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kaythefloppa · 3 months ago

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How would you rewrite The Lion Guard?

Ooh, good question.

Will pre-face this by saying that I enjoy The Lion Guard and am far more forgiving towards it than others (primarily because I was in the show's target demographic when it came out nearly 10 years ago, so I had a closer attachment to/attraction towards it than, people who were old enough to see the original film drop in theaters). That being said, it has a lot of flaws, some commonly pointed out by the fandom, others not so much (and around 70% of them stem around the finale, which.. we'll get to). So here are some major things I'd rewrite about the show itself (not like, every individual episode because that would be hell lmao)

Word vomit ahead because I have too many opinions on this children's show.

Season 1:

I'd definitely include more of Nala in the pilot episode, maybe showing her personal thoughts on the matter, perhaps even teaching Kion how to fight, or a throwaway line implying that. Also, I would definitely provide explanation on how Scar got away with killing his Lion Guard, and on why Kiara became so obsessed with becoming Queen. Additionally, I'd show some background lions (i.e. non-characters because we can't let them overshadow the mains), just so that we can actually buy Simba's point on there being other lions for the guard (but like, at the end of the day, we know Kion's team will prove themselves/be better). And lastly, I'd fix the climax to where Simba would try to rescue Kiara and then somehow get injured/stuck, so the Guard would have to save both of them from the stampede. I think those main things left a bad impression towards fans outside of the target demo, even as they got better on so, I think re-tooling them a bit would save a lot of that dissonance.

This was something I really wanted to see in the show as a kid; Episodes where the main characters meet "good" animals in the same species as their villains. Jasiri's introductory episode made me think they were going to have this as a recurring theme, where each member of the guard meets an animal who they initially judge for being the same species as their counterpart villain, only to realize that they're pretty great. For example, Beshte meeting a friendly crocodile (this was before S2) Bunga protecting a cobra (or alternatively, rescuing Ushari from the hyenas), Fuli meeting a jackal that's actually honest, or Ono even working together with a friendly vulture (that part specifically I fixated on, because I had this whole story in my head about the unnamed 'third vulture' in Mzingo's flock who goes through this whole character redemption arc, but I digress). This I believe would've fixed the issue that some people had about the portrayal of predatory animals in the series. Because yeah, on a Watsonian level, these villains are in every way amoral, the Lion Guard stops them from over-hunting, not hunting in general. On a Doylist level, the ratio of evil predators to good predators is way imbalanced, and I think this approach that 9 year old me thought this show would go, would've been a huge-lifesaver for the series in that department.

The Kupatana Celebration: The jackals would attempt to steal from the Pride Landers whilst they're all distracted, leading up to the Pride Landers fighting them. I'd also change some dialouge so that Kion and the Guard wouldn't come across as though they are right for hating jackals, and so that Janja wouldn't be proven right in his attempted murder of a child by the narrative.

The Trouble with Galagoes: Makucha and Mapigano would be streamlined into one character. Not only would it save a lot of time, money, and budget just using one model, but it would show the true menace Makucha is, because he was badly nerfed in the show when he became the new Big Bad.

Lions of the Outlands: I have so many mixed opinions on this episode. On one hand, the moral is actually pretty great, a perfect mirror to Never Judge a Hyena By Its Spots. And on that note, we see more of Jasiri and her clan. On the other hand, the Outsiders are in it, for no other reason than to both tie into TLK 2, and build up to the finale, (and they fail entirely on those two merits). The one thing I'd change is make it a two-parter in the middle of the season. The first part would explain the mystery behind the Outsiders, maybe even filling in some of the legit plot-holes the second movie had with them. The second part would be where the real action and conflict begins, with Kion choosing the hyenas over lions and blasting them away to the termite mounds (and I'd easily cut the "Our New Home" to "Our Old Home.)" Vitani would also have more of a presence in this episode, mainly so that it'll be less jarring when we see her again as the successor to the main cast.

And on another note, I would have Janja team up with Kion and Jasiri against Zira as a temporary alliance. It would just seem like an interesting idea. The point of the episode is Kion's views being turned on their head as he realizes that the lions he's meeting aren't as open-minded or kind as him. Having him come to the defense of his most hated rival, even temporarily, would've added to that juxtaposition, and maybe foreshadow his redemption.

I'd definitely rewrite Bunga to make his personality better. Don't get me wrong, it does get better in the show, but in early S1, they try too hard to recapture the magic of Timon and Pumbaa's comedy from the original. It'd be much better to allow him to serve as a comic relief on his own scale to allow a better first impression of him as one of the main characters.

Allow an introduction episode for Ushari. For someone who is supposed to be the hidden secondary antagonist of the series, he gets no introduction episode, and no revelance beyond just cameos and running gags; So unlike Makuu, you don't resonate with him enough to accept him as a key player later on down the line. There was an episode plotline involving a cobra harassing some songbirds that was never greenlit because it was inaccurate t o cobra behavior, but I think Artistic License aside, it would've made okay groundwork for Ushari to appear.

More non-lion characters. In a show where the overall message is "different animals can do just as well as, if not better than lions," and featuring the different animals that contribute to the Circle of Life, they did pretty well, but I would've loved them do more. Episodes with painted dogs, and the values of communication. Episodes with caracal cats where the heroes learn not to underestimate, episodes with that one African Rock Python that encourages boundaries, episodes with secratarybirds where you can stomp the shit out of grumpy bastards who want to kill children. Cool shit.

I'd tone down Kion's roar a lot. I don't mind it in a fantasy setting, but I think a lot of tension, conflicts, and character arcs are undermined by it. I would've preferred it if we had episodes in Season 1 where Kion slowly learns how to use the Roar's powers, akin to Elena of Avalor's Scepter of Light/Night story arcs. Tie that in with him speaking with Mufasa. The more he controls the power of the spirits, the more he is able to speak to them. In the meantime, I'd allow some villains' defeats to be accreddited to the characters themselves, for example, Cheezi and Chungu defeat Nne and Tano themselves, Anga, Ono, and Hadithi being able to chase off the vultures, or Hodari and Makuu both working together to drive off Kiburi.

I'd change the episode arrangement. Mainly to allow future seasons to actually start with the episodes that begin their respective seasons' arcs. The first 5 episodes of Season 2 would be placed near the end of Season 1 to establish a mini-arc about the dry season coming up soon, with the last of these 5 episodes being the Savannah Summit, showing Makuu's redemption and signifying that there's gonna be a change in tune. Then we'd get Trail to Udugu as the Season 1 finale, which would wrap up Kion and Kiara's sibling rivalry from the pilot and show Simba firsthand how well Kion's team is structured through its diversity. It would register as a perfect season finale without there being a heavy ongoing arc for it to cap off.

Season 2

The Rise of Scar would serve as the Season 2 premiere (which it originally was supposed to be, until it was pushed up 5 episodes). And while kicks off the best portion of the show, (S2) it does ultimately also cap itself off in the worst portion of the show (S3), so some stuff I would change:

Ushari's heel-face-turn. It sucks. Even ignoring the messy implications of having the only snake character become a generic bad guy because "evil venomous snake," it's bad character writing. Not only do we have no proper introduction to his character, not only was his prior relevance relegated to background appearances, but his motivation is extremely hollow, so much so that it's forgotten entirely by the time the episode is over and replaced with a new one (that also comes up out of nowhere and has fuck all to do with anything). More than once in future episodes is it implied that Ushari wants reptiles to rule the Pride Lands, and honestly, I think that would've/should've been his motivation for his betrayal. Maybe he sees how other reptiles struggle during the dry season and the Lion Guard is so pre-occupied with the other animals and disasters that he winds up feeling neglected and angry. This is what turns him to villainy.

I would have Mzingo in on the Scar ressurection plotline. One beef I have with S2 is that Mzingo, who was the duel antaognist of the pilot, gets sidelined entirely. Ushari essentially replaces him as the hyenas' spy, with several scenes clearly resembling that of the pilot (right down to the song, which is essentially diet Tonight we Strike). It wouldn't have done much to add Mzingo in, but it would've made sense, and allow for interesting interactions between Ushari and Mzingo.

Instead of Janja, it's Ushari who causes Kion to roar by revealing his betrayal and threatening his family. This does water down Janja a bit, but again, with the idea that he'll be redeemed in due time, you have to put some limit on how far his villainous actions go.

Rescue in the Outlands. Good. God. On its own, it's perfectly fine, but Season 3 manages to make it retroactively worse. If they wanted to give hints that Janja was redeemable, redeem him at all, and imply a ship-tease between him and Jasiri, they should've dialed back some of the shit he does to allow him come across as less iredeemable. The writers didn't have to have him try to incinerate Jasiri and the cubs, and they didn't have to have him openly mock them as they're about to explode, but because they did, it shoots his rushed redemption arc right in the bloody foot. The episode would've worked fine with some workaround.

The workaround I would have for that? Well, I would have it be where Janja chases Jasiri's clan out of the Outlands so they're forced to hide in the Pride Lands until the Lion Guard helps them take it back. We'd see that Janja is content with Jasiri making it out alive under the assumption that she wouldn't come back. Still technically evil, but not anything way over the line. This would also allow Simba and Nala to be introduced to Jasiri, overcoming their own prejudice and bias about hyenas like Kion did, which would make for a far more entertaining subplot than... ugh... Thurston. And in the end, Simba and Nala help Jasiri and the Lion Guard flush out Janja.

The Bite of Kenge: I would include Makuu, just for the awesome factor, and the biology reference: Because crocodiles and monitor lizards are mortal enemies due to how the latter preys on the hatchlings of the former. Makuu absolutely rocking Kenge's shit would be so awesome. And also we'd get Makini and Makuu sharing dialouge (which I swear to god, does not happen at all in the show, FUCK!)

The first half of Season 2 would have Ushari as a red-herring, with several attacks from Outlanders accreddited to him. It isn't until the midseason finale where the Guard discovers that Scar is alive and realizes that he's the real threat they need to take out.

Speaking of the midseason, I would cut out Sumu entirely. He's a cool character and all, but I find it hilarious how not once does Scar consider sending Ushari, a cobra, in to bite the enemy team. Especially since the species of scorpion that Sumu is happens to be non-lethal (whoops!). Anyways, I'd have it be where Ushari takes Sumu's role of poisoning the king, biting him on the tail. This would invoke fear into the other Pride Landers, who deem him to be the big threat to the Pride Lands (i.e. red herring). Ushari's betrayal would be a secondary conflict in the episode, as they still struggle with the idea that one of their own could turn on their home. Ultimately, Scar's return is revealed, and that Ushari's betrayal was in the means of bringing forward a worse threat to the Pride Lands, which sets the tone for the remainder of the season.

Speaking of which, I would keep Kenge in. According to the writers, he left the army off-screen to avoid getting blasted by Kion's Roar, which to me, seems like a clever way of saying "We couldn't get the royalties to re-hire our Game of Thrones guest-star onto our preschooler show as a series regular." But like, I think having him stay on the army would just add more man-power, because why introduce him if he's not gonna play a role in the final battle.

An episode where Scar attempts to contact Zira to be in his army, but the Guard thwards him. Again, just a minor change. Also, once again, we'd see Vitani, possibly her facing off against Kion, to further the idea that she strongly rivals Kion in ferocity, which sets up the finale in a more natural light.

The Hyena Resistance would show both Kion and Jasiri rescuing Janja. That way, his redemption would come across as less of him crushing on Jasiri and more of him having his worldview legitmately changed. Additionally, we would have Kion or Jasiri mention the true cause of Scar's death to Janja, who would deny it at first, listing it as lies.

Pride Landers Unite and Fire From the Sky are meshed into one plotline, so Anga is introduced earlier on. I find it stupid that even though Mzingo is clearly on Scar's side, they don't at all consider him a suspect for the fire sticks. Plus having all of the Outlanders face off against the Pride Landers would be more thematic this way. Additionally, I'd have more members on the team, such as Big Baboon, Thurston, and even some of the giraffes.

Much like with S1, I would change the episode ordering around a lot, mainly because I think some events and interactions do not make sense when viewed by airing order. For example, the Hyena Resistance builds up to the idea that Janja would redeem himself, and the skinks also report Janja's hesitation to Scar, but that apparently means nothing when Janja is working with Scar two episodes after this one. And I feel like Kion gathering forces to help him defeat Scar would be the inciting incident for the end of the final battle.

The order I would arrange S2b in: The Scorpion's Sting -> The Wisdom of Kongwe -> The Kilio Valley Fire -> Undercover Kinyonga -> The Zebra Mastermind -> The Underground Adventure -> Beshte and the Beast -> The Queen's Visit -> The Hyena Resistance -> Pride Landers Unite/Fire From the Sky -> Cave of Secrets -> The Fall of Mizimu Grove

The Fall of Mizimu Grove would serve as the Season 2 finale (as it serves as a climax of the ongoing conflict, but not in a way that ends it). We'd show Jasiri and her clan, Ushari and his skinks, as well as Anga and the birds taking part in the battle before Scar himself is revealed. Otherwise, the episode is mainly unchanged, and once again, the finale of the second season.

Season 3:

I posted a rewrite of S3 onto the Lion King subreddit, but in the context of a rewrite of the grand series, things go differently.

Battle for the Pride Lands would be expanded into a 6-episode story arc, in which the older characters make their final stand in the fight against Scar. I take issue with the fact that for years, they built up Scar as a force to be wreckoned with, dragged the arc into S3, only to end it entirely there. I've entertained the idea of the special being the finale to S2, but I think this approach also works, just to allow the audience to get settled in with the new 'norm' just as a way to fix some of the pacing and writing issues I found in what was otherwise, the best episode of the series.

In this 6-episode story arc, I would allow a redemption arc for Janja in the premiere episode, so that he could have more time to atone for his mistakes. Janja would redeem himself in the premiere after realizing the truth behind Scar's death and that Jasiri and Kion were telling the truth. Janja would immediately leave Scar's army and encounter Jasiri. "A New Way to Go" would be a duet between them. Eventually, let's say Scar traps Janja's clan and Kion's Guard in the lair, and as they're all swimming away, Kion gets stuck and Janja is able to rescue him from drowning. This allows a heart-to-heart between them which also extends to the rest of his clan, Jasiri's clan, and even some of the Pride Landers. The episode ends with Janja joining forces with the Pride Lands, giving them the info they need to beat Scar once and for all.

In the second episode of this arc, we focus on the Outlanders, specifically their reaction to having almost killed Janja. One other beef I have with the special is how the Outlanders besides Janja are all given a backseat, and are eventually just hand-woven redemptions and written off entirely. So my rewrite allows more character development at the end of their story arc. We'd see scenes with Mzingo, him feeling regretful over having almost killed his partner (either accidentally or purposefully). And we'd focus on Dogo and his siblings, who took a backseat in S2, but would now be older. We'd see what Dogo was up to in S2, maybe watching in fear as his parents and siblings would get into more dangerous situations. He'd be old enough to fight, but he's completely burnt out and disillusioned. Essentially we'd see him get the redemption arc he was robbed of. The episode would end with him leaving, and Kijana staying (to show the idea that some people can change, but others can't). The episode ends with Scar threatening the remainder of his army with death if they turned against him, which is what gets them to join his team, but internally, they know that Janja was right for turning on them. Meanwhile, Ushari is still as evil as ever.

Episode 3 of this arc would focus on Kion enlisting help from the other kingdoms; The Theluji Mountains and the Backlands, in order for the impending battle ahead. This would allow some old characters like Sokwe, the Gorilla Princes, Dhahabu, and Badilli to return, and we'd learn more about their history and origins. Meanwhile, we see Scar recruit Makucha on his army to replace Janja.

Episode 4 of this arc would follow through on the redemption arcs. Specifically involving a moral in which not everyone will forgive you, but that shouldn't stop you from trying to be a better person. I think this episode would involve Janja and Dogo helping Ma Tembo and the elephants and hippos take back Kilio Valley and Big Springs, which puts a huge dent in Scar's plans. Perhaps Zito and Johari are those who choose not to forgive Janja and Dogo, but Ma Tembo and Basi do. Plus Janja and Dogo would make a really funny duo.

Episode 5 delves into Scar's past. I think the biggest problem with the backstory in the show is that it is entirely tacked on and is only there for plot contrivance. An entire episode would've been more serviceable, especially with the direction they were headed with. I'd change the backstory entirely. Here, I'd have it be where a rouge lion clawed Scar, and then having the cobra spit at him before he roars them away. He is hailed as a hero throughout the Pride Lands, feeding into his ego until it becomes too big for him, so he plots to overthrow Mufasa. When they refuse, he teams up with the hyenas to get rid of them. He lures them into the Outlands where he roars at them, and the hyenas hide what's left. The hyena clan take the fall, and Scar is left off the hook, but powerless. This is what Scar decides to use as inspiration to defeat Kion once and for all. Meanwhile, Kion and the Lion Guard search through the paintings of Scar's past and see what the audience sees in the flashbacks. At the end, they discover a cave painting of Askari putting out a fire at the Tree of Life, which re-inforces their belief that the Roar can and will stop Scar.

Episode 6 is the big special that caps everything off. The Lion Guard take their battle with Scar into the Outlands. A large majority of the battle portion of the original special would take up this episode. We'd see everyone join in, including Kinyonga, Badilli, the baboons and zebras, we'd see Ushari, Kenge, and the skinks facing off against the reptiles, Simba and his lionesses fighting jackals, Timon and Pumbaa causing mayhem, it's this whole big fucking thing. Eventually the Lion Guard is able to defeat them, but Ushari and Makucha double back. Ushari bites Kion, but it's established that it's only a small dosage of venom that will affect his mind, then Makucha scratches him, giving him a scar.

The big thing I'd change here is that I'd actually have Kion roar at the volcano to make it erupt. Jasiri and Kiara help lead the Pridelanders and Outlanders away from the lava flow. This would allow a set-up for Jasiri eventually ruling the Outlanders, and establish future events of the second movie where Kiara is willing to unite opposing sides in order for a brighter future for all. Meanwhile, the Lion Guard find themselves trapped as the lava surrounds them. Scar taunts them in their final hour, but that is when Kion decides that instead of destroying his enemies for injuring him, he offers them forgiveness, using the Roar to summon the Lions of the Past to destroy Scar. Makucha runs off in anger, and we get the same moment of Ushari's death, which would give off the idea that whilst offering forgiveness is good, some people are too far gone.

I'd make the Mark of Evil more well-defined by stating that Kion will lose control of the Roar and act out more with the small amount of venom within him. Not the whole "you will forget the difference between right and wrong" bullshit. The journey to the Tree of Life begins.

I'd rewrite the villains: A lot. This post did a far better rewrite of the S3 villains than I ever could, especially keeping in the theme of each villain being a 'counterpart' of the main heroes, so I'll link ya there. But yeah, I would allow Makucha to remain the intense threat he is, and give the villains' squad more numbers. I'd also probably switch out Chuluun and Varya's species. A tiger would be absolutely terrifying as a villain, and Varya and her cubs being attacked would be a lot less stupid if she were a smaller cat. I'd also have Mama Binturong be paired against Ono, as they are both the "brains" of their respective teams. Maybe Ono is able to use his knowledge on porcupines/binturongs to guide Bunga over to the Tuliza stash, and Mama Binturong targets him. I would also objectively have Mpishi in the army, she was robbed of a re-appearance.

I'd probably change the animation and voice-direction on Azaad to look younger, because he strikes as way too old for Fuli. And I'd probably keep their dynamic platonic.

Friends to the End is rehauled entirely. The episode assassinated Bunga's character development, and was low-stakes overall in ways that just do the main characters a disservice. Have him actually be worried as to what would happen to Kion, have his friends disagree with him thinking he's wrong. Have Bunga be the one to challenge Kion when he mouths off at Beshte, and have the titular song actually be sung to Kion.

Change the Night Pride. The Tree of Life is meant to be a congregation of biodiversity, so it would only make sense that its protectors be a mixed group of animals and not just more bland-looking lions (Asiatic lion portrayal is appreciated, but I think this was the wrong way to go at it). Once again, saw someone else do a far better rewrite of this, with the royal family as tigers, and with Nirmala and Surak as a dhole and buffalo, respectively.

I'd change Rani's character. A LOT. I think part of the reason why Rani has become such a divisive and controversial character in the fandom is because of her lack of accountability. She doesn't apologize to Kion and the Guard for her part in the misunderstanding, she doesn't apologize them for accusing them of leading Makucha and co. there, and even when Kion and Rani have seemingly come eye-to-eye in Long Live the Queen, the next episode continues to have Rani talk down to Kion, saying he has "potential" and not apologizing. I like when characters have flaws, but it's not satisfying when they don't acknowledge those flaws, apologize, and grow. Having Rani and Baliyo apologize towards the Guard, like say, at the end of Little Old Ginterbong, and gradually learning from their impulsive mistakes would be good character development, and it would allow audiences to get more used to Rani.

More episodes at the Tree of Life. One big issue with the show's ending is that it up and puts so much limelight on the Tree of Life in the finale when it's only been present for over 9 episodes. That's not enough time to get us to care, especially if your main character(s) will be moving in there by the finale. We should've had more episodes at the tree to learn about its history, how it's structured as a kingdom, the biodiversity there. Maybe even tie in with the other hanging threads of lore such as the Evil Lions of the Past, Askari's connection to the Tree of Life, his discovery of the Roar of the Elders, and the prophecy on the Roar returning to the Tree of Life. One of the writers themselves even said that they had a vision for the Night Pride's backstory including the disappearance of Rani and Baliyo's parents and the origin of Rani's scar, that, because of the limited episodes they had planned for the final season never actually made it into the series. If Season 2 can have nearly 30 episodes, then Season 3 can come close to that mark, especially when it's the end of the story and you need to put your all into it.

I would change Binga into a sloth-bear. This is actually a key detail of canon divergence in my fanfic, Roar Towards the Future, but to re-iterate, I HATE canon Binga with a passion. Lazy, unoriginal, and reeks of a lot of tired, worn out tropes from the 2000's. And yeah, it's an interspecies relationship, but in a world where the animals can talk sing, and communicate with each other, would it have hurt to change the species at least? Also, we get an Ono solo song because we were fucking robbed.

I'd change the specifics of Kion's healing, where he is cured of the venom, but still is unable to control the Roar, so Nirmala continues the healing, to which Kion realizes is not physical anymore, it's emotional, and that him mastering the Roar represents him finally having both his body and mind at peace. I really didn't like how S3a built up the venom to be Kion's problem that he needed fixing, only for S3b to say, "nope, it's just trauma," and have his healing focus around that. It's a good idea on paper, especially if you view the venom as a metaphor, but in reality, the way it's executed just gives off the idea that mental/physical health issues are one in the same thing in a box, and that treating one will inherently and unoequivically treat the other, which uhm... is a terrible message to have in a kids' show. They should've not brought up the venom at all and have that be the message from the start, or resolve the venom plot-line and point out how that's not where the healing journey ends, because the end-result makes it seem like the writers just forced the venom in there as an excuse to write Kion out of the Pride Lands in time for TLK 2, with no thought forbeyond plot contrivance.

I'd have the Lion Guard age from teenagers to young adults in S3, starting with the episode Long Live the Queen, to give off the idea that the Guard has stayed at the Tree of Life for a while to the point where defending it from the villains/Kion's healing has become the new norm. According to the writers, they wanted them to remain teenagers until the end, as a contrast to Kiara being an adult, but I think that shoots their story in the foot when it's somewhat a coming of age story, as well as the marriage thing in the finale, so I would personally have them shown to be grown up starting in the episode of Janna's death. I'd also have the origin of Rani's scar be explained. And I'd also establish closure for Sarabi by having Kion say he never met any of his grandparents. I think Sarabi deserved at least some closure in the series.

The Lake of Reflection flashback confuses me so much, because like, Janja is a teen, presumably an older teen when Kion is a cub, I highly doubt he'd be this tiny ass cub when Kion was a toddler. I would just have the flashback include everyone's S1 models pre-Return of the Roar.

I would probably have the final battle at the Tree of Life be a mirror to Pride Landers Unite, where the animals of the Tree of Life help the Lion Guard and Night Pride defeat Makucha and his gang. I'd also have the Rani/Kion romance be a separate episode on its own, which would then end with the cliffhanger of Kion being asked to stay.

Oh boy, the finale. Basically, the main thing I'd change is that it'd be an extended episode, possibly a double-length episode, or even triple-length like the Elena of Avalor finale, just to wrap everything up. Vitani's Guard is made of a mixture of different species on the Lion Guard. You can even keep the all female aspect, just have them be different animals than lions. You'd expand more on the TLK 2 callbacks (i.e. mentioning Nuka, suckers!), wrap up more character arcs, have Vitani and her team actually earn her moment (like say, defeating a new enemy, or maybe Makucha's army comes back and Vitani saves the day). I'd cut the entire bullshit contest, it is so stupid. And by the end, Kion chooses to give up the Roar and stay at the Tree of Life with Rani, BUT the rest of his friends stay at the Pride Lands, (including Makini, because she deserved to stay). The ending isn't focused around Kion and Rani's teenage wedding (because for one, they wouldn't be teens) but it would focus on the animals of the Pride Lands and Tree of Life commemorating Kion's former Lion Guard for all of their years of defending the Circle of Life, ending on a reworked version of "Here Comes the Lion Guard" from the soundtrack.

And lastly, (this is just wish-bait). An epilouge scene showing a reunion between Kion's former Guard in the Pride Lands, depicting the new lives they lead years into the future. As the sun begins to rise, they all head to Pride Rock just in time for a royal celebration; The presentation of Queen Kiara's second-born cub, who will lead the Lion Guard of the next generation. Roll the credits!

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magpiefngrl · 8 months ago

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hey! curious new writer here. which fix of yours were the easiest to write and which were the hardest? in what way?

Hello anon! Thanks for an interesting ask.

OK I'll start with the disclaimer that every fic has its difficulties as well as moments when it flows, but there have definitely been some that poured out of me with great ease than others which were a constant struggle.

The Miseducation of Draco Malfoy, my first drarry, was written at the height of my obsession and it poured out of me. I wrote like a fiend all day and would go to bed at night and reread what I wrote. I breathed that fic day and night for the weeks it took me to write it. It was also the most fun I had writing, prob because I was a complete unknown and there were zero expectations from me. Similarly, The Full Monty, written just after TMODM, was an easy fic to write. I remember I read the prompt and was immediately assaulted by images and started laughing on my own and was like, OK I need to claim this, the fic is writing itself.

Similarly but in a more tortuous way, dirtynumbangelboy poured out of me too. More tortuous because it took me ages to find the right beginning, and by then I was behind with my deadlines and got stressed. Also, I wrote it in a sort of dread of the Erised fest, because it had some amazing writers that year and I was intimidated. I remember my goal was to "at least not embarrass myself" .

But, aside from the doubts and stress, dnab itself flowed like nothing else. There are passages that I really love, even now years later, and they are exactly as they came out the first time. I did very little editing (compared to other works).

With The Boy Who Died I made a fun post on tumblr about a mdzs AU of drarry and then the idea wouldn't let me go so I had to sit and write it. Luckily it was summer and I didn't work and I could spend my days writing it. There were moments I got stumped but it mostly came out easily.

Finally, a lot of my short fics poured out of me in one go and came out almost perfectly formed. The Dare, A Perfectly Normal Reaction, and my MCD The Death You Carry are good examples.

Fics that took ages at first:

so my thing is that I have to find the right opening to begin the story, otherwise I can't proceed. I don't plan; the first scene/chapter is my plan. And sometimes I get stuck for yonks. With The Unquiet Grave I began with a Draco POV, him being a politician and Harry his bodyguard, had an interesting first scene and then---nothing. It's like I hit a wall. Zero words come. When I have this feeling, I know I need to go back and revise. Long story short, it was when I changed the POV to Harry that somehow the whole gothic mood came about and I felt the auspicious click: I got it. That's what the story is. A gothic romance. After that, it was easier.

The same thing happened with Hush, darling. I rewrote a first scene fruitlessly several times until a random bit of inspiration fell into my hands: the visual of a card game. I began with it and I let it guide me and the whole plot/stakes/cast fell into place.

Fics that needed a LOT of work and had to be dragged into existence:

The Gift is the first that comes to mind. First couple of chapters were pretty easy and then I was stumped. Writing it felt like dragging myself up a slope, step by step and also not being happy with anything, so that was fun. :/

The other is 9 ½ Days, which took actual years to finish. In that case the middle part was the hard one. I wrote the beginning fairly easily and the last chapters, the plotty ones, also flowed. But the middle. Zeus almighty. It took me years and I thought and thought and thought about it a lot. Finishing this fic was an immense relief but also a source of pride, especially because I really liked the result, and judging by the comments I get, people seem to love it too.

Thanks for an unusual ask! It was good to ponder about my fics and my writing process. The same issues seem to crop up with my original works too, and it's helpful to remind myself that I got over those issues before and I can get over them again.

#Inbox #my craft or sullen art #my stories

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veraynes-blog · 2 years ago

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hi! During the hollidays I went completely berserk on your tensimm fics and devored them. I never took the time to leave a comment because i was just always ravenous for the next chapter lol. I especialy love unspoken!! the concept of a willingly broken down and stuck tardis that still somewhat functions but isn't itself but still has all the infinite rooms,,,,argh!!! makes my brain go brrrrr i feel like its such rich ground for existencial horror Other than that, I'm absolutely in love with how you interprent tensimm, especially this..darker version of themelf the doctor can be if he lets himself get influenced, it really feels like yeah, this is what would happen to them. I also think you wrote the sexiest fanfic porn i ?? ever read???!! and ive been reading those for longer than i should Anyway I wanted to draw a big piece of fanart for you but other work got in my way. I still really wanted to show my appreciation for your writing hence this out of nowhere ask I wonder, what are your thoughts on 12 and missy? They're my fav version of them bc missy character's arc just!!!!gets to me, would love to have your thoughts :) Anyway i'll stop rambling on now, I hope you have a lovely day, I can't wait for whatever writing you have planned next

Oh wow, thank you so much??? 🥰 What a lovely message to log in to this morning!!

Ahhgh I'm so glad you enjoyed the fics! It's been my favourite fandom to (obsessively) take part in, which is probably why I'm not ready to let it go yet lol. I love your take on the broken TARDIS in Unspoken. Not something I actively considered at the time, but you're so right. They were living in a TARDIS shell, there's definitely something horrifying when you say it like that 😅

✨️Love✨️ when the Doctor gets an opportunity/temptation/influence to go a bit darker! You can tell in canon that it's something just below the surface, especially in Ten, and I feel like if he'd had more exposure to the Master his story could have gone a lot differently 👀

I'm always overwhelmed people even consider drawing fanart for my fics, thank you for telling me!! 🥰

And I love Twelve and Missy so much! Our first and only semi-canon confirmation of romance between them. They're also both a close second favourite in terms of versions of the Doctor and Master, for me. I would say, though, I always thought there was an air of... tragedy? That went right through their storyline. Not just the misunderstanding at the end (which to this day I find harrowing as a narrative 😔) but even the fact that Missy was so lonely and desperate to get her friend back that she was willing to change everything about herself? And the Doctor let her?? Demanded it, actually?? I dunno, she was just trying so hard in her own psychotic way, and I think Twelve wanted it to work as well, but he had such a strict and obscure moral code by that point that it all felt a little... doomed 😕

I do love them, I promise, I'm just not as good with tragedy as a genre 😅

Thank you again for the message! 😘

#doctor/master #doctor who #tensimm #twissy #verayne answers

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sineala · 3 years ago

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Tony Stark and Arthuriana

Coming to you by special request, a very long post about 616 Tony's interest in Arthuriana, with a focus on all of Tony's run-ins with Morgan le Fay!

I feel like I should disclaim the extent of my knowledge here, which is that I still haven't managed to read anywhere near every issue of Iron Man -- at least, not yet, anyway -- so I'm just going by the things I know I've read, and Morgan le Fay's Marvel wiki entry is frustratingly under-cited, so it's very possible I've missed something relevant, but I'm pretty sure I've got the big stuff down. My other disclaimer here is that I'm not as big an Arthurian nerd as Tony is, which is to say that most of my familiarity comes from modern retellings -- T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset -- and not so much the usual classic sources on the Matter of Britain, though I've read bits and pieces of them.

(This is because I wanted to read versions of them that were as close to the original as possible but so far have not ended up finishing any of them because, well, that's hard. So I've never read the Mabinogion because I do not know Welsh. I've got the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is probably the best student edition if you're looking for something without modernized spellings, as I was. I've also got -- well, okay, it's my wife's but I'm borrowing it -- a relatively recent Boydell & Brewer edition (ed. Reeve, tr. Wright) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which is, you guessed it, in Latin with a facing English translation. I haven't gotten very far in it because, in case you didn't know this about Latin texts, the beginning is pretty much always the hardest, so I gave up and read some Plautus adaptations instead. Anyway, if for some reason you too want to read Geoffrey of Monmouth in the original Latin I'd recommend that one, but I can't recommend any particular English translations because I've never read one by itself. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting Latin prose recommendations in this post. I mean, maybe you did; it is me, after all.)

Okay. Right. King Arthur. Here we go.

We've got:

Flashbacks to Tony's childhood in late Iron Man volume 1

A brief discussion of Morgan's origin story and Avengers #187

Iron Man vol 1 #149-150: Doomquest

What If vol 1 #33: What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?

Iron Man vol 1 #249-250: Recurring Knightmare

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1-4

Avengers vol 3 #1-4: The Morgan Conquest

Civil War: The Confession

Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11: Time Is On No One's Side

In terms of universe-internal chronology, we know from Iron Man #287, from 1992, that Tony has been a fan of King Arthur since childhood. This is an issue of a fandom-favorite arc which features Tony having a lot of childhood flashbacks, including the famous "Stark men are made of iron" line (in #286) that for some reason MCU fandom decided it loved; I mean, seriously, I've seen that quoted in way more MCU fic than 616 fic. But slightly later, in #287, we get an entire page devoted to Tony's love of King Arthur.

The narration reads: "Over the next few years, I learned as my father intended. Discipline of body. Strength of character. But in what free time I was allowed, I worked my way through the school's library. At thirteen, I discovered Mallory [sic], who showed me a whole new world. A world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Of chivalry and honor. And the fantastic deeds -- of armored heroes."

The art shows Tony as a child sitting under a tree, reading a book labeled Mort D'Arthur by Mallory [sic] -- no, don't ask me why nobody at Marvel checked how to spell either the name of the book or its author -- and daydreaming of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, knights, et cetera. Just in case you somehow missed the extremely blatant hint that we are meant to understand that Tony's knight obsession heavily influenced him becoming Iron Man as an adult, we see one of his armors mixed in with all the drawings of knights. So, yes, canonically Tony is Iron Man at least partly because he's a giant King Arthur nerd, which I think is so very sweet. I love him. He's such a dork!

(This issue is currently in print in the Iron Man Epic Collection War Machine, should you need your own copy.)

This isn't actually the only reference to Tony as a King Arthur fanboy in this era of canon, either; a little later, in IM #298, we see that one of Tony's passwords is actually "Mallory." (Yeah, no, they still couldn't spell. But it's cute.)

But in terms of actual publication order, this is definitely not the first time we have seen in canon that Tony is into Arthuriana, as I'm sure you all know. I would assume, in fact, that giving Tony a childhood interest in Arthuriana is because Doomquest is one of the most beloved Iron Man story arcs of all time, and that all started at least a decade before IM #287 here was published.

The villain of Doomquest -- the one who isn't Doctor Doom, at least -- is Morgan le Fay. Yes, that Morgan le Fay. Yes, Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan le Fay. Yes, all of this King Arthur stuff is canonically real history on Earth-616. Morgan's first appearance in Marvel, per the wiki, was in Black Knight #1 (1955), which I have not read, and judging by the summary I feel like this is probably just supposed to be a straight-up comic retelling of Arthurian legends for kids; I don't think Marvel really had the whole Marvel Universe in mind as a concept in 1955, so I'm not sure this was meant to connect to anything else. I feel like this is another one of those instances of Marvel discovering that they can write comics about characters in the public domain for free -- like, I'm pretty sure that's how we also ended up with, like, Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology wedged into 616.

As far as I can tell from the wiki, the first time Morgan tangled with the Avengers (or indeed the larger 616 universe) in any way actually predated Doomquest -- it was in an early arc in Spider-Woman (#2-6) and then Avengers #187, which came out in 1979, actually right when Demon in a Bottle was happening over in Iron Man comics. If you read #187, Iron Man is not in it because he's off the team due to his drinking problem and also his accidentally murdering the Carnelian ambassador problem. So Wonder Man's filling in instead. This issue is part of Michelinie's rather sporadic Avengers run, which makes sense, I guess, considering where we see Morgan next.

Anyway, Avengers #187 is the classic issue where Wanda is possessed by Chthon, but what you may not remember from Chthon's backstory (I sure didn't!) is that he was summoned by Morgan le Fay because she was the first person who tried to wield the Darkhold to summon him. As you can imagine, this did not work out especially well for her and her followers and they had to seal Chthon away in Wundagore Mountain, which was where Wanda found him. (The Spider-Woman stuff is only slightly earlier and also appears to be about Morgan and the Darkhold; the Darkhold is not one of the areas of 616 canon I am especially conversant with, alas. It's on my to-read list.)

Doomquest, as you probably know, was a classic Iron Man two-parter in Layton & Michelinie's first Iron Man run that set up Tony and Doom as rivals; Doomquest itself was IM #149-150, in 1981, and then in their second IM run they came back and did a sequel in 1989, Recurring Knightmare (IM #249-250), and then the much later four-part sequel to that was the 2008 miniseries Iron Man: Legacy of Doom, which was also by Layton & Michelinie but generally does not seem to be as popular as the first two parts. They've all been reprinted, if you're looking for copies; I have a Doomquest hardcover that collects the first four issues and then a separate Legacy of Doom hardcover. Currently in the Iron Man Epic Collection line there's a volume called Doom, which confusingly only collects the 249-250 part of the storyline (as well as surrounding issues), because for some reason the first Layton & Michelinie run isn't in Epics yet but the second one is. So the beginning of Doomquest isn't currently in print, as far as I can tell. I'm sure you can find it anyway.

So what's Doomquest about? Okay, so you remember how Doctor Doom's mother's soul is stuck in hell for all eternity? Well, Doom's obviously interested in getting her back, and the strategy he has embarked on is to try to team up with other powerful magicians who can help him out, and he thinks Morgan le Fay would be a good choice, for, uh, his quest. Doom's quest. A Doomquest, if you will. (If you've ever read Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment, you're familiar with the part where he later ends up waylaying Strange for this and they go to hell together. And if you haven't read Triumph & Torment, you really should, because it's amazing.)

So Doom is off to his time machine to go team up with Morgan le Fay and Tony thinks Doom is up to something -- Doom has been stealing components for his time machine from a lot of people, including Tony -- and he follows him and it turns out one of Doom's lackeys has a grudge and wants to trap Doom in the past forever, and Tony gets caught up in it. Now they're both in Camelot. Surprise! #149 is actually all setup; they don't get to Camelot until #150.

IM #150 begins with Doom and Tony thrown back into the past; there's a fandom-famous splash page of them locked in combat, only to realize that they have found themselves in Camelot.

They are then discovered by knights; Doom would very much like to attack them, but Tony, who naturally would be happy to LARP Camelot forever, persuades him to play nice. Also Doom thinks Iron Man is only Tony's bodyguard so he keeps referring to him as "lackey," much to Tony's annoyance. Somehow everyone thinks they're sorcerers. Can't imagine why. The knights take them to meet King Arthur himself, and Tony has clearly had his introduction all ready to go, as he introduces himself in a timeline-appropriate manner, says he's here to apprehend Doom, and demonstrates his "magic" by levitating Arthur's throne. Doom's response is essentially "I'm the king of Latveria," which is, y'know, also valid. So they're guests at Camelot for the night while Arthur figures out what to do with them.

We then have a page devoted to Tony alone in his room, musing sadly about how alien he feels, how he doesn't know if he'll ever get home, how he could never fit in here without his beloved technology. Then a Sexy Lady shows up to keep him company for the night, and he decides maybe it's not all bad. Thanks, Marvel. I guess they can't all be winners.

Doom is using his evening much more productively; he compels one of the servants to tell him where Morgan's castle is, because he's still interested in having that team-up. Then he jets off. Literally. He has a jetpack.

The next morning Arthur's like "one of you is still here and one of you has punched a hole through the castle wall and flown off to join Morgan so I guess I know which of you is more trustworthy." He then explains to Tony who Morgan is, because Tony professes ignorance, because clearly we had not yet retconned in Tony's love of Arthuriana. Tony offers to go fight Doom and Morgan with Arthur; meanwhile, Morgan and Doom have teamed up and Morgan has offered to help get Doom's mother out of hell if he commands her undead armies against Arthur because for Reasons she can't command them herself anymore. So that's a thing that happens.

So, yes, it's Tony and Arthur versus Doom and Morgan. Fight fight fight!

Tony tries Doom first but then decides to hunt Morgan down, and in the ensuing fight we get what I think is Tony's first ever "I hate magic," a complaint that we all know he still makes even to this day.

Anyway, Tony freezes a dragon with Freon (mmm, technology) and Morgan gets upset and disappears, so the battle comes to an end, and of course Doom is extremely mad at Tony because he blames Tony for Morgan not sticking around to save Doom's mom, because I guess Doom trusted her to keep her word? Weird. (Like I said, for the next chapter of Doom saving his mother, go read Triumph & Torment.)

Doom says if he and Tony work together, the components in both of their armors can send them both home. So Tony has to trust Doom. Which he does, because he really has no other choice. They build a time machine and Tony makes Doom agree to a 24-hour truce when they get back, so they can both get home. So it all works out okay, and they end up in the present, and Doom tells him, ominously, that they will meet again. Okay, then. That concludes the original Doomquest. It's fun! You can see why fandom likes it.

So that's all well and good, but you might have noticed that Tony's ability to get home hinged on Doom actually being trustworthy. And Doom was. But what if Doom hadn't been? What if he'd just stranded Tony in Camelot forever As you may have surmised from the form of that question, that is in fact a question Marvel asked themselves, because, yes, there's a What If about this! What If v1 #33 is "What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?"

The divergence point from canon, as you can probably guess, is the very end of Doomquest. Instead of Doom bringing Tony home, he deceives him and leaves him in Camelot. And since Tony cannibalized a lot of the tech from his armor to make the time machine, he doesn't have a way to go home.

This is not a story where Tony comes up with a way to go home after all. He really doesn't get to go home. But instead of drowning his sorrows in mead -- because, remember, Demon in a Bottle has already happened and Tony is sober now -- he decides he might as well just play the hand he's dealt. So with what's left of his armor, he defeats some enemies that Morgan rounds up to send against Camelot. And for his services, he's knighted. He is now Sir Anthony.

Tony acknowledges that he is both living the dream and would also like very, very much to go home.

He does end up having some fun in Camelot; it's not all miserable. But he obviously doesn't want to be there.

So if you're at all familiar with King Arthur, you know how this goes, right? Arthur fights Mordred and Mordred kills him. And that does happen in this version. Except Tony is right there, and with his dying words, Arthur asks Tony to rule Camelot... and Tony agrees.

So, yes, Tony Stark becomes king of the Britons after Arthur's death and he never goes home again. The end. Man, I love What Ifs.

Heading back to main 616 continuity, there is still more of this arc to go. The original Doomquest was only two issues, yes, but it was popular enough that Layton & Michelinie did a sequel a hundred issues later, in their second run of Iron Man, and that's Iron Man #249-250, Recurring Knightmare. (In the intervening issues were Denny O'Neil's IM run, specifically the second drinking arc (#160-200), and then Layton & Michelinie came back and most famously gave us Armor Wars (#225-232). I would have to say that Armor Wars is definitely the standout fandom-favorite arc of their second IM run; for their first one, I think a lot of people would have a hard time choosing between Doomquest and Demon.) But anyway, yes. Recurring Knightmare.

Recurring Knightmare is... well, the best way I can describe it is "a trip." It is definitely a sequel to Doomquest, and it is also definitely not a sequel you would ever have expected to see for Doomquest.

Much like #149, #249 is pretty much just setup. Fun setup, but the big action is in the next issue. We open with Doom in Latveria, on his throne, pondering which of his servants he should have disintegrated. Anyway, he's just hanging out there when a mysterious object appears. In California, Tony is suited up and entertaining the crowd at a mall opening when the same object also appears! He takes it to his lab. Please note that this is after the Kathy Dare incident, so Tony is still recovering and is walking with a cane. Doom sees on the news that Iron Man has found the same object, which cannot be carbon-dated, and he shows up at Tony's house. He criticizes Tony's taste in art.

Anyway, Doom basically orders Tony to work with him. Tony refuses, and then Doom sends some robots to attempt to steal Tony's version of the object because he thinks if he has them both he will be powerful. Doom manages to steal it, and when he puts the pieces together, both he and Tony disappear.

So where do they go, you might ask? Camelot?

Not exactly. The future! There is a great callback to the Doomquest splash page.

It turns out they are in London in 2093. Merlin brought them there. Tony still hates magic. And in the future, King Arthur is still there, except he is now a child, because he has been reborn. But he does remember Tony from Doomquest, at which point Tony kneels. Doom, of course, is not impressed. He asks why they have been brought to the future.

The answer is that things are going wrong in the future. If you do not personally remember United States politics in the 1980s, I need you to google the words "Strategic Defense Initiative" right now. I'll wait.

Back with me? Okay, so this is a future where Reagan's Star Wars program actually happened the way he wanted it to, and the satellites are still hanging around the Earth in the future and messing everything up, and Arthur and Merlin need Tony and Doom's help to stop them. Doom once again flies away with his jetpack, of course.

Tony is game to help, but he's not in an armor that can stay in space for long. This is when Merlin takes him and Arthur to the mall and Tony manages to get everything to upgrade his armor at Radio Shack. You see what I meant about this issue being weird.

Tony is out in space trying to disarm the SDI platform, which is where he runs into his future descendant, Andros Stark, who is in armor you will probably recognize from Iron Man 2020. He is referred to as "the resurrected spawn of Iron Man 2020" so I assume he's actually directly related to Arno rather than a direct descendant of Tony; Wiki confirms that Arno is his grandfather. This is all from way before Arno was contemporaneous with Tony in canon. Anyway, he's fighting Tony.

Oh, by the way, Future Doom exists. Future Doom would like to rule this future Earth and for some reason Andros would like to help him. Meanwhile, Present Doom finds out from Merlin that he can't leave except by magic and he can't leave without Tony, so he is reluctantly on Tony's side.

They need help from the Lady of the Lake, except the lake has been paved over and is now a parking lot. Merlin makes the lake come back and then of course they get Excalibur. Arthur is a kid, so he can't wield a longsword; Doom assumes he's going to take it because he is basically a king, and he's pretty grumpy when the sword picks Tony. Tony then uses Excalibur to destroy the space lasers, and I bet that is a sentence you never thought you would read. It's pretty cool. Tony concludes that magic has its good points. Tony stops Andros and Doom stops, uh, himself, and the world is saved and they get to go home. Also, Doom finds out Tony is Iron Man, but when Merlin sends them back he conveniently erases their memories, so neither of them remember anything about this and Tony's secret is still safe. And that's the sequel to Doomquest.

And if you think that's weird, wait until you see Legacy of Doom.

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is a four-issue miniseries from 2008, also by Layton and Michelinie. Even though it's from 2008, it's set during a much more classic time in Iron Man, continuing on from where we left off in this Doomquest saga. We start with a framing story in 2008. Tony, who has Extremis now, is busy scrapping some of his older armors and reviewing his logs when he suddenly remembers that there was a whole thing with Doom that happened that he seems to have forgotten about until right now. So the whole thing is narrated by Tony in flashback.

Tony's in space fixing a satellite when a hologram of Doom shows up and summons him to Latveria. It's not really clear why Doom needs Tony's help in particular here, but Doom tells Tony that he's discovered that Mephisto would like to bring about the end of the world, which Doom finds, and I quote, "presumptive." So Doom has his Time Cube, and with it he takes Tony to hell.

(Yes, I promise this is relevant to Doomquest. There will be some Arthuriana shortly.)

Doom brings Tony to Mephisto, and it turns out it's a setup! Doom trades Tony for an item he wants from Mephisto, leaves, and Tony's going to be trapped in hell forever! Oh no! (I mean, he's not. But it's quite a cliffhanger.)

At the beginning of issue #2, we find out what the Arthurian connection is, which is that we learned that after the events of Doomquest, Morgan had been granted sanctuary by Mephisto in exchange for a shard of Excalibur that she had somehow stolen. Doom still wants Morgan's help with some magic -- he doesn't mention what it is here, but he says he needs someone of Pendragon blood, and that'd be her -- so he traded Tony to Mephisto in exchange for, I'm guessing, Morgan and the Excalibur shard.

I have probably mentioned this elsewhere, but Legacy of Doom #2 is one of my favorite issues of Iron Man ever, solely because of the next scene. We return to Tony in hell. Howard Stark is also in hell, and he is now a demon, and Tony has to fight him. Mephisto brings popcorn and watches. This is the one time in canon when Tony actually confronts his father, and okay, yes, it's a fistfight in hell and Howard is a demon, but that's comics for you. Howard spends several pages insulting Tony -- specifically insulting his masculinity, but that's a whole other essay -- until he finally insults Maria too, and that's when Tony fights back, because his mother taught him to be good. Honestly if you're a Tony fan I'd recommend this issue just for that scene.

Anyway, we go back to the Doom and Morgan plot, and Morgan casts the spell Doom wanted, which was fusing the Excalibur shard with Doom's armor. Then Doom sends her back to Camelot rather than hell, because he's still mad that she never helped him get his mom out of hell like she said she would.

Tony freezes Howard with Freon -- yes, the same trick he pulled on the dragon back in Doomquest -- and tells him, "You're no father of mine." It is immensely satisfying.

(I had been going to mention that I thought it was a shame that neither canon nor fandom seems to have really engaged with this confrontation, and I know canon never believes in narrative closure but fandom sure does -- and then, anyway, it occurred to me that since the framing story of Tony remembering this is set when Tony has Extremis, there's a very good chance that he no longer remembers remembering it. Goddammit, Marvel.)

(If I got to retcon one canon thing about Tony, I think "the entirety of World's Most Wanted" is up there. I mean, okay, a lot of things are up there, but WMW is definitely on the shortlist.)

Okay. Tony has now engineered his way out of hell, and he's back with Doom in Latveria. Doom has Excalibur. Doom would very much like to fight him. While wielding Excalibur. You get the sense that this is going to be bad. Another cliffhanger!

Legacy of Doom #3 opens with Tony destroying Doom's lab to buy time and running away from Doom and Excalibur. I should probably mention that Doom still doesn't know Tony is Iron Man (anymore), so he thinks he is dealing only with Iron Man, Tony Stark's lackey. Meanwhile, some scientists at SI think there's something weird going on with space. Meanwhile meanwhile, Tony is in a forest taking a breather when a mysterious old man walks up to him.

It's Merlin! Surprise! Merlin wants Tony's help to stop Doom from doing whatever he's doing with Excalibur. The sword makes you invincible and the scabbard makes you invulnerable, so Merlin sends Tony to Scotland on a fetch quest for the scabbard. Doom has now magically sent the sword in search of the scabbard, so the sword flies away to meet it and Doom follows. Turns out the thing that's wrong with space is a thing that's going to hit Earth at the exact place Tony and Doom are. What a coincidence! So Tony and Doom get trapped in a stone circle and fight some stone warriors and then Tony ends up with the scabbard. And by "ends up with," I mean it fuses to his armor. Next issue!

Legacy of Doom #4 is when things really, really get weird. A giant demon made of eyes (???) appears, and this demon is apparently what Doom had been preparing to fight (because it's mad that Doom stole one of its spellbooks), and now he can't, because the sword and the scabbard aren't together. Thanks, Shellhead.

That's when Merlin shows up and says all is not lost. They can defeat the demon... if they put the sword into the scabbard.

"But I'm the scabbard now!" Tony says, uncomprehending.

"Yes," Merlin says. "You are."

Then Tony gets it.

So, yes, Doom has to, um, penetrate Tony. With Excalibur. I love comics. I love comics so much.

So that's a thing that happens.

And then Tony flies off and, I guess, resolves to never, ever think about any of this again.

We head back to the framing story, in which Tony, now having remembered all of this, flies to Britain, buys the land the lake is on, and paves it over, presumably so it will be there for Merlin to bring back in Iron Man #250. The end.

Whew.

Okay, yeah, I know I didn't have to summarize the whole thing, but Legacy of Doom here really is one of my favorite Iron Man miniseries. And I just want to share the love. Please read it. It's great.

But the Arthuriana fun doesn't end there! In fact, now we get an Arthurian-themed arc that actually isn't in Iron Man comics. It's in Avengers! Iron Man is involved, though.

(There is also apparently a Morgan arc in Avengers #240. I actually haven't read it. It seems to be yet another Spider-Woman arc. I get the impression that this isn't really Arthuriana other than having Morgan in it fighting Jess, though, so it doesn't seem quite as relevant. Morgan also apparently has some appearances in FF, Journey into Mystery, and Marvel Team-Up, but those seem like more of just basic villainy. Also, probably not involving Tony.)

Kurt Busiek's 1998 Avengers run, volume 3, is in large part the kind of Avengers run that is a nostalgic love letter to older comics. Heroes are heroes and villains are villains and good triumphs over evil. The Avengers all live in the mansion and are BFFs. I love it. It does assume that you are already a fan of the Avengers, because it starts out by summoning pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger and is available to the mansion, and that is... a lot of people. Thirty-nine, by my count. Also, when the entire team is magically whisked away, we are treated to the following narration, as Steve disappears: "And Captain America's last thought, as the world goes white around him, and he with it -- is that Iron Man would hate this."

The narration doesn't tell you why Iron Man would hate this, or how Captain America would know that Iron Man hates this. This is not explained later on. But if you have read comics -- or if you have read the above summary of Doomquest -- you know that Tony is absolutely, one hundred percent, thinking, "I hate magic." And Steve knows it.

The reference is not relevant to the plot; if you don't get it, you'll be fine. But that's what I mean when I say this is a nostalgia run. There are definitely Easter eggs for people who have read a bunch of comics. Busiek does this a whole lot in his work -- there's a reason you can buy an annotated edition of Marvels -- and, yeah, it happens here too. Just know that there will be references you're not getting, if you're new to comics.

Anyway. So Busiek's run actually starts out with an Arthurian arc, #1-4, "The Morgan Conquest." The name is a dead giveaway. Yes, Morgan le Fay is back. Again. For once, Doom is not involved.

The Avengers are all back from their sojourn on Counter-Earth after fighting Onslaught -- don't worry about it -- and mysterious things are happening. There are a lot of monster attacks. So pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger is summoned to the mansion, at which point we learn from Thor about some mystical artifacts that are being stolen. (They are the Norn Stones and also the Twilight Sword. That sounds like something from a Zelda game, doesn't it?) The Avengers go to try to stop this, end up in Tintagel, and then they run into Mordred. He wants to capture Wanda, presumably for Magic Reasons. Morgan le Fay casts a spell on all of them, reshaping reality. Yes, all of them. Surprise!

So now all the Avengers are living in a medieval castle and/or town; Morgan is their queen, and thanks to the power of mind-control they are all basically living in Ye Olden Times. The Avengers are all some variety of knight, except for Wanda, who is chained up in the dungeon so Morgan can steal her magic and use it to fuel all this reality-warping.

Wanda calls for help, and that snaps Steve (Yeoman America!) out of the mind control (or altered reality or whatever you want to call it) pretty fast, because Steve's always been very good at resisting mind control, and then Steve promptly goes and snaps Clint out of it, because I guess Steve is also good at inspiring people to snap out of mind control. "Oh, man!" Clint says. "Not another alternate reality! Not again!" (I assume he's referring to Counter-Earth? Maybe?)

So Steve and Clint go around reassembling the Avengers and orienting them as to reality. They get Jan and Monica easily, but then Steve insists on trying to get Tony because, I guess, he likes Tony and would really like to hang around Tony, who is half-naked and asleep in his bedroom, and certainly I am reading nothing whatsoever into this. Clint tells Steve it's not going to work. Tony has historically been fairly susceptible to mind control; it was only pretty recently at this point that he'd been doing Kang's bidding in The Crossing. But the more serious impediment is that this is Tony Stark and he would obviously like to LARP being a knight forever and ever. Tony, therefore, does not believe Steve, and throws him and Clint out of his bedroom and into the barracks.

"Iron Man's a good guy, normally," Clint says. "But he's waaay too into his whole nobleman/lord of the manor trip. That spell musta hit him right where he lives!"

Clint speaks the truth, clearly.

Anyway, they go around and manage to make pretty much every Avenger in the room other than Tony snap out, and attempt to rebel against Morgan while Tony is stil fighting them because he is Still A Knight. There's a lot of punching, because some of the Avengers still aren't free; they weren't ones Steve found.

The day is saved when Wanda manages to channel Wonder Man and break free. This gives the Avengers a fighting chance against Morgan and the Avengers are all lending Wanda their power when Tony finally snaps out of it and is on the side of good.

Then they take Morgan down, go home, and attempt to figure out which of these thirty-nine people should be on the active Avengers team. Hooray.

But that's not the end of Morgan le Fay showing up to screw around with Tony's life! There's more to come! Not much, but there is one that I know of, and at least one more memorable reference.

(I haven't read all her appearances or anything, but one of them definitely involves Tony; I can't swear that he doesn't appear in any of the other books Morgan shows up in, but it'd be a cameo for him, because I only know of one more arc that she's in in a book that Tony stars in.)

In a few more years, we have now entered the part of Marvel Comics history where Brian Michael Bendis writes all the Avengers books at the same time for, like, seven years running. It was sure A Time. There were a lot of word bubbles.

And the thing about Bendis is, Bendis looooooves Doomquest. If you're familiar with the very end of his tenure at Marvel where he made Doom be Iron Man after Tony got knocked into a coma in Civil War II, you have probably figured out already that he likes Doom. But he also likes Doomquest, specifically.

I mean, if nothing else, the giant splash page in The Confession where Maleev redrew the climactic Doomquest fight while Bendis had Tony talk about how deeply meaningful to his understanding of the world this all was -- and how it allowed him to predict Civil War -- was probably a big clue, right?

As far as I am aware, Morgan le Fay makes exactly one more appearance in Tony's life. And that's in Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11. Only one of those issues is named, so I'm going to assume the arc is named after it: Time Is On No One's Side.

You remember Mighty Avengers, right? The deal with the Avengers books at the time was that after Bendis exploded the mansion and made the team disband in Avengers Disassembled, the main Avengers book was no longer called just Avengers. Instead, the main Avengers book was New Avengers, and that was the only Avengers book. Then Civil War happened, Steve got killed, and New Avengers became the book about what was left of the SHRA resistance (i.e., Steve's side) after the war. So about halfway through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers starts up, and Mighty Avengers is about an extremely fucked-up and grief-stricken Tony Stark trying to run the official government-sanctioned Avengers team, with Carol's help. This is the comic with the arc where Tony turned into naked girl Ultron. You remember.

So, anyway, there's this Mighty Avengers arc where Doom is Up To Something (there are symbiotes and a satellite involved) and somehow Tony and the Avengers end up in Latveria, punching Doom. Also, by the way, Doom is visiting Morgan in the past because he likes her. The Avengers attacking his castle made him have to come back to the present, so he's kind of cranky. And he fights Tony, and in the course of the fight, his time platform explodes and sends Doom and Tony and also the Sentry to... the past.

This is one of those times where you should definitely look up the comics if possible because the way the past is visually indicated here is that it's colored with halftone dots the way you would expect old comics to be colored, although they have modern shading and color palettes. It's very charmingly retro.

So the three of them are stuck in New York in the past, and naturally they would like to leave. There's one person in this time who has a time machine and it is, of course, Reed Richards. Doom and Tony have a lot of banter in this arc; I think it's entertaining.

Sentry has to be the one to break them all into the Baxter Building because of that power he has where no one will remember him. So they do that, travel forward in time, and end up in Latveria in the present again except Doom is gone and also things are currently exploding where they are.

Doom, of course, has made a side trip to visit Morgan again and he asks her to help him build an army, because I guess this is what their relationship is like. So the rest of the Avengers are captured by what look to me like Mindless Ones and are in a cave in magic bondage, because comics. Jess comments that at least they aren't naked, because she too is remembering that memorable New Avengers trip to the Savage Land. Doom threatens Carol in some creepy sexist ways and eventually it turns out that Tony and the Sentry are fine and everyone kicks Doom's ass. Business as usual.

And the last page of the arc is Morgan alone, wondering where Doom is. So technically Morgan and Tony don't come face to face here, but I think she counts as being at least partially responsible for ruining Tony's day here. And then Secret Invasion happens and Tony has a very, very bad day.

There are a few more Morgan appearances after this, but, as I said, I don't think any of them involve Tony. She shows up in Dark Avengers, apparently, which was one of the post-Civil War Avengers titles I didn't read, and I know that recently, on the X-Men side of things, she's been in Tini Howard's Excalibur one, which I have only read a little of. No Tony there. Just a lot of Morgan and Betsy Braddock and Brian Braddock and the Otherworld.

If you are interested in Morgan's other appearances, you might like this Marvel listicle that is Morgan le Fay's six most malicious acts. I pulled some of the Darkhold backstory from their discussion, but it's not really focused on Morgan and Tony.

So there you have it! That's everything I know about Tony's love for King Arthur and every run-in I know about that he's had with Morgan le Fay! One of two terrible people in Tony's life named Morgan! Actually, I don't think we've seen Morgan Stark in a while. I wonder if he's alive. There should be a Morgan & Morgan team-up. I should probably stop typing and post this.

The tl;dr point is that you should all read Doomquest and its sequels, especially Legacy of Doom. They're great!

#posts i actually wrote

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raisinchallah · 3 years ago

Note

I can't find the post now but you saying in Strange New Worlds where Spock says "Starfleet is where I'm accepted" or something like that. Excuse me while I make my tinfoil hat but I can't shake the feeling that newer Trek shows are shifting to military propaganda or 9/11 really did move TV so far right that they have to be even more obvious and basic with their messages. Like you said, it's such a revision but also hard for me to not think "Who benefits from this"

ok this answer got a bit out of control dfjklad;jklj its going under the cut

yeah i think theres a ton of different factors and i do think its been a gradual shift starting before these new shows like i didnt actually realize until recently but voyager was produced as a network show not a syndicated show like tng and ds9 and had to answer to the executives of upn as well as paramount (tho paramount owned upn) and there was a lot more executive meddling and was part of why the show like wasnt able to have any kind of overarching story or anything tho rick berman was also super nervous about that and in many ways voyager feels like a shift towards a sort of baffling obsession with starfleet rules and obsession with starfleet for starfleets sake which i think is somewhat jarring after watching ds9 and feels like active course correction and then of course the most extreme product of the post 9/11 tv environment was enterprise also produced in a similar atmosphere with that kind of oversight and all that i think also well its been the slow march towards understanding itself as a larger franchise as well and i guess as each subsequent show is produced its like actively defining what the franchise itself is... and then theres aos which actually is pretty interesting on this front that it does portray a much more militarized starfleet and is definitely critical of that but i think perhaps has been taken by some people to be like well starfleet = good so militarized starfleet also = good and because it was so many peoples first introduction to star trek i dont actually know how that has altered fan perception and so on and now we exist in a world of more and more giant sprawling franchises that also have extremely tightly controlled content that is also wrapped up in military propaganda and i dont think star trek is ever gonna like fully going on in that direction but i do find it interesting i guess starfleet has become the defining trait of the series and must always exist i think the push to bring back the federation in discovery really is so puzzling to me but i guess just again reflects this history and i suppose u cant really call something star trek now if u dont have the little delta shaped badge on or something when i dont really feel like that has to be what it is cuz its a massive massive universe to explore i know picard this season is i guess trying to be political and comment on current events but tbh i havent watched it so i do not really know how people are assessing its handling of it and all but i do think this would be idk interesting to look into and think about and wow i just realized i strayed kinda far from your question um anyways back to the revisionism yeah i think partially it might just be trying to sand off the edges and redefine this story and show for their ongoing franchise plans and like the newer shows have very much been stuck in looking at old star trek sort of a snake eating its tail which i think will always angle towards somewhat underwhelming and kinda conservative takes idk i wonder if in many ways its trying to reflect how fans and the public percieve what star trek should be rather than like reality idk all marketing something adkl;kladfj i am trying to not be so cynical and whatever but idk its interesting ok sorry for the word wall

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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 4 years ago

Text

Stalker X Stalker, Part 11

First

Perma tag: @nathleigh @peachmuses

Stalker x Stalker taglist: @aespades @jayjayspixiepop @blueslushgueen @fan-written @seraphichana @nerd-nowandforever @toodaloo-kangaroo

Plot? What's that? I only know domestic fluff

She really didn’t know what to think when Tim asked to move in for a second time the next morning.

On the one hand, it felt like she was taking advantage of him. He’d seen her get shot and she doubted he’d really thought rationally since.

On the other hand… he essentially lived there already and it would do a lot to alleviate the anxiety the both of them had...

She rubbed her eyes -- ha, as if she hadn’t been awake the whole night to make sure he hadn’t had nightmares -- for an excuse to look away while she thought. What should she do? She would be lying if she said she didn’t want him to move in, she knew that was clouding her judgement, but even if she recognized her bias it wasn’t easy to just put it aside.

She sighed lightly and lowered a hand from her eyes. Tim looked really cute after having just woken up with his hair all messy and his eyes half lidded and one of his cheeks slightly flatter where he’d been resting his head against her and who can really say no to that face?

… well, Marinette supposed that would allow both of them to relax a little...

She let her hands drop to rest on top of his.

“Sure, darling. If you want you can move in… but, if you ever want to move out, I won’t stop you. Just ask.”

He cracked a tiny smile. “The only time I’d ever move out of this place is if you were changing apartments.”

She snickered. “Where I go, you go?”

“You have no idea,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “You bats and your dumb cryptic sentences. Would it kill you guys to ever say a single thing directly?”

“Yes. I’m pretty sure that I would drop dead on the spot.”

Her lips twitched. “Oh yeah? Heart attack or sniper?”

“Can’t tell you. I would drop dead on the spot.”

“Damn. Foiled again by the… mystery cause of death!”

The smile on Tim’s face brightened and he looped his arms around her. “You’d save me.”

“Oh? And miss out on my chance to get that rich boy money you probably gave me in your will?”

He schooled his face back into a serious look. “I see. I’ll have to write you out of my will, then. Make sure you bring me back.”

“Nooooooooo! My scheme! Ruined! Now how will I become a millionaire without trying?!”

They looked at each other for a few seconds, his face purposefully smug and hers pinched into a frown…

And then they broke character, giggles falling from their lips and smiles lighting up their faces. She tipped her head forward until it rested against his chest. He squeezed her tighter.

Then, to her surprise, he flopped back on the couch, pulling her with him. “Alright, sleepy time,” he said cheerfully.

“Darling --.”

“You didn’t sleep last night. Sleep.”

She pressed against his chest until she could sit up just enough to glare at him. “I have super strength. May not be as strong as Connor or anything but I can definitely get away from you if I wanted.”

“Of course.” A smug look made its way across his face. “But you wouldn’t hurt your darling, would you?”

She glared harder despite the slight reddening of her cheeks. His smirk didn’t waver.

Marinette huffed and dropped back down. “You’re the worst.”

“You love me.”

She didn’t respond to that, instead just grumbling ‘pillows don’t talk’ and letting herself finally nod off.

Having two perfectionists trying to figure out the layout of a limited living space might not have been their brightest idea. They should have, at least, gotten someone to help.

Instead they had brought out Marinette’s tape measure and mapped out the entire apartment on a sheet of paper and then made tiny shapes for the furniture. Now, they sat at the table, obsessively moving pieces around.

It could have been worse, of course. Neither of them were the type to hoard things. He wasn’t all that concerned with anything other than his clothes and his laptop. Marinette only cared about her clothes, video games, and baking tools -- all of which could be tucked away in the provided closets and cabinets with ease. If needed they could probably get by with nothing but a dresser and a pull out bed each.

So, yeah, their own personal living styles weren’t the problem…

It was their work. Who knew their workaholic tendencies would be their downfall (besides everyone, of course)? She needed a lot of space for her fabrics and mannequins to make sure nothing got damaged. Tim would need a lot of space for his supercomputer if he didn’t want to make the long trip to Bristol every night.

Speaking of the trip to Bristol! He needed a place to put his motorbike and his suit. Shit. He could find a place to park his bike if he tried, but… he started cutting out a piece for the suit.

Marinette saw him adding more stuff and her head hit the table.

He snickered a little and poked her hair until she, however reluctantly, picked her head back up to send him a halfhearted glare. He smiled, reaching over and plucking the tiny square of paper from where it had stuck itself to her forehead. A blush spread across her cheeks.

Then she happened to glance down and her annoyance was back in full force.

“We didn’t think this through,” she said.

His smile became more strained as he looked down at their map. “Moving sounds so easy on paper.”

“Maybe it’s easier for people who don’t have such complicated lives.”

“Yeah. You’re right. I’m quitting.”

“Aw, but then I’ll lose my patrol buddy! I’ll have to do everything with your siblings instead.”

His nose scrunched up. “God, no. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

She rolled her eyes. “Please, you love your siblings.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t know they’re the worst.”

She looked like she was going to argue, but then she tipped her head and nodded. “True.”

He snickered.

Their smiles disappeared quickly as they looked back at the layout of the apartment. Could they even fit all their stuff?

… wait, actually, could they?

He started shuffling things in and he realized that, if they wanted to have space to walk, there wasn’t enough room. No wonder they’d had so much trouble finding a layout that would work. It was literally impossible. They needed more space.

She hesitated slightly. “... what if we bought out the apartment next to this one for work? It could even double as a backup in case you ever decide you want to have a place of your own again.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Can we do that?”

“You’re rich, you could probably figure it out.”

He rolled his eyes. “I mean, yes, we can technically kick out the people next door but I’d kind of prefer if we didn’t displace random families.”

“I mean… we could always…” She made a stabbing motion.

He couldn’t laugh at that. Laughing at that would be bad. So he wouldn’t do that.

“Bean -- Mari -- no.”

“I’m just saying! We’d even get the apartment at a discount!”

Okay, he might have laughed a little.

… they didn’t end up stabbing anyone but, hey, if the family next door happened to get some huge scholarship courtesy of The Wayne Foundation that they didn’t remember applying for with the stipulation that they would have to move districts... then they just so happened to have a lucky break. Good for them.

Which meant that they only really needed to buy a desk, a dresser, and a bed.

So they went to Ikea! A boring place where no shenanigans ever happen!

… well, no shenanigans ever happen if you’re not a pair of vigilantes that bounce bad ideas off of each other like they were playing a particularly intense game of Don’t Let The Balloon Touch The Ground and the entire world would blow up if they dared to lose.

Speaking of things that touch the ground, the resident dumbasses should probably have kept their feet firmly planted on it.

Marinette squinted down the escalator. “Oh, they’re definitely going to kick us out.”

“Definitely,” he agreed.

“Maybe arrested.”

“Maybe that, too,” he said brightly, checking the pot over his head to make sure it wouldn’t come off.

“... the PR team is going to hate us,” she warned him.

“Absolutely.” He could feel the gaze on the back of his head, telling him that the employees had noticed them and, quite likely, knew what they were planning. “Ready?”

A grin spread across her face. “Of course.”

He smirked. “Good, because they’re coming.”

She glanced back at the employees making their way over to interfere.

“Threetwoonego!”

He pushed off with his foot, relishing in her indignant yelp, and grinned widely as he started the very bumpy ride that was snowboarding down an escalator. He’d thought he’d be more or less okay because he had been a skateboarder but it turns out that boarding down moving stairs is very different from boarding down flat planes. He let loose a string of curses as he struggled to hold the plank of wood to his feet and not die a very painful, very stupid death.

Marinette came whizzing past him, eyes wide and the tray she’d been using as a board somehow missing.

She met his eyes briefly and flashed a grin.

And then they crashed.

It was about as painful as one would expect. Tim was glad that he’d thought to give himself a pot-helmet-thing because it had cracked down the middle and he didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t done that.

And he was the lucky one. He got out with a few bruises and a better appreciation for his own life. Marinette was nursing an arm that looked like it was trying to imitate the escalator they had just slid down, lips pressed together tightly as tears threatened to escape.

He carefully crawled over to check for any other injuries that might have been less noticeable.

She grinned up at him, either because he was currently checking to see if her teeth were all in place or to be smug. What she could currently be smug about, though, he had no clue…

“You’re so stupid,” he told her, just in case she wasn’t already aware.

Her smug grin remained even after he had removed the finger from her mouth. “You’re just mad that I won.”

“... sorry?” He hadn’t even been thinking about their impromptu race, too concentrated on the whole ‘making sure they hadn’t just died’ thing, and it took a moment for his brain to catch up. Then he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, won a pretty new cast, maybe.”

She snickered. “You had to cheat and you still didn’t even win. How does it feel to suck?”

“Probably still better than it feels to have a broken arm.”

She sat up. “It’s fine, I’ll live.”

He snorted. “You bet you will. I’m going to bubble wrap the whole apartment.”

“You can’t babyproof the place! We don’t even have kids yet!”

Before he could question her use of the word ‘yet’, the employees managed to get their attention. They were trying to get down the currently very broken escalator and the one that was currently going the wrong way for them. Despite this, the two of them had only a minute max before they reached them.

Marinette and Tim locked eyes.

“Run?” She suggested.

He was already getting to his feet. He dropped a business card for the employees and turned to her.

He grabbed her good hand and they sprinted out of the store, smiles lighting up their faces and laughter spilling from their lips. The poor employees hadn’t stood a chance of catching the two vigilantes, even injured as they were. They knew the city like the back of their hands and were able to weave in and out of side streets and alleyways without much thought.

Once they were sure that no one was following them -- leaving a store unattended in Gotham was a terrible idea and Tim had left a card for them to call -- she tugged him to hide between two buildings.

They squeezed into the tiny space and leaned into each other for support while they struggled to catch their breath. Her good hand came up to grip his shirt. He rested his forehead against the wall above her.

She lifted her gaze to his and he wished she hadn’t because he’d already been out of breath enough before she’d done that but now here was staring into her blue eyes, the corners crinkled in a way that had become so familiar to him over the past few months, and god… all he could think about was all the stories that described how time stopped when you fell in love… and how those stories couldn’t be more wrong. He would have hated for that to happen because if time stopped then he would have to see that perfect smile of hers in anything but real time and he doubted that it would have looked nearly as beautiful without the way her shoulders shook with barely restrained laughter or the slight fluttering of her lashes or the steady pinkening of her cheeks.

She finally gave a little puff of laughter. “What?”

He blinked once, trying to bring himself back to what was going on. “Oh, I was just thinking…”

“Oh? Don’t strain yourself.”

He smiled. “I was just going to say something nice but instead I’ll insult you on your stealth. You’d be a terrible criminal, laughing during your getaway.”

She rolled her eyes. “You laughed, too.”

“Yeah, but when I did it it was super cool and professional.”

“Ah, I see. How could I not have noticed it before?”

He snickered. “Well, if today has proved anything, it’s that you are not, in fact, the world’s greatest detective.”

She grinned. “You were the one that put the pot on my head originally.”

“You came up with the idea to go down the escalators like that.”

“You agreed.”

“You -- I -- shut up,” he complained, sending her a glare.

She smiled at him until he pretty much had no choice but to smile back, letting his head fall the last few inches to press his forehead against hers.

Her hand gripped his shirt a little tighter.

He moved his hands from the wall to her waist.

They stood there, letting time pass them by, searching each other's eyes for some sort of answer to the question neither of them could bring themselves to ask aloud. He bit his lip, trying to swallow down his anxiety.

Her eyes flicked to his lips, her own parted as if to say something, before she seemed to think better of it.

She closed the gap. His heart skipped a beat at the feather-soft feeling of her lips against his and he let his eyes flutter shut. She teased his lip out from between his teeth with her own.

And then she pulled back just slightly.

He opened his eyes just enough to see her shy smile and the blush lighting up her face.

“You… you really have to stop doing that. They’ll get chapped --.”

He pressed forward again, capturing her lips in a kiss that was far more desperate than the last. She gasped quietly and he took the chance to slip his tongue into her mouth. The hand fisted in his shirt slid up to wrap around the back of his neck, dragging him even closer. He pressed her back against the wall, a hand trailing up to tangle itself in her hair, trying to reach more --.

She brought her bad arm up to cradle his face and then yelped in pain.

He jumped back. Right. Broken arm. Looks like a staircase. Not good.

He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Uh… let’s get you treated.”

Marinette ended up with a pink cast and an order to stay home for at least a week.

She pouted, resting her head back against the couch as she watched him shuffle around in search of his second shoe (it was tucked behind her back, but he didn’t need to know that). “I’m not a child, you guys can’t just ground me,” she complained for what felt like the millionth time.

Tim rolled his eyes. “We all have to do it when we break bones unless it’s an all hands on deck situation. Been like that since even before I was Robin.”

“But B goes out with broken bones all the time!”

“That’s different.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“It is. If there is a situation where B can be a hypocrite he will do it”

Marinette scoffed. “And you’re allowed out because…?”

He started counting off on his fingers. “None of my bones are broken, my job requires me to leave, I don’t get in trouble 9/10 times I leave the house… should I go on?”

“Last one is a lie,” she mumbled.

“No, I only get in trouble, like, 8/10 times I leave.”

It was hard to maintain her glare. She settled for sticking her tongue out at him like the mature adult she was. He returned it, despite the fact that he was also an adult according to the law.

He grinned and came to sit next to her on the couch. She shifted around until she was leaning against him instead of the couch, legs tangling with his.

He didn’t say anything about the blatant attempt at trapping him there with her. Instead, he leaned closer to her face and said: “Speaking of leaving, do you happen to know where my other shoe is?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Why do I get the feeling that you already know where it is?”

He snickered. “I know you, Bean. So, can I have it back?”

“Hm… I don’t know…” she said, twirling his tie around her hand.

He let her pull him down for a kiss. She giggled against his lips as his hands ghosted over her in search of the missing shoe. She kept her good hand at his collar as a kind of silent promise that she wouldn’t -- couldn’t -- move the shoe, even throwing her bad arm around his neck just in case.

He pulled away a few moments later, squinting at her suspiciously. “I’m beginning to suspect I’ve been tricked.”

Her eyes widened in mock innocence. “Me? Trick you? I could never.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, where is it?”

She glanced at the time and smirked. “I guess you’ve earned it…” She pulled her foot out from between the couch cushions to show him the shoe she had hastily slipped on when he’d gotten close.

He scoffed lightly and slipped it off. “Y’know, if I had literally one of the most common fetishes in the world that wouldn’t have worked.”

“But you don’t, so it did,” she chirped with a cheeky grin.

“Guess that’s true…” He pecked her lips one last time before pulling his shoe on and she grinned as she watched him head to the door.

Only to stop a little short because of a knock.

He raised his eyebrows and glanced back. “Are one of my siblings coming over?”

She pressed her lips together thinly to keep herself from laughing. “It’s not any of their normal times. I just figured that, if I had to be home alone all day and couldn’t really do any work because my stupid cast, I should at least keep busy while you were gone.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. He stepped forward and opened the door to reveal a delivery guy with three giant boxes. The furniture they had ordered from Ikea had arrived.

He signed for them and then turned to glare at her. “You planned all this so I couldn’t go.”

“I mean… you could always leave me here to do them myself.” She batted her eyelashes at him innocently. “Of course, my broken arm will make it a little difficult but I’m sure I’ll manage.”

She had been stared down by Batman in full kevlar, she could handle the glare Tim gave her in his slightly messy work suit.

Then, he sighed. “Do you have a backup plan?”

“Obviously. Don’t think you’ll like that one as much.”

He scowled. “You’re really this determined to not be home alone?”

“Oh, no, this is about getting B to allow me out. Trapping you and your siblings here is just a means to that end.”

“You’re going to be trapping my siblings here, too?”

She grinned. “Yep. They show up all the time, might as well use that.”

His shoulders slumped a little.

She giggled. “If I have to stay inside all the time then so do you guys. It’s the rules.”

And, so, she reached for him until he pressed a short kiss to her lips.

Then, they got to work. Or, rather, he did. She had been relegated to just sitting nearby and helping him figure out how to build it.

She took a few pictures for their public accounts as necessary: a picture of him with three screws poking out of his mouth while he tried to figure out the weird L-shaped tool he’d been given, a picture of the two of them staring at the instruction sheet with confused frowns on their faces (taken by Tikki), Vanelope enjoying the boxes the stuff had come in, what was definitely not a thirst pic of Tim, and then the finished furniture in the apartment.

It was there, right before she was about to post it, that she realized that she hadn’t actually publicly followed any of the Waynes. She squinted at her bio, which proclaimed that she would only follow people she genuinely liked, and then at the ten people she had followed. The internet would notice if she suddenly followed eight more people.

“Darling?”

He peeked an eye open from where he was relaxing on the couch and then raised an arm for her. She took his hand and smiled a little when he pulled her into his lap so he could hug her like a pillow.

Then she pulled a more serious look to her face. “Do you want to go public or not?”

He buried his face in her neck. “Sure.”

“... not even gonna think about it?”

He shrugged. “They’re going to suspect it no matter what. Especially since we were goofing around in an Ikea of all places and you’re uploading pictures of me helping you with furniture.”

She nodded slightly. “I know, but I don’t have to upload them.”

There was a long silence as they considered their options.

Eventually he just sighed and tightened his grip on her. “I’ll go with anything you want to do, Bean.”

She relaxed slowly and, hesitantly, she sent him the photos. “Here, you can upload them, too. Might as well make it public on both of our accounts.”

He picked his head up slightly to check out the pictures. She felt his lips curl into a smile against her shoulder at the picture of Vanelope. “This one is nice.”

She snickered. “All cats are cute, obviously it would make a nice picture.”

He hummed his agreement. “No offense to you, you’re cute and all, but the cat definitely wins the cutest here.”

“I’m not offended at all. We could never beat that.”

Then, she got an idea.

“Except… maybe… want a picture of us kissing for the reveal?”

“I’ll take any excuse,” he said with a wink.

She rolled her eyes even as she felt her face warm. “You don’t need an excuse to kiss me, dumbass.”

Now it was his turn to blush. Yay, revenge.

… also, it would be cute for the picture if they were both a little red for it.

She twisted in his lap to press a kiss to his lips. His hands came up to cradle her face. She threw her bad arm around his neck, fingers threaded in his hair.

Her camera clicked. They ignored it.

#im going to write a million words of fluff and no one can stop me #unless i get like zero likes #im v motivated by likes and reblogs pls guys i need it #pls #also they're getting worseeeeeee #tim is lowkey possessive and mari is lowkey controlling #but its v lowkey so #baaasically doesn't exist #stalker x stalker #maribat #tim drake #red robin #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #timari #timmari #timinette #shutterbug

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practicalmagicintuitions · 4 years ago

Text

Reading on HC

DISCLAIMER: If you will send me an Anon, I will answer in the same tone as your ask, opinion is written.

All information and statements made in this reading or any other post of mine are all alleged until proven to be fact and for entertainment purposes & usage only. All information stated is based on my intuition and my tarot cards. Opinion only. The readings have no intention to cause any harm to the individuals, people featured in it.

Disclaimer 2 : seems extra long reading to me, sorry for that. If there any typo sorry for that too, I wanted to post this today, so I typed like a mofo.

Cards pulled on 15/07

What is happening now?

Devil rx Eight of Wands.

On The Devil card, you can see the couple from the Lovers card chained together while The Devil is watching them. Those two cards are numerological counterparts ( The Lovers 6 The Devil is 15 = 1+5=6) so they have a connection but this is not limited to some romantic relationship. This card also deals with addiction, obsession, influences, control, illusion, materialism. And when the card is upright the pentagram is in the “wrong” position, it’s upside down. So when the card is reversed, the pentagram returns its correct position and becomes the protective symbol again.

So The Devil rx means the chain falls off, it’s an opportunity to free yourself from those obsessive, addictive things which affect you. It's realising you have the power to change. But before you came to this realisation and urge to be free, you have to hit the rock bottom. I feel it’s important to say that in this question I haven’t asked about his romantic relationship, so it could mean changing a circle of friends or situations too.

8 of wands is often called the cupid’s arrow or the falling in love card while it is more about infatuation and adrenalin rush. It’s also a fast-moving card. This card is also called the holiday love card.

So I see two possible options. One of them is he is ready to free himself from some bounding situation fast. And this freeing attempt makes him enthusiastic, cause some adrenalin rush and in this case, it means he is trying to free himself from infatuation. He wants rapid results. The second option is that he is trying to free himself because there is another person, a third one if you like.

HC+NV relationship now.

Eight of Swords rx, Five of cups, The Sun rx.

It’s very interesting to see those 3 cards together, I had to meditate on them a little bit longer.

With the 8ofSwrx I think he has a more realistic, clearer view on this relationship. I think this clarity cause great sadness and regret. (5ofC) Sun rx means the relationship is cooled down. 5ofC is a traditional bad relationship card. Not necessarily a breakup but definitely arguments and disharmony. Because this is about the relationship and because 8ofSWrx is about to break free, release, escape freedom (like the Devil rx) and the 5ofC has a breakup meaning, I think the relationship itself lost its warmth, burnt out. Maybe because the past events were too much or one of the parties is still crying over a “spilt milk” aka cannot let the past go, a past relationship perhaps. If this is about letting go of this current relationship with NV, it won’t be a lucky “escape”. It will bring sorrow, probably thinking about why this didn’t work?

HC feelings, emotions

Judgement rx on top of it 7ofSwords

Judgment rx is about a difficult transition you are resisting or need time to adjust. It’s the refusal to hear the call. Delays, confusion, broken family units. etc. But because we have the 7ofSw on top of it ( and I mentioned before how I pay attention to the cards that fall on the others. This is only my method, maybe others don’t care but I do) I think he is seeking a way out about this situation he seemingly cannot let it go. But this card is an unsettling, shady, sneaky one. It brings dishonesty. Walking on eggshells, getting away with something, preparing for some action. Discomfort is the foundation of this card, it’s almost like you want to be truthful but cannot get what you want with honesty. This is the white lies, diplomatic approach to a situation. You know how he was compared to a politician, this is it basically. I feel this is the I cannot let go, but somehow I want to but my methods and ways won’t be honest and nice. For example when your partner is cheating you but too coward to admit it and accusing you of cheating. You fed up, break up with them, so they got what they want without being hones. That was just an example to describe the card, not the exact situation I saw here. 7ofSw is also means planning, mind games, tactics, being undercover etc.

9ofWands, Page of Cups, Star rx, 2of Cups rx

He was defensive, he protected a young feeling which was a teen love type of emotion ( I remember I got this card ones how this relationship felt at the beginning and I think this was his card back then too) and probably this is why he feels he is stuck, he cannot let go because he was protective over this. And just left this doesn’t seem an option, not with a clear exit. (again, not whit honesty)

With the Judgment rx this again means, hard time to let it go. He feels he was committed to fight for and guard that young feeling (as we saw with his FO post ) but now he is hopeless (Star rx). He also feels he is constantly battling and this wears him out. Maybe that’s why a relationship seems to burn out.

Pages are not just the youngest but they are the news bringers in tarot. This cup could mean gossip, being overly dramatic. To be honest I think this perfectly fits for his FO post and maybe he feels it was too much, too dramatic. On the card, the Page is offering his cups to someone and it could mean he feels he made those offers. He offered his emotions to her but the situation is hopeless. Or more likely it was a false hope. I said once in my previous reading that the most intense feeling I get from him for NV is this Page of cups, teenage love thing, which is more like the first few weeks, head over heels emotion, but this is without any real substance.

There is no love here. 2 of cups if it’s upright is still not the love we saw on the Lovers card. It’s more like the early touchy-feely phase of a relationship which could grow to something more but it could die down too. Reversed 2ofC means trouble in a relationship even the end of it. Two people realise they are not meant to be together. 2ofC not only represents romantic relationships but friendships too. In that case, it could mean a fallout between friends.

What I found interesting is that this could mean a codependent relationship between two people to the extent they cannot leave each other. This resonates with the Judgment rx. 2ofCrx can be a sign of a third person in the relationship or that one of the parties feels attraction outside of the relationship.

His relationship with his family

Wheel of fortune, 2 of wands

Wheel of Fortune could be a fate, a karmic card. As I understand here that it means they as a family have a strong relationship even if the wheel is turning to negative. I don’t see this bond be destroyed by a woman (like MM did with Harry and the BRF). Rifts, arguments yes, but I don’t see this as a permanent situation.

The 2ofW is often described as planning the future because the figure on the card is looking at a globe he is holding in his hands. Here I almost feel he is looking into the wheel.

2 of W is decision making. Seems like a passive card without moving but you are thinking, making plans, so it’s not passive really. He knows the decision he makes will affect many. But as a relationship nor the Wheel neither the 2ofW are good cards. So I definitely sense some trouble now ( at that time of the reading) but he is in the position to change things.

9 of Pentacles, Strength.

The imagery of those cards are very similar. Both have a very bright yellow background, on both, we have a female figure alone with an animal.

9ofP could represent an older woman, but first I want to talk about the Strength card. This is about your inner strength, calm the beast inside you. It means your inner strength is put up on a test. 9ofP could mean that you are sacrificed many things for success. I think he temporarily sacrificed some part of his family and this is what put his strength to the test. This card also correlates with material wealth and success. I used the RSW deck for all of my HC readings but I cannot let go the feeling I have when I am using my own, personal deck which is the Druid Craft Tarot. On that card, the woman has everything financially, but still, there is boredom on her face. She is not happy, she is missing someone or something from her life. And I feel as an emotion this is very much present. He has a good status financially, seems everything is good, but still he is not happy. And this is something that could put his inner strength for a test.

2 of pentacles rx

If this card is upright it means we are successfully juggling between 2 things. Because it’s a pentacle many times this is about 2 jobs, but as I said pentacles are about resources.

If this card is rx it means you cannot do that anymore. You know that you have to choose between the two things. It could mean his family vs NV, or NV and another one, but could mean a poor financial decision for example with his FL house, maybe he overspent. (Tbh I think I mentioned this before somewhere that maybe he will have problems with his house)

This card also could mean a breakup. I don’t see this means a breakup from his family, I think their relationship is tested. Since this is a rx 2 it speaks about imbalance.

This very much describes the whole reading. I felt imbalanced. I had a hard time reading certain combinations, first, this whole didn’t make sense. I am not sure how clear I was, this is definitely not my most polished reading. But then I thought I think I am picking up their imbalance. Because this whole has the “ I want to be free” feeling, but at the same time the “I cannot let it go” too. Like I want to go but there is an anchor which is holding me back.

If we check the cards I get, we have 4 twos ( 2 of cups, wands, pentacles, Judgement), 3 of them is reversed. It means losing harmony, trying to do 2 things at the same time unsuccessfully. The illusion of companionship. You don’t have equilibrium. etc. It’s about decision making, serious ones. Two sides of a story. It also means because those are reversed that he is afraid of making a decision, he rather wants to other make those on his behalf.

We also have 4 eights ( 8of wands, swords, The Star, The Strength). 2 of them upright, 2 of them reversed. Eight is strength. His inner strength is tested, his life gets busier. Reversed one means bondage, lack of courage.

If you want to imagine his situation, imagine a swing. Back and forth, up and down. He needs to make a decision to slow down or stop, or he will lose control and fall off. This is what he is now and this is what I picked up, while I had a hard time understanding the cards.

I hope you enjoyed it. :)

#pmitarotreadings #henry cavill #henry cavill girlfriend #natalie viscuso #opinion #alleged #tarot #tarotreading #celebrity tarot

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caterpellas · 4 years ago

Text

munich nights • harry styles 2

summary: touring inseparably as best friends and musicians, yours and harry’s relationship takes a cruel turn in munich.

warnings: smut (thigh riding, oral f receiving, girl on top n i think that’s it)

genre: bestfriend!harry, friends to lovers(?), angst, smut, it’s the works y’all

pt 2/3 (one is here) word count: 6k

a/n: this is the penultimate bit now :) i’m actually super nervous to post this lol i’m a mess anyway pls enjoy

chapter 2 playlist

you couldn’t lie, you cried yourself to sleep that night, with a movie you sort of cared about playing in the background. harry didn’t love you, and what used to be the strongest friendship in mankind had now crumbled apart and returned to a state of distant nothingness. harry didn’t love you. he didn’t have to say those words to you for you to know they were true. the realisation hit you about twenty minutes after harry left like an arrow to your chest, that was so recently covered in his ejaculate. not only were the pair of you virtually inseparable, you worked together as well and you had absolutely no idea what was going to happen now. you felt too ashamed for him and his band members to see you now after last night.

waking up in a damp patch of tears in your double bed, you try your hardest to get on with your day and forget last night. a bath felt appropriate so, just before midday, before you’d even greeted your friends yet, you ran one. the tub itself was freestanding and as deep as your head when you sat in it, the victorian taps centred in the middle. it was definitely the nicest bath you’d had in your life. you stripped off last nights clothes that you had shamelessly fallen asleep in and hoped to god the hot water of your bath would erase the images of last night, but the feeling of harry’s touch burned hotter then any water.

almost an hour later, milo, your drummer, knocked on the door of the bathroom you were still in.

“y/n? you in there? we haven’t seen you since last night before you and harry left. is everything okay?” milo’s voice reached you through the oak walls. you wanted to tell him that nothing was okay, and that you’re most important relationship ceased to exist but you couldn’t bare to tell anyone else, especially your friend and bandmate of 5 years.

“i’m all good, i’ll be out soon.” you make it downstairs another half an hour later, the need for a cup of tea driving you to the kitchen. as you reached the breakfast bar right next to the kitchen, you saw the sickening mop of brown curls that you were hoping to avoid. he turns to face you at the sound of your slippers against the tiled floor.

but instead of plain ignorance, a much more unexpected reaction finds its way to harry as he greets you, “y/n! we were beginning to think you’d drowned in that bath.”

you stood in bewilderment at harry’s attempt at a joke, wondering why he was trying you like all of last night never happened to either of you. but you picked this over cold silence so went along with it, “yeah sorry i needed to recover from the jet lag yesterday.”

it was sort of true, you were feeling the time difference and were grateful to be able to rest today. aside from plans to go out this evening, you were all going to rest up at home. which meant being in close quarters with the man you were trying so hard to avoid. making your cup of tea on the old aga kettle, your friends went back to discussing tour details, chatting about last and what was in store for the rest of the trip. you got a feeling their plans for the future weren’t going to be that plain and simple.

by the evening, you had all found yourselves comfortably sat around the fire outside, eating takeout from a german restaurant nearby. it was really good, and although you and harry had barely spoken more than those few words to each other things weren’t as awkward as you were dreading they’d be. usually, if things hadn’t gone the way they had, you and harry would be sat next to one another, your sides touching all the way down whilst you giggled over something harry was telling you.but as it goes, milo and olly sandwiched you between their huge bodies.

“does anyone know the name of the club we’re going to tonight?”

your ears pricked up at the mention of going to a club. you didn’t realise you were going out-out.

“panorama, i think? i put harry’s name on the guest list.”

it occurred to you that you were heavily underdressed for an exclusive nightclub. you had a good feeling they wouldn’t accept your cargo pants and grubby trainers. jumping up from the bench you run to the door, “i need to go change!”

you opted for an ever so slightly classier look and went with a small pleated skirt and a cropped cardigan. not a combo you’d usually wear, it was a little more fitted then you’d choose for yourself but you’d compromise a little to get in the club. you stuck with the dr martens purely for comfort and called it a night there. you loved your style for many reasons, but the most important one was that it was low effort. it took a maximum of 20 minutes to get ready and you took pride in that.

the group had organised to have a limo to share instead of a taxi, so harry was a little more protected from paparazzi and also to fit the size of your party. they were all waiting outside on the drive when you got downstairs and in unison, their heads turned to face you.

sarah grinned at you, “i love it.”

“very cute,” charlotte smiled as well.

you responded with a “cheers” before daring to look at harry. he was wearing a silk shirt and slacks in a baby pink colour. nothing different to harry’s usual attire but the outfit still sent a chill down your spine. well that, and the way he was looking at you. it was dark out but you could still see how electric his green eyes were as they stared directly at you. you’d been caught off guard, harry wasn’t someone you were prepared to connect with again this evening. in fact, you’d convinced yourself that you didn’t even care whether harry was going to be there or not (utter lies of course). but by the way he was looking at you, you knew this wasn’t the end and you weren’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

the vip section of ‘panorama’ was plush and teal coloured, with flower garlands and strip lights along the ceiling. you had a lounging area all to yourselves, with big padded benches and cushions. it was luxurious and if you weren’t so highly strung from having harry sat so near by, you’d fall asleep on it. you drunk so many cocktails by this point and your worries seemed to fade away into the loud club music.

“y/n.”

harry was sat next to you, but distantly. he was chatting to mitch before he said your name. no matter how loud the music playing was, you’d still always here his voice. turning to him, you asked, “harry?”

he’s smiling at you, like nothing has changed, “how come you haven’t danced yet this evening?”

it was a good question- you loved to dance more than you loved to perform. harry would always make fun of you, the shimmy you would do when he was playing disco in the studio and the way you always swayed along to fleetwood mac, pretending to be stevie nicks on stage. the reason you weren’t dancing is because you were far too obsessed with the closeness you had achieved with harry in your booth.

“i haven’t quite been feeling it just yet,” you teased back and you felt as though things with harry had gone back to normal, so you dared to ask, “are we good?”

harry’s boyish smile took over his face as he gave you a definite, “yes.”

“well i’m feeling more in the mood now so i’ll see you later,” you get up to exit, smoothing out the pleats in your skirt and struggle to take your eyes away from his. dreaming he’ll follow you, you make your way into the adjacent room filled to the brim with people. the song was bassy, but mellow and you could immediately feel your body moving to it. before you knew it you were almost next to the dj booth, opposite the ceiling high speakers and the song was perfect. you hadn’t felt this relaxed since yesterday’s plane journey and you let your unease pour out of your limbs as they writhed to the music. it took a few minutes to take you out of the trance and realise, although surrounded by a mass of people, you weren’t alone.

a tall figure was behind you, and without turning you knew who it was. you could smell his cologne easily- it was gucci of course and it was heavenly. not even daring to turn to him, you stayed facing away, afraid of what it meant to have him in your view. his hands, large and firm, gripped your shoulders, like he did twice yesterday, and his hot breath was against your neck.

“can i join you?”

the question itself was said innocently, this wasn’t the first time harry had asked to dance with you, and probably wasn’t the last, but it felt different to you now. god how you missed the simplicity of harry being unattainably yours as a friend. finally bracing yourself to meet his eyes from almost a foot above you, you spun, his arms falling from your shoulders to your forearms.

smiling up at the familiar face of the love of your life, you said into his ear, “of course you can dance with me.”

dancing with harry was nothing sexy or erotic but it was the most intimate you’d ever been with him, before last night. harry loved to dance almost as much as you and the best part of his whole personality was nothing other than his devil-may-care disposition. it reminded you of the times he’d twirl you while you were stood somewhere completely out of the blue, or when he’d snap his fingers along to a song and by the time you’d joined in the two of you had broken out into a full dance routine just for the sheer fun of it.

harry grabbed your small, clammy hands and pulled you into him, and then straight back out as wild cherry played through the speakers and you inaudibly laughed at his initial dance moves.

“is that all you’ve got styles?” you smirked at him before laughing at the ridiculous version of the hustle he was trying to pull off. he looked way better than you’d ever want to declare, looking fresh out of the 70s whilst funk music played to his dance moves. it suited him down to a fine art and the song was tailor made for his steps. your hips circled to the song and you remembered just how much you love it. pulling out some more unconventional dance moves you went for the peace signs over your eyes and harry’s head fell back in laughter whilst watching you.

this was it. the perfect moment you were so afraid of losing with him. you understood now that whatever yours and harry’s union was, it was far stronger than you ever gave it credit for. harry and you were back to normal again and instead of last night’s beer goggles making you far more candid then you’d like, now your feelings were crystal clear. harry was all you’d ever want.

as boney m. began to fade in now harry’s dancing had become more intense and now the pair of you were far closer then you’d ever danced together before. one of his hands made a brave attempt at looping around your waist and spinning you, making your skirt flare up in the process. usually you’d be shy and care, but only harry was paying attention to you and the thought of him have a small peak at what was under your skirt didn’t even slightly bother you. one of your arms clutches his lean bicep and you moved in unison together, only inches away from one another now.

“i love watching you dance,” harry whisper-shouted in your ear. unprepared for that statement, you stare into his eyes as they flashed in the colours of the lights. his gaze is unfocused, undecided on if it will look into your own or watch your lips, dampened from the small lick you gave them. his own lips were distracting you as well, the bottom one pulled in by his teeth, a habit he picked up when he was feeling conflicted. you wished he wasn’t such a hard man to read. the only definite you held onto right now was that he wanted to kiss you, reaffirmed when his eyes closed and his head ducked to meet your own.

“harry,” you place a hand on his exposed chest, “i can’t kiss you.”

he knew why. he knew that it crossed the boundary you weren’t meant to cross again. but much like you that didn’t want to stop him. so, despite himself, harry ignored your remark and hesitantly placed his lips on yours. the feeling of his kiss muted the sounds around you and in desperation you urged him to kiss you harder. no matter the height difference between the two of you, harry and you still felt perfectly matched. harry’s hands came into your tangled hair and gripped at the top of your neck, his lips even firmer against yours at the new angle. this was far more passionate then last night, and you were seeing harry in a whole new light. he wasn’t just your friend, an unrequited love and now a one time sexual partner but something more on par with your own emotions. harry’s zealous kiss seemed to correspond with all the feelings you had never spoken about him. but then he pulled away, leaving you empty again. you frowned at him, “why did you stop?”

he simply smiled back at you, soothing your nerves, and took your hand as he pulled you through the crowds to a curtained doorway. the room he took you to was a semi circle, the wall surrounded by a settee, and the floor was carpeted and plush with cushions and blankets. it reminded you of a harem, which made you question harry’s choice of destination. it was far quieter in here, the music now a dull bass in the background.

“why are we in here?” you looked over to harry who had already taken a seat on the sofa.

“i thought you’d want more privacy,” he grinned at you. harry’s attitude towards the whole thing was starting to irritate you instead now. why was he acting like this whole thing was so casual? did it not affect him like it did you?

“you’re kidding right? what even is this?” you scoff at him, crossing your arms across your chest. you were pissed.

harry’s brows creased in confusion, “what’s the matter?”

“what’s the matter? how can you ask me that? things are different now harry and you know it.”

he knew it. he just couldn’t find the courage to tell you that he’d wanted things to be this way for the past 2 years. it’s why he was constantly cracking jokes or messing around with you, making you smile and laugh brought him more joy then anything else in his life. it’s why he was so overwhelmed by white hot jealousy when he saw your mouth around that arsehole sound tech’s dick.

“jesus, y/n we’re friends aren’t we? why do we have to talk about that anyway, we’re having fun.”

“because harry,” you huff at him, “unlike you my feelings are a little bruised from last nights events.”

his eyes momentarily filled with guilt, “i know that was- not decent of me.”

“uh you think? i love you harry but you’re not pulling this crap on me again,” you tried to sound stern but his eyes melted you. you looked away but his hand reached for yours. this was it though. your temper had gotten the better of you and you were ready to leave him here and say goodbye to any relationship you formerly had with him. if he did anything again to you like he did last night you were sure your dignity would crumble into unfixable pieces. sighing, you finish off by telling him, “i can’t do this anymore harry.”

“i don’t want to lose you,” harry’s eyes were filled with pleading.

“you should have thought about that before i put your cock in my mouth,” you snapped at him. you hated to admit that saying out loud what you and harry had done had turned you on immensely. harry’s pupils dilated in synchronisation with yours. he played right into this.

“so you’d never do it again?” why was he asking you this?

“no. i wouldn’t.” he wouldn’t get the satisfaction of knowing what he did to you anymore. even though the sight of him with his half buttoned silk shirt, damp with sweat as he lounged on the settee, his high waisted trousers spread apart along his long legs made your legs feel like mush. your voice was so convincing that harry’s face fell and in an instant you wanted to eat your words.

“y/n, i’m sorry if i overstepped,” he stood up and wiped his hands on his trousers, “do you wanna just go back to being friends?”

there was only one right answer to that question;

“fuck no.”

you jumped harry then and there and he fell back onto the padded seat, hands strongly gripping your waist. you quickly kissed him and in shock you retreated, your eyes locking, before connecting your lips with him again. his hands move south to your hips and then to your buttocks, giving your scantily clad cheeks a squeeze. you knew from a past discussion harry was an ass man, after a few drinks together one night you were talking about likes and dislikes. it reminded you of one preference in particular. grabbing a fistful of his hair, you tugged it gently and an audible moan fell in between his lips against yours.

“fuck, y/n do that again,” he mumbled into your mouth and you responded with another pull on his curls. his hips jerked up to meet the middle of your legs and between the thin material of his trousers and nothing covering your crotch other then the thin material of your underwear, little was left to the imagination. you could feel harry’s erection growing the more your hand tangled into his hair. your bare thighs clutched tightly by harry’s hands and you could tell they were longing to hold your bare ass. with your other hand on harry’s bicep, you moved it down to his hand and guided it up along your cheek and he hummed in satisfaction.

“hey harry,” you spoke into the kiss, “you remember california?”

how could he forget- you had spent the whole day drinking on the beach and that was where you had confessed about all your likes and dislikes, giggling like little kids the whole time. who knew that several months later that secret information would become so beneficial?

“what about it?” he asked as your lips traced down his neck to his chest.

“do you remember what i told you?”

a switch flipped in harry’s head and he suddenly knew what you wanted. his thigh came between your legs and you put your weight onto it eagerly, and his hands rocked you back and forth on the cotton of his slacks. the friction was exactly what you needed and you had never been more thankful that harry had listened so intently to your confession; you loved dry humping.

harry’s gaze was on you as you continued to grind on him, and the sight was enough to turn him from semi to fully hard.

“does that feel good?” harry asked you and you were too shy to answer him, only whimpering in response, “tell me y/n.”

“it feels so good harry,” you moaned out. your pace had begun to quick as you needily searched for your release. you could feel your wetness seeping into the material against his thigh and a faint squelching noise could be heard underneath your mewls of satisfaction. your hand fell across the bridge of his nose, outlining his sharp cheekbone and rest along his neck, licking his lips as he watches you get yourself off on him.

on a normal occasion, you’d be too embarrassed to ever ride someone’s thigh, it made you the centre of their attention and that frightened you. but knowing that harry’s undivided recognition was different. you loved having his hands and eyes all over your body. not that he knew, but it was his after all. if he wanted it to, it could belong to him.

“harry,” you gasped, “i’m going to cum.”

to know he was about to witness your undoing just like you’d seen his thrilled him.

“cum for me y/n,” harry pushed your hips for you, gripping the flesh of your ass, and rolling you back and forth till you let out a sob as you came all over his thigh. your forehead fell onto harry’s shoulder as you recollected yourself. that was the first time you had ever cum just from humping. and it was on harry’s leg. the familiar blush crept up your arms to your neck and cheeks and you couldn’t bare to lift your head off of harry’s shoulder.

“y/n,” harry’s voice gently interrupted, “not to rush you or anything but my trousers really are soaked.”

his fingers slid down your thighs to help you off of his leg, your own like that of a baby deer. you weren’t expecting harry to unbuckle his belt and slip his trousers off his legs, the thick wet patch taking up a lot of the fabric.

“what are you doing?”

“well you don’t expect me to keep them on do you?”

“i sort of thought you’d just leave again.”

harry’s face flushed in shame, “i am really sorry i did that last time, y/n. it was a dick move.”

“just a little,” you give him a half smile to let him know you couldn’t stay mad at him. stood in awkward silence, your panties dripping with your cum and harry in nothing but a shirt and boxers, you didn’t know what to say. it wasn’t common that you’d find an uncomfortable lack of words to say to harry.

finally, after one too many moments in silence, harry beckoned you with his finger, “c’mere.”

suddenly you found yourself snugly wrapped in his arms, your cheek to his chest as he held you.

“harry i-“

“don’t just yet please.”

so you stayed that way for a little longer. you realised that this could be the last chance you hold him like this, so you mentally noted every last thing about him you loved. his smell, typically of gucci, but underneath the artificial scent a more clean, personal one of clean bedding and shampoo. his arms, and how their length seemed to engulf you better than any of the softest, plushest bedding in existence. his lips that you could feel on the top of your head and how the feeling of them on your own was tattooed to you now. you knew that if you ever kissed anyone in the future it couldn’t penetrate the lasting layer of his.

he pulled away from you a few moments later, looking down over you. searching his eyes for any clues to his own thoughts from under your lashes, you found nothing. it didn’t mean you were expecting what came next.

as you started, “i understand if you don’t want to do this anymo-“

“i love you.”

the words hung in the air in stunned silence, and you were in too much of a state of shock to know how to take them. he loved you? was he saying the way he always did or did he mean he loved you the way you loved him?

“harry you don’t mean that you.. does that mean you, like, love-me-love-me?” you sounded like a teenager, your juvenile question was all you could muster up.

“i’ve always loved you y/n,”

“i know you have bu-“

“will you just let me finish please?” his fingers pressed against your lips to silence you, “you always talk without actually listening. let me a second please.

“i realised that you’ve never been my friend. don’t interrupt. you were never my friend because you were always like way more than that. friend seemed too small a word for us, you know? and then that day after i saw you and that shitty sound tech fucking in your room i was so angry and jealous and then i realised how much i wanted to be in his place. but you and me had already had such a good relationship i was worried i would ruin it by changing our dynamic. then on the night i met camila, you were so distant from me. i was upset and camila was into me so i was going to fuck her, but i couldn’t. i haven’t had sex with anyone since i saw you and-“

“his name was josh.”

“y/n i really couldn’t give a fuck what his name was. but anyway last night that prick wouldn’t leave you alone and i had to do something, and i wasn’t planning on taking things where they went but by the time you’d brought up my tattoos i was in too deep. i hate that i left you last night. i wanted to say all of this then, but i was too scared. so i left and hoped things would go back to normal between us. but our normal is nothing compared to what we had last night.”

overwhelmed, you sat down on the settee, leaning back to accommodate all of this information.

“so you want to be with me?” you asked him, still not believing it for yourself.

harry beamed at you, “i know, crazy right?”

“i just- i,” you stuttered over your lack of words.

“you don’t have to feel the same why i just figured it was best to be honest.”

you couldn’t help it, but you snorted at him, “you’re kidding right? i have not wanted anything more in my entire life.“

harry knelt down in front of you, and from this height you to were level. you could see eye to eye as equals now. his lips came to your forehead and softly kissed you there, your eyes fluttering closed. it was contentment to know he was finally yours. moving even closer to you, harry moved your legs aside and came between them and you had to prevent him from getting too close so your still-damp panties didn’t come into contact with his expensive shirt.

“you know,” you could feel harry’s lips turn upwards into a smirk on your forehead, “this means you don’t have to feel quite as worried about me fucking you anymore. i’m yours now, y/n.”

he lowered onto the back of his heals, taking his head to the level of your breasts, and he moved back a bit to take in the sight of you. you had to have been a mess, your black eyeliner probably smudged and your hair knotted around your head. your legs were still wide apart, giving harry the greatest opportunity to see under your little tartan skirt.

his pupils widen at the sight, “i can’t believe i’ve never seen you in a skirt like this before. you look so cute in it. it gives me great opportunity to do this,” his hands slid up your thighs slowly and surely, eventually coming down so that they were on the inside of your legs, just before your crotch. you were at his mercy at this angle, and he used it to his advantage. his long fingers brushed up against your clothed core and you whimpered at the sensitivity.

“are you still sore from earlier?”

you nodded and swallowed the nervous lump in your throat. his fingers moved up towards your hips, bumping your clit in the process and grabbed the sides of your tight underwear. pulling them down your legs, he got to see your pussy for the very first time. mouth practically salivating at the sight of your already wet lips, he began kissing along the insides of your legs, working inwards from the knee. he stopped at the edge of your thighs, teasing you with no touch. you hips were writhing at the need for contact and he pinned your thighs down, restricting you.

“i want to undress you first.”

his nimble fingers make quick work of the tiny buttons on your cardigan and it only just occurred to you that you’re not wearing a bra underneath. your bare sternum is exposed and you can tell harry is surprised to find you completely naked behind the cardi. slipping it off your shoulders, your perky breasts are finally unleashed for harry’s viewing.

“we never fucked,” you blurred out.

“what do you mean?”

“me and josh never had sex. i haven’t actually had sex in about two years.”

harry’s jaw sunk slightly at your confession, “but- how haven’t you?”

you felt embarrassed by this. no one ever compared to harry so why would you waste your time on them? you mostly only fooled around with josh because you needed a distraction from harry’s constant sex appeal.

“well josh and me never actually got around to it since he left the crew and aside from him there hasn’t been anyone else.”

you couldn’t believe you were saying this to him right after he’d undressed you, the air con hardening your nipples. harry couldn’t really concentrate on what you were saying, especially when his name was mentioned and your breasts were on full display to him. ignoring your rambling, harry’s mouth came down onto your right nipple, circling it with his tongue and ending your words with a gasp. your nipples were more sensitive then you’d initially realised, or maybe it was just because it was harry’s mouth encapsulating them, but the sensation felt like enough to make you cum from that alone.

“harry, i,” you sighed out breathily. sentences weren’t able to be formed presently, it was all too much. not for harry though, who had no qualms about saying, “i want to fuck you in nothing but that little skirt.”

you tried to press your thighs together, his words jolted down to your clit and you needed some kind of release. harry’s mouth went back to your boobs and down the valley in the middle, licking down it, to your pierced belly button and finally his head disappeared under your skirt. you instinctively placed your feet up on either side of the sofa to spread your pussy even further for his access.

his tongue mercilessly licked up from your taint to your clit and you bucked in delight. the muscle of his tongue pressed hard against the sensitive ball of nerves in quick movements, lapping at it rhythmically. you couldn’t control the volume of your moans now, cussing incoherently to him. but it wasn’t enough, you needed harry fully.

pulling his hair, you were so close to cumming but you couldn’t let it happen yet, not till he’d been inside you.

“harry stop,” you manage to get out, “i need you in me.”

he drew back as soon as you spoke and you leant forward to unbutton his shirt, but you lost your balance as you go forward, falling on top of him onto the cushioned floor. you both burst into giggles at your clumsiness, it was something that you joked about a lot together. you hadn’t loved anyone more then you loved harry right now, his chuckles like music to your ears as you lay on him nearly naked, his curls sat on his forehead.

“i love you,” harry told you, his hand cupping your cheek from below.

“i love you too,” leaning to kiss him, you moved your hand down and gripped his erection, forcing a moan from his lips, “now make love to me.”

he wasted no time in finishing off unbuttoning the rest of his shirt, and you ground your hips into his erection, forcing a groan from his lips. you were so close to feeling harry inside you, only boxers in the way of you two. you sat back and slipped them off his hips. before you got a chance to line him up with your walls, harry interrupted you, “are you in birth control?”

“yes,” you blushed. he smirked at you as he grabbed his hard cock in his hand and positioned it with you. you sunk down ont his cock, sighing is feel yourself being filled. you had craved this feeling for far too long, and harry filled you so well.

“fuck, y/n,” harry’s eyes closed when you engulfed him fully. adjusting, you began to bob up and down on his dick slowly, getting used to the foreign sensation. it stung a little bit as you hadn’t been filled in so long, but the need for harry numbed any of the pain. harry’s sweaty hands came up to cup your breasts, playing with your nipples as you began to quicken your pace.

“how do i feel inside you? does it feel good?”

you could only nod back, his cock hitting your g spot so well from this angle. as you began to speed up, your tits bounced delectably in front of harry’s face and he had to take over dominance, slamming his hips up to meet your own. his erection pounded into you, your mouth eliciting depraved whines. your skirt was swinging around your barely clothed ass and giving harry only sneaky glimpses of how the two of you were connected.

with harry’s hips moving more erratically, you could tell he was close.

you leant your mouth into his ear to whisper, “i want you to cum inside me.”

that was enough to tip harry over the edge, and so you could both finish together he reached his thumb under your skirt and thumbed your clit, sending your body into a heavenly orgasm. harry unloaded into your walls as you clenched around him, the both of you finishing in unison. flopping down onto his chest, he left his cock in you, both too fucked out to move yet. when he had softened, he slipped out of you, making you wince at the feeling.

“so,” you said into harry’s chest, “does that mean you’re mine now?”

his hand rubbed the small of your back, “i’m yours.”

#i’m sorry #harry styles x reader #harry styles one shot #harry styles smut #harry style fan fiction #harry styles #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #one direction #one direction fanfiction #one direction smut #bestfriend!harry #harry styles imagine #harry styles blurb #harry styles icons #harry styles fic #fine line album #friends to lovers

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jenomark · 4 years ago

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DECEMBER

➔Pairing: Doyoung x Reader (Female) | Jaehyun x Reader (Female) ➔Other Members/ Characters: -.- ➔Genre: Plot (ft. smut, romance, angst, fluff etc.) ➔Warnings: Vaginal penetration, cheating, angst etc. ➔Word count: 3,317

➔Summary: You are dating handsome and lovable Jaehyun. You stay at his apartment all of the time, along with his roommate Doyoung. Doyoung has feelings for you, which he doesn’t quite understand. What begins as an innocent crush changes the lives of all three people over the course of seven months.

AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER

-Sorry it’s so late!! January & February will be up sometime soon! 💚

The very first time you had crossed over that threshold, it was to embrace Jaehyun. With your first date jitters, you nearly collapsed into his arms, tripping over your own feet in his doorway. Luckily, he found the idea of you quite charming, even if he had to stop you from breaking your nose on the first date.

Your old work friend had set you and Jaehyun up on a blind date. You almost didn’t show up, using every excuse under the sun as to why you couldn’t go. Truthfully, you weren’t ready to be in a working relationship with anyone, especially not a blind date. Upon seeing him and letting him, quite literally, sweep you off of your feet, you were happy you went through with it.

Your first impression of Jaehyun was that he was drop dead gorgeous. You could hardly speak eloquently around him, but that didn’t matter, because you liked the way he led the conversation. He wasn’t perfect, but he made up for the things you lacked. He was a little clumsy, just like you, which gave you a breath of relief. You were almost too happy when he accidently knocked his beer glass off of the table with a switch of his elbow, his pretty face flush with the embarrassment that seemed to follow you all your life. He made you feel you were not alone, which might have been the very reason you held onto him. He was everything you needed at the time: a fun, beautiful distraction.

Though you were no longer friends with the people who set you up, you decided to keep Jaehyun as yours. His job was stable, the sex was great, and he was someone you felt you could pass the time with. Though the relationship itself lacked a lot, it felt like the right thing to jump headfirst into. You weren’t expecting much, honestly. Liking the feeling of falling for someone was enough for you, and you hoped it would be enough for him.

You definitely weren’t expecting to grow so attached to crossing the same threshold time and time again. You spent more time with him than you had with any of your exes from past relationships. You were having sex with Jaehyun on a daily basis, staying the next morning's at his apartment, digging through his snack cabinets and avoiding his hermit-like roommate. You were someone’s girlfriend. You liked the way it felt having a place to come back to when you were feeling lost, to watch movies in, and to take a shower using all the hot water. It felt a little bit like coming home, which made you realize how much you had been craving closeness with someone.

It only took you a few months to realize that the person you had been coming home to wasn’t exactly Jaehyun. It might have been clear from early on that Jaehyun wasn’t as right of a fit for you as you had originally thought, that you both stuck together because it was easier, and the sex was enough to entertain the idea of more. They say ignorance is bliss, after all. You both got something out of the relationship, so it was much harder to break-up for good. So, you kept it going, and because you kept it going, you started falling in love with someone else.

The truth was always much harder spoken than not.

You couldn’t stop finding the humor in everything. Doyoung set you down after kicking in his bedroom door, his eyes searching your face for acceptance. The sound of the door opening and hitting the opposite wall replayed in your mind, the clumsiness of the situation warming your heart. You could hear it echo a thousand times, each time seeming more comical than the last. You cupped your hand to your face, tilted your head back and let yourself laugh until you were hot in the face and near tears.

“What is funny?” he asked, though he was on the brink of laughter, too.

“I don’t even know.” you said. “I just have this uncontrollable need to laugh. I’m really nervous. I think I love you.”

You laughed loudly, nearly bending over because your stomach hurt so much. When you felt a stab in your side, you pressed your hand to it and unfolded your body until you were standing straight. You tried keeping your face stoic, but you were failing miserably. Doyoung was staring at you, not completely sure what planet you were from.

“Let’s just fucking do this.” you said.

You crossed the gap between you, letting your body knock into his, and you kissed him. You were still giggling a little, but as Doyoung’s kisses turned more serious, you swallowed it. You grabbed the back of his neck and felt the edges of his rain soaked hair tickle your fingers. The passion struck you both again, coming full-force like it had never left.

You started rubbing the front of his pants, hoping to rouse him. Doyoung took your hand and clasped it with his, bringing it away. You wanted to feel his bare skin on yours, so you tried removing his shirt, but Doyoung grabbed your other hand and brought it away. You stood holding hands and kissing, Doyoung leading you.

“Let me touch you. “ you said, trying to pull away from his grip.

When you yanked your hands away, there was no trace of laughter on your lips anymore. You felt like you were staring into his soul when you looked into his eyes. You stood facing him, your decisions hanging between you, weightless and certain.

Doyoung stood still as you placed your fingers against his chest. You moved them underneath his shirt, his skin warm to the touch. You felt him, as if he were going to disappear after a few minutes, the spell having been broken. When you were finished, Doyoung’s hand was waiting for you. You placed your hand inside of his and let him hold it. You led him to his own bed, sitting down on it and stretching your body across it.

The light in the room was dim and romantic. Though things started off with a bang, you and Doyoung were moving slowly. You made out with him, with his body on top of yours, and your hands scratching up his back. You couldn’t stop getting excited whenever you touched a new part of him. All of the sensations were firing off signals in your brain at once, the serotonin making you come alive. All of the memories of your lives together were replaying over and over again. There weren't any thoughts spared for Jaehyun. It was just you and Doyoung, building up to the layers of clothes between you.

Doyoung pulled his shirt over his head. From there, it felt like time had unfrozen. At last, you were together. You were intentionally in his bed, your fingers feeling for his belt buckle, and his hand making a home against your hip. He was looking at you, his eyes not shying away from yours. His lips were on your neck, his lower body pressing against yours. You opened your legs and invited him inside.

“I love you.” Doyoung whispered before putting his lips to your lower belly.

He lifted your shirt over your head. He stripped you naked, stopped only to look down at your body in all its glory. You wished you could get inside of his head to find out what he was thinking, to see if you were everything he wanted. Kicking off his pants, Doyoung knelt down on top of you and pushed the hair from your face. You could feel the old laughter wanting to tear itself up your throat, and you accepted it as happiness wanting to bubble out.

“I love you.” Doyoung said. “And it’s madness.”

He slipped inside of you. Doyoung was gentle with your body, moving slow, and holding your head to make sure he didn’t hurt you. You wanted him all over you, but you loved the way it felt to be wrapped up in his arms safely, not knowing what type of future you’d both have from that moment forward. You felt like you were free falling.

You couldn’t catch your breath. Feeling Doyoung fill you up was overwhelming. You wrapped your legs around him to bring him closer. You bit down on his ear for a second before releasing it from your teeth and moaning loudly. You let him tease your body with his tongue before moving inside of you again, the Doyoung of the past being laid to rest inside of his sheets.

You had never cheated on anyone before. You didn’t know it was possible for you to be with someone and entertain the idea of someone else. You weren’t that kind of girl, or, you weren’t that kind of girl, in the beginning.

When you first met Doyoung, he mostly kept to himself. Hooking up with Jaehyun meant sneaking around when Doyoung wasn’t home. You think the excitement of it all was the foundation of your budding relationship with Jaehyun. It was all simply too fun to give up. When Doyoung was home, he hardly came out of his bedroom the first few weeks. You thought it was his idea of being independent or keeping a low profile, or maybe it was a respect thing, but you’d never met a man that was so conspicuous. Whenever Doyoung moved, your eyes followed, like you knew he wanted them to. It became a bit of a game to meet him when you stepped out of Jaehyun’s bedroom, to see how far he would go to not look at you. And even though you were sure he hated your guts for interrupting his perfect existence, you couldn’t stop yourself from the obsession of getting him to like you, to talk to you, ot to want to be around you.

The first time Jaehyun tried breaking up with you, when you had talked to Doyoung in the kitchen and you had linked your pinky with his, was the very first time you had really felt anything for another person that extended past “Fun”. Most of your relationships were just full of ideas of what you and the other person could be, how good they appeared on paper, and what was worth keeping and what was worth throwing away. With Doyoung, he had laid everything out on the table in a way that made you feel seen. After awhile, you realized that you didn’t care that much about Jaehyun breaking up with you, but you were more worried about losing Doyoung.

It was wrong. You knew it was wrong in every way your brain tried to spin it around. You had fantasies about fate, little red strings tying your fingers to his. You were falling in love with what was meant to be, and what means you would go to in order to find the truest form of that love. You thought of many excuses that felt like bad writing in the movies. If it was so wrong, why did it feel so right? Why would life choose to throw him into the mix without it meaning anything? All of those things spun around and around in your mind until you started to believe them, and gradually, until they were all too powerful to ignore.

It was wrong. It is wrong. It will always be wrong. Jaehyun might not have been a storybook perfect love, but he was human, and he treated you better than people thought. And yet, kissing Doyoung couldn’t help you remember what was morally correct, or what kind of situation you were really in. You made the choice to kiss him. You could have made the choice to stop, but you knew you never would. December would come and go, the sex being even better than you imagined, and January would knock you on your ass.

In the back of your mind, as you tried to grapple with your decisions, all you could hear was the bang of Doyoung’s door.

The mistletoe hung from the doorway, like a scene in a foreign movie. You let Jaehyun pass under it first while you stood back a little, hoping that no one would notice neither of you wanted to be caught underneath it together. You looked up at the green mistletoe, its red ribbon falling apart, and you thought it was a perfect metaphor for your current situation. As you passed under it, Jaehyun’s mother's voice chimed in, her idea of romanticism beginning and ending with her son and his girlfriend of nearly half a year.

“You must kiss!” she said, clapping her hands together. “It’s Christmas! Jaehyun, don’t stop loving your girlfriend because we’re around.”

Jaehyun’s family never felt like yours. As they all stared at you, you realized how badly you’d always wanted to reach that part of him, the part that made him who he was. They were nice people who treated you kindly, but you were still a stranger that didn’t belong in their family quite yet. You blamed it on Jaehyun’s inability to take your relationship seriously enough to introduce you to his mother sooner, but got rid of those thoughts as soon as you remembered what you had done to him. It was an odd feeling being in such a personal space during a holiday without feeling like your existing relationship was the whole truth.

Quickly, only to please his mother, Jaehyun took your elbow and pulled you underneath the doorway. He kissed your cheek lightly, his eyes never meeting yours. He let your elbow go and walked further into the kitchen, leaving you behind. The Christmas party continued, his family tearing their eyes from you and going back to whatever they had been doing.

The weird feeling between you and Jaehyun had been happening for a week or so. It had nothing to do with Doyoung and everything to do with the fights you were both having. Jaehyun said you weren’t appreciative of how hard he was working in his personal life, and you were annoyed he paid attention to you so little that he had no idea you were a part of that life, too. Your days consisted of watching Jaehyun storm off into the night after a fight, you crying alone in his room, and then letting Doyoung rub your back until you fell asleep. Then, the next day would reset and all of the mystery resentment would start again.

Doyoung, during all of this, was patient. He didn’t push you towards breaking up with Jaehyun for good, even though you felt he had every right to, and even though it’s the course you both knew you wanted to take. He didn’t involve himself in the petty arguments between you and Jaehyun, he just made his presence known in case you needed him. He was supportive for someone who had to watch his roommate and the girl he was in love with give each other brisk kisses some days and shoot daggers at each other the next.

You leaned against the kitchen counter and waited for Jaehyun to talk to you, to show you that he knew you were there. You thought coming to the party would make you feel better mentally. The Christmas holiday was always your favorite, but you had gotten into an argument in the car on the way over, and the jollyness of the season had been sucked out of your soul.

“I don’t know what we’re doing anymore.” Jaehyun had said in the car, as soon as you pulled up in front of his parents house.

You watched his fingers grip the steering wheel before you spoke. “If you want to break up with me, just do it.”

You wanted him to be the one to say it, to break it off because you knew you were too cowardly to do it. Your mind was made up. You wanted Doyoung, but you were dealing with the guilt of adding him to your life and subtracting Jaehyun. You didn’t want Jaehyun or Doyoung to lose their friendship either, so you kept yourself in the misery of waiting for someone else to make the first move. It was a terrible habit to have.

Jaehyun shook his head, as if he were shaking out bad thoughts. You could see snow flurries hit the windshield and melt against the heat of the glass. They kept your own thoughts at bay, though they were frantic. There was a time when the image of sitting in front of Jaehyun’s family home at Christmas would have pleased you. Now, it made you feel sick to the stomach, especially when you remembered that Doyoung had nowhere to go for Christmas. You tried not to picture him sitting home at alone, bundled up in his soft blue robe, his lips so pouty and kissable.

You blinked away the memory of an hour ago from your head and focused on where you stood in the kitchen. There should be no moments but the present. Jaehyun’s dad was kind and offered you a plate of food, which you accepted but didn’t eat. His aunts and cousins tried their best to invite you into their conversations, but you felt like you could never relate to any of them. After going through the motions of trying to enjoy Jaehyun’s family’s Christmas traditions and ignoring the sadness invading your brain, you asked if Jaehyun would take you back home.

“Now?” he asked.

“I don’t feel well.” you lied.

“I want to stay for another hour.” he said, his voice rising. “I haven’t seen my family together in a long time.”

You put your hand on his arm and tried to portray that you were apologetic, but you just felt desperate. Your eyes were glassy, like you might cry. You didn’t want to guilt him into making a decision, that wasn’t your motive, but you couldn’t help feeling emotional.

Jaehyun sighed. “I’ll get my jacket. I guess I can drive you home and come back.”

You decided to wait on the front steps alone while he got his jacket, the snow flurries landing in your eyelashes. When Jaehyun came back outside, you could tell that he was thinking of something to say. You could feel what was about to happen, so you braced yourself against the coldness Jaehyun had a habit of releasing when he felt backed into a corner.

“You’re not happy with me.” he said. “And I’m not happy with you.”

You could feel a little sting in your chest when he said those words out loud, because the truth always hurts. The girl you used to be was clinging hard to the idea that maybe Jaehyun was where you were supposed to be, that maybe he could take those words back. There was no part of you that wanted him, but you couldn’t keep yourself away from the What Ifs. They clouded your mind and often made you feel confused.

Jaehyun continued, “I don’t want to say things that will hurt your feelings on Christmas, so I will keep it short. We’re not good together. You’re not the person I see myself with in the future. You’re nothing like what I imagined. I don’t even know why I held onto you for this long. It feels...cruel. I think we’re a little too codependent.”

The tears that fell were both natural to your emotional state and to the cold biting at your cheeks. You listened to him, your eyes not knowing where on his handsome face they should focus. When you spoke up to tell Jaehyun you agreed with him, he cut you off.

“- I cheated on you.” he said. “I cheated on you that night I went to the bar without you.”

#doyoung #kim doyoung #nct #jaehyun #jung jaehyun #nct 127 #nct fanfiction #nct doyoung #doyoung fanfiction #jaehyun fanfiction #doyoung smut #doyoung fluff #forgive typos and stuff please ty ly

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dinopopduck · 4 years ago

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Ezekiel Only Being Unaffected By Certain Kinds of Magic

Let’s just start with me saying this isn’t exactly a new theory. It’s the demigod thing, and it’s a fairly popular one. If you haven’t heard of this headcannon, I put as much as I can find here. If you have, I found a bunch of new stuff that I haven’t seen anyone else mention, so reading this isn’t a complete waste of your time, I hope.

I tried to keep this from becoming wordy, but it got really long anyway, because there was a lot to talk about here.

Ezekiel being unaffected by magic is sort of an ongoing thing in the show. He is influenced by it much of the time, such as by Santa’s Hat, Pan’s Flute, Prospero’s spell, lycanthropy, etc. When it comes to the stuff he was seemingly completely immune to, there is one link that connects them all.

Apple of Discord: Everybody knows this one. The Apple is a Greek artifact, meant to turn you into the worst version of yourself, and Ezekiel was only one completely unaffected. It’s blamed on “he’s already the worst version of himself” or whatever.

Zeus Lightning Bolt: the episode where Ezekiel ends up decked out in Greek armor, and is sent to pick up Zeus’ Lightning Bolt, which was freaking out and zapping everywhere. He picks it up just fine, and he’s then able to hand it off to Flynn. It may have been purely because of the Greek armor he was wearing, but Flynn did not seem so sure about that working.

Cindy’s Love Potion: Ezekiel is able to be near the potion without becoming obsessed with Cindy. At first, it’s blamed on him being obsessed with himself, then later Jacob tells Ezekiel that he was already in love with Cindy. It was an obsession, not a love, potion you literally spent the episode proving that blah blah, he didn’t even recognize her at first blah blah, anyway, I have a better reason.

There are two Greek mentions in this episode. First, the potion project itself is called Project Aphrodite, a Greek goddess. Second, the sunflowers; when asked, Jenkins mentions how sunflowers are a Greek symbol of unrequited love. In addition, “love” potions may have originated in Greece, or at the very least, were common enough to have multiple sites claim that, lol. At the end of the season, where each librarian uses their gifts to turn Apep mortal, this greek potion is what Ezekiel ends up using.

See a pattern here? Everything that he was completely unaffected by was Greek in some way. So, he has an immunity to these kinds of artifacts, but why? I vote demigod.

Anyway, moving on.

Here’s some magic he could have been immune to, or could not have been. Its pretty debatable.

Fortuna: Technically a Roman Goddess, but the show does acknowledge how similar they are to Greek Gods. He may have been affected by the spell, but broke out of it pretty quick. Some think he may not been affected at all; slot machines aren’t exactly fair, especially in a casino that exists to cheat completely. As for Ezekiel getting so upset over losing, what he says, “Not the guy that loses, I’m the guy that wins” sounds very similar to what he was saying in Point of Salvation, but that’s a whole nother topic.

Alternately, he was affected and this point shouldn’t be here. I don’t know, I’m not the writers.

Libris Fabula: He was a little bit affected, just far less than the others, as he acted pretty much the same. He did get a barely noticeable clothing change, became luckier than normal, and was just able to cast a spell for some reason? Speaking out that spell, it froze the guy, and a certain Greek God does have the ability to put people to sleep. Not really the same thing, but worth thinking about. Maybe. More on that later.

Most people think he was immune, but he could have just been similar enough to the character he was portraying that he didn’t need to change a whole lot.

These ones are barely worth mentioning, because have other reasonable (though I guess your definition of reasonable may be different from mine) explanations, but you could see them as magic immunity as well:

Silver Screen: Ezekiel gets into character the least, while Cassandra and Jacob are out singing and calling people by their character names. Maybe less affected, maybe just a spoilsport. Probably the last one.

Point of Salvation: Was the only one able to remember previous loops. Since they were in a video game, it’s explained that since he was the first through the door, he became the player while everyone else became NPCs. I mean, sure.

Christmas Thief: Saint of Thieves only used his truth telly power on Ezekiel’s mother, not him. Ezekiel did not feel obligated to say anything. Could just be that the guy wasn’t talking to Ezekiel. Or, earlier in that episode Ezekiel tells his mother he doesn’t steal anymore (at least for anything other than the Library, I assume, cause he still kinda does) and therefor that made him immune to the spell, since it only works on thieves.

Image of an Image: Both Cassandra and Ezekiel got their pictures taken, and Cassandra was the only one affected by the transfer spell. However, Ezekiel wasn’t one of the “chosen ones” because he snuck in, and jumped in front of the camera while Eve (one of the “chosen ones”, who was later able to be affected) turned away. Either that, or he just didn’t have time to feel the effect, since his picture was taken after Cassandra’s, and Eve’s was placed in manually.

That’s all the possible instances of magic immunity I could think of.

Next, we have some other stuff that is relevant to this point, but wasn’t necessarily artifact/magic immunity.

Prophecy Cube: Created by the Oracle of Delphi, who is from Greek mythology. This isn’t about whether Ezekiel was affected by something, as he was still able to use the prophecy glass/get stuck in the cube. Rather, it’s about the Zeus Challenge in the cube. They probably would have died in there, but luckily, Ezekiel had just happened to steal, and keep on him, the exact thing they needed to get through– a bunch of golden coins, and a prophecy that ensures at least one coin can’t be destroyed. Luck? Prophecy? Divine Intervention? Plot convenience? Okay its probably the last one but STILL

Also, Ezekiel getting pissed at Zeus.

Zeus’s Bolt (again?): There is a promo image I think for season 4? that has each of the Librarians holding their tools. Jacob had his axe, Cassandra had a notebook, Flynn had Excalibur, all normal, except for Eve and Ezekiel. Eve had this big staff thing I didn’t recognize, and Ezekiel had Zeus’ Bolt for some reason?

Lightning, just, in general: If there is wild electricity in an episode, Ezekiel is probably around.

Examples:

City of Light: Gets shocked and knocked backwards into Jacob by a very electrified fence, gets up right afterwards and is fine.

Broken Staff: The Zeus Bolt thing, you get it.

Image of an Image: Ezekiel electrocutes Jacob. Jacob was not really fine. He lived, though.

Point of Salvation: Ezekiel electrocutes Jacob part 2 Electric Boogaloo, but this time on purpose. He was not fine. He died. But don’t worry, he lived.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Mentioned a little bit above, Ezekiel, Jacob, and a student get stuck in the Zeus Challenge, and Ezekiel uses some coins he just so happened to steal recently. Throwing them on tiles shows whether or not lightning will strike if it was stepped on. Seriously, why is it ALWAYS Jacob?

The Dark Secret: Ezekiel is the one sent to wrap a cord around a lightning rod constantly being struck by lighting. “Why am I bloody doing this”, he asks? I mean, Zeus probably isn’t going to kill his descendent(?), right?

Werewolves: Have you heard of the Lycaon of Arcadia? It’s a Greek myth. Basically, this dude named Lycaon wants to test how smart and all-knowing Zeus is. To do so, he kills his own son, cooks him, and serves him to Zeus to see if he notices, ya know, no biggie. Zeus was like “wtf man” and brings the son back to life, and turns Lycaon into, you guessed it, a wolf. So, Zeus creates a werewolf of sorts, maybe one of the firsts. In Fangs of Death, Ezekiel just so happens to be the one (main) character to be turned into werewolf. So, if he was a descendant of Zeus, imagine how big of a “fuck you” that was to the god. That all being said, Ezekiel was turned by an Egyptian god, so that might not have been intentional. Also, they may have just been avoiding turning Jacob, because there is already a werewolf named Jacob and they didn't want another Twilight reference in that episode.

Family/Name: Ezekiel is adopted, and his adoptive mother mentions how she took him in off the streets. Because of that, we don’t know who his birth parents are, and whether or not he, or anyone else, knows is unknown. Soooo, we can take some creative liberties as to who his parents might have been.

As for his name, it carries some religious connotations. It should be remembered though, the meanings I’m talking about here are Biblical, not Greek, so again, might mean nothing for this argument. “Ezekiel” is “God’s Strength” or “God will Strengthen”. Jones might also be something like “God is gracious” or “God has favored”, thought different sites say different things. However, I’m pretty sure the name Jones came from his adoptive mother, and apparently Jones is a common last name in Australia. His first name is more relevant, because all of his siblings have themed names; Mercy, Charity, and Honor. So, either his mom named him differently because she knew something we don’t, or he already had the name before she adopted him. Either way, this probably means absolutely nothing. But what are we here for? To analyze a dead show like an English teacher analyzes the color of curtains in an 100 year old text. If it wasn’t for all the other stuff, I probably wouldn’t think about this too much.

Okay. So Greek stuff, lightning, and Zeus himself come up a LOT when it comes to this guy. So is Ezekiel the son of Zeus? Possibly, but a more popular theory is that he’s Zeus’ grandson. Because Zeus’ son just so happens to be Hermes; god of things such as luck, travel, money, trade, and most importantly, thieves. Oh, and animal husbandry/shepherds and sleep, I don’t know how much those apply but I will try.

Time for some comparisons, honestly most of these don’t even need to be explained so I’ll keep it short-ish, cause this shit has gotten way too long already.

Luck: Ezekiel, especially in the first season, likes to rely on luck, and tends to be very lucky in general. Examples where this is mentioned include Fables of Doom and Apple of Discord. “Smarter to be lucky then lucky to be smart!”

Travel: We can assume that he ended up traveling in his previous job (that being heists all over the world) fairly often, even before the Library. Becoming a Librarian with a teleporting door increased that of course.

Money: Steals very high-value items to sell. Also apparently likes to take money from his coworker’s wallets. And probably everyone else’s.

Trade: The aforementioned high-value pieces he steals are traded/sold for money. In Christmas Thief, we find out he kept none of the money or items, giving it away to others who needed it. That kinda fits this category, I think.

Thieves: I really don’t need to explain this. Unless you haven’t seen the show.

Animal Husbandry/Shepherds?: Basically the care of animals. Um, well he doesn’t keep cows or anything, but he has a tendency to “adopt” magical creatures that need help. Stumpy, Nessie Jr., maybe Frankenstein’s Monster as well?

Sleep: I mentioned earlier how Ezekiel froze a guy (not really in an icy way, just couldn’t move) by hitting him with his coin. Hermes is able to send people to sleep with his Caduceus (the snake wand thing). Yeah, it’s not really the same thing, though you could consider being frozen a kind of sleep. He could have just been lucky enough to find a magical coin, and lucky enough to figure out how to use it at the exact right time without even knowing what it did. It’s a stretch either way, really, and was never explained in the episode at all. Yeah, I can't find anything else that fits.

Hermes is considered to be a thief and trickster, and a lot of the things he is god of are Ezekiel’s main occupations. With all those similarities to Hermes, frequent events related to lightning and Zeus related things, and immunity to Greek artifacts, we can conclude that he is perhaps the son of Hermes, taking after his father in abilities and getting visits from grandpa.

Alternatively, his somehow IS Hermes, but I doubt that. He’d probably be way more powerful. He was also able to see the future with Prophecy Glass, which Jenkins claims is impossible for immortals to do (although in that case he was talking about a Prophecy Cube, but close enough). It’s more likely that he is a demigod.

Okay, that is all I can think of that is relevant. I binged the series about two months ago, and have been thinking about this theory. I went ahead and re-watched the episodes that I mentioned in more detail, as well as parts of others that I remebered. The reason I bring this up is because I may have missed things. I did not rewatch a majority of the episodes, more that I looked at a list of episodes on wikipedia and tried to remember what happened in them, watching clips and episodes if I needed to.

The show was cancelled, so we’ll probably never get a confirmation as to who Ezekiels’ birth parents were, and as such, you can’t prove me wrong! That being said, if I got any facts incorrect in this, please tell me so I can fix it. I’m not well versed on Greek Mythology, in fact I know basically nothing, and did the research as I went along. So again, there could be more. This is just what I found in like, less than a day of searching.

Join me next time on “How is Cassandra magical, where’d she get it from? Also, were we ever gonna meet her parents?” And “In the first episode of season 3, Jacob is just able to hit a heavy punching bag of its chain, across the room, at bullet speed, just because of a shift of his wrist, and later in that episode do the same thing to Apep, and it’s just…never addressed or spoken about again? Like wtf man?”

I'm probably not doing that

If you managed to get through all of this, thank you, and I hope this wasn’t too painful to read.

#the librarians #ezekiel jones #greek #hermes #zeus #this took so long #magic #magic immunity #theory #headcannon #demigod #curse of cindy #apple of discord #broken staff

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where-theres-smoak-2 · 4 years ago

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Fandom Thoughts

First thing I want to say is this post is just me speculating and expressing my thought on things. I’m sure many people will disagree with me or have a different interpretation and that’s ok. I could be totally way off base with everything I say but like I said this is just my interpretation of and my thoughts on things, also just want to say that I mean no disrespect to anyone or anyone’s fandom so yeah.

So we all know that B*ghead is the largest fandom and the most popular ship. There’s no lying about that. I think it became so popular out of a combination of things, I think Cole’s popularity from his time on the Disney channel did bring across a lot of fans. I mean I could be totally wrong about this but I do feel like alot of the B*ghead fans were originally Cole fans. I’ll be honest, I didn’t watch Riverdale when it first aired, it was about 6 episodes in when my sister told me it was a good show about a murder mystery and that I’d never guess who was on it? Cody from suite life. I myself originally started watching the show because I was curious about the fact that Cole was on it and then stuck around because I got invested in the mystery and because from that very first episode I was hooked by Barchie and saw so much potential with them. I do think another contributing factor to the B*ghead ship’s popularity was the fact that the actors themselves became a couple and so people weren’t just invested in the ship but in the actors’ relationship too. I also do think that the fandom was very ‘loud’ on social media and there was alot of engagement. All of that combined with the fact that they did have some cute scenes together I think was the perfect storm to creating a popular ship.

However V*rchie doesn’t actually seem that popular to me. In fact from what I can tell its a much smaller fandom and I would argue that after B*ghead the most popular ship out of the three is Barchie. Barchie has always won out in fan polls against v*rchie and I feel like I see more comments from the Barchie fandom than I do the V*rchie fandom. To me it has always been more of a B*ghead vs Barchie thing than a V*rchie vs Barchie thing. It always felt more like V*rchie got support because it kept Archie out of the way of B*ghead. In fact I see quite alot of support for Veggie and for Archosie and alot of people admit that they liked those parings over V*rchie. I myself loved Veggie together far more than V*rchie and I didn’t mind Archosie I thought they were cute, I didn’t like them as much as I did Veggie but I still thought they had some really nice moments together. I think after Betty, I liked Archie with Josie best.

But here’s another thing to bear in mind. Whilst Riverdale and its ships are popular online and get alot of chatter on social media and has its fandoms which are very vocal on social media, there is also the general audience. These are the people who just watch the show every week, they don’t talk about it on social media, they don’t look up interviews and obsess over every little crumb of info the writers put out trying to figure out what might happen in the next episode. They are the silent part of the audience, I suppose you could call them. And I would say that this part of the audience far outnumbers the part that are involved in the fandom side of the show. Of course its very difficult to really know what this side of the audience really thinks of the show because they aren’t out on social media telling people what they think. The best way is to know what they think is to look at the ratings and the netflix streams.

I mean I know that the ratings don’t really matter a whole lot when it comes to whether or not the network will renew a show and that streams mean more nowadays anyway. But in my opinion I do think the ratings can still give you an idea on how interested the audience is in the show. The way I see it is that if I am really excited by a show, I spend all week looking forward to the next episode and you can bet your ass that when that show’s next episode airs I am sitting down in front of that tv and watching it live if I can, because I don’t want to wait a second longer than I have to when I want to see it. With this season all the Barchies know that the most live viewed episodes of the season were 5x05 and 5x06, the two episodes that were promoted with Barchie. The lowest two episodes not just for this season but in the shows history were 5x08 and 5x09. These were the two episodes that had the V*rchie and B*ghead content.

I also discovered this website flixpatrol that tracks the top tens on Netflix in various countries each day of the week. You can also look up specific shows to see where in the top ten they come each day of the week and I think I found something interesting. Now obviously because its week by week I could only really get information for episode 9.

So what can this information tell us. Well episode 9 aired on the 24th and appeared on Netflix in alot of countries on the 25th. This chart shows where in the top 10 Riverdale fell this week, I’ve outlined those two dates in red. A dash indicates that it didn’t appear in the top ten that day. Now we can see that Riverdale most definitely does better on Netflix than it does in the live views and is consistently in the top ten in most countries. However, as I said, I did notice something. On the days it appears on Netflix we can see that in most countries it doesn’t appear in the top ten and in the countries it does it is very low on the list coming in at mostly, 8,9 or 10. To me this suggests, like with the live ratings, that people just aren’t rushing to watch it. Some of this can be explained by the fact that it airs on a week night and it does fall high on the list on the Saturday after it airs on Netflix which could suggest that people are waiting until the weekend to watch it. But again, maybe its just me, but when I really want to watch a show, when I am really excited by a show, I will stay up late or I will get up early to watch it. I mean when 5x05 and 5x06 aired I was up early on the Thursday morning refreshing my Netflix page over and over waiting for the episode to become available because I was that excited to watch the episode.

*Edit: I’ve learnt that I have read this chart completely wrong as there is a one day lag, so the ratings on the 26th show that people were tuning in on the 25th which is the day it becomes available on Netflix in those countries. So ignore everything I just said in the paragraph above. I am going to keep the chart in for those who are interested in those numbers though. But yeah apologies for that.*

To me this doesn’t really line up with the whole B*ghead is the most popular ship. I mean with B*ghead being the most popular ship then this last episode should be the most watched and I’ll admit I was a little surprised that it didn’t have more views. So why is that, we know B*ghead is popular so why aren’t we seeing it in the views. Well I think the answer is whilst they are popular, whilst it has a large fandom, its not popular or big enough to save the show by itself. And to be clear this is just my opinion which I’ve based on what I’ve seen people saying on social media and in YouTube reactions and reviews and from this data from the amount of people tuning into the show. But I think as much as many people like B*ghead, more people dislike/ are bored of V*rchie, are bored of the repetitive plotlines, are getting frustrated with the nonsensical plots. I think it has just gotten to the point where the things they don’t like about the show, or the things they’ve become bored with, far outweigh any appeal one ship might have. Basically I just get this overwhelming sense that people have lost any excitement they felt at this show. And this goes beyond any ships, whilst I do think alot of people tune in because of ships, there is more factoring into it than just that. I feel like all the excitement that came with the time jump and with seeing something new with Barchie and seeing something new with them being adults and dealing with adult themes, has worn off. It happened so fast too. I mean after episode 8 aired it was like a dementor had come along and sucked all the happiness out of the fandom. All of that energy that had existed before was just gone in the space of 45 mins.

But here’s my question. I did notice a little bit of that energy come back when the promo for ep 10 was released and it showed that shot of Jabitha together. Again I do think that alot of people like this idea of Jabitha together or at least are intrigued by it. Although I know there are quite a few B*ghead fans who think the romance is unnecessary. But again I think this interest in Jabitha is because it is something new and therefore it is something interesting. I’ve also seen some Veggie fans creeping out of the woodwork over the last few weeks. So what I am wondering is if the show decided to go the route of Barchie, Veggie, Jabitha, Choni and Kangs would that generate enough buzz and would all those smaller fandoms together be enough to revive the show a bit. Especially if they couple those ships with some interesting new storylines to go with them as well as keeping the interactions between characters varied. I mean I am not expecting the views to suddenly jump up massively back to what they used to be in like season 2 but I do wonder if it would be enough to breathe life back into the fandom again.

#barchie #jabitha #anti bughead #anti varchie #anti v*rchie #anti b*ghead #riverdale

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chaifootsteps · 3 years ago

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Ok so,, I've been wanting to ask--and im not too sure on how familiar you with this--how do you think Blitz's ADHD affects his relationship with Striker?? Im sure you probably saw the one ask I sent to vizowrites that they posted on their story, but Im not too sure on how familiar you are with the headcannon/cannon (not too sure if its confirmed or not) about Blitz's ADHD. (Also I'm not too sure how familiar you are with ADHD itself, and if not that's alright!)

Anyways, we know Blitz has a hard time with rejection (such as when Loona yelled at him in the Spring Broken episode). We also know he is impulsive and lacks self control. Blitz also has obsessions/hyperfixations such as on horses (these are all ADHD traits). I can imagine Striker himself isn't too edcuated on the topic himself, but once he learns that Blitz has ADHD, he does a shit ton of research to learn more about it so he can better understand Blitz. But, ADHD is known to put a negative toll on one's relationship, whether it be bluntness, rejection sensitivity, strong emotional outbursts, etc.

So back to what I was saying before, how do you think Blitz's neurodivergency affects his relationship with Striker? (If needed you could always do a quick google search if you want to know more about ADHD, or you could even DM me cause I have it myself and know a lot about it)

Sorry that was a lot! I hope you don't mind me coming at you with this 😅

Hoo, boy, Blitz and ADHD...well, for starters, I can definitely buy the theory of him having it because it would explain a lot. Blitz seems like he's probably got a couple of things going on, none of them ever formally diagnosed except for maybe when he was a very little kid, but he’s not stupid, he knows how people react to him and he knows how people look at him.

Maybe I’m projecting a little here, but I think his choice to not put a name to any of his neurodivergencies is a deliberate one. Once you’re that person with X, that’s what you become forever. It’s how the world will label you. Blitz has enough trouble with labels he can’t help that he’ll never be able to escape as long as he lives.

(And let’s face it, Blitz slings around the r-word. That says something right there.)

I also think Striker’s probably got at least one neurodivergency of his own -- in my little headcanon land he’s got PTSD -- and like Blitz, isn’t interested in thinking about it too deeply...their general approaches to life don’t exactly say “Hey, let’s find a sensible balance of therapy and medication to help deal with this.” I do think they probably look up each other’s issues as time goes on, try to understand each other a little bit better, to put a name to all of it.

But I think for the most part, they just...are what they are. Blitz can’t focus, can’t handle rejection, is impulsive, obsesses over things and people, and loads up on caffeine to make up for the dopamine he lacks function. That’s how he was when Striker met him and as far as either of them are concerned, it doesn’t matter which aspects of him are symptoms of something and which ones are just part of his personality.

All that matters to him is that Striker stuck around.

#BlitzStrike #Anonymous #Blitzo #Striker #actual blog post

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tigerdrop · 4 years ago

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okay kind of obsessed with the body swap art tho. idk why i just like benrey getting to bully gordon with his own body, his own voice, and i like gordon trying to navigate whatever weird shit benrey’s got going on. gordon not being able to figure out or control whatever organs in benrey’s throat produce sweet voice so it’s just spewing whatever emotions he’s feeling at random (including Horny? uh oh. can’t hide that as easily as a surprise boner can you gordon?)

this ask kicked me into actually thinking about it and your brain is so huge. massive. i lost control

last night i was struggling to articulate thoughts for the body swap thing but this is kickstarting me. i. really love bodyswap stuff........(sighing) i am yet again having to confront the fact that i latched onto an embarrassing number of Things after having first read about them in [REDACTED]. truly hate being alive

so like......potions. you can get into a whole lot of weird stuff with potions. truly loving that darnolds 5-minute existence gives me an excuse to think of the stupidest horny potions scenarios

and why in the fuck wouldnt he have a bodyswap potion just chillin in his lab. why wouldnt benrey crack that bad boy open and take a sip while darnolds bitching at him "dont you touch any of those goddamn potions. im not gonna tell you which ones which so if you die, you die"

gordon claps benrey on the back afterwards like "well, thats a risk im perfectly happy for him to take" but uh oh you fucking buffoon. the touch is what activates it. and shit just starts spinning and schlorping in his mind and he nearly falls over clutching the lab bench next to him and when he cracks his eyes back open, hes........shorter. and everybodys asking if somebodys okay but that somebody isnt him and hes kind of miffed about that

and then gordons head turns and he sees Himself being steadied on his feet by tommy and darnold and hes like.......guys? guys. hello! and the sound of benreys voice coming out of him with that irritated and loud timbre makes everybody turn to face him........b/c that is so insanely weird coming from him

im like way into the idea of benreys, like, Eye Darkness Thing transferring to gordons face when their bodies are swapped, too. its just his malevolent energies manifesting physically no matter what body hes in

Wait god wait. Like. Benrey in Gordon's body and he gets horny for some reason and has to live Gordon's fucking pained life of the suit edging the hell outta him- Bc now Gordon can actually fucking jerk off for the the first time in days. No edging bullshit from the hev suit

benreys newfound appreciation for why gordons such a bitch all the time

RRRRRRRRRRR gordon able to go wild beating his meat that night finally but right before he does he stops because hes looking down at. 8)!

YES EXACTLY....... gordon freeman humbled by the sight of benreys huge meat. except its his meat now

at first he only feels mildly weird about jacking it when hes not even in his own body right now but hes been edged for days now and hes just thinking "if i can just get this out of the way now, ill be clear-headed for however fucking long im stuck in black mesa. maybe this is why ive been so goddamn stupid lately. yeah"

but then he gets some time and space to himself at long last and unzips and the shock of seeing benreys huge uncut dick instead of his own brings him back to reality like "?oh my god what the fuck am i doing"

embarrassment! guilt! but also hes still fuckin horny and eventually curiosity wins out. whats the harm, right. its not like he has to say anything about it. and gordon freeman is (mostly) heterosexual and hes never been this up close and personal with a foreskin before and hes just......curious. scientifically

maybe hes even.......locked himself inside one of the company restrooms while hes at it. just to make sure hes got privacy. and there is a mirror right there........ he was gonna just bust one out and leave as fast as he can but now hes curious

starts. thumbing the hem of his shirt under benreys vest. starts lifting it up experimentally just to see where all that hair leads. out of curiosity. and seeing the curve of benreys stomach peek out in the mirror makes him hiccup on sweet voice inadvertently

weirdly enough theres a part of him thats both relieved and disappointed that hes never seen that color before

he never envisioned that seeing benrey like this would be a turn-on but like......with that vest and that helmet on he just looks like some kind of fuckin roundish rectangle shape. but now gordons intimately familiar with how his body feels to move around in......what hes gotta look like underneath all that armor and ill-fitting work clothes......and the hornier he gets the stupider he gets

takes off the helmet.......just to test the waters. if somebody manages to bust in, thats not so weird to explain. and hes surprised by the shock of black hair he finds under there. he doesnt know what he was expecting....but honestly, benrey looks, like, kind of nice like that. more like a person

im slightly obsessed with the idea of benrey just not even registering as a Real Guy, physically, to gordon, one that he could possibly be attracted to, until hes out of his work uniform.......like hes more of an icon of a person than anything up until that point. pure signifier. no substance

like......you know......the equivalent of how benreys HL model registers to 99% of people watching the series. sure, thats not necessarily anything youd register as "hot", most likely, but then u peel that away and its like........Oh

the model is the icon and the representation of the icon is the real

and gordon runs a hand thru benreys hair and tries out one of those shitty little smirks benrey likes to use on him and the effect is.......dizzying. is that him? is that what benrey really looks like to him?? he feels fuckin salacious doing this

he can even.........get his face up close to the mirror and really look at those teeth

run his tongue over them experimentally.......feel their sharp edges.......and, no, theyre not sharp like a knife, but they are definitely pointy. and surprisingly well-kept......hes never seen benrey brush his teeth before but clearly he must. theyre so smooth and slick under his fingertips

and then he flushes and drops his hand b/c hes getting some weird fucking thoughts right now........but looking back up at himself in the mirror and seeing benreys face all wide-eyed and red makes the issue worse

oh, you really like seeing him look like that, dont you. and gordons pissed b/c this isnt even his fucking brain but its still whispering the exact same neurotic, self-defeating shit at him that hes trying very hard to tamp down

and then he starts getting a little crazier. taking off the vest. he can explain that, no problem. its just kind of hot. heavy. he needed a breather! its normal. just in here to splash some water on his face and cool down, nothing wrong with that. but that just makes benreys shirt all the easier to access.......and he tugs the hem of it just a little higher and looks at himself in the mirror and runs a thumb over the curve of his stomach, where the hair is thickest, and he shivers

gordon freeman is deeply normal and would never get off to the sight of a guy with arms the size of his head tentatively dragging the hem of his shirt up, just for gordon to look at him closer

hands shaking from nerves as he decides to loosen his tie and start unbuttoning and he sees more and more hair-dusted skin and muscle and fat and a thin sheen of sweat reveal itself

> i could see gordon trying to tense and flex the muscles a bit just because hes normal

HE IS, AND HE WOULD

he doesnt know when "being horny b/c hes been pent up and edged for days and he just needs to get his rocks off real quick so he can be normal again" turned into "being horny b/c the way benrey looks under his uniform is scary good to him" but if he thinks about that too hard hes gonna have a panic attack

tells himself that its all just because he hasnt been able to get off. thats why hes thinking this shit. hell stop thinking it once he nuts

> hey this is a quick aside but yknwo how he talks to himself in third person sometimes? what if he does and then kinda does a mental double take at how his name sounds coming out of benreys mouth, with his voice. ok thats it goodbye

oh ym god thats making me go insane. doing it by accident and then.........saying it again. on purpose. just to hear benreys voice doing it

getting one knee hitched up onto the sink and leaning forward with his arm braced against the mirror and his forehead leaning on his arm and tugging benreys dick (no, idiot, thats your dick right now, stop thinking about it) and tentatively groaning out his own name and it comes out so hoarse and desperate that it punches him straight in the gut (too bad, hes thinking about it, he cant not think about it, not with the way he looks and sounds right now)

> remember in the series when benrey called him gordon one (1) time and he noticed immediately and was like..i think thats the first time youve called me by my name.

he looks so fucked out and slutty in that mirror that it almost makes him pass out

eyes darting like hes trying to commit every single detail of how he looks right now to memory (b/c he is. he fucking is. he wants to make benrey look like this so fucking bad. just for him. wreck him and get him flushed and sweaty and panting and moaning gordons name and jesus christ, okay, thats where his brains taking him. okay. cool)

hes dizzying himself thinking about it. he knows benreys hot for him by this point, theoretically. assuming his weird come-ons werent just jokes. benrey would probably let him do this to him. benrey would probably want him to touch his dick. gordon thinks about how good it might feel for his own hand to be on benreys dick and he cant get himself solidly into one headspace or another - hes gordon, hes benrey, he wants to touch, he wants to be touched, he wants to feel his own hand on this dick (and god, maybe he could. maybe he could ask. wouldnt that be crazy.)

benrey in gordons suit and gordons body and gordons face leaning over him, b/c fuck, he really is tall compared to benrey, hes figured that one out awful quick. and gordons (his) hand on his (benreys) dick and stroking him and leering down at him with those dark, dark eyes that dont even really look like his eyes, anymore, not with the way theyre shaded over, and hearing his (benreys) (his) voice moaning out his (gordons) (definitely gordons) name and all the little "pleases" and "thank yous" that he cant stop letting out b/c benreys voice was made for it, made to beg and whine and ask so nicely, and his heads spinning as he comes all over the fucking mirror and sink

> i wonder if this could be combine with the ideas that parts of the self or like mind is still a bit left behind if that makes sense, like with benrey also wanting this that part of the reason gordon wants to say those things

"do you want to fuck him or do you want to be him?" well my good bitch, perhaps you can have a little of both. welcome to my personal hell

hes never come so hard in his fucking life and the noise that rips out of him when he does, finally, after days of being jerked around (ha ha) makes his ears burn with shame

now if you really wanna go crazy. imagine that benreys up and walking around this whole time b/c being edged by his stupid broken suit is making it impossible for him to sleep, and he hears........all of this. stops and presses himself flat agains tthe wall to listen

he cant actually get into the bathroom to scare the shit out of gordon/offer to join in/etc, b/c this stupid flesh body of gordons cant even noclip, but he can press his ear to the door and. listen. and he can flush all the way down to his chest when he hears gordon in there, moaning out his own name with benreys voice

so thats what gordon wants him to do, huh. thats what hes thinking about.

poor benrey, tho. he gets to experience just a lick of the endless fucking suffering that gordon goes thru every single day just by being alive, and "the HEV suit trying and failing to suck him off to completion while his dick twitches against the hard metal of the interior every time gordon groans in there" is just one small part of it

anyway . see ya. my final message

#asky #writin stuff

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elyvorg · 5 years ago

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Kaito Momota: How ADHD Can Be

It’s about time I properly shared a take of mine that I never really talk about in my usual analysis posts, which is my very firm headcanon that Kaito has ADHD. While this is partly thanks to me having ADHD myself, self-indulgence is far from the only thing making me think this. There are so many reasons why this makes every single bit of sense, and this post is going to talk about all of them.

And, see, I don’t want to alienate anyone by having them think I’m about to present an interpretation of Kaito that looks nothing like the Kaito we know, because that’s not it at all. I’m here to talk about how so many of the things that were already abundantly true about him also happen to fit perfectly with ADHD. Really, you could think of it more as me talking about how ADHD actually looks a lot more like Kaito than most people might have realised.

After all, ADHD is a frustratingly misrepresented disorder that’s way more complex and interesting than most people are aware. So not only does it make a huge amount of sense to see Kaito as ADHD, it’s also just genuinely fascinating to think that this could be influencing how his mind works and the way he reacts to things throughout the story. Imagining that Kaito has ADHD could never make him any less Kaito, but I do think it makes him yet another layer of interesting on top of everything else he already has going on.

So even if you don’t have any personal investment in ADHD yourself, I hope you can follow along with me for this. There’s a lot of fun stuff to talk about here.

(Since ADHD is so horribly misrepresented that I can’t expect the average person to know what it really involves, this post is also going to include something of a whirlwind explanation of ADHD itself, in order to help people better appreciate why all these things about Kaito are potentially ADHD things. With that said, obvious disclaimer: I am not remotely a mental health professional, just someone with self-diagnosed ADHD who’s read up a lot about it. Some of this will be from things I’ve read, and some of this will be from my own experiences that I’m now pretty sure are an ADHD thing. My descriptions of these symptoms are likely to be somewhat oversimplified because I’m focusing on explaining this headcanon rather than explaining ADHD itself, so please don’t take this as a definitely-100%-accurate ADHD resource. I’m happy if this can raise awareness of what ADHD is really like, but you should look elsewhere to learn more.)

Hyperfixations

One major thing that ought to be more commonly known about ADHD is that it’s really not a lack of attention; it’s an inability to properly control where our attention goes. It’s been described as an “interest-based nervous system” – we’ll involuntarily focus on whatever seems most interesting to us in any given moment, regardless of its objective importance.

This plus a reduced amount of dopamine receptors means that when we manage to find something that gives us a lot of dopamine, ie, is fun and engaging to think about, we cannot stop thinking about it even if we wanted to. Our entire lives will begin to revolve around this Thing that we enjoy, thinking about it, doing things related to it and consuming more information on it to get as much of that sweet dopamine as possible. This can often be to the detriment of everything else, including more objectively important matters, because who cares about that stuff when Thing is the best thing ever!?

As an example: as you might imagine, I have been hyperfixated on DRV3 and especially on Kaito for over two years now. I have not been able to stop thinking about Kaito even when I’m supposed to be doing other things, and there’s literally nothing that’s more fun for me right now than sharing all these thoughts of mine with other people. We also love to infodump about our hyperfixations to anyone who’ll listen, after all. That’s precisely why this post exists, along with many more like it on both my blogs.

SPACE

So, this is perhaps one of the most easy-to-spot signs that Kaito might be ADHD. Because, man, he really loves space. Sure, any astronaut would have at least some level of interest in it, but Kaito is so obsessed with space that he introduces himself with a grandiose space-themed title, wears a galaxy print on his slippers and the inside of his jacket, and simply couldn’t wait for a college degree and had to make sure he got up there as fast as possible.

Granted, it’s not like Kaito talks about space 100% of the time. He is stuck in a killing game, after all, which is also kind of important to pay attention to. But, still, no matter what more-objectively-important things they can push themselves to focus on when necessary, there’s always a part of an ADHDer’s brain that’s near-constantly thinking about their hyperfixation anyway and will take any opportunity to bring it up and make things about that if they possibly can. And, well, Kaito still talks about space quite a lot considering that he’s in a life-or-death situation that doesn’t have anything to do with space at all (at least, as far as he knows for most of the story).

There’s one delightful bit of white noise I absolutely love in a debate in trial 4 where Gonta is suggesting a vehicle could have crossed the river. Someone responds to this with “Like a rocket?”, despite the fact that, A, there were obviously none of those in the Virtual World, and B, you don’t use those to cross rivers. Kaito, you dork, now is not the time. But of course now’s the time, there is always time to be thinking about space-related things, no matter how impractical and irrelevant it might be. Someone has been murdered, everyone else’s lives are on the line – not to mention his illness and the huge pile of inferiority issues he’s struggling with at this point in the story – yet amongst all that, Kaito’s brain still found time to go, “hey, speaking of vehicles, aren’t rockets the coolest!?” And… yeah, that’s genuinely what hyperfixations are like.

Then there’s the time Kaito asked Maki what her favourite spaceship was, like this is just an obvious go-to conversation starter in his mind, because of course he has a favourite spaceship. He has thought a lot about his favourite spaceship (or spaceships; let’s be real, there’s probably several that he thinks are SO COOL and might call his favourite depending on the circumstances) and could fill ages talking about nothing but that. Even though he knows this conversation ought to be making its way towards helping Maki open up about her past – this is one of his training sessions, after all! – there is still a part of Kaito that really just wants to talk about space, because a part of him always wants to talk about space.

We can see this as well in multiple FTE invitation dialogues (those brief lines describing how they hung out before the actual event starts) in which Kaito apparently spends it talking to Kaede or Shuichi about space, just because he can. There’s also several of his hangouts in the Salmon Team bonus mode where Shuichi’s suggestion of what to do doesn’t really have anything to do with space, but Kaito finds a way to make it about space anyway. ADHD minds are hyper-associative and make connections between concepts very easily – and, naturally, they’re particularly liable to make connections to the thing that the mind is already spending the majority of its time thinking about. So it’s really not so surprising or remarkable at all that Kaito can find ways to make even seemingly-totally-unrelated topics about space somehow, not if he’s ADHD.

(…To be fair, a particular fixation on a certain topic to the point of repeatedly bringing it up when it’s not called for isn’t necessarily that uncommon among Danganronpa characters, what with their talents. But hey, that doesn’t have to make Kaito any less likely to be ADHD. Rather, it would actually make sense for Ultimate students to have a higher than average proportion of ADHDers among them, since an ADHD-fuelled level of intense interest in a thing is more likely to make someone become hugely talented at it out of accumulated knowledge and practice. I’ve been increasingly thinking that Kaede could perhaps be ADHD, too, for example. But that’s not for this post; we’re talking about Kaito here.)

The longevity of space

ADHDers will generally go through many different hyperfixations throughout their life, sometimes one at a time, sometimes somehow managing to juggle more than one. An individual hyperfixation tends to last anywhere between a few weeks to a few years depending on its intensity and the longevity of the topic, but it’s rare for it to be more than that. Usually, sooner or later, the overwhelming passion for the thing will wear itself out.

And admittedly, Kaito’s passion for space has been there since he was a kid and never faded – and never will, of course! – which is far more persistent than most hyperfixations tend to be. But then again, there’s so many different things related to space for him to get excited about! Hyperfixations fade either when something else comes along that’s more exciting because it’s new and fresh, or when you’ve squeezed every last possible drop of dopamine out of it such that it no longer holds quite the same thrill. But with a topic as vast as space, there’s always more to learn to keep the excitement fresh, especially now that Kaito’s an astronaut trainee and is really on the front line of new space knowledge and technologies and is actually going to get there himself one day!

Besides, it’s not like ADHDers’ hyperfixations are completely outside of their control. My own hyperfixation on V3 and Kaito would probably have faded ages ago if I hadn’t kept it going by constantly making more content about it such as this. And similarly, there’s no way Kaito would have wanted to let go of his passion for space, not if he had any say in it himself, so he’d have done whatever he could to keep it burning during the times when the spark maybe wasn’t quite there as much. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable that Kaito could have remained hyperfixated on space for so unusually long and still be showing no signs of stopping. We all know how stubborn he is.

(House plants)

Kaito has probably had a few other, lesser hyperfixations alongside his lifelong passion for space. For example, I like to think that his fondness for house plants, according to his report card, is to such an extent that he was once hyperfixated on them. (This would have been for reasons that totally don’t bear a suspicious resemblance to other things he cares about.) I doubt he’s currently hyperfixating on them at the moment – at no point does he ever try to shift the conversation to being about house plants unprompted – but that wouldn’t stop him from still being generally fond of them and retaining all of the “useless” information he learned about them back when he was obsessed. One very rarely ever stops caring about a hyperfixation topic entirely; rather, the fixation just fades and the topic becomes no longer constantly on someone’s mind. I’m sure Kaito still could and would talk your ear off about house plants just as much as he would about space if you happened to get him started.

People

More importantly, though, I think that another of Kaito’s less obvious and intense hyperfixations – but still a very long-lasting one that’s active right now – could be, simply, people. Just, people in general: their flaws and complexities and differences, all the many ways in which they can communicate and work together, and the amazing potential they have to achieve great things if they do so. Kaito is so passionate about this stuff and has so many fully-formed opinions on things of this nature that make it seem like he’s spent a lot of his free time thinking about this, just because he can. Maybe he began to get interested in it after realising that communication and teamwork is important for an astronaut – but it also reads to me like Kaito is into this kind of stuff not because he needs to be for the sake of getting into space, but simply because he finds it genuinely fascinating and couldn’t stop thinking about it even if he had to. (Which would also help keep him interested in space, because it’s intrinsically linked to this other topic that Kaito finds fascinating!)

And within this, Kaito definitely hyperfixates in particular on his sidekicks. Once he’s made someone into his sidekick, which functionally means that he’s going to devote himself to supporting them through their issues and helping them reach their potential, he really devotes himself. It’s his hyperfixation on people in general, but concentrated on a specific person(s) that he can have a direct and tangible impact on, which means even more to him than just his feelings about how awesome and fascinating humanity is as a whole.

Kaito is really, really good at supporting his sidekicks, after all. He spends so much time, even when he’s not around them, thinking about what their problems are and the best ways he can help them. He was clearly eyeing up both Shuichi and Maki as potential sidekicks at least a day or two before actually acting on it and inviting them to training, as if he was trying to gauge exactly what their struggles were and how best to help before jumping right in. He approaches helping each of them in very different ways, making it clear that he’s specifically thought about who they are and the best tactics to help them individually instead of just carelessly using the same old script each time. On more than one occasion, he drops something on them one morning – the nickname “Maki Roll”, and the “bonus” training that becomes the katana scene – that he hadn’t mentioned at all the previous night, meaning that he’d been thinking further about how to keep helping them while on his own overnight.

So it seems to me like maybe it’s not just his selflessness, or his somewhat unhealthy co-dependency (more on that later, actually) that makes Kaito so good at this. I don’t think he could even stop thinking about helping his sidekicks if he tried. Figuring out how to help another human being grow and change and reach their full potential is so fascinating and engaging and rewarding to him that how could he ever not be compelled to do that as much as he possibly can?

The price of caring

This does, however, come with a downside. Because Kaito is fixating so strongly and uncontrollably on supporting his sidekicks, because doing that matters so much to him, it’s only going to hurt him more when he begins to feel like he’s failing at it. He can’t just brush something like that off as not really a big deal, because of course it’s a big deal. It’s everything to him, and it’s literally not possible for him to make himself feel like it isn’t.

It’s just as bad as if space suddenly twisted and became painful to think about somehow. Which… I guess that actually kind of happens too, when Kaito starts to realise that he’s never going to make it up there. And he can’t deal with that by trying to tell himself it was never that important, either, because space is always important to him. Even if he wanted to switch that part of his brain off or ignore it to help himself cope, he just couldn’t.

Caring so intensely about things feels amazing and makes a person wonderfully passionate, but it can also be a double-edged sword.

(Executive dysfunction?)

One big negative side to ADHD is that it tends to cause executive dysfunction, which, to massively oversimplify it, more or less means the profound inability to get yourself to do things that you know you’re supposed to be perfectly able to do. That interest-based nervous system does not do well with motivating us to do tasks that are objectively important but aren’t interesting or fun to actually carry out, resulting in a mental block that can appear to the outside observer like wilful laziness, even though it really, really isn’t.

This appears to be one part of ADHD that Kaito manages to avoid having to deal with. (He may superficially seem “lazy” during training, but that has nothing to do with his brain and everything to do with his body and the fact that he’s sick and doesn’t want anyone to know.) But I think that’s mostly because none of the reasons that ADHD causes executive dysfunction actually apply in the killing game.

One of the few things other than interest that motivates an ADHD brain is urgency – suddenly they can do that boring essay they’ve been putting off when the deadline is tonight, showing remarkable speed and focus in a fit of nervous anxiety over the potential consequences of turning it in late. And there’s plenty of literal do-or-die urgency to motivate Kaito during the killing game, so there’s no way he’d ever not be motivated to do what he feels he needs to do to help everyone there. Plus, the things he’s trying to do involve helping people, something he inherently finds interesting, so he’d be motivated for those reasons anyway even if it wasn’t quite so life-threateningly vital that he does so.

(Kaito is a bit flakier and liable to miss important details during the investigations and trials, mind you. This might be because, while the urgency of “if we don’t solve the case we die” is looming over him, the actual details of the case aren’t something that instinctively feels urgent or that he inherently finds interesting, so it’s harder for him to pay proper attention and take it all in even when he’s trying to. Kaito has plenty of intelligence in a lot of ways, but his brain is evidently not wired for investigations and deductions like Shuichi’s is – he’s perfectly capable of following Shuichi’s logic and understanding it, but not of figuring any of that stuff out himself in the first place. This could partly be down to Kaito having ADHD and just not being interested enough in these particular kinds of mental exercises to be able to get his brain to focus on them as much as he’d need to in order to solve them.)

I also don’t think executive dysfunction would have got in Kaito’s way much during his regular life before the killing game. (You know, if he’d actually had one, but let’s pretend for now that he did.) Motivation issues can be helped a lot by an externally-imposed structure telling you what you need to do and when, which is why a lot of ADHD people don’t even notice any problems while they’re in a school system and only fall apart once they’re adults and are suddenly expected to structure their own life. Kaito’s astronaut training would definitely give him plenty of structure to work from so that he always knew what he needed to do and never had this issue. It’s also really challenging, which is another thing that helps keep ADHD people interested and motivated. And while the actual end goal of getting to space is far-off enough that it wouldn’t be able to work as a direct motivator to an ADHD brain (we are bad at things with delayed gratification), everything Kaito’s learning would still be related to space and communication and teamwork, so he’d be interested in learning all of it simply for its own sake.

Emotional hyperarousal

Another big defining feature of ADHD that isn’t nearly as well-known as it ought to be is that it amplifies emotions to a far greater intensity than those of neurotypical people. ADHDers’ feelings and reactions are naturally bigger and louder and just more than most people’s – which sounds a lot like Kaito, doesn’t it? He’s always larger than life, energetic and passionate about everything, not just his specific hyperfixations. Look at how excited he gets about just seeing snow! And he has so much enthusiasm for so much else, too – as he puts it: “there’s nothing unnecessary in this world!” When Kaito feels things, he feels them full-throttle, with no half-measures, which is just how Kaito would always want things to be!

…But, whether he likes it or not, that also applies to the painful feelings just as much as the good ones.

Emotional dysregulation

Kaito can often be very reactionary and get unnecessarily riled up over minor things that don’t really warrant such a dramatic response. If you think about it, this isn’t really something he’d want to do, because he’s always trying to stay positive and keep people on his side. So apparently it’s something he simply can’t help, as if his brain is just wired to make him more liable to do that.

If even minor slights can cause an overreaction like that from an ADHD brain, then imagine how much worse it is when the stimulus is something genuinely worth being upset over. That already-painful emotion gets amplified to even greater levels, to the point that it can be almost unbearable. People with ADHD can often have a more difficult time dealing with things, not necessarily because they’re emotionally weaker, but because they simply feel things harder than most other people do.

Kaito goes through a lot of emotional pain throughout the story – and he’s really pretty bad at dealing with it all. He basically has only two not-very-healthy methods for doing so. One is to try to ignore it entirely by focusing on something more positive, which on its own could be put down to his desire to come across as an invincible hero who can inspire people. So this particular unhealthy tactic doesn’t necessarily mean that he wouldn’t be able to properly deal with these emotions if he actually stopped being an idiot and tried to.

However, Kaito’s second unhealthy coping mechanism is to turn the pain into anger – sometimes to the point of lashing out in ways he doesn’t mean to. Punching Shuichi at the end of the first trial is very much caused by Kaito being unable to contain his pain over Kaede’s death rather than any controlled attempt to push Shuichi forward, since he regrets it and apologises for it the next morning. And then the agonising truth that Gonta killed someone is even harder for Kaito to bear, leading to him lashing out at Shuichi again in what was very much desperate pain-fuelled anger with no rational basis for it. Unlike with simply hiding his pain, lashing out like this is not something Kaito would ever want to do; it’s not exactly very heroic of him, after all. So this suggests that there’s more to Kaito’s bad coping mechanisms than just him trying to appear strong and not worry people – that sometimes the pain gets so unbearably intense that ignoring it isn’t possible and he just can’t deal with it and loses control of himself.

Uncontrollable bouts of rage can be a common problem that comes with ADHD because of the amplified emotions and difficulty properly regulating them – and it’s definitely a problem Kaito suffers from, too. That part of Kaito that lets him get so wonderfully passionate in helping everyone around him might well be exactly the same part of him that simply cannot handle it when he realises Gonta murdered someone and leads to him lashing out at his best friend.

Moping (…not a technical term)

…Okay, I just said Kaito has only two unhealthy coping mechanisms for painful emotions, but maybe there’s also kind of a third: unconstructively moping about it. This doesn’t sound like Kaito at all – he frequently gives others advice about not doing exactly that – but he can actually be seen falling into doing so a couple of times if you look closely.

In chapter 2, when Ryoma’s behaviour bothers him for all the wrong reasons and he has no intent of actually doing something about it, Kaito really should be just trying not to think about it at all and focusing on something more constructive like helping Shuichi. However, the places he hangs out in for his chapter 2 FTEs and his invitation dialogues indicate that he spends a whole three FTE slots just brooding unhelpfully about the state Ryoma’s in. This is definitely not something he wants to be doing, since he hastily changes the subject if Shuichi hangs out with him.

And in case 4’s investigation, after Shuichi’s cell phone experiment makes Kaito feel useless and unneeded (he thought Shuichi needed his help! – but, no, turns out he actually really didn’t), the pain of that feeling noticeably lingers with him for most of the rest of the investigation. He’s in enough of a bad mood about it afterwards that Maki notices it through his less-expressive virtual avatar, and he doesn’t even come with her to call Shuichi back from the rooftop and just logs out on his own in a sulk. Then he also ends up explicitly unaware in the trial of some of the information Monotaro shared with the whole group once they’d logged out, meaning he was apparently still too wrapped up in feeling useless to be paying proper attention.

(And these are the two examples of Kaito doing this that are noticeable thanks to subtle clues in his behaviour – but since Kaito would obviously never draw attention to it, maybe he actually does this a lot more than those two times and we just can’t normally see it.)

See, another thing about emotional dysregulation – plus the difficulty in controlling the focus of your attention that comes with ADHD – is that it can be hard to stop yourself from thinking endlessly about painful things, even when you very much don’t want to be thinking about them. I once saw a tumblr post describing ADHD as Chronic Cannot Leave It Alone Disorder, and I can confirm that, yes, this is very frustratingly accurate, for the bad things as well as the good. It’s possible that Kaito’s advice about not moping when you could be doing something to make a difference might have originated for himself, to try and mitigate his brain’s tendency to do this. But while I imagine this helped quite a bit in letting him control his thoughts and stay focused on the positives, it appears that, despite his best efforts, it still doesn’t always work.

Impulsiveness

The Primarily-Hyperactive subtype of ADHD (aka the one that’s definitely the subtype Kaito has, for obvious reasons) is sometimes called Hyperactive-Impulsive type, because impulsiveness tends to be a big part of it, too. I think this is kind of a combination of emotional hyperarousal and inability to control attention – the impulse to Do A Thing gets amplified to the point that it floods the entire brain, and it becomes nigh-impossible to ignore it and consider the potential negative consequences before acting on it. It’s like that Chronic Cannot Leave It Alone Disorder gets concentrated into a single instant of frequently-terrible decision-making.

It’s no secret that Kaito is impulsively reckless – and if you think about it, it’s to an extent that’s honestly kind of pathological. Cheating his way into the astronaut exam early, for example, could very well have permanently ruined his chances of ever being allowed in and making it to space. He should never have considered that a risk worth taking. So apparently he just wasn’t properly considering the risk at all – not even for the most important decision of his life.

A lot of the time, these kinds of bad decisions can be fuelled by those amplified painful emotions that get turned into anger like I talked about before. The stress of the killing game causes Kaito to very nearly get himself killed on two occasions early in chapter 1, almost lashing out in a way that would have broken school regulations. Kaito is perfectly aware of the consequences for doing that – but in the heat of the moment, it just doesn’t matter to him. His overwhelming desire to express his pain-fuelled rage simply blocks out everything else from his mind. A similar thing happens in chapter 5 when Kaito’s attempt to punch Kokichi after the supposed mastermind reveal only results in him getting knocked out and captured by the Exisals that were very obviously there and under Kokichi’s control. It’s summed up pretty well by the fact that Kokichi outright tells Kaito that punching him won’t fix any of the things he’s angry about, and Kaito’s response is, “Even if that is the case… I can’t get over it if I don’t punch you!” To Kaito, in these moments, it’s never about the consequences; it’s about needing to let out his too-strong emotions right now and to hell with everything else, even if that “everything else” literally might include his life.

Then there’s everything that happens with Kaito at the casino. The consequences for him here aren’t exactly dire, since all he loses out on is the chance to buy a prize, but still – that uncontrollable fixation on the anticipated thrill of winning and the inability to consider the really-very-high possibility that he’ll lose is exactly the type of reckless thrill-seeking that people with this type of ADHD often have.

In fact, the bonus scene at the casino is literally titled “Kaito’s Gambling Problem” – and as you might imagine, impulsive-type ADHDers are at a higher risk of developing harmful addictions to things such as gambling. While this isn’t an actual gambling problem here because no real money is involved and it does seem that he never gets tempted by the casino again after the second time, the scene’s title apparently wants us to consider that Kaito has the potential to develop a legitimate gambling problem should he ever get old enough to legally gamble in the real world. Which is a weirdly specific thing for the writers to make a point of when it has no bearing on the plot… so it makes me wonder if they could have actually been trying to tell us something here.

This kind of impulsiveness can also cause people to blurt out their thoughts without thinking about the consequences, potentially resulting in upsetting someone or embarrassing themselves. At first glance, considering that he has a lot of thoughts he’s determined to hide from the surface, Kaito doesn’t seem to have too much of a problem with this kind of impulsiveness. If he did, you’d think he’d find himself muttering stuff like “I feel like crap”, or “I hate this place” all the time and then having to hastily paper over it and insist that no that’s definitely not how he’s really feeling at all. So apparently, he’s fairly good at thinking before he speaks when it matters to him?

Except, when he’s in the Virtual World, Kaito makes multiple unthinking comments to the effect of “I like this avatar body”, which he has to awkwardly brush off when Shuichi questions him, since it rather hints that something’s up with his real body. He’s suddenly really bad at this, even though he was pretty good at it the rest of the time.

So maybe what’s going on is this: in an effort to stay positive at all times because he’s Kaito, Kaito trained himself to have a constant, unshakeable mental filter that prevents himself from impulsively blurting out how he’s feeling if it’s something negative. However, he can’t stop himself from still randomly blurting out whatever positive things are on his mind. This usually isn’t a problem, but it can sometimes include things – it feels so great to not be dying for once! – that he really doesn’t want to be voicing either, if he only gave it a moment more thought.

Rejection sensitive dysphoria

Often shortened to RSD, rejection sensitive dysphoria is a specific and especially nasty kind of emotional hyperarousal / dysregulation that almost all ADHDers suffer from. (At least, I feel like it should probably be classified as a subtype of that, though I’m not sure if that’s the official take, so don’t quote me on this.) The ADHD researcher who coined the term defines it as: “extreme emotional pain triggered by the perception – not necessarily the reality – that a person has been rejected or criticised by important people in their life. It may also be triggered by a sense of falling short and failing to meet their own high standards or others’ expectations.” That second sentence is important and frequently overlooked, because it indicates that, despite the name, this isn’t only about perceived rejection by others; it can also be about an entirely personal sense of failure.

I first read about this concept while I happened to be hyperfixating on Kaito’s mindset specifically in early chapter 5, aka that time he avoids Shuichi out of shame over feeling like he failed him in the previous trial, due to his own unreasonably high standards for being a “hero”. (If you didn’t realise that this is what’s going on with Kaito in early chapter 5, go read this other post of mine and get caught up, because you’re going to need to be for the rest of this section.) And, naturally, though I was supposed to be reading that article about RSD to help me figure out if I had ADHD, my brain made some connections. That was the moment I began to have this headcanon; everything else in this post blossomed from that as I thought about it more and realised a lot of other things about Kaito also fit this incredibly well.

The null hypothesis

So, let’s consider early chapter 5. In fact, let’s assume for a moment that Kaito doesn’t have ADHD and his emotions function like a regular person’s. He would still, of course, feel like he’s utterly failed Shuichi by showing himself to be weaker than him and doing the opposite of supporting him during trial 4. That part’s not specifically based in anything ADHD and is just a product of Kaito’s psychological issues about heroes, which I’ve already talked about plenty in that post I just linked. (I don’t want anyone to think that my ADHD headcanon is getting in the way of or diminishing any of that; this is just another layer on top of it.)

Kaito really wants to make things right and apologise for his mistakes in the trial (and for his really-not-actually-mistakes too, for that matter). He really wants to fix the rift between him and Shuichi and not leave the two of them painfully torn apart like this. He knows the responsibility to do so is on him and not Shuichi. But… he doesn’t do it. Why not?

The only possible reason would be that he’s just being a coward and running away from the guilt and shame he’s feeling rather than facing up to it. Except… Kaito’s not a coward. He may arguably seem like one in some ways given how he refuses to acknowledge his weaknesses to his sidekicks – but that’s not to protect himself and his own emotions; it’s because he’s idiotically convinced that it’s better for them that way. Here, now that he believes he’s already failed Shuichi as badly as he ever could, he should feel like he has nothing more to lose on that front (and Shuichi never even needed him anyway, right?), so there should be no harm in owning up to it and at least apologising for what he’s done wrong.

Granted, Kaito is busy trying to make up for his failure through his totally-great escape plan – but that’s still no reason why he can’t also apologise first and then keep trying to make up for things with the plan anyway. And it’s not at all like it was in the trial itself, when he was too wound-up in the heat of the moment to be thinking clearly. He’s had plenty of time to process what happened and regain control of himself and become consciously aware of what he knows is the right thing to do here.

The guilt and shame Kaito would be feeling from his belief that he’s failed Shuichi would still hurt pretty bad, sure – but I don’t think, if it really is a proportionate emotional response to what he feels like he’s done, that it’d be something he couldn’t face up to. He’s incredibly resilient and knows that sometimes you’ve just gotta face painful things head-on, and he should be more than willing to do so for the sake of making things at least slightly better between him and Shuichi.

So, I argue this: Kaito avoiding Shuichi the way he does in early chapter 5 doesn’t quite make sense unless he has ADHD. (Or perhaps some other neurological disorder that would have a similar effect on his emotions, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to be sure what other possibilities could fit.)

Too much pain

I can confirm from experience: RSD freaking sucks. Any feeling of “I should be able to do this, but I messed it up”, or any seemingly innocuous comment from someone you care about where they either point out a mistake you made or that could possibly be interpreted to mean they don’t really care about you that much – these things can hurt like hell, so much more than they have any right to. It’s as if that insignificant twinge of disappointment that most people would feel just gets multiplied by like a thousand until it practically feels like you’ve been stabbed in the chest. And I should note: the rejection version tends to be triggered by people important to you, but I find it’s especially bad if it’s someone I not only care about but also look up to. You know, like Kaito very definitely does to Shuichi.

Case 4 has plenty of things that would trigger RSD for Kaito before even getting into the worst parts of the trial. That cell phone incident in the investigation I mentioned earlier, where Kaito thought Shuichi needed his help for a second and then ended up feeling like he really never did at all? And all the times Shuichi shoots down one of Kaito’s arguments in the trial and tells him he’s wrong (which happens seven times, by the way)? Every single one of those seemingly-minor moments would have hurt Kaito not just a little, but one hell of a lot. It’s honestly really impressive and a testament to Kaito’s resilience that he managed to keep himself together and show barely any signs of how he was feeling for as long as he did.

It’s also very relevant that RSD is known to potentially trigger an externalised response of instantaneous rage, exactly like the outbursts of anger I mentioned in the previous section. I’ve already talked plenty elsewhere about how a lot of the pain that’s causing Kaito to lash out in trial 4 isn’t just over Gonta’s guilt but is also over how he’s being made to feel like a horribly inferior failure compared to Shuichi – and, yep, that’s still a perfect match to Kaito having ADHD.

By the end of the trial, Kaito’s issues and irrationalities have rendered him convinced that he’s utterly failed to be the hero he’s supposed to be, and that Shuichi obviously doesn’t need him or care about him any more (if he ever even did in the first place). That’s giving Kaito plenty of genuine conscious reason to be hurting pretty damn hard to begin with, before his ADHD brain-wiring even sinks its claws into it. Now try to imagine that pain getting disproportionately multiplied by like a thousand – fucking ouch, and then some. Nobody, not even someone as brave and resilient as Kaito, should ever be expected to be able to face up to that, to actively make it even worse by talking about it and bringing those feelings to the forefront, especially not when doing so would just be showing even more weakness to the person it hurts so much to show weakness to. I don’t believe it’d be fair to call anyone a coward for that.

Kaito’s not a coward; he avoids Shuichi in early chapter 5 because he is genuinely in too much pain to bear. The only way he can deal with it at all (now that he’s not in the heat of trial 4 and is very determined to at least not make things even worse by lashing out in anger again) is by simply trying to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. If he manages to prove himself as a hero, maybe it’ll stop hurting quite as much and he’ll be able to face up to it, but until then, avoiding the pain is all he can do.

(Obligatory Harmonious Heart mention)

Since I relish the opportunity to bring this scene up whenever I can, I might as well add that Kaito’s Harmonious Heart event is another instance in which he’d be feeling some pretty rough RSD – at least, in every outcome except the best one in which Shuichi reassures him that they’re friends and it’s okay to open up to your friend. It’d be especially bad in the worst outcome where Kaito realises Shuichi has seen his “weakness” and feels like he’s failed him. Probably not quite as bad as in canon, but still, ouch.

In fact, an interesting thing about that worst outcome is that Kaito specifically says he feels “so embarrassed”, which, when you think about it, doesn’t really sound like the kind of thing anyone would expect Kaito to ever describe himself as feeling, even at a time like this. However, I know from my own experience that “embarrassment” is in fact something that it’s easy to mistake RSD for when you don’t know what it is – just an embarrassment that’s somehow agonisingly painful, because that’s totally how embarrassment usually works for most people, right. So, A, this fits perfectly yet again, and B, since you’d usually not think to have Kaito ever use that word… it makes me wonder if the writer for this scene knew.

Coping methods (and why Kaito doesn’t have them)

Of course, it’s not like there aren’t methods to try to combat and mitigate the incredible pain that RSD can bring. One that I’ve found works really well (thanks to Kaito himself!) is exercising. It really helps to burn off that excessive emotional energy – and not necessarily just RSD, but any of the disproportionately painful emotions ADHD brings – by translating it into physical energy. “Let your sweat wash away all your sadness, fear, worry and hardships; just start moving your body and your pain will become memories before you know it,” actually sums up how this feels pretty well! It’s quite possible that this advice – heck, maybe his entire exercise-to-help-the-mind thing in general – is something else that Kaito first came up with for himself, after he found that it helped him calm down and feel better whenever he’d get too upset about something.

…So it’s really rather cruel that Kaito’s worsening illness also happens to lock him out of one of his only genuinely-healthy coping mechanisms for what he’s going through emotionally in chapters 4 and 5, isn’t it.

Another thing that’s really helped me in dealing with my own RSD is simply understanding it. When you know that it’s a disproportionate emotional response, you can remind yourself that things aren’t truly as bad as the pain is making them feel like they are, which makes it easier to take steps to stop it hurting, such as talking to the friend who unintentionally triggered it and having them reassure you that of course they care about you. Without that understanding of it, it’s all too easy to think, “if it hurts this much, I must deserve to be hurting this much,” which, yeah, that’s a bad path to go down.

One pretty important part of my headcanon that Kaito has ADHD, then, is that he definitely has no idea he has it. If he’d been diagnosed with it at some point in his life, he’d understand these problems of his better. Even if the doctors never told him all these things I’ve been mentioning here about how ADHD actually works (which is way too disappointingly common, so I gather), Kaito would have researched this stuff himself at some point, in order to better understand himself and know his limits so that he can work around them to be the best person he can be. He wouldn’t want to let anything get in the way of him helping others as much as he can and achieving his dream of going to space, not even the idiosyncrasies of his own brain. And, heck, he’d probably find it interesting if only he had a reason to look into it in the first place! Many ADHDers hyperfixate on ADHD, and Kaito definitely seems like someone who would have if he’d known.

So, if Kaito was aware of his ADHD, he’d be able to recognise what he’s going through in early chapter 5 as RSD and handle it better. He’d know that, no matter how much it hurts, things aren’t actually quite as bad as it feels like, and that apologising to Shuichi sooner rather than later is almost certainly the best way forward even if the prospect of doing so seems terrifying as all hell. For that matter, if Kaito knew about his ADHD and what it really involved, he’d almost certainly have trained himself to be able to deal with a lot of his more troublesome symptoms better than he ever does in canon.

Friendship difficulties

Because of their differently-wired brains, ADHDers can often struggle to connect with the rest of the world that doesn’t think the same way as them. And here’s a fun subtle thing about Kaito that ought to get talked about more: he’s not actually very skilled or experienced at making friends. Having sidekicks that he can inspire and support, and being a general encouraging influence on a wider group of people to keep them working together – sure, that stuff comes naturally to him. But regular, everyday friendship? Not so much.

This isn’t that easy to spot, because most of the time we see Kaito, he’s deliberately focusing on motivating people, which he’s great at. But there are a few instances here and there where Kaito interacts with people in a not-specifically-motivational way: his attempts to befriend Kaede (who doesn’t need his support), his earlier FTEs with Shuichi (which should be happening before training starts), and the conversation with Shuichi and Maki in chapter 4’s second training scene (before Maki begins talking about her past).

In all of these, Kaito turns out to actually be a huge awkward goof who doesn’t seem to have the first clue how to do regular interpersonal interactions. And basically everything about him being this way can potentially be explained by ADHD.

Too many thoughts

It’s never quiet and organised in an ADHD brain; whenever we’re not hyperfocusing on one specific thing, our minds always have like five different thoughts rattling around in them at once. So, consider the conversation with Shuichi and Maki, which Kaito was attempting to treat like a Regular Conversation (rather than the chance to help Maki open up that it definitely actually was in his head). Perhaps, in his efforts to do small talk, not one but several different possible small talk questions popped into his head at once and clamoured for his attention, such that a couple of them – “what blood type are you?” and “what [something] do you like?” – got accidentally merged together when he opened his mouth to speak. That plus his impulsive lack-of-filter meant that out came “What blood type do you like?” and Kaito sounding like a doofus.

(When Maki points out that this is a strange question, Kaito awkwardly laughs it off. It almost seems like he’s used to accidentally saying things people consider weird during his attempts at normal conversation and has learned to try and act like it’s nothing so he doesn’t push anyone away.)

This disorganisation in ADHD minds also tends to make them get too caught up on unnecessary details they find interesting and wander off down random mental tangents rather than whatever they’re supposed to be talking or thinking about. I once saw a tumblr post that said ADHDers are likely to tell “stories that start sooner than they need to and end somewhere other than the point” – and this happens to be a literally perfect description of the story Kaito tells Shuichi in his second and third FTEs. He was supposed to be telling Shuichi how he became interested in space. He began by talking about finding a treasure map and conquering the seas, and he finished with how he was busy conquering the land when his summer vacation ended. At no point did he mention space; he’d got so wrapped up in the story itself that he’d completely forgotten that was meant to be the point.

Kaito also has a bit of a tendency to make strange statements that appear to make perfect sense to him even though they kind of don’t to anybody else. He wants to learn to play the piano for when he goes to space? Well, of course; he might meet an alien! You can’t ever know how malicious other people’s secrets are? Sure, but that’s why you just gotta believe in… yourself! These really do make perfect sense in Kaito’s head (the first is about communication; the second is about people-reading skills). But it seems, perhaps, that his overly-active mind made connections too fast and jumped several tracks at once, to the point that he didn’t realise he was skipping a few steps of his explanation and that it wouldn’t make so much sense to the people listening. Which is also a thing that ADHD people are liable to do.

Too loud and excitable

A less immediately obvious thing that’s strange about Kaito’s behaviour in the chapter 4 training chat is that, when Shuichi essentially just straight-up asks Maki to start talking about her issues, Kaito admonishes him for being too direct and claims he can’t just do that. This seems odd coming from Kaito, who’s usually nothing but direct in his approaches to encouraging people, and who definitely also intended to prompt Maki into talking about her issues here.

But, apparently because he’s trying to present this as a Regular Normal Friend Conversation, Kaito didn’t think he was meant to be so direct in this context. Which suggests he’s learned through experience that his usual kind of directness that works great for encouragement apparently just kind of puts people off when it’s used in a regular conversation. So instead, he was trying to work his way towards hopefully maybe getting Maki to open up through awkward small talk that he must know he’s terrible at – no wonder he was miffed when Shuichi casually went and committed the exact social “faux-pas” he’d been trying to avoid, with complete confidence that it’d actually be fine, and it turned out it was. (Whoops, there goes Shuichi effortlessly being better than him at everything Kaito finds difficult, like always.)

Nonetheless, Kaito probably has good reason to be worried about coming across as too direct (outside of sidekick contexts, where that’s just the best way to get through to someone and help). Because, when he’s not actively trying to avoid it, he does have a tendency to get a bit carried away with things and put people off as a result. Remember the time he asked Kaede for a hug? There’s absolutely no reason to assume this was romantic or sexual in nature, because it already makes more than enough sense to think that Kaito was just so excited at meeting someone so similar to him and thought she was Super Cool and just really wanted to be her friend!!! So he impulsively expressed that sentiment in a rather-too-forward way that he was too caught up in his excitement to realise was going to come across as rather inappropriate.

Not that being too overly excitable and direct about things necessarily has to lead to behaviour that’s outright inappropriate in order to cause problems. (Though please never forget that Kaito asked for the hug and respected Kaede’s boundaries when she said no.) Even if he’s not doing anything wrong, Kaito being his usual larger-than-life self all the time might just come across as a bit Much and be kind of weird and off-putting for a lot of people. It’s that emotional hyperarousal again, which I mostly talked about the negative side of in the earlier section – but the positive side of it, amplifying the good emotions to make someone more enthusiastic and passionate, can still (completely undeservedly) be a negative thing in a social context with others who just aren’t wired the same way.

In Kaito’s second FTE, wrapped up among his ridiculous overblown childish fiction, he appears to potentially be talking about an actual playmate he had at the time who joined in his game of pretending to be a sea captain. Then they had a fight and Kaito never saw him again – and he presents that like it was just part of his game, too, but this can likely be taken to mean that they had a falling out that never got resolved and stopped being friends. If so, I can’t help but assume that this was probably because tiny Kaito was a little bit too boisterous and excessive in his playing – while still not necessarily doing anything wrong – that it overwhelmed this other kid to the point that he didn’t really want to join in any more.

There’s also one bit of FTE invitation dialogue where Kaito claims he’s about to teach Kaede how to have peace of mind… and then he tells stories that make her question his definition of that. Which makes a lot of sense considering that ADHD minds, particularly hyperactive-type ones, are never relaxed for even a moment. Kaito doesn’t know how not to be energetic and over-the-top even when the people he’s with just want to wind down and relax, which also wouldn’t really do him any favours in terms of making friends.

But none of that is Kaito’s fault; he’s not trying to be selfish or drive these people away. It’s simply the way his mind is, always going full-throttle when most other people’s usually aren’t. He just gets so excited about so many things and has a hard time toning that down. Besides, why would Kaito even want to tone it down and be boringly down-to-earth when his mind could be up in space instead!? That’s much better! …except that most other people don’t see it that way.

Too much infodumping

In the training chat, after embarrassing himself with a bungled small talk question and being shown up by Shuichi making it look like it’s actually somehow not a problem to be too direct after all, Kaito attempts to bring things back around to small talk with the, uh, “safe” option of asking Maki what her favourite spaceship is. Which isn’t really small talk at all, of course – but then, actual small talk is hard for ADHD people, because it’s not interesting enough to care about paying proper attention to. They’d much rather be acting on that constant desire to talk about something they’re interested in, such as one of their hyperfixations, which is not always the best way to connect with others who don’t happen to be interested in the same thing.

(Fortunately, since another of his hyperfixations is Maki and her issues, Kaito is perfectly happy to listen once she starts talking about her past, and the conversation shifts back to a comfortable hero-and-sidekick situation again rather than an awkward and confusing how-do-I-friends???)

There’s another of those FTE invitation dialogues in chapter 1 where Kaito tells Kaede he’s a good listener… and then apparently Kaede spends the entire time listening to him instead. Except, obviously Kaito really is a good listener when it’s in his hero-and-sidekick context and he’s helping someone with their problems, because he’s invested in supporting them and so it’d be easy for him to pay attention. But perhaps, when it’s in a regular friendship context and the person he’s talking to doesn’t need his help (like Kaede doesn’t), Kaito’s not quite so good at listening because he’s not necessarily as interested in what they have to say. So he might be liable to just impulsively act on the desire to talk about the things he wants to (such as SPACE; there is always time for space) and then get so focused on it that he overlooks the other person’s feelings and genuinely doesn’t realise he’s coming across as kind of brash and self-absorbed.

Kaito’s second and third FTEs with Shuichi are an even better illustration of this. Upon Shuichi choosing to hang out with him for a second time, Kaito apparently realises Shuichi is interested enough in him to possibly want to be his friend. So he responds to this by… launching into a huge ridiculous story about his (completely make-believe) heroic adventures as a kid. This kind of one-sided conversation and bizarre topic choice is not, in fact, a great way to make friends with someone, but Kaito doesn’t seem to realise this. He finds his story so cool and exciting that he impulsively assumes Shuichi would too and jumps into it without actually confirming whether Shuichi wants to hear it or not. And, honestly, it seems like Shuichi doesn’t, at least not particularly, and is only listening out of politeness and an inability to get a word in edgeways. His less-than-enthusiastic response to Kaito’s story suggests that these FTEs are canonically meant to happen before training begins and Shuichi comes to properly consider Kaito a friend – and therefore that Kaito’s not really doing the best job here of making Shuichi begin to consider him a friend.

Still himself despite it all!

All of these potentially-ADHD-fuelled idiosyncrasies of Kaito’s make it a lot harder for him to make friends in the normal way – and he seems to be somewhat aware of this. Some of the things from the chapter 4 chat hint that he’s slightly insecure and afraid he’s going to put Shuichi and Maki off by being so dorkily himself. There’s also a little more of this in the Salmon Team bonus mode, in which friendship is the entire point, and yet a few lines when he’s inviting Shuichi to hang out hint that Kaito isn’t completely convinced that Shuichi would want to hang out with him as a friend rather than as a sidekick who needs his advice and support. If he was more used to having friends, he probably wouldn’t still be so insecure about this – so this honestly kind of suggests that Shuichi and Maki could be the first real friends Kaito’s ever managed to make.

Because of these kinds of issues in connecting with people, a lot of ADHD kids grow up unconsciously learning to suppress their true selves, hiding their boundless enthusiasm and unusual interests to seem more “normal” so that they can fit in. I know this because I was one such kid, and I’m still struggling to unlearn this as an adult. So I have huge admiration for Kaito having managed to not do this, refusing to let anything stop him from being himself at all times. His convictions about staying true to himself are even more impressive when you realise that he would have felt so pressured to break them and pretend to be someone he’s not in order to more easily make friends.

As strong-willed as Kaito is, I doubt he’d have been able to do this as a kid without help. His parents and grandparents must have been really, really good in validating his passion and energy and never making him feel ashamed for being the way he is, assuring him that if other kids can’t see how great he is then that’s their problem and not because he’s doing anything wrong. He wants to go to space more than anything else in the world? Awesome; he should chase that dream with everything he has and not care how ridiculous and childish and impossible everyone else seems to think it is! Not all parents would do that.

After all, there are a lot of occasions in which Kaito does just brazenly present his larger-than-life self to someone in a clumsily overbearing attempt to make friends, without showing even the subtlest sign of being worried it might put them off. For that matter, Kaito is generally very willing to just throw himself into things he’s unfamiliar with and possibly end up failing spectacularly and making a fool of himself – something that’s likely to be pretty painful for him, given how RSD is. While some of this is probably down to his impulsiveness and not even considering that he might fail, I’m sure sometimes he’s got to be aware of it, and if so, that’s some impressive resilience and determination. People with ADHD can become unconsciously inclined to never try at anything out of a fear of that painful failure, but of course Kaito would refuse to let that happen to him – which is really quite admirable.

Interestingly, all of the times Kaito is subtly insecure about his social skills – the chapter 4 scene, the Salmon Team bits, and maybe that time with the former friend in his FTE if you assume that him wrapping it up in a fiction means he’s still uncomfortable about what happened – involve someone he’s already friends with. After all, it’s probably easier for him to fearlessly dive in with someone new, because it’s less of a blow if he messes up in that context – not everyone’s going to click with him and that’s just how things go. But once Kaito’s already built a strong connection with someone, he becomes more afraid of messing up, because being rejected by someone important to him would be agonising. You might think that he ought to feel more comfortable around people he’s already friends with because he should trust them and know they’re not going anywhere no matter how much of a dork he is – but when RSD is a factor, it makes perfect sense for it to be the opposite.

Sidekicks can be friends, too!

Perhaps part of why Kaito is able to remain so confident in himself most of the time is because he nonetheless hasn’t grown up alone and lacking meaningful connections to other people. Despite his difficulty in making regular friends, he’s compensated for this by having sidekicks, which are a very different matter that his eccentricities conversely make him very good with. Being enthusiastic and energetic and over-the-top like Kaito can never not be is helpful when he’s being an inspiring hero, not weird or off-putting at all!

Still, while Kaito has a far easier time forging that initial connection with someone through the sidekick approach rather than the friend approach, that doesn’t make him worse at actually being someone’s friend (and not just their “hero”) once he’s got his foot in the door. If Kaito had told the story from his FTEs to Shuichi after they’d started training and properly bonded, Shuichi’s reaction would have been completely different: still probably exasperated, but in an affectionate kind of way, because he knows that’s just part of what makes Kaito who he is, and it’s actually pretty fun to be around. He has a lot of this sort of response to Kaito once they’re friends, and it’s adorable. It’s the same in the chapter 4 training chat – neither Maki nor Shuichi are at all put off by Kaito’s awkwardness, partly because they’re not exactly great at social skills themselves, but also because they know how much Kaito cares about them, and no amount of arbitrary social missteps could ever change that.

When someone becomes Kaito’s sidekick, meaning they’ve accepted his support and understand how much he wants to help them, they can see everything else about him that they might have found weird before in a new light. They learn that his eccentric behaviour isn’t him being deliberately rude or self-absorbed at all. It’s just genuinely how he is, and it’s part of how he can support them so well like he does, but that’s not all it’s good for. They come to appreciate Kaito not just for his incredible supportiveness, but for everything else about him, too. He’s not just their hero, but also their friend.

However… Kaito apparently can’t see that. Since he’s never been that good at forming regular friendships with people who don’t explicitly need him, he’s all too liable to assume that the people who do need him are only sticking around because of that, and no other reason. That co-dependency of Kaito’s I mentioned earlier, aka his rather unhealthy need to be needed? While the stressful context of the killing game definitely made it way worse throughout the story, it seems it was already slightly a thing in the first place – and if so, Kaito having ADHD could very well be the root cause.

Kaito is Good

Being realistic about how sadly uncommon well-represented neurodivergency is in fiction (and how misunderstood ADHD tends to be), I don’t know if I should try to assert that Kaito being ADHD was definitely the writers’ intent. However, almost every major facet of his character and personality fits with it so damn well that I want to think it’s at least possible that someone on the writing team could have had it in mind. Especially with the couple of bits I mentioned that seem like they could have been deliberately included by someone who Knows.

Still, even if it wasn’t intended, it’s amazing how good of a fit this is. Maybe it’s just that, in creating a character as intensely passionate as Kaito, the writers naturally wrote into him all the downsides of being that way as well, without even realising they were near-perfectly modelling the highs and lows of ADHD. After all, the human mind’s ability to simulate other human minds even when they’re not real is freaking magical. Kaito is such an incredibly well-written character with so much thought put into him whether or not he was meant to be as extremely ADHD-coded as he is.

I’ve always believed that Kaito is a fantastic example of how the best way to write realistic and interesting flaws into a character is to have them organically draw from traits that, in other situations, can be that character’s greatest strengths. And in my opinion, this is also kind of true about ADHD. When I figured out I had it and what it really meant, it was hugely validating for me, because I learned that almost everything I’d been struggling with was basically just the logically-inevitable downside of some of the things I’d always liked about myself, such as my ability to get so ridiculously analytical about stories I love like this. I wouldn’t trade those parts of myself away for anything – and I can’t imagine Kaito would, either.

I’ve seen a few posts and articles focusing on the bright side of having ADHD by listing some of the positive traits ADHDers often have because of it, and, delightfully, so many of them – fun to be around! compassionate! persistent! to name just a few – are things that Kaito has in spades. So, well, if ADHD can look so much like Kaito… then surely it can’t be all bad.

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(P.S.: High-five to anyone who headcanons Kaito as autistic! There’s a lot of overlap between that and ADHD. Many of the symptoms I’ve talked about here can also be symptoms of autism, and even with the non-overlapping bits, a lot of Kaito’s idiosyncrasies that I linked to ADHD could be interpreted slightly differently to link them to autism instead. I believe ADHD fits him somewhat better than autism does, but then I’m more knowledgeable about ADHD so my data is skewed, plus I’m pretty obviously biased since I’m personally invested in the idea of Kaito being like me. Taking a step back from my more specific headcanon here, though, there’s still every reason to assume that Kaito is at least some flavour of neurodivergent, and I think that’s pretty awesome.)

#danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers #kaito momota #character analysis #kaito's hero issues #ramble #adhd #adhd headcanons #creating that tag because i can already tell kaito won't be the only adhd headcanon i make #oh my god this ended up *longer* than the hero ramble how did this happen #and yes i will link to the hero ramble in every single other kaito ramble because it is always important #i also talked about myself in this more than i ever usually do on here so uh #personal?

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