#which I never am fully aware of so it’s hard to combat

[curly-cottage-girl]

I must not stress. Stress is the stomach-killer. Stress is the little-death that brings total digestive obliteration.

[erigold13261]

How was Neon, an AFAB man, able to enter the navy and become a war hero?

"Don't ask, don't tell." basically. [Also, I am not FULLY aware of everything that goes on in the military/navy, so this all makes sense to me but might not be fully truthful to how things happen in real life. But hey, this is all fantasy so I could say whatever I want lol].

He was a very friendly guy and probably knew some people in the navy already. Or at least the toy maker he apprenticed under knew people in the navy and introduced Neon to them. I see Neon as being friends with one of the medical doctors who would later be the one to push Neon into doing the full cyborgification process.

So that guy was probably Neon's main medical person who looked after him and cleared him for active duty in a combat zone. And that would carry on to other medical practitioners where Neon's charisma just allowed him to get by some checks that would have denied him the ability to go into combat zones (which was technically a flaw in security, but it worked out for Neon lol).

There have been plenty of trans people who have infiltrated (probably not the right word to use here) the military and were able to serve but not in combat zones. They would be either nurses/doctors, cooks, secretaries, etc.

So there were higher ups who did know that Neon was trans, they just didn't say anything. Though some of them did try to make his life hell by forcing him to do more manual tasks as a way to punish him just because he was trans. Thankfully Neon works smarter, not harder (though he did work very hard) and was able to do everything asked of him.

It was his knowledge, quick thinking, and skill with machinery that allowed him to save his ship after it got hit and some of the boilers/engines were close to exploding. He did end up losing his right arm in leg in this instance (along with some function of his right eye), but it saved the crew.

His self sacrifice earned him a few medals, but also his medical friend offered Neon to get experimental cybernetics as a thank you from the navy. He thought Neon would take them and go back to being a civilian, he had no idea Neon would come back after recovery ready to get back to work and serve his country.

By that point Neon was very well liked by much of the crew he was part of (this was before he was a captain) and even by a lot of the higher ups from his actions and ability to be tested on. So they let him back in and he continued to work, even helping advance weaponry and cybernetics while he worked because Neon was never idle. Even helping create the bases of a lot of the warbots used in the upcoming war.

Once the war started it didn't even matter what kind of people were in the navy, as long as they were serving their country the military would take whoever they could draft and any volunteers. So Neon didn't even have to worry at this point about getting kicked out, though he did continue to keep his transness a secret/on the down low as best as possible.

He was also a lot higher rank than he was before by the time he was outed fully as trans to his crew. Being a commander at the time thanks to his improvements of machines, robots, ships, and more. So his rank, promise, and crew were all there and kept him in the navy for a few more years.

Things were going great until the captain of the ship Neon was a Commander on died along with a small but decent portion of the crew on board during an attack. Neon was able to take command and lead their ship out of enemy waters and to a rendezvous point where backup would be. This action would be what allowed him to be promoted to Captain and take over the crew that was left on his own ship.

Unfortunately, the luck Neon had would run out soon enough as his ship would blown up in enemy waters, but close enough to the shore that there were survivors who were able to make it there on life boats. At least the ones who weren't shot on their way to shore.

Neon and his closest 5 friends/crewmates (they were helping people escape and making sure Neon would make it off too and didn't go on a suicide mission) were the last to leave the ship after realizing everyone else is probably dead or not able to be saved. They were able to make it to shore.

At this specific point I am unsure on whether I wanted Neon and friends to become POW or them actually be able to fight back and try to make it to allied forces that were "kinda" close by. I think I am leaning towards them fighting back, which would be possible as I can see them having brought weapons along with having some cybernetics between all of them giving them a physical advantage to the enemies who did not have this kind of technology.

Either way, Neon was one of the only people to survive thanks to the help of a warbot(-s, maybe more than one) that made out of the water and helped protect Neon but was too late to save the other 5 crewmates.

The warbot(s) and Neon making it back to allied ground allowed him to give important information about the internal workings of some camps or something like that which helped in the end of the war itself. However, by this point Neon was exhausted and full of injuries which would later cause his other arm and leg to be amputated, face plates put on his head, and a full spinal reconstruction surgery.

So yeah, Neon really helped out the war efforts. Later on once he became a full cyborg he would also work as a sniper so that he could earn more money to give to his ex-wife and daughter while also keeping another war from starting.

At least this is the general stuff I was thinking about. Some things might change or be added, but for the most part this is how I see Neon's navy career going.

[astaroth1357]

Brothers React to a Demigod MC 

So, I've gotten some interest to do a Brothers follow-up to a previous request of mine (Undateables React to a Cute, Badass MC), however, I've thus far refused to write one. Honestly, this HC actually plays on a trope I personally dislike and had it not been a request I would have never done it to start with. I just can't see any reasonable way a non-magic human can beat a bunch of demons, I just can't, and that hinders my imagination quite a bit. …But someone who’s not so human? That I can get behind. Fair warning, I grew up with the Percy Jackson series so that’s going to paint quite a bit of how I see modern demigods. Ready for things to get super-ultra fanfic-y for a bit?

Intro:

The day to kidnap bring the exchange students to the Devildom has finally come and the demons have all gathered in the Council Room to open their portal to the human world. Really, things started without a hitch - the portal opened with and their future student dropped down out of it and landed on the floor… before they suddenly leapt up, pulled out a weapon, and lunged at them!

… This isn’t your normal human, it is?

Lucifer

Oh Devil, this couldn’t have been any farther than what they wanted… They were looking for a human and they managed to pull out a halfling! A divine halfling no less!! Why wasn’t this in their file?!

Look, Lucifer might not be on good terms with his father, but even he knows he had it better than any children of the pagan gods… The levels of petty vindictiveness that run through that bunch are literally the stuff of legends...

After he and Barbatos were able to restrain the MC before they hurt themselves or anyone else, Diavolo explained everything to them and gave them a pardon for attacking the Demon Prince on sight… After they identified themselves and their parentage, Lucifer knew they were in for some shit…

He and Diavolo had to iron out an apology letter to their godly parent for days just to keep from saying anything that could accidentally cause a second Troy or worse... It was a mess...

But on the bright side, the “human” came pre-prepared for fighting monsters and demons, which honestly took a bit of a load off his shoulders. That’s less responsibility for Mammon - and in his experience, the less responsibility Mammon has, the better things usually turn out.

… Though their ability to actually hold their own in a fight did make things complicated sometimes - like whenever he was their perceived opponent... 

He wasn’t expecting to have to manage a being that was actually capable of meeting him toe-to-toe on the battlefield and it did hinder his intimidation factor to some degree…It was hard to be threatening to someone who’s likely faced worse than you could ever offer.

In the end it probably worked out for the best, as a live exchange student is better for Diavolo than a dead one - but man did it get on his nerves until they made their pact together… Be scared of him, dammit!

Mammon

The first time he tried to threaten the human, they straight up pulled out a weapon and looked like they were ready to whip his ass!! Didn’t they know he wasn’t being serious?? 😫

He really didn’t know why he had to be on babysitting duty, anymore... This huma-er demigod could handle themselves just fine!

When he first ditched them with Levi, he later found out they managed to cleanly toss his brother over their head and make a break for it all by themselves! And Levi’s no pushover either!!

Later, he saw them getting ambushed on their way back from school and they soundly knocked out about five demons before he even caught up to them… and he’s, like, fast and stuff… 

Their strength is kind of unreal at times, but he could tell they were still far from a mindless killing machine. They were more or less a normal person, they had wants and dreams like anybody else, but they just happened to be a long stronger than the average mortals around them. 🤷‍♀️

After he eventually got to know them and a bit about how their life worked, he felt a little bad for them... Who wants to be hunted down just for being born?

After learning about their struggles, Mammon ended up resolving to help keep them safe (even if a part of him knew they didn’t need him that much).

I mean, if the whole world’s against you, then you can use all the help you can get... right?

Leviathan 

Levi found out exactly one thing about them within the first two minutes of meeting them… their reflexes were killer.

After Mammon ditched them on Day One, he tried to drag the human to his room to tell them his genius plan but they broke out of his grip and threw him flat on his back like was just second nature! 

He was stuck on the ground for a full minute, trying to process what just happened, while they ran off into the House all alone…

Did he just get tossed around… by a human?? Was he really that pathetic!?!

Finding out later that they were actually half-god certainly helped out his self-esteem because, man, if he had lost so easily to a human of all things... He might have just never left his room again…

Levi pretty much kept his distance from them until they finally made a pact together and then he discovered that the MC wasn’t so scary after all. If he’s being honest, being in the same house as a demigod was actually kind of cool...! 

Like, it was almost exactly the plot of the show: “Wait, I Thought I Was the Son of a Pagan God So What Am I Doing in a Christian Hell??” but their MC seemed to know a lot more about fighting than the protagonist of that show ever did…

Plus, because he never had to worry about their safety, he had even more excuse to never leave his room. Win-win!

Satan

A demigod, eh…? He had done plenty of research into human world mythologies in his spare time, frankly he thought the old gods had died out - but it seems they were still up and kicking… and making babies for whatever reason? Horny bastards...

Satan's original interest in the MC was purely academic. It’s not everyday that you get to meet someone of such a unique heritage and he fully intended to learn if all the legends about their greatness were true… and well...

He could say that the MC was certainly different than how he pictured humans being. He’d never met very many before, but from what he could gather they were a weak race that really got by on wit and persistence… However, nothing about the MC was weak.

Their aptitude for combat was surprisingly sharp, both in skill and reflexes. He had once blown up at them in anger and not only did they dodge his swipes but they got in a good few hits themselves with a nearby lamp… He never once thought a mortal could give him a black-eye but, somehow, they pulled it off. 🤷‍♀️

Combine their physical skill with what magical gifts were granted to them by their godly-half and they were a force to be reckoned with… Even Solomon seemed to hesitate and think more about his actions around them (which is saying something for a sorcerer of his strength).

It’d be fair to say a part of him grew to respect the MC long before they ever made their pact and that respect only grew afterwards. If he had to be bound to any master, human or otherwise, he’d rather it be one that he could right about consider an equal not only as a friend, but in strength as well.

Asmodeus 

A demigod…? Oooo, he hadn’t come across one of those since he bedded Aeneas all those centuries ago… Such a gorgeous man, got all his looks from his mother~! 🤭

Asmo was probably the most interested in their godly heritage, but it felt like he was treating them like a zoo exhibit for a while… Something pretty and new to look at, but not exactly someone he wanted to know personally...

He openly and readily admitted that watching their little demigod in action got him hot and bothered (or well, more hot and bothered than usual ) but it didn’t take him to see they weren’t interested at the time…

He decided that he just had to have a pact with them after they saved him from Henry 1.0! It was before he noticed the giant snake and he was lurching back to strike, but the human swept in to knock him out of the way. They probably could have made mince meat of the creature themselves if Levi weren’t begging for them to spare his former pet...

Post-pact Asmo treated them with a lot more respect… but also still fanboyed over their fighting skills hardcore. 

Like, their body had to be fit to keep up with all those monsters, right?? What was their training routine? Could he watch?? Oh please say he can watch!! He just can’t get enough of that fighter’s physique…! 😍

Beelzebub 

So… the human isn’t a human but only part human? And the other part is a god? Does that make them any sturdier than normal humans…? Call him curious…

Beel was probably one of the few brothers who was legitimately weary of the MC from the beginning… He can get a certain feel for a person pretty quickly and something about them just felt…frankly, kind of dangerous.

But they also intrigued him a little… Beel’s used to being one of the strongest demons in any room he walks into (not a boast, just a fact) so for him to get that feel from a mortal was pretty impressive. A part of him just wanted to test them… you know?

So. He did. He asked them to help him train his martial arts one day and even with his awareness, he was not expecting the results that he got.

The MC was strong. Very strong. They were not only able to keep up with him and dodge his blows, but they were able to predict his moves and counterattack in kind. They didn’t even need to tell him that they had actually been fighting for their life for years, he could tell. They had a skill you don’t get from practice matches...

After that point, the two would go to each other to train and keep their skills sharp… but also just to spar for fun. Their fighting styles made a pretty good match and they bonded pretty damn quick because of it. 

If anime tells us anything, when you find a good fight buddy, you stick with them. Even if one’s part god and the other is a demon. 🤷‍♀️ 

Belphegor 

A demigod is still human enough to hate, sorry MC. Not that he knew about their godly heritage at first…

Really, he should have been a little more suspicious of how easily they seemed to take to life in the Devildom... Weren’t demons supposed to scare humans? Why did they seem so comfortable down here...?

His confirmation only came when he tried to enact the final part of “Use the MC to Escape the Attic!” plan and take their life to seal the deal… but oh boy, was he outclassed real quick… 

The MC had already socked him in the jaw by the time he got his full demon form out and then they threw him across the room by the tail… the TAIL!! And it hurt like a bitch, too!! Even during the full blown fight that followed, he could tell they were holding back and it pissed him off something fierce...!

Why was the MC so strong?!? Humans weren’t supposed to be strong!!!

His brothers heard all the commotion and the Lilith confrontation ended up happening up in the attic between a somewhat beat-up Belphie and a barely-scratched MC. Had Beel not come to his defense on instinct, it might have turned out worse for him in all honesty… Something about that human just wasn’t right…

He only found out about their god-half after everything settled down and he promised not to try killing them again (not that anyone thought he could...) and that put some things into perspective. So the Lastborn Ruler of Hell isn’t as strong as one mortal demigod…? Ouch. Okay, fine then... Whatever...

He does think it’s too bad he missed them beating the crap out of the rest of his brothers, though (minus Beel)... That would have been fun to see. 😔

So I tried to keep this one God-parent neutral, but I’ve upgraded this to its own series! Check it out if you’re interested! 😊

Demigod MC Series: Intro, Aphrodite, Hermes

[ignitedbynatsu]

He Makes You Feel Insecure ~ Sting

A/N: Final-fucking-ly. excuse my language. You have no idea how long I’ve been playing with this idea in my head and just not being able to write it out. It was horrible. I hope you like it! I’ll try to post some more stuff the upcoming week but I can’t promise anything since everything is a bit overwhelming lately. Thank you for all the love and support! Don’t hesitate to drop me a request as well or just come and say hi 🥰

Warnings: insecurities (he makes you feel like you’re overdramatic), swearing, wounds

Genre: angst to fluff

Other versions:

Gray ~ Laxus ~ Cobra/Erik ~ Bickslow ~ Gajeel ~ Natsu ~ Jellal ~ Freed ~ Rogue

☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀

"Is that really all you got, Yukino" you taunted the girl as a smug look was plastered on your face. The celestial mage was panting heavily in front of you. She had come to you a couple of weeks ago to learn how to wield a sword since she felt useless in a battle when she didn't have her keys. You happily agreed to it, seeing it as an opportunity to train more.

She charged at you, holding the diamond sword you made earlier diagonally in front of her face, ready to strike but at the same ready to block any attack that comes her way, just like you taught her.

You swiftly moved away, spinning on your feet in the progress as you slowly formed diamond armour around your body. You wanted to practise closer combat without your sword, which is why you were so focused on your defence. You knew you wouldn't always be able to rely on your sword skills, so this was the perfect moment to practice. 

Nobody doubted for a second the fact that you were an excellent swordswoman,it was the exact reason why Yukino came to you in the first place. But you could get overconfident, resulting in you slacking your moves and getting careless, and that's exactly what happened

Your back was still facing the celestial mage as you took your time, presuming she wouldn't be able to recover that quickly after you swept her feet from underneath her. But you were wrong, resulting in Yukino getting a direct hit on you. Unbeknownst to her, she hit you in your blind spot which was right in between shoulder blades. It was the spot where your armour was the weakest.

You fell forward, immediately forming a dome made out of diamond around you in an attempt to shield you from any following attempts.

 Yukino gasped at your reaction, knowing you only made that move when you were hurt badly "(Y/N)! I am so sorry! I didn't mean to-"

You let the shield crumble down again, making you visible to your friend. Placing a knee on the ground and pushing yourself up, you winced at the burning sensation. "It's fine, I was careless. It's not your fault"

Your reassuring words didn't ease the worry that was swimming through Yukino's mind "I'll go get some stuff to clean it up"

"No, it's fine, I'll go get it myself in a bit." You stopped the girl from running away as you stood up straight in an attempt to show her you were fine "you are progressing really fast"

"It's all thanks to you. Are you sure you don't need me to check up on your wound?" She offered again.

"Yeah, I'll be okay. Maybe I'll try roping Sting into pampering me. That way he'd at least has done something useful today" you attempted to joke to make the younger mage feel better, and it was a success as a small chuckled left her lips. "Let's go back shall we"

Once back, the stinging sensation had still not died down. In fact, it only got worse.

"Sting" you whined as you leaned your head against your boyfriend's shoulder.

He chuckled at your childishness as he turned to look at you "yes, my love?"

"I got badly hurt during training with Yukino" you pouted "can you take a look at it?"

A chuckle left his lips once again "sure drama queen, where is it?"

"I'm not being a drama queen" you stepped away from him, the pout was still evident on your face but this time it was paired with your scrunched eyebrows.

"Of course you're not" sarcasm dripping from the words that just left his mouth.

"What do mean by that?" Your lips were now tightly pressed together, forming a straight line. You were now standing directly in front of him with your arms crossed in front of your chest.

"Remember that time you thought Rogue got kidnapped while he just overslept?" Sting explained, but you were quick to defend yourself "in my defence, Rogue had never once overslept."

"Fine, what about that time I twisted my ankle and thought I had broken it for sure" the crease between your eyebrows deepened as he kept listing situations "or that time you thought some guy was harassing Minerva while they were just out on a date?"

"I was just worried" you mumbled as you recalled more encounters where you were indeed overdramatic.

  "All I'm saying is, you tend to enlarge things. That's why I'm pretty sure that it's only a scratch, after all, Yukino just learned how to handle a sword. There's no way she could've hit you, the best swordswoman of our guild, that hard. But if you want I could still look at the wittle wound" he cooed at you, unknowingly worsening your mood.

"No. It's fine. I'm probably just being overdramatic again" the coldness that was latched to your words, send shivers down the guild master's spine, but before he could even muster an apology, you had turned on your heels and left to go home.

That night when Sting came home, he apologized and told you he didn't mean to make you feel that way. However, his words felt shallow, leaving nothing but an empty promise to be better.

The following days, the burning sensation only got worse, but you kept telling yourself that it was nothing. It was probably only a scratch just like Sting said.

Ignoring the pain, you kept going on about your days like normal. You kept making mental notes to not get swallowed by the worry for your guildmates and blow everything out of proportion. You absolutely did not want to be known as the girl who cried wolf.

Nobody seemed to notice, at least, so you thought. The boy in the shadows that liked observing more than talking to people noticed every small change from the moment Sting called you overdramatic.

It's why he wasn't surprised when Sting called him one morning, panic coated every word he spoke "Rogue! (Y/N) isn't waking up! I don't know what happened! Shit! Rogue! Help! What do I do?"

"Get her to the hospital as soon as possible, I'll meet you there" he replied in a much calmer voice. He knew he'd make matters only worse if he'd let his own worry shine through.

Sting had successfully brought you to the hospital in under ten minutes, Rogue shortly arrived after you two.

"I don't know what happened... She seemed fine yesterday…" Sting trailed off as the twin dragon slayers were seated next to your hospital bed.

"Did she really though?" Rogue sighed which earned him a questioning look from the blonde " (Y/N) hasn't been herself for almost a week"

"What do you mean? She seems perfectly normal to me?" Sting's gaze averted from his friend to you as he tried to recall any odd behaviour, but nothing came to mind.

A heavy sigh left the raven-haired mage again "ever since you called her overdramatic, she's been acting more distant, being less expressive. I think you hit a nerve when you said those words"

Sting was quick to defend himself "it can't be that. I apologized that night, and she told me it was nothing, that she didn't care"

"Whatever you say" he mumbled as he noticed your hand twitching.

Sting quickly grasped that same hand and waited patiently for you to open yours, while anticipation filled his. "I'll go get a doctor"

Rogue re-entered with a doctor sooner after, once you were fully awake " Ah, miss (L/N) good to see you awake"

You nodded your head awkwardly before she continued "you had a nasty looking cut between your shoulder blades, were you aware of that?"

"Yes," you mumbled as you fiddled with your finger, afraid to make eye contact with anyone.

The doctor sighed as she put the clipboard down "there was an infection spreading from that wound due to pieces of diamond stuck in it. Had you waited any longer, you would have died. Why didn't you come sooner"

You felt incredibly small as all eyes were looking at you, waiting for you to respond "I didn't think it was that bad. I didn't want to seem overdramatic"

As soon as the last word rolled off your tongue, Sting's eyes grew wide in realization. Rogue was right. "We'll give you a moment"

"(Y/N)" you refused to meet his eyes, even when he grabbed your hand to stop you from fiddling, so he tried again but with a more stern tone this time "(Y/N) look at me"

You did as he requested and wished you could sink into the darkness as Rogue could right there and then. The hurt and disappointment that were swimming in his eyes made your gut wrench as you never intended to upset him "why didn't you say anything?"

"You said that I was being a drama queen and that there was probably nothing to be worried about, so I assumed that it was just that, me being my overdramatic self" you explained, your eyes averting again to your fingers that were now intertwined with Sting.

"I thought I told you I didn't mean that" he frowned at the fact that you didn't even dare to look at him.

"But you were right!" You explained fed up as frustration tears started to form in the corner of your eyes "I am overdramatic. I blow everything out of proportion. I am just a burden that brings unnecessary stress into everyone's lives"

"Okay stop that. First of all, you are not a burden, nobody thinks that so stop it. Second of all, I am really really sorry that I made you doubt yourself. You're not overdramatic, well maybe a little, but it's not a bad thing. It shows how much you care about all of us. I'd rather have you blow things out of proportion than minimalize it and have bad things happen like this" he explained.

"You really think so?" You ask, your watery eyes finally meeting his.

"I know so. I am so sorry for making you feel so insecure about yourself. That was never my intention, please forgive me" he pleaded.

"I forgive you, I'm sorry for not saying anything sooner about the wound" you reply as you kissed his hand.

"It's alright. Now get some rest, my love. I'll be here when you wake up"

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 303: And What, Pray Tell, Is a “One For All”

Previously on BnHA: The Todorokis (really just Enji) looked at their children and went “how can we screw up all four of them in uniquely different ways” and proceeded to do just that. Touya was all “just because practicing how to set myself on fire better hasn’t worked to win my dad’s affections YET doesn’t mean it will NEVER work”, because child logic. Turns out setting oneself on fire real hard isn’t so effective at winning affections, but is actually incredibly effective when it comes to burning oneself to death, so there’s that. Back in the present day, the Todorokis basked in their various misplaced (again, except for Enji) feelings of guilt, and were all “anyway but get over yourself already Enji, you still have to do something to stop this kid”, and Shouto was all “I’ll help too”, and Enji was all “(╥_╥)”, and Hawks and Jeanist were all “[surreptitiously listening in from outside the door]”, and that’s basically where we left off.

Today on BnHA: Hawks and Jeanist are all “mind if we join you on this family journey?” and proceed to stroll in uninvited with their puns and their perceptive insights. Hawks is all “so to sum everything up, we’re fucked, but at least you have us here to help you out! by the way, no clue why I’m the first person to ask this in three hundred chapters, but wtf is One For All.” We then cut to Deku, who’s still all “[(－－)]z”, and All Might, who is all “I’m just going to ignore the extremely loud racket going on right outside this room.” Which, btw, is happening on account of Bakugou, who is all “(╬◣Д◢)” as Satou, Tsuyu, and Mineta cart him away. Anyway so that’s a lot of antics, and also it looks like Hawks has gotten tired of the Todorokis refusing to put the pieces together on their own about OFA and so he is fast-tracking that shit. And meanwhile Deku is chatting it up with the Vestiges exactly like we all thought. And now we have to wait another whole week for updates on all of this. This really is not fair.

omfg lol

“our bad, we were kind of accidentally listening in on purpose.” like I said last week guys, no fuss. it’s a tradition

OMG

I am absolutely fucking floored. Hawks literally said that so casually that it’s impossible for me to rewrite it so as to be even more casual. that’s literally what I would write in the “today on bnha” section. in fact I probably will write that

(ETA: just for laughs I tried it and it really worked.)

a couple more things to point out about this panel: 

“TOP 3” omg yes. more like “top only” at this point, honestly. interested to see how that goes

Hawks’s phone is freaking the fuck out about something, calm down there

I know this is a standard Jeanist hair-fixing gesture that he does all the time, but I can’t help but form hypotheses about this being a stress reaction because Hawks’s hair is making him internally freak out. Hawks, if this man tries to get you alone with him and some hairspray and a comb, please for the love of god do not listen to him. get out of there and call the authorities

omg Shouto’s face

okay confession, I wasn’t really sold on the whole “Shouto has a schoolboy crush on Hawks” thing until exactly now, when I became 100% sold on it. that is adorable

and heck with it, gotta show Enji and Rei’s reactions here as well because lol

“omg my son who’s not my son, and he just overheard everything about me being a terrible shitty father and person overall, oh and plus my actual-son set him on fire and called him out on a national broadcast. I’m just gonna stare at him baffledly.” versus Rei, who is all “hmm, who are these people”

so Hawks is all “I got released from the hospital after one day for some reason so I made Jeanist drive me around places while we talked about life” but uh, heyyyyy, what’s Rei doing

okay, uh

SO FUCKING FORMAL OMFG. “SORRY MY KID TRIED TO BURN YOU TO DEATH, APPARENTLY HE DOES THAT” REI NO IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT

HAWKS IS ALL “I’M JUST GONNA LAUGH SINCE THAT’S MY DEFAULT RESPONSE TO BEING PROFOUNDLY UNCOMFORTABLE”

let me tell you a secret Hawks, it’s my default response too. ahahahahahahaha oh thank god Jeanist is helping her up -- AND MAKING A JEANS PUN, OF COURSE. IT’S BEEN ALMOST THIRTY SECONDS. MY MAN WAS DYING

“WTF IS ILLEGAL DENIM” he’s talking ‘bout them counterfeit jeans, Rei. Antoine Bugleboy knows

THANK YOU JEANIST!! OUT HERE ASKING THE RELEVANT QUESTIONS

damn straight. we’re not gonna sit around waiting another 300 chapters for this information on this man’s watch

now Hawks is telling Endeavor he used to watch videos of him all the time, and calling him his “childhood obsession” I can’t

OH MY SWEET STARS AND MOONS

1000% CANON. “SO CLOSE...” ARE YOU SERIOUS. YOU REALLY PUT THAT THOUGHT BUBBLE THERE AND EVERYTHING. “GOOD MORNING EVERYONE, SO JUST IN CASE YOU WEREN’T ALREADY AWARE, TODOROKI SHOUTO IS NOT ACTUALLY STRAIGHT.” HORIKOSHI KOUHEI I AM LITERALLY DUMBFOUNDED. THIS IS AMAZING

and meanwhile that look on Hawks’s face while he casually-but-not-really-casually-at-all asks this question. that phone app better be using his actual voice. I’m not sure I could take this scene in the anime at this point if it was like Alexa talking or something

that look in his eyes is basically saying that so far, based on the information he has absorbed up until this point, Hawks is prepared to view his former childhood obsession as a flawed but changed man. however I get the distinct feeling that depending on Endeavor’s answer now, he would be willing to drastically shift some of his opinions on him

(ETA: this is maybe my favorite panel in the entire chapter. the fact that his question isn’t addressed to anyone in particular, but his eyes are zeroing on on Endeavor. and the way his leaning-on-Shouto pose manages to be simultaneously nonchalant and yet ever-so-slightly protective. there’s so much going on in this one question and gesture and I’m mildly obsessed with it.)

however, Rei is all “that was me” and ONCE AGAIN WITH THE FACES IN THIS CHAPTER holy shit

Hawks definitely did not see that one coming sob. it’s so fun watching him frantically recalculate his ideas about this family every two seconds

DAMN IT HORIKOSHI I UNDERSTOOD THE PARALLELS ALREADY, YOU REALLY DIDN’T HAVE TO DO THIS

yes, Hawks, you get it. it’s not exactly the same, but it’s close enough. though unlike your shitty parents, Rei and Enji are at least trying

OKAY I SERIOUSLY CANNOT WITH ALL OF THIS

fljkdlaskfjlwkjl okay we’re doing the bullet-points breakdown here

first of all, the fact that poor little Shouto’s heart is still thumping away at this proximity and all he can think is “CLOSE” all intelligently as he stares at him with that face omg

and meanwhile Horikoshi has these STRATEGIC BANDAGES WRAPPED AROUND HIS CHEEKS TO HIDE ALL OF HIS SHOUJO BLUSHING omfg. SENPAI NOTICED YOU SWEETIE!!!

HAWKS YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY ZERO OBLIGATION TO WASTE ANOTHER SECOND OF YOUR LIFE WORRYING ABOUT THESE TWO ASSHOLES WHO NEVER SPARED YOU THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF REGARD OR CONCERN IN THEIR ENTIRE LIVES. THE NICEST THING YOUR MOM EVER DID FOR YOU WAS BUY YOU A $2 ENDEAVOR PLUSH FROM THE DISCOUNT BIN TO KEEP YOU QUIET, AND YOU WERE SO AWED BY THAT ONE ACT OF SORTA KINDA APPROXIMATE KINDNESS THAT YOU SHAPED YOUR ENTIRE WORLDVIEW AROUND IT. PLEASE LET ME PICK YOU UP IN A BIG HUG FOR JUST A SEC, YOU DESERVE THE WORLD AND YOU WERE ONE THOUSAND PERCENT JUSTIFIED IN LEAVING THEM IN THE DUST THE SECOND THAT YOU COULD

but all that said, he immediately recognizes that Shouto would also have had cause to do the same in his situation, and yet hasn’t. and so he has that much more admiration for him all of a sudden, which is just super sweet, and fully appropriate. Shouto does deserve props. I’m choosing to take this as an “it takes a lot of strength to be able to forgive, and people who choose to do that even though they’re not obligated to are really amazing" type of thing, as opposed to “people who don’t forgive other people who severely wronged them are bad.” and if I’m wrong and Hawks’s line here is meant to be seen as actual failing on his part, well then fuck that, but we’ll move on

SO NOW, DOWN TO BUSINESS!

I am so, so curious as to what kind of strategy Hawks has for this (if he even has any), so I’ll just be quiet now and read

so Hawks is summing up basically what we already knew -- that Tomura and his inner circle (curious that there’s no mention of AFO, because if Hawks doesn’t know about him, that implies almost no one does) are still on the lam with a few PLF stragglers and some High Ends; that a bunch of prisons have been “liberated” (I assume this means all of the inmates escaped, so if that’s the case then where’s Kurogiri??); that the HPSC is fucked; and that heroes are resigning all over the place, and so civilians are taking matters into their own hands

OH DAMN!?

does this mean we’ll actually see some international heroes?? I will LOSE MY DAMN SHIT omg

(ETA: apparently people who paid more attention to the first BnHA movie than I did recognized the silhouettes as belonging to some background characters from Two Heroes. so maybe they were just cameos and they’re not actually new characters who are soon to join us lol. oh well.)

anyway so Hawks agrees with the other Todorokis that Endeavor has no choice but to fight

awww

DON’T WORRY ENJI THEY’VE GOT YOUR BACK. WITH YOUR FLAMES, AND JEANIST’S PUNS, AND HAWKS’S BOYISHLY GOOD LOOKS, THE THREE OF YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU SET YOUR MINDS TO

so Enji is very pertinently asking why they’re standing by him in spite of the... [gestures vaguely to everything]

oh my lordy lord

Shouto you had better do something to combat this soon, or this man will sneak past you on my favorite character ranking after all. his face. his cheeky lil finger gun. the fact that he sums it up so fucking simply. “if someone is trying to do the right thing, I want to support them.” exactly. exactly

(ETA: and one last thing I love but forgot to mention, which is the fact that Hawks calls it a team-up despite the fact that he is clearly in charge.)

meanwhile Jeanist is all “as for me, at this point I just straight up don’t give a fuck”

I can’t handle how fucking cool this chapter is you guys

so Hawks is all “you good?” at Enji. and Enji...

if anyone needs me, I will be building myself a discourse-proof fort made entirely out of problematic characters. I don’t even care. I will go on living my life very happily in here

lol at Natsu being all “BUT DON’T THINK THIS MAKES US FRIENDS”

I’m living for this weird and no-doubt entirely unintended implication that Natsu and them all are gonna join in the fight with the rest of them. I mean, they do presumably all have very powerful ice quirks. and Natsu has medical training on top of that, and Fuyu is skilled at getting eight-year-olds to behave which could be a useful talent for dealing with Tomura hahaha I kid, but I’M JUST SAYING. who needs hero licenses anyway

OH SHIT FINALLY SOME DISCUSSION OF AN ACTUAL STRATEGY. even if it’s just a PR strategy

WHAKLHL

and now for some reason we’re flashing back to Natsu and Fuyu’s attempts to navigate through the media crowd outside the hospital

well I guess this is why I’m not the mangaka. if I were writing this I would have done something trite and predictable like using that “One for All” line as an excuse to cut to Deku!! as opposed to this entirely unrelated scene!!

seriously though why do we need to see this lol

no one in this crowd has ever heard of Alexander Dumas huh. or even the popular 2007 Disney Channel original movie, High School Musical 2

so now there’s an entire page of Hawks saying they need to know what One for All is, and Endeavor having one of those patented Todoroki WHOOSH realizations lmao look at this

just wait until this man figures out that one of the scrappy new interns he took on three months ago was actually the main character all along

SKDFIOHWIERLKSJGLWLK!!

NOW IS PROBABLY A GOOD TIME TO ASK MYSELF WHY I CHOSE THIS CHARACTER WHO KEEPS DISAPPEARING FOR SIX OR TWELVE OR FORTY CHAPTERS AT A TIME TO BE MY FUCKING FAVORITE. WELCOME BACK SON PLEASE DON’T SCREAM YOURSELF TO DEATH YOU STILL HAVE A HOLE IN YOUR TORSO

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

(ETA: can we just take a moment to appreciate how Bakugou even got so close to Deku’s room in the first place though. in this giant hospital with no idea of where to even go. does he have Deku Radar or something.)

YOU SIX ARE OFFICIALLY ON MY HIT LIST!! SPARE ME YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS!! MY BAKUDEKU REUNION KEEPS GETTING POSTPONED WEEK AFTER WEEK!! YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE HEROES WHERE IS YOUR CONCEPT OF MERCY

(ETA: btw just to be clear, I’m not actually angry lol; it makes total sense that they don’t want this rampaging feral toddler who was still in his own coma all of fifteen minutes ago to come and start screaming at the other coma child until he tears all his stitches out. if there’s anything we Bakugou fans should be familiar with by now, it’s being patient.)

also, Tsuyu wrapping her tongue around Bakugou’s still-healing torso wound absolutely can’t be hygienic at all. also wait is that Inko??

(ETA: pretty sure it is her. she got all of one line smdh.)

Iida is all “thank god Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight pulled through, I thought for sure he was a goner back there”

for the record this is actually really sweet to see how relieved he is. he’s one of the few people who saw the original injury close up, back when he was still at the battlefield and unconscious, so I imagine it really did freak him out quite a bit

JIROUUUUUU

“sometimes I just like to stand here and tug on my imaginary suspenders, what of it”

how come you guys get to loiter around Deku’s room but Kacchan doesn’t. god fucking dammit. AND WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN

I BET KACCHAN COULD WAKE HIM UP FROM HIS COMA WITH THE POWER OF RIVAL INTENSITY!! BUT NOOOOOOOO, [is dragged away back to my fort]

OH MY GOD!?!

"this seems to be an entirely normal and above-board situation that we have just stumbled onto”

I see Jeanist comes from the Iida Tenya school of respectfully using people’s full names

Jeanist becoming one of the main characters is the best thing to ever happen to this series

EXCUSE YOU, IIDA

BUT I’M SURE HE’D MAKE AN EXCEPTION FOR KACCHAN THOUGH!! [elbowing my way back out of the fort] HAWKS, PLEASE --

DON’T GO ALL OMINIOUSLY PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER ALL ON YOUR OWN GODDAMMIT

“there’s absolutely no way this angry wriggling shoulder burrito kid here could answer literally all of my questions, so I’ll just ignore him”

OH MY GOD WE’RE FINALLY CUTTING BACK TO HIM BUT THE CHAPTER IS ENDING

[jumps up, throws a folding chair at Iida and the rest of the gang, and then runs]

oh my god. actually this chapter was awesome. but I’m so fucking mad at this cliffhanger though lol

at least we got a couple of answers! and some hints and teases! poor Deku looks so worn out even though he’s asleep dlwkjl my little green baby. and is it just me or is his quirk activated?? All Might’s all “I can feel it” as if it isn’t obvious just looking at him, why are you trying to be all mysterious dude

anyway! so at least we finally have confirmation and a date for those vestige antics at long last. looking forward to meeting Mister The Fourth next week so we can finally ask him “hey dude, what the fuck”

[words-writ-in-starlight]

where's the essay op

Okay so bayonets.  I don't know why I ever pretend that I want to talk about anything but military history and battlefield medicine.  I checked all my sources in the waiting room of a doctor's office so you're just going to have to trust me because they are Gone.  I’m pretty sure this can all be found on a few Wiki dives, though.

First of all, to recap, let me clarify a common misconception.  The triangular bayonet was NOT outlawed in the 1949 Geneva Convention, nor any future revisions—as it was originally a musket weapon, it was fading out of use by World War II and the subsequent Convention.  However, you'll notice that I opted to use to word "violates" rather than "were banned by," which is a fine semantical hair to split and, I suppose, debatable.  Most bayonets were not explicitly banned in the GC, in that there is not an article in the GC saying you can't use them.  However there IS an article in the GC, adopted from the earlier 1899 Hague Regulations, stating that it is prohibited to "employ weapons...of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering" (originally part of Article 23 of the HR, now Article 35 of the GC, expanded in 1977).  Personally, as someone who knows a lot about how a lot of weapons impact the human body, I think that is a more expansive statement than most people would expect, and should be treated accordingly.  Regrettably I do not work for the UN.

Point is, triangular blades specifically are known to cause wounds that are difficult to heal, highly prone to infection, and extremely likely to never fully recover, while also having a relatively low mortality rate.  This is because the axes of a triangular wound, which is shaped sort of like a Y, make it very hard to stitch closed, and very easy for any "twisting" of the blade to create a large hole with ragged edges that's functionally impossible to stitch closed.  As an added bonus, because of the way scar tissue forms, it's possible for one "line" of a triangular wound to pull open other parts of the puncture while the scar tissue forms and pulls on the skin.  Even by standards in the 1700s, triangular bayonet wounds were phenomenally likely to infect and consistently difficult to repair, and modern medicine has made only limited improvements on that situation.  As such, cases have been made that certain types of bayonet/triangular blades in general are therefore in violation of this article, despite not being explicitly banned.

(Side note: yes, the American military violates the GC on the regular.  The American police violate the GC.  I am excruciatingly aware.  The GC is interesting reading generally, but especially if you're an American and you ever feel like being appalled for a few hours.)

Anyway, with that covered again, let's actually talk about the development of triangular bayonets, which might've been out of use by the time of the GC but DEFINITELY violated that article in a big way for a good two centuries prior and are also a fascinating insight into the fact that humanity, as a whole, is really determined to do things in the dumbest way possible.

The first thing you have to understand about bayonets is that they were originally invented as a way to integrate pikes with guns, not knives or even swords.  When arquebuses and muskets were first invented, you were lucky to get a rate of fire around one round per minute, and you still had to protect your army while they were reloading their clunky black powder guns.  Therefore, most infantries between like...the invention of the gun and the late 1600s were comprised of soldiers equipped with muskets, and also soldiers equipped with pikes (a type of spear).  The idea of a bayonet was "what if we put a pike and a musket TOGETHER and then we could give everyone THAT and have way more guns in our army because we don't need pikemen anymore." Which makes sense when you think about it.

What makes less sense is that the initial effort at bayonets was something called a plug bayonet.  You'll never fucking guess what these geniuses (first record is Chinese infantry around-abouts 1600, popular use of plug bayonets recorded in Europe around the 1630s) figured out for their first try at a bayonet.  Here's a hint!  There's not a lot of places on a gun where you can "plug in" a sword. 

Obviously plug bayonets did not exactly catch on as a fantastic solution, because these guns were either a gun OR a short spear and neither was especially good at their jobs.  A bunch of battles hinged on this problem. Which brings us to the end of the 1600s, when English forces in Scotland got absolutely obliterated by a bunch of Highlanders in 1689 because the English were so busy trying to fix their bayonets that the Highlanders literally just charged them, fired one volley, and cut them down with swords and axes. The English took that one very personally (which, you know what, fair, it was a humiliating defeat, especially since the Highlanders had been using that tactic very successfully for a while) and started developing better bayonets.

This is where we get to socket bayonets, AKA what you would probably recognize as a bayonet from a period TV series or a museum.  Socket bayonets have a metal sleeve that gets attached around the barrel of a gun (in this case a musket), so that you can still theoretically use the damn gun while it's attached.  There were problems with the development of socket bayonets (notably, it took a while to figure out how to keep them from falling off the gun during battle), but overall they worked much better and armies started getting rid of pikemen. This was also when bayonets were shortened to a little over a foot, which isn't really important but made them much easier to maneuver.  Socket bayonets were the European order of the day by the early 1700s, and mostly came in three flavors: single edge (like a knife), double edge (like a sword), and spike (like a...spike).  There were pros and cons to all of these (single edge wasn't great for stabbing, spike was ONLY good for stabbing, and double edge was kind of okay at stabbing and kind of okay at slashing), but most importantly, both single and double edged bayonets were fragile.  The heads of polearms were shaped on patterns other than "sword on a stick" for a reason, and it's because "sword on a stick" is not very sturdy.

Triangular bayonets were the solution to this problem.  Triangular bayonets are basically a single piece of metal creased long-ways, with both edges sharpened and the top fluted to form a third edge at the crease.  This makes a much more resilient weapon than a flat blade, because a twisting motion doesn’t risk snapping the blade in the middle.  It also means that now you have three edges, and human nature is to figure “more knife better.”

And don’t get me wrong, as a weapon of war, the triangular bayonet was a great one.  It was introduced in the 1710s and then got used regularly to maim and terrify through the start of the 1900s.  In fact, the triangular bayonet worked so well that it only began to get phased out of use when the style of war itself started to change dramatically during the World Wars.  When warfare was focused on pitched battle (your old school “two armies enter, one army leaves” kind of warfare), the emphasis of a bayonet was on extending the reach of a gun.  A bayonet lets a soldier have a weapon for closer range combat, where a gun—especially a long gun like a musket—is not as effective.  So when you had two armies on the field and a bayonet was first and foremost a way to keep the enemy at least gun-length away, longer bayonets were better.  

But World War I was the advent of trench warfare, which was a terrible idea and also meant that a long weapon, like a gun with an extra foot and a half of sword on top, was much, MUCH harder to work with.  Either fighting took place in no man’s land, where you probably weren’t going to get close enough to use a bayonet anyway, or in a trench, where a weapon as long as you were tall was just impossible to work with.  

(If you know anything about WWI, you’re probably asking me about bayonet charges right now, specifically the concept of “going over the top.”  Contrary to every media representation of WWI ever, “going over the top” of a trench faded out of use pretty quickly.  It was a type of bayonet charge where the soldiers in ONE trench fixed their bayonets and tried to charge no man’s land in an effort to reach the OTHER trench, but it was basically never effective because no man’s land was often heavily trapped and strafed with gunfire and mortar shells.  Also, it was the kind of battle tactic that military history books talk about with phrases like “total annihilation of whole attacking battalions,” so that’s the kind of mortality rate we’re talking about here.  The Battle of the Somme featured a good number of bayonet charges by the British, for context, so people learned and started using other tactics.)

So, since bayonets were only useful in trenches, suddenly everyone was scrambling to shorten bayonets and guns so that their soldiers could get ANYTHING DONE.  And THEN soldiers started admitting that they were literally taking their bayonets off their guns and using them as knives instead, because for trench fighting that was way more useful, and so everyone just decided fuck it, let’s just make bayonet-knives, which is why WWI weapons with bayonets usually look, very literally, like someone duct taped a short knife to the front of a gun.  This was the start of the decline of the triangular bayonet, a full two hundred years after it hit the battlefield, which is a frankly spectacular run for any weapon since the invention of the gun.  Triangular bayonets held on, here and there, through part of WWII, but they were almost entirely gone by the time of the Geneva Convention being ratified in 1949.  However, spike or knife bayonets are still issued to many armies as a weapon of last resort to this day, although they aren’t often used in actual attacks.  Now we have bigger, worse weapons for actual attacks.

 TL;DR, the development of bayonets went like this:

“What if we put a pike ON a gun?  …oh wait, you still want to use the gun?  Sucks to be you, I guess.”

“What if we put a sword on the gun instead?  Then we could put it somewhere where we can still use the gun!  Good luck keeping it on there, though.”

“What if we actually made something designed to get put on a gun and stab people effectively?  Like, what if we designed something with that purpose in mind?  Perhaps?” SMASH CUT TWO CENTURIES

“Well if you’re just gonna take your bayonet off and stab someone with it anyway, can we just go back to giving you knives, then?”

And now you’re caught up on all the dubiously successful ways we’ve tried to mutilate people with a knife-gun.

[courtofcravings]

Another you (2)

Warning: Some blood, needles, minor injuries.

Completed. 

“Also, Y/N, you should call me Jim… Jim or Kirk.” 

“But, Sir? Is that appropriate?” You asked him. You’ve never worked with a captain who was okay with being familiar around their inferior officers. “I think after today, it would be weird if you didn’t,” He said, looking down at you, smiling softly.

“Alright, Jim… Jim or Kirk,” You said, not as a question, but more to mock him like a dad joke. To which he laughed at, “Perfect,” He looked down at the phaser and back at the area you two were walking towards. “So what is this I hear about you not knowing how to use a phaser? Seems pretty standard for anyone going into the field,”

“That’s just it; I know the standard, and that phaser is anything but.” You two walked for a decent amount of time, as he explained to you what the different buttons do, even quizzing you on the important ones to ensure you can protect yourself.

“You know, Bones thinks that I should ask you out.” Your head whipped at him, of all things to come out of his mouth. “Does he?” You asked back, hiding a creeping blush. You refused to look at him, staring ahead. “He’s known I’ve had a crush on you for a while, although, after this morning when we tag-teamed him, he might have changed his opinion.”

“Might never want to see us together in the same room, let alone in a relationship.” You added. With a burst of courage, you asked, “How long have you had this crush, Jim?”

“Since the day Bones introduced us. You’ve had to see that I’ve been showing up at your lab way more often,”

“I thought you were just coming to bug Doctor McCoy in the lab while we worked on the research. Anytime you and I talked, it was always short conversations about the work.” You’ve always liked the captain, but you never believed he’d actually return those feelings.

“I was intimidated.” You stopped walking, “Why are you telling me this now?” You inquired. Does he think you won’t make it out? Off this planet?

“When you face a life or death situation, these confessions seem so pointless to hold back.” You stopped walking and turned to face him; you reached up and planted a small peck on his cheek. “Well, I’d have to agree with Bones; you should ask me out.”

Eventually, you two came across the nest, a large caved in whole in the ground, with small tents inside of it. “I thought this was a diplomatic mission; what did you guys do to piss off the natives?” You asked him, looking at all the different guards walking around.

“They aren’t the natives of this planet that we came to see; these new species killed or enslaved the natives of this planet.” You shivered, not from the icy air this planet had, but from the amount of death that must have occurred here. Jim gave you a reassuring squeeze.

He was freezing to touch, but you knew it wasn’t from the air; it was from the blood loss he’d suffered. He needed real medical attention and fast.

“Why did they take our crew?” You had a sinking feeling in your stomach, made even worse at the fact that you couldn’t see your missing crew. “Trophies of conquering, they will be slaves.”

Near the camp’s left side was a small metal rod hooked to a large box. “Jim,” You pointed at it, recognizing what it was immediately, “That is what is blocking our comms, our transporters. If I can get to it I c-” He scoffed, interrupting me. “Absolutely not, that area is surrounded by them, and you can’t even use a phaser,” He said, his blue eyes staring intensely into yours.

“Okay, and what is your grand plan? To run in guns blazing? You can’t even move without me supporting you, and don’t try to tell me you’re fine.” You returned using the same tone he had with you and the same look he was giving you. “I am well aware of the trauma your body is undergoing due to blood loss right now, so stop telling me you are fine because you aren’t.”

This morning you couldn’t imagine not addressing him by captain, and now you are snapping back at him. What a development. But you know you are still right, so you are not going to apologize.

“I have no idea what Bones was saying; you are much more like him than me.”

“What!? think first, do next?” You scoffed.

“Exactly, but with a bit more pessimism.”

“Your definition of realism and pessimism are confused. If I were pessimistic, there would have been no way I’d almost die trying to help you when you were tied up. With all that blood loss, there is no point in saving a dead man.”

“Come on, Y/N, we both know you only did that because you couldn’t handle this handsome face going to waste.” He said in your ear, making heat creep up to your cheeks.

“Maybe, I am more like Bones; I am starting to learn his bitterness for you,” You bit back. He smiled, looking pale. He needed medical help, and your arm wasn’t doing so well either. You had pushed back the pain while walking in the forest, but It was throbbing—pain radiating up your arm.

“Jim, let me. If I can take it down, you can use the comms. The ship can lock onto the crew and get them out,” You reasoned with him.

“Fine. But if it is too dicey Y/N, I want you to run; you haven’t trained in combat,” He was right; there wouldn’t be much you can do if they confronted you.

“Stay here,” You said, leaning him against a tree. “I really can’t go anywhere,” He replied. Right, at least it’s reassuring to know he can’t get into any trouble. “Be careful,” He said and placed a small kiss on your forehead. “I said it last time, and you didn’t listen, so I’ll repeat it as your captain, don’t do anything stupid.”

You snuck around the nest, hoping not to fall into any of the guard’s eye view. The grey antenna was sitting there waiting to be turned off by you.

Tiptoeing between the tents, you stopped dead in your tracks. You heard that woman’s voice from before talking, having a conversation with two other voices. In the tent to your right, they must have been in there. You took your phaser out and looked under the tight, lifting to see inside it. They were alone.

“You,” The woman said, “Y/N, the scientist.” You ran to her first, untying her, handing her a phaser, then moving to the next two, “The captain?” Sulu asked solemnly. “He is alive, barley. He lost a lot of blood. There is a device blocking the comms I need to take down so we can get out of here.” You informed them. It was mutually decided they should sit still since they were wounded and could possibly attract more attention by being in a larger group.

Making it to the box, you realized it was locked. As much as you wanted to do this quietly, it was out of your hands. This is extremely stupid. You lined up the phaser and shot it a few times until there was a thick hole in the box. You were, hopefully, powering it down so the comms will work.

You stepped back slightly, hitting a hard surface. No, not a surface; it was a body. In an instant, you were picked up and thrown into a wall, hitting your head and back. You couldn’t move but braced for a second impact.

It never came.

“Y/N!” You heard Jim say. Opening your eyes at the sound of his voice, you saw that you were on the ground, safe, in the transport bay. “I can’t believe we actually survived that,” There was blood dripping down your head, and your arm was throbbing, but you were alive.

“Always so pessimistic, Y/N; I knew the whole time we’d be fine.”

“Depends on your definition of fine; you have a hole in your leg, I personally would not call that fine,”

“There is no point in arguing with him, Y/N,” Bones said, walking in with a wheelchair for Jim. “Hey, what happened to don’t do anything stupid? I watched you get tossed.”

“Just thought to myself… hmm, what would Jim do? And as it turns out, it was stupid and dangerous.”

Jim went to make some snarky comeback but instead started to faint. You and bones both supported him and lowered him into the chair. “Sorry, guys, I guess I’m falling too hard for Y/N,”

“Only you would try to be a flirt went fainting from blood loss,” Bones responded. You couldn’t even look at him with your face so heated; you just stayed silent all the way down to Med bay.

Bones took Jim into a private room and began working on his leg. You didn’t know what to do, shower and rest or wait to make sure Jim is alright. “Excuse me, miss?” An older gentleman placed a hand on your shoulder, introducing himself as Dr. Jean. “Dr. McCoy told me to look at your head.”

“I’m really, okay,” Dr. Jean insisted, so you caved; you didn’t mind sitting down for a second. He cleaned up your head wound and did a concussion exam. It came back normal, so he cleared you. Honestly, you were tuckered out from today; you decided to sit and wait outside for Dr. McCoy and Jim. Being too tired to walk upstairs, you chose to close your eyes while waiting.

You felt someone gently shaking your shoulder, but you could barely move. You tried to open your eyes, but they felt too heavy. “What do you mean you cleared her!? Does she look okay to you?” You heard someone yell, no, not someone. “Doc..Doctor McCoy?” Someone beside you cupped your cheek. “Hey, Bones, she’s talking.” You knew that voice, but your felt brain so foggy. “Jim, tell me her heart rate,”

“Jim?” You felt a hand on your neck, “Ouch.” It was still bruised from today. “Bones, I can barely feel one,”

“Nurse Chapel, help me lift her,” You heard her ask more questions, but she was talking so fast, it was hard for your head to digest them. “Foggy” You felt out of breath from just those few words, making it harder to talk, “Doctor, my head,” The doctor and nurse laid you down.  

“I’m Telling You, McCoy! She did not have a concussion.” Someone growled, “Pulse is thready and weak, not fully alert,” You were able to open your eyes slowly; everything around you much too bright.

You felt a comforting warmth touch your hand. “Vitals are not holding,” You looked at your hand; it was Jim. “You were,” You kept running out of breath “Jim, I think she’s talking to you, try to ask her-,” He looked between you and the doctor, “You were so cold when we,” You took a couple of rapid breaths, “But now you’re very warm.”

“Start her on an IV and 92% oxygen.” You noticed you couldn’t feel anything on your one arm, where the scratch is. “Doctor,” You spoke so much already, you felt so out of breath, “My arm,” Dr. McCoy stepped to the side to look at it. “Dammit,” He finished lifting your sleeve, “Jim, you said she scratched it? That looks infected, and her symptoms would suggest venom… maybe the plant was venomous?” He turned to order Nurse Chapel to do something.

You felt an oxygen mask go over your face; Jim was holding it. Finally, feeling like you can breathe and fill your lungs again, “You stayed with me?” Jim looked down at you, “Of course, couldn’t let Bones have all the glory,” He replied while glancing at bones, who was cleaning the wound.

“And here, I thought it was because you couldn’t let my beautiful face go to waste.”

“That contributed to it.” He gave you a small chaste kill on your forehead, brushing your hair out of the way of your face. “Y/N, Your wound has been thoroughly cleaned. Nurse Chapel is going to administer a remedy; it may make you drowsy” You reached your other hand to grab the doctor’s arm and gave a squeeze. “Your welcome, Darlin,” He said, dismissing himself.

“So when am I getting this date?”

“This doesn’t count!?” He asked, feigning surprise. “As much as I think it’s romantic that you almost bled out, and I almost died in a chair, I feel like others may disagree,”

“When you wake up,”

The doctor was right. You slept for about 16 hours while the anti-venom worked through your body. Besides your achy muscles, you were feeling great, energetic even.

“Y/N, you’re finally awake,” Bones walked in to greet you. I know someone will be happy to hear that. He will not stop bugging me about you. “Jim?” The doctor took some quick vitals on you before he felt okay to discharge you. “He has some trouble walking right now, so I sent him to rest. That, of course, has not stopped him from calling to check-in.”

“Can you do me a favor and not tell him I’m awake yet?” Bones gave you a curious look but agreed.

After showering and stopping by the cafeteria, you made it to his door—Ready for a real date. You heard the familiar chime that let him know someone was at the door, and you waited for the swoosh of the door.

It opened, and he was standing there, leaning on his crutch.

“I thought we could have our date, I was promised,” Holding up a bottle of whiskey and some warm fresh food in containers. “You’re awake!?” He signaled with his arm for you to walk in. “Bones didn’t tell me you were awake. Did he check you up before you left?” You set down the food and drinks, turning to face him. “Yes, of course,” He took a few steps over to you, a smile on his face.

“I thought it would be nicer as a surprise.” You wrapped your arms around his neck. “I brought food and drinks because I know your leg is still recovering; I hope that’s okay.” He cupped your cheek with one hand while tilting his head slightly and kissing you softly. He was bracing himself with his other hand against the wall, “Very much okay with me.”  

--------------------------

[latter-day-saint-nick]

Transmascs and the Not-Like-Other-Girls Syndrome

Much has been said about the Not-Like-Other-Girls Syndrome already. We as a society seem to have largely accepted that it is a sexist attitude, and I am not here to dispute that. Hating on girly girls for the way they perform femininity doesn’t help anyone. That said, I’ve seen a few posts recently pointing out that girls with NLOGS tend be gender non-conforming teens and young adults who were bullied and ostracised by other girls, and so have a hard time trusting traditional femininity, as they connect it with their abusers. Therefore we should be spending just as much time, maybe even more, telling girly girls to accept tomboys as we do vice versa, and the fact that we don’t shows how much we still cling to society’s ideas of acceptable femininity.

This got me thinking about my own experiences, which I suspect other transmascs will be able to relate to. See, I definitely had a phase as a teenager when I hated most girls and things connected to femininity, including aspects of myself that I considered girly. This was misogynist and wrong and kind of unhealthy. I’m not going to pretend differently. That said, looking back, I can see that much of this hatred came from being a trans boy who hadn’t been given the tools to understand that he was, in fact, allowed to be a boy. Being grouped with girls who I seemed to have so little in common with often made me feel lonely and miserable. To be fair, chances are I wouldn’t have been all that happy being grouped with the boys either, since I wasn’t interested in sports and cars and boobs (that’s what straight teenage boys are into, right?). Even if I’d been raised as a boy, I was still queer and neurodivergent, so that coloured all my childhood experiences.

Anyway, many of my gripes about girls were unfair. I shouldn’t have been annoyed by them for being obsessed with make-up and dieting, even though I found these things stupid. Instead I should have reserved my ire for a patriarchal society that teaches women from a young age that they are worthless unless they are thin and cover up their natural faces. Yes, I realise all that now. But, and this is an important but, my experiences had shown me that it is a short step from “I’m a girl and I care about make-up and dieting” to “all girls should care about make-up and dieting, and the fact that you don’t means there’s something wrong with you”. While there were times I have been shamed by cis men for being insufficiently feminine, most of the shaming came from cis girls and women. Usually it wasn’t even done in a mean-spirited way. Most of these girls and women genuinely thought they were helping me by instructing me on how I should dress or what I should do with my hair. Like we were characters in a teen rom-com, and I was the ugly duckling who is given a make-over by her friends and finally gets to dance with the cute guy.

As always when I discuss transmasculinity, I feel the need to put a disclaimer here. I am fully aware of the fact that to many people make-up and pretty dresses are fun and empowering. There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with being a woman, just because I decided that it wasn’t for me. But the fact that I even feel like I have to give this disclaimer all the time shows how much more we seem to value the feelings of cis women who embrace femininity over those of women and afabs who reject it. Even when I’m including trans men in my writing, I always have to make sure to show them having positive relationships with the women around them, sometimes in ways that don’t really match my own experiences, lest readers think that these characters just choose to be men because of internalised misogyny. Yeah, that’s a terf rhetoric, but it seems to be common enough that I actively feel the need to combat it at every turn.

But let me make things perfectly clear: to me, personally, traditional femininity was a prison. I hated so many things about it, and I hated the way girls my age and adult women alike were pressuring me to look a certain way and be a certain way. Even now when I see YouTube videos of women talking about the importance of a good skincare routine, I just feel exhausted and wonder how anyone could find joy in that. Once I was old enough to realise that it didn’t matter what other people thought, that I could just cut my hair short and wear fun, comfy clothes, the pressure didn’t stop. And, yeah, that’s how I came down with a serious case of NLOGS. But it’s important to bear in mind that for one thing, of course I wasn’t like other girls - I wasn’t a girl at all. And for another, I had in fact had many negative interactions with girls. Even ones that were perfectly fine one-on-one could turn insufferable in a larger group.

So, yes, those of us who are trans or gnc shouldn’t characterise traditionally girly girls as stupid and shallow. We should all respect each other’s life choices in how we express our genders. But remember that the pressure to perform femininity in a certain way only comes from one side. You don’t get baby butches telling their classmates things like “I don’t know why you keep your hair this long. You’d look so good with an undercut!” or “How do you expect to get a girlfriend dressed like that? Have you ever tried wearing flannels and Doc Martens?” So why should gnc girls and transmascs have to put up with constant comments and criticism on our appearance and then pretend that feminine cis women have never been our oppressors?

[xx-thedarklord-xx]

Reason to Love

Draco thought that dread would fill him as he stared across the ballroom at Harry. He had hoped dread would fill him. That would have meant that part of him had moved on. But even as the green eyes he loved so much filled with a hatred that he wished he too felt, all that remained in his veins was pain—agonizing pain that hurt just as badly as it did when Harry walked out of his flat, and then more importantly his life.

Deep breaths and calming thoughts did nothing to soothe his hyperactive heartbeat the longer he stared. Propriety—which had been instilled in him at birth—was chagrined at the notion of prolonged focus, but he couldn’t bring himself to look away. Months of no contact deluded his mind into thinking even an extended blink would cause Harry to disappear as if he had only ever been a product of wishful thinking.

Their locked gazes ceased being mutual as Harry turned to his date, successfully blocking Draco from his line of sight, who was left standing there staring at his back—like a weirdo.

With a lot of strength that would have disgusted who he had been emotionally even just a year ago, Draco moved across the room toward the balcony—ignoring everyone who made space to talk to him, knowing it would reach his mother come morning but he had long ago lost his will to give a fuck.

As Draco looked over the railing, mind not fully seeing the landscape as his distracted thoughts took over, part of him wished he did give a fuck. Because the person staring blankly at gaudy untrimmed hedges was a mess. A distinguished mess, sure, but a mess nonetheless—one he didn’t appreciate seeing echoed in his reflection when he could no longer hide from the lies that others believed so easily.

I am fine.

It fell off the tongue quickly; a gut reaction to deflect from the glaring obvious. He wasn’t fine and the only one who knew the truth was the same one who stared back at him in the bathroom mirror every morning.

Lying came naturally. If not because of who he was, then it was the Slytherin characteristics he embodied because he had no other personality traits to rely on. It was easy to lie, especially when those around him wanted it to be the truth. Convincing them was a breeze, but convincing himself was impossible.

His eyes slipped closed as he took a few deep breaths, wishing that it was as calming as his Mind Healer preached. Sweat beaded on his forehead and despite being outside, all it brought him was the sweltering humidity of the summer night.

“I’d say you have a lot of nerve showing up here, but you never had that, so let’s just call it stupidity and be done with it.”

Draco’s lips parted as he withheld a breathless gasp at the sound of Harry’s voice. A sound he wasn’t sure his memory properly emulated over the last few months, it seemed different. Or maybe it was because it was filled with the same hatred that had been in Harry’s gaze.

He didn’t want to turn around, and despite how bloody cowardice that was, he hadn’t been put in Gryffindor for a reason. Turning around meant facing not just Harry but facing all the lies he had been telling himself. If Draco turned around, his sense of stability would shatter just as easily as his heart did when Harry left.

I am fine.

With the smallest shred of gumption he possessed, Draco squared his shoulders and did the stupid thing by turning around.

Being up close granted him nothing more than being across the room had. It wasn’t as if he felt better, in all actuality he felt worse. At least far away he had been able to keep a semblance of distance even if it was just an illusion. Up close the hatred in Harry’s eyes was more prominent, held more emotion and made it impossible to hide from, even if he glanced away.

“Stupidity is the root of bravery, you should know that,” Draco countered, not bothering to try and find comfort in the insults. Those used to be Harry’s favorite way of showing affection.

“That’s where you and I are different,” Harry said, voice as quiet as the breeze that Draco wished would combat the humidity. But in reality, all it did was make him feel worse. “You never had a flair for that.”

While entirely accurate, it stung a little.

“What do you want?” Draco couldn’t help but ask. “If it’s just to insult me, save the foreplay for your date, will you?”

Wishful thinking had him imagining the hatred in Harry’s eyes dimming enough for annoyance to take over. While Draco was adept at handling both, annoyance was far easier.

“You knew I’d be here,” Harry said, eyes roaming Draco’s face in a manner that made him uncomfortable.

“I wasn’t aware you bought out the Ministry,” Draco drawled, hating the familiarity to the banter. “If need be, do check the invitation list, won’t you? My name is on it.”  

“You’ve avoided every function where we’d be in the same room, excuse me for thinking you’d do the same tonight.”

There was something in the tone that had Draco frowning. There was clearly annoyance, but he wasn’t sure at what. Was Harry upset that he hadn’t been around? Or was he upset that he showed up?

“You’ve been missing me, have you?” It was supposed to be sarcastic but a piece of Draco longed to know the answer, no matter how pathetic it made him feel.

There was no answer, only a hard stare that held far too many emotions to decipher. The longer Harry remained silent, the more he feared there would be no answer at all. The dark parts of his mind that never once believed the lies he tried to delude himself into whispered, did he have the right to know?

“I’m not sure,” Harry finally answered after several long uncomfortable moments. “There are times I think I hate you, and then there are times when I wonder why it has to be the present and why it can’t be four months ago when I loved you so strongly.”

The agonizing pain returned and it was strong enough to close his eyes. Getting answers wasn’t always a good thing. Now all Draco wanted was for Harry to shut up.

“And the middle ground?” Draco wondered. “Which one is more prominent?”

Harry exhaled deeply, strong enough to blow away strands of messy unkempt hair.

“I don’t know.”

Strangely, that hurt Draco the most. The indecisive approach to love.

“That’s where you and I are different,” Draco parroted Harry’s words, watching the way something gleamed in his eyes.

“If there is a reason to love, then that means the love changes when the reason is gone. I loved you without any reason,” Draco blinked rapidly, wishing the stinging of his eyes was because of the sweat still marring his face.

“While the temperament of your love has changed, mine hasn’t. It’s still there; whole, intact and going without pause.”

It was Harry’s turn to close his eyes as he covered his face briefly.

“I wish I could be like you,” Draco admitted what his teenage self never would have. “Not just your characteristics, not just your bravery, but perhaps if I loved like you did, then I’d be able to move on. If I let my love get bitter or angry then it would let in distance, would let in reasons to change it.”

Knowing that Harry’s love had changed and hearing it were two different things. It wasn’t fair. Harry got to be angry, got to fester over it and got to find closure even if it came in waves of pain. All Draco was left with was pain while the love was still there. But if love when bruised, torn and scratched remained one-sided, it would only ever lead to more pain.

“Who says I moved on?”

The question had his brows arching as he tried to understand why Harry seemed to bristle.

“Are you saying you haven’t?”

When Harry threw his hands in the air, Draco grew more confused.

“I don’t know,” Harry whispered, and for the first time in a long time the tone was lost. “It comes and goes. There are days where I don’t think of you at all and it feels like a step in moving on, but then when I least expect it, you creep up into my mind and it breaks my heart all over again.”

“Despite what you might think, I’ve never wanted to hurt you,” Draco said, unable to keep the desperation to be believed from seeping through. There were a lot of assumptions people had of him, and he never bothered to correct them. Letting people believe what they wanted to was far easier than changing their mind. But the one thing he couldn’t do was let Harry think that he never cared.

There was a soft devastation to Harry’s face before, “I know that, I’ve always known that.”  

“Then I don’t—”

“I haven’t moved on,” Harry said, and the determination to the tone held a touch of surprise, as if Harry was only just realizing. “Because even when I think of you and it hurts I still wouldn’t want that to go away. I don’t want to one day think of you and it not bring me back to happy times. I don’t want to think of you and it be a distant memory with no emotion. I want to think of you and feel something, even if it hurts.”

“That’s not healthy,” Draco blurted before his mind caught up with what he was really hearing.

Harry snorted, lips tilting up in a ghost of a smile. One that still caused his heart to skip a beat, followed by a jolt of pain with the knowledge that he had forgotten how beautiful it was.

“And you’re the epitome of healthy, are you?” Harry returned, lips still quirked.  

“No,” Draco shook his head, unable to banter when the truth of the statement touched a bit too close to home. “If I was, I wouldn’t love you like this. Not with the same ferocity, not with the same passion. Not when it hurts me like this.”

Harry shifted on the balls of his feet as his tongue swiped across a plump bottom lip nervously. “What if I don’t want you to be healthy?”

There was a beat of silence as Draco’s squinted, forehead creasing harshly. “Come again?”

A red flush graced tanned cheeks as Harry’s hands waved frantically. “That came out wrong.”

“It always did when it came to you.” Was that a tease? Draco wasn’t sure that was wise. Not when it would just hurt more in the end.

A glare with little heat was sent his way and Draco hated that he craved it, hated that a simple glare could cause his breath to quicken and the tempo of his heart rate increase.

“What if we attempt something,” Harry gestured between them with a hand. “Again?”

Oh boy.

Draco took a deep breath,  not daring himself to hope, not even sure if it was all real or just another illusion to lie to himself with.

“Is that wise?” Draco asked, ever the worrier. “It hurts now, I don’t want to imagine the pain should it happen again. I don’t think I’m ready for that.” No matter how much he wanted it.

“Give me a chance to love you without reason too.”

How could something so sweet hurt more than cruelty? Draco’s heart felt close to breaking, wasn’t sure he had much more in him.

“Not to mention your love is torn, isn’t it?” He continued as if Harry hadn’t spoken. “You weren’t sure about the love and hate, that can’t have changed already.”

“Why don’t you let me worry about that?”

“Not when it’s my heart that’s the causality.”

“Both of our hearts,” corrected Harry.

“Exactly,” Draco said with a small shrug. “Not even an hour ago you were glaring at me, it’s not so easy to let go of the bitterness, even if you love me too. I think we need time to acclimate, maybe find out what’s different. It has been months, I’m sure things have changed.”

There was a flash of amusement in green eyes and Draco almost regretted the whole conversation.

“You wanting to woo me, Malfoy?”

Malfoy.

Merlin, it was a breath of fresh air to hear his surname from Harry. What started out as a formality, never being granted the pleasure of the familiarity enough to use first names during their youth, had changed into fondness as they dated.

Malfoy.

The name that brought pride to his father but shame to him.

Malfoy.

The name that was only ever uttered with animosity and contempt.

Malfoy.

The name that fell from Harry’s lips with love and not a hint of a sneer.

Malfoy.

“Yeah,” Draco began, a small reserved smile quirking his lips. “I think I do.”

He was Malfoy, and on his favorite occasions, he was Harry’s Malfoy.  

[river-bottom-nightmare]

Nightwing 83 Review

guess who isn't weeks late this time. my opinion of the series is going up a little bit. it's still not great, but i'm not actively put off by it anymore the way i was after 81. not going to tag as spoilers, but be warned that they are under the cut

i’m sure you all are well aware of this but now, but dear god i love bruno redondo’s art. like, an unhealthy amount. the pink and blue is getting to be a theme with either him or just this run, but i am definitely enjoying it. the movement in this cover is clearly obvious, but well done. you recoznize right off the bat that the cover was drawn to drag your eyes down the page until you get to the bottom, but you enjoy the whole ride there. 

also, redondo’s way of drawing a character in stages of action so we can see just how much they’re doing in a split second of movement is quickly becoming something i like to see drawn with dick, and any other character that has that sort of ease of movement and body sense, like cass or sin or maybe a super. 

and he’s in action the entire time! there’s shot drawn just to show off a shirtless comic book character, the way nightwing is so often subjected to. he’s shirtless because he’s changing his clothes, and that’s all we see, no more and no less. very practical, very well done. i like it.

he looks so cute right here oh my god. the little squint, the hair curls. it’s adorable.

but also like. unless melinda has specifically outfitted the door spyhole so that the person on the other side can’t see dick looking through it (and in all honesty she might have) then everyone on the other side can see dick looking through that door. 

bringing your attention back to the “i can’t see melinda’s fbi file oh no!! it’s redacted!! whatever can we do!!” stupidity. redacted files are child’s play for oracle, and definitely doable for both dick and bruce. so that’s bullshit.

now, melinda apparently grew up with the maroni family, then took down part of the family from the inside. the maroni family is a large and notable presence in gotham, one that bruce pays a respectable amount of attention to. he definitely would have grown suspicious when two members of the maroni family were taken down, and with some investigation, he would have discovered melinda’s plan. and it should go without saying that the majority of things you see batman doing? dick can do it too.

it’s not so much that i don’t like how clever the villains/antiheroes are getting. i don’t like how dc heroes are increasingly written as less intelligent. they seem to be relying on pure fighting skills or luck, which may be the case for a couple heroes, but has never been the case for most of dc’s big name heroes, the bat family included. it’s irritating to me to see this sort of stuff pop up as a major plot point when i know that, if dick or bruce had been written with the amount of skill and power that they canonically possess, this entire mess would have been sorted out years ago.

unrelated but dick and melinda have the same hair

this may just be me, but i was always under the impression that dick doesn’t really have a “double life???”

yes, he’s talented enough to create enough differences between robin/nightwing and dick grayson’s mannerisms, way of movement, voices, and speech patterns so that it’s very difficult to put the two together.

but nightwing has never been separate from dick grayson, not the way bruce and batman is. he’s always leaned more towards clark in that aspect: his hero persona is an exaggerated, stately, larger-than-life version of who he really is. there’s no second persona, no real “dick grayson identity” and “nightwing identity.” they’re the same person with the same goals, ideas, and skills. one just pretends to abide by the law, and one gives up pretense of that.

oh good thank god. if he’d trusted her right off the bat (hehe. bat.) i would have slapped him upside the head. at least he’s still got instincts.

gosh the colouring on this is cool. the red has enough purple and pink tones to it that it doesn’t abruptly ruin the tone of the artwork. but it’s definitely glaring enough to take the reader outside of this personal moment they had slipped into between dick and melinda, to put them back in the present where they’re reminded that oh yea there are people hunting dick down. 

the next panel keeps this up too, in a less severe way. melinda’s bodyguard shows up (i forgot her name sorry :[ ) and subtly places us in the middle of an action scene rather than a private, personal scene.

laughing so fucking hard have our little vigilantes grown so accustomed to breaking into places that it doesn’t even register as a crime anymore??? tim coming in through the fire escape to pick bernard up for their date and being very much confused as to why bernard is freaking out.

i really like melinda’s shirt and now despite all the work i have to do and the fucking conference i have to host on monday i want to spend hours scrolling through clothing shops online trying to find this shirt. the mock neck/neckline is so cool i want it

so roland just assumes that a very dangerous vigilante who is highly talented in combat and a very dangerous bodyguard who is also highly talented in combat had a fight that ended with this very dangerous bodyguard being tied up and she looks completely fine? roland just assumes that her having no visible wounds or bruises means that they got into a fight and she lost that easily? uh. aight then

dick what are you doing. legitimately what the fuck are you doing. why are you posing oh my god. you are injured and tired and in absolutely no position to go hand to hand with one of main enemies. jesus christ run away or head to lower ground or something. don’t just stand around letting the floodlights show exactly where you are.

i don’t understand what he’s trying to do here??? blockbuster fully bought the story that dick fought them both, won, tried to get info out of them and failed, then hightailed it out of there. he didn’t have to draw roland out for a fight.

but it does look cool. the way the light just highlights his silhouette and the blue parts of his costume does look badass. he does get style points in my book for this.

w h a t  d i d  i  f u c k i n g  t e l l  y o u ,  d i c k ?

very classic superhero line and it does sound like something dick would say in a fit of righteous rage but also it makes me laugh so hard because all vigilantes think they’re so powerful that the law doesn’t apply to them. dick vigilantism is illegal. you’re acting above the law and pretending it doesn’t apply to you. hypocritical much?

it happens so often in superhero movies, tv shows, comics, whatever and it makes me giggle every damn time.

pretty decent comeback but before i start seeing people writing blockbuster as a thug i’m going to remind you that he made a deal with a demon for genius level intellect. if this turns into another bane situation i’m going to be a little miffed. he’s a smart man, which makes him a dangerous and infinitely more interesting enemy for nightwing.

this is so horribly in character i want to scream. (or. at least. it lines up with one of the versions of nightwing i have in my head.) he’s running right towards the bullets, miraculously doesn’t get shot, while making a sort-of pun. i hate this so much. i love him.

this is cool. this art is really really cool.

he leaped from a building right towards a helicopter that’s actively shooting at him, but none of the bullets are touching him. none of the corruption of the city can touch him no matter how hard it tries, because he’s too good to be corrupted. Comic Book Logic Can Be Good Sometimes Actually.

batman’s belt what??? swiss army knife who?? sorry, i only know nightwing’s bright blue escrima.

this is one of my favourite things about heroes with exceptional abilities, even more so if the hero is human. the things they can do are so far beyond the realm of normal human abilities that it’s equal parts terrifying and awe-inspiring every time they act.

he just used modified grappling wires to hook to the door of a moving helicopter, swung around the helicopter safely without hitting the blades, gained exactly the right momentum to swing upward again right through the opening of helicopter, then fought and tied up the men before they had any idea what was happening. that’s near impossible to do.

it’s stuff like this where i just sort of sigh in contentment. no matter how many times they leave out dick’s detective skills or conveniently forget that he’s actually a master planner and team leader and make him out to be this forgetful dude who makes everything up on the fly because of his “circus roots,” at least they won’t ever take away dick’s sheer physical ability honed to perfection. 

the art, too! in a few panels, dick’s drawn a little lightened or blurred. he’s moving so quickly and fighting so efficiently that he can barely be seen by the enemy. he’s got perfect form all the way through.

and THIS!

there was a helicopter that had five men shooting at him with what looks like machine guns. most people would be dead. some would run away, and be nimble enough to survive without fatal hits. there are very few people, even in fucking comic books, who can look at that hopeless situation and turn it around so quickly and thoroughly that he benefits from it instead.

i just. love nightwing.

it was funny the first time as a comic reader aware of the meme. it’s really not anymore. why the hell would you, in universe, be wearing a shirt that has a picture of your boyfriend being hit in the face by his father. 

okay that was funny. 

look at lil bitewing, so concerned for her human!!! love her sm. 

also a question as to the timeline of things. is nightwing happening before or after urban legends? 

i was so distracted by dick wearing a robe and briefs and nothing else that i didn’t register the second part until later. he slept for two days?? babs, baby, he recently had a very traumatic brain injury. why do you sound so nonchalant?

@TIM X COFFEE SHIPPERS GET FUCCCCKKKKEEDDDDD

ngl i totally forgot about that dude oops

this comic is giving so many reaction pictures. you know how you always use the worst possible picture of your friend for your friend’s contact picture? i’m just getting so many of these.

leslie!!! the titans!!! lucius!!! dick going to go see old friends!!!! the titans!!! this part made me so irrationally happy it really did. gar being the one to just. offer dick solutions with open arms. this was the best

i wish i could just copy and paste this entire scene, but that would take up way too much space, so i’m just going to talk about it instead. 

you gave me my name, nightwing, and you gave me some of the best advice i’ve received in my life: beautiful little throwback to nightwing’s origin. you’d be surprised at the amount of people who don’t know where the name came from, or who don’t know how much clark means to dick. and the fact that dick still looks up to clark as a hero, recognizes that clark isn’t always perfect and yet continues to hold him in such high esteem, and still looks back on advice that clark gave him fondly just warmed my heart so much.

for a man who has fearlessly stood up to darkseid, bruce will do a lot to avoid a conversation: “grrr. i’m the BATMAN. i’m so DARK and MYSTERIOUS. nobody knows the true me. no one ever will. i will be LONELY for the rest of my CURSED LIFE. such is the price of a hero. ignore my farmer himbo husband in the background”

but i don’t think there’s anything heroic about being a billionaire: another nod to how much dick follows clark’s example rather than bruce. yes, this was a very poignant and important criticism, and i think it’s wonderful that this was published in a pretty popular comic book. but the thing is, there is a way to be a heroic billionaire, but only in fictional universes. the way bruce, ollie, t’challa only ever use their wealth to help people. they donate massive amounts of money to charities that they themselves create so they know exactly how the money is being used. they hire people who aren’t likely to get jobs anywhere else and pay them much more than what a base living wage is. they use their power to help push progressive laws and social change. they are helping. 

dick doesn’t fully see it that way. he spent more than half his childhood the son of a billionaire, but still believes that one could be more heroic when one doesn’t have obscene amounts of wealth. whose example do you think he followed to come to that conclusion?

superman looked up to alfred pennyworth?: i mean yea alfred may have been a wildly irresponsible guardian and one hell of an enabler but goddamn if he didn’t love his kid.

you don’t need my input. you’ve thought it all through: ooooooh this line made me grin. for so long, dick’s treated clark as a mentor and a guiding figure. he’s still seen as a kid, an up and coming, snot-nosed titan with dreams of a better world. clark still thinks of him as a kid, despite watching him grow up. but this little line was something i think dick needed sorely to hear. he doesn’t need anyone’s guiding hand on his shoulder, he doesn’t need to ask for permission. he doesn’t need clark to support him the way he did when he was a teenager. he’s all grown up now, and he doesn’t need clark’s help. i imagine it was a bit of a surprise for dick to hear that. 

honestly, i couldn’t think of a better role model: ohhh but it doesn’t stop there. clark just straight up turns the tables on dick. imagine you’re dick, and you’ve looked up to this one hero your entire life, and then one day he turns to you and says that he thinks you’re so kind and smart and worthy of a person that he wants you to mentor his son!? goes to show just how much clark trusts dick.

i swear to god dick probably cries every time he hears clark compliment him because bruce is so rare and sparing with his praise that clark giving him the slightest hint of approval is just a dopamine rush.

also, now deathstroke and superman have both asked nightwing to mentor their kids. the juxtaposition is fuckin hysterical. imagine either of their reactions when they realize what kind of company they’re with

lets talk colours for a second, because i absolutely adore how classic colour tropes have been subverted in this comic, and in this general run really.

warm tones have usually (usually, not always) been associated with light and comfort and friendship and,,,,,well,,,warmth. whereas cool tones are usually used to unsettle, or make a scene seem colder and put the reader on edge. this varies if a comic only uses cool tones, or only uses warm tones, but if a comic uses both, this is generally well-used.

that isn’t the case in this run.

dark red, orange, and other warm tones have been used to symbolize danger, action, attacks. hot pink isn’t usually included in this colour group, but it’s definitely part of it in this case. in contrast, scenes that have cool colours give us the impression of slipping into a comfortable, calm scene with babs, tim, the titans, and other allies. even the beginning scene with superman has this blue, but then it transitions into something more golden coloured. dawn broke over dick, as his new idea came to light, and that was reflected in the art (and the sunrise setting.)

have there ever been times when dick’s longed for the comfort of his mask because he didn’t feel confident as dick grayson? i can’t think of any. i may be wrong, but this struck me as pretty ooc.

am i just??? gay and reading this all wrong??

cause i was under the impression that when someone says they are grateful for your friendship you don’t immediately kiss them. 

or is this like. normal straight mating rituals.

i mean he’s smiling afterward but still babs aren’t you supposed to at least make sure it’s okay first? you guys broke up a while back after you said something along the lines of “i want to be coworkers with you and nothing more because i don’t trust you or feel comfortable around you as a civilian anymore.” like lmao after you say something like that to someone i would assume that you don’t have the permission to just kiss them whenever you want.

show of hands who else got real sad when they realized dick was talking about himself in this.

sure, he could be referencing the things he’s seen blockbuster pull, and the children on the streets. but “i’ve seen money used for enforcement,” sounds a little too close to dick’s entire life being destroyed by one man threatening the circus to pay protection money for me to completely ignore. and “i’ve seen the poorest and most vulnerable blamed and punished rather than assisted” becomes a lot worse when you remember dick was thrown in juvie for a couple months until bruce was able to obtain legal guardianship, and in there, not a authority figure believed him when he told them his parents were murdered.

he’s lived this before.

a. mother. fucking. typo.

fucking why

i mean i’ve stated my distaste for the batfamily groupchat before but like. this is reaching new levels of ridiculousness. jason sounds like he was written by a fanfic writer. tim sounds like he was written by a fanfic writer. steph sounds like she was written by someone who doesn’t know the first thing about steph and wanted to include her for “family points!!!!!” damian’s supposed to be completely off the grid, and everyone’s searching for him. i do love the way cass texts tho.

well god fuck now i’m crying

dick got a phone call, a sorry, and a thank you out of bruce. i feel so much secondhand happiness for him, if that’s a thing. we’ll just ignore the way bruce looks ugly af and focus on the good parts okay?

and again with the colour symbolism here!

i’m either going to love this or hate this. who knows, we’ll see.

something something hearts something something pink is an evil colour something something. i need to know more about this guy but there’s definitely symbolism there. 

is it just me or does this dude look like the backstabbing traitorous absolutely motherfucking piece of shit villain that killed tadashi hamada in big hero 6?

~~

taggggg list: @woahjaybird @birdy-bat-writes @anothertimdrakestan  @subtleappreciation @screennamealreadyused @bikoncon @pricetagofficial @catxsnow @maplumebleue-blog-blog @sundownridge @thatsthewhump @xatanna-troy @red-hood-redemption​ @capricorn-stark​ @batshit-birds​ @comics-observer @buticaaba​ 

[tennessoui]

Does anyone else wonder what would happen if Anakin & the Clones were to 'steal' some of the Jedi's so called Reject (or ones on the way) Initiates? Obi-Wan did spend time as a Slave & he has clearly been Brainwashed by his CURRENT Masters. Anakin with the help of Aayla, Ahsoka, Vos, Obi-Wan, &Clones could raise them to be great. I never understood why they took the L.S. from the people they sent into the Corps when they say that L.S. are their lives. Basically saying that they are Dead to them.

ahh hello you sent this i think in May and i'm gonna be a bit honest i didn't like it that much because i think it's much, much too heavily jedi-critical for my tastes--obligatory pause for the I Love The Jedi Order ad run-- so i wrote this in about an hour about what i think would happen if Anakin and his men were to steal some of the Jedi Initiates, and no. No, it doesn't go well. Because the Jedi raise their kids in a community for a reason and literally Anakin could not do that alone and there is no way i can see it working on a practical level because I don't think Anakin or his men know the first thing about childcare, save for Anakin's occasional shift at the creche.

I didn't mean for this to be Anakin-critical, but someone had to be the guy getting lectured and i figured it should be the guy that kidnapped some kids. anakin needs to get lectured more sometimes imo.

(1.6k)

Three of the Initiates won’t stop crying, and a fourth has been shivering since they jumped into hyperspace, no matter how many blankets Rex has draped over their form.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Anakin doesn’t know what to do. He’d thought…well, Anakin’s sure that his former master would say that he hasn’t been thinking at all lately, and certainly not when he’d hatched this harebrained scheme to steal away younglings from a cruiser bound for the AgriCorps.

But he’d thought, really, that all Initiates would be like Ahsoka had been when she’d come to him as his padawan. That they’d be snarky but kind, quick to adapt and ready to listen to him as the authority figure.

Apparently, every youngling isn’t the same. Who knew.

The fifth Initiate who had aged too old to be taken in by a master sits in sullen silence by the porthole, but they’re screaming in the Force.

Anakin’s head hurts. He’s being bombarded on all sides by children whose mental shields aren’t strong enough to keep their very strong emotions in. They’re terrified. They’re terrified of him.

He calls Obi-Wan. He doesn’t know what else to do, and he had never, ever wanted to hurt these children. He’d been trying to help them.

It just turns out that he doesn’t know how.

“Anakin?” Obi-Wan snaps as soon as the call connects. Anakin flinches away from that tone. It means danger. Not in a physical sense, but in a I’m Very, Very Disappointed With You sense. Which might be even worse.

“Master,” he says. One of the Initiates lets out a particularly high pitched cry.

“Are the younglings okay? What have you done, Anakin?” Obi-Wan asks him in an aghast tone.

It makes Anakin bristle, even though he’s just been thinking the same thing not a minute ago. “It’s not right that the Jedi just send some of their younglings away! They deserve better than that! They’re children! They deserve choices! The Jedi—they took them from their homes and then they’re just giving them away! It’s worse than slavery! And if you can’t see it, Master, you’re as brainwashed as the rest of the Jedi!”

The holo of Obi-Wan looks at him for so long that Anakin starts to fidget. Finally, his master shakes his head slowly. “That was a very nice speech, Anakin. Who told you that?”

“I can’t think for myself!” Anakin snaps.

Obi-Wan raises a delicate eyebrow and checks something on his datapaad. “I see you were scheduled to have tea with the Chancellor at 2000 last night. Is it safe to presume you discussed the Jedi tradition of sending Initiates to the Corps?”

Anakin blushes furiously at that. It had been the Chancellor, actually, who told him about this in the first place. He’d always known, of course, but he hadn’t known the details. “You take away their lightsabers!” He shouts. “Master, you told me that my lightsaber was my life! And then you just take them away from the Initiates? It’s like you’re killing them!”

Obi-Wan looks alarmed and even confused. “Anakin,” he says slowly. “Are you really expecting the Jedi to let barely trained thirteen year olds run amuck with dangerous weapons?”

“Barely trained? I was only six years older than that when I was Knighted!”

“An event I regret not arguing against more every day,” Obi-Wan rubs at his temple for a second before looking up at Anakin. “A lightsaber is your life if you’re out in the field, on a mission, on a dangerous planet, in a war. In what event would a youngling need one in the AgriCorps? Would you run to the Senate and demand Senator Amidala’s floating podium? I’m sure she would say it’s her life.”

Anakin splutters. It’s not the same.

“But put all of that aside for a second, alright. Yes, I too wish that younglings and initiates brought to the Temple to be trained could all be trained. But there are simply not enough Jedi. And one should never rush a padawanship in order to take on another Padawan. Do you know what happens to the Initiates sent to the Corps?”

The Chancellor had made it sound as though they were forced to do backbreaking work in the fields of the planets the Corps had bases on. Anakin gets the feeling that if he were to say that now, Obi-Wan would disconnect the comm, and as much as he doesn’t need a lecture, he does need help.

When Anakin makes no move to say anything, Obi-Wan sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “The younglings you’ve kidnapped—they’re in pain, yes?”

Anakin crosses his arms at the phrasing, but he can’t deny that they are crying.

“Initiates sent to the AgriCorps are sent in groups of ten or more if we can help it. That’s because it helps them latch onto each other and strengthen their own shields, all with a mind healer in the cruiser with them to oversee the process. And upon arrival at the AgriCorps, they’re specially trained still until they would have been Knighted. Not in combat or diplomacy as you and I were, but in meditation and compassion, as you and I were. We don’t…the Jedi don’t just send our younglings out into space alone! We have systems in place that help with the transition. Systems you have ruined because you did not even try to understand them.”

“I wanted to help them,” Anakin protests, but it’s weak and he knows it.

“Help them? Help them?” Obi-Wan repeats. “Padawan, unless you have been spending much more time in the crèche than I have ever seen you voluntarily sign up for, you have no idea how to help them! I have no idea to how to help them! The Jedi raise our children communally for that very reason. You cannot do it alone. Neither could any of us, but together we can. What were you going to do, Anakin? Where would you take them, how would you feed them? Clothe them? Train them? Were you going to form training bonds with all of them? Because you’re powerful, you’re the Chosen One. You don’t need the Jedi Order.”

“I never said that,” Anakin mutters. “I’m not—I didn’t do this because I’m the Chosen One or—or whatever, I—“

“Was listening to the wrong source of information, I am highly aware, yes. Now. We do have your coordinates now. There will be consequences for this. There has to be. Hopefully harsh enough consequences that the next time you think you can abuse your authority over your men to unilaterally right an injustice only you can see, you think twice. You call me before you commit a felony.”

“Palpatine told me you were almost sent to the AgriCorps!” Anakin bursts out. “He said you were made a slave!”

Obi-Wan freezes and turns his face back to Anakin completely. “Ah.” He says.

“You admit it!”

“I…they were hardly related, Anakin. Bad things happen, yes. No matter how hard we try to create a perfect system. External trouble will arise. Like, say, your friend Palpatine who, indirectly through you, has managed to derail a simple AgriCorps drop-off and also ground The Hero With No Fear during a war.”

Anakin curls his lips. “This isn’t about anything but the younglings. I felt them on that cruiser. They were scared! And sad! And confused! And hurt! You can’t tell me you weren’t when you thought you had to leave!”

Obi-Wan runs a hand over his face and stays quiet for a few moments. “I was,” he finally admits. “And I’m sure they are too.” Anakin goes to say something, but Obi-Wan holds up his hand. “I’ll not mention the fact that I’m sure you’ve made it worse for them, despite what I know were only gold intentions. And I will say yes, I was scared. And sad. And hurt. And angry too. I was leaving my home. I didn’t understand why.”

Obi-Wan fixes him with a cutting stare, one that makes Anakin feel all of eleven again.

“Tell me this though, Anakin. How did you feel when you left Mos Espa with my master, Qui-Gon Jinn? Did you feel scared? Or sad? Perhaps angry? Hurt?”

Clenching his jaw around the denial that he hadn’t felt any of those things (he had), Anakin nods stiffly.

“Because you were leaving your home?” Obi-Wan presses.

“No one should be forced to leave their home. No child should feel like that!” Anakin bursts out.

“But do you still feel like that?” Obi-wan ignores his outburst. “Do you still feel angry and sad and scared and hurt all the time? Do you hate the Temple that much, Padawan? The Order? The Council? …Me?”

Anakin stares at him, and Obi-Wan shakes his head slightly and clears his throat.

“I apologize, I should not have made that so personal. My point, however, is that they are scared now and they are mad now, and they will not have the life they thought they would. But they will not be alone to work through that disappointment. How could you think you and your men are better equipped to dealing with these younglings’ needs than a community of fully trained people who have been in their position before?”

Anakin scowls, but there’s a high piercing sob from behind him that has him turning around in worry. Kix rushes over to the youngling, but he can’t help them. He’s not Force-sensitive, let alone trained in the Force. Obi-Wan’s right. Force, he hates it when that happens.

“Alright, master,” Anakin says when he looks back at Obi-Wan. “I’m sure you’re on our tail already, so we’ll turn around and meet you halfway.”

“Thank you, Anakin.” Obi-Wan tells him quietly. “And…Padawan, I know your heart was in a good place but…oh, we’ll talk much more about this later.”

“Yes, Master.”

“And Padawan? Perhaps no more tea with the Chancellor for a while.”

“…yes, Master.”

[mostly-marvel-musings]

The Outsider

Request: Enemies to lovers with Thor by @jennie22feona​ I hope you like this love ;)) This was a challenge because Thor is so lovable. Happy reading!

Fall Prompts Masterlist

Pairing: Thor Odinson x Reader

Warnings: Mostly fluff, a few curse words.

Permanent Taglist: @godofplumsandthunder​ @ladyacrasia​ @agustdowney​ @raspberrymama​  @littlegasps​ @swaggysposts​

Send me an ask if you wish to be tagged!

Word count: 2.1k oops!

…

“Well if you don’t try, it won’t get better now, will it?”

Steve reasoned, patting Thor’s shoulder as he passed him, carrying his dish out to the dining room where the team were gathered for dinner. Thor frowned looking down at his own plate, staring at the lasagna you’d made for everyone.

It was one of those rare times when he was staying at the compound, not busy saving the nine realms. The team got together for meals more frequently after the Ultron incident.

A real sense of family developed over the years, friendships were formed as new people became a part of the Avengers. Thor had no problems getting along with anyone in the past, except you.

He met you during the battle of New York, watching you fight like the strongest warrior alongside Natasha and Clint with your unparalleled combat skills.However, you seemed distant and gave him a cold shoulder when the team hung out. Every attempt of making conversation was met with an eye-roll or a look of disgust, and usually ended up with you walking away from the scene.

Thor sauntered out to join the rest, taking a seat right opposite you and digging in.

“Oh (Y/N), this is delicious.”

“Indeed. So tasty.”

Everyone complimented your dish, as you looked around the room, positively beaming. You met Thor’s eyes and he gave you an awkward smile, clearing his throat before shoving a large bite in his mouth.

“You know Asgardian feasts are the greatest. Nothing can ever compare.” He smiled proudly, hoping you’d appreciate his ‘attempt’ to make nice.

Steve shook his head in exasperation, while your smile disappeared. You went back to concentrating on your food, jamming the fork in the food a bit too forcefully and muttering,

“Well it’s not bloody Asgard.”

Nat placed her hand on yours soothingly, and turned to look at Steve, who was equally bothered.

“I’m sure about that Thor, but (Y/N) here has prepared this lovely meal for all of us, don’t you think that’s nice?”

Thor opened his mouth to say something, but you cut him off,

“Don’t bother Steve. It’s fine.”

Everybody remained relatively quiet for the rest of the dinner, Clint tried to break the awkwardness recalling funny incidents that happened during the last mission.

Thor kept stealing glances at you, guilty for having made you this upset. He’d actually enjoyed the food quite a bit, but his efforts at making small talk had left you deflated.

…

Two weeks had passed since you’d last seen the proud Asgardian God, not that you would ever admit you had been counting.

You were busy chasing potential Hydra leads with Steve, who on multiple occasions mentioned that Thor was trying to get to know you better but didn’t know how to.

“He’s so stuck up and proud, I just can’t stand him Steve!” you’d stated.

The captain had tried to play mediator several times before, however it hadn’t gone too smoothly. You expressed that it was best to not try anymore, some people just don’t click.

After a particularly tiring sparring session one evening, you strolled into the kitchen to grab a drink, when you heard cabinets opening and closing as you approached. Thor was searching for food, you deduced, as you watched his rummaging from the kitchen doorway.

You didn’t want to face another awkward conversation, so you figured you would just tip-toe around the fridge, grab a drink and get away without him noticing.

Having successfully retrieved a bottle of beer, you turned away from the fridge and collided against the large chest of the God of Thunder, who had chosen at that exact moment to walk out.

You hit your bum pretty hard on the marble floor, back going next but Thor’s instincts kicked in and he saved your head by placing a hand underneath while bracing his body with his other hand to prevent crushing you. The beer bottle smashed from your hand splashing liquid everywhere, as a yelp left your mouth.

“Lady (Y/N) I am so very sorry, I did not see you. Are you hurt?”

His voice soft, worried as you felt his breath on your cheek, you had shut your eyes on impact, scared that you were just about smushed.

Peeking an eye open, you saw Thor’s face right over yours, brilliant blue eyes studying your face, concerned. You felt frozen, lying on the kitchen floor with Thor’s body on top of yours.

“I’m fine.” The creeping pain in your back and ass said otherwise, with Thor’s help you scrambled to a standing position, heat warming your cheeks, heart still racing. You were very much aware of Thor’s grip on your upper arm as he still ran his eyes over your sweat-covered gym clothes.

A sharp sting in your left hand drew your attention there and you saw a piece of glass lodged in the side of your palm, blood trickling from it. Thor saw it too, jumping into action as he grabbed a towel from the counter and approached you.

Exhaling loudly you braced yourself, carefully pulled the shard out, more blood rushing to the surface. Tears stung in your eyes as you pressed the towel down on the cut.

“Probably need stitches.” You muttered as the towel changed color from white to red, already walking out of the kitchen.

“Please allow me to assist you, Lady (Y/N).” he called after you, following you towards the elevator.

“Uh no, I think you’ve done enough.” Muttering rudely, you entered the elevator and pressed the button to the compound’s infirmary.

Thor followed you anyway, stayed by your side while you got stitches in the med bay, explaining to the nurse how it was completely his fault, even riding the elevator back with you to your apartment floor after the wound was attended to.

You didn’t say much the entire time, pangs of guilt coursing through at his thoughtfulness. Discourteous as you had been, this man still tried his best to help but, your stubborn self refused to admit it was all your mistake.

…

Leaning on Steve for support, you limped towards the common area for a movie night. You had a sprained ankle from your latest mission that hadn’t quite healed yet and was bandaged.

“Easy. Are you comfortable?” Steve carefully propped your leg on the wooden table, before placing a small pillow underneath.

“As I’ll ever be. Thank you Rogers.” You gave his hand a grateful squeeze and placed the large bowl of popcorn in your lap.

“Your hand isn’t fully healed yet. Seems like you’re losing your edge, (Y/L/N).”

Glaring at his statement, you already regretted telling him about the kitchen incident. All hopes of this embarrassing event staying between two friends had gone to shit when Nat and Sam brought it up earlier today and Steve hid his face, sniggering.

“I’m not losing anything, you’re about to lose your arm if you keep this up.” You threatened, though you both knew you were kidding.

Your banter got cut short when the Asgardian God walked into the room, swinging Mjolnir in one hand and a large candy bar in the other.

You had literally been avoiding him ever since, excusing yourself to fake phone calls when he was around, eating dinners alone in your room under the pretext of wanting to be with yourself.

And now, knowing Steve – Mr Goody-two-shoes, he would ask Thor to join you here, and he did just that.

“Hey Thor, we’re watching old classics today, come join us.”

Steve ignored your death stare and continued to look at Thor expectantly, who seemed undecided for a bit, but then smiled and walked over to the couch, accepting Steve’s invite.

You threw a handful of popcorn at Steve when Thor wasn’t looking, he merely shrugged, mouthing ‘you-should-talk-to-him’.

Thor took a seat next to you, keeping a considerable distance in between while you resumed the movie. Halfway through it, Steve made an excuse to go to the bathroom only to never return, leaving you alone with the Asgardian.

You’d fallen asleep before the movie got over, not realizing when Thor had covered you with a blanket or when he’d moved closer to support your head on his shoulder.

The noisy crunch of popcorn from your right, brought you back to consciousness as you noticed the bowl now in Thor’s lap, and his other hand wrapped securely around your shoulders.

He was so warm. You didn’t have the heart to move away.

“I’m sorry did I wake you?” he asked, removing his hand away, much to your disappointment.

“Yeah. It’s—it’s fine though.”

Scrambling a foot away, the previous distance returning, you felt your cheeks flush.

A few minutes passed as you both watched the second movie that had begun, before Thor broke the silence.

“How did you injure your ankle?” pointing to the bandaged limb.

“If I tell you, you’ll laugh. It’s embarrassing.”

“I will do no such thing, you have my word.” He replied sincerely, turning to face you fully.

You began telling the story honestly, how after the mission you were walking towards the jet and accidently tripped on a previously unseen stone that had resulted in a nasty sprain. You skipped the part of how actually your mind had wandered to the day you and Thor had that kitchen mishap.

He seemed genuinely concerned for you after hearing it and like he promised did not laugh.

“You know the healers on Asgard would’ve been able to mend it in no time.” He added.

“Your ability to bring your Godly realm into every conversation blows my mind, really.” You laughed, rolling your eyes.

“Well, all of you have such incredible stories from Midgard to share, and I feel like an outsider, I just thought sharing stories from my home planet would make for interesting conversation. Which I now realize is the cause of your annoyance, so I’m really sorry about that.”

He frowned, a sad look flashing in his face, before he replaced it with an understanding smile.

You felt terribly guilty for never having thought it that way. He was just trying to make conversation. He was a literal outsider, always taking great interest in wanting to know about ‘Earthly traditions’, having nothing to add to that hence sharing his Asgardian tales.

Wow. And you had been a real bitch about it this whole time.

Suddenly Steve’s words came back to you, all he wanted was try and get to know you better. Well now, it seemed like you had blown your chance of that ever happening as you kept staring down at your hands, unable to form a response.

“It seems like my presence is no longer wanted, I’ll leave you be, Lady (Y/N), enjoy your eve—” Thor began but you cut him off.

“No wait! Please.” You said almost too loudly, grabbing his wrist as he was half rising from his seat.

“I owe you an apology, several to be honest. You have been nothing but kind to me and I was a bitch. That little kitchen accident was all on me, I tried to sneak past you because I wanted to avoid an awkward situation. You helped me through that even though I was so rude. Hell, I even faked being busy to avoid dinners. This makes me such a terrible person and I am so sorry Thor. You didn’t deserve it, really I’m so so—”

In all of your gesture-filled apology frenzy, you had missed Thor leaning in slowly with an amused expression on his face, before his lips made contact with yours taking you by surprise.

His soft lips covered yours, hands moving to cup your face gently as he kissed you, feeling you relax against him and return the kiss.

It ended sooner than you’d hoped, breaking apart you found yourself grinning like an idiot, touching your lips, as if to make sure it had really happened.

“You’re not a terrible person (Y/N). You’re a strong, poised warrior. Maybe a little set in your ways.” The God added quietly, making you giggle as your forehead landed against his chest.

After a few moments you figured it was time to head back to bed, seeing as it was way past midnight. With Thor’s help you stood up, who ducked down and took your hand in his.

“Allow me to escort you back to your chambers.”

All you could manage was a shy nod, and he had effortlessly picked you up and had begun walking towards your room.

From a dark corner, Steve groaned as he removed a twenty dollar bill from his pocket and handed it to Natasha who had a victorious grin on her face.

[justgenshinstuf]

hiii! can i request hcs for diluc, zhongli and childe on how they would confess to reader who likes them too but is really oblivious? HAHA thank you! ^^

Thank you for hc request! Sorry for the wait and hope you enjoy :3

Confession Headcanons

He takes a long time to come to terms with his feelings for you. Almost like 7 stages of grief.

At first he thought it was just a passing interest, then he tried to convince himself being friends is enough for him to feel happy. The more time you’d spent together, the more he realised he is absolutely addicted.

It soon became impossible for him to keep it all to himself. The way his heart was beating faster when he sees you, how his legs became weak, how he couldn’t help but think about what you’ve been up to during his work hours, how he wished to have you by his side on nightly vigilante missions.

He was scared to death of making a confession, no enemy could possibly make him this terrified.  He would’ve never built up his courage if not for the fact that he couldn’t look at you anymore without thoughts of getting closer, touching, embracing. It was like a progressing illness.

He realised how lonely he was without you. You managed to make him so happy but so scared at the same time, afraid he’ll never have a chance to bathe in your otherworldly light, to be worthy of your love.

He’d made battling darkness alone his only life goal, but now he was attracted to the light and might burn to ashes because of it.

On one of the ordinary days he just spits it out. After the sleepless night of thinking and pacing around his room the only thing he was able to say to your face was a plain and simple «I think I love you, y/n». No words could possibly describe how he truly feels about you. He just didn’t know how to present it no matter how much time he’d spent thinking, and now a choking feeling in his throat was leaving him completely voiceless.

You wouldn’t get it at first. Have you herd him right? This can’t be it. You’d never even considered Diluc liking you back, like, in more than friends way. You’d love to hear those words from him, but this was just too good to be true, right?

When you awkwardly said he is your best teammate ever too, you could almost see all the colour disappear from his face. Something clicked and those rusty wheels in your head finally started turning. You couldn’t help but let out a loud gasp, covering your mouth with both your hands.

«Wait! No no no, you mean love like in IN love?!»

You suddenly felt a whole range of different emotions from wild excitement to gravely embarrassment. Unable to stay still, you rushed to grab Diluc’s hands in yours, tightly squeezing his thick gloves. At that moment you could feel him shacking a bit.

«Forget what I’ve said! Let’s do this again!» You took a deep breath before reassuring Diluc you actually love him back. You then froze in place with your eyes shut, still grabbing onto his hands, slowly turning red enough to match your beloved one’s hair.

Diluc could barely hear you over the thudding in his temples. His hands felt numb from your touch, that choking feeling in his throat suddenly started growing stronger. In a sharp move he put you in a tight embrace, pressing his lips against the top of your head, so tight, like he wanted you to merge into one.

You could now feel his irregular warmth with your whole body, hear his heart racing. «Sorry for acting dumb». You quietly muttered into his chest.

You couldn’t possibly see his eyes getting a bit watery and decided to pretend you hadn’t noticed his voice being shaky as he gently murmured: «I’m so happy right now, you have no idea».

He’d never experienced something quite like that before, but now, when he was finally free from his archon duties and could pay more attention to his feeling and relationships, he came to a surprising realisation.

For some reason he couldn’t quite understand, he could feel closer to you than anybody else he’d met. Maybe it was the fact you come from another world and he is an ex-archon in retirement?

This feeling was truly beyond his reach, but now there was no time to waste. Something this important should be handled the proper way. He wasn’t fully convinced you were a perfect match for each other, but in his idea it wouldn’t be fair to keep you in the dark about his feelings for you.

Years spent observing common folk and breathing with the culture of Liyue had certainly taught Zhongli something about how mortals handle this thing they call love, but he still felt a bit lost. He needed to learn more, to understand better, this was no place for stupid mistakes.

That one special evening he invited you to an opera, it was an outstanding performance of a famous Liyue singer. You were a bit nervous, it seemed almost like a date for some reason, and Zhongli seemed more elegant and suave than you’d previously noticed.

After that he invited you to his place for a dinner. You joked a little about him not having enough mora to feed both of you to hide your embarrassment. Rendezvous with Zhongli have alway felt so thrilling. His stoic and a bit mysterious presence made your thoughts fly apart.

He just laughed (oh, that beautiful voice) and said it was a special occasion. The suspense was killing you, was he really enjoying your company that much to prepare some kind of a surprise?

When he opened a door for you to enter, you were immediately blown away by the sight of the room alone. Decorated with beautiful flowers, and even a few Glaze Lillys, it was illuminated with multiple candles, which emitted a pleasant and calming odour. The table was served with probably a bit too many dishes for both of you, all of which looked more like hyper-realistic models of food straight from the pictures.

Frozen in place from shock, observing all the beauty in front of you, for a moment you felt like you entered the pages of a romantic novel (or maybe one of your wettest dreams, could be both). Before you could even articulate a question about the occasion, Zhongli lowered in front of you, looking straight into your eyes.

He gently put a beautiful antique comb incrusted with jades into your hand. «Please, accept this little gift as a sign of my upmost adoration». It was hard to maintain eye contact when he looked straight at you with such a serious expression, so you shifted your gaze, fixating on your small hand in his.

«For a long time now I wanted to make a confession. I feel like I am in love with you, y/n». He tightened his grip on your now shaky hand for a brief second before letting go. «Don’t worry, I understand it might not be mutual. I thought it would be fair to not hide something like th…»

You didn’t give him a chance to finish, putting your hand on his cheek, still holding his beautiful gift in another. The last thing you saw were his light pupils growing wider in surprise when you pressed a gentle kiss on his lips. «I think I love you too».

Now the tables have turned and Zhongli became the one flustered and lost, before he blessed you with a rare sight of him genuinely smiling.

«You never cease to amaze me, traveler from another world».

He knew you liked him before you could even admit it to yourself, this proud and self-confident rascal. He was perfectly aware no one can resist his teasingly flirty charm.

For some reason he completely missed the moment he started falling for you too. When did the fact you are his opponent became more important than the thrill of a friendly combat? Your wit, your grace, your unthinkable power, it suddenly blew the poor boy away.

Tartaglia became more and more serious during your time together, joking less, being lost in thoughts more, making dumb mistakes during battles. The fact he couldn’t come up with a good way to ask you out frustrated him. He couldn’t even fight properly, for archons’ sake, what is this?

It was his first time finding such interest in something besides being a ruthless warrior. One day he strives to conquer the world and now he is worried to ask you out. Pathetic.

He wanted to make it a casual, but decent confession, something worthy of you. But it still made him nervous. Did all-mighty Fatui Harbinger feel suddenly insecure? Would someone like you even want to date him after he’d been such an ass? Did you really like him back, or did he make it all up in his head to boost his ego?

He couldn’t take it much longer before he decided to approach the situation head-on. No time for this lovesick mess.

Childe surprised you with his sudden appearance from behind, putting a little white flower into your hair. «Hey~ looking pretty today! Care to go for a stroll with your favourite Harbinger?»

Seeing him always made you smile, but you didn’t have time for a sparring session today. You tried to politely decline his offer, but he reassured you it had nothing to do with fighting this time.

One awkward moment of silence later he laughed nervously, scratching the back of his head. You noticed he was holding something behind his back.

«I bought you a little something. It’s a gift and… I think it should match you perfectly».

He pulled out a shiny ring sitting in a little box, a pinky blush slowly started covering his face. He was swaying around a bit while staying in place, not even hiding his nervousness anymore.

«I wanted to tell you that… Well I kind of… I really like you, y/n. Will you go out with me?»

He laughed a bit again, before realising you were shooting a deadly gaze at him. Almost like during mid-combat, when you are almost ready to murder him.

«You think this is funny?»  You were so pissed you could barely keep your voice down. «I don’t have time for your stupid pranks!»

Oh, poor soul, you were convinced he was just messing with you again. No way someone like Childe could be serious about something like this. And even the ring? The audacity!

«Oi, wait, I’m serious!» He rushed to grab your arm before you could turn away to leave. «I don’t even want to fight you anymore. I know I look stupid right now, but thats how I really feel. I want you! I don’t know how to do this properly, but, please, just hear me out!»

Something in the tone of his voice finally convinced you this was sincere. A playful smile crossed your lips when you grabbed him back by his jacket.

«So, does this mean you accept your defeat?» His face being almost red now made you giggle.

«No, I’m taking the first prize!» Tartaglia quickly retorted, gaining his confidence back. He picked you up from the ground and started spinning you around a bit, both of you laughing.

«Seriously, I love you, y/n». He whispered quietly, snuggling you closer to him.

[the-girl-in-the-box]

Can You Imagine? I

Summary: Freydis was dead. At least, when she’d lost consciousness, she’d been sure she was. But now she has woken up in a cold, sterile environment, one she is certain is not Valhalla, and the world as she once knew it has changed. People now have strange abilities, some of them, and people they call ‘scientists’ are trying to give them to her. The bigger issue, though, is the fact they have also woken the very man who killed her. Ivar the Boneless lives again as well, in the same way Freydis does, and if they want to survive... she may have to learn to trust him again.

A/N: As you can see from the summary above, I have... had a very strange idea. But! It’s one I look forward to exploring, and this is an AU of a sort that will be revealed as the story progresses :) If you have any ideas what the AU is exactly, I’d love to hear them! Otherwise, I would also love to hear any other feedback, and I hope you enjoy! Please reach out with DMs, reblogs, or asks if you’d like to be added to the taglist, which will be at the end of the post. Skål!

Warnings: Hospital-like environments, mad science, injections, human experimentation, etc. Google translated Norwegian and German, and Old Norse in Italics!

Masterlist

—

The World Turned Upside Down

The first thing Freydis noticed was the bright lights overhead, even if she didn’t know how they were so bright. She shut her eyes against them, and moved her arm to cover her face in an attempt to block them out. When her arm didn’t move, held down by something wrapped around her wrist, her heart lept into her throat. She had thought to wake in Valhalla, to be welcomed by the gods after her sacrifice in saving Kattegat from Ivar the Boneless, facing him with what she had done and still fighting to save her own life from him. But… this could not be Valhalla, she thought.

Wherever she was, it was cold, and almost unnaturally bright. Her eyes finally opened again as her chest rose and fell quickly. She was hyperventilating. Vaguely, she became aware of a strange, high pitched sound that was short and quick. People around her were speaking, she heard their voices, but their words were foreign and unfamiliar to her. It didn’t seem to her this could be Hel either. It didn’t match any description of what she knew from the legends and stories from home.

So… what was this place?

Freydis’s eyes soon adjusted to the bright lights, which she saw were coming from strange spheres, held up by… some sort of disk, on a pole? Her head turned to the side, and she groaned quietly. “Where am I?” she tried to call out. “Who is there?” Her voice was scratchy, and cracked under the attempted volume.

“Hun er våken,” she heard someone say, and she frowned. It sounded vaguely similar to her own language, but not quite familiar enough that she could make it out. She caught the first word, she, so… they were talking about her, weren’t they?

“Who are you?” she tried again.

A door behind her opened, catching her attention and making her quickly turn her head to look. The room began to spin with the speed she’d turned with, and she closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

“God morgen, Freydis,” the voice said, and her eyes opened to see a woman standing in front of her. The woman was dressed like no woman she’d seen before, in a strange white coat that came to her thighs, beyond which Freydis could see she wore loose pants, of a dark shade, and strange shoes which covered the front, sides, and back of her feet, but not the tops. “Ikke vær redd, vi er dine vinner, hm?”

She couldn’t understand enough of the woman’s words to respond, though she could catch not, we, and… friends? Was she saying they weren’t her friends? Her heart jumped again.

“What is happening?” the Viking woman tried to ask. When the woman put what was meant to be a calming hand on her arm, Freydis flinched and tried to jump away. A soft sob left her throat, one she hadn’t even realized had been building. “I don’t know what you want with me,” she started to say, “but please, just let me go. I will not cause you any trouble, I swear it.”

“Shh,” the woman said, beginning to stroke her hair. “Du er trygg her.”

You, and here. She wished they could understand each other, at the least. The woman looked toward the source of the strange sound, and sighed. It’s speed and frequency had increased. “Du er for stresset,” she mumbled. “Du må slappe av.”

“I cannot understand you,” Freydis tried to tell her, but the woman just shook her head.

“Du burde hvile,” she said. “Vi flytter deg til annet rom.”

The woman picked up a strange looking device, like a tube with some liquid in it, a long thing off the tip. Her breaths only became more shallow, more quick, as she brought the thing closer. “What is that?” Freydis asked. The woman didn’t answer, and she pushed the tip to her neck. A sharp pain immediately pierced her skin, and a soft cry came from the Viking woman. Something burned through her under her skin, making her gasp and writhe on the cold surface they had her strapped to.

“Hvil, Freydis,” the woman said. “Du vil føle deg bedre når du våkner igjen.”

The corners of Freydis’s vision were darkening, and she let out a quiet whine as she started to lose consciousness. Her chest ached in the worst way, feeling tight and strained. One last choked sob left her, and she descended into darkness.

—

When Freydis woke the next time, there was still darkness. Her head hurt, and her body felt stiff, but she could move. She was laid in a bed now, blankets laid over her body, her head resting on a pillow. It was better than what she’d been used to as a slave, the straw pallets she slept on, but not what she’d had as a Queen, as Ivar’s wife. The bed was small, with a firm mattress and flat pillow.

She sat up slowly, closing her eyes to combat again the way her head was spinning. Her hand went to her forehead as if that could help, brows creasing. Once she felt more steady, Freydis opened her eyes once again and started to look around, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. There was nothing else in the room, it seemed, aside from her little bed. But that was better than that harsh surface from earlier. The woman rubbed the back of her neck, sighing.

At least now, Freydis could see she was alone. Without that woman in with her, she began to mumble softly to herself- or, really, to the gods. “You gods, you cannot leave me alone here,” she whispered. “Here I know no one, and I have nothing. If I must remain, help me to understand what it is I am to do here, and bring me a companion, so the loneliness will not set in and take my desire to do your will.” She sighed, running her hands over the wall, which felt much like the cold, hard surface she’d been strapped to earlier. It must have been made of the same material.

“I do not doubt that it is my fate to be here,” she continued, “and I will not question your judgement of my fate. I only ask it be made more bearable for me. For your servant, Freydis.”

At that time, she heard a clicking sound, the same sound that before had signalled a door opening. Her heart jumped as she whipped around, looking for whoever may have entered the space. This time, she was joined by a man, one who still dressed in no way she had ever seen. He wore similar pants to the woman, though his shoes covered his whole foot, and he had no strange white coat. Just a long sleeved shirt, a vest over that, and a… strange sort of bow fixed around his neck. What sort of clothing did they have there?

(It should be noted, at this time Freydis had not yet noticed the far stranger garment she wore- an almost nightgown sort of thing that stopped above her knees, and opened down the back except for the three or four places it was tied together.)

“Hei,” he greeted, smiling at her. Freydis lifted a brow in response, and subtly pressed herself closer to the wall. “Snakker du norsk?”

“I… do not fully understand you,” she told him, more confident without being tied down. “I can tell this once you have asked if I speak Norwegian, but only because the words are so similar to my own. But I do not speak your language.”

The man chuckled a little. “So my theory is correct, then,” he said. Her eyes widened as she recognized every word that came out of his mouth. “The Norwegian spoken today is similar to the Old Norse spoken in your time, similar enough much meaning can be understood, but not similar enough for the languages to be interchangeable. Fascinating.”

“What do you mean, ‘the Norwegian spoken today’?” Freydis questioned. “‘The Old Norse spoken in my time’? Hm? I don’t deny I am glad to hear my own language spoken, but you must understand the unnerving situation I find myself in. I do not know where I am, who you are- only that you are not my friends- and it would appear that I am being held captive. All I want, is-”

“Who has told you we are not your friends?” the man interrupted her. “Of course we are your friends. We’re- well, we’re the reason you’re alive, My Lady.”

“That woman who came to me when I was restrained. She said we were not friends. And then she took my consciousness.”

“Yes,” the man confirmed. “You were having a panic attack. We knew there’d be no use talking to you, explaining anything, if you were panicking. My colleague chose to sedate you so we could restore you to a calmer state, and explain then. She does not speak Old Norse, or perhaps she could have calmed you better than she did.”

“Perhaps I should not have been restrained, if calming me was your goal,” she pointed out flatly.

The man’s cheeks turned a slight shade of pink, and her brow lifted. “Perhaps not,” he agreed. “But what we have done with you, has never been done before- not successfully. It has been attempted, but you are the first success.”

His words brought no comfort to Freydis, and her eyes narrowed, her head tilted slightly to the side. “What did you do to me?” she questioned. Her voice had turned more firm than before, losing any of its naturally amicable tone, as she demanded this answer.

“We brought you back to life, of course.”

Everything froze at his words, including Freydis herself. She watched him with wide eyes, her mouth slightly agape, and then she laughed bitterly. “That is a cruel joke. If you want me to believe you have brought me back to life, then I must first have died. But I know I have not died, as I have not seen Valhalla. I do not believe you.”

The man sighed, and bit his lip. “Could I convince you to come with me, then?” he asked. “I can show you proof of my claims. Then, perhaps, you will let us help you.”

“If it is true you raised me from the dead, then you should be horrified with your actions. You have stolen me from Valhalla, and the gods, and interfered in fate. They will be angry.”

“Or, perhaps you have found a new fate with us,” the man suggested. “Come. I’ll introduce myself along the way.”

Perhaps against her better judgement, as she had nothing else she could do, Freydis walked to the man, and allowed him to take her from the small room she was in.

The man led her out into a long, bright hallway that felt similar in nature to the first room she’d woken in. Large, white rectangles seemed to light the space, and she creased her brows as she looked up at them. Something about them made her quite uncomfortable. She swallowed again.

“You have not told me where I am,” she commented. The man merely chuckled in response. “Do not laugh at me.”

“My apologies, Queen Freydis,” he said. “I was laughing because you’re right. You don’t miss a thing, do you?”

Freydis narrowed her eyes at the man’s back. “No, I don’t,” she agreed harshly. “And I will not ask again. Where am I?”

“You are… in Germany, not that this will make any sense to you. You’d have known Germany as the Germanic tribes, which were part of the Frankish Empire.”

“Has it been taken from the Frankish?” she questioned. Her mind turned to her husband’s uncle, Duke Rollo, who had helped him take Kattegat. Freydis wondered vaguely if Rollo was alright.

The man chuckled again, but answered before he could anger the Viking woman behind him. “Many centuries ago, yes.”

A frown set on her lips as her brows creased harshly again. “I still do not believe you, that I have been dead before,” she said. “I fell unconscious at the Battle for Kattegat, and you have kidnapped me. Perhaps I am not even in the Germanic tribes.” She swallowed hard, making sure her voice did not shake, and no nerves were heard in her voice as she spoke again. “My husband will come and find me. You should return me to him before he destroys you and your people.”

She couldn’t see the way the man grimaced. History didn’t know that Ivar the Boneless murdered his wife after her betrayal. After all, she had been found sharing a tomb with him, buried like heroes together, and none of the sons of Ragnar had taken note of how Freydis had died- other than it was the day Björn Ironside took Kattegat. So, with her question, he was hit with the realisation that she didn’t know her husband was dead.

“He… is not a concern to us. We are safe, keeping you here,” he said vaguely. He hoped that Freydis wouldn’t realise anything about Ivar’s passing until she learned it truly was centuries later, and it would only make sense that he was gone, just as she once had been.

This caused Freydis to frown more deeply, and she suddenly stepped quicker to the man, grabbing his shoulder and slamming him into the wall. He immediately pulled away from her as best he could, though he did not escape her. His eyes squeezed tightly shut. Clearly, he was terrified of her.

“Ivar the Boneless will come for me,” she hissed out. “You would be wise to return me to him, entirely unharmed, before he raises up his Great Heathen Army again, to come and rescue his Queen.”

The man was shaking under her. Freydis wondered how little prepared these people must have been, if their men fell apart so easily. She wasn’t even a shieldmaiden, and yet he was terrified of her. “If- if we could get through this tour, I think you would see just what- what I mean about your husband, Your Highness.”

She huffed, and narrowed her eyes. “If you try anything, and he finds out, he will kill you. I’ll be sure of it.”

He nodded enthusiastically, still grimacing and trying to push himself into the wall. “Of course,” he said. “I’ve told you- we are your friends, here. We won’t hurt you.”

“See that you do not, or there will be Hel to pay.”

Eventually, he took Freydis into another strange room. Though this one was still different from all she had seen so far. It was filled with strange slabs of metal, all with moving images on them. People in the funny white coats, including the woman from earlier, were watching these moving images, and writing in a language she couldn’t read.

The images showed men and women strapped down the way she had been, the same strange devices put to their skin, sometimes multiple of them, and various liquids were pushed into them. The woman from earlier soon noticed Freydis’s presence, and she smiled, coming toward her. The Queen backed up immediately, and the woman’s face fell.

“Jeg antar at det er fornuftig at du ikke vil like meg, ikke sant?” she said. Freydis looked up to the man, as he had clearly understood her, and she didn’t understand this woman.

“Doktor Schmidt, sie spricht kein modernes Norwegisch,” the man said. This was yet another language, and Freydis frowned sharply. What the hell were they playing at.

“It is rude to speak in front of a guest in a way they cannot understand you,” she reminded him pointedly. “What are you saying to her, and what is she saying?”

The man turned to Freydis to answer, “I was telling her that you don’t understand modern Norwegian. She doesn’t speak the Old Norse you do, so I’m going to have to translate between you two, I suppose.”

“No need,” Freydis said. “She is the one who has brought me here, is she not? She put that strange liquid in me which took my consciousness. I will not speak to her.”

The man grimaced and relayed what she said to the woman, who pressed her lips together and sighed, before answering him. Freydis’s eyes watched his response intently.

“She is sad to hear this, but understands. Though, she asks your forgiveness for making you sleep earlier. You were beginning to have a panic attack, and she wanted to keep you from going through that.”

The harsh glare Freydis shot the woman revealed she did not have Freydis’s forgiveness. “Anxiety and panic are nothing I have not experienced before,” she said. “I would have been fine.”

Again, he spoke to the woman, but this time she didn’t stay to listen, her eyes catching on one of the moving images. She had seen herself flicker across it. An image of her sitting in a throne, eyes open yet unseeing, hovered in the upper right corner. She looked beautiful, if not… dead. Covering the whole thing was a moving image- the one in the corner was still- of people moving around a woman, strapped to and laid out on a cold… hard…

Gods above… she thought. It was her.

What Freydis was watching was footage of her being brought back to life by these scientists, who were testing various things on her corpse, monitoring her, until an order was given. A shot of something was put straight into her heart by one scientist, and then they all quickly cleared the room. It was then that she woke, and she watched the interaction she had had with the woman- now standing behind her- before she’d been rendered unconscious.

She watched as she was given a shot of a tranquiliser, and fell asleep, and then the image froze. “This is a monitor,” the man at her side said. “We play back videos on it, and can take notes on what we see in them. That video was of you being woken up for the first time- brought back to life. The picture in the corner there, that was your corpse as we found it. You were with your husband, Ivar the Boneless, in a tomb meant for heroes. Preserved. It was… it was incredible, really. To find you both so perfect, even after death. We were thrilled, naturally, and-”

Freydis stopped listening as another one of the ‘monitors’ shifted, and showed a different image that struck her to her core.

Ivar’s corpse, laid out on the same sort of table as she had been, and he was being injected with various things, just as she had been. She hadn’t seen that part of her own footage. She walked away from the scientists again, and up to the monitor, watching as an injection was given to him in his heart, just as had been done to her. The scientists in the room with him cleared out, and just as she lifted her fingers to the screen, her expression unreadable… Ivar the Boneless took a breath.

Freydis promptly passed out, and collapsed to the floor.

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius, @katfett, @zuzus-sun

[aforrestofstuff]

TOP 5 FAVE W O M A N MOMENTS

I gotcha, anon. Sorry this is so late! I took forever trying to gather these panels and despite my efforts, they are mostly potato quality. Thanks for your ask, though! ❤️

In no particular order:

1. Fubuki putting the fear of God into Do-S

It’s not often we get to see Fubuki tear shit up, and I think this is the one of only few times we’ve seen her use her signature move in the manga (not counting that one omake where she fucks up all those little spiders). It was up until this point that I thought of her to be super... weak? Like, I thought this whole time she was just using her status as Tatsumaki’s little sister to wrangle up a bunch of hooligans as her underlings but I’ve found that to be a fat fucking lie. She’s super badass in her own right. She even resisted Do-S’ love magic whip thingy because her will is just that strong.

Fubuki doesn’t need to be Tatsumaki’s little sister to be feared, she just needs to be pissed off.

Personally, we don’t give Fubuki enough credit in terms of strength and raw “fuck ‘em up” power. I know she didn’t win this fight (technically), but Do-S is a demon threat monster and even some of the S-Class have a hard time with demon threats (cough cough, Zombieman and Pureblood). And, not to mention, Fubuki was also fending off her entire crew—who were taken under the influence of Do-S’ super BDSM love spell magic—this entire fight!

Darkness Blade was also involved somewhere but this ain’t about him. Moving on:

2: Do-S would’ve straight up merked Amai Mask’s crackheaded ass had he not been an actual freak of nature

(Sorry for the microwave quality pictures but we’ve all read the manga right? Just use your imagination.)

So, prior to Murata reworking the entire “Amai Mask commits homicide via his own damn hands” segment with Do-S, we had Do-S basically surrendering herself to Amai at the sight of him dicing up her love slaves at the speed of light (the merc squad). I did not like this AT ALL. I thought Do-S was a kickass character and for her to have this stupid death scene was really disappointing.

Thankfully, Murata thought the same thing. She still fucking died, of course, but she gets a little more... er, dignity? Idk, she’s just badass.

Amai Mask pretty much slams her skull into the wall, gives her like 13 concussions, and when he thinks he’s in the clear—BAM! Elastigirl powers, bitch! Do-S wraps herself around Amai and utilizes her freaky ass Alien-esque snake tongue to drill into his eyeball as her last stand before death. And this is why I think it’s valid that Fubuki had such a hard time dealing with her, because if it were any other S/A-Class hero (besides Zombieman, Superalloy, Genos... and maybe even Metal Bat) that got their brains drilled into via snake tongue, they would’ve died. If it were Child Emperor, Puri Puri, or even Atomic Samurai at the other end of her attack, they would’ve been FADED, man! It’s only because Amai has those bullshit monster invulnerability powers that he survived.

In conclusion: Do-S got done dirty the first time around, but Murata has since redeemed himself by giving her some wicked elastic powers and nearly dealing the final blow to Amai before dying. She’s also rlly sexy uwu

3. It is written somewhere in the Geneva Conventions that using Captain Mizuki’s thighs as a means of destruction is considered a war crime

First of all: holy fuck I’m horny.

Second of all: UUUH??????? This is 100% just Murata’s death by snu-snu fetish in action but I’m not complaining. Mizuki is super badass. I’m not a fan of this trope that women in male-dominated media have to give up their femininity in order to be taken seriously, so I was expecting at least one female character in OPM to be a mirror reflection of this shitty trend (judging by ONE’s track record of being allergic to women). However, OPM is all about taking tropes and putting them in a meat grinder. Mizuki is super feminine, bubbly, and positive! And that doesn’t make her any less of a fearsome opponent to these monsters, which is something I can really appreciate.

Overall, OPM has very few female characters (which is bad), but the treatment of the few we have is very good when compared to other media of the same medium. I’ve said before how I enjoy the fact that both sexes are treated as equal opportunity fanservicing, and I think it’s fitting to reverberate that here.

Mizuki is hot as hell, but she’s also strong, fun, and a ray of fucking sunshine. Her and Mumen would be great friends, now that I think of it!

4. Shadow Ring said SIKE

UNDERAPPRECIATED QUEEN RIGHT HERE ^^^^^^^

She’s so badass in the entirety of the surface strike sequence we get before the heroes enter the Monster Association base (take a shot every time I say badass. Try it, you’ll die).

I was super impressed by how strong she is?? And the whole time I’m reading this fight sequence I’m just like.... why aren’t we seeing more of her. She should have just as much screen time as Stinger! She was even noticed by Ninja Extraordinaire, Flash Flash; and she played a pretty big part in getting the S-Class to open their eyes to the combat prowess of the lower classes. If it weren’t for her, I fully believe the strike team would’ve had a much harder time penetrating the monsters’ defenses.

Also she’s cute as hell. All of the other female characters in OPM are over the top supermodel sexy (again, not complaining), so it’s refreshing to get someone that goes against the status quo (which as I’ve said before, OPM is kinda all about). Whenever we see her unmasked in those little volume extras Murata makes, I just want to squeeze her cheeks like an annoying aunt.

I forgot to mention this in the Mizuki section, but I think it also applies here: her teammates never point out the fact that she’s a woman. There’s no commentary on it, no snide “oh hurr hurr you’re a girl under the mask?” comments, just women kicking ass and male counterparts kicking ass alongside them, which is another thing I appreciate. It’s not often we get women in manga just.... existing. It seems there’s always gotta be a good reason for writers to insert female characters into their stories (WHY), but not here. Shadow Ring’s sole purpose in the story is to kill monsters and look cool while doing it. She gets the same treatment as all the other himbos around her.

I am completely aware that my say on the subject of gender equality in media could be completely invalid because I’m a cis dude but those are just my THOTS

5. Lily being 14 and always ready to murder

Lily stole my wallet and kicked my ass :(

[simpforroses]

Heya! For the f/o flower asks, may I get some marigolds, sunflowers, roses, and dahlias?💓 I actually am curious about how you tease law outside of the bedroom of course hehe

Hi Savannah! Thank so much for sending this bouquet! I’ll answer rose with @thatbadbruja’s ask, so I’ll tag you in that. Also I’m doing this on mobile so sorry if it gets long 😅🌹 Law & I don’t tease eachother that much *nervous laughter* it’s just some inside banter heheh

Marigold (fav pic/video/moment):

Fav picture in my gallery: Long-Haired Law is just *chef’s kiss* 🌹but official pic is this one. His gaze is so firm & steady, ready to lead his crew into the Wano raid; and the rain makes it better too, as I love rainy days & it enhances his “ROOM” ability 😍

-Fav Video would probably be when he used Takt to use his severed arm to slice Trebol. It shows he’s a tactical combatant who is fully aware of his opportunities & surroundings—which as a history/strategy/war enthusiast, I find attractive & amazing. As I always say: “Intelligence is sexy”

-Fav Moment: All of them...? But probably when he called his heart back from Vergo at Punk Hazard, because it demonstrates his stamina & degree of mastery of the Ope-Ope no Mi. OR when he turned himself in at Wano for the safety of his crew; demonstrating he is a good captain with a heart of gold. 🥲

Sunflower (Teasing):

It’s more or less Law & I have a witty banter between us; instead of purposely teasing eachother to annoy the other—as we always avoid giving a reason for the other’s headaches or scowls.

—-For example (while reading an Art History book together during chill time):

Me: “Even though my favorite artist is Friedrich, I’d commission Michelangelo if he was alive, you know why?”

Law: “Why?”

Me: “Because I’d want him to immortalize you in marble like the godly masterpiece you are.”

Law: *blushing* “Well, we’ll need to make one of you too, because what is a god with his goddess? My statue would be lonely by itself, unless you want to break your promise to never leave my side.”

Me: *blushing* “Oh...you’re right.”

Law: “As always” *smirks*

Dahlia (Song Lyric):

This one is hard hmm...I think “How many spirits did it take to weave this robe?” from Loyal Blood Runs Forever Red” by Wang Kai, because it reminds me of Law’s past & how he had to build his way up to who he is. This Loss by Korn works too.

In regards to our couple song, I think Hong Jue by Hu Xia or Forever With You by Decyfer Down works :)