#I don’t need to be more precise with my speech they just need to be better at understanding me

[2-dsimp]

Ok so everyone and their mother has yandere CEO/ boss x a secretary/assistant/intern blah blah blah

BUT! Hear me out...what and a yandere assistant x boss darling??

Cw: slight blood/gore, obsessive/possessive tendencies, self-sabotage, lack of self worth,

Synopsis: 【You are the overseer in charge of the finance floor of the company SupeCo. And you happened to be issued a brand you employee who was albeit a greenhorn. But nonetheless passionate in preforming his duties as your assistant. You’ve in the short couple days you’ve grown a soft spot for him. And constantly prayed that he’d make it through his job, in one piece since you discovered that he tended to be accident prone.】

☆*:.｡..｡.:*☆ ☆*:.｡..｡.:*☆ ☆*:.｡..｡.:

Yandere assistant! That’s always in attention whenever his darling boss is ready to put him to work. He’s practically twitching from getting withdrawals of receiving less than the amount of orders he’d like to have from you.

Yandere Assistant! Whose mind is buzzing 24/7 and is utterly pathetic all by his lonesome. And craves for you to throw whatever tasks you’ve got at him, anything at all, to satisfy his dream of being your personal lap dog.

Yandere assistant! Who loves hearing your voice calling out for his support from across the office hall. He just cannot relate to how his other coworkers cower at their names being announced by their own superiors. Since you were the best in his humblest opinion. And the only one he’d deem to be of importance to be more precise.

Yandere Assistant! That subtly does self sabotage if only to hog your time, in making you giving him lengthy instructions. On what to do since he clearly couldn’t fathom how to print out a piece of paper.

Yandere Assistant! Who swears that he’s not incompetent on purpose. But it’s just that he adores the way you’re so kind with your words. And oh so patient when it comes to correcting a member of your staff. Even going as far as to touch him to show exactly how to maneuver the printer. In short all of your lovely gestures made him jumpy. As he was sweating bullets trying not to turn into a feral degenerate and bend you over the broke ass printer to properly “use it”.

“Tem? Temothy~? Hello? I’m sorry Am I going too fast for you or—“

“Ah nonono absolutely not! Y-you’re fine B-boss I c-could hear you j-just fine!”

Your new hire assistant, Temothy, stuttered as he blinked out of whatever daydream he got afflicted with. Fixing you a mousy smile as he haphazardly fixed his messy overgrown bangs which obscured half of his face from view. You noted that He always had a soft spoken voice along with his habitual stutter speech pattern. Whilst he fidgeted a bit underneath your explicit worrisome expression as you fretted over his wellbeing like a mother hen.

“I only need to cut these stacks of paper for y-you with this cutter r-right? I’ll get on T-that right a-away!”

He managed in a squirrelly tone as he shakily grabbed ahold of the paper cutter. Lining up some blank pieces alongside the dotted lines with an unsteady hand.

It was his first couple days on the job and you found him to be quite the ditzy klutz but an endearing one nonetheless. It was refreshing how eager he is to always lend a helping hand even after he had just gotten off his shift. Which made you feel bad to ask him to come in to work when it was his day off since some of your employees decided not to come in for their shift.

“Wait Temothy dear you’re holding it the wrong way—!”

“Ouch! Oh my stars I’m t-terribly sorry B-boss! I got it all fuckin b-bloody! Ah paper towels… where’s the paper towels?”

You couldn’t believe your eyes and what you were hearing. Was this man seriously worried about how he dirtied the cutter station to which he earnestly tried to clean. While the skin on his palm was sliced open from pinky to thumb. And was bleeding rapidly as bloody rivets ran down his inner wrist.

“Temothy forget about the cutter and papers okay? You don’t need to worry bout none of that. What we need to do is patch you up first and foremost”

You cooed as you briskly took his uninjured hand in yours and ushered him to your office where you always had a health kit stored underneath your desk. Completely missing how his breathing slowed and his wide eyes dilated into small heart pinpricks.

“Y-yes Boss…thank you for c-caring I’ll be sure to return this d-debt”

His usual timid expression darkened into something more depraved as a small fanged smile made its way onto his chapped lips. Of which he licked as he gave an experimental squeeze to your hand only to shiver in delight when you responded back in kind.

No one had ever been this kind to him, due to his bad luck he’s always the type to be scoffed at without as much as a second glance. Hell it was a miracle that he even landed this job as your assistant in the first place. But now that he was here he intended to stay permanently and serve you for the rest of your days as your loyal assistant. Whether you liked it or not, you couldn’t ever get rid of him not when you’ve already gave him your hand to hold near in dear to his heart.

[mrs-stans]

Sebastian Stan Tells All: Becoming Donald Trump, Gaining 15 Pounds and Starring in 2024’s Most Controversial Movie

By Daniel D'Addario

Sebastian Stan Variety Cover Story

It started with the most famous voice on the planet, the one that just won’t shut up.

Sebastian Stan, in real life, sounds very little like Donald Trump, whom he’s playing in the new film “The Apprentice.” Sure, they share a tristate accent — Stan has lived in the city for years and attended Rutgers University before launching his career — but he speaks with none of Trump’s emphasis on his own greatness. Trump dwells, Stan skitters. Trump attempts to draw topics together over lengthy stem-winders (what he recently called “the weave”), while Stan has a certain unwillingness to be pinned down, a desire to keep moving. It takes some coaxing to bring Stan, a man with the upright bearing and square jaw of a matinee idol, to speak about his own process — how hard he worked to conjure a sense Trump, and how he sought to bring out new insights about America’s most scrutinized politician.

“I think he’s a lot smarter than people want to say about him,” Stan says, “because he repeats things consistently, and he’s given you a brand.” Stan would know: He watched videos of Trump on a loop while preparing for “The Apprentice.” In the film, out on Oct. 11, Stan plays Trump as he moves from insecure, aspiring real estate developer to still insecure but established member of the New York celebrity firmament.

We’re sitting over coffee in Manhattan. Stan is dressed down in a black chore coat and black tee, yet he’s anything but a casual conversation partner. He rarely breaks eye contact, doing so only on the occasions when he has something he wants to show me on his iPhone (cracked screen, no case). In this instance, it’s folders of photos and videos labeled “DT” and “DT PHYSICALITY.”

“I had 130 videos on his physicality on my phone,” Stan says. “And 562 videos that I had pulled with pictures from different time periods — from the ’70s all the way to today — so I could pull out his speech patterns and try to improvise like him.” Stan, deep in character, would ad-lib entire scenes at director Ali Abbasi’s urging, drawing on the details he’d learned from watching Trump and reading interviews to understand precisely how to react in each moment.

“Ali could come in on the second take and say, ‘Why don’t you talk a little bit about the taxes and how you don’t want to pay?’ So I had to know what charities they were going to in 1983. Every night I would go home and try not only to prepare for the day that was coming, but also to prepare for where Ali was going to take this.”

Looking at Stan’s phone, among the endless pictures of Trump, I glimpse thumbnails of Stan’s own face perched in a Trumpian pout and videos of the actor’s preparation just aching to be clicked — or to be stored in the Trump Presidential Library when this is all over in a few months, or in 2029, or beyond.

“I started to realize that I needed to start speaking with my lips in a different way,” Stan says. “A lot of that came from the consonants. If I’m talking, I’m moving forward.” On film, Stan shapes his mouth like he can’t wait to get the plosives out, puckering without quite tipping into parody. “The consonants naturally forced your lips forward.”

“If he did 10% more of what he did, it would become ‘Saturday Night Live,’” Abbasi says. “If he did 10% less, then he’s not conjuring that person. But here’s the thing about Sebastian: He’s very inspired by reality, by research. And that’s also the way I work; if you want to go to strange places, you need to get your baseline reality covered very well.”

A little later, Stan passes me the phone again to show me a selfie of him posing shirtless and revealing two sagging pecs and a bit of a gut. He’s pouting into a mirror. If his expression looks exaggerated, consider that he was in Marvel-movie shape before stepping into the role of the former president; the body transformation happened rapidly and jarringly. Trump’s size is a part of the film’s plot — as Trump’s sense of self inflates, so does he. In a rush to meet the shooting deadline for “The Apprentice,” Abbasi asked Stan, “How much weight can you gain?”

“You’d be surprised,” Stan tells me. “You can gain a lot of weight in two months.” (Fifteen pounds, to be exact.)

Now he’s back in fighting form, but the character has stayed with him. After years of playing second-fiddle agents of chaos — goofball husbands to Margot Robbie’s and Lily James’ characters in “I, Tonya” and Hulu’s “Pam & Tommy,” surly frenemy to Chris Evans’ Captain America in the Marvel franchise — Stan plunged into the id of the man whose appetites have reshaped our world. He had to have a polished enough sense of Trump that he could improvise in character, and enough respect for him to play him as a human being, not a monster.

It’s one of two transformations this year for Stan — and one that might give a talented actor that most elusive thing: a brand of his own. He’s long been adjacent enough to star power that he could feel its glow, but he hasn’t been the marquee performer. While his co-stars have found themselves defined by the projects he’s been in — from “Captain America” and “I, Tonya” back to his start on “Gossip Girl” — he’s spent more than a decade in the public eye while evading being defined at all.

This fall promises to be the season that changes all that: Stan is pulling double duty with “The Apprentice” and “A Different Man” (in theaters Sept. 20), in which he plays a man afflicted with a disfiguring tumor disorder who — even when presented with a fantastical treatment that makes him look like, well, Sebastian Stan — can’t be cured of ailments of the soul. For “A Different Man,” Stan won the top acting prize at the Berlin Film Festival; for “The Apprentice,” the sky’s the limit, if it can manage to get seen. (More on that later.)

One reason Stan has largely evaded being defined is that he’s never the same twice, often willing to get loopy or go dark in pursuit of his characters’ truths. That’s all the more true this year: In “The Apprentice,” he’s under the carapace of Trumpiness; in “A Different Man,” his face is hidden behind extensive prosthetics.

“In my book, if you’re the good-looking, sensitive guy 20 movies in a row, that’s not a star for me,” says Abbasi, who compares Stan to Marlon Brando — an actor eager to play against his looks. “You’re just one of the many in the factory of the Ken dolls.”

This fall represents Stan’s chance to break out of the toy store once and for all. His Winter Soldier brought a jolt of evil into Captain America’s world, and his Jeff Gillooly was the devil sitting on Tonya Harding’s shoulder. Now Stan is at the center of the frame, playing one of the most divisive characters imaginable. So he’s showing us where he can go. The spotlight is his, and so is the risk that comes with it.

Why take such a risk?

The script for “The Apprentice,” which Stan first received in 2019, but which took years to come together, made him consider the American dream, the one that Trump achieved and is redefining.

Stan emigrated with his mother, a pianist, from communist Romania as a child. “I was raised always aware of the American dream: America being the land of opportunity, where dreams come true, where you can make something of yourself.” He pushes the wings of his hair back to frame his face, a gold signet ring glinting in the late-summer sunlight, and, briefly, I can hear a hint of Trump’s directness of approach. “You can become whoever you want, if you just have a good idea.” Stan’s good idea has been to play the lead in movies while dodging the formulaic identity of a leading man, and this year will prove just how far he can take it.

“The Apprentice” seemed like it would never come together before suddenly it did. This time last year, Stan was sure it was dead in the water, and he was OK with that. “If this movie is not happening, it’s because it’s not meant to happen,” he recalls thinking. “It will not be because I’m too scared and walk away.”

Called in on short notice and filming from November 2023 to January of this year (ahead of a May premiere in Cannes), Stan lent heft and attitude to a character arc that takes Trump from local real estate developer in the 1970s to national celebrity in the 1980s. He learns the rough-and-tumble game of power from the ruthless and hedonistic political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), eventually cutting the closeted Cohn loose as he dies of AIDS and alienating his wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) in the process. (In a shocking scene, Donald sexually assaults Ivana in their Trump Tower apartment.) For all its edginess, the film is about Trump’s personality — and the way it calcified into a persona — rather than his present-day politics. (Despite its title, it’s set well before the 2004 launch of the reality show that finally made Trump the superstar he longed to be.)

And despite the fact that Trump has kept America rapt since he announced his run for president in 2015, Hollywood has been terrified of “The Apprentice.” The film didn’t sell for months after Cannes, an unusual result for a major English-language competition film, partly because Trump’s legal team sent a cease-and-desist letter attempting to block the film’s release in the U.S. while the fest was still ongoing. When it finally sold, it was to Briarcliff Entertainment, a distributor so small that the production has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money so that it will be able to stay in theaters.

Yes, Hollywood may vote blue, but it’s not the same town that released “Fahrenheit 9/11” or even “W.,” let alone a film that depicts the once (and possibly future) president raping his wife. (The filmmakers stand behind that story. “The script is 100% backed by my own interviews and historical research,” says Gabriel Sherman, the screenwriter and a journalist who covers Trump and the American conservative movement. “And it’s important to note that it is not a documentary. It’s a work of fiction that’s inspired by history.”) Entertainment corporations from Netflix to Disney would be severely inconvenienced if the next president came into office with a grudge against them.

“I am quite shocked, to be honest,” Abbasi says. “This is not a political piece. It’s not a hit piece; it’s not a hatchet job; it’s not propaganda. The fact that it’s been so challenging is shocking.” Abbasi, born in Iran, was condemned by his government over his last film, “Holy Spider,” and cannot safely return. He sees a parallel in the response to “The Apprentice.” “OK, that’s Iran — that is unfortunately expected. But I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Everything with this film has been one day at a time,” Stan says. The actor chalks up the film’s divisiveness to a siloed online environment. “There are a lot of people who love reading the [film’s] Wikipedia page and throwing out their opinions,” he says, an edge entering his voice. “But they don’t actually know what they’re talking about. That’s a popular sport now online, apparently.”

Unprompted, Stan brings up the idea that Trump is so widely known that some might think a biographical film about him serves no purpose. “When someone says, ‘Why do we need this movie? We know all this,’ I’ll say, ‘Maybe you do, but you haven’t experienced it. The experience of those two hours is visceral. It’s something you can hopefully feel — if you still have feelings.’”

After graduating from Rutgers in 2005, Stan found his first substantial role on “Gossip Girl,” playing troubled rich kid Carter Baizen. Like teen soaps since time immemorial, “Gossip Girl” was a star-making machine. “It was the first time I was in serious love with somebody,” he says. (He dated the series’ star, Leighton Meester, from 2008 to 2010.) He feels nostalgic for that moment: “Walking around the city, seeing these same buildings and streets — life seemed simpler.”

Stan followed his “Gossip Girl” gig with roles on the 2009 NBC drama “Kings,” playing a devious gay prince in an alternate-reality modern world governed by a monarchy, and the 2012 USA miniseries “Political Animals,” playing a black-sheep prince (and once again a gay man) of a different sort — the son of a philandering former president and an ambitious former first lady.

When I ask him what lane he envisioned himself in as a young actor, he shrugs off the question. “I grew up with a single mom, and I didn’t have a lot of male role models. I was always trying to figure out what I wanted to be. And at some point, I was like, I could just be a bunch of things.”

Which might seem challenging when one is booked to play the same character, Bucky Barnes, in Marvel movie after Marvel movie. Bucky’s adventures have been wide-ranging — he’s been brainwashed and turned evil and then brought back to the home team again, all since his debut in 2011’s “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Next year, he’ll anchor the summer movie “Thunderbolts,” as the leader of a squad of quirky heroes played by, among others, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Florence Pugh. It’s easy to wonder if this has come to feel like a cage of sorts.

Not so, says Stan. His new Marvel film “was kind of like ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ — a guy coming into this group that was chaotic and degenerate, and somehow finding a way to unite them.”

Lately, knives have been out for Marvel movies as some have disappointed at the box office, and “Thunderbolts,” which endured strike delays and last-minute cast changes, has been under scrutiny.

“It’s become really convenient to pick on [Marvel films],” Stan says. “And that’s fine. Everyone’s got an opinion. But they’re a big part of what contributes to this business and allows us to have smaller movies as well. This is an artery traveling through the system of this entire machinery that’s Hollywood. It feeds in so many more ways than people acknowledge.” He adds, “Sometimes I get protective of it because the intention is really fucking good. It’s just fucking hard to make a good movie over and over again.”

Which may account for an eagerness to try something new. “In the last couple of years,” he says, “I’ve gotten much more aggressive about pursuing things that I want, and I’m constantly looking for different ways of challenging myself.”

The challenge continued throughout the shoot of “The Apprentice,” as Stan pushed the material. “One of the most creatively rewarding parts of the process was how open Sebastian was to giving notes on the script but also wanting to go beyond the script,” says Sherman, the screenwriter. “If he was interested in a certain aspect of a scene, he was like, Can you find me a quote?” he recalls.

Building a dynamic through improvised scenes, Stan and Strong stayed in character throughout the “Apprentice” shoot. “I was doing an Ibsen play on Broadway,” says Strong, who won a Tony in June for his performance in “An Enemy of the People,” “and he came backstage afterwards. And it was like — I’d never really met Sebastian, and I don’t think he’d ever met me. So it was nice to meet him.”

Before the pair began acting together, they didn’t rehearse much — “I’m not a fan of rehearsals,” Strong says. “I think actors are best left in their cocoon, doing their work, and then trusted to walk on set and be ready.” The two didn’t touch the script together until cameras went up — though they spent a preproduction day, Strong says, playing games in character as Donald and Roy.

After filming, both have kept memories of the hold their characters had on them. They shared a flight back from Telluride — a famously bumpy trip out of the mountains. “He’s a nervous flyer, and I’m a nervous flyer,” Stan says. Both marveled at the fact that they’d contained their nerves on the first day of shooting “The Apprentice,” when their characters traveled together via helicopter. “We both go, ‘Yeah — but there was a camera.’”

Stan’s aggressive approach to research came in handy on “A Different Man,” which shot before “The Apprentice.” His character’s disorder, neurofibromatosis, is caused by a genetic mutation and presents as benign tumors growing in the nervous system. After being healed, he feels a growing envy for a fellow sufferer who seems unbothered by his disability.

Stan’s co-star, Adam Pearson, was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis in early childhood. Stan found the experience challenging to render faithfully. “I said many times, I can do all the research in the world, but am I ever going to come close to this?” Stan says. “How am I going to ever do this justice?”

Plus, he had precious little time to prepare: “He was fully on board, and the film was being made weeks later,” director Aaron Schimberg says. “Zero to 60 in a matter of weeks.”

The actor grappled for something to hold on to, and Pearson sug gested he refer to his own experience of fame. “Adam said to me, ‘You know what it’s like to be public property,’” Stan says.

Pearson recalls describing the experience to Stan this way: “While you don’t understand the invasiveness and the staring and the pointing that I’ve grown up with, you do know what it’s like to have the world think you owe them something.”

That sense of alienation becomes universal through the film’s storytelling: “A Different Man” takes its premise as the jumping-off point for a deep and often mordant investigation of who we all are underneath the skin.

The film was shot in 22 days in a New York City heat wave, and there was, Schimberg says, “no room for error. I would get four or five takes, however many I could squeeze out, but there’s no coverage.”

Through it all, Stan’s performance is utterly poised — Schimberg and Stan discussed Buster Keaton as a reference for his ability to be “completely stone-faced” amid chaos, the director says. And the days were particularly long because Oscar-nominated prosthetics artist Michael Marino was only able to apply Stan’s makeup in the early morning, before going to his job on the set of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

“Even though I wasn’t shooting until 11 a.m., I would go at like 5 in the morning to his studio, or his apartment,” Stan recalls. The hidden advantage was that Stan had hours to kill while made up like his character, the kind of person the world looks past. “I wanted to walk around the city and see what happened,” Stan says. “On Broadway, one of the busiest streets in New York, no one’s looking at me. It’s as if I’m not even there.” The other reaction was worse: “Somebody would immediately stop and very blatantly hit their friend, point, take a picture.”

It was a study in empathy that flowed into the character. Stan had spoken to Pearson’s mother, who watched her son develop neurofibromatosis before growing into a disability advocate and, eventually, an actor. “She said to me, ‘All I ever wanted was for someone to walk in his shoes for a day,’” Stan recalls. “And I guess that was the closest I had ever come.”

“The Apprentice” forced Stan, and forces the viewer, to do the same with a figure that some 50% of the electorate would sooner forget entirely. And that lends the film its controversy. Those on the right, presupposing that the movie is an anti-Trump document, have railed against it. In a statement provided to Variety, a Trump campaign spokesman said, “This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should never see the light of day and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire.” The campaign threatened a lawsuit, though none has materialized.

Asked about the assault scene, Stan notes that Ivana had made the claim in a deposition, but later walked it back. “Is it closer to the truth, what she had said directly in the deposition or something that she retracted?” he asks. “They went with the first part.”

The movie depicts, too, Ivana’s carrying on with her marriage after the violation, which may be still more devastating. “How do you overcome something like this?” asks Bakalova. “Do you have to put on a mask that everything is fine? In the next scene, she’s going to play the game and pretend that we’re the glamorous, perfect couple.” The Trumps, in “The Apprentice,” live in a world of paper-thin images, one that grows so encompassing that Donald no longer feels anything for the people to whom he was once loyal. They’re props in his stage show.

“The Apprentice” will drop in the midst of the most chaotic presidential election of our lifetime. “The way it lands in this extremely polarized situation, for me as an artist, is exciting. I won’t lie to you,” says Abbasi.

When asked if he was concerned about blowback from a Trump 47 presidency, Stan says, “You can’t do this movie and not be thinking about all those things, but I really have no idea. I’m still in shock from going from an assassination attempt to the next weekend having a president step down [from a reelection bid].”

Stan’s job, as he sees it, was to synthesize everything he’d absorbed — all those videos on his phone — into a person who made sense. This Trump had to be part of a coherent story, not just the flurry of news updates to which we’ve become accustomed.

“You can take a Bach or a Beethoven, and everyone’s going to play that differently on the piano, right?” Stan says. (His pianist mother named him for Johann Sebastian Bach.) “So this is my take on what I’ve learned. I have to strip myself of expectations of being applauded for this, if people are going to like it or people are going to hate it. People are going to say whatever they want. Hopefully they should think at least before they say it.”

It’s a reality that Stan is now used to — the work is the work, and the way people interpret him is none of his business. Perhaps that’s why he has run away from ever being the same thing twice. “I could sit with you today and tell you passionately what my truth is, but it doesn’t matter,” he says. “Because people are more interested in a version of you that they want to see, rather than who you are.”

“The Apprentice” has been the subject of extreme difference of opinion by many who have yet to see it. It’s been read — and will continue to be after its release — as anti-Trump agitprop. The truth is chewier and more complicated, and, perhaps, unsuited for these times.

“Are we going to live in a world where anyone knows what the truth is anymore? Or is it just a world that everyone wants to create for themselves?” Stan asks.

His voice — the one that shares a slight accent with Trump but that is, finally, Stan’s own — is calm and clear. “People create their own truth right now,” he says. “That’s the only thing that I’ve made peace with; I don’t need to twist your arm if that’s what you want to believe. But the way to deal with something is to actually confront it.”

[retrieve-the-kraken]

So after taking some time to clear my head, and letting the wave of relief and closure wash over me, and feeling like someone literally unclogged my brain, I rewatched season 3 of Young Royals, but only finished just the night before I was going away for Easter weekend, so I didn’t have time to write anything.

But now I can finally say this: I liked it much better the second time.

And it wasn’t just the trepidation and anxiety that i had for finding out what happened in the end that kept me from completely enjoying it the first time. It was also that annoying week-long gap that we had to endure before watching the finale.

(I get that they did it for promotional purposes, and it was a lovely thing to be able to have that event for the final chapter, which obviously could only be one chapter, imagine having everyone there for the entire season, everyone watching for nearly six hours… no good.)

That gap, I feel, made it feel like we just landed randomly on an episode that was meant to tie up all the storylines. And of course it is, and of course it still feels that way in regards to some storylines, but wow, what a difference it makes to watch the whole thing as a whole, the way I’ve enjoyed the previous seasons.

I definitely could process it much better the second time around, watching calmly and carefully, and once I jumped straight from episode 5 into episode 6, it definitely felt more cohesive. It felt like it followed the same pattern as the previous seasons, the conflict at the end of episode 5 is very similar in every season, and it felt right.

And the final episode of each season seems to follow a very similar pattern too, except that it shifts a little each time as Wille gains autonomy. In Season 1, the climax was that Wille had to do what the crown said, on the crown’s terms (deny the video, keep August’s betrayal secret, lose Simon), because he didn’t know what else to do, he didn’t have a choice, sad ending. In season 2, he has to do what the crown says (do the speech, play the part of the Crown Prince), BUT he’s doing it on his own terms (telling the truth about the video, being with Simon, even if it means keeping August’s secret), he has somewhat of a choice, bittersweet ending. In season 3… well, it looks like he’s doing what the crown says still… and then he finally realizes that he does have a choice. Sad ending? Nej! He finally gets his happy ending. He has come to terms that the can have a choice.

The second time around, just when we thought we were getting yet another sad ending or bittersweet ending like the previous seasons, it shifted. Plot twist, he’s getting out of the car. Of course there is a lot up in the air (was your first thought also literally “but Wille, you left your bag in the car! You don’t have a toothbrush! You don’t have a phone charger! You don’t have clean underwear!” or are you normal? I am not normal, I have anxiety about things like that), there are many things that will still need to be resolved after the credits roll, but… it felt right.

And of course there are things that got tied up and still felt a bit quick, and things that felt annoyingly left up in the air, but that was precisely what happened each season, things that felt like maybe would get properly addressed the next season, but that’s not how life works. Not everything gets resolved. And it feels a little sadder or more bitter because we’re not getting another season.

But we are. It’s playing in our heads right now. People are writing fanfiction about it. And I can’t wait to absorb it all.

I’m definitely watching the whole season again, and doing a play-by-play analysis like I did for season 2, because I love hyperanalyzing every detail of this show.

Can I just preliminarily warn that I will be gushing about Edvin and Omar, and Nikita and Frida and Malte, so so much? Because the second time watching season 3, I was in awe, true awe, of how good they have all gotten. I mean, they’ve all been incredible from day one, but I feel like there were nuances to their characters this season that highlighted so much how incredible they all are. Particularly my babies, Edvin and Omar, deserve all the awards. Can’t wait to see everything they do.

I will miss them with all my soul. But I don’t have to let go of them yet.

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam. A potentially stupid question. Image descriptions for screen readers. Do they work the same way for audio and video? As in are they needed or helpful? I'm finding conflicting answers when I search for this.

Not at all a stupid question! I think sometimes it can vary by community, to be honest.

Screen-reader users, visually impaired folk, and others for whom IDs are particularly relevant, feel free to chime in; I'm going to ramble and you likely have more useful stuff to say. Remember to do it in reblogs or notes, as I don't post asks sent in response to other asks.

I'm not visually impaired, and I don't use a screen reader and thus am not really able to speak with firsthand authority. In the past, when I've asked, I've heard that in-post text is better than alt-text for images; even if that stops being the case, I prefer to use in-post text because there are people who aren't screen-reader users who also like the IDs. I do too, actually. And generally I've heard that video as well as image should be described. I don't do straight audio generally, but when I do, if it's a song I don't bother because the title is there and lyrics are googleable, if it's speech I like to see/give a transcript.

I like when videos have descriptions especially, because I am almost never in a position to play a video I see on my dash. If the video doesn't autoplay I don't want to hit play because then it will load with audio and I'm usually either a) somewhere I can't have audio or b) already listening to something and unwilling to turn it off. If the video autoplays it's muted, but if it's audio-heavy there's the same issue. So if someone posts a video without a description/transcript, unless it has captions, I can't engage.

There are a lot of guides out there for how to write IDs and I kind of think, based on conversations I've had, most of them are bullshit by people who don't use screen readers. In my experience, which is not universal but is relatively comprehensive, people who can't see an image often do not want a precise objective description as we're instructed to provide.

There's a great essay that touches on this, Against Access, where the writer, who is Deafblind, talks about how he doesn't want a diagram, he wants an emotional evocation.

Why are you telling me, telling me, telling me things? Your job isn’t to deliver this whole room to me on a silver platter. I don’t want the silver platter. I want to attack this room. I want to own it, just like how the sighted people here own it. Or, if the room isn’t worth owning, then I want to grab whatever I find worth stealing.

I've had people get shitty with me about putting "feelings" into my IDs, but the majority of people for whom those IDs are necessary have told me they like it because, for example, saying "She looks like she's about to commit violence" is a subjective opinion but conveys something that "A woman is standing with arms upraised and a frown on her face" does not. And if you're describing an image but there's not a ton of meaning to it, describing it in clinical detail is wasting time. A paragraph describing a fortysomething white guy and all the clothing he's wearing and the room he's in is not as helpful, on occasion, as simply saying "This is a photograph of me in my bedroom." It depends on context, which is your call to make, and the only way to get good at that is to do it.

But again: this is my experience with my readers, and even John Lee Clark, quoted above, doesn't speak for his whole community. So I would suggest that the best way to get an answer for this is just to ask your readers what they'd prefer. If you have friends who use screenreaders, ask them. If you don't, or if you don't get a response from your readers, I would do what you feel is best until someone tells you otherwise, and then be gracious and discuss it with them so you can better understand their needs. In my experience, when someone is genuinely trying to make a more welcoming space for disabilities -- as opposed to making virtue-signal attempts to Be The Perfect Ally -- they get a lot of slack when they don't get it exactly right. It is better to make a welcoming space for people to feel safe telling you that you fucked up than it is to pretend you're never going to fuck up.

So yeah, as someone who is more or less fully sighted, that's my two cents, but if you really want to know what your readers want, you know...I'd ask them. :) Good luck, either way.

[dreamwritersworld]

Hey! I don't know if you’re accepting any requests; if not, you can just ignore this. But i wanted to ask if you could do headcanons on how the sully family was after the reader died in ‘the perfect child’? I’m craving more angst and I love that story so much! 😭

Omg! This is an amazing idea! 💓 I appreciate you reaching out! This does include extras of younger Y/n as well :( which will honestly probably make you very sad cause ugh my heart breaks for her 🥲

The perfect child. Extra. (Sully family x reader)

Nothing hurt the family more than Y/n’s death.

Neytiri dealt with her death the hardest, she was so angry. Her daughter was always willing to put her life on the line because she was trained to…trained by Jake. It’s wrong yes, but it doesn’t mean the memories of Y/n’s worried face doesn’t haunt Neytiri in her dreams..

*

They were in the forest.. Neytiri watched y/n cry and the young girl could feel her stares so she slowly turned around

"don't stare at me like that! cause l'm not a child! I grew up faster than other people, I didn't need a stupid stuffed toy!"

Suddenly the dream went black and eight year old Y/n was standing right in front of Neytiri with cuts and marks on her hand from training so long as tears were falling down her eyes...

Jake's speeches about her having to ‘win’ and be perfect could be heard in the background as Y/n slowly went down to her knees that were already marked up from crawling and hunting in small spaces.

“…please look at me! I'm begging you mama! Don't stop being my mother!"

The yelling of Jake got louder as he began walking towards them and picking up Y/n dragging her away while she struggled to get out of his grip to reach her mother.

"Mama?"

Y/n's cries for help was disoriented like it was hurting her to speak

"Mama, no! Please! Please I’m tired! No more training! No!Stop this please! Stop it now!"

*

Then it was over.

For the first time ever, Neytiri woke up in sweat..her body was heated and she felt ill, turning over and running out the home to throw up..

After awhile she just sat and thought..thinking about the reason as to why her nightmare had y/n with wreaked hand so much that blood was coming out from the deep cuts...

*

Neytiri looked around for her eldest wondering if she could take care of Tuk for a moment and when she did find Y/n…her heart shattered into pieces.

She saw a site of Y/n shooting her arrow repeatedly, quickly beating her speed every time landing precisely..but at what cost? Y/n had a hitched breath as she felt the blood drop down from her fingers that were cut from hours of practice against the bow’s string.

That’s the first time Neytiri realized her child was ok in hurting herself if it meant she’d get her fathers approval

“Y/n!”

The teenager immediately put down her bow, hiding her hands behind her back, sending a smile to her mother

“Show me.”

“..what?”

“Show me.”

Y/n’s heart panicked at the thought of her mother finding out the overworked hours she does for training..instructions straight from her father

“You hurt yourself? Show me. Now.”

The teenager looks down slowly pulling out her hands in defeat..this was normal wasn’t it..? Training like this was normal?..

Neytiri knew Y/n’s thoughts..she knew it was implented in her mind that doing this was normal. However if Y/n felt it was normal … why hide it? Unless she felt slightly guilty..

It’s very true. Y/n felt guilty…not because she trained herself into bleeding..no not that. She felt guilty because no matter the hours she does..she’ll never be perfect and she was scared her mother would think it’s pathetic.

“how long have you been doing that?”

“Mom, I don’t want you to cry. I’m ok-“

“I don’t understand?! Why? Why would you do that to yourself? Is it me? Is it because of me?”

“No mother of course not-“

“Is it your father? He’s hard on you, I know that. I tried to keep you from it! I’ve tried to protect you. I’ve only ever wanted to protect you!”

“Please mother, it’s not because of that, I’m just training and I bleed by accident.”

Neytiri knew there was no changing Y/n mindset. She was so stuck on it being normal that…it was considered and accident.

“My beautiful girl…my special miracle baby girl…why? Why would you do that?”

“…i didn’t mean to…i wanted to stop but I need to get better mother-“

Neytiri got up to hug her child that was holding in tears seeing her mother cry

“…i am so sorry that i missed this…I’m just so sorry Y/n for everything..give it to me. Ok? You give all that pain and stress to me. I Can handle it…”

Y/n struggled to hold in tears in her mothers arms feeling overwhelmed...

*

See…a mothers love was like no other. Y/n was absolutely broken, and Neytiri broke with her knowing there was not much she can do for the damage was already done..

Jake listened to the wind blow knowing his wife was outside..his heart hurt. His “strong heart” felt empty and broken..he and Y/n had a strong relationship when they were younger ..something like he had with Kiri and tuk now. Yet he failed to maintain it because he was too stupid to notice how he was overworking his kid.

His heart had some kind of longing that he wished he was able to fix if he has just listened to Neytiri soon..if only he had just let her finish the heart breaking story of Y/n training so hard she’d hurt herself..

*

Neytiri’s pleads started when she noticed her husband walking out the home at the usual training time.

“No Jake you can’t! You cannot do this to her! Please stop training.”

Jake couldn’t hear it anymore, not when he knew Y/n was slacking and sleeping at their training spot waiting for him…exhaustion and for what? She never trained…or at least that’s what he believed.

“Neytiri please. Stop. You will not prevent her from practicing. She needs to get better-“

Jake turned his back to Neytiri waving off a hand like he was telling her ‘whatever.’

“Jake! You walk out that door and make our daughter train one more time today and I will not. hesitate to take our children tonight..you can decide the rest.”

Her husband turned harshly to Neytiri’s threats. He figured if he just listened to her for a little then she’d give up on whatever fight she was holding against him so Y/n couldn’t go to practice.

“…I can’t sit by and watch this destroy my child anymore. You can’t steal her passion. You can’t steal her self confidence. My lines been crossed. Your approval isn’t worth it for her and it’s definitely not for me.”

Jake closed his eyes in order to calm himself and settled on the fact that Y/n wouldn’t practice…at least not today.

-*

Seeing Y/n happy during her younger days felt like a fever dream and her death plays over and over in his head…he wished and wished on a shooting star that he can relive the moments they shared before she passed…they were supposed to go flying the next day..the day she died.

The reason why Jake wanted to make Y/n strong and fearless was because he saw the fear in her eyes at a young age…so much desire to travel the forest but absolutely shaken up by a moment they both were vulnerable in..

*

Typically they were never in the dangerous areas but Y/n had wondered off and Jake found her in a ship that was once used for the old war against the sky people.

“Y/n what are you doing here?! You are not allowed in these areas do you read me?!”

The child gently tugged her father in the large abandoned ship, ignoring his instructions…at this time she was just 4.

“Sully’s stick together daddy! That means you have to follow me!”

The young girl giggled while Jake admired the child who was amazed by the ship but he knew it was only a matter of time before they must go.

“This was used during the war..”

Y/n didn’t quite understand what that meant but the warrior equipment always amazed her.

“…ok we should get going kid-“

A thantor had rushed in head first straight to the ship and Y/n’s shrieking could be heard..her fear and the thantor could smell it.

Her terror gave it more energy as it shook the ship again and Jake held onto Y/n, looking everywhere to escape.

That was until the Thantor hit the ship so hard both of their heads hit into a thick material and they passed out.

10 minutes had past and the thantor wasn’t giving up..Y/n had woke up before Jake. Her heart skipped a beat seeing its claws finally break through the thick metal. She immediately shook her father, searching for his protection.

“Daddy? Hey. Hey!”

That moment was absolutely horrifying, she didn’t know if her father was even alive from the hit…it was all her fault.

“…what?”

Jake woke up deranged confused and forgotten on his surroundings..

“Get back baby, get back.”

Y/n closed her eyes and curled into herself while Jake stabbed at the claws of the animal harming it, making it easier to kill with a bullet. He went through the other side and when he saw Y/n..saw the way she cried, how her body shook, the silent and muffled whimpers from her covering her mouth…it was enough to make him upset. He was mortified.

“I’m here baby! Cmon! Let’s go now.”

Y/n couldn’t move…Jake couldn’t snap her out of it..she almost died, and for a small moment she believed her father died.

Eclipse approached right in that moment and Jake’s fear for Y/n grew larger…

“You have to be strong Y/n…cmon let’s go now! It’s dark and more creatures are coming.”

His patience was running up while he heard raspy howls like the ones he met on his first night in the forest and that’s when adrenaline rushed through him..he didn’t even realize the bruise and blood forming on her small leg from hitting into the ships wall.

His arm reached out for her but Y/n put him to a stop

“I can’t! I can’t! My leg hurts! Daddy help me!”

Jake yanked her up and pulled her over his shoulder as he ran through the forest all, he thought about was how it was his fault she didn’t know how it was in the real world.

-*

Jake had never seen that type of fear ever again…not until her last moments.…inside she was screaming, feared, holding those same exact eyes as she did when she was younger…

Yes, her parents had a difficult time..but there was a particular sibling who stayed up listening to the way his mother rapid movements to get fresh air out the house or the way his father had a hitched breathing … the same one Y/n had during her last breaths..almost like he was unintentionally mimicking it while he thought about her death.

Neteyam was Y/n’s closest sibling. He knew never to poke her, interrupt her during training or question her all the time the way Lo’ak did. Y/n understood where Neteyam stood perfectly..the younger sibling the second eldest who took at least a small portion of the blame when it came to Lo’ak and the rest of the kids troubles…but now he was the eldest and there was a small fear of him having the same pressure and weight Y/n had.

He’ll never forget watching his parents clean her body..seeing how his father could no longer hide his emotions, sobbing. He will never forget the way Neytiri held Y/n’s face begging for her eyes to open and look up at her again.

Neteyam knew her death traumatized him but not the way it did to his younger brother. Neteyam turned to Lo’ak hearing him shift repeatedly in his sleep as his hands curled in creating a grip…

Lo’ak couldn’t sleep properly not without Y/n’s death replying in his head…while he slept his body would repeat the same actions it did when he was holding down to Y/n’s wounds absolutely disassociated. Lo’ak was the only one who saw her hidden in the forest when he heard her calling. It was obvious to him that it was no longer her, something took over her…she wasn’t thinking clearly..not when she saw them tied up. When she died he didn’t even bother cleaning the clothes that had her blood on it..he threw it out. As much as he teased Y/n..Lo’ak loved her and that was his way of showing it. Mean? Yes. But nothing would get through Y/n, no matter how much small comments he made it never made her realize how she needed to get loose and forget her fathers instructions every once and awhile.

His teasing never stopped Y/n from doing the same, there was rare moments but she’d alway get back at him with a joke. Surprisingly Y/n was the funniest out of everyone, she didn’t say much either but when she did it made everyone laugh. The way the two siblings joked was their love language to each other…

Kiri and Y/n had a very different relationship from the two boys who she spent most of her time with. Kiri had very few moments when Y/n was vulnerable with her but she saw right thought her.

all she wanted was to have everything her siblings had..

not expecting to be perfect all the time.

being able to mess up.

being comforted when messing up.

being able to forget training.

never thinking their father is going to hate them.

not expecting to win all the time.

not seeing everything as a competition.

Kiri understood Y/n fully, she got upset at her father every time he made her cry. In fact Kiri always cheered her mother on when she defended Y/n. Even In the toughest moments Y/n didn’t cry…she was seen as perfect. A tough strong girl. Is she though? Is she as strong as she poses to be? She isn’t. She isn’t allowed to show her emotions because she will be seen as weak. But from Kiri’s point of view Y/n was very independent, she admired it. The clan considered Kiri strange since the day she was born but Y/n made sure no body would get to her.

All three siblings always wanted to beat the ‘favorite child’ but it wasn’t until now they realized Y/n was just who got caught in the crossfire of their parents fear of losing their child. There was a reason why her parents put so much pressure on her and it’s because she was their first child, she made Neytiri a mother and made Jake more responsible. They obviously didn’t know weather their choice for her were wrong or right, but in those moments it felt necessary, they believed if they made her strong she’d protect herself and the family.

Tuk however…she didn’t see Y/n as the favorite…maybe she was her favorite sibling! But she was not her fathers favorite or her mothers favorite. Tuk never quite understood her parents relationship with Y/n, thought she never paid any attention to it. The little girl did know that she got annoyed anytime she was yelled at and would still take the blame…In the background of y/n’s punishment you can hear Tuk’s little voice telling her father she didn’t do anything wrong! Tuk never failed to make Y/n laugh and they’d have the best time when Y/n took care of her..

Both sisters, Kiri and Tuk laid in Y/n’s hammock that night. They were tucked and tangled in the same way they were when they witnessed Y/n die. Sometimes the memories play quickly out of nowhere in their head..they would see the panicked looked on everyone faces..hear Y/n’s hushed words.. see the damp soil soaked in their sisters blood.

The entire family was hurt by her death but they knew one thing that Y/n always made clear.

“Sully’s stick together”

!💞!

Tag list: @noodlesfics @eywas-heir @itshype @zatarias-pandora @yeosxxx @arminsgfloll @tsireyak @neteyamforlife @aimsro @elegantkidfansoul @goodiesinthecloset21 @nikotokitaswife @bucky1235 @detectivesparrow @kikosaurscave @ssc7514 @simp-erformarvelwomen @eirianna @ambria @im-in-a-pansexual-panik @lv9su @luciddasher @dakotali @httpjiikook @tainted-artist4161 @fanboyluvr @bat1212 @mxn14 @innersuitcasehairdoscissors @ducks118 @midnightliacr @osakis-gf @onetwo123three @briannalarae @thirsty4nonlivingmen @historygeekqueen @abbersreads @eskamybeloved @hoodiepandaninja16 @valovesyou @silentlyswimming @r3dc4ndy @onlytays @papichulo120627 @tsamiaxo @wwwellacom @dotheyevenknowmars @midgetpottermills @he110hon @kodzukenwhore @minkyungseokie @sophiasleeps

[meowmeowmeowmeow4x]

Dark Blue Moon and the Suffering Sun Chapter 22

MASAPOST

this chapter kicked my ass, what with the allergic attack and continued insomnia epsidoe ;-;

Danny watched as Damian’s body froze in dawning horror. The hang-up sound deafened the room. The boy sat stock still. His arms trembled. The phone slipped out of his palm. He didn’t bother to pick it up.

“I… I do not understand.” Damian whispered. “I was speaking in plain English.”

But Danny understood. He understood now, where he never knew before. A lump grew in his throat.

How many people think about the movements of their tongues in speech? How many people actively plan out and execute precisely which movements their mouths make, judging distances, contours, contact time and aerodynamics? How many conversations has the average person had without a single thought towards any of these factors?

His siren brain turned Damian’s shell-shaken chirps into English words so seamlessly that it took active concentration to remember they weren’t English words, not any that a human could easily understand.

“Damian-”

“Do not ‘Damian’ me!” Damian’s fins turned into rigid spines, a reaction he only ever saw from sirens seriously trying to kill him. “We have been speaking in English this entire time! Why could he not understand me?! I have been-”

Damian’s eyes widened. His breathing hitched, then labored. His hands went to clutch at his throat.

“What have I been speaking?”

“Damian, I’m sorry.”

“When you threatened the sailor for his phone password, he complied immediately. You spoke human English to him!” Damian jabbed Danny’s chest, accusation radiating off every word.

“I know. Damian, I-”

“Father is a discerning man. He will not accept a phone call from a strange number twice! You could have squandered the only opportunity we have had to contact help for thousands of miles!”

The young boy’s chest strained to contain his breathing.

“Damian, you’re hyperventilating. Let’s slow down and-”

“No!” Damian backed away from Danny’s hands, like they were molten lava. “We need to contact father again, now! Show me how to form human words.”

Danny stuttered. He had never thought how to do that. He spoke in clicks to his enemies, and when he changed to human form, he’d speak normally again with his loved ones. Changing to human words in siren form was effortless to him.

Damian did not wait for his response long. The boy wheezed, and gasped. The boy’s throat clenched and throbbed as he spat out rasping hisses, and malformed syllables.

He sucked in another breath, and tried again. Each attempt ended up in failure. Damian’s breath grew shallower, his breathing accelerating further and further.

“No! No, no, no, no!” Damian muttered. The boy’s body slumped over, collapsed against the floor. “Why can I not do it?! What do I need? Show me!”

Damian’s chin wobbled His eyes wavered with tears threatening to come out.

Danny was at a loss. Heat scorched his cheeks, shame and guilt in tandem. “I- I- I don’t k-know. I never l-learned. I-it just came naturally to me.”

“I have lost my legs! I have lost my family. I have lost my age and my mental maturity. And you never saw it fit to tell me I have lost my voice too?! What else will you take from me?!”

Danny’s heart seized. A white streak dripped down Damian’s cheek. Then another. Danny lowered his head. “I’m sorry Damian. I- I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know this would happen.”

“What do you mean?!” The child wailed. “We have been swimming for two days! You have had so much time to consider, and yet you did nothing!”

“We can still contact your dad. I-I can speak to him. Or we could text. Or maybe-”

Danny’s nose prickled. Voices came from around the boat. Atlantean voices. More than ten of them. He raised his head, and spotted scores of soldiers announcing their presence in front of the boat. A couple of them in fancy headgear also sported Atlantean magic tattoos. Not good at all.

Damian wrenched a half-sobbing chirp too broken to understand. Danny scooped up the tiny, tiny child, and turned them both invisible. Damian pushed against his arms, but Danny kept firm. He shattered the windows of the room, causing the soldiers outside to yelp and ready their weapons. Without giving them anymore notice, he jumped into the water, speeding away from the scene.

Danny had lost count of how many hours he’d swum, Damian still clinging to his back. Whatever faint traces of warmth the boy had started to show him had long evaporated.

“Damian?” Danny prompted, for what felt like the hundredth time. “Damian, I’m sorry, I swear I didn’t mean to.”

What did he mean to do?

Damian remained quiet, and terrifyingly still. All that came out was a tiny whine and a hiccupped gasp.

“Damian, I promise there’s an explanation for this. It’s-” Danny stopped. It’s what? What could he say to explain? That he was a full human until he was 13 years of age? That he’d had about 10 positive interactions with the other members of his ‘species’ his entire life? That he was not even what or who he said he was, a freak of nature, tainted and touched in ways he could barely imagine?

His only safety net was his secrecy. Danny’s mind flashed to armadas of GiW ships funded by Wayne Enterprises, his parents at the helm of the flagship, and Bruce Wayne soon after. He imagined swimming, and swimming, and swimming for the rest of his life, hiding away in the Mariana Trench and never seeing the stars again.

Damian had no reason not to tell his father everything that transpired during this journey. And he especially had the right to be very angry with Danny. After all, who else failed to save him?

But he was also owed an explanation of some kind. Maybe a half truth? Danny swallowed the lump in his throat. He cleared his mouth. Why were there tears blurry his vision?

“Do not speak to me.” Damian muttered. Nowhere was the boisterous, prideful ego. The kid sounded utterly defeated.

“Damian…” Danny begged. He blinked as fast as he could. The tears were even faster.

“The only reason I have allowed you to carry me is because I still wish to go home. But I do not wish to speak to you. Or speak, period.”

Danny let the silent tears fall freely. “Ok.”

Jack Fenton lay on a mechanic creeper, looking into the complex mesh of wires he and Maddie had concocted in a feverish haze over the course of a single day, and now it was sparking. That was worrying. No need to sweat it, though. Jack Fenton was nothing if not a mechanic, and he’d sort this issue out in no time.

Maddie was on the deck, carefully watching for any siren interlopers who might take an easy shot at them. With her at the helm, Jack had nothing to fear as he inspected the damage.

His eyes traced lines of wires and pipes. Hydroplasm tubes leading into combustion chambers fed by cooling units. Ahah! There it was! One of the cooling tubes was leaking. The bolts on the thing were just a bit too loose, and water was beginning to drip through. A layman might think a cooling tube being broken would cause issues, but the Fentons were nothing if not thorough. Their failsafe system kicked in, and forced the engines to slow down so as not to overheat everything. Let it never be said that Jack Fenton did not care for the safety of his children!

Actually, now that he thought about it, there were a lot more minor issues than he thought there would be. Nothing major, thank goodness, but he could tell why the SAV had been chugging lately.

Time to get to it! Now what tools would he need?

Jack Fenton sat up, only for his head to bang on a pipe. He fell back onto the creeper with a wheeze. Gotta keep an eye on where he was!

 “Dr Fenton?” Was that Brucie?

“Brucie boy! Please, call me Jack! Dr Fenton was my dad.”

“I’m sure Jasmine will soon be saying the same.” Brucie chuckled. “Jasmine told me you were taking longer than normal. Need a hand?”

“You sure about that? This isn’t the kind of thing you can find in an old Toyota.”

Brucie was out of his fancy suit and tie, and in more dirty work-appropriate wear. At least he had the spirit!

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem. I’ve done a few creative engineering projects myself. Some of my designs are sold by the company.”

Jack rolled himself back into the open air, where Brucie was already taking stock of the machinery. Jack’s eyebrows shot up.

“Huh. I didn’t know you were a hands-on type of CEO!”

“I try not to be distant from the people I’m working with in the company. This is your field of expertise, though. If I’d get in the way, that’s fine too.”

“No, no! It’s been a long since time someone’s been this interested in our work. Most people run away! Probably the sirens intimidating ‘em.”

“I can imagine.” Brucie’s voice became sombre.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Brucie, I didn’t mean to, well.”

“It’s alright. The two of us are in the same boat, anyway.”

Jack snorted. Brucie’s face cracked up a little. “Alright then. Come on down and I’ll show you what we need to do.”

Brucie wasn’t lying when he said he had experience. Guy was keeping up with Jack as he explained how the engine worked and why it wasn’t working now. It was like he was talking to a peer in the field! It was exhilarating, considering he and Maddie made up pretty much half of the entire field of siren research.

“Where do you even get enough energy to power this thing? I know it’s not oil or coal or any kind of fossil fuel.”

“That’s easy, Brucie! It’s hydroplasm! Same thing that makes up sirens’ bodies. Gives them their powers.”

Brucie coughed loudly, almost dropping the power cell he was holding up while Jack redid the seals. “So it’s siren blood?”

“I guess you could say that. Not like we’ve ever actually caught one.” Jack tapped the hydroplasm tubes. Thankfully those ones were still airtight and secure. “All this stuff is filtered from the big blue sea herself! Ain’t that neat?”

“It’s incredible.” Jack felt pride swell, for his and his wife’s hard work.

“You’re pretty incredible yourself, Brucie.”

Brucie’s eyebrow quirked. “I can’t say I haven’t heard that before, but it’s usually from women trying to get my attention.”

“I mean it! Most parents wouldn’t have the gumption to take to the seas and fight monsters from the abyss for their kids. And that’s fair! Not everyone’s got the expertise Mads and I do.”

Jack turned the last screw and tapped the power cell. Tight as a tourniquet.

“And not every CEO’s willing to get knee-deep in nuts and bolts either.” Jack continued. Truth be told, Jack had never thought of the possibility of meeting a rich person before. He always thought they’d be in some other kind of world, totally unlike anything he knew. Vladdie was different of course. They went back all the way to their college days, after all.

“Not every parent would personally invent an arsenal worthy of sailing the high seas and fighting through them to get their son back.”

Jack beamed with pride. “Come on, Brucie. You’re making me blush!”

The men continued working, patching up the cracks, filling in missing parts, and welding together pipes, falling into a new pattern that they weren’t quite used to. Occasionally they would bump into each other, or pass the wrong tool and would have to correct. These mistakes became rarer as the night went on, and a comfortable silence settled between them.

“I’m just- I don’t know what to say. The boys. After Alicia and her son, we promised it would never happen again. Moved all the way to Amity, filled the bay with equipment, made a fortress out of our house, and then what?”

Brucie looked down. “I’m sorry about your sister-in-law. And I’m sorry I was careless too.”

Jack reared his head up. “What do you have to be sorry for, Brucie?”

“It was very likely my carelessness in visiting Amity Island that provoked the attack on my son, and yours.”

Jack waved them off immediately. Preposterous! “The only fault to be had is Phantom’s. We’ll get our boys back, and make Phantom pay.”

Bruce screwed in the last piece. The fathers backed out of the room, and slid the protective panel back over the engines.

“Danno’s a strong kid. I’m sure your Damian’s a wildfire and a half too. Wherever they are, I’m sure they’ll have each other’s backs.” Jack whispered. He hoped everything he taught his boy would give him a chance, even a sliver.

Brucie nodded. The men shared a look, and shared whatever hope they could carry on this voyage over the ocean.

[faithst]

ZB1 WHEN YOU ARE HAVING EXAMS

pairing zb1 x gn!reader

genre fluff

warnings mentions of food

notes me? your favourite zb1 writer ⁉️ pls im so touched, ilysm🥹 i hope your exams go by smoothly and thank you for requesting, ina ! i hope you enjoy this (i went to do this so fast bcuz of ur exams 💕)

masterlist<3

— zhang hao

so affectionate 🥹

soothing touches like tracing circles on your free hand while you study

reassures you alot like “you’re gonna do great”

listens to your rants and complaints abt a certain topic/subject you don’t like

his reaction to that is literally: “oh, it must be hard.” ☹️

always tells you that he is proud of you

overall comforts you as much as he can

“you have all the time you need, take it easy.”

— sung hanbin

worried 24/7 for you

not bcuz he thinks that you’ll do bad but because he doesn’t want to see you so stressed out

always supervising you cuz he doesn’t want you overworking yourself

maybe even more stressed than you 😭

insists you take a break even when you started studying like 15 minutes ago 😃

makes sure you take care of yourself while also putting your all into studies

hands you meals and drinks himself just so it’s easier for you

“remember that i always am and will be proud of you.”

— seok matthew

learns the subjects just to help you

sometimes, you end up teaching him a thing or two

creates a study timetable for you

his motivation makes you motivated; win-win ‼️

maybe a bit too motivated…

gives you questions during the most random times throughout the day 🫢

you’re brushing your teeth? question.

you’re taking out the trash? question.

his motto is ‘no pain, no gain’

“don’t fall asleep just yet, i have another question!”

— shen ricky

knows exactly when to help you or to give you space to study

if he sees you studying, he won’t disturb you

but if he sees you procrastinating, he uses the power of ✨bribery✨

“if you get an A on this test, i’ll buy you anything you want”

boom ez motivation 💥

“finish these questions and i’ll give you one of my photocards” “i want a jiwoong photocard though..”

isn’t jealous at all because secretly, he wants a jiwoong photocard too 🤫

“i’ve ordered 2 jiwoong pc’s!” “wait, why two?”

— park gunwook

helps you study 🤞

one condition tho; a kiss for some help

gives you tips and tricks on how to answer questions precisely

also gives you all his notes

makes sure you get enough sleep the night before an exam so you won’t be tired while answering it

very experienced in these matters 👍

when you feel like giving up, he gives you a motivational speech that would inspire many

very very very patient in teaching you so that you don’t feel pressured

“you got this one correct, you’re amazing!”

— kim taerae

he sees you studying and thinks that you’re very hardworking

therefore, he doesn’t want to bother you

absolutely silent whenever you study because any form of noise can be disturbing

like he tiptoes around 😭

but when you’re done, he asks if you need anything

a hug, a kiss, ricky’s wallet? he can give you them all

okay, maybe not the last one but you get what i mean

he convinces you to think that you’re the smartest person ever 🫵

“you’re gonna kill this!”

— kim gyuvin

he tries to help you study and cheer you up

as in, he doesn’t want to see you stressed so he cracks a joke or two 🤝

it becomes very distracting but he has good intentions

“do you know how to do this?” you ask, pointing to a question

“let me see…” bringing the book towards his face, squinting his eyes

places back the book in front of you “yeah, no. sorry..” 😃

eventually you ask him to be a bit more quiet and he has his lips shut

but he’s always in the room while you study whenever you need a joke to hear

“no joke, you’re the smartest person i know”

— kim jiwoong

checks up on you ALOT

gives you shoulder and head massages to release the tension you have there

goes up to you and rubs your shoulders 🫠

“hey, you deserve a break. let’s go for a walk.”

with him, all your worries disappear and suddenly you’re like ‘the tests are gonna be so easy’

if you just happen to become slightly anxious; he will notice

comes up to you to give you a kiss 💋

which breaks you from all bad thoughts

“after your exams are over, i’ll take you somewhere nice.”

— han yujin

studies with you cuz he most likely is also having exams 🤝

if he doesn’t understand, he asks you and vice versa

sometimes he spaces out and you have to bring him back to reality

when you’re really worried and start saying ‘what if’s’

he gives a whole list on why you’re going to get good grades

“firstly, you’re good at everything you do. secondly, i think you’re smarter than gunwook hyung.” 😦

before the exams start, he makes sure to say good luck to you

“i don’t need to say this because you always do so well but good luck!”

© keiwook

taglist @bruhiamistake @trashhdez @chxrrymxxnlight @haesunflower @big-uwu-stan @trsrina

here, if you want to join the taglist !

[kwillow]

People are too nice to me and send me so many intriguing and prescient questions and scenarios about my imaginary friends. Some of these I would have a hard time responding to with drawings, so I've gotta just use my words (SO MANY WORDS) instead!

So, for all interested parties, in response to those questions, here come some LORE RAMBLES: THEO EDITION.

Asks and answers under the cut!

Thank you! “Strange but interesting” is what I aim for with him.

I don’t think I’ve talked about Theo’s voice before! To be honest, I often struggle to imagine precisely what my character’s voices are; the qualities of my mental performance for them varies from day to day. Still, I think with Theo I can formulate a description of some kind.

I imagine his voice to be on the higher end for a man, though not exaggeratedly so, along the tenor range. He can deepen his pitch purposefully to sound more imposing or masculine, but his voice tends to rise in pitch further and further when he’s tense, like a violin string on the verge of snapping. He speaks clearly and distinctly, sometimes to the point of almost biting off the ends of words rather than having them sloppily run into each other, and only rarely uses contractions. His voice has a slight nasal quality to it at times. When he’s angry, a bit of a rattling growl can edge the end of his words.

When he was young, he was a terrible stutterer. He made a concerted effort to train himself out of stuttering in his adolescent years, but he will still lapse into r-ruh-ruh-repeating his syllables if anxiousness gets the better of him and makes him forget to swallow those extra sounds.

He is an expressive speaker, far more so than he’d prefer. Like his pitch varies, so too does his volume, and he can swing from speaking so softly as to be almost inaudible to screaming with all the volume his lungs can muster in a moment. His cadence is full of exaggerated pauses for effect mixed with swift traipses through less important words said simply for the music of reciting them to himself; his conversational tone sounds more like a performer going through a soliloquy than casual speech. In large part, that’s because he’s had more pleasant experiences with theater than conversation.

As many have noticed, he has also a vocal tic. He makes nasally sounds and guttural grunts and growls involuntarily, more often when he’s nervous or upset about something. As he gets older and his body is less able to shrug off the effects of his little smoking habit, he wheezes and coughs in the middle of his sentences as well.

For most settings, I imagine him speaking in a highly affected Transatlantic accent, but in Amaranthine (which is what I assume people are asking about and what I’m defaulting to for these answers), his accent might be more typically British posh-y, like Received Pronunciation. Or maybe not, I mean, it’s a funny animal fantasy setting, so he could have any accent I like. :P

If you want auditory examples, I think something mixing the high-pitched, sibilant, nasally breathiness of Peter Lorre with the refined yet expressive voice of Vincent Price would get you pretty close to what I imagine. To break from the classic horror actor category, you can also throw in this animated series’ depiction of Doctor Octopus to add the all-important ingredient of “nerd factor” to his voice, haha.

He’s a bookworm, yes, but that means he likes to learn! In his case, he’s also someone who enjoys mastering (or at least getting competent at) new skills and is extremely likely to learn to do something well just because someone thinks he can’t. He also has the benefit of being kicked out of school and extremely unemployed, so for most of his life he had lots and lots of free time to take on all manner of niche hobbies if he so desired!

His drive to learn a new skill is motivated by a combination of practicality, gentlemanliness, a need to know how to handle his own business to have as little outside interference as possible or simple intellectual curiosity (which itself is often a cover for boyish whimsy about Cool Stuff). To give examples of practical skills he taught himself: most people probably wouldn’t expect him to be a good cook, but he learned to do that because his family lost their household staff, and someone had to figure out how to cook beef – and because he wanted to take better care of his mother after she fell ill. He’s a great seamster because he wanted to make alterations to his clothes to better fit his unusual proportions without suffering the indignity of being prodded and measured by some nosy tailor. Where he lives, engines are extremely uncommon, being used only for agriculture if at all, but if Theo did own his own automobile, he would learn how to fix the thing himself as best as he could because he wouldn’t want some stranger poking around in his precious baby. He does know how to repair basic clockwork mechanisms, though! (Even if he won’t fix his own pocket watch for weird sentimental reasons.) He taught himself to be ambidextrous purely because he worried about losing a hand in a freak accident one day. He never wants to be caught unprepared or feel like he can’t handle something on his own if he needs to.

For skills in the “oh but if I could do this it would be so cool – I MEAN GENTLEMANLY” camp… yeah, actually, he does like to fence. He might not be able to hold his own all that well against a trained opponent, partly just because of his own physical limitations, but he knows the footwork and he certainly enjoys fighting stationary enemies while role-playing in his head as a knight. (He would be exceedingly embarrassed if anyone knew that part.) He can dance – but only as half a pair – and play the piano – or at least the chords his fingers can reach. He makes model ships and is familiar with all their parts even though he’s never seen the ocean. He knows a fair bit about women’s fashion and could probably help a lady pick a flattering dress for a gala… if she didn’t mind dressing about decade out of style. He’s a fine marksman, though that does overlap with “practical skills” when you live in a world with monsters creeping around on the edges of towns. And that’s not even getting into his self-taught anatomy lessons! But maybe we shouldn’t get into that, for the sake of our stomachs.

I could keep rambling, but to summarize, Theo lacks worldly experience, but he is a curious little guy and has all kinds of weird skills rattling around in his skull. You never know what he’s gonna know! Except for anything involving successfully interacting with other people. He’s never going to know how to do that.

Theo is the sort of person who enjoys collecting things, in that he is often captivated by the history and sentimental value of objects that catch his eye, likes to have a little hoard he can lord over like a dragon, doesn’t see value in minimalism and is loath to get rid of anything he owns.

However, he’s a homebody who rarely traveled far from his hometown of Northcrest, a small and remote barony, and his family (and therefore he) did not have the kind of financial situation that allowed for many frivolous expenditures. Therefore, he cannot regularly obtain new items for his collections because he would quickly exhaust everything that caught his eye in his own town, and he would be wary of spending his family’s dwindling funds on something that only served to satisfy his own whims. If he were in different circumstances, able and willing to travel more broadly and possessing the kind of wealth that allowed him to fully indulge his fascinations, I’d imagine he’d have quite the collection of art, weapons, antique books, clothing, and other fineries. As it stands, he only rarely adds a new object to his own collections, and he instead contents his inner dragon by attempting to maintain and catalogue the acquisitions made by past Norths that have accrued in their manor over the generations. Still… a toy store in his town has made quite a profit off him by having new model trains in stock around his birthday and holidays.

I don’t think he’d be terribly enthused with an insect collection, regrettably. At least not a live one. Preserved, exotic kinds might at least hold the intrigue of far-off places, but something more mundane (and wrigglier) would repulse him more than fascinate him.

I’m going to say somewhere along the line between “absolutely not” and “it’s complicated.” Theo obviously gets fulfillment from looking after the people he cares about, and in Amaranthine, he’s been in a caregiver role for so long he takes a certain amount of comfort in it. Even so, if he somehow knew people thought that he “wants” the people he’s close with to fall ill, or have chronic poor health, he’d be horrified. Theo’s not exactly the most hale and hearty fellow himself (and he’s also made his health notably worse through the years via his own actions, good job on that bud), so he knows first-hand how miserable frequent illness is. He wouldn’t want someone to suffer through that. Also, witnessing his mother’s slow decline and death was harrowing for him, and part of why he flings himself into caring for Hyden is that he doesn’t want to see something like that again and is doing all he can to keep Hyden stable. It brings him comfort, but the stress of feeling responsible for someone’s health – and the stress of only being able to manage their symptoms and never fix the problem – takes a toll on him, too, even if he wouldn’t say so.

So, he wouldn’t blame a sickly partner for their condition, and he’d be willing to care for them and want to help them, but I don’t think he’d ever say he “wants” someone he cares about to be sick. Would he nonetheless be more likely to get close to someone sick versus someone well? Well, maybe. Theo has a bit of a dependent streak, not in that he needs someone to dote on him, but that he doesn’t feel like he has any worth in a relationship unless he can provide protection or assistance. But someone could easily satisfy his need to be needed in other ways, too. Like someone being clumsy and needing their clothes mended regularly, or having a deadbeat husband they need murdered, you know, stuff like that.

He doesn’t know much, and never cared to ask much either, like you imagine. He mostly just knows they’re not nobility, they do have some mage ancestry and ability, and beyond that aren’t important (according to Jocosa). Besides, as a history nerd, he has little interest in learning about his father’s side when his mother’s side has biographies, tapestries, records of badges and achievements and personal spellbooks in such great measure that he couldn’t hope to go through them all in his lifetime. Does Leonard’s side of the family have even one tapestry? No? How dull.

For his part, Leonard isn’t close to or fond of most of his family and isn’t very candid about his past life before becoming successful, so he was amenable to not talking much about his childhood or ancestry. He would prefer if Jocosa was similar restrained and didn’t extoll the virtues and history of her bloodline constantly, but alas, no. One of the consequences of marrying into snotty nobility, I suppose.

Oh, you’re on to something there! :)

Now, with someone like Theo, whose brain is a Gordian knot of congealing gray matter basting in a cerebral soup of self-deception, neuroticism, and concentrated hatred, it’s hard to point to one thing as the sole cause for any of his many issues. At the same time, I don’t want to just dump the entirety of Theo’s issues with his family and how they impact him psychologically because I worry that I could write a thousand words about it and still have five thousand more in me, and we all have other things to do with our time than read all that. That said, to briefly (ha) touch on what you’ve mentioned…

Many of Theo’s problems with intimacy, with needing to feel useful, with fearing connections with others, and so on do stem from his troubled family history. At least some of his self-loathing is borne from him, at a glance, looking more like the man he most despises instead of being the same long, slim, elegant creatures that form the roots and branches of his mother’s family tree. Although, the irony in that is that all the “bad” genetics that cause him grief and suffering come from his mother’s side – but he alternately blames the cruel gods and himself for being a freak, not his mother or grandpa or any of his weaselly ancestors for that.

It’s also true to say that Theo’s self-sacrificing and self-effacing acts of kindness towards his mother and to others he cares for are done in part to make up for the fact of his own existence. The fact that his beloved mother had to couple with a disgusting, loathsome, degrading, unfaithful cur of a man (have I mentioned Theo really hates his dad yet?) in order to bear him weighs heavily on his mind and warps his self-concept. As much as Theo knows his mother loves him, he also knows – and despises – that he if he’s his mother’s son, he’s also his father’s spawn.

Jocosa doesn’t talk at length about her problems to Theo, or anyone – she wouldn’t want to make Theo feel responsible for her woes and she isn’t the kind of woman to whine about her life’s tribulations besides – but Theo isn’t so ignorant that he can’t pick up on the tension in other’s conversations, read meaning into words left unsaid, or work backwards from what he is told to deduce the rotten truth behind what little he’s told. He knows that everything involving his conception was hard for her, even if she doesn’t say it, and he feels he needs to do everything in his power to make up for the suffering bringing him into existence put her through. ...And I could go on but I think that’s enough to get the picture for now. Have I mentioned I can write a lot of words about Theo??

I think Hyden would know better than to say something like that – out loud. Hyden does try to push Theo into a personal valet role. But Theo has his limits and Hyden is smart enough to not press them (too much, right away). Being referred to as a kind of servant is one of those limits that really pisses him off and would be a one-way ticket to not getting any more pillow fluffing. Also, for as much as he helps Hyden with daily tasks and provides whatever dotage he feels is required of him as an apprentice, caregiver or host, there are tasks a manservant would be responsible for that Theo categorically refuses to do (even though Hyden wishes he would).

I am greatly amused by the thought of someone trying to get a flower crown on Theo. I can’t imagine it’d ever go much better than people trying to put shirts on their cats. He just really doesn’t like situations wherein Stimulus I Have No Control Over Is Happening To Me.

He does tend to flip from fury to (relative) calm depending on the circumstance and the source of annoyance, so you’re spot-on with the variable reactions he could have to a floral intrusion. I would say he isn’t likely to use “witch” as an insult for the same reason as he wouldn’t use “harpy” or “ice queen” as an insult, which is that any kind of derogatory comment his mother was ever called might as well be a compliment in his books. “Harlot” is completely fair game, though.

Thanks a bunch for the kind words on my weird rat guy. So happy you like him!

(Also “dark fantasy rose type flower” made me laugh. God. He’s such an edgelord. Emphasis on the “lord”, with a title and arms and everything.)

Glad you like seeing him! I guess one of the benefits of me not getting particularly exotic with the colors or markings on my furry designs is that you can find associations to actual animals like this! I hope your pet rat had a better temperament than Theo does, though.

…Which sounds a little stupid considering quite a lot of these answers involved me talking at length about Theo being sad and self-sacrificing and crap like that. I swear to God he’s a nasty little bitchboy most of the time. I need to draw him biting someone on the face or insulting someone for being poor or eating someone’s eyeball or something again to balance the scales here.

Note to self.

[yuurei20]

Hi Yuurei!! 🤗 Sorry if this formatting gets all squished on tumblr! 😭

I admit this is a bit of a passion question here, but Ace’s clubwear DUO voicelines felt like they had different meanings (and are a little rude) in the English version. I wanted to get your opinion if you have time!

JP + my interpreted translation

Jamil: 「焦る決めるなよ、エース」 (Don’t make any hasty decisions, Ace)

Ace: 「分けってます、ジャミル先輩」 (Got it, Jamil-senpai)

EN official

Jamil: Stay cool and land the shot, Ace.

Ace: I know, Jamil To my understanding, “wakettemasu” in THIS context is more in the vein of, "I understand/I am acknowledging your advice as my senior and listening to it.” It sounded a bit jarring in English to me, like “I know, you don't need to tell me" even when they're in the middle of a game.

JP + my interpreted translation

Ace: 「サポートあざっす、フロイド先輩！」 (Thanks for the support, Floyd-senpai!) 

Floyd: 「ミスすんなよ、カニちゃん」 (Don't make a mistake, Crabby) 

*I used to think he was saying “Don’t miss,” so I defer to the official translation. 😅

EN official

Ace: Back me up, Floyd!

Floyd: Don’t screw up, Crabby.

I personally don’t like Ace’s "Thank you" (azassu) being taken out because he is normally the type to thank others, in any situation, even for humor. The rewording makes it so Ace is demanding Floyd back him up, but the original dialogue sounds like Ace is thanking Floyd for backing him up during a game (maybe even without being asked). I think Ace would get squeezed if he ever thought he could boss Floyd around…hehe.

Anyway, I could be way off on my interpretations before they got translated to English. Semantics and 1:1 translations are elusive, but it'd be nice to have better understanding of club members' relationships as they were intended. 🥺

Hello hello! ^^ Thank you for this question!

Your translations are very good!!

Jamil's original line is 「焦らずキメるぞ、エース！」 and I think both your interpretation of "don't be hasty" and EN's "stay cool" are correct! ^^

Literally translated it is close to, "without hurrying / without being impatient / without rushing," as in Jamil is telling Ace to stay calm and composed.

「キメる」 is an example of how context-dependent the Japanese language can be! Literally it is just "to decide" or "to set," but in the context of Jamil's clubwear we know that he is likely telling Ace to make a precise, confident choice and/or shot, as in waiting for the perfect moment to shoot for the goal and/or to strike.

Since this is a battle line he could be taking a shot for either a basketball hoop or taking a shot at an enemy! EN's "land the shot" goes both ways, much like the original JP ^^

Ace's response of 「わかってますよ、ジャミル先輩！」 is, I think, actually very close to the EN interpretation!

It might sound a little harsh in English, but it is also borderline impolite in Japanese! A polite response would be わかりました in the past tense, to indicate that Jamil has explained something that Ace didn't know, but now Ace understands and is acknowledging such.

By using わかってます in the present tense Ace is giving the vibe that he didn't need Jamil to tell him, because he already knew.

This is very characteristic of Ace's speech patterns with his senpai ^^ He walks a thin line of politeness/over-familiarity almost all the time, as a part of his character!

I absolutely agree with your evaluation of Ace's line! ^^

While he is speaking in a slang-like way that you would normally not want to use with your senpai, he is still thanking him, and EN-Ace's translation sounds like he is giving an order to Floyd when he isn't!

I recently reviewed the JP main story from the prologue to 7-4 while collecting all examples of the characters saying "please," and it has been very interesting to match up to EN ^^

Characters like Ruggie, Azul, Jade, Sebek and Silver (in Book 7) are saying "please" just all of the time in the original game, which EN sometimes carries over, sometimes reinterprets into different forms of politeness like "sir," and sometimes drops, as in this case with Ace and Floyd! So interesting ^^

[desertfangs]

Inebriated - Armand/Daniel - 1000 words

Daniel is drunk and pleading for the blood. Again.

This angsty little nugget was written for @vcmicroficmay Week 3 for the prompt "Inebriated."

Full text here or cross-posted to AO3.

“Give it to me, damn you!” Daniel demands, the liquid sloshing over the lip of the glass that he jostles in his hand while he speaks. “Haven’t I proven that I’m worthy?” 

“It is not a prize one becomes worthy of,” Armand says patiently. 

Daniel scoffs, anger rising. “Bullshit! You’d do it if you really loved me.” 

Armand starts to say that’s absurd, that his love for him is precisely why he cannot damn him to this, but Daniel won’t hear it. 

“You don’t know what love is! How can you!” He slurs his speech but Armand understands well enough. “You torment me and toy with me and you’ll never do it. You’ll just let me die. And then what!” 

The last part comes out more like a sob than a question. Daniel is drunk enough that the alcohol is melting his resolve. Some drunkards grow cruel and mean the more they imbibe, but Daniel simply runs out of steam. His anger in this state tends to come out in short, fiery bursts, like fire from the mouth of a dragon, and then dissipates. 

Armand merely needs to wait him out. 

“Well? Do you have my grave picked out?” Daniel flings his hand forward in an accusatory gesture and the rest of the contents of the glass slosh onto the floor, ice and all. Daniel stares at the glass in his hand, as if offended it had dared spill its contents without his permission. But then he looks back at Armand. “Will you leave my body in my bed to rot? Or will you take me out on your boat and drop me into the sea?”

“Daniel—” Armand reaches for him but he pulls away. 

“Don’t.” He walks back to the living room and leans against the wall, sliding down it onto the floor. His fingers tear at his short blond hair and he glares at Armand with a mixture of anger and pain. 

And then the tears come. 

Armand stands across the room, watching him helplessly, listening to the sobs shake his chest. His lungs rattle as he holds his head in his hands and stares at the carpet. Air wheezes through his trachea. Daniel starts coughing but the sobbing doesn’t stop and Armand is afraid he’ll choke. 

He crosses the room and kneels in front of Daniel. He takes his hands in his. After a moment, Daniel catches his breath. He meets Armand’s eyes. His beautiful, violet eyes are red with large circles beneath them. Tears—mortal tears, made of saline—streak down his cheeks.

“I would do it for you,” Daniel says. His voice is weak. He looks defeated. Lost. So much younger than his thirty-one years. 

“You believe you would,” Armand says. “But you don’t know—”

Daniel scoffs and leans his head against the wall behind him, tilted to stare up at the tall ceiling overhead. Armand stares at the line of Daniel’s throat, at the artery pulsing under his skin. He’s pale—not pale like Armand, not like the dead, but like a mortal who does not get enough sun.

“I know I would,” Daniel insists. 

Defiant, always. 

Armand does not bother to argue. The tears have stopped. His beloved—this strange and beautiful boy who has captured Armand’s heart so fully—sits listless and broken. His shoulders slump. His heart rate slows. He sniffles again, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. 

Why can’t I make you see? 

Armand bends forward and kisses his tear-stained cheek, salty and wet. He smooths his forehead. You’re still so young, Daniel. 

Daniel swallows and looks away. His thoughts are turbulent, bouncing around from the broken glass on the floor to the exhaustion he imagines he feels in his bones, to the frustration that tears at his soul. 

Armand bites his own wrist, gashing his flesh with his fangs. Daniel’s eyes focus on it, his pulse racing at the site of his blood beading up out of Armand’s pale white skin.  

Daniel shakes his head, trying to resist. It won’t be enough. What’s the use? 

Armand starts to pull his arm back. He won’t force his blood on Daniel. It was meant as an olive branch and if Daniel will not take it—

Slender fingers snatch his wrist, holding it there in front of his face. He doesn’t drink. He just watches the skin knit back together. He’s always so fascinated by the way Armand’s body heals. 

He licks his lips. Then he glances at Armand, his look pleading enough that Armand knows his desire. He cuts open his wrist again.

This time, Daniel does not resist. He holds fast to his arm, keeping it against his mouth as he drinks, swallowing deeply, desperate to drink enough blood to work its magic. Armand enjoys the feeling of Daniel drinking from him and the calm that comes over Daniel when the blood sears through his veins, their hearts being in unison. 

Finally, he eases his arm out of Daniel’s grasp. 

Daniel’s eyes are brighter now, his mind clearer. His heart pounds in his chest. He meets Armand’s gaze again. 

“You used to say I danced with danger, back when this all began,” Daniel says. “That I walked a fine line.” 

Armand stares at him. He did say those things, many times. And they were always true. Even now, he—

“You do the same thing by letting me drink from you.” Daniel glares.

Armand says nothing. 

Daniel gets to his feet, more steady now that the blood is working through him and the effects of the alcohol are fading. “You know what I think? I think you want to do it. You’re just a coward.” 

Daniel storms out of the room. A moment later, the back doors to the Villa bang open and Daniel disappears into the night. He’d headed toward the Plaza, not the boats. He’ll stay on the island, then. 

Relief rushes over Armand. He goes to get a dustpan to clean up the broken glass.

[yggdrasilhypno]

Today’s been such a fun day for me, simply scrolling through Tumblr and finding myself reading all of these lovely scripts and inductions.

So many creative and interesting ideas, flourishing underneath each and every meticulously chosen word.

Everyone has their favorite kinks and ideas, and you can truly feel their passion within their work.

So that’s what I want to chat to you about, if you don’t mind: passion.

Passion’s incredibly important to me, it’s what draws me to people honestly.

Whenever someone’s passionate about something, you can really feel it all in their behavior.

Their voice changes a bit, showing signs of excitement and knowledge.

Their hands may start to move around, accentuating their speech.

Their eyes seem to light up with fire, pure and utter joy expressing from just their stare.

And you can really feel it too, in the way you find yourself understanding where they’re coming from.

Maybe you think back to something you love and can relate.

The best moments however is when you feel swept up in their passion, as if you’re getting excited just hearing about it.

For me, I constantly find myself getting sucked into their passion, even if it’s not something I’m knowledgeable of.

Though if you’ve ever read my writing, you may understand what my passions are.

I love a lot of things in life, from the silly to the insane and to the simple.

But for now, let’s simply explore my passion and the passion of others in hypnosis.

Because right now, just hearing about people’s passions is enough to get you invested in what im saying, and in turn you just want to listen a little bit more for me.

But I could just simply show you why passion is so beautiful to me.

Hypnosis is something I believe in heavily, not only as a method of entertainment or clarity but as a legitimate therapy and healing outlet.

More so than that however, I believe it to be utterly fascinating.

The idea of being able to influence the way someone thinks, acts, and perceives the world only through focus and relaxation absolutely drives me wild.

That fire within me lights and all I can talk about is hypnosis, I love to listen and to learn about it constantly and as my words swell, it feels like a tornado slowly consuming everything else around it.

Like a drug, it draws out ideas within me that I allow to flow expertly and with precision, always being able to craft something tailor made to break brains.

And yet, as one may feel this passion, they feel swept up in it, as am I whenever I feel passion within someone.

Their eyes may follow along to what words I say, and the torrential flurry of them may be too powerful for constant comprehension.

After a bit of exposure, their minds seem to just nod along to the flow of my passion, as it engulfs them in a similar flame to mine.

You can understand that, can’t you?

Feeling so driven and happy about something that you can’t help but let it all out?

You can feel that fire too.

You can feel my fire.

Like a constant river flowing, my ideas careen downwards towards you as you’re able to understand every word and allow them to ignite you further on.

You may need my words, you may want to listen to them more so you can feel this amazing even longer.

It’s simple passion sweeping you, sweetie.

Follow along and prosper with me.

[striderl]

Hey you're fully back welcome :D

How are you doing? :3

(I had a dream right after you left that I was lost in a mall with Polaroid and I had it written down for when you got back and I thought you'd get a kick out of that hehe)

Anyways yeah I'm not gonna bug you too much or ask you any oc questions (cuz I don't got any) I just wanted to pop in and say hi :3

Have a noice day/night! :D

Hello, @luney2mooney!

Feel free to send an ask anytime, I’ll be thrilled to read your dreams!

To be honest, my artwork routine is still not fully back to normal.

I have been working on apartment renovations and repairs with my parents for the past 3 months, which is the reason I haven’t been active during the summer. Minimum internet usage, minimum air conditioner usage, 6-10 hours of physical work per day, hand-washing clothes and huge-@$$ bedsheets because we don’t have a clothes washer. My parents can’t even stand seeing me on any electronic devices for over 10 seconds. 

And guess what? No wages for all the hard work! Not even a single penny unless we are capable to rent the apartment out! That’s life for ya when you aren’t born into a rich household — you’ll have a hard time making money that’s enough to support yourself.

Luckily, after two weeks I’ll be getting back to school so I won’t be dealing with as much physical labor. Funny, right? When everyone’s looking forward to vacation, I just want to go back to school and be a nerd. But then comes the problem with tuition, so I’ll probably open commissions in September, just to make some money so I can get a bit of pain relief from using so much of my parents’ pensions.

Anyway, my ask box is open, but I’ll still keep the same rules:

No NSFW and blank shipping is allowed on my turf, I’m trying to keep my mind healthy even when it comes to sexual content. And the fact that people are obsessed with forcing characters into ships disgusted me

No Skibidi-unrelated OCs unless you are asking for a commission (future planning)

I don’t use AI except when I need peer review on wording, not for entertainment or other purposes. Stop asking about it

Keep your ask precise, just a few more words can’t hurt. I don’t have telepathy so reframe yourself from forcing me to read your cave-man-speech

My ask box, my choice. If I don’t want to answer your questions, I won’t answer it. It’s not my absolute responsibility to answer everyone’s ask. But as long as nobody trespasses my rules, I will answer it with pleasure

Yes, I might be targeting people here because I’m tired of people spamming my ask box with random stuff I can’t even understand, and I’m tired of keeping up my “nice guy” profile. I find it EXTREMELY necessary to defend myself because people are *inadvertently* stepping on my boundary, not once, not twice, but MULTIPLE TIMES! Is it so damn hard to just learn to do better?

… Excuse me, I just wanted to vent. Take care of yourself as well.

[hx4x4enthusiast]

Two sparks and a drumming heart

Part 1 (3233 words)

Part 2: https://www.tumblr.com/jorico/721903257373605888/chapter-2-1560-words-warmth-covered-my-sore-body?source=share

Ship: Optimus x gender-neutral reader x Ratchet 

Fic category: hurt/comfort 

Trigger Warning: Self-Harm, Depression, mention of past suicide attempt,

“Speech”

-Commlink conversation-

kursiv=thought

It was a calm Friday at the base, the kids finally got the permission from their parents, Fowler and Optimus to have a sleepover all weekend long. Difference all the kids sleep with their guardians, and I will sleep n the main area.

 You see everyone has a guardian, a protector of sorts, they pick you up from school protect you from the Decepticons spent time with you while you teach them about earth and humans. For example, Arcee is Jacks Guardian, Bulkhead protects Miko meanwhile Raf has Bumblebee as his Guardian and I well, I can take care of myself, always has always will and that is fine. Believe me I can understand Optimus is the leader of the Autobots he already knows all about Earth and humans a top of that he has the burden of an entire planet and war on his shoulder, meanwhile Ratchet constantly works from trying to help with scientific advancements to give constant medical services.

 Ratchet is a medic to be more precise the medical officer of the Autobots, and probably the person that loathes me the most. And I tried to befriend him, or at least be on civil speaking terms (like June), with him but every time I try, it seems the opposite happens. Some people just don’t get along with others. And I would stay out his way believe me I can take a hint. My other half guardian would be Optimus he is the leader. He is civil with everyone, and kind of the only bot Ratchet is willing to listen to. He is nice we, on the rare occasion he has time, talk about books. But well Optimus is the Autobot leader and a Prime he doesn’t have time for a small human like me, which is absolutely understandable, I mean he carries the weight of the fate of our planet and the future of his planet on his shoulder. While simultaneously being a strong leader for his team and fighting in a war. Problem they are my guardians, well half guardians, they sometimes just drive me home or well bridges me there. But seeing the other kids with their guardians does make me miss something I wish I had, but that’s just me being silly. And I have my ways to deal with these thoughts and feelings.

 Shaking myself out of those thoughts I look at the time and realize the kids are not going to be back soon. Jack and Arcee were on Patrol, Raf and Bumblebee were out as well probably racing and finally, Miko and Bulkhead are out dune bashing. Realizing I have the bathroom to myself I grab my bag and move into the direction of the shower.

 We all had bags in the base with back up clothes, sleeping bags and basic hygiene products after one-to-many incidence that ended in us needing a change of clothes or having a spontaneously sleepover. And I was in desperate need of a shower.

 Infront of the bathroom we put an old locker where we could put our stuff, the locks were Jacks idea to make the locker Miko-proof. After I took my clothes and shower out of my locker, I checked the floor to check for anyone in the hallway. Knowing it was empty I rummaged through my bag to get to a small cardboard box buried under my clothes. Having the little box in my hands I pull out one of the wrapped articles an put the box back into its hiding spot. Having the utensil concealed underneath my clothes I give one last look into the hallway before stepping into the the room with the showers and putting my clothes into the designated spot. I start to strip out of my clothes, and leave them on the floor, they are a problem for future me. Taking my shampoo, bodywash, towel and the still wrapped object I proceed into the actual shower. The warm water on my skin feels like heaven and I release a shaky breath.

 There are several reasons in my opinion why showers are great. But the biggest is probably that a shower washes everything away like stress, exhaustion, tears, and blood. Though I suppose for most people they are just a way to get clean. In the background of my brain my thoughts are continuing their philosophy about humans and shower time. While I watch fascinated, with the occasional sharp sting on my lower arm, as red mixes with the clear water and goes down the drain. I glance to my arm and see my dominate hand holding the now unwrapped blade while continuously slitting red lines into my skin. The little red drops don’t even have time to form as they are immediately washed away. It has been some time since I last did this. When did I last cut myself, it was probably a few weeks before I met the Autobots. Right, I wanted to kill myself on the day I met the Autobots but couldn’t go through with it because The Decepticons attacked me before I could begin. And since then, I didn’t find the time. Oh, right I should go back before someone tries to find me. No one should see me this way.

 Quickly washing my hair and body, while being careful around my wound, I turned off the shower and dried myself up, carefully dipping around the wound, it was a good decision to buy black towels.  After throwing on a hoodie and a pair of short sweatpants I clean up after me and leave the shower, stuffing the wrapping paper and blade into my hoodie, to dispose of them later. After gripping my bag and putting it back into my locker, I slowly start to trot back to the others.

 The main room came into view, mentally preparing myself for the social flood I take a deep breath and step into the room. Only to find nothing, or more like no one, the room is empty. The human area is missing Jack, Miko as well as Raph and even Arcee, Bumblebee along with Bulkhead are missing. Only Ratchet and Optimus are on the computers no doubt calculating and strategizing the future of the Autobots. Having just taken a few steps into the room both of them suddenly freeze which is concerning. After they scan the room for whatever it is that unsettles both their optics land nearly contemporaneous on me.

 “Uhm are you okay should, should I leave, I can go no Problem I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Do you know where the menaces are I wou-.”

“You are injured.”

“What?”

“You are injured.”

  I blinked my mind trying to process onto what is happening. While Ratchets observation is not wrong, how did he know? Does Optimus know? He looks just as shocked as Ratchet. Wait do they know? Know what I did? No, they can’t that’s not possible. But they are aliens, with high tech and Ratchet is essential a doctor. My body erupts into goosebumps, and I have a full body shiver. Which tears me out of my thoughts. Just in time to see Ratchets green arm scanner disappearing and him looking at the apparent scan results. Looking up it’s like some turned a switch around and he is in doctor mode.

 “You have multiple incisions on your underarm. The next steps are to clean the wound and wrap it up to keep the wounds from getting infected and help with the healing process. Now follow me to the med bay so that I can ensure the appropriate treatment of the wounds and check if there are incisions that need stitching.”

 I look shell shocked between Optimus and Rachet. Unable to react.

 “Well, what are you waiting for the faster you receive medical treatment the lesser the chance of infection.”

 One thought crosses my thought. -If Ratchet takes me to the med bay he will see the wound, if he sees the wounds, he wants to know how they came to be. Then I must explain, then they will now that I am a useless wreck, and they should abandon me. - Scared of the reaction that will follow the reveal of the reasons behind my scars I do the only thing, sensible to me at that moment. I turn tail and bolt out of the room into maze which are the corridors of the old missile silo. Followed by an angry shout.

 “You better come back here right this nanocycle, or so help you, Primus!”

 The floor feels like it is vibrating and the muffled sound of something solid hitting the ground repeatedly, changes to fast approaching vehicles. A Blur of red and white speeds past me, I collied with solid metal. A Ambulance is parked right in front of me. The ambulance belongs to a medic, a medic which patient just went AWOL and not only tried to escape treatment but also him. Doing a 180 is met with yet another collision, this time though the metal adorns a red-blue colour scheme and the vehicle changes from an ambulance to a semi-truck. Both ways blocked by vehicles and surrounded by thick concrete walls that are enclosing rapidly.

 “What is wrong with you? What happened back there?”

 “Little Archivist?”

 A high-pitched tone goes through my ears and my hands instinctively cover them, only for my chest to feel like someone laid multiple rocks on my lungs. Rapidly trying to take deep breath to get oxygen in my lungs doesn’t seem to work and my vision starts to blur. The feeling of a calm deep baritone voice starts to slowly blend the high-pitched noise out. while the feeling of warmth and something smooth encircles me. Drawing small patterns onto the metallic looking appendage start to pacify the wind whirl in my thoughts.

 “You are safe our little archivist, everything’s going to be alright, we are here.”

“Can I come closer? Is it okay if I touch you?”

 Looking up I am met with the concerned optics of Ratchet. I nod and slowly the feeling of something warm and smooth encircles me. And I find myself sitting in a metal servo with a cybertronian equivalent of a thumb gently draped over my legs Drawing small patterns onto the metal appendage furthers the process to pacify the wind whirl in my thoughts. And I feel a light draft from being slowly lifted, as Ratchet starts to slowly right himself to his full hight. Optimus slowly makes his way over to us with careful steps, like one would do when faced with a scared animal.

 “Little Archivist, are you back with us?”

 Looking up to Optimus I nod, his faceplate shows the same feelings as Ratchet. Confusion, Concern and behind the two one could see fear.

 “We won’t discuss or ask about what transpired if you don’t feel ready for that conversation.”

“But I do need to take of your wounds. I won’t ask any question related to how you got them, in exchange you will go with us to the med bay and let me take care of the injury.”

“And after the medbay you will stay within both see and hearing distance of either me or Ratchet, which includes recharge which we will do once Ratchet has checked you, over. Do you agree to our condition?”

 I nod unsure and confused on what else I could do. Ratchet carefully curls his servo around me and we move into the direction of the medbay. No one saying a thing.

  As Ratchet walks through the doors of the medbay Optimus directly behind us closes the doors and moves to the side of the berth Ratchet carefully put me on. A series of clicks later two mass-displaced cybertronians are sitting next to me. As Ratchet makes a move to inspect my arm, I get startled out of my vegetive state and recoil back. Right into Optimus. Gently he lifts me up like I weigh nothing and deposit me into his lap. One servo circles around my midsection and remains there light enough to not make me feel trapped but still secure enough to give comfort and be grounding. All the while laying his other servo on my head and tenderly guiding my head to his chest plate right above his spark.  The sound of his spark giving me something to focus on, as I lean against him.

 “Your safe little archivist, we are here, we want to help you.”

The deep rumble of Optimus voice and the warmth of his chassis made me snuggle closer to him.  

 “He is right little spark, would it be ok if I touch you? I want to take a closer look at your wounds.”

 Looking up at Ratchet I saw the gentle look upon his faceplate, being reassured by his words and voice.  I slowly uncurled my arm and hold it out for Ratchet, my scars on full display for both cybertronians to see. Both silent as Ratchet inspects the scars and starts getting the supplies, he needs to clean the incisions, from his human med bag that I only notice now.

 “I am going to disinfect the wound now, little spark. This may sting a little.”

 Hissing as the alcohol-soaked cotton ball hit my wounds was the only thing I could really do, with the firm grip Optimus and Ratchet had. I couldn’t escape or really move my limbs, though I weirdly didn’t feel trapped, it felt comfortable, it felt safe. After cleaning up the wounds, Ratchet put some ointment onto aid in the healing process and started wrapping up the arm, while continuing to hold my arm in the strong hold. Ratchet took a deep vent, a human custom he adopted. And raised his helm util his optics met my eyes.

 “These incisions are very clean, like they were created with a sharp object under the intension to cause harm.”

“A sharp object like a knife or a razor blade.”

 That sentenced from Optimus made me look up, only to see his gaze on a small metal object in his left servo that had previously held my head. I paled and try to escape only to realize Optimus had tighten his grip around my mid-section and Ratchet held my arm the same way Optimus held my mid-riff. Atop my legs were trapped between Ratchets thigh guards. It was clear that they both did this before and had no intension of letting me run away again.

 “No no, let me go. Please I won’t do it again I swear. Just please.”

 In hindsight I also could have tried to move a brick wall and would have been more successful. But in that moment my flight reflex complex was in full motion. Ratchet took that moment to ask the dreaded question.

 “Little Spark did you do it? We are not mad or disappointed, we won’t scream or judge you.”

“But we need to know if you hurt yourself, little archivist. We want to help but we can only do so if you let us.”

“You are important to us, we don’t…can’t lose you. Please talk to us.”

 Hearing their concern, I hesitantly looked up to see their optics on me. Fear and sadness edged onto both of their faceplates. Seeing the always confident leader of the Autobots and the consistently guarded medic be this vulnerable for me. They cared for me, the one always over, the third wheel made, the back-up friend, made me break. For the first time in a long time, I opened up to someone, let someone see my heart, see me. Not the carefully crafted persona made to please everyone. No, I showed them the real me the shattered person that fixed themselves with all-purpose glues and duct-tape. I always was pretty ugly when I cried.

 ­

As my crying ebbed down into silent little sobs and I realize my surroundings. I find myself in a hug, surrounded by warmth and seeing parts of an orange-white shoulder pad. Slowly the shoulder pad moved back to reveal a chassis with a helm and a face plate with a look of love, care and relief.

 “Now little spark, I say you need a good recharge, doctors’ orders.”

 I heard Optimus chuckle, at Ratchets attempt to hide his as he calls it “soft side”, as he lifts me up and into his arms. Causing me to yelp and latch onto Optimus due to the sudden movement. Causing another chuckle from Optimus and a small smirk from Ratchet.

 “I agree with him you need rest, little archivist. Besides I don’t think it is wise to go against a medic’s orders. Especially Ratchets”

“Can I get that in writing.”

 I couldn’t help myself and smiled, it was small and a little shaky, but it was real, the first one in a long time, that wasn’t forced. Turning back to his original size ratchet took Optimus with me in his arms into his servo and moved out of the medbay.

 “Where are we headed?”

“To our hab suite little spark. Because besides you there is another bot that hasn’t recharged in a few decacycles and desperately needs to shut down.

 Said bot kept quiet and didn’t acknowledge the hint Ratchet gave. Continuing the journey to the bot’s quarters while surrounded by Optimus warmth and with the gentle movement of Ratchet, my eyes felt heavy, and I couldn’t contain my yawning. The Adrenalin is probably leaving my body. Fighting against the exhaustion seemed useless as I grew more tired from minute to minute. Until sleep claimed me and I fell asleep in the arms of Optimus.

Feeling a sudden weigh on his shoulder the Prime carefully moved his helm to see their little human deep in recharge on in his arms. Feeling a small smile make his way onto his faceplate as he carefully readjusted his grip on the small human.

 -Ratchet it seems our little sparkmate, didn’t make it to our berth to fall into recharge. -

Ratchets gaze fell upon his Counjux to see the little human, in his arms, indeed had felt into recharge.

 -Well, are you surprised, after everything that happened today. I am just disappointed we didn’t notice it earlier. Then they wouldn’t have to suffer today. Who knows how long they already had to deal with this on their own. –

 Feeling the blame Ratchet put on himself through their spark bond. Optimus looked up to his Conjux.

 -Not you or I are to blame for not this. Though the situation my be dire it is good we have found out now before worse could happen. Now we are able to help, able to stand beside them to fight of their inner demons. –

-Always the poet, Optimus. But enough of the sentimental their will be more than enough time for that in the future. For now it’s time for recharge, both of you desperately need it. –

 Seeing they arrived at their shared hab suite. They end their commlink conversation, as Ratchet carefully deposits them on the berth. Optimus carefully lays the sleeping human in his arms down, before changing back to his original size and laying himself next to his conjux. Taking their little human between them. They share a little kiss before powering down to the sound of two sparks and a drumming heart.

[dreeaams]

LET ME BE CLEAR, your emotions (energy in motion) ARE A MANIFESTATION. They cannot be the cause of any of your manifestation because the only thing that causes your manifestation is your mind.

So if your mind creates your manifestation what do you mean by that, you may ask? THE THOUGHTS(4D) that you are constantly thinking and your INNER DIALOGUE(4D) are the cause of your manifestations(3D).

Thoughts and inner dialogue are the same exact thing but please stop listening to those “gurus” that say “you need to feel those feelings of happiness and gratitude for it to work or that if you feel sad or mad it won’t work out.”

THAT IS COMPLETELY FALSE because your FEELINGS are the end results/a manifestation and it came from a THOUGHT/ INNER SPEECH that you were already thinking.

Example:

I know that my SP is obsessed with me but I have that disgusting feeling in my body that he doesn’t care about me because he ghosted me 2 days ago.

1. ALL CIRCUMSTANCES ARE NEUTRAL, it doesn’t mean shit at all. YOU ARE THE ONE PUTTING A MEANING TO IT. Only you!

2. Because you don’t know that all circumstances are neutral you now say in your mind that oh my SP ghosted me for two days so now he doesn’t like me, he doesn’t give a fuck about me boohoohoo.

Stop fucking whining, bitching, and complaining! Why? BECAUSE YOU ARE THE ONE PUTTING A MEANING TO YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES!!

3. By whining, bitching and complaining you are telling yourself that that circumstance is negative and because of that stupid belief you attract more negative events. And you also tell yourself that your SP doesn’t give a fuck about you so what happens? HE DOESNT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU.

4. What should I do instead you may ask? Great question! Know that ALL CIRCUMSTANCES ARE FUCKING NEUTRAL, ALL OF IT. Once you understand that, know that your emotion doesn’t mean shit at all because that too it is the results of your thoughts. Your emotions are neutral too they have no meaning unless you put a meaning to it.

5. In manifestation (the law of assumption to be precise) you are the one creating your own rules only you so if you think a certain way, then you are always right I promise you. Make up your own fucking rules and stop listening to all those stupid techniques that makes you more depressed and anxious.

6. Keep telling yourself that your SP is obsessed with you, “Every circumstance is leading me to my manifestation NO MATTER WHAT” you are the most important person on this earth for him, he thinks about you 24/7. Don’t forget that your imagination is the only reality and that what you see in the 3D it is a reflection.

Just understand that you are the operant power, you manifest every single second of your life with the thoughts that you think and your inner dialogue. You are the one creating the rules I promise you your life will complete turn around.

If you have more questions ask me and go watch her videos they are so fucking good she changed my life 😭 love you girlies follow me for more❤️

[admirableadmiranda]

Hi! I have an perhaps silly question!

I am currently reading volume 4 & 5 of the official translation. Up till now, I didn't have that many problems with it (mostly because it's been years since I read the fan one and since I don't speak Chinese and English isn't my first language the only thing I noticed at first was that it... read ? Better if that makes sense? It was easier at least.

But I have. Concerns. Does Wei Wuxian truly say fuck (or whatever equivalent there is in swear words) all the time? Because I noticed it in vol 4 and now I keep seeing it! I know he's supposed to be pretty informal, but that + the way he speaks sometimes ("I know I've got a bad rep" ??? "What are you doing on my turf"???) keep taking me out of the story xD idk if it's because I took a break in my rereading and got used to fics modifying his speech patterns... but given that when I'm writing mdzs fics I usually make sure to... idk adapt the speech patterns so they're not too modern sounding? Am I overthinking this? Should I let wwx say fuck all the time?? XD

Hope this doesn't bother you and thank you in advance for your answer!!

Hi! Hello again! How’s it going?

So full disclosure I have not read the official translation in full yet, but uhh… yeah I’ve seen more than enough of Suika’s prose to know that there’s something off about the way she translates WWX that just eliminates an important element of his character.

For what you’re saying between ExR and Suika’s translations with Suika being easier to read, I get that. ExR has a lot of trouble with tenses and plenty of times they use a word that’s not quite what they actually want it to mean, so it takes more work to read what they intend to say over what the text says, but Suika’s text only really is improved by being cleaned up, @kimalysong and @jiangwanyinscatmom have a lot of posts on text either vastly altered from the intent or lines just flat out missing, if you’re curious about going down the rabbit hole of the official translation.

Now WWX does swear on occasion, especially when he’s younger and using the rougher Yunmeng dialect, but the other lines you’ve quoted tend to have Suika’s usual problem of making lower class characters speak roughly and often with southern accents regardless of how they sound in Chinese or with consideration to the character at hand. Wei Wuxian has an incredible grasp of language and literally switches linguistic registers depending on who he’s talking to and what the situation is and given some of his lines that I’ve seen in the official translation compared to stuff in exr or that my friend has translated for me, it seems like Suika has flattened all of that out in favor of her usual style of handling lower class characters.

I think you’re noticing it because it’s at odds with everyone else’s translations and grasp of WWX. While ExR has its own troubles with grammar at times, you can still see the strength in his language usage, to say nothing of Fanyiyi and Taming Wangxian’s translations which are much more solid on that front(@mxtxfanatic has posts comparing the language uses between exr, Fanyiyi and Taming Wangxian if you’re curious) and really lay out a well spoken character who can adjust his speech as needed (and drop the occasional precision fuck strike when needed).

I am not impressed by Suika’s way of translating characters speech especially as it pertains to Wei Wuxian, and I think you’re right to say that it feels weird. Don’t follow her style of speech, continue to write a WWX who absolutely understands the tangled web of a world he lives in and adjusts his language for the person at hand consistently.

[sunsafewriting]

AU. Chapter 4

Ava starts a dumb YouTube channel where she makes complicated recipes badly. Maybe people show up for that, but they kind of stick around for her conversations with her roommate — who stays off-screen. Mostly.

chapter 4 excerpt:

The new camera is so fucking shiny. Ava holds it, enjoys the newness of it, the sleekness, while Beatrice flips through the manual. This is how it goes, whenever they get a new thing; Ava wants to touch it, and Beatrice wants to read about it. 

Ava, as she does every time, takes the opportunity to say, "It’s probably super intuitive. We don’t need instructions."

Deriding guides, lists, textbooks, and other itemised sets of information is always a worthwhile investment: Beatrice, very predictably, gets this expression that suggests they may as well walk into traffic if all the structure of the world can be so easily jettisoned. 

"This is a very precise and multifunctional piece of equipment," Beatrice replies. "A thorough understanding of —"

Ava just lets the rest of it wash over her. The essence of the speech is more or less that Beatrice would like Ava to get the absolute most out of her camera, which necessitates an inventory of every single function and feature, so that she fully appreciates her options. 

Ava, by contrast, is of the opinion that the knobs and dials are things she can fuck around with and figure out as she goes, and that the way to get the absolute most of out of her camera is to point it at Beatrice. 

She appreciates her options just fine. 

Beatrice reads the manual in English and then in German; every time, for every appliance, Beatrice checks a minimum of two languages, to account for any lapses in translation. 

While she's doing that, Ava has managed to pop the batteries in and figure out the memory card.

She spins off the lens cap and brings the camera up to her eye, peering through the viewfinder. It's the first camera she's ever owned in her life, and she likes the feeling of it much better than her phone: the weight of it, how the zoom requires twisting and fiddling rather than swiping her fingers, the delightful tactility of the button under her finger.

And yes, it’s supposed to be for her channel, for making better quality videos, but there’s a reason she got this model instead of a lameass camcorder. She also wants to take four hundred million photographs of literally everything in existence — okay, some things more than others — and conveniently, she wants to push this button four hundred million times, so everything is going to work out terrifically. 

"This is going to consume my entire life and brain, I can just feel it," Ava murmurs, adjusting the zoom again, listening to the faint whirring sound it makes. 

She pans the camera across to the actual expert in consuming Ava's life and brain for comment, but Beatrice is frowning down at the warranty information and has very likely not noticed that Ava is talking at all.

"Bea?"

"Hmm?"

"Can I take a photograph of you?"

"Now?"

"Yeah."

"How about we go for a walk?" Beatrice suggests. "I'm sure there are plenty of photographable things outside that you’ll be able to experiment on."

The opportunity to make an experimenting joke is right there, but if Ava goes down that road, they'll never make it back. 

"Just a super quick snap of you, and then we can go on a walk," she bargains. 

Beatrice makes a vague gesture that Ava recognises as a yes before her gaze drops back to the instruction booklet, her finger curling the edge of one of the pages. "I suppose. What do you —"

"Got it!"

It took Ava an age to get Beatrice to smile in photographs without looking somewhat wary and pained — the pictures she has from the first few months of their friendship seem to suggest that Beatrice had a mild headache for all of it — but now, Beatrice smiles like Beatrice, even when there's a camera. 

[cont. on ao3]