#yeah just uh. something to think about lol

[harunayuuka2060]

Ace: If this is actually your and Lilia-senpai's child, we definitely need to hear the family lore.

MC: Bro, what?

Deuce: Actually, I'm curious too...

Jack: How are we going to know that he's telling the truth?

Ace: Oh, yeah. Your concern is valid, Jack.

Ace: Since the Prefect tends to deny shit.

MC: You're the lying piece of ass here, Ace.

Ace: Lol. Anyway, wake up Lils. We'll start with the interrogation.

Lils: *being cuddled by MC so he would feel safe*

Ace: You ready, Lils?

MC: Why is Lilia here?

Lilia: Don't mind me.

Malleus, Silver, and Sebek: *also went to listen*

Ace: Lils, just be honest, okay?

Lils: *nods cutely*

Malleus: He also acts like Lilia...

Ace: What's your Mama and Papu like?

Lils: ???

Jack: I think you need to ask one at a time.

Ace: Oh, right. What's your Mama like?

Lils: *beams* Mama is very caring~ They feed me. Do the laundry. Wash dishes—

Ace: Typical.

MC: *throws a shoe at Ace*

Ace: Ack! A-Anyway... How about your Papu?

Lils: Papu? Hmm... I don't see him often.

Ace: ...

The rest of them: ...

MC and Silver: *giving Lilia judging eyes*

Lilia: *pouts* Hey.

Ace: Why is that?

Lils: Mama said Papu is like an old cat who is searching for a resting place. But I don't understand why he can't do that at home—

Lils: When we have a garden.

Lilia: ...

Sebek: Lilia-sama...

Deuce: *mutters* Vanrouge-senpai doesn't want to traumatize his child, I suppose...

Ace: Uh... Well... What can you say about their relationship? Do you think they love each other?

Lils: *nods enthusiastically* *smiles brightly*

Lils: Mama would wait for Papu in front of the house every morning!

Lils: And when Papu doesn't come home, Mama then will look sad... *puffs his cheeks*

Lils: *smiles again* But when he does come home, Mama hits him with a broom!

Malleus: Pft—

Lilia: ...

Silver: ...

Sebek: Huh?

Ace: *to MC* You bipolar or something?

MC: Bruh— no, what?

[dadsbongos]

pleaseplease make more daisuke mouthwashing x reader 18+ stories where hes a whiny boy because he got jealous about u hanging out with curly ( sneaks in ur room to talk then ure up with the rest ! ) i hope this gets noticed tho💔 i would absolutely appreciate if u take this request! 🫶🏻

P.S I LOVE YOUR WORK!! i enjoy reading ur stories<33 it makes me feel like im actually in their world lol, i can imagine it pretty clearly😭😭 ure amazing!!

as mentioned earlier i got drunk writing this sorry / +18!!! / probably less than 1k words idk

@maniacpixiedreamboy come get your man he's barking....

Daisuke lets people get away with a bit more than he should. Usually that means allowing assumptions that he's dumber than rocks; life is easier that way. Less responsibility, less arguments, less struggle to be heard. The only person to ever see through that and call him on it is hidden behind a steel door thicker than his captain's head.

...ugh.

Captain. Captain Curly.

Raising a trembling hand, Daisuke knocks -earnestly shocked he's actually gone through with it- and feels his heart leap into his throat as seconds pass. Silently awaiting either brutal rejection or sweet remedy.

Part of him disbelieves his feet are even outside your door. Third eye beaming down on his own lean body poised for embarrassment, after an hour talking himself up just to leave his quarters. Swansea was dead asleep when he stealthily padded out, and Daisuke prays the old man remains that way when he shamefully crawls back inside.

"Daisuke?" your voice startles him.

Jumping, he snaps a wristband against his skin and silently stares at you, wide-eyed, "Uh. Hi."

"'Hi'? What the fuck are you doing out here...?"

Voice rocky with slumber and eyes discolored with exhaustion, Daisuke imagines you're seconds away from ripping the answer out by force.

"Uhm," he clears his throat, shooting this wary look back as if he's doing something illegal and whispers, "Do you have a thing for Captain?"

"The fuck?" that seems to wake you right up. You blink bleariness out and glare at the man, posture straightening out, "What's wrong with you?"

"Well, you two seem close and all..." Daisuke wants the Tulpar to spontaneously split down the middle and for his body to get ripped into the vacuum of space, "For the age gap, anyway."

"Why do you care?" you dig out drowsiness from either eye with your index knuckle, yawning into Daisuke's face which he supposes he deserves, "You can have the dude, I don't like him. He's my boss."

"I don't- !" Daisuke hisses until you giggle quietly, "Oh, you're mean."

"Yeah," you shrug nonchalantly, leaning against the doorway with folded arms, "You're still standing outside my door. So what?"

"I don't like when you're mean to me..."

"Yes you do."

"But you're not supposed to know that!"

"Alright, then," you step back, finger out to press the close button on your doors, "If you've got nothing else to say, then I will: goodnight, Daisuke."

"No!" he wails, immediately burying teeth into his hand and cringing at the outburst. Just to follow it with a muted one, "Nooo...."

"What? What do you want?"

"You already know," he whines, batting those thick lashes at you like you've been anything remotely resembling sympathetic tonight.

"I wanna hear it," you snag him by the collar of his Pony Express sanctioned sleep shirt and drag him inside before closing your door. Shoving him back until his knees buckle against the bed frame.

Daisuke crashes into your thin sheets. Again: Pony Express sanctioned. Meaning they're bright fucking yellow and do shit for keeping out the cold. But they're a welcomed reprise from that stiff hallway. He shakily exhales, eyes darting around the room for a mere glimpse of any deposed laundry he could spot. Underwear, specifically. Which is strange because until he boarded the Tulpar, Daisuke did not think he was a pervert.

He's ran around a couple bases back on Earth, and he's watched porn, and he's been in casual relationships (two, actually, both of which were surprisingly chaste). He'd never known himself to be obsessed over the idea of sullied garments.

"Daisuke," your voice lulls him back into the moment, eyes low and expectant, "Don't ignore me."

"Sorry," he blurts, swallowing hard and refocusing entirely on the sorry excuse of pajamas you've thrown on. Thin short sleeve and boy shorts. Fuzzy socks he can admit are adorable.

Briefly, the image of his hands wrapped around them as he holds your ankles to your ear flashes in his mind and he has to shake it out just to remember the English language.

"I, uh, well, you know? I'm," he clears his throat, pushing up onto both hands and thighs spreading as this insufferable heat begins throbbing all across his lap, "I'm super pent up. Like. Crazy pent up. I didn't think I'd share a room with Swans', I'm dying without jerking off," your rising brow only prompts more pathetic truths from his mouth, "And I can't find any material other than. Well..." again, his eyes crawl over you without subtlety or remorse. Tongue darting out to slicken his lips, "You."

"Me?" you take one step forward and his hips jump up instinctually.

"You," he confirms, sitting up straighter before slumping forward. Crooking his head up as you approach, and telling himself he allows you to take his cheeks in both hands, "You're so hot you make me wanna vomit. I don't even think it's the isolation, I just... want you."

"Yeah, baby?" it's so condescending, the way you smile down at him and coo, "You wanna fuck me?"

"Uh huh," he spreads out even wider, fingers knotting into your sheets to keep from abruptly grabbing your hips. Silently begging to be touched and praised and kissed.

"What a sweet boy I got, how'd I get lucky enough to get stuck on a haul with you?"

Your wondering goes unanswered long enough for Daisuke to feel permissed to strip those flimsy boy shorts from your legs. Shoving them near your knees before begging,

"Can I put it inside? Just for a little -I need you, please?"

Daisuke spent a countless sum of nights deliriously spiraling into dreamland to thoughts of you riding his cock, but now the reality is sweeter than every built imagination.

His head is practically molten against his shoulder blades and his lungs are expelling air faster than they can recover. Hot thighs slap and stick and peel and you're mewling over him with honeyed lips just wavering above his,

"Is this good, honey? Is it everything you dreamed of?"

He sounds like one of those pin-up blonde girls in porn, fucking wailing for you. Your name muddied and drug through a series of babbled, "Uhhhhh, fuck, yeah, yes yes yes fuck so good. Never had it like this, fuck fuck, I think I love you."

You staunchly ignore that last bit. Mouth hovering over his and teeth snagging Daisuke's with the prayer to draw blood.

Cock fat enough to stretch you out while his head thump thump thumps deep inside you. Velvet walls hardly accommodating with how tightly they squish around his shaft.

Far thrown out his mind is Captain Curly, now all Daisuke hopes for is to be the sole person on board you've made your sex toy.

"fuck me," he wails, even as you follow that exact command, "Fuck me, baby, God!"

Swollen with pleasure, you grind against every down-thrust as you ride his cock and moan his name just like he wants. One hand buried in his bleach-strained hair and one carving into his thigh for purchase.

"Daisuke, harder, babe- give it to me harder!"

He does his best to compky, as Daisuke always does: eager to prove, eager to be useful. Punches his feet onto your mattress to thrust up into you and slam fully inside your snatch, his balls bruising against your ass.

Again he claims to love you and again you choose to ignore it.

You might love him, you might not.

Daisuke is forever willing, flicking nipples and tongue-kissing and drooling and begging.

Daisuke is the perfect fucking sex toy, you think.

[beneathsilverstars]

dagger ending question: how did the villagers within earshot react, and do they also check in on siffrin? thinking like, tutorial kid and running one

hmm, let’s see, who’s nearby, where is he.. somewhere that siffrin would assume is adequately out of the way for a minute of privacy, but if he’d actually thought about it he woulda realized there’s way too high a chance of someone walking through…

i think the best option here is the path to the clocktower, across the broken bridge and right around the corner. the villagers never go to the clocktower, the party has it all to themselves — but siffrin you silly goose, that means everyone in the party walks that path at least once a loop. and since siffrin is usually the last one still running around town and did the friendquests the last several times they looped to dormont, they forgot when exactly odile finishes her shopping and brings everything back to the clock tower, if not interrupted.

unfortunately. this means the closest villagers are the kids. but if they start hollering “what’s wrong??” as they run over, odile can go ah fuck and yell back for them to turn around and go get mirabelle right now because someone’s hurt. and if they don’t all go, or when they bring mirabelle back, the kids can be told to guard the bridge and make sure no one bothers them while mirabelle is working! sometimes the best way to stop a kid from doing something is to task them with making sure no one else does it.

hmm.. bonnie is nearby too… perhaps far enough to be out of earshot of the initial shouting, but they’d probably see the kids rush by with mirabelle and run over to see what’s going on. so maybe actually mirabelle sends bonnie to get isabeau! again, distracting them with a genuinely useful job. and when they get back, the kids say nuh-uh you’re not allowed past the bridge, and before bonnie can clobber them for it odile comes over and swaps out with isabeau and talks to bonnie. says siffrin got hurt, but mirabelle is healing them, and the best thing odile and bonnie can do now is stay out of the way and plan a really good dinner.

ofc bonnie asks what happened, but odile is not about to explain what she actually saw, and does not have a cover story ready either, and would rather not come up with something on the spot before she has more information, including.. siffrin’s status once mirabelle has done all she can. so she just says they’ll have to wait until siffrin is healed to get the full story. bonnie is very upset, esp bc odile won’t tell them how bad it is other than “mirabelle got to them quick, so hopefully they’ll be just fine.” which is not very reassuring but odile doesn’t want to say more and then be wrong about it. bonnie probably ends up deciding they’re even more mad at siffrin now so they don’t care ANYWAY but like they’re saying this with tears on their face.

and then yeah the villagers who saw mirabelle run by would have been talking worriedly, maybe starting to congregate by the bridge. running one, tutorial kid, smug one, maybe even fishing one and daydreaming one. odile just tells them one of the other saviors got hurt but mirabelle is taking care of it, if we need any help we’ll ask, otherwise go away, stay out of it. she’s being a lil snippy but who could blame her. and though the villagers are very curious they know when to back off… and go gossip w the other villagers instead, lol. they’re probably worried about what this means for the whole defeating the king thing. 😔

[rollercoasterwords]

i rember seeing you update your tags with memory loss and my heart dropped lol it’s always been one of my biggest fears and you mercilessly explored it (and specifically how it affected relationships) and it was terrifying and beautiful and wonderful

the way you write memory loss haunts

me i love your writing so much im in awe and uh have a wondrous day 😭

hiiiii thank u yeah i have. many thoughts about memory loss clearly lol

i think in general part of what compels me is that i feel as though there is a very prevalent message that we should think of life as a linear journey through time, moving from past to future, and also that the meaning of life is evaluated in ways tied to that linear concept of time--i.e., the idea that death is a fundamentally more important experience than most (if not all) other moments of life, because it is temporally at the "end" of a linear life cycle. & this is something i explored in thtf bc i wanted to push back on & question the presumption that death is necessarily any more important of a moment simply because it's the last moment we might have, & i wanted to explore a concept of life in which moments happening at different points of time are not necessarily ever "over"--those moments have always happened & are always happening somewhere in the fabric of the universe...basically thtf was me exploring how things might change if we break away slightly from life measured by linear timelines.

ANYWAY lily's story arc in worm moon is kind of a similar exploration. i think one thing that people find really frightening about this kind of memory loss--which was based around early-onset dementia--is the idea that you are losing these moments when you can't remember them, and also becoming unmoored from your linear temporality. your life is no longer a straight & predictable line from past to present to future; now the past interjects on the present, times get tangled up, etc. & again i wanted to explore the ways in which that can be painful but also the idea that a life unmoored from memory and time does not necessarily preclude joy & love & everything that people generally find makes life worth living; yes, lily losing her memory of her son is painful, but that doesn't mean the moments and the times she lived with him go away. they aren't lost or eroded because they didn't exist only inside her memory or her mind, y'know? the past is always happening and the future is always happening and the present is always happening all at once, etc...or maybe it's not! who knows! but just because we tend to perceive reality one way doesn't mean other perceptions of reality are necessarily less real.

& with sirius's experience of memory loss--there are some overlapping themes, but also different stuff i wanted to unpack & explore. i wanted to write a character going through the trauma & frustration & loss of feeling as though an important piece of past & memory had been stolen from him, and how that blank space can leave a hole inside you, and you can spend so much time trying to fill it--but at the end of the day, sometimes memory is just gone. sometimes it was never made correctly in the first place, and you end up with a hole in your life. and so often in stories about that kind of traumatic memory loss what i've seen is a narrative where there's an eventual restoration of memory that fills in the hole and allows the character to finally move on. but i wanted a character who has to come to terms with the fact that this specific, acute kind of memory loss is permanent--there is no healing of the hole, there is no patching over it, you just have to learn how to be a new person around it because you can't go back to the person you were before it, because that person is no longer you. and you have to learn to live with a trauma that you can't even name. i think that's a stumbling point for me with a lot of narratives i've encountered about trauma: oftentimes, they rely very heavily on finding ways to name & explain that trauma as a means of healing from it and coming to terms with it and moving past it. and if you have a traumatic experience tied to memory loss, or if the memory loss is the traumatic experience, then it's not really something you can "come to terms with." you just have to accept that something happened to you or your body or however you think of that person you can't remember and you'll never fully know what it is; you'll never get to sit down and watch a movie of the memory that says "this is the Truth and this is What Happened and this is why there's a hole inside you and you have nightmares about things you can't remember." anyway i think i'm just rambling now & not explaining this very well lol it's easier to just write what i want to say through these characters yayyyy fanfiction let's all clap & cheer etc

[crunchycrystals]

Chapter 1 of 5, 8,996 words

Summary:

Percy and Annabeth are best friends working in the film industry together, him as a stunt performer and her as a camera operator dreaming to be a director. Until one day they aren't. Until one day they haven't spoken in 18 months and Percy's quit doing stunts. But when he gets the call saying Annabeth's directing a movie and it might not get finished without his help, he's on a plane back to being a fall guy.

AKA my Percabeth au based on 2024 movie The Fall Guy starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt

hey so i wrote something

[meamiki]

mira !!! :]

[pettyprocrastination]

whoever this beloved anon was I am so touched by your kindness! You definitely didn’t have to do this but I am so happy you enjoy this idea and I will happily expand upon it for you!

this is just a collection of word vomit bullet points for the time being but I will happily answer any and all questions about this pair!!

warnings: violence, angst, child death (Sarah Miller), foul language, the same warnings that apply to tlou, reader is Sarah's mom and described as having similar features to her. 

So the general Idea is that you and Joel are happily married before the outbreak. 

You had been Sarah's mother, his high school sweetheart he got pregnant when neither of you were old enough to have any reaction to the pregnancy test other than a fucking panic attack in one another’s arms. but you made it work 

you both worked but made time for one another and your sweet girl, going to museums every other weekend and joel insisting on swooping you off for a date every now and then 

nothing special. He knows you’re more of a diner gal than anything too fancy that makes you both feel out of place. 

On his birthday in 2003, you had planned to tell him that you were pregnant again. But the memories of your own fears of motherhood from all those years ago begin to swirl through your head again and you get cold feel. deciding to tell him the morning after

it is his birthday afterall, you want to focus on him. 

but when you’re woken up in the middle of the night because tommy needs to get bailed out, Joel kisses you sweetly one last time before promising he’ll be back and you can’t shake the feeling that something bad is happening. 

its you that shakes sarah awake that night. shouting at her to put on her shoes when she’s still rubbing the sleep from her eyes because you’ve been listening to the radio for the past two hours, calling joel again and again and again praying for him to fucking pick up but to no avail. 

Sarah, bless your little girl’s bleeding heart is the one who insists you check on the adler’s against your better suspicions and when you find the eldest looming over her daughter, blood and sinew dripping from her mouth, you grab your daughter hand and burst into a full sprint until something slams into your back and sends you tumbling onto their front lawn

its how joel finds you, struggling to keep the once sweet old woman, whose now nothing more than dead eyes and gnashing teeth straining to snap at your pulse point as you push against her while sarah shrieks before your husband runs forward and cracks her skull with a wrench. 

there’s hardly a moment of pause, just enough for him to pull you up and into his arms before he’s ushering you both into the car with an urgency. 

when the truck crashes, you get separated from them. Perhaps at Tommy’s side when the flames rise and create a wall, separating you from your husband, or maybe pulled into the mob of chaos when trying to escape from those already infected-

all joel knows is that you promise you’ll find him: just get sarah to safety and you’ll meet him at the river

Poor thing is already so frightened, held in her father’s arms with tears streaming down her face insisting they can’t leave you they just can’t but her father kisses her forehead and reassures her its going to be okay 

“we just need to be brave, okay babygirl? Your mama’s real tough, she’s gonna be alright.” 

he isn’t sure if he’s saying it to his daughter or himself. 

but when he comes to the river you aren’t there. Only a soldier who points a gun at the scared little girl in his arms and then he loses everything

its when the light is gone from his daughter’s eyes that he realizes. His voice cracked and raw from sobbing that he looks around to see his brother with drawn in shoulders and tears in his eyes but his wife is nowhere to be found. 

Tommy says you got lost in the chaos. Everything was so loud, so sudden that he turned around and suddenly you weren’t there. 

Joel wants to go back but its Tommy that stops him, that dulls the red in his vision to a sad faded pink because his brother points at the orange horizon not too far from them, so much of the city is already in flames. 

“We’re gonna find her, but not there.” 

So Joel searches. for the first year spent in the world post-outbreak its all he did. 

He became a smuggler because of it. 

Information came at a price and he needed to be able to fucking pay it, whether it be in blood or ration cards. He was willing to do anything to find you or any thin thread that lead your way. 

But it’s Tommy that asks him to give up. Not in those words of course. 

The youngest Miller knows better than to say something so cruel that would make his brother, the only person he has in this world turn on him. 

But his voice is worried when he asks him one night in Boston when he hasn’t even had the chance to wash the blood from his knuckles 

“You think she would have wanted this for you?” 

the fight that followed his words was brutal. Vicious insults and scarred fists slamming against each brother until they're both too tired and bloody to continue. Each leaning against a wall for support and Tommy’s wavering voice breaking the silence. 

“I don’t know where she is, Joel. But I do know you're gonna get yourself killed if you keep lookin’ for her.” 

All he can do is nod. 

It’s a few days later when he meets Tess. Who has heard plenty of stories about the elder miller’s brutality and wants him to put that muscle to good use for some extra profit. 

It begins his new life. One that empty and cold but one he can live. 

Until of course, Ellie comes along. The sweet and incredibly opinionated girl that makes him become something akin to the man he thought died twenty years ago. 

its when he’s traveling with Ellie, that it happens. When a warm familiarity has settled between the two because so much blood and pain has been shared he can’t help but see her as something close, something bright even though all he can force himself to utter in her reference is “cargo” 

when theyre traveling through the woods as Ellie chatters away, probing his memory about a movie that may or may not have existed thirty years ago because her descriptions of the plot are incredibly odd he hears a voice shout for them to stop and finds himself staring at a man- no, a boy- pointing a gun at them. 

Ellie stills, but Joel can see enough to know that from the lanky figure and dimpled face that he’s young. Maybe twenty, twenty-two at the oldest, but his eyes dart from Joel to Ellie with a pinprick of fear that allows Joel the time to charge forward and slam him to the ground before wrestling the gun from his hands. 

He has enough to time to tuck it under the stranger’s chin before he hears the sound of the safety being turned off and finds himself looking up and seeing a gun just inches from his face. 

Joel’s head whips around when Ellie’s voice calls out his name in fear, he turns to see another stranger holding her a gun point, shoulders drawn back and a shadow cast over their face by the had obstructing their identity. 

“You hurt one of mine, I hurt one of yours. That a fair deal?” 

Its takes him a moment to recognize you. It’s been so long since he’s heard your voice, the sweet tease when you would poke at him each time he woke up late despite the fact that you reminded him to set his alarm the night before, the times you’d chide him with a harsh “Joel Miller!” whispered in public anytime he was able to grab you a bit too passionately to be appropriate in public but the laughter in your voice let him know you were never truly mad at him. You didn’t know how to be. 

But that sweetness is buried under a cold rasp that cuts through the air as you point a rifle at the scared little girl in front of you.

“You think I won’t?” You’re older now, skin covered in scars from a life he didn’t know you got the chance to live and your eyes are cold as they regard your husband. “Put the gun down and get the fuck off of him, I won’t repeat myself.” 

Joel mumbles your name in awe. The woman he loved, the woman he mourned the one he fought so hard to find stands before him like some sort of hallucination and suddenly the world feels like its spinning until you bark orders at him again. 

“You’ve got five seconds Joel, make a fucking choice before I make it for you.” 

He looks down and realizes the boy under him, the one with the bleeding nose and snarling face has your eyes and his dimples. 

“One.” 

The one above him has Sarah’s hair. Soft brown curls that shine under the sun. 

“Two”

Wait. No, they both do.

“Three.” 

Twins. Jesus fucking Christ you had twins. 

“Four.” 

Joel holds the rifle up above his head and the one boy standing snatches it from his grasp, tossing it to the ground and kicking it far from his reach. He slowly stands, allowing your son- dear god your son- to scramble to his feet. 

Your voice softens just for a moment. “You okay, Duke?” 

Blood stains the bottom half of his face from where Joel slammed his fist into the boy’s nose just moments before, but he nods nonetheless. 

Now, they both stand on one side of you and he can see the resemblance clear as day the same way he would whenever Sarah was by your side.

When you order him to hand over his bag, he does so without question before telling Ellie to do the same. 

She watches him with wide eyes, her hands still up in the air but gaping at her companion as if he had grown a second head. 

“Joel!” “Just do it, alright?”

He doesn’t miss the way you watch their interaction with narrowed eyes until she tosses her bag to you and you slowly lower your gun. 

“Now, you want to tell me what the fuck you think you’re doin’ at my home?” 

[al-luviec]

compiled whatever this is (and I run out of tag space)

meh HoT gifs (3/?)

[icewindandboringhorror]

Some fantasy traveler inventory details (like what they would carry in their bags), based on two of the recent costumes I did.. love finding random little scraps and items and putting them together lol

[turtleblogatlast]

Thinking about the Don Suave scene and what it means in terms of LGBTQ+ representation because my brain does nothing if not torment me with random topics to ramble about on the regular.

Anyway, I just wanted to ramble about why I like the scene but to get it out of the way - the scene can very easily be interpreted in so many different ways, and all of them are valid. I personally see it as Leo having at least some attraction to a man. And the following is an explanation of my own interpretation and thoughts on it and what it means especially for Leo’s portrayal in the grand scheme of things.

Long-winded interpretation under the cut!

Now, to start with, it’s important to me that in the scene Leo looks at Don Suave in the very beginning and then for the entirety of the rest of the time the man is on screen, Leo’s eyes are closed. Yet, in the end, he is still visibly enamored with Don Suave, happily cuddling up to him as he’s being carried away.

You can very easily interpret this as Leo being spellbound and that’s honestly super valid and I believe he likely was at least somewhat in the beginning, but considering how fast he looked away and how he never looked again, I personally think it makes more sense to read it as Leo just finding the man attractive, at least somewhat. (For the record, I personally headcanon Rise Leo as bisexual with a heavy preference for men, but I want to be blunt when I say that any interpretation is valid. Literally any. Ace, pan, gay, bi, none of the above or a mixture of something new literally all of it is more than okay and fair. Hell you could even interpret this entire scene as more romantic attraction than physical and it would still work. Anything goes!! Don’t bother people, guys, really.)

The main reason I take this scene to be at the very least LGBTQ+ adjacent isn’t just because of how it’s portrayed, but because of who Leonardo is. Not in terms of Rise of the TMNT, but in terms of the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™️ franchise.

Leo’s a character who, while changing with each iteration, has still at his core been around for decades upon decades as “the blue one”. One fourth of the team. He’s the one most are going to look at as the Leader, and oftentimes he is the one closest to having the title of Main Character. Not to say the others aren’t just as important, but Leo’s presence in the A plots of basically all TMNT media is often something very main character-esque.

And that’s very, very important to note. Here we have a Main Character of a prolific and decades long-running franchise distributed by a children’s television network. You can play around with his and his brothers’ characters all you like, but there is always going to be challenges to dodge around, especially since this was still in 2018-2019.

For example, you can play around with their designs so long as they’re color coded turtles, but their sexualities? Now that’s tricky.

“But what about Hypno and Warren?” Not main characters and also they’re Rise originals. They have a lot more room to play around with than a character like Leo does. But even talking about main characters in the franchise, you could arguably have an easier time playing around with Donnie or Mikey’s sexualities than Leo or even Raph, as (unfortunately) the former two tend to get more B plots, so they’d likely have had a little more leeway (still not a lot though.)

So, where does this leave us?

It leaves us in a place where outright stating and/or showing undeniable proof of Leo’s attraction to men is very, very difficult. So, workarounds!

Workarounds like the entire Don Suave situation.

To be honest, as left up to interpretation and lowkey and deniable as it is, this whole scene means a lot to me because of who Leo is as a character. It’s just nice when we get so see even the bare bones of representation with characters that have been such a large part of pop culture for decades, y’know? Even if more would be so much nicer, this is better than I thought we’d ever get for these boys.

And, again, literally nothing I’ve said is the only way to interpret it, I’m more than happy when people interpret media on their own honestly, it’s just something I’ve been thinking of lately and I was wondering if others felt the same way.

Whatever you think when you interpret this scene or Rise Leo as a whole, I just thought this would be interesting to think about, even if it was ramble-y, haha.

[skrunksthatwunk]

idk if i've discussed it before (i have certainly THOUGHT about it) but someone on my kuwa suffering ep 89 comp mentioned it and i just had to go off about it like. ok. sensui tells yusuke something along the lines of "you heard itsuki" when itsuki's inside the uraotoko, implying that not only can sensui hear those inside the uraotoko, but that he expects yusuke to be able to as well. which means that yusuke Almost Certainly Heard And Kind Of Ignored kuwabara's prolonged mental breakdown and wailing about how much he needs yusuke to live etc. which. guHHH i hate him yusuke you ass but also listen.

the only acknowledgement yusuke gives to this (if any) is when he says something like "sensui you're sooo fucking cooked this plan's going perfectly (my friends are going to get strong and kill you when i die)." he's trash talking to sensui, ignoring the others because, i think, he doesn't want to acknowledge what he's doing to them.

yusuke is explicitly recreating the experience he had with kuwabara's "death" at the hands of toguro, complete with the announcement of intent (and power) to kill, the inability to impede the threat in any way (barring a power-breakthrough), and the target in some way racing towards/volunteering for their death. yusuke learns through doing, and through tough love-style approaches. it's only effective if it hurts. watching kuwabara die like that was devastating to yusuke, but it sure as hell fucking worked. he beat toguro because of that maneuver. so even if he has to (re-)traumatize his friends in the process, this method will make his friends stronger, and he feels confident in that. but he never had to live with the consequences of kuwabara's death, not really. that's something hiei makes clear before they enter the cave as well, that there are no fake-outs ready to make him or anyone else stronger. the only deaths here will be real. the only power gained will come at a high, permanent cost. hiei's warning is an attempt to keep everyone alive, to keep yusuke from being stupid. and then yusuke decides to take that fatality into his own hands, but it's kind of his friends who would pay the price. he's going to make them live through the days, months, years without him, the actual permanency of loss (assuming they survive for that long), something he never experienced with kuwabara (a new facet of that traumatic scenario), AND he's escaping the emotional fallout of this choice through death. he doesn't have to see them mourn, won't get yelled at, won't watch them fail to move on. he's tapping out and choosing to believe they'll be fine.

but i think he feels guilty. just a little. i mean, yusuke couldn't even believe that people cared about him enough to want him alive in episode one. he's staked everything on his friends, which means he still kind of... doesn't value his own life, at least not compared to theirs. but he believes his friends love him and want him around, and we know that because he has to, or else he wouldn't make a plan that depends entirely on that love. he is actively leveraging the care he doesn't think he deserves, trying to hurt them in a way he is intimately familiar with (only worse), for.... what, exactly?

this is kind of my sticking point tbh. i don't think the answer is... super clear, but let's start with what it's not.

yusuke is not doing this because it is the most practical way to save all of humanity; that would be the mafukan, which he stopped. it could be a gamble to save all of his friends? the mafukan strategy would guarantee koenma's death/eternal imprisonment, whereas this strategy gambles all of humanity on the chance that his friends come out of the Easy Break Oven strong enough to avert the end of the world. if the sacrifice of even one friend is completely intolerable, perhaps he'd accept those slim odds and their steep consequences. yusuke tends to take risks like that, especially when he's got fight-induced tunnel vision. he doesn't think things through too much; his schemes are usually dependent on surprising his enemy enough to oneshot them. truthfully, i think this is the closest we'll get to an answer, and it's a more conventional one for this kind of story. but there is another layer i haven't been able to get from my mind.

i think yusuke is gifting each of his friends an honorable warrior's death.

so, in case it needs saying, yusuke, kuwabara, kurama, and hiei all (at least once, if not several times) exhibit a desire to die in combat in a way they deem noble to give their lives purpose (usually by self-sacrifice, but sometimes by another metric of honor, like hiei's duel with shigure and his desire to die in mutual defeat against an evenly matched opponent; or even kurama's decision to fight shigure in his human form, displaying a sort of passive suicidality via placing being true to himself in this (somewhat symbolic/inconsequential) way over survival). they need to make their lives count for something, because they feel guilty for being alive (kurama and hiei feel guilty for their past actions (hiei's is most evident in his distance from yukina, though that's not its primary reason), hiei, kuwabara, and yusuke have all been ostracized and made to feel like burdens on/unwanted by their caregivers and general society; all four of them have felt profound isolation even from their loved ones (yusuke and hiei are rather obvious; kurama can never tell his mother about the majority of his life nor what she truly means to him in the context of it; and kuwabara is separated from his peers for his spiritual awareness and his "stupidity" (plus his parents aren't around? and he is Desperate to define manhood/manliness through a broader pop cultural one which includes the warrior sacrifice thing bc he has no male role models BUT that's for another post) (i will admit kuwa's the most tenuous one here irt isolation)). they want to die for a cause so badly it's actually physically painful to me. it is passive suicidality, and they define their lives and identities by their relation to, engagement with, and skill at doing violence, etc. they live to die by the sword. anyway. nobody talks about it but i think it's very important to understanding what yusuke's doing here.

because i think he knows that about himself and his friends. they're kindred spirits. at the very least he knows this about kuwabara, who literally made a speech about this before diving into toguro's fingers In The Event That He Is Recreating Explicitly. he is dying nobly like they all want to on the chance that they'll get to break out and fight sensui rather than dying without even getting to take a swing. it's about his pride and theirs. but i don't think yusuke necessarily believes they'll win. he knows better than anyone how strong sensui is, and how wide the gap is between sensui and team urameshi. his stated position that humanity is doomed and that he doesn't care about its fate is, i think, not completely genuine, but if we take it at face value, he's not killing himself so that his friends can survive the end of the world. something's going to come around and kill them eventually. he's doing it so they can survive long enough to fight sensui. he needs them (specifically kuwabara) to be strong enough to free themselves to begin round two. but he's given up on their side winning, on humanity surviving, on his own victory---why should he think his friends are capable of winning? this could be another case of yusuke's fight-blinders. it could be another gamble, more blind faith put in his friends. but honestly it reads more to me that yusuke's giving them a chance to die together on the battlefield. them winning would be great, but it's not his goal. it's a pipe dream.

he knows he's going to be killed. they're probably going to be killed, too. but to make it so they last a little longer against sensui, to make the odds a little more even, so they are killed not like livestock, but like worthy fighters, he'd die a little faster. it's the best kind of death someone like them can have; and he'll deprive himself of it just to make their ends a little sweeter. even if the road to that is far more bitter.

but it's not like yusuke's friends know what he's thinking or agree to it, and he can't exactly make his case for it in the moment. he's making that choice for them. whatever his intentions, whatever odds he thinks they have of beating sensui, he's kind of sealing all of their fates. so how the hell is he supposed to acknowledge kuwabara screaming at him not to die, trying desperately to express what yusuke means to him in what could be their final moments together? this plan is going to hurt his friends terribly. it is already doing so, and he can hear it. his choices to stop koenma from using the mafukan and to die for his friends' strength are both selfish in some way, no matter how you read the scene. if yusuke comforts kuwabara, he might not get strong enough. if he twists the knife, well... how could he forgive himself? and either way by responding he would have to face them all and say yes, i'm doing this regardless of your feelings (with the intention of hurting you). so i think he does what he often does. he avoids it. he lets that emotion glance off him and his bravado and his one-liners so he doesn't have to deal with the fact that he's hurting people, that he's scared and guilty and unsure of himself. that he's about to die again, about to put kuwabara through the grief he saw at his wake again, only worse; about to put his quieter friends through something similar.

yusuke is confronted with the responsibility one has to the people who care for them, and he runs from it in an attempt to give them some small peace. just like when he died before and thought hey, at least my mom and keiko won't be burdened by me anymore. because the only thing he can really do for them is die.

[shooks-stupid-stuff]

egodeath: the disappearance of one's sense of self, or the removal of one's ability to distinguish themselves as an entity separate from their social or physical environment.

[seaofreverie]

Sparkstember Day 28: The Sparks Brothers

I'm not a movie person... So when I do actually rewatch a movie (I mean, even watch it, at ALL, haha) it must really mean that something is up. I mean, well, it also IS a thorough, highly enjoyable and visually appealing movie about a band that I've been so incredibly invested in for the past several months. So maybe it's a surprise that I don't watch it more often actually. Because one beautiful side-effect of seeing it each time was getting an unexpected and very strong surge of motivation to keep on going towards the things that matter to me the most, despite any and all obstacles that could appear on the way. Another side-effect of it is being happy and joyfull and being filled with warm feelings and thoughts for the whole following day at least. Usually up to 3 days afterwards actually.

But ok, of course, what I'm getting at is that the Maels' story is so incredibly inspirational. Seeing how they persevered through all those years and NEVER lost their spirit or their vision, never gave up... is not only moving but also something that reminds me that wow, so much *really* is possible. I spent so many years fully convinced that there are things that I'll never be able to achieve. And sure, some of them are indeed pretty unlikely to happen. But if you told me from even one year ago that I'd be making art daily and not dreading being so much as perceived anywhere in the great world (so, including the internet)... well, I would have not believed it at all. I really mean it when I say that I used to believe that there are things that I'll just never be able to do. It's like it was simply not meant for me to be able do it and have those experiences. And yet...!

There's a lot I owe Sparks and this is one of the biggest things I'll always be grateful for. They really changed my life for the better. Truly nothing else before them reaches the same degree of how much it helped me. And well, I'm saying this on TSB day because this is where this feeling of gratitude and feeling SO lucky becomes the strongest. And the beautiful thing about it all is that they were always just themselves. They had their vision, they knew what they wanted to do and didn't care about how it would be received. Which is such an important and meaningful message to me, I can't even express how huge it is to me to see these two people who only really had themselves and their endurance and got exactly where they wanted to be.

Alright, some less grandiose observations now. Well, let's start with the fact that this was by no means my introduction to Sparks but it still really cemented my love for them even more. I loved being reminded of their whole journey and learning more about it, and even moreso I loved being able to see more of their beautiful brotherly bond and their wonderful personalities. Truly no other people in this whole world make me as happy as them currently. And the brothers' sense of humour hits super close to mine, so this is also a time filled with genuine laughs (I die laughing at the absolutely true Sparks facts at the end EVERY TIME). And since I'm a huge fan of animation and mixed media art and such things, this was simply a joy to view for my more artistically-inclined side too.

And damn, those two hours and 15 minutes really fly by so fast. When I have to arrange a huge timeslot to watch it all in one go, because that's the only way to do it for me, and then it feels like no time has passed anyway. And even with so much being said there, it feels like there's still so much more to get to. But it's still enough to lift my spirits completely for a pretty long time. And to make me cry a lot of the time too... Absolutely impossible to not shed a tear by the end of it all. It's moving, it's funny as heck, it's super fun and it's absolutely beautiful and truly lifechanging. 💖

[the-somwthing]

Thinking of making one of those life series askblogs with all the dead characters in some form of afterlife. They’re really fun and things like that have been in my head since Last Life started so if anyone’s gonna jump on that you know it’s me (especially since I’ve run 3… successful enough ask series in the past).

[red-winter-is-coming]

New Sparrow art!!!!

My silly. Beloved. Holy fuck I'm older then him now.

Anyways, Silly little details that are important to me:

The feathers are from his most common nicknames!! (Darling Crow, Raven, Bluejay, The Shrike/Butcherbird, Magpie, Sparrow)

Nat 20 bc he's lucky. also because he's heavily Victory coded.

Ace of hearts w/ knife - 'Ace' is his pet name for his boyfriend and he did accidentally kill someone via stabbing them in the eye for Racer

The coins numbered 7 are sliver, while the ones numbered 13 are gold, therefore the traditionally 'lucky' number is on the less valuable one and the traditional 'unlucky' number is on the more valuable one!

Dice colors - If the D20 was real it'd actually be clear with gold flakes and numbers, but I was limited by my art style ;-;

@thenopequeen hey I know it's been forever but may I offer the silly as tribute :] /silly

[theclearblue]

I'm gonna get into a brawl with my mother one day don't be surprised when I get on the news