back of cars he had hitched rides from. All of the time on the road, and not seeing his grandma and uncle for so long was starting to get to him. He knew exactly what he needed: a smoke to ease his nerves, and so he told the man driving him to drop him off at the nearest gas station. He went in and immediately found the cigarettes. He was about to grab a pack of Camels when another hand was in his vision.

“Oh sorry!” You laughed. “Just trying to get my brother one. They’re his favorite.”

“It’s alright. Here, you take ‘em.” Even though they were his favorite too, Arvin was a gentlemen, just like how is grandma raised him to be. After everything, he owed it to her to keep it up.

“You sure? I know that they’re a good pack and you like you’ve been through hell and,” you started rambling.

“I’m sure,” he laughed. “You take ‘em.”

“Thanks,” you looked down and blushed slightly.

He walked away started to wander around looking for anything else he wanted. He spotted the drinks and decided to get a coke for the road. He got the drink and walked towards the cashier when a body collided with him.

“Oh miss I’m so sorry I- hey stranger,” he smiled.

“Oh my goodness! I swear I didn’t see you. I was just walking to the drinks and then you came and,” you trailed off. Arvin knew it was an accident, but couldn’t help but wonder if something was off. It was coincidence sure, but he couldn’t be too careful.

“Right,” he dragged out the word. You two went your separate ways and he paid the cashier and started walking towards a bus stop. Now fate as it may be, the bus stop just so happened to be next to your car. Arvin was waiting for the bus and everything was peaceful until he heard a car engine starting and failing. He looked over to where the noise was coming from, and sure enough it was you in the car.

“Goddamnit start, you piece of shit.”

This was the final straw for him. He walked over to you and turned you around to face him. “Look. I know the first time we bumped into each other was an accident, and maybe so was the second time. But now it’s getting too much, so I’m gonna ask you this one time. Are you following me?” He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching.

“Sir, I swear those times were accidents and yes, it is a little too weird that we keep running into each other, but now my car won’t start and it’s my nephews birthday today so that’s why I got him the drink and I ran into you because I was making sure it was the right one, and…it’s just been a stressful day,” you started to tear up.

He looked dumbfounded for a second and looked down at your car. It wasn’t smoking, so he knew it be an easy fix. “I’m sorry for that. I didn’t know all that. Your car looks like an easy fix. So how bout I help you out as an ‘I’m sorry?’”

“Do you know anything about cars?”

“I used to be a mechanic back at home. So I’d say I know a little thing or two.”

“Thank you,” you smiled. He smiled back at you and you opened your trunk to get your toolbox. Your brother had insisted on putting one in your car in case something like this ever happened. You handed him the tools and he got to work.

About twenty minutes later he gotten your car up and running again. He wiped his hands on the rag that had came with the box. “Good as new. Just a little dead battery, and thanks to that car over there I was able to hook up the cables and get it running again.”

“I don’t even understand how that works, but thank you…I’m sorry what’s your name?” You asked.

“Arvin,”

“Arvin,” you repeated.

“Here, if you ever need another car repair, you’ll know who to call.” He dig in his pocket for a leftover business card from his old work. It had his name and phone number on it.

“Thank you. I’ll be sure to call if there’s any trouble. But aren’t you going somewhere? You look like the traveling type.”

“We’ll,” he scratched the back of his neck. “I have a feeling I’ll be staying a little while longer,” he winked.

[jiminrings]

can we get a fratboy Jimin and good girl oc with pinning from both sides 👀 ahhhh thank u in advance love ur writing!!

cherry king

drabble week: day four

drabble week masterlist

pairing: fratboy!jimin x goody two-shoes!reader

wordcount: 3k

glimpse: "y-you uhm, you-? y'know, you like... doing that? is that why it's your nickname?"

feedback + support mean the world to me!!

“next!”

great!! the line’s moving :D

that’s only like the 87th time jimin has heard the word next and it makes him wonder how much more would it take him to bring him to the front

(it’s actually only been 14 times and jimin might just be a self-admitted impatient bitch!!!)

he understands that yes, it’s ten in the evening!!! and reasonably-large stores/pharmacies like these can have less staff at the time compared to ten in the morning

sure, checkout machines and cashier lanes could be broken down!! or they could just not be open at all

jimin gets that alright, maybe the self-checkout machines are close at this time of the night because it is ten in the evening

what’s not clicking in his mind, however is that at the exact time that he comes here

as in the EXACT time that he’s here (!!!) — there happens to be dozens of people in a store at ten in the evening, and there happens to be a grand total of one (1) cashier lane

atleast random store music would be entertaining :((( all he hears are the beeps of a scanner and the chatter of groups of people who came here

jimin was eavesdropping on some guys in front of him and he wAS invested but lmao turns they were just discussing the plot of die hard or any testosterone-jacked movie like it

he’s also tried looking at the smaller middle-aged woman’s phone in front of him who’s scrolling through her facebook feed, but quickly decides against continuing it

because what if u could see his face and when she turns it off, she’d see a college guy deeply-invested in the baloney article she was reading about how subway sandwiches are the work of the devil

so uh yeah he’s just looking everywhere besides the front, back, and the sides of him and in all angles basically

he’s,,,,, aimlessly scrolling through his instagram feed he’s already scrolled through tHREE times and his explore’s page a little too dry

it’s a good thing that jimin’s entirely sure he’s the nosiest person out of this line and no one else is trying to figure him out

might be wrong though

“cherry king?”

hold the fuck on

jimin’s eyes widen, head snapping up and clueless to the fact that he doesn’t look discreet at all, and his head-cocking’s the most movement he’s done the whole time in this store

WHO’S SAYING HIS NICKNAME?????

it can’t be a coincidence either because as far as he’s concerned, there isn’t anything named cherry king that’s being sold here

there is literally NO other plausible scenario happening here besides the fact that someone who knows him is in the store!!!!

his gaze falls to the person behind him, brows knitted in confusion until it clicks

oh

that was you?

“jimin? huh, it really is you. i thought i was losing my mind for a second.”

“y/n?”

okay maybe hE’S the one who’s losing his mind here

he knows you!! you’re the smart girl in his year who’s known for being pristine and stuff!! you’re like the good-est girl he’s ever known and heard of

.... quick question lads is that weird to know someone by

“you could’ve just called me by my name, y’know,” jimin chuckles heartily, still a little dumbfounded to see you here but he’s grateful for the interaction nonetheless

you look casual today?? like you still look like yourself but everyone else would think it’s an out-of-body experience to see you out of your pretty dresses and monochromatic get-ups

it’s you..,.. in a hoodie three sizes larger than your size with your pristine shoes traded in for socked-feet wearing slides

jimin thinks that you look like grace under pressure

“i wasn’t sure,” you smile right back and it’s the first time he realizes that there’s glasses atop your nosebridge, softening your image more from the usual composed look you carried

“how were you sure enough to say my nickname out-loud though?”

jimin questions you, bringing light to how he’s wearing a plain white shirt and is looking as relaxed as ever with how he’s dressed — his hair long enough to be put into a messy sprout of a bun

you clear your throat, the amusement bubbling in your scratchy throat

“you have yourself as your lockscreen, jimin.”

oh my gOD

he winces when you say it, eyes screwing shut in embarrassment that he whines in pain with how direct you put it

“n-no way — fuck you respectfully, y/n. i-i’m not- i’m changing it right now!!”

does he look the vainest person alive rn

the way he has a mini freakout entertains you to your core, giggles unable to be suppressed as he finds the latest-taken picture he has of dogs that he comes across with

that’s 10/10 an experience he doesn’t want to repeat again

“it’s okay. i won’t tell anyone.”

he hears you reassure and he believes you, a flustered blush on his cheek still as he coughs to make up for a diversion topic he couldn’t think of

frankly, you’re getting bored too and jimin’s the only form of entertainment you have because using your phone atm would be too disorienting

“what are you doing here, by the way?”

your head tilts in query and he’s relieved that you address something else, not being relieved seconds later when he realizes his answer

“just a little supply run for our frat. we weren’t supposed to run out of things for three more days, so this is just a lil emergency haul for awhile.”

you nod in understanding, glancing down at his basket and uh

uhm 1/4 of the space is literally occupied by boxes of condoms

....

......

jimin’s confused to why you turn silent, thinking that he must’ve gotten boring to continue talking to until he follows your gaze to his basket

NO WAY?!]>|>]%%[%]%]

“i-it’s not l-like that!!!” he crouches and immediately gets the food and the bottles of shampoo and conditioner to bury the condoms in the bottom of the pile, attractively getting more attention from you who’s ready to let it go

“i-it’s not — it’s ours — n-no!! t-they just gave me a list and i just put it because it’s on the list b-but like it wasn’t my-...”

how many more times will the universe fuck jimin up in front of the person he has a lil happy crush on

you only smile meekly, tilting your head and he thinks this is the part where you tell him how much of a douche he is

"y-you uhm, you-? y'know, you like... doing that? is that why it's your nickname?"

:O

“t-that?” jimin clarified albeit confused, thinking back to his nickname as he tries to rapidly connect the dots to not look like a fool

cherry king? that?? what do you-

WAIT WHAT

“nO!! o-of course not!!”

he almost shrieks and his voice sounds ultimately defensive, shaking his head no

why does he look so frantic

“hey, hey, i believe you! — calm down, jimin. you don’t have to explain anything to me.”

whew

fuck

but he argues that it iS the truth though!!!

but why won’t you just ask him why he’s called cherry king though >:(

you’re already content with the silence after the conversation but he isn’t, still wanting more

is it so bad that he wants redemption D:

“how about you? what are you doing here?”

you don’t answer instantly and it’s because you’re nudging jimin to continually walk, the cashier looking much more visible now as he’s nearer in line

he takes a look at the handful of things that’s in your basket —

electrolytes, hot pockets, soup, cup noodles and fever patches...?

“oh. i think i’m running a fever.”

what???

what are you doing here aLONE if you think you’re running a fever???

he’s not gonna lie about the fact that you don’t look too good

what if you pass out and no one’s there for you and all the graveyard shift employees do is put a wet floor sign around your figure???

“y/n?? what are you doing here alone then?? are you oUT of your mind??”

the panic in jimin’s voice is clear as day and you’re a little startled, instead responding to tapping him on the shoulder to point that he’s already the one on the cashier

what he does is grab your basket before he is, putting it in front of the conveyor belt because he couldn’t even wait for it to roll out

“i said i think i’m running a fever.”

jimin stops from simultaneously rummaging for his rewards card and putting his items on the counter to unceremoniously drop the box of condoms down jUST to put his hand on your forehead

“you are.”

you surely don’t think low of jimin but you can’t help be surprised either at his concern for you when this is the only time you’ve had a conversation with him!!!

“you drove here?” he asks in seriousness, sending you a look while waiting for the total amount

“walked. the airconditioning makes me even more sick,” you answer with no fuss because even thinking about car fresheners while you’re sporting a fever makes you want to gag. “let me-...”

jimin already pays for both your items in cash, getting them bagged separately as he’s not gonna take no for an answer for what he’s gonna propose next

“then i’ll keep the windows down. i’ll drive you back to your dorm.”

he grabs both your bags in one hand and uses the other to beckon you over, holding you still because it’s dark out and a fever vision wouldn’t exactly help

it’s only when he straps you in and (true to his word) puts the windows down and starts his car that you start asking

“why are you doing this for me?”

why IS he doing this for you??

jimin thinks about his answer in a second

“would you do the same for me?”

well

if you were in front of him at a godforsaken line, had yourself as your lockscreen, realize that jimin’s behind you with a fever and is by himself in a store at 10 in the evening

“of course i would.”

jimin smiles, steering away from his parking spot

“then i would too.”

( ♡ )

maybe you’re thinking of jimin

no wait you’re dEFINITELY thinking of jimin

you’re much better now and your fever’s already subsided enough for you to go back to class!!!

the whole interaction with him was three days ago and maybe your head is just full of him at this point

“are you sure you’re okay to handle this by yourself??”

jimin worries when he drops your bag to your hands, briefly coming inside your dorm to set it down

“mhmm. i’ll just sleep it out.”

“i think if you’re missing a couple of steps.”

you snort as his paranoid features, waving him off. “i’ll eat. then go to the bathroom. and then sleep.”

okay good enough

“what if this just-“ jimin trails off, his expansive mind suddenly running as he points to your chest, “stops????”

cute

“i have a smart watch.”

“would you put me as one of the emergency contacts? please?”

he’s making you take down his number without malice because jeez he’s gENUINELY worried!!!!

it may not always be great sharing a house with his frat brothers, but he knows that if he has a fever, atleast half of them would dote over him and you have atleast one who would go into hysterics!!! it’e a full package!!

“i’ll be okay, jimin. i’ll call you when i need someone to hand me my puke bucket.”

“please do. i’m not even kidding. get better now because i miss your dresses.”

o_O

uhm

“n-no i meant your usual style!! wait, not that there’s anything wrong w-with your style right now. i-i was-...”

“yeah. i miss them too. now go home, jimin.”

“you sure?”

u never really had the impulse to invite a guy to go inside your place but maybe now you do

“mhmm. drive safe.”

okay

:-)

“good night, y/n. call me whenever.”

classes were a bit rough today because you’re still easing yourself on getting back to the groove of things, but it was tolerable!!!

you’re getting your key out of your backpack when a lock clicks open a couple doors away from you, the hinge noisily squeaking

it’s jimin who leaves it, with seri who’s the actual occupant of the dorm leaning on the doorframe

“y/n—!”

he squeaks the moment his eyes land on you

your hand automatically waves, the same meek smile for him to see

“jimin.”

( ♡ )

the last interaction you had with him is still on jimin’s mind, a whole week later

it’s been bothering him recently that you know what it looks like the last time around!!!! but he could swear up and down that it wasn’t

he just feels this great urge to explain even if you haven’t asked

“oh. so we have to move out for the time-being?”

jimin clarifies with namjoon, the head of the frat, and he’s met with a solemn nod

it makes sense!!!

the house got checked today and there were mULTIPLE fire hazards!!! and it needs to be fumigated anyway under new campus protocol so it indeed makes sense

practically everyone's going home because it’s a long weekend anyway because of a holiday

and he’s not sure if he wants to take the same route.

“hi.”

jimin squeaks the moment you open your door, surprise evident on your face but not shock to the point you’d close the door on him

“jimin?”

okay maybe he’s gonna go straight to explaining

“frat house needed to be closed because of some complications, and it wouldn’t be open to us for another three days. most of the guys are coming home,” jimin clears his throat, his head down while he shyly scratches the back of his ear, “i have one, but i’m not sure if i wanna.”

oh

it’s that problem

it takes one, two seconds before it all registers in your head, nodding surely

“you can take my bed. i’ll take the couch, it’s a pull-out anyways.”

you open the door for him widely and the only thing you ask if he’s had dinner and if he’d like some

god you’re really throwing him in a loop here

it’s after a batch of your cooking that jimin’s only ache is why you were the way that you were, half-dazed the whole time he’s met you properly

“why do you never ask me?”

“hmm?” you hum as you dry the dishes that you’ve used, wanting to get it done as soon as possible so your full attention would be on him

no, actually. jimin WANTS you to pry!!

he wants you to worm your way into his privacy and into the confines of his mind

but it seems like you’ve already did without even asking.

“ask me why i’m called the cherry king.”

you tilt your head in confusion, that time playing in your head of why jimin looked confused when you didn’t continue to ask further

maybe you’ll indulge him

“why are you called the cherry king?”

jimin smiles, leaning to your couch with his arms relaxed

“we did secret santa for christmas at our frat house. taehyung thought it would be nice if he pranked me by gifting me a jar full of cherries, but i thought that was his actual gift, and i liked it to the point that i finished it in one sitting.”

tHAT’S ACTUALLY PRETTY ENDEARING

cute, even

“ask me why i came out of seri’s apartment last week.”

oh that’s.,.,. that’s a bit higher in level compared to nicknames

“why did you come out of seri’s apartment last week?”

“because seri’s the ex-girlfriend of hoseok, my frat brother, and he wanted me to return all her stuff because he doesn’t want to be reminded of his cheating ex.”

well that was definitely weighted

jimin plays with the hem of his shirt, the words tumbling out of his mouth

“ask me why i love you.”

why do you wHAT

your mouth drops open, the new position you took on the other end of the couch taking an impact on him

“w-why do you love me?”

jimin’s a lot of things but he’s not drunk tonight

he doesn’t know why he’s letting his feelings slip either, but it’s the bottomless need that he feels when he’s around you

“i feel wanted. i feel needed.”

he smiles cheerfully even if he feels shy dropping this on you all of a sudden

“not sure if you want me nor need me, but i feel welcome with you if that makes sense.”

:)

“you just make me feel loved, i guess.”

jimin looks at you for the first time since he’s opened his mouth, an equally fond look on your face

you said no words but what jimin receives is a gentle tug, your hand on the side of his face until he’s leaning on your shoulder

“i wanna know what's up there.”

he points a finger to your temple, an amused lilt to his tone, “surprise me.”

it’s an unfolding of things that was weeks in the making but months in developing, the distant glances leading you to recognize jimin in the shop in the first place

“i feel the exact same with you,” you answer honestly and it makes his laugh from his chest, his cheeks warm and his heart content

and you just wanna suspend yourselves in this moment forever

“oh! and if i were to lose my virginity to anyone at the moment, it'd be you!!”

...

....

jimin swats at your shoulder to which you only giggle at, a toothy smile on display as this is the warmest he’s ever felt

“i wasn’t kidding!!!”

you yawn when you defend yourself, predicting that you’d fall asleep sooner or later on the couch, but for the time-being, you just stroke jimin’s hair to soothe the both of you

jimin is now the furthest thing from sleepy

"what? you told me to surprise you!!"

[1863-project]

Hello! Ever since I found your Submas primer I've been really really enjoying your posts about trains, the Submas boys, and other info posts. Particularly I love the post about how the two are autistic; I learned so much from that and I want to hear more about it. I have a friend who is autistic and that post made me feel like I understood autism better than I did. I would love to hear more about being autistic and how that could affect the Submas.

Hi, anon! If it helps, I have a whole separate blog where I do my autism advocacy work (although I don't update it as much as I should), and the Autistic Gaming Initiative's website can be found here if you're curious about what my all-autistic streaming team does! We're all happy to answer questions, etc.

This is the Submas autism post in question, which I wrote because I've never seen myself more in fictional characters in my nearly-33 years on this earth. They both have traits I do - I often joke if you combined them into one person, you'd have me. I'm actually not sure which of them I'm more similar to, because it fluctuates - but in general, I have Emmet's bluntness and intensity, and Ingo's lack of volume control and overbearing sense of responsibility. I can't put into words how much I appreciate them for existing, because although it never outright says they're autistic, they're still the most natural-feeling portrayal of autistic characters I've ever seen because they're just written as they are, not to "be autistic" if that makes sense. Basically, they weren't written to be "autistic characters." They were just written to be Ingo and Emmet. The fact that they happen to be the best-ever use of the "autistic people are good with trains" trope on the planet is likely a coincidence, but I'll take it.

Since I'm similar to both of them, I can speak from experience as to things that have arisen in my life due to being autistic:

I've been told I was too direct, provided too much information (oversharing), or came off as unintentionally rude

I've been told I was too loud (still get this one, I work in a library, whoops)

I've been told to stop talking about my interests because nobody cares

I've been told I have to make eye contact to make people think I'm listening to them (I get around this by looking at people's noses)

I've struggled to make friends because I was "weird" and "different" compared to the other kids I went to school with (I wasn't diagnosed until I was 20, in 2009)

I didn't dress like other people because of sensory issues (I still dress differently today, but now it's because I have my own personal sense of style and money to afford it)

When I was an infant, I started crying at some parent-child event because they did a group song. My mom overheard a parent go, "What's wrong with that baby?" and was ready to throw hands but my dad stopped her. I spent my entire childhood overloaded by rounds of Happy Birthday.

I have the world's most oversensitive nervous system. Many, many friends have found this out and found it amusing. (It’s affectionate and I don’t mind, don’t worry.)

I will be in physical pain if someone talks from behind me at a specific angle.

When I’m good at something, I’m verrrry good at it. This includes my ability to build IKEA furniture by myself, as well as how I’m able to instantly drive nearly anything (including steam locomotives now).

I retain information extremely well if I’m interested in the subject at hand, and I can find said information very effectively. I still remember things I learned about paleontology and astronomy from when I was 3-4 years old, and this ability has made me a great archivist and historian because that requires me to know a lot about history and be a good researcher.

I experience emotions extremely intensely, and this is overwhelming for both me and others. Even my happiness can overwhelm other people. (You know how Emmet gets about battling? It’s like that.)

I occasionally experience meltdowns or shutdowns under stress or if I’m having a sensory overload. Here’s a great comic on the subject!

I often found myself feeling “alien” when I was younger because I didn’t understand the intricacies and rules of human social interaction and society, and oftentimes when I learned those rules I thought they were ridiculous.

You may have noticed there’s a higher percentage trans and nonbinary autistic people than average, and in general a lot of us are gender non-conforming. Collectively we just decided gender and gender roles were stupid and I think that’s really cool of us. Although I’m a cisgender woman, I didn’t conform to my middle class suburb’s strict idea of femininity, so I grew up thinking I was bad at being a girl.

I’m good at work that requires repetition and focus. It’s what makes me a really good archivist. I don’t have to interact with people when I’m archiving, and I can do the drudgery neurotypicals get bored doing.

Because of intense childhood bullying by my male peers, I actually have never dated. I’m about to turn 33 and although I don’t need a partner or anything, it would be nice to at least properly try dating. The trauma makes it difficult for me to even initiate talking to men, though.

As you can see, that’s a big mix of positive and negative experiences. Ultimately, getting my diagnosis when I was 20 years old turned out to be an affirming experience and introduced me to the self-advocacy community, which I’m now actively involved in through blogging and AGI. That’s not to downplay my struggles, though. I have good days and bad days, and I’ve met some people who were accepting and understanding and others who were not accommodating in any way. Sometimes the things I have trouble with get in the way at work, like my issues with prioritizing tasks (they all seem equally important in my mind), but sometimes my work is actually enhanced by me being autistic. My adult friend group is mostly made up of fellow neurodiverse people, and I prefer it that way because we understand each other better. There’s a lot more supports than there were when I was younger, so it’s definitely easier to be autistic now than it was when I was growing up, but we still have a long way to go in the disability rights fight, so we need to stick together!

I hope this answers your question, anon! If you’ve got more, feel free to ask me - I’m more than happy to help with things like this!

[r0-boat]

I’ll finish the submas thing when I finish the submas thing-

But-

A very long shower thought because I had a pretty not great day today so- 

YO FUCKED UP VOLO WARNING

College AU. Volo is a professor; he’s kinda weird but he’s really good at his job and personable, so administration just sees him as a reliable employee and they tend to not take any complaints about him seriously. He’s typically very professional- only breaking that to be a decent person (“hey maybe you shouldn’t lie to your boyfriend about being on birth control when you’re not.”). But oh- there’s a new student in the college rotation who he has to advise and also teach in a core class.

There’s physical attraction, but the part of him that likes having a job and money says to not act on it. You know. Because duh.

But there’s a lot that’s going through his head- when you come in for help on a schedule or how to deal with another professor or help for his class. And it’s driving him a bit insane. His office hours are later than his coworkers and now here you are- on campus, after class hours, sitting in his office with him. He keeps getting a little too close, watching a little two intently, but you don’t seem to mind.

But it certainly poisons his mind- constantly thinking about you, so much smaller and innocent than him, how you would be such a good little wife for him. He decided he’d let you finish your degree of course- he’s not a monster- but he definitely intends on keeping you to himself.

Uh oh- you got kicked out of your dorm. Why? They didn’t give you a reason, but now you’re panicking in your advisors office. Volo is comforting you, definitely overstepping as he hugs and rubs your back, soothing you down. You have all your stuff in his office now, and he offers to give you a hotel room for the time being- oh but that’s too much that’s too much to ask of you- and then he offers to let you stay with him, in a separate area of his home so there’s a boundary that he intends to ignore.

So volo takes you home. His home is definitely too nice to just be on a teachers salary (I know profs get paid more than public school teachers but still they should be paid well for dealing with us.). There’s a spacious quest room for you and his Pokémon are curious but unthreatening ( I’m not excluding Pokémon from this AU I wanna pet togakiss).

But there’s one thing you noticed- there’s clothes, robes, shoes, all your size waiting for you in there. There’s expensive toiletries and skincare for you- some of the things you already use, some of the things you’ve wanted to buy. But while it’s creepy, it’s clean and nice and there’s no where else to go.

Volo keeps his distance from you at home, more casual but still not over crossing into his students boundaries, even if they’re living in his home. He cooks you food, supports you emotionally, and has helped you do things like brush your hair or put it up. So while you’re starting to deal with emotions festering, Volo is checking off boxes in his head of how to make you want to stay here.

There’s another part of the guest room that’s concerning and odd- a box under the bed. Fine, probably storage, but when you open it, it’s sex toys. Even more concerning, one is one of yours that went missing a while ago and a pair of your panties in the box. Alarm bells are ringing, but come on- it has to be a coincidence, he’s been so gentle and caring, he didn’t steal these from you. Right? You try to ask him about it while he prepared dinner, but he just laughed it off, saying he has a female relative who sometimes stays over. (He does but that shit ain’t hers.). However, after dinner, your woozy, having trouble staying awake and standing up. Volo helps you to your room and sits with you while you sleep- softly stroking your hair and face while he just watches you. He doesn’t want to take you just yet.

This happens more and more- sometimes with terrible nightmares that accompany them, but volo is always there waiting to comfort you. One night he carried you to his bed and the nightmares went away when you slept beside him. He gives you a good morning kiss and holds you against him- it’s a break after all, don’t you want to learn how to relax even more?

Mask

Creep Professor volo😳

Oh, good news someone you've been dating gets an apartment and you're moving in with them. You tell your professor this only for him to look... Mad?

Well of course he's mad you're supposed to be playing and you're not only dating behind his back but they're planning on leaving him.

That's not happening not on his watch

[beevean]

SEGA and its most recent Sonamy side – more canon than ever

[Translator’s note: this article was originally written in Spanish by @latin-dr-robotnik​]

Hello again! Today we’d like to discuss about something that’s been happening recently, and probably taking Sonic fans by surprise: what is going on with SEGA and its stance about Sonamy?

At the beginning of this year, to celebrate the 200 articles on Seaside Hill Paradise, I finished what I call “the Sonamy trilogy” of articles that I started in 2018 and which cover different themes, such as:

SEGA and the eternal issue of the Sonic-Amy dynamic

“I love you” – Forbidden words in Sonic

SEGA and the eternal issue of “Sonic’s girlfriend”

The idea was to offer a more-or-less complete analysis about the many facets of their dynamic in the last 27 years; a dynamic that, you may have noticed, is not that easy to pin down, and that we’ve been updating almost regularly (although I also intended to investigate on other dynamics, like Knuckles and Rouge’s for example, and write about them). Generally speaking, in these articles I don’t draw objective conclusions about the status of the ship in canon (despite the fact that the available information tends to confirm it in various occasions). I also like to repeat myself and say that shipping is supposed to be for fun, not for tearing each other’s hair in that black hole of misery that is Twitter, but recent events left us slightly perplexed, and this is why we’re here once again.

We left the status of the Sonamy canonicity with these two peculiar instances back in August: Sonic mentioning his “girlfriend” in the Japanese version of Sonic Battle, and the Twitter account of SEGA of Europe saying Sonamy is their “favorite videogame romance”. Now, let’s recap a bit…

Sonamy in Sonic IDW... Round 3

[SPOILERS ALERT FOR IDW SONIC #14-#35]

In 2018, when IDW just started, I decided to study a little how the Sonamy dynamic worked in this new universe. To our surprise, the comic didn’t waste time in dropping its biggest bomb, in one of the cutest scenes we had seen in ages. Since the very beginning, IDW proved that it didn’t intend to deceive those fans that looked for a bit of development of both characters.

I wrote an article about it in June 2019, and it coincided with the beginning of one of the most infamous arc I’ve seen in a Sonic comic for a long time: the Metal Virus Saga. The question is, what has happened since then?

Well, in 2019, with the same accuracy of an aimbot, I said “We’ll probably see some new interactions between Sonic and Amy sometime around IDW #20”. And wouldn’t you know, as misery and tragedy settled in that arc, it was exactly around IDW #20 that we saw some Sonamy interactions: both exhausted, to their limit, with a Sonic that couldn’t even touch Amy to soothe her pain, due to him being infected with the virus.

The arc developed like this in what felt like an eternity, to finally conclude in one the most absurd ways in Sonic history. But it wasn’t a complete disappointment, as, after months and months of asking and discussing on the internet about how much Sonic and Amy deserved a hug at the end of the arc… it actually happened.

Since that moment in IDW #32, we shippers thought that it was what both of them deserved after so much time spent separated and pushed to their limit to survive, but also that after the end of the arc everything would go back to normal. However, what we didn’t know was that the Sonamy train had no intention of stopping, not in IDW, nor anywhere else.

A recurring detail in IDW Sonic is that Amy’s tail starts wagging every time she sees Sonic, as if she was a happy dog. I swear, it happens every time.

Come IDW #35, once again we have some hugs and bits of dialogue between our hedgehogs. For sure, the question here isn’t their relationship itself, as it was for IDW #2, but rather the issues this arc is slowly dealing with. But it’s really nice to see them again, sharing that closeness that they’ve had in the comic since the beginning– be it with some gestures of affection, a wink, a gesture, a private joke.

My favorite image is the first one, Belle’s reaction to seeing Amy hugging Sonic. It’s like she’s thinking “oh, is she his girlfriend?”, and she wouldn’t even be wrong in thinking that.

It can’t be denied that IDW Sonic provided us the conversations and the emotions that the games seldom do. Certainly, the comic has its share of issues and it’s not really a story that I personally follow for its own merits (it’s more because it’s still Sonic, for my interest for things like this, and Belle’s existence… whom I already ship with Tails, sorry not sorry), but what it does well it does really well.

For now, we have to see how IDW Sonic will follow the development of the characters, especially in view of the closure of the current story and beyond. And we may be done with this part of the article, but there is still a lot left.

Sonamy in merchandise

Taking us completely by surprise, recently SEGA launched, in collaboration with Hot Topic, a series of Sonamy-themed t-shirts. No, seriously.

So many people told me this as soon as the voice spread (you know who you are, thank you guys for thinking about me <3), and I can’t help being still surprised that this is actually a thing. T-shirts with lines like “You’re my favorite”, “Love in the fast lane”, and my personal favorite, “S&A Forever”, with drawings of Classic Sonic and Amy… in SEGA-approved products. I don’t know if you realize how much of a big deal this is, even more than “Celebrate the 25 years of Sonic’s girlfriend” from 2018.

One of the things that surprised me the most (aside from how explicit they are in officializing the relationship, and the fact that there are still 2 months left before Valentine’s Day 2021), was the decision to use Classic Sonic and Classic Amy. I tried to understand this decision by analyzing the simplicity and easiness with which the Classic designs convey a message (let’s not forget that Classic Sonic was so iconic because it was specifically designed to convey his expressions without words), besides the fact that they’re inherently cuter than their modern designs. There’s also the controversial aspect of post-Adventure Sonamy, with all the dubbing and weird interpretations that the fandom made over the years… By comparison, the Classic design are a much simpler choice.

What is actually going on?

Well, let’s take a step back and think about what we just saw. The way SEGA has been recently trying to push Sonic and Amy in front view (and for the entirety of 2020, based on the articles I mentioned in the beginning) tells us the harsh truth we all have to accept sooner or later: Sonamy sells, and it sells a lot.

From a strictly business point of view, the ship is so iconic and popular, with fans and detractors alike, that it would be absurd for SEGA to ignore the chance to print these two characters and get a load of money. As I said in my 2018 article, despite the fact that in Japan Sonic isn’t as big of an icon as it is elsewhere, they know pretty well that Sonic + Amy = love, and they have huge amounts of merchandise to back it up. It’s in the West that because of different cultural values, of which we’ve already talked about, along with some internal resistance, left this aspect of the franchise a little on the side. But they’ve been trying to fix it… and how…

Let’s not forget that a decade and a half ago Sonic Team seriously favored Sonamy. They officially said it, Sonic X was their purest view of Sonic they had at the time.

Outside of the business perspective, I believe we’re facing the moment that we’ve been waiting for: it’s time they’ll establish once and for all the dynamic of these two characters, following more closely the original Japanese vision of Sonic. I said many times that, in trying to change canon, the West, especially SEGA of America, did nothing but confuse fans and generate more discussions than needed, by introducing different data and portrayals that contradict the canon established by Sonic Team.

We’ve talked about Unleashed and emotional support, about Sonic X, about the major moments that opened the door to interpreting this dynamic as something more. We don’t threaten at gunpoint those who would rather stay away, but we respond to those declarations that still try to violently discredit the simple fact that Sonic and Amy, who are most of all close friends, form in some measure a couple that, even with its imposed limitations, manages to captivate fans and not fans everywhere in the world. Even the Simpsons used it as a joke, and that says a lot.

What the future has in store for us.

Unless something else happens in this last month of 2020, this is the most complete compilation I can offer at the moment about the status of Sonamy in the fandom and in the official canon. Yes, canon.

It’s impossible to ignore the signals. As you may have noticed, I’ve been considering Sonic and Amy as an official couple, with its clarifications (for example, that at the end it’s more of a friendship, that it’s not a romantic relationship in the most explicit way, that it’s more of a personal perspective to justify a more mature vision of the relationship in the future, not right now), but nowadays I think that SEGA has spoken loud and clear. I think canon is ready to negotiate the idea that Sonic and Amy, apart from being excellent friends who would risk their lives for each other in a heartbeat, have something else on their hands (probably the other’s hand). This won’t automatically translate into a kiss, or a complete love declaration (although Sonic X came close…), or a commitment to a formal relationship like we know them in real life. SEGA canon affirms that Amy is “Sonic’s girlfriend” and nothing more. Outside of that detail, they still pretty much function as friends interacting with a little flirting here, and a little Sonic running away there. It’s the basis of their dynamic, now enhanced by the fact that SEGA is giving us a clearer message.

I think that this all may culminate in a game or an animated series, but I wouldn’t completely count on that. It is good to recognize how far the official position goes on this issue, but at the same time I want to reaffirm that there are things that are better left in the hands of the fandom, and in the meantime that IDW or any other continuity gives us hugs, winks, gestures and words of encouragement, we as the fandom will take care of exploring other avenues and hypothetical scenarios.

This is all I have to say on the matter for now, and I hope you’re happy with this wonderful Sonamy experience we’re going through – I certainly am. See you next time!

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 52: Writing is a technology

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 52: Writing is a technology. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 52 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about writing as a technology. But first, do you wish there was more Lingthusiasm to listen to? Even though this is Episode 52, we have almost a hundred episodes of Lingthusiasm. Some of them exist as bonus episodes over at our Patreon.

Gretchen: If you want to listen to those and have more Lingthusiasm in your earballs, you can go to patron.com/lingthusiasm. This also helps keep the show ad-free. If you like listening to a show without ads, help us keep doing that.

Lauren: The Patreon also fosters this wonderful linguistics enthusiastic community. In fact, we have a Discord server, which is basically just a wonderful chat space for people to talk about linguistics. There are over 350 people on the Lingthusiasm Discord right now.

Gretchen: If you wish you had other lingthusiasts to talk to to share your interesting linguistics anecdotes and memes and general nerdery, and you want more people like that to talk to, you can join the Patreon to also get access to the Discord. We launched the Discord community just a year ago, and it’s been really fun to see it grow and thrive and take on a life of its own since then. If you are already a patron, and you haven’t linked your Patreon and Discord account together, it’s there waiting for you. Feel free to come join us.

Lauren: We have Patreon supporter levels at a range of tiers. Some of them include additional merch. One of my favourite perks is the very scientific Lingthusiasm IPA quiz where we send you a short quiz and then we give you your own custom IPA character which is enshrined on our Wall of Fame.

Gretchen: It’s a fun quiz. We have fun looking at people’s answers.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode is a collection of some of our favourite anecdotes from interviews and from other episodes that didn’t quite make it into the original episode. We’re delighted to share those in that bonus episode.

Gretchen: You get to see a bit behind-the-scenes with that episode. Also, do you want more linguistics on your favourite other podcasts?

Lauren: Always.

Gretchen: Constantly. We’re also very happy to do podcast interviews on other shows about various topics. If there’re other podcasts that you like that you wish would do a linguistics episode and interview one of us, you should tell them that! We’re happy to come on. Tag us both or something on social media or tell your favourite podcasts that they could do a linguistics episode because we’d be happy to do that.

[Music]

Lauren: Gretchen, do you remember learning how to read?

Gretchen: Not really. I mean, I remember encountering the alphabet chart in my first year of school, but I already sort of knew the alphabet at that point. I guess there was some point when I didn’t know how to read, and there was some point when I did, but I don’t really have concrete memories of that. Do you remember learning how to read?

Lauren: I feel like I have more memories of learning how to write, just because that’s such a mechanical thing. I remember sitting there writing out a row of As. I definitely wrote the number “five” backward for way longer than I probably should have, which is a really common thing that happens when kids are learning to write because it is a combination of brain skills and fine motor skills. But reading in English is something I feel like I’ve always just been able to do. I mean, I guess in comparison learning to read Nepali, which is written in a different script – it’s written in the Devanagari script – I have more memories of that because I did that in my 20s. Even now, I still feel the real disconnect between being relatively able to chat and really struggling to read and write. I still have to put my finger under the words as I’m going through, whereas with English it just feels like the words are beaming straight into my brain because I learnt to read that language so early in my life.

Gretchen: Yeah, I read at this automatic level. I can’t see a sign that says, “Stop,” on it and not read it in Latin script. But in undergrad I took both Ancient Greek and Arabic. In Greek, I got to the point – because the script is sort of similar enough and I was familiar enough with the letters previously-ish – that I got to the point where I could very slowly sound out words as I was reading them out loud because we had to do a lot of reading aloud in Greek class. But in Arabic, I was very much at that hooked on phonics level where you’re like, /p/-/t/-/k/-/a/. There are a few words that I have as sight words in Arabic. One of them is the word for “and,” which is “waa”, and one of the words for “the,” which is “al”, and one of them is the word for “book” because “kitaab” just shows up all the time. But most of the words I had to painstakingly sound out each letter and then listen to myself as I was saying them. I’d be like, “Oh, it’s that word,” even if I knew it, which is this process that I must’ve gone through in English, but I don’t remember doing it for the Latin script.

Lauren: I think that is one of the things that makes it really hard for people who grow up in highly literate, highly educated societies to tease writing and reading apart from language. But actually, when you step back, you realise that writing is actually super weird.

Gretchen: It’s so weird! It’s this interesting – it really is a technology. It’s a thing you do on top of language to do stuff with language, but it’s not the language itself. There are thousands and possibly millions of languages that have never been written down in the history of humanity. We have no idea. We’ve never met a society of humans, or heard of a society of humans, without language. But those are spoken and signed languages, which are just kind of there. Writing, by contrast, was invented somewhere between 3 and 4 times in the history of humanity.

Lauren: That we know of.

Gretchen: That we know of.

Lauren: There might’ve been a society that did a very ephemeral form of snow writing that we have lost forever. But we have records of 3 or 4 times.

Gretchen: It’s been invented a handful of times. There are a few other cases where there are scripts that haven’t been deciphered by modern humans. Maybe they’re scripts, maybe they’re not – it’s not quite clear. But it’s definitely a handful of number of times. And then once other cultures come in contact with the technology of writing, they’re like, “Oh, this is cool. Let’s adapt this to our linguistic situation,” and it gets borrowed a heck of a lot. But it only got cemented a few times.

Lauren: It’s worth saying that “3 to 4” is a bit squishy because it’s not entirely clear if cuneiform, which is a very pointy form of writing from Babylonia, somehow inspired the Egyptian system that became what we know as the hieroglyphs or if they just happened around the same time by coincidence are something we may never really fully put together. That’s a very contested situation. That’s why we can’t even pin down the number of times we think it was invented.

Gretchen: Cuneiform is the one that’s made with the sharpened reed that you push into your clay tablets or, if you’re some people on the internet, into your gingerbread because there’s some really excellent examples of cuneiform gingerbread tablets people have made, which I just wanna – yeah, it’s really great. The Egyptian hieroglyphs people have seen. But yeah, it’s unclear whether they were in contact with each other and kind of heard of each other in a very loose sense and were inspired by each other because there was some amount of contact between those two areas, or if that was elsewhere. The other two – one is in Mesoamerica, in modern-day Mexico and that area, where they had a writing system there that, again, developed into lots of different scripts as it got borrowed from different areas, of which the best deciphered is the Mayan script from the 3rd Century BCE. There’s also the Olmec script, which is probably the oldest. The Zapotec script is also really old. There’s a bunch of scripts in the modern-day Mexico area that also developed independently.

Lauren: Then the final system arose in China around the Bronze Age a couple of thousand years BCE. Because this script was mostly found in its most earliest forms on oracle bones, it’s known as the “oracle bone” script.

Gretchen: What is an oracle bone?

Lauren: They are turtle bones that are used in divination.

Gretchen: Oh.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: And, again, the Chinese script, once it developed further, it was also, yeah, influenced a bunch of the other writing systems in the area.

Lauren: I find it super fascinating, with absolutely no historical knowledge or insight to bring to this, that in these three different places that were completely separate and going about their own cultural lives writing arose at a similar time around 3,000 to 4,000 years ago.

Gretchen: Yeah! You wonder what was in the water or something. Well, and it’s partially, I think, that there’s a certain level of writing makes it easier to do things like administrative bureaucracy if you’re trying to keep track of whether people paid their taxes or – it’s a very empire-y thing to have is to develop a writing system.

Lauren: Oh yeah. And it’s absolutely worth stating that it’s not like three people in these three different locations all woke up on the same Tuesday 4,000 years ago and were like, “I’m gonna write a long letter to someone.”

Gretchen: Did they have Tuesdays 4,000 years ago?

Lauren: What you see is this emergence of, “I’m just gonna make a couple of notes so I know how much money you owe me.” Some of the earliest cuneiform tablets we have are just, like, beer supply stock takes.

Gretchen: Like, “Three oxes and this many baskets of grain” or whatever.

Lauren: I feel like it’s very human to be like, “We love writing because it’s poetry, and I can send letters to people I love,” and it’s like, no, it’s actually, “I just wanted to know how much you owe me.”

Gretchen: The king just wants to know if these people have paid their taxes.

Lauren: So, what you get is – although I’m like, “Oh, it all happened within similar millennia,” it is actually centuries of development from just keeping tabs on a few items to a fully fleshed out written system.

Gretchen: What types of things people thought were important to write down – things like legal codes and stuff like that – one of the interesting things that I came across when I was looking this up was that there’s a person named Enheduanna, who is the earliest known poet whose name has been recorded. She was the high priestess of the goddess Inanna and the moon god Nanna in the Sumerian city-state of Ur. There we go. But authorship shows up much later than some anonymous civil servant keeping track of who’s registered which grain or some anonymous priest or something keeping track of who’s made various offerings. This idea of like, “Oh, you’re gonna write poetry,” is a step later.

Lauren: Filing your tax is what is actually one of the best links you have to those ancient civilisations.

Gretchen: There’s this Egyptian named Ptahhotep – that’s “Pta,” P-T, even though I know I’m not pronouncing it that way – he was a vizier in Egypt. He’s also one of the first named writers, the first book in history – or people call him the first book in history – because he wrote these Maxims of Ptahhotep. There may have been people who were writing on more perishable materials that didn’t get recorded and stuff like that. It’s this whole process of, “Okay, I’m going to draw these little diagrams of oxen or something or draw these little diagrams of this plant or this animal or whatever to record what types of things get recorded.” But then in order for it to actually become a writing system, there’s also this step of abstraction that has to happen. This is when you start saying, “Okay, well, the word for this very easily visualisable thing” – so I’m thinking of oxen because the word for “ox” in one of the Semitic languages, I think, was something like /alef/. And so, this “ox’s head” gets transformed into, “Okay, what if this is the sound at the beginning of the word for ‘ox’s head,’” which is /alef/, and it gets transformed into our modern letter A, which is “alpha.” “Alpha” in Greek is just the name of the letter. It’s not “an ox’s head” in Greek anymore because the Greeks borrowed it form the Phoenicians. This level of abstraction that has to go from, “Okay, I’m gonna draw an ox’s head” – if you turn a capital A upside down, it kind of looks like an ox’s head.

Lauren: It’s got its little horns, which are the feet of an A.

Gretchen: Yeah, and there’re all these related languages. You know, Arabic’s got alif at the beginning, even though it doesn’t look like an ox’s head anymore. Hebrew’s got an alef, and Greek’s got an alpha, and all of these alphabets that begin with A. It’s this level of abstraction where you can use this thing to stand for this thing that was associated with an ox.

Lauren: There’re a couple of main different ways that you can relate these abstract images that you’re putting down in writing to the language that you are trying to capture. Of course, being a linguistics podcast, I was gonna bring this straight back to the structure of language.

Gretchen: Well, I think it’s interesting to look at the structure of languages in different areas of the world, and how people reflect those in the writing systems that are developed for those languages. When they borrow a writing system for a language with a very different structure, they end up doing certain adaptations to account for not just like, “Okay, languages have different sounds,” but also those sounds are organised and structured in different ways with relationship to each other. The writing systems often reflect some of that history.

Lauren: The Latin alphabet that both of us are most familiar with has a very approximate correspondence between each character of the writing system and a sound in the language. And I say “approximate” because English spelling is a wonderful historical record of how some of those sound changes have changed over time. I’m just gonna keep this upbeat. You can fall down a giant well of English writing system problems, but to get to a point where the majority of letters have a pretty stable correspondence to sounds that we recognise as phones in the language, and that allows us to write out the words of English.

Gretchen: One of the things that’s true about a lot of the Indo-European languages is that they have a particular ratio between consonants and vowels in the words, where they have a fair bit of consonants in relationship to their vowels but not a ton. You can see this in the writing system because the writing system represents consonants and vowels separately. And yet, when the Greeks were borrowing the alphabet from the Phoenicians – Phoenician is a Semitic language like modern-day Arabic and Hebrew – that alphabet only had consonants in it – letters for consonants – because the vowels were not that important. This is still true of modern-day Semitic languages is they’re often written in writing systems that don’t represent the vowels or kind of optionally represent the short vowels, or sometimes they represent the long vowels, but they’re often written in writing systems where the vowels can be omitted. That’s not really a thing you can do very well in Indo-European languages and still have things understood because the vowels carry enough information that you need to represent them somehow.

Lauren: Even when you have a phonemic script, it’s not necessary to always represent all of the sounds to convey the language.

Gretchen: Right. Then conversely, there are other languages where the vowels are even more important and, in fact, every consonant comes with a vowel or virtually every consonant comes with a vowel. In those, you often get what are called “syllabaries,” where they represent one syllable at a time, because why bother with representing each of these things separately when in every context where you have a consonant there’s gonna be a nearby vowel – or in virtually every context there’s gonna be a nearby vowel – and so you can have a symbol that just represents the whole syllable there. That’s also a structure that doesn’t work very well for Indo-European languages because they don’t have that many vowels. There’s this spot of like they have important enough vowels that you need to represent the vowels somehow but not so important are vowels that you have to represent lots of vowels all the time, whereas languages like Japanese or Hindi – well, Hindi’s Indo-European, but it’s got more vowels, I guess.

Lauren: The Devanagari writing system is inherently focused on the syllable, which is a very different approach to reading. Each character of this writing system, if there’s no vowel specified, it just comes with a bonus vowel. It’s like, “Buy this consonant, get this free letter A sound.”

Gretchen: Right. That’s partly a feature of the writing system, but it can only be a feature of the writing system because it’s already a feature of the language. A similar thing goes for a language like Chinese, where a lot of things are based around a syllable.

Lauren: Then you can go a level of abstraction further where your character in the writing system represents a word-level thing and doesn’t have a direct relationship to the sound correspondence, which is what happens with the Chinese script.

Gretchen: I think it’s important to recognise that there is a phonetic component to Chinese characters. They often make use of – especially for words that are more abstract – it’s not just like, “Oh, here’s a bunch of little pictures that we’ve drawn,” because that’s not capable of conveying abstract concepts like grammatical particles and words for things that don’t come with easy pictures. And so, making use of, “Okay, a lot of our words are one or two syllables long, so here’s a word that’s relatively easy to visualise that sounds very similar to a word that is not as easy to visualise.” We can just add a thing to be like, “It sounds like this, but it’s got a meaning more related to this,” and you can be like, “Oh, it must be this more abstract word.” The classic example, which I’m definitely gonna do the tones wrong on, is that the word for “horse” is /ma/, and the word for mother is also /ma/ with a different tone, and you can add the little horse semantic component with the woman semantic component and be like, “Oh, it’s the word that sounds like ‘horse’ but has to do with something with a woman,” and then you end up with “mother.”

Lauren: This works for languages in China because they tend to be not as long as words in English. We like to add all these extra bits of morphology within our grammar, whereas, again, you get – not a direct rule force – but you get this general tendency where the writing system kind of fits with the vibe of the grammar of the language.

Gretchen: One example of that is in Japanese where they were heavily influenced by the Chinese script, but Japanese actually does have suffixes and other little grammatical words and things you need to change about words. They made some of the Chinese characters that had formerly only had semantic things into just like, “Oh, this makes this sound, and this makes this sound,” because they needed to be able to represent that morphological information that’s not super important in Chinese but is very important in Japanese. You end up adapting a script into something else when it gets borrowed in a different context. Another interesting example here is Farsi or Persian which is an Indo-European language that’s conventionally written with the same script as Arabic except it’s also had a couple of additional letters added because Persian has a P and Arabic doesn’t. They had to create a symbol for the sound P, which is why you get “Farsi” instead of “Parsi” because Arabic doesn’t pronounce that P. So, it makes the P into an F. Sometimes you get people adding additional letters like adding a letter for P. Sometimes you get adapting whole sets of a script.

Lauren: Sometimes you lose letters. English had distinct characters for /θ/ and /ð/ until it was technologically easier to just use the characters in the printing press that English had borrowed. It’s makes me a little bit sad. But also, it makes international people – maybe it’s a little bit easier.

Gretchen: We used to have a thorn for the /ð/ sound, but those early printing presses from continental Europe didn’t have thorns on them. I mean, Icelandic still has thorns. One of the things that I think is more interesting in the closer to modern era – not strictly modern era – is cultures and peoples that are familiar with the idea of writing yet take the idea of writing and say, “We’re gonna make our own homegrown script that actually works really well for our particular language.” One of my favourites is the Cherokee syllabary, which was invented by Sequoyah, who was a Cherokee man who didn’t know how to read in English, but he’d encountered the Latin-based writing system in English. He thought it was cool that the English speakers had this, and so he locked himself in shed for several years and came up with a syllabary for Cherokee. Some of the symbols on the Cherokee syllabary look something like Latin letters, but they stand for completely different things because he wasn’t just learning to read from English. Some of them are completely different. This became hugely popular among the Cherokee in the area. There were newspapers in this in the 1800s. There was very high literacy in Cherokee country. It was really popular. It’s even still found on modern-day computer keyboards and stuff like this. You can get Windows and stuff in Cherokee. It’s this interesting example of that’s one where we can say a particular person was inspired by writing systems but also created his own thing that became very popular.

Lauren: The thing that makes Cherokee so compelling to me is not only did he come up with an incredibly elegant, well thought out, suits the language system, but that he actually got uptake as well – that the community decided to use this as the writing system that they would learn to read and write in, and that it had uptake. It’s very easy to come up with ways of improving the technology of writing but, as I think you’re fond of saying, language is very much an open-source project. You can come up with really elegant solutions, but if no one else is gonna take them up, that’s not gonna be very helpful. So, Sequoyah’s work is doubly amazing for that reason.

Gretchen: People actually made printing presses with the Cherokee symbols and were using those. Another interesting case of this disconnect between a person or people coming up with a system and actual uptake of it is Korean, which has what I think linguists generally agree is just the best writing system.

Lauren: Yeah, we’re like, “Writing as a technology is amazing. All writing systems are equally valid. But Korean is particularly great.”

Gretchen: “But Korean’s really cool.” The thing that’s cool about it from a completely biased linguist perspective is that the writing system of Korean, Hangul, the script, is not just based on individual sounds or phonemes, it’s actually at a more precise level based on the shape of the mouth and how you configure the mouth in order to make those particular sounds. There’s a lot of, okay, here are these closely related sounds – let’s say you make them all with the lips – and you just add an additional stroke to make it this other related sound that you make with the lips. Between P and B and M, which are all made with the lips, those symbols have a similar shape. It’s not an accident. It’s very systematic between that and the same thing with T and D and N. Those have a similar shape because they have this relationship. It’s very technically beautiful from an analysis of language perspective.

Lauren: I love this so much that when we were prototyping a potential script for the Aramteskan language for the Shadowscent books, when I was constructing that language, I also started constructing a script that we never used anywhere, but it was helpful to think about how the characters would write and what writing implements they would use. If you look at the script, you’ll notice that the letter P and B are very similar, but B has an additional stroke. T and D are very similar, but D has an additional stroke. Very much feature driven. And then for the vowels – it’s roughly a quadrant in the writing space – the /i/ vowel is in the top left of the quadrant, the /u/ vowel is in the top right of the quadrant, the /a/ vowel is in the bottom left of the quadrant.

Gretchen: So clever!

Lauren: It was actually just for really selfish reasons that I decided to go with a feature-based system, and that is that it was easier for me to remember if I used the features of the language and made sure that the voiced sound was always identical to the voiceless one but just with an additional stroke. It meant that I only had to remember half the characters.

Gretchen: That’s very elegant. The easy to remember bit is also true about the Hangul script because it’s got so much regularity. The famous quote about Hangul is something like “A wise man can learn it in an afternoon and a foolish man can learn it in a day.”

Lauren: So catchy!

Gretchen: There’s probably a better version of that quote. What’s interesting about it from an adoption perspective is that Hangul was invented by Sejong the Great.

Lauren: Appropriately named.

Gretchen: Who has a national holiday now because of the script. But it was created in 1443. It’s not quite clear whether it was him personally doing everything or whether he had an advisory committee of linguists, but it’s really extremely well-adapted to the linguistic situation of Korean in particular. Even though it’s just also really cool for how it represents the inside of the mouth, but it’s really well adapted for Korean. It was invented in 1443, but it wasn’t popularised in use until several centuries later because for a long time Korean was also using, like Japanese, this adapted version of the Chinese script or adapted version of the Japanese script because of the cultural influences. In the early 20th century, they were doing a much bigger literacy push in Korea to be like, “What want everyone to learn how to read.” And they said, “Okay, we’re gonna have an orthographic reform, and we’re gonna use this script which has this very nice historical pedigree but also is much easier to learn than this complicated thing that we had done that wasn’t really designed for Korean.” It’s got this historical antecedence but also it came back in the modern-day. Now, everything in Korean is written in it. It’s because it’s really easy to learn how to read and write in. The historical uptake wasn’t immediate. It wasn’t during King Sejong’s lifetime where they were like, “Oh, yeah, now we’re all gonna use his script,” people were like, “Okay, king, you’ve got this hobby,” but it wasn’t popularised until later.

Lauren: Even when there is really strong abstraction, humans have this unavoidable tendency to think about the relationship between sounds and other senses. In sound-based writing systems – Suzy Styles, who has been on the podcast before and works on perception across the senses, did an experiment alongside Nora Turoman where they looked at whether people can guess, for writing systems they’re not familiar with, which character was the /u/ sound and which character was the /i/ sound. They found that for a whole variety of scripts there is a much higher than chance – because there’s only two choices. If was completely arbitrary, it would be 50/50. But people do tend, across the evolution of sound-based writing systems, to have /u/ that has a more rounded, bigger sound has properties in the writing system that re-occur. People continue to unavoidably link the sounds of the language to the written properties of the script in a very low-level way. I’ll link to that study. It’s really great.

Gretchen: That’s interesting. It’s not gonna be 100%, but there’s this slightly better than chance relationship.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Visual representation of physical information is also something that shows up in ways of writing signed languages.

Lauren: Yeah. Everything we’ve talked about so far, I think, we’ve talked about for spoken languages, but it is possible to write signed languages as well.

Gretchen: There are several different systems in place. Some of them are language-specific like, “Oh, this is the system for writing ASL in particular,” and some of them are kind of like your linguist, International Phonetic Alphabet trying to provide a language-agnostic way of writing signed languages for research purposes but, in a way, that’s sort of impractical, like the IPA for general use. There’s an interesting set of systems. There isn’t as much agreement among representers of signed languages in writing which amounts of information are crucial information that has to be written down and which are optional bits of information that the reader can fill in from their own knowledge of the language and the signer.

Lauren: I think it’s worth flagging that that’s not just a discussion that arises for signed languages. It’s just that those conversations got thrashed out for spoken languages four millennia ago, and we weren’t around when people were arguing about whether intonation had any role in the – or people probably were arguing because it was an emerging thing.

Gretchen: Well, when people were arguing about like, “Do we write vowels or not,” which was a big thing. Do we write vowels? Do we write intonation? And punctuation followed quite a bit after – you know, punctuation wasn’t as much of a thing for several of the early centuries and millennia of writing. They didn’t do punctuation. There’s some level of ongoingness that’s still there. If you think about the internet efforts to try to write tone of voice very precisely and communicate sarcasm and irony and rhetorical questions very precisely, there’s some level of ongoing debate that’s still happening in the spoken language context but not nearly as much as is still happening in the signed language context.

Lauren: Also, just because of the way that signed language communities tend to be embedded within larger spoken language communities, people who sign as a primary language tend to also be educated in the mainstream spoken language, and so literacy gets developed in, say, a language like English.

Gretchen: I think that’s the case for a lot of smaller spoken languages as well where sometimes there’s this imperative of, “Okay, we want to be able to write things to each other” or something, but if there hasn’t been a history of a lot of published literature in that language that you’re trying to read, then it becomes a question of, “Should we teach this in school,” because there isn’t literature there, even though there would be oral literature. It becomes a chicken and egg problem of which comes first, or which do you start teaching first, when you’re constantly comparing stuff against a few very large spoken languages that have this very long writing tradition. It shows up in languages with a newer writing tradition.

Lauren: Education systems have a massive influence there. My grandmother, actually her strongest written language is German. Even though she and her sister speak to each other in Polish, they would write to each other in German because that’s the language they had been educated to write in. Even with people who don’t speak minority languages, the influence of the education system there is so massive.

Gretchen: Reading and writing, they’re separate skills even though they’re often taught together. Sometimes you can read a language that you can’t write or something like that. But it’s a big question. With signed languages, because video technology is now available, if we’d had good audio recording technology 4,000 years ago, the pressure to develop writing systems for spoken languages might not have been as strong – probably wouldn’t have been as strong – even though there are other useful things that writing can do even in the audio-video era. It’s easier to be like, “Well, you can just make a video of the signer,” and then you’d know exactly what they were trying to say and exactly how they wanted to say it. You wouldn’t have this level of abstraction of are you gonna try to write it down in a way that imperfectly represents what a person is gonna do when they’re producing it. It is still interesting looking at some of the signed language writing systems. Some of them, like Stokoe notation and HamNoSys, which stands for “Hamburg Notation System,” they try to very physically represent the characteristics of the signer – where their hands are, where their face is, and things like that. There’s another one that I can’t find the name of that is based on the ASCII alphabet, so you can type it into search engine boxes, which has some advantages as well but represents things more abstractly. It’s got this link with Korean, which was representing this very physical aspect of what the mouth is doing. Several of the signed language writing systems like Stokoe and HamNoSys also have this very physical representation what the body’s doing when it’s being produced. But I think they’re more popular among researchers than they are among actual D/deaf users who tend to use video a lot.

Lauren: I encounter Stokoe and HamNoSys in the gesture and signed linguistics literature. I haven’t really seen them too much outside of that.

Gretchen: I think that it’s easy to conflate a language with its writing system because we’re so used to thinking of English as sort of inextricably linked to the Latin alphabet. But there isn’t a reason, in theory, why you couldn’t write English in the Greek alphabet or in the Arabic alphabet or in a very adapted version of Chinese characters where you’d have to do a lot of adaptation. The same thing is true when you write languages that don’t originally use the Latin alphabet and you have romanisations of them. Writing systems are just as much political and contextual. Some of them have this very tight structural relationship to the properties of the languages they represent and some of them have looser relationships because they’ve been adapted to it later.

Lauren: It’s this slightly looser relationship to language as it’s spoken or signed that means that linguists don’t always include writing systems in, say, an Introduction to Linguistics course. We don’t often talk about writing systems. But when we were putting together the Crash Course series, we ended up making writing the topic of our final episode for the series.

Gretchen: I think partly because people are really interested in it, so why not do something about writing, and also because I think that you can use writing systems as a window into some of the interesting structural features of different languages and how the writing systems represent that. As somebody who’s really interested in internet linguistics and the rise of informal writing and how we represent tone of voice and things like that in modern-day writing, and that’s still a moving target evolutionarily speaking, I think it’s interesting to give that linguistic lens on writing systems even though they are imperfect representations of the languages that they represent.

Lauren: “Writing Systems” is Video 16 of Crash Course linguistics, which is wrapping up this month. If you’ve been holding out to watch all 16 of those episodes, you’ll be able to do so very soon or perhaps even now thanks to the temporal vagueness of podcasts.

Gretchen: Crash Course is the YouTube series that we’ve been working on basically all of 2020. It’s especially popular with high school or undergraduate teaching. If you know people that age, or who teach people that age, that may be a useful thing to send to people. We hope that people find it useful as a resource for self-teaching or for instructing in various capacities.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, “Not judging your grammar, just analysing it” mugs, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and book about internet language is called Because Internet. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can access to 48 bonus episodes to listen to right now at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons also get access to our Discord chat room to talk with other linguistics fans – like, do you remember learning how to read – and other rewards as well as helping keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include an AMA with a lexicographer and our favourite stories and anecdotes that we just didn’t have time for in some of the earlier episodes. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you could recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life. And, hey, tell your other favourite podcasts that they could a linguistics episode, and get us on! It’d be fun.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[mayraki]

“the right path” - jj maybank

popeheywrd’s gif!

summary: two strangers start to expierence the déjà vu effects often. the only thing that they aren’t noticing is that it only happens when the other one is around.

MASTERLIST

check out my current jj maybank x oc series! -> “don’t mess with the troublemakers”

Some people don’t like to believe in destiny. They think that each one of us has to work hard for what we want and that’s how it’s going to come into your life. Not because the universe has a plan for you, hard work and passion is what garantes you a proper and happy life. She didn’t think that was a half wrong, you do need to work hard, but is nice to have a little bit of fun in life and think that there’s something else out there than just living. There has to be something out there, something that explains the things that happens to you or what you go through.

But, wondering didn’t stop her from living every day like it was the last one and embracing every little thing that happened to her without stopping and asking herself why. She was always having fun on the beaches of Outer Banks with her best friends, or just walking around going nowhere. Summer was there to be enjoyed, so she was going to enjoy every little second.

“C’mon! It’s the first party of the summer! We can’t miss it!” She said to her best friend, while the two of them were walking to the beach on the morning of that Saturday.

“You go, tomorrow I have to wake up early. Mom wants me help on the store since summer started.” Her friend said before shrugging her shoulders and letting out a big sigh.

“You’ll get back to your place early, I promise you!”

“I want to go. But you have to convince my mom, you know if I ask her she won’t let me.” She said once the two of them walked into the beach and her feet touched the warm sand.

“You got it!” She turned around to face her and walk backwards. “You know your mom loves me.” A smile appeared on her face but when she stared to look around and every single detail her eyes were seeing were familiar, she quickly stopped.

“Are you alright?”

“I don’t know.” She said while looking around. “I’m having a déjà vu.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, oh my god, why isn’t it stopping?” She started to walk backwards again to try to stop.

“Wait! Be carful Y/n!” Her friend yelled but it was too late, her back had already hit a wet body. She quickly turned around while the déjà vu was still going, but as soon as her eyes locked eyes with a pair of blue ones, the feeling went immediately away.

The blonde guy she was staring at had the same surprise expression she had. Since his body was wet she figured he had been in the water, he was holding a surfing board while still making eye contact with her.

“JJ!” She heard a guy say behind him.

“I’m sorry... for bumping into you.” He said still surprised.

“It’s my fault, I was walking backwards.” She said shaking your head.

“Me too.” A little smile appeared on his face while the guy that called him before, appeared next to him.

“You ready to go bro?” He asked.

“Yeah man, let’s go.” He said without breaking eye contact with her. “Sorry, again.”

“Me too. Have a nice day!” She said when he and his friend started to walk away.

“What was that?” Her friend asked when she walked closer to her.

“I have... no idea. But it was fucking weird.”

“Tell me about it, from where I was standing, for the way you two looked at each other it looked like two friends who reunited after 40 years of being separated.”

She turned her head to her friend confused. “You need to stop watching romantic movies.”

“Why are we here again?” JJ asked once he and Pope entered the store.

“Kie gave me a list of things to buy for the party tonight.” He said while checking the little paper he had on his hand.

“What is there to buy? We already have everything, beer, some blunts, that’s it.” JJ shrugged his shoulders but Pope didn’t answered, he was already walking more deep into the store. JJ followed him but he was not paying attention to the shelves next to him, he was looking down while his fingers were playing with his lighter.

“Do you think this is it?” Pope asked him while showing some bag of chips. He looked up and just nodded uninterested.

“Hey! Y/n! Wait up!” JJ and Pope heard coming from the other side of the store.

“Shit, it’s happening again.” JJ said after his eyes started to recognise every single detail that they were seeing. Like it was happening for the second time.

“What?” Pope asked confused.

“I’m having a déjà vu.” He said looking around trying to brush it away.

“Is it over?” Pope asked but JJ shook his head. He started to walk away getting worried because it was not ending. Usually, when it happened to him it lasted seconds, and it was not like he got them often, but for some reason this couple of days he was getting them more and more, and they were longer.

“JJ, where are you going?” Pope asked once JJ was getting closer to the end of the aisle.

“I don’t know-”

“Y/n, is it happening again?” JJ heard close to him.

“Yeah, what the fuck-”

JJ suddenly stopped when he saw the girl from that morning. She was was facing him backwards but it wasn’t difficult for him to recognise her. The feeling of weirdness around him was slowly going away but when she turned around and they both locked eyes with each other, it completely went away.

“Hi again.” She said with a smile.

“Hi.” That’s all JJ could say. The déjà vu went away but the weird feeling was still there, the feeling of something else going on.

“This is weird.” She said softly without breaking the eye contact with him. She was still wondering what was happening to her. It wasn’t common and the fact that the both the times it happened, the blonde guy was there.

“Weird in a good way or a bad way?” JJ asked.

“Still trying to figure out.” She nodded looking around for her best friend. “Uhm, I lost my friend. See ya.” She gave him a little wave before walking away and leaving JJ there, with questions on his mind.

“I mean! You have to be honest with yourself! It happened to you two times today and the blonde guy was there. Coincidence? I don’t think so.” Her friend said while she was looking for something to wear to the party on her tiny closet.

“That’s some movie shit. I probably have low iron or something like that. I’m going to google it.” She said when her back hit the bed.

“I already did.” Her friend said and a little smile escaped her mouth.

“You’re always a step ahead.”

Her best friend joined her on the bed. “It said a lot of things. But what caught my eyes is that maybe, it means that you’re going on the right path in life.”

“What does that mean?” She asked confused before sitting down.

“Think about it! “The right path”? C’mon, it has to be with the blonde guy!”

“Huh? I’m not following you.”

“Y/n! It means that that guy is your right path!”

She furrowed her eyebrows confused and then shook her head. “You seriously need to stop watching romantic movies.”

“The universe wants you two to meet. That’s why you get déjà vus and they stop when you see him. It’s obvious!” She lifted her arms into the air.

“You’re crazy!” She got up from the bed. “Let’s just say that the universe wants me to meet this guy, why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s your soulmate.” She said quickly.

“That’s it.” She said after shaking her head. “You’re binging all the Marvel movies with me. No more romantic ones!”

She loved the loud music. How her body moved to the rhythm, and the slight air blowing around her body. Parties on the beach was her favorite thing to do on the summer, surrounded by friends and having the best time. Nothing was ever wrong.

She noticed her cup being empty so she waved to her best friend letting her now that she was going to get it refilled.

As soon as she turned around, she locked eyes with an old friend.

“Kie!” She yelled.

Kiara Carrera. Her family owned The Wreck, one of the most famous restaurants for tourists, they both met when she worked for her father on the restaurant as a waitress, but soon having to let it go since it was too much for her and her other job. But on the little time she was there, they both became good friends and loved every single moment they spent together as co-workers.

“How have you been?” She asked once they broke the tight hug.

“I’ve been doing great! Well, at least since summer started.”

“Things aren’t going so well at the Kook academy?” Kie shook her head. “Don’t worry, I’m here to save your horrible days.” She let her arm go around her shoulders before leading her to the dance floor where her best friends was.

The three of them were dancing like there was no tomorrow. They looked like three drunk girls since they started to dance weirdly, but the truth was, they were having the time of their lives and not worrying about anyone around them. But when their feet couldn’t anymore, Kie let her arms go around the other girls’ shoulders and walk them to the side of the beach.

“C’mon, I want you two to meet my friends.”

“Please tell me you didn’t meet that at the kook academy.” She said with a disgust expression.

Kie let out a tiny laugh. “Only on my worst nightmare. No, they’re cool.”

While the girls were walking to the where the boys where, JJ and John B were teaching Pope how to roll the perfect blunt.

“No dude!” JJ yelled. “You have to lick it just a little bit! Not lick it until you no longer have saliva in your mouth!”

“Alright! Alright!”

“Now gently roll it with your thumb.” John B said. “I said gently!”

“Not so fast!”

“You want to break it?!”

“Seriously guys, you would be great teachers.” Pope said sarcastically.

“Hey guys!” The three guys heard Kie yelled behind them.

JJ blinked but when he opened his eyes he had the same weird feeling of déjà vu. “Fuck, not again.”

Some guys were yelling because they just won a game of beer pong so she turned around to see where the noise was coming from, but quickly stopped when the same feeling appeared.

“Are you having it again?” Her friend asked. She nodded. “Alright! Come here!” She grabbed her arm and quickly pulled her friend to JJ, who was weirdly looking around like she was.

“Is everything ok?” Kie asked when she saw how the two girls quickly walked to her friends.

The moment JJ and her locked eyes with each other when her friend positioned her in front on him, the déjà vu went away like a spelling breaking.

“Is it gone?” Her friend asked.

She slowly nodded. A little smile appeared on her face while he was confused on why every déjà vu always disappeared when the girl showed up.

“Shit.” She softly said.

“This is Y/n. And you are?” Her friend asked for her.

“JJ.” He said with a smile while shaking her hand.

“Nice to finally meet you.”

“Weirdly, it doesn’t feel like this is the first time I met you.” JJ said and she let out a tiny laugh.

“Oh, this is perfect.” Her friend said softly with a smile on her face while the rest of the pogues were staring at the situation confused.

Maybe her friend was right. Maybe the universe was trying to tell them something. It wanted them to meet. They couldn’t deny it, the fact that they both had the same weird feeling when the other was around couldn’t be coincidental. Maybe, everytime they were around, everytime they touched each other or the looked at each other, it was, in fact, their right path.

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[potaetaezz]

Accidental Confessions

pairing: Todoroki x fem reader

word count: 1.5k

_____________________________________

You don’t remember when you first fell in love with Shoto Todoroki, but you did you know it’s been a long ass time. However, the joys of your ‘secret infatuation ’ were soon going to end.

Everything about him made your heart beat a little bit faster, made your cheeks that little bit pinker. Everyday, you’d sit at your desk, just trying to stop your eyes from drifting over to him. Occasionally, your eyes would meet, which would cause you to practically combust, immediately looking at whatever crap was on your desk. [Little did you notice how his gaze would rest on you for a couple seconds longer.]

You've always liked him from a distance, never getting too close, never letting your hopes get too high, but someone was about to ruin that for you...

The bell rang, waking you up from your daydream as you shot up out of your desk. While you made your way down to the cafeteria, a familiar scent caught your attention. Shoto’s cologne, warm and expensive. It wasn’t strong, but it was distinct, you knew it was him. Shoto always walked behind you when you went for lunch. You didn’t think anything of it. You picked up your food and headed to the table where Ochako and Tsuyu were sitting. Izuku and Tenya were absorbed in a deep conversation, discussing something you weren’t bothered to understand. Shoto sat down beside you, as he did everyday without fail. Something you had always written off as a coincidence, something you always tried not to make a big deal out of, no matter how much you wanted to.

His presence beside you made you warm. Butterflies grew in your stomach as you glanced over at him.

“I don’t think that’s how it works.” He chimed into the conversation. 

Whenever he spoke, everyone listened. Whenever you heard his voice, your heartstrings would play a melody as the  butterflies would dance, only growing even more. 

You were just about to eat when you noticed a pile of soba noodles now resting on the side of your plate. You looked up at Shoto, almost as to ask why, but he just kept eating. He did that every now and then, offer you some of his food, hand you an energy drink after training. But still, you knew better than to get your hopes up. [Little did you see the slightest smile grow on his face as you tucked into the noodles.]

As per usual, you all headed back to class to spend the last 10 minutes of break relaxing. Until you heard your name mentioned…

“Did you notice Todoroki acting all heroic yesterday saving y/n…” Bakugo laughed, arms crossed, face smug.

Yesterday, a group of villains had appeared while on a class trip. Everyone was separated. You were in a group with Iida, Shoto and Sero. You were running to help guide civilians safely away when you fell, gliding across the rough tarmac. And in that split second, while your back was turned, the villain saw an opening. One of his hands holding a knife, stretched out, aiming for you. 

Shoto noticed, and couldn’t stop himself from freezing villain solid (at the sight of him attacking you). He ensured the civilians’ safety while  protecting you in the process, however it wasn’t exactly the best way to go about it and definitely not like Todoroki to be that impulsive. There was a better way to stop the villain, a safer way, but Todoroki just couldn’t stop the ice from building

Strangely no one had mentioned the event, until now. 

You glanced over at Shoto, but he seemed to have ignored his words, too engrossed in his book. But once Bakugo brought up the subject, everyone started talking about the incident. 

Kirishima’s voice piped up, “Yeah actually, don’t you think Todoroki has been acting kind of weird lately…”

“Yeah he’s been all flustered but he’s normally so composed.” Ashido adds, and soon, the whole class isn’t talking about the event, but Shoto’s strange behaviour. 

You never even noticed he’d been acting strange, despite you being the one to pay the most attention to him.

“Well obviously it’s because he likes y/n.” Denki says, although not realising how loud he said it, and the whole class falls silent

Shoto is now a bright red colour. Unable to move. Not daring to look up despite everyone’s eyes glued to him. You’ve never seen him like this. So affected by someone’s words.

But you didn’t have time to think about that, let alone digest Denki’s words. Did you hear him correctly, you couldn’t have, if it was true, how could you not even notice. How was this possible. 

You could feel your cheeks burning, the butterflies growing, your heart almost beating out of your chest. Your mind was frantically going over all your interactions together, but you still couldn’t grasp it. Yet hearing those words, almost made you melt, even if they weren’t from him. Just hearing the one thing that’s been constantly on your mind, out loud, warmed your heart. A small smile tugged at your lips.

Meanwhile, everyone is shook. Like their mouths open, agape, speechless. It was like as if they heard Bakugo had apologised for something. The last person they would’ve guessed to have ~heart eyes~ was Todoroki. His calm demeanour, his nonchalant attitude, they couldn’t imagine him being in love. 

Everyone’s eyes turn to Denki. 

“Denki are you sure you didn’t electrocute something earlier…” Bakugo says.

Denki is looking around, suddenly dumbfounded. He thought this was common knowledge. That everyone was aware of it but just didn’t talk about it in case you heard. You were just as clueless as Shoto, so it didn’t surprise him you hadn’t figured it out by now. 

In response, Denki points to Shoto, who has now reduced to a bright pink, blushing statue of embarrassment, internally freaking out and regretting every decision he’s ever made.

And at that, Denki rests his case and sits down, going back doodling on the side of his notebook.

Murmurs start growing louder.

You can hear your name in multiple different conversations.

“Wait, does that mean you all didn’t know she likes him back either?”

Your heart dropped. 

Your breath quickening. 

Your eyes are now on Denki (who you could literally strangle right now), who’s standing up once more with a confused look on his face.

“You serious?” Kirishma responds, and internally Denki is like ‘are you all blind, they literally flirt with each other all the time…’

Just at that moment, while everyone is in utter and complete shock for the second time today, Mr.Aizawa comes in to put you out of your misery.

—

( After class )

You ran out of that class as fast as possible, avoiding everyone’s questions and stares. A burst of fresh air calms you as you walk outside. You couldn’t focus, Denki’s words ringing in your ears every second of that class, even now. You couldn’t imagine Shoto’s reaction, what is he thinking, what will he do; will he ignore you, pretend it didn’t happen-

You smell something, and your heart almost leaps out of your chest. 

Shoto’s cologne.

“Can we talk?” His voice calm.

You turn around to him. His hair disheveled, his eyes heavy with lack of sleep. Something pulling at your seams as you look at him, making you want to just crash into his arms. Your eyes glide over his mouth, thinking how easy would it be to press your lips against his. You felt vulnerable, now that your secret was exposed, you felt needy.

“Of course.” you offer him a smile.

“It’s true. What Denki said, what everyone’s saying. It’s true. I like you y/n.”

He looks at the ground, his foot tapping awkwardly which you find adorable. Your heart begins to swell and you can’t stop a smile from forming. 

“I like you too, Shoto.” 

His eyes once again find yours, a childish grin on his face as he walks closer to you. 

“I like you too y/n.”

“You already said that Sho.” You laugh at him, but he just looks at you with a confused pouty face.

“But that doesn’t mean I can’t say it again?” 

Shoto and you walk back to the dorm together (taking the long route), the two of you unable to stop smiling. It’s not awkward at all, the conversation flows easy, and honestly you never want it to end. You never want to stop looking into his eyes, to stop listening to him talk about the book he was just reading or the villain he was fighting. You only just said ‘i like you’ but you never want to say goodbye. Once you reach the dorm, he makes sure your knees (that you scraped yesterday while falling) are treated and patched up. 

You take a deep breath and walk into the dorm together,

and of course, just as expected, it’s c h a o s, everyone is asking what happened, what’s the deal, was Denki right, the room is filled with noise and laughter

and you’re happy, because Shoto is right there by your side. (despite the fact that Denki was the match maker/mastermind/ruined your whole plan of actually confessing to Sho <3)

_____________________________________

A/N: thanks for reading! sorry if there’s spelling mistakes, it’s currently 3 am <3

_____________________________________

[im-da-bronx]

Executive dysfunction life hacks, loopholes, and shortcuts

By me, your local adhd disaster

Some of these I am currently not doing but that’s more of a funds and location situation b/c I’m living with my parents

Get one of those roomba vacuums that plugs into a station. That way you only need to empty it once a month, and you don’t have to worry about remembering to vacuum.

Get one of those air filtering systems. I’ve heard that they suck the dust out of the air (less cleaning, yay!!) and it’s supposed to be really good for people with allergies and asthma. These, too, only need to be emptied once a month or so.

PAPER PLATES. PAPER PLATES EVERYWHERE. You WILL thank me, when you don’t have a pile of dirty dishes piled up in the sink. Yes, have regular dishes, but save those for special occasions, and use paper plates and disposable cutlery for everyday.

If you can, set up your bills to be paid automatically, top priority, every month. That way you don’t have to worry about forgetting to pay them, and you don’t have to worry about not having enough money, because you pay them FIRST, and then use the rest for other expenses. (Is it obvious I have no clue how banking works?)

Keep a wastebasket in your room. That way you can throw out all of the food wrappers without having to trek all the way to the kitchen/bathroom/wherever, and having a trash free bedroom is a must.

Try to do your laundry once a week, because if you’re anything like me, you’ll have only gone through three or four outfits, and it’s way easier and less time consuming/stressful/requires less spoons to fold three shirts, two pants, and six pairs of socks than folding a months worth of clothes.

NO DUMPING LOCATIONS. Try to not have a beanbag chair/steamer trunk/desk/whatever in your bedroom, because you WILL want to dump your laundry and assorted things there to deal with later. DO NOT. I do not have one, but I want to get a desk for my bedroom, and I will be getting a slanted drafting desk, because if it’s flat, I WILL dump things there.

Avoid over-complicated neurotypical organizers. If you’re not going to hang up your shoes every time, then just get a big bucket to dump them in. You will not be tempted to dump not-shoes into your shoe bucket, because shoes are gross and dirty and you don’t want your things dirty. **This comes with the caveat that you might wear the same two pairs of shoes over and over again, simply because you can’t see your other shoes.**

If you take medication every morning, put your Flintstones vitamins (or equivalent) right next to your medication so that you don’t forget to take it. I know that I forget to take my vitamins, and it’s really not good because I’m borderline anemic, and I’m not getting enough iron.

On that note, DRINK WATER. I will forget to drink water, so I try to make it fun. I’ll drink out of a dollar tree chalice, or a pirate’s rum bottle, or I’ll take shots or smth. If you can’t make yourself drink water b/c of the taste or smth (which happens), try to drink Gatorade or other flavored electrolyte juices (my go-to is fruit punch Gatorade, which is great until you brush your teeth and think you’re bleeding)

If you rely on packaged snacks to eat, try to buy healthier snacks, such as granola bars, trail mix, fruit cups, etc., b/c they’ll have nutrients that you need, and b/c sometimes the flavor mix up from ‘sugary junk food’ to ‘salty trail mix’ or whatever can be satisfying to those of us who get bored with repeating things. You don’t need to completely cut out junk food, b/c any food is better than none, but it will make you feel better if you’re in the mindset of, “I’m gross, I don’t eat healthy, I don’t work out,” b/c then you’ll be like, “wait, I ate a fruit cup today! Fruit is healthy!” And fruit is tasty and has water and vitamins.

Facial wipes. Sometimes (most of the time) I’m in a rush to leave or I just don’t have the energy to pull out the face scrub and completely wash my face, so facial wipes are a must. The ones I get act as a cleanser and makeup remover, and they don’t require rinsing afterwards (though I prefer to rinse my face if I can). These are great, because if you’re self concious of acne or oily skin, but can’t bring yourself to completely wash your face, these will make you feel fresh and clean.

Wide toothed combs for my friends with crazy curly hair. When I had mono (AVOID AT ALL COSTS) I would roll out of bed (often already partially in my uniform) brush my teeth, and use one of these on my hair. It was a huge change from before, when I would take a shower every single morning, and spend at least ten minutes on my hair and appearance every day. The trick with these (to not brush your curls out completely, but also avoid tangles and rats nests) is to start from the bottom with DRY hair, then wet your hands and run your fingers through, dampening the curls enough to re-clump and re-curl them, without making your hair dripping wet.

If you have to/like to wear makeup, but don’t like that it costs so many spoons, try to figure out why. My makeup routine used to take 30 minutes for just the basics, but recently I bought a kabuki brush (so soft!!) and it took 10 minutes to do my makeup. I then realized that my routine before consisted of 50% makeup application, and 50% washing my hands a million times b/c I had a super small sponge applicator and I’d use my fingers a lot.

If you have hobbies that require a bunch of supplies, but organizing them is a pain, get a giant plastic tub and dump everything in there. That way you don’t have to worry about “my paints are over here, but my canvases are over there” because giant tubs can fit a lot. I recently did this with my knitting and crocheting stuff, and it’s great, because while, yes, I really liked the baskets I had them in before (pretty woven reed ones), they weren’t conducive to stacking, and I had so much yarn that it would fall out and roll everywhere.

If you have trouble getting out of bed, try sleeping with a pet. When my dog would sleep with me, I’d have to get up to let her out in the morning, which was a mental “hey, be aware, you have to get up soon” when I went back to bed. DO NOT RELY ON THIS METHOD, use it as more of a guide/reminder, unless you have a specially trained service pet.

Try feeding your pets treats at the same time every day, coinciding with your ideal mealtimes. That way, they know it’s time for them to eat, and they’ll remind you, and you’ll remember to eat. **this also works with children, in that they’ll make you make them food, and you’ll be reminded to eat**

Slippers are great for of your feet get cold easily/you don’t like dirty feet/you don’t have the energy to put on shoes. Be aware, though, that if you don’t like dirty feet, or if your feet get really cold, you should wear socks with your slippers, because if you don’t, your feet will get really sweaty (gross) and then, b/c your feet are damp (ew) they’ll get EVEN COLDER (no)

Lists are good. If you’re like me, though, and you need about five separate lists (one for your daily routine, one for chores, one for your daily goals, one for your weekly goals, one for things you’d like to do eventually, one for ideas you want to look up, etc) get a day+week+month planner. If you’re like me, you won’t want to use a 2020 planner if you’re beginning it in July (b/c my brain is weird and doing that is just Not A Good Idea, though it isn’t Banned) so if you’re weird like me get one without any dates in it (or ambiguous dates, like the month and day, but not the year or specific week day) so you can start anytime, or plan ahead and get the yearly one in December.

Reward yourself!! If you know you did everything you’re supposed to in a week, buy a Frappuccino or an ice cream, something you don’t get very often. If you’ve been putting off watching that show, but you went for a walk two days this week, watch that episode! *try not to make the rewards too vague/far off or too close, because you either won’t do it because “I’m never gonna get one” or “why should I, it’s RIGHT THERE”

Put music on while you’re working/cleaning/etc. upbeat music will get you dancing, and hey you’re standing up, so you might as well take these shirts those three feet to the hamper.

Use the “fuck it” method (I’ll try it, and if it works, nice, if it doesn’t, fuck it, I gave it a shot.)

If all else fails, throw your phone away (social media is a huge distraction, I spent an hour writing this instead of doing other things)

Please feel free to add on to this!! I am always in need of finding new ways to do things, as I either forget, or realize there are too many steps to doing a thing, and my brain doesn’t like it.

[babylooneytoonz]

Blood Trails [ Pt. 7 ]

Chapter Summary: Time skip to two weeks later, when Tony Stark comes up with a fool proof plan on how the Avengers will protect Johanna. Although Bucky doesn't agree, he still decides to go ahead with this. Is this a coincidence or is Bucky having other hidden interior motives? Who knows?

Warnings: Cute fluff, daddy daughter moments

Word Count: 2900+

Masterlist

You had been living at the Avengers Towers for two weeks now, two mostly uneventful weeks; where you had been interrogated almost three four times again, and then on the fourth day, for some reason, you didn’t know why, they had decided to take you off the cuffs when they saw that you were pretty much behaving yourself and not giving them a hard time. The truth was, you were sort of liking living here. It was much better than the crap and the torture that Vasili gave you and this felt refreshing. In fact, Bucky even let Sasha come see you, and for some reason, the little girl pushed the monster in you into hiding, bringing out the real hidden you that had been laying dormant for ages.

“You do realize that we are actually hiding a fugitive in here, don’t you?” Tony crossed his arms dismissively over his chest. He had always liked you , you were one of his favorites, and this was the only single reason he had not blurted out to anyone that the Avengers were actually hiding a HYDRA assassin and protecting her from law.

“What do you want me to do? Throw her out? Hand her over to the CIA? They will rip her apart. Besides, she seems to be doing better.” Bucky’s eyes turned towards you, as he noted you making weird googley eyes at Sasha, who was standing outside the glass room where you were locked in, but the two of you looked merry, even with the glass separating the two of you.

“Oh, would you look at that Barnes? The mother of your child and your child are just getting along so perfectly. Who can say that she doesn’t remember a thing?” He dramatically pretended to wipe a tear, and then smiled, this time a genuine, carefree one, directed towards you as he cleared his throat and turned towards Bucky. “I think she isn’t as bad as how you used to be initially.” Bucky just rolled his eyes at Tony’s words, but his eyes were fixed on you as he studied you. He could see that you were kneeling down, your palm was pressed to the glass, and Sasha had, for some reason, her lips pressed to the glass where your hand was. Bucky couldn’t help but smile at what he was looking at, before Tony’s phone started ringing, and he walked off, speaking on the phone.

Bucky made his way to the coffee vending machine, and he poured you a mug of coffee. With equally slow steps, he walked up to where his daughter was, and when Sasha saw him towering over her, she turned around and smiled, Bucky looking down at her as he said, “You wanna come inside with me? We can give her a coffee. She looks miserable without it, don’t you think?” He threw out his hand towards her, and could notice that you were noticing the small interaction between the father and daughter from behind the glass, a hint of a smile playing against your lips.

Sasha took her father’s hand excitedly, and there was a glimmer of excitement in her eyes. She was finally going to meet you, without having the wall of glass separate the two of you. As Bucky and Sasha reached the door, he slowly lowered himself so he was in a squatting position in front of her, and face level with her face, “Sash, I know you’re my big girl.. and Daddy can tell you anything.. right? And daddy also knows that you will understand.”

“Yes daddy, you can talk to me,” the little girl smiled, her blue eyes radiating with warmth as she ran her fingers through her loose strands that had managed to fall out of her fishtail braid.

“Well, ah – “ Bucky squinted his eyes slightly, “she, uh doesn’t really remember anything. The bad place we got her from, they did some things to her, that made her forget..”

“Is that why she doesn’t remember who I am?” She asked, her eyes widening, with a glimmer of sadness in them, and Bucky nodded.

“Yeah, which is why.. can you try not to call her mom, baby? She might just get scared, you know?”

“I will try, daddy. I don’t want to scare her away, now that I’ve found her.”

“You do know that you’re my best girl right?” Bucky smiled, and the little girl fixed her forehead with Bucky’s, chuckling in her sweet, childlike voice. “Yeah, I am your best girl.” Bucky chuckled genuinely, and he stood up, taking her hand again, her tiny fingers clasping naturally against his hard metal ones, as the glass door swiped open automatically, and you turned towards the two of them, still kneeling by the glass.

“Well, hi. Is that for me?” You pushed yourself up to your feet, awkwardly shuffling the weight of your body from one foot to another. You were dressed in a loose fitting tunic that reached your knees, and you didn’t care that everyone in here could see the various marks and dried up cuts that covered your legs.

“I thought you could, uh, use some caffeine.”

“I really do, appreciate it.” You smiled, taking the mug from his hand and bringing it to your lips, as you blew twice on it and took a sip, letting the froth give you a fake moustache, to which Sasha just started giggling.

“What? What’s so amusing, скучать?” You looked down at her, amused, and then back up at Bucky Barnes, noticing how he was also trying to muffle a smile from breaking out against his lips. That’s when you realized that you probably had froth all over your face. Embarrassed, you pursed your lips together, your cheeks flushing red suddenly, as you turned away and quickly swiped your sleeve over your lips, trying to ignore the little child’s very obvious giggling.

“Well, I think we should leave – “ Bucky began speaking; but Friday’s voice ringing through the cell suddenly made him clasp his mouth shut, as the two of you started looking at each other; your frown only widening.

“Sergeant Barnes, Mr. Stark wants to see you and the rest of the team in the meeting room. They’re all already there and waiting for you now.”

“Thank you Friday, I’ll just – “

“Also, Mr. Stark wants you to bring Miss Johanna to the meeting room.”

You raised your eyebrow questioningly towards Bucky and he just shrugged, running his hand through the back of his head.

╞═════𖠁𐂃𖠁═════╡

Your stomach felt like it was knotting up, and you began nibbling on the insides of your cheeks to make your nervousness go away. It wasn’t nervousness per say, but you really didn’t understand why you had been called suddenly, when all you had done the past two weeks was be nice. You hadn’t tried to escape, you had listened to what was asked of you and yet, today you had been called into the meeting room. Your first thought was whether they were planning to send you back..to Vasili Dreznov. You dreaded it, but at the same time, you mentally scolded yourself for being so paranoid. Sending you to Dreznov will be the last thing to cross their mind.

Bucky cleared his throat, and you were pulled out of your thoughts, your head sharply turning towards him. He raised his palm slightly, asking you to step into the meeting room before him. You nodded, and stepped in, your footsteps loud enough to alert the other occupants of the room enough to turn and give you a glance.

“Well, Y/N.. I mean to say Johanna, why don’t you take a seat?” Tony pointed towards a leather chair that was a few steps away from where you were standing. You turned to give Bucky a quick glance and he blinked, as though telling you that it was okay to do it. Biting your lip, you lowered yourself into that chair, placing both your elbows on the table as Tony cleared his throat again, “Well, I’m not going to beat around the bush, but we’ve got a problem. I just received an anonymous intel.. something is going to happen. Something bad, something dangerous, something that will change everything.”

“Well, you are sort of beating around the bush here. What’s the crack?” Clint walked up to the empty chair next to you, pulling it casually and plomping down on it like this was the most normal Avengers meeting and you were a normal part of it, which was hilarious. Nothing about this meet made you feel like you were a villain that had actually been caught by these people.

“Way to ruin my mood, Barton. Well anyway, there is something weirdly fishy going on here.” He clapped dramatically, and the holographic screen started displaying a video footage. The footage playing was of a colony. Everything looked normal; women and children walked about the streets, cars passed by, and everything looked like a normal upper middle class colony. “Now I know you all must be thinking what’s so fishy about this little colony in New Jersey. This is what’s fishy! Nothing really looks fishy?”

“You’re really not making any sense,” A female voice called out from behind you, and you just turned around, to see a woman with a slender frame, and long dark hair step in, her eyes darting around the room and fixing on you for a bit before fixing on Tony. You knew her as Wanda Maximoff, and you knew her from your third day of captivity in here when she had come to see you, immediately returning from her mission.

“Thank you for your input, Miss Maximoff,” Tony mumbled, faking an accent and then turned back to the holographic scene. “Jokes apart, something is going on in that colony, and that’s what the intel said, and that is what we must find out, what exactly are they hiding?”

“This is still vague, Stark.” Bucky raised an eyebrow.

“Well, Barnes, this is all I know. It could be anything, someone in that colony might be making a freaking bomb that may destroy all of America for all I know, but I don’t.” Tony continued, glaring at Bucky before he abruptly turned and bent over the keypad, his fingers typing something against the keys and an animated 3D representation of the colony sprang up in the middle of the room. “Well, I’ve done you all the favour of narrowing down your search for you. Well, technically my systems have. And these are the only suspects that have been narrowed down.” Two houses out of the entire lot were suddenly highlighted as the color of their rooftop started turning red. Tony explained in a detail that the mission involved going to live in that colony in New Jersey undercover, and trying to find out what exactly was going on there, and it meant, that the interaction had to be formed with the occupants of these two houses because these were the most suspicious ones, and one of them was definitely hiding a secret.

You kept sitting there awkwardly, listening in, trying to process the information that was so openly being discussed between you, which you had no idea why. Little did you know that Bucky and the rest of the team also had the same apprehension and thoughts as you, in fact everyone except Tony seemed to think this. Finally, you gave up when you could listen no more and slowly stood up, your sudden movement causing a sudden hush to fall over the room.

“I’m sorry, I think there’s been a mistake here. I don’t understand why I have been asked to be here. I’m not one of you,” you frowned, looking at Tony.

Tony smiled, and the next moment, he had turned round the desk, and was already walking towards you, while you looked on in confusion. He finally stopped walking and fixed himself just next to you, and cleared his throat. “On behalf of the rest of the team, I don’t think they’re gonna mind, I would like to make you an offer. You’ve been here two weeks now, and I was wondering if you ever considered joining us.”

Bucky’s eyes almost widened, when he heard what Tony had just said to you; so much so that he pushed himself closer to Sam, and mumbled into his ear, “What the hell is going on? You knew about this?”

“No freaking way, Barnes,” Sam whispered back, just as startled as Bucky was.

“Woah, hold on a minute. You’re offering me a position here? Knowing well who I am and who I worked for.”

“Well you said it yourself. Worked. In past tense.” Tony mumbled, scratching his jaw when Bucky grabbed his arm forcefully and literally pulled him aside so he could talk to him, alone, “Okay, what the fuck are you trying to do?”

“Hey, you’ll thank me later, metal man,” Tony yanked his arm away, and walked off, letting Bucky just glare at him, like nothing had even happened.

“So Johanna, you in?”

You couldn’t hide the budding frown on your forehead, as you suspiciously eyed him, trying to psychoanalyze him, try to figure out if he was just mocking you, but Tony Stark looked at you with what looked like an utmost sincerity, that confused you even more, “What’s the catch if I say yes?”

“If you say yes, you’re protected, you’re not a fugitive anymore you’re free from HYDRA, atleast to an extent that you don’t have to work for them anymore, and if you say no.. you’re a traitor to this country and you know the rest.”

“So basically –“ your arms crossed over your chest as you took a deep breath, “ трахни мою жизнь but I don’t have another option is what you’re telling me. Because it’s like choosing between wanting to die either by consuming poison, or by drowning. But you got to die in the end.”

“We aren’t that bad, Jesus. You make us sound like we are horrible. Well woman, we have fans all over this world – “

“Tony, seriously that’s enough. Give her a break,” Wanda stepped up next to you, and for once you were thankful that someone had spoken, broken their silence for it felt like you were being cornered in here by one man.

“Tony, can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?” Bucky finally spoke, and that’s when you realized that he had been strangely quiet all this while. You watched from the corner of your eye, as Bucky and Tony stepped out of the meeting room, and the door slammed shut, leaving you alone with the rest of the team.

“What the fuck was that?” Bucky almost growled, when he had brought Tony out into the hallway.

“I am only doing you a favour. Isn’t that what Steve did? Did you forget about yourself?”

“That was different.” Bucky stated, simply.

“Yeah you’re right Barnes. That was different. I didn’t like you back then, and neither do I like you now, but her –“ Tony crossed his arms over his chest, and took off his glasses, now standing chest to chest with Bucky, “ – she was a nice one. I knew her before you even knew her. And if there is anything I can do to make sure she doesn’t have to step foot back from where she just came here I’m going to do that. And besides, I cooked up just the best little plan so she gets her memories back.”

“So that’s what you truly want,” Bucky deadpanned, and shook his head, moving away, back towards the meeting room, leaving Tony to quietly follow him until all eyes turned towards the two of them, including yours. You finally took a deep breath, and brought your hands up to your hair, fluttering your eyes shut just for a split second, before you opened them again, “I accept.”

╞═════𖠁𐂃𖠁═════╡

Three days later, you found yourself in your first official meeting as an Avenger. Natasha and Bruce Banner still weren’t back from Afghanistan, so it left Bucky, Sam, Clint, Tony, Wanda, Vision and you.

You kept watching as Tony slammed two heavy looking files on the round table in front of you.

“Johanna.. Bucky..” Tony deadpanned, grabbing a file out of the two and tossing it into the air, that Bucky caught midair using his metal arm, “that mission I was talking about. The one about that colony in New Jersey.. You two would be going undercover.”

Bucky looked at you, and you looked at him, then back at Tony, nodding. This seemed fairly easy, for your first official mission. It was only when you felt Bucky almost groan, and you noticed that he was reading the file that was handed to him, that you realized that this wasn’t the end of it. You snatched the second file that was laying on the table, and a frown caked over your forehead when you saw what the mission was all about. You and Bucky were going undercover, pretending to be a newly married couple who were expecting their first child together.

Of course, it just couldn’t have been a straightforward, kicking some asses kind of a mission for you.

“Come on, it won’t be that bad,” Tony chuckled, and Bucky just threw him a glare, knowing well aware the games that he was trying to play, and the conversation he had with him three days back came spiraling back into his mind; where he had confessed that he had an idea that could bring your memories back. Maybe this was this intelligent idea of Tony Stark, when even Wanda and Vision could have been send undercover, he actually chose the two of you.

“When do we leave?” You turned to Bucky, your expression blank.

“Tomorrow. Think of it as a vacation. The two of you deserve it.”

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[avatoh]

MERRY X-MAS NOTALWAYSLATE: Rumbelle Secret Santa

@notalwayslate : Hope I answered the prompt:

A03

She caught his eye as soon as she walked into his shop, his head jerking up as soon as the bell over the door rang. 

Her name was Belle French and she was in town visiting her parents who owned the flower shop ‘Game of Thorns’ down the street. He had seen her around town a lot as of late; but he never quite had gotten the chance to talk to her since she’d been back, which was odd since they always had conversations that lasted for hours within a day or two of her arriving back into town. Her presence had been a yearly occurrence for nearly a decade, for as long as her parents, the older couple had lived in Storybrooke. Sometimes Belle was in town for as long as three months, sometimes she just stayed a week or two but she was always around during Christmas. 

He had first stumbled upon her when he was collecting rent at the flower shop about 8 years ago. She had been covering the counter while her parents were away and he still remembered the day as if it were yesterday. She had been trimming the stems off of a bushel of roses and making a huge bouquet, very intent in her work. He had been absolutely stunning. There was a ray of light shining into the shop, hitting her just right, highlighting her chestnut curls and eyelashes as she intently focused on her work. The moment had been all too surreal, like it was out of a dream or movie of some sort. He hesitated to walk closer, afraid of running the moment. He felt something stir inside him for the first time in a long time that day that would be the bud of almost a decade of on again, off again, pinning and emotional suffering; of the anguish of never quite finding the right words to tell her how he really felt.

They made a bit of a connection that first day as he and she exchanged a handful of words. She didn’t fear him and made him exercise his mind and trip over his words as they spoke. She caught him off guard and twisted his tongue and made him feel like she had the upper hand on him when it was usually him who had the upper hand on everybody else. One thing for sure was that she was a most peculiar woman.

Belle never stayed quite long enough for him to scare her off or to succumb to town gossip. “It’s nice to see you again Mr. Gold!” is always what she would say without fail when she came back into town. Being around her made him feel shy and she almost always caught him off guard, which was a super strange thing for him since usually he considered himself quite the guarded person. There was just something about her that made him stumble and feel quite like a fool.

There had been a number of attempts on his part to appear collected and resolute when talking to her, but always she said or spoke of things that made him take a long pause to think about his next words and even on a few occasions, she made him stutter, which was very unbecoming of him. Belle had a way with her words and a unique way of thinking that he admired. But he would be remiss to not notice that there was always some weird sort of tension and awkwardness between them whenever they spoke or interacted. He could have sworn that she liked trying to get the upper hand on him and for some reason, it didn’t annoy him in the slightest, simply because it was her.

“Miss French. To what do I owe the pleasure?” he said as she walked further into his shop.

“I was just wondering if you wanted to accompany me to the town hall Christmas ball on Sunday?”

“Excuse me?” She'd been back in town about a week, hadn’t spoken to him, hadn’t even waved to him or seen him in the street and now she was here in his show inviting him to a dance when they hadn’t acknowledged each other in 7 months. Was he hearing her correctly? “You’re inviting me to the Christmas dance? You know I never go.” 

“Maybe you can go this year. With me,” she added.

“Why?” he asked her cautiously.

“Why not?”

Once again she really had caught him off guard in the most unexpected way. “Very well,” he said without giving the proposal much of a second thought.

“Really!”

“Sure.”

Belle quickly reached out her hand to shake his. “Alright. You can’t go back on your word now, we shook on it. Pick me up at 6 on Sunday.” She turned to leave. “Good to see you again, by the way.”

“You as well, Miss French.” He gave her a bit of a nod and found himself cracking a bit of a smile as she left, immediately feeling panic set in. He was going to be going to a dance with Belle. Why had she chosen him over all the men in Storybrooke, surely there were men more suited to her tastes that she probably had more in common with than him? He never went to the town gatherings, much less dances. What if this was an elaborate joke at his expense? She wouldn’t do that, he told himself, but this was still an odd thing to ask of him. He usually hated these sorts of things.

It was a Tuesday. He still had some time to think about her offer, still some time to back out to spend the evening alone. He didn’t hate Christmas and dances per-say, but a lot of people made a bigger deal about it than they should. Christmas was a fine holiday but all the Christmas movies, songs, the red and green, the oversaturation of it all seemed like a bit too much most of the time. It was a good time for his Pawnshop and Antiques business, he supposed.

This wasn’t a date: he had told himself this Tuesday night, a few hours after her invitation. This wasn’t a date, how could it be? They were just two acquaintances that saw each other every now and then who had nice conversations that he really looked forward to. They were friends of sorts, if he could even call it that. A date would mean that they had feelings for each other. He had admitted to himself years back that he did indeed have feelings for her, but she never gave so much of an indication that she did as well for him.

If he was going to be honest with himself, he didn’t give her really any indication that he liked her as well. She wasn’t even around all year round, she clearly had something to go back to. He remembered years back that once she brought up the fact she had a boyfriend, he wasn't sure if she still had one, but she could. He tried his best to not think of her like that following that occasion. Despite this, he always just seemed a wreck whenever she came into town, he would be fine then his world would completely change in an instant as soon as he laid eyes on her again. 

Every instance of them meeting for the first time in awhile was like how he felt the first time he had seen her. There was just something about her presence that just resonated with him and made him want to get to know here better. Getting to know her was a whole other story though. He was constantly choked up around her. And when he did open his mouth, every word and topic just seemed increasingly awkward and unlike him. He remembered their infamous chance meeting at Grannies Dinner 4 years back when he ranted about ketchup for a solid three minutes like the fool in love that he was. He was his own biggest annoyance and knew on Sunday he was going to be the most awkward man alive on the planet. Not that it mattered anyway.

The days ticked on and eventually Friday fell; he still hadn’t seen Belle since the incident, but he did keep an eye out for her when he was around town but he never happened to see her. Friday was the day he was due to collect rent at her parent’s Flower shop, he kept on thinking about what he would say if he saw her there. Something along the lines of, “See you on Sunday,” to confirm that they were indeed still on for Sunday but he had to say it in a way that wouldn’t look too over-eager, but still acknowledged that he was aware that they had a planned outing together.

Game of Thorns was next place to collect on his list and he was dreading and looking forward to the possibility of seeing Belle. She usually was around when he was there to collect rent and this is when they usually chatted. A coincidence, it probably was, but he couldn’t say for sure. 

He walked into the small shop and was met with Colette French at the counter. He frowned with disappointment, now this was odd. “Oh, Hello, Mr. Gold.”

“Hello, Mrs. French. I’ve come for the rent.”

“As usual,” Colette said, handing over a wad of cash in a folder that he slipped into his breast pocket.

“Thank you,” Gold said, about to leave.

“Mr. Gold,” Colette prompted, making him falter.

“Yes? What is it?”

“My daughter,” she said. “You are going to take her to the dance on Sunday, is that true? She’s very excited and won’t stop talking about it. Told me to say “hi” for her and that she’s sorry you two couldn’t have a chat today but she’s off with one of those friends of hers shopping for a dress.”

“Ah.” Gold paused, not expecting that.

“It’s just all so strange,” Colette said.

“What do you mean?” He had to keep his defenses up and at least address that last jab from Collette. 

“Oh, heavens, I mean nothing by the word ‘strange’, just poor choice of words; it’s just that she hardly talks about wanting to go out with single men nowadays and all the years I’ve lived here I’ve never once seen you go out with anyone…”

“You’ve never seen me go out with someone? Oh, I see That’s actually none of your concern.”

There was an awkwardness in the air, Colette opened her mouth to respond but he just left. So, Belle was telling her parents, or at least her mother that she was going to the dance with him, and that she was excited by it, no less. This was thrilling news, to be sure. He had felt a bit rude about how he responded to Collette French’s comment. That was what usually happened when people made comments about it being strange that people would want to spend time with him, ect. His words are what he used to defend and protect himself but they often hurt him more than they helped him. Being far too quick and curt with no sort of response back is probably how he had managed to shun and separate himself from most of Storybrooke society. Perhaps he’d apologize next time he saw the elder Mrs, French or just slip back some of the rent money. How he spoke to her was exactly why he was hated. It was probably a good thing he couldn't speak with his usually ferocity around Belle. 

The day of the ball, Gold could hardly work, usually he spent Sundays crunching numbers for his various enterprises, but he could hardly focus as the time ticked on. Ultimately, he had to call it a day a lot earlier than usual on account if not getting anything done. It would be better to focus on getting ready for the ball anyway. In the days prior, he had gotten his suit cleaned and  a small trim at the barbers, all he had to do was decide between the two ties he was thinking of then pick out a complimentary pocket square to complete the look.

He was ready and dressed quite early and was just sitting there in his suit hours before he needed to be.The thought of drinking crossed his mind, but he forwent that idea. The minutes ticked by and soon it was only a half hour until he was due to pickup Belle. He could hardly wait any longer and decided that he would head over early. Hopefully he wouldn’t be such a nervous wreck once he saw her. He had practically been panicking for hours and it was quite unbecoming of him; she shouldn’t see him like that.

Gold arrived at “Game of Thorns’ and the house that was attached to it to find the building quite empty. No lights, no sign of movement. Gold had gone around back to the house and fear crept in his mind once again. What if Colette French were to open the door and was mad at him for the way he spoke to her? He’d have to apologize and then explain to Belle how he had been awful to her mother and l undeserving of her, it's what he should do regardless if the woman opened the door or not. What if Maurice French opened the door and didn’t expect to see him there or know that he was taking his daughter to the ball? The man would probably never forgive him for that. He crossed his fingers as he knocked on the door, hopping not to have to deal with more awkwardness than Belle.

“Just a minute!” he heard Belle’s voice call out to his relief. Her reply was accompanied by a few loud thuds and a sound of clattering. Belle opened the door a few moments later and she looked gorgeous. “Come on in, I’m just finishing my makeup.”

He hesitated at the threshold. “If you don’t mind, I think I rather-”

“Nonsense!” Belle pulled him in. “Nobody else is home anyway, if that’s what you’re worried about. Please sit, it’s far too cold outside and I’ll only be a moment longer.” She disappeared into the next room over. Gold looked around. He had been in this house and room a few times while collecting rent, but he mostly did his collecting in the attached flower shop. It had changed since he had last seen it. He didn’t know whether to keep his eyes transfixed on an object in front of him or to allow himself to look around. He stayed mainly focused at the wall in front of him but started to look around as the minutes ticked on.

Belle had shocked him so much when he met her at the door. She had dressed up considerably, he couldn’t really remember seeing her pull out all the belles and whistles like this, even at the previous dances that he had only seen in passing. She was stunning regularly but now she had on jewelry, a nice rose scented perfume, and the most gorgeous satin green dress that most certainly made him feel things. Once again, she had left him speechless and in awe of her.

Belle had been a little longer than five minutes when she finally came out again. This time she had a shawl on and had finished her makeup. Her lips were candy apple red but looked more delectable than the sweet treat itself. “Sorry, I took a little longer than I expected,” she said a little sheepishly. 

Gold was up on his feet in a fraction of a second. “No worries.” He should tell her how beautiful she looks, he thought. “You look stunning,” he said quickly before realizing that the words had left his mouth.

“Oh, thank you. You look quite dashing yourself. It looks like we match too.” 

He looked down at his tie and pocket square which complimented her dress and bright red lips and was glad that he had chosen this ensemble. “It appears so.”

Belle let out a little laugh. “It’s good to chat with you again Mr. Gold. How about we finish catching up in the car?”

The ride to the ball couldn’t have felt shorter. 

It was a good 15 minutes to the town hall with the roads he took but the two of them were still comfortably chatting in the car 15 minutes after they had parked. Most of the awkwardness had melted away and the two of them had gotten to talk with one another, uninterrupted, awkwardly, longer than they had ever before. It was nice and the conversation flowed smoothly.

“Is there a reason that you decided to go to the ball with me, Belle?” he asked her. It had been the question on his mind, after all.

“Well, I wanted some arm candy to keep me company,” she teased. A false answer.

That was immediately when he became a mess again, stumbling over his words until he finally said they should probably get going and get to the dance. His confidence continued to falter as he felt that all eyes were on them. “Gold and her!? That poor girl,” he heard somebody say. Perhaps it was even what he deserved to hear, but it was something he wouldn’t stand for. He snapped back his head in the direction of the voice but couldn’t tell who it came from as everyone in the vicinity shrunk back in recoil. He was about to open up his mouth and shout at them when he felt Belle’s hand rest on his elbow, pulling him back.

“Don’t mind them. Please, let’s continue on.”

He felt his anger melt right out of his body. “Ok,” he said plainly. He was then introduced to some of Belle’s friends, women around her age and perhaps around his age who he had seen around town but hadn’t really talked to before due to not having any business dealings with him. They were polite, welcoming, and nice to both of them. They stood gathered in a group with them for about an hour before people began to break off and dance or mingle elsewhere. His leg being the way it was made him a clumsy dancer and he had spent the previous week hoping that she wouldn’t actually ask him to dance at the dance but knew the question would probably be unavoidable.

After the conversation with the group had filtered out and only a few of the uncoupled people they were talking to remained, he suggested out loud that Belle take one of them out on the dancefloor so he wouldn’t have to. Despite wanting to stay in her company, she did deserve to have a bit of fun for herself. “Oh, I was hoping to dance with you if that’s something you’re interested in?”

Gold shook his head. “I have two left feet and don’t make a great dance partner,” he said as he tapped his cane on the ground for emphasis.

“Does it hurt you to dance?”

“No.”

“You just don’t want to?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just been quite awhile and I can’t quite move certain ways or as fast as my partner.”

“Oh,” Belle said. “I don’t mind that at all. Would you be willing to try a slower song?”

“I’ll think about it, if the opportunity arises.” Not but one song later, the tempo of the new song signaled her to ask again, He reluctantly agreed to dance with her. She made him give in so easily. They danced to two songs before they retired to an alcove alone.

“That was fun.”

“It was,” Gold agreed. “But I need a bit of a break now.”

“That’s understandable, I’m a bit tired myself.”

They sat looking out at the crowd.

“Thank you,” Gold said. 

“What for.”

“I- thank you for your company. I don’t really go to these sorts of things but I had fun tonight.”

“I did too, but the night’s not over.”

“True. But every time I see you, time feels too short. You always leave just when-”

“Just when what?”

“Just when I think you’re going to stay and grow used to your company.”

“I’m leaving the first week of the New Year. There’s still some time left.”

“But I want to get to know you better, have for years,” Gold said. “I-” he paused, fighting through the next few words. “Even though you are only going to be here a bit longer, would you consider going out with me again?”

“On a date?” Belle asked.

“Yes. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take you out on a date.”

“I’d like that very much Mr. Gold. I never thought  you’d ask; that’s why i thought I’d be the one to ask you first, here.”

Gold flushed. “Is this a…”

“Well it didn’t have to be.” Belle was equally as red. “But I liked to think it was, and is, if you don’t mind. Each year I hoped you would ask me, but you never did, so it had to be me to ask you now. I- There’s something about you. From the moment I saw you I just couldn’t get over you and I'd like to get to know you better as well. I want to learn more about you and grow used to you if you’ll permit it.”

“I-”

“Merry Christmas,” Belle said, bringing her face closer towards his for a kiss.

[shiny-procrastinates]

(re)Watching Magia Record S1 - part 4

part 3 here

Hello everyone and welcome back to our... I don't know how to call this really, I'm more narrating what's happening in the screen than anything, but in any case today we are continuing what we have been doing these last few days.

Last time, we had an episode focused on the Momoko trio, got handed even more mysteries and had a brief cameo of our favorite drill-haired mahou shoujo. So what will this episode have in stock for us? Only one way to find out! (these introductions are getting cornier and cornier, I'm running out of ideas here.)

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story: Magia Record S1 episode 4

Today, Iroha's visiting a chinese food restaurant on Mitama's recomendation. Well, I suppose even magical girls have to eat sometime.

But before that, let's wind back a little bit.

After the op, we get a little monologue from Iroha about "friends". It's probably obvious by now that she's not the biggest social butterfly out there, but this scene basically tells us that Iroha had no friends besides her missing sister, which just makes this even more sad, honestly. The solitary atmosphere of the first episode was no coincidence.

While dropping by Mitama's, Iroha hears from Momoko the aftermath of the fight with the Chain Witch from last episode. Momoko says everyone who had disappeared had come back safely, and says that might've not been a witch, but something lurking behind the rumor. The trio brings up some other weird rumors while Mitama desecrates a perfectly good cheesecake.

“Mitama-san, why“

Iroha asks if there's some rumor where people went missing and Momoko guesses correctly that she's wondering if her sister didn't get caught up in one of those. Sadly, they don't know any other rumor where people went missing besides the Staircase of Severance.

Oh my god Mitama is eating that thing, looks like the Coordinator's will be closed for a while.

The girls try to brainstorm some ways to look for Iroha's sister but, well...

Like this, Iroha just looks like some weird girl who insists her imaginary younger sister is real... which she might be, I wouldn't put that possibility past this series, but for now we are assuming her sister actually existed.

Iroha pokes in and says she'll do it herself, since she has no idea where to start investigating now and it'll probably turn into a long search anyway. Momoko's not very convinced. Mitama then hands Iroha Banbanzai's flyer and now we are back to the present.

In Banbanzai we meet Tsuruno Yui, Kamihama's (self-proclaimed) Strongest Magical Girl. The size of the dishes are also the strongest. One has to wonder how does Tsuruno explain to her father the "magical girl discount" she has going on.

Iroha eats a bit under the expectant eyes of Tsuruno and, when pressured for a rating she says...

50/100, or 2.5/5 when going by the occidental style rating. Tsuruno's shock here is impressive considering that's Banbanzai's usual rating no matter what it puts out. Hey, consistency is good!

After eating, Iroha apologizes for giving such a low rating despite getting free food, but Tsuruno explains basically what I wrote. Yes, Iroha, you guessed right.

Tsuruno apologizes for not having any hints in regards to her sister and, after getting Iroha to call her by her first name, says she'll try to introduce her to someone that might help her with investigating the strange rumors. Tsuruno is hesitant on the phone at first but quickly gets excited as the person on the other side of the line agrees to meet them right away. And the person they go meet is...

Yachiyo, obviously. She's like "I have no time for this" at first, but is stopped by a crying Tsuruno and ends up telling them about the rumor she's investigating.

The rumor Yachiyo's investigating right now is about the Seance Shrine. Basically, there's a rumor saying that if you visit a certain shrine, write the name of who you want to see on a ema and pray properly, you will meet that person. However, you'll be so happy you'll become unable to leave.

Yachiyo says while investigating she found some posts of people saying they actually met who they wanted to meet who disappeared afterwards. Tsuruno wonders if anyone has been declared missing and Yachiyo points out that even if there was, no one would think to attribute a missing person to a rumor.

Tsuruno has a eureka moment and asks if the Seance Shrine is Mizuna Shrine, but Yachiyo says she already tried and nothing happened... wait, hey Yachiyo,  that's dangerous, what if it really was the right one? lol

Yachiyo says she already had low hopes, but if somewhere with so many visitors as Mizuna Shrine was the Seance Shrine, it would already be all over the news with the amount of people that would go missing... which is a very fair point.

So the girls have no choice but to go around and look for a less known shrine. For better or worse, there are a lot of them in Mizuna.

In one of them, Tsuruno finds a stamp rally going on in Mizuna Ward, and asks if that couldn't be a tip in regards to the rumor. Iroha's skeptical at first, but Yachiyo says they might as well do it, since it's better than looking around blindly.

While they walk around, Yachiyo tells Iroha the legend of the star-crossed lovers that was cited in the stamp rally paper. It's the tale of how two lovers of different social standings were separated by death (well, assassination), and then reunited after countless prayers from the princess. Iroha says that it's a lovely story, but Yachiyo doesn't seem to think the same.

Yachiyo then tells Iroha the hidden, true ending of the history, where the princess sacrifices all of the people of the town to their god in order to meet her beloved again.

and magical girls should know that better than anyone else.

A bit later, Tsuruno says doing this almost makes it feel like the old times, but Yachiyo just ignores her. Iroha asks if they've been close for a long time and Yachiyo says they used to be, but they're not anymore. Seeing from Tsuruno's behaviour, though, that's gotta be because of Yachiyo herself.

Iroha comments that even if it was a past relation, she's still jealous, since she's never had any friends besides Ui. Ui was everything to her, so now that she's gone, Iroha feels empty... it's a bit concerning that she feels like that when you consider her sister was ill enough that Iroha had to cure her with a wish. What would have happened had she not become a magical girl?

Yachiyo says, but this isn't the past to Iroha. She firmly believes that Ui must be out there somewhere, so she wants to find her as fast as possible. Yachiyo then tells her that if that's the case, she shouldn't be tied down by her past, she should become stronger, for her sister's sake.

Like that, they finally reach the Seance Shrine...

not. They end up back at Mizuna Shrine, which Yachiyo had already discarded as a possibility due to the number of people that would've gone missing if that had been the case. Yachiyo had thought that there had to be a connection between the rumor and the legend, so maybe they missed a hint somewhere. The trio doubles back for the day.

However, as they head back, something crucial dawns on Yachiyo:

She's a broke college student and today was 10xPoints Day.

Yachiyo gets Tsuruno and Iroha to help her and goes grocery shopping. Yachiyo tells Iroha about the points benefit, but Iroha has no idea what she's talking about, so Yachiyo says she's still a kid... yeah, but I think it would be weirder if a middle schooler knew about this stuff.

Being a magical girl sure is suffering. You get kidnapped from trains and buses, and can't even catch a sale without getting a witch as a freebie. There is no rest.

Here! I can finally comment that it creeps me out the fact that Iroha sleeps with a plushie of this thing. I know it's in this series' style to have weird things going on in the background, but still...

The fight starts and- Iroha why the heck are you going to the front what is that crossbow even for. Yachiyo tells Iroha to stay behind her, but Iroha's holding the idiot ball right now... partly because Yachiyo told her to get stronger, but still. Iroha shoots a few times at the witch, trips, misses espetacularly and almost becomes witch food. Great job, Iroha.

Now, while Iroha's hesitating about what to do, in comes Tsuruno.

Maybe not the best time to be striking poses, Tsuruno.

Iroha screws up once again and sends Tsuruno flying but, as expected of the (self-proclaimed) Mightiest, she still makes short work of the witch (also probably because we're running out of time for this episode).

I'm guessing Iroha's magic in combinations just makes the other person's magic stronger. Kinda lame when you think about the previous two examples, but I guess that's standard for light magic in games... it's already weird enough that their magic has attributes at all but, oh well, game logic.

In the end, poor Yachiyo missed the sale. However, thanks to not being blinded by shiny discounts, she realized something important they were forgetting about the rumor.

Sure enough, just like Yachiyo said, Seance Shrine really was Mizuna Shrine at night. When they walk in...

The extremely suspicious chibi Kyuubei appears. I was going to say it that it only appears in rumors, but the first time it appeared was in a witch Labyrinth, so that's not it either... wait, wasn't it singing a song about rumors the first time Iroha met it? Hmmm...

In any case, the group heads further in, and the rumor very kindly gives them some plaques. Yachiyo tells Tsuruno not to write anything, since they don't know what'll happen and they'd both write the same name anyway.

The plaques turn into something like familiars as soon as they finish writing, and Tsuruno is held back for not writing anything. Iroha hesitates a second with Tsuruno being attacked, but obeys when Tsuruno tells her to go ahead and take care of Yachiyo... I, uh... have a feeling the opposite scenario is more likely, though.

Yachiyo and Iroha go ahead and offer their prayers. Then, when Iroha opens her eyes...

they are at a different place, and what both of them see is...

The people they longed to meet.

Iroha's time has begun to move again.

---- x ----

Aaaand that was episode 4. This time, I wasn't dumb and actually checked the episode was over before starting to write the closing part.

This is probably true of the previous episodes too, but I particularly like how the colors are used in this one. The tale part had not really the same sepia tone of historical things, but more of a celestial yellow tone, and the part at the witch labyrinth in the supermarket has a cute candy-like tone to it. It's not the same subdued kind of realistic thing like in, say, SSSS.Gridman, but there are some good, calm parts in here.

During the rally, when Iroha was telling Yachiyo about not having anything besides Ui, the procession they were walking in the middle of is a reference to Kitsune no Yomeiri I think, but I couldn't really connect the situation or what they were talking about to the tale so I decided to not point it out up there. Do feel free to search about it and draw your own conclusions.

I forgot what else I wanted to say, so I guess I should tie this up now. Did you know? Writing the introduction and close-up is actually harder than writing about the episode itself so you'll have to forgive me for not being able to think up anything besides "see you next time". In fact...

See you next time, on episode 5!