#This was my first big fandom event so far I think

[saltpepperbeard]

REGARDLESS of the minimal season 2 tidbits, I had so much fun watching this with y’all! SO FUN TO SCREAM AND HAVE HEART PALPITATIONS AND APPRECIATE OUR LOVELY CAST AND LOVELY FANDOM <333 

[snickerdoodlles]

one of my most formative fandom experiences was a comment i had gotten on a fic i wrote for a halloween themed fandom event.

this was for a manga/anime, so the fic was a general ghost story obviously set in Japan. the beginning of it involved a pizza delivery and while writing it, i had spent like 30 minutes just double checking tipping customs and the types of pizza they serve and even fell down a wikipedia rabbit hole looking up the history of pizza in Japan.

now, i just like the research part of writing, i do stuff like this because i have fun doing it. and while i was writing this particular fic, i had laughed at myself for my 30 minutes of googling that amounted to 2.5 offhand lines in a 3500 word fic. i didn't think anyone would care about or even notice those particular details except for me, especially since none of them were relevant to the ghost part of this ghost story.

except, when i had sent this fic to a Japanese friend, the first thing she said to me about it was "OH MY GOD YOU GOT THE PIZZA RIGHT"

and that was the moment when it had really clicked for me. what had just been 30 minutes of effort on my part had become a moment of relief for her. my friend was far more used to reading ethnocentric fic that ranged from unintentional ignorance to outright superiority against part of her culture (the original story's culture no less). and even with the "innocent" ignorance (heavy quotes on that) far outstripping any outright maliciousness, that's still so many people saying her culture was not worth learning about. the pizza in my story was a small detail, but i had cared enough to put in some effort to check it. and for her, coming from a fic experience where her norm was bracing for hundreds of inaccuracies born of ignorance, especially at that time after a flood of stories centered around "Halloween as a cultural holiday in the US" premises instead of the "Halloween is a commercial gimmick in Japan" reality, seeing someone put in some effort even for minor story details meant something to her.

this also throws me back to the discourse that arose in a french show fandom a few years ago because there were a lot of fic authors that wrote 'dollars' instead of 'euros'-- but when people brought this up as a prevalent issue across the fandom but an easy one to fic/watch out for, many of these writers instead pushed back to complain that they were posting stories for free and it wasn't that big of a deal. which really upset a lot of people, but then this upset was met with a new wave of indignation that people needed to 'get over it' because they're writing fic ~just as a hobby~. but, even if 'dollars' instead of 'euros' wasn't a big deal, by digging in their heels about the issue, they were saying "your culture isn't worth even five minutes of my time or effort."

I've been thinking about these things lately because the ethnocentrism in Thai drama fandoms is...staggering. just over the turn of the year, there were waves of Christmas fic for Buddhist characters. and just. Christmas in Thailand is a tourist thing at best. sometimes a pop culture gimmick for international audiences or maybe an offhand high school thing to blow off steam between midterms. it's not a cultural thing. and even if a character is a part of the Christian minority, a Christian Thai's holiday customs and culture are going to be vastly different than a Christian's customs in the Americas or Europe. and while the Christmas fic is at least finished for now, I'm already bracing myself for the Easter fic wave that also seems to pop up for Thai dramas. it's so frustrating to see this sort of cultural overwrite all the time, especially since most Thai drama holiday works aren't about Thai holidays.

but the thing that really got me bristling about all of this again was i saw a post the other day where op said that they weren't going to write [thai drama] fic because they don't know much about thailand.

what an absolutely appalling statement to make.

google is right there. wikipedia is free. you don't even have to leave tumblr or AO3 to learn more because there are Thai natives in fandom who write essays to explain common elements of their culture. hell, even just watching these Thai stories and considering the values and messages imparted by the narrative framework and story lens tells you something about that culture. the audacity to look at a culture different from your own and say "this is not worth my effort or time to learn anything more about," are you kidding me?!?

the messages and values of a story tell you about the writer's values, which are going to carry their cultural values, beliefs, and biases. Thai culture is going to be heavily relevant to any Thai story, even the ones that aren't explicitly about Thai culture/customs/etc. (hell, Thai bl/gl as a genre alone-- just the fact that queer Thai writers are making these stories in Thailand's current political climate is highly political, even the "fluffy" ones that don't seem to make outright political statements.) to approach any story like it was made in a vacuum is to remove the writer(s)' culture and values and to overwrite them with your own.

especially because this is fandom. these are the lowest stakes to learn! it sucks to see people say things like "but i'm scared i'll get something wrong" and hold up that fear as a shield to justify their ignorance. no one's expecting anyone to get every detail right, especially not for a culture that isn't theirs, just make an effort to learn something new about it. pick out something that caught your eye as different to learn more about and see where it leads you.

and for the record--making a mistake trying to broaden your horizons is a far, far better thing to do than to superimpose your culture on everyone else's because you're scared to confront your ignorance.

edit: check out this reblog thanks

[infin1ty-garden]

MEMORIES MAKE EVERYTHING SO DIFFICULT

⋆｡°✩ summary: where you fake amnesia to get out of a fight with your enemy and he lies and tells you'd been dating for a year ⋆｡°✩ character(s): draco malfoy, theodore nott, mattheo riddle, enzo berkshire and blaise zabini ⋆｡°✩ warnings: meantion of injury ⋆｡°✩ word count: 644 ⋆｡°✩ author note: this is my first time writing for the harry potter fandom. so, sorry if the characters are ooc

masterlist.

DRACO MALFOY

⋆｡°✩ Draco found out through a friend you'd gotten amnesia, he immediately went to find you. Stating he was so worried you'd gotting injured by a gryffindor no less.

⋆｡°✩ When you expressed confusion over who he was, the lie slipped out. "Your boyfriend."

⋆｡°✩ You dismissed his suggestion of visiting the hospital wing. He decided to patch you up himself.

⋆｡°✩ This act went on for a while. He didn't know why. He wasn't in love with you. Was he?

⋆｡°✩ He told you he lied about being your boyfriend and understood if you never wanted to speak to him. You made an admission of your own. How you don't have amnesia and remember everything.

⋆｡°✩ "The love I have for you is real."

THEODORE NOTT

⋆｡°✩ The hole time you talking about how you don't remember him, he was just smirking at you. That's when he proclaimed you were dating him.

⋆｡°✩ Since forever he'd been in love with you but you'd always treated him like a enemy. When the opportunity presented itself, he wasn't gonna waste it.

⋆｡°✩ He didn't make a big show of dating you. Wanting to make the gestures more intimate and personal but also easier for him when it blows up in his face.

⋆｡°✩ When you finally told him you'd lied about the amnesia, he didn't speak to you for a while. You thought that was it but he'd cornered you asking if everything you'd said was a lie as well.

⋆｡°✩ He'd falled deeper in love then he ever has and the thought of you not reciprocating those feelings crushes him.

MATTHEO RIDDLE

⋆｡°✩ Mattheo didn't believe you as soon as the words left your mouth. He decided to fuck around to see how far you'll take it

⋆｡°✩ Saying how you'd been together for the better part of the year and "How could you not remember me?" bullshit

⋆｡°✩ You both went along with it. At the same time, Mattheo stopped flirting and sleeping around. What a weird turn of events? Why would he do that?

⋆｡°✩ You played along for a time but decided to tell him the truth. "I know. You're not as good at lying as you think."

ENZO BERKSHIRE

⋆｡°✩ As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt horrible. Why did he feel so bad? He was supposed to hate you.

⋆｡°✩ Still he never corrected himself and proceeded to take you on many many dates

⋆｡°✩ Pretending to be your boyfriend was a lot more enjoyable than he thought it would be. Was he falling in love with you? No way!

⋆｡°✩ Enzo knew he was lying to himself but it was better than admitting what he already knew

⋆｡°✩ You went on all kinds of dates. His friends noticed the change as he was a lot more happy and made fun of him for it.

⋆｡°✩ One of your friends accidentally mentioned you had lied to him. At first he was furious but he'd lied to you as well.

BLAISE ZABINI

⋆｡°✩ Blaise is not some one who makes fun of medical conditions but...

⋆｡°✩ He introduced himself as your boyfriend and for the last few months his feelings of hate had turned into love

⋆｡°✩ He was going show you how good of a boyfriend can he be and maybe just maybe you'll fall for him as he had for you

⋆｡°✩ It doesn't take him long to realise that you'd lied but he goes along with it. Ignoring obvious signs of you actually retaining your memory.

⋆｡°✩ He was his happiest when hanging out with you and he knew his feelings were real. He hoped you'd realise yours were too.

⋆｡°✩ Unable to lie to him anymore you told him the truth. How you lied and love him. His answer? Kissing you.

Thanks for reading!

[buckets-and-trees]

Sweet, sweet Aspen. You have been a very bad girl. This soft!dark guy, your boss, caught you doing something wrong—something that could easily get you fired—but he decided maybe, jussst maybe, he should keep your indiscretion, and your resulting punishment, between the two of you. After all, he’s been dreaming about filling you with his cock for ages 😏

(I picked this GIF because it looks like he’s saying, “On your knees.” lolll)

well, dearly beloved sister ho, you know we were thirsting over a particularly ... inspiring gif.

I don't think you anticipated your ask to spawn THIS, but... here we are! THANKS FOR POPPING MY ANDY CHERRY!

Fandom: Chris Evans Characters Title: I'm Your Man Characters/Pairings: soft dark!Mafia!Andy Barber x female!reader Word Count: 3k

Summary: You've spent weeks working to pull off the perfect night for Andy Barber's big charity event. A rush job, but you worked meticulously and diligently over six weeks to coordinate the biggest event of your career to date. You weren't the only one with a plan for the night.

Content Warnings: extortion, explicit smut, DUBIOUS CONSENT, spitting, oral - male receiving, spanking, vaginal intercourse, breeding kink, unprotected sex

Logistical Notes: A NAUGHTY submission @the-slumberparty's Naughty or Nice challenge. Prompts incorporated are in bold.

Additional Notes: I didn't want to write a summary. There's only enough plot here to smut you up. Dividers by @rookthornesartistry and @firefly-graphics.

You sit up straight when you hear the door to Andy’s home office open behind you.

“Thank you for waiting for me,” he says as he strides across the room and takes a seat in the leather executive desk chair.

“Yes, of course, Mr. Barber,” you reply. Every part of your body is tired – tired in a good way from the long day of work – so you were eager to get home, soak in your tiny tub, and crawl into bed for the rest of the weekend, but it hadn’t been an incredible inconvenience when he’d asked if he could speak with you before you left.

“Tonight was exquisite, you did well,” he doles out the praise, and you try to quell the blooming in your chest. In the six weeks working with Andy Barber to plan the charity event you’d just executed for his foundation you had seen that he wasn’t one to casually compliment, hard to impress. You had taken more and more satisfaction out of each meeting, email, or text exchange as you consulted and then presented him with options for the event when he had fewer and fewer notes, knowing you had cracked his taste and gained his approval. He’d been your toughest client to date, but by far one of the most rewarding as he had excellent taste.

“Nearly perfect,” he adds.

Your smile falters ever so slightly, and suddenly your chest floods with a chill. “Nearly perfect? I’m sorry, sir, what didn’t live up to your expectations?”

This was far from your first event, you had built an incredible portfolio over the years, and you knew you were finally ascending to be one of the best event coordinators on the eastern seaboard – you had received an email request from a goddamn Vanderbilt to plan a wedding for them in a year and a half that you were going to respond to and accept in the morning. You weren’t arrogant, but you’d worked damn hard and knew you were good.

“You.”

Your breath catches in your throat. “I – what?”

“Only one misstep tonight.”

Your brain flies back through the evening, reviewing every moment, raking through trying to determine what you could have possibly missed.

“I’m very particular about what belongs to me, and I cannot abide theft.”

Your jaw drops.

“Empty your bag.”

Now your whole body is buzzing with incredulity. You shake your head.

“I know what’s in there.”

You almost didn’t take this job when it landed in your lap. He was the reason you knew you should have said no. There were whispers about his reputation, his real businesses. But you took the initial consultation because the pitch was more money than you’d made over the last three years. Then when you’d met him, he’d been so normal, so nice, maybe a little charming, and up until this moment you had convinced yourself there was no way any of those rumors had been right.

But before you even put your hand in your bag, you knew you were wrong to have thought he wasn't all those awful things.

Not one, not two, but three Rolex watches nestled in the bottom of the main pocket. Watches you'd never seen - wouldn't even have known where to find them.

You scoop them out and drop them on his desk, eyes burning with tears. “Why?”

“Yes, why? I was already giving you a fat paycheck. What a shame when I had just given your name to the Vanderbilts’ social secretary for their son’s wedding a few days ago, I’ll have to reach out and let them know.”

“No,” you breathe.

“I’ll have to discreetly let everyone in my network know it’s better not to invite someone in their home with such light fingers.”

Your breath hitches and your hand flies to your mouth to stifle an almost sob, trying to hold back the onset of tears. “Andy, no, please.”

His smile softens. “There we are,” he coos, “you finally called me Andy like I’ve told you to so many times.”

He leans forward resting his arms on his desk.

“Now, if you go upstairs, be a good girl, put on what I left for you in my room, and wait for me, maybe I can make all of this little misunderstanding go away.”

His steel blue eyes are hard, they demand an answer.

You cock your chin up wishing you could say no, wishing you could even scowl at him, but aside from the heat and hurt in your eyes, you know you can’t do anything more without risking further ruin, so ultimately you let your chin drop and nod, resigned to the impossible power this man wields.

“Now we’re back on track for a perfect night, sweetheart. I’ll be up soon.”

You don’t know how long he makes you wait, using the promise of soon as another show of his power, but long enough that your knees hurt from sitting back on your heels in a submissive, kneeling position with your head lowered, hands folded in your lap, and back to the door as the card in the white box left for you had instructed.

Also in the box had been a set of exquisite black lace and silk balconette bra and cheeky underwear. That they fit you like a glove had been both humiliating and alluring.

Even though Andy was the reason you almost said no to the job, even though he was the humiliating reason you were in this position – extorted into a nearly naked state, no question of what was to come – he was also the reason you took the job.

Dread pooled in your stomach, but along with the dread and humiliation, there were rivulets of shameful desire.

You had taken the job for the money and for how quietly charming he had been. He had never outright flirted with you, but he always left you with the question of whether he was. You worked hard for him because it felt good to win his approval. He praised you and you had preened under his intense blue eyes every time. You had forced yourself to keep everything professional.

All for nothing since you were in the farthest position of professional now.

When you finally hear him enter the room, your sit up straight again.

He tsks and says, “Head down, sweetheart.”

Andy comes around to stand in front of you. You see his perfectly polished shoes, the perfectly tailored trousers. His hand moves to your jaw, tilting your head up to look at him. He runs his thumb over your lips, circling them.

“Open your mouth,” he says.

You do.

He leans closer, then spits in your mouth, and you blink in surprise, a surge of humiliation running through you, but his grip on your jaw is powerful, so you don’t move away.

“Close your mouth but don’t swallow.”

He moves back from you then, and he begins to silently undress. He had already taken off his jacket, but he doesn’t hurry as he unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt, the buttons down his chest, and then shrugs it off his shoulders. He places it nicely on a plush armchair on the side of the room. Next he sits on the edge of the bed and removes his shoes and socks.

The way he doesn’t watch you but does all of this in your line of vision, knowing you have to watch, is another move meant to communicate who is in control of this situation. Still holding his saliva on your tongue is starting to become uncomfortable. Your instinct is to swallow, but you don’t know what disobedience may mean with Andy, so you fight the urge, not wanting to tempt any more of his darkness.

He stands and takes the shoes and socks to a large closet off to the side of the room, and when he returns, he stands directly in front of you again, takes your jaw in his hands again.

“Show me,” he says.

Your eyes watch his face you open your mouth, showing him the pool of saliva.

“Good fucking girl,” he murmurs. You hate the small bloom in your chest those words immediately invoke again. He spits into your mouth for a second time, then with a caress that is too tender he urges you to close your mouth. “Swallow.”

You do.

Andy unbuckles his belt, unbuttons the top of his fly, then unzips and pushes down the waist of his trousers with his briefs, and reveals his hard cock for you.

He’s big.

You had gotten yourself off to the thought of him a few of times late at night alone in your bed, most recently a few days ago, and you hated that you had since you were now here like this, forced on your knees in front of him.

Your core is pulsing with heat at the sight of him though – bigger than you had fantasized, and bigger than any man you’ve been with previously. You know he’ll fill you in a way that will ruin you for other men. You want and dread it.

“Take me in your mouth, sweetheart,” he commands.

Instead of forcing his cock into your mouth, this is more possessive, having you submit yourself to pleasing him of your own accord. You know every way he’s manipulating you.

“If I have to tell you one more time,” he trails off, leaving the end open for your imagination.

You plant one hand softly on his hip and wrap your other hand around his shaft, leaning forward to take him in your mouth. As you push forward, he groans. He won’t hold back when he’s pleased with you – he never has, he knows it affects you. His hands go to either side of your head. “Eyes on me, sweetheart.”

You do as he says, sucking him, bobbing up and down his length, and for a while he lets you control the speed and the depth, but his hands let you know he can and will control this when he wants to. After the first couple of minutes, he makes this clear when you push back to take a breath and wipe the mix of your spit and his pre-cum dripping out of your mouth and his hands firmly prevent you from moving off him. Instead, he pushes you down slowly – more slowly than you had been pumping – and doesn’t stop until your nose hits his lower abdomen. You try to push against his hips, and he pushes his hips forward with you still anchored on his dick. Your eyes well up.

“So pretty,” he says, “imagined you like this, but you’re more gorgeous than I thought you would be.”

Something in your chest melts. You wish he wouldn’t say things like that. It makes you weaker – weaker for him. He pulls back just an inch or two, then pushes his length into your throat again.

“That’s it, sweetheart, my perfect fucking girl.”

You whimper, and the tears spill over.

His right hand moves away from your face and around behind him. He’s quick, and when you can see his hand again, it’s to discover he’s taken his phone out of his back pocket. He takes photos of you, angling the phone a few different ways. Then he tosses the phone onto the chair where he’d laid his shirt.

Then he resumes his small, concentrated rutting, only easing out just enough to make the thrust back in worth it for him. As he does, he groans, swears, wipes tears from your cheeks, and the moment before it’s too much, he finally pulls you off him.

You fall forward, gasping for deep lungfuls of air, but he’s already putting a hand under your arm and hauling you up.

“Get on the bed,” he instructs, man handling you with surprising ease, doing most of the work your weak and aching legs can’t do to hoist you up onto his Alaskan king bed.

He’s immediately up as well and behind you, the last of his clothing stripped off. His fingers quickly undo the clasp of your bra and pull it off your shoulders and toss it away. He pushes you forward, toppling you down to the mattress. He slaps your ass, and you gasp and jerk. He brings his hand down on your round flesh again, with another sting, but the second one has you moan, and he lets out a satisfied, “Yes,” before giving you a third slap, the hardest, and you moan again, but this one more guttural, and you’d be mortified if you weren’t shocked over the way it translated to pleasure so quickly to your brain.

Then he yanks the lacy underwear roughly down and off your legs, tossing it away as well. He pushes between your legs behind you, splitting your legs open, and his fingers seek your cunt.

He hums in approval, “So wet for me. Ready for me.”

You huff and pant.

He leans over your back, pressing you down into the mattress. “Are you eager for me?”

“Andy,” you whine.

“Say it and I’ll fuck you good, sweetheart.”

You don’t want to. You bury your face in the covers.

He slaps your ass again, and you yelp.

“Admit you want me to fuck you.”

Another slap.

Another.

“Yes,” you finally concede.

“To breed you.”

You gasp, but he’s already hauling you further up the bed, and he drapes himself over your back, arms caging you in on either side of your body. His legs push yours apart as he leans down to press kisses over your shoulder blades, at the base of your neck, along your spine. He uses one hand to guide the thick head of his cock to your leaking entrance. He doesn’t care to stretch you. “Take me in your cunt, sweetheart, it’s mine.”

The only mercy is that he slots himself in slowly.

You press your hands up against the headboard and concentrate on taking deep breaths, on trying to relax your walls completely, because he’s entering you, in you, filling you, unrelenting invasion and it’s pleasure and pain and too much and not enough because every moment of more fullness is exquisite and you can’t even think about holding back the sound he’s pushing out from your diaphragm, up your throat, and out of your mouth, because that’s how it feels as he's filling you.

Once’s he’s fully inside of you, he presses his mouth right next to your ear. “I’m going to fill this pussy with my seed.” He anchors one hand on your hips, then begins pull out, only so he can start thrusting back in. “I want everyone to know who you belong to.”

You’ve never had an orgasm only from vaginal penetration, but the way he fills you as he fucks you, and at this angle, making you almost forget to keep breathing, you wonder if this is how you’ll go, strung out as his cock punishes you with the pleasure, but then his hand works around beneath you and his fingers quickly find your swollen and aching clit. You cry out, and one of your hands reaches back to cling to him, fingers clutching into his hair. He nips at your neck, chuckling darkly.

“My pretty girl, my good girl, taking my cock so well, you close?”

An immediate, “Uh huh,” is all you can manage.

“Then let go,” he commands, pinching your clit harshly.

You see stars, and you cry out for him.

Hearing you scream his name and feeling you clench around him is all he needs, and he pumps his cum into you, saying more dirty, filthy, possessive things, but you don’t know what the words are, because you’re completely lost to coherency.

He sinks his full weight on top of you when he’s completely spent.

Both of you are silent while you come down, heartrates returning to normal.

You wait for him to say whatever he’s going to torment you with next, but he doesn’t speak.

After more long moments, he finally pushes up enough to turn you from your front to your back. He cups your jaw again and strokes his thumb over your cheek. Your breath hitches at the intimate gesture in the aftermath.

“Aw, why are you crying now, sweetheart?”

No, you didn’t want more tears, and not these - the soft tears. You try to look away, but he forces your face back to look at him.

“I would have slept with you if you’d asked, Andy, why did you have to do it like this?”

“Because this is so much more than that, sweetheart. I didn’t want to just sleep with you, and I needed you to know from here on out that you’re mine. I own you. I’m very particular about what belongs to me. I didn’t want you to have any illusion that there’s a choice here.”

He brushes the tears off your cheek.

“I’ll have my men move your things here in the morning, and we’ll elope in a few weeks. I’m closing the deal on a resort in Lake Como, doesn’t that sound perfect? We’ll tie the knot and then spend our honeymoon there – we can stay all summer if you want.”

You hesitate.

“No one else is gonna take care of you like I do. Now I asked you, ‘doesn’t that sound perfect?’”

“Yes, Andy,” you whisper.

“Of course, it does.” He finally kisses you – and it’s dangerously soft. Warm lips engulfing yours, insistent, sucking your bottom lip between his. You whimper, and he licks his tongue into your mouth, lapping you up. He rolls over with you, putting him back on the mattress with you on his chest. He holds you pressed to him with one hand, the other hand securing your head so you can’t escape his kiss until he’s done kissing you.

It isn’t until you think you might pass out from how breathless you are that he finally breaks off the kiss. He shifts his pelvis up against you, his cock hardening again. “And I was serious about you carrying my child. But first you’ll ride my face until I’ve made you cry for a good reason, and then I’ll fill you up with more of my seed. You’re not leaving this bed the rest of the weekend.”

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

ARE YOU OKAY? AM I? DO WE EVEN CARE IF WE'RE OKAY?

read: -> THE MORNING AFTER

[rui-drawsbox]

remembering the most memorable mc's (with canon appearences) from the otomes i played

all of them are phone games btw. and looong rambling about the games after the cut!

Mystic messenger has been in my radar since i was in elementary school but i played it for the first time after the spanish traslation came out (2017 i think?) Seven shaped my type in such a specific way that im not really sure why loved him so much (it was the whole "he loves you in every route" stuff). I like a lot the default mc, most of the fandom did and that was enough to won me over

Rosa is top tier protagonist tbh, Tears of Themis has really good story and characters (as far i played, not a lot but i enjoyed it) The reason i'm not that much of a fan is bc the game is expensive asf and not very free to play friendly. You're either lucky or have a big wallet with the gacha

i miss my wife man(Marius)

Ephemeral has to be one of the best free to play otomes i've played tbh (if my memories aren't tricking me, it's been years) Good artwork, good storyline, good characters and as far i remember you can unlock one chapter of the character route per day (mabye two days, idk) and the mc's background has an important role in every route (she's a zombie! she's pretty now but eventually will fall apart, aaaaand her story gets expanded in one of the routes!) ((shes also adorable)) There's also a sequel, if you wanted more of the boys! never finished it but i'd recommend it

Honorable mentions! Huellitas Mágicas is a great game! has a really good cast with well fleshed arcs for all the characters, even the scondary ones! The game shines more for the development of *all* the characters rather than just the protagonist/ml. The main theme is overcoming insecurities! Each love interest has a different way of helping our (very insecure) protagonist and helping different characters with their own struggles :DD

10/10 i recommend this game if you want something cute and can be finished in a few hours, if i remember right. It also has a sequel! with like- 12 new love interests, also never finished it bc i didnt found a guide that worked for me but ñek

A3! is my canon event as a gacha player. Discovered the english/global server, tried it and got bored, left it for a few months, tried it again and fell in love, noticed the game was going to shut down bc low sales -HAHA :(-. This is not a otome btw, this is here bc Izumi has to be one of my favorite protagonists in gacha games ever

last but not least! Obey me! Shall we date? oh dear, what have they done to you :(. The original had intense powercreep to force you to pull cards -multiple times bc that makes them stronger- and even now, the company showed a lot of favoritism to some characters, leaving others to dust bc they don't make the same money. Not to say, they released a new game with the same cast and new main story (ignoring all what happend before). And let me say: THEY LITERALLY WANTED TO KILL THE ORIGINAL GAME.

Nightbringer might be a decent game but i don't trust the devs anymore, i still remember what happend with Asmo's birthday right after the release, and honestly i don't want to sit there watching how they disrespect my favorite characters again and again and again. Loved the characters hated the devs. 5/10 you can play it if you want but i don't recommend spending money on it, it's not worth it, just search #obey me here in tumblr and enjoy the amazing fanworks that i can assure you have a lot more love than the game itself

i miss my wife man (mammon and levi)

[carowleysposts]

What happened to Aziraphale and Crowley between 1941 and 1967?

It is well known by the fandom that Aziraphale realizes he’s in love with Crowley after Crowley saves him and his books from the n4zis in 1941. That moment marks the shift of their relationship, when Aziraphale sees that not only did Crowley know him well enough to save his books, but also was there for the sole purpose of rescuing him - because he cared. This moment led to their most romantic adventure yet, which involved the car “is there anything i can do for you in return?” scene, the magic trick performance, the “trust me” moment and a very intimate, private, candlelit dinner.

They had crossed a very visible line in their relationship, you could see it in the way they were looking at each other, being more open, talking and drinking together. They were acting romantically towards each other, even if they couldn’t admit it or talk about it.

But then, the next time we see them, it’s almost like they moved backwards in they’re relationship. Aziraphale is practically unable to look directly at Crowley when he first gets in the car. And then we get the iconic, yet heartbreaking and confusing “you go too fast for me, Crowley”. And you can see that Aziraphale looks almost mournful after saying that.

I saw a post on twitter comparing the two car scenes - the one where Aziraphale is practically throwing himself at Crowley and then the one where he’s hesitant towards him.

And it made me think. Like, whatever happened between those two car scenes has an impact that lasts for many years, as we can CLEARLY see that 2008 Aziraphale and Crowley were still a bit colder and more distant than their 1941 selves. Their relationship backtracked a lot from that candlelit dinner. And i don’t think that’s a plot hole, i truly think there’s something we don’t know yet.

Of course, after the events of season one, they’re back to being really close, their dynamic is pretty much restored and we can see them hold hand in the bus - which David Tennant has confirmed happened, and it is heavily implied that Aziraphale stays at Crowley’s that night, where they did the body swap for the trials.

BUT! In the first episode of Season 2, Aziraphale mentions that he had to do the “i’m sorry” dance in 1941. It definitely happened after that candlelit dinner, so could that event - which led to the apology dance - be connected to why they had a temporary falling out? What was it that happened after that dinner? Are we going to see more from 1941?

It has been the only time period that was shown in both seasons, and it was perhaps the most romantic and significant time they’ve spent together prior to the events of season two. Perhaps they went a little too far and weren’t prepared for that? Perhaps they’ve miscommunicated and had a big fight? I don’t know, i’m hoping our dearest @neil-gaiman has an answer for that.

Also, when Crowley says “no nightingales” before kissing Aziraphale, Aziraphale seems to understand perfectly what he’s referring to. He looks absolutely crushed after Crowley says that. So it led me to believe something in the past made them associate “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” to their relationship and perhaps talk about it. And i believe that, if i am correct and they have talked about the nightingales before, it was in 1941. But then, what do I know?

I would REALLY love to see your theories as to what happened between them after that dinner, if anything at all. Also, does anyone wanna be moots? My posts have been very successful but i’m not getting followers and i really want to meet more of you.

[rallamajoop]

On Mia Winters, misogyny, and abuse

As should be pretty obvious by now, I love Mia Winters. I honestly think she’s one of the most compelling characters in this whole damn franchise.

But let me make clear: you don’t have to love her. Mia’s canonically done a lot of shady shit in her time, and her relationship with Ethan has real problems. There are perfectly viable interpretations where the only thing really holding it together is his own denial. Only I never seem to get to read any of those takes, because the most common characterisations Mia gets in fic are an irredeemable monster, or a cardboard cutout who exists only to be written out as quickly as possible. And to write Mia out to that degree doesn’t just do her character a disservice, it does Ethan a disservice, and a big one.

The amount of Mia-bashing I see out there in this fandom turns my stomach. It’s not just the slash fans who’d rather ship Ethan with another dude. I have seen Mia loudly bashed in tags on het or gen fic in which she does not even appear. I have seen male fans reviewing these games on youtube who treat her the exact same way. But it’s never more frustrating than when that hate comes from the same fans who’ll turn around and talk about characters like Chris or even Lady Dimitrescu (she who canonically abuses her and murders her servants, and, y’know, eats people without a shred of remorse) like they’re perfectly forgivable and have done no real wrong. And don’t get me wrong: I love Lady D, but I love her because she’s magnificently evil. Mia? Mia’s a whole lot more complicated.

But to really explain why this hate makes me so uncomfortable, I’m going to have to start with the start of Resident Evil 7, and Mia’s very first scenes in this whole franchise.

Let me quickly summarise the opening of that game. A man whose wife disappeared without explanation suddenly gets a message about her whereabouts. He travels to an isolated location, breaks in, and finds her. She denies ever sending him that message, and seems incredibly distressed that he’s there at all. They fight. It ends with him sinking an axe into her neck and shooting her several times with a handgun. But see, he didn’t do anything wrong! It was all self-defence! She started it! She was acting crazy!

If you didn’t spot it, the whole opening of RE7 reads uncomfortably like a story about a woman escaping an abusive relationship, then being tracked down and murdered by her ex.

Obviously, I am not here to tell you Ethan’s abusive. He’s not, we’ve got no reason to imagine he is. He was legitimately acting in self-defence.

But the fact the first thing Ethan has to do in this game is find the balls to kill his own wife ‒ that a whole new era of Resi games has opened with a sequence so easily read as a sympathetic justification for how a man might perfectly innocently track down his missing spouse and "have" to kill her – that made those opening minutes into by far the most uncomfortable part of this whole franchise for me. Shit like this really happens. I mean it, I will track down the fucking statistics on women who are murdered after trying to leave an abusive partner if I have to.

What happens to ‘Mia’ in the opening to RE8 isn’t much better: it's as textbook a fridging as any I’ve ever seen. Yes, it’s a fridging that gets retconned away later when she turns up alive, but the fact that’s even possible speaks to just how awful and confusing her death is. The game opens with Mia’s violent murder at the hands of this series’ longest running ‘hero’, and the event is framed entirely in terms of how awful it is for her husband. That's as frigid as a fridging gets.

The eventual reveal that the real Mia was just trapped alone in a cell being experimented on by a madwoman for god knows how long doesn’t actually make it better. The horror Mia goes through in both these games is a footnote, barely explored.

I bring these events up not to condemn the RE franchise, not to say that including these sequences was unconscionable, or that violence against women can never be shown in a horror title. A quick glance at my tumblr should demonstrate how much I adore these games. Tropes like fridging become problems only because they’re so ubiquitous they can come to define almost the only roles women get to play, not because any individual example is necessarily grounds for outrage. If anything, there’s just as much to analyse in all the hate thrown at characters like Ethan Winters (or his predecessor, Jonathan Harker) as a archtypical examples of sexism against men – backlash against the very idea of a male character in the disempowered role of horror victim, usually reserved for women.

But with this context in mind, my god is it uncomfortable to see people talk about Mia as irredeemable monster who deserves to suffer more. People who will valorise the likes of Chris Redfield, who didn’t even bother to stop to tell Ethan that’s not Mia, yet talk about Mia like being shot to death in her own living room was only what she deserved. That is just a whole load of yikes.

And given that both games open with Mia being violently killed by a male protagonist (twice in RE7, with the player in control), it sure is convenient how so many people have managed to ‘find’ the evidence that proves she’s the real villain. You don’t have to think too hard about Chris Redfield as a violent maniac or Ethan Winters being forced to kill his own wife if it’s okay to inflict violence on this woman. “Yes, but she shouldn’t have done [X]…” or even “But what if she’s the real abuser” is a narrative that gets thrown at real women in abusive relationships all the time – especially when the man is a friend of whoever’s casting judgement, or even a celebrity. Real world examples of this shit in the wild run the gamut from wild fan-takes on The Shining ‘proving’ that actually the abused wife was the ‘real’ abuser all along, right up to the ongoing hate campaign against Amber Heard. People don’t want to have to think badly of someone they admire, and will take any excuse to shift the blame. The stakes are infinitely lower when we’re talking about fictional characters, but the same pattern plays out.

And look, I do get it. It’s easy to go into these games and come out with a negative opinion of Mia. She’s the one who lures you into danger in RE7, acts all innocent, and then comes at Ethan with a chainsaw – and when you finally find out her big secret at the end, it turns out she was working for the people who created Eveline from the start! You’re really not given a lot of reasons to invest in Ethan and Mia’s relationship before she’s suddenly coming at him with a knife, and the fact she never does get to come clean to him in canon leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

It’s really easy to go into RE8, note all the glaring signs that Ethan’s relationship with Mia isn’t healthy, and draw your own conclusions about a woman we don’t hardly even see again for most of the runtime of the game. Half this goddamn fandom still seems to think Heisenberg is actually a lycan, ffs – most of what people think they know about Mia is more meme than fact, and the rest is pretty surface level. Basic media literacy is not exactly high out there in the tumblrweeds (let alone the rest of the internet).

But as for the idea that Mia’s responsible for all the horrors Ethan went through, people seem to forget that Mia herself went through so much worse. Ethan spent a day in the Bakers’ property, and a day in the village. Mia spent years trapped in the Bakers’ property, and days at least imprisoned in Miranda’s lab, knowing exactly how much danger her family were in, helpless to save them. She’s no innocent herself, but ye gods has she already suffered for her crimes.

So with all that out of the way, well, what’s the actual ‘evidence’ that Mia herself was abusive? No-one's coming into this one without some bias, but let’s at least give it a fair shake.

Right upfront, I want to recognise that in both fiction and reality, women can be abusers, and men can be victims. Abuse in heterosexual relationships is far more likely to occur with the man as the abuser, but the reverse does happen, and the fact culture at large can be so eager to cast the woman as the villain doesn’t make it any easier for the real male victims of abuse to get recognition and help. Society as a whole is still just really shitty about enabling or excusing real abuse.

But the idea that Mia was abusive has very little to back it up. Whatever you make of “her” interactions with Ethan at the start of the game, the fact remains: that’s not Mia, and the fact she’s acting so strangely is meant to be our clue that something much bigger than a little marital strife is going on here. Knowing all this doesn’t really make the scene where she’s violently executed less disturbing, but you can’t miss the hints we don’t yet know the full story.

So the question becomes, is there any evidence that the real Mia was abusive? I’ve dug into this one a bit before in my post about trying to figure out the timeline of exactly when Mia was replaced, but there are no definitive answers as to how long Miranda's been living in their house. To summarise a long post (and a surprisingly lively timeline of events from the days before the game begins): the most likely intent seems to be that Miranda’s been posing as Mia for less than a week, though a lot of the vibes of the scene give me the impression it’s been several weeks at least. Ultimately, that’s going to come down to your own interpretation.

The Mia mentioned in Ethan’s diary who blew up at him at the hospital could be the real Mia, but more likely isn’t: you can’t really use her to argue anything definitive, one way or another. The Mia from the flashback where Ethan gets the call from Rose’s doctor is the real Mia, but if you think getting upset when your husband brushes off your obvious distress over your daughter’s health makes you abusive, then nothing I say here is going to convince you otherwise.

The only ‘real’ evidence that Mia might be a problem is one line you might hear from Ethan while taking Rose to bed, and it is admittedly a red flag: your mother’s scary when she’s angry.

And to anyone whose whole hatred of Mia has been built backwards from this one line – especially anyone who’s grown up in a dysfunctional household themselves – hell, I get it. It is one really yikes thing for Ethan to say about his wife.

But in Mia’s defence, I can only point out that, well, yes, canonically, she is scary when she’s angry.

Oh, did I say angry? I meant fucking possessed.

And if Ethan’s bringing up the spectre of that time, even subconsciously, maybe that should be an even bigger clue that the Mia in this house right now isn’t Mia.

But what really shows this line for what it is is that we’ve seen the real Mia angry. We’ve seen her cold fury at Eveline, daring to go right back to asking ‘can we be a family now?’ within hours forcing Mia to assault her own husband with a chainsaw. We’ve seen her frustration at Ethan’s own denial, and we’ve seen her stalk out of the room when he blows off an important conversation for a call from work. We’ve seen her advance on Chris after he shut her down, demanding, Where is my husband? Where is my daughter?!

We have never seen her angry without real justification. Her anger is neither violent nor disproportionate. It’s consistently purposeful, focused, and contained. There is nothing scary about the real Mia’s anger, unless you’re threatened by the very idea she might have something valid to be angry about.

There is evidence of tension in the Winters’ marriage from before Miranda’s arrival, but it takes a very different form – most evident in the flashback scene where Ethan receives the call from Rose’s doctor. Far from Miranda’s brusque, dismissive copy of her, the real Mia is anxious and depressed, scared of what Rose’s results might reveal. Here, Ethan’s the one brushing her concerns aside (“We talked about this […] Rose is fine!”) He recognises there seems to be something Mia’s not telling him, says they should talk about it, but then immediately brushes the conversation off when he gets a call from work, while Mia storms out of the room.

You can certainly read Mia as a hypocrite here, getting angry at Ethan for not knowing things she’s deliberately kept from him. But it’s Ethan who decides a call from work is more important than a conversation with his wife – someone who is obviously distressed, canonically still on a regime of drugs after the traumatic events of RE7, very likely suffering PTSD along with Ethan, and maybe even some form of postpartum depression. We don’t know anything about Ethan’s work, so there’s no point in speculating about how much he ‘needs’ to take that call. Mia’s no clear villain here – quite the opposite.

Personally, I tend towards taking this scene as evidence that Mia has tried to talk to Ethan about what really happened to him, but hasn’t managed to get him to face the truth. For all that Ethan supposedly wants to talk about the past, it’s a defining plot point that he’s badly in denial himself.

Or they could both be at some fault here: Ethan unwilling to face the truth, while Mia is reluctant to force him to face something she knows will hurt him and bring him distress. Even when Mia says outright that she ‘tried to keep this a secret, but…’ to Chris at the end of the game, the implication is as much that she’s tried to keep it a secret from people like Chris, who might decide Ethan is dangerous. She’s lied to protect him before, and if she’s still lying to him about her past with the Connections, then the fact that knowing the truth will hurt Ethan is obviously among her reasons. Protecting Ethan has always been among Mia’s top priorities ‒ even at her own expense.

The only other real hints we get about Mia’s inner life come from the glimpses of her we get in Donna’s domain. But I’m hesitant to read too much into these, given how unclear it is how much is just a manifestation of Ethan’s own anxieties. If anything, the ‘Mia’ in these scenes almost seems to have some far worse secret than simply having not told Ethan something he really ought to have put together on his own, and I’d kind of love to see that explored too – at least as long as that goes somewhere more interesting than round umpteen of ‘and that’s why Mia sucks’.

But my point here isn’t that you have to read any of these scenes the same way I do. I do think it’s important to recognise that nothing written for a game like RE is truly character-driven; scenes exist to serve the plot far more than to reflect consistent character motivations or hold up to fridge logic (which, let’s face it, is the real reason for most of Chris’ horrific behaviour in this game, let alone anyone else’s). The result is rarely super consistent, and leaves ample space for multiple interpretations of anyone’s motivations. Regardless, the idea there’s any hard evidence that Ethan and Mia’s relationship is dysfunctional, or that whatever’s wrong is Mia’s fault alone, is going to be incredibly hard to justify.

Any assertion that Ethan and Mia are somehow on the verge of divorce also needs to be weighed against the masses of evidence of how much they love each other – the number of times Mia has said she loves Ethan, up to and including (yes, I’m bringing this up again) how ready she is to die for him in RE7. Her speech to Chris at the end of RE8 states explicitly that being together with Ethan and Rose is the only thing that matters to her. “Mia, I’m sorry, I love you,” are some of the last words Ethan ever speaks – and I can’t help but read into how the moment he finally pushes Rose into Chris’ arms so they can get away with him weighing them down is right after he learns that Mia is alive, and thus implicitly that Rose won’t be alone if Ethan doesn’t make it. And good god does that scene break my heart every time.

It’s worth recognising that the fact Ethan and Mia love each other doesn’t inherently mean their relationship is healthy, or that you have to love them together as much as I do. Like I said up top, you don’t have to like Mia, and you don’t have to justify not liking her if you don’t. I would genuinely like to see fics where Mia and Ethan’s supposedly-necessary break up feels in character. Where Ethan loves her but just can’t deal with the resentment and the fallout over all the lies she told him, where he's been clinging to his 'happy ending' with Mia after surviving the Bakers so hard he can't face the fact things just aren't working, or where he’s having to face that their relationship only ever really worked because she was away so much. It will break my heart, but fiction is allowed to do that.

But god, it would be nice if people could just take the bashing below an eleven around this place. The number of times I’ve had to sigh and back-button out of reading something, because yet another author has decided to project their own hatred for Mia onto the husband who’s still reeling from watching her being violently murdered in front of him… it gets fucking old, y’know?

I would really like to think that in the year of our lord 2024, fandom would be a bit past this thing where they bash the canonical female love interest in the name of shipping the hero with another dude. People will bend over backwards to try and cast Heisenberg and Chris as guys who really care about consent and worry about Ethan getting hurt, because heaven forbid anyone be caught shipping something slightly problematic. And yet misogyny still somehow gets a pass.

You do not have to love Mia. You don’t even have to like her. But ye gods, the hate she gets is baseless and absurd.

Hasn't this poor woman suffered enough?

(And on that note, I promise I am finally done soapboxing in defence of Mia Winters, thank you for bearing with me for this long.)

[snippychicke]

It's Just Business -- Four

Fandom: One Piece (LA mainly)

Rating: Teen so far

Pairing: Sanji/Reader

Warnings: No real warnings, but god, I hope you like pining

Summary: You felt like you had known Sanji forever, considering your family had been the main merchants Zeff used to supply the Baratie. You had a small crush on him, but knew it was hopeless considering you were the one woman he didn't seem to pine over. 

It was fine. Or so you thought until you ended up on the Going Merry as a bookkeeper and supply manager. Being around him 24/7 was a lot more difficult than just a few days a week.  

(Please note 》°《 denotes a scene in the past while -*- will be a regular scene break. Because yeah, I like my non-linear story telling.)

Masterpost | Ao3

Coco village was freed of Arlong after several long years. You had already talked with several of the townsfolk about restarting trade routes to help restore their village-- they did have some of the best tangerines in the region, after all. Plus, being the closest to the Baratie meant even fresher items for the restaurant, as well as a large boost to their own economy. 

Business was your trade, and one of the very few ways you could help out. You also helped Sanji prep food for the entire community as a celebration, which challenged the small set of culinary skills you did have. Still, you would take it any day over the fight had left you wondering how you were even standing. 

(You also desperately tried not to think that this might be the last time you watched him cook. To see the light in his eyes as he mentally went over his recipe, assuring everything was going to be perfect. 

Eventually the evening wore into the middle of the night and you found yourself sitting at one of the few bonfires still burning. You were nestled between Nami and Sanji (Well, closer to Sanji than Nami) with the rest of the Strawhat crew circling the fire as well. You enjoyed just listening to the others, the events of the day leaving you tired. It was probably more than okay for you to slip away to bedrolls Nami’s sister had prepared for the crew, or even trekking back to the Going Merry to crash, but you felt reluctant to leave. Even if you were struggling to keep your eyes open. 

"It'll be nice not to be the only girl onboard," Nami sighed during a lull in the conversation, making you frown as you glanced over at her. "Being surrounded by those three was hard enough, let alone Chef Flirt."

Sanji leaned forward, giving the redhead a wink. “Just want to make sure you’re aware how beautiful you are, Nami dear”

Your chest tightened. You had assumed she had known, but then again, Luffy was still insisting you were part of the crew. "Actually…I'm not staying." Your words caught the attention of everyone else, and suddenly you had five pairs of eyes staring at you, making things even worse. "I came to make sure you idiots got here safe and sound,” You insisted against the looks of disbelief that everyone was giving you. “I can't just abandon my job and become a pirate." 

Even if Sanji was doing the same thing. Even if Zeff himself had encouraged you to embrace the chance if you had found it appetizing. And… you kind of did. Even with the fighting, you enjoyed being around the Strawhat Crew and could see yourself becoming quick friends with all of them.

"But you're part of our crew," Luffy was the first to actually protest. "Even with our Navigator back, we need you at the helm! Plus you’re the bookkeeper!" 

“Your ship isn't that big that you need both a navigator and a helmsman,” You argued. “And surely between the five of you, you can manage your own supplies and ledgers." 

"We have a thief, a liar, and Luffy," Zoro of all people pointed out, opening his eye that had been closed before. "And I'm not keeping track of anything." 

Before you could argue, Sanji nudged your shoulder. "You really want to keep ferrying supplies back and forth to the Baratie the rest of your life? The same thing you've been doing since we were kids?" 

Your stomach twisted at the thought. At seeing the firelight reflected in his eyes as he gave you a pleading look. "Well, no," You admitted slowly. Especially considering he wouldn't be there anymore. You loved Zeff, Patty, and everyone else. But… No Sanji to talk and tease? It would be like the restaurant lost its heart…. 

But it was the responsible thing to do. It was good, steady, profitable work. 

"What's your dream?" Luffy asked, staring at you intently from across the fire, the flames flickering in his dark eyes. (There was just something about this boy you couldn't put your finger on that both scared yet compelled you at the same time.)

Dream? You huffed at the thought as you shook your head. You never really had a dream; just short term goals. You had been happy enough with life that you never really questioned what the future could hold. You had listened to Sanji talk about the All Blue through the years with fondness as well as envy. Nothing brought you passion like that. Nothing called you so much to daydream about it day after day, year after year. 

"I don't have one," You admitted quietly with a half-hearted shrug. 

But Luffy refused to take that as an answer. "Surely there's something you want?” he pressed. “More than anything?" 

Something you wanted more than anything? More than anything, you… just wanted to be happy. But compared to Luffy’s dream of being the King of Pirates, Zoro’s goal to be the world’s best swordsman, and Sanji’s own dream of finding the All Blue, your ‘dream’ (if it could really be called that) would likely fall flat. No matter what Nami and Usopp’s own dreams were. 

You shrugged your shoulders. “Not really? I mean, seeing new places would be fun," You offered, hoping no one could tell your cheeks were darkening in the firelight. “But I don’t know if it's enough to compel me to leave everything I know behind.” 

~*~

Sanji swore he could feel his heart drop into his stomach as you dug your heels into your refusal. The bright future he had just been daydreaming of suddenly grew dark as you faded from it. 

Were you really so against the idea of joining the crew? Of becoming a pirate? Despite pirates being the cause of your parents death, you hadn’t seemed to hold any ill-will to the so-called profession itself. Plus you had just admitted that you didn’t want to stay in the same routine for the rest of your life. 

Without thinking, Sanji placed his hand over yours, bringing your attention to him. Those wide, bright eyes that he loved so much, now filled with doubt, worry. 

“What about finding the All Blue together?” he asked softly, squeezing your hand softly. In all of his daydreams of finding the uncharted area, seeing the mixture of all the four seas together, you had been right there beside him. To the point he couldn’t  imagine the All Blue without you there, grinning ear-to-ear and just as excited as him. 

You bit your lip as you looked away, though you squeezed his hand softly. He could tell you were lost in thought, allowed you a moment to go over the pros and cons in your head as you always did, debating if it was worth the risk. 

(Please, he prayed, let him be worth the risk.) 

You sighed in defeat, leaning against him suddenly with your head on his shoulder. “Okay, fine. I’ll join your crew.” 

He heard the other cheer, but it mostly fell on deaf ears as he untangled his hand from yours so he could wrap his arm around your shoulders, squeezing you tightly as he pressed a kiss to your hair. “Thank you,” he whispered to the crown of your hair. 

"I've sailed the same stretch of water all my life,” you stated just as softly. “It'll be neat to see other places for once."

Sanji was determined to show you the world as you searched for the All Blue. Whatever it took so you didn’t regret your choice. He’d hunt down every natural and man-made wonder to make it up to you if need be.  

》°《

"Oh god, you're gonna be one of those," You swore when you found Sanji on the back deck of the Baratie that was restricted to staff only and mostly filled with crates and barrels of overstock. 

But your focus was on the thin white cigarette in his mouth, the lit tip bright in the shadow cast by the restaurant. A lot of the cooks smoked, so it wasn't surprising to see Sanji had picked up the habit. Yet you couldn't help wrinkle your nose--mainly just to give him grief. 

"Oh shut it. I've heard enough from Zeff," He grumbled as you perched yourself on the crate he was leaning on. 

"He means well." Sanji merely grunted at your defense of the older man. Silence fell and blanketed the air as you both looked out at the ocean, listening to the waves gently lap at the sides of the restaurant. 

"I guess I should break the news," You sighed, and watched his shoulder tense as he took a deep inhale of the cigarette. It had been a few weeks since the death of your parents-- since you found your way back to the Baratie where you had been accepted with open arms by the crew, proving they were every bit the family you had felt. Yet you knew you weren’t one to stay in one place, used to having the wind in your hair as you headed to the next destination. Bussing tables, waitressing, all the jobs you were qualified for on the Baratie drove you up the wall after doing it for a few days in a row. 

He knew you couldn’t stay still, and you knew he didn’t like the idea of you leaving. 

But the suppliers Zeff had reached out to proved that they did not hold to the same kind of quality that you believed the restaurant deserved. "I'm going to take over my parent's route. My vessel will be smaller, so I'll have to make more frequent trips, but like Zeff said, that just means fresher ingredients for the restaurant." 

The relief in Sanji's frame was easy to see, warming your heart. You even caught a small smile on his face as flicked away the ash into the ocean. "Aw, were you worried, lil' eggplant?" 

He rolled his eyes, though his smile didn't fade even as he looked up at you. "Didn't want to have to deal with some random idiots that don't know what they're doing. That's all." 

"Mmhmm," You hummed doubtfully as you slid down from your perch to stand beside him, nudging his shoulder with your own. (You were a little irritated that he had reached his growth spurt and was now taller than you.) "Either way you're not getting rid of me that easily. You're gonna be stuck with me forever." 

You couldn't imagine leaving the crew after everything. Just being alone the few days between the restaurant and port made you nervous enough. But you had to pull your weight, prove that while you may not serve the restaurant directly, you were vital enough to keep around. 

What you weren't expecting was Sanji suddenly wrapping an arm around your waist, pulling you close to him to the point your back was pressed against his chest as he muttered in your ear. "Is that a promise, lil' miss." 

Your heart was pounding in your chest from the near-sultry tone. You knew he was just playing, just seeing if he could get you flustered. A game of chicken. That's all this was. You pushed away the butterflies and twisted in his grip and wrapped your arms around his shoulders with a devious grin, hoping your blush didn't betray you. "It's a threat, my good sir." 

Sanji smirked, his gaze lingering on you for a long moment before he leaned in, pressing a kiss to your forehead. A friendly gesture… or so you had convinced yourself as he let you go. 

Because there was no way he saw you like the fancy ladies that visited the Baratie. Not when you had known each other for so long. You were friends. Friends that playfully flirted just like you bantered and cussed each other out. 

 Right? 

[sepublic]

The Owl House's Ending Anniversary...

So it's officially been one whole year since The Owl House ended.

One year ago, I wondered how I would move on. How I would keep going. But I also knew I would, no matter what, because time keeps going on. Things will eventually pass, they always do, that's how so many moments and days for me have gone. Even entire periods of my life.

So I'm not surprised how things have gone on since then; I still had plenty more things to say about TOH, and I still love it just as I have. I've gotten new hyperfixations, and even returned to old ones as some of you can see with recent posts, so it's only a matter of time before TOH circles back again.

And man does it feel so slow, only to feel so brief, it really feels like this anniversary has snuck up on and surprised me! And once again, we have some other, appropriate event lined up; A solar eclipse on this anniversary! Luckily there's no sigils nor coven heads gathered to make me worry. But dang, it was raining in Connecticut when Luz returned there, and it was the rebirth of Jesus when Luz was resurrected.

Makes me wonder if anyone of the Boiling Isles, justifiably, has had PTSD from solar eclipses, and dreaded any that showed up, despite knowing it couldn't happen again. People must've held their breaths the entire time during the first eclipse, panicked at even the slightest fatigue, and then it passed and they realized it really was impermanent and over. And that there was another step towards moving on, which I guess I can relate to now, though this is something I'm much less happy to see gone.

I think a lot about how TOH has influenced both me and my writing, how I approach characters and stories now. I've found myself gravitating more and more towards personal, character-driven stories and situations now. I still have a bit of a taste for grander-scale stuff, but TOH was special for me in that it feels like the first time I really got and understood a show and its characters from the ground-up as I experienced it all in real time. The first time I truly grasped themes and character arcs and could make reasoned predictions based on those, some of which came true! It really feels like THE big start of my media literacy in a way?

It's been fun looking back at TOH as a 'whole' work more or less to reevaluate, and learning other things behind-the-scenes about the show. We've had a few more livestreams and stuff confirmed. Dana's done more drawings, including on her Patreon.

I haven't been writing as much TOH stuff lately, and tbf I've already said soooo much. I might have other, new things to say later down the line, and I do have a few thoughts I've written in notes that maybe could be fully-fledged posts in their own right. I've found comparisons to protagonists of other media, like Miles Morales, or Arin from Ninjago.

The Owl House still is and will probably always be something truly special to me; It feels like my first real fandom experience. My first time understanding and learning a show, appreciating it as it develops and even as I speculate. It broadened my tastes and horizons, my ability to participate with others in stuff.

I miss it; I miss new episodes, new developments. I'm still agonized over things that could've been, things I would've loved to see more of. I'm apprehensive over whether we'll get that Raeda prequel because I don't wanna get my hopes up. Plus Dana needs a well-deserved break and is trying and experimenting with new, different things. And I get that.

It's bittersweet, it's scary, it's freeing, it's sad, it's happy. I've gone so far, this show and fandom has gone so far. And it'll keep going, it has to, time keeps marching on. Luz had to lose her father Manny, process that, but still keep going and must be surprised looking back how much she's adjusted since then, how much she's still grown and gained and learned, while still holding him dear; The same applies for the Titan and the magic she once wielded. With grief and acceptance being a core theme in this show, I'm not surprised that it prepped up the viewers to do the same, and now we have.

And you know what? I'm gonna keep going on, like Luz Noceda, possibly my favorite protagonist of all time, one of the greats and a huge inspiration now for how I really want to write and focus on my own protagonists, too. I'm gonna keep doing this like it never ended. The rate and frequency might fluctuate, but every now and then I'll have things to say, and stuff to drop by and check, such as with the tag and the occasional trending post, others' reblogs, and so forth.

So again, thanks to Dana and the crew. Thanks to Luz Noceda, Eda Clawthorne, King Clawthorne, and the other many, many characters! Luz's story is one where it feels like the show really is about her at its core and wraps around to her, and I want to do a story one day that accomplishes the same feeling. And as I see how Dana has been inspired by past influences, I can't help but look forward to future generations and stories that will themselves have been inspired by The Owl House, I know I've been already, retroactively applying it to things that were already fairly compatible to begin with, and really needed the fresh breath of new inspiration.

I'm repeating a lot of the same things I've said last year. Will I say the same stuff another whole year from now? I'll see. But until next time... BBBBYYYYYYEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

[disillusioneddanny]

Spread the Love Fic Recs <3

There's been a bunch of negativity lately and I think that means we as a fandom need to spread some love around. If you get tagged please add some fics that you think deserve more love, only request is that they aren't insanely popular fics (think like fics with less than 50k hits) this way we can get some other fics out there for others to read and enjoy!!

1.) Premeditation by Chromatographic (Lia)

The problem is that so few people are even able to see what the problem really is. The problem is that things that manage to find the balance on the knife’s edge of life are so, so hard to kill. The problem, Jasmine Fenton realizes, two weeks after she moves into Gotham, is one that almost no one, in any dimension or realm, is able to solve. The problem is simply put, though, even if it’s almost impossible. The problem is this: The Joker is a Halfa.

this fic has the hardcover ship (Jazz/Jason) and everlasting trio (danny/sam/tucker) it's beautifully written and keeps you on the edge of your seat as you watch the story progress. Absolutely amazing. The writing is just amazing, Chroma sucks you in with beautiful storyline that just blows my mind. And the ending is just absolutely perfect!

2.) Halves by TourettesDog

Jason wasn't sure why Dick thought it was a good idea to drag him along with Tim to Amity Park. His brother seemed to think the strange case would offer a decent opportunity to bond-- without Gotham (and Bruce) close at hand, perhaps it wasn't the worst idea he'd ever had. Unfortunately, Amity Park is far stranger than Dick anticipated, and Jason hasn't quite been himself since they arrived. Going to FentonWorks for answers was their first big mistake.

honestly one of my favorite fics atm, I just love Gothamites going to Amity Park, i'm just such a sucker for the idea and we just don't see it enough so this fic is just my dream come true!

3.) Pitch-Dark Shades by SummersSixEcho

Danny Fenton is trying to build a new life in Gotham after closing up the connections to the Ghost Zone. Not that all connections are entirely broken, still being able to perceive shades and give them strength when he connects to one of their prized objects. Tim Drake is trying to find his own place in the world, focusing on becoming a better detective by solving cold cases in his spare time. When Tim and Danny meet, a new (begrudging) partnership starts to bloom to solve even the hardest of cases. Or it would if only they told each other the truth.

I truly just love Danny and Tim together in literally any kind of capacity. They just cause so much chaos together and it's amazing. This fic is just absolutely lovely and the prose is amazing. Summers fics are truly enrapturing and just pull you in so easily.

4.) Beneath A Different Light by AKelaNakamura, SummersSixEcho, TourettesDog

When a convergent event hits unexpectedly, Damian and Danny find themselves in the last place they’d expected: In the body of the twin they’d thought long dead. With the after effects still coursing through them and danger lurking in both cities, the brothers must figure out who they can trust—all while slowly learning about the life their twin has led without them. Or, none of these bastards can catch a break.

Demon twins. Just--just Demon Twins my beloved. This fic is two chapters in and i'm just so utterly in love with it. Summers, Akela, and Dog are just a match made in heaven when it comes to cowriting a fic. The fic just yanks you in so easily and you find yourself thinking about it even after reading the fic. Just a wonderful fic!

5.) Come Little Children by Die_Erlkonigin6083

American Chestnuts were once one of the most important trees along the East Coast. The blight destroyed most of them, but not all of them. There was one chestnut tree, one that entranced a child, and then, what it wrought, enchanted an entire city or two

YALL when i tell you that the storytelling in this is absolutely breathtaking I'm serious. This fic has brought a tear to my eye because of just how beautifully it's written. It's got cool fantasy aspects to it, it's based off of an old fairy tale, it's just so amazing and it's one of my favorite fics to reread if i'm having a bad day. Just truly a lovely fic.

Now, I would like to see @halfagone @spite-sapphic-starlight @noir-renard and @midnightenigma recommend some of their favorite fics if they're willing <3333 let's spread some more love in this fandom!

also even if you aren't tagged--please feel free to recommend any fics you enjoy!!

[accio-victuuri]

WYB IN HENGDIAN 🤡🤡🤡

i knew my initial post about it wouldn’t be the last, i just didn’t expect what would happen after. lol. to think that, this should just be some chill clowning on our part and no one really knows for certain how the location thing works on douyin.

it’s now on entertainment hs. and while i do think this tag could be popular because people are curious, is he filming there? he is notoriously secretive about his projects lately so any crumb of where he is and possible hints at his work will get people’s attention.

as i mentioned, that 7km may not be the most accurate. @rainbowsky even said, some are saying it may be the closest baseus store to the user. the same is being explained in the screenshot below, it says the OP’s location will not have anything to do with it.

there is a mechanism, since it’s an ad, that will connect you ( the one who is watching ) to an offline store of that brand. the screenshot discusses how a blogger from Zhejiang posted about KFC, and then someone in Nanchang watching it found that same proximity thing and it’s saying how far they are from the KFC Nanchang store. but i cannot shut down people who say it works when you are in the same city, you will find how far someone is from you. it’s not exactly a unique feature, dating apps even have that.

I personally believe that they spent some time together in HD during the holidays. as with this fandom, we will get the clues at one point or another. that’s just how it is. 🤷🏻‍♀️

this is also gaining some traction because of how similar it is to the ximalaya clowning…

as soon as the hs went up of him being in Hengdian, at 12:00, he posted an Ad for Baseus. The same one shared in Douyin and his IP shows that he is in Beijing. We can gather a few things from this move.

1. This has nothing to do with the HS. It happens all the time. Ads like this are posted in multiple platforms so maybe the douyin one is first and then Weibo the next. They are not doing damage control or washing. It’s an obligation to the brand.

2. The IP of Beijing. This could easily be someone else posting for him. The speculation among BXGs is that, he had to do this to cover up for the fact that he is in Hengdian. P2 is saying he used the Brand’s video, not even uploaded it himself. So it seems like he is in a rush to publish it. In the same way his “playlist” in ximalaya was closed when people noticed something was off.

( xz holding a banner that says run away quickly as soon as wyb comes back to their HD hideout. lol )

It is said that the Baseus weibo post may be damage control because he also shared an ad for YAYA on his douyin but didn’t xpost to Weibo. We are familiar with how greedy Weibo is with ads posted on celebrity accounts so it is really better to keep things on Douyin. So they are saying WYB pushing for the Weibo post says he is doing this to cover up. The IP on there isn’t even the most reliable, I remember that weibo tv awards event where artists are posting supposedly in the venue but their IPs are different.

It also doesn’t help that we had that rumor of them spending CNY in HD.

It you think about it, in a way, this seems like a parallel of sorts to him posting a photo of him in Inner Mongolia while XZ’s production was filming there. but that was voluntary on his part.

3. He is shutting down the rumors. I believe this is a favorite among so/os because it implies that wyb hates the cpf narrative so he is shutting us up by posting that weibo ad with an IP. However, him, “shutting” us up in this case is totally fine. 😅😅😅

We’re sorry for exposing you. 🙇🙇🙇

That’s why i felt off when i saw that candy cause it’s invasive. It could easily be used for the wrong reasons and we know how big wyb is with his privacy. There is nothing wrong when we piece things together based on photos they share ( or lrlg posts ) like with GG’s birthday etc but this one may put WYB in trouble. I love it when they get to spend their free time together or with friends & family and i would hate for them to feel like we are making a joke out of their security. That is not the case here. They always come first and whatever will make them safe.

At this time, the point isn’t even what the 7km means and who is right or wrong. I personally think this is a lesson of how what we talk about in the small circle of cpfs may be used to negatively talk about WYB. Tho this HS is not negative or scandalous at all — but it’s only a matter of time. XZ & WYB are such big names and there are a lot of people who are just waiting for the right piece of news. Years ago, our CPNs can be kept locked away and no one cares, but in recent years, that is not the case anymore. We should be more careful. ☺️

AGAIN, if it’s true, it will come back to us in bits and pieces till the picture is complete. 💟 Let’s be patient. Bjyxszd indeed.

[bitchliteraria1906]

I'm so sorry for spam posting about Lokius. It will happen again.

Anyways, I wanna talk about how the fell first x fell harder thing works with them, in my personal opinion.

Let's get it out of the way: Mobius fell first, Loki fell harder. I think most of the fandom agrees with this.

Mobius studied Loki's life. He's seen all the bad and even downright unforgivable things Loki is capable of.

But he's also seen Loki interacting with his family and the people of Asgard, how he never seemed to fit in, how there always seemed to exist an emotional wall between him and pretty much everyone that wasn't Frigga. He's seen vulnerable moments other people in Loki's life can only dream of knowing about.

As I said, something Mobius definitely noticed is the big emotional wall that exists between Loki and other people.

So the first thing he does when he gets a chance to talk to Loki is try to break down said wall, and he does that by pressing him with questions and pushing all the buttons possible.

"Do you enjoy hurting people? Do you enjoy killing?"

"I'll kill you."

"What, like you did your mother?"

It's a cruel tactic, and considering Mobius’s personality it's safe to assume he didn’t enjoy doing that, but it's what you're expected to do with prisioners at the TVA, and in this case, it works. Loki opens up, and it makes things easier.

I've seen a lot of people joke about how Mobius studying Loki is basically him having either a hyperfixation or being a fanboy with a little celebrity crush, and... yeah? That's pretty much it?

I mean, come on. Even though it was necessary to understand Loki to work with him, you can’t tell me Mobius wasn't genuinely interested in him too. Even in season one, when things were far from perfect and there was still trust to be built, he seems to think of Loki as fascinating/endearing sometimes, and did nice things for him without expecting anything in return, like giving him the daggers, complimenting him, just overall speaking softly whenever they're talking. He wouldn't do that if he didn’t see Loki as more than a variant he was being forced to work with.

All of this, paired with his reaction to the possibility of Loki having a thing for Sylvie, paints Mobius as the person who fell/noticed his feelings first for me. I personally think he pushed these feelings aside due to a "It would never work" train of thought, even before Sylvie.

As for Loki, while he obviously didn't trust Mobius at first, once they started spending more time together, he seemed to start feeling safe and comfortable around him to a degree that he had not felt with anyone else in a long time. He sleeps peacefully around Mobius, allows himself to be playful, and seems to genuinely appreciate the nice things I mentioned Mobius did for him.

But he's also a very traumatized person who hasn't felt genuinely connected to anyone in a while, so he obviously has no idea what to do with this, and the high stakes he's dealing with obviously don't help. He doesn't have time to sit down and process how he truly feels about this random analyst that just came into his life and flipped it upside down. And even if he had the time, would he even manage to accept he was falling for someone? We're talking about Loki here.

This is where the biggest difference between their situations shines for me: Mobius had a long, boring time to think of Loki before even meeting him in person, and even when they did meet, he was dealing with less shit than Loki. He had time to think about Loki, come to a conclusion about his feelings, and make the conscious choice to not act on them/push them aside.

Loki was thrown on the TVA shortly after the events of Avengers, watched a tape of his entire life play before his very eyes, had to learn everything about the TVA and timelines and then met Sylvie and the other variants. It's not that he didn’t reciprocate, he simply didn’t have time to process his feelings.

Personally, I can see him having a moment of realization at the end of season one, when he realized how desperate he was for Mobius's comfort after being kicked through the door by Sylvie, and when the horror of Mobius not recognizing him set in.

And that's what I mean when I say he "fell harder": it's not that he loves Mobius more, it's that Mobius developed and accepted his feelings slowly, while Loki's feelings hit him like a train at the worst time possible.

[niftukkun]

New from RECAP Weekly!!! An Exclusive Interview from Hermitopia's Emperor?!?

for the third week of @shepscapades ’s hermitcraft character design event, i offer grian as an empires smp member!

ok so first off, that head. thats just p03 from inscryption. but grian. it fits! but also! go play inscryption go go its on sale Right Now (until june 30) go play it its so good then go watch this video afterwards join my fandom please please please join us

ok back to hermpires! so i originally was gonna take an empire from s2 and just insert grian into it, but while browsing through the esmp s2 wiki i came across/remembered hermitopia and my brain went yep! this one. so i thought a bit about what grian would do if he was an empires smp member and how hermitopia would happen, and i think grian would crash the economy on purpose. i mean it almost already happened when the hermitpires crossover happened so i dont think im too far off. i think grian originally exported something simple, like maybe sugarcanes or mud, something easy to farm yknow, but then i dunno got bored or something so he made a couple more farms. then kept making more farms. then the hermitopia we all know and love happened!

actually maybe hermitopia isnt grians first empire. i think grian has a separate empire but decided to invite his friends to help him make some farms and then it just kept going. then hermitopia happened. i like the collaboration aspect of hermitopia so i think thats how that happens. hermitopia isnt necessarily grian's but its under his command so it gets called his. (isnt there a word for this? was it vassalage? i think its vassalage)

with that in mind i went with a robot-y grian because grumbot and a snazzy cool suit because business man (sidenote im looking over my pre art notes and one of them is just capitalism man and. yeah! not wrong). i gave him more steampunk-y wings than the usual feathery ones cause that fit better. i gave him a crown not really sure why but it fits since without it the design was more Just A Guy but with it he's more Emperor yknow. the buttons have a g on it because he would and an (attempted) gold trim cause that looked nice and fancy. originally he was gonna have four wings cause fun fact four wings is part of my base grian design but four wings kind of crowded the drawing so i didnt include them (sad) and i also didnt include the tail hes supposed to have because i couldnt find a good way to add it in with the pose. but in my heart he has both four wings and a tail

now why magazine style artwork? i 'unno. i thought itd look cool. and it does!! it looks SO cool!!! im so proud of it. recap magazine!! because of course im gonna make a hermitcraft recap reference are you kidding me recap is practically already a magazine reporting what gossip is happening on the hermitcraft server on any given week. its very specifically volume 9 issue 34 because thats when the crossover happened season 9 week 34 babey we love little esoteric details hell yeah!! i looked up how magazine covers work and its supposed to be like, main article big and smaller supporting side articles just kinda floating around so i did that!! and i made them funney references because of course i did! local bard catches scurvy because you cannot convince me that oli orionsound would not catch scurvy he would. does god is gay is a reference to that does bruno mars is gay nonsense article that makes me laugh everytime specifically in reference about mr smallish bean because he. has so many children. and none of them as far as i know from the lady server members theyre all lovechilds from gay lovers its hysterical and hilarious. quit your job join our sun cult is about the dawn empire because thatse the vibe that empire gives me and i think its funny. also!! thats hermitopia!! in the background!! i got the image off of the empires smp wiki and just Biggen'd it and it makes a bomb ass background hell yeah ^-^!!

also version with no text here lookit it!!

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

“The updates are making me like Idia more, but in the same way you'd like a character for being pathetic” I’m shocked you didn’t like Idia at least from what I remember? He’s basically the same as Rollo (a character you do like I think) and in more ways than one. They’re both gloomy looking guys and traumatized big bros that are self righteous and pathetic. What kept you from liking Idia before if you don’t mind me asking?

[Referencing something I said in this post!]

Okay, confession time: when I was a little kid (I’m talking like 7-10 years old), I was SUPER into Greek mythology and more specifically the story of Hades and Persephone. I ate up ALL the Hades and Persephone retellings/reinterpretations I could find and actively hunted for more 💀 so you’d think I’d like Idia, who is twisted from Hades, given how I gravitated to Octavinelle because of my attachment to The Little Mermaid in my childhood…

I think what puts me off of Idia in spite of his similarities to Rollo, a character I do really love, is a combination of Idia's appearance and his attitude.

To tackle the shallower aspect first, I actually don't like characters that look "too" gloomy. I would say Rollo is stoic-looking, but not gloomy? He has a pretty neutral face most of the time and the only gloomy thing about him at a glance is the dark circles under his eyes. With Idia... There's a LOT going on here. The hair is definitely unique, but I've never been into super long hair. The nature of it kind of overshadows his face and Idia usually looks miserable as a default. I've mentioned before that I'm unnerved by his coloration too; the super pale skin plus the blue lips is reminiscent of a corpse and, well... while I do see there being an audience that finds him beautiful, I don't think that's a cute look for him.

Now, his attitude. I'm not going to fault Idia for being passionate about his hobbies, as we all have our niches that we're super into. What irks me is how Idia expresses himself and acts out on behalf of those interests. He talks down to people who "don't get it" and takes other measures to defend the things he likes that I think is crossing a line. For example, he tracks down the IP addresses of Ignihyde mob students that defaced his favorite idol group's website. In the EN version, Idia threatens to doxx the mobs too (though he never does, this was just a localization decision). Yeah, you could do that I guess... but should you? 😭 The other characters also do questionable things (as a J word fan, I cannot deny this) but those actions are usually so outlandish no one irl would do it (like how Azul is a high school student that runs his own shady business). Idia's behavior, meanwhile, embodies some very real and very toxic aspects of fandom culture. I think part of why I disliked Idia at first is also his manner of speaking; it's riddled with so much internet lingo that it's hard to take him seriously sometimes. This is even more true of the EN version of the game, which has added even more slang than was in JP. Like... sorry, am I NOT supposed to be giggling when OB Idia is making threats while talking like an enraged gamer (both in EN and JP)? There is a ceiling on how much pathetic I can take in one sitting, and Idia far exceeds it every time he talks. Other characters (like Rollo making cheesy villain speeches, Azul being teased, Jamil's DOKKAN, etc.) have their moments of funny ha ha-cringe as well, but at least I can still see them in a serious light.

Books 6 and 7 are enhancing my opinion of Idia solely because they focus on the "traumatized big brother" part to his character. In Glorious Masquerade too... Idia gets the courage to call Rollo out because he knows their experiences are so similar. I think the storyline was done very well, and I loved seeing how Idia grows from an event that no doubt affected him deeply and still continues to influence him to this day. It's clear that he cares deeply about both Orthos and will step up to protect them. I LOVE THAT FOR HIM, it's not as though Idia is completely throwing aside one brother for the other, he's acknowledging them both as his "true" brothers. The way he goes from laughing to crying in his post-OB flashback... Idia getting so mad at us attacking Phantom Ortho with lightning... the willingness to "go" with OG!Ortho to the world beyond... apologizing to Robo!Ortho for falling for the dream's promises of eternal happiness... Aaaah, it's just too good 😭

DIHLBASOFYIAYVYEBfsWPYWPF WHAT CAN I SAY... I like me a reliable onii-san character 🤡 I'M NOTHING IF NOT PREDICTABLE

[lizzaneia-elizalde]

the way i gasped when i see you have obey me! as fandom you follow is so dramatic, no but i swear I gasped dramatically pinky swear!!

Your headcannons for Yan! Solomon because he's my husband. I love his enigmatic style and how he has "oops! just created another disaster but hey i also have the solution" energy and on the serious note that despite knowing he had very less chances with MC in original timeline he still had their back everytime. I love my Shady McWizardson so much i cannot explain it to you. When NB came i was like 'this is it. this is solo stans era and we are living our dream!' How they'd play house with each other has me kicking my feet!!

Alsooo,, who's your favourite OM character 👀

-🌼

Yandere! Solomon

GIRL I AM ALSO IN LOVE WITH SOLOMON HE'S SO SHADY AND LOWKEY YAN. Although he DOES need to lay off the kitchen like stop going there bbgirl-- ALSO, favorite OM character? With the brothers, it's Beel. I love my big boy, my himbo, my everything. Jealous and clingy Beel is a blessing that comes once in a blue moon and I thank last year's valentines event for that. Outside of the brothers, it's ironically Solomon and Barbatos LOL FAIR WARNING THOUGH, I'm not that far yet in Obey Me Nightbringer. I did complete the original Obey me up to 80, but that's it. SO THERE WILL BE DETAILS THAT ARE WRONG!No nsfw for this one hehe

You know how everybody says that no things and events are coincidences?

This sorcerer definitely and deliberately got you transported back in time to solo you.

You don't need to know that though.

At first, he indeed got a bit guilty from isolating you so suddenly and without a warning from your beloved demon brothers.

But the more he saw the beauty of you and him living like a domestic couple together?

It eased his guilt almost immediately.

Back then in the original world, he spent most of his time gazing at you from afar. Wishing that it was he who was closest to you.

Not those demon brothers that he can't seem to shake at all.

Sure, he became your master/mentor, but that's it. You never saw him more than that.

And it frustrated him greatly.

So he had no choice. I hope you forgive him for that :(.

Solomon definitely got more closer to you once you went back in time.

But it was still hard not to frown when he sometimes hear you cry in wanting to go back to the present.

So, he does his best to distract you from everything.

Solomon definitely manipulates everything to his whims if it means getting closer to you.

I can also see Solomon being nicer to you and a distant coldness to him when somebody speaks to him that's not you.

Two-faced Solomon is a thing i've been thinking about for quite a while, and it fits him so well.

If he had a choice, he would just keep you from rekindling flames with the past brothers at all.

But he's too nice for that.

That, and he can't afford your image of him to break at all.

People will warn you about him and how he's shady.

But you know him best! He would never force a demon on a pact at all! All of these demons only knew the sorcerer Solomon, and not him.

Oh he would definitely use tears also. He will not hesitate to do so once he knows tears are your weakness.

He will build an image of a mischievous but good sorcerer in your eyes.

And he will not hesitate to eliminate those who threatens to break that image at all

Both of you are human! Only you and him are all the both of you got. The others cannot be trusted that much.

Even the brothers! They're not your demon brothers that's for sure.

So only rely on him.

And only him.

Let's just say it was a bad day for Solomon.

He went back to the present and he can hear the present demon brother's bemoans of agony from not having you.

They were about to tear the whole devildom apart trying to find you.

Oops, Solomon didn't tell them. His bad, really.

The sorcerer society also decided to pester him greatly.

Then, there's Barbatos in both the past and present to bring you back to the present to not mess with the timeline anymore.

But Barbatos foresaw this already. So what's the point?

This only made Barbatos frown and say "He's gonna regret that."

Eh. He won't.

When Solomon went back to the hall, he realized you weren't there.

Strange, you're usually home by this time.

He asked the demon brothers, nothing.

He asked Simeon and Diavolo. But nothing also.

He even went as far to ask Thirteen, only to get a face full of octopus.

He's getting frustrated, not until he saw little Luke acting fidgety.

Oh. He knows where you are.

Unfortunately for him, you ran away from the hall because you figured out that he deliberately transported you here.

You screamed at him, asking him why.

And you started to question everything about him. About how if he's really as nice as he is, as to why he's so adamant on helping you, on how he knows every solution to everything!

Solomon can feel his whole resolve crumble. All his hard work down the drain.

Last chance to make this right...

He got on his knees, hugging your legs and crying his eyes out. God knows how desperate he was for you to believe him.

"NO! Y/N I SWEAR I DID IT FOR A GOOD REASON I CANNOT SAY!"

He made it seem like the time travel was necessity for your safety, that something will happen if he didn't do it.

The waterworks, and his heartfelt confession of finally admitting his feelings wholeheartedly, and that he never lied to you... It felt genuine (It's not).

And you, ever so soft on him, decided to forgive him that easily.

And he smiles, for he knew he got to you.

[zahri-melitor]

A Quick, Somewhat Joking Discussion of 'the Best Ways To Get Into Comics' (TM)

Be 10-14 years old, pick up a random comic at the library/bookshop/someone's collection and become obsessed. This is proven the best method and the level of confusion engendered by it is actually more useful long term than any other method. (At that age you are going to fall deeply in love with random texts that are never going to quite have the depth your brain imparts on them)

Mention to a friend who does like comics that you want to 'get into comics' and said friend, knowing your preferred types of tv shows and books, your favourite characters and having asked what you're hoping to read, carefully picks out something that is objectively a good starter comic that fits your tastes and makes your brain go brrrr. (god tier level, that friend is a keeper, also congratulations on the fact you are never going to replicate the feel of reading that first comic again)

Lurk or hang out in some fandom space where you are regularly exposed to discussions of comics that includes actual panels and storylines of recent comics, and work out from that what seems to have a vibe you like, so you go and pick up that run (solid option, being able to taste various writers and styles of run before diving in gives you a better chance of choosing a run that hooks you, I was introduced to so many runs via scans_daily in this way back in the day).

Wander into a library or comic shop or bookshop that has a decent number of comics with the idea that you want to look into reading these, and then flip through a bunch of trades in what you think you want to read before something catches your eye and you pick that up (less likely to be a definite hook, but has the benefit of being far more likely than any option listed further below to involve newbie-friendly art. And newbie-friendly art is something that isn't discussed enough in terms of recommendations but is one of the biggest reasons people just getting into comics bounce off the format).

Only here will I mention recommended character reading guides. In my experience they're useful in certain contexts, particularly for characters who have hard-to-trace chronologies, for finding out what runs that person considers essential to the character, for untangling the order of comics in particularly confusing large events, and for narrowing down and directing people where there's a big chunk of material to read about a character. My objection is they tend to be treated like gospel by newbies, they frequently don't consider whether the artwork is going to make their eyes burn, quite often they are more focused on the 'best' stories for a character rather than the 'most accessible stories' for that character (these are two separate concepts!) and they tend to sell a narrative of 'don't read X' where X is quite often a comic which people don't enjoy but where an important event happens or is simply an older comic that's particularly affected by community expectations and standards having changed since it was written.

You know that '75 Years of Comics' series of prestige hardbacks that DC did? They're great to hand to a newbie looking to get into a specific character or mantle, because it's got stand alone stories that are highly regarded or solidly introductory about that character from each era, they can page through it and work out what version makes their brain happy, and then follow up on those leads into more reading. (Expensive but perfect for libraries)

The first trade of a recent run for the character in question by the current or second most recent writer. Most runs when they change lead writers are going to have some level of onboarding simply because a lot of people DO switch what they're reading depending on what team is on the book, and by going with a current run you manage to sidestep a lot of the 'this feels weird and old' problems.